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

Hi Sierra, thanks for joining us today. Do you manage your own social media?

I manage all my own social media. I have a TikTok (1.7 million), YouTube (415,000), two Instagram pages, and a business facebook page. It is a full time job juggling all my social media content.

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 Sierra and I bought an indoor playground in the middle of a pandemic! In July 2020 I took a HUGE leap of faith, and bought my local indoor playground so it would not have to shut down. I used to bring my kids to all the events at the playroom and hosted several of their birthday parties in the playroom, so I was very sad to see that it might close down.

I was recently sent home from work in March of 2020, and had no idea if/when I would be allowed to go back. With two small children in lock down, it was very difficult to keep the kids entertained. So I reached out to the owner of Grandma’s Playroom and asked if just my family could pay to play in the playroom while it was empty. Sandy, the previous owner, said YES! So we started spending almost every Sunday in the playroom and I fell in love. When Sandy posted that she was going to close down the playroom or sell it, I thought… “I can do that!”. The next day I got my LLC and started working on the process of buying the playroom. July 1, 202o was my first day in business!

Then I started posting about my journey on TikTok and one day a video BLEW UP! It was a video about me searching for toys the children in the playroom had hidden. From there I researched the TikTok algorithm and began my content creating career! For almost two years straight I posted 3-9 times a day, every day, with out fail! After lots of dedication and hard work, I now have 1.7 million TikTok followers and over 400k YouTube subscribers.

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

Building an audience on TikTok for me was lucky followed by lots of grinding. It was lucky that I hopped on the app at the perfect time and it was luck that one of my videos went viral. I then followed up that lucky with lots of hard work! I made 3-9 TikToks every single day! I knew the playroom wasn’t going to be able to pay all my bills at first, so I needed to figure out a way to supplement it. I reached out to many creators in all different niches to see how they made money on the app. I found out that you can get paid to use songs in your videos. I found all these websites and applied to every single one. Since it was early on in TikTok, I got accepted by almost all of them. I then spent hours a day on each website looking for sounds, using the sounds to work for my niche, and submitting my videos. Sometimes it would take me all day, but I always told myself, “if you want it to pay like a full time job, teat it like a full time job!”

My advice to all is to make sure you are enjoying the process of filming and posting. People love passionate people! Post on TikTok about 3 times a day. This sounds like a huge number, but if you start to think about documenting what you are doing vs filming content, it will come much easier!

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I have made myself the face of the business. I make sure that its my face you see when you go to the website, my social media pages, and when you are in my business. I stop by even on my days off and I am often here 6-7 days a week. I am a local mom with two small kids that want the same thing as my clientele, for my kids to have a safe and fun space. So I make sure I’m relatable as well. I want this to be a place that moms want to come as well as their kids.

Contact Info:

• Website: grandmasplayroomstl.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sierra_zagarri/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GrandmasPlayroomSTL/
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/sierrazagarri
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@sierra_zagarri?lang=en