Christal Luster has at all times known she’s had a healing quality about her.

If it was working together with her family to assist create quality haircare products that help people beautiful from the within out—acting, or ministering through the Christian music she composed, she’s at all times been of service. Nevertheless it was laughter of all things that actually converged her talents.

It began the summer of 2020 while on a staycation together with her then-husband. Luster had walked into their kitchen one lazy day and noticed an enormous mess he’d made within the room, much to her chagrin. As an alternative of lashing out, she picked up her phone and created a video with a trending piece of audio playing within the background that genuinely captured her irritation while panning to the untidy kitchen.

She posted it, and an hour later she’d amassed 10,000 views. Then 40,000. After which Tabitha Brown commented. It was then Luster said she realized the facility of her reach.

“I’ve at all times been silly, everyone who knows me knows that, but I don’t think I noticed how vital authenticity on social media was until that viral moment,” Luster tells ESSENCE. “I used to be completely myself, and other people related.”

Luster then began to recurrently create videos across all her social platforms reacting to humorous, often Black colloquial memes, together with her own twist. Unsurprisingly, a short while later, she’d amassed a following of greater than 700k on TikTok and nearly 300K on Instagram. She says it’s all due to authenticity.

“I feel like that’s {effortlessness} online is usually a giant hang up for individuals who wish to get into content creation,” Luster says. “Yes, there are parameters. Yes, there are things that you must do to be certain that it’s clean, that it looks good. After all, videos which have good lighting and great sound quality are vital. But at the tip of the day, in the event you take per week to create one amazing video, or in the event you take an hour to take an excellent video and also you’re capable of post day by day versus once per week, you’re going to go a bit of bit further since the makeup of those apps is basically about feeding the apps. It’s about feeding the beast. And consistency is at all times going to be the important thing. And so I felt that being authentic, not being so packaged, which was hard for my virgo brain to understand at first, showed people, particualarly millennials who grew up in the right Instagram feed era, that we just have to get on the market,” the thirty-something said.

@christalluster

A complete lotta movement for wingless pads 🤔😅 #womenproblems #relatable #reactionvids #funnycomments

♬ original sound – Christal Luster

In under three years, her brilliant humorousness created a para-social phenomenon and led to her securing partnerships with the The Shade Room, and brand deals with Curvycouture, Southwest Airlines, and SheIn amongst others.

She also shared her learning in Viral Vids: A Guided Content Journal for Increased Engagement on TikTok and supporting clients under her content production firm, Christal Clear Productions, LLC, which makes a speciality of catering to the needs of small business owners and artistic professionals. Although the firm is successful, she says her bread and butter is her brand.

“I’m also acting and I do still have a few clients but I’d say about 80% to 90% of my income is from influencing,” she shares. And based on estimates, the dimensions of her following can command tens of hundreds of dollars for dedicated posts and long-term brand partnerships.

“I’m often negotiating prices anywhere between $2,000 on the very low end for perhaps one platform and one post, all the best way as much as about $10,000 for campaigns, depending on which platforms, plus a Link In Bio because essentially I’m my very own cable channel,” she properly asserts.

Through the successes, she maintains that her true calling is service.

“Over time, it became apparent to me that this was a calling,” she tells ESSENCE. “This was something that I used to be meant to do. I’ve leaned into content creation heavily and have built a profession out of it, which works together with my passion for acting and music, but the true reason behind it’s because I just love bringing joy to people.”