November 2025
CGA Monthly
Let's Get You Paid
The big announcement last month was big enough that we’re recapping it here: The Creators Guild of America is introducing CGA Compliance, a program to make sure its members get paid the money they’re owed.
Being a creator today is challenging for all sorts of reasons, but one of the most prevalent (and annoying) is simply the number of brands and companies that think they can get away with paying creators when they get around to it, instead of on the timetable they agreed to. Not to put too fine a point on it, but… WTF? Since when did terms agreed to in signed contracts only apply if one party feels like it? Since when did a commitment to pay within 90 days become optional? The creator economy is unpredictable enough without a giant question mark hanging over your primary source of income.
The worst part is, creators have almost no recourse except to ask politely. And then ask politely again. And again. And… Our members are sick of it, and so are we. We call bullshit, and we’re putting our money where our mouth is. Or more specifically, we’re putting our mouth where your money is.
The Compliance service is in beta right now, but when it’s up and running, here’s how it’ll work. Creators can visit creator support, where you’ll submit your name, the name and contact of the delinquent payor, and the amount you’re owed. (While you are not required to submit a signed contract to us, you will have to confirm that such an agreement exists.) Once that happens, the CGA will send a polite but firm letter to the creditor, naming you as a member of the Creators Guild of America and requesting on your behalf that you be paid the money that’s owed you. Though we won’t initiate legal action on your behalf, we’ll be sure to mention that you’ll have our support in any legal action you might have to bring.
Then we see what happens. If they pay you, great. If they persist in withholding payment, we’ll explore other options with you. If you want recourse to legal action, we’ll help you get started. If a company consistently fails to live up to its obligations to creators, we won’t be afraid to “name & shame” them.
The sad fact is, companies drag their feet on paying creators because they can. The playing field is far from even. An individual creator has precious little leverage through which to compel a company to pay on time. Often, the worst consequence a creator can threaten is to refuse to work with that brand or company again… which, honestly, might feel worse for the creator than for the company. After all, with the abundance of content creators working today, a single creator wouldn’t be wrong to worry that they might be seen as expendable. And given that most creators’ goals are to form enduring and productive relationships with brands, severing a potential connection is often the very last thing a creator wants to do.
The brands know this, and that knowledge has allowed them to abuse creators’ trust. That changes starting now. It’s one thing to blow off an single individual, especially one who’s desperate not to antagonize. But companies aren’t so quick to ignore an organization that reaches thousands of members, and that counts many of the most vital agencies and platforms in the creator space as allies and supporters. When it comes to your brand relationships, you don’t want to be the “bad guy”. We’re happy to have you leave that role to us.
Creator Convos with Jenny Hoyos
CGA Programming Chair Jeff Barrett sat down with wunderkind creator and strategist Jenny Hoyos to talk about finding the sweet spot between communicating your passion and playing to the algorithms' appetites, and about some of the red flags when looking at contracts. The conversation can be found on the CGA's YouTube channel.
CGA Profile: Phil Ranta
Phil Ranta has served on the CGA Advisory Board since the guild's launch in 2023. A longtime citizen of the creator space, he was good enough to sit down with us and chat about his background in content, his new company Stealth Talent, and how the CGA can elevate creators' careers.
So, where do you come from? Before the creator economy was a thing, what was your role?
So before the creator economy was a thing, I was a comedian. I came out to Los Angeles to be a comedy writer. I was a screenwriting focus in college, but I was always on internet. When I came out to Los Angeles, I sold a comedy show to Super Deluxe.com. That was about 20 years ago and I just never left. Digital was just interesting--I loved that there were no gatekeepers, and I just held on for dear life. From ringtones to the wallpapers, the birth of premium web video, the MCN era, the live streaming era... I just kind of made my way through all those eras.
Having survived the first 20 years of digital content creation—and not everyone can say that—where have you gotten to now?
I'm currently the founder and CEO of Stealth Talent, where we are bringing together great creators and great entrepreneurs to build generational companies. We believe that the only way for creators to outlast their influence or last longer than the algorithm prefers them is to build something stable when they're at the top of their game. And we believe the best people to build that stable thing are entrepreneurial-minded operators. So creators can continue being brilliant marketers and creative voices, and the operators can help them achieve long-term outcomes.
What makes for a successful creator? What are the essential skills?
There's really two, and that's tenacity and self-awareness. Everything else is negotiable. Even when people say, well, a great creator has to be brilliant, I'm like, “actually, they don't have to be brilliant. They have to be self-aware.” It's like saying that the best writers have to be like Shakespeare. That's just not true. There are highly successful authors writing romance novels, or writing airport reads. They don't need to be Shakespeare—they only need to be aware of how they fit into the ecosystem. Successful creators need to know how to learn from the content they post, how to look at their analytics, how to be a little better every time, how to recognize when they find a niche that's valuable, and then be tenacious once they find that, to continue posting, to not get burned out, to be able to develop a schedule around themselves. As long as they have self-awareness and tenacity, pretty much anyone can become a professional creator. There's just very few people that have both.
What's some of the content over just the last year or two that's gotten you excited, that has you following new creators?
I think the short form evolution has been exciting. It used to be if you were a comedian, you'd have to do a sketch comedy channel with a lot of different stuff on it. Whereas now you can be a TikTok star by essentially doing like one recurring sketch. You don't have to be SNL anymore; you can just be Wayne's World, and knock that out of the park every time, exploring it and having fun with it. I love what's happened with stand-up comedy and TikTok. Stand-up goes through waves. It always has. But with the ability to do clipping, finding that 30-second joke moment is like the new Tonight Show appearance.
Where and how are you looking to steer Stealth Talent?
We want to find creators that build companies that are themselves so valuable that they reach the same level of importance as the content creation that spawned them, like Mr. Beast and Feastables. Somebody with 500,000 followers making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year with content might also have their candy company making another couple hundred thousand dollars a year. Once we're able to find that delicate balance where they're able to control their own destiny and not have to grind for brand deals, but build something that they own and brings them stability, I feel like that's where we really win.
If we can do that 10 times over or 100 times over, awesome. But in five years, I just want to be able to look back on that and say, “We created the best funnel so creators could have the best opportunity to do that.”
What kind of support do creators need right now?
Whether through the CGA or just in my role at Stealth, I want to help them understand their career a little bit better, and understand where there's gaps. For a lot of creators, there are “unknown unknowns” that can loom over them. Digital rights management, for instance... Maybe they don't know their content's being stolen. Maybe they've never used trial rules before, or they're in an aggressive contract where they didn't know that it was not industry standard to do X, Y, and Z, because nobody ever told them. A lot of creators could use someone to observe, clarify, and then help fill in the gaps and solve for challenges.
What role do you think the CGA can play in improving the prospects for creators?
Creators need greater advocacy, to have their rights protected. Simply speaking with a collective voice is a big step forward. Any one creator talking to YouTube or Facebook or TikTok is very small. 100 creators starts to become a little more of a concern. But when you hit 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, you can start to affect policy in a real way and add urgency behind it. These platforms are are for-profit businesses, and we understand that. But every once in a while, you need somebody to come in and say, hey, your commercial side will be hurt, or your brand will be be hurt unless you solve this problem that may not necessarily be hurting your bottom line at this moment. Somebody has to advocate for that, and it has to be somebody that lives outside of an organization that's sole focus is on stock prices and the bottom line.
How to Deal with AI
We're pretty sure we used to talk about other stuff before the advent of AI, but jeez, we can barely remember what it was. Every few weeks, some new AI breakthrough hits the market (or at least the press) and it feels like we have to re-wrap our minds around what we just saw and what it might mean.
In October, the thing that broke everybody's brains was the release of Sora 2 from OpenAI, which allows users to insert themselves or other users—via individual avatars called cameos—into infinitely customizable AI video clips, often generated from a single, one-sentence prompt. Consequently, we've been subjected to dogs skydiving, a reality cooking show with alien contestants, and the unsettling spectacle of Tupac Shakur teaching Mister Rogers how to roll a joint, all of it just the tip of the Sora iceberg.
Legacy media and its adjuncts, most particularly the major talent agencies, have circled the wagons in response, urging their leading lights not to “opt in” to Sora, denying Sora users the ability to manipulate their images and likenesses. This pullback has made dead celebrities—save for the handful with rigorous estate management—the lowest-hanging fruit for creators intent on releasing content featuring famous people doing unusual things. This has given us everything from clips of Mister Rogers getting baked with Tupac, to Robin Williams' daughter Zelda issuing heartfelt pleas for creators to stop creating AI content featuring her father.
For creators trying to connect with and expand their audiences, the activity around Sora has made for a tangle of legal, ethical and practical issues. Legacy media's defensiveness over the use of Sora is understandable, given how much of its market share rests on the established personae and reputations of a few hundred stars. But the tools that allow one creator to subvert or undermine an established celebrity's brand are just as capable of creating new stars, of elevating a previously unknown talent to a household name.
It's hard not to sympathize with people like Zelda Williams, who are seeking to protect the legacies of those they love from people who would undermine them for kicks and clicks. The CGA well understands the fundamental value of an individual's name, image and likeness; it's one of the key creator protections listed in the CGA Rider, and we included it precisely to discourage this kind of brand sabotage. At the same time, the creative and entrepreneurial possibilities of Sora content are undeniable. Just because a tool can be misused doesn't rob that tool of its essential value.
Technology will continue to evolve, and so will our opinions. But for the moment, we reject the notion that tools like Sora are inherently destructive. Once we get past the parlor trickery of making famous people seem to do things that they would never do (or have done) in real life, creators can get down to the real work of testing the limits of their creativity and skills. Very soon, we will see creators who rocket to prominence thanks to their vision and ability to use these tools in ways the rest of us never dreamed possible, in ways that redefine and expand their own brand, rather than hijacking someone else's.
Those are the creators we're here for, and we can't wait to help them get there. For all of the craziness we've seen on the platforms this year, we know we ain't seen nothing yet.
Ready for Compliance?
The CGA is looking for creators to test its new contact compliance service. Are you late getting paid? Click the button below and help your guild figure out the best way to make sure you get what's owed to you. CGA members and associates are both eligible to participate in the beta, but members will be given priority. Beta testers must confirm that they have a signed agreement with a delinquent creditor.
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