The Creator Spotlight Podcast

Kate Lindsay is a freelance writer and newsletter editor whose own newsletter, Embedded, is pushing 35k subscribers. She's one of the best people out there writing about the internet for the internet. This is an episode about why more newsletters should be run by two people, an indie newsletter born from a shuttered publication, and paying NYC rent with premium newsletter subscriptions. 00:00 Who...

Today’s guest, Andrew Southworth, always wanted to become a musician. To do so, he became a mechanical engineer. Last year he quit his day job to make music and help other people market their music full time. He does YouTube, newsletters, courses, he has an agency — he does it all. We spoke about: 📆 A 13-year long bet to become a creator-entrepreneur 🪴 How to diversify, effectively, as a creator...

Today’s guest is Akhil Chauhan, who runs The Writer’s Job Newsletter (TWJN). But he didn’t create the newsletter — he acquired it. Akhil has been running TWJN solo (besides occasional social media help) for two years. The guy he bought it from ran it for only one year. We spoke about: 💰️ The economics of a newsletter acquisition 🤐 Keeping his personality (mostly) out of the newsletter 🤝 Pulling...

Today’s guest is Peter Ramsey. He runs Built for Mars, a UX consultancy and content library he started almost by accident after the company he founded during university was acquired in 2018. I was drawn both to his story and the undeniable quality of his content. Peter is a rare type — an obsessively detailed researcher but not pedantic about it. He’s just as talented at spinning that research int...

Today’s guest is Caitlin Murray, better known by her Instagram handle @bigtimeadulting. After her son was diagnosed with leukemia in 2016, she started writing about it to friends and family — nearly 8 years later, she has 1.4 million Instagram followers. It’s a great story. In today’s episode: 00:00 The origin story 05:50 How to gain over 1 million followers 10:15 The 4 chapters of @bigtimeadultin...

Today's guest is Tyler O’Shea, creator of Joker Mag, a website and newsletter about sports underdogs. He started the project in that “what am I gonna do with my life” period after graduating college. Nearly 7 years of posting later, he’s still doing it as a side project, but it’s also led him to a career in SEO (search engine optimization). In this episode, we talk about: 🐶 Learning how to write...

Today's guest is Kate Samuelson, co-creator of Cheapskate London. Every Monday, they send out a newsletter built around free events, two for each day of the coming week. Over the last five years they’ve built an audience of over 19k, winning praise from longstanding media institutions in the process. All the while, Cheapskate is a side project; during the day, Kate works as a journalist. She speci...

Today's guest is Haya Kaylani, creator of a curation-style newsletter called The Deep Dive. What does she curate? YouTube video essays, five of them every Wednesday. She’s built an audience of 92k TikTok followers and 13.5k newsletter subscribers in just 15 months — pure organic growth, with almost all of her newsletter subscribers coming over from TikTok. In this issue, we discuss: 🎨 Curating, g...

Today's guest is PJ Milani, a high school animation teacher recently turned social media star. He’s known for his “visual metaphors” — single-panel illustrations featuring lessons about life and creativity. Across his socials he has over 200k followers, his newsletter has 16k subscribers, and he teaches a perennially sold-out cohort course about visual thinking on Maven. In this issue, we discuss:...

Ryan Broderick is the creator of Garbage Day, “A newsletter about having fun online.” He’s among the most popular journalists-turned-newsletter-creators out there. It’s clear by the numbers (68k subscribers, 3k of whom pay for premium content), praise from other creators, and the nearly 200 press clippings on his About page. In this episode we discuss: 📰 There’s (almost) no difference between jou...

Jared Dashevsky runs Healthcare Huddle, a twice-weekly newsletter for physicians and other healthcare professionals. In just over four years, he’s built an audience of 30,000. He’s also built a team of 13, dismantled that team and been acquired. But today, Jared is once again a solo creator. In this episode, we discuss: 🎓️ The cap on how far Healthcare Huddle can or should scale 😍 Understanding...

Arielle Nissenblatt knows podcasts. She writes a weekly newsletter about podcasts, hosts a podcast version of that newsletter, co-hosts another weekly podcast and a daily podcast. She runs a Discord community for podcasters. On top of all that, she works full-time as a community marketing manager at Descript. In this episode, we discuss: 🤝 How Arielle broke into the podcasting industry 🎙️ Why you...

Ryan Sneddon runs Naptown Scoop, a local newsletter serving Annapolis, Maryland. In three-and-a-half years, he’s built an audience of over 18,000 (nearly half the town’s population), and last year the business generated around $200,000 in revenue. In this episode, we discuss: 🏘️ How Ryan got half the town to sign up for the Scoop 👩 Exactly how Ryan defined his core reader 💲 How Ryan prices the n...

Ali built an audience of over 7,000 subscribers before he even sent the first issue of his newsletter, AI for Work. He would only end up sending 13 issues before (at approximately 30,000 subscribers) he went looking for advice on how to monetize and ending up selling the whole thing instead. We spent an hour discussing: 🧲 How he built an ingenious, highly successful lead magnet 👀 Emailing every...

Andrew Huang is lifelong musician and a pioneer in the Creator Economy. He made his first dollar online auctioning off songwriting commissions on eBay two decades ago and has since became a celebrated YouTuber with 2.36 million followers, produced commercial commissions for international brands, and published a book. Make Your Own Rules: Stories and Hard-Earned Advice from a Creator in the Digital...

Casey has been writing the youth consumer trends newsletter After School for three years, the culmination of nearly two decades writing and editing content about and for teens in her own online publications and in Teen Vogue and New York Magazine. On the occasion of Casey leaving her day job to work full time on a newsletter — for the second time in her career — we spoke about: 💵 Building and sel...

Eric, alongside Slava Rubin (host of the Smart Humans podcast), co-founded Vincent in 2019 as an aggregator platform for alternative investment opportunities. It's evolved into a media company with three newsletters and a podcast, still focused on alternative investments. Adam joined the team a couple of years ago as a researcher and writer. We spoke about: 🏋️ Building a solid core audience over f...

Hannah started the TikTok page Salary Transparent Street two years ago. It now has 1.3 million followers — 2.8 million across all channels — and is a full-fledged media business, with $1 million revenue just last year. Read our feature on Hannah and subscribe to our newsletter for more behind-the-scenes stories from the creator economy. We spoke with Hannah about: 🫂 Building a brand based on audi...