Creators on Cap Tables: Why More Brands Are Paying in Equity

0:00Jasmine Enberg: Hi, everyone. This is Scalable, a weekly show about the business of the creator economy. I'm Kaya Yurieff. And I'm Jasmine Enberg. Every Thursday, we take you beyond the headlines to tell you what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. There are now more creators on cap tables than ever before. Creators want more control and ownership over their own businesses. For creators, the payday can be huge, especially if the company they have equity in has an exit or IPOs. These deals are often framed as equity for endorsement. In many ways, giving creators equity is really just the next level of influencer marketing.

0:34Kaya Yurieff: Because I'm incentivized for the long term, yes, I will be starting to invest more.

0:39Jasmine Enberg: Just like brands aren't going to be handing out equity to every creator, creators also just can't go around taking equity stakes in every company they like or want to work with.

0:48Cat G: Creators should not confuse themselves with venture capitals. As a creator, you are still managing your own business.

0:56Jasmine Enberg: The best piece of advice that I've heard from an investor is just because you like a brand does not mean that it's a good investment.

1:07Jasmine Enberg: Hi, Jasmine. Hi, Kaya. And hi, everyone. Welcome to Scalable, our weekly show about the business of the creator economy. For as long as we've been covering the space, creators have been asking for a seat at the table. Now, more of them are getting one. Over the past few years, more brands have been giving creators equity stakes in their companies, sometimes in lieu of cash. That means there are now more creators on cap tables than ever before. And it's not just the big name stars or the household brands. Alex Earle's deal with Poppy is probably the most well-known example of this. She took an equity stake in the beverage brand in 2024 before it sold to Pepsi last year for roughly$2 billion.

1:44Jasmine Enberg: But like you said, it's not just the Poppies and Alex Earles of the world who are doing this. Smaller companies are trying it out too. In December, Gen Z dating app Vibes also gave creators, including Zach Justice, equity in its company as part of a new creator at the cap table program. That was in partnership with One With Many, also known as OWM, which is a platform that helps creators sign equity deals with brands. Then there's DripTail, a social shopping app focused on body inclusivity. Most creators on the app make money through standard affiliate commissions, but the company is also giving some of its top creators equity stakes.

2:18Jasmine Enberg: Drip Tail is funded by Love & Money Ventures, an early-stage VC and angel investment fund from Shine Talent Group. And the most recent example is Kat Getzy, better known as Kat GPT, a very clever name given that she makes content primarily about AI. In September, she announced that she'd taken an equity stake in creator management company Smooth Media, which represents her. And as part of the deal, she became a strategic advisor. Kaya, you actually got to sit down with Kat and the co-founder and CEO of Smooth Media, Josh Kaplan, to learn more about the deal. Yes. And one of the first things I asked them was, why do this kind of deal in the first place?

2:53Jasmine Enberg: Here's what they said.

2:54Cat G: We've had an incredible year being partners, getting to build all sorts of amazing things. But it's not just her as a creator, it's also Kat as an ambitious person, as somebody who really can see and think at a really high level. And by having somebody on the career side give us feedback, keep us honest, give us ideas, I think it's one of the few high, high leverage things that we can do as a business to put us in an amazing position for the next five years of growth that we're thinking about.

3:22Kaya Yurieff: And from my perspective, having more equity in different portfolio companies has been something that's been top of mind for me in general and felt like I had also a lot to offer in terms of taking all of the learnings from actually being boots on the ground and building a creator economy company as a creator, and then giving that kind of access and knowledge in a more in-depth way so that they could apply it across their portfolio of creators.

3:49Jasmine Enberg: We'll share my full conversation with Kat and Josh at the end of this episode. Before that, we also wanted to zoom out and take a deeper look at what's going on. As usual, we had a lot of questions. Why are more creators joining Kat Tables now? What do these deals look like? And what are the pros and cons for both creators and brands? And how does this all fit into the broader trend toward ownership that we're seeing in the creator economy? But first, a message from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by PopStore. Comment sections can be a mixed bag for creators. On the one hand, they're great for engagement and building community.

4:21Jasmine Enberg: Right, and who doesn't want to get a personal response from their favorite creator? But on the flip side, it can be exhausting for creators to keep up with all the comments they get, and it's basically impossible for them to respond to every single message. That's why tools that automatically reply to DMs have popped up to help fill the gap. Most of them work in the same way. Creators set up a trigger word, and when someone uses that word in a comment, they'll get an automated response. We've all seen it or even done it ourselves. Comment shop or episode, and you'll get the link to an outfit or podcast sent to your inbox.

4:50Jasmine Enberg: This solution helps creators save time, but it can also make comment sections feel like they've been taken over by bots with hundreds or thousands of people commenting the same thing and getting the same generic response back. These tools also don't always consider the context of a comment and can send links to people who have unintentionally used the trigger word. Popstar's approach is different. Its AI-driven Echo Me platform monitors creators' posts as well as fan comments and DMs to figure out what people are actually asking. Echo then sends a personalized response in the creator's own voice with the right link.

5:22Jasmine Enberg: So say on the same post, one person comments, where's this from? While another person comments, you look great. Any workout tips for new moms? Each person gets a custom reply with the right link that they're looking for. No more spamming your community with bot responses or links. Want to try it out? Get 50 % off your first month by visiting echo-me.ai. We're excited to start testing Echo ourselves. Okay, now let's get into it, starting with why these creator equity deals are happening now. So in many ways, giving creators equity is really just the next level of influencer marketing. This year, advertisers in the U.S.

5:58Jasmine Enberg: are expected to spend over$44 billion on creator ads, which is up by double digits from 2025, according to data from the IAB. That is a huge number, but part of the growth is actually because costs are rising, and so is competition, and brands still don't have a good way of knowing whether they're spending their dollars wisely. Half of marketers in a recent study from the Association of National Advertisers, for example, didn't even know how much of their budget is going to influencers, which is just crazy to think about. So paying creators in equity rather than cash takes away some of these upfront costs for brands and mitigate some of the risk or the uncertainty of whether or not their investment is going to pay off.

6:40Jasmine Enberg: But the other big reason I think we see more brands giving creators equity stakes is that it makes creators more invested literally and figuratively in the success of the brand. So while the terms of these deals are obviously different, generally speaking, creators aren't making money immediately like they would in a traditional cash deal, which means that they're more incentivized to work to grow the brand so that they too can hopefully cash in. We asked DripTail founder and CEO Mark Weinberger about why the social shopping app decided to give some of its creators equity. Here's what he said.

7:13Cat G: Giving creators equity is really about aligning incentives. With unlimited upside, they have an ongoing incentive to continue to promote the brand and weave it into their narratives because the value they create keeps accruing to them in perpetuity. And if the creators are the ones helping to make us successful, they deserve to get compensated. It's that simple. The result is that almost all of our user growth has been driven organically by just a few of our earliest equity creators.

7:38Jasmine Enberg: For creators, the payday can be huge, especially if the company they have equity in has an exit or IPOs. So take Poppy, for example, as we mentioned at the top, it sold to PepsiCo for nearly$2 billion last year. Now, we don't know exactly how big of a stake Alex Earl had in Poppy, but let's say it was 1%. She could have made just shy of$20 million, and that's before obviously any taxes or fees. That is an enormous sum that many creators could only dream about. I mean, according to Creator IQ, the average creator made just about$44 ,000 over the past year. It's also no wonder that Earl has since gone on to invest or take equity stakes in other companies, including beverage brand Gorgie, which sells energy drinks and supplement brand Symbiotica.

8:20Jasmine Enberg: She also joined Sipmargs as an investor during its$3 million fundraising round in March 2025. Here's Alex in her own words about why she's taking this approach. Poppy was something that I had organically just like loved and always used. And they sent me and my friends to Coachella, which is how then we were like, maybe we do a bigger partnership after this. And I was like, you know, I also want to invest and be a part of this. Like, this is a part of my life and I want to help grow and build this brand and spread the awareness for it. So that was kind of how that one started. And it really made us and my team start thinking about the deals that we do a little bit differently.

8:53Jasmine Enberg: And, you know, maybe it is about I find, you know, my five or six brands that I really, really love and I'm always going to organically have with me.

9:00Kaya Yurieff: But it's it's different than feeling like you're like a walk in paid out when it's the stuff that you really like genuinely use and love.

9:06Jasmine Enberg: So obviously, there's a lot of potential upside for creators in these types of equity deals, which explains why they're so willing and so excited to take them. At the same time, though, we do have to be clear that not every creator is going to get a deal like this. I mean, they're typically reserved for the biggest name creators. There is not a lot of data out there on how many creators have equity stakes in companies. But what we do know is that sponsored content deals are still the number one way in which brands work with creators. They were cited by 84 % of enterprise marketers in Linkia's annual report, for example.

9:40Jasmine Enberg: While that does not mean that these brands aren't giving some creators equity as well, the fact that just 16 % of those same marketers said they were working with creators on product collaborations, for example, suggests that it's still pretty few and far between. For sure. But the fact that we're now seeing more startups like DripTail and the Vibes dating app go this route, especially with lesser known creators, means there is now an opportunity for smaller creators to participate. And it's just another sign that the trend toward giving creators equity is growing. Here's why Maddie Gustini, a founding creator at DripTail, decided to take an equity deal and what made the social shopping app an attractive partner for her.

10:17Kaya Yurieff: So much of being a creator can feel very transactional. You're kind of always chasing the next brand deal or the next video or next affiliate sale, whatever it is. And obviously, those are all really great revenue streams, but once the campaign is over, it's over. And I really liked the idea of putting my time and my audience and expertise into something where I could actually have ownership and participate in that long-term upside, especially because I think creators bring a lot more to brands than just posting an ad. I think it's really exciting to look at something and say, okay, what could we actually build together over the next five to 10 years?

10:53Jasmine Enberg: But to your point, a company also only has so much equity to give because every grant dilutes the founders and existing investors. That's why creator grants are usually pretty small. That's something I also asked Josh Kaplan, CEO of Smooth Media. The company manages more than 65 creators, and it's not feasible for every one of them to get an equity stake too.

11:13Cat G: There's nothing on the roadmap right now, as far as us trying to make a bigger program about this or anything like that. This is nuanced to us very specific to the relationship that we got to build over time. So no, it's not like, like, oh, we're going to, we have plans to do this with 10 creators by the end of the year. We're going to continue to be just opportunistic and thoughtful about the relationships that we have.

11:31Jasmine Enberg: So one more big reason why creators and brands are doing more equity deals is simply optics. I mean, on the brand side of things, it looks good to have a creator on the cap table. So many brands talk a big game about involving creators early in the process. They use buzzwords like co-creation and collaboration, but very few of them actually follow through with that. But giving creators equity is a really good way for brands to show that they're serious about it. And then if you think about the creator side of things, it gives them more credibility and respect in the business world. And that is what they really want.

12:05Jasmine Enberg: So, Kaya, I mean, you actually sent me a clip of Alex Earl talking about this on her Netflix show. I mean, granted, it was about developing her own beauty brand, Real Actives. But I think the same applies to any type of investment by a creator, whether it's, you know, for their own company or equity for promoting an existing one. Totally. I think her line was something like, I want to be seen as a serious business person and not just like making videos on social media, right? But that leads us nicely to our next question. What do these deals typically look like? So like you said, Jasmine, these deals are all very different.

12:34Jasmine Enberg: And most of the time, the financial terms are unfortunately not made public. So we don't have a lot of visibility. But in general, I mean, creators can likely expect to get somewhere between a fraction of a percent to even a few percent in a company, though it can vary. And that percentage is really going to depend on when a creator was brought on, like if they're brought into a later stage of a company, right, versus early, what kind of a role they're playing, meaning, I mean, do they become a co-founder? Are they an advisor? Are they something else? And really just how hands-on they're going to be in the company in general.

13:03Jasmine Enberg: Here's what Kat said about how involved she'll be in Smooth Media.

13:06Kaya Yurieff: It's a happy balance. I would say not so involved that I'm like in every single meeting or anything like that, but it's also, it's not going to be exactly the same in the sense of like me giving my two cents or offering feedback when like I as a creator in their portfolio of creators have a piece of feedback of their team construction or, you know, the way that things are working or the different tools that we're using or how efficient our workflows are, or even on the bigger scale, like how I want to diversify my own company and revenue streams and working with them to kind of talk through that, not just on the, you know, immediate term of here's what I'm thinking for CatGPT, but here's what we're thinking for CatGPT.

13:44Kaya Yurieff: And also, let's now have a larger conversation about how this could potentially be applied across multiple creators.

13:50Jasmine Enberg: Yeah. And it's also really important to note that in many cases, creators aren't putting down cash. So they aren't investors in sort of the traditional sense of the word. Instead, these deals are often framed as equity for endorsement, meaning that creators are getting a stake in the company in exchange for promoting or endorsing the brand, or they might be getting advisor shares. So the Vives example is a case in point. The company has said that creators can, quote, now earn equity through content performance, community activation, referrals, and ongoing brand building, that makes a ton of sense, especially for a startup or a smaller company that is looking to work with creators who probably don't have a lot of cash to invest.

14:31Jasmine Enberg: Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, especially when it comes to the bigger name stars who have money to spend and want to use it on strategic investments. And so they may be investing actual cash sometimes in combination with an endorsement deal. Yeah. And creators becoming investors is something we're seeing happen more and more these days. I mean, many of them are becoming angel investors, which basically just means they're investing their own money, usually into early stage startups. In the case of creators, they're usually writing pretty small checks, especially compared to a venture firm.

15:01Jasmine Enberg: And a few creators have even launched their own venture funds, like Jake Paul, who co-founded AntiFund in 2021, and members of the Sway House Boys, if you remember that TikTok group, they also started venture fund back in 2020. Another possible emerging trend that we're watching is venture backed creators starting to back other creators. So Diary of a CEO host Stephen Bartlett is probably the best example. He used funding he raised last year to invest in Maggie Sellers Ream, who is the host of the podcast How Smart Rich. Now Bartlett is taking that one step further by partnering with Authentic Brands Group to launch a new venture called Obsession, which plans to deploy up to$400 million in creator-founded businesses.

15:41Jasmine Enberg: And this is all part of a growing trend toward ownership in the creator economy, which is something that we've talked about in previous podcast episodes. It's also something we've been watching all year. I mean, more than ever before, creators want more control and ownership over their own businesses and their own livelihoods and not just be at the whims of brands and platforms and their changing policies or preferences. I mean, brand deals can be really unpredictable. So can platform payouts. And I think a lot of creators have now woken up to the reality that their businesses might have a shelf life.

16:13Jasmine Enberg: Anyway, speaking of Maggie, she actually talked to me a little bit about equity on stage at the Sounds Profitable Business Summit. And what is especially fun about this clip is that her bringing up equity was actually totally unprompted. I had asked her something like, what is the biggest trend that people in the creator economy are sleeping on? And here's what she said. I don't think it's being slept on. I think it's just starting to really come to the forefront and it's creator equity. I think that it's fun. I've been doing investing for about six years now, and I love seeing so many creators interested in being able to take equity positions in early stage startups that they are helping to build.

16:51Jasmine Enberg: I think I saw something recently that you have to see a message about six times to be able to really convert. And I think that when you have a long-term partnership, whether it's equity or a brand partnership that's based on many different platforms and many different touch points with the consumer, that is what the most successful brand partnerships will be made from. So whether it's creator equity, them actually taking equity in these brands, or just brands that they have a vested interest to talk about five, six times, that's what gets me really excited about being able to partner with brands.

17:24Jasmine Enberg: And I think we're just starting to see this really explode. 100 % agree with that. So obviously, Maggie is also an investor herself. But as you can hear in the clip, I mean, she makes a lot of the same points that we've been making that equity and just longer term partnerships between brands and creators in general is going to make creators more motivated. And I also love what she said about people having to see something multiple times before they convert or make a purchase. It is so true. I mean, we have talked about this countless times on this podcast, too. The flip side, of course, is that it doesn't always have to be something that they see from the same creator over and over again.

17:59Jasmine Enberg: It can be different creators, but it does help when it is the same person, especially when it's a high consideration purchase where you need a lot of trust. Well, this is not high consideration, but this is beyond TikTok. Like I just see creators over and over again, plugging the same trending thing. And I'm like, all right, I finally pulled the trigger on it. But that's my point. You just need to see the product over and over again. It can be different creators doing it. Yeah. A hundred percent. But then the next question is, how does a brand decide which creator to give equity to and vice versa.

18:29Jasmine Enberg: So clearly there is a limit to all of this. Just like brands aren't going to be handing out equity to every creator, creators also just can't go around taking equity stakes in every company they like or want to work with, especially when they fall into the same product category and might compete. There has to be a vetting or a selection process. So Alex Earl said as much in the video, saying she's realistically only going to be taking on, you know, five to six of these type of deals, and they're for products that she uses a lot. So if you look at the categories of products she's involved with.

18:58Jasmine Enberg: They don't overlap at all, right? You have alcoholic beverage, non-alcoholic beverage, supplements, and then her own skincare brand also has nothing to do with those categories. Here's what Maddie Castini said about how many equity deals she expects to do. I want to keep that number pretty small, maybe a handful of companies over the

19:13Kaya Yurieff: course of my career, because I don't look at equity as just another version of a brand deal. You are taking ownership in something, and because of that, you want to genuinely believe in the company and you also want it to make sense with my audience and my expertise. And most importantly, I want to feel like I am actually contributing to growing it. So I don't want to just have equity in 20 random companies where I'm basically just a spokesperson. I'd rather have meaningful ownership in a small number of businesses where I can actually be involved and say, I helped build this. And kind of because of that point, you're not just putting your name or your audience behind something, you're putting your time and your reputation behind it too.

19:50Kaya Yurieff: So I think it has to be something that you're definitely really selective about.

19:55Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I think the other thing is, like, if a creator takes a stake in a bunch of companies, that could just come off as less believable to audiences. I mean, I put this under the bucket of creators can't win, which seems to come up all the time in these conversations. No, it's true. And I hear this from traditional VCs to all the time, like I when I'm catching up with people, and I'm like, what startups are on your radar? Like, what's interesting? What's exciting you? And often they'll start, you know, gushing about a company. And at the end, they'll say, well, I'm also an investor. And it just kind of takes some of the wind out of the recommendation because you're like, well, is this actually buzzy?

20:26Jasmine Enberg: Or is this just because you have a stake in it? When it comes to creators, I do think it can be slightly different because they already get paid to promote product. So investing isn't all that different. But often when creators are talking about a product that they really like, they'll mention like, oh, I don't have a partnership. I genuinely like it. So there is something actually about not having a financial relationship that makes it more believable. But I don't know. What do you think? I mean, yes and no. I think we're kind of at this point now where most people either don't care or at least understand that creators need to make a living and that they're going to be doing that primarily through promoting products.

21:01Jasmine Enberg: And most of the time, it doesn't hurt their reputation as long as it feels like a credible partnership. And based on most of the research that I've seen, it doesn't make people less willing to trust or buy the things that these creators are promoting. And on the flip side of things, is like you could also argue that a creator must really believe in the product if they're taking an equity stake in it, especially if they're putting their own money there. And that's kind of what Alex was alluding to in that clip. She's saying she feels like less of a quote paid ad when it's a product that she really loves and is an investor in.

21:35Jasmine Enberg: And I think that can translate to audiences who really love and trust her as a creator. That said, I think it still does raise some eyebrows. I mean, like you, Kaya, I am immediately skeptical when I hear ABC or another business person recommend their own product or something that they've invested in. And I think this idea of creators having equity in a company is still pretty new for people. I mean, they might be okay with creators promoting products on social media and making money that way, but it might still take some use to or getting used to to having them be investors in a company and the massive paychecks that could potentially come with it.

22:10Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I also asked Kat and Josh about this. Here's a little of why each of them said this deal was the right fit.

22:15Cat G: It wasn't, oh, I need more eyeballs on smooth. It's I want somebody who is so unique and brings an X factor and changes the trajectory. So we're five years in. We have so many ideas. I think we have so much potential as a company. How are we going to hit that potential? It's by having perspective like caps.

22:32Kaya Yurieff: Investing in a company and being on the cap table of another person's company is about so much more than the mere transaction of advice for equity or equity for cash. And it has so much more to do with the long-term incentive and deep personal ties that you build with the other person who's building that company. It's rare that you come across another business owner who you respect and work with and who is building something that is so closely related to the thing that you are also building, but not in a competitive way.

23:06Jasmine Enberg: So that's their experience. And zooming out, what we often hear is that brands should only give equity to creators who make sense for the brand. They shouldn't just be looking at who has the most followers or the most engagement, but rather what else can this creator bring to the table and to their specific company? Because when this is done right, creators can also help with everything from content strategy to product development and overall marketing tactics in addition to just good PR and promotion. But it has to be the right creator for the right brand. Here's DripTail's Mark Weinberger on how the company decided which creators to give equity to.

23:36Cat G: Equity deals are a filtering mechanism to weed out the transactional creators that are just getting involved to make a quick buck. We don't have a specific number of creators that we plan to give equity to, but we are extremely selective. Because when you give equity, you're partnering essentially in perpetuity. There's also no cookie cutter formula for how much equity we give. The most important criteria for selecting those creators is engagement. For us, it doesn't matter how big or small the following is, whether you have a thousand followers or a million. Now, we'll, of course, adjust the amount of equity depending upon how much scale the creator brings.

24:09Cat G: But I'd much rather have a large number of nano creators with highly engaged followers than a single mega creator whose followers have tuned them out. Especially since the value of our platform is all about diversity and having many creators to shop from versus just one or two.

24:22Jasmine Enberg: And on the creator side of things, it also has to be the right brand. Like I imagine it's probably really exciting when a brand comes to a creator and is offering them equity. But the best piece of advice that I've heard from an investor is this, just because you like a brand does not mean that it's a good investment. And I'd go even further to say like, just because brand is offering you equity does not mean that it's a good investment either. I think creators really need to consider whether it's the right brand for them to be working with. So that means they have to vet everything from, you know, internal business practices to the company's growth trajectory to its public image.

24:55Jasmine Enberg: And of course, that is so much easier said than done, especially given that most creators just don't have a business background. So they will probably need to bring on experts to help. They also then need to weigh the investment, whether that's their own money, whether it's time, whether it's just deliverables, versus the potential reward, as well as the potential risk. Yeah, so let's talk a little bit more about that, because there are also a lot of potential pitfalls and risks involved in these types of deals. I mean, like we said earlier, it can be really hard as a creator to know where to put your money.

25:28Jasmine Enberg: Investing as it is can be intimidating, and making the right bet on a company, especially at the early stage, is really challenging. The risk is even higher when creators are putting their own cash into a company. I mean, there is a reason venture capital is an entire job and the pros also get it wrong. And in fact, they make a ton of bets counting on just a few winners because they know that most won't work out. So creators who go in expecting a big payout might be very disappointed. So let's put some stats around this. So even when companies have an exit, most companies return less than what investors put in, according to PitchBook.

26:01Jasmine Enberg: Plus, only about 1 % of startups that raise seed funding become unicorns, meaning that they're worth a billion dollars or more, according to data from CB Insights. Totally. And you covered this extensively at the time. But if you think back to like 2020, 2021, you had professional investors who were pouring cash into creator economy startups. And many of those bets really did not pan out. And a lot of those VCs obviously had a lot of capital that they needed to deploy at the time, which I think contributed to the boom. But a lot of them also got spooked and spending just hasn't returned to the same level since.

26:34Jasmine Enberg: So I think all this just goes to show, like you said, you know, even the pros can make mistakes. But back to creators as investors, there are also actually now some startups that are trying to help bridge the gap. So in September, a startup called Cherub raised$4.5 million in funding for its network that connects founders, investors, and creators for early stage investing and advisory opportunities. Then, of course, there's One With Many, which you mentioned up top, Kaya. Basically, it is a platform that helps match creators and brands for equity deals. and at launch last September, the platform said it had more than 5 ,000 creators and hundreds of companies onboarded.

27:12Jasmine Enberg: So I think all of this just goes to show a couple of things. I mean, one, there's obviously a lot of interest in this type of activity, meaning, you know, moving from promotional deals to more ownership-based partnerships between creators and brands. And then two, there's a lack of education and expertise that really needs to be filled. Besides the financial risk, there's also reputational risks for both creators and brands. So probably the most high profile example is crypto and FTX. We're going to take a little walk down memory lane. Lots of celebrities and creators were paid to promote crypto in general, and some were paid in equity by FTX, which famously collapsed in 2022 and whose founder, Sam Bigman-Fried, was later convicted of fraud.

27:54Jasmine Enberg: So Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen, for example, reportedly both had major equity stakes, in FTX, while athletes Steph Curry and Naomi Osaka apparently also had equity deals. Investors actually tried to sue the celebrities as well for their involvement. So a judge ended up dismissing most of those claims against the celebrities that had equity stakes and the YouTubers who promoted FTX. But even so, it was a huge PR nightmare for all involved. And I think probably made some of these celebrities think twice about taking equity in companies that they didn't know much about. Yeah. And on the other side, brands can also face huge PR nightmares if a creator gets canceled or otherwise lands in hot water.

28:37Jasmine Enberg: In good news, neither of us could find a lot of cases involving creator equity just yet. But I do think if and when these deals become more common, there has to just be more examples of this. I mean, there's already so many examples of when a company has had to sever ties with a creator who is just promoting their product or is otherwise involved with them because of bad behavior. Just take Good Good Golf and their bad, bad ad. I'm sorry, I had to do that. In case you missed it, YouTube channel Good Good Golf launched an ad with sports equipment company Callaway that shows one of Good Good's co-founders shoving a female golfer to the ground.

29:14Jasmine Enberg: Now, the backlash toward the ad was immediate. It was really intense. And it just continued to get worse. I mean, even after the CEOs of both companies had apologized. And as a result of all of this controversy, GoodGood lost a ton of business, including high-profile partnerships with companies like Dick's Sporting Goods, as well as the PGA Tour. And then if you think about creators having equity in a company, it is even harder then for a company to be able to separate themselves from that creator if they do something wrong than it is when they're just endorsing the brand or otherwise involved with them.

29:46Jasmine Enberg: My first question when I saw that ad was, who remotely ever thought this was a good idea? We also have to mention David Dobrik here. I mean, in 2021, he stepped down from Dispo, a photo app that he had co-founded and raised venture funding for. And this all happened after investors cut ties with the company because of sexual assault allegations against a member of Dobrik's friend group, which is a group of YouTubers back then called the Vlog Squad. This is obviously a very different example since it's a creator-founded company, but it again shows the risk of working with and investing in individual creators.

30:17Jasmine Enberg: We always talk about that key person risk. And also just shows the importance of choosing partners carefully. And that applies to both creators, brands, and investors. All right, now it's time for our interview with Kat GPT and Josh Kaplan, the co-founder and CEO of creator management company Smooth Media. In September, Kat Getzey, also known as Kat GPT, announced that she had taken an equity stake in Smooth Media, which represents her, and joined the company as a strategic advisor. It's the latest in a string of creators joining cap tables at outside brands by securing equity either in exchange for a cash investment, endorsement, or both.

30:50Jasmine Enberg: Getsy and Smooth Media co-founder and CEO Josh Kaplan told me why they did the deal, what it means for their business, and what advice they have for other creators and brands thinking about these types of arrangements. Kat GBT has more than 880 ,000 followers on Instagram, where she mostly talks about AI. She also shared her take on how the tech is evolving and what she makes of the recent warnings from AI leaders, like Anthropik's CEO, that the pace of development needs to slow down. So how did this kind of come together? Because this is the first time you've offered outside equity, right, Josh?

31:20This is the first time anybody, whether it's a creator, an investor,

31:24Cat G: we don't have investors, we're a bootstrap company, we've been growing, we've been having a great time. But it just became so obvious, like over the conversations and the meals, and it's just the in between moments with Kat. We both just love thinking big about our respective businesses, and just the more aligned we can be. I was like, it's such a such a no brainer for us to be able to do that. It's a new thing for us, but I couldn't be more confident that this was like the right time and the right person for us to be able to expand as a company in that way.

31:51Jasmine Enberg: And as part of all of this, you're also becoming an advisor. How involved do you kind of plan on being with Smooth Media? What will the advising focus on?

31:58Kaya Yurieff: It's a happy balance. I would say not so involved that I'm like in every single meeting or anything like that, but it's also, it's not going to be exactly the same in the sense of like me giving my two cents or offering feedback when like I as a creator in their portfolio of creators have a piece of feedback of their team construction or, you know, the way that things are working or the different tools that we're using or how efficient our workflows are, or even on the bigger scale, like how I want to diversify my own company and revenue streams and working with them to kind of talk through that, not just on the, you know, immediate term of here's what I'm thinking for CatGPT, but here's what we're thinking for CatGPT.

32:37Kaya Yurieff: And also let's now have a larger conversation about how this could potentially be applied across multiple creators. Before, if I had a friend who was a content creator and was like, I want to work with Smooth, can you make an introduction? Of course, I love Smooth, I'm going to make the intro. But there's also that voice in the back of my head that's going, hmm, if Smooth is paying more attention to this person, now they're splitting their attention between me and this other creator. If you're thinking about it logically to be like, am I incentivized to make this introduction? Whereas now, again, because I'm incentivized for the long term, and I on paper, in addition to in my heart, want Josh and Jenny to succeed, I am incentivized to make that introduction because I know it will help them, you know, grow their portfolio of creators and therefore scale the company.

33:20Jasmine Enberg: I love the honesty.

33:21Cat G: And I can say for sure that Cap, before any of this was an idea or inked, was very positive some and was bringing all that opportunity, which was so appreciated. But there's nothing like real, of real alignment. But going back to like what Kat is doing, it's not, hey, can you do X number of posts or can you do Y number of consulting hours? It's the people to people relationship. It's that feedback in the in-between moments. It's the ideas on a random. You wake up in the middle of the night or I wake up at a random hour and Kat's like, what if we did this? Those are the things that are going to be so transformational to the company, not some transactional consulting hour that we then need to figure out a dollar conversion into an equity share.

33:57Jasmine Enberg: Do you expect to have similar arrangements with other current creators you work with or future creators you work with? Or is Cat like a one and done situation?

34:06Cat G: Cat is one of a kind, but there's nothing on the roadmap right now as far as us trying to make a bigger program about this or anything like that. Again, I think that this is nuanced. It was very specific to the relationship that we got to build over time. So no, it's not like, oh, we're going to, we have plans to do this with 10 creators by the end of the year. It's really, we're going to continue to be just opportunistic and thoughtful about the relationships that we have.

34:27Jasmine Enberg: Yeah. Cause do you guys have 65 creators now? Is that the latest number?

34:30Cat G: Yes, yes. I think we're about to hit 70.

34:32Jasmine Enberg: So you can't possibly give 70 creators equity, right? Like there has to also be a balance in that as well. How do you think about that, Kat? Because you're obviously investing, thinking about your business holistically. This is something that's happening more. I think everyone after the Alex Earl Poppy example got really excited about like the potential upside here. And we've also seen it from smaller startups that are just getting started and starting programs to kind of give equity. But do you expect to invest in other companies? If so, kind of what kind of companies?

34:59Kaya Yurieff: The short answer to your question is yes, I will be starting to invest more, not just personally as a content creator, but also this is a bit of a teaser and like more to come, I would say in like early 2027 about this, but through Cat Labs and the entity of the actual organization that is being built, which inherently is tying tech, which is an industry that historically has sort of like lived and thrived off of giving equity in lieu of cash, especially for like early stage startups. One thing too that might be worth pointing out is I wonder if other people might be looking at this deal and thinking, oh, I'm a content creator.

35:39Kaya Yurieff: I should have an equity stake in my management company. I do want to point out that I think there's something particularly unique about this scenario where Smooth Media is not a nine-figure centimillionaire, like ginormous legacy talent agency with a hundred year history and, you know, 10 ,000 people represented. Smooth Media in particular focuses on knowledge creators, meaning people who are on the internet talking about technology, business, and health. It's very obvious how that niche kind of directly intersects with Cat TPT and the brand that's being built there. I would argue that most management companies are probably not that way.

36:22Kaya Yurieff: I don't think that's the story here. It's not that creator takes equity in management company. It's like creator takes equity in company that is directly related to her field, which just so happens to also be her management company.

36:31Jasmine Enberg: And just to be clear about what we're talking about, because there's different things, right? There's like Logan Paul and Jake Paul have an early stage venture fund. There's creators that are angel investors that are putting their own cash into things. So what you're talking about here is equity in exchange for basically endorsement. I mean, obviously, it's deeper than that. But this is a case where Smoot is giving you the equity, right? Like you're not putting cash in.

36:50Kaya Yurieff: I would just tailor that a little bit further. It's not so much in exchange for endorsement. This is a strategic advisory. There's a third one there too, which is more like traditional in the tech sphere, which is strategic advisory because they're on the advisory board. I would say this falls into more of that category than like celebrity endorsement. Josh, would you agree?

37:11Cat G: I would definitely agree. And again, for me as the CEO of Smooth, it wasn't, oh, I need more eyeballs on Smooth. It's I want somebody who is so unique and brings an X factor and changes the trajectory. So how are we going to hit that potential? It's by having perspective like cats.

37:27Jasmine Enberg: What's sort of your advice for other creators and companies who want to do these types of deals? I mean, it sounds like also it depends kind of on the category that they're in. For a Poppy and Alex Earl, I'm sure there's so much she could bring behind the scenes with marketing and products and all these other things that you can contribute to. That's not just pure promotion, but how should these companies be thinking about who to partner with on both sides?

37:49Cat G: I believe that it's still very particular and that creators should not confuse themselves with venture capitalists. I'm not a venture capitalist. Venture capitalists get to make so many bets out of their fund. Only a couple have to go right in order for them to be an incredible success and get to brag on Twitter for the rest of their careers. As a creator, you are still managing your own business. You're managing your own cash flows. And so you need to be really thoughtful about where you're putting your credibility, where you're putting your time. And so if there's something that is so aligned and you can speak to the business so well and you have a vested interest and you have an inside edge because you are a creator and you've been managed by that company, I think it's fantastic because of all of those different connection points.

38:31Cat G: But I speak to other creators who go, I just want to get a ton of equity and a bunch of things. I'm like, what are these things that you're getting equity in? How, what is this going to amount to? And also like, are you paying your bills? Are you sitting out, you know, are you on top of your own model? And so I start to push back and say, you just got to know what game you're playing. And if you're Alex Earl, and you've done a ton of deals for tons of cash and you get to go invest money into something that could have a really high potential, her risk is actually quite low. And then she gets really high upside because of the position that she's in.

39:01Cat G: So I think that's a really cool opportunity for some of these people at the top of their game. But I would also put Kat at the top of her game where she gets to say, hey, I can spend some of my attention thinking about not just exclusively Kat Labs and Kat GPT and physical phones and these things because she's had a certain amount of success that she's now sitting on top of. So I think it's very specific to the stage of the creator and the relationships in the companies that they're looking at.

39:27Kaya Yurieff: It's very sexy to say, I am a founder. It's very sexy to say, I have equity in XYZ company, right? And my fear is that I could easily see a scenario, especially when this is such a hot headline right now, where a lot of micro and midsize creators get taken advantage of by brands who don't want to pay them in cash. And so instead, they offer them honestly negligible amounts of equity or amounts of equity that ultimately when you tie them to these ridiculous valuations don't actually add up to much. That's the other thing is like, there's a level of sophistication and legalese that gets tied into these kinds of things that if you don't come from a background in which you're dealing with these kinds of like, you know, convertible notes and safes and these kinds of like financial instruments that are not as straightforward as I'm just going to send you a wire, I could easily foresee a world in which like we're seeing smaller and mid-sized creators start to get taken advantage of.

40:26Kaya Yurieff: And that might be the headline a year from now. We just don't know. So my advice to people would be to think about equity as a creator in a scenario where you are genuinely excited about the product or service that this company is creating and providing. And you personally have a strategic advantage in either helping to distribute that product and sharing your own audience to help distribute it out into the world, or strategically as an advisor, which is more like this shape of a deal, to actually help that company grow. That is like a must have. Second is you have to actually like the founders.

41:01Kaya Yurieff: And I think a lot of people don't even know the founders when they're considering deals like this. And that's like a huge red flag or something that people should really, really, really think about. Because at the end of the day, you know, especially for a lot of the company sizes that we're talking about, you should absolutely be able to have a conversation with the founder. And then the last thing I would just say is to echo what Josh said, it's, have you already done the diligence on like your own personal cash flow, a lot of even micro or midsize creators are self-employed. Do you have enough cash to cover yourself for the foreseeable future, whatever that might be?

41:32Kaya Yurieff: Because these are not liquid asset classes. You do not get money out unless there is a liquidation event, which is like an IPO or the company gets sold. But besides those, which are less common, you're not seeing your money for like five to 10 years. And I don't know if everybody fully understands that when they get all excited about these deals. It's Sexy for five to 10 years, but you also might just lose all that money.

41:55Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I recently looked up the stat from PitchBook and 70 % of startups that exit return less cash than investors put in also. So an exit is also not a guarantee that you're going to get, you know, the$20 million payday of, you know, Poppy or whatever it is. So that was all amazing advice. I think really smart. Why do you think, both of you, that this is happening more now across the board? We've seen creators kind of age well invest. it's sexy also for startups to have creators on their cap table, right? Like if you think about Fia, like the amount of celebrities, I mean, they put that out as like a Coachella style, right?

42:29Jasmine Enberg: Like graphic. I mean, I think part of it is what you said on the brand side, right? Like it's less upfront cash for them to put out. But what else do you think is driving this?

42:37Cat G: I think a baseline piece is that creators are valuable and that creators bring a lot to the table. And whether they're being paid cash or whether they're being brought onto a Coachella style cap table, they can really help with the go to market, they can really bring a lot of attention, which is why, you know, smooth media as an agency and a big part of cast business is brand partnerships, is that a creator's ability to promote a company is extremely productive. It's more saturated on Facebook and Google these days with paid ads, it's harder to break through the noise on an algorithm, but you just go back to the fundamentals of why creators are being so successful.

43:17Cat G: And I think there's a recent episode on your podcast guy about just creator brand partnerships and just about how it's actually being deployed and why it's being effective. And then piece number two is ego, because it's really cool to be on a Coachella style cap table. Those two things put together and a lot of creators that have access capital and have a lot of connections can go, yeah, this came into my inbox. This seems interesting. Let me go for it and take it for a ride.

43:42Jasmine Enberg: Okay. I also want to zoom out a little bit and just talk kind of more broadly about creator economy, AI, kind of what you guys are seeing. We're going to start with some of the headlines, because there's a lot of scary headlines about AI going to kill us lately. Anthropics CEO is calling for kind of the industry to slow down on AI development. Sam Altman kind of double tapped that. But what do you make of all that, as someone who covers AI?

44:04Cat G: That was your whiteboard. Yeah.

44:07Kaya Yurieff: I think these are extremely serious news stories that we should all be paying very close attention to. And this is something that I've been talking about on my page since literally its inception. I have never for one moment tried to hide my thoughts and my concerns about the negative consequences of, especially in particular, and a misaligned super intelligence. Honestly, the only reason I don't talk about it so much nowadays is because I feel like it does get really dark really fast. And ultimately, what my audiences want more is content that leaves them feeling empowered. What gives me a glimmer of hope in situations like this is seeing that audiences are starting to be more receptive to these kinds of serious conversations and being willing to kind of mobilize and activate in a way that affects the real world.

44:55Kaya Yurieff: And instead of just being like doomsday online is converting into like, great, who should I be voting for in my midterm elections to actually like put in place the kinds of regulations that I want to see because I personally care about these issues. I think the more information that can get out there, you know, the excellent reporting done by local and national and international journalists about these kinds of issues is one of the most important things that we need right now because I, at the end of the day, as a content creator of one, I'm actively trying to digest and give information at the same time.

45:25Kaya Yurieff: And I never purport or claim to be an accredited journalist in the way that these, you know, professionals have dedicated their entire careers to researching. But what I can do is change the way that people think about these issues. And I think if I can, you know, give people hope to feel like there's things that they can actually do in the meantime to take advantage of these tools to not feel like they're getting left behind, to actually feel like they can make a difference on their own lives and build their dream lives with the tools that exist today, while also fully understanding how they can become active and, you know, engage in their own civic abilities and civic duties to create the world that they want to see for tomorrow, that's a win-win situation for me.

46:04Cat G: That nuance is why I love working with Kat. And there's other creators that we represent that are journalists that are doing amazing reporting on topics like this. And why I feel so called to it and why I love being in this knowledge creator space is that we've never had better innovation, but we also never had more fear. And the fear is justified. Everything Kat just said, it's not like it came out of nowhere, but we got to figure out a way that culturally and the more macro, and I hope we're a part of the solution in the way that we talk about these topics the way we partner with these brands, that we are a productive force in finding a way to balance out those different pieces and make sure that the future that we build for ourselves, for our children, et cetera, is a better place.

46:46Cat G: The way we see the world is through the internet. The way we interact with the internet is through creators. And so this is just such an important moment from all parts of the stakeholders within this that we just take it so seriously.

46:58Jasmine Enberg: To your point, I mean, there are so many polarizing opinions, right? Like I hear all the time from people that are like, Oh, my God, my job is so much easier with Claude or like, Oh, my gosh, I like can't live without chat to BT. And then there's also people who are worried about data centers coming into people's backyards, right? Like there's a lot of big feelings, I think, in general about AI. What was interesting was like the open AI brand trip and just seeing like the level of backlash that creators got for that. How do you think about those things? Like, does that concern you? Does it impact the way that you do business or your business at all?

47:26Jasmine Enberg: It was interesting. We had corporate Natalie, if you're familiar with her on the show recently, She has her B2B marketing agency now. And she's like, there's so many AI companies that are spending now on influencer marketing. So clearly there is a lot of demand. But how do you think about kind of all those different factors? How does it impact the business side?

47:41Kaya Yurieff: Like you said, there's a huge influx of spending. So I think if anything, it gives creators such as myself an advantage to be able to be extremely selective. And the way that I can exercise that selectiveness is by saying, who are the brands that I trust to navigate this very tumultuous environment well and consistently well into the future? For every one brand deal that we say yes to, there are hundreds that we say no to. I mean, literally hundreds that we say no to. And the things that we look at are, you know, is this a company that has a demonstrated track record of exercising tact in their marketing and communications in general?

48:22Kaya Yurieff: And more importantly, at the actual structural company level, are they putting their best foot forward in terms of sending updates to, you know, customers and the world when they have a security incident? Are they companies who are consistently thinking about, you know, how they show up in the present and like putting out educational materials to go beyond just the mirror? Like, here's our new product, because if they are, they will probably continue to do so and be a verified, more trusted partner that you can continue to work with. And who, by the way, will also be more willing to work with you as a creator on briefs where you're like, I'm not comfortable or I wouldn't say it this way or here's how I think we should adjust this brief or I want to talk about this differently because I do have an extremely finely tuned cultural antenna and can tell you right now that if I follow this brief, it's going to get both of us canceled.

49:10Kaya Yurieff: So like, why don't we try to work together on this and figure out how we can actually achieve your goal of telling your story in a way that doesn't end up in a nightmare scenario for all of us.

49:20Jasmine Enberg: Are brands receptive to that generally?

49:22Kaya Yurieff: Oh, you know what's funny is because of the way Smooth works, I just relay my pushback to Smooth and then they have to deal with it if the brand doesn't like it. But I am very blunt. I mean, Josh will tell you he's on all Slack channels. I'm like, if I don't, if I'm not doing it, I'm not doing it. We will pull a deal. And we have pulled deals before, especially the quickest way for that to happen too with a like a seasoned creator who like actually knows their tone and their audience is to feed them lines. The second you're feeding me lines, I'm like, this is over. This is done. So obviously, Smooth does a great job of like vetting out the partners who are going to be doing that before it even gets to my desk.

49:57Kaya Yurieff: But by the time it gets to me, usually it's already, they're a great partner who's willing to work on that.

50:02Cat G: The marketer wants the content to perform. If we say, hey, this isn't going to land, hey, and it doesn't make sense, we're doing it with the best intention. We're not just saying, hey, your brief stinks, try again. We're very collaborative. And that's why we have a bigger team that can do that type of work and become an expert in that type of work. So by the time it gets to Kat, it's just ready to run. And we're always taking in that feedback and as part of that loop.

50:22Jasmine Enberg: Kat, I will say a lot of people cite you as an example of a creator that's grown really quickly. That's a newer creator. I know you had a YouTube channel in college, but KatGBT is definitely much more recent, but it does feel like the creator economy is just like, it feels like it's always been crowded, but it's just getting more and more crowded. And it feels harder and harder to kind of break through, build a sustainable audience. I think a lot of that is the shift to kind of these algorithmically driven feeds. But what have been kind of some of the strategies that have helped you succeed? And you started in earnest like 2024-ish.

50:52Jasmine Enberg: Is that right?

50:53Kaya Yurieff: First video, September 4th, 2024.

50:55Jasmine Enberg: Walk us through that. It's hard to build a following of that scale now.

50:58Kaya Yurieff: It is. It is. It's like planting a tree, right? The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. So same with being a content creator. It's like, yeah, sure, it's gotten harder now than it was, you know, in 2024. But it's still a better time now than waiting another two years. So I would highly, highly, highly recommend for anybody who has even like a modicum of interest in yapping into their front-facing camera and posting a video of it online, do it. Like, just do it. You never know what the results may be from it. Consistency is key. I got lucky because the second video I ever posted is Catchy BT.

51:33Kaya Yurieff: I went to bed. I woke up and it had 120 ,000 views the next morning. And that was a lightbulb moment for me to go, oh, I think I'm on to something here. And I do wonder like if that hadn't happened, would this have all happened so quickly? I don't know. But what it did, what it set off for me in that moment was, well, if that happened after two days, let me see what will happen if I post one video every day for 30 days. And that was the goal. And what ended up happening is 30 days came and went and it was 60 days and then 90 days and I was still posting a video, one video per day. Even if it got to 11 p.m.

52:03Kaya Yurieff: and I was exhausted and had just taken a shower, I was still committed to just posting out those videos. And I think what you realize is that the beauty of being a content creator in 2026, as opposed to 2016, which is when I had my YouTube channel, this is pre TikTok, pre, you know, vertical scrollable algorithm feed, is that the algorithm takes care of all the heavy lifting for you of finding you, your audience. So if you just make something halfway decent, and anybody out there wants to see content about your underwater basket weaving, the algorithm will do the heavy lifting of finding them for you.

52:39Kaya Yurieff: You just need to be consistent and show up and try and just keep learning. Honestly, I would say like, try under complicating it. Like so many people spend a lot of time, I think, worrying about like lighting and angles and having a like great editing camera and all that stuff. A lot of that is lipstick on a pig. If the substance and the content of what you're delivering isn't truly valuable, then nobody really cares.

53:02Jasmine Enberg: No, it's true. I'll just like watch someone talking on the street to camera if it's like compelling. Like I don't really care about the optics of it. The other thing we've seen, Josh, is like there's less of the big megastars anymore. There's always going to be the Mr. Beast of the world, but it's really feels like it's the long tail. And then some of the kind of big names, obviously you guys sit in the knowledge creator space, but what have you seen kind of working more broadly? Are there certain niches that you think are working really well right now?

53:28Cat G: The zoom out that I love to walk through is that we're so used to it. And the way that I grew up was that there was still, I would flip channels on a TV guide. There's only so many channels that you could go through. And we're not that many years in the grand scheme of things into just having total chaos where you can watch anything whenever you want, short, long, anything in the middle. And so the idea that you're going to know every big name creator, the idea that, you know, everything is going to be monoculture, we don't even know how far we are into this shift where it's completely fragmented, completely democratized and so personalized that there's going to be so many communities of a thousand followers, a hundred thousand followers, a million followers.

54:11Cat G: The world is so big. And so going back to your question to Kat, I hate the idea that it's so competitive. So it's such a doomer mentality to think that we're, we're too sad. Everything is competitive, but there's so much opportunity. And so, yes, maybe not every creator's goal is going to be Mr. Beast, Alex, Earl, etc. And there's also still a great career creator that can have a 5 to 15 person company and they might sell brand partnerships and marketing services. They might sell physical phones. They might sell Excel courses. They might sell any number of things because this digital entrepreneurship, this creator-led entrepreneurship is so amazing.

54:52Cat G: And it's such an amazing time to jump into it. So I'm excited about everything that's in this middle size. You don't need to go raise$10 million or$100 million to build this incredible business. You can bootstrap it. You can get a little bit of capital from a different source. And you can be off to the races with whatever you're super passionate about, with whatever you think is a really interesting opportunity in the market. People like Kat, we're going to build these incredible businesses. And I don't think they need to go raise crazy amounts of money. They have the leverage of their audience.

55:22Cat G: They have their own expertise and their own amazing skill set. And now is the time to get your pieces in the right place, to be able to know what game you're playing and really capture the value that you're creating. What I hate seeing is somebody who has tons of followers, tons of great community, tons of views, but they're not capturing any of of value or they burn out and they stop doing it. I want to really think about how creators can institutionalize themselves and build a team around them so that they can do this and have a great life around it.

55:51Jasmine Enberg: What are these big opportunities that you see right now for creators, both like existing and people just starting out?

55:56Cat G: I think one of the biggest barriers for a creator is team, is a creator cannot do it all themselves. And the biggest opportunity is to think bigger, to think longer term, to be able to build up with that and find a group of partners that you can go the distance with?

56:11Kaya Yurieff: I'll give a very tactical piece of advice to answer this question because it's literally what I did a year and probably two months ago when I had a YouTube channel when I was in college, micro creator, maxed out at about 25 ,000 subs, but very loyal following nonetheless. And then I took five years off of social media entirely, completely went off the grid, deactivated the YouTube channel, got off Instagram, snapped out everything at the time. It was just like, I need to renegotiate my relationship with social media and go dark. And I did that. and it was amazing. But when the itch to create ultimately came back, because I've been making videos since I was 13, and it is at the end of the day, my form of artistic and self-expression, I literally sat down with a piece of paper and a pen and I wrote down kind of two columns.

56:54Kaya Yurieff: One was, what are the things that I could literally talk about ad nauseum? Like, what are the things that I find so genuinely interesting? And I ideally am so interested in as well, like I get so passionate about that I could talk about them a lot without getting tired. And the bright side of that is when you're passionate about something, your energy and your life force starts to come through. And that's just like absolutely infectious on camera. So inherently that content will perform better. And then column two were my non-negotiables of like, what do I absolutely not want to talk about? And this is a learning that I had from having that YouTube channel, which was more lifestyle in college.

57:31Kaya Yurieff: At that time, it was like, everything goes. It was like, here's my life. And it was like, here are my friends. Here's my relationships. Here's my family. Here's where I live. And that was a huge learning in terms of like oversharing on the internet and realizing that actually there are things that, you know, I've grown up a little bit. I've matured. There are things I want to keep just for me. And once I had those two lists, it actually became very easy to conceptualize ChatGPT because top of the list on the left-hand column was AI. This was again at a time where like ChatGPT was becoming really popular.

58:01Kaya Yurieff: People or trying to understand it. I, at this point, had been working in industry for seven years, breaking down and working with teams who were both technical and non-technical, like always kind of having these roles that were traveling both sides. And then my non-negotiables, which was like, I want to have my page be about something. And I would encourage new creators to think about creating a page that is about a thing as opposed to just making it about your life. Because even though that's easier to do in the beginning because the surface area is so broad, ultimately, it's a bit of like, you'll catch yourself in a trap because if people fall in love with that and now you're like stuck having to give updates on your relationship when you're like, you know, two years later, you're like, I actually don't want to tell you about what my boyfriend and I did last night.

58:40Kaya Yurieff: That's like kind of personal. One of the only things that I would advise strongly against somebody doing is using AI to develop their tone of voice and to create their content for them. And that could mean writing a script that you're going to read verbatim or creating and editing and putting together and stitching together the video for you. This is obviously a sliding scale. I think we all know the difference between the sort of gray area where it's assisting in your own creative process versus the ones where it's doing it wholesale for you. Audiences at the end of the day can smell the difference between something that is authentic and truly coming from your heart versus something that is being recited because you were handed a script.

59:18Kaya Yurieff: And I don't think that anybody who truly wants to build a loyal audience as a creator will ever see that amount of success if they're just reading something that was written for them. And you won't have as much fun. Like it is a genuinely fun and fulfilling experience to build an audience online. And I would just encourage people to do the hard work of sitting down with a pen and a piece of paper and like really writing through and thinking about what they want to share with the world as opposed to taking any shortcuts.

59:43Jasmine Enberg: Love that. Perfect note to end on. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll see you here next Thursday.