We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brooke Laycock a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Brooke, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later?

If I had the opportunity to go back knowing what I know now I want to say that I would change how things happened and start sooner, but then I also feel like I would have missed out on the opportunities that I have been given and the set of skills I have acquired. Many years ago when I graduate highschool I was also in a modeling school where I learned how to network, market myself, and a little bit about how the fashion world operates on a social media platform. At the time I didn’t see myself taking modeling serious and decided to pursue college, which I will always be grateful for deciding to do. Today as a graduate student and a content creator I can honestly say that both worlds of education and working on a social media platform have given me an advantage in this field. Had I started sooner of course I believe I would be farther in the content world, but I would have never met the people who are in my life or of learned the skill set that I have. I strongly believe that no matter what I decided, start sooner or keep things the same, that I would be successful. However, the experiences and people I have met on this journey are worth more to me and so I would keep things the same.

Brooke, 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?

For starters, I am a Florida girl that recently moved to Austin Texas! I started my content creating journey solely on Instagram focusing on fashion and lifestyle about a year ago when I moved to Austin. Since then I have expanded to Tiktok and Pinterest. Originally when I first started I had no intention of taking this as serious as I have. The idea of posting content came from other fashion content creators that I looked up to. I was inspired to post my own content, but I was posting strictly for fun and as a creative outlet. Over time that slowly changed once brands started reaching out to me. It started slow with few brand collaborations during the first few months of content creating, today it has grown to more collaborations and opportunities than I could have ever imagined. As a fashion content creator my primary focus is styling outfits that inspire others to go out of their comfort zone and try something new. When I first started I remember how liberating it felt to construct an outfit that I was proud of, as I am growing my brand this is the feeling I aspire to spread. No one really teaches you how to have style or even make an outfit that makes you feel confident, my desire is to help fill that gap for others with my brand. When it comes to confidence, I can feel the difference in the level of confidence depending on the outfit I’m wearing. Sharing how to construct outfits that you’ll not only feel proud of but feel confident in is what I base my entire brand around.
I am very proud of my content creating journey thus far. The amount of time that gets poured into content creating is no joke, so attempting to balance the content creating life while also being a graduate student has been massive achievement. Of course the road to finding the balance between these two lifestyle was not easy and was actually the toughest task I have endured. Aside from all of the ups and downs, the experiences, opportunities, and skillset I have received are more than I could have ever imagined and I will forever be grateful.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I know so far I have mentioned that there has been a lot of ups and downs, but there was a period of time where it was just continuously down. During this time I was not seeing any growth within my posts, my engagement was at an all time low, and I could not for the life of me figure out why. I started to focus more on the numbers and let that impact my content. I let it heavily influence me to the point where I was more stressed making content than I enjoyed it. During this specific period I did a lot of reflection and watched countless videos of other content creators talking about their journeys and giving advice for starting out with content creating. While watching these videos I had a mini epiphany and realized I lost sight of the real reason of why I was posting. I realized I was posting more so for numbers than for the message of my brand. Once I started focusing more on my brands message I started to see growth. I think this was the biggest learning curve that I could have acquired this soon into content creating.
Going through this tough time with my brand made me realize that when tough times arise the best thing I can do is to take a step back and reflect on myself in the situation.

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

When I started my content journey I started with my personal account. In my opinion this transition impacts the length of time for growing an audience. It took a lot of patience, consistency, and time before I really started to see any kind of growth within my audience. First things first, time is key with content creating. It takes time before you really see any kind of consistent growth and it also takes time to create content in order to be consistent. For anyone wanting to start content creating I would really focus on consistency and not the numbers. Consistency within your posts is what will grow your audience not how many likes or comments you get. Additionally, make sure to be posting for quality not quantity.
Starting out does not mean you need to jump right into 5-7 posts a week either, if you can only do 1-2 post a week thats okay just make sure you are consistent on the days you post. When I started I was posting about 3 days a week and over time I figured out how to manage posting 7 days a week, but again it all takes time!
Another thing I want to emphasize is the importance of originality and being authentic. It can be extremely easy to really like someone else’s brand concept or style, and that is perfectly okay. Use their style as inspiration but DO NOT copy their style for your own branding. This will lead to little to no growth because the niche you’re trying to portray to can tell when you’re not being authentic. Be yourself, you want others to engage with your content for you not what you perceive yourself to be!
I want to emphasize how important it is to be yourself, because it is not easy at first. It can be nerve racking to post as a content creator when you’re first starting out. I won’t lie it was terrifying when I first started, I was fearful of what my current followers would think and how others would perceive me. It took time to get over this fear and once I did I really started to have fun within my content creating ability. This lead to my engagement and following growing and creating sincere relationships with other content creators. The most important thing you can do as a content creator is to not let what others think or say about your content dictate what you post, people are going to have something to say no matter what you post so post what you want!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brookeannlay/
• Other: https://pin.it/6bDvsLR