Building a Media Company and Team
Growing a creator business into a media company: unit economics and readiness, strategy and portfolios, organization design and capacity, hiring under pay transparency, EEO and worker classification rules, fully loaded payroll costs, equity and contracts, managing people and culture, production systems, multi-channel expansion, finance and cash forecasting, in-house sales and products, loans, grants, equity and Regulation D exemptions, and exits, acquisitions and succession.
CRE-401 Year 4 3 credits 12 lessons · 6 h 19 min
Offered by HSM University · Content Creation
This is the American version of this course. See the Canadian version.
What you'll learn
- Explain how a creator business differs from a media company and use unit economics, contribution and break-even to judge readiness to grow
- Write a mission, positioning and portfolio strategy, measure concentration risk and translate strategy into objectives and key results
- Design an organization with clear roles, decision rights and structure, and plan staffing capacity around bottlenecks
- Run a fair, structured hiring process that meets US pay transparency, equal employment opportunity and worker classification rules
- Calculate the fully loaded cost of employees, compare it with contractor costs and design pay, equity vesting and employment contract terms
- Manage a creative team through clear expectations, feedback, one-on-ones, performance plans, remote practices and a healthy culture
- Build production pipelines with SOPs, kanban boards, backward schedules, asset management, quality checks and operational metrics
- Decide which channels, formats, platforms and languages to add and evaluate expansions with clear success criteria
- Read and build a layered profit and loss statement, segment results, budgets, KPI dashboards, cash forecasts and scenarios
- Decide between agency and in-house sales, design commission plans, manage pipelines and inventory, and evaluate product models
- Compare bootstrapping, loans, grants and equity, calculate dilution and cap tables, and explain US securities exemptions
- Value a media company, structure and evaluate exit and acquisition deals, plan succession and produce a capstone company plan
Course content
12 lessons · 6 h 19 min total · final exam
- 1 From creator to company 31 min · quiz
- 2 Strategy, mission and positioning 30 min · quiz
- 3 Organization design and roles 30 min · quiz
- 4 Hiring: job design, recruiting and onboarding 30 min · quiz
- 5 Compensation, equity and employment contracts 30 min · quiz
- 6 Managing people and building culture 30 min · quiz
- 7 Production systems and workflows at scale 32 min · quiz
- 8 Multiple channels, formats and platforms 34 min · quiz
- 9 Finance for a growing media company 35 min · quiz
- 10 Building a sales team and product lines 35 min · quiz
- 11 Raising capital: loans, grants and investors 30 min · quiz
- 12 Exits, acquisitions, succession and capstone 32 min · quiz
- E Final exam 20 questions
Requirements
Recommended background. You can start any course at any time.
Description
Growing a creator business into a media company: unit economics and readiness, strategy and portfolios, organization design and capacity, hiring under pay transparency, EEO and worker classification rules, fully loaded payroll costs, equity and contracts, managing people and culture, production systems, multi-channel expansion, finance and cash forecasting, in-house sales and products, loans, grants, equity and Regulation D exemptions, and exits, acquisitions and succession.
Part of the Film & Photography stream, typically taken in year 4.