Working as a makeup artist on set, Trulee Rodney kept finding herself more interested in being in front of the camera than behind it. When COVID hit, she had fewer reasons not to try. The results surprised even her. “It was doing so much better than the content I would make when I was on set,” she says. “And I was like, ‘Wait a second, am I the drama?’”

Today, Trulee is a beauty creator working across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, where she covers curly hair care, personal vlogs, and what she calls “personality-based content.” Her day runs from filming to planning future shoots to testing products she won’t post about until she’s confident in them, gathering opinions from her sister, her cousin, and extended family before forming a verdict.

What she has built around that process has more structure than it appears, with each platform doing a distinct job. Her Amazon and LTK storefronts function as running product journals, while Amazon also gives her consumer intelligence about what her audience buys. Her brand deals are run almost exclusively as long-term arrangements grown from relationships that started as one-offs.

“I value honesty and integrity over any amount of money,” she says. “I always make sure that I’m being very selective.”

A Strategy for Each Platform

Trulee runs a consistent content operation across three platforms, but the content is tailored to what each audience wants from her.

On TikTok, the relationship is communal. Followers step in to answer each other’s questions before she can get to them. “People really want to get to know you,” she says. “They want to remind you that they know things about you.”

YouTube attracts an older audience that expects education and depth. The emotional register runs differently there. “People on YouTube are way more likely to want to know if you’re crying, and what’s going on” 

Instagram operates closer to a curated visual record. She describes it as “a more friends-based Pinterest,” where aesthetics still carry weight even as Reels have pushed it toward more candid formats. The three-way distinction shapes how she packages everything from product introductions to personal moments.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Trulee Rodney (@trulee)

Short Form Gets You There. Long Form Keeps You There.

Trulee’s approach to YouTube includes content that runs well past what most creators would cut. “Short form does win the race, but in a very quick way,” she says. Long-form content, by contrast, lets viewers see who she is without the compression short-form demands. The connection built that way, she argues, tends to last.

She posts long-form even when a specific video doesn’t hit, because the audience built through it stays longer than one built on a single trending moment. The format decision on any given piece comes down to whether context matters. Some content compresses cleanly, other content doesn’t. “If I post it with no context, it’s just confusing,” she says of long tutorials where a viewer entering midway can’t follow the transformation.

The Storefront Proves She Meant It Before the Deal Existed

Trulee’s Amazon storefront is not passive affiliate revenue. She removes products when she stops using them, cycles in new ones she’s testing, and tracks the back end to see what her followers actually purchase. She describes it as “a journal of the things that I love.” But it is doing several things at once.

One is market research. Because she can see what her audience buys, she is accumulating demand data she intends to carry into her own product line eventually, whether that takes the form of clothing, hair care, or the bonnets she already sews by hand for giveaways. “I feel like that just shows me what my followers even like,” she says.

The storefront also functions as documentation for brand partners. When a paid deal goes live, a product with months of organic storefront history carries evidence that the endorsement predates the contract. “I think if anything, it’s able to show everyone that the things that I’m saying I use and the things that I’m saying I love have been sitting in my Amazon storefront,” she says.

Long-Term Deals Don’t Start That Way

Trulee’s brand partnerships are mostly repeat business, i.e., brands she has worked with for months or years, where both sides know each other’s limits. “I could probably make more money if I just accepted every single thing that came my way,” she says.

She emphasizes that “not all of these partnerships that I have long-term started off as long-term. It started off as a one-off, a one-off. And they’re like, ‘Let’s do three months. Let’s do four months. Let’s do the year.’”

Her advice for reaching that point is to post about what creators genuinely love before anyone asks them to. “I’m always tagging the brands I love, and they really appreciate that,” she says. “They always appreciate the natural shout-outs because that makes them more inclined to partner with you and create a long-term partnership.”

The same selectivity extends into active campaigns. If a product in a brand’s lineup is one she doesn’t believe in, she says so. “I’m not going to include this product,” she explains, describing a scenario where she might love a shampoo but not a conditioner sold alongside it. Brands, she finds, are generally receptive. “They just want me to be honest and passionate.”

The Product Is Still Being Built

Trulee is already working beyond the platform. She co-developed a curly hair product she cannot yet name, describing it as something that will simplify the wash day routine across curl types after roughly a year of multi-tester development. She spoke on a creator panel this month and is building toward a product line of her own, whether clothing, hair care, or the bonnets she already sews by hand.

The infrastructure she has assembled around her content is designed to travel with her into whatever comes next. What she believes makes it durable is the same quality that converted one-off deals into multi-year partnerships: the record of what she recommended before any check was involved.

“This job is not only about chasing a moment and trying to be so unbelievably calculated,” she says. “As much as you should have a plan, being yourself and planning according to that is the most important thing.”

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Check Out Our Podcast