We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brady Wertz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brady below.

Brady, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

The job that doesn’t come with a manual, HR department, welcome packet, or training wheels.

Welcome to being a full-time social media influencer!

Through trial and error, frustration, celebration, highs, and lows we have luckily made it through to the other side but not without our fair share of scrapes and bruises.

In September of 2021, my wife Caitlin and I started CedarCouple on Tiktok. Little did we know at the time, the simple act of creating a user name and login would forever change our lives.

We struggled with…everything. Who is going to watch us? What do people want to see? How do we edit these videos? Is this a waste of time?

It took us 28 days to gain our first 1000 followers, all while posting new video content twice a day.

On November 30, 2021 we attempted our first TikTok live stream at Dave and Busters arcade. This very first stream on TikTok had 1.2 million unique viewers, and 96,000 people watching concurrently at the peak!

We were just being our genuine selves and having fun.

(Brady) “I can remember ending that live stream and looking at Caitlin and saying, we might have something here.”

(Caitlin) “We had no idea what we did right or wrong. We had no moderators to help us control the chat – not that you could with 96,000 people commenting. We just knew that people seem to enjoy the content we made, and we wanted to repeat it.”

We continued to attempt live streaming on TikTok throughout December 2021 and January 2022. However, it was a struggle – as the algorithm for TikTok would flag our arcade streams as possibly being a casino or gambling and would suspend our account.

In December 2021, our account was suspended for almost 3 weeks, and in January and Feb 2022, our account was suspended for 2 weeks in both months.

We were beyond frustrated, as a new account we had little support from TikTok at the time.

We reached out to several other “fresh” creators and they all seemed to go through this same RITE OF PASSAGE as new streamers.

Caitlin and I sat down and seriously discussed moving platforms and had no idea what our next step should be.

After days of spit balling ideas, we ultimately decided to stay the course.

Fast forward to today, as we hit our 2 year anniversary on TikTok, it all seems surreal. We have grown our following to almost 1.5 million followers on TikTok, 300K on YouTube, and 10K on Instagram, and 13K Cedar Saplings (what we call our followers) in our Discord chat server.

In 2023 we won Best Variety Act 2022 on TikTok, we were invited to be a part of the first ever TikTok Creator Acceleration Program, through partnership with Elucid Blends we launched our skincare products, attended VidCon for the first time. We have launched Cedar Couple merchandise, and met so many amazing people along the way.

We have created a safe place for everyone to come and feel part of a community and family. We have always made it a priority to stay humble and genuine.

There is no play book on how to successfully create a social media presence, and we certainly made our fair share of mistakes along the way, however, we attribute a big part of our success to being true ourselves.

Brady, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Cedar Couple is Brady Wertz & Caitlin Ackley. Before we were full-time social media creators we had “real jobs” . Brady worked full time as a Aerospace Engineer and Caitlin was a Dental Assistant. In the beginning we would work all day, travel home, and then stream for hours in the evening and get up again the next day and do it again. It takes a lot of time and dedication to build a platform and social media presence.

Through the support of our community and growth of our TikTok platform, in April 2022 Caitlin was able to quit her job as a Dental Assistant and move into focusing on social media creation and editing. Brady was able to resign in early 2023 to devote more time towards streaming and travel for events and content creation.

Our TikTok channel “CedarCouple” started at Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. We made short videos about some of our favorite rides / roller coasters and how to win the various midway games. When Cedar Point closed for the winter we began live streaming at Dave & Busters arcade, focusing on how to play/ win the various games and just having fun and being ourselves.

Our channel started during the COVID-19 pandemic when many people were feeling isolated from each other and maybe were unable to leave their homes to enjoy travel and fun activities / games. We would also stream from home playing games and just sharing our lives and chatting with our followers.

We were able to bring the fun to them while creating a community and family with our followers. Through these daily variety live streams our channel continue to grow exponentially, from 300 followers to the nearly 1.5 million we have today.

We consider ourselves a “variety” daily live stream. During the summer months we stream from Cedar Point 2-3 times a week. We also visit other arcades in the area playing games and the fan favorite – claw machines. Other days we stream at home preparing arcade wins such as stuffed animals aka “plush” for sale on our Mercari page, and just sharing our home life and chatting with followers.

We are still in awe every day with the growth of our channel, with viewers worldwide. Sometimes having over 1000 people in stream watching us make dinner or do laundry on our non travel days. We attribute our success to being ourselves, having fun, creating a genuine community where people feel supported and accepted.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Our very first goal when starting as creators was to have the opportunity to partner with Cedar Fair / Cedar Point. We thought if we were able to work really hard and make some videos and post live streams from the park that we would be able to work with them for one of their media events. When we received the first email with them to partner for their media days, it was so exciting!

Our mission has changed since that initial start. Our mission and goal is now is to make our community a safe space for anyone that comes into our live stream. If you are sometime feeling on the outskirts of your community, and you are looking for a space place to come and share your thoughts feelings, and struggles; whether it be as a single parent, having a hard time at your job, issues with friends and family, or celebrating a graduation, wedding, birth of a baby, etc. No matter who you are or where you come from community is for you, as we always strive to make our community a safe place for everyone.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Our job as variety creators and streamers is to always create a place to have fun. I can promise you from what you see on camera – it is not always fun and games.

There is a ton of work behind the scenes that it takes to create video content, and develop new fresh ideas. Scheduling time to create video content and the hours of work later to edit and voice over those videos. In addition to traveling to location to live stream, of which we stream 40-50 + hours a week on top of creating the other content that we do for TikTok and YouTube.

Our job may be to show us at amusement parks, arcades, playing games and having fun or make it look like we are having fun. Even though we have the same days as everyone else where we wake up and we say – do we have to go to work today – its the same thing for us and I promise you being in social media / content creation is a lot of hard work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://beacons.ai/teamcedarcouple
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cedar_couple/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpxh3IaqpUP58f61O2n0aiQ
• Other: Tik Tok – https://www.tiktok.com/@cedarcouple