I think last week we talked a little bit about meetings and how to be effective in a meeting, but what we didn't talk about is what actually goes on there. A lot of influencers, they come to a city, especially in New York where most the brands are, they set up a bunch of meetings with those brands and what happens in them is, you talk about what stuff do you cover? What brands do you cover? Have you done any collaborations before? Tell me about your audience, tell me about your background, tell me about what you're looking to do, any travel plans coming up?

You're basically trying to brief that brand so that if they have any opportunities coming up, they can figure out where to put you in. The more complete and complex the things that you do can look, the easier it is for that brand to say, "They would fit here, they would fit there, they would be great at that, they would be awesome at this." It behooves you to come prepared for that. Come knowing, what are the top brands that you talk about? What are your five dream collaborations? That if you could work with any brands, what would it be?

What makes you different as an influencer? Why work with you? That's a question we asked in the Sephora applications. It was out hundreds of thousands of influencers, why you? Because we have 80,000 people in our platform alone and that's a small part of the influencer community. Why should we care about you and what you do? You have to have a compelling answer for that. You're essentially pitching yourself and if you've never been a salesperson, it really makes sense to practice a little bit. A lot of people are uncomfortable talking about themselves, present company excluded.

If you're not comfortable doing that, it's good to practice. You don't want to come off sounding rehearsed but, if a brand says to you like, "Well, what makes you different?" You're like, "Well, I think that I just like-- I have a really authentic voice that my audience really like relates to." I'm already like, "Meeting's over. Time to go." If you can't talk passionately about what you do and about your audience and about the things that you want to do in your dreams then like, "How can I get excited about it?" I think the point of those meanings should be for the brand person to leave feeling excited and they want to help you.

They want to get you in a collaboration. They want to work with you in some way. You have to bring that energy and be like, "This is my life. I love this so much. It's been so great to connect with all these amazing women all over the world. Let me read you this DM I got the other day. It's incredible." You have to brag a little bit, and there's the balance between bragging a little bit and being annoying. That's a difficult balance to strike and it's a tightrope that I've walked my entire life but, it is really important to be able to inject some excitement into that room and have them leave and feel like one, you were memorable, and two, they want to help you, and three, they know how to help you.

If those three things aren't true when you leave a meeting, you have failed. That's it. One more thing on meetings and brands really quickly because I don't think we've said it in a while, every single brand in the world, your dream brand, anyone you want to work with, most of the time, that is one person. One person that you have to connect with. All you have to do is get in front of that one person. It is not as intimidating as it sounds. Sure, they may not take your meeting, but not reaching out because you don't think you're going to get the meeting, just say that sentence to yourself.

I didn't reach out because I didn't think I'd get the meeting. That makes no fucking sense. There is nothing to lose. These are just people. They are generally really kind, nice, smart, driven people. They like helping young influencers if they can. If you give them a compelling reason to, generally I find that those brands will go out of their way to help you. You have to reach out though. Unless you're just on that Tezza curve and you're growing 50,000 followers a month for 18 months, you have to reach out. You have to do the leg work. They're not coming to you.

You have to come to them somehow. Don't be intimidated by those meetings. If you've never done it, book a trip to New York. If you've never done it and you're not in New York, pick a random date, two months in the future, email a bunch brands and say, "I'm going to be there that week." You set up five meetings, book the ticket. If you don't, say that your plans changed. You booked a collaboration and you can't come to New York and you'll reschedule some other time. Five meetings is worth a plane ticket if you can afford it.