We recently connected with Ella D’souza, Greta Quintini and have shared our conversation below.

Ella D’souza, Greta Quintini, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

We came up with the idea for our agency Shalla NYC when we found comfort in helping our friends. After being in LA for a couple of years and meeting so many people we had learned the industry secrets from our past jobs and decided to use them to help others! Some of our close friends were starting their careers as Influencers and didn’t know where to start. By helping them answer some emails and read contracts we organically started to be the people to come to when our friends wanted help in the influencer industry. It was a natural progression to us starting to do it more professionally and finding new people outside of our network that we could help. We loved seeing the results and success of campaign’s and projects we worked on.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

The elevator pitch is that we are a boutique talent management and event production agency. We specialize in working with influencers and creators on content strategies and in securing the best possible brand deals for them. We also work with brands in the LA area to produce events and experiences to life. No event is too big or too small!

What sets us apart from others is our dedication to our clients (both influencers and brands) that stem from our own experience of working for others. We saw the pain points in the industry, and we aimed to correct it with our own business. We create a family feel for anyone that works for us and make sure both influencers and brands know they can fully trust us.

We are very proud of the roster we have grown – some of our influencers have grown exponentially over the last few months and have started some of the current biggest social media trends. We are also proud of some of the events and experiences we have curated for our clients. Some of them were multiday involving experiences and dinners, and the feedback we got from those attending was always very positive.

How’d you meet your business partner?

We met in high school at the tender age of 15 in Rome, Italy. In school we were very different types of students but immediately starting a long lasting friendship. Unlike a lot of people in our class we both decided to go to college in the US. Greta in Boston and Ella in New York. We spent our 4 years of college visiting each other and interning in the summers in NYC. Once our careers started we still stayed close and loved working on side projects together we always saw there was something entrepreneureial in working together. We started a Blog in NYC as a passion project that we had planned to turn into a business, which unfortunately didn’t pan out because of Covid. Then we both moved to LA at separate times and found ourselves longing for more independence and way out of corporate America, Which is when we started Shalla NYC.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Our whole agency is built on long lasting relationships with people we have met along the way of our careers. Our knowledge in the space having worked on both sides (the brand and talent) is unique and helps set ourselves apart. Of the new talent we sign 80% are all from referrals of talent we already manage. We strive to give all of our talent the appropriate amount of attention and listen to their needs, help them grow and be there for them when needed. The environment we work in and with our talent is one that feels like family, we develop close relationships with them that go beyond the work. We like to think that our reputation is such and it has manifested in the amount of interest we receive of people wanting to be a part of the Shalla family!

With our brand partners and clients we always try to be timely in all of our responses, respectful and collaborative. We want to develop ling term relationships over one off deals.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shalla.nyc
• Instagram: @shalla.nyc