Pay Transparency for Creators w/ Lindsey Lugrin

0:00As an influencer, I ran into the same problem. I'd get all these brands DMing me, wanting to pay me in clothes, never money. It was never quite worth my time. And I was just like, gosh, I just wish there was a website where I could just look this up a lot like Glassdoor and know what number, you know, to throw out there.

0:22Hey, Lizzie, welcome to the show. How are you? Thank you. I'm doing good. I love these energies. We need that, you know, like especially for people listening. Let's get started. Usually what I do all the time with guests on, we use this thing called the map. So basically it's divided in three main sections. There is the mission, what do you aim to achieve with what you do. The number two is the achievements. Anything that you are very proud of could be in your life or could be career-wise. And then the last one is the purpose. So why do you do what you do? My name is Lindsay Lee Lundgren. My company is FYPM app or Fuck You Pay Me app.

1:00and I am the founder and CEO. I started FYPM in 2020 after fitting on the idea for over a decade. Basically, I did a ton of freelance modeling. In 2015, I won this Instagram contest called hashtag cast me Mark. And my prize was to be the international face of Mark Jacobs. I was one of 11 people chosen out of, I think, like 750 ,000 people from all over the world who entered this contest. And it was incredible. It changed my life. I was on billboards all over the world. I was in magazines. But for all that, I got paid$1 ,000. And to this day, that was my highest paid gig ever. And it's funny because I always looked very successful on paper.

1:46I was sold as wall art and Urban Outfitters. I did New York Fashion Week. I was in New York Magazine. I was on Vera Wang's website. I did a whole bunch of stuff. But I always kind of found myself in this position of being good enough to do the work, but not good enough to be paid. But it would still be a while before I finally started FYPN. In between, I got a degree in finance. I started working at a $25 billion fund doing equity research. So my job was essentially to build out financial models, research public equities, interview CEOs. While I was there, I started my online alter ego, Miss Young Professional, which is mostly a comedy about sexism in the workplace.

2:29So I would kind of like take pictures of myself in these cute outfits and use myself as bait. Like I look like a work wear blogger, but in the captions, it's like really, it's really funny. It's like I take bad career advice they give to women and I make it worse and I make memes and I do a lot of role reversal. And then as an influencer, I ran into the same problem. I'd get all these brands DMing me wanting to pay me in clothes, never money. It was never quite worth my time. And I was just like, gosh, I just wish there was a website where I could just look this up a lot like Glassdoor and know what number to throw out there.

3:02But two, I ended up quitting finance and joining the marketing team at Poopery. And I figured out exactly why this was such a problem. It was literally built into the tech. So we used this service called Coley. And I remember there was a button we could use as a brand to filter out all the influencers who wanted money. And I was just like, Oh my gosh, this makes so much sense. So that's kind of like how this evolved personally, from my story in 2020 pandemic happened, I lost my job, I lost all my money, my ex boyfriend Delphi, I was living in his house. So I lost my house. And I ended up back in my parents house for the second time as an adult.

3:39And I thought, fuck it, I'm just gonna build this website that could have prevented all this from happening. Because if I would have been paid for all that modeling and all that influencing work, I wouldn't be here right now. And I'm gonna call it fuck you paidy because I'm fresh out of the, you know, the poo-poo business. I know a lot about risky marketing and I just know people will get it. And it worked. It kind of took off immediately. I raised venture capital in 2021 and we spent these past three years rebuilding the website, but essentially aggregating this giant database of line level influencer brand deal pricing data.

4:10And we just launched our very first paid product to influencers and talent managers in December. We are raising money again right now to launch our business product. And basically what our business product is, I'm calling it Build My Offer Tool, but it's a tool that leverages our database of line level pricing data to help brands and marketers and agencies price and instantly contract creators. So you can take the influencer, you know, the deliverables, the terms, and then it'll spit out a range of live market rates for what's normal for this type of collab. And that's a huge pain point for everyone.

4:46I really believe that transparency benefits everyone and it's key to the continuing maturation of this industry. Is there any other achievements, you know, in addition to what you said, you know, about, you know, the modeling also, but is there anything else you are proud of? Achievements and bucketed into a couple different categories. Business wise, like we soft launched this product to creators and talent managers about three months ago and already passed 100K ARR, which is a huge milestone. though I'm really excited about that. I think that shows just how hungry people are for the information.

5:19Pay transparency is what this next generation expects. It's amazing. I get thank you messages every day from influencers like, oh my God, your website saved my life. Thanks to your website, I can actually turn my blog into a real business. I can see that especially what is funny to me is that we're going to get more in debt, especially with my offer. Seven years ago, when I wrote my thesis about influencer marketing, it was exactly on how much to pay an Instagrammer, okay? Like there was nothing seven years ago about that. Like I took all this data and I created a little tool called, what was it, like Instagram money calculator or something like that.

5:57It was very basic, okay? So it was just taking in consideration a lot of data that got together, but you were able to put your handle and be like, based on these numbers, this is how much you should be paid. And I think it was interesting because I wanted to show like, hey, you know, there should be data, right? and faxed behind being paid, right? It cannot just be random or the Wild West, right? So in their part for work is that now you have, after all these years, you have so much data, right, that you can gather and also so much data that it's, if I go to correct it, it's inputted directly from users, right?

6:29So creators go on the platform and they say, I did this campaign for this brand, I got paid this and so on, right? So now we have all this data. How can creators and also talent managers use the data that they say there? for people that don't know about the platform. Most people use it to do due diligence. They have like an inbound offer from a brand and they are using FYPN to basically decide if they want to work with them or not, like if it's going to be worth it. Because in addition to the pricing data, we do have anonymous qualitative data. So we ask everyone to rate their overall experience working with the brand one to five stars and then also add ratings of creative freedom, communication rating.

7:09That's very important in these collaborations. They pay on time all the knowledge they need to make decisions for themselves. For example, one brand, Amazon. Amazon is huge. They have reviews. The lowest paid is zero and the highest paid is like in the six figures. How do creators know where they land in this collab? And that's going to involve a little bit in part from us on FYPM helping fine tune like their search results, which reviews are more relevant to them while keeping the anonymity. But the other part is the brand product. When we launch our Build My Offer tool, we're also going to be adding a tab where brands can post general updates, links to open opportunities they're running.

7:52We're looking for these type of influencers to do this type of campaign. We're going to be sourcing them through the influencer marketing factory. This is our total budget. This is what we're trying to gain. And then using a toggle to show how much of the budget has been committed so both parties know whether or not waste their time. I'm also interested, Ike, to know, now that you have all this data, do you think that it's even possible to create a model where you put your handle and certain other factors such as the industry that you're working in, your general cash, right? Because that also changes a lot, the CPM models and so on.

8:30But still, even if you have all this data, it changes because what if you're represented you know, by maybe a big, you know, like agency, right? It's something. If you are like maybe solo, it's something else. If you just started and you still have to build, right, your sort of like, you know, portfolio maybe. Sometimes I know that some people ask a bit less because they are not that, you know, sure, right, that you want to go with a certain price. So any guidelines, any tips there? Again, even if you have all this data, there's still a lot of, you know, like going on there. So do you find anything that can help creators in addition to that, just to understand what to ask, how much, like when?

9:11I don't know, maybe there is not an answer yet, but I'm very curious about it. Influencer marketing works because when you do influencer marketing as a brand, you are essentially purchasing a human endorsement. So our pricing model is going to price influencers in a whole new way. One, it's going to be based off of the production value. And that's your traditional focus services, the kind of deliverables, how much experience the influencer has, how good are they at doing this job? And then the next is the endorsement value. What does this person's face mean to my customer? You know, so like relative celebrity within their niche, like adding that level of credibility.

9:53The other thing is going to be priced on usage, which is the distribution values. Where is this content going to show up? And for how long? Is it on my channels? Is it on the influencers channels? And then the last thing is the opportunity cost or the risk tolerance of the business. If you're an influencer, you're essentially an independent contractor. And then on the business side, the risk tolerance is like, okay, is this a startup with essentially no budget or a tiny budget or a local business where they don't know if this influencer's audience is actually like, or am I like the Amazons of the world where I can take a lot of risk on essentially.

10:29So that's like the new, that's like the way we're going to be pricing it and we're going to be leveraging our database, but we're also going to be looking to secure some additional data partners, incorporate some live deal flow data, and then also these more qualitative aspects. Is your brand ready to amplify its reach? Well, the influencer marketing factory is here for you. We are a global influencer marketing agency helping brands ignite their growth. From influencer identification to campaign strategy, handling legalities and agreements, to managing shipping and logistics, we got you all covered.

11:04We work with hundreds of brands across different verticals, from Fortune 500 companies to direct-to-consumer brands. And we don't just stop there. With detailed ROI analysis, we help brands like yours measure success, transforming impressions into conversions. You can find us at theinfluencermarketingfactory.com or just searching the influencer marketing factory on Google. In all these different very interesting factors that you said, these are the things that we need to calculate, right? Have you noticed maybe anything that usually creators don't think about? Among these, is there anything that you pinpointed and be like, you know what, the majority of people that usually ask me questions about it or when they use the platform, they usually forget about this, but it's actually one of the most crucial things.

11:50We still have a lot of creators who end up low-balling themselves because they're pricing themselves based off of things like follower count, when really what most brands pay for is the usage. So a lot of the time they'll get an offer and then within this long contract will be based in like perpetual usage rights, exclusivity, all this stuff that they don't know they should be asking for. Now we have a situation where creators now they're starting to catch on to that and then they'll turn around and they'll ask to be paid for that but then they'll end up losing the deal because they don't know how to negotiate their like endorsement value you know what i'm saying or maybe it's like it's not worth it because they're just getting started and they don't yet have that high endorsement value that enables these other creators who who do i'm hoping that the tool will not only serve to price and contract but it'll also serve to educate and then And as more people join FYPM, they're like, okay, this is how I turn this into a career.

12:51Do I really want to do this? I think it's a good point because, you know, what is the only time data tell you part of the story, right? It's quantitative data, but then there are all these things about education that I like when you say about, you know, a lot of people, they don't know what is in a contract, right? In an agreement. And maybe they just sign it. And then there is law centralization and miscommunication. And then no one is happy, right? So I think that also just basic things sometimes such as knowing what is a media right, you know, what is inside the scope of work and what people should expect to see.

13:21You know, all these terms, I think it's are important. And, you know, many times and it's not an age thing, you know, because I found like, you know, whenever we work with people, like we find young people that are super, you know, prepared on everything. And then other people that might be, you know, like a bit older, they still don't understand certain terms. So I don't think it's about the age. It's about be prepared. And, you know, maybe what if it's your first campaign? What is the number 100? You know, and I think that even after 100, you still learn about things. So I think that the educational side, the sort of, you know, academy type of thing, I think it's quite important.

13:52So are you also building that? Like it's something that is a work in progress or it's like? Oh, yeah. The one thing you can depend on to stay the same in this industry is that it changes, you know? Like not only social media platforms, they're all public companies. They all they evolve every single quarter. And I am always learning people think I'm so funny. They're like, you are still good at marketing. You're like, you know, all this stuff. And I'm like, I really I don't know. I don't know what's going on anymore. Sometimes, you know, like I have to continually stay on it and keep learning. It's just nuts.

14:27Like, especially like Instagram announced yesterday, they're gonna be only recommending it original content. I think that's great but I'm also like okay what does this mean like what does this mean you know kind of have to always be on your toes it's a lot like entrepreneurship I get it you know so I was reading that you know more and more people are saying it's very difficult for a marketer these days to do everything up until a few years ago you were able somehow you know to do all social medias and taking care of comment analysis and doing this and doing that but these days I have so many options so many new features every single day.

15:03That's why I think that it's almost getting impossible to get one marketer that is updated on everything, right? Because there is just so much, right, to do. So, you know, I can imagine. So let alone for a creator that their job, primarily whenever I talk with creators is like, oh, I would love to create more, but I have so many other things that I have to do, like, you know, sending emails to brands, you know, I have to learn about new features and so on. While sometimes they're like, hey, I love creating content. Sometimes I cannot do that enough because they have to be updated on the newest algorithm thing, you know?

15:34So I think that also it's an issue on that. So what do you think, what do you envision for the future of the creator economy based on all the data that you are seeing in your platform and based also on your own knowledge as a marketer? What do you envision and what do you hope to see? I think they're already on its way. I think that creator economy, influencer marketing is going to grow into a more key role of digital advertising for brands, especially as GDPR evolves and makes it more difficult to reach your customers online. The tools that enable marketers to really gain the confidence they need, this influencer knows how to talk to their customer, and they know how to reach them, and they know how to price it.

16:17I think that's key to unlocking that. And I think this is a legit career. We're just at the beginning, and more people are going to come in. I'm excited. I'm really very excited. I mean, you know, I do agree. I've been into this industry also for almost 10 years now. And it's funny for me, anytime that I see certain articles be like, influencer marketing is dead, the creator economy is dead. And every year there is an article about it, but every year brands are spending more on influencers. They're spending more on creators and so on. So absolutely, I see that. Is there anything else I didn't ask you today that you want to share with us?

16:54Anything that you are either excited about for your company? any trends that you are noticing anything that i again we didn't touch base on but you want to share with us yeah sign up sign up for fypm everyone sign up for fypm you'll be able to post links to open campaigns you'll be able to post updates tell people you'll also be able to do a little bit of search and discovery we're going to be rolling out influencer testimonials so as a brand you'll be able to write testimonials about influencers you love to work with endorse their skills, access other marketers, like qualitative knowledge about what it's like to work with an influencer too.

17:32We've got a lot of cool stuff going on. I'm just freaking pumped, you know, and we're not replacing anything. It's just basically whenever you're like, I'm looking for influencers who do this, or I don't know if I'm budgeting this type of campaign correctly, you will be able to go to an FIPM and find the information you need to make good decisions for yourself. Yeah, no, I think, you know, it's pretty cool, especially when you have like, you know, data that is input directly by creators, right? And later on also by, you know, talent agents, I guess, also, and brands and so on. Because it's something that sometimes this industry is missing, you know?

18:05A lot of the data you can see outside is script data, you know, somehow. But having the data directly from the people, it is what we're missing. So we're going to put the link in the description so everyone can sign up. And hey, sending good vibes and, you know, good luck with everything that you're building. And thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. Thank you so much. Oh, and one last thing. we are raising money so if you want to invest email me or dm me or whatever find me i'm constantly online and i will send you my pitch deck yay fantastic uh what would you need the best place for people to connect with you then which which channel is it the best my email uh or no instagram i do all my stuff on instagram what am i talking about professional yeah a bunch of links for people to easily click and connect with you again thank you so much you know best of luck with your future adventures and this was the influence factor by the influence marketing factory and i'll see you next week