Laura Whaley is a creator who has over 5M followers between Instagram and TikTok.
Between Instagram and TikTok, Laura Whaley boasts over 5 million followers.
The Canada-based Whaley has made a name for herself for what she described to me in an interview earlier this week as “relatable work content.” Whaley started her TikTok during the pandemic’s nadir, when the virus demanded everyone become shut-ins and thus transition to working remotely. Whaley, like so many, soon felt isolated after the virus cut off human interaction. Naturally, she turned to technology to help fill that void, at least somewhat partially, and focused her energy into sharing her experiences working from home with other people.
What was born of desperation has grown into a source of pride and turned Whaley into a thriver. A notable achievement, since by her own admission, Whaley “had no intention” of growing her following, let alone essentially becoming a celebrity.
“I just started posting content of things that I was experiencing working from home, thinking no one would see them,” Whaley said of her influencer origin story. “The community I built online has really been from people that are like, ‘I can relate to this.’ I thought I was alone [in] experiencing that [lonesomeness].”
Whaley likes to think of her social media outlets as providing a “relatable, safe space” for people to come and commune with like-minded individuals who may be experiencing feelings of loneliness associated with the struggle of working from home. Over time, Whaley’s focus has broadened from the conventional 9 to 5 corporate lifestyle to enable more people to share ”working experiences, stories, and skits from professional life,” according to Whaley. The majority of Whaley’s audience is made up of Generation Z women; her overarching goal is to help women succeed by empowering themselves to excel in the (virtual) workplace.
One of Whaley’s most popular series is what she calls How to Professionally Say, which she explained helps translate corporate speak into everyday language. In addition, Whaley performs skits on various topics, like how to set boundaries at work. “I have a different group of characters that do their own skits,” she said.
Despite her audience primarily comprising of Generation Zers, Whaley didn’t intentionally set out to cater her content to a particular group of people. Her content is truly intended to be egalitarian. Whomever it may be that finds her work on social media, Whaley’s goal is to ensure she’s continually “keeping connected to the people that follow me and understanding their experiences.”
“For me, it’s creating for my community I already have versus focusing on the people that aren’t following me, if that makes sense,” Whaley said of her creative ethos. “It’s a lot of crowdsourcing ideas and keeping connected to the community and just creating for them. It continues to evolve, which is beautiful. I would say my focus is just creating for the workplaces that already follow me online.”
She added: “I have a following across the world, which is so amazing to me because it’s not a specific narrative and group of people. It speaks to how many shared experiences we all have in our working life, no matter where you live or what age you are. I try not to focus on a specific demographic as much because I’ve learned over time my content can relate to people across different demographics.”
Whaley’s mantra that she wants to create relatable work that’s approachable to every person speaks well for the disabled community. As has been espoused in this space numerous times, the whole work-from-home dynamic is hardly something novel to the pandemic. It’s just that abled people—society writ large—were suddenly forced to confront it because of the onset of a global public health emergency. Whaley’s work, then, may prove indispensable to someone who may struggle with isolation and socialization due to their immobility. Despite how many people snidely grouse over social media’s penchant for disinformation and insipidness, the truth is social media is a godsend to many disabled people because of just that: sociability. Pandemic or not, there are many in the disability community who cannot (or should not) leave their house for health and/or logistical reasons. In this context, Whaley’s community has the potential to be more impactful than teaching people sheer job skills, however important in its own right. The group can be something bigger—it can be a community of friends.
Apropos of today being International Women’s Day, Whaley was keen to share details about her collaboration with Amazon Canada. The partnership is meaningful to Whaley, as she’s working with Amazon to help spread the word about women-owned small businesses. Being a small business owner herself, Whaleys knows firsthand how difficult it is to maintain the operation; she wants others in similar boats to know they’re not alone at sea. “I think a huge part of why I was so interested in partnering is, when we support women-led businesses, when we are supporting small businesses across Canada, it has such a massive impact for those people,” she said of her collaboration with Amazon. “I know the hard work that goes into everything that they do in their day-to-day. I’m super fortunate to be in the position to partner. A lot of my following is also excited to support businesses that they haven’t heard about—especially small businesses and people that are just working really hard to start something new and beautiful.”
On International Women’s Day broadly, Whaley said the occasion serves as a poignant reminder that women everywhere need to be—deserve to be—elevated and recognized. People can support one another while supporting themselves. “I think that International Woman’s Day is a perfect example of supporting each other and allowing each other to succeed and cheering each other on,” she said. “I’m so excited to see all the women that are being put to the forefront and their businesses with Amazon Canada and giving them more exposure.”
For Whaley, she attributes her small business massive growth spurt to “posting at a really opportune time.” At the time she was beginning, there wasn’t much out there in terms of how she wanted to help people; that hole in the market, as it were, combined with her creativity helped buoy her to where she is right now. “I often get asked,‘How do you always have so many ideas?’ and I’m like, ‘Well, welcome to my brain because it’s never ending.’ she said of her creative juices. ”I would say that my creativity and my ability to story tell has really allowed me to continue posting over all this time and never really [run] out of ideas."
Above all else, Whaley considers herself to be “a businesswoman.”
“I’m fascinated by different industries, whether that’s, small businesses [or] whether that’s massive corporations,” she said. “Learning the whole business behind social media has been absolutely fascinating for me. I would say, those are some things that have helped me succeed within the space that I’m in.”
Her successes aren’t defined by mere numbers, but Whaley’s leave an impression.
“If I really sit down and think I have over 5 million followers across [social media] platforms, my brain doesn’t even compute that high,” she said. “I just always think if I walked into a stadium with 5 million people, like how overwhelming that would be. It’s extremely overwhelming and hard to grasp my head around, but my day-to-day hasn’t really changed. It’s strange to sit here and think about that. I’m extremely grateful for it, and I’d say it really hits me how large of a following I have when I’m out in public and I get recognized and people will come up to me and talk about the content. When I’m able to interact face-to-face is really when it sets in. Like, ‘Oh wow, these are real people out there watching my videos.’”
