Afleveringen
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Hayden Hillier-Smith has edited videos watched over 5 billion times.
He worked with Logan Paul and Mr Beast at the peaks of both their careers. He won a Streamy. He's shaped how millions of people watch video. He's also spent the last several years convinced that the creator industry is measuring the wrong thing.
Views work as a substitute for connection. The chase for more of them is volatile, shallow, and increasingly dangerous. Hayden has watched the algorithm hijack the careers of almost every creator he knows.
In this conversation, Ronit and Hayden get into why retention editing kills story, why your first hundred videos are supposed to be bad, what it means to treat content as a bid for connection, and how grief shaped his entire creative philosophy.
Follow Hayden at @hilliasmith. Subscribe to The Creator Class for more conversations with the creators shaping the industry.
Chapters
00:00 β "We need to stop looking at analytics. You're all doing it wrong"
00:14 β Editing billions of views for the biggest creators on the internet
00:41 β Why fame on the internet is volatile and shallow
01:28 β The video that saved Hayden's life
02:27 β Meeting at the bat mitzvah
03:07 β Hearing Hayden speak at VidSummit
04:26 β The most pivotal moment of his career
05:09 β Retention editing vs storytelling
05:46 β Telling a data conference to stop looking at data
06:28 β Getting hired as Mr Beast's story specialist
06:41 β The isolation video where the engagement ring was the throughline
07:55 β "People don't care about emotions"
09:42 β Being afraid to put himself on camera
09:55 β Watching his mother die at seven years old
10:50 β Logan Paul gave him permission to be big
13:44 β Putting himself in front of the camera for the first time
15:17 β The validation he'd been deprived of his whole life
16:54 β His CPTSD diagnosis
19:01 β Why creators feel isolated
19:29 β The pandemic creator economy boom
20:22 β When a million views stops being enough
21:13 β "It's the same as drug addiction"
22:38 β When shareability was the metric that mattered
23:54 β The best videos are the ones people sit you down to watch
24:33 β Finding your passion as a creator
26:13 β Why most men never figure out what they're passionate about
27:30 β Finding your art outlet
29:38 β Why all creators feel the same emotionally
31:13 β Why your first hundred videos should be bad
32:00 β When the algorithm hijacks your channel
33:35 β Treating the channel as leverage, not the destination
34:52 β Why Hayden's YouTube channel is his editing show reel
35:32 β Ending the editing podcast
38:20 β Forced accountability
39:09 β How to find a mentor
40:33 β Content as a bridge toward future possibility
41:16 β Making content for the specific people you want in your life
43:04 β Why art is the biggest form of connection
44:16 β The video that saved his life
45:07 β How toxic ego led to one of the worst things in internet history
47:04 β The decision not to take his life
49:06 β Being celebrated, then vilified
51:45 β What it means to be a creator today
53:14 β Where to follow Hayden
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The most influential beauty creator in the world built her career by breaking almost every rule she was told to follow.
Shima Katouzian has 3.5 million followers. That's a fraction of the platform most top beauty creators have. Yet she's the number 1 creator in the world powering conversation around beauty, number 6 by Earned Media Value globally, and number 3 by impressions. The reason is trust.
Shima built that trust through radical honesty. She only promotes what she actually uses. She refuses to soften her opinions for brand partners. She's open with her audience about money, products, and the industry itself.
That honesty has come with a cost. The Iranian regime banned her book. They banned her from returning home. When her father passed six months ago, she couldn't attend his funeral.
In this conversation, Ronit and Shima get into the real cost of honesty, what it takes to survive coordinated cancel campaigns, and how to stay yourself when the world wants you to be someone else.
Follow Shima at @herosheemaz. Subscribe to The Creator Class for more conversations with the creators shaping the industry.
Chapters
00:00 β "You are the number one creator in the world powering conversation around beauty"
02:35 β Meeting Shima at a brand conference
03:39 β The moment on the panel that stopped Ronit cold
04:39 β The stat that makes Shima different from every other beauty creator
06:06 β What Creator IQ's data says about her influence
07:11 β Leaving Iran in 2017 with no plan
09:30 β Landing a job at Tesla without knowing what Tesla was
10:39 β Posting through the pandemic while everyone else stayed home
12:18 β "It felt like FaceTiming my friend"
12:27 β Could she have done this if she'd stayed in Iran?
14:09 β How cancel campaigns work at her scale
15:29 β The coordinated attack that nearly destroyed her business
17:57 β The two-week rule a podcast taught her
19:30 β The morning ritual that got her through
20:46 β Why the campaign ended in 200,000 new followers
21:21 β Why it took three years to quit Tesla
22:24 β The "fuck it" moment
23:12 β Discovering affiliate links by accident
25:02 β The $6,000 she didn't know she'd made
26:02 β Why her conversion rate is unlike anyone else's
27:28 β Launching her beauty line three years ago
29:05 β The gap she saw in beauty
30:23 β Building her products with her followers
30:41 β The Immigrant Girl eyeshadow palette
32:15 β Sitting with Selena Gomez and Jennifer Aniston
36:17 β Why she'll never become a lifestyle creator
38:04 β The bubble she built with her audience
38:27 β "They can relate to me because I never changed"
40:38 β The book she wrote 15 years ago
42:03 β Becoming the best-selling book at the Tehran book fair
43:00 β The moment she realized her audience was real
45:05 β "I care about your hard earned money"
46:25 β Losing her father, banned from going home
47:00 β "I'm the biggest threat to the Iranian regime"
47:30 β "We are a real person in a digital world"
50:00 β The cost of honesty
51:23 β Why influence invites envy
52:34 β Where to follow Shima
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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One of the biggest challenges creators face isn't building something valuable.
It's recognizing and articulating the value of what they've already built.
Over the last five years, Jessica Kaylee helped pioneer a storytelling format that has since become one of the most-watched content genres in the world. What started as a creative experiment grew into a global audience of more than 20 million followers and billions of views.
But what makes this episode unique is that it becomes a live creator positioning exercise.
As we unpack Jessica's audience, impact, bio, social profiles, visual identity, and public-facing brand, a larger story begins to emerge - one that even Jessica hadn't fully articulated herself.
Together, we explore why her content resonates so deeply, the role creators can play during some of the most formative years of their audience's lives, and how the way you tell your story shapes the opportunities available to you.
The conversation also examines the often-overlooked relationship between audience psychology and creator positioning. Jessica didn't just build an audience. She became part of her audience's lives during some of the most memorable and influential years of their development.
What follows is a conversation about storytelling, influence, audience connection, creator positioning, and the power of understanding your own narrative.
Because many creators aren't struggling to build something meaningful.
They're struggling to tell the story of what they've already built.
This episode doesn't just tell Jessica's story.
It helps her discover it.
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Kevin Espiritu paid for college with online poker winnings. Then he became addicted to video games. Then he accidentally discovered gardening.
Today, he runs one of the largest creator-led businesses in the worldβan eight-figure company built around one of the least likely categories imaginable: gardening.
What started as a personal attempt to improve his own life grew into Epic Gardening, a business spanning content, commerce, community, publishing, and acquisitions, reaching millions of people around the world.
But what makes Kevin's story so fascinating isn't the scale. It's how he built it.
He didn't start as an expert. He started as the audience.
In this conversation, we explore how a complete beginner built one of the internet's most trusted brands, why solving real problems beats chasing attention, and the lessons he learned scaling from solo creator to CEO.
Because Kevin didn't just build an audience. He built something people depend on.
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Hollywood actor and digital creator Adam Rose gets a billion views a month.
For someone whose career grew up inside the traditional entertainment system, what he's built online now reaches an audience that eclipses many television shows. The biggest TV programs in the world attract a few million viewers and call it a hit. Adam's videos can clear a million views in a matter of hours.
But the part of his story worth sitting with isn't the scale. It's everything that came before it. Decades of creating, posting, auditioning, and trying to make it. Following rules that didn't work. Chasing versions of success that never quite fit.
In this conversation, Adam shares the hard-earned lessons behind his success, the mistakes that kept him stuck for years, and what finally helped him break through. We talk about building a career that can thrive both inside and outside the traditional entertainment system, creating sustainable systems for long-term success, and what it really takes to succeed as both a Hollywood actor and digital creator.
Subscribe for new episodes.
Timestamps:00:00 Cold open
01:30 Two worlds, one career
05:00 Hollywood is a permission-based business
09:00 What the early YouTube years actually looked like
15:00 The dance video that hit a million views overnight
20:00 What changes when you don't need anyone to say yes
23:00 The Seth Rogen quote about quitting
26:00 The years Adam spent trying to look cool
30:00 Posting for everyone else, not the people who know you
35:00 Building the team, and the mistakes that came with it
44:00 Where the creativity actually happens
48:00 Why repeatable formats aren't lazy
50:00 Working smart inside an unpredictable schedule
56:00 Does Adam need Hollywood
01:00:00 How a billion views changes the room
01:05:00 Where the money actually comes from
01:09:00 The three things every piece of content has to do
01:13:00 Sharing is the metric Adam optimizes for
01:17:00 The trampoline problem
01:20:00 Audience questions
01:31:00 The person underneath the character
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Reza Khan has 6 million followers, 100 hundred million monthly views, and brand deals coming in. By every external measure, he's winning. So why does it still feel like none of it is building toward something meaningful?
In the first episode of The Creator Class, I sit down with Reza Kahn, one of the internetβs leading family creators, for a live strategy workshop on the future of his business. We dive into audience psychology, community-building, and how creators can move beyond chasing momentum to building something more intentional, mission-driven, and personally fulfilling through the content they create and the businesses they build. We also unpack the realities of brand partnerships, the major shifts happening inside the creator economy, and what creators need to understand if they want to stand out to brands, platforms, and entertainment companies today.
If you're a creator who's growing and can't shake the feeling that none of it is adding up, this episode is for you.
Follow Reza:Instagram: @therezakhanYouTube: @rezaandpuja/
Follow Ronit:Instagram: @ronitcohnLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ronitcohn
Subscribe to The Creator Class for new episodes every Wednesday.
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Sean Does Magic grew 1M followers a week for 7 weeks straight. By 21, he had 25M followers across his platforms, billions of views, and a meteoric rise the entire industry was watching. It was also the lowest point of his career.
In this episode of The Creator Class, I sit down with Sean for a live strategy workshop on what it actually takes to come back from a stalled career. We unpack the unspoken cost of growing too fast, the difference between viral content and a career that lasts, why most creators are jumping on a trampoline when they should be building a skyscraper, and how Sean is now navigating one of the hardest pivots in the creator economy: evolving from a magician into a lifestyle and travel creator without losing the audience that built him.
This episode is for creators at every stage of growth, the industry professionals shaping their careers, and anyone trying to understand the human side of building a life inside this business.
