The Liz Moody Podcast - Lucie Fink — How To Get Your Dream Career, Behind The Scenes Of The Social Media World, And SPECIFIC Tips To Find A Mentor

Episode Date: May 1, 2019

Lucie Fink (@luciebfink) is the living, breathing embodiment of creating your dream life. The mega-popular host of Refinery29’s Try Living With Lucie series also has her own popular YouTube channel and a bright, colorful Instagram account with hundreds of thousands of followers. None of this was just handed to her, though—Lucie has been hustling since she was young, creating and producing video content long before she was paid for it. In this episode, she breaks down specific actionable tips for getting your dream career (no matter what it is). We also get into the nitty gritty of growing your Instagram, including how often to post, what type of content does well, and how to edit photos—even if you’re not an influencer or an aspiring one, seeing the behind the scenes of what goes into influencer life is absolutely fascinating. Lucie shares how she got her dream job at Refinery29, and then we get into mentorship, including a crazy story about Matt Lauer that you won’t want to miss. We also touch on Lucie’s own health journey—she had her gallbladder removed (and the reason why is connected to birth control, which is fascinating) and is a huge advocate for Ayurveda and other practices. This is a great episode if you have a dream and want to make it real, or if you just want to be inspired by Lucie’s wisdom and infectious joy. Enjoy! This episode is brought to you by ButcherBox, a brand new sponsor that I’m so excited to have on board. ButcherBox sends grass-fed and finished beef, pastured chicken and pork, and wild-caught Alaskan salmon directly to your door. I’m such a huge advocate for healthy eating being accessible to everyone, no matter where they live or what grocery stores they have access to, and I think ButcherBox, which ships nationwide, is a huge step in the right direction. If you want to try ButcherBox for yourself, go to ButcherBox.com/lizmoody. With this link, you’ll get $20 off your first order, PLUS 2 packs of bacon and 2 pounds of breakfast sausage. DM me on Insta if you need ideas for what to make! This episode is also brought to you by one of my favorite food brands, Love Beets. Love Beets, which is found in the produce section of most grocery stores, makes cooked beets with no preservatives, that taste really fresh, just like a beet you would actually make yourself. They have plain beets, but also a ton of different fun flavors, including Beet Salsa, Wine & Balsamic, Honey + Ginger, and Sweet Chili. You can find Love Beets in most retailers nationwide, including Whole Foods, Kroger, and Costco, and you can also buy their beet juices and beet powder online at lovebeets.com—use the code LIZ for 20% off. You can also follow @lovebeets on Insta for more recipe ideas—and as always, you can DM me if you need recommendations or ideas for what to do with them! PS: Healthier Together is officially a number one best-seller! You can get your copy right here or at lizmoody.com/cookbook. Please keep sending me your creations on Instagram—they make me so happy! Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends. It's Liz Moody here, the host of the Healthier Together podcast, the author of the Healthyer Together cookbook, which just came out on April 9th. If you're not sick of me talking about it yet, I'm loving seeing what you guys are all making. I probably will never get sick of it. And also when you guys post the really cute photos of yourself getting the book and like your cute kid or your cute pet, oh my God, I show it to like my husband and I'm like, oh my God, this is so cute. I'm dying. It truly makes my die. So please, please keep sending me those on Instagram. I'm also a writer and an editor and all of the things. Yeah, I just, so I have been crazy recently. I was just in Montana for a week, which was insane. I've never been to Montana.

I went to a dude ranch, and I did all of the sort of dude ranchy type stuff. I did archery, and I did fly fishing. I didn't catch anything. Thank God. I'm actually kind of terrified of fish. I think they're really gross, especially when they're like swimming in the water and they're all slimy. So I didn't actually want to catch anything. but I liked standing there on the water and having it be really like serene and peaceful and lovely.

And I wrote horseback, which was really interesting for me. My mom, as you guys might know, was in a pretty serious horseback riding accident when I was two years old. And she was in a coma for a while. And it ended up being this huge thing in my family that my mother and father got divorced as a result of that I'll unpack maybe in a later episode. Horses have always really, really scared me. And it felt like this really big moment for me to get on a horse. I basically had a panic attack for, I don't know, like two hours while we were on the ride, but I was really, really proud of myself for getting on it.

They also gave me the old tired horse. I was like, please give me a horse that literally cannot run off and cannot buck me. So they gave me Ace, who I think was like 25 years old and had joint problems. So we got along famously. I'm in L.A. for an event right now. And then I will be going back to New York for a little bit. And I'll have a bunch more events coming up. So if you guys want to hang out in person and you know that I love hanging out with you in person,

And it's my favorite thing. As you've heard me talk about ad najum, I'm all about building community and creating community in real life. And so I love seeing you guys at these things and getting to talk to you and like take our friendship off the podcast and off the Instagram and the internet and into the real world. So always check my website, Liz Moody.com. I think it's slash events, but just look for the events tab on the website. And we can hang out in real life. I have Nashville and Chicago coming up. I have more New York events.

And I can also always come to your town. So just like shoot me a message on Instagram and be like, Liz, come to my town and hang out. And I'll be like, sure, I'll do it. Let's see if there's a cheap flight. Okay, we have a really fun guest for you guys today. I love this episode. I know I say that every time,

but I'm really selective about the guests that I choose. I wish you guys could see all the PR emails I get from people being like, I have the perfect guest for the healthier together podcast. I'm like, no, no, that's not the perfect guest. And I'm really picky about them because I want you guys to love all of these people. So this is Lucy Fink. And you may know Lucy Fink as the host. of Try Living with Lucy, the super popular Refinery 29 YouTube series. She's also an Instagram

unto herself. She's at Lucy B. Fink on Instagram and she has her own YouTube channel, which I believe is just Lucy Fink on YouTube. And she is just like a bundle of sunshine. But I think that my favorite thing that you can take out of this episode is like how to make your dreams come true. My motto in life is never be the one to say no to yourself. Like if you have a dream, if you have something you want to do. If you want to write a book, you want to, you know, apply for a job. If you want to do any, if you want to ask a boy out or something like that, never be the one to say no to yourself. Like make somebody else say no to you. So that means going out there and trying it. And then if you fail, like at least you've tried. I know so many people are like, oh,

someday like once I have the qualifications or once I have this or once I have that, I'll do this. I'm like, just do it. And then if you fail, you've tried and you can feel good about that. And I think that Lucy, to me, is the living embodiment of that. Like, she has had incredible, she's had just the most remarkable career, but she's made it all herself, you know. So she teaches us all of the steps that she's taken in her path to that. She had Matt Lauer as a mentor at one point, which is really interesting. And that's at the end of the episode. So make sure you stay tuned for all of that.

But she talks about how she got him as her mentor the first place, which I think is so fascinating. I've actually been dying to have a mentor forever and I don't quite know how to go about it or do it. And she broke it down on like very simple steps and like how to email and exactly what to say and just very specific things that I thought were very actionable. So stay tuned for that. And we also talk a little bit about how the whole Matt Lauer scandals have affected Lucy's life. She's also just like such a go getter generally. Like she breaks down what you actually need to create creative content and how she got. started on that creative content journey. And it's also a really interesting episode. If you're trying to

grow your social media, we get super specific about that. Like, how often should you be posting on Instagram? What type of content? How should you be engaging with people? How do you trick the algorithm? Like all of those types of things? And then how do you create the content that you're actually posting on Instagram? It's really interesting if you're trying to like become a social media influencer or you're interested in any of that. But I also think even if you're not remotely into that, it's cool to see behind the scenes of all of that because I think when you don't see the behind the scenes and the work that goes into everything, you're just like, oh my God, like these people have such cool lives. They're like trotting around the world. They're taking pictures and cool places.

And it gives you the sense that your life is like less than or shittier. I know I feel that way a lot when I look at all of these people. And for me, when I see the work behind it that goes into it, it makes me compare my life less and it makes me feel better. about my own situation. So I really like that. And Lucy really gets us into the dirt behind all of that kind of stuff, which I think is fabulous. We also talk about Lucy's own health journey. She had her gallbladder removed, which we talk about how that was the result of her birth control, which I have never heard before, and was really fascinating to me. And that and a number of other things sort of sparked this whole huge health change in her life. And she's changed how she's eaten. She's embraced

diureveda, which I found really fascinating. So we talk about her wellness practices. And I thought that was super interesting. It's just like a great episode. I'd say this is one of the more like how to have your best life in a career sense episodes that we've done. So if you're interested in that, if you're interested in like kind of having your day-to-day life and what you do, be more what you love. I think you're going to really love this one. And as always, I really like to talk about it with you guys. So come chat with me on Instagram at Liz Moody. Um, DM me, send me, you know, posts about what you thought of the episode, what you thought of Lucy, send me future guest requests for episodes. I love all of that. And, you know, like blah, blah, blah. But if you like the episode,

if you could do a little rating interview on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts, I know every podcaster says it, but it's because it like makes a difference. It helps iTunes rank you differently in the algorithm and it recommends the podcast to more people. And, You know, it's like important. So if you do like it, if you could do that, I'd so appreciate it. I'd appreciate it more honestly if you like sent it to a friend and you guys talked about it in real life. Because again, I'm just like, community, please let's make community. But whatever you want to do.

Or just like, you know, chill out and listen to it and eat some cookies and like live your best life. Have some wine. And I hope you guys love it. All right, Lucy, welcome to the healthier together podcast. Hey, Liz. Thanks so much for having me in your beautiful, beautiful apartment. Thank you. Welcome.

The light in here, I feel like this is like, I can understand how your YouTube is so beautiful because the light in here just makes everybody look like glowing. Not that you're not glowing beautiful. You are. I totally agree, though. The windows are giant. Stunning. And we definitely picks this apartment for the light.

For the light. Does your fiance, is he like understand that he needs to live sort of a social media ready life? He does. He is kind of not into that at all on his own. Yeah. He's very much, you know, probably. wouldn't open the Instagram app if it weren't for me. Yeah. But he's, he's gotten really into it. I'm really proud to see how he's progressed. He's, he now has probably three, four thousand

Instagram followers. Not as much as my twin sister who's hit now like 13. K. Like legit sort of an influencer. She is a many influencer, a twin influencer, just from being twin. And Michael, you know, he's just gotten a lot better at being open and willing to be in photo shoots. And, you know, he can see the statistics when I pull up my Instagram and I sort it by the most liked photos in the past year. He's probably the top 10 photos. Really? So he knows that he performs. Is that because you were like announcing your engagement and like these big life events?

Or is it just like people are like, we want to see you with Michael, Lucy? I think it's some of it was the engagement. Like our engagement photo has, I think, 50,000 likes just really blew up. But a lot of it is even pre-engagement and a lot of just random post-engagement. photos. I think it really is because he's probably, you know, a significant other is like that person in an influencer's life who's the most, like, interesting to the audience. It's like, who is this person that he or she loves and what is their relationship like? And I think, especially being on YouTube, people get this real desire to know what your personal life is

like. And I think that's why they really care about my twin sister and my fiance and, like, all these people that I spend so much time with start to become. important to them in a way. So I want to talk about your twin sister. I want to talk about Michael. I want to talk about a lot of things. But since we're in sort of the social media land, let's kick it off with that. I feel like you have a real sense of like, I feel like, I don't know why people follow me. I don't know. They try to like make it feel like it just was like so organic. And they just woke up one day and they had like 100,000 followers. And I feel like you seem to have a really good understanding of like who your audience is and why they respond to you and why they like you.

can you kind of speak to how you became an influencer, what your goals are with that, and like how you know what to post or what your audience is interested in? Yeah. So did not happen overnight. We'll start with that. It took probably, you know, three years since I've been doing this three plus years. I started in 2015 at Refinery 29. And really my Instagram growth was a very slow climb that happened alongside the chronic and list

posting of YouTube videos. videos. Once a week for three straight years. That's like over 150 YouTube videos. So many assets, so many episodes. And on top of that, Refinery 29 was also getting into the Snapchat land. And we had Snapchat Discover, which when they were one of the first maybe 15 publishers on Snapchat Discover, they were getting millions and millions of views every day. So just there was a time when a video of mine on Refinery Snapchat Discover page would bring me 5,000 Instagram. followers in 24 hours. Wow. So there were, you know, some really intense fast climbs and then some periods were a little slower. But really the growth was slow and gradual and happened alongside just

like endless YouTube content. And I always tried to make my YouTube content very much audience-driven. So asking the audience, what five-day challenge do you want to see me try next week or with Lucy for hire, what job do you want to see me try? And really like sitting and reading those comments, those were our meetings at Refinery 29 were what episodes does the audience want to see? Let's go read through comments and highlight our favorite ones and then talk about what we think works from a production standpoint. And we tried to make it as much of that two-way conversation as possible. And really, when I would share episodes, some episodes I'd put out, I didn't even think were good topics to make episodes on, but so many people requested them.

It was one that you were like, and then people loved it. Probably the biggest one was five days of not looking in a mirror. Oh, interesting. I was just like, what is the story here? I don't even think that's going to, you know, be a big deal. Maybe I'll have difficulty putting my contact lenses in, but what is the big deal? And then I tried it. And of course, it was a really interesting experiment.

And the video went up and it did really well. And I was like, there's case and point. Just do, you know, follow the audience. At the same time, there is, I do need to have like a producer's hat on and a little bit of a production lens with certain topics that people want me to do. Probably I shouldn't do. Are there ones that, what are ones people have requested that you don't feel like would have enough narrative to, to?

Well, one that people have requested that I just don't think is culturally sensitive is people want me to try like wearing a hijab for five days or, you know, people want me to try some some more cultural and religious things that I think are a little too sensitive for this day and time period. That makes sense. Things that refinery wouldn't feel comfortable with. Right. There are also certain dieting episodes that I personally am not, I don't want to do to my body

and refinery is very anti-diet culture. Five days of intermittent fasting where you just don't eat anything the entire time. You know, at the same time, I have to remember that I'm like a small framed white girl. So like I don't want to come off. I just don't want it to come off in a port way. And so it's always thinking about what do people want to see and what's appropriate and what is on brand with refinery and then marrying all those together. So your YouTube was more audience driven.

When you're posting on Instagram, are you like people like photos of me and Michael? just going to post a lot of photos of me and Michael or like how do you decide what you're posting there? So my Instagram kind of the content there just changed so much over the course of these past few years. So if you went way back on my feed to early 2015, you would pretty much only see stop motion videos or like pop art pictures of my donuts or my candy or whatever. And that was because I really, with the exception of maybe in 2012 and 2013 when I was using my Instagram just to filter photos for Facebook. I started using my Instagram as sort of like a creative outlet and an artistic portfolio for my stop motion work. And so it was very much bird's eye view top down items on a table with a bright poppy background, things moving, very colorful and Andy Warholish.

And then only after I started sharing videos on refinery where people started getting interested in my personal life, did my Instagram feed shift to being more personal and showing people behind the scenes of these YouTube videos. And I remember, like, there was a specific, I mean, I don't think it was overnight, but there was a specific moment in probably 2016 when I realized, wow, all my Instagram photos are now me instead of this artwork that I was sharing. And it's because not that people didn't care about the stop motion anymore, but the photos of me or me and my family were just doing so much better and bringing so many more people

to the page. So that was when I started thinking, okay, I guess. guess people want to see this. And now, of course, with the insights feature, you can really see what people like. Yeah. And I kid you not, it is straight up, you know, row and row, row after row of just me and my sister or me and Michael are the consistently most liked photos. So then what do you do on, like, a day like this, you did a dance workout. You're in like a casual t-shirt and leggings. You look super cute, but like you're not insta. Right. What will you do if you need to post-kind? Do you like create a photo on dates where you don't have photos?

So usually I don't think I am the kind of person who wakes up and just snaps a selfie and post that on my feed. My photos are a little bit more stylized and edited. And I try to have them be a little bit more. I don't know if the word is highbrow, but a little bit more artistic. Yeah. And thought went into them. That being said, I have noticed that if I sprinkle in the occasional selfie in my workout outfit, it actually does really well. People are like, oh, wow, this was taking on an iPhone.

Exactly. And I don't necessarily see myself as someone whose entire feed is like that, but every so often. So, you know, on a day like today, I had a sponsored post go up at 9 a.m. So that was pretty much my post for the day because I usually only post once a day. Unless I have something else to say, which I did today, I had something else to say. And I wanted to share my dream from last night, which is that I had a horrible nightmare about my wedding day. and in my dream my dress was navy blue and the sequence were falling up and Dwight Shrewt from the office was sewing the sequence back on. Oh, and I don't think he'd be very good sewed. I don't know. But, you know,

I had that moment where I was like, I want to share this right now because this is a dream I had last night. So I posted that photo and I just used, you know, I went back in my camera roll to when I was trying on dresses and I used one of the photos from trying on dresses, not of my actual dress, but a random one. And I mean, if anyone looked at my camera roll, they'd probably be over. overwhelmed with the amount of photos in there. I want to say it's like 16,000 photos. And is that just because at every opportunity to take a photo that could be usable, you're like, oh, I will take this photo? It's probably because when I do a photo shoot with a photographer, sometimes I'll just, you know, meet up with a photographer, bring three outfits and bang out a lot of content. Okay. And I'll just air drop all of those to my phone and kind of have them

at my disposal in case I has something to say and I want to find the right picture that goes with it. If I'm on vacation, I try to just like, if there's ever a moment where it's really easy, hand my phone to someone and just have them take a photo. And do you try on vacation to be like dressed cute and like have your hair look cute so that if those moments arise, you can take a photo? I definitely think about what I'm packing in the sense of, oh, I'd love a photo in this. A lot of times it's actually for a contract and like, oh, I need to take a picture of a swimsuit. Sometimes it's a brand has sent me an outfit.

I'm like, oh, Florida would be a great place to wear this because it's so summer and it's the middle of March here. But I wouldn't say I do, I'd say like maybe 60% of the time that stuff is planned out. And the other 40% it's just like, this is a cute photo. And I hand my fiancee the camera and he knows now to take at least 20 photos to see if I got a good one. My husband, he'll take like five and then he'll just be like, people are looking at us. You know, like he'll get, if there's nobody around to play the game for a while, like, if we're at home or something.

But if we're in public, he just gets so, like, embarrassed about people seeing us. Michael, thankfully, is when he's behind the camera, he's very happy to do it for me. And, you know, I'm the one swirling in circles with people looking. And he's like, are you done? Do you want me to take more? He doesn't really care. If he was in them, that's a different story. I think I'd have to be more mindful.

Do you have any tips to take, like, an amazing Instagram photo? Truthfully, I don't think the camera or the lens is the key here. I mean, I did just buy a new camera and I'm really excited about it because it does have a really cool lens. But that said, I think so many of my favorite Instagram photos are just taken on an iPhone. So you regularly post up that you took on an iPhone. Regularly. Yeah. Okay. And I do edit the photos in Lightroom. And sometimes I use like certain presets on them that I think make the color look really nice. But I'm not the kind of person whose entire feed is one preset. Yeah. Where like everything. looks like it fits together with a theme just because... I feel like your theme is like... Colorful. Yeah. Yeah. I love like...

I always say to people, I love fake-looking photos. Like I almost use my Instagram feed as a art form. Yeah. Whereas if someone was looking at a sunset and the sky literally looked neon, pink, and purple, they'd say that looks too fake. I'm like, that is beautiful. I love that. So, and that's just my style.

Yeah. So I think my color scheme, scheme quote, is being in air quotes right now, is very... just colorful. But that being said, I feel like I could pop a black and white photo in and it's fine. So I don't feel like I have to stick to a consistent grid. And I actually rarely look at my grid. I know a lot of influencers put their photos in another app first to how it looks. Yeah. I'm more so focus on the actual individual photos and just how they look in someone's feed, not really when they're looking at my whole page. And that's because if you even go to the insights, like I'm pulling it up right now. If I go to my Instagram Insights, it's telling me that my account has had 1.9 million impressions in the past week.

Okay. And of that 1.9 million, only 65,000 went to my profile. So because of that. So what I had an influencer tell me that the reason you worry about your grid versus like the photos that appear in somebody's feed when they're scrolling is because that's how you gain new followers. That is true. I think that if your grid. Because people will come to your grid and then they'll be like, oh, this is beautiful. I want to follow you.

Yeah. I think when people come to your page, they obviously look at your bio. They look at your bio photo. Maybe they'll look at how many followers you already have as a determinant of if you're worth following for them. And then, of course, they will look at some of your photos. But I don't believe in the fact that you have to have a thematic grid for people to want to click that follow button. I think, you know, for some people, it looks really nice. I follow so many people who have a beautiful grid.

Yeah. Who I look at it with my jaw down to the floor, like, how do they do this? How does every photo have the same colors popping out? Yeah. It's interesting. I especially am drawn to those like pristine white minimalist grids that are just, every photo is just like white and gray and very clean. Which is interesting.

It's like the opposite. But I do think that, you know, not everyone follows for the same reason. And a lot of people comment on my photos that they love my theme. And I'm like, what's my theme? I don't know. Yeah, that's interesting. Do you ever have photos that you really like and then they don't do well? And then you would sort of, I don't, like, do you ever get disappointed by your growth or disappointed by how photos are performing?

And how do you deal with that? Yeah, I think, you know, there's certain times when I'm really excited to share a photo and I have something really powerful to say. Maybe powerful is not the word. But it's like spilling out of me. I need to say this. And I always find that when I feel that excitement about the post, it usually does. on par with how I felt versus the times when I'm like, I feel like I need to post just to post, which I really try not to do.

Do you post every single day though? I do, but not as a hard and fast rule. There have been plenty of days that I've skipped because I haven't had something to say and I've reminded myself of this moment where there have been times in the past when I've been like, I really just need to post just to stay active and I'll go back in my camera roll, find a photo, say something that was not really relevant to have. how I was actually feeling, and the way it performs always is linked to that. And I'm always like, wow, they could tell.

They could tell that I didn't really care about that post. Is there anything that you would tell sort of like the baby influencers like your sister or something who were trying to grow and they didn't necessarily have like hundreds of thousands of followers that were making people want to follow them in the first place? I personally think captions are such an important part of Instagram these days. So many people can have just pretty photos. and yes, that might drive a big following just because people want to look at these aspirational images. But your captions can basically be a blog.

I don't even have a blog. And I just use Instagram and my website as the place where I can connect with people on a longer form. Obviously, also my YouTube is more so my longer form platform. But people don't realize how much, how in depth they can get with captions and how much people can learn about you. The other thing I would say is to try to have some semblance of a regular cadence on the app. I don't think it has to – I did go to an Instagram meeting once where they told you, if you want to grow, you should post seven times a day, which blew my mind. So I have a friend who's a food blogger, and she's been posting three times a day, and she's grown like $100,000 in the past six months, which is crazy because I feel like nobody's growing like that on it anymore. But I feel like if I got three posts from the same person in my feed, I'd be a number.

Like I'd be, or seven posts, God forbid. I'd be like, I don't want to follow you. Like, this is too much. I think the way Instagram used to be where it was a chronological feed, that was when I was more so annoyed because literally every single person's post in the past hour would be there and you have to scroll down to see anything from before. Now with the algorithm, which is kind of tricky and who knows why you're seeing what? I'll see posts from four hours ago, from two days ago. And I think Instagram's just serving you what it thinks you're going to like. based on who knows what. And if you post seven times, the ideas are more of a chance that there will be something that somebody will like? I think the idea is that if you post seven times, first of all, not all seven of your posts will necessarily show up on everyone's homepage. But secondly, the idea and what I think is happening here is I think Instagram is doing this thing where if you post more, you're basically getting, because you've just put out

more content. There is now more time being spent from phones across the world looking at your page, which is somehow signaling Instagram that people are liking what they're seeing, which is pushing you more places. And I did actually hear with Instagram at that meeting I went to, they were encouraging people to write captions that were longer. So that people are reading the caption for longer. Not for the purpose of, as I said, connecting with people. Having people know stuff about you. Yeah. But actually for the purpose of tricking the. app that people, you know, Instagram doesn't know you wrote a caption. They just think people are staring at your photo. And so they're like, let's give this to more people because people

seem to like this. Oh, that's so interesting. And so I don't, you know, I'm not encouraging the new, newbie influencer to just trick the app. But I do think more content leads to just general, more eyeballs, which probably brings you up in the algorithm in a way. That's interesting. Do you get jealous of like bigger influencers than you? I, you know, I used to be like really figured, trying to figure out how to grow. Like I used to be really focused on, I just want more followers. And I want to grow. And I always did things in the right way. Like, I never bought followers or did any of the fake whatever. I always grew authentically through YouTube. And only recently did I hit a point where, I mean, I wouldn't say I'm still like, I wouldn't say I'm over wanting to grow. Of course,

I would love to have as many people connecting with me as I can. But that said, I did have a few moments recently where I've been like, why? Why do I want more? What is more going to bring me? And there was even a day recently when my Instagram went back by, I guess, a thousand people. Was that when they were clearing all the bots? No, it wasn't that day. It just like I had 151,000 and then it went back to 150. Okay. And it just, it had been teetering on the edge and it finally dropped over. And it went back. And I remember being like viscerally upset that that number had dropped. But on the same exact date that the number dropped, I opened like three separate big emails from brand partners that want its partner with me. And I was like, Lucy, you're the only one that's staring at this, wanting it to grow.

Meanwhile, you're already at a stage where brands are interested in partnering with you. And they don't care. Like, they want to work with you for what you've already done and for who you are. And the fact that you went down 100 or up 100 or down 1,000 or up 1,000 is just meaningless. And it was just a funny reminder, like that those partnership opportunities came on the day that I was so devastated about this loss. Yeah. And I realized there's no tie to how much income I'm bringing in and that number. I mean, yes.

There's some tie on the big scale, but nothing that like a few followers here and there can change. And I just, you know, I look at some people who have giant accounts are getting like the same engagement numbers as me. And then some people are getting way more. Yeah. And then some people with tiny accounts also get huge engagement. Yeah. Yeah, which is interesting. And I just think, you know, it's.

brands take everything into consideration when they pick who to work with. And I really don't see it as is the brand choosing between me and person X, Y, Z. Oh, they chose them. Like, I am at a loss. I don't see it that way. I really think the right brand opportunities or the right partnerships come to the right people at the right time. And if a brand chose someone else for an opportunity over me, I know something else is going to come. And it's not, I try not to have a scarcity mindset about it and just think of it as there's an abundance of opportunities. And I genuinely believe that because this business is built on personalities and individual people, there's room for everyone to have their own brand and make money doing this. It's not like the more people on the platform,

the less money there is to go around. Well, so that brings me perfectly to my next question, which I think something you've done that people find really fascinating and cool is that you've made your personality into your brand. So like I've had my personality as part of my brand, but I would say like I'm nervous if I don't consistently post food or share food, people won't like my stuff. And every time I like put a photo on me out there, I'm like, oh, well people like, do they want to hear from me and about me? And I think that you've done a really amazing thing and just being like, I am me, you are interested in me. How did you do that?

Well, honestly, how did I do that? I feel like it's just a byproduct of the series that I started with, which is such a personality-driven series. Yeah. Like I truly wanted Try Living with Lucy when I pitched that to a refinery. I picked it as a format because I knew that every episode would have a constant, which is me, but every episode could be about a different topic and there are endless ideas to slot in. So when you're coming up with a good YouTube format, a good tip for people is you basically want to come up with a show that's like every episode's the same. And there's a format.

It's like any TV show you know, chopped. It's always the same format. but different people or house hunters. Always the exact same format, different people, different areas of the world. So I was trying to come up with a show format that would be the exact same. People who were tuning in on Fridays at 11 a.m. would know exactly what they were going to see and how the episode would be broken down. But where there would be endless possibilities of what episode topics we could do and basically the show can go on forever.

Because you've never done all you can do. And that was the five-day challenge. You know, five days of being vegan, five days of spending 50, $5 days sleeping on the floor. There's literally endless ideas. And even once you get through all the mainstream challenges, that's when you can pretty much slot in any brand. Five days on this brand's mattress, five days using this conditioner.

Right. Whatever it is. There's a cruise ship or whatever you did. Carnival cruise. Yeah. There's literally endless possibilities. And so when I pitched that to refinery, I was really excited that the show, even though every episode was a different topic, it was always me bringing myself and

my unique personality to it. And I think people like started to get to know who I was and what my personality was like through those videos. And then Instagram just kind of was a way to show them behind the scenes of what's happening in my life when they're not watching those videos. And it just naturally became, I do so many things in the videos that anything I want to do on Instagram basically is fair game. Right. Because it's all just lifestyle. And I think, I think it's about like brand. If someone wants to do that, branding themselves as a life style person instead of, say, beauty or food or makeup. Yeah.

And I'm not saying, you know, that it's a bad thing to brand yourself. You're not screwed. Because at the same time, there's also something to be said about being really niche and being in a specific world. Yeah. It's just so much harder to be like, like, I'm proud of my food, you know, capabilities and proud of my cookbook and all that. But like, it's harder to be like, oh, if I want to post content today, I need to spend

six hours in my kitchen trying to develop a recipe. and then I hate food photography. Don't even get me started on the food photography. Versus like, it's a beautiful day. I'll go find a beautiful location and like take a picture. And I'm a writer first and foremost. And so I'm always just looking for like a place to write, you know. I think it's about slowly changing.

You know, if you want to start introducing more lifestyle content, I would say it's just slowly introducing that content in a way that's going to be the most digestible for your audience. So maybe that means you take a photo in a park, but your caption is about food. And you're writing something that happened in your kitchen that day, but you're not in your kitchen. And then maybe the next time you post a photo in the park, it's, I took a break from the kitchen to go here. Like, this is behind the scenes of my life.

I'm not in the kitchen, guys. I'm not eating. Definitely just expanding it. And I think, you know, we talked, when we were at dinner, we talked about some people whose feeds rely on their food. And I know that it's just important to share what you actually want to share because you don't want to start. to feel resentful about the path you've chosen. It's your feed. You could do whatever you want.

And you might lose followers, but you'll also gain new ones. It's funny how hard it is to remember. Like, it's your feed. You can do whatever you want. Yeah, there's no rule. You feel like a little boat in like the waves being crashed around sometimes. So how did you start? Is refinery your first job out of college?

No. So I was at Ogilvy and May there for one year first. Which is an advertising agency. Advertising agency. I was in the production department in their entertainment division. Let's roll back for the. I'm going to let's because I want your whole sort of story and we'll end with like how you pitch refinery because I think you're such a I'm I my life philosophy has never be the one to say no to yourself like if you have an idea always make somebody else say no to you because you don't know if they will and I feel like you're the living embodiment of that to me and you've done so well in that in your life but let's roll back to like when you're tiny kid are you the ham you have a twin sister are you like the attention getting cartwheel doing one definitely okay I was definitely the performer I was definitely the performer I My parents tell us, we don't really remember this, but my parents tell us that I used to do shows

in the house and my sister would be sitting, quote, front row, not that there was any audience row to sit in, but she'd be sitting right in front of me. And as soon as it was over, as soon as it was over, she would cheer and say, again, again, again. And my parents were like, Allie, no stop egging her off. But apparently- She created you. This is like Ali's fault. She's to her credit. Yeah.

Yes. As Allie has been like a built-in audience for me. From when I was little doing that kind of stuff, I used to pick up cameras around my house and shoot. I remember one in specific was a commercial I made of how to make the proper peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And I just set up the camera on a tripod. I have to find this footage somewhere. If you find it, I'm going to put it up with the episode. That's like amazing.

I'm going to have to search. Yeah. But I remember, you know, putting peanut butter on one side of the bread and jelly on the other and then clapping them together right in front of my face. and then like showing it to my family like as a big movie screening. And I remember I remember sitting in front of the mirror and like acting. Not that I'm an actress at all, but I was really into just performance in every way, shape, and form. And when I was really little, my mom did sign me up. She did take me to like do an audition in the city, but I really chickened out and I was really shy.

And I remember reading some script for like a Cheerio's ad and just totally chickened out. Oh, no. Now when I think about it, I'm like, oh, Lucy, I wish you could just know what you know now about like how cute it is when little kids are proper adult sounding and just like go in there. Yeah, but who knows? You might have like been a whole drug-addled like child star situation. Exactly. It's good for you.

And there was another time when I heard a casting call for a reality TV show and I called, like as an 11-year-old, I called the station. and this whole crew came to my house for an interview, basically where they wanted to meet us and see if we were good for the show. And then they called my mom back and said, we love you and we want to follow the kids to school. And my sister and brother both said no. So we had to get out of it. Were you so mad at them? I mean, I wasn't like really mad because I didn't know exactly where it could lead to.

But I was definitely like, you guys are ruining my life here. You could have been the Kardashians. We could. I don't even know what that show went on. Maybe it was the Kardashians. It was like high-assie. Yeah, the first one. It would have been the fangsdale.

Yeah. The fangs. So, you know, there were signs here and there that I was into the media world. But come high school, I was like, I don't know what job I want to have. And I didn't really see, I didn't really see a clear future in the media world. Were you cool in high school? I was cool. I think I was cool.

I was the president of the drama club. Okay. But I was not only friends with drama club people. I think I was cool. I was really nice to people. in high school because in middle school I wasn't. In middle school, I was just in a group of friends that was kind of mean. And I was like, what's going on?

Like, I just remember being like, oh my God, I had this realization in ninth grade that it's so not cool to be mean and that it was like really cool to be nice. And I, my sister and I left a friend group and joined a new friend group. Were you guys always in the same friend group? You weren't like Jessica and Elizabeth in Street Valley High where one of them's like the book reader. No, no. We were really good friends.

We have different skills and we're in very different industries. She works in finance, but from a social perspective, we've always had the same friends and liked the same kind of people. So sometime around high school, I was just like, on the side of all of this media stuff, like completely separate, another one of my interests was medicine. And I was very into watching surgery shows on TLC. Like not Grace Anatomy. No, no, no.

like my heart surgery story on TLC, you know, open heart surgery videos. And I would go on YouTube and basically watch like gory C-section videos. And I was really intrigued. And my mom had a friend who was a plastic surgeon who came over one day with pigs feet and let us practice suturing the pig's feet. Because I was like, maybe I'll be a plastic surgeon. And I thought it was the best thing ever. And by the time high school was over, I was just like, I guess I guess I'm going to be a doctor. that's another thing about having a twin is when you can do something that your twin can't do.

In this case, it was like I could really stomach this like bloody, gory stuff. And Ali would just be like, I don't know how you can do that. And I think reinforcement from my parents of being like, Lucy's really into the bloody stuff. Like Lucy can handle that. And Ali can't. I'm like, okay, wow, I got to be a doctor. So we applied to colleges. We applied to all the same colleges and got all the same decisions at every school.

That's so crazy to me. And some of those were rejections, right? Yeah. You got like some, the same acceptance and the same. And the same deferrals and the same everything. That's so weird. And we chose Johns Hopkins as our school because it was just the best school we got into. And then once we chose that, I was like, well, now I have to be a doctor because this is the medical capital.

And is it good for finance too? I think, I think of it is such, I mean, it's a good school universally, but I think of it is, like, the best for medicine. Like, it's just the medicine school. I think medicine and, like, public health, it's really good. I mean, it had a great economics program that she did, but I don't think it's known for finance. I mean, Bloomberg went there and he's really rich, so who knows? Yeah. I don't know.

But we basically chose Hopkins, and as soon as I got in there, I said I have to be pre-med and become a doctor. And I was undecided major, but I started my freshman year going down the neuroscience track. And I was taking all my, like, intro to cognitive neuroscience and neuroscience. Yeah, the casual classes. The casual classes that I really, really loved, like, learned so much. and I still remember some of the stuff I learned. But as soon as semester one, a freshman year was over, I was just like, I don't think, you know, all the people here that are premed at Hopkins are devoted to medicine. All these people have been working in labs since they were little.

And I've been, like, dancing on stages. You sutured pigs' feet. I did suture pigs' feet, but I didn't. All these people had done, like, research already. And they were like, we want to be doctors. I imagine. And pre-med, I hadn't even really gotten into the pre-med. core classes, which are just like so cutthroat and so rigorous. And I was like, I kind of want

to life out in the sun. Like, I don't know if I want to work in the lab all day. I think I might have to switch. And my parents were very supportive of the switch. My mom was always told me that I was meant to be on camera or something. And I just, I just didn't know what jobs there were, but I was like, I guess I'll make the switch and do something creative. So I switched my major to creative writing because Hopkins didn't really have any sort of like broadcast journalism I'm major. Switch to creative writing and essentially was producing a YouTube show for the admissions office at Hopkins, which going back to what you said, when I first got to Hopkins, even when I was pre-med, I walked into the admissions office and I said, I would like to host a YouTube series for

your university. Basically, I want it to be a travel channel-esque show that shows prospective students what Baltimore looks like. Oh, my God. And they were just like, cool, we've never had anyone do this? Here's the student producer team and here's the student shooters and editors. Go shoot us a pilot and bring it back. That's so cool. And that was like my fun side thing on the How did you even have that idea? I had the idea because all of my home friends were convinced because all them had watched the wire. And they were all like, Baltimore is so dangerous. And I got there and was there for like a couple weeks and thought this is the most beautiful city ever. And yes, there's dangerous areas, but there are dangerous areas of.

New York City too. And I just wanted to show my friends at home how beautiful the city was. So I was making this video for them. But it turned out that they put it on the admission site and it became like a main reason why people were applying to the school because they were able to see it. And that was my first time ever doing YouTube. You're listening to the Healthier Together podcast. I talk a lot about this in my book, but my diet is around 80% vegetables with the other 20% being animal protein, legumes, and grains. I am super picky about my meat, though, and there are literally zero stores in my Brooklyn neighborhood that have the grass-fed and finished and pasturized products that I want. And honestly, I would rather eat no meat than eat meat that's

inhumanely raised or filled with the kind of hormones that I do not want my body. That is why I was so excited when I discovered Butcher Box a few years back. They send incredibly high-quality animal proteins frozen directly to your door. And this stuff is really frozen, too. Sometimes it would it out all day while I was at work, and when I came home, it was still rock solid. Beyond being far better for the environment, this type of meat is way better for our bodies. Grass-fed beef, for example, has lower levels of unhealthy fats and higher levels of omega-3s than other types of meat, in addition to vitamins A and E and a ton of other health benefits. And if you want even more omega-3s, butcher box now carries wild Alaskan sack-eye salmon. While we sometimes defrost our

products in the fridge, more often I'll actually cook it straight from frozen, which I love because then no matter what, if plans change or if you're too tired to cook, your meat never goes bad and you never waste all that money. I'll pop the frozen meat straight into my instant pot, which is like an amazing life hack, or I'll use the ground beef to make my way more veggies, bolognets, which is a weeknight staple in our house. I'm such a huge advocate for healthy eating being accessible to everyone. I'm sure you guys have heard me talk about this before. It's why I don't use fancy ingredients in my recipes. I want everybody to be able to make them no matter where they live or what grocery stores they have access to. And I think ButcherBox, which ships nationwide,

is a huge step in the right direction. If you want to try it for yourself, go to Butcherbox.com slash Liz Moody. That's butcherbox.com slash Liz Moody, like my name. I'll also leave a link in the show notes. And if you use that link or use the URL that I just said, you'll get $20 off your first order, plus two packs of bacon and two pounds of breakfast sausage totally free. I love Butcherbox, Having a stash of healthy animal protein in my freezer just makes it so much easier to have dinner on the table in any given night. And I hope you love them too. DM me on Insta at Liz Moody if you need ideas for what to make. Now, let's get back to the episode.

Are your parents, like, creative people, or did they know that that was even a possibility to be creative and make a career? Yeah. So my mom is an artist. She painted all the paintings that you see around the apartment. Oh, really? Bedroom and everything. Oh, my gosh. She was a stay-at-home mom my whole life, but she has like an art studio, and she's kind of half interior designer, half graphic artists.

These are beautiful. Yeah, and she's really creative. Like, she's definitely been my creative spirit guide forever. And my dad is a radio DJ. So he's in the media world. Oh, that's so cool. He grew up, I mean, he is now on a station in Westchester, but he was on PLJ and K Rock in like the 70s and 80s and was a big radio. one of those voices like he does you're listening to he's like you're listening to jimmy think on 107.1

oh my god jimmy think is like such a good radio name and i have some great clips of me and my sister when we were little being like i'm lucy think and i'm allie think and you're listening to our dad jimmy think like he was on the peak when we were in middle school so oh my god we used to go record those promos so that's like a cool media sort of out of the norm career so you had that sort of modeled for your whole life that that was even possible. And I think the only thing I thought for being on camera was, okay, so I'm going to be on TV. And the only real path I saw was getting an agent and being like pitched out to go host like red carpet gigs. Honestly, travel channel I would have said yes to.

But the only thing I was thinking of for some reason was like an entertainment host. Yeah. And that is just the last thing I want to do. Like I'm. What are you wearing? Yeah, like I don't know anything about fashion. Yeah. I don't know celebrity culture, so I can't even like gossip about it.

And I just, I always found that stuff some of it, like trashy and not nice. And I was like, I don't want to contribute to that. And I remember out of school, part of the reason I chose to go to Ogilvy and do the production side of things and actually like set my on-camera dreams aside was because I met with an agent out of school because I had all these Hopkins videos. and I also had been on the Today Show in college. So I had like some live clips. How did that happen? Such another long story. Basically had really wanted to intern there when I was young and I was way too young to intern there.

But I planted it in the HR person's head that if they ever needed a teen to come on the show, that I was open to being like a teen spokesperson and answered teen questions. And then I knew one of the food producers there. She was my family friend. And I just pestered her with ideas. And she finally passed me to the parenting producer who one day was like, we need a teen. If you want to come, we need a team home from Hopkins. And they sent me home. And I did a segment.

And I took everyone's emails and the on-camera people and the producers and just continually pitch them ideas for the next two years. And I was like back on the show six or seven times in college. With stuff you'd come up with usually? A mixture. Okay. Some of them were things I came up with. Some were like, we need you tomorrow because, you know, those teams. Teens just died at Electric Zoo from a Molly overdose and we want to talk to a teen about teens going to raves, like stuff like that.

Interesting. So it was a mixture of not as timely news stories. Like, should teens be paying for their own spring break or should parents contribute? And how did you come up with ideas for that, your pitches? Like, how did you even know how to pitch or what a good idea was for a story? Honestly, I was just thinking of topics that I would find interesting. And, like, I was listening to my friends' conversations around. me. And I was like, what are people talking about? What do people want to hear about? And as, you know, I was

sort of thinking, I did have, my parents were so helpful at being like, they were the ones who was sitting watching news every day. And my parents would occasionally call me and be like, we just saw a segment about this. What if you did this? And I'm like, that's genius. And I wasn't really a news watcher, so I needed their brains. But then at the same time, it was just like listening to the people around me and writing everything down. And I just had like a bank of ideas that I would just send off. And thankfully, they needed ideas. Yeah, no, that's amazing.

Okay, so you had all these clips. You met with an agent. I met with an agent or she. Like, you're not ready for Hollywood or? He was like, what do you want to do? And I was like, well, I want to be on camera, like a host and a personality. And I was showing him all the stuff I did. And he's like, I mean, I can sign you, but it's basically going to just be like,

if an opportunity comes up for you to go host an event, we'll send you to go host. the event. And in hearing about what these events were, I was just like, this is what I don't really want to do. Like, I don't really want to be doing red carpet interviews or, like, going to the Grammys, like... Did you ask them about doing, like, a travel channel show or something? And he was just, he was kind of just like, that's, you know, you don't really have enough experience to just pop on to travel channel. Okay. And it was also before social media was really a thing. So there weren't, like, influencers. This was in, like, the end of 2013. I mean, maybe there were. But I was not one.

Sort of starting. Yeah. People were just starting to grow and use Instagram for what it is now. But it was not like people were getting paid or getting all this free stuff. And I just, I didn't really know what the options were for on camera. So when he told me that, I was like, okay, I think I'm going to choose to go the behind-the-scenes route and be a producer because I really want to make stuff and be creative. And I remember just saying, like, if the on-camera stuff comes to me, if there's an opportunity to do it. it, I'll do it. But if not, I'm not going to pursue it. And I think, truthfully, I think I was a little bit

scared of trying to do it and having it not work out. So it felt really safe to just be like, if it works, it works. And which now that I think back, I'm like, lame, Lucy, you should have just shot for the moon. But whatever, I definitely. It worked out. It felt like I took the easy road out by just going into production. But I couldn't lie to myself. And my whole year at Ogilvie was spent like talking to people being like, how can I be on camera? And I remember every single person I spoke to in that building, I was like showing them my clips from Hopkins and Today Show and being like, this is what I do. How can I make a show for Ogilvie? Like, I was going to make a YouTube series for Ogilvy that wouldn't even go public. It was just going to be like an internal video

series that the employees would get. And like, that's what I was going to do because I wanted to make content and be in it so badly. And did you, do you love it like for the making? Like if nobody watched your stuff. What do you still love the process of creating it? Definitely. Okay. I just love, first of all, I love hands on making stuff. Like the way someone makes a painting, that my version of that is putting a video together. And I actually really like editing in the process of like telling the story and adding music and like, oh my God, making a music video is like my dream. Just editing something to the beat of a song is like so fun for me. But then on the flip side, it's whatever I'm actually doing in the video. Ideally, if there's like another.

person that I'm with that I'm engaging with and I'm learning something and I'm taking people into an experience. Like that's just my happy place. Yeah, that's what I love about the podcast. I just feel like it's like, oh, I can like sit down and ask people that I'm so interested in all the questions I ever wanted. Right. And just like really dive deep and show people things that they've never seen and introduce them

to people that you think are cool all while still being you. Yeah. And so I knew I wanted to do that in some form. And I kept pitching it at Ogilvy and they were just like, this isn't really. We don't really need this. Right. And also, this is not, you know, you're never going to be in one of our ads. Like, if we were casting an ad, we would go through a casting agency.

We're not going to use our associate producer as the talent in an ad. And I was just like, okay, I get it. And that was when, very luckily, this woman who was the chief creative officer at Ogilvy, who was one of the people that I, like, talked her ear off about what I wanted to do, she became the COO at Refinery 29. And when she got there, she probably a month later, shot me a Facebook message and was just like, I'd love to give you a tour of refinery and I think you should meet with the video team here and they're doing exactly what you said

you wanted to do. And to make a long story short, I actually didn't know what Refinery 29 was, so I was not really impressed by this. And I had seen Ogilvy in my mind as this giant 100 year old ad agency and refinery is kind of like a small startup. And as did my parents, who even though they are cool and creative, they're also like traditional in that sense. They were like, what is this company?

What do they pay? And I went in to meet with Refinery and was very clear with them that I was pretty happy at Ogilvy. Like they were starting to let me do more creative things. They were actually about to move me from the production team to the creative team. And I thought that was a good move. And Refinery was just like, well, what do you want to do? Write down your dream job description. And I wrote down this description that was like on camera, production, being in front of the camera.

writing scripts, editing, making stop motion videos, like a whole slew of things in a condensed paragraph. And they basically copied and pasted that into an offer letter. And they're like, well, you can do that here. Wow. So it's difficult to say no. Have you ever talked to your boss or the COO or whoever it was that brought you on about why they were willing to take that leap with somebody who was just like a production assistant and Ogilvie? Truthfully, the craziest thing is that this woman, like I haven't, I wouldn't say I'm like close with her.

And I wouldn't say that I've spoken to her that much in my life. Like, but she changed my life. Like fully. She probably doesn't even understand the gravity because she left refinery two or three months after I started. Oh, wow. And started her own thing. And so she wasn't even there to really see everything that happened.

But it's just a crazy, like, thing to ask any, what, 23, 24 year old? Like, what's your dream job and then give it to them? And she, I mean, she was the C.O.O. at refinery who has, I guess was told video is hiring and we need more video people. She put my name in, but then she was out of the process. So the people I interviewed with were the video production people, not her. She just, you know, they were like, we got your name from her. Yeah, but now we're meeting you.

So they've actually told me many times why they wanted to hire me. And it was at a time when refinery was like 15 people on the video team. It was very tiny. they now it's now video has its entirely own floor and is over a hundred people and it's just boomed in the past three years but back then they were still getting started and what they told me is that they they couldn't tell me how many people had come into interview and had said i want to do x y z but didn't have any thing to show for like didn't have anything that said hey i want to be on camera and here's this video show that i self-produced or hey i want to make stop

motion videos for your brands. And here's my Instagram account that has 25 of them from the past month that I'm just doing. Oh, and by the way, I was being, I was already, my stop motion business was a little thing when I was at Ogilvy that I like kicked off as a little side hustle. And I was being paid by random brands to make these 15 second Instagram stop motion videos for them. So much so to the point that like that little side hustle was paying my rent in 2015 before I had any followers. So it wasn't like an Instagram. influencer thing. It's just a producer thing. And when I got to refinery, they were like, we, I think they just saw, you know, you're saying what you want to do, but you're doing it.

And the words she used were, if we don't hire you, someone else is going to hire you and you're going to go do this for them. So she's just like, we want to take you off the market. What would you say to somebody who is like, I want to be doing that stuff, but I'm not in college so I can't like have access to a video production team or like not feeling like they don't have the resources to do those types of things. So in terms, I think with different media, there's different skills and equipment that you need. But I'm so of the mindset that anything you want to do in the video or production, whether it's photos or video or stop motion or YouTube or whatever, you don't need a crew and equipment. Like you really just need, if someone's going to shoot a

YouTube video, I'm convinced that someone can start off a whole YouTube series vlogging by just my early try-living with Lucy videos were quick time videos. I didn't have a camera. Really? It was just quick time set up. Some of it was an iPhone, like the old iPhones. And you weren't nervous about like with there's so much content out there these days and so much of it is like very high quality. You weren't nervous about not putting out that level of quality? Honestly, like I didn't even, I don't even know what I thought when I was posting these early videos. I had no concept of where it could go to. I wasn't. the type of person that watched YouTube. So I didn't know like, oh, my goal should be to have this many subscribers. And all I was doing was making the videos.

Like I just kept putting them out and kind of, I don't want to say like blindly putting them out because I was reading all the comments and getting feedback. And we were tweaking the episodes based on the audience's input. But I was definitely not like, is this good quality? I took it from my own commenters to tell me like your audio quality sucks. Okay, now we need to get a better audio. equipment, but it wasn't like I was comparing it with other people's stuff. It was just always being compared to my last video. So you would tell people to just like start and like,

they'll get better as they do it. And especially with, I mean, stop motion, I started shooting stop motion videos with my iPhone, duct taping my phone to a chair, lighting the set with a desk lamp, putting a piece of construction paper underneath as the solid seamless paper and just like shooting these fun videos that I don't think needed. I did plenty of videos for brands on my iPhone. it's all for social media, so you don't need to be shooting giant quality photos. Of course, when I did do one, I did one video in 2015 for a brand that wanted to put it in movie theaters. So for that, I was like, I need a camera. And so I rented a camera to do it for that.

That's cool. But everything else has shot up my iPhone. And I just think people are really, anyone who wants to start a blog or a YouTube channel, these days people are so concerned with, like, don't have the right gear, I don't have the equipment, I don't have the lights. I don't have the camera so I can't do it. And it's like, if you just started, not only would you be able to get out there faster, get your face out there, start getting people interested in you. And then like down the line, once you know it's time, you can invest in equipment. But I think people invest in stuff way too early before they even know if it's going to be successful. And then they've just wasted money. Or even if they know if they're going to like it. Exactly. Yeah. That's another thing is if you're doing a job where you're on camera, I think so many people see this job and think it just looks so easy. Yeah.

And that it's like, oh, wow, I've actually heard of people at refinery kind of talking about me behind my back in a way. She's just doing spa treatments for five days. Exactly. Like, I've heard from people that in other meetings, people have said things like, well, what does she even do? Like, she's just getting a facial or she's just at this hair salon. And I don't think the whole world realizes that, at least in this digital world, yourself doing everything. So all the production, all the release farms, all of the telling the shooter what to shoot, the gear rentals, everything is one person who's also on camera. So what does it

look like just sort of head to toe when you're shooting a five day? So it starts with the concept and I pulled together a full research document of like, what do I want to cover in this episode? If someone was going to watch five days of drinking water, I'm just pointing to my water cup. you know, what are all the stats and figures about water that we need to mention. And I feel like water is such a silly example. Maybe I'll use something else. Do one you did. One I recently, okay, five days of I or Veda.

That was one of my favorite episodes. And it was, I read a book about it. And I was like so intrigued on this about this book that I decided to break it into five days. This is a Sahara's book, right? Yeah, she's going to be either on an episode before or an episode after as we've already recorded it. Obsessed with Sahara. Yeah. She's amazing.

Sahara Rose. So I found her book. I read it myself. Only once I read it and couldn't stop talking about it to friends did I think, maybe I should make a video about this because I'm so passionate about this. It doesn't normally work that way. That was one episode that I was so passionate about. Yeah. And then that happened. So I sat, I pulled together her book basically wrote up a whole sheet of all the basic info of Iyerveda, broke it into five themes. If it's like an episode topic like Iirveda, then it's basically I'm teaching them something and I have to split it into five sections so that there's,

each day is dedicated to something. Okay. But a lot of times if it's like a challenge, like five days of sleeping on the floor, that research page would just be like, what is sleeping on the floor? Do for your spine? What if some people said, has refinery written any articles on this in the past that I can quote? Stuff like that may be reaching out to a doctor and getting wellness and fun. So like not looking in the mirror one was that like self-esteem facts?

I was looking into like psychology of seeing yourself and I was kind of, my research for that was like going through a whole day, making note of every time I saw my reflection and just kind of pulling together stats of like, how many times a day do people look at themselves? Okay. Where are all the places in the world where you would catch yourself in a doorknob or a window and subway and just thinking about that kind of stuff. Okay. Then if it's like a challenge, then it's like, okay, I'm just getting started and I'm,

I bring my camera, I'll rent a camera person from refinery or just sometimes with my own vlog camera be filming the day and basically just go. through the five days, I would say typically because I don't have access to a camera person all day, every day, and that would just cost a refinery, 29 ridiculous amounts of money to hire someone to actually track me for five days. A lot of times I do these challenges alone and then vlogging a little bit? Vlogging a little bit or just like writing down what's happening. And then I'll have a videographer for two days and I'll change outfits and we'll recreate it all.

Okay. So a lot of it is like reality TV recreation. Yeah. In the beginning it wasn't. And then I was like, we need to be more efficient and hair down how much time we're shooting. Because these episodes. So in the beginning, did you have a camera guy just kind of chilling with you for five days? In the beginning, it was like I would have someone in the middle of the day at work, like follow me to go do something. And then I'd realize, like, we just got like three hours of footage for Tuesday. Right. And this video is like eight minutes total. And now I have three hours that it's. wasting everyone's time. And so we started getting more efficient about kind of once I did the challenge, then I'd like look at it from a further back view and say, how do I put this into five days in a way that has a beginning, middle, and end and a story arc. And then I sort of like construct the video. And do you write all that? Is that just like written down like beginning and middle ends? The arc is this? Yeah. It's usually written in a document like by Wednesday I realize this. Like make sure that I'm sort of have the story flow. And then. the actual webcams, I used to record them day of, but then I realized, like, this is inefficient because there's something I wish I had said on Tuesday that I was feeling and I didn't say it. So what I've started doing probably two years ago is I would record all of the webcams for the five days at the end as like a recap. And I'd be like, so on Monday, I did this. On Tuesday, I did this. And it's so much better because I do basically do a rough script. So I know what I want to say now that the video is over and I can make sure that there is that story arc and

it's all clear and concise, but I do wind up just like talking to the camera and kind of going off the script. Okay. So how long would you say it takes you to put together? Like how many hours of work are going into every eight minute clip? Hours of work is tough to say. I would say usually for each five-day video, there's usually like one day of full research, two or three days of shooting.

And then another, the thing is because of the way refineries edit teamworks, it's not like they're just as soon as I'm done shooting. they start editing and it's done that week. It's usually like in the calendar to be kicked off being edited a couple weeks later. And once it starts being edited, the editor's working on a few other projects at once. So I'll get a first cut and then I give notes. And then I get a second cut and I give notes. Right.

We usually like to, what I give advice for people who want to have a YouTube channel is if you want to do weekly videos, you should probably at any given time have like four videos that are done and ready to go. And you're working on videos for after that. Just so that you are never at a place where you're like, I don't have anything. Yeah, I tell people the same thing with podcasts. I just think you never want to be like, oh, my God, I need to put this up on Wednesday. And I don't have anything to put up. Right.

Exactly. So you become sort of like famous through doing this. Scary. How? And you want to be even more famous, right? Kind of like you would like to like have your own show someday on a TV channel and all of that. How is that impacted like your relationships and how you view yourself and how you view yourself and how you move through the world. That's a great question. Well, it's very interesting because

I don't consider myself famous because I am me. And so that's just a very, you know, I feel like when someone says that to you, it makes you like uncomfortable and scared. But also like, it also makes me like when people say I'm, I have any notoriety from like my books or stuff, it like makes uncomfortable, but it also makes me like a little validated because it's like, oh, the stuff that I'm doing like matters in some way. Right. And I think, I just think it's interesting, like I look at so many other people who do what I do. And I think they're famous, but I don't think I'm famous. And I wonder if other people feel that way too, because it's, it's difficult to look at yourself the way someone else would look at you because you know all the work that it

took to get there. And it doesn't really seem like the way you look at a famous person where it's, you just see the highlights. And so I definitely, I find that word, like, funny. Also, I think it's funny because I never being a YouTube watcher myself, I was never, like, obsessed with a YouTuber. And because of that, like, when I think of fame, I'm thinking of, like, Brad Pitt. Exactly.

Yeah. Hollywood stars and big singers. And it's just an interesting, it's, there's this interesting dynamic and dichotomy between when people think of like a Selena Gomez versus a YouTuber. And that's because these other stars and celebrities from Hollywood are so unreachable and untouchable. And you would never be able to contact them. Whereas people are sending me emails and I'm responding. Or people are DMing me and I'm replying. And sometimes I do think like, does that make me not famous? Because Selena Gomez would never respond to this. So what am I doing? Taylor Swift does sometimes. Does she? And she's very

Yeah, she does. So, like, respond to DMs and, like, show up at people's weddings and stuff. Well, and that's the kind of thing is, like, at that stage, though, it's almost like, that's just good publicity for you. Like, and I'm not saying she's not doing it out of the goodness. No, I know she's both. Like, I think she's smart and I also think she cares about her fans. She's known for being really, you know, into her fans and caring a lot and doing great meet and greets and stuff. But when you're at that level, I feel like it's, it's almost a play, a publicity stunt to, like, show up as a one's wedding and that it's you look so nice and relatable. But really like you're not sitting there answering your own emails and you're not taking calls with people and giving them career advice.

Yeah. And so for me, it's, I think the whole YouTuber fame is is very different from that fame because the way and the reason people know you is from sitting watching videos that you've made for them tailored to them while you're looking them in the eye on your bed. And because of that, it feels like more intimate. People tend to like, when I am stopped on the street, It's not the way I would assume someone would stop Taylor Swift. Right. People literally come up to me and just like throw their arms around me. They're just like, Lucy, hi.

Or they just like call my name as if we're an old friend. And I have to then discern if I know this person from somewhere in my past or if it's a random fan. And it does get, sometimes I'm like, hi. And then they're like, you don't know me, but. And then they explain. And I'm so grateful for the people who explain because some people don't. And how often do you get like recognition? nice on the street, would you say? I would say I get stopped and like spoken to maybe twice a week.

That's like a fair bit though. And then the others are our DMs that are like, did you just walk by six avenue? And I'm like, yep, that was me. So do you derive a sense of self-worth through that? Or is it just like, I feel good about who I am and this is just like a nice to have? I think it's nice to especially knowing how hard people try to get their voice heard. in the digital space, it's nice to know that some of the stuff I'm saying is being heard. I definitely don't do what I do to be recognized for it, although it does feel nice, like as I'm sure anyone would say. But I think the best reward I get, like one of my favorite things is when I get

private messages or emails from people that are them explaining something to me of like how some little tiny thing in one of my videos created a shift in their mindset and cause them to do something that like changed their whole life. And I've gotten a few like really intense videos like one, sorry not videos, really intense emails. One was from a woman in Norway who this is like about to get really dark, but was on the verge of suicide. And then my five days of self-love video popped up on her YouTube and she watched it nine times and did overdose. Oh my God. I just got like full body shivers. Yeah. So emails like that, everything from that to someone being like, I watched your video on this and it convinced me that my relationship.

was not healthy and now I'm, I moved to Guam and I'm whatever. And stuff that I'm just like, it's kind of difficult to actually wrap your head around how something that I'm doing every day that as I put it out, I don't know how it's going to be received. I don't know if anyone's going to care or retweet it or whatever. And you just don't know how it's actually permeating the world and like causing real ripple changes in people's lives. Yeah.

And you've met some like what you would call real famous people through your job, haven't you? Yeah. Like on refinery. And are they, do they feel different? I don't know. Like what's spill the tea on them? I mean, some people I've done videos with at refinery are like Drew Barrymore and Carrie Underwood and like people that I think of as bigger celebrities.

And also I've met some really giant YouTubers at places like VidCon done videos with people that have like 15, 20 million. Which is crazy. And what are they like? Like IRL. They've all been great. I mean, everyone I've met has been, I mean, granted, they're on camera when they meet me. Right. We're doing videos.

So I think sometimes there are YouTubers who, I think the, the quote, stereotype about a lot of YouTubers is that they in person are not the same way they are on camera. Well, I think a lot of people are shy in real life, which is why they go behind a camera in the first place. And then people are like, oh, you're not shy because you're talking to camera. And then you put them in front of real people and they're like, oh, wow, they're really shy. Exactly. So either they're shy or they're like awkward or can't really talk to people. But they talk really well to a camera. Yeah.

I feel like I got into this the other way where I like like to talk to people and then was like, what can I do on camera? No, you're like exactly the same in real life as you are on camera. And when people ask me about that, I'm just like, well, truly it's because I'm not a good actress. Like I was in plays, but I don't think I would be an epic holly. Hollywood actress. Allie thought you were great. There have been a few. She's your biggest fan.

There were a few times. There were a few trial living with Luzi episodes where I had to act. Like I had, we were recreating something and I needed to play a part. Yeah. It wasn't just like a recreation, but I had to act. And I feel like so uncomfortable when I'm acting. I'm like, this is so staged. This is so bad.

And so for that reason, I feel like I can't be anything else on camera than just who I normally would be. Right. And when the camera goes on. For me, it's like when the camera goes on, anything that I was going to do just gets like a little bit more focused. A lot of people get really nervous when a camera goes on. I get like laser focus. I feel like I can say my lines in one take without messing up.

And if I'm talking to someone, I'm just like really into the conversation. And if I was going to try to do something, like throw up a candy and catch it in my mouth, I would do it well on camera. but wouldn't be able to do it off camera. Interesting. So I think, and because of that, I feel really comfortable. And like you were saying before, you have to really like it. Yeah. There have been so many people that I've come in contact with.

I remember, I started the sentence and I never finished it. So many people who, like, what do you do? You don't do anything. And they think that job looks so fun and it looks so easy because all you're doing, you're seeing all the fun stuff in the videos. And then they have the opportunity to go do it and to be the host of the video and be on camera and not only did they personally feel uncomfortable doing it like it just doesn't come naturally to them but they then read comments about themselves online and just can't handle comments and are like

I'm never doing this again because I can't stand what people have to say and that's if you're in this industry it's just sort of like you have to know that not everyone's going to like you yeah and some people are going to hate you and if you put a video on YouTube you're basically being like what do you think of me comment below right and you just have to move you. forward and not get bogged down by that. So do you ever have any moments of like, so a big part of this podcast is like, it's that I'll have what she's having. It's people overcoming wellness challenges or psychology challenges or relationship challenges

to like be living their best lives. Have you had things you would consider challenges to overcome because your life feels so perfect and sparkly and happy from the outside? Definitely. I have. And I've personally experienced so much growth in the past couple of years, just like changing so much as a person and my interests. And I remember like being early days at refinery, being more so interested in doing this

job for the notoriety that it would bring, being more like, I want more views and I want more people. And, you know, I want to do the topic that's going to be the most viral on YouTube and what's the craziest thing we can do. And over time, as I've made more and more content and I've just like seen the genuine reaction from people, I myself have also experienced just this massive, shift away from the way I used to be, which was like, I know that your food and health isn't really everything, but I used to be like, I just never cared about health.

Like, I never cared. And I like shudder to think of some of the things I used to eat. But I just would, my body doesn't gain weight easily, like just genetically, I have a fast metabolism. But I would eat. Which is like carp lunch to eat. Like, yeah, I always, I, on my good days, I feel like the fact that my body would gain weight is like almost. a good thing because otherwise I would just eat like Cheetos. Exactly. And I just ate so many donuts and so much candy. And I remember being at camp and being like, it's canteen. And I would get

sour power straws and slurp Coca-Cola through the sour power straws and didn't care about my teeth. Like I had cavities and I was just like, I'm not, I didn't think of health. And I, my parents did make sure that we ate like a healthy family dinner every night. But dinner was pretty much the only healthy meal. I would have like juice and cereal for breakfast, some sort of like sandwich or school lunch with like a chip witch for lunch and then like a pile of Oreos after school and then a healthy dinner followed by ice cream. And so I never thought about it. And it wasn't until 2017 when I had my gallbladder removed. Yeah. And I had gallstones. And truthfully, I don't even want to blame it on my food. I think it was my birth control, which a side effect of my birth control is gallstones.

Wait, really? Yes. Like you can read the small print on that? Says it right on it. And when I asked my doctor if I should go off it, his response was, no, because you've already got the one side effect and it's gone now. But side note, I'll probably be going off control eventually. I just like don't want a baby right now, so I'm still on it.

Yeah. But long story short. That's crazy. I had this gallbladder situation. Yeah, and I didn't. I saw your YouTube on that and I didn't even know young people got their gallbladder. Like, I mean, I didn't know very much about gallbladders in general, but I didn't know it was a young person thing at all. Is it common for young people?

It's not. And it's, they usually say the four Fs. I think it's like female, 40, fat, and something else. And so, like, I am a female. Oh, fertile is the fourth. To your fertile. So I'm female and I'm fertile, but I'm not 40 and I'm not heavy. So, like, I think it was a product of birth control and or the fact that you needed it?

So I was having, like, a lot of pain. every time I ate, especially something fatty or fried, which would send bile to my stomach, I was feeling like immense pain. And I actually had discovered in high school from getting a cat scan for something else that I had gallstones. And I was just told that I had gallstones, but that it wouldn't be a problem. Like a lot of people have them and it's fine. And I just remember, like, talking in the back of my mind, okay, I have gallstones. And then in college, I was experiencing the pain again.

Thankfully, when I was surrounded by a lot of doctors to be handy. And one of my really good friends was like, you know, this sounds like pain that you would have if it was from your gallbladder. And I know you've gallstones. Long story short, like fast forward to 2017, it was pretty bad. And I was just really scared. Like, I am not used to having pain. So when I was feeling pain so frequently, I was convinced that like something was, like, I thought it was cancer. I was like, there's got to be something wrong.

Yeah. And I just remember thinking, like, pain means it's spreading. Like I thought it was getting worse. And I went to my friend's dad who's a GI and he was like, it's your gallstones. And if you were my daughter, I'd just have you take it out because the risk is that you might be like traveling for work and have an attack where it needs to come out and be in Russia and have to get it taken out by a random person. Do you need your gall water? You don't. So your body readjusts.

Your bile is then stored in your liver. So it's like you do want to take care of your liver. And I'm not a big drinker anyway. but you, I feel like liver enzyme support is good. I don't do that. I probably should. But after that happened, I, by nature of just like doing so many videos in the health and wellness space and me, I gained like a really personal interest in natural healing

and natural remedies and did a ton of videos about natural remedies and then Iirveda. And I just as a person like had a 360 health shift. And now, I kid you not, I listen to podcasts every day. I have like five on rotation that I listen to that are all about the human body and health. Which is kind of full circle back to your doctor days. But it's interesting because not exactly because all these podcasts that listen to are kind of against doctors. Yeah. And not against them.

Obviously, there's a lot of acute moments when doctors are really helpful. But, you know, even Michael, he's going through some stuff right now with his migraines. and I sent him to a naturopath to go figure out what it is and figure out how he can naturally fix it because that's not supposed to happen. And any time he goes to a neurologist, they throw pills at him and he doesn't want to take pills. Right. What did the naturopath say? The naturopath basically was examining his full lifestyle and put him on this different course of

different herbal supplements to take and was telling him all these lifestyle changes to make regarding meditation and sleeping. Has it helped at all? This, like, just happened. Okay. So we don't know yet. We'll get an update. We will get an update. But he doesn't want to take pills.

Yeah. He gets, and they're like semi-genetic. His mom gets them too. But it's just way too often. And they're like super debilitating for him. And he right now has these pills that he takes that basically like just knock him out and make him so foggy. And the headache goes away.

But then he's like not functional. He's not functional. And he also something to do with like, your brain, something to do with your nerve, or what is it called, I guess it's the vein of where the blood is flowing through your brain. It makes them constrict so tight that like the next time they get even wider and you have a worse headache the next day. So it's just kind of silly. You're listening to the Healthier Together podcast. This episode is sponsored by one of my favorite food brands, love beats. You may have seen them in your local grocery stores

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Now, let's get back to the episode. Should you feel different from doing, like, what wellness-y stuff do you do? So I, like, do a lot of Ayurvedic stuff now. So I do tongue scraping every day and do, like, a lot of self-oil massages. I also, like, wake up every morning and have a full giant glass with apple cider vinegar in it. And I make, like, so many smoothies all the time just as, like, filler in between meals. I never really have that as a full meal. But I eat so many fermented foods and I take so many probiotics.

And I just, I've added like a lot of supplements to my day, like turmeric pills and apple cider vinegar pills. And I go do meditation regularly, like either at home or I go to a meditation spot, I do yoga two times a week. I really try to, I sleep with my phone out of the room. I put on magnesium oil before bed. Like I do a lot of things. that I noticed. Do you feel different? I just noticed that in the past couple, especially with this

career where it's like so crazy and fast paced and there's no turning off. If I were not doing this stuff, I feel like I would be crazy. Like there were a couple times in the past couple years before that surgery when I was almost starting to feel like heart palpitations in the middle of movies. And I was getting really nervous that I was like starting to get anxiety and panic attacks. And did you have a panic attack ever? I don't think a full-blown one. But just like on the precipice. Like on the precipice, I was, it happened a bunch of times that my heart would start racing.

And then actually in the middle of my surgery, something weird happened with my heart. And I needed to be on a heart monitor for the next few days. And I just was like, I need to calm the hell down and like not be so. I don't even know what I was. Like I feel like I just didn't care about health as much. And then I realized how important it was. now like I really value my health and take really good care of myself. And even things like the gallbladder, I'm like, I even question if I made the right decision to get it out.

Because now I listen to all these podcasts that are like, there are natural ways to dissolve gallstones. And I'm like, well, I didn't know any of this before. I know. But you can't like, I beat myself up over so many of the decisions I made like in the past. And I just like you can't do it. I know. So I'm trying trying not to be as, you know, annoyed with myself about that. I feel like there's just been a big shift and now I'm in this better space. But I, of course, back to your earlier question, of course, still, you know, not every day is just like, everything's happy and joyous. I definitely get stressed a lot about am I doing enough?

I think in this job, it's like you don't, especially now that I don't have a full-time job and I am my full-time job. It's like I can always be doing more work. Yeah. But I work with a mindfulness entrepreneurial coach via Skype once a week. and she has me closing my laptop at 5.30 every day and sending her an emoji via Instagram to let her know that it's closed. So I'm trying to like shut off at a normal time and do like set morning meditations that she's like helping guide me through. Why did you decide that you needed that type of like a mindfulness entrepreneurial coach? She actually reached out to me and offered me a free session one day.

and it came at a time when I was very interested in doing my own coaching for other people. So I thought, wow, the universe just gave me a coach who I can use for free to teach me how to be a coach. And so I did one session with her where I told her that I wanted to coach. And she was like, well, I can help you through that if you, we did a swap where she was like, I'll coach you once a week for free if you promote me, help promote my coaching program on Instagram. Yeah. And so we started working together and then fast forward a month. I already had my first coaching client from her help.

And it turns out I don't want to be a coach. I did it once. It was great. I love that you tried it though. Yeah. Yeah. And it was really, it was a great experience. And like it's something that I know I can always do again if I needed extra income or

had more time. But it's not what I want to focus on now. But I did that for a little with her help. And then I was like, you know what? I don't want to coach anymore. I just want to use you as like basically, I feel like she's kind of a mixture between a friend and someone who, like, she really helped me make the transition from with refinery to being on my own.

Yeah. And help me with those like contract negotiation talks. Like she was, she basically did like role play with me or like help you actually like concretely be like, this is how I'm going to ask. She helped me like manifest what I wanted, like helped me write down exactly what I wanted. and help figure out the right language for me to ask for what I wanted and help, I think she helped me get what I wanted. And then she also helped me basically anything I wanted to do. Like there was a time when I was working with her and I said I really want to become more minimalist and get rid of some of my stuff.

And she basically like helped me create a whole program to clear out my stuff. So she just helps you like put things into life. Yeah. And she, if you want to do something like she has all these documents that are like write down exactly what you want and put. out there. What's her name? We should give her a shout-out this way. Her name is Margellane. Her Instagram is Morning Margellane. She has her own media company. She's from Canada, but she lives in Germany, and she's a badass. And she's so cool. Did you read that BuzzFeed article that was viral a few months ago about burnout culture and millennial burnout? Oh, I don't know if I did, but I read something

similar about YouTubers. Okay. Well, the framework of this was the idea that millennials in general these days, whether you're in the public eye or not, you are sort of your own brand. all the time. And like, instead of being on and off, you're always on in some way, shape, or form, which just leads to you being a little bit exhausted all the time. How do you combat that type of thing? Because you are your own brand more than even most people are. Honestly, if I didn't have Michael, I'd be a zombie. Really? Because I think if I didn't have someone who, I guess, was like relying on me to be there and be present for them, I'm I could easily power through a whole day and night still working.

And I could go, I could eat dinner in front of the couch while responding to Instagram DMs. And I could go out with friends and continue making Instagram stories and just continue building my business while I live my life. But with Michael, he's from the start, you know, I've been with him since high school. So he's just so crazy to me. Yeah, he's like been there for the whole journey. And he is such a good influence in my life. number one, he's just like a rock and is like very stable and steady. He's not, he has no drama, no problems. Like he's just very consistent and logical and a great steady guy. But he's also very,

he reminds me all the time that I need to put my phone down. And in the beginning, it like it would feel like an attack in the beginning. He'd be like, put your phone down. We're on vacation. And I'd be like, this is my job. This is how I make money. And I'd like kind of fight back. But he knows now like, you know, If we're out together and there's a beautiful sunset, he knows they might pick up my phone and capture it. It's just like part of my, who I am to take content and make something that I'm seeing in real life into a piece of shareable content. It's just part of it.

But at the same time, we've now, you know, we've implemented so many things in our relationship. Like, as I mentioned, I sleep with my phone plugged in out here. So once we get in bed, I don't even like have access to it anymore. And going out to dinner, it began as me being like, I'm kind of afraid to play. out my phone because I don't want him to get like mad. And it evolved into we don't touch our phones at dinner. Like we're at dinner now. And, you know, if I want to check something, I'm like, I'm going to check my phone

to see X, Y, Z. And it's like a specific reason why I'm going to check it. It's not just like let me mindlessly scroll or do something. Well, and even the checking, like, it's usually there. Like, unless you like are debating Nasslers and you need to look up a statistic. It's like I, I'm shocked at how strong the poll is to like check this email or check of this Instagram posts got some reaction because it's all going to be the same an hour or two later. True. And especially with emails, like, that's when I find myself moving towards more often than

Instagrams. Like, I open my email and just refresh it all the time. It's because I do this too. And I realize for me, it's because all of my good business increase. My good news comes from email. And it's the shit I use for affirmation. Like, if I'm not feeling good one day, I'll like refresh my email to be like, Liz, you have value. because this brand wants to work with you or something. And it's so shitty. Like that's not where I should be getting that affirmation. I think you're right, though, because that, for me, Instagram DM can be a whole lot of noise.

Yeah. And just a lot of people asking questions or brands being like, we'd love for you to be an ambassador and stuff that's probably not going to bring me a lot of money or notoriety. Whereas the emails is the spot where it's like, we'd love for you to do this giant partnership with this giant brand. What do you charge? And then I'm like forwarding into my agent and getting so excited about what's coming and it's always via email. So I open email, refresh it, and it's like 15 new things.

And I, it's almost like that dopamine hit of my email refreshing with new opportunities, like what's on the horizon. And I notice that if I'm, you know, I just, sometimes I do it anyway, even though I know this. But if I'm not going to respond to that email in the next minute that I open it, there's no need for me to even look at it. Yeah. Because why look at it and then mark it is unread. I mark everything is unread or flag it. And then I'm just, like now I'm God forbid I did that before bed. Then I'm lying in bed thinking about how to respond. And sometimes it's just, why not set a time to open your computer, get on your email? And now that I have the headspace, let me read your message and reply to it right away or delete it right away.

Do you do anything to like get that sense of self worth or self-love, not from email, not from Instagram to like make sure it's coming internally or like through your close relationships? I definitely just, you know, I'm one of those people who as soon as I post a photo, it's like I do more than I want to, just continue to open the photo and refresh and see like how many likes or how many comments or what are people saying. And a lot of it is me trying to respond to people because back to the algorithm, I feel like if you're active on a post after you post it, it's helpful for more people seeing it. But there are also times when I am like, okay, I'm in a play. So I'm going to post this photo and turn my phone off. And I opened my photo after the play's over and it did perfectly fun. Yeah.

And I'm just like, so I guess I don't have to be sitting there monitoring as likes come in. But for me, my Instagram DM is like a bottomless pit of unread messages that if I ever was like, I just want to see what people have to say. And who likes me and who likes my videos? Like, I could go there. Yeah. And but the thing is, it's interesting. Like it's the strangest thing that once you, and I'm sure you feel the same way, having been doing what you're doing for so long, once you get one message of someone saying,

like, I love your videos. I'm your biggest fan. It's like you're kind of numb to everyone else that says that. Like, maybe I felt it's not like if I'm having a bad day, that makes me feel better. Definitely not. And if I'm, if I'm stressed about something, it's not like I can go there and be reminded of how good I'm doing. But your brain tricks like, I know that on a deep level, but on a shallow level, I'm like, I'm having a bad day. I need somebody to tell me I'm great. You know what I mean? Right.

And like, I'm like, it'll work this. I know it hasn't worked the first a thousand times, but this time it's going to work. And I'm going to feel great. I've just never experienced it. You know, I feel like you always think it's going to make you feel better or you always think that it's going to be so meaningful. But I think it goes back to when I was saying how I don't think of myself the way I think of other people.

I've had this chronic thing where, like, I can look at another Instagrammer who maybe, let's just think of if they had the exact same following and the exact same engagement as me. If I look at them, I think of them in like a sphere of like, wow, they've done so well. They're doing such great things. They're, you know, that person could probably go on vacation for a week and not post anything. and I would still care about them and they're so amazing. But I don't give myself that same leeway. And I don't look at my own account from the outside world. So I frequently have to like reorient myself to be like, let me just take a minute and close my eyes and think of like what someone else thinks of me.

And when, because the truth is the way I believe the world works is that like I feel like this is going to come out wrong before I even said it. But let me try to say it. I almost feel like the way others perceive you is what matters. Right. I don't mean that. And, you know, that's so opposite. In a like, we are harder on ourselves than other people are on us. Yes.

Like, the way is, I just feel like there's, you can't, it's not in a vacuum where it's like, I think what I'm trying to say is if you're going to judge yourself, you have to judge yourself the same way you would judge someone else. You can't look at yourself differently and think that you're worse. off just because you like know more about your own story. And so I frequently have to be like, well, let me actually just look at my account and look at who I am from the eyes of someone else. And the moment I do that, I'm like, wow, I'm doing so great. I've accomplished so much.

I could literally stop making videos right now and I will still have been a successful digital media YouTuber. Yeah. I did it. And sometimes when I think that it like calms me down that I don't need to be hustling. and grinding so hard because like I've already gotten over this invisible hump of whatever I'm trying to get over and I've already gotten to a place where most people don't even get to in their whole careers. But then it's just so hard to maintain that distance from myself throughout the day.

So then throughout the day I slowly start slipping back into like, I have so much to do. And if I don't do it, I'm nothing. And like I have to continue making the next video and doing the next thing. And what's my next thing? And you look at other people and you're just like, oh, that person is set. Yeah. They probably feel the exact same way. Everybody does. I think it's been one of the most interesting things is I've encountered more and more

successful people in my career, all of the people who I'm like, one, you must have no self-esteem problems. Two, you must think like you're so beautiful. You're so smart and you're so successful. And every single one of them like doesn't feel that way. And they're just measuring themselves from one person up. Right. The latter.

Like it universally, even like very famous Hollywood celebrities. Oh, yeah. They're just like measuring. And even worse. I think for some of the Hollywood celebrities because they're being told constantly. Like I was interviewing somebody and she said that there's a list that they keep for journalists at Hollywood celebrity parties. And like you know all the celebrities know going in if they're like a top priority, a medium party or low priority on the list. And it changes like party to party.

Yeah. And like there is no place where you feel like you are all the things, you know. That's why I think especially in this world where it's about you and you are the brand. and you are the person, you have to remember. Like, I sometimes think about it in the sense of that Hollywood pyramid. Like, my favorite star, I'm just going to use Selena Gomez. She's not my favorite star, but, like, I love her. But if Selena Gomez was my favorite star, there's still people who are above her, like, topping the charts.

And every week it changes. And every week someone else becomes in most followed Instagram. And it's never, even once you get to the top. But she would still be your favorite star through all of that. You know what I mean? But I feel like what I'm saying is like even when even when you're at what you consider to be the top of a pyramid, you're still not at the top. And even if you did get to like the top position in the entire world where you're number one and everything in the whole world, like it's not going to maintain that. And you're going to it's going to be stressful for you to maintain that.

So what do you do with that? It's like you never get. What I feel like is I realize that there's never like there is no end goal. Like there's no, there can't be an end goal to your life or your career. You have, like, your goal has to just be to enjoy what you're doing throughout the process because you're never going to get to a stage where you've said, like, I've made it and you, like, lie down peacefully and just die happily. Like, that's not how it's going to work.

Yeah. You have to really enjoy what you're doing. And at the end of the day, you have to, like, one thing I can say with confidence is that, like, I really like myself. Like, I just, like, like who I am. And I know I'm a good person. Yeah. And I'm just like happy to be alive.

And I like what I'm doing on Instagram and that's fun. And it really shows off my personality and it's true to who I am. But all that aside, like I'm just, I'm trying to make my life as good of an actual life as possible. Because like what's the point of getting ahead of someone else on Instagram or getting another follower or getting to the top tier of the people coming to the party? If you're not just enjoying life. And I know it's not like a, I feel like there's no race. It's not race, but there's no, like, measurement of like, you enjoyed your life the most. So here's your metal.

Like, it's not like you're trying to enjoy your life more than others around you. But I just think there's the only thing you can really do is recognize that whatever you're doing, if you are happy and enjoying it, it's enough. Like, you don't need to be pushing and trying to do so much and and be the best because you'll realize once you become in that best position that either it's not all that it was chalked up to be. and now you're stressed out of your mind, or you're slipping down the list and, like, you're never actually the best. Yeah, and if that's what you put your esteem in, then it's just like there's nothing to cling to there. It's like water through your hands.

Okay, so there's a few questions I like to ask everybody, and you're the first person that I've warned ahead of time about these. So you better have extra good answers. Everybody else is like, oh, my gosh, let me think. Even people who purport to listen to the podcast, I'm like, well, you should have heard it. I don't know if I saw these questions. Well, I changed him up.

I was on the calendar invite. Oh, gosh. I don't know if I read that, Liz. Well, you should read your calendar invites Lucy. Okay, so the first one is, have you ever been somewhere in the world where you're like, these people really got it right in terms of like living a happy, healthy life? And if so, where was it? Oh, wow.

Well, can it be something I've seen online? Sure, although I feel like you would know as much as anybody that like. It looks like could be fake. Yeah, it looks can be deceived in. That is very true. Okay, well, personally, I think anyone that lives in like a small fishing village off the coast of some island really knows what they're doing. And, you know, I would say the one that's coming to mind is off the coast of Italy, Sardinia. They are, I believe they're one of the blue zones.

Okay. I think. So that means they're like the most long-living people in the world? Yes. The most longevity in the whole world. And they, you know, there's also Okinawa in Japan and other fishing island. And all these people just live such long lives because I believe they're eating the freshest food. Their movement is basically just like physical gardening and they don't go to like spin classes in Okinawa.

They're just doing stuff. They are surrounded by the negative ions from the ocean all day. And they're just, I feel so happy when I'm at the beach. I can't imagine living there. And overall, they have such a sense of community, and especially the older people, feel really honored and cared for. Can you imagine a society where instead of being like older people, get out of the way or like can't hear what I'm saying or be part of this conversation where like I revere your wisdom and knowledge, not this 20 year old on Instagram's wisdom and knowledge, you know. I'm like when I'm old, I'm moving to Okinawa. Or maybe we'll change the society here from the inside out.

That would be amazing. So yeah, I would say anyone that has, like, even though I'm so on the grid, I think the people that are off the grid know what they're doing. I love that. What's one purchase you've made that's helped you become healthier or happier? Absolutely. It's got to be that tongue scraper. Really?

Yeah. You love your tongues. And that's a cheap one, too. So cheap. It's like seven bucks. Amazon Prime. It's yours, Dr. Tongues? I don't think so.

It's like a stainless steel. Yeah, Dr. Tongue is. Oh, maybe it is. Does it have like the brightly colored handle? No. Oh. It's all stainless steel. steel. But it's honestly, it's made me, from what I've learned from tongue scraping, it's made

me healthier because it's clearing off the plaque that's building up on my tongue overnight. But it's also, it's not one of those things that I don't remember how I went through my life without this. Why? Like, why is it so wonderful? You have no idea, like, how much stuff is coding my tongue when I wake up and before I go to bed that I'm disturbed and disgusted by the fact that I never did this. Yeah. And it's, you know, I, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm, sure someone could say like, well, that's, it's not bad stuff. It's not toxins. But from what I hear, it is.

Some of it is toxins. And they used to do this back in ancient India and Irovedic times. And I feel like the fact that it's funny because when I posted about it and I posted about my Ierveda video, the photo I used was a tongue scraping video. And I had so many people, so many followers from India commenting on it being like, you never did this? Or they would like tag their friends. And they were like, do you believe that people don't do this?

And now I'm totally on board with them. I'm like, how do I look at Michael and I'm like, don't you want to get? Does he not do it? He doesn't have one. And he's not using mine. That's gross. No, you should get them one. I should.

And I think if I'm convinced that if I provided them to all the people in my life, they would also fall in the dick. But I think if anyone out there wants to just physically feel like you're doing something that you can literally see the results. Yeah. The second you do it, get a tongue scraper. That's like I, so I don't drink anything in the morning until I brush my teeth and I scrape my tongue and, floss and get everything. And I do like a brushing, rinse, mouthwash. And it's because I've learned from various doctors that you have all these bacteria in your mouth when you first wake up.

And if you swallow it, you're just swallowing it. And now whenever I watch people like drink when they have it, brush their teeth in the morning or eat. And I'm just like, oh, my God. They're like eating. Because it's so gross. And nobody has breath smells good in the morning. Not one person. Other thing, the other purchase I would say that's been great is I got a battery powered alarm clock on.

on Amazon. And it sits next to my bed and it's so cute. You can probably see it from where you are. Oh, it's very, it's like a turquoise teal color. Yeah. And it's the best thing to not sleep and it looks like an emoji of an alarm clock. Like it's not like a digital one. Yeah, it's like retro. Yeah, it's like retro. It looks like you hit the top of it. And it actually does like the top actually jingles back and forth and it's like and I like slap it in the morning like as if I'm in Spod's up. But it's, it's been the best purchase because I have not slept with my phone in the room for probably like two, three months now. And does that make a big difference? So much. And I can't even it's, I just remember like there were times when I wouldn't, I couldn't sleep that I would reach

for my phone, which was making it 15 million times worse. And then also when we were lying in bed, if we were watching something on TV and I had a question about it, I would just grab my phone to like search something. And now I'm like, oh, I can't search. So I just living in the dark ages. Just think about it. But it's just amazing. And it forces me to do a lot more reading in bed. And do you have more sex? Do I have more sex? I mean, we're not like sex right for bed people anyway. We're not either. And my husband like desperately wishes that we were. And I'm just like, I'm sleepy at night, man. I think the big thing it's done is it's made my, like, I have a dream journal next to the bed now. And at the moment I wake up, it's like I slap the alarm clock and I have my dream journal and I like write down the dream, which I don't even know the point of this. I don't know where I'm leading with it. I just actually the natural path told Michael to do it. So I started one of my. own. So now I have this dream journal and I just feel like my whole bedroom space is like now

just what it's meant to be for. And I'm not like bringing my phone in and all my social media stuff. It's like almost if I visualize it when I'm sleeping, there's no Instagram on my bed. Yeah, I love that. What's the best way to spend 20 minutes every day in terms of a good life? Honestly, just with good people who you love, doing something that you genuinely love. I'm, I really, admire my twin sister because she is the most, I don't know if like self-aware is the right word, but she's just of all people I know. She gives no shits what anyone else thinks. She just knows what she wants and what she doesn't want and is like, that's what I'm

going to do and that's what I'm not going to do and no one's going to walk on me and no one's going to tell me what I have to do. And both of us were very much like not big drinkers in high school and college and I would find myself getting swayed and peer pressured and. to like, okay, I guess I should take a shot because this is cool. And Ali would just be like, no, I don't want to do that. That's like, I don't like the taste of that. I'm not doing it.

And she wouldn't be feeling like she was doing anything extravagant. Like she just was like, no, I don't want to do that. But I, from an outside view, was always so, I admired her so much for a lot of times our friends will go out. And then Allie and I are notoriously like, we don't want to go out. We should want to come home and snuggle and watch a movie. And sometimes I'm like, I guess I'll go out because it's like, everyone wants to go out and I don't want to go out. Yeah. And Ellie's like, okay, well, then I'm going home alone. Bye. I love you. And like gets in a cab and goes home. Wow. And I, she's like one of my favorite people to be around for that reason. Because when you're with her, you know that whatever you're doing is like she wants to be doing it. Yeah. And same with Michael. Like I just, I think that a lot of people ask me how I stay happy or like how I'm happy in my life. And I attribute it to the people around me and my relationships. Like, yes, I found a job that I like, which is helpful and I, you know, do stuff like self-care

that brings me happiness. But probably none of that would really register if I didn't just have like a very healthy, stable relationship and good relationships with my family. And like Michael's whole family is now my family too. And his sister is like a little sister to me and his parents are second parents to me. I want to ask how you like cultivate that. But for you, it's like you were born with this really strong relationship. and then you have this really strong relationship with your brother.

And then you met Michael in high school. So do you know what you would do if you didn't have all these things sort of built in? And you wanted that strong sense of community? So yeah, I definitely was blessed with like really loving parents who my parents were also like middle school sweetheart. So they. Oh my God. And, you know, they were from the beginning of time with my family. My parents were all about like family, strong family values.

And they were not accepting of like us. We would obviously have little arguments and bicker every once in a while. But they were like, you guys are each other's best friends in the world. And you never talk about, you never like talk negatively about your siblings to someone outside of the family. I love that. And like they were just really, they drilled that into our heads from the beginning. And so the five of us have always been really close.

And my mom's an only child and my dad has two brothers that don't live nearby. So like we don't really have. extended people. It's mostly just the five of us. And then in comes Michael's family where he has like a hundred million cousins from South Africa and all over there in London and Toronto and New York too. And so it's like now a big boom family with him. But I think like for me, the only part of my life that hasn't always been that constantly stable is the friend aspect of it. Because I, my sister and I definitely jumped around from friend group to friend group a couple times in high school. Which is probably easier because you had each other.

Yes, we always had each other. And we were also always with a third friend of ours who is like our best friend. She's 10 days older than us or 10 days younger than us. And we've known her since we were infants. And so like we definitely always had each other even as we tried to find who we liked really. We want to be friends with. But I think I learned that lesson nice and early in high school. So come college, I remember just going into college being like, I am not making the same mistake that I made in middle school where

I became friends with the cool people who I thought was the good thing to do. And then it turns out they're not nice and I don't want to be with them. And so from day one of college, we found a group of friends during like orientation week that are just the nicest people. And they're still our best friends to this day. And so, I mean, for people who don't have it with a family, I don't think it needs to be people that are blood related to you. I think I got lucky that the people that are blood related are very caring and nurturing. But I think it can just be the people that you create in your group. I think it's about being honest with yourself and being like, do I actually like this person?

Yeah. Or am I trying to be friends with them for some social reason or for something outside of that? Or because they reflect how I want to be perceived. Exactly. Yeah. And that's never going to end well. Like you're not going to actually be happy being friends with someone that you're like kind of scared of. Or like someone that you are a little jealous of.

Yeah. You need to find like real true friends who are lifting you up and really supporting you and just being like great friends. I love that. Okay, last question. Yes. What is one big mistake you've made in your life and what's one thing you really got right? Do the mistake first. So we can end on a positive note. What's one mistake I made? When I was just finishing up college, this is like such a long story. I have to shorten it. I have to shorten it. Okay. But the long story short is that I, I think there was one point in my like, it was actually before my career started when I was a little bit too much. I was an oversharer in a way and I shared a little bit too much information on

Twitter about what I was doing and who I was working with and it wound like I feel like I need to tell the story otherwise. Yeah, you tell the story. Just a long story short is that I was being mentored by Matt Lauer who I know now there's a lot of problems. Very thankfully, none of that involved me. But back in 2013 he was mentoring me and I was sharing a little bit too many details about How did he start mentoring you? He was on the Today Show when I was the guest. And so he became one of the producer. He became one of the talent that I grabbed his email and was like sending ideas to.

And he was a great mentor to me and helped me a lot. And I definitely overshared too much just the fact that he was mentoring me, which I don't think the industry at that time was okay with men mentoring women. And in like 2013, there was a National Enquirer article that went out that Matt was like having. having like hitting on me basically in 2013. You were in the National Enquirer. And this was like before any, before I did anything on YouTube. Oh my God. Just this random article that went out that he was had like a wandering eye for this today's

show guest and whatever. And it was very scary for me because I was not in the industry yet. And I was like, I didn't do anything wrong. He didn't do anything wrong. This is just straight up yellow journalism. Did his like team call you and tell you like this is how we're handling this or anything? Well, yeah, I got called by NBC. They were like, this is, this kind of happens all the time with him.

But they're publishing an article. We got, we got notified. We just have to let you know as a formality. And actually a reporter went to my house and was like interviewing my parents. And this was before we knew. So my parents were like interviewing with this guy, not knowing who he was. He didn't say where he was from. So anyway, long story short, I think I just like overshared too much.

And it led to this like false article coming out. Fast forward to 2018 when he, all those allegations came out against him. Thankfully, I was not one of the people that he did any harm to. But I did, I did start getting contacted again because people dug up an old article and they're like, were you part of this? Did you have anything to say? Did you have like, what were your feelings when all that came out? Because obviously he was like mentoring you and helpful to you in your career.

But then you're like, oh, he did all this stuff. I was absolutely appalled. and I was just so great. Like it almost was like a moment when I was like, oh my God, maybe that article and everything, which honestly that article caused me to like step away from him because I didn't want to get caught up in some silly scandal. So I was like maybe that was like the universe protecting me from whatever happened that I know happened with other women. So then it was a mistake. So maybe.

You know, at the time I definitely thought I was a mistake. Yeah. Now that this has all come out, it's just like. been kind of put to rest for me because I'm like, okay, that whole weird situation in my life now has like a reason on it and maybe someone was digging around for something because they knew about things he had actually done. Yeah. I don't know.

But I felt like that was a mistake on my part because I didn't know anything about the industry. And I just felt like I overshared that he was taking me to lunch alone and that he was being my mentor. And I probably will always feel like I made a mistake, even though I don't know if I did anything wrong except for being a millennial tweeting. Can I just get just, I don't want to make this too long, but you are amazing at asking people for things. I guess like, I don't think most people would occur to them if they met Matt Lauer ever to be like, can you be my mentor or something like that? How do you go about that in a way?

I guess I would always seem like this person's so busy. They're not going to have time for me, whatever. I don't have anything to offer them. How do you do that briefly? I think for me, the people that I've always been attracted to mentor, as being myself the mentor are the people who come into it with already ideas and already have thoughts and they don't just want to sit and quote pick your brain. I think that that's my least favorite expression. I have a friend who we joke about when people want to pick our brains.

We're just like, we don't want our brains to be picked. My brain is a garden and it needs to be watered, not picked. And like every time someone comes in, I just have this visual of like someone literally picking my flowers and it's like who's rewatering that. Now I have to rewater it. And I feel like with a mentor relationship, it's not like they need to give you something in return. Like you can mentor someone and it can be a nice thing for you to do. But it is nice if the person that you're mentoring comes to the table with something. And the way I approached it with Matt and with any other mentor I've had is I didn't just say, like, can I pick your brain and can I ask how you got your job and try to replicate it?

But I came in with like, here's segment ideas. Can I get your feedback on how these would do? And here's videos I've made. Can you tell me what you think? And he was definitely like, this segment is a good idea because of this. This one wouldn't do well because of this. This video is good, but try to do another video where you're doing this. And he was like actually giving me actionable steps.

And do you acknowledge, like when you're emailing him, like, are you like, I know you have eight million things to do, but do you want to watch this five minutes? Or like, how do you deal with that? Yeah, I think that it's always great to acknowledge that, you know, you don't want someone to think that you're just like, you'd think their time is endless and that they're endlessly. available to just respond to your questions. So I always think it's nice to say, you don't have to say, like, I'm sure you're busy. You don't have to be like a shy little lamb, but I think it is nice to let someone respond on their own time or like, I'm sending this off to you. Let me know what you

think when you get a minute. And then if they don't respond in a week, you can say, hey, I'm just kindly following up on the below, no rush, unless there is a rush. Yeah. Like they're really, when it comes to mentorship, it's not really a rush situation. So when you saw him, I'm trying to learn. On set, was it like, I have a few ideas. I'd love to run by you. Can I grab your email? Yeah. When I saw him on set, it was like he was the talent that I was paired with.

So we did the segment together. He and everyone else that I ever worked with at the Today Show, like, blew me away with how good they were at, I guess they do it every day. And it's natural for them. But we would just be like talking and the camera is counting down like 10 seconds and they're just still talking. And they're just chatting away. Eight, seven.

and literally just talking about like lacrosse at Hopkins and like asking me all these questions. And then it's like three, two, one. They just turned to the camera. We're here with Lucy. Wow. Turn on. Yeah. And sometimes they're not even reading the teleprompter.

So they're just obviously really talented. But I think it was, you know, after the segment or maybe it was before, either before or after I said like, by the way, I have, I'm a student. This is who I am. You know, they didn't know who you are. So you have to introduce who you are. I go to Johns Hopkins. I do a lot of video content. I would love to do more on camera opportunities and I have a whole list of ideas.

Can I grab your email after and send it to you? And actually after one of my appearances, I don't remember if it was the first or second. I went back to his office to like talk through some of the ideas. And that's what creeps me out now is that his office was the site of this whole door thing. I don't know. But I did go to the office many times and like was very professional talking through ideas. but I think it did come from me having to be like, can we set aside five minutes to talk? If you don't have time now, can we do lunch?

And that was why a lot of our times when we met were going out to lunch because when he's at work, he has to be at work. Right. That makes sense. All right. One thing that you really got right. One thing I got right. Ooh. Bring us home.

Bring us home. I mean, I'm inclined to say that it's not like a thing I did or something like that. but I'm inclined to say that I think my mindset about a lot of things is a good mindset. And I just happen to be really interested in consciousness and in going beyond the veil of society in a way. And I feel really like awake to the world around me and awake to the fact that we're living in this one time period that there has been. so much time that's come before us and that we're just like so little in the scope of the universe. And I know that like kind of freaks people out.

People get really nervous when you talk about how insignificant they are. But I just love that. I love remembering how insignificant everything I'm doing is because of the fact that when you're in your own head, you think everything is massive and everything's so important. And every little tiny thing you do is a big problem and a big, everything's stressful in our lives, but like, I think having the mindset about what is the purpose of this, not in a sad way, but in a way that's like, what is, what am I really hoping for at the end here?

And I think the answer is just like, you just want to live a good life and be happy. So if instead of trying to like achieve goals and accomplish things and being so stressed out about getting to an end line, you realize that like the whole life is the finish zone. You're just every day is another day to live and enjoy. And if you do that, I think you'll live a better life than if you're just striving for something that you might not ever do or achieve. And I think one thing I did write was actually like adopt that mindset in my everyday life and remind myself of it all the time. It's one of the things that I think about a lot when I'm meditating. And it's why I love reading books about the brain and the mind and consciousness.

and I'm reading a book right now called Why Buddhism is True. It's not really, and maybe I'll get to that part. It hasn't really been about that. It's been mostly about how consciousness works and how all these people, like, think that the world is one way. But really, we have, there's so much deeper we can go in our minds. And it's, if you really take a moment to, like, step back from the daily stresses, it's, there's nothing to be stressed about. There's nothing to worry about.

Just like, live your life and enjoy. you're just an organism. Does that make sense? Yeah, that does. I love that. It's a great sense of perspective. I think especially in like the influence, like it's great for everybody, but in the influencer, like, I need to get this many likes and this many comments world. I think that's particularly like rounding to have that perspective. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if that's something I did right. Maybe it's my brother who was a physics major who like planted that in my head sometime. And he, we always talk about like the human condition and life and the brain and stuff. But I don't know.

If it's something that you have to do, I would just encourage people to do more meditation and more thinking and just being more mindful about themselves and their place in the world. And what they're, if they are so stressed about something like, what are they so worried about? What's the worst thing that can happen? Like, follow. I love like, I did this with my friend once and she was like, then this was. happen. And I was like, and then what? And she's like, and this would happen. And she was like, and then what? And she was like, and then this would happen. And if you actually take it to the end and she was like, oh my God, like, nothing terrible. Right. And some things are truly terrible in the world. But I think a lot of the stuff, I'm always like,

you can reserve your, your terrible thinking for those times, you know? Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me here today. Thank you for coming over. This is so lovely. This is great. How cool is she? She's just like such a ball of sunshine. I feel like she has such positive vibes. And whenever I hear a talker I am around her presence, I get positive vibes too, and I love it. So you can find her on Instagram at Lucy B. Fink. You can find her on Refinery 29's YouTube channel. And then you can find her on her own YouTube channel at Lucy Fink. And you can find me at Liz Moody on Instagram.

You can find my book healthier together in stores anywhere you want. It has lots of delicious recipes, like best healthy cookies, which are going viral on Instagram. What else is going viral? The general says cauliflower is doing really well. You guys, the green detox soup is doing really well. The actually delicious one with like the toasty hemp gramelada. So you guys will have to like make the stuff yourself and tell me what you like. But you can buy healthier together in any store near you.

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