Behind the Screens: How We Turned Social Media Into a Full-Time Career
Discussing the business of influencers, including how much we made for our first paid job on Instagram and the process of brand partnerships
Hi everyone,
Happy Tuesday! How was your weekend? After somehow avoiding it for over a month, we both woke up this weekend sick. My head is in the clouds, my throat is on fire, and I have almost zero energy, and PJ isn’t far behind me in how he feels. This happens every single year around the time that school starts back up for our kids, and every year, for some reason, I act surprised when it finally hits us. Our daughter was sick last week and so was my mom, so I suppose it was only a matter of time until one of us (or in this case, both of us) caught it.
On a more positive note, we had an out of town guest come and stay with us this weekend, and it was so much fun catching up with him. One of our best friends, Nick, flew down from Virginia to spend a few days with us. He left this afternoon, which is sad and it didn’t feel like a long enough trip, but we will be recapping everything we did in an upcoming newsletter, so be on the lookout for that!
Meanwhile, we’re getting settled in to Holiday House and have stayed out there two weekends in a row, so I wanted to highlight a wonderful brand that helped us make it feel more like home.
Naturepedic provided us with three twin mattresses for our children’s rooms and they are the most comfortable mattresses that we’ve ever had. Er, that they’ve ever had. We chose the Serenade Organic Hybrid Mattress and went with the middle ground firmness, the “Cushion-Firm”. After laying on our daughter’s mattress for a bit after we first opened the box it came in, we immediately wanted to upgrade our mattress to Naturepedic because it felt like sleeping on a plush cloud. The website describes it as a safer, healthier organic mattress, and goes on to say:
“Hand-built in our certified organic factory with tender love and care, the Serenade is beautifully tailored with a luxurious finish. It features a hybrid design, combining organic latex for pressure-point relief and encased coil support that gently contours to your body. At Naturepedic, we replace polyurethane foam, flame retardants, adhesives and other chemicals with healthier natural materials.”
Thank you, Naturepedic, for helping our kids to settle into the farmhouse!!!!
In other news, we have a new vlog that premiered this past Sunday and it’s one of my favorites ever. It’s kind of a hodgepodge of clips featuring our family, us attending a fun event, spending the night at the farm, some cooking, and even a little debate watching. It feels like one of our classic vlogs from a few years back when we did a YouTube vlog every Sunday. Hope you enjoy it.
Alright, here we go!
PS: Today is National Voter Registration Day. Are you registered to vote? You can go to iwillvote.com to check your status!
Watch: In Vogue: The 90s
If you’re nostalgic like I am, or just really into fashion and all the important figures who make it what it is, this Hulu series is for you. With brand-new, candid interviews with icons like Anna Wintour, Naomi Campbell, Marc Jacobs, and a million others, this series dives into the whirlwind of Vogue and fashion in general that was the 90s. They really were such a different time, a time I don’t really remember since I was born at the beginning of that decade, but one that is so fun to revisit. I think you’re going to love this show.
You can watch In Vogue: The 90s on Hulu.
Read: The J. Crew Catalog is Back
Speaking of 90’s nostalgia, I came across
’s wonderful daily newsletter, and the issue that immediately caught my attention was the one about the iconic J. Crew catalog that the brand brought back last week. Jake takes a look into why they brought it back, if it was a smart move, and, in another issue, gives his thoughts on the catalog after reviewing it.You can read The J.Crew Catalog is Back on Jake’s newsletter.
Listen: Dancing In The Flames
The Weeknd’s new single was all I could listen to the last couple days. It’s so damn catchy and fun and dreamy and gets me excited for his upcoming album, Hurry Up Tomorrow.
You can listen to Dancing In The Flames wherever you get your music.
Behind the Screens: How We Turned Social Media into a Full-Time Career
Whenever we do our weekly live chats on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, which we call Vino & Vent (side note: You should totally join us on our next one!), we get a bunch of questions from new viewers, all usually asking some version of the same thing:
“How did you meet?”
“How many kids do you have?”
“Who’s the top and who’s the bottom?” (classic)
And probably the most common one that shows up more than any other:
“What do you guys do for a living?”
I’m not sure why that one pops up the most, as our live chats don’t give too much indication into one thing or the other when it comes to jobs, but alas! They take place at 8p in our kitchen while we sit on stools and drink wine after our kids go to bed. But maybe people are curious of those they see going live online for complete strangers and they wonder, how do these people make a living? What do they do for work? Why are they talking about their lives for people on the Internet?