Creator Logic With Avi Gandhi Of Partner With Creators (@avigandhi)

Hello everyone. If you are new here, big welcome. I’m excited to have you, and I hope you stick around, enjoy this episode. And oh my God, we literally have hundreds of episodes for you to binge on after. So for those of you guys who show up week, over week, whether it’s on, Apple Podcasts or Spotify or YouTube or Google Podcasts or wherever you listen, I’m just so appreciative that you come and you support this community and these conversations, and I tried to keep him good for you guys, and this week we didn’t disappoint.

We just finished recording, with Avi Gandhi, who you’re gonna hear from momentarily. He was really insightful and it was a great conversation. I have been following him for quite a while on LinkedIn and have just noticed that he’s been really cultivating really interesting insights and conversations on LinkedIn, which you guys know is It’s definitely my favorite social platform,

The second place is TikTok these days. And, YouTube too. I don’t know, I’m just addicted to them all if I’m being honest. But I do love LinkedIn. So he’s a fellow LinkedIn creator and doing such a good job. Really good job of just creating content that people want to comment on and talk about.

So I invited him onto the show and I was super stoked that he said absolutely. We just finished recording and you’re gonna really enjoy our conversation. 

So a little bit about Avi. So he considers himself a writer, a producer, advisor, and entrepreneur in the creator economy space. He was named LinkedIn News’s Top 10 Voices in the Creator Economy for 2022. So he’s killing it over there.

He also writes the Creator Interview newsletter, creator Logic, and he also coaches creator, economy, founders and executives on how to successfully work with creators. He worked his way from William Morris, WME to Patreon and advising and consulting a ton in between.

He is a Forbes 30 under 30. He’s a former Yale and very passionate about diversity and inclusion. And despite earning it more than like half a lifetime ago, he is still very proud to be an Eagle Scout. He also lives in LA with his wife and his pop, and I’m very excited for you to hear more from him this week.

So before we jump into the episode, just want to thank all of you guys who have attended the events that we’ve produced in the last couple of months. We’ve done a ton of in-person events that are probably my favorite kind cuz it’s just, nothing beats that energy in the room. And it’s been so awesome seeing your faces and we did a live podcast recording at the last one in New York.

We’ve done, so much interacting and networking and there’s just been really great success stories from those in-person meetups. But we also just hosted two virtual events that were also incredible in their own right. 

So the first was the hiring job fair that we hosted, mid-March. And, God, that was just incredible. It’s the third time we’ve done it and we’re gonna continue to do it because I hear from people like, wow, like they’re incredible candidates. We’re gonna have a difficulty giving an offer because there’s so much to choose from and we love to be able to help people hire in the industry and just bring you the most incredible candidates. 

And of course, from the candidate’s perspective, I’ve gotten countless messages saying I got a job. Or, I’ve been dying to meet people from this company. And just, they felt heard, they felt like they, were able to get in front of people that they have been trying to for the longest time, who we can really make an impact in their life and their career. So we’re just happy to bring the right people together.

And in addition to that, we also have the Best of Influencer Tech event. If you are tuning in on the day that this episode drops, then today is our best in influencer tech event. It’s today. So I hope you already registered.

If you go to the live event, you’re gonna get promotions and discounts and there’s just so much buzz and fun to all of our live virtual events that you’re not gonna wanna miss. So I know I’ve been talking about it week over week. Today is the day. 

So If you happen to listen to this podcast and before the event today, just check out our websites. Iamwiim.com/events. We’ll link it in the show notes of course. I hope you come. 

We’ve got Mavrck, they actually were on the podcast just a couple weeks ago. I love and love learning about them, and all that they offer. And, I love the people of their company are just really great people and just learning all about the product and everything. And it’s been awesome hearing from them. So they’re gonna be presenting. Love Mavrck.

Isaiah is gonna be presenting. Again, they’ve presented in the past at, events that we’ve had or at the best influencer tech events in the past. And they’re back and they have such a special place in my heart too because they’re headquarters and where they started is an Orlando, Florida, which might seem so random to some other people, but actually went to college right down the street from where they are.

So years ago I went and visited their headquarters and it’s just been so lovely meeting. So many people from their company over the years, and I just happen to think they have an incredible product and they’re always innovating and they’re publicly traded company. So they just have so many resources and are doing wonderful things in this space.

And I’m always like, yeah, my fellow Floridians are like, I wanna support them so much. So they’re participating and there’s, a lot of other people that are also presenting at today’s best in influencer tech event.

So If you happen to catch this on the date that this episode drops, I encourage you to check it out. If you go live and attend the event live, there are promotions and discounts and a lot of fun things that only the live participants do get. You can go to iamwiim.com/events to register and it’s completely free. Thanks to all of our awesome sponsors of this event. 

So I encourage you to go, but if you did miss the live event and you’re like, no, it’s March 29th, so this is yesterday, or if you listen to this a month from now, don’t worry. You can go to Iamwiim.com/tech, that’s T E C H. And there are replays of some of our past sponsors. The promotions will not quite be there, but the demos of, all the latest and greatest in terms of their products are all there and you’ll be able to solve so many of your problems with are there any tools out there that like help me search and find for the exact precise type of influencer that I’m looking for? Or who has the type of audience that I’m looking to reach or are there any tools out there that can help me with gathering the data on the analytics or managing the campaign? This is why we have this event, you guys, because you’re doing incredible work, which is just made more incredible with the amplification of better technology. So I encourage you guys to check out either the live event or the replays, and again, it’s Iamwiim.com/tech. 

All right, you guys. Thank you so much. As a reminder, we would love for you to check out our membership as well. If you are a member, we’re constantly giving more and more value to you guys.

We’re hosting more live events coming up very soon, so keep an eye out for when we announce those and, we’re just very excited to welcome more and more of you guys into our membership community, which is. At this point, hundreds of people deep.

If you are like excited by meeting people who are going through all the same things as you, sharing resources, having support with our mentorship program, continuous education, so much, then I just encourage you to check it out, see what we’re up to, and see if it’s a fit for you.

All right guys, we’re gonna get into the interview with Avi and I hope you guys enjoy.

 So thank you guys so much for joining today. You’re in for a big treat. We have Avi Gandhi, with us today. So Avi, welcome to the show. How’s it going? 

Avi: It’s going well. Thanks so much for having me, Jessy. 

Jessy: Thank you for being here. We definitely heard about you in the intro to this episode, but I think it’s beneficial always to just hear like off of your resume, off of a piece of paper in your own words, just a little bit about your professional journey and even a little bit about your upbringing.

Like I think that, informs who you are today and the position that you’re in. So give us a little backstory. Who is Avi? 

Avi: Sure. Going back to all the way to the beginning, I am a child of immigrants. Parents came here from India in the mid eighties.

I was born in LA but mostly grew up in the Bay Area. Went to college at Yale watched too much entourage while there and, decided I wanted to be like that guy. 

Jessy: That’s how you got to WME I love it. 

Avi: That’s right. I was like, I don’t wanna be a banker like all my friends who also didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives, and that seemed to be the default.

So I was like that Ari guy seems cool. He wears cool suits. Yale’s on the phone about random stuff. He sounds hilarious, now I go back and watch Entourage. I’m like, this show’s kind of problematic. But 10, 15 years ago, it was culture. 

So came to LA went into the mail room at WME. And in a couple years became an agent, in the digital media department. There’s a whole journey there, but I think that would take like the entire episode tell. I will say that, I started in the music department and was working on a pretty unique, business, run by this woman, Suzanne Brantner, who was a talent manager and then became an agent, and she was running content distribution.

So we were acting as like the label for artists who wanted to release their albums direct to fan instead of going through a record label. And then eventually we were doing indie films, where the filmmaker didn’t want to go, through a distributor and they wanted to go direct to fan. This was back when like Radiohead had released their album on their website, and Lucy K had done his, it was a hot thing, but it was also brand new.

And so she ended up getting promoted to lead digital at WME I followed her and, eventually became an agent. And was in the early creator economy as it collided with Hollywood. And so it was on the forefront of helping creators who at the time really didn’t have a business model.

They were just starting to get paid by ad sense. Brands were just starting to figure out that there’s maybe something here from a marketing perspective. We were figuring out all the ways you could make money as a creator. I remember we had this, wheel we call it the wheel of modernization, and it was like every kind of, segment we sign a creator, we’re like, all right, what can we do on the wheel? Can we do a book with them? Can we put them on tour? Can we partner them with another creator and package a movie that they could sell direct to fan, and going all the way around. And so we were on the forefront there.

I left in 2016, spent some time, pursuing some entrepreneurial dreams. I caught the VR bug . Had a creator, VR company, for a while. And worked for a few different companies in the gaming space and went back to Hollywood. I launched Wheelhouse DNA, which was the digital media production arm of Jimmy Kimmel. And, producer Brent Montgomery’s, business Wheelhouse. And we were producing podcasts and YouTube channels for some of the biggest creators in the world.

Then joined Patreon and from, 21 to 2022. Built their, creator acquisition team, and went after some of the biggest creators in the world. Top 50, top 100 creators across podcasting and Twitch and YouTube, TikTok.

And then left in 2022. And I’m now a creator myself. I write on LinkedIn. I’ve got my newsletter Creator Logic. I work with companies in the creator economy to help them understand how creators think, how to segment them, how to work with them, how to position them, how to reach out to them, et cetera, et cetera. And yeah, that’s what I’m up to. 

Jessy: That’s awesome. I love the story. I would love to dig in a little bit to towards the beginning of your journey. I would be lying also if I said that I wasn’t pseudo inspired by, Entourage as well. So it’s, of course we look at it 10 years later, like you said, and it’s like that’s pretty problematic. And… 

Avi: Yeah.

Jessy: Cringey in a lot of instances, but also real talk, I’m sure you probably have similar stories that I do working at a talent agency like that long ago. And, I’ve shared on this podcast before when I was an assistant making $26,000 living in New York City, how typical that was, and how toxic my work environment was.

So, I’d love to learn like what you learned from one of your first jobs at WME, like starting in the mail room, which is very, common, at WME, if not required, perhaps. And what did you learn, like working your way up there and also do you think that there’s anything in that model that is still relevant today?

Avi: It’s a great question. First off, I will say that I was incredibly fortunate. certainly there were some. People at the company who were just toxic human beings. When I hear their name, I still cringe. But, my boss, Suzanne, was a wonderful person, still is a wonderful person. And I’m incredibly fortunate to have work for her.

and I had a great experience, doing it, as her assistant and her coordinator. In terms of what I learned, so much. Content distribution at this point has dropped to zero.

And like we were basically at the very beginning of that when like YouTube was new Hollywood was still figuring out how to like window across different platforms and like do you go to YouTube first or Netflix first, or do you go to theater first or, Whatever. And same thing with, music. This was pre Spotify, right? So the music industry was like in the toilet.

And so with respect to marketing, I think like one of the first and hardest things I learned is just because someone has a name doesn’t mean they’re going to be successful or drive success.

Bringing name recognition together with distribution and reach. It seems obvious now, but back then it wasn’t. We would work with some really big celebrity names that I don’t want to, throw under the bus, but just cuz you put their album out and did a bunch of press and PR and did a bunch of, one off events here and there, and they would show up at album listening party and this and that. Like back then, like if they didn’t have a social media audience, nobody knew, nobody cared.

And even back then, like we made more money off of a movie featuring a couple of YouTube stars, and this was one of the first of those projects, movie Camp Dakota featured, Grace Helbing and Hannah Hart.

They made more money and we made more money off of that, movie than we did off of releasing albums from Grammy Award-winning multi-platinum artists. Simply because like we didn’t have the distribution ourselves, and the artists didn’t have the distribution, right?

So the record label had distribution through radio. So if you didn’t have that, you couldn’t compete. That’s why like today, like you’re seeing record labels, signing TikTokers is cuz they have the distribution. So I think learning the power of distribution was a huge, thing for me. 

Jessy: No, and that’s a hugely valuable lesson to learn. You start at a giant company, like to me back in the day, I know what is William Morris? And now of course it’s William Morris Endeavor, WME, et cetera, et cetera. But like people know it now, people knew it then, huge company.

I can imagine your excitement recently outta school and getting a job there, regardless of, was it the mail room or…

Avi: Yeah.

Jessy: You know your name on the door, but through the work that we do at Wiim I see a lot of students graduating school wanting their first big job and they wonder if, should I go work for a big company where I’m a small fish in a big pond? Should I work at a startup where I can have a lot of impact?

What do you feel about like your decision to work for a big company back then? And does that translate now? What do you think? 

Avi: That’s a great question. I had the opportunity to work at a startup. Cuz I had worked for a startup kind of remotely, throughout college.

And I passed on that and went to Hollywood mostly because my heart wasn’t in the startup thing and it was in, entertainment. I think that every individual is different. Me personally, what I needed to learn was, the value of shutting the fuck up and doing the work.

And I learned that the hard way. Like I I actually got fired and then rehired in the same day basically by some tough love from, someone who I now think is a wonderful, HR exec, but at the time had to give me that tough love because I was goofing off and I thought I was, the coolest guy in the world and I thought everything was gonna be easy. And I just graduated from Yale and it’s like what is this place? 

And he had to put me in my place. And like after that, I put my head down. I did stop goofing off. I basically was like, I’m here to work and don’t talk to me if it’s not about the business. And, two years later I was promoted to agent.

So it worked, but I wouldn’t have learned that had I gone to, a place that didn’t have, those kinds of guardrails that kind of culture and like that didn’t really like value, the effort and the craft and like the, willingness to put your head down because it’s hard to put your head down, especially in a company like that, right?

Where everything you do, any other human being would be like, that’s the coolest thing ever, right? For work, I would have to go home at 8:00 PM on a Friday, take a nap, wake up at 11, go to the club where Avicii is playing, go backstage, say hi to the manager, right? Most people would be like, that’s the coolest job in the world.

And it totally is. But if I don’t get in, cuz I wasn’t put on the guest list, I have to figure out how, then I’m not gonna be able to say hi to the manager. And then the manager’s gonna think my boss is ignoring him and then it’s gonna be bad for everyone. And, those are the kinds of things that like you just have to learn to do.

I don’t think I would have, at a startup where you don’t really know what the bar is. When you’re at a startup, everything you’re doing is good. It’s what’s the bar, what’s the benchmark? Unless you’ve got like really great investors and like a really experienced leadership team who’s setting the bar and saying, this is where we need to be based on X, Y, Z you’re just working towards something.

Whereas like at these big companies, there’s very clear bars. It’s if you’re at this level, you’re crushing it. If you’re doing this like you’re not and you gotta step it up, cause you don’t really learn that in college. 

Jessy: Oh there’s so little. I have so many qualms with like academia in our country, and even like going to a school like Yale, which, oh my God I remember visiting the campus of Yale wanting to go there.

I don’t know if they told you the same thing. They’re like, your finances will never be a reason that you don’t go to Yale. And I’m like, is that true? Is that true? That’s a really good line. I just don’t know if it’s true. Yale’s incredible. I was a theater major in college, so like also looking at Yale and their program and everything. It was incredible.

But I love the lesson learned, graduating from Ivy League, getting a great job at a very recognized company, but the insides of those companies, like you go inside and it’s like, all right guys, like we, earned our keep. Like we have this name recognition cuz we all work our asses off and we are who we are in the industry because when you walk in the door, perhaps like you learned, maybe, you have to check your ego at the door, like you have to get to work.

So it’s interesting to just think about like, how from the outside perspective, it perhaps seems like the dream job, glamorous, you romanticize it, as some people I’m sure aspire to work at companies like that and others, and then how it could just be a different experience when you get there.

Then you later on at company, like Patreon as well. And I would love to dig into that experience a little bit. We talk, a bit on this show about brand deals all day every day for influencers. And that’s been such a tried and true revenue model for creators.

But I love to talk about the other ways that really smart, brilliant creators have learned to diversify their revenue and have all these additional revenue streams. I would love to just talk about your time, at Patreon and like what you observed there in terms of growth within the creator economy.

Avi: Patreon was the first to do what it does. I remember, when I first reached out to Jack cuz I was interested joining the company, and I said to him, who would’ve guessed eight years ago or 10 years ago now that someone who made a tool for creators to ask fans to give them money.

Hey, I’m making this thing. If you like it, give me money. Who would’ve guessed that would be a billion dollar business that would pay out more than a billion dollars a year to creators? That it would revolutionize how creators get paid? 

No one, most people would’ve laughed at that. I laughed. I was an agent at the time. I laughed at, I was like, pat, what is this? Pat? Is this like begging? Like I don’t, that’s silly.

But that’s the definition of visionary, right? So like Patreon was the first platform to do what it did, and it’s established entirely new business model for creators. And it grew from being this kind of I don’t know, almost charity kind of thing.

Hey, support me sort of thing to becoming a vehicle for creators to build real businesses. And that when I joined was the direction that we wanted to take. The company was like, okay, everyone thinks of us support. It’s like hey, support me. I’m a starving artist and I need your support.

But there were creators on Patreon making a million dollars a year. That’s not support. That’s a business. 

Jessy: Way more than support. Yeah, absolutely. 

Avi: And there’s a lot of creators making, thousands and tens of thousands of dollars a month. And so how do we get the word out that, hey, this isn’t just about being a starving artist. This is about building a business and using the platform as the vehicle to do that.

And I think we made some good progress towards that and I think the company continues to, right? Like every other company and the creator economy and in tech and, soon the world like this, I’m gonna call it a recession because that’s what it is. I know every economist right now is trying to pretend that we’re not in one, but that’s bullshit. This is a recession. We’re in a recession. Let’s get used to it.

It’s affecting every company and Patreon’s no different. But I think the company has a strong brand. The company I think is still the good guy in the creator economy relative to a lot of other businesses. They still deeply deeply are creator first. I think they’re gonna be fine.

I will say probably the biggest headwind they face, in my opinion, is competition. I think that membership and the subscription model in general is becoming increasingly commoditized, and I think a lot of platforms have launched with the tool sets and the paywalls and the ability to deliver content and community and all of that. 

And so I think it’s going to be a question of, like niches, right? I think the creator economy in general, many products and platforms, we could talk about this in more depth at some point. 

But, I think a lot of products and platforms are gonna be competing in like what are basically commoditized markets, right? What’s the difference between X, Y, Z subscription tool or X, Y, Z brand project management platform or whatever. And so it’s gonna be about branding. 

Well this is the subscription tool for, musicians, and this is a subscription tool for, cosplayers.

And this is the subscription tool for, NSFW, and this is the … blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that’s the direction I see the hills base go. . 

Jessy: Yeah, no, it’s so interesting. Admire the hell out of a company who, they’re so early on to an idea that people just don’t get it necessarily at first.

But that’s what being a visionary is, seeing into the future, and it being a branding problem, right? It’s like the idea that, are we just creating a product that creators can beg for money?

It’s no way, we just need to rebrand that a little bit and say creating the facility for community to exist to support creators that they love and they want more from, and they wanna, oh my gosh. I just think to my favorite YouTubers in particular and like how when I find someone that I love on, I want more.

And so to be able to have a product that facilitates that is huge. We have an event called the Best of Influencer Tech that’s coming up pretty soon. We’ve hosted it. I think this is our seventh one. 

And it’s interesting cuz the conversations that happen in our community, I assume happens across the industry, which is you have a lot of creatives. And you have some people who are more technology minded, and thank goodness for those people because they’re helping amplify the work of those creatives. 

But there needs to be more conversation amongst those people to make the products better. To understand like what’s really truly the problem that they’re solving at the end of the day to understand all the nuances and the creators need to feel comfortable using the products.

The user experience needs to be good and the functionality I appreciate those problems cuz I do think that they’re good problems to have. Like we have talent on each side, the technologists, the creatives. I just think more of those conversations hopefully need to happen to make the products better and get them into the right people’s hands.

Do you consider yourself more on the creative side or more on technology minded side.

Avi: So first off, I a hundred percent agree, that there is a disconnect, between the two. And that’s the gap that I’m personally trying to fill right now.

I consider myself both. I sit between the two. I sit on the business side, I sit on the, on the creator side. I’ve done both. I’ve worked at both as both. I’ve made a living as both. And not only have I done it as both, but like I’ve, this like very unique set of experience where like I’m a creator right now and I make a living as a creator. I also make a living as a consultant and like working with companies. 

In the past I’ve worked at tech companies and understand the nuances and challenges of working with technology, I’ve worked as a creator, representative, as an agent and a manager. And I understand the nuances of both being creator and working with creators.

And I’ve been an influencer marketer and a partnerships executive, and I’ve done deals ranging from like less than a thousand dollars to over $10 million. 

So I think like my goal right now in this moment in time is to be able to bridge the gap and solve that problem that you’re talking about, right?

Where companies frankly don’t really understand creators. They like creators. The people that work at these companies have the mission to serve or help creators, or at least to make money with and off of creators, because they’ve watched creators content or listened to it and they know what they like and they think it’s cool and they wanna be part of it.

But do they really understand the challenges creators face? Do they really understand why creators make their decisions? And how they make their decisions? No.

And so like I’m trying to solve those pain. By writing articles about my experiences working with creators on LinkedIn, by, writing a newsletter where I actually interview creators about their, decision making and the logic that they use to like, pick their various tools and partners and platforms and all that.

And also by working directly with companies, as an advisor and consultant to help them figure out, what are they doing right? What are they doing wrong? How do they segment creators for their product? Which groups of creators should be they be going after? How should they be approaching those creators? All of that stuff. 

Jessy: I love that because I’m very well aware that you coach creator economy, founders and executives on how to successfully work with creators, which I think is such a unique position to be in, and I think so needed.

So I would love to hear, like what are some of the top things that executives should keep in mind? Give us a little bit of a sneak peek have us be a fly on the wall of some of the conversations that you’ve had in the past. 

Avi: Sure. I’ll share one big framework, that I like to use, and think about that I think continues to resonate. Like every time I bring this up to an executive running a creator company, they’re like, oh, duh.

Which is that, some people talk about creators as artists. Some people talk about creators as entrepreneurs, but the reality is every creator sits somewhere on a spectrum between artists and entrepreneur.

And an artist is someone who’s making content for the sake of making content, right? It’s like the painters and the musicians who are like, I’m making this thing. I hope the world likes it, but even if they don’t, I’m gonna keep making it. 

The entrepreneur is someone who is making content as a means to an end, and that end is usually revenue, right? So like I like to say, Gary Vanerchuk is the ultimate like creator, entrepreneur.

If his content stopped making money, he would stop making content yesterday. He’s not making content for the art of it. He’s making it because it makes him a profit, right? And so most creators actually sit somewhere to the left or the right. And I think what every creator economy company needs to get crisp on from a business model perspective, from a marketing and branding perspective, from a positioning and sales and outreach perspective, is what types of creators are they going after? 

Are they going after the more artistic creators? Patreon goes after the artists, right? That’s the language they use in their brand. That’s who Jack is. That’s how they talk. 

And like they generally go after the artistic creators and like now they’ve been trying to move more towards the entrepreneurial side, shifting some of their language in their creator pitches and such to build a business.

But that’s not the brand that they’ve built over 8 to 10 years. Whereas other companies like Kajabi, for example, are going after the more, entrepreneurial side, right? They’re building tools. that let you sell courses and build websites and build your funnel, right? Stan, similar startup, like they’re talking about funnels.

Artists don’t think about finals. Are you kidding? right? They’re thinking about like they make music and hopefully somebody listens to it, right? And how do we get people to listen to it, right? It’s a funnel, but that’s not the language they’re using, right?

And so even like the words that you use in describing what your product does affects which creators resonate and which don’t. And so understanding and thinking about who your target is on that spectrum, I think is valuable for any founder in the creator economy. 

Jessy: I love that. As an more of I guess on the entrepreneurial side, question mark. Like, I’ve heard so much about Kajabi, when I first dove into wanting to build a membership and like people live by Kajabi.

You’ve got hardcore people, praising Kajabi in everything that they’ve built. But it’s interesting. I love that take on it that just simply that there are people doing seemingly similar things, but they identify slightly differently whether they’re on the creative or the more entrepreneurial and.

the core fundamental differences so vastly different. But, there is certainly a different approach to working with them. And the, tools perhaps need to be slightly different to account for different things. But the vernacular is certainly different and, communication in all any partnership is key.

So to be able to speak the correct language, to be understood, and to be able to be understood and to understand is imperative. So I love that insight. That’s so interesting.

So you coach, I love that. At what point and how did you realize that you wanted to be a coach and how do you strengthen your coaching abilities? Cuz that’s like a very specific skillset. 

Avi: It’s so funny. I don’t know why I feel like I’ve been resistant to the term coach. 

Jessy: What term do you like to use?

Avi: I call myself like a consultant and advisor. But at the end of the day, what’s the difference? I guess like sometimes it’s about the output, at the end of the day, like I’m helping founders, executives and leaders in the creator economy figure out how to solve difficult problems.

Sometimes I’m doing it for and with them and sometimes I’m guiding them down the path. Mostly I’m doing it for and with them, so that probably is more like advisor slash consultant than it is coach. 

Jessy: I appreciate the word distinction. I’ve had conversations just like this with people who can I identify the same way and I’ve heard both, sides and so in terms of, an advisor, a consultant, like how did you realize that you wanted to go that route, and how do you strengthen that skillset to be a better advisor, to be a better consultant for the companies that you work with?

Avi: a great question. I fell into it. I think a lot of people who read what I talk about on LinkedIn, Like what I say resonates with them. Maybe it’s some problem that they’re having and I’ve happened to post like my experience working on something similar and solving for it or whatever that might be. And so they end up reaching out to me for advice or feedback and that then leads to a conversation about how I can help them.

And, I started out actually doing, traditional consulting, project-based consulting. Let me work with you. Build out a strategy, embed with your team, deliver documents that that, outline steps and X, Y, Z, and I’m like, I don’t really like that.

If I’m gonna be doing writing, I’d be rather writing about creators, like I’d rather be writing on LinkedIn. I’d rather be writing my newsletter like that. The creative stuff I wanna do. I don’t want to be sitting and writing all day just to deliver, to someone. 

And, over the last couple years as a people leader, most of my time has been spent coaching and talking to people and helping them figure things out, building relationships cross-functionally, externally.

And so that’s the kind of thing I like doing. And so it kind of like came together where a couple of my clients, rather than have me like draft strategies and write documents or whatever, they just wanted to pick my brain.

They wanted every couple of weeks to hop on a call for 30 minutes or an hour and get me to answer a bunch of questions to help them guide their thinking and that resonated Cause that’s high impact for them, but low effort for me. And I love that. 

I love things that are low effort, high impact. I think everyone should guide their life by that.

Like what is the lowest effort thing you can do that has the highest impact? Yeah and so what I realized was this coaching-consulting talking through problems, mentoring teams, helping them, figure out how to go down the path, is I think much more valuable for them because it builds a stronger organization.

It builds deeper understanding and deeper thinking. There’s having someone come in and write you a strategy and then you don’t understand the underlying principles. And so when they leave, cuz they’re consultant, they always end up leaving, then all you’ve got is this document and you don’t have any actual knowledge or skills.

And so what I try to do is come in and impart the knowledge and skills so that when I leave the team can be successful without me. 

Jessy: Do you find that there’s been a sort of a trend in that direction? Meaning people’s attention spans might just be shorter, but perhaps for whatever reason they just digest the information better with I’m just gonna pop in and have a conversation with Avi for an hour and then I’m gonna go away and implement for the next few months, and maybe there’s more value in that versus, we’re gonna hire you for six months straight. We’re gonna meet, every day or every other day.

I wonder if there’s a difference in the way that people work now, given that the world is just very different, do you find that your clients digest the information better in one way or the other in terms of cadence, in terms of I don’t know. I’d love to hear your thoughts generally on that. 

Avi: It’s a really great question. I think you’re on the right track there, I think, I haven’t spent that much time thinking about it, so you may be entirely right, like especially about the difference in cadence around how people work now versus before.

I guess if I think about it, the pattern is that there’s no pattern. Like most of my clients aren’t like we’re meeting once a week or every other day or whatever. 

They’re just like, hey, I’ve, I’m working on this thing. Can I grab half an hour or an hour to talk through it? Or, Hey, I have one client who’s got I think three meetings left in our package and I haven’t heard from them in three or four weeks, and they’ll hit me up whenever they’re ready to pick my brain again. And that’s fine.

I think it’s, especially because it’s about knowledge transfer and about knowledge transfer when you need it. You don’t know what you need to know until you get to the point where you’re like, oh, I don’t know this, and now I need to know it in order to continue. So at least with regards to what I do, it’s largely about unblocking, it’s unblocking and helping transfer knowledge so that the team can then move forward on their own.

They don’t need me in every meeting or doing a consistent thing every day because there’s stuff that they can do that they know how to do that they don’t need my help on. What they need is like the information to do it every once in a while. 

Jessy: it’s kinda refreshing. I can imagine from like your client’s perspective, that you’re considered like an expert in your area and precisely in the instance where everything comes together that they’re like, ah, like we need Avi.

Like that’s when they will tap you when they need you, the most. I can also imagine we have a lot of consultants and freelancers in our community, so I can also imagine that from a business perspective, some people are always wondering how do I charge as a consultant? 

Do I, get half upfront, half later after every session all upfront. And I can also just, foresee, consultants who perhaps, let’s say they just charge after each session or per session, and they don’t do like a package. They’ll be like, ooh. Like I want cash flow. I need cash flow.

Avi: Yeah.

Jessy: It’s an interesting thing to do. Could you share a little insight into that? Do you tend to have a package where you charge up front or is it 50% up upfront or later? Or does it just vary on the client in the scenario? 

Avi: Yeah. Honestly, I have not figured this out yet. I am just, every time I’m like let’s do it this way because it feels like every one of my clients is a little bit different. 

I do sell my time. I use a platform called Topmate. There’s also, Calendly has a pay gate and Stan has like paid, bookings for like time.

But like Topmate has packages and so I can basically offer, 30 minutes for X dollars or five 30-minute sessions and Topmate will track them and and then it just basically charges upfront.

And so that’s helped me actually largely collect upfront for those like limited engagements where it’s like, hey, I just need to pick your brain four or five times over the next couple of months. So I’ll just buy that time up front.

And some companies there’s folks who I know that have hired me on that front. They just expensive to, like the big company they work for, or write it off as a small business owner.

And then the flip side is like for longer term engagements, I’ll do basically like a monthly, payment. And depending on the company right if it’s like a big, like Discord I’m like, Discord is gonna pay me. Like I’m not worried about Discord paying me. So like I’ll just collect at the end of every month and move forward with my life. 

Whereas like some small startup, I’m like, hey, you’re paying me at the beginning of every. month I don’t think you need…

Jessy: Alright. 

Avi: Like firm rules, right? This is something I’ve struggled with a little bit just cause in general, human beings like rules and guardrails and like having okay, if it’s X, then Y. 

But the truth is, especially as an independent creator, especially as an entrepreneur, especially as a solopreneur, every client, every customer, every person you talk to is different.

And like I charge people differently based on how much value I think I can provide based on how legit the company is and how good it looks that I’m working for them based on how much money I think they have. I’m not, if the client listens to this sorry, like I price discriminate in that sense, right?

That’s the ideal from a, I studied economics in college and I’m not very good at it. My brother’s a professor of economics, so if he hears me talk about this, he’ll probably make fun of me. But like from a rent generating perspective, right? Like the ideal way to make money is to price based on how much you think you can make from any individual customer.

Jessy: Hundred percent. We’ve talked about that on this show in terms of how to price for influencer partnerships. The coaching that I do is for talent managers, and I get that question a lot and I have a very similar answer, so I love that you said that, but people say how much should influencers charge? I’m like, my answer for whatever it’s worth is how…

Avi: However much you make. 

Jessy: However much you can make what the other person sees that you’re worth and will pay. It’s interesting, there’s a platform I love like dropping tools. I was appreciating that you’re like sharing a few resources that you use.

There’s very new tool we’ve used a little bit actually at Wiim called Trafft with two Fs. And what I appreciate about them because they’re another like scheduling tool. So if you’re a freelancer, I use a Calendly equivalent called TidyCal. it’s like a little cheaper and it does exactly the same thing.

but what I like about Trafft that is just clever is that if you are a freelancer and people are booking your services, it has like an upselling feature. So if they book like an, let’s say an hour of your time, they can also book like an additional 15 minutes or a secondary service that they might want from you.

What I appreciate about that is I feel like people appreciate options and like customization depending on their needs and their needs at that moment. And so I wanted to share about them too, because they take like a slightly unique perspective about that, like upselling bit and whether you use their platform hashtag not sponsored or not, it’s totally fine, but I feel like if you are a solopreneur or a small business owner and you are just selling your time or your services or your company’s time or services, any salesperson will always think about where are the opportunities to upsell depending on what the other person needs and maybe doesn’t even know that they need yet.

So just to think about that as I’m sure there are a ton of people listening who are like, how do I price my time better? How do I figure out how to charge and do I just send them to a Calendly link to book time and pay, or do I put a whole contract together and these are very legitimate questions that a ton of people approach differently and wonder about.

Do contracts for all of your clients or not always? 

Avi: Yeah. When people book my time, there’s no contract. It’s you’re paying me for half an hour, schedule a time on my calendar and let’s go. 

Jessy: Yep.

Avi: Obviously like bigger companies in general, if I’m doing like a monthly engagement or something like that, then like they will have, consulting or freelance or, independent contractor agreements.

And so I’ll do those. I do negotiate them a little bit. like I try to make sure they’re no exclusivity and I try to make sure, that, we can part ways at any time that if we do, I get paid a prorated rate and that kind of stuff. But, I don’t have my own agreement on that front. Like at some point maybe I will. 

Jessy: I’ll tell you a little cheat for whatever it’s worth.

Avi: Please, yeah.

Jessy: If you wanna use Calendly or an equivalent to book time, you know how sometimes it says on Calendly, you have to agree to these questions or answers?

Avi: Yeah.

Jessy: You could say, do you agree to X, Y, Z? You could also just link out to a longer agreement. If they read it, great. If not, that’s on them. But if they agree to it, they could simply put a little check mark or an I agree, perhaps.

Because it’s circling back to what we are talking about earlier, how do you make technology most user friendly? 

Avi: Absolutely.

Jessy: And if you are just booking an hour of time with you, I don’t wanna go back and forth and redline an agreement. If we’re talking about under a thousand dollars or whatever it is. 

Avi: Yeah.

Jessy: Sometimes even under 2000 or whatever, like time is money, but you wanna cover yourself as a business owner.

So to maybe just throw in a link to something that they absolutely can view and take a peek at. It’s no secret. Or they can just say it’s not worth my time to look at this. I’m just gonna say I agree. Everyone’s covered. So that’s a little hack I wanna bring up. 

Avi: I’m definitely gonna use that. I love that. That’s a great one. 

Jessy: Yeah. Okay. I would be remiss if before we ended this recording with each other, we didn’t talk about, your like LinkedIn journey and this new journey that you’ve got with this awesome new newsletter on LinkedIn Creator Logic. 

So I would first just love to hear about. What is the value prop of LinkedIn to you? And what has your journey been thus far in terms of personal branding on there? 

Avi: Yeah, that’s great question. I fell into LinkedIn a little bit. Like I started posting a little bit while I was at Patreon and I think, just because I had the title at the company, like people were like, oh, Patreon, oh, head of Greater partnerships.

People would find and read what I was saying. And I ended up reaching out to their then head of creators just for networking purposes. But, he connected me with someone on his team. This guy came in who is amazing also X WME. And he’s been helping me figure out how to be a creator. 

I ended up applying to the LinkedIn accelerator while I was at Patreon and yeah, it’s funny, like I applied with this podcast idea creators of color and it was like a brand building thing. It was like, the time, cause I was fully employed at Patreon and I was like how do I build my brand? I’m passionate about DNI. Let’s talk about creators of color.

And then I left and then I got accepted. But, the stipulation was that I had to do the project that I pitched, which was creative of color, that doesn’t have anything to do with my business, unfortunately. 

But it was a near and dear project, so I produced six episodes of it and, then realized okay, like in doing that I had to post three times a week at least just about creatives of color, but creatives of color wasn’t driving my consulting business, right? Like I needed to post more things that were about working with creators so that I would get leads for consulting.

And so then I ended up having to post at least five times a week for six weeks. So that built the muscle of posting daily and like creating content daily. So by the end of that accelerator program, would say that was the most valuable thing for me is that it forced me to learn to produce a high volume of content on an ongoing basis without fail.

And that has then led me to where I am today, which is I post daily, I post early in the morning. I love to engage with the comments, have discussions, debates, whatever. I love to jump into other creators, articles that resonate and leave my thoughts. Like I spend a lot of time, just talking to folks on LinkedIn and then, now I’ve launched newsletter, as a way of, bringing insights directly from creators to people. So LinkedIn is where I share my own insights experiences. 

Creator Logic is where I talk to creators and bring their insights and experiences to table. So I actually go through the data of where’s their audience? Across which platforms, where’s their revenue? What are their revenue sources? How does their audience by platform match up with their revenue sources? 

I just had a conversation, and posted yesterday an article talking to Gigi Robinson, who’s a speaker and, activist model and, multihyphenate creator. Turns out instagram has, 10,000 of her, three or 400,000 followers, but yields 70% of her business.

Like those are insights for both creators and business people in the creator economy to understand as a way to then get at one, how to be a better creator from the creator perspective and how to like, build your business. And two, from the, creator economy perspective, how to work with and understand creators and their incentives and how they make decisions, right?

We go through her stack, like who’s her agent? Like how does she construct her team? What are the tools she uses for producing her podcasts and producing her video and photo and all that stuff, right? And like why, like that’s the core under, like what’s the logic behind that decision, right? Hence creator Logic. 

And so my hope is that these are like super deep article. It’s on LinkedIn. I do the newsletter on LinkedIn, but I’ll be set of doing longer form stuff via an email newsletter and on a website. I’m using beehive for that. So it’s creatorlogic.beehive.com B E E H I V E, I should probably get the actual URL, but for now, that’s what we’re using.

Jessy: We’ll drop it in the description on the show notes.

Avi: Thank you. Thank you. And like there, I go super deep, all the data, all the like stack breakdown, and then I also add my own analysis and learnings, right? Because it’s one thing to see the numbers and see the learnings.

It’s another thing to then have someone like me walk you through what does this actually imply? What are the things that you should be thinking about as a creator economy company based on this? And how should you make decisions in the future?

That’s what it is. And like a lot of those learnings I’m gonna be offering in a paid tier. That I hope people will subscribe to because they want to go deep. But even if you don’t want to go that deep, you just want the numbers and you just wanna know what creators are using and why, that’s all there. 

Jessy: I love it. I love it for so many reasons. A, I love the name Creator Logic. It makes me really curious. I’m like, oh, what is there logic behind, doing all sorts of stuff. It really feels as if it’s like getting a behind the scenes of the way that they think. So I love the name. It’s a great name. 

Avi: Thank you. Yeah. 

Jessy: And the names are important, so I love the name. I think it’s great. And I also big picture, respect the fact that that’s the perspective that you’re taking because it seems like the theme of this conversation a little bit that there are just, parties on either end of conversations that aren’t communicating enough. 

So I feel like people from like our community, for example, would so benefit from hearing the logic that a creator has for doing all sorts of things, because it’ll just enable my community, the professional, influencer marketing community to work better with them simply because they understand something a little bit better or they’re like, oh my God, I didn’t even think of that. 

So I’m very excited for the newsletter. I read the first one and it was great. And like I mentioned…

Avi: Thank you.

 Jessy: We’ll of course, drop a link to it in the show notes so that everyone can check it out. It’s been awesome having you on the show today, and there’s so much more we can chat about. Maybe we’ll have you back on. 

Avi: Yeah, that’d be great. 

Jessy: In the meantime I’d love for our audience to get in touch with you and just follow along. I know that I follow along on LinkedIn cuz that’s a platform that I love as well. What’s the best way for our community to follow along with all the awesome stuff that you’re doing?

Avi: Yeah. Right now it’s LinkedIn and the newsletter and I thought about should I start a TikTok or an Instagram and maybe I will actually use, there’s some interesting platforms super creator is one where like I could put in my LinkedIn post and it would generate a script. I could then shoot as a TikTok and it would up, like maybe one day. But for now, LinkedIn Newsletter Creator Logic, and we’ll see where it all goes.

Jessy: Perfect. You were producing a ton of great content, so there’s a lot to consume even on just two platforms, the newsletter and LinkedIn. So…

Avi: Thank you. And lemme just, for ease, it’s LinkedIn way you spell the name, A V I and then last name G A N D H I.

Jessy: Perfect. Perfect. And for everybody’s ease. I’ll just chop a ton of links in the show notes. 

Avi: Perfect. 

Jessy: Cause I wanna make it easy. User friendly.

Avi: I love that. Yes, please.

Jessy: Let’s cheer to connect with you. So we will absolutely do that. Thank you so much for coming on today. It’s been such a pleasure getting to know you and all the cool work that you’re doing and yeah, just thank you so much for coming on today.

Avi: Yeah, thank you Jessy. I really appreciate it. It was fun