We recently connected with Shannon Brush and have shared our conversation below.
Shannon, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
I have taken several risks in my life so far. One huge risk for me that led me to my success today was making the decision to get out of college. I realized that I wanted my life to go in a different direction that I originally had planned. Instead of settling for a career that wouldn’t fulfill me or my life, and instead of racking up more student loans in the process, I decided to transition into working full time, and creating my content business on the side. I wanted to take control of my own time and my own career, and I felt the only way to do this was to start my own business.
Not only was this a huge financial risk, but it was a huge emotional risk as well, and not everyone in my life understood why I was doing the things I was doing at first. But I did have a plan, and I started putting all of my time I would have spent studying school into my content creation. I worked full time at a couple of different businesses for a couple years before the pandemic, and kept gaining knowledge about content creation and how to turn it into a business. When the pandemic hit, I was laid off from my in-person job and started working from home full time, and the job I had let me work on my content while I was working, so this really helped me build my business even more!
After working hard at it, I was able to scale my business over the next two years and I now am making money doing what I truly love, and I get to be on my own schedule and my own boss.
Shannon, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Shannon! I am a 25 year old Beauty and Lifestyle Micro-Influencer/Content Creator based out of Kansas City, Missouri, United States. I got into content creation because I had always loved taking photos and videos, even as a kid, and I also fell in love with video editing when I was in high school. I had always watched and admired other influencers/creators that were able to do what they love, educate their audience, and get paid all while being their own boss and getting paid for their talents and work! I realized that you don’t have to have a million followers to be able to make a living as a social media creator, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and create Naturally Shannon!
My content is centered around encouraging my audience (you) to beYOUtiful in your own skin!
I focus on K-Beauty and Clean Beauty, and mostly upload product placement shots, product reviews, product education, and some lifestyle and fashion inspiration to my Instagram and TikTok.
I help educate my audience on which products to use for their skin type, how to use the products to be most effective, and demonstrate the results of the products.
My YouTube is a little bit more intimate as I share my life and experiences as well as demonstrate how to use skincare, makeup, and haircare products.
I help brands by creating content that brings their products to my audience. I also do content creation for brands to use on their own channels/websites as well.
What sets me apart is that I am skilled in a lot of different aspects, such as video editing, photography, videography, educating an audience, ect. and I feel like that makes me more marketable in this industry.
I am most proud of being able to say I do what I love and make a living from it. I am happy that I get to be free to be as creative as I can be, as I know the amount of hard work and long hours it takes to get to that point.
Nice to meet you, and I hope to see you over on my socials!
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
My advice is to just start! I started building an audience in late 2018 after doing some research on how to grow an audience. I was focused on creating a community of like-minded people who also are interested in the same things I am, and I created a niche surrounding that idea. Niches are really important to begin building an audience, because you can really reach a specific group of people. It is a lot harder to build a following if you are just posting randomly.
Definitely make sure you have a strategy in place before you even start posting. After you have a niche and strategy, start posting content that you see others are posting, study trends, and get your name out there! Post at the same time each day if you can and always stay consistent in posting daily/more than once a day depending on the platform. I also interact with my followers’ posts all day every day, I am never inactive or not interacting with others’ posts. This helps you gain an organic audience that supports you as much as you support them!
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
Technically, yes! My side hustle (influencing/content creation) is in the process of turning into my full-time career! I say “still in the process” because I am still working full time for now, but my plans for the very near future are to phase out my full time job to part time, and then to full time in my career! I know this will not happen as soon as I want it to, so I have to stay patient, and know that with time and work, it will happen!
An important milestone was when I first started charging brands and taking payments for my work. It made me realize that this can really happen, and that I can really make a living off of doing this! It was about this time last year when I made my first $100 from my first sponsored post! Seeing my growth over the past 12 months has been a motivator to me to get it done and make it happen!
My boyfriend and I are also wanting to purchase a house/get married in the next year or so, so knowing I am bringing in extra money to save for that every month is nice, too!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://62615b2934791.site123.me/#
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/naturally.shannon/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/naturallyshannon1997
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Shannon_UGC
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/shannonrenae1997
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@naturally.shannon
Image Credits
Shannon Brush (@naturally.shannon)