How a Swiftie Turned Superfandom Into Big Business w/ Olivia Levin

0:00All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the strawberry watermelon refresher and the mango pineapple refresher with popping boba to crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all now at McDonald's. Refreshers contain caffeine. Copyright 2026, The Coca-Cola Company. Sprite is a registered trademark of The Coca-Cola Company. Ready to soundtrack your summer? With Red Bull Summer All Day Play, you choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep-end DJ, a road dog, or a trail mixer?

0:43Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit redbull.com slash brightsummer ahead to learn more. See you this summer. This episode is brought to you by Prime. What if you had one more chance with the one that got away? Sam, you came home. Based on the best-selling novel from Carly Fortune. Every Year After follows childhood friends Sam and Percy as they reunite in the dreamy, nostalgic lakeside town of Berries Bay. Love can be hard to find. So if you're lucky enough to find that person, never let go. A second chance at first love.

1:23Every Year After, now streaming only on Prime. Taylor Swift is among the most impactful artists of her generation. In her fans, the Swifties may be music's most impactful fandom. I'm not just saying that for flattery. I do think that it is undeniable that not only is Taylor Swift a massive artist with a sprawling catalog of hits, often written all by herself, she also has had a sizable impact on the music business in a number of ways. But just one example is, let's be honest, how many people outside the music industry knew or cared about catalog sales until her. Today, I'm joined by Olivia Levin, a Taylor Swift superfan and the founder of the social media account Swifties for Eternity, which boasts over 630 ,000 followers on Instagram.

2:08I was dying to have Olivia on the podcast today because she's a fan who's managed to turn her passion for a musician into a full-time six-figure career spanning brand partnerships, social media management, book sales, and even a ticketing subscription business. In a time when the music business's favorite word is superfan, I thought that we should have one on the show and actually understand the power that they hold.

2:37Welcome back to On The Record, a music business podcast from Billboard and Sick Bird Productions. As always, I'm your host, Kristen Robinson, and today I'm joined by Olivia Levin, the founder of Swifties for Eternity and author of the New York Times bestselling Taylor Swift fan bible, The Story of Us. After founding her Swifties for Eternity fan account at the age of 13 on Tumblr, Olivia has become a major leader in the Swiftie universe. After college, she started working at a book publisher, but then after layoffs eliminated her position, she decided to go all in on being a fan of Taylor Swift.

3:11First, Olivia paid her bills with brand deals, but then around the time that Taylor Swift's comeback was really picking up speed, where Taylor could do no wrong and the Ares tour was happening and suddenly everyone in the world wanted a seat, Olivia found herself helping fans swap tickets amongst each other for face value. given how many fans were concerned about reselling sites like StubHub and what that would mean for ticket prices and whether they would skyrocket or end up in the hands of people who just weren't very passionate about going to see the Ares tour. So after doing this for a while for free, Olivia got on the platform FanFix, which is a site where fans can pay a subscription price in exchange for access to bonus influencer content.

3:50And she started posting verified tickets there at face value. She didn't take any cut of the tickets, but where she really earned her money was on subscription fees. As time went on, she expanded this enterprise to also include tickets for other shows as well, including Gracie Abrams, Sabrina Carpenter, and Harry Styles. Today on the show, we are going to talk through all things fandom, Taylor Swift, ticketing, you name it. We're going to talk about it. So please welcome to the show, Olivia Levin. Olivia Levin, thank you so much for coming to On The Record. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me.

4:21I'm so excited. I'm very excited to have you because we have not yet had a fan on this show. And I think fans are inarguably the most important part of the music industry. Because without them, there isn't a music industry. Yep. So I think this is going to be really instructive for a lot of people in our audience. We have a lot of fans that listen to the show that want to just know a little bit more about what's happening behind the curtain of the music industry. Yeah. We also have like a lot of executives. So I'm excited for this conversation. And who better to have it with than you? Okay, so you have been running Swifties for Eternity, one of the biggest Taylor Swift fan accounts.

4:54Is it the biggest? Do you actually know? I think it's the biggest one, I think, that has a face to it. There's maybe a faceless account that has more. Well, so yeah, Swifties for Eternity has been running since you were, what, 13 years old? Around then, yeah. Okay, and it first started on Tumblr, but would you say it feels like Instagram is probably the primary one now? Oh yeah, 100%. It has been for a while. I started Tumblr first, and then shortly after I started the Instagram account. And I think I only started on Tumblr because that's where Taylor Swift was hanging out. Fair enough. Fair enough.

5:26Also, Tumblr was a moment. It was really important at the time. It really was. But I don't know anyone who, I mean, I'm sure there are still people who use it, but I don't personally know anyone who does. Yeah. I mean, I don't think I've used it since high school. But yeah, I don't know. But also, you wrote the book on the Taylor Swift fandom. Yeah. We have it right here. The Story of Us. The Story of Us. Okay. So when did it come out? What was the release date? Came out April 14th. This past April 14th. So it's only been a month and a half of it being out. But New York Times bestseller. New York Times bestseller.

5:57I can't believe that's real. That is wild. OK, let's get into the fan conversation. So one of the things that I hear in the music industry a lot, like for the last five years, the biggest buzzword that I've been hearing is super fans. The music industry is always trying to find new ways to monetize the super fan or try to engage the super fan more. And you are a super fan. yeah a super fan of Taylor Swift and I'm wondering what do you think you see like the music business get wrong about being a super fan I think and we were just talking about this before the podcast but I think sometimes the word super fan has a negative connotation you know comes with like a bad reputation like they look down on super fans when I think they shouldn't because without us then the artists would be nothing, you know?

6:47What do they get wrong? I think some people try to sell so much to super fans rather than make them a part of what the artist is doing. And that in itself makes fans, super fans, want to buy things more than just being sold to, like just anybody, you could be anybody, you know? Super fans want to feel like they are a part of the journey. and that is something Taylor gets right every single time she announces something and has another release with all the Easter eggs. We're a part of the journey. We're not just being sold to. Yeah, I'm wondering if you can go a little bit deeper into that. What are some ways that you've seen Taylor Swift really treat her fans right that have led to her having such like a long lasting fandom?

7:31Yeah, I mean, I think from the very beginning of her career, even when she had like, you know, a handful of super fans. Number one, she always made time to connect with them online, but also in person. So she's famously known to have done a 13 hour meet and greet where she stood for 13 hours and she took no breaks because the fans weren't getting any breaks. And the line was around the building and she was like, I want to meet every person who came. So I think things like that. And then I think with all the Easter eggs, she's been doing it from the beginning of her career, but she has continued to do it up until now.

8:06And I think she forever will do it. And it just works because fans, like I said, love to feel like they're a part of the release. And, um, I think she has just as much fun as we do finding all the Easter eggs and coming up with ridiculous theories. We have come up with some that have been right. Um, but some that have been way off. And I think it's probably just as much fun for her to watch all of it happening as it is for us to do that as a community. And that's another piece of it. It brings the fandom together. And then we feel like we're a part of something bigger than ourselves, not just with Taylor, but with all these millions of people who are just as interested and curious about the Easter eggs and the new releases as everyone else.

8:51So how often do you think Taylor Swift is lurking in the background watching people try to sleuth things out? I think it probably used to be more. Back in the day, it was every day. I mean, it was on Tumblr. Those days, she was on there almost every day, lurking and reblogging things and coming up with inside jokes with the fandom, which are all documented in the story of us. nowadays I think she stays more so away from social media I think you know her family and friends send her things and she probably sees things that way I do think she probably if I had to guess has her team go through all the theories and everything the fans are constantly talking about and and gives her like a one pager every day like this is what your fans are talking about and that would be such a good way to do it so that she doesn't have to endure the the toxic part of social media because you know she's been through a lot on there I honestly think that would be the best way to preserve your sanity I don't know how any famous person is able to be on social media I don't even have a lot of followers and it stresses me out to be on social media like I can't even imagine millions and millions of people discussing your every move even if the vast majority of it is positive seeing the level of negativity that can get passed around it's just not good for anyone's confidence and as an artist I really do think that one of the key things that you have to have as an artist is just pure confidence and trust in your vision yeah and that's just the perfect way to knock yourself down yeah and that's what she kind of said in one of her recent speeches she said like don't let anyone you know distract you from the reason you do this in the first place and and focus on your craft everything else social media all that toxic stuff it's just a distraction and it doesn't matter but I do think it's so cool that despite leaving social media a bit more she has still found ways to be so in touch with what's going on in the fandom and I never feel like she's above it you know she's still in it with us even if she's not liking our posts every day like she used to yeah well okay so you went to one of the secret sessions that's where you first met her yeah right okay so for those who might not know what that is can you describe a secret session basically um taylor did it for a few album cycles and she would have fans come to her house um about three four weeks before the album release and then she would go through each song and tell the fans what each song was about um and the writing process all of that and we would get to listen to the album you know way before it came out and it was just a very intimate way for her to connect with us and um and us with each other you know like I ran into people there that I still talk to today so so special yeah well how did how did they even pick the fans so Taylor found me on Tumblr she followed me on Tumblr already and then one day I got a DM from her on Instagram and because I had the same username on both and she just sent me a smiley face and that was like her way of easter egging like you don't know what's coming um and then fast forward like a week I was at her house that is wild so crazy yeah I bet that was so fun I mean especially since you were like what 14 by this point or something 17 when I met her 17 I was a senior in high school still like yeah that's a really big deal and I I do think those are the moments even if you can't do it for a ton of fans you're never going to get that experience and then you're going to evangelize that experience to all the fans that you meet moving forward too and a lot of other artists now do stuff like that I mean she's a trailblazer she has she has led the way um for so many artists so yeah I mean okay correct me if I'm wrong I feel like Taylor Nation was one of the first HQ accounts yeah if not the first probably the first yeah yeah I feel like that is another example of something that she did that is now being it's not just kind of the norm like yeah yeah we were just talking before so you run the kidleroy hq account but yeah like everyone kind of is expected to have that and i actually love an hq account i do too i think it's great if you're you know even if you're not super fan tier but you're a big fan of someone and you want more than what they post on social media i mean a lot of famous people don't go on socials much anymore and don't post that often i miss like the glory days of Twitter where people would be messy as hell on Twitter.

13:15I do too. I wish that people would be a little bit more off the cuff, but I understand why not. I know. And I wouldn't advise them if I was working with them to do that, but like I do kind of miss the mess a little bit. But yeah, the HQ account, like if anyone is not familiar with an HQ account, it's just a place where you can actually post like kind of official things like tour updates and stuff like that. Exclusive content, BTS. Yeah. Okay. So you've managed to make Swifties for Eternity into this business as a fan where you're running an HQ account for another artist you're still doing Swifties for Eternity and doing brand deals and stuff like that for that and then ticketing which we'll get into later in the conversation but I'm wondering I feel like I've noticed that this generation that's come up in the music industry kind of 20-somethings right now there's a lot of fans that are actually entering the actual music industry and starting to work on artists real social teams yeah have you been experiencing that too do you have a lot of friends in kind of fan spaces that are also so many so many um even a girl I work with on who's on the label side of the kid Leroy um grew up as a super fan of an artist and then now she works in music I know so many people and I I love it I don't think there's anyone better to do the job um than people who understand what it's like to be a fan so if you're you know if you've never been a fan of someone or never been a hardcore fan of someone and you're hired to essentially communicate to the artist that you're working with fandom how are you going to do it if you don't understand why they they're big fans you know so I love it I the the fan to music industry pipeline is so real it's real and it's happening like one of my favorite examples of this I don't if you've met the girls who created FanMaid.

15:05Oh, I actually have. Well, I haven't met them in person, but I had a call with Olivia a couple years ago. I was going to bring up Olivia because she was a Miley Cyrus super fan and now she works with Miley. Or at least last time I checked, FanMaid was working with Miley. So it's just great to see those stories because I do think it's great hands-on experience. And I think if there's any young people who are listening to this podcast, if you can't seem to get yourself to LA or New York and get into these big music industry internship type things. There are so many ways that you can still participate in music that don't require any barriers to entry.

15:37Anyone can sign up to Instagram and make a second account and start running a fan page and see where it takes them. And that ends up being good real world experience. Absolutely. But yeah, I'm wondering if there was any stigma that you face though, as you're trying to build this into a business, was anyone ever discouraging or even like maybe fearful that you would fangirl too hard over an artist or anything like that? so when I did an internship in PR when I was in college I was told to delete my fan account because you know if you're in entertainment music it's not a good look um and I'm so happy I didn't listen and I mean none of my book wouldn't exist like none of this would exist so I was too passionate about it to delete it for any job yeah so also it's an internship it's gonna end it's an internship yeah offering me a real job with a real check maybe even even then I'm like I shouldn't have to give up something that I do on the side for fun that I'm passionate about for a career in music and I wasn't even sure that I wanted to be in music I really didn't know what I wanted to do um but yeah I kind of just figured it out but I would never have deleted that account I briefly had a stint in the One Direction fandom okay back in the day like right when they were starting to take off I feel like I was in middle school at the time there was like a switch flipped I think it was right when like What Makes You Beautiful came out.

17:01And every girl at my middle school was so obsessed with them that it became a thing where kind of everyone started listening to them and talking about them every day at lunch or in between classes. And it was like it was a real social phenomenon. And I remember at that time almost starting to feel pressure at a certain point to make sure I knew everything and that I could prove that I was a true fan. How do you see social dynamics play out within a fandom do you ever see any competitiveness or territorial behavior between fans so growing up when I was a teenager 100 percent um within the fandom there was always like competition who's the better fan who's been a fan longer all that um who has all the merch back then it was more so how many times can you meet Taylor how many times can you get her attention there were there were fans there was beef in the fandom because there were certain fans that Taylor interacted with very often so they were like the favorites and so everyone else would get jealous and start bullying those people it was a whole thing and there was actually this one time and I write about it in the book where fans were fighting and Taylor was very in tune with what was happening and posted a photo of her wearing gloves and one said hate and one said love And in the caption, she wrote, choose the right one.

18:25And that was her being mother and like telling her fandom, like, behave, stop being assholes to each other. So there was a little of that. I feel like with the AeroStore and everything, I see less of that competition and stuff because one, you know, fans aren't meeting Taylor as often as they were back then. But also there are so many new fans and I love to welcome new fans. I'm like, I don't care if you became a fan yesterday or 20 years ago. You know, I came in. I wasn't at the very beginning. I was six when debut came out. So I came into it in like 2013. So I'm not like technically an OG. I don't think there should be this like ranking system or status that comes with, oh, I've been a fan for longer than you have.

19:12So I have seen it die down with the Arrows tour and all the influx of new fans. I think that's cool because I actually would have guessed that with the Eros tour and new fans, there would be kind of a us versus them, the original fans versus the post Eros tour fans. But it's glad to hear that. Yeah, I think Swifties, the OGs were really happy to see her success and how many people came around to being a Swiftie during the Eros tour. So I definitely see less of it. I mean, I see the occasional tweets that are like this person. I will say there's a stigma with TikTok Swifties. Oh. So on Twitter, I see a lot of hate toward the TikTok Swifties.

19:49Yeah, I don't know. I don't know why. I think they maybe say weird things sometimes on TikTok. But like everybody on social media says weird things. Sometimes people take it too far. Yeah, I do think that sometimes you just have to remember that some of these fans are 13. Like if you see someone getting defensive, it's very possible that that's one of the young ones that is just trying to prove themselves. And they're kind of in that middle school mindset. Yeah. As an adult, it's fine. Whereas a lot of us have grown up with her and are now adults. So we had that phase back in the day. But yeah, now there's a new wave of them.

20:21Yeah. Yeah. Well, OK, so you mentioned that, you know, people have a little bit less access to Taylor than they used to. She's just so famous at this point. She also has gotten to a place in her career where she doesn't need to do as much promo as she used to. I've thought about that a lot, especially when I was reading in your book about I believe the year was 2016 when she went away. She went dark for a year. I thought about that because, you know, if you're running a fan account, it must be really hard to keep a page going when your artist is off cycle or when they decide, hey, I'm going to step back for maybe even a few years, if not forever.

20:59You know, there's always the possibility that in the future, Taylor Swift could step away because she wants to have kids or she just kind of wants to live her private life. And I'm wondering, how do you think that would impact the fandom and how does a fandom respond when there are those gaps? Well, I think we've been really lucky with Taylor because she's always working. And that's something I admire about her so much. Her work ethic is insane. It's where it's why she's gotten to where she is today. I don't think she's ever going to go anywhere. Like, yeah, maybe we won't see paparazzi pictures of her as much.

21:31But even she said in a recent interview in the fall that she doesn't like when people are like, oh, you're going to go away, get married, have kids and and people aren't going to hear from you anywhere. She's like, no, like, this is my job. It's my passion. Like, I'm going to keep doing it. So I don't really worry about that. But there are some slower times in the fandom. And I don't know, I post every day pretty much, even when she's off cycle, and there's not much to post about. There's always things to reminisce about or like laugh about. So I just, my passion comes in where I love being a glue in the community and bringing people together, even when she's away and busy and living her life so I I try to always find things to to post about where people can come together and get that one dose of joy every day even if there's not much going on yeah I mean I guess you can always go back into the archives she's been around long enough that there's plenty of content to remind people about like one year ago today this happened yeah yeah classic like this is what we do in you know in my like journalism realm too is like okay there's a there's an anniversary perfect time to revive a story that we loved from 10 years ago or something so true yeah so I mean and yeah I think the debut album is turning 20 this year yeah yeah so I'm I'm clutching my pearls for uh debut Taylor's version I know okay so that's actually something I was going to ask you about because you posted about that recently and well the full post was kind of talking about the new Toy Story 5 song that she wrote and it's more of a country-leaning song and so you were positing that maybe this would be a great way for her to get back to the debut album and remind people about kind of that sound from her.

23:12100%, yeah. But okay, so she has her master's though now. So the debut album has been re-recorded. It's been done for a while now. And last year when she announced that she bought her master's back in the letter, she wrote that debut will come out eventually so so she said it's done and re-recorded the one that won't is reputation um maybe the vault tracks will at some point but not the full album most likely so um so yeah I think what better moment to release debut Taylor's version than the 20-year anniversary of the debut album make it a big cultural moment like Miley did with Hannah Montana you know yeah yeah I mean I think that's a very fair prediction.

23:58Also with the Toy Story 5 song, another great thing that you pointed out on social media is that this was a really smart move by her because it kind of introduces Taylor Swift's music to a new generation of fans through Toy Story. She has done this before, in my opinion. I think The Summer I Turned Pretty, which had a pretty young demographic watching that show, although they're more like pre-teens, teenagers. I was watching. Yeah, and me. I did watch the first season. Then I fell off. But yes, it was a good show. Oh, you didn't finish. Okay. I know. It was just, it's the gap between seasons. I just lose momentum.

24:29I get it. I get it. So anyways, but Taylor Swift licensed some of her songs for that show. And I thought that that was really astute back then. And I remember I actually wanted to write a story at the time about this very thing that I feel like it is introducing her to the next generation. So I'm wondering if you can kind of elaborate more on that. Like, how do you think Taylor Swift is able to constantly reach out to a new generation of fans because I feel like she does that very well. She does it very well and very often like you said. I think the best way she's ever done it is the re-recordings.

25:01I mean obviously she had other motivations but I do think it helped capture a whole new generation of fans because she essentially was reliving what she built in her career the first you know decade or so. So I think that really brought in a whole new wave of fans and then that's what led to the tour and and that just took her to new heights but um with Toy Story specifically I yeah I posted a video the other day saying how it's just brilliant because Toy Story a Disney movie you're gonna have that soundtrack playing in every single household not just households with little kids but mostly probably um that song will be on repeat and so these little kids who may not know much about Taylor yet are going to hear that song and they're going to be like, oh my God, I love this song.

25:50Who sings this? I want more of Taylor Swift. And then, you know, maybe she comes out with debut Taylor's version this year and they get hooked the way everybody got hooked in 2006. It's brilliant. Yeah, I totally agree. One other thing I wanted to ask you about digital marketing for artists. We did an episode of this show with the co-founders of this company called Chaotic good. And they run a bunch of strategies to help a lot of big name artists in the music industry to get their music essentially into the algorithm on TikTok. It sparked a very large conversation about like, is the feed fake online?

26:27There's a lot of discourse. But I think a related type of digital marketing that's become really popular in the music industry today is the idea of labels creating fan pages themselves. There are a lot of record labels that create their own fan pages and run them, but they don't disclose, you know, this is from the label. It just kind of mimics what a fan page would look like. And so I'm wondering, how do you feel fake fan pages impact fandom online? I mean, I'm not against them. I just, I prefer the organic route of let the fans do it themselves, but I understand why they do it. I mean, the more fan pages that pop up, the more it'll inspire other people to create fan pages.

27:11So if anything, you are creating more organic fan pages by doing that. Have you seen it impact fandom online? Like, have you seen fans just like accidentally running into these fake fan pages and realizing? I don't think they know. I don't think the fans who have fan accounts know that some of the pages they're interacting with are label fueled fan pages. I think they have no idea. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it's Interesting because it well I'm just so in my bubble. I'm like so deep in like the music industry bubble that I feel like people have revealed that these fan pages exist. I've seen chatter about it online but you know it's very possible that it's not reaching fans like this news about this marketing strategy.

27:50Yeah I don't think I think it's reaching people in the music business but I don't think it's really reaching the people who have fan accounts and I would maybe say that most people who have fan accounts are on the younger side. Yeah. And probably aren't, you know, on the side of TikTok or whatever, where they would learn about the music business yet. I'm also wondering, because you got started on Tumblr, what, how long ago was that now? Like 2000, I guess. 15 years ago? A little less, but yeah. Okay. So you started on social media about 15 years ago. And since then, the internet has evolved and social media has evolved a lot.

28:26So I'm wondering how do you think the evolution of social media has impacted fan accounts? I think now that they're more prominent and I feel like everybody knows about them, it's more normal to have it. I would say there's less of a stigma now than there was when I started one. Yeah. I mean, I definitely feel less judged by people now that I've turned it into a business and have a book and everything and have made money from it. but I remember in high school at first I didn't really want people to know in my school like oh I have a Taylor Swift fan account um eventually I didn't care and I became known as like the Taylor Swift girl I was like okay I went to her house so whatever yeah just kind of own it at that point yeah but I I do think that because it's as social media has evolved um and so many more fan pages have popped up it's just kind of a norm now so I think people respect it more than they used to.

29:24I think they used to look down on it more. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. I also feel like the way that social media works now is very different. Yeah. So Tumblr and early Instagram, like basically everything pre-TikTok was very much so about I found an account that I like and I'm going to follow it. Yeah. I'm going to see it in my feed all the time. And it's chronological. And it's about connecting with friends or internet friends in the case of fandom usually. But now we, since TikTok, we switched to this FYP model where it's all about serving you content that suits you rather than serving you what your friend's up to.

29:57And so has, has that had any impact? I actually think it's benefited me a lot. During the arrows tour, especially every, every single video I would post would just pop off and get me a ton of followers because it would be fed to people that weren't following me so and I also really like the trial reels yes because that does the same thing so I yeah I think it's definitely helped my page grow probably a lot of pages because you know if you're interested in one thing people who are seeing my videos are probably seeing videos from other fan accounts that are related to Taylor so um yeah I mean I'm sure there's negative things I mean I never see my friend's content anymore on my my page when I scroll like I never know what they're up to because I just see like right now I see a bunch of off-campus stuff like edits and stuff I'm like it's my entire page because Instagram knows that I liked a few reels like edit fan edits and now it's my entire page yeah so yeah it's like it's so great for the discovery of a page yeah but sometimes it can be hard to keep the page into all of the followers yes um that's at least what I've found and I feel like with this very fragmented internet, like as someone with a podcast now, it's like I'm constantly trying to post a million times because it's very possible that my friend doesn't see the first five posts that I make about an episode.

31:18So yeah, I mean, that's a huge issue that artists are facing today. Maybe not someone like Taylor who is so ubiquitous, but an up and coming artist today to try to break through the noise. For sure. But another thing that I saw recently, Instagram has a new policy. they're not prioritizing content from aggregators so people who don't make a bunch of original content this wouldn't really fall into your domain because you do actually show your face make original content go to games and capture yeah you know mine's kind of a blend of the two yeah and so I'm wondering do you think that that could have a negative impact on some of these other fan pages yeah I think if you don't make any original content and you're just like reposting other people's stuff it could definitely affect your page um it could probably affect meme pages and stuff like that that aren't making original content I mean I post a lot of tweet dumps that's kind of how that's one way that I keep everyone updated um and engaged on the page so that actually worried me when I got that notification like Instagram's going to be boosting original content I'm like okay so yeah well but you do post stuff with your face you know yeah um you went to the eras tour and were posting i was posting so much original content back then um during the eras tour and going to chiefs games and award shows and stuff like that yeah well okay so i want to switch gears a little bit and talk about how swifties for eternity turned into your career so what was the turning point for you when swifties for eternity went from just something you were doing for free for fun and into something where you were making money or maybe considering it as a career option?

32:56So I moved to Nashville post-college. I had a corporate job at a small book publishing company. I hated it. And about a few months after I moved to Nashville, I got laid off literally the day after I told my mom I wanted to quit. But I wasn't going to actually quit. So I'm happy. It gave me the push I needed. And that summer of 2023, I was like, okay, well, I'll apply to jobs. And while I do that, I'll start putting my face on the account. That's where I really started to put my personality and, you know, do videos of myself talking on Swifties for Eternity. And still at this point, I was looking for a corporate job.

33:41I was like, OK, I didn't think there was any money to be made on a fan account. And then as the summer went on, I was interviewing at labels in Nashville. And I was like, none of this really excites me. Like, I don't really want to work for someone. And so one day I just called my parents and I was like, I'm going to stop looking for a job and I'm going to take an online copywriting course and build my own freelance copywriting business. That was my plan. OK, so I did that. I took the course. I eventually had one client and then I was in L.A. and I happened to meet this girl who I connected with from Instagram and she was big Swifty and she worked at a talent agency.

34:19and she was like let me like rep you and try to get you brand deals and I was like do you do you actually think that would work and she was like well we can try it like you started putting your face on the account now so like there's a face to it so let's try and it worked and that fall of 2023 I made more money in brand deals than I ever did in corporate oh my god and I stopped I quit the copywriting thing I was like yeah I don't need to do that anymore so I focused on that full time. And then I also was doing some stuff at a content house learning about like virality and stuff like that as like a side gig a couple times a week.