Everybody seems to love to talk about how to grow a big following, but nobody talks about the price you really pay when you do have a bigger platform.
I've been a creator for the last seven years.
I built my platform to about a million followers across Instagram and YouTube.
And I remember reading this article from Tim Ferriss that really scared me.
He talked about comparing your following size to real life cities.
So for context, on Instagram I have more people following me than the city of Cincinnati, Orlando and Pittsburgh.
And then on YouTube I have more subscribers in the population of Seattle, Boston and San Francisco.
And it really isn't until you compare your following size to cities where you realize how much we've normalized 10K followers or even a thousand followers.
If you had a thousand followers, you have more people following you than the population of these towns right here.
And if you think about real life cities, there's always gonna be a small population of people that are unwell, have a lot of unhealed trauma and also have really bad intentions.
And so you have to wonder how that's different from the online community that you've built or are building.
And so that's why I'm making this video, because there are so many things that I wish someone told me before I ventured into this journey of building my audience.
That would have really saved me from my mental health, prevented me from losing myself in this process of building my audience, and would have kept me a lot safer online.
The first thing you got to know is as you grow your following, you will be exposed to more hate.
It's not necessarily because your content got worse or because you've become a bad person.
Now that you have a following, it's because you are growing, you are reaching more people.
If anything, it's actually a sign of success.
And I'm not saying that to gas you up.
It's simply just a numbers game.
So I think that it's reasonable that 90% of people are going to like you 10% art.
If you're starting out and you have a hundred followers, that's 10 people who don't like you.
That's manageable in real life.
I could probably count 10 people who don't like me.
But then online, as you grow your following and, let's say, you have 10000 followers, that same 10 of people now becomes a thousand people.
And that's only the people who are following you.
We're not talking about viral videos like posts that end up reaching 20000 people, 50000 people, all of a sudden.
And that explains why when your posts take off, you naturally just get more hate comments.
Even for me, once the comment section becomes weird, I just stopped looking at it.
But I also take it as a sign of success because now I know that this video or this post is picking up steam. and it's reaching a lot of people now unfortunately as humans we naturally look at the negatives more than the positives and if you're sensitive like me or you're new to this and you blew up overnight and you don't know how to handle all of these comments all of this hate then you're going to easily internalize that and change the way that you show up i remember when i was a smaller creator i was more likely to do live streams and yap and like say what's on my mind and be a lot more opinionated than i am now but as my platform grew i I started to get more exposed to people's expectations, opinions, and I was always afraid of saying the wrong thing because there was always going to be someone that was misunderstanding what I was saying or just wanted to argue with me on the internet.
And so naturally it made me feel a lot less safe being online, which is really ironic.
You would think that as you grow your platform, you become more confident, you become more open, you become more connected.
But I actually find that the opposite is true as you grow your audience.
And because of that, you end up building walls up.
You end up removing proximity because maybe in the past you've allowed people to get way too close and then they hurt you.
And so you end up outsourcing a bunch of things like common engagement, DM engagement, and you also end up building a character for yourself rather than being yourself, as a way to protect yourself.
Because for a lot of us, it could be easier to receive criticism for a character that we've built online than receive criticism for who we actually are.
And this is why it is actually really hard and vulnerable to be authentic online.
But here's the thing, though even though building a character for yourself is gonna make you feel safe, if that gap widens between who you actually are in real life and the character you've built online, you are gonna feel so much cognitive dissonance, you are gonna feel such an identity crisis, especially as your values start changing.
I remember when I started social media, I was in my early 20s and as my platform grew, I decided to put myself in a box, create an online character for myself, which is this social media educator that's really professional and is very knowledgeable and knows everything about anything.
As I grew older, as I started nearing my thirties and I wasn't really about the hustle culture anymore, I didn't really like the thing that I was teaching.
It was so hard for me to grapple with.
And the truth is, even if you don't do social media, people every day have identity crisis.
Is they always change?
They always evolve, but it's almost like being online and having a bigger audience.
It's harder to navigate through that process.
And there is almost less grace for you to figure things out on your own time.
For some reason, because you've built a following, you almost feel like you're in a rush all the time to want to figure things out, to want to understand who you are, to almost want to announce your identity online and what people can expect of you.
But the thing is that life doesn't work like that.
We expect ourselves to know ourselves within a week, when in reality it takes like five to 10 years to actually build character.
And so if you want to learn from me, just take your time with it and just know that there will be people who join the ride of you growing up online and then other people who opt out because maybe you're not their person anymore, and that's okay.
Don't rush your timelines, because I spent years building this identity and then at the end of it, I still had to burn it down, and now I'm still trying to figure myself out.
Like, I will not say, like, this is who I am anymore.
I just tell people, hey, I'm going on these side quests.
I'm learning about myself.
And if you wanna join and like understand what I'm learning in real time not that I'm your guru then come along this ride with me.
But I'm no longer like my old self where I'm like, do they like me?
Do they not like me?
Oh my God, if they unfollow, then that means they hate me.
Like none of that, because that's just so bad for your mental health.
This leads me to the next thing, and that is the fear of falling off and being irrelevant is so real.
As your platform grows, as you get more views, your standard increases.
And if you don't hit that standard, anything below that not just means that your post isn't good enough.
It means that you aren't good enough.
Now, this isn't true, but this is likely the story that you will tell yourself.
You then put so much pressure on every single post to perform, to the point where it's not even fun for you to create content anymore.
And you also lose sight of the progress you've made, the support that you've built and your gratitude.
I remember back then I was so upset that a video only got 20000 views when in reality, years before, I was praying to even get 500 views.
Because how it works is imagine yourself creating posts and on average, you're getting a thousand views per post and you're really happy with your progress.
But then one day the algorithm blesses you and you get 500,000 views on one of your posts.
Then the next day you get 2000 views.
Even though the 2000 views is more than the thousand views that you usually get, you're almost like not happy with that because it wasn't 500000 views.
You then put yourself in a position where you're constantly chasing that viral video.
And so now you end up looking at what other creators are doing.
You start doing what's trendy.
You start doing what's safe, what is known to perform.
And that comes at the expense of your own authenticity, your own creativity.
And then, if it works and you do get lots of views, you will then attract brand sponsors, who will then tell you how much your videos are worth.
But you're going to think that's how much you're worth.
Because how brand deals work is that they pay you from the amount of views that you're getting on your channel or on your Instagram.
And then now you get stuck in this cycle where you're chipping away at your identity, at your creative freedom.
And it's no wonder why so many creators end up quitting YouTube or leaving influencing as a job.
At the same time, I understand that when you post what's on your heart, it doesn't always make income, but this is how you support yourself.
So this is what I do.
I rotate between these three buckets, one for you, one for me, and one for life.
There are times where I'll make videos that are for you, designed for the viewer, designed for the algorithm to get views, to attract brand sponsors.
But then there are also videos that are for me.
These are videos where I'm just having fun.
I'm posting it because it makes me feel creative and just because I want to.
So I'm not gonna care if it gets a lot of views, a lot of likes, or even brand sponsors.
And then finally videos that are for life.
These are videos that make me feel like I'm contributing back to society with the generous lessons I've learned in my life.
They may not be the trendiest topics.
They may not go viral right away, but I do them because I genuinely think that it might help someone out there.
Kind of like this video right now.
Now moving on to the next thing.
As long as you are posting yourself publicly online for people to entertain themselves with or educate themselves with, you are putting your safety and security at risk.
One thing that I regret was when I was younger.
I was a lot more reckless with what I was sharing online.
I was sharing my possessions.
I was telling people how much money I was making and you never really know who's watching.
For example, you've seen Kim Kardashian get robbed because she told people she was going to be in Paris and she showed off her ring.
I've also seen influencers like Tamera get robbed as well, because she does show off her luxury handbag collection.
And there's also this girl Hailey, that I follow, who doesn't have as many followers as Tamera Kim, but she also got robbed because she told people that she was gonna be out of town.
And the thing is, that is just people stealing your possessions.
It could be even worse, especially if you are a woman.
That's exactly why when I travel, I don't publicly post where I'm going and what my itinerary is.
And I don't post what I did on vacation until I'm back home.
But on top of physical safety, we also need to talk about cybersecurity.
If you are a creator or you have an online business, all your livelihood is online and it can take one person, one hacker, to take all of that away from you.
Whether that's gaining access to your Instagram, your YouTube, your Shopify, whatever it is, or even your bank account.
This actually happened to my fiance Leon.
So in his old business he had this really successful Instagram page that had over 200000 followers and a hacker got into it.
And Leon lost his source of income overnight.
Him and I definitely learned from that lesson, which is why we always change our passwords.
But we also use cybersecurity platforms like Keeper, the sponsor of today's video.
Keeper is a leading cybersecurity platform that keeps your passwords, identity, and files safe.
They are the top-rated password manager in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Plus, they are the most downloaded password manager in the world.
Keeper has never had a security breach and is one of the most reputable password managers out there.
While LastPass, which I used before, had a major security breach back in 2022.
That affected a lot of people and that's why I moved.
Keeper uses zero trust and zero knowledge encryption, meaning nobody can see your passwords, including Keeper themselves.
It also has breach monitoring, which makes sure that all of your passwords have not been compromised by the dark web or some hacker, as well as a security audit to let you know how strong your passwords really are.
There's also one-time password sharing, which allows you to give access to your accounts without revealing the actual password itself.
This is so helpful to share your streaming passwords rather than texting them to your friends or family, giving access to your social media account to a team member, or your banking information to your accountant or bookkeeper.
Keeper also offers Keeper Chat, which allows you or anyone else to text privately with self-destructing messages, untraceable message retraction and a private media gallery that doesn't leave any traces in your actual camera roll.
They've also got secure file storage so you can store confidential documents like your bank statements passports, driver's licenses, policies.
This is so helpful if you need to send documents to your accountant or your lawyer or anyone that you trust, but you don't necessarily want to have that traced in email.
And by the way, it was actually really easy for me to migrate from LastPass to Keeper.
All I had to do was download the Keeper desktop app, import all of my passwords over and then afterwards I downloaded the Keeper Google Chrome extension.
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As someone whose livelihood entirely depends on the internet, it is a very small price to pay for a good cybersecurity system and password manager.
If you wouldn't cheap out on the security on your home, you definitely should not cheap out on the security on the internet.
And if you want to try out Keeper, you can use the code VAN50 for 50% off personal and family plans.
The link will be in my description box and in my comment section below.
Now onto the next thing you need to be wary of as you grow your platform.
And that is the amount of people that may exploit your likeness in order to build their businesses.
So I've had many experiences where I've worked with coaches consultants, agencies.
I've joined programs where initially they were really excited to work with me because they could use my logo and promote their own business.
Yet they did not deliver on the actual results that were promised or we ended on bad terms because they were very unprofessional and I would not recommend them to other people.
Yet, despite that, my logo is still on their pages.
They still drop my name to sign clients.
They'll take things I've said out of context and put them on sales pages on programs that I didn't even join or take, or they take way too much credit for the success that I've built.
That's why it's really important whenever you're considering hiring someone or working with someone.
And one of the main reasons why you want to is because someone you admire or look up to work with them.
To make sure you contact that person directly.
Because I made that mistake.
I remember once I hired a consultant and the reason why is because on their sales page that had all these logos of these bigger companies and creators that I really admire.
And so I hired them.
I did not have a good experience.
And because I thought I was going crazy, I finally decided to reach out to one of those main companies that I really respected.
And turns out they had the exact same negative experience as me.
And they were actually going through a legal battle of trying to remove their logo from this person's website.
And so that's why I think it's important to really understand the weight of the brand that you've built, the platform that you have, and also the trust that you've built with your audience, the value that you actually bring to the table.
Because sometimes, when you're constantly telling yourself that you're not good enough, you're not good enough, you put yourself in a position to be expected.
And what I learned that a lot of bigger influencers do or business owners do is they actually make other people sign NDAs or sign an agreement that says you cannot use my likeness to promote your business until I'm actually satisfied with the work that was delivered, or I formally give you a testimonial on a specific service that you did and that is the testimonial that you've used.
Now, of course, this does sound really intense and ideally you don't have to go that route and you just trust that people are going to deliver what they say they are.
But I'm just sharing because not a lot of people talk about this other side of having a platform or just working with other people in general.
On the topic of understanding the weight of the platform that you've built.
As you grow your audience, you will naturally attract more people who want to be your friend or want to invite you to certain things.
Wanna collaborate, wanna do all these things.
And it's very important that you understand the difference between a transactional relationship versus a genuine one.
And the truth is that I didn't even learn this lesson until I hit a very low point on social media and business.
I was so burnt out.
I burned down my entire business.
I took a whole year off.
I went on a sabbatical and I was absolutely shocked by the amount of industry peers, people I considered friends or even past clients, who would use my name for clicks.
They would use my name and tell my story as if they knew my story, make tons of speculations over on their newsletters, podcasts and YouTube, all without checking in on me.
And it was very hurtful, but at the same time, I'm so grateful that it happened because it allowed me to remanage my expectations when it comes to business opportunities and just relationships in general.
So now, in this creator business, when someone approaches me, I will suss out what their intentions are.
I will want to get to know them better as a person, see if our values actually align, see if I'd even want to be friends with this person before I even dive into business with them.
Or on the flip side, let's say I'll look at a business opportunity and I will just purely see it as a transactional thing.
Like I'll be like, okay, in my head, this is a transaction.
I'm not going to expect anything more from this person.
We are not friends because I think before I just thought everyone was my friend.
And so that's what caused me to be really hurt when those things happened.
And now, looking back on the situation, I think I took something out of it too, in a sense, where I also realized in the past I have leveraged people's names to get more clicks on my content because they had a bigger following and I only saw them for their following and their platform size, rather as them as people.
And so now I kind of like refrain from doing that as much as I did before, because I now know how it feels.
Now, on the topic of relationships, I do want to talk about parasocial relationships and some of the personal responsibility you might feel for other people, especially as your platform gets bigger.
At the start of this video, I really talked about the importance of putting into perspective the volume of people that you're reaching and using cities as a way for you to truly conceptualize that.
With any city, there's always going to be a percentage of people who maybe are unwell and because they watch your videos and they see you as a friend, they may unload a lot of that burden onto you.
And that was a big reason why I had to outsource a lot of my emails over time, because I would get a lot of emails that were really heavy, that were just people asking for money, people telling me that they were going to hurt themselves if I didn't do this or say this, or just really needing help.
And because I'm not licensed to do any of that.
It was just a lot and it can be pretty heavy stuff sometimes.
And I don't think a lot of people actually talk about that side of things.
And so it's just something to be aware of.
And when it does happen, understand that there's only so much that you can do, and to really try your best to point people to the right resources that can actually help them.
Now onto less heavier things with the parasocial relationships.
I feel like growing a platform and understanding that more people know me than I actually know them.
It's caused me to be a little bit more afraid of who I'm going to bump into in public or being in public.
Sometimes it's actually more common for me to be recognized in the States than in Canada.
But I remember a few times where I was in the States, or even in Canada, but mostly in the States where I was just hanging out or shopping or doing something and someone would come up to me and say, oh my gosh Vanessa blah blah, blah.
And I love it when people come up to me.
I think it's so cool.
But I will always leave that interaction just being so fearful of being like oh my God, what was I doing before?
Was I rude to anybody?
I hope I wasn't doing anything embarrassing.
I hope I lived up to their expectation.
Like you know it's.
It's this thing that gives me a lot of anxiety actually, even though I do encourage you, if you ever see me in public, to say hi.
But don't be offended if I'm ever just kind of like a bit scared or wide eyed or don't know what to do with myself because I'm so used to talking to nobody on the camera.
And so when I actually see someone in real life, it's definitely a different type of experience.
Now the purpose of this video is really not to scare anyone from building an audience.
I am so grateful for the platform that I've built and I would not change it for anything else.
I just only wish that there was a video like this that existed for me as I was building my platform, so I would just feel less alone over the things that I was experiencing.
And, by the way, if there's anything that you've experienced as you've built your audience, let us know in the comment section below.
As always guys, I appreciate you and if you liked this video, make sure you watch this one next.
