What Is The Creator Economy?

All right. So today we're going to talk about what the creator economy is and what that means for you. If we look at recent trends, Cameo raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation. And Cameo is marketplace where you can go and ask celebrities like Brett Favre or people from The Office or Russ Hanneman from Silicon Valley, pay them money and they'll make videos for you. So it's basically a way for, um, it used to be just for celebrities, but now it's opening up a little more. You take a look at that company, you take a look at Substack as well. Substack is the email newsletter company and they raised about, I think around $84 to $92 million, something like that. So it's a lot of money for an email newsletter company. Clubhouse raised a bunch of money. They're valued over $1 billion. Now, when you think about this, more and more money is going towards the creator economy, which is just basically putting more power into the hands of creators. So a YouTuber could be a creator, a blogger could be a creator, a podcaster could be a creator. In a sense, an entrepreneur is a creator and they actually just have more options in my opinion. because they have a lot of leverage underneath them, right? And you can do it either way. I think you can start as a creator first and then you can become an entrepreneur, or you can start as an entrepreneur, have businesses, and then become a creator, right? Gary Tan is a very good example of this. We had him on the Leveling Up podcast, so highly recommend that you check that one out. You know, still at the end of the day, you can call yourself an entrepreneur, creator, whatever. To me, they're kind of the same thing because as an entrepreneur, you're creating all the time. You're creating jobs for people, you're creating new types of businesses, right? Or maybe when you're investing in a company, you're kind of helping people create, right? So you're creating all the time. A lot of entrepreneurs write books. The creator economy, it's nothing really new. It's just people are using this phrase and people like new phrases. But if you think about it, everything created around you, this camera that I'm shooting on right now was created, right? This microphone was created. This shirt was created. You know, what people are really talking about today from the creator economy standpoint is, you know, what's modern, right? Like podcasting exploding. Spotify's buying all these podcast companies. They're scooping them up. Let's look at NFTs as an example, or Nifties, whatever you wanna call them. NBA Top Shot. Just raised $305 million in funding. Kevin Durant backed them, Michael Jordan backed them. We're kind of moving into this era where more power is flowing towards the creators. And I think what we're going to see in the future is that more businesses are started kind of in reverse, where like a MrBeast, as an example, he builds out an audience and then he builds out the businesses, right? So he built out his YouTube channel, built out his audiences, now he has MrBeast Burger. The reason we're going to see that is because more and more people Do not trust kind of these large conglomerates. They don't trust the government. They don't trust large conglomerates. So they want to go to people. They want to go to people that they trust and people that build audiences. Well, they can do stuff with that audience after because they can decide how to best serve them by hitting up their email list or hitting up their socials and just saying, "Hey guys, what are you looking for exactly?" And then trying to deliver on that promise, right? So I think we're going to see a lot of these creators partnering up with maybe business savvy people and or maybe even saying like, let's use Mr. Beach as an example, partnering up with restaurants that are struggling and saying, "Hey, I have the influence. Why don't I help you blow?" this thing up, right? Because that's what it really is. At the end of the day, one of the strongest moats you can have around you is having the ability to have an audience with the push of a button, you know, summon a bunch of people, right? And to get them to do something. I think that's extremely powerful. And that's, that's a defensible moat. I always like using the 4 forms of leverage that Naval Ravikant talks about. You have code, capital, labor, and media. Media is becoming more and more of a moat that you can have. And leverage, just keep in mind, is when you press a button and you can get a lot back from it, right? Which is an example of this might be investing. You put a dollar in, try to get $10 back. Like me recording right now, this might go onto the podcast, might go onto the YouTube channel, but it could potentially hit tens of thousands of people, right? That's why a lot of VCs or investors are putting money into this, 'cause they see it as the future. I would argue even people that are young right now, kind of growing up, let's say Gen Zers, you know, the first job they wanna go for is to become a YouTuber. They wanna become creators. So fundamentally, you know, human beings, we just want to create. We want to go make things. You know, there's 3 things that, you know, we're ultimately looking for. We wanna be able to connect with other people. Right? We want to be able to contribute to something that's bigger than ourselves. And, you know, we want to take care of our physical health and our mental health at the same time, right? So, you know, the first 2 I mentioned, connecting with people or, you know, contributing. If you create, you do that, right? Because you build an audience, you connect with people, you're gonna have other like-minded people that you get to hang out with, right? So I think you look at all the money going into this space right now. Look, you can be a Substacker, a TikToker, a blogger, all these things, you know, Clubhouse or whatever you want to do, right? I think There's just so much opportunity available. And I think being able to dedicate maybe even, you know, let's say if I spend 3 hours a day watching TV or whatever, maybe I dedicate 1 to 2 hours of that time creating. And maybe there's a ratio to this, right? So for every hour of content that I consume, maybe 2 hours of that is spent creating because creating is a lot harder to do. But, you know, at the end of the day, you're going to reap more rewards from it because what I like doing personally is I love learning and then I love teaching, right? Because it articulates my thoughts. And so, you know, that's how I've been able to build an audience around podcasting as an example, right? Or even on the blogging side, that's really compounded over the years. And now here I am, you know, shooting stuff like this in hopes of compounding yet another channel, right? So the final thing I'll say around this is if you're looking to get started with creating, it takes time. Usually what I found is it takes about 3 years to get something going, whether it's a business or building an audience. But the important thing is to get going. Don't stress that other people are way ahead of you right now. You know, they all started at chapter 1. So You're at your chapter 1 right now if you're just getting going, right? Don't forget to check out the next video over there. Okay, over there. And before we go, open a new tab, levelingup.com, to learn more about the book. We may or may not have other goodies tied to this book. All right, levelingup.com in a new tab. You can check out the next video first in a new tab, and we'll see you later.