One of my absolute favorite platforms across social media was created by Khadeen and Devale Ellis, a black millennial married couple with three kids. I first learned about them on an episode of the OWN Network show Black Love and began following them immediately.
One of my favorite episodes of their web series, The Ellises, is “Devale vs. Two Kids.”
I can relate on soooo many levels to aaaaaaalll of this, being a millennial spouse and parent.
As I’ve followed Khadeen and Devale, they have become my friends-in-my-head and fellow commiserators on things related to live, love, and parenting. They have also become #businessgoals, because they’ve developed an amazingly successful brand that continues to grow and thrive.
So, I was really excited when I learned that they had started a podcast. The podcast, called Dead Ass, shares “honest and raw conversations about relationships, parenting, family, work life balance and everything in between.”
One recent episode, “For the Content Creators Out There…,” provided some advice that was just too good not to share. Khadeen and Devale basically talk about how they’ve grown their own brand. Today, they collectively have more than a million Instagram followers, 150,000 YouTube subscribers, and have been featured all over the place.
I’ve pulled out some of the important pieces of advice I heard on the podcast episode, though it is truly worth a full listen. I’ve included the episode at the end of this post.
- Don’t focus on the comments – it is exhausting and unproductive.
- Be authentic in whatever your content is.
- Be cognizant of your brand and make your content digestible if you want to monetize your social media platform.
- It doesn’t happen overnight–it takes ten years (!!) to become an overnight success.
- Have a supportive partner, especially one who can fill the gaps and has the skills you lack.
They also have a conversation with Eric J. Dickens, the creator of the MakeUp X BreakUp web series. Eric’s web series is going into its third season and was recently added to BET Digital. The web series has about 30k YouTube subscribers and a few hundred thousand views.
Even with all these successes, Eric still has a full-time job, which he talked about on the show. This reminded me of a tweet I saw recently:
I was really encouraged after listening to this episode, for some many reasons, and I hope you will be too. Keep it pushin, ya’ll.
What kinds of things do you struggle with as a content creator? Drop a comment and let me know! And, share this post with all of the content creators you love!
The full episode: