‘Jordan The Stallion,’ Jenny Hoyos, Misha Brown, V Spehar, Ziad Ahmed, Shira Lazar, and companies like Liquid Death, LTK, Boobie, Smosh, NFL all have one thing in common – It’s No Fluke they found success.
Each week, we unpack the highs, lows, and untold stories of culture and creativity with top creators, brands, agencies and thought leaders.
New episodes drop every Tuesday and Thursday. Stay tuned!
Got feedback or a guest idea? Reach out via email, LinkedIn or Instagram.
A Shorty Award winner and Real Time Academy member, Jeff Barrett works with major influencers and brands like Adobe, Experian, Oracle, FIS and more on communications and influencer strategy. He spent three years traveling to almost every state in the country writing about startup ecosystems for Inc and Entrepreneur. After years of talking for a living, he's ready to listen and amplify the voices of amazing people, stories and ideas.
Dan Robbins is the Head of Brand Sponsorships at Substack. Previously, Dan held executive roles at PayPal, Roku, and Nielsen. He has also served on the boards of The Ad Council, the Modern Marketing Association (MMA), and The Point Foundation, taught a course on advertising economics as an Adjunct Professor at Cornell University, served as Executive in Residence for Progress Partners, and participated as a juror for the Clio awards and the Effie awards.
His achievements include being named PRWeek Marketer of the Year, a Business Insider Power Player, and a Fellow at the Economic Club of New York. He is a graduate of Cornell University and is based in New York.
Substack gave brands a first look at the next phase of its sponsorships program today at Advertising Week, including three new sponsorship formats designed to create value for brands, creators, and their audiences, as well as the introduction of independent brand measurement through Kantar.
Since announcing the program with an initial group of brand partners in June, Substack has also been bringing more brands into the program and building a growing pipeline of campaigns across different categories.
The three new formats are:
The Unlock: A brand sponsors a creator’s paid post, making it free for everyone to read. The creator gets paid, while the brand gives readers access to content that would otherwise sit behind the paywall.
The Upgrade: A brand gives a creator’s free subscribers a month of paid access at no cost to the reader, with the creator paid for each person who upgrades.
The Masthead: A brand works with writers and creators to curate or commission work around a theme, bringing it together in a dedicated destination on Substack, almost like a digital zine.
Tameka Bazile is a Brooklyn-born social strategist and corporate creator who is shaping the conversation around work, identity, and brand power in the digital age. With a career spanning over eight years, Tameka has built a reputation as a sharp, creative industry leader who blends strategic thinking with real-world relatability. She is currently the Associate Director of B2B Social & Content Marketing at Business Insider and previously served as Social Strategy Manager at TIME, where she oversaw social programming for legacy media, bringing the century-old brand into a social-first future
Tameka’s social campaigns have powered multi-million-dollar brand strategies for clients including Amazon Prime, Ally, Nissan, and Roadway, earning accolades such as a 2024 Clio Silver and media features in Business Insider, MSNBC, and CNBC. Beyond the boardroom, Tameka has cultivated a loyal audience of over 60,000 across LinkedIn and TikTok, where she shares career insights, lifestyle content, and behind-the-scenes looks into the creator economy.
Her content blends authenticity and expertise, sparking meaningful dialogue around entrepreneurship, self-care, relationships, and redefining success on your own terms. Tameka has collaborated with brands such as Lyft, Sprout Social, Notion, and Skillshare, delivering creator content that connects deeply with professional women and modern marketers.
A sought-after speaker, she’s taken the stage at national conferences including AdWeek Social Media Week and Black is Tech, offering fresh, honest perspectives on the evolving role of social media in business, culture, and identity. Through everything she creates, Tameka remains committed to helping others navigate career transitions, own their story, and build a life they love—online and off.
Amanda Ghobadi/The Branding Babe
Sandy Carter is a globally recognized technology executive, author, and thought leader at the intersection of AI and Identity. Currently CEO of an EQUS, an agentic AI company focused on privacy-based AI, identity, and trust infrastructure, she has run and scaled multi-billion-dollar businesses at AWS and IBM, and previously served as Chief Business Officer at Unstoppable, a unicorn startup. Sandy is an Adweek Power AI 100, Microsoft MSN AI Entrepreneur of the Year, USA Today Top 5 AI Strategist, and a Fortuna AI and Innovation Leader of the Year. In addition, she was named a Top 10 Chief Business Officer by TradeRev. She serves as Chair of the Applied AI Group at The Digital Economist and is a Forbes contributor.
A sought-after keynote speaker, Sandy has presented at Davos, CES, SXSW, reInvent, and the United Nations, and hosts The Marketing Companion, a top 1% podcast with two podcast awards. She also sits on several AI boards, including Altair AI (ALT NASDAQ) and others. Sandy is the bestselling author of "AI First, Human Always" and the founder of Unstoppable Women of AI, advancing women's leadership in emerging technology worldwide. Her work is guided by a core belief: AI should be built to amplify human potential, with people always at the center of the strategy.
Dana Hork builds modern creative partnerships that help ambitious marketers deliver real brand and business results. Known for unlocking creativity under pressure, Dana brings clarity, creativity, and momentum to tensions caused by limited resources, competing priorities, and high expectations. She leads with a distinctly Minnesota-nice approach – grounded, low-ego, steady – creating the trust required to make better creative decisions when things get hard.
She leads and co-founded Beers With Friends, a creative microagency helping ambitious brands solve high-stakes creative challenges in just five days. Through the agency’s signature “Beer Run” sprint approach, Dana partners with founders, CMOs, and marketing leaders to curate senior, situational teams that deliver decisive brand and creative work – without the bureaucracy, intimidation, or exhaustion that often comes with traditional agencies. After years of leading marketing teams and building brands from the inside out, Dana helps close the gap between how creative work is traditionally produced and what modern marketing leaders actually need: fresh thinking, entrepreneurial energy, and true partnership when stakes are high.
Since its inception, Beers With Friends has been named one of ADWEEK’s Top 10 Indie Agencies to Watch and one of Indie Agency News’ Top Weirdos, Misfits + Underdogs. The agency’s client roster includes Dig Inn, Grubhub, Virgin Galactic, Goodwipes, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Manitoba Harvest, Kizik, Pet Life Unlimited, Curio, and more.
Prior to Beers With Friends, Dana held senior marketing leadership roles across some of the world’s most recognizable brands. She was SVP of Marketing at Wonder, where she helped lead the company’s go-to-market launch and drive early consumer adoption. Previously she served as Head of Social Media at Walmart, doubling customer engagement and helping reshape public perception of the world’s largest company. At Jet.com, Dana was Head of Brand Marketing, shaping the brand’s positioning from launch through Walmart’s $3.3 billion acquisition. During her tenure, she also led Jet’s partnership with the Obama White House, launching the Community Diaper Program and signing the Equal Pay Pledge. Her additional experience includes brand marketing at PepsiCo and serving as a Vice President at JPMorgan.
Dana’s perspective has been featured in Ad Age, ADWEEK, Campaign, Forbes, Fortune, Indie Agency News, Marketing Brew, MediaPost, and more. She has appeared on podcasts including Own It, Genuine Connections, Build The Damn Thing, The Exit Interview, and On Brand, and has been a featured speaker at events such as POSSIBLE, ADWEEK House, and Mirren Live.
Michelle Coulson is the CEO and Founder of Remote Rebellion (RR). She helps people to design their dream lives with more freedom and flexibility by getting a remote job that they can do from anywhere.
Before RR, Michelle spent 7 years working in the corporate world as a recruiter in London, Singapore and Australia.
She was so busy in her city life that she didn’t notice how unhappy and lonely she was. Then, when the pandemic forced everyone to work remotely, her friend invited her to Bali whilst the office was closed.
2 months later, her boss called… “The office is opening, you need to come back to London.”
She didn’t want to go back to that life, but her request to work from Bali was declined for no good reason and she was angry that her freedom and community were being taken away.
So she quit and decided to stay in Bali, despite the risk that she had no idea how to find a remote job!
After a lot of scrolling on LinkedIn, finding only fake remote jobs, and sending lots of applications for remote roles, she realised how tough it is to find a 100% remote job and was so frustrated!
Then she switched tactics and created a proper strategy using the knowledge she’d gained from 7 years in recruitment.
Soon after, she landed 2 freelance recruitment jobs, helping remote first startups to attract top talent.
But then she realised something... Instead of helping companies to hire, this strategy could help others to find their ideal remote job, work from anywhere and break free from the 9-5 office life like she did.
She has since helped hundreds of people to land a fully remote job that’s enabled them to live a life THEY design, with absolute freedom and flexibility!
Ash Kumra is an AI ecosystem builder. He writes a column on AI and leadership for Inc.com, serves as SF Chapter Lead of The AI Collective, the world's largest AI community with 150,000 plus members across 175 plus global chapters, and produces AI programming for Step Conference, a global tech and entrepreneurship festival.
A former business radio host, Ash has interviewed 500 plus founders and technology executives, and his LinkedIn Learning course has reached 25,000 plus professionals. He cocreated AI for Leaders with MIT Sloan Management and received the White House EMPACT 100 Award for Entrepreneurship Excellence.
Aneena Elza Binod is a social media marketer, copywriter, graphic designer and all-round creative. She believes LinkedIn can be a lot more fun than being trapped in the shackles of "synergy".
She is also the founder + creator of The Internet’s Favourite, a baby brand dedicated to discovering and celebrating cool people, brands and ideas from across the internet. It’s still finding its feet, but Aneena is having a lot of fun building it.
Whether you know him from his wildly popular tenure as the original host of HQ Trivia, his anchoring of the live, MLB whip-around show ChangeUp on DAZN, his own, critically-acclaimed late-night talk show Running Late with Scott Rogowsky (and the pandemic spin-off IsoLate Night), his two shows on Verizon’s Go90, Start Talkin’ (Complex Networks) and Weird World of Sports (Team Whistle), or his first television credit, the ABC primetime series Would You Fall For That?, comedian Scott Rogowsky has cemented himself across a diverse media landscape as the host with the mostess. Today, you can find him hosting Savvy, a live, interactive game show of word puzzles streaming daily on the Savvy mobile app.
Nila Makhfi is the co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Parkzy, the first peer-to-peer network for on-demand parking, which she built alongside her brother and a close friend. She studied psychology at UCLA, earned her master's in consumer psychology from USC, and has previously worked at Snap and AXS. Outside of Parkzy, she hosts community events under LinkedUp that bring LinkedIn creators together IRL.
Emmy Award-winner Scott Greenberg is Co-Founder of the audience simulation platform Chronicle Media. Founded in 2025 and backed by Patron, Point72 Ventures, Z Ventures, Sands Capital and other prominent investors, Chronicle automates social growth for top global content creators, brands, studios and network partners. The company’s AI platform leverages frontier audience simulation models to discover the largest fanbase on social media and drives rapid growth through new viewer engagement, content optimization, channel management, conversion and ROAS monitoring.
From 2009 to 2023, Scott was Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the animation studio Bento Box Entertainment, where he oversaw all business and operational facets of the company that was acquired by Fox Entertainment in 2019 and produces Prime Video’s hit musical comedy “Hazbin Hotel,” “Paradise PD” for Netflix, Apple TV’s “Central Park” and “Bob’s Burgers” and “Krapopolis” for Fox. Scott also co-founded and served as CEO of Blockchain Creative Labs (BCL), which marked Fox’s entrance into the next-gen space. Moreover, he spearheaded Bento Box’s international expansion by partnering with Australia-based Princess Pictures to launch Princess Bento Studio and crafting a multi-year production services agreement with Boulder Media in Dublin, Ireland.
Ollie Lewis is Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of the audience simulation platform Chronicle Media. Founded in 2025 and backed by Patron, Point72 Ventures, Z Ventures, Sands Capital and other prominent investors, Chronicle automates social growth for top global content creators, brands, studios and network partners. The company’s AI platform leverages frontier audience simulation models to discover the largest fanbase on social media and drives rapid growth through new viewer engagement, content optimization, channel management, conversion and ROAS monitoring.
Prior to Chronicle Studios, Ollie was formerly an executive in the unicorn startups Rebellion Defense and Improbable, and a technology leader in the UK government.
