I AM A CREATOR

WHY CULTS ARE GOOD BUSINESSES

Happy Summer War & Peaceniks! Ready to create?

I know that I just put the idea in your head, but stop thinking about the Creator Economy. Before you wade into that concept, take a second and think only about the word Creator. List in your mind every career or profession that you would call a creator.

Photographer. Fine Artist. Dancer. Director. Graphic Designer. Clothing Designer. Decorator. Drag Queen. Comedian. Musician. Make-up Artist. Marketer. Director. Actor. Writer. There are more careers that belong on this list those of you reading this likely could add - and many more beyond that.

There is a misperception in conventional wisdom that the Creator Economy is simply a euphemism for Influencer Marketing. It isn’t. Sure Jake Paul and Trixie Mattel started their careers as Influencers. But that’s like saying Bob Iger started his career as a set carpenter. Mattel and Paul have built massive personal industries around their personas that have little to do with clicks or brand deals on YouTube. Ryan Kaji started as a YouTuber at 8 years old. This summer, he will release his own self-produced feature film on 2000 screens nationwide, and it will likely become one of the highest grossing films of the year.

Reese Witherspoon is known as an actress. About ten years ago, she started investing in books (remember those?) before they were released to the public. She bought the rights to Gone Girl, Wild and Big Little Lies, all of which she turned into incredibly successful films and TV. In 2017, she formed Reese's Book Club, a direct-to-consumer email-based reading suggestion list, populated by Witherspoon’s fans. The club now has approximately 4 million members. Publishers clamor to be one of the books Reese chooses each month to recommend. Through her production company Hello Sunshine, Witherspoon and her team secure the rights to most of the books they select, before the books are released. Then, by the power of her Book Club, she turns the books into hits. When the books become best sellers - as nearly every single chosen book does - Hello Sunshine creates a film or TV show based on that book, with a built-in audience of rabid fans ready to watch.

Books selected as Reese’s Book Club Picks outsell average fiction books by 700%.

Reese speaks to her audience on Instagram and TikTok. She circumnavigates the gatekeeper economy to secure IP, generate sales, build audiences, and all-but guarantee the success of her various endeavors. She is not doing brand deals for yoga pants on social media. She is building her own personal creative empire - which she sold in 2021 for $1 billion.

This year, The Creator Economy will generate a quarter of a trillion dollars in revenue. By the end of this decade, the creator economy will produce a half a trillion dollars in revenue.

To fathom this, you must stop thinking about Creators as Influencers. Podcasts are Creator Economy platforms. This newsletter you are reading, and every other non-conglomerate-owned newsletter you get in your inbox (Puck, The Ankler, Bari Weiss, The Information), are all creator-led enterprises. Taylor friggin’ Swift and her self-produced, self-distributed Eras Tour Movie, with more than $250 million in theatrical box office, is the poster Woman for The Creator Economy.

The truth is that Swift, Witherspoon, Paul and Mattel, are the exceptions. They are the top 1% of creators who get rich. But the reality is that a tremendous amount of creators are making middle class livings, working very hard, in The Creator Economy. The secret is, creator-led enterprises do NOT need to be massive enterprises, with tens of millions of followers to make money.

Once you let go of the singular concept that The Creator Economy is just another name for Influencer Marketing, and that creator-led businesses only exist on social media, the scope and scale of opportunity in this ecosystem takes on a new shape.

The Creator Economy is not driven by clicks alone. And talented creators from an array of disciplines are able to build their own small businesses based not on impressions, but cemented by their ability to monetize the love of their work from their small, passionate communities. The gold-medal case study is Witherspoon, who has used a few million emails to create a billion dollar business. But this newsletter you are reading right now is a much smaller example. I have thousands - not millions - of avid readers. I have tens of thousands (not tens of millions) followers on LinkedIn. Every single penny I earn is generated through those two portals. Every penny.

The list above includes one of the most popular Patreon publishers, The Yard, as well as numerous other Patreon creators with far fewer feed subscribers. The Last Podcast On The Left is not a Top 100 podcast. They have fewer than 14,000 Patreon members. Their Patreon will generate more than a $1 million this year. That’s on top of whatever revenue they generate from podcast ads, merch sales (which they do a lot of), and touring revenue. Snake Discovery is a YouTube series about reptiles. It’s also a pet shop in Minneapolis. They have 3 million subs on YouTube. They have 3,500 Patreon members. This year, they will generate more than a quarter of a million dollars from Patreon memberships, on top of their merch (which they sell a lot of) and various other sources of income.

Last year, Roblox paid out three quarters of a billion dollars to independent game creators who developed games for their platform. Most of those creators are younger than 35. That payout was an increase of nearly 20% from 2022.

Last year, the Roblox game-creator community included 12,000 developers. 3,500 of them made $10,000 or more. 750 of them made more than $100,000. Many of these individual game creators have built out their enterprises into gaming studios, just as Trixie Mattel build out their business into a massive entertainment company.

Beyond the top 1%, in various shapes and sizes, across countless crafts and disciplines, The Creator Economy provides hundreds of thousands of jobs worldwide and contributes dozens of billions of dollars to the American GDP.

From now on, The Creator Economy will generate most of the value that artists will earn over the course of their careers. SEE: Taylor Swift. SEE: Reese Witherspoon. Successful Media practitioners - even those who do not run their own creator-led businesses - will need to learn how to ply their trades in The Creator Economy. Those who do will find opportunities as great or greater than those of the past gatekeeper Media era. Those who do not, will not.

Look a the Goldman Sachs data above. How many areas of Big Media can you name that are projected to grow 100% in the next 36 months? Any? There are no simple, clear paths to find a place in The Creator Economy. You simply have to wade in, test and learn, and find your way. This may seem daunting. However, and I cannot stress this enough, good Creator Economy gigs are not entirely dependent on billions of clicks or tens of millions of followers. Most of the best opportunities in this arena will come from businesses like Snake Discovery, who build small but mighty, highly engaged, super passionate and loyal communities around their work.

TL;DR version… Cults are good businesses.

We are at the precipice of an explosion of consumption and spending in what I call the Community Economy - a segment of Media focused NOT on pure reach, but rather built entirely around monetizing the passions of specific audiences.

And within this segment, creators will still need to produce GOOD content. Channels will still need to market to their audiences. Brands will need to learn how to go direct to consumers, without relying on mass reach platforms. Deals will still need to be made. Projects will still need to be managed. There are good jobs to be found. But like the creators who drive this fast-growing sector, the winners will need a lot of hustle, tons of determination, and the willingness to wake up stupid and re-learn everything from the ground up.

The clip below is a teaser for the zoominar video I did this week, featuring my full presentation from SXSW. You can watch the teaser for free right now.

Below the paywall you’ll find the full-length zoominar, where I detail my difficult but somewhat miraculous bout with cancer, and correlate my battle and treatment with the current apocalypse in Media, and the necessary cures I prescribe to fix what is wrong with the Big Tech and Media Industrial Complex.

Each week, I write this newsletter. I put a lot into it. I give parts away for free. Other parts I put behind a paywall, exclusively for paying subscribers. Why? Because I am a creator, and this is my business. This is all I do. The newsletter is not the sole generator of revenue in my enterprise, but it is a main cog in the flywheel that powers the rest.

My entire livelihood now runs on the Community Economy. My business is fueled by what I write each week. The ideas I put out into the world are the front door to my retail establishment. I work my ass off. But I work for myself. Is it any easier than when I worked for bigwigs in corporate Media? Fuck no. Is it far more satisfying? FUCK YES.

A huge part of the reshaping of the Media Universe will be a shift in economic power from the Gatekeeper ecosystem to Creator-led Community Economy. If you read me regularly, and trust my insights, please take this seriously: Over the next quarter century, there will be far more Media opportunity in The Creator Economy than there will be in the traditional Media gatekeeper ecosystem.

If you are a paying subscriber to this newsletter, thank you so much for your support! If you are free subscriber, take a minute and watch the trailer. If it interests you, consider signing up as a paid Peacenik, to get the full zoominar below the paywall. For those who’ve not yet made the leap, I created a Summer Sun Special discount on subscriptions (for a year!) that you can access here. Think of it as dipping your toe into the Community Economy. 😎

Most of all, please take some time to enjoy the weekend!

ESHAP