Hey! Welcome back to the Creator Economy NYC newsletter, your weekly hit of insights and strategies to help you build, monetize, and scale as a creator.
This week: we sat down with Jahbari Taylor, a “Moneytainment” creator and founder of Finfluential, an influencer marketing agency built specifically for finance and B2B brands.
His arc from creator to founder is one I see often: He didn't go all in when the brand deals started matching his salary. He went all in when he, well, got laid off.
We talked about the math on first hires, why he thinks of a video editor like a personal trainer, how he uses TikTok and LinkedIn for completely different jobs, and what it takes to become the default answer in a category.
Oh, and after reading, you can get on the list for our next event.
Let's get into it.
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How Jahbari Taylor turned getting laid off into a finance creator agency
Here's the thing most creator-founders don't say out loud: your content can't stop just because your business needs you.
Jahbari Taylor is living that tension right now.
He's building Finfluential, an influencer marketing agency connecting finance brands with creators, and his content IS his pipeline.
The audience he grows on TikTok is the proof of concept he pitches to brands. The relationships he builds on LinkedIn are the deals that fund the agency. He can't clock out of creator mode to run founder mode. He has to be both, all the time.
"It feels like creating content while having a full-time job," he told us.
That's the reality most agency founders and creator-entrepreneurs don't advertise. And Jahbari's figured out a few things about surviving it.
The packaging is part of the product
Before the agency, before Moneytainment, Jahbari was making finance content nobody watched.
He sat at 3,000 followers for a while making informative videos, just not digestible ones. The feedback from bigger NYC finance creators was consistent: good information, wrong wrapper.
So he rebuilt the whole thing.
He stopped teaching finance directly and started using business news as the hook. For example, the Michael Jackson estate news became a way to explain how trusts work. And Oracle layoffs became a primer on severance.
The news earns the click. The evergreen concept gives the video shelf life.
Don't fuggedabout it: The lesson isn't just a content tip. It applies to anything you're building: the packaging is part of the product. If people aren't engaging, ask whether the information is wrong… or whether it's just not walking in through the right door.
You probably won't jump. You'll get pushed.
By late 2023, Jahbari was getting brand deal offers that matched the salary at his full-time startup job. He kept the job anyway.
He had real proof. Revenue signals, deal flow, a growing audience. And he still hedged for another full year.
Then he got laid off in 2024.
"It's like, now you kind of have to make it fully work," he said.
I see this constantly in this community. The jump rarely happens when the numbers say go. It happens when the choice gets made for you. We all run the same calculation… one more month, one more signal, one more milestone… and the math (more the mindset) never quite clears.
Don't fuggedabout it: You probably won't jump. You'll get pushed. The question is whether you've been building something real to land on.
Hiring feels reckless. It kind of is. Do it anyway.
Hiring as a creator feels financially irresponsible. Income is lumpy. Brand deals settle on 60-day terms. One slow month and you're paying someone with money you don't have yet.
Jahbari compares hiring to getting a personal trainer, and I think this is the best framing I've heard for it.
He talked about how people don’t just hire a personal trainer for the workout plan. You can find that on YouTube for free. You hire them because someone now expects you at the gym at 6 AM. The money buys accountability, not just their expertise.
Your first contractor works the same way. You pay for more than their hours, you pay for the fact that someone is now waiting on your delivery.
Jahbari put it plainly: "I wake up every single morning, I see the messages, and I'm just like, all right, well, we gotta do this."
That pressure is the product. Some of us need to buy it.
Don't fuggedabout it: Often times hiring comes down to a mindset shift. For ex, you don't hire a contractor just for their hours. You hire them because someone is now waiting on your delivery. Buy the accountability you can't manufacture yourself.
Don't hire for what hurts today. Hire for 12 months from now.
Once you've decided to hire, the next question is: who?
If you're a video creator, the default assumption is hire a video editor. You make content, you need more content, simple. But that's only the right answer if content output is actually your bottleneck.
Jahbari's content was already generating leads. His real problem was everything behind the production - brand deal coordination, agency pipeline, operational stuff that kept slipping. So his first hire was ops, not a video editor.
He also pushed back on something most creators assume without questioning: that your first hire has to be full-time, local, and expensive.
His first hire was part-time and overseas. If you default to full-time W-2, you're competing with better funded startups & co’s for talent. Don't fight that fight.
Don't fuggedabout it: don't hire for the thing that hurts most today. Hire for what you need to still be doing 12 months from now.
Every platform needs a job. Most creators never give them one.
Jahbari's content lives in two places - TikTok and LinkedIn - and they're doing completely different work.
TikTok is the Moneytainment brand. Short-form business news, built for reach, built for audience growth. It also generates real revenue through the Creator Rewards Program, enough to cover expenses, which means it buys him time to build everything else.
LinkedIn is the agency engine. Not about reach. About who's reading, and who ends up in his DMs after. That's where relationships with brands and marketers start.
He made a bet worth naming: relationships are the owned audience. Platforms shift. Algorithms change. The people stay.
"I'm building out these relationships with people online and in person... that's what's going to stabilize the overall business."
Don't fuggedabout it: Before you ask what you should post more of, ask what job each platform is doing for your business. If you can't answer that clearly, you're posting without a strategy.
It's not about solving the tension. It's about building for it.
The thing I keep coming back to from this conversation is that Jahbari hasn't solved the creator-founder tension. He's just built systems that let him hold both without dropping either.
The content funds the agency. The agency validates the content. The TikTok audience proves the concept. The LinkedIn relationships close the deals. And underneath all of it, a hire who handles the parts that would otherwise eat him alive.
That's the real move. Not eliminating the tension. Building the team and the structure that lets you stay in it longer than everyone else.
So here's your one thing this week: audit one role in your business that only you are currently filling… that probably shouldn't be. Content production, deal coordination, operations, whatever it is. You don't have to hire tomorrow. Just name it. Because you can't solve a bottleneck you haven't identified.
Follow Jahbari at @jahbaritaylor everywhere.
There's something about building in New York that's hard to replicate anywhere else. The density of talent, the pace, the fact that you're never more than one conversation away from someone who's figured out the exact problem you're stuck on.
Jahbari felt that firsthand.
That's the thing about this city. It doesn't just give you inspiration. It gives you access.
Next event: coming soon…
Our next event is being planned for May, and you can rsvp now to apply to join us.
We’re bringing together NYC’s top creators, marketers, and founders for something a bit more laid-back this time.
Come through, grab a drink, catch up with the people you know, meet some new ones, and enjoy it.
And, we have 2 sponsor slots open for brands who want in.
Join the likes of Adobe Express and others in getting your brand in front of the most influential community in the creator economy. Inquire here.
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It walks you through the exact mental blocks keeping you stuck, and doesn't let you leave until you've shipped something. A piece of content, a product, an event. Whatever you've been holding onto.
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Two free tools top creators use to keep themselves moving
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.
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Thanks for reading! If you take anything from his story, take this. You don't need permission from a layoff to go all in. You don't need a full-time W2 hire to unlock accountability. And you don't need every platform to do every job.
F*ck It, Create It,
Brett
