[laughs]

... 25 grand to throw a party? But I came, uh, I got into the final 25, and then you had a week to get as many people onto a Facebook page as you could.

And I got, like, 8, 9,000 people onto this Facebook page in five days, but I was, like, in my student union, like, scribbling, like, "Sedge's social page" on people's arms.

And I came second to one of the relatives of the family who owned Glastonbury, and it went onto Glastonbury's Facebook page.

So, like, I was never gonna win, but the company then called me and were like, "We don't really know what social is.

You clearly have some, like, gamification tactics for building communities and audiences.

Do you want a job?" Um, and so I had a year left at uni, and I thought that would kind of fizzle out, they'd forget, they'd hire someone, and I had a job to go to before I graduated.

Mm

Whereas those couples apparently that share it more, they're more affectionate and get on better, basically.

Yeah, I think it depends on the people and the couple.

And I won't say who, I've got like a friend in my head, but she really believes that her role on earth, and she's got a significantly better career on paper than me, but is to look after the house and to look after the children and to take the very traditional role of wife and of mother.

And she often says to me, just like, oh God, I just don't understand why or how you do things like that.

Or why wouldn't you be the person that would do the other? And since I've ever met my husband, things have had to be even, because my job was always slightly more nuts, or I was way more than him, or we went through the deal process, then we went through me leaving the business, then we went through adapting to obviously having children.

And so we just had to divide and conquer to be able to just survive and survive as a couple, but then obviously survive as parents.

And also pre-meeting him, I had to like, sounds awful, but like I had to outsource stuff.

I think the world's still trying to understand like where does that balance found? and for what kind of age groups because i i wonder whether if you come fresh out of uni do you want to work from home half the time when you're still trying to learn and build your thing versus like it's actually some people or a lot of people would say like as a family it's a really good ability to say well actually today is not a good day for me to be in the office i can smash it at home other days i can come in what do you think about the work from home split week stuff and what do you think it will look like in the kind of future do you think is this it now do you think

But what's the kind of, how do you know that an influencer is going to be successful in providing an ROI? And yeah, how does it kind of work for people that have no idea about the industry?

Yeah.

So, God, where do I start here? One is I think the reason why people make mistakes in influence marketing is they just think, oh, I'll be able to give you anything.

And because you've got a following, that'll do what it needs to do.

And actually, it's understanding.

So like, where's the archetypal alignment? Like, what are your values? Why do you exist? What do your followers come to you for? And in the same respect, the brands, where is that synergy and that overlap? There's also the basics of vetting, because back in the day, if you were ever on a reality TV show before you were even accepted, you were told to buy your following.

The worst advice they possibly could get, especially now, because you're looking in 30, 40, 50%, like we're talking 10, 15 years ago, some of these followings, they're not real.

So you don't think it's possible?

Because I think a lot of what we want to talk about and we're going to get onto in this podcast is finding that balance between wanting to... succeed in life and do you know have your ambitions do your goals yeah but also to kind of enjoy life because I think people you know I could be wrong but you know if you're listening right now I'd imagine you're someone that is wanting to look after mental well-being you want to feel good but you also probably want to do things I think sometimes it feels like it's a little bit one or the other but in my opinion I want to like build mental fitness to be able to do all the things I want to do not to just to kind of do nothing that makes sense it's not to kind of sit there meditating all day i want to be achieving my kind of yeah goals so talk me through the stage then of kind of when you started seeing and i guess what was life like at that time can you start a company and look after yourself and be happy or is it is it true that starting a company is inevitably going to be really difficult

Yeah, I definitely think there's a misconception, which is if you set up your own business, you get to be your own boss.

It's all on your timings.

You get to kind of play by the rules, set the rules.

And the reality is when I swapped my nine to five, I replaced it with a 24-7 because you don't stop when you're running a business.

There's always something to do.

There's always something to think about.

Yeah.