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00:00:00
00:00:01
Lauren Fortner
38 Plays18 hours ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Lauren Fortner.
To keep up with or connect with Lauren:
✨Lauren’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenfortner/
✨Edit Media Group’s Website: https://www.editmediagroup.com/
✨Edit Media Group’s Instagram: @theedit
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 to Lauren Fortner and The Edit
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, Lauren. hi how are we doing? I am good. Thank you so much for doing this. appreciate it. I got to chat with your co-founder just last week. yeah It's really nice to get to do like, I'm always obsessed with co-founder dynamics. They're so interesting. And to get to talk to the both of you quickly was really ah fun for me. So thank you for doing it.
00:00:24
Speaker
Yeah, of course. Excited. For anyone who doesn't know you, can you say who you are and what you do? Yes, I'm Lauren Fortner and I am the co-founder of The Edit, which is a social media and creative agency.
00:00:37
Speaker
How do you describe what you do? What is your job each day? What does your day look like? It depends on who I'm talking to. To my family, I say I work on the computer.
00:00:49
Speaker
but And then people a little more savvy, I say I work on Instagram and TikTok. But what I'm actually doing day to day, i think what makes the job and the agency life exciting is it really does vary on a day to day basis. So some days I'm a strategist and I'm a trend forecaster. ah Other days i'm working as like an operations person in Claude code, trying to automate things. So
Balancing Business Operations and Strategy
00:01:20
Speaker
my time really varies between working in the business sometimes and then working on the business and looking higher level at what can we do to really help shape our clients like social footprint more and really be like a strong force in this industry.
00:01:37
Speaker
I like that. I appreciate that you said that and you weren't couching it with, I'm trying to get to working on the business, not in the business, et cetera, because I feel like there are a lot of folks who like, that's the message is like you, you run the business, you don't work in the business, but at least in my experience and other co-founders and founders I've chatted with, I think actually for a really long time, you gotta be doing both. And if you're never working in the business,
00:02:05
Speaker
i think it can be a problem. You can get a little too far away from things and it can. So anyway, I like that. And I appreciate that. When you're not there, there's such a fine line, right. But I think it's important to still get into the mix so you can really understand like, where is there room for optimization? What's going really well? Where are there things that can be fixed? And if you're not getting into the weeds sometimes, it's hard to see that. So we really try and toggle in and out from the weeds to that like overhead view, just so we can make sure that we're building systems and coming up with ideas that are really helpful for our team and also for our clients.
00:02:47
Speaker
It makes
The Role of Social Media Tools in Strategy
00:02:48
Speaker
sense. i Do you guys know Muckrack? Have you used them at all? I know it, but we don't use it. We use it a bit with our clients. There are some good, it makes a lot of sense for LinkedIn specifically, probably a lot less so for the platforms that you guys work with. But they asked me to do a little end of year predictions for 2026 thing. And I was stumped. And then one of my predictions was about how I feel like It's going to be increasing. I'm curious what you think about this. Like so important for leaders in strategy marketing create
00:03:22
Speaker
be in the mix and really hands-on in the tools, especially around social. Because I feel like one thing that happens sometimes in big organizations where the strategic and creative leadership isn't willing to really get in there and look at the platform, look at a post and figure out why are these working and these aren't, is that they start to they get way too far away from the execution in a way that really hampers their ability to actually lead on strategy. And I think especially with social and the platforms that are moving so quickly, you have to be you have to be a little hands-on to know what you're talking about.
00:04:03
Speaker
And you can't just be outsourcing all of that work to younger, and more junior folks. That's a little high level. Give me your take. If you disagree, I'm open to it. No, it's because the thing is, it's like even if you were to – not go on Instagram for two months. Like there's probably been multiple changes to the features, the functionality, the algorithm. So it really is a unique field in the sense of how quickly it moves. Like not even from like a trend perspective. Yes, of course, like that moves so fast. And I think that's something where our team really can hone in on that. But when it comes to
00:04:42
Speaker
the way that the actual platform works, like that changes so much. So if you're not in it, it's so easy to fall behind. And I think with social, there's so much testing and learning that has to happen. And so unless you're like getting your hands dirty with being part of some of that testing and learning, it's really hard to get like a good sense of where things are moving and where they're going. So I do agree with you that it it is important.
Lauren's Journey to Co-Founding The Edit
00:05:12
Speaker
I'm really curious to know, so kind of, when we I talked with Katie last week, got her sense of like her life story and professional journey up till you both started, you officially became co-founders and started to work together.
00:05:25
Speaker
Tell me about you, like from high school onward, what was your journey like until you guys made it official? High school onward. Oh my gosh. So I went to college, same as Katie, to USC. Yeah, I know. We literally went to middle school, high school, and college together, which is wild. Wait, don't think I realized that. Maybe she told me and I forgot. I don't think so.
00:05:45
Speaker
Man, that's amazing. right We met in middle school and then, yeah, i went to middle school, high school, and college together. So I was actually a music business major at USC and my dream was to work in the music industry. And so that's actually what I did straight out of college is I worked in on the record label side of things. And when I joined, I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do in the music business.
00:06:10
Speaker
But what I did know is that I was the most green in any room I walked into. I was in like the most like assistant, like entry level role, but I was so eager to progress that I felt like I really wanted to add value into every room I walked into. And that would be a way that I could get noticed and have people start to give me more responsibilities. And so at that time,
00:06:35
Speaker
MySpace was not to date myself, but MySpace was still a thing. And Facebook was maybe like five years old.
00:06:46
Speaker
And eventually Instagram started coming around the bend too. But I would really push my like the bosses and the people I was working with. I'm like, hey, there's this thing called Facebook. There's this thing called Twitter. What if we started using it for our bands to talk with their communities or to promote different things? And It was such a low stakes situation where there was nothing to lose. So a lot of people gave me the opportunity. And then I just started building from there. It was never really my intention to get into social since social was such like a
00:07:20
Speaker
ethereal thing at that time. You had to have a college email to get a Facebook. It was a very different landscape, but I was on it. My friends were on it and nobody else at these companies really knew much about it. so I was like, okay, I can become the social girl. and I would reach out on Instagram or Facebook to these companies and we started bartering for posts. And I um realized like, oh my God, this is so powerful. Each one of these followers, it's currency, it's monetary exchange at this point. And so after working the music industry for maybe five or so years, five or six years, I really just felt like I needed to expand and start touching other industries, categories. And so I eventually started my own thing
00:08:04
Speaker
where I was working on social management as well as brand partnerships. And when I had that business is when Katie and I started co-working again and just realized that our services and like our – there was a gap in the market and like our two combined skill sets really helped fill that.
00:08:25
Speaker
It's such a cool story. Okay. There's so many things I want to ask about. When you were first getting into social, do you remember like – why you were drawn to it and why you were, I really think we should look at this guys. I presume, as you said, you're maybe one of the younger people in the room. So you're naturally a little more aware of it. Were you yourself a prolific personal user or were you just really interested in it from the strategy perspective or both?
00:08:54
Speaker
I think at the time, because a lot of the bands when I was started out were, i was working mostly with like hard rock and metal bands and they were on like the smaller side of things in terms of budget, resources, things like that. But they have, that like that community has such a rabid fan base. Like the the fandom in that space is so dedicated. And that's something I knew, like,
00:09:25
Speaker
working in it, but also having been part of it. And so I felt like the biggest issue for my bands was we didn't, it was taking so many, it was, it required money to get in front of people, to pay, to get on the radio, to pay, to print posters and send out mailers and to buy a ad in a magazine. And I realized like these kids on social,
00:09:49
Speaker
were talking to the bands. They were freaking out when the bands would respond. just like, this is free and this is huge reach. So rather than sitting in the mailroom and like yeah printing posters and sending out flyers and doing all those types of things, was like...
00:10:06
Speaker
We have a free resource here where we can meet, reach like hundreds of thousands of people. And so even I was using it personally, not like in an obsessive way, but just enough to really understand the power of it. And I think to your point, like from a strategic perspective, I just realized i'm like, this is free and we can talk to so many people. And
Partnering with Katie and Defining Roles
00:10:27
Speaker
it was solving both the issues that we were having at the time.
00:10:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's really interesting. What were some of, do you remember some of the first really big wins you had where you noticed, oh my God, we put this out and it got 100,000 XYZ and it changed things for a band or for the strategy significantly and it's okay if not. I'm just always curious.
00:10:50
Speaker
There wasn't like...
00:10:54
Speaker
There were, there was a band I was working with that like just getting them, they weren't on the platforms at first and getting them on the platform was like a huge win for me. Specifically, like we had a lot of success on Twitter. They were an international band and we had tons of success on Twitter and it just made life so much easier because we had so many exciting things happening and it just gave us a really clear tool to promote it I know that's not like the most specific or exciting answer, but my brain's foggy from however many years. Like that was like so long ago. I know. It's funny.
00:11:32
Speaker
Crazy that Twitter doesn't really exist anymore. I know. I actually was on X yesterday just because I was at a conference and we were talking, the conference was really focused on AI and talking about AI. And one of the speakers was like, my tweet is going viral on X. And I popped in on to X just to see what he was talking about. And I feel like during COVID, I was using X to talk, ah like people were talking about crypto, NFTs, that whole space. And now everybody on there is like talking about AI and the evolution of that. So it's interesting to pop in and out.
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah. I haven't been in. So would you recommend it? Are you like dip in once every two weeks, see what's going on? Or are you on it regularly? What's your I mean, if you. It's, listen, it's specific now in terms of what people are talking about. So I do think it's a good place to double tap into headlines, if you will. So if there's like a headline or something you're interested in, I think it's interesting to do a little bit of a deeper dig to see what the public forum is saying about it.
00:12:39
Speaker
Are you guys deep in Reddit at all? do you run Reddit for your clients or do you check Reddit for? So we don't run it for our clients, at least at this point in time.
00:12:52
Speaker
We'll use it sometimes just to get a pulse in terms of what communities are talking about. But we're definitely seeing rise in Reddit in terms of usage and use case for it. So it's something that's been coming up a bit more in in the office.
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. um So for you, one thing I'm curious about for The edit, how currently do you and Katie, like how do you define your duties separately if you do at all?
00:13:22
Speaker
I'm always very curious about that with coworkers or co-founders. founders yeah It's interesting because a lot of people have asked us that or like throughout time have been like, oh, you need to have or have told us you need to have very different and distinguished roles. And we are so lucky because it's naturally evolved. We never said super formally, you're the head of this and you're the head of that.
00:13:50
Speaker
It naturally evolved that way. And then we both started running with it. So I would say some of it quite honestly is like still just unspoken. Even like little things like today, is tax day. Katie does the taxes, but I do like, and deals with the accountants, but I deal with like insurance and payroll and all these other things. Again, like random distinguished, but very unspoken. But when it comes to the business, she really is a lot more involved in business.
00:14:19
Speaker
creative side, things that are visual, that are pop culture. She's amazing at that. She has a great aesthetic eye. She knows what's cool. She knows what's trending. Whereas I more so get a little more, I'm more interested in the data, the strategy, the trend forecasting side of things and help.
00:14:41
Speaker
So I'll like typically build part of the strategy and then she'll figure out how to bring it to life visually. And like, it's such a nice complimentary situation because I'm not great at that.
00:14:54
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds incredible and perfect. It sounded like, so I'm trying to remember exactly the way I think she described it to me was when you guys met, you'd known each other for a while, but you realized you both kind of doing similar things in LA. You were co-working. You started to co-work in the same space.
00:15:09
Speaker
Exactly. slowly you started to share, was it like an intern or an assistant? Exactly. At some point you both were like, I think this is one thing. Exactly.
00:15:20
Speaker
and That must have been like really fun. Was it at all scary to be like, okay, right now I have my successful independent thing happening to merge that and to seed a touch of control and to now be a partner as opposed to ah like a sole proprietor? Did that feel – what was that experience like for you?
00:15:39
Speaker
It's definitely scary. Starting anything new, typical like the unknown obviously has its an element that's scary, but I think we really did a good job of making sure it was the right fit before we got into it. We work dated for almost two years. So we ran our separate businesses, but stayed in touch or co-worked for about two years. And I think in that period of time, A, we just recognized how much we e valued each other's opinions and needed someone to bounce ideas off of. But B, we had the exact same work style and work ethic. And I think That to me is so incredibly important because if you have a different work style, it's really hard to partner with someone in that capacity. And ours was...
00:16:34
Speaker
literally exactly the same. And so once we started building together, we very quickly realized and it kind of became like, oh my God, how are we not doing this sooner? Because we always say the wins became twice as big and the losses felt half as bad. And it was such a game changer having that. And I can't imagine running a company right now without without her It's incredible. I'm so glad you two found each other. It sounds like kismet work love story kind of. i know. I'm like when we were kids, when we were 10 years old, we would always do study groups together in middle school and high school. And we we worked very well together on our homework. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be great business partners. But for us, lucky enough, it was a sign. It was an indicator back all the way back then.
00:17:27
Speaker
I know it can maybe feel intangible and more just an energy thing, but are you able to describe your shared working style?
00:17:36
Speaker
Machines.
Work Ethic and Leisure Balance
00:17:39
Speaker
Say more. just It would be really hard to work with someone who was in the clouds and just floating and we both.
00:17:49
Speaker
can be creative when we need to be creative, but we also, we just work really hard and for better or for worse, multitask a lot and are just doing a lot and are just constantly pushing. Cause I think, I think we both really share a similar quality and that complacency is not an option. And so we're both pushing each other and ourselves in the business to continue to level up. And so I think if we didn't have that shared drive and that instinct to just want to keep pushing through and just to be almost machines, like we're working so hard, it would be, it wouldn't be possible to keep things going, but it's great. Cause we always are wanting to level up and make the business better and to do new things. And it helps to have someone to hold you accountable in your goals.
00:18:44
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. i I resonate with the machine vibe. like that. You kind of need to. Yeah. To like it too, if that makes sense. You don't want to be pushing yourself and you're like, this isn't my style. I'm miserable. I'm burned out. But if you're like, I've got a lot of energy, I can really put it into this thing. That's powerful.
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah. And we give each other energy. Like we make time for – we'll sit and grind for hours, but then we'll step outside for a little bit or like her kids will come home and we'll hang out with the kids for a little bit. Like we have these like nice moments too, where it doesn't feel like all work all the time. So that's also like an important distinguishing factor too. Yeah.
Misconceptions and Flexibility in Social Media Strategy
00:19:29
Speaker
To come back to social for a second, I want to ask, what do you all think folks are getting wrong about social right now from whether you're the way social agencies approach it or specific even if it's just elements of understanding of strategy users or the platform?
00:19:46
Speaker
Is there anything that you feel like are messages you keep being like, no, you guys have it wrong. It's not this, it's this. Yeah. There, i think one one thing that I see people, i don't want to say getting wrong, but it's just almost like a block where I feel like people are still being too overly precious about social.
00:20:11
Speaker
You can sit and craft a beautiful, brilliant strategy and then go lie with it and it fails and you need to pivot. So it's like, why waste all that time nitpicking and what if, what if this, what if that, like it's important to have a high level strategy and goal, but I sometimes think people get so caught up in it and then get too many cooks in the kitchen that it like dilutes. Those are two separate problems. So like on the brand side, what I see is like too many cooks in the kitchen, And then you Frankenstein to make everybody's opinion heard and it dilutes the output.
00:20:51
Speaker
And it's a reflection of six different people wanting six different things. And then by default, there is like the final output feels like nothing. Right. So there's that happening.
00:21:03
Speaker
And then on the other hand, like I was mentioning with like people being too precious, social moves so fast. You have to be nimble and you have to be willing to test and learn and to try something and have it fail and then pivot or to do something that works and then change your plan to double, triple down on that. And if you're not putting out content because you're overanalyzing what to post, you're not creating pieces of data to get feedback from. So if you're just sitting there thinking and not producing,
00:21:38
Speaker
you're not getting any data. So put out 10 pieces of content that flop. That's okay because you're going to learn so much from that by cranking that out that you'll be able to then go back to the drawing board tweak and then ideally get into the zone.
00:21:53
Speaker
So I would really encourage people to be more fearless about testing things out and then to try and not have so many cooks in the kitchen to dilute a message or a piece of content.
00:22:08
Speaker
Yes. I feel the pain on the cooks in the kitchen every now and then that it's just, it's brutal when eight people weigh in and they all, and the piece is more a reflection of nobody getting their feelings hurt and everyone's feedback being interpreted as opposed to what makes the most sense here, what's going to get this out and what is, what's helpful for the audience. One thing I'm curious about, like I agree so wholeheartedly with everything you're saying,
00:22:31
Speaker
Sometimes I feel like large organizations like an enterprise org, they might have expectations around a significant amount of the deep strategy work, like a slow cycle around even getting vendor strategy approved, for example. Maybe, you know, i don't know if you encounter that at all, but if you come into a big organization that has a lot of processes, pretty slow moving, how do you communicate to them like the flexibility, the fluidity, and the urgency that you need to drive the results that they want.
00:23:07
Speaker
Yeah. So I think with bigger organizations, there So there is a time and place for that high level strategy, right? Where you're setting the tone of what is the goal of our Instagram? How do we want people to feel when they come to that page versus the TikTok, for example? But that's very high level. And I think what needs to be ever evolving is the way we execute towards that North star, where sometimes I think people get too fixated. So for bigger brands, it's like, we will still give them that high level. Like if they hear the pillars, here's the very top level strategy. Here are our KPIs to know if we're doing a good job so we can measure it. But something that we find works when they're not able or willing to be as nimble is, and if we did this,
00:24:03
Speaker
10 more times or an X, Y, Z way, here's where we're projecting we could be. And so we show them the end of the road in two different paths and the numbers are screaming positively in one way. Like you can get a bit more buy-in to your ideas and to your vision when you propose it in that sense.
00:24:26
Speaker
So down to do the decks, the core messaging pillars, the overall goals. And then if there's something, ah sometimes you putting together like quick notes, quick details when you're like, okay, when they're like, what's going on? Why are you guys doing this? And you're like, okay, here's why. Here's what we want to do Here's what we think will happen.
00:24:45
Speaker
And you're not like laboring over long on it. But I'm guessing some slides are put together and you get something out and you get their buy-in. Yeah. And for most of our clients, like we're doing analytic reports, typically it's on the monthly cadence. We're in that report. We're looking at the month. We're looking at a wider picture and we're saying, this is what worked. So next month we're going to do this in this, this, this, in this way. and And here's what didn't work. So let's not try that. Let's not do that anymore.
00:25:12
Speaker
And we'll propose or this is why we're like, hey, reach has been a little bit flat in the past month. We're proposing that we're going to do 20 day sprint of reels and see if we can build reach just by doing like reels only on on the page. And this is why we're doing it. Here's how we're going to measure the success and if it works. And then we're going to circle back next month and report back on our findings.
00:25:38
Speaker
So use those like monthly reports as the spot to do all that makes total sense to me. Yeah.
Natural Strengths and Challenges in Work
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah. All right, one question I wanna get to is what you wanted to be when you grew up, just cause I always liked that question. But before then, one more work-related question around for the work you're doing right now, what comes the most easily to you where you get the most energy, it feels really natural, and what are the parts of the job where you feel like this is just does not come as naturally and you have to be a little more consciously working at it?
00:26:07
Speaker
sir I think what comes,
00:26:13
Speaker
naturally is the strategy and kind of the big ideas and then being able to back it up with like data and reasons. I think I,
00:26:26
Speaker
While I am not an artist in my ability to personally, that's why I got in the music industry. I'm like, I don't play music well enough to be a musician, but like, I love it so much that like, I want to contribute to it. And so I love art and creativity. And while I can't physically execute it I love coming up with the ideas and building campaigns. So that definitely comes naturally in terms of what doesn't
00:26:52
Speaker
Some of the logistics that come with running a business that I never thought about, like state compliance, really just boring stuff. It's not coming too natural to me. Like I get, we can get it done and we can figure it out, but there's just certain parts of being a business owner where you're like, wait, what? I have to do this. So some of just like that very basic admin for being a business owner.
Personal Interests and Future Outlook
00:27:16
Speaker
I feel like every year there's like a new surprise.
00:27:19
Speaker
Yeah, I resonate with both of those things. And then what it maybe you'll say, i don't know what you'll say, but when you were a little kid, do you remember what you wanted to be? So it changed all the time.
00:27:32
Speaker
Like when I was into music, I wanted to be a rock star. When I was playing tennis, I wanted to be a tennis player. and i asked my parents that recently and they are echoed what I was just saying. Like I remember I really was into tennis when I was younger and i wanted to be a professional tennis player. And that was like a pretty big phase for me. So maybe that.
00:27:54
Speaker
Are you someone who gets like, do you go through stages of being deeply interested in something? And then you kind of like, okay, yeah. that What are some of your recent deep interests?
00:28:05
Speaker
Right now, I'm so interested in ai which i'm I went to an AI conference yesterday. I'm trying to stay up to date on the news with that. I'm trying to build out like agents.
00:28:17
Speaker
So I'm pretty deep in that right now. I also, this is so random, but I newly discovered country music for the first time. And I never thought I would ever like it as a gal that was like a former and still loves metal music. But I'm really into country music and I'm um deep.
00:28:35
Speaker
I'm like researching all the artists. I'm looking at their tours. I'm reading their backgrounds, their histories, their collaborators. So I'm like on the Spotify opening up all the song credits, like trying to see who works with them. Just like very much like obsessing over their history and their team.
00:28:52
Speaker
Both are super interesting. Very different. Yeah, super different. I didn't expect you to say country music, I have to say. That's not where i thought you were going. I thought you were going to say something like, I don't know, health-related for some reason. I don't know why. Well, I'm also really into researching peptides right now too. That's another big one.
00:29:11
Speaker
Loving learning about peptides. So that is a good one. I feel like I know peptides are important and they're making headlines, but I have not – ah I have not dipped my toes in that research yet. I'm pretty ignorant right now.
00:29:25
Speaker
Start dabbling. All right. For anyone who's listening and they really want to follow you or get in touch with you, where can we send them? And we'll throw whatever you say into the show notes too. So if you're listening, you can just scroll down and click.
00:29:36
Speaker
Yeah. So on Instagram, I'm Lauren EFF, L-A-U-R-E-N EFF. And then also on LinkedIn, Lauren Fortner. Hell yeah. All right. We'll throw both in there. Thank you so much, Lauren. It was really fun to chat with you. i think what you and Katie are doing is so cool. And it was really fun to get to talk to you both in this way. So I appreciate it a lot.
00:29:56
Speaker
I appreciate you. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. It so good getting to chat.