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

Senor , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

My name is Daniel Lee. Even though I grew up in the Midwest, where diversity continues to be painfully lacking and underrepresented, my parents were constantly working throughout our childhood to help us explore the world and to see the beauty in all of our uniqueness and differences. Difference wasn’t something to be scared of, but something to embrace.

As we were in process of moving to a new town when I was young, I was homeschooled until the move was completed when I was 7yrs old. My mom made reading such a fundamental part of our homeschool learning because she knew all the worlds that would open up to you once you could read, fiction and non-fiction alike. We went extensively through world/US history (making sure not to leave out any of America’s embarrassing past), world art, music, geography, etc. We would frequent museums, art installations, libraries, and all the while showing through each of these exercises how beautiful the world was, yet making sure to cover how flawed the villains have been throughout it. She was certainly the key for any academic success I achieved later in life,

Every night before bed, we’d always have family time which usually involved reading of some kind; one of the favorites being a large children’s book that went through every country in the world and showed a couple pages about each of them. Who the people were, pictures of the people, pictures inside the country, their languages, religions, governments (or lack thereof), their trades, geography, their strengths, their struggles, all the while with themes continuing to center around the world’s diversity and beauty.

For the first 18 years of my life, my grandmother was teaching english/writing in countries like the Philippines and Thailand. She would always have incredible stories and perspectives and she even worked with my school in third grade to get a pen-pal program setup between my public school class and her class in an effort to connect students across borders. In those same years, my dad would travel several times a year to different countries in South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia to help with water or housing projects that needed workers and would always return from missions with unique toys for us kids with a story on what they were and how they were made (my favorite being hand-stitched hacky sack type bean-bag balls from Guatemala). I would often get to meet people from the areas he visited, which was always a fun experience as a young kid.

All of this to say that: in a part of the country that was (and is still) lacking in diversity and has systemic racism built in throughout the housing and school districts, my parents took the initiative to raise their kids in a way where they would see the world and the world’s people for how beautiful they all were. But also raising us to be well aware of the issues, evils, and power dynamics at play throughout history. In a part of the country that would constantly abuse religion and the Bible, my parents would expose these practices to us and how the texts actually contradicted what these people practiced. In a time where people would marginalize anyone that looked/acted different from them, my parents made sure to not poison their kids with the same thinking. They never made fun of or poked fun at anyone that was different and would ask us to practice empathy and love wherever possible. My parents have made plenty of mistakes like any parents have, but I will always be thankful that they worked hard to instill love in us from a young age.

Senor , 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?

As reading was one of the core foundations of my education growing up, I always found my happy place in the creative. I adored artists of every kind from painters, to animators, to authors, to actors/voice actors, to performers, to musicians, and so on. I loved any and all genres, and I wanted to be involved in everything all at once. As a young kid, I drew, I wrote, I learned piano, and I read what felt like every fun little fantasty/mystery/action/history book we had. Eventually, I got locked in on movies and would consistently wear out the last few minutes of VHS tape where “behind the scenes” would show the voice actors perform side by side with their animated counterpart. I knew I loved stories and I knew I wanted to be involved with them in some way.

When I was in high school, public education was just coming around to the idea of showing kids how to use Microsoft Movie Maker, where I quickly became obsessed. Nothing I made was remotely enjoyable for a viewer, but I had a blast making it. I spent what was probably too much time making dumb little videos, but would eventually edit our 30min senior homecoming video and play Tevye in our musical that same year. It was the one year of high school I felt like I actually enjoyed.

I didn’t have any confidence in myself at the time or graduation however and, living in the Illinois Midwest, I was convinced by others I would not be able to turn any of these talents/passions into a well-enough paying job and so went to college for mechanical engineering. At this point, I hadn’t ever been involved with anything on social media and didn’t have enough time to pursue any of the arts while studying 10hrs a day. But Vine just happened to be on its last leg and I was thus introduced to the idea that there was a way to find a creative outlet for myself even while trapped in my dorm and even if it felt like I was the maximum distance from any movie-making city.

I graduated college in 2019 and jumped (a little too quickly) into a job out of state in another small Midwestern town. As I was never a fan of small towns, I found I had extra time at home to explore what was going on the post-Vine internet. At that point, the creator of Vine tweeted about starting a Vine 2 (or Byte as they would call it) and they needed 100 beta testers. I signed up expecting absolutely nothing back since every celebrity and their mother signed up for a spot. But weirdly enough, I ended up being drawn for one of the tester spots. I ecstatically accepted and started trying my hand at short sketch comedy under the username ‘Senor Pequenos,’ a nickname that was bestowed on me nine years previously by my Spanish teacher.

The Byte experiment was a huge success and I found myself as one of the more popular creators on the app by the time it started phasing out, and was blessed with an audience of over 17k people. Through that year, I had also made many new friends with several becoming lifelong relationships that are still alive and kicking 3 years later (two of them being Nick and Julianna who I host our comedy podcast with). This little experiment showed me that comedy was actually something I felt I could get decently good at, and it was something I actually enjoyed. My previously rock-bottom confidence in myself was slowly starting to grow purely from the kindness of this little online community. So I started spreading my online presence to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, etc.

And now I’ve been making videos across several social media platforms and profiles for almost 4 years. I mostly create short comedy videos, but over time I’ve also stretched into movie reviews, podcasting, advertisement writing, and voice acting. We have almost 500k followers across my main socials, 5k on my movie reviews page, and 12k on our podcast page. We’ve grown our dingy little podcast from scratch into what now has 31k downloads, 50k streams, and is in the top 25% of podcasts on Spotify in just over a year and a half. I am extremely proud of everything we’ve been able to accomplish, and I’m very lucky/blessed to have had so many wonderful people support what I/we do along the way. It would have all been impossible without any of them.

I feel like what is helping set us apart from others in the field is that, while I think so many strive for internet fame, notoriety, and status as the top priority, we are just having fun and want others to join us. Our goal is to remain as genuine and authentic as possible. We don’t pretend to be anything other than your average, everyday idiots trying to “scratch out a pleasant, simple tune” from the crazy world around us. We want to make people laugh, and are glad that so many enjoy what we put out for them.

I have lived in St. Louis now since 2020 and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon. St. Louis is my home and I love my people. In the coming year(s) I hope to get more connected to it and really do what I can to support it. I live on Washington downtown, and we just completed our first stand-up comedy show at a local business on the strip and sold out with almost 90 people in attendance. I would love to do more stand-up shows as soon as possible to help support our STL local businesses, especially as I know those on Washington have been struggling for awhile now. I also want to get more connected to the St. Louis comedy/music community so that I can really get more involved in what opportunities our city has to offer.

In the next year, I would also like to get more involved in the acting/voice acting communities since it’s been my longest-standing goal to become one, and maybe one day find my way onto the movie theater screen. One of my biggest goals moving forward is that I want to continue growing our podcast into something that could be a comfortable part-time job and provide funding for those of us with health problems and college tuition payments.

I’m very encouraged so far in this life journey, I am very thankful to people at CanvasRebel and VoyageSTL for letting us share our stories, and I look forward to seeing what the coming years have to offer.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I generally have a policy of open dm’s on all my platforms where I try to answer everything sent my way, and I think the most common question I’m asked is “how can I get big on social media” or “what’s the key to growth on social media,” and I have the same answer every time (for people like me in which social media is not my day job): consistency of your vision and your output. There’s nothing special or outstanding about me in any way, I’ve just been consistent the entire way about why I’m doing this and consistent with putting out whatever “this” is. But I think it starts with being honest to yourself on why you want to create content.

In my case, I needed a creative outlet to have fun and I’ve continued to have fun goofing around since I started. On the other hand, while striving for fame or notoriety isn’t inherently a bad thing, it forces your focus on an output that is outside of anything you can control. When you focus consistently on something you can’t control to provide results, it usually becomes frustrating, depressing, & debilitating to continue when social media platforms and their algorithms change constantly. If your goal is to turn some kind of content creation into a career path, there are more direct ways to work towards this that usually don’t involve social media as a top priority.

In my MBA courses, we talked a lot about how the current consumer demand is driving all these social media companies to create their own short-form content platforms like TikTok, and if I’ve learned anything about TikTok over the last several years, it’s that TikTok is not for your passion projects and life dreams, its for goofing around and s***-posting. Time and time again, I’ve seen some of the most talented people I know lose confidence or get burned out because they throw their heart into social media videos, don’t get the results it deserves, and then stop making content altogether. Which is completely understandable and breaks my heart to see.

TikTok (and similar) algorithms promote what I call anti-loyalty for content creators. In past, if you subscribed to someone on YouTube, their algorithm would use that metric to give you more videos from that particular creator. However, YouTube found that this did not push their users to “explore” for new creators, as everyone started to settle down with their subbed accounts and were completely fine not looking for anything new. This didn’t help YouTube’s website hits, growth, advertisements, or revenue. TikTok on the other hand seemingly cracked the code for site growth with their algorithm which allowed them to become (if I recall correctly) the biggest search engine in the world (beating Google) in 2021.

With TikTok on the other hand, if you subscribed to someone, their algorithm would use this metric to suggest you videos from, let’s say, 10 other accounts JUST LIKE the person you subscribed to, but not necessarily the exact person you just subbed to. And then if you subscribed to one of THOSE ~10 people, TikTok would suggest you ~10 MORE accounts JUST LIKE the person you subscribed to, and so on. Every new subscription/like/share you make on TikTok (in my opinion) tells them what categories, genres, and trends they should put on your fyp INSTEAD of what specific PEOPLE to put on your fyp (fyp meaning “for you page,” or TikTok’s main video feed). On TikTok, in the eyes of their algorithm, you’re not subscribing to people, you’re subscribing to specific boxes/topics of content, of which TikTok has an increasingly endless supply of other videos that land in those boxes. Which means their users are constantly exploring (just by being on the app), and constantly subscribing, and constantly finding new content that they enjoy without having to do the work of exploring the internet themselves.

Hence, I feel like we don’t know very many names from TikTok like we did on YouTube since a creator’s growth seems to come more from categorization rather than fanbase loyalty looking to watch YOUR videos specifically. However, this isn’t meant to be discouraging, and this brings us back to the answer of the original question: “how to get big on social media.”

I think for me, what helped unlock my potential and remove my anxiety/depression when it came to creating ideas/videos for social media was the key realization: only put in as much time into TikTok as you are willing to lose. After about a year on TikTok, I switched from lengthy edits that took hours to film/edit to 20second videos filmed in camera or stitched from other videos on my feed. I was still doing comedy, I was still doing short videos, I was still doing what I wanted to do, but now I was doing it in a format that better fit what TikTok was made for. NOW whenever I make a video and it performs badly, it’s not a big deal because I only put maybe 15minutes into making it (and I can post that same video on 3 other platforms). If the video performs well, then it’s an exciting bonus and I can be super happy that I have a video going viral. And every once in awhile, when I have time to put into a longer edit, I’ll do it. But since I’m not putting in hours of time every day, it’s no longer a discouraging slap in the face if a video underperforms. If your dream/passion IS to create content that takes hours to make, that’s totally fine, but TikTok won’t be the place for that (which is ok because there are other avenues for this with less risk of mental health damage and a better chance of success).

That might be a hard sell to any artist who’s seen other small artists gain insane traction from TikTok, and the allure of those numbers is a strong pull to the platform, but for every one serious artist success story there are 10,000 other artists that got burnt out from the algorithm. TikTok is not for everyone, and that’s ok; it’s not on you, it’s on the heartless algorithm. It’s not on you and it’s not your fault and you are in no way lesser than others.

To anyone reading this who is a creator who’s heart has been stomped on by underperforming videos: the algorithm is not personal nor is it an indicator of your self worth; its a giant mathematical equation that doesn’t know you or how special and unique you are or how much you love to do whatever it is you do. The algorithm is just rearranging trillions of 1’s and 0’s to push videos for hundreds of millions of people all at the same time in one place. But that being said, it doesn’t change the fact that when we put something we love on social media and it underperforms, it feels like the algorithm is telling us we suck and then we get discouraged from posting again. This leads to the opposite of consistent posting since the algorithm inadvertently killed your consistent vision to post.

This is a long way around the block to get back to the main point of “find a consistent vision so you can consistently post,” but all that I found my consistent vision from understanding these topics. Doesn’t mean it’ll work for everyone, but it’s worked for me and many people I know. Now, my consistent vision for TikTok is to just have fun, be goofy, play with bits, and become more comfortable showing my face/body. This is an INTERNAL focus (not a focus on EXTERNAL output that I have no control over), and so my vision cannot be affected by the internet algorithms and it stays the same no matter what.

Then comes the easier part: consistently posting. This doesn’t mean every day or twice a day or anything insane, just whatever schedule you feel like you can keep without it becoming a burden. Whether that’s once a day (like me), every other day, MWF, weekends, once a week, once a month, just make that schedule consistent. The algorithms want consistent content from you to find you reliable enough to push your videos out into the fyp ethos. Predictable posting frequency is easier for the algorithm to chew on and categorize you. Then just stick to it best you can, but know that you CAN take breaks, you CAN take hiatuses, and the algorithm won’t freak out on your page (from my experience and that of my friends). That being said, even if it WOULD freak out, remember you and your mental health are the top priority over whatever you post, so make sure you are doing well before you put yourself out there.

I have pretty much posted one video a day for 4 years, sometimes taking breaks on weekends or holidays or vacations, and not stopping is genuinely the only reason any of my platforms have grown. Sometimes it takes months or even years of posting before you really start to gain any exciting traction, but if your vision is consistent and you’re having fun no matter what, then that won’t phase you. And with any luck you’ll find yourself one day with a surprisingly larger corner of the internet than you ever expected you’d have. You got this!

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Besides just having fun and meeting fun people, I do have larger goals when it comes to my social media pages/platforms that drive me. Some of the smaller goals revolve around getting better connected with STL, meeting more people in the city I live in, supporting local artists/businesses as best I can, and starting stand-up shows. My larger 5-10+ year goals would be to one day be an actor and/or voice actor in larger movies/shows. My dream goals would be to create enough income from social media to pay for my siblings college tuition and allow my dad to retire, as well as build our podcast to a point where the income could support each of us as a part-time job.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://beacons.ai/senorpequenos
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/senorpequenos
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/senorpequenos
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/senorpequenos
• Other: https://linktr.ee/senorpequenosreviews https://linktr.ee/pequenopod https://boxd.it/1gKhJ https://www.snapchat.com/add/senorpequenos1 https://www.twitch.tv/SenorPequenos