Gaby: Hello, John!

Allison: Hello, Hank!

Gaby: We are Gaby and Allison from Just Between Us.

Allison: When they asked us to do this video, we were excited because our channel is a comedy channel, and we rarely get real with our talk.

Gaby: I get real all the time.

Allison: Yeah, you’re pretty real, but I try to stay fake.

Gaby: That’s why we’re an odd couple. That’s why this works.

Allison: But there’s been one topic that a lot of people have been asking us about that we’ve never really addressed, and we figured that this would be a good opportunity to do it. This is my first vlog.

Gaby: Congrats on your first vlog!

Allison: Thank you! I feel different. So, that question is: Why did we leave BuzzFeed?

Gaby: We left over a year ago.

Allison: It was probably one of the scariest decisions we’ve ever had to make.

Gaby: I agree.

Allison: The first few months there were amazing.

Gaby: I had had a writing job before, so I was less enthused about the whole thing.

Allison: I don’t think you’re ever as enthused as I am about anything.

Gaby: That’s true. It’s very hard for me to feel joy. And I was also like 26, so it wasn’t my first job. It wasn’t—I wasn’t like a lot of the other people there, who were, like just out of college. 

Allison: Now I feel embarrassed that it was my first job and I was 25. It wasn’t my first job, but it was my first job writing.

Gaby: Your first writing job. Yeah, your first writing job, which is a big deal, and it’s like a scary thing to leave.

Allison: I’d done a lot of writing for free. But it was also an incredible environment, and there were all these people our own age, and we were all like making stuff, and I very distinctly remember standing there during like an all hands meeting and just thinking it’s so sad that I can’t work here my entire life. And so that’s what was so interesting with like after a few months went by, when like things kind of started to change where it became clear that maybe that wasn’t where I was supposed to be for forever, that there was some push back about the fact that we had our own channel. We were in a sort of department where it wasn’t super clear like what we were supposed to be doing.

Gaby: And we also were like toying with, okay well then do we get—do we get rid of Just Between Us and commit ourselves to BuzzFeed? But that didn’t feel right to us either.

Allison: We were getting interest from other people about doing our own stuff. We wanted to prioritize Just Between Us because that was growing, and Just Between Us is ours. The thing about jobs is that you can leave them.

Gaby: Big time.

Allison: And so you have to listen to yourself, and if like at a certain point, even if the company’s great, even if like you had great experiences there, if it’s no longer the right fit, like in a relationship, then you have to break up.

Gaby: When you work for a company and make videos, everything that you make, that company owns. So for instance, you might have heard about some people being let go from BuzzFeed, and those people, the characters and the videos that they—the series that they created while at BuzzFeed, they’ll never be able to make that series ever again. And that’s because that is BuzzFeed’s intellectual property. And that began to scare me, where I was like, well, do I give them my best ideas? Later in life, I may want to use those ideas for something, and I won’t be able to. And that started worrying me more and more, and the idea of them owning anything to do with Just Between Us started worrying me more and more.

Allison: And I remain like so grateful to BuzzFeed, like I do not think that like we would be where we are if we hadn’t had BuzzFeed. I think it was incredible exposure. It was amazing. But at the same time, you have to remember that a company is always a company, and a company is not your friend. And so that’s confusing because you’re working with all of your friends, and all of the people that work there are your friends, but the company itself is not your friend.

When I went into this industry, I knew that it was going to be very unstable, and it was gonna be kind of chaotic, and I wouldn’t really—I wasn’t really gonna know what was gonna come next. But I think one of the issues is if you start working for one of those big companies, you kind of get tricked, and you’re like, “Oh, I have stability, and I get to be creative!” But at a certain point, you have to remember that you need to take risks.

Gaby: In the end, you only have yourself, and you only have what you’ve made, so like, how do you know—like, to me, I kept—whenever we were there, I would always think, "how do I know any of these companies will be here in five years? Why would I, like, marry myself to this thing that I’m like, have no guarantee of it being around?" The only thing I knew would be around was me and you. Hopefully, if we both live.

Allison: That’s really

Gaby: If we both make it.

Allison: seems really optimistic. But also like that’s the kind of personality that we are, and there are so many people that like, like the way that they would be the most happy is to stay at a company and work there long term, but it just wasn’t right for us. And I think that that’s almost like what we want to say the most, is like just listen to your gut, and listen to what feels right for you. And like, the other side isn’t roses.

Gaby: Yeah.

Allison: Like, work, it’s constant stress. We’re constantly upset, but we’ve been able to work on projects and like strive towards projects that are like so much bigger than I think that what we could have done if we stayed there, and so much more our own. This feels so uncomfortable to be talking sincerely into a camera.

Gaby: Yeah, I’m really excited watching you do it.

Allison: I’m like breaking out in hives. Where are the jokes?