Savannah Engel On How to Make Yourself Indispensable

00:00:05
Speaker 1: Be tough to each other.
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Speaker 2: We'll cut it out.
00:00:08
Speaker 1: We had to cut something out because I said something very inappropriate.
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Speaker 3: About me.
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Speaker 4: Wow.
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Speaker 2: Wow.
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Speaker 3: Hi, everyone.
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Speaker 2: Welcome back to another episode of Quiet Confidential. It is my pleasure to introduce you to my guests today. I have Savannah Engel, who is the CEO and founder of Savvy and her vice president of Savvy, Claire O'Connor. Hello, ladies. hey girl hey thanks for joining I know it's the middle of the summer and I just it's also a Wednesday so tough scheduling but thanks for being here.
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Speaker 1: You're a PR agency in New York City in the middle of August it is high time of is it your craziest time yeah I mean it's always our craziest time but this is particularly crazy yeah yeah.
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Speaker 2: Damn why is is it just because it's like it's.
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Speaker 1: Like the prep of fashion week we're still we're half fashion half hospitality and Every restaurant or bar we rep wants to open the same week as every fashion show that we have. So it's really awesome.
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Speaker 2: Understood.
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Speaker 3: Well, Godspeed.
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Speaker 1: Blessings and prayers.
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Speaker 2: You've got this.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, we need it. Thanks, babe.
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Speaker 2: Okay, so your company has exploded over the last couple years. Let's go back to the beginning. What you've built is so cool. How did you fall into this?
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Speaker 1: Oh, my God. Okay, so the way I got into PR, I was at SMU, and I was on homecoming court. And I was, when you're on home county court, you throw all these parties for, like, there's parties. You have, like, five parties. And I took over, not the Green Elephant.
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Speaker 3: What was it called?
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Speaker 1: Bowery Bar, whatever in Dallas, SMU. It used to be called, what was it called? It was great. Anyway, and I remember throwing a party, and my friend Teddy's sister was there, who was already in New York working. I had been drinking too much. She had been drinking too much. And we became best friends. And she was like, you should be my intern. And she was in PR at Michael Kors. So originally, I was going into human rights. I had three majors. That's the path I was going. Take me into the Darfurian crisis. I'm ready for it. And then I did this internship. And one day, I was on the wrong floor at the right time. And I happened to be poking through some clothes. And at the time, my accent was even thicker because I'm like full Mississippi. And I look at a piece of clothing. I go, whoo! I love the shit out of that. And then I hear this cackle behind me. Like a Long Island cackle. And all of a sudden I turn around and it's Michael himself. And he is just dying. And I was like, child, where are you from? So anyway, I had a great internship summer. I was a terrible intern. And I am doing, because I had three majors, I was doing an extra semester at college. And so, and I was like applying to law school and human rights things, doing the whole thing. And a position opened up in October and Michael and Billy and Leah Jacobson, everybody, my original boss was like, you need to hire, let's go after Savannah. She was our intern. And so they were like, can you be here tomorrow? I was like, absolutely. Cause I changed my resume where I was. I had said, no, I'm in New York city and I live at this apartment or whatever. And so I was like my friend's apartment on the Upper East side. And, um, well, essentially, um, Flew up, and I was like, Mom, Dad, we got to get me a New York. Flew up the next day. I remember I watched the September issue of the movie. At the same time, Devil Wears Prada had come out and all this other stuff. And so, I don't even think that had come out yet. And I went in for the interview, and Michael and I had a hilarious interview together, and I got the job. Well, this is like before Zoom and everything, like finishing classes and online learning. So it's the financial crisis. And so literally, I go to my teachers at SMU, and I'm like, I got a job in New York City, so I actually, I have to go, but I still have to graduate from college. And that's how it happened. Like, I fell into Michael Kors. And so when I was there, it was like 150, 250 people, not a huge company. It was pretty big. But we were going public, so I was there for all of that. And that's Marian and Waterman, who I learned so much everything from as well, that came in. And then after we went public, I got poached by Barney's. And then I went, that was when the press went to the left. And it's like when kind of everybody that was from the Gucci group era came in, like Mark Lee, Daniella Vitale, Charlotte Blackman, and then Dennis Friedman came over from W, and it was this really cool place. But like my boss left after six months to be the SVP at Dior, and it was just me and my boss, and we were all alone for a long time, and I had to learn.
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Speaker 3: All this stuff.
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Speaker 1: Anyway, I'm going to tell this really fast. This is so getting long. Then I found, Michael found out that I was looking at other jobs and was like, because Allure was going to hire me on and then I had gotten offers from other places and he was like no Savvy belongs to me and so pretty much all my jobs were kind of canceled and my salary was doubled and I was created a position to do VIP and events at Michael Kors and I went back and then I ended up going into music and I was head of fashion and branding at First Access in for North America and then worked with Warner and had the whole roster there too so I was kind of doing both Am I supposed to tell how I got my company?
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Speaker 3: No, this is amazing.
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Speaker 2: I also didn't realize that you've really touched every asset of the business.
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Speaker 1: Oh my God, everything. And then, Claire, you're going to get to your, I'm so sorry, this is so long-winded.
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Speaker 3: No, it's no good.
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Speaker 1: I am very close to finishing. So then I left, and I kind of loved being in music, but fashion had become so much from the old world of fashion where.
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Speaker 3: Like blackberries were.
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Speaker 2: Pre-Instagram, yeah.
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Speaker 1: Babe, I had blackberries thrown at my face. I loved the structure. I loved the fear. I know that sounds crazy, but like love Stockholm Syndrome.
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Speaker 3: That was the best time. Love it.
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Speaker 1: And so I was so uninspired by the industry that I was really inspired by music. I poorly play the banjo. And I'm from where Delta Blues originated. And so anyway, I had a company with Chloe Kaye, who's now a big DJ, and Alex Cronin, who's now a big stylist. And we had this company where we were all doing branding and creative branding for emerging rappers. And in music, what we were really bad at, we were really good at our jobs. We were really bad at making money. We just didn't know how to do that. So all of a sudden, all of us started going off on our own careers. I shattered my leg on my 30th birthday in Aspen. And I don't remember starting a company because I was on painkillers for like four or five months. But I did. And at that point, I was like doing bookings for online. So all the celebrity bookings for online for W Magazine. I was doing all these crazy odd jobs. And I started a company with my best friends by launching her brand, Markarian. And so I always say she tricked me because I don't remember it. But she might have tricked me. Anyway, that's how I started my company, which is terrifying.
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Speaker 2: I mean, that is the most epic story I've ever heard.
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Speaker 1: Like American pharmaceuticals.
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Speaker 2: Everyone I know who's really good at their job, who's doing something... like so naturally has always fallen into it ass backwards. Like the same thing happened to me.
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Speaker 1: I didn't even know what PR was.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Such a bad assistant.
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Speaker 2: But it's like, you're like, Oh wait, I'm, I'm doing the things that I'm already good at and I have all these amazing relationships.
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Speaker 3: So like, here we are.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: I have arrived. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Okay.
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Speaker 3: Hell yeah.
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Speaker 1: Sorry.
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Speaker 3: I freaking love that.
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Speaker 1: Long story.
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Speaker 2: I mean, no, that was amazing. And I have so many more questions. You, your interaction with Michael Kors is hilarious.
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Speaker 1: I love him. I love Ian Lance.
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Speaker 3: Hilarious.
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Speaker 1: And John Idol.
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Speaker 2: I worked at the Michael Kors store in Georgetown when I was in college.
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Speaker 3: Yes.
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Speaker 1: MK for life.
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Speaker 2: And I also worked at the Rockefeller Center when I was an intern.
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Speaker 1: Leaning into MMK, leaning into that sub lines during the recession and watches and everything, they leaned into recession proof. They killed it.
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Speaker 2: Great company. Amazing company. Is Savvy that nickname? Did that stem from Michael Kors?
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Speaker 1: No.
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Speaker 3: That's fairly new.
00:08:01
Speaker 1: Fun fact. S-A-V-I is not my nickname. It's S-A-V-V-Y or S-A-V or Vanna is my nickname.
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Speaker 3: Who calls you Vanna?
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Speaker 1: A lot of people back then, like Vanna White. And so Savvy, we worked with our friend Essie DiStefano who helped us do the rebrand because it used to be called Savanny and a little PR, but I don't like us to think of ourselves as a PR company.
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Speaker 3: Because you didn't remember starting it, so that was the easiest route to go.
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Speaker 1: I didn't know what to call my fucking company. I was like, I was at Soho House, and I'm like, I guess I'll call it this.
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Speaker 3: I love it.
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Speaker 1: And, again, I don't really remember. And what was I saying? Savvy, she helps with the rebrand.
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Speaker 3: Because, look, if you.
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Speaker 1: Call it S-A-V-V-Y, you're competing against actually a bunch of strip clubs and then a ton of nail salons and strip malls, all related to strip. You go on there and type the word in Savvy, and you're going to see Savvy Nails, Savvy Brows, Savvy Eyes, Savvy Times, so many Savvys. Savvy sexy times.
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Speaker 2: We like savvy with an I.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Savvy legs. You know what that means. You know, sorry.
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Speaker 2: Okay, we like savvy with an I.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Okay, so it did not stem from Michael Kors. It stemmed from some other stuff. But he called you that, which I find very endearing. And clearly thought very.
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Speaker 3: Highly of you.
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Speaker 1: I love him.
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Speaker 2: What do you think made, it's so rare, I feel like, for interns to get that exposure to the fashion designer himself. What do you think made you so indispensable as an intern back in the day?
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Speaker 1: Babe, I was a shitty intern. I was hungover every single day. I am a personality hire. I will tell you that right now. You can still get by being a personality hire.
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Speaker 2: I honestly think I was the same. Like, we were all going out on, like, Wednesdays, like, dollar beers at Turtle Bay and then Brother Jimmy's.
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Speaker 3: Who was it?
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Speaker 2: You have to be somewhat organized to have all the jobs that you've had and to start a company. But maybe that's where Claire comes in. Hire your weaknesses. okay so how long have you guys been working together.
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Speaker 1: Uh eight almost eight years oh my gosh years it actually might be like tomorrow or today.
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Speaker 2: Yeah it is huge yeah eight years damn that's a long time so one year after you actually started yeah technically year one of them And were you guys friends prior or did you?
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Speaker 1: How did you know?
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Speaker 3: No, we're actually recently friends.
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Speaker 1: We actually have had each other for all these years.
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Speaker 3: Last year it started.
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Speaker 1: I can't stand.
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Speaker 3: Her, but I love her now.
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Speaker 1: And so her cousin had, no, actually my first assistant was Victor.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, one of our best friends.
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Speaker 1: Victor, one of her best friends because then he worked for Markerian. Shout out to Victor. We love you. Victor was my assistant. And then he left to work at Markerian and then I hired your cousin on who had just left Vogue. And so I was like, great, I have no money to pay you and experience. You know, this is like, there wasn't no doll's hair. Doll's hair.
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Speaker 2: At the beginning, I feel like that's a hard thing to do. Like I was, my first assistant, I was paying her $ 20 an hour while she was still in school before I finally admitted to myself, like I gotta, I gotta pay for help because like I need help. Yeah.
00:11:06
Speaker 1: And it takes a second because you have to like, my parents, look, I went to SMU, had a beautiful childhood, I'm very blessed, but like, cut off you know like figure it out sis you're in New York.
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Speaker 2: Well you figured it out girl you figured it out and so.
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Speaker 1: That was my first assistant and Claire came on as an intern I'll let you tell the I mean you you should actually you can tell them the inappropriate story of how you first met me yeah.
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Speaker 3: We'll start from before so I was 18 and I was in school nobody.
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Speaker 1: Do the math you look so young Claire is still a VP.
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Speaker 2: I'm not gonna ask you nobody do the math but you have amazing skin you look very young.
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Speaker 3: Um yes I am 12 So I was 18. I was in school my freshman year at American University for politics and international relations. And I hated the school. So I left after a year, and I decided to take a gap year. And I was sitting at home, and my cousin posted on Instagram that she needed a New York Fashion Week intern, and I wasn't doing anything. So I said, why not? And I started, and I am sitting on this couch right now. Never left. Left for a brief period of time, but maybe we'll get there. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: No, but Claire literally met. I mean, it's inappropriate. It's fine.
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Speaker 3: Oh, so I arrived to her. We worked out of her apartment until 2020. So 2018 to 2020.
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Speaker 1: One bedroom, like railroad house in the West village.
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Speaker 3: Like you just moved in. There was nothing there.
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Speaker 1: There was nothing there.
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Speaker 3: You actually worked out of, you bought me books. She sent me to buy books for a new apartment. Um, and I arrived on my first day, knocked on the door. She opened it. She wasn't wearing a lick of clothing, not even a bra, not even underwear.
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Speaker 2: Good morning.
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Speaker 3: Welcome to work. Welcome to work.
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Speaker 1: Me too, y'all. Like, I'm sorry. I just didn't. I'm like, I grew up like I'm a naked person sometimes, you know?
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Speaker 3: So I said, okay. I don't know what I texted my parents. I was like, I'm just going to grab a towel.
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Speaker 1: Let me get changed.
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Speaker 3: Hey, girl.
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Speaker 2: It's so funny because so many of our male candidates will reach out to us. And I've told this story before. They're like, why aren't I a fit for this role?
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Speaker 3: I'm like, well.
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Speaker 2: She kind of wants a female because there's just stuff. It's like when you're someone's assistant, it's so intimate. And, like, you will catch them at home in a moment. Sometimes you're naked. Sometimes you're naked.
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Speaker 3: We don't have time. Yeah. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: It was just different back then. Like, you just take off your clothes in the middle of a sample closet. You just throw on something else and you go out for the night. You know?
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Speaker 3: Hot summers in New York. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: It was.
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Speaker 1: It was a hot summer. Essentially, I recognize Claire's talent were... ahead of everyone else's talents that was working for me. And I said, why am I, why are all these people working for me? I just want you to work for me.
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Speaker 3: So I did.
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Speaker 1: I said it. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: The rest is history. And you guys have been together for eight years. We have, we've been together many places. We've been two together.
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Speaker 2: You're just in a visa together.
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Speaker 3: We're just in a visa together. We, that's all we actually can say.
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Speaker 1: It was. Thank you, Bronson.
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Speaker 3: We made a lot of connections. I think we could say that.
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Speaker 1: We made a lot of impressions.
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Speaker 3: Um, And according to work, that was a networking trip. And it really was. It really was.
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Speaker 2: Honestly, they're all networking trips, to be honest.
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Speaker 1: I gave those business cards out until 3 in the morning, let me tell you.
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Speaker 3: I love that.
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Speaker 2: When I went to Cannes last year, I did the Cannes Film Festival last year, and it was amazing. And I brought these little cards that said, can't stand your assistant, but C-A-N-N-E-S. And I would go to parties, and I would drop them on tables. And I would get clients.
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Speaker 3: That is so smart.
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Speaker 2: And I did the same thing at the Super Bowl. I wrote, does your assistant fumble?
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Speaker 1: Wait, that's a great idea.
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Speaker 3: And I would literally drop them.
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Speaker 1: Claire and I have different visions of Cannes. It's more of a dark period of my life. Yeah. So every time I think of Cannes, it's like where I've really struggled.
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Speaker 3: Well, we actually have made a lot of good friendships out of that. Well, hopefully we'll all go back together and not struggle.
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Speaker 1: Totally, totally.
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Speaker 3: Trauma bonding is what I mean.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, next year we'll do it.
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Speaker 1: I know, I kind of want to do Cannes Lions. Okay, anyway.
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Speaker 3: Very fun festival.
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Speaker 2: But I'm the same as you.
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Speaker 3: Like, I'm scrappy.
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Speaker 2: Like, I treat all these things like networking because we all work in a business of people.
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Speaker 1: There's always a yes instead of a no.
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Speaker 2: There's always someone to meet.
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Speaker 1: There's always something that's a need. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: You can fill the void.
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Speaker 3: 100%.
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Speaker 4: Yeah. 100%.
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Speaker 3: Okay, so wait. You started off as assistant and then how did you grow?
00:15:04
Speaker 1: Oh, intern.
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Speaker 3: Okay, sorry. Intern.
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Speaker 2: And then how did you move your way up the ladder?
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Speaker 3: So I feel like it was kind of like I was the only choice for a while.
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Speaker 2: There was no one else.
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Speaker 3: We really like, I feel like we were both in like really interesting times in our lives individually. And we kind of just, like, needed each other. We really did. And we didn't really need, we didn't know that.
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Speaker 1: That was not our, we did not.
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Speaker 3: There were weeks where, like, we, it was, like, really just us for a while.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: There were periods, like, month periods after people left and moved on where it really was just us.
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Speaker 1: We worked until 6 in the morning every night, 5 in the morning doing lists. Like, I'm talking every night we were working until 4 or 3. And the same, I mean, that's how I worked those hours as an assistant manager or coordinator. I worked until 3 or 4 in the morning. I mean, I wanted to. It.
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Speaker 3: Yeah. I also was commuting from Connecticut at this time. Oh, there were times when you were 18. So I lived at home.
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Speaker 1: Claire would live at the blow up bed at the end.
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Speaker 3: So I would leave.
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Speaker 1: I love this.
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Speaker 3: I would leave her apartment at like midnight, take the train home, come back the next morning, wake her up sometimes.
00:16:01
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:16:02
Speaker 3: And during fashion week, yes, we did live together.
00:16:05
Speaker 1: We did. She would live at the bottom of my bed in an air mattress and it was hilarious.
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Speaker 3: Photographic evidence.
00:16:10
Speaker 1: But like, when I tell you that the apartment was full of 17 interns, like an assistant, like, We had to bring in an extra table. There's one bathroom. Oh, my God, it was horrible.
00:16:21
Speaker 3: And this is really toxic, but we.
00:16:23
Speaker 1: We did 17 events that year.
00:16:25
Speaker 3: Yes, but also there was one season where we, like, forgot to eat and she just ordered probably, like, 20 bags of potato chips for everyone. And she eats so fast. She ate the chips so fast, it actually scratched her throat and she had to go to the doctor. She had to go to the emergency room.
00:16:41
Speaker 2: While you had 17 interns in your apartment.
00:16:45
Speaker 1: What's this, my esophagus?
00:16:46
Speaker 3: It cut her esophagus.
00:16:47
Speaker 1: No, babe, I burned a hole in my esophagus. Oh, wait, what were the chips?
00:16:51
Speaker 3: The voodoo chips.
00:16:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love the voodoo chips. Nola, I don't know, come on, Cajun style. And so, oh my God, y'all. I had like an open thing and get this. After I finally got diagnosed, I had to keep working because we had to go throw a big diesel party, an anti-Valentine's Day party at a strip club in L.A. And you could smoke in the strip club. So then I was like.
00:17:12
Speaker 3: It was like getting in there in that cut. God damn it.
00:17:14
Speaker 1: I'm dying. You know? And anyway, we lived.
00:17:18
Speaker 2: Damn. But like how fun is it to look back on those days and be like before I really took off, I had 17 employees in my apartment and we were just like doing it. Like it's so fun to be able to reflect like that.
00:17:31
Speaker 1: It is true.
00:17:31
Speaker 3: Sort of. I don't even remember these things until we start talking about them.
00:17:35
Speaker 1: I know. I remember it very vividly.
00:17:36
Speaker 3: And we had the rack of black clothing.
00:17:39
Speaker 1: And everybody, I put all my black clothing. Everybody would just bring all their black clothing. And what would happen is people would be wearing different pieces of clothing. Because we'd come in and somebody would come in and grab clothes. And we'd have to go to something else.
00:17:49
Speaker 3: Like six shows a day. Sometimes like come back.
00:17:51
Speaker 1: It was truly like six shows a day. Because we were being hired by all these different agencies. It was to do work, side work. And we were cheap. So we just did everything.
00:18:02
Speaker 3: We would do, like, just photo. Or we would do, like, just VIP.
00:18:05
Speaker 1: Or we would just do seating.
00:18:05
Speaker 3: Or just front of house.
00:18:06
Speaker 1: Or just this. And we'd have to change every time because we'd be sweating our faces off. Or, like, what was the show in the skate park?
00:18:14
Speaker 3: Oh, that was actually my first fashion show ever. It was John Elliott.
00:18:17
Speaker 1: Spring, summer 2018. Pier 59.
00:18:19
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:18:20
Speaker 1: There's a photo of me in the New York Times.
00:18:22
Speaker 3: Oh, it's amazing with Justin Bieber.
00:18:23
Speaker 1: Making the way for Justin and Hailey Bieber. That's when they.
00:18:25
Speaker 3: Announced that they were new. I hope that's framed in your office summer.
00:18:28
Speaker 1: Y'all, I was sweating in places that.
00:18:30
Speaker 3: Well, they made us wear long sleeve black t-shirts.
00:18:32
Speaker 1: I should have never been sweating. I should have never been sweating in those places.
00:18:35
Speaker 2: It's such an interesting point that you bring up the whole communal black clothing rack because a lot of, I feel like kids these days don't know what's up with that. Like if I ask someone to go to an event, my team is very appropriate.
00:18:48
Speaker 3: It means you are the hired help.
00:18:50
Speaker 2: Some other assistants, they cannot get it right.
00:18:53
Speaker 1: No.
00:18:53
Speaker 2: They cannot get right.
00:18:54
Speaker 3: We've had people show up in like Hervé Leger bandage dresses and.
00:18:57
Speaker 1: Heels and it's like, what do you think you're doing? I've had some other founders of PR firms that are like, I'm not going to wear black. Are you okay with that? And I'm like, but maybe I hire on. I'm like, I'm wearing black. That's all I say back. Like if I'm throwing an event, I wear black. Sure.
00:19:12
Speaker 3: Why not?
00:19:13
Speaker 1: Look, we're doing a podcast. PR has changed. We're not totally behind the scenes anymore. Like I give quotes sometimes to different news.
00:19:20
Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
00:19:20
Speaker 1: We're doing things and like, yeah. Obviously, but it's a sign of respect. We are, we should be asked questions. We are holding it all together. We are not part of the guests.
00:19:30
Speaker 4: Totally.
00:19:31
Speaker 1: We are the, like, we are behind the scenes.
00:19:32
Speaker 3: It's also helpful to guess. They know who to ask questions.
00:19:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, you need to know what to do. I'm all black. Ask me.
00:19:37
Speaker 3: If no one can find you. 100%.
00:19:38
Speaker 1: I got a headset.
00:19:38
Speaker 3: Talk to me.
00:19:39
Speaker 1: It's like Red Flats Queen in the black dress.
00:19:41
Speaker 2: The black, when I saw that, I was like, she's perfect.
00:19:43
Speaker 1: No, I've been her.
00:19:44
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:19:45
Speaker 2: We've all been her, but like, she knew, she's like, I'm gonna wear something appropriate and wear comfortable flats so I can run and like dictate the street.
00:19:51
Speaker 3: But honestly like the red is really good too like all in black I don't remember if she's all in black but like the girl in the red.
00:19:55
Speaker 2: Flats yeah if you wanna pop like great but she knew what to do I don't allow red flats but we're here for it yeah you know what I'm saying though it's like the neutral outfit wearing like comfortable shoes instead of being the assistant who shows up in like full glam and stilettos and you're like huh.
00:20:09
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's your biggest.
00:20:10
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:20:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:20:11
Speaker 1: Good luck. You're literally going to break.
00:20:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does.
00:20:13
Speaker 2: It's so important. Speaking of talking about giving quotes to people, I read an article about you recently on.
00:20:21
Speaker 3: Vogue.
00:20:23
Speaker 2: I read an article about you recently in Vogue about how you've been a bridesmaid 40 times.
00:20:28
Speaker 3: 40 times, baby.
00:20:29
Speaker 2: That is insane.
00:20:31
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:20:31
Speaker 2: But I also thought to myself while I was reading it, I was like, it's because she's so amazing at cultivating relationships, like personally, professionally, like it all ties in.
00:20:40
Speaker 1: I love friends and I love people. I'm an extroverted extrovert. When I walk into a room, that's when I get my serotonin and oxytocin and everything. You know, some people have to recharge at home. I don't ride the subway as much as I used to. But there are times where I have to go stand in really crowded places if I'm down or anything, and it kind of boosts me.
00:21:02
Speaker 3: It's a weird thing.
00:21:03
Speaker 1: But I love people. It's like my one superpower, right? One thing is that I'm super ADHD, so keeping up with some people is hard. Because I think we still have the relationship, but it's hard for me to be able to call them all the time and do things like that. But if you're my friend, and you know who I am, you know I still love you, and I'd do freaking anything for you at any point. And so that... Those are relationships that when they get me, they know that I'll always be there for them. And it's also part of it because I'm Southern, right? Like, I'm from Mississippi. I went to, you know, all-girls Christian camp in North Carolina, Camp Greystone. I then went to boarding school in Asheville, North Carolina, like hippie boarding school. I then went to SMU. Like, I am so Southern. So that's a lot of friend groups that are Southern, plus New York, plus, like, I've spent so much time in London and Europe.
00:21:54
Speaker 3: Like, oh, my gosh.
00:21:55
Speaker 1: L.A.? And L.A., I've done the L.A. weddings. I only like the Antanas. I actually hate L.A., FYI.
00:22:02
Speaker 2: Again, I think I'm going to die on the hill of I'm the only person who still likes L.A.
00:22:06
Speaker 3: But we'll see. I like L.A.
00:22:08
Speaker 1: For like 10 to 12 days at a time.
00:22:10
Speaker 3: In the winter, it's very nice. It is really nice. I get to go by myself.
00:22:14
Speaker 1: I just think that, look, if I always had to choose between moving anywhere in America and L.A., I'd choose the South. Come on, the weather's great.
00:22:25
Speaker 2: The food's better.
00:22:27
Speaker 1: We, like.
00:22:27
Speaker 2: Would you ever move back home?
00:22:30
Speaker 1: No, and I say that, look, I always want to have something in the Delta, right? Like, you know, I always want to hunt down there or do something of that nature and we have great parties, but I don't ever really want to quit working and you really can only do our job in New York.
00:22:44
Speaker 2: London, LA.
00:22:47
Speaker 1: Let's not say LA. New York, London, Paris, and Milan. And so... And I love those cities. I need a city. I like the anonymity of a city. I like that I can, you know, as social as I am, maybe I'm not social one night. You know? It's like, I love the city. Nobody knows each other's business.
00:23:06
Speaker 3: Yeah. I hear you.
00:23:07
Speaker 2: I'll probably move back to New York.
00:23:08
Speaker 1: We'll see. Yeah.
00:23:10
Speaker 2: I don't know.
00:23:10
Speaker 1: Who knows?
00:23:11
Speaker 2: Who knows? I literally changed my mind on the subject. Like, I play a game with myself on the daily.
00:23:16
Speaker 1: New York's back, baby.
00:23:17
Speaker 2: I know.
00:23:18
Speaker 3: It does feel really good.
00:23:19
Speaker 1: Let's go Knicks.
00:23:20
Speaker 3: Um.
00:23:21
Speaker 2: Okay, so when you first started your company, you were primarily doing just fashion?
00:23:25
Speaker 1: No, we started our company as an events and VIP company.
00:23:27
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:23:28
Speaker 3: Not even PR, not traditional PR at all.
00:23:30
Speaker 1: Not traditional PR. Traditional PR came when we, look, we did a little bit of it for our clients to sign on, but, like, it wasn't our focus. I wouldn't even say it still really is. But during COVID, there was no event. I mean, we were coming up with the craziest ideas ever. We did so much traditional press. We were actually giving out free PR advice.
00:23:49
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:23:50
Speaker 1: 30 to 45 to an hour sessions.
00:23:52
Speaker 3: Wow.
00:23:52
Speaker 1: For free. Schedule with us and we would tell you how to. We would try to.
00:23:57
Speaker 3: That's so genius. Between people on a way. Five, six a day.
00:23:59
Speaker 1: One after another. And it was just like, for us, my thought process on it. And like so many people posted about it and everything. Like the entire industry was like, this is amazing what Saab's doing. You know, we did it. But it also, slightly selfish because it made our brains continue to think. And be creative.
00:24:15
Speaker 3: We had nothing else to do.
00:24:16
Speaker 1: There wasn't. And, like, we were fighting for our clients to, like, be in any credits of, like, what swimsuit to wear when you have a mask on. But, like, you know.
00:24:24
Speaker 3: Right.
00:24:25
Speaker 1: And so I was in Mississippi. I sent everybody home. And I was back in Mississippi.
00:24:30
Speaker 3: You were in Rhode Island. Rhode Island, yeah.
00:24:32
Speaker 1: And so we started doing this advice. But it really kept our brains thinking. And we would be. talking to all these different businesses, it reminded me of my time at Barney's because it was so many different categories and different ways of doing things and different levels of brands that it was really great for us. And we met a lot of amazing people and did a lot of interesting things from it.
00:24:52
Speaker 2: So cool. So what would you say is the core focus of your business now?
00:24:57
Speaker 1: Look, I think the idea of traditional PR or what you think of as a PR agency doesn't exist anymore. I mean, clearly it does. I just don't think it moves the needle. And so we like to put our focus on I mean, everybody uses this term, community building. I feel like we used it before everybody else did. But there are two ROIs you should be doing, and this is what our company does. You either are making money to every event, every VIP, everything we do has some type of kickback, or you're building a new community. The problem with traditional press, I love all of my editors. I love y'all forever. There are paywalls in front of everyone. So you're looking at a very small amount of people that are going to remember their damn password and log in every time.
00:25:39
Speaker 3: And it's mostly us who are paying for it because we have to.
00:25:42
Speaker 1: How am I going to push a brand out like that? How am I going to make money for something or this consumer good? You have to think about other ways to involve people. Is it events, activations, VIP? And what is VIP? Just celebrity? No. Is it just an influencer?
00:25:55
Speaker 2: No.
00:25:56
Speaker 1: It could be the curator of the Guggenheim. It could be the new top doctor at MD Anderson. There's so many different ways to think about this. And then partnerships and collaborations are a no-brainer. that's gaining a community that another thing you're, you're feeding off each other. But you know, we go in and redo like strategy. I mean, you can talk about this.
00:26:15
Speaker 3: No, it's completely true. I think one of the things that we are best at is finding new communities, but also finding interesting partners for our clients.
00:26:24
Speaker 2: So, and how do you do that? Like, cause that in itself is a matchmaking.
00:26:27
Speaker 1: It's a lot of, a lot of research.
00:26:29
Speaker 3: A lot of research, a lot of conversation with our clients too about their goals, but also like what their other interests are. So, One of our clients is Tanner Fletcher. They're a very small brand, gender neutral. They're on the CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund. We started working with them probably two years ago. We met them in, I think so, we met them in Paris. Cornered them. At a cocktail party, networking. Cornered them. Thank you, Ian Malone, for introducing us. He would kill me if I didn't say that. He would come to our office with a gun. And we met them. We took them out to dinner. That's not the story, but we love them. They are two gay men who love antiquing, and they love doing their home, but they make clothes that look like interior design and look like architecture. So for their first big show that we did last, oh my God, it will almost be a year, last September, we did this partnership with Etsy, and Etsy had never done a fashion collaboration before in that area.
00:27:28
Speaker 1: We actually love Etsy. They do a lot.
00:27:30
Speaker 3: We do.
00:27:31
Speaker 1: Shout out to the Etsy team. Great marketing team over there.
00:27:33
Speaker 3: Yes, they are. I probably have.
00:27:36
Speaker 4: The amount of things that I buy on Etsy is.
00:27:39
Speaker 3: You can get clothes. I mean, people think of it as, like, crafts. Oh, my God.
00:27:42
Speaker 1: I love Etsy.
00:27:43
Speaker 2: Handbags, like.
00:27:44
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
00:27:45
Speaker 1: We have Savvy Stanley's. We do.
00:27:47
Speaker 3: That's love. Yeah. But they, like everyone else, get a lot of things there, and they decorate their home with Etsy, and so we partnered with them, and we did this... That show. Oh, my God. I think everyone was crying. It was amazing. It was, like, their first big show ever. They are two... 27, 28-year-olds, no one has money. These shows cost like $ 350, 000.
00:28:11
Speaker 1: $ 500, 000.
00:28:12
Speaker 3: That's impossible. And it's impossible to get that many eyes on a brand that's small outside of New York City. We all know what the Vogue Fashion Fund is. We all know what the CFDA is because we work in that business. But someone in Minnesota where they're from doesn't know what that is unless they're related to them. And there's like 100 people that are related to them. Don't worry. They all work the show. They all come to the show.
00:28:31
Speaker 1: Love them.
00:28:32
Speaker 3: They all work. They all do the chairs. It's really cute. But we partnered with them and we did this show where basically it was, I mean, we had like 300 people all set up. There was a moving truck. And when the show started, the door opened and the models started walking out and they were all carrying either vintage items for Etsy or we did a collaboration with them. So collaboration home items. And they walked around the runway and they were setting up a room in the middle. So it was like they were decorating their house. for when their family was coming over so there was a lamp there were cool rugs curtains and they were all wearing the clothes and like to look around and see people just like open their mouths and be like what's going on so confused like we had I had never seen that we had you know Virginia Smith we had Nicole Phelps we had all of the biggest people in fashion that are like still of that Old age fashion. You're not old, but you know what I mean? They're not old, to be clear. Icon.
00:29:27
Speaker 2: Pre-Instagram era of fashion.
00:29:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, people that, like, honestly are my gender, younger than me, they don't know these people anymore, which is crazy. But, like, I have never. done a show top to bottom where all of those people have been sat in the same room together, and it was crazy. It's true, because we work with.
00:29:49
Speaker 1: So many small brands. Yeah. Obviously. I had Anna there every year. I worked with her security. Everybody's there. It was a different time. But for a brand like this, that was a huge deal. And the thing is, it's like, Everybody wants to be a brand like that, right? But there's this authenticity that they have that doesn't exist in every brand. And fashion has become so saturated.
00:30:08
Speaker 3: That's why our hospitality business has.
00:30:10
Speaker 1: Been fun because fashion PR is very manual. Everything takes time. You're handling physical clothes. Everything is slow. You're working on emails where people don't even respond to emails anymore. And then this hospitality business kind of gives us a little different life too because we get to mix it with fashion. And that's why all these clients are coming to us now. But fashion is, the industry has become very saturated. And there's, I think everybody thinks they can just walk in one day and say, I'm going to start a fashion line. Right.
00:30:40
Speaker 3: You have no training.
00:30:41
Speaker 1: You haven't even taken a class.
00:30:43
Speaker 3: There's no shame in taking a class. We suggest that all the time.
00:30:45
Speaker 1: All the time. I'm always like, do not talk to me. You go right on down to FIT right now and take a pattern making to classes right now. And then you take an embroidery class right now. You have no idea what you're talking about. So, you know, we have built some brands when I tell you from the ground up, from the ground up where I'm literally like, okay, here's a warehouse.
00:31:03
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:31:03
Speaker 1: Use this factory.
00:31:05
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:31:05
Speaker 1: Here's your pattern maker. No, do not use that in border in India. Use this in border.
00:31:10
Speaker 3: Cause we get all the feedback on the other side. So like if we're dressing a celebrity and we're sitting with a stylist, they're like, what's going on? I picked this up and it's all falling off and we know where it's coming from too. And we work with many different brands. And so we can kind of see the difference. through all of it and make suggestions that way. I think that's also like.
00:31:28
Speaker 1: It's even the simplicity of, like, corsets or the way the seams are finished. You know, all that kind of stuff is so... It's an art form.
00:31:38
Speaker 3: It really is.
00:31:40
Speaker 1: That's why a lot of the majors work so well. Like, you look at Laura Piana or Brunello Cucinelli and things like that. Like, it's the quality. And the problem with a lot of this... It's just noise.
00:31:51
Speaker 3: Yeah. And it's all the same, too.
00:31:52
Speaker 1: Like... Everybody wants to create the same.
00:31:54
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:31:54
Speaker 1: There's no... Sorry, we're sounding real.
00:31:57
Speaker 3: But to go back to partnerships with Etsy, and honestly, Etsy I'm speaking to does this count as one of our deliverables in the contract that I'm speaking about the collaboration. We'll get back to that.
00:32:09
Speaker 1: But they- That deal memo and contract.
00:32:14
Speaker 3: It wasn't a partnership anyone had seen before. So like, okay, you go to a show and- I mean, it's genius. That's so cool. Lipstick. And obviously, someone's doing hair and makeup, someone's doing whatever. beauty shoes. That's great. And we love all of our partners who do that because that completes our show and it brings the artistic vision to life. But like I had people, people still come up to us. We've actually done two partnerships with them with Tanner Fletcher and we're in the middle of another one with another brand. But it is like, you just need to do something that people are going to talk about because there's nothing left to say about fashion week. There's nothing left to say about clothes. There's nothing left to say. really, in general, about anything that people have been doing in fashion for the last five years. I feel like the shows are now... Do something weird. Do something different.
00:32:59
Speaker 2: I feel like the shows are now, it's like, which influencer is sitting in the front and, like, taking a photo and, like, getting the Instagram shot. And there's rarely a show where you can walk away and actually have people look up and focus on what's happening.
00:33:10
Speaker 3: And, like, either the clothes or the pieces. So.
00:33:14
Speaker 2: That's super rare and good for you ladies. I mean, how did you come up with that?
00:33:19
Speaker 1: People come to us because we come up with the craziest and kitschiest ideas. Like we've thrown a, for Tom Bolo, this is one of my favorite parties I've ever thrown, is I did a foot fetish party because they had done a collaboration with Tom Wesselman. He was a pop artist that had the lips of the cigarette hanging out. He also did a foot series. We didn't tell the estate about it.
00:33:39
Speaker 3: And I grew up a fetish party.
00:33:41
Speaker 1: In the East Village bathhouse. got mafia'd on the way in. Like literally walked in and they go, you can load in. And I go, why are there still naked people everywhere? And I was like, we did. And so I was like, okay. I went and grabbed like $ 2, 000 or $ 3, 000 in cash. And I go, may I load in now? They were like, load in. So I had people literally sucking on toes for charity. And I had people like swimming in every pool. And we had a DJ downstairs. I was serving. At one point, we didn't have enough bartenders. Oh, my God.
00:34:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, we were bartending.
00:34:11
Speaker 1: So I had to bartend. And the only thing I'm good at is I'm not good at making drinks. So I was like, you can order shots or a beer from me. What do you want?
00:34:18
Speaker 3: Tequila soda, vodka soda. Anything complicated, tequila soda.
00:34:22
Speaker 1: No lies.
00:34:23
Speaker 3: We can't cut anything.
00:34:23
Speaker 1: We opened it up till 4 a.m. because I was like, just keep all the $ 100, 000 worth of alcohol.
00:34:26
Speaker 3: People were wearing communal bathing suits. They had communal bathing suits there. And people were like, well, everyone's going in. So like, yeah.
00:34:32
Speaker 1: Everybody was naked. I was like, we didn't think anybody was going to be naked. I'm in like jeans.
00:34:37
Speaker 3: There were things happening in the saunas.
00:34:38
Speaker 1: And I was like.
00:34:39
Speaker 3: BFA was trying to go in and I was like, no, no, no. I don't know if it was Matt. I was like, no, no.
00:34:44
Speaker 1: But it was wild. And then another time we did a Sopranos party and I had a stripper pole and strowled.
00:34:49
Speaker 3: Stripper almost fell because it was like a standalone stripper pole. What was it called?
00:34:51
Speaker 1: The Bang Bang Club? What's it called in the Sopranos? The Bing Bang Club? Oh, it's.
00:34:55
Speaker 3: Bada Bing.
00:34:56
Speaker 1: Bada Bing.
00:34:56
Speaker 3: It is Bada Bing. It's Bada Bing.
00:34:58
Speaker 1: And so we made this and. it actually was where the Sopranos were filmed, into the Bada Bean Club, and I had strippers, installed a stripper pole in the middle, and had strippers doing it, and the inside had somebody rolling Cuban cigars. We were serving gabagool. It was amazing.
00:35:13
Speaker 3: We all were leopard, and we had really long red nails.
00:35:15
Speaker 1: Every single one of us had long nails and red leather.
00:35:17
Speaker 3: They were falling off.
00:35:19
Speaker 2: So when you guys float these insane but amazing ideas, does someone have to be.
00:35:24
Speaker 3: Like, There are a lot of people that say no.
00:35:26
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:35:27
Speaker 3: Like, how do you do it?
00:35:28
Speaker 1: We did a crush party for the Rune.
00:35:29
Speaker 3: You kind of have to explain it like this.
00:35:30
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, my God.
00:35:31
Speaker 3: With this, like, energy.
00:35:32
Speaker 1: I don't know if y'all remember Hector's. Hector's was that diner that used to be a meatpacking next to the Standard. It sadly closed after 80. Yes.
00:35:40
Speaker 3: We were the last event there. We were, like, the last people there. Yes, I remember Hector's. I know.
00:35:43
Speaker 1: It closed, like, the next week.
00:35:44
Speaker 3: And we took it over.
00:35:45
Speaker 1: We did a crush party where you had to be taken. You had to bring somebody you liked or somebody you wanted to get rid of.
00:35:51
Speaker 3: Basically, we have a crush list in our office because we're all girls.
00:35:54
Speaker 2: I keep a singles list in my phone.
00:35:56
Speaker 1: We have a crush list. But we have crushes. Some of these people aren't even straight.
00:35:59
Speaker 3: I mean, some of them are celebrities. Some of them are people in real life. Some of them are boyfriends of people who work with us. But when we have a party where we can invite them to, we're like, okay, where's the crush list? We have a crush list.
00:36:10
Speaker 1: We update it.
00:36:11
Speaker 3: We need to update the crush list. We have a couple more, actually.
00:36:14
Speaker 1: We need to get another whiteboard and put our crush list up.
00:36:17
Speaker 3: That was my hate list, but you guys took it down.
00:36:19
Speaker 1: We had a hate list, too. We had a.
00:36:20
Speaker 3: It's like the burn book. Put it in the book. It's a burn book.
00:36:22
Speaker 1: We had a burn book, too.
00:36:24
Speaker 3: Someone took it down when I was away. This one party... Scary burn book.
00:36:26
Speaker 1: We hired an Elvis impersonator to marry everyone. I had somebody running around. I married, like, five gay men.
00:36:33
Speaker 3: And I sent a video to her mom, and she didn't know what to say.
00:36:35
Speaker 1: She didn't know what to say. And then we had.
00:36:37
Speaker 3: I felt bad.
00:36:37
Speaker 1: I had one of my friends in a diaper, and he's running around with.
00:36:41
Speaker 3: Oh, my God, Lucas.
00:36:43
Speaker 1: With.
00:36:43
Speaker 3: Oh, we had a water gun with tequila in it.
00:36:45
Speaker 1: A cupid rings on, and he was shooting arrows at everybody inside of this space. We had condoms everywhere. We were smoking cigs outside. We had my other friend, Bunny, had on a cupid thing, and she had water guns full of tequila that she was squirting in people's mouths.
00:36:58
Speaker 3: I think it was Lalo. Thanks, Lalo. It was Lalo.
00:36:59
Speaker 1: Good Lalo, our client. It was hilarious. I mean, like.
00:37:05
Speaker 2: thank God for you guys because I feel like there's so many.
00:37:08
Speaker 1: Not everybody loves those events.
00:37:09
Speaker 3: No, like, I would love those events. We also just, like, do what we would want to do, like, on a Saturday night.
00:37:15
Speaker 1: We have another event coming up at our new client Bar Leone, and I want to come up with some ideas like that. I just need to, like, percolate more.
00:37:23
Speaker 3: I want you to throw me a party.
00:37:25
Speaker 1: But you have to give us, like, a theme and then let us go wild with it.
00:37:28
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:37:29
Speaker 1: Like we've done for Rachel Ansel.
00:37:30
Speaker 3: And I have to like contradict a lot of what you stand for. There's just so.
00:37:33
Speaker 2: Many sterile events.
00:37:33
Speaker 1: It's a high low.
00:37:35
Speaker 3: It's a high low.
00:37:35
Speaker 1: We took them to the box.
00:37:36
Speaker 3: That's what I was just going to say, yeah.
00:37:38
Speaker 1: And I, it was a collab with Dunkin' Donuts and we had like Dunkin' Donuts on boobs and like pink everywhere and like people dancing and things. For less dancers, yeah. I think I saw a penis. I don't know. And it might have had a donut on it, but it was great.
00:37:52
Speaker 3: Like, 87% of those people had never been to the box before, and they were all in pink. They were all in sparkles. It was great. They were so, like, wary walking in. That's crazy.
00:37:59
Speaker 2: I haven't been to the box in a couple years. I don't know that I need to go back in.
00:38:02
Speaker 1: You don't need to go.
00:38:04
Speaker 2: It's so fun when you're with a crew who wants to go.
00:38:06
Speaker 3: And you end up there. You can't decide to go there.
00:38:09
Speaker 1: Margaritaville is a funny one, too. Oh, yeah.
00:38:12
Speaker 3: Rachel Antonoff. We love Rachel, our client. We did a party at Margaritaville last May.
00:38:17
Speaker 1: Like, in Times Square with a pool.
00:38:19
Speaker 3: People, again, were in the pool. No. But she always does these hilarious t-shirts that we have to wear at all the events, and the one at that event was I Got Crabs at the Rachel Antonoff Margaritaville event.
00:38:29
Speaker 1: Isn't that funny?
00:38:30
Speaker 3: And three weeks ago, I was wearing it to drop my laundry off, and a family friend of my parents did see me on the street and stopped to talk to me, and they definitely clocked the shirt, so I had to rush away. But then we.
00:38:40
Speaker 1: Did, like, Reformation at the New York City Ballet.
00:38:43
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:38:43
Speaker 3: Which is, like, insane. You need a span. You guys clearly have span.
00:38:48
Speaker 1: But those are, like... That's where we have the most fun. And then VIP we're really good at. I mean, I was doing it, Mike, of course, so long as Claire's now running that department. And it's partnerships and collabs are fun. The thing is, we're not saving the world here. Let's make it fun. It doesn't need to be $ 8 million. Don't take it too seriously. Oh, my God.
00:39:12
Speaker 3: Don't hire us if you want a serious party. Be cool. There's just so many boring things.
00:39:19
Speaker 2: Dinners that you can go to or like brand activations with the same people and you're sitting there and you don't really know anyone and no one's talking to each other so it's like they don't know how to shake your hand yeah and then going to one of these parties it's just like it's night.
00:39:30
Speaker 1: And day I mean there's a thing that I always do at every dinner that we do I bring out right after abs tequila shots and make everyone but there are certain brands that that does not fly for and then.
00:39:41
Speaker 3: I'll give the yay or nay before usually it's.
00:39:43
Speaker 1: A yay or nay where I'm like let's read the room and that always gets people going yeah But it's just also, like, hilarious to.
00:39:51
Speaker 3: It's fun to see people, like, come out of their shells, too.
00:39:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I feel like at all these events that we've all been to a million times, people really don't talk to each other. And it's so, they can be really awkward and, like, not fun.
00:40:01
Speaker 3: Like, I'll play this game.
00:40:03
Speaker 2: And they spend an arm and a leg on them.
00:40:04
Speaker 3: They spend so much money on it.
00:40:06
Speaker 1: Oh, sorry, go ahead.
00:40:07
Speaker 3: No, I was just saying, like, the first event of every fashion week, it's usually, like, the CFDA event or something. I will play this game where it's like, how long can I go without asking about the weather? How busy are you this week? Everyone, how busy are you? How's your summer? How do you feel? What are you doing? I'm like, Oh my God, it's like the first event.
00:40:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:40:22
Speaker 1: But I don't have anything.
00:40:23
Speaker 3: Let's do dinner soon.
00:40:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, we actually, one event that I recently attended that I thought was actually really done well. And it felt like an old school fashion party was the, um, the one that we didn't do this event, but our clients were involved. The Tanner Fletcher boys did a J crew collab and it was when they did that whole, It was last year. It was like Kalina Strada. All these different designers came in with J.Crew. And they threw it in an old art gallery. And it just felt, it was such an interesting group of people. It wasn't the same people. It was a well-done party that when I walked in, I was like, this is excellent.
00:40:55
Speaker 3: It was nice because it was, so this is.
00:40:57
Speaker 1: And we have no claim to it. We didn't do any of it.
00:40:59
Speaker 3: No, we didn't. I was very impressed. It was Carlotto.
00:41:02
Speaker 1: Carlotto, did I?
00:41:03
Speaker 3: Yeah. But that's a collaboration, like again, Tanner Fletcher. We got to keep that. We got to talk about the other clients after this.
00:41:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. Dog shows.
00:41:10
Speaker 3: We, I mean, J.Crew, I love. I worked on, I invited Olympia and the amazing J.Crew girls to every single Tanner Fletcher event. They didn't come to any of them. You guys are busy, like, no worries. For probably a year, and then finally we got an email. Someone new joining their marketing team, and they reached out for this collaboration. And it was, they were doing a roll neck remix, the classic roll neck sweater. I have a couple. They're the best. And they chose five New York City-based designers. Tanner Fletcher was one of them to reimagine the sweater. And so it was so cool. We got to go to their office and see how they do everything, work with Olympia, and do a whole photo shoot that we would have never been able to do prior. But going into a J.Crew store and seeing something that you worked on for so long that you grew up wearing, like I am a Crew Cuts J.Crew girl through and through. We haven't even talked about it. I'm sorry, Claire. I keep interrupting you. I just ignore it. She always does this. It's a disease. It's okay.
00:42:07
Speaker 1: Our biggest accomplishment is actually dressing the First Lady.
00:42:09
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. We got to get to that. We went to 2021. Like, we dressed the First Lady for the inauguration.
00:42:18
Speaker 2: That is so special.
00:42:19
Speaker 1: I mean, that's crazy. And I worked so hard to make that happen.
00:42:22
Speaker 3: And it's your best friend's brand? Yeah.
00:42:24
Speaker 1: I worked so hard to make that happen. When I was at Michael Kors, I had worked a lot with Michelle Obama, and we had done a lot of Hillary's campaign as well. Michael is very big in the Democratic Party, as is Anna Wintour. And so, whatever you believe in. And so, I knew how to do these fittings, and I knew how it worked, and I knew how they had to pay, and I knew how they had to do everything, and I knew the way it was happening, because we had made Obama so much stuff, and we had made Hillary so much stuff, very secretly, but that was part of the campaigns and everything. So, I kind of knew what to do. And I was like, okay, before... any of these first ladies get into the primaries, I'm going to go ahead and start reaching out to their teams.
00:43:07
Speaker 3: Smart.
00:43:07
Speaker 1: And I was like, you want a sock? I'll make you a sock.
00:43:10
Speaker 3: You want pants? I can make you pants.
00:43:11
Speaker 1: COVID, by the way. You want a jacket? I'll make you any jacket you want. You want anything? I will, I will knit you a beanie. And so like, that's how far I took it since it's all them. And I followed up and I fall. I mean, I am, I have, when you're a publicist, there's like also big personality publicists. You just don't really ever get embarrassed and you have no shame because And you don't actually recognize when you're being annoying, so you just keep going. And eventually they give in.
00:43:34
Speaker 3: You have to dissociate. Well, that's why they're good at their jobs.
00:43:37
Speaker 1: My motto in life is there's always a yes inside of a no.
00:43:40
Speaker 3: Remember that, kids?
00:43:42
Speaker 1: There's always a yes inside of a no.
00:43:43
Speaker 2: There's no such thing as no. There's no such thing as no.
00:43:46
Speaker 1: And so I– sorry. It was around– I don't even remember the month. Maybe it was around, like, October.
00:43:54
Speaker 3: It was the fall.
00:43:56
Speaker 1: And– This is when the Bidens have gotten to a bigger level where it was between them and I don't remember who else. And I got a call back and it was Bailey Moon. And I had known Bailey because he addressed some celebrities that we had done. And he used to be.
00:44:10
Speaker 3: At Gabriella Hearst.
00:44:12
Speaker 1: And I remember him from that. And he reached back and was like, Sav, let me call you. So he called me and goes, you're one of the short list of designers that are going to do the inauguration. And what sucks is that it was COVID. So At any other inauguration, I would have gotten to be there. The designer would have gotten to be there. We would be doing the fittings in the White House. Well, not in the White House, but wherever it is.
00:44:36
Speaker 3: Right, in person, yeah.
00:44:37
Speaker 1: And in this time, it's like we're driving to Delaware, and we have to wait for security. They have to tap us down. They have to test us.
00:44:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was in a rental car driving down there.
00:44:44
Speaker 1: And we have to pass it on. So it was very different. But it still was an incredible moment. I mean, I remember I set up a war room that day in the office. Yeah. Every other second, my phone was ringing with the New York Times, with Today Show, with MSNBC, CNN, everything. And I'm just like, hi, hi, hi, hi.
00:45:07
Speaker 3: Sending someone down to the showroom because Allie was in the Hamptons.
00:45:10
Speaker 1: It was a cool experience.
00:45:10
Speaker 3: Wasn't there. We were on the phone with her all day.
00:45:13
Speaker 2: That is like a monumental career moment for you.
00:45:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was the biggest moment of my career. I will say that.
00:45:19
Speaker 3: And then what did we do that night?
00:45:20
Speaker 1: We blacked out.
00:45:21
Speaker 3: How'd you celebrate? We went to Corner Bistro because that's our favorite place.
00:45:25
Speaker 1: I was carried. Actually, and Corner Bistro has now been sold. I think it's now owned by the daughter or whatever, so it's all different bartenders. But it's next door to my apartment, and we used to really work there. I mean, they knew us by name. They knew our orders. They knew where I lived.
00:45:40
Speaker 3: They checked in on me.
00:45:40
Speaker 1: They carried one of us out of there, our limp bodies. We ended up at some inauguration parties.
00:45:46
Speaker 3: No, I don't even think that.
00:45:47
Speaker 1: We took 13 shots together. So that's another thing about our company. No, we shouldn't talk about our wild nights at our bonding times.
00:45:53
Speaker 3: Another thing is that I am Savannah Engel's publicist. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Well, also, we wanted to go out so badly. We wanted to go out so badly. We were so drunk. We found some random house party. We walked in. We were ready to.
00:46:05
Speaker 1: I don't even remember who invited us.
00:46:07
Speaker 3: No idea where we were. We were so ready for people to receive us and be like, we can't believe that we can speak to you in person. Like, we're so proud of you. Like, you two are like, wow, what a duo. No one cared at all. I think we sat... I remember there was like a window. People were outside on a roof. And then you and I looked at each other and we were like.
00:46:27
Speaker 2: But you guys were celebrating for yourselves and no one else.
00:46:31
Speaker 3: That's it. Hilarious. Sounds really fun.
00:46:34
Speaker 1: No, it was a team.
00:46:35
Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
00:46:36
Speaker 1: I know I should talk about us having wild nights. But we do what we built at Savvy as a real family. And when I tell you we're all like sisters, we really are. And I know that sounds so douchey. Everybody says that. But can we please do Sammy's Romanian this year?
00:46:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was up to you.
00:46:51
Speaker 1: We usually rent out Cafe Select.
00:46:53
Speaker 3: The back room is really fun.
00:46:53
Speaker 1: I'm the one that falls off the table into the wine glasses.
00:46:56
Speaker 3: You pulled me down last time.
00:46:57
Speaker 1: I did pull her down.
00:46:58
Speaker 3: There's a photo of actually us mid-air.
00:46:59
Speaker 1: And all of our employees are like.
00:47:02
Speaker 3: Fell on a wine bottle.
00:47:02
Speaker 1: But we have fun. And the last time we did it, we ended up, we did a Knicks game and we ended up at karaoke until 6 a.m. We're going to go to the Rangers game this year because we can't.
00:47:10
Speaker 3: Afford Knicks tickets. I know.
00:47:11
Speaker 1: And we're going to do something like.
00:47:12
Speaker 3: Congrats, guys, but we're priced out. We're priced out.
00:47:14
Speaker 1: We should do Sammy's in the fall. But the whole team, it's just like fun.
00:47:17
Speaker 3: It sounds so fun.
00:47:19
Speaker 1: We have a lot of fun together, but we also.
00:47:21
Speaker 3: We hang out all the time, but like everyone else, we hang out all the time.
00:47:24
Speaker 1: I instill, there's one thing that I will say about my team, work ethic that is so impressive in a generation that generally is generalized. A lot of times, wow, there was a lot of that word for not working. We have instilled a community. Right now it's all girls, but we are open to many boy applicants come along.
00:47:45
Speaker 3: That's right.
00:47:47
Speaker 1: And they care so much about the work. And that's something that I had in my old days because it was so hard to get a job in fashion. We're a little girl from Mississippi working at a big company like that, doing fashion weeks in the middle of Bryant Park.
00:48:06
Speaker 2: Dream, yeah.
00:48:07
Speaker 1: I worked so hard and I cared so much that... To see that in our company when I hear about, when I even watch other companies, it's just different. It hits different. And the workload at our company is a lot. And it pushes people to different boundaries. And it's because I also believe that we should go above and beyond for our clients. And it's the community we've built within our company.
00:48:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it's also because we do work primarily with up-and-coming designers, emerging designers. And so you become so close with them.
00:48:41
Speaker 1: And restaurants, everyone.
00:48:42
Speaker 3: Yes, we're promoting the newly expanded hospitality division.
00:48:45
Speaker 1: Honestly, we should take Eagle to our fashion business.
00:48:47
Speaker 3: It's crazy. She'll get it in there, like, a couple more times. Or we could do, like, a little, like, disclaimer at the end.
00:48:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:48:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, we love you guys. But you become so close with them. So, like, Allie was Savannah's best friend. Now she's one of my closest friends. We're all going to dinner tonight. Tanner and Fletcher are two of my closest friends. Tanner and I have the same birthday, and we've worn it at the same time.
00:49:07
Speaker 1: No way.
00:49:07
Speaker 3: Which is difficult, because we fight all the time in public, but we don't mean it. But all of our clients, like, you are there from the beginning, so it feels like your brand, too. And, like, we don't have budgets. Like, Chanel stands out. laurent like even like an ula johnson or like a mid-tier brand that's sold in most retailers we don't have budget to pay someone to wear things i don't think most people understand nine out of ten people on a red carpet are paid if they're not paid their stylist is paid or they're paying for glam the stylist should be paid Oh, yeah, totally. 100%. But, like, an extra styling fee on top of that. We don't do that because we can't. So we work 100 times harder to get one thing on a carpet. And when it doesn't happen, like, when I tell you that we are one of two choices... thousands of times. It's, like, heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking. Like, I've definitely let it get to me. It's, like, an emotional, like... It's emotional.
00:50:04
Speaker 1: It makes you question, like, your value in life.
00:50:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:50:07
Speaker 1: Not because of that, but, like, honestly, what is my purpose here?
00:50:09
Speaker 3: And then your client's upset, too, and you're like, I don't know what to tell you because I'm upset. And, like, we did everything we could. And it's always at the 11th hour.
00:50:16
Speaker 2: Always.
00:50:17
Speaker 1: I won't lie. I was on the phone with this past Met until, like, 4 in the morning with three different clients crying. And it was just... We were going to go to the Met parties, and then I just sat on the floor on headphones. I fell asleep in our client's room. And I just talked to my clients until four in the morning. And then not to bring in the hospitality business, but that's the same thing. Everybody we work with, I've been friends with since I first moved to New York and was a little, you know, bar rat running around, you know, blacking out or whatever. I went to a party college, all right? I'm sorry. I'm from the Delta. We drink a lot. And so I, these people were bartenders. They owned these small places, whatever. Now they're like major people in nightlife, major restaurateurs, which reminds me I need to call one of them back. to see them succeed is really awesome because these are actual friends. Almost every one of our clients is a friend.
00:51:04
Speaker 3: And what does that say about you guys and your relationships? It's true. It doesn't always work.
00:51:08
Speaker 1: Out with friends. It doesn't. Sometimes just we don't match.
00:51:11
Speaker 3: It's best when you, we have a lot of friends that we work with that we were friends with before, but it works really well when you become friends as you grow too.
00:51:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
00:51:20
Speaker 3: Instead of going in the opposite way, which a lot of people tend to do. They don't want to mix business with friendships too much it can get it can get.
00:51:28
Speaker 1: Bad we all know that like be more honest when it's just some people can't take the heat right like and that can hurt a friendship.
00:51:36
Speaker 3: Or you don't want to say something because then your other friend is going to say something and you can't really vent about like not saying that that happens to us but like it's.
00:51:45
Speaker 4: Common i girls found a good balance yeah honestly my belief is i'm never going to bullshit my client if i think they're wrong i tell them to their face they're wrong yeah and if they think i'm wrong they can tell it to my face and we can have it out but I am going to tell you when I think you're wrong.
00:51:58
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:51:58
Speaker 3: That's why you pay me. Because also you pay us. Yeah, exactly.
00:52:00
Speaker 1: We're not supposed to just do what you do.
00:52:02
Speaker 2: How do you deal with managing clients' disappointment? Let's say if an actress chooses a different look last minute for the carpet.
00:52:09
Speaker 1: You give them the straight facts.
00:52:11
Speaker 3: Straight facts, but also being in that position and being in that room is also a huge deal.
00:52:19
Speaker 1: It is a major deal.
00:52:21
Speaker 3: Even like having a conversation with a stylist, like, a law roach or an aaron walsh we love and we work with all the time like even getting like we send a new brand and no one oh my gosh jessica faster we.
00:52:31
Speaker 2: Love you um love jessica faster she is actually whatever molly dixon's molly i mean we love it jason remember my roommate jason's.
00:52:38
Speaker 3: Our brother yeah jason didn't want me to go back to college and then i.
00:52:42
Speaker 1: Did i was so afraid to tell him i didn't want her to go back to college i was like you don't need college just stay.
00:52:47
Speaker 3: But she tells a story she says i never let her go back and then she doesn't finish the story and so i always have to say like i want She.
00:52:54
Speaker 1: Graduated with a 4.0 while working.
00:52:55
Speaker 3: If you didn't say that, I would have assumed that you had just stayed. No, I went back, and then I finished my last final of college sitting in the lobby of the Carlton and Cannes. Amazing. As I was waiting between fittings, and it was a paper on genocide, and I was there for fittings with see-through crystal dresses. I traveled with eight suitcases by myself.
00:53:17
Speaker 1: I had to throw a crawfish bowl.
00:53:19
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. One of the suitcases I had to buy in Gatwick. And it was just beats. And there's cobblestone streets there. But you did it and you figured it out.
00:53:30
Speaker 1: She did. I was like, you're going to do great. Bye.
00:53:31
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:53:33
Speaker 3: There were some tears.
00:53:33
Speaker 1: Yeah. Always tears. A lot of crying. I mean, next question. Sorry.
00:53:37
Speaker 2: No, I mean, I'm just what you said earlier about like everyone in your team being so excellent and having a really good worth ethic. You clearly like. it stands out to me a lot because I used to be an assistant and so did you, and you actually like did all the internships and did all the lower level jobs. So now being the boss, I think it's really easy for you and I to both recognize how to build teams and who's going to be excellent.
00:54:01
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:54:01
Speaker 2: It's hard to craft.
00:54:04
Speaker 3: So hard.
00:54:04
Speaker 1: I will say I have not to talk bad about the younger generation, but I, they don't think like we do always.
00:54:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's crazy. And like you, uh, And it's just different.
00:54:13
Speaker 2: Being available after 6 p.m., it's like, that has been the most difficult for me to understand.
00:54:19
Speaker 1: Last night, we missed a 10 p.m. email, and I am the boss. But like, and I wasn't in copy. And they didn't respond to it, and it's for a client that's in a different time zone. And I was like, ladies, you're in client services. I go, that means you're always on. You've watched the movies. You know what PR is. You don't get to turn off your phone. You don't get... To turn off on email. It is a new thing that I let people have vacations where they're not working. But we have a brand new employee. She has a vacation right now. We are opening four or five new restaurants in the next month. She's working this vacation. She can be in Hawaii, but she is working. And I've maybe taken one vacation where I have not worked. I've actually really never. I'm the boss. I can't disconnect. But I also had guilt. I never wanted to disconnect. It gave me purpose in life. I love my career. And at our level, the career defines you actually. And I think taking that away would take away who I am and my own.
00:55:22
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:55:23
Speaker 1: I don't know who I am without my career.
00:55:24
Speaker 2: How do you leave for a week?
00:55:26
Speaker 3: How do you not know what's going on?
00:55:28
Speaker 1: Oh my God.
00:55:29
Speaker 3: I can't imagine. It makes me sick.
00:55:31
Speaker 1: We're really behind on emails and I pretty much think, I've never been so stressed out and we sat on a nine hour flight with no Wi-Fi and I just.
00:55:38
Speaker 3: Was like, oh my God, we had so much work to do.
00:55:42
Speaker 1: Because usually the flights are pretty good on the way back from Europe, but this time it wasn't working. I hate that plane. It was an old plane.
00:55:49
Speaker 3: It was like the Delta Enzyme 300.
00:55:52
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to throw my computer down the aisle. Like I was so angry.
00:55:56
Speaker 3: They reset it twice because we asked them to.
00:55:57
Speaker 1: And then I ended up landing and I'm working to what, 5 a.m. time where I was because I have so much to do, which is fine. But it's like, I have to stay on or else there's no way to catch up.
00:56:08
Speaker 2: I don't know how to turn off.
00:56:09
Speaker 3: I literally don't know how.
00:56:10
Speaker 2: To turn off.
00:56:11
Speaker 3: I mean, I had to leave our lunch in Ibiza and go. I sat in the car and had to send emails. You did.
00:56:17
Speaker 1: You were gone for a while.
00:56:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gone for a while.
00:56:20
Speaker 1: You were gone for a while. It was rough. And then she took herself. She goes, I just need to go into the ocean.
00:56:24
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. And they were so worried about me. Our friend's husband, shout out Keith.
00:56:27
Speaker 1: We love Keith.
00:56:28
Speaker 3: And Hillary. We love Keith. They were like, where is Claire? Because I was in the car.
00:56:31
Speaker 1: I was like, Claire is having a moment in the ocean right now. And I come down. She's like under the dock.
00:56:35
Speaker 3: I was by myself. I was.
00:56:36
Speaker 1: She's like holding herself under the dock, just staring.
00:56:38
Speaker 3: No, I'm not.
00:56:38
Speaker 2: At least you know what you need to, you know, reset.
00:56:41
Speaker 3: I was really worried. You okay?
00:56:44
Speaker 1: She's literally like just holding, staring.
00:56:46
Speaker 3: Like one by one, they came to check on me. And I was still kind of just like floating.
00:56:49
Speaker 1: It's amazing.
00:56:49
Speaker 3: Of course, my phone was like in one hand.
00:56:50
Speaker 1: But.
00:56:51
Speaker 3: And then you go back to work. You go back to work.
00:56:54
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:56:54
Speaker 3: I like it.
00:56:55
Speaker 1: I love it. I love my job.
00:56:56
Speaker 3: I love what I do. I love that I'm busy.
00:56:58
Speaker 2: And like how, like it's such a privilege to love what you do and it's so amazing. Like I feel the same way and I think also what you said earlier about letting your team be wherever but like be working. Check your phone. There's no such thing as not checking your email.
00:57:11
Speaker 1: It's not that hard.
00:57:11
Speaker 3: I know that you're looking at your phone.
00:57:13
Speaker 2: There's people who don't.
00:57:14
Speaker 1: Check your fucking email.
00:57:15
Speaker 3: Are you crazy?
00:57:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's confusing to me that people don't know how to do both. It's like you can be remote, but also just like, all you have to do is look, pick it up.
00:57:25
Speaker 1: It's already attached to you.
00:57:26
Speaker 3: I know you never let go of it.
00:57:28
Speaker 1: Just click on the Gmail app. It's real simple.
00:57:33
Speaker 2: But then there's always the person who's like, well, if I'm technically off, I have to do this.
00:57:37
Speaker 3: No, you don't.
00:57:37
Speaker 2: No, you don't.
00:57:39
Speaker 3: It's a job. It's how you make money.
00:57:40
Speaker 1: Don't you want to eat? Sorry.
00:57:42
Speaker 3: You're right. I'm actually going to tell the story.
00:57:46
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell it. I'm going to tell the four-day story. The assistant.
00:57:52
Speaker 3: Oh, my God.
00:57:53
Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
00:57:54
Speaker 3: I'm scared. We actually don't know which one.
00:57:57
Speaker 1: You're talking about. It was actually proposed to us from a major editor. Oh, yeah. And she did not know any better. I thought this girl was going to work her booty off.
00:58:03
Speaker 3: She had come from another country. Another country.
00:58:07
Speaker 1: And, like, we're offering her, like, she had a work visa.
00:58:10
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
00:58:10
Speaker 1: We're, like, giving you a way to stay in the country.
00:58:12
Speaker 3: We're, like, she's here to work. She loves fashion. She wants to work. She was connected with this editor, which we love and trust. And that says a lot when you get an endorsement from someone like that. And you're like, absolutely.
00:58:23
Speaker 2: Right.
00:58:24
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:58:24
Speaker 1: This girl, day four.
00:58:26
Speaker 3: I think, I literally think it was two or three. By the way, she arrived.
00:58:29
Speaker 1: Was it? Was it three?
00:58:30
Speaker 3: She doesn't have a cell phone plan. We later find out that she had been in the country for like two months.
00:58:37
Speaker 1: She couldn't, so she wasn't receiving, a lot of her stuff was done on iMessage and WhatsApp, but a lot of it was done on iMessage. Yeah. And so- Because I don't believe in Slack. I fucking hate it.
00:58:48
Speaker 3: Well, we did an intro meeting with everyone, and then she immediately said she had to go to Verizon. Well, I sent her there.
00:58:53
Speaker 1: I was like, you need to go to Verizon.
00:58:54
Speaker 3: But, like, why don't you do it before?
00:58:55
Speaker 2: Two months in the United States without a phone plan?
00:58:57
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
00:58:57
Speaker 1: And you want to stay in America.
00:58:58
Speaker 3: That's on purpose.
00:58:59
Speaker 1: So, anyway, she goes, can I speak to you, Savannah? And I was like, sure. And I go, motherfucker. What is this child? Is she going to quit?
00:59:08
Speaker 3: Who knows? She goes. so I'm, like, not good at this.
00:59:15
Speaker 1: And I was like, good at what? She was like, this. And I was like, your job? And she goes, yeah. And I go, are you good at everything? And she just was very offended by that question.
00:59:29
Speaker 3: Mind you, she was sitting next to an assistant for two days just watching them.
00:59:32
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:59:33
Speaker 3: Just onboarding.
00:59:33
Speaker 1: No questions asked. I don't like it. I go, you don't know what you're doing. Of course you don't. I don't even think I've let you do a calendar invite yet. I'm pretty sure you have been a glorified FedEx runner, and that's only across the street.
00:59:45
Speaker 3: I doubt she did that. But she also was like, I don't know who any of these people are. I was like, you're not supposed to. It's okay.
00:59:50
Speaker 1: And she goes, I don't know if I want this. I go, but you don't know what the job is. What are you talking about? Right.
00:59:56
Speaker 3: She went out for four days.
00:59:57
Speaker 1: At one point, I shouldn't have ended it this way, but I literally looked at her and I go, don't you need money?
01:00:03
Speaker 2: But it's also just like, aren't you curious?
01:00:08
Speaker 3: Yeah. No curiosity.
01:00:09
Speaker 2: The people who don't sit there and ask the questions and who just stay silent and are like, this is too hard for me. It's like, no, you actually need the hard job to learn shit.
01:00:17
Speaker 3: You have to. I think everyone should cry at work. I think everyone should cry.
01:00:23
Speaker 1: They always cry hidden.
01:00:24
Speaker 3: I used to go to the 18th floor.
01:00:25
Speaker 1: I'd grab some ice on the ice machine. I'd go bawl my eyes out. The mailroom would give me the key to the bathroom on the mailroom floor. And I'd go cry. And I'd put the ice under my eyes. And then I'd go up there. And I'd be fine. And I cried every day.
01:00:40
Speaker 3: For like 12 years. The six-floor showroom at the OTB building.
01:00:42
Speaker 1: And I cried. I mean, I've cried to Claire where I literally had to call her and I'd go, I have to shutter the company. Shutter is when I'm like, to a new level of stress and, like, failure.
01:00:52
Speaker 3: Oh, no. Right? Oh, yeah.
01:00:55
Speaker 1: That's when I'm in a dark place. I say, shudder. And Claire goes, oh, God. Okay, I'm coming. Yeah.
01:01:01
Speaker 2: You know what to do when that happens.
01:01:03
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's mostly yelling.
01:01:05
Speaker 1: Cooper and Lauren have been with us for, like, four or five years, which I think is a testament as well that everybody stayed with us.
01:01:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, we love them.
01:01:10
Speaker 1: And, like, we have a great team.
01:01:12
Speaker 3: It sounds like it.
01:01:13
Speaker 2: And people are staying.
01:01:13
Speaker 1: And we now have an amazing COO who has changed our business, changed my life. Her name's Sarah left. Shout out to Sarah left has.
01:01:21
Speaker 3: My, I would be dead.
01:01:23
Speaker 1: We would not have the business.
01:01:24
Speaker 3: I'm not even trying to be funny.
01:01:26
Speaker 1: Since I'm telling you in the past two to three years, we have tripled in size. We have tripled in growth.
01:01:32
Speaker 3: She started last year.
01:01:33
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:01:33
Speaker 1: I mean, even in the past year I am talking, it is a major change and it's, you know, we got to that level. Right. And we had the person that's in there because my mind is not business money. No y'all. I'm a creative. Like, Let's hope I'm paying taxes, right? Like, I am, by the way. And she's brought something amazing to our company. But every single person that's joined our company has brought something amazing. I love our team. And I'm just doing, and right now they are stressed. We have 15 events the first two weeks of September, which is a lot of work. And they are so stressed, and I am trying to do everything in my power to alleviate that. And I hope that shows that I'm a good boss in any way. But, like, I just want them to. to enjoy and have fun in what they do and just be proud of their work.
01:02:20
Speaker 3: I mean, working for you sounds like so much fun.
01:02:23
Speaker 2: And I also think that a lot of CEOs and founders tap out and they're like, oh, I have people to take.
01:02:28
Speaker 3: Care of it.
01:02:28
Speaker 2: But the fact that you're still this involved and care.
01:02:31
Speaker 1: This much still. I do care. I have anxiety about it. I do, maybe.
01:02:34
Speaker 2: You work so hard.
01:02:35
Speaker 3: You deserve all of this. It's great.
01:02:37
Speaker 1: Sometimes I run away, but I'm working the whole time and they're like, please just go away, Seth.
01:02:41
Speaker 3: I respect you so much. I beg her to go away.
01:02:43
Speaker 1: I know. It's a hard position. To go from being a startup founder where you are in the weeds and you are overseeing everything, and it is so intense. Poor Claire is dealing with that now because she is overseeing a lot of things, almost everything, because I'm having to run the business. And that shift over the past year and a half has been a growing pain for all of us because not only does that stress come on me as a founder and as a leader, that stress leads into the company as well. And it causes... It's an interesting... shift when you go from that.
01:03:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:03:16
Speaker 1: It's a hard shift to, to be the CEO.
01:03:19
Speaker 3: You had a very hard time with it.
01:03:20
Speaker 1: I had a really hard time not having my hands in the weed of everything and doing it and then going to like, okay, this is what's happening. Just update me instead of, I'm not.
01:03:31
Speaker 3: Explaining as well, but like being on every email, being.
01:03:33
Speaker 1: On every email, I'm still on probably way too many emails and more emails than I should be. And then sitting there and doing finance meetings and going over contracts and sitting with my lawyer all the time and doing this and this and this and this and this and closing business and that's all I focus on and everything. And that was a really hard shift for me. But that's just me as a person.
01:03:50
Speaker 3: I understand. I'm literally going through it right now.
01:03:53
Speaker 1: It's a really difficult growth, and it was not comfortable for me, which made it actually uncomfortable for the whole team. And so as a leader, you have to remember that whatever you're putting out there is what they also are putting out there. Because it's all, like, I mean, we're all in the same cycle. We're all menstruating at the same time. We are.
01:04:10
Speaker 3: No, like, we actually are.
01:04:12
Speaker 1: The tampon box runs out, okay?
01:04:14
Speaker 3: It's really, really difficult. We are all on our period at the same time, y'all. And actually, oh, no, we won't be on it for Fashion Week. Maybe I shouldn't have shared that, but we won't.
01:04:23
Speaker 1: We won't be on our period for Fashion Week? No.
01:04:24
Speaker 3: The week after.
01:04:25
Speaker 1: Yes, we are.
01:04:26
Speaker 3: The week after. But we have a week in between, so.
01:04:28
Speaker 1: Third week, people.
01:04:29
Speaker 3: Third week. Mark your calendars, guys.
01:04:31
Speaker 2: Everyone mark your calendars.
01:04:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, after, like, September 15th. yeah but I also like think it's important to note before Sarah came in it really was just her and I like the icon of our group chat is a blind person like the blind person emoji because we actually had no idea what we were.
01:04:50
Speaker 1: Doing I thought I wanted to be a lawyer like I know I built a business but I have no idea how to build a business but she literally like determination my friend but it's a.
01:04:59
Speaker 2: Lot of like just like optimistic delusion it's like you kind of have to just like you have to be so yeah you're like i know what i'm doing i know what i'm doing and then you just got to do it like you kind of just have to have that mindset of like this is going to work like i've got.
01:05:11
Speaker 1: This totally totally i talked to a lot of people that want to start a pr agency like at right out of college and i cannot say with enough enthusiasm that is the dumbest fucking thing you can do you have got to learn from your elders And if you can go into corporate, do it. If you can go into an agency, do it. If you can go into anything, do it. You will not learn. Don't you want to not make the mistakes? That's the thing, right? You're going to make plenty of mistakes as a founder, but if you can get a good base of 10 years of learning from those mistakes and learning from your elders and learning from your bosses, you will make much less extreme mistakes that could actually ruin you and take you down. So, yeah, I do think that, like, there's, you know, this entrepreneurship, I love it, and some people are built to be entrepreneurs, and it's amazing to fail, fail, fail until they make it. But if you have the opportunity to learn in the industry, especially ours, it is all about human interaction.
01:06:13
Speaker 3: You can't teach it.
01:06:14
Speaker 1: You have to pick up the phone. That's actually the biggest thing I want to tell you. For everybody that wants to do PR, fashion, whatever the fuck you want to do, use the fucking phone.
01:06:21
Speaker 3: It's a lost art form.
01:06:23
Speaker 1: Email is not always going to work. I called everyone and we had landlines.
01:06:27
Speaker 3: Text.
01:06:28
Speaker 1: Call them and text them. That is a real relationship. Go to drinks with them. Go to coffee.
01:06:31
Speaker 2: Go to the weird.
01:06:32
Speaker 3: And we'll pay for it. Go to the weird.
01:06:33
Speaker 1: Raves at the bathhouses. I don't care. But do something. It is human. Your social network is your worth.
01:06:40
Speaker 3: In your career.
01:06:41
Speaker 1: Period.
01:06:42
Speaker 3: I mean, period.
01:06:44
Speaker 2: If someone doesn't respond to your email, call them.
01:06:46
Speaker 1: Call them. Find their number. Stalk them on the internet. Find them.
01:06:48
Speaker 3: Find their boyfriend.
01:06:49
Speaker 1: Find their mother. Whatever you need to do.
01:06:50
Speaker 2: If your boss wants a reservation at Fort Charles and they're not picking up the phone or the email, show up.
01:06:55
Speaker 3: Get your ass to Fort Charles. Go walk there.
01:06:58
Speaker 2: Go shake a hand.
01:06:58
Speaker 3: Say hi.
01:06:59
Speaker 2: I work for so-and-so. How do you think I got my contact there? I walked there myself.
01:07:02
Speaker 1: You're like, hi.
01:07:03
Speaker 2: Shout out to the Fort Charles team.
01:07:04
Speaker 3: Love you.
01:07:05
Speaker 2: Might need a rest.
01:07:06
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:07:07
Speaker 3: Love you.
01:07:07
Speaker 2: But, like, that's how you do it.
01:07:09
Speaker 3: Totally.
01:07:09
Speaker 2: And you have to, I think so many young people, now that I'm in this space of getting people jobs and recruiting, they all are so focused on, well, I want to be a producer, and, like, I'd rather do that right now. It's like, no, no, no, you have to go be an assistant so you can learn and make your mistakes in a safe environment instead of getting thrown into the fire.
01:07:27
Speaker 1: I do think CAA does a really great thing, or WME, and you have to start in the mailroom. Oh, yeah. You have to start in the mailroom. 100%.
01:07:34
Speaker 2: What were you going to.
01:07:35
Speaker 1: Say about the way we talk together?
01:07:37
Speaker 3: Just like our relationship.
01:07:38
Speaker 1: Claire and I have the weirdest relationship because we're like truly.
01:07:40
Speaker 3: Sisters, right? She told me earlier she wanted to talk about this.
01:07:42
Speaker 1: And there are certain things that, you know, we have to, even though we can literally dig at each other and fight like sisters and be cunty to each other. I should cut that word out. Be tough to each other.
01:07:53
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll cut it out.
01:07:55
Speaker 1: We had to cut something out because I said something very inappropriate.
01:07:58
Speaker 3: About me.
01:07:59
Speaker 1: Wow.
01:08:00
Speaker 2: Wow.
01:08:00
Speaker 1: But we have a really good way. of handling each other and a trust system. And I have that with Sarah as well. And now we have that with Cooper and Lauren because they're at that level. And, you know, I want everyone that works for me to have an ownership in the company. And I've always said this. This isn't just my company. This is us building something, and I can't do it without you. So we're at that point where I think all of our top leadership has a real interest in succeeding Or the fact that I beg them every day not to quit. Which I do.
01:08:36
Speaker 3: I'm like, three more years?
01:08:37
Speaker 2: Literally, my team, I'm like, if you're unhappy, you'll tell me, right?
01:08:40
Speaker 3: Like, you can't leave. I would die.
01:08:44
Speaker 1: How's the feelings today?
01:08:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:08:46
Speaker 1: Did I do that right?
01:08:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. I mean, you and I fight 15 times a day.
01:08:50
Speaker 1: Oh, my God. More like 100.
01:08:52
Speaker 3: 100. Sometimes we don't speak to each other.
01:08:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes we actually don't speak to each other.
01:08:56
Speaker 2: I can't imagine that.
01:08:57
Speaker 1: Oh, well, i mean we communicate still on text right but like.
01:09:01
Speaker 2: Not willingly like no eye contact or yeah yeah it's no.
01:09:04
Speaker 3: Oh my god that would be crazy um it must be kind of crazy for people to watch that well we have to like explain to new people who come in we're like she'll say something and i'm like hi actually remember when we looked at the clock earlier and it said 12 20 and you can't talk to me until 12 32 Time's not up yet. We gotta wait.
01:09:18
Speaker 1: You have to wait. All of us sit there and we'll announce in the office and I'll be like, because I believe in an open office.
01:09:22
Speaker 3: We just have to have an open office.
01:09:24
Speaker 1: We're expanding our office and it's time that I have to get my own separate office.
01:09:29
Speaker 3: I need my own separate office.
01:09:30
Speaker 1: We share it with always the hinting group. Nate Hinton, shout out to my brother. I love him. We love him. He's gonna have to get an office too. It's time to that point. We're big enough that it can't be a full open office where I'm just yelling all the time because I'm so loud. But like, we'll literally yell up in the middle of the room and be like, okay, going nonverbal. it's an announcement don't talk to me for an hour.
01:09:49
Speaker 3: No seriously in March we were in Milan for fashion week and we obviously weren't talking we weren't speaking and we were out to dinner with a bunch of friends oh my god and they all we were going to go to Como for one day it's a bunch of our Italian friends.
01:10:04
Speaker 1: And because we had like clients yeah it was.
01:10:06
Speaker 3: The weekend so we didn't have shows that day and we never let ourselves do anything fun never And so we're like, let's just like, why do we have to stay in a hotel? She was like, I've never been to Venice.
01:10:12
Speaker 1: I go, you've never been to Venice.
01:10:13
Speaker 3: Well, they were, oh, sorry. They were all like, we don't go to Como. We're going to Venice tomorrow. Come with us. We were like, okay, let's go.
01:10:21
Speaker 1: What happened is the crazy Italians went till 5 a.m. And we went to bed, like, because we were exhausted, to get on our train. We show up.
01:10:31
Speaker 3: We get there. She and I, first of all, we're getting on the train. She doesn't know how to buy a train ticket. So we're like maneuvering everything. And we get on the train. barely speaking just like oh did you get the water and headphones in and we get to Venice and they all text us they're like oh we're not coming until tonight we're like.
01:10:49
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me we were in Venice alone we are now it.
01:10:54
Speaker 3: Was so awkward we were literally walking around like oh like oh the bridge over there and this I think we have a selfie that's like so weird because your mom was like what are you guys doing we're like oh here we are we got in a gondola Not speaking.
01:11:06
Speaker 1: We were in the scuttle alone.
01:11:08
Speaker 3: I go, hi sir, actually we're not really speaking right now so it might be really awkward. Oh yeah, I made this video and I was like, me and Savannah Engel haven't spoken for, yeah, spoken for like what, 12 hours? End up on a gondola together? They showed up at like 9 p.m.
01:11:25
Speaker 1: No, no, no, we had at Bellini's.
01:11:27
Speaker 3: I know, at night.
01:11:28
Speaker 2: We probably heard you guys were fighting and then they did it on purpose.
01:11:31
Speaker 1: No, we took the last train back.
01:11:33
Speaker 3: Oh, you had to run.
01:11:35
Speaker 1: We had a race. I mean, we should have just stayed in Venice, honestly.
01:11:39
Speaker 3: On the street?
01:11:40
Speaker 1: It was, but it was like, it's like funny.
01:11:43
Speaker 3: We always end up like in these situations where people are like, what are you guys doing here? Like, we went to Glastonbury one year.
01:11:51
Speaker 1: Oh, Dua Lipa knows us, but doesn't know why she knows us. And I'll tell you why. There was a season where we saw her at a Golden Globes party, and then we saw her at a Grammy party, and then we saw her at a, Oscars thing, and then we saw her during Fashion Week. Then we saw her in May, in Feb, in Milan. We ran into her in Paris.
01:12:11
Speaker 3: At this point, she's just waving to us. Let's just be like, oh, good to see you.
01:12:14
Speaker 1: No, she didn't even do that.
01:12:15
Speaker 3: She's the one that waved. She's the one that waved first.
01:12:17
Speaker 1: She goes, hey, y'all, because she recognized us so many times. She thought she knew us. So then we're at Glastonbury. She's the headliner, and we're walking. We have VIP pass. Whatever. We're in that area, and we're walking around, and she was like, she sees us and goes, hey, y'all, and I'm like, Hey, Dua.
01:12:33
Speaker 3: Everyone we're with was like, was that to you?
01:12:35
Speaker 1: She doesn't say, hey, y'all. She was like, hey, guys. You know what I mean? And it was like, it came to the point where people were like, did Dua leave but just waved to y'all? We're like, yes. She doesn't know she's not our friend.
01:12:45
Speaker 3: That's amazing.
01:12:46
Speaker 1: She just thinks that she knows us. We actually don't know each other.
01:12:48
Speaker 3: But, like, if I were her and I met you, like. We saw each other at Kos.
01:12:51
Speaker 1: We saw each other at this party.
01:12:52
Speaker 2: You're a very memorable person.
01:12:53
Speaker 3: Like, I would probably. Like the red hair. Yeah.
01:12:55
Speaker 1: The red hair and the loud southerner.
01:12:57
Speaker 3: Yeah. She literally.
01:12:59
Speaker 2: I'd probably get the same thing if I were Julie.
01:13:01
Speaker 1: She genuinely, like, thought she knew us.
01:13:03
Speaker 3: Surprised she didn't pull you backstage. No, what a shame. That would have been fun for her.
01:13:07
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
01:13:07
Speaker 3: We probably should have.
01:13:08
Speaker 1: Leaned into that more.
01:13:09
Speaker 3: But, like, relationships.
01:13:10
Speaker 2: It's like seeing Dua, like, one of the biggest pop stars in the world.
01:13:14
Speaker 1: But it was hilarious.
01:13:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, clearly leave a lasting impression on people.
01:13:17
Speaker 1: Didn't get the wedding invite.
01:13:18
Speaker 3: She didn't know where to send the invite.
01:13:19
Speaker 1: Dang it. No.
01:13:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, mine must have gotten lost in the mail, too.
01:13:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. Well, ladies, like.
01:13:26
Speaker 2: So cool what you've built together.
01:13:28
Speaker 3: Like, eight years is insane. Thanks, babe. Like, goals.
01:13:31
Speaker 2: Couple goals, right?
01:13:32
Speaker 3: Yeah. Ooh, that's going to keep me up at night.
01:13:34
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:13:36
Speaker 3: No, but it's like you, like, I'm also in a relationship with my employees.
01:13:40
Speaker 2: Like, it's like you're in it every day. You're talking all day long. You're going through mood swings together. You're traveling together.
01:13:45
Speaker 3: You have to have fun together. Yeah. And we always find our own fun.
01:13:49
Speaker 1: We have fun.
01:13:50
Speaker 3: You could stick us in a room with a million strangers and.
01:13:53
Speaker 2: No, you're the best party host and guest.
01:13:55
Speaker 3: Seriously.
01:13:56
Speaker 1: We have enough of you in fun time.
01:13:57
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
01:13:58
Speaker 2: Well, thank you guys for coming on. This was so nice.
01:14:01
Speaker 1: Megan found me my assistant. Megan found our clients our assistant.
01:14:05
Speaker 3: And everyone has been amazing. Well, right back at you. Thank you for all the referrals. So sweet.
01:14:11
Speaker 1: Love you.
01:14:12
Speaker 3: Love you.
01:14:13
Speaker 2: So nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too.
01:14:14
Speaker 3: All right, guys. Well, thanks for tuning in. And if you need an events, marketing, PR, VIP.
01:14:21
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:14:22
Speaker 3: Community at WeAreSavvy.com.
01:14:23
Speaker 1: Community at WeAreSavvy.com.
01:14:25
Speaker 3: Also, if you're looking for a job.
01:14:27
Speaker 1: Oh my God, please, we're hiring. Just please, God, so you have experience. I need you, I need you, I need you.
01:14:31
Speaker 3: And I hope you've watched this entire thing before flying.
01:14:34
Speaker 2: I think this might have been the funniest episode.
01:14:37
Speaker 1: Yay!
01:14:38
Speaker 3: Thank you, everyone.
01:14:38
Speaker 1: Money!