Ahead of the holiday weekend, I want to share a recap of things I’m reading, listening and paying attention to – all as it relates to the creator world of course.
One clear theme came up as I was putting this together this week: the rise of the creator entrepreneur. This is something I’ve been documenting for months but haven’t quite put words to.
Essentially the best creators are doing more than just posting content; they are thinking like an entrepreneur. AND, on the flipside, the best founders and entrepreneurs are thinking like creators (it’s meta I know). But it’s a really interesting shift to me and I think we are just at the tippy tippy top of the crest of this wave.
I realize that this is my sweet spot too because I love talking about starting, running, and growing businesses in a traditional sense. But I also love how the creator world (and how people are making money online) is upending so much of what we know to be true.
Here are a few things I’ve been loving lately that speak to this shift:
📓 New Creator Diaries Deep Dive: Brett Deshevky of Creator Economy NYC
This week I published a new Q&A article with Brett Deshevsky, the founder of Creator Economy NYC. I have been following his work and taking notes for some time, and I'm so thrilled to get the opportunity to speak with him and learn more about his story.
The CENYC newsletter, which curates meetups, creator economy news, and Brett’s own lessons in building
The growth of CENYC has looked like a rocket ship from the outside. But of course I was more keen to learn about the pivotal decisions to go full time, to scale.
Today CENYC looks like:
→ a thriving online and offline community in NYC and beyond
→ 10,000+ newsletter subscribers
→ brand deals with Notion, LinkedIn, Shopify, Teachable, and more (casual)
→ a sold-out NYC conference for creators
We spoke about how it all started, how he's building IRL community, strategies he uses for pitching brand deals, and the frameworks he uses to stay focused, and so much more.
🎙 Creator Spotlight: Jayde I. Powell
Omg — Jayde is my new career icon. After listening to her Creator Spotlight episode, I immediately wanted to write about it and even share it on TikTok.
@cromwellcreativeco Jayde is my new career ICON ✨ and I love her approach to business. some highlights: - jayde calls herself a creator entrepreneur because ... See more
For one, Jayde’s story is incredibly refreshing. I love how she leans into her unique voice, approach and POV. The creator world desperately needs more people like this to break the mold and show us all what’s possible. And on that note, she’s incredibly transparent too.
She breaks down how she makes money on LinkedIn, how she approaches brand deals, her rules for boundaries and preventing burnout (like not working more than 80 hours a week… um goals!?) She calls herself a creator-entrepreneur, because she’s running a business, not just an audience.
📘 Dan Martell on Time, Energy, and Scaling Smart
Dan Martell called this the most value-added conversation he’s had all year — so of course I’m paying attention.
Dan understands what it means to run a business as both a CEO and creator. His background is as a startup founder and he's sold several successful software businesses. In 2024, he wrote a book, Buy Back Your Time, that’s near gospel for so many founders I look up to.
Instead of letting that be the pinnacle of his career, he's now turned all of this expertise and insight into a creator business and has grown into something so much larger than he expected. (More than 3M followers across social alone!)
‘build your dream life’ - okay you have my attention!
Some highlights of this episode:
Dan treats his time like his product — and is intentional about buying it back through systems, support, and structure.
He separates roles clearly: he’s the talent in the business and manages that role just like any other.
The episode is full of insights on building a content-first business without losing yourself in the output machine.
Dan’s story is a great blueprint if you are serious about building a sustainable business through content.
Build-in-Public Update
Given that we have somehow reached the midway point of the year, I sat down last week to kind of check back in to the goals I had set for myself at the beginning of the year.
Some look rather light in retrospect, like posting on LinkedIn consistently and continuing to build out this newsletter, while some are still ones that loom large, like "write a book" and "book more speaking opportunities."
here’s my scrappy notes version of 2025 roadmap I wrote in January. if you squint hard enough you’ll see my three pillars were build audience → monetize audience → build industry presence
But again, I'm reminded of the power in actually writing your goals down as a means to make them happen. And one of the things I was grateful that I did when I was brainstorming my goals was actually to break down my goals into quarterly actions so I could see when I'm making progress.
some notes from my mid-year check in
And it's clear to me, even with just six months of data, that investing in your personal brand and betting on yourself, showing up consistently in places like LinkedIn and building your email newsletter is 1,000% worth it.
I feel such a renewed clarity on my niche and what I am fascinated by and how I most want to help people. And what I realized is that I kind of had to figure this all out through the act of just doing it.
@cromwellcreativeco some thoughts on building a business in 2025 #creatoreconomy #careeradvice #entrepreneurship #creator #entrepreneur #newsletter #freelan... See more
For now, I'm going to use this as inspiration to keep building. I will share more on my Q3 and Q4 intentions in the next couple of weeks.
Also as a reminder, I’m still building out the interview series for Creator Diaries. I've already got some great pieces in the works, but what's been SO fun for me is how energizing these conversations have been. I’d love to find and highlight more stories of people building the future of the creator economy.
If that’s you, let’s chat!
