The evolution of a content creator is something brands and agencies see, but don’t watch. Bear with me on this for a moment. It’s like the difference in hearing something, and actually listening with the intent of understanding.

So we on the agency or brand side of things may run into a content creator we find on Instagram who is doing interesting things around the topic we’re focused on for our brand or client. We reach out to them, maybe do a sponsored post or some other type of trial run content collaboration. We appreciate their work and their, let’s say 50,000 followers there.

And then we move on to other clients, other campaigns, other creators. A year or two passes by and we think, “Hey! That one creator might make a good candidate for this campaign.” We reach out to them and chat about the possibility, then have to swallow hard when their rates have grown exponentially. Because they have changed.

Now they have 1.5 million followers on TikTok or their YouTube channel exploded. Or they were hired to be the host of a TV segment for some brand. Now they have a talent manager and have turned their content into a business.

We saw it, but didn’t watch. If we had, maybe we would have kept that relationship going.

Content creators who are doing so with intent are trying to become media properties. They want to hire teams of people to do all the busy work while they create the concepts and sit out in front of the camera. They build audiences to sell advertising or brand partnerships for so they can grow their empire.

It’s that leveling up that falls into the purview of Kevin Grosch. He is the founder and CEO of Made In Network. The company does a lot of things, but its core capabilities are focused on creating content and building media properties for content creators.

They do the same thing for brands, too.

When I connected with Kevin recently, I had a ton of questions. When do content creators turn to outside help for doing what they already do? What tricks do you have to build those big media properties? Can you make me famous?

Instead of just chatting about it offline, I asked Kevin to come to the show and help us all understand more about that evolution of today’s content creator past influencer to media property and brand. How his company helps them and brands and how we can all benefit from knowing how its done.

We learn more from Kevin Grosch today on the show.

This episode of Winfluence is presented by CIPIO.ai. We are helping brands transform their digital marketing with user-generated content videos and images at scale. Come see us at CIPIO.ai. If you want me to personally show you the platform and how we can solve your digital marketing performance problems with high-performing UGC, just go to jasonfalls.co/cipio … fill out that form and I’ll personally set up time to chat with you.

Find show notes for this episode at jasonfalls.co/kevingrosch.

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The Man and Method Building Content Creators into Media Properties