Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - A Shoppable Life

00:00:00.000 hey it's joe if i send you my instagram can you look through it and then tell me which of my

00:00:07.840 pictures might be the most commercial absolutely um do you have your phone i do yeah so it's joe

00:00:16.560 piazza author how do you spell piazza amber venn's box is scrolling my instagram i called her up and

00:00:24.480 asked her to scroll my instagram to tell me if i got what it takes to be a mom influencer

00:00:28.920 Okay, great.

00:00:29.440 So there's an adorable image of your daughter

00:00:32.380 wearing kind of this little heart onesie romper.

00:00:36.160 That would be an amazing post for like to know it.

00:00:39.060 Great. 0.98

00:00:40.120 Amber's an expert at this sort of thing. 1.00

00:00:42.820 Probably the expert. 0.86

00:00:45.580 She is the founder and president of both Reward Style

00:00:48.480 and Like to Know It.

00:00:50.820 These are the platforms that make influencing possible.

00:00:53.840 They're huge.

00:00:55.960 In the past 10 years,

00:00:57.400 influencers who work with RewardStyle and Like to Know It have sold more than $8 billion in

00:01:02.740 products for brands from Gucci to Walmart. Now, most of my pictures on my account are of my kids.

00:01:10.220 So by asking Amber if my pictures are commercial, it's almost like asking which of my kids

00:01:16.060 is more commercial, which when you put it that way is as uncomfortable as changing in a communal

00:01:23.820 dressing room at TJ Maxx. You know, let's see the cute little tiny feminist. That one would be gold 1.00

00:01:30.220 on like to know it. So many people would love that piece. They would want to have it and share

00:01:33.960 and buy that piece. That one would do very well. Now, in addition to helping influencers sell you

00:01:40.100 products, reward style also trains women to be influencers. It helps them figure out how to make 0.99

00:01:46.280 their lives shoppable. Together, we have pioneered a new industry. From Shanghai to LA and Berlin to

00:01:56.100 Sao Paulo, Reward Style influencers have grown into an incredibly strong, thriving community

00:02:01.260 of entrepreneurs. This is Reward Style. I've interviewed about 100 influencers now,

00:02:09.180 and most of them have told me I have got to get on Reward Style. They say the Reward Style

00:02:13.760 training program is like the Harvard for influencers. It's often said that reward style

00:02:18.600 is like grad school for influencers. We now have 100 reward style millionaires. And what that means

00:02:24.680 is these are individuals, solopreneurs who have been empowered by our platform. They've come to

00:02:28.820 it. They've built their business with us. And through our platform alone, they have earned

00:02:34.060 over $1 million. That's incredible. And they're women. Are they all women? They are all women.

00:02:39.580 And all 100 of the reward-style millionaires are women.

00:02:44.400 I actually can't think of any other industry

00:02:47.660 that has minted so many female millionaires 0.93

00:02:51.380 in such a short period of time. 0.99

00:02:53.800 Can you?

00:02:54.440 I can't.

00:02:56.140 Maybe only Hollywood.

00:02:57.400 Maybe this industry is second only to Hollywood.

00:03:00.560 Maybe, but I would say that we're going to beat Hollywood.

00:03:06.540 You have to apply to be a reward-style influencer.

00:03:09.580 And according to some statistics, their acceptance rate is even lower than Harvard's.

00:03:15.560 I didn't get into Harvard 22 years ago, but I feel like I have a shot with reward style.

00:03:21.200 Now I get to find out if my life as a mother is investable, commercial, shoppable.

00:03:29.560 I'm Jo Piazza, and you're under the influence.

00:03:39.580 chapter three a shoppable life

00:03:48.980 today i'm signing up to be a reward style influencer deep breath when i talked to amber

00:03:58.980 she told me how to do it and it sounded pretty easy pretty painless you would go to rewardstyle.com

00:04:04.920 and go to our influencer page and apply.

00:04:07.400 And the team is actually looking for certain things.

00:04:10.080 We vet those applications

00:04:11.080 and then we make investments in influencers

00:04:13.600 that we think are investable.

00:04:17.720 So I go to www.rewardstyle.com.

00:04:23.420 Everyone on this page is so good looking.

00:04:26.740 I am not this good looking.

00:04:29.600 All right, apply now.

00:04:32.140 Boom.

00:04:32.620 tell us about you first name

00:04:36.960 this is way easier than harvard region i live in philadelphia but i have a lot of friends in

00:04:48.000 new york and la which seems a lot sexier not that philly's not sexy love philly best city in america

00:04:56.260 please provide all the channels you post content to regularly. I don't know what half of these are.

00:05:03.540 What's Plurk? What's Bilibili? No, not, I don't even, I can't even think about TikTok. Username,

00:05:10.460 Joe Piazza Author. All right, these questions are optional, but can help increase your chances of

00:05:17.580 being approved. Please identify one of the categories you need help with. All right,

00:05:22.640 monetize. I want to monetize myself. How much time do you plan to dedicate to creating and

00:05:27.800 monetizing content? As little as possible. That's not true. I'm going to tell them full time.

00:05:32.920 You'd think they'd ask you more. You think they'd want to know a little bit more about me. Like,

00:05:36.680 do you like to take long walks on the beach? I'm a Virgo. I enjoy pasta, but I've been doing a keto

00:05:43.780 diet recently. All right. Bam. That's all we got. Reward style. Application. Submit it.

00:05:52.640 now I just have to wait and see if I get accepted but while I wait I want to figure out what a

00:06:00.640 shoppable life even means so I called Emily Hund from Penn again shoppable life is a term that I

00:06:07.620 came up with with my colleague Lee McGuigan we are looking for a way to sort of encapsulate

00:06:12.820 what was going on on Instagram with people monetizing their lifestyles so shoppability

00:06:19.740 is this idea that any place, piece of content, experience could be a potential site of commerce.

00:06:30.320 So when I wake up in the morning in my Brooklyn and sheets and make my way to the bathroom to

00:06:35.380 use my Billy razor to shave the bottom half of my legs and then put my everyday oil on my face

00:06:41.220 to get that just got screwed glow. What? Yes, I genuinely love these brands. This is not an ad.

00:06:49.740 These people are not paying me yet, but if RewardStyle approves me,

00:06:55.500 these could all be potential sponsors of my Instagram side hustle.

00:07:02.020 But the thing about being shoppable, when you start documenting and broadcasting your entire

00:07:08.300 life on Instagram, the opportunities for product placement feel endless. This all has the potential

00:07:14.740 to get real overwhelming real fast.

00:07:18.180 A lot of the mom influencers I've talked to

00:07:19.740 say that they have moments where it's hard

00:07:22.300 to separate their real life

00:07:24.140 from their brand-friendly Instagram life.

00:07:27.600 Suddenly, I was learning that everything I saw was content.

00:07:32.000 That changed the way I did everything.

00:07:35.000 I was picking betting because it was what I liked,

00:07:36.560 and also, does anyone else have anything like this?

00:07:39.260 How is this going to photograph?

00:07:40.840 Can I link to this and get an affiliate off of it?

00:07:43.160 That's Natalie Levin again.

00:07:44.980 We talked to her in the last episode. 0.83

00:07:46.280 She was one of the early mom-influencing celebrities,

00:07:49.600 the creator of the HeyNatalieJean Instagram account.

00:07:53.280 And that blurry boundary between life and business that she describes,

00:07:57.380 that was so disorienting to her that she eventually quit this crazy world.

00:08:02.660 But we'll get to that in a later episode.

00:08:04.920 For now, back to Emily Hund.

00:08:06.660 Your participation in commercial life is no longer limited to actually going to a store.

00:08:10.880 shopping is something that could potentially happen anywhere. This has sort of been growing

00:08:15.840 and sort of creeping up on us for a long time. We've talked about the history of influencing

00:08:20.320 already. We talked about Lucille Ball revolutionizing mom influencing on TV,

00:08:24.480 but there have been other versions of the shoppable life too. Especially if you were a kid in the 80s

00:08:29.080 and your parents watched TV late at night, you're going to recognize a lot of these.

00:08:33.020 You know, we kind of talk about like older forms. Like if you think about like an infomercial.

00:08:37.920 the following is a paid advertisement for the express ready set go that was like an early

00:08:44.640 attempt to make watching television a shopping experience so the shoppable life on instagram

00:08:51.120 is just this idea that we're presenting our lifestyles in images and in instagram stories

00:08:57.020 and that they can be merchandised and monetized pretty seamlessly the merchandising and monetization

00:09:04.520 of Instagram and Instagram stories is the idea that you can buy another person's entire life

00:09:10.340 with just one click. It's amazing. It's as easy as putting in your fingerprint. And within a

00:09:18.560 matter of seconds, you can go from looking at this picture of someone's life to owning a piece

00:09:25.460 of that life. I don't pretend to be, you know, exempt from this either. I recently bought a rug

00:09:32.600 for my bedroom. And I think that's part of the appeal of influencers more generally is they make

00:09:38.460 life easier for their followers. I do this all the time. I mindlessly order organic nipples and

00:09:48.080 nursing tops that have empowering messages that I secretly hate. You've got this, mama. 0.84

00:09:54.220 And I know in my heart of hearts that all of this is just maternal fetish wear,

00:09:59.720 But I'm buying the lives of the women who make motherhood look easy and beautiful

00:10:03.420 because I desperately want something in my own life to be easy and beautiful.

00:10:08.520 You're okay, baby.

00:10:09.680 You're okay.

00:10:11.160 We live in a time of total information overload and aesthetic overload.

00:10:17.420 And again, like I said, zooming out even further,

00:10:19.940 these broader societal issues with work and things like that,

00:10:24.040 people are just overwhelmed.

00:10:25.220 And when you find someone online whose style you like or, you know, whose lifestyle resonates with yours for whatever reason, it's easy to just follow them and say, I'm just going to let this person make my decision.

00:10:40.560 Think about how easy and wonderful it is to let someone else curate your life for you.

00:10:45.300 When you become a mom for the first time, your entire identity shifts.

00:10:49.660 And that is one of the reasons that moms are so susceptible to influencer marketing on Instagram.

00:10:56.100 At no other time in our lives, except for puberty, has our identity been so malleable. 0.99

00:11:02.200 And we had no idea who the fuck we are. 0.98

00:11:05.760 Until five years ago, I knew exactly who I was. 0.99

00:11:08.480 I was an author, a reporter, a best friend.

00:11:11.440 Many nights, the girl who stayed too late at the club.

00:11:14.260 Three years ago, I became one thing.

00:11:20.560 And the worst part of that is I had no idea how to be that thing.

00:11:24.140 how to be a mom, a mama, a mommy.

00:11:27.620 There are too many decisions to be made in a day as a parent

00:11:31.080 and the idea of being told what to do and how to be

00:11:34.520 and what to put on my body to be a good mother 0.99

00:11:37.940 feels like a goddamn miracle. 0.99

00:11:42.900 I totally get that, absolutely. 0.98

00:11:45.720 There's Glynis on one of our nightly phone calls.

00:11:48.700 But I'm curious how many things you have actually purchased.

00:11:54.140 via Instagram. Do you want to walk through my house and I can show you? I would like to walk

00:11:59.880 through your house, actually. Why don't you just pick one room and walk me through that?

00:12:05.240 All right, let's do my bedroom. After spending a lot of time on Instagram, I realized I've made

00:12:11.400 my entire bedroom white. All white, white sheets, brook linen and parachute, white curtains. Those

00:12:18.600 or Ikea, white carpet, home goods.

00:12:22.100 I mean, I've gotten white on the cheap,

00:12:24.040 but it's kind of great.

00:12:26.000 It feels like walking into a cloud or a coma,

00:12:30.660 both of which I imagine are very comforting things.

00:12:35.780 It sounds like walking into an invitation

00:12:39.080 for a toddler to spill something.

00:12:42.340 Oh, it's filthy.

00:12:43.140 It started out as white

00:12:44.360 And now everything is kind of a dull yellow, but it still feels very soothing.

00:12:55.220 Anyway, I have to say I love my white bedroom and Instagram kind of programmed me.

00:13:00.380 Not having to make any decisions, someone else telling me what to do, it takes something off my plate.

00:13:05.820 It takes something off my to-do list.

00:13:07.220 And it reminds me of that scene that I love so much in Fleabag, season two, where she's in the confession booth.

00:13:13.900 And she says, I just want someone else to tell me what to do.

00:13:18.720 I think that we all just want to be told what to do. 0.99

00:13:21.860 And then she has hot priest sex. 0.97

00:13:24.460 But here's my question, Jo, is does waking up in an Instagram room bring with it like the satisfaction of looking at an Instagram room? 0.98

00:13:34.260 Do you feel like you're in the picture?

00:13:36.240 I do.

00:13:36.980 Sometimes it's so creepy, right?

00:13:38.740 But sometimes when it's clean, in the one hour a week that my room is clean, I do wake up and I feel like I'm in a movie set.

00:13:48.900 One of those Nancy Meyers movies with Diane Keaton where she wears the turtlenecks and everything is white and beautiful.

00:13:54.920 Or in an Instagram.

00:13:58.700 But look, I bought all of these things just by clicking on my screen.

00:14:04.400 It wasn't always this easy.

00:14:05.760 Do you remember when you couldn't even shop on Instagram?

00:14:08.360 It's not that long ago that Instagram was just for FOMO and it wasn't for, you know,

00:14:14.120 satisfying your FOMO with a purchase, essentially.

00:14:18.560 Do you remember when we used to have to go to a mall to buy things?

00:14:22.060 I remember having to go to a mall to find out what I wanted to buy.

00:14:25.780 The immediacy of this sometimes feels to me like the fantasy of eight-year-old us.

00:14:34.340 Like, you want what you want when you want it and now you can have it.

00:14:37.800 I miss them all.

00:14:39.940 I did not miss them all, Jo.

00:14:42.100 I loved them all.

00:14:44.900 No, but it's true.

00:14:45.960 When Instagram first started, sometimes people would put products in their Instagram.

00:14:50.240 And remember, you would look at it and be like, oh, I like that product, but now I have to search.

00:14:55.480 Now I have to Google what that is and go to their website.

00:14:57.920 And it was clunky.

00:14:58.720 It was just you couldn't shop on Instagram. 0.99

00:15:01.280 But there were a handful of entrepreneurs, women, who broke that system.

00:15:09.100 Somebody was like, I don't need to spend the next 45 minutes coming up with various search terms for this caftan to find out where this woman purchased it. 0.97

00:15:20.080 I'm going to provide it for people and take a piece of the pie.

00:15:24.040 I'm going to deliver this caftan directly to your email. 0.97

00:15:26.920 And that woman was Amber Venn's box.

00:15:28.940 Amber Venn's Box.

00:15:31.860 It's a great name.

00:15:32.960 I love a three-name name.

00:15:34.860 She's the woman who was scrolling through my Instagram at the beginning of this episode.

00:15:38.200 And when we get back, you're going to hear about how she became the biggest tech CEO

00:15:41.640 that you probably have never heard of.

00:15:43.900 But you should. 0.95

00:15:45.160 If you know Mark Zuckerberg's freaking name, you need to know her name. 0.97

00:15:49.060 Be right back. 0.96

00:15:49.860 we did our history lesson in the last episode but we didn't really talk about how we were able to

00:16:03.680 start shopping on instagram how a shoppable life became possible a lot of companies tried to solve

00:16:10.140 this problem but the most successful one has been reward style and like to know it i'm gonna geek

00:16:15.600 out a little bit about this story, because frankly, we don't geek out enough about women

00:16:20.480 founders. Unlike most tech darlings, Amber Vensbox does not live in Silicon Valley. 1.00

00:16:27.560 She's unapologetically based in Dallas, where she's lived since she moved back in with her dad

00:16:32.240 after finishing college during the 2008 financial crisis. Back then, she was designing jewelry,

00:16:38.380 and she just landed a job as a personal shopper. She got paid by commission for selling clothes

00:16:43.860 to really fancy clients.

00:16:45.880 As one does, she started a blog 0.99

00:16:47.480 to try to market her business.

00:16:49.340 I started this website thinking

00:16:51.380 that it was gonna be a marketing tool

00:16:52.980 for my offline business of personal shopping.

00:16:55.460 At the time, personal shopping,

00:16:57.060 a lot of people maybe had assumptions about it

00:16:58.920 or didn't know what that business was.

00:17:00.680 And so my thought was, okay, I'll start this website.

00:17:03.300 I'll show them what I do.

00:17:04.640 I'll show them my point of view and how it all works

00:17:06.820 and what they're getting into.

00:17:07.900 And I'll book more offline customers.

00:17:10.520 This was a very smart marketing decision

00:17:12.220 that turned into a terrible business decision.

00:17:15.360 This was actually a great innovation

00:17:17.540 that my customers didn't even know that they wanted.

00:17:20.760 And so they just started going to the site to shop

00:17:22.620 and cutting me out of my business

00:17:24.500 because I wasn't able to collect commission

00:17:26.100 on the sales that I drove online

00:17:27.620 the way that I was offline.

00:17:30.600 So people would just buy what she recommended on the website.

00:17:33.600 They didn't need her anymore.

00:17:35.560 She thought about how to fix that,

00:17:37.740 how she could get paid for her recommendations.

00:17:40.680 I like this part of the story.

00:17:43.480 I like it a lot.

00:17:45.460 Amber is very upfront about the fact that she launched her company to figure out how to get herself paid. 0.99

00:17:50.880 She wanted to make money.

00:17:56.080 My then boyfriend, now husband, and I were sitting around in his apartment one day and just kind of talking about what I was going to do.

00:18:02.100 He just said, you know, this seems like something that you love.

00:18:04.280 Do you want to continue to do it?

00:18:05.800 and I said yes to me I just wanted to make money the same way I had offline which was

00:18:10.940 I'm driving a sale I earn a commission that's the business that I knew and I just wanted to

00:18:15.120 be able to prove to these stores that you know that I was the one driving the online sale and

00:18:20.120 get paid the same way I always had and we went on a walk to our local Starbucks and just sat down

00:18:25.100 and thought about you know how this would work and how people could get paid and I remember he

00:18:29.180 asked me well what would this thing be called and at the time I was maybe you know 20 years old and

00:18:35.680 I said, well, I think it would be called RewardStyle because if you have great taste,

00:18:40.500 then people will buy things and you'll make money. And we just got online and looked up

00:18:45.580 and found that RewardStyle.com was available and purchased the domain.

00:18:50.140 The website was very simple. It was based off the idea of affiliate linking that most websites use

00:18:55.700 today. It linked bloggers with brands and then paid them a commission on each sale that they

00:19:01.260 drove to that website. But in the beginning, brands were still like, meh, why should we do

00:19:06.500 this? Bloggers are still doing shit for free. But Amber hustled her ass off and got the brands to 0.99

00:19:12.000 come on board. But then eyeballs went from blogs to social media feeds. So Amber launched a new 0.98

00:19:19.680 product to deal with Instagram. At the time when Instagram launched, there was no linking out of

00:19:26.240 the app. And so our influencers were building huge audiences. They're creating more content there

00:19:30.540 than they even were on their blogs

00:19:31.820 or their Pinterest or Facebook or Twitter,

00:19:33.820 they kept just telling us like,

00:19:35.380 please monetize Instagram, please monetize Instagram.

00:19:37.800 And the concept that we came up with was,

00:19:40.640 okay, if we could make the like button a trigger

00:19:43.800 for a email newsletter,

00:19:46.840 and then back to the way that I love to name things,

00:19:50.060 like to know it was quite literal.

00:19:51.620 You would hit the like button

00:19:53.160 and then you could know everything about the post.

00:19:55.380 Within the app, an influencer could tag

00:19:56.800 nearly everything in their lives

00:19:58.380 and consumers can buy it with just one tap.

00:20:02.020 This moment is what Emily Hund refers to

00:20:04.400 as the start of the shoppable life.

00:20:07.100 The most important part of being on the RewardStyle platform

00:20:09.900 is knowing how to create and publish Like to Know It posts.

00:20:13.800 First things first,

00:20:14.940 you want to make sure you've downloaded the RewardStyle app.

00:20:17.760 Once you've done that, open it up to get started.

00:20:21.580 Tap enable a new image and from your camera roll.

00:20:24.320 The first iteration of Like to Know It was a newsletter.

00:20:27.140 And then in 2017, they launched the Like to Know It shopping app.

00:20:31.180 That made purchasing even easier.

00:20:33.020 It became a one-stop shop for people who like to shop from influencers,

00:20:37.080 who wanted someone else to tell them what to buy.

00:20:39.280 That very first year, consumers bought about $10 million worth of products through the service.

00:20:44.100 And then the next year, it grew to $50 million.

00:20:47.580 And then the following year, $150 million.

00:20:49.880 And then up to $500 million.

00:20:51.880 And it was increasingly becoming a critical piece of our ecosystem, not just for our influencers, but for our brands.

00:20:59.860 Fast forward to today, it's the largest single driver of sales for our retailers.

00:21:04.180 It's growing triple digits annually.

00:21:06.760 And last year, consumers purchased one billion dollars worth of products through the Like to Know It app alone.

00:21:13.920 One billion dollars.

00:21:16.100 It ain't nothing.

00:21:17.440 So Amber's company is helping you buy things, but it's also helping brands sell things.

00:21:24.500 It's helping brands meet their customers where they're at.

00:21:27.100 And where they're at all the time, even in the bathroom, is online.

00:21:32.800 We now have 5,000 retailers who are integrated into our technology and commissioning on the

00:21:40.000 sales that our influencers are driving through their content.

00:21:42.440 You can imagine all the traffic we're driving and then now also billions of dollars in sales to these guys every year.

00:21:49.520 On the influencer side, influencers are accepted into our ecosystem.

00:21:53.660 They're provided really four things.

00:21:55.260 They're provided off the bat, immediate relationship with these 5,000 retailers.

00:22:00.900 They're provided with publishing technology, both through our mobile app and our desktop platform,

00:22:05.000 to publish their content in a way that makes it shoppable for consumers across any platform.

00:22:09.660 you can shop anywhere anytime and with that a quick break buy yourself something nice while

00:22:18.540 we're gone 1.00

00:22:19.060 amber vens box is a 34 year old mother of four and the president of a company that has driven 0.99

00:22:37.620 more than $8 billion in sales to brands in the past 10 years. Why the hell hasn't she been on 1.00

00:22:44.640 the cover of Forbes? I cannot stop thinking about the numbers that Amber threw around when she 0.97

00:22:51.020 explained how RewardStyle completely changed the way we shop on Instagram. I was very excited and

00:22:56.500 I texted Gunas and then she didn't respond to my text. So I called her to talk more about it.

00:23:01.820 joe those numbers are insane have you asked for an application oh yeah i applied this morning i

00:23:12.760 think that what they do is they just look at your instagram feed and they decide by looking at your

00:23:18.280 instagram feed if you're shoppable commercial beautiful perfect enough to allow you to become

00:23:26.580 a reward style influencer. Okay. I have some questions. What is the, what did they ask you

00:23:32.120 on the application? That's what I, the first thing I want to know. Like, is it, do they look at your

00:23:35.160 follower count? Like what is the SAT score version of this? Do you have to have a certain

00:23:39.460 amount of followers or posts per day or likes? They just want your info and then they take a

00:23:45.860 look for themselves. Well, obviously they're going to see Bea and Charlie and that'll be the end of

00:23:49.920 that. Totally. They're the most adorable children of all time. Who doesn't want to buy Bea and

00:23:56.380 Charlie. Oh, when you say it like that, it feels so gross. I don't want someone to buy my children.

00:24:02.840 When I talked to Amber on the phone before, she told me that Bea was more commercial than Charlie.

00:24:08.380 Oh my God. Does Reward Style offer future therapy for your children?

00:24:15.060 Reward Style does not provide therapy for your children. That is not a service that they offer.

00:24:20.320 And Glynis was joking, but I am considering what this can do to my family. And we are getting into

00:24:25.540 that later. Right now I'm still trying to exploit my children by getting accepted through award

00:24:30.100 style. You're applying blindly to a secret club that could bring you millions of dollars if you

00:24:37.300 have what it takes, though you don't know what it takes. Gwyneth, as usual, was right. I still had

00:24:44.800 no idea what was going to get me into this secret club. And the beauty of being a journalist is

00:24:50.140 that I could just ask Amber and her team what they were looking for in an applicant. Yes,

00:24:54.800 So we're looking at how long you've been creating content, how engaged your audience is,

00:24:59.560 what types of content and on what channels? Are you a single channel? Are you multi-channel?

00:25:04.760 And are you creating the types of content that would be able to be commercial? So for example,

00:25:10.700 are you showing your kids out riding a bicycle? And we can see the kid, we can see their outfit,

00:25:14.580 we can see the bicycle. That's totally commercial. We can actually say like,

00:25:17.640 I chose this bicycle because it was the right price point. I liked the way it was monochromatic

00:25:21.520 And my kids, you know, always wear these cute little cashmere suits from H&M.

00:25:25.720 You won't even believe how inexpensive they are.

00:25:27.900 Obviously, people are buying into your life and your lifestyle.

00:25:30.240 And so it needs to be very well-rounded.

00:25:32.260 There needs to be enough content there to where we could monetize it.

00:25:36.560 I also asked, once you pass the test, once you get accepted, who is actually making good money? 1.00

00:25:44.020 There's thousands of women who are supporting themselves and their family through reward style. 1.00

00:25:48.400 And behind them, thousands of women who are just supporting themselves.

00:25:51.520 Behind that is really those that are using this to supplement their income. 0.98

00:25:56.640 And so maybe they still do have other careers.

00:25:58.900 We have very successful influencers who are running PR agencies who are still nurses,

00:26:02.900 who are doing other things that it changes their quality of life.

00:26:07.060 But there's a trickle-down effect here.

00:26:09.360 Now it's not just the influencers making the money. 1.00

00:26:11.840 Now some of these women are employing the rest of their family too. 1.00

00:26:14.880 You know, now we're seeing husbands and sisters and mothers 0.93

00:26:17.340 and all of this kind of folding into the family business, which is now influence.

00:26:21.520 Today, nearly 30% of our influencers identify family as one of their top three content categories.

00:26:28.120 And when we look at 2019, we see 100% growth in family influencers year over year.

00:26:35.500 100% growth in the family category.

00:26:38.700 It does make you wonder about the incentives that come with that money.

00:26:41.760 Sarah Fryer, the Instagram historian and author of No Filter, has some thoughts on that.

00:26:46.520 sometimes I look at mom influencers and wonder if they would have as many children if not for

00:26:57.220 the amazing sponsorships that come with being pregnant or having a baby it's a great story

00:27:05.620 you can tell I think there's a lot of nostalgia that people have for the time that their kids

00:27:10.440 or babies and a lot of aspirations to be that kind of perfect mother to a baby that makes it

00:27:18.080 so lucrative. The idea that some influencers build their lives around this idea of shoppability, 0.56

00:27:24.020 it's pretty dark. It's a black mirror dark. But according to Amber, when we talked to her in the

00:27:29.000 beginning of this episode, my life feels shoppable. My kids seem to have what it takes.

00:27:34.820 your daughter wearing kind of this little heart onesie romper that would be an amazing post for

00:27:42.000 light to know it so i was excited and a little nervous when i got my email back from reward

00:27:49.460 style about the status of my application thank you for your interest in reward style an exclusive

00:27:57.900 invitation only platform for digital publishers we've carefully reviewed your application and

00:28:03.120 unfortunately your request to become a member of reward style was not accepted at this time

00:28:07.780 this decision is a reflection of the competition for admission and does not detract from the

00:28:12.640 impressive credentials you submitted we encourage you to continue publishing and apply again in the

00:28:17.980 future sincerely the reward style team 0.88

00:28:21.300 fuck 0.99

00:28:24.320 seriously 1.00

00:28:25.940 well now I feel like shit 0.98

00:28:30.140 I was cocky man 0.99

00:28:32.140 I thought I had this 1.00

00:28:33.780 so you were rejected by the mommy bloggers

00:28:39.040 I was rejected by reward style

00:28:41.320 that's my best friend Jackie

00:28:43.140 she was the first person I called

00:28:45.820 when I got rejected from reward style

00:28:47.600 that makes me angry on so many levels

00:28:50.340 Because it's funny, even though I didn't know if this is actually something I wanted to do,

00:28:55.600 the rejection still stung.

00:28:57.520 I don't know.

00:28:58.060 I think they just look at my Instagram and they're like, no, you do not have a shoppable

00:29:02.220 life.

00:29:02.660 People will not want to click and buy your life. 1.00

00:29:04.400 On behalf of all the moms that are normal, like, am I allowed to cuss? 1.00

00:29:09.740 You can cuss, yeah. 1.00

00:29:10.600 What the fuck? 1.00

00:29:12.280 Seriously. 1.00

00:29:13.280 So that's so offensive.

00:29:14.760 And then who are they to be the arbiters of all these things?

00:29:18.760 I think that they don't want normal humans.

00:29:20.740 I think they want superhumans. 1.00

00:29:22.660 But the quote unquote superhumans on Instagram, we all know are bullshit. 0.99

00:29:28.380 What would you do if you're taking pictures of your children and it's not, they don't 0.99

00:29:32.960 look photogenic?

00:29:33.980 What if you think they don't look sellable?

00:29:36.960 That's awful.

00:29:38.220 That's horrific.

00:29:39.380 Oh.

00:29:39.860 Right?

00:29:40.460 See, now it feels gross.

00:29:42.340 I think it's gross.

00:29:43.580 And I hate them on your behalf. 0.72

00:29:46.820 I'm very angry.

00:29:48.760 I love you.

00:29:49.840 Thank you.

00:29:50.480 I love you very much.

00:29:51.660 Thank you.

00:29:52.700 Thank you for that.

00:29:57.920 There was a long time in my life where I didn't get rejected from things.

00:30:02.940 I'm good at stuff.

00:30:05.100 But it's happening more and more.

00:30:08.460 I haven't told anyone this, but last year I wrote half of a new novel and I thought it was a home run, but my editor told me it just wasn't commercial enough.

00:30:18.760 I scrapped 200 pages.

00:30:21.400 I applied to some jobs.

00:30:23.680 Never heard back.

00:30:25.120 Totally ghosted.

00:30:26.800 My last novel, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win,

00:30:29.220 it was supposed to be this huge Amazon TV show with Julia Roberts. 0.98

00:30:33.840 And then Julia Roberts bailed on me.

00:30:36.260 I got rejected by Julia Roberts.

00:30:38.680 No one in my life is allowed to watch Notting Hill ever again.

00:30:42.060 I'm reaching a point in my life where I am no longer

00:30:44.780 the hot, young, 30 under 30 girl Friday.

00:30:48.360 I'm a middle-aged Sally. 0.99

00:30:50.320 No one wants a middle-aged Sally. 0.74

00:30:54.060 I called Airburgen,

00:30:55.960 fully realizing that I am probably very annoying at this point,

00:31:01.000 but I wanted more clues.

00:31:04.200 This is what she told me.

00:31:06.080 It's actually really all about authenticity

00:31:07.940 and off-the-cuff looking content

00:31:09.840 that feels very, very relatable.

00:31:12.420 The stuff that doesn't feel like a stage,

00:31:14.580 that doesn't feel like it's a model,

00:31:15.840 that doesn't feel like a caption,

00:31:16.980 that's like someone who lives in a totally fake world.

00:31:22.040 I thought that's what I was doing.

00:31:24.200 I literally just take pictures of my real life.

00:31:27.040 I realize that the Instagram version of my life

00:31:29.240 isn't as perfect and beautiful

00:31:31.500 as a lot of the women that are in reward style ranks.

00:31:35.180 But I am not a quitter, not like Julia Roberts.

00:31:38.120 I'm still doing this thing.

00:31:39.760 But to do that, I need to figure out

00:31:41.620 what the hell Amber means when she says authentic.

00:31:44.840 What does it mean to be an authentic mother on Instagram? 0.99

00:31:46.980 an authentic woman.

00:31:50.460 We are going to find out next week.

00:31:57.480 Under the Influence is reported and hosted by me, Joe Piazza.

00:32:02.020 Our story editor is Glynnis McNichol.

00:32:04.780 Emily Marinoff is our producer.

00:32:06.860 We had a production assistance on this episode from Mary Du.

00:32:10.200 Sound design by Emily Marinoff and Jessica Kreinchich.

00:32:14.160 Our theme and additional music was composed by Jessica Kreinchich.

00:32:17.800 Mixing was done by Jackie Huntington.

00:32:20.400 Additional research conducted by Jocelyn Sears.

00:32:23.440 Julian Weller is our consulting producer.

00:32:25.840 And Manga Shatikador is our executive producer.

00:32:29.720 Special thanks to Isabel Lam from Reward Style for her constant coordination of all of my interviews with Amber.

00:32:35.900 And Emily Hund from the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication.

00:32:42.000 And thank you, thank you.

00:32:43.440 To Morgan Lavoie and Christina Everett for lending their voice acting skills to this episode.

00:32:48.200 They're way better than making my husband do all the voices.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - February 18, 2021

A Shoppable Life

Episode Stats

Transcript