Blake Michael is an entrepreneur, creator, and CEO and founder of Fourteen Media Group.
Successful creators can make tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars each year by monetizing their talents and hobbies and building a personal brand online. But of the roughly 303 million people around the world who consider themselves creators, only 4.3% earn six figures or more per year. While it’s a steep climb to the top of the industry, the income potential for those who make it is beyond what anyone would have dreamed of just 10 years ago. If you can unlock your ultimate creator potential, you can better position yourself to join the ranks of top-tier influencers who have turned their brands into multimillion-dollar empires.
Take, for example, MrBeast. MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is a YouTube star and entrepreneur and, at only 24 years old, he is a prime example of how content creators can reach their ultimate potential in the digital sphere. Since launching his YouTube channel, MrBeast has become the single highest-earning creator on the platform and has launched several multimillion-dollar businesses, including a burger chain, snack company and a tech accessories startup.
However, MrBeast’s unprecedented success has nothing to do with luck or overnight virality, despite what some might think. Having regularly posted to his YouTube channel for 10 years, MrBeast has seen a steady increase in viewership, audience loyalty and income by analyzing what works, adapting his strategy as trends change and building a personal brand. By catering to the algorithm, building a supportive team and diversifying his off-platform revenue streams, MrBeast has reached his full creator potential—and you can, too.
Building Your Brand
Creating a personal brand is an essential first step for content creators to reach their ultimate potential in the digital sphere. To do this, I suggest you first establish a presence on all relevant social platforms, such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Even if your primary focus is one platform, you should post regularly to them all and ensure that each platform has a consistent voice and style. If you create valuable, entertaining content for your audience, you’re more likely to see a return in audience loyalty and you can use that to begin building a brand around yourself as a personality.
Once you’ve established yourself as a valuable personal brand, you can monetize your content further by licensing it out to companies like Spotter or Jellysmack. These companies help creators scale their channels by offering upfront cash in exchange for future ad revenue from their existing catalog of content, not unlike a venture capital business model. Spotter has even invested in MrBeast, who used the cash to finance a Spanish-language channel. Spotter says that since they started working with him, MrBeast’s viewership has grown by over 300%, equating to 1.35 billion monthly views across all of his channels.
Creating Your Team
With a personal brand behind you and financing secured, you can begin to build a small team to help you scale your business. A one-man show can be profitable as a creator, but in order to build and sustain a viable long-term business, you’ll need an experienced and passionate team to help you maximize and multiply your efforts.
MrBeast, for example, now employs as many as 200 people to help him manage his five YouTube channels. This figure excludes his business ventures MrBeast Burger and Feastables. As of writing this, there were 24 open positions at MrBeast, including a human resources manager, content strategist, assistant editor, producer and even a private chef. However, Donaldson didn’t start off providing 401(k) matches for private chefs. When his channel first took off, MrBeast hired four of his childhood friends to help him run his brand. This small initial investment in part-time-friends-part-time-employees helped him scale his efforts and grow them into the large operation he runs today.
With the creator economy still being a relatively new and unexplored industry, it’s important to find people who are experienced in the digital space and understand the needs of content creators. Most creators have built their careers as one-man shows, brainstorming, executing, publishing and optimizing content all on their own. They likely don’t have a consistent workflow that they can pass on to hired team members, and the job roles are far from traditional. As such, any team members need to have high levels of adaptability, autonomy and an ability to handle ambiguity. If you’re reaching your maximum capacity and need to outsource to continue to grow, focus on identifying actionable tasks you can delegate and seek team members who are passionate about helping you achieve your full potential.
Expanding Your Empire
MrBeast doesn’t just create content. He also sells apparel, invests in other people’s business ventures and has founded a nonprofit. To reach your ultimate creator potential, I believe you don’t just have to maximize content creation, rather you have to transcend it entirely. Creating an ecosystem of products and businesses outside of social media platforms allows you to create multiple streams of income and expand your reach, helping you to achieve your ultimate potential in the digital sphere. Whether you want to be a musician like Shawn Mendes, an actor like Quinta Brunson, a comedian like Bo Burnham or an entrepreneur like MrBeast, just remember they all started out as creators who reached their ultimate creator potential and transcended it.
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