Driven by curiosity and a commitment to authenticity, Stepfanie Tyler embodies the spirit of agile entrepreneurship vital in today’s world of tech. In this episode, she joins Paul Swaney to explore her dynamic career path in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing. She shares the importance of authenticity in online content creation, the impact of Elon Musk on her work, and her current efforts to build a strong audience on X. Stepfanie also delves into her evolving political views, how she pivoted her business strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic, and what it takes to muster the courage to carve your own path in life.
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Agile Entrepreneurship, Mindset Shifts, & Elon Musk
How Stepfanie Tyler Has Embraced The New Media Landscape
We are sitting down with Stepfanie Tyler, who has an eclectic background. I’m excited to talk to you. A couple of the highlights are that she got recruited from college into Abercrombie’s training program, became a GM, and decided to start her own marketing company. She had a bit of a bump in the road due to COVID. She’s got a bit of her fingers in everything.
The first thing that’s interesting is she dropped a new album called Speedrunning Love, where she was the lyricist and then dove into putting the music together with AI. She also does AI art, which she posts on her Twitter account, which is how we came into contact with each other. She had some interesting interactions with Elon Musk that we’ll talk to. It’s super good to sit down with you, Stepfanie.
Happy to be here. Thank you.
Stepfanie’s Journey To Marketing Entrepreneurship
I gave a little bit of your background. Why don’t you give me a little bit about what happened as you left college and then started to work at Abercrombie? Once you finish that, I want to hear what you pivoted over to start your own marketing company.
Eclectic background for sure, and a quick backstory on the college piece. I started wanting to be a nurse and specifically wanted to do pediatric endocrinology, which is so incredibly random and specific, and through that, you have to work a lot of hours in emergency rooms and nursing homes and such. Over two years of studying that, I figured out that was not for me, and that’s not what I was going to be passionate about seeing disgusting fluids all the time.
I pivoted. I had so many credits, like I minored in Biology because I ended up having so many credits for the sciences. By the time I figured out I didn’t want to do that, my counselor at the time was like, “Pick any major because you essentially covered such a wide range here. Just pick anything.” Women’s Studies had the least amount of math, which was none. I chose that very interesting path. I used to be very liberal, so I thought I would like that.
Graduated with a degree in Women’s Studies and immediately went back home. I got recruited by Abercrombie & Fitch to be a manager in training, which was not what I wanted to do, but to get a job offer that essentially had benefits and all that, so sure, why not? On my first day of work, I was shown a book, a binder of the people, the types of faces and skin colors, and all of these things that you are allowed to essentially hire from because this was before they turned that ship around.
I went to my car on my lunch break on the very first day. I went to my car and cried and called my mom and was like, “This is the most racist, bigoted company. I don’t know how I’m going to survive here.” I stuck it out because it was a job, and I was 20 or 22, however old. Within three months, I was given my store. I started managing a store there, and then about six months after that, I asked to be transferred.
I wanted to explore outside of the small town that I grew up in. I asked to be transferred, and that night, my district manager called me and said, “How do you feel about Vegas?” The store manager quit. I took this as a message from the universe that I was supposed to ask to be transferred, and I ended up at Fashion Show Mall in Vegas, which was a flagship location. I had 70 employees and 6 or 7 assistant managers.
How long were you there before you got the flagship?
Nine months total. I got my store back in my hometown in 3 months, then I worked there for 6 months and then transferred.
How many employees did you have at the flagship store?
About 70 associates and 7 assistant managers.
You went one year from never managing people before to managing a lot of people.
I would credit a lot of that, though, to working in hospital settings. I was lucky enough to shadow some pretty cool doctors, even though that wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing when I was volunteering to get my hours to graduate. I like networking. I have always been okay with that. I was lucky enough to work under some incredible doctors, where you learn triage. What do you need to do first? Stop the bleeding and operate.
I was running a successful store at Abercrombie, but living in Vegas, I was going out much more, being in my mid-twenties. I met a lot of cool people, tons of movers and shakers and entrepreneurs making a bunch of changes, getting downtown going, and rebuilding the city. It looked different than it does now. Through that, I met some people who would start saying my name when there were opportunities.
Somebody needed an office manager for their marketing agency. I started doing that part-time while I was still working at Abercrombie and eventually ended up doing that full-time because it paid slightly less, but we had clients all around the US, and our biggest clients were in Hawaii. I was going to Hawaii quite often to manage events, and it was fun. It was fun work.
What was it like when you had a full-time job where you were responsible for a store, everything that happens at it, whether it’s loss or people complaining and employee relations, and then deciding to add, I’m making the number up, 20 hours a week extra to probably an already 50 or 60-hour workweek? Talk to me about the process of managing that.
I have always used my downtime to do creative things. The extra twenty hours was just, it was fun. Like I said, I was learning things, and I was lucky enough that these people were all so experienced and much older than me that it was like scratching the itch of curiosity. Like I said, I was going to Hawaii all the time. It was fun work, and it wasn’t long before I ended up doing that full-time.
As I said, I was getting paid less, but I had consistent hours. It was from 10:00 AM to 4:00 AM, and then all of the traveling, whereas at Abercrombie, it was sometimes overnight doing audits, or you never have a consistent schedule. You never get weekends off, and then you are dealing with eighteen-year-olds who aren’t interested in helping run the store. They want to get a paycheck.
What It Is Like To Pivot From Retail To Marketing
That’s a hard pivot in your career. You went from retail management or supply chain retail over to marketing. What was it like to get up to speed in marketing?
I grew up in a house of Newsies and marketing. My mom was the marketing director at our local newspaper my whole life. I knew more about marketing than I cared to know. It was print media, which was already dying. It was an opportunity to learn more about the social media aspect like Instagram. TikTok wasn’t even around yet. We were using Snapchat, and it was a learning experience, but I knew the basics of marketing, I would say.
Through that, I ended up meeting another girl who was a 1099 contractor and somebody that we hired to do random projects. Over a few months, she and I were like, “We are doing a lot of work for these clients that are like $30,000 to $50,000 a month retainers, and we are getting a very tiny percentage of this.” I’m seeing how much money is coming in, and I’m seeing where it’s going, and I’m wondering why I am not getting more.
We had this conversation, and we were like, “Should we start a marketing agency?” She knew the technical stuff, and I was doing business operations. We sat down one day not in her garage. We sat in her guest room on the couch, and we were messing around with what we would call it and whatever. “Should we email people? We know some people in LA who have restaurants. Let’s start emailing them and seeing if anyone would be interested.”
Within a week, we locked down three clients, and one of them was a $25,000 contract through somebody who had restaurants spread across the US. He happened to need tons of work, and she knew him through a previous project. I immediately quit my other job, and we started this agency as 50/50 partners. When you ask for my advice, I’m sure you will not be a 50/50 partner.
The Evolution Of The Marketing Firm And COVID Impact
Bo, I think you met. He just became my first equity partner, and he got a fourth of the returns, but ostensibly, I will never give up. I feel I have 50.001% of control for obvious reasons. That’s going to bring up a question. How long did the firm last? I know you said you had some challenges during COVID, which everybody did. Walk me through the evolution of the firm and then what happened during COVID because it sounded like you came swinging out of the gate.
No, we were crushing, honestly. We hit it at the right time. People who were doing marketing were either big agencies or small social media-type agencies like “I will run some Instagram ads for you.” We happened to have the perfect knowledge set, and the two of us together were crushing it. I don’t give myself much credit, but we did pretty well out of the gate.
For 3 to 4 years, everything was smooth sailing, and then COVID hit, and most of our clients were in hospitality, casinos, restaurants, and hotels. All the restaurants were closed across the US. The first 2 or 3 months, it was like waiting around to see if they were going to reopen. We understood they couldn’t pay us for services. We were not promoting anything. There was nothing to do. It was a difficult decision. We need to pivot because we can’t wait around. When is stuff going to open? It seemed like never. We parted ways at that point. She was doing production stuff anyway, so that worked out for her.
I saw an opportunity since everything was closed during COVID. There were a lot of businesses that still needed content, like clothing brands and eCommerce. They weren’t closed, but they couldn’t create content because of the COVID restrictions. They couldn’t book spaces. They couldn’t have more than 1 model and photographer in a setting. I started doing the same thing that we did when we started our agency, which was cold emailing these people, “Do you need content creation?”
How many cold emails did you send to get this second venture going? A hundred, two hundred, or thousands?
Over two years, probably thousands, but to get it going, hundreds. I would say, though, that people need help. Probably 10 out of 100 would say yes in some capacity, even if it was a small $500 deal. Yes, we need one piece of content. It was a lot of bandwidth because I was managing so many different projects, but I’m pretty organized.
A lot of times, I see when entrepreneurs have success and it’s a services business, they have to balance feeding that funnel with cold emails and then delivering the work. How did you manage that during that time? What month was this during COVID that you started it?
It was like May.
You went quick. You saw it not working, and you went.
I went quickly.
The bias for action is one of the themes of my team out there. It’s better to make a slightly wrong decision or even a wrong decision quickly than if you waited 6 or 8 months for your other venture to come back.
We waited for weeks, and then it was like, “How is the government running? What’s happening? When are we going to open?” We did not feel optimistic about things turning around quickly. As I said, she had experience doing production stuff and felt she could do that quickly. I was now more well-versed in both aspects of content creation and the actual marketing, outreach, and all of these operations. I started reaching out immediately. Instagram.
Influencer marketing wasn’t huge yet. That’s the other thing that I had going for me. We had worked with influencers through our agency to get them paired up with the businesses that we were working with. I knew what businesses wanted from influencers. I didn’t want to be an influencer. That’s how it shook out. They didn’t want a marketing team. Rather, they needed content creation.
I was sending out hundreds of emails. You asked how I managed it. I had a spreadsheet. I had a spreadsheet of the type of business and what they were selling, and I had canned outreach that I would then tweak slightly to whoever I was sending it to. At night, I would schedule 50 to go out the next day. Maybe over a week, five people would reach back out, and I’d handle it like that.
Overcoming Fear Of Cold E-mails And Networking
It’s interesting. I see a lot of entrepreneurs that try to get this perfect system. They find even a relatively cheap CRM, and they want to ramp all this stuff up before they start calling. Calling is the only thing that matters. What advice would you give someone afraid of cold calling or emailing because that is a huge roadblock for a lot of my team? They don’t want to cold-email people on LinkedIn, even for a job. They don’t want to cold email. What do you do to get your mindset right, and what advice would you have for other people?
I can’t speak on the calling. That is not a strong suit of mine. I have not called one person. Emailing, though, I have no shame in emailing and the advice is to send the email because the worst thing that’s going to happen is they are not going to respond to you or they are going to say no. Pretty much 10 out of 100 were saying yes at this time. It depends on what’s happening in the market at this point. People desperately needed content. You have to be a little bit opportunistic.
People desperately need content. You just have to be a little bit opportunistic. Share on XI want to go back to networking. You’d lived in the area for a while. What role did networking play? You said you’re in your mid-twenties and got some name recognition. How did networking feed your entrepreneurship, or did it?
Not in this capacity. I started reaching out mostly on Instagram. I would look at businesses that seemed like they needed help, and then I would go find whoever like, “Who’s the CEO of this company? Who owns this company?” Find their email or find them on social media and DM them directly.
DM them or email them?
It depended. If I couldn’t find their email, I would DM them.
I’m being tactical about this because the biggest question I get is exactly what did you do? Some people say, “I cold email,” and others are like, “What does that mean?” Where did you get the emails? What were you doing to get the CEO’s email address?”
You searched for the company.
You weren’t using ZoomInfo or anything? You were Googling it?
I don’t even know what that is.
Fair enough. That’s one of the things said. After we started going, I was going in earnest until I hired Ben. I think he left. We took another six months to set up some cool tech to do this stuff, but in the beginning, it was me and Bo. We were just dialing for dollars, too, and then we went to conferences and stuff. It’s interesting. What I’m hearing you say is just go. Don’t overthink.
Just ship and you can do things. I know people hate that now because it’s like this tech bro thing, but you can do things. It’s crazy. On cold emailing or DMing, you will be surprised to see who will write back. I have had some crazy interactions with some incredible people that I have no business talking to. You can’t email something stupid to provide value. Be useful. Elon says that a lot. “Be useful.” If you see something that could be helpful, tell them and tell them how you are going to fix it, and 9 times out of 10, if they need that help, they are going to respond.
You cannot just email something stupid to your audience. If you provide them with value or something useful, they will respond nine times out of ten. Share on XNavigating The Pandemic And Pivoting In The Marketing Journey
You went from Corporate America to owning an agency to the lockdown to a second bite at the apple on marketing efforts. Are you still doing that, or did you pivot it down, or where’s it going?
In between that too, funny enough, one of the companies that I was working with, which I was in touch with through a DM, was originally the girl who ran their marketing. The main model for their brand ended up going on maternity leave, and she was in charge of all the content. I took over for her. Eventually, because it was such a small company, I reported directly to the CEO, and over time, I told him, “We could probably change a few things here. What’s up with this inventory?” He’s like, “You know about inventory?” Through those conversations, I got brought on as the director of brand operations for this company, and I stopped doing the influencing stuff for a while while running operations for them.
I learned so much that I wanted to do my clothing brand. I got an investor, and we started on this path to do what we were calling Wild Bare Muse. We got pretty far down the road and had 25 prototypes for different items that I was super passionate about. Once you get to the supply and manufacturing, I’m sure because you’ve done it, they are very antiquated, and the systems they have don’t make a lot of sense for people who want to manage inventory differently. They sell packs. It’s like, you get 2 extra smalls, 3 smalls, 2 mediums, 2 larges, whatever the ratio is and that’s that. You have no say in tailoring more to your business’s needs.
This was new. We decided to pump the brakes on that because we are looking more for a manufacturer who wants to work with us because we have a lot to provide too. My investor is well-versed in inventory management and works with some big eCommerce companies. He is changing the way they do inventory management, dynamic pricing, and a lot of things that are starting to pick up traction here. Until we can find a manufacturer who wants to work with us on that level, we are not going to make some crazy inventory investment. It was going to be $4 million. Anybody who would do that, I’m sorry. That’s not smart.
She’s on Instagram. I forget the name of her brand, but she only ships one day a month. Have you seen this girl?
Are you talking about Brittany Martinez, the sundress girl?
One day a month and it sells out in four hours or something like that.
That’s one way to do it. Brittany, she’s cool.
The supply chain for clothing and the distribution channels are just so different from how they used to be. I don’t think Abercrombie is dying, but retail has been changing, and people are building $1 million or $100 million brands on Instagram.
Especially now that drop shipping is so readily available. If you know how to use AI and you can figure out drop shipping, and you don’t care a ton about the quality or specific cuts or whatever, that’s going to be a good bet for a lot of people.
Exploring Music And AI Art: A New Passion Or Career?
When did you start working on music and AI art? Is this a hobby? Are you monetizing it? What’s the plan?
That started as a hobby. When I pivoted to doing my clothing brand, around that time, Elon bought X. I wasn’t doing social media anymore because I got burned out on the whole influencing thing. I grew my own. After my agency, I ended up growing my own Instagram account. It was like, I don’t know, 35,000 followers or something, and it’s relentless posting, the dumbest things you can imagine. It’s not real, it’s not authentic, and I crawl out of my skin when I’m not being authentic. I couldn’t do it anymore, so I wasn’t using any social media, and then Elon bought Twitter, and I’m like, “Let’s give this a shot. I want to use my voice for good. How can I do this?”
I got into AI art specifically, and I was like, “I will make an art account.” I started getting a little bit political, but around the same time, I was finding that I didn’t resonate with the liberals anymore. My account started a little bit liberal. I was engaging with a lot of people who were voting Democrat, whatever, and then what happened is that the October 7th happened, and I was like, “Screw this. I don’t want to do any politics on my account. I’m getting a new X account. I don’t want this one anymore. I grew it to 3,000 followers and I ditched it.” I was like, “I want to be anonymous, and I want to talk about AI art, and I’m going to do this AI music that has come out.” If you look at my account now, it says it was created in October 2023.
That lasted about 4 months, and I had 5,000 followers, and I was in the AI art community and then the first assassination attempt on Trump happened. I was cooking dinner, and I had already, at this point, decided I wasn’t going to be voting for Biden, but that was a secret. This isn’t something I talked about with my friends. There were a few friends of mine that we had a joke where it’s like, “Stepfanie’s MAGA now,” and they would joke about things. We were talking and I’m like, “I don’t know. I don’t like that anymore. I’m MAGA, I think.” I’m joking about it.
I had already made this decision in my mind like I’m not going to be voting for any Democrat. I see Trump go down. I’m cooking dinner, and chills all over my whole body. Like, “You’ve got to be kidding me. I got on board with this. I was a never-Trumper. This is the worst thing. Please get up.” He gets up, he pumps his fist, and I’m like, “Screw this art account. Trump is winning. It’s all over.” I made a post that night that outlined. I wasn’t anonymous anymore at this point. I put my picture, and I was like, “Screw it. I will talk about politics. I clearly can’t stay away from it.” I wrote this post about transitioning from women’s studies and being a never-Trumper to, “I’m voting for him. I saw him get up. He got shot in the face, and he starts pumping his fist, and you cannot fake that level of authenticity and courage.” Elon “tweeted” it.
I saw this post and it was like twenty posts deep or something.
It was 1 post and it was like 10 lines like, “Graduated in 2012 with a degree in Women’s Studies.” I lost touch with the Dems around Me Too. 2018 is when all of this started, and I was learning about entrepreneurship and capitalism in general. I was already on my way a little bit from the left. Made this post. Elon “tweeted” it. Bill Ackman “tweeted” it. Rolling Stone wrote an article about it. I was on Fox News. I did an interview on Fox for this stupid post.
What it told me was people desperately want to see the things that they are thinking in the real world, and nobody was saying this at that point. Especially a liberal girl to be like, “I’m voting for Trump. I’m so sick of everything happening on the left.” I lost some good friends over that, but I don’t regret it and he won the popular vote.
Overcoming Challenges In Personal Relationships
What’s that like? With the expensive and stereotypical women’s studies, it’s pretty there are not a lot of conservatives going into women’s studies. I heard what you said about the physical journey. What was the mental journey? It’s tough to give up friends and relationships. My partner and I had a little bit of a rift. Not in the biggest, baddest way. I’d love to hear more about the mindset shift.
As I said, I didn’t know what I was doing, and I chose women’s studies on a whim because it had no math. My dad’s always been more conservative as a police officer for a long time, and I always dated conservative men, interestingly enough. I said my dad was a cop, so a lot of self-accountability and, “You are not a victim,” was beaten into my head as a kid.
Sitting in some of these women’s studies classes, it’s like everybody’s oppressed and everybody’s a victim. I don’t know. While I was liberal and I would go to rallies and support pro-choice, which was probably the one thing that kept me on that side the longest, I was the most conservative. I was not conservative, but I was the most conservative person in those classes.
You say you are a reasonable human, and nobody is on moderate talks anymore, unfortunately.
Two of my professors hated me. It was obvious. Anytime we would talk about how Islam would get brought up or something, and I’m like, “We are talking about oppression, so do we want to talk about the women who live in the Middle East who are like slaves?” “That’s their culture.” “Okay. Got it.”
I don’t want to go too deep into a rabbit hole on this.
No rabbit hole on this. That was the one thing like they would be, “We all know Stepfanie has her opinions on this,” and it’s like, “Okay.”
Elon Musk’s Impact: Gaining 40,000 Followers From A Single Tweet
The logic doesn’t follow very much. The queers for Palestinians, I can’t square that circle in my head. It’s like, “What is it? Chickens for KFC?” I can’t square that circle. Let’s put a pin on Elon. That’s how I found you. The Elon post must have hit 20 million views or something.
It’s 58 million. I got 40,000 followers from that.
My account went from 200 to 15,000 followers in a day and a half, 2 days, or something like that. Did you get 40,000 followers in what period?
A week. It was pretty crazy. I did not do that post for any other reason. I remember sitting down in my bed and typing it out, and I had fifteen different versions. I was shaking, and my palms were all sweaty, and I was like, “Why am I feeling like this? It’s a stupid Twitter post. Nobody’s going to see this. I have 5,000 followers. Why is it so hard to say this?” I had this self-talk of, “If it’s so hard for you to hit send, you need to hit send.” I hit send, and then I went to bed and woke up and was like, what the F? This is insane.
When did Elon find it?
Within twelve hours.
He wrote a little blurb about it. He didn’t retweet.
He put fire emojis, and then he found another one and “tweeted that too,” and I was losing my mind. This is so insane.
Does he follow you now?
No. He’s gonna follow me on May 25, 2025.
What’s your goal for the year?
No. It’s been written in the future. It already happened.
You are going to manifest it.
It’s a date from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
I haven’t read that in years. Are we already caught up to the timeline of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?
I don’t think so.
Mindset Shifts For Young Entrepreneurs
I hope not. That would be terrible. Let’s take your mindset shift and couple that with not necessarily political but your mindset shift around having agency, starting up, and doing your own thing. What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs? You’ve had a couple of hiccups. What advice would you give them?
First of all, never be 50/50 partners. I report to revenue, and I want to make decisions that are going to make money go up and sometimes you end up in these situations with people who care a lot about the aesthetics or something branding and all this stuff that doesn’t affect the bottom line or has negative impacts on the bottom line. In a 50/50 partnership, one person always needs to have a little bit more control, or you are going to end up in this stalemate where nothing gets done.
Never be 50/50 partners. One person always needs to have a little bit more control. Otherwise, you will end up in a stalemate where nothing gets done. Share on XFor example, I wanted to hire a couple of people to take on some of the tasks that a CEO or a creative director shouldn’t be spending their time on. For example, sending out these cold emails. We have a process already in place somebody else can do that. We didn’t have AI bots at the time. I want to focus on bigger things, and I want to focus on growing the business, but then you can’t do that because you can’t hire more people because the other partner thinks that we don’t need people. A 50/50 partnership I would never recommend. Even if it’s 0.1% like you said. Somebody needs to be able to pull the trigger and say, “No, we are doing this.”
The thing is no 50/50 partnership. I took your quote down, and our report to revenue. That’s going in my mental lockbox. The second piece of advice you could give to aspiring entrepreneurs.
Just ship. If you are not embarrassed by the stuff that you are shipping, you didn’t ship fast enough. A lot of people say that. It’s hard, especially being a little bit of a perfectionist. This isn’t done yet, or this is crappy. No, it doesn’t matter. You have to let it touch reality so that you can get that feedback to know how to make it better. If people aren’t making fun of what you are doing, you are not doing it right. The people who are going to tell you, “Good job.” Those are your friends usually. You have to find the haters. They tell you what you are doing wrong, and then you fix it.
Give me a double-click. Give me a story of somebody giving you some feedback, and you had to change something quickly.
The last AI album that I put out, “This is trash. It’s not even real music,” whatever. It’s like the tech improves. My writing can improve by putting it out. I iterated on that, and I would say that this new album is much better. It’s above the bar, but I’m biased because it’s mine.
It’s Speedrunning Love. Can you get it on Spotify?
Everywhere.
You’ve got your hands in a bunch of different things. Any more advice you’d like to give to entrepreneurs?
No. Just ship. Just do things. If you have an idea, just do it. If you get over the idea and you are not interested in it anymore, stop doing it. A lot of people get hung up on, “I already spent three months working on this project, and I don’t resonate with it anymore, but I spent three months, so I have to finish it.”
If you have an idea, just do it. If you get over the idea and you are not interested in it anymore, stop doing it. Share on XThe funny part, for me at least, was that we talked about being a generalist. A lot of the work that I did back in the day was these weird, random, one-off projects. They end up coming back around because you’ll find something else that you like, and it’s like, “I worked on something a year and a half ago, and I still have it. Perfect.” Now, it fits in, and you can iterate even more on that. Follow your curiosity. If you are not interested in something anymore, don’t work on it.
How do you make the decision? Have you ever read the book The Dip? Seth Godin.
I have had breakfast with Seth Godin.
Why don’t you tell the story, then?
We were at a conference. One of my friends was giving a speech for a coffee company, and he was friends with Seth, so we had breakfast.
That’s one of my favorite books. He talks about that feeling you get when you think it’s the moment before failure, but it’s the moment before victory. Here’s some stuff when you know it’s time to tap out. How do you know when it’s time to tap out?
Another thing I like to talk about is the “trough of sorrows.” Are you familiar with this?
I’m not familiar with the concept, or where you are headed, but explain it to the readers.
You are going to go through these phases when you are working on things where one day you are like, “On top of the world. This is the best thing I have ever made in my life.” The next day, you are like, “This is the worst. I’m so embarrassed by this. I can’t believe I would even be working on this.” This cycle, but there’s a difference between “This is hard, and I need to push through,” versus, “I am not passionate about this anymore. I don’t feel aligned with this project,” and moving on.
Building A Flexible Future And Embracing The Creator Economy
I tell the team here this is a schizophrenic job in our house. Some days, we are smashing it. On other days, we could be squabbling. We have ramped up staffing quickly. I have a clear picture of how I want to be in ten years. What does that picture look like for you in ten years?
I hate when people ask me this because of my eclectic background. I don’t know. You told me. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this, but this might not even be released until March 2025, and I’m like, “I might not even think these things.” Not that I don’t have a plan or a goal in mind, but I don’t know where I will be living. I have no idea. I do follow what is interesting to me and that’s why I am here.
The one thing that entrepreneurs are is they are very flexible. A lot of times, when we are looking at we have got one of our team on the ground at an asset that’s very entrepreneurial. The team is very conceptual. They have a minimum viable product, but they don’t have the nuts and bolts of scaling a business. I have heard you’ve got that flexibility, and you’ve worked in a little bit of the supply chain. With all this stuff, do you see yourself more on the marketing side, the media side, or the product side? You told me about clothes and brands. Also, marketing services, and you worked retail. Do you know that much or are you going to see what opportunities are open to you?
With the way X has monetized creators right now, I’m focusing on putting all my eggs in that basket. Having an audience is important right now, not just for having an audience but for whatever you are going to do in the future. With how they keep implementing new features for creators, like Rev Share, it’s going up. They are iterating, making it better. They want people there. I do believe that will be essentially like the media company.
Elon calls it the “Everything App.” Why would you not want to carve out a path for yourself if you believe in the future of that business? Which I do. That said, I am working on starting a podcast right now with one of my girlfriends who lives in Manhattan. We recorded our first episode, so we are nowhere near being super ready to get into it. We are going to do that and then focus mostly on shipping it on X.
People have asked me what my account has done on X because it went up from 200 followers to 20,000 in a very short period and then 30,000 over the last couple of months. It’s tertiary to me. Ben was on a call for a cold chain warehouse manufacturing company that somebody sent me in a DM, and we are about to have an AI machine company brought to us by someone on my show.
I had a strategic plan on December 7, 2023. My account popped up in January 2024. I threw my plan in the trash. That’s to your point about having to be flexible. What I’m hearing you say is you are going to go into the media aspect of it, and you are going to use a platform not that X, whatever be banned like TikTok. There’s been a lot of creators. I’m very concerned. I don’t know if you saw the Supreme Court decision. They are going to let it shut down. What are your thoughts about TikTok? What have you heard, and why is X, not TikTok? You were on Instagram, but not on Instagram anymore. What’s the decision-making process there?
I trust Elon. Full stop. I’m sure a lot of people will hate that, but Elon genuinely cares about the future of humanity. I trust that he says it’s going to be the Everything App. I trust him. He’s delivered on everything he said he was going to deliver. That is, quite frankly, why I put all my eggs in that basket.
When he was building the megafactory in Austin and scaling up the Model 3 and I’ve done manufacturing for twenty years, I was like, “There’s no way he’s going to get this done.” What I didn’t realize is he would sleep on the factory floor to get it done. After that, I was like, “The product quality is not going to be as good. They are going to have recalls.” Then I got into my best friend’s Model Y in Boston and it’s a better car. It is designed better. I don’t bet against Elon.
I have a Model Y, too.
It’s a better car. Catching the rocket booster with the chopsticks is the coolest engineering achievement I have seen in my lifetime. I forget the exact tolerances I had this looked up but the tolerances on that relative to its size,are insane.
They make it look so easy. I watched them catch it. I was on a Southwest flight, and I had the spottiest Wi-Fi. I kept refreshing, trying to time it exactly right so that it wouldn’t be buffering.
Did you get it?
Yeah. I was almost in tears. The woman next to me was watching me because I was doing all these weird things with my hands. She was like, “What are you doing?”
It’s so funny. We haven’t had that spirit of ingenuity since the first space program. I looked at it and the number of launches. He’s done more launches than NASA has ever done. I was talking about Bezos. He did a launch. I don’t think he’s going to catch them. The Amazon business model is distribution and scale, and Elon has worked on Tesla. He is doing robots. He is doing SpaceX. I don’t know how he keeps it going. Neuralink. It’s all innovation-focused and the manufacturing is not an afterthought. He thinks manufacturing is harder than design and not marketing. That’s so interesting.
It makes a good product.
Tie that back to your thinking about a clothing brand. Is it possible to do that in a clothing brand good enough that you don’t have to market it? I don’t think that’s possible, is it?
The fashion industry, their whole thing, though, is like, “Look at our brand.” I’m thinking of Louis Vuitton, and they still make ads. I don’t know. Does Tumi advertise?
AI’s Role In The Future Of Fashion
I’ve had five Tumi suitcases. From what I understand, I don’t know if this is exactly true, I have never sourced it but they gave Jennifer Aniston a bunch of money, millions of dollars, and told her she could only carry Tumi around. That’s all she was allowed to carry, and that’s how it caught on. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Somebody can fact-check me on that, but that’s a damn good suitcase. For the money, you can spend more money than on a Tumi, but you can’t get a better bag. They never break. I got a suitcase in 2012. It has 1,000 airline segments on it, or maybe 1,500. They are good bags. Just ship. Do you see AI intersecting with fashion? That just came off the top of my head. How’s that going to materialize?
I know one of the suppliers I was considering working with was talking about how he wanted to use it. He wanted to do AI try-on hauls or customizing, “You bought these things in the past,t and here are these things,” using AI to do that. Fashion specifically, you can create clothes in Midjourney. Something that I wanted to do with Wild Bare Muse was do lingerie. I was calling it “livable lingerie” because I don’t like lacy stuff. I like cotton and more comfortable things. “Livable lingerie.” I was using Midjourney, you can type in bra top or whatever, and it will give you the most insane designs, probably ones no one has thought of. There are endless ways.
You could use AI as your design team if you had the right supply chain set up.
If you had a supplier who could cut those for you or make the patterns.
There’s a problem somebody needs to solve like a short-run supply chain.
I bet AI will solve that, like, “Here’s the picture. Now tell me what’s the pattern.”
Authenticity As The Guiding Principle For Life And Career
What do the patterns look like? What machine can I run it on? That’s a good idea. I’ll talk about that offline. I transition to themes. I go from facts to themes. I heard authenticity but one guiding principle for your life and career, what would it be?
Authenticity.
One of our firm’s values is authenticity. In the finance industry, people are very passive-aggressive, I have found. In finance or fashion? Fashion is pretty direct. They are always shaping the message, and it gets distilled down. One of the things I wanted to do and my COO, is we are going to give people the bad news all the time. We are not going to get anything. I’d love to hear your take on authenticity because it’s very important to us too.
Authenticity is a term that gets tossed around by everyone. I feel like most people now, it’s like, “Authenticity, that’s my number one principle.” It is my number one principle. I have even talked about it here, which is why I stopped posting on Instagram. I can’t lie either. I have tried to lie in the past. I can’t do it. I have to say what I’m thinking. I have to tell the person the truth. When I am posting, especially political things on X, I would never want to mislead anybody into thinking something that I don’t to get views or anything like that. It’s just so important to me.
I think about my future self, like how I would feel if I did this in a shady way right now. In a few years, whatever comes from that, how will I feel about how I handled this? That’s the thing that has always kept me more honest, and you could say integrity would be a good fit for that one. I always think about my future self. I don’t want to feel disappointed in myself down the road.
I find some of the podcasters that were originally, let’s not say moderate because it’s not even on politics. It’s on some of the crypto people, some of the startup people. They have to get more and more aggressive to get more likes and clicks, and they find it polarizing.
You can be aggressive while still being authentic, though. A lot of my posts probably come off a little bit aggressive, and that’s because those are the things I feel that I have to be most authentic on, and sometimes, when you are not aggressive, it gets lost in noise because, unfortunately, the algorithm when you piss people off with a statement, that’s going to get churned up more in the algorithm. It’s not that I do that on purpose by any means, but there are a few topics in particular that I go pretty hard on.
You can be aggressive while still being authentic. Share on XWhat are the topics you go hard on?
You have to be in a caloric deficit to lose weight. Full stop. Elon is the greatest entrepreneur and innovator of our time. Those are the two that I go hardest on. That’s my litmus test for people, too.
I think I said this on Twitter. I had a former friend of mine who was one of the CrossFit guys, and he was always like, “Your body doesn’t count calories.” I’m like, “You are a mechanical engineer. It’s a heat balance.” There are things you could do to swing that metabolism. It’s true, but it’s an energy balance. Have you found anybody who says Elon is not the greatest inventor of our time because it’s pretty dispositive that he is?
I don’t know them personally, but people tell me this all the time on X.
What do they say? Who do they say is?
They don’t have an answer and you can even ask, “Why don’t you like Elon?” “He doesn’t even do anything. He doesn’t even build the stuff he does. He gets the people to do it.” They will say he’s not ethical in the things that he does. “Who would you say is an ethical CEO? Name one.” There’s never an answer. One person told me Bill Gates, and I’m like, “He’s done a lot but we are talking about reusable rockets. This dude caught a skyscraper with chopsticks.”
It’s three times besides the Statue of Liberty and it’s something obnoxious.
The area that he covers, is prolific. I don’t understand how any person could not see greatness.
I was a naysayer at first. I didn’t think he respected manufacturing and I have heard him on Rogan, and he is like, “Manufacturing is 100 to 1,000 times harder.” He’s like, “I’m not saying design is trivial, but making it at a low cost that you can buy it is a very different situation.”
I used to not talk about him. That was one thing that I would not talk about. Even in the AI space, I would not talk about Elon because as a woman, if you like Elon or if you admire him, then they are like, “You turn to Elon. You want to have an Elon baby.” If you are a guy who likes Elon, it’s like you’re a bootlicker. They call you a meat rider or whatever. Sure. That’s what I am. I guess.
He objectively is doing good for the world. The thing I always found funny is the way they do the ESG scoring. They were saying Tesla wasn’t as good a company ESG-wise as I forget the other one. It was some oil company. He gave all the Tesla patents and made them open source. He’s like, “Make electric cars. Do it.” Nobody’s going to do it.
Even the chargers, the charging situation, they have all these dumb chargers that now everybody’s going to use the Superchargers anyway. It’s like, “Why don’t you guys listen? I don’t understand. Why do you make it harder on yourself?”
They think they could patent it, and then they will patent it. Their intellectual property is valuable, and he knows that what’s valuable is the network, which is the whole thing. They finally switched, that was the thing you wanted the same port, and that’s super obvious. Focus on X in the media side of it. Going to start a podcast. You recorded your first episode. Is there any way you see your brand evolving as X becomes the Everything app? How would you define your brand?
I don’t know. That’s why one of my favorite books is Range by David Epstein. That gave me permission not to care about a niche because that’s what everybody’s always telling you, like, “What’s your niche? What are you going to post about?” It’s like, “Today I care about this. Tomorrow, I’m probably going to be fired up about something else. I genuinely don’t know.”
I like to go with the flow of how I’m feeling because that’s how I remain authentic. Otherwise, I don’t want to talk about something that’s boring to me. I see people who talk about the same things every day on X, and that’s fine. That works for them, and that’s great, but I just could not talk about the same thing every single day.
It’s super interesting you say that because it’s a question mark of mine because I stream of consciousness, but I have a set schedule that I’m going to put in some finance content or put in some other content and I have had multiple people DM me or say, “I’m unfollowing you because you are not doing finance.”
As we were shaping up this show, it was three things, entrepreneurship, senior finance professionals, and then young career people who had a traditional background to tell their stories. That’s the number one feedback I got here. Try to be everything to everyone. I don’t think I am, but that’s interesting. What’s your podcast going to be about? What’s the theme?
We are calling it the United States of Memes. It’s going to be an all-encompassing, everything-under-the-sun. As I said, I cannot niche down. United States of Memes, everything and anything that has been communicated through meme format. We are going to talk about that and the evolution of memes and how we communicate through memes. A lot of people think a meme is something new to internet culture, but Richard Dawkins coined that quite some time ago. It’s everything.
It’s funny, and I’m going to date myself, you would hear one joke when I was in high school in the ’90s. You would hear one joke from a person, and then somebody would tell you that joke. I already heard that one and now, there’s a piece of funny content every twenty minutes. I’m going to ask you a question I feel like you know the answer to, too. How do you differentiate yourself or you don’t try, do you is what I’m thinking?
I don’t want to say I don’t try, but I am. We talked about this. I have some very quirky things, paired with childhood trauma. I grew up around a lot of boys. I was riding dirt bikes. I was tough. I didn’t cry, especially not to my dad. A lot of self-accountability. “Don’t be a little girl” is what I always tell myself. I force myself to do things. Be uncomfortable.
I try to be authentic as much as possible, and that’s also counterintuitive. Being authentic doesn’t always come naturally. Sometimes, you have to force yourself. It’s easier to go into your shell. Sometimes, you have to force yourself to be authentic. It’s easier to ride the narrative sometimes instead of saying that you think something different.
Your authentic self does not always come naturally. Sometimes, you have to force yourself to go out of your shell. Share on XThe advice I give people is to keep your monthly burn rate as low as possible because I worked with people who were making lots and lots of money, like way past six digits, and we were broken and house-poor. That, in my opinion, is what caused them not to be authentic. They structurally set their life up so they couldn’t be. I have always prided myself on that. Honestly, sometimes, to a fault, where I should tone it down and my style needs to be changed a bit.
There was an instance a while back when somebody wanted me to sign an NDA for something, and they were going to pay me $20,000 to sign this NDA, and I said, “No, thank you.” I refused because I was not going to blast anybody, but in the future, if I ever want to talk about that, I am not going to say, “I got paid money to not be able to say these things.”
It’s a typical practice when you are in the media when they exited Chris Cuomo and then when they exited Megan Kelly. You have a contract, and you could go to court and get the money, but everybody, what they do is sign the NDA and the non-disparagement clause to get the money quickly, and then they can never talk about it again. I have heard her say multiple times, “Can’t talk about that.” You didn’t want to be in that position.
I will never put myself in that position ever, for no amount of money. I can’t because I know myself. If somebody’s talking about something and I feel that I could add value by saying what, I’m going to want to say what I know. Being tied to not that $20,000 isn’t a lot. That’s a lot of money, but you know how clients work. You can get a monthly retainer that’s $20,000.
It’s easier to make money than to save money. My mom’s been clipping coupons for many years. She’s still broke.
That’s a meme that’s going around right now. The IQ curve one, and it’s like, “I need to make more,” money. I need to make more money, and then at the top, it’s like, “I need to figure out all this like financial stuff and save this money.”
It’s so funny you say that. My old firm had an exit. A guy had an exit. He was a CEO and our CO caught up with him and he was like, “Do you guys have any products I can invest in? I got $35 million in my checking account,” and that midwife guy would never have that happen. They’d have a spreadsheet running with the coupons and peel-offs. He doesn’t think about it that way.
Key Takeaways And What Stepfanie Is Most Proud Of
He thinks about it because he’s a CEO, he’s got more equity. His company went public. The mental bandwidth for that, and the thing I pound the table hard for, is those people who are like, “You should optimize your credit card points.” If that’s what you are spending time doing on the weekend, you don’t get time for anything else. That’s the tiniest little part of my mind share. What do you hope the people, the readers, take away from you or I inverse that, what are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of not stopping because when you do share so much stuff, especially personal stuff, you get a lot of hate, and there are days when I’m getting emotional, even talking about it, but there are days when it feels like it’d be so much easier to like to delete X and not share anything, but you have to keep going. I’m proud of myself. As I said, I have these weird, quirky things and I have never liked being the center of attention. It’s probably because I was with boys. That’s not how they roll.
I don’t like having a lot of attention on me and why even doing this is like, “Why do people care what I have to say?” Not quitting. I am pretty proud of that. There are a few instances where I wanted to stop and go find a regular job because it’s hard to not, it’s hard not to have a consistent paycheck that you know exactly how much it’s going to be. You have like a 401(k) and you have health benefits and all of that.
Books That Have Shaped Stepfanie’s Life
I always did from the very beginning for, say, 18 to 42, and I tell people, if you can stomach being a W-2 employee, don’t go be an entrepreneur. You have to have the itch to get it done. That’s super interesting. The last two questions. Number one, what is your favorite book or the books that have the most impact on your life? I feel like you are going to say, Range.
In order of how I read them and how they impacted me, A Universe from Nothing is by a theoretical physicist, Lawrence Krauss. This is an older book, but I found it at a thrift store and I got off of alcohol in 2020 and went on a more spiritual journey. I did mushrooms with my friend out in the middle of the desert and had this weird awakening where I was like, “I want to know more about the universe.”
I went to a thrift store and randomly found this book, and it got me interested in quantum physics and astrophysics. I went down all these deep rabbit holes after reading that. I’d say that changed my perspective. The second one would be Range by David Epstein. That one told me it was okay to be a generalist and not to feel bad that I didn’t have that. I wasn’t like a specialist in anything. That opened my mind up too, and the third one is random and I also found it at a thrift store. It’s called Spontaneous Evolution. It’s Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman.
I saw it at the thrift store. I judged it by its cover. I grabbed it and I could not put it down. It was everything from spirituality, ancient Greek philosophy, systems thinking, and the American Revolution, which I didn’t know much about admittedly, until now because of these books, and I got more into systems thinking. I read 150 books between 2023 and early 2024. I was nonstop because I wasn’t working on anything and I did shrooms and I was like, “I want to figure out what I’m doing here.”
I read all these books, and I started making a mind map. I made relational databases with all of the books that I had read and used ChatGPT to tell me about all the different themes. I made a timeline of everything that I had learned before this. I couldn’t tell you who lived during the same period. I didn’t even know that stuff because, in history, they teach you segmented bits and pieces.
It’s all dates and stuff. It’s not as interesting.
Not like how the whole system works together. I read all these books and made this mental map and had this timeline of like, “This is so interesting.” I had no idea how all this stuff worked together, but Spontaneous Evolution. Some parts are so wackadoo.
You had a hard copy book. You don’t do Kindle?
I like to highlight and flip a page. I like to annotate. Spontaneous Evolution. I will have to send you a picture. It’s marked up. It’s so crazy. I have little tabs in there.
A lot of people have asked me and I probably read 2 or 3 books a month now. How do you make time for reading? What’s your advice for people?
I have not made time for reading, do as I say, not as I do, but you have to make the time. For me, it was easier. I knew specific things that I wanted to know more about and then chose the book that was most closely aligned with that topic, which helps you stay interested. Also, if you lose interest in a book, stop reading it and then pick up a different one and start reading that.
That’s what the Naval said. Stop asking what books to read. Ask what capabilities you want to learn about and then read books to fit that, which is super interesting. Where do we find you on social media? What is your tag?
It’s @WildBareStepf.
Do you have a Substack too?
Yes. I need to be better about posting my essays here. I’m going to be honest, working on this album took a lot of time. I wrapped that up and now I am going to explore more spaces again.
The album is called Speedrunning Love. You wrote the lyrics and AI music, and you have a cool AI art page. I have followed that one, too. We are good to sit it down with. I’m very excited to hear more about your story. Hopefully, we can check it in a year.
Thank you so much for having me.
Super.
Important Links
- Stepfanie Tyler on Instagram
- Speedrunning Love
- Stepfanie Tyler on Twitter
- Wild Bare Muse
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- The Dip
- Range
- A Universe from Nothing
- Spontaneous Evolution
- Stepfanie Tyler on Substack
About Stepfanie Tyler
Creator, entrepreneur, and professional shitposter who accidentally turned sarcasm into a career. Started in retail (survived), ran a marketing agency (questionable life choices), and now writes essays nobody asked for on Substack while slowly crafting a podcast between existential crises. Recently released an AI-assisted album, Speedrunning Love, under the artist name “Summer Blake”—a deeply personal project blending vulnerability and creativity.
Uses her platform to roast bad takes, spark conversations, and prove that shitposting might just be the ultimate art form.
Follow her on X (for the meltdowns), stream the album (for the feels), and stalk her podcast (when it finally exists). You’re welcome.