The Digital Dept. Co-CEO Sarah Boyd Interview Transcript

Clint Betts

Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the show. You're the CEO of The Digital Dept. Tell us what that is, how you became CEO, and your journey leading up here.

Sarah Boyd

Yeah, we became The Digital Dept two years ago, taking you back. It was through multiple acquisitions. I started my career in fashion PR. I did that for about nine years, then started my own business called Simply, which is a fashion and beauty conference. As I started building that company, I started managing celebrities in the digital space. A lot of the contacts I had from my PR days were interested in this new thing called Instagram and how to monetize it. This is going back to when Instagram first started. So started building that roster of celebrity talent, my conferencing business, and that business got acquired by a company called Socialite. Socialite, I then became the president of, and about a year later, we were acquired by Dolphin Entertainment, CEO, Bill O'Dowd. You can look at a past episode to learn more about him. So once we were under the Dolphin Entertainment umbrella, we then merged with another company called BeSocial that was also acquired by Dolphin, and the two companies came together, and we became The Digital Dept.

September will be our two-year anniversary. So, essentially, what we do is all things influencer marketing. We have a talent management division where we manage about 300 influencers and all of their brand deals. We have a brand division where we do it on the brand side. We can cast influencers and put their strategy together. And then our third division is event and experiential. So we can produce any sort of event, from small to large corporate events, to a 15-person rooftop dinner, and everything in between, the PR mailers, anything experiential and event-focused. So kind of a one-stop shop for anything influencer.

Clint Betts

You have these skills and this expertise, and you're world-class at it, but everyone kind of needs to know how to do this stuff right now, particularly CEOs in our audience. How do you talk about yourself in public? How do you promote yourself in public that's authentic and doesn't feel like it was written by ChatGPT and know things of that nature? So if you wouldn't mind, give us a sense for the advice you give influencers, CEOs, and people who do already have some sort of audience, and how to do it authentically, and why they should do it in the first place, maybe.

Sarah Boyd

Yeah, I mean, nowadays, everyone in business should have some sort of social presence, and it doesn't mean that you're selling a product or that there's an end goal there. You just have to have some sort of presence because everyone's going to just look you up on whether it's LinkedIn or Instagram, being thoughtful and curated with that content. So they also want to know who you are as a person. I share a lot about my family and what I'm doing in my everyday life. I mean, it's kind of boring when I'm sitting on Zoom all day, so I'm not sharing that much in terms of my business, but then I'll share my thoughts on the influencer landscape or press that I've done, things like that, but really give people a peek into my personal life. That's not for everyone. LinkedIn is a great place, obviously, for CEOs.

I try to be consistent with my content there and provide value for other people in business, and use that as a tool to generate business opportunities. But really, where a lot of our content lives is The Digital Dept's handle. So we're doing lots of different sorts of content there, whether it's talking about our talent, talking about tips and tricks in the industry, how to grow as a creator, what brands are spending in this space, and on what types of creators. So we give a lot of valuable tips there, and then I'll repost some of them for my personal channels. But I think as a CEO of a product or service, really having the meat of that content live on your brand profile, and then you can kind of reshare that content as well. But always providing value and being authentic, providing value to anyone following you, that's how you're going to build your following and create virality and shares. How can something be of value to someone else that's watching?

Clint Betts

So what type of influencers do you work with, and how do you pair them with the right opportunities?

Sarah Boyd

Yeah, we have about 300 on our roster. I would say 20% are more on that celebrity tier, whether it's reality TV, musicians, actors, actresses, or professional dancers. We have about another 20% that is a new acquisition we made, it's skincare and dermatologists, which-

Clint Betts

Oh, interesting,

Sarah Boyd

... surprising. But they do extremely well. They have that expertise, and a lot of brands love working with them. And then the rest are traditional content creators, fashion, beauty, lifestyle, with some foodie creators. And for us, we look at it as a team, so the talent typically gets inbound opportunities from brands wanting to work with them. So we help negotiate the best opportunity for our talent, but also the brand is happy and wants to continue working with them, making it a long-term relationship. And then my old PR days, I know how to pitch, so I really push the team to do a lot of outbound pitches as well. So typically, when we sign a talent, we go through their dream wishlist of brands that they organically use, have them take photos of everything around their house, whether it's under their sink or in their bathroom, what makeup they're using, and we use that as our target list of brands to reach out to start that relationship. Sometimes it starts with just sending the product, and they organically talk about it.

Sometimes it turns into a paid campaign right away, but it really is a relationship business. So it's attending their events, it's getting their product and sharing organically, and then it could turn into a larger partnership for that talent. But we like to take what they're using already and turn that into something paid and meaningful for both sides.

Clint Betts

Give us a sense for what makes a great event, a great experience, whether small, medium, or large, and how you think about events.

Sarah Boyd

Yeah, this is a great question because our event division here does such a wonderful job. I think first is having a beautiful event that has touch points that you leave that event talking about it for months to come, telling your friends talking about this little feature that happened or this giveaway or the amazing gift bag, or maybe there is a fun performance that happened, but something that's memorable that people will continue to talk about. Second would be the production. Don't skimp on the production. There are lots of ways you can do it that aren't that expensive, but make such an impact. And then also, who else is there, who's in the room? So that's another part of the event, curating who you're going to be networking with and who you're meeting with while at the event. So we actually have our own events called Brand Edit.

We do those four times a year. We typically align it with New York Fashion Week, Miami Swim Week, or Nashville CMA Fest. So it's tied to more of a cultural event, and over two days, we have lots of brands come in, activate, and we bring in 150 influencers over those two days to meet with the brands. But the influencers love it, because A they get to meet the person behind the brand, experience the product, get to take it home and try it, but also it's kind of turned into this viral hashtag where you've got to be at the Brand Edit event and everyone's searching who's there, and it's just turned into this really exciting event that everyone's really looking forward to because they know they're going to get incredible photos there, great backdrops, great networking, people to meet. So it's been really fun watching that grow over the last few years as well.

Clint Betts

Give us a sense of how AI is changing your business and the influencer landscape.

Sarah Boyd

It's pretty wild. Luckily, we are very relationship-based. The talent is signed with TDD and a manager, and they have a really personal relationship. It's daily text and phone calls and meetings in person, and it's really strategizing how to build their business and grow their career. But AI has helped us a lot. It helps create strategies for them that we might not have thought of, that we can pull inspiration from. You can figure out what is going viral at the moment. I mean, it saves so much time. You can find contacts to pitch. I mean, I'm on ChatGPT all the time just asking all kinds of questions, and it's just helped us in terms of saving time and not having to put together a full document that takes half a day. It can be done in a few seconds. On the flip side, we have seen AI become a talent manager. There's an AI talent management agency, which is wild, and it's a computer, so if talent want to sign with that person, they have to know its AI.

It's not an actual person on the other end, but maybe that's for some people. But I think a lot of our talent just like that personal touch, the white glove service, and having a person that they can really rely on and talk through things with. But there's definitely competition out there with AI.

Clint Betts

Well, the crazy thing, too, is people are creating AI influencers. They're not real people-

Sarah Boyd

[inaudible 00:10:31] making money.

Clint Betts

And they're making lots of money, and it's just like it's not a real person, which is crazy. And so I wonder how... I don't know what all of this means for society. It almost ups at a level beyond the future of influencers. What does this mean if we're all just having our own fake avatars following each other and talking to each other, and what are we doing?

Sarah Boyd

No, turning into the, what is it, the Sims, and yeah, it is wild. And I'm surprised that some of these AI influencers are actually making money doing brand deals.

Clint Betts

Yeah, it's weird. It's very, very, very strange. And I wonder, I'm sure there's a lot of fraud in there, right? Because I bet some people don't even know that it's an AI, which would be just a whole other thing, right? Well, give me a sense of what a typical day looks like for you and how you go about each day.

Sarah Boyd

Yeah, typically when I wake up, I go boxing. I love boxing, so-

Clint Betts

Really? That's awesome.

Sarah Boyd

I'll do my workout, clear my head, get back home, and I dive into emails first, kind of get through the inbox, all of that. And then, usually the day before, I'll kind of look at my day the next day, put in any meeting notes, and kind of get prepped, and then I'll jump in. I'm usually on Zooms, I would say six to seven hours of the day, whether that's one-on-ones with team members, team meetings, talent meetings, or brand meetings. It runs the gamut. Every day is a little bit different. So it's a lot of Zooms.

Clint Betts

Do you like that? Do you like being on Zoom so much?

Sarah Boyd

I'm such a people person. I love - get me to an event, get me in person. That's where I thrive. So it is a lot of being on Zooms, and I'm kind of over it.

Clint Betts

Yeah, I hate it. I hate it.

Sarah Boyd

It's so different than being in person and just having a conversation and building a relationship. But our team's remote, so people are all over the place. It's near impossible to get everyone in the same room unless we do it once a year and bring the whole team in. So kind of has to do for now. But yeah, I enjoy being in person when I can. So I travel, I would say, one to two times a month, whether that's to New York, to Nashville, LA, Miami, just to get to see our team in person, our talent, our clients. But really, the day-to-day is the vision for the business. How do we continue to be successful, whether that's in our affiliate division, our talent, our brand, or our events? So kind of wearing a lot of different hats, reviewing our numbers, making sure we're achieving the goals, and a lot of guidance and working with the team through issues that they might be having, and helping them figure out how to get into a good place if they're not.

So it's a lot of that and a lot of the daily fires always happening, the daily successes, so kind of in the mix of a lot of it. So every day is different, which I like.

Clint Betts

It's interesting you mentioned Nashville. I mean, it's always been like Music City and big for country, but it's really become one of our great cultural hubs in the United States, too, beyond just country music. It's fascinating.

Sarah Boyd

I love Nashville. It's a great spot. We've got a lot of talent that lives in Nashville, so I try to go out there three or four times a year and see everyone, and it's great. Love it.

Clint Betts

Yeah. Nashville's awesome. I totally agree. Give me a sense of how you maintain culture, given that everybody's remote.

Sarah Boyd

Yeah, it's a big focus for us. I think culture is everything at a company. We have a few committees that we put in place. We actually have a culture committee, so they're tasked with planning fun events virtually. Happy hours. We do happy hours in each city. We have a book club that people love here. We have a social committee. So it's getting the team together to create social content. And then, I think having that one-on-one open-door policy where people feel okay to reach out and pop time on my calendar and have that connection. And again, I travel a lot to get to see the team in person. I think in person is huge. But also, when I'm not there, the team should get together and have coffee or meet for lunch and build the internal relationships as well. We do a lot of team meetings.

So we do a weekly talent meeting. We have a brand meeting, we have an event meeting, and then the full company. We do our all-hands meeting once a month, so that's our time to really let other team members shine. We go over the big heavy-hitting stuff, and then we'll let team members talk about a case study that they had happened that month that was a success story. So we like to highlight other people here at the company, so everyone gets to know each other. Because we're a growing team, we're now 75 employees. We grew a lot last year, so I want to make sure everyone knows who everyone is at the company and how we can cross-pollinate and work together collaboratively.

Clint Betts

How are you feeling about the economic environment? We're more than halfway through this year. How has it been with any of the economic turmoil that happened earlier? Did any of that affect your industry at all?

Sarah Boyd

It did. Yeah. I think it affected every industry. Q1 was rough with the fires in LA. We have a lot of talent in LA. A lot of clients, a lot of team members. So that took us out for a minute, and then it was the tariffs, and then it's been one thing after another this year. So it has been a struggle. We've had to shift some of our strategies. We made an acquisition earlier this year to launch an affiliate division, so it's a new service. We've kind of doubled down on our professional beauty division, our division with all the derms and skin care experts. So growing that because that's working really well, and then shifting what's not working. So it's always kind of bobbing and weaving through tough times that are just going on internationally. You can't really avoid it. It's part of business, and figuring out how we can still be successful in other areas that aren't seeing such a steep decline, and really evaluating who our talent is and who our clients are, and how we can make a meaningful impact and still continue to scale.

Clint Betts

Yeah, for sure. Finally, we end every interview with the same question, and that is, at CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives are just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?

Sarah Boyd

Oh my gosh. I have to say my sister, she's 10 years older than me, and when I first moved, I was in Philadelphia in college, and I was dying to move to LA and my sister was already living there, and she was starting a PR agency and she said, move here, get settled, and I'm going to hire you as my first employee. And she took me under her wing. She gave me so many opportunities, and I worked with her for almost nine years, helped her grow that business, learned so much, and made so many relationships, which helped me then start my own business and got me to where I am now. So if she didn't take that risk on me, I don't know where I'd be right now. I'd probably still be in Philly somewhere. Who knows. Definitely, she helped me get into this industry.

Clint Betts

That's incredible. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on. Congratulations and everything. What you've done is amazing. And yeah, let's have you come back on again. It'd be fun to see how this whole industry has changed even in just six months.

Sarah Boyd

Let's do it. Thank you so much for having me.

Clint Betts

You bet. Thank you.

Edited for readability.