Digital Social Hour
Andy Creators Inc: AI in Marketing: Are We Doing It Wrong? | DSH #1504
22 Aug 2025
Chapter 1: What insights does Andy share about his early life and entrepreneurial journey?
They didn't know how to make a 30-second, you know, animated commercial that captures your attention. That's where the fuck we're at right now with AI. Like, my CMO sent me a fucking chat GPT output like this today. I was like, Will, are you fucking kidding me? At least tell it to make this digestible to me. It's not your original thought anyway.
Like, that's so not pee, but that's where we're at right now. You know what I mean? All right, guys. Got Andy, CEO of Creators Inc. here today. Welcome to Vegas, man. Thank you, brother. What you doing in town this week? The Watch King invited me out to do a convention. I have another buddy who's in the jewelry business. What are you doing out there, man? Are you working on the business?
I started the business in Boston and actually Massachusetts jacked their tax rate up from five to nine percent. I didn't know that. After your first million dollars in revenue. So you pay 5% on your first million, then you pay 9% on every subsequent million, which really made no sense because the state over-collected taxes.
So when that happened, I said, this might be an opportunity, like a reason to go the fair way. That's some liberal ideology right there, right? Sounds like Cali. So for those that don't know Creators Inc, it's the largest influencer agency in the world, right? By gross revenue, yeah. That's impressive. And how long did it take to get to that level?
I started about five and a half years ago, right in, I would, let's call it January of 2020 during the pandemic. Wow. So pretty fast growth. I feel like there's been agencies around for decades. Yeah. It was really about the boom of OnlyFans. You know, I'm not going to, not going to beat around the bush. That's really what the catalyst was. So right time, right place, plus good execution.
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm a little bit older. So I started the company when I was 35 or 36 years old. I'm 41 turning 42 now. So You know, a lot of my competitors and other guys in the space are in their early mid-20s and they're still excited about buying their first supercar and all this kind of stuff.
But I had that wave and, you know, I was really excited to just build a very stable service business. And that's what happened. That's a good point because you already had the experience. You already built a company that had a billion dollars revenue prior to this, right? Yeah, built and failed many times. So, you know, the experience is a big deal.
Someone hears this like a billion in revenue, they're probably thinking how did that one fail? You know what I mean? Yeah. Was that the phone business? Yeah. So I'll back up a little bit. I grew up in Wayland, Massachusetts and my parents were doctors. I was always kind of alone, like by myself, you know, I grew up with a nanny and I'd go out in the woods and, you know, keep myself busy.
My sisters were 10 years older than me. So I was kind of an oldie child. And so I was by myself a lot as a young kid. And I remember really thinking that I had a lot of self-confidence because I was, you know, alone. I didn't kind of, you know, have a picture of the, the, the broader world. And I thought I was going to be a famous athlete or an actor or something.
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Chapter 2: How did Andy Creators Inc. become a leading influencer agency?
I was, I was, I was a good wrestler. And, um, Uh, but you know, girls didn't like me and I get laid until I was 18 years old. And, uh, just high school was a tough time for me, but I'm in the locker room, junior year of high school and a kid comes in, this is the year 2000, right? So six years before Mark Zuckerberg even exists with Facebook, right?
Like, no, like the, the dream was you go to college, maybe you ride the subway to wall street, you make 200 grand a year with your ball sticking to your leg in the summertime. And like, that's the, that's the dream, right? So entrepreneurship was not on my calendar on anybody's kind of radar yet. And so this kid comes in the locker room and he's all excited.
And he says, I got into Babson college. It's the number one school for entrepreneurship in the world. And, you know, Babson college was like around the corner from where I grew up. So I thought it was a shit school. I said, well, it's entrepreneurship, like a lung disease. And he goes, no, he goes, um, Arthur blank who founded the home Depot was fired from his job.
And he went to a coffee shop and wrote the business plan for the company. And now he's a billionaire. He owns the Atlanta Falcons. I go, that's what I want to do. Hmm. somehow figure out how to get into this school. And I show up driving a Ford Explorer and Abercrombie and Fitch thinking that's as bling bling as the world gets. And then I see all these Arab kids driving Ferraris.
And I said, what dorm are you in? They go, Habibi, I live at the Ritz. I got the fuck. So, and one of these kids invites me to a nightclub, right? A freshman year.
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Chapter 3: What strategies did Andy use to grow OnlyFans creators' revenue?
So I go out to the nightclub. I didn't realize he needed money for a cover charge. I had no money. So I had to sneak in so I didn't have to pay $20. And when I get downstairs, there's a club called Aria. I'm watching these kids pop Cristal, freshman year of college, and they've got black cards. And it's just this wrestler-like competitive rush took over for me.
And I just started building and failing businesses after that from that moment on. That's the one good part about college, I guess, is the networking, right? Yeah. The access to other people. Yeah. I feel like if you don't take advantage of that when you're in college, it's kind of a waste at this point. Yeah, absolutely. So you got inspired by that. And I guess, did you find your mentor there?
What was the next step from there? Um... I wouldn't say I found my mentor, but, um, I, I found some really smart kids at Babson who, you know, were like, came from, you know, pretty poor backgrounds who were there on scholarship, who were like great coders and programmers. Um, and we built a business together. That was one of the first behavioral ad networks, which exploded.
We were the number three, uh, buyer of banner ads on the internet behind Google and Yahoo.
And we figured out pretty early on that we could sell mobile offers on the internet because like not everyone had a credit card, but everyone had a cell phone and kids had their parents, you know, would get a parent's cell phone and they could subscribe to stupid things like ringtones, horoscopes, IQ quizzes,
We made a million dollars for our dorm room and thought it was a big deal through a party. Carriers thought we were pains in the ass as we were just creating all these customer service chargeback bullshit issues. And then in 2008, when there was a flash crash, I'm in my mid-20s, I'm getting these phone calls from the CEO of AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile. Hey, Andrew, how do we do more revenue together?
This is a great stream of income. They gave us an API into their backend and do a billion dollars in transactions. Wow. Federal government came along later on after we had sold the company and I was, you know, flying around in a private jet in my twenties and living downtown in Boston and basically wiped me out, you know, hit me for $97 million. Jeez. Um,
Yeah, I went from, you know, being a hundred and three pound small kid to I bulked up in my twenties. I, you know, really started going to the gym and, you know, that then I hit my growth spurt. So I'm in my twenties and I've got money and that's my new identity.
I'm giving money to restauranteurs and, you know, all these ventures and then boom, you know, like I'm on the front page of the newspaper. for basically losing all my money and settling with the FTC. And that kicked off about six years of darkness in my life that took me to kind of find myself and come back from it. But while I was kind of in this rock bottom period...
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Chapter 4: How does Andy perceive the current state of AI in marketing?
And then they say, what's wrong with you? And you finally grab it. And that's the first time when you grab that rattle that you are getting attached to something that is limbic in this world, right? How old are you? I'm 28. Okay. So for the next 28 years, as we go on, It's a world of prey and predator.
We're all trying to predate on each other and sell each other things that are in our own interest because we're trying to get money, but not necessarily good for us. And you have to figure out and navigate your way through the world. And what this doctor taught me was that, you know, we're already hardwired to win. It's when you get out into the world, all the predating distracts us.
You didn't need cocaine, Tony Robbins, clout, plastic. ever was. Learned through his method to like stay connected and hardwired to myself and not get turned out by all the shit out here. And so when I say P-I-E-S-S-S-O, the physical is your diet and exercise. It's the way you eat. It's the way you take care of your body. The intellectual is the way you learn every day. Your mind is a muscle.
If you don't Work it out. It gets soft. Old people do crossword puzzles. E is your emotions. Like, you know, meditation, people who meditate versus people who don't actually physically have a different anatomy or amygdala shrinks. That's your emotional battle. So your ability to organize data and not like when you're sitting at a traffic light, just like shit on yourself constantly.
Your inner roommate shuts up when you, when you, when you meditate. Also women, when they menstruate, their amygdala swells. That's what PMS is.
socially and sexually cut out all the negative shit should only be positive energy only you know i'm not on dating websites because i can't i don't want to be out till four in the morning getting drunk to get laid you know there's other ways to go what you need and socially like you shouldn't be around people that bring you no purpose um there's a lot of neuroscience behind the power of spirituality so for example
You take a prison population, you give half the Bible, the other half that doesn't have the Bible, and you watch those two crowds. Very different result. Another great example is scientists who take two glasses, put some rats in them with water. The rats start treading water. In about 15 minutes, they give up and they drown. Okay, they start the experiment over.
Rats start treading water at about 14 minutes and 45 seconds. They pluck the rats out. They dry them off. They give them something to eat and they drop them right back in the water. Now these rats just swam till failure. How long do you think they lasted the next time? It's gotta be less than 14. 250 hours. Why? Why? Because they believed they would be saved.
Think about how much further they could go when they thought something was coming to save them. Holy crap. So when they thought nothing was coming to save them, they gave up in 15 minutes. When they had that hope, it lasted 250 hours. That's crazy. Crazy. And then lastly is your occupational dimension.
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Chapter 5: What lessons did Andy learn from his past failures in business?
Like they evacuated the whole hotel. Ooh. That's a thousand dollar night hotel. That's crazy. That's insane. I just had an event there for a F1 the other day. Yeah. Damn. That's nuts. Yeah. Yeah. But, but neon's a good kid too. And I, you know, I, I don't want to say I worry cause I think all those kids are on their journey.
They're going to figure it out, but they've, they, they garner so much attention and like, I hope they get a chance to kind of figure out life in their own ways and do the right things by the time they get to my age. Um, You know, because like the journey is crazy, right? Like when I first made money my first time around, I had to do all the ego dumb shit. Like it was a crutch.
You know, I had to make people, I had to make everybody know I was important. Right now, I just like, I don't give a fuck. Yeah. And that provides a lot of freedom. Well, a lot of the most financially successful people I know are like that because of childhood trauma. They're trying to prove everyone wrong and they got a lot of demons they're battling. So they overwork. They become workaholics.
Yeah, you don't want to peak in high school. No, you definitely don't want to be in high school. But no, you're right to be worried, man. This guy, Vitaly, have you been giving up on that story? I'll tell you something crazy. Three days before Vitaly was arrested, he FaceTimed me. I hadn't heard from him in a year.
Since he blew back up with the Predator shit, I let him come to one of my Coachella events and we had some fun. We filmed a skit. And I think he also is genuinely a good guy who is really passionate about content and virality. And again, if you don't know him, you probably have prejudiced opinions about him. Three days before he gets arrested, he calls me up. He goes, I need a huge favor.
You still own this domain, like the tally, the goat. I need it back. I was like, okay, no problem. But like when you get back from wherever the fuck you are, he was in Philippines. I was like, you got to come over. You got to, you know, make some story posts for us and say like, CreatorSync is great. Like they hooked me up with my domain, whatever. But he's like, yeah, okay, okay, okay. I promise.
And then of course he gets arrested. Yeah. The live streaming stuff is you're constantly chasing crazy. Anyway, what's going on with him? He's just in jail in the Philippines. He's about to face charges. Yeah, it's not looking good, dude. It's not looking good. But the point is these live streamers, they just keep having to do crazy and crazier things. And it ends up like that.
I can't believe they're as ballsy as they are. Like, I just, I mean, I, I fear incarceration. Like I don't want to be locked up that it's actually like the reality of it's so bad because it's not, but, um, you know, just not being able to pursue your goals or relationships or be that because you're like sitting in a federal camp sucks. Um, so I'm just surprised, like,
You know, when law enforcement gets involved, you know what I forget? Like these kids are so young. A lot of my clients, like here's something interesting, right? When I first started, I tried to be like super agent. I was like, you need to be filing your taxes. Here's your CPA. We have your tax return filed. You need to write a check. Some of my clients would be like, nah. Yeah.
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Chapter 6: How does Andy view the future of content creation and influencer marketing?
Thanks, Brad. Check them out, guys. See you next time.