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.
Every creator I know is chasing the same thing: content people actually come back for, not just scroll past once.
Most of us are winging it. Michael Valentino isn't - he's been building must-watch shows since his MTV days, and now he's doing it at the scale of an entire media company.
This week: Michael Valentino, Editor-in-Chief at NowThis, on how a media company with 100M+ followers across platforms decides what's worth making, and what any creator can steal from a TV studio's playbook.
Let's get into it (plus, our next event on July 28th).
Creator Economy Live East is coming to NYC - July 29th
We're excited to be partnering with Creator Economy Live East, the industry's largest influencer marketing conference, taking place July 29 in Midtown Manhattan (right after our July 28 event)
The event brings together creators, agencies, platforms, and brands including Anthropologie, Estée Lauder, Disney, American Express, and many more for a full day of conversations, networking, and industry insights.
As part of our partnership, I was able to secure 20% off any ticket exclusively for the Creator Economy NYC community, just use code CENYC20.
Hope to see you there!
Stop making posts. Start making shows.
Before NowThis, Michael Valentino spent his career as a creative executive and producer at MTV, NBCUniversal, and Fallen Media, work that racked up more than 5 billion views.
He became Editor-in-Chief of NowThis in 2024 and brought that TV instinct with him. A writers' room. A dedicated celebrity talent team. An actual testing process before anything gets greenlit.
The results so far:
Across all channels, NowThis reaches an audience of 1.1B+ each month and has 100M+ followers
Standup Desk, their fastest growing show, has added 400K+ followers in only three months since its premiere, with 32M monthly views and 3.1M monthly engagements
Are You Okay? sees an average engagement rate of 11.3% with 2.7M views per episode. Judgy sees an average engagement rate of 13.4% with 2.4M views per episode.
NowThis is operating as a media company, not a social account. That's exactly the gap most creators are stuck in.
Take Are You Okay?, their Webby-winning social-first flagship. Host Bri Morales stops strangers on the street for interviews that swing between real check-ins and total comedy.
It's a repeatable show, not a pile of random clips, and that's the whole difference between posting content and building something people come back to.
So how does a media company decide what's worth making, and what can a solo creator actually take from it?
Michael's approach breaks down into four moves. We’re calling it the SHOW framework, because that's exactly what it builds. Let’s run through it:
S: Swap posts for shows
You might see a viral post on your feed and assume it's luck. It's not, Michael says.
"There's a science to how we get the audiences to watch what we do... this isn't just a one and done thing. Anyone can get a million views. But not everyone can create pop culture phenomenons that really turn into moment and fandoms."
Look at what separates a show from a post:
A content creator's goal is views on the next post; a show builder's goal is a franchise.
A creator is reactive to whatever's trending; a show has a repeatable, recognizable format.
A creator collects passive scrollers; a show earns loyal fans who come back.
As the mantra at NowThis goes: a hit is a hit is a hit. The only question is how you make one.
🔒 Don't fuhgeddaboudit: Before you post today, ask if this is a one-off or the start of something repeatable. Post the one-off less, build the repeatable more.
H: Hook yourself first
Michael has one rule that overrides everything else: be a fan of your own content before you ask anyone else to be.
"My number one content rule here right now is this: we have to be fans of what we're making. If we aren't fans of the content, then why would anyone else be?"
Build a brand and a show you love first. The audience, and ideally the fandom, comes after.
"Once you have the fans, the advertisers come, and we have really great partnerships with all of our client sponsors. And they always come back, which is the exciting thing."
Here's why it compounds:
You make something you genuinely love. That authenticity earns trust. That trust is exactly what advertisers are buying, what Michael calls the "brain trust" of NowThis, and it's why brands sometimes attach themselves to a show before it even launches. That revenue funds better production, which makes the next show even better, which deepens the trust. Round and round we go.
🔒 Don't fuhgeddaboudit: If you're not excited to watch your own next content, don't publish it yet. Fix that first.
O: Own a format
Build a format people come back to and you haven't just made content, you've made IP. Something with a name, a shape, and a life beyond the platform it started on. And owning a format starts with finding the gap nobody else is filling.
When NowThis committed to this path a couple years ago, the market was already saturated with shows, and as Michael puts it, everyone with an iPhone is a creator. So they stopped trying to out-volume anyone.
"How do we kind of find gaps in the marketplace and create a show, fulfill a need, that the audience either doesn't have or doesn't even know that they have... Niche is the new mainstream. We like to find a niche, and then from there, kind of expand it. And if the audience feels smarter or feels like they're being spoken with instead of to, then it's really likely that they're gonna hop on your bandwagon."
Stand Up Desk launched about two months before our conversation and had already pulled in 300,000+ followers and millions of views, all organic, no ad spend. It worked because nobody else was making it.
🔒 Don't fuhgeddaboudit: Name your recurring thing this week. A name is what turns a post into a series into a format people can look for, and a niche worth owning is one nobody else has claimed yet.
W: Widen from there
Once the format works, it travels. You can see this play out with Are You Okay?.
The social series runs across every platform, it travels the celebrity press circuit, and it spins off into new markets. Michael told us NowThis has already launched Are Y'all Okay? in Nashville, with an Austin show in early development. The format is the franchise.
The catch: none of this works if you stand still. "When you're stagnant, that's when you lose your relevancy," Michael says. Evolve the format or watch it flatten out.
🔒 Don't fuhgeddaboudit: Once something is working, ask what the version 2 of it looks like before your audience gets bored and asks for it themselves.
Steal this playbook
Niche is the new mainstream. Don't water it down for a broad audience, go narrower.
Talk with your audience, not to them. Respect the viewer's intelligence and they'll bring their friends.
Make the trend, don't chase it. "A lot of major media companies like to follow trends. At NowThis, we're the ones making them." You don't need NowThis's size to adopt the posture. You need the nerve to build what doesn't exist yet.
Evolve or die. Keep moving before the thing stops working.
What's it been like creating in New York City?
Yep, that energy is contagious and exactly why we’re building here.
Our next event: July 28th Mixer & Panel
Summer is in full swing and after a packed few months of events, launches, conferences, and creator chaos, we're bringing the community back together.
Join Creator Economy NYC and our friends at TopFan for an evening of networking, conversation, and connection with creators, marketers, platforms, and industry leaders shaping what's next.
We'll explore what it means to build a creator business that lasts, from audience ownership and direct fan relationships to creating opportunities beyond the platforms we rely on every day.
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.
The Creator Accountability System (FREE): Your visual companion for consistent creation in 2026. Get it here.
Thanks for reading! Pick one piece of content you've made in the last month that got a decent response. Don't post the next random idea tomorrow. Go build the second episode of that one instead.
F*ck It, Create It,
Brett
+ With research, interview and editorial support by Taylor Cromwell - a newsletter and creator economy expert and founder of Creator Diaries. Follow Taylor on LinkedIn.
