The Journey of Connections and Unexpected Growth.
Being an Influencer is now one of the most popular career aspirations for children. It surpasses traditional career options such as veterinarian and teacher in the United Kingdom alone. In a study conducted on Awin of 2,000 parents with at least one child between the ages of 11 and 16, YouTuber and Influencer ranked as the 2nd and 3rd most popular choice after being a doctor.
With my educational background in biomedical engineering and starting as an entrepreneur in renewable energy, I never thought being an influencer would be a label I would ever be called. My career has always been in B2B, selling renewable resources to distributors or later going into management consulting working with corporate leadership on organizational transformation.
I strived to be in the background. One of the main reasons I love management consulting is to make a transformation impact on an organization and the people working within that business while playing a strategic mastermind role and not being too visible. Maybe it goes back to my Asian upbringing of not standing out too much; being visible and public speaking made me so nervous that I felt judged and saw that I preferred to do the thinking work in the background. Life had a different plan.
In the summer of 2017, my life seemingly started falling apart. The relationship I had at the time, while it seems well, just stopped working. Aside from all the personal crises that unfolded, which I’ll spare you the details of, I worked in the Corporate Strategy Group at Liberty Mutual Insurance. I stopped finding joy in consulting as I used to.
While I love corporate strategy, I reached a point in my career, after ten years, that I needed to determine what direction to pursue next. Whether to build a stable job within corporate, go down the Partner route in Management Consulting, or follow the love of writing and entrepreneurship that I had left years ago.
I think Entrepreneurship has always called to me. The feeling of creating clarity on a vision, a dream. I was then brought a group of like-minded individuals together, creating the foundation and environment for people to collaborate and build something unique together. In the process, creating change and seeing what was in your imagination become a reality and making a tangible impact in the world and the lives of others. I cannot imagine a more rewarding cause to dedicate my life to.
If you know me, you would not be surprised that I took the more uncertain path. It was not logical, but it felt right, and it took everything I am and even more to pursue this path. There was a reason I had waited ten years to do this. I was afraid, afraid of failing, of visibility, of rejection, of success, of not being good enough, and so much more. The entrepreneurship journey pushed me to face all my worst fears and with very high stakes – that if I couldn’t overcome them, it would be financial ruin and no way to pay the bills the next month.
It pushed me to make those cold outreaches, learn how to make sales, lead a new team, motivate people, balance very tight finances, market, and leverage every channel I could to get in front of prospective customers clients and make a living. That journey took me to social media.
Being visible to an audience I may only vaguely know through text, building a connection, and learning to do anything from videos, reels, graphic design, video editing, copywriting, and storytelling – all the necessary skills needed to be successful in influencer marketing. I learned that posting regularly was not enough, but I had to open up and share my journey. How healing that was once I overcame the fear of being seen. To recognize the difference between sharing and seeking approval and how much more freeing and fun the sharing experience on social media can be once I see it from a different light. The mindset and perspective that helped me enjoy this journey more:
· I’m sharing, not selling – Not needing anyone who sees it to approve or do anything.
· Call to action are Invitations – Invitations are for people to feel welcomed but obligated, truly being unattached to what actions people will take.
· Expressing my creativity, not marketing – It made content creation so much more fun rather than a task I needed to do for work.
· Having fun with it rather than being perfect – I don’t need an ideal strategy; I can learn and grow along the way.
· My story is enough; I am enough – So there is no need to do the extraordinary to get attention; being real is enough.
My influencer journey became a journey of self-acceptance, so I no longer sought acceptance from strangers who just found my profile online. Being unattached made connections fun, and I built new relationships over various social media channels because I already gave the approval I needed.
Today, I see social media as a way for me to find like-minded individuals, share my story and journey with folks with whom it resonates, to walk the trip separately but connected. It’s a blessing and a joy. My mentor, Mary Morrissey, has shared this with me, and I have found it so true – the long walk is the gift – the journey was meant to be long, that is the gift, whom you become in the process.
May your journey be blessed.
~Ngan