We recently connected with Makayla Samountry and have shared our conversation below.

Makayla, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

The best time to start will always be yesterday. I think once you realize something is successful, you will always wish you had started sooner, and the biggest advice I always give other creatives asking about starting a social media platform, wondering if it’s “worth it” or if they will even be successful is that you will always wish you started sooner! Sometimes the hardest part is simply starting — because it’s intimidating, it’s daunting. But we all start at 0, and the genesis is truly the most important part. Setting up a solid foundation is crucial, so don’t be afraid to take your time.

I started uploading videos to YouTube when I was a freshman in college. Being able to make a living from social media was always a long-term goal, but I created because I loved it and enjoyed having a fun hobby while also being in college for both English and Creative Writing degrees. It also helped me feel connected during a very isolating time in a small college town before friendships started to form. As my life shifted from college in Ohio, to transferring back home to Minnesota, graduating, and ultimately making the decision to pursue social media full-time instead of going to grad school, YouTube has been there to document my feelings, days, and milestones every step of the way. I am so grateful to have video diaries of my first and last days of college, move-ins and move-outs, holidays, family events, even documenting every step of purchasing my first house and renovating it to become what it is today: my dream home.

I think it’s common to wish you had started sooner once realizing that path leads to success, and part of me always wonders where I would be if I had started uploading videos to YouTube when I was younger, but I am also very grateful for where I am now and all the opportunities it has led to.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started YouTube as a hobby while in college. This was back in 2014, social media was still evolving and Instagram was still very curated to present an image of perfection and happiness in highlight reels; however, on YouTube, I found other girls who were posting real, raw content about their lives, specifically about college, and that is when I started making and uploading videos about my honest experience in college, at a time when social media made it appear perfect. The truth was, I was really struggling to adjust in college, and YouTube gave me a passion and virtual escape.

Any spare moment I had outside of work, school and studying, I was focusing on YouTube. I have spent hundreds of hours filming, editing, planning, essentially, creating. And now, I am living my dream, creating full-time for a living, and providing myself the freedom to fill each day with various creative endeavors. It’s been almost eight years, and YouTube still gives me the biggest rush of endorphins every time I hit record, upload, and publish.

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

Nowadays, everyone is hyper-focused on the numbers, the growth, the amount of fans, followers, subscribers etc. and the status; when in reality, it’s not about that at all — and if that is what your focus is on, then you aren’t going to grow and become successful. It is very transparent as a viewer when someone is trying to chase fame, as opposed to when someone is genuinely authentic with their content and their connection to similarly minded fans that chose to follow them. And that is what you should always strive to build on social media. People follow creators when the audience feels like the creator is real and honest with them, so my advice would be to focus on creating content that you enjoy and love making, focus on the little things, every detail, and take the time to connect to each supporter, respond to comments, and focus on building connections rather than numbers.

There’s a very common saying among social media creators about how “the quicker you rise, the faster you fall.” You don’t want that 15 minutes of relevancy online, you don’t. You want an audience that will grow with you, so having a slow and steady growth is actually, in my opinion, better than gaining a huge following overnight. The people that feel like they grew up with you are the supporters that are going to stand by you for a long time, and that sense of loyalty is super important.

Of course, the larger that your audience becomes, the faster you will grow overtime. I remember hitting 1,000 subscribers on YouTube about 6 months into posting, and it felt monumental. It still does! And that’s the other thing: celebrate the milestones, big and small. It definitely took a few years, gaining a couple thousand overtime, until I hit 10,000 subscribers in 2018, 20,000 subscribers in 2020, 50,000 subscribers only a few months later in 2020, then 100,000 in 2022, where I am at today. So you can see the slow growth at first, but after gaining that moment, the growth begins to become more consistent and the wave grows bigger. But it still warms my heart when I receive the comments from the supporters I’ve grown closest to who proudly proclaim how they have been with me through it all from the start.

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.

I think there is a huge misconception that people who pursue social media as a full-time career aren’t educated, won’t be able to find a job or be able to retire, simply because we are self-employed. Sure, social media as a career is something that no other generation before even had the option of pursuing, so it is difficult for people to understand or see working out down the road, but the truth is, I have college degrees, I have job options, I built up a solid Roth IRA account for myself, and I have absolutely no limit on how much money I earn. If I want to push myself to earn more, I can. The whole concept of “but what are you going to do when this doesn’t work out?!” is blasphemy because you would never ask someone in another field of work that same question. And if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that no job is as secure as you think, so it’s not a bad idea to diversify your income and build as many streams as revenue as you can.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/makaykay17
• Youtube: youtube.com/makaylasamountry