I’m so excited to share this week’s Creator Diaries interview with you!

This week I got to chat with Avi Gandhi, an advisor and creator economy veteran. He’s building Creator Access Network, a membership program that negotiates discounts with companies serving creators. He describes it as “the Costco for creators.” (Disclosure: I’m a CAN member and also an affiliate! Fully endorse what he’s building ☺️ )

I wanted to talk to Avi because he’s spent nearly two decades watching the creator economy develop from multiple angles. He was one of the first talent agents representing YouTubers, before YouTube had a Partner Program or any real brand-deal infrastructure. He has worked in influencer marketing, founded a startup, produced creator-led media, led creator partnerships at Patreon, advised companies including Discord and Adobe, and built a creator business of his own.

His perspective is useful for anyone trying to understand what comes after the influencer economy: a world where creators are small-business owners, content is a primary customer-acquisition channel, and expertise can be packaged and sold in more ways than a traditional job allows.

Here’s what I learned from our chat!

-Taylor

When Avi entered the creator economy, creators were still trying to convince brands that their work had commercial value.

“I was one of the first talent agents representing creators way back in the day, before YouTube had a Partner Program,” he says. “Back then there was no brand-deal infrastructure. Brands were just trying to trade product for posts.”

17 years later, the infrastructure is more developed—there are talent agencies, influencer marketing platforms, creator management companies, payment tools, analytics platforms, and specialized legal and accounting services—yet there is still a major gap.

Many creators are building businesses with the resources of a solopreneur and the costs of a company.

After leaving the agency world, Avi worked across the broader ecosystem. At Wheelhouse, he worked on creator-led production, including putting the Hype House on Netflix, producing a Streamy Award-winning podcast with Bailey Sarian, and building YouTube channels and podcasts for top creators. At Patreon, he led the creator partnerships team and helped sign some of the platform’s biggest creators.

Over the past four years, he has also been a creator himself, publishing on LinkedIn and writing a newsletter. That audience drives an advisory business, where he helps companies build creator programs, partnerships, products, and strategies. It also became the testing ground for Creator Access Network.

When Avi got serious about his own creator business, he needed to form an LLC, hire an accountant, launch a newsletter, improve the design, and pay for the tools that would help him grow. In his first year, he spent around $12,000.

“When you’re a creator and you’re a solopreneur, every dollar you spend is out of your own pocket,” he says. “Most startups, you think about startups like they raise venture capital or some sort of seed financing. They have money to spend.”

The comparison that came to him was Costco. Once he and his wife had a house and a baby, they could use Costco to lower the cost of diapers, food, and household supplies. A AAA membership gave them discounts on car services, travel, and hotels.

Why didn’t the same concept exist for independent businesses?

Creator Access Network currently focuses on the companies creators need to launch and operate their businesses: newsletter platforms such as beehiiv, course and membership platforms such as Kajabi and Mighty Networks, accountants and lawyers who specialize in working with creators, production tools, and AI products.

The membership costs $49 a year. Avi says the median discount available to members is $400, with some members saving hundreds or thousands of dollars across tools, events, and services.

The model also reflects a truth that creators rarely get to talk about publicly: most experiments don’t work.

That’s normal, he says. Creators try a lot of things. They test new platforms, offers, formats, and distribution channels. The public usually sees the success story after the fact, rather than the abandoned products and wasted subscriptions that came first.

The goal of Creator Access Network is to make the learning curve less expensive.

Avi’s larger argument is that the creator economy will eventually stop looking like a niche industry and more just small business owners of the future.

AI will allow companies to produce more with fewer employees, while creating more space for people to sell their own expertise, products, and services, he says. The result could be a larger class of independent businesses—consultants, freelancers, educators, creators, and small companies—using content to find customers.

“The creator economy is going to become the economy,” he says. “It’s already happened.”

A lawyer who publishes useful posts on LinkedIn may never call themselves a creator. Neither might a financial adviser with a newsletter, a chef selling cooking classes, or a consultant who finds clients through a podcast.

They’re all still participating in the same ecosystem: creating content, building trust, and using distribution to sell something.

Before social media, a local business might have relied on flyers, direct mail, a newspaper ad, or word of mouth. Today, a small company can reach potential customers through short-form video, LinkedIn posts, podcasts, newsletters, and online communities.

The creator economy’s old business model was often summarized by Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 True Fans” idea: build a committed audience of 1,000 people who are willing to pay for your work.

Avi believes the model has evolved alongside the tools available to creators.

When Kelly wrote the original essay nearly 20 years ago, digital products, ecommerce, memberships, and online distribution were far less developed. In the years since, platforms such as Patreon, Kajabi, Fourthwall, and print-on-demand services have made it easier for individuals to create and sell products directly.

Li Jin later updated the idea to “100 True Fans.” Avi would take it one step further for a business like his own.

“I would even update that to the 10 true fans,” he says. “That’s my business.”

His audience is not only made up of people who might buy a $20 product. His content can reach an executive who hires him for a consulting engagement. One business customer can be worth $10,000, $100,000, or more over time.

“I have clients that, over several years, have paid me more than $300,000,” Avi says. “They found me through LinkedIn.”

That’s not a promise that every creator can turn 10 followers into a 6-figure business, but it is a powerful reminder to think carefully about the value of each relationship and the purchasing power of the audience you are building.

For a B2B creator, one person with a business problem and the budget to solve it may be more commercially valuable than thousands of casual viewers. For a consumer creator, the equivalent might be a smaller group that buys products, joins a membership, attends retreats, or returns to a high-value offer.

Instead of asking “How many people follow me?,” creators should ask “Who can I help, and what is that help worth?”

The range of possible creator businesses is exciting. It is also one of the easiest ways to become overwhelmed. (Can relate 😅)

A creator can launch a course, start a community, sell consulting, pursue brand deals, create a paid newsletter, publish on YouTube, and build a product line. Avi has fallen into that trap himself.

“The biggest piece of advice I can give anyone—and I’m not particularly good at it myself—is to focus,” he says. “You want to do a lot of things. ‘I want to launch a course, and I want to start this community, and I also want to do some consulting.’ The more you do, the less successful any of those things will be.”

His recommendation is to experiment enough to find a signal, then concentrate on the thing showing the most promise.

That doesn’t mean you should commit to the first idea forever. Early experimentation is part of finding the right model. The decision changes when one offer begins to attract customers, generate repeat demand, or create a clear path to growth.

At that point, Avi says, it is usually more valuable to improve the working model than to keep juggling every possible idea.

Focus becomes difficult when the creator is still responsible for every task.

Avi regularly talks to creators who spend hours doing work they dislike or are poorly positioned to do. His advice is direct: outsource the task when the time it frees up is worth more than the cost.

He uses video editing as an example. If a creator is spending 20 hours a week editing, hiring an editor may create enough capacity to launch the YouTube channel, consulting offer, or product they have been postponing.

The same logic applies to accounting, scheduling, design, research, and administrative work.

“It costs $500 a month,” he says of hiring an accountant. “That is worth it if you make an extra $5,000 a month because now you’re not thinking about your accounting anymore.”

Creators sometimes treat delegation as a signal that they need to become employers or build a traditional company. Avi sees it more simply. An editor, accountant, designer, or virtual assistant can be a service provider—a cost of doing business—without requiring the creator to build a large internal team.

Your goal doesn’t have to be an exit or a venture-backed company. It might be more time with your family, a less frantic workweek, or the ability to spend more energy on the work only you can do.

Avi also sees Creator Access Network as a way to expand the creator partnership model beyond sponsorships.

He describes creator partnerships as a pyramid. At the top are major equity or ambassador deals with a brand’s most visible faces. Below that are paid sponsorships, user-generated content, affiliate partnerships, and gifting.

He believes there is another layer at the base: giving the broader population of creators a reason to buy and use a product themselves.

“There is a base layer that nobody has ever talked about, thought about, or even activated,” he says. “Get creators to use the product. If they have the product organically, then it’s likely to appear in more content organically.”

His long-term vision is for Creator Access Network to include consumer products and services alongside creator-business tools. He imagines brands such as Uniqlo, Apple, or Yeti offering discounts to creators who might otherwise purchase those products at full price.

The brand receives potential organic exposure. The creator gets a lower-cost way to try something they may genuinely use. The relationship is less formal than a sponsorship and can begin before a creator has enough scale to attract a paid campaign.

That idea fits Avi’s broader view of the creator middle class. The future will include a small number of highly visible partnerships, but it will also include millions of people using content to build trust around a business, service, or point of view.

Creator Access Network is also becoming a source of education and examples for creators who are still building.

At the time of our conversation, Avi was preparing to launch New American Dream, an interview series featuring creators with fewer than 100,000 followers who earn more than $100,000. The goal is to focus on the tactics behind those businesses rather than only profiling people with massive audiences.

The network’s newsletter includes regular discounts, some of which are available to nonmembers. Paying members receive access to deeper offers across the creator tools and services in the network.

That editorial layer matters because the creator economy still over-indexes on highly visible success stories. A creator with millions of followers may offer inspiration, but their business model can be difficult for someone with 5,000 or 25,000 followers to replicate.

The more useful examples may come from people building quietly at a smaller scale: a consultant with a handful of strong clients, a newsletter operator with a paid niche audience, or a creator who turns one skill into several related offers.

Avi’s own business sits at that intersection. He’s using content to sell expertise, building a membership around a practical business need, and creating media to help other people understand what is possible.

If you want to connect with Avi or learn about CAN, here’s where you can find them:

That’s all for this week 👋🏻