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Megan Miller is an influencer marketer with big plans to help content creators land their dream collaborations. She worked as an Influencer Marketing Manager for multi billion dollar brand that we’ll talk about here or she worked with celebrities, influencers, and major brands on influencer campaigns. We are so excited to welcome her to the podcast today. Welcome Megan. So Megan, it is so cool to have you here today. I am just personally excited to get to know you a little more and learn about your you know journey in the influencer world and all that that entails. But first and foremost, welcome. How’s your day going?

Meagan Miller:
Thank you so much. I am so excited to be here. I’m excited to talk about influencer marketing. And yeah, my day is going good. It’s very hot here in Florida. So just trying to stay a little bit cooler but it’s going great.

Jessy Grossman:
I am going to be living vicariously through you if you don’t mind. I am a Floridian and myself and I love meeting a fellow Floridians. I’m just going to live vicariously through you hope you don’t mind.

Meagan Miller:
I don’t mind at all.

Jessy Grossman:
Amazing. I’d love for you to share a little bit just in your own words about your professional journey to Ashley Furniture to Influencer Marketing, and a little bit about your approach to the world that we all work in. Can you share a little bit about your journey with our audience?

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, definitely. So I actually went to school for Southern College in Lakeland and I went for advertising and public relations, which at the time was very marketing driven, social media driven and when I graduated, I worked for a smaller agency. So I did social media marketing for female authors who wrote a couple books, and we were doing their promotion. And then I worked at an agency that only did influencer marketing and social for restaurants. So we started doing all their social. And then I started working at Ashley, in Ashley as a Social Media Associate, just running their national Ashley homestore channels. And then I quickly moved into influencer marketing, I would say within the first couple of weeks of me being there, I started asking about influencer marketing, they didn’t have a program at the time. And we kind of kicked it off. And that’s really where my career in influencer marketing started. We started it in 2017 and it’s growing even more now. And we’ve worked with influencers, all the way down to micro-nano influencers for content and then all the way up to celebrity level mega influencer partnerships and everything in between, really. So they have a very robust program and it was really cool to kind of kick that off from the beginning.

Jessy Grossman:
And so talk to me about that, because I I’m sure that a lot of people listening have had that experience or are currently navigating through that experience. And of course, that experience being like this company, maybe this giant company like an Ashley Furniture has been around for so long and I’ve had you know, has had tons of success in their own right, but hasn’t done the influencer thing. And so I can imagine that it’s a lot of education. It’s a lot of exploration. So like, tell us about how that process was from, you know, starting an influencer division or, you know, a focus at that company.

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, it was really awesome and luckily, I had an amazing boss who allowed us to really test a lot of things and prove out the value of a lot of things but it’s so important and I my best advice I could give on that matter is to stay up to date with the industry and everything that’s going on. So like following podcasts for Women in Influencer Marketing or any books, social, anything that you can find staying relevant. So it was so important to me at that time to kind of figure out what is the overall industry doing? What are brands doing an influencer marketing? How do they run their programs? And, you know, figuring out that journey from the beginning was very interesting, but something that I wouldn’t have been able to do without following every part of what the industry was doing.

Jessy Grossman:
And so people ask us all the time, you know, they’re like, Oh, do you like… I was just talking to somebody on a Zoom call the other day, and they’re like, I want to learn more about like the industry. I didn’t have a formal education in it. You know, how do I learn? Where do I go? And so yeah, there are definitely some resources that I could share but I’d love for you to share some that you found with through your journey.

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, so I followed for a long time Fohr so FOHR, and they and James, which is their CEO, he also has a podcast. And he always keeps up on the trends and influencer marketing and has weekly videos, talking about things that are going on, or trends that you might see if someone’s talking about a certain influencer, or a change in an algorithm or anything like that. He’s answering those questions live. So I always found that to be incredibly helpful. And then I’m a really big book person. So I found the book is just called Influencers. And that’s a really good book as well. I think it’s by Brittany Hennessy. If I’m saying that, right.

Jessy Grossman:
Yeah. Brittany Hennessy. She’s actually Episode One of this podcast.

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, exactly.

Jessy Grossman:
She actually just launched her own podcast. So yeah, she’s a great one.

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, I love her book as well and I followed her on social for a while. So just making sure that you’re really in that space. And I didn’t start out in influencer marketing. I started out in social but making sure that you’re looking at the things around you, even the people you follow on Instagram. If you follow other influencers, you can see their brand deals. And you can see a little bit about how those might work on the outwardly facing side and see how they tag the brand or the way that they’re talking about a product. And just focusing on those little things helps a lot to kind of understand how an influencer works with a brand as well.

Jessy Grossman:
Yeah, absolutely. And we talked about a lot on this podcast, how everybody also just learns in different ways. So I think it’s it’s super valuable to just like meet people where they are so I love hearing you know, like, for me, I’m an… I’ve learned about myself just the past few years, like, I take in content through audio, like I love podcasts, but I that’s why I think that’s also fall in love with Clubhouse, things like that. There are so many people out there who you know, just love reading, whether it’s books or just digital, you know, content. Some people are more visual. So I appreciate you sharing a few other resources with us. I know there’s a lot of people listening who appreciate that too. And so with that being said, I… we’ve been doing this fun thing on the show lately, where we ask our guests some just like, get to know you questions and.

Meagan Miller:
I loved it.

Jessy Grossman:
It’s, it’s cool. And I do too. And I’m excited to ask you these questions because, you know, it’s great to learn about what you’ve learned in influencer marketing and keeping it very official. But it’s also great to know the person behind all of those ideas. So the best way to do this is that don’t think too much about it. I’m gonna have some rapid fire questions for you. And are you ready?

Meagan Miller:
I’m ready, I think.

Jessy Grossman:
Oh, you’ll be ready. You’re ready. Just Yeah. Don’t think too much about it.

Meagan Miller:
All right, I’m ready.

Jessy Grossman:
All right, perfect. What is your favorite social media app?

Meagan Miller:
I used to say Instagram, but now I’m leaning more towards Clubhouse because it’s really fun. It’s like live podcast, which I think is awesome.

Jessy Grossman:
Yes. What is your biggest motivation?

Meagan Miller:
That’s a good question. Um, for me, I think it’s really time. And so it’s kind of a weird answer but I like to have a lot of time to myself, to travel, things like that. So I work really hard and in the influencer space so that I will have kind of that time.

Jessy Grossman:
Oh, I love that. Oh, that’s such a good answer. If money were no object, what would you do all day.

Meagan Miller:
Um, my life wouldn’t look too much different because of being able to work from home, I travel a lot, but also still in the influencer space. I’m still doing kind of what I’m doing now just traveling to a lot of different remote locations.

Jessy Grossman:
I love it. So this is a fun question when you were a kid, influencer marketing, I don’t know if it existed. I doubt it. So when so when you were a kid, what did you want to be?

Meagan Miller:
This is a great question. I actually just found a little art project I did in elementary school. And I wanted to be in the fashion industry, and working with celebrities who walked and I made this up like in elementary school at the time, I didn’t know that it was basically public relations or marketing or influencers. But I wanted to work in the fashion industry.

Jessy Grossman:
I love that. And so this is a great follow up question. The last question of this is, Do you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert?

Meagan Miller:
Definitely an extrovert, for sure.

Jessy Grossman:
Oh, that’s so good to hear. Okay. Very interesting. I definitely feel like we got to know you a little bit better. That’s awesome. So talk to us a little bit about Clubhouse, you mentioned that you are really into Clubhouse and it’s been such a hot topic, both on this podcast and well beyond this podcast. So I’d love to hear your thoughts maybe in relations to influencer marketing and branding.

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, I am so excited about Clubhouse, and specifically the events that I’ve joined so far. Not only is it just already a really cool community, and I have thought for a while now that influencer marketing, in my opinion, is moving more community based and more Ambassador programs where influencers stay with brands for long term. And they also communicate one on one with all of their followers and just really building a true network of people. And I feel like Clubhouse does that so that you can talk to people one on one, you can have them ask questions. And it really is a sense of community. I joined the Women in Influencer Marketing Clubhouse a couple weeks ago and the amount of people who followed me on Instagram afterwards, and we’re still dming back and forth about working in the industry was just so awesome to see. And that’s really what I like about Clubhouse and I could see brands using it to connect with customers even more. But the way that I’ve always built my influencer program or any collaboration that I’ve always done is to make sure that not only is the brand protected, but also the influencer and then it’s a true mutually beneficial collaboration. And I think brands could do a great job of reaching out to influencers, maybe even via Clubhouse and starting this long term relationship, we always call her influencers and talk to them one on one. So it could be really cool to get a group of influencers who might be a brand ambassador to be able to talk and ask questions to the brand one on one. Clubhouse, you know, just kind of kicking off, but I have a lot of ideas for it. And I could definitely see where it would take off even more in the future.

Jessy Grossman:
Yeah, that’s so interesting and it’s just so new. I was listening on this past Sunday, I always try to check out their town halls with the co-founders and they like drop really interesting things. And you know, everyone nowadays is asking, like they’re like, oh, Clubhouses definitely a thing. It felt like TikTok in the beginning a little bit, you know? And people are asking, like, how can brands get on there. And they said, a few really interesting things just this past week, they were saying that they are way more interested in having the creators monetize their content, then, you know, selling anybody’s content or selling anybody’s information. And in addition to that, they were saying, you know, they don’t want to see brands get on a Clubhouse in terms of individual accounts, like they’re more… because they’re they in their ideal world, which like it’s so new, you know, we just have to see how that sort of organically evolves, but as of now, in their eyes the way that it would or the way that it would happen is that a brand could come on but as a club versus an individual account. So like with that being said, have you seen instances on Clubhouse in your experience there were, you know, either it’s been a branded conversation or it seems like they’re some sort of opportunity where a brand could have been involved, like, I’d love to just be a fly on the wall to some of your experiences on there.

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, I haven’t seen it directly but I think a lot of the bigger influencers, I would consider them kind of like a brand, a lot of them have, you know, their own products, they, there’s their channels are almost as if they’re their own smaller personal brands. And I’ve seen them utilize it to kind of communicate more one on one with their following. And I think, to clubhouses, town halls point, if a brand jumped on, maybe it wasn’t necessarily the brand, but being more open, as you know, an internal brand to say, maybe my VP of Marketing is gonna come on, or maybe my Manager of Influencer Marketing is gonna come on, and they’re gonna hold a meeting just to talk about influencer marketing, I would say, we were having four to five influencers a day reaching out, if not more, depending on the time of year and so being able to have that one on one communication with our influencers could be really cool. So maybe it is an individual person from a brand who gets to jump on and kind of be an expert, just like a panel. If you’ve ever gone to, you know, a larger panel where marketing experts are speaking on that panel, I could see brands using Clubhouse in that way to just foster a better connection.

Jessy Grossman:
Yeah, I could totally see that. I think that it’s like, that’s sort of where a lot of this is going from a branding perspective. It’s like, you know, a few years ago, like, there was this commerce, this is years ago, to be clear, like this conversation and the conversation was about, you know, does anyone who like who really follows the brand’s Instagram account or the brand’s YouTube, like, Sure, there are instances where it makes sense in certain types of brands? Where I could see that, but it’s much more rare, but like, how much more engaged are you with a brand if their CEO is somebody who you can relate to, or you know, they’re someone in their leadership is somebody that you personally have some sort of connection with an attachment with? And I… it’s really interesting to see that like, Clubhouses really sort of going in that direction. And I think that people are so used to thinking about it very differently, that it’ll be really interesting to see. People lean into this newer idea about just like individual connections, you know?

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, I completely agree. I really think, you know, the way things are moving is about connection, whether it’s on the brand side, or the influencer side. But just having that moment where you were able to truly connect with the people behind the brands. And on the influencer side, being able as a brand to connect with them, and have that mutually beneficial collaboration, I just think is so important.

Jessy Grossman:
It is it really, truly is. I just feel like it moves the needle a lot more. So it’s cool to see it just, it’s cool to see a platform that’s really embracing that. That’s really yeah, that’s really, really interesting. I’d love to hear just generally speaking, like, what do you think yields a successful branded partnership? We could discuss that on any platform you like, but like, how would you articulate what that would look like? Since you’ve been on the brand side before?

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, I think this is a perfect transition, talking about Clubhouse into this question, because I truly believe a great collaboration, especially I’m sure there’s a lot of brand managers who listened to this podcast but for us, it was always about communication. We’ve fostered some of the best relationships with some of the biggest influencers in the industry, because of the way that we communicated with them. One on one in house, if we had to get on a phone call with them, we talked to them the whole way through and communication is so key, not only about all of the deliverables, but also you know, what’s going on in their life, if they have something come up and they can’t meet a deadline. You know, maybe there was something really important that happened in their life, making sure you’re kind of keeping up with them and that they know that it’s okay, and I think fostering great relationships with amazing communications is key and of course, going into all of the ways that you can run an influencer campaign, whether that’s with paid media or email or sweepstakes or anything like that, of course, all that comes with it but having that communication with the influencer, they’re more likely to give you more content that was then was even asked for better content, the photography will be even more amazing. And so my, you know, my always my advice is communication and just being there as that person, not just the brand, because there’s a team of people, there’s faces behind everything that a brand is doing. So I just think that communication is key.

Jessy Grossman:
It is totally agree with you. Here’s my real question. How do you do that at scale? I think that we could… most people could agree on that and that if you’ve explored, you know, just getting real with the people that you’re working with, and, you know, if someone’s like, a day late for a deadline, just saying, like, you know, it’s okay, like, you know, I don’t know, just connecting with them on a human level be like things happen, and they’ve yielded positive results from that, you know, there’s so many other scenarios, of course, but it’s great to be able to do that but it’s difficult to do when you have hundreds, if not even thousands of influencers that you’re working with. And there’s so many moving parts and so many variables. So are there any hacks or tips that you could share with everyone listening about, like how to address that side of things as well?

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, and we definitely, you know, we scaled our program, and we were also working with a lot of influencers as well, and it’s really about, like an ambassador program, almost. So you have key influencers who become your advocates, and people who were talking about you all the time, because of the way that you were able to communicate with them more on a one on one way. And if you are sending out a mass email, I think that is okay, can send out kind of like an email that’s more directed towards that person, because it does take a lot of time. But that time definitely yields results. So the more time you can spend making the influencer feel really special, and that your email is directly to them. It has add more, you know, more direct relationship, then you have these results that the content performs even better, you know, you get more content out of it. So there’s definitely things you could do where your time still yields results.

Jessy Grossman:
Totally, I’m putting you on the spot a little bit by asking you this question, because I hope it’s okay, because I just I know that so many women are and men, you know, working as an usher just struggling with this. And they’re like, yeah, I mean, obviously, that sounds like the ideal, but how do I make this a reality. And so, you know, I would I will just chime in and add to that, because I think you gave really great actionable tips like, there is a Chrome extension that I recently started testing out called ChatSilo. That’s one that’s been really interesting to explore and again, I’m in the like, pretty early phases of exploring it but essentially, what it is is like a CRM for your DM’S, those a lot of letters and acronyms, Customer Relationship Management service, basically a CRM, for your direct messages, obviously. So essentially, what you could do is you can tag all of your messages, like potential customer, or, you know, potential influence, or to work for my brand, or like, whatever the categories would be that are applicable to you. And you can add notes to everybody and stuff like that. I will say that like, bit, you know, Facebook, business messenger, definitely has some of these features already but ChatSilo was another tool that had a little bit more features than were already built into the platform. So I don’t know, I’m currently checking that out. I just kind of wanted to share with anyone listening. I and I, I’d love to hear from you. You know, are there any, like apps or tools or just like business tools that you’ve used over the years that you’re like, Oh, this has really been a game changer for my business.

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, for me right now and you know, my business working in influencer marketing, kind of what I’m doing is ClickUp. They kind of pride themselves on the app of all apps. And it is, I love you know, if I can have everything in one spot, instead of opening Excel or Google Docs, and then moving to a chat, messenger, everything like that. I love it all in one spot, and ClickUp is what I’ve been using to kind of do that right now and get everything all together. So you can link and clients, you can organize XLS, to do list. And you can link any of your Google Docs or Google Drive. You can also chat right from ClickUp as well. So it’s just everything in one spot, which I love.

Jessy Grossman:
So that’s so interesting to hear. I have not used it myself but I continue to hear more about ClickUp. Do you remember how you heard of them in the first place, I’m always curious, like attribution where where things come from,

Meagan Miller:
I actually heard about them from an influencer. They were using it to keep track of their campaigns, because you can also make content calendars and there as well. So a lot of social media managers well have their content calendars all laid out in ClickUp, it really does cover almost every app out there, you can add it into your ClickUp. And I know a lot more influencers who are using it to kind of manage their campaigns and keep up with brand deals and negotiations. And so that’s kind of what I’m using it for, to help my clients out and you can have different folders. So every folder can my one client can just have access to that folder, and then I can have a folder for each client. So we communicate only through ClickUp.

Jessy Grossman:
That is so useful. I’m gonna go check that out and report back as one. But I your endorsements huge, so I glad to hear that it’s been so helpful for you. And then speaking of, you know, the influencers that you’re working with, like how do you identify the best influencers for you and the projects that you’re working on?

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, so I, we’ve talked about this a lot but I really love authentic influencers, who are really excited about what they’re working on. And so I have clients in the home decor space, who are renovating this, like 70s time capsule home right now. And she is so passionate about the renovation of her home. And I love influencers who are very passionate about, you know, their niche. So whether that’s fashion or home decor, whatever it may be, are just really excited about it. And I think that comes through on your channel. And again, yields results have more engagement, more followers, because they’re just authentic, they’re talking about themselves, they’re sharing, you know, parts of their life that people can really relate to. And for me, that’s how I find my influencers, for brand collaborations, but again, on the time and scale side, I think it’s really important to find influencers whose content is beautiful. So a lot of the times the following and the engagement rates, which of course are very important. We come most into play, but for me, it was always about content, depending on the campaign. If we could have amazing engagement, that and content that was beautiful, that’s where it was most important to me. And when I saw influencers pitching to me to work together on a campaign. If they had a smaller following, but beautiful, beautiful content, then we would still consider them because the following doesn’t always matter. It’s always it’s just about what you’re talking about on your channel and the content that you’re producing.

Jessy Grossman:
And so I’d love to hear how certain things weigh for way to you, meaning, you know, if they have incredible content, but not a great following, but their engagement is high, but their you know, click throughs are this now, like I would assume like it depends on the KPIs probably for the campaign, right?

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, definitely. So I’ve talked to a lot of influencers, especially in the micro-macro side. And they’re always like, I can’t reach out to brands, because you know, I don’t have enough following. But on the brand side in it, it might be true for some brands, or maybe it was just, you know, some of the companies that I’ve worked with, but it was really about and depending on the campaign and the KPIs, you know, content. And if we saw, you know, an amazing following, that’s awesome. But if the content wasn’t really there aligned with the campaign, then it would kind of just change our mind on you know, what we were going to do, and that depends on the campaign as well. So if the campaign is for reach, or you know, brand awareness or something like that, then that’s different. But if the campaign is for, you know, more photography or more videography that we can use in our marketing, then, you know, we could work on a collaboration that was just for content. So it truly depends on the campaign, the KPIs, the goals, but I worked with a lot of influencers just for beautiful photography.

Jessy Grossman:
That’s good to know. So anyone who’s listening and has an influencer and has beautiful photography, you have a chance, you have a chance. If you reach out to Meghan, you definitely have a chance of working together. So I’m sure people would appreciate knowing that I mean, everybody values different things. But again, like everybody has different KPIs, like, I could totally understand a brand. It’s just like, No, I mean, I really want to align myself with like, incredible content creators, because the content itself will just speak for itself. So yeah, I think is Yeah,

Meagan Miller:
Sorry to interrupt. And I think as brand managers too, it’s really important to really think outside the box and start pitching the importance of content, because for a brand, who needs content for their social, I’ve always found that user generated content or influencer generated content was always the best performing. So what is content kind of worth to the brands that you work for?

Jessy Grossman:
That’s a really good question. And I hope that everyone listening is sort of thinking that to themselves as they’re listening to this. I’d love to hear a little bit about what influencers or their managers can be doing better to be working with brands, like how can… all of us could be doing better I think I can preface it with saying that right. But of course, you’re living in your perspective. So having worked with so many influencers, a lot of managers, I’m sure what can they all be doing better?

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, I truly believe everyone could be better at remembering that there’s people behind at all the work that we’re doing. So whether you’re a manager or an influencer, I think there’s always kind of this tension that the brand might be trying to take advantage of the influencer, or the influencer might be asking too much of the brand versus the worth of their channel. And there’s always kind of this friction there kind of debate. But remembering that everyone going into it should be trying to get a mutually beneficial collaboration for both parts on the brand side, protecting the brand and the marketing goals and making sure that you’re still hitting your KPIs. But remembering that the influencer that this truly is their job, and what they’re doing is important. And it’s not just taking pretty pictures, but really a lot of work to create beautiful content for a brand that’s authentic to their followers. And then on the influencer side, just remembering that, you know, it is a brand who has their own marketing goals and VPs of marketing and CEOs to report to and share back what they’re doing. And so just remembering that it has to be mutually beneficial for both sides, and that there are people just doing their best job and doing their best to work towards their own goals. And I think that’s the most important thing to remember and that everyone can remember it on the brand side and the influencer side.

Jessy Grossman:
That’s really good advice. I hope everyone listening heard that and started to implement it tomorrow. It’s really, really solid advice. I’d also love to hear about what marketing trends have really stood out to you lately, like what are you seeing and what what looks pretty successful and exciting to you?

Meagan Miller:
Hmm, that’s a great question. Um, right now, I am loving kind of influencers who are working with brands, kind of for more than just posting in feed, but some how tying it back into almost all of their social channels. So from Instagram stories to end feeds to TikToks and a lot of people have been doing the full campaign for a while on most multiple touchpoints but when I follow like one of my favorite influencers, and I see that brand content across all of their kind of channels and what they’re working on, I love that aspect of it because I I believe that kind of what they’re talking about, they really liked because they posted it so many different places. And they put a lot of effort into all of that content. So I think as brand managers, depending on budgets and KPIs, trying to do the best that you can to have multiple touchpoints and not just collaborating with an influencer, just to do like one and feed Instagram posts or one Instagram story, but trying to do your best to get a full campaign and posting in as many places as you can.

Jessy Grossman:
Yeah, a hundred thousand percent we actually are in the process of like, figuring out one of our upcoming Clubhouse conversations to basically be about just that. So just the effectiveness of you know ambassadorships versus one off posts? And I don’t know you and I before we started recording talk, we’re talking a little bit about Gary Vee. And so the idea of like having one long form of content and just maybe chopping it up and like giving it legs and just being efficient with our, with our content and yeah, I don’t know I there’s different ways to approach all of this. But I, I’m excited to hear that you’ve witnessed that to be fairly successful as well, because I hope that’s where things are headed, more and more, especially in 2021 and beyond. So that’s pretty exciting. And then like beyond influencer marketing, which we’ve heard so much, what do you Megan like to do for fun?

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, so I love photography. I took a few photography classes in college and then I’ve just been around photography kind of my whole life so love taking photos, love going out on hikes and taking photography, which I think is why I love social and specifically Instagram so much is just the way that you know photography is moving and influencers in their content and the way that they make it look so different, especially if you follow like a tezza or a Kylie kitties, their content and their photography is just next level. So outside of influencer marketing, just always keeping up with photography trends.

Jessy Grossman:
That’s so cool. And like, Where did that come from that love of photography.

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, so my mom was actually a professional photographer. She has had a camera ever since she was little. And so I actually inherited some of my mom’s cameras, like really old ones that she had when I was my age, or when she was my age. And then I have my new photography but always growing up. We were like camera ready, always ready to smile at the camera because my mom either had a video camera or regular camera in our face at all times. Which is awesome, because now we have a lot of photography we can look back on but my love of photography definitely came from my mom.

Jessy Grossman:
That’s so cool. And so how does your mom feel that you’ve gotten into influencer marketing? Like does she understand it? Does she get it as a photographer? Like, what are her thoughts on that?

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, definitely. I think she loves it and kind of the, the content and the way that we’re posting and stuff like that. She was definitely interested in it and definitely understood it.

Jessy Grossman:
That’s so cool. I think it’s incredible to have such a positive female influence in your life, and to be able to infuse that into what you’re doing it for a career. I mean, how incredible is that I was watching some I don’t even remember some Netflix documentary last night and he was like my mom always telling me like, find what you love to do, and then learn how to make a living out of it. So I mean, isn’t that the ideal? It’s definitely, definitely the ideal.

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, Definitely.

Jessy Grossman:
For sure. So we asked this of everybody who comes on, I’m really excited to ask you, What do you wish someone had told your younger self that would have given you a professional or personal advantage today?

Meagan Miller:
Great question. For me, and the industry that I’m in, it would have definitely been to start your social media accounts when social first came out. I’ve seen so many influencers and bloggers who started when Instagram first launched. So I wish I would have known to do that, but then on more of the career side to get involved in everything that you can, even if it’s not directly the role of influencer manager, influence or intern, for example, but I had a lot of my background in college where I was managing events and all of the huge events that came to campus, whether it was concerts or comedians, I was managing the talent so from their writers to bringing them on campus to pick arranging their pickup locations. I was doing that when I was in college. And at the time, I just thought that was a really cool thing to do but now looking back understanding the relationship between like a celebrity and a man or a talent manager was so awesome to have. So going back, just getting involved as much as you can, whether that’s, you know, on your college campus or, you know, volunteering for something, volunteering for a brand for a philanthropic campaign, anything that you can to just get the most knowledge about a certain industry.

Jessy Grossman:
One hundred percent. So just like immerse yourself as early as possible, it’s so hard to like, see those connections? You know, like, that’s what these are why these questions like, What do you wish you told yourself, it’s like, well, I was mining herself. So like, I probably wouldn’t have been able to learn this until now. But, you know, hopefully younger women listening will be able to implement all these words of wisdom that people like yourself are passing on. And like really taking it to heart to really just do it, like, throw yourself into all these experiences, because it’s incredibly useful and beneficial. And like, imagine how far ahead they’ll be from where we were. Right like,

Meagan Miller:
So agree and just to add to that, too, like knowing a hundred percent knowing your worth as well. So when you immerse yourself so fully in something and you don’t necessarily recognize it as something that ties back just making sure you know your worth going into careers or your roles don’t be afraid to negotiate on your behalf I remember not doing that when I first started out my first big career move I didn’t negotiate I just was like so excited to have the role and looking back I definitely should have negotiated should have known going in kind of what my worth was. So I think that’s really popular right now to kind of talk about but I truly believe knowing your worth when you go into a new role.

Jessy Grossman:
Yeah, especially as women. One hundred percent, one million percent definitely and just like surrounding yourself by women who can help you figure that out if you’re you know, having confidence issues or you know, just try I mean look like we’re all young at some point and I don’t know anybody who you know immediately knew their full worth at an early stage like some of us certainly were more competent than others and you know, time builds up that confidence but I don’t know man like if you just surround yourself with your biggest cheerleaders they’re gonna… they’re you’ll do for them what they do for you and it’s all about like boosting each other up to be able to nailed that interview or or nailed that opportunity, whatever it looks like but fake it till you make it sometimes too right? Sometimes you got to do what you got to do so look it’s been such a pleasure having you on today really enjoyed our convo. Like I if women listening want to reach out and connect with you learn more about you just maybe work with you in some capacity, what’s the best way for them to connect?

Meagan Miller:
Yeah, I would love if everyone wanted to connect on Instagram. My Instagram is document your truth and so it’s pretty easy to find but I’d love to connect with anyone. Again, if there’s younger people listening or anyone who’s really trying to break into the influencer industry. I’m happy to discuss more answer any questions or again, just be your cheerleaders. So don’t hesitate to reach out and you can find me on Instagram at documentyourtruth.

Jessy Grossman:
Amazing. And yes, a very memorable handle for sure. Thank you so so much for being on today. Megan, It’s been it’s been a real pleasure.

Meagan Miller:
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.