JOSH MIELY, HOST: The media landscape doesn’t stand still, nor does the business behind it. Welcome to Changing Frequencies, a podcast from NAB Show. Each episode explores how media, entertainment, and storytelling are evolving, from broadcast to streaming, content creators to the cloud, and sports to AI, spotlighting the people who are defining what’s next. I’m Josh Miely from NAB.

Today, we’re looking at how the creative process itself is changing when the gap between shooting, editing and feedback starts to disappear. And stay with us until the end of the episode because we’ll share an exclusive promo code for our listeners that gives you a free show floor pass to the 2026 NAB Show happening April 18th through the 22nd.

For a long time, the creative process and media followed a pretty clear sequence. You’d shoot something, hand it off, edit it, review it and refine it over time. Each step had its place and each step created a natural pause where creative decisions were made. But that structure is starting to change.

Today, footage can be reviewed while it’s still being shot. Editors can begin shaping scenes immediately. Feedback can happen in real time instead of in defined rounds. The delay between production and post-production is shrinking and, in some cases, disappearing altogether. That shift isn’t just about efficiency. It changes the rhythm of the creative process itself. It makes it faster and more collaborative, but also more fluid and sometimes more complex.

At the 2026 NAB Show, these ideas are front and center: how cloud workflows are reshaping production, how creative teams are adapting and what it means when timing becomes a critical part of storytelling. So today, we’re looking at what happens to creativity when everything starts happening at once.

I’m joined by Derek Schweickart, team lead for Camera to Cloud at Frame.io and Adobe Company. Derek, welcome to the podcast, my friend.

DEREK SCHWEICKART: Hey Josh, great to be here, thank you.

MIELY: Well, Derek, let’s jump right in. We’ve spent years talking about cloud workflows as a way to make production more efficient. But when footage is available instantly, how does that actually change the way creative decisions get made?

SCHWEICKART: Camera to Cloud is really born out of the remote production workflows that started becoming more common during COVID, right? And that was a really particular type of production where we had to work remotely. We had to connect people in a different way. And I think it’s interesting to think about that now sort of in 2026, what that looks like. And what I tend to see with the instant availability is, it’s like you said in your intro, production is less production and post-production; things are happening at the same time.

You can have that archive of everything that’s happening in your pocket, which is really powerful, especially with Frame.io Camera to Cloud. You can see what you shot a couple hours ago. Maybe you’re in transit between locations and you can review what you saw that morning. Maybe you can have a second set of eyes who are in a different mindset than the crush of production, like an editor who’s off-site, who’s watching your back and making sure that you’re getting the things that you want.

So, in that way, I really think of it kind of as a production tool, right? To help you make those decisions and maybe, you know, catch something that you would have caught, you know, the next day or a couple of days later in a normal workflow, you can actually catch maybe the same day. Get that pickup shot or, you know, correct something more in real time. So that I think is an interesting attribute of it, that real-time production expansion, if you will.

MIELY: Yeah, and look, you mentioned editors. Like, how’s this changed their approach to their work? I mean, obviously it’s still putting things together, but it’s got to be different timing on that sort of stuff. And do they have to put themselves in a different frame of mind before they even start a project?

SCHWEICKART: I’m seeing a little bit of both, honestly, and it depends a lot on the context. In some ways, it doesn’t change that much, because when you need to deliver something is really what drives the amount of pressure that you have to do a certain thing to get your cut done, right? So I think that just the availability of the media itself doesn’t automatically change when people are doing things unless there is that pressure to deliver something sooner.

So, it depends a little bit again on your particular use case. What we see with C2C and Frame.io is people who are doing quick-turn production, like quick-turn social kind of content. They love it because they have to get to their audience as quickly as possible. And it makes a big difference for them to have it a day sooner or hours earlier than they would with a normal workflow.

People who are doing more long form, they tend to have a bit of, a little bit more room. And so it’s kind of up to them to see how much of the creative, like how that changes the creative process. And I’ve seen people where it doesn’t change it at all because it’s sure they got it there sooner, but they’re still cutting the next day. And other people, they’re trying to jump in, you know, to get on top of it. So it really depends a lot. And, I’ve seen a bit of both. Definitely the efficiency has come in for those workflows that need that turnaround really, really quickly.

MIELY: I’m glad you mentioned that it’s different for the different vehicles going out, whether it be social or more of a long form. Because one of the things I was thinking about as we were getting prepped for this is, you know, if we can have this real-time collaboration, it means a lot of people can weigh in earlier. And look, it’s great to have everybody’s input, but sometimes that improves the work and sometimes it risks flattening a creative vision. Have you found that to be the case? And how do people avoid letting that happen?

SCHWEICKART: You know, I haven’t really found that to be the case, to be honest. You know, a lot of what I’ve seen, it’s a similar, like it kind of existed already. If you think about video village and people sitting around and making decisions just on set and the fact that you open it up to, you know, people on the cloud, it’s often the same group of people and, you know, capturing the attention during production is always challenging, right? Cause there’s a million things going on.

So, you know, I don’t think that — typically people in production have a lot of spare time to be coming up with, like, just creating extra work for themselves. So yeah, like I said, I’ve seen a little bit of both.

I will say that one of the things we’ve seen that was really interesting was making decisions when you actually can give feedback instantly. So, one of the products that we’ve launched that I really am excited about was Real-Time Logging, which is a partnership with our friends over at Ambient. So we were doing some marketing material internal to Adobe, and you could actually get feedback by the producers on set in real time just by pressing a button essentially and marking those moments. And they end up on your clips in Frame.io, which is kind of, to me, that was a really interesting use of the cloud technology for capturing things that were otherwise, you’d have to write down on a note or remember.

So just say, for example, you’re doing a long interview, like even you talking to me, you could be sitting there and hitting a button that says, oh, he said something interesting here or here. And then when you get into the editing bay, you have a lot of the producer feedback sooner. So, to me, that’s less noise and actually really good signal to what the creative intent was and how these sort of connected technologies can actually enhance creative focus as opposed to kind of what can also happen, which is like—I get what you’re saying, too many cooks in the kitchen, too many voices. But, you know, the opposite is also true.

MIELY: Well, I love that the opposite is true and that’s becoming more of the norm, because I think the fear could be if there’s more voices, it could slow things down, but it sounds like: one, it’s speeding things up, and two, because of that, are we seeing that kind of production timelines and stuff, especially as things become more expensive to produce? Are those shrinking? And that’s kind of where this is all settling itself out and just making it the new normal?

SCHWEICKART: Again, I think it depends a lot on the environment for sure when it comes to a lot of the social content, right? Like there’s just things get turned around really fast and it’s, you know, I feel like production crews nowadays are under a tremendous amount of pressure to deliver more video content than ever. This is something that we hear over and over again from our customers. They just, they have to get more stuff out and we’re seeing, you know, new businesses coming to sort of video production field just because if you’re a business owner, you’re a content creator at this point.

And so, I don’t want to veer too far off of the more creative, narrative, long-form documentary project that I think is at the root of your question. Because those workflows, there are so many constraints when it comes to feature film and whether getting your footage through Camera to Cloud or even through the cloud faster, does it change your budget, is kind of a difficult question to answer. You know what mean? I couldn’t speak for all the producers out there and how they’re solving those problems. But in terms of, like, the efficiency of getting your dailies, like, yeah, I think we’re into a new paradigm these days.

MIELY: And I guess I would say it’s probably an opportunity and as you say, it’s going to be different for everyone as we go. You know, delve a little deeper into, kind of like, on set. Do you see that this has changed what happens there, kind of, fundamentally day to day because of the new opportunities of this communication that Camera to Cloud allows?

SCHWEICKART: I hate to say it depends again, I think that what I’ve seen the most impact when it comes to Camera to Cloud and that narrative space is the creatives having more access to what they just did. So directors and cinematographers who can reference their entire shoot and just see and have it in their pocket and it’s more personal.

So it’s interesting, right? Because like part of the conversation here is collaborative and to say, yes, everybody can see the same thing. But at the same time, because, and maybe this is particular to Frame, but you know, because of the iOS app and the easy availability of the media once it’s in front means that I have my entire shoot in my pocket.

And that’s powerful as a creator. And I have seen that and I have gotten that feedback from, yeah, I get directors and photographers who just, once they get into that workflow, it’s hard for them to kind of get out of it because it’s so convenient to know what they did a couple hours ago or yesterday.

MIELY: So, you know, that brings up just this interesting thing of when does a project actually get finished? If you’ve got all this access to your footage and everybody can kind of chime in, when do we get there?

I mean, Lorne Michaels has famously said, you know, SNL is never finished. It’s just time to go live. I mean, are we getting to that sort of thing where it’s just whenever a deadline hits, people are going to be able to do that? Are we getting to a point where we can have multiple versions of a project? Is this going to be “Spaceballs,” where we can watch the movie even before it’s finished? Like, where do you think we’re even going to get in the next five years?

SCHWEICKART: It’s hard to predict. I will say that there’s something in the creative process, to Lorne Michaels’s quote, which is a great quote, that is just true. I mean, that’s been my experience whenever I’ve, you know, I created a feature and many short films. You do at some point have to just stop, and it’s hard to know when you’re done. How the technology plays into that is interesting where I think there is a lot of noise that gets created through this, right?

And so, we do need to have ways of sort of finding more of the signal within the noise. And that is something that we’re actively working towards at Adobe and at Frame, especially in this era of AI where there’s so much more content being created and then renditions and just you can generate so much more media, and you need a place and ways to organize and really shape that into the vision that you want.

One of the things I’ve seen with the, kind of, you know, cloud digital era is fragmented storage becomes a real issue, right? When everybody has their version of something and there’s, you know, editors are not always in the same building, let alone the same city or state now, you know? And so keeping everyone centralized is really important to, you know, to this idea of how do we get everybody on the same page to get to that finish line?

I will say, I think there’s some exciting stuff coming down in the next few years, just, you know, in terms of different ways of thinking about what a finished product is. As we see, you know, more mobile devices, just the way that people consume media, which challenges, you know, a lot of institutional and legacy ways of doing things. I’m not entirely sure what we’re going to see in that space, or if we’ll see “Spaceballs,” but I do think there’s some interesting questions in there.

MIELY: There really are, and look, this has been a fantastic conversation. We’re starting to run out of time. So I want to get you out of here on this. When we think about Frame.io and we think about that future, what does success look like? What do you say, hey, you know, the problem we’re out to solve, if this, if we’ve solved it completely, or if we’ve solved it three-quarters of the way, it’s going to save this much time. Where do you see that? Where do you see yourselves fitting in the future of content production?

SCHWEICKART: I think Frame.io, we’re really looking at being a place to help you manage your creative work, you know, and across different industries, right? So, from marketing to quick-turn social to feature films, everyone needs tools to help them achieve this creative vision, you know? And I think what getting to finishing means is really getting everybody on the same page. And that’s one of the core tenets of Frame.io.

And we’re built on that with, you know, being the platform where you can communicate your creative ideas and making sure that everybody is seeing the same thing, talking about the same thing and working towards the same vision. So I do think we can play a significant role in that moving forward and helping people feel like their teams are less disjointed and a little bit more focused on a common goal, common mission.

MIELY: Excellent. Derek, thank you so much for taking the time. We’re excited to see you at NAB Show. I know the Adobe booth is N2141. Is that where you guys are going to be working out of or are you just bouncing around and taking meetings?

SCHWEICKART: No, no, little bit of both. We’ll be at the booth. I’ll be demonstrating our new product, which we’re calling Frame.io Drive, which to our topic of conversation here is designed to give you direct access to your Frame.io media on your desktop machines and in your desktop applications, really trying to give you that single source of truth.

So, yeah, come on by the booth. We’ve got people there who are giving demos. I’ll be doing some live demonstrations. And I’m happy to answer any of your questions and dig deeper.

MIELY: Excellent. Well, Derek, thank you for answering my questions. Everybody make sure you check out Frame.io Drive at NAB Show, and Derek, safe travels, and thank you again for being on the podcast.

SCHWEICKART: My pleasure, Josh. Thank you so much.

MIELY: What’s striking here is that it isn’t just about moving faster. It’s about changing when creative work actually happens and who gets to shape it along the way.

If you want to learn more about the technologies and innovations of Adobe, they will be at the 2026 NAB Show in the Creator Lab in Central Hall and on the show floor at their booth N2141 in North Hall.

As promised, listeners of Changing Frequencies can use the promo code PODCAST26 to receive a free Show Floor pass when registering at NABShow.com. That’s PODCAST26, and we’ll see you in Las Vegas.

I’m Josh Miely. Thanks for listening to Changing Frequencies. Subscribe, share and join us next time as we continue spotlighting the people shaping what’s next.

JOSH MIELY, HOST: The media landscape doesn’t stand still, nor does the business behind it. Welcome to “Changing Frequencies,” a podcast from NAB Show. Each episode explores how media, entertainment and storytelling are evolving from broadcast to streaming, content creators to the cloud and sports to AI, spotlighting the people who are defining what’s next. I’m NAB’s Josh Miely, and today we’re looking at the creator economy. Not from the perspective of growth or audience, though, from something more fundamental: ownership.

And stay with us until the end of the episode, because we’ll share an exclusive promo code for our listeners that gives you a free Show Floor Pass to the 2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas coming up April 18th through the 22nd.

Now, over the past year, the conversation around AI and creativity has moved from theory to reality. You saw it in Hollywood with the SAG-AFTRA strike that put AI and digital likeness at the center of labor negotiations. Questions around consent, compensation and control are no longer abstract. They’re economic. And those same issues are now moving directly into the creator economy. Because today, it’s not just content that can be scaled, it’s your identity.

At the 2026 NAB Show, these themes are front and center. How AI is reshaping creation and distribution and monetization, and what that means for creators operating in a more complex landscape. That’s also the thinking behind NAB Show’s new Content Creator VIP program, designed to help creators navigate that shift. So today we’re looking at the creator economy through the lens of identity, likeness and control. To do so I am joined by Luke Arrigoni, founder and CEO of Loti, a company that helps creators protect and control their digital likeness online. Luke, welcome to the show.

LUKE ARRIGONI: Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

MIELY: I’m excited for this conversation because, I mean, this is front and center and has been in the news for our communities, right? We’ve already seen these issues surface at the highest levels of the industry from actors to voice talent, where AI and their digital likeness become central in labor negotiations. So from your perspective, let’s open the conversation like this. How much of what’s happening to creators today is part of that same larger shift?

ARRIGONI: You know, I think it would be impossible to run any part of your creator business without first trying to understand what your rights are. What does it mean for AI, for likeness, for someone to copy your own material and just put it somewhere else? And the landscape is becoming ever more complex. And there’s legislation that’s trying to simplify, things like NO FAKES that are trying to at least say, if you copy someone’s name, image, likeness into some AI program, you owe them something for it, or they can even control what gets made in general.

So I think if you are in this space right now, while it might have felt like a fringe thing to understand what, like, NIL rights were in the past, now it’s very manifest for your business to have kind of a firm understanding of, “Do I get special rights?” Like, if you’re in Tennessee, you get Elvis, right? And trying to figure out how that maps to a bigger play strategically for you is gonna be something I think more people are gonna need to figure out this year.

MIELY: All right, so when we delve into that, I mean, obviously we talk about AI, we’re talking about the creative side of it, but this really is that, you know, that ability to replicate identity at scale. How should creators then frame their thinking about this with that tradeoff of, hey, AI can help me, but AI can be really detrimental to my business.

ARRIGONI: Yeah, I think that there’s this spectrum that everyone needs to understand. It’ll be different for every brand, right? So whoever you are as a creator, you’ll have a different kind of approach to it. But you should be considering things like, what kind of topics would I allow someone to make me of? Is there a political topic that I’m okay with it generating it? If you’re outspoken about a certain kind of politics, well, that might be a complete red-hot issue you’d never want to touch. For some influencers, that might be what the majority of the things they’re, they’re generating are.

Um, you want to figure out how you can kind of collect all of your endorsements and make sure that no one generates anything that is, you know, could put you in a bad spot on that contract, where it’s like you saying you don’t like the thing that you endorsed last month. Uh, so I would say that the real analysis that everyone needs to think about for AI and being able to generate themselves or others generating you is a rule set of what matters to you. And you should think about it as in real bespoke rules, not something like an on-off switch like drugs or no drugs. You might say something like, “I’m okay with things along the lines of cannabis. That’s all right with my brand.” And you should kind of try to memorialize that in a Google Doc somewhere.

MIELY: All right, so in talking about what’s right for you, and I think about, you know, some of the creators I’ve talked to and a lot of them, you know, they think about their content mainly as their product and what’s right for them and what they want to shape around. As you’re talking, you’re talking about, it’s actually their likeness as an asset. So what is that sort of shift in thinking the need to be when they put it in practice?

ARRIGONI: It’s definitely an interplay between them, right? It’s their content and that’s what people are really watching, but also them as an entity, as an identity that has some economic value. And they should of course try to figure out the balance between what is the authentic version of my brand, which is just like, me, not AI versus a new, cool, creative way to reach audiences, right? Like you don’t have to think about it as inauthentic, right? You could think about it as there’s a way in which I can engage in a very meaningful, cool conversation with a thousand people at the same time. And AI can allow that.

So I think understanding where you as the product can be moved at scale to do more personalized things. That’s where, like, AI would come into play. And that rule set we talk about would come into play versus, like, the content itself. Like, what do you authentically as you going to spend time to make a video of? And it’s a balance. You’ll have to figure out what’s good for your brand.

MIELY: No, and that’s going to be different for every brand. It’ll be kind of exciting to see over the next 18 months, those that are able to understand and harness that. I guess I still, I want to keep delving into this a bit so we can educate. You know, when we think about AI-generated versions of real people, which is a side of this that we’ve kind of brushed on and alluded to in the first couple of minutes, but not gone, like, full-on in. Let’s go full-on in right now. Where are creators most exposed when it comes to misusing their identities?

ARRIGONI: I think it’s two big places we see. The first is impersonation accounts. Someone just literally will boot up a social media account that says it’s the authentic version or a private chat or some other way to reach people. And then they sell them inauthentic products or outright scam-type services, trying to get them to donate to charities that are not actually charities that, just a sinkhole of blockchain money. That’s probably the most profound way that we’ve seen people misuse deep fakes because then you can have a deep fake on one of these accounts saying that they’re the authentic version.

And the other way when it comes to identity is people creating endorsements of products with deep fakes using the influencers’ likeness, using any kind of digital-first creators’ likeness. So they go to promote a certain type of cosmetics brand. And then you, of course, show up promoting this brand that you’ve never even heard of. And this can be doubly problematic for you. One, you could just be in conflict with a different cosmetics brand that you’ve done work with. We’ve seen that, and that’s really hard to navigate, right? Cause the person that actually paid you needs you to go remedy it or wants you to remedy it even though there’s not great, there’s not great mechanisms for that. So, you have that problem. And then, of course, you just have the problem of people are using your likeness to promote things, which is also how you make money and you need to limit that. You have to create a kind of economic scarcity around it.

MIELY: That’s it’s a great way to put it. How do you, how do you protect yourself, then? Where do you guys come in to help people protect themselves once they’ve diagnosed, “Oh, this is happening to me and I want it to stop.”

ARRIGONI: Well, this is where selfishly and biasedly, I will say that this is what we do. We do it better than anyone, right? But, but the idea is you should probably get a provider that scans the internet for what you look like and sound like and then has the ability to delete things where you don’t belong. Now, Loti is really good at it. You know, where we, we take pride in the fact that we have so many more assets that we watch, that our take-down capabilities are better than others.

But it doesn’t remove the fact that someone, you should hire someone to go and do this, because it’s, it’s very expensive to do on your own. So, it’s one of those businesses that naturally makes sense at scale. You couldn’t, for instance, like vibe-code an internet scraper. You know, we spend a lot of money every month to try and digest that. And it’s not just for one person. It’s just, you have to get it all at one time. But understanding what the landscape looks, what a competitive landscape looks like for companies like mine will be important. Like, which way do I want to go? How do I want to get some kind of protection will be important. And the pricing is pretty, is a huge range from a freemium-like product to a couple thousand dollars a month and everywhere in between.

MIELY: Well, and then that makes sense because look, we’re talking about, you know, the universe is the most vast expanse out there. The second most vast thing is the worldwide web and where anything and everything can go. So, I take it that there’s any different size for folks. You know, as we think about these creators a bit more, you know, a lot of the deals they’ve made are around just, you know, their traditional content and the rights for that. Are they losing something if they’re not trying to base deals around themselves, I guess?

ARRIGONI: Pretty soon that will be something they need to consider is the product being themselves, the endorsement, the trust. And they shouldn’t consider this as, like, an inauthentic way or selling out or anything like that. Cause sometimes you get that vibe a little bit. You get in a conversation with someone and they really want to lean hard into, like, oh. it feels unethical to use AI to make an endorsement. The reality is, as long as your team is still vetting the products, if you yourself actually still think that this is a viable thing that you’d want to promote and endorse. That’s really what your, your fans, your customer base is interested in. Whether they don’t, probably don’t care if you are the one with the camera up and it’s staring at you and you’re doing 48 takes to get the thing right. That’s not as important as, like, actually, I know a lot about this particular product space and this product is actually the best.

So, thinking about it as a way to, to endorse the things that you care about in a way that you can reach more people, because you can also think about things that are more personalized. And this is you as the product, not the content, right? Imagine doing a deal with a brand, and the brand has you as someone that’s, like, walking through a particular part of their product.

Here’s a good example: If I sold financial literacy software, like I go through your checkbook and find all of the duplicate subscriptions, there’s a bunch of apps that do this kind of thing, right? It might be cool if my brand as a creator is financial knowledge that I’m, like, walking through it with you. You, like, go to the dashboard of the app and then me as the advisor is walking through and be like, oh my God, you have two Netflix. Maybe you shouldn’t eat so much Domino’s, right? Like I’m just kind of jabbing at them a little bit, but it’s my brand, it’s who I am. It doesn’t violate my rules necessarily, but it’s a lot more fun and engaging for both your customers and the product. And it’s something that’s only possible with AI.

And people don’t necessarily feel like they’re being robbed out of that. They know it’s AI and it’s still just a lot more fun to have their favorite financial YouTuber go through their checkbook than it is to have, like, Clippy in the corner do it.

MIELY: Well, come on, now. We all liked Clippy back in the day.

ARRIGONI: Clippy was amazing.

MIELY: Yeah. Hopefully he has a ripe comeback here in the AI time. But I take the point. That’s great, because it adds kind of like a personalized touch if you’re the user tied to something that you enjoy, or if you flip it on the other side, you’re the content creator, if it’s somebody new, that that person that’s using the app is being exposed to it might take them to your content. Correct?

ARRIGONI: Correct. This is a great use of AI that people all know. It’s not uncanny valley. They know it’s AI. They still like the experience, right? And it benefits you, benefits the brand.

MIELY: I dig that a lot. What else can you tell me if you think about how things might fundamentally change with stuff creators can monetize, you think, over the next three to five years, kind of built off of this?

ARRIGONI: I think the strategists are going to win here. I think that it’s like electricity just got piped into the building and there’s a lot of really cool things we could build from it. And so the example I just gave about the checkbook thing, it’s probably a dumb and rudimentary idea, but your, you know, your audience, the creators could probably think about, “Well, hold on, what if I didn’t just do it to just make more podcasts or make more videos? Like, that’s, that’s like, the first, kind of, oversimple way to use AI. What if I thought of a different way?”

I think the people that are very creative in the use of their likeness as the product to combine with the brands they enjoy, and I know that sounds vague, but that’s kind of the space where creativity lives. I think those people are going to be really successful because there’s so much that is possible now.

MIELY: I think you’re absolutely right. And look, it’s, I think there’s going to be some pure innovation and things nobody’s thought of, but I think there’s going to be a lot of, you know, we think about all the different, you know, I’ll just, I’ll say like movie promotions we’ve seen over the last few decades and these little one-off things that, you know, someone might remember from 15 years ago, tied to whatever title that, “Oh, that was a cool little thing.” And it never really happened again because it was tough to do. All somebody has to do is remember that, and all of a sudden it becomes the same example that, know, similar to the same example you just gave, right?

ARRIGONI: Yeah.

MIELY: So I brought up the word innovation. When we think about innovation over the next three to five years, which, you know, you used to always say five to 10, now it’s three to five, because everything is just moving so fast.

ARRIGONI: Telescoping. I agree.

MIELY: With AI tools and platforms, what’s missing around, when it comes to our infrastructures for ownership and control, for any creator in general?

ARRIGONI: So this is something that uniquely we’re trying to solve for at Loti. This is something that, we’re building a system called Interchange that lets GenAI platforms and others do a real-time clearinghouse. So you might say, “I want to generate Josh,” right? And you’d be like, “Well, I put Josh in. What are Josh’s rules? What are Josh’s prices, right? And then how does Josh get paid out of it, right?”

Like, there’s all of these kind of boring aspects of the plumbing required so that if I’m a user and I want to create that, there’s not like a way to do that. Like, is a major GenAI platform going to pick up the phone on a hundred million calls and call each individual person? Probably not, right? And so we strongly believe that infrastructure solves a lot of these liquidity problems. So, to answer your question, there’s not a lot of infrastructure on that right now. And we are trying to build all of the infrastructure for that.

MIELY: Yeah, that sounds like a big bite of the apple. Kind of take us through the different steps of how and what that might be. Like, is the end result, like, we’re just going to land on a webpage, be able to type in all our stuff and boom, there we go?

ARRIGONI: Yeah, I think what you do is in, so, our thesis is that the core way in which you can sell and defend your brand is through defense. There’s actually being able to say when people don’t listen to your rules, there’s something that goes out there and deletes it, that takes it down, which is what our core product is. Right? You can think about it as if you could walk around the toll booth, no one would pay for it. So we build a really strong toll booth, big fences. And that’s what we’ve been doing for years now.

And now we’re at a point where, you know, if you do go land on a website, you know, or if you are a creator, you go to your Loti dashboard and you put in all these rules, all the natural language ones, the bespoke, kind of, “What is me or the brands I’ve endorsed?” You kind of enter it all in 30 minutes tops, and you set prices. And then if a fan goes to one of the many GenAI platforms and they do actually type your name to be put in, there’s no interaction required. It feels very seamless for the user. 300 milliseconds or less, they get cleared, right? So for most people, it’s just like a bat of an eye. It’s not like they’re waiting 10 minutes or even a minute. It’s just less than a second. They get found, they can find it. Yeah, you can generate this. You’re good. Or maybe we nudge them a little bit.

For us, it’s about rails, not guardrails. We really want to create liquidity. And so if someone comes to us with a prompt and says, “Hey, I really want to make Josh doing his thing,” but you have a rule that you always need to be in a blue sports coat, right? Like maybe it’s part of your brand, right? Like, this is the iconic blue sports coat, right? And someone tries to put you in a red sports coat, we will gently nudge the GenAI provider, like, actually back in brand is putting him back in that blue coat. And we feel like this is the easiest way that’s also kind of frictionless for users when they get things wrong a little bit, that we just nudge them back into the OK space, and then it gets generated. And then we can deliver all those analytics to creators. Like, by the way, a lot of people want to generate you in a red coat these days. Maybe you do a video with a red coat, right?

Like I, I’ve of course picked the funniest and most ridiculous thing, but I think for every creator, when they hear me give that example, they know what I’m talking about for their blue coat, right? And it’s not about shutting down generations, because no one wants that. It’s about making sure that the generations do happen, but on the terms that everyone agrees with.

MIELY: No, I mean, setting up their parameters and then allowing that to go out into the ecosystem and then getting information back, you know, like crowdsourced, here’s what people actually might want to nudge on those. So you can make, you know, realistic and thoughtful decisions around it. That’s what you’re talking about, and that’s what I love. And I love the—

ARRIGONI: At scale.

MIELY: At scale. And I love the, you know, the, talking about it as though, you know, if you don’t have a good enough toll booth set up, that people are just going to go around it. It immediately made me think about “Blazing Saddles,” which is kind of funny. But it’s, it rings true. And it’s, look, the more we distill this down at base levels for people, the more it imprints on their brain and they kind of get where we’re going. Because this can get to be some pretty heady stuff pretty quick. And people, you can see eyes glaze over and I don’t think we’re having that happen [inaudible].

ARRIGONI: No, think about the red coat, right? As someone does generate the red coat, someone says, “You know what? Screw Loti. We’re just going to generate it anyway.” Right? Someone generates it, they ignore us, the GenAI platform just ignores, they upload it, they put it on Instagram. Well, Loti goes around and shuts it all down. We’ll delete it off of Instagram, right? That doesn’t fit the brand.

And now you’ve sold something as a GenAI platform to someone that’s unusable. They can’t upload it anywhere, they can’t send it anywhere. It’s infringing. They’re getting marks on their account because it’s, like, it’s out of copyright. It’s out of whatever they didn’t have the authorization to do it. You basically create lots of problems for your customers as a GenAI platform because you have Loti doing the enforcement. And so as a GenAI platform you have to say, “OK, I need to either tell them it needs to be in a blue coat or we’ll never show you the red coat, because if we do, it creates problems for you and for us,” right? Because we also know where it gets generated, right?

So we can trace it back and be like, “You’re the one that tried to jump the fence over the toll booth.” Right? There’s that attribution that I think will keep everyone more honest because then we can just kind of freeze people out of the ecosystem if they want to continually violate creators’ rights. And we’re really like, “Sorry, you continually create fraud on your system. You don’t get access to rights to protect our users.” And I think that’s something that only comes from the power of defense, from the first part of what we talked about, of, like, downloading the internet.

MIELY: And I love that you kind of circled it back there, because we’re about at time. I guess, Luke, where I want to leave it is one or two things, kind of, off of this conversation that if you want people to say, “these are the things I’ve got to remember,” these are what those one or two things are. And then just, you know, what you guys are doing, when is it coming to market, where is it at, that sort of thing.

ARRIGONI: I would say you should embrace AI for your brand and that’ll look different from everyone. Figure out how you can be creative and strategic and that’ll be your edge over everyone else. And then for us, we’re gonna be releasing Interchange here soon. We’re really excited about it. And if anyone would like an account to protect themselves, we do of course have many plans that work for everyone at any stage of your career. Please visit us at LotiAI.com.

MIELY: There we go. LotiAI.com. Luke, thank you so much for helping us unpack one of the most important and least understood shifts in the creator economy.

ARRIGONI: Thanks for having me.

MIELY: As AI continues to reshape how content is created and distributed, questions of ownership, identity and control are becoming central to the future of media. These are exactly the kind of conversations we’ll be continuing at the 2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas and through the new Content Creator VIP program, designed to help creators navigate this increasingly complex landscape.

As promised, listeners of “Changing Frequencies” can use the promo code PODCAST26 to receive a free Show Floor Pass when registering at NABShow.com. That’s PODCAST26, and we’ll see you all in Las Vegas. I’m Josh Miely. Thank you for listening to “Changing Frequencies.” Subscribe, share and join us next time, as we continue spotlighting the people shaping what’s next.

JOSH MIELY, HOST: The media landscape doesn’t stand still, nor does the business behind it. Welcome to Changing Frequencies, a podcast from NAB show. Each episode explores how media, entertainment and storytelling are evolving, from broadcast to streaming content creators to the cloud and sports to AI, spotlighting the people who are defining what’s next. I’m Josh Miely. For many of today, we’re looking at live sports, not from the highlight reel, but from the infrastructure that makes those highlights possible.

Before we begin, this episode is proudly sponsored by Lumen and Vyvx Solutions, a leader in managed broadcast transport and connectivity for live sports and media production.

We’ll explore the broader industry implications, but it’s important to acknowledge that Vyvx plays a major role in powering many of the live events viewers take for granted. Now, live sports production has changed dramatically in the last few years. Distributed crews, centralized production hubs, cloud graphics, IP transport, low latency streaming. As sports betting and second screen interactivity, as well as global streaming, scale up the tolerance for delay, or even worse, failure keeps getting smaller.

So what does it mean for the infrastructure layer? I’m joined today by Rick Gibson, vice president and general manager of Vyvx Solutions at Lumen. Rick leads a global team responsible for managed broadcast transport, fiber, IP, video and satellite connectivity that supports live sports production around the world. Rick, it is great to have you. Welcome to the NAB show podcast, my friend.

RICK GIBSEN: Thanks, Josh. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

MIELY: Oh, absolutely. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation all week, once we had it booked. And here’s where I want to start. Live sports used to mean trucks and satellites. I’m thinking like, you know, back in the John Madden/Pat Summerall days. But today means IP networks and dispersed teams. In your view, what is fundamentally changed in how live sports are produced over, let’s just say, the last five years.

GIBSEN: Oh, my. You know, it’s changed so much. And it’s, and it continues to grow, year over year. Requirements grow, solutions change and modify. You know, really connectivity is, it’s really no longer just how you deliver the show. You know, years past, you may have, you know, a one gig circuit, you know, into a stadium, you know, that you’re delivering, you know, a handful of video feeds, maybe a little bit of data.

But now it’s, you’re talking, you know, hundreds of gigs worth of traffic that are actually traversing the, you know, the overall platform and delivering for the customers. You know, and it’s not only capacity, it’s really modernizing, you know, how broadcasting is actually done now. I mean, you have to, embracing cloud along with data-driven analytics powering software-defined, intelligent workflows.

There’s just a multitude of changes that we’ve seen, you know, over the last five years. And like I said earlier, it just continues to grow and grow.

MIELY: And I assume that it will continue that growth spurt over the next five years and five years after that and after that. So at what point does latency stop being a technical issue and become more of a business issue, especially with the streaming you mentioned and second screens and sports betting and everything else we’ve got now within our live sports broadcasts.

GIBSEN: You know, with fan engagement, with all the data that we’re pulling together and that we’re, you know, that we’re transmitting across, you’ve got consumers that are, they’re watching the game on one, pulling up analytics on a second screen and, you know, doing both maybe, sometimes three screens. But to the point of latency, it becomes a business decision—or I shouldn’t say business decision—becomes a business issue whenever, you know, customers are then seeing, you know, the content is getting to one location, you know, a lot quicker than another location.

We’ve seen in some markets, you know, where you have dual broadcasters, you’ll even see where consumers will actually move because they can hear their neighbor cheering, you know, before they’re cheering. So it’s definitely getting the content to the consumer’s eyes is paramount. And then along with, you know, the growth of online betting, you’ve got to imagine that they will need, you know, the quickest, most reliable transmission that is available.

MIELY: Absolutely. It blows my mind to just think of some of the deep-down prop bets they can have and the fact that the in-game betting has things that will go spontaneously with what is happening with the game. It’s really quite amazing. And to your point earlier, you know, as a Green Bay Packers fan, when I watch my Packers, but also, you know, want to listen to the local commentators, boy, sometimes matching up those times, it’s really tricky. And you got to be patient. And thankfully I understand why, but I don’t think the general public does. Would you kind of agree?

GIBSEN: I do, I do. It’s, you know, whenever you look at the overall quality in how, you know, you’ve got your embedded audio along with the video, and how that’s how that’s brought out, you know, from an aggregation standpoint and then, you know, through post-production and delivered. It becomes, you know, the priority to ensure that it’s getting to the consumer’s eyes as quick as possible.

MIELY: Absolutely. And listen, I know, you know, Lumen Stadium out in Seattle, you guys won the Super Bowl. I’m allowed to drop a little bit of a Green Bay Packers on this conversation.

GIBSEN: There you go.

MIELY: I want to jump up now to actual production. You know, we’re seeing more centralized production hubs. We’re seeing more remote crews. How does the connectivity that’s out there enable or I guess maybe sometimes even possibly constrain those that are doing remote production in the strategies they put together for it.

GIBSEN: Oh, that’s I mean, that’s a great question. You look at just the size of some of these events, you know. You look at the, you know, you look at the big game that we, you know, that we do every February. The capacity required for just that game. You know, of course, I’ve been doing this a few years.

I can remember, you know, providing the transmissions for that, you know, basically below one gig. And now we’re doing that show anywhere — five, 600 gig worth of traffic, out of, you know, and that’s from the stadium. So there’s, so you look at that, you know, from that perspective, and you have all these remote, all the remote production, and even it’s moving the content to production.

So you’re using just this vast amount of, it’s both video and data that, you know, for analytics for, you know, for everything that is actually need for, needed for the broadcast. So that kind of gives a view in into how it enables. But then on the reverse side, you know, the area of constraint, you know, you have some locations where it’s hard to get that amount of capacity, that amount of content. So you have to be more creative.

You know, you, either you’re using some dedicated connectivity, some internet direct connectivity. So there’s, you could be doing anything from, you know, multiple 20-meg, you know, internet services to, you know, maybe a gig or a little bit more of a gig of traffic. You know, a lot of that you see primarily, maybe in college sports and maybe some of the tier two, tier three locations.

Not an issue in the pro venues. You know, the pro venues are all built out, you know, with tons of capacity. So there’s, you know, but it really just kind of depends on the show that’s being produced and the requirements, you know, getting that content back out to production or post-production.

MIELY: So then that was going to be my follow-up when you brought up venues is, you know, as we look at sports venues that are continually getting updated, you know, if they’re building a new stadium in Cleveland, that’s not to say that the current stadium, they’re not updating all the tech capabilities within on a year-to-year basis. Correct?

GIBSEN: Absolutely, absolutely. We actually, Lumen will go through, we do a capacity and services evaluation. You know, it’s not, you know, when you look at the Vyvx end of, our Vyvx’s business within Lumen, it’s not just about capacity because it is service. Because you want to, you know, whenever the broadcasters pull up and plug in, they need a myriad of solutions, right? They need video. They need internet. They need private line. They, you know, they need voice. They need, and just, you know, a suite of services. And so what we have to do is look at, how do we best serve everyone that’s in there from the broadcast or the league? And then any other organizations that, you know, need to actually transmit from the facility.

So review it. Augment. And it’s, I almost, I kind of refer to it as, you know, painting the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s like, you know, whenever you get done, you go back to the beginning and start all over again. So…

MIELY: Oh, wow. So it’s, like, it’s just like a continuous construction project.

GIBSEN: It is.

MIELY: But again, it’s the speed of our technologies right now. Correct?

GIBSEN: Exactly.

MIELY: So I think we probably have started covering this, but I wanna make sure we hit it fully. We think about streaming and how it’s more central to how sports are distributed now. Scale and reliability. How do they change compared to the traditional broadcast models we had that you and I certainly grew up with?

GIBSEN: You know, on the, so if we look at streaming, we look at it, you know, from two lenses, right? From, because you have, you know, basically the traditional content aggregation, where you’re pulling the content in from the venues, you’re doing your production, you’re doing your streaming encoding and then off to the consumers. You know, if you look at from the aggregation standpoint, very, very similar to, you know, traditional, you know, to the traditional broadcast model. Once you get to the distribution side, that is where, you know, it changes dramatically. You know, and you’re going from, you know, delivering to, you know, say specific points to multiple, multiple points.

And so you have to look at the overall network in areas of IP peering, you know, the interconnectivity between different regions, localization for those specific regions and how that’s actually delivered. So it’s a, sometimes it’s, even for large events, it can actually even be a traffic engineering effort to ensure that you have, you know, all the content delivered, you know, to those different peering points, you know, as needed.

But, yeah, it definitely changes the way that we have to actually look at the network. You know, you go from, you know, either delivering, you know, with like say multiple waves to satellite to, now you’re delivering to, again, multiple peer points all across an IP network.

MIELY: So go a little bit deeper in that like, you know, we think about let’s say the World Cup’s coming up, right? And 12 years ago, we had a World Cup and now we have one now. How many different places are we sending streams now as opposed to 12 years ago, which is when streaming literally was in its infancy. But it was, you know, we’d had Netflix for a while. We started to have where we were streaming sports. What can you tell us about that?

GIBSEN: Well, you think about it too. You so you have, you know, if you go back 12 years, you would have, you know, I could remember when we would look at, you know, delivering 10 terabits of traffic was huge, you know. And now, you know, now you see some of these large events, you know, from a streaming perspective that exceed 50, 60 terabits in, you know, in their overall delivery.

So, there’s, you know, and then if you look at just infrastructure, you know, you’re handing off to, you know, years ago you would hand off to major markets, right? And then deliver from there. Now it’s from a cloud perspective. You’re hitting the network. It’s in the cloud. And then you’re dropping in all these different peering locations and getting directly to the consumers. So it’s quite the effort.

MIELY: Indeed. And look, another thing that we’ve talked about, but I want to come back to here right now is real-time data, because there’s a lot of that that goes on. The player tracking, analytics. We talked about three screens at one point in time. We talked about how wagering goes. I mean, it’s part of the product.

How does moving that data change what the infrastructure has to deliver? I mean, I think some of it goes into what we’ve already talked about, but I think there’s probably a bit more there.

GIBSEN: Yeah. I mean, it really, it bridges the production technology with fan experience. You know, I mean, you go back a few years ago, it’s primarily about making sure that we’re delivering, you know, video and audio. And someone may have been using, you know, some internet for back-office work. But no longer.

You know, we look at the vast majority of games that we deliver, the data traffic, is large, sometimes even larger than the video traffic. Now, granted, you know, there’s a lot embedded there. You know, you’ll have like, the broadcasters will, you know, will have embedded video files along with, you know, just some of the standard data and the analytics that there’ll be that they’ll be carrying.

But for the most part, you know, the appetite for that data is, it’s just growing. It’s almost, like it seems like it’s growing by the hour. You know, a lot of the requests we see is really specific to, you know, to the data that the both the broadcasters and the leagues are hungry for.

But for the most part, you know, the appetite for that data is, it’s just growing. It’s almost, like it seems like it’s growing by the hour. You know, a lot of the requests we see is really specific to, you know, to the data that the both the broadcasters and the leagues are hungry for.

MIELY: Excellent. And I know we’ve got a lot more leagues now. Like, we just start thinking about, we’re playing football in the spring. We’ve got, you know, a bunch of great rights deals that have happened in women’s sports. You know, obviously the venues are there and they’re going to be able to handle this. Do we have enough people and manpower and everything to continually cover all the sports that we have out there with this vast volume and everything that goes into every game that goes out?

GIBSEN: Yeah. You know, one of the areas that we really look towards, and of course, I think everyone does is automation, right? I mean, you know, there’s a lot of that that we’re looking to automate. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, we’re not going to be able to automate, you know, someone going and actually, you know, connecting up fiber, you know, at a venue and, and you know, and ensuring that, you know, that we have the right connectivity, the right camera feeds, things of that nature.

But, yeah, it’s an area where, you know, we constantly need more, you know, whether or not it’s more automation, more people, to actually provide those services.

MIELY: And then looking ahead five years, what do you think is going to separate leagues and media companies that get this right from those that don’t as we have this ever-expanding sports ecosystem?

GIBSEN: Wow. You know, that’s a great question. I would say, you know, the winners are going to be the ones who treat the connectivity as a strategic production layer and not a utility or just a connection point. Anymore, the underlying network and connectivity is a part of the production.

You know, we used to just call it “transmission.” But if you look at the way that production is done today and how production is moving more and more into the cloud, it’s the connectivity, the underlying network and the different services that get you to, you know, production, to post-production or even to the cloud. It’s even more important today than it ever was.

MIELY: And it’ll be even more important tomorrow than it is today, I am sure. Rick, this has been a blast. I’m going to get you out of here on this because I just have to know. I know you’ve been in so many of the, you know, the big trucks that have been at major sporting events and stuff. Tell me what your, one of your quickest “came to your mind right now” memories was of being in one of those trucks, what you covered. And by all means you had to say “big game” and not the actual name, that we understand.

GIBSEN: Yeah, absolutely. I think one that was probably near and dear to my heart was the game last year in New Orleans. You know, that was, there were so many things that were just surreal in the fact that you’re rolling these trucks into a broadcast compound with about eight inches of snow on the ground in New Orleans. And that was, that was unreal. But you know, the great thing was, you know, it was a massive undertaking.

Everything from the stadium itself and the entire setup at Bourbon Street, it was great to work with the broadcaster and the leagues, you know, on that show. It was just a real joy, one of the larger ones we’ve ever done. And we were just really, proud to be a part of it.

MIELY: Well, excellent. And tell everybody real quick, where can they find you when you are at NAB Show? Where can we find Lumen and Vyvx Solutions?

GIBSEN: We are in the West Hall. We have multiple locations around the sports theater. So, you know, once you enter, we’ll be right there next to the sports theater. And then we’ve got a couple of hospitality suites as well. So, we’re looking forward to seeing everyone.

MIELY: Rick, that’ll do it for today. Thank you for helping us look behind the curtain at what makes modern sports media possible.

Listen, infrastructure isn’t glamorous, but it’s foundational. And as sports media becomes more global, more interactive and more real-time, the backbone layer becomes strategic. These are exactly the kind of conversations we’ll be continuing at the 2026 NAB Show Sports Summit in Las Vegas, where industry leaders will tackle rights strategy, distribution models, data-driven engagement and the evolving economics of live sports.

I’m Josh Miely. Thanks for listening to “Changing Frequencies.” Subscribe and share and join us next time as we continue spotlighting the people shaping what’s next.

JOSH MIELY, HOST: The media landscape doesn’t stand still, nor does the business behind it. Welcome to Changing Frequencies, a podcast from NAB Show. Each episode explores how media entertainment, storytelling are evolving, from broadcasting to streaming, content creators to the cloud and sports to AI, spotlighting the people who are defining what’s next.

I’m Josh Miely from NAB, and today we’re talking about creators, not just as personalities or influencers, but as business operators. Creators today are expected to function like media companies: revenue streams, contracts, production standards, platform strategy and long-term sustainability.

Today I’m joined by Dylan Huey, Nicki Sun and Travis Keyes. All three of them are founding members of NAB Show’s Creator Council. Dylan is CEO of REACH, a creator-focused ecosystem spanning marketing services, talent representation, ventures and studio work. He helps build an infrastructure that enables creators to operate as scalable, sustainable businesses.

Nicki Sun is host, filmmaker and founder of Nicki Sun Media, a producing branded content for companies including Samsung and RØDE. She’s the creator of The Nicki Sun Show, and she’s a champion of professionalization and entrepreneurship in the creator economy.

And Travis W Keyes is a commercial photographer and filmmaker operating at the intersection of cinematic storytelling, brand partnerships and creator-led production. Travis works in the hybrid space between independent creator and commercial creative, bringing deep experience in corporate branding, ambassador roles and industry leadership.

His tenure as president of American Photographic Artists concluded in January of this year. Thank you to all of you for joining me today. Our time is limited, so let’s just jump right into this conversation. And Travis, why don’t we start with you? When did you realize you were running a business and not just creating content?

TRAVIS KEYES: You know, it’s a funny thing. We start out, we kind of make all this content we love doing. And then you get that first email, it’s like, what are your rates? And you’re like, oh my God, this is serious. And how do I how do I approach that? And what is a breakdown of rates and how do I, you know, and when you don’t realize you have that full answer, you know, like, oh my God, this is a business and I have to, like, address it as such.

And there’s that pressure of, you know, when you first make, you know, if you are an ambassador something, and you’re that pre-ambassadorship when you’re just making it because you love the content. There’s no pressure. But when, as soon as you go into that, like, suddenly you’re under contract and you have to perform and there’s analytics and all this kind of stuff.

You realize, whoa, this is a business — And now the pressure of making content, it feels a lot stronger. So then you have to really understand what the business side of it is. And I think a lot of people, when they go into creating, it’s because they want to tell a story and they want to connect with their audience, but they don’t realize the repeatability of it, the sheer weight of what it means to do something and be a business.

And that is something that, is not really taught in, in the creator circles and shared, you know. I think it was very gate-keeped in numbers and contracts because people didn’t want someone to underbid them overbid them and a lot of that. And so it was one of those things that I realized I have a lot to learn about answering an email if someone asks me, what are my rates?

MIELY: Gosh. And Dylan and Nicki, what about you?

DYLAN HUEY: Yeah, I would say. I mean, that’s exactly spot on. I started off in the creator space when, I was 14, so I would say, I’ve been an entrepreneur at an early age. No, but I come from Silicon Valley, and I think growing up in Silicon Valley, I always had some sort of entrepreneurial mindset.

You know, when I was 14, I loved the joy of getting all these PR packages. It felt like Christmas in my front door every single day in middle school and high school. You know, but I think, you know, especially with the creator economy not really being the creator economy back in 2016, it was more of a smaller function of marketing.

You know, I was a 14-year-old outreaching to brands every single day, about 100 brands a day, telling them why they should pay a 14-year-old 5000, 2000 bucks at a time. You know, I think that that was always my ethos, being someone who came from a very tech-focused family, who grew up in Silicon Valley, now starting to become a creator.

And you know, I love my career journey being an influencer, because the first week I started social media, I gained 30,000 followers. So there’s no trigger, there’s no ramp-up. There’s a lot of learning on the go, which I thought was great. But, you know, I think very early on is when I, when I learned, kind of the ins and outs of the business world and being a founder and a CEO, really stemmed from content creation originally for me.

MIELY: And Nicki, what about you? When did you cross over that Rubicon?

NICKI SUN: Yeah. So my background is professional, on-camera host, and it kind of transitioned into behind-the-scenes filmmaking really when I went to NAB Show. I was actually the MC for the Post Production stage in 2018, and actually due to not — due to seeing a lack of women in the space, I decided to launch my own, a tech channel called Tech Nicki Speaking, which is a play off of my name, “technically speaking,” and I launched a YouTube page where I was reviewing cameras, showing people how to do tutorials that go viral on TikTok, like the Lookalike Challenge.

And I realized my creations became a business when companies at NAB Show interacted with me so, you know, that I hit a different market and they would send me stuff. It would be like, how can we work with you? How can you, like, shoot a product tutorial about this? And that was me wanting to go behind the camera.

But in doing so, it forced me to be in front of the camera because I was actually in front of the camera talking about how to do things behind the camera. So it’s very meta in that way. But I realized that there’s so many brands that had wanted to work with me, that this is a legitimate business, and I need to make sure that I have all my ducks in a row before I continue going forward.

So I would say, really, 2018, 2019 was when I realized that I wasn’t just creating to create anymore. It was also creating, and I have to have a business side, in mind as well.

MIELY: I’ll tell you what, what a decade it’s been as all three of you have just kind of been in this space and seen it explode for yourselves as we’re sitting here with it, and let’s go to Dylan for this one, how do you describe your business model today? Where does revenue actually come from?

HUEY: Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, I think as a creator, there’s so many ways to monetize. And I’ve very much been someone who’s seen all the different ways that you can monetize, right?

I think very early on, for me, it was solely focused on brand deals and then the standard monetization on TikTok and all the other platforms. But because I turned into more of a business-centric person, I say brand deals are great, but I honestly try to do zero brand deals. I don’t want to flood my account and I post mainly on Snapchat now. I get 20 million views every day on Snapchat. And I don’t want to flood my feed with branded content.

On the flip side, what I do now is I’ll work with a lot of creator economy and tech-focused brands and advise them and tell them and be that liaison between industry and the creators. I think that that’s my superpower here, being someone who is very in the industry and as well a creator, and that, honestly, it pays way more than the Snapchat Mid Roll program, which is great. I love Snapchat. Don’t get me kicked off of that Mid Roll program. But I make a lot of money, and that’s how I grow.

And then, you know, beyond that, my main company, REACH, which is a marketing agency and talent management company and venture fund, you know, I’m spearheading and leading that and we have 40 employees. So I’ve really turned my expertise in social media and creator economy to be able to monetize, help other creators monetize, help brands scale and grow, in a very unique and unprecedented way in this creator space.

MIELY: So it’s just really great to hear from you how you had to pivot as you went through this journey over the past few years. Travis, do you find that it’s been it was similar for you? I’m sure it’s different pivots, but that you had to constantly reassess what you were doing?

KEYES: I did that every day, I think. I think we have to. You know, I didn’t enter as a content creator, and it was something that I never, kind of—it wasn’t on my journey, what I expected. I started out in film and TV and working in production and movies and making films and wanting to do that. And then I found I just was disenchanted with the whole film industry and people, like, making their lives of how they knew other people. And their worth was set on like, “Oh, I know this person or I can get this done.”

So I kind of got out of that and distracted for a while and opened up bars and nightclubs in New York and Miami and Connecticut and was lost for a long time and just wasn’t happy. And I found photography. And photography led me down to a happy place where I was, like, this is incredible, but now I want to tell a story.

And as in, early on my days, that was when the influencer boom, I think, kind of happened. And that got kind of annihilated because influencer was taking advantage of, you know, “Oh, I want free things” and doing that. And then this whole thing kind of took—then I think the birth of the content creator was born. And the content creator was someone that knew how to tell stories, knew multimedia from telling stories, whether it be photography, through podcasts, through video.

And that storytelling was — earned trust between their audience and who they were kind of talking to. And that’s what I fell in love with. It was about really kind of finding that space where we could connect with people. And that’s when the content creator was born and the authenticity of what we do was starting to get valued and wasn’t like, oh, bad mis-label, they’re an influencer. No, there was a content creator. And I think anyone that wants to be, you know, successful nowadays has to be versed in being a content creator because you have to connect on so many different levels, with the brand, with the behind-the-scenes, with the audience. And if you’re not doing that, you’re kind of falling behind. And that’s, I think, why this space right now is so important.

MIELY: And Nicki, I want to bring you in on this kind of hear what your story was. But also, you know, as we sit here today, how do creators most underprice themselves and leave money on the table as they’re working through their business models?

KEYES: [Chuckles] You got a day?

SUN: Yeah. So I — I know! I can only speak to what I’ve experienced, but I would say when I was first starting, because, like Travis, I didn’t start out as a content creator or influencer. I love how we both put “influencer” in quotes, because that’s just not how I ever, like, defined myself. It would be like, OK, I realize there’s a difference between charging a package versus charging a la carte, and sometimes as a beginning creator back then, I felt the need that I had to do everything like a YouTube video, 3 to 5 minute.

I had to add, you know, a plug. I had to do social media, vertical content. We got to do collaborations. But I realized I could either package all that up with a higher ticket price or also just charge more. So the biggest thing that I learned while doing this is, the biggest thing to me that creators also leave off the table is licensing fees, their collaboration. Because yes, for you to create the content to put on your page is going to be so much more, because you really are getting — giving them access to your trusted audience. You’ve taken forever to build your audience. And your audience is going to know you, if you put something up that you don’t really believe in.

So it really is a huge thing. Like Dylan said, like, I really, when it comes to brand partnerships, like, I really don’t take a lot. Like, it has to really go with my flow or be a part of my brand. But yeah, licensing, if you create the video, that’s great. But there’s also months afterwards and being able to leave that video up for six months or a year or two years, charge for that, because this company is making money by running your ad with paid ads.

Not just organically, but you don’t, as a creator, see the compensation for that. So you need to charge for them using your video beyond that. So I would say that’s, that was a big thing for me learning, really real is, optimize the scope. Like if the price or the budget is not as high as you’d like it to be, you can totally optimize your scope, like take off a video, just do like, “Oh, you just wanted a photo? Okay, cool.” I don’t have to do all these other things in order to do that. And, yeah, I would say just with licensing fee, just — advocate for yourself. Like no one knows, but you have to advocate for yourself. But those were the biggest things for me.

MIELY: We are always our biggest advocates. And as you were answering that, Nicki, Travis, I saw you just shaking your head a bunch. So I want you to chime in and also kind of talk about what brands most misunderstand about what they’re actually paying for when they hire you or they hire a creator in general.

KEYES: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up, because they both kind of go back into each other. And both, you know, Dylan and Nicki, you kind of focus in on key things that I had prepped as well. And when, Nicki, you were talking about things that, really, people undervalue themselves and don’t look into that, licensing was number one for me.

I think that scope creep is a huge thing. I think if we don’t have those—and a lot of times we don’t take that time or they don’t give us the time for that pre-production and letting us say, what is the scope of this? What do you expect, what are the deliverables? And every time that they, you know, how many times we’ve said, “Oh, you know, we’ll do it for this price. And then suddenly, “Oh, can you just do another 30-second or can you do one revision or you can do this or can you?” And then suddenly they hired you as a photographer, filmmaker and then they have you as a creative director and like, “Why aren’t you coming up with the ideas for this one?” “Well, you didn’t hire me for that, or you should have hired me for that.”

You know, there’s all these things that kind of creep in: distribution rights and, you know, undervaluing usage is huge. You know, all those things are massive. But when you were going back to, you know, talking about, I think, what brands kind of misunderstand in that kind of whole circle, you know, they’re paying for reach there. You know, that’s what they think. They think they’re paying for reach. When they hire you, they’re like, “Oh, they have a great reach.” But impressions are rented, trust is earned. And then what they’re actually paying for is that trust transfer.

And Dylan, one thing you said is like and Nicki, you reiterated, was you were not trying to put that much brand up, branding on your site. And that is because by doing that, we’re devaluing the trust we’ve earned. And the trust we’ve earned is so valuable that that is what I think that a lot of these brands misunderstand is that earned trust. You may have a smaller viewership, but your engagement is higher and your trust is higher. That is what you’re really kind of putting out there, you know?

And beyond that, it’s your production standards. It’s your storytelling fluency. It’s, you know, your consistency. All of that is what — so, I find that brands kind of misunderstand that the most.

HUEY: If I can add, I think that, you know, when I’m talking to creators every single day now, I have a lot of creators who we manage who have millions and millions of followers, 5 million followers, 10 million followers, and they’ll be, like, “I’ll do every single brand deal that’s 500 bucks.” You know? And I tell them, like, I can get you 10,000 brands hypothetically at 500 bucks, and it’s great. But, you know, your audience doesn’t want to see 10,000 brand deals. And, you know, it’s an oversaturation.

I tell creators to think of their own social media accounts kind of like it’s a TV channel, right? If you were watching ESPN and basketball and every single 10 seconds was a commercial, would you watch that? No. I personally wouldn’t, and I don’t think anybody in the world would watch it, right? You have to have an even distribution, knowing your audience and knowing when the right time to place brands into, to really make sure that your followers believe you and trust you.

Because at the end of the day, if your fans and your followers stopped trusting you, then when you do a brand deal, when you do the next brand deal, who’s going to actually buy into that brand? Who’s going to believe it’s an authentic brand deal? Who’s going to, you know, every CPG and DTC and tech company, they will tell you maybe that brand awareness is a major factor of the campaign.

But at the end of the day, let’s be honest, a CPG and D2C brand, it’s sales. And for a tech company, it’s downloads and MRR, right? And if you can’t help them get that, well, you’re not going to get a renewed contract, right? And the best thing that you could do is figure out how to get a long-term partnership with a renewed contract.

And it’s proving yourself out first. Right? It’s making sure that they believe, that same company believe that your audience is the best audience to advocate for that company. And I found that to be really helpful, that comparison for creators would be like, “Oh my God, you’re so right. We shouldn’t be going for these $10,000 brand deals since we have 25 million followers. Let’s go for the bigger brands that are long-term, that can pay us 400, 500, $600,000, but also make sense for our content and where we can build a really long-term series that this brand can be a part of after this first deal happens.”

MIELY: And Nicki, I want to bring you back in on this because I’m sure you’ve got an opinion. But also I want to know, because we’ve talked about a lot of metrics here in these answers. What are your success metrics? What matters the most to you as you’re producing your content?

SUN: Yeah, to me it’s never been about and, you know, I could be wrong or whatever, but it’s never been about the follower count or the view count. For me, the biggest things, because working in both corporate and non-corporate environments, you know that the marketing director doesn’t get it when they’re asking you to make things go viral. That’s just not a thing. Like, “Make things go viral.” So I’m like, okay, I like to turn that word into make things “shareable.” So for me, what makes you as a person share this piece of content with your friend, your mom, your colleague? Does it have those features of entertaining, inspiring, informational? That’s where I usually guide clients that I work with into creating content.

So for me, one of my biggest metrics is the shareability of it. Like, how many times was it shared? Did you hear about it? But then outside of, like, data, for me, my measure, my metric of success has always been being top of mind when it comes to collaborating with certain brands. If I’m, like, in the top 10, like, creators that they want to work with, that’s amazing.

Also, having a seat at the table. For me, metrics is—having been in it, I just want to help, like, guide creators, you know, in a direction so they don’t have to experience some of the struggles or challenges that I faced. So actually just being on the NAB Creator Council, that to me is a measure of success, is like, being — having a seat at the table to allow, to make changes and decisions that help other people walk in the door. That to me is like my current measure of success.

MIELY: That’s really cool. And listen, we are so excited we have all three of you on the Council. And Travis, I do want to get you to really chime in. You know, one of the things I just picked up on with what Nicki said was, you know, it’s not viral content. It’s shareable content. People want to share content that they feel kind of part of the community, part of your community. Would you agree with that or no?

KEYES: Oh, well, absolutely. I think, you know, I think so many people go in for, you know, initially when they start for the likes and think that if they’re not getting all the likes, then, you know, trying to reach everybody in the world, you know, that they’re not being successful.

But, I mean, if you reach 1% and you build your tribe and you build your trust and you build your people, that is success. I mean, it’s like going to Comic-Con or, you know, or, you know, Space Camp. Those are your people. You know, you’re not going to — everybody’s not going to love what you do, nor should they.

And if you’re not adding some controversy and some back and forth and, I just produced my first film and the scope of the reviews are, “We love it and we hate it.” And I think that’s actually a really good measure of success is, like, if it was somewhere in the middle, like, or if they weren’t talking about it, then, you know, not so great, you know. But if people love it, and they hate it, that’s speaking, you know, I think that brings you to a point where, like, “Wow, they’re talking about it.” That’s what we want. We want people to have those kind of, you know, reactions and connect with the people that we’re trying to tell stories for.

You know, my stories aren’t gonna, you know, connect with everybody, but if I find the right people that — There’s nothing better when you sit in a room with, like, fellow creators like this and we just suddenly start talking and we you instantly we’re like, “Oh my God, what about this? What about that?” And you can’t stop talking because you have so much in common and you’re just kind of riffing off each other. I think that’s, you need to find your people, and that’s where it’s all about.

MIELY: So, Dylan, at one point in our conversation, you kind of mentioned the Grammys a little bit. Obviously we are the National Association of Broadcasters. Want to get your take and then everybody around the panel. You know, when you look at broadcasters, when you look at those traditional networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, you know, what have creators learned from them, what do they aspire for, in terms of what they’ve done? And then where do you think that those networks and those broadcasters can learn from creators themselves?

HUEY: Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, I talk to a lot of people every single day and brands who know what working with traditional broadcasting looks like and CPMs and numbers and numerical, right? And the business world is very saturated with people who know radio and broadcasting very well.

You know, at least for me, I think the first and foremost thing that I’ve seen, a big juxtaposition between traditional broadcasting and also the creator space is just the fact of, like, age and demographic, right? We’ve definitely pivoted into an environment and a society where people are watching TV, film, radio, all of that less and cable.

And now switching to watching social media, YouTube, right? I think, you know, YouTube is most watched on the TV nowadays. Right? And I think that that’s been the ethos of just seeing that change. Right? You have very legacy, 50-, 60-, 70-year-old guys on the broadcasting side. And that’s juxtaposed by, if you go to famous birthdays and you look at famous birthdays, like top 20 creators, I think 60% of them are under 18, which is insane, right?

And I think it’s showing how audience is really transforming. Right? I think there’s a lot of things for creators to take away, right? At the end of the day, the goal for a lot of creators is to be very traditional. Digital is trying to be traditional. Traditional is trying to be digital, right? A lot of traditional companies like CBS and CNN, they’re trying to figure out ways to crack influencers and to leverage influencers to help them.

They’re also trying to figure out ways to go on the internet and focus outside of their cable and to rebrand themselves as a more digital-focused company. And that’s exactly what creators have been able to do, is figuring out how to build long-term legacy audiences digitally on social media. I think the things that creators can take away, it’s just the aspect—and I think Travis talked about this, and, you know, a few other times we’ve talked about kind of just a focus of creators wanting to turn themselves into brands, right? And I think that these traditional broadcasting companies have really been able to successfully build a long-term legacy empire. Right? And the goal for creators is to be a long-term legacy empire.

I think, you know, when I first started on social media, my mother told me that creators only have a four-year lifespan. And I was like, OK, how do I causally reinvent myself? I don’t know whether or not that’s true, by the way. So don’t quote that, but that’s what my mom always told me. But I always try to figure out how can I continue to reinvent myself so that my audience, while my audience continues to mature and evolve, ’cause they stay with me.

And I think that that’s what legacy brands or legacy entertainment has been able to do successfully is have a really strong cult following long-term, where people are constantly watching them, and creators can learn from that. Because if you do, truly, if my mom is right with the four-year thing, then you constantly have to change your narrative, change who you are as a creator constantly to evolve with adjusting algorithms. And learning from traditional entertainment would be really helpful on that.

MIELY: Well, I’ll tell you what, Dylan, I would agree with your mom and the examples I would put out there are Madonna from the ’80s into the ’90s and the 2000s and Taylor Swift these days. So Travis, you got mentioned in that. I want you to kind of follow up on it and put it through the lens again of working with or thinking about broadcast media as you answer.

KEYES: You know, it’s one of those things. It’s like, why would a creator want to come to NAB and what does NAB want to do with creators? And I think, you know, it’s like when — I’ll mark myself, I think I’m quite older than Nicki and both Dylan. But I grew up when, you know, there was not internet. Go figure. How does someone exist there? And there was like three channels on TV. You know, it’s like we — whether you were young or old, you went to the same place for your information.

Now there’s — it’s so segmented where, you know, the older generations are going still to broadcast TV, but the younger generations are not going to that. They’re not using it as their — where they’re getting their information or their entertainment. They’re doing it through their phones. They’re in, you know, YouTube, through Twitch. You know that, you know, that that few kids watch, you know, hours and hours of someone playing a game on Twitch is not — it’s something that the older generation doesn’t understand.

And so coming to NAB where you understand the legacy of, you know, traditional broadcasting and reaching that scalability to huge audiences to where content creators now have a voice and a direct line into a certain tapped group of people that they’ve really entrusted and learn their trust and have those — and, you know, the broadcasters can’t figure out how to get to those people. We both have something to learn from each other. And if we allow each other to learn from each other, that’s where we get that hybrid of, you know, of really working together and understanding with the next generation of this whole media and connecting with people is going to look like.

Because it’s not going to be one or the other, it’s going to be something in between. And that’s where, you know, these great meeting up of minds can really work off each other and really kind of, that’s the most important thing. I hate using word “community,” but it’s that — because I don’t want that to feel like anybody’s not supposed to be in that community. Because we’re all supposed to be there. We’re all supposed to — so these creative circles need to come together and share with each other and help each other and build off each other.

MIELY: Well, yeah. And listen, when someone uses the term community, you can be part of multiple communities. And that’s what bridges and brings those communities together and makes those communities kind of even larger just with different subsects.

And I love that you said, you know, “hybrid.” And Nicki, I want to bring you in on this, you know, in to work off of that. Because when you think about kind of, you know, creator content, sometimes that is, you know, that’s not as linear as what broadcast does. And yet there’s pluses and minuses to that on both sides. Correct?

SUN: Yes, I agree with my colleagues here. No notes. I think starting out in broadcast journalism like over 10 years ago, that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a broadcast journalist, but at the same time I was like, I don’t want to report on possible sad news all the time. So I really wanted to stick with the infotainment, like it’s informational, but it’s also entertaining.

And I realized that after I graduated college, I don’t think any three acronym legacy media was going to hire this punk kid right out of college. So I ended up just starting my own YouTube channel, and I did my own talk show where I interviewed a lot of those who, to me, I felt were underrepresented in media, particularly like indie musicians and artists in the Asian-American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander community. So I really was able to build a community through that. And so I think now, having been to—this would be my ninth NAB Show, I’ve definitely experienced and seen the changes from broadcast level and balancing the intersection between legacy media and digital media, and I’ve always tried to be there to help bridge what needs to be, like, connected.

But like Travis said, like, you can’t have one or the other. It’s like it’s going to be a meeting of the middle. So it’s how can we work together? How can we learn from those who have laid down the foundation but also learn from the new generation of storytellers who have really got it, like, they have a head start and they really know what they’re doing.

So finding that level of respect and that groundedness to come together to realize we can really actually learn something from each other. We are really doing two things, maybe two sides of the same coin, but we just got to get on the same level that at the end of the day, it really comes down to core storytelling. Regardless if you’re in broadcast legacy media or even, influencer or a content creator like, how is your storytelling? How can we improve that from all ends? And I think that’s the way forward.

MIELY: Storytelling and purpose. And that’s what we do when we get together at NAB Show. And listen, I know at one point in time, you know, we’ve talked a lot about everything on the business side and we’ve talked about storytelling. We haven’t really talked about the tech side. So next thing I want to do is jump into AI and kind of talk about the tools that you guys are using. And whether or not it’s effective.

HUEY: I love AI, personally, and I think that that might be a hot take. I don’t know about the rest of everyone on this on this podcast, but I love AI. Now I know where my strengths are and I know where my weaknesses are and I know where my limits are. Right? I’m never gonna overuse AI. I cannot fully be replaced by AI. People watch my content because they want to see my personality. And it goes into this aspect that we just talked about: virality versus shareability. Right? At the end of the day, I could make a million viral videos, but if nobody recognizes me and watches me, what brand have I been able to build? Nothing. Right?

But I do love a good viral video, right? And virality does equate to shareability. For me, like, my entire content workflow is optimized with AI and I think if you’re not using AI, you’re missing the mark of being able to be more productive. Now, am I going to use it to completely film my videos and to, you know, have an AI background and to replace my face with an avatar? No, not at all. That’s—my audience would hate that because they came to me and watched my content because it was me.

However, can I utilize it to help me edit a little bit faster, right? Or can I use it to help storyboard what I wanted to film and put it into tangible soundbite ideas just because I can’t write that well? Yes. And that, I think, is what’s great, right? When I’m on meetings and I’m brainstorming with my team, I can use AI to note-take. And after 15 meetings at the end of the day and being tired, I probably didn’t remember what I said at 9 a.m., right?

Those are ways that AI really helps me as a creator, especially on the business side of things, right? Obviously, for me, I’ve been able to optimize my workflow. And I think we had this meeting at one of the Creator Council meetings, at the end was, like, “What’s our, like, AI tech stack?” And I was like, “I use this for, you know, all of my text messages. And to schedule my meetings, I have an AI tool that I add to my emails and, you know, for sales, I have this tool. And then, you know, for anyone who wants to call me on the phone and I can’t pick up, they can talk to an AI that knows everything about my business,” and to be able to talk about that.

You know, the business side is always really great, but the creativity aspect is something that a human needs to do that AI, at least for right now, and for me, in my opinion, would never be able to replace. It’s always going to be— a human has to be the product. Because yes, AI avatars and AI creators are a thing. You know, and we’ve seen an AI creator at Wimbledon and it’s been great. But that’s just a fad. I mean, it’s trendy. Nobody can really relate to that. There’s no authenticity. And how do you scale and grow that after, you know, having a little bit of a viral moment because it’s something interesting, right? A person is really the spearhead of the brand. That’s my opinion on the AI side.

MIELY: Dylan, I love it. There are a couple of pull quotes in that answer. I am sure we’re going to be seeing those circulated as we run up to NAB Show. Guys, and I guess we’ll go to Nicki for it, you know, a follow-up on that. Do you use then AI more so on the business side than on the creative side, because I think, you know, some people might not even think about doing that.

SUN: I would say when it comes to AI, I am cautiously optimistic. But like Dylan said, it’s like, you know, you cannot replace humans. And I think that the whole reason of why I create is to have that shared human connection with my audience. But I will say, like, when it comes to AI, so much AI is already embedded into a lot of the tools that I already use, like DaVinci Resolve. When I’m recording my podcast, that AI dialog, it helps me to really just take out all the hums and hisses. At the end of the episode, when it’s an hour, I basically transcribe the whole thing, throw it into an AI tool, and then it shoots out a summary for me that I could utilize.

But it’s not — for me, it’s not copy-paste. Again, it’s like a nice way to brainstorm what, like, the conversation, what I thought it was, and then it could also challenge me to think, “Oh, well, it was more about this,” and it helps me do more of my internal research of how I should be able to, I guess, put it out in the world.

So I use AI in that way, and I have used AI tools too to help edit faster. But in using the AI, I realized I didn’t like the AI. So, if anything, again, I’m cautiously optimistic. But I would say I use AI, certain parts and creativity when it comes to editing programs, when I’m editing videos, but it’s never fully AI, like this is the final results. It’s more like, “Oh, that’s what you could do with AI.” Well, this is what I can do as a human. So it’s always that compare-contrast, and you take it with a grain of salt, in a way.

MIELY: I love it: compare-contrast. Listen, guys, we are almost out of time. I got one last question. I’m going to ask you to put your prognosticator hats on, if you will. Five years from now, what will the most successful creator businesses look like? Travis, let’s start with you.

KEYES: That’s a good question. I think we’re getting to a place where the creator becomes their own company and their own identity, their own person. Where that is creating small teams, production infrastructure. They really own their audience channels. They have a recurring revenue, you know, system, models in place, data literacy, clear IP ownership. I think the more literate they become as a business model and really understanding, becoming almost like their own mini TV stations and content creators.

That’s, I mean, you look at people that started out with the love of it, you know, Marquese Brownlee or Linus and stuff like that, that just started making videos that they love. And now they have these empires of studios and production teams and stuff like that. It’s scalable. It’s — we’ve never lived in a point where, it’s sort of the renaissance of creativity, where I like saying that, you know, where we used to make movies and it’s, you have to bring in a helicopter to do a, you know, a huge aerial shot and have giant, you know, things that do, you know, these moving shots. That all fits in a backpack, you know? So there’s never been greater storytelling now that those tools are accessible to everybody. And with that, the AI is kind of scary with that. But also at the same time, I’ll bring in a Star Wars reference. You know, there’s the Dark Side and then you can go to the light, you know.

So everything is a tool and it’s how we use it. And I think that five years from now is going to hopefully see AI kind of go into the — right now, I think people are fearful that, saying, you know, AI, and I think a lot of people instantly think, “Oh, this whole thing was created with AI.” And the scary thing is, a lot of us good content creators will throw out something like, “Oh, this was AI, and now we have to show the behind the scenes to show that no, it wasn’t AI. We actually shot it.” So we have to authenticate that we’re actually doing something real and it’s good and not AI, which it really, kind of, drives you mad.

But I think we’ll kind of get to the process where people are using AI as tools to help, you know, be efficient. But also the badge, moniker of “this was not created with AI” is going to be something that comes back around and be very wanted and authentic.

MIELY: Yeah, I definitely would agree with that. And Dylan, I saw you shaking your head as well. Do you agree? And you know the most successful, how are they going to be in five years?

HUEY: Yeah, I think Travis is pretty spot on. I mean, I always have been saying this for the last few months. I think the next big creators are going to be the ones that own everything, verticalize in-house, right, and have everything oriented into their own company.

You know, Travis named a few of those creators. But, you know, I want to spit three creators that I think are doing this very similar thing that are, are successful. Allen Chikin Chow, Dhar Mann and then MrBeast, right? Those are three creators who are very much the case studies of merging entertainment and creator.

And I think, you know, we’ve seen digital and traditional very much contrast each other. And I think the future is going to be that very much synergetic, you know, of traditional and digital finding its footing into culture equally as much, right? I don’t think that we should be calling a creator a creator, right? We should figure out how to turn these creators into celebrities as well.

You know, and it’s funny, cuz I was talking to some of my friends and I was naming creators. I’m like, do you think this is a creator? Or do you think this is a celebrity? And they were like creator, streamer, creator, right? And I’m like, OK, how can we get that foot in the door to make these creators actually be seen as legitimate celebrities in the same way we see a Ryan Reynolds, a Ryan Gosling, etc. Right?

You know, I was, I was talking to my friends about the Grammy Awards, right? And why I don’t think that Alex Warren would have had any chance to win, right? Because people think of him as a TikToker. And I’m like, what can we do to prove that he’s an actual viable music artist more than just a TikToker while he’s getting 50 million streams right now?

I think that that’s the direction that we’re going to see continuing to transform the digital space into merging with very traditional entertainment, whether that be music, whether that be film and TV. But then as well, having these creators really think of themselves as a very business-oriented mindset, having a CEO rather than having a go get a manager at an outside company. How can they bring up, partnerships, brand partnerships in-house? How can they make sure that they have a very structured finance team and legal team and all of that, where it’s all usually separated, right? It’s all still the Wild West. You have, you know, all these different people and players that are outside agencies and how can you bring it into one where you have them part of your team for your team with you?

MIELY: See, and that’s building the business and that’s, I guess, what we’re kind of leaving people with as we wrap up. Nicki, I do want to give you one last chance to chime in, and I do want to say, hey, Dhar Mann was at NAB Show last year. And you guys are going to be at NAB Show this year, which is super exciting.

SUN: I know, we’re so excited to have more creators or people who identify as creators, at NAB Show this year. I would just say, to add on to both Travis and Dylan, ownership for sure. I do think, personally, I don’t know this hot take, but the year or the time of worshiping and idolizing celebrity is kind of gone for me. I think we could just see how, just, the world is responding to current things that are coming out right now that, yeah, like the people that you idolize before may not be the people that we should be idolizing, which is also why I’ve always had this problem with the term “influencer,” of being, saying you’re a self-proclaimed influencer.

But I would say with that, I think that’s why it’s so important to feel like you own your audience, not relying on one specific platform. There’s other great places like, you know, Substack or, you know, being able to just build your own or having your own email list. I mean, that’s still key in this day is like, if you can have access to someone’s email, like they’re trusting you with your email, I feel like that’s, like, point one. Because you never know when a social media platform may not survive.

So I would say just being able to own your content across the board, having a team, having infrastructure and mini studios, but just operating, as, you know, a business. But that’s also, if that’s your M.O. at the end of the day, like, a successful creator business is where you start and where you want to go. Does that align with your vision? Because sometimes it could get totally taken out of context, and you wanted to just be a creator and create and not have to worry about all this stuff. That’s an option too. So not every single creator has to build a studio. But at the end of the day, that if that is your M.O., that’s what I think a successful business would look like to a creator who wants to go that route.

MIELY: I think that is a great point for us to end on. You’ve got to know your purpose. You follow your purpose, make your content and everything else kind of falls in place. Dylan, Nicki, Travis, thank you so much for this candid conversation. You guys really know what it means to operate and be a creator in the creator economy today. We’re psyched to have you come out and see us when we are in Vegas.

I’m Josh Miely. Thanks for listening to “Changing Frequencies.” Subscribe, share and join us next time as we continue spotlighting the people that are shaping what’s next.