Addressing Content Creator Mental Health with Gigi Robinson
Mar 06, 2024
Join us as we sit down with Gen-Z content creator, mental health and chronic illness speaker & advocate, Gigi Robinson. Gigi was a guest on the show back in 2022 and walks us through her own personal journey, working to overcome personal health struggles and advocating for content creators in regard to pay and mental health. You'll hear how Gigi's work on both of these topics helped earn her two separate invitations from the White House.
We talk about the the challenges of the fast-paced, ever-changing digital landscape and how content creators have to blance negativity and managing their mental health. Gigi shares her initiative to create a dedicated Mental Health Day for Creators, shedding light on the urgent need for mental health resources within the creator space. Gigi also discusses authenticity, advocacy, why creators need to create a personal brand.
Join us as we sit down with Gen-Z content creator, mental health and chronic illness speaker & advocate, Gigi Robinson. Gigi was a guest on the show back in 2022 and walks us through her own personal journey, working to overcome personal health struggles and advocating for content creators in regard to pay and mental health. You'll hear how Gigi's work on both of these topics helped earn her two separate invitations from the White House.
We talk about the the challenges of the fast-paced, ever-changing digital landscape and how content creators have to blance negativity and managing their mental health. Gigi shares her initiative to create a dedicated Mental Health Day for Creators, shedding light on the urgent need for mental health resources within the creator space. Gigi also discusses authenticity, advocacy, why creators need to create a personal brand.
I realized there's a huge, huge, in my opinion missed opportunity to provide mental health resources for content creators, and a lot of creators don't talk about it until they're burnt out, and that's part of the problem. So I really wanted to create something that was dedicated just to creators.
Speaker 2:
Welcome back to the show. We are in March and it's Women's History Month and we have a wonderful guest on our show today. We are lucky to have on with us for the second time, gigi Robinson. Gigi was on the show back in 2022. And she is on again today to talk about all the new stuff she's done since then and it's kind of unbelievable to me what she has done in just two years. She has written a book since we last spoke with her, a kids book about chronic illness.
Speaker 2:
Gigi suffers from chronic illness herself. She talks about that experience and she's also been a sports-illustrated swimsuit model. So what I love about this conversation with Gigi is we talk about a wide range of things, but really what I wanted to do was get Gigi's perspective about how the influencer, the creator space, how that is evolving and how it is affecting how we think about different topics. So we get into that. We also talk about the mental health issues that a lot of influencers, a lot of people who are very active on social media, how they are handling those issues, because they do get so much hate, and we just get into, I think, a lot of very interesting topics about this space. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Gigi and we're going to jump right into it. Here we go, gigi. Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1:
Thank you so much for welcoming me back. I can't believe it's been two years since we last spoke. That is a lot of time that seemingly went by in a heartbeat.
Speaker 2:
I think, because I follow you on some of the social media platforms, I feel like I know what's going on in your life and there have been some amazing things that have happened. Let's start with, if we can, because you had this opportunity late last year to you were invited to the White House. Can you talk a little bit about what prompted the invite and how that experience was?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so for those that don't know me, I mostly have made myself known as a content creator that also is a mental health and chronic illness advocate. I spent most of my teenage years and early 20s dealing with chronic pain and chronic fatigue and dealing with a lot of pushback from my peers, from academics and even from doctors. Luckily, I have a very supportive family and some really nice friends that have supported me, but because of that, it led me to advocate for myself to the point of actually getting my diagnosis of endometriosis, which is a disease that affects one in 10 women, and that completely changed my life, and so the more that I talked about my health struggles online, the more I built my community. That led me to become the first Sports Illustrated model with a chronic illness in the magazine.
Speaker 1:
I wrote a children's book, a kids book about chronic illness, a 30 or 40 page children's book and because of that health advocacy I was actually invited to the White House twice in 2023. The first time was for a briefing on lowering health care costs, which was really cool, and that was health advocacy related. And the other passion of mine which is where I think also we've connected in many other ways is my passion for the creator economy, advocating for fair pay for content creators, helping content creators grow their brands and whatnot, and so I was invited a second time to the first ever digital media and creator economy party at the White House for the holidays, and so it was really cool to be able to go twice within a couple months of each other.
Speaker 2:
But it's all because of, I think, the compounded work that I've done over the years that's caught me here you've accomplished so much in such a short period of time, which is amazing, but I think it's also a testament to this dedication that you have for the space, this creator space, and really trying to make sure that first, you are creating content that is authentic to who you are and what your experience is, but then also advocating for others in terms of helping them build their brands, but also advocating for their fair pay in terms of what they're doing. There's so many new people coming in every day. We talked about this before we started recording that influencer. I think her channel is called Risa Tisa. I think she's got over a million followers now, probably even like two million followers, in the matter of several weeks of sharing this story, this crazy story about her life and her ex-husband and how that all went, and now she's doing brand deals. And this is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:
It's that the industry is very much driven, I think, by what is new, what's exciting, who is trending, and so that makes it so hard, I think, to maintain your business if you are someone who's doing this full time and you have to think about diversifying your income from just those brand deals. And I'm wondering are you seeing that? Are you seeing that influencers, creators, are starting to think about not just doing the brand sponsored deals but maybe affiliates, so that they're doing their own TikTok shop? I mean, I know there's a lot of different ways you can start, you can make money besides just the brand deals, but from what I understand, most creators are making the majority of their money from the brand deals. Are you seeing a shift there in terms of people trying to diversify how they're making money?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, totally Amazing points. And I think back to your point about this new breakout creator. This is the first creator that's really been like a breakout star of 2024. I think Alex Earl, at this point, was like the last real breakout star in, like Monet, and they were 2022. So there really weren't many breakout creators last year. They were still riding in their first year wave last year, in 2023. And so this is really interesting that we're seeing this, because it's kind of like whoa TikTok's been in a slowdown, like not as many creators are breaking out there.
Speaker 1:
I think the creators that were really big during COVID 2020 and 2021, those creators, the successful ones, are the ones that built their business. Some great examples are like Tori Dunlap and Vivian, too, both financial creators. They ended up both creating podcasts, both creating books, having a website, having digital courses, building an email list, and because they built a personal brand, they were able to scale. I have not seen Alex Earl do any of that. Even Charlie D'Amelio like yes, she's wrapped by UTA and UTA Ventures and she has all her partnerships with Hollister and D'Amelio shoes and whatever Like that's amazing for her, but what's her brand? She likes coffee. She doesn't have a personal brand, right, and so I think it's a huge missed opportunity for so many creators.
Speaker 1:
If this creator reset does not jump on the personal branding train and even if she gets signed and picked up by a talent agency, if she doesn't figure out what's her overall brand like, is she going to sell us something Like? She's a storyteller. She said even in one of her shows that are her 10 minute videos that she created the series to be listened to consecutively as a podcast. She didn't create it to be listened to as a video informational series where people are listening. She was like I wanted to create like a true crime style podcast where you're on your toes by the end and you had to click out and go to something else and engage next, which is so smart.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
But I think another part of it is like what's she selling? Like how is she going to actually do brand deals? How has a brand going to invest in that? Right now, we don't really know her. So I'm very curious about that.
Speaker 1:
And, to your point, other creators in my experience, yes, they're doing affiliate marketing, but I haven't been with that, and the reason why is because you'll get these brands now saying, oh well, we would love to do a paid partnership with you and you're like great, tell me more. And they're like oh, we'll give you like a 10%, 3% to 30% is the range that I've seen. Commission and I'm sitting here like creators are not your salespeople. Like our videos do have the potential to sell, they all have the potential to get in front of your ideal audience, but we are not the people that are supposed to be selling your product. You can then pay and boost our ads, which then should convert, but we are not the people that should be getting compensated for selling. If you want to include that in a paid partnership for creating the content, that's fine, but I do not think that affiliate partnerships are really sustainable long term.
Speaker 2:
Are you finding, are you seeing that I know TikTok shop is being pushed heavily? Are you seeing that influencers, creators, are making a decent amount of money if they're engaging with TikTok shop?
Speaker 1:
I have some friends that have done a lot, but I really I haven't dabbled in TikTok shop myself. But again, I do have some friends that were like I tried this and I did make a couple extra $1,000 or a couple extra $100. But I don't think the margins are big enough to make somebody want to spend the hours that you need to spend in order to sell on TikTok shop.
Speaker 2:
I think that's where the industry is going to evolve for sure, and continue to evolve. All right. I want to get to something that you've been working on that is new and, I think, a very important initiative. You are working to get a creator mental health day. I want you to explain it and what you're doing.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. So to diversify my brand that I've developed over the years, I've always had ggrobbinsoncom. I do public speaking. I wrote this book. I had a podcast Everything you Need Is Within which I put to rest, but I may start up a new podcast because I started this new company, hosts of Influence, which is to really help creators with their storytelling and personal brand building. So not just like, oh, I want to coach you to get more followers, like I could not give a shit about what number of followers you have. I think building a personal brand is what's going to keep you in the creator economy longer, and that's why I've survived.
Speaker 1:
Again, I don't have a million followers. I don't even have 500,000 followers across all my platforms, and creators don't really understand storytelling most of the time because they are falling into it. They're making videos for fun and one day something pops off and they're like I'm going to be a creator and so, aside from teaching them the business, I really want to help creators learn to scale their brands. And so, with that, the more creators I work with and the more creators I talk to, and from my personal lived experience over the years of achieving all these different things, I realized there's a huge, huge, in my opinion, missed opportunity to provide mental health resources for content creators. And the issue that I have with that is that I think they're saying there's something like 400 million creators doing this. That's a lot of people. Again, I'm going to be a creator. If you look up Creator Mental Health, you're going to get one thing from Harvard with their public health and policy school that they hosted, I actually met their team. They're super cool and they did create a specific handbook about how do creators, you know, interact with hate online. So that was one really interesting thing.
Speaker 1:
But besides that, what is there? There's really nothing that's dedicated exclusively to content creators and what they deal with online, what they deal with with their business, what they deal with with their family and friends, and so and also just the idea of what they deal with with technology. Right, like, you have to like put your phone down sometimes. I sometimes have 14 hour screen days Like that's too much, that is way too much on my phone, and so how can I optimize my business and my lifestyle to really take care of my mental health? Because sometimes you can just go down the drain and it's really hard, and a lot of creators don't talk about it until they're burnt out, and that's part of the problem. So I really wanted to create something that was dedicated just to creators.
Speaker 1:
Mental Health Awareness Month is in May, and I am working to have an official Creator Mental Health Day, and it's going to be dedicated to and focused on helping content creators. Again, like, really get off their phone. And another thing that we were talking about before we got on this call is I've been just so many mental health related events for creators, but the focus is creating content about the event. It's not actually taking something beneficial away. I think it would be cool to have, you know, content opportunities and content windows during this Creator Mental Health Day, but the focus would really be about helping creators not only with the tools and resources they need, but with an experience that they leave going. Oh wow, I didn't think about how you know programmed I am to create content because it's going to get views, and so that is what the focus is, and you guys can find more info about that very soon. You can follow me on. Linkedin is probably where I'll announce it first.
Speaker 2:
It is so clear to me that you have to very quickly learn to shut out, yeah, some of the negativity that comes at you. You know there's. I don't think I've ever spoken with a creator or an influencer who has not had hate on their content. Everyone's got an opinion, it doesn't matter, and sometimes they're stunned by what's coming at them. I'm really excited that you're doing this. I think it shows that you have a deep connection to other creators. You yourself are a creator and influencer. I think having 400,000 followers makes you very solidly an influencer, gigi. So one last question that I have is as we look forward, we are, I guess, the end of the second month of the year 2024. We've got an election coming up. We've got a lot, there's a lot going on. What do you think influencers and creators, this industry is going to have in the broader world as we move through 2024?
Speaker 1:
I think with anything political. I think since 2020, when COVID happened and when a lot of other social justice movements were happening people were almost getting influencers, were getting canceled by regular people and their followers for not speaking out about certain things, and that has kind of become the norm.
Speaker 1:
And so, fortunately or unfortunately, I anticipate another round of 2020 happening when it comes to creators getting political and not getting political, and creators almost at least talking with my friends kind of feel like they're trapped in a box, right? They're like if I say something, like you said, if they state their opinion about something, whether they are directly connected to the issue or not, which we've more recently seen a lot of uproar against, people talk about an issue and then they either get canceled or massive, massive follower growth from it because of the way that they're supporting an issue or not, and so I just find that to be really interesting. I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of that with the election coming up. I also think we're going to see a lot of brands get. They're going to stay neutral, but some brands that do political campaigns or partner with political organizations are going to partner with creators. I also anticipate the Biden administration inviting content creators a lot more this year. We've already seen at least four or five events happen this year With influencers. I know some of my friends were there yesterday or the day before with the digital team, which, by the way, I think it's really smart what they've been doing and it is a way to show that also, you don't have to be a celebrity to get here and that you can be recognized for your work. And it's not necessarily an endorsement of the White House, like you could love or hate the president, but if you still got to be in the room and take a photo with the president, you've taken a photo with one of our presidents, like that's pretty cool, and so not everyone gets to do that and I think, in some ways, because of the way that their digital strategy team has moved through this, it's made it seem accessible to people and it's made it seem less of an achievement than it is, which is messed up.
Speaker 1:
But, that said, I do think, with the political climate it's going, people are going to lose a lot of followers, like many have since October 7th. I think it's going to just continue to get more tense. I think brands are going to work with less creators who have been outspoken about specific issues. I also think that, as creators become more and more connected to their audience that believes in the same things or doesn't believe in the same things as them, we're going to see them become more activists or advocates for certain things, which I don't know if I like, because not everybody is trained to speak on certain things.
Speaker 1:
If you're becoming an activist based on infographics on social media, not being an activist like you should be involved in policy. You should have a background in policy or at least been involved with nonprofits or political people to start with. And so that's actually why, from the start, I personally distinguish myself more as an advocate, because I don't have that policy background and, yes, I'm versed in some of it, but I'm more advocating for the people and their stories rather than activating politically in policy. And so I think there's going to be a lot happening. I'm having a vision forward and I'm like this is kind of giving dumpster fire, but I do think brands are going to be very picky with who they're working with, and I don't know if I love or hate that, because sometimes I do think there are the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do, but I don't think penalizing creators for sharing what they believe in and advocating for certain groups and certain parts of their identity should be political.
Speaker 2:
Well, Dee Dee, if anyone is going to help the industry figure it out, it's you. You are blazing the trails here, still so much runway ahead of you. It's going to be very cool to kind of continue to track your story and what you're doing. If people want to do that along with me, what is the best way for them to do that?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so I think LinkedIn is where you'll find more of my hot takes, my thought leadership, my more serious industry commentary. There you can find me anywhere on socials at symbol the word it's, and then Gigi Robinson. So it's Gigi Robinson everywhere. Ggrobinsoncom LinkedIn. I'm just Gigi Robinson, or you can Google me and I respond. So if you DM me, I will respond to you, or you could email me or LinkedIn message me. I love talking with people and so this has been so much fun to talk about industry stuff. I usually get asked to talk about public speaking or branding or chronic illness, and I feel like we really dove deep into the creator economy, so this was a very enjoyable hour with you.
Speaker 2:
Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.