Treyton Devore: Building CreatorBread
Last week, I interviewed Treyton, a creatorpreneur who provides financial planning services for creatives and freelancers. We have spoken about his career trajectory that led to the intersection between finance and sales, his content creation strategy, and some of the pain points creators face when it comes to financial planning. Enjoy.
[This interview has been shortened and edited for clarity. Full remarks can be found via the podcast here]
What is Creatorbread? What is the origin story like?
Treyton: The original idea for creatorbread kind of started because I never saw any blogs (or really any content) that were focused on financial education or business education for creatives. I’m a financial planner and a creator myself, so I understood what it was like to be a solo creative and be responsible for everything, while also having the technical financial knowledge of being a financial planner.
I spent probably like two months trying to figure out the name for it because I didn't want something generic. I eventually stumbled across the name creatorbread after piecing different words together and was like, oh, that sounds kind of cool. I wanted it to stand out and be playful and just wanted an opportunity to build a cool brand.
What got you into freelancing and financial education in the first place?
Treyton: I graduated college in 2018 and I was a finance and marketing major. Before my senior year, I took a random door-to-door sales job and Miami. Through that job, I fell in love with the ability to control your own income when you’re self-employed. In my senior year I dove into figuring out what that career path could look like. I started looking into financial planning and I'd always been kind of like interested in personal finance and money, I just never really had done anything with it.
I started applying to the big financial advising firms like Wells Fargo and Charles Schwab, but I just kept getting turned down because I didn't have a network of rich friends or anyone to sell products to immediately. As I was looking for a full-time job, a recruiter found me on LinkedIn from a transportation company up in Kansas City, which was only three hours away from my hometown.
Over the next two years after graduation I continued living a minimal, college lifestyle because I figured out that I could start a financial planning business on my own - I just needed to save enough money to make it happen. Then, in June 2020, I quit my job with $20,000 savings which were about a year of business expenses & three to six months of a personal runway.
When the business was growing slower than expected, I turned to freelance content writing to earn extra money and to my surprise, I fell in love with it. That led me to learn more about being a freelancer and how to make it, then I realized that freelancers are small business owners. There’s a lot to keep track of financially, and given my personal finance knowledge and newly-discovered love for freelancing, I decided to dedicate my content to personal finance & business education for freelancers & creatives and that’s what I’ve been doing since last year.
How did you determine what kind of channels are you gonna use?
Treyton: I took the Gary Vee approach where I literally started posting on every platform, understanding what sticks, then run with that. And that's what I did initially - I would write a blog and then that blog would be a script for YouTube videos. So then I record the YouTube video, embed that back in the blog, clip it, and distribute it to all the platforms. When I was initially doing the podcast, that was the one thing that I just didn't enjoy at all. It just never really felt like the natural thing for me to do and that was the biggest thing; what do I actually enjoy doing and what am I good at? Eventually, it was more of the blog stuff.
So then I initially leaned into all written content and stopped doing the podcast, stop doing videos, and just want to get good at publishing written content. And that's kind of what I spent last year doing, I amped up my writing game and got a lot better at it.
Treyton on his early popular reaction video on Dave Ramesy
Treyton: I created a Dave Ramsey reaction video and it got picked up by the algorithm where I had over 10,000 views within the first month. However, I didn't like the video because I was condescending toward what Dave was saying and I didn't like my attitude. It wasn’t how I wanted to present myself online.
It was so hard to take that thing down because the video was getting views and I thought to myself that I could just keep doing these reaction videos and I could probably grow the channel and be just fine. But in the end, I don't want to be known as that kind of person. I didn’t want to be tied to Dave Ramsey. I just don't like that style of content now so, I unlisted it.
What are the things that creators misunderstood in financial planning?
Treyton: Yeah, I would say the biggest thing (and what people normally reach out for initially) is taxes. You're responsible for managing both your business & your personal finances, and sometimes creators are also working a normal nine-to-five job, which adds even more complexity.
When you’re self-employed, you have to withhold like 20 - 40% from every payment you receive to pay that tax bill and a lot of people don't know what they should really be doing with that. Then you have to manage the business finances at the top level, but then how you choose to manage that also affects how you're gonna manage your personal finances.
So it's like two layers of finance that you're kind of responsible for.
And it's just a lot to think through. Like there are a lot of different things playing into each decision - like the type of insurance you have is going to affect your ability to get a health savings account (HSA) which could save you money on taxes if you contribute to that. So there are just a lot of different things playing into money that can be confusing if you don’t have a deep understanding of how everything works.
What do you want to be known for?
Treyton: I want to be known as someone who can make complex things make sense in regard to personal finance & creative business. I want to be the first person that comes to mind when you have a question about money or trying to make it as a full-time creative.
Where can you learn more about Treyton’s work?
You can find more about Treyton’s blog and newsletter here at Creatorbread.
If you’re a creative looking for financial planning services, check out AllStreet Wealth here
You can also follow & connect with Treyton on Twitter
💡 This Week's News In the Creator Economy
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Andrew Tate is now banned on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube
Apple Podcast unveils top 100 most subscribed podcasts on its chart
Youtube Shorts videos now come with a watermark like TikTok
TikTok is experimenting with a “nearby” feed capturing surrounding events
Instacart opens Shoppable Cart for influencers to share their meal plans
Amazon launched Clubhouse-like product Amp
✌️ That’s it until next time!
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