Girl Gang Craft Podcast Episode #92 “On Monetizing Content, Brand Partnerships, and going Anti-Pitch”

Phoebe Sherman interview with Kristen Bousquet

INTRO
Phoebe Sherman

Welcome to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast where we dive in deep to all things business, wellness, creativity, and activism for artists and entrepreneurs. We talk with impactful female driven companies and founders for an inside look at the entrepreneurial experience where you'll come away with tangible steps to elevate your business. Are you ready? I'm your host, Phoebe Sherman, founder of Girl Gang Craft artist and designer, and marketing obsessed. We're here to learn together how to expand our revenue, implement new organizational techniques, and cultivate best business practices as we work towards creating a life doing what we love. Let's get started.

Hello. Hello, Phoebe here. Welcome back to another episode of the Girl Gang Craft podcast. Today we have Kristen on the episode from Your Soulcial Mate. So she is great. And we dive into things like brand partnerships and building community. If you're a creator who wants to monetize, if you are a small business that wants to sort of monetize in a different direction and really treat your social media like a channel and pull in ad revenue, which we love ad revenue. We have a brand partnership class. You know that. This episode is for you. We talk about some brand partnership horror stories. Honestly, that's like my favorite thing to talk about. If you have a brand partnership horror story, you want to share it with me, let me know. I would love to hear it. Before we dive in to Kristen, let's see. Our Salem event is this weekend this Saturday. So if you're here in the new England area, come shop our vendors. It's going to be a good time inside and outside at Old Town Hall here in Salem. More information on that on our website girlgangcraft.com/events You can RSVP and find all that info. It's also of course all over our Instagram. So craft fair this Saturday free to attend and then next up after that is our August 8th event in Sacramento at the Crocker Art Museum. You can go ahead and grab tickets for that and get a discount with the code pajamas. So that's giving you a good time. That is a night evening event. That's a Thursday night at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. Apps are open for all of our other events. Holiday events Salem and Oakland are closed as of now. Those are our most popular events. You can join the waitlist for those, but we have Malden and SAC and Providence open. If you didn't know, our Providence event moved to a different date, December 7th and a different location. So we're going to be at Farm Fresh and Private Hands December 7th now. So all of that information is on our site at Grogan craft.com/events. Or you can apply at girlgangcraft.com/apply and go ahead and call us up please. I would love to know your questions about wedding stuff, maybe craft fair stuff and maybe email marketing or content creation or brand partnerships. Those are the conversations I would love to have. Also time management. How do you schedule your day? Maybe you just have a tip that you want to share. And of course- you get that business shout out if you call us and leave your business. I will repeat it on the podcast. Actually, we'll just play your little voice recording. So call us up and yeah, let's get into the episode. Kristen is a creator, monetization coach and founder of Your Soulcial Mate. She started her company after selling her first business for 100 K at 25 years old, and since then has been able to generate over 450K in her creator business as a micro influencer. Soulcial Mate’s goal is to educate entrepreneurial creators on how to turn their online influence into a profitable, self-sustaining business through social Scoop, podcast creator membership, Social suite, and coaching programs, all while keeping the social and social media. And I'll be on her podcast too. So keep your eyes out for that. Or your ears. Oh my god, that's so corny. Keep your ears out. We talk about some good stuff, so let's get into the episode.

Hello, hello. Hey Kristen, and welcome to Girl Gang Craft the Podcast.

Kristen
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very pumped to be here.

Phoebe
I am so happy to have you. I've been following you for a while, and I'm really excited to be able to have a conversation around monetization, around partnerships, around all of the sort of things that you talk about. So why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do for work?

Kristen
Of course. Yeah. So my name is Kristen. I own a company called Social Media. We work with entrepreneurial content creators and influencers to teach them how to monetize their online, influence their creativity in a way that is profitable, of course, but also very self-sustaining. My kind of motto is keeping the soul in social media. So I really like to keep things very non-chaotic. I want to be able to make money, but I also really want to be able to spend time with my dogs and like sit on a sunny day on a Wednesday, just read a book or something. So my goal is to help get creators to a point where they can do that.

Phoebe
I love that I think it was your story yesterday that you're like, I just need to stop by and read at 1 p.m. I'm totally like that too. I found that I actually don't work that well around 3:00. I might as well go outside. I actually like to work at 5 p.m. and I like do well at that time. So sort of like what works for us, I think is really important.

Kristen
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's so crazy and everyone is so used to working 9 to 5. And when we become our own bosses we're like, oh, we'll work 9 to 5, but we don't actually have to do that. I am the opposite. I really like to get up super early, and I like to get all my work done by like 2:00 and then not touch my computer again in the afternoon.

Phoebe
Yeah, that's valid. Some days it totally shifts. So for me, I mean, I'm not that consistent too. Like sometimes it's a completely different schedule and that's amazing. So being your own boss. Yeah. The flexibility. Yeah. Okay. Tell us a little bit about how soulcial mate came to be.
Kristen
I was a content creator myself. I still am a content creator myself. It was probably back in 2018 or so that I started really intentionally posting content, mostly fashion content, actually, and a lot of like creative photography. And I have a lot of fun with it. In that season of my life, I think it was like a perfect outlet. I lived in a small town in Massachusetts, and so there wasn't a lot happening. I had to kind of go make my own creative endeavors, and it was a lot of fun. But what I found was that I was getting a lot of people asking me as I started doing brand partnerships, how I was actually doing those, and I found myself in the DMs answering the same questions just over and over and over again. I was like, this is so crazy. Why is everyone asking me? Like, do I know something that other people don't? It didn't really occur to me until I just had this kind of big DM full of messages from people just kind of asking questions. And so eventually I got to a point where I said, okay, I'm clearly on to something here. And I started doing just one on one coaching calls. Those went really well until I found that I was just on the phone all day, and I couldn't do any of my other work because I was just on calls, on calls, on calls. So I needed to find a way to make it more sustainable for me, which is why we created a course where a lot of those questions that I was answering in the calls actually got answered in a way that was a little bit more self-guided. Then I still do offer coaching calls, just not as often, I guess. And we do have a membership program called Social Suite, where it's one to many. So for me, in my position, I'm able to help a lot of people by sharing one thing instead of me having to be on calls with individual people all day long. So again, sustainability was a really big guiding principle for me when I'm building social media into what it is today.

Phoebe
And so when you were starting content creation, did you have another full time job at that time?

Kristen
Yes or no? So I owned a company in Massachusetts where I'm originally from, and we basically did hair and makeup and photography. So in 2019, I actually sold that company to my partner. I sold my share of the company, and then I was able to move away from that and kind of put everything that I had into my own business doing social media. But it was kind of a secondary focus for me, influencing and content creation to my business that I did have previously.

Phoebe
So interesting. Okay, cool. So when you started doing content creation, what sort of brands were you starting to work with and how did you sort of start to dip your toes into that revenue stream?

Kristen
Yeah, for the most part, I did have a lot of brands that were coming to me for gifted partnerships, which is what we all expect. We get a lot of those, which is super frustrating, but it's the reality of it sometimes. I started getting a lot of those, and just from working with brands pretty consistently in a gifted capacity, I was able to start doing more paid partnerships. And once I started working with brands that were a little bit more well-known, that's when I found that I would get more brands reaching out to me for actual paid partnerships. I did also do a little bit of pitching at that point, but not a ton. I feel like it was one of those things where I always knew I needed to do it, but I just kind of went on the back burner and I never really got to it, as I'm sure happens with a lot of other people and obviously just not getting responses to them. And that whole process being very frustrating. The brands that I was working with at that point, actually, a lot of them were also from influencer platforms where you could kind of like go and apply for different jobs. And at that point, this is back in 2018, 2019. It was before Covid when so many people became creators. Those platforms were not very saturated and it was very easy to get jobs on those platforms. So a lot of them were fairly well-known brands like household names. But coming from those platforms, which I honestly think is much more difficult now.

Phoebe
Can you name drop? Can you give us some of those I think the beginning?

Kristen
Yeah I'm trying to like, think. I feel like it was so long ago. I remember working with crest, which was a really big one. I worked with a lot of like fashion brands. I worked with Shutterfly, some UGC for them. I literally cannot even remember. I feel like it was 100 years ago.
Phoebe
Yeah. So like how did you sort of pivot to, well, I guess, how did you sort of add on Soulcial Mate while you were doing some of these brand partnerships? What did that sort of building look like for you?
Kristen
Yeah, honestly, when I first started Soulcial Mate, I didn't do really any advertising on my feed because that was actually something I was really nervous about. I didn't want brands to come to my page and be like, wait, can we hire her? Is she just like a service provider? Like, it felt like it would be a little confusing for probably the first two years of Soulcial Mate. It was mostly me, just like sharing things on stories I would like maybe a couple times a month, share something about the services I was providing on my feed, but it was like very infrequently and a lot of my content I started to shift probably in about 2020, started to shift a lot of it more towards business and social media monetization versus just like fashion and photography, what I was doing before. So from probably up until I would say 2022. So for the first two years of my business, I was mostly making my income from influencer partnerships, probably 75, 80% of it. And maybe that other 2,025% was from coaching. Now it's crazy. It's actually completely flipped. I've put so much more of a focus on my coaching business that I probably make 80% of my income now from coaching, and that other 20% comes from things like brand partnerships. So the tables have definitely turned in the last couple of years.

Phoebe
Why don't you give us, like, the inside scoop of what Soulcial Mate is and what it looks like today?

Kristen
Yeah, I mean, we've gone through so many changes in the last four or so years of being in business. I think that's something that a lot of people need to get comfortable with is just like that evolution of, especially when you're first getting started, things are going to change so much. We used to just have a course that was self-guided, but you also got one on one calls included in it. Again, I found that I was just on so many of those one on one calls. So we actually ended up changing the format around. Now, today, what social media looks like. First we have a podcast. It's called Social Scoop. So every Tuesday we have episodes that give creators actionable items, things that they can actually go out and do to help monetize. We have that podcast. We have a membership program called Soulcial Suite, which is really where my big focus is on now. I feel like in previous years, I've always thought that I needed to have so many different offers and have so many different products that I was sharing with people, because I wanted to have something for everyone. Like, I don't want anyone to come to my website and say, I don't know if it's for me. Like I wanted to serve everyone. And what I found was that I was serving no one. Like when you're trying to reach out to too many people, you're actually not targeting it enough that you're reaching that person very specifically and making it an easy decision for them. So I actually got rid of all of my offers about three months ago, and we only have social suite. And then when you're in Soulcial suite, you can upgrade to get access to a course that we have all about the method that we teach, which is called the anti pitch method. So I definitely have minimized my business in the last couple of years, especially in the last couple of months. I read this book called ten X is easier than to Act if you heard of it.I feel like it popped up and everyone is like, oh my gosh, it's amazing.

Phoebe
I have read it yet though. For your newsletter though about How to be a millionaire and oh yeah, the money one.

Kristen
Yes, I'm on a like big business book reading kick. I usually am not, but I've been listening on audiobooks and I feel like they're so much easier to not get bored of. I read this book ten x is easier than two x, and the whole premise is that if you were to ten x your business, it would actually be easier than two x in your business. Which sounds crazy, right? It doesn't sound like it makes any sense, but for you to two x your income, you would like. Okay, I'm going to get this side gig. I'm going to like double this amount of work and like it's so much more work. But if you were to put all of your energy into one thing and just like really go hard and that it would be so much easier for you to actually ten x that instead of doing 50 different things. As I was reading that, I looked at my schedule and I went, oh my gosh, like, I am spread thin in so many different directions. So I said, I'm going to get rid of everything except this, my main thing, and just see what happens. And it's been great. It's really awesome. I feel like it's less pressure for me to have 50 different things that I feel like I have to promote and just really promote this one offer to my audience that, in my opinion, is the most valuable. It feels great. Yeah, honestly.

Phoebe
I love that and it feels good. For sure. Amazing. So what do you think that magic is of getting together in a group? Tell us a bit more about your format, I guess. With soulcial mate and like that group and what sort of things come to be when you all gather together and talk about and I'm talking about industry, you talk shit, talk about your feelings, etc..
Kristen
Yeah, it really is magic. Like, I love that you use that word because it's so interesting. Like we're small business owners who are probably working like on our laptop by ourself all day. We don't have a lot of human interaction during the day, so being able to bring all these people who are using social media to monetize, or they want to be using social media to monetize, bringing them all together in a room is so cool to see, because you're just in a room of people who understand the things that you're going through. I mean, like love my husband, love my family, but I cannot talk to them and actually get a response where they're going to, like, commiserate with me and really understand me, the creators that we have. I'm so thankful that everyone is so welcoming and like everyone is down to help each other out. No one is elbowing anyone to get opportunities. Everyone is helping each other out. It's really, really cool to see even like makes me so happy. Sometimes I'll just be scrolling through my Instagram feed and I'll see someone in social sweet posts. And all the comments are other social sweet members. And I'm like, see? Like that is so cool to have been the one to bring that all together in. So so sweet. So it's a monthly membership subscription. People can stay for years. They can stay for a month, however long they want to stay. They can kind of come in and out. But our kind of three pillars are support. So you're getting not only support from the community. We have about 140 other creators, but you're also getting support from me and my community manager, who is incredible. She's amazing. Education is another pillar. We have a ton of really great resources where script, ebooks, templates, tutorials for people that are just like, I need the quick answer. Like, I don't want to wait for someone to respond to this, I just need a script or whatever. And we also do a ton of live group meetings and workshops like that every month, where you can learn from each other, you can learn from industry experts. And then our third pillar is connection. Obviously, again, being in a community, that's a huge part of it. So we have community discussion forums. This is like such a random example, but we talk about like a lot of business focused things of course, but we also have this thread that's just for fun, we call it. And someone in there the other day I was like, I had this conversation with my dad about the best plastic cutlery from different restaurants. We're like, what? And everyone went in like their cabinets and pulled out their cutlery and was taking pictures. Just so many random things like that. But we have a lot of fun in there. You're able to really make friends and actually connect with other people who, again, are going through a lot of the same things as you, which is actually harder than it seems when you're not in a community space for that.

Phoebe
So tech wise, what platform are you using for that?

Kristen
We use Circle. I looked into so many different platforms, and circle, in my opinion is the most user friendly. It's also the most robust. I mean, you can do so many different things in there, and it's also the most kind of esthetically pleasing. I would say. You can customize so much of it and really make it look very well branded for you. We love it. They feel like every month they come out with new features that I'm just like, man, I didn't even know I needed this, but amazing.

Phoebe
That's cool. So what are some of the pain points that you see your group going through currently?

Kristen
Yeah, I mean, with monetization, obviously one of the big ones is just like, how do I make more money? Why am I not getting brand deals consistently? We see a lot of kind of pain points related to monetization because obviously getting started, I think it is very difficult for some people, especially if they don't have that support of being able to ask people like, hey, would you buy this? Would you buy that, would you charge this or would you charge that? So finding all those things out on your own, I think can be difficult. We also have a lot of pain points. I would say that related to just content creation in general, inconsistency, like how do I create content more consistently? How do I get people to actually watch my content? How can I build more community around my content? And then the third thing I would say would kind of be more logistics of, okay, what the heck do I do come tax time? How do I read this contract? What am I actually signing in my charging enough on this contract and a lot of questions along those lines.

BREAK
Phoebe
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Phoebe
What trends are you seeing in the industry right now? I know for me personally, I feel like last year was rough on brand partnerships. This year is different. Maybe even this year. I'm personally having an easier time, at least at the beginning of the year. I don't know, it could all just be a crapshoot, but I don't know. Do you have any insights into what's going on with the economy and not only the economy as like other businesses, but also like the creator economy? There's so many more creators right now to so what have you been sort of seeing in the industry on sort of a bigger scale?

Kristen
Yeah, I mean, one thing I hear a lot is people saying the same thing. Oh, like time of year seems so slow. Why was last year so horrible? So I think it really is like a case by case, because I also hear the complete opposite thing of like, oh wow, last year was my best year ever, right? So everyone is going to be so different with the opportunities that come to them, depending on so many different factors. It could just be brands looking for a very specific locations or very specific niches. There's so many different factors. I think that Micro-influencers and nano influencers are definitely seeing a lot more partnerships now than they were maybe a couple of years ago, because brands obviously know that for a micro influencer, it's so much easier for them to actually be able to connect with all the people that follow them versus someone with 500,000 followers. It's near impossible to have conversation. It is impossible to have conversations with all of those people.

Phoebe
What do you define as a nano influencer?

Kristen
Usually in Nano, and my mind is like 10,000 followers and less. I think one of the things that I hear a lot again from creators, actually, last night I just did a poll and I said or a little question box on stories. I said, if you've never joined socials, but you know about it, why haven't you taking the plunge? And I got so many messages from people who are just like, oh, I'm just too small of a creator, or like, it's just so saturated. There's so many creators. I understand that because I used to feel exactly the same way, but seeing it from the other side, like seeing so many nano creators, micro creators who don't have a lot of followers but are still making full time income. It's possible. I think it's such a mindset blog and same with this idea of kind of oversaturation. I'll tell you. Like again, from being so involved on the other side of it, working with brands and agencies and getting a lot of the resources that I'm able to teach and share from them, I hear from so many of them about how horrible some creators are at communicating, being timely, doing things when they're supposed to, being detail oriented. So if you can be a really good partner and be, again, like responding in a timely manner, being detail oriented, actually reading the briefs, taking your time and really putting all of that into your content, like that kind of stuff can go so far because you can have mediocre content, but you're incredible to work with, and you're probably going to get hired over someone who has really great content, and it's not great to work with. And you'd be surprised by how many of those creators are not good to work with, but also be not consistent. Like so many people create Instagram profiles, they go super hard for three, four, six months and then they like give up on it because it's hard.
Phoebe
How do you know what to charge for a brand deal?
Kristen
There is literally no right answer to this question. The best thing that I can tell you is, my sales answer would be just join socials. It will help you figure it out. But in general, there is no formula. The calculators there are all different. Like they're all going to give you different answers and probably inaccurate answers. The best thing that I can say is pull a number out of your ass, charge it and see what people say. Like you have to sometimes just put it out there and see what kind of feedback you get. If you're finding that you're getting all like, accept and says it's probably too low because typically brands are going to negotiate if it's like too high or if it's right in the right area, but if it's $150 and they were budgeting a thousand, they're like, yeah, sure, no problem. Right. So that's typically a telltale sign that it's too low of a rate that you're charging. And if you find that you're negotiated pretty frequently, you're probably in the right realm. But one thing I do always like to mention with rates, too, is I don't think it makes any sense. I don't think it's realistic for you to have one number. That's the number, because you're not going to get paid the same for every partnership I have like a range of what I typically charge, and it's just dependent on the brand. It's dependent on the deliverable, how much effort and time and money I'm going to have to put into it. It's never just one number, and that's the number I'm always settling on.

Phoebe
I think that's good advice. I think I like that if people say yes too easily, it's probably too low. I think that's totally spot on. I also work with a range too, and for instance, Adobe pays me more than print of I right now and those are some consistent ones. And print if I pays me a little bit lower than my rate. But it's consistent. That's a trade off. So if it's a one off, maybe I charge a little bit more. But if that's money that I know that's happening every month, right. And like with print, if I'm doing two a month, that's so consistent and it becomes easy because you really get to know that product well too, and it becomes second nature. Maybe some of those rates are like a little bit lower, or it's like a dream brand that you want to work with. And so that's cool. Or there's some other perks. Maybe they have an affiliate program also, whatever. I think that consistency can be really important. I love to find brands that I can work with for more than a one off, because I developed a relationship up with, you develop the ease of the type of content and what you're talking about.

Kristen
In your audience, to your audience, get so much more familiar with the product and typically like they're going to purchase it after seeing it a few times versus just seeing it one. So it's more beneficial for a brand to do something that is long term.

Phoebe
Absolutely. All I know is my own audience, but I find generally too, that people need to see something like a million times, like a one content piece with a brand is not going to necessarily be successful. Right. And that post cannot perform well for some reason. Whatever. So I like to pitch like a multiple video series or multiple. Let's include a newsletter. Let's include a story to that. Let's do TikTok and Pinterest, whatever. I think that can be a really option to like if a brand is giving you a price and you want to raise the price, add in a few deliverables and I'll be more likely to budge on that.

Kristen
Yeah, definitely. I mean, that's something that there's a huge part of. What I teach is really offering those like bundle prices, because obviously it's going to be so much more appealing for a brand if like, they can pay a little bit more money and get a lot more flow and you're happy because you're doing something that is very likely going to have higher conversion, but also your hiring the invoice price, like you're going to be making more money. I remember reading somewhere that it was like seven times. That's how many times people have to see things before they actually are going to like take initiative to purchase something.

Phoebe
I've seen the seven time thing too, and I kind of feel like that was back in the day. Even so, I feel like we have to multiply that by like 3 or 5.

Kristen
I mean, yes.

Phoebe
It's so funny to watch my own shopping habits, even, like, I bought these candles the other day immediately and I was sort of like, wow. Like I saw them. I immediately purchased and bought them. I was like, that never happens. I just like watched my process. And then I was sort of like, oh, what did they do? Well, so watch your own shopping habits too, like how you purchase things, how many times you have to see things. Sometimes I feel like these ads are multiple kind of pieces. They're just like bullying me into buying something. Then I'm like, okay, fine. You know.

Kristen
Fine I’ll do it. Exactly. Yeah. No, I think you bring up a good point, too, of a lot of the times that first post, we don't really know if it's going to do anything. Now. Maybe someone has like heard of the brand. Okay, cool. But we don't know that they're actually going to do anything. Maybe they've heard of it six other times somewhere else. And this is going to be the seventh when they purchase. But it's very likely that's not going to be the case. And I do think as a creator that's also like your responsibility to be transparent with the brand, too. And I think that's actually a really good negotiation ticket for you too, is if you're saying, hey, like if the goal is brand awareness, great, let's do this post, people will be aware. Awesome. However, if the goal is you want me to make $1 million from this post, that's not going to happen. If we do this many posts, maybe we'll get closer to that, but I think it is managing expectations and making sure that brands are aware of what you're expecting to happen from this post. That also will help you not get in the situation of a brand emailing you after a partnership and being pissed off when they didn't make enough sales. Managing expectations is a huge, huge part of.

Phoebe
Partnerships for sure. I think that's so great. I love the transparency aspect and setting expectations up front. I saw a thread the other day about someone who didn't get paid, because that their content didn't do as well on.

Kristen
I think I saw the same thread. It was huge, right?

Phoebe
Yeah, and then your invoice is not valid. Like, are you kidding me? Like you put the content together. You had a contract. That's bullshit. Obviously there's going to be some shit from brands and I think there's so many new people in the space working for the brands. There's global brands, there are so many miscommunication and stuff that happen. So I think if you can be clear up front to about this, there's an awareness campaign. I love that even just inserting that in, okay, we'll use this for brand awareness. Oh like if we want to work for conversions more. I suggested this many posts. I think that's great. Do you have any horror experiences with brands that you want to share?

Kristen
Yeah, sure. I feel like I have 100 of them. Where do we start? No, I think my most frustrating horror story, because there was really not much I could really nothing I could do about it. So I worked with Smiledirectclub for a couple of years and they paid me super well. We had a really great partnership going. We were in the middle of a, I think it was like $11,000 contract, and they went out of business. They filed for bankruptcy and I was like, sick. Okay, cool. I'm getting letters in the mail that are basically just like, hey, if you want to file a claim they had paid me $5,500 upfront. They owed me another 5500. If I wanted that $5,500, I basically would have had to file a bankruptcy claim with them. However, what I learned through this process is the way that bankruptcy works is they basically have everyone file claims who wants money from the company or is owed money from the company, and they put it in order of, like most owed to lease owed, and then they pay as far down the list as they can pay. Right. I'm going to be my dinghy $5,500 is all the way at the bottom of this list. Let's be honest, they've got entire corporate buildings. They had physical locations ever. I mean, they must owe so much money to so many people. I was like, there is no way this is even going to be worth it for me. I filed the paperwork because it was something simple. I just had to mail it in but never got paid. Don't expect to get paid.

Phoebe
Didn't everyone who started with them because there were braces right there like an Invisalign? They had to restart because they couldn't finish their session.

Kristen
And they still took money from people, which is crazy. Yeah, they're in some deep shit for sure. But I was like, it's fine, honestly, because I am just like, happy to not be associated with this company anymore. I went through and deleted all of my content with them because I was like, I don't want anything to do with this. This seems like they're not handling it correctly.

Phoebe
Wow.

Kristen
Yeah, that was fun. That was super fun. What a learning experience. Now I know all about bankruptcy.

Phoebe
What else you got for us? I mean, yeah, there.

Kristen
I can think of one more true horror story. I don't think I've ever been so frustrated through a partnership, ever. I had one brand that was basically like a brand where it was like this box and you put like formula stuff in it, and it would make foam. And so it was like for big backyard parties and stuff, you could have like a big foam pit and all this, and this is back in my like, I'm not making this, this content at this point. This is more like a lifestyle, whatever. So it fit in. I was like, yeah, this will be so fun. They sent me like 50 blow up toys and stuff to really set the whole scene of this partnership. We shoot the content. I mean, it took hours. It was a huge production because we just set up our entire backyard, like blow up all these things make my whole backyard into a giant foam pit. We're like trying to use self-timer and shoot with foam. I mean, it was like it should have been like a reality TV episode. It was crazy. Super frustrating shoot, whatever. We finish it. I think I threw my phone a couple of times, but I was so happy to be done with it. So I sent the brand the content, and meanwhile I go through the brief before this and obviously make sure I'm like hitting all the points, everything right. So everything's good to go send it to the brand and they're like, hey, we love your content, but we changed the brief and we actually need this, this and this. And I was like, what? No, excuse me? And I said, well, no, because I did my job correctly according to the brief. I'm not going to reshoot this entire nightmare of a shoe and not be compensated additionally. So we negotiated additional compensation and thankfully that went well. But it was so much back and forth. I was working with an agency. They had to keep going to the brand and say, hey, she wants more money, and the brand is like, we're not giving her more money. But it was kind of just someone messed up the brief. I don't know, I'm assuming it was the agency when the brand was kind of just pissed off that they had to pay extra to me for that mistake, but I was like, sorry, not my problem. Reshot it, got paid extra, and then I was like, cool, I'm never doing this again. Don't ask me to change anything. Finally finished it up. Never talk to them again. Never talk to the agency again. It's fine. I was cool with it. Good times.

Phoebe
Yeah, I think that's great. Great point too. If you have to re film something, and especially if it's on them too in their demands, please negotiate extra money in the phone box. Still in the business?

Kristen
I don't know because I am traumatized. I can't go on their website. I can't even, no.

Phoebe
Amazing.

Kristen
Yeah, you definitely won't catch any of my contracts not having, like, very specific parameters about reshoots. Now, typically what I'll have in a contract is I'll do like 1 to 2 edits for free. Like if they need me to go back and change, like one little thing in the text or video. Sure, that's fine, but reshoots know for free. No.

Phoebe
Do you use all your own contracts then?

Kristen
No, I don't, honestly, a majority of the time I don't, because a lot of the brands, especially when you're working with larger brands, like they have legal departments that put them all together, so they're very likely not interested in using our contracts. The only time I use my own contract is if it's a very small brand who doesn't really even have a contract to offer, but a majority of the time what's happening is I'm getting the contract from the brand going through and saying, hey, this isn't in here, I need to add it or this isn't what I am agreeing on. We need to change it.

Phoebe
Do you still take free product?

Kristen
No. Honestly, I am at the point in my career where I'm not doing anything for like less than $1,000. I feel snobby saying it, but I just don't care. I simply value my time so much and for the work that goes into it, for the rapport that I've built with my audience, it's simply not worth doing anything for less than that.

Phoebe
I'm sure people in your program take free products starting out, though.

Kristen
Yeah, definitely. I think it's okay to do when you're starting out. I don't think gifted is always bad. I think gifted with specific requirements is bad. So if a brand wants to send me a gift, sure, I love gifts. Great. Send it to me. Maybe if I like it, like I'll share it on my stories just simply because I want to. But anytime a brand says, hey, we have these! Here's a brief based off of this box of lipsticks we sent you. I'm like, well, you can have it back because like, that wasn't the agreement. I honestly don't think that gifting is a bad thing. I think it's a really great way for you to get your foot in the door and actually start to build some sort of a connection with the brand, but the second they ask you to do something specific in our offering to pay, you were asking your rate red flag for me.

Phoebe
Yeah, I hear that. I agree, I do take some free product, especially if they don't give a brief. I agree I did work for an air conditioner. Okay, that's what I was like. I will make a video for a free air conditioner or fine.

Kristen
With the few hundred dollars that it saves you. Yeah, like not a bad one.

Phoebe
Okay, fine. Okay. Let's talk about your anti-pitch method because I think that's really interesting because it's like the opposite of what I teach also. And I don't understand it. And I'm not a LinkedIn girl also. So I would love to hear a little bit about how that works and what you teach.

Kristen
Yeah, I in 2022 basically spent the whole year experimenting with this method. I kind of had this lightbulb moment where I was sending out so many pitches, not getting responses, and I was just annoyed and frustrated. And because I was, I just stopped sending pitches because I was like, well, they don't work anyway. What's the point? No matter how many times I kind of perfected it, I thought about the way that we kind of communicate with our audience. Our audience wants to feel like they have that one on one connection with us. When I send someone a DM and start a conversation that's so powerful and people appreciate that so much, and now I have such a stronger connection with that person versus me just never initiating any sort of like, personal connection or even them. So what I realized was that the way we as an industry really are approaching pitching is just like, so impersonal. Why is anyone going to want to pay me thousands of dollars if I'm sending them a copy and paste message that says the same thing is probably what everyone else is? Pitch says. In reality, just worded differently. I was like, how can I actually show these people that I am genuine, like I'm in it for the right reasons, and I'm really actually interested in like helping their business grow and being a part of it. I'm not just here for like the money grab, and I started to use LinkedIn for that. I know most people, most creators are not LinkedIn girls. It seems like a super boring platform, or only for people who are like super corporate working 9 to 5 I think that's actually like the magic of it is. There are not a lot of creators on there, so it's really easy for you to stand out. It's like, imagine Instagram ten years ago when there were only a handful of creators. It's a different world. The way that the anti-pitch method works is you connect with the people at the brands, and it's still not necessarily going to be instant results. Like you're really networking, you're introducing yourself in a way that's not like, hey, I want to work with you right now. It's more just like, hey, I love the brand. Keep it up like I exist. If you're here, if you need anything, but I'm not looking to reach out to you immediately to get money from you right now. So a lot of it is just building your connections, building your network so that when a brand does have a campaign that they're casting for, they're like, oh my gosh. Yeah, I remember that girl I just connected with, Phoebe. She does this. Isn't this like and then they can come to you. I think it's valuable because it's so much easier for us to spend our time on something that's actually going to be valuable to our like. Networking is always going to be a great thing. Sending a cold pitch email that we don't even know got to the right person. Not necessarily the best use of time. So my idea behind it is really just like using your time as wisely as possible by building your network. And then when there are things that pop up, they can come to you. They already know you exist.

Phoebe
I think that's fascinating because the corporate girls are on LinkedIn. Yeah, the girls maybe aren't, but the corporate girls are. And I think it's interesting that we think of this brand as this, like big thing. Obviously it's this big thing, right? But the people that you're talking to are just other humans. How do you get into their brain? I think that's really great.

Kristen
Yeah. And I mean, the other thing too, is in our industry, people hop from brand to brand to brand. Like you would not believe. If you have a hello at whatever brand email that you're emailing, you don't know if next week a new person is going to work there. They don't know who you are, and they're like, who's this chick? I don't want to hire her, but if you know the person at the brand and then they move to another company, maybe they hire you again, you can actually have a network of people in the industry versus like a very generic email that again, we don't know who's behind there. We don't know anyone's behind there.

Phoebe
The turnover is crazy. Yep. I mean, the turnover is totally wild too. I think that's really key.

Kristen
Exactly.

Phoebe
Yeah. What does this Networking look like. Are you posting things. What do you do on LinkedIn?

Kristen
Yeah. So the course that we have in social suite, it's called brand BFF is where we go into it really far in depth and kind of talk through the whole process. But the idea is really finding the brands that first of all, make a lot of sense for you. More reaching out to like a quality kind of brand versus just a high quantity of brands. So finding brands that genuinely would make sense for your audience, then you're kind of going through on LinkedIn finding the people who work at the brands that would be in the areas that are relevant to you. So obviously we'd be looking in like marketing, influencer coordinating, social media, content production, whatever. Like somewhere in those realms. Everyone's title at different companies is different. So you just kind of have to find the one that feels like it makes the most sense. And then from there, there is, I guess, kind of two ways that it can go. Typically, I'll send a connection message when I'm connecting. We have a bunch of scripts for that in the suite as well, but basically I might connect with someone and then immediately start a conversation with them where maybe we get on a call and we just kind of introduce each other. I love intro calls for that reason is just kind of like me being able to tell the brand about me and what I do and that I exist, but also me being able to learn what the brand is, working on what their needs are, so that if I do want to send them a proposal, I know exactly what they're looking for. So it could go that way. It could kind of happened pretty quickly, and that does happen frequently. I do think another avenue that happens to kind of like another way that it can go would be maybe you just connect with that brand and then you spend some time what I call warming up the brand. So it's kind of having those maybe 3 to 5 touchpoints of when they're posting, you're commenting on it, or when they share that the company just did this. You're coming in and sharing your thoughts, having that again, repeat exposure. We were talking about where they can see your name a few times and then they're starting to be like, wait, I've seen this name a few times. Like, who is this person? Let me go like look into it further. And then eventually after kind of that warming up step, you might want to initiate connection and say, hey, I just saw that whatever brand just posted that you we're going cruelty free. That's so great. I'd love to hear how you guys are going to be marketing it. Would you like to get on the call? Whatever. And so finding ways to learn about what they're doing so that again, you can kind of cater your offerings to them. Based off of that I always will send a proposal versus just sending rates an email. We have like again a bunch of templates for it and everything in the suite. But that gives, I guess, kind of much more of like a professional feel, right? If someone's going to spend thousands of dollars, it feels really nice when they're like getting it all bundled together versus like just typed out an email. That's kind of, I guess, really how the process works. And honestly, sometimes that whole process can take two weeks. Sometimes it can take six months. We still don't know what's going on behind the scenes of the brand. If you connect with the brand and you're in this warm up process and then six months later, you're still warming up, that's not surprising to me. Like some brands aren't posting often enough where you're going to be able to interact super quickly. Some brands won't be casting until a certain time of year, and then you have to wait until that point. So it's still not instant gratification, but it's just spending your time in a way that's more valuable to your business.

Phoebe
Yeah, amazing, I love it. What do you think's going to happen with TikTok?

Kristen
Honestly, I'm not even going to lie. I don't even care. I feel like in the last 6 to 8 months, I have literally not given a shit about TikTok. I'll, like, repost some of my content there, but I don't feel like anyone that I ever really meet on TikTok is serious. I don't find a lot of really great clients through there. It's a lot of people who just want quick. They're not willing to put the work, and I don't find quality people often enough on TikTok that I spend my time there often. I love it for scrolling. I love it for watching dog videos, but honestly, I can't get on board.

Phoebe
Yeah, yeah.

Kristen
I don't think it will get shut down. I don't know, I really haven't looked into it enough to really know all the details, but I can't see that it's actually going to get shut down. I think that's crazy.

Phoebe
I don't know, I kind of think the opposite, but I agree with the TikTok stuff. TikTok feels like a huge pain point for me, and sometimes I'll just be like, okay, fine, we're going to just Charli saying that I'll throw out five videos in a day just to like, see. And man, they all get 250 views.

Kristen
And then you're like, why did I just do that? What a waste of my time mean.

Phoebe
This is the one, this is the one. And Instagram, it's more consistent I guess they're both consistent. 250 Am I getting over on Instagram? My Instagram feels more community focused for me. I mean, that's our generation, I don't know, but it definitely feels like our community is more on Instagram.

Kristen
Yeah, and I think that makes so much sense. Like the other thing that I think is a huge I don't even know what you'd call it. I think it's something that TikTok is not doing very well, is DMs. We spend so much time on Instagram, in the DMs and stories TikTok. I have turned off my DMs because the only DMs that I was getting from people were literally just, hi, tell me how much to charge.And I was like, I cannot look at this any longer. I'm gonna literally explode. It's very hard.

Phoebe
That's a good point. The DM thing to to use manychat I do.

Kristen
Yeah. Yep. Big manychat girl.

Phoebe
We all have manychat and that's changed everything. And I mean TikTok doesn't have that and even Facebook doesn't have that. Yeah those conversions are really important.

Kristen
Yeah I found like maybe a couple years ago I was doing a lot of TikTok lives, and I think I would do pretty well with conversion on those. Like if I went live, I would usually end up with maybe 1 or 2 people that would join my membership, which is great. I think that was awesome. However, I think as time has gone on it's the quality of people.
Again, I just don't feel like anyone is actually willing to invest. No one's willing to like, put in the time and money and effort that it really takes. Whereas I just have found that people on Instagram I feel like are much more serious or like invested.

Phoebe
Okay, well Kristen, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell us where we can find you?

Kristen
Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Instagram is the best place to find me. Don't go find me on TikTok. I won't answer you. My handle is cable. You ask you. It's funny because it's actually the beginning of my last name, but I got married two years ago. But I'm afraid to change my handle. I still just go by my last name from my maiden name there again. We also have a podcast Social Scoop. You can check that out and everything else is really on Instagram.

Phoebe
And I'll make sure to include all those links below. Thank you so much for joining us.

Kristen
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.

OUTRO

Phoebe
Thank you so much for listening to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast. Head to Girlgangcraft.com/podcast for shownotes and more. See you next time.