Tomorrow Today

The Future of the Creator Economy with Felice Schimmel

July 07, 2022 Duke McKenzie / Kyle Kaplanis / Felice Schimmel Episode 11
Tomorrow Today
The Future of the Creator Economy with Felice Schimmel
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

The creator economy is driving innovation across industries, shifting definitions of work and providing revolutionary avenues for income. 

The creator economy is a booming industry, which only skyrocketed further during the pandemic: tech innovation of the past decade has amplified the industry’s possibilities. On the front-end, different platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter have billions of users the world over, and have provided content creators with impressive revenue streams.

We talk with Talent Manager, Felice Schimmel about her experience in the content space and working with creators, and her views on the shift between Web2 and Web3 and how creators are adapting with the new emerging technologies like the blockchain. 

Jump into this episode as we explore 

  • What it is like working with Content Creators
  • What Social Platforms are the hottest right now
  • Will Web2 creators be important to the Web3 space
  • How is IP Ownership going to effect the future of the Web

Be sure to Follow the Tomorrow Today Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss a new episode.

Follow us on Social Media

Duke McKenzie 


Kyle Kaplanis

Duke McKenzie
LinkedIn - Duke McKenzie

Kyle Kaplanis
LinkedIn - Kyle Kaplanis
TikTok - @theweb3guy
IG - @kyle_kaplanis
YT - The Web3 Guy

Duke McKenzie:

Okay. Everybody, we have an exciting, exciting, exciting. Episode today. I'm so excited. Can you tell, we have one of my favorites. We have Felice Schimmel. Let's give her a round of applauses go on Kyle. You gotta clap with me here. Clap with me for Felice. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

Kyle Kaplanis:

I'm clapping.

Duke McKenzie:

Felice welcome. So Felice is the co-founder of Team Checked, which is a tech driven agency that helps content creators interact with their audience, through their fans and engagement full disclosure. We work for Felice's firm on a bunch of different things at PRJT Z, Kyle's of mine day job. And on top of that, Felice is into a lot of things, web three NFTs crypto, which we'll be asking a lot about . And if you follow her Instagram, which will put down below Felice is actually my personal favorite influencer because she shows me all of her travels, cuz she never stands still. Felice welcome.

Felice Schimmel:

Thank you so much for having me on your podcast.

Duke McKenzie:

We're excited to have you.

Kyle Kaplanis:

Yes. We all live vicariously through your Instagram. That's for sure. No Felice, it's so great. As Duke mentioned, we work with you on a lot of different endeavors and stuff and we know you, but people listening might not know you. Right. So I would love to share a little bit about your orgin story and how you even got into this space of working with creators.

Felice Schimmel:

Excited to be here and talk about all different, cool things that are affecting the creator economy right now. Before I got into influencer marketing, I would like to say I'm a recovering event planner I was involved with the experiential marketing for a long time. I've been a little bit in the cannabis space and, after that I was in the artificial intelligence space. So just kind of going where the trends are and the cutting edge, technology and just getting in where I feel like I can make a difference in these industries that I think are really important to the future of everything. Honestly. We're seeing a lot of artificial intelligence being used in NFTs and cryptocurrency and just like how we're engaging people all over the world in the conversation. Then when COVID came, obviously events were not really happening anymore. And my partner had a touring agency that was specific for influencers and bringing tighter relationships between the influencer and their fans. When touring ended as well, we put our heads together and decided there's gotta be a better way to do this. because the fans were still wanting to engage with creators and they wanted to feel connected. And, we decided that we would bring it digital and that there was a lot of technology involved in it. We jumped on the technology bandwagon really quickly and started to help them extract users from different platforms and to really solidify those relationships with them and make them fans.

Duke McKenzie:

That's exciting. So when you got into the pure creator space, cuz working with influences and creators it's the best of times. And it's the worst of times cuz it's crazy business. What surprised you the most and what do you love most about working with creators specifically?

Felice Schimmel:

I think the thing that surprised me the most was just how much work they actually do.

Duke McKenzie:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Felice Schimmel:

I think a lot of people just think because they do a 30 second dance that they don't do any work at all. And that's actually not true. There's managing your fandoms. People have no idea how many conversations that they're having with fans on the back channels. How they want to feel connected to them. So they have to manage what a fandom looks like. It's very important to amplify their influence, as we say. Because they're not just creating they're influencing. So those are two very separate concepts. They don't just create, turn off their phone and walk away for the day. You have to respond to your comments, you have to engage with your followers. And then you have all of this pressure coming from brands that then want to partner with you. And you're like, I just dance or I just create funny content. And now all of a sudden you're a whole business entity Now we have a completely different conversation that we're having, and you're not just simply an artist. You're also an influencer as we call 'em. I think that's what surprised me the most was just how hard you have to work to be a content creator or to be a influencer. Then the part that I love the most is really seeing real genuine human interaction with the fans. When you're no longer, just a number, you're not number 3,550 you're number one. And so I really love when we're able to create that engagement and that connection for somebody that really looks up to a creator or an influencer and, genuinely wants to connect. And seeing those human interactions, whether it's a hug or like a beautiful message, just saying how much they appreciate the time that they took to create the content or to respond to them. I think that's what it's all about at the end of the day is just that you're seeing that you're actually making a difference in a person's life and that you're not just making a dance video.

Duke McKenzie:

You know, what I find crazy a lot of creators that you work with, that we work with there's a lot of them that, have millions of followers, but, many people in the mass media or whatever, don't know who they are, but yet. These people are some of the most important people to a particular group of people, right? Like when you see the meet and greets and all of those things. Someone who you may never have heard of is so important to somebody for something that might seem silly, like dancing or whatever. And it's crazy the connection that they have with their followers.

Felice Schimmel:

And to watch their followers grow with them as well. I think a lot of people realize that their creators are human. And so it gives them a little bit more grace towards themselves to know that nobody's perfect, that this idea is not perfect and that they can do better and keep achieving and growing just like their favorite creator. And I think that's the really important takeaway that people are coming from the creator world. It's different when you're looking at Instagram versus TikTok, but I think that's one of the special things about TikTok creators specifically, is the fact that you don't have to be perfect and that you're sharing your imperfections with people and it gives them permission to be imperfect as well.

Kyle Kaplanis:

Absolutely. I think we're seeing a shift with that as well with not only on the creator side, but businesses are now rethinking the way that they do media in general, like ads and everything. I feel like COVID really pushed it into this mode , but the world is craving authenticity. And we're seeing that, I think that's here to stay community authenticity. There's New key factors in this new revolution of technology. Would you agree? Yeah,

Duke McKenzie:

And then where are you seeing for businesses and stuff and, and even your creative partners, the most innovation on a social network, for example, which social network are you finding the most interesting creators right now? Is it still TikTok? Are you finding that they're having a resurgence on Instagram per se? What are you seeing the most interesting creators that you're working with right now.

Felice Schimmel:

I would say TikTok is still the leader mm-hmm , but I would say the second behind it, that's giving it a run for its money is Twitter.

Duke McKenzie:

Twitter??

Felice Schimmel:

Yeah. With the neurosurgeon of voice media. That's not new, cuz we've always had talk radio mm-hmm in the past, we have had radio shows in the 1920s where people were telling stories and they were weekly. Radioed mm-hmm mm-hmm , shows. And I am seeing people getting creative in that space as well. So bringing together community without the visual, I think is a lot more challenging than just being able to do something in, 15 seconds. Telling a story in 15 seconds is a whole nother mm-hmm mm-hmm . Specialty mm-hmm But I think keeping people engaged without the visuals has really brought about new creativity.

Kyle Kaplanis:

People who are listening as well, when we talk about web three or these new emerging technologies, a lot of people use Twitter as the main source of those conversations. So it's funny how I just recently got on board to it. I never was a fan, but then I realized I have to have this now. I have to use Twitter. It's mandatory almost. And if you wanna get. The knowledge and insights of all the new information that's coming out,

Felice Schimmel:

which is also the weekly shows that I'm starting to see. Just like how to engage with your audience while you're talking not to lose. Their attention span, because you're asking for a longer attention span than just 15 seconds. And you're not able to just create shock value, like visual shock value. Right, right. So I think it's just a really interesting, creativity platform at this point. mm-hmm

Duke McKenzie:

and it's interesting. So I'm a big, talk radio fan, especially if I'm driving or something like that. I fall asleep to talk radio, cuz it's like you can engage or it's ambient and it's keeping you company. And it's funny, this is where we met. It's interesting because. I was a big clubhouse fan when clubhouse started. And I always had it on maybe it's cuz I was stuck, in my house. And what's making me think about it is your point about, audio communication and live audio, right? Trying to keep them engaged. You were a heavy clubhouse user before. Yeah. Are you still a heavy clubhouse user or are you saying I love the live audio experience and you're really heavy into both? Or are you saying there's something about Twitter of owning this and I'm really into what's going on Twitter spaces and all that type of stuff.

Felice Schimmel:

Yeah. So I've switched from clubhouse over to Twitter spaces. Mm-hmm obviously the community aspect is missing a little bit from clubhouse to Twitter spaces, mm-hmm but as far as creativity goes, I really think that, Twitter spaces has got really interesting, cuz people are fighting for your attention. You can only be in one space at once.

Duke McKenzie:

Right. Right.

Felice Schimmel:

Like I said, it's really gotten, These creators more creative, but, as far as TikTok goes, the end of the day, you're like laughing and you're crying and people are telling their stories in a very visual way, which I really like about it. But as far as innovation goes, I think it's Twitter spaces is where it's at right now. Especially with the conversations about web three, I think there's a lot of questions and it's easier to have the open communication there where you can go back and forth and expand your knowledge versus TikTok where you're just showing a video and then there's comment sections, but you don't automatically get your answers or you also don't, automatically get the engagement with the people that are listening and watching. You get a like, but it's not the same thing as getting a question. Right. Mm-hmm

Duke McKenzie:

I think you and Kyle are gonna go off on this because you've been spending a lot of time on web three. You've been helping educate us a lot about web three. So to you. When talking to the layman. We're called tomorrow, today. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to bring normal people along for the journey and everything. Cuz most of our audience are marketers and business people who don't think about this a lot. Why have you been dedicating so much time on web three and in your opinion, and then just what have you seen out there and where have you been going to see these things and what's exciting you?

Felice Schimmel:

People in Web3, have the ability to make decisions a lot faster than traditional marketing outlets. They own their budgets. They are willing to try new things. KPIs are still important, but it's not on the extreme level of how many exact things did I do per dollar amounts. Mm-hmm I think web three is more about what advertising used to be, which was fun. When it was like brand recognition and not the actual clicks or the actual eyes. Are you getting brand recognition? Cause right now, These are brand new brands coming to market, whether it's an NFT, whether it's a cryptocurrency, whether it's a crypto trading platform, they're brands, let's just be honest. These massive marketing budgets that are exciting, and they're trying to make a lot of noise and what seems to be saturated market, but it's not, it's really an uneducated market more than saturated market. First off you gotta make a lot of noise and second off you gotta say, like, why even pay attention to me because mm-hmm then you have to work on the attention.

Duke McKenzie:

Can you dig into that a little bit? When you say it's an uneducated market versus a saturated market, I wrote that down. Dive into that a little bit.

Felice Schimmel:

Basically web three is still so new. What we're gonna use it for now is not what we're gonna be using for in five years from now. So it's just about education. We have to teach people what web three is, why they should pay attention to it, why they should even care about it, how it's gonna affect their lives. What it's gonna look like in the future and why they should be excited about it now instead of later. All these conversations have to happen now. Versus 800 bars of soap, like, we know what soap's used for, we know purpose of it. But at one point, like people didn't know exactly what soap was used for how it killed bacteria and things like that. So they had to have those conversations back when they were launching those things. And now they're just trying to get brand recognition. So right now we're having these conversations about. What they can do, and then we have to get into the brand and why you should trust that brand. It's just really fun to be a part of these conversations and, the community aspect behind it makes it even more fun. Where my attraction to it is that there's a bunch of community on top of marketing budgets. So we're not just asking people to, to receive the message we're asking people to also live the message.

Kyle Kaplanis:

I love that. You mentioned it's an uneducated market. Do you feel that, web two creators or influencers you wanna call 'em, those that are really excited about this space, do you feel that they're gonna play a big part in the future of marketing within this new technology.

Felice Schimmel:

Of course. They're influencers, they influence people. And usually people that are artistic are the revolutionary people that are early adapters in a lot of different things. Mm-hmm, , they're open minded to begin with. Creators A lot of them, not all of 'em, but most of them are actually artists as well. Um, right. You know, creating laughter as an art form, creating dances that engage you and make you feel good about your body and yourself is also an art form. So they are artists in a lot of ways. So it makes sense that you would match it with creators. On top of it, they are influencers and they're able to get the word out a lot faster to a lot of people who maybe are curious, but don't have a resource to find out more to ask questions to, but if their creators are coming to them and saying like, Hey. I like what I'm learning and I wanna share that with you. Let's have this conversation together. I think they have a lot of room for influence in the space. The other thing is, is it allows them to own their top supporters off of platforms, which I think is really interesting. So creators are master community builders, which we know, and that's why they have fandoms and followers and people that are engaging with them. So they take that same skill set and they bring it with them to web three. And they're bringing their communities with them. They have a very big role to play in web three development and in influencing which platforms are gonna make it and which ones aren't and, which NFT projects are gonna make it and which ones aren't, because they already have people that trust them and want to learn from them and want to grow with them.

Duke McKenzie:

If we look at the different portions of web three, right? I had to really wrap my head, around, crypto, as in. Basically, I had to wrap my head around what currency means. Okay. And that's sort of a interesting conversation. And then I had to wrap my head around, NFTs. And you talked about community and art meets community, because when I first started educating myself on NFTs, right? I'm like, everybody else, why would you wanna buy a JPEG? Why would you wanna buy this picture. You could already have this or whatever that means. And then I bought one or two. I'm not a massive collector. I'm just more of I'm hon sore. Yeah. I'm, I'm just trying, I'm testing things out, you know, I'm, I'm jumping into the water. Exactly. And one of the things and this hit on what you said. One of the things that hit me was, oh, wait, this is a community. I remember I bought my NFT. I joined the discord. We were talking about it. We talked about other things. It was a group of like-minded people. It's interesting cuz the NFT market is, a lot of new entrance and it's a hot market at the moment, but I'm very excited about the community aspects of it and what else can you do with utility and all of those things.

Kyle Kaplanis:

You made a point here about that. You don't have that many. And I think that's really important to just mention really quick, because a lot of people listening, they feel like, oh gosh, I have to jump in and own a bunch. Yeah. Yeah. But I actually think it's really important that people. Do that don't FOMO out. Right? That's the biggest mistake in this space right now with FOMO. And, I don't wanna go off topic, but it is important to do your research and buy into communities that you're gonna wanna be a part of.

Duke McKenzie:

What I even think. And I'd love your thoughts on this piece. Yeah. I even think of when we're talking about NFT's, I'm like, just try don't go crazy. Try it. Yeah. Open a wallet, buy one. See what happens. Just go through the process because mm-hmm , we're very early. But the things that are happening today is going to affect all aspects of life. I believe over the next 10 years, just like the web did when the web first started and everyone was like, I remember I, I got into the business in 98. I worked for a.com startup and all of the things that they were saying at that time, it seemed crazy. But the web affects every single aspect of your life, everybody's life right now in the world, but in north America, for sure, even in ways that we didn't even imagine. And that's what I think is gonna happen with web three, but particularly NFTs. I think there's a lot of things like utility and stuff like that we could add that could really affect everything. I don't know. What do you.

Felice Schimmel:

I think we're redefining what it means to have ownership of something. Mm-hmm I think there's been a lot of broads and fakes and we're tired of not having the real deal and we want to know what's authentic. Mm-hmm and so I think that's where we have a lot of room for NFTs and blockchain and. What that can mean for us. The other thing is sometimes you wanna be off the radar and you don't wanna be authenticated, and that's also gonna cause a problem in the future. I think as humans where we can't really be rogue anymore. right. Um, because it's all documented on the blockchain. So I think it's gonna alleviate a lot of the problems that we've seen with people lying in fraud, but at the same time, it's gonna create a whole nother set of problems where people aren't allowed to change their mind. that's

Duke McKenzie:

a fascinating, you know what? I haven't even thought of that. A guys like when social media came out, I was like, okay. This is documentation, but you could delete posts. You could still recoup from mistakes and they have to search, but you're right in this new world, everything is on the block. It's a permanent record, right?

Felice Schimmel:

It's a permanent record. Yes. Yeah. And one of the platforms that came up to me at, NFT L a was like, I've created a social media platform where now creators can turn their content to an NFT. And I was like, oh, let's, let's pass up. Somebody like thought buddy. I don't think you're a content creator. I think you're, a brilliant mind who doesn. and the human side of being a content creator. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you look at me? Like what, what, what, like, why would you even say that to me? And I put a lot of research into this and I was like, yeah, except for what happens when you say something about somebody that you don't want turned into an NFT and he is like, well, you could just buy it back. And I was like, but then a holder doesn't. Necessarily have to sell it back to you. Right? So it's like, Ooh, this is just really setting us up for some ethical problems. And some disasters when we have a bunch of young adults creating content mm-hmm and how they felt two years later after they put something into an NFT form and then they can't get it back, cuz somebody else owns that data on a blockchain I think it's gonna lead to some really questionable yeah. Conversations for people like us, who. Help advise content creators on, business strategies.

Kyle Kaplanis:

That's how early we are that people are having these conversations and I remember having that conversation with you. I was right next to you at the N FTLA week. But what I was saying is that when we were exploring the floor, What I noticed from our conversations is a lot of people still have no answers to some questions that we have. And they're still like, Hey, this is just my idea. And I'm running with it. And that just reminded me of how, early we are in this space and that we're gonna see massive changes. That person is probably gonna go through all these obstacles and have to face that until five, 10 years from now where it's become like the internet. Now, it doesn't seem crazy to us. It's a part of our life where again, that we're gonna see those changes come and then eventually we will be immersed in it. And it's all normal to us.

Felice Schimmel:

Yeah. And we can delete things off of SEO if we work really hard. But then once somebody owns your NFT. It's like, you have to negotiate with another human about owning something that belongs to you. So I think it's gonna be a very interesting conversation to have, and people need to start really thinking about what we're doing with the purpose of NFTs and that's gonna change over the next five years or so.

Kyle Kaplanis:

Absolutely

Felice Schimmel:

see what happens with it. I thought it was interesting that they wanted to take the creator land, grab up for that and that they felt. The content that they were creating was valuable enough to turn it into NFTs mm-hmm . So I think that's an interesting conversation to have, do the fans, remember and love content so much that they wanna own that dance, right. Or that comedy. Right. Or that moment where you had a reaction to something that was maybe not appropriate. right. I'm really curious to see, what people are gonna want to do with these NFTs and what platforms are gonna say, this platform is obviously not considering the content that's being made on it as their IP, versus TikTok, which kind of feels like once you put something onto their platform, it's TikTok, it's IP mm-hmm And I think that's also gonna be a question of , who owns the content. That's on these platforms and who can make an NFT out of it. With this particular product, you own your content and you can make an NFT out of it. I don't know if TikTok will NFT off of your content, right? and if you even are gonna have a right to be able to say, I don't want that as an NFT, or I want certain percentages. Right now, we're negotiating percentages of live streams and like mm-hmm, random promotion, but let alone your normal content. So I think it's gonna be very interesting to see what happens in this space with creator.

Duke McKenzie:

I know that a couple of your creators have launched NFTs, but what's boggling. My mind is you know what? Some of the collections. You own the IP. Of the NFT that you buy. Right. But then it's like, okay. You buy a piece of art and it has a brand name on it. So the one that everyone's talking about the most popular one is Bored Ape Yacht Club, but from IP you can make money off of that particular image and likeness, but so can they, they can make money off of the brand and things that you own. And it's just gonna lead to a lot, of these IP questions that, what happens if Bored Ape Yacht Club, the owner, both do an animated series with this one image who knows? I don't know. They say it says you have the rights. It's a fascinating, , yeah, fascinating time.

Felice Schimmel:

The really cool thing that a lot of people don't know is that when an artist is attached to a project there's code, that's written into it for the lifetime of the NFT, as long as it's being sold and they can trace it back to your wallet that you're making a percentage of it. Mm-hmm so it's pretty cool. You might not make money off of the t-shirt that has the artwork that you created, but if it gives you more value of the piece of artwork so that when you resell it to another person who can then continue making money off of the merch that's being sold of your art, then the artist will benefit in that way. So I think that's really cool. I think that NFTs are allowing artists to make money, just like how TikTok allow dancers to make money and comedians to make money. Mm-hmm in a way that they never have had the ability to, I think The percentage of people that have succeeded to the point that they're actually making a living, being an artist has been very small until recently. So technology is allowing artists to be artists. And I think that's really cool. And that's, what's worth supporting NFT projects for, especially if they have a way that they've. Done something nice for the artists. So that might be a question that you asked before you invest is does the artist benefit from the resale value of your NFT? And if they do, then I think you should consider buying into that if you like the artwork, if they don't and it's just computer generated and they don't really give the artist any additional benefits, then you might not wanna invest into that particular project. because it's not really supporting art. If you want to be a supporter of artists in their art form but I think that's, what's so cool about totally. Could you imagine if the family of Vango was still making money off of every time? No, that's that is cool. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And they might not make money off of like the reproduction sales, but they're making money, the actual artwork, which is super cool.

Duke McKenzie:

That is cool. Love it. As we get into this brave new world, there's a lot of thorny questions, but then the reason why I encourage people to just look at these new trends that are happening, they're happening right now. There's just so many cool and interesting things that are happening that will affect all of us. What I'd love to wind down on another trend that's happening right now. I teased you a little earlier in this episode about your punishing traveling schedule and working from different places and working remote. As we've all dealt with COVID. And as we are opening up again and one of those things, let me ask you a question. Did you always work remotely pre COVID? I know you've done some work in Europe and Mexico just check out our Instagram, everybody, like you're working everywhere. Did you do that because of COVID or were you like that pre COVID?

Felice Schimmel:

I've always been a nontraditional office worker. I haven't been in an office in about eight years, I would say. So I've always had a home office Uhhuh. Um, but with, COVID not needing to meet clients on site allowed me to be able to work from anywhere, which has been really great. Right. So I just jumped on the trend bandwagon and started trying different places. So the first thing I did was Mexico, cuz it was the same time zone mm-hmm so I was like, all right, well, let's see how this goes. And it, wasn't so hard for me to get on the plane and come back if I absolutely needed to, but in-person events weren't really happening. So I had that ability. So then I was like, what happens if I go seven hours away from here? And,

Duke McKenzie:

um, was that okay? Like, did that work?

Felice Schimmel:

After about three months, I got a little tired of taking calls from Los Angeles in Athens, Uhhuh, Uhhuh, like it's one in the morning and when I could schedule those, it would only be 10:00 AM in California. Mm-hmm right. But it allowed me to also have the freedom of exploring the world and just really seeing what the effects of COVID was on other cultures and societies. And just really brought me back to my core values of just being grateful for all the gifts that I have in this world. And the ability to connect with people on a human level, regardless of where we were and feel like we all had this compassion of going through. COVID together. And it brought like humanity back in a way, which was kinda weird because it disconnected us from each other. Mm-hmm

Kyle Kaplanis:

but it also United us. Yes. Mm-hmm we all had similar concerns. I'm so glad you brought that up, cuz this seems to be the, consistent factor in all of our conversations is the world authenticity and being human. I agree. I think that we're gonna see a massive shift of, and, I mentioned this before even brands are gonna have to humanize themselves a lot more. Mm. They have to be a face. They have to be a physical being to give back. They can no longer hide behind your logo. I think we're gonna see a shift in that. And everybody wants that. We're craving that as human beings, that interaction.

Duke McKenzie:

Yeah, I, a hundred percent agree. I a hundred percent agree. Felice. You are wonderful. Thanks. Thank you very much for coming on. This was a great episode and thanks for coming on today, we loved having it.

Felice Schimmel:

I'm so excited to be here and to continue this conversation with you guys and the work that we're doing with creators and helping them establish what it means to have a community off platforms.

Duke McKenzie:

That's great. Felice, everybody. Got it. Thanks a lot. And that's a wrap.

How is it working with content creators?
What social network is the hottest right now?
Why Web3?
Will Web2 creators be an important factor in growing Web3?
Decentralized Social Networks and NFT's
IP Ownership
Working Remote Around the Globe