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.

Listen. We’re all here to make money. I want you to make lots of money!

There’s a reason the word economy is in our name: Creator Economy NYC isn’t only about making great things or growing an audience. We want to help creators build enduring businesses that allow them to keep doing the work they love.

But “make more money” isn’t much of a strategy. More money for what? To hire someone? Leave your job? Stop refreshing your inbox waiting for the next brand deal?

This week: we hosted a panel with four all-star NYC creators (Felicia, Carson, Alberta and Colin) in partnership with Relay, and we talked about what they actually do with the money once it hits, and the four moves that changed their business. 

Spoiler: the right move depends on the creator, the business, and the life they are trying to build. So before getting into rates, revenue streams, and business accounts, we started by defining the thing itself, with a little help from a fellow NYC creator and one of our great economic thinkers … Cardi B.

Let’s get into it.

On September 27, Zig.ai is hosting The Closers Only Club, an invite-only NYC gathering for sales leaders, operators, founders, and GTM builders exploring how AI is changing the way teams drive revenue.

The night includes a panel on the future of AI in revenue featuring sales leaders, creators, and AI experts, plus special performances from Funk Flex and Austin Millz.

If you work across partnerships, sales, growth, or the business side of the creator economy, this will be a great room. Spots are limited and going fast - request yours on the waitlist now.

These four creators are building very different businesses: a national lecture series, a running-and-baking life-style brand, a tech-comedy media business, and a career platform spanning content, events, partnerships, and products.

But their answers to our kickoff question made one thing clear: what turns a check into a money move is the decision that comes after it, the one that changes what becomes possible next.

For one creator, that might mean reinvesting a brand check into a team. For another, it might mean making unpredictable income more dependable, going out and asking for the opportunity, or building a company whose revenue supports other creative people.

That could mean hiring a team member, improving production, or paying your own way into a room that could change the business.

Four creators, four definitions, all correct. But pull them apart and they follow the same order: see it, shed it, scale it, seed it.

Management is a weirdly loaded topic in the creator world.

Signing with a manager can feel like you've officially been called up to the big leagues. Going without one can feel like proof that you're a savvy founder who keeps the full check. Both ideas miss the point.

The better question is: can this person see money, terms, or opportunities that you can't?

Carson had one of the wildest growth spurts we've heard about. He went from roughly 200 followers to 250,000 in one month. Then around 100 managers reached out.

Because Carson is a CPA and can't help himself, he interviewed approximately 40 of them.

"Everyone said they would hang the moon and the stars, and only one actually did things for me."

At the time, Carson was negotiating $500 for three videos and thought he'd hit the jackpot. The manager he chose took over the conversation and dramatically changed the value of the deal.

"I thought, 'Maybe I can't do this alone.'"

Alberta's experience was less sudden but landed in the same place. She'd been creating for six years. She knew people in the industry. She understood tech, media, and the internet. Surely she could estimate what a video should cost.

Nope.

"I thought, 'I know people in the creator economy. I think I can guess how much a video should cost.' I was so deeply, deeply off."

Alberta was clear that some creators can handle this without representation, but they need to really know the market. Knowing creators isn't the same as knowing the current rate for a tech integration, how usage changes that rate, or when a brand has more budget than it's showing you.

So, do you need a manager? Not automatically. But if your pricing process is "this sounds like a lot of money" or "this is more than my last deal," you need outside market information before you send another number.

We’ve gone deeper on what a manager should actually take off your plate (and when another kind of hire might make more sense) in How to hire as a creator, Part 1 and Part 2, and when to work with management.

Yes, that's the technical business term.

Felicia handed off negotiations because doing them changed how she felt when it was time to get on camera.

"There was no way I was going to be the person sending those emails and negotiating on my own behalf and still have the confidence at the end of the day to record content. The energy wasn't conducive to the kind of content I wanted to make."

She and her husband divided the business around their strengths. Felicia took the content, design, and everything that "looks good." He took the contracts, invoices, and wordy operational work.

Colin uses a related test: "The way I make decisions is: 'Am I the best person for this task?' Not: 'Can I do this?'"

He calls the alternative figure-it-out-itis: the habit of doing everything yourself because you know you can eventually solve it.

You've been competent your whole career. Of course you can build the deck, negotiate the deal, edit the clip, organize the event, and answer 47 emails. Congratulations, you've built yourself a job with five departments and one employee.

When Colin gave this answer onstage, his videographer was clipping the panel, his assistant was capturing short-form content, and his team was answering emails. That's what getting out of your own way actually looked like in the room.

Diversification has basically become the vegetables of creator-business advice. Everyone agrees you should have more of it.

Launch a product. Build a course. Add a membership. Start a newsletter. Make merch. Keep stacking revenue streams until the business looks safe from the outside and feels unbearable from the inside.

Alberta isn't interested in doing that just because it's on the creator-founder bingo card.

Brand partnerships work for her. Her audience is growing. She has more videos to make and more platforms to reach. Why interrupt that momentum to launch something else just yet? (As she referenced Mr. Beast’s recent launch of a Lunchables competitor - Lunchly)

"Maybe brand deals don't last forever, but maybe Lunchables don't last forever either. Why are we putting all of our eggs in a different basket? This basket is good. I like this basket."

Her best money move was doubling down.

"Sometimes things work, and it's okay for them to keep working."

That doesn't mean ignoring risk. Alberta's biggest platform is YouTube, and her channel was once banned for a week. Today, she distributes her ideas across platforms, short-form clips, and newsletters. She is diversifying distribution without forcing herself to abandon a business model that fits.

Colin offered another framing: creators are building media businesses, and sponsorships are advertising revenue. A magazine does not treat every new ad sale as evidence that its business model has failed.

The question you should ask yourself: where would one failure shut the whole business down?

If it's one platform, expand your distribution. If it's one client, widen the customer base. But if the model itself is working, you don't have to invent five new businesses to prove you're a founder.

When Felicia's brand deals slowed down, she began making user-generated content to cover her New York expenses. She had recently moved to the city, wanted to meet people, and needed another source of income.

She and her husband considered hosting one lecture night a week. They hadn't set out to build a national events company. Their goal at the time was just to make friends and maybe pay the heating bill.

That experiment became Lectures on Tap, which now has 10 chapters across the country.

A new business doesn't need to begin with a massive, perfectly planned launch, a detailed five-year plan, or a complete brand architecture. A contained experiment can answer the questions that planning cannot: will people come? Will they come back? Will they pay? Do we want to keep doing this?

Hell, that’s how CENYC started! A simple bar meetup on the Lower East Side.

Felicia's experiment succeeded, but it also brought a new class of problems.

"More money does not equal more problems. You're going to have problems. It's just: what kind of problems do you want to have?"

As Colin put it from making money moves himself: "The quality of my problems has gotten better."

Thanks to our panelists and ​thanks to Relay for supporting this conversation.

As we know, a creator business comes with a lot to manage beyond the content. Relay’s business banking and money management platform helps you organize your income, set aside money for things like taxes and expenses, and get a clearer picture of what you have available to spend. Explore Relay today.

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. What’s your next money move to make?

Maybe it’s finding a manager who can prove their value. Handing off the one task that ruins your energy for everything after it. Putting a date on the calendar before you’ve built the empire. Or accepting that the basket you already have is actually pretty damn good.

Making the money is one decision. What you do next is the move.

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.