The Take Timeline

Creators & Influencers

How the cowboys’ take on Creators & Influencers has evolved.

1. 2026-01-09moderate 75%

   Launching a new product with a relevant, authoritative creator in the same niche consistently drives growth.

   partnering a new product, a new debut with a relevant authoritative creator person, expert in that same niche...every time we're up and to the right, it's a huge win.

2. 2026-01-13high confidence 88%

   Street interview and street talk content creators working across major US cities can generate $3,000-$8,000 in monthly revenue.

   Every single person is able to make 3,000, $4,000, 5,000, $8,000 a month being a street talker.

3. 2026-01-21moderate 60%

   Identifying and activating trending creators in major brand moments creates exceptional marketing results and consumer sentiment

   They found the trend in the now. You grab that person, you incorporate that into a massive event... This is one of the best things I've seen probably all year.

4. 2026-01-22moderate 78%

   Supplement customers prefer research-backed practitioner influencers over flashy macro influencers.

   They actually don't trust some of the big flashy health influencers... They trust more people that are backed by research and backed by owning their own practice

5. 2026-01-30moderate 75%

   Discovering influencers organically through customer tracking and post-purchase surveys is more effective than outbound influencer marketing tools.

   We noticed in our post-purchase surveys that he was driving a fair amount of new customers... we looked in the survey and he's actually driving customers to us. We should reach out and see about doing something more solid together.

6. 2026-02-14moderate 72%

   Audiences can detect inauthentic AI-generated content; building trust requires consistent real-world authenticity over polished content.

   I think that people do have a nose for it... his IG stories are always of him at 4:30 in the morning. It's not just like the IG reel that is like day in the life thing.

7. 2026-02-17Predictionhigh confidence 92%

   In 2026, brands will increasingly use their own employees as micro-influencers for marketing

   In 2026, we are going to start seeing the rise of brands using their employees as micro influencers

8. 2026-02-18moderate 55%

   American Eagle's Gen Z pivot with creator campaigns should have happened years ago, not now.

   This should have been in place a long time ago. This feels late to me. It feels very late.

9. 2026-02-19moderate 72%

   Investing in immersive creator experiences like 4-day orientations produces significantly better creative output than traditional affiliate programs

   If you're making a bet on creators, why not do something where you can bring them together for even if it's just a day or two... the level of creative that you get out from that person is going to be next level

10. 2026-02-26moderate 75%

    Strategic brand partnerships aligned with audience are far more valuable for emerging creators than ad revenue or random sponsorships.

    The easiest ways are either one... having your own product... or partnering with a brand that fits your target audience... that's going to be better than any kind of ad revenue.

11. 2026-02-26high confidence 85%

    Established brands should provide creators financial support and operational resources like editors to enable sustainable growth in an unstable creator economy.

    brands have the opportunity... to provide some stability into a pretty unstable field... provide both the financial support and then resources whether it's like helping out with editors... helping out with like strategists.

12. 2026-03-04high confidence 80%

    Customer-first influencer discovery is more effective than traditional outreach because you're marketing to influencers who already know and like your brand

    everything from the old way of influencer and affiliate marketing was let's go out into the universe and find influencers and affiliates who match our vibe. They may or may not have ever heard of the brand... based on the fact that we know exactly who the person is

13. 2026-03-07moderate 65%

    Detonating all creative at once ('blitzing') floods the market and misleads even sophisticated creators into thinking a product is organically blowing up, so offline sampling with creators ahead of a synchronized launch avoids that false signal.

    detonating all of these pieces of creative at one time and then pouring money onto them flooded the zone and it made everybody think, including the high lever creators... this product is blowing up

14. 2026-03-13high confidence 80%

    Jake argues brands running creator/UGC sponsorship programs should give influencers near-total creative control rather than scripting them, since the influencer's own style is what built their audience.

    we are not creators, right? These influencers built their following because they're great at what they do... let them cook.

15. 2026-03-14moderate 68%

    Brands are moving past standard UGC creators toward hiring comedians for street interviews and skits because the content feels more organic and brings a fresh advertising perspective.

    We're bringing on comedians to like make content, street interviews, skits... they're more organic.

16. 2026-03-20moderate 70%

    Effective influencer and affiliate seeding depends on the founder personally engaging creators to learn what they like and dislike about the product rather than treating it as a hands-off program.

    I talk directly with them. I want to know what they like about the product what they don't why they want to share it with their audience why they don't.

17. 2026-04-02moderate 72%

    Unpaid doctor referrals became a more effective seeding channel than the traditional pay-per-post influencer grind for the coffee brand.

    there's doctors out there recommending our coffee... if your doctor tells you to take something, you're not going to go on amazon.com and do reviews and comparisons

18. 2026-04-04moderate 73%

    Lifetime access perks like a gold card are wasted on a typical employee and would be far more valuable given to a prolific content creator who'd generate ongoing exposure from it.

    somebody who's like continually making content or IShowSpeed... such a smart move... I think it's smart. Just think we gave it to the wrong person here.

19. 2026-04-04moderate 70%

    Authentic athlete and creator partnerships only materialize if the product is genuinely good, since credible partners won't endorse a product they don't personally love.

    You got to have a great product actually. Those those guys aren't going to work with you if they don't like the products.

20. 2026-04-09moderate 75%

    Meta's Instagram commerce push is really aimed at pulling top TikTok Shop creators over to the platform, not at helping merchants.

    I don't think that they're doing this for merchants. I think that they're actually doing this to get creators over. Like the best creators.

21. 2026-04-21moderate 72%

    Serious brands need a dedicated, full-time creator native to each major platform's culture rather than one team spreading content across all of them.

    Every serious brand will have a dedicated creator for every major platform. YouTube X, Tik Tok, Instagram... One person, one platform, full-time, native to the culture.

22. 2026-04-22moderate 62%

    Deliberately platforming employees as visible experts, even knowing some will eventually leave, is worth it because it builds a recruiting and content engine.

    I knew then that people would leave and it would platform them way and I was like that's what we want.

23. 2026-04-22moderate 55%

    Scaling a creative engine mainly comes down to finding and enabling more creators to make low-lift, phone-shot content for the brand, not producing fewer higher-polish assets.

    finding creators who want to create for the brand... it's so such a low lift just to whip out your iPhone

24. 2026-05-02moderate 65%

    The best-performing UGC comes from finding real GLP-1 patients on TikTok who genuinely understand the customer experience, not generic scripted creator content.

    just go to Tik Tok search GOP1 and just find people who are in GOP once... they understand what you go through.

25. 2026-05-05moderate 75%

    Chris argues the Frost Buddy-style model of paying many low-follower creators a revenue-share commission per video is a fundamentally different, more effective way to work with creators than traditional influencer deals.

    everybody who is used to the previous type of influencer creator relationships that I was describing that we had at Bruce Bolt, they need to pay attention because this is a totally different way to play the game

26. 2026-05-05moderate 70%

    Colin argues publicly disclosing creator earnings (the 'Hudson method') is a powerful recruiting tool that drives mass creator-generated content and cheaper organic/paid reach.

    somebody with 8,000 followers made 8K, made 6K just on the ad juice last month... That's the whole method that we're talking about here, the Hudson method

27. 2026-05-06high confidence 80%

    For the new brand's launch, Jack is deliberately excluding small/micro creators from seeding and only gifting to bigger creators to protect premium positioning.

    I'm not going to give them to like Karen the you know, TikTok shop creator with 50 followers, it's not happening. Not doing it.

28. 2026-05-09moderate 75%

    Brand builders should be wary of trying to be talent managers with creator equity bets, even though early sponsorship of the right creator (like Theo Von) can turn into a huge long-term win.

    you're a brand builder, you're not a talent manager or an A&R... we were very early sponsor of him... Theo Von has gone on to build an amazing career and he's super famous.

29. 2026-05-12moderate 60%

    Colin argues a Killdozer-style 'only eat X for a week' YouTube challenge built around Chunky Fit cookies would be a huge marketing hit for the brand.

    What I would love to do for a famous YouTuber is I'm only eating X Y Z of these protein cookies... I think it would be a huge home run of a hit.

30. 2026-05-13moderate 70%

    Freelance TikTok Shop creators who whitelist content across multiple brands can build durable, passive recurring income like performance marketers, a shift Blum calls the 'performance creator era.'

    You have eight to 10 ads for different brands passively earning you commission in meta ad accounts that are spending for what, six to eight months... The performance creator era

31. 2026-05-13Predictionmoderate 68%

    AI-generated UGC ads are inherently untrustworthy, so brands betting on real human creators will outperform those relying on AI-generated content long-term.

    I can't think of anything less trustworthy than an AI UGC ad. It's literally a fake story from a fake not even real thing... people are going to continue to buy from people in the future.

32. 2026-05-15moderate 78%

    Jack Raines argues niche creators with strong distribution can build multiple hundred-million-dollar businesses off their platform, which is why his fund invests directly in creator-led holding companies rather than chasing typical startup deals.

    distribution is like a pretty compelling moat and we ended up raising like a $64 million fund to invest directly in like those creators.

33. 2026-05-16Predictionmoderate 60%

    Marketers skilled in creator/clipping strategies will increasingly find outsized opportunities working for non-traditional clients like politicians.

    there's a lot of opportunity for talent to go to these other spaces and like yield outside results ... I think we're going to see that especially with some of these younger guys

34. 2026-05-20moderate 60%

    Chris believes X's new AI-powered Creator Connect product is a genuine win that will open up valuable creator and ad opportunities for DTC brands.

    using Grok to bring relevant creators to brands in search of more ad dollars... great win... I think there's going to be very relevant ad space to be had already is for e-com D2C brands

35. 2026-05-22moderate 72%

    Brands are aggressively diversifying away from paid ads toward creator and affiliate armies, following the 'Hudson method' playbook popularized by Comfort's founder.

    This is what brands are doing. They're diversifying so hard off of just paid ads now.

36. 2026-06-02moderate 68%

    Showing up in person at conferences and events is far more effective for building relationships with celebrities and influencers than cold email outreach.

    it's too hard to reach these people especially the celebrities and influencers... you have to show up in person. And when you show up in person... with a bar in your hand

37. 2026-06-05moderate 68%

    Owning your own large property gives a creator total creative freedom to produce extreme content without location or permission constraints, which benefits both the creator and brands working with him.

    it gives these guys, the creators and brands a freedom of like, well, you can't really tell me what to do on my own property for content

38. 2026-07-03moderate 72%

    Brands that get creators to produce trend content for free and then draw backlash should instead properly pay and activate with those creators.

    It's cringe to hop on a creator trend for free, to be honest.

39. 2026-07-11moderate 55%

    To reach top-tier athletes for partnerships or gifting, the best approach is to treat the athlete like an 'account' and find the lowest-level intermediary (agent, assistant) who can be penetrated, rather than going direct.

    I would see the athlete as an account and then like what's the lowest layer I can penetrate that account at, do a bunch of deep research on that

40. 2026-07-17moderate 70%

    YouTube's distribution advantage is so dominant that no independent creator-led platform has stuck, though one built by someone like Mr. Beast could finally succeed and would be welcomed by creators wanting better ad-split control.

    The distribution that comes from being on YouTube is so incredible that I just don't think anybody could ever effectively wean itself off... if someone did do it successfully, I think it would be very welcome.

41. 2026-07-18moderate 65%

    A creator's owned newsletter community is a valuable added layer when evaluating a creator partnership, beyond their social following.

    related to their newsletter, oh, I've got this community and they're all in here and they're all talking to each other all of the time... That to me becomes a juicy offering, an additional piece of the entire kind of ecosystem of working with said person

42. 2026-07-24moderate 55%

    A VC fund with a strong track record still loses deals if it isn't visible the way creators and creator-driven brands are, so reputation alone isn't enough.

    You have this amazing track record. You have this amazing network and reputation, but no one knows it.

43. 2026-07-24moderate 60%

    For a brand like the one advertising underwear/DTC gear, paying Andrew Huberman a straight revenue-share deal would be a better marketing spend than any other channel.

    I say Huberman, give me your number, I'll give you 10% of rev share and throw you as big a bag as I can... Don't spend a dollar anywhere else. Just go give Huberman the bag.

44. 2026-07-24moderate 62%

    Live Fresh sees it as an obligation to build credibility with the dental professional community via an ambassador program, not just sell direct to consumers, since dentists' endorsement (or lack thereof) shapes repeat trust.

    it's it's our obligation to kind of bring this tour philosophy to the industry so we're kind of not only bringing consumers the things but that the dental community's actually heard about us and can... go to bat for us in the chair

45. 2026-07-27moderate 55%

    Being forced to build a real audience for a grade, as ASU's new influencer major requires, could be one of the most valuable things a student gets out of college in 2026.

    actually getting a degree and being forced to build an audience in some niche on some platform... may be the most valuable thing you can get out of college in 2026

46. 2026-08-12moderate 65%

    Colin argues brands should be far more aggressive about giving away free samples to creators, treating heavy sampling volume as a necessary investment rather than something to be stingy about.

    this is not a stingy endeavor... let's make this war machine and let's let's get after it.

47. 2026-08-15moderate 60%

    Staffing the team with real, credentialed baseball people rather than generic marketers is what makes Baseball Lifestyle's community engagement authentic.

    when you talk about the authenticity, like yes, we we live that. But I think that what's allowed us to stay is like we've been doing this since Josh is 15 years old and he's 28 now

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