How creators turn brand deals into million-dollar software – Feat. Miles Sellyn

Miles Sellyn is VP of Partnerships at Rare Days, a company that builds software with creators including Colin and Samir, Cody Sanchez, and Rhett and Link. His argument is simple: 95% of creator businesses are advertising companies, selling other people's products with no long term upside, when the same audience and the same distribution could be pointed at something they actually own.

In this episode, Miles is direct about what has changed and what hasn't. The cost of building a real consumer app has fallen from millions to a few hundred thousand, which changes the maths entirely for a creator who needs a million dollar business rather than a fifty million dollar one. But he's blunt about the vibe coding narrative and about the reputational risk of shipping something mediocre to an audience that trusts you. Plus why audience and customer are not the same thing, and the operational problem nobody plans for when 8,500 people can suddenly raise a support ticket.

A practical case for adding software to the revenue stack, and an honest account of what it takes to do it without embarrassing yourself.

Topics covered: creator software and digital products · why brand deals don't build enterprise value · AI and the cost of building apps · finding the right product for your niche · pricing and validation · email lists as launch infrastructure · MVPs with off the shelf tools · knowing when to get help

What is Creator Generation?

Creator Generation brings you behind the scenes of the creator economy, featuring top YouTubers and experts who share the strategies, lessons, and stories behind building successful channels, growing incredible businesses, and driving the world’s biggest online video successes.

Ant: 00:21

Today, I am joined by Miles Sellyn, who is the VP of partnerships at Rare Days. Now you might not have heard of Rare Days, but they are a company that builds software in partnerships with creators. They're pretty good at it. They've partnered with the likes of, you know, Colin and Samir, Cody Sanchez, and Rhett and Link. Today, Miles and I sit down to have a yarn about why and how right now is the best time for creators to be building software as part of their business.

Ant: 00:55

Instead of introducing yourself, what was the thing that you were like, you know, like, hey, creators need to know this?

Miles: 01:01

Yeah. I think for me, the you know, I feel like I'm banging on this drum all the time about the opportunity that exists in building software, but such a an infinitely small number of creators are actually doing it. And I think you have these real success stories, or you have people having very modest successes. And I think everyone who works in this space and is a creator understands at a visceral level what the opportunity is. But very few people are taking the actual steps to go do the thing.

Miles: 01:35

And so whether or not that's with us, it's something I'm just really passionate about, about filling people in on what those steps are so that more people take the steps. It can be a very rocky road building revenue as a creator. And to me, I guess I'm jaded. I've been building software and stuff on the Internet for fifteen years. But, like, to me, it is such a clear opportunity that I just, you know, wanna help people hopefully see how clear it is.

Ant: 02:01

I think your response was software, baby. Yeah. But when you say software, what do you mean?

Miles: 02:07

Yeah. It's it's a little bit of a misnomer. I think, you know, digital products has been the kind of nomenclature that the kind of creator space has used over the last five, six years. I think the opportunity there is a little less than it has been post COVID up until 2025. I think when people say digital products now, think paid PDFs and courses and that definitely had a moment.

Miles: 02:37

I think it is hard to sell education in that way. When during COVID and kind of in the immediate aftermath, people were taking online courses. I mean, we've all bought an online course. How many of us have completed that online course is another question, I guess. Where this when I say software now and what I think is the opportunity for creators is building web and native mobile apps that provide specific features of their pieces of functionality to solve a user's problem.

Miles: 03:13

And that is like a very, very broad scope of what software means. I think lot

Ant: 03:19

of aren't doing it. I think you just explained that.

Miles: 03:23

So, yeah. And I think that is we all know what software is because we use it every day. But it is such a broad definition that and and this is something that I think is kind of a problematic aspect of the discourse right now where it's like, you could just go build an app. It's like, well, yeah, anybody can go build an app. Can you build the right app to put in front of your audience to turn them into customers and not make you look like a total idiot is a much harder thing to do.

Miles: 03:56

And we've all had good app ideas, and then we've sat with them for ten minutes and realized it's either not a good idea or it already exists or it has, like, one fatal flaw that we can't overcome. And I think that's where a lot of creators get stuck.

Ant: 04:08

I I think the other one is I don't know how how to do that. Even today, it's like, Oh, I could just put it in ChatGPT, Claw, Gemini, whatever. Know, pick your AI. Even then, they could tell you or could build it. But it's like, What am I doing?

Ant: 04:23

How the hell do I even do this? Think that's a big gap.

Miles: 04:26

Yeah. I think that narrative is sexy in a post and is, like, borderline deceitful in reality. Like, you can do that, But if there have been consumer success stories of people doing that, I have not seen any of them. We have 35 software engineers working with us. And I have seen what these tools have done to a senior software engineer in terms of, you know, empowering them to really produce work at, like, a whole different level.

Miles: 05:04

I'm probably one of the most nontechnical but software aware people. And, like, all of my attempts to vibe code stuff have produced things that I wouldn't be comfortable selling to an audience of millions of people because the the risk there is so much higher. Not to mention that, like, you sure, you could sit down and do this over the course of several weekends. Haven't really met a lot of creators who are like, oh, I have spare weekends to go learn how to vibe code something while running, you know, the eight other arms of my business.

Ant: 05:36

I think the number one challenge creators face when we talk to creators and anyone going through our programs at Change it, it's time. Relationship with time, not enough time. So, yeah, I let's add more to to the Creator's plate. I think it's a good idea. Okay.

Ant: 05:53

You know, if anyone has even remotely looked at, like, gone past those hurdles of, like, what the hell is this thing? I guess it's like a digital something that's worth value to your specific audience, maybe in community. To get past that, I don't even know how to do it, but that's something else. But then even if you've gotten past those things, it's typically been very expensive and very time consuming, like high risk. Obviously, high reward if it if it lands.

Ant: 06:22

Like, we've seen software. Like, we know, we're using, you know, Riverside to record, which is, like, great podcast software or, you know, like all these other amazing tools and apps and everything else. But if it doesn't work, you're in the hole both time and money. Like, I assume that's been a big barrier as well.

Miles: 06:40

Definitely. So and and I think this is this is why the last twenty years of venture backed software exists because, like, software was really expensive to make, and so you needed a lot

Ant: 06:53

of capital to do it.

Miles: 06:55

At the same time, that meant you had to have quite exponential outcomes for this whole model to be worth it. And so I think as that math starts to change on different levels, it's really interesting for creators because you don't need to spend $15.10, $20,000,000 to build this kind of consumer grade app. You can do it for a few $100,000, which means you don't need to build a $50,000,000 business. And most creators are not going to be able to put a million dollars into building an app. Can you put $200,000 in and make a million dollars?

Miles: 07:34

That math starts to be a lot more feasible. And given you know, if you do have relatively strong conviction in the opportunity there with the product, you know, you don't necessarily have to go and give up a ton of equity in a business. You don't have to go give it rev share in perpetuity. Like, there are creators who could go easily get a loan for a $150 and build something of quality. And then, you know, in a lot of these businesses, it solves the kind of peaky and valleyness of revenue because you can build something that is a subscription model and kind of have that smooth, sustainable cash flow, which is, like, you know, something that pretty much every creator I've ever met is is looking for.

Ant: 08:19

Which is huge. I guess maybe that's what we'd go to. Let's create the case. What is the case for creators to do this? Because there's a lot of diverse revenue opportunities that creators can go after, limited time.

Ant: 08:34

And then there's also the challenge of most creators, their businesses are reliant on continually uploading content to then generate more revenue or the next lump like you mentioned. But what's the case? What's the case for? Why is this like, Miles, you spend so much of your time just beating the drum. Creators, you are sleeping on this, you're missing an opportunity.

Miles: 09:00

Make your case. So the way I have always thought of it is that 95% of creator businesses are advertising companies. They create content. They sell advertising. And usually, they are selling advertising for products that they have no long term upside in.

Miles: 09:24

Increasingly, we've seen these partnerships where you're coming in as an equity partner for something, but you aren't really building enterprise value. Maybe you get a long term deal, but that is not really building enterprise value for you.

Ant: 09:39

And they talked about it bit, but they're rare. Let's be honest, they're one percent less.

Miles: 09:45

Yeah, absolutely. And I think maybe we start to see a bit more of that because brands are starting to become a little wiser to that. But at the same time, the available inventory for those brands is getting larger and larger as more people start creating content. So proportionally, I think it probably stays around the same. I have no data whatsoever to back that up, but that's what my gut says.

Miles: 10:07

Whereas on the software side of things, the problem in these businesses has always been customer acquisition cost. Why software businesses are good is because they're zero marginal cost or close to zero marginal cost. Serving one customer is the same as 1,000, 10,000, a 100,000. And so when you put those two things together, Creator has distribution, has the ability to have a very low customer acquisition cost, and then software businesses have zero marginal cost. And so if you can figure out what is the right product to convert an audience to a customer of a zero marginal cost product at a very low acquisition cost, that's a great business.

Miles: 10:45

So that's the principle of it. The the part of the paradigm to what we're talking about before that has been very difficult is the upfront investment. And as that start number starts to go down, you know, to me, I look at some of these businesses and I'm like, you know, you do $3,000,000 of merch and make a $100. Makes no sense to me. And not that, you know, there's some merch businesses that obviously much, much better than that, especially with different providers who kind of take on a lot of the risk.

Miles: 11:19

But there is such a clear opportunity to me if you can uncover what the right product is to build a business that is something that you are building equity value in, and you can use that advertising power that you have to build long term value in your business rather than kind of transactional brand deals.

Ant: 11:39

Yep. 100%. No. Like, I'm all on board. I'm like, yo, state your case, but I I'm totally on board.

Ant: 11:45

And I I think it, you know, it needs to be driven home. Reminded, most creative businesses are advertising. They're a media buyer for a third party brand, either directly with you as a creator or with a brand integration or where the platforms get most of their revenues, advertising over the top of your content and your reach and influence. Everyone else is already selling to your audience. You just might not be directly capturing that value.

Ant: 12:15

Whereas this is a really interesting opportunity to actually directly you have reached an influence for a very specific audience, you have domain expertise, like specific knowledge that no one else probably has or at level that other people won't have for this niche or vertical or your type of community that is valuable. Then you have a way of building something that's valuable and capturing revenue from that, that is then not lumpy. Like you said, you've got one customer or one user. I still grade against the user. I'm like, It's a user.

Ant: 12:54

I'm like, Ugh, it's a person. It's a human. Come on, man. But anyway

Miles: 12:58

I will say, though, you mentioned domain expertise, and I think that is very true right now. I wonder if that is true going forward as being a kind of requirement for these businesses. Yep. I haven't seen anyone do this, but in my mind, if you are any creator who a software company feels good about advertising with, there kind of is no reason for you not to just go build a version of that software and sell it to your audience yourself. And and that's, like, a little hyperbolic.

Miles: 13:40

And but I think there is some truth in that somewhere because, you know, you have a $100,000 to spend it with you, then it's like, well, could you could you go build in a you know, who's a good example? Caleb Hammer, the financial audit. You know, Caleb Hammer? Yep. Yep.

Miles: 14:02

I think, you know, historically, he had done brand deals with these companies that would be like budgeting apps and and finance apps. Eventually, he was like, it makes no sense for me to show their thing when I can go build my own version of it. I think he's a cautionary tale in some ways because I don't think that launch went that well in some ways. But that's the kind of thinking that makes a lot of sense to me is for the upside that is available to you by building your own thing is a lot different than or is a lot more appealing than selling someone else's.

Ant: 14:37

So the play is if a software company approaches you to advertise their stuff, take their money, and then spend that money on developing your own better version of it.

Miles: 14:51

It is a little Machiavellian, but I think the playbook is actually get the deck, see how much they want to spend, reach out to [e-mail]. We'll have a chat about it, and we'll see if the economics make sense. And then we'll see if we can build our app.

Ant: 15:06

Love it. All right. Problem solved. We're done here. And then obviously AI, right?

Ant: 15:12

You almost feel like, geez, just mentioning it. People are going to stop switching off and being like, Oh, yeah, AI will solve everything. But it's proven that AI and Agentia is most valuable, I think, so far at the moment. Miles, you're more of an expert in this than I am, but around what you guys are doing in software development and coding and things like that versus where creators really sort of skim will crawl and push back is around content creation and AI slot. So bear with us.

Ant: 15:44

This is more like productivity and process and coding AI conversation coming down. That's, I assume, had a really big impact on capability and capacity and dropping the costs in building software.

Miles: 15:58

I would say, and I don't want to get too kind of like deep in the weeds of it, I guess, because I think it all could become kind of meaningless for people pretty quickly. I would say what we have seen and what we are kind of making a bet on as our for our business in the longer term, although I don't even know what the longer term means nowadays. Like, you know, I don't think it is an exaggeration that years from now, will look back in kind of early February and think of, like, pre opus and post opus or pre codex if you're a GPT person. It really did just sort of, like, change how software development happens. And we have like I said, we have 35 software engineers.

Miles: 16:34

Like, I'm just I'm seeing that on a practical basis on a you know, every day. I think two things are happening simultaneously with AI and software development. The first is that making fine stuff, there's basically zero cost to it anymore. And and that's a bit of an exaggeration, but, like, it is very, very easy to get too mediocre for with a software product, which is cool. At the same time, our view is that that is going to make there are going to be a lot more software products.

Miles: 17:17

There are going to be a lot there is gonna be a much lower percentage of those software products that are great because there are gonna be there's just tons of shit. And, like, the whole kind of slop narrative, I think, is going to carry forward into software as well. Simultaneously, what is happening is people who are great designers and product designers and software engineers are using these tools to make stuff that is raising the ceiling on what great is. And so, you know, could I go build a mediocre budgeting app in three weekend nights and weekends? Like, probably.

Miles: 18:02

Anyone gonna wanna buy that? I don't think so. But and particularly with creator businesses, I think the the risk you take on is a reputational one whenever you launch something. And so launching mediocre stuff I have never seen a creator who has been enthused with launching a product that they weren't hyper proud of. And so I think the onus is on creators to really be confident what they are producing is not going to alienate their audience and reduce their reputation and trust with their audience because that's also the ultimately, like, engine of the business.

Miles: 18:50

And so you launch a shitty software product, and all of a sudden, this media and advertising business that is the engine of the business starts to dry up and dissipate. And so it has this kind of cascading knock on effect that can be really negative.

Ant: 19:04

Yeah, I love that. Both of us are relatively non technical, you're more technical than me, but it really crystallized for me. Hearing you talk, there will be this and always has been, right? It's mediocre crap, right? With content, products, whatever.

Ant: 19:22

The good creators and the great creators, they make, if we're talking content, they make content that stands up above that, whether there's AI slot or not. And then when it comes to software and products, this translates to anything. AI is just going to enable more crap to be there. But it's then using things like that, like AI to be a tool to actually rise, you just elevate and continue to elevate. Good creators are in an actually phenomenal position to actually take advantage of this insane moment we're living through.

Ant: 20:03

Hopefully, survives. But that's another thing.

Miles: 20:07

The other thing I would say, Ant, is that risk starts to become that you make something because you can, not because you should. And, you know, I think universally beloved MKBHD and and I don't think this is an AI driven product development, but, like, the panels have just, like, made no sense. And I think

Ant: 20:34

We don't need to kick the shit out of him, but I think we should just really quickly because people don't know what that is. A TLDR on that, because I think it's a really good case study that explains what you just the point you're getting to. I'm sorry, cut you off, but like

Miles: 20:46

Yeah. No. No. It's a it's a good call. I mean, MKBHD is like, you know, the preeminent kind of tech reviewer, YouTuber.

Miles: 20:55

I'm I'm sure everybody's kind of familiar with him. He I think it was about a year ago, maybe a little bit more. He launched a consumer app called Panels, which was functionally a free tier and then a freemium, like, paid tier of phone wallpapers, which was something that he was really into, but just makes no sense as a product. I can't remember what the pricing model was, but it was, like, too expensive for foam wallpapers. The first time I saw that, I was like, that's a crazy idea.

Miles: 21:26

And so I think there is you know, there historically, you know, one of the kind of underlying principles of venture backed software is there are a lot more misses than hits. And there are a thousand things outside of the price point that can go wrong with building a software business. And none of those risks really disappear just because you can build something faster and cheaper. And I think a big risk for creators is to assume that because they have an idea that they think is good, it's going to mean it is a successful product. And that type of judgment and pattern recognition and go to market strategy and product design, like, those things don't go away just because you can do it quicker.

Miles: 22:21

And, yeah, like I said before, like, the you know, I think Marquez is really blessed that one, he dealt with it really well as I think he does with a lot of stuff. You know, he was just, like, transparent. He was honest about what he did. He, you know, took really quick steps to kind of respond to the feedback, and it wasn't that damaging to him from a trust standpoint. I don't think a lot of creators would have, one, handled it the same way and two, been given the type of forgiveness and kind of grace that his audience gave him.

Miles: 22:57

So, yeah.

Ant: 22:58

Yeah. And he probably has financial wherewithal to take the hit. Yeah. And then a lot of creators also from an emotional and mental health point of view, there's so much of themselves in what they put out into the world. Like the fear of it not working, it's almost enough to not happen.

Ant: 23:17

So for it to be realized, that would be a hard thing to deal with. Think Marquez did a really good job of probably rationalizing that, and his experience in the tech world probably helped him prepare for that and have seen it before. Okay, well, you know, that's it.

Miles: 23:34

Do think as well, there's this conflation sometimes creators will make between audience and customer, which is just because someone is a member of your audience doesn't mean they are a perfect fit customer for a product you might sell. And I think creators can kind of default sometimes to being like, my audience will buy the thing for me because they are my audience. And so when I talk to our creators, we talk a lot about what is a addressable market of customers within your audience? How much of an audience needs to actually become a customer for this to be a viable business? And is that business, when you sort of chunk it out, worth you trying you know, because the rest of the audience is going to be sold to to a certain extent.

Miles: 24:22

And so if only 5% of your audience is going to become a customer, is it worth telling the other 95% that they should buy your thing that they're probably not going to buy?

Ant: 24:31

Yeah, it's a really good point to be looking at what's your audience versus what's your actual potential customer base. All right. Let's dive into real world practicality. What does this actually look like? And not from a don't do it from just because you can perspective.

Ant: 24:52

But, you know, we were sort of talking just before jumping on, you've got a case study or at least a creator you guys have worked with and it's like from the early stage because it's kind of like I'd love to step through, like, how does this actually work? Like, you know, you're a creator, you've got good traction, you've got an audience, you've got specificity that you of like you are the advertiser. You know, you're running on the advertising model. You might have other revenue streams, but they're lumpy. When do you start?

Ant: 25:23

Like, where does it start? Yeah.

Miles: 25:26

So there can be kind of different entry points to it, I suppose. Some of the signals we will really look at, I guess, is, you know, there is definitely an inverse correlation between audience size and kind of quality of niche, which I don't think is really kind of a a hot take for anyone. But, the more distinct a niche is, the more likely there is a product opportunity there that you can monetize with a smaller audience. So the signals we look for there is, one, certainly sustainable revenue of some sort. It doesn't necessarily have to be advertising.

Miles: 26:11

Some people would have we work with some people who are still full time doing some type of role. We've worked with authors. We've worked with kind of all different people who have different types of revenue streams, but, building a product does inherently have some risk to it. So it's always worth having other money coming in. You know, I you don't wanna bet your house on building a software product.

Miles: 26:40

So typically, where it will start is one of two things. The first is that a creator has begun to loosely develop a product thesis based off of feedback from their office or from their audience, rather. So they have started to pick up comments, DMs, people saying, oh, I wish there was this thing. And they might not. One phrase I love is a term called the adjacent possible.

Miles: 27:11

And so a bird feather started as a spike on a dinosaur. And you never would have looked at the spike and been like, there's a feather here. But there was kind of the initial piece of possibility was back here. And that kind of one piece of insight that leaves, maybe there's a thing here. So sometimes creators will come to us with that.

Miles: 27:33

More often than not, they come and say, I have a really engaged audience. I know I'm in a good niche. I want to do a thing, but I don't know what the thing should be. And that is a really core part of our business is helping to take people through the kind of strategic process of defining what a product could be that they could turn audience into customer with.

Ant: 27:56

Yeah. Nice. And you got an example where you could sort of like take me for a little walk through?

Miles: 28:00

Yeah. So the one I'd love to talk about is a creator named Doctor. Jen Ashton. And so she is, again, kind of great niche. So when I think about great niche, I think about is it a niche where the content serves a transformation of some sort?

Miles: 28:18

If you can kind of I love Ryan Trahan. Ryan Trahan makes me feel stuff when I watch his content. But I've never been on a personal A to B journey that I change as a person in my life with his content. And so shout out to Ryan, also a customer of ours. He's great.

Miles: 28:37

So I look at that transformation. A great niche is usually some type of recurring pain. This is why fitness is such a great category. Everybody wants to be more fit. Even the second you stop being fit, it becomes a pain again.

Miles: 28:51

It's just a pain that never really goes away. This is less a little bit about the niche, but it can be kind of related to the niche or to the creator is an emotional connection, emotional investment. Fitness, again, is a great thing because, like, it is a reflection of my own self worth, how good I feel about myself. Willingness to pay is something we think about a lot. So it you know, if your audience are 13 year old boys who are watching entertainment content, like, they don't have any money.

Miles: 29:28

And we've we've learned that one the hard way. And then to a lesser extent is sort of like the opportunity for a kind of natural progression of products. Could you sell more than one product in that kind of ladder? And so to kind of go back to Doctor. Jen, she is incredibly certified.

Miles: 29:47

She's a double board certified physician. She's an OBGYN. She's a board certified master's in nutrition. I hope I'm saying these certifications right. And she had been on American television program as a chief medical correspondent for many years.

Miles: 30:04

She's a practicing physician still. But she had as she was starting to think about her transition from traditional media, she had started to build her own following on Instagram and had been very successful in doing so. So when she had started to build that, she very, very intelligently, shortly after crossing probably 200, maybe 300,000 followers, launched her weekly newsletter called Agenda, Doctor. Jen Agenda, and was a weekly newsletter with women's health and fitness advice from an incredibly certified physician. And so, you know, again, one thing I'll often advise creators is like, don't throw all of your eggs in one basket.

Miles: 30:51

She did that for about a year, maybe a bit more before she left her role. And so she had kind of, like, built up these other two properties before she ever really thought about launching a product. And by the time she had come to us, she had this kind of very vibrant, very engaged community on Instagram. And she had this rapidly growing newsletter property as this kind of owned audience that she knew she could springboard something from, but she didn't really know what that thing should be. And so we were originally connected to Jen because she had seen a product we launched with a Creator named Doctor.

Miles: 31:31

Becky, who's a parenting creator. And so I think she took some inspiration in that, and then we kind of met and then kicked off the process of sort of going through some product strategy of what her product might be.

Ant: 31:43

Awesome. How before we, like, kick on, how important is that, like, email list, like, in that nonalgorithmic audience?

Miles: 31:51

I mean, nonnegotiable is the word I would use. I I mean, I it is the most effective channel to sell at the end. You know, we were talking beforehand about the the problem of, what if only 5% of your audience is wanting to buy this thing? If you are putting a bunch of content on your social platforms that only sell that 5%, it's not gonna go very well for you. You can take that 5% and put them into an email list.

Miles: 32:21

It is a permission based environment where people are much more comfortable being sold to, and there's an expectation there. And so, basically, every launch strategy we have ever been a part of or facilitated, Email is you know, probably makes up 70% of the product sales. Like, it is a massively effective tool. And I, you know, I think the what's the Ally Adult thing? Like, the best time to start a YouTube channel was five years ago.

Miles: 32:53

The second best time is now. This is the exact same thing with an email list. Even if you don't feel ready, you're not sure what it is, like, just start doing it and, you know, start figuring out what you wanna talk about. Test stuff. Yes.

Miles: 33:06

Nonnegotiable, I guess, to compare to my original.

Ant: 33:08

Love it. I mean, a leading question because, you know, that's that's the answer that we know and collectively you and I, and hopefully everyone else does, but want to bang that drum long and hard, and just pause on that moment to drive it home and everyone will get sick of me saying it. It's like all the other content provides the opportunity and connection and it's wonderful. This is not about this or that. But without that, then the leverage opportunities to actually build something that is sustainable and scalable and lasts.

Ant: 33:42

It's just not possible almost. I just wanted to just keep hammering people on the head about that. Don't pause, wait till the episode's finished. Then if you haven't got your email, button down, get into it. And if you

Miles: 33:59

I I think most you know, in my experience where most creators struggle with it is like, do I write about? How is this different than my content? Which is maybe a separate podcast, but

Ant: 34:09

This is a really awesome signal, but it's also concerning. They go, I don't have anything valuable to say. I've got nothing to say. And these are creators for making one long form video a week plus all these amazing short form. They've got communities and memberships and all this.

Ant: 34:24

I've just got nothing to say that's valuable. One, that's bullshit because clearly you do. But two, the creator is then saying to me, is so valuable. It's the most valuable. Anything I put down that channel needs to be valuable.

Ant: 34:44

That's great. Yeah, it is bloody valuable. You're thinking about it in the right way, but don't think of it from a position of fear. Just go, You've got something valuable to say, You are awesome. But keep treating it like it's a great channel.

Ant: 35:01

Yeah. Don't get afraid of it.

Miles: 35:02

I think a lot of people are uncomfortable in writing as well. So many people start creating because they have an affinity for video or they found a talent for video, and it's just such a drastically different medium. Like, write our newsletter. I went to university for way too long studying English literature, so I'm much more comfortable in that format. Whereas, you put me in front of the camera and I'm way less comfortable.

Miles: 35:28

But I think people gotta the same way you get over the hump being on video, It just like wraps. You just gotta start writing. You gotta find out what your audience wants to hear from you in that format. And your fiftieth newsletter is gonna be a lot better than your first.

Ant: 35:46

100%. All right. We've gone down that side road. Let's come back to the mainstream. If we're looking at Doctor.

Ant: 35:53

Jen then still, think that's probably where most creators are going to be. And I think that's okay. I think that's kind of right. You don't need to know the solution. But what did you guys do to We don't have to go into the complete methodology, but how do you even then figure out what the thing should be then?

Miles: 36:10

Yeah. So I'm happy to kind of go into the methodology we use for And it's a little bit different for every customer. So we had a hypothesis that there was a kind of membership product of some sort. Jen wanted to build something that was able to provide recurring value over a longer period of time. She knew that she had her kind of depth of expertise.

Miles: 36:36

We had these different subject areas where she was an authority to speak to. And so she had some kind of initial hypotheses as well as things her audience might want from her. And so we basically mapped out all of

Ant: 36:51

the

Miles: 36:51

possibilities of what are features that could exist in a product like this. So we might say, you know, it could have courses within it. It could have live AMAs with Jen. It could have live conversations with her and other experts around specific subjects. This was a year and a half ago, but we were like, it could have an AI gen.

Miles: 37:13

It could have fitness plans. It could have meal plan. You know, I think we had 26 kind of different possibilities of what this could be like. And I think where some creators start to get in trouble is they say, okay. Here's a list of things that could be I might go ask my audience.

Miles: 37:27

Says, do you want fitness plans for me? Fitness plans is inherently like a meaningless like, what is a fitness plan? Does it include you know, people are quite humans are bad at responding to conceptual questions with concrete feedback. And so one thing that we really like doing is building what we call feature vignettes. And so they are screens of what a app or website might look like that illustrates kind of what a product or what a feature of a product could be.

Miles: 37:59

And it's much more concrete for people. So when we say symptom tracker, you can see of like, hey, if I open my phone, this is what a symptom tracker could look like. And then we again, this is a great reason to have an email list. Gives us access to people who are invested in Gen. We could then survey those people to get feedback on what those different features look like.

Miles: 38:20

So we started to really get a sense of kind of what the things that people what are the things that people would want to use within Jen's audience. And you can start to get a sense of which of those are really hard to build versus which are the ones that people really wanted and start to map out what are the ones that are gonna be the highest impact and the lowest cost to build out an MVP. At the same time, while we were doing this, we had a lot of, you know, conviction around Jen being able to talk about menopause and women's health and nutrition certainly. But what was kind of the accidental insight as we were going through this process is she started doing a six month long kind of wellness experiment with her trainer, a guy named Corey Rowe, and documenting the whole thing on her Instagram. And she was kind of live talking about what she was eating and why she was eating it and what her fitness routines were, it but was very kind of unstructured and fluid on her Instagram.

Miles: 39:21

But people were like, I want to do this thing. And so, you know, after when 10 people say that, you're like, oh, that's kind of interesting. When thousands of people are saying it, there's certainly insight that should drive some type of action there. And so we were able to work with Jen to take the content of that program, apply it to the feature set that we had defined in the surveying and and product strategy work we've done, and then launch an MVP version of that product just about fourteen months ago. So we launched it in kind of February 2025.

Miles: 40:02

And again, something I would advocate for lots of creators is we moved quite quickly there. We launched an MVP, which was a Webflow site with a we built it all on Circle. And so use off the shelf tooling, use what we could out of the box to kind of get something into market. There's also because it was a fitness wellness program, we wanted to launch it in relative proximity to the new year. And launched that almost entirely off the back of Jen's email list.

Miles: 40:33

We I think she maybe did two or three social posts about it, but was really just sort of to the list. And we had, in about three and a half months, we had 8,500 people sign up, did over a million dollars of sales. And, you that's for an MVP version and then immediately started collecting feedback for this kind of broader, more holistic product vision. Wow. Man, there's a

Ant: 41:02

few things I wanna unpack there, but let's start with the lightest thing you said. Like, 8,500 people in a couple of months and about a million bucks in revenue. What sort of email list number are we talking here? Like, what is broadly?

Miles: 41:17

Yeah. So we actually ended up segmenting quite I mean, I guess when we launched, it was probably she had a really good conversion from her social audience to her email. The email is also just, like, so valuable and so good. So, you know, she's probably north of 200,000 now. I think it was around just over a 100,000 when we launched, but we had segmented out that email list to a specific wait list for this product launch converted the the wait list at something insane, like 70% of people on the waitlist converted to the product.

Miles: 41:52

But it was also the most successful creators we have worked with may not understand the nuances of developing product, but they know exactly who their audience and who their customer are and empathize with them in ways that provide very valuable strategic input. One of the things that Jen was adamant about is that this was going to be less than a dollar a day. She wanted it to be incredibly accessible to her audience, and so the kind of eight week version of it that we launched with $59. And that led to this kind of, like, massive conversion of that wait list because it was so accessible.

Ant: 42:40

Yeah. I love that. No. Like, was gonna ask you, like, you know, like, in all of this, there's a bunch of special specialisation that's been brought to the table. It's kind of like, what can the creator focus on?

Ant: 42:52

Where can they add the most value? It's kind of like that, right? Know that what insights can you give to a partner or to the project that you have about your audience and sort of protect that and put your flag on the ground. The other one was, like, how do you know if it's a good idea before launch? Are you still launching with a bit of uncertainty?

Ant: 43:19

Or is it the signals are there? Like, how do you

Miles: 43:22

Yeah. I mean, you're never fully certain. And I think, like, you can de risk it in a number of meaningful ways, but you're never gonna de risk it entirely. So, you know, certainly the more you know, we launched a a course with a creator named Adrian Perez, OMG Adrian on Instagram. And I think earlier I said that the course paradigm is kind of dying unless it's a very kind of he teaches cinematic filmmaking for social.

Miles: 43:56

And it's like, you've definitely seen his stuff on Instagram. It's stunning. And he it's a very clear transformative journey. So you can take this course over the course of a weekend, and you will learn the principles of cinematic filmmaking, and your content will be better. And there was signal in his audience that people were like, I want you to make a course to teach me how to do this thing.

Miles: 44:20

And so that's always a very strong signal. That being said, people love saying that. Then this the lever becomes how much are people gonna pay for it? And nailing that can be really risky. You know, Jen had that insight that she wanted it to be under a dollar a day, but we usually recommend quite strongly that we do some type of, like, pricing, survey and synthesis, to get a sense of kind of what is that price point that's going to be acceptable for the largest portion of customers.

Miles: 44:54

Shout out to the Van Westendorp pricing mechanism. People wanna Google that one. That's the best one. The Van Westendorp.

Ant: 45:02

Okay. Love it. Sounds super nerdy, but probably really useful. And it probably makes you a better consumer as well. You understand what's what levers are being pulled for you too.

Ant: 45:11

There's a double win for you here. And then the other really interesting thing you pulled out was you guys built on existing tools and platforms, Webflow, Circle, existing stuff that everyone has access to as well rather than custom making all this stuff. That accessibility is there for people regardless of the process they take to do this, right? Even though we sort of correct the other thing, you can't barcode something that's going to be exceptional or worth selling, but you can probably create product or essentially an experience for your audience using existing tools.

Miles: 45:53

Yeah. And, you know, what we will see oftentimes, whether it is in a project that we've kind of been there zero to one and then, you know, one to two, like we're doing with Jen, or sometimes people will come to us and say, know, I've launched a very successful business on x platform, but I can't do this thing, that thing, and this other thing that my audience really wants. And that's when it makes sense, or my customers really want, and that's when it makes sense to start to build custom. Know, we've been talking to someone who has a very successful product on Circle, but they wanna build they do a lot of it's, meditation content, and they wanna build custom meditation timers. And it's like, you just can't do that in a SaaS existing SaaS solution.

Miles: 46:38

And when thousands of your customers are asking for it, probably worth building.

Ant: 46:42

Anything that's really stood out for you with that journey with Jen, anything that just keeps striking home is like it surprised me that this worked or it surprised me that something failed or didn't land. Is there anything in there that maybe we can extrapolate it out as a learning?

Miles: 47:00

I mean, there's certainly a lot of high fives. Think the thing that some creators will underestimate, and this is kind of like a champagne problem, I suppose. You know, we we were we were pretty confident it was gonna be successful when we launched it. I didn't think there was gonna be 8,500 customers in three months. And when someone leaves a YouTube comment, there is an exchange of value there that doesn't really require you to service that person's comment.

Miles: 47:35

You know, it's a free medium. They watch ads. They get the content for free. When someone has paid you money and then they leave you a customer support ticket, you are obligated to get back to them. And all of a sudden, you have 8,500 customers.

Miles: 47:48

There's like an operational lift to running that that is, I think, blindsides a lot of creators, which again is a good problem to have. But it starts to build it starts to require an operational infrastructure that I think most people don't anticipate to begin with.

Ant: 48:05

That's a really good point. And it's not something to be afraid of the success, but yeah, it's good to flag that if this lands, you have to service it. But it's a good prop to have. Right? Like, that's the Yeah.

Miles: 48:18

And and the other thing I would think is, you know, depending on what the product is, obviously, but if it is a product that requires ongoing content, you have potentially just created, an additional like, you basically started a new channel, which I think some people don't think through all the way. But, again, if, you know, if you get to that point, it can be a good problem, but it also, you know, requires infrastructure to be able to kind of feed. It's a separate beast you're feeding in addition to the one that you're already feeding.

Ant: 48:51

Yeah. I mean, personally, I wouldn't advocate to, like, stress too much about that as you go, flag it and then address it when that problem comes. But I don't know if you have a take on that. Find we get over analysis paralysis. We won't act until all of those things are sorted because they're unknown and they're new, right?

Ant: 49:13

Whereas, hey, if that comes, we'll have money coming in, we'll have customers.

Miles: 49:18

Yeah, is a problem, but it's a great problem to have. And if you know, I agree. If you if you don't launch something because you think you are gonna need to get a customer support person down the road, you're never gonna get that customer support person.

Ant: 49:32

You gotta be so successful with your launch. You're gonna need all these things, but you won't launch it until you have all those things. Yeah, we'll get around the circles. So I don't want anyone doing that. Don't want to make that point.

Ant: 49:42

Okay, let's so like to wrap it all up, like what do you know, what's the opportunity right now for Creators? Like what are we seeing? What's the tangible thing they can be thinking about doing? Yeah.

Miles: 49:58

Again, to kind of bang the own drum, I do think that creators are not thinking about this as a viable option. Most creators aren't. Where if they are, they are thinking about it as the kind of sixth option down the road. You know, I think I say all the time that our biggest competitor is either apathy or YouTube. Because it's not that people don't wanna do this stuff, it's that if you are running a YouTube channel, you are just busy.

Miles: 50:31

It is all consuming to a certain degree. And so I think what I would advocate for people to do is find other people, whether it's people like us or whether it's other creators or it's people in their lives who they know who have launched technology businesses and talk to them about what goes into it. Dedicate some time to think through what it could look like for you and your audience and take it seriously as an opportunity because it is not an exaggeration that it is the best time in human history to try to do one of these businesses, but it does not mean that you are equipped to do it by yourself. And my view is that you're kind of setting yourself up for failure if you think you're gonna build a million dollar software company by vibe coding it on the weekend. And you'll waste your weekend.

Ant: 51:23

Go enjoy your weekends. Start thinking about this properly and find others who have skills and capability to help you get there.

Miles: 51:36

And I think there used to be this kind of aversion in the creator economy to getting help in different areas. The same way that you would be like, I need editing help, it is a reasonable thing to be like, I probably need a designer and a software developer to build this product. And there's a level of discomfort there because there's a lack of familiarity with the process, whereas most people are kind of more familiar with the editing process, so it feels more comfortable to offboard. And and there's a lot of misinformation, not only in an AI thing, but, like, you know, some people be like, oh, yeah. You can build an app for $10,000.

Miles: 52:13

Like, I haven't seen any good ones. And Like probably shouldn't. Like Yeah. And I think most people who tell you that you can and should are selling $10,000 apps.

Ant: 52:27

That's a really good point. Awesome. Like like, thank you. It's always great to hang out with you. I think we've definitely moved up software up in the revenue stack hierarchy.

Ant: 52:40

There's never been a better opportunity to do this and the stability and the scale of that revenue shouldn't be ignored. I love it. Thanks, mate.

Miles: 52:50

Thank you so much for having me. Always great

Ant: 52:52

to chat.