 Hi and welcome to School of Hustle. I'm your host Sarah and this is the show all about what it takes to build the business of your dreams. Brands spent $22 billion in 2018 on social media marketing and are set to spend up to $15 billion on influencer marketing in 2022. Our next guests Stephanie Carton and Courtney Spritzer are the founders of Social Fly, a full-service social media agency dedicated to social media marketing growth hacking, media planning, content creation and influencer marketing. They're also the host of Entrepreneurship, a podcast all about female entrepreneurship. Welcome to the show Stephanie and Courtney. Thank you so much for having us. We're so excited to be here and share a story with you. Yes, I'm so interested in your story because you guys have a lot going on between the two businesses that you're running. Could you talk about why you decided to start Social Fly? Yes, so we decided to start Social Fly because social media really was a passion of both of our. So I'll take you back to the early days of Facebook. I was actually one of the first users of Facebook when it first launched. I was a sophomore at Cornell and I remember getting access to this platform and back then it was called TheFacebook.com. And as a college student, we thought we were so cool back then because we got access to this new platform. And I remember thinking back then, wow, this is really going to change everything that I'm learning about in school right now in terms of sales and marketing and how to reach people. But I wasn't quite sure how back then. And then when I graduated from college, I really just always stayed on the forefront of everything that was happening with social media. And I was working in sales and marketing in the hospitality industry. And I started realizing that businesses really needed to be using social media to grow their business. And this is back in 2009, 2010, before social media really was what it is today. You were really an early adapter of this. Oh, yes. Yes. And I just always knew it was going to be the way of the future. So friends of mine who were starting businesses, they were reaching out to me asking for sales and marketing advice. I told them, start using social media now. This is going to be the way of the future. And what they say to you at the time, were they like, what? How is that? How is that going to be the future? Yeah. I mean, it was tough. Like in the early days, when Courtney and I first partnered together and we were selling our services, we really had to convince brands and businesses why they needed to invest in social media back then. I remember they would say things to us like, oh, our intern can just do this or, you know, my daughter's home from this for the summer. She can help us with this. And as you see now, more than ever, social media really is your direct communication to your customer. And you do need professionals who know how to execute these campaigns properly. But we were definitely super early and Courtney can share, you know, how we met and partnered together. Yeah, I'd love to hear about that. Yeah. So we actually met maybe it was faith, but we met coincidentally in Miami, which I am now living in Miami. So I feel like I've come full circle with with Stephanie. And we happened to meet while we were both on vacation in Miami. And we quickly bonded over our shared passion of social media. I had graduated from NYU about a year prior to meeting Stephanie. And I was working in an insurance company in Massachusetts. And we stayed connected through, of course, social media and Skype at the time. And I had grown up in New York as well. And I really wanted to get back to New York. So I ended up getting a job in New York at American Express. While I was there, that I saw all of the amazing things that Annex was doing from a social media marketing standpoint. And that's when I knew I wanted to get into social media. I wanted to learn more about it. And I shared this with Stephanie and she said, well, why don't you join me in starting a social media agency because she really wanted to develop her the agency. So we started working nights and weekends on the side of our full-time job. After about 10 months, we put our jobs on the same day in May, on May 4th, 2012, and it's been an eight year journey. We have a team of about 30 people. We've worked with hundreds of brands and we've been working around the clocks for the basically for the last eight years. Wow. Well, social media has had tremendous growth in that time. So you definitely got into the right industry at the right time. And since then, there's been many, many social media agencies that have popped up as an influencer myself. I'm part of a lot of them. How do you how do you compete with all of the people that are popping up today as an early adapter yourself? We live and breathe social Stephanie and I practice what we preach. We do all of our own marketing, which most agencies don't do. And we often use ourselves as kind of the guinea pigs. The test teachers for the new capabilities that come out on social. And as a result, we became number one on Google for social media agency. And that's how our clients find us. And then we also wrote a book about social media back in 2015. Was that like love follow? That was it. Yeah. You have a lot going on from all different angles of this business. So I'd love to hear about what you did to get started on this. Today, you have so many different sides of it from content creation to influencer marketing to media planning and social media marketing. What was the first thing you did when you decided, yeah, let's go through with this idea. So we were very scrappy in the early days. And I would argue we're still very scrappy. We don't know. You look pretty polished at this point. Well, we you look we bootstrapped our business. So we are only seeing us in the top up right now. I have shorts on. You look great. Yeah, so we bootstrapped our business. So after Courtney and I handed in our two weeks notice, that was on a Friday. We went out and celebrated that weekend that we left the corporate world. And that Monday we got to work and started pounding the pavement and working on our business. So that Monday, the first thing we did was we put up an ad back then on Craigslist looking for a couple interns to help us for the summer. And then we reached out to a family friend of Courtney's who owns a printing company and still owns a printing company in New York City. And he offered to give us some complimentary space in his printing company. So we could actually have our interns show up there with us and not be working out of my small apartment on the Upper West Side at the time. So we found a lot of really scrappy ways to get started. And really the best advice that we were given was from Frank, who owned the printing company. He said to us, you guys need to join this networking group. It's a networking organization called BNI Business Networking International. It's an international organization. So there's chapters all around the world, specifically in New York City, where where we were starting the company. There was many chapters in New York City and essentially they do a breakfast meeting every single week where you go around the room and do your elevator pitch to everyone in the room. There can only be one person from each specific industry in the group. So it's a paid membership and it's not terribly expensive. So even if you're just starting a business, you know, it's a couple hundred dollars to join. And then, yeah, it's definitely a good investment. I mean, you get one client and you make it back right away. But I do remember thinking, how are we going to pay for this? But even in the beginning, when you start a business, there are certain investments that you have to make to be able to get to that next level, to be able to grow the business. I completely agree. And you said earlier, you and Courtney really became the guinea pigs and tried things for the first time. And I want to ask about entrepreneurship, because in many ways, that's exactly what you're doing there is you're being the guinea pig. You're doing content creation and sharing your stories. When did that come about and what was that process of incorporating that into a business that already has a lot going on? Now, we actually, entrepreneurista was the evolution of something we used to do on Facebook Live and we hosted a Facebook Live show for about two years where Stephanie and I talked about all of the latest things that you need to know from a social media perspective. And then we had guests and we loved it. It was definitely a lot of fun for us. And then when podcasts started to become more popular, we wanted to learn more about it and we wanted to continue to kind of use ourselves as the guinea pigs and really test out a new platform. And because you're exactly right, you know, running a business is time consuming. We can't be everywhere as much as we would love to be. And maybe out in this new virtual world, we can be in more places at one using technology, but we had to decide, you know, do we want to continue the Facebook Live show or start testing out a podcast? So we decided to test something new that you always have to innovate. That is part of the DNA of the company and we wanted to try something new. So we decided to start the entrepreneurista podcast. We had a brainstorm with our team to figure out, you know, what did we want our podcast to talk about? And for Stephanie and myself, we are so passionate about entrepreneurship and specifically helping other women entrepreneurs understand and realize that they too can start a business. It's a lot of hard work. You're going to make a lot of mistakes. Yeah. So you feel best and you learn from it and you move on. Yeah, exactly. So we wanted to inspire as many women as possible. And that's how the entrepreneurista podcast came to be. What I'm learning from you guys is your early adapters to many different things. And that's part of the reason why you're successful, because you're not afraid to just try it. We're definitely risk takers and always want to jump in and test things out and see what works and if it works great. And if it doesn't, that's okay too. At least you tried and you can move on quickly. Yes, totally. Now, along this journey, is there anything that you learned that you wish you knew in the beginning? The very first thing would be to when you incorporate your business name, be sure that you have a trademark and that you do a great trademark search. Have a great accountant, have a great business attorney. Those are definitely key elements. When we first started Social Fly, the name of our company was actually called Collective Media. And because our SEO was so good right off the bat, we got a letter from a company called The Collective a couple of months into us starting the business with a cease and assist letter. Oh, my God. And we were so young and naive back then. We're like, oh, my gosh, what does this mean? Like, are we going to go to jail? I mean, we didn't think that, but we didn't know. It's scary. It's scary because you've never experienced that. So you switched it to Social Fly. Why call it Social Fly? Well, it was a long brainstorm process. I think we had a certain amount of time to get back to the cease and assist letter to come up with a new name. So I think we were brainstorming for a good month or two and we were about to go with another name. And then one night the name Social Fly just hit me at night. I called Courtney. I said, I have it, Social Fly. And she said, yes, that's it. And, you know, we're social and we make businesses fly. And it just was catchy. And I think it's a much better name than our original name. So you can always make something good out of a situation that might not seem so great. You move into this warehouse, it sounds like. You have the interns and what do you do next? You start pitching businesses. You start going to these conferences. You're seeing quick growth. What's what's next for Social Fly at this point? Yeah, so that summer we had six interns. We just had such a great group of interns. We were very, very fortunate to have them on the team at that time. And because we had such a great group of people, we were able to provide really great work to our clients. Stephanie focused on going out and landing new clients. And at the time I focused on making sure that all of our clients got the services that they signed up for. I provided all of the strategy and coordinated with with our team at the time. And then by the end of the summer, they unfortunately had to go back to school. So we needed to hire a full time person. But of course, you know, we're a scrappy startup, so we started her out as part time just to test it out and it quickly turned into full time. And then by the beginning of next year, we needed we had two people full time on the team. We moved into a new office in 2014 that just seemed so expensive at the time. And it was much larger than we needed. I remember a few weeks ago looking at a picture, I was like, who do we fill up this office? And I remember how scared I was to take on this rent of rent because our rent had increased by five times at that point. But also you were looking at it carefully because your income was increasing as well. So it was a calculated risk at that point. Yes, for sure, but we still, you know, need to make sure that our clients were we're signing new clients. And that's something we're always focused on is making sure that we have a great pipeline of of new business. So when you're doing production, do you have a studio inside of your office space or how do you do that there? Yes. So we got more office space again. You keep expanding every year. We built a whole production studio in our office and we can do photoshoots, video shoots. We produced a PSA actually for the Girl Scouts several years ago. So the range of creative services we can provide is is very wide. So you don't have a special team, necessarily in content creation. It's just across the board. Social media content because we can do photoshoots and video shoots. It lends itself to other types of content that our clients need. Yeah. So at what point did you start taking influencer marketing really seriously? We were early with influencer marketing as well. What do you remember what year that was? I want to say it was also 2015. I think 2015 was like a very transformative year for us. That was also the year that we published the book. So it was around that time at the end of 2014 to what 2015, I think. So my question to you now is what do you think the future is? Because you guys have been spot on with all these trends early on. So what what's coming? What what are the things that people should look out for? OK. Oh, you go first, Corey. We are actually working on providing a package. So for any clients that want to be prepared for all the random things that are to come, we have our own predictions so they can sign up for that. And then we're also very much leaning into working remote. We think that more and more people are going to work from home and we will be providing solutions for that. And then on the social media side, a few things I would lean into would be thinking about your social media channels as a content destination. So how can you cultivate this community of customers? What content do they care about? That's going to want to make them come back to your account or that's Instagram or Facebook or Facebook group or community every single day and crave the content that you're putting out. So by having these one to one relationships with your customers and building real community and a content destination for them, you can build these long term relationships with your customers through social that will create this repeat business, especially for e-commerce brands. So speaking of growth, you've grown entrepreneurship to a very large following. Do you have any advice for those that also want to grow a successful podcast? Yes. So actually another thing that we did to test out the podcast, something new we hadn't done before was get a billboard to launch it. So we put out a billboard in Times Square the day that we launched our podcast. And what we learned from doing that was it gave us instant credibility and not necessarily because a ton of people saw the billboard in Times Square, although they did, it was really the picture of the billboard that we then posted on our social media that really got a lot of people's attention. And with the billboard, people just took it seriously from day one. I think it was really just the perception of having a billboard that just gave it that instant credibility. And there we were able to build an audience through the people that listened to the podcast, shared our content and actually by doing contests with different types of influencers. That's a great way to grow your following. And the other thing that we did was the exact advice I just shared before. We created this content destination specifically on Instagram for entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs says. So every week, not only do we feature the founders whose episodes we're releasing, but we also feature all different entrepreneurs who want to share their story. So we'll either reach out to entrepreneurs and ask them if they want to share their story. But we also get so many requests every single day from entrepreneurs does who want to share. So we're featuring their stories on our account. And then when we post it, they're also sharing it with their audience. So then it kind of creates that snowball effect and people start to follow. Then they see the Instagram account. They see what entrepreneurs is about. We have the link to our podcasts and our bio, and then they click through and then we get new subscribers that way. So again, thinking about your social channels as this great content destination with content that your audience is really interested in is so important. And it sounds like you've learned so much from your experience and you've learned a lot from interviewing all these incredible female entrepreneurs. So my question to you is for each of you, what's one piece of advice that you would give to aspiring entrepreneurs? We ask this we ask this question to all of the times. No, really? So perfect, I'm turning the tables on you. My advice would be to keep going. There are so many challenges that that you're going to face. And there will be days, weeks where you just want to keep you want to give up, but you have to just keep going. Believe in yourself. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Learn from them fast and then just keep, keep moving, keep moving forward. And my advice before you keep going, you first have to start. So just start because I think when you're thinking about launching a new business, you can easily come up with all of these ideas or why it won't work, why you shouldn't do it, and then you just get stuck in your own way. If you have an idea, you're super passionate about it. You have the energy, you know, you can make it happen. Just start. You'll figure it out as you go along. There's so many resources that are out there. There's so many people that will help you along the way. If you just reach out, people genuinely do want to help others. So don't be scared to start and don't be scared to reach out and, you know, build your network along the way because people will help you. Wow. Well, thank you so much. And that is all for this episode of School Puzzle. If you like what you heard, please keep up with our other episodes on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts, or wherever you stream and listen to podcasts. 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