We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cami Sarria. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cami below.

Hi Cami, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear from you about what you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry and why it matters.

Before launching my own social media marketing agency, I spent nearly a decade working in the world of marketing for various corporations. So, it’s safe to say I’ve experienced first-hand corporate America’s biggest mistakes towards my industry.. which is the immense failure to understand how creative minds’ operate.

Since it is a corporate job, creatives are usually expected to work 9am-5pm.. meaning, they’re expected to PRODUCE & CREATE for those same 8 hours, monday through friday.

But the thing is.. creativity simply doesn’t work that way. It is impossible to FORCE your brain to be creative. Corporate America doesn’t understand how in order to produce top-notch work, as creatives we have to have very specific environment & circumstances that will trigger & aid our brains to come up with ideas.

Hand in hand with that, I think that because of this same exact reason, they tend to get the worst work possible from their creative employees. Whether they’re a social media manager, videographer, graphic designer, etc., when you’re over-worked in the way most corporate jobs over-work you—**because most of the time they hire 1 person to fulfill the job of 5, but that’s a conversation for another time**— they tend to produce mediocre or simply not their best work.

So by not understanding & RESPECTING how creatives’ minds work, corporate America is shooting themselves in the foot because they’re basically forcing their employees to create shitty, most of the time rushed & underpaid work.

This is one of the main reasons as to why I started my own company. I knew that when I was ready to start hiring employees & grow my team, I would make sure they were never underpaid nor overworked- because I want them to create to the best of THEIR abilities.

& I’m glad to know I’ve accomplished just that.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I think my love for creating started when I was a child because I grew up in a very artistic household.

We all play instruments, sing, have hobbies & play sports.. my parents always made sure that my brother & I were involved in something creative & artistic, so that naturally ignited passion in me from a very early age,

Before understanding what marketing was or that it could be a career, as a child I thought I wanted to be a fashion designer. I used to watch a show called Project Runway, (if you know you know) where fashion designers would create different pieces & do photoshoots with their designs. The moment I saw a photoshoot set I fell in love. I genuinely thought- and still think- that it was the coolest thing ever. I wanted to be there. I wanted to direct. That’s all I dreamt of.

As I got older I realized I had absolutely no skills for fashion designing, but better yet understood what exactly I had to do to get myself in rooms like that. So I began.

When I was about 16 years old I started a blog (back then it was cool, ok). I used to write weekly articles about life, skincare, fashion, personal beliefs, etc. At this point, Instagram had just started to be a thing, so I’d post my articles on my feed & just create content- which at the time was just photos.

2 years later, this same blog (that I kept up with for those few years), landed me an internship at a big PR agency. This was the first time I got to experience what it was like to work in an agency, with clients, with photoshoots & events. I was living a dream! Shortly thereafter, I moved on from being an intern to working full time.

As years went by, I quit that job & then worked for different corporations within their marketing department. During this time, I was also a full-time student at FIU pursuing my double major in Marketing & PR with a minor in social media marketing. My love for marketing & creating continued to grow through the years.

Now, having graduated, having quit my stable job, having started my own agency & now having grown my team & working with so many amazing companies & business owners, I’m so grateful my journey led me here.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Although I work in digital marketing, I’m a firm believer that word of mouth marketing is the BEST way of gaining clientele.

& in order to get that word of mouth marketing from your clients, you HAVE to build real relationships with them. I think my most effective strategy has been simply creating beautiful, inspiring, genuine bonds with all of our clients.. & the best part? it’s not even a strategy. It’s just genuine connections that happen naturally. That’s why prioritizing your client’s journey is the most important part.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

I think to maintain good energy within a team is to understand everybody’s individuality. You feel & do your best when you’re the most authentic you, so having a team/boss that encourages that is key.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.selftheagency.com
• Instagram: @selftheagency