Making My Career Out of Social Media

Hi. I'm Bethany, I'm 18, and right now I work full time in a call center in Lehi. I also go to school full time as well at Utah Valley University.

My biggest fear is being stuck at a desk job for the rest of my life and right now, I've sure been spending a lot of time behind this desk. I have a few side businesses right now that I love, but nothing that can sustain my lifestyle. So I'm starting to feel like I'm kinda stuck. Until my communications professor challenged my class to do a "Social Media Project". I mean I'm already fairly active on social media and making a bit of money off of it, but I want to take it further. I can't tell you what in the world got into my system that night, but after I watched the lecture I wrote a brief bullet point list and drifted off to sleep. I woke up to these words on the screen:

-Social media full time

-Millionaire by 30

Geez ok Bethany. High expectations much? Looks like I won't be stuck at a desk job much longer. So I immediately got to work. I already had a little bit of experience managing social media pages for brands, but I wanted to take it further. Within a week of reaching out to brands and putting myself out there, I had 3 different job offers to manage their socials for their company. That is going to be a huge part of my income.

Next was building my OWN brand. No, not just Shop Simko and Ivy Wall (though those are getting a little makeover too). I'm talking about my personal brand. What makes ME on the internet. So I started by figure out who Bethany is, and who she wants to be. It's important to me that those around me are happy and feeling loved. Since a lot of my content is already about modeling and being an influencer for my companies, I think I can dive further into that and help elevate girls ideas of themselves. I also seriously love clothes. It's a problem at this point. Just ask my boyfriend, I can't go to any clothing store without buying literally everything. But I mean if I'm gonna have a problem, why not capitalize on that?

So style tips and fashion are the next part of my Brand identity. Now, what about my businesses? I offer services as a photographer and I own clothing and jewlery companies. Those have been a huge part of my life since I was 15 and I don't want to let those go. So, I'm going to work female entrepreneur and business owner content into my posting.

I'm a little worried about my audience not relating to all of my content, but I guess I'll figure that out on the way. And that's what this blog is for, to figure everything out and document it while I go. Who knows, one day when I'm a millionaire, it could be really interesting to look back and see where I started.

I don't want income to be my motivating factor - to be honest, I'm still trying to figure out what my motivating factor is. Yeah, the idea came from a class assignment but that's not where my passion comes from. What I really want to do is inspire others. Show them what's possible and guide them along the journey. This seriously is brand new territory for me and I have no advantages in the industry besides my ridiculous amount of determination.

So can a random girl from a small town in Utah become a successful and recognized public figure? I guess we're about to find out.