Cal Poly is in session. Students swarm through campus and file in and out of classes. They're thinking about the chapter reading.
They have tonight, their next class, their new door, their senior project.
Got to get to the gym. What's for dinner tonight?
Where's the nearest bathroom? Kate and I know things can get a bit chaotic as a student navigating the inns and out of college life.
At cal Poly.
We focus on learning by doing, but sometimes you don't know what to do well. Emma and I are here to answer your who, what, when, where, why, and how's here? On CP one oh one Learned by Listening, presented by KCPR ninety one point three. Hi Mustang, I'm Kate Lopenske, a fourth year journalism student, and.
I'm Emma Hughes, a fourth year English student here at cal Poly.
And we're here to share our tell all guide on how to survive and thrive at cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
So grab a notebook you may want to write this down. Welcome back to CP one oh one. Today we have a super special episode for you guys. So as you know, Kate and I are completely on the grind with this podcast, trying to build a following, but unfortunately we have no idea how to be influencers.
So we thought it would be fun to invite some creators from cal Poly to tell us all about their careers and share some advice. And with all of this great information from these talented students, we're definitely going to be famous after this.
Oh yeah, Q like all of our sponsors coming in.
Yeah, wait, what's real quick? What's your dream sponsorship?
Do you know?
Dream sponsorship? Kirkland Vodka, stop Costco in general? STA think Costco?
That would actually be really cool, like.
Free Costco membership for life, like food at the food court whenever I want it for free, like I would wear. I actually every Christmas I ask for a Kirkland Costco sweatshirt.
Ooh that's love. That sounds so cozy. Yeah, what's yours? Mine's jelly cat? Obviously?
I love my jelly cats like I would if I could, I would so start one of those jelly cat TikTok pages. Yeah, and just like show like esthetic setups of my jelly cats and give them all personas. That makes me sound so crazy. Okay, let's hear from these amazing content creators. Yes, they have so much information to share with us.
Hello, my name is Courtney Osman and you can find me on TikTok at Coco Aussie on Instagram at Courtney Osman. I post relatable, fun videos of my life as a student, young woman, all of that in my day to day experiences.
Why do you do this?
No, my favorite part is it is the being able to influence people's days or even influence their thinking. I know, like right now the comedy videos are back when I was doing puppy videos.
I mean, even if.
It's just a smile during the day, even if it's just super small, to be able to make someone laugh and maybe enjoy their life a little bit or maybe think a.
Little bit differently.
I really want people to live their lives and love it and grow and reap the benefits of that. I remember this one super small thing was this guy had instagram DMed me and he said, I just want to let you know that there's this inside joke that my friend and I have between us because of one of your videos. And we literally framed this picture from just like a video snippet frame of your video because was just so fun. It was one of my puppy videos
with the dog had the tongue sticking out. It was just a silly, stupid video, but it had just made their lives a little bit more fun. And I know that my impact is however much it is on someone's lives. I would hope one day to be big on someone's lives, to impact them in positive ways. But even to what extent that is, to be able to make someone's life better, even just buy a chuckle that lasts four seconds is something that brings me joy.
Do you see this is something long term?
I'm not sure.
I think if TikTok does go away, another platform will show up. Also, Instagram is also still big. Instagram reels, other platforms, YouTube, YouTube shorts.
That's a growing thing.
I think that there are plenty of opportunities for greaders to still do the same thing me personally. If it's more long term, I guess I'm just taking it month by month and seeing where the passion calls me. I supposey.
Yeah, So never fear people out there, Courtney is still going to be posted.
Yes, guys, don't worry. Don't worry. You'll be scrolling and I'll still make you laugh.
I know, ye, Why don't you just introduce yourself, your name, near and major.
Hi.
My name is Regan Fortenwalt. I'm a second year mechanical engineering major.
Okay, a woman who does it all.
Yeah, I've expected you to be like English or something based off your platform.
Everybody everyways like why aren't you an English major? But like I've always just been an engineer, So like, I don't think.
I'm fascinating that's so cool.
Do you consider yourself an influencer? Do you go buy the label like content creator? How do you refer to yourself with this big social media following?
I I can go with influencer. I go mostly with content creation though, because I don't really do like advertisements except for like my own like book and stuff online. I kind of want to get into it though, because I heard that you can get a lot of free stuff, but I like it's just never something that I've been good at, you know. Like, so I've always just gone with content creator because like I share my own artwork online and so that's sort of how I made my following.
Okay, Yeah, I mean, let's get this girl a dice and hair rop. Let's like, yeah, like.
You know what they should spant do my hair every morning with one of those. Yeah, there you go, see sponsor me.
Okay, maybe content creator to influencer pipeline. All right, so we are familiar with what kind of content you create, but for those who haven't heard of you, like, what content do you make and post on your page?
So?
I do spoken poetry. So it's this kind of small niche on TikTok and Instagram where you read out poetry that you have written, but you do it in like a spoken format. You do this with music in the background. Most of the time you show your face, but with some poetry on TikTok and Instagram, it's just like a picture of the screen that you wrote it on. Stuff like that. But my specific niche is reading out spoken poetry.
And I'm one of the highest followed female creators on both TikTok and Instagram for the spoken poetry little.
Niche to hear women in poetry.
Yeah, let's get more poets online. It's kind of a super small niche. I think there should be more people doing it.
Yeah, so how did you kind of get into that?
So I started writing like five years ago, just like for myself. But after talking to my therapist, she followed this account, who I also followed. I was inspired by her and her content and just started posting every day. It was never like really going to be like about having a big following. It was mostly supposed to be like an online diary. But then when like it started like escalating and more and more people started watching, I started realizing, like, oh, I can't put every little intimate
detail of my life online, you know. But it was always my dream to be able to like share my poetry with people, because it was like my biggest passion, and just like the opportunity to be able to do that is like so inspiring to me.
Do you remember your first viral moment and what that felt like for you when you first started getting views?
Oh?
Yeah, that was it was insane. Like I'd been posting every day for two months. I'd just gone through a terrible breakup. I wrote a poem about like that heartbreak that I felt, and it was this poem called August, and it like gets two million views.
It seemed like.
Everybody and their mother's had seen this video. And two million now doesn't sound like a ton, you know, But at the time it was super motivating because I finally knew what kind of content people wanted to watch and what people related to and what could actually help people.
Kind of going on that same vein there, do you feel like you create a persona for yourself when you're entering like these online environments. Are there videos out there that you choose not to share or poems that you're not sharing?
Oh yeah, yeah. So I've written two poems a day every day for the last.
Five years, so oh wow. Yeah, it's a.
Lot because I do it to exercise and also like get my emotions out. But a lot of those poems are super personal with me and also very bad, you know, like if you've written like five thousand poems, like ninety five percent of them are bad, you know. And so the poems that I write for myself are very different
than the poems I put online. I wouldn't say it's like another persona really, Like sometimes I change details of the poems so that the people they are about like don't know they're about them really, but like it's more like it's meant to be relatable and help other people get through their feelings and not necessarily like my first reaction to the poem, you know.
So yeah, how.
Has that changed then your like writing process, or if you are writing two poems a day, do you break it up almost into like one poems for me and one poem is going to be for the world, Like how does that feel? And what changed?
I started during COVID writing one poem a day, and the whole thing with that was that I was going to hide them so that I could come back to them later, like reading a diary. But I quickly got
frustrated with that because I couldn't read them anymore. So what I do is I write one poem to keep and put in a diary, and then another poem that's just for me, and sometimes those are for TikTok, and sometimes those are just poems that I write at the end of the night that go poem, poem, poem, because I'm just trying to not get into this fear of writing, which I think is why a lot of people get writer's block too, is because they're afraid that everything they're
right is going to be bad, you know. But I try to avoid that by writing bad things deliberately, and so I'm not afraid of it.
That's really cool, And can I just say it's just such a beautiful coping mechanism because I cope with a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. So that is so real, amazing, And the way that you've been able to build a platform out of us is just so so so cool. Have people reached out to you and told you about the impact that your work has made on their lives, how they relate.
To your yeah crazy.
For example, like a year and a half ago, I wrote a poem like I should wear my glasses more, and I wrote it wearing my glasses because I wear contacts every day. And a girl I did a book signing two weeks ago, first ever. It was crazy, what a great opportunity.
Yeah, we want to ask all about that later.
But like a girl came up to me and she's like, you changed my life. Like the next day, I literally wore my glasses to school. Oh, and I was like, you're kidding, that's crazy. I get a ton of emails and messages and I don't have time, like really to look at them all. But it's overwhelmingly positive. And a lot of people who have started creating like poetry content since I started and I started blowing up, I think are inspired by me, Like have said that they are, and I think.
That's so good.
Like I really think we should have more people write poetry and put it online.
So kind of going with that, like the people that you meet, what opportunities have you kind of encountered through this large social media following, and maybe this is an opportunity like if you want to talk about your book and oh yeah, like that, like what has changed since becoming you know, since having this following?
So I never without this following, I don't think I ever would have had the opportunity to get my book published, which is something that was always my dream ever since I started writing, is to have a book in stores like in Barnes and Noble, and that finally happened in October because they don't take like some you know, at least they didn't take mine when I submitted it on my own. So it's like I never would have had that opportunity. Same with the book signing. The publishers they
want to do another book signings. So I'm actually having my second book, it's called Prince of Hearts, come out in February. I'm so excited about that because it's it's been a year since I've written like lover Girl my first book, and Prince of Hearts is basically like a sequel to that, where Lover Girl was about heartbreak, about that terrible breakup I had and like the consequences of
my like self worth after that. But Prince of Hearts is about like getting into a relationship but then having trust issues and low self esteem because of that last heartbreak and because of like feeling like relationships haven't worked out in the past.
Oh my gosh, I need to read that right, Like, you clearly have very relatable content. Yeah, So in the end, like, we are a cal Poly based podcast, So have you learned anything from like going to cal Poly? Like has this environment helped you at all? Have your classes inspired you at all?
Or anything?
I mean, I know you're engineering, right, Like, how has like going here kind of influenced your career in poetry and online?
Well, I think the general atmosphere at cal Poly, Like I I've changed so much since last year, Like the people I've met, the things that I've spent my time doing have been so different since my high school years because I I guess, like, compared to how it was in high school, now, I feel like I actually have like a giant support system of people who like me
just for me, you know. And I feel so grateful to be going to cal Poly because I feel like that's the general atmosphere, like all around here is just positivity. Plus also I feel like like it's California too, you know, because I'm a from Boise, Idaho.
Okay, wow, Okay, so that's different.
Yeah out of state.
Yeah, And I've always wanted to live in California. I've always wanted to be part of like the California West Coast sphere, and I feel like I've really fit in here. I've always wanted to take like a poetry class, but I'm also worried, like because my poetry is like more modern poetry, like where it's like I don't really follow like most structures or the way.
It's that if you take the creative writing classes all just writing poems and then you read them in front of the.
Class, I'd be but like, let's hope I can take criticism.
Like this podcast too is so niche right now because we're like how to be an influencer, but like at cow Poly, right, how are you doing that as a student.
It's a big balance too, But I I personally like, really enjoy the grind, you know, because poetry is something I'm just really passionate about. I don't really see it as like a job.
As long as you're taking joy out of it, that's all that matters, right right, all right?
And then just to tie everything up beautifully, what would you say is your favorite part about having a platform?
Oh?
My favorite part is I think it's Emily Dickinson. She has this one if I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking poem that is actually a poem I read right before I started writing myself, and it really inspired me because I kept thinking, if I can just write one poem that will change one other person's life. And the fact that that's not only happened now, but happened thousands of times over with people online who have told me, like, I'm crying to.
This, that is what I like about it. Totally. I'm gonna cry.
Okay, So before we wrap up, where can people find you?
So you can find me at Reagan's poetry on TikTok and Instagram. I have a book out called Lover Girl and it just came out in October, where you can find it in any Barnes and noble.
Well, that's all the time we have for today. One last piece of advice, don't be afraid to put yourself online. It might take some work and it might take some time, but it's definitely worth it. As we just heard from our lovely influencers, I mean, Kate and I are on the grind, so you should be too.
And anyways, we'll be back with more tips and tricks next time on CP one on one learn by listening. You can find us on any preferred streaming platform for the next.
Episode and to keep up to date with CP one on one and all KCPR podcasts, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Spotify, TikTok, or Facebook at KCPR nine Monthly.
Or check us out on KCPR dot org slash podcast.
Signing off, I'm.
Kate Lipenske and I'm Emma Hughes. Thanks for keeping up with all things Kyle poly