Behind the scenes working for David Dobrik with Natalie Noel Mariduena - Business Insider

Fans of YouTube star David Dobrik know Natalie Mariduena as "David's assistant Natalie," and his childhood best friend from Chicago.Officially, Mariduena is an executive assistant of David Dobrik LLC, and when she's not appearing in Dobrik's vlogs or TikToks, she is working beside him to help scale the growing business.Mariduena's involvement started a few years ago when Dobrik, who is one of YouTube's most popular creators with 18 million subscribers, asked her to come out to LA and help him out."I had one more semester of college I had to finish, and my parents would kill me if I just wasted all that money," Mariduena told Business Insider. "I quickly found that wasn't going to be the case and that I actually wanted to stay in California and working with David for a long period of time."Since then, Mariduena has become an influencer herself, with 4 million followers on Instagram, a manager of her own (she's signed with Digital Brand Architects), brand deals, and even 215,000 followers on her closet account (a separate account some influencers make specifically for outfit pictures).But she said that everything she does is a part of the larger team. "That's what translates into my relationship with Fanjoy, and why I'm so hands-on there is because I genuinely love it and think it's so fun to see someone out that's wearing a design that I came up with." Outside of merchandise, Dobrik's business also runs on brand deals, and Mariduena said she's helped a lot with those projects as well. "A lot of the people that we partner with understand that about David, and how we get all these fun things done so quickly is that mutual understanding, and they trust that we are going to make something cool."Read more about Dobrik and the influencer industry on Business Insider:A YouTube video editor who works with David Dobrik's Vlog Squad told us what it's like to film top creators, from private jets to quick turnarounds