How’d You Do It, Halle Robbe?
Halle, creative force behind @girlscarryingshit, joins me to discuss her career holy trinity: social media, sh*t, and shrooms
How’d You Do It? is a series where I ask people whose work I admire to break down exactly how they made it happen; the real steps, missteps, and everything in between.
Halle Robbe is the quintessential multi-hyphenate New Yorker - writer, editor, creative director - and exactly the kind of person you hope to be seated next to at a dinner party: effortlessly glamorous, hilariously sharp, and deeply sincere.
She’s the creative force behind @girlscarryingshit (GCS) and the editor-in-chief of @pinkythemagazine. In 2021, Robbe cut her teeth in influencer marketing at a New York City agency. Today, she works with companies like California Naturals, Nuuly and OLIPOP as sponsors of GCS.
For the uninitiated, @girlscarryingshit is a beloved Instagram account with over 272K followers and nearly 3,500 posts. Each image is a tribute to the universal, unspoken feminine superpower: the ability to carry more stuff than should be physically possible. Its bio says it best: “After thousands of years without pockets, non-men have evolved a superior grip to carry their shit.” Say less queen.
What draws me most to Halle’s work is her sense of humor and play - whether it’s the tiny sticky glittery hands that cover the pinky mag universe or aesthetic pictures of fingers clutching mayo, juice, lipgloss, speaker and a purse but also her purpose. She consistently uses her platform to spotlight voices that often go unheard, pairing sharp wit with deep care.
How did you first get started in your career - and was this always the plan?
I would say I was figuring it out as I went. I’m lucky to be doing something that I genuinely love, but deep down I’m a “work to live” person not a “live to work” person, so I was always more focused on what I needed to do to achieve the quality of life that I wanted and didn’t really care what job I’d have to do to achieve that. I supported myself through college in NYC working minimum-wage service industry jobs, 40-60 hours/week, because that was what I needed to do in order to pay rent, eat, and have a little left over to party. Even post-graduation, I continued on that way for the first year or so, because (even though I had a degree) it was all I was really qualified for in terms of work experience.
All that work was a blessing in disguise though because, when the pandemic hit, I was able to collect the maximum amount of Pandemic Unemployment because of all the long hours I’d worked. Ironically, I was able to save up for the first time. So when things started opening up and places started hiring again, I realized I was in a position to take an unpaid internship and get some work experience in a field that could lead to a career, rather than bouncing from job to job forever. My goal post moved from survival to getting a salaried job, which wasn’t something I’d ever cared about before — office had always seemed oppressive to me — but it looked easier than being on my feet all day and I knew I’d eventually need my own health insurance.
I found a digital marketing apprenticeship on Indeed, where you worked for free for 3-months while they taught you everything about digital marketing, then they’d make you an offer at the end to join the agency full-time.
What was your first job in the industry, and how did it shape where you are now?
I found the work at the agency extremely uninspiring. It was indeed easier than working in the service industry, but it was so boring and advertising is so purely-capitalistic. After a week or so, my boss announced that one of our clients wanted the agency to manage their social media and asked if any of us wanted to do it. There were only 5 people at the company at the time, all men except for me. Not to be gender essentialist about it, but I think it’s common knowledge that girls (and gays and gay girls) rule social media. I was eager to do anything besides keywords and SEO, so I volunteered. It was still very corporate work, but it allowed me to be a little more creative.
After another week or so, we were brainstorming ideas for how to get one of the clients’ products off the ground and I suggested we use influencers. My boss (again, a man) was like, “we can never get ahold of them” and I was like, “their emails are literally in their bios, I’ll do it.” So I did. I reached out to the emails in their bios and googled everything else about working with influencers as I went. I taught myself how to source influencers, analyze their metrics, project ROI, negotiate five-figure deals, write contracts, create briefs, comply with FTC law, etc.
Within a month, I was bringing in 10% of the company’s revenue and negotiated a full-time offer early, because I was doing something that no one else there knew how to do or wanted to learn how to do. By my third month there, I was promoted to Director of Social Media & Influencer Marketing and made my first hire, which would turn into a team of 4 within the year. I was 23.
To answer the second part of your question, I would say that my first job completely changed the trajectory of my life. Not because of where I was working or who I was working with, but because it reinforced my belief that I could do anything I set my mind to, regardless of whether or not I was officially “qualified” to do it on paper. I also started GCS while I was working there — not because I was working there, but it happened while I was there. One of the girls on my team, Barbara, was the subject of the first photo I ever posted.
Was there a specific moment when things started to ‘click’- where you felt like you were in the right place, doing the right thing? Was it launching GCS, or did it happen before?
I would say none of my jobs in corporate America ever felt like the right thing. Having a salary and benefits quickly lost its appeal when it sunk in that I’d be obligated to give 8+ hours of my day to companies that I didn’t really believe in, just because they made me the best offer. It didn’t feel like a fair trade. I’m a big proponent of working smarter, not harder, or in other words, doing the least amount of work for the most amount of money. Unfortunately most of the jobs that work that way are in male-dominated fields, like finance. But conveniently, one of the few women-dominated professions that can make finance-level money is social media influencing. I loved getting to offer some girl in Middle America five figures to post a TikTok. It made me feel like a corporate Robinhood, redistributing the wealth from greedy corporations to individual women whose lives it would actually make a difference in.
Everyday, I was having conversations with clients about how to grow their social media accounts and having my ideas struck down. But I knew how I would do it. And I knew if I could grow it to a certain size, I could be on the other side of these influencer deals, earning thousands of dollars per collaboration that I could use to fund anything I wanted — specifically, things that mattered.
I had a feeling that GCS could be the account that allowed me to do that from the beginning, but I didn’t take it seriously right away, because that (taking yourself too seriously) is the quickest way to kill a social media career before it’s even started. I used it as a way to “take the edge off” and experiment with my ideas about growth, without having to worry about answering to a client. I posted whatever I wanted, as much or as little as I wanted, whenever I wanted. It was fun!
I started pinky when it was still in the “for fun” stage, to tap into the dual meaning of “carrying shit” and as an outlet for my community to express the complex, intersectional experiences of being non-men in a world built for men. Or, more simply, Instagram is for the physical shit we carry and the magazine is for the metaphysical shit we carry; I joke that it’s for “girl stuff,” but the punchline is, of course, that “girl stuff” can be anything.
The first issue of pinky was a complete experiment that I had no expectations for, but the second issue — the “inner child” issue — really made it click for me. I flew to LA to shoot with one of my best friends, Carlotta. Neither the page or magazine were making any money yet, but we had come up with this beautiful concept to shoot during the California super bloom, so I paid out of pocket to fly there for the weekend. For those 3 days, I felt so peaceful. Not because I was in LA (a city I do not like), but because I was with one of my best friends, collaborating on a fun, meaningful project. I realized that was all I wanted to do, forever; I literally told another friend “I think this is my life’s purpose.” So I flew home, broke up with my partner who’d been asking me to focus less on GCS, and gave it my full attention. A year and a half later, the page was profitable and became my full-time job.
What does a typical day - or week - actually look like for you?
Everyday honestly looks different. I’m not the kind of person who thrives with a routine and I’m definitely not an early-morning person. The only thing I routinely do is make a To Do List for the next day before I go to bed, to clear my head before I try to sleep and help me know where to focus when I wake up. Some of the common tasks that make the To Do List are: review GCS submissions, ship orders, handle customer support emails, answer emails from brands and press, shoot content for brand deals, and work on pinky (which has its own set of subtasks, depending on where we are in the process). Right now I am the only full-time “employee,” so I am the community manager, social media manager, content editor, copywriter, partnerships negotiator, order fulfillment, customer service, creative director, photographer, accounts payable & receivable, etc. My strategy for getting it all done is basically to get the quick, easy, time-sensitive tasks out of the way first, then use whatever time is left to hyperfocus on the creative stuff that requires more of my brain. My apartment constantly looks like a tornado’s been through it, but it was just me.
Have you ever felt totally off-track or unsure if you were doing the right thing? What helped you keep going?
I think most steps that I took felt off-track, because they were, but they were also the best next step. They weren’t exactly what I wanted to be doing in the end, but they were related, tangentially, to where I wanted to end up. It’s been less like climbing a ladder and more like climbing a rock wall; sometimes you have to make a lateral move before you can move up.
What helped me keep going was giving myself permission to turn around if I realized I’d made a mistake, which I did, once or twice (like when I almost became a Real Estate agent). But for the most part, I always found a way to use where I was to help me get to where I wanted to be.
What were the key decisions or pivots that helped get you to where you are now?
Taking a low-level position to gain formal experience in something I was interested in, job-hopping when better offers came along despite the stigma, going freelance as soon as I could so that I had time for the things I was actually interested in, and — once I found something I wanted to go all-in on — choosing my career over a relationship.
Looking back - what skills or experiences were most valuable when you were just starting out?
It’s a tool not a skill, but Google. Also, getting comfortable asking for what I wanted, even if it felt like a reach. Truly the worst they can say is “no,” and you’d be surprised how often you’ll get a “yes” that leads to experiences you wouldn’t have gotten if you’d stayed quiet.
Who helped you along the way - and how did those relationships come about?
I’ve lived in New York for nearly a decade and make friends everywhere I go. Not in the sense of like, “Oh I’m so charming I make friends everywhere I go,” but that I put in the effort to connect with people wherever I am, regardless of whether they can do anything for my career — that’s important. No one wants to talk to someone who sees them as a step on a ladder. But if you make genuine connections with people over topics unrelated to your career, you never know when you might be able to help each other out down the line. At this point, I post extremely niche questions/opportunities/requests on my instagram stories at least once a week (usually more) — sometimes for myself, but often for other people — and always have at least one person in my “network” who can help or who knows someone else who can help. And even if it’s you helping them, rather than the other way around, it’s great to be a connector. Connecting other people, without there being anything in it for you, will keep your network strong.
My advice would be, make an effort to meet someone new in every room you walk into and don’t worry about “who” you’re talking to. Anyone worth talking to just wants to be talked to like a person.
If you could ask the above questions to anyone, who would it be and why?
Rayne Fisher-Quann. I’m so impressed by her Substack. How did she amass such a large following there, larger than any of her other platforms (which is pretty much an unheard-of ratio)? How does she sustain herself off it, seemingly completely, with less than 60 public posts in 4 years? Building a following on any platform usually involves prioritizing quantity over quality, at least in the beginning, so I’m fascinated by what she’s done.
What do you do outside of work that you believe helps your work/ career the most?
Can I say mushrooms?
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really love this interview! some great advice and very well written