We were lucky to catch up with Barbara Perez recently and have shared our conversation below.

Barbara, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

I feel like I regularly have this thought about what would my life be like if I didn’t have the career that I do, what if I were to dedicate my life to what my college degree says? Because a life of a creative is a fulfilling one but it’s also riddled with uncertainty, being unsure of what your monthly income will be, and wondering if there are enough jobs for you to dedicate your life to, I think there is comfort in having a regularly 9-5 job, a job at an office where you can expect certain things, also when you have a ‘typical’ job, you get to clock out, while being a creative or an artist you don’t clock in or out, I think you are always working because your creativity is your fuel, therefore when are we not thinking? But don’t misunderstand me, I love what I do and I thrive on working at my own pace, setting my boundaries, and working with only my expectations. I am happy with the life I have and with the choices I made, but it’s unavoidable to think from time to time on the ‘what ifs’,

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m Barbara, a Latina creator (more specifically Venezuelan) with a focus on beauty although I’m branching out into more lifestyle content, on social media I like to say I have sort of an alter-ego called Beatinest. When I was deciding on what to name myself, I didn’t want a typical username like makeupbybarbara or beautysomething, I wanted something different, so one day I decided to open up an online dictionary on 2018, and low and behold the word of the day was ‘beatinest’ and the meaning took the decision for me; “most remarkable or unusual”.

When I was 12 I became obsessed with makeup tutorials on YouTube, i could watch more than 15 videos a day because I found it so entertaining, I think that’s when I fell in love with creating art through makeup, but I stayed as a fan for a while before dipping my toes into the creator world on 2018, I remember that I was so scared to tell people that I opened an account, it was terrifying to me because I used to think ‘what if this goes nowhere?’ ‘what if I fail?’ and that’s when I decided to tell people that it was only a hobby.

Until 2020, stuck in our homes I decided to post even more and I gained a lot of traction, and when I was true to myself and to others about what I wanted to do with my life: bring joy and entertainment to people through my art.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I’ve learned to keep to myself and not to trust people lightly, I’ve had more than one occasion in which I think someone is rooting for me and it’s supportive until I find out they’re not, with this I don’t mean you should become a hermit and not connect to people at all, I mean more in a sense of not to trust blindly without knowing the person.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I think the key to growing on social media is to let people know your personality and let them connect with who you are, at the end of the day there are millions of creators posting daily on each app, the only differentiating factor that you have is yourself, so focus on that and that every piece of content you create make it your own.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tiktok.com/@beatinesttt?lang=es
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beatinest/?hl=es
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@beatinestonyt