Welcome back to the Creator Economy NYC newsletter, your weekly dose of insights and strategies to help you build, monetize, and scale as a creator.

Every creator hits the same wall eventually: you're making things you're proud of, brand deals are rolling in, and somehow you've never been more stressed!

We sat down with Varun Rana, an NYC-based comedy creator who's turning sketch comedy about modern work into a full-blown media company. His story is a masterclass in what happens when you stop trying to do it all yourself.

This week: how Varun built a three-person creative engine, the delegation mistakes he made along the way, and why he credits this community with changing his trajectory.

Let's get into it.

Varun is an NYC-based comedian (you might recognize him from one of our events!) and content creator with 170,000+ followers across platforms, known for his satirical takes on corporate tech culture and modern work life.

He's partnered with brands like Notion, Ramp, and Replit, and he's building what he calls a one-person media company.

Here's our Q&A with him, edited lightly for clarity.

I'll start by saying every content creator's business is different, and I'm not like other creators. I'm not an educational creator. I am an entertainment creator. I make comedy - sketch comedy, stand-up, long-form narrative documentary-style stuff on YouTube. It's informative, but it's meant to be entertaining and humorous.

My playbook really looks so different from what you're seeing other creators build right now. All of this is purely from trial and error, doing this from scratch. There's no precedent, really.

I saw someone the other day saying we're in the age of the individual media company, and I would say that's what I'm building. An entertainment and storytelling engine that pulls on my own life experiences and observations about modern work. 

I'm trying to tell the truth about it in a way that entertains others, makes people feel a sense of community, feel included - just comic relief in an otherwise kind of mundane and sometimes toxic work situation.

Brand deals are a big part of the revenue for a large chunk of this path. I think it's gonna be like that for a while. But I'm starting to see some expansion.

Because of my writing and directing abilities, companies are coming to me for things like, "Can you come in and write and direct a video series?" … content they would own. So it almost turns me into a media agency of sorts. I start to sell my creative intellect.

It came in three stages.

A couple years ago, late 2023, I started hitting a good niche with tech comedy stuff, and that led to some quick brand deal opportunities. It kind of woke me up to the fact that there's money in this industry. Of course, because I was younger, I just spent all the money on dumb stuff.

Then another wave of cash comes in late 2024. I'm doing this full time now. I got fired because of my content. So I have to start thinking of this like a business. I'm making a few thousand bucks and thinking, okay, maybe some of that should go towards someone to do stuff for me.

But that was at a time where I didn't really know what I was doing. I was purely going off of, "I spend time on this thing, let me reduce that." I wasn't really thoughtful about what I wanted that time back for.

I ended up outsourcing things that were actually my secret sauce - the ideas, the strategy, the story. Especially in the early days, it's so important to keep that close to the creative and the artist.

So I made some mistakes with hiring and automation, and then I just kind of took back control over the summer. I was like, it's just gonna be me again. Let me figure this out, network, hustle, and just keep trying to get as many opportunities as possible while posting as much as possible.

And then thankfully, abundance came my way. A lot of great brand opportunities came. Then I was overwhelmed again. But something needed to be different this time.

I eventually connected with someone who's a fractional chief of staff. I didn't really know what I was looking for from this person, but I took an intro call.

Before we committed to anything, he educated me on the concept of "zone of genius" and recommended I read about it.

And I realized - I'm very energized by video, writing, story, the creative side of it all. That's really my strength. But these other operational things like interfacing with my agent, dealing with brands, even just keeping my stuff organized — figuring out how to get organized was not something I could also be thinking about while protecting my creative energy.

So it became more about energy management. He recommended I bring on a VA to help with some of these things while he manages the high-level business strategy - money, deals, all these things that stress me out a little bit.

That literally just gave me so much more clarity on what I'm building here. I'm not just trying to build a machine to push out as much content as possible. I want to be able to authentically show up all the time and make things I'm really proud of, take my time with them, and never feel like I'm trading off business owner stuff for creative stuff.

Now I have a team of three - me, a fractional chief of staff, and a VA. It's a great trio. I'm basically building a creative vehicle to reduce the distance from idea to delivery and make all of that as easy for me as possible.

It always feels risky. But the way the freelance economy works, it was kind of like, let's give it a shot. Let's trial run this and keep our baseline expectations realistic. Start small.

And honestly I was at the brink of insanity. I was visiting my parents, working from home, waking up stressed. These are champagne problems, sure, but I was like - I don't want to live like this anymore. I want my peace and creativity back. And I realized it will probably pay off if I invest in making myself feel better.

You could think you’re being rational about it and say, "Oh, don't pay. Do it on your own." But we all know it doesn't work out so nicely. Even when you work in a corporate job, you don't work all eight hours. Your brain can't handle it. So that decision was purely from wanting to feel better.

After talking to this guy, I was like, yeah. I've earned the ability to ask for help. And I don't think I'll scale if I don't.

I live out of Notion. We're getting information from a lot of different places - email, Slack, a lot of Slack - whether that's information about a new brand project or a contract or whatever.

We use some AI to take stuff from Slack, put it into summaries in our Notion docs. For a brand deal, for example, we'll summarize the terms of the deal and link the Slack thread where it's being discussed so I can easily go there if I need to. For that, we're using Zapier and similar tools.

Now I'm actually building Notion AI agents myself. Like, if I have a skit idea tabulated in Notion somewhere, I want to be able to turn that into instructions for my VA to go email these people, book this room, whatever. If it's some repeatable process, AI agents in Notion are really useful. It turns twenty minutes into twenty seconds.

This is where you start to figure out the culture of your organization, even though we're talking about a tiny team.

It takes time to figure these things out, and it takes mistakes. But it's all about finding humans you mesh with who help you feel better about your work.

Check in with yourself and ask: is it maybe time to feel less overwhelmed and try delegating? Don't be afraid of what's on the other side, because it's so worth it, even with all the mistakes.

I'll say it straight up: Creator Economy NYC changed my life. I started coming to those events right when I got fired, and there were a lot of indirect benefits. Getting in the habit of networking in such a welcoming environment encouraged me to do more of it. 2025 was a big networking year for me.

And all that networking eventually led me to the person I hired. And that person has led to freeing my time up to post some of my favorite videos I've ever posted. And that's only in a few months of having that person. None of this would have happened if I didn't live here. I'm not saying it'd be impossible, but it would have been a lot slower.

Now I'm getting pitched for huge opportunities purely from getting coffee with someone I met at a dinner. All of it took place in New York.

I think it's an iron-sharpens-iron kind of thing. You're in this community where people are making great money doing this, and you're like, wow — I want to get like that too. It's uncomfortable at first, but it's also necessary.

- Varun Rana (@the_varunrana)

We're partnering with Relay — the business banking platform built for the way creators and solopreneurs actually run their finances — for our next event in the Flatiron this April.

The topic: money in the creator economy. How to manage it, protect it, and build with it. We're bringing together a panel of creators and industry voices to get into the conversations most people avoid.

This early RSVP is an application to attend. It helps us curate the room while details come together — and those who apply will be the first to receive updates as things are finalized.

The F*ck It, Create It Workbook is the thing that finally gets you off the sideline.

It’s a guided system — with companion videos — that walks you through the exact mental blocks keeping you stuck and forces you to ship your first piece of content, product, event… whatever you’ve been sitting on.

If you’ve been overthinking it. Waiting until it's perfect. Telling yourself you'll start Monday. This kills that.

One time purchase of $57 for the workbook and companion videos.

The Creator Goal Setting Guide (FREE): A simple but powerful document to help you declare who you want to BECOME in 2026. Get it here.

The Creator Accountability System (FREE): Your visual companion for consistent creation in 2026. Get it here.

Thanks for reading! If Varun's story doesn't convince you to stop waking up stressed and start looking to delegate, I don't know what will. See you next week.

F*ck It, Create It,

Brett