That video has accrued 18 million views, has made me [laughs] $50,000. Your audience today as we speak, just over 1.4 million total. It's been a decade of this.
You specifically want to be seen as a content creator with various skills rather than an influencer. The way the whole lifestyle influencer thing sort of shook out was a bit of a mistake.
Oh, so you had to follow the money? Yeah, ba- basically for four or five years, the money there was just so good. My new label that I want to be called is more of an artist.
Walk me through all the different ways you make your money right now. Okay, so... Welcome back to the Creator Spotlight podcast.
My name is Francis Serere, and today we're speaking with Lucy Fink, a creator who's been in the game for over 10 years. She got her start working at Refinery29, hosting and producing videos for them.
Then she left in 2019, and since then has built her own media business, lifestyle content, her podcast. She's got a bunch of different revenue streams, multiple six figures surely. She has one full-time employee even.
She's learned a lot over a decade plus in the business. I learned a lot from this conversation. I think you will too. So I've heard you speak about learning to deal with the trolls and angry comments- Mm...
ever since you first went on camera for Refinery29. It's been a decade of this.
Obviously, anybody who's been on camera for long enough, and especially women who create lifestyle content, there's always this troll element.
You're the first person I've ever heard of, though, who once reached out to- [laughs]... one of their trolls and had a call with them. I don't need you to recap the whole story.
Basically, I understand you called this person, and basically everything good about your life was the inverse in her life, and- Yes... face-to-face on the call, there was no vitriol. It was quite emotional.
Why did you reach out to this person? What point in your career was this? And why do you think she took the call?
Yeah, I mean, I've been through a rollercoaster of emotions as far as how to respond to these types of comments and how much they're actually impacting me on a day-to-day basis.
And I think at the very beginning, anyone who's a somewhat of a new creator can probably relate to the fact that at first, starting to get negative comments and hate and people who just don't like you for you, there's an element of shame or embarrassment or, like, you just...
It's almost like a flight mentality where you're just like, "I don't wanna fight you. I just want you off my page." So there's a lot of blocking and deleting and just trying to pretend it doesn't exist. But
as you were saying, after decades of doing this and being in this space and showing up regularly and kind of committing both to myself and just to the world, like, I'm here, and this is a public forum, and that's what the comment section is for, so go at it.
I have had to sort of loosen the reins of- Hmm... what I'm comfortable receiving, and I think at the, the moment I got this particular woman's comments,
for whatever reason, I didn't view them with any lens of embarrassment or shame or, "Should I delete this? Should I block her?" I, I think the first thing that came to mind was curiosity about- Hmm...
who, what is going on here? Who is this? What would drive a person to do this? And just in more recent days, I've... more recent years, I guess, my whole platform has sort of led in a human interest direction.
I'm extremely curious, and I'm interested in not only trying lifestyle experiments and changing things about my own life, but I'm so curious about humans, and that's the whole- Hmm... premise of my podcast.
So I just really wanted to know what could drive a person to come at me with such anger and- What, what year was this? I think it was 2020, 'cause I, I believe it was over COVID.
Okay, so you were already doing your own thing. You'd already left Refinery29. Yes. And I just had no, [laughs] no knowledge of what... I had theories about what being a troll,
you know, what would drive someone to be a troll. Hmm.
And I had done some little experiments here and there where I would respond in different ways to people who were leaving mean comments and seeing their replies to my response, and I, I had developed a few theories.
I pretty much, without fail, people would do one of a few things. If I, if I responded, I always responded to mean comments kindly, so if I ever got, if I ever wrote back kindly,
it was pretty clear that people were not gonna stray from this formula. Hmm. Either they were going to immediately delete their comment and get embarrassed that I actually saw it and just, they would disappear,
or they would write back and double down and be aggressive, in which case I know they're just here to fight, and there's kind of no use going down the path.
Or the third one was that they would just sort of flip the switch and be like, "Oh, I didn't even know you were really here. Hi, I love your videos." [laughs] Like, "Sorry, I hope I didn't hurt your feelings."
[laughs] And I had done these experiments, and I had basically figured out some of these people, but I really just needed... This one woman was kind of- Hmm... frantically attacking everything in a few-hour period. Hmm.
So I just needed to know, and we got on the call, and just like you said, it was, it was bizarre how it was d- truly from the place you would think
someone who's just unhappy with their own life and exactly what you would think it is, someone who just wants to take someone else down to knock themselves up a little.
You, on a recent episode of your podcast, you had a follower of yours on. This is a thing you do on your podcast. You have audience members on. People can submit themselves, submit a question.
They can be anonymous- Mm-hmm... and you can answer the question, or they'll come on.
But a follower came on to sort of challenge you on the privileges in your life and, you know, what you put into your videos, your lifestyle, your con- you make a lot of lifestyle content. There's an inherent privilege.
She come on to challenge you. Tell me how that episode went for you. Yeah, so when I got... We had this application form, lucyfink.com/apply.
People can submit to be on the show, and often it's to come on as a guest to talk about their own life story, something happening in their life that's crazy interesting, fascinating.This application was from a girl who lives in rural Colorado who has a very similar life to me, and we're at a very similar age and stage of life and have a lot of similarities.
But financially
is where the big discrepancy lies, and I've been very open with my audience about my, you know, being born and raised in a wealthy suburb of New York, and my parents putting me and my siblings through college with no student loan debt, and just being set up for success in any way that a person could be in the world.
And this woman had kind of the opposite financial situation, and she was living with her husband and two kids in a- Mm-hmm... 550 square foot log cabin in the middle of the woods with not many amenities.
And she kind of wrote on to talk about how she followed me because she felt like we were similar, but then over time, my content has just proven to her how different we are, mostly in the sense of money. Mm-hmm.
And she just wanted to have an open conversation about privilege and finances and our different lifestyles and different places.
I even say in this episode when I first got that submission, my initial thought was, "Wow, years ago, this would be the type of submission I would just archive in my inbox and not even- Hmm...
open, or maybe I would respond to her but not take on the, you know, task of putting it on the podcast and blasting it out," 'cause there was a part of me that thought, "What's, w- where's the benefit for me in this?
Like, I'm just gonna bring someone on who's gonna, I don't know if it's, like, make me feel bad about myself or embarrass me or make me just feel like a dumb privileged [laughs] person. So what's the benefit of this?"
But really, the direction the podcast has gone is leaning into discomfort. Mm-hmm. And with all my guests, I'm asking them really personal questions and trying to get deep answers for the benefit of the listener.
And so who am I to host that show if I can't even be in the hot seat myself? So I decided to bring her on, and it was a really interesting conversation. To this woman's credit, she
had every reason to be one of those people who would be a troll, but she was always very nice. Like, I... To my knowledge, she has never left me any hate on my content. Mm-hmm.
But she was opening up to me about certain things I post or certain things that come out in my content that she, in her own head, says something mean about. [laughs] And she sort of expressed what those were.
Um, and we just had a really interesting conversation about the differences in our lives and, you know, I might have more fiscally, but we talked about the areas of her life that she actually has more wealth in a way.
Mm-hmm. Um, and it was just, it was a great convo. You said that you specifically want to be seen as a content creator with various skills rather than an influencer. Mm-hmm.
I love talking about the, the semantics of the, [laughs] the influencer versus, versus creator. I would love to hear how you think about that difference.
I think an influencer to me feels like someone who's not well-versed at making content, but- Hmm... can do it, and obviously posts a lot of stuff, maybe takes a lot of photos, maybe slaps together some reels.
But there's not a lot of creative juice behind it or storytelling that's going into it.
And so a lot of people who are posting about products who are just standing in front of the camera talking, not that there's not an art form to the pitch of selling a product, but the actual creation of a video where there's creative editing and music alignment and something visually interesting for the viewer, that to me is the art of being a creator.
And it comes across in different ways. There's not one way to do it.
But I've always kind of shied away from the influencer word because to me, I've, I do follow some people who I think that is an influencer, and their content reflects them being an influencer, not a content creator.
But I just think that word content creator has now been kind of the blanket term for anyone who's on the internet making a living, even influencers. So my new word, which is,
you know, not a new word as far as words go in the lexicon of the world, but- Your new self label... my new label that what I want to be called is more of an artist. Hmm.
And I actually re- related to that word years ago 'cause I got my start on Instagram as a stop motion artist. Mm-hmm. And I was animating for brands, and then I started being in it, and that sort of transitioned me away.
But in more recent days with the video content that I create and some of the poetry I've been writing and my- You're working on a novel... new, new big goal of my psychological [laughs] thriller novel- [laughs]...
along with the artistic element of producing videos, to me, the word is artist. And I actually changed- Hmm... my little bio line on my Instagram handle from content creator to artist like two days ago. Hmm.
That's interesting. Uh, that's interesting. I, I thought you were gonna say, when you went, when you got to artist, I thought you were gonna say communicator because- Hmm... you, you used that word a few moments before.
I personally have really identified with that term communicator in that I came up in school, I was always a good writer, mixed in English classes. Yeah.
And I wanted to be some kind of writer, whether that was a journalist or a novelist at various points in my life, right? And now,
at the point I am in my career, I try to think of, I try to think more in terms of being a communicator and maybe this, like, what's the best way to translate this idea to its intended audience, and is that through writing?
Is that through a video? Is that through XYZ format, right? Mm-hmm. Artist is another way to think of that, I would say. But yeah, I, commu- communicator is a candy one, I think. Um- Another word that I- Okay...
like to go to is storyteller 'cause I think that- Hmm... encapsulates it too. Hot word right now. Yeah. That Wall Street Journal article. I'm, yes.
And it, listen, it's, all these words are-Can be loosely used by- Mm-hmm... many for various reasons. [laughs] But that is a word... I just, I, I even feel within myself...
I was telling a friend the other day, when I go... Let's say something happens to me in my life and I'm on my way to get coffee with a friend, and I'm about to tell the story to my friend. Mm-hmm.
The whole car ride for me is spent mapping out the order in which to tell the various elements of the story so that it lands the best, and
I, I feel when I, even when I'm just talking about something that happened in the house, it's like I am crafting a story and telling it in the right order- Mm-hmm...
and hitting the right beats and g- capturing the emotion and the laughter and the punchlines and that, I think, translates directly into content. I agree. No, I, I, I identify with that term as well.
Uh, I wanna talk a little bit about the Refinery29 days, more leaving there, right? Because this is a key part of your journey to where you are now. Your audience today as we speak is just over 1.4 million total.
It's 530,000 on YouTube, 554,000 on TikTok, 330,000 on Instagram. This isn't counting RSS podcast feed and- Mm-hmm... newsletters, these private audiences. But to get there,
you started as a stop-motion animator, as you said, on Instagram. After college, you work at Ogilvy & Mather, and then you go to Refinery29 where you become an on-camera host.
And then after, I think five years you said, you leave, and they let you keep your audience. You have around 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. Clarify that for me.
So you had a channel that was your name, but that the work you produced with them would be published there, and then they let you leave with it. No.
So Refinery29, unlike a brand like BuzzFeed where all the talent that worked there at the time, because the BuzzFeed was, you know, five times the size of Refinery- Mm...
they forced their employees to create these Facebook pages and profiles that were called like BuzzFeed Lucy or BuzzFeed Francis. Yes. And then when you left, you lost those people.
When I went into Refinery, I had, I, actually it was right around the time, maybe it was like a, a year or two after Safiya Nygaard, one of the BuzzFeed talents, had left, and she made a YouTube video that was called Why I Left BuzzFeed.
Mm. And it was basically like they made me make this audience profile. That was part of it, was that she couldn't keep her own audience and she wanted to be able to own her followers. And so- Mm-hmm...
I brought that video to the head of the video team at Refinery, and I was like, "I just wanna show you what's happening at other media companies.
I would love to be here for a really long time and grow with you and build your platform, but the number one thing that's important to me is that in every YouTube video on Refinery29's YouTube channel," which by the way was being syndicated onto- Mm...
Delta in-flight entertainment and- Oh, wow... Amazon and o- other places, every video I post that I'm in
we're gonna embed in the video, not as like a added-on YouTube subtitle, but like in the video in the final copy my Instagram handle is gonna pop up as my lower third. Mm-hmm.
Because when Refinery then got on Snapchat Discover and they're putting content out to new audiences of millions, my Instagram handle will always be there.
And I saw the direct impact of that request pay off, not only in, from the YouTube channel, Refinery's YouTube channel, driving people to my own Instagram handle, and also that was the same handle of my YouTube channel.
So some people would search it and follow my personal YouTube channel. But also specifically Snapchat, that was a big one.
Right in 2016 when Snapchat Discover, I don't know if you remember that, when they had the bubbles and there were maybe 20 publishers that got a bubble- Mm-hmm...
and that was all that was public to the world on Snapchat, and Refinery was one of them, and they would repurpose my YouTube videos there every week.
And I would wake up some mornings and my Instagram would have 10 or 15,000 new followers, and I would wake up and see this jump from like 80,000 to 90,000 followers and I'm like, "I must be on Snapchat today." Mm.
And then I would go open Snapchat and there it is, and there's my Instagram handle. So I was really, you know, the, as much as they were using me to grow their content, I was using them to build my audience.
And as far as my own YouTube channel went, I wasn't really putting out a lot of stuff there.
On the weekends I would sometimes do my own thing that didn't really make sense for Refinery's channel, and I would put it on mine, but I did have 100,000 people that subscribed- Mm... in my time there.
And then when I left, obviously I just kept my own audience, but I did not keep any part of Refinery's 3 million subscribers that we had grown the channel to. Yeah. Yes. [laughs] Okay, so that 100,000 is the seed.
When you're at Refinery you have this whole team around you. You still have to do a lot of work, but you've got people chopping up clips and distributing them. Yeah. All these things that really help grow the audience.
Suddenly you leave, you don't have a team.
In that first year when you're now trying to reestablish yourself as your own brand and you're not part of a larger team, what were like two or three of the most significant difficulties in setting up your business and regrowing your audience?
Definitely that mindset of Refinery kind of being this well-oiled machine where I, all I was focusing on was YouTube and producing the video, going back and forth with the editor, finalizing the cut, and then I would see it live.
And then I sort of took for granted that Refinery was sending my video out to at least 20 other people who were appropriately sizing, chopping, writing, and spreading it out across the whole internet- Mm...
which was helpful.
[laughs] So when I left, it was almost like it took me at least a year to sort of realize that I needed to be treating my own media company that I had just started as a mini Refinery29, and that I needed to-Be distributing the content into all those places.
And so at first I started doing it myself, but that led to some offloading and delegating and hiring over time. And then, I mean, there was definitely somewhat of a plateau moment with my platforms. Mm.
'Cause as soon as I'm off Refinery29 and I don't have regular stuff coming out on their three-million subscriber platform where they are every week putting paid spend to promote the content and reaching new people,
as soon as I leave that, it's kinda like a dull period of, okay, now I need to ramp up what is my editorial content that's gonna get people to follow me here.
And I alway- I think my Instagram w- and my YouTube, I mean, all my platforms were always relatively healthy as far as engagement and people.
Like, I, I never felt like all of a sudden no one was there, but I had different moments in my life since then that were big growth moments and led to a lot of new people coming for whatever reason, whether it was, like, a micro series I started or, uh,
expanding into different, a new platform and just starting to kind of change the content. But it definitely took, I don't know, it took a lot of...
Ever since I've left Refinery, I feel like I'm living in an experimental zone. [laughs] And I'm still kinda there. [laughs] Yeah.
Well, okay, you, you've brought people in, the team has grown and, you know, contracted over the years. I think right now you have one full-time employee and a few contracted service providers, right? Mm-hmm.
What is that team today? Yeah. So I have one full-time employee who works with me on everything, and she's essentially my director of operations, but also has editing skills.
Like, she has a lot of the same skills I have, so we can- Hmm... tag-team a lot of stuff. She's my one full-time. Then I have another part-time social media manager.
I have a virtual assistant editor who is primarily working on the podcast. I have a team that I hire that manages my two newsletters, which is, that's a one-person team.
Then I have another team of two people that I hire that sort of help with some of my meta ads management, and most of that is for, uh, different, driving to different paid offerings that I'm doing or products or whatever.
And I work, I have a
management team and an agency, so I have a talent manager and a talent agent, and those teams are both in LA, two different companies, and on each of those teams there's probably, like, four to five people that I work with that are the hands on the ground talking to the brands' people.
We don't, you don't have to tell me exactly how much money you make, but I am curious how long it took you to replace your salary at Refinery after leaving. Oh, well, that's a great question.
So I could just tell you the numbers. My salary at Refinery29 was, I think the max I was ever paid was, like, 95K. Mm. Could be somewhere between 92 and 6, I forget.
But when I-- And that was for my full-time job, th- and pretty much I was responsible for at least 52 YouTube videos a year, 'cause I had a video every week, plus there were random brand videos that popped up, random Facebook Lives they wanted me to host, like a lot of other things, but it, that was at least 52 videos.
The year I left in 2019, I sort of eased my way out, so I didn't just cold turkey leave, but I left being a full-time employee and instead we entered into a contract for the year 2019- Hmm...
where I was commissioned to make 16 videos for them, so just four videos per quarter, and that helped me sort of transition away with the audience. And for the 16 videos, I had a contract of 100K.
So- [laughs] And that was my- More money for way less work [laughs] Basically I had more money for a fraction of the work as, as sort of just a c- my first contract- Mm...
then going off on my own and having all the free time. So it took me, you know, negative days- [laughs]... to make back what I was making. Um, and then
really the big kicker in the business was being able to m- make the high majority percentage of my brand deals. 'Cause when I was working- Mm...
at Refinery, they were helping me get brand deals, but they were taking a really large chunk, and then when you move to a talent agency, they take 10%, so. Yeah. Now I imagine you're making a good bit more than that.
[laughs] We just talked about all the people you work with. You don't have to tell me exactly how much you're making now, but I imagine it is, I don't know, two or three times that, if I was just to guess.
You don't have to say anything if you aren't. [laughs] I mean, yeah, it's every year has... I've had interesting... I have a tracker for every year- Yeah...
of the business's revenue, and it's been interesting to watch the cycle of it, because there were a few years there where it was just going up, up, up, and then around different times in my life, whether it was a year that I took a maternity leave in the holiday season, which is like a huge brand deal time, and I couldn't do any work, or years when I was pregnant,
that there have been, it's gone lower, then higher, and lower, then higher, and so it hasn't been a straight upward trajectory, but- Yeah... 2025 for me was a big year. 2025 was actually my lowest net year- Wow...
in maybe six years, and that's because I have paid more people than I've ever paid [laughs] to build different systems and help me with some of these various revenue streams that I've been opening.
And so my hope is that 2026 sees the fruits of that labor, but we're, we're still only in month one. Yeah. So let's walk through those revenue streams.
You recently did a whole video breaking this down on your channel, so anybody listening who wants a lot more detail than that should go watch that video. Maybe Producer Tom will link it in the description.
But walk me through all the different ways you make your money right now. Okay. SoNumber one, and kind of the easiest, cleanest one, is the brand partnerships, and that comes in through my agency or my manager, and
I walk away with 75% of those deals because I... Oh, no. Sorry. Wait. Yeah, 75% of those deals- Yeah... because I give 10% to the agency, 10% to the management company, and 5% to my attorney, so.
And, and what percentage of your overall revenue pie does that make up? Um, in years past, it was, like, 90%. Wow. Now, it's [laughs] probably gonna be different because I've opened up some other things, so.
This is the goal. This is, yeah. Good. Yeah. This is the year that hopefully that number will be more like 50% or, I don't know- Mm-hmm... not, not 90 or 80.
The next revenue stream that's been opened is my one-on-one coaching and consulting arm of my business. So I work with about three to five clients one-on-one every month, and it's, like, a months-long coaching package.
Four weeks, it's just a four-hour package, but it's a relatively high-ticket offering for four hours of really targeted, guided coaching on helping them build their social media platforms.
It primarily focuses on Instagram, and it's not really for aspiring influencers.
It's, some people are actually aspiring creators, but it's actually mainly been for people who have completely different jobs but who know- Mm-hmm... in 2026 that they need to be on social media to grow their business.
So I work with real estate agents, dermatologists, people that have products, anything like that. Um, and I help them create series, and they show up on camera.
I actually develop the formats and series for them and then give them all the production tools and knowledge and give them a content calendar and set them on their merry way. So that's been a- You actually, wait.
Really sorry to interrupt you, but really quick, I, I heard you in a net- I think this was in that revenue stream episode of your podcast I mentioned, but you had described it as coaching and then in the middle of talking about that- Yes...
you shift to calling it, like, "Actually, I'm just a social media consultant. It's not one-on-one coaching." Yes. That was an interesting semantic difference.
Yes, because I work with a coach who helps me with my business mindset, and it's very much a coach, and she is- Mm-hmm... she's coaching me. She's guiding me. She's giving me journaling prompts. We're thinking.
It's whatever. When I actually think about what I'm doing for these clients, I am coming into their business as a social media strategist and- Mm-hmm...
essentially getting some information from them, doing my own research on their niche, and then giving them formats that I suggest and then tips and strategies on how to show up continually and have the best growth and
goals that they wanna hit from their platform. So that's been one of the most rewarding streams because I just love doing those calls, and- Mm-hmm... that's just been...
I, it's something I had done in the past, but now that I've opened it more regularly and I have a r- running application form and I just have applicants coming in that I'm booking three to four months out, that's been really enjoyable.
Next is the new course that I launched, so this was a, the first time it's happening is happening right now, but it's a YouTube Launch Your Dream YouTube series course- Mm-hmm... that I
lowered, instead of charging what I would charge for one-on-one, 'cause there's a lot of people in it, I lowered the price somewhat, but it's still a relatively high-ticket course, and we have a cohort of people going through it together.
And this is a course that I would love to build out and grow and
run multiple times a year and keep taking on different cohorts and ultimately funnel the cohorts into some sort of ongoing membership community where we can continue showing up and talking- Mm-hmm...
about content and strategy, which is sort of similar to my paid newsletter, so that's another stream. There's the Creator Confidential paid newsletter.
It's somewhere between $8 and $10 a month, or you can pay for the year and get a discount on it, and that's two times a month, a super valuable article that's coming out. That is,
if you think I'm being honest in this conversation, it's like- [laughs]... times 500 with numbers and screenshots and a lot of background stuff that I wouldn't publish on Instagram. [laughs] Mm-hmm.
And we have a- about 100 people in that right now, and, you know, just launched it a month or two ago. So I'm excited to keep growing that, and the best thing about a newsletter, as you know, is
as you keep going over time, it just keeps, like, the price doesn't keep going up, up, up by that much, but the value of the newsletter just keeps growing.
'Cause it's like as soon as they sign up, they're gonna unlock this archive of- Yeah... hundreds of amazing articles that you've written in the past. So that's been a really good one. Then
other revenue streams, my podcast- Hm... was a huge- Two years in... new addition. I'm two years in. Mm-hmm.
First year it did pretty well, but there were some production costs to get up and running, so it was okay, and then second year
I switched to a new network, and I was on a n- a new network that had some higher threshold minimums of how many downloads the show needed to be getting regularly before they could monetize- Mm... it with sales.
So I was in really ramp-up views and downloads mode for a while, and just in the past maybe two, three months it started selling. And already it's more...
Like, just put it this way, in January, it's more than my other outside brand deals from the podcast, so I do think that's gonna be a big revenue stream for me, although unfortunately there are more,
unfortunately or fortunately, I don't know, there are more people involved in it, so my portion- Oh... of the pie is smaller, so, like, a big deal there doesn't go as long of a way for me- Yeah...
because I have a network and multiple agencies and it's just a little bit- Do you work with Dear Media? Did you work with them from the beginning?
No, so I was on Cloud10 in the beginning.And Dear Media was just my dream network.
I always wanted to launch a show with Dear Media, but when I pitched them my show, they were like, "We're, we're not starting new shows with creators right now. We're really only acquiring existing shows.
So go start it elsewhere, and then we can keep in touch." And I started it at another network that was great and gave me a chance and, you know, launched it with me. But had some legal...
I had some issues with when I ultimately wanted to move over to Dear Media. Yeah I didn't realize that I had, uh, given some of the IP to the first network, so now everyone's involved.
[laughs] So yeah, it's become a little bit of a hoopla, but we're all happy, and we're all friends. A lot of slices of the pie. We all get along.
A lot of slices, like it is a, a big pie that I'm seeing less than 50% of, but it's fine. And I, I just also love the podcast. Mm-hmm.
So I even said to myself when I started this show that my goal with it was not to make a huge revenue stream. It was to kind of expand my footprint and my content and just offer new things to my followers.
So I was never chasing the money, but obviously now that I see how much work it is, I'm like, we kinda deserve to be making money [laughs] from this, and it costs me a lot to run. Mm.
I have to pay, even though I'm on a network, I pay out of pocket myself for the studio space, for the editors. Mm. And of course, I do all the time and work. So you do want it to monetize, and thankfully it is. Yeah.
So the podcast is becoming good right now, and then other revenue streams, I have sort of the standard influencer revenue stream of affiliate revenue from posting, whether it's on Amazon or Shop My Like To Know It.
For me, because I'm not a blogger, and I don't think people are necessarily there for my links, it's never been a huge money maker in my business.
I've been on brand trips with people who are making so much money from affiliates, and I realize, like, their whole platform is about selling products. Yeah.
So it's just n- um, it's never gonna be like that for me, and it's fine. But I have been able to make some side income from that. Let's go back to the education products.
So I know that in 2020 you did a one-time Instagram branding course. Yes. I think you had it up for two weeks, and then you took it down. That tells me that maybe you felt you weren't ready to do an education product.
They're hard to get right.
I've talked to a few different people who have done them, and the theme I see, and this makes sense with what you're doing too, is that the ones that do the best and the ones that are the stickiest and get the best reviews are typically those that are cohort based because you can...
Like, anything you need to learn about is usually out there. You don't need to pay to get, like, a, an e-book or whatever it may be, right?
Like, maybe, and maybe the people who made those e-books, et cetera, have really concentrated the value, produced a workbook format for you.
But I personally, and I think th- this is most people, learn the best alongside other people in a time-limited course concurrently. You can ask people. Mm-hmm. So what
went wrong, or what wasn't right about that Instagram branding course in 2020 that you then are taking into the cohort course that you're currently in the middle of? Great question. So
it wasn't per se that it didn't do well. W- I sold that course with a friend of mine who lived in Germany at the time. Mm. And we worked together on it. She really brought the mindset,
journaling side of it, and I brought the social media, you know, what to do side of it.
So it was sort of a nice merging of, here are your homework prompts and things to think about, and then here's the tangible facts of what to do. And we created the course in a way that, as you said, it was not live.
It was like a go at your own pace, here's 10 modules, I don't know how many there were, and we coded the web... We didn't even do it on a course platform like Kajabi or anything.
It was like she coded the site where as they were going through, they would check off the module, and it was, like, filling up this ticker, and it was beautiful, really well done. But... And it sold relatively well.
Like, I, I don't know what a good amount would be for someone who's selling a... It was a $290 course. But we had a few hundred- Mm... people buy it, um, in that two weeks that we sold it. And I think
what didn't work about it for me was I freaking hated selling a course. Hmm. The way that I... It did well, and I was happy with the final outcome, and I was happy with how many people were impacted by the material. But
to show up, even though it was just for two or three weeks, to overhaul my platforms for weeks to be selling people on something, even though it was something that I believed in and thought would be helpful,
just felt so boring and s- and icky to me. And I was like, I, I realize that I don't like selling in this way, and I don't wanna sell people on stuff.
And not only that, but I didn't even get the tangible reward of seeing the transformation in people, 'cause everyone was doing it at their own pace.
And it's kinda like we sold it, and then I never heard from many of those people again. You have no idea how it went. I have no idea. Mm.
And so after years and years of being, you know, focused on the brand partnerships and the building and the growing, I s- I actually s- I... This is a case of, like, say it out loud, and it will come.
I said to someone that I was interested in... I moved to this new town, and there were a few people in my town who were, like, asking me questions about social media, and I was guiding them over coffee.
T- And one of them was a sex therapist, and one of them ran this, like, mom program. And I was finding the education for them, it was just rolling off the tongue, so fun for me to talk about.
I was, like, setting up these coffee dates to teach them stuff. And I was like, this is so fun, and at the same time, be- after I said, "I'm loving this. Like, I'm loving teaching this.
Maybe I should get back to coaching," I got two emails in one week from past clients that were like, "I'm pivoting my direction. Are you free for a call? Can we do a one-off?" Whatever.
And I just started slowly opening it where-I jacked up the price. Like, I forget what I was charging before.
It was maybe, like, I was charging 500 for an hour, and I was like, "I'm now only gonna offer a month, and it's gonna be $5,000 for four-" Mm-hmm... "sessions, and that's it." Because
it's not something I need, but I like doing it, and if I'm not doing it, if, if I, if my time wasn't spent doing this, I could be doing another brand thing at this time, so it is taking up valuable...
Or spending time with my kids. So- Yeah... I need to feel like the price is right for it to be happening, but then I feel so good about it. And everyone that I said it to was just like, "Great, when can we start?"
And it was a moment for me of like, in the past it was sometimes hard to ask for $500, and now here I am asking for 5,000, and no one's questioning it. Mm. And the way that I've gone about
selling this on my social, and even the YouTube course, it's like I have changed my whole strategy. It- it's not even a strategy.
It's like I just have m- changed my mindset of how I'm approaching this, which is that I have such a healthy, thriving business doing other stuff that this coaching and these courses are so
for fun for me that I don't really need a client. Like, I don't need you- You also need less sales. You don't need to sell that many of them to sell out. Exactly. I don't... I...
And, and honestly if I have no coaching clients in a month, it's not like I made no revenue that month. So genuinely I'm like, "I don't need any of this.
It's all just if the people are right, and if they align, then I'm here and I would love to help, but I do not need to sell you." So I've totally changed even just my language in the whole process of them signing up.
It's like when they go to sign up, I've tried to take out all the friction of needing to sell them on it. Mm. So I give them the information on the page, and then they pay.
And then I send them an application for them to apply, and they've, like, already paid. [laughs] So then once they get accepted, if they get accepted, it's like, "Great, you already paid. When do you wanna start?"
And I don't need to, like, go on a discovery call and sell them on doing it. Mm. It's like, "If you wanna do this, I'm here. If you don't, I'll work with someone else, or I'll just be doing my other thing."
How many people are in this first cohort of the, the eight-week course? The eight-week course has 22 people, and that's- Were you- Not a thou- the, the course is 2,500. Yeah. Yeah. Were you oversubscribed? Um,
as far as how many I wanted in there? Uh, or did, uh... Like, did 50 people respond- Oh... and you had to tell 28 of them, "Sorry, next time"? Yes. More people...
I, I don't think it was 50, but more people than we let in. There were some people [laughs] who applied who paid, and then we sent it back, and it was just- Oh, wow... more so, like, a energetic alignment or me...
I really wanted people in the course who I was like, "I genuinely feel you could have a YouTube channel," which do- didn't need to be people that already had a big following on social. Mm.
But something about being able to see their social and seeing who they are and seeing what they were already doing, I just didn't wanna take people in who I was like, "You're just never gonna have it.
[laughs] You're never-" Yeah... "gonna do this." Um, and so... And I didn't limit it to women. There are a couple men in it. But I always like to weed out some people. Yeah. No, certainly.
You wanna make sure that they're actually gonna get what they're, what they want out of it. Um, one...
To go on a totally different topic, one thing I noticed when I was preparing for this on your YouTube audience growth, right? There's this website Social Blade.
You can see historic YouTube growth data, all, TikTok, et cetera, all these platforms. But I saw this weird graph on yours.
So I could look as far back as January 2023, so three years back, and at that point, January 20- T- January 2023, you were at 421,000 subscribers, and you had a really productive growth period that ended nine months later in September 2023 at 505,000 subscribers.
So that's really good. It's a big spike. But then- What was it from? 400... 421,000 to 505,000. Okay, got it. In nine months. And that is, um, just basically throughout the year of 2023.
But then over the next year ending on December 2024, you only add 4,000 subscribers net. So over one year, about 13 months, 14 months there, you go from 505 to 509,000. It's this essentially flat year, this plateau.
And I was wondering, like, did she stop posting? But you didn't, and your videos were still doing well. And then now, so a year after that, a year after landing at 509,000, you're at 530,000.
So it was a much better year, but still quite flat, especially in relation to that, that earlier period, which maybe you had, you'd had even more growth that I couldn't see on that graph.
Long way of saying, do you know what that plateau was? Do you know why in 2023 you essentially... Or no, 2023 you did grow. Do you know why in 2024 you essentially were flat on YouTube?
I need to look back when I launched the podcast, but there was a moment in 2024 when I took on the podcast, I basically stopped posting editorially- Mm.... on YouTube- Yeah... aside from the podcast.
And, I mean, that could be what you're talking about, but I actually was thinking not in regards to the plateau, but in regards to the growth,
something interesting that happened on my channel between, I think it was 2021 and 2024, is I experimented and did this one random video with this dance company. Mm-hmm.
They invited me to come into their studio in Brooklyn and do, like, a learn this dance cardio class where I was learning a dance alongside- Mm-hmm... a teacher, and they invited me to do it, no payment.
Like, just come in and do it, and we could film it and put it on, on our app, and asked me if I would put it on my YouTube channel. And I was like,
"This is gonna be so weird for my channel because the, I'm not, like, a fitness dance with me channel." Yeah.But I was like, "I'll just try it." This ac- you know what?
This must have been in 2019, so it was like the first year I was on So I can say... on the app... really quickly, your most viewed video- Yeah... you've got a few of these videos, but your most Yeah...
viewed video with 18 million views posted- Yes... April, 2019. There you go. 20-minute hip hop dance class. And then- Exactly...
like all your top viewed videos, except for a coup- well, let's s- y- your one, two, three, four, five,
five of your most viewed videos are these dance videos, except for your second most viewed video, which is telling my twin sister I'm pregnant.
Yeah, so I did that one video, and actually, if, if you, I don't know if on Social Blade you can see the backend stats on a per video for someone else.
But if you look at it, I posted in 2019, and it was like, eh, like my channel reacted exactly as I thought they would. They were like, "Whatever. What is this?" Yeah. You know, a f- few thousand people watched it.
It was maybe, maybe had 5,000 or 6,000 views. And then one day, right around March, 2020, so COVID- Mm. Uh-huh... when people are all of a sudden like, "Learn a dance. I need to move- [laughs]... my body at home."
Everyone's typing in learn a dance. This video got sucked into the be- like you could see, I use, I use vidIQ, and so I can see- Mm-hmm...
the SEO terms, and I can see which SEO terms I've put on the video that wind up being trending terms and which ones end up making it so when someone types into YouTube, "dance," my video's the number one video that pops up- Yeah...
at least for a period of time. And basically from 2020, for the next six years, it's still going strong.
That video and the SEO behind it is just, it's blowing out, being sent to so many people, has accrued 18 million views, I've shared on my newsletter, has made me $50,000 [laughs]. Wow.
And- In just, uh, Google, or YouTube AdSense? Just YouTube AdSense. And it's also grew my platform. I have to look at what it is, but I wanna say that 200,000 of my 500,000 subscribers have come from dance videos. So,
and I, I did it once, and as soon as it blew up, I was like, "I have to do this again." [laughs] Yeah.
So all over the COVID time and the years after, I did many more of those, and they all performed like relatively well. They're all top performers. And at some point I was like, "So should I just become a dance platform?"
Like I kn- [laughs] I know I'm not a dance person, but I do love dancing. Like if this is where it's going, like I'm not a dance channel, but should I be? Yeah. And just this past year, it must have been
January or December, I forget, but I did another one, but this time it was a paid partnership with the platform. And I was like, "I, I want you guys to pay me. I'm gonna do it, and I'll promote.
Instead of saying nothing, I'll call out your app and your service." And I'm trying to parlay that into a recurring paid partnership, 'cause clearly- Mm-hmm... I have a lot of dancers on my platform [laughs].
But it's just a lesson in taking risks with your channel and, and doing, exploring in areas that you might not be in your niche, you know? Yeah, finding this kind of ripe vein and mining it. Yeah.
So with that, and with, as we discussed earlier, your content shifting as your lifestyle sh- lifestyle shifted, audience going from 18 to 24 to 25 to 34,
is there a phenomenon of like dead weight in your audience, where maybe people who followed you for one thing then are still subscribed, but just stop engaging, and creates this strange video engagement to subscriber count ratio?
Have you noticed any sort of odd audience behavior as you've grown but your content has shifted? Maybe.
I mean, I definitely do receive, specifically on YouTube, where I think that audience w- were the heavy Try Living With Lucy watchers, I definitely get comments quite regularly that's like, "Are you ever gonna do Try Living With Lucy again?"
[laughs] As you said on the Reddit- Yeah... whatever forum, that comes directly to me all the time. Um, I would say maybe there is...
I, I do notice, you know, I, I think a lot of these legacy creators have big followings, and maybe their engagement doesn't match, and I've been having a... I mean, I do feel my engagement is relatively safe and good.
Yeah. Like it's never like I look at my platform and feel like, "Oh, does this look like I have fake followers across any platform?"
So I feel, I do feel good about it, but it's, it is hard to compare yourself as a more legacy creator who's been doing this for a decade to some of the more Gen Z up-and-coming social media people, because
the amount of young people that are following them that always are touching their phone and liking and commenting on everything makes their engagement off the charts compared- Yeah...
to the people my age, who if you looked at my reels, for example, I might actually have the same views as one of those people, but way lower people actually re- liking or commenting- Yeah...
because the audience is older.
Yeah, I mean, looking at just your latest five videos from the last month, the average view count is, I, I'm not good at math, just off the top of my head, it's probably like 70,000 over five videos- Mm-hmm...
which is pretty solid. I've seen some people who their following is millions, and then you look at their most recent videos, they're still posting, and it's like five-digit numbers, like- Mm-hmm...
a few thousand, and it's clear that they were really good at this previous era of YouTube and then just failed to shift as the rules of the game shifted.
I'm not saying that for you, but it, it, it is like a strange phenomenon of like the ghost audience- Mm-hmm... that, that you'll see.
So on another podcast, though, in August 2025, last year, you said that both of your maternity leaves were the biggest growth drivers for your platform. That's a, a direct quote. Yeah. What does that mean?
So both times that I had a kid, and I took dedicated time off from doing brand work, and- You were still making content. You just took three months off from brand work. Yes.
And I wasn't making content on any sort of schedule or holding- Mm... myself to anything.
I was just still showing up and sharing what was happening, and I think-A lot of people were plugged in and tuned in then 'cause they wanted to see the babies and wanted to know what I named them and wanted to just, especially my- the first time, wanted to see how it was going.
And I, because I had no brand partnerships and I just didn't have any commitments of things I had to post, I was in such, both times... Well, partially because of postpartum hormones- [laughs]...
and then also partially just 'cause of the free space and time- Yeah... I was in, like, a next level emotional creativity burst. Flow state.
And yeah, both times I had ideas for pieces of content that were, like, total tearjerkers, emotional. They were making me cry, they were making my husband cry, they were making the baby cry.
[laughs] Like, everyone's just sobbing. Come on, that one's easy. [laughs] Everyone's walking around the house, like, unwell.
And it, it was, as I said before, content that was coming from such an authentic, personal, poetic place- Mm...
that I would put this content up, and not only were people kind of already there wondering what was happening, but then they would see it.
And so some of my most viral Instagram content and TikTok content was from those time periods when my... I just feel my content was particularly meaningful and impactful for people.
And I actually have one, I think it was that video that was 80 million views. Mm. I've reused it multiple times on trial reels, and I've also- Mm...
reposted it many times with different text overlays and sort of recycled the basis of it, 'cause the video with the song worked so well.
And that video I've posted many, many, many times, and I think across all the times I've posted it, it, like, single-handedly grew my Instagram by 100,000 followers in a year. Wow.
And so, and I have the, the b- the stats on the back end are just, when I go to it, I'm like, 50,000 people came from this one time I posted this video,
which is interesting, 'cause then it begs the question of me building an audience that's going in the lifestyle direction, and then- Yeah... all of a sudden I'm gonna go back to, "Peace, I'm on TV".
[laughs] But I don't know. I, I think the thing that remains consistent about my content, and the thing that I actually really love and that I think differentiates me, is how diverse the content is that's on the feed.
And anyone that's followed me for, like, longer than a week or a month and has actually looked at the content holistically on the page- Mm-hmm...
I think might see and say that she's got a whole lot of different creative things happening. [laughs] And sometimes, like, they don't know what they're gonna get from me.
It could be a funny skit where they're laughing, it could be a lifestyle video where I'm making coffee, it could be a poem, something super deep, it could be an emotional crying video about relationships, it could be sharing about someone's crazy story from a podcast.
But it's not very niche, but the niche is that I'm there and I'm the niche. Yeah. And, and I think people,
maybe not everyone's gonna like every piece of content, but I, I like that it's wide-ranging and it doesn't silo me. What is, like... I don't know if you have this goal and you could articulate it, but
the Netflix show goal, I know that's the big thing. What is the year where you're like, "I need to hit that then"? Is it this year? Is it by 2030?
Like, what is the timeline or any detail you can give me on how you're gonna get there? Yeah. So it's funny, it's not... Maybe this is a negative. Maybe I do need some more finite timelines- Tangible. Mm-hmm...
and, and fire to make that happen. But I think it's more... So with the, the Netflix and the hosting, it's more, for me, that's more about being able to be part of a big cultural project that is- Mm. Mm-hmm...
an unscripted hosting opportunity, ideally where I have some production input, and where I can create some sort of content that gets seen by the masses, because I just don't think that's necessarily gonna happen in my own isolated corner of the internet.
So that's why it doesn't have to be Netflix, but I would ideally want it to live on an external- Yeah... streaming platform. And in the past I would always say TV show, but I think now in 2026 it might not be TV.
So whatever that is, I just want it to be off platform from my world.
And as far as the timeline, I, I almost feel like, and I've felt this way about a lot of things in my life, it's something I really wanna do, but I just have so much trust that whatever I'm meant to do is gonna find me if I keep living in my element and doing what's lighting me up in the moment.
And honestly, like, that's what happened with Refinery29. When I graduated from college, I was so not in the mood to be out there- [laughs]... to, like, pitching myself and auditioning for things and
actively trying to get an on-camera opportunity. And I remember I said, "I'm gonna go work at Ogilvy. I'm gonna be behind the scenes." I was working in production be- totally off camera. And I just remember saying, "If
an opportunity to be on camera is meant for me, like, if that's what I'm meant to do, then it will come to me, but I'm not spending my life pitching it out." And- Just stay in motion towards that direction. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
And so I worked behind the scenes, and naturally because I love to do it, I was putting myself... You know, I was making video content, I was making stop motion.
Anytime Ogilvy had any sort of internal company videos that they needed for their conferences, I was, like, raising my hand to be in them.
And I very much emerged at Ogilvy as this, like, young creative person who someone who was the h- the chief creative officer was, took an interest in me and scheduled a meeting with me.
And I basically used it to just, like, share all the stuff I had done with her in the past. And I, I had started a YouTube series for my college and had some Today Show clips. I was on the Today Show as a teen.
So I just showed her all my stuff, not out ofGive me a different job, or, you know, it wasn't a job interview. I already worked there. I was just showing her everything.
And very luckily, about six, three to six months later, she became the COO of Refinery29. Mm-hmm.
And her role there was build up this digital video department, and she, the only person she could think of was this young person she met at Ogilvy who said she wanted to do all this stuff. And so she called me.
I remember I got a Facebook message from this chief creative officer. [laughs] I was like, "Why is she reaching out to little old me?" Facebook message, different era. [laughs] A Facebook message.
And I'm, like, in the middle of the street in Times Square reading this message to my boyfriend, now husband, and I'm like, "Oh my God, she wants me to come in to Forever 21." I didn't know what Refinery29 was.
[laughs] So I was like, "What is it, a clothing store?" Like, she wants me to come in. Yeah. And then of course it just ended up being the best place I could possibly be and a great opportunity. And so even to this day,
any time I'm talking to people and talking to my agents, managers, like we're always kind of discussing, should I just be hiring a production crew and go shoot- Mm-hmm...
a pilot series and then go shop it around place, like at places and see if someone wants to buy what I've made? And I don't know why, I don't want to live like that.
Like, I don't want to be making something and then trying to sell [laughs] it around to people.
It's like if there's a show that I'm meant to host, I'm just trusting that if I tell enough people what I want to do and I'm putting out my creativity and my art form and I'm meant to be the host of something, then it's gonna come in to me somehow.
And maybe it's not. Maybe someone will be listening to this and be like, "Girl, you are lazy as fuck and you're never gonna get a job." [laughs] And you know what?
May- then maybe that's the life I'm m- that's meant for me, is to have a little more low-key and just be doing what I'm doing, which is working. But- You seem to be doing all right for yourself...
it's like if it comes, it comes, and I'm excited for it and I'm not gonna turn it down, but I'm not, I don't want to spend my life chasing because I know that even once I get the show, I'm not gonna feel like all of a sudden I've done everything and I'm fulfilled- No...
and I can d- go die now. There's always the next thing. Yeah. I'm always gonna have a creative passion, so I might as well just keep following the passions and then see what the universe gives me. [laughs] Mm-hmm.
There's always the next thing, and that is the end of this thing. Yes. Lucie, thank you for coming on. [laughs] Where- Thank you so much. This was awesome. Of course. Where should people go to find your stuff?
All right, so on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube, it's LucieBfink, spelled L-U-C-I-E-B-F-I-N-K. And then on my website there's different landing pages for different things.
So there's luciebfink.com/apply if you want to be a guest on the podcast. There's luciebfink.com/apply-coaching if you want to apply to work with me as a coach or a strategist.
And then there's luciebfink.com/youtube, which is more information about the YouTube course, which we'll be doing another cohort probably in the summer.
And lastly, luciebfink.com/confidential for the newsletter, the paid newsletter, Creator Confidential. Perfect. We'll end it right there. Listener, thank you for listening along. Thank you. And we will see you next week.
Ciao. [outro music] Hi there, my name's Tom. I'm the producer of the Creator Spotlight podcast. If you enjoyed that episode, I would recommend this episode with Caspar Lee.
He's another old school video first creator that has been around for a long time.
He was on YouTube about 14, 15 years ago, and he tells us all about his rise and then why he left that behind to move into the entrepreneurship investment space. So I'd recommend that one next.