LadyGang - LG QUICKIE: A Beautiful Mess!

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

Keltie's internet idols, A Beautiful Mess founders Emma Chapman and Elsie Larson, swing by to chat about finding success in the crafts industry, how to handle failures and putting out small fires within your company.  Need a holiday gift?? Check out our amazing sponsors!! Head & Shoulders: Check out the Supreme Collection TODAY at headandshoulders.com Mrs Fields: Get 20% off site-wide with promo code LADY at mrsfields.com - Just click or tap the microphone at the top and enter promo code LADY for 20% off your order! DailyHarvest: Go to dailyharvest.com and enter promo code LADY to get $25 off your first box! Brooklinen: Go to Brooklinen.com and use promo code ladies to get 10% off your first order and free shipping. Boozy Bites: Go to www.boozybites.com and enter the code Ladygang to get 15% off your order!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's time for a quickie podcast one presents the lady gang the hollywood girl posse with lady gang quickie here's kelty knight becca tobin and jack vanik let's make this quick oh my god our guests today have been my internet idols since i had my first white map book with the bubble keys over 12 years ago and if you've ever felt like me and thought god i wish i could stay home all day and make crafts and it would be my job or you wish you had the guts to apply that really loud, bright floral wallpaper in your dining room with no regrets, or you wanted to make a festive cookie with that cool, smooth icing that seems impossible to do? Well, these two show you how it's possible. This sister duo runs A Beautiful Mess, the best blog ever. They also host A

Beautiful Mess weekly podcast, make awesome photo editing apps like a color story film and template, and their motto is stay home and make something. Hello. Welcome to Kelty Land. I feel very passionate about them. Please welcome intense book nerd and beanie wearing icon, Emma Chapman and her sister, bang aficionado mama to two beautiful babies. And the woman who makes me want to wear only mustard colored cardigans, Elsie Larson. Oh my gosh. That was a great intro. Yeah. That was so much talent. I'm so excited that we know each other because I feel like I've been willing this friendship for, I swear to God, 12 years. What was your first blog you ever posted? Okay. So we started blogging just for fun. We had no idea. It was like basically Zanga.

So I used to post like just a picture of Jason Schwartzman and be like, I love Jason Schwartzman. And that would be a blog post. Yeah. In like 2005. So, and at what point were you like, we need a beautiful like chalk written fun font own font that we design kind of site yeah was there like a transition between jason schwartzman like how do we go from jason's decor like yes we discovered making money and it was so awesome we had no idea when we first started that you could ever make money from a blog and then you know after a few years we discovered it and we were like, okay, I think we want to get a million hits a month. And I think we need to focus on making things that people care about. Yeah. We had a retail store and we realized fairly quickly that

our blog was making more money than our retail store. And our blog was basically like the, for fun, you know, just what we would do while we were bored at the retail store. So we were like, wait a second, maybe this is the business and the retail store is not the business. Maybe we should flip these. So we did. And then you don't have to pay for rent. both. We will have any, any, any stock working out this year. So no kidding. Um, what did you each want to be when you grew up before you were like, I have a shop and I'm a professional blogger. Like what, like if you were to go out and be a normie, what were you going to be normie? Yeah. In high school, I wanted to be a hairstylist. So I never, yeah, I never thought

honestly that I would even work full time. Like I never really thought about it. What did you want of me. That's interesting. Yeah. I don't think I really knew when I was in college, I studied philosophy because it seemed fun. And then I moved to LA for three years because I wanted to do like comedic acting. I went to Groundlings. I really wasn't very good because I'm a hardcore introvert. Turns out that might not be the best profession for you if you're scared to be in front of people. Blogger might fit better. So yeah. And I thought about going to law school, but I was too scared of debt. So I moved home and basically started helping Elsie with her blog and her retail shop and that worked out. So yeah, I was like living off my Etsy shop and, um, you need someone to

ship stuff. And I was like, I can ship stuff. So what was the first, uh, blog post or not first blog post, but what was your first like sponsorship deal or first time that you actually made a dollar from either the blog or that kind of world. Yeah. I remember like back in the day we would sign up to do like a six month campaign and like travel and like be in photo shoots and be in video shoots for like $10,000 or $5,000. So that was probably our first like little hurrah. Like we did one for Levi's and we did one for Adobe Photoshop. Yeah. And that was like in the early days, like before brands really knew that, um, that kind of sponsorship was valuable. Yeah. Okay. Well, I have, I have a question. So you share your whole life, I mean, and, and you both

have, you know, there's the spinoff thing is like, um, you have the Larson house and like, there's, you know, there's all these different businesses now, but overall, both of you are putting a great deal of your personal lives, your behind the scenes life, like every move you make, you buy a house, you're going to redo it. Like you're sharing that with your people. You're going through relationship stuff. You're sharing that with your people. And 99% of the time, like with lady gang, people love it. They're like, Oh my God, your pool. It's going to be so great. Oh God, you're all thinking of you. But then when you put your life out like that and your life is your business, I think it's very difficult to a turn off. And then it becomes really difficult

when people don't like your life. Um, how do you deal with that? Cause that's something that I really struggle with. I'm an overshare and lady gang. I share everything. Everyone knows everything about me. And then when they don't like it, I'm like, I wish I could just hide in a hole, but like, I can't cause that's not my job, you know? Yeah. Are you an Enneagram three? Yes. Maybe you were a three. Yes. That was hard to be an influencer and be a three. I'm a seven. So I'm too. Me too. Me too. Me too. I've never met another seven before. Really? Nine is my boyfriend. Nines are great. Nines are great people. Like the rock solid. Do you have a hard time making a decision? Um, yes. I changed my mind a lot and you have a lot of ideas and a lot of dreams

and she'll have like 50 dreams and I'll make like three of them. I'll be like, let's do these three and try to make them happen. And I would normally have one dream. So I feel like I get to do like double or triple, whereas Elsie kind of doesn't get to do as much, but at least we get something. I think it's good for sevens to work in teams. Yeah. So that someone can keep you focused, right? Oh my God. You're speaking our language. Cause Jack, I'll be like, Hey Jack, can we do a new media deck? And then out of the blue, she'll be like, I have 20 new merch ideas. And I'm like, that wasn't the job. As a seven, you, I'm assuming you probably get a little bit scattered with like all of your work stuff. Like I'm always working on like a hundred different

things at once, but then it also has to be on my time. And Kelsey will be like, Jack, do this now. I'm like, uh, no, I'm doing this other thing now. Cause this is what is really like inspiring me at the moment. She's like making merch designs is inspiring me. I'm like, I know, but a brand really wants our deck and we need to put that we're New York times bestsellers on it before we send it today. I'm sorry that you're, I'm also, Hey Ontario, come on down to bed MGM casino and see what our newest exclusive the price is right fortune pick has to offer don't miss out play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show only at bet mgm check out how we've reimagined three of the show's iconic games like plinko cliffhanger and the big wheel into fun casino

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or someone close to you, please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Cheers, not ready. the lady gang anyway but how do you deal with people when they don't like you right um i mean honestly it's so it's so painful like there's times when we like cry in our cars um just like

i think anyone who goes into the public eye it's just like terrible but then there's also times when it gets easier and just kind of learn to um we we call it like the hillary sunglasses i was gonna say this is what we do so you know how you can send little like gifs or gifs however you say it um i always send elsie like when we're having a day where we have a lot of trolls or people are really hate the thing that we put out there or whatever i will just send her hillary clinton gifs all day long where she's just like putting on her sunglasses in one of the hearings one of the millions of hearings people made her go to or whatever else because i just think you sometimes have to channel or like put on your vision board those people who keep going through the hate

because they know what their purpose is and they know what their goal is. We just did a podcast today about when Martha Stewart wrote a book from federal prison. She's our hero for that. Yes. So that's like a really good vibe.

Yeah, just don't stop. Keep going. The only way they ruin it for you is if you quit. And that's up to you and not them. So you just got to keep, put on those sunglasses in your hearing like Hillary and just get through it.

I love that. I love that. What do you guys do when you have a bad one? well when keltie has an x and then post things in our facebook yeah so keltie has her meltdowns very publicly and they will be in the middle of the night in the facebook group and keltie will post keltie is sad with a picture of her like looking sad like laying in her bed and then she'll overshare recent too i can't even say it's like it was 12 years ago like i literally just this happens every few months and then and then i'll have to send screenshots to becca being like

what the do we do with keltie right now and it's that's the process that happens with keltie her, her meltdowns are very public. Ours are very, I'm a very like emotionally internal person. So I'll just, I'll keep it all inside. Nobody will know what's going on, but we've got to have one and the other. Well, the thing is that like, you know, I come from that mind frame of like, when I like something, I'm very vocal about it. Like I love Matt Nathanson. I will buy all the merch. I bought his Christmas album. You know what? I hate Christmas albums because now when I put Matt Nathanson, sorry, you know what? I put Matt Nathanson radio on now for the rest of my life on Spotify, I'm going to get fucking Christmas songs. That's not what I go to you for Matt. It's

like when you did a Def Leppard cover record, I was like, sometimes I'm listening to Def Leppard covers. I don't want that. But anyway, I still bought it. I bought the fucking t-shirt. Like that's what I, when I love something, I love something. And when I hate something, I don't care. It like does not come into my world. Like I would never sit down and like write a comment on someone's Instagram. If I thought their pool was too big, like people did called being healthy. and some people don't have that this year so yeah or just i mean trolls are just it's it's such an interesting thing trolling it's like sometimes like these people that were like hey i you know i bought your book i came and saw you in dallas i've been following you for 10 years and you're

a fucker and you're like you are so invested in me and i would i guess my point is like i would hope that if you've been following me for 10 years today and you have done all these things and supported the things that I've done, that you would genuinely know that I'm a pretty good person and I'm doing my best and to give me like a little slack. That's what surprised me. Like trolls are trolls, but I'm like talking like when a fan is like, you're canceled. You're like, you've been following me for so long. You know that I'm a messy and I'll say shit. I don't meet, you know, like that's when it gets upsetting. What was it your therapist said? Do you remember? That was the best advice. Okay. She said when people are hurting, they blame, they hide. And

what was the other one? They shame? No. They blame, they hide. I don't remember. They blame? This is why we're not therapists. We go to therapists. It's mostly blaming. Yeah. Well, I just, it's the whole hurt people, hurt people, you know, and I know it's a cliche, but I really do think like this year, especially, but even generally, you never know what someone's going through. It's so they could, you know, their spouse could have just died. They could have just lost their job. They could. And they probably, they may not mean the mean shit they're saying. They're just having that day and you don't know, and it still sucks and they shouldn't deal with it in that way. But you know, if you want grace, you got to give grace. So yeah. I think

also in situations like that, where if it is a true fan or somebody that's been following what you're doing and actually like cares about you, it may come from their heart in a good place as like a constructive criticism, but it's really hard to be on the receiving end of that and not take it personally and not be offended by it. Right. Because I mean, we're human beings on this end of it too. And so are you with, you know, insecurities and all this stuff going on in our heads that little comments like that, that might be like a passing thing to you could end up, you know, playing over in our brains over and over and over again, where it's like, where did I up? Did I do this wrong? Oh my God, I can't do it again. So it kind of has this ripple

effect. The internet is just a very, um, can be a really toxic place even when it's not trying to be for when people are, now Jack has her business. You guys have a thriving business. We have our little business, but I would say that none of us are on the fortune 500. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, all kind of chicks getting it done. I know you guys have a handful of employees. We have a handful of employees. It's like, you know, we're, we're kind of doers. We're staying home and making something, um, to take it out of your words. And, and with that is like, it's kind of difficult because you don't have the support of like, oh, well, you know, uh, Dell owns my company. And so I use their HR and their lawyers and all these things. And so, you know, what are your

headaches? What are your pain points for business? And how do you kind of get through them? Well, they're new all the time. I feel like it's always a blind spot where you're like, oh yeah, if we were at a big company, we would have that. Like, I think, I feel like you just mentioned HR. That's a big thing. Like, um, you know, with our app company, I feel like you should always kind of be on deck, ready to replace people as needed because a lot of times people want to change or need to change or whatever else, you know, and it's not a personal thing and it, you know, you can't expect people to stay forever, but when you're a tiny company and you don't have that kind of support, you're like, well, I'm not like always interviewing. And is that now a part of what I

have to do. We're like, can you wait until after Christmas and not ruin our lives? Yeah. We're like, Hey, I have this personal problem. Could you just wait for a month? Like, it's like that kind of, I'm like, well, that's not very professional, but I don't know how to solve this because we're too small. So yeah. It's like that kind of thing. And then, yeah, we don't have like a lawyer, like, you know, on retainer or whatever. We have a great one we work with and she's awesome. I feel like she is lately. A little bit. Yeah. Do people come for you? no I mean no we haven't had we haven't been sued in a very serious way and I hope that we never are like god forbid yeah I hope not um but lots of little things yes and um or I feel like we're

always putting out like some kind of small fire you know and like learning something we didn't know and like Emma said having blind spots for sure because we've never run a company before like at each stage of growth it's bigger than we've ever thought or imagined it never even worked at a company. Like the first time I heard the word org, I was like, what are you talking about? Yeah. Do you guys want to know what I did before blogging? I worked at Hobby Lobby. So my God. Yeah. Kind of on brand though. Yeah. Of course you did. I want to talk a little bit about failure. So what have you launched that has like been a love of yours and then just like bombed and how did you sort of like pivot? Yeah. Like two or three years ago, we tried to make

our own essential oils and I love essential oils. I was so into it. They were very high quality. And I was like, Oh, everyone hates MLMs. Everyone wants a new option. That's not that. And no one wanted it. No one cared. It didn't do well. And we, you know, just like paid for it. I told you we should have started an MLM, but well, the thing is the people that like essential oils are people that shop that, that like an MLM, like they already have their essential oils. They've got their thing the lady gang and then so what do you do you just like kind of eat it eat the cost and be like everyone's getting essential oils for christmas this year like yeah we actually like move on from businesses all the time yeah like things that you know make money we keep doing

and if it doesn't make money or like it's losing money then we definitely just you know stop and move on i think that's part of it you know i feel like i'm learning to failures are more like a little, like tried that graveyard and you're like, well, I just learned a lesson from that one. And now we move on and you just lay it to rest, rest in peace, dear essential oils business. Has anyone ever come and been like, we'll give you $10 million, but we get control of a beautiful mess and all of your businesses. And then, um, and you were like, no, we want to keep it. Uh, $10 million. I would probably say, yeah. Yeah. I feel like I don't need the shit. um yeah people have like inquired for much much smaller amounts of money and like we're happy

doing it and we see ourselves actually doing it for a while like we're not like winding up right now um or winding down i mean we're winding up still so um yeah like i i don't see us selling it, but for, you know, every business has its price, right? Girl, you know, it's true. It'll come. I have my price. I'm waiting patiently for my million dollars. And then I want to talk about the podcast. We're so excited for you. And, you know, I've obviously, I like eat up everything you guys do. And I think it's very interesting that podcast was your choice because Emma you are shy and um and like your brand is so visual you know what I mean like it's like I want to see the cookie I want to see the wallpaper I want to see like the you know you

painted your own fucking mugs and sewed your own clothes like so what do you think your fans get in the podcast that they might not get on the site and through social I feel like it's just all the little silly like things and just like getting to know the personal side of us you know what I mean because like you never really like know instagram people you know like you think you do but then when you meet them in person you're like oh they're totally different so i think it's just a lot of that i don't think our audience ever heard us uh cuss until the podcast so yeah it's like a very big debate on our podcast and for some reason like we like have the explicit rating on every single episode no matter what and we can't make it go away so now i just don't care anyone

that was just uh elsie's daughter nova it still got the explicit i was like there's no custody on this podcast wait i don't even think ours gets the explicit really um like the first few episodes it was like coming and going and then it just stayed and now it will like never go away you don't know why i would say like you're probably like the opposite of that like i can't imagine a world and we're like, you know, Adam Carolla doesn't have that listing and you do, but you know, it's, things are just hard for banging headband cuties, you know, it's always going to be something. And now it's just like, I guess you just got to throw some F-bombs around. Yeah, we do. And we don't basically, however we feel, but people never hear that on the blog or

on social. So I think it's kind of, I don't know, for some people it was shocking. And for some people they were like, yeah, we get it. It's kind of like a fun, more personal format. Yeah. Like I was listening to a podcast like a couple of years ago that made me feel like close to someone and then I was like, oh my God, I want one, you know? Yeah. And I think the dynamic of sisters, like people don't really, they know we're sisters, but they don't really get to feel the whole, like basically how much we interrupt each other or how much we like kind of don't even care when we interrupt each other. Like it's just a very fluid and we have very different voices. Like literally the cadence of our voice. Yes. So that's kind of funny and fun. I don't know. I just feel

like it gives people a peek into something that you just can't get from like a blog. That's about mostly crafting and cooking and such. I love that. Okay. And it's easy. Oh my God. It's so easy. And you can do it from anywhere now. Definitely easy for you because the shit you're making on the blog is like, I made my own kitchen table. Here it is. I put it with 14 carat gold leaf and it only took me a week. Like, of course, podcasting is easy. Why do you think we do it? Like you're making a fucking bat cookie that has like eyeballs and shit. Like I get it. Difficult. Your projects are getting more intense. So my last question is this. So many ladies want to have cool Instagrams, AKA me. And I bought the beautiful mess has a handful of e-courses. You've got a podcast course,

you've got the photography course, you've got the Instagram course. Um, I took the Instagram course. I thought, found it to be very useful. And I wanted to know if you would give one secret or two secrets to making like how you plan your Instagram and how you make it super beautiful. And then if people want more, they can head on over to a beautiful mess.com and purchase any of the apps or the courses or anything. Yes, totally. Um, okay. So I think posting videos is super important whether you love it or you hate it like jack's cocktail videos are the perfect thing it's just so fun yeah i think that starting some kind of a series of videos is a great way to grow and meet and reach more people just because of the way the algorithm is and like the share page or

whatever let me get my pen hold on i'm just getting my pen more videos okay i hate a video Yeah. Cause you know, they like feature them real big and stuff. Um, so especially the new one, like the reels, that one they're really pushing right now. Um, and the other thing, I think if it's fun for you, like finding like a color scheme and sort of like matching is definitely the easiest, fastest way to make your feet look really good and definitely using the same filter every time. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Those are all the bangers. Yeah. But I think just being yourself, you know, not trying to be anyone else. That's probably like numero uno. Kelty's trying to be herself times a million on Instagram right now.

Yeah. It's, I'm there for it. I love it. I'm the running. I actually had, I had a, I had a private tutorial with Elsie. It's true. Texting late at night. I'm like, Hey, I bought the course and I was like, and it's still not a lot's happening. Um, but my issue is that, um, well, I have a lot of issues, but just in general, I'm not that interesting. So I don't have like a keen sense of style and I don't have an eye for things. Like, I think my house is really beautiful. So Elsie's advice to me, and you can see that I've taken it. She was like, listen, okay. You don't have an eye for like fashion or different things. I mean, she didn't say that, but like, I don't, I don't, I'm not like a fashion blogger. That's like, here's how I put my like

French tuck in or whatever. And I'm not cooking. Like there's nothing about my life. That's like other than my, what's in my brain. And my brain does not make good Instagram content. So she was like, your house is super beautiful. All I want from you is to like see pictures of your beautiful kitchen. So I just started posting like every third picture is a picture of my beautiful kitchen. And I have gotten like 2000 followers and my engagement is like way up. So Kelsey was right. I'm so proud of course it works. It's a great kitchen. I had a dream about your kitchen. Isn't that insane. That's how great it is. It's so great. So beautiful. So, all right. So, uh, you guys can follow along with, they have so many different accounts, but just go to a beautiful

mess.com to find them, um, to find all this stuff. The podcast comes out a beautiful mess podcast every Monday, which is great because you don't have a lady gang podcast on Monday. So now you can go over, subscribe to their podcast, leave a review. Let's get these ladies charting. Um, it's a really great podcast and i feel like you are i mean a cooler better neater more interesting version of us but like very much in the same vibe if you like we're definitely not cooler no but we love you so much and we're so excited i know we love you guys chatting with you guys so good we can't wait till we all move to nashville and we all become best friends and eat pancakes let's do have a weekend let's have a weekend we will like filter it all the same

it'll be great everybody has the same filter yes and everyone's probably i didn't say this to me in the episode but becca is shooting her television series because she's like a working actress right now so she couldn't join us for this one um but she sends her love and we missed her and she was like i don't know anything about crafts i'll be okay just keep me updated and i was like i got you so she says hi though okay cool so we weren't here for a long time jack but we're here for a good time bye lady gang is produced by alex ingber will sterling and steve delamater make sure that you rate and review this podcast where you listen to it please it makes a huge difference and also subscribe so you never miss an episode and if you really love the episode we want to hear from you

on our social media channels at becca at kelty at jack vanek at the lady gang but more importantly we want to see you sharing the lady gang with your friends so be like oh my god i just listened this episode was great okay here you go here's a link love it love it love it okay thanks for listening and we'll see you next Tuesday