Going viral in high school is one thing. Walking into the cafeteria the next day and hearing everyone laugh is another.

Valerie Lepelch remembers both.

“My third or fourth video got a million views in 10 hours,” she says. “And I was gaining a lot of followers.” The spike came from a bet with a friend to see who could “get famous first” on TikTok shortly after the platform rebranded from Musical.ly. Valerie posted. The views followed. So did the backlash.

“I remember walking into the lunchroom, and everyone was laughing at me,” she recalls. “And I was, like, ‘This sounds like a freaking high school movie.’”

Instead of deleting her account, she doubled down. She changed her username to something anonymous and kept uploading. “I didn’t care. I was going to graduate soon.” That decision, made in the final stretch of high school, would eventually replace college, anchor a full-time business, and force her to reinvent her content more than once.

The momentum did not come out of nowhere. Valerie had been chasing the Internet long before TikTok. “I had a YouTube account when I was, like 8, and I would post covers of me singing songs, which were horrible,” she says. One DIY One Direction merchandise video reached 3,000 views. Middle school experiments followed, then a pause after classmates discovered a shared channel and called it embarrassing. High school brought another attempt, another wave of peer judgment, and another reset.

TikTok moved faster.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Valerie found the format that would define her early rise: POV acting skits. “I made one, and it blew up really quickly. I remember in the first two hours it was already, like, at a million views.” Comments demanded sequels. “And then my account hit a million, and I was, ‘Okay, so this is my niche, and I’m gonna stick to this.’”

For the next several years, she did exactly that. The POV format gave her structure, scale, and a young, loyal audience. It also taught her an early lesson about the creator economy: momentum is real, but it is never permanent.

When a Niche Stops Working

By late 2024, POV content began losing momentum across the platform. What had once been a breakout format became oversaturated.

“The POV acting videos kind of died down, and people weren’t doing them as much,” Valerie says. “So I had to figure out a shift in my content. And that was really stressful.”

Her audience skewed young, primarily ages 8 to 14. A sudden pivot risked alienation.

Instead of switching overnight, she transitioned gradually. “I would post one POV within all the other videos so that they were still getting what they wanted,” she explains. “But I would just sneak them through a little bit and then one by one, start eliminating them.”

At first, resistance appeared in the comments. “People were like, bring back the POVs.” But over time, engagement shifted.

The new format leaned into relatable comedy. “Just videos that people can send to their friends and be … this is so relatable.”

That shareability became her primary performance metric. “Definitely the share button,” she says. “Like how many shares it gets is how you know the video is going to perform well.”

Her audience has since broadened. “It used to be strictly just 8 to 14-year-olds, but now it’s a mix of all ages.”

The Business Calculation

While her peers were finishing college, Valerie was evaluating income stability.

“I didn’t know if this could be a full-time job. Like, how are people doing this?” she says. Her parents encouraged her to stay in school. She completed about a year before stepping away.

“I told my parents, I was like, ‘Listen, school will always be there, but this, I don’t know how long it’s going to last.’”

The decision was not impulsive. It was financial. “You kind of have to look at it like, okay, if I’m working a 9 to 5 or any other job, you have to just compare and see if you’re able to make enough on social media where you’re going to be able to support yourself.”

Her first brand deal was small, but symbolic. “I was, oh, my gosh, I just made money from a video.”

Recognition in public solidified the momentum. “I was in Mexico at an all-inclusive resort, and this girl came up to me, she’s like, I’ve seen your videos.”

Still, the emotional transition was complicated. “I saw all my friends, you know, graduating and doing all this stuff at college and stuff, and I felt really left out, and I felt kind of behind on life.”

The creator economy offered income and flexibility. It also required redefining traditional milestones.

Management, Contracts, and Trust

As Valerie’s audience grew, so did inbound emails from management firms.

“I didn’t know at first whether I needed management or if I could do it myself.”

Her advice now is measured. “I think the best time to get a manager is probably when you hit 100k.”

She cautions against long contracts. “Never lock in a contract for, like, a year.” Instead, she recommends trial periods. “Try it out for a 15-day period, see if you like it.”

Her selection criteria for brand partnerships have also changed. “I like to accept deals that I actually resonate with or things that I actually use,” she says. “Because there are a lot of people who will just accept anything, even though they don’t like the app or they don’t like the product.”

Beyond contracts, she learned another lesson in Los Angeles. “Definitely finding people you can trust and seeing who’s actually your friend versus who wants to use you for content or use you for your numbers.”

Her closest collaborators today are creators she met during the POV era. They still film together, but they also spend time offline. “We can hang out for a whole month. We don’t have to film together.”

Platform Strategy and Creative Discipline

Valerie treats posting as an operational discipline.

“Consistency,” she says. “You have to just be consistent and post every single day.”

She batches content, filming up to 15 videos in a day. TikTok is her production hub. Reels and Shorts are repurposed from that core content.

She experiments with timing. “For TikTok, I usually post around 4:00 p.m. EST. And then for Instagram and YouTube, I post at 10 in the morning.”

Text overlays outperform captions. “I don’t think really anyone reads captions. So text on the screen.”

Relatable nostalgia resonates particularly well. “Appealing to nostalgia and stuff. People love nostalgic videos.”

Still, unpredictability remains part of the job.

“You could have a really well thought-out video, but no one cares,” she says. “It really depends on the day, the algorithm, and all that stuff.”

Expanding the Brand

Valerie is exploring adjacent formats, including podcasting.

“Definitely want to maybe start a podcast,” she says. “My best friend and I, we send 10-minute voice notes to each other every day.”

Attending VidCon last year as a featured creator, Valerie found that meeting fans remains one of the most grounding parts of her work. “It’s always just super fun and heartwarming to meet the people,” she says. “They’re like, ‘I grew up with you.’”

Acting remains a possibility, but with boundaries in place. “TikTok acting versus real-life acting is very different,” she says. Commercial work feels more realistic. “I think commercials are kind of a good medium.”

For now, she prefers staying close to the platform that built her. “I just love being a content creator and being online,” she says.

And her advice to creators on handling criticism and volatility is direct.

“No matter what you do, no matter who you are, there will be one person who’s going to hate on you or thousands,” she says. “So I would just tell my younger self, ‘Just don’t listen and ignore,’ and listen to the positive stuff.”

Photo source: Greenlight Group