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00:00:00
00:00:01
Lauren Kleinman
87 Plays6 days ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Lauren Kleinman.
To keep up with or connect with Lauren:
✨ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenkleinman/
✨ Website: https://www.dreamday.la/
To stay in touch with Meredith and Medbury:
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Medbury on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medbury_agency/
Subscribe to the Medbury newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Email Meredith: Meredith@MedburyAgency.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Lauren's Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Lauren, I'm so happy to be getting to have this conversation with you. I think what you're doing is really cool. I love talking to other female agency owners who are doing cool stuff. Anyone who doesn't currently know who you are, can you say a little bit about what you do?
00:00:16
Speaker
Yes. Thank you so much for having me. Really excited for this conversation. i'm Lauren Kleinman. I'm the founder and CEO of Dream Day. We're performance PR agency really is sitting at the intersection of PR and affiliate. We coined this term around performance PR to encompass the best of both worlds under one synergistic strategy.
00:00:34
Speaker
ah year into starting that business, I started a passion project, which was the quality edit it and quality media. a full service performance agency. We leverage our own publication, the quality edit it in whitelisting campaigns for our clients.
00:00:48
Speaker
And so I spend my time running two agencies.
Lauren's Personal Journey and Yoga Influence
00:00:53
Speaker
I'm really into wellness. I'm a certified yoga instructor. I'm a mom of two kids, passionate about building people first organizations and telling amazing stories on behalf of all the great consumer brands that we work with.
00:01:08
Speaker
Oh, my God. I'm obsessed with everything that you just said, Lauren. I didn't know you were yoga instructor. I'm also a certified yoga instructor. I was recovering from or maybe in the middle of honestly, like burnout.
00:01:19
Speaker
And this was probably two years ago. And I got a mass text from my yoga studio and it said, do you want to become a yoga teacher? And I'd always had it in the back of my head. And i was like, yes, I do. And it's like a 200 hour course. And it was a week for four or five months.
00:01:37
Speaker
And it was like one of the best things I ever did. I never intended to actually become a yoga teacher, but I'm always thinking about how I can push myself outside of my comfort zone. And I hate public speaking. I was like, this sounds like the scariest thing I could possibly do. So I signed up.
00:01:52
Speaker
Do you feel like you think about it much or it manifests itself? at work for you at all? Absolutely. I think maybe in like subtle ways that I wouldn't necessarily expect, but I think it bled over into how I think about leading our team. Like I said, building people first organizations and prioritizing that work-life balance.
00:02:14
Speaker
My yoga training was a lot of going really deep emotionally, going into your childhood, like things that are blocking you. It was very much less about the asana or the movement and all about like inner discovery.
00:02:28
Speaker
And one of the main themes was vulnerability. And I think that's something that i try to bring into the workplace and being able to really open your heart in that way and be vulnerable when you don't know something or when you're feeling insecure. i think that's something that has carried over into our culture on both agencies.
Challenges Faced by Female Founders
00:02:48
Speaker
And then the other kind of like personal professional development piece was that public speaking where I literally almost quit a job once because I was so scared of public speaking. We just had to do these simple like weekly standups.
00:03:00
Speaker
Now in running two businesses myself, of course, I have to do some public speaking. And I've realized that it is just a muscle that you have to flex even when you're uncomfortable. And a great line from my yoga training was you have to walk through the fire and to get to the other side.
00:03:16
Speaker
And I feel like that was so uncomfortable for me to be learning these things. literally like new language with Sanskrit and the moves and be like teaching a class, which was like our final. And I was really close to quitting the night before and on the final because I was so scared. And then I thought I've got to walk through the fire. i'm going to do this.
00:03:38
Speaker
I'm literally not even trying to be a yoga teacher. Why am I putting so much pressure on myself? And I did it and it it was amazing. And obviously I passed, it was hard to fail, but i I was proud of the work I did and you know, how much I studied I put everything I had into it. And I think that the public speaking and pushing myself to do uncomfortable things and being comfortable in the uncomfortability those vulnerabilities, I think was something that changed me forever.
00:04:08
Speaker
Wow. I appreciate in some ways. I feel like, i don't know if it feels vulnerable to you, but i think it's cool that you said that you're not comfortable with public speaking. I think sometimes for founders, it can feel like a taboo to say that because there's this expectation that you're like, this larger than life character is so excited to get on stage and talk.
00:04:25
Speaker
But it also surprises me. We've only talked maybe three times before this, but each time I've been like, damn, Lauren, so confident. It's the same. It's groaning. it's not that Yeah, it's really practice. And like I said, I feel like it's like a muscle. And when I tell people that it seems to come so naturally to you. And again, it's been six years of running the business and I've had to public speak a lot and I push myself to do it. I go on panels, I do podcasts.
00:04:50
Speaker
And yeah, I think even when it's uncomfortable, that's really where you find the growth. Yeah, totally. That resonates with me. I feel like I've been thinking very much along those similar lines lately.
00:05:02
Speaker
And I don't know about you, but for yoga, I tend to go like in and out for six months. I'll be like obsessed with it going forward to the week and then I'll be more of, oh, once a weekend. But like I'm in an obsessed phase right now.
00:05:13
Speaker
And I feel like there is something about... Being able to be more and more calm and even happy in moments of discomfort and fragility around building a business. Because part two of that, I'd say is one thing I've been thinking about is sometimes I'm chasing. I'm like, when will...
00:05:34
Speaker
this business not feel fragile. And I think I thought as it got bigger and bigger, I would start to be like, there's nothing. And I'm like, all businesses are fragile all the time. And you just to be comfortable with that. And I feel like yoga helps with
Business Growth and Resilience
00:05:47
Speaker
that a little. Absolutely. Absolutely. Like literally, that's what they teach about like Being able to hold the pose, even when you're uncomfortable, obviously you don't want pain, but being able to stay with the uncomfort. And I'm still learning that today. I think in business, I think it's, ah you always want to feel comfortable and like safe just as a human.
00:06:08
Speaker
And building an agency is scary. What if team members leave? What if clients leave? However, I can share from my experience being six years into doing this for me, that part of it has gotten easier because I've seen our resilience over and over again in tough economic times and tougher macro economic environments. And also we've been fortunate to grow. And I feel like with that growth, that comes at resilience as well, because you know that you have a lot more clients, you have revenue diversification, you have a lot of team members.
00:06:41
Speaker
And it's actually funny. I have a mentor who sold his agency. don't know the number, but he made like over a hundred million dollars. It was a pretty big agency.
00:06:52
Speaker
And yesterday I said, his name is Steve. Steve, I'll never forget what you told me one day when we were sitting down. at And I had told him, I don't want to grow a big agency because that's a lot of people to think about. It seems so stressful. I'll be like 10 times more stressed than I am now with double or triple or four times the headcount.
00:07:12
Speaker
And he said, no, it's like literally the opposite. If you're able to get to a place where you have that many people, it's because you've put a lot of processes in place and you've created like a very well oiled machine and you're actually able to relax a lot more because you have executive team that you can rely on and, you know, your processes and the way that the agency is running is in a really good place.
00:07:35
Speaker
And I can't say that I feel that like total relief now, but I do feel lucky that I've surrounded myself with an amazing executive team that I can rely on. And I got an EA last year, which was really game changing. And I found that I'm starting to feel that what he said to be true is fruition, which is interesting and nice and opposite of what I would expect.
00:07:55
Speaker
just this expectation, especially on women to be like the face of their brand, the face of the agency, be outgoing, be like razzle dazzle while also like running the day to day and like being a good operator. Aishwarya actually said this on a podcast. I think it was the Hot, Smart, Rich podcast with Maggie Sellers. And she was talking about how there's this pressure on women that she doesn't see the same pressure on men to do that.
00:08:23
Speaker
And I just have always thought that was like an interesting aha moment, because actually feel that maybe you do too, as a female founder myself, and that we have to be presentable, and we have to be well dressed, and we have to be well spoken.
00:08:38
Speaker
But we also have to be really good at running a business that's operating at a high level and making money and growing and all the things. I'm sure we'll do some clips to promote this, but for anyone just listening also like Lauren, your outfit is killer. I do feel like there's a pressure around presentation.
00:08:56
Speaker
And I think too, there's this sense of, I i don't want to get too in the weeds and I want to come back to all the stuff you said and bring it back to all the work you're doing. But I'll just say that I think sometimes it's a double standard of you need to subtly overcompensate for some things where it's like, all right, you're a woman and you're a leader.
00:09:15
Speaker
And so you need to be warm. You need to be attuned. You need to be doing all these nurturing things. And you need to like always look great while you do it and always sound great. But it can't be obvious that you're trying. Yeah, has to feel effortless, right? Yeah.
00:09:28
Speaker
But- It's definitely something that I don't think we recognize enough. And yeah, there is that pressure that I think we just internalize and deal with, but it is definitely there. And I don't know what the solution is because i feel like to be successful, you have to like,
00:09:47
Speaker
You got to do those things. But I respect like a lot of founders and maybe Ash is one, even though she does some public speaking who are like, you know what? Not going to play that game. I'm going to focus on building my business and that's going to be enough.
00:10:00
Speaker
I'm not going to try to do it all. Yeah, I think and that may I like that. I'm going to go look up that podcast and listen to it. Yeah. I think, too, maybe you've found this, that there's so much advice out there and all these norms, but there's 100 different ways to build the business you want to
Inspiration Behind Dream Day
00:10:16
Speaker
build. And hope you can do the one that feels in alignment with you.
00:10:20
Speaker
The name for Dream Day actually came from this kind of cheesy inspiration, but I'll just own it. Where after I left Ritual, where I was formerly founding team and VP of marketing and um help build that business, I was like, okay, how do i want to spend my days? I had a one-year-old at home and like, I'm going to create my dream day every day. And it very idealistic idea. And, but I started to think about what does my dream day actually look like? If I could do anything with my time, what would that look like? And I thought,
00:10:49
Speaker
I would have a perfect work-life balance, make a smoothie in the morning, go for a hike, take a couple client calls, spend time with my family, my husband, and that's a day. And I don't think I've ever had a dream day since I started the agency.
00:11:05
Speaker
But and actually my therapist, she's like, Lauren, that doesn't sound like you're trying to work. That sounds like you're trying to be like a part time like a mom. But my point being that I do come back to that often because especially if you're an entrepreneur, you have a lot of freedom to decide the type of business, like you said, that you want to be building.
00:11:25
Speaker
And in my case, with Dream Day, with quality media, we have been on this very high growth track. Both businesses were Inc. 5000 fastest growing agencies this year.
00:11:38
Speaker
And so we've set out on that trajectory and sometimes it can feel stressful looking back and is this as grateful as I am for that growth? Sometimes with that comes a lot of pressure, right? Like my husband always says, heavy is the crown.
00:11:52
Speaker
If I think back to that original dream day, I am always thinking about like, how do I continue to protect my energy? and i loved how Taylor Swift said, my energy is expensive. i don't know if you saw that clip that went viral. And I love that.
00:12:05
Speaker
It's really good. And ensure that you are ultimately, even in the building phase, like living the life that you want to be living and proud of how you're spending every day. Yeah, I think that's cool. I think a lot of people feel like when I'm done building, then I can do it as opposed to process, but you're in process forever. Exactly. What would your business look like if you never sold it?
00:12:26
Speaker
How could you make it feel good and sustainable? Another question that I like to always ask myself is how do you want to feel? and if you work back from that question, I want to feel balanced. I want to feel centered. I want to feel empowered.
00:12:43
Speaker
What does it take in terms of reforming or refining your day to get there? Because at the end of the day, all you remember really is how you feel. So running two agencies right now, what is a day in your life like?
00:13:01
Speaker
Right now, I spend a lot of my time on internal calls. I work with clients, especially when there's high touch kind of items. I'm working closely with my executive team on Dream Day, a major decisions.
00:13:16
Speaker
as well as my two co-founders at Quality Media on hiring, operations, new clients that we're bringing on Quality Media and Dream Day. i do a lot of our business development. So a lot of my time is spent directly selling, speaking to prospective clients.
00:13:33
Speaker
But also thinking about those macro relationships that we can build with referral partners, other non-competitive like-minded agencies. And then I also do thought leadership like this as well. Speaking about performance PR, performance marketing, and sharing more about what we're doing and trying to get the word out there.
00:13:54
Speaker
Can you talk a little bit more about the concept of performance PR? It's something that you all really coined and I feel has become pretty iconic.
00:14:05
Speaker
And I'd be interested to hear you talk about it a little more.
Performance PR and Data-Driven Strategies
00:14:08
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I was inspired by my time at Ritual, actually. i was working with every top tier PR agency that you can imagine.
00:14:16
Speaker
And while they were all really great in different ways, there was one area that I felt that they were all stuck in their traditional ways, specifically around affiliate marketing. Basically, I saw how a lot of publishers were making money from commerce revenue, and that was the main way that they were staying in business with the ever-changing publishing landscape.
00:14:37
Speaker
And So what that meant is that they were thinking about what products and brands to include editorially that their readership would resonate with, but also the brands and products that would actually make them money as a publication.
00:14:52
Speaker
As publishers are struggling, making money is important. And so... What I saw with the PR agencies was that they did not understand affiliate marketing, how to really meet modern brands or publishers needs. It coalesced, honestly, like pretty organically. I didn't leave ritual and I was like, I'm going to do performance PR. i honestly just started doing a lot of affiliate marketing, specifically working with top tier publishers.
00:15:13
Speaker
And then I realized like we have to actually be really good at pitching as well. And so I hired our first hire and we hired publicists and everything started growing organically through that. i thought there has to be a better way where you have one agency that from the start is really good at PR and can do everything from thought leadership, brand PR, business press, but also consumer press, which is the overlap with the performance PR.
00:15:39
Speaker
as well as an all-star affiliate team that thinks about it from like a full funnel perspective and where the crossover is like working with the top tier publishers. So for example, let's say that one of our clients was having a really hard time breaking through to Vogue.
00:15:56
Speaker
How can we go to Vogue and share, here's the commission rate for the product. Here is their AOV. Here's how they performed for you in the past. And basically help from a data-driven perspective, size up the business opportunity of why they would want to work with that brand. Here's their traffic, et cetera.
00:16:14
Speaker
From a reporting standpoint, too, I think when you work with most traditional PR agencies, agencies I was always frustrated by them giving us a UVPM metric at the end of the month. So if you're not familiar with this, it might look like, oh, yeah, you got a billion impressions this month from the press that we got you.
00:16:29
Speaker
But I knew as a reader of these publications myself, not everyone is clicking into every article on pop sugar, just because that's the amount of views that they're getting as a publication. It felt very opaque.
00:16:40
Speaker
And so, you know, even now from a reporting perspective, for the first time, we've demystified the results of PR and we can say, here's your top publishers that are driving the most revenue or traffic.
00:16:51
Speaker
And here's editors that are really working. We should lean into this angle. We're not taking a blind approach to pitching and just pitching everyone. We're saying, okay, here's from a consumer perspective, the publishers or partners that are really resonating. Performance PR is best in class PR, best in class affiliate marketing as part of one synergistic scope.
00:17:11
Speaker
And I'd say it works best with consumer brands that have a sizable amount of traffic and interest. We work a lot with female founded brands, with diverse founded brands, and we work with a lot of giftable brands. Because if you think like a publisher, there's so many opportunities to mention a giftable brand in gift guides, whether that's over the holidays or Easter or what have you. Yeah, exactly.
00:17:39
Speaker
Thank you so much for breaking it down as you're talking. It's so brilliant. A few thoughts are that it's funny. My husband works in PR and and I were talking last month about
00:17:53
Speaker
There still isn't an industry standard or best practice for how you show um ROI. And as you're talking about it, it's like accountable PR and then more strategic PR in that you look at, to your point, you double down and you're like, all right, this edit, the content that we did with this editor worked so well.
00:18:10
Speaker
Yeah. Let's amplify those results. On one hand, it seems. In the digital age, it feels like intuitive yeah and genius, but I feel like everything that's really cool and innovative seems like that in hindsight. Like, why do you think other people have not done this yet?
00:18:26
Speaker
and think affiliate marketing is honestly a very specialized skill. And in having a publication, I get a ton of pitches from other agencies and...
00:18:38
Speaker
It's almost that they're missing the sensibility on the storytelling PR front. It's like a lot of publicists aren't trained to think about data and a lot of affiliate marketers aren't trained to think about storytelling. So when I get these pitches, it's hi X, like literally sometimes they just forget to put my name and it just still says X. And it's like X, he has running a sale period, like typos, weird spacing, what have you. And I'm like, okay, this affiliate agency needs more storytelling. I think the reverse is true too, where I think just for...
00:19:08
Speaker
Even at Dream Day, we're not training our publicists to be affiliate marketers. We have a full separate affiliate team that's nearly as large as the PR team. It's a very specialized skill.
00:19:19
Speaker
And for our affiliate team, we've been doing it for many of them for the past 10 plus years. So I think honestly, just a lot of agencies haven't wanted to invest in this area.
00:19:31
Speaker
However, more and more clients are asking for it. So I think it's inevitably becoming a priority for them to build in the capability. i think the difference with us is we've been doing it from day one. So it's very ingrained in the way that we think and do everything. Every touch point has both at their core. Whereas I think where agencies are building it in now, it's okay, here's some add-on upcharge service, but they're not thinking about all of the crossovers from a reporting perspective, from team communication perspective, from
00:20:02
Speaker
how to really leverage the best of both worlds. So it's complicated, I guess, is like the long and short of it What is your, it's always easier to keep doing things the way that you've been doing them. Yeah.
00:20:16
Speaker
And so what is your affiliate team focusing on specifically versus the publicist team? Yeah. Great question. So our affiliate team had mentioned, we have a full funnel strategy, like a deb diverse strategy. So if you can think about from a partner recruitment perspective, thinking about top of funnel being your top tier publishers.
00:20:37
Speaker
It's more of the awareness, like storytelling as you move to mid funnel, maybe it's more like influencers, sub affiliate networks, this is shop my, or like to know it. And then as you move down the funnel in the customer journey, you think about rewards or loyalty or even discount.
00:20:53
Speaker
However, when we're pulling those bottom of funnel levers, we're very thoughtful about how we're doing it and making sure that we're incremental. Most traditional affiliate agencies have the opposite approach in terms of we're just going to turn on all the loyalty deal and coupon partners. And I saw this when I was working with affiliate agencies as well. Content is usually like the smallest portion of what they're focusing on because a lot of them just don't have those relationships.
00:21:16
Speaker
The affiliate team is focusing on recruitment, pitching all of those partners. The more partners that you have talking about the brand in the right way and the higher conversion rate you have, the more lucrative your affiliate program is going to be.
00:21:29
Speaker
Obviously there's a lot of other nuances around what they're spending their time on, whether that's like client management, their own team management, but I'd say recruitment analytics and data and understanding how to really like leverage the data in smart ways is really important.
00:21:45
Speaker
And then working through all the different types of partners to be partnering with in a program, making sure that we have a diversified pool. When we started, we were like, we're only going to work with content partners, no bottom of funnel, none of this sort of stuff.
00:22:00
Speaker
And then we realized, oh wait, two years later, publishers are really struggling. Traffic is down. This is not a sustainable way for these clients to grow through affiliate. And so that's where we had to come more full circle and encompass a lot of other partners so that your program is not over reliant on one type of partner.
00:22:19
Speaker
a lot of different considerations there on the PR side, our team, it depends on the client and what they're looking for. If they're looking for brand press, business, thought leadership, or if they're just focused on consumer revenue driving press. But similarly, we're obviously pitching a lot. So building relationships with editors, pitching editors,
00:22:39
Speaker
managing clients work back plans and covering launches and understanding their entire marketing calendar and overall trying to make sure that they're positioned in the best light in the media landscape.
00:22:53
Speaker
I would say our KPIs on the affiliate side are growing traffic and revenue, obviously, and getting as many partners into the program, but also partners that are actively talking about the brand. You can have as many partners in the program, but if they're not promoting, it doesn't really do anything.
00:23:10
Speaker
yeah And on the PR side, getting the highest quality of hits and highest quantity of hits and that quality, i think is really important. I think actually the pendulum has swung a bit from quantity to a lot of clients really focusing on quality.
00:23:24
Speaker
So we use actually a method called, we just started using it called the Barcelona scoring method. And it's basically like these principles and framework of these different rules for PR and communication versus a singular scoring method.
00:23:39
Speaker
So we've started to actually grade the quality of our press hits based on. goal setting using both qualitative and quantitative data and evaluating the impact of press in a more holistic way.
00:23:52
Speaker
Not to go on a tangent here, but I also think that quality of press has become more important because of AI in searches.
AI's Impact on PR and Marketing
00:24:00
Speaker
So now AI is prioritizing new press.
00:24:04
Speaker
If you search best genes of 2025, it's going to look through all of the publishers that have the highest authority and domain ranking for those recommendations. It's an interesting time because on one hand, publishers are struggling.
00:24:20
Speaker
On the other hand, it's becoming more and more important in terms of customer discovery. And yeah, again, we're focusing a lot on the quality of press that we're getting as well as the quantity. and Both are important.
00:24:33
Speaker
God, that's interesting. First of all, that Barcelona scoring framework, is that proprietary to you all? Or is that and just an out there? Yeah, not proprietary to us. I think you can look up the Barcelona principles and you can see the framework. There's seven kind of rules within the measurement tool. And I love this because one of our account directors actually was like, we should be doing it this way. And like, this is genius. This like another great way to help quantify the impact of our press with clients.
00:25:05
Speaker
And there's other tools that are helping our clients understand how they're ranking from an AI perspective as well. But we basically rolled this out from account director's recommendations. It's been super helpful so far. and We're only like a month in, but always iterating.
00:25:20
Speaker
and Yeah, that's super cool. i'm going to look that up. and And oh my gosh, there's so many other things you said I wanted to de touch on. One thing that actually this ties back to, we have had a few other PR folks on the podcast and Jamie Mazur, like last year blew my mind with this.
00:25:36
Speaker
So for anyone listening who doesn't know this is that... I didn't understand the benefits of being at a wholesale retailer from an affiliate link perspective.
00:25:49
Speaker
And if you're listening and you're not aware of it, and Lauren, correct me if I'm wrong or I'm out of date here, but essentially if you're at Target or Amazon, someone goes onto Vogue, clicks the link, purchases the product, generally the publisher will get not just like 10% or 20% of that product purchase, they'll get 10% or 20% of the entire cart.
00:26:13
Speaker
So someone's got 500 bucks in their Amazon cart, so and so D to C is a lot harder generally from my understanding to get quality placements for because there's a little less incentive for the big publishers from the affiliate kickback perspective. So I do, you guys do work with D2C. Like, how do you deal with that particular challenge when there's probably so much competition to get into these like really high tier quality editorial publications right now?
00:26:43
Speaker
That's such a good question. And it's been one that we've been grappling with for now quite a few years. In the beginning, even in the early days of ritual was like D2C only. We'll never go into Target, never go into Walmart, never go into these places.
00:26:56
Speaker
never going to Amazon. And all the DTC companies were the same. We want to own the one-on-one relationship with each customer and communication and everything. Then Facebook became extremely expensive. Every DTC company realized it's becoming harder and harder to acquire customers efficiently on Facebook.
00:27:15
Speaker
And many of them just hit a ceiling. We've more or less acquired all the customers that we can through this one channel. And so they all started expanding from DTC only to okay, we are going to go into retail. We are going to go on to Amazon.
00:27:26
Speaker
And it's funny how the pendulum has swung and now like being in retail is like so sexy. You get into Costco, if you get into Walmart, like you're just like crushing it, right? And I think it's all about reaching as many people as possible with your product and your brand.
00:27:40
Speaker
But exactly what you said is correct in that if the link is going to these retailers, whatever's in the basket, they will get commission on it. So they favor driving to those links versus driving to DTC.
00:27:51
Speaker
And so what you see a lot of publishers doing now is like, getting options on the links, buy it on Target, buy it on Amazon, buy it directly on d to c We try to educate clients and make sure that their D2C commission rates are competitive at the very least with what publishers are getting on Target or Amazon. But you almost have to, like you said, overcompensate because the basket size is higher in those places.
00:28:19
Speaker
Another thing that's been interesting and along that in that same vein is in COVID, everyone was buying stuff online. Like it was the D to C boom. It had never been. And I think a lot of clients expected that same growth to continue. they're like, oh, this is just like my business. But when COVID ended,
00:28:38
Speaker
and people started spending money in person and on travel and on experiences. So not only did the consumer spending on D2C change, but also they're starting to go purchase things in person. So where you might buy Olipop to your doorstep before, and now you're just like getting it at your Sprouts or Ralph's or wherever you shop.
00:29:02
Speaker
And what's interesting about that is just that in those instances, there is no affiliate marketing. Like you can completely lose the attribution. Obviously, no one's tracking a link of when you're like stepping and buying something in store, even if you did ultimately discover that product through a roundup or through some press article. And that drove awareness and visibility, but completely untrackable on our side.
00:29:23
Speaker
So that's been like a challenging nuance. And that goes back to, OK, there's still so much value and. Having that awareness and having that share of voice against your competitor set, that's hugely valuable, but it's definitely like fault with affiliate marketing.
00:29:43
Speaker
Definitely. And I imagine so complex in that it's if you so read the Vogue article that referenced Poppy and then... you go into the store the next week and you buy it, you're like, it definitely had a consumer impact, but you don't have the tracking. to Now, I think there's, don't quote me on this, maybe it was like, there's now 15 touch points for a customer to make a purchasing decision at the end of the day.
00:30:06
Speaker
yeah When I influence to buy something, yes, sometimes I just see an Instagram ad, but sometimes it was because I read about an article and then I got an ad served and then I heard about it from an influencer. Then I saw it on TikTok. Then I got another ad served and then I finally purchased. And so Within affiliate, they've tried to become especially platforms like impact more sophisticated with like multi-touch attribution.
00:30:30
Speaker
You could still give Vogue a percentage of what that commission is because it's following like the tracking journey. But still, it has to be like a very clean customer journey. And as we know, like it never is. So still like messy and a challenge that someone has to figure out.
00:30:49
Speaker
That's super interesting. Do DTC brands often end up giving a higher percentage of the affiliate sale to try and compete with the brands that are in the bigger retailers? Yeah, definitely.
00:31:01
Speaker
Let's say for like certain categories like supplements or dog food, it's highly competitive on the CPA or like the cost per acquisition or cost that your commission rate that you're offering.
00:31:13
Speaker
So there's publications that will say, you want to be on this listicle and you want to be in the top five, let's say, because usually they're not as prescriptive on number one, you have to pay $250 per ah new customer.
00:31:27
Speaker
And that's just how much you have to pay to get into this article. And this is with established publications. But because these listicles drive so much value for these brands and are so well trafficked and easy when you search for a query like best dog food 2025, these are all the articles that come up and how people make their purchasing decisions.
00:31:49
Speaker
Like it's. worth it for the brand usually to pay whatever that amount is to get on that list. So yes, I also think subscription brands have an advantage because you can also do things like we're not only going to pay you on the first month, we're going to pay you on every other month or a vitamin company might say we're going to pay you 100% of the first month sale because they know that they're going to make up that revenue on all of the recurring months, for example.
00:32:21
Speaker
Interesting. What you said about AI, so interesting. Definitely for some of our clients, one thing we talk about a lot is the benefit of proprietary data. It performs so well on social. We're more in the B2B space.
00:32:34
Speaker
The proprietary data in those reports are what can get you from a B2B perspective showing up in AI. I hadn't really thought about it from the B2C sense. It's almost weird. it Somehow these legacy big editorial brands that are struggling so hard, maybe in a year they'll be able to charge even so much more because they'll be like, look at all the data on how we'll show your brand up in AI. AI ends up saving these big editorial brands.
00:33:00
Speaker
I want all the workers to be successful. So yeah, any way that they can figure how to monetize on the AI side. And we've been focusing more on like GEO, which is basically like SEO for all the like AI engine optimization.
00:33:15
Speaker
i always like to keep it human and think of myself as a consumer. How am I finding and discovering products? And I mean, I use ChatGPT for everything and my friends do too. And was finding a new water filter for my home, for example, and weighing options. And this is all a whole chart of the pros and cons and pricing and like better than any.
00:33:40
Speaker
Think about if I had to read through 10 different reviews and I know that they're somewhat biased and what have you. I know that chat's biased because it's scraping the reviews, but still it like save so much time to just be able to search that
Future of Affiliate Marketing and AI Innovations
00:33:53
Speaker
way. So I think that's going to become so important to affiliate marketing, to PR.
00:33:59
Speaker
The CEO of ChatGPT is Sam Altman. He was saying how they're going to start doing affiliate marketing and they're going to start getting commission actually for the products and links that they're recommending.
00:34:12
Speaker
for a lot of like interior design things. So I'll take a picture of office space and I'm like, how would you improve this if you were a prominent interior designer? And it gives me all the recommendations and I'll be like, give me a specific links. I've purchased those exact links before.
00:34:27
Speaker
And so it's, it's, I would say not all the way there and the most amazing shopping partner yet, but it's pretty incredible and it's only going to get better and it's going to get better. I think so quickly. Wow.
00:34:40
Speaker
I think it's going to change the affiliate game. It's opening up an entirely new channel very quickly. That's fascinating. And I'm going to try that. Oh my gosh. My hot interior design tip is you can take a before and then ask it for like the recommendations. Just the recommendations alone are like so helpful.
00:35:02
Speaker
And then you say, do what the prompt is do a surgical edit. keeping the image exactly as it is, but overlaying these changes that you would recommend making.
00:35:13
Speaker
Yeah. If this is my back picture, it would literally give me an image like overlaying all of the changes that it recommends. And I have tweaked like different areas in my home. Oh, my gosh. You liked the results and it was great. wow Or you can keep tweaking like you can be very prescriptive. Like we have an AI trainer, actually, both agencies.
00:35:33
Speaker
His name is Devin Karpz. Shout out to Devin. He's incredible. Incredible. And he was just at our offsite last week and he said, imagine Chachupiti, like you have Einstein sitting right next to you.
00:35:44
Speaker
But if you tell Einstein, hey, go run my company for me, he has no idea what to do. So his point is, you have to be super prescriptive with AI. So if you're doing your interior design, you'd be like, I want it to be like,
00:35:58
Speaker
rustic, chic meets, I don't make this stuff up. Soho home meets a little bit ah modern, whatever, and pretend you're XYZ interior designer. Like how would you think about designing this space or upgrading this space? So point being, you have to be really smart with your prompts, but you can continue tweaking and the more specific directions you're giving it, the better outcome you're going to have.
00:36:22
Speaker
How that's so cool that you guys have an AI for like a week now that I've told you this. Trust me, it's very. Oh, yeah. No, I'm going to be doing this like tonight. Tonight. Oh, I'll email you a picture. you like you like with here before But that's very cool. You have this AI facilitator or trainer. What did you say? human Officially.
00:36:41
Speaker
Yeah, he's a trainer facilitator on the one agency. We've made a more sizable investment. So we do like weekly calls with him, weekly trainings. He's developing custom chat GBTs for us. He's developing like this internal operating system. Like it's a pretty heavy lift, but there we're doing paid social, a lot of creative. And so think about it across our portfolio, being able to identify trends, hooks,
00:37:09
Speaker
creatives that are performing well, understanding why, learnings back to the clients, like all the data that it can ingest. Like it's he's building all these really custom tools that I think we can like not only make us more successful at what we do and provide more value to our clients, but also almost be something that we can productize and sell as like a service.
00:37:30
Speaker
Yeah. that's on the quality media front. On the Dream Day front, we've done a bit of AI training. We haven't gone quite as deep, but we're going to soon. So I'm really excited. And if you have a business, you can think about...
00:37:43
Speaker
What are things that you're doing consistently that you think AI could do for you? And so with him, I've put together here's top 10 highest leverage ways we can use AI within our agency.
Leveraging AI for Agency Efficiency
00:37:55
Speaker
Imagine giving all of your internal documents, processes, et cetera, and like building something custom tailored to your agency that your senior team members can share. That's like my vision with how we'll use it at Dream Day. And like I said, how we're already starting to use it at Quality Media.
00:38:11
Speaker
But very excited about AI. And I think it's another trend that's not going away and going to be the way of, you know, high performing businesses. And even to come up with the top 10 highest leverage ways you can use AI in your business, you can just ask Chattypt. You'll get some good like inputs on problems you want to solve, but it'll probably spit out like good starting points. And another tip from Devin is to never accept the first answer AI gives you. So just continue to refine from there.
00:38:41
Speaker
That's fascinating. I feel like referred a lot of people to him. So yeah, everyone needs him. So, well, next I was going to ask, how are you all thinking about and using AI? But you just answered that. and it sounds like you're setting some goals, working with an expert and doing everything you can to keep up with it and leverage it, which is amazing. I'll share one fun use case that I thought of, which was...
00:39:06
Speaker
Imagine when you're onboarding a new client, you have a series of questions that you're asking them and you conduct a really thorough hour and a half deep dive that then the transcript is put into chat GPT.
00:39:19
Speaker
And you would remember, this is ritual CEO cat. Remember all these answers. Maybe there's a time when Ritual's not launching a product, when it's a bit of a slow season on PR, or even when an editor reaches out and says, hey, what's Kat's morning routine?
00:39:37
Speaker
We can have all of that already, like within our Rolodex and expand upon it. But... From a memory perspective, it's like, we'd have to go dig through notes. We'd have to be asking those questions consistently. Even as like that one use case, I can see that being really valuable from like a pitching perspective, from mining new creative angles.
00:39:58
Speaker
And literally that's like just scratching the surface, but that alone I think can be really interesting and valuable. Yeah. At Medbury, what we do, we generally were working with B2B SaaS and tech companies, but we end up doing what we call voice interview as part of the kickoff with their individual leaders to get to know them. It's a little bit like a podcast interview, but the transcripts from those, we do something really similar and those are gold. And sometimes yeah what we'll do is we'll take something that the writer wrote to start with.
00:40:30
Speaker
Which is totally great and could go to the client and we'll put it through a project and be like, yeah run it through, compare it with this voice interview and flag like two or three things that could make this more appealing for this client, etc. Like the transcripts and AI I feel are...
00:40:46
Speaker
So incredible. Yeah. I have another fun tool for you to look into. It's called Fixer, F-Y-X-E-R. And shout out to Devin because this is his recommendation. But it literally like sorts through and categorizes your inbox.
00:41:00
Speaker
base It'll be like, these things are just FYI. These things are things you need to respond to. This is just Bam, don't waste your time. saved me, according to the tool, of course, but it saved me last week, like 13 hours.
00:41:12
Speaker
And it's like completely just the best investment I've ever made in terms of like email cleanup. And I don't use this ever actually, it, it does an okay job doing this. I would not recommend, but it basically will respond for you as well. So when you wake up in the morning, it has all of your draft emails ready to go based on your tone, based on everything else it's seen about how you respond to certain questions in your inbox.
00:41:41
Speaker
Wow. And you can literally, if you wanted to sound like a robot, yeah press send. I end up not using that much. If you wanted to, you probably could, depending on what type of industry you're in and you know, how much you think it sounds like you, I suppose. But even just as thought starters, it's like really interesting. And to your point on be transcripts, it also will join your calls and automatically after send a recap to everyone of what the action items were like. That alone is huge. They're like good. I think we used to have Fathom and now we have Fixer.
00:42:20
Speaker
Fixer is better than Fathom in terms of the action items. I'm going to check it
Advice for Aspiring Women Leaders
00:42:25
Speaker
out. All right. I know we only have two minutes left, and I did want to make sure to get to this question, which is that I'm sure you've seen this stat, but something like only 1% of creative agencies are owned by women. As someone who has built two incredibly successful businesses, what advice do you have for other women who are thinking about starting something up there?
00:42:44
Speaker
Yeah, such a great question. My little cousin with her this last... weekend and she's like happy enough at her corporate job but she's I really want to just like train women and like I have this idea of training company and she's always been super athletic and i'm like what are you doing with your life you gotta start and she's I can't quit my job I have the golden handcuffs and I'm like you don't need to come quit your job right now. Just train a couple clients on the weekend or after hours or whatever. See if it resonates. Dip your toes in Get them a little bit wet. See, you know, what kind of response you're getting and if you can learn from your prospective customers, etc.
00:43:20
Speaker
ie before I left Ritual, I had asked two friends, if I were to leave Ritual, would you hire me for XYZ? And they're like, yes, absolutely. Like, where do I sign?
00:43:31
Speaker
Some people can just take the jump. For me, having a one-year-old, like it was important to have some form of security in becoming an entrepreneur. It was those two votes of confidence. That was all I needed where I was like, okay, I know I can charge them this much. I know I'll make this amount of money. It will be enough for me to feel secure and I'll build from there.
00:43:52
Speaker
but if you can get that, I don't want to call it reassurance, but if you can get like, I guess that feedback from your perspective customers, I do think that makes it a lot easier, especially if you're a woman.
00:44:05
Speaker
But I would say don't wait until you feel ready. Start where you are Work with what you have. Build your network. Relationships, community is really everything.
00:44:15
Speaker
And resilience matters more than perfection. Building ah real business matters more than vanity metrics. Figuring out your economics, how much you're going to charge, what are your actual expenses going to be. Make sure that this is something that is sustainable. And especially if you're like bootstrapping, that has good the fundamentals. And like I said, that customers are responding to, or at least that you're learning from.
00:44:39
Speaker
I think you do not have to do it all at one and you don't do it alone either. I surrounded myself in the early days with mentors and advisors as much as I could. i didn't start building an agency. It was just me for a year just working on clients myself. I learned a lot through that experience. I tried to work with clients that had good logos that would be good from building my cache and like a network perspective.
00:45:04
Speaker
After that, I leaned in and started growing organically from there. one step at a time. Get your LLC set up, get your website set up, think about your services or offerings that you're going to provide. i like to think about what is the white space?
00:45:19
Speaker
What do I uniquely do well that other people can't or won't or don't? Try to identify those areas and then validate by talking to prospective customers. See if they would pay for your services or what you're offering and surround yourself with the right support system, really defining success on your own terms in terms of what you want to be building, what you want your day to look like. I'll hide it in both, like how you want to feel at the end of every day. Thank you, Lauren. That is some awesome advice. I agree with everything you said.
00:45:49
Speaker
And I'm so happy we got to have this chat. Thank you. i was so really enjoyed it. And I can't wait to go try Fixer and play around with chat TPT interior design.
00:46:00
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Thank you.