The Creator Spotlight Podcast

May 16 2024 2
The Creator Spotlight Podcast artwork

Behind-the-scenes stories from across the creator economy.This podcast is part of our newsletter, Creator Spotlight.Every week, as part of the process of writing our newsletter, we spend an hour in conversation with a notable creator. Only a few parts of that conversation can make it into the newsletter — now you can listen in for every little story and piece of advice.Hosted by Francis Zierer (Twitter and LinkedIn).Uploaded ever Friday morning.

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Ep. 11: Haya Kaylani, creator of The Deep Dive

May 16 2024 51 mins  
Today's guest is Haya Kaylani, creator of a curation-style newsletter called The Deep Dive. What does she curate? YouTube video essays, five of them every Wednesday. She’s built an audience of 92k TikTok followers and 13.5k newsletter subscribers in just 15 months — pure organic growth, with almost all of her newsletter subscribers coming over from TikTok.In this issue, we disc

Ep. 10: PJ Milani, creator of the Visual I.D.E.A.s Newsletter

May 09 2024 45 mins  
Today's guest is PJ Milani, a high school animation teacher recently turned social media star. He’s known for his “visual metaphors” — single-panel illustrations featuring lessons about life and creativity. Across his socials he has over 200k followers, his newsletter has 16k subscribers, and he teaches a perennially sold-out cohort course about visual thinking on Maven.In

Ep. 9: Ryan Broderick, creator of Garbage Day

May 02 2024 57 mins  
Ryan Broderick is the creator of Garbage Day, “A newsletter about having fun online.” He’s among the most popular journalists-turned-newsletter-creators out there. It’s clear by the numbers (68k subscribers, 3k of whom pay for premium content), praise from other creators, and the nearly 200 press clippings on his About page.In this episode we discuss: 📰 There’s (almost

Ep. 8: Jared Dashevsky, creator of Healthcare Huddle

Apr 25 2024 50 mins  
Jared Dashevsky runs Healthcare Huddle, a twice-weekly newsletter for physicians and other healthcare professionals. In just over four years, he’s built an audience of 30,000. He’s also built a team of 13, dismantled that team and been acquired. But today, Jared is once again a solo creator.In this episode, we discuss:🎓️ The cap on how far Healthcare Huddle can or should s

Ep. 7: Arielle Nissenblatt, creator of EarBuds Podcast Collective

Apr 18 2024 50 mins  
Arielle Nissenblatt knows podcasts. She writes a weekly newsletter about podcasts, hosts a podcast version of that newsletter, co-hosts another weekly podcast and a daily podcast. She runs a Discord community for podcasters. On top of all that, she works full-time as a community marketing manager at Descript.In this episode, we discuss:🤝 How Arielle broke into the podcasting ind

Ep. 6: Ryan Sneddon, creator of Naptown Scoop

Apr 11 2024 59 mins  
Ryan Sneddon runs Naptown Scoop, a local newsletter serving Annapolis, Maryland. In three-and-a-half years, he’s built an audience of over 18,000 (nearly half the town’s population), and last year the business generated around $200,000 in revenue.In this episode, we discuss:🏘️ How Ryan got half the town to sign up for the Scoop👩 Exactly how Ryan defined his core reader

Ep. 5: Ali Abassi, creator of AI for Work

Apr 04 2024 58 mins  
Ali built an audience of over 7,000 subscribers before he even sent the first issue of his newsletter, AI for Work. He would only end up sending 13 issues before (at approximately 30,000 subscribers) he went looking for advice on how to monetize and ending up selling the whole thing instead.We spent an hour discussing:🧲 How he built an ingenious, highly successful lead magnet�

Ep. 4: Andrew Huang, author of Make Your Own Rules

Mar 28 2024 49 mins  
Andrew Huang is lifelong musician and a pioneer in the Creator Economy. He made his first dollar online auctioning off songwriting commissions on eBay two decades ago and has since became a celebrated YouTuber with 2.36 million followers, produced commercial commissions for international brands, and published a book.Make Your Own Rules: Stories and Hard-Earned Advice from a Creator

Ep. 3: Casey Lewis of After School

Mar 21 2024 70 mins  
Casey has been writing the youth consumer trends newsletter After School for three years, the culmination of nearly two decades writing and editing content about and for teens in her own online publications and in Teen Vogue and New York Magazine. On the occasion of Casey leaving her day job to work full time on a newsletter — for the second time in her career — we spoke about:

Ep. 2: Eric Cantor and Adam Katz of Vincent

Mar 14 2024 55 mins  
Eric, alongside Slava Rubin (host of the Smart Humans podcast), co-founded Vincent in 2019 as an aggregator platform for alternative investment opportunities. It's evolved into a media company with three newsletters and a podcast, still focused on alternative investments. Adam joined the team a couple of years ago as a researcher and writer.We spoke about:🏋️ Building a solid c