Lindsay Anthony and the art of asking for someone else

Lindsay Anthony’s first product was payroll. She had graduated in 2008, wanted a job in public relations, and found herself selling a service that few people would describe as a creative calling. Door-to-door sales does, however, give a person plenty of practice approaching strangers with a proposition. There are worse apprenticeships for a future publicist. There are also apprenticeships with more comfortable shoes.

Today, Anthony is the founder and CEO of Lately Collective, a San Diego agency working with consumer brands and content creators. Her business involves asking people to pay attention, consider a collaboration, approve an idea or pay for someone’s work. The requests have changed since payroll. The need to understand the person receiving them has stayed close to the center of her career.

One clue to her approach appears in a small exchange about an almond-and-oat-milk brand. A former client spotted a celebrity’s Instagram story, recognized something familiar and sent Anthony a message: “Is this your magic?!” Lately had indeed worked on the Mooala project, from the idea through design and shipping. For someone employed to make other people visible, being recognized through the work is a pleasing reversal.

The door before the inbox

Anthony attended the University of California, Santa Barbara from 2004 to 2008. Her later professional life would be rooted in San Diego, but the first chapter after college involved sales rather than the PR role she had hoped to find. A subsequent layoff from another sales job gave her a reason to try the field again.

She entered through an internship at Formula PR, now Havas Formula. Her work there included national food and beverage brands. She then joined Olive PR in Little Italy, where she encountered the workings of a smaller business, before returning to Formula and eventually becoming a director.

Those workplaces offered different views of the same profession. A national consumer account and a smaller local agency give a publicist different problems to solve. Read together, the moves help explain the combination Anthony would later choose for her own company: consumer-brand experience delivered through a boutique business.

She launched Lately in April 2021. The early description was modest: she told people she was freelancing. Clients followed. A company name can make a beginning sound more orderly than it felt at the time; freelancing is a useful reminder that the first unit of an agency is a person agreeing to do a piece of work.

Anthony had also become a mother of two before starting the business. Her account of the launch includes the ordinary founder questions about attracting clients and making money. The distinctive part is what happened when work arrived from a direction she had not expected.

A seat on the other side

In 2022, Anthony described creator management as an unexpected fit. Her background had involved representing brands in collaborations with influencers. Helping creators manage their own partnerships put her on the other side of a transaction she already understood.

The change matters because an audience and a business are different responsibilities. Making content gives a creator something to offer. Negotiating the work, finding appropriate partners and keeping communication moving are additional jobs. Lately places those jobs alongside the public relations work that brought Anthony into the field.

In 2023, she described the company through a Venn diagram with three participants: brands, creators and media. That image is a useful explanation of her business. Each participant approaches the same material with a different interest. A company wants its product understood. A creator has to make something that belongs in their own work. An editor has a reason to be selective.

The diagram is also a portrait of the founder’s working position. She has chosen the place where people’s interests meet, which means the quality of the introduction matters. A plausible match needs more than two names on an email. Someone has to understand what makes the arrangement worthwhile for the people being introduced.

Lately’s current services give that idea some practical shape. They include brand public relations, creator management, bespoke influencer campaigns and the design of custom PR mailers. Its published client list includes Mooala, Spiceology, Sugar Bowl Bakery and Honeyfund. The work travels between a company’s message and the people who might carry it.

Someone recognized the work

The Mooala exchange offers a glimpse of the personality behind those services. Anthony’s pleasure was partly in hearing from an old client, and partly in that person recognizing another Lately brand in the wild. The account includes the shipping as well as the idea. Even a campaign with a celebrity at the visible end has a parcel somewhere in its biography.

Mooala marketing executive Jordan Campbell described being among Lately’s early clients. In Campbell’s account, moving from a large PR firm brought closer involvement from the people leading the agency and a team willing to advocate for the brand. Campbell’s praise centers on how the relationship worked, including the steady supply of ideas.

From the creator side, Lisa Fennessy, founder of The New Knew, described arriving with sponsorship negotiations consuming her attention and her work priced too low. She credited Anthony with changing the scale of what seemed possible and handling conversations on her behalf. That is an individual client’s account, with the specific priorities of an independent creator: pay, representation and confidence in the person speaking for her.

Those accounts illuminate two different reasons for hiring the same agency. Campbell wanted a partner engaged with a brand. Fennessy wanted someone she could trust to represent her work. Anthony’s business sits comfortably between those descriptions, where being quick to respond can matter as much as being clever in a pitch meeting.

Her interest in the relationship predates Lately. In February 2016, she published a LinkedIn article comparing clients with a significant other. The title promised five reasons and explicitly dispensed with the romantic material. A client-service essay timed for Valentine’s Day is a small but apt artifact of a publicist’s mind: find an occasion, then find an angle.

A business with more names in it

The family photograph on Lately’s team page places Anthony in company of a different kind. She appears with her family, smiling outdoors. It belongs alongside her description of starting the agency after having two children. The founder’s title occupies one part of a life with other people in it.

The agency, too, now has more names attached to the work. Lauren Brady leads creator partnerships; Arin Wiggins handles operations; Maddison Cervantes is listed as account director. Those responsibilities put some organizational detail around a founder’s original freelance practice. The business has people whose jobs are to look after particular parts of it.

Anthony has publicly acknowledged the people who helped her along the way. When she became a finalist in San Diego Magazine’s 2024 Celebrating Women Awards, in the Marketing and Media Pioneer category, she credited the support and mentorship of women and men in her circle.

That acknowledgement is consistent with how former colleagues describe working with her. Chelsey Korman emphasized a positive presence, imaginative ideas and media-relations ability. Meredith Tsebetzis, who worked with her at bloomspot, pointed to sales and marketing skills and an ability to establish relationships. The sales chapter remained visible to someone who had watched her work.

“happy clients and a happy team”

Anthony’s definition of success, 2022

Her definition leaves both sides of service work in the picture. Clients need to feel well represented. The people representing them need a business they can work within. It is a plain answer with fairly demanding implications for a founder responsible for both.

The next request has a budget

By 2026, Lately had received recognition as a PR Net Next Gen Awards honoree. Its award profile described a roster of 34 creators who had generated more than $4.5 million. The money belongs to the creator-revenue measure. It gives a sense of activity across the roster without turning Anthony’s personal finances into part of the story.

The agency’s public plans offer another view of the work. For a creator retreat scheduled in San Diego for February 5–7, 2026, Lately sought a brand to sponsor a bay cruise. The request named a budget of roughly $1,500 plus gifted products, and an expected group of 12 to 15 creators.

It is an unusually concrete little proposition. There is an activity, a cost and a group of people. A possible sponsor can consider an actual arrangement. The request does some of the useful work of a pitch by making the decision easier to understand.

Lately has also announced Elevate, offering management support to micro and mid-tier creators, including negotiations, contracts, pitching and strategy calls. These are practical services around the visible content. They extend the same problem Anthony encountered when she first moved from representing brands to representing people making work for them.

Her career has involved learning how to ask on behalf of different people. First came payroll customers, then consumer brands, then creators. Lately gives those years of experience a business address. Somewhere between the first introduction and the final shipment is the work Anthony has chosen to keep doing: helping somebody else make their case.