We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Reneze Lopez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Reneze below.

Reneze, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with 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?

I have been earning a full-time living from being a creative for about 2 years now. I started my journey in June of 2020, just as a hobby with no true direction what I wanted to accomplish. During this time, I would post about our previous travels and I think people wanted to see something different than the chaos the world was in so I grew a following quite fast.

I received my first campaign within 2 months and it just started rolling in from there. There were a lot of times though that I wasn’t sure if the business was going to be able to sustain my living expenses but I also had no other option but keep moving forward due to my previous industry being completely shut down.

I remember vividly there was a day when I sat in our back patio and made a decision to commit to doing whatever it took to be successful. I followed every account I could find that taught tips and tricks about the industry, I studied my community and sent out content for trial and error. Before I knew it, I was making over 5-figures every month and after two years, I learned the pattern on busy and slow seasons allowing me to get smarter and hustle harder to accommodate the consistent changes of the social media world.

The one thing I learned along the way that I wish I had done sooner was to niche down. People find you because of the value you bring so you have to consistently provide that value; otherwise, they will stop paying attention and your engagement will drop. I feel like if I had accepted this sooner, I would be much further now but I do trust in the process so I have no regrets!

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 Reneze, and it’s pronounced like Denise with an “R.” I was born and raised in the Philippines and my family and I moved to the US in 2006. I have always been passionate about 2 things – travel and food. The travel came from always wanting to see the world and to know more. My love for food came from my grandmother! She always made sure our bellies were full and that we enjoyed a variety of dishes every single day.

I came from the trade show industry and had always dreamed of climbing the corporate ladder, but 2020 had other plans. I took a journalism class in college that I really enjoyed so I thought – “Why not write on the ‘gram?” Before I knew it, people started to follow me for my story-telling of destinations I’ve visited, restaurants I love, and so much more.

My goal is to inspire everyone to get back out and travel the world, explore new destinations, try new food, and live their best life. I strongly believe in recharging your soul and mind via new experiences and travel moments that inspire you. I also encourage individuals to try new food from all over the world. I believe that food always has a story to tell, and the best way to learn about someone’s passion and culture is through food.

I am very proud of the tight-knit community we’ve built. I love knowing that there is a place on the internet where people can come as one and enjoy each other’s company as we talk about travel and food.

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.

The content creative space is rather new but is actually quite valuable. A lot of times when we creatives tell people we are “influencers” or “bloggers” or “content creators” there seems to be a negative connotation to it and I’m unsure why. In a nutshell, what we actually do is simple marketing. We learn about a service, product, destination, etc. and we use our own experiences to share that with our community.

On that same note, creatives are small businesses who function on one’s support. Liking, commenting, saving, clicking on our links are simple ways that you can support us to keep doing what we do. Most creatives I know do their craft full-time so any kind of support allows us to feed our families and keep inspiring every single day!

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

Resilience is a MUST in the creative journey. Not one journey is the same as another because who you’re selling is yourself, and frankly, no one truly lives a life like you.

My first holiday season as a full-time creative was one of the most challenging seasons of my life. The months leading up to it was wildly busy so there was a sense of security in what I was doing but then as soon as Thanksgiving came around, it halted almost immediately. It was very quiet and people were on vacation and I just knew that I was going to come across some hard months.

During this time, I had two options – I could either freak out or keep moving forward. I had to learn to be resilient. It was tough chatting with non-creatives about it because they didn’t understand the struggle and I truly felt alone. So all I did was pray hard, and find other avenues to make money in this industry. I paid attention to EVERYTHING I saw and thought about ways to scale the business.

Looking back now, I was able to scale the business 7x from that hard time and I can still feel the gut-wrenching feeling of the struggle in those few months but I also know that whatever challenges the business comes across, the solution is to sit back, analyze, and be resilient.

Contact Info:

• Website: sincerelyreneze.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/sincerelyreneze
• Facebook: facebook.com/sincerelyreneze
• Linkedin: N/A
• Twitter: N/A
• Youtube: N/A
• Yelp: N/A