We recently connected with Renee Summerour and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Renee, thanks for joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

As a multimedia journalist for over 12 years, I left the industry in 2023 to pursue my podcast aspirations as well as content creating and producing goals. Working as a broadcast journalist has its benefits, but it also has its downsides like a difficult work- life balance, low pay, constant relocation and no individuality.

it was a very hard transition as journalism as a specialized industry, and it took me a while to find the work lifestyle balance I was looking for. Luckily, for me, I had been doing content creating since the pandemic. it has fueled my Las Vegas lifestyle by allowing me to go to restaurants, activities, and events and capture all of it to present to my growing social audience of over 140k.
It has allowed me to monetize on all platforms, and along with my podcast I produce my content my way! I also work remote doing producing. It’s nothing I ever saw myself doing, but now that I’m here I’m so grateful!

Renee, 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?

My name is Renee Summerour and I am a broadcast journalist/multimedia professional. I’ve been in the news industry for the last 12 years, reporting/ anchoring the news, as well as producing digital content, consulting, public speaking and content creating. I began my journalism journey after graduating from Long Beach State with a degree in marketing. The economy was horrible, and I was one of hundreds of thousands of millennials that moved back home with their parents. I started going to my community college and fell in love with shooting, film, and news broadcast. I started in radio, where I worked with three prominent radio stations in San Diego for a couple years, before taking my broadcast journey to the next level when I moved to Yuma, Arizona and began anchoring for Nbc and ABC. After two years there, I moved and became a news anchor/mulit-media journalist in Waco, Texas for Fox, 44 news, before moving to Las Vegas. I was a news anchor at the Las Vegas Review Journal for five years before pursuing my podcast and remote work. I’ve been able to successfully merge my journalism career with becoming an influencer/content creator/producer. I work for a digital school that teaches musicians how to become better, and I help the business by producing the classes while also improving their social media presence. I am so proud to say that, despite the industry downsizing, I have been able to achieve the work life balance I needed, while also continuing to do what I love. It allows me to move more freely, be more creative with what I’m shooting, and I have no one to answer to, but myself. The numbers that I have grown via my social media allows me to move to and from different places and events that most people have to pay to experience. I get to experience it all in Las Vegas, for free, and produce amazing content for people to see. Everything that I learned in journalism I now do for myself and have created a lifestyle with balance and excitement!

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

Right before Christmas 2023, the job that I had been working for the last five years fired me unexpectedly. I put in so much time and effort into building this particular news station and felt like all those years I had put in was a failure. I’m not one to look for a job after losing it, and over the last 12 years working in journalism I’ve always had the next job lined up. So getting fired unexpectedly before Christmas was a huge blow! Luckily, I have an amazing partner who is extremely supportive, but a lot of people don’t have that support. Nonetheless, I felt useless, jobless for six months, and hearing ‘no’ hundreds of times, even though I had 12 years of experience. I should’ve been making six figures by now but everywhere I turned those jobs were not available. But I never gave up! And because of that I was able to not only find a job, but I found a remote position that allows me to continuing doing what I love, which is Social media content creation and Media. Being a journalist teaches you resilience like no other job I have ever worked. Between moving around the country, low pay , and doing all of the work yourself, it really does teach you to keep going.

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

I built my audience on social media through comedy and authenticity! I currently have 140K followers between all of my platforms and a lot of this came from being consistent! For anyone who wants to build their social media, the best advice I can give is batch creation! This means choosing a time during your week to create lots of content. Then you can schedule all of your content throughout the week or month and not have to try to do it day by day. This will give you the consistency you need while also preplanning your social media strategy so you’re not wasting your time. Also have fun, entertain, and be authentic. People want to see people that they can relate to.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reneesnews/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reneesummerour/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxXFwNw3UtPpanFQhx-a6Lg
• Other: Tik Tok:
  https://www.tiktok.com/@reneesnews