How Women Engage With Desiree Martinez Of Women Of Video

[00:00:00] Jessy: Hi everyone and welcome to the WIIM Podcast. Women in Influencer Marketing is a first of its kind exclusive networking group made up of inspirational women. This podcast is where we explore influencer marketing and get real about women in business. Find us wherever you download podcasts and of course, you can always find us at iamwiim.com. That’s iamwiim double I .com

Hey guys, what is up? Welcome back to the Women at Influencer Marketing podcast. My name is Jessy Grossman of course and I am not only the founder of this incredible community but also your host for this podcast, my baby. It’s like my baby. I thought the community was fun to run but this podcast is just so fun.

It’s honestly one of the most consistent things I’ve ever done. Probably in my whole life and don’t get me wrong, there are definitely weeks and I’m like, Ugh, I really gotta record another video or I didn’t get my shit together and schedule a guest, so I gotta record like a solo episode or do something or I’m running late, I’m running behind whatever.

But that is actually pretty far in few between. I love this podcast and I think that it’s just because we get really interesting women on. And I hardly remember that we’re recording a podcast truly. It’s just fun to have these types of conversations.

And today’s guest is certainly one of those people that I could talk to her for hours. We have a lot of similarities but beyond that, we actually have a lot of differences. She’s also running a community but hers are more for creators.

So Desiree Martinez, she is a YouTuber, she’s a podcaster, an author, an award-winning social media, creative content creator and an advocate for women creators. So she is my type of woman.

She’s worked with hundreds of businesses and brands to help them grow their businesses with better content marketing. She really truly knows what it takes to help your business grow, to build community. We talk about that a lot on this episode today and get leads through a really noisy newsfeed.

She’s the founder of Women of Video and as the founder, she’s helping build economic. And equality for the female creator economy with community education and resources.

She is a hot mess mom of two. Her words, not mine. She’s a Mario Kart champ. Slytherin and nerdy wife living in Michigan. That mean she’s a Michigander.

My ju just came out . We have links to how to connect with her in the show notes but she is also a member of Wiim so you can also connect with her in our community. She and I were connected actually by another Wiim member who met her and knew me for a while and was like, you guys are doing somewhat similar things you should definitely connect, I think you to vibe and we really have.

So ,I just have huge respect for what she’s building. She has a women in video conference, which is really exciting. We talk about that a little bit in this episode. So there are lots of fun things to enjoy. Before we get into the episode though, I want to highlight our merch.

So you’ll see on your screen now, we’ve got beautiful new items that are in and so many of you are working from home and wanting to spruce up your background, what about what you’re wearing or what about what you’re holding in your hand. I think that your work from home situation should be a bunch of conversation starters.

You’ll actually see that in Desiree’s background. She’s got this cool background that we were talking about before we started recording where she’s yeah I’ve got this trinket that, you know, it was the first time I met so and so and that trinket, which means this to me and it’s like a whole wall of conversations.

I was like, oh, that’s so good, so smart. And I just think it would be so fun to be able to have a Wiim, whether it’s a Wiim shirt but have your Wiim water bottle or have a laptop case. There’s a lot of really great ways to kick off a conversation with an icebreaker. I love sort of asking people about their backgrounds or something that has nothing to do with the conversation at hand, just to sort of them off a little bit for the point of getting to know them better.

So some women merch can definitely do that. I’m a huge fan of Printful, which is where our merch comes from. The quality of their items are so, so good. So it’s getting a little colder. We’ve got hoodies and all sorts of nice warm weather items but also like I mentioned fun accessories as well.

Anyways, I have a bunch of them and I can vouch the quality is so good but also on a practical level, really good conversation starters. Oh, I love the iPhone case. That’s a really great one. So you’re like Wiim. What’s whim? Let me tell you anyways.

It’s really fun. We designed some stuff where we’ve got like some cool pops of color now, so definitely check it out. I’m a big fan of the merch. I also wanna mention to everyone and make sure that our members are aware of this incredible masterclass library that we have. So for members, it’s totally free, peruse. We’re so leaning into the on demand idea because fortunately, unfortunately, having live virtual events, people are finding it harder to attend these days. It’s not the beginning of the pandemic, which is a good thing.

But the point being we have this whole library of master classes from how you can YouTube all about Instagram reels. Everything from the stuff about the platforms to how to make a perfect pitch.

We have one coming up about podcasting. We have a couple of them about paid social. We have so many different topics out there but of course they’re all relating to influencer marketing, social media and also just women in business. We have some good ones about venture capital.

So it’s a wide variety of topics. So the next time that you’re perusing, I don’t know who has cable anymore but your TV or you’re perusing YouTube, that’s what I peruse these days or Hulu or Netflix consider us as well. We have really good content. We’re just producing more and more and adding to the library.

If you are not a member of Wiim, of course I’m gonna say you should join but real talk, you can also just view those classes, the master classes, all the cart. If you wanna join the membership, I know you’re gonna get a lot out of it. But real talk not everybody has the money. Not everybody wants to commit right away. I know I have to see something and mess around with something for quite a bit before I’m actually convinced to dive in.

So I’m not gonna be that pressure sale. But if you wanna explore Wiim a little bit and be like, what is Wiim all about? Like you wanna actually explore one of our master classes. You can each one, I think that they’re like 19.99, so very affordable. You pick the topic that you’re interested in, download it, you’ve got it, it’s all yours. Members of course, get to view them all as part of their membership fee.

Anyways, I am so proud of those master classes and also the ones that we are producing, coming up. We just did one on Web3 ,which I happen to think is a really interesting topic and I want more of our members to learn about. And like I mentioned, our next one coming up is all about podcasting. Obviously, I’m gonna share with you guys what I’ve learned and how I think you guys could do it better.

And if you’re like, wait, you guys, me, I’m gonna be on a podcast. Yes, girl. You are gonna be on a podcast, why? Because influencers are not just the ones that we hire on a regular basis. You might be hiring more thought leaders perhaps. Those are the types of influencers that I know that you are. It’s not just for the fashion estars and the parenting influencers and the traditional kinds of influencers that we’re thinking of.

I wanna encourage you, to be an influencer in your own right and get your thoughts out there. The only reason that like people listen to this podcast is cuz I’m consistent and I’ve got a lot of shit to say and I get some really interesting people on here to have conversations. That is literally the recipe for having a podcast. Of course, we’re gonna talk about how to have a successful podcast and sort of like the nitty gritty of what microphones to do and what to think about when growing and building a podcast.

Anyways, if this is something that intrigues you even in the littlest bit, check at our events page because it is coming up soon.

So it’s i am wiim.com/events. All right, without further ado, I’m so excited for you to get to know Desiree again. She’s a gem. She tells it how it is and I know you’re gonna learn a lot from her. So enjoy. This is Desiree Martinez of Women of Video.

All right, so Miss Desiree, we’ve been chatting for a good like 10, 15 minutes before hitting record. I’m excited to continue our conversation. We heard quite a bit about you in the intro to this episode. First of all, warm welcome first and foremost.

So thank you for joining today. I always think it’s awesome to hear in your own words, a little bit more about you and like how you got to being where you are today. Cause you have such an interesting story. So lay it on us.

[00:10:17] Desiree: I’ve got so many ways to start this. Sometimes I get sassy and it was like I was born at three o’clock on the Thursday. Truth of is like what led me to like our conversation is just my deep seated fire in my belly, aggressive desire to help women creators. Because I have been a part of the creator economy for about five years, I’ve been a social media marketer for about 13. And it’s so interesting to me how, we make all these strides technologically and socially and culturally but for some reason, whenever something starts or becomes new, there’s like this fight for women to have equal pay and equal representation.

And I was like, why is it that men, white men specifically always dominate things and then push us down and then we have to fight for it. And then there’s this constant state back and forth of devaluing and deconstructing what we’re doing.

I’ve always thought that it’s been super messed up. I got into the creator economy because I have a social media marketing agency called All In One Social Media that helps businesses manage social media with package based services while putting military spouses to work as social media managers.

And, my husband was in the Air Force at the time in our community, in our base. The women were not able to get jobs. We have this Facebook group for every base around the country, for spouses and it was those things like, I can’t get work, the town will not hire me even as like retail or fast food.

And I was like, This is super messed up because I actually grew up a military kid. My mom had this exactly mission happen to her. And I was like, how is this still an issue 25 years later, especially when we have so many great opportunities for making money online.

So I started to teach them how to be social media managers and then I’d hire them so that they could make money passively with a company that understood their lifestyle, their jargon, their needs and things like that.

And so, because it was military life, my husband came home and was like, hey, we have orders to move to South Korea. And I was like awesome ,how the heck am I supposed to keep growing this agency if I don’t have a way to get leads, go to conferences, talk to people.

And so I turned to YouTube as that solution because I could teach people about social media by answering their common problems. And I just turned into this thing I absolutely was obsessed with. It’s like my favorite thing I get to do. It was a wonderful creative outlet for me. And, in addition to being something that was really effective, as I continued to get better. And work through my really awkward kinks as a creator that we all have when we start.

And it was just this thing that kept growing and growing. It still to this day is a fantastic lead source for my agency. It allows for us to continue to make money, put military spouses to work, and I’ve added additional revenue streams from it, like through the Amazon influencer program, through sponsorships, through affiliates, through courses, through syndication, all with my like 35,000 subscribers.

So it’s just one of those things for me that I really love it as a creator. But the thing that pushed me to the women in video, which is where women as have the alignment, the connection is there’s a conference in the industry called Social Media Marketing World, and I really was a big advocate for this conference at the time, but they were like, we’re going all in on YouTube. We think this is the future of marketing.

And when they announced all of the speakers at their conference, they were all men. It was four white dudes and one man of color. And I was like, why would you do this? 60% of marketers are women.

So rather than getting mad, I came up with a solution and I was like, hey, how about we did a panel called Women of YouTube and we could talk to marketers about how to work with women creators on YouTube and like what they can do and how it can, be a return on their investment.

And they turned it down even though they liked it cuz they were just full. And so I turned it into a live stream with a company called Tube Buddy, which is an extension for your YouTube channel.

And it went off fantastically. And people at that, same conference that I was at, cause I did it the week before. People were coming up to me asking me like, where can we get more? I wanna do smart. I love hearing these women and these stories. And I kept getting asked and so I turned it into a podcast.

And so the women of YouTube was born, in 2022. We rebranded it to the Women of Video because at the time when we even started that podcast. TikTok didn’t exist in that way. Video wasn’t anything but YouTube. And so since then we’ve branched out to expand what we’re doing. Plus you should never build a brand on the proprietary trademarked name like YouTube or Facebook or something.

And so since then we’ve been telling the stories of women YouTube creators to inspire other women to start and keep creating on YouTube, and other video platforms so that they can build economic impact in equality for themselves as creators through education resources, and community.

[00:14:53] Jessy: I’m so obsessed with your story. So we were introduced actually by another WIIM member. Kristen, shout out to you girl, you sort of made history here and we just had an initial call.

 I thought you were great. We just had a pretty short call though. And then I started looking at your content after and honestly , I was hooked. Your content is so good. And I’m just so impressed by what you stand for. Obviously we’re like very much pro-women and trying to get women’s voice out there. There’s a lot of synergies. I think that’s probably why we were put in touch in the first place.

But, I’ve love to talk a little bit about community because it’s such a buzzword in the past year, couple years for sure. And you see all these really incredible, exciting communities take off and they have a complete life of their own regardless of what it started out as.

I think that people who are listening today, whether you’re on the brand side, the agency side, the influencer side, maybe you are an influencer or a manager, absolutely needs to wrap your head around the power and the possibility of community. So I’d love to just start by asking you, what’s your experience building a community? Because short’s incredibly successful now. Everybody starts at zero. And where do you see your community going?

[00:16:17] Desiree: So I think the community is like the new online buzzword. And I think that because it’s talked about so much, I worry it’s gonna get a little devalued. People are gonna get sick of it. Kind of like synergy, like those kinds of things. The thing about a community is with whatever you’re doing, whether you are an individual influencer who’s trying to impact people through whatever you do, or whether you’re a larger organization, like a big corporation like Apple or Starbucks, whatever you are fans, you prolific customers, the people that just keep coming back to you because they like what you’re doing. They like your messaging that’s relating in some way, shape, or form. They like your style.

Those are your people. Essentially think of your community, like those are your people. Those are the people that you call, you turn to when you need something. Like, I need comfort, I need help, I need resource, I need solutions. I need someone to cry on. Kind of like how we as individuals are trying to like build our tribe of small people.

Having a community is essentially a bigger tribe run a specific theme. The more specific your theme is, the more specific purpose you have, the more it’s very clear what you do and what you offer, the more successful you’ll be.

 We’ve heard a lot, especially in the past year or two as the creator economy has blown up, is you have to pick a niche, like you have to be in a box. They have to know where to put you. And while that can seem a little creatively limiting, sometimes it’s really important for building out foundational community needs.

When we started off with The Women Of Video, we were The Women Of YouTube. And so being able to specifically find women, YouTube creators to talk to them. Like that, build up really solid foundation for us.

And then additionally, once we dove into what our content was, it wasn’t just about telling the stories of women YouTubers, it was about telling the stories of women YouTubers to help other women become YouTubers. And now it’s to become creators.

Because video is where everyone wants to spend their time now. We’ve seen that with TikTok, we’ve seen it with Reel. We’ve seen that with Facebook. We’ve seen that with YouTube. We’ve seen that with Pinterest. We’ve seen that with Snapchat. It’s just where we spend our time now, it’s how we consume our content the most.

And being able to know, okay, how can they turn my 60 seconds to five minutes into money is a question. So I always ask people. How do you make money? And so the fact that I have the uncomfortable conversations with people that for some reason we societally have decided that we don’t talk about money in politics, which I think is super stupid because if you don’t talk about it, you can’t know and you can’t help with change.

But so I have that conversation like, how are you making money? I want people to know. And then I share with people how much money I make and how I’m doing it so that they know what is possible and how they can do it. Because I think when people talk about becoming a YouTuber, they wanna do it for adoration, for fans, and because they think that they’re gonna get a lot of money off of adsense or from reals bonuses and things like that, when in fact, for the vast majority of creators, it’s their smallest income stream.

And so by being able to know, I can go to the Women Of Video community because I’m gonna find other, solutions about being a creator, the problems I might have and people I can ask questions to about like, how’s my thumbnail doing? Or I can’t figure out what this is. Why is anyone else experience this issue?

Being able to go to the Women of Video community to learn about what’s happening, what’s going on with Twitch, what’s going on with Instagram, what’s going on with YouTube? What’s going on with these different things? Being able to go to a community and being able to find the right resource. And tools to help me with my journey.

Like, I’m a YouTuber and I’m expanding into shorts, but I wanna also distribute my content onto Instagram and to TikTok and Pinterest. But that’s a lot of extra time in manual labor. How can I simplify this? Oh, you wanna use the tool? Repurpose.io because you post it once and then it will download on watermarked version, then redistribute it to the places it needs to go.

Right? So it’s having that place that they know they can come to for answers and for support and for the refreshing, inspirational story on a weekly basis, that’s what this community is and that’s what they know they’re going to get.

And then we are able to build that up. We have over a thousand members, in our Women Of Video community, we’re looking to expand and make it bigger and reach more people, and that’s why we’re also doing an in-person event in Atlanta in March of 2023. That’s just all women video .For women by women focusing on helping women creators build economic impact and equality through education, resources and community so that they know without a shadow of a doubt that not only do they have tons of valuable information, but they have a great tribe to support, push and help them to achieve all of their goals.

[00:20:53] Jessy: If I can make it to that conference, I’ve already told you, I really wanna go. It just sounds so good. The premise is incredible and having an in real life, like an in person experience like that, like nothing beats it. I just feel you’ve just feed off each other’s energy and just like bringing so many like minded people together for, a conference like that, I’m excited for it. So, we’ll definitely leave more information in the show notes about the conference for those of you guys who are interested in attending and learning more, but I’m super excited for you to do that.

So you guys have like about a thousand people in your network, I’m sure more who just like sort of know about you and I call those that are lurkers, who are like, oh, what’s going on over there? And it’s like, come on in, commit. You’re not gonna get as much out of it, lurking from the shadows.

But you have so many women who have found, you guys, discovered you guys and love what you’re doing. What are you hearing from them? I am always trying as much as I can to ask my community, what can I be giving you more? What can I be giving you more of? And it does real talk, it’s tricky because everyone’s sort of looking for different things and I’ll speak personally, I sort of wanna find and define what my community is. Have you gone through this, similar struggles in trying to always be as relevant as possible for your community and what are they asking for these days?

[00:22:21] Desiree: It’s a really tough question. So this is a two part thing. Okay. So let’s talk about the quality of your community, so that you can keep supporting them. And I think that’s also the question of how do you how do you figure what they need? I love transparency and honesty about it. Cause I don’t want you guys to think this is just easy and roses all the time.

Right now we’re actually in a hard place with the community and it’s not because they’re uninterested. It’s because the platform that we are mainly communicating on, which is Facebook groups, the reach is trash. And it’s hard to connect people, especially cuz like you have these like community expert people that are like, oh, it’s still relevant and if you’re posting and being active and it’s like, no, it’s not that simple cause, you have to think too, a lot of people are not using Facebook as much anymore, and so we’re in a process internally as our organization switching to a new place to communicate and to be able to make sure our messages are getting pushed the way that we want them to so that they’re able to get them there.

And then also, because of the reach issue and we wanna have a growth issue. The creator economy is really cluttered and so if, and there’s a lot of companies that are leading in the creator economy that have bigger budgets. So I’m spending the time investing financially and like targeted advertising and doing a lot more outreach so that we are able to get in front of more people.

Because I think that it’s ridiculous to rely completely on an organic strategy when you’re fighting against all these other places that now are filling in noise that didn’t used to be. Now, how can I make sure that we’re doing what they need to do? What they need to know is one is asking, asking people, having conversations, DMing with people like, hey, what are the issues that you’re facing?

Talking to other people who are in the creator education space. Like, Hey, what are the issues that you’re seeing your audience needs? And filling in some of those gaps and providing answers. And sometimes it’s having answers for things and solutions for things that they didn’t know that they needed. I’m in the pulse for the creative economy, and so when things come in, I’m gonna share them.

With the audience about stuff so that they know what’s going on. Like, when we recorded this, Instagram was trying to figure out how to do media kits through their app. And so I had, shared an article from Instagram that talked about how that they’re working on that. Cause again, being an influencer and a creator, you need to know how you can make money and it’s another opportunity for that.

So it’s really, answering the questions that they have and meeting their needs but also having answers in meeting needs they didn’t know they had.

[00:24:33] Jessy: And what are your thoughts on the media kit thing? Cause I have so many, but you go first.

[00:24:37] Desiree: I think that Meta as a whole is to pick a lane and I think that they are just struggling. And I think that they are not, listening to their community. They are not paying attention to what people want.

And I think that they focus too much on user experience versus the people that allow for their platform to have success like business pages and creators. And so I find that rather than trying to make new stuff no one’s asking for, fix the problems that people have.

[00:25:10] Jessy: Oh my God. Snaps to that. For people who are maybe tuning in and don’t know what this is so, they’re trying to basically have a hand in supporting creators in developing media kits.

And I was so perplexed by that, like you are a social media platform. It doesn’t even feel connected. I can’t even say connected business. What fundamentally bothers me about it. I don’t know how you feel.

In my mind that’s a small business and maybe, a small business that can basically get traction and have its own life and its own income and its own, success outside of Instagram. And I’m like, why are they trying to take that from somebody?

 I hate that idea. And we have a weekly live stream about the latest news and influencer marketing and social media. So I think last week, two weeks ago we discussed, the fact that people are not so happy with the creator marketplace that Instagram has also created for brand deals. And I sort of pulled our community and I was like, Is anyone using that? Is anyone in there? And a lot of people were saying, no.

And I’m like, why are they in that space? And I agree with you. There are so many bigger problems, that are not fixed yet, that should be fixed. Why are they focusing in so many different directions?

[00:26:36] Desiree: Honestly for me, when I think about what they’re trained to do is that they think that they, well, where were everyone’s hosting, we should be helping them with all these other things that they have.

Oh, creators need sponsors, let’s connect them to sponsors without realizing that there’s literally, sponsorship coordinators with almost every major company. And then there’s like communities like WIIM where it’s people that are in charge of helping influencers from an agency or from a brand perspective or a marketing or PR perspective that find them to pay them because, Facebook and Meta is like, well we can help them then we can get money for helping them.

And all of these other things that exist are like, no, we don’t wanna do that. We don’t wanna get charged more or let the influencer lose money. So we’re going to go directly to them and create terms that make sense. They’re not paying attention.

I I listened to this really great creator community podcast called Colin and Samir. They said something perfect this morning cause they’re talking about the whole twitch disaster that happened about a week ago.

And this is something that companies need, especially on that level. They need someone whose job it is to be the creator liaison. They need someone whose job it is to talk to creators and be the sound of reason in those rooms that people are trying to come up with solutions through things people have.

YouTube, does not have an influencer brand partnership portal. They have individual people that coordinate act as a contact for YouTube creators once they hit certain subscriber and viewership levels and they work with them that way to help them with partnerships and finding the right deals and helping them with what they’re trying to accomplish because they know they’re happy, they’re creating, they can put ads in front of their content and then they can make more advertising dollars.

For some reason, companies like Twitch and Meta and all these other ones are not having that part. You’re seeing it actually a little bit with LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a whole creator division that they’re doing and they have a lot of people that they’re investing in to help, with creators on LinkedIn that create better LinkedIn content and they understand their lane and training people how to create for LinkedIn for success rather than just creating for creating sake.

So I think if brands are in a position to have a creator liaison, it’s gonna be truly beneficial for it. And that’s from a platform standpoint. When you talk about from a company standpoint, a company standpoint, especially that is working with creators, you need to consider having a creator board of directors.

I am literally on a creator board of directors for a company called Spread Shop. Spread Shop does print on demand ,merchandise for people, for creators. So it’s like I have YouTube channel, I have this phrase or saying I did, I’m gonna put on a t-shirt and long sleeves and a face mask on a cup and I’m gonna sell it.

And they print shops all over the world, so you can even print locally in other countries. So if I have an audience in America and Canada and Australia, I can have a Canadian in Australian store as well, and they can print locally at that location so that they’re not paying astronomical international fees. It’s very smart and very well done. And because they understand that as executives who run a company who are not actively creating and paying attention to the creator economy in the way that a creator is because it’s the foundation of their business, they’re asking us. So there’s a board of 10 of us and they ask us questions and we’re all doing different things on the platform and they have an agenda every month and we meet every month and we ask about stuff and they ask us about stuff we talk about stuff, we discuss things, they ask us questions and we give them insights they didn’t even think about.

So if the creator economy and influencers and UGC are a part of what you’re doing in your marketing, you need to schedule and find a way to communicate with creators so you can know what to do versus assuming you have the answers

Make your life easier, by just going to the source. You don’t need to recreate water, water already exists.

[00:30:31] Jessy: It’s hard though, in an ideal world entirely, a hundred percent. It comes back to the beginning of our conversation. We’re talking about communicating and hearing and listening and responding to our own communities, and we’ve got a thousand and less people to listen to and it’s like, I struggle with making sure that I’m listening to everybody and like Instagram or Meta whatever, they’re hearing hundreds and thousands of millions of voices and they all need different things.

So I totally hear you on that. I can’t help but think that they just need to find their North star from within a little bit more and stop listening to so many people. It depends though, right? Cause you’re also talking about a company that’s creating merch for creators.

So yeah, I would like to think that they’re in touch with their customers. It’s interesting though, right? Like it depends on what scale you get to.

I had breakfast with someone a couple days ago. He is an investor in the creator economy and he’s like, if you know of anybody who like, they’re creating like really interesting businesses or something that’s really gonna solve a problem on a mass scale, I would love to talk to them and possibly invest in them.

And I’m like, I have a community of hundreds of people, thousands of people. You have a community, I know people who have communities amongst ourselves. We’ve got a reach of so many incredible, brilliant, capable women. And I am having trouble coming up with some people to suggest.

I was having such an internal struggle on my way home that day, because I’m like, maybe I’m just not in touch with the right people. That could be possible, but I’m also thinking , their so many people that I know , they just work for others, they’re not necessarily entrepreneurial, they are running, brand partnerships within awesome agencies or whatever companies they’re doing, but they’re not necessarily doing their own things despite having incredibly brilliant ideas and they could go off on their own and make a killing.

But I hear from more people who want to go in the entrepreneurial route and wanna pick my brain about it, but, don’t like something gets in the way. My question to you is where do you see women in particular sort of like tripping up professionally in the creator economy? It’s a big question, but I’d love to see if you are seeing that like I’m seeing it.

[00:33:10] Desiree: It’s a very good question. So how are women, impacting the greater economy, I think is kind of what you’re asking. I think that women are impacting the greater economy because there’s a lot of data around women and it comes from two sides. There’s the underrepresentation, the underpay that we run into and unfortunately we run into that as women and literally every job in every sector in America and that’s I think a conversation for us to have maybe a little bit. But when we talk about the impact that we’re having.

 There are some things that just fundamentally just are the way that they are. Women are in charge of their budgets and their households. Women are in charge of the vast majority of spending and shopping. Women are in charge of what usually happens when it comes to families and children and things like that. Men have their places their stuff is usually around, executive decision making ultimately while women do the managerial multitasking pieces. And we can see countless, TikTok videos and reals that kind of talk about that and like how to fix it and how to stand out and how to lean into it and that kind of stuff.

Women’s impact on the creator economy currently is we are, here and we are allowed and we are creating and what we need is support from brands and algorithms to have attention.

Women make up less than 12% of the top 25 training videos on youtube. Am talk about the top 30 earners from YouTube in 2021, there was four women in that list and two of them were children. When you talk about things like how much from a brand deals perspective, how much women make versus men.

There are more women influencers on the platforms but they make less money than men dollar for dollar. And I think that the issues is women need support from companies algorithms and to understand this is why we are here. We’re here to help and solve problems for 50% of the population.

 The fact that women are a niche, 50% of the population is a niche, is a total problem. But we have to keep showing up as women creators also to help with that disparity, to help with the struggle to show our genius and bring things to life and what we’re capable of doing. So when you have opportunities to stand out and to shine and to be present, to be a leader, do it.

So, like for example, in my video, if you’re not listening, I have a little box here on my shelf and it has a bunch of colors on it. This is done by Sarah Ranae Clark. She is an artist who does coloring books. So what she does is she buys comic books and she’s incredibly, incredibly detailed, turns ’em into works of art from a coloring book and she talks about crayons and how she sketches and how she does it in her techniques and things like that.

And she created these color palettes. So it’s kind of like when you go into like Pinterest and you’re like, I wanna repaint my living room. And then you go find the swatches of the different colors. Like there’s five to six colors on there. Like these go well together. This is a good theme.

She created a whole box of them because she had created this digital product that was wildly successful and she has sold over 6,000 of these and she has a following of about 125,000 subscribers, I think when she did this.

And she got featured on, I forget his name. Something Navar. He used to be the creator coordinator for YouTube and he started his own sort of thing, and he featured her and talked about how she’s doing it and what she’s doing and how she’s having an impact.

These are the kinds of things keep making, keep innovating, keep being the leader and making and doing what you wanna think and don’t let anyone tell you not to do it because, you know your audience, you know what they need, you know what they want. And the more you can succeed, the more the rest of us can succeed behind you.

And I’m not saying it’s put pressure on anybody, it’s just to hopefully inspire you. Like if you do it, then other people can do it too. Someone has to be first, someone has to be second, someone has to be third.

So lead the way and don’t hide because some man tells you you’re not value. I have a personal experience. So there’s a gentleman in my industry, he’s actually on my board with me and I was having a struggle with my YouTube channel. I had turned to him for consultation, and he’s like, you’re being discovered for the wrong things on your YouTube channel. I made the decision based on his advice to take down from a five of my top performing videos because it was categorizing me wrong on YouTube. At the same time, it was to double down the content I wanna be found for and known for .

Because I did that my channel has been on this slow decline, half the viewership, half the ad revenue over the past year and now I’m having to reach out to someone for a new consultation.

And so because this guy told me to do this thing and I believed him rather than talking to my other peers that I talked to my other peers about it and they were all women. They’re like, You should never have done. it was just so I got burned because I didn’t turn to people that understood me, my message, what I was doing.

I turned to him because he’s supposed to be the leader in the industry and he turned out to be wrong. So we have to support each other and every chance that we can, even if it takes work, even if it’s hard, even if it requires extra work to find them extra money to have access to them because they’re good. You gotta do it.

[00:38:11] Jessy: Yeah. No, I really appreciate that so much. I don’t know this guy, I don’t know if I’m from home while literally don’t know who you’re referring to, but maybe what he said worked on one channel, not on yours. Who knows? Or maybe he just had no idea what he was talking about. like, I think the point is to know your own business. Probably that’s one thing I’m taking from what you’re saying, right? You can bring in outside people and outside voices and perspectives, but at the end of the day, trust your gut and like you see what’s happening and so you have to respond to that. That’s one thing that I took from that.

Here is one of my gripe that I have and it probably is a little bit controversial, but I think being a minority that you’re, so eloquently saying earlier, how can 50% of the population be a minority but we are.

Because we are classified in that way. I know I feel this and I can imagine a lot of other women feel this pressure to have to like pave the way for future generations of women. And having a certain level of success because we are fortunate that we are this generation, that has so much more than the women before us did that it’s like well, we have to just leap frog for the next generation meaning, I feel this pressure to not just have a community, but have a community that eventually, has thousands of members and is incredibly successful and helps thousands of other women because God forbid I were to do something on a less than that scale, would it be for nothing?

Like, I had so much opportunity and things at my fingertips that I should be able to kill it. And if I don’t they won or he did it better. I hate generalizing all women, of course, but like my approach to business is probably different than a lot of other guys and I actually feel like I’m fairly aggressive and assertive and direct in business.

But I see other people around me, building bigger things, getting more reach, getting more buzz, all the things. And I’m like, am I failing myself and am I also failing to give the opportunity to women in the future? Because there was already a precedent set by what I did. Do you feel any of that? Or am I incredibly hard on myself?

[00:40:42] Desiree: I want you to know right here now you are not alone. You and I we can get together and console each other and talk about this tears and joy with lots of wine together. Girl, I hear you hard on this.

Why can’t I just do my job, right? It’s kinda that question, why can’t I just do my job? Why can’t I quite quit myself? Like why can’t I just show up, do what I need to do, make my money and leave? No. I have to be in this constant state of, I need to help change the world, need to help progress. I need to help grow. I need to help be an influence and change lives.

And I think that the reason for women like you and me is cuz we’re hardwired that way. There are a lot of women out there that are not,. There are a lot of women other that because they’re not in a position to do it. They don’t have the personality to do it. They don’t have the means, the income, the ability, the thoughts for it. Entrepreneurial brains. Movements driven brains, leader driven brains, government official kind of brains. It’s a very specific and often lonely track because you’re doing a lot of things at a high level with a lot of pressure on yourself, a lot of pressure from others, a lot of desires and goals and things that you wanna do.

And it even kind of gives you like achievement fatigue. I wrote a book. It’s a hard thing to do. A very small percentage of people write a book. I wrote a book, It’s called Start ,Suck, Get Better. It’s about my journey as an entrepreneur and being a woman and a mom and a wife.

And I just kept doing more things. I don’t really talk about my book a lot. I don’t advertise to promote my book a lot. I was like, all right I wrote a book, check the box. Okay, now I gotta keep moving on to the next thing.

 So I think that there’s something to be said for achievement fatigue, but there’s also something to be said for like, there needs to be people like us. And you, if you are listening, if you feel this way, because you are possibly amazing human being is wildly capable of change and wildly capable of helping people. And as women, that’s like our DNA is to build communities, build the tribe, help each other, support each other, nurture each other. And the more we can do that as women, the better the world will be. When women are in charge of things, things are better.

People go look at Rwanda. The horrible tragedy that happened to them in the nineties. So many men died in that travesty. And now it’s in this place where Rwanda is predominantly a female society. You have female government, you have female business who have female executives. That country is thriving because women are in charge .Cause women stepped up and stepped in and did what we knew they were capable of.

And so whenever you were filling alone or that like, why can’t I just do this? Why do I have to put so much pressure on myself? Why do I have to make this hard? Why am I trying to make this so much? Keep going because it means that you were doing the right thing. Because if it was easy, everyone would do it.

And you would feel so unfulfilled and so unhappy because you didn’t do everything you could to try and make change.

[00:43:34] Jessy: I also think that it’s an incredibly powerful thing to just be more open about these feelings. Right. Because even talking to you and being like, oh shit, she totally gets it. This pressure that we feel as women.

So I’ll tell you when I was having this conversation with this guy, and he is like, Yeah, so if you know anybody who is worthy of being invested in or wants to contribute to our fund, let me know. And I was so mad because I’m leaving there and I’m like, I literally know hundreds of brilliant people and why can’t I come up with anyone who’s doing this.

So many of the people that they’re investing in are men. And he even said it at the meeting, he’s like, oh, it’s such a shame that so few women are, VCs. And I’m like, had a podcast about it. Do you know this woman? He is like, Of course I do. Cause there’s 2% of women who are VCs of course he knows the one woman that I’m referencing.

My point being is that, I’ve been trying to dissect what I feel about this conversation since it happened, I do think that having more women who are the investors would make a huge difference.

You mentioned you’re like women we’re builders, we’re connectors. A lot of us are very nurturing and wanna help each other, which I think is like an incredible qualities to have. There’s just not one path…

[00:44:58] Desiree: There’s not one path for anyone, even a man. I think that my suggestion to you as a fellow builder is to, one, pitch yourself to him for investment, if that’s what you’d want to do. And then I also think to present the opportunity to the community as well, but I also think it’s to keep going, keep doing like this proves like if it’s hard for you, if you can’t think of people, if the things aren’t there, you need to keep doing what you’re doing because it’s so necessary.

[00:45:23] Jessy: Yeah. No, I appreciate that. I’d be lying if I didn’t say what about me? The day after I’m having conversations with other people that I had scheduled and the little semblance of an I idea and I’m just like, maybe I should connect her to this person’s. They could build something to be good enough for this guy. And am like, oh, I hate that. But then I’m like, Ooh, maybe WIIM should be its own VC fund and maybe we should invest in women. And…

[00:45:52] Desiree: So there’s this awesome bank that’s for the Creators, It’s called Creative Juice. It’s run by women. Her name is Sima, and she got a bunch of VC capital to start with this.

And their whole mission is to invest in greater specifically women. It’s finding this kinda Spotter. Spotter is a company that has a billion dollar valuation and they want to reach more women because they see that they have a book of business and it’s so many men. There’s not a lot of women. A lot of women are discouraged from thinking that they can work with a company like Spotter and do that kind of stuff because they don’t have an existing book of library and a large track record and examples of like successful women through their program.

There are so many companies, there are DEI, diversity, equality, and inclusion initiatives for reason with so many companies ,because they are not able to have it stream yard, the tool that we’re using to do this. Their marketing manager’s a woman, and she’s constantly finding that. She’s like, I hate the bro mentality that we keep finding ourselves in with all these events we go to VidSummit and VidCon and then even like with their own YouTube channel and the people on our team. It’s because men are creating this and so this create, this bro culture which attracts more bros.

And she’s like, so I have to be this female voice of reason asking and pushing for more initiatives to do things like Women of Video to figure out how to partner with companies like WIIM. And so it’s a lot of that kind of stuff and it’s knowing that, there are initiatives for women and there are things for women to do is just. We’re fighting a really big battle while men just cruise along. They’re a nice little flat path.

[00:47:24] Jessy: I will say , I could talk about this with you for a very long time.

[00:47:28] Desiree: Oh yeah, for sure.

[00:47:29] Jessy: It’s a great conversation, because it’s a very relevant conversation. There’s no solution to it. We’re problem solving as we’re talking about this, but you can’t look left and right you just gotta keep doing what you feel is the path that you should be on because, you hear this from creators all the time, right? it’s like, oh, how did you become this creator with millions of followers? Most of them are like, oh, I just started cause I was really into knitting . I was really into this hobby, whatever the hell it was, but they just genuinely loved it. And then coupled with a business savviness, because you gotta have that as well of course. And all the ingredients were there, but it didn’t start by defining the end result. It didn’t start by saying, I’m going to do this at the end.

I wonder if this could be a bit of a distraction, by comparing yourself and I wish we didn’t have to compare ourselves. I wish we could just continue to trust what we’re doing and you know what’s a real measure of success to me? It’s actually not even having to go through a venture capital fund. I’ve said this past on our podcast like venture capital, they don’t just hand you money for nothing. They hand you money for ownership and control of your baby, the thing that you’ve created. And it’s like this weird marker of success if you’ve had like a round of funding from venture capital, like Woo, they have venture capital money and it’s like, this clout chasing, it’s like a misnomer because actually if you’ve been able to successfully build up a company where you haven’t had to give up any ownership of your company to somebody just in exchange for money. That’s actually way more successful in my eyes, but I digrace.

[00:49:18] Desiree: A hundred percent. It’s like trade vanity metrics. Like, ooh, venture capital. When I was at VidCon, I did a channel review with this guy and he was talking about, he got venture capital and he was doing this stuff cause he has this tool for live streaming, but it’s not like a stream yard where it’s accessible for everybody. It’s for fancy live streaming, luxury live streaming.

And I was like, okay, cool. I got venture capital. I’m like, then why are you coming? First of all, why you coming to me for channel review? And number two, I’m talking to him and I’m like, everything you’re saying is bullshit. Who cares about how many people are on your stream? How many of them are customers?

 There are so many people that forget about the important parts. There are so many things that get funded that just are failures and they tank and it’s horrible and there are so many things that do well and it’s just they bootstrapped the shit out of it to get there. And so I think the sooner we can stop chasing specific things and vanity metrics and whatever misleading numbers you think that you need, the sooner you can focus on what you need to do which is asking yourself, what do I need to create? What I need to do, to build an audience that will give me money?

[00:50:24] Jessy: Yeah, definitely. How do you solve the problems? What are the problems to solve and what’s the best way to do it? I listen to your podcast, I’m excited about, your community and the conference and all that stuff, and sometimes you need to take off our marketer hats or like professional hats and just be a straight up consumer and it’s like, why am I attracted to your community?

It’s because I can go in there and get some really awesome wisdom, some really awesome perspective and just take that and run with it today. It’s really practical advice and it’s from a hive mind of women who are in the same position that you’re in.

So I love that. There is something there, like you can’t completely disregard the buzz that’s created by certain things. We all work in marketing. It’s like I know that there’s value in buzz, even though I wish there wasn’t. I know that there’s value in getting accolades and you know, whatever the fuck.

Even though I know that nowadays everybody buys accolades. If you’re talking about like awards and things like that, I could tell you how to get them . I can tell you how to win an award. You get a PR person. And you pay them to then pay award ceremonies to give you an award.

 It’s all bullshit, but it is what it is. So I think that if we build the thing, solve the problem but also acknowledge what is happening around us, just having an awareness of what the reality is. We’ll be fine.

[00:51:52] Desiree: It’s more than fine. We’ll be successful. We’ll all be able to live the lives that we want, the way that we want, how we want.

And I think the best thing that anyone can do is hopefully as an added bonus, you can help lift up other women along that journey.

[00:52:05] Jessy: Snaps to that. I hope that people listening and watching this conversation are definitely gonna wanna check out your community because I’ve said this on the podcast before, I love a good niche communities.

The fact that you guys are very specifically in video I think it’s brilliant, very specifically helping women, I love it.

Tell them what’s the best way to learn about Women of Video.

[00:52:28] Desiree: Womenofvideo.com. It’s our hub for our podcast or community and for the conference.

[00:52:34] Jessy: Amazing. Perfect. So go check that out.

We will have that linked in the show notes of course. Thank you so much for coming on. I’m so happy we were put in touch. I feel like we could chat for a while. I enjoy our conversations genuinely. I love what you’re doing, so I wanna support you. I want our community to support you as well, cause think you’re doing really, really valuable work.

So, thank you for coming on today.

[00:52:59] Desiree: Thanks for having me. I hope that everyone has a great day. Remember, you and everyone listening are possibly amazing.

[00:53:05] Jessy: Yes. What a good note to end on. You’re the best.

If you enjoy this episode, we gotta have you back. Check out our website for more ways to get involved, including all the information you need about joining our collective. You can check out all the information at iamwim.com. Leave us a review, a rating but the most important thing that we ask you to do is to share this podcast. Thanks for listening. Tune in next week.