EP 13 Get To Know Harley Jordan - Sonia Interviews Harley
Sonia, our new Co-Host of Brand Meet Creator, interviews Harley. Get to know her rise from covid lay offs to IG's OG transition girl, start up growing pains and the BTS of what it's like to get started in the world of content creation.
Timestamps:
[0:56] What were you doing before your reels took off?
[2:46] What are you up to now/what are your goals?
[4:34] What are the biggest misconception about the influencer industry?
[6:26] What would you tell someone who wants to go down the same path as you?
[7:33] What was the highlight of 2021?
[11:01] Rapid fire questions.
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LINKS:
Find Harley:
IG: @theharleyjordan
Website: https://www.theharleyjordan.com/
Find Sonia:
IG: @Sonia.elyss
Website: https://www.soniaelyss.com/
Follow The Brand Meet Creator Podcast:
Rate, Review, Subscribe & Share: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/brand-meet-creator/id1609505183
00:00
Welcome to brand meet Creator Podcast with me Harley Jordan and Sonia Elise, a place where we pull back
0:06
the curtain and the trashy filters on the influencer marketing industry.
0:10
So pull up a chair and grab a notebook, it's time to shed some light
0:13
on the ever changing it's diverse. Okay, so hopefully you have listened to our most recent episode where Harley interviews me as your new official co host of the podcast. And now I'm going to return the favor because while many of you know the Harley Jordan, let's pull back the curtain as we always promise and get to know her a little bit better, who's excited? Here, we got
0:45
the interviewer here, bring it out to be the main character,
0:51
always she never is not the main character. Okay, question one. So we know that you are the queen of transitions. But what did you do before you decided to start hitting record on rails? Tell us about it.
1:07
You know, first and foremost, I I'm kind of dead. The fact that you categorize me as the Queen of transitions, because I feel like I haven't posted a single transition tutorial single transition in months and months and months. Your girl is just trying to pivot here. So to answer your question, I, I was working in business operations. Right out of college, I was actually I went to I went to school, I went to college for exercise science, I had a minor in bio, I wanted to work in a lab for exercise physiology, like I had big sciency plans, got out of school, and ended up in business operations at a celebrity training facility and realize that you know what business operations was very similar to the side of my brain that I was using to do all of my schoolwork. And so ended up throughout a couple different jobs. I was in the travel industry for a while I was in strength and conditioning, I weirdly enough, worked at a fortune 500 Roofing Company, there was a lot of trauma there. And when COVID hit, I got laid off, I was one of the most recent to be hired first to be fired. And I jumped into Instagram. And that's how we got to where we are today. It was it was a spur of the moment, you know, why don't I Why don't I try this thing?
2:36
Oh my goodness, what a Cinderella story. I love it. And I love your nerdy side. That's all about fitness and movement. One of my favorite fun facts about you. Okay, next question. So we're fast forwarding to now. What are you working on? And where are you leaving your mark out there? What are your goals?
2:56
I feel like I have been through so many big pivots lately. With moving from this like weird niche of all transition tutorials. I am willing to bet that I was one of the first people to bring in app native Instagram transition tutorials to Instagram. And that's built my platform. But after a while, like number one, why did Harley Why did you pick the most difficult niche the most time consuming niche you could possibly be in? Like yeah, great, it's creative, like it's fun, but so much time. So leaned into the coaching, I love the coaching. I love one on one and like the soul searching side of building a brand with creators, but right now I'm kind of jumping into other efforts and kind of backing out of some of that Instagram coaching. I really am looking to make a difference and I think it's okay for your business Jeff stages. So we recently kick started an influencer agency creator agency all influence management, which is really my biggest push right now is just trying to help creators to actually make money build a not only the agency side, but a collective a community of creators for creators to help them in their pursuit of doing this full time.
4:25
We love an evolution and everyone has to start somewhere which leads us to the next thing and leads us to the next thing. So you are definitely moving in the right direction. And as you said, you identify as a creator and you work with many influencers and creators. What do you think the biggest misconception is about the industry?
4:46
Oh my goodness. Influencer Marketing, being a creator is a free lance gig is a freelance gig. If you think that this is going to be Some, I just grow followers and I make tons of money, you are mistaken. It is a hustle. This is entrepreneurship. I think there's a lot of weird information out there about like, anyone can do it, which you can. But it's, it's a hustle. And I think it's really important for us to go in with that in mind. And with the knowledge of you are going to need some business help, you are going to need to learn how to delegate, you'll probably have an assistant long term, I hired a business manager pretty quickly. And all of this because it was necessary to make those jumps in my business. And you really just can't do it as a one woman show where you know, brands just come to you. And that's that and I post for a couple $1,000. And that's my money for the month like that. It just doesn't work like that.
5:51
Yep, I think I would agree with that one as one of those top ones for sure that influencing is not easy creating, it's not easy. And it takes a village, if you really want to be successful.
6:02
It does. And there's just so much that goes into the content on the day to day to like, even if you're not, I mean, you're not getting paid for the day to day content you're posting. You're only getting paid for that, you know, one one post a week that sponsored so yeah,
6:18
big effort. Don't let me scare you away. Please, please, please don't let me scare you away.
6:24
There's still room for everyone. And it can be fun. Okay, so give me the Harley Jordan roadmap to success. What would you tell someone who's looking to walk a similar path that you're on right now?
6:36
Oh, be ready to try a lot of different things. Get ready for a lot of flops and a lot of soul searching and know that it's okay to ask for help. I feel like I've tried so many things. And when I jumped into this, I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea. I thought I was going to start a blog. And it was just going to be monetized through adds like how she didn't know. And that was going to be that. But actually moving into this like I am so I'm so proud of the path that I've taken. But I really wish that I had more help along the way. I wish I had invested in more help along the way. And use that as a jumping point for some of those hard moments.
7:32
What was your notable high or win for 2021?
7:36
Oh, so 2021 was really the year that my platform took off. Let me give you a little timeline here. So I started posting reels consistently, on January 1 of 2021. My first transition tutorial, which pretty much built my platform I posted in February, and it hit 1.5 million on Valentine's Day. From there. I think I gained like 16k followers in the next 60 days, something real quick. And I was making $0.00. That's not true. But I was doing one off meetings and helping people and felt like I was running myself into the ground. And I didn't know what to do. And there were days where I had six, one on one meetings all in a row. And I got off and I was brain dead to the world. And it was just terrible. So I was actually on another podcast and I stopped the host after and I was like, what do you what do I even do here? What? I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I can do next. Like, am I doing something wrong? Because I feel like I can't sustain this. And he was like, he was a business coach. He was like, here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna go to your story and you're gonna say, I am going to show you the exact way that I did this. I'm going to start a group program I'm looking for five people 10 people, something like that to join this 90 Day mastermind which oh my god if I 90 days I can't believe that was the
9:16
recommendation to me because that so long.
9:19
It's it dragged on and then you have all these testimonials and like that's that's going to be that it'll kick start your journey, blah, blah, blah. So I did that. And I basically made like 14 grand overnight, and I literally cried. And because I I was just COVID laid off for a year you know, I I wasn't ready to start my own business or I was ready to start my own business but like success hadn't come yet to I've literally I literally cried I was so overwhelmed still. And at that point, I was finally able to get help. And I remember that just being like the biggest weight off my shoulders. I hired my business manager at that point. And all was up from there with like, now being able to delegate some of the organizational stuff, if you've seen me in business life, and I'm sure our producer Chase, who's my business partner for all influences, like, just cringing at me, because I'm the least organized person ever, like, Thank God that he keeps me on. But I am, I'm a hurricane sometimes in my hurricane. So I need to delegate all of that organizational stuff. So I finally got to do that. And I'm kind of like what you said in your journey is you learn what you're actually good at? What drains you on the day to day and what you should be doing versus what you shouldn't anymore. And that collectively that like journey from? Wow, we're actually getting money actually making money to wow, I can make an actual difference here. Like that was my that was my moment of like, okay, I can do this. Let's go.
11:01
Amazing. Okay, so here we go. Now to the fun part. A rapid fire. Are you ready?
11:08
I don't think so. But yeah, okay,
11:10
we'll start we'll start easy. What's your favorite color? Yellow? Oh, that was a surprise. Okay.
11:17
What did you think it would be? Pink? Definitely not.
11:24
All right, next up, we all know that you are gluten free. If you could eat gluten again. For one day, what would be on the menu?
11:34
It's pizza that I miss good pizza. I learned that I was gluten free. I'm at like 23 years old at when quarantine started. This was like all a terrible experience for me. World shutdown lost my job got ulcers learned that I was gluten free or gluten intolerant. Awful time. Anyway. Pizza pizzas my big one.
12:00
Just pizza. All right. Next up. If you were an animal, what would you be?
12:07
Oh, my gut reaction says on Australian Shepherd is my spirit animal. Kind of erotic kind of high energy.
12:18
I was projecting Flamingo on you. Oh,
12:21
interesting. Interesting. Okay, if you
12:24
had to name your least favorite application that you have to work in, ie, Excel, PowerPoint, Canva, whatever, which is your least favorite to pop into
12:37
frickin Trello get me out of the organizational apps.
12:43
Love it. I thought it was gonna be okay. And what's your?
12:47
What's your? What's your science major? Um, I like Canva
12:52
Canva. Me too. I can't wait for it has can flick on public yet because I'm definitely buying stocks. Okay, amazing. And final question. One that you also asked me. If you were to relocate anywhere in the world, where would you go?
13:07
So my gut reaction says somewhere in Mexico or like in the Caribbean? I love me some beach and tropical. But I don't know if I could do that full time. I think I mean, I would love to go to it's lame to say Palm Springs but like that's my favorite place in the world. I want desert. I want hot desert. That's it. I don't need people near me.
13:35
All right, fine. Harley in the middle of the desert, frolicking with a cat. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us as we interview Harley. We hope that you stick around for many of our episodes to come with me as your official co host and Harley as your forever Guiding Light. If you'd like to interact with us more and chit chat, which you know we love. Please come find us on Instagram and drop us a note in regards to what you'd like to hear next. We'll see you soon.