Santa's Wish List for the Creator Economy: Why a $500B Industry Still Runs on Guesswork

The creator economy is now worth over $500 billion. Yet most creators are running their businesses like they're playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey: blindfolded, spinning in circles, hoping they hit something valuable.

This isn't a hot take. It's a structural problem that's been hiding in plain sight.

Over the past week, I shared six wishes for the creator economy on LinkedIn. Not fantasies or provocations, but fundamental infrastructure gaps that are holding back an entire industry. The response was overwhelming—hundreds of creators, managers, and investors nodding along, saying "finally, someone said it."

So let's lay it all out. Here's what's broken, why it matters, and what needs to change.

Wish #1: Creators Finally Know Their Numbers

Imagine running a retail business without knowing which products make money. Or launching a SaaS company without tracking churn. Or building an e-commerce brand without understanding customer lifetime value.

Unthinkable, right?

Yet this is the daily reality for most creators.

The creator economy is obsessed with vanity metrics (views, likes, followers) but allergic to the numbers that actually matter: revenue attribution, customer intelligence, lifetime value, and where money leaks every month.

Creators don't know:

- Who their customers really are

- Which content actually drives revenue

- What their audience is worth over time

- Where their business bleeds cash

This isn't a creator problem. It's an infrastructure problem.

You can't scale what you can't see. You can't manage what you don't measure.

Until creators have access to clear, unified, cross-platform business intelligence, they're not building businesses. They're guessing.

Wish #2: Platforms Stop Owning the Creator-Audience Relationship

Here's the quiet deal every creator accepted when they started posting:

Creators build the audience. Platforms own the relationship.

Platforms know who your audience is, how they behave, what they buy, and how valuable they are. Creators get reach, engagement, and "insights" that stop just short of being useful.

If a platform disappeared tomorrow, most creators would lose their customer data, revenue history, and ability to re-engage their own audience.

That's not a partnership. That's dependency.

The most valuable asset in the creator economy isn't content. It's the direct relationship with the audience.

Creators need to own their audience by default—emails, behavior, purchasing signals, lifetime value, everything. Platforms will always matter, but creators need leverage, not loyalty.

If you don't own your audience, you don't own a business. You're renting one.

Wish #3: Transparent, Standardized Creator Deals

Two creators. Same audience size. Same engagement. Same campaign. Wildly different prices.

Why?

Because brand deals in the creator economy are still negotiated without benchmarks, without shared standards, without real performance data, and without dynamic pricing.

Everything happens in private, which means power flows to whoever has the most information. Usually platforms, agencies, and brands. Not creators.

This is why creators constantly ask: "How much should I charge?" "Is this a good deal?" "Am I being underpaid?"

And let's not even start on the equity-as-payment debate.

A $500B industry shouldn't still run on vibes.

We need transparent, standardized creator deals with clear pricing logic, performance benchmarks, and revenue expectations. Standardization doesn't kill creativity, it removes exploitation.

When creators understand the economics of their work, negotiations become partnerships, not guesswork.

Wish #4: Creators Get Paid Like Businesses, Not "Talent"

Creators generate predictable revenue. But the system treats them like unstable freelancers.

Banks don't lend. Insurers don't understand them. Financial tools don't fit how they earn.

So creators self-fund growth, absorb risk personally, and get punished for irregular income, even though many creator businesses are more diversified than traditional companies, with revenue from ads, brand deals, subscriptions, products, and IP.

This isn't a creativity issue. It's a financial infrastructure failure.

Motivation isn't the problem. Infrastructure is.

Creators need financing based on cash flow, not job titles. They need tools built for multi-income models and institutions that recognize them as the future of work.

Until creators are treated as real businesses, the creator economy will always underperform its potential.

Wish #5: Monetization Advice That Goes Beyond "Sell a Course"

Somehow, a $500B creator economy keeps recycling the same advice:

"Run ads."
"Sell merch."
"Launch a course."
"Start a membership."

If that worked universally, every creator would be rich by now.

Most creators don't have a monetization problem. They have an insight problem.

They don't know what their audience actually buys, which content creates demand, or where willingness to pay really sits. So they copy what worked for someone else and wonder why it doesn't work for them.

The future of creator monetization is built on better decisions, not recycled playbooks.

Monetization advice needs to be personalized, data-driven, and demand-led. If everyone is selling the same thing, the problem isn't creativity. It's strategy.

Wish #6: Talent Managers Get Better Tools (So Creators Win Too)

Behind every scaled creator is an operator making the chaos work.

Talent managers juggle multiple platforms, manage overlapping revenue streams, negotiate deals, forecast income, and protect long-term value. Most of them do this with spreadsheets, WhatsApp, and gut instinct.

That's not sustainable. And it's not fair to them or to creators.

Creator scale is an operational problem disguised as a creative one.

When managers have better data, better forecasting, and better leverage, creators get better deals, more focus, and longer careers.

The creator economy doesn't need more hype. It needs better infrastructure.

The Pattern Is Obvious

Different problems. Same root cause.

The creator economy scaled faster than its infrastructure.

We built platforms for distribution, tools for publishing, and marketplaces for attention. But we never built proper business intelligence for the people actually generating the value.

That's the gap GYST (Get Your Sh*t Together) exists to close.

Mel Tsiaprazis and I are building GYST around a simple belief: Knowing your numbers = making better decisions = making more money.

What that means in practice:

- Unified, cross-platform revenue and performance visibility

- Clear understanding of who your audience actually is

- Monetization insights based on your data, not someone else's playbook

- Better leverage in deals through clarity and benchmarks

- Tools that help talent managers operate like real operators

Rigorous clarity so creators and their teams can plan, negotiate, and grow with confidence.

The creator economy needs grown-up infrastructure. That's what we're building.

Three Questions for You:

- What would you run differently if you trusted your data instead of your instincts?

- What's the hardest decision you or your manager are making without enough information?

- What decision would you stop delaying if your numbers were finally clear?