The Challenges of Being a Sustainable Influencer or Creator

Is it possible to preach the values of sustainability while still promoting consumption?

This is the question posed by a recent New York Times article, “The Moral Quandary of Slow Fashion Influencers”. The piece explored what it’s like navigating the nuanced world of working with brands — and making a living — while also advocating for sustainability and reduced consumption.

And a lot of what was in this article and what some of the creators said in this piece really resonated with me.

Being an influencer or creator in the sustainability space comes with a lot of complexities and challenges, and my personal journey is no exception.

In today’s solo episode, I will be talking about how I navigate balancing my values while sustaining a media platform and business in the midst of some of the complexities and challenges sustainable influencer or creator experience.

If you know someone else who would find this content helpful, share this episode with them!

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Read the Transcript From This Episode:

Hey there, and welcome or welcome back to the Conscious Style Podcast, where we explore what it will take to create a better future for fashion. I’m your host, Elizabeth Joy.

And today, I will be talking about the complicated world of sustainable influence. So this season, season three, of the podcast is all about going behind the scenes of conscious fashion, giving you a glimpse into spaces that you may not often see or hear much about.

And in today’s solo episode, I’m talking about the challenges of being an influencer or creator in the sustainability space; how I navigate balancing my values while sustaining a media platform and business; and I’m going to get honest with you about what it’s been like, the challenges I faced along the way, where I’m at now, and where I’d like to go.

So it’s a bit of a different topic than usual, but I think it’s an important one. And I hope that this episode will be useful for any of my fellow creators or entrepreneurs out there. And that it will also be interesting for everyone else to have this look at, you know, being a content creator in the conscious fashion space.

If you know someone else who would find this content helpful, grab the share link in your favorite podcast app for this episode, and send it their way.

As always, the transcript for this episode, as well as all of the relevant links are going to be in the show notes over on consciouslifeandstyle.com.

Alright, now let’s get into today’s episode.

Is it possible to preach the values of sustainability while still promoting consumption?

This is the question proposed by a recent article in The New York Times titled, “The Moral Quandary of Slow Fashion Influencers”.

You may have seen this piece being shared around. I actually shared it in The Conscious Edit my weekly newsletter, so if you’re a subscriber, you may have already read it (side note: the sign up for that is at consciouslifeandstyle.com/edit).

But essentially, if you haven’t checked it out yet, this article interviewed a few leading creators or influencers in the sustainable fashion / slow fashion space, like Aja Barber, Marielle Elizabeth, and Aditi Mayer.

The article explored what it is like navigating the nuanced world of working with brands, and paying your bills, while also advocating for sustainability and reduced consumption.

And a lot of what was in this article and what some of these creators were quoted as saying in this piece really resonated with me. And it also brought about more thoughts that I have about this topic.

So I thought I would sit down, write up these thoughts on paper and share them with you. Because I remember being on the other side (so to speak) of all this and watching sustainability bloggers or influencers and sort of wondering more about what was going on behind the scenes. So that is exactly what we are going to do today.

So first, for some context, if you’re newer to the show and Conscious Life & Style or @consciousstyle on Instagram, you may not know this, but I actually used to post photos of myself on Instagram and run a more influencer-ish personal style blog.

Today, I would not consider myself an influencer per se, but I would consider myself a creator. So I host this podcast, I create the graphics for the Instagram posts — though they are not always my words being quoted.

I write a lot of guides and articles for my website, consciouslifeandstyle.com. And then there’s other types of content that come in, like I write the weekly newsletter that goes out to The Conscious Edit subscribers.

But at the moment, I do not make videos or take photos of myself very often other than Instagram stories. And I guess it depends on what someone’s definition of an influencer is, but right now, I would say I am a creator and not really an influencer.

And part of the reason for this shift is because of many of these complexities, challenges, or questions brought up in trying to navigate being a sustainable fashion and lifestyle influencer.

And this is not to say that what sustainable fashion and lifestyle influencers are doing isn’t valuable or don’t believe in it, it just didn’t work for me based on what direction I wanted to take the Conscious Life & Style platform. I think everybody has a different journey.

But with all that sort of cleared up, out of the way, let’s dive into what these complexities or challenges are.

First and foremost, the most obvious is probably the fact that most influencers on social media make money, make their living by promoting consumption, right? Promoting products, whether it be beauty products or clothing, or sometimes it’s promoting things like travel, which still has an ecological footprint, when we think about flying too far off destinations, staying in super fancy hotels, and so on.

And even if it’s not consumption of something, specifically, following influencers on social media is associated with making us feel like we aren’t enough, that we don’t have enough of something, that our homes aren’t decorated beautifully enough, that we don’t have stylish enough clothes, or we’re not doing exciting enough things in our life. It’s this idea of more, more, more.

And much of this feels in opposition to the values of slow living, sustainability, and conscious fashion. So this is an internal ongoing battle that I think most influencers and creators in this space go through.

Like, how do I share outfits without making my followers feel like they have to copy this exact outfit? Buy these specific pieces of clothing? How do I make money and work with brands without promoting overconsumption?

And while there are no easy answers to this, being a slow fashion influencer, or creator is not impossible, I don’t believe. I mean, if you want to be perfectly 100% sustainable then okay, yes, that’s probably impossible.

But it’s also probably impossible to make a living, build a career in fashion at all, if you want to be 100% perfect, because this industry has a lot of issues. And you can’t address all of them all at the same time perfectly.

And on the way you also need to sustain yourself so that you don’t burn out, right? You don’t quit after two years. You try to do everything perfectly, but then you work yourself to the ground, and you have nothing to show for it and you’re out. We also want to be considering personal sustainability.

So we sometimes have to operate within the existing spaces, in the existing systems we’re in while we challenge them. And this is a tricky balance. I’m not going to lie and say that this is simple or that I have all the answers, but I will say that I believe that if you are committed to your values, you are committed to continuing to experiment, you are staying consistent, you’ll start to find your way.

And this way will look different for everyone. So I’d also add here that if you keep in mind that your path doesn’t have to look exactly like somebody else’s, I think you’ll find something that will work for you, that will feel good, that will allow you to make a difference, while also being able to pay rent and feed yourself and have an actual career out of this.

So some creators, for instance, have found that they can work with bigger brands that aren’t fully 100% sustainable to help them then work with smaller, more holistically sustainable brands with small budgets, or so that they have enough funds to do other work that pushes the industry forward for free, like partnering with advocacy organizations, for instance.

Or some creators use Patreon, especially creators that do not want to do a lot of advertisements or brand deals. But like with this example, you can’t build up a Patreon overnight. It takes time. It might take years to expand your audience enough and get enough patrons to actually make Patreon your main source of income.

So in the meantime, creators may still need to take brand partnerships, or even once their Patreon is up and running they may just be super selective about which brands they work with.

Or maybe an influencer decides to do the sort of conventional route of partnerships as their income, but they’re just super selective about the brands they promote and their partnerships are not salesy, but are more educational and inspirational.

So those are just some examples I think of creators finding different approaches within the complexities of working with brands, potentially promoting consumption in some way while still advocating for sustainability.

And if you follow a variety of influencers and creators, you may notice that they each sort of have a different approach. And some may feel good to you, as an audience member or follower or listener, and some may not.

And I think that creators also have to consider their audience and what their audience wants to see. You know, some audiences really, really want brand recommendations, and others really don’t want to hear about any brands or any product.

So navigating that complexity depends on the situation of the creator, of their audience, and so on. But even once a creator finds their approach, there are going to be further sorts of complexities that happen.

And my partnerships manager, Abigail, and I touched on some of these in the previous episode, but one that I’ve experienced a lot is that the small brands that are holistically conscious often have a smaller budget than the big brands that maybe just have a few eco-minded things that they’re doing that are maybe less impressive.

Now, this isn’t always the case, we once had a brand valued at over a billion dollars offer to send a product worth less than, like 100 bucks in exchange for an entire blog post and Instagram post review. And, you know, this is a blog I’ve been building up for many years that had almost a million page views last year — like that is not a fair compensation for that.

And then on the other hand, we have small brands willing to invest in the largest package we offer because they see the value of working with us and they’re willing to invest. Maybe we’ve worked with them on a smaller partnership, and it’s proven the ROI. But as a rule of thumb, generally, bigger brands, bigger companies do have larger budgets to work with influencers.

So then the question comes up: do I work with only small brands that are holistically conscious that can’t necessarily pay me what this work is valued at? Or do I work with larger brands that can pay what I believe my work to be valued at but aren’t necessarily the most ethical or the most sustainable option out there?

Now, each creator is going to have a different answer to this. And they might have different reasons for why they think one thing or the other.

And one important element to keep in mind is creators from marginalized groups face more challenges in getting opportunities. And also those from lower-income backgrounds might not have the sort of savings or financial cushion to sort of have the privilege of choice all of the time as they navigate being an influencer or creator. So context is super important.

But for myself, for my particular journey, I have taken the route of working with almost exclusively smaller brands. And we usually do smaller partnerships to keep it a bit more affordable for the smaller brands.

Other creators might decide to do 95% unsponsored content, and then that 5% that’s sponsored is paid for by bigger brands and that 5% is enough to pay the creator, enough to sustain themselves and maybe even their team.

Some creators might try to do sort of alternative sponsorships like promoting an electric car rental service or something that we all use and need, like food.

Other creators might decide that they don’t want to or are unable to do this full time. They want to freelance on the side to make their money or maybe they have a nine to five and they’re doing influencing on the side. So then they are not relying on influencing or content creation to make their full-time income.

Again, unfortunately, there is a lot of privilege wrapped up in the influencer space. And I would like to hope that this is less for the sustainability community. If you want to be a fashion influencer, you maybe have to buy new outfits for every single day. Every day you will need to show a new outfit.

And in the sustainability community were advocates of re-wearing, mending our old clothes, shopping secondhand. But that is a hopeful thought and I know that there is still a lot of privilege wrapped up in all types of influencing.

So another idea that I want to throw out here would be to offer more value to brands besides the value of being an influencer.

So this is something we briefly touched on in the previous episode. But maybe a creator works with a brand on not just posting Instagram posts that promote that brand’s products, but also that creator could take photography that they then sell to the brand for the brand to use and other campaigns or on their website. Or maybe their creator creates weekly social media content for that brand for an agreed-upon rate.

Like, as we talked about in the last episode, being a creator, like the most exciting part of it, I think, is that you have a license to be creative. There isn’t a set path that you have to take. You can be creative, you can do what hasn’t been done before. There isn’t a rule book that you have to earn your money from promoting brands on Instagram, if that’s not what feels good to you.

One final approach I’ve seen is creators offering courses or other digital content like ebooks, or checklists or downloads, templates, things like that to their followers. And this enables the creators to earn a living without necessarily having to rely so much on brand partnerships. So then either they can be more picky about which brands they work with, or they just keep a reduced amount of sponsored content for their audience.

And this last approach is the approach that I want to take Conscious Life & Style in the next year. So my goal is to create useful digital resources, whether that’s ebooks or courses that provide value for you all as my audience and also can enable me to continue to be very picky about which brands I promote, and enable me to continue to grow this business, make a bigger impact, but while sticking to my values of sustainability, and minimal or slow consumption.

And this doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop sharing brands, or stop affiliate marketing, or sponsored partnerships. It’s just that I don’t want to be fully dependent on that.

I mean, I will continue to share brands that I believe are doing things better and paving the way for a more sustainable and equitable future for fashion. Not in a way that’s like shopping from these brands is going to change the world. But in a way that’s like, hey, if you need this thing, or you really really want it like it’s been on your wish list, and you have decided you are going to buy it, I want to provide you — or the plural you — with the most conscious options possible.

I want to give you options that you can feel good about, that feel aligned with your values, that will make a positive impact, that will make a small business owner do a happy dance, or will help sustain an artisan’s generations-old crafts.

I’m not going to pressure you into making a purchase ever or make you feel like you’re a bad person if you can’t afford to buy from this brand. But like if you can support these brands, and you’re interested in this stuff, and you’d rather support a small business then give another 100 of your hard-earned dollars to a billionaire corporation, like here are some great options to check out.

I feel like conscious consumption is presented as this zero or 100 thing. Like either it’s transforming the fashion industry, changing the world, or it’s totally useless, doesn’t matter at all, it’s all a lie, doesn’t do anything.

And this binary either-or thinking is so frustrating to me and I could do a whole episode on this, and maybe I will. But like I just don’t think it’s that simple. Some people will be like, well, regulation is what we need to fix fashion. And regulation is so important but it won’t do everything and it certainly won’t do everything very quickly.

So we also need a mindset shift from the general populace. Like we need consumers, we need individuals to just start caring more. And we need brands to do their part to innovate further and invest in solutions. And we also need workers to have more power to have a seat at the table like there’s so many moving pieces, right? And we need education.

And of course, we also need small, innovative fashion brands to exist that are doing things so, so, so much better than the big players that are proving what is possible. And the only way that these small brands can exist is if people support them, right? Because unless they are independently wealthy, they need customers to sustain their business.

Working as team, hands piling on top of eachother

And so I don’t think it’s as simple as saying, this is everything and then this has no impact. I think it’s a very fair debate to talk about, like, what percentage you think or how important you think each of these elements are in the whole pie. That is a conversation, I think, that’s really interesting to have. But I don’t think we can say that one thing is everything and then another element is useless.

Another sort of thing to consider, I think, as a creator trying to navigate working in sustainability is that, your view of which brands you want to work with, how many brands you want to work with, how you want to promote these brands to your audience, all of these things are going to evolve over time.

Like when I started sharing brands, it was very like, here’s a feature on this brand, here’s everything amazing that they’re doing. And this was several years ago when there weren’t honestly a ton of these conscious fashion brands. But now, the conversation is so much bigger.

And so now I like to do sponsorships and a more educational way, diving deeper into maybe a specific issue in the fashion industry that this brand is addressing.

And something that Marielle Elizabeth said in that “The Moral Quandary of Slow Fashion Influencers” article was, “I do have a bit more leniency for designers who are marginalized in some way because I know that their funding opportunities are very different”. So that is also something that I’ve learned on my journey as a creator.

I would say in the beginning, I had a more rigid criteria for brands, they had to have certain certifications, use certain fabrics, and so on. And this I realized is limiting for small brands, and not always accessible to entrepreneurs that have been marginalized. And so things like that will evolve over time.

Both as creators get clear on their values, and unlearn and relearn and educate themselves. But also as the space over all progress is forward. Like things that might have been groundbreaking five years ago, might be considered standard now, or at least not that exciting. Maybe the big brands have already started doing it and sort of co-opted it and made it not as innovative anymore.

But this is another challenge that creators in the sustainability space face. Like we have to continue our education and try to bring you the most researched content, or the most well-researched content possible.

Like it’s not as straightforward as, this sweater is super cute. Here’s my affiliate link. You know, putting together each post in a very mindful way, in an educational way, that is more time-consuming. It’s going to be more effort than just taking a photo and then putting emojis as the caption.

Like sometimes I’m genuinely shocked at the content that fashion influencers post and how much engagement they’ll get. Like how successful influencers will be posting outfits and affiliate links and pushing sales all day long. I just I also don’t get from an audience perspective how that’s valuable.

But I just feel like that is another complexity or challenge that I’d add here as a sustainable or slow / conscious fashion or lifestyle influencer. It can be really frustrating to see influencers or creators do such simple content that looks pretty but doesn’t really have a meaning behind it and then it does so well.

And then you’re over here spending hours and hours researching something, talking about a topic you feel is super important and then you hit publish, and you get crickets. Or you maybe get some engagement, but nothing like what you see over in the so-called mainstream influencer world.

But yeah, I feel like that’s also part of the territory, like we’re not in this sustainable creator space for our own egos, hopefully. We’re not in this for a bunch of likes, and all the money, and endless brand deals. I think most of us got into this space because we care and we want a better fashion industry, or beauty space, or food industry or whatever it is.

And we want to use our creativity and our skills for writing or photography or videography, to help contribute to the change and to make an impact, to influence people to take action and drive the change.

And engagement is important in the sense that we want this message to reach as many people as possible. But it’s also not just a numbers game, because it’s bigger than social media. Like I would rather a post gets just 300 likes, but 10 people are super impacted by that post: inspired or learned something or it pushed them to take action, rather than a post that gets 3,000 likes, but I didn’t really make an impact in anyone and nobody really did anything except double tap on a pretty photo.

I do think there is a way to do both. And there are some amazing slow fashion influencers out there that are able to get really great engagement, take beautiful photos, have lovely outfits and they’re also talking about things that matter, or they’re inspiring people to re-wear their clothes, or they’re inspiring people to ask more questions about the brands that they buy from.

So there’s a way to do both, of course, I’m not saying that there isn’t, but like, I think that the idea of quality over quantity also goes for social media engagement. But that is a lesson that I am still learning.

And I still have moments where I’m like, Oh, this post didn’t do that well, and I really, really wanted more people to see it or more people to like it. But then I’ll look at the comments section and someone will say how, it inspired them to start a club at their school. And that’s like that matters way, way, way more that this person was inspired enough by this one post to make an impact in their community and raise awareness about conscious fashion to their community like, Whoa! That is why I want to do what I do.

And I’m still working on getting too caught up in the numbers. But I think it’s important to try to separate ourselves from that as creators, particularly in the sustainability space, and just think about what is our purpose, what is our goal like beyond the follower count and the likes.

But I’m going to be honest with you that it can be easy to forget this the more time you spend on these social platforms like they can distort your perceptions of what matters to you. They can really easily take you further away from your real goals or intentions. It’s such a comparison game on social media, like no matter how hard you try, I think it’s inevitable that you will compare something of yourself to what you’re seeing.

And as a creator, I feel like that often comes in the form of, oh, this creator is growing so much faster than me. Oh, this creator has so much engagement. This creator gets so many likes, ugh this creator is so consistent on Instagram. Ugh this creator is doing this really cool thing, their post went viral, you know, why can’t I create content like that?

And I think that for myself, and I’m not going to speak for like the general sustainable creator space, but for myself, I found that the more I’ve diversified my platforms and my income away from relying on social media, the healthier relationship I’m able to have with it.

Because I can take a week off of social media, and it’s not going to cause my business to go down the toilet. Or if a post doesn’t get great engagement, I don’t feel like my business and my message isn’t important, because I also have my blog, I also have this podcast that you’re listening to right now. I also have my newsletter, The Conscious Edit.

So I am a huge advocate for diversifying your platforms, including a platform that you have control over, whether that is a newsletter, that you have that list of subscribers that you can reach, no matter which platform you decide to switch to. Or through a website where you own the domain, like, it’s not going to get shut down randomly, or you’re not going to like get kicked off.

That happened to the Fashion Revolution Instagram account for a little bit. They couldn’t log into their account, like their account disappeared for a few days and they had no idea why. And this is an account of a reputable nonprofit organization, something like 400,000 followers, and they just lost their account overnight with no explanation. And that can happen on social media, so it’s important to have a platform that you own.

To be clear: these things, websites, newsletters, are not algorithm-proof. Email providers change what goes into the primary folder versus the promotions folder in people’s inboxes. Google has algorithms that determine if your blog posts will get shown high in search or not. And as there are more and more Google ads, like the top results are ads in Google, your blog posts are going to get shown less and less.

But these algorithms at least change less often. And at the end of the day, you do still own that core content that’s on your site. Like you’re not publishing it on an external platform like Instagram or YouTube that you don’t own and then they kick you off, and you can’t ever get access back into your account. You can’t get that content back — it’s gone. You maybe have the images saved, hopefully, on your phone or something but that content isn’t accessible for anybody to view any longer.

So that’s something to consider for any other creators listening. And yeah, I think also for readers or followers, if you can, if you really, really love a creator, sign up for their newsletter, or check out their blog, or, you know, see if they have a Patreon or a Substack or something like that, to connect with them off of social media because social media algorithms are notorious for changing very rapidly and you might not see that person’s account anymore.

Or maybe their entire account was deleted in an extreme case, and then you’ll have lost connection to that creator. So if you want to make sure that you stay connected to them, I definitely recommend signing up for a newsletter or Substack, or Patreon or whatever.

The best way, by the way, quick plug here, the best way to stay in touch with me is by subscribing to my newsletter The Conscious Edit, you can sign up for that at consciouslifeandstyle.com/edit. And of course, this podcast is a great secondary way so you can hit subscribe or follow on your podcast app of choice to make sure you’re seeing the latest episodes of the Conscious Style Podcast.

But that’s pretty much what I have to say about that, I won’t get into like the nitty-gritty of platform strategies and all that stuff because I think that’s quite specific to creators. And at the end of this episode, I’m going to share something that I have for you all fellow creators and bloggers listening to this.

But another layer or element to consider with sustainability influencers and that complexity is that sometimes they talk about tough topics, right? Topics that not everybody is going to agree on. And as all of these social media platforms begin to figure out what they’re going to allow or not allow, sometimes they’re harsh on platforms that talk about issues that shouldn’t be controversial but are, like climate change, racism, worker rights.

Another challenge that they have to deal with is these posts being limited in reach. And then another challenge I would add to that is that sustainable influencers often have to deal with rough comment sections.

So like when an influencer is posting a reel of outfits, or a photo of them drinking coffee, the comments might be like “cute”, “love it”, where’d you get that bag? But if an influencer starts to talk about a deeper issue: environmental justice, or the issues of fast fashion, sometimes the comments can get really nasty. And these negative comments are unfortunately particularly present for creators who are marginalized.

So in addition to the negative comments that they might receive on the actual content, some people on the internet, really steep low, take it too far and start to also make personal attacks when they don’t agree with the point that the creator is making.

And so I want to acknowledge here that with my privileges as a white straight-sized, cis-het woman, I haven’t experienced this personally. Although I’ve received comments about the content that I put out there itself that people don’t agree with it, I have not dealt with, you know, racist, fatphobic, xenophobic, and other demeaning comments that I know other creators have received.

And Instagram has finally started to do like the bare minimum with this to address it allowing creators to for instance, enter in trigger words so that if a DM contains that word, it will automatically be blocked, or at least hidden.

Some creators, especially those with large followings, and whose posts reach wide audiences have gone so far as to just say that their DMs are unmonitored, that they don’t check their DMS, or they might have an assistant check, but they’re never personally in their DMs. And I think that if you’ve seen this as a follower, that a creator like doesn’t check their DMs, know that it’s probably for a really good reason because people can get really mean and aggressive fast.

And it’s really bad on social media, like I have seen some podcasters receive really bad reviews, that I’m like, what, I don’t even get this? And thankfully, I’ve been spared from that for now, I mean, we’ll see. It’s inevitable. I’ve basically yeah, acknowledged that one day, I’m going to read a review of the show and it’s going to make me really upset or angry or whatever but the reviews are few and far between; a negative review, right?

The comments and the direct messages on social media are much more commonplace. And I think that creators really should be able to set boundaries and not feel bad about it, as my manager Abigail talked about in the previous episode.

Some people might get mad if a creator doesn’t respond to their DMS or they limit their comments to followers. But at the end of the day, it is the creators own platform and they have a right to protect their mental health.

And for creators out there like you know yourself and what you can handle. Like for myself, managing comments has gotten a lot easier as I’ve stepped away from the camera. That it’s not like photos of me, although I will say I was talking about lighter topics when it was photos of me and I pretty much never got a negative comment.

But if I talk about like some of these difficult issues, people will disagree with me and that’s okay. I don’t take that personally. Even if the person says it really mean, I’m able to sort of brush it off because it’s not about me. But that’s gonna be different for each creator. And obviously, as I mentioned, some people receive more offensive comments than others do.

And so I think it’s important as followers, you know, obviously I follow other creators as well, it’s important for us to acknowledge and respect their boundaries. And if you want to have a conversation with them, perhaps email is a better alternative if they don’t check their direct messages, or maybe join their Patreon community if you want to chat with them so you can also support them for their time and efforts.

But anyway, making the content less personal is another reason for my shift away from being an influencer more into making Conscious Life & Style, a media platform. I find it way less stressful, and there’s less pressure now that my platform is not personal. It’s not about me. I don’t have to be perfect and hold myself up to unreasonable standards, but I can still push for a better fashion system and do what I can, without feeling that intense scrutiny.

Because I feel like that is another challenge that sustainability influencers face, both from their followers’ expectations, but also for themselves. Like it can feel like you have to do 100% of the right things all of the time, otherwise, you could start to feel like you’re an imposter or a hypocrite.

And it is difficult to navigate trying to influence your followers to make better, more conscious choices, while also acknowledging that you’re not perfect, and you might mess up sometimes. Like that balance is really, really tough. And some creators have communicated that really, really well. And it’s been inspiring to see that: how they’re able to encourage people to do the best that they can, acknowledging that everybody has different barriers, different situations, that they’re not perfect, but like everything that we can do, does make a difference.

And I think that people will often expect a lot from sustainability influencers. And I do think there is a certain sort of standard to uphold, you know, because there is greenwashing and as sustainable fashion and green products and all these things get more common, there’s going to be more greenwashing in the influencer space just as there is a ton of greenwashing with brands. But at the end of the day, they are often just individuals trying to do their best.

And I don’t think it’s wrong to hold people with a lot of influence accountable, especially if they have 300,000 followers, and they’re like doing significant misinformation on their page. But I do also think it’s crucial to acknowledge that they’re just one person.

And of course, there’s a difference between an influencer who’s just trying to profit off of this rise in awareness about sustainable fashion versus somebody who really, really cares about these issues and has sort of dedicated their platform to it. So there’s layers to that.

But I think that, in general, being a creator influencer in this sustainability space, comes with a lot of challenges and complexities that we are all still trying to navigate. So those were some, well a lot, of the complexities of being a sustainable influencer or creator.

There is more to this conversation for sure. I could easily do a part two and if you are a creator that has more challenges to add to this list, send me a DM on Instagram, you can find me @consciousstyle. But I think that this episode covered the main or some of the most common complexities or challenges that I face that I know that other creators face.

So if you are a creator, or you are interested in starting a blog or a platform, and you have questions that you want to ask me. You want some support on things like: how do I monetize my platform? How do I find my unique voice? How do I source content ideas? How do I navigate these complexities of being a sustainable influencer in a way that works for me?

Those are all things that I would love to help you with, and so I am now offering content creator consulting services.

So for a little bit of background, I started my blog, consciouslifeandstyle.com as a side hobby/writing portfolio several years ago. But I’ve since turned it into a sort of full media platform website that has nearly 1 million pageviews a year. And I’ve not only been able to make this my full-time career, but I now have an amazing, small but mighty team helping to grow the mission of Conscious Life & Style as well.

And I really, really want to help any other conscious bloggers or aspiring content creators out there, to bring your vision to the world and earn a living from what you love to do while making a difference, but without all of the same frustrations that I went through on my own journey. I learned a lot of lessons the hard way on this journey and I would love to be a support for you on your content creator or blogger journey.

So of course, these consulting services do come with a fee but my goal is to save you a lot of time and money in the long run. And the value that I think that I could offer you is more than what I’m charging for this. So if you want to learn more about these consulting services, you could head to consciouslifeandstyle.com/consulting and the link will also be in the show notes, and episode description.

So that is all for now. Thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode and putting up with my stuffy voice here as I’m battling a bit of a cold.

So we will be taking a midseason break from the podcast next week. So there will not be a new episode next week but there will be another episode the following week. So make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss that episode when we come back.

So I will meet you here again, same time, same place, two weeks from now for another episode of the Conscious Style Podcast.

And I look forward to hearing from some of you, fellow creators and bloggers. I hope to be able to work with you in those consulting services soon. Alright, bye for now!