We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Siera Bearchell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Siera, looking forward to hearing all of your stories 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?

After graduating law school, I was pregnant with my daughter and knew I wasn’t going to pursue my law career right away. I started sharing more of my pregnancy and motherhood journey on social media (mostly Instagram and YouTube at the time) and started to receive brand partnership opportunities! I had to figure things out totally on my own and at that time, there were not many resources to help creators in the social media space. Now, 5 years later, I am so grateful to have worked on paid partnerships with some of the top brands in the world including Sephora, Porsche, Volkswagen, Samsung, Tim Hortons, and more :)

Siera, 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?

After losing our family home to a house fire, I started volunteering with the Canadian Red Cross to give back to families who had also lost their homes. I heard about a pageant that shared volunteer opportunities. I knew nothing about the pageant world, but entered the competition and won! I went on to win Miss Teen Canada-World and place in the Top 5 at Miss Teen World. I was able to build a school with Free The Children in Kenya, Africa, speak to 16,000 young people at a youth conference and much more. I had some amazing opportunities because of the pageant world and made a goal to one day represent Canada at MISS UNIVERSE.

In January 2017, I finally achieved my goal of competing at MISS UNIVERSE. Despite being “body shamed,” I still placed in the Top 9 among 86 countries from around the world. I was able to showcase that your dreams are possible even if you don’t fit the “standards” that others lay out for us. My stories and posts around this time were shared by the likes of VOGUE, TIME, ELLE, Cosmo, etc.

From here, I began speaking about body confidence, self esteem, and the power of the mind.

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

In the world of social media, one of the challenges creators and influencers deal with is the backlash from “trolls.” What I tell myself and those who ask me, “How do you deal with the haters?” I say this: “What they say to you says more about them, than it does about you.” They may not understand it, but they are deflecting their own insecurities and feelings about themselves onto you. They are trying to bring you down to their level. And you don’t need to go there.

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

It’s very easy to get caught up in what others are doing and feel like we need to be like everyone else to reach new levels of success. Sit back and think about what makes you unique and what do you bring to the table in your niche that others don’t share or haven’t talked about yet. What skills, advice, perspectives do you offer that you haven’t seen before? Are you amazing at DIY? Do you have great advice when it comes to buying your first home? Do you like sharing tips on how to survive University?

I didn’t know it at the time, but I created a community of likeminded women who wanted to live life by their own rules. The more I share my OWN journey in a genuine and authentic way, the more brands reach out to me! It’s cliche, but being authentic and genuine is going to help you play the long term game to success in the world of social media.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sierabearchell.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sierabearchell/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siera-bearchell-8a1659111/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/sierabearchellofficial
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sierabearchell

Image Credits
Leighton Bearchell