Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brianna Sosa. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Brianna, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Who is your hero and why? What lessons have you learned from them and how have they influenced your journey?

When we speak about hero’s, we often think of men in fancy colored suits with capes or masks, however. Every time I hear this question I think of my grandfather.

He faced a lot of adversity in his life, from being drafted in the military, to his permanent injury from a work accident, to just being a black man in the Deep South over coming racism to simply feed his family; He never needed a mask or cape to be a hero to me.

His wit and never backing down attitude is where I obtained my “Popaw didn’t raise a quitter attitude.”

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?

My name is Brianna, but if you ran across me online, you may know me as TheNailSimp.

The obsession with nails started very young for me. As a kid, I used to adore walking by the local nail shops just to get a peek at the plastic hands in the window with the designs. I’d often take mental notes of what style I was going to get once I was old enough.

Once I was old enough, I never skipped an appointment.

Where I really discovered a passion for nails and nail art was during a difficult phase in my life. At the time, I was in an abusive relationship and nails were my escape.

I would stay up in the wee hours of the night painting my nails and toes. Right then and there a spark was lit. This opened me up to using different methods and mediums.

My social media’s were started as a means of showing my progress. What sets my page apart from others is to show that there are bumps in the road. It sounds cliché but with nails, you have to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day.

I also seriously enjoy finding good affordable products for my followers. At times, certain mediums are intimidating enough, but with this economic squeeze we are experiencing, this can discourage someone from even trying. I understand this more than anything, this is coming from someone who started with dollar nail polish, so I always try to find the best deal for my followers.

So if you’re interested in nails but not sure where to start, I would invite to grow with me.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

That you have to gain a deeper understanding of why something failed.

You can do everything right and sometimes things just don’t go the way it was originally planned.

I had an opportunity to work with a larger brand and put in countless hours of work for this collaboration. After all was said and done, they suddenly withdrew their offer. For someone who didn’t have much of a following I was devastated. I combed through every interaction, post, and even my work, I spent days trying to figure out where I went wrong.

This felt like someone took the wind beneath my wings. I went silent on social media and began giving my nail supplies away. I wanted to abandon my socials and give up. I’m glad I didn’t!

It turns out that they had become under new management, things changed, and their influencer program had been put on hold. I couldn’t control this but it was very discouraging.

Stuff happens, things change, and timelines change. You have to just roll with the punches and move on.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Frequent posting has been aiding in my growth.

When running a social media page on any platform, the algorithm plays a major part in gaining some type of audience. You’ll never know what video may gain traction. So it’s always best to have several different posts because you never know what people will gravitate towards.

Once you start to gain traction, keep posting, eventually you’ll start to expand. I always call it “feeding the algorithm.”

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenailsimp/
• Other: https://linktr.ee/admin?q=%2Fadmin

Image Credits
Myself