The Creator Spotlight Podcast

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 discuss:🎨 Curating, gatekeeping, and gatecreating📺️ Why writing about YouTube is a huge opportunity📢 Applying lessons from a career in PR to indie creator work🤳 Building a newsletter audience by building a TikTok audience00:00 What is The Deep Dive02:30 Being a curator06:23 What is a video essay?14:26 Going viral on TikTok19:04 Why start a newsletter?24:21 Why we need curators and gate-creators28:22 The stats - How to grow subscribers33:32 Haya’s premium newsletter, The Rabbit Hole37:27 Monetisation and referrals41:47 Advice for creators and lessons learnedIntro music produced by J. & Doug Organ.

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 this issue, we discuss:🌱 Organic growth🔜 Trusting the process, every day🎨 What it means to live a creative life🤝 Working in community with other creators00:00 Who is PJ Milani 01:25 Why PJ started creating — Getting on social media 09:04 How to gain 200k followers 14:48 Relationship between writing and drawing 19:39 Which social media platform is best — Twitter vs Instagram vs LinkedIn 23:57 How to convert social media followers into newsletter subs? 30:56 How PJ monetises his content 42:23 The long term plan Intro music produced by J. & Doug Organ.

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) no difference between journalists and creators🛋️ Why you need a Simpsons couch gag in your newsletter🫵 Every American is a journalist (if they want to be)🚖 Creators are Uber drivers for content🧑‍🎓 Garbage Day is on the syllabusIntro music produced by J. & Doug Organ.

Jared Dashevsky, creator of Healthcare Huddle, shares insights on scaling newsletters, identifying true fans, sustainable workflow, and key lessons from his four years of newslettering. He discusses pivoting from B2C to B2B audience and the challenges of building and dismantling a team.

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 industry🎙️ Why you should not start a podcast (unless you should)🫂 What “community” means to brands and creators💖 The potential of creator advocacy organizations🏠 How brands should work with in-house creatorsIntro music produced by J. & Doug Organ.

In this episode, Ryan Sneddon, creator of Naptown Scoop, shares how he acquired half the town's population as subscribers. He details defining his core reader, pricing ad spots, the effective referral system, and plans to increase revenue by 175%.

Ali Abassi, creator of AI for Work, shares insights on building a successful lead magnet, emailing every subscriber, monetization experiments, TikTok growth, and plans for a local news newsletter.

Andrew Huang, a pioneer in the Creator Economy, shares insights on focusing output on specific platforms, creating online music production courses, scaling as a creator authentically, and writing his first book filled with timeless advice.

Casey Lewis discusses building and selling her first newsletter, writing to 0 subscribers, leaving a full-time job for her newsletter business, and her premium subscriber model with a 5% conversion rate. She also talks about monetizing a curation-style newsletter and her journey on TikTok.

Eric Cantor and Adam Katz from Vincent discuss building a core audience, revenue generation through partnerships, and not worrying about competitors. They talk about the evolution of their newsletters, decision not to put names on the byline, and knowing what not to write about.