Dive into the bustling intersection of influencers and innovation with James Michalak, CEO of NeoReach. Discover how a blend of top creators, cutting-edge tech, and insightful market data can lead to transparent, scalable marketing success, no matter the budget. Join us for a spirited talk that unravels the essence of being a creator in today's complex digital landscape.

Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.

• Over 80% of creators operate independently.
• Substantial growth through creators, not brands.
• AI manager negotiates deals for creators.
• Strategic M&A for operations improvement.
• The concept of "fan subs" to monetize content.

Resources:

• NeoReach
• DevNoodle

Connect with James Michalak:

• LinkedIn

Connect with our hosts:

• Josh Hoffman - LinkedIn
• Alex Garashchenko - LinkedIn

Quotables:

• 11:20 - There's things that look good, like, you know, you have the concept of a 10-foot car, you know, 10 feet away. It looks fine. We had a 10-foot business for a little while, right? So it's taking a look at those things and saying, Ah, I could probably make that better. Or, oh, we should focus some time and attention here to improve that process, improve that, you know, customer service, whatever. So yeah, I do a lot of that. It gets me in trouble both at home and in the business. But you're not, you're not moving forward unless you're making things better or trying to break stuff.
• 28:07 - I think that the creator economy is still ripe for a complete rollup. I think what we're seeing from a perspective at the macro level right now is driven by agency holdcos that are like, oh shit, we need this capability. We're just gonna bring it in-house so we can, you know, charge out the wazoo for it and add in hourly rates and stuff. But for us, we've looked at it differently still through the lens of like roll-up strategy in the sense that there is a huge competitive landscape out there. Any individual or like single aspect of the creator economy has hundreds of organizations trying to figure it out.
• 14:27 - I think everyone is swimming in the direction of continuing to service brands 'cause that's where at least the short-term dollars are. We're kind of going against the current, and we are focusing, I would say probably 80% of our attention now on the creators themselves. So building out tool sets for them to be more dangerous with their brand deals, building out ways for them to get paid more easily to do all the back office menial BS work that they don't really want to do. That's part of an activation. And then leaning into AI to make all that happen. 'cause the holy grail for us is being able to be that self, you know, full self-service aspect for creators to where we are also leveraging the data that they provide us to make informed decisions on the managed services side and possibly even use that to dictate where the creator economy is going.
• 27:01 - If it's hurting creators more than it's hurting my team. We're doing the creator thing first, 'cause at the end of the day we're in service of them. They're the reason we exist, and our entire value proposition moving forward is built around them. So like how can I be a hypocrite and focus on us first rather than trying to, to make life easier for them in any way that we can. Whether or not it's like payment processing, it's new tool sets, different data sets, jumping on the phone and just answering questions, all that kind of stuff.
• 41:27 - Cause what we see all the time, even with the creators that we represent as licensed talent managers, brands, lowball, right? Brands have, they've got a bottom line that they need to preserve. So they're not coming out with their best and brightest or their best offer out of the gate. They're probably asking for way too much in terms of content or requirements from the creator as well. And these, the creators were looking to service, they're amazing, but they're not as well versed in how to negotiate with a big brand or even a smaller one, how to advocate for themselves. So this is us taking data, and backing that up, and putting an AI agent in their corner.