Sarah Boyd and the business of knowing someone

Sarah Boyd once helped arrange fashion previews in which a new stylist arrived every 15 minutes. Brands had clothes to show. Stylists had people to dress. Boyd’s job was to make the introduction useful. Then the people outside those appointments started asking to come in. A public panel followed, and some guests travelled from Italy for a discussion lasting three quarters of an hour. There was a business in the room. She still had to work out who would pay for it.

That question runs through her career: who needs to meet whom, and what makes the meeting worth something? It carried her from fashion public relations into SIMPLY’s conferences, then celebrity social-media representation, and eventually the co-CEO’s seat at The Digital Dept. Along the way, an address book became an events business, and an events business became part of a larger talent and marketing operation. The introductions kept acquiring new purposes.

01 A sister, a small town, a way in

Boyd grew up in York, Pennsylvania, and studied in Philadelphia. Los Angeles was the destination she wanted after college; she moved there in 2004. Fashion buying had initially appealed to her, until the numerical side of the work cooled her enthusiasm. The future chief revenue officer had, it seems, taken a scenic route towards the numbers.

Her sister Caroline was building a PR agency, Caro Marketing. Boyd joined her and learned a trade in which remembering somebody, following up and asking again were ordinary daily work. Her responsibilities eventually included VIP relations, bringing her into contact with stylists, editors, celebrities and their representatives. She was learning how opportunities travelled through the fashion business, and how much depended on being known to the right person.

She has been candid about the advantage her sister gave her. Later, explaining SIMPLY, she returned to people from small towns who had talent and ambition but lacked a relative already working in the industry. Creating a place where they could meet established professionals gave her own good fortune a practical second use. A connection that had helped one sister could help somebody else get started.

02 When the audience became the customer

Those early previews revealed two different kinds of demand. Brands wanted access to stylists. Aspiring fashion professionals wanted access to the people on the panel. When brands proved reluctant to fund relationship-building, Boyd shifted towards ticketed consumer events. In March 2012, she staged the first event of the independent business she was building. The idea had survived because she was prepared to change the way it earned money.

She wanted the atmosphere to change, too. Fashion PR had introduced her to people who treated being difficult as a professional qualification. Boyd had been regarded as the nice one, sometimes with the implication that she ought to correct this deficiency. She made kindness part of the proposition instead. Guests should be able to approach the people whose careers interested them, ask questions and leave with a useful relationship.

There was some less photogenic preparation behind the invitation. When she left PR, Boyd budgeted for three months without pay and did freelance consulting to help with the transition. She also made a large vision board with the speakers, sponsors and partners she hoped to work with. Later, she could look back and recognise names that had become actual collaborators. The board gave the ambition a visible form; the budget gave it a little time. Together, they suggest a founder working with both possibility and constraint. Wanting particular people in a room was a starting point. She still needed to make a proposal, find the resources and persuade them that coming would be worth their while.

“There are no mean girls here.”

Sarah Boyd, on the environment she wanted SIMPLY to create

At a Chicago conference in 2016, she explained the purpose over brunch: other people should have the kind of opening her sister had given her. Panels and networking supplied a format for doing that repeatedly. The gift bag might get taken home; the more consequential souvenir was a person willing to answer the next email. Hospitality had a commercial purpose, but it also made the first approach less forbidding.

03 The side business that changed the business

SIMPLY expanded beyond Los Angeles to New York, Chicago and Dubai. Its conferences gave people a reason to gather around fashion, beauty and the careers forming between them. Boyd’s network also contained people facing a different problem: they already had public attention, but needed help turning their online presence into a business. The relationship was established before the service had a name.

Celebrities she knew through PR began asking about blogs and monetising social accounts. Traditional representation had been organised around other work, including acting and music. Digital opportunities required their own attention. Boyd began building that capability alongside the conferences, responding to requests from people who already trusted her judgement. The new line of work grew out of an existing conversation.

The overlap suited a founder who liked bringing people together. By 2019, her work also included co-founding Moms + Babes Box, a subscription-box business for mothers and children, and contributing fashion and beauty coverage to Forbes. Events, products, editorial work and representation each gave her a different way to work with an audience. They also made the business more complicated than a conference calendar alone.

For all its emphasis on community, this was still a company that needed resources. Boyd eventually reached the point where personal relationships and a very small team could take it only so far. She approached possible acquirers. In 2017, SIMPLY joined Socialyte. Seeking a larger organisation was a decision about the work she wanted to keep building, and about how much of it she could reasonably carry herself.

04 Two CEOs, with different jobs

Boyd became president of Socialyte in March 2022. Dolphin Entertainment acquired Socialyte later that year, putting it within the same corporate family as Be Social. Boyd and Be Social founder Ali Grant already knew each other through projects and partnerships. Combining the businesses offered a way to bring their overlapping services and complementary capabilities into one agency.

The Digital Dept. launched in September 2023. Grant and Boyd became co-CEOs, with Grant also serving as chief marketing officer and Boyd as chief revenue officer. Grant described her remit as branding, marketing and the talent division; Boyd’s included new business opportunities and financial goals. Sharing the title came with a useful agreement about where each person would spend her attention.

The company’s work connects creator representation, brand strategy and experiences. For Boyd, that puts several earlier chapters within the same operation: helping talent build commercial relationships, helping brands choose partners, and bringing people together in person. The corporate structure has changed considerably since SIMPLY’s early events. The practical value of a good introduction remains easy to recognise.

05 The follower count leaves something out

Boyd’s view of influence starts with what an audience actually does. She has described creators with smaller followings producing sales while much larger accounts fail to move purchases. A large number supplies an inviting first impression. The more useful questions concern engagement, buying decisions and whether a recommendation makes sense coming from that particular person.

She also talks about refusal as part of a creator’s working life. Some of the talent she works with turn down more proposed partnerships than they accept. An audience notices when a product sits awkwardly beside everything else a person shares. The relationship that makes an endorsement valuable can be weakened by treating every available deal as equally suitable.

That thinking extends to the advice she gives people developing an online identity. Reality television can introduce someone to an audience, but she encourages talent to build a story around interests that can continue beyond the programme. On trends, she allows room for temperament: a creator who dislikes TikTok dances need not perform them on managerial instruction. Even the internet can occasionally excuse you from dancing.

06 Building a company that can introduce itself

In April 2026, Boyd discussed the journey from a tiny SIMPLY team to a company of 75 people. The central problem had become delegation: giving other people enough responsibility for the business to operate beyond its founder’s personal capacity. Finding colleagues, trusting their judgement and making them feel ownership were now as consequential as finding the next client.

“I didn’t want to feel like an island anymore.”

Sarah Boyd, on seeking support as the business grew

Her descriptions of company culture are pleasingly specific. A committee has a budget for activities. There are virtual gatherings, in-person get-togethers and a monthly book club. Office hours give colleagues somewhere to ask questions, while coffee chats make space for conversations unrelated to a campaign. A reality-TV Slack channel supplies common ground without requiring anyone to pretend they have come to discuss quarterly targets.

Remote work presents a particular complication for somebody whose professional instincts were formed through meeting people. Boyd has described long days on Zoom and a preference for seeing colleagues and clients in person. She lives in Delray Beach, Florida, while the company lists offices in Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Nashville. The person who built opportunities by gathering people now has to help a dispersed organisation feel connected.

There is a recognisable ambition beneath the acquisitions and changing titles: make it easier for people to do useful work together. Early on, that meant getting newcomers into a room with fashion professionals. Today it also means giving employees the resources and responsibility to work without every decision passing through Boyd. A successful introduction eventually permits the introducer to step aside. For someone who likes arranging the gathering, that may be the harder part.