From Hype Beast Radio, I'm Jeff Stapele and this is The Business of Hype,

a show about creative entrepreneurs, brand builders, innovators, and the realities behind the dreams they've built.

For this episode of The Business of Hype, we're going to focus in on an occupation that probably just a few years ago didn't exist at all. In fact, I find that when I meet

people who do this job, they aren't even really sure what to call it yet. So for the purposes

of this podcast, we're going to call them image consultants. So let's rewind a little bit. If we go

back a few years in the timeline of social media's history, we had blogging,

MySpace, and then Facebook, which was all very innocent and grassroots. I mean, photos were

meant to be personal and unfiltered then. After all, social media is supposed to be a reflection

of your life, and your life should be that, personal and unfiltered.

And then came Twitter, which was really all about the words.

People who excelled at writing and being able to wax poetic and short spurts excelled immediately on Twitter.

And while images and videos could be posted, it was really always an afterthought.

And then came Instagram.

And along with Instagram, higher resolution cameras on phones that we've never seen before.

So now all of a sudden, pictures you were posting on social media had a higher level of expectation.

And as you're sharing life on Instagram, you're also curating it.

Making sure everything looks, feels, and sounds as you intended it to.

Even if you took a flippant view of IG and posted purposely, poorly taken photos and

meaningless captions, that in and of itself is also a curated decision. So it really wasn't

until just recently that people realized that they might not be all that good at curating their own feed.

So they needed help. Enter the profession of image consultant.

I'm sure image consultants existed in Hollywood and the recording industries long ago,

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