We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stefanie Stevens a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Stefanie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
I believe that anyone who is striving for success needs to have the drive and tenacity to not give up. When something doesn’t go your way, that doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t meant to be. When you’re striving for success, you will fail sometimes. There’s no way it will be easy all the time and everything will always fall right into place. It takes hard work and determination, and there will be some rejection and failures along the way. But if you give up and stop trying, that’s an automatic fail. There’s no possibility of success if you stop aiming for it. But if you keep going, that’s the way to success. You have to be willing to step outside of your comfort zone, get uncomfortable, often, and do things you’ve never done to get something you’ve never had before.
Stefanie, 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?
I am a vegan influencer, and so I discuss and educate about all things vegan! I’m active on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. I create and share my own vegan recipes, I share recipes from other influencers and I write and share opinion pieces and educational posts about veganism. I also feature vegan-friendly brands (food, supplements, beauty, skincare, etc.) to introduce my followers to their company and products and drive consumers to either their brick-and-mortar stores or websites where their products are sold. I’ve been vegan since 2009, I’m a certified nutritionist and so I’ve been practicing and studying vegan living for years. I am a great resource for vegans and non-vegans alike, whether you’ve been vegan for years and you’re looking for recipes and new vegan products to try, or you aren’t vegan but you’re interested in becoming vegan or even just wanting to live a more compassionate, environmentally-friendly or healthy life.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Engaging with your community is super important. Finding people who are genuinely interested in your content and supporting them is important, as well. You also want to create content that can teach others, or make them feel something. That helps them or has an impact on them in some way. Growing a following takes time, but when you put intention behind what you’re creating and focus on how you can use your platform to serve others, you will grow not only a following, but a community.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I think that specifically with being a vegan influencer, you have to have a great deal of resilience. Only about 3% of the population is vegan, which still comes out to several million, but the reality is that we live in a non-vegan world. The majority of non-vegans that approach me are supportive, curious, and even interested in veganism for themselves a lot of the time. But you do get those “anti-vegans,” and they insult in a myriad of ways. From commenting on my appearance and figure, to insulting my cooking, or assuming that I have an agenda and that I’m going to engage in a heated debate with them because they’re posting pictures of slaughtered animals on my posts. In those moments, I remember those who do support me, and I even reach out to them for comfort and encouragement sometimes. And I’ve also stopped reading a lot of those negative comments, I rarely look at them at all now.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifeveganized/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifeveganized
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanieannstevens/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifeveganized