The Creator Class

Ronit Cohn

The creator economy is a $200 billion industry, and the people who built it are still being asked to navigate it without a playbook. For 15 years, I've been the person creators call when the stakes are highest. The deals, the partnerships, the moments where everything they've built is suddenly at risk. This show opens the room where those conversations actually happen. Real stories, real decisions, the thinking behind them. For creators at every level, the people who help them build, and the parents of creators trying to understand a career that didn't exist a generation ago.

Afleveringen

  1. 30 jun

    The World's Most Influential Beauty Creator Broke Every Rule

    The most influential beauty creator in the world built her career by breaking almost every rule she was told to follow. Shima Katouzian has 3.5 million followers. That's a fraction of the platform most top beauty creators have. Yet she's the number 1 creator in the world powering conversation around beauty, number 6 by Earned Media Value globally, and number 3 by impressions. The reason is trust. Shima built that trust through radical honesty. She only promotes what she actually uses. She refuses to soften her opinions for brand partners. She's open with her audience about money, products, and the industry itself. That honesty has come with a cost. The Iranian regime banned her book. They banned her from returning home. When her father passed six months ago, she couldn't attend his funeral. In this conversation, Ronit and Shima get into the real cost of honesty, what it takes to survive coordinated cancel campaigns, and how to stay yourself when the world wants you to be someone else. Follow Shima at @herosheemaz. Subscribe to The Creator Class for more conversations with the creators shaping the industry. Chapters 00:00 — "You are the number one creator in the world powering conversation around beauty" 02:35 — Meeting Shima at a brand conference 03:39 — The moment on the panel that stopped Ronit cold 04:39 — The stat that makes Shima different from every other beauty creator 06:06 — What Creator IQ's data says about her influence 07:11 — Leaving Iran in 2017 with no plan 09:30 — Landing a job at Tesla without knowing what Tesla was 10:39 — Posting through the pandemic while everyone else stayed home 12:18 — "It felt like FaceTiming my friend" 12:27 — Could she have done this if she'd stayed in Iran? 14:09 — How cancel campaigns work at her scale 15:29 — The coordinated attack that nearly destroyed her business 17:57 — The two-week rule a podcast taught her 19:30 — The morning ritual that got her through 20:46 — Why the campaign ended in 200,000 new followers 21:21 — Why it took three years to quit Tesla 22:24 — The "fuck it" moment 23:12 — Discovering affiliate links by accident 25:02 — The $6,000 she didn't know she'd made 26:02 — Why her conversion rate is unlike anyone else's 27:28 — Launching her beauty line three years ago 29:05 — The gap she saw in beauty 30:23 — Building her products with her followers 30:41 — The Immigrant Girl eyeshadow palette 32:15 — Sitting with Selena Gomez and Jennifer Aniston 36:17 — Why she'll never become a lifestyle creator 38:04 — The bubble she built with her audience 38:27 — "They can relate to me because I never changed" 40:38 — The book she wrote 15 years ago 42:03 — Becoming the best-selling book at the Tehran book fair 43:00 — The moment she realized her audience was real 45:05 — "I care about your hard earned money" 46:25 — Losing her father, banned from going home 47:00 — "I'm the biggest threat to the Iranian regime" 47:30 — "We are a real person in a digital world" 50:00 — The cost of honesty 51:23 — Why influence invites envy 52:34 — Where to follow Shima

    53 min.
  2. 24 jun

    How to Pitch Yourself as a Creator (Jessica Kaylee Live Workshop)

    One of the biggest challenges creators face isn't building something valuable. It's recognizing and articulating the value of what they've already built. Over the last five years, Jessica Kaylee helped pioneer a storytelling format that has since become one of the most-watched content genres in the world. What started as a creative experiment grew into a global audience of more than 20 million followers and billions of views. But what makes this episode unique is that it becomes a live creator positioning exercise. As we unpack Jessica's audience, impact, bio, social profiles, visual identity, and public-facing brand, a larger story begins to emerge - one that even Jessica hadn't fully articulated herself. Together, we explore why her content resonates so deeply, the role creators can play during some of the most formative years of their audience's lives, and how the way you tell your story shapes the opportunities available to you. The conversation also examines the often-overlooked relationship between audience psychology and creator positioning. Jessica didn't just build an audience. She became part of her audience's lives during some of the most memorable and influential years of their development. What follows is a conversation about storytelling, influence, audience connection, creator positioning, and the power of understanding your own narrative. Because many creators aren't struggling to build something meaningful. They're struggling to tell the story of what they've already built. This episode doesn't just tell Jessica's story. It helps her discover it.

    1 u 3 m
  3. 10 jun

    What a Hollywood Actor Had to Unlearn to Reach a Billion Views a Month

    Hollywood actor and digital creator Adam Rose gets a billion views a month. For someone whose career grew up inside the traditional entertainment system, what he's built online now reaches an audience that eclipses many television shows. The biggest TV programs in the world attract a few million viewers and call it a hit. Adam's videos can clear a million views in a matter of hours. But the part of his story worth sitting with isn't the scale. It's everything that came before it. Decades of creating, posting, auditioning, and trying to make it. Following rules that didn't work. Chasing versions of success that never quite fit. In this conversation, Adam shares the hard-earned lessons behind his success, the mistakes that kept him stuck for years, and what finally helped him break through. We talk about building a career that can thrive both inside and outside the traditional entertainment system, creating sustainable systems for long-term success, and what it really takes to succeed as both a Hollywood actor and digital creator. Subscribe for new episodes. Timestamps:00:00 Cold open 01:30 Two worlds, one career 05:00 Hollywood is a permission-based business 09:00 What the early YouTube years actually looked like 15:00 The dance video that hit a million views overnight 20:00 What changes when you don't need anyone to say yes 23:00 The Seth Rogen quote about quitting 26:00 The years Adam spent trying to look cool 30:00 Posting for everyone else, not the people who know you 35:00 Building the team, and the mistakes that came with it 44:00 Where the creativity actually happens 48:00 Why repeatable formats aren't lazy 50:00 Working smart inside an unpredictable schedule 56:00 Does Adam need Hollywood 01:00:00 How a billion views changes the room 01:05:00 Where the money actually comes from 01:09:00 The three things every piece of content has to do 01:13:00 Sharing is the metric Adam optimizes for 01:17:00 The trampoline problem 01:20:00 Audience questions 01:31:00 The person underneath the character

    1 u 5 m

Info

The creator economy is a $200 billion industry, and the people who built it are still being asked to navigate it without a playbook. For 15 years, I've been the person creators call when the stakes are highest. The deals, the partnerships, the moments where everything they've built is suddenly at risk. This show opens the room where those conversations actually happen. Real stories, real decisions, the thinking behind them. For creators at every level, the people who help them build, and the parents of creators trying to understand a career that didn't exist a generation ago.