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

Deja, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

My name is Deja Dodson and I go as Deja D on all my platforms. I grew up watching YouTube and content creators since I was young around middle school. When I turned 13 I started creating my content from storytimes about my first gym locker room experience and continued documenting my life through slime challenges, music video recreation, prom vlogs, and my college dorm tours. When I started my freshman year at Hampton University I went into school as a Psychology pre-med student and was super depressed gained a lot of weight and hated it. I also started my motivational blog during this time Deja’s Daily Dose that would start me building my platform to become a motivational speaker. I would drop quotes and motivational short reels, and host vision board parties in my dorm. My content did not start to gain a lot of traction until COVID. I worked at Target at the time it was the winter of my Sophmore year and I posted a video of poses for curvy girls. The video went viral taking me from 200 followers to 10k on TikTok is a week. I stayed up to date with the tractions from the video and grew my platform to 34.4k to date. During the duration of my time in college, I went through a lot of ups and downs personally however I was able to score multiple four-figure deals throughout my time at Hampton University. I started a podcast “Let Me Tell You Something” Season 1 was filmed during the Spring Semester of my Senior year highlighting topics of the transition of graduating from school and starting adult life. Season 2 was filmed 6 months post-grad and highlighted things I learned about adulthood since I graduated. I am currently focusing my content on being a marketing strategist both in front and behind the scenes for brands. My blog Deja’s Daily Dose is still growing Season 3 will be dropping in 2025 on all platforms (seasons 1 and 2 are on as well) Youtube, Spotify, and Apple podcast. Deja is continuing to host events bringing together creatives and working on mental health. I also plan to continue to further my education to become a licensed clinical psychologist to continue to build on her motivational speaker platform.

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 am Deja Dodson I am 23, African American, and from Capital Heights Maryland. I am the oldest daughter of four and a first-generation college student who attended Hampton University and has a degree in Psychology and Journalism. I am a growing motivational speaker and marketing strategist who owns the blog Deja’s Daily Dose. I highlight and aim to help Black women navigate adulthood. I do not have the best relationship with family and post-grad I moved to a whole new city, Philadelphia to start my life.

I am most proud of my consistency and dedication to self-development. I have the tattoo, “God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers” because I have been through a lot in my personal life and deal with anxiety and depression occasionally but I do not give up on myself or the vision God has for my life. I have been creating content since I was 13 and have built a community that genuinely supports me and I continue to find ways to stay relevant despite the mental struggles that I go through.

How did you build your audience on social media?

During COVID I was a sophomore in college and while creating content was fun and a passion it was not bringing in money so I worked at Target in the evenings after class. It was around the holiday time maybe November 2020 and I came home from work and made a video showing pose ideas for curvy girls. I posted it late at night after I recorded it and woke up to so much traction on the video. I went from around 200 followers to 10k in less than a week. I kept the traction up by following the video with multiple parts and also people were interested in my fashions so I would do more fashion content targeting body positivity since I was more curvy/ plus size at the time and grew my platform from there. The advice I would give is to do it if it is a passion. I had already been creating content for years and one night an unexpected video blew up and changed my life. After that I have seen my content have great days and numbers and some not so much but because it is my passion I keep going and capitalize when it is higher than others.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

While in college Spring Semester of my sophomore year, I unexpectedly moved and left my parent’s house. I became independent and had to support myself through school and eventually life. Taking on so much responsibility over my life at 19 and detaching myself from that environment has brought me through good and bad times and throughout that personal struggle I am continuing to push and never fall into too much depression. I do have seasons in my life where my personal life interferes with my motivation to keep going but for the past few months almost a year, I have been doing better with managing my mental health. I have been in therapy for months, and have been working and putting myself out there to build a brand new city at the age of now 23. I learned to, “Take it one day at a time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/Dejadailydose
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dejaaaaaaad/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCELq10fYalNN7lvZxXZpHcg

Image Credits

I took all photos.