Wearing a Sandro skirt, Madewell boots, and a J.Crew top with Ray-Ban sunglasses
A I went into brunch on Sunday with one of my close girlfriends on a serious mission: I needed one more successful person in my life to convince me to hire a publicist. Over the past 6 years I’ve very un-strategically ended up where I am today. I constantly wonder how I’m percieved and where I am exactly today: I have a very different viewpoint of myself compared to what (I think) most of the public views me as. It’s an honor to be considered a successful businesswoman but I am not going to deny I battle questioning myself and my decisions frequently. Being 21-years-old, completely financially independent and on my own in my business and personal life is fantastic and stressful! The pressure of knowing I have to pay my manager commission, my assistant, and all of my expenses has become second nature. However if you decide to ever create any company you’ll still question yourself until you’re at the top of your field, in my opinion.
Entrepreneurs are wired to think of themselves differently than other people think of them. Like when I bring up the definition of successful or self-made wealth to any of the successful entrepreneurs I’ve had on This is Life Unfiltered, none of them ever look me in the eye and say “F** yes, I am successful! I’m great!” whether they’re 40 or 25. We’re so obsessed with the idea of working and seeing results that we frequently overlook things like milestones and goals that we hit- even though we should understand and appreciate the goals that we do hit more often.
I have been my own publicist for a really long time. I won’t expose all of my secrets but I will say that I realized I wasn’t totally bonkers during a car ride I took when I put on old G-Eazy music. Everyone knows I’m slightly obsessed with him, and not because he’s super cute. I’m obsessed with the story of going from so little to so much and not having anyone to fall back on besides yourself. That’s why when I tell people I love rap music more than any other music people look at me crazy until I give them some of my favorite songs to walk away with and listen to, and then get back to me. In one of his songs he says how he made a fake email to get himself into bars to perform when he first started out and had no money, and since I’m not exposing my secrets I won’t say that I’ve done just that…but you know, I really related to that song.
At brunch my friend who runs her own business and is very successful told me that if I wanted to grow as a businesswoman it was time for me to give some of the responsibility away. You just can’t do everything. You can’t negotiate every deal. You can’t write every email. You can’t comment back to everyone. You can’t edit every podcast episode (though I do) because by doing so many things at once you take away from the true beauty of being an entrepreneur: being the brains behind certain parts of the mission.
So I walked away from that brunch with a new perspective: money is just money. But growing as a person in your business and your personal life is something completely different that money can’t interfere with. Sometimes I have a lot of money for a 21-year-old to have in her bank account. Sometimes I wake up so anxious and overwhelmed I want to cry because I think what in the heck am I doing try to do all of this on my own AND if it all crashes I have NO PLAN B! Because I don’t want a PLAN B when I have a PLAN A++++!
Sometimes I have so much money I put all of it into my savings and am super content for 5 hours, and then something comes up and I have to withdraw all of it into my back account and I’m back to square one.
Long story short, my Fearless Friday of this week was deciding to take the leap and hire a publicist. I now have Alexis, whose my assistant and pretty much my mom, I have an incredible management team, and two publicists. I’m also incredibly blessed because of the network I’ve managed to make for myself in the entertainment industry that makes taking major leaps like this just a little less scary.
The next time you’re anxious about something, maybe it’s time you realize that to grow you have to feel anxious and scared. That period of time won’t last for forever and you’ll come out on the other side. Stronger. More successful. More driven. Happier.
