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.
Here is the uncomfortable question every creator needs to ask: Is your business platform-proof? If Instagram or YouTube or LinkedIn went away would you be screwed? Would your business even survive?
Most creators already know the answer. Few have done anything about it.
This week: Erin McGoff’s (@AdviceWithErin) playbook for turning platform attention into things you actually own. Step by step.
Let’s get into it.
The 5-step ladder from creator to founder
You’ve probably seen Erin on your FYP page at some point. She’s built a massive following of 7+ million followers over the past few years.
But what’s as impressive is all that she’s building behind the scenes (a book, a podcast, a newsletter with 225k+ readers, a CNBC column, and a venture-backed startup called Stupid Fish, to name a few.)
We got Erin to walk us through the whole playbook:
Step 1: Treat your content like a company from the beginning
“If you want content creation to become your full-time job, you have to treat it like a full-time job. So that means investing back into your company, what you make, and employing people and being good at managing them… being strategic about who you hire and what they do and knowing what your strengths and weaknesses are. You can’t just make funny videos. You gotta be really strategic about what you do.”
Here’s what that looks like tactically:
Build your squad early. Her assistant Tatiana has been with her for almost four years. She has an agent, a manager, a lawyer, and an accountant. There’s a limit to what any one person can do. At some point, if you want to grow, you need people behind you.
Delegate what you can, but keep the core. Erin delegates tasks like operations and admin. She identifies and protects the 20% her audience values most. She outsourced video editing but always does the final review to ensure her unique style remains. "I always have the last touch on it. Because if I don’t, you can tell.”
Figure out what your version of that is. What’s the thing that only you can do? Protect that. Delegate the rest.
Steal this: Write down everything you do in a week. Circle the 2–3 things only you can do. Everything else is a delegation opportunity — and the sooner you build that muscle, the sooner you stop being the bottleneck.
Step 2: Figure out your business model
Not all creator businesses are built the same. Erin sees them on a spectrum:
On one end: creators who build products and separate themselves from the brand entirely. Courses, templates, communities — the business runs on what people buy.
On the other end: personality-driven creators who monetize through endorsements and appearances. The brand is them.
Erin sits in the middle, and she chose that position early. Free, high-quality career advice — funded by brand partnerships with companies that naturally fit inside career content.
The split: about 80% of her revenue comes from brand partnerships with companies like LinkedIn and Microsoft. About 20% comes from digital products, affiliate income, and platform payouts.
But she’s not stopping at a seven-figure creator business. She’s taking the next step — packaging her knowledge into IP (the book), and then building a product that’s separate from her entirely (StupidFish). (More on both of those below).
Steal this: Map out three creator business models you admire. Identify which one matches your content, your audience, and your tolerance for selling. Then commit to one as your primary engine.
Step 3: Own your distribution
We have a newsletter, so obviously we’re going to say this: don’t be too dependent on any one platform.
Erin launched Hyper Helpful two years ago. It’s now at 225,000+ subscribers with a 40–45% open rate. She writes every issue herself, every Tuesday night.
“I 100% own my newsletter. Nobody can take that away from me. But Instagram could shut down tomorrow.”
One of the most interesting things Erin shared is how she’s funnelled her social followers (more than 100K!) into her email list: a quiz about career types. It’s that simple.
Steal this: You already know you need an email list. The question is how to fill it. A quiz funnel (Interact, Typeform, ScoreApp) converts passive followers into owned subscribers. Build the quiz around the question your audience already asks you most.
Step 4: Repackage IP into durable assets
Erin had thousands of hours of original career advice scattered across platforms. The most common question she got: “Where’s that video you made about ___?”
So she packaged it. The Secret Language of Work published through Penguin Random House on March 10 is 10 chapters covering everything from negotiating to networking, consolidating years of IP into one reference-able thing.
The book isn’t a revenue play: “I wouldn’t do it for the money. I could have made that money doing other things.”
Instead it’s an asset that validates her expertise in a way a viral video never will. It turns “TikToker with good advice” into “published author with a methodology.” That is especially impactful when you're building beyond content.
Steal this: You don’t need a book deal. But ask yourself: what IP am I sitting on that could become something more durable than a feed post? A book, a framework, a course, a tool — anything that packages scattered content into a single, referenceable asset. The question isn’t “what should I create?” It’s “what do people already keep asking me for?”
Step 5: Build beyond your personal brand
Unfortunately too many creators realize too late they’ve built something that relies on them to show up every day. This makes it harder to scale beyond you.
Erin’s experimenting with things that don’t need her face on them. The biggest bet: StupidFish, a venture-backed career discovery platform she’s calling “the cure for career confusion.” She has a cofounder. She raised capital. And the product is built to stand on its own.
What makes this possible is the years she spent building trust with an audience that has the exact problem StupidFish solves.
She knows her people, she knows their pain points, and she’s building something that actually addresses them. That’s the creator-to-founder edge that so many creators are sitting on without realizing it.
“A traditional startup would have to scrape to find people to test their product. I put up a link, and I get 15,000 people on my waitlist.
I see these problems in the hiring space, and I’m over here, and I’m looking at AI and all this new technology. And I’m like, I can create a solution? I have the power here. The platform and the power and the finances to create a solution.”
She’s also thinking about micro-brands. Hyper Helpful has its own identity. StupidFish has its own identity. “People who use StupidFish don’t necessarily all know Erin. And that’s the point.”
Steal this: Audit your brand. Is everything dependent on your name and face? Start identifying pieces that could stand alone — a newsletter with its own voice, a product that solves a problem your audience has, a brand that serves the same people but doesn’t need you on camera every day. That’s how you build something that scales past you.
The platform-proof ladder
Save Erin’s platform-proof ladder to reference next time you’re feeling stuck:
Treat it like a company → Invest back in, build your squad, delegate everything except your edge
Choose your business model → Brand-funded, product-led, or hybrid — pick one primary engine and commit
Own your distribution → Newsletter, email list, quiz funnel — move followers off rented platforms
Package your IP → Book, framework, course, digital product — turn scattered content into durable assets
Build beyond your name → Micro-brands, software, products that don’t require you on camera
Erin’s book The Secret Language of Work: Hyper-Helpful Scripts for Every Situation is available now from Penguin Random House. You can follow her work at @AdviceWithErin everywhere.
Erin spent almost six years in New York and built the early foundation of her creator business here. She came back to the city for her book launch last week — and the room reminded her exactly why New York matters.
“New York attracts the best people on earth,” she says. She and her husband threw an after-party and invited the professional relationships they’d built over those years — ad agency folks, screenwriters, content creators, all in one room.
“I just think everybody who is ambitious and really wants to have a really successful career should absolutely move to New York.”
April 7, 2026: Creator Money Moves with Relay
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 theme: what happens when the money actually starts coming in. Brand deals, sponsorships, product revenue - it arrives fast, and most creators aren't ready for it.
One day you're "getting paid," the next you're running a business you never quite signed up to run.
We're bringing together a panel of top nyc creators and industry voices to get into the conversations most people avoid. This is the room where we talk about what scaling actually feels like from the inside.
If you’re a creator who wants to level up in the new year, start here
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.
One time purchase of $57 for the workbook and companion videos.
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! If this playbook doesn’t make you rethink how platform-proof your business actually is, I don’t know what will. See you next week.
F*ck it, create it,
Brett
