When does traveling the world come into your plans? For most of us it’s probably a quick vacation here and there or some time after retirement, but LaRae has been showing that it can be done on your own dime in your 20’s!
To understand LaRae’s journey, we have to go back to her college days. She came from a small town in Utah and was studying psychology, since she had always been fascinated by people. Partway through college, she took a break to do a service mission in Russia, which ended up being quite the eye-opening moment in her life because of how impactful learning about an entirely different culture and language was. After 2 years in Russia, LaRae came back to the states to finish school. Originally, she wanted to go into therapy with her degree, but ended up going into consumer psychology instead because her being an empath made it hard to not get personally impacted by clients’ problems.
After finishing her degree, LaRae headed back to Russia because she loved it so much. Her first job out of school was as a project manager for a firm that made apps to help different brands market their products. She stayed there until her now husband proposed, at which point she came back for him since he couldn’t leave the U.S. for work. Between now and then, she’s visited 16 countries and is trying to get to 20 by the end of her 20’s! Content creation played a key part in this, and her approach to the social media game has evolved over time.
When LaRae first started out, she wanted to be primarily a travel blogger, she had a friend who was doing that for a living that was able to really help her out with learning the ropes. When it comes to monetization, LaRae has found that diversity is key. If you’re trying to make money purely off of brands as a micro-influencer, it’s probably not going to be enough. If you’re instead able to diversify your skills, such as providing a service like content creation for brands you’re working with in addition to posting about them on your page, you’ll see much more success than you would through just one channel. For LaRae her passion for fashion was much easier to monetize than social media itself, as she won a pageant and got into New York fashion week from it! She’s also been in fashion weeks in Milan, Paris, and London!
All creators have to deal with burnout at some point, and when I asked LaRae about it she came prepared with a “Burnout Plan” of going back to working in psychology 🤣! It turns out working in fashion can really put a strain on you- her schedule during fashion weeks looks like getting up between 5am and 6am, doing hair and makeup, rushing to the first show, then literally sprinting to a cab so she can rush to the show after that so she can be there in time to change into the next brand she’s representing. This cycle continues all the way into the evening and then repeats the next day. Outside of fashion weeks, LaRae used to book herself as much as possible, including weekends, but over time she found that the best way to avoid burnout is to take some time each week to step away from work. Unfortunately, it’s pretty difficult to protect weekends in this industry since it’s common for clients to have things going on on the weekends, but it’s the best way to keep fresh.
LaRae has quite the interesting story with all the places she’s been, and now that we’re at the start of 2023 she has big things coming! As mentioned before, she wants to visit 20 countries in her 20’s, and on the social media side she wants to grow her Instagram up to 100k followers, and her income up to six figures as well. LaRae also wants to put her psychology degree and life coach certification to good work by using her platform to become more of a life coach. She has an app and website in the works to provide life coaching and productivity materials, so if you want to keep up with LaRae, you can find her on Instagram @larae.day!
