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I’m so excited to welcome back my friend, Lindsay Silberman to the podcast. We chat all about managing the personal and professional sides of entrepreneurship.
In case you missed her, Lindsay is a wildly popular luxury lifestyle blogger. She’s created content for large brands like Sephora and Capital One.
She spent a decade as a magazine editor covering travel and beauty for publications like Vogue, Wall Street Journal, and Town and Country.
Not to mention, she also launched her first company, Hotel Lobby Candle.
During the first launch, her product sold out in 24 minutes. Fast forward to today and Hotel Lobby Candle is in Neiman Marcus stores nationwide.
She rejoins Her Life By Design to chat all about building Hotel Lobby Candle. We discuss her take on influencer marketing as an entrepreneur and managing mental health as a public figure. So let’s dive in and chat all about managing the personal and professional sides of entrepreneurship.
Managing the Personal and Professional Sides of Entrepreneurship with Lindsay Silberman
When it comes to the world of influencer marketing, Lindsay Silberman has experience being on both sides of the spectrum. Needless to say, her relationship with social media has been a long journey with lots of ups and downs.
From being an influencer herself to becoming a fully-fledged entrepreneur – Lindsay’s perspective on influencer marketing has shifted.
Today, we’re picking up where we left off, starting by introducing you to Hotel Lobby Candle.
What is Hotel Lobby Candle?
Hotel Lobby Candle is a home fragrance brand inspired by the scents of luxury five-star hotels. This endeavor marries Lindsay’s two careers as a content creator and influencer, as well as a magazine editor.
Before she was traveling and creating content as an influencer, Lindsay spent a lot of time writing and editing stories for the travel and beauty spaces.
Her travels provided opportunities to stay at a lot of luxury hotels.
“I just remember one thing that stood out to me about all these places was walking into the lobby and being immediately engulfed in amazing scent.”
The idea for Hotel Lobby Candle had always been in the back of Lindsay’s mind. But due to her busy travel schedule, she never had the time to fully research and bring her visions to life.
However, Lindsay’s work and travel schedule started easing up in 2020, just like everyone else. So she took the opportunity to do the research, learn about manufacturing, and build Hotel Lobby Candle from scratch.
In October of 2020, Hotel Lobby Candle officially launched with two scents. With a luxury price point of $56 per candle, she managed to sell out both products in 24 minutes.
Since her business was entirely online, Lindsay was worried that she would not be able to sell a candle that no one has smelled before.
In reality, she’s spent years building “a lot of trust with my followers over the years and people just believed that yeah, I have good tastes and if I say it’s amazing then it’s amazing.”
How Lindsay Grew Hotel Lobby Candle
Hotel Lobby Candle’s launch was an unexpected success that Lindsay never got around to sending her products to other influencers.
“I’d ordered all these fancy boxes and all this stuff. And we never even ended up sending them because obviously, we were sold out.”
But when she launched their Paris collection for Valentine’s Day in 2021, Lindsay executed her first round of influencer mailers.
Having insight as an influencer and content creator, Lindsay knew that targeted outreach and collaborating with influencers who have loyal followings were key to the growth of Hotel Lobby Candle.
But since Lindsay was simply sending product without payment, she knew that she couldn’t expect influencers to post about her product.
“I reached out to people with no expectations of them to post. If they post, great. If they don’t, that’s what I expected.”
Aside from this key strategy, Lindsay attributes a large part of Hotel Lobby Candle’s success to branding and packaging.
“We’re very focused on wanting every moment of the unboxing experience to feel Instagrammable. So many people, even people that don’t have a big following, just love to post videos and tag us unboxing their candles. And we repost every single person that tags us.”
This attention to detail has paid off since Lindsay has received countless images of her product (including the packaging) from her happy customers.
How Lindsay’s View on Social Media Has Shifted
Lindsay’s experience as a content creator and entrepreneur has given her give her a new perspective on social media. Since we last spoke to her (or maybe even before), Lindsay has stopped placing importance on the number of likes or followers.
“I post stuff that I think is good. And you know, sometimes people don’t like it. But it’s not gonna like ruin my entire day.”
Part of the reason why Lindsay has been able to let go of the stress associated with social media is because her business doesn’t entirely depend on it. She doesn’t have the time to stress out over low engagement since she has a whole other company to run.
“But the other thing that I’ve come to realize is that brands, if you create really good content for them, if you meet your deadlines if you’re super professional, you’re easy to work with, you follow the directions, give it your best effort whether it’s going to perform or not. But if you did every possible thing in your power to give them something great that they can actually reuse in their own ads or their own feeds, they’ll come back to work with you again and again.”
Lindsay’s New Take on the Influencer Marketing Industry
Lindsay has also learned just how much the influencer marketing space has changed from a recent campaign she did with a large beauty brand.
The brand she partnered with had asked for a single static, in-feed post and a few story slides. However, the static post, which had to be a shot of her holding the product, did not perform well at all.
Whereas the story slides did exceptionally well and she managed to sell out their inventory.
“It just goes to show that there are so many different mediums and methods to selling and converting. And just because you’re doing a sponsored static post and it gets no likes, it is so not indicative of your power as an influencer.”
Changes in the Influencer Marketing Industry
The good news is that Lindsay also noticed that the influencer marketing industry is reflecting the same.
“There’s less focus on like, number of likes and number of comments and reach.”
According to Lindsay, brands are more concerned with whether or not your content is good enough to drive action. This could be measured in swipe ups and click-throughs.
“But I think so much of it is, can you create something that is on brand for that company? And will it be cheaper for them to use your ad than for them to do a whole campaign on their own? So I’ll always look at the brand’s feed and look at other ads they’ve had, and try to make sure that it’s selling the brand to me, but in line with that.”
With organic reach and trends being more unpredictable than they ever were, Lindsay believes that so much of social media relies on creativity and storytelling, but more importantly delivering good work and being professional.
Managing the Personal and Professional Sides of Entrepreneurship
Lindsay’s journey from content creator to entrepreneur has not only given her a unique perspective on the influencer marketing industry, but in many areas of managing the personal and public facing sides of entrepreneurship.
We discuss so much more in this episode, including the more personal details of Lindsay’s life (such as her decision to freeze her eggs).
And if you want to catch up on the finer details of this episode, all you need to do is click the player on the bottom of this blog post!
Tune in to this episode by clicking the player above!
A glance at what we discuss:
- Why Lindsay decided to freeze her eggs and what the process is like (4:03)
- How Lindsay takes care of her mental health as a public figure (11:29)
- Lindsay’s relationship with social media (13:20)
- How building Hotel Lobby Candle shifted Lindsay’s view on social media (16:03)
- The changes that Lindsay noticed in the influencer marketing industry (22:20)
- What is Hotel Lobby Candle? (24:37)
- Things that contributed to the growth of Hotel Lobby Candle (30:45)
- Rapid-fire round with Lindsay (35:24)
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Resources:
- https://hotellobbycandle.com/
- Lindsay’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindsaysilb/
- Hotel Lobby Candle’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hotellobbycandle/
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