Behind The Scenes of Influencer Marketing ft. Annie Varellas, Brand Manager at Corporate Natalie

The woman, the myth, the legend, my brand manager, Annie, is here with us in the demoted studio. Thank you for having me! What does a brand manager do exactly? My least favorite thing about working with you? Do you feel fairly compensated? That was not in my job description. If you want to hear all the ins and outs of working in the creator industry, behind the scenes of influencer marketing, and how to break into the industry, this episode's for you.

Demoted. Annie! Hi! Welcome to Demoted! Oh my god, I'm so honored to be here. It's such a comforting presence to have you in the beanbag with me. No, I never thought I would... in this in this bag in this in this very bag ross's bag let's for the people who might not know you you are my brand manager today's a very special day actually it's your full time of two years workiversary. Which is so weird because I always say I've been working For three years?

for you which you kind of have because you started as a contractor but we'll get into that annie joined corporate natalie at the end of 2022 as my full-time brand manager right and instead of going to like a uta or a caa or a talent agency where I could be kind of one of many on a roster of a bunch of awesome creators. I decided to hire a brand manager full time in house.

and I made a job description, circulated it with my network in the creator space here in the Bay Area. I wanted someone who could come in person, be with me to film, travel with me. and I was connected to Annie. I interviewed multiple people, but when I interviewed Annie, She showed up with a notion document, love notion, former sponsor of the pod. That was about, you know, 20 pages of things that I could be doing with my brand and ideas for the brand growth areas.

where we should invest more time. And I was just so floored by your preparedness, your professionalism, everything that came with that. And

I hired you quite shortly after that first call we had. It was pretty quick after that. I find myself just very lucky. I think it was kind of right place, right time. Not sure if I'd get this role today. It was such an honor, and I mean, Natalie was... looking for someone it was just the right time it was perfect i always say like i'm so lucky i'm so thankful i was just talking to matt this morning he's like annie predates me

Like I've been dating you longer than I've been dating Matt, who I now live with. He kept Matt a secret for quite a bit though. I did. You knew. You knew everything about me. Yeah. So Annie, tell us a little bit about yourself for the people who might not know you. Yeah. I'm Annie. I'm Natalie's brand manager, and people are like, what is that?

And as Natalie said, a lot of creators have managers, agents, a ton of different people on their teams. And I manage Natalie's partnerships on a daily basis throughout the pipeline. from outreach and inquiries to negotiation to contracting. I help her with creative and then All of that. I like to call myself her little AI bot. Because I do feel like I... quite literally live and breathe in her shoes every day and it's so fun to have that closeness.

and yeah other than that we do i mean we do everything we do strategy we do pr for you yes it's every it's everything in one and you do it all even filming and taking a first cut at the edit and obviously all of the brand partnerships any invoicing you talk to the accounting team finance you're really like a chief of staff in that role and now that we're growing the team you are going into like more of a management position a people manager which is

Really exciting for our next phase, new chapter for Corporate Natalie. So we're going to talk about all things kind of influencer economy, our origin story, the day-to-day. What do we do? What's like a week in the life at Corporate Natalie?

I hear from a lot of creators specifically, like, I want an Annie. Everyone wants an Annie. I think even outside of creators, they're like, I want someone who's my partner. who knows my brand, knows everything about me. I think a lot of founders probably are like, wow, I want someone like this.

by my side as I'm starting this company. And so what does it take to be an Annie? We're going to dive into that today. We're going to do some tips for giving feedback to sensitive people as Annie and I both are. We'll do promoted.

we'll do promoter demoted and we'll talk about just being two young women honestly running a business and what that entails yeah and i'll say just start off credit to natalie for even like Thinking through having someone as our brand manager I think that's step one is such a smart thing to just have that foresight into I want someone to be my right hand whether you're starting like a project or you know small or a big business i think having someone along your side is so important for just like

Your burnout. The trust. The trust. and a lot of creators early especially at a really young age are like okay i need pr i need an agent i need a manager i need a business manager i need all these things it's like do you really need that many people do you want to manage that many people do you want five people telling you what to do every single day like no you want one person who you can trust who can understand the breadth of everything you're doing you work with expand VA my other company my

like everything across the podcast, you do brand deals for demoted. It's like, you understand the ins and outs of what my brand means and represents and you make sure that that is carried through across all activations. Yeah, it works for us. So I guess like when you saw that kind of job description and job application from me, like what made you want to work for... content creator or an influencer was this ever something that you pictured in your career yeah I was a YouTube girly

I've told Natalie about this quite a bit, but I loved YouTube. I would... pretend in the mirror when I was a girl braiding my hair that I was doing a tutorial for other girls. I just always loved influencer marketing before it became influencer marketing, but I really never thought that I would go into it.

Natalie, when she reached out, it was perfect timing because I actually had just left a skincare company in San Francisco where I had been on the in-house influencer marketing team for three years. So I had experience working with. directly with agencies, with creators, and doing the whole process. throughout the pipeline.

partnerships but on the other side on the brand side rather than on the creator side and you could see like oh this is what a difficult agent looks like this is what an influencer who doesn't have their stuff together looks like like you could see all that from the brand side which is helpful probably 100 and i think What was really cool about my first job was it was a startup. And I feel like if I didn't have this experience where I had to wear so many different hats.

this team I wouldn't be able to do what I do for you every day because you kind of have to wear in my role right now i'm wearing different hats so i got exposure into the legal side and um not just like the calm side the creative side so that's kind of how I got into it I mean I was I knew of Natalie before I'd seen her on TikTok obviously and I kind of just remember seeing her

name pop up in this role and I was like my heart started beating I was like wait this is my opportunity I need to prove myself but I really did not think I was gonna get the job it was honestly just fun making like applying and doing the whole process of

Thinking through what I would do for your brand, which I think is why I know it would be a good fit and a good next step. And that wasn't even an ask for the interview, right? Like it was just like a behavioral interview and you showed up with all these ideas. I was like, this is what I need. I think especially.

Annie and I talk about this a lot when we give feedback to each other. I'm like, I want you to manage me. Please tell me what to do. I'm constantly making decisions. I'm exhausted by the day-to-day of running a business.

you do manage me so much of your time it's like not only we need to be here we need to do this like We show up to an event and Annie has the entire conference floor mapped out she knows exactly the first and last name of everyone on the team that we're meeting when we leave she writes a thank you note immediately to the team everything you are you are so great and we have such a good system now and so

like just exciting to see and really run it like a business i think people are curious about the day-to-day obviously it's different we're in each other's like rooms our lives such intimate you know spaces of each other's lives but i think we are

more corporate than i think people would expect with an influencer team yeah so do you want to talk about kind of your maybe week in the life could you give a little insight this is yeah it's it's fun every week is different some weeks natalie and i are on the road

And some months, honestly, every week we're on the road. Those are my favorite times because I love spending that one-on-one time non-stop with her. When you knock on my door at 5am and we're going to Barry's in Austin, I'm like, oh gosh. Yeah, I drag her to workout classes.

We eat the breakfast buffets at the hotels, whatever. But yeah, I think a lot of people think my day-to-day is kind of get up and post a video at like 9 a.m. answer some emails and we just like hang out we just like hang out we unbox pr we like maybe get on one call or two but it's and i i mean there is we're so lucky like i'm gonna start off by saying i hate the whole like narrative of This is really hard. It is. We're very fortunate.

But a lot of what we do starts like early in the day. The majority of my work is on email. And then some days we have filming days. So something that people don't really know about how Natalie works. we typically have like two days a week that we dedicate to filming And so we just get together, we film our partnerships for the week, we film funny ideas that we've written down. And so those days are very heavily in-person, a lot of editing.

we like to take meetings together on those days we'll film about 15 videos a week i would say it fluctuates but that's probably the output that we're doing in those one to two days it's funny half of those videos are thought on the spot oh yeah we're together and we're kind of like remember the cigarette one oh if you guys saw the the recent video running into your co-worker in the wild

So good. It's probably one of my favorites. We were dying laughing. We also were nervous that it was maybe inappropriate to... we've never like we don't even know what to do with a cigarette i'm like annie go into the corner store and just say i would like a pack of cigarettes shaking the massage video was also really great if you saw that video or it was like a couple years ago um there are some golden videos annie and i went to get massages together

which we're actually doing again for my birth. I'm trying to do a yearly massage together. I don't know why she's like, but having me and he got me a massage credit for my birthday i'm like we're going together um so we're doing massages but that video in particular we went to get massages and we came out and i was doing like a bit with Annie just as I always do. I'm always experimenting. I'm testing bits with Annie Singuistics. And I was like,

Did you have the man in the corner of your room? Like the little man juggling? When he started chanting. Did you, were you in a smoking room? And Annie was like, what are you talking about? Then we made a video about it when you knew of a drastically different experience. I mean, that answers the question I think a lot of people have about.

like where we come up with our ideas yeah well a lot of it is pre-planning so the week before annie's always living two weeks in front of what's about to occur so about a week or two weeks before Annie writes like five scripts or concepts or trends and identifies them. I similarly will write a few and we put them all on the calendar. Then at the start of the week, I kind of look at all of our organic scripts.

pick and choose which ones i want add some others find some trending sounds and then that becomes our main film day we also have a weekly email cadence which is like our bible for us so every actually this is great for any role yeah if you have a job where you have a bunch of tabs open in your brain and you have a lot to communicate to your manager, but your manager is busy.

wrap it up in a weekly email. And you can send this on Thursday or Friday, but I like to break it down by all the different projects that we're currently working on here's what i need from you i need to make you to make selects from this brand here's the content we're posting on linkedin this week here's my suggested content to post towards the latter half of the week on tick tock it's like a big content section it's oh these brands are gifting you make selects if you want it

oh, these partnerships, I need to just script this, I need to review this contract. It's very, it's a whole kind of living document of everything that the business is doing in any given week. And I think it not only helps you, know what's happening and what I'm doing and working on, but it also helps the person writing it. Make sure that they're checking in and following up with certain people that maybe they haven't checked in with in the last week.

etc so it kind of is just a running update and I know that a lot of teams do this they have calls weekly calls check-in calls but i think writing it down is so important it's helpful i go to the weekly multiple times during a week so yes we're a bit more corporate we also travel we go to conferences which is so fun we get to be in kind of the zeitgeist of a Vegas tech conference, seeing the rave event, R-A-I-V-E. It's all

It's a whole thing. Annie and I have been to Vegas more times than I can count. My favorite place? Our favorite place. We love it there. What's like a surprising thing about working for a creator? Anything that's

you wouldn't expect anything that pisses you off that I do. I think it's so funny because I don't think of Natalie as a typical creator, and I know that that sounds so annoying, but...

She is so corporate, like we just said. I'm so type A. She is very type A. I think a lot of creators get the rep that they, like we talked about earlier, just kind of like wake up and as their day comes, like they... take it and if they get an email they'll respond whenever they can etc Natalie does also plan things out like two weeks in advance our calendar is like

color-coded with like purple is like a scripting block yes red is film red blocks and meanings are pink and I think what surprised me most about Natalie In general, because I'm not going to say about working for a creator, because I think it's hard. I don't want to... You're the only creator I've worked for. Natalie is so humble. I think that a lot of people see these creators on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube, and kind of think, okay, but they can't really be that real.

And Natalie is... the realest person ever she's more real in person and she's also 10 times more hilarious. She is so funny with the random stuff she says. in the middle of the day so i think gosh if we had a little camera fly on the wall yeah in our office oh my god oh it would be a comedy show she's insane don't even get me started on her mom shout out kim i love you we love you her whole family

hilarious I think that that's what surprised me about working for Natalie I think I didn't realize how hard-working she would be and how humble she is and how much she'd teach me I did not think I was gonna have a boss that was a creator that like was going to drastically professionally advance my career.

Oh my gosh. Thank you, Lani. I truly mean it. You're so sweet. I love growing together too. I think it's like even outside of work, we're also growing in our personal lives and we... learning as two women how to find time for our partners and for our families and yes work is important and we're so motivated by work but How can we find balance together? grow the team in order to give us more balance and I feel so lucky to get to do that with you and make those decisions with you.

My partner. Okay, so let's talk about compensation because I think I hear a lot of people, I need an Annie, I want an Annie. Do you feel fairly compensated in this role? I think traditionally UTAs

do not pay their assistants and agents well, right? Especially in LA too. You're just assumed like, oh, you're going to be an assistant your whole life. And you're just the role of an assistant until, you know, maybe you're 30. Like it's very, it's very different. I think.

being in San Francisco obviously I'm surrounded by it's really important to make a living wage and all these things do you have anything to note on like your compensation do you feel fairly compensated like tell us about that yes I think it is true being a creator in SF different than I think any other location it is expensive here but I will say Natalie treats me so well I am very fairly compensated for my work

And I am very fortunate. And I know that when you are wanting something, you need to like put in the effort and know that passion first, money second. And I think once you've proved that passion. It does pay off and it did pay off and I really feel right now just like completely supported and so happy. But I think it's just it's something where it's like if you see that there is potential to get to where you want to be financially in the future.

on a certain path if that means making a sacrifice at the beginning. I think it's so worth it. In our performance reviews, we do the model where I want you to come to me and kind of present me. Pitch. Pitch your ask for the next year, your comp package, what do we want it to look like. It's grown since starting. It started at a salary and now it's grown to, there's a commission piece where I really like that, like,

My success is tied to your success. Why should we take that last minute deal in December for the Christmas sale giveaway? Why should we do that? Because we're both winning in a small way. So I like that it's grown in that way. I like that.

We're kind of motivated together to grow, and I think you've grown my business immensely since joining, and you see everything. You know the entire balance sheet of the business, and you're able to see like okay what should my place in this be given the work i do and i really like that we have such open conversations like that we put those like hats on and we're very serious about it and approach it that way and i think just last piece on that too

creators in general it's so hard there's not like this role for me is there's no brand manager role like I don't have many other people to talk to that are in this role and I think every one that works for a creator does something different so it's really hard to learn the industry standards so credit to influencers who do have employees and are trying to figure out

how do i compensate this person fairly because it is such a challenge and i didn't even know how to pitch myself like what would you say to someone who says i want to do what you do i would say yeah you do i love my job

I didn't know my job existed before I got it. And I think that's crazy. There are so many jobs, dream jobs out there that you may not know even exist. And I think the key to getting to a job that makes you super happy.

is to try a lot of things this sounds so annoying I remember hearing this when I was in college and I was like yeah yeah yeah how do I do this but You know, I loved my startup experience because I got to see what so many different teams were working on, and I really loved what I was doing in Flintstone Marketing, and I also loved the creative side of it.

and and you also did consulting work you were consulting with notion yes right so i did a lot of i worked i also worked with a lot of different companies on um contractor work in the meantime, but test out a lot of different things. If an opportunity comes to you that contains certain areas where you feel like you could be challenged, but also areas that you feel comfortable in and excited about, then obviously take it and try it.

Sounds so, like, dumb. No, it's great. But I didn't think I would like this job, honestly. Like, I thought, oh, my God, maybe it'll just be, like, a one-year thing. And now I'm, like, looking back and I'm like, yeah, wait.

I was going to do like finance in college, but I ended up doing what I loved doing as like a kid like watching influencer stuff exactly so you're gonna be with a cane at 85 working for me are you kidding me i think one thing is a cool concept called job crafting where you kind of all the things you love about your job or even your school and you're like what are what really fires me up what energizes me and

What would be my dream job if I could make a dream job? And you and I even talk about what are the things you want off your plate that you do that you're like, God, I actually hate doing that. And we try to craft the role in that way. And now with our new employee starting, we can offload some of those things. And I think with a small team too, we can grow together. And one tip I'd give is

find the people you want to align yourself with. I followed one of my mentors to Palo Alto Networks. We left Deloitte together. I would follow Annie into a fiery inferno. And I think aligning with those people, it's like that can make the work fun.

It's all about the people. It really is. Also, you're never stuck in a job. You really are never stuck. You're stuck. No, I'm not stuck because I love it. But I will say, I think a lot of people, especially when you're in your 20s, Natalie and I are closer to our 30s at this point, but I think when you're in your 20s, a lot of people are like, I wish that I had this job or your job sounds so much more fun.

And the grass is always greener. Honestly, you only see the fun sides of jobs. People are not going to post the horrible days that they've had. Exactly. And I just think that that's a mentality you should take with you whenever you're comparing, I think, your job to other jobs.

everything's a highlight reel everything is a highlight reel i also think there's almost like complaint porn where people are like so obsessed with complaining about their life it's like okay whose job sucks more let's talk about it like my friends and i'll be at the dinner table and we're just like

my god everything you know it is such a bad why are we finding pride and complaining it's like there is some something cool about loving what you do and natalie's you're really good at that i think especially recently but you've on hard days i feel like i find myself kind of stopping and because natalie does this reframing wow it's such a like really really really back-to-back day i feel so flustered

But I'm so lucky. Like, but I'm so grateful to be in this job. I love just, like, self-affirmation. Yeah, and it really changes the game. It does. Like, we'll end, like, a tiring work trip, and I'm like, This is the best. I love you. We're so lucky. Like, didn't we just have the best time? We're so tired. We're like, didn't we just have so much fun? Just like, so yeah.

Being thankful for those days. I'm so thankful for you and thankful for the business we've created. Is it challenging to work with a woman so close in age to you? Annie and I are basically the same age.

do so many similar things every day. Obviously, I own the business, but we're pretty much partners in this. I think a lot of female co-founders listening or even just friends listening can relate to being so close with one person and especially as women can you speak to like that experience and how we've grown together in this yeah it is so interesting i think starting off i mean it's changed starting off working for someone who was so close to my age as my boss it was like

A little bit weird, right? You're used to having in a corporate job, like all of these executives that are much older. It feels different being assigned tasks by someone who's around your age. Absolutely. That's like the fact. It has to. That being said. There are so many fun parts about this, about working with Natalie at the same stage in life, I think. she's going to get married soon like i get to see kind of

my life, hopefully, two years in advance. And it's really cool to also be able to know that if I'm struggling with something at my current life stage, Natalie has probably gone through it. and can relate and she leads with empathy always in her job but i think especially being at the same age, we get to bond over these life experiences and know that, yeah, at this point, we're trying to prioritize being with our partners. spending time with our family.

and doing things before life gets even crazier. Exactly. When we're both pregnant together, that's going to be an absolute sitcom. I can't, we can't address it now. We're going to have to coordinate some maternity leave for corporate LLC.

I think it's hard. I mean, I'd be lying if I said emotions don't play a role in like every single day and every single decision and everything we do, even just how we communicate over text. I'm so aware of your feelings and I'm so... cautious to make sure that i'm like giving you the utmost respect that you deserve and i've sometimes like to a fault find it hard to like offload tasks or ask for things and I think I've gotten way better at it but

Because I value you so much as a friend and I never want to feel like I'm giving you something beneath you, for example. But because we've had moments of conflict, have learned how to grow from that. Like we've had moments of crying to each other. We've had moments of like maybe raising our voice.

I think being sensitive and having those real moments with coworkers, obviously right setting. You do not want to cry in meetings where you should not be crying. Of course. Don't be scared to open up to someone who you feel close enough to at work. Yes. that I think it helps. It really creates a morale. And so much of the time, it's like you're living in this silo of all these things that you're doing and these stresses and the day-to-day.

so often when we talk we're like oh it's just kind of a misunderstanding or like it's a misalignment of my intention or like a miscommunication and imagine just letting those things build up instead of being able to talk about it like if we weren't able to talk i'm sure you would have left like years ago you know you are so emotionally mature i think you're more in tune with your emotions than i am

you're able to be like hey like is everything okay i i don't really do that i did that once with you i'm so confrontation is hard emotion averse like i'm always sweeping under the rug i'm such a people pleaser to my core that i'd rather not address it and i think having you as maybe more like in tune with your emotions and an emotional person is so great for our kind of yin and yang. I agree. I think there's something to just knowing that if you're letting your emotions bottle up.

You can change, like it is crazy how much one conversation can change how you're feeling in a given day.

One day, I actually, I know we were going to discuss this a little bit later on. One day I came into Natalie's office and I was like, this whole morning that whole morning i was like wanting to cry i was so frustrated i think i had held like held in a little bit of tension from the weekend like you were working i was working but she didn't tell me i had to work like I was doing it because I felt like we needed to, and I held resentment towards her.

I think that's a very real thing with anyone in any job. But I came in, I didn't address it. I came in and I was like about to cry. Anything you would say to me, like I would burst. And Natalie addressed it.

i don't know if you want to talk more about it but basically my point is at the end of the conversation of sobbing and us just going back and forth about where we misaligned where we miscommunicated just realigning that honestly we want the best for each other we love each other each other and we don't see like any future where we're not working together that's like that was so that was everything i needed that day and i felt so happy and motivated the rest of the day and i think

Just knowing that, yeah, confrontation is like tricky and addressing it is obviously so uncomfortable for a lot of people. but you can really change like how you feel in just like five minutes if you just have a conversation yeah thank you for sharing that i i mean i felt stronger after that day i also think we you having the ability to move on and move forward and not harboring things especially as women it's easy to like hold on to these things and be like

remember that time you did that thing a year ago that would that would kill us that would kill our relationship we're able to move forward and always be looking ahead and i really love that about us So that's kind of what Annie and I do on a day-to-day. Let's get into some hot takes and juicy questions. Let's do the questions from the listeners. So I posted on my story a selfie of us.

ask Annie and I anything and we got some great questions so how many times a day does Annie roll her eyes at you as the first one so she doesn't see majority of them I don't see majority of them but I would say at least 10 and five of them are valid most of them are not valid most of them are totally just me hold again holding resentment for something she never told me to do but i'm just putting brush It's so self-inflicted. We are both people-pleasers, so I think that that goes both ways.

Yeah, a lot of times. I love an eye roll. Ross always says, Annie's constantly rolling her eyes at me. And it's true. And he deserves it 100% of the time. I mean, you guys know, I think a lot of the motorheads know that I get a little feisty. The Ross Annie beef is water for the bucks. There's a lot of Ross Annie beef, yeah. Who's the bigger social battery? I think me. Yeah, I agree. Do you agree? I think mine's grown.

Yours has grown in this role. When you started, you were like, just so you know, I'm not really into travel too much. I'm like, how does every week sound? Now you're United 1K. We're traveling the world. It did start, I think you were way more introverted before. I think it was kind of during COVID, like kind of getting out of it that we started working together. And so we were really used to super remote.

working from home just like being separate and now we're together most days of the week and if not we're like doing a workout class together i think if you would have told me in like 2021 2022 that i would be doing this much socializing i would be like never no i love it now and i think it's like it is truly a muscle social battery is a muscle and you just slowly try to like build that muscle

I will say Natalie is crazy. She is constantly seeing people constantly doing things. I told you her calendar is insane. You guys don't even see the half of it. I'm not, I don't know how this woman does it. And she also is traveling every weekend. Every weekend. And then during the week too. She's living out of a suitcase. i don't know i don't know when she recharges honestly i don't know i don't and then she

And then she goes off and she's like, oh yeah, I watched this whole show this weekend. And I'm like, when? When? When did you have time to do that? I'm Hermione Granger who like stops time and like lives on multiple different universes. And somehow she gets sleep. She gets eight hours of sleep. I know. And then she goes to her 6 a.m. class. I'm like.

Annie, let's talk about your sleep schedule. What is your sleep to wake up routine? Do you sleep? Can you tell us about it? Because Annie wakes up at...

It got really bad for a second there. For a second there it was 3.45am. I'm not kidding.

Sometimes there are those days and I don't text you so you don't know. You can't tell me. I knew I was going to get this question and I was thinking about this earlier today. I don't think... everyone is a morning person and I'm not telling anyone they should do what I do no I do what I do and I wake up early in the morning one because I grew up doing it with my parents but two genuinely I work my best in the morning yeah and once 2 p.m hit

goodbye yeah i'm not getting anything productive done no but yeah i mean routine i got you to be a morning person you know i try to i try to copy my life after you, minus the 4.30 mornings. No, I think it's, yeah, it's not great. You want to take a nap around like 1.30 every day. It's so hard. I actually just took a nap the other day and I felt so bad about it. I had so much nap guilt.

So guilty. Right? But you know what? And a nice nap is so nice. You need a 30 minute lunch break nap sometimes. Yeah. And it really revitalizes you. I'm all for the lunch nap. I will say, just to end that note, if you're a morning person and you feel like you could be more productive in the morning, I think embrace it.

Natalie thought she wasn't a morning person and I think she I think you would say now that you kind of are yeah and I think you have to make a choice because I started as like a night owl and sometimes I'll get back into these tendencies but when I was living with my roommates in my first apartment working at Deloitte I would work until you know 11 30 12 and then kind of sleep in until like 8 and I had no sense of routine there and I was just like this is what my life is and

I would say it definitely feels better in the reverse, but you can't stay up late and then wake up. You'll feel miserable. You've got to pick one and let yourself sleep, I think. forgive yourself for sleeping we talk about this all the time you're like oh sorry i slept in i'm like please like i am gonna turn 35 and be a witch so you know get your sleep guys get your sleep what does natalie do that drives annie crazy

One thing that really thoughts me is I'm talking directly to the camera here. She's not even looking at me. Hi, Natalie. has spurts of productivity. So bad. So manic. What this means is I won't hear from her for two days.

like i will not hear from her i'll be texting her i'll be like which is usually saturday sunday i mean yes yes but sometimes like if you're traveling during the week yeah that's understandable you have things to do but i'm like oh she's relaxing and i kind of start to like my blood pressure kind of i start to relax myself let your shoulders down not texting me a lot and we're not doing a lot great you know maybe it's a chill week BAM!

Thursday night. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We're starting this business. We're opening a marketing agency. We're hiring a new employee. She decides to open her laptop and sit down for four hours and just grind our work. Grind. How she does it, I don't know, I think. there's a lot of caffeine involved maybe a lot it is insane and it it stresses me out beyond belief i'm getting the only person who suffers from that is you i like i like press send on the email close my laptop i'm like

you would never believe how productive I just was. Annie's on the other end crying. I'm actually like, that's when I get, that's when most of our fights start. It is. I'm like, what? It's the uncontrollables of the business and I'm one of the uncontrollables.

Do I have one for you? Yeah, you do. Because Annie's such a workaholic, which I honestly think is a good term. She tries hard. She does great work. Sometimes, you know, of course, balance is great, but I'm not going to complain about having an employee who is a freaking badass beast.

The one thing is when we're traveling for events, and it's because we don't have another employee that she's the only one manning the email, but is when she has her laptop out at events doing emails. I'm like, hang on. We need to be here. We need to be present. And she's like,

well then i'll have to do the emails at 11 p.m you guys ever just like want to take your laptop out at events and do your emails so most recently is that just you that might just be you so recently we're at an event at noble south by southwest and we get to the event and he goes I go, you left it in my hotel room. I thought that was intentional. I literally go, I'm so proud of you for doing that. You go,

this is going to be horrible. I might just like run back and get it. I go, wait, we're going to leave it. And we left it. And I was so proud of you. It was such a great day. And on our recent feedback session. She said she was very proud of me for it, but I will say it was not my choice. And now you will be doing it moving forward.

I will. We'll see. Catch me on my red eyes, like, up at night. No, literally. We'll fly red eyes home. We're, like, sleeping next to each other on the plane. She's... No. That's when you sleep next to each other on the plane. You're like, okay, we've crossed so many barriers. This question says, is Annie going to be the photographer when I get engaged? No, guys, I'm not a photographer. I'm so bad. When we get the vlog footage back and 90% of it is blurry and we're like, God dang it.

Focus it. We can't. But we're both not videographers. No. Or photographers. You think you're going to be hiding in a bush? If I saw you hiding in a bush, I'd freak out. I'd run away. Yeah, she'd panic. No, you will not be photographing the engagement. Thank you though, everyone. Any upcoming physical activities you'll be doing?

Oh, I am doing a triathlon. So I literally found this out because I read a text that I wasn't supposed to see that popped up on the top of her phone. I'm like, wait, Kevin just texted you triathlon training. What do you mean? I am doing a triathlon with my boyfriend. I was a swimmer growing up. A little bit about me. She really does it all, folks. I was a swimmer last year. I ran the marathon in Chicago. And now I'm going to try biking and make it a whole thing.

You're going to be in the try position, just racing down. Shout out Escape from Alcatraz. Natalie will be there showing me on. I will. Is it in San Francisco? Yeah. Oh my- I will be swimming from Alcatraz. That is terrifying. When I see you pop up with your goggles and a wetsuit, I'm going to feel like a joy I've never felt before. I think I'm going to be the one person that gets eaten by a shark because that's so me. It's so you. Like, I'll somehow drift off.

and be like somewhere i shouldn't be and shark territory that's so scary don't even say that don't even will that into the world that's terrifying natalie everyone oh everyone always asks about your fitness and i think we should talk about it a little bit oh my routine meaning like go to a class whenever and i only do classes let's talk about like how you really have gotten very much like healthier in the last few

I have. Well, when I started, before I had Annie, I was doing all this work on my own, plus a full-time job. It was insane. And then there was a period when I quit when I was doing it on my own. Full-time and it was still too much and All day I would not move I was walking like 500 steps a day. I also was in a very just like early 20s peak kind of party phase where I would go out a ton on the weekends and be so hungover and just not healthy in that way and I

Got to a space where I didn't feel the need to like do this insane partying I Was so content with like waking up and getting steps and I found a partner who's super active and we like go on runs together and I feel like I'm in such a better space mentally that, like, i find joy in a workout class when when i was 23 i'd be like oh my god berries like kill me like i can't do it

forward to it look forward to it and i give myself the forgiveness my friends make fun of me for this and like you should make fun of me but i will leave a workout class if i'm not enjoying it or if i feel like my body's out of whack or if like my hip hurts or if

i'm just tired and i'm like honestly i want to use this time to sleep for 30 minutes i will leave like it's a sunk cost i agree people are like oh god i already paid for it i need to go okay i get it if you do it as a motivator sure i think it is a sunk cost and you need to that time you only get once so if you have an hour and you are going to go to your berries class and you miss berries And.

You sleep and feel better for your day? Don't be mad at yourself. Don't be mad at yourself. That was like you spend $30 on better sleep. Exactly. You feel great for the day. I would pay any amount to feel better in my day. Feel more well rested. What's done is done. What's done is done. So yeah, I'm very forgiving and I think that just helps with the whole kind of fitness journey. I'm very proud of that. Thank you. It was you. You taught me a little morning workout class.

i'm like i can work out in the morning natalie taught me the importance of low impact exercise which guys it's true life-changing what's a professional strength of yours that's the other person's weakness so for me i think

Getting back to people really fast on email and just like being very efficient. If I have 30 minutes in like any given time, I'm sitting down and pulling out my computer and I'm like... making sure yeah i hate when things pile up and we've had brand partners be like you're quickness with responses is unparalleled and that's why we get so many brand deals and that's why we get things done because

Every time there's a campaign, I mean, not every time, but a brand will say, we want to do the chapstick XYZ campaign. We're going to reach out to 100 creators and see what they say.

the first creators to respond are more likely to get a larger portion of that budget. That's true. And so you convert a lot more deals with your efficiency of response. And I think that's such a strength of yours i would i would sit on things because i'm such a like look at something that stresses me out and just let it build i i can't like i can't address it i don't know why in the moment it is so much easier than you think i know someone's i don't know if it's mel robbins but just

five four three two one yes do it i love i love that like i need to do that so that is a strength of yours that is a clear weakness of mine what about I think just like being, I mean, it's just obvious. I'm more of like an onstage presence. Like I've done training for speaking. I would say maybe like speaking is a strength of mine. That's like not even a weakness. I just got a speaking coach, which has been really helpful.

So I think that's maybe a strength that is just something that I do that you haven't invested in. And Natalie is really good at, yeah, a big group of people and making every single person like feel.

scene and oh my gosh i think that that is like not that i'm saying i can't do that but i'm saying i think a lot of people there are special people that have that characteristic and i think that's a very like that's a huge strength of yours And it's a reason why you're so successful with these events and why I low-key think she needs to be a host. oh my gosh we'll manifest it we'll manifest it we'll see what is sf dating like

SF dating is already bleak. Okay? SF dating as a creator with a million followers is desolate. I can't imagine going on a date And someone knowing who you were. I had multiple dates where after a glass of wine, they're like, oh yeah, I've seen all your stuff. I'm like, you're a complete stranger to me. I have no idea who you are. It feels unsafe. Yes. It's weird. It's crazy. And Matt, Natalie's boyfriend,

Did not know who she was. Doesn't even have social media. No social media, which I love. So you guys can't find them. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. And our moms introduced us, which is the craziest part. Guys, if you're feeling bleak in the dating scene. What are your moms? Who knows you better than your mom? We went to Aritzia last week. Claire, the sweet girl who was helping us. A sales associate. She was a sales associate and she said that a client came in and set her up with her son.

And they're dating. Yes. So I think like moms really have great senses. Who knows you better than your mom? I agree. I think SF dating in general. So I will not say like it sucks because I know that there are cities like New York or New York. is so more women than men and it's like feels like the Hunger Games finding someone that you feel like you can align with on a date but um sf dating is is a grind too it is a grind it's a grind and it's also kind of

I've heard this phrase. The odds are good, but the goods are odd. There's a ton of men. So true. There's so many men on these dating apps. there's something off about all of them i agree i think there's also there are a lot of couples in the city and so you i think people who are single feel

Here are some things my brand manager and I know about each other that you guys might not know. Natalie sometimes ghosts me for three or... Three or four is not true. It is super easy to tell when Annie's annoyed with me. I believe it. Even though you think you're hiding it. Honestly, anyone. I am really bad at facial expressions. I will show you if I don't like you. Natalie takes vitamin gummies or honestly any supplements as sweet. in contrast Annie has never eaten a salad with dressing on it

Soggy, then you can't save it for later. Annie has no idea how to ask for help. Instead of being like, hey Nat, you just gave me a hundred things to do. Could you do one of them? Normalized perfectionism. Normalize being perfect. I hate when I can't do something and I will try until I physically can't and I pass out. Exactly. And now we're actually, we hard art. I will have to delegate. We're in the phase of delegation. That's our new kind of motto.

we're reading the making of a manager together we are we're doing a little book club which is a great book it's a great book on management and i think it teaches you like how to give feedback how to work with people effectively how to define what success looks like i think

We read each other's minds so much that it's scary to bring someone new on into this like very established cycle and so we're working on like let's write down what success looks like where's the direction we're headed because we know it but let's put it down on paper so i'm excited for that next phase when natalie is super stressed she has one request and that is to

Have me play with her hair. I like a little head scratch sometimes. And sometimes you're the only person there and I need you to do it. Crosses the line. It crosses the line. This is where the friend and brand manager line gets kind of like a little bit blurry. Do you guys ever have your boss ask you to play with their hair? No? Oh, okay. Next time, why don't you offer it? Offer it. Hey, you want a little head scratch, Bruce? Can I get in there?

It seems stressed, bud. Annie is the fittest person I know, so much so that I'm certain she could beat me up if I wronged her. That's so not true. You know you would beat the living crap out of me. I could beat someone up, for sure. You could beat a man up. Guys, I'm a 5'2 little girl. No, but you're... I'm just a little baby. You're so strong. Like, we do solid choreo of, like, 18 springs on. I think growing up...

Swimming. Anyone who grew up a swimmer knows this. You use every muscle in your body. your muscles are just primed for more weight this is a big reveal the dog i use in my content fletcher you know that little tiny mini poodle is actually annie's dog So I don't have a dog, even though it's a core brand pillar of mine. Fletcher is my dog. i'd say fletcher is our dog fletcher treats natalie his mama.

I'm Fletcher's mama too. Fletcher has two mamas. Yes, two mamas. Annie and I are both sensitive creatures, and navigating being two working women in her 20s who are building a business together, here are some tips for giving feedback to a sensitive person.

Start off by giving them the highest compliment you can think of. If it's appearance related, that's... probably best name your firstborn child after them and then give them a quick piece of criticism mumble the constructive criticism and then when they don't hear you and they ask for you to repeat it leave the zoom just get out of there send tissues to their home via doordash

Just get ahead of it, right? Prep them. You know it's gonna hurt. After you tell them just something slightly negative, give them a full week off vacation time go wherever they want to go it's all covered by the company throw ceaseless hearts in the zoom chat while you're giving constructive criticism it's constant it's like it distracts them

and it's also affirmative hire a clown to stand in the corner of the room to make balloon animals to set them at ease Deliver each requested improvement via a note tied to the neck of a puppy. give them a little something to cling on to. Pre-book an emergency appointment with their therapist right after the Zoom. Bonus points if you send the notes to their therapist while in advance. Speaking of therapy, I'm glad you brought it up because I'm going to need it after how good you look in those.

Gooder sunglasses. Annie, thank you. I thought it got a little bright in here and I needed to put my sweet Gooder shades on. The coolest. You're probably thinking, are those Hundreds of thousands of dollars? Those look so freaking sick. Are those $100,000? No, they're not. No, $25 a pair. $25 a pair, you can look this freaking hot. Plus, they're 100% polarized. Lightweight and comfortable. No slip. No bounce. And they come with a one-year warranty.

and 30-day guarantee of free returns and they're for the active girlies out there which I love I'm running a triathlon I'm constantly training I want something that If I lose it, I don't hate myself because it's so expensive. It's in the San Francisco Bay. It's in the SF Bay. What am I going to do? I'm going to get another $25 pair from Goodr. If you go to goodr.com slash demoted and enter code demoted,

you'll get free shipping at checkout. Goodr offers a 30-day money-back guarantee and 100% satisfaction. Again, that's goodr.com. slash demoted and use code demoted for free shipping let's get into promoter demoted do we like it do we not like it promoter demoted working in social media promote i will say it has its cons like working on the weekends or off time

I also think people in social media like true social media roles at companies aren't respected enough which is just an annoying reality of it like all the bits you see on reels are like the so when the social team comes in and it's like a bunch of dancing clowns you know like people don't give them the respect they deserve when they're really moving the needle with marketing right when you share your job

to older people and they're like what social media social media yeah you have to be ready to kind of feel those yeah and just be able to take it honestly obviously we're going to promote promoted or demoted weekend work I love a Sunday just because I typically take a half day on Fridays. So... I do not encourage it for my employees. However, I like to work when I want to work. What do you think?

I do like, I like to catch up on the weekends. I think if you have free time, I do think it's a good moment to catch up. I don't think you should be sending a bunch of emails, and I myself am guilty of this. You know, you don't want to be stressing out someone else on their weekend. True. Think of the impact, yeah, the email has. Maybe just schedule, send it.

which i've started doing yeah which i think is helpful i'm gonna demote weekend work generally demo for work-life balance promoted or demoted vlogging annie's childhood dream i love vlogging 2025 i said you know what tiktok might go away We're buying the G7X camera and we're going to make the vlog happen. Is it hard to get people to watch? Yes. You guys are sleeping on the vlogs. Honestly, they're like...

seven of them up now or six of them. They're funny as heck. They're Annie and I just yapping into the camera. If you want kind of those in-between moments of our life, that's what the vlog is. I'm going to promote it because I enjoy doing it with you. I think it's fun. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. We have an editor.

Shout out YouTubers. Shout out YouTubers for like making the thumbnail, doing the edits, having a short form editor, long form editor. How do we promote the thing on reels? It's a whole beast. I think also like if you want to vlog for yourself for later on in life, just for memories.

I love that. Where are the YouTube girlies at? I think they're watching a little bit more polished content than mine. Promoted or demoted fighting in the Newark airport. So this did happen. This is another one of those examples of Did you and Annie ever fight? Yes. In the Newark airport we have. We were not speaking at the Newark airport for a brief moment there. Oh, I was pissed. She was pissed. I was chewing on my almonds from Starbucks and just...

Doing everything to avoid eye contact. I don't even remember the context of why it was that. Oh, it was because we just miscommunicated. Classic. We just... decided we couldn't speak together it was probably a little bit of and then we're boarding and i was like are we gonna talk now oh and we were fully like Voices raised. We were, we were, we were really in the morning. Really?

Well, here's what I think about what happened. Normalize fighting with corporate Natalie at the Newark Airborne. Yeah, normalize. Like, if any of you saw that, sorry. Sorry, guys. It ended in a very healthy hug, and we... Ends better than it. It ends better. Yeah. It ends better. Normalized fighting. Promoted or demoted? Solid core. I turned you on to solid core and then I turned myself off to solid core. So you're demoted.

I'm still gonna do it and pay the membership fee and feel like a weak little shrimp in there. I'm still gonna do it. Why is it the most competitive class I've ever been to? Everyone is so hot. Everyone is so good at it. They make you like... transition really fast from each exercise to the next so like water break yeah has anyone heard of a water break also

Every girl's like dying to get to the next ones. They kind of like end the exercise before early. Well, and they can get a shout out. Well, they get a shout out. They're like, so intense. And he's already in the plank. And he's already in the plank in three, two, one. Don't be the last one in the plank. I'm like, okay.

I took a sip of water. Okay? Is that allowed? Oh, for all our guy listeners, too. Give it a try. Give it a try. Give it a try. I would like you to see what we go through on a daily basis. Give it a whirl. Demote it now and fire it up. I'm going to promote it. Let's get into Dear Demoted. We'll do one of these from our listeners. Would you like to read it, Annie? Let's do it. Oh, my God. I recently transitioned from operations to the program management space within the same company.

While I am happy with my role change, there has been one difference I've found to be challenging. I've noticed elongated response times for discussions in platforms like Slack. So my question is what do you think is the appropriate amount of time to acknowledge slash respond to a peer? Not necessarily something I need help on as I know it's something I just need to adjust to. I just thought it would be interesting to hear your perspective.

Typically, when I see a message, I like to at least acknowledge it, even if I don't have the answer right away, but I'm not sure if I should expect the same. That's interesting. It's like the culture of the new team is we're not going to respond. It's not that important to us. do expect a response within a decently reasonable amount of time if it's during work hours. I think

An hour is probably the longest. I never wait for that long with you. You'll always respond to me. But I do think during work hours, there should be some baseline expectation, even if the message is in a meeting now we'll get to this later or something i do think that that's appropriate do you agree yeah or just having the foresight if you don't think you'll be able to respond yeah to message your coworkers and be like, I am going to be off for a couple hours if I don't respond in this time.

like you will get a response from me later or on slack this person's on slack on slack i don't know if they still have this but when i worked for the company i worked with before natalie like there were a little status statuses you could put up so if i was sick and i was slow to respond because maybe i was napping part of the day but then on part of the day i would put a little sick emoji

And so you hover over the names on the side and the direct messages. You can see where they are. You see what people are doing. So if someone's slow to respond, they should at least have a status on. I think that people should communicate. um more about when they are available and like just generally i agree probably within the hour is the best rule yeah in terms of how to handle it sounds like they're not going to change yeah well differentiate urgent from just like a

you know, random request or question. If it's something urgent, I would mark that and be like, hey, would love a response in the next 30 minutes before I hop on this client call. differentiate what messages really mirror to response there is a chance maybe you're in this kind of training period entering a new team where it's like

it feels like a question that's maybe outside their day-to-day. It's more of a training and they're like, oh gosh, okay, like, let me get to that later when I have time. If it's an urgent work-related, maybe client-facing external question, Make sure you're getting a response to that because this can feel quite isolating, feeling like you're screaming into a void. Yes, also just...

From a performance standpoint, if it's affecting how much work you get done, the lack of response from other people, just go to your boss and say look i i've noticed that my productivity has been slower my output is lower because i am struggling with responses from other co-workers

I would love some advice on how to prioritize responses and make sure that I get, you know, how best to communicate with my team to make sure I get responses when I need them. And I think just like that's so fair and that's something that... they would definitely step in on because it's affecting your output. I agree. I think Annie and I will both also demote Like the need to constantly be on. Yes. And especially off hours. Like I think.

This is really specific to 9 to 5. If someone's messaging you expecting an urgent response at like 8 p.m. or God forbid on a weekend, I don't think that should be an expectation if it's not. clear in your job you know also this has just to do with dms like emails are a different breed you do not have to respond to an email immediately, like that is-

I think anyone who expects that is pretty insane. Amen. Amen. That was Dear Demoted. Let's get into some Spotify comments. I think these are from the episode with Victoria. Thank you guys for commenting on the Spotify. I will read the first one.

Absolutely loved this episode. You are who you surround yourself with and you ladies are in great company. I love that. I hope you guys enjoy the next. female only demoted with this episode as well. You are the type of friends we need in this world, lifting each other up, cheering each other on, supporting each other.

Thank you, DeLong J. Thank you, DeLong J. So sweet. We love women supporting women here on this pod. 100%. You know who also supports women? We'll give him a shout out while he's not here. Ross. Ross works with me, you, and Becca. All women team. And he is really just... He's the best. He's a king. He's a king. Love you, Ross. We love you and we miss you. Here's a shoutout by Kira the Border Collie.

I want to give a shout out to my awesome human mom, Sarah, who's absolutely crushing it in the business valuation world. She works so hard for our family and we are so proud of her. Thank you, Kira the Border Collie. Your typing skills are... Next level. You deserve a little treat. Get those paws on the keyboard and you deserve a treat. As always, please submit your corporate confessions, dear demoteds, questions, comments, concerns to contact at demotedpodcast.com.

or the form on our website. We love hearing from you. Like, comment, and subscribe. Comment interesting posts. Maybe, you know, uplift the women in your workplace with that subscribe button. Maybe give some feedback to the subscribe button if it's feeling sensitive. You know, we'll see how long... Get that alarm of a subscribe button. Yeah. Yeah, Annie. Yeah. See how long that subscribe button takes to respond on Slack once you message it. And as always, tune in next week on Demoted. Demoted.