Jessy Grossman
How can breaking the silence on pay rates foster better outcomes in influencer marketing campaigns? Learn from our expert guest, Jessy Grossman, Women in Influencer Marketing (WIIM) founder and an outspoken advocate for salary transparency in the influencer marketing realm.
In this Art of Sway episode, host Danielle Wiley and Jessy Grossman discuss why opening up about paychecks empowers executives to make smarter choices and strike better deals in influencer campaigns. You won’t want to miss Jessy’s story behind launching WIIM, her unique POV on the importance of revealing full compensation packages, and as her experience helping companies and individuals align their expectations with market standards in the influencer industry.
Find out how Jessy’s weekly ‘salary reveals’ help empower individuals to negotiate better and choose roles wisely, based on their personal and professional needs. From Danielle’s journey of work-life balance while running her own company, to Jessy’s passion in advocating for fair pay, their discussions highlight the increasingly critical trade-offs between salary and quality of work life.
Don’t miss this outstanding conversation that sheds light on the evolving dynamics of work, pay, and influence in the digital age! Be on the lookout for:
- Why it’s important for women to know they can make six-figure salaries in the influencer marketing industry
- How revealing the ‘full package’ (benefits and all) is better than just focusing on monetary compensation
- Which non-salary perks are most attractive during the recruitment process
- Why time is the most precious and valuable commodity of all
Episode 47: Jessy Grossman
This podcast is brought to you by Sway Group, a full-service influencer marketing agency. Sway Group specializes in matching brands with the right influencers and creating the kind of branded content people actually pay attention to.
For over 12 years, they’ve been helping businesses just like yours hit their goals with top-notch content strategies. They’ve got a network of over 45,000 diverse influencers, they don’t shy away from challenging campaigns, and they’re masters of authentic storytelling. Basically, they’ve got you covered when it comes to getting your brand in front of the right people. Head over to swaygroup.com and check them out.
Danielle Wiley: Welcome to The Art of Sway, the podcast that uncovers the power of influence and its impact on all areas of our lives. I’m your host, Danielle Wiley. Each week we’ll explore the many facets of influence through candid conversations with industry insiders, from brand marketers to social workers, educators, leaders, and more. Let’s dive in.
Jessy Grossman is a longtime entrepreneur in the digital media space. She’s passionate about supporting women in business and being at the forefront of innovation. She’s been quoted in the New York Times, Forbes, and was awarded a spot in the influencer top 50 by Talking Influence. In less than two years, she created one of the fastest-growing talent agencies in the country. Amidst unprecedented growth, she sold the multi-six-figure agency and pivoted to focus on her longtime passion project Women In Influencer Marketing, better known as WIIM. Founded in 2017, today WIIM is the premier professional organization for those who work with influencers. The community offers networking and new business opportunities, career services, continuous education, and more. Jessy also does consulting, advising and influencer marketing recruiting with her company Tribe Monday. You can find inspiring stories and more about Jessy on the WIIM podcast. Check out iamwiim.com and tribemonday.com for more information.
I was a guest on Jessy’s podcast way back in the early days of the pandemic, and we even co-hosted a couple of clubhouse sessions together. While we have stayed connected through social media, there is nothing like a one-on-one conversation, and I absolutely loved catching up with Jessy. Her dedication to supporting women who work in all aspects of influencer marketing is such an inspiration to me. She is tireless in her quest to elevate the space, and I am excited for you all to hear this conversation. Enjoy.
Okay. It is so great to have you on. I was trying to remember when it was that you had me on your podcast, and I feel like it was like mid-COVID. I feel like I was sitting in a bed working.
Jessy Grossman: It was a while ago. It was too long ago, so I’m happy that we can pick up where we left off today.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, yeah. Well, you are an early adopter of podcasts. It took me a few years kicking and screaming to get-
Jessy Grossman: I was going to say, how are you liking it?
Danielle Wiley: I like it. I’m a huge podcast listener. It makes my family crazy because I always have my AirPods and listen… I cannot do any type of chore, walk, anything without a podcast in my head. So it was something I always wanted to do, but was just very intimidated by the technology and getting everything set up. But luckily, the team rallied behind me, and I had people helping me. I so admire folks who jumped in earlier, and there’s so much to figure out, and the technology’s always changing, and it’s a lot.
Jessy Grossman: And that’s the thing. It’ll keep changing though, and we’re all learning from each other and stuff, honestly. And there are certain tweaks and stuff that I’ve even recently made to my show. It’s a constant state of learning. So the best time to start is now. I’m really glad that you started this and it’s going so well. Congratulations.
Danielle Wiley: Thank you. Yeah. It makes me think of the old days of blogging. People would always come to me and ask, like “What do I need to do? Should I start a blog?” This is obviously very long ago, and it’s always like “Just get started. You’re never going to… You’re going to evolve. The first things you write are always going to… You’re going to look back and they’re going to be weird” or-
Jessy Grossman: You’re going to cringe. Yeah, you’re-
Danielle Wiley: Or silly.
Jessy Grossman: Definitely.
Danielle Wiley: But we evolve and we’ve changed the intro and outro a couple of times for this. It’s evolved into its own thing. We’ve changed the description of it. It took on a mind of its own and it’s fine. That’s what’s Nice about media these days is it’s not printed. You can change it.
Jessy Grossman: You can. That’s a good point. I also feel like just being, whether it’s your own business or your own project or podcast, whatever that is, you have to get comfortable with the messy, and you have to almost enjoy the process because it’s always going to evolve. It’s always going to change. And I think people, I assume people who maybe have… They’re not so comfortable with change, they could really struggle with that because that is the nature of it. No matter what show you have, no matter what project. Especially even working on social media, there’s going to be like Threads is going to launch, and Twitter is no longer going to be Twitter, it’s going to be called X. I never thought that Twitter would be sold, nonetheless completely rebranded and its own completely different thing, but you almost have to enjoy that. So I feel like it’s the sick, twisted individuals like myself who thrive in that unstable environment. I don’t know. I just want people to be eyes open about that. I think it’s important.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, no, if you’re not constantly pivoting or at least open to a pivot, and our number one value is agility because we… Gosh, even if a platform doesn’t rebrand, they could change their terms and services with no warning and suddenly a program you were working on is now in violation and need to change every… We don’t own these platforms, which is one of the nice things about podcasts because you kind of do. But yeah, you have to be ready to change everything at a moment’s notice or no moments.
Jessy Grossman: Definitely, but I love the ability to be nimble. Because I’m sure you have people who listen to this podcast, you had corporate life before this. And working for some of these large companies, it’s impossible to be nimble because there’s so much bureaucracy and red tape and levels of approval and all of that stuff. And so I don’t know. I’m going off on a tangent, obviously, but I love the ability to be nimble and just shift and evolve fairly easily and fairly quickly. I think it’s a privilege, honestly, to be able to do that because I know that there are people listening to this even who are like, “Oh, I wish I could be that nimble, but I have to get 10 layers of approval before I make one small decision.”
Danielle Wiley: I think it’s also good just for your self-psychology, because if you are able to have an idea and just jump on it, one of the things that you really quickly learn is that they’re not all good ideas, and you get really good at just trying things out and moving on and not dwelling on it and not beating yourself up over it. There’s a certain resilience that comes out of that being nimble just because there’s no way that everything’s going to hit the way you think it will.
Jessy Grossman: There’s also a lot of power in testing and learning and almost expecting things to fail because that’s how you learn. It’s the moments of success, it’s like, “All right, we already got this. That’s why it was successful, so yay us. But I’d like to build more. I’d like to improve more.” We can always improve. So how do you learn where to improve and where’s worth building? It’s actually from the times where you fall down, it’s actually at the times where things don’t go right. And Lord knows I’ve had a lot of these moments, and even recently, even just we had this event last week where I left and I was like, “Yeah, this felt really good.” And people were so complimentary. They’re like, “Gosh, you’re really good at events.” And I’m like, “Okay, real talk, the reason that this is successful is we’ve had a slew of missteps prior,” and even with the event that I left feeling so good about, days after, I was like, “Oh, crap, I forgot to do this,” or “I didn’t do that how I wish I did.”
There’s always learnings, but the learnings are… It’s good when things go wrong, you get to… It’s like, “I will never make that mistake again. I’ll never make that mistake again.” That’s like every contract or every agreement that you redline, that’s a mistake that you probably slipped up on before. That’s every subsequent redline in an agreement. It’s a lesson learned from a prior agreement that you maybe missed.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah. I obviously know what you do and who you are, but our listeners who have been listening to us jammer on, let’s take it a step back and have you explain. I’ve been so blown away by what you have built and continue to build at WIIM. Do you say at WIIM?
Jessy Grossman: WIIM, yeah.
Danielle Wiley: I say it in my head WIIM. Okay. But I’d love for you to take us through your career journey and how you ended up with this organization.
Jessy Grossman: Yeah, it’s been quite the journey, and I always try to be really real about stuff like that. None of this stuff happened overnight, and I don’t know, I like to be very honest about the good, bad, the ugly, all of it. So I moved to New York back in 2009 right out of college, and I was a theater major, having nothing to do with marketing, advertising, anything. So I moved to New York with aspirations of directing. I worked a little bit in TV, a little bit in the theater, but that was not the lifestyle that I thought would make me happiest. I had a former professor of mine really was the one who was like, “You should really look into representing talent. Maybe that side of things would be a better fit for you.” So I tried to get anyone to even interview me. This was in the middle of the recession. It was not a great time to get a job.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, that’s a scary time to graduate college.
Jessy Grossman: It was. Also, those people who are graduating now are in the past few years, they probably feel that too. What I ended up doing… Because I couldn’t even get an interview at the time because I had no connections, I had moved to New York for theater, people just… Was just out of school. And so I ended up basically going part-time at my full-time moneymaking support myself in New York job, which was working at Bloomingdale’s. And I ended up losing all of my benefits so that I can go part-time so that for the other 20 hours a week I could do an internship, an unpaid internship that she explicitly told me, “Even if things go well, I don’t have a role for you here. I can’t hire you. But if it does go well, and there’s a big if, of course, I can introduce you to people because I…” She was in like her seventies. She’s been in the industry for many, many decades and was very generous in offering that.
That being said, everybody, especially my parents, thought I was out of my mind to literally [inaudible], to go on COBRA, to lose my health insurance, to… I was paying my rent with this money of this job, but that is not why I moved to New York. So I took an internship and long story long, I left that three month internship, got four interviews, two job offers, and that ended up getting me to a company called Don Buchwald & Associates, which is a pretty well-known talent agency. They represent actors on both coasts. They’ve been around since the seventies, and I, after about five years of working for about, gosh, like $26,000 a year there, because that’s how much they pay you in Hollywood, I ended-
Danielle Wiley: That’s more than I made at my first [inaudible 00:13:16], which, granted, they were a little bit before.
Jessy Grossman: But it-
Danielle Wiley: At that time. But yeah, I mean-
Jessy Grossman: It’s a struggle. It is a struggle. Yet I fought for that job and I took pride in that. In retrospect, I have so many feelings about it, but it did lead me to, five years into that job, ending up launching their influencer division because I knew that I wanted to be… From an assistant, I wanted to be an agent, but all these people were my parents’ age. They had worked there for 30 plus years and literally no one was going anywhere. So I was not going to inherit anybody’s business. I wasn’t going to be able to really do anything unless I literally built it myself.
So I ended up getting whiff of the hype of creators, influencers at the time, and without any knowledge of real anything, I launched their influencer division and only like maybe two or three months after that launched WIIM. We’re going back to about 2017. So WIIM, which is short for Women in Influencer Marketing at the time, it was completely a passion project if I’m being honest. It was a way for me to get my questions answered because I had no idea what I was doing. And for me to meet people so that these theoretical influencers that I hadn’t signed yet, but I would sign in the future, I would be able to get them business because I would be able to meet people through this networking group that I was basically creating simultaneously.
Cut to, I’m going to give you the much more bridged version of the end of the story, but I ended up leaving that agency to start my own. That sold and then I was given… It was like a very pivotal moment in my life where I was like, “If I’m ever really going to give WIIM a real shot, really not have this necessarily be a passion project, but have this be my full-time thing, now is the time.” And it was a scary time because it was in the middle of COVID. Towards the beginning of COVID was really when I had to make this decision of what I wanted to do next, and I decided to give WIIM a real shot.
And so today it looks so different from what it was back in 2017. It’s like a full membership. It’s to support the women who are behind the scenes in influencer marketing, who work at brands, who work at agencies, who work at tech companies, who are talent managers, and give them a community, and give them a place that they have support, they can network. We host events, we have a mentorship program. We have a whole nine that’s all part of the membership, but it’s grown to be this incredible community of really like-minded women who all… You can’t be in the group unless you are a cheerleader, unless you support other women and are really passionate about the industry. That’s a long-winded way of telling you about WIIM.
Danielle Wiley: I didn’t know all the bits and pieces of that story, so it’s good to hear all of it and more impressive even than what I knew and was impressed by.
Jessy Grossman: Thank you.
Danielle Wiley: I have my own feelings about this topic and my own kind of hypothesis as to what you’ll say, but I’m curious to hear your take on why women need their own dedicated space in this space.
Jessy Grossman: Yeah, I think women need a dedicated space in lots of spaces. It’s interesting, when we launched WIIM, we’re just talking about how it’s… Like the origins of it. We could have been People In Influencer Marketing versus Women In Influencer Marketing. Women in business has just been something that I’ve always been personally very, very passionate about. It was like my upbringing. My mom was the first entrepreneur that I ever knew, and she had her own business and she was so big on women’s rights and would tell me about when she was growing up in the seventies or the sixties, how it was different back then. And we’ve come a long way today, but there’s still so much that we have to go. Even if…
We can literally do things that they couldn’t do back then, that women couldn’t do back then. The perceptions are still there though, like the misperception. There are a lot of women who feel insecure about their power in business, and there are men who don’t necessarily support them or intimidated by them or just a number of different reasons, but there’s still not an equal playing field. There just isn’t. And I think that now our job is to combat the cerebral side of it, the mental aspect of it. It’s interesting because influencer marketing on the creator side from pretty much the very beginning has always been very dominated by women. Their most creators are women. So I just wanted to embrace that and celebrate that.
But I recognize that from a business perspective, which again, like WIIM is, not really for creators, it’s actually for the people who support them, who hire them and advocate for them. I just feel like we have a long way to go in order to advocate for ourselves to make more money, to be okay with the successes. I feel like some people have to feel like they need to almost apologize for success that they have and was it okay? Or ask for permission too much. And I feel like there’s a number of ways to get through that, but I feel like one of the more powerful ways and the way that I’ve seen it be successful through WIIM is with community where if you can really find women around you who you can help each other and you can really support each other and be there for each other in a number of different ways, I just think it’s a really powerful thing.
Yeah, it’s important because it’s not there yet. It’s important because we haven’t… It’s not a given that women can do anything they want to do. I want to see a world where it’s just a given, it’s just natural. I want to see more women presidents. I want to see a woman president.
Danielle Wiley: Same.
Jessy Grossman: Yeah.
Danielle Wiley: What do you think our biggest challenges are right now in the space, and not necessarily just for women, but just in the creator space in general? From your vantage point, what are you seeing as our biggest challenges?
Jessy Grossman: Yeah, I can go on and on, but to keep it concise, a couple of main things come to mind. Number one is just transparency and education. I just think that there’s a lot of stuff that’s still gatekept and I think it’s ridiculous and literally helping nobody to do that. I think that creators not knowing enough about the other side, not knowing what goes into pricing, not knowing what other creators are making, not knowing what it is to be a manager and how that all works. Everybody needs to understand the other side a bit more to have that perspective and therefore to be able to just, in my opinion, do their jobs better because it’s not healthy for all of us to be isolated and really not understand the other.
And then the other thing, which is unrelated to that, I just don’t think the technology is really there. The issue with influencer marketing is that most people are trying to do it at scale. I have a lot of opinions about that. I’ll give you the TL;RD. I just actually don’t think that influencer marketing is really a business set up to be done at scale personally because it’s a relationship business. And if you’re really doing business at scale, truly like Amazon style, then it can’t be a relationship business because there’s just too much that goes into maintaining and building relationships.
But if you’re going to get closest to it, the closest that you can possibly get to scaling that business, you have to have good tech. I certainly have some companies that I really applaud, I think they’re doing a great job, but I think it comes back to that perspective thing again. I think more people who build influencer tech need to better understand the day-to-day of what influencer marketers are doing and what they really need. And only then can they build something that’s truly effective and helpful, and we need it. We need it, it needs to be there. And I feel like it would also just give more credibility to what we’re doing. It would just be a really, really positive thing. So yeah, transparency and technology.
Danielle Wiley: I have a lot of feelings about the technology piece. We’ve been doing this for over 12 years, so we built the business on Google Docs and spreadsheets and realized we needed a platform and built our own in 2012 because that didn’t exist and had our own for a while. And now all these platforms exist and we are really happy with the one we use, we use CreatorIQ, and we get great data. But still it doesn’t do everything we need and we still have pieces of technology that we’ve built. And we’re not technologists. I always joke that CreatorIQ once told me and one of my partners that we were the most technical non-technical people he had ever met.
Jessy Grossman: You’re like, “Thank you.”
Danielle Wiley: Thanks, I think. But yeah, we have this mishmash of different technologies, some of them homegrown, some of them that we pay for as a service, and we have to jury-rig our own system behind the scenes to accomplish everything that we want. And it always seems like, man, we need this thing. We can’t be the only ones who need this specific piece of technology. And then you call around to all the platforms and lo and behold, no one has solved that and no one is doing exactly what you need.
I think the other piece with… I can go on a huge rant. The other piece I’m seeing with technology is that there’s been so much talk of the creator economy and there are all these people with dollar signs in their eyes who aren’t creators themselves and haven’t necessarily been in the space. So maybe they were like software people or VC or just tech bros or whatever it might be. I do see that most of them are men, which is a different topic, but they get these dollar signs in their eyes and they’re reading all these articles about the billions of dollars in the creator economy. They create a software that is maybe useful, maybe not, probably somewhere in the middle, and there’s no real plan for monetizing it.
I had a week a few months ago where two separate software companies tried to raise our prices for something with no explanation. One of them tried to raise prices by 300, and that’s like a classic. What is that saying? Your lack of planning-
Jessy Grossman: It’s almost like bait and switch, I feel. If you’re talking about 300 times, it’s so unreasonable that it’s like, cool, let me get you hooked enough to what we do and you’re in bed with us and now I’m just going to bait and switch and be like, “Surprise. Your hands are tied and now you have to pay all this extra money.”
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, what I’m seeing is that there was all this venture capital poured into these tech companies without any real plan for how these were going to monetize long-term and whether they were actually solving a problem. And now that the dust has settled and it’s time to actually be a real company, that question still isn’t answered. And so they come up with this cockamamie plan of just changing their pricing model, which doesn’t make sense, is unfair to all of us in the industry just trying to get our job done. It’s a major problem.
Jessy Grossman: Yeah. Look, I think that… I have so many opinions about venture capital. I just think that’s generally venture capital has a big problem and there’s a handful of people who I know who are currently trying to raise money for their company. And the number one question that I ask is I’m like, “Why are you going that route? Why are you going that route? Do you need to go that route?” I really don’t even want to lead them into anywhere. I really just want to ask the question.
And most of the time, I just had this conversation with someone a couple of weeks ago and she was like, “I don’t know why.” Because you’re supposed to? Because that’s what people do? Because it’s this level of clout that you get if you have a series A, series B or you get money infused into your company? Do you know how much of your company you’re giving away to do that? A significant amount. Do you know that just because someone says yes to you to give you all this money, there are a lot of conditions to that? And is that the right person that you want to go into business with? I’ve gone into business with… I’ve had bad experiences with business partners personally, and so I am so weary of that. I’ve lived that experience and that was a business partner, nonetheless someone who maybe is dropping a million dollars in my lap. Nobody does that out of the goodness of their heart. I’ve seen this same thing.
I don’t know. So I would just say be wary if you’re going to go into working with some technology platform or whatever sort of company it is, I think it’s good to know how they’re funded and what their plan is. Because if you are resting a chunk of your business, if you’re reliant on that company, it’s important to know that that company has longevity because you’re creating systems and processes with your company relying on it. I would want to know that that’s a very stable, reliable company. You’ll never fully truly know, of course, but I do think it’s important to do a little bit of research before you sign a contract with a technology company or any company for that matter.
Danielle Wiley: Here, here, sister.
So jumping back, you were talking before just about transparency with creator pay, but one of the things I am a member of, your community on LinkedIn and see everything that you write. And I know that you are a huge proponent of salary transparency for those working in the industry, not just the creators. So I am really curious to hear why this is such a passion for you and how that journey has evolved because you’ve been doing it for a while now, and I’m wondering what you’ve heard back, what’s the response been? How has that been going?
Jessy Grossman: People love a voyeuristic anything, like a peek in behind the curtain. So people love it. I love it. We’ve had hundreds of people anonymously submit their comp packages and it’s a full comp package. So it’s not just what you’re making, but it’s like, are you also making bonus? Are you also making commission? Do you have mat leave? What percentage of your insurance is covered by your employer? How much PTO do you get, if any? Where are you based? What ethnicity are you? So it’s really interesting data points and it’s helping people in different capacities. It’s helping people who are looking to hire, to know. Some people really don’t know. I’ve actually, through my consultancy, people have hired me to create salary banding for companies. People really, truly just don’t necessarily have that perspective.
And I can tell you, I know the reason they hired me and they’ve sought me out was because they saw that we do these salary reveals and they’re like, “I feel like you might be privy to information of what a lot of people are making. I want to make sure we’re paying people fairly.” And I was like, “That’s really respectful. I do have that information and I’d be happy to help you.” But every Tuesday on our Instagram, on our LinkedIn and our other socials, we have a salary reveal where people… You’ll see sometimes they’re paid too low, sometimes it seems like they’re paid like “God, that’s something to look up to. I would love to make that much money.” It’s good to know that a woman can make 300,000, $400,000 a year in influencer marketing. Some people literally don’t even know what’s possible because you have your limited scope of what you’re aware of.
So we really just love to just pierce the curtain, bring it down, show people what’s out there so you can advocate for yourself and a raise. You can advocate for yourself when you’re in an interview looking for your next role. If you’re looking for something and you’re looking through job listings, whether it’s on our website, LinkedIn, whatever, to say, “I want to be honest with myself, and if something is paying $40,000 a year, but I just saw a few posts on WIIM that that same role, people are paying $80,000 a year, a hundred thousand dollars a year,” then there’s a lot of power and “No. And maybe I shouldn’t even go on that interview. Maybe I shouldn’t even waste my time. Yes, maybe it’s a difficult economy, maybe I got let go from my job.” But I can tell you that there are a lot of people in that boat, unfortunately, very unfortunately.
But there’s so much power known, there’s so much power in holding out for something that you feel good about. And I feel so strongly that from the onset, the very beginning of accepting a new role, it’s so important to feel good about it. Not to settle, not to say like “But I’m in a bad position.” I understand that. And some people literally just need to be able to pay their bills. Freelance for a while, just find some work, but don’t necessarily accept the first full-time position that says yes, because there’s a lot of implications to that. You’re stuck in that, your time is going to be sucked by this role that maybe you don’t really want to take, but you’re taking it because you need to pay the bills. Do freelance work.
There’s other stuff that you can still maintain your relevancy in the industry. You can still be growing contacts, learning. This is all things that happen in WIIM. There’s nothing more precious and valuable than your time. And if you sign on to a full-time role that you just don’t feel is the right fit, all your time is going to go to that. And it’s very hard to find the time to then find another replacement job that is the better fit. So yeah, the salary reveals, we love them.
Danielle Wiley: I think it’s also interesting, I was at a very large agency before I founded Sway Group and was paid very well. But to your point, that’s not always everything. My life was not my own. I didn’t get to choose which clients I worked on. Some of them made me feel squeaky inside. I was commuting. From a time perspective, there’s so many elements to a compensation package. And for us as a smaller company, we don’t have funding, but we know what we can offer is flexibility. And for some people that makes more sense. We have a four-day work week. We offer lots of vacation time and holiday time, and there’s no commuting. I love your point that it’s a full package. It’s not just the salary and to really look at everything and find that fit. The conversations under the salary reveals are often the most fun part.
Jessy Grossman: Yeah, absolutely. When people comment, “You can get what? This company [inaudible] what?” Even you bringing up a four-day work week. I’ve heard of a handful of companies in our industry that are doing that now, but it’s not commonplace and like, oh my God, talk to anyone who works at an agency and they’d be like “A four-day work week? I would kill for that.” I also do recruiting of influencer marketers, and I bring that up because that’s one of the first questions that I always ask candidates is what is most important to you? Because I don’t think it should ever be completely at the sacrifice of something else. A four-day work week isn’t worth making the $26,000 that I used used to make working in Hollywood.
Danielle Wiley: And we do pay more than 26,000.
Jessy Grossman: I would hope so, and thank you for clarifying. But it’s important to look at these things holistically, first of all. And it’s also important to have self-awareness to know what’s most important to you. Living in New York City, it would literally be impossible for me to be making probably less than a hundred thousand. In New York City, San Francisco, any of these big cities. But if I live in a smaller city or a state where housing is just more reasonable, then yeah, $80,000 might be able to go way further. And if I could also get maybe a four-day week work or killer health insurance. We’re women’s groups, so we talk about mat leave, we talk about being able to cover fertility treatments and stuff like that because you have great health insurance and you want to build a family, whatever your story is.
I don’t know, in my twenties, if I did have the self-awareness to know what was most important to me, if I’m just being honest, I think that in my twenties I was just a ridiculous workaholic and I was just grinding. So I wish someone had told me this information, but I would have said to myself, what actually is most important to you? And focus on that. I think it’s an evolution. I think you’re continuously going to learn and in different decades of your life, things in my thirties now are way more important, completely different important things than in my twenties. I had no desire to even have kids in my twenties and now I have a stepdaughter and would love to have more. So very different. But presently, what is most important to you and just go after that.
Danielle Wiley: I have so many more questions, so we might have to do a part two, but we’re coming up on time. So I’m going to ask you the final question that we’ve been asking everyone on the podcast, and it’s my favorite. What is the last thing that you were influenced to buy, watch, read, or listen to?
Jessy Grossman: Gosh, there’s actually a lot of stuff. I’m being honest, I’m very susceptible to being influenced for all sorts of stuff. The latest probably was my favorite YouTuber. I was just watching this last night. She just announced that she launched her own YouTube membership, and I fan girl all over her. I think she’s amazing. Kendall Ray on YouTube, and she has all these platforms and different projects and stuff, but she just announced that and Paul was like, “Are you part of her membership yet?” And I was like, “I just heard about it right now. I want to join.” So I am seeing that a lot more.
Another podcaster actually that I love Nick Viall, The Viall Files, I guess it’s Viall Files is how it’s pronounced. I don’t know. He’s a former Bachelor person, but he has this one awesome relationship podcast that has nothing to do with Bachelor anymore, and he launched Vial Files Plus. And I just find it really fascinating when you just really admire someone, whether it’s a lifestyle influencer or a business influencer or whatever it is, and they’re offering additional content. I’m the first one who’s very much, I’m like, “Take my money. Take my money. I want more of that, and thank you for offering it.” So influenced by the intrigue of additional content by people that I love.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, you are influenced to get more influenced.
Jessy Grossman: Yes.
Danielle Wiley: Yes, right?
Jessy Grossman: Sounds dangerous, but yes, that’s the truth.
Danielle Wiley: This has been amazing, and like I said, I think we probably will have to have you on another couple of times because I didn’t even get through half my questions, but I’m so glad-
Jessy Grossman: I talked too much. I’m sorry.
Danielle Wiley: No, no, no. Loved it. Loved every minute. But it was so great to catch up with you again, and hopefully we don’t wait another three years before doing this.
Jessy Grossman: That sounds perfect. I appreciate you having me on, fun chatting and reconnecting and stuff, and congrats on your show.
Danielle Wiley: Thank you.
Thank you for listening. Don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. Please check back next Monday for a new episode featuring candid conversations that explore the power of influence. I am your host, Danielle Wiley, and this is The Art of Sway.
