[Music] well hi welcome to another episode of Bouie best friend today we have a career chat you guys know that I love my career girlies I love this type of conversation and I interviewed Lily Comba Lily is the founder and CEO of Super Bloom Super Bloom is an influencer marketing agency and I am an influencer and I've been in this space for a very long time and I always love to learn from the brand side or the agency side of how things actually work and Lily worked on the corporate side of influencer marketing for a very long time and then she opened up her own agency we talked about that transition from the corporate world to entrepreneurship and what challenges you might face and once you decide that you are ready for something new or you want to make the jump or you want to switch careers like how do you actually do that and she gave like some actual tangible tips of like if you're ready to if you're planning to quit your job what to do how to do it I love talking to Lily she's just so funny it was an amazing conversation we talked a lot about influencer marketing and some best practices for Brands if they're just starting with their influencer marketing or if they are already there but they just want to learn something new so without further Ado and me blowing too much in this intro let's just Dive Right In And if you love this show and I'm hoping that you do because I'm putting a lot of damn work into this podcast like subscribe share it with a friend you know what to do leave a review give me a high five I don't know send Good Vibes into the universe do something if you have a friend that is running running their business and you think they're going to benefit from this episode send it to them they need to hear it okay bye Lily welcome to bie best friend thank you for having me you know it's so nice to uh be actually able to speak to you because I'm usually watching your webinars and I learn so that's how I discovered you I think this was almost like two years ago and I started following you and your work and I was like this girl is so smart she talk she says all the things that you know you are always wondering when you're building a brand or you're from the influencer side so your webinars are crushing it and I'm joining every everyone I can well thank you for that the the webinars that we started planning kind of just we did the first one almost on a whim um which obviously like will get into my my history and all of my what I'm doing now professionally and why webinars are even a thing we're talking about but yeah I think the first one uh I remember you from was about years ago but it wasn't even a super bloom webinar it was from a different agency partner yeah and that was very fun I loved that that was like my first webinar I think ever so let's just Dive Right into your background give me a little overview of like what you do who you are and all that yeah absolutely my name is Lily uh Lily Comba I am the co-founder and CEO of Super Bloom right now which is an influencer marketing agency that's focused on helping Brands kind of bridge the gap between performance servant strategy and human first campaigns and why Why Super Bloom came to be it's a culmination of all of my professional experience all at once my first job out of college was at a traditional Ad Agency where I was on the out of home team so buying Billboards and bus shelters and it was really my first experience in like Mad Men style advertising and media buying and you went to school for advertising no I was an English major oh I went to a small liberal arts college in Claremont California called scripts College um and I for a hot second was an econ major just because I had a declare a major so I could go abroad as a sophomore and yada yada I graduated an English major because I loved reading and I loved writing so where did the love for advertising come from it was a I worked in the career center in college which I loved like I was a career consultant and so what that meant was like I would have my peers come in and I would review their resumes and review their cover letters and I've always really loved D supporting fellow women because I went to a women's college it was always women coming into the office helping them in their careers and actually through that job I learned about so many different types of roles out there like project managers or marketing or like Finance I was exposed to so many different types of jobs that the ones that were in advertising or in marketing were the ones that just like excited me the most because there's a lot of writing there's a lot of creativity in advertising and marketing and I was like well those are kind of the strengths that I have when you're you know in college you think you know everything and then the world very quickly humbles you um but I was just exposed to so many different types of jobs that the descriptions for those were like that sounds neat that sounds like something that I want to do and so when I graduated I got this job at an ad agency and I was in it for a year it wasn't my favorite job but I learned a lot learned a lot about really good team chemistry like and how important that is to me and I learned that it's actually I had a a side Hustle the whole time at my first job um because I loved doing the career Consulting so much in college um and because my full-time job I wasn't doing writing I wasn't doing other kind of areas of marketing I was really just an assistant I still wanted to expand my skill set and so I developed the full-blown side hustle and was lucky enough to really go deep with one other female entrepreneur her name is Alex she was a a negotiation career coach for women and one of the tasks that I really focused on for her was Partnerships so what is Alex's brand and what's like this company's brand or this Magazine's brand I loved identifying the invisible strings that tied those two Brands together and I was like well what job titles what is that what is that job in the real world and at the time it was Business Development which was also influencer marketing and so when I was at my full-time my first full-time job I was looking into jobs with business development titles with cuz influencer wasn't a term back then it was like you were on the Partnerships team but even then Partnerships fell under Business Development and that's when I found a coordinator role on the business development partnership team at Thrive market and I was at Thrive market for almost four years doing influencer marketing I had a short little pivot actually onto the content Community team where I was actually a writer and utilizing my English degree finally it was I was 3 years on the influencer team and it's where I just it learned the foundation for everything it was like back in the day when we tested the first Instagram sponsored Instagram story when stories became a thing I remember how stressful that time was I mean I was always creating content not in the way that I do now but every addition you're like oh my God what do we do now how do we adjust and then you do it real quick and then look at how crazy it took off so I was super super lucky to be at Thrive Market at that time because it's when influencers were it was was gaining popularity as a marketing channel there were all of these new launches like stories like I mean YouTube stars were have always been a thing but YouTube sponsorships were new podcast advertising it was like this Dawn it was like this the cracking of the influencer marketing industry as a whole and I was lucky enough to be right place right time with Thrive market and I was on the influencer team for about 3 years and by the end of my time on the on the influencer team I was 100% overseeing the YouTube pipeline of part Partners which I loved I just love YouTube and it's funny because I did I kind of reached my own personal growth within the team and I was like I'm done doing this I would love to be a senior content writer and so that's when I actually pivoted in 2020 so at the start of 2020 from January to October those 10 months I was on the content in community team which was a big learning experience for me because I went from influencers which was very growth data analytics heavy to content and campaigns and way more awareness than acquisition but I always knew in the back of my mind that I wanted to get back into influencer marketing if it were an opportunity for me to create a program from the ground up I learned so much from that influencer team but I had my own thoughts and theories and hypotheses that I wasn't able to obviously like execute because I wasn't managing the team and so that is when seed Health the probiotics company reached recruited me to to launch and scale their influencer program and that was at the end of 2020 so how was 2020 for I mean it was Co obviously so there was a lot of changes and a lot of like adjustments so you basically change switched jobs during Co yeah I changed companies but I like to say I went back to my roots like I went back to what I really loved doing which was connecting people to their opportunities that are meant for them and that's really what influencer marketing is even if you're at like one brand you have the ability to identify and source influencers that you're about to give their dream partnership to and like I get goosebumps when I think about that because I just love doing that that tying and that connecting and that's really what influencer marketing is and so with how tumultuous 2020 was you're at home I'm no longer commuting like there's so much like self-reflection and oh my God it was just like a an insane year for everyone and I really realized that I wanted to get back into influencer marketing because I was missing the skills I just missed it but I also wanted more ownership and so I feel like the opportunity at SEI manifested in in some in some sort of way cuz I had been thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it and that's when their talent agency and like recruiting agency contacted me and I was like well one thing led to another it was the the end of 2020 and I think I started in November so it was kind of quick okay so you manifested your dream job at that time yeah let's talk about manifesting for a second do you believe in that like do you believe in like vision boards and stuff like that I don't I should vision board more and it's funny I say that while I look at my bulletin board full of uh could be considered a vision board yeah I I think that manifestation works but you have to will it into existence like have to put in the work but you have to put in the work but you also have to believe in your crazy ideas and for for me that's manifestation is just like believing that like yes I have at the time when I was hired at seed I was drowning in my own impostor syndrome I was like they believe in me they're hiring me to launch and scale their influencer program and to spend their money wisely and like can I actually do this I was only just a mere manager before and now I'm going to be a senior manager like can I actually do this and I was like yes because I believed in myself when I wanted it and now that I have it I suddenly don't believe in myself anymore that's so crazy that happens constantly I mean that happens with to me every single day like I've been creating content for so long and sometimes I see myself like oh the way I said this it's so it's so weird like I need to reshoot and it's I mean what do you I mean impostor syndrome in general do you think that men and women feel it the same way because I never really hear a man talking about like oh I don't belong here no it's literally it's such a painfully feminine experience yeah yeah and I don't know why I really don't know why it is because there are so many women absolutely killing it and they're always talking about how they've suffered from impostor syndrome I don't know what it is I can only obviously speak from the female perspective but it's annoying as hell mhm so how many how long were you at seed I was at seed from November 2020 till June 2023 so about just over a year and a half 2 and a half years there and then right after that you started your company yeah started Super Bloom went right from seed to Super Bloom which is a metaphor I did not realize I was making at the time but oh my God I just realized it right now so crazy okay so you obviously have experience working in the corporate world something that's like super structured and as you said in the beginning like sometimes you just can't make those changes that you potentially see that have to happen to now running your own business so how did you transition from that corporate world into entrepreneurship it was a lot of different factors and I would say it was a year passively in the making and then six months of really getting into my own head and like digging myself out because I loved the team that worked for me at seed the environment was very energizing but everybody reaches their Breaking Point where we're they're just like burnt out they don't have the same opportunity for impact anymore and that's really what was the inflection point for me was I didn't see a future anymore I was like I have built such a massively successful program with my team can you just throw out some numbers that I know that you usually do throw because I need people to understand how massive and how what your spend was at that time seed with influencer marketing like it's mindblowing my starting budget at seed like November 2020 was around $20,000 per month and that was to you know invest in upfront influencer fees and by the time that I left the team and I we were overseeing a budget upwards of around $2 million so in the span of two and a half years it exploded and that was you know hundreds of influencers every month double that in campaigns lots of content being approved lots of content that's why you see it everywhere um and we also worked very deeply with the Performance Marketing and paid social team that further Amplified influencer content as ads and it's it's just why it was such a fun program to build and I learned so much but I think the biggest learning was I'm very impact driven kind of going back to like even the the job that I had in college is like doing meaningful work and being impact driven I was so burnt out and just exhausted from corporate structure that I was like I don't think I'm going to be able to make an impact anymore working in corporate is so limiting in in some ways like you get all the benefits and you like you know you you have a shiny office sometimes for those who are listening right now and they are in a corporate role and they might want to make the switch but they're not you know they don't know what they're going to do or like how did you feel when you decided okay I'm just going to start my own thing I needed a lot of almost like safety that was like a big thing for me I had had like a side Hustle but I had the security of a full-time job at the same time but having that side hustle also allowed me to realize that I by myself as a a human being have skills that are going to be attractive to someone I my side hustle obviously stopped once I started working at thve market and then I didn't have it at seed but to make that transition it's scary it's very scary like it's a there's a reasoning it's like not it's not easy it's not easy it's very scary and it's there's a reason why no one does it it's a reason why there are so few Founders and so many like why there's always like one CEO or maybe two CE it's like it's a very scary position to be in initially but then it quickly becomes very empowering and exciting because what I was and you also have to get really clear on why you're doing it are you doing it just to escape corporate culture your business will probably fail if that's it if you're just trying to escape something those problems are going to follow you wherever you go until you do the Deep work to like shake off the corporate trauma shake off the belief systems that aren't actually yours and you get back to who you are and get back to your roots even if that means going into a different industry like getting back to yourself is what sets you up for Success from transitioning from corporate to entrepreneurial life and it's easier said than done I I would say that it took me like a year before I was like I can make this leap I worked with a career coach for 3 months before I quit cuz I put in my can you tell us a little bit about that like what is a career coach do so for me I it's so funny cuz like Tik Tok is such a smart platform like it I love my my for you page is really for me I like when people say that I've built my for you page Brick by Brick as I truly have at that time about a a year and a half ago so in January of 2023 I was just drowning at work and was super unhappy super unhealthy and hid it very well from my team at the time because I you know was mama bear I didn't want them to have I didn't want them to know so my for you page was filled with like career advice and career coaches and I actually found my career coach from a Tik Tok video I forget what it was focused on it was like overachieving under recognized like I was like oh my God that's me I feel seen I feel seen and her name was her name is Kristen Smith I worked with her on like a three-month intensive where it was visualization and meditations and homework and practices and I remember so distinctly this one meditation we did probably in early May cuz I put my notice in in early June in early may I had already kind of thought of the idea of Super Bloom being like the name it was a strong manifestation SL visualization exercise where she had me close my eyes and she was like visualized yourself right now and it was just like a cloud of Darkness I was like I don't see like it is so dark my mental health was so bad that I couldn't even like dream and she's like okay well imagine there's like a crack in the Darkness andless like plow right through it you know and what do you see on the other side and what I saw on the other side is now what the graphic for Super Bloom is it's just like this flooded field of like flowers and M and it's all AI generated shout out AI we love a if you use it right it really is great and I was like that was the sign that I needed because I was just dragging my feet to quit the golden handcuffs of being at a startup you're like oh we could get acquired we can make all this money like oh I could hire more teammates or you get promised the world and those promises don't always come true and I was like oh my this is it and then couple weeks later I quit and that was also really freaking scary I'm sure you remember vividly that entire day but you don't have to walk us through it if it's too emotional but I was ready it was an angry week so it made it easier I was just angry for so many reasons and it was a Friday Friday morning it was a meeting that I already had scheduled with like this new boss this I took it from the approach of like I am no longer the right fit but in reality I was like I no longer recognize this place for me for myself I no longer recognize the company if somebody's about to quit their job do you have any tips of like how to just do it I wouldn't say write a script because you're going to trip up and you're going to think that you have to memorize it and when you are quitting you might be like oh my God I said this wrong and you might stumble so what what I would do is just like write a couple of the bullet points that you want to make sure that you hit and it's just a list and give yourself permission to hit all of them or to hit none of them it sounds like such a cliche it is like ripping a Band-Aid off there's a little bit of a sting get it done and like regulate your nervous system before do some walk back and forth in your room shake out your hands like do some jumping jacks yeah ice cold water maybe some sour candy like all the things that you would do if you feel like you're panicking and just do it because realize and recognize that it's temporary pain for what will be a long-term gain because it's like it's 10 seconds maybe it's two seconds of being like and June is my last month at seed that took me two seconds to say but look at the opportunities that that one phrase enabled me so think less about what's happening right now and think 98% of your thoughts should be what this is about to unlock for you that helped me a lot I love this you you saw the the little crack in that black and then became Super Bloom so tell us about Super Bloom Super Bloom is we're having a good time I would say that the first six months I didn't realize no one warns you no one told me how hard it would be to to start a business walk us through every single pain point because I'm in that boat right now I think the pain points honestly came from my own self-limiting behavior because of what I was trained to believe in in my previous jobs I don't really regret anything but I will recognize mistakes and the mistake that I made was not taking any time off between jobs if you can if you can allow it if you can financially afford it reward Yourself by taking a week off at least maybe two weeks I never take time off and I so happy you said that because I need a vacation I've been so burned out recently and I'm like pushing pushing pushing and like literally 3 days ago I got the worst migraine of my life and I don't get migraines body okay maybe I shouldn't be yeah maybe I shouldn't be on my on my computer until midnight every single night that's one thing I've learned as well uh is your body will always tell you when something's wrong or when something needs to change and so practicing that self-awareness and that's one of the one of our team values at Super Bloom is know your limitations because you can only know when you're approaching burnout or when you're burnt out but even further than that you need to be able to identify the solutions that get you out of that place and I think the the first six months of Super Bloom we were attracting clients that were very similar intensity to seed because that's what I was familiar with and that's what I thought was my comfort zone and I quickly realized I was like no no no no no no no like I need a complete flip flip the switch I need different people I need different brands I need I need what I want not what I'm used to and it was right around like November December so maybe 5 six months into Super Bloom where we started attracting a lot of the clients we still have today so about you know eight months nine months working with some of these Brands and so the early days it was a lot of like well how do we price ourselves uh and we were underpricing our services a ton for the value that we could have that we are now creating you just learn a lot you make a lot of mistakes like prepare yourself prepare to make a ton of mistakes but always own up to them own up own your ship own up to your mistakes because people will respect you more for owning your mistakes rather than dismissing them and that's a big thing that I realize too tell us specifically what is super bloom I obviously know because I follow you yeah maybe the audience needs Super Bloom is uh an influencer marketing agency that helps Brands work with influencers and so kind of like our our tagline is Bridging the Gap between performance d strategy in human first campaigns because what we realized we were really good at is thinking about revenue and thinking about cost per acquisition and thinking about the return of investing in in influencers but then on the flip side of that really good at relationship building with influencers and maintaining those relationships and being respected in the space for just being good people to work with and then also coming up with really creative and fun campaigns for influencers to feel inspired by not necessarily rest restricted by and we were able to obviously balance those two things and scale it tremendously and so that's now what we're doing with the clients that come to us we kind of have two different buckets of clients we have early adopters where these are brands that sometimes themselves are brand new and they want to launch with influencers from day one and we're like awesome cool and then we have brands that have been around for a couple years but have maybe tried and failed in working with influencers before and we come in and we nurture them and educate them on our methodology and on best practices and then co-exec a strategy together I mean I love both buckets of our clients but I typically oversee those early adopters because I love the nurturing and I love the training and the education because it's it's such an issue in this industry is there's no one everyone's gatekeeping it's like can we stop can we just like start collaborating again and so those are that's kind of like the early adopter clients and then we have another bucket of clients that my co-founder Marty Rose overseas and she those are like brands that have are spending so much money on influencers already and we come to the table to just further enhance their campaigns and spend more of their money um you both have a flower in your name yeah the super bloom thing really you really branding executed amazing it's CRA yeah it's a crazy it really just fell into place and that's kind of how we knew that it was it was the right so I I obviously quit seed in June and super bloom formally launched in July and then Marty Rose worked with me at seed and she came over to super bloom in September just a longer tale of offboarding for her I have to say since I work with a lot of Brands and I am on you know the influencer side but I'm also very curious about the brand side and I see different you know how different brands approach influencer campaigns and it's fascinating how many Brands don't recognize that building an actual relationship with the talent goes so far instead of when they're just treating you like a number and when they're just they just want this many clicks and this many that and this many like you don't even think about brand awareness and I'm sure some Brands don't need brand awareness they think they don't need it but they just I mean I worked with I don't even know how many Brands I worked with in my life and it's like it's it's actually like a relationship with with another human like they just don't recognize that so I would love to hear from you like what do you think why people I mean one of your taglines is like Bridging the Gap and like making that those relationship first why do people still don't recognize that's the key to a successful campaign I feel like I can answer this because I thought that I knew a lot about influencer marketing at seed and Thrive Market but since starting an agency we are exposed to so many different belief systems and perceptions around influencers that it's mind-boggling and I think that brands that don't prioritize the relationship portion of the industry are frustrated by influencers in general they're like I don't know why influencers don't work for our brand I don't know why it's always pay per play I don't understand why this isn't working for us ah like how can I be as big as seeds program and I was like well first maybe you go to therapy cuz you got some anger that needs to be resolved here and I promise you it's not the influencers that the issue cuz if it's your entire program isn't working the common denominator is you so and we do a lot of that uneducation unraveling and re-education with our with our partners because to be a good influencer marketer you have like our first team value our first company value is relationship first because that is make or break in this industry and it is as simple as how you reply to emails the information the education that you provide your influencers the results of the campaigns that you provide the getting on a kickoff call like I love a kickoff call when when when somebody's like hiring me for a campaign just like get on a call like let's just see what you want like what are you sure I'm going to get a brief and I'm going to go through like your dos and don'ts but it's so much easier to just get on a call see what is your main thing like what do you want to emphasize and like how you want this campaign to succeed and it's yep it's a 30 minute it it can be a 15minute conversation yeah and it and I think a lot of brands are like oh that's not scalable well not everything has to be scalable we also we we were spending $2 million a month and we made time we accommodated yeah every influencer that wanted to get on a call with us what's the big deal hire a coordinator to do all of them you need to invest in your influencers and that's beyond just like a set aside marketing budget you need to invest your time you need to invest your creative you need to invest your inner personal abilities and skills like these are people at the end of the day like you are marketing The Human Experience with humans it's not just an adset I think a lot of people that want like a growth focused or like a growth forward program come from acquisition heavy backgrounds where it's like they're just used to working with adsets that don't talk back that don't have personality that aren't people and so it's a it's a complete switch in your brain it's it's literally like dating you have to be nice to people in order for them to in order to yeah like mindboggling yeah okay so in Super Bloom you you work with a lot of small Brands but you also work with a lot of large Brands so how do you approach a brand let's say a small brand that doesn't really have a lot of budget but as you said some want to work with influencers right away how do you handle that relationship and all that we have none of our uh agency offerings are cut and dry we don't have a standard rate card like everything that we do is custom because influencer marketing is unique to each and every brand and so like the inherent nature of our agency reflects the nature of influencer marketing as well so a lot of Brands we'll start start just Consulting basis or we'll get them into our accelerator program which is like a boot camp it's like a four to six week boot camp you meet with us twice a week for an hour each time and we train you on everything we know it's kind of like a sub offering we don't even like really talk about it all that much until we get on a call with the with a brand that's just looking to be educated or re-educated on influencer marketing it's also a big reason why we do webinars is like those early Brands they are going to get so many influencer marketing agencies are so expensive nowadays yeah these smaller brands that are just like looking to learn more and to crack into the industry can't afford those bigger agencies and so it's a big reason why we even created the brands and Bloom webinars is because it's free information from people that are doing really good work in influencer marketing and you get them from every Aven like it's like skin care Wellness uh every type of yeah every type of brand so everybody can kind of find something that works for them yeah I'm a huge advocate for like just information sharing and that's a big thing that these Uber early adopters like maybe pre- early adopter need is just education and honest level setting about this industry around expectations let's talk about expectations love that okay you know what I love when I working with a brand and I'm hired as a Creator I'm creating content I'm not your sales rep I'm not responsible for the amount of sales you hit or like the sure the amount of clicks are great but like sometimes people think that we are a sales machine so how do you communicate that to the brain and obviously everybody needs to you know the the collaboration has to be successful in order for them to make sense so how do you communicate those type of expectations that like you can't expect this to sell out because you paid an influencer yep we failed at doing that in the early days and I think it's because we were also so naive we were we were so used to an influencer program that was just absolutely crushing it you know that like yeah we can pay this person $5,000 and they'll back out like yeah yeah yeah and so that was also a much needed root Awakening for us in the early days too where we're like oh we can't be guaranteeing the same results that we were able to so easily generate at seed because that program was 2 and a half years old and this program is zero months old and so we never want to be the agency or the people that overpromise and underd deliver cuz boy howdy are there enough agencies that do that and so even if a brand doesn't like that even if a brand even if we're like listen you're going to see maybe a 0. five return on your influencers on month one because we have to generate interest there's this like marketing rule of seven where you have to see a brand seven times in order before you purchase it's the same thing with influencers and you have to get creative and collaborative with how you work with an influencer because one-offs don't work do a two-month scope crazy book two different campaigns within those months wild like there's no one in this industry that is a on hit wonder and if they are they're very rare and it just doesn't I mean it's it's a onetime thing it's like a one night stand like okay awesome like it's not going to be good it was your first time it doesn't really benefit your life overall no so like we are very vocal and very good about level setting expectations nowadays and and people respect us for it and if it's just and for me too it's like okay well they have unrealistic expectations around performance which means like it would have been an unpleasant Partnership if we were to work with them so it's a good thing that we're not working with them yeah and it's just like a it's a total different mindset and it go it translates into your personal life too it's like you need to set expectations you need to set your boundaries and if someone isn't open to them well they're not meant for you so move on when you do have budgets to hire influencers and what qualities do you see let's let's give a specific example let's say if it's like a I don't know a skincare brand obviously they are going to actually I'm not even going to give my opinion let's say you have a skincare brand in Super Bloom and they want to do a campaign what what are you looking for in an influencer well first I want to see you know are they are they tracking and monitoring the influencers that are already talking about them those are the people that you should start with 100% because they're already organically talk talking about you tagging you sharing how much they love you that is the warmest way into influencer marketing is to be working with the creators that already exist within your community when it comes to sourcing net new influencers you have to make sure it's a brand fit like if you're like let's say it's um like summer Fridays isn't going to go to an influencer that just talked about Clinique skin care hydration mask you're not going to do that because you have to be very intentional in who you reach out to and in the influencers that you want to work with because you not only have to make sure that it makes sense for you but it makes sense for them and that goes back to the relationship component it's like it's a two-way street you have to make sure that it's mutually interesting and mutually amicable and then another thing that I look forward too is just like the sophistication as an influencer it's like are they posting the stories are they doing Q&A features because that to me showcases that this influencer has a community versus just an audience and that's really the bence that you should be looking for when identifying an influencer for your BR and you can obviously get really into the weeds with their data and analytics their demographics their insights their story views their link yeah I mean that doesn't matter obviously if you're targeting like the US market or European market or like yeah sure you have to look at that but I feel like so many I see so many Brands working with influencers that are just make doesn't make any sense and I wonder sometimes like is it because they think think they're going to get a lot of return like I just don't understand the business strategy behind it like I I don't know I don't either it's you don't you want to be a brand that is talked about not seen if that makes sense like you don't want to be able to go to someone's Instagram page in their feed and clearly see a sponsored reel or a sponsored post because like their creative brief requirements were so strict that it's like oh my God this stands out like a sore thumb on this Creator's page you want to be like a seed is where it's like I see I'm seeing them everywhere but then you also see them nowhere at the same time and it all comes down to strategy it all comes down to again making sure that it's a mutual partnership and then even on the influencer side it's just say no yeah like even if there's money on the table you will be attracting opportunities that are more value aligned with you the more you say no and the more that you get way more aine funny I just this morning I posted a real about saying no because it's just it's key like you can't say yes to every single thing absence is almost like a form of Interest like you you can't you don't have to be everywhere so when it comes to Brands trying to dabble into influencer marketing but they're on a budget what would you suggest but they want to like maybe do a paid campaign but maybe they don't have a lot of money or maybe they want to do gifting like how how would you you approach a brand like that yeah I'm like how much money are we talking 10,000 money 5,000 I get let's say somebody okay let's let's start very let's say somebody has like $500 I mean that's that's you know $500 per influencer MH honestly the best way to work with influencers when you have a low budget is in a ugc capacity because those fees and with ugc Creator specific creators because they tend to be very cost efficient very lowbudget but depending on how you utilize their cont content organically and on paid you can drive an amazing amount of Revenue and that's a great opportunity to test into just the Creator space in general not necessarily influencers but like okay this is a face that is outside our organization it's not an in-house ad it doesn't look like an in-house ad but it's Creator giving Creator Vibes how did it perform how did it do and the great thing about ugc creators too is you can also script them with influencers please don't give influencers scripts please don't please stop doing that it's not the benefit to an influencer to script them but with ugc creators you can because it's what they're paid for and then once you kind of test the waters with ugc creators you can graduate to co- launch my I always recommend co- launching an influencer program which is prepaid upfront influencers with an ambassador or commission-based program you want two of those things live at the same time because my hot take with affiliate programs is sure you could reach out to 400 creators offering them a commission model two of them are going to say yes it's just the way the industry is headed obviously like you will get more than just two people but I'm just saying the gist is you spin your wheels for a limited return it's not working smarter whereas like my POV is even if you start testing with influencers that are $1,000 a pop you're taking the revenue that you the $500 that you invested in your ugc creators and maybe you you generated $10,000 in Revenue you're like great I can now use that $10,000 to pay a handful of influencers on a paid campaign those influencer campaigns once they post are going to naturally and organically grow your affiliate program and that's exactly what we did at seed we didn't do any Outreach for our affiliate program or our commission based program we just focused on investing in influencers and because of that you get these micro creators that follow them that want to be a part of the same program and that's how we were getting you know like 50 to 75 applications per week with doing no Outreach we made sure that we set up a really strong in infastructure with Seed University and that they had monthly newsletters and they had the resources that they needed to succeed but we didn't source for it we didn't like spin our wheels for no reason we were working smarter and not harder so that's kind of the trajectory is like start with ugc doesn't matter how little little budget you have you're going to find someone that'll work with you for 50 bucks try it yeah and where do you where do you suggest people look for ugc creators there's there's some software out there that do ugc creators or that can help you Source they're in your DMs they're tagging you already most likely but then even even LinkedIn LinkedIn is like an untapped resource uh for finding ugc creators I literally for finding anyone literally I people forget about LinkedIn I found like 35 ugc creators for one of our brands from from LinkedIn just by typing in ugc and making sure that it was like a it was it was a skincare brand so finding beauty or Wellness related ugc creators but yeah hashtag LinkedIn you can do it for free by just putting a half hour into doing some searching yeah um so how do you when let's say you have a client and they invested money in their influencer and maybe they're even though you did all the education and you told them you know maybe this is not going to happen and they're not happy after the campaign is done what do you do it happens it's so funny because this was months ago or in the early days of Super Bloom and one of my business partners was like you should go into politics cuz you handled that really well and I'm like influencer marketing is it gives you 101 training in how to be a politician because you have to be very solution oriented because there are conversations that get really tough where you're like I know that you said a 0.5 return was normal on month one but I really wanted a two and a half return and we're like well you know I completely understand where you're coming from and the frustrations associated with it like we level set intentionally in the early days just so you know but like chances are nine times out out of 10 there are also 16 other good things that happen from the campaign and 16 other learnings that the brand can take away from it and if you're a good influencer marketing or a good agency you're already ahead of that you're like okay well it was the creative brief let's reiterate the creative brief let's really hone in on this value prop of the company instead and see how that converts on month two and then reiterate again in month three and really because with influencers you have to test and learn and you have to hack your way to see what works see what type of influencer works to see what type of creative brief works it takes a lot of you have to go all of my colleagues will say you got to go slow to go fast and once you figure out your your pocket your Niche and your briefing process that's when you unlock a lot of success for your program I love this okay so for the last few minutes I would love to talk about you building Super Bloom just like from the entrepreneurial side and like what hurdles that you did not expect and how did you handle them how long was like just like even coming up with the name coming up with the brand identity just like stuff that people don't really talk about my co-founder we we are frustrated with ourselves so many times there was like we are so focused on supporting our brands that we have forgotten Super Bloom has a brand like if you go to our Instagram by Super Bloom on Instagram or our website by super you're like oh God like we need to update these things like we've I mean not a bad problem like we are so hyperfocused on doing good work for our brands that we've forgot about Super Bloom as a brand but I would say that so our business partners in the space are called super affiliate and so they really helped us build out the infrastructure and that kind of goes back to way earlier in the conversation I was talking about like safety and my need for Safety and Security and just like craving that stability and I was lucky enough that the co-founders at Super affiliate Andy and Anders I had known for years before I met them in 2020 because I wanted to utilize their software at seed but we couldn't seed wasn't on tropiflow we really want to build an agency and we want you to head it up but we want you to run it also so they were there to be almost like when I was falling backwards like they were there holding me up they're like you're going to keep going I love that you're going to figure this out and it was in collaborating with them too that we came up with super bloom like their company is super affiliate we Super Bloom but then like the flowers and then we're like oh my god I've always loved super bloom all the synergies like trly it just took a lot of collaboration but then a lot of quiet too of me figuring out like what holy moly it's so expansive to work for yourself cuz you're like I can now do everything I've ever wanted to do yeah like in the corporate structure there's black there's you know what is it red tape black tape Yellow Tape there's all this tape there's propes there's like people that need to approve all this and you're like I can't do anything because all of the egos at play are limiting me and now I can now I can do webinars where I'm talking about industry best practices and I'm elevating great people doing great work in the space like hell yeah wanted to do that at seed but I couldn't now I'm actually M moving the needle for all 12 of the brands that were helping it's like damn right it took you know it's like building Super Bloom though we're still doing it mhm we year year in we're still figuring it out I feel like when you mentioned about like all the steps and like people don't understand how many people need to see a piece of content before it actually gets approved it's like I create the content I send it to my management my management sends it to the I mean you probably know this better than me like when when you get the content from the talent side like how many people even go through that piece of content when you're inhouse it you obviously it goes directly to the brand the brand approves and it's usually just like the manager that's on your account approves it on the agency side it goes from you to your manager to us we do a first pass but we send it to the brand for final approval and then you know we're like you need to get back to us within an hour on this content approvals are the one thing that you don't drag your feed on and then we send the feedback back to the talent manager that relays it back to you yeah a a lot of steps yeah okay final question actually not final I have two more questions yeah any any type of trends that you see like I feel like Tik Tok is obviously very authentic and raw in the moment Instagram kind of has a little bit of that on stories mostly but where do you see socials and influencer marketing going nowadays what makes me so happy is that I see people heading back to YouTube because I should go back to YouTube yes YouTube is my favorite platform and it's funny because it really goes back to my old media like advertising media buying days YouTube is the best it's long form content it's true raw Vlog it's it's everything that makes social media great and all of the things that make it bad aren't there that's something that I've noticed a lot is that a lot of people are going back to YouTube and creating channels I do think it's a big factor is that Tik Tok what's happening with Tik Tok my engagement in Tik Tok is like one day I'm blowing up the other day like 30 views it's embarrassing Tik Tok is so embarrassing is Tik Tok is so embarrassing and so humbling as a content creator yeah but also like is it going is it going away like what is literally happening with Tik Tok I think a little bit of that fear it's getting more people back to Instagram and it's bringing a lot more people back to YouTube which I'm very happy about we need more people back to YouTube so YouTube is the way to go okay noted I will do that yeah add more to your plate but go launch a YouTube channel let me start with daily Vlogs I have no idea who's going to edit all of that you are you putting your podcasts on YouTube yeah yeah then you're great you've already got you're gonna be on YouTube oh you've you've already got you've already got a channel now you can just no I do I do I have I used to be like a YouTuber kind of like I was doing Vlogs and like makeup tutorials when I was a makeup artist oh my God I love and then when I started with Tik Tok and everything was short form I just like focused on short form and I was like whatever yeah but actually I have two more questions you're just so smart I I have to like take advantage if you're a brand that is just starting to post on social Tik Tok Instagram there's a few brands that do a really good job they show you all the behind the scenes and they like what would you say how can a brand stand out on social nowadays humanize your brand I don't care if your co-founder shy or your CEO is sh get them on the page get showcase the people behind the brand because more and more that's such a genz thing like gen gen Z is becoming a ginormous consumer class and what people are craving is realness authenticity and what better to do that than the people behind your brand or customer testimonials and yes it is important at the end of the day to always be reiterating your company values and your you know products and selling them but people go to social to be entertained to have to to escape to be educated if your brand isn't doing that it's why it's not growing it's why it's not failing and my biggest piece of advice is to humanize the brand and that is however you want to Define that but it is just getting people at the Forefront of your marketing strategy and that could be influencers not to sh my own horn but it could be influencers I okay one final question that I ask every single guest and what piece of advice would you give to your younger self oh God no it's like no I'm going to cry um um what advice would I get oh my God I I want it sounds so cliche but it's we like a cliche cliches are there for a reason it's honestly everything always works out you just it does it might not be the way that you pictured it it might not be the way that you visualized it but everything always works out even if you fail miserably on the way or you completely pivot everything always works out because you believe in yourself like you have everything within you to do what you want to do and to do what you need to do so I guess it's kind of too mic drop love it love it crushed it Little Lily needed to hear that a lot oh high five little Lily I would love to tell us who should need like if somebody wants your help like if if they're a brand a small brand like where can they find you working to reach out your Instagram socials give me all of that yeah if you want to reach out just to chat about career stuff as you know I love it love helping people figure out what the heck it is that they want to do specifically if they want to get into influencer marketing you can find me on Instagram lyoma LinkedIn you can email me at ly lyb super bloom.com by super bloom.com and then obviously super Bloom's website is by super bloom.com or our LinkedIn is super bloom our Instagram is by super bloom.com but don't judge us because we've forgot to be a brand Builder I'll link everything in the show notes so they can find you Lily this was awesome and I so happy that you came on the show and shared your knowledge and I'm just excited to see I just love following you and I remember even when you opened the agency and like when you posted like your first photo shoot for the company I was like wow I just love when I see somebody following their dreams and just making it so love it thank you so much for having me thank you bye-bye everyone bye bye bye see you next week Bouie bestie thank you so much for listening I hope you enjoyed the episode be sure to subscribe to my podcast so you'll never miss out I release new episodes every Friday if you love bougie best friend please leave a five-star rating and a review your support means the world and it helps the show grow you can also follow me on Instagram Tik Tok and YouTube at CoCo Beauty and you can find Bo your best friend on Apple Spotify and all other major podcasting platforms love you bye