For creatorpreneur and Packs Light founder Gabby Beckford, creators are not just content machines anymore; they are small business owners and potential community leaders. 

As far as Gabby is concerned, creator-led businesses can rise above social media metrics and create wider ripples across communities, beyond likes and follows, by becoming sustainable business empires.

After leaving her position as a data quality engineer at Northrop Grumman in 2020, Gabby didn’t just transition into content creation – she developed a business ecosystem. Starting with Packs Light, which has grown to over 500,000 followers across platforms, she’s methodically expanded into multiple ventures while clearly focusing on travel, education, and community building.

Rather than concentrating solely on growing followers, she approached content creation with an engineer’s precision, building systems that could support larger business ambitions.

Engineering a Sustainable Business Model

Gabby’s approach to business building reflects her engineering background, which becomes evident in how she views monetization. 

“The thing that’s best for monetization is what’s sustainable,” she explains. “What’s sustainable is different for each of us.” For Gabby, sustainability meant developing multiple revenue streams while maintaining trust in brand partnerships.

“I have to be involved in the creative process,” she insists when discussing brand collaborations. “You can’t hand me a script and ask me just to say what you want word for word. I have to interpret it for my audience.” This commitment to genuine communication has led to long-term partnerships with major brands like Delta Airlines, Chase Bank, and Marriott Bonvoy.

However, the reality of running a global creator business involves significant dedication. “It comes with 3 a.m. meetings and grappling with time zone changes,” she reveals. “I’m the one who has to wake up very early in the morning and be coherent, so I can tell a story good enough to pitch tens of thousands of dollars to a company.”

Building Platform Independence

Given the recent platform shifts shaking up the creator economy, Gabby advocates platform independence and risk management. Unlike many creators who build their businesses entirely on social media platforms, she’s developed a diverse business portfolio. 

“Social media is huge in my business, probably 70% of my business as a whole,” she acknowledges, “But it’s important to me to be spread across multiple platforms.”

Her strategy involves crafting distinct content for each platform, understanding that different audiences have different needs. “I have a different story to tell on LinkedIn from the business side of being a creator than I do on Instagram, where I’ve had followers for six years who want to learn specifically about travel,” she explains. “My Instagram followers want me to keep it short, while my YouTube followers want two-hour videos.”

This approach extends to her content creation process. “I would get bored if it were the same video on every platform,” she reveals. “I tailor the content on TikTok versus Instagram. I get to play with the minutia. And I think that’s why I’ve been successful.”

Platform uncertainties have validated her approach to independence. “When TikTok went down or was about to go down, the first thing I said was, ‘Use this service, download every single TikTok video that you have, download all of your videos from CapCut, put them on an external hard drive,’” she shares.

The cornerstone of her independence strategy is her blog and email newsletter, with 22,000 subscribers. “When I talk to my mentees about my journey, I’m always sure to start with the fact that I had a blog,” she emphasizes. “Because if every social media platform went down, I would still be posting on my blog today. And I own that. Go own your audience.”

Innovating the Travel Industry

Gabby has just launched SeekPTO, a travel tech startup representing her most ambitious venture yet. Her timing aligns with major industry movements: “Sustainability and regenerative travel are definitely booming this year. I’m seeing people paying attention to the communities in places they travel?”

Rather than following traditional industry models, Gabby is developing new concepts that respond to current traveler needs. Her latest concept reimagines group travel experiences, particularly for solo travelers. 

“I was talking to my audience the other day in my email newsletter about doing a group trip for solo travelers where we don’t hang out every single day,” she explains. “Maybe every other day, we have an event. But you get free time. It’s like a free-time group.” 

The response was immediate and enthusiastic: “Everyone was like, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing. I want a little bit of comfort, but I don’t want every day planned out for me.’”

This concept emerged from her deep understanding of changing travel preferences, particularly among younger generations. “When we look at what’s happening in actual Gen Z demographic in the land, there’s so much variety,” she notes. “There’s Gen Z’s who want to quit their job and travel the world, and then there’s those who want a white picket fence and peace more than ever in these chaotic times.”

Gabby’s approach to travel focuses on building educational components and community support systems. “Those are my favorite moments from traveling – the moments that I learn about the world, and that makes me learn something about myself,” she shares. “I can feel myself grow as a person by meeting other digital nomads.”

The Future of Creator-Led Businesses

As the creator economy matures, Gabby sees opportunities and fundamental challenges that need addressing. 

Her recent LinkedIn post captured this tension perfectly: “Good morning to brands with appropriately allocated budgets and a long-term vision while working with influencers. The rest of you reflect.” Behind this pointed message lies a deeper critique of current brand-creator relationships.

“When I go to these conferences, creators are asking large brands, ‘How do I work with you?'” she explains. “And brands say, ‘Build a relationship with us!.’ But then I get offers for one-off partnerships, with no longevity or reactivation strategy…”

She describes the disconnect: “Some brands reach out saying they love my content and my mission. But as negotiations unfold, and we’re discussing the creative, the truth is made apparent: They don’t love what I do. They don’t even really know who I am. They loved my numbers.”

This experience shaped her vision of how the creator economy must progress. “I want to see more conversations about long-term financial freedom from creators,” she emphasizes. “Not just about making a lot of money and buying fancy things. I want to see people talk about investments, trusts, wills, and long-term, like family generational money from this entrepreneurial space.”

The health of the creator economy, in Gabby’s view, depends on building stronger, more equitable relationships between brands and creators. “If there’s a brand who saw that [LinkedIn post] and decided, “Oh, she’s high maintenance, we don’t want to work with her,'” she states firmly, “I would say, ‘I’m high maintenance because I want you to have a marketing plan, an appropriate budget, and a C-suite that supports you?’ “

A Creator’s Vision for the Future

Gabby’s path from engineer to creator slash entrepreneur is an example of what building a sustainable business in the creator economy looks like. 

“For a long time, I was just posting on social media and making money from it,” she observes. “But now, I’m moving to leverage the audience I’ve grown as a lead generator to fund my blog, my YouTube channel, my digital products, my platform, and my SeekPTO.com.”

Her approach shows that with strategic thinking, solid business infrastructure, and genuine community building, creators can build sustainable, scalable businesses that extend far beyond their social media presence. “The biggest strength we have as creators is community,” Gabby concludes.