C-Suite: The
Content Creator’s
Journey to CEO
Content creators are building multi-faceted businesses, creating jobs, and even developing product lines from the springboard of their YouTube channels.
In April 2009, computer enthusiast Austin Evans began spending some of his time posting tech and gaming reviews to his new YouTube channel. By Christmas, he had amassed a library of about 100 videos, and they were getting views — by the thousands. Not only was it exciting to connect with people around the world and see they cared what he had to say, he learned he could even start earning revenue, through the YouTube Partner Program, which shares revenue from advertisements placed on his videos. He’s had a career in content ever since.
The media is abuzz with success stories about high-earning YouTubers who bring in tens of millions of dollars per year from one über-successful channel. But rather than building his success primarily around his own on-screen persona, Evans, like many of his fellow creators, is focused on building a brand that is bigger than one person. He’s focused on leveraging his content business to support his family, expand into new sectors and support a fast-growing business. He’s now the CEO of his company called Overclock Media.
Austin Evans
YouTube creator &
CEO of Overclock Media
According to Oxford Economics, in 2021, YouTube’s creative ecosystem supported more than 425,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the United States alone.11Source: Oxford Economics 2021
YouTube US Impact Report
Being the CEO of a media company built up from a YouTube channel isn’t so different from leading a company in any other thriving industry: creators like Evans are helping to add hundreds of thousands of jobs to the United States economy. According to Oxford Economics, in 2021 alone, YouTube’s creative ecosystem contributed more than 25 billion dollars to the U.S. gross domestic product and supported more than 425,000 full-time equivalent jobs.1 As the platform grows, so can these employment opportunities.
1Source: Oxford Economics 2021
YouTube US Impact Report
Building a company that’s not just focused around me
Back in 2009 when Evans launched his channel, YouTube was four years old. Now, he oversees two successful channels with a combined 5.8 million subscribers, and five full-time employees.2 His content creation company, which spotlights tech products, just acquired a building. Soon, it will be their new headquarters and production studio.
According to Evans, keeping up with new content formats and evolving audience preferences requires constantly trying new things — and that keeps him on his toes. But, he has no desires to go work for someone else. In fact, he has dipped his toe in the type of content creation that happens in Hollywood, and there’s a reason he’s stuck with YouTube all these years: return on investment.
“With the scale, and especially the production costs, of doing more traditional content, the ROI is wild,” Evans said. “With a three-person team, I can make a video in an afternoon, and it could be as profitable as spending a week on a set to shoot a commercial for some other company.” As his company matures, Evans is working to make it more sustainable. He has his own employees relying on him now, after all.
“One of the main focuses over the last few years for me is trying to build up a company that's not just focused around me. I’m trying to build up multiple channels to diversify the business, to build something that could sustain itself,” he said. “If I get hit by a bus tomorrow or I lose my voice for a month, the whole show doesn't shut down, like it did in the past.”
“I’m trying to build up multiple channels to diversify the business, to build something that could sustain itself.”
We’re all in
this together
One of these full-time content creation jobs belongs to Matt Ansini, who works for Evans as Overclock Media’s showrunner.
Before finding a job in the creator ecosystem, Ansini was a graduate student studying media at Rochester Institute of Technology and shooting videos of surgeries in a hospital to pay the bills. It was a solid gig, he said — one he could’ve held onto for years. But when Austin Evans and Overclock Media’s production lead Ken Bolido approached him about helping them start a new YouTube channel, the offer was too good to pass up.
“I wanted to feel a little bit more fulfillment from my work,” he said. “So I pretty much said yes, immediately.”
Matt Ansini
Showrunner at Overclock Media
& host of This Is
Now, Ansini hosts satirical product reviews on a channel called This Is, for nearly 400,000 subscribers and counting. The change meant having to say goodbye to the stability and predictability of traditional media. But, working for Evans’s company, with its payroll structure, 401Ks and health insurance, Ansini can make a career as a professional creator on YouTube without completely abandoning the benefits that often come with “traditional” jobs.
Of course, he still gets his fair share of unpredictability: “The landscape is ever changing,” he said. “You have to always be changing. You have to always be adapting.”
According to Ansini, creators with successful businesses are rolling with the changes — and they don’t need to do it in a vacuum.
Talking to other YouTubers, Ansini shares strategies and compares notes on what’s working, and what isn’t. “That is something that feels great about this,” he said. “You never feel like you're really competing. It's like we're all in this together — ‘How can we help?’ — because it's better for everyone.”
Time is currency
Liah Yoo, a content creator turned entrepreneur, was also a YouTube early adopter. But she didn’t focus all of her attention on content creation at first: She took a job in the corporate beauty industry and worked for a company for several years until, in 2015, she quit to pursue YouTube full time. By 2017, she was ready to step things up: She launched a skincare brand called Krave Beauty, which is dedicated to slowing down the “fast fashion”-like beauty industry, pulling back the curtain on waste, green-washing, marketing hype and more. Today, her multi-channel business employs 16 people.3
3Source: LinkedIn
Liah Yoo
YouTube Creator &
CEO of Krave Beauty
For certain kinds of creators, Yoo said, branching out to online retail is a logical trajectory.
“A lot of successful content creators that I look up to never create content about ‘what I want to put out there,’” she said. “It's always about ‘What value can I provide to the audience who's spending a precious 10 minutes of their day?’”
According to Yoo, creators who’ve learned to keep up with this fast-changing media landscape have skills that are well-suited to other types of businesses, too.
“Time is currency on YouTube, and I think that's why a lot of great YouTubers are very business-savvy and strategic,” she said. “If they do launch a business down the road, whether that's a product business or other type of service-based business, they know how to listen to their potential customers and the market, and to identify exactly what value their product or solution can bring to the table.”
She sees other companies applying what she calls the Krave Beauty playbook. And that brings her joy — and a sense of purpose. Yoo is helping other entrepreneurs grow their businesses too. In early 2022, she established a $1 million investment fund called Press Reset Ventures, to help commercialize sustainable innovation and technology for the beauty industry.4
“Time is currency
on YouTube, and I think that’s why a lot of great YouTubers are very business-
savvy and strategic.”
“From my perspective, and from my own personal experience, if you are a content creator who was able to change someone's life, and then you start a business that can help integrate another solution to their life, that's the magic formula,” she said.
4Source: BuiltInNYC