Hidden Gems: Meet Kacie Luaders of Could Be Pretty Cool | Pretty Cool Data

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kacie Luaders.

Hi Kacie, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in Detroit, where music was everywhere and everyone had some connection to it. I studied music recording technology, then went on for an MFA in sound design, which is what brought me to Atlanta.

I spent years doing sound design for theater, but I also kept ending up on the business side, in marketing, in audience research, in data analysis. So I was living in two worlds at once, making creative work and studying who gets paid and who gets counted.

The turning point was 2019, when I was a top ten finalist in Spotify’s Sound Up accelerator. Being in a room full of creators with big ideas and almost no infrastructure behind them changed what I wanted to build. I started my company in 2020 as a podcast production business, and the production work now funds the research I care about most, which is treating the creative economy like a real economy worth studying.

Short version, I make podcasts and I count things. Turns out those two skills work well together.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I started the company in 2020, which was a strange time to start anything. Everyone was home, everyone wanted audio, and it felt like the whole industry had opened up. Then 2022 came, the world reopened, and the money moved. Funders shifted their priorities and the entertainment industry pulled back hard on the kind of independent work I was building toward. A lot of what I thought I was walking into just stopped existing.

That was the hard stretch. But that is also where the model I have now actually came from. When the big industry doors closed, I started working with mission-driven organizations, and it turned out that was where my two worlds finally lined up. Those partners care about the same things I care about, they want the work to mean something, and they are in it for the long haul, which suits how I work.

So the detour became the direction. I would not have found it if the first plan had worked.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Could Be Pretty Cool | Pretty Cool Data?
Could Be Pretty Cool is a media production company and a Certified B Corporation. We make podcasts with mission-driven organizations, universities, and public media, and we treat those shows as more than content. When you interview people across a full season, you are collecting qualitative data, and most organizations never do anything with it. That is what we specialize in. We produce the show and we help you understand what the show is telling you.

The Pretty Cool Creator Collective is our accelerator for underrepresented creators, modeled directly on my own experience in Spotify’s Sound Up, where being in the room with other creators changed what I thought was possible. We have piloted it and we are expanding it now, with a Macon edition in the works.

Pretty Cool Data is the newest piece, and it is its own thing. Most organizations get a report at the end of a season and then start over from zero the next year, so Pretty Cool Data lets them track insight year over year and see the patterns that would otherwise get lost between cycles.

What sets us apart is that the production work funds the research, and we are working creators ourselves. We are not researchers guessing at what independent creators need, because we are freelancing and producing and pricing our own work right alongside them.

What matters most to you? Why?
We have all absorbed the idea that creative work is supposed to hurt, that if you are struggling then you are doing it right. It gets treated like proof of commitment instead of what it actually is, which is a market with almost no information in it. Creators are guessing at their rates, guessing in negotiations, and guessing at what next year looks like, and then we call the outcome a personality trait.

What matters to me is putting real information in their hands so they can build careers that hold up. Sustainable does not mean the same thing for everyone. For one person it is a full-time creative business, for another it is a steady side practice next to a day job they like, and both of those are legitimate. My job is not to tell anyone which version to want, only to make sure they are choosing it with actual numbers instead of folklore.

Pricing:

• The Pretty Cool Creator Collective is built to be reachable, because the people who most need this kind of support are usually the people with the least room in their budget for it. Pretty Cool Creator Collective membership is $10 a month

Contact Info:

• Website: https://couldbeprettycool.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/couldbeprettycool/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaciewillis/
• Other: https://www.prettycoolcommunity.com/c/_/profile?now=1785452388129