Nicole Story Dent is a content creator with more than three million followers across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. Her audience knows her for millennial humor, parenting absurdism, nostalgic callbacks, and an openness about depression, anxiety, and ADHD that has become a consistent part of her voice. What they may not know is that for the decade before she made her first video under her own name, she was commissioning influencer content from the other side.

From 2013 to 2023, Nicole worked at a Texas-based toilet-spray brand that built its name on irreverent YouTube videos and sharp marketing copy. She arrived as a graphic designer and left as SVP of Creative, having spent the intervening years writing and directing the brand’s commercials, building its social media presence, and managing its influencer partnerships as that market formed. 

“I was always on the brand side,” she says, “but what that really helped set me up for was understanding contracts, and what to expect when working with brands as a creator.”

The move to creating full-time was not planned. It emerged from a therapist’s suggestion, a first-ever brand deal, and a termination notice.

What Ten Years Behind the Camera Actually Buys

Nicole spent a decade as the person inside a brand who approved briefs, argued over deliverables, and decided what partnerships were worth.

“I knew how to negotiate for myself,” she says. She also understood the internal hierarchy behind brand creative feedback: the requests that flow from bosses rather than creative conviction. “I totally understand why the brand wants that there,” she says of common deliverable constraints. When her own partners pushed back on format or timing, she absorbed it rather than treating it as a personal affront.

That familiarity has translated into creative latitude on most of her campaigns. “I try to go, ‘Okay, this brand’s saying they want the product in the first three seconds, let me do it my way and see what they think,’” she says. Most of the time, she adds, they agree.

A Therapist, a Termination, and a Deadline She Set Herself

By 2022, Nicole was struggling inside a company that had grown around her. Her creative scope had narrowed. She had been briefly on TikTok during the pandemic, building around 50,000 followers before a second pregnancy pushed her off. Her therapist was asking what she was doing for her creativity.

Nicole mentioned the dumb TikTok videos she used to make. “She was like, ‘We’ll do that, start making them again,'” Nicole recalls.

She made her Instagram public and started filming after the kids were in bed. “Literally, after my kids went to bed, I was staying up to like three in the morning,” she says. “I started making videos and editing in my off time, still with the full-time job.” Within about six months, she had tens of thousands of Instagram followers. A paid brand partnership came next. Then a termination notice.

The termination became a deadline. “I gave myself a year,” she says, “six months to a year to see if I could make what I was making at that job by being a social media creator.” The negotiating fluency, the rate sheet she could design herself, the knowledge of what brands would ask for: all of it was operational from the start.

Why She Left Motherhood Content Behind and What She Found Instead

Nicole launched her content with motherhood material. She was in the early years of raising children, found it absurd, and had spent the same period following other mom creators for sanity. “If you can’t find the humor in it, you will drive yourself crazy,” she says.

The comment section broke the strategy. Parenting content generates polarized, zero-sum debates she had not anticipated: one faction accused her of making motherhood look too aspirational; another said she was making it look terrible. “You can’t get it right,” she says. “You’re talking about parenting.” She also decided not to show her kids on camera, which narrowed the material further.

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A video about millennial nostalgia changed the trajectory. It drew engagement without the ideological heat she had come to associate with parenting content. “People don’t tend to be too opinionated about nostalgic things,” she says. “My community is so incredibly kind, and I want to keep it that way.” She expanded into that lane and has stayed.

A Three-in-Five Rejection Rate and What Drives It

Brand deals account for roughly 90% of Nicole’s income, while the other major creator revenue streams have yet to become meaningful parts of her business. She keeps Facebook monetization turned on after other creators recommended it, but says turning on TikTok monetization for one-minute-plus videos hurt her engagement. She is waiting for her YouTube audience to grow before pursuing monetization there, and affiliate marketing has never felt natural to her.

Her management agency, Odyssey Entertainment Group, vets pitches before she sees them. By her estimate, she declines roughly three out of every five offers. Some rejections are budget-driven. “A lot of the smaller brands just can’t afford your rates,” she says. Weight loss pitches are refused categorically, rooted in her experience growing up during a period of diet culture. “Don’t even send those my way,” she says.

Photo credit: Tanya Gupta

‘You Had 2 Be There’ and the Platform Fragility Problem

Nicole’s podcast, “You Had 2 Be There,” was her management agency’s suggestion, and it came from a plain observation: every audience Nicole had built lived on platforms she did not own. “Anytime Instagram goes down,” she says, “or I see this thing about this creator that got hacked and lost their account. And then TikTok went away for, like, 17 minutes and everybody’s freaking out.”

Nicole did not know what to talk about alone for an hour each week. The solution was co-hosts. She reached out to two other millennial creators she had previously collaborated with, Kate and Erin, and after roughly 18 months of preparation, the podcast launched. The show is currently self-funded. “We haven’t broken even yet,” Nicole says, “but it’s a passion project that we all three feel really good about.”

The longer ambition is a streaming deal. Nicole sees creator-led podcasts transitioning into video formats with platform backing. “That’s a whole thing that I hope we’re on board with,” she says. The show is also a first step toward the longer storytelling formats she has been waiting to work in.

Her North Star, Not the Platform’s

One thing Nicole did not expect from the Creator Economy was how it would change her competitive instincts. Her decade in corporate marketing had trained her for a zero-sum environment: good ideas were currency, co-workers were rivals by necessity. “It’s eat or get eaten,” she says.

She now watches other millennial female creators land brand deals and feels a genuine happiness; something she had to learn to recognize in herself. “I see them getting a brand deal, and I’m happy for them,” she says. “We are not competing with each other. We are building each other up.”

The five-year vision covers a lot of territory: a podcast, a streaming deal, a screenplay, a children’s book. “It feels like a ticking time bomb,” she says. “This could all go away tomorrow.” The only constant she controls is the work itself.

“I hope they can see and sense that my content is coming from a really authentic place,” she says. “I hope it feels true to me, like I’m following my North Star, and not the platform’s North Star.”

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