From Influencer to Growth Creator

Here’s the crazy thing 🤯 My first year in “business” I drank the influencer coolaid 🧃 I thought the only way I could travel and work with my dream brands was to grow a huge following and then leverage it to get deals. And then I did that, but something unexpected happened. Yes hotels were willing to have me stay for free, but almost none wanted to pay me 😑 WHAT?!? I thought that’s the whole point of building an audience. Had I just wasted the last 2 years of my life for nothing? Well turns out I wasn’t the only one with this grand plan of building an audience and pitching hotels and I was getting lost in the sea of tens of thousands of other travel creators. And on top of that, more were being added to the sea every day. I saw the writing on the wall. I knew something had to change because there was no way I’d be able to continue surviving off free collabs and hoping brands eventually just randomly decide they “have a budget” I had to sell them something they actually wanted to pay for 😭 But WHAT?! So I did a deep dive into the thing I dreaded most. Learning sales and marketing. But in doing so I realized my fatal mistake (and the one that most creators make as well) I was selling a commodity. Almost anyone could sell photos and video. And as much as my mom told me I was special, brands didn’t seem to think so. So here’s what I did. I completely changed my business model. Instead of selling photos and ad space on my Instagram, I started selling growth strategies through content marketing. The 2 years prior to this decision I had learned the skills of creating content that engages an audience, but I realized most hotels were clueless in this realm. Here’s something I could really help them with! The work and deliverables were more or less similar but my close rate and client retention sky rocketed after switching my model🚀 So I refined it more and it’s now what I call the growth creator model. If you want to learn more about how it works comment “PLAYBOOK” and I’ll send you my full guide to growing a $100k/yr travel creator business. Be blessed and stay stoked 😎🤙