00:00:00.000Hey all, Jo here, and you are listening to Under the Influence.
00:00:10.580It is publication day, friends. Everyone is Lying to is in the world. I want you to ignore
00:00:17.480all of your children and do nothing but read this book for the next 24 hours. Okay? I promise
00:00:25.420issue that everyone is lying to you is a wild, juicy, pulpy ride with just the right amount of
00:00:31.580taking down the patriarchy. And that's what we need and what we want right now. If you're one
00:00:37.040of the few people who hasn't ordered the book yet, order now. It can be here tomorrow while
00:00:42.960you're listening. It's like two clicks. Don't let yourself be the only one who hasn't read the book
00:00:47.620that the internet cannot shut up about. Yeah. And speaking of the internet, today, we're talking
00:00:55.700to the one influencer who has personally convinced me to spend actual money on actual things that I
00:01:03.320love. The one and only Grace Atwood. On her recommendations, I've bought tanning drops,
00:01:11.980incredible books, maybe the best mascara of all time, pajamas, countless dresses,
00:01:18.680and all of them are complete perfection. And that's because Grace just knows what she's
00:01:25.160talking about. Grace is an OG blogger who started back in the early days of Blogspot and Google0.94
00:01:32.380Reader. And she's built her business by being transparent, consistent, and yeah, I already said
00:01:38.960this, but by being authentic, actually authentic, not fake authentic, in a space that usually
00:01:45.980rewards a lot of smoke and mirrors. I'm so glad that this episode is airing today when
00:01:51.900everyone is lying to you comes out, because Grace is one of the good ones. She's honest.
00:01:58.940When she doesn't like something, she tells you. But if she loves something, she shouts
00:02:03.620about it from the rooftop. Today we're talking about the business and the evolution of content
00:02:09.800creation. All of the real work that goes on behind the beautiful feeds, why affiliate links don't
00:02:15.860have to be a dirty word, and how influencers have become media brands unto themselves. Even if
00:02:24.020mainstream media still doesn't quite get it. This is one of those episodes where I get to pull back
00:02:29.980the curtain on what it really takes to build trust, build a brand, and a livelihood in the
00:02:37.820creator economy. You're gonna love it. And Grace. She's awesome. I have to start by telling you
00:02:52.820that you are the one influencer who has convinced me to buy the most things that I love on the
00:03:02.260entire internet. I don't regret a single thing that you've told me to get from the face tanning
00:03:08.100water stuff. The face water, yes. The face water. It's so good. That was a Laurel Panson wreck and
00:03:14.000she's someone I really trust. That's like the highest praise because I take recommendations
00:03:19.220so seriously. Like if you put your name behind something, you want people to love it.
00:03:24.100I know. I know. It matters. And, you know, we live in a world where everyone is trying to
00:03:28.660cobble together different streams of income and figure out how this works. And, you know,
00:03:33.320it's hard to know who to trust. But yeah, yeah, you have brought some wonderful things
00:03:38.260into my life from books to tanning stuff. And so thank you. I just want to start out by saying
00:03:43.980thank you that is so nice and thank you for writing your book that is coming out very soon
00:03:49.760so soon that was my favorite you've written i think i fell in love with your writing through
00:03:54.440the knockoff like way back yeah i think that's when we first started talking i mean yeah it is
00:03:59.060yeah and that was kind of about like the digital print world and then now you're like kind of
00:04:04.480coming full circle talking about the influencer world totally totally yeah i mean this one was
00:04:09.220so fun to write. That's the thing. And I love Sicilian Inheritance, but this one was just a
00:04:14.100blast. And I wanted it to be fun for readers, too. So thank you for putting it in your newsletter.
00:04:19.460It means so much because you're also such a reader. I love your book recommendations.
00:04:23.380Finding books is hard and you have impeccable taste. Thank you. That's so nice. I love to read.
00:04:29.940I know you do. I know you do. So we've been talking about the influencing world for a while.
00:04:35.080you were one of the first people that I wanted to talk to when I created the Under the Influence
00:04:39.400podcast almost six years ago. And you've been in the business of writing things on the internet
00:04:46.260for a long time now. I think you're an OG. Would you consider yourself an OG?
00:04:51.140Yeah, it's been 15 years. And I started when I was not young. I started, I mean, I was young,
00:04:57.380but I was 28. I wasn't like a lot of these, a lot of these women started when they were,0.72
00:05:01.380you know, 19 or 20. So it's been a long time. And so what was the first platform that you were on?
00:05:09.240Because I want to go through the journey of how things have changed in the past 15 years.
00:05:14.120It's been such a journey. When I started, I had my blog, which was hosted, I think it was just
00:05:19.080on Blogspot. Yeah, that sounds right. Yep. The big thing was Google Reader back then. And then I
00:05:25.120think i started a facebook page and a twitter account for it and that was all i had back then
00:05:32.140i had a day job i would go and i would on the weekends i would schedule my blog posts and then
00:05:36.720in the mornings i would put them onto my facebook page and my twitter and then i'd go to work and i
00:05:41.200come home and i'd maybe it wasn't so all-consuming you know it was just like you could schedule
00:05:46.240things and then you just would go to your job and come home right right it was not media at that
00:05:53.480time because I think I was still in traditional media. I was vaguely online, but also making
00:05:59.200print magazines. And media was not a 24-7 world. It was, okay, we make content, we schedule
00:06:05.400content, we put it out, and then you can walk away. You can have a life. You're not constantly
00:06:11.680glued to this thing in the palm of your hand. And that started to change around seven, eight
00:06:19.940years ago. Am I right? Yeah, I think it was when stories became a thing because it was not only
00:06:25.820just, you know, you're supposed to be talking to the camera, documenting your day, sharing your
00:06:29.860life, but then you also were getting these DMs. And when the DM started, it felt like it was just
00:06:35.820like, oh my gosh, I have to be looking at my phone at all times. At all times, at all times. And it
00:06:41.400became so all encompassing. So as social media grew, how did your blog evolve? So I feel like
00:06:48.860it went from the blog being kind of the center of my social media universe to Instagram becoming
00:06:56.000the center of it, which is a change that it was dictated purely by revenue, not by choice,
00:07:03.120because I like the world where you and that's why I'm loving Substack right now is where you
00:07:07.600schedule it. I know. It's so it's so your Substack is great, by the way. Thank you. As is yours. I
00:07:13.340forward it i link to it all the time and yeah it's so refreshing but i feel and it's sort of
00:07:21.260pivoting back i feel like substack is now becoming my top priority um just because the instagram
00:07:27.660algorithm is this little beast that changes every day and you have to feed it and if it gets upset
00:07:32.440suddenly you know my story views are half of what they used to be and i don't really know how to fix
00:07:37.820it. And frankly, I don't want to because it's too much. It's too much energy. It's so it's so
00:07:44.060much energy. It's so much. And that's the thing that I realized when I started doing under the
00:07:48.540influence and started reporting on this world. I was like, oh, my God, creating content is a
00:07:53.080full time job. Anyone that pretends that it isn't is absolutely lying to you, which is where the
00:07:58.600title of the book comes from, because I was doing more work to attempt to be a content creator than
00:08:04.660I was ever doing at magazines or newspapers. It was all encompassing. I think it's also just that
00:08:12.260urgency factor, right? Because they're both jobs and they're both a lot of work. And I would argue
00:08:18.020that writing for a magazine is harder work. You have to, you know, have a background in journalism,
00:08:23.400et cetera. You have to be a talented writer. Whereas Instagram is, it's just like a lot of
00:08:30.740It's just like I open my app and sometimes I feel like I'm drowning because it's like, oh, you have all these messages that you need to reply to.
00:08:48.860At what point were you able to quit your day job and become a full time influencer?
00:08:55.740And do you call yourself an influencer or a content creator?
00:08:58.600what titles do you prefer these days um it's interesting okay so first of all it took five
00:09:05.980years and um i could have probably left at four years but i had equity in my i was working for a
00:09:13.140startup but i wanted that to vest oh yeah you'd never leave before that so i kind of hung long
00:09:18.020hung hung on as long as i possibly could um and then i was just really burnt out i'd been doing
00:09:24.600the blog for five years and it was growing and it was doing really well but then I it was still a
00:09:29.780startup so like if you're at a startup and you're working 60 hours a week like you're not working
00:09:34.200enough like the benchmark is 80 and I was giving them 60 hours a week and I was always falling
00:09:40.380short so I at that point was when I was like I'm falling apart over here and I decided to leave I
00:09:46.860never at the time I didn't want to be a full-time content creator so much of my identity was tied
00:09:52.080up in being the director of social media for this other company and it was really hard to
00:09:57.980let that go and I feel like influencing is it's becoming take it's starting to be taken more
00:10:07.320seriously but it wasn't always and it was kind of considered a joke job or like you were not a
00:10:14.740serious person and like I don't come from generational wealth like if I was to fall
00:10:21.220flat on my face. My parents would let me live in their guest room. They love me so much, but
00:10:25.720no one's going to help me. So I took it really seriously when it came time. It was like,
00:10:31.060can this be a real thing or should I keep my day job? Yeah, no. And I get that as also someone who
00:10:39.800does not come from generational wealth. And in fact, someone who is now actively supporting
00:10:45.260my mother. I'm like, oh, everything I do is a job that has to make money, despite the fact that I
00:10:50.600love writing yeah I'm like oh if this didn't make me money I couldn't do this anymore I would I would
00:10:56.300go find something else to do because it's not just for funsies and what I do not think is fair
00:11:01.660is that for a long time and even still now you know influencing when women are doing it and I
00:11:08.900think that is also a caveat is is still not taken as seriously as it should be despite the fact that0.97
00:11:14.360it is a multi-billion dollar business. Totally. And I look at you as an entrepreneur, as an
00:11:22.320entrepreneur and a writer, your content is so well curated. And you've also built a community,
00:11:29.040which I think is very, I know is very hard to do. And also very important for young women
00:11:36.340to feel like they have a place to go. People can talk it out in comments. People, you know,
00:11:44.060can suggest their own things for you and i think that's a really really important thing to be
00:11:50.440yeah i i think so too and that's why i reply to every single comment because i want to do i same
00:11:55.920if someone takes the time to send me a message i know i was just like complaining about dms and
00:12:00.060it's not that it's just the it was the volume and the the feeling like oh wow this has changed i
00:12:05.000have to like always look at my phone but if someone takes the time to send me a message to
00:12:09.560share their thoughts like i want to make sure that i can give that back to them and take the
00:12:14.540time out of my day to reply and engage absolutely absolutely and i think i think that that is
00:12:20.860really a part of it i do think that influencing is being taken slightly more seriously now it is
00:12:27.300still not covered well by the mainstream press i know yeah as as a business uh and i think that's
00:12:34.360because a lot of the mainstream press doesn't understand it um very well or how the business
00:12:39.180model of it works. That's what I want to dig into a little bit today. What is that? What was the
00:12:44.260original influencing business model when you had the blog before social media? And then how how has
00:12:49.680it changed to to now? How is it how has it evolved? Yeah. So in the beginning, I would I used I was
00:12:56.880actually one of reward style, which is now LTK, one of their first users. And so I used affiliate
00:13:03.860links. I did not make very much money from them. I remember like one time someone bought a pair of
00:13:08.420sunglasses and I made $50 and I was like oh my god this is the most exciting thing ever it really
00:13:13.940it really the one time I because I tried to use um the like to know it affiliate links and I had
00:13:21.020nothing in my house that was of any value but I used these target water shoes uh that that Charlie
00:13:26.340had and I got like 50 cents and I was like whoa that worked that is a thing yeah so I had affiliate
00:13:34.560links and i did i started like i think after like two years i started getting approached by brands
00:13:40.560who wanted to to buy like a sponsored post and the revenue was was lateral like i remember i got
00:13:48.180like ug paid me 300 to i judged a contest i made a video i made three blog posts and i made i went
00:13:57.260to their studio downtown like during my work during my lunch break at my day job and filmed
00:14:03.260a video with them and i was like 300 this is amazing um it's a little different now it's a
00:14:11.500little it's a little different now it's a little different now but i do think in the early days a
00:14:14.820lot of brands thought they could pay people in product and maybe not pay people what the what
00:14:21.440the level of exposure was worth also because brands didn't know yeah and i was on the other
00:14:26.360side of it working at a brand and we didn't know like i remember we paid this influencer i think
00:14:31.540like five thousand dollars to do something i was a really big influencer and she drove like a hundred
00:14:37.900thousand dollars in sales but then the next time we worked together we totally restructured the
00:14:42.560deal because it was just a learning process like if we had paid her i don't know fifty thousand
00:14:47.620dollars it was like that would have been a lot of risk to take on because we didn't know yet
00:14:51.580exactly exactly and i was working with brands in the beginning of this
00:14:56.200two, helping them figure out the influencer landscape. I was actually working with Third
00:15:01.680Love, the bra company in San Francisco. Yeah. They do. They really do have excellent, excellent
00:15:07.060bras. The half cup sizes kind of changed my life. I love their half cup sizes. I love a halfie.1.00
00:15:12.380Yeah. I realized I was a half. It's a thoughtful detail. Well, you know, they were bras made
00:15:18.880by women, which kind of made, you know, when they're made by people with boobs, that made all1.00
00:15:23.700of the difference. But everything has changed since then. And one of the things that I love0.91
00:15:28.920is you talk to your audience about how this is a business and you explain it to them. And I do
00:15:34.740think that there are a lot of content creators out there who are pretending, oh, I'm just showing you
00:15:41.340my life. And here's some links of things I like and not being open and honest about the fact that
00:15:45.500I'm running a business here. Yeah, that's what gets to me, right? Because, you know, that and
00:15:50.660I think that's when an audience also feels kind of tricked like oh I thought I'm also looking at
00:15:55.500pictures of my cousin's baby here on Instagram and I think I'm just looking through the window
00:15:59.480and looking at your life but this isn't real that's so strange yes you marry the realness
00:16:05.260of your life with the fact that you're running a business and I want to take a quick break and
00:16:08.700then let's let's get back to how that works okay we are back
00:16:19.920talking to grace atwood i want to talk about how you're really open with your audience about how
00:16:25.560this is a business for you why did you make that decision i mean i to me there isn't any other
00:16:31.760decision like i just always want to be really honest and i feel like in that same regard i
00:16:37.640will say this is a business i do make money from these links but like i tested this for three
00:16:41.520months before accepting this partnership like with a skincare product product especially like
00:16:46.520again kind of goes back to your point like when you took like the fact that you trust all my
00:16:51.980recommendations that is so important to me so I'm also going to let them know like this is a business
00:16:58.760I am working like this is this this time this isn't just like a hobby I have like I'm not like
00:17:03.600a like rich housewife or something not that there's anything wrong with being a rich housewife
00:17:08.260nothing at all nothing at all I mean I would take it I would I would maybe take it I'd be like great
00:17:13.100thank you someone someone could happily pay my mortgage i'm down with that um but like this is
00:17:19.840how i pay my mortgage so i always want to be really open and honest um because i think i'm
00:17:27.160also like not a good liar like if i if i was to lie like i worry that i would get caught or
00:17:33.700something and then i'd be like i'd be like in the center of some sort of scandal i don't know i'm
00:17:38.880always like worried about getting canceled like oh my god same same and i mean given the the words
00:17:45.340that come out of my mouth on a regular basis it's shocking i have not been canceled yet but but i do
00:17:50.180fear it i want to go back a little bit to the evolving businessness of it and you sharing that
00:17:58.340with your audience you're being so transparent with your audience about that you wrote a great
00:18:01.900sub stack uh i think just a couple weeks ago that i emailed you that i told you i liked it was
00:18:06.740starred in my inbox for so long to remind me be like tell grace you like this uh that just explained
00:18:12.320the different changes that are happening to your business and so talk to me about what the world
00:18:17.140looks like right now in this business model so i think things have gotten so performance-based
00:18:22.680which makes sense because all these brands are just like they're not going to just give people
00:18:26.860money like but again like i'm not doing this for fun the brands aren't doing it for fun there has
00:18:31.540to be real results from the influencer side so I have seen a bigger uptick in affiliate marketing
00:18:38.640I've been doing a lot more of that where a brand will give me a discount code and say you can talk
00:18:45.060about us or not talk about us but like here's 25% off for your readers at our and an affiliate link
00:18:51.820and that does really really well you know as long as it's something I really like which again there's
00:18:56.880no deliverable like like if i don't like it i don't have to say anything so that's a big one
00:19:02.780i'm seeing definitely fewer instagram partnerships on stories which frankly i'm glad like making
00:19:12.780those is such a pain it's like you record it you're casual you're just like hanging out at home
00:19:18.080and you're like making sure you hit all the talking points because it isn't ad and you have to
00:19:23.300you know, involve in use their talking points. And then you add all the hashtags and you send
00:19:29.520it over to the brand. They give you their edits. You make the edits. You maybe have to send it
00:19:33.120back. Then you have to add all the hashtags back in and the link when you post. And, you know,
00:19:37.220but it's the whole thing, the time the whole thing is done, you're just like, I feel like
00:19:41.120my blood pressure is just like really high. It's a lot. It is a lot. It's a lot of work.
00:19:46.600Yeah. Whereas I think Substack is, it's a much slower pace, both in terms of creating the content and consuming it. Like it's just, it feels so much more laid back.
00:19:57.040well in i mean for me as a writer i find it so much more fun because i get to just i get to spend
00:20:04.600time with it i get there gets to be explanation and nuance and more nuance in the comments too
00:20:11.860which i love i mean i i posted something recently uh talk who was but my brain is i'm in perimenopause
00:20:21.620like for sure now and my brain just like ken who was the singer that said she like thought having
00:20:28.960kids was horrible on who was that i don't remember but it was there's a another sub stacker called
00:20:38.800the opt-out kelly yeah yeah and she wrote about that and it cracks me up chapel chapel round
00:20:44.600yeah yeah so i'll edit this i'll edit this so yeah so i recently posted on instagram that i
00:20:50.400didn't really care what chapel round thought about having kids and whether or not she thought having
00:20:55.980kids seemed like a horrible dumpster fire because when i was 28 i i knew absolutely nothing about
00:21:02.280what it was like to have children or or to be a to be a grown human being living living in the0.70
00:21:10.040world with you know family issues and sandwich generation stuff i'm like i probably would have
00:21:15.320said the same thing i don't think i just don't think anyone should care and the instagram
00:21:19.760community came for me they're like you're anti-feminist like of course she can speak her
00:21:24.700mind and i'm like totally didn't say that like not like that um and people that i love on instagram
00:21:30.400too were like oh my gosh i'm gonna unfollow you and i'm like wow there's like there's some some
00:21:36.440rage some rage there not at me just at the world i think and then on substack it was a really nuanced
00:21:41.680conversation of people being like yeah when i was 28 like i thought kids were gross too and i'm like
00:21:48.020Yeah, totally. And I still think they're gross. But like, I don't think that everyone with a child's life is a dumpster fire. And so there's just more nuance because there's more time. And it doesn't feel nearly as addicting, which I think is really important. So yeah, I'm I'm I love the Substack revolution. I do.
00:22:05.960me too me too so in terms of creating a brand aesthetic i think you've also done a really good
00:22:14.080job how important is that because i think that's another thing that people don't recognize
00:22:18.420right away they know they like an account they know they like a person that they're following
00:22:22.760but they don't think about how much work goes into creating a cohesive brand and that's something
00:22:28.720that's really hard for me because i'm not like a design person so i personally think it's really
00:22:34.640important but I don't know how important it actually is because I keep getting served all
00:22:39.000these memes and like business things being like stop worrying about how your feed looks like stop
00:22:45.180worrying about what your grid looks like ugly content is in but that's good for me man I can't
00:22:50.640do it like I have to like have it be pretty and um that's just like the millennial in me that
00:22:57.100you know came of age during or of social media age during the era of the flat lay
00:23:01.900and millennial pink and everything being so pretty um so i i'm not always good at getting
00:23:10.360myself there but i have a great graphic designer i work with for like the collages on my blog and
00:23:14.760i work with photographers because i am not best at taking photos like if i was gonna sit and do
00:23:21.520something all day it would be right like i really enjoy writing and these other elements like even
00:23:25.920i don't even enjoy having my photo taken we do like every week or every other week we'll do a
00:23:31.700shoot and that's the day that i look cute and then the rest of the time i'm kind of just like0.92
00:23:35.480a garbage person like hanging out in my living room okay my my life is is lived as a garbage0.86
00:23:42.840person hanging out in in my living room but that's the other thing that i love that you talk0.96
00:23:48.980about and it's something we we've talked about for a long time how content is created that there
00:23:54.960are professional photographers videographers involved and you know there's there's a day
00:24:00.420where this is done. Let's take our last quick break and dig into that. Okay, we're back.
00:24:14.600When I first started covering influencers, I didn't know this. And I feel like a lot of people
00:24:20.200didn't know this back then. And there's still people that don't know it. Influencers are not
00:24:24.900necessarily taking all of these photos in real time or themselves there's a team of people
00:24:31.440behind them helping them create this content you have you have a schedule on on how how you're shot
00:24:38.760and how things are created can you just talk to me a little bit about how that works yeah so um
00:24:43.660every two to three weeks we have our what I call my editorial shoot if we're doing ads that's a
00:24:49.540separate day but this is just we try and take eight different outfits um i what i do is i come
00:24:55.460up with the list of all the pieces that we're going to feature my assistant drops in pinterest
00:25:01.180inspiration and things that she thinks are cute like maybe we should try this background maybe
00:25:05.320you should be like sitting with your legs crossed here something like that and then we send that to
00:25:11.060the photographer like a week before the shoot and then we shoot for like three hours sometimes two
00:25:17.340two to three hours and just get it all done the new thing that i've been doing is we also shoot
00:25:23.820with a disposable camera or a film camera because i just think that that is more interesting
00:25:29.660visually but you agree i've been loving the stuff you've been doing with the film camera oh thank
00:25:34.540you you have to do the dslr too because it doesn't give a clear like a um a clear picture of the
00:25:41.100color um because people want to see what like if if it's like all like moody lighting and stuff
00:25:46.260that's cool but like what does the dress actually look like yeah yeah exactly exactly so i love that
00:25:53.220you call it an editorial shoot because that's the message that i've been trying to pass down for so
00:25:57.780long influencers and content creators are editorial directors creative directors this is like like
00:26:05.240looking at a magazine looking at your sub stack and the blog looks like looking at a magazine i
00:26:12.140wants it to be like that and then i do post like a real outfit diary on my sub stack so people can
00:26:17.860those are just mirror selfies and like what i actually wore to different things throughout
00:26:21.660the week and sometimes i'm wearing like this t-shirt and it's like not very cute but um for
00:26:27.960the most part i want my content to feel polished and pretty to look at because that's what i want
00:26:33.320to see but that feels like a real balance between having polished content having a brand and also
00:26:40.660of being authentic. And that's one of the things that I was playing with a lot in Everyone is
00:26:44.920Lying to and that I like to talk about on the podcast is what is authenticity? Because so many
00:26:51.360brands are like, we're just looking for authentic influencers. And even our influencer character,
00:26:55.560Rebecca, in the book says there's a right way to be authentic and a wrong way to be authentic.
00:26:59.200Totally. But I think by just showing people your mirror selfie outfit, you're like, this is what I
00:27:04.660actually wore. And this is how I wore it. And this is how I look. And it's not edited necessarily.
00:27:09.680yes uh and that's a nice that's just a nice peek yeah and when we have an editorial shoot like
00:27:16.740those clothes are steamed ahead of time and i am not allowed to put them on because i will wrinkle
00:27:20.700anything i sit down in i won't wrinkle anything i emily amick just gave me a like handheld iron
00:27:28.380steamer that she told me to use because i look so wrinkled all the time in everything i own in fact
00:27:34.860I loved a near a recent piece you had that banana dress the Simon Miller one I have a banana
00:27:41.820jumpsuit that is it's such perfection and I just pulled it out of the summer the summer box but it
00:27:48.260is so wrinkled and just having a steam it's the bane of my existence Nick Astor is a good ironer
00:27:54.140I hate steaming yeah yeah I hate it I hate it but but yes I like everything will be wrinkled the
00:27:59.840second that I put it on likely I will spill something on it the second that I put it on too
00:28:04.140so yes yes absolutely absolutely and so a lot of how much of the business now is and we can just
00:28:12.880talk in general terms but you do affiliate links i think and i think a lot of people know how those
00:28:17.640work now you're really honest about it you're like a lot of these are affiliate links i might
00:28:20.420get a percentage of this i do affiliate links in my sub stack now and you should and i think
00:28:26.780everyone should yeah who's creating content because there's the freelancing market has tanked
00:28:32.440And so, like, this is how a lot of writers are earning their income.
00:29:35.500Of course, I can't have control over whether people are shopping or economic factors, etc.
00:29:41.180But it just feels like I'm not beholden to a brand or talking points or recording something and then recording it again and again until I get it right.
00:29:52.460Affiliate is, to use your word, authentic.
00:33:30.880i live in a small city and i don't drive so my rule is if i can walk to the drugstore and pick
00:33:36.200it up like i'm not gonna amazon it right same same but if like i just needed like a pressure washer
00:33:42.920at like and some like spray to get mildew off my outdoor lounge cushions and i wasn't gonna
00:33:49.420take an uber to like lowe's or home depot i was gonna order it and i guess i could have ordered
00:33:55.820it from walmart but like is walmart any better my husband would be like absolutely not and then
00:34:02.060target with the dei stuff it's like what is the totally well i posted about my book being uh buy
00:34:11.140one get one 50 off at target this week because my publisher was like oh great thing you know
00:34:16.520and then i got so many comments from people saying well we don't shop there anymore and i'm like
00:34:20.280Some people do. And some people are not shopping at Target because of DEI stuff. I personally have not been to Target in six months for lots and lots of reasons. We don't drive. We don't go anywhere.
00:34:33.160I haven't been to Target in years, but that's just perfect.
00:34:36.540But whatever. And I simply do not judge how people are making their decisions when I know that people, that everything in life is hard right now.
00:34:45.400And we're all trying to do the best for both the planet and for our families.
00:34:49.700Yes. I think just being thoughtful about it and trying to just not be like, don't just order everything on Amazon. Like if you can walk somewhere and get it or if you have a car and you're driving, then great. Go buy it somewhere else. Buy it at your local hardware store. But as a car free person, that's just not realistic for me right now.
00:35:08.720Yeah, totally. Exactly. We we recently tried to buy. I inherited a couch from my mom that is so gorgeous. And you are vaguely inspiring me to reupholster it.
00:35:19.260Yes, I think that's the best thing is rather than buying a new piece of furniture, get it reupholstered.
00:35:24.220I know it feels so daunting, though. And I'm like, is this going to cost me a gazillion dollars?
00:35:29.220it actually won't so my sister is the one who made it my sister um has a textile business and
00:35:36.280she's always talking about um you know reupholstering things and she finds beautiful
00:35:41.720furniture and gets it done you just have to i wish i knew someone near you that could do it
00:35:46.180because it's the key is finding a good person right and i'm sure there is someone great and
00:35:50.420i'll put it out to like my philly folks to let me know uh because this couch was at my mom's house
00:35:56.020and she was a longtime smoker right but it was it was also in my new york city apartment yeah let's
00:36:01.700be honest i was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day when i was a gossip columnist in new york city
00:36:05.520and like so much wine and beer and crap has been spilled on this couch but it's so gorgeous
00:36:10.200uh and i wanted i wanted to buy an upholstery cleaner and i went to three hardware stores
00:36:14.380within walking distance of the house and no one had it and so i had to i had to amazon it
00:36:18.460didn't have a choice but i tried i tried my best yeah that's all you can do it's all we can do
00:36:25.000yeah all we can do yes i've loved everything about this conversation i just i i really am
00:36:34.140so appreciative of how transparent you are about your job and how how you make money from it and
00:36:42.920also the ways that you try to really you know foster i'm going to use the word authentic i0.65
00:36:49.480don't use it a lot because it's such bullshit, but authentic connections with readers. I know0.50
00:36:54.420everyone at my publishing house is also a Grace Atwood fan. Oh, that's so nice. Oh, yeah. I mean,
00:36:58.800I'm not perfect, but I'm trying. You're doing really great editorial work. Okay. And that's
00:37:05.120because that's what this is. But it's funny because when you've mentioned the book,
00:37:08.560like my editor immediately texted me. She's like, oh, my God. Grace Atwood is reading the book.