Speaker 1: Cal Poly is in session. Students swarm through campus and
Speaker 1: file in and out of classes. They're thinking about the
Speaker 1: chapter reading.
Speaker 2: They have tonight, their next class, their new door, their
Speaker 2: senior project.
Speaker 3: Got to get to the gym. What's for dinner tonight?
Speaker 1: Where's the nearest bathroom? Kate and I know things can
Speaker 1: get a bit chaotic as a student navigating the inns
Speaker 1: and out of college life.
Speaker 3: At cal Poly.
Speaker 2: We focus on learning by doing, but sometimes you don't
Speaker 2: know what to do well. Emma and I are here
Speaker 2: to answer your who, what, when, where, why, and how's here?
Speaker 2: On CP one oh one Learned by Listening, presented by
Speaker 2: KCPR ninety one point three. Hi Mustang, I'm Kate Lopenske,
Speaker 2: a fourth year journalism student, and.
Speaker 1: I'm Emma Hughes, a fourth year English student here at
Speaker 1: cal Poly.
Speaker 2: And we're here to share our tell all guide on
Speaker 2: how to survive and thrive at cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
Speaker 1: So grab a notebook you may want to write this down.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to CP one oh one. Today we have
Speaker 1: a super special episode for you guys. So as you know,
Speaker 1: Kate and I are completely on the grind with this podcast,
Speaker 1: trying to build a following, but unfortunately we have no
Speaker 1: idea how to be influencers.
Speaker 2: So we thought it would be fun to invite some
Speaker 2: creators from cal Poly to tell us all about their
Speaker 2: careers and share some advice. And with all of this
Speaker 2: great information from these talented students, we're definitely going to
Speaker 2: be famous after this.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Q like all of our sponsors coming in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wait, what's real quick? What's your dream sponsorship?
Speaker 3: Do you know?
Speaker 1: Dream sponsorship? Kirkland Vodka, stop Costco in general? STA think Costco?
Speaker 3: That would actually be really cool, like.
Speaker 1: Free Costco membership for life, like food at the food
Speaker 1: court whenever I want it for free, like I would wear.
Speaker 1: I actually every Christmas I ask for a Kirkland Costco sweatshirt.
Speaker 3: Ooh that's love. That sounds so cozy. Yeah, what's yours?
Speaker 3: Mine's jelly cat? Obviously?
Speaker 2: I love my jelly cats like I would if I could,
Speaker 2: I would so start one of those jelly cat TikTok pages. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and just like show like esthetic setups of my jelly
Speaker 2: cats and give them all personas. That makes me sound
Speaker 2: so crazy. Okay, let's hear from these amazing content creators. Yes,
Speaker 2: they have so much information to share with us.
Speaker 4: Hello, my name is Courtney Osman and you can find
Speaker 4: me on TikTok at Coco Aussie on Instagram at Courtney Osman.
Speaker 4: I post relatable, fun videos of my life as a student,
Speaker 4: young woman, all of that in my day to day experiences.
Speaker 1: Why do you do this?
Speaker 4: No, my favorite part is it is the being able
Speaker 4: to influence people's days or even influence their thinking. I know,
Speaker 4: like right now the comedy videos are back when I
Speaker 4: was doing puppy videos.
Speaker 3: I mean, even if.
Speaker 4: It's just a smile during the day, even if it's
Speaker 4: just super small, to be able to make someone laugh
Speaker 4: and maybe enjoy their life a little bit or maybe
Speaker 4: think a.
Speaker 3: Little bit differently.
Speaker 4: I really want people to live their lives and love
Speaker 4: it and grow and reap the benefits of that. I
Speaker 4: remember this one super small thing was this guy had
Speaker 4: instagram DMed me and he said, I just want to
Speaker 4: let you know that there's this inside joke that my
Speaker 4: friend and I have between us because of one of
Speaker 4: your videos. And we literally framed this picture from just
Speaker 4: like a video snippet frame of your video because was
Speaker 4: just so fun. It was one of my puppy videos
Speaker 4: with the dog had the tongue sticking out. It was
Speaker 4: just a silly, stupid video, but it had just made
Speaker 4: their lives a little bit more fun. And I know
Speaker 4: that my impact is however much it is on someone's lives.
Speaker 4: I would hope one day to be big on someone's lives,
Speaker 4: to impact them in positive ways. But even to what
Speaker 4: extent that is, to be able to make someone's life better,
Speaker 4: even just buy a chuckle that lasts four seconds is
Speaker 4: something that brings me joy.
Speaker 1: Do you see this is something long term?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure.
Speaker 4: I think if TikTok does go away, another platform will
Speaker 4: show up. Also, Instagram is also still big. Instagram reels,
Speaker 4: other platforms, YouTube, YouTube shorts.
Speaker 3: That's a growing thing.
Speaker 4: I think that there are plenty of opportunities for greaders
Speaker 4: to still do the same thing me personally. If it's
Speaker 4: more long term, I guess I'm just taking it month
Speaker 4: by month and seeing where the passion calls me. I supposey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So never fear people out there, Courtney is still
Speaker 1: going to be posted.
Speaker 4: Yes, guys, don't worry. Don't worry. You'll be scrolling and
Speaker 4: I'll still make you laugh.
Speaker 2: I know, ye, Why don't you just introduce yourself, your name,
Speaker 2: near and major.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 5: My name is Regan Fortenwalt. I'm a second year mechanical
Speaker 5: engineering major.
Speaker 3: Okay, a woman who does it all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've expected you to be like English or something
Speaker 1: based off your platform.
Speaker 5: Everybody everyways like why aren't you an English major? But
Speaker 5: like I've always just been an engineer, So like, I
Speaker 5: don't think.
Speaker 3: I'm fascinating that's so cool.
Speaker 1: Do you consider yourself an influencer? Do you go buy
Speaker 1: the label like content creator? How do you refer to
Speaker 1: yourself with this big social media following?
Speaker 5: I I can go with influencer. I go mostly with
Speaker 5: content creation though, because I don't really do like advertisements
Speaker 5: except for like my own like book and stuff online.
Speaker 5: I kind of want to get into it though, because
Speaker 5: I heard that you can get a lot of free stuff,
Speaker 5: but I like it's just never something that I've been
Speaker 5: good at, you know. Like, so I've always just gone
Speaker 5: with content creator because like I share my own artwork
Speaker 5: online and so that's sort of how I made my following.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, I mean, let's get this girl a dice
Speaker 3: and hair rop. Let's like, yeah, like.
Speaker 5: You know what they should spant do my hair every
Speaker 5: morning with one of those. Yeah, there you go, see
Speaker 5: sponsor me.
Speaker 2: Okay, maybe content creator to influencer pipeline. All right, so
Speaker 2: we are familiar with what kind of content you create,
Speaker 2: but for those who haven't heard of you, like, what
Speaker 2: content do you make and post on your page?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 5: I do spoken poetry. So it's this kind of small
Speaker 5: niche on TikTok and Instagram where you read out poetry
Speaker 5: that you have written, but you do it in like
Speaker 5: a spoken format. You do this with music in the background.
Speaker 5: Most of the time you show your face, but with
Speaker 5: some poetry on TikTok and Instagram, it's just like a
Speaker 5: picture of the screen that you wrote it on. Stuff
Speaker 5: like that. But my specific niche is reading out spoken poetry.
Speaker 5: And I'm one of the highest followed female creators on
Speaker 5: both TikTok and Instagram for the spoken poetry little.
Speaker 3: Niche to hear women in poetry.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's get more poets online. It's kind of a
Speaker 5: super small niche. I think there should be more people
Speaker 5: doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so how did you kind of get into that?
Speaker 5: So I started writing like five years ago, just like
Speaker 5: for myself. But after talking to my therapist, she followed
Speaker 5: this account, who I also followed. I was inspired by
Speaker 5: her and her content and just started posting every day.
Speaker 5: It was never like really going to be like about
Speaker 5: having a big following. It was mostly supposed to be
Speaker 5: like an online diary. But then when like it started
Speaker 5: like escalating and more and more people started watching, I
Speaker 5: started realizing, like, oh, I can't put every little intimate
Speaker 5: detail of my life online, you know. But it was
Speaker 5: always my dream to be able to like share my
Speaker 5: poetry with people, because it was like my biggest passion,
Speaker 5: and just like the opportunity to be able to do
Speaker 5: that is like so inspiring to me.
Speaker 2: Do you remember your first viral moment and what that
Speaker 2: felt like for you when you first started getting views?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was it was insane. Like I'd been posting
Speaker 5: every day for two months. I'd just gone through a
Speaker 5: terrible breakup. I wrote a poem about like that heartbreak
Speaker 5: that I felt, and it was this poem called August,
Speaker 5: and it like gets two million views.
Speaker 3: It seemed like.
Speaker 5: Everybody and their mother's had seen this video. And two
Speaker 5: million now doesn't sound like a ton, you know, But
Speaker 5: at the time it was super motivating because I finally
Speaker 5: knew what kind of content people wanted to watch and
Speaker 5: what people related to and what could actually help people.
Speaker 1: Kind of going on that same vein there, do you
Speaker 1: feel like you create a persona for yourself when you're
Speaker 1: entering like these online environments. Are there videos out there
Speaker 1: that you choose not to share or poems that you're
Speaker 1: not sharing?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah. So I've written two poems a day
Speaker 5: every day for the last.
Speaker 3: Five years, so oh wow. Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 5: Lot because I do it to exercise and also like
Speaker 5: get my emotions out. But a lot of those poems
Speaker 5: are super personal with me and also very bad, you know,
Speaker 5: like if you've written like five thousand poems, like ninety
Speaker 5: five percent of them are bad, you know. And so
Speaker 5: the poems that I write for myself are very different
Speaker 5: than the poems I put online. I wouldn't say it's
Speaker 5: like another persona really, Like sometimes I change details of
Speaker 5: the poems so that the people they are about like
Speaker 5: don't know they're about them really, but like it's more
Speaker 5: like it's meant to be relatable and help other people
Speaker 5: get through their feelings and not necessarily like my first
Speaker 5: reaction to the poem, you know.
Speaker 3: So yeah, how.
Speaker 1: Has that changed then your like writing process, or if
Speaker 1: you are writing two poems a day, do you break
Speaker 1: it up almost into like one poems for me and
Speaker 1: one poem is going to be for the world, Like
Speaker 1: how does that feel? And what changed?
Speaker 5: I started during COVID writing one poem a day, and
Speaker 5: the whole thing with that was that I was going
Speaker 5: to hide them so that I could come back to
Speaker 5: them later, like reading a diary. But I quickly got
Speaker 5: frustrated with that because I couldn't read them anymore. So
Speaker 5: what I do is I write one poem to keep
Speaker 5: and put in a diary, and then another poem that's
Speaker 5: just for me, and sometimes those are for TikTok, and
Speaker 5: sometimes those are just poems that I write at the
Speaker 5: end of the night that go poem, poem, poem, because
Speaker 5: I'm just trying to not get into this fear of writing,
Speaker 5: which I think is why a lot of people get
Speaker 5: writer's block too, is because they're afraid that everything they're
Speaker 5: right is going to be bad, you know. But I
Speaker 5: try to avoid that by writing bad things deliberately, and
Speaker 5: so I'm not afraid of it.
Speaker 2: That's really cool, And can I just say it's just
Speaker 2: such a beautiful coping mechanism because I cope with a
Speaker 2: pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. So that is
Speaker 2: so real, amazing, And the way that you've been able
Speaker 2: to build a platform out of us is just so
Speaker 2: so so cool. Have people reached out to you and
Speaker 2: told you about the impact that your work has made
Speaker 2: on their lives, how they relate.
Speaker 3: To your yeah crazy.
Speaker 5: For example, like a year and a half ago, I
Speaker 5: wrote a poem like I should wear my glasses more,
Speaker 5: and I wrote it wearing my glasses because I wear
Speaker 5: contacts every day. And a girl I did a book
Speaker 5: signing two weeks ago, first ever. It was crazy, what
Speaker 5: a great opportunity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we want to ask all about that later.
Speaker 5: But like a girl came up to me and she's like,
Speaker 5: you changed my life. Like the next day, I literally
Speaker 5: wore my glasses to school. Oh, and I was like,
Speaker 5: you're kidding, that's crazy. I get a ton of emails
Speaker 5: and messages and I don't have time, like really to
Speaker 5: look at them all. But it's overwhelmingly positive. And a
Speaker 5: lot of people who have started creating like poetry content
Speaker 5: since I started and I started blowing up, I think
Speaker 5: are inspired by me, Like have said that they are,
Speaker 5: and I think.
Speaker 3: That's so good.
Speaker 5: Like I really think we should have more people write
Speaker 5: poetry and put it online.
Speaker 1: So kind of going with that, like the people that
Speaker 1: you meet, what opportunities have you kind of encountered through
Speaker 1: this large social media following, and maybe this is an
Speaker 1: opportunity like if you want to talk about your book
Speaker 1: and oh yeah, like that, like what has changed since
Speaker 1: becoming you know, since having this following?
Speaker 5: So I never without this following, I don't think I
Speaker 5: ever would have had the opportunity to get my book published,
Speaker 5: which is something that was always my dream ever since
Speaker 5: I started writing, is to have a book in stores
Speaker 5: like in Barnes and Noble, and that finally happened in
Speaker 5: October because they don't take like some you know, at
Speaker 5: least they didn't take mine when I submitted it on
Speaker 5: my own. So it's like I never would have had
Speaker 5: that opportunity. Same with the book signing. The publishers they
Speaker 5: want to do another book signings. So I'm actually having
Speaker 5: my second book, it's called Prince of Hearts, come out
Speaker 5: in February. I'm so excited about that because it's it's
Speaker 5: been a year since I've written like lover Girl my
Speaker 5: first book, and Prince of Hearts is basically like a
Speaker 5: sequel to that, where Lover Girl was about heartbreak, about
Speaker 5: that terrible breakup I had and like the consequences of
Speaker 5: my like self worth after that. But Prince of Hearts
Speaker 5: is about like getting into a relationship but then having
Speaker 5: trust issues and low self esteem because of that last
Speaker 5: heartbreak and because of like feeling like relationships haven't worked
Speaker 5: out in the past.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I need to read that right, Like,
Speaker 2: you clearly have very relatable content. Yeah, So in the end, like,
Speaker 2: we are a cal Poly based podcast, So have you
Speaker 2: learned anything from like going to cal Poly? Like has
Speaker 2: this environment helped you at all? Have your classes inspired
Speaker 2: you at all?
Speaker 3: Or anything?
Speaker 2: I mean, I know you're engineering, right, Like, how has
Speaker 2: like going here kind of influenced your career in poetry
Speaker 2: and online?
Speaker 5: Well, I think the general atmosphere at cal Poly, Like
Speaker 5: I I've changed so much since last year, Like the
Speaker 5: people I've met, the things that I've spent my time
Speaker 5: doing have been so different since my high school years
Speaker 5: because I I guess, like, compared to how it was
Speaker 5: in high school, now, I feel like I actually have
Speaker 5: like a giant support system of people who like me
Speaker 5: just for me, you know. And I feel so grateful
Speaker 5: to be going to cal Poly because I feel like
Speaker 5: that's the general atmosphere, like all around here is just positivity.
Speaker 5: Plus also I feel like like it's California too, you know,
Speaker 5: because I'm a from Boise, Idaho.
Speaker 1: Okay, wow, Okay, so that's different.
Speaker 3: Yeah out of state.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I've always wanted to live in California. I've
Speaker 5: always wanted to be part of like the California West
Speaker 5: Coast sphere, and I feel like I've really fit in here.
Speaker 5: I've always wanted to take like a poetry class, but
Speaker 5: I'm also worried, like because my poetry is like more
Speaker 5: modern poetry, like where it's like I don't really follow
Speaker 5: like most structures or the way.
Speaker 1: It's that if you take the creative writing classes all
Speaker 1: just writing poems and then you read them in front
Speaker 1: of the.
Speaker 5: Class, I'd be but like, let's hope I can take criticism.
Speaker 1: Like this podcast too is so niche right now because
Speaker 1: we're like how to be an influencer, but like at
Speaker 1: cow Poly, right, how are you doing that as a student.
Speaker 5: It's a big balance too, But I I personally like,
Speaker 5: really enjoy the grind, you know, because poetry is something
Speaker 5: I'm just really passionate about. I don't really see it
Speaker 5: as like a job.
Speaker 3: As long as you're taking joy out of it, that's
Speaker 3: all that matters, right right, all right?
Speaker 2: And then just to tie everything up beautifully, what would
Speaker 2: you say is your favorite part about having a platform?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 5: My favorite part is I think it's Emily Dickinson. She
Speaker 5: has this one if I Can Stop One Heart from
Speaker 5: Breaking poem that is actually a poem I read right
Speaker 5: before I started writing myself, and it really inspired me
Speaker 5: because I kept thinking, if I can just write one
Speaker 5: poem that will change one other person's life. And the
Speaker 5: fact that that's not only happened now, but happened thousands
Speaker 5: of times over with people online who have told me, like,
Speaker 5: I'm crying to.
Speaker 3: This, that is what I like about it. Totally. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna cry.
Speaker 2: Okay, So before we wrap up, where can people find you?
Speaker 5: So you can find me at Reagan's poetry on TikTok
Speaker 5: and Instagram. I have a book out called Lover Girl
Speaker 5: and it just came out in October, where you can
Speaker 5: find it in any Barnes and noble.
Speaker 1: Well, that's all the time we have for today. One
Speaker 1: last piece of advice, don't be afraid to put yourself online.
Speaker 1: It might take some work and it might take some time,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely worth it. As we just heard from
Speaker 1: our lovely influencers, I mean, Kate and I are on
Speaker 1: the grind, so you should be too.
Speaker 2: And anyways, we'll be back with more tips and tricks
Speaker 2: next time on CP one on one learn by listening.
Speaker 2: You can find us on any preferred streaming platform for
Speaker 2: the next.
Speaker 1: Episode and to keep up to date with CP one
Speaker 1: on one and all KCPR podcasts, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Spotify, TikTok,
Speaker 1: or Facebook at KCPR nine Monthly.
Speaker 2: Or check us out on KCPR dot org slash podcast.
Speaker 3: Signing off, I'm.
Speaker 1: Kate Lipenske and I'm Emma Hughes. Thanks for keeping up
Speaker 1: with all things Kyle poly