Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rachel Romero. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Rachel , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
No lie, before I was able to develop any sort of instinct or expertise, I Googled everything. Marketers and digital content professionals are notorious for slamming together strange acronyms and nomenclature. I am guilty of saying stuff like, ‘Hey, can you get me a proper CTA on this email so that we can try to increase our ROI? Our CTR is way too low and now the CPA is through the roof! Maybe we can try tweaking our SEO strategy first.’ I worked in an environment that would have welcomed my questions but it would have really stopped the meeting and our creative conversations. When you’re learning something new, that level of self-service is so important. Yes, I can and should ask for help if I need it but how can I make sure that I am learning in my own way? Searching also gives you the opportunity to look at a ton of sources too, which I think is important. There’s a lot of power in being able to tell one of your colleagues, ‘I looked up what color the sky is and I am pretty sure it’s blue, which seems to be the popular consensus, but I did see some argue that it’s more green. I would love your expert opinion sometime,’ versus, ‘Hey, what color is the sky?’
For me, I wouldn’t speed up the learning process and wouldn’t recommend that anyone do so, unless it’s absolutely important. Part of remaining relevant is always learning, always paying attention, always Googling. After almost two decades of online marketing and content work, I truly believe that the learning process shouldn’t be sped up. It’s critical to take the time you need to learn! My best advice is to allocate as much time to growing and keeping up with the industries that you serve, and not to rush through it. There’s a lot of joy hidden in the process of discovering why things are the way they are. Staying curious is the best recipe for long term success as a creative.
A lot of the skills that have proven valuable to me are not anything that can be taught. It lies within that gut feeling – when, where, and how to speak up, when to give your colleagues and partners the platform to shine, when to be a cheerleader and when to be the star quarterback (please note that I included a football reference here to impress our CEO, Travis, and our COO, Ed). I am constantly still learning how to be a better colleague and leader. I absorbed a lot of these skills from paying attention to how the people that I respect carry themselves. Travis and Marisha here at Critical Role are two people that I really try to observe and model because I have always respected their approach first as humans and second as businesspeople.
Rachel , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My professional career began in my hometown of Denver, Colorado, as an architectural and structural designer. That meant that I was drawing buildings (and pieces of buildings!) and creating floor plans. I really loved that kind of work but it’s certainly not recession-proof so way back in 2008, I found myself laid off with no line of sight into when banks might be funding construction projects again. While anxiety-inducing, I have a really good friend, Brandee, who suggested that I start working for an online content company that was capitalizing on the digital revolution. At this time, traditional media outlets were also laying off a ton of wonderfully skilled writers and the company I worked for hired them and paid them based on how much traffic they were bringing to our website. Truly, one of the first content-creator models ever. There was no model for what we were doing and it was exciting.
It was wild to me that I was able to do cool content and community work for an online company because I had been busting my ass promoting an independent hip hop radio show called Basementalism that my friends and I produced. I started handing out flyers after rap shows and ended up hosting for a bit, as well as interviewing touring acts and a whole ton of fun stuff. Our show was simulcast in Poland of all places and we used to upload our audio online before Soundcloud or podcasts or any of that. Hip hop was the first community that I ever really found and I am so grateful for it. It showed me how sacred shared interest and culture can be. Basementalism was an act of love for all of us and I was a part of the team for almost seven years. It was so special to be able to build something with people that I consider my best of best friends to this day (shout out to Sean Choi and Christian Arcand!).
I moved to Los Angeles in 2011 without a real idea of what I might do out here. In retrospect, that seems super irresponsible but I landed a project management job at Machinima, which at the time carried a brand new monetization model for gaming and other content creators on YouTube. I fairly quickly moved into an audience development role and was overseeing all of our community and event marketing efforts. This was my first time getting a taste of what a more mainstream entertainment industry might feel like. I attended my first convention, threw a really bitchin’ party with Mixmaster Mike (Beastie Boys, Invisibl Skratch Piklz), and learned even more about those weird industry acronyms and how to work with talent. We built some really great communities together at Machinima.
I accepted a director-to-eventual VP-level marketing position at Legendary Digital Networks shortly after I left Machinima. There, I met the founders of Critical Role, which is the company that I currently serve. Critical Role started as a weekly livestream of a roleplaying game campaign that initially began in someone’s living room. Since the show launched in 2015, we have had the great blessing to launch and maintain our own media business which remains 100% owned by our founder group. It’s a rarity nowadays to be able to operate in this manner for almost a decade and I credit that to the hard work and passion from everyone in front of and behind the scenes. We’re fortunate to have an incredibly supportive and kind audience, that we call Critters. We really do our best to center our audience in everything that we do and that’s one of the reasons why working at Critical Role has been so meaningful to me. We all deeply care about doing right by our audience and will work tirelessly to ensure that we’re living up to the standards that we set for ourselves.
When we were ready to launch our foundation in 2020, I was honored to be asked to serve as a board member. Our leadership team believes strongly in using our platform to do good work and it’s been an honor to work alongside our board and our CRF president, Ashley Johnson, to create meaningful and successful fundraising campaigns for the causes we care about. We support a variety of different partner nonprofits that have causes that are important to us, which include supporting global LGBTQIA+ rights, childrens’ issues (poverty, cancer, creative development), and indigenous people. This has been one of my greatest achievements because we’re able to give back to the greater community in very tangible and meaningful ways.
We have a ton of cool stuff coming in 2024 and I can guarantee that 2025 will be a banger year for us as we will be celebrating ten entire years of being in business – a true dream for a media company like ours. I am so proud of Critical Role and the work that we’ve done together.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Don’t fuck it up.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://critrole.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_missrachel/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/criticalrole
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelromero/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/criticalrole
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/criticalrole
- Other: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/criticalrole
Image Credits
Professional/headshot images: Blake Jackson