TL;DR
If you've spent any time on LinkedIn and you follow the creator world, you've probably seen AJ Eckstein's content. AJ is the founder of Creator Match and he’s been building it in public since week one — and this past week, I sat down with him to talk about all of it.
Whether you're a creator trying to land your first brand deal, a founder figuring out how to use content to build a business, or someone just trying to understand where B2B creator marketing is actually going — this one is worth your time.
-Taylor
$$$ ALERT
Building a creator business can feel like death by a thousand subscriptions. A newsletter platform here (love u tho beehiiv <3), a banking app there, an automation tool, a community platform — and before you've made a dollar, you're bleeding hundreds a month just for the privilege of trying things out.
And the worst part you're paying full price to experiment and figure out what even works for you when you have the least money to spend on it.
That's why I teamed up with Creator Access Network 💪 Think of it like Costco for creators: one membership unlocks exclusive deals from 40+ companies (the best beehiiv deal anywhere, Manychat, Mercury, Wispr Flow, and more) — over $20k in savings and growing. And right now you can get lifetime access for just $149. Most members make that back on a single deal.
BUILDING IN PUBLIC
Creator Match started as a LinkedIn-first creator marketing agency — and AJ was one of the earliest people to take LinkedIn creators seriously as a channel for B2B brands. They were the first agency to pay out over a million dollars in LinkedIn creator deals.
Creator Match has since expanded well beyond LinkedIn — what AJ calls "full stack creator marketing" — running campaigns across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and paid media for brands like Anthropic, Notion, HubSpot, and Zapier.
One of the most interesting parts of our conversation to me is how brands are moving away from feature marketing (we launched X) toward use-case marketing (here's what X actually does for someone like you). Creators are the best vehicle to tell those stories at scale.
Which means if you’re a creator trying to land a brand deal, there’s a clear path to doing so.
→ Start creating content around the tools you know and love and show other people how to use them (aka your use case)! I saw an awesome example of this in my feed recently wth Folasade Daini and Wispr Flow
We also got into the power of Youtube for B2B creators. (Spoiler alert: business is booming and every brand wants to increase their spend here through long term partnerships.
Highly recommend reading through my interview with AJ if you want to nerd out on all things creator marketing (my favorite thing to do!)
Below is the TL;DR version of some top lessons I learned:
AJ Eckstein’s 10 lessons for creators 💡
On getting your first brand deal: Start by talking about the tools you already use. Post about what's in your tech stack, tag the brands, show the use case. Don't think of it as free labor — think of it as the audition to land the big role.
On professionalism: Brands and agencies will bend over backwards for creators who respond and follow through. Outside of performance, if you're a good partner, people come back again and again. Everyone talks. Treat your content like a business. (AHEM: this is why one of my core missions is to help people think more like business owners!)
On the creator vs. founder identity: Decide what you are. A founder or creator first. For AJ, the content exists to market the business — not the other way around. And know if you’re a creator you are running a business at the end of the day.
On trying to do both: You can either do one thing incredibly well, or two things at an average level. If there's a week where both are demanding, you'll always choose the business. Own that.
On content when you're slammed: Don't try to create content. Document what's already happening. Keep a weekly founder journal — the good, the bad, the screenshots. Review it on Sunday. Post from that. You never have to sit in front of a blank page.
On feature marketing vs. use case marketing: Nobody cares that the next version of your product just launched. They care about the use case — what it actually does for someone like them. That's the shift happening in B2B right now, and creators are the best vehicle to scale it.
On owning a niche: Pick one nail and hit it every single day. Don't spread across five conversations at once. The goal is to get so deep into one topic that when it comes up, people think of you — and when they think of you, they think of that topic. Outbound content to inbound DMs.
On measuring ROI: The best marketing is not trackable. Stop trying to attribute every post to a dollar amount. The goal is to stay top of mind with your ideal customer. You'll see it show up in "how did you hear about us?" over time.
On AI search: Creator marketing for AI search is the next category — and most brands haven't figured it out yet. Dedicated long-form content is what gets pulled when someone asks Claude or Perplexity for a recommendation. The brands that get there first will have a structural advantage that's very hard to undo.
On surviving what's coming: The pendulum will swing back to the human. AI avatars will get called out. Requirements for disclosure are coming. The creators who tell the best stories will be the ones still standing — not the ones who post the most, but the ones who make you feel something.
LINKS & THINGS 🗞️
A few things I've been reading, listening to, and saving recently:
Matt McGarry and Katelyn Bourgoin talked about building your unignorable idea, pivoting as a creator, building frameworks around your ideas - and there are SO many gems in this convo. Speaks to what I talk about all the time in terms of building IP as a creator.
Daniel Priestley is back with another super valuable YouTube video! It walks you through how you can find your highest-value work, stop selling time for money, and also where AI can’t replace workers.
I’ve been working on a case study about ShopMy and the founders’ story and really loved this interview with Tiffany Lopinski. In 5 years, ShopMy has gone from launch to a billion-dollar business. Its rise tells us so much about the influence of creators and where the creator economy is going 👀
S/O to Matter for helping me keep this list going!
That’s all for this week 👋🏻 Here's to a strong second half of 2026! 🫶🏻