Welcome to On The House, a podcast by creators. For creators. Grab a seat at the table where we're breaking barriers in the influencer industry and serving up information that probably should not be free. Here you're going to get real unfiltered conversations about the creator economy, growing your business, keeping up with the latest trends and what that means for you. Grab that coffee friend, because we are diving on in.

Sophie, welcome to On the House, the podcast. I'm.

I'm so good. Thank you. I am actually, I'm in London, so I'm looking out my window to a sad gray sky, but this summer we've had the heats of all heat waves in. I'm a Brit, so I hate hot weather. I hate cold weather. It's all we talk about and complain about. So I am actually embracing the gray today. I've got a shot on, I'm gonna get cozy later. I'm having autumn, like four, five. So it's a good day. It's a good day to have a good day. Good day to chat.

I love that for you. I too don't like it to be too hot or too cold, so I find myself in a similar situation as you. And ironically, although I'm in the US it's also gray and rainy outside and I love an excuse to wear a sweater in the summertime and make my warm cup of coffee and just like work from the couch because. I typically don't do that, so I love that for you. I wanna start off by just rewinding ever so slightly, and I really wanna know the origin story behind pretty Little Marketer. Did you ever envision when you started it that it would look like what it is today and at what point if you didn't envision it, was there like a turning point where we're like, okay, we started here and now we're over here.

I love this question because I often think that listeners or peers or interviewers will expect such a straightforward answer of, I had this plan, I did this, and then this happened, but. I guess for a lot of you guys listening, you'll be comforted to know that I had no idea what I was in for. I had no idea what I was doing. And last month, in June, I celebrated my business in community's fifth birthday. And I remember having this moment surrounded. I hosted my own. I'm an only child, so I've only child syndrome, as my parents would tell you. So I hosted my own birthday party and I invited everyone. I love to celebrate my business, and I had this moment of god, I'm five years in, but I only now just feel like I semi note what I'm doing. Things are only just making sense, so it's been a long journey to get to understanding my business on paper. I think that journey has been really challenging because I never set out to start a business, be a creator. It was June, 2020 and I was a second year university or college student at the time. I'd actually gone to university a little later than conventional in the uk. So in England, typically you'd leave school at 18 and head to university. For me, I left school at 18. I had no idea what I wanted to do, what I wanted to study, and looking into one thing when University College, that's expensive. I was just not, I wasn't ready. So I vowed to take a year and then I would decide, and I got a job in my hometown, just a small town in Gloucester, in England, which is in the southwest in a call center. So I ran financial results calls for banks and financial companies, which aged 18 was not the most exciting role in the world. And that one year quickly turned into two years, and two years quickly turned into three years, and the whole time reflecting now and towards the end when I was turning 21. I was waiting. I dunno what I was waiting for, but I was waiting for something to change or someone to magically get in touch and know my dream job that I didn't even know and give it to me, or waiting for someone to say this magic world or pull me somewhere, but. Life doesn't work like that. So age 21, I had this crisis of, oh my goodness, I'm not a baby anymore. I am a big girl. I'm 21 years old. And I remember Googling jobs that are creative with people and business. Those are the three things that I love in every single. Google result pointed to marketing, advertising, branding. Okay. That sounds cool. We'll give that a go. So I head to university age 21. You'd think 21 sounds young and it was. I'm 28 now and I was, I'm still a baby, but I was just a baby then. But on my fast day, we have an induction day. On our fast day I was wearing a lanyard and everyone else has had their picture and their name on. But in big red letters at the top of mine, it said mature student. What a way to age you. So my whole university experience was started from this moment of, oh my goodness, I'm gonna take control. I'm gonna do something. And then you get to union, you are reminded that you are late. You are not a regular student, you are a mature student. I remember tanning it around so people couldn't see, and then people come over and oh, like what's your name? Trying to flip it around and you'd be like, oh, hello. Yes, I'm Sophie. Please don't touch so I got to my second year. I was two years in, and I constantly felt like I was trying to catch up. I need to do this, I need to get all this experience. Everyone else has three years on me. By the time I graduate I'm gonna be 24, I'm late. I need to keep up. And I'd submitted my final assignment of my second year. Expecting this feeling of relief, but I just burst into tears. I remember lying on my sofa back in mine and my partner's first ever apartment and just feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders. I was so overwhelmed. I had a year into graduation. I had a year to figure it out, and I wasn't even 1% of the way that I think the most overwhelming feeling for me was lonelier. Especially in an age of social media, and I know that many of you guys listening will likely relay. Everyone else has it figured out. They've got it in the bank, they've got the holidays, they have everything that I want. They are so happy and I am not. So I took to Instagram, I'm a Gen Z baby, so I started an Instagram page called at pretty little marketer, just in a bit to find friends. I just wanted to share a part of my journey, see who was out there, who was like me, who I could talk to in the dms. Within a week, we had a thousand followers, two weeks, 2000, and by January there were 30,000 followers on the Instagram page. I'd been posting on LinkedIn as Sophie, not as a business account at that point as well. By February, I was freelancing. It's a social media mock. It was some of the world's biggest brands. And at time of graduating in that summer, I had a full-time freelance role. I had started monetizing PLM through digital products, and I was also freelancing with some of my dream brands on the side. So a very challenging moment turned into something that truly changed my life forever.

crazy how sometimes the world just put you on this path that seems very non-linear. It's very zigzaggy. It's like we had to take the long way to get here, but in the end, you end up exactly where you're supposed to be. It's if those series of events had not occurred the way that they were supposed to occur, you may not have ever started. Pretty Little Marketer, and then I feel like because it was such a perfect fit and it was so natural of an extension. Your existing skillset and just your passion, I think too. I think that's what really attributed to its early success and it allowed it to blossom into what it is today, which I think is so cool. I think that I might have seen somewhere that there was a point in time where you felt like you might give it all. Can you walk me through what happened? What was your thought process and what kind of pushed you to that ledge and then led you to back away and evolve?

I would love to, I share a lot of content on LinkedIn, and one of my missions is to just normalize all the rubbish stuff. I think I, I have my dream job. I get to do amazing things. I've moved to my dream city, but all of that comes with buckets or buckets of. Rubbish, imposter syndrome, things that go wrong, financial stress, all of the above, and I wish we normalized that more. So I'm really excited that you've asked this question. It was. I think the end of 2022. So we were about two years into PLM. Obviously by 2021 I was freelancing with my dream brands. I'd monetized PLM, I'd graduated into this exciting space of speaking, creating, spending my whole life on Adobe Express and really living my creative dreams. By 2022 in the summer, I was still walking as a freelance social media marketer, so I very much considered PLM my side hustle. Sophie was the freelancer, and PLM was like this baby community that I just looked after. It wasn't yet the business that you see today. I had signed six clients. Over the summer social media marketing clients, so that was end-to-end management of strategizing, having shoot dates with them, creating the content, graphic design, executing. You guys know how demanding it is to manage your own socials. I manage one account and that's enough. So to have existing clients and then add six more onto that. I do not know what I was thinking and I got to this point of I had given myself so much to do that I couldn't do it. But I think when you are in it, when you're in the stress of a long to-do list or you're in the stress of brand partnerships, not going well or difficult conversations, it's really hard to zoom out. And figure out what the problem is because the problem's, not you. But in that moment, all I could think was, I can't do this. I'm doing something wrong. And I think so often in those moments, giving up feels like the easy option. And

Like it would be so much easier if I just worked a nine to five and I didn't have to worry about any of this stuff.

if someone else could just tell me what to do that would someone tick the reins?

Yes.

I had connected with an old freelance client from the year before, and they were looking for a head of like employer branding, community branding, personal branding, and I was super interested in that. At the time, I'd been building my own personal branders, Sophie, alongside PLMI was doing a lot of workshops, universities, talks in companies around building my personal brand, so it felt like the stars were aligning. Maybe this was my next step. I had signed the contract, we were gonna move to London, which at the time was about two hours away from where I lived. Everything was ready and if I recall right, I was due to start on the Monday and I emailed them on the Friday was, I'm really sorry. I can't do this. This isn't the right choice. I know that I've signed the contract. I know that we're ready to employ, but I just, something in me, and I don't know what it was just a gut feeling that like I wasn't done yet. I didn't want to take the easy option, and I'm not sure that would've been easier anyway to uphold my life when I wasn't ready or work for someone else when I really don't think that I made, I don't think I'm employable. I don't think I made for that.

I am not a good employee. Do not hire me.

Please. No, I would be like, even self-managing, like I am my own worst employee. To put that on someone else would be disgraceful. So I just had this moment of, I, this actually isn't right. I just can't do this. And I'd got rid of all my freelance clients, so it was too late to take the job. I'd said I didn't want it, I wasn't going ahead. It was too late to get all my clients back. I'd got rid of all of them, so I was left in this place of, I've got something, but. Nothing. I have no income, but something about that really excited me, like an opportunity to build into something I wanted rather than something that I felt jailed to that was defining me rather than me defining it. So it's one of those moments, again, like you were saying in the moment, it feels. Awful. It was so challenging. It was so difficult, so stressful. But if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't be where I am today. So you just have to trust the grace of the universe to steer you in the right direction, even when you're trying to pull off to one side. So it was a hard time, but makes for a good story.

One thing I wanna dive into is the brand that you built today. You've done such a good job of building a brand that feels intimate, but also scalable. What are three tactical things you did maybe in those earlier days as you made that pivot that you still swear by today

of course. So by end all of 2022 in. To 2023. I very much see that as stepping out of freelance shoes and into founder shoes. I was still self-employed, but I was no longer walking as an extension of other people. It was my time to walk for myself. So early 2023. I started monetizing PLM through one-to-one coaching, so I would do personal brand coaching, I would do LinkedIn coaching, and I would do social strategy coaching, and I also ran workshops, webinars, and offered digital products 2024. However, last year was the year where my business really found its feet. PLM has always been about community. Sophie owns PLM. Sophie isn't PLM, so I was looking for ways to almost step back from being the face and being the voice instead. And I very much see my role in my business as the facilitator. I write the content, I host our webinars. You'll see me in our membership. But the magic is the collaborators, the people that I interview in our webinars, the way that I start conversations in our membership, the insights I pass on to you through my content that you can take into your walk places and do something with. So I think that repositioning of this is Sophie's thing, but it's not. Sophie was really important and I always strive to make it a shared space through everything I do. Whether it's my newsletter, sharing an insight with a thought at the end of, what do you guys think? How are you gonna take this into your workplace? So your last thought after reading is in, oh, wow, Sophie explained this so well. Sophie is so great. It's a, okay, what am I gonna do with this new information? Always putting that weight back onto the reader and their responsibility to be a great community member. Allow them space too. Get involved and let them know that this is for them. I put messages in our membership all the time being like, hi guys, what do you want? What do you want from me? And I'll give it like, this is not about me. This is all about you. So I think tactic tip number one is considering how you can make your platform, whether that's a Substack newsletter, your Instagram, your TikTok, if you have a private membership, even your website, how can you make it a shared space? I think the second thing that. Really changed my business and the way that I approach my business is something that, that I call a mission statement, but one line defining what you do. I struggled for a really long time in the early days of PLM being 2022 into 2023 when I wasn't freelancing anymore. I was running a business, but I was coaching and I was doing LinkedIn coaching, strategy coaching. You could also buy a notion template from my website and you could hear me talking about trends in my newsletter and I felt like there were 10 bunnies in front of me and I was chasing all of them 'cause they were all shiny and they all worked and they were all super cute. I started working with a business coach at the end of that year, Alice, who I still work with now, she's a very good friend of mine now. She interviewed me at my birthday party. We hang out outside of walk. She is, I couldn't, I wouldn't be here without her. And she was what is PLM? I was like, oh, PLM does coaching and I have a newsletter and I do this. And I said, reeling off these many things. And I remember her looking me in the eye and she was like, no, what is PLM? Or what is the one thing that it does? The most common feedback that I got and still get is this thought of making complex ideas simple. I love the thought of being able to turn something confusing into something actionable or empowering or something that you can confidently take into your next step into your workplace, into your own business. And so we were like, PLL makes social media simple. And I had this light bulb moment. I was like, oh my goodness, that is everything I want. That is what I want to do. And so internally, that gave me almost a benchmark to challenge things against every new idea, every new post. Okay does it make social media simple? Yes. Cool. Green light to the next step? No. Okay, let's park it for now. Or how can I pivot it into something that does achieve that mission? And then externally, people know what they come to PLM for. The same reason why you go to an Italian restaurant for Italian or a Chinese restaurant for a Chinese, you know that when you show up and turn up, you are gonna get what you expect. So having a benchmark externally as well was really important to me. I think the final thing, but has really. My business, and I don't know if this is unexpected or a bit rogue, but for me has been leaning into non-social media. I know that my mission is to make social media simple, and I run a community for people in and on social media, and it's all I talk about on social media, but hosting regular offline events. So if that's inaccessible, because I know that it is quite a challenge and requires time, energy, and budget. Even just my newsletter, I send out a newsletter every Thursday to 20,000 readers and I get responses every week, oh, I didn't notice this. Or, oh, I think this about thread. Oh, here's my story. Here's what I open up to. And having a place that you can intimately be. With your audience, funneling them from a viewer to a participant, to a community member, to hopefully an advocate that's gonna tell their friends and recommend you, I think is a really missed step of many creative strategies. So what are you doing off the grid, off TikTok? I know Substack is a really amazing one that a lot of people are leaning into right now. So three things to consider that I hope are somewhat useful.

I love those so much. I also agree. I feel like being able to take that conversation offline is so vital and that's where you build the no, and trust that we hear from all of the gurus about marketing. I personally love Substack. It's been a platform that I've had a lot of fun on because it brings me back to the old days of blogging where you felt like you were really connected. And I also think whether you're a creator, building a personal brand, or even just an actual brand yourself, it's such a way to connect in a, on a deeper level. And like you get to do a lot more storytelling. You get to be. More in depth about what it is that you're talking about because you have the space and capacity to do and I find people that were a lot more gated on social media are opening up and you're able to peek into their personal lives more. Whereas they felt a little bit cautious to do that because they wanted to stay in their lane of their niche and. You know how it is, you build up the algorithm and you're a fashion influencer, so like you feel the need to only focus on fashion, but this allows for them to divulge into different pockets of their life, which is cool. I'm also seeing too, even with Substack, and you've probably experienced this, but brands are seeing the value of it. Like we're having brand collaboration partnerships come through specifically for Substack. And it's interesting because I'm a huge believer in email marketing, period. Substack is falls under that bucket, but obviously it's a little bit different. And. At no point in time am I working with influencers. Has a brand ever been like, I wanna sponsor your email newsletter, even though they may have a hundred thousand subscribers, so it's a huge audience. You would pitch them that and they'd be like, no, we're good. Because they didn't see the value in it. So I think it's really cool that they're seeing the value in a more traditional form of media versus. The shiny reels and carousels and all of that. Something else that you mentioned, which I found interesting, is in that shift of kind of pulling Sophie out of pretty little marketer and making sure that pretty little marketer wasn't Sophie, it was its own business, it could stand on its own two legs. With your social media strategy, how did that shift impact what you were doing in the business and what type of content you decided to put out?

I found that really challenging at first, and I think I am very fortunate that I have a. LinkedIn profile that I've been building for four to five years alongside PLM. So it wasn't this moment of, okay, I'm gonna stop being Sophie on PLM, and I have nowhere to share my thoughts or my story. And starting from zero somewhere else, I already had this kind of personal brand outlet. Not that PLM is completely faceless. I host our events. I host our webinars at the end of every newsletter. Every Thursday I send one out. I sign off as Sophie. Thanks for reading lots of love. Sophie. At the end of a carousel, if you swipe all the way to the end, you will see my profile picture and then at Sophie Miller to direct people to my LinkedIn. Likewise. I'm in all of our videos. I'm my only employee, so you're not gonna see anyone else, so I'm still there, but it's very much PLM socials. Here are my thoughts on what you might find helpful around dark social, or, this is what I heard about Instagram's algorithm shift. This is what you need to know. So it's very informative, empowering in an educational sense. There will be trickles of Sophie and Sophie's story on business socials, like it was our fifth birthday party. So I did like a little photo dump and I did loads on stories around that as well. You'll see me on Instagram stories as well as infographics and brand stuff, but I've always had my LinkedIn to share my thoughts. I. Writing a HubSpot column at the moment. So when I started that, that goes on Sophie, or I've recently been hired as a guest lecturer, which is really cool and really exciting. But that's not a PLM announcement, that's a Sophie announcement. So really figuring out what girls were was important for me versus PLM and Sophie. But I think having that personal brand outlet was. Like that is the best thing for me, so I'm not forcing everything. I think also this is a very humbling moment when you're growing a business that you are the face of, or you own of people actually aren't here for me. Like

Wow, believe it or not.

people like M'S. Insights and they like that it comes from a human and they like that. Sophie feels like someone they know and hopefully they do know me, but they're not there to see what's in my bag, or they don't care what I'm wearing to my birthday party event. Or if they do, they'll follow me on that personal brand channel. So I had to be really real with myself at some point and be what are people actually here for? I was drafting a post the other day about how I think we often teach strategy, audience strategy by thinking about who our audience are. But I think the next stage in that, especially that the way social and creator economy space is going is thinking about who our audience want to be. We follow people because they help us to be our ideal self. I follow influencers because they dress better than I do. Their jewelry stack is better than mine and I trust them to get me to their level. So through PLM sales shows, who is my audience marketers? Who do they want to be better marketers. They don't wanna be like selfie, Having separate platforms, separate places for your different personalities or purposes, but also being really real. What do my audience want from me? And those of you who are lifestyle, fashion, food creators, they probably want to see you there. They want a piece of that, but for me, who posts about marketing news, you're not here for Sophie. So I think those two things for me, but it's still a challenge. There are some times where I'm like, I don't know where this should. Like it's all my thoughts. I don't know where this should go. So I think it's constant trial and error with content, isn't it? What worked last week, how can I use that this week? But having real split platforms, I think has been the simplest approach for me.

You mentioned LinkedIn a few times, I feel like up until the last year or so, LinkedIn was very much viewed as like. For the suits, if you were in a corporate role, you would utilize LinkedIn in a very professional manner. How do you feel like people can use this platform in current day to help build their personal brand and expand and like what type of content should go there and how is it different than other social media platforms?

I love LinkedIn so much, and I know that many of you have a visceral cringe reaction hearing someone say that, but LinkedIn has truly changed my life. My feed is just full of the girlies, like marketing girlies. It is full of memes and stories and there's a real lack of educational content on my feed or job announcements or what you'd expect to be on a LinkedIn feed. So I think curating a network of people that you want to spend time with has been really important for me. When I first started posting on LinkedIn, it was late 2020 into 2021, and I didn't really have any connections on the platform. I didn't have any expectations, and I almost had this naive confidence of I'm not connected with anyone. I don't have any examples of what should be on there. I was there posting pink emoji, field selfies, the sort of things that you see on Instagram. That was me on LinkedIn. And it very much still is, but it's a bit more polished and hopefully better than it was back then. I actually filmed a watch in my walk bag video this morning for LinkedIn, which is a platform that you wouldn't typically expect what my walk bag video to go on. But I really feel, and my hope and wish for LinkedIn is that people start being people. I would love to see creators. Move or add LinkedIn into their kind of social strategies or into their platform rotation to share more about how they do what they do. How did they build their brand? Like the real behind the scenes of the business rather than what you might put on your TikTok or Instagram, which is the end product. It's the external. It's how you are living and what you are up to. So I truly think that anything can go on LinkedIn. By way of strategy to give some insight for how I approach my LinkedIn, I split my content into two strands. One is client content and the other is community content. So your client content is written for the people that are gonna get you what you want. It doesn't necessarily have to be clients in the technical or literal sense. Clients might look like. Influencer marketing managers in the brands that you would love to partner with. Or it might look like speaking coordinators at conferences that you would love to speak at, or it might look like brands that you would love to host a workshop for. It's showing your expertise, it's being an educator and it's sharing your value. So for me, that will be things like how I grew my newsletter following audience to 20,000, or how I. Did this, how I did that, sharing the real technical bits to what you do for me, I still write in a really fun, friendly tone of voice. There will be silly humor, there will be emojis in there. So don't think that because it's business, it has to feel business. And then the second strand of my content is community content. So this is written for my peers. It's the people that are just like you. So for me, that's other marketers, other business owners, or other creators. This morning I shared there was this Barbie game that I played when I was super young, when I first had a computer, and I shared a meme of that this morning with the caption. Mentally, I am here and now that's not gonna allow me a speaking gig. It's not gonna allow me my dream partnership, but that is gonna build community, that's gonna flock all of the marketing girlies to my comment section as we reminisce on all of the nostalgic Barbie games that we used to play. When we were kids, or it might be celebrating my businesses fifth birthday, or I've moved to London, or I've recently made my new hi, my fast hire for my business, this is where you share more of your personal story, more of your thoughts. So splitting between the two is really helpful for me to be able to almost have a fun strand, my community strand, where I'm just chatting with other marketers. But then also because LinkedIn is so full of opportunities, you are reaching people that you would never. Or you might, but you have a really slim chance of reaching on Instagram, TikTok, any other platform you are reaching decision makers who can put your name in rooms that they may never be in otherwise. You still have that strand that is strategic and is doing what you are on the platform to you do. But yeah, don't think that because it's LinkedIn, it has to be proper prim professional. I think that. Is a big overlap between being personal human, but also being formal, representing your business you can still be you. So my true hope is that it continues to be this place where people just be who they are. Likewise, I think as creators, if any of you do run businesses, building your personal brand as a professional, there is huge opportunity to monetize as a creator over there, our biggest revenue stream. PLM is Sophie's LinkedIn, so above my membership, above PLM partnerships and brands that I work with, it's how I work with brands on content for my LinkedIn. Right now in August, I feel like we get midway through a quarter and brands are just getting rid of their budget. So I filmed three LinkedIn ads this morning and I got an email for a couple more later today. So there's big opportunity there. I think brands are really waking up to the potential to reach decision makers on there as well.

I find it so fascinating because I feel like it's a platform a lot of people are sleeping on, and I think there's a lot of money on the table because, for lack of better words, it's low competition. You don't have as many creators flooding that platform with high quality content and creators are already positioned. In a really great spot because their skillset is knowing how to resonate with an audience to create high quality content and to create content that converts and they understand the different types of content and the different purposes it serves. And being able to translate that onto that platform, I think would be really beneficial. But I also feel as a business owner in general. It's a really great platform to be on for the examples that you just laid out of like kind of understanding those buckets of where to put what into and making it super clear for your audience. I also find even just on the creator influencer side, sometimes they're afraid to share the behind the scenes of. I think, a lot of times so many of them start out and they might just be sharing their life very casually as, let's say a stay at home mom with two kids at home and they had never imagined that it was gonna turn into a multimillion dollar influencer business. And it's almost as if you're afraid to let their audience see that progression of themselves, because they don't wanna be. Not relatable anymore, which I understand there's like a line to toe there for sure. But I also think people are interested in the industry as a whole of what does the behind the scenes actually truly look like? And that's something that I felt has been very gate kept in a way of, unless you're truly in it, nobody's really talking about what that looks like and how much work goes into it. And like the strategy and the business acumen that's required by influencer is so often. Think people have this misconceived notion that, oh, they're just like trying on cute clothes or sharing their latest home decor, or whatever the case may be, and yes, that's 5% of what they do. There's so much more to it. So I agree. I'm excited to see what the future holds. I wanna shift gears a little bit and I wanna chat about some fun social media stuff. I feel like there's a lot of shifts happening in the creative industry and I would say, especially over the last 12 to 18 months, but this year in particular, I have identified the most amount of change in one industry than I've seen in the last five years. Incredible. And I think a lot of it is the rise of different technology and people have to then evolve as a result of that, which is making them clever and sharper, and it's just really fun to see. So one of the big things that I've seen, and you've probably experienced this too, is there's been this shift almost away from creators and influencers and Brans in particular are looking towards. Customers and they're looking about more creative ways to get their end result. What advice would you give to somebody that might be a creator or influencer to stay relevant and map out their strategy for their business to accommodate the needs of the brand?

Oh, I love this question. I. Think my best advice would be to consider how you can position yourself as a hotspot for community over just being a creator. So sure you share Luxury fashion halls and advice for women. And they follow you because they love your Chanel handbag collection, or they love watching you go on your luxury holidays. You are not just providing entertainment, they don't just follow you for you. You have this audience of people with a shared interest. So what can you do to bring them together? And I don't mean rebranding to a community like PLM, it's a educational space for people in marketing. Being a facilitator. So is that hosting TikTok lives where you are talking about the latest Dior, Jonathan Anderson drop. Are you live watching and live reacting in real time through your TikTok videos to the MET Gala or I don't know, the, a new concert or like a celebrity happening? Are you considering a substack where you are sharing your thoughts around what's new and for Autumn Winter? New predictions for the next season. It's not just you broadcasting, it's you bringing people together. I think brands are really shifting in a way that they haven't before to prioritize different metrics over just likes and followers. I was at a Formula E event on Friday, and the CMO Ellie was there. Oh, she was amazing. And I very rarely go to events and take notes, not because I know everything, not because people aren't sharing things worth writing, but I think very often when you go to events, you have speakers sharing thoughts to many. It's a broad audience, so it's really hard to go deep. But Ellie did such a brilliant job of keeping it. Broad, but her insights were just amazing and she shared this thought of community health. So when they're measuring their KPIs at Formula E, they're not just looking at followers and likes, although those are important to their partners and sponsors. What they're really interested in is their community health. So they're looking at their dms, they're looking at comment sections, they're looking at public shares, so like re-shares, or if someone tags at Sophie in the comment section and they're like, oh my goodness, you have to see this. What are you doing that's bringing people together around what you do? I think that Misha Grimes is a really brilliant example here in the uk. I think that Bronte King is also a brilliant example here in the uk. Someone I often reference when I share this thought is Alex Al, not because she, she has a huge following. Of course, she is like exceeded creator into celebrity status, but what I find really fascinating is her hot mess brand. How it's an extension of hub. It's something that people are enabled to get involved with. So what experience can you provide outside of just you? What is the shared interest between you and your audience? Lifestyle. Slow living food, healthy eating fitness. It isn't, they don't just follow you for you. They follow you because there is a shared interest. So I think capitalizing on that is going to be really important. I also think back to our earlier conversation of. Diversifying. We don't know what could happen to Instagram tomorrow. I think TikTok this year has been a crazy example of what can happen quite literally overnight. So is it an email list? Is it an Instagram broadcast channel? Is it a substack, super accessible visibility on their gray? I think that they've either raised our wealth or have invested something like a hundred million recently is a big one for the future. Thinking bigger than just you and what you post. But yeah, the thought of how can you be a community facilitator over just a creator

let's dive into trends for a second. What is like your favorite trend right now and what's something you feel like people may need to unlearn when it comes to trends?

Ooh. I think my favorite trend right now from a broad marketing sense is employee generated content. I dunno if you, Amanda, or any of you guys listening, have seen this anywhere. I think the anthropology are a good example of this. Maje who are a jewelry brand, John Deere, who make tractors. I feel like these are all very UK. Heavy brands, but there are many out there. They're no longer just using influencers or employee or user generated content to talk about their products. Ooh, Kylie Cosmetics on TikTok. They've been doing a lot of employee generated content recently, actually, because I've been saving all of it 'cause I think it's so cool. But employees is the face of the business, something that anthropology do really well. Rather than sharing like what's new in, in pictures or getting a creator or A-A-U-G-C video, they do this thing where they go around their office and they'll ask people what's on their payday wishlist and they'll pick something from like the new in anthropology section, a new collection, and to be able to connect with an individual like, it's my payday. I wanna know what's on your wishlist. One, it feels really natural and organic, but two, I think it's a real shift in the way that marketing is changing. Five years ago it was all about a static grids, flat lays product shots, but even flat lays. Now, summer Fridays, they will share a messy sink set up. Someone's just got ready and it looks absolutely blitz. There's things everywhere. Sure it's a product shop, but it feels like you've lived in it. It feels like a reflection of me, and I think that's why employee generated content does so well outside of just LinkedIn and employees posting. Poppy do an amazing job at this on TikTok. I don't know if you've listened to their founder Allison's interview with Emma Greed on Harm New

No.

Amazing. She really dives into the strategy behind that, so that's a recommendation from me. So employee generative content, I think is my favorite trend right now. And I think something that we need to unlearn when it comes to trend is assuming that they are fleeting. I shared, I did my first ever keynote in Amsterdam. Last September and I talked through the biggest trends of 2024. It was like de influencing mi micro virality. I can't remember what the other ones were. But my whole thought was this. It might be small, but it's indicating a big shift. Even TikTok trends and things that blow up and go viral overnight, it's so much more than just an audio or a celebrity who's done something silly or the Coldplay cheating scandal and brands get involved. It's looking at people's reactions. Are they loving it? Are they hating it? Are they sharing it? Are they liking it? Are there more comments than likes? Reconsidering the bigger picture when we see these things happen, because what happens now will inform what will be our daily reality in six to 10 to even 12 months time. So I think like the attitude around trendy, it's trendy, it's gone viral like it's happened now. This can inform you so you can make better decisions in months or years to come. So I think for me that attitude needs to already hope that it would shift, recognizing that it's so much more than a silly TikTok trend.

I agree. I always think of trends as like these big rocks that are being thrown into the water and like when you throw them in, they make this big initial splash, but then you have all the ripple effects that come off of the rock. And I feel like that's such a great example of trends because that's truly what happens. It ripples out and then it touches on so many different aspects of people's daily conversation that they're having with their friends over dinner or. What they walk into a target and purchase that day or, it's so interesting, and I know you've even spoken about this like idea of quiet marketing where there's only a small percentage of. Data that we can truly measure. But there is that ripple effect that it has where it's being shared in a DM or talked about, or somebody sees something and then they walk into a store and based on what they saw earlier that day, they then make a decision to now purchase the barrel like jeans because their favorite creator was wearing them and maybe they would've never tried them on and things like that. If you had to delete every platform on social media except for one to use forever, what would it be?

I feel like you guys can all guess. We can guess

know.

it would be LinkedIn. I think for me it just has that, like I can share a text post and I love writing, but if I wanna do a video, I can share a video or I could do a carousel, or I can do a text post with an image and then all perform semi similarly. I think the algorithm really rewards relevance, so if you can be a good conversation starter, if you can share a thought and be a place where people feel like they can contribute in your comment section or reshare with their own thought. It feels like a really social platform that I often think there are attributes to the LinkedIn community that I wish I could feel on other platforms, like TikTok is too quick for me. I cannot post and keep up on TikTok Instagram I love, but I feel like you don't get to know your audience in the way that you do on LinkedIn. I also find Instagram for me, really unpredictable right now. I can post something that I think will do amazing and it. Won't, and I'll have weeks of rubbish stats and then a random week where everything goes well, whereas LinkedIn feels much more consistent. So many reasons why I love it, but for me, I think it brings together the best of every other platform. If you curate your network well, there are many. What about ISS on LinkedIn where you'll post about how you love Red Jumpers, and someone will be like what about blue? Blue's not in the conversation right now, Jonathan. So if you curate your network well, you can avoid the people that make the platform miserable. But no, no platform's perfect. But for me, yeah, I think it really brings together what I love about social media.

If you had one thing that you could leave our audience with to just help encourage or inspire them today, what would it be?

I shared a talk last week and it was one that I have done a lot of times, but I hadn't done it for a really long time. And you know when as you are talking, you're almost like. This is something I need to know and I almost like re-inspired myself. I have this talk that I often deliver called Create Don't Wait, and it's where I share my story of walking in a call center and how I waited three years for someone to come and rescue me. For three years. And then I went to uni, and then I got in the same rut. And even now as a business owner, I get to points where I'm like, oh, they're up to such cool stuff. Like why did they get to go to that event and I didn't. Or why did they have so many likes and comments? And I don't. And I think we get in this rut of, I'll just leave it up to chance, or maybe one day it will get better. What can you do right now to create instead of wait? We've talked about the changing social media landscape instead of waiting for something to go wrong, what can we do right now to create new opportunities or instead of waiting for, meta have been top of my brand partnership list for years, and I was lucky enough to sign a contract to work with them earlier this year. Through a series of people that I have met along the way and things finally coming together, I am yet to pitch for a partnership. I'm very lucky that a lot of my stuff, I think especially through being visible on LinkedIn comes inbound, but even. After my talk last week thinking like, what do I wanna create? Like you have done such a great job already at making your dreams a reality. You are sharing content online. The hard bit is over. We don't need to do the fast post. Build an audience. We've done the hard stuff. It's really up to you now to decide what you wanna do next. Create, don't wait. One of my favorite quotes is how you spend your days. How you spend your days is how you spend your life. And so not waiting for the good days, just making them happen now and after that talk, I almost re again, I reinspired myself, but what am I waiting for right now that I could actually take a handle on and take the lead? I think we have so much more control than. Us silly humans think we do. So what can you create and how can you stop waiting would be my final nugget for today.

So good. I feel like we all need a reminder of that no matter what season of life we're in. Okay. I'm gonna do a few rapid fire and then I wanna wrap up. What are you currently listening to, either your favorite book, maybe, or a podcast?

It is Emma GRE's podcast. Is it Aspire? I think it's called. She recently had Allison from Pop Beyond. She had Meghan Markle on there. She has the best guests in. Something I think that Emma is great at is allowing people to be bold. Like she invites these women on and they can stand in their achievements, which I think so many podcast hosts and things I listen to, don't give them the space to be like, I'm actually really good at what I do and here's how I do it. That is really good. So Emma Greeds podcast is my whole life right now. I love it.

I can't wait to listen to that. What is inspiring you right now? It could be anything.

That is a really good question. I. Probably my business friends. I have a wonderful friend called Rachel who runs an amazing company called because of marketing if you are into like campaigns and marketing. She is amazing. She has a Substack as well, but she's also on Instagram and LinkedIn. She lives a few hours away from I, but I was lucky enough to hang out with her yesterday. And I think just being around people that. Constantly think bigger, like nothing is enough for Rachel, but in the best way. And she's always thinking about what she can do next. And I find that challenging. So to be around people that bring out the best in me. So I would say, Rachel, I'll have to send this to her, but Rachel is inspiring me right

Yay. I love that. Yeah, I agree. I think being around people who think really big also pushes you to think outside the box and not in a copy paste way, but just in a way of oh, what if I did this in the business, or what if we took this. Next step or it just makes you think it, sometimes you need to zoom out a little bit to see the full picture. And what are you craving right now? It could be anything. Maybe fall

Oh, absolutely. I was just gonna say, actually my whole TikTok feed this week has been full wishlists, and I think especially because the weather's a bit gray in the uk. We had rain yesterday. I am ready to watch Harry Potter or Twilight or the Hunger Games. I want a big blanket. I want, I'm just ready for. Christmas, Halloween, but I love how I'm able to hibernate, like I moved to London six months ago. And it's been the best decision ever. I love it here, but also it's so go. I'm at events all the time, especially now that it's summer and I feel like everything slows down a bit more at winter, especially the end of year into December. But there's so much less pressure to post all the time or do big things because no one else is. So I think part of that is like a. Craving and desire to slow down a little bit. Stepping into August, I think it's summer, holiday vibe. So I can do and I'm off on a holiday in September, so four and a break is all I want right now.

I know. I feel like we all need a little fall cozy up. Thank you so much. This was such a good chat. So valuable. I know our audience is going to listen and probably re-listen. So where can everybody find you online?

Thank you so much for having me. Your questions were absolutely brilliant. I feel like I've really been able to. One, think about things that maybe I don't think about too often, but hopefully share some things I haven't shared before. Amanda, I'm so grateful. I run Preto Marketer, which is at Preto Marketer on Instagram and on LinkedIn. My website is pretty little marketer.com. There you can find my newsletter and everything else I'm up to. Or if you wanted to follow me, I'm on LinkedIn at Sophie Miller. I'm also trying to post more on Instagram, but desperately failing. And that is Sophie Miller with four Rs at the end because someone a long time ago took the actual Sophie Miller handle, so I'm relegated. That's okay. It happened to the best of us.