We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brielle Galekovic a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Brielle thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Has your work ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized?
“What do you do?” is a question I get asked frequently, as I am sure a lot of people do. My response: “Where do I begin?” To put it simply, I am a creative professional in this new-age social and digital space. I am an on-air host and lifestyle expert, founder of my own lifestyle brand, content creator, writer, creative director, blogger, producer, event producer, branding expert, and entrepreneur. As the days change, so does what needs to be created, whether that’s content for my brand, The Gilded Bellini or for other brands. Some days I may be on-camera hosting a live lifestyle segment for the news. Most days, I am juggling managing The Gilded Bellini and my full-time career as an on-air live shopping host (think QVC or HSN-style) for a fashion brand. This career is nowhere near linear. In fact, there are more ups and downs than I can keep track of. But it is a career I truly love.
A lot of people think that just because I do on-camera work or post content on social media that it’s not only easy, but that there’s no depth; that I’m just trying to be famous or that I’m playing pretend – that I don’t have a “real job.” I’ve been told this time and time again by both friends and (non-immediate) family, believe it or not. It once really brought be down and made me second guess myself for years. But one thing that remained constant through the doubt was that I genuinely loved to bridge the gap between what I was sharing on camera and the viewers; to foster community, engagement and awareness for products, places and concepts I loved so that maybe someone on the other side would want to experience that too.
On the opposite spectrum, there are people that think anyone can do my job. Especially with TikTokers and Instagrammers getting notoriety overnight, they’re the ones who are now in the running for positions like mine just because they have influence. There is a HUGE difference between being a trained on-camera professional who can talk seamlessly for hours on end and someone who can just edit a video to tie their best moments in a bow to post. Although we all mostly see the final package with anything, just know there are hours upon hours of time, preparation, learning and perfecting in order for it to be perfect from the first sentence to the last. I’m the first person to say it – I would be failing miserably at a LOT of other careers out there (don’t even get me started on computing numbers or finance, ha!), but what I know for sure is I know in my heart this is the career I belong in. I have always been a performer and felt I have a natural ability to share a story eloquently, efficiently and in a way that people can relate to. It has not been an easy road to get to where I am at now. I am absolutely nowhere near where I want to be. But I am very happy and grateful for the path I have taken.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I was born and raised in New Jersey and really came into my own when I moved to New York City for college. It was there that I landed a position at a PR firm a day before I was finished with school. However, as can happen in life, the reality of my dream didn’t match my vision. I had interned a bunch for a few years and was exposed to the daytime TV world at my fingertips. I was even able to get my feet wet and do some on-air modeling on TV segments on networks like FOX 5 and PIX11. It all really excited me a lot more than PR did, even though I did love the branding and business side of the industry.
I realized I wanted to be able to still represent brands and tell stories, but on-camera. In that same time, I was just a young professional in the city excited to go out with my friends, really looking forward to party brunches on the weekend. It was a lifestyle! I realized no one was really talking about it in the media, though. Fast forward to a few years later when I decided to move to Southern California, I launched my blog/brand, The Gilded Bellini in 2016 that began focusing on brunch experiences in Los Angeles. My main focus was shooting Food Network-style videos alongside my videographer reviewing different brunch experiences on-camera. While this was an expensive venture at the time, I was really the only one who was doing it. Even today, you could go on Yelp and find a brief review of a place, but you won’t really get a feel for how an experience really will be unless you can see it before you go there. Essentially in all my videos, I was my viewers’ “host” into previewing their next brunch destination.
As social media and the digital world evolved, so did The Gilded Bellini. My on-camera presence ended up snowballing into me representing lifestyle, beauty, wellness, cocktail and fashion brands on different news stations’ lifestyle segments, like KTLA, FOX 5 Vegas and CBS Phoenix to name a few. I was even featured on FOX’s The F Word with Gordon Ramsay one time! Fast forward to 2021, with a LOT of hard work and dedication on my own brand and working with others, I landed a full-time live shopping host role for a fashion company and its live shopping platform. While fashion wasn’t something I had always solely focused on, I realized that throughout my career I was somehow always a live shopping host; how, may you ask? If you’ve ever watched any of my segments or have seen my content on Instagram, you’ll see I am always sharing an experience, a product or a concept that is buzz-worthy. Sometimes it’s live, sometimes it’s taped, but it’s always telling that story, bridging that gap between what’s on screen and the viewer.
I find it to be so fun and fascinating that I can help bring products to life in just one broadcast/livestream; create an environment where consumers are educated and informed; both confident and excited about their purchase(s) or an upcoming experience; connected to both you and the product(s) in a way that builds trust and enthusiasm. I am committed to taking my audience through the coolest experiences, providing engaging content, introducing innovative products and showcasing what’s trending effortlessly both through live broadcasting and online. That being said, I truly love being a trusted and relatable source for my audience.
In the future, I plan to evolve even more and focus on more lifestyle content on-camera, as well as get into some on-camera work for a few non-profit organizations I care about in an effort to spread awareness.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
Understand the magnitude of how both professional training, experience and natural talent blend together with dedication and hard work. It’s not something you just wake up and decide to do. Not everyone is a creative and that is ok. But just because someone isn’t sitting at a computer screen on a spreadsheet 8 hours a day does not mean what they’re doing isn’t challenging. I struggled for many years juggling jobs that I may have liked, but I just wasn’t passionate about. I really did yearn to just do what I felt I should be doing. But it does not happen overnight. Our jobs are not posted on normal job sites. An interview or a conversation may lead to an audition which could lead to a callback or nothing at all. It’s a lot of very high highs and very low lows. Understand that not everyone wants to be the next Kim Kardashian, but they’re just doing what they love creatively. When you really sit back and think about their talent, do you think you could do it the same way, or better? It puts it in perspective to really put yourself in another person’s shoes. It may be cliche, but I think about that a lot with other careers as well. If you open up your mind, you can open up a whole new level of respect for other people that maybe you didn’t realize was clouded by a lot of noise from other opinions before. My best advice is: be open, be understanding. Without creatives, there are many sides to business that would suffer and vice versa. It’s a world where both sides are needed!
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I have always been really driven about the trajectory of my career. But it was reinforced 2 years ago when my dad passed away from a terminal illness. It really did put life in perspective of giving my all into what I loved doing and blocking out the noise. My dad was always a huge cheerleader of mine, especially as an immigrant from Croatia (he moved to the states at 12 years old). Never in a million years would he thought it would have been possible in his lifetime to see his daughter not only be born, raised and go to college in America, but to also represent the Galekovic name on national television in her career and publicly. Call it what you want, but my small story is part of the American dream and I am very proud to continue the legacy of my dad through my work. I think that as I keep moving forward in life, my goals will change both professionally and personally but that fact alone will always be at the forefront of my mind in the good times and the challenging ones.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thegildedbellini.com
- Instagram: @thegildedbellini
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/thegildedbellini
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briellegalekovic/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/briellegalekovic
- Other: www.tiktok.com/thegildedbellini
Image Credits
Grace & Light Photo by Marisa Trujillo