I’m sure you’re here because you have been wondering how to become an influencer. Well honey, you’re definitely in the right place!
I can’t believe I finally get to write this blog post!!! On September 15, 2021, I left my accounting job to work for myself as a full time influencer & YouTuber. I’m literally screaming on the inside as I am writing this post, because this has been my goal for over 5 years! So many other bloggers I would research would talk about how their journey as an influencer was not planned. Having a creative outlet allowed Influencing to just happen in their lives, and everything worked out great!
That was definitely not my story. Ever since I saw Rachel Parcell and her blog Pink Peonies, I wanted this business for myself. I didn’t know how it would happen or if I would even like it. However, I had to figure out how to become an influencer. We are 5 years later and this is the longest thing I have stuck with! After the first few months of blogging, I knew this was the career I wanted and would love. I’ve been hooked ever since!
Bodysuit (here) | Jeans (here) | White shoes (similar here) | Sunglasses (similar here) | Similar black bag (here & here)
I know many of you have not been through this journey with me from the beginning or you may have a ton of questions. So, I decided to write this post! Let me take you guys through the journey of how I grew my business while working full time, prepared my finances for this leap and when I knew it was the right time leave my 9-5.
How I grew my business while working full time
I started this blog in March 2016 after coming across a fashion and lifestyle blog I fell in love with, Pink Peonies by Rachel Parcell. I loved the career Rachel created for herself. It made me want to create a similar space for plus size women like me! At the time, I had been an accountant for 3 years and I honestly did not like my job. The corporate life was so depressing to me. For a couple of years I was trying to find what career could make me happy. When I came across Rachel’s blog, I knew I had to try this out.
When I first started, I didn’t even know if I would like blogging. All I knew is that I wanted to do something I loved, serve people I could identify with, and make money that will allow me and my future family to be very comfortable. Before I decided to give this a try, I did a ton of research on Rachel and other bloggers to see if this was a business worth investing time in. Boy…was I shocked when I realized how much you can actually make in this industry. In 2021 I made 6 figures and I was only full time for 3 1/2 months!
It took me about 5 years before I was able to go full time. Honestly, about half of that time I wasn’t doing my absolute best. I was working, but not at my best effort. When I finally started taking things more seriously, I began to make money from brand partnerships. After coming home from my accounting job, I worked most weekday nights until time for bed and every Saturday. Here are the things I worked on to grow my influencing business.
- Create plus size fashion looks and research photos to get ideas for content to create
- Complete weekly photoshoots with a photographer. (My first photographer was my little cousin…so everything doesn’t have to be perfect here!)
- Schedule 5-7 weekly Instagram posts on Planoly with captions. This helped me not have to think so much throughout the week
- Research video ideas for YouTube
- Film 1 to 2 weekly YouTube videos. They would either entertain or educate/inform the audience I have and was trying to grow.
- Edit the weekly YouTube videos. Eventually I outsourced this to a video editor so I can have more time to create
- Complete the links and description boxes for all of the YouTube videos of the week
- Go through emails and communicate with brands and PR agency’s regarding brand campaigns. My manager now does this 100% on my behalf
- Complete any open brand campaigns
September 2020 was the first month I made a great deal of income working with brands. That month, I secured over $21,000 in campaigns for September alone. Thank God, I have consistenly secured campaigns every month since then!
Honestly, these are the only tasks I can think of as I am writing this post. It doesn’t include steaming clothes for shoots, setting up the equipment for video shooting, doing my hair and makeup in order to create content, traveling to and from the shoots, etc. This job may be pretty, but trust me it is not for the faint of heart. Influencing and running it as a business is HARD WORK! However, I wouldn’t trade this career for another. I love my job!
How I prepared financially
I may not have liked all of my duties as an accountant, but I am a numbers girl by heart. If there are numbers involved, then it will most likely make since to me! That’s weird huh? Being a person that loves math but hates accounting…lol anywho!
Before I quit my job, I had a ton of debt because that was just normal to me. My other family members had debt, so it never crossed my mind to live my life without it. In October 2020, I decided to enlist some help from a financial advisor. My goal was to become totally debt free so I can quit my job, and start influencing full time. Clearly, that didn’t happen…but more on that soon!
During this time, we made a plan for me to live solely on my accounting income. This is pretty much what I was already doing. Anything I made from my business would be split into 3 buckets.
- Taxes
- Monthly Operating Expenses
- Debt
The debt category was simply taking the place of my payroll category in the future. Instead of paying myself as income, I payed myself in the form of debt cancellation. We listed all of my debt from smallest to largest. This way when I would pay off a piece of debt, it would motivate me to keep going and do the same thing to all of my other debt. I would take 50% of what I made that month, and pay it towards the smallest debt. When that one was paid off, I would move to the next debt.
My last debt was my student loans where I had paid off over $6,000 by May 2021. Then, I decided to press pause and focus on building my 6 month emergency fund before September 15, 2021. That is the day I planned to leave my job. I used the same payment method as I did when paying off my debt. This time, I was building up my emergency fund instead. Here’s how we calculated how much I should save for my emergency fund. We wrote my living expenses and multiplied them by 6. This was not based off of my paycheck from my accounting job, only my bills and other living expenses.
By the first week in September 2021, I had everything saved and I was good to leave my job to work on influencing full time. I had paid off $52,825 of debt from October 2020 to May 2021. I will do a full blog post on paying off debt in the near future.
When I knew it was time to quit my day job
When I thought about quitting my job, I had a vivid imagination of everything being crystal clear. Chile…I couldn’t have been more wrong. I had an expectation of being completely debt free with a ton of money pouring in before I would quit my job. My thoughts were when everything is perfect and I can’t handle doing both anymore, I would happily leave my accounting career. That kind of happened, but not as I thought it would.
As I stated earlier, I really didn’t like my job. It gave me the financial stability I needed to build my influencing business. Outside of that I couldn’t stand it! Accounting is a very demanding career. It takes a lot of brain power and by the end of the day I would be exhausted. Getting myself in the mood to work on my business every night was hard, because most of my energy was used at my accounting job. I cried often…no lie like all the time! I was miserable and hated the thought of having to get up and go to work.
During the time I was preparing my finances and getting out of debt, I got a bit of a second wind. I didn’t complain when going to work (as much). Also, I felt less drained since I worked from home during the pandemic. Then t came time for my yearly review, and my supervisor gave me a call. She said, “We are happy to give you this raise for all of the hard work you have been doing during the high turnover we’ve had at the company”. After quoting me the $5000 raise she politely added “Oh, and we would love to see you pick up more responsibility with this new salary…” I was so numb and annoyed.
By this time, accounting literally felt like a place holder until I could start my real life. I was doing everything the company asked, and that was it. Nothing more and nothing less. I didn’t care to achieve anything while I was there, because I wanted to reserve all of my energy to my business. In accounting I was efficient, timely, and I did my duties well, but I had no desire to do more. I prayed to God that this is not how I wanted to feel about a job I spend most of my day working. I had a big cry, God told me some things, and I finally felt peace about things not being perfect before I quit my job.
Things might not have been perfect, but I wasn’t stupid. I still made sure to prepare my finances for the day I would leave. First, I had a conversation with my financial adviser about my plan to leave my job. She congratulated me, and we put a financial plan in motion to have 6 months of living expenses saved in my emergency fund. Thankfully, I had already paid off so much debt prior to this so that most of the money I made was mine! I’m still working on being debt free, but I’m so much happier while doing it and I have the mental space to triple my income.
In June 2021, I told my manager and supervisor about me quitting my job. I told them that September 15, 2021 was my last day and I was going to focus on my business full time.
What’s Next
Whew…that was a lot right! So, you’re probably wondering what I plan on doing next. Well, at the time I am writing this post, I’ve been full time for going on 5 months lol. So, honestly I am still in the growth phase and I may be here for a couple of years. I’m so excited to be doing something I love and focus on making the business work for me!
Of course, everything hasn’t been perfect. I am still learning something new every month. This job is showing me to always be optimistic and produce great work. However, its important to prepare for things to not go your way. Even while I am learning new things, I am accepting them with grace. Now, I have more patience versus when I was in accounting. Most of all, I want to learn how to live again! I’ve been on the roller coaster ride of creating content to get it done and be consistent. Now, I can learn how to create content as I live my life!
I hope this post was helpful for any of you considering starting a career as an influencer. If you have any additional questions I didn’t cover, feel free to ask me in the comments below!
