Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Stephanie McNeal on the Raw Truth of Influencer Culture EP 304

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Join us for a fascinating and thought-provoking conversation as Stephanie McNeal, a renowned expert on influencer culture, sits down with John R. Miles. They delve deep into the unfiltered lives of influencers, pulling back the curtain on the glamorous facade and revealing the realities that lie beneath. McNeal is the author of Swipe Up for More!: Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers. Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/stephanie-mcneal-on-influencer-culture/  Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers: A Conversation with Stephanie McNeal In this episode of Passion Struck, Stephanie McNeal, author of Swipe for More, sheds light on the lucrative world of influencers and the impact they have on society. From the rise of mommy bloggers to the ethical challenges of featuring children in influencer content, McNeal reveals the complexity of this industry and leaves us wondering - will influencers continue to shape our lives and choices? Brought to you by Hello Fresh. Use code passion16 to get 16 free meals, plus free shipping!” Brought to you by Indeed. Head to https://www.indeed.com/passionstruck, where you can receive a $75 credit to attract, interview, and hire in one place. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/9vlClaeUdcI  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://youtu.be/QYehiUuX7zs  Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Marshall Goldsmith on How You Create an Earned Life: https://passionstruck.com/marshall-goldsmith-create-your-earned-life/  Watch the solo episode I did on the topic of Chronic Loneliness: https://youtu.be/aFDRk0kcM40  Want to hear my best interviews from 2023? Check out my interview with Seth Godin on the Song of Significance and my interview with Gretchen Rubin on Life in Five Senses. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  Passion Struck is now on the AMFM247 broadcasting network every Monday and Friday from 5–6 PM. Step 1: Go to TuneIn, Apple Music (or any other app, mobile or computer) Step 2: Search for “AMFM247” Network

coming up next on passion struck so many people spend so much time on Instagram and following influencers and being influenced by influencers and their shopping habits or their parenting habits or their health habits. And I think it's something that a lot of people don't really think about in a really thoughtful way, at least until the past few years. And I wanted to dive in and really explore it because I have seen how influencers and following influencers have impacted me in so many ways and so many of my choices in terms of how I dress, how I cook, how I work out, how I parent. But there isn't a lot of actual thoughtful analysis of the industry itself.

Welcome to PassionStruck. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.

Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 304. PassionStruck consistently rated by Apple as one of their top 10 most popular health podcasts. And thank you to all who come back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better and impact the world. In case you didn't know, a PassionStruck

is now on syndicated radio in the AMFM247 broadcast network. Catch us every Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. Eastern time. Links will be in the show notes. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for joining us. Or you simply wanna introduce this to a friend or family member.

We now have episode stutter packs which are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we organize in convenient topics to get any new listener. A great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. In case you missed it earlier this week, I had some great interviews.

First was with Hal Hirstfield, who's an accomplished professor of marketing, behavioral decision-making and psychology at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. We discuss his new book, Your Future Self, How to Make Tomorrow Better Today. I also interviewed Sally Jenkins, New York Times' bestselling author, and a powerhouse in the world of journalism, with over two decades of experience as a columnist and future sports writer for The Washington Post. We discussed her newest book, The Right Call, What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life. And if you liked either of those for today's episode, we would love it if you gave us a five-star rating and review review that goes such a long way

to bringing more people into the passion to our community where we can bring them weekly doses of hope, meaning, and inspiration, and teach people how to live a limitless life. And I know our guests love to hear from you too. Now let's talk about today's episode. I've recently done a number of episodes on the impact of digital addiction.

Today, I'm going to look at another side of this. Instagram and its influencers. Countless hours of our daily lives are dedicated to indulging in the infinite scroll of Instagram. It's remarkable to think that 15 years ago, influencers were non-existent, but today, they wield a significant influence over how we cook, consume, parent, decorate, think, and ultimately live our lives. However, despite their pervasive presence in our daily routines, the inner workings behind the meticulously curated Instagram grids, a captivator's remain largely surouted in mystery.

Thankfully, that veil is about to be lifted. My guest today, Stephanie McNeill, a senior editor for Glamour Magazine and former cultural reporter for Buzzfeed news, takes us behind the curtain into the secretive real world of influencers in her book, Swipe Up For More, inside the unfeltored lives of influencers delving deep into the lives of three prominent influencers, namely Caitlin Covington from Southern Curls and Pearls, Merna Valero, the running advocate, and the original mommy blogger Shannon Bird. McNeill offers an unprecedented glimpse into their journeys. Drong from three years of immersive recording, we discuss how these influencers construct their

empires, grapple with critics and cynics, assert their creative autonomy in the face of tech platforms that facilitate their businesses, navigate public parenting, all while maintaining their impeccable appearances. We delve into why there is a notable presence of Mormon Mami influencers, what they experience is like for those working with highly popular influencers. How influencers manage the abundance of free merchandise they receive, the inner workings of brand partnerships, and perhaps most intriguingly, the realities of their earnings. Stephanie McNeil is an alumna of the University of Southern California's Annemburg School of Communication and Journalism, where she received her BA in broadcast and digital

journalism with a double major in international relations. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so excited today to welcome Stephanie McNeil to Passionstruck. Welcome, Stephanie. Hi. Thank you so much for having me. Well, I understand you grew up in Southern California and that your parents are both Naval Academy graduates like I am.

And when I first got out of the service, the first place I moved to was actually San Diego, which I think is where you're from. Yeah, you and my parents have a lot in common. They moved to San Diego right after graduating from the Naval Academy, and then they both went into the reserves and stuck around there for more than 20 years. I grew up in a, and our east of San Diego

in the mountains of San Diego. So you were over by Alcahone area? Exactly, yes. Yeah. What was amazing to me is I lived in La Mesa because at the time I was going to San Diego State, but I worked down at Point Loma and Coronado and it was so interesting how there could be a 40 to 50 degree temperature change practically between the coast and coming home.

Yeah, absolutely. It was so hot. I went to high school in Elcahone and then I lived about 30 minutes east of that actually. So the temperatures up there were even more extreme isn't the right word, but we definitely got semblance of seasons. My mom's from the East Coast and really liked feeling like she had seasons in California. So we would get snow every four years maybe, but it would the temperature was a bit cold and yeah, it was really hot in the summer.

So that's funny. A lot of people have no idea when I say I'll go hold on or anything like that so it's gonna be bad. Well what was one of your favorite things about San Diego? Oh gosh everything at San Diego is a great place it is just a very laid-back lifestyle I think everyone is for the most part, pretty chill, which sounds very California for you to say, but it's just an easy life, I think, the antithesis of New York,

because now I'm looking to you up to deal with all the different weather, and it still irritates me that I have to think about what I wear, when I step outside, I just don't wanna think about it, and I don't wanna have to put about what I wear, when I step outside, I just don't want to think about it. And I don't have to worry. I don't want to have to put a coat on or anything like that. I think it's just easy and it's nice. You don't really have to worry about extreme stuff

for unfortunately the droughts and the fire seasons and stuff that's happening. I like the Southern California lifestyle, lived in Brooklyn. I live in Brooklyn now, and I've lived in New York for about 10 years, but definitely a California person, for sure. Well, prior to starting this whole passion struck endeavor, I was doing fractional work where I would come into companies

and I'd be a fractional CEO or chief marketing officer, chief information officer, et cetera. And I happened to be doing that for a company called Bold Business. And I happened to be doing that for a company called Bold Business. And I had never thought in a million years that I was going to start getting into the publishing world, but the owner of that company used to own CEO magazine and he wanted to try to replicate it. So we started two publications of our own. One was called Bold Business, and the other one was called Project Bold Life. And interestingly enough,

we were trying to utilize a lot of the concepts that Buzzfeed did as a guideline to how we were trying to build those brands. I wanted to ask you how does Buzzfeed create network-specific content to be consumed within social media because they really did it differently than everyone else. My former boss Ben Smith, he just wrote a book all about Buzzfeed and how they used the social web to drive traffic and the history of the company. I think the main philosophy that I gained from working there for so long was

the concept of shareability and that's what makes people want to share content. And that's not just articles, that's videos, photos, silly emails, memes, this idea that people want connection and people almost want a reason to connect with their friends. And it's really true. If you think about the people in your life, I live in Brooklyn and I have friends and family all over the country and sometimes rather than just checking in with them and saying, Hey, how are you? What are you doing today? It's a lot easier just to say, hey, I saw this really funny video or I saw this meme or something like that. When you think about how much conversation that drives, that's the spirit that Buzzfeed especially in the early days really captured and was able to use to its advantage.

Not in a nefarious way, but in a way that really cultivated this big community of users and subscribers and followers. At least from my vantage point in working there for so long, that's what I took away from it. And that's what I always think about when there's all these questions about I work in digital media.

So it's all about how do we get people to read? Do we need to do these tips and tricks? And I'm a big believer that you really just have to create things that create conversation and things that make people want to share. And that can be a list of your favorite designer purses, or it can be a 10,000 word article that's really compelling.

But either way, creating that connection in that moment is a really good way to make content that resonates with people. Yeah, and I understand that recently, as of April, there've been a number of changes in the company, what's the latest on Buzzfeed news? Yeah, so I actually work at Glamour Magazine now. I started in the end of March.

So I left Buzzfeed news shortly before they decided to shut down the department. And I think it was April 20th. So yeah, that's obviously a huge bummer and it's a huge loss, I think, for the company in the world. I learned a lot there and I think it really created a really compelling style of journalism that we see the DNA of all over the media from the New York Times to major magazines. I work with people all over Condaid, NASA and our work who used to work there. So yeah, I think it did make a really big impact. Yeah, well, I found it was interesting how

in just such a short time, he eclipsed maybe even doubled the volume that Huffington Post had with BuzzFeed. So really did play such a significant role there for a period of time. Well, you've been writing and blogging about bloggers and influencers if I have it right since about 2016. And I wanted to ask you, what is the most surprising thing that you've uncovered about Instagram versus reality from engaging and thinking about your subjects? reality from engaging and thinking about your subjects.

I think the most surprising thing is exactly how much money you could make. I think people don't really get it because I think that one thing that people don't think about when they think about the influencer industry is the advantage for corporations. And I discuss this in my book, but I think people are really confused as to why influencers make money, why people want to pay them. But if you look at it from an economical perspective, if you're a corporation like Target or Walmart or something like that, you're a return on investment with working with an influencer versus doing a traditional ad campaign or doing some sort of people they're paying, they're only really paying one person. So I'll give you an example. So If you're target say and you want to do a line, you want to promote a line of Topperware, let's say, you could do a whole ad campaign. And I don't think they would do this, but this is just an example. I came up with hop and hop in my head. You could do a whole ad campaign, and I don't think they would do this, but this is just an example I came up with on the top of my head.

You could do a whole ad campaign about your top aware, and you could spend a million dollars on this campaign. And it could be a great campaign. You're not only paying everyone in your advertising department and house, maybe you're bringing in another ad agency, you're hiring models, you're hiring videographers, you're hiring photographers, you're hiring makeup, you're hiring hair, you're hiring post-production people. So it's this huge spend, get in front of 500,000 people for this ad campaign. Or you could pay an influencer who most of them shoot at least some of their campaigns themselves

or they just have one photographer or one videographer. Most of them do their own hair and makeup. The thing with the companies is they say, hey influencer, do an ad campaign for our Tupperware and here's some notes, here's like what we want to do, come back to us with some footage or whatever, but then they just let them do it. They don't have to have all these other moving parts in it. So even if they pay the influencer a fraction of the million dollars, they would have spent on that ad campaign. Let's say they pay the influencer $20,000. the influencer $20,000. That is such a deal for them. To hypothetically, get the same number of eyeballs.

Because an influencer who has a million followers, you might get a million views on your ad, or you might get 500,000 views on your ad, which is the same. You could hypothetically get from a print or a TV ad or some other social media ad on your own accounts. So think about it from that perspective. I think people get really just a gasp at the idea that oh my gosh an influencer is doing an ad campaign for a brand for the a make a video and some photos which takes a lot of

work but they're getting paid $20,000 for that ad. Well, yeah, because they're doing all of the work that someone that 50 people have to do. Obviously, I'm simplifying in various ways. I wouldn't say the production value is exactly the same, but a lot of these companies are beginning to think that ROI is the same, And that's the key. So I think what people kind of misunderstand is influencers are making so much money because they're such a high or a turn on investment for brands. And they can do a lot of these campaigns. So they're making a lot more money than people realize. And I've asked people a point blank to tell me how much they make in a year. They won't.

I would say most major influencers at about half a million followers, I've been told and I read in my book can make about minimum $10,000 per ad. And so even if they're doing for a month, that's $40,000 in that one revenue stream alone. The craziest thing to me is just how lucrative this is and how it's just a very obvious win for companies.

And I think people are just completely in the dark and they don't really understand the process and they don't understand how lucrative it is and why? Well, we're gonna be talking a lot more about that. And today, the majority of the discussion is going to be about your brand new book, which comes out this week called Swipe for More, Inside the Unfeltered Lives of Influencers. And I thought a great starting point in discussing the book. And you just tapped into it a little bit is for you to go through what you define by influencers and how an influencer differs from let's say a video creator.

Yeah, so I in the book and elsewhere in my reporting really try to differentiate between different types of people that make money making content on the internet. And I think it's important to put them into these categories because the businesses operate slightly differently. And it's just like looking at movies and TV, for example. Everyone in a movie and a TV as an actor, they can move in and out. They are different industries and it's important to examine them differently. There are people that write whole books about TV and movies and vice versa. So video creators tend to be people who started on platforms like Fine or YouTube and I think one key thing to know about them is they got a lot of their start with virality. So these are people who a lot of their success comes from these big videos with huge numbers, getting 10 million views, tons of subscribers, and YouTube culture kind of evolved to

feed that beast. So the speed where people are constantly outdoing themselves. And you see this DNA on TikTok now as well where people are doing big kind of event style videos and there's feuds and there's pranks and there's really ratcheting up this energy to get more and more views. So influencers on the other hands are people who started with usually blogs or some other form of writing style, they tend to have less followers in general. They're not searching this big virality or this big moment of viral fame per se. And they are more valuing a consistent relationship with their audience. So if you think of video creators making something that's akin to the big TV show that everyone wants to watch, influencer is more looking to create Vogue.

A big magazine that people are going to be extremely devoted to, that they're going to come back to again and again, and that they views. They seek to have a core audience where people are coming back to them again and again. Okay. So how would you view someone like me, for instance? So I have the podcast channel. I have three YouTube channels, over half a million followers on Instagram, a few hundred thousand on LinkedIn. I do both in a way, but I've never really looked at myself as an influencer. I just at myself as someone who's been trying to go out there and help people live their lives in a better way. Well, so that's a really interesting question because the two subgroups that I just explained really were prominent, especially in these distinct ways in the beginning of the influencer slash

creator economy. So in the early 2010s, in the mid 2000s, when this industry was really growing, there were these really two distinct types of groups. And they still exist today, but one thing that influencers have brought and video creators of well have brought to culture is every single industry now incorporates parts of being an influencer and being a video content creator. So before the internet, you could have done the same thing that you're doing, but maybe you would have had a radio show or you would have published books. But because we have so many of these tools in our disposal,

because video creators and influencers have built these mechanisms that we can promote our work, it connect with audiences and share thoughts and writing and speaking and all of that. Now so many different industries can tap into the influencer model to share their work. So journalists in some ways now are influencers. There are so many things I published a story earlier today and I'm on my Instagram sharing it and talking to people just like an influencer would do about something they were promoting because I'm copying them in a way in order to connect with my audience. So to answer your question, I think you're definitely an influencer in your own way.

But that term now touches so many of us. I'm an influencer. You can make the argument that I have that politicians are now tapping into influencer ways as well. And who do you think really runs the influencer industry? Who runs the influencer industry? I think this is a really broad term, but women. And I think that's one thing that I really hope people take away from my book is there are not many industries

in the world that are created by and for women that make this much money. And I think now there are so many mechanisms. There's companies have whole influencer marketing teams where they reach out to influencers. Those are mostly young women. I know that's broad. I can get more specific if you'd like. Well, I'm more interested, I would say, in why your goal in writing this book was to bring the multi-billion-dollar influencer industry to life as its own entity. I didn't see that anyone had really done it before. There have been books about Instagram, great books about Facebook. There have been books about the platforms. And I think that a lot of writing about the internet in general does focus on the platforms. And rightfully so, Mark Zuckerberg's

a character, there's a lot of intrigue there. But without influencers and all of us, Instagram wouldn't have anything to put on its platform. And I think that really gets ignored. I think a lot of times people spend so much time on Instagram and following influencers and being influenced by influencers in their shopping habits or their parenting habits or their health habits. And I think it's something that a lot of people don't really think about in a really thoughtful way at least until the past few years. And I wanted to dive in and really explore it because I have seen how influencers and following influencers have impacted me in so many ways and so many of my choices in terms of how I dress, how I cook, how I

work out, how I parent. But there isn't a lot of actual thoughtful analysis of the industry itself. So that's why I did it and hopefully I succeeded in... What does it mean to you then that this cohort of, let's say, women is driving so much of our purchases, our thoughts, and our lives. And how does it impact mainstream female culture today? I think that it's a lot more democratic because since there is such a lower bar to entry in giving into an influencer role, I think it has really changed how so many industries operate. One of the things

I discussed in the book, and Volta Scro's Drive, Work in Women's Magazine, I love journalism, I love magazines. One of the women that I interviewed in the book, tried to break into the magazine industry when she was in her early 20s and just graduated from college, And on paper, she's a very stereotypical person. He would think, oh, yeah, she definitely could work in the magazine industry. But she couldn't afford to live in New York on the salary that an entry-level job paid her. So she ended up making her Instagram account

and her blog. Now, she's one of the biggest influencers. And she's essentially created her own online magazine. And another, one of the women I interviewed in the book was a plus-sized runner and she wrote a blog about how she doesn't feel like she needs to be the stereotypical Nike just do it like no pain, no gain runner. She really loves to run and exercise for peer pleasure and enjoyment of the outdoors. And because her blog resonated with so many people that didn't see that representation in mainstream media in mainstream advertising for sports, she really became a big and powerful influencer to the point where Louis Levin was essentially begging her to be the face of their brands because they

realized they had this huge untapped market. She gave them a hard time because they have had not great representation in the past and she was okay like I'm going to interview you and make sure that this is something that you're actually committed to. She has been able to bring the concerns of her community and people like her directly to Lou lemon and how she's on billboard, she's in all of their ad campaigns. And that's to me as a very tangible way that influencer culture is impacting our culture because it's showing so many more different things that can be prevalent in fashion and beauty and clothing and wellness. There's only so many voices that there's only so many mainstream media outlets. And I think influencers have really democratized that in a sense.

and the media outlets. And I think influencers have really democratized that in a sense. Well, you start out the book by talking about what I'll call a pilgrimage of sorts to visit the land of Mormon influencers in Utah. Yes. And it's interesting because you meet with one and you were given a tour of mega houses that many of the influencers their own. Why is Salt Lake City such a haven for mommy bloggers?

So that's the million dollar question. And one of the men I interviewed in the book, who's wife is a mommy blogger, gave me what he thinks is his explanation, which I think it makes a lot of sense, which is many millennial Mormon women were raised in the 90s in the early 2000s, and that was a time where I grew up in that era as well, and there was this big emphasis on female empowerment in girls, women who who work and there was very much anything a boy can do a girl can do mentality and that element of culture where

I think many more millennial women do work outside the home than our mothers did or our grandmothers did, shaped against the expectations of Mormon culture, which is the you settle down, marry young, have kids, become wives. And so many of these women were in their early 20s and were having babies and were married and weren't working outside of the home. They were highly educated. They were really motivated. They were really entrepreneurial, and blogging was a fad in the mid-2000s and early 2010s, and many of them started blogging as a creative outlet, as a business-oriented outlet, or just for fun. And corporations, again, they spotted basically a gold mine because I think this is changing

a little bit, but a lot of corporations that sell things for kids and parents, they are going to gravitate towards very beautiful young, well dressed, well made up, nice hair, good looking moms. And it was just a match made in heaven where all of these baby brands and maternity clothes brands and all this stuff really wanted to work with these women who had these big following, blogging about their lives. And because these women were savvy and realized quickly this could be turned into a real business opportunity. It just exploded. And then if one person does it, another person can do it because as the person I interviewed told me in their community and the Salt Lake City and the suburbs, it's a very tight community.

Many people there are warm in and it's just a very tight knit close community. The people who were getting really big on the internet, it's not like it's a celebrity on Hollywood. This is the girl that you went to middle school with or the girl who lives down the street. So if you're a entrepreneurial young mom as well and the girl that you knew from high school is making a ton of money doing it, you're, oh, well,

I could probably do that. This seems attainable. This isn't something where I have no shot getting in. If she could do it, I could do it. And he compared it to the Silicon Valley. It's like, why is the Silicon Valley? Why is there so many startups in the Silicon Valley? Because it was just got the culture breeds on itself. One person does it, then another person does it. Now, all these people are doing it. So that was his explanation. And I think that's a really good explanation. And I think the LDS

community has always been very pure and good advocates for the joys of home making the joys of motherhood. It's something that's very valued in their culture and I think they have used that and used these things that they enjoy and love and been able to turn it essentially into a business opportunity. That's what I think makes sense, but other people might have other opinions as well. Well, throughout the book, you end up profiling three of these influencers, profiling three of these influencers. And I'm gonna tackle each one individually. And since we started talking about Salt Lake, I will start with Shannon Bird.

And I was hoping you could tell the audience, who is she, and why is she the Adam Sandler of Mommy Bloggers? So Shannon Bird, like I mentioned, is a mommy blogger. She is very typical to persona. I just described where she grew up in this holy city suburbs. and ambitious, but also wanted to abide by the norms of her culture, wanted to be a mom, met her husband, Dallan, who was several years older than her when she was in her early 20s, and they married and had five kids, essentially, over the next decade or so. This example that I just said, she knew a pair of sisters who were starting blogs and had become very successful as Mommy bloggers in the early 20 tens and they lived in her town and they said, hey, you should give this a try. You have young kids to work getting all this free stuff. We're getting all these deals to sell things. You should try your own blog. And so she started her blog and also her husband's from the East Coast. And so she thought it would be a good way for his family to keep up on her kids and see what they were up to. So she

started her blog. And at the time, the image of Moby blockers, especially ones that are in the LBS church, was a very picturesque, sanitized, almost like a magazine style of blog where right now, the trend is It was more of this is something aspirational that you should look up to so that children always looked very put together and everything was always great and the photos were always beautiful and that just wasn't really Shannon's style. She's a very confessional person. She is a very real person, a very authentic person and she just thought it would be boring to post all these very quaint, luxurious images of her children. And so she just leaned into her zany side. And also she said, in hindsight, she had so many kids, she had all these young babies. She couldn't really put on even a facade that everything was perfectly serene all the time. So she adapted this persona as a messy mom and she calls

herself the Adam Sandler of mommy bloggers like he described where she has always loved to lead into these zany antics or messy dramas going on in her life. And it's won her a lot of support, but also a lot of haters who judge her, which I talk about in the book as well. Yeah, and I wanted to touch on two things based on what you just brought up. One of them is after I discovered who these people were, I went and looked at their profiles myself. And I noticed as you were talking about that, she does feature a lot of pictures of her kids. And I know in my case, I have a son and a daughter, they're older now, but they have both asked me not to feature them in post without seeking their permission

first, which means they don't get really featured at all, which I don't mind at all, because that's their desire. But for mommy influencers, what are some of the ethics and challenges of featuring their kids? Yeah, it's a really thorny question for sure. I think one thing to remember is it's really easy to look at the past decade of mommy blower culture and see what the internet is now and say, oh I would never do that, I would never go, my kids on the internet. There's like privacy issues, there's ethical issues, but when many of these women started out, the internet was not what it was and they truly felt like they were just sharing with a very small group of people.

And as the industry has grown and evolved and people started making real money off the they truly felt like they were just sharing with a very small group of people. And as the industry has grown and evolved and people started making real money off the images and videos of their children and people started to say, hey, are these children working? Are they not working? What's the line here? There has been a lot of discussion,

especially in recent years of, is this something that the state or federal government needs to regulate? Is this something that we should view as a kin to that of a child actor, where a child can only be in footage for ex numbers of day, if they need to have a water break or a certain amount of the proceeds made off their image needs to be set aside for their own profit eventually or in a trust or something like that. And a lot of people have brought up the law which regulate child actors, which is called the Cougan law, which is the law that makes people take breaks on set.

Babies can only be on set for a certain amount of time proceeds from their working to put into a trust. And there has been a little bit of legislative rumblings in the past couple of years of trying to do a kugen law for social media fame, but it's really tricky and it also really runs the gamut. There are really exploitative unfortunately parents on social media who purposely put their kids in bad situations in order to get footage and views. There are people who share everything about their kids, including really intimate moments. There are influencers who don't share their kids faces at all, don't share their kids' names, only refer to the bike nickname. And I think it's tricky because I think

to, this is not a new problem, I think it is a very exacerbated problem by the internet, but women have used the persona of their family and children in creative work for a very long time. An influencer that I talked to about this issue last year said something like, I understand the ethical issues and I have certain boundaries like she also, now that her kids are older, will only feature them with their permission. But she said, I write my blog, it's creative writing about motherhood. I never put anything Embarrassing or identifiable and my kids on there, but it's about me and it's about my memoirs of motherhood and Why is that different than someone writing a book and publishing it about motherhood?

How it was that different and it is different in many ways. So it's a thorny issue, but it's not a new issue. It's just a exacerbated issue and I think it's hard. I think I think we haven't figured out this in general. I don't think we figured out child stars. There's been this whole push this year after Jeanette McCurdy's memoir came out that people are saying maybe children should not be in movies and TV's full stop. Is there a way to ethically have a child actor? Is there and you could say the same exact thing? Is there ethically a way to have a child influencer or an influencer featuring their children? And I don't know if we figured it out yet. I'm of the mind that leaving people to self-regulate is never going to work because unfortunately,

there are many parents out there who don't have their children's best interests at heart. But I do think there is a way to do it ethically and I think people do it ethically every day. And then the final point I would make is, we really don't know yet what the kids are going to think because the same influencer I just referred to who talked about the memoir is really one of the OG quote unquote mommy bloggers like she started way way back and she's been doing it for almost 20 years at this point. And she has, I think,

six kids. And some of them are now adults. Some of them are now in college. I think one of them is in his early 20s. And they, in many ways, don't really care. She said, and that's something actually we've seen with Gen Z is some Gen Z doesn't care. And obviously there's a huge spectrum, but the truth is we really don't know what the generation that is growing up online. And that goes from my baby who's on my personal Instagram account all the way up to people who parents post them to a million followers a day. We don't really know. So I think that we're really going to have to see what the next generation says, and then we can really put some good guardrails into a cow. The very short answer is I don't know. I think we need to figure it out, but I don't know if anyone has the solution yet.

Okay, well, the second person you profile is Caitlin Covington. There's a stereotypical lifestyle and fashion blogger, but is one of the pioneers of the blogging industry. However, I found it interesting that in the book, you write that Caitlin hates to tell people that she's an influencer. Why is that? I think influencers have a bad rap. I think over the past couple of years, influencers have become a dirty word. This stereotype of them is

almost like a sell out, a woman who doesn't have any marketable skills, but just sells who doesn't have any marketable skills, but just sells their life on the internet for money. And I think the Kardashian backlash has trickled down to influencers where I think people think of influencers as many Kardashians where they don't have any talent, they don't provide anything good to the world. And it's become a catch all for the downfall of society through social media. And I'm sure influencers are the butt of a lot of jokes.

So it's hard if you are an influencer because there's not another really word to describe yourself. I think some people try content creator, but I think that is similarly mocked. So yeah, I think it's hard if your entire profession is considered a joke, but I have seen a couple of influencers online say that they're trying to reclaim the word influencer as well. Well, then lastly, you bring up a third influencer and hopefully I can pronounce her name correct.

Marna, Valerio. Yeah, that's right. And you say that she represents an important part of the influencer industry that is rarely discussed. What is that? So, yeah, I mentioned her a little bit before, but I think people, again, when people think of an influencer, they think mostly about shopping, people selling a bunch of cheap clothes from China is something that I see a lot. It's such a big industry now.

It's so broad. And I think people don't really think about niche influencers, which I think you could call yourself a niche influencer if you so choose with your podcast and your Instagram and all of that kind of stuff. But it's almost like being a thought leader in a certain realm. I really wanted to highlight Merna because I think her story is so incredible and it shows how you can use the power of influence and influencing to not only make radical changes in your own life,

but also bring your personal values and your message to a wider audience than you ever would have before. So I talked about the Louisville Lemon example, where she was able to manifest real change with Louis Lemon for her community, which are athletes who are not a size two, who exercise for pleasure, not to change their bodies. And she really got to be in the room when they were designing new sizes for bigger

athletes, when they would bring that issue to the forefront. But also it's been really empowering for her because she's someone who has a really unique story and Really loves the outdoors and has been able to build this incredible life for herself. She was working as a teacher and doing good. She wasn't making teachers. They're not like rolling in the dough. in the dough, and she's now hoping to build a house where all of her family can come stay and really build almost some generational wealth for herself. And I just thought it was a really incredible story and I had followed her for a while. And I thought that's the part of the industry

that people are missing, is the ability to impact culture, the ability to influence change, but also the freedom that it is giving so many people. And I was doing an interview about the book a few days ago and I want to bring up this point that the person I was talking to was saying that someone they knew was really annoyed because their children who were in college said to them, well, I really think it'd be cool to be an influencer in XYZ realm. And their parents are no clutching their chest. Oh, no, not an influencer. But if you look at it from the perspective of the next generation, it's really empowering to have the option to build your own business based on your

interests and values. Because every school day, you read about a new corporation doing mass layoffs, the tech industry is a mess, the industry is a mess. Things feel really unstable right now. And I think for this next generation entering the workforce, it can be really empowering to have the option of, you know what, I don't need to work somewhere where I can be laid off and my computer, shut off in a moment's notice, or I have to toil away and work for an abusive boss or for people of color.

I don't want to work in a work environment where I wanted to bring forth is see how this can be making a change for women, people of color, people of different body types, traditionally aren't seen as making big in business, how it's really giving them a voice and a seat at the table and a chance to build something for themselves. Okay and I know for me personally, I have had some issues with meta and YouTube in them shutting down or making it harder for me to get my message out. And in the case of YouTube, I had an issue, when you upload a video, you're supposed to give it a rating. And I had done a story on a Jewish rabbi who had been molested when he upload a video, you're supposed to give it a rating. And I had done a story on a Jewish rabbi who had been molested when he was a child. It was not very graphic

content. It was very slightly mentioned throughout the episode. And so I labeled the content as such that there was some mentions of it, but it was lightly mentioned. And YouTube ended up disagreeing. And then threatened to cancel my whole mentioned. And YouTube ended up disagreeing and then threatened to cancel my whole account. And this is after I had put 450 videos up and turned off monetization for almost three months. And there's no repercussion for it. The answer you get back is our algorithm will decide when it's going to give you back the properties. And so I wanted to ask you the same question through that lens.

How much power do you think Meta and YouTube have over influencers that use them? A huge amount. And that's one of the things I get into in the book as well is this has been in the news a lot lately. And we're going to talk to BuzzFeed News, but many parts of contact creation all across the board have been really cannibalized

by the platforms. I'm talking YouTube, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, where they took over so much of online content. They really made it so they controlled the conversation for a really long time. How this applies to bloggers is that all the people that I talked to in my book started out as bloggers. And what that meant was they owned their URL,

they owned all their content, it lived on their website, and they ran ads on a website that they controlled. So if something went wrong with the ad, they would have to contact their service provider, but it's not like they're going to wake up one day, and their website is just going to be wiped. And if it does, they own the websites. They have a lot of ways to fix ways to fix that. In the mid 2010s, there was this big push to the platforms. You need to put all your stuff on the platforms. You need to be on Instagram, you need to be on YouTube. And influencers really last on to Instagram and Pinterest

as a way to spread their content, but it cannibalized the entire internet. So people stopped visiting blogs. They stopped doing all these things where they were actually going to these websites that people owned and just started looking at everything on Instagram. And the problem was instead of building their business on a website that they owned, they were now building a business on a website that someone else owned. And there has not been, in my opinion,

an adequate level of support for these people who have built their businesses on Instagram. And I did a piece about this for BuzzFeed news about two years ago. It's really hard now for influencers to break away from Instagram and go back to platforms that they control because most companies will pay so much more for an ad on Instagram versus an ad on a personal blog or a sub-stack or something like that. That is really bad because now

there was an influencer I knew who has a million followers has been in the industry for over 10 years and one day she woke up and her Instagram was gone. And this wasn't just, oh no, where's my Instagram? She has a whole month full of business obligations that she needs to do. She has obligations to people she works with. Like she has to post on Instagram, or else she's gonna violate her contract. And the level of support that influencers have

and people are always surprised when I say this is literally the exact same as anyone has. So if I wake up tomorrow and my personal Instagram with cat pictures is gone, I have to email help that Instagram and hope someone will respond to me. And if I have a million followers business Instagram account,

the level of support is exactly the same. And that to me is a problem. Oh, and it's impossible to get to a human, to discuss your issue. Well, Stephanie, I had one final question for you and that is if someone was listening today or they pick up a copy of your book, what is the core message that you

hope they get from it? I think the core message is influencers matter. I want people to make their own opinions. I don't want people to go away from it saying, oh, she's trying to say influencers are greater. Oh, she's trying to say influencers are horrible. I think that people should decide on their own, but I think what I want people to come away with is this is something that we have to pay attention to because it's really impacting our

society and a myriad of ways and it is something that we need to think about critically. So yeah, influencers matter is my main pitch. Well Stephanie, thank you for coming on the show. And if people wanted to learn more about you, where is a central place that they could do so? The best place is my Instagram account, which is at Steph E. McNeil. Okay, well, thank you so much for coming on the show and congratulations on your brand new book.

Thank you so much. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Stephanie McNeil, and I wanted to thank Stephanie Penguin Random House and Laura Monahan for the privilege and honor of having her appear on today's show. Links to all things Stephanie will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books

from the guests that we feature on the show, all proceeds go to supporting the show. Videos are on YouTube at both John Armyles and PassionStruck Clips. I am now also, as I mentioned at the show, all proceeds go to supporting the show. Videos are on YouTube at both John Armyles and Passion Struck Clips. I am now also, as I mention at the beginning, on the AMFM247 National Broadcast, and you can listen to me every Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. Links are in the show notes. Everties or deals in discount codes are in one community place at PassionStruck.com

slash deals. You can find me on LinkedIn and sign up for my LinkedIn newsletter, or I'm on all this other social channels at John Armyles where I post weekly doses of inspiration, hope, and meaning. You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast interview that I did with Emily Morse, who is a doctor of human sexuality and the host of the award-winning number one sexuality podcast Sex with Emily, which has been on error for nearly two decades. And we discuss her new book, Smart Sex,

where she distills her knowledge as a human sexuality expert into a groundbreaking framework that will revolutionize your understanding of sex and pleasure. To shame is a huge factor. We don't even realize how much of it is keeping us from having the conversations, being sexual, being in our bodies, and I actually talk about different kinds of shame in the book, breaking into different ways that we experience it. And so when you start

to look at that, you kind of recognize that it's literally everywhere. The thing about shame is the more we shed light on our shame, we learn to like kind of talk about this stuff. It does kind of go away. It's like shed light on our shade, and we learn to like kind of talk about this stuff, it does kind of go away. It's like shedding light on our darkness. It's so pervasive in why we don't want to talk about sex, why we don't feel comfortable in our bodies, body shade, shame is really heavy. Remember, we rise by lifting others,

so share this episode with those that you love and care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. And meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. And until next time, go out there and be passion-strike. [♪ Music playing in background, music fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out, and fades out you