The Man Who Moved Creators from the Margins to the Middle of Microsoft

Joey Maestas has spent his career watching an industry graduate from novelty to necessity He was inside Team USA39s marketing operation building athlete storytelling programs a decade before quotcreator economyquot was a phrase anyone used in a board meeting He was at NextVR when virtual reality still felt like the future instead of a cautionary tale And now as the executive steering Microsoft39s creator and influencer strategy he is doing something harder than chasing a trend He is embedding one inside a company whose business model has almost nothing to do with contentThat is the conversation Tim Spengler and I had with Joey on this episode of Lead Human and it is one of the more useful hours we have recorded this year for anyone who creates manages creators or has to explain to a skeptical leadership team why any of this mattersWatch the full conversation at httpsyoutubeGV5RSDwPTicismhwFb8LWPbGSLNlv subscribe on your podcast platform of choice and explore more at httpsleadhumancomLeadership as a Learning PostureAsk Joey what makes a good leader and he does not reach for a framework He reaches for his own hiring decisionsquotWe just hired a new creator team at Microsoft and everyone39s different and has different experiencesquot he told us quotSomeone from EA who has a great experience on building creator programs someone from Live Nation with a lot of experience in artists and performance someone from TikTok and a lot of the short form experience It39s been interesting because I just feel like that just makes you better putting a good team around you your cabinet per sequotIt is a simple idea that most executives say and few actually practice hire people who know things you do not then let yourself be taught Joey39s version of leadership is less about having answers and more about staying in a permanent state of intake When Tim closed the interview by summarizing the throughline of the conversation that was the line he chose Learning is not a phase you graduate out of It is the jobThe Muhammad Ali QuestionEvery guest reveals something unplanned and with Joey it came from a question about his LinkedIn banner Why Muhammad AliquotThat39s just been my LinkedIn for yearsquot he said quotMuhammad Ali has just been someone that for me growing up watching a lot of old fights based on what he stood for Very outspoken Just inspiring for mequotTalk about the ultimate influencer we told him He did not disagree It is a small detail but it says something real about how Joey thinks about the creators he works with every day not as a marketing line item but as people whose cultural weight predates the term quotcreator economyquot by decades Ali was never chasing engagement He had it because people trusted what he stood for That is the exact quality Joey is trying to systematize at scale inside one of the largest companies on earthProving the UnprovableThe hardest part of Joey39s job is not finding creators It is defending the budget line to executives who want a numberquotYou can39t go into a meeting and say look at all this awareness we drove Great But it39s like what are these actual business resultsquot he said His team tracks individual creator links down the funnel not because the relationship matters less than the metric but because the relationship has to survive contact with finance quotIt39s really looking at if someone posts something what type of conversation are we seeing from that Did we see a spike in app downloads that dayquotAnd then there is the moment every brand marketer chases and can never fully engineer creators who keep posting after the contract ends quotThey just truly love the product now and they trust usquot Joey said quotThey could be on a trip they could be doing something with their families whatever it might bequot That more than any dashboard is the signal his leadership actually believesAdvice for Every CreatorToward the end of the conversation Joey gave the advice that Tim and I suspect will get clipped and shared more than anything else in this episode It was aimed at us but it applies to anyone building an audiencequotIf you want to go into your kitchen start cooking and show someone your meal like start posting thatquot he said quotYou39ll get a clear view very quickly on if that39s working for your platforms or notquot His point is not that overthinking is wasteful It is that overthinking substitutes for the only research method that actually works publishing and watching what happensWhy This Conversation MattersJoey Maestas sits at a rare intersection enough institutional history to have watched this industry graduate from Vine activations at the Rio Olympics to AIgenerated influencers debating real ones for brand deals and enough current authority to be shaping how a trilliondollar company decides which of those bets are real His closing message to anyone hesitant about this space was direct quotDon39t be afraid to jump inquot he said quotThere39s so many inspirational stories and new people that you meet that each have their own different niche and stories to tell It39s fun because it never gets boringquotFor anyone building a creator program managing talent or building their own platform from nothing this episode is a working blueprint from someone doing it inside one of the most scrutinized marketing operations in the worldWatch the full conversation at youtubecomleadhuman subscribe on your podcast platform of choice and explore more at httpsleadhumancomLead Human is hosted by Jack Myers and Tim Spengler exploring the human side of leadership in the age of AI and unleashing the human potentialamp160

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The Man Who Moved Creators from the Margins to the Middle of Microsoft

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