Skip to content

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

BRAND DEALS — The most effective way for creators to start monetizing their brand is to get paid to promote other products/services. Typically this happens when a creator takes the initiative to reach out and share their media kit with a brand, actively pitching themselves as a potential partner.

As part of my series about “How Influencers Can Monetize Their Brand”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Casey Adams.

Casey Adams is a 21 year old entrepreneur and co-founder of MediaKits. At the age of 17, Casey started his podcast, The Casey Adams Show, which has quickly become a top 50 business podcast. Over the years Casey has interviewed over 300+ world class individuals including the late Larry King, Rick Ross, Maye Musk, Robert Greene, and David Sacks.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit more. What is your “backstory”? What brought you to this point in your career?

When I was 15, I was almost paralyzed playing football — it actually put me in a neck brace for almost 6 months. During my recovery, rather than just watching TV or hanging out, I got really invested in personal development; and because of that, I started my first company at 16 doing Facebook advertising for local business. After that, I went through a number of transitions, started a couple different companies — but, the endeavor I’m probably most proud of, other than MediaKits, is my podcast. I’ve interviewed over 300 entrepreneurs — including Larry King, Elon Musk’s mom, and Rick Ross. That project has really helped me expand my network, make valuable connections and partnerships — and it’s really the backbone that’s led me to this point.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you in the course of your career?

I’ll go on with the most interesting — I actually interviewed Larry King back in 2019, and how I got the interview is really an interesting story — and one, I think that can be a great lesson for those in the creator community.

So this whole thing started when I went to a dinner hosted by the owner of the Houston Rocker, Tilman Ferittta in Beverly Hills. The majority of people there were influencers and as dinner was getting started, Tilman asked everyone to introduce themselves — and it just so happened that the guy sitting next to my business partner, Kieran O’Brien, was Chance King — Larry King’s son. Of course, I went over and introduced myself — and ultimately invited him to an event I was doing the following weekend with a number of entrepreneur personalities.

Fast forward to a couple weeks later — I’m walking through the Century City Mall with Kieran, and I happen to run into Larry King. So again, I go up and introduce myself — tell him that I met his son — and we take a picture to send to Chance. Long story short, I continued to build a friendship with Chance, and eventually it led to me having the opportunity to interview Larry King.

And the reason I love this story is because I put myself out there. I made the connection — and continued to foster that relationship — and there was no key outcome or end result that I was expecting by getting to know Chance. I didn’t introduce myself or invite him to my event because he was Larry King’s son. He’s a great person to know in his own right — so by getting to know him, and others in this industry, and focusing on more than just the immediate outcome, I’ve had a number of unexpected — but truly incredible opportunities, like getting to interview Larry King.

All that said — my takeaway piece of advice from that story would be that creators should focus on being open-minded. Take opportunities that come your way. You never know what they’ll lead to.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I’m extremely purpose driven — and when it comes to my podcast, I strive to make the conversations impactful by really focusing on how I can use this interview to bring value to the listener. My goal is always to give them something they can take away and use in their real life — and I think the way I bring goodness to the world is by using my platform to inspire the younger generation to think differently about their future or an opportunity.

And for me, this is important because I didn’t have someone offering me that kind of advice when I was just starting out. Someone giving me practical advice or pushing me to reach for that opportunity — but knowing that I am that person for someone else is really what keeps me going, both through my podcast and through my work at MediaKits.

Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path but know that their dreams might be dashed?

As a creator myself, and as the co-founder of a company focusing on the creator space — I often think back to when I was just starting out. I had no content. No following. No one cared — and the concept of putting myself out there was scary. It’s easy to compare yourself to creators who are huge. They’ve been around for decades and have these huge followings — and it can leave you feeling like: “Wow. How can I do this? How can I compete?”. And my biggest piece of advice is to just get started. Don’t overthink it. The reality is, you just need to see what works. Find your groove by putting content out there and seeing what works.

I started my podcast using a pair of Apple headphones walking around my childhood bedroom — and, at the time, I was really telling the narrative to myself, but just recording it as I did. That episode never got any massive traction, but the more I dedicated myself to my podcast, the more relationships I built in the space, the more my views increased. I wouldn’t never have gotten to where I am today — from both a content and a partnership perspective — without just getting started.

The two other pieces of advice I would offer along these same lines are — one, make sure you’re being authentic to who you are and the type of content you want to create. Have a direction in mind for where you’re headed, but also — and this brings me to my second point — fall in love with the process. There’s no end to being a creator. Maybe you reach a million followers or you get that interview you’ve been dreaming about. That’s amazing — but what’s next from there? Fall in love with what you’re doing and finding ways to recreate yourself as you meet the goals you set for yourself.

Is there a particular person who made a profound difference in your life to whom you are grateful? Can you share a story?

When MediaKits first went to raise money, it was completely new for me. Raising venture capital wasn’t something I’d done before — but our advisor, Aristotle Lumis, had. He’s raised over $100 million across his various business ventures — and thanks to his expertise and mentorship, in just a few months, MediaKits went from never having raised a dollar to closing our million dollar seed round. Having someone we could bet on and trust as we went through the raising process for the first time was so impactful, it’s honestly hard to put into words what a huge help he’s been.

So what are the most exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

So neither of these are surprising — but my podcast and MediaKits. My podcast allows me to be a creator. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, but I’ve actually interviewed over 300 entrepreneurs across a number of different industries — and that number just continues to grow. I want to continue finding new people to feature and new insights to bring to my audience — so that continues to be an exciting project.

MediaKits, on the other hand, allows me to support other creators in the space. Our product is designed to help creators best position themselves when they’re speaking to a new brand, without having to update their media kit every time. Their data already lives in our tool — making it really clear, easy, and beneficial for creators to advocate for themselves and build their personal brands. So, for me, of course I’m excited to build and scale MediaKits as a company — but I’m also excited to meet the needs of creators who are looking to make an impact in their space.

What are your “Top Five Ways That Influencers Can Monetize Their Brand” . (Please share a story or example for each.)

  1. BRAND DEALS — The most effective way for creators to start monetizing their brand is to get paid to promote other products/services. Typically this happens when a creator takes the initiative to reach out and share their media kit with a brand, actively pitching themselves as a potential partner. For example, the creator JR Garage (@jrgarage) has worked with many automotive brands by using a media kit.
  2. LAUNCHING A COMPANY — More and more creators are realizing how important it is to promote their own products and services. For example, Josh Richards and Bryce Hall launched Ani Energy because they knew it was a better idea than to be promoting RedBull for free.
  3. NFT LAUNCH — The creator economy is quickly shifting into web3 and it’s causing creators to look at monetization from a different perspective. For example, the famous entrepreneur Gary Vee launched an NFT project called “Vee Friends” and each NFT provides access to an annual event he’s hosting.
  4. AD REVENUE — This is very common for a lot of big YouTube creators. Monetizing your brand on YouTube is fairly simple but you need to fit certain criterias + get a lot of views. For example, in the peak of Jake Paul’s YouTube career he was making a killing from YouTube ad revenue.
  5. AFFILIATE DEALS — Creators can receive a % of the sales that they bring in for a brand through affiliate marketing.

If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

For me, it’s all about curiosity — and you might be wondering how I plan to start a movement around curiosity, but let me explain that a little further.

I’ve learned so much by asking literally thousands of questions to some of the world’s most influential, intelligent, and inspiring individuals; and each time I have the opportunity to sit down with one of these people, I can feel my skills getting sharper and my knowledge base getting deeper. These aren’t necessarily insights that you would learn in school. These are things that come from years of practical and theoretical experience combined. It’s life experience and on the job learning all wrapped into one.

So for me, I’d love to see more of that from future generations — that natural curiosity. The desire to learn and grow; to spend more time asking questions, listening to those around us, and continually self-educating. If I could turn that into a movement — that’s something I could see really driving value for future generations and our society as a whole.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why?

As a podcaster I’d love to sit down and have a conversation with Tim Ferriss. His ability to have incredible conversations for hours is admirable and I’d love to learn more about how he thinks about the world.

What is the best way our readers can follow your work online?

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/casey

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caseyadamsofficial

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/thecaseyadams

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/caseyadams

My media kit: https://app.mediakits.com/casey

MediaKits: www.mediakits.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/mediakits

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mediakits

Facebook: https://facebook.com/mediakits

You can find us online at MediaKits.com, on TikTok at @MediaKits, Instagram at @MediaKits


Casey Adams of MediaKits: Five Ways For Influencers To Monetize Their Brand was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.