One of the perspectives we haven’t touched on nearly enough on Winfluence is that of the talent manager or influencer agent, if you will. At some point in an influencer’s growth, they may look to a talent agency, manager or agent to help them manage or grow their business.
The talent manager, however, presents a bit of perception issue. Many agency strategists and even brand-side marketing managers hear “talent manager” and think, ‘Oh, great. There’s another 25% in cost just to use that particular influencer.” That’s not a fair perception, really, but a talent manager’s job is to look out for the influencer, make sure their value is well represented and respected and their likeness, rights and such are protected.
Kyle Hjelmeseth is the founder of G&B Digital Management, a talent management firm that represents influencers and content creators. It started when his wife, Stephanie needed representation. She is an influencer in the style and beauty space … she’s @honeynsilk on Instagram.
Kyle came on the show to talk about his firm and their interesting and unique, value-based position. In fact, G&B is made up of a roster of almost intentionally diverse influencers. Kyle and his wife are both people of color, though Kyle admits his mixed-race makeup isn’t obvious.
So we talk about the diversity topic and 2020’s impact on that. But I also dig in and ask him all the questions about that cost misperception, what a manager’s goals are for the clients and how agencies and brands can work best with them. I also asked him when an influencer knows it’s time to seek representation.
You can connect with Kyle on LinkedIn or Instagram.
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Winfluence Transcript – Kyle Hjelmeseth – G&B Digital Management
Jason Falls
Hello again friends thanks for listening to Winfluence – The Influence Marketing Podcast. One of the perspectives we haven’t touched on nearly enough here on influence is that of the talent manager or influencer agent, if you will. Once an influencer or content creator reaches a certain level of reach or volume of offers, I’m sure there are different triggers for different individuals. But at some point in an influencers growth, they may look to a talent agency manager or agent to help them manage or grow their business. The talent manager however, presents a bit of a perception issue. Many agency strategists and even brand side marketing managers hear talent manager and think, “Oh, great. There’s another 25% in cost just to use that particular influencer.” Now, that’s not a fair perception really, but a talent managers job is to look out for the influencer, make sure their value is well represented and respected, and their likeness, rights and such are protected.
Jason Falls
Kyle Hjelmeseth is the founder of G&B Digital Management talent management firm that represents influencers and content creators. It started when his wife Stephanie needed representation, she is an influencer in the style and beauty space. She’s @honeynsilk on Instagram. Kyle came on the show to talk about his firm and their interesting and unique value-based position. In fact, G&B is made up of a roster of almost intentionally diverse influencers. Kyle and his wife are both people of color. Though Kyle admits his mixed race makeup isn’t quite obvious.
Jason Falls
So, we talked about the diversity topic and 2020s impact on that. But I also dig in and ask him all the questions about that cost misperception what a manager’s goals are for the clients and how agencies and brands can work best with them. I also asked him when an influencer knows it’s time to seek representation. So there’s a lot to learn today. Kyle Hjelmeseth, talent manager to the influence marketing stars is next on Winfluence.
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Jason Falls
Kyle, I suppose the way to distill down what you do and what your firm does for the layperson is your talent management company that represents digital content creators or so you’re an agent of sort is is that fair to say?
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Yeah, it’s kind of fair. I would say you know, I always in this is a funny thing about being in the state of California. Legally speaking, I have to make a distinction because you have to have a license to be an agent. We are a business management firm. But you know, whatever, talent manager use it as will.
Jason Falls
Very good. So what makes G&B digital management different from other management companies out there? Is it just the clientele? Or is it a different sort of take on things?
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Everything, my friend everything, it’s Yeah, no, I mean, that’s a great question. And, you know, I even want to thank you for having me on on your program.
Jason Falls
Sure.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
And then, you know, to answer that question, basically, if you go back to the beginning of when I started doing talent management about seven years ago, the influencer space or you know, you can call call the individuals, whatever you want influencers, when I started, it was just bloggers, digital talent is popular. is kind of a newer space, I think, you know, influencer marketing really started around 2009-ish. So I didn’t come into the scene too far down the pike. There’s a lot of players in the space now. But anyways, when I got involved, I got involved, because my girlfriend was a blogger was still as a bloggers, now she my wife, and she was asking me to help her with her business. And so I did, but I’m not from this world at all, I have no experience in talent management. I’ve never worked for one of the big firms or had any, you know, kind of management experience in this lane at all. And everything I learned was just like, on the job, through the emails through the phone calls I was having with brands that were coming her way asking, you know, or wanting to work and partner with her. And I just winged it. And, you know, obviously you do you wing it for so long until it becomes practice, and you find out what works. And obviously, what doesn’t. And for me, I am lucky, because I guess I learned enough lessons along the way. And to really not only, you know, create a great business for myself, but then to grow into this, you know, big national firm that we’ve become today.
Jason Falls
That’s, that’s pretty awesome. Now, I understand that I think I understand this correctly, that you’ve built this sort of family of creators and influencers that you represent, in such a way that there’s there’s almost like a vibe of activism and social conscious built in there is is that something that is the result of 2020? And all that happened? Or is was that intentionally sort of, you know, the way that you built the practice?
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Oh, man, these questions are awesome. Jason came locked and loaded? Yeah, that’s a fantastic question. Because it gets to the root of i think, even like the whole nature of 2020 and activism in 2020. Because, you know, I think a lot of the response. And what happened in the wake of George Floyd’s murder was, was just because it’s been brewing under the surface for so long. You know, and you can go back to the days of civil rights, and Martin Luther King, and that was a big bubble over and then it kind of went, went under the sheet, you can say for a while. And we saw it come up again, I think, a few years ago, around the time of Trayvon Martin, so you know, it’s like some of these names that we know, we’ve got these names in our kind of collective consciousness now, that, you know, denote certain points of when the conversation about diversity and equality and whatnot, has really come to head. how that relates to my firm, I just happen to be an interesting business leader myself, because I’m a minority. Although I always let people know, especially if you haven’t looked up my phone or whatever, I’m extremely white passing.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
And I just happen to be married to Chinese American woman. And so and she was my first talent. You know, I was saying that, you know, I started working with my girlfriend was a blogger, and then she’d be now my wife. So when I signed her, or we, I guess I should really say when I started the firm, and she was our first talent. One of her friends, you know, signed on as my second talent. He’s also Chinese American. You know, and so, like, within the first five talent that I had, you know, over 50% were of a different race than Caucasian or or white. So, for me, honestly, Jason, it was something I thought about at the beginning, because as especially as a mixed race individual it’s not something you generally think about, I’m not thinking about how to like, have more diversity, because I’m already diverse. We were already diverse since day one. So it by the nature of me as the owner, and and especially the tone we set from the beginning, I like to say we’re diverse and state one is how I put it. So, so yeah, and when last year’s events happened, you know, there was just a lot of attention on every company in terms of, you know, how diverse is your talent roster and our field? Or how diverse is your staff and, and I just felt extremely lucky during that time. Because there was so much cancel culture, you know, I think we can bring it term.
Jason Falls
Yep
Kyle Hjelmeseth
You know, around what was happening to other businesses who, you know, had not placed any any emphasis, especially those who placed you know, very little emphasis on diversifying their staff or their, their hiring practices or their the talent they were using and campaigns for marketing and advertising. You know, so much attention, negative attention going there, that I was lucky that we just happen to be already diverse, you know, and already already had a great kind of tapestry, both inside our walls, and also with those that we serve.
Jason Falls
So certainly, you know, 2020 opened the floodgates for influencers, and many brands taking stands on social issues from racism and social justice to police brutality and beyond. And as I said, a lot of brands took stands on issues in the last year that maybe they wouldn’t have before, it was kind of a coming out party in a lot of ways for a lot of brands, which was kind of nice for them to have a social conscience. But I’m curious if you think that trend will continue for brands, or if there’s some danger that they may retreat a bit, thus making influencers, perhaps like some of your clients who are more socially conscious, aware and vocal, perhaps it makes those influencers susceptible to being avoided? Because of their outspoken nature? Is that a concern at all?
Kyle Hjelmeseth
That, you know, that’s a really interesting question, because it’s got so many, like, so many bits of nuance to it in one sense, you know, you’re absolutely right with the hypothesis that, you know, especially in the months after the real summer of protests and whatnot, things quieted down, every you know, that you had to take a stand as a brand, you had to show up on social media and put, you know, a statement on on your website. And there were a lot of brands that that opened up their books and showed, okay, hey, this is actually what are our, our staff breakdown, you know, by ethnicity, where we’re at, and a lot of brands when they did that had to also say out loud, hey, we’re not doing the best year when it comes to diversity. And we want to change that. And so I thought that was all positive, like, really the resulting conversations that came out of last summer, were positive in my perception of in terms of like, hey, let’s get into this conversation. let’s admit that we could do better. And and that at least starts us on the path to of course, doing better now, could that be swept under the rug? And was it swept under the rug? Absolutely. You know, and I think we all during that time, that a lot of conversations I had, were like, okay, cool, this is great. Right now, these conversations are really helpful, but in four months, six months time, who’s really going to be who’s still going to be doing the work and showing up. And, you know, we, I guess the way that I look at it, personally, is that as long as that acknowledgement was out there, that means that it’s not, it’s partially up to the brand to have to go back and make changes and do something positive and keep their word, it also becomes part of the ownership then gets shared to the audience, whoever is hearing that message, to hold them accountable. You know, there’s not some great, you know, Department of diversity within our federal government that goes around poking that hole, you know, and and, you know, showing up with a clipboard, saying, What’s going on, right? So, we, as the consumer public have to go and say, cool, I remember I remember, you know, when this was going on last year, you guys said you were gonna do this. Did you guys do that? And if they didn’t, you know, it’s, it’s not my opinion that the brands who did not make headway be, you know, taken out and flogged. For that or cancelled? It’s my opinion that the question is continued to be asked so that there is a measure of accountability. And if you say, Hey, we didn’t get very far. Well, why not? And what can we do? What can you do now? You know, and you got to have those voices out there that are they do have one eye on this conversation, they do have one eye on these brands, and they do ask the question and, and if things are going great, then we celebrate it. If they’re not, then Okay, let’s talk about how we can help and whatnot. So that’s just kind of how I look at it. I think this year, you know, there’s been a lot of things to pay attention to. And I mean, obviously, not even not even just this year, last year, there was a lot of things to pay attention to. There’s just been so many topics.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
But if we just talk about 2020 and 2021 … 2021 so far, we’re not even one month in. There have been so many things that we as society have had to pay attention to, that it becomes difficult to do the work in the lanes where we want to see real progress made. I think that energy has shifted a bit, you know, over the last couple weeks, and I think in a positive direction of hopefully, quote, unquote, calming down, and maybe we’ll get back to work on some of these things. But, you know, we’ll see.
Jason Falls
Yeah, yeah, I know, we, you know, one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on the show is I saw a list that one of your one of your people sent me of trends that you want to watch for in 2021, in the sort of influence space, and one of them caught my attention was the environmental impact of influence marketing. I think when most people hear that they’re going to be confused and not really know what that means. So can can you explain why influence marketing’s environmental impact is something we need to pay attention to?
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Yeah, well, I’m, I’m really happy to talk about that. Because it’s not something like you said, it’s not something that the average person would really like, tune into me, maybe they might question it. If you have somebody out there that’s a bit sensitive to what’s going on with the with climate change and sustainability in general, they may look at influencers and think about, well, influencers are these people, you generally if you’re following them on TikTok, or Instagram or wherever you see them, getting things sent to them, you know, influencers typically are sharing products that are either in one category, they’re gifted so they are like a free product that’s sent to the influencer for the influencer to review and then share that review online. Or they are a sponsored product. So the influencers paid a sum of money in order to share their their review of the product. But anyways, so the the, at the end of the day, the influencer is receiving stuff. And, and you can extrapolate that thought out and say, Okay, well, some influencers I follow, they receive a lot of stuff, you know, they they’re constantly sharing all the stuff they’re getting, what happens with that stuff, right? I am a little bit more sensitive to this conversation, because my as I’d mentioned, my wife is a well, she’s a blogger, influencer. So I see the package that she gets, she’s a fairly well known blogger, and she’s been around in the space for going on nine years. So she’s got a lot of relationships with a lot of great brands. And I see the packages that, you know, show up because these brands want her to talk about their product ahead of their launches, or whatever it may be. Or it could be just things for fun, fun ideas, advertising campaigns, you know. And so I see this happening in my own life. And I own this agency now. And we’ve got, you know, quite a few talent that are assigned to our agency. So just in my own mind, for the last few years, this is something I’ve been contemplating, like the impact of brands and agencies sending, you know, this myriad of things out to people across the country. And I’m just one, one agency. There’s quite a few agencies that deal in influencer marketing now. And this is not a new thing, mind you, I guess. It’s not a new thing. And it’s not something that’s that’s particular to influencer marketing. And I wanted to qualify that because, you know, a lot of people who don’t know, influencer marketing’s relationship to Hollywood are kind of like how influencer marketing got started, like, is very related to Hollywood and how you would how you would perceive celebrities getting things you know, celebrities are gifted products from brands all the time and you know, in hopes that the celebrity shares that thing and it becomes a hot new product because I always use like the worst examples because I’m old but I’ll be like, you know, because Brad Pitt you know, shows up some hat or whatever and then becomes the hot hat. I need to I really need to update my
Jason Falls
You should use a female and handbags. That’s a big one.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Yeah, I always eat I always say Cameron Diaz which is equally awful.
Jason Falls
You could update that a little bit,
Kyle Hjelmeseth
You know,
Jason Falls
Demi Lovato say, Demi Lovato. That’s easy to remember.
Kyle HjelmesethI know, there we go.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
But yeah, so you know, it’s, it’s all interrelated because these are individuals who have community they’ve built that they’re, you know, sharing messages with and kind of like mini celebrities and a lot of cases, some of them are her actually celebrity level these days, but and you know, the line of thought goes, Hey, these people are receiving stuff, lots of stuff, what is the cost of that stuff not in terms of dollars, but in terms of impact. It’s some base math, like you’re in our own home, we get a couple, maybe one to two packages a day. You know, maybe that’s 10 packages a week, which, you know, to a normal person, that sounds insane. But like in the world of influencers, pretty mild, and fun, average package, you know, weight is like pound, that’s 40 to 60 pounds a month of stuff you’re receiving. And that stuff isn’t just going to stay in our house, right? It’s gotta have destination, even if my wife were to use everything she receives, on which she tries to still has, you know, there’s still things like, it gets shoved in a corner until a time that it’s can’t be shoved in any more corners, right? So, so that’s a really big thing. You know, it’s been a big conversation, actually, behind the scenes for I would say, for the last couple years, where a lot more of our talent that are assigned to our agency, are saying, Hey, you know, can the brand who’s going to send me this thing? Can they use more environmentally friendly packaging when they sent it? You know, because there are options for for biodegradable packaging and whatnot now that didn’t used to exist? Or even can they send me this thing? And are they gonna, you know, like, let’s ask the question upfront, is the brand okay that I recycle it? When it’s done with its use that I do? A lot of the talent that we, we manage, they like to do giveaways. So is the brand okay with us do hosting a giveaway with a thing that sense so that it has, you know, multiplication of its lifetime value in it touches multiple hands versus being like something that’s used, used once and thrown away? So, so it’s already been that conversation behind the scenes within the influencers. But now we got to take that conversation back to the brands, to the agencies that are sending all this stuff out and say, hey, let’s partner together, let’s think about how we can actually reduce the impact on shipping and whatnot, reduce the, you know, the product load that’s, you know, going out around the country, what are some solutions, you know, in order to, to lower our own impact on climate?
Jason Falls
Interesting. Okay, well, that clears it up for me and hopefully for everyone else …
Kyle Hjelmeseth
I know I just gave you a whole long winded you know, thing there but, but it is a really interesting thought, you know
Jason Falls
Yeah, well, it’s it’s definitely something worth thinking about. And good that good that we brought it up now people think about it. Okay, so you, you also represent a number of creators in the travel space. And we talked to Gary Arndt recently from Everything Everywhere, arguably one of the more influential creators in the travel space, and he is so uncertain of the future of travel and tourism, because of the whole impact of COVID. He’s actually pivoted to focus on a podcast that is less travel and more history and knowledge based content. What are your clients saying about getting back to making travel important again, how long do you think it’ll be? How long do you think it’ll take before that segment can get back on its feet?
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Yeah, that’s a, you know, that’s just like, that’s a hard hitting, you know, topic because it there are just millions of people that are impacted billions of dollars, you know, that are being lost, you know, because of the the damage to the overall travel sector. And then beyond that, the multiplication out to or the extrapolation out to like, the damage that the loss of travel does to local governments and things you know, not having the tourism and the tax dollars and whatnot. within our own industry, you know, it’s like we we manage just one travel blogger. In our whole firm, we only have one travel blogger, but we do have lots of other types of bloggers who use travel as a means of like content development so everybody’s kind of interested obviously in traveling for our one travel blogger I’ll say this was it was such an incredibly difficult time like this last year obviously has been immensely difficult for that person. His name is David Hoffman from his channels called David’s been here and he’s big YouTuber who travels the world and shows people the the path less taken so he’s not typically doing you know, great, great, big storylines about Paris or if he does go to Paris. He’s showing you like the underbelly the the stuff you’re going to go visit and whatnot, but he goes to A lot of countries like Uzbekistan, he’s in Ghana right now, places that most people are not putting on top of their, their wish list. And I mean, David’s story is just incredible to me when it comes to to COVID. He was actually in the small kingdom, the tiny Kingdom of Bhutan, when COVID lockdown is happening here in the United States. And it’s this whole epic thing that I think should be a movie one day, more or less, me being on the phone with him, telling him what’s going on in America, as he’s trying to escape from futon before the borders closed, to get home to his family, in Miami, Florida. And, and then you know, him and I once he returned, and thankfully, he made it back just by the skin of his teeth. It was this question of, well, you know, crap. What are you going to do now? What kind of story could you possibly tell? And, and that was really up in the air for a good few months, you know, there are a number of countries that are open, still, and have been open during this whole pandemic, that have very low rates of infection for COVID. one that comes to mind is Albania on another one would be Kosovo. And, and what I thought was really incredibly interesting. And I I’m thinking, you know, had to like what the trend may be, is that literally, we could be moving into a time where these countries who have remained open, like get more prominence and dominance when travel really fully opens up because they really exposed new people who who want to see something to the beauty of Albania, I’d never considered Albania before.
Jason Falls
Yeah
Kyle Hjelmeseth
But, because it’s been one of the only places open, David went there. And I learned so much about the country, and I’m like, I have to go there. It’s like, top of my list now. And so, you know, I think there’s gonna be a Personally, I think there’s gonna be a power dynamic that changes in terms of like, where people go, as borders start to open up. And a lot of that’s going to be based on what restrictions are placed in which areas. And, and I, you know, honestly, I think in the next six months, we’re going to see a flood of dollars, come back into tourism, how that’s going to happen, it’s going to be a multi stage, you know, like the first stage and I think, you know, a little bit of that is happening now in America. We’re very much in this kind of, like season of very, like tiptoeing into road trips, you know, and are V’s are sold out. airstreams are sold out, you know, things that harken back to different time of Americana. 60. And, so really thinking, I, my first thought is, hey, we’re gonna see a lot of emphasis on domestic travel, which is really what we need to do as a country. And it is, and I’m guessing most countries need to do is like, we need to turn inward, we need to encourage Americans to travel America, because that will, that’s, you know, one of the safest ways that we can get some normalcy back into tourism. And then as you know, foreign tourism comes back into play, you’ll see that I think, you know, later in the year 2022. Really, you know, as especially as as airlines and the Tourism Board start to ramp up and get dollars get relief from governments to to start to sell, sell their spots again. You know, so it’s gonna be it’s gonna be painful process can be slow multistage, but I think that we’re gonna be having fun throughout America for a minute.
Jason Falls
I certainly hope so that sounds like that sounds like a pretty bright future, compared to what we’ve been doing for the last year or so.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Absolutely, absolutely. And I mean, to me, for me, personally, it just makes me feel like that makes me think about my childhood. I think, you know, a lot of kids, that’s what we do on the great American road trip with our parents. And I certainly didn’t spend time and in the law states that I haven’t even been back to. I had great experiences in Montana, and Wyoming, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. And I haven’t had the chance to go back. And so, you know, that’s where my eye is first. And I think a lot of people feel that way.
Jason Falls
Cool. Let me switch gears now a little bit and talk to you about the role of a talent manager for a creator. I’m sure there are a lot of influencers and creators out there listening who may aspire to when they have representation. So when does a creator know they need someone like you? Is it a workload issue? It is, is it a revenue based issue? Is it perhaps size of audience issue? When should someone come looking for your help as an influencer?
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Yeah, I’m really glad to answer that because it is something that I think people don’t really consider. Often before they email me. And, and I say that with love because I get emails every day and multiple emails a day from from people who want to be influencers and they always send you know, we have a little form on our website where they send in, you know, their Instagram account or whatever for review. And, and I listened to Gary Vaynerchuk one time, if you’re familiar, and Gary really brought it, you know, like made a very clear statement that I thought was powerful. And it’s like, if you’re thinking about becoming an influencer, and you want to get brand deals, you want brands to pay you money for something, you know, partnerships, like all these influencers are getting influencers working with Chanel, and Coca Cola and huge multinational brands and whatnot, you know, that there’s a lot of Allure, to having those opportunities. A lot of people want to get in on those opportunities. But you have to ask yourself, like, how influential Am I really, maybe you look good. And I, you know, I certainly I want to give you a high five, if you’ve got, you know, the the confidence in how you look, and whatever images you’re sharing of yourself. So you’re like, wow, I look good. And so maybe somebody will partner with me. But that’s not it. You know, that’s not the whole equation when it comes to getting partnerships. And then of course, having representation. A lot of times, it’s not about looks at all, or what you’re putting out there, it’s about, again, what Gary was talking about, how influential are you? Do you have a spear? And are people engaging with you and your content? So when I asked myself that question, when I challenge people ask themselves that question, you know, like, if you’ve got 2000 followers, you’ve got a pretty small sphere of influence comparatively out there. And you have to look like, well, you also have to consider how many people how many of those 2000 are really engaging with my content? am I sharing something that’s causing a lot of conversation? It answers most times, you know, especially with the smaller person who’s on their way up. It’s a work in progress. So I like to tell people, you know, you can monetize at all different levels, depending on the amount of hustle that you’ve got. But if you’re really, really intent on becoming an influencer, and getting management from a major firm like ours, you have to have proven your yourself in the space. To me, proving yourself is kind of like, when somebody’s got around 100,000 followers on on one platform like Instagram or TikTok. And they, we look at everything. So you know, I’m not saying somebody just shot up overnight and got 100,000 followers, and that makes them really attractive. I like to see slow, steady growth, growth that comes from the quality of content that they’re producing. So I’m looking at somebody I’m saying, oh, wow, they’ve got so many examples, months and months of content that they’ve been putting out there. They’ve been creating, they’ve been working hard. at, you know, building this presence, and now they’ve got 100,000 followers, they got it, you know, a lot of people engaging, commenting, liking every post, you can really see an active community. That’s what makes me turn my head and say, Okay, let’s take another look at this person, what they’ve got going on, maybe they might be fit for, for, you know, management. Good deal. Now, if someone is fit for management, what part of their business in their work in their activity? Does a manager take off their plate? Yeah, so we get excited. Because we are, you know, we’re the boring the boring business people, right?
Kyle Hjelmeseth
We get to do all the stuff that generally creative people hate. So when somebody comes to us, we offer 360 management that means that we deal with all of the invoicing for their projects that we review their contracts to make sure that the the contract that they’re getting from a brand or an agency really is is honoring boasts respecting both parties. So we do all that nuts and bolts we calendar things for them. So we keep them on a calendar because you know, typically when you get projects, their due dates for when you have to turn things in and when you have to post and promote. So we really keep the the individual’s business on track and allow them to focus on their creativity so they can spend more time creating, you know, the beautiful Instagram post or the the video or whatever it is they’re creating and less focusing on getting that in, you know, invoice out and then collecting money. So it’s all the nuts and bolts. We also, you know, as a major agency, this the benefit of us of partnering with a major agency is we are Rolodexes infinity. At this point, you know, I’ve been around long enough. You know, we’re not New Kids on the Block. I’ve worked with every brand under the sun pretty much. So our Rolodex is is very large. So when somebody comes into our camp, they’re you know, we’re we’re getting to see who they’re working with and who’s interested in them. A little bit, but they’re really benefiting from being aligned with us and having access to, you know, probably a myriad of brands that they would want to work with, you know, and get pitched to. So we, we pitch our clients, we put them out in front of those that we’ve built relationships with and say, Hey, you got to check out this, this new addition to our roster, they’re really great. They’ve got a great community great style, and we should talk about doing a project with them. So …
Jason Falls
Nice.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Yeah.
Jason Falls
So let’s talk to the brands and agencies out there now to I’m gonna play the part of a brand or an agency person for a moment and share a perspective with you. And then I have a question for you about that perspective. So here’s my little roleplay. I’m prejudiced against an influencer with a manager because a manager means there’s at least a 25% additional cost on top of what I’m going to pay otherwise. And if I had a choice between two influencers with equal social presences, and one has a manager and one doesn’t, I’m calling the one who does, because my perception is going to be I’m going to get more bang for my buck, tell me why I’m wrong in feeling that way.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Yeah, you know, I never like to say somebody is wrong, I think your feelings are really valid. And I’ve certainly, you know, I’ve dealt with a number of of clients of ours who out the gate have even said that to us, I’ve actually had a few instances where the client hasn’t said that to us. But they emailed my influencer back, saying, hey, we’d rather not deal with your manager, not knowing that the influencer, either was gonna afford that to me, or that the email that the influencer has, is actually shared by me. So. So I’ve caught this situation, you know, multiple times, I think the thing that, you know, that typically doesn’t happen with large agencies that we deal with the large brands, they don’t try to skirt us. It’s usually like a smaller sort of situation where somebody doesn’t have experience working with managers, a number one, you know, when it comes to that 20% 25%, whatever it is that we are tacking on we as an agency, we are a completely reasonable agency. And I think that’s one of the biggest things about our reputation that people know across the board that we don’t price gouge, we’re not adding some inflation of costs that like, you know, makes our people impossible to work with when it comes to a budget. And I do know, that exists out there. So it’s actually we’ve got that reputation of not being price gougers, because there are people that are price gouging out there. So, you know, that’s, that’s one thing that you know, is comes like upfront, when when dealing with G&B is just how fair we are with pricing. What’s the benefit, though, the benefit is is twofold. One, because we are a gang of professionals that do all of the tasks that is just kind of a numerating, before, agencies and brands that work with us know that we are bringing a quality of the workflow that typically doesn’t exist, when you’re dealing with an individual, you know, it’s really hard to chase an individual. And a lot of times if an individual creator out there doesn’t have the same setup we have terms of they’re just really disciplined project managers for themselves, then you’ve got an you know, an agency out there that’s trying to hunt down the work that they’ve contracted and hunt down even the you know, the kind of the follow up stuff, the statistics that have to be turned in afterwards, the invoicing, hunting, you know, trying to scream for an invoice just to wrap a project up. There’s that confidence that we’re going to bring excellence in the project management. And so you know, that’s a big one. The other thing, though, that is brought up more often than not, is that when somebody partners with G&B and our talent, they know because they’re our talent that the talent is going to show up. You know, and that’s a big one, there are so many influencers out there today. It is, I can’t say it’s not a saturated environment. So people know us, they know the quality of talent, they know the quality of our workflow again, but they know that the influence or talent is going to show up do the work. And a lot of times if you’ve got somebody that’s like, independent out there, it can be real hit or miss, whether they’re gonna do what they’re contracted to do, there’s lots of performance issues. So you know, so at the end of the day, you work with us, you you would even want to spend that 25%, more 20% more, because it’s going to ensure that the project goes smoothly, not only at the beginning of the project during the project and and to close everything out.
Jason Falls
Well, and one thing you were polite not to bring up, but I will. There are a number of brands and agencies out there that will take advantage of a creator who they sense maybe doesn’t know any better and undervalues their work, right. I mean, a manager is a great protector and equalizer in those circumstances.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Yeah, I mean, that’s the other side of the coin. Actually, it’s like that’s why we do what we do. And that’s why we’re well known for what we do is we really take a protectionist view and you know, there are certainly so many instances I could point to where we sign a talent. And the talent comes on board with us and says, Hey, I signed this contract before I started working with G&B. And now I see that these these, you know, this brand over here is using my image on billboards, this actually happened. This is like a real instance, where a brand started using the talents image on billboards around the city of San Francisco, and in San Francisco International Airport. And when the talent found out about this, because some of her followers were kind enough to, you know, say, Hey, I just saw you at SFO, she was like, That’s awesome, but I’m not getting compensated for that at all. And that was just that was the brand taking advantage and putting stipulations in the contract that the talent wasn’t aware of at all. Things that we would catch, because we know to look out for those things that they might not. So really, it’s Yeah, for the talent, it’s just having the protection of a season team that’s going to bat for you to to negotiate fair rates to negotiate fair contracts and fair, you know, stipulations. And, and really, yeah, it’s not just as I was kind of articulating before, it’s not just the nice nicety of having somebody keep a program on track, it is creating a really fair environment in all senses of the word.
Jason Falls
So if you know, now, I realized for everybody, for the for the record, you know, Kyle’s not complaining about brands and saying all brands do this, I’m just throwing this out there for conversations sake. But Kyle, if you could wave a magic wand, and make all brands and agencies come to the table with you with an optimal attitude and approach, what would that look like? How do you want them to approach a negotiation?
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Yeah, you know, I would say that, that’s a great question. For me to just make kind of that statement to it’s like, I will tell you, I, I’m proud of the industry that I work in, because that the times that the situation I just explained, the times that that happens are so few and far between, we have you know, and you know, we’ve been in the game for seven years. So this is it’s been a growing experience and a learning experience for everybody along the way. And I mean, every brand and agency that I work with, it’s this has been seven years of growing and learning or 10 years for some, you know, but um, but it’s all been, it’s new, it’s not something that’s been established, or we just have like a specific protocol that everybody follows. But um, I would say, you know, the, the the best situations for a brand and an influencer and the talent, where they have, like, really all of their needs met on both sides is we’ve got things like, the likeness really well defined. And what I mean by that is, when a brand is going into a relationship with an influencer, and having them create content that has the, the product in it, a lot of times brands want to use that that image that the influencer creates, and they want it, they want to put it on their own social media channels, maybe they want to put it into an advertisement on Facebook, or, you know, they want to use it on a billboard, or whatever it is, they have those things called out, it’s always great to have this thing called out in the conversation, the negotiation phase before, it’s kind of hidden in a contract, because if it’s hidden in the contract, a lot of times that kind of stuff can be missed. So it’s you know, it’s the the brand or agency coming up, you know, in those conversations saying, hey, by the way, we have a plan, we have a marketing plan, we want to use your imagery, potentially, you know, for the next six months, and one of the potential uses might be on a billboard, or it might be in a Facebook ad or whatever, and listing those things out up front. So we say we really know what’s going what’s going to happen with the content at the end of the day, and what’s going to happen not really just with the content, because this includes people the content has the likeness, the face of the individuals in in that photo or in that video or whatever. So thing Okay, we want to use your likeness for the next six months, you know, we’re gonna put you out there XYZ creator and show people who you are. So just, it’s really all about having that kind of information upfront. That makes the conversation really amicable, you know, allows both parties to work out what you know, if there’s dollars involved paying for the rights to you know, have somebody likeness and whatnot. That’s all just out on the table up front. So that the conversations really clear and everybody feels like there’s a fair, you know, a fair agreement at the end of the day.
Jason Falls
Very good. While we’re at it, I’d love to get your perspective on the the influencer pay gap both from a male female perspective and from a white/person of color. perspective, there is I would say a shameful disparity in average pay for influencers from brands now it’s hard to govern equal pay, when each influencer or their management negotiates their fees individually unionization seems very difficult. In an interesting … industry that isn’t tied to geography, and many industries are isolated in many bubbles of their own. So like fashion and beauty influencers don’t necessarily interact with or talk to cooking and food influencers, who don’t talk to b2b SaaS influencers, and so on so forth. But is the impetus for closing the pay gap solely the responsibility of the brands to govern themselves? Or do managers, agencies and even influencers have a role to play there too?
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Yeah, you know, that’s really interesting, because as you articulated, there isn’t a standard. You know, there are there are definitely a you, if you were to Google, you know, what to charge for an Instagram post from an influencer? There are definitely guidelines out there. And, you know, I was mentioning earlier in the conversation, I think that how we, how we build our rates is very reasonable. And we hear that from our clients all the time that we were very reasonable, because, personally, the way I like to look at business, I’d rather have lots of repeat business, by keeping our rates reasonable, versus trying to just like, steal every dollar that you possibly can drain out of you for that one and done program. We want to build longevity into our business, and also the business of our talent. And so, you know, there there are some guidelines, there’s lots of, you know, things you can google about guidelines where prices should be or could be. But it really is up to every influencer in every talent agency, you know, at the end of the day, and everybody I know, you know, from lots of conversations that I have, it’s wild west, I don’t know if they’ll ever be like, I always say like one true ring to rule them all, to show my geekiness. My Tolkien geekiness there.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
So yeah, so the responsibility of closing the gap is really on. I think it’s it’s both parties, and it has to be very widely acknowledged that it’s both parties. That’s something that I tried to really work on this last year, especially in the days of in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and you know, the conversation around BLM. And then of course, the resulting conversations about diversity, inclusion, equity. What we did, you know, in this was a really interesting conversation for a lot of reasons. But we created like this outline of questions that influencers and agents could ask back up the up the conversation pipeline, to the agencies and brands that were hiring us. And typically, that doesn’t happen. So typically, it’s like the brand or agency, they’re coming down to us where the end of the chain here, or the talent release the end of the chain, and they make an offer, and they don’t tell you what they’re paying other people or anything like that. Or they don’t even tell you who else is on the campaign. So we, you know, we wanted to really push back against that as a result of, of the BLM summer, if you will. And we created this initiative called normalized equality, part of normalized equality was a set of questions to say, okay, who else is on this campaign that I’m about? You’re asking me to be a part of this campaign? Who else is on the campaign? So we can actually talk about and look at, you know, like, how diverse is the campaign, giving influencers and giving talent managers the questions, right questions, so that they assume more power on the conversation and push back up against brands and agencies? So I think that same logic applies to the question you’re asking about the pay gap is that it has to be coming from both sides, like the A lot of times, there’s this funny joke. I mean, it’s funny to me, like in our world, there’s always a struggle between the agency or the brand and the town manager, the talent of, you know, the brand saying, well, what’s your rate? And then the talent managers level? What’s your budget? What’s your rate? And it really serves nobody other than, you know, it’s like both parties are trying to gain the advantage. It’s like whoever breaks first if you give the budget Well, now I know how much money you have. If you give your rates Well, they know what they can get you at, you know, or whatever. So it’s, it’s, I think, imperative for there to be a lot more transparency into what people especially what people are, I think, where the budgets are, and I think that brands need to be more open about how much money they have earmarked for specific individuals that they want on the campaign. And that’s really hard to do. I that’s not something I think is you know, a lot of brands are going to be willing to adopt or agencies will be willing to adopt to say, okay, we want Stephanie we have earmarked $2,000 for Stephanie, and this is where we think that money could go and then Stephanie can come in and say okay, cool. I appreciate the $2,000 This is how much work I can create for that. That’s The best scenario so that there’s just like this real easy understanding of how much money we have. And then the creator can say, Well, this is what I can create for that, that helps kind of normalize things and keep a more open conversation. But you know, well, I don’t know if we’ll ever see that happen.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
The paid the biggest pay disparity, and I think you would, this may be, this may be a surprise to you, maybe not. Men in this world, are the ones that make the least amount of money. And it because influence and social media in general is very female dominated, especially in the top categories, the top categories for influencers are typically fashion. fashions got like the highest amount of spend, the second highest amount of spend is typically beauty. The third is like food, I think, off top my head, but you know, those are female dominated industries and female, you know, dominated just like the men who are in the space make far less violence.
Jason Falls
Well, let me push back on that a little bit, because a lot of the surveys that you see now, and this is where the pay gap conversation has kind of erupted is that I think the this latest statistic that I saw from, I can’t remember which study it was that came out recently was that men make 7% more across the board.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Hmm. I’ve never seen that. I will just volunteer that, you know, like that. I have never seen that, especially, you know, and all the conversations I’ve had with every agency or brand we work with. I’ve never seen the men make more in this space. Even if they did PR program, typically, you know, I guess there’s another way to look at it. Typically, men are offered far less programs than women
Jason Falls
That could that that could make sense that they’re, I think I think they’re the disparity probably is, and forgive me for this. But you know, you are in a different stratosphere of influence marketing than I think most people are. Because most people who are doing this are not dealing with managers and, you know, hundreds of 1000s of follower influencers, they’re dealing with that sort of mid tier.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Actually, that is a really great point, Jason, that I think we can talk about for just a second more because I’m in this last year, there was there’s a really interesting, and I don’t know if you follow this, and maybe this is where the question originated. But there’s a really interesting Instagram account called influencer pay gap. And, and, you know, I followed that a lot of people in my sphere follow that account. I think it’s great for bringing up bring attention, as you know, the conversation on the disparity between men and women, the disparity between, you know, the different ethnicities in terms of pay, which definitely exists, you know, on an ethnic breakdown scale. Excuse me, but, but one of the things I really highlighted when I first started reading that account and looking at the, the submissions from people was that there were a lot of, quote unquote, influencers, being featured by that account, saying, Hey, I only got, you know, offered $300 by brand XYZ for my participation in this campaign, or I only got offered gifting for, you know, some no money only trade or, you know, a barter for the goods for this campaign. But then you start to look at the amount of followers that that that those people had. And it’s like, okay, you know, I appreciate that you’re, you know, kind of sad that you didn’t get a monetary offer, but you also only have 1500 followers on your Instagram account. Right. So to your point, I, you know, as an agency owner IDM in a much different stratosphere but I also think that’s a really relevant point to the influencer pay gap conversation, is that there are there definitely is a threshold in which influencers start to receive steady monetary compensation. And it’s it’s not 10,000 followers, you know, that’s, that’s hit or miss, maybe somebody gets 50 bucks. Here, they’re not 20,000 it’s not even 50. It’s, you know, like I was saying earlier, it’s like 100,000 or more is typically where you start to see more consistent kind of paid opportunities. And I don’t think that these things are correlated. I don’t think that that means that there’s an influencer pay gap. I think that that means that there are a lot of people who assume they should be getting paid because they have 2000 followers, you know, so it’s kind of a misnomer, a bit of a misnomer. So,
Jason Falls
That’s certainly something that deserves more investigation, research and conversation and I’m sure all of that
Kyle Hjelmeseth
And that will require transparency. Like really, that requires a lot more people being a lot more transparent about how the money is is changing hands and who is going to
Jason Falls
Very true. Kyle this has been most insightful sir thank you much for the time today where can people connect with you if they want to know more or even see if you’re a good fit to manage them?
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Yeah, thanks Jason. It’s gb-dm.com. That’s our agency website or our long form of our name is godandbeauty.com which still works and then of course I would say you can follow me on Instagram but spelling my last name and you know, hopefully they check out your podcast and they see okay, what follow Kyle Hjelmeseth that @ KyleHjelmeseth, but how do you spell Hjelmeseth, so.
Jason Falls
It we’ll make sure that it’s it’s linked from the show notes and spelled out there so we don’t have to go through that the the, the Nordic spelling of your last name is challenging, I think for most people probably challenging for you to write.
Kyle Hjelmeseth
Yeah, and took me a while when I was a child.
Jason Falls
Awesome. Kyle, Thanks so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it.
Kyle Hjelmeseth\
Yeah, thank you Jason.
Transcribed by otter.ai
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