Stephanie Carls tells powerful stories.

Stephanie’s stories teach others how to use technology as a tool to lead easier and more productive lives. By day, Stephanie works as a Customer Success Manager at Rivet and by night Stephanie creates videos for her YouTube channel My Savvy Life.

Recognizing that technology can be overwhelming, Stephanie is all about providing simple, easy-to-follow tech tips. We sat down with Stephanie to chat all things digital, her love of social media and how she finds balance in her life. 

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a passionate team member at a startup in Austin, Texas called Rivet. As a Customer Success Manager, I work with our clients to understand content and business challenges and help to develop recommendations to help solve and meet goals with our story-telling platform.

Plus, I’m a digital lifestyle enthusiast that enjoys sharing ways that technology is here to help instead of overwhelm. This could be websites, apps, wearables, etc that are changing the way we think of technology as a whole. My YouTube channel has new videos every week! It’s fun to work with brands for media segments, features on my channel, and more.

But the best part of me is being a wife and a mother. My two boys, Chase (6) and Carson (1) are so much fun and always teach me things daily!

Describe your passion for social media. When did it start? How do you engage daily? What kinds of benefits do you see in your personal or professional life?

My passion for social media started early on when I realized the impact it could have on businesses. As I began blogging about different ways businesses could use social and by doing that, I gained traction in the ever-changing world of social. Plus, it was even more fun to incorporate video into my posts as something else I could do. This by far had to be my favorite part and totally launched my passion of video.

In terms of engaging daily, it is something I put as an important part of of my day. In order to remain in-the-know, I’m constantly reading. Whatever I’m reading and find interesting and helpful to others, I make sure and share. However, building and maintaining relationships always takes precedence. I’m not on social to be a news source. I’m on social to be SOCIAL. When have we ever had this type of opportunity to meet others so easily?

What are some trends in content marketing you see for the next year?

Storytelling. Brands are realizing that it’s becoming harder and harder to keep customers attention and also attract new customers. What’s the best way to share their story? Let existing customers share why they love working with them. This is why I’m excited about working with Rivet and our customers. They are realizing we live in a world of “infobesity” and are trying to figure out what can be done to cut through the noise out there.

What motivates you? Who or what inspires you?

I’m constantly motivated by the idea of being a better version of myself than I was the previous day. It is so true that we learn something every day and whether is a big or small lesson, you have to pay attention and be willing to use that lesson in your future. If you don’t, how will you ever achieve your greatest goal? Keep trying until you get there.

How do you balance work and life?

There are days that I think there is a way to balance, but then I keep going back to realizing that there really isn’t such a thing. Think about a scale that you are trying to balance…it’s only in balance for a brief second. You are constantly working to maintain it. For me, I’m focused on immediate priorities. During work hours, that’s my priority to work with customers, but if one of my boys is sick, that changes the priority. If I’m getting ready to travel, I know not to book something the night before as I want to spend as much time as possible with my family.

Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years?

When I’m asked this question, I find it very hard to answer. In this rapidly changing world of tech, social, marketing, etc, there is really no clear answer as I’m amazed at how fast things change. I do know that it’s an exciting industry to be a part of and I’m pretty pumped to see where it will take me.

Tell us about your experience using about.me. What do you like about our platform? Do you have a favorite feature of ours?

I love that from a personal brand standpoint someone can utilize it to pull together a professional web based page, on top of that I really like the social aspect of the site and meeting more quality people.

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