Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:20:19 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:20:19] S2: Which is obviously so much better. Yeah. I wanna talk a little bit about how you think about tools and technology and the future. And I know we've had a conversation before, where a decade ago, when you started your blog, fifteen years ago, you had a blog. Now you have a blog. You have an Instagram. You have a... You, you know, could or could not have TikTok. You have your Substack. You have your Substack premium and free. You have your ShopMy. You have your Amazon platform. It... You have a lot to manage. I think we all discuss it what we see very clearly with AI and five coding and all of the incredible stuff. And Thomas, you and I have had some really fun conversations about the future of tech in the category. It's very clear that just the world is gonna get easier. And I use the analogy to be like, in some ways, Julia is becoming a sats.com. The future of, you know, a person can become as big as a department store. And I see that very clearly from everything that, you know, Inspired has touched in ecommerce and the future of ecommerce. That shift feels very easy for me. How do you guys think about that? Just this huge shift that's happening where people have so much more influence. And if you think about it, Macy's was a guy. I'm pretty sure Bergdorf was a guy. Like, there were real people curating, and that was just happening digitally and with no physical footprint.
00:21:47 · Julia Berolzheimer
[00:21:47] S0: Yeah. I mean, it... It's it's so interesting to sort of like live in the in the shift because we never sought out to sort of have this whole sort of ecommerce on our website, but it's naturally shifted towards that as I think consumers have naturally shifted towards creators and influencers for not just deciding what to purchase, but like as entertainment. Right? Like now I think like Netflix is competing with with, you know, YouTube for content. Like people don't wanna watch shows. They wanna watch these creators instead. And, you know, we are constantly trying to think bigger picture of like, what's that next phase? How do we sort of integrate this power into something bigger and broader? And I mean, that's a question we're still trying to figure out, but we know at the end of the day, our customers are not just our followers are not just there to participate in, you know, watching something while some people create to for enjoyment or entertainment. Our followers are there because they want help in their purchase decisions. They want help in their style decisions. So we really look at ourselves as the authority of that.
00:23:12 · Thomas Berolzheimer
[00:23:12] S3: Yeah. I I think, like, just on that topic of of how our focus is on, like, helping... You know, someone said, like, what service do you offer? Because I I I talk about our business as, like, we're offering a service to someone. I think we're taking the world of fashion and, like, taste and and style, and we're curating it down to help people make more confident decisions. And, like, so many people are online now, and, like, what's the most rewarding thing for them to do? What's that little bit of feedback that they can get? They can get eyeballs. They can get views. They can get reach. But then, like, what does it lead to? We're lucky that we came up in a time where we know that actually what we're trying to drive our sales or sales to the sponsors that we're working with. So we have, like, a north star that's, like, directing us towards, and I don't know how many people that are professional, even professional creators, know what they're doing. And it's hard because you're like, I could do this. I could do this. You could literally do anything. There's too many decisions that could be made. But, like, returning back to tools, like, there's... Like you said, there's so many platforms. I think, like, we have to figure out, like, what are you gonna do? Like, are you gonna be on seven different channels to be publishing? Like, I think what we're really big... Like, really focused on three. Maybe we're gonna add a TikTok or a YouTube this year. It's like, you can... I feel like there's not... There's always ad, ad, ad, ad, ad, but there's very rarely, like, a, okay. Let's take away and condense or figure out more what our message is. So I think, like, tools is just going back to how many people have, like, what Julia has with me, which is, like, a part... Like, a true partner in the business. We know a lot of professional creators. They're like, oh, my husband's, like, not that into it, or he's like, he does his own thing. Like, I think, like, I am a very strong tool and resource for Julia, and, like, I think I've contributed to that success significantly because when you're starting something, whether... Like, if you have entrepreneurs who are in your audience, like, it helps to have someone to bounce ideas off of. We're always together all the time. But, like, it can be hard, especially as a creator, because like I said, you can do anything.
00:25:20 · Thomas Berolzheimer, Alexa von Tobel, Julia Berolzheimer
The world is your oyster, but then, like, you need focus. Like, focus is really important too. [00:25:26] S2: I'm gonna interrupt just to ask. I want one second on what is it like to be a married working couple for fifteen years with two beautiful little girls? I mean, clearly, it's working, but, like, do boundaries, rules, how does that work? Give us, like, a quick tidbit. [00:25:42] S0: I feel like people think that we are, like, sitting side by side working together. We work very differently. Most of the time, we don't even see... Unless we're shooting content, we don't work in the same room. Even we both don't like to be interrupted. So, you know, if if we're having a meeting, he puts, you know, a calendar invite on my calendar. Like, we keep some formalities of being in an office and being sort of coworkers because that helps keep a good balance of respecting each other's boundaries and time and not just walking up and inter... Interrupting the other person. [00:26:21] S3: I'll like raise my hand. I'll be like, I'm over here. I have a question. [00:26:27] S0: But I mean, I feel like anybody in this day and age where we're accessible twenty four seven on our phones, on our computers, like nobody has like a work life balance anymore. And so it's just... It's always ebbing and flowing depending on the season that, you know, whether it's a busy season or not or... And just trying to to do our best. Every day, I always say, I'm just trying my best. [00:26:56] S3: Yeah. [00:26:56] S2: Do you remember the brand I told you I wanna start? Literally doing my best.
00:26:56 · Alexa von Tobel, Julia Berolzheimer, Thomas Berolzheimer
[00:26:56] S2: Do you remember the brand I told you I wanna start? Literally doing my best. [00:27:00] S0: Yes. Literally doing my best. [00:27:02] S2: Best. That's right. We're gonna start that brand together as working parents. Thomas, just... What's your quick tip to to working with somebody you love so much? [00:27:11] S3: I mean, it really helps that we're... I always say, like, we're yin and yang. Like, we're... We have strengths and weaknesses, and we both, like, fill each others in. So I think that's really helpful. We we joked in a in a previous post earlier this year about, like, how we're in a throuple with our our business. And at times, it, like, does feel like that. And it's like, we both agree that we want our business to be to be important and and and bigger, and it's an important part of our lives. And, like, you know, like, we we don't ever say, like... I I guess we do take some time and, like, okay. We're not gonna work on business right now, but we do also, like, really invest in it. And I I think we try to balance, like, how much we can have and it's, like, healthy and and not healthy. I don't know if Julia, you could add to that. [00:28:03] S2: I think Julia was gonna interject there. I wanna hear it. [00:28:05] S3: Yeah.
00:28:05 · Thomas Berolzheimer, Julia Berolzheimer, Alexa von Tobel, Alexa von Tobel
[00:28:05] S3: Yeah. [00:28:06] S0: Just saying like we both want to constantly... We both have the same sort of drive. Like it's not like one wants to work more than the other. So that works for us because I think it would be hard if one of us, you know, when we're going out to dinner, we we love talking about, you know, our dreams and our goals because they're aligned. They're they're together because, you know, we're building it together. So it's like we want to talk about those things. It's not a burden or something that we're like, oh, we're talking about work. We're talking about our dreams, you know. And it's like, what's more exciting than that? And we've just always been very aligned with our business and each other, and it it just works. I feel like some couples, it would not work, and some couples, it just works, and and it does. It totally works. [00:29:03] S3: Yeah. [00:29:04] S2: I see why it works. Let's talk a little bit about the future. What is gonna change in the the creator economy over the next decade? Why don't you each go? What do [00:29:15] S1: you see... What what are [00:29:16] S2: you most excited about? What are you most worried?