I can make anyone a full-time creator: My first speaking event recap!!

I spoke at my first-ever speaker event, and I was terrified. This year I promised myself I’d say yes to more things, push myself outside my comfort zone, actually try the scary thing instead of talking myself out of it. I’m so glad I did it. The feedback afterward was some of the best I’ve gotten — people came up and told me they genuinely learned something, which is the entire point. So if you weren’t in the room, here’s the full recap.

That’s the line I opened with. Bold claim, I know — but I wanted to start with something that actually grabbed a room full of creators, not ease them in with a slow build. So yes: I think I can turn every single person in that room into a full-time creator. That’s an exciting thing to promise, and I stand behind it.

Before the how, here’s the why-you-should-listen-to-me part. I’ve done influencer management and organic social for Paris Hilton’s beauty brand Parivie and did all organic social editing for Coachella. I’ve ran social strategy for Sports Club Atelier, Lauren Kyle McDavid’s clothing bran. I’ve negotiated brand deals for creators like Sarah Stage, Tiziana (the creator of the anti-brain-rot series) Negotiated deals for her with brands like CNN, National Geographic, Wikipedia, and Sony, plus worked with Katelyn Petterson and Annalise Sara.

I’ve also worked with creators who aren’t at those huge tiers and are still making a full-time income off content: people like Mackenzie Dempsey, Sophia Spags, and Whitney Klassuko. Micro doesn’t mean you can’t make money. It means a smaller following, but if you swap your mindset and find different ways to monetize, you can have the exact same earning potential.

Here’s the actual point of that list: none of these creators have something you don’t. If you’re reading this and you haven’t started posting, or something’s holding you back these people aren’t different from you. They just took the leap, actually tried to learn, and put themselves out there. I know that’s scary, but that’s the whole secret: there’s no way to hack the algorithm or some secret that nobody is telling you. It’s literally just to show up consistently and authentically on socials.

Every post you make is a lottery ticket. Every post is another shot at the one video that changes your life. And unlike an actual lottery ticket, the more tickets you buy the more you post the better your odds get. You genuinely have a better shot at going viral and having social media change your life than you do at winning the actual lottery. And let’s be honest, basically everyone’s bought a lottery ticket at some point in their life.

So how do you actually win? You never know which post is the one. So if a video tanks, who cares. If it’s stuck at 200 views, nobody saw it, it doesn’t matter. Don’t spiral. Go into your analytics and actually figure out why:

• Was the hook weak?

• Did the editing style not land?

• Were your Closed captions added in app? (They should always be!)

• Did the algorithm understand what your video was about?

The only way you’re going to learn is by flopping and then figuring out why that flopped. Now you know how to make the next video better.

And the thing that actually separates you from the creator sitting next to you — the thing AI can’t replicate and nobody can copy — is your personality. Your specific humor. Your voice. Your energy. Lean into it, don’t sand it down trying to sound like everyone else. We don’t need more New York City cookie-cutter influencers.

This is the question I get more than any other, so I spent a real chunk of the talk on it.

Brand deals are about positioning. Think of yourself as a salesperson because that’s exactly what you are at that moment. Brands are getting hundreds, sometimes thousands, of pitches a day. You need something that makes you stand out: a strong media kit, a genuinely distinct personality, a content style nobody else is doing, or a signature series people already associate with you.

The other big lever: bundle your content. A single post is the easiest thing in the world for a brand to say no to. If you’re pitching “$2,000 for one Instagram post, plus $500 more for a story set” — don’t. Bundle it. My go-to bundle is one Instagram Reel syndicated to TikTok (fancy way of saying cross-posted — brands love a fancy word) plus one story set, two to three frames, with 30 days of usage.

And always, always charge separately for:

• Usage rights

• Exclusivity

• Whitelisting

The bigger move underneath all of this: position yourself for a long-term partnership whenever you can. It’s better for you: recurring income, a deeper brand relationship and it’s actually a better deal for the brand too, since they get you at a discounted rate in exchange for the commitment. Win-win.

Easily my favorite part of the day. A few brave people handed over their media kits and let me review them live, in front of the whole room. So much fun, and a lot of people told me they learned more watching that than from anything else I said up there.

So — if you’re in my paid Substack community, send me your media kit and your pitch and I’ll review it before you send it out.

My friend and I had one rule going in: we’re not nervous, we’re excited. I held onto that the entire walk up to the stage, and the second I actually started talking, most of the nerves disappeared. That’s basically always how it goes — the buildup in your head is always so much worse than the thing itself. I’d made it into this huge deal, and it just wasn’t. I was excited the second I started.

It’s the same lesson with content. You overthink what people are going to say about your post far more than they actually will. Your first posts are not going to be good and if your first attempt at anything comes out perfect, that means you waited too long to start. You played it too safe. Failure is just part of the business. It teaches you fast what doesn’t work, and that’s exactly how you optimize for what does.

So: say yes to the scary thing. Make the post you’re not sure about.

— Mia xx