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.
Most creators want to go full-time. Few will tell you what it actually feels like to do it.
Viviana Vazquez (@overgenpoverty) walked away from a $185K tech job five months ago to bet on herself. She's been incredibly transparent about the numbers - and the emotions behind the jump.
This week: how she built runway in her creator business and what she'd tell anyone still sitting in their W-2 chair wondering if they're ready.
Let's get into it.
Real quick: AI creator CatGPT is coming to NYC this weekend and hosting a pop-up tomorrow in Soho with our friends at Shopify, showcasing her “Physical Phones” product. Creator-owned products in action. RSVP here.
Viviana Vazquez's leap to full-time creator
Viviana grew up below the poverty line in a rent-controlled Manhattan apartment - eldest daughter of Mexican immigrants, family of five living on her dad's $28K salary. By 2024, she was the one making $185K. The kind of job a lot of first-gen creators dream about and never leave.
She left it anyway.
She now runs @overgenpoverty full-time, the financial education platform she started in 2021 to help first-gen folks break out of generational poverty. And she's been unusually transparent about what going full-time actually looks and feels like.
"Every day feels really scary for me. Every day feels like me questioning if this is the right move. Because I was doing really well in my career, and I kind of left that stability to pursue this. I have to remind myself of that constantly.”
That fear didn't stop her from being clear-eyed about what it actually takes.
"If you love content, then you should be treating it as a business from the beginning. And even if you don't want to monetize yet, you should be thinking about the end goal a little bit more. I think a lot of people just create for the fun of it, but if your dream is to do it full time, then you need to figure out how to be able to live off of that."
That clarity is what drove everything she did next.
The Runway-First Framework
When Viviana decided she wanted to go full-time, she gave herself one full year to treat content like a real business before she'd even consider quitting.
She calls it how she lives, like a personal finance creator would. Here's what that actually looked like:
Step 1: Separate the money, immediately.
She opened a dedicated business bank account and drew a hard line: no mixing personal and business funds, no pulling from business revenue for personal expenses. Everything the business made stayed in the business.
"All that I made in 2025, I saved it in my business bank account because I was treating it as a business."
This isn't glamorous advice. But it changes how you think. Once your business has its own account, you start treating it like a business… not a side hustle with a Venmo.
Step 2: Build your other revenue streams before you need them.
While she was still W-2'd, her creator income was 100% brand deals. She knew that was a fragile foundation. So she queued up everything else in advance — digital products, speaking, affiliate — fully built and ready to launch before she handed in her notice.
Her product suite is priced to match her audience (first-gen folks who are still building wealth):
Budget template — $8
Debt tracker — $6
Investing ladder — $7
Bundle — $12
Plus speaking, 1:1 coaching, and affiliate income layered on top.
The point isn't the prices. The point is that she had multiple revenue levers ready to pull on day one of self-employment, not something she was figuring out after she quit.
Step 3: Know your actual runway number.
She closed 2025 at $70K in business revenue. Most of it sitting untouched in that business account. That number wasn't just a milestone, it was her cushion. Enough to absorb a bad month (or three) without panicking.
What's your runway number? Not a vague "I should have savings.”
But the specific dollar amount that would let you operate without revenue for 6 months. Varies person to person (and your risk tolerance), but that's a good target before you make the jump.
Step 4: Decouple your ego from your follower count.
This one's the mindset shift that changes how you operate.
Viviana has 178K on Instagram, 22K on TikTok, 11K on Threads. But she's watched creators with millions of followers struggle to clear $100K a year.
"Your follower count is not necessarily equal to how much money you're making. There could be people with millions of followers and they're not even making 100K a year versus people that are thinking with this revenue-first approach."
That observation rewired how she thinks about every piece of content she creates now and where she devotes her time:
Is this content going to produce revenue coming in?
And if not, do I really want to spend that much energy on it?
That's not cynicism or being lazy, that really is running a business. Your follower count is a vanity metric until it isn't. Revenue is the real scoreboard.
What she'd tell you if you're still in your W-2 chair
"Make sure that your business is sustainable financially. Diversifying your income streams is super important. And then also having the financial systems in place so that you're not super stressed about the money. If you're stressing about money as a W-2 worker where everything is a lot more stable, then it's just going to be 10 times harder when you're a business owner."
Five months in, she's already matched all of last year's revenue — and she still hasn't paid herself a dollar from the business.
Follow Vivana at @overgenpoverty.
Viviana on building a financial education business in New York
Btw, this is exactly why we built CENYC :)
Next Event, May 19th: Creator Spring Mixer
Spring has officially sprung 🌸
So we’re bringing together our community of creators, marketers, founders, and operators for the next Creator Economy NYC event: the Creator Spring Mixer.
Expect great conversations, networking, and meeting the people behind the brands, platforms, content, and ideas shaping this space.
We’ll also have some special programming mixed in throughout the night. More on that soon 👀
Big shoutout to our partners at Adobe Express, Jobstream™, and Siftsy for helping make this one happen.
You've been sitting on that idea long enough.
You know what you want to make. You've thought about it, planned it, maybe even started it. And somehow it's still not out in the world.
That's exactly what the F*ck It, Create It Workbook is built for.
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.
One-time purchase. $57. Companion videos included.
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! I hope Viviana's story is the nudge you needed, whether that's to actually run your numbers this weekend, start building the second revenue stream, or give yourself permission to over-prepare.
F*ck it, create it,
Brett
With research and editorial support by Taylor Cromwell
