From $400 a month to $70k a month - Feat. Andrea Casanova

Andrea Casanova was born in Venezuela, left after her brother was kidnapped, and moved through the Dominican Republic, Panama and Brazil before landing in the US for college. On a student visa she was legally capped at $150 a month, so she hustled: growing League of Legends accounts, walking dogs, shooting photos for bars. She now runs an agency, speaks on creator economy tech, and is building Ginger, a tool that helps creators handle their inbound brand deals.

In this episode, Andrea is open in a way most people aren't about money and the discomfort that comes with it. She started her agency with one client, a psychiatrist who was also a witch, at $400 a month, and inside two years was billing $70,000 a month. We cover why she thinks 67% of brand emails go unanswered and what that costs a mid-tier creator, why she says the missing skill is business etiquette rather than engagement rate, and her split between brand building and cash building as a way to decide what to work on. Plus, what she had to say no to in order to ship Ginger, and what she'd tell a first-time creator walking into Cannes with nothing to offer.

A candid conversation about money, judgement and focus from someone who has built from almost nothing more than once.

Topics covered: money mindset and pricing guilt · building an agency from scratch · unanswered brand deal emails · business etiquette for creators · brand building vs cash building · decision making frameworks · becoming a non-technical tech founder · saying no

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: 00:00

Hey. I'm Fred. And I'm It. And this is Creator Generation. Creator Generation of hype.

Andrea: 00:05

Just give me $400 a month, and I will script your videos. I will edit them, and then I'll publish them. And by the third video, she went mega viral. I'm talking like she could literally quit her psychiatry job and just do that full time. She ended up releasing merch.

Andrea: 00:21

She ended up just becoming like an icon on social media.

Ant: 00:25

Today, I am joined by creator entrepreneur Andrea Casanova. In my ten plus years in the creator economy, Andrea has to be up there as one of the most impressive creators I've been fortunate enough to spend time with. Today, we dive into the mindset and beliefs that have helped Andrea build multiple successful businesses. Create a generation of hype. Andrea Casanova, welcome to Creator Generation.

Andrea: 00:53

I'm so excited to be here, and I'm genuinely so hyped that we were able to connect.

Ant: 00:58

I know. It's it's I'm I'm super stoked. So, Andrea, we met about a year ago. I'd like

Andrea: 01:04

to to doesn't feel like a year ago. It feels like it was this summer for some reason because it's so fresh in my mind.

Ant: 01:10

Well, we, you know, we're always, you know, in in each other's DMs and messaging. Maybe that's why. Right?

Andrea: 01:15

Yeah.

Ant: 01:16

And Andrea is a a a an amazing creator, creator entrepreneur. We met as she was taking part in, our MBA for Creators that we're that I ran in LA, and everyone would know that I think getting the guest to introduce themselves is really, really lazy podcasting, but I'm gonna break that rule because Andrea gives the best introductions about herself and who she is and what she's about, that I could never ever ever get close to writing or telling you. So, Andrea, please.

Andrea: 01:50

Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love that. That's amazing. I wonder which introduction I use at changer when we

Ant: 01:55

Well, I'll I'll give you actually, let's I'll I'll take that. Well, so we we was oh, there's about 25 amazing creators sitting in a room, and we're all introducing each other and getting to know each other. And it was very, you know, sitting down, people casually introducing themselves. And then, like, I think, Andrea, you're one of the last creators, and you're like you stood up at your at at your seat, and then you went, actually, you know what? Hang on.

Ant: 02:17

And then you went to the front of the room, and it was like, bam. And everyone was just like, damn. Andrea's our girl. So that whatever that intro was.

Andrea: 02:26

Oh my gosh. That's amazing. I love that that stood out. I remember that at the same time, I was going through public speaking classes and something that even though I didn't adore that class talk about tea. I didn't adore the public speaking classes I was taking elsewhere.

Andrea: 02:39

I did get one thing out of it, and that was that was try to connect with every single person in the room. And I couldn't do it from where was sitting. So I I went and and stood. So I remember that now. Was you know, some would say that that was a little pick me of me, but I will say that that's, like it's good student behavior.

Andrea: 02:54

So it's what took me far in school, and I'm sure that's what takes me far in life. So I'll do it. But thank you everyone for tuning in. My name is Andrea Casanova, and I am a Creatorpreneur. I am originally from Venezuela.

Andrea: 03:08

I'm an immigrant. And as of the past few years, I'm actually a documented immigrant now. So, hey. We're here. We're doing the thing.

Andrea: 03:17

I've had the pleasure of building in the creator economy as a creator as well as a business owner and now a tech founder. So I've been able to see the brand side, the creator side, the talent side, and and everything in between. And I think that that is what really makes my life as a content creator and as a creator entrepreneur a very full and colorful life just because I've been able to see it from so many different angles and lenses. And I'm a public speaker, and I speak on technology in the creator economy. And I also have a tech tool for creators called Ginger that helps them negotiate inbound deals on their behalf.

Andrea: 03:52

And I was part of the MBA by changer last year, which was a wonderful experience, so just very happy to be here in hindsight.

Ant: 04:01

Amazing. See, that's what I mean. I couldn't have done that. I can't roll my eyes like that either. But, Andrea, you but let's take it back.

Ant: 04:09

So when you moved to The US, right, like, what triggered that?

Andrea: 04:13

So I lived somewhat of a chaotic childhood, and I won't bore you guys with that. But I did move around to many different countries, Dominican Republic, Panama, Brazil, and ended up in The United States here. And that was because well, I was born in Venezuela, first of all. And it was very chaotic. The first time we moved because actually my brother had gotten kidnapped.

Andrea: 04:32

And I say that laughing because every time people, like, hear it, they're like, oh my gosh. But, unfortunately, that was so common in our country. They call it, like, Kidnap Express where it's you know, they take somebody really quick, and you have to pay out some money and whatnot. And we had no money, so we had to, like, figure it out. And it's a long, long story.

Andrea: 04:51

But one day, I just woke up, and my entire house was packed, and my parents were like, we're not putting children through this. Like, we have to leave. It's not safe anymore. And we moved from country to country trying to make their businesses work. They worked in tourism.

Andrea: 05:03

So I was experiencing what it was like entrepreneurship, maybe not perfect entrepreneurship, but I did see the ups and downs pretty quickly as a as a young girl. And it scared me a lot, to be honest. That's why I thought, okay, I'm gonna go to The US, pursue the American dream, and hopefully get a job either at a law firm or a doctor or whatever it takes for me to not live the freelancer slash entrepreneur life because it was very, very chaotic. Funny how life works. Right?

Andrea: 05:30

And so I told my parents, like, can we make the biggest effort to try to send me to college? And they sent me to college with a little bit of savings they had, and it was their last hurrah to, like, try to help me push me into this world. Right? And once I got to The US, they quickly had to withdraw those funds because they got caught up in some debt and whatnot. So when I tell you and I had to, like, figure it out, and it was favors over here.

Andrea: 05:58

Pay me for this little gig on social media. I'll take photos of your of your space and your your bar, your club, and whatnot. Or, hey, could you think that, you know, I could do I could walk your dog. I could do this one thing. Like, through all of those little side hustles, was able to get through college and through very special people that just came in my life at the right time at the right place.

Andrea: 06:17

And eventually ended up in LA for a job interview, but I decided to sell everything in Florida when I was in Florida for school. I was like, let me put everything away, sell it, and go to LA to for this job interview and hope I get it. And it was for a major content creator, the biggest Latin American creator at the time. And I got the job. I scaled her from 3,000,000 to 12,000,000 on YouTube and within ten months.

Andrea: 06:43

And then I was like, you know what? I don't wanna be doing this anymore for other people. I wanna go ahead and see what it's like to work a nine to five somewhere a little bit more stable. I wanna get to know the marketing world, not just the creator world. Because at the time, this was, again, 2016, 2017, 2018.

Andrea: 06:58

It wasn't like creators were even considered something to be in the sense of, like, you were you had to be Kylie Jenner to be considered an influencer back then. Right? So a lot of hustle and a lot of in between in all of this when I was undocumented too. So lots of risks were taken, and eventually, one led one thing led me to another, and I was able to build my own platforms, my own businesses, and here we are.

Ant: 07:22

I think we skipped a few beats, but that's cool. We'll we'll I'm

Andrea: 07:25

back to

Ant: 07:26

them because that seems very simple, and I I fear it was following up. But you tell this story that, like, law kept you, early days when The US that you like, the law kept you at earning a $150.

Andrea: 07:38

Right?

Ant: 07:38

So, like, what did that teach you about money?

Andrea: 07:41

Oh my gosh. So just for context, anybody who's listening, when you come to The US on a US visa, you're not allowed to make money. So, you know, a lot of people allegedly do it under the table getting cash or something like that, but you're capped at a $150, which is absolutely insane. But here's the thing. At that time, especially when you grow up in Dominican Republic with pesos and Venezuela, Bolivar is, you're not really aware of what $20 versus a $150 is.

Andrea: 08:10

To me, anything beyond $5 was huge. And so I was constantly doing these little side hustles and getting paid $20 for work that would take anybody a whole month to execute, yet I was like, oh, I'm at the top of my game. I'm over here. I was also scaling League of Legends accounts when at the time it was, like, the level the top level you could get to was 30. So I was hustling, growing those League of Legends accounts and then selling those for, like, $40, $50 to people who wanted to be at a higher level.

Andrea: 08:39

The amount of psych hustles that I had were kind of insane. But what it taught me is that, you know, in hindsight, I'm so proud of her, and I love that version of myself so much because it taught me that it's all about perspective. And that if to me, I could make a $150 and a little bit more work in my advantage and not let that stop me, not let that be, like not be a victim to my circumstances that that taught me that I could make more. I don't know why. I don't know why it had that ingrained in me because definitely it was something that I saw my parents struggle with a lot.

Andrea: 09:12

But I guess there was something in me that just knew that it was gonna work out anyway. So I think that for me, the main thing that it taught me about money is that it that you could always make it, and that it didn't have to be perfect, and that you didn't have to follow anybody's rules. And I'm glad that I didn't follow anybody's rules, allegedly.

Ant: 09:30

I love that because, yeah, we do have a you know, broadly, we have an unhealthy sort of relationship with, like, making money. I think there's, an unlock. You know? Like, if Right. We think it has to be hard or it has to be we have to provide like, and creators, particularly, we have to provide exponential value before we can get get some get some for ourselves.

Andrea: 09:52

And you know what's so funny is that even to that point, why do we think of it as hard or bad or good or better? Like, why do we assign adjectives to this force that is ultimately neutral? The same amount of money that saves your life in a hospital is the same amount of money that could potentially get you in a really bad situation. So the force itself, the the the concept itself is extremely neutral. It is the story that we tell ourselves in a specific moment of time that gives it its meaning.

Andrea: 10:23

So for me at the time, you're telling me I can make a $150? Dude, heck yeah. It reminds me of in toy in Monsters Inc. Mike Wazowski gets the chance to be in a magazine, but when he sees the magazine, he realized he's covered by the barcode at the bottom. Yet he's so stoked, and everyone around him is like, oh, I'm so sorry, dude.

Andrea: 10:41

But yet he's so stoked. So for me, that meant, oh, okay. If it's a $150, that's just what I got what I gotta do. You know? So that's and that's still how I see it now.

Andrea: 10:52

Like, think that the reason why I've been able to scale my business successfully, it's because I understand that money is simply a byproduct of effort and relationships and storytelling and love for the craft, not necessarily something that I have to perform a transaction with. Does that make sense?

Ant: 11:13

100%. Yeah. No. It's great. I love that story.

Ant: 11:17

Okay. So then you you started your own agency 2020. Right? Correct. And you're char like, I mean, we won't put any adjectives around it.

Ant: 11:26

You're charging $400 a month. You know, this is what my research tells me. I don't think you've told me. And you're, like, kinda doing everything in terms of content for your clients there. Like, I didn't wanna use the adjectives, but but it was only $400 a month.

Ant: 11:43

So, like, what what was going on there? Like

Andrea: 11:46

Yeah. Absolutely. So one of my first clients was actually a witch on TikTok.

Ant: 11:50

Epic.

Andrea: 11:51

I what I would do is that I would go on Upwork, and then I knew that I was gonna have to compete with a lot of people on Upwork because they had more time and more, like, I would say, like, money accumulated on their profiles. You could see how much, like, they've been charging and how many hours they've worked. And I'm like, wow. I'm gonna start from zero. People are gonna think I'm a bot.

Andrea: 12:08

So I'm just gonna go ahead and look through the description and try to find anything that tells me anything about these people, whether that is the name of their product or maybe if I could see the account and just guess what their last name was or whatever. And so I would look them up on social media and then send them a personal message, which it goes against Upwork's rules. So allegedly, I did that. Mhmm. But I remember DM ing this lady who's like, funny enough, she's a psychiatrist, and she's also a witch.

Andrea: 12:38

And she was like, I just want some I wanna go on social media to teach girls. This was at the time when all the love spells were going viral and all of that stuff. She's like, I wanna teach girls the, you know, the the very dark side of all the things that they're doing, and I don't want them to just go at it from this ignorant perspective that they can make someone fall in love with them because it could be dangerous. Like, I wanna go in and teach magic the right way, and I'm like, I could help you do that. Mind you, the only experience that I've had with witchcraft was Harry Potter, Wizards of Waverly Place, and Maya Abuelita, who was a little bit spiritual, but she was, like, still very diehard Catholic.

Andrea: 13:14

So, again, very much like I was like, yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about. I have I've used that before. Again, I have no clue what she was talking about. But I knew how to edit videos, and I knew how to hopefully grow people on social media.

Andrea: 13:26

So I was like, you know what? Just give me $400 a month, and I will script your videos. If you give me the info, I'll script your videos. I will edit them, and then I'll publish them. And by the third video, she went mega viral.

Andrea: 13:38

I'm talking, like, she could literally quit her psychiatry job and just do that full time. She ended up releasing merch. She ended up just becoming, like, an icon on social media. And I still kept her even when I was already making $70,000 a month. I still kept her as a client, and I still did all the work myself.

Andrea: 13:56

I never outsourced it because I just loved her so much until one day I just couldn't do it anymore.

Ant: 14:00

There's a lot to unpack there. I mean, it'd be remiss of me to you should've just picked up the phone, called me. I'm not into, the dark arts, but I I you know, famously, did study witchcraft and demonology at university. So

Andrea: 14:15

That's hilarious.

Ant: 14:16

As a history subject as for if it yeah. It's a callback to many many podcasts ago. It gets dragged up every now and then. So I couldn't

Andrea: 14:25

No way. That's like a weird that's a weird fun fact. I would have never guessed. And also, like, I learned so much about history and Wicca and the origins of every I learned honestly, I learned so much that I can hold myself in a room of dark arts, I guess. Could.

Ant: 14:39

Amazing. Okay. We skip a lot I I love how we went from $400 a month to $70,000 a month. Yep. That's not an insignificant jump.

Andrea: 14:51

Correct. And it didn't happen right away either. Sorry to interrupt you. No. Go.

Andrea: 14:56

I started my agency on 08/19/2020 because that's the day that I quit my last job. And by okay. So the first month, I made $400. The second month, this girl let go of her clients, and one of them was 1,300, and the other one was 1,700. So she told me again, I'm just doing the posting for them and social media growth.

Andrea: 15:15

Can you take them on? So add that up. I'm assuming that's about, like, 3,000 ish or something like that, 2,000 something. Maybe $3,000 a month. As you can guys can tell, math is not my forte to this day.

Andrea: 15:27

But yeah. So I went from making, you know, $400 a month to 3,000 to then getting a phone call in December. And mind you, through all of this journey, I was struggling so much internally because I was like, how am I charging one person $400 and then another person for essentially the same thing even less, perhaps, $2,000? Like, that dissonance was really active in my brain, and it's because, again, in the creator economy, we don't really have. To this day, social media managers don't really have a specific rate.

Andrea: 15:58

There's not like a creators can charge x y z or social media. No. It's all a la carte, it feels. You know? And so I get a phone call in December, and it's my friend, and he's like, hey.

Andrea: 16:10

I know that you're doing the cross country road trip because you're gonna go visit your then boyfriend's family. And you're undocumented, I had to do the cross country road trip seven times. But that being said, in the middle of the Dakotas, he says, hey. I have a DJ. You may know him.

Andrea: 16:25

Do you wanna take him on as a client? And that was DJ Tiesto. And he was like, do you wanna take it all together? You can do strategy. I'll do the production.

Andrea: 16:33

And I'm like, sure. And so as soon as I signed that one client, then I leveraged that name and leveraged another person of, you know, the same place, same status, I would say, and another one and another one and another one. And then it just spread like wildfire. At some point, I had to let go of a lot of clients simply because clients that had bigger budgets and a lesser scope to go over. So but that one, which client I did keep because I loved her.

Andrea: 17:01

She was so sweet. She actually came and blessed my house. But it to this day, it still remains something that I work through because there is that internal guilt of I had to watch my parents work these jobs that were super intense in order to make a fraction of what I was making simply to post for someone else on social media. So yeah.

Ant: 17:19

How how did that feel?

Andrea: 17:21

To this day, it still feels kind of surreal, and I've actually had I've I've taken it to extremes so far. Some days I I in the past years, I'm like, no. I can't keep charging that much. It doesn't feel good, integrity wise. It doesn't feel good.

Andrea: 17:34

Like, $50,000 to just sit with a brand and strategize for them, that's bizarre. Like, why are we doing this? It's not okay. Like, it's not okay. Right?

Andrea: 17:43

I I attach a moral, I guess, perspective on it versus there are other days in which I find myself using the, well, they're not paying me enough, so I don't wanna go above and beyond on here. And so I go back and forth with what what really is money in this industry? Where can we how can I feel comfortable with making more money with less, quote, unquote, effort? Because realistically, a brand's not paying me to sit there for an hour. They're paying me because I can do it in an hour versus somebody else that would take them, again, ten years to learn what I've learned.

Andrea: 18:18

Right? So it has been a a conflicting issue that I know I'm not the only one struggling with this. I talk about this with my friends all the time. Every time they get a brand partnerships or a strategy client, they struggle with the exact same thing.

Ant: 18:31

100%. What made you then turn the camera on yourself?

Andrea: 18:36

So when I left my job, I had already surpassed 10,000 followers on TikTok giving marketing tips. So, actually, I did the inverse thing. I didn't necessarily start a business before content creation. I started the business because content creation took off, people were like, hey. Can you actually do this for me instead of just giving out those tips on social media?

Andrea: 18:57

So what made me turn the camera on myself was, a, I recognized that that's just where we were gonna go. I had TikTok where one was one of my clients. I skipped over that. But when I the last job that I worked was at an agency called Sapphire, and they're TikTok number ones advertising agency. They just got acquired.

Andrea: 19:14

And I was in charge of a lot of their acquisition user acquisition efforts back in 2019, so this was pre COVID. And what was so interesting is as soon as COVID hit, I kept telling I remember I launched a podcast episode on January 1 being, like, why TikTok's the next big thing? And everybody in their comments was, oh, cool. That platform where everybody's just dancing and does banana bread. Like, sure.

Andrea: 19:37

That's gonna take off for businesses. And I kept getting clowned for that, but lo and behold, we were right. And I was like, you know what? I know that this is where it's gonna go. I don't know what my angle is yet, but I'm gonna I'm sure that I'll figure it out.

Andrea: 19:51

And then that's when I realized that I didn't have to just make lifestyle video like other creators were making. And so I branded myself LatinaPreneur so that my friends couldn't find me, and I just started making little entrepreneurship tips. Mind you, I was not an entrepreneur yet. So but I was entrepreneurial. And then a few months after that's when I left my job.

Andrea: 20:10

And, yeah, I just I just knew that that's where you were heading.

Ant: 20:13

Across you know, we we skip around a little bit, but across your whole journey, you know, in these formative years, but even now, there's a whole bunch of things that you've never done before, and you just go do them. Right? Like, what gives you the confidence that you can go do them and succeed in them?

Andrea: 20:33

It's not confidence. I wish it was. It's faith. And I think that that is why I get to do it. Because if it was confidence, that would mean that I had to rely on myself to do it.

Andrea: 20:46

But when it's faith is whether I do it or I get the right resources to hire somebody who can who can do it or I meet the right person to teach me. That is faith in my opinion. So I wouldn't say it's necessarily, like, confident in my skills as much as it is in the confidence of me knowing that I could figure it out anyway, and that's something that I've always been exposed to. I remember when when I was in school, my parents didn't really have the time because they were entrepreneurs and or the money to hire, like, a private chauffeur, right, to take me to school, and then the bus was way too much. Believe it or not, the bus cost more than if you were to just take a taxi to school and whatnot.

Andrea: 21:26

Because it was like a private school and all of that stuff. And, I also lived really, really far away from the school because that's where we could afford it. And so I remember my dad met this like random taxi driver that had kids, and he's like, hey, if I pay you x amount a month, could you take my kid to school and back and make sure she's safe and he was like, he became like a little grandpa for me. And so I was exposed to this idea that you may not have exactly what those people in the 1% have, but you can have your own version of that. And so I applied that same mentality to everything I do.

Andrea: 21:56

Do I have the same resources as Whaler Group does? Absolutely not. But do I have access to creators who are great strategists? Sure. I can put a team together to execute a campaign.

Andrea: 22:07

And perhaps even better because we're in it. We're chronically online. Right? So I think I'm just extremely resourceful, and I'm also I have a lot of faith in God and in my ancestors. I know that they're, like, walking with me every step of the way.

Ant: 22:19

Yeah. So you have this immense belief then, like, that

Andrea: 22:22

Yeah.

Ant: 22:23

Powers you. Right? You know? Do you question that ever?

Andrea: 22:28

All the time. All the time. I question my confidence. I question my ability. I question my judgment, which I would say it's, like, the hardest one to deal with.

Andrea: 22:36

Because when you, you know, when you question your abilities, you can always work on them. But what if your judgment's not right? What if the business partner that you started working with is not? Okay. What if your discernment is not in alignment with the rest of your court?

Andrea: 22:48

That is where I feel like that that's the most dangerous place you can be in. So if you are listening and you're anything else in your life can be out of place, but make sure that your judgment is as aligned to your values, purpose, etcetera. I do question it. I I question it every single day. Even this big move that I'm doing it to New York.

Andrea: 23:08

I've been in LA for nine years now, and I decided to just sell every single thing that I own and just move to New York because I saw more momentum there business wise. I kept getting invited to so many events, so many brands wanna hire me to do on-site consult stuff there. And also the lifestyle that I really adore, which is a moving fast paced lifestyle is there. So I've been feeling like it's just calling me, and and and I question that calling sometimes. Right?

Andrea: 23:34

Because why would I leave a place that's so good in pursuit of something great? What if I don't get it? But I also have to understand that everything most things, I would say 99% of life is a two way door. And the same way that we can cross the way, we can also come back. You could always start over.

Andrea: 23:49

And so I believe in that in the two way door theory. The only time you can't do that is when you die. And, sure, it can get difficult with certain factors if you have kids, if you have a mortgage, and whatnot, but even then, it's figureoutable. So why the fuck not?

Ant: 24:04

Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Is this a a one way door or a two way door is is a really great decision making framework? And, yeah, like you said, can you walk back through that door?

Ant: 24:14

Can you undo that decision or not? Tell me about Ginger.

Andrea: 24:19

Yeah. Absolutely. So Ginger is what I call the superhuman email tool for creators. So it doesn't just help them negotiate deals with AI writing, but also what I love about it the most and what I personally use it for the most is to organize my chaotic brain in my email. So I'm very ADHD, literally medicated.

Andrea: 24:41

If I if I feel off in the call and going in different directions because it's wearing off today. But that being said, what I love the most is that I'm able to access my email, and Ginger tags everything. It tags my partnerships, it and tells me what type of partnership it is. It gives me a summary of the partnership or the event or the PR gifting or whatever. And then it tells me exactly what they're looking for and if it's in alignment with me.

Andrea: 25:05

And so as a Creator Panora who's really busy and who gets a lot of inbound that sometimes is not really qualified because out of all the 90% of the inbound that I get is not really something that I would pursue, it saves me a lot of time and energy. Like, I I don't miss emails as often as I used to, and therefore, don't miss out on opportunities. And even though I'm still represented by a management, I we both use the tool to make sure that everything is like, nothing's falling through the cracks. So, yeah, eventually, I don't want it to just be an email tool. Hopefully, this is something that we can roll out to different forms of Creatorpreneurs, consultants, public speakers, freelancers, writers, photographers, and and have their own set of categories.

Andrea: 25:45

But, yeah, it's been really fun building it considering I know nothing about tech. So but, again, one of those moments where I committed and figured it out.

Ant: 25:53

Which I which I love, and and, you know, I reckon, it's a whole another podcast is the build of Ginger, and you as a nontechnical founder of a of a of a tech product. It's it's bloody brilliant. But with Ginger, you say that there's 67% or so of, like, brand deal emails going unanswered, in creator inboxes. Why aren't creators responding?

Andrea: 26:18

For a variety of reasons, would say, creators are not responding because either they don't have the business etiquette that other people have been able to amass or buy or hire or outsource. Right? So and when what I mean by business etiquette is communication skills. Can you answer an email without it being, hey. Sure.

Andrea: 26:40

I charge $70 for this. Do you actually take the time to do research and as to what the company is offering and what you should be charging? Do you have the ability to keep up a relationship and a conversation with somebody understanding that the check may be small right now, but it could be bigger in the future if you choose to nurture that a little bit more? So what happens to a lot of creators, myself included, is that we fall into these worlds, and we're left with a lot a big audience. But what happens to the formative amount of knowledge in years that normally you would get if you were part of an accelerator or if you were part of, like, a if you went to school for business, which, I think that you should just be an entrepreneur and learn more that way.

Andrea: 27:18

But if or if you had mentors. And I think that a lot of creators just don't ask because they don't they're not aware that that is a pitfall in the first place. They think that the reason that they're not getting the deal is because of their engagement or because their content sucks or because they are just not represented by the big companies. But in reality, what's happening is there is a disconnect between who they are and who they have to be in a room with other business owners. So that is the the gap that I'm hoping to fulfill with Ginger.

Andrea: 27:47

And with a lot of content and education, that's why I haven't necessarily completely pivoted my personal brand to just be a tech founder because I really do feel like a lot of it a lot of my goal is here, and and the purpose is to democratize that type of information as someone who does get access to these rooms. So yeah.

Ant: 28:04

And part of those deals not being answered, I I think I read somewhere that you said for a mid tier creator, there's on average about $5,000 of brand deals getting left on the table a month.

Andrea: 28:15

Yeah. Not just brand deals, but also, like, UGC deals that don't have to be out into the world. It could just be for internal purposes for a company or for ads or for public speaking. Like, a lot of creators don't even know that they can do that. They can sit in canned lines, so they can sit in at in VidCon.

Andrea: 28:30

And even if they don't have all these other accolades that c suite executives have. Right? They're not aware of that, and so a lot of that just goes unanswered. And, also, they're chaotic brains. They're creatives.

Andrea: 28:42

You know? There's a reason why they are they have a zone of genius, and that's not necessarily sitting down and doing admin work. So

Ant: 28:49

Do you think we expect too much of creators?

Andrea: 28:52

Absolutely. I think people expect too much of anybody who has an audience. And there's this argument on social media constantly of, like, once you have an audience, you have a responsibility to be a decent human being. But I don't see it that way. That's my hot take of the day, would say.

Andrea: 29:07

Like, I don't I don't think so. Because the reality is that everybody has their zone of genius, and just because you have a zone of genius does not mean that your values align with that zone of genius. I can be great at pickleball, but what does that have to do with understanding what my privilege is or where where I should be an ally in and whatnot? Like, if there's a disconnect there, and we expect too much of these people who more often than not start from their parents' basement. And then next thing you know, they're in the South Of France with the rest of the biggest brands in the world.

Andrea: 29:38

Right? So we're expecting too much of them. And that, you know, that's why I love that programs like changer have thesecom this is the first time, by the way, as someone who does a lot of guest speaking in other programs, that this is the first time that I was able to experience and also see the practical advice in a program, by the way. Because no everybody in their freaking grandma's teaching growth is teaching how to have a signature series, how to have, like, a great hook and a whatever the fuck. But nobody's teaching these creators what happens to their IP.

Andrea: 30:12

Like, I was mind blown when I when I sat down and one of the guest speakers, Tyler Cho, she came in and she's like, yeah. Do you guys know that for those reaction videos that all these creators are growing and growing up with and they have 10,000,000 subscribers on YouTube, which in my head is like, wow. They're huge among us. They're not even able to exit that channel if they wanted to simply because they have IP that doesn't belong to them. That was the first time, and mind you, I've worked for film studios and went up, but I never put two and two together that even that's a form of IP.

Andrea: 30:38

So, again, the democratization of this information is not as accessible as we think.

Ant: 30:46

And then we expect creators to not only be good creators of content, good corporate citizens, or good citizens of the world, but also good at negotiating deals, good at

Andrea: 30:57

coming up

Ant: 30:58

with products, good at thinking of events, good at figuring out how much they should charge, or being comfortable with charging. But and, you know, there's a whole body of work. You know? Ginger is is part of that and and, you know, change it. We're trying to to do our piece as well to to overcome that, and this is not meant to be a big sales piece for changer and ginger.

Ant: 31:22

But, like, so I'll move on. But, like, what is it is there is there a belief that, like, creators have to give up so that they can actually start acting like a founder and and step up into those into those spaces that the creator economy kinda wants them to?

Andrea: 31:40

Yeah. I think that it's not so much a belief that they need to get rid of as much as it is the ability to recognize that there are people out there that are willing to do good work for a piece of their pie. And I think that creators are not aware of that. They really underestimate their ability to produce fruits for other people. And what I mean by that is it's not just about you paying an editor.

Andrea: 32:12

I'm sure that there are people out there that good assistants, good interns, good potential managers, good publicists that haven't got into the places of the CAAs or the UTAs of the world that could do great work for a creator. If the creator just believed it themselves enough to be like, hey. Listen. I may not have the money right now to hire you, but what if you work with me and you get 20% or 10% of my deal of my next deal and whatnot? Like, I think that they just don't see themselves as resourceful because they don't have the same money that Alex Earl is is, you know, racking up every single month.

Andrea: 32:47

But they do have the viewership. They have the portfolio career itself. That's something that my friend Hannah always says, like portfolio career of, like, having a career that's really, really full of different pieces. Like, I am sure that there are people out there that are willing to invest in you as long as you're still focusing on your zone of genius, and you don't have to do it all. Like, that's also something else.

Andrea: 33:05

Like, in Cannes, I saw this oh my gosh. This year was probably one of the most chaotic conferences that I've ever been to simply because there were a lot of create first time creators there that have never even worked with a brand trying to get access into these rooms. And while I do applaud and I think that that's the right move, they were coming at it from a very old school perspective of networking of, like, so what do you do? What do you and, like, that is that's not how it works. And so I think with a little bit more guidance and whatnot, they can make Cannes work next year for them if it's the right fit.

Andrea: 33:38

So

Ant: 33:38

If you had five minute not five minutes. Let's say, three minutes with one of these newbies who's coming off there and they're, like, you know, desperately trying to network, then they're going about it the wrong way. Which way should they go?

Andrea: 33:53

Be of value. Always offer value. Even if you have $0 in your bank account, you do have the ability to be chronically online. Like, there's a reason why you build an audience, and that is because you understand how social works. And a lot of these executives at companies don't still to this day don't understand how social works.

Andrea: 34:09

So if I was absolutely broke, but I had an audience of some sort or I was great at editing or I was great at posting it or speaking to the camera, I would walk into these rooms, and I would walk up to an executive, and I would literally be like, hey. I don't want any anything from you. Like, I don't want you to pay me. I don't want you to do anything. Like, how can I be of value to you?

Andrea: 34:27

This is all the things that I can do. Is there any way that we can hop on a call? Like, I just want five minutes with you. And then you figure out what you're actually gonna work on and whatnot once you meet up with them, but I think the wrong approach should be to expect to check simply because you've built some form of audience. Because fun fact, everybody has an audience now.

Andrea: 34:43

So run numbers are the smallest thing people care about and brands care about nowadays. So

Ant: 34:50

I love that. I'm gonna have a hard pivot on this one, but that's okay. You know? It's my show. We can do what we want.

Ant: 34:58

I I was reflecting back the other day just thinking about, like, your story with with Ginger and hanging out in the NBA for Creators Together. And correct me if I'm wrong, but we were, like, doing a session and we're working on, like, you know, prioritization and focus and what's the most important thing. You're like, hey. I'm building this thing, Ginger. And then I'm pretty sure you came back the next day and you're like, I've now booked a launch date.

Ant: 35:24

I've got a venue. I've got a vision board for what the event's gonna look like. Like, can you tell me about that? Like, that having that like, go shifting from, I'm building this thing to here's a deadline, and I'm gonna ship this thing.

Andrea: 35:40

Yeah. I think that for me, the biggest thing was understanding what what is the door to the next room that I wanna be in. And I thought that just because I was a creator that I needed to stay doing creator things, keep posting more. That's usually, like, output. We immediately default to output.

Andrea: 35:57

Right? And then sitting down with Tylo and yourself and just putting down together, okay. What is what what does Andrea want in the next three months, six months, a year, five years? Because that was part of the exercise that we did. And I realized that a lot of the world that I wanted to be a part of depended on building in that world in the first place.

Andrea: 36:15

Right? And so I think that for me, talking about it versus actually doing it and doing it publicly is what was the biggest unlock. So now I really live by what is that 20% that really makes the 80% work instead of just because I have more output, it'll work out because, like, there's more chances of that spaghetti will hit the wall and whatnot. So for me, was just getting that clarity, which I got that day. And then I I was able to work towards that a little bit easier because I also gave gave myself an end date.

Andrea: 36:43

And I think that that's important as creatives is to work in a box. Imagine telling someone who's creative, let's say a writer. Right? Give me your best piece tomorrow about anything. They're gonna go insane.

Andrea: 36:53

But if you tell them, give me your best the best piece that you can write about penguins. They're most likely gonna come back with something beautiful or not. Who knows? But most likely, because they were giving a sandbox, they're able to work with that. And for me, the sandbox was that date in particular.

Andrea: 37:07

It made it more real, and I definitely made a lot more progress and leveraged so many other connections simply because of that launch.

Ant: 37:14

I love that. And and it it's for a lot of creators, it it feels like it would be the opposite to put things in it, like constraints, but you you those constraints create the the opportunity for creativity, but it also gives you something distinct you have to deliver by. Yeah. And in doing in doing this and prioritizing Ginger, I what did you have to say no to?

Andrea: 37:40

I had to say no to myself, first of all, to not work on any other project that was gonna be demanding a lot of my time and my energy, which sucked. Let me tell you why. Because those projects could have generated immediate revenue. So I had to focus on the long term pie versus a little piece of pie. And that's exactly what I did.

Andrea: 37:59

But then that ended up with me even getting more revenue because I was able to go on stages and speak about ginger after that launch. I was able to get the chance to be mentored by Seaswood executives in tech that like, the CMO of Microsoft, the CEO of Microsoft AI. Like, it's crazy what just like, mind you, I'm not a multimillion tech founder. Like, this is not a a unicorn yet. Right?

Andrea: 38:25

But for me, it is access to these incredible minds that could help me scale ginger and or help me scale something else in the future. So I did have to say no to a lot of other projects, a lot of other, like, pieces of content as well. I wanted to do a whole series on this one other thing, but it was just gonna be a lot for my audience, so I decided to just, like, hyperfocus on one thing. And most importantly, I I I had to say no to my own my own mindset, I would say, of building in public. Because it's one thing to have a start up on your bio versus oh, no.

Andrea: 38:59

No. On your LinkedIn profile than it is to actually front with it. Right? To go to I made ginger merch this year for Cannes, and I was giving it out for creators, and I had it. I was wearing it myself.

Andrea: 39:09

Like, it's one thing to do that and then get asked six months later what happened or how is it going and have it be in a place where you're proud of or you're not proud of. Like, that idea at the time seemed really hard. And then the more that I'm in it and then the more that I talk to other creators and other founders, I realize how it's all smoke and mirrors and how wherever it really is, like, wherever the stage wherever ginger's at or it's gonna be and whatnot, it's all a work in progress and and just being okay with the fact that it's gonna be a work in progress.

Ant: 39:40

How do you how do you stick with that focus? Right? Like, you commit. Here's Ginger. I'm gonna do this, and then there's all of these other opportunities coming in all the time.

Ant: 39:51

Like, we're talking about the inbox. Right? Like

Andrea: 39:53

Right.

Ant: 39:53

Creative inboxes are full. So, you know, this is your experience is not unique to you. Right? Like, there's opportunities. There's internal drive to create, to do other things.

Ant: 40:04

How do you stick then to the thing that you're committed to that you you know has long term value, but still there's these other imports?

Andrea: 40:13

I think that something that every creator should do is make a little board and divide brand building and cash building. And brand building to me is what is something that may not have a check right now, but it's gonna have the most amount of leverage in two or five years. And cash building is what is something that may not have the greatest relevance in five years, but it will give me it'll it'll pay my rent or it'll pay my rent off for the year, or it'll get me to be able to invest in a studio so I can film x y z. Right? Once you make that list, you're gonna start seeing that some either overlap or completely not aligned at all.

Andrea: 40:51

And to me, it's being able to focus on the ones that overlap as much as I can. So for Ginger in specific, speaking about Ginger on stage is very valuable to me. I acquire users. I get feedback, and, also, I get to speak and make a living out of it. Right?

Andrea: 41:06

So those things can coexist. Building another tech tool and building Ginger, while possible, it might affect a little bit of my credibility. It might affect my focus, and it might therefore affect the impact on the tool. So I've I've I've put a lot of great ideas on the back burner simply because I wanna make sure that I give this one a x amount of attention. So it depends on what overlaps and what doesn't and also where you're at.

Andrea: 41:33

Because I'm also not gonna tell creators to, like, focus only on the long term. You know, you're gonna be the next Christopher Nolan if you just focus on long term if they can't pay the rent. Right? So I guess it's a it's a healthy medium. Discernment.

Ant: 41:45

100 percent. No. I love that. That's a really great exercise. Do you have, like, a a filter to say no?

Ant: 41:53

Like, do you have a set of rules that just make it easy to say no and yes to?

Andrea: 41:58

Yeah. I mean, the best thing that I've learned in the past almost twenty nine years is I'll get back to you. The power of I'll get back to you, whether you wanna say yes or no to me is the most important thing. Because I think that what happens is we don't take enough time to think about the decisions because we get too excited or we get too turned off by them. So I would say my formula is say, I'll get back to you to everything.

Andrea: 42:24

The second step would be to do that little chart thing of, like, could this help me now? Yes. Yes. Could it also, like, help me in the future? Yes.

Andrea: 42:32

No. Whatever that and and whatever you value, whatever your focus is. And the last one I would say is, does this actually move anything forward for me, or is it just for the accolades? Is it just because my friends are doing it or the creators are doing it that I think that I have to do it? I think that that one's, like, a really important one because a lot of creators again, so many of them invested so much money in Cannon got nothing out of it.

Andrea: 42:56

Others, I know friends who literally stayed in a yacht because they couldn't find anything else. The yacht didn't have AC or bathroom, but yet they got so much out of it because they were at the right stage and at the right at the right stage in their creator journeys to be able to do that. So it's understanding whether that fits with you in that specific stage that you're in.

Ant: 43:15

I know some of those young guys. There's good good content came out of that too. Yeah. But I I I wholeheartedly agree there's a lot of creators who do things because they see other creators doing them. Whether that's I mean, the content coming out of Cannes was great FOMO content, but it it's for everything, like merch.

Ant: 43:34

It's for, you know, certain thumbnails on a YouTube video, you know, it's

Andrea: 43:39

Even channels. Like, know people who could be crushing it at a specific channel if they just devoted their whole attention, but then they wanna launch a YouTube because that one other person just sold their channel for a 100,000,000, so they wanna go do that instead of seeing the value of this. So, yeah.

Ant: 43:51

So having that decision making framework where when there are, like, infinite opportunities for every creator, really, is is incredibly important. Okay. A couple of quick hot ones to to close it out. Which founder do you find most inspiring?

Andrea: 44:09

Okay. Shameless plug. My best friend, Sarah Pearl at Hot Hype Priestess, she's my bestie, and we've been through like, the past two years, her and I have been facing some, like, challenges in our personal lives, and we've been each other's rock. And to be able to see her go from literally a year ago, she was still in LA. She probably moved, like, a week from now to New York.

Andrea: 44:31

She started over from scratch and decided to launch her manifestation app and has scaled it, two to three hundred k a month. She's incredible, and I saw her build the wireframe for her manifestation app on a piece of paper. And then now that being out into the world and her having multiple accounts that she posts on six times a day. I'm telling you this girl is I don't know how she does it. And she still has time for a boyfriend.

Andrea: 44:57

She still has time to go out. Like, I am telling you, like, this is she's an ADHD at heart, and it works for her. And I love her so much, and I'm so proud of her. So she's definitely been someone I've I've looked up to. My other close friend as well, Laura Costa, she has a tool called Cleo that helps you grow on LinkedIn.

Andrea: 45:16

And seeing her out as well building in tech coming from, you know, teaching people how to grow on LinkedIn to now building a tool to help them build on LinkedIn has also been super inspiring. So just two incredible women doing incredible things.

Ant: 45:30

Love that. Okay. Which creator inspires you the most?

Andrea: 45:34

Oh, that's a good one. Let's see. Dang it. You know, that's a really great question because I don't like to consume a lot of content simply because I would fall into a comparison trap. So I don't I'm not a consumer anymore as much as I used to be.

Andrea: 45:56

But my friend Amada, she's a she used to work she was a founding member at Superpower, and now she, you she left Superpower and now is doing her own thing again. And she built an account. Like, launched a new account January 2 and has built it to 70,000 followers in such a short amount of time and making content in Spanish for Latinas. And I just really love how even though she's building also in tech has back to back days with investor meetings. She's posting multiple times a day.

Andrea: 46:26

That's so inspiring to me. My friend, Laina Booth, as well, she just quit Stand for Creators and is going all in on her full time content creation. And I she's doing this series of doing every single day something that scares her. So she started literally, like, a few days ago. And the first day, she was supposed to, like, slide in Airbnb DMs and hopefully get a partnership out of that so she could go to the desert.

Andrea: 46:51

And she landed it. Just literally by doing things that scare her every single day, that's her series. And I love that. I find that so inspiring. So yeah.

Ant: 47:01

You know, we couldn't have planned this better because my third question of my my final closing three is, actually, what's the scariest thing you've ever done?

Andrea: 47:10

Oh, scariest thing I've ever done? I don't know. I don't know if anything has ever been really that scary. Like, sure, immigrating immigrating here was really hard in, like, facing immigration and all that stuff and, like, the legal battles and getting scammed and stuff by lawyers was definitely a little hard. Honestly, I will say, like, what's besides skydiving, probably the scariest thing has been to know that my parents are getting older and building in a different country.

Andrea: 47:41

I think that's a guilt that a lot of entrepreneurs who move away in the pursuit of something else, somewhere else, face very often, and my dad became disabled about two years ago. And when that was happening, I thought I was gonna lose him, and I didn't have my green card at the time. I got it, like, a month later. I thought I was gonna lose him, but I thank god I didn't. He's still alive.

Andrea: 47:59

He just doesn't have one leg, and he doesn't have the other foot. So definitely struggling there, but he's alive, and that's what matters. So the fact that I was here and that I was most likely gonna have to say goodbye via FaceTime because I couldn't leave the country was a fear that I don't think unless you're in the position you don't comprehend. Like, you I was going through all the motions in my head of, okay. I'm gonna have to plan a funeral through FaceTime.

Andrea: 48:25

I'm gonna have to do this because I already said goodbye to my grandma who's the one that raised me the most because my parents were always traveling through FaceTime, and I couldn't go see her and say goodbye. So living with the constant especially when you I was undocumented, living with a constant fear of I'm not there. And now even though I'm documented and I go often, the fact that I'm a seven hour plane away from anything urgent is definitely a fear that I live with every single day. But then again, being here is what allows me to keep their lifestyle good over there. So it's a price we have to pay.

Ant: 48:56

Bonus one on that. Is do you think you know, you when you initially started to answer that question, it was kinda like, oh, I haven't really done that many scary things. Do you think that's because you've become comfortable with discomfort?

Andrea: 49:09

Yeah. Absolutely. And also because I always put things into perspective, and I know that someone out there is facing something scarier. And I know that that's, like, the thing for everybody. Right?

Andrea: 49:18

Like, everything's relative, but I'm just so grateful that even though I may not have had it the easiest, but I've just had such faith in God and also in my friends and people that have just come in my life at the right time or the right place that that I'm just so grateful. Like, beyond scared, don't think that I'm just grateful. There's no place for fear here.

Ant: 49:40

I love it. Andrea Casanova, thanks so much for joining me on Creator Generation. Loved it.

Andrea: 49:44

Oh my gosh. Thank you guys for having me, and sign up for changer NBA because trust me, guys, you're gonna get so much out of it.

Ant: 49:52

Create a generation. Look on the mic.