00:05:30.840We have two acres that we've purchased.
00:05:33.140They are full-on old house renovation influencers,
00:05:35.740which is a thing. Now I might not be doing a good enough job explaining this
00:05:42.340so I decided to bring on someone who could. I called the reporter Michelle Konstantinovsky
00:05:47.260who wrote about this for Glamour Magazine. The headline was for Andy and Candice Meredith
00:05:54.760a show on the Magnolia Network was a dream come true until it wasn't. I wanted to have you on to
00:06:01.340just give us a quick rundown. What happened for people that don't know who Andy and Candice
00:06:07.000Meredith are? They had a show on HGTV, which is kind of like the pinnacle of home renovation,
00:06:13.240you know, outlets called Old Home Love. And then they had a Facebook show. And then they partnered
00:06:19.320with the Bucket List family, which I also had no idea about with a very influential Instagram
00:06:25.100family and um you know they had i think what was a casual relationship with chip and joanna games
00:06:32.360so joanna slid into candace's dms and i think they had kind of a casual relationship up until
00:06:38.100that point but joanna really approached her through a dm and was like we are creating a
00:06:43.200spinoff network called magnolia and we think you know you and your husband would be perfect
00:06:47.920for our network the show was called homework and so um candace and andy's whole shtick was that
00:06:53.720they renovated like very old historic homes. And in addition to, you know, the vignettes of them
00:06:59.120renovating their own home, they would help homeowners on their own budgets, renovate their
00:07:05.140homes. And that was kind of the whole premise for the show. And they had amassed a following before
00:07:10.180the Chip and Joanna, you know, relationship. So it's not to say that they connected with this
00:07:16.080power couple and all of a sudden they were thrust into this. They definitely earned the cred, but
00:07:20.440this was next level. Then the issue started. The show was not going according to plan.
00:07:27.960And the homeowners who trusted Andy and Candace Meredith to renovate their homes
00:07:31.640felt like they'd been taken advantage of, even scammed. And they started talking about it
00:07:37.120publicly on Instagram. Candace said she didn't feel she had the staff she needed and that
00:07:43.220contractors and clients were being difficult to work with. She also told us we would almost
00:07:47.940certainly have to raise our budget to a hundred thousand dollars. It's hard to articulate how
00:07:53.000vulnerable that place was to feel like I was being held captive in my own unearthed home
00:07:58.760while screaming and shouting for anyone to hear me but being ignored. We really really wanted to just
00:08:07.000resolve it peacefully but we tried so hard to do that and feel at this point we've exhausted all
00:08:13.520options. The first of these complaints came from a woman named Aubrey Bennion. She's a Utah-based
00:08:20.820project manager and entrepreneur. What she's alleging is like pretty significant.
00:08:27.880It was just a kitchen remodel. It should have cost $20,000 of her own money. Again,
00:08:32.840this was not like Magnolia footing the bill. This was, you know, they were paying for it.
00:08:36.900And she says it wound up taking five months at almost double the cost. Aubrey kind of led the
00:08:42.100But at the same time, she had found through her own investigating and other people who were I think they were want to say they were nine families or nine groups who were involved in the making of this show.
00:08:54.880They kind of somehow found each other and were like, hey, I'm going through this thing.
00:08:59.100I heard you might be to kind of joined forces.
00:09:01.540And so other people took to Instagram and did the same thing, did these Instagram threads detailing the horror show that was taking place, as they alleged.
00:09:12.100One of the families claimed that the couple asked them for $85,000 for their renovation project,
00:09:18.300which was $40,000 over their original budget.
00:09:21.720And then, after getting them to up their budget, they never finished the work.
00:09:26.640Another woman claimed that the Merediths had charged her $40,000, also over her budget, by about $15,000,
00:09:33.800and then said that they left her with way more problems in her house than she'd started with in the first place.
00:09:39.520And again, all of this was being aired on the Instagram.
00:09:44.060That same platform that had turned Andy and Candice Meredith into a brand in the first place.
00:09:49.720The same platform where Joanna Gaines, queen of home renovation, slid into Candice's DMs and first talked to her about having a TV show.
00:10:00.540Yes, that thing, that place, was where they were being torn down.
00:10:06.120live by the sword die by the sword live by the followers die by the followers
00:10:16.080the story was about that these feuding parties took to the same platform to try to like lay out
00:10:23.500the facts and the facts were pretty much up for debate depending on who you were talking to
00:10:28.080This story was forwarded to me so many times with glee.
00:10:34.920With glee by people, I think, that didn't even know who the Merediths were, but who were just kind of delighted to see someone that had been Instagram famous taken down.
00:10:47.320We wield very little power as like everyday people.
00:10:51.400But now that influence or power celebrity is kind of democratized in this way where it's like almost anyone can be an influencer.
00:10:59.900There's like a joyfulness that comes from like, oh, now we can take that person down using the same means that they use to elevate themselves above us little people, you know.
00:11:09.440But Candace didn't deny any of this happened.
00:11:29.820Like, it was just, it was, it was too much.
00:11:33.780And I can say that even though the communication each homeowner felt for themselves felt like it wasn't enough, we never slept.
00:11:43.300We, you know, we were constantly trying to communicate.
00:11:50.820What she was really taking issue with was like the the venom that was being brought like in their direction.
00:11:58.020She said when I spoke with her that, you know, her her child was saying that he was having suicidal thoughts and tendencies and they were being bullied.
00:12:07.620And it was intense and it was hard to hear that.
00:12:12.560We have been scared to share our side because we, one, we're not trying to take away from their experience.
00:12:17.880And two, the threats that we're receiving and the comments of people accusing us of being frauds or theft, thieves, it's just been a little bit, not a little bit, a lot overwhelming.
00:12:30.260And it has taken us a little bit of time to share.
00:15:26.660Something that is largely born out of growing your brand and burnishing your brand on social media.
00:15:32.200And this big idea right here is kind of the Trojan horse in this design influencer episode.
00:15:37.920Because it's such a classic form of influencer content that it is the perfect example of how things can get out of hand.
00:15:45.820You can trace it all the way back to the beginning of design influencing and see how the world has blown up and mutated and transformed and become something that the early design bloggers hardly even recognize.0.96
00:15:59.900After the break, we're going to talk to someone who went through this entire mind-boggling journey, and now she just wants to find a way to put good shit into the world without driving herself crazy.
00:16:15.820Scandal or no scandal, people whose jobs are tied to social media, who feel the pressure to keep up0.93
00:16:24.400with this crazy hamster wheel, they feel like they're under a lot of pressure. Pressure to stay
00:16:30.520savvy, to look perfect, to be relevant, to grow and grow and grow. For some people, it's starting
00:16:35.820to seem like it's not so worth it. It's really just become this, uh, this, just the survival
00:16:42.640in a lot of ways, just this war of attrition to see who can, who can keep getting the eyeballs
00:16:49.080and, and, you know, with influencing, or I should say with content creation, it's traffic and
00:16:54.580engagement. Those are the two things you're constantly going after. Um, and different posts
00:16:59.320garner different traffic or engagement and they're not always the same thing. And so it's just
00:17:05.240Every day, it's been just this wild, wild west.
00:17:11.660That is the voice of someone that I have admired for a very, very long time.
00:21:24.860I think I, like I had one person, then two, then three and four.
00:21:29.480Then it was time to stop working out of our basement.
00:21:33.020So I think in 2015, we got an office space and things were feeling pretty good.
00:21:37.900Like I was getting a lot of partnerships.
00:21:39.580And then with my second child, like I, I mean, I just felt like I was drowning all the time and I did not know how to, how to keep up with it emotionally and physically, financially.
00:26:11.660like we bought a farm like these were specific choices to get out a little try to get off the
00:26:18.740hamster wheel and get out of the city to slow down a little bit it's amazing to me that you've been
00:26:26.220doing this 12 years I feel like you're at the top of your game you have one of my favorite sites and
00:26:31.820you feel like a grandma I'm in this existential not crisis because I think I'm on the other side
00:26:37.080of it where it's like, I have 30 years left of potentially like creating, creating content or
00:26:42.680building my career. And so it's just, it's very much a, what's that going to look like, Emily?
00:26:48.300What is, what is that going to be? Um, how are you going to use them in the most meaningful,
00:26:53.240fulfilling, purposeful ways? All the things that you care about all of a sudden, when you're 35,
00:26:57.74038, 40, that you didn't really care about when you're 25, like meaning, purpose, value, like
00:27:02.360what, what are we doing here? Um, and it's kind of exciting to get to the point where you're just
00:27:06.820Like, I don't need to be the most popular and to do the memes anymore.
00:27:12.320I just want to educate and inspire and inform and add value to the world.
00:27:18.860If someone as successful and savvy as Emily Henderson is exhausted by this constant hustle,
00:27:26.300then what hope is there for the rest of us?
00:27:30.700One of the things that struck me the most while talking to Emily is our passion for the written word.
00:27:35.360For the old school, traditional nuts and bolts of digital content, the blog.
00:27:42.460The best thing I've ever done is never given up on blogging because it's always been there.
00:27:49.900So when everything else feels like, you know, you're just playing this Hunger Games war of attrition, trying to stay alive in social media, the blog has always been there.
00:28:02.220So I kept blogging about the show and then it started just steamrolling into this business
00:28:08.340that kind of blew up in a really good way.
00:28:12.760I love that you say that because we talk about it a lot, right?
00:28:15.620We're like everything could go poof, all of the social media platforms.
00:28:19.340But if you have the blog and you have the words and you've created a multimedia brand
00:28:25.300and that still lives no matter what happens to the social media,
00:28:32.940Yeah, because social media is so volatile and, you know, during the pandemic at the very beginning, all contracts were canceled and it was terrifying for a lot of people that, you know, do what we do.
00:28:45.460But the blog, because we have ads, like the blog kept us not only afloat, it was thriving.
00:33:53.500And when I say that it's like a Hunger Games war of attrition and survival, it's where the rules change every every year and the weapon all of a sudden doesn't work anymore.
00:34:04.460And you're just like, OK, OK. All right. So now we have to do this to stay alive. OK, OK.
00:34:09.380And it's all fine and good. But like at a certain point, you're just like, to what end? Like to what end?
00:34:15.800Exactly, exactly. I think brands are all doing the best they can. And some of them are doing
00:34:21.500such really interesting work on social media. I think content creators are all doing the best
00:34:27.180they can. But so many of us are just at the mercy of the social media companies who I don't think
00:34:32.740give enough of a shit about the consumer, the audience, and also the creators and the brands.0.96
00:34:40.680I don't think that there is enough care in that world. And I would like there to be more care.0.99
00:34:45.240And I think that that is the whole point of the Women's Day Off the Internet.0.81