691 Valerie Emanuel :

Beyond the ongoing debate about the impact super tall super skinny supermodels and Instagram influencers have on our self-image as girls and women, and beyond the increasingly diverse definition of beauty, is a fast-emerging new trend – the demand for models who wear their authentic activisms on their sleeves. Like she says, my guest today – Valerie Emanuel – is disrupting the modeling industry with a unique agency dedicated to positive change in the world by empowering role models.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur and model who combines her social justice activism with talent management and motherhood. Valerie Emanuel started out as a child model and soon saw a need for positive change within an antiquated, and in many cases, abusive industry.

Valerie Emanuel co-founded Role Models Management in 2017 at the height of the #metoo movement with the belief that if real change was going to happen, it had to happen from within, starting with model agencies and the way the modeling industry operates.

Valerie, who’s been passionate about the environment since she was a kid, first got scouted as a model at a mall. A story as classic as all the times she got told to shed pounds. Then in 2016 when she graced a billboard for Recycle Right with Kristen Bell and Whoopi Goldberg, the ‘aha’ moment – she could transform the industry itself by creating a platform that both empowered a diverse roster of models and empowered them as businesswomen and activists. Now her unique agency places women who want their voices to be heard with likeminded brands and helps inspire them to be positive role models for the world.

Today Valerie shares her vision about how she’s transforming modeling, plus we talk about why brands increasingly want to be aligned with diverse voices aligned with a social impact mission – and what it’s like to balance the demands of business as a mother, and much more. So, listen on and be sure to join the conversation with Valerie and me over on Podopolo, the must-download app for personalized and interactive podcasting – just follow Wings when you join, and find the comments section with this episode.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Valerie Emanuel.

Melinda Wittstock:         Valerie, welcome to Wings.

Valerie Emanuel:             Thank you so much for having me on.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’m really intrigued to talk to you, because models have such a big influence in our lives and women’s self-image, in terms of what we think that we can do, or be, or have. And you have a whole new take on it with Role Models Management.

And what was the spark that led you to go in this direction, to really disrupt the modeling industry as we know it?

Valerie Emanuel:             Well, thank you so much for bringing up all information. I think I have disrupted things. And my models are changing the modeling industry. I started modeling when I was two years old. And I know that you say we look up to models to buy things from, but I think we also look up to them for a lot of things that are happening in pop culture. And they’re always in the news. And so they’re more than just an image in so many ways in the social media. They’re influencing people to change their bodies, change their faces.

There are so many things that we’re being sold. And with Role Models Management, I wanted to get some men and women who were changing the world for the better. They weren’t just selling clothes, they were talking about what’s going on with plastic pollution. They were talking about what’s going on in the regenerative farming movement. We have teachers, professional athletes on our board. And I thought it was important for me to present models who really took their career to another level because they saw it holistically.

They weren’t just like, “Okay, I’m going to be in and out, and I’m going to be done with this by the time I’m 25, 26. And then my looks are going to be gone, and then I’m going to do something else.” A lot of my models are business people, they’re career minded. And the things that they stand for, their passions are really not just side hobbies. They’re creating movements and businesses out of these.

Melinda Wittstock:         What a wonderful vision this is. And so, what was the spark? What was the moment in your life where you said, “Okay, enough of this, we can do more”?

Valerie Emanuel:             Gosh. This must have been when I was 21 years old. I took four years off of modeling in college, and I traveled the world. And I just went, “I’m so tired of walking into rooms and people telling me I need to lose weight, or walking into rooms and people telling me that my hairline is too far back, or my nose is too big. Or I need to stave myself for two weeks.” I was like, “This is crap.”

And I just felt like I kept meeting all these amazing women in the industry. And I thought our story should be told. The women are beautiful and amazing, but you’ve decided to not be in this industry for the same reason that I have. It’s very abusive. And we know the entertainment industry is not the healthiest. So I thought, “How can I start a movement?” At first, I thought it was just going to be like a club where we met up and read books and talked.

And I thought, “No, I could be the agent that people want.” I had one talent agent, and this is probably what sparked the change is she became a friend. She became someone that I wasn’t scared of. And I don’t think a lot of people realize this, but when you’re an actor or a model, it’s like your agent is like the tax collector or something. You don’t want to get that phone call. You don’t want to have those conversations.

You don’t want to go into their office, but you have to. They’re not your employer, but they behave like your employer. So it’s just a really weird, abusive relationship, where somebody basically just tells you what’s wrong with you all the time. And they’re also under a lot of stress because as an agent, all you do is look for work.

So I had this transformative relationship with an agent that was healthy. And I thought, “I want to be that for other people.” And that’s really what sparked me starting the agency.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is so important. I think of so many girls, young women, older women, who, by extension, feel the same way that you’re describing, because they look at all these perfect images of women and think that that’s how they need to be.

And then when you add to it things like #MeToo and women’s empowerment, and more and more women becoming really great entrepreneurs and business women, really owning their bodies and really appreciating the diversity of beauty, it strikes me that this makes total sense from a business perspective as well.

Because all the consumers out there are looking for something that has meaning, is doing something good for the world. So, what has the response been? When you first really got going, did you find that this was an easy sell to the other models, first of all? And then, by extension, to the advertisers, people who actually hire models?

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah, totally. When we first started the business, I was very afraid that this was going to be a social club for a few months. And then eventually, we might make some money. But within a week of us actually putting the business down on paper and turning in our incorporation papers, we had business. We had like two jobs in our first month, which was very exciting.

And then our first year, I think we made like $80,000, or something like that, which is fantastic. But I didn’t know that models were going to want to be with us. I was like, “We’re a small agency.” I came from scouting. My partner, Anne Therese, came from marketing. And she was a college student and a model. And so we were like, “We don’t have experience.”

“We don’t have some famous talent agents who left IMG to come be with us.” It’s just us, but this is our mission. And if you want to be on board with us, please, sign up. You can roll with us. And people surprisingly, signed up. We had successful models who were like, “I like what you’re doing, I’m going to stand behind your mission.”

And really, by bringing them on board, I think we got to have more trust with clients. We’d got to these brands, or these brands would come to us because me and Anne Therese had modeled. And my partner is just brilliant at PR and social media. So we had clients coming to us that were like, “We heard you have activists. Do you have anyone who does this? Do you have anyone who is a public speaker or a spoken word poet, or whatever?”

And we had those. We had to really diversify our roster. So we just started reaching out, across every platform we could, whether we found someone on YouTube or Instagram, or even just finding someone in the street. I love street scouting. And people loved being with us, even though we were small. They just had never seen anything like it.

So I think that’s just a testament to how timely the agency was. It was just the right zeitgeist. We launched right after #MeToo. And people were eager to find something different, so that definitely helped propel the success in the business.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right, your timing seems impeccable. Increasingly, businesses have social impact missions. So they want to be more authentic as well in their marketing, and they want to be associated with models or a creative, or whatever that actually is in alignment I guess, with what the brand is trying to sell in terms of their own mission.

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah, 100%. It’s just not authentic anymore to put someone who looks good in an ad. You remember that Kendall Jenner, PepsiCo, where it was protesting and Black Lives Matter was happening? It just fell so hard on its face, that campaign. And it was like, you could have put somebody really cool. I don’t know, like somebody who was actually in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Maybe someone who’s starting a movement for Black farmers in the Midwest. Anyone. You could have just put anyone. And I think that was proof to advertisers to then start working with smaller agencies because they were like, “People are not just buying a celebrity image anymore.” As a matter of fact, if you put the wrong celebrity or the wrong influencer in your brand, it can make your brand fail. Or you’d have to change everything.

I’ve met so many people who’ve had to change their branding because they made one wrong move. And they’re like, “We literally have to do a whole new business.” I remember we worked with Kim Kardashian we when she first started SKIMS and it started off as kimono. That’s just one example of how you have to change everything, because culturally, it just didn’t stick. So she had to just scrap it all and start over.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, the market always speaks. And so, how big is your agency now? How many people are you representing?

Valerie Emanuel:             Right now, we have a roster of just under 100 models. There was at one point where we had I think, almost 200 clients. And then COVID hit. And we were like, “You know what?” I think we had a lot of clients just because our clientele and the people we worked with were all over the place, as far as commercial and some influencers stuff, and some print stuff, and some live event modeling.

But we really realized that we want to focus more on content creators and activists specifically, not just spreading super thin in the modeling industry. So now, we’ve got about 90 models in the US and Europe.

Melinda Wittstock:         And so, tell me a little bit more about it. So it’s not just sending them to go-sees, or getting them gigs on commercials or in fashion magazines or whatever. It sounds like you’re moving more into if I heard you right, into the content marketing space, where you’re really enabling them to not just get gigs as a model, but to actually grow their own platforms and their own businesses. Is that correct?

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah, totally correct. I think, as an agent now, our margins are so small. Our margins are what? 20, 30%. So we have to think above just working with other brands. Our models now are making their own podcasts. They’re on YouTube channels, brand collaborations, creating content for brands. And so we really want our models to realize that you don’t just have to do what’s in front of you. You can create your own opportunities. And so during COVID, for example, we launched a website called Role Models EDU.

And monthly, we had classes with some of the top people in photography and social media, just teaching our models how to format their online presence so that we can help them to make more money. How can you have a bigger reach, and also present yourself in a way that’s going to make you more marketable? This is a career. I don’t think that I could have started the agency if I didn’t think of modeling as a launching pad for something else. I went on set with the idea to meet producers, meet directors, meet people.

I was like, “I might want to be behind the camera. I might want to do casting.” And I know that a lot of models don’t think like that because they don’t think they have that opportunity. But whatever industry I went in, whether it was teaching or working in an art gallery, I was also thinking this is not going to last forever. So I’m not going to take every single opportunity that comes, because it’s exhausting. But I’m going to be very focused on what’s around me and what I can do with this.

Melinda Wittstock:         There was a certain moment when models started to have, I guess, businesses. I’m thinking back to people like Tyra Banks, who was a real trailblazer in this area. Or Heidi Klum. You think of some of the ones that coming from total supermodel iconic stature, really created businesses around themselves. How much do you think they changed the industry, that paved the way for what you’re able to do now?

Valerie Emanuel:             When Tyra Banks came out with America’s Next Top Model, I don’t think everybody realized how controversial that was for a swimsuit model to have her own TV show. People really didn’t like it. My generation was really into it. I think I was in high school. I graduated in 2008. So I was in high school. And I thought, “Whoa. So if I’m modeling, I could possibly have a TV show one day?” I don’t want to have a TV show now, but this was just a thought.

And then Heidi Klum with Project Runway, they completely changed the game. Because from that, they made consumer brands. They had collaboration lines with all types of food and clothing companies. So I think models after that, were realizing … That was pre influencer, but I think they started the whole model as influencer movement. You can say it was like Cindy Crawford and Pepsi, but really having a digital presence.

It was people like Tyra Banks and Heidi Klum, for sure. And I think they also set a precedent for women that you can work across multiple industries. Because to be honest, a lot of men do that. They will have one business and then they’ll partner in another business, and then start this other endeavor. And it’s like, we don’t have to just stay behind our desk or do one thing.

You don’t have to stretch yourself too thin, but there’s just so many opportunities within one industry. And we’re not staying at jobs for 30 years anymore.

Melinda Wittstock:         Exactly. And then I think the influencer trend has been really interesting as well, where I can’t help but wonder. And I probably know the answer already. But if someone who is a model has built up a massive following on Instagram, with really good content and a really authentic story and a message that’s consistent, and has like gazillion followers and whatnot, that model, influencer becomes a lot more valuable to the right brand.

Valerie Emanuel:             Totally. I think with models, what you really have to do now, or with anybody who has a personal brand, because I want to talk to people who are maybe trying to figure out how they can become an influencer in their space. You started your business and now you want to become an authority in that space, whether you have an ice cream company or a bag company.

But you have to have a niche. If it’s going to be lifestyle, it’s going to be lifestyle. Everything on your page is going to be blue? Then everything can be blue. But I think a lot of people just assume that if influencers have amazing looking content, they’re making money and that’s their business. And that’s not always true. You Have to find a mix of exciting people and knowing how to sell people a lifestyle.

And there’s not that many people who have mastered that. Because I have influencers who have almost a million followers and we can’t get over $1,000 for a post for them. They do other things for money and modeling brings in more, but we haven’t figured out that formula for them, which helps themselves. You know what I mean?

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Valerie Emanuel:             So it’s very different for everyone, because I have an Instagram with less than 10,000 followers. But sometimes I can ask for 500 or 1,000 or $2,000 per post. And I guess I figured out a little bit of a formula to help sell and create content in a way that fits organically into a brand. So I think that’s really it.

Whether you’re selling your own brand, or you want to sell other brands, you’re a stay-at-home mom and you want to promote that, there are certain people who’ve really got it down. And I’ve also really changed my following so that I’m following people who are creating content that’s going to enrich my life. I don’t need to see a pretty picture anymore.

And I think that’s what I’m trying to talk about with the girls who have a million followers and you can’t really make money on a post. Sure, their followers can get them more money for a commercial or something, but they haven’t figured out that way to organically selfing. It’s just still an image. So it’s a formula, and I don’t exactly know it.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s about an authentic connection that like in all great marketing, the person who is receiving the message, feels like they’ve been seen and heard. And there’s a trust there. So there’s an element of storytelling and just real connection. And that’s like all things marketing. And it’s tricky to get that I guess, right out of the gate, especially if you’re really young.

You think of a young model who hasn’t really lived yet. I’m coming to this as a woman in my 50s, okay? And I think of myself in my 20s compared to now, in terms of just the texture of the experience and knowing my own voice. Whereas back then, I was probably experimenting a little bit with my voice. I didn’t really know my voice. You know what I mean?

Valerie Emanuel:             Mm-hmm (affirmative). Totally.

Melinda Wittstock:         And so, do you spend a lot of time helping all the women on your roster, really just find that voice? What is it that’s unusual or differentiated about them and their stories? They’re beyond the image. What’s inside them that can connect in that really authentic way?

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah, that’s part of our onboarding. So a part of our onboarding is getting models, looking at all the channels that they have. Sometimes people have got it down and we found them because they had a viral video, or we found them because they were like, “I have a huge workload to manage, I need a manager.” But a lot of times, we sit down and we go, “This is what you need to add. This is what you need to take away. This is what’s working, this is what’s not working. I think you could work with X, Y, and Z clients.”

If you have a personal brand or you want to be an influencer, I always tell people to write down 10 brands that you want to work with. And you don’t have to copy their content, but is the content that you’re creating, even going to fit into that picture? No. Then, why would they ever work with you? How would they ever notice you? So I always tell people, who do you want to work with? Okay. Well, is your social media and your online presence looking like that or not? And how can we change that?

That’s something I said about the courses that we provided on Role Models EDU. And we plan on having more of these. But really just helping them to see, what can we do to change what you have going on? That’s part of the onboarding. And then, we help a little bit as we go along. But we hope that they take the blueprint that we gave them and really work with it to grow their online presence.

Melinda Wittstock:         Absolutely. That’s so, so critical. So you have your own voice, but it’s got to align somehow with someone who is going to pay you, whether it’s a brand, putting a model in a commercial. Or for that matter, a nonprofit with a big cause, say around climate change, right?

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Or whatever it is, it’s got to connect. So I want to talk a little bit about the sustainability side of what you’re doing and go back into your backstory. Because as a young woman, you’ve been all over environmental awareness and animal activism. And since your teens, right? So this was almost your first love in a way, going and changing the world.

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah, totally. I didn’t even know that that’s what I was doing. I’m from West LA and I feel like my mom, she really is an activist, without even trying to be one. But I live in Playa del Rey now and there’s Ballona Wetlands. And I always tell this story of how when I was a kid, they were trying to build this huge project here, which they ended up building. But it took them 15 years. And I was like one of the reasons is because my mom protested the hell out of them building on it.

And she was a person who, if you threw trash out of your car, she’d pick it up and curse you out. She was just very much like we have one place to live. We need to stop making this earth so ugly for everyone else, and everyone just needs to stop wasting so much. And so I kind of took that on. And in high school, I became vegan. And I remember when I was modeling, there were certain things that I didn’t want to do because they didn’t fit my values.

And so when I started Role Models, I thought, “Okay, how can I have models where they can tell us what their boundaries are basically?” These are the things I do and don’t want to do. Because in a modeling agency, you could walk in and be like, “I’m vegan. I’m not going to do a Burger King commercial.” And they could literally be like, “Yeah, I don’t give a crap. You’re doing the Burger King commercial.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Valerie Emanuel:             And that, I don’t really know how that works anymore. It still happens every day. But in the social media age, we want the things that we’re working with to be aligned with the things that we actually do in our daily lives. That was something for me. It was so important.

And I thought, “If I care about something, the people who are around me don’t need to also care about it. But they just need to be aware of it.” That’s a part of me that’s not changing. And that was I think, once I was like 16, 17, I decided who I was going to be and what I was going to stand up for.

Melinda Wittstock:         How did you end up in modeling?

Valerie Emanuel:             I was scouted. I was scouted at a mall.

Melinda Wittstock:         Such a classic story.

Valerie Emanuel:             I love street scouting, too. I’m that person where you’re walking with your 14-year-old daughter and I almost get hit by a car running, across the street to meet you in the coals down, because I just love discovering. This could be the next Kate Moss or the next … You know what I mean? Tyra Banks or Naomi Campbell. You never know.

And we don’t do too much development at my agency, which is basically when you take a model from nothing, you fly around the world, get all these photo shoots and stuff. But I do have mother agents that we work with. But I love that. There are so many people who don’t know that they have something that’s a privilege.

Because I think we don’t like to talk about this, but beauty is a privilege. And so if you can take that, and if I can instill into them, this is not just about beauty, this is about so much more. Who do you want to be? What do you want to do? This is just a catalyst that could get you there through modeling. That’s what I want to inspire in young people.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. How can you leverage it? As an entrepreneur, I think, how can you leverage all of your assets? And so if beauty is one of your assets, how to leverage that in a way that’s really positive and uplifting for other people, and for the world, for the planet. Not just as self-aggrandizement or whatever. Like, “Look at me, I’m beautiful,” but actually leverage it to do something good.

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah, totally. There’s just this thing that I realized lately, that like 90% of social media and influencer culture is toxic. But if we could just take one out of every 10 people and put them in someone’s social media feeds, or put them in an ad where they realize that it doesn’t have to be like this, there’s people who have a positive image on themselves and a positive look at the world, that changes how many people? I don’t even know.

But yeah, it’s very important to me that we help people from the beginning, just realize that beauty can be used for so many different things. But if your end game is to get likes on Instagram, you’re not doing it right.

Melinda Wittstock:         Absolutely. So back in 2016, you were on a billboard, billboards all across the country, on a Let’s Recycle Right campaign. You were alongside Kristen Bell and Whoopi Goldberg. Was that the first time that you really expressed this in your own modeling? Or was that just the big headline?

Valerie Emanuel:             I think that was the first time. When I did Let’s Recycle Right, that was the first time that I realized that I was seen as someone in the industry who was an activist. I just couldn’t believe that they even put me in that campaign. I felt like it was a fluke. My friend presented me to the team, my friend Evelina. And I was like, “Oh, that’s cute.”

And then when they called me to do the shoot and I actually made the cut and I saw the billboard, I was like, “Wait, what?” It didn’t make any sense to me. I had been on little bus benches before, on Target or Sears, or whatever. But I was like, “I’m being seen as an activist.” That’s amazing. It put a fire under my ass to keep going, because I didn’t really think that I was seen.

And that was also a time where I didn’t want to model anymore. I was just like, “I can only be a businesswoman.” But yeah, it’s a problem for me in my life, for sure.

Melinda Wittstock:         Fantastic. So you founded the agency just a year late. And what’s it been like? What were the biggest challenges that you faced? And what were some of the ways that you overcame them?

Valerie Emanuel:             The biggest challenges of being an entrepreneur? I started the agency when I had one-and-a-half-year-old daughter. That was-

Melinda Wittstock:         I know that. Oh, God. I’m on business five now, but I started one of the first ones when my daughter, was six weeks old.

Valerie Emanuel:             Oh, God.

Melinda Wittstock:         And I built this business to later, a nice eight-figure business while my daughter was an infant. I don’t even know how I did it. I look back now and I was like, “What?”

Valerie Emanuel:             So I’m pregnant. When I was pregnant, you could literally miss me with everything. I was like, “I’m going to the gym. I’m going to be on the treadmill watching Netflix, and then I’m going home.” That’s all I did when I was pregnant. And then I did pregnant modeling, but no, kudos to you. I was like, “Oh, my God, if I have to get pregnant, I’m also going to have to work this time. So I don’t know if I can do that.”

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s interesting, though, that there are a lot of women who do found businesses with young kids, right?

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Because it gives you the flexibility to create, to work on your own terms. As an entrepreneur, you feel most of the time, your work is never done because there’s always more. There’s always more to do. And it’s always on your mind. And that’s just part of the entrepreneurial, I guess DNA, or just what it takes.

And so on the other hand, though, it does allow you the flexibility to create a business around the lifestyle that you want to have, and figure out a way to balance all these things. So, what was that like? You’ve got your one-and-a-half-year-old and you’re launching a business. You’re launching two things at the same time.

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         So, how did you manage? How did you juggle it all?

Valerie Emanuel:             Hod did I manage mom life and entrepreneur life? I’m reading this book right now called Set Boundaries, Find Peace. And in the beginning, there was no time for boundaries. And I hate saying this because it’s probably not mentally healthy, but there was a lot of times where my daughter didn’t go to sleep until 10:00 PM.

And I had to get something in on Friday, and it was Wednesday. So guess what? I’m staying up until 2:00 AM and I’m getting this done. And there was no option. I had some childcare, but my daughter’s dad is in another country at this time. He was always in another country, so it was really difficult.

I had help from my mom, but I lived in Malibu. I was very far from everyone else. So it was a lot of me going to sleep at one and waking up at five, which is not healthy. I had five years of total, almost putting myself into a burnout. But that was the only option. And I was talking to someone about this yesterday, because I told my friend I thought she was a little entitled.

We had a great conversation. Now, we ended up talking for like an hour-and-a half. She was like, “Was that a typo?” And I was like, “No, let’s talk on the phone.” But I was like, there’s going to be some times where you have to sacrifice more than you want to, and you have to sacrifice more than is healthy. And it doesn’t last for-

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, I’ve been there.

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah. And it doesn’t last forever. I know we talk about self-care, but there are some times where you just have to put your ego aside and just stay up until 4:00 AM to finish the business plan, because someone needs to see it in the morning.

Melinda Wittstock:         Exactly. So it’s a really delicate balance, because it’s really hard to sustain success or sustain your business growth without you being healthy, and without the self-care, and without all of that. But you’re right, there are always some moments and they’re not permanent, because you can’t sprint long distance.

Valerie Emanuel:             Yes. Yeah, totally.

Melinda Wittstock:         But there are these times when you have these sprints and you’ve just got to do what it takes. And that’s what’s required, especially if you’re building a business like yours that’s disruptive of an industry. That’s actually a business that isn’t just selling something, it’s transforming something. And that’s a whole different game.

There’s lots of different types of entrepreneurs, but when you do have a business that is, “Okay, I’m going to disrupt an industry,” now that’s a big thing to take on. I know that personally because that’s kind of my jam, which I’m turning into podcasting. But it is a really delicate balance. I don’t know where you land on this, but I’ve found that a lot of it is just being aware and present at all times.

Valerie Emanuel:             100%.

Melinda Wittstock:         Just being present to what is actually going on. And understanding and having that self-awareness or consciousness that, “Okay, I am in a sprint right now. This is not forever, but here’s how I’m going to figure it out. And here are my boundaries around that sprint. And here’s actually where that sprint can end, or here’s where I’m going to really balance all this out somehow.”

Valerie Emanuel:             100%. And you know what? I heard this really interesting sermon last week. I go to this church called Zoe Church in Los Angeles, and my pastor was talking about how you need to have one day a week, no matter what you do or how busy you are, that’s like Christmas. Where on Christmas, you don’t answer emails, you barely look at your phone.

You’re not going to sit down at your computer. You need to have one day a week that literally feels like Christmas morning, where you eat what you want, you don’t have anywhere to be. You can watch your shows. You can chill, put your feet up, take a relaxing walk. You don’t have to get ready. And so that’s what I started doing like two years into my business, because I don’t think I was on a two-year sprint.

I definitely took time off. But I thought, “This is just the sacrifice time. This is go time.” My business took off way faster than I thought it would. And I was working internationally. So yeah, I would have to wake up at 5:00 AM so that a booking in London went smoothly. But I just realized this is not forever.

Eventually, I’m going to have someone who’s going to be able to help me. And my business partner was also international, so I had to deal with that time difference. But yeah, I put limits on that, for sure. And there were certain times where I was just out of office, unreachable. I think I did that once a month.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, that’s vital to take those breaks. I’ve learned that, too. I have to have one day of the week where I’m not in my business.

Valerie Emanuel:             Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:         And in an ideal world, too, once a quarter, having a little bit bigger a gap. But that presupposes in a business that you get to the point as fast as you can where you can hire and build your team, so that you’re not doing everything yourself.

And I think as women, we fall into the trap of thinking we have to do at all, or we have to be involved in everything. We’re control freaks or something. But we can’t. It doesn’t work. And this is a concept that men intuitively get, I think a little bit better than men where they are all about leverage right from the start.

Valerie Emanuel:             Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:         It has to get done, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be done by me.

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah, 100%. I don’t know why they think that way. But you know how you meet men in their single season and you go over, and they’ve got a house and they have a housekeeper and all these people? And I’m like, “Wow, I never thought about that, that I could have a housekeeper, even though it’s just me right now.” I never even thought of that. I was like, “Wow.”

But I definitely got my life changed by a graphic designer, an in-house graphic designer that we have, and social media person. And I’ve had two assistants during this time at my company. And it just makes a big difference. There’s no way you can do invoicing and booking, active book clients’ flights and hotels. And then I also have to make up social media content.

And then we do productions. I’ve got to film this commercial with a budget of 80,000. It’s just, there’s no way I can do it all. Everything’s going to come out looking like baloney ham sandwich, rather than a really nice [crosstalk].

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. And then you’ll-

Valerie Emanuel:             It’s just not going to work.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. And then you’ll burn out. There’s a stat. I forget where this research came from, but women who hire someone, at least someone within the first six months of their business, have like a 95% higher chance of actually succeeding. The opposite of that is if they don’t hire, at least in the first year, it’s more likely their business is going to fail.

They’re going to burn out. They’re never going to scale. They’re never going to have the ability to actually grow the business. It’s so critical. And sometimes I think hiring, especially in the early days of a business where you don’t really have a lot of cash yet, but gosh, I’ve learned to look at hiring people as an investment, not as an expense.

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah. And with hiring, I think it’s really scary because people think, “Oh, my gosh, this person has a retainer of this much. And they need to be full-time and X, Y, Z.” And I just tell people now, if you’re thinking about hiring, if you’re scared, hire someone to do a project with you.

That’s how we found our lovely assistant and graphic designer, who has been with us for a few years. She just did a project for us. And then we kept hiring her for all of our smaller projects, or people who come in and do like a three-month project with us. And if I like them, I can hire them. And if it doesn’t work out okay, and if we can’t afford them, I’ll go.

When I need help again in the winter, I’ll rehire you. But hiring someone doesn’t mean that you’re all of a sudden paying health insurance for them and doing all of this stuff. Hiring can just be something that’s seasonal or project-based, especially in my industry.

Melinda Wittstock:         Exactly. I think that’s so smart. I know. When it comes to growing and scaling a team, in my current business, Podopolo’s, the new app that I have that makes podcast listening social and personalized, and allows podcast hosts to actually make money from their content, and there were two of us in January this year. We have a team now of 24. And that’s not even including our vendors and whatnot, but [crosstalk] growing the technology.

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:         And I’ve found, and I don’t know if you found this in the stages of your business, that who you’re being at the very beginning is a little bit different than who you’re being when you start to scale.

And then who you’re being a little bit later on at scale. I mean, different things are required of you at different stages of the business. Have you found that in the sense of, have you found that your own role is changing? Or the things that you focus on where you used to have to do it, but now you can delegate it? Now, your focus is something different?

Valerie Emanuel:             100%. And it’s the same with my partner, Anne Therese. It was so funny when we started the agency. Like I said, it took off pretty quickly. And we immediately within three months, were like full-time talent agents. And she goes, “I’m not a talent agent, Val. I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this part of the business.” And I was like, “Yeah, I don’t want to be abusive, but you have to do this.”

I was like, “You have no choice. We don’t have money to hire more agents right now. You are going to be an agent.” And I think over time, she morphed into being an agent, and then went back to doing more of our marketing and our branding, which is equally as important. But for me, it’s like now, a lot of my job is financial. And contracts.

I was like, “I can be an accountant or a lawyer.” You know what I mean, with all this stuff that I’m doing? And that’s totally not what I thought I was going to be. I thought I was just going to be making phone calls and being like, “This person is booked. I’ll put it in their calendar.”

And now, I’ve turned into something completely different, which is actually fun for me. I like doing this part of the business. But yeah, I didn’t think that I’d be doing accounting and contracts all day. That’s not what I thought being a talent agent was.

Melinda Wittstock:         Exactly. It’s not why you go into it. And then that’s what I think happens to a lot of business owners is that they go into it because they want to do something, the mission, the thing that they love to do. And then they find themselves doing anything but that.

Valerie Emanuel:             Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:         And that can be yeah, not good. That’s why there’s someone else somewhere whose heart sings doing the accounting. They love that.

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         They live for that, right?

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s the person you need in that role. You know what I mean?

Valerie Emanuel:             Yeah. And I have someone I work with. But at the end of the day, because of the way my business works, because I’m so involved still in the bookings, it’s like I had to realize that I had to I guess, sacrifice this thing I didn’t like if I wanted my business to run smoothly.

So if accounting with my accountant every other week is the one thing I have to do that feels kind of shitty, like I said, I actually like it. Or sorry, it feels kind of crappy. That’s not the biggest deal. Whatever. It’s going to make my business run smoother. It’s going to save me time at the end of the year. I, just for two hours every Friday, put the time into the money stuff. And that’s it.

Melinda Wittstock:         So Valerie, you’ve obviously got a really big vision for Role Models Management. Where do you see yourself in like five years time, 10 years time? What will the transformation have been as a result of what you’re doing?

Valerie Emanuel:             The transformation of Role Models I think, is moving into business management. Me and my partner have both started other projects since we started Role Models. So people said it was a bad idea. But I’m like, “From the beginning, you have to remember that we are people with different passions.” So I’m actually working on an agricultural project right now.

She’s working on a climate optimism project. But with Role Models, we see ourselves doing business management. And we’ve moved not out of the commercial and print space with models, but we’ve moved more into the content creator space and production space. We’re really helping brands to bring their business to life, and doing full scale digital marketing.

We realize we can’t just do one thing. And we have bigger margins when we do production. And it also helps us to bring in more business and have more control over the vision. And to help brands execute their vision in a way that we think is healthy for their audience.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s fantastic. I’m so excited about where you’re going with this. I want to make sure people know the best place to find you, Valerie, and work with you. If a business owner is listening to this podcast, an entrepreneur who needs a model for a campaign or a brand that what you’re doing resonates with, or a potential model or someone who wants to work with you, what’s the best way?

Valerie Emanuel:             The best way to reach our agency at is … Sorry. The best way to reach our agency is at Role Models MGMT, and it’s everywhere. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Rolemodelsmgmt.com

Melinda Wittstock:         Fantastic. Thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Valerie Emanuel:             Thanks so much, Melinda, for having me. Have a great day.