stop being a 'lifestyle creator' 🥴 and start making REAL money by doing this... 💵

0:00Protein is now at Starbucks and it's never tasted so good. You can add protein, cold foam to your favorite drink or try one of our new protein lattes or matcha. Try it today at Starbucks. Last year, I doubled my income as a creator, and it was not because I went viral or because I hit some follower milestones. It was because I finally started treating this as a business. I have been on social media for half of my life. Let that sink in. I'm about to turn 30 in two months and I have been on the internet since I was 15 years old. My channel and my personal brand has gone through so many changes during this time. And social media has changed so much, like 10 times over. I feel like it changes every year and now it feels like it's changing in an even shorter amount of time. And even though I've been on the internet for about 15 years, my content the past five years I would say has just been in a state of decline. My views were low, my followers were dropping, and I was not changing anything.

1:01That was the problem. I was not changing anything. And if you work in social media or if you've just been on social media, social media is not the place to stay stagnant. You have to always be evolving and learning. For years, I was treating social media and content creation as this hobby that I've mastered. And I really wasn't thinking strategically of how the landscape has changed since I started. I focused obsessively on being consistent, which I will say consistency is required. You have to do that. But I completely negated the other part of it, which was always evolving my strategy. I really didn't think about it strategically and I didn't think about how to actually grow my revenue. I was kind of just coasting. That's what I would say. I would land a brand deal, get really excited. But I didn't really understand why the brand wanted to work with me. Or how do I leverage my personal brand and my unique POV to really grow my business? Because this is a business. If you are trying to grow your personal brand or your content creation, you are operating a business. I always like to describe it as I was very reactive instead of proactive. And the moment everything changed is when I started asking myself,

2:03if this was a business, which it is. But if it was a business, what would a business owner do? And at the same time that my followers was declining, I wasn't growing. The personal brand was not in a good spot. I was also building my other company, Rella. And so I took so many lessons that I've learned from Rella and operating that as a true business to apply it to my content creation. And not only did it double my revenue, my followers actually finally started to grow again. Business owners aren't just guessing their pricing. They're okay with inconsistent streams of revenue. They're not accepting the first offer without negotiating. And they definitely do not operate without systems and strategy. So I started treating myself like a business. I'm now the CEO of two companies, Rella and my personal brand. The biggest breakthrough for me during this whole process was how to systemize sponsorship. Because as a creator, that is where you're probably leaving the most money on the table. And if you are landing brand deals and it feels unpredictable, you are not alone. I was in those exact same shoes for the past couple of years. I'd get a sponsorship, get excited, and then realize that one of my friends was getting paid

3:04like double the amount I was for the same follower count. And trust me, you guys, if no one has told you, there is a lot of money in this industry. And no, you don't need to have a million followers to get that money. I'd spend hours on revisions that were never outlined in the contract. Or I'd accept the first offer because I was just scared that I wasn't going to get anything else in the future. And I also didn't really know how to negotiate. But truthfully, I think the main reason why my income has grown compared to when it wasn't growing is because I didn't optimize my personal brand for brands to consistently want to work with me. I feel like social media looks so easy. When it comes to social media and content creation, it does kind of feel like the Wild West sometimes. Which is why I am partnering with the viral income lab. It's a course created by real marketing executives. These are people that are actually setting the budgets they're working with creators. They explain why creators consistently get high brand deals and longer term partnerships while you may be thinking, like, why isn't that me? The viral income lab is exclusively on Kajabi, which makes it a clean, professional, and intuitive experience. Which means you can focus on the actual learning material and not a confusing interface.

4:04You'll be able to learn how to calculate your real market value, how to pitch brands professionally instead of just waiting for your inbox to fill out, how to negotiate without fear, and how to structure your deals so that you are not drowning in revisions. This works whether you're on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, you have a podcast, you do not need millions of followers, you just need a good system. And something that really unlocked that mentorship for me, which hopefully you can do the same in you, is realizing that brands are paying for my audience and my influence. So even though a real might take you an hour to make, it doesn't mean you're charging for an hour's worth of work. You have to start treating yourself like a professional and realizing that you are qualified. Right now, you can enroll at a discounted price of $489. And this is not a monthly fee. With this, you get lifetime access to all of its trainings, its templates, scripts, and even human support from experience executives. If one of your goals this year is to build more predictable income from your content creation, then this is the system for you. The link will be in the description and also pinned in the comments.

5:05Let's start treating yourself like a business. I want to share the four major changes that helped me double my income and help grow my following. First one is that I treated myself like a business, creating an ideal follower profile and a mission statement. The very first thing that I did was I wrote a mission statement. I know it might sound cheesy, but I definitely encourage you to do this. What am I actually building here? Who do I stand for and who am I trying to reach? I define my ideal follower profile. This might sound similar to your ICP, which is ideal customer profile, and that is for a reason. Who is your ideal follower? What do they care about and what transformation are they looking for? Again, this feels cheesy, but it is not just another branding exercise. It completely changed how I make decisions. What content do I create? What partnerships do I take? How to talk about my work? In the past, I considered myself a generic lifestyle creator. Seriously, what does lifestyle creator even mean? It pretty much was just an excuse for me to post random content about my life with no rhyme or reason. And you guys, that is lazy. I'm going to call myself lazy. That was lazy of me.

6:05And there might have been a time where a normal college student could just post about their day or a corporate girl he could just post a day in her life. But times have changed and everyone is creating content now. So that generic content does not work anymore. There was a time where that was a novelty where not many people were posting their life, so the ones that were really stood out. But it's 2026 and everyone is on social media. So you have to find a way to be different. You need an angle, you need a point of view, and you need a mission. If you cannot clearly answer the question, what type of content do you post and why do people follow you? Then you need to go back to the drawing board. And even though my numbers were declining, it took me so long to realize this because I was just clinging to the past with what worked five years ago. And what helped me realize this is that in parallel, I was building Rela and we were going through the exact same problem. We were trying to build Rela for everyone and the second that we started niching down and saying, no, no, Rela is for this very small group of people. Rela exploded with growth. So once I knew exactly who I was speaking to, the founder, the aspiring entrepreneur, someone who's curious about building a business, everything became clear.

7:07I wasn't trying to be everything for everyone. I was building and creating content for someone very specific. The second thing I did that really helped me grow my brand and my income was I figured out what made me unique and I doubled down on it. I stopped looking at other creators and figuring out what's working for them. And I started asking myself, what makes me different? One of my biggest hesitations before leaning all into the founder entrepreneurship content is that I thought, well, I don't really see that many other people filming this type of content, so there must be a reason for it. And you guys, if you do not see so many people filming content that you want to post about, or something that makes you unique, that's actually a good thing. You found a white space in the market. And I always used to tell myself this so I don't know why I didn't take my own advice, but it was always to create the content you want to see. I wanted to see other founders, other entrepreneurs, other business owners, but yet I was so scared of creating that content because I felt like no one cared because I didn't see it on the internet. And that should have been my sign that I need to be the one to fill that white space. And once I identified that, I leaned into it hard.

8:07For me, my content is a combination of being a founder, sharing the behind the scenes of building a business, building business lessons. And once I identified that, it made it so much easier to create content because every piece of content, every story, fell into that theme. Brands actually started reaching out because they wanted that unique perspective and they knew that my audience wanted that perspective too. So it made it a lot easier for brands to identify themselves in my content. That helped increase my rates. I'm going to be transparent with you. I have been getting some of the highest brand deals I've ever gotten in my past 15 years working in social media because I am working with brands that are so strategically aligned with my content. And it's so crystal clear on who I'm talking to. When I was posting my generic lifestyle content, I was diluting my brand. I could have been talking to anyone's and I actually learned a lot from working with influencers at Rella because we don't care about their following. We care about who they're speaking to. We search for influencers at Rella. If they are posting lifestyle content and content about so many different topics, we never work with them.

9:07We only work with people who are so strategically posting about social media, about content creation, and about being a social media manager. All we care about is that they have a clear audience that we can tap into. So how are you going to reverse engineer that and make sure that you have a clear audience that brands can tap into? The third thing that I changed was I built systems for everything. I actually just uploaded a video on how I can create over 100 pieces of content in one month, which shows my system. But in the past, I would store my brand deals in my literal notes app. Yeah, that was my system. Now, I have a system where I track everything. Track all of my brand deals, the budgets. I keep all of the information so feedback, any communication stored in that one brand deal. So if I need the brief, if I need the feedback, I can just click into it in my Rella account. And I can see everything. Everything is systemized. And if you want to actually learn what a good system looks like or how to build a system, that is where I recommend the viral income lab. Because they're going to teach you all of this. They also have some pre-made templates. And if you want to see a video on how I manage all of my brand deals and my content,

10:07then definitely let me know. But systems are going to free up your mental space. Instead of reinventing the wheel each time, I had a very clear framework that I could rely on and I tracked everything. And the last change that I needed to make was that I actually said no to a lot more than I said yes to. This was really hard at first. I'm not going to lie. I always was someone that I wanted to share everything. I wanted to share my workouts, my food that I was eating for dinner. I wanted to share all the books I was reading, my get ready with means. But I had to say no to a lot of content that I wanted to create. I'm not chasing viral trends. I'm not chasing everything that's going out on social media. I really am focusing on my specific point of view, like I was mentioning. And to make it easier, I have content buckets. So if it doesn't fall into that content bucket, then it's a no. And if you want to find your no list, then definitely make content buckets. Because that's going to really help you figure out what you don't post about. The clarity makes it so much easier to say yes to the right things and no to the wrong things. And you're not going to have FOMO about it anymore. And brands actually noticed this too. So if they felt like, oh my gosh, this is something that would align so perfectly with her content,

11:09they're going to pay me more. They're going to want to work with me. And it probably will turn into a long-term partnership. Versus in the past, brands had to kind of like try to fit themselves in my content. Like we were like, oh, what if we do like a morning routine? And then like, this could somehow be fit in versus now. It's like, oh, you're already posting about this founder stuff, about business content, about what your life looks like behind the scenes. Like, this would be perfect in it versus the other way around. And trust me, brands noticed. And I'm seeing the benefits of it because my brand deals are increasing. So let's talk about what it used to look like versus what it currently looks like with all of these changes that I made. Like I said, in the past, I was tracking everything on a notes app on my phone. I was posting very much in the moment and consistently, but kind of like all over the place content that was so random, that no one really knew why they were following me. I didn't have a unique point of view. Whenever I did work with a brand, the deliverables were kind of random and chaotic. I didn't have consistent pricing or a consistent income. There were endless revisions when I did work with a brand. And it was a lot more one-off brand deals instead of long-term partnerships. Fast forward to today.

12:09And that's really been turned on and said. I have a very clear scope and a purpose. I have fair pricing and I'm actually getting higher paid brand deals. I have systems that track everything so I'm professional and organized. And I prioritize long-term partnerships. The difference was not my follower count. My follower count has grown, which is a nice thing when you are doing all of this. But the brand deals started becoming more consistent and started being higher paying, even when the follower count was staying the same. I had a clear IFP, had my systems in place, and I only said yes to partnerships that actually aligned with my strategy. So treating social media in your content like a business is not losing your creativity, you're losing your authenticity, it's actually the opposite. It has freed me so much. Mentally, I've grown, I'm more financially stable. And if you are going to put all of this time into content creation, which I know you are, you might as well run it like a business and actually have a strategy behind it. If you are ready to stop guessing on sponsorships and start building predictable income, check out the viral income lab in the description. It is the system that I wish I had years ago.

13:10Let me know in the comments which change resonates with you and what you're doing to change. Thank you so much for watching this video and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye guys. Zero sugar. Tap the banner to learn more.