We recently connected with Xaveriya Hobbs and have shared our conversation below.

Xaveriya, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

My creative career started when I was about 13. I would watch short film videos about barbie dolls and I really enjoyed watching them and wanted to create my own! I loved barbie dolls , especially Monster High! My mom had an old camcorder she stopped using and I would prop it up on some books and make stop motion videos! I loved creating action scenes of my dolls fighting or things throwing , or even live action shots of my dolls driving lol. As I grew older and entered high school, everyday I would ask my sister to take pictures of me of my outfit. I really enjoyed doing my hair and dressing up! I loved how the sunlight bounced off my skin. In 2019, my senior year I purchased my first camera and start taking self portraits. Over the next few months I invested in backdrops , lights and stands and started doing my own photos at home! At this time I was taking my camera everywhere and just having fun and I also loved recording my day to day life and giving mini tutorials to myself in my bathroom mirror. Being fresh out of high school, I was very afraid of posting my videos to the public. After COVID hit, everyone was on Tiktok and this is when I regret not posting earlier. If I would have started posting sooner and not care about what others would have thought about me , I know for sure I would have a much larger community and creating content full time, traveling the world all expenses paid while I’m getting paid!! However I always remind myself to give myself grace because everything is on Gods timing and I have learned so much from other creators. Not only that I have learned patience , more about my analytics and the most important… consistency! As of today, I am going at the right pace. It is a little difficult maintaining a full time job , my photography business and still create my personal content but I manage. God is within me and he will not let me fall! I can only move forward and make progress as each day passes!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

For those who do not know me I am a beauty , fashion and lifestyle content creator as well as a portrait and product photographer! I am also signed to a modeling agency and have been in a few commercials for my hometown. What sets me apart from others is my creativity. I have so many unique ideas and when I bring them to life I always get compliments on my concepts/creativity! I love trying new things and ever since I was younger I loved being the center of attention and being recognized for my work. The thing I am most proud of , is building a strong and loving community , particularly in hair care. I have low porosity and the girlies know the struggle of maintaining low porosity hair! I am also proud of remaining consistent and not giving up creating content and still managing my own business full time. I am extremely proud of pushing myself even when I dont feel like doing something. I would want the world to know me ( in a positive way ) because God has enstilled the vision in me to become a world renowned low porosity hair guru, fashion girly who also models for commercials and seen in print ADS that also owns multiple booming businesses. I want everyone to know me as a GIRL BOSS and I want to encourage and motivate younger girls that they can do anything they want , as long as they put the work in for it.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is seeing my own vision come to life! I also enjoy the creative process of doing my hair and makeup. This also pushes me to continue and come out with different concepts each time.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I built my community by just posting . Yes I’ve been consistent on and off but I posted and discovered what worked and what didn’t . You’ll never know what kind of content you will enjoy making and also what content your audience enjoys unless you POST. One thing I have learned is that followers do not equate $$. Just because you have a lot of followers does not mean youre making any money! This isn’t always the case but a lot of people think ” Oh I have x amount of followers!” … okay and…? Quality OVER quantity! I say this because you have 500 followers and still make a killing amount in profit as long as youre putting in the work ! Something else I would like to share is to believe in yourself and think out the box. Nowadays, people say follow trends – yes they help but be aware of what you post, especially if youre trying to grow a community! For example if you always post beauty content but then one day you make a video to a trend that doesn’t align with your current niche and that video blows up.. now you have all these new followers that followed you because of that ONE video that doesn’t align with your niche. Cool you got more followers but they aren’t going to engage with your posts because they didn’t follow you for beauty.. they followed you for whatever random video you posted so they’re going to want to see more of that! The takeaway is that if youre going to use trends, use it but implement your business/niche into it! One last thing is to just start posting and see what works and what doesn’t. Look at your analytics. A lot of people post 1 video and expect for it to blow.. in reality you dont know what video will do well.. unless you post consistently ! As long as you believe in yourself that you can do this others will believe in you as well… show your confidence! Show up for yourself because no one is going to be your biggest supporter besides YOU.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.zxentphotos.com
• Instagram: xaveriya
• Youtube: Red Head
• Other: My photography IG : @zxentphotography
  My photography Tiktok : zxent