TGIF. 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.

We love talking about making money in this newsletter. How to land brand deals. How to monetize your audience. How to build revenue streams. But here's what we don’t talk about enough: what the hell do you do when the money actually starts coming in?

This week: what our panel with Relay broke down about the financial mistakes creators keep making - and the moves that fix them.

Let's get into it.

Advocating for this community is what we do and the strongest advocacy starts with real data.

We launched a survey to help us understand how creators are building, earning, and operating right now so we can bring that directly to the brands and partners who need to hear it.

It takes 2-minutes and your responses will help shape the future of our industry, and your business. And it’s completely anonymous.

This week we hosted our 40th Creator Economy NYC event — 40! — this time with Relay, the business banking platform built for the way creators and solopreneurs actually run their finances.

The room was packed. We had over 600 RSVPs. When we started talking about the nitty gritty money (things like taxes, bank accounts, hiring) it got quiet. Like, quietest-the-room-has-ever-been-for-a-panel quiet. Tax day is next week and clearly people needed to hear this stuff.

We brought together four people who see creator finances from completely different angles:

Here's what they laid out.

Before we talk strategy, we need to talk about the mental block because it came up immediately, and it clearly hit a nerve in the room.

Viviana has been creating content since 2021. Yet didn't charge for anything until… 2024.

Three years of creating content without charging for any of it. She wasn't collecting emails or thinking about monetizing. 

Jack had a version of the same thing. He had 200,000 followers without ever trying to monetize. His only goal was landing jobs through Twitter DMs,  which worked. It wasn't until COVID, a layoff, and brands sliding into his inbox that he realized: oh, people want to pay me for the thing I was already doing for free.

We asked the room: how many of you are still running everything through your personal checking account?

A lot of hands went up. Waaaay too many.

Here's why that's a problem, straight from Ariel (who’s a CPA, btw):

"If you are co-mingling personal funds and business funds, when it's April 7th and you are getting ready to do your taxes, you are now combing through way more transactions than you need to. And in the unfortunate event of an IRS audit — they do happen — they're going to comb through your bank account and they don't know the difference between a personal deposit and a business deposit."

Yoseph’s been there. "I've been audited and it's a bitch."

And he put it simply: "I think it's like a form of self-care. You're doing this thing for real. You open the account. Maybe it sits empty. It doesn't matter. You're just getting started and figuring it out."

Managing your money wisely = self care. It’s that simple. 

This is one I see a ton of creators deal with. Jack has been clearing over $200,000 a year as a creator for five years -  and yet until recently, he wasn't spending a dollar on his business.

But it wasn't a straight line. When he hired someone and it didn't work out, instead of hiring the next person, he tried to do the whole thing himself again for six months. Just started drowning.

As he put it: “You have to keep taking those swings at finding the right people and being willing to fail at things"

Viviana took a different route but landed in the same place. She saved every dollar she earned from content, about $70K, while still working full time. That became the safety net that let her invest once she went full time. She hired a talent manager (a 20% cut, but helped her land better brand deal rates) and is now looking at bringing on a VA.

Yoseph reframed the whole thing about spending:

Ariel works with creators every day, and she sees this mistake all the time:

This isn't just about ROI on a hire. It's about buying back the headspace you need to actually create.

Jack learned this the hard way. He worked every single day including weekends for 13 straight months before he started making hires. Don’t wait until you’re drowning to bring in some help.

The room got dead quiet for this part. Here's the short version from Ariel:

ICYMI, we published a deep dive into creator taxes last week with Ariel if you’d like to read more.

Open a business bank account today. Seriously, that’s it.

Set up separate accounts for: operating expenses, taxes (30%), and savings.

Every dollar that comes in goes there - not your personal account.

It takes five minutes. It's free. And it's the single fastest way to start seeing your creator work as an actual business.

Oh, and Relay is incredibly easy to use.

Our next event is being planned for May - and we're opening up 3 sponsor slots 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.

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.

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 you're still running your business out of your personal bank account, consider this your wake-up call. Fix it this week. Five minutes. See you next week!

F*ck It, Create It,

Brett