I once asked a very famous rapper — we’re talking about a household name, world-famous for many decades — about his secret to creative longevity and relevance.
I said to him, “You were 17, 18 when you came into the business. Hip-hop changes rapidly and most people don’t last. Why do you think you’ve lasted so long?"
I thought he was going to say something like, “because I’m the greatest rapper alive.” But he didn’t.
Instead, he said, “well, most stars, they get on the pedestal, and they want all their fans to bow down to them. But me, I get on the pedestal, and I pull people up with me. That’s my whole energy. I’m just trying to bring people up with me. And when you lift people up, they want to lift you up.”
I’ve always loved this idea: the idea of helping expand the potential of people, both individually and collectively. That’s been my source of inspiration, all throughout my career. It’s part of what drew me to Visa in the first place — a place with a purpose to uplift everyone, everywhere. And it’s the idea that’s driving GetP@id, where successful creators help those earlier in their journeys build a following and get paid for their work.
The tools to create and distribute have never been easier to access.
Not that long ago, if you were a musician who wanted to cut a single, you had to spend significant money for time in a recording studio, to make the recording itself, probably more to mix, and definitely more to master. You might spend even more on production, and distribution was not guaranteed. You’d be very lucky to find a home at a reputable label.
Today, though, we live in an era where you can make a platinum album with a $99 microphone and some basic software. You can record a song in the morning, forgo physical production altogether, and release it that same day, distributing it through any number of online channels. The tools to create and the distro have democratized, but getting paid still isn’t a sure thing. And this doesn’t just apply to musicians, either. Whether your medium is paint or fabric, pixels or pasta, your passion doesn’t guarantee a paycheck.
For a lot of creators, that’s a problem.
Creating is just the beginning.
Today, somewhere around 50 million creators make up what a lot of folks call the creator economy — the informal collection of musicians, artists, gamers and other creative types doing work they love independently as a full- or part-time source of income. The phenomenon itself isn’t new, but the scale is, and it is growing exponentially.
Even so, creating is just the beginning. In a world where traditional gatekeepers continue to cede ground to more direct, more social, more participatory channels, anyone has a shot, but capitalizing on it can still be pretty difficult. Even if you have every advantage — say, you went to a fancy art school and your work is great — you probably didn’t learn what you really need to know to market yourself, or price yourself, or run distribution, or build a following — all of the things that together make the difference between a hobby and a business. That’s why we started GetP@id: where creators show creators how to get it done.
In GetP@id, creators show creators the difference between a hobby and a business.
As a leader in global payments, helping people get paid is kind of our thing, and we see a great opportunity for a new kind of creator middle class to emerge in the shifting landscape. We decided to leverage our brand and expertise to pair rising creators with others who are more established — like a mentorship program for the digital age.
Through GetP@id, creators from the worlds of fashion, music and food will work through weekly challenges — pushing boundaries, building their brands, and working to improve their skills to increase monetization opportunities for their work. They’ll also get time with mentors established in their fields, who will share their knowledge and experience around what it has taken to build their own businesses.
To start, we’ve paired mentor @dannylovespasta with @chefbrad__ in food, mentor @ldrethegiant with @jovvamusic in music, and mentor @whokae with @steelojeem in fashion. You can follow along yourself each week on Visa’s Tik Tok, Instagram and YouTube channel (#GetPaid), hosted by comedian Kareem Rahma.
Supporting the continued growth of the creator economy
If we really want to expand the potential of people, giving them things like inspiration, confidence and opportunity are all part of the equation. But the other part is giving them the mechanism — the systems that can help them capitalize. That’s why we started the Visa NFT Creator Program, the Visa Ready Creator Commerce Program, and it’s why we started GetP@id: programs that aim to give more creators the tools and systems they need to help grow beyond hobbies into real businesses.
As Visa’s founder Dee Hock was fond of saying, if you remove friction from money and give people access, ordinary people can do extraordinary things.