The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Color Me Courtney aka Courtney Quinn - How To Ignore Negativity, Create Community, A Highly Recognized Brand, & Not Compare Yourself To Others

Episode Date: July 30, 2019

#205: On this episode we sit down with our friend Courtney Quinn famously known as Color Me Courtney. Courtney has built one of the most recognizable brands using color. On this episode we discuss how to build a meaningful brand, how to drown out negative feedback, and how to not compare yourself to others. We also discuss what it takes to build a highly engaged community online.   To connect with Courtney Quinn aka Color Me Courtney click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens If it’s time  (and it is) to focus on your health and feel your best, getting into a daily routine with Athletic Greens really will be the single best thing you can do for ​yourself this year. We have a special offer is you jump over to www.athleticgreens.com/skinny ​and claim our special offer today. Get 20 FREE travel packs valued at $79 with your first purchase. This episode is brought to you by BETABRAND and their Betabrand dress pant yoga pants. To try these pants go to betabrand.com/skinny and receive 20% off your order. Millions of women agree these are the most comfortable pants you’ll ever wear to work.  Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her.

But I also think that people are really quick to like throw a creator away. Like if they post one thing that they don't agree with, like I don't have to agree with your politics to like your sense of style. But you also have the right to unfollow them if they made you feel bad. So it's like this weird like double edged sword of they don't have to be your everything. And I don't want to be anyone's favorite blogger. I maybe want to be one of your 10 that you like go to. And you go to mine to make you feel happier, to make you feel confident, or to teach you how to wear color. And you would maybe go to someone else to learn how to treat a pimple on your face. Howdy, howdy, boys and girls. Ladies and gentlemen,

that clip was from our guest of the show today, Courtney Quinn of the famous Color Me Courtney brand. On this episode, we discuss how to build meaningful brands, how to stand out online, and how to build thoughtful content. Her content is thoughtful. It is very creative. Guys, if you haven't looked at her Instagram, it looks like a beautiful, beautiful mural, honestly. You know, Lauren, we're getting up there in years, or at least I am. I'm aging a bit. I love when I get to see people, you know, you spoke with Courtney a few years back at a Create and Cultivate when she was starting out and planning her flag as a content creator. And it's been amazing to see the progress she made working from Disney to I've seen her on commercials with Microsoft all over the place. I mean, she has blown up and it's just really, really impressive to see someone's growth and potential and how they build their brands over time.

The difference I think between Courtney and so many other influencers is that she's so strategic and methodical about everything. So she plans a color of the month. So if she's doing like yellow, she'll go scout out locations. She'll make sure her clothing matches. And she spends a lot of time curating a beautiful experience for people to be inspired by. And you feel that when you walk away from her content, you feel inspired. And I think that as an influencer or a blogger or a content creator, it's really important to hone in on what you want the audience member to feel when they leave. So when you leave the Skinny Confidential, I want you to feel inspired to be the best version of yourself.

I want you to feel that you have tons of tangible takeaways that you can apply to your own life and tips and tricks to optimize your life. So with Courtney, when you leave her page, you also feel inspired. And I think that's awesome because sometimes you can follow people that don't make you feel good. And Courtney is not one of them. People are finally starting to figure it out. They're starting to understand that being a content creator, blogger, YouTuber, influencer, whatever you call it, podcaster is not as easy as it looks on the surface. People are trying to say, wait a minute, can't everybody be a blogger, influencer, creator? Yes, everybody can try to be, but that doesn't necessarily mean everybody will be successful at it. And the ones that are, are the ones putting

in massive effort. I think if you're thinking about getting into creating of any kind online, this is a very valuable episode because Courtney dropped some gems and some tips on how she's done it successfully, how she's worked with some of the biggest brands and platforms in the world by doing that, by being thoughtful about her content. You know, it's not just about throwing up everything against the wall online. It's really about being thoughtful, having a strategy and understanding it. And, you know, finally people are starting to realize it's not as easy as it looks. And with Courtney's interview, I think it's really important that you guys pull up her Instagram so you can see exactly what we're talking about. It's so dynamic. It's bright. It's got all these different pan pan tones on it. Everything is so branded. It's bright. It's got all these different pantones on it. Everything is so branded. It's so interesting too, because even down to her house, she paid attention

to what she was shooting and everything is colorful. It's, she just really understands her audience and her voice and her market. And I appreciate that. And Courtney, if you're listening, which I'm hoping you are, I saw that you got to go to the new Disneyland Star Wars Adventureland and I was devastated to not get an invite. Let's take a plot twist. What is it with you and Star Wars? I love Star Wars and they just did a whole new Star Wars land. I don't get it. What am I missing? A lot, a lot. It's the one thing. No, you and I just don't, we're not connecting on it. What aren't you missing? You said it's ground for divorce that I won't watch Star Wars. If we ever have a child, just know that that's something that I'm going to get them right into Star Wars. I don't

think a girl's going to like it. Trust me. Courtney, bring me to Disneyland. You got the end. You got the hookup. I seen it. I've been watching. I want to go. Courtney Quinn is the blogger and influencer behind ColormeCourtney.com. She's a quirky New Yorker with an out of the box sense of style. And she is colorful, you guys. She's worked with brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Disney, Jonathan Adler, Kate Spade, Coach, to name a few. And fun fact, she was working at Coach initially and then decided to pursue Color Me Courtney full-time. When she's not creating candy colorful content, you can find Courtney front row at the latest Broadway show, eating her way through New York, binge watching bad TV, or hanging out with

her fiance at Paris and her French bulldog waffles. Let's welcome Color Me Courtney to the show. Let's pause for a second. Let's dive into some nutritional stuff. Athletic Greens, one of our favorite new show partners. Guys, we first heard about this from Tim Ferriss, who only vets the best products, and I knew we had to dive a little bit deeper. Hence, we started trying Athletic Greens. Been taking it for a couple years now. Here's the deal. No one has the perfect diet and your body's daily nutritional needs change. And this is due to stress or sleep or just not the best diet. You know what I mean? So what Athletic Greens is ideal for is for starting the day off because it's going to give you lots of energy. And it's great for overcoming gut issues.

Gut issues are something that I feel like so many people deal with and they don't even know they're dealing with it. And when it's fixed, you feel so much better. And then personally, for me, I feel like I deal with fatigue. Sometimes I get low in energy. So what I've been doing is Michael's been making me this very specific smoothie that he's going to give you guys the recipe for every single day. Well, here's the thing, and I'm going to dive into the smoothie, but I just want, for people like Lauren that are getting their green servings a little bit easier and a little bit more disciplined, this is just a value add to it. But for people like me who struggle getting the greens, this has been a complete game changer. My skin's better,

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the EU. So check that out as well if you're over there. Again, athleticgreens.com slash skinny. This is the skinny confidential him and her. Okay. So I want to go back back. I want to go back before you even started this, go back to your childhood. Give us a little bit of your background. Totally. So I grew up in Arizona. I was like always into like fashion and color and I like didn't fit in because like Arizona, everyone's wearing like, you know, like boots and like a jean skirt kind of thing. And I just always wanted to work in fashion. But my dad's an entrepreneur. He has like a Ph.D. in math. He's like hardcore like that. And so when I told him I wanted to

work in fashion, he was like, go get a business degree. So he did. I went to ASU and got a business degree and I hated it. So I just did it in like two years. He told me he would pay for four years of school. So like don't party and like mess around. So I kind of manipulated him into paying for my MBA. And then I got my MBA at 21 from San Francisco and moved to New York, like all like bright eyed, like hoping I'd get this amazing job in fashion and no one would hire me

because I looked like really old on paper or I looked like I was lying because I had like these kind of a lot of degrees, like really young. I had no experience. So the degrees actually ended up hurting you. Yeah, I took my MBA off my resume. That's how I got my first job. Wow, but that's the first time.

I don't think there's anybody that's ever come on the show and said a degree actually didn't help you. Yeah. Well, I think it helped me now in like building my current business and I use a lot of it now. But going in, I was going in for these entry level fashion jobs like I'd never had like a real like big kid job. And it just either looked like I was literally lying on my on my resume or that I said it could be like really intimidating to look at a resume that like the person you're hiring would have more education than you and could eventually like kind of take your job. And that is so Robert Greene, 48 laws of power. But you know what? Those are the wrong people in those positions.

Then if you're getting discouraged, like my whole thing is to get people that are better than me because when everything can be better. Totally. Yeah. But you know, like corporate fashion can be like kind of catty, like kind of like very devil wears Prada-y, which is like weird and not what I expected. I learned quickly, like in working for some of my favorite brands that when you see behind the curtain, it's like not what you think it's going to be. So I kind of bounced around. I did some retail jobs. I eventually like started my blog really hoping to get hired and also because I was kind of miserable in what I was doing and I ended up

working at Coach making handbags. I was a merchandiser first and then I was a product developer for about a year. Is this before or after the first blogger collab with them which was major with Emily Schumann? Oh I don't know know. When was that? I don't know. Maybe 2009. Oh, it was after. It was after. Yeah. So I graduated high school in 2008. Okay. Yeah. So I graduated in college 2012. Um, we're getting old. The last project I worked at at coach was the first Disney collab, the Mickey one. Um, and they were starting to work on the first Selena Gomez stuff. It wasn't under me, but that's what they were starting to work on the first selena gomez stuff it wasn't under me but that's what they were working on um so it's cool because they were working on all this like new stuff they still had this like previous like kind of coach image of like it's your mom's coach

but we were working on all this cool stuff um and it just got to the point where then color me courtney grew because like you know when i was miserable at jobs i was working more on it and then i had to choose between like isn't that wild but you just, when I was miserable at jobs, I was working more on it. And then I had to choose between like one of them. Isn't that wild what you just said? When you're miserable at a job, you're working more towards your hustle. Yeah, 100%. That's my favorite thing ever. I think that mentality is a winner mentality.

Yeah, I would watch the clock. I called it. I said I was a five to niner because I would go to nine to five at like coach. And then I'd go home from five to nine and work on Color Me Courtney. That is wild guys. If you're out there and you're listening, there's no excuses. I actually miss it a lot. Like the side, like I also called it my Hannah Montana life.

Cause it's like, I got to like take off the wig, you know? And I liked having two things. Well, I want to talk about this a little bit. Cause I think there's a lot of young people and they can use you as an example of what's possible now, right? Because you are somebody that has proved you can have a typical nine to five job, may not be the happiest, may just be, okay, you know what? I'm going to eat shit here for a while and just put in the time.

And at the same time, build the thing that you really want to build into. Can you talk about like what that actually looked like when you were at the typical nine to five job and working on the thing that's your main thing now? Yeah, I think back and like I kind of got sick towards the end because I was working a lot. So most days I'd wake up around like four or five. I'm like a five hour sleeper. Like five hours is like my number. If I sleep more than that, it's too much. It's like, I either sleep five or 10. There's like not an in-between. How old are you right now? Is that rude to ask a woman? No, I'm 28. Okay. Yeah. My dad's like, he'll sleep like one night every three nights.

I used to think I was a six hour. Yeah. And then I started reading all these books on sleep and I'm questioning it. But I relate to it. As I've gotten older, it's catching up to me. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I'd like it to change.

Like I feel like I'd probably be, like I would like to be able to sleep more. But yeah, like six, five, six hours is like my number, especially then. So I'd wake up like five or 6am. I do some work on Color Me Courtney before I would go in like, just like simple stuff. Like I would comment on, I'd give myself metrics. I'm a numbers girl. So I'd be like, okay, I'm going to comment on 200 unique blog posts, like linking to my site every single day. I would spend three hours working specifically on Instagram. I would do like things like writing blog posts and like all like the generic stuff, but I was really working on like kind of growth. Then on my lunch

break, I would, thanks, I would do, I would eat for 15 minutes. I would work for 45 on Coloring Courtney stuff. And then I would like do stuff like on the subway. Like I always like kind of made a game out of it. Like how many things can I comment on in these like 20 minutes to like help grow my Instagram? How many times can I be active in this community to kind of help grow that kind of thing? And then I come home and I would again like answer emails usually at night and do all like my blog posts and stuff and then go to bed and then wake up the next day and do it again. Out of every single influencer we've ever had on this podcast, your story sounds the most similar to mine. Oh. And it's funny that you

just said you created a game because I did the exact same thing without knowing I was doing that. Like I would go on Twitter and see how many people I could actually engage with in five minutes or I would go. I still do it. I did it today. Like when I was sitting on the runway, I was like, I have five minutes. Let's see how much I can do. And how long have you been doing it? Like how long have you been blogging? Like I guess six years, seven years. So if that to me again is another winning mentality, that's so important. The hustle. What I see in commonality between both of you is no matter how big your platforms are getting, right? Like you're on commercials, Lauren's platforms are growing. Like you guys have, you guys are success stories in the blogging influencer space, but you're still taking the

time to engage with your community and other communities. And I think that's something that a lot of people lose sight of as their platforms grow is that they go, okay, well, I'm big now. So I don't have to engage in those behaviors anymore. It's the wrong way. Stop. Like, even if it's just like, I didn't one day because I was sick. I didn't one day because I had a migraine. I didn't want to look at my phone. It makes such a difference. And now I find myself like being able to like take next steps and like deciding to like delegate a task because it's like, oh, if I delegate that task to someone else, that's an hour more I can spend engaging with my community. It's like my favorite part. And I think it has to be your favorite part of it. If you want to have a really active community the way you do, Lauren,

like it has to be like your favorite. For every level though. Yeah. Right. For anybody that wants to do this as a career path, like people fight so hard to get audience, right? Like that's their main thing is like, when you guys are starting, I need to get audience and the audience. And as soon as they get it, like, okay, cool. Got it. And I'm going to abandon it now. But then like, for what, why did you fight for it? Why do you work for it? If you're just going to toss it away. It's wild when people like Michael just said, work so hard for the platform. And then the thing that got them the platform, which is the audience they separate from. Yeah. It's crazy. I think like we were saying earlier, like you have to work even harder now.

Yeah. Well, and there's so many creators and I think just recently, maybe it was last week on Instagram, you said or someone said that you had said that you don't rely on platforms that you don't control, which I love. And my fiance said that forever. Like every time I complain about anything, he's like, you don't own Instagram. Why are you like complaining about it? And really like Instagram could go away tomorrow. Any of these things could go away tomorrow. And unless you've engaged with your audience and taking the time to have that relationship

with them, they won't follow you. So community is obviously a huge part of your success. Let's talk about branding, though. And I want to get really into this. I know just by looking at your Instagram as a creator, how long those images that you take are. This isn't like just an image, guys, of her with a handbag sitting at a cafe. This is a serious, serious image. Tell us, walk us through how long one Instagram post

takes with a caption. Yeah. Okay. So I guess it depends. I've gotten better at it now, but for me, I want my feed to look like a rainbow. So when you look at it, like I don't want two photos that have a yellow background to sit together. So that takes a little bit of planning. There are days where it's like, I'm just going to take a photo of my outfit, but then I need to have a blue backdrop. So it's like, okay, let me go walk until I can find a blue backdrop.

So maybe we're walking around for a half hour. Maybe I know of a blue backdrop. So we go to it specifically. I spend about two or three hours doing what I call color scouting. So that's where I just walk around the city in like different areas. And I take photos on my iPhone. I have a fake Instagram where I like save them and geotag them. And then I like use a hashtag system so I can find them later.

So that when I'm looking for like a yellow one, I can like go through and I'm like, oh, there's that yellow one that I saw two weeks ago. Here's a geotag. Let me go there and shoot my outfit there. So that's kind of helped instead of like just having to figure it out on the spot every single day. I also do a color every month that I focus on as like it's something I started last year just to kind of introduce people to a specific color. So like right now it's baby blue, which is like a hard color for me because I don't really wear blue. I mostly wear like warmer colors. So I'm always shooting baby blue looks.

So I have to find like colors that work with baby blue. So there's like a lot of like color theory that goes into there where there's certain colors that I would wear with it where there's certain colors that I wouldn't. And then captions. I usually am writing the caption while I'm shooting it. So I usually am thinking about what I'm going to say. Maybe I won't know going in, but I start shooting and I'll be like, oh, this is what I want to say. So I'll physically stop the shoot, write the caption.

Sometimes it happens when I'm editing and then I'll again stop editing and like write the caption because like just I'll have that like inspiration of whatever I want to say. But it's been harder lately because I've been on this kick where I'm kind of worried about like the next generation. I'm worried about people who are consuming on their phones so much. And I want to make sure that I'm not just saying like here's a cute photo of my outfit. Like I want to make sure I'm actually like saying something. So a lot of times the captions aren't related. It's just like, you know, if you're having a hard day today, like I see you kind of thing.

And I think that can help people sometimes more than just me twirling in an orange dress. And who's taking the photos? My fiance. And I can't wait to get into this. How's working with your fiance with him behind the camera? Because I can only imagine how that would work out. It's pretty good. Oh, Michael doesn't take your photos ever?

Oh my gosh. He can't even take... If I ask him for one photo, it's like I'm pulling teeth. Listen, I show up on this mic every week. I feel like that's putting in my time. I'm not good at photography. And he's also very entertaining on your Instagram story. Okay.

Thank you, Courtney. Thank you. Do you have to ask him to be on your Instagram story? No, he loves it. See, I have to ask Paris. I have to show him. He has to get pre-approved oh no michael doesn't i would love it if lauren would get a pre-approval and i would love if she would ask it's just that's just not occurring so she says no it's like i would really love that yeah because imagine if i just turned like if she

woke up early in the morning and i just had the camera going that wouldn't go over so well no you just you would know better i know what good light is you don't have any like you need to work on like your good light. If it wouldn't match her aesthetic and her branding. It's all about self-preservation. I don't want to get, I literally don't want to get shanked. You know, I'm sleeping. All right.

So go on. How is it working with your fiance? Yeah. So it's pretty good. So he does all my photos right now. And then he works in PR. So like, he's like a sounding board too. A lot of times, sometimes if they're bigger projects, I'll involve him.

Like last year for fashion week, I did a mentorship program where I took three girls from a black girl magic program in Brooklyn in high school who were interested in the fashion industry and like set up like meetings with like potential career people that they wanted to work with and tried to help like break down this barrier like this race barrier that they felt was prohibiting them from being able to do these jobs and so he helped with like setting up some of those interviews, using some of his contacts, things like that. And but from photos, he's pretty good. He's always been interested in photography, went to school for journalism. So he's like kind of good with like a camera. But I think there's this idea, this like glamorous idea of like a blogger boyfriend.

And I can't tell you how many girls who are like, I need to meet a guy who will take my photos. And I, oh, I just want to shake them. Because they're specifically, like, the first generation, I feel like, of the fashion bloggers. They all had this blogger boyfriend and none of their relationships worked out. And I've talked to them, like, some of them on panels or, like, elsewhere about it. And it's this, like like sad story where girls think that they need this man to take their photo to like help them elevate to the next level. That sounds like an excuse to me.

Yeah. And like, it's nice that it works out because we can like travel together, but there are days where it doesn't work out. There are days where I'm like, don't talk to me that way. And we fight and it's like an issue, you know? Lauren and I wouldn't be together if I had to take the photos i'm being i'm being 100 honest because i couldn't i'm not excited about it i don't like photos my mom made me take too many photos as a kid i'm sorry mom sorry that sounds like an excuse i don't like posing i don't like taking but that being said if we would in a hack to give anybody that's creating like any hotel you travel to you can hit up the concierge say hey is there a local photographer that wants to come and shoot for a few hours? That's a professional that does that professionally

for a living. Um, if we go somewhere, I'm like, okay, who do we need to bring on to do this? Because I know it's not what I'm good at. Um, but it'd be like me being, bringing her down somewhere and saying, okay, listen, we're going on vacation. I'm gonna need you to do this thing that you hate doing. It just, it just wouldn't work for the marriage. Totally. And I think that's the thing. Some people like when people are like, Oh, my husband hates taking photos, but he doesn't. I'm like, maybe he shouldn't do it then because like, I don't want to tell you how to run your marriage, but that sounds like an issue to me. Paris likes taking photos. He goes to YouTube university like every night and he's like researching new stuff. He'll come home and be like, can I buy this camera? And I'm like, yeah,

whatever, buy whatever you need. So he's genuinely excited about it. And so that's why it works. But because he has a full-time job, there's been times where like I have blogger friends that we rely on and we'll like meet and we'll like bust out three photos really quickly if we need it. There are times where I travel on press trips without him because he can't travel. And like, we have to like figure it out.

So I don't think it's something that you have to have. He's also an extremely patient person, like the most patient person. You guys. Oh, that's not like Michael. I think about my friends, Thomas and Julia.

That's what I was just going to say. That reminds me of that. From Gal Meets Glam. And Thomas loves photography. He's, he's a, has all the equipment. He loves taking the pictures.

He's like, he's something he's passionate about. We ran into him in Aspen and even like, he wasn't, he was not with her. He was just, we were at dinner and he's like bringing us aside, taking pictures. Like he's something he's passionate about. We ran into him in Aspen and even like he wasn't, he was not with her. He was just, we were at dinner and he's like bringing us aside, taking pictures. Like he likes to do that stuff. And so for somebody.

Thomas, you're hired. That wants to do that, that I think it's great if that's their passion, right? But if it's somebody that's not excited to do it, don't put them in that box. And it doesn't mean that like he can't work with you then. Like you just have to find like for you, find what strengths that you're good at and then fit it into the business that way or create roles for them that way or bring new value that way. Or just turn the camera on them on Instagram story when they're not looking and just make them do stupid shit. Entertainment. It's one thing though, like if we're at a dinner

or somewhere, it's like, Hey, there's nobody around. Can you snap it? Like, of course I'll do that. I'm just not going to go on shoots. Yeah. So we were talking earlier off the mic about how you're specific about which content you consume. Yeah. Can you were talking earlier off the mic about how you're specific about which content you consume. Yeah. Can you sort of speak on that? Because we just had Mark Manson on and he is really strategic about limiting the content. Yeah. No, I think it's really important. And so me specifically, like just on Instagram, I have two Instagram accounts, right? I have Color Me Courtney, which is my main Instagram account. And then I've Color Me Magix. I just launched it earlier this year. It's like at 40K. It's not huge, but it's Disney, Harry Potter, and Broadway focused.

So I'm like a nerd on all those things. But I felt really censored about them on Color Me Courtney because not everyone's like on my extreme level of like I can watch Moana every single day. So I wanted to create a community where I could kind of be more of like my full self there and not alienate my previous community. And I work with Disney all the time. So it just like was a fit. So on that one, I follow like all like happy Disney accounts. Right. So there'll be days where I'm like sad or something. And I just want to like basically go to Disneyland through Instagram. So I'll just go check out those accounts. And then on my Coloring Courtney page, I, like, really try to follow, like, people who look like me, like, people who have, like, curvier bodies, shorter bodies, like, maybe not, like, the normal idea of what you would see in, like, mainstream media. Like, I think especially for me growing up, I didn't have a ton of role models who, like, looked like me in the media.

I straightened my hair for, I don't know, like, 15 years. That makes me so sad because your hair is so fucking cool. Oh, thank you. It took me a really long time to like accept it. And I've always like- Why did you feel you needed to straighten it just because that was the example of what- So my mom's white.

So she has like beautiful straight hair. I like, you know, every little girl wants to look like their mom, right? I didn't know how to do my hair. I grew up in Arizona. There wasn't a ton of like black women in general. Even if they did, they didn't have like curly natural hair. I remember like if I had to like say like role models that I like looked at that I felt

like looked like me, their options were like Kyla Pratt or like Raven Simone or like Beyonce. And I'm like, that's that's not really obtainable, you know. But how cool is it now that you get to be the role model that you needed growing up to so many women? Totally. That's like the main reason why I started my blog. It doesn't that give you like chills? Yeah.

No. And it's a huge responsibility. Like I remember reading like 17, like reading it like it was my Bible and reading something that had like a girl who looked like me. And she said like specifically what she did in the shower with her curly hair. And I think about that. I can picture that ad because I was an ad nerd too. So I like ripped it out. I had it in a binder all organized by like different things. But I can picture that ad every time I wash my hair, which then reiterates

the fact that anything I say could have that effect. And so that's why there's a lot of things I don't talk about on Coloring Courtney. Like I claim to be an expert on color. Like I claim to be an expert on like my own personal journey and like my personal sense of style. But if someone asks me like a question about like mental health or something, I always then will direct them. Or if they ask me about skincare,

I usually direct them to you. Because I'm like, I don't have a ton of experience. Not with this pimple on my chin. You don't know me in the middle, like straight from a flight. But because there are experts, I feel like you're an expert on skincare. Like I consider you an expert on facial massage. So if someone was like, I don't know anything about facial facial massage, I'd be like me neither. Everything I learned is from Lauren go to go to Lauren because I don't want to say something that then someone uses every day as

their like main source of an idea or like a fact when I'm not an expert in it I love that like I'm so attracted to that as a reader and as your friend I think that's so amazing because you can't be it all to everyone. That's why I don't say that a lot. I don't talk politics. I don't talk religion. I don't know enough about the subjects to have, and I don't know all the facts to have a strong enough opinion. My followers are called cuties.

So I recently got into it with some cuties about like unfollowing people that make you feel bad on social media. And I think that's so important. But I also think that people are really quick to like throw a creator away. Like if they post one thing that they don't agree with, like I don't have to agree with your politics to like your sense of style. But you also have the right to unfollow them if they made you feel bad. So it's like this weird like double edged sword of they don't have to be your everything. And I don't want to be anyone's favorite blogger.

I maybe want to be one of your 10 that you like go to and you go to mine to make you feel happier, to make you feel confident or to teach you how to wear color. And you would maybe go to someone else to learn how to treat a pimple on your face. Okay. You have to find that 17 ad and put it on your Instagram stories or something. I have it because I have, um, I literally, as a kid, I would clip them out of magazines. I have it. Okay. Because I have, I literally, as a kid, I would clip them out of magazines. I would paste them on like in a binder. Dude, you sound like me. We're twins.

We're vlogging before it was vlogging. I did the same thing. You like post it and arrange it. Yeah. And then send it to my friend. And my friend would be like, oh, I like have this thing. And I'm like, oh, here's a really easy DIY hair mask.

Let me pull it out. But don't you think it's important to be following creators, authors, whatever it is that also make you kind of question your perspective? Yeah, definitely. I think that the whole point of social media, right, is that you could create this like space for yourself. But if you use it to close yourself off, then that's a problem. I think you even actually said to me like a long time ago when we first met that you like you were like, oh, I thought you were sort of this way. And then I started following you and I realized, oh, we have a lot of similarities.

I'll be real candid. I judged both of you. You're beautiful, blonde, like Barbie, like you're easy to be like, oh, this is what Lauren is. Right. You know, and I was like, oh, I'm not going to like this girl. And then I met her and I was like, wait, she's like my favorite person. And I've told so many people that. That's very, very, very sweet.

I feel the same about your platform. The whole idea behind this show is, at least from my perspective, I won't speak for Lauren, but for me, I never wanted an audience that was going to come here and just be nodding their head yes the whole time. Like the whole idea was to bring people like you on, bring other experts on, bring other influencers on and have them question perspectives and be like hmm i didn't think about that angle before that's interesting because if you just have people that are like yes i agree yes it's like sheep right the idea is to create a new dialogue to create questions to create new perspectives to present

new lifestyles like we've had so many different walks of life on here and the whole idea is like okay you may not agree with this, with this perspective. You may not like it, but at least it gets you to open your mind a little bit and realize that there's different personalities that exist. And that's how we get to like a level of respect, right? Like, just like, see it. It doesn't have to be for you, but you just can't like be against it and mean to it for no reason.

And if you, if that's where you go right away, it's like, I'm again i'm again then maybe it's a benefit to question like wait why is that my default response to go against this right away right use that as an opportunity to grow instead yes at least just take a step back and question yourself like i didn't like what he said i didn't like what she said but why but for me if it's not bringing me value in any area of my life i'm fucking unfollowing like i'm just i just am i think that that my my energy tank is like too valuable to be surrounding myself on a daily basis with with shit that doesn't add anything to my life yeah well you can learn a lot from like i'm i'm like kind of an optimism optimist where i feel like you can take you can learn something from anything so even the people who are doing it wrong, I learn a ton from them.

You know, I follow a lot of like I guess you could call it like almost hate following, but it's not out of hate. It's literally out of like, oh, I never want to do that. Oh, that's a mistake. And I'm very like analytical. And so I watch numbers. I watch people's numbers. I watch what post people are responding to, you know, like and things that you do, like the comment chains, like where you post, you used to do them every Friday. I don't know if you still do them every Friday. Sometimes we follow Friday. Follow Friday. Yeah. Where you

like encourage your community to like follow each other, talk to each other. And yeah, like, so I watch that and I'm like, oh, that worked. And then I'll DM you and be like, this is great. I'm stealing your idea. I'll 100% credit you, but you don't need to credit me. This is what you did and I took it. Steal away. I'm always looking at your page for inspiration. I just want you to do pink again. Yeah, I know. Tell me when it's pink.

No, when you do pink or blush, we have to do something. Yeah. Especially with that robe that you got that I copied you on. Did you buy it? Yeah. Okay, good. Did Michael get one? No, he should.

It's that really, that robe that looks like I'm going to murder you. Oh yeah, that thing. The pink fluffy one. If I ever see her in that, like I'm going to murder you. Oh, yeah, that thing. The pink fluffy one. If I see her in that, I know it's only for me. I have it in two colors. Ooh, maybe I need it in two colors. You never know what mood I'm going to be in. Or black.

So what is your favorite failure or favorite struggle? So right now, my favorite struggle or failure is YouTube because I'm trying to do that. And it's very challenging and humbling to like, this is kind of the first time I've built a new platform since I started. Like when I started, I built Color Me Corny and Instagram at the same time, like my driving traffic to my blog and driving traffic to my Instagram at the exact same time. And I was able to do so kind of pretty effectively. And I didn't feel like I was like hitting a lot of roadblocks or a lot of failures. But I'm working on YouTube now and I'm publishing three times a week and it's hard. So like just learning like a whole new platform and trying to

engage with a different community. And that's why it's challenging because I'm not trying to drag my current audience over. I'm trying to use it to build a different audience. And, you know, it's a uphill battle. Before we dive into that, let's talk about Beta Brand. You know what's been looking good, Michael? What's been looking good, Lauren? My butt. You got that sweet ass. It is looking really good because, guys, I'm telling you, I've been wearing these dress pants. I got sent them by Beta Brand. They're black and they're flattering. And the best part is they hold you in. Now I've worn them like 50 times and I can tell you it's holding you in. Like everything is looking where it should be. So the ones that you want to get though are the dress pant yoga pant. Okay. Very specific. It's a very comfortable style and it's designed to

impress. Like Michael said, it's basically a yoga pant, but it's for work. So their pants are going to be wrinkle resistant, which I love because I feel like I'm always wrinkling everything. And the detail on this pant doesn't disappoint. So it's, it has like fake zippers, pockets, front buttons, and belt loops to make everything look right. So they have options for all shapes and sizes, taste, boot cut, straight legs, skinny cropped. I'm a huge fan of the skinny jean. So is Michael. I'm a huge fan of everything that makes your ass look like that. They also come in standard colors like black, navy, gray, khaki. You know I love a black pant.

It's just like my go-to. But they also have limited edition colors too if you're into color. These pants are it when I've eaten too much sourdough or chips and salsa. You just throw them on, you walk to get coffee, you go to work, even happy hour. You can take them to the gym, to work, to whatever. They're simple, they're straight to the point, and they're everything everyone wants. They're black pants that are comfortable and make you feel tight and right. That's why I started wearing Beta Brand's Dress Pant Yoga Pants. Millions of women agree that they're the most comfortable pants you'll ever wear to work. That's betabrand.com, B-E-T-A-B-R-A-N-D.com slash skinny, all lowercase, to get 20% off your Dress Pant Yoga Pants.

Enjoy. I look at it too, and you said this earlier, is it is humbling and it causes you to realize, wait, hold on. I may be, you know, the shit over here, but I need to actually like put my ego aside and really work hard again. Yeah. And totally. Yeah. It's like the same thing happened when we started this show. We're like, okay, well we have Lauren has such a massive platform on Instagram and blog and we'll just pop over here and do this. And then we saw the numbers in the beginning. We're like, what the hell is happening? They don't care. And it

takes time. Cause it's a, I mean, there's some of that community community that came over but since then it's mostly been like a podcast community growing and a lot of creators now on the side of dear media they think okay well i have a million followers on instagram i'm gonna jump over to podcasts and they see their numbers like oh shit it's not as easy to move people off platform as you think so nice to see like i'm so glad i did it even if like in a year from now i decide to walk away from it and oh, like wash my hands of it and do something else. Like it's just nice to try something else. And it's a super humbling experience. And I think we all kind of need that, especially like us as creators.

We're like it's weird because we're talking to millions of people every day, but usually like by yourself alone, like in your house. It's this like weird juxtaposition of it's very lonely, but it's also you have this huge community. So it's bizarre. It's so weird. It's the like weird juxtaposition of it's very lonely, but it's also you have this huge community. So it's bizarre. It's so weird. It's the weirdest job. Super thankful for it, but it's really odd. And so like being able to see like what you're good at, what you're not good at, I think is like always really nice. Another thing for me, something I had to recently talk to my dad about because he's an entrepreneur and he's like very, very like strong willed like me, but maybe even more antisocial and stuff is like hiring.

So right now it's just me. And then I have an agent here at DBA. And then my fiance Paris helps with some stuff. And I've had assistance before in the past. And it either was or wasn't good like experiences. And I was actually like watching the Girl Boss show on Netflix again. I had watched it the first time. And there's all these like awful things girl boss show on Netflix again. I would watch it the first time and there's all these like awful things that she does as a manager. And I saw a lot of myself in

her and was like, crap, maybe I'm give us some examples so I can check the boxes to see if that's what my problem is too. Well, so you're like me this way where you work all the time. I see you all the time working and I want everyone who works for me to be working the same amount as me. Like if I'm working at 6am, why aren't you working? Uh-oh, daddy's getting mad in the corner. Well, I'll tell you why. But it's not reasonable. Michael's a great manager.

You can never expect people that work for you to work as hard for you as you do on your own. Taylor, are you jacking off back there? Are you listening? Except for Taylor. Taylor has to work harder than me. No, but it's, I mean, listen, if it's your thing and you're building your personal brand, like, of course you want people that are going to come in and be excited and be aligned and work. My advice is always to put people in the best position for themselves, right? Like every time I have a conversation with somebody that works for me, it's like, what can I do to help you towards the goal that you're trying to pursue? Whether that's going to be in a career with one of my companies for the next 10 years

or whether you want to work here for a couple of years and then go off and do your own thing. It's putting them in the best position for them to succeed. And along that, you can tell them, okay, while I'm getting your best work to help grow your career, I also want to get the benefit of like, while I'm helping you get there, you're giving me as much as you can to build this thing. And I think if you have those candid conversations, people and realize it's not about you, but it's about them. Yeah. Then you'll get the most. I'm a Leo. So that's hard for me. It's hard. I'm like the most Leo, Leo. It's challenging running a team, but it's hard too, because you're so creative. I think you do a good job of it. You have a pretty, no.

I need help. Like, I know. It looks like you have. You're very, very creative. You're one of the most creative influencers I've ever seen. I used to think of myself as being like co-creative and business brain. And I think just because I've been by my, like on my own, like working in an apartment by myself, like I've kind of viewed more or skewed more creative and I've been by my like on my own, like working in an apartment by myself, like I've kind of viewed

more or skewed more creative and I've lost some of that like managerial brain that I used to have. And so realizing that has been like another thing like, oh, maybe I need someone to be on top of me and be like, you need to show up at this time or you need to do this or you miss this because I used to be really good at that stuff and I just can't do it all. And like accepting that has been like really hard for me. Well, what it is for everybody that is in that role. It's like, you know, I don't consider myself an expert at management. I just consider that I've had a couple more years than Lauren to do it. But I think really like the unlock for me was realizing I don't want anybody to work for me. I want them to work with me and I want them to be excited about working with me. And so if you, you know, like I always use the example when I was younger, I had to,

I worked at this landscaping company and there was two foreman and one of the foreman would just sit off to the side and yell at us what to do. And I looked around at everybody and everyone was like, kind of like sluggishly half-assing the job because they were just annoyed at this guy standing off to the corner. And then there was another foreman that literally got in the dirt with us and was working his ass up harder than us. And I looked around, everybody was working to try to keep up his pace. Yeah. And I think that show instead of tell. Yeah. And to just make people feel like they're heard and working with you towards a goal, not just for you, but for everybody. Yeah. And I think a lot of first time managers make the mistake of they like they hire somebody like you're working for me and I'm the

boss and you're doing this. That's me. And that's discouraging to people yeah yeah and I think like me two years ago if you said all that I'd be like whatever Michael sure but like now I'm kind of open yeah I'm open like really like watching that TV show with like being like oh she's awful she did this she did that and then me being like wait that's all me it was like really like I need to watch it another i gotta love it okay people like managers feel like hey you're lucky to have a job with me yeah like that's the attitude they take yeah and my thing is i'm lucky to have somebody with that skill set working with me so like i flip it and i just if you look at it like honestly like me and taylor change our perspective yeah me and taylor like we bicker back forth and like working but i always look at taylor and it's a compliment

that i'm lucky to have someone on my team like him that can do all the different things that he's done and help. He just woke up from his sleep. But it's important because, you know, gratitude to the people that are helping you move the ball forward for the thing that you're working on is extremely important where people get in trouble as they, they think that the other person should be grateful to work for them. You say you're not organized, but I'm going to say that you are because I'm just going to guess that you have some balls to the walls calendar system. Yeah, I love a good calendar system. But you know, I started time batching, I think based on you and it's changed. It's changed my life. It's really been great. I think you actually posted about this recently, how you like schedule every second of your life. And I'm that way. Like I first started doing it when I was studying for the GMAT because I decided to study for it in like 30 days before I went to grad school. And

usually people like study like six months. And so I had this like insane schedule of like, wake up at five. Like I would schedule my bathroom bakes. I would schedule like when I would drink water. And I also at the time kind of had this like unhealthy obsession with working out. So I'd like work out for like two hours on the treadmill and then like be doing math problems and then like doing like this other like crazy thing. So like going back and forth. But I would literally schedule every second of my day to where like, oh, here's when you can go to the bathroom. Here's when you can like rest for 15 minutes. Here's when you can change your clothes. Like these are the things. And I'm not as crazy about it now, but I have to, I have to do that. You're a really confident person. Where do you think that comes from?

I don't know. Because a lot of people struggle with it. Yeah, no, they definitely do. And I kind of like wish I struggled more growing up than I did with confidence because I feel like I would be able to maybe relate to some people who are going through it more. I'm not sure if it's something like that's like tied to me being a Leo, something that like my parents instilled within me.

I was a competitive dancer. So I like grew up dancing on stage like I don't get stage right ever. I've never been like nervous to perform or anything. My mom tells a story of I had to walk in this like fashion show in Vegas in front of like 10,000 people when I was like 10. And she was sitting there like because she's like doesn't want to be the center of attention. She says she doesn't want a funeral like she doesn't ever want to be the center of attention. So she tells the story of her being like, oh, I'm so nervous for the person who has to walk out first like that sucks for that kid. And then it was me.

And like, you know, I didn't care. I just have never, I think I've always just been too busy to care like what people think. So I'll like make a mistake. I'll like mess up. I'll fall on my face. And it just never has bothered me. But there are things like that I've been unconfident about. Like, you know, we talked about my hair, like not wearing my hair, like curly for a long time. Recently, like a few years ago, I started wearing my hair curly because

my fiance kind of was like, you know, you're kind of a hypocrite. And I was like, what? And he's like, you're kind of a hypocrite because you talk about like all this stuff, like accepting your body and like celebrating the things that like used to be insecure about. But you don't wear it. You straighten your hair every day. And I was like, damn it. He's right. Like I can't let him be right. So I literally started wearing my hair curly just to like get the better of him. And it was like a huge, like, I didn't know how to dress. Like I didn't feel like myself. Like it was like a huge, like blow to my confidence. And then I was mad too. Cause I was like, I'm not like, why do I care so much about my

hair like that shouldn't determine what I'm wearing or how I'm feeling or if I want to go out it would take me twice as long to get ready every day and so there are things that like you know I think we've all been through but nowadays which is like so interesting Dorit from from Housewives and Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian are wearing their hair like you yeah I mean it's crazy yeah it's very intense well the reason I ask. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah. It's very intense. Well, the reason I ask about confidence is, I mean, I think that's one of the top questions we get to the show.

Like, how do you get confidence? Yeah. And I don't think we've ever been able to really like quite answer it concrete. I mean, there's so many different things. Okay, good. This is actually, it's something that I use. It can work one of two ways. It's like my favorite method.

I use it for so many things. You can use it to break a habit. I used it when I was building like branding. You can use it for confidence. So I take a sticky note, write down like specifically when I was building Color Me Courtney, I decided these are the five things that are going to be true to Color Me Courtney. Like it's going to be colorful. It's going to be about positivity. It's going to make you happy and two other things that I'll keep proprietary. And I wrote these five things and I put them on a sticky note and I put it everywhere. It was on my bathroom mirror. It was on my door in my bedroom, door in my closet, on my phone case, like everywhere,

laptop, everywhere, you know, refrigerator. And I would look at it and anytime I would post any content for the first year, it had to check three of those boxes. Otherwise it didn't get seen. So there was about 30% of the stuff that I was posting, creating that I was like, this doesn't fit these. Why am I posting this? Get it out. And so it's something I used really specifically to create this like clear brand. And now I could probably get away with like missing a few, but the way it ties to confidence is you can do the same like sticky note method. You can use it for everything. You can use it to stop biting your nails.

You can use it to like anything. So I would write the five things that you like most about yourself, put it everywhere. And then you have to see it before you do anything. And I think just seeing it written down can really help. I also, I wrote a post about this on Valentine's Day. So So it's color me corny.com backslash love yourself It's color me corny.com backslash love yourself if you want to look at it Where just use the people in your community like use your friends They usually already think these great things about you

So you can do an exercise where you guys write each other notes write each other things Like these are the five things I like most about you. And a lot of times you won't see it unless someone else says it, which is so silly, but it's just like human nature. And then the last thing I'll say is that anything you're insecure about, if you can find a way to turn it into your superpower. So for me, like I have a lisp, obviously, growing up as a kid, I got teased about it all the time. And people would say, it makes you sound dumb. I went to speech therapy and like learned how to talk without it. Like I could talk without it right now if I wanted to.

And then when I started like blogging, but like when I say I could talk without it, it was like you're speaking a second language. So I could, but I had to think more before I would say everything. And I couldn't be myself as much. So when I started blogging, I made the conscious decision to bring it back and like stop kind of like putting on this and deciding to be my full self because I didn't want someone else to feel the way that I felt about it growing up. So if you find something that you are insecure about and you turn it into your superpower,

your lisp for me, also my lips were really big. I got made fun of. So I never wore, I know now, but like as a kid, you know, I don't feel bad. Well, now I wear lipstick every day on my big lips to like celebrate them. My curly hair, something I was ashamed of. I'll take some of your lips and your curly hair. I think that's really, really solid and powerful advice to take insecurities and turn them into superpowers.

Yeah. I think it's very, very smart. Because it's there anyway. You might as well like shout it, right? I love that advice. Get something good from it. It's like Howard Stern on air, how he always talks about his small penis. Make it a branding decision, right?

I respect that. Well, it takes what I think, you know know it takes the power away from others that would but they would try to say or do things to harm you right it's like it takes all of it away how do you deal with trolls i actually don't get a ton of trolls which is nice i like obviously there's like the get off my internet thing which i haven't been on for years but i guess that was my first like interaction with them is i didn't have a page for a long time. And then someone told me that they had made a page for me. So I went on and it wasn't a lot. There are maybe like 40 threads. And if they were like valid, I like the only time a troll comment hurts me is if it's true. Like if someone says like, she's ugly, I'm like, great. That's like your opinion. I don't care what

you think. But if someone's like, she has bad grammar and I'm like, oh crap, I need to work on my grammar. Like then that's the only time that I like, that it hurts me. So all the things that people said that were true, I like put them on a list. I like prioritize them in terms of like things that like I could work on. And I took them as constructive criticism. And then all the things that weren't true or like were just like completely wrong. I like went and I actually responded to like 30 of them

and was like, hey, like this website is like kind of lame. Like if you want to say something to me, I love feedback. I love that you guys are so obsessed with me that you're writing about me. Like, thanks. But like if you want to give me feedback, send me an email, send me a DM, post a comment on my page. I won't delete it. I

don't care what you say unless you're attacking someone else. I don't care if you're attacking me, but let's not do this here on this page. So I like went and responded to like all of them. A lot of them were like the typical things like she must just have a rich boyfriend who's paying for everything. You know, people think bloggers don't make money. And I'm like, do you want to see my tax returns? Like, I don't know what else to tell you, but like, that doesn't matter to me. And doing that, like helped me like push it away. Like I know I only responded to like 30, 40 people. And then at the end of each one, I said, I'm not coming back here again. Like I'm not going to give this website another view. You now know how to contact me if you're interested, but like, you know. Well, I think it's extremely smart to

look at it in that regard. Like for me, one one if they're not talking about you on some level then you maybe got to find something for them to start talking about right i think for anybody that's out there in the people create their careers just to have yeah get some get some trolls talking about you that's important because if they're not that must mean that you're not interesting enough to talk about two it's important to look at constructive criticism like you said like i look at, I still look at the iTunes reviews or I'll look at stuff and say, Oh, he's saying like a lot or he's interrupting. Okay. That's really, that's actually beneficial for me to hear because I address it.

And I also tell people that are new to podcasts, Hey, look at the bad reviews and not just the good, because the audience is going to give you the feedback that you need to perfect your, your path, right? Like if you're going to need to perfect your speech or you're going to stop saying like or interrupting, it's important for you to know that. But the last thing I'll say for people, if you're one of these people that's out there on a negative site,

like get off my internet or something, it's not hurting the people that are winning, right? Like it's not taking, if somebody goes on that site and talks about Lauren and I, it's not slowing us down and it's not affecting us. What it's doing is it's taking valuable time away from the person that has to do it. It's just a big time suck. It's a waste of time that you could be using to put into your career, to put into positive energy. I'm jealous. Who has that much time? Exactly. Because all of the negative stuff

comes back around and doesn't end up hurting anybody but the person who's being negative. Yeah, Courtney's busy scheduling her bathroom time. She doesn't. Anybody but the person who's being negative. Courtney's busy scheduling her bathroom time. The first time Lauren told me that I was on a site like that, I swear to God, I never went and looked. I just said, cool. Like, fine. Like, OK, great. Then I move on.

It's not like it's taking time away from me to slow me down. I had an epiphany six years ago when I was put on a site like that. And I was I looked at it. This was six years ago. I'll never forget it. And I told Michael and Michael was like, good. And since then, I do not read my own press clippings,

good or bad. I really try to stay away from both of them. I mean, I really try because if you get too many good press clippings, it can go to your head. My dad always says this.

And in the bad ones, it sucks your energy. So it's like neither are really super beneficial. You just keep on your trajectory doing what you're doing. There's like a hundred things that I want to do every day that I don't have time to do. And responding, talking to trolls is never on the hundred list. So there's just, there's just not enough time.

But if you're, if you're one of those trolls, you have to sit back and be like, wait a minute. How much, how much time do I have to allocate to this? Like you, this is where you're going to spend your time. You get one shot at this life. That's it. Just one time. And you want to look back on your life and say, Hey, I spent a couple hours of every week of my life commenting negative things that had no effect on the people that I was commenting about. You know what I mean? Like it's think about that waste of time. Yeah. It's crazy. And well, and I also have a pretty international following too so i've had to learn to kind of just have a thick skin because a lot

of times i'll get or at least when i was starting out i would start to get defensive about stuff and i realized it was like language barrier like they would say something and i would take it the wrong way and uh i'll quote mean girls the musical right now because i saw it for the sixth time the other night it's so you guys should see it. We saw it. Oh, yeah. Did you love it? It's really good.

Yeah, it's so good. It says, if you're feeling attacked, that's a feeling, not a fact. Don't jump online and react. And like, that's it. Like, it's a feeling. If you're feeling like someone's attacking you, maybe they are, but it's a feeling. It's not a fact. It doesn't have to mean anything. You can choose to like move on.

But when you choose to instead pay attention and react to it, then it becomes something. That's why every morning I practice stoicism and it's helped me so much. I can't even tell you. It's just- I'm sorry, I don't know. What's stoicism?

It's a philosophy five minutes every day and it just talks about perseverance and it's just a lot of wisdom. Today's, did you read today's? I haven't read it today. It's all about Michael. Yeah, Michael. It's all about doing good and, and how you just, you fight critics by just doing good. We should send you a copy of the deal. We got to send her a copy. I think you'd really like it. Yeah. Also, I'm sending you woo and a book too. Cause it's not, we normally have a wrapped gift. No, I have it enough. I have it in my office. Thank God. I'll bring it to you. Michael for the win. Thank God.

Okay. Okay, Michael for the win. So I want to talk about your morning routine. Yeah. Can you walk us through that? I'm sure it's specific. It's actually not. It's kind of, it's because it's different every day.

I guess a meetings day, right? Usually I would wake up, I would do emails for about an hour. I need times. You know how I am. Okay. So I'd wake up at like, usually like 6am. I'll do like emails or whatever for about an hour. I need times. You know how I am. Okay. So I'd wake up at like, usually like 6am. I'll do like emails or whatever for about an hour. I pick out all my outfits like way in advance. So I don't have to worry about that. And I only wash my hair like once a week. So I don't have to worry about

that kind of stuff. So then now what? It's like 7am. I'm really bad. I never eat breakfast. It's really, really bad. I know I'm supposed to. And then I'll just kind of just get ready to go out and like usually shoot because we usually shoot in the morning. We'll do that from like seven to like nine ish, depending on how many things we're shooting. Sometimes we're shooting a stop motion video, which takes a lot more time. A lot of times me and my me and my fiance will like commute together or and head over to like meetings based on your recommendation to do all my meetings in like one day. But there are now because I'm doing YouTube, there will be days where I'll sit in front

of a computer and like edit a video for 30 hours. My stop motion videos, the one that took me the longest took 165 hours to edit. Wow, holy shit. Yeah. So and I've made over 100 of them. There was a time where I was doing one a week. So usually every Tuesday, because I'd post them on Wednesday, was a full stop motion day of editing. Like I guess Friday is probably like my most always

well-organized day because I'm setting up for the weekend because we shoot all weekend. So usually Friday I wake up, I usually like treat myself and watch a TV show in the morning before I like get ready. I then have to handle like things like packages and like stuff like that that I hate doing. So I'll do that first and then I'll plan all of our shoots for the weekend. Planning the shoots means picking out the location, picking out the actual outfit. And then I usually like to pick out like a theme or a mood board that I can share with Paris, which has really helped from a shooting point of view. Because then instead of me being like, let's make something out of nothing, I can show like a creative direction of like, this is what I need. This logo needs to be visible because it's sponsored by this, or this is just for me, but it's going to be going live next month. So we want to make it

look more summery than it really is doing all that stuff. So that's like my Friday day, I guess. It sounds like you're proactive rather than reactive. Try to be. Any beauty tip that you can throw us? Give us a good one. I know you have some. Those eyelashes are insane. Well, these are extensions. I love eyelashes. They look so good on you.

I love them. Lipstick, skin. I feel like this is, yeah, okay. So I love doing lipstick in an Uber. It's like my favorite thing. Literally, like when I have to do my makeup at home, I'm like, this looks bad. Right now I'm doing like this highlighter on my nose, like in the center, because I feel like it makes me look like a Disney princess.

I'm into that. What's the highlighter? Fenty. Oh, it's very pretty. I put it on with my finger. I could use some highlighter on a lash right now. I put on pretty much everything with my finger. It's like very bad.

No, that's okay. I don't really wear foundation that much. You don't need it. I need foundation right now. Big time. What's a book, a podcast, a resource that you can leave our audience with that's brought you a lot of value oh i like is it bad to say your podcast no i like your podcast i knew i was going to keep you around for some stroke the ego please i listen to harry potter a lot which is really bad

um just like you played in the background or Like on Audible, like this is my seventh time from start to finish. I just always listen to Harry Potter on Audible. I honestly just listen to a lot of musicals and stuff like that. Things like that make me happy. So that brings happiness. Yeah, I've been listening to Six, the musical right now,

which is cool. You'd like it. It's Henry VIII's Six Wives, you know, because he beheaded two, divorced two, one died and one survived. And they've decided to take back the microphone and perform live in concert. That sounds interesting. Yeah, it's really interesting. I just saw it in London. Maybe all Henry VIII you and I can't even spell. No, it's the other way around. So it's like a really kind of female empowering songs and stuff like that.

I got to listen. Where can everyone find you pimp yourself out? Yeah. Oh, I gladly will. So I'm Color Me Courtney on pretty much all social media. My main platform is Instagram and my blog, of course, Color Me Courtney dot com. I have a second Instagram account, Color Me Magic. Courtney is spelled the C, not the Kardashian way. And color is spelled the American way, C-O-L-O-R. You are amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. This is great. This is a dream come true. Come back anytime. Anytime. Thanks. Quick fun giveaway as always. Do you want to decorate your hydro flask

with TSC cheeky stickers? Well, today's the giveaway for you. All you have to do is tag a friend on my latest Instagram and recommend the podcast giveaway for you. All you have to do is tag a friend on my latest Instagram and recommend the podcast to them. We want you guys to spread the word. You guys tell your friends if this podcast has brought you any kind of value and one of us from the team will slide into your DMs and send you some cute stickers. I put them on my hydro flask, my phone, my computer. They are fun. Let me tell you. Hope that this episode brought you tons of value. And with that, we'll see you next time.