Humans in the Gig Economy: How Mikayla Groody Built The 411 Around Community, Creator Pay, and UGC That Actually Converts

Humans in the Gig Economy is a series by Dots, the global payouts platform for marketplaces, gig platforms, and creator tools. We talk to the people building real income streams in today’s creator and gig economy, from founders, and operators, to the creators who are figuring out how to make flexible work actually work.

For this edition, we spoke with Mikayla Groody, founder of The 411, a UGC and creator agency built around fast, authentic content from real people. 

In less than a year in the space, Mikayla has generated 100M+ views on her own content, driven 60M+ views through managing creators across multiple companies, and helped The 411 cross 10M views within its first week of launch. 

Mikayla’s story is about what happens when a creator learns the system from the inside and then builds an agency around the things she wished existed earlier: better pay structures, stronger creator support, and more honest community.

From “just extra money” to founder

Mikayla did not enter UGC thinking it would become a full-time career. She says she originally heard about it from her best friend (and now her co-founder!) who was already deep in marketing, dropshipping, and UGC. At the time, Mikayla was simply looking for some extra money and assumed it would be “a couple hundred here and there.” Then she applied to Playkit, was hired quickly, and within her first few weeks landed a viral video with 6.5M views. From there, things accelerated.

That story is unusually fast, but the broader trend isn’t. The creator economy has become a legitimate work category, with one recent market forecast estimating the global creator economy at $254.4B in 2025, growing to over $2T by 2035. The same shift is showing up in how younger workers think about income: in one 2025 U.S. survey, 37% of workers said they currently have a side hustle, with another 35% considering starting one.

Mikayla’s story sits right in the middle of that shift. What starts as “extra money” can become strategy, management, systems, and eventually a business.

What the job actually looks like once it becomes real

The day-to-day reality of working in creator marketing full-time is different from the social media posts. Yes, there is freedom. But there is also a real risk of drifting through the day if you do not build structure for yourself. Mikayla sets a strict routine, with a number of hours at the computer, and even a walking pad just to keep herself moving while working.

That may sound small, but it points to a deeper truth about UGC and creator work: the job often hides inside the same apps people use to procrastinate. Social media work blurs the line between “I’m researching” and “I’m scrolling.” That makes discipline part of the job description.

What creators really need from brands

Mikayla built The 411 around community: creators are contractors, yes, but they should still feel appreciated, known, and supported.

That philosophy shapes the agency’s operations. The 411 uses separate Slack spaces for clients and creators, with the agency itself acting as the bridge between the two. The boundary is intentional. She wants creators to feel protected from the pressure of direct client communication, and she wants the agency to preserve a space that feels like both a workplace and a community.

This is more than vibe management. It is an operational choice. The best creator ecosystems are rarely just “talent marketplaces.” They are environments where expectations are clear, support is real, and creators do not feel like they are alone in front of a brand.

Why The 411 hires for motivation, not just experience

One of the most distinctive parts of Mikayla’s approach is how lightly she weights past experience in onboarding. She asks creators what they are posting right now, what their hobbies are, and what they are actually interested in, not just what their most-viewed video was or how long they have been doing UGC. Her reasoning is simple: she herself came in knowing very little about UGC, and still ended up with huge performance. She would rather hire someone eager, motivated, and willing to learn than someone with a polished resume but no real energy.

This also feeds directly into how The 411 matches creators with campaigns. Mikayla says the agency tries to match people based on niche and personal interest. If someone is into sports, they are more naturally suited to sports betting or workout content. If someone is more artistic, that shapes where they fit too. The idea is not just relevance. It is authenticity. Content works better when creators are promoting something they genuinely like or understand, because that comes through on TikTok and Instagram.

That view lines up with broader industry trends. Influencer marketing as a software category continues to grow, with one market forecast putting the influencer marketing platform market at $1.15B in 2026, expected to reach $2.03B by 2031. But what Mikayla is describing is less “classic influencer marketing” and more creator-led content systems: high-volume, niche-matched, personality-forward, and designed to feel native enough that people actually trust it.

The pay structures creators should understand before they say yes

A lot of UGC work is still paid on CPM, meaning creators are compensated based on views. She is openly skeptical of CPM-only setups because views are not guaranteed. Her preference — and what The 411 offers — is a base pay per campaign, with CPM or view-based bonuses layered on top. In her view, creators should not be left hoping a video performs well enough to justify the work.

At The 411, creators are paid weekly, which creators prefer over monthly or biweekly structures. The agency also works with clients upfront to determine whether they want to include view-based bonuses, and then pays those through to creators. On top of that, The 411 sometimes adds its own bonuses for things like top creator of the month or for videos that drive strong app or website traction even if they are not technically viral.

That detail matters. It reflects an understanding many brands still miss: a video can be operationally valuable without being a vanity-metric hit. Plenty of viral videos do not necessarily drive conversions, while more targeted videos bring meaningful traffic or downloads.

For creators, the takeaway is clear:

• Learn the difference between CPM-only deals and base pay + bonus structures.
• Do not assume “performance-based” automatically means good.
• If you are new, do not undersell yourself so aggressively that you end up doing real work for tiny upside.

Her advice later in the episode makes this explicit: understand the difference between CPM and flat-rate work, avoid selling yourself short, and try to get onto campaigns that last a few months rather than one-off gigs whenever possible.

The least glamorous problem in UGC: getting paid on time

The biggest frustration faced by creators is that creators are often promised money for a certain time and then do not actually receive it when expected. In a traditional job, you know when payday is. In UGC, even when the money is better, the timing can be much shakier.

That is not a niche problem. Late payments are one of the most common stress points in creator and freelance work, and they are especially brutal because the people doing the work are usually not giant companies with cash buffers. Instead, they are students, freelancers, and younger creators trying to pay real bills.

This is exactly where the infrastructure side matters. Dots exists to help platforms, marketplaces, and gig businesses handle the boring-but-critical part: onboarding, verifying, and paying people reliably. For companies running creator campaigns at scale, that means fewer “did payouts go out?” moments, fewer manual workarounds, and fewer creators left wondering whether they need to chase someone down in Slack or email. Dots’ public materials emphasize support for onboarding and payouts across multiple countries, currencies, and methods, so the payments layer stops being the bottleneck.

That is not the glamorous part of the creator economy. But it is the part that determines whether the whole system feels trustworthy.

The money trap creators need to watch out for

Once you realize how much money UGC can generate relative to a traditional job, it becomes very easy to say yes to everything. Getting “money hungry,” taking too many opportunities, making hundreds of videos, and burning out is an all-too-common scenario in the space.

That is useful advice because it is easy to romanticize creator work as “just making videos on your phone.” However, creator work can scale quickly, but so can exhaustion. 

• Do not say yes to every gig.
• Learn your boundary before you hit burnout.
• See longer-term retainers or campaigns as stability, not just immediate cash.
• Understand that rest is part of sustaining the work, not the opposite of it.

Saying no gets easier once you realize not every opportunity is good, and not every client is trustworthy. If someone misses payment timing in the first month, it is usually a sign.

Where UGC is headed

UGC is only going to keep getting bigger because online marketing is not going away and everyone is on their phones. However, it may become harder to break in, not because the opportunity disappears, but because more people are already doing it.

That feels plausible. As creator marketing gets more normalized, it becomes both more accessible and more competitive. The winners are unlikely to be the people with the most polished “influencer” persona. They are more likely to be the ones who understand niche, know how to work with structure, communicate well, and can keep themselves from burning out.

Advice if you’re just starting in UGC

• Do not say yes to everything.
• Learn the difference between CPM and flat-fee/base-pay deals.
• Do not sell yourself short, even when you are new.
• If possible, start with an agency, because it gives you experience, campaign access, and a better chance of getting onto something consistent.
• Look for campaigns that last longer than one month so you have a little more stability while you figure out your next move.

How Infrastructure Like Dots Keeps the Gig Economy Moving

Stories like The 411t’s only work if the money side keeps up with the creativity.

Creators need:

• To be paid on time
• In ways that work for them (bank accounts, wallets, local rails)
• With clear visibility into what they’ve earned

Platforms and marketplaces need:

• A way to onboard creators and gig workers (KYC, tax forms, payout info)
• To send payouts across countries and currencies without reinventing the wheel
• To track everything in one place for finance, ops, and compliance

That’s the layer Dots is built for.

Dots offers an end-to-end payouts platform that lets companies:

• Onboard and verify creators and contractors
• Send and track payouts globally in 190+ countries with local methods like bank transfers, mobile money, and digital wallets
• Set their own flexible payment schedules and rules, whether it’s weekly payments or bonuses for good performance

If you’re building the next 411-style marketplace, UGC platform, or any gig network, Dots sits quietly in the background so that:

• Your team can focus on growth and product, not spreadsheets and bank files
• Your creators and contractors can focus on the work, without wondering when, or if, their money will arrive

Book a demo here!