The Creator Economy & Money With Katie

Alex Lieberman: What's up, everyone. This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Morning Brew. Welcome back to Founder’s Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you, the business builder, the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business, a team, or a new product. Today, I am talking about The Creator Economy with our very special guest, Katie Gotti. Let's hop into it. So in 2021, creator economy startups raised $3.7 billion. Some people are wildly excited by that figure. Others are wildly skeptical. Now to understand the excitement, let's start with a short history lesson. Pre-internet, power was wielded by the few that could afford distribution. Newspapers relied on printing presses and delivery routes. Radio had recording equipment and airwaves. TV had broadcast licenses and physical cables. You get the pattern. Then the internet came along and took away the distribution power of traditional media. Newspapers and magazines took a serious hit when the web brought the cost of distribution to basically zero. The printing press became a keyboard. That paper route became a website and social media only furthered traditionals decline. The advantage shifted from distribution to owning attention and the power shifted from traditional media institutions to aggregators, think Twitter, Facebook, TikTok. But there's another shift in power that we're going to focus on today. The internet created a real economy for creators who are now able to extract value from the audience that they've worked to build for so long. Individual creators now have the tools and distribution to earn a massive audience and monetize that audience. But it isn't easy. It is a physical grind that can take years to pay off. There's also a mental battle to overcome. For every like follow and share that offers a dopamine hit, there's a hateful or cruel comment. And committing to creating full time forces you to spend time on things you may not be good at, or you may not like: think time management, operations, emails, monetization. And that is what inspires us at Morning Brew. We want to become a platform for creators to realize their potential and avoid the challenges that plague so many of their peers. Morning Brew wants to create a community for our creators to confide in one another and accelerate their growth by leveraging Morning Brew’s audience. We can handle all of the shit that our creators don't want to, and we're already on our way. Katie Gatti, better known as Money With Katie, has officially joined Morning Brew. She is the face of personal finance for our generation and as she builds a larger, passionate audience, the opportunities are endless. She's also joining me on the pod today. Katie, welcome to the show.

Katie Gatti: That was quite an intro. Thank you, Alex.

Alex Lieberman: Did you like that?

Katie Gatti:  I did face of personal finance for our generation. Yes, I loved it. 

Alex Lieberman: We got, we got to go get a sign on your wall. So let's, let's get into your story. I want to hear the rundown on Money With Katie. Where did your passion for personal finance come from?

Katie Gatti: Well I always joked that it came from a mix of just general confusion and greed in the sense that when I got my first full-time job in marketing, I obviously started receiving full-time paychecks. And after about six months, I kind of sat back and I was like, I don't really know what to do with any of this money, like aside from paying my rent and paying for my car and my food and like the things that normal 23 year olds are paying for, I didn't really feel like I was actually getting ahead with that money. It just kind of felt like I was on a bit of a hamster wheel and it wasn't like I wasn't saving. I knew I was saving cause there was always money left over at the end of the month. But that money wasn't actually working for me or doing much for me. And so I would talk to typically my male friends about finances from time to time and they all seemed to know how to invest. They were investing, they were talking about making money in the stock market. And I was like, wait, what, like who taught you how to do this? Where did you learn how to do this? And a couple of them sent me some very preliminary resources and it really just sent me down the rabbit hole of all rabbit holes. I became kind of obsessed. I would listen to personal finance podcasts, read the books, stalk the bloggers. I mean, and at this time this was 2017, 2018, it was not as popular as it is now to blog about personal finance. So there weren't as many of them, but man, I just, I devoured as much content as I could. And I kind of became obsessive about sharing that information with my friends because I knew that I was not alone as the only, I was not the only woman in my friend group that was not investing and had no idea what she was doing. It was pretty universal in, in my kind of social circle that we didn't really know. So I kind of really became a little emphatic about, about sharing that information with others.

Alex Lieberman: I mean, I have met few people in my life that are as obsessed with, with personal finance. 

Katie Gotti: And love money as much. 

Alex Lieberman: No, not, not, not saying your, your money hungry. I just like, even looking at your Instagram stories from the last few days, especially when you were, you know, flying back and forth from New York back home, like you just diving into the healthcare system, like full on. It just takes a very specific brain to do that. But you know, what you've talked about is consumption, right? You got obsessed with consuming personal finance content because you had no idea what the fuck to do when you start getting paychecks. What shifted for you to end up thinking about creation, right? You mentioned helping your friends, but did you have a passion for creation as well? Was that something that came naturally to you?

Katie Gatti: Yeah. Absolutely. I do think that that was kind of the flip side of the coin to where this became kind of a perfect storm. I have a very obsessive personality. I've always been that way. I get into something and then I, I cannot stop. I get very singularly focused on it and want to know as much as I possibly can. And I think that's why personal finance and some of the topics that are associated, like healthcare, are so intriguing to me because I almost get anxious when I feel like there's something important to know that I don't get. I'm like, no, I need to get this. I need to understand that, I need to know everything about it. And so I've always considered myself a pretty good writer, too. That was like the one skill in school that English class was always very easy for me. I didn't really love math and science, but English lit, like I loved reading and writing. And so the transition to creating that type of content was pretty natural for me, fortunately, but it was moreso focused on the blogging side of things and writing longer form content. And especially with personal finance, these are topics that I give creators that only do short-form video, a lot of credit because it's really difficult to convey a lot of these topics in 30 or 60 seconds, but I always really enjoyed diving into the topic and getting into the nuances and the loopholes and things that I feel like are easier to do and kind of more fun to do. And those long form. Yeah, in long form. But I think the, the actual transition was in April of 2020 because I had been working full-time in an office and I was a fitness instructor on the side. So I’d sometimes be in classes before and after work. And so I didn't really have all that much free time prior to the pandemic. And then when everything shut down and I wasn't going into an office anymore, and I wasn't teaching classes or taking them, I was kind of in my house a lot. And I remember having conversations with people who were really stressed about money and really stressed about losing their jobs. And I was really stressed about money and losing my job, but I just remember I wanted to create something that I was proud of. Like I wanted a project, I wanted something that I could pour into and make decisions about that was just mine and that no one else was really weighing in on and I could take it in any direction I wanted. And I really just wanted to be proud of something that I was creating on my own. And so it, I remember creating MoneyWithKatie.com and realizing the URL was available and just buying it. And then spending eight or 10 hours, I sat at the desk and just started putting the initial articles in and designing the site and completely lost track of time. And I remember getting up after that first session and being like, holy shit, I really like this. Like, I didn't even realize like an entire day just passed. I was so in the zone, like in flow state doing it. And so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this is how it kind of ended up, but it was pretty natural.

Alex Lieberman: Just to give people, you know, a quick sense of the chronology: 2017, 2018 is when you get more into personal finance, as you're just trying to, you know, solve your own problems. April of 2020 is when you launch Money With Katie, like, you know, the handles, the site. Just so I have a sense. Had you been creating content prior to that or no? 

Katie Gatti: I did have a personal blog. I'd had a personal blog, katiegatti.com, since like 2015, so I was already writing on the internet, but it was not about personal finance or it occasionally would be, but it spanned all sorts of topics and it was really never something that I attempted to get people to follow, so to speak. It was just kind of my way of putting my musings out into the world. It wasn't monetized. But Money With Katie was my first attempt at like, I'm going to actually turn this into something that I feel proud of and is more than just a little like side blog.

Alex Lieberman: Yeah. So April, 2020 is when you really put your focus on your specific niche, you wrapped a brand around it. Like, you know, it's like in the early days of the Brew, when we went from like PDFs to actual email newsletters, like you just like, I'm going to take this a bit more seriously. April 2020, you launched the brand. When in the journey, did you start to believe that Money With Katie, the side hustle could become Money With Katie the, the full-time gig? Yeah,

Katie Gatti: It's funny because in my full-time working life, my full-time professional career, I was kind of going through a transition also as I was building Money With Katie. And I was transitioning more from being a marketing and brand copywriter to being a more UX-focused writer, somebody that was writing microcopy for software, and that pays a lot better. So I was switching companies and trying to make more money full-time as well as I was building Money With Katie and feeling pretty good about my career growth, but what really made me feel like okay, Money With Katie could actually eclipse the career growth that I've seen and be a more viable source of income was probably about halfway through 2021 when I started to consistently bring in 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 a month from Money With Katie. That's when it became clear that because, you know, when you're doing something on the side, you're always kind of aware that the corporate benefits that you have are adding a, not insignificant amount of value to your compensation. So even if you're making, I'm just going to throw out a random number six or $7,000 a month gross. If you have health insurance and you have a 401k match and you get a bonus or stock options, your total compensation could be twice as much. So I think that when it was starting to like really extremely outpace my full-time income, which at the time was pretty good, that's when I was like, okay, if I can maintain this level of five-figure earnings every month for Money With Katie for six to 12 months, I was pretty risk averse, so I was like, if I can do this for six to 12 months, then I think I would feel comfortable actually trying to do it full time and not just doing it on the side. But like I said, I'm pretty risk averse. And so I was not in a hurry to like, leave the comfort of having a corporate job.

Alex Lieberman: It makes total sense. I as well am very risk averse, as much as people think entrepreneurs are the most risk loving people ever. I, maybe I'm the exception to the rule, but I am very not risk loving just to give people a sense quickly, you are making 10 to $15,000 a month at some point, right. And this is when it kind of like crossed and you're making more on an annualized basis, like significantly more than your full-time job, just for people listening who either have side hustles or they're thinking about them, what were the revenue streams like? How were you making money?

Katie Gatti: Sure. So my primary revenue streams were sponsor income. So I had reached out to a few different companies that financial companies that I used and really liked and basically harassed them into either giving me affiliate deals or to paying for content directly and tried to structure those in such a way that there wasn't as much of a conflict of interest. In other words, I'd say, do you want to be the sponsor of educational content about investing? It'll be presented by you? And, you know, you'll, you'll be the presenting sponsor on a piece. So I had sponsor income. I was also selling what I call a wealth planner. So it's a spreadsheet tool that is kind of all built out for you and has a lot of functionality in it so that you can just put in your numbers and get built in best practices, recommendations, track your net worth, things like that. I also had some courses that I was selling one specific to budgeting and then one specific to investing in a tax-advantaged way as a moderately high earner. And then yes, just, I would say affiliate income was another big one. So credit card affiliate income, somebody signs up for a credit card through a link that I have and make an affiliate income on that. But yeah, I'd say those are the four main things.

Alex Lieberman: Amazing. I have one last question for you before we go, which is, you know, people look at side hustles and content creators, and they just assume that like full-time content creators are living the dream. Like it is all, you know, sunshine and rainbows. I want you to talk for a second about what are the one or two biggest challenges that you experienced being a creator either now, you know, full-time within the Morning Brew ecosystem or even prior when you were doing it as a side hustle.

Katie Gatti: I think what I have to say first, just to get it out of the way, is that in a lot of ways it does feel like a dream if it's something that you are obsessed with. If you're going to spend all day reading and writing about these things anyway, it really is pretty awesome, I think, but obviously with everything that's amazing in life, there are going to be downsides. There's no such thing as a perfect job. And I think for me, I would kind of bucket the downsides into two main categories. The first being, despite the fact that I've been doing this now for two years and have never once run out of ideas, I always kind of have this fear in the back of my head that I'm going to run out of things to say, there's going to be a time that comes when there are no topics left. There are no conversations to be had. I've already said it all. So I think kind of riding those waves of like inspiration and abundance of ideas and abundance of motivation, and then those periods where you're kind of in the valley and coming up with a really good idea is really challenging. And I think when you take a lot of pride in the content that you're putting out there and it's your face and your name, it feels very personal and very representative of you. And so anytime I've ever put something out there that I'm not obsessed with and super proud of, I feel kind of guilty. And like there's some shame around that. So I think that stereotypical writer's block style, that would be kind of the downside, I think, of having to be every single day, being creative every day. It's just some days you don't, you don't feel it and it's not flowing. The other side though, the bucket that I would say is probably the more challenging side is what you said in the introduction about hate. I don't know what it is about the internet, but people will find the weirdest things to come at you for. And people can be really mean whether it's how you look or what you wear or how you talk, or, you know, if they're attacking you based on disagreeing with you, it's just interesting how there is a real lack of civility on the internet. And I find that when I was doing it part-time, it didn't get to me as much, A, because my following was not as large, I was not exposed to as many people, but also because I wasn't on social media all day, like now I feel like if I don't even want to know how much time I spend reading DMs on Instagram, It's, it's probably a pathetic amount of hours, but when you're kind of constantly inundated, you know, for every 10 nice messages, there's one mean one, it can wear on you. And so I have to be very conscious about when it's affecting my confidence to like really consciously unplug from it and be like, I'm just not even going to open the door on that today. Like I need to focus on just writing or just recording or whatever it is that day is for and shut the door on the trolls. 

Alex Lieberman: Yeah. You know, just to give you credit for a second. I think the way that you've at least that I've seen you navigate that, especially with a certain follower who wrote in and you ended up turning, turning their, their DM into a coffee mug that ended up selling, the way you literally quite literally monetized hate, I think is a, is a really cool example.

Katie Gatti: Thank you. 

Alex Lieberman: I want to let you go, but one last question, which is for all of Founder’s Journal’s  listeners, what can they do to support you and support the Money With Katie brand?

Katie Gatti: Oh, that’s very kind of you to ask. If you are interested in the Money With Katie brand, you can find it at moneywithkatie.com or on Instagram and Twitter @MoneyWithKatie. The number one thing though, I would say, if you're listening to this podcast, I'm going to assume that you like podcasts. The Money With Katie Show is probably everywhere that you get your podcasts now. We dig into some pretty interesting topics, personal finance and otherwise.

Alex Lieberman: It is a killer show. And you should absolutely follow Katie on all of the socials. Katie Gatti, thank you so much for joining the show. 

Katie Gatti: Thank you, Alex. I really appreciate it. 

Alex Lieberman:  Now, Founder’s Journal listeners, I would love to hear from you. Who are your favorite creators? Other than Money With Katie, obviously. Send me an email, alex@morningbrew.com, send in the handle or the name of the creator. I want to hear who your favorite creators are, and maybe we'll figure out a way to bring them onto the Morning Brew platform. Thanks as always for listening, and I'll catch you next episode.