Lindsey Culli vividly remembers the day in the fall of 2021 when she got a phone call from the counselor at her son’s Baltimore County public school alerting her that he had expressed a desire for self-harm. At the time, Calvin was a six-year-old first grader who was struggling to navigate the post-pandemic world, especially after spending his early education in front of screens.

“Calvin was one of those kids who was in kindergarten when the pandemic started,” Culli recalls. Though her son was academically high achieving, she believes that the social isolation of those years stunted his social and emotional growth. “He’s an introverted kid. He was feeling all these big feelings [at school] and he didn’t have a way to express it,” says Culli. “He was saying the most outrageous thing he could say, which terrified the guidance counselor because he started talking about self-harm.”

Naturally, this alarmed his school counselor, who took his words seriously. Thankfully, it eventually became clear that Calvin didn’t have plans to actually harm himself. “He was just kind of grasping at, ‘What is the biggest thing I can say to get somebody to pay attention because I’m not okay. I don’t know the language to talk about what’s wrong. I just know that something is.’”

Eventually, Calvin’s “big feelings” escalated to a point that Culli and Sam, Calvin’s father, decided it was time to seek professional help. Fortunately, Calvin’s school had an arrangement with a private practice therapy group that saw students during the day. His therapist diagnosed him with anxiety and began helping him learn tools to manage it.

“He started seeing a therapist that spring and it was really helpful pretty much right away,” says Culli. “[His therapist] gave him the toolbox that he needed and started putting tools in his toolbox to be able to recognize the emotions he was feeling and name them [and] work through them. That is hard when you’re an adult, but it’s especially hard when you’re only six! He’s come a really long way and it’s a testament to the therapy that he’s gotten and the people that he’s been able to work with.”

Today, Calvin is an active 10-year-old. He still struggles with anxiety—Culli thinks it is likely part of his wiring as someone who strives to be high-achieving. The difference is, when he gets those “big feelings,” he knows how to process them. Best of all, Culli has watched Calvin grow into the creative, empathetic, and thriving kid she always knew him to be.

“We named Calvin after the [comic strip] Calvin and Hobbes,” says Culli. “It turns out he’s actually a lot like the comic book Calvin! He’s very creative. He’s very bright. He’s also a really good friend. He has so much empathy, which probably hinders his mental health a little bit because he takes on other people’s feelings and emotions. I think it’s both a strength and also a challenge to be an empathetic and compassionate person in a world that can be so tough. But now he has the tools to manage it.”

Calvin’s experience with anxiety as a young child is not unique. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 10 percent of children between the ages of three and 17 have a diagnosed anxiety disorder. Experts contend that it’s normal for kids to experience occasional anxiety about stressful things like academics or social situations. But the National Institutes of Health (NIH) explains that anxiety becomes a disorder when it does not go away and its symptoms interfere with daily activities.

Biologically, the way our bodies experience anxiety is similar to the way we process fear. Fear keeps us safe from danger, preparing our bodies for “fight or flight.” Our heart and breathing quicken to boost oxygen flow to our brain. Our muscles tense up to prepare us to run, fight, or hide. Our minds zoom in with a laser focus on the threat to determine the best plan for safety. Anxiety is the body’s response to a perceived threat.

While this heightened state of awareness is helpful for actual danger, living in a state of high alert about unspecific future threats can be overwhelming—especially for children who may not have the tools to manage these feelings.

Krista Dhruv, LCSW-C, is an individual and family therapist and educational consultant based in Baltimore. She has served as a counselor in K 12 schools and higher education settings and has observed how anxiety presents in children of all different ages.

“Starting with our youngest kids, they might experience somatic symptoms, like belly aches, headaches, and disrupted sleep,” explains Dhruv. “It manifests physically because anxiety is in the body. It’s hormonal—cortisol and adrenaline, a hormonal response to perceived fear, metabolizes in the body. [Anxiety] also shows up as worry language: a lot of ‘what ifs’—‘What if you forget to pick me up? What if nobody wants to play with me? What if I eat something and it makes me sick?’”

Research suggests that the causes of childhood anxiety are complex. Some children may be more sensitive to strong emotions or have a biological tendency toward anxiety. For others, anxiety may develop as a reaction to a significant stressful event, like a death in the family. Environmental stressors, such as food insecurity, parents who fight or argue, or experiences of bullying, abuse, and neglect can also cause anxiety in young people.

Further, larger events and issues, such as climate change or global instability, may also impact children’s wellness—especially for older kids who may be more aware. An often-cited study conducted by the Pew Research Center indicates that more than half of teenagers are worried about a shooting happening at their school.

Other environmental factors inducing worry are, well, the environment. A recent survey published in The Lancet polled 10,000 young people across 10 countries, revealing that as many as 84 percent of respondents were worried about climate change, with 45 percent reporting that climate anxiety affected their daily lives.

Regardless of the constellation of causes behind anxiety, it is important to note that it is on the rise. A Department of Health and Human Resources report in 2022 noted that between 2016 and 2020, the number of children ages 3-17 years diagnosed with anxiety grew by 29 percent and those with depression by 27 percent.

This is important on many levels, not least of which is that a mental health condition is a risk factor for suicide, which is also on the rise among young people.

Increasingly, experts point to a growing cause of mental illness in young people: social media and phone use.  Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, claims that what he terms a “phone-based childhood” is to blame for a many of these unsettling youth mental health trends.

In fact, so great is the impact of social media that U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy recently called on Congress to require warning labels on social media sites to communicate their potential harms, especially for the developing adolescent brain. And Australia just passed a groundbreaking ban on a social media for children 16 and under.

Haidt likens young people’s unrestrained exploration of this new virtual frontier to launching our children to the planet Mars without first doing an appropriate amount of research to realize their bodies and minds are not suited to survive this alternate planet. The research he presents in his book posits that “overprotection in the real world and under-protection in the virtual world are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.” Kids’ brains are literally being rewired during their crucial early, brain-building years.

“In this new phone-based childhood, free play, attunement, and local models for social learning are replaced by screen time, asynchronous [or non-real-time] interaction, and influencers chosen by algorithms. Children are, in a sense, deprived of childhood,” explains Haidt.

Anxiety can show up as what ifs: ‘What if you forget to pick me up?’ ‘What if nobody wants to play with me?’

Dhruv agrees and has observed the impact of screen time on today’s youth. “[Social media] is kind of experience where young people are socializing and interacting, but being that they’re online, the whole body isn’t involved—it’s disembodied. Young children aren’t outside as much playing and climbing trees—maybe even spraining an ankle. Kids aren’t taking healthy risks, which are imperative to healthy development.”

“These are normative life experiences that build our resilience and develop a growth mindset,” Dhruv continues. “When most of our [socializing and recreation] is happening online, whether it is video games or through social influencers, we lose that ability to take risks, social or physical or emotional, and to really experience failure as well as success, which is part of life.”

She echoes Haidt’s ideas about asynchronous interactions: “I might text you this morning about a funny thing that my dog did and you might not text me back until 3 o’clock today with a cute little emoji, which feels good.”

But something is off: Human beings aren’t meant to communicate via delayed reaction or strictly through our laptops or phones.

“We are wired to be in community and in connection,” she says. “We should be able to read body language. If I say something and a friend grimaces, I realize I probably shouldn’t say that again, or I should check in with her about that. [With online socializing], we lose all that nuance of the human experience.”

There is, however, a silver lining to the over-sharing that is often seen on social media. Experts note that children are increasingly likely to talk about their mental health with transparency, which is steadily chipping away at the stigma of mental illness. There are additional benefits to phone use and social media. For example, many kids who may feel marginalized due to their differences can more easily find their community online.

And experts are keen to note that the phone itself is not the enemy: If used responsibly, it’s a valuable tool to help us connect and make life easier. The key is to make sure parents place limits on the amount of time kids spend on screens and the content they view.

“The one positive about social media is that it allows access for a great deal more information,” explains Chad Lennon, MD, a child and adolescent psychiatrist for Sheppard Pratt. “People are communicating more about their mental health.”

Young people are more aware of mental illness—and the resources available to help.

“What has happened over the past 10, maybe 15, years or so is a complete shift. Now what we see that most of the people coming to us for services, whether it’s in a school environment or private practice, are already coming with the diagnostic language. They’re coming with deep attunement to their emotional experience, saying specifically, ‘I have anxiety,’ or ‘I think I’m neurodivergent,’ or ‘I’ve had this many years of treatment,’” shares Dhruv.

And therapy really does help. Calvin is a perfect example. The tools his therapist gave him were the key ingredients for helping him return to the thriving and intelligent kid his parents knew him to be.

“I think therapy is very helpful for everyone, but if you have anxiety, without [therapy], it can be hard to go through daily life and not get overwhelmed or upset,” says Calvin, with a thoughtfulness and maturity that belies his years. “Therapy has helped me to be able to be in certain places or spaces and without feeling afraid or anxious. I have more friends now and I can do things I think would be fun without being overwhelmed or afraid.”

For parents of children with anxiety, sometimes it’s hard to know what they can do to help. Lennon advises the following game plan: “First, parents really need to know themselves. The best way to help your own child is if you have a sense of your own emotional regulation,” he says. “Secondly, I’m really big on helping kids develop coping skills—and I use that term very generally because really anything can be a coping skill, as long as you know it helps you reduce your anxiety. Coping skills can be anything from playing a sport, going for a walk, taking a deep breath, reading or drawing, connecting with friends, even video games can be helpful, if used properly.

“[Thirdly,] connect with someone you trust,” shares Lennon, who adds that this doesn’t necessarily need to be a therapist. “This could be a parent, aunt, uncle, or coach. Helping a child connect to someone they trust helps them realize they are not alone, which goes a long way toward reducing anxiety.”

Therapist Krista Dhruv also advises that a great starting point for finding help for school-aged children is the school counselor and/or pediatrician. “The school counselor is a great first place to go,” she says. “They don’t necessarily know your child best, but they know this age range really well and can help you understand this developmental stage and what’s normative, typical, or atypical behavior.”

The family’s pediatrician is also trained to spot an anxiety disorder or help a family understand how to best help a child. Furthermore, they can examine if there is a physical cause for anxiety, especially when a child presents with somatic complaints. Finally, there’s a practical consideration for reaching out to the pediatrician: They can provide a referral for mental health services, which in many cases makes it easier for your health insurance to defray these expenses.

Fortunately, experts agree that most children with anxiety can reduce its impact through a combination of therapy, appropriate medication, and lifestyle changes.

Natalie Wynn is quite possibly the most famous person you’ve never heard of. She’s what you would call social media famous. Gen Z and millennial famous. And certainly LGBTQ+ famous.

Her YouTube channel, where she posts under the moniker ContraPoints, has 1.79-million subscribers. She also has more than 30,000 paid Patreon subscribers, who get additional quick hit videos, called Tangents, made just for them. She has a Reddit account devoted to her, with breathless posts that follow her every move. “Let Mother Be Tired,” one was titled, when Wynn posted on X (formerly Twitter) that she was overworked.

“Does anyone know if there are any books that Natalie has recommended?” queries another. A third gushes about Wynn’s appearance in a recent video (“such a serve”).

She has fans. She has haters. She has articles written about her (there was a profile in The New Yorker, no less, that said she was “one of the few Internet demi-celebrities who is as clever as she thinks she is”). She’s been idolized. She’s been canceled. She’s been vilified. And she lives in Baltimore.

So who exactly is Natalie Wynn?

When I suggest to her that she’s a “Millennial Trans Fran Lebowitz,” she doesn’t object. “I do think Fran would be a Youtuber if she were my generation,” she says of the famed orator, known for her sharp wit and fearless candor.

I’m interviewing Wynn, 35, in her Baltimore City brownstone, a three-story home that looks like a cross between a Gilded- Age mansion and a Victorian brothel. She decorated it all herself, which will come as no surprise to those who have seen her videos, replete with elaborate backdrops—candles, books, tapestries, claw-foot tubs, and more—that she set-designs herself.

Today she’s dressed simply, in a T-shirt and artfully paint-splattered cardigan. She has long dark blonde hair. She’s tall and slender. Pretty, by almost every Western standard, but in a slightly quirky way, like all those knock-kneed girls Tyra Banks transformed into super models on America’s Next Top Model.

Her videos have a fairly wide range of topics, but they mostly focus on gender, transphobia, cancel culture, bigots, and narrow-mindedness in general. She’s not afraid to go after high-profile figures like Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and J.K. Rowling, backlash be damned.

One video from 2018 is called “Incels,” where she discusses the scourge of the “involuntary celibate” movement and talks to a skull, a la Hamlet. In another video, made in 2020, called “Shame,” she is nearly naked, Adam-and- Eve-style, with a crown of flowers and a dense, floral backdrop. Another recent video is about her unlikely love of the Twilight series. (She argues that female sexuality, even if it involves a hot teen vampire, should be celebrated, not kink-shamed.)

For that one, she’s sitting in her study, a dark, reddish-cast room—it happens to be the same one we’re sitting in now—illuminated by candles and the soft glow of tasseled vintage lamps. In the same room, there are also important-looking brown leather chairs; a carved chessboard; cluttered bookshelves, and, thrillingly, a ladder on wheels to reach the bookcase’s highest shelves.

The videos often have a classical music score, which tracks, as Wynn went to Berklee College of Music as an undergrad. (She plays piano and, more recently, the harpsichord. Downstairs in her brownstone, a semi-grand piano sits across from a beautifully ornate harpsichord, as though prepared for a round of dueling keyboards.)

She often does costume or even set changes, mid-video. She also has conversations with herself—playing both herself and a skeptical interrogator. She does voices, accents, characters. She interjects video clips and photos, often for comedic purposes. She wears hats (so many hats).

In a world of bare bones podcasts and boring Twitch streamers, Wynn puts on a show. Which is a good thing, because the videos can be up to three hours long. Yes, three hours of just Natalie Wynn talking. (TikTok is not the medium for her. She puts the “long” in long-form video.) But the talking is captivating—funny, erudite, provocative. She’s the coolest philosophy professor you never had.

Wynn grew up in Vienna, VA, with a medical doctor mother and an academic psychologist father (they’ve since divorced). She says her childhood wasn’t all that great.

“I mean, it’s not like I was working in the salt mines or anything,” she says. “But I wasn’t happy—there was lots of psychiatry involved.”

The gender exploration came later. She rues the fact that she didn’t grow up during our current gender revolution—it might’ve helped her figure things out more quickly. But mostly, she says, she was restless, anxious, and a little depressed.

She dropped out of Berklee and eventually landed at Georgetown, where her father worked. “I got a massive tuition benefit because, you know, nepotism,” she cracks. After graduation in 2012, she got a master’s degree in philosophy from Northwestern. The philosophy degree comes through often in her videos, where she routinely quotes Spinoza, Wittgenstein, and Socrates.

After Northwestern, she moved to Baltimore in 2015 because she was dating someone who lived here. It didn’t work out. “Once you switch your long-distance relationship to a short-distance relationship, the whole dynamic changes and it falls apart,” she says.

But she had fallen in love with Baltimore—it’s unpretentiousness, the beauty of its architecture, the history, its “weirdness,” the fact that “it feels like nature might reclaim the city at any moment,” she says. And she has joined the cult of RoFo—“a KFC inside a 7-Eleven,” she marvels. So she decided to stay.

At first, she was doing the gig economy thing. She gave piano lessons. She drove an Uber. She did some copywriting for Overstock.com. (“I remember this anger at having to write five paragraphs on a pillowcase,” she says.) It was around 2014 and something called GamerGate was going on—basically, a misogynistic harassment campaign directed at women who had the temerity to enter the previously male-centric world of gaming. In a way it was a precursor to a lot of the  toxic things still happening in our culture—QAnon, the alt-right, doxxing.

That was when Wynn made her first YouTube video, about GamerGate. It didn’t do very well. But she kept making them and started gaining a following.

“I got viewers because I was making responses to bigger creators,” she explains.

She also got better at making the videos—and adopted the melodramatic, rococo style she has now become famous for.

IN A WORLD OF BARE BONES PODCASTS AND BORING TWITCH STREAMERS, WYNN PUTS ON A SHOW.

The follow-count grew and soon she was actually able to make a living at it. Ads weren’t going to be her ticket to success—YouTube monitors video content closely and Wynn was talking about some controversial topics. (She’s fairly sanguine about that fact: “If you’re, like, Squarespace or something, you’re not going to want to have your company advertising on a video about Nazis—even if your video is anti-Nazi.”) So she started a Patreon account, where fans could support her and get access to exclusive content.

All the while, she was gaining clarity about the fact that she was trans. In the videos, she began messing with gender, wearing wigs and makeup and dresses—even talking about her sexuality (she’s a lesbian). But she wasn’t quite ready to go out in public that way.

“Something about YouTube makes it easier to say things that you wouldn’t even say to your own family,” she explains. “Like, when you’re alone in your room, you can say things to a camera that would be hard to say to anyone else.”

She medically transitioned in 2017. I ask her if it was scary to do that in front of a camera. “Yes, it was, but in a way I didn’t fully understand how scary it was, which is good,” she says. “Otherwise, I might not have done it.”

And she freely admits that she became a little addicted to the online attention—the frisson of excitement she got when her view-count rose, the endorphin rush of receiving hundreds of comments (yes, she reads the comments). “It was exhilarating,” she says.

Until it wasn’t.

One of the reasons why Wynn talks a lot about cancel culture is because she was briefly canceled herself. It’s inevitable, in a way, when you’re that famous. With great success comes a great backlash. Yet it was a bit confusing at first.

“When you are someone who has gotten big online because people presumably want to know your thoughts on things and suddenly people are getting mad at you for doing just that, you’re like, ‘Why are you getting mad at me for saying my opinion? I’m a professional opinion-haver!’” she says.

It wasn’t just the right-wingers and centrists and J.K. Rowling fans who were gunning for her. She could handle that. It was members of her own tribe—the trans community, who thought Wynn was “failing her role as a spokesperson,” she says.

The worst came when Wynn made a video using a controversial trans activist named Buck Angel. (Ironically, Angel was enlisted to read a quote by John Waters.) To many in the trans community, Angel is something called a “transmedicalist,” meaning he thinks the only authentic trans people are the ones who have medically transitioned. By merely associating with him, Wynn herself was canceled by her own community. It was harsh. It was hurtful. And it made her paranoid.

“I can remember in 2019 literally walking around Baltimore with, like, a hoodie and sunglasses and earphones,” she says.

But it passed, as it always does. She’s learned a lot from it—basically that when the internet mob comes for you, the best thing to do is to say nothing or quickly apologize.

“Either way would be better than defending yourself, because you start posting a thread: ‘Part one of 26: Here’s why these people are wrong and why I’m right.’ The minute you start doing that, you’re beginning a spiral downwards into complete madness,” she says.

“…YOU CAN SAY THINGS TO A CAMERA THAT WOULD BE HARD TO SAY TO ANYONE ELSE…”

But it didn’t stop her from courting controversy, which brings us back to J.K. Rowling. Yes, that J.K. Rowling, billionaire authoress of the Harry Potter series. For some reason, Rowling has become obsessed with trans women. She’s someone who is disparagingly referred to as a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist)—meaning she doesn’t think trans women should be in traditionally female spaces (bathrooms, locker rooms, female sports teams, etc.). Rowling has been vilified in some circles for her perspective—and cheered on in others—but she continues to double down on it.

Wynn has been one of her loudest detractors, which feels a bit like a loss to her.

“I loved Harry Potter—I used HTML to make a Harry Potter fan website when I was a kid! Harry Potter has a very widespread appeal, of course, but I think especially among people who are sort of bookish or like, quirky misfits. Because it’s such an escapist fantasy: You’re in this mundane world where you’re mistreated by your family and it actually turns out you’re really special, magical even. You get this letter and you go to this other world and another school where you’re a celebrity, and you’re the most important person in the world!”

She laughs and shakes her head. “So like a lot of her core audience is who she’s attacking here.”

Wynn was recently a guest on a hit podcast called “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.” Wynn acquitted herself well—she was calm and articulate and persuasive. But she immediately regretted doing the podcast, which was mostly defending Rowling. She feared a backlash—so she got in front of it, taping a video about the podcast where she explained why she shouldn’t have done it. The video was nearly two hours long and got five million views.

“I actually think that I succeeded in damage-controlling it,” she says.

She’s getting better at this stuff. Negotiating potential backlash, ignoring the haters, recognizing that the internet is not real life.

Which is a good thing. Because she will never stop speaking her mind and speaking truth to power. Bigots, liars, and hypocrites, consider yourselves warned.

Last Wednesday, hordes of art lovers gathered on the sidewalk of Art Museum Drive to take in the illumination of Tavares Strachan’s exhibit In Broad Daylight. Above the grand columns and staircase of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the orange letters came to life in front of everyone’s eyes. And, thanks to social media, everyone following along at home also had a front row seat.

Not only has social media been great for promotion and education, but it’s also redefining how the art world operates.

“It gives everyone equal access digitally to get their work out there and to get the word out about what they’re doing,” said Andrea Boston, the social media manager for the BMA. “I use social media to share facts about an artist or to share the history behind the work of art. It creates this experience with art and what’s going on behind the doors in real-time.”

Aside from artists using it to sidestep galleries to make a name for themselves, social media also makes it easier to sell their work. Boston says that she’s actually purchased prints from artists through Instagram and notices that some even forego professional websites for Facebook and Instagram accounts instead.

“Social media requires strong imagery and a compelling message, which is perfect for art,” she said. “Particularly Instagram, which is a platform that is pretty much designed for beautiful, well-curated photos. That’s the perfect soil for artists to grow a following.”

For local visual artist Hoesy Corona, he believes that social media is a game changer for the art world. By opening up the possibilities that were once limited to reach potential audiences, it’s helped him to establish his brand on his own terms.

“I tend to use it as a professional extension of my studio practice—a virtual marketing assistant of sorts,” he says. “I can give both insight into my studio process, as well as keep my audience informed about my goings-on.”

Strachan himself has a complicated relationship with social media. While he believes that it’s beneficial to his craft, he also knows it’s hard to escape. As an artist, he has to make sure that his work remains the most important thing.

“The art world and being an artist has become kind of global I think,” he says. “It allows for us to stay connected.”

Corona shares a similar philosophy about the influence of social media and believes that it will only continue to help open the doors for artists and patrons alike.

“Just a handful of years ago, artists were limited by the ways in which they could reach potential audiences and had to rely on discriminating middlepersons to sell their goods or gain access to show their work,” he explains. “Social media gives artists plenty of exposure without the help of predatory arts professionals which allows smaller independent artist run spaces to carve a niche for themselves and build a wider audience.”

The BMA has seen that happen quite literally. In just one year, their Instagram followers have grown from 8,000 to nearly 17,000 due to what Boston describes as “growing interest in the dope things the museum has been doing.” By using Instagram and other social media channels to share what’s new or coming soon, they have been able to draw in more visitors than they would have a decade ago.

“Our numbers show it,” she says. “It creates this immediacy and accessibility that we didn’t have before. It opens this portal to art and discovery that may have felt exclusive or roped off in the past.”

When Emily Berman began selling LuLaRoe in January of 2017, what she pictured was a significant discount on her favorite printed leggings, not necessarily hundreds of pieces of clothing stacked up against the walls of her Towson townhome. “I liked doing it, and thought it was fun,” says Berman. “But it was really easy to see how it could take over people’s lives.”

LuLaRoe is just one example of multi-level marketing (MLM), a strategy used by direct sales companies to get existing distributors to recruit new ones. Whether they’re selling patterned leggings, skincare products, nail stickers, or essential oils, these companies are more widespread than ever, aided in large part by social media and the internet. A record 20.5 million people were involved in direct selling in the United States in 2016, and the industry as a whole racked up an estimated $35.5 billion that same year.

But to say MLM companies have a glowing reputation might be a bit of a stretch; many people still consider them pyramid schemes. While pyramid schemes place their focus on rewarding people for recruitment and expansion, a legitimate MLM company pays its distributors for simply selling its products to consumers.

“You still need to be careful,” says Stacie Bosley, associate professor of economics at Hamline University and an expert in multi-level marketing. “Even in cases where you have a viable product that people want to engage with, you can still have trouble turning a profit, and I think that is the reality of a lot of modern MLM experiences.”

While there is no documented history of the origin of MLM companies, there is proof that these types of businesses existed as early as the late 19th century with the California Perfume Company, which eventually became Avon Products in 1932. The original MLM business model relied on in-home parties and door knocking to get the word out in sellers’ neighborhoods—think Tupperware and Mary Kay.

Pasadena resident Gina Cook knows these methods well, as she’s been selling Avon for the past 23 years. After moving to a new area, she was looking for something that she could do at home while raising her four children that would also allow her some time outside of the house. But things were much different in 1995. When Gina began selling Avon she was assigned to a certain territory and all selling was done by word of mouth.

“We used to do paper purchase orders that had to be delivered to a local Avon representative’s house at noon on Saturdays,” says Cook. “When I started, the catalogs were about 80 pages, and now they are well over 200 because we offer so many products and, because of that, I have customers that place orders with me every time a new catalog comes out.”

Today, Cook does it all. She is a member of the Pasadena Business Association, where she makes connections with local merchants, participates in networking events, and has become a known figure in the business community. “I’m the only person that drives around Pasadena with pink eyelashes on my van and lipstick on my windows,” laughs Cook. “Everybody knows me.”

While technology has changed, Cook got into the business for the same reasons as people do today—to support her family, establish independence, and gain meaningful social connections.

That was also the case for Kristin Albrecht, who began selling the cosmetic brand SeneGence this past September. Albrecht received SeneGence’s star product, Lipsense, a long-lasting lip color, as a Christmas gift. “I had never heard of it before, but I liked the color, so I gave it a try,” says Albrecht. “That is when my obsession began.”

Albrecht wanted to buy new colors and ended up connecting with a former high school classmate who sold SeneGence on Facebook. “I was spending so much money on the products that she reached out to me to see if I would be interested in selling,” says Albrecht. “She told me I wasn’t going to be forced to sell to other people and I would get a discount, so I signed up.”

Albrecht, who is also a store manager at Aldo Shoes in Annapolis and runs her own fashion blog, felt SeneGence was a great fit for her, with products she loves and an opportunity to widen her social circle. “My mentor and I weren’t best friends in high school, but through this experience our friendship has grown to her being one of my best friends,” she says. “Even if I were to stop selling SeneGence one day, these girls I’ve met will probably always be some of my closest friends. It’s just a great group of empowering women, and I’m all about that.”

For stay-at-home mom Melissa Renno, venturing into MLM was also about finding common bonds. She began selling Young Living essential oils after hearing about them from an acquaintance at an adoption conference she attended. The younger of her two sons, both adopted from China, was having trouble sleeping and, after trying everything, she was persuaded to give Young Living essential oils a try. When Renno started using the oils at bedtime, her son began to sleep well and has ever since.

That was three-and-a-half years ago, and she hasn’t looked back. The acquaintance—who eventually brought Renno on board as a distributer at Young Living—is now one of her best friends, and she has met many other amazing women and families through the company.

The idea of being your own boss and creating something from the ground up is what draws many people to multi-level marketing companies.

“I was 35 when I started this, and I was at home with two small children, dealing with the unique blessings and struggles that come with adoption, and I was feeling kind of lost,” she says. “I love being a mom, and I love my kids, but to be honest, I don’t love being a stay-at-home mom, and to meet people who felt the same was amazing. It was just this awakening of a creative part of me that kind of got stuffed down in the years after we brought our children home.”

Renno now has nearly 8,000 people in her downline—or the successive roster of sellers she has signed up, those they have signed up, and so forth—and it continues to grow. “The business part comes naturally when you are sharing products to help people live healthier lives,” she says. “It’s not about signing people up, or achieving a certain rank, it’s first and foremost about wellness.”

Many MLM companies seem to offer people a way to have it all: a career with flexibility, new friends, a way to stay at home and spend more time with their children, and extra money. (A 2016 study by the Direct Selling Association found that 74 percent of MLM representatives are women.) But there are still many uncertainties with some of these companies to take into consideration.

“It’s a treacherous landscape in a developed economy,” says Bosley. “One of the things that I find frustrating is that a lot of MLM rhetoric seems to want to defy the rules of economics: You’re in your own safe space and the sky’s the limit! But that’s not true. You may have a product that people to seem to like to come together to try to consume, but they still have to butt up against the reality of the marketplace, which is Amazon, Target, and every other possible substitute.”

The idea of being your own boss and creating something from the ground up is what draws many people to MLM companies. But the rules and restrictions some companies put on their distributors can have the opposite effect. For example, some companies don’t allow refunds if a distributor decides to throw in the towel, leaving that person with a significant financial loss.

“I never felt like a small business owner in this,” says Berman. “To me, a small business owner would have a lot more choice than you do in these companies.”

The way the system is set up, there is no way of guaranteeing financial stability unless you have reached a certain level of success within the “pyramid.” In some instances, the company has already flooded the market and, by onboarding someone else beneath you, you are essentially creating your newest competitor.

Additionally, the hyperbolic language sometimes used by these companies can inflict guilt and shame upon people who aren’t able to execute the business successfully. This leads to what Bosley calls “gain framing,” which is when sales associates wave around big checks and discuss their promotions without being completely honest about how much of their own money they are putting into the business.

For Berman, it was an old high school friend who convinced her to start selling LuLaRoe products. But she became skeptical pretty early on.

“After signing up, there was a six-week waiting period, which really should have been a red flag to me that there were way too many people selling it,” she says. “You didn’t know when they were going to call you, and when they did you had to be ready to give them your credit card number right away.”

Just one quick search on YouTube and you will see a plethora of videos of women crying because of their newly acquired debt from their experience with a MLM company.

“There is a part of the MLM world that’s absolutely an intersection with fraud, and we need to figure that out,” says Bosley. She notes that, because it takes so long for the Federal Trade Commission to prosecute these cases, it can be difficult to spot bad actors from a distance. At the same time, she warns, even legitimate companies can pose high risks. “There are companies that have enough sales to be legitimate, but they can still have sellers who struggle to profit,” she says. “I’m concerned for those who fall for a fraudulent opportunity, and I’m also concerned for the variants involved even when it is done legally.” (Indeed, there are currently several lawsuits facing LuLaRoe, as well as a proposed class action lawsuit calling the company an all-out pyramid scheme, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.)

“You may have a product that people to seem to like to come together to try to consume, but they still have to butt up against the reality of the marketplace.”

Those concerns are only amplified by the prevalence of social media. If it seems like your Facebook and Instagram feeds are overflowing with friends and acquaintances peddling the latest in cosmetics or cooking essentials, you are not alone. Social media has kicked MLM companies into high gear.

In the past eight years, there has been a 30 percent increase in multi-level marketing sales, according to Atlantic Media’s business news site, Quartz. MLM companies are able to reach their consumers now with the click of a button by forming a Facebook group, firing up a live video stream, and posting photos and video content to their thoughtfully branded Instagram pages. The connection is instant, and they are able to reach people all over the world.

Companies like Avon, which reached peak success in the ’60s and ’70s, did so because they were the simplest way for people living in the suburbs to have access to the kind of luxury products only found at the nearest department store, which could be hours away. Now, social media is able to provide the same easy purchase from the comfort of your own home.

“Avon now gives everyone that signs up a website,” says Cook, who also has a Facebook page, Gina the Pasadena Avon Lady, where she can be in direct contact with her customers if they have any concerns.

Renno also has a website with information about her products and how she is using them, and she posts weekly Facebook Live videos on her personal page to show off new merchandise. Hosting “parties” on Facebook, where you invite people to purchase goods for a limited time through live videos and contests, is another common MLM practice. It allows both buyer and seller to establish a genuine connection and friendship through the purchasing process.

As controversial as these companies may be, the reality is that, while there are plenty of people who fail, there are also people who succeed. For instance, Renno, whose husband could retire in the coming years, is able to help support her family and has been sent on several free vacations due to her sales performance with Young Living. And whether that is due to good timing, having an acute business sense, or just good old-fashioned hard work, you can’t deny that this model works for her.

“The financial freedom that comes along with it is incredible,” she says. “I am able now to stay home with my kids, be present when I need to be, and work when I can.”

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Berman and her seven-month adventure with LuLaRoe leggings. After a while, she realized she wasn’t making enough money to justify the effort required to keep up with the business.

“In the end, I still love the clothes. I just don’t think my personality is one to persuade people, so I don’t think this business model would ever be successful for me,” Berman says. “And I wouldn’t want to be responsible for talking someone into something that wouldn’t work out for them in the end.”

Experts advise to never mix business with pleasure—let alone with friends or family. But Robert and Tammira Lucas aren’t your average couple. Since marrying in 2011, they’ve built five businesses, attributing their success to hard work, sacrifice, and faith.

“You have to stay strong and focus on your goals,” says Tammira, who was named one of the Baltimore Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” in 2016. “The biggest thing for us is that we support each other.”

Both of the Lucases discovered their entrepreneurial talents early on—Robert in high school, with a successful custom T-shirt business, and Tammira in college, where she ran a mobile kids’ spa. “You have to fail a lot in order to grow,” says Robert. “You don’t always strike gold, but when you jump off that cliff, you build your wings on the way down.”

So it was no surprise that these natural-born business people started working together, especially in light of another shared interest: their daughter, Ryann. After launching a successful kids’ accessories line in 2010, the couple saw what they could achieve in tandem, and went on to open a home maintenance company, a co-working space, pictured, a car dealership, and a business-consulting firm.

“We saw that there were opportunities out there to better the African-American community while still working as a family, and we wanted to help others do the same,” says Tammira, who also co-founded Moms As Entrepreneurs to teach business skills to low-income women. To share that message, the couple recently launched a podcast called “The Lucas Brand,” available on iTunes, where they share the ins and outs of working as a team.

“Hopefully,” says Tammira, “we can inspire other young, black couples to strive for their dreams.”

Without a business degree or cosmetology license, Jamyla Bennu began making hair products in her kitchen and shared the recipes with her online followers. It was then, in 2001, that Bennu and her husband Pierre birthed Oyin Handmade, a natural hair and body care product line, in their kitchen of their Baltimore home. 

Fast forward more than a decade later, Oyin—which is Yoruba for honey—has come a long way from kitchen concoctions and Mason jars. It is now an internationally recognized and award-winning beauty brand sold at major retailers like Target, CVS, and Whole Foods. And she credits a lot of their success to social media.

“It really just started to spread by word of mouth,” she said. “Then I looked up two years later and it’s all that I was doing. It kind of took over.”

During the early stages, Bennu realized that social media was a great way to communicate with her customers, but she had no real marketing training to do it effectively. She came across a program created by Facebook, the Small Business Boost, that involves a series of workshops that educate small business owners on the tools for how to use Facebook and other social media to benefit a business.

“Before the workshops, I had been experimenting in a haphazard sort of way,” she said. “I’m a maker, I’m not a marketer so I didn’t come into it thinking about the different technical strategies to use. That’s not my native language, so it was very useful to get access to information about how to use the tools effectively.”

After learning the best practices for branding her business (including peak times to post, using Facebook Live), she decided to continue her relationship with Facebook by becoming a member of the #SheMeansBusiness project. This online network celebrates women in business and showcases inspirational stories from those who use Facebook as a main tool for marketing and connecting with their customers. Bennu’s journey was such an inspiration that she is one of seven women profiled on the website.

“It was part intimidating and part exciting to have an outside crew come in and let me tell my story to a wider audience,” she said. “It was also exciting to see my work and my company through their eyes. I don’t get to tell my story often and take a step back to look at the impact in a larger social sense.” 

Oyin Handmade is very active on all social media platforms and Bennu says it’s become the best way to engage with their customers. Whether it’s used to promote a new product or share tips and tricks, she says that social media has changed the way she does business.

“In the realm of natural hair and beauty, there’s tons of people who are using Instagram and Facebook to share their experiences and product reviews,” she said. “Social media is vital to us.”

When Adam Mittadam started posting photos of his five French bulldogs on social media, he never expected them to become stars. But snapshots of the Highlandtown resident’s charming companions—full of scrunched expressions, adorable costumes, and creative poses—have captured the hearts of dog-lovers from Baltimore and beyond, earning their cheekily named Instagram account, @we.farted, more than 52,000 followers to date.

Today, the pack can often be spotted having lunch in Fells or taking a walk through Patterson Park, but their story starts in the mid 2000s, when Mittadam was a fresh-faced college graduate who had always dreamed of owning his own pup. After doing some research, he knew that Frenchies, with their small size, lively temperament, and funny faces, were the ones.

In 2006, he bought his first, Mango, a classy “gentleman,” and before long wanted to help more Frenchies by adopting them. A decade later, he still has Mango, now age 12, as well as Vespa, 7, the “lazy cuddler,” Coconut, 7, “the cheerleading squad captain,” Moped, 5, “the football team captain,” and Chopper, 3, aka “Baby Chops, the Energizer bunny.”

But it’s not always easy being a dog owner of five. Not only do the costs of vet visits and food add up, but some of the pups have health problems. Baby Chops, for example, has an esophageal condition that makes it difficult to swallow food. Before meeting Mittadam, he couldn’t find a steady home.

“It’s a big commitment,” says Mittadam, “but I wasn’t going to be the person who returned him again.”

Mittadam and his Frenchies have received endless support from their growing brood of fans, and the 34 year old has now started sharing training tips and health advice to other dog owners on social media. Mittadam does have a full-time job as an analyst, but he’s not opposed to having his pack become Insta-famous like other leading pooches Jiff Pom the Pomeranian or Doug the Pug.

“We’re accepting sponsors,” jokes Mittadam. “I’d love to get to the point where I can take on my dream job—posting about my five potatoes with little legs all day.

Chopper

Phyllis Langley (@lifeofphylly)

If you were on a deserted island and could only bring one thing what would it be?
AG: My cat, Trippy Cat.

LC: A 6-pack of Flying Dog’s Bloodline.

What is your favorite photo on your Instagram account?
AG: We recently did a day of featuring dog pictures, which were a lot of fun.

LC: It’s also cool to see pictures of people in their natural environment, like their studio or living room.

What do you love photographing the most?
AG: I love photographing people and getting to go to coffee shops and sit down and just talk to them.

Mary Ellen LaFreniere (@steelcutflowerco)

Ian J. Bell (@ianjaredbell)

What is your guilty pleasure?
AG: Pitango [Gelato] and Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

LC: Lately, tacos from Clavel. And I don’t totally feel guilty about it.

How has social media enabled The Bmore Creatives to grow?
LC: People searching through hashtags and locations helps them find us. We wouldn’t exist without Instagram because our way of growing a following in the beginning was commenting on people’s photos and liking them. Social media means everything to Baltimore Creatives.

Who is your idol?
AG: Beyoncé. Also Lane Harlan, the owner of W.C. Harlan, because she’s such a boss.

Rosemary Kourdoglou (@officegoth)

Olivia Witherite (@oliviawitherite)

If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?
AG: We would love to live in Europe.

What do you hope people get out of seeing the pictures you share?
LC: I hope people who live in Baltimore can see the city from a new perspective. But also, for people who don’t live here, it’s nice when someone stumbles upon our feed and realizes they may have had a totally different idea of what Baltimore was like.

What’s next for The Bmore Creatives?
AG:We have an event coming up called Baltimore IRL, a pop-up gallery at Wet City featuring photographs by some of Instagram’s most avid photographers.

Justin Berk is distracted. Though he’s being interviewed in the back of a Timonium Panera Bread, he keeps stealing glances at his MacBook Pro and his iPhone, which lies on the table buzzing and ringing frequently.

His preoccupation, as always, is the weather. A storm system is headed for Maryland and is moving in faster than anticipated. Suddenly, snow that was scheduled for the following day might arrive as early as this afternoon, and Berk, the meteorologist of choice for many Baltimoreans, is worried about missing a chance to update his legion of social media followers on the latest projections.

“I’m sorry. I hate to be rude,” he says in his rapid-fire patois that still retains a hint of his native “New Yawk” accent. “Oh my God, this is crazy. Look,” he continues, turning his computer to reveal a radar map.

“This is where it’s going to start as rain and go to heavy snow, probably a couple inches of accumulation, then to rain, then into snow tomorrow,” he says, pointing to the pink smear on the map engulfing the greater Baltimore region. “Now how do you [explain] that without putting people to sleep?” he asks, his eyes alight with all the delight of a kid on a snow day.

He finds ways. With more than 200,000 followers on Facebook, nearly 30,000 on Twitter, and as many as hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to his website, JustinWeather.com, Berk’s populist touch can’t be denied. Almost certainly, a portion of his audience followed him over from his Baltimore TV gigs, first at WBAL from 1997 to 2003 and then at WMAR from 2003 to 2012. But since heading online-only in 2012, his following has, well, snowballed, and he now reaches about 1 million people a week on Facebook alone, and up to 5 million during storms.

But he has accumulated a small, vocal contingent of detractors, as well. A parody Twitter account (@NotJustinBerk) regularly mocks his forecasting skills, his catch phrases (“Faith in the Flakes,” “stickage,” et al.), and his general persona. And though he has won several “Best of” awards from local media (including Baltimore in 2000, 2006, and 2007), he has also taken plenty of hits for his denial of man-made climate change and his thin-skinned reactions to criticism.

Somehow, this self-described “weather nut” has touched a nerve, becoming one of Baltimore’s most divisive media figures. The irony is that Berk comes across like an inveterate people-pleaser. When an elderly man needs a chair at the packed Panera, Berk grabs one for him. When the issue of climate change is raised, Berk begs off, saying he’s trying to avoid the issue these days because it’s “too polarizing.” (Contrary to the vast majority of climate scientists, he believes that global warming is due solely to the Earth’s natural temperature fluctuations.) And when Cool Kids Campaign, a Towson-based charity for pediatric cancer patients and their families, needed an emcee for one of its American Girl model search events this month, guess who agreed to host?

“He pretty much agrees to anything we throw at him,” says Sharon Perfetti, the executive director and co-founder of Cool Kids Campaign. “[The model search] means interviewing hundreds of American Girl hopefuls on a Saturday on his own time. If he sets a goal or says he’s going to do something, you can count on it being accomplished.”

“People were dropping F-bombs on stage. I don’t do that.”

This includes visiting schools most weeks to teach lessons about weather and raise money, and hiking and biking across Maryland. Last August, Berk spent a week trekking 321 miles from Wisp to Ocean City to raise money for Cool Kids, a trip he plans to repeat this summer. He averaged dozens of miles per day and developed excruciating blisters. Despite this, he refused to cut corners. Because pedestrians and cyclists are not allowed on the Bay Bridge, he took a boat to the Eastern Shore. But rather than sit back and enjoy the breeze, he insisted on riding a stationary bike on the boat during the crossing.

What’s the source of this almost maniacal drive? “I survived a lot,” he says.

Berk was born in the Bronx in 1973. His parents split up when he was 3, and it got ugly. “I remember everything. It was not fun,” he says, though he declines to elaborate. The resulting custody battle lasted two years, one of which Berk spent in and out of foster care. Finally, Berk’s father was given full custody of Berk and his older brother. His father soon remarried, a welcome development that stabilized the family. “I got to see something not work, and then I got to see something that worked better than most,” Berk reflects.

But money remained tight, and the family bounced between the Bronx, where both his parents were public-school teachers, and the suburbs, a more middle-class existence made possible by his father’s willingness to work extra jobs. These included weekend shifts at Caldor department store and selling IRAs and bonds.

“He’d be out until 11:30 at night,” Berk remembers. “We couldn’t afford to live in a close suburb, so we had to live way far out to get to something better. So his commute was about an hour and a half each way. He is the most generous person I know—and I’m not just saying that because he’s my dad.”

Through it all, weather remained an abiding fascination. It started when he was 5 or 6 years old and a blizzard forced New York City schools to close. It continued out in the ‘burbs when he noticed that the TV weather reports didn’t match what was happening outside his door. “We were getting different weather,” he recalls. “I really wanted to understand why.”

Berk’s curiosity extended to cutting out the weather sections from various newspapers, leaving playtime with friends to watch the weather forecast on the TV news, and, of course, watching lots of the then-nascent Weather Channel. “It got to the point where, sometimes, I’d go into the bathroom in front of the mirror and pretend I’m pointing to a weather map and doing the forecast,” he says sheepishly.

A shy kid, weather became a source of confidence for Berk. “My friends would be calling me up saying, ‘Do we have to study for the test tomorrow?’ The first time I [correctly predicted the weather] I was like, ‘This is pretty cool. I’m helping people out, but it’s nice to know what’s going to happen ahead of time.'”

But another crisis loomed. At the end of eighth grade, Berk was hospitalized for what some doctors thought was cancer but turned out to be a staph infection. After surgery, Berk spiked a fever and his leg swelled, leading one doctor to suggest amputation. Though the doctor reconsidered, Berk wasn’t out of the woods. He developed an allergy to penicillin and was forced to try a relatively new drug, which he thinks “fried” his thyroid and stunted his growth. It took a few years before Berk felt back to his old self.

“I was told by my doctor they weren’t sure if I’d fully recover. I think I did.”

It is because of this experience that Berk is so devoted to the Cool Kids Campaign, and, perhaps, why he reacts the way he does to adversity. “I think it’s a good example for anybody. You can hear ‘No,’ and still go,” he says.

And go he did, first to Cornell University, where he earned a degree in meteorology, and then to stations in Syracuse and Binghamton, NY, before landing in Baltimore at WBAL and then WMAR.

His tenure at WMAR ended abruptly in January 2012 when contract negotiations broke down forcing his departure. According to Berk, the major sticking point was his Facebook page. He had created a page to “explain weather as I wanted to, when I wanted to, not just when I was at work,” but management wanted the ability to access and change it at will.

“It’s a good example for anybody. You can hear ‘No,’ and still go.”

“They could remove me from my own page, and then I’d turn into Steve Jobs version 1.0—kicked out of my own company,” he says.

His Facebook page had about 5,200 followers at that point. But the harder the station pushed for access, the more he resisted. “Honestly, I doubled down,” he says, figuring, “I must have something more valuable than I realize.”

Though leaving television after nearly 20 years for social media was a massive change, it was not wholly unwelcome. Berk was tired of the early mornings and wanted more flexibility in his schedule.

He can now spend more time with his two sons, ages 9 and 5. (He is currently separated, but he and his wife live near each other north of Baltimore and plan to share custody.) In fact, it was his oldest son who pointed the way forward with an idea for a kid-friendly weather app that was released in November 2012. Called Kid Weather, it has been downloaded in 55 countries. Berk has another app, WUSUP: Weather You See, in development that will offer “crowd-sourced” weather updates. And, of course, he’s working on further monetizing his website.

But social media can be a double-edged sword. And though Berk remains largely unscathed, the few nicks he has sustained continue to sting. Chief among them is that parody Twitter account, which, though only followed by 195 people, counts many of his old TV colleagues as fans.

The account’s “bio” reads in part: “Even when it rains and I’m calling for snow, I am always 100% the man.” When asked to explain the motive for the snark, the anonymous poster behind the account said, “EGO. [It is] larger than Maryland’s population.”

Berk sees the account as cyberbullying at best and litigious at worst. He claims current WMAR employees who have retweeted the account are in violation of the station’s social-media policy. But he also says to sue would “not be my style.” (WMAR general manager Bill Hooper had no comment.)

Berk’s frustrations boiled over publicly last fall at the Mobbies, The Baltimore Sun‘s annual online media awards. Accepting one of two awards he won that night, he accused some members of the audience of helping “to propagate” the parody account. “I actually had to hire an attorney because it got so bad,” he continued as the crowd murmured and tittered. “I’m sitting on such a tremendous amount of information that, if I went public, would actually be extremely detrimental, if not destroying some careers.”

Then, changing tack, he said: “I’ve decided to take the high road. I decided to focus on the good stuff.” He finished by quoting lyrics to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” and grabbing his crotch. A video of the speech was uploaded to YouTube and made a minor splash in local media with City Paper editor (and former Baltimore senior editor) Evan Serpick commenting that the account is “frankly something a C-list local celebrity like Berk should probably be honored to have.”

But Berk remains defiant. “I was at a snarky event to begin with. People were dropping F-bombs on stage. I don’t do that. . . . I briefly mentioned that with my award and many good things, my past year was not all fun and games,” he explains.

And it is precisely this attitude that infuriates his detractors. What Berk sees as uncompromising and moral, his critics view as petty and egotistical.

Meanwhile, his fans are unaware—or at least uninterested—in this media tug of war.

Near the end of the interview, Berk is distracted once again, but this time not by the weather. A young blonde woman is staring at him, and he is sure he knows her from somewhere. As she approaches Berk asks, “Have we met before? You look really familiar.”

“I don’t think so,” the woman admits. “I follow you on Facebook though, so maybe that’s part of it.”

About a year ago, Baltimore Coffee & Tea’s regional retail director Mary Romeo attended a social media one-day course. She realized the industry was rapidly evolving.

“Social media was changing daily, and I wondered how I could keep up,” she says. “I decided that, if I was overwhelmed, other small businesses had to be also.”

So, last June, she formed A’La Carte, a group that consists of 22 local business owners who meet monthly to discuss social media and the general challenges faced when running a small business. The group includes marketing companies but also has an obvious food slant, with members like Charm City Cook, Mouth Party Caramels, Popsations, Mallow Munchies, Michele’s Granola, The Charmery, and The Arthouse Pizza Bar.

“We kind of live in a vacuum sometimes, and this is such a nice way to bounce ideas off of each other,” Romeo says. “Plus, each of us can bring a certain expertise to the table.”

One month Katherine Kozelski from Pixie Social gave a tutorial on Facebook and, another month, Charm City Cook’s Amy Langrehr, pictured, right, with Romeo and Joan Dolina, left, owner of Arthouse, shared tips about Instagram. The group brainstorms about business challenges and their klatches have produced many tangible results.

“When I was baking brownies for The Emporiyum, I needed a commercial space, so BG [Purcell] from Mouth Party lent me her kitchen,” Langrehr says. “It’s crazy because I am where she was seven years ago. Running a small business is a scary thing, so it’s nice to have people tell you it will all be okay.”