Lauren Kleinman - Why Data-Driven Storytelling Matters Now

Ramon Vela (00:00)
Welcome back everyone. This is going to be a great show. I have with me Lauren Kleinman, who is the founder of Dream Day as well as the co-founder of Quality Media. Welcome to the show.

Lauren Kleinman (00:24)
Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

Ramon Vela (00:27)
Well, I appreciate you making time. You're such a busy person. mean, we'll cover a little bit of this in the interview, but you're the founder, as I mentioned, of Dream Day, the co-founder of Quality Media. You're a yoga teacher. You're a mom. You have all these different roles that you play in your life, and I'm sure you're just extremely busy. So I appreciate you making a little time for me and my audience.

this is also sort of a moment for me because ⁓ thank you moment really, because your company has been great with my show. You've been such a supporter of the show. So many of the guests that we've had on the show are referrals from your company. So I really do appreciate your help in making this show what it is. thank you for that and thank you for making time for us today.

Lauren Kleinman (01:11)
Thank you right back and all kudos to our team. I know they've been working really closely with you and our amazing founder roster of clients. You've been such an incredible interviewer over the years. So thank you back to you and your team for all the support of our clients. Really excited to chat with you today.

Ramon Vela (01:29)
definitely. So I always like to start off with my signature question, which is a gratitude question. And I do this for a couple of reasons. One is for those who are maybe new to listening to this show, I am a big believer in gratitude. I have a gratitude meditation practice. I think the world of gratitude and it's helped me through some of my darkest moments, emotional moments and business life as well. And I just like to promote it.

It's free, it's available to everyone. You combine it with breath work, with meditation or journaling or praying, whatever it is, it's just so powerful and I love to promote it. The other reason why I do this is that I think a lot of times for people, they see a business and they don't really think about the people behind the business. They think it's like a faceless corporation. They don't really understand how difficult it is to run a business, to start a business.

to work on client work and all of the above, they really kind of just sometimes see a faithless corporation. And I want to make sure that anyone that we have on this show, we're kind of letting people see the back end. We're letting people see who are those folks behind the brand, the companies that really care about what they're doing and care about their work and care about their communities and their clients and their employees. And so I think it's great.

to be able to get to know who we're interviewing. And one way of doing that is by knowing what you're grateful for. So with that said, can you share a moment or a memory when someone did something for you that made you feel grateful because it meant that they believed in you, your vision, or your potential?

Lauren Kleinman (03:03)
Thank you. I love all of your yogic philosophies and questions. And in someone who's struggled with different fear-based mentalities, they say that gratitude is on the other side of fear. So I really appreciate the question. I've been lucky to learn from so many incredible bosses and other founders.

Walter Driver from Scopely took a bet on me early on. I joined as his right hand and it's now one of the most valuable mobile gaming companies in the world.

He was my boss two bosses ago before I worked for myself. And then Kat from Ritual, she took ⁓ a bet on me early on as well. I didn't have a lot of consumer brand experience, but the experience that I gained at Ritual eventually led me to start my own company or companies, plural, I should say, and gave me kind of the credibility to have so many of the relationships and incredible

⁓ clients that we have today. And it's really cool because it's kind of come full circle in terms of the trust that we've given each other over the years. Ritual is a client at both agencies, both Dream Day and Quality Media, Quality Media for pretty much since the beginning of our ⁓ inception and Dream Day over the last year or so.

So I'd say that's my first one. I've been lucky to learn from the best. And my second, have to give some love and kudos to my husband. He's always believed in me as an entrepreneur and helped me really take the leap. Definitely one of my biggest supporters, which makes all the difference as a working mom and entrepreneur.

Ramon Vela (04:38)
Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that. And I will say about the husband part is that it's just one of those things that we don't really talk a lot about in terms of entrepreneurship is those people, those partners in your life that maybe directly or indirectly make that decision with you about being entrepreneurs, but they support you nonetheless.

and they are there for you and without their support, know, it would make this journey so much more difficult. And I don't think we talk about that enough, about the intimate relationships around entrepreneurship. And, you know, if you're single and everything else, that's great and so forth. But I just think it's wonderful to have people around your life that are supportive of you. so, yeah, you're incredibly...

Lauren Kleinman (05:22)
really,

you know, anxieties or different things that I gut check with him and just to have someone that is kind of, you know, a rock in that way and standing behind you, I think is so helpful and valuable. And I actually have one more gratitude for someone named Jesse Morris. He also in the very beginning, I didn't know if I could be an entrepreneur and he really pushed me to kind of take the leap and

I was honestly pretty scared to leave Ritual, but it was him who showed me the way and showed me how to get started. I can't forget about him as well. I know he's a lot of other prominent female entrepreneurs get their footing as well.

Ramon Vela (06:04)
Wow, that's fantastic. And

that's what I mean. It's like you have to have those people around you who help you. And I think many entrepreneurs do. And what I like to do on this show is, you know, sometimes we take a pause and we think about those people because you have to think about the wins because entrepreneurship, there's so many obstacles. There's so many things that happen just on a daily basis. I've talked to people where in the morning they talk to an investor and everything's fantastic.

Later on in day, there's some sort of manufacturing issue or whatever it is. But, you know, it's all in one day. It's like a roller coaster ride and people don't realize sometimes how difficult that is. And I like to shine, have a shed a light on that because it is, it really is difficult. And I like to think that, you know, when we share those challenges with people, we are showing how much we care and, and that we're letting people know that, wow, you know,

I'm really bleeding and sweating and tearing over this product or this business. So you're incredibly fortunate to have those people in your life. just as a closed loop, I'm sure you've talked to your husband, but do you talk to the other folks? Have you let them know how much they mean to you?

Lauren Kleinman (07:12)
I have, ⁓ Jessie knows and I try to never forget kind of where I started and how it all came together. My husband definitely knows and then Kat Schneider and Walter Driver I've mentioned on quite a few podcasts ⁓ and give them kudos often. So yeah, I love that. It's important for them to know as well.

Ramon Vela (07:33)
Yeah. And I think, I think that's part of the gratitude is that whenever possible, I think you have, you should do a closed loop, right? Like you should let those people, if they're still in your life and they're still with us, you know, want to close that loop. But, but thank you for sharing that. that's a good segue though, to where I kind of wanted to start. You have these two businesses, you've got a lot of stuff going on. So there's a lot to talk about. ⁓ but I always want to start off where that

were that sort of impetus that that moment in time where you were like this close to starting the business and it sounds like what you just said it sounds like that's where Jesse came into play. Walk us through that time when you had this idea and you but you were still on the fence and what pushed you over that fence.

Lauren Kleinman (08:20)
Yeah, great question. ⁓ so I was formerly founding team and VP of marketing at ritual, and I was there for almost four years and I worked with a lot of the top PR agencies across the U S and while they did some really great work for us, there was this kind of white space that I saw in terms of understanding how publishing was evolving to not only encompass what publishers wanted to organically surface to their audience because of the fit.

but also the business opportunity for partnering with a brand from a commerce and affiliate perspective. And so whether it was not inserting affiliate links into the pitches or understanding dynamic commissioning rates, felt like there was this real lack of understanding ⁓ in terms of how the landscape was shifting. And then even from a reporting standpoint, I was constantly frustrated by getting the reports back and it saying, you achieved 5 billion impressions.

But knowing that people are not actually clicking into every article or that number is not a true representation of kind of like the full impact of the work. So it felt like PR was very much a black box in terms of understanding the ROI. And like I said, I saw how the landscape was shifting where at least consumer press was starting to utilize, this was like 10 years ago.

affiliate links. And so we could actually start to delineate, okay, how much traffic and revenue is actually coming from each of these articles. And so that kind of led to the impetus of this idea I had around performance PR. And honestly, in the beginning, I didn't know that I was going to build an agency. I didn't know that I was going to coin this term around performance PR. was just consulting under market, everything under marketing and growth.

And the initial two clients that I worked with, Seed and Parsley Health, started asking kind of, how are you thinking about this? How are you thinking about these things, you know, in your past experiences? And I had a really unique POV that I just kind of organically realized over time. Similarly, as it relates to the inception of Quality Media, my co-founder at Quality Media, was formerly head of growth with me at Ritual.

And we did a lot of these really lucrative publishing partnerships where we were working with top tier publishers like BuzzFeed and Well and Good and Pure Well, and essentially looking at the affiliate content that they were authoring and then putting paid social spend behind it, which is a term called whitelisting. However, when we tried to replicate this strategy with a lot of other publishers,

It also felt like there was this gap in terms of understanding performance or creating programs that would actually at the end of the day back out for brands like Ritual or like the clients that I was working with. So long story short, that led to the inception of the second agency, Quality Media, which is a full service performance agency really specializing in some of this white listing through our own publication called the Quality Edit.

All of that happened organically building block after building block. But in terms of your original question of how to kind of, you know, get over that initial hump or take the leap. I, I was a new mom. I had a one year old and I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I grew up, uh, working with my uncle who was in the import export business, selling Tamagotchi's selling knockoff razor scooters.

inflatable sofas to all my friends as a preteen. I would ride through the mall with business cards that I had created. At the time Razor scooters were all sold out at Sharper Image and I was like the only one in town with this scooter hookup. And so I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but it wasn't kind of through the...

experiences I had working at these various companies that I had all the learnings where I finally felt, okay, I'm ready, I think to start on my own. Both the seed founder and the parsley health founders were friends of mine, Eric Katz and Robin Berson. And I had honestly, just asked them, you know, if I were to go out on my own, like, and consult, would you hire me? And they both were like, yes, you know, we'd hire you right away.

And so that gave me a lot of the confidence. And then, I said, you know, mentioned Jesse earlier, he was also friendly with Era and, you helped kind of like push me of like, Hey, it's not just Era. There's like so many other people in my network that would want you to consult for them and want to learn from you. And so again, it was kind of, I'm someone that is a bit risk averse, believe it or not, but it was those kind of like moments of,

Ramon Vela (12:53)
Thank

Lauren Kleinman (12:58)
getting that confidence that inspired me to go out on my own. And like I said, I really wanted to work for myself as a new mom. And the idea is just kind of snowballed from the experience that I had at Ritual and in some ways ⁓ at Scopely prior to that.

Ramon Vela (13:17)
Well, first of all, that is amazing. You did this all while you were a mom. And that period in itself was so difficult. But combining all of that, your life must have really been crazy at the time, which you mentioned how grateful you are for your husband. So I'm sure he played a big role in that. But that is a big moment.

Let's take a step back and for, because there's a lot of brands who listen to the show and I know that this term is a term that you use a lot and I feel like it's it's beginning to hear things more and more like that. The performance PR standpoint. So when you go to a client and you're introducing yourself and you use a term performance PR, break it down to us in a real simple way so that the

people listening can understand. What does that mean? That means, it mean like based on your example you gave earlier, does it mean it's almost as if it goes beyond the impression? Is it about tracking revenue? Give us a high-level overview of that.

Lauren Kleinman (14:20)
Absolutely. Even to take a step back further, can describe how I position Dream Day and our services at large. So we are a full-service PR agency and a full-funnel affiliate marketing agency that works together in one synergistic scope. So if you can imagine concentric circles, on the PR front, we do, as I mentioned, full-service PR, everything from brand to business to thought leadership to consumer PR.

across all mediums, Substack, TikTok, which we'll get into later in the show, I'm sure, in terms of the diversification of media, but TikTok, Substack, digital print awards, broadcast, podcasts, you name it. ⁓ And then on the affiliate side, we are the agency of record managing everything from top of funnel. So working with your top tier publishers and publications to more like mid funnel influencers, sub influencer networks.

or that that's like to know it or shot my, et cetera, to bottom of funnel. However, when we're pulling those bottom of funnel levers, we're very intentional about how we do that and making sure that we're driving true incrementality. A lot of affiliate agencies just pull those bottom of funnel levers, which is not a good look for the brand. That was also a frustration that I found at Ritual where it felt very much like they were cheapening the brand over the long term.

we take a very brand first approach in our affiliate marketing perspective. And where the two circles overlap is what we coined as performance PR. So that would be consumer PR that is actually measured through affiliate links. So traditional PR has always been about awareness, getting headlines, mentions, cultural cache, which is obviously still very important. And I think even more important in this moment, we'll talk about

why later in the show, but AI is one big component. But essentially, performance PR blends that storytelling with affiliate marketing. So press doesn't just look good. It also drives measurable revenue. And we really built this model so that publicists and affiliate strategists sit side by side, working towards the same KPIs like driving traffic, driving revenue, but also driving the highest quality hits and the highest quantity of hits. So you can think of it as

visibility plus ROI.

Ramon Vela (16:40)
And while this was happening, I imagine that, and I've seen this also, the industry for publications and things like that was also changing. So it wasn't just you, but the industry was changing as well. And in some ways, I think you may have even been maybe at the cutting edge at that time when you started Dream Day.

Because now it's, think it's, it's already here. Like this is, this is part of what the industry is like now. And if you're not doing it, then you're kind of behind the times. But I think at the time you were starting at the cutting edge at the time where the industry was about that was, was changing. And, ⁓ and so now what you're doing is that this is now like almost like a requirement, I think for a lot of, ⁓ for a lot of publications, right?

Lauren Kleinman (17:30)
For publications and brands, yeah, you absolutely as a brand cannot compete if you have a consumer product without being on an affiliate program and understanding what commission rate you're offering, how that differs from your competitors. Publications are also, like you mentioned, under a lot of pressure to monetize their content. I'm sure you've seen layoffs and different publications even going under. And so we really position ourselves as partners in driving

mutually beneficial ⁓ relationships for both the brand and the publisher. Editors are tasked with both storytelling and revenue goals. So commerce editors, when they're writing a lot of these pieces, some of their KPIs are actually to drive traffic and revenue through the editorial that they're creating. So we try to think like publishers and think like publications or even editors as publicists and think backwards to what would the headline be for this pitch.

What is going to help these publishers be successful in driving revenue and traffic to this article? So whether it's mentioning interesting stats or celebrity or influencer fans or interesting and unique collaborations or partnerships, we're always trying to think of how can we help the publisher make the most money from consumer press as possible and also help our clients and brands be most competitive in the competitive set of

you know, the other brands so that they're showing up on a high SEO ranking listicle or, you know, their brands or products are being discovered on ChatGPT or, you know, higher up in whatever other ranking there is.

Ramon Vela (19:08)
You know, and I think that's probably the key to success, which is what you just said a second ago, which is you sort of think like the publication or the editor of the publication. And I think that's probably the key to success is being able to pitch the brand story and position it in such an angle that makes sense for

that publication because if it doesn't meet the criteria that they have, which is they want the eyeballs, they want something interesting, they want something that aligns with whatever they're doing and whatever their mission is, but also then has the component of the affiliate component of it.

Lauren Kleinman (19:48)
Exactly. By essentially bringing them affiliate enabled brands and actually interesting stories, preparing them with all the assets that make their jobs easier, we help them hit both their storytelling and traffic and revenue goals. And this alignment also helps build trust and repeat coverage so that when we forge these relationships, are relation publisher relationships that the brand can leverage in perpetuity of their company really.

Ramon Vela (20:14)
Yeah, you know, on the show, I hear a lot of founders tell their story. And sometimes I do listen and think, you know, I think they really need to, they need to sharpen their pitch a little bit, their storytelling a little bit. How do you guys take that? Like just as an example, like, know, a brand comes in, they become a client. You know, how do you take their story? You know, turn it into something that

an editor of publication would find interesting.

Lauren Kleinman (20:43)
Yeah, such a good question. There was actually a LinkedIn post that I was reading last night. I'll have to resurface for you. And it was actually coming from a VC, Carrie Bennett. And she was saying how there's a big difference between brand messaging and PR messaging. And a lot of brands think that they'll just hand over their brand messaging and that that makes it actually interesting from a PR perspective. But our job as publicists is really to translate that.

information in a way that is topical and relevant and timely for the editors that were, you know, outreaching and pitching, and make it translatable in a way that again, goes back to those objectives of what's actually going to drive eyeballs to this piece of content. and so sometimes we actually won't bring on a client when they don't have that initial brand messaging piece figured out. We typically refer to an agency, ⁓

like Sarah Brooks from Goldilocks, who is a pro at kind of helping brands crystallize that initial messaging. And from that foundation, we can then take it and translate it to what is actually PR-able, if you will.

Ramon Vela (21:55)
Yeah, well, it's definitely tough. So let's fast forward a little bit and say that you've brought in the client and you've done all the things that we just talked about, the PR component of it, the affiliate marketing, all of the above. When it's done correctly and you've got to put it all together, what does that look like for a client?

Lauren Kleinman (22:17)
Yeah, I mean, I think a great example would be one of our clients is Quince. I don't know if you're familiar with that brand, but they're kind of the modern Macy's really huge company doing everything from creating and selling beds to cashmere sweaters, to socks and pajamas, to supplements, beauty products, you name it. They are a perfect client for us because they have a lot of traffic.

coming to their site. They have a lot of categories. Publishers find a million different reasons to mention them. Their products are actually really high quality and very affordable. And so the partnership in that instance looks like our team is, this is an anomaly. don't, I don't want to set expectations, but our team drives around 450 press hits for them per month. An insane amount, obviously, but.

speaks to kind of the volume of traffic that they're getting and also the amount of presets that we're garnering just because they have so many different products and categories for us to get included. So from a, you know, what that looks like, our team is obviously sweeping all of that press, pitching all the different categories. It's kind of a bohemoth of the team on RN because obviously there's just so much to pitch and so much to

sweep and report back to the client, if you will. And then we also manage their full funnel affiliate marketing. So at the end of the month, or even on a weekly or biweekly basis, we're able to report on here's all the press that we got. Here's the traffic that it has driven and here's the revenue that it's driving. And then on the affiliate front, we're going a layer deeper, like I said, in all of those different categories, whether it's influencers or technology partners, loyalty partners, credit card partners, et cetera.

⁓ and pulling all of those levers as well. But it's again, really coming back to the KPIs of the highest quality press, the highest, that's going to give you that cache, visibility, credibility, authority kind of within your competitive set. And then all of the quantity of press, which can be what drives the traffic and revenue through the affiliate channel.

Our team also takes a very data driven approach, which is also a gap that I saw from my experience at Ritual. And so we're not just blind pitching, you know, every editor and every publisher under the sun. We're looking at historical data of where does the brand actually perform, which publishers, which outlets, which types of angles, and then leaning into those ⁓ even further so that we can drive the most ROI. ⁓

on kind of every pitch that we're sending.

Ramon Vela (24:56)
Yeah. And I think you hit it on the nose there. think, ⁓ at least from my perspective, I think where a lot of brands, a lot of, ⁓ agencies, PR agencies get it wrong is they lack that sort of data centric, nature or model. And I mean, I don't know if that's your opinion too, but I feel like that's one of the big, the big problems is that maybe it's kind of old school, to not do the data. But I think in, in our

in our time in history right now where everything is pretty much like you can capture data on pretty much everything. That's where you have to be. mean, would you agree with that being the problem with a lot of other agencies? Now you don't have to like, we don't have to bad mouth anyone, but.

Lauren Kleinman (25:39)
throw anyone

out of the bus. No, I'll just speak about ourselves. I mean, I think ⁓ our approach is very unique in that we've done PR and affiliate marketing as part of one synergistic scope from the very beginning. And so it's built into the way that we do everything, the way that we pitch, the way that we report, the way that our team communicates with each other. One hand is always talking to the other, which is something that I saw at Ritual where our PR agency would be competing with our affiliate agency in terms of who got what hit, who's reaching out to who.

And the last thing you want as a brand is to have two agencies that you're paying competing with each other, right? They should be complimenting each other and really leveraging the synergies of each scope to drive the best quality of results for the brand ⁓ overall. So something that I see now is a lot of PR agencies tacking on like an affiliate marketing capability after the fact, but it's still very siloed and not truly like synergistic and working with PR.

And it's almost like, okay, we need to check this box and say that we do affiliate marketing because clients are asking for it. But a lot of times they're, you know, junior team members or, you know, understaffed or not able to really, um, you know, drive the results that like a full affiliate team could or should be doing. Um, and similarly on the affiliate marketing side, like I said earlier, what I see now is a lot of affiliate agencies are trying to get better at.

Ramon Vela (26:53)
Mm-hmm.

Lauren Kleinman (27:02)
storytelling and trying to get better at PR, which is an important part of the mix. actually, because I own a publication, I get all the pitches from other affiliate agencies. And a lot of times it's still like, hi X or like I read an email and like the formatting all, you know, crazy. and so it's interesting to kind of like see both types of agencies trying to tack the other piece on. But I would say that a lot of times it's not truly.

Ramon Vela (27:16)
you

Lauren Kleinman (27:30)
Synergistic and because it's like built within our DNA from the very beginning. It's a pretty unique differentiator for for dream day And then the other piece of what you said that I think is important is especially the types of brands that we work with consumer brands They have less and less just like, you know brand building dollars like just willing to spend money on brand marketing without any indication of how it's actually Performing or the ROI that they're getting on those channels

So I think the timing is absolutely ripe for this performance PR approach. And while not everything should be dollar for dollar by any means, again, sometimes the brand building press or broadcast press or what have you, we're not assigning a dollar amount to that. But it's still hugely important. But where we can, again, with that consumer press piece, being able to delineate, hey, here's like some ⁓

you know, indications of what we're seeing. And in many, most cases, here's the actual dollar amount that this piece drove. The one caveat is a lot of times that's not even trackable through the affiliate platform because I know we'll get into AI. very excited to talk about AI eventually, but, the articles that we're generating are helping those brands rank higher, in chat GPT when people search for the best genes of 2025 chat GPT, I guess we'll go there now.

Chad GPT 5.0 is actually prioritizing top tier press and the most topical and relevant press in search results. And so without getting that consumer press, you are also being left behind from a GEO perspective and not going to be included in these LLMs. So I forget where I started with that tangent, but I think that consumer press is more important than ever. And I guess to close the loop.

the attributable revenue through the affiliate platform is not even painting the full picture because that press is maybe being repurposed on your ads, which is part of our model of quality media, is showing up in ChatGPT or other LLMs, is ranking on Google and is one point in the purchase consideration journey of a customer, but maybe the one that ultimately tipped them over before they bought through the Instagram app.

Ramon Vela (29:48)
Mm-hmm.

Lauren Kleinman (29:49)
So hugely valuable and all works together as part of kind of the overall marketing journey and customer journey.

Ramon Vela (29:57)
⁓ And you just mentioned chat and I was actually that was my next follow-up question. So you kind of already got there. So there is, you with chat and with others, you there's a, you've talked in the past about diversification and now there is just so many places there, the line between blog and publication and channels and, you know, everything is kind of all blurring.

Lauren Kleinman (30:03)
Okay.

Yeah.

Ramon Vela (30:25)
And so that's something that brands need to be aware of, especially in this space. I remember there's a company we've had on the show. His name is, the founder's name is Will and his brand is called IQ Bar, I think. And I remember a post, this was a while back ago, but I remember a post that he said that he's noticed that they're getting more clients from ChatGPT and are being driven from there.

Lauren Kleinman (30:50)
GPT. How crazy is that? Both agencies, like we ask, you where did you hear about us? And more and more people are saying that they hear about us from chat GPT when they're searching for different agencies. And I attribute some of that to the press that we get the podcasts I do, cetera, but also the awards that we win, like it all kind of factors into giving us that authority on on chat GPT. But love to hear that.

Ramon Vela (30:52)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and, and I don't even know like how, like if, if it's just happening, just happenstance or he's planning on it or, you know, structuring his, his approach to that. I don't know. didn't, I didn't, I didn't ask him about it, but it was just interesting to me that that's happening. And then what you said earlier about how chat GPT is taking these rankings and, and, bringing them up. I think that's important for brands to know. That's something that I think that's really huge to know.

these little ins and outs of how the platform or the algorithms work. But we're dealing with all sorts of things now. Like how are you guys approaching those and helping brands with that? Because you've got the influencers, you've got Substack, you've got these blogs, you've got, of course, ChatGPT. How is all of that now working in the mix for you?

Lauren Kleinman (32:03)
Yeah, absolutely. The way that I think about it is performance PR, at least as long as I've been in it, was the first major wave of change, right? The convergence of PR and affiliate marketing as it relates to consumer press. And the next kind of wave of change that I'm observing and talking about is really this diversified media landscape. And like you said, encompassing all these different channels, I like to always, I'm a consumer and shopper myself. I like to always...

think about how I'm making purchasing decisions. And I'm not just going to pop sugar to search for the best water filter. I'm looking at a lot of different channels to make up my mind about which one to choose. On the water filter specifically, actually, I only went to ChatGPT, weighed the pros and cons, and then bought on Amazon, for example. But in terms of this diversified media landscape, a lot of what our team is talking about is

With editorial teams becoming leaner and leaner, a lot of the traditional publications changing their models. I actually saw this really interesting article about how Wired has made a lot of their editors influencers in their own right and their readership and subscription revenue, I forget the exact stat, but has gone way up as a result of that.

⁓ Aside from that, I think a lot of these editors are leaving traditional publications, creating their own sub stacks. And so we're talking a lot internally about what is the media landscape going to look like a year from now, three years from now, five years from now. We're treating those sub stacks as if they're their own publications because they very much are. And by the way, they can drive as much traffic and revenue in some instances as the top tier traditional publications. So.

For me, the diversified media landscape means not really relying on one channel, whether that's press or paid or influencers or SEO or TikTok. The discovery journey is more fragmented than ever. So your brand has to show up across multiple touch points, whether that's sub-stack newsletters or TikTok shop, affiliate sites, legacy press, Instagram ads, influencer ads. And it's that diversification that not only builds resilience,

But to the point on ChatGPT, ChatGPT is prioritizing what people are saying about you on Reddit, the latest press hits you got, what people are saying about on your ads, YouTube videos. All of these are factoring into the algorithm. And so by trying to kind of be everywhere and have some presence in all of these different channels, you're going to be a lot more competitive.

Ramon Vela (34:37)
Mm-hmm. And so speaking of chat GPT, let's get into that topic that you mentioned earlier about AI. So on a high level, you're using it now through via chat GPT in other ways. In our conversation before our pre-interview, you talked about how you're using AI internally. You're hiring people to come in and build things for you.

educate your employees and you're encouraging your employees to use that. Let's talk about it in a couple of different ways. One is how do you see AI now changing the landscape for agencies? And then afterwards we'll talk about, I'm interested in talking about how AI is internally impacting your organization and how you're dealing with that as a leader.

Lauren Kleinman (35:23)
Yeah, absolutely. Probably talk about this one for an hour. ⁓ Look, I think no one has it all figured out. We're very much building the plane as we fly it. And honestly, that's just because everything is changing day to day so rapidly, even the LLMs themselves, that it's impossible for anyone who says they have it all figured out, here's the playbook, I think is full of it. That said,

Ramon Vela (35:26)
.

Lauren Kleinman (35:48)
We have, I think, unique permission as a boutique and innovative agency. Both of our agencies were fastest growing in the US this year and also a fast company, fastest growing companies. I think that we have this unique permission to really leverage the technology that's in front of us. And so where a lot of agencies are saying, I've heard even like banning their employees to use AI.

We are saying we are a people first AI enabled agency on both agencies. And we're actually leaning into it because I think it's the future. And if you're not kind of evolving with the times, think just like performance PR or this diversified media landscape, you're going to be left behind. So the way that we think about it is that really AI will not replace creative strategy or relationships, but it can take over the repetitive manual task, whether that's

know, drafting pitches as a first review, analysis, reporting, and really so that teams can focus on higher value creative work. And in terms of kind of your other question, in terms of, you know, us putting our money where our mouth is,

We are investing in an AI consultant on both agencies. We started with Quality Media, his name is Devin Carps, shout out to Devin, we love you. He has created and worked with us over the last few months, these custom GPTs for our organization in terms of the highest leverage AI use cases. So whether that's creating BD calculators or understanding our overarching OKRs or...

mission vision for the next 10 years of where we want to be and creating these custom GPTs so that everything that we put into that tracks back to those overarching ⁓ goals and objectives. He's creating all of those GPTs for our team to leverage and then training our team, not only from like a one-on-one capacity, what's the difference between projects and threads and how to really use ChatGPT just from a one-on-one perspective.

but also then training them how to use these custom GPTs. So we started with his training at Quality Media. We're now starting at Dream Day as well. And like I said, I think that it's going to be the future and I'm really excited to build these people first AI enabled agencies.

Ramon Vela (38:15)
Mm-hmm. And you know, I think you are absolutely correct about AI is just, you have to just accept it. It's the future. It's the tools that you're going to have to use and all of that. But your employees, people in general have, you know, are worried. They're worried that it's going to take their jobs and so forth. So from a leader standpoint,

How are you dealing with that nervousness within your Dream Day employees and or quality media?

Lauren Kleinman (38:48)
Yeah, I mean, even our AI consultant will say never take the first draft as gospel. I'm paraphrasing, but your chat to BT output should have three or four different human led revisions and the buck always stops at the human. And I think we see at least now at quality media and dream day that.

even though the LLMs are pretty incredible, they have a long way to go in terms of ever replacing humans. I really don't think, especially in a communication and high touch white glove agency services type of role, I don't think we're even close to the chat TV replacing any employees. And I honestly think when the employees use it, they can see that. There's so much human work that needs to be done. And I think the future is really

going to be focused from a skillset perspective, less on like, okay, can you write a pitch? And more on how are you when you communicate with clients? How do you handle when a client is not happy or has different expectations? Like these actually intangible relationship qualities and how do you really foster those relationships with clients over time?

I would say the bigger thing that I hear from our team members are like, I feel like I'm cheating. Like they're really innocent. like, I, you know, I'm scared to use it because I just like, I don't want to take like a shortcut, which is, you know, so, noble. ⁓ but I've tried to really encourage them to kind of get over that hump and like, you know, this is an incredible opportunity. Think of this company as kind of your playground to, learn this tool of the future.

Ramon Vela (40:18)
you

Lauren Kleinman (40:32)
whether you're at Dream Day or quality media, you're going to need this tool for wherever you are next in your career, very likely. So I think we've done a good job and it really comes back to the education component. think a lot of companies, not even agencies necessarily, tell their team, like use AI, you should be using AI more. Like if you're not using AI, I think there was one company, maybe it was Google or something that said, if you're not using AI, you're gonna be fired.

Ramon Vela (40:39)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lauren Kleinman (41:00)
And I assume that they're doing this, but it's like, okay, if you're, if you're saying these types of things, you better be teaching your employees how to use it because it's, ⁓ you know, not as straightforward as you might think. There's a lot of different integrations and tools and, our AI consultant says, think of it as you have Einstein in the room with you and you tell him, Hey, Einstein, go run my company.

As smart as Einstein is, he's going to have no idea how to run your company unless you're giving him all those inputs. So we literally are spending months at both companies, helping our GPTs be the smartest that it can be knowing as much as it can about our companies. and then like I said, training our team members to understand how to really leverage the resources that we're putting in as a leadership team. because, know, without that, you, you have a very dumb thought.

Ramon Vela (41:54)
Mm-hmm.

Lauren Kleinman (41:55)
in whatever LLM you're using.

Ramon Vela (41:57)
Yeah. Well, I love that aspect of it because I think this approach, even though it's the future and it's everywhere and everyone's talking about it, I really feel that you have to guide your employees and your people through this because I feel like it can make people nervous and so forth. can make wary of using it for whatever reasons. on a higher level,

I really feel that leadership is really needed and I think required of this time in history that we're in. Because I feel that there's a lot of things changing, good or bad, however you feel about whatever is going on in the world, there's a lot of changes. And I know this from a human nature standpoint that people

don't like change. They want things to always be the same and always feel comfortable and secure. And so the world in general, people I think are, there's a nervousness, there's a little anxiety, there's some stress. Obviously there's a lot of stuff going on in this world. A lot of news events lately that can make people very nervous. And as a leader, you have to take all of this stuff into consideration. Not only the direction of your company and what you're doing and

And not only as, you know, as a mother, have to look at your kids and how you're bringing up your kids, but also your employees, you know, they are human beings who feel different things and can feel nervous, can feel anxious or stressed out. How are you as a leader, how are you dealing with that in general with helping your employees become stronger, confident, and feel like they're

that you want to keep them and stay in on the mission, how do you keep them focused?

Lauren Kleinman (43:44)
Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question. There's obviously so much going on in the world I try to lead the team in terms of the way that I would want to be treated as an employee and implement the policy policies From a cultural perspective that I think are interesting that would make me want to stick around at a company So we've implemented some you know more progressive creative policies. I think that

Most exciting thing is we're never stagnant in terms of what those policies are at either Dream Day or Quality Media. We're always thinking about our people first and thinking about how to make their working experience even better.

At Quality Media and Dream Day, we go so far as to say that we want these working experiences to really be the highlight of their careers. So to do that, we have put together, like I said, some creative perks. We do Wellness Fridays. We're going to implement Winter Fridays as well, which is a new one that I just learned about that our team brought up at dinner last week ⁓ as something fun and something new that we'll implement.

We do so wellness Fridays are where you know, everyone can take a Friday off once a quarter to do anything that it's like serving their mind, body, soul. Summer Friday is pretty self explanatory. We have very generous, unlimited vacation. And actually something that my therapist shared with me is the more that I've always I've dealt with burnout a couple times in my career.

And she shared that the more that I evolve as a person, the better the company is going to be, the more that it's going to flourish, the more my employees are going to feel it. And so the more that I prioritize balance, I feel like the stronger our output has been and the, they say, and maybe this is a bit woo woo, but that, you know, your company is a reflection of yourself. And at least, you know, we found that that has

Ramon Vela (45:35)
Thank

Lauren Kleinman (45:42)
come to be true. We've won a lot of cultural awards. Retention is insanely high, not only from a client perspective, but also from an employee perspective. We just ran the numbers the other day. was like 87 % retention, which is pretty much unheard of in the agency world. Anything over 80 is like crazy. Our burnout is lower, creativity is stronger. And I also think that clients can really feel that energy. Happy people produce better work.

and better results and better case studies and higher retention clients as well. We also, I know you mentioned my yoga experience earlier on in the conversation. When I was pretty stressed out a couple of years ago, I didn't really have other senior team members in place or real executive team.

And I got a mass text from my yoga studio saying, do you want to become a yoga teacher? And in that moment I thought, yes, yes, I do. And so I took a four month course, 200 hour training, which is kind of the standard yoga teacher training. it was one week over four months. ⁓ and it was one of the most transformative experiences. I actually have a major fear of public speaking. was going to.

quit my job two jobs ago because I hated public speaking. was so nervous and every Monday we had to do a standup and I really wanted to push through that. And I thought what a better opportunity than yoga teaching where you have to speak in front of a group. You're doing poses. It's, you know, understanding where everyone in the, you know, audience, so to speak is at kind of in their, ⁓ Asana or movement. And after I completed that training, I was so inspired.

Ramon Vela (47:20)
Mm-hmm.

Lauren Kleinman (47:24)
that I was like, how do I replicate this for the company? So we introduced this Better You benefit at Dream Day, which is a week long sabbatical for personal growth. And anyone on the team that's been at the company for more than two years can leverage that benefit. They get a stipend, a week off, someone put it towards getting their MBA and did this whole presentation after, which was incredible. And so, yeah, at the end of the day, I think

You know, the balance of work, life, all the things in between is so important as a mom of two kids, as a wife. Um, you know, I wear a lot of hats. As you said, I think again, I think about what I want, um, out of my career. And I do want that balance, uh, more now than ever. So I try to instill that into the companies. Um, and of course there's moments where, you know, hustle is necessary, but I think if you scale without.

boundaries, you're really just scaling chaos. And so I've learned that prioritizing balance isn't at odds with growth. It's what really makes that sustainable growth possible. And like I said, my therapist said, the more you grow as a person, the more that you'll grow professionally. And, you know, that's been so true is I've really grown up with these agencies over the last, you know, six years.

Ramon Vela (48:43)
Well, you know, I personally believe that, you know, that I agree with your therapist. I think that the more you evolve as a person and the more grounded you are and how you evolve, I think it will show up because people look to you. You're a leader. I mean, in a sense, we're all leaders. You know, I'm a leader to my family. I'm a leader to my employees or contractors.

your leader, to your children, to your employees, to your community, to other people in the industry. And I think people look to you, especially your employees, they'll look to you and they'll, how you lead your life is gives them permission or not permission to do certain things or act certain ways. So I think it really does behoove you to continue to evolve and so that your employees can see that.

And then I think really just the way things are changing, I think it's important as a leader to also look to see how your employees are. And I love the fact that you're creating all these things and all these different programs and things for your employees, because I do believe that the happier you are, the better experience you're giving to your employees, the more that that

experience is it's kind of almost like overflow into your clients, you know, and to your, you know, your users and so forth. They're going to feel it. And so I really, I do believe that. so kudos to you and, and, you actually answered my, my last question, because I want to be respectful of your time, which was about how you stay grounded. And, and I, and I wanted to people to know about your yoga store because I think it's incredible. I mean, the fact that you did that while you were, you know, doing all these other things.

It's pretty incredible because I know that's, ⁓ I've never done, I've done yoga, but I've never even thought about being a teacher or anything because it's schooling. I mean, it's like a, you have what is like a four, six month or whatever the timeframe is to do this. And it's a lot of hours because you got to have those hours and you got to teach, you got to get those teaching hours and you got to all the sense of other stuff. ⁓

Lauren Kleinman (50:54)
exhausted by the end. was recalling

the other day that there were like some classes towards the end that I was just like, you know, barely doing the poses and just like hanging on by a thread. But I love this thing that my yoga teacher said, I should have mentioned I was about to quit like a night the night before my final I was so nervous, even though I have, by the way, have no intention of being a yoga teacher, the only time that I've taught yoga.

was to the quality media team and to the dream day team so far. It's been like three times. And I had no intention to teach yoga, but I had all this pressure and fear that I put on myself of I don't want to public speak. What if I mess up? Like all these things. And I literally drafted something to my yoga teacher saying that I couldn't do it. Like there was, you know, I just couldn't do it. I'm sorry. It's over. And I remember

in that moment something that she said and I never really knew and I get chills talking about it. I never really knew what she meant, but she said, you have to walk through the fire sometimes to get through the other side. And in that moment, I reminded myself of that and I said, I'm gonna do it. Even if I fail, I'm gonna do it and say I tried. And I've never really been so proud of myself like for willingly signing up for something that I was really scared to do. One of my life mottoes is,

do something that scares you every single day. So willingly assigning myself up for the scariest thing I could imagine. And then, you know, being able to get a certification and my kids, you know, came to and husband watched me graduate. And yeah, it was just an incredible moment of doing something also for me personally, that was beyond, you know, my career or professional life, beyond my identity of being a mom and just something that kind of filled up my own cup.

Ramon Vela (52:39)
And, and, know, undoubtedly, think that is going to have an impact, even though you're doing it for yourself, that undoubtedly is going to have an impact on your kids, on your employees, on your community, on people around you, because it shows like, like, you know, when you change or involve as a person, it's going to impact other people. And, and, you know, and kids, by the way, like, I've had three and I've learned this, that they actually

Lauren Kleinman (52:58)
Absolutely.

Ramon Vela (53:05)
I think watch what you do more than what you say. mean, they'll remember what you say, but they'll, they are like keen observers on what you do and how you behave and, and they'll learn from that. And so, ⁓ yeah, I love that. I want to be respectful of your time. This has been fantastic. And, ⁓ I want to give you this, ⁓ this opportunity now to leave the audience with whatever you would like to leave them with, ⁓ whether it's towards your clients or as other founders.

Lauren Kleinman (53:22)
Thank you.

Ramon Vela (53:35)
Um, you know, you have this enormous, incredible experience. You've run in these companies, you're a mother, you are, you are, you are doing something that I think really is quite extraordinary. And, and I think there's a lot of lessons you've learned. So if you want to leave us with some lessons you've learned of life, of running your business or something you want to leave with, with, uh, potential clients, you're more than welcome that you have the floor.

Lauren Kleinman (54:05)
All right, so I'm gonna take this question, the direction of advice for future entrepreneurs. I know you have a lot of business leaders listening, but sometimes I wish that I had been given this advice earlier on. So my first is really just taking the leap and having the courage to start. Entrepreneurship really starts with courage, as we talked about earlier in the conversation, and really having a clear vision for the future. Like I said, I saw this white space of,

two agencies that were really improving upon services that I wished I had when I was in house at a brand. And I really learned over time what clients were interested in from me and leaned into that really iterating on my offer, you know, one client at a time, if you will. So the first is really just taking that leap and having the courage it takes to start. The second is to stay curious and keep learning.

⁓ This is actually like one of the biggest things that we screen for in terms of future hires, especially with like we talked about how quickly the marketing landscape is evolving. Curiosity for me is one of the most powerful tools and qualities that you can have. Asking questions, and this sounds like I'm talking to my seven-year-old son, is not a weakness, it's an asset. It helps build stronger relationships, uncover gaps and wins, and

often leads to insights that spark some of the biggest breakthroughs. I believe that great ideas can come from anywhere and it's so important to just keep learning. Read everything that you can, find people in your network that you're learning from. And then the third would just be to grow intentionally at both agencies. We have no pressure to grow. know a lot of agencies take on any client under the sun.

And we have a very different kind of white glove bespoke approach. We only take on clients that we believe that we can drive a true impact for. So continuous iteration and learning and really I've talked about a couple of times so far, like building one block at a time and listening to customer feedback of both agencies. We're constantly soliciting feedback. If a client doesn't go with us and goes with another agency, we're getting on a call with them, understanding why.

And just keeping that like intentional and sustainable growth top of mind. As you think about, know, team bandwidth and the quality overall with both agencies, we're always thinking about our case studies are our number one new business growth driver. And the minute that that quality goes down, we have to take a pause and stop and figure out, you know, how we can improve our services to again, drive the best case studies in the industry.

And so yeah, those are my three tips for entrepreneurs taking a leap, staying curious and growing intentionally. And lastly, in terms of where you can find me, I'm on Instagram, I'm on LinkedIn. I do some fun thought leadership on LinkedIn, so be sure to follow me there. And in terms of the businesses, you can find us at dreamday.la, qualitymedia.com and thequalityedit.com, which is our own publication.

Ramon Vela (57:04)
⁓

Lauren Kleinman (57:05)
Thank you

so much for a great conversation. It was really fun.

Ramon Vela (57:08)
Yeah, no, thank you. And I appreciate you making time and this has been a great conversation. I've learned so much about the business on both of the agencies. So I appreciate it. I know you're busy. You got to run. You got another meeting going on. So thank you. And we're going to make sure everyone to put those links that she mentioned on our podcast description, which you could find on Apple, Spotify, pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts. We'll have those on there.

And then I always say, stay safe, stay sane, stay healthy. So please do so. again, I just want to give a shout out to Lauren. This has been such an amazing interview. Like I said, I've learned so much. I've been doing business with Dream Day now for a while, but I've learned so much about what they do and what they offer. definitely, if I'm a brand, I would definitely be looking into this and taking a look at the Dream Day website and or the quality media website.

But again, thank you. So we have just had Lauren climb in who is a founder at Dream Day and co-founder at Quality Media. Again, we're going to have those links on our podcast description. So go check it out. One last thing before we leave is we've all been going through a lot of stuff the last few years, the pandemic and geopolitical wars and politics and everything else. Let's just do ourselves a favor and let's try to be a little kinder to each other. If we can do that, I know we can make this human experience a better one.

Beyond that, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to another episode of the story of a brand.