🔴 400K followers as career insurance

What’s more useful after a layoff: your resume or your content capital?

Our guest this week is Colin Rocker, a content creator focused on career development with a particular mission to equip and inspire first-generation professionals. Since 2020, he's amassed over 400,000 followers across platforms, turning his side hustle into a full-time career that's replaced his corporate salary.

I loved this conversation; Colin is an earnest and compelling storyteller with sharp insights on authentic community building.

In this episode:

• 📢 Turning a layoff into a thriving new career

• 🧠 How to build your reach (and use it as a career safety net)

• 🌱 Creating community through vulnerability 

— Natalia Pérez-González, Assistant Editor

• 00:00 Introducing Colin Rocker

• 01:11 The many failed attempts before finding success

• 03:23 Defining the niche 'first-generation professionals'

• 05:46 Diversifying your platforms: Instagram vs TikTok

• 08:00 The most valuable skills needed as a creator 

• 15:11 Going all in as a full-time creator

• 18:39 The value of personal brand identity

• 23:51 Monetizing your audience, ethically

• 29:21 Attracting a diverse audience

• 32:32 Managing your time as a full-time creator-entrepreneur 

• 38:29 Creating meaningful, positive content

• 42:46 Building a welcoming community

• 46:17 The challenge and rewards of writing a newsletter

• 49:54 Personal experience in a post-information world

🎧 If you prefer a podcast platform other than YouTube, we’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you tune in to your podcasts.

The layoff that launched a personal brand

Publicly announcing a layoff has traditionally carried some level of shame or stigma, but for Colin Rocker, it launched a new career.

Within hours, his inbox was filled with messages, not from recruiters but from the press, major consulting firms, and tech leaders in New York City, where he currently lives.

That moment didn’t just mark a shift in his income — it crystallized his entire philosophy: reach is the new resume. When you build an audience, you build a safety net. One that corporate America can’t guarantee.

Before the layoff, Colin had a stable career in strategy at Konrad Group (previously, he worked at Deloitte) and a growing side hustle as a creator, earning $30,000–$40,000 annually from content. Post-layoff, this wasn’t enough to support a young, growing family in Manhattan. So he made a calculated decision: treat content like a full-time job.

He had six months of runway, so he sat down with his wife and made an ambitious promise:

This wasn’t the time to go to the beach or sulk; he now had a baby and responsibilities.

@careercolin

#careersintech #careertok #careeradvice #bragbook

His first 100,000 followers came from offering general career advice, but his audience truly exploded once he identified his distinct niche — leaning into his authentic experience as a first-generation professional. The son of a plumber with a high school education, Colin’s edge comes from lived experience navigating corporate life without a blueprint or much context.

The more personal he made his content, the more he found that his audience connected and resonated.

Today, Colin has successfully replaced his corporate salary, with brand partnerships accounting for about 90% of his income. He's expanded into digital guides, speaking engagements, and coaching, while building For the Firsts — a professional meet-up club for those charting career paths no one in their families imagined.

Nat’s notes ✍️

As I listened to this conversation, what struck me most was Colin's deliberate move to decenter himself from his own community, For the Firsts.

While he’s clearly invested in building the reach of his personal brand, he measures community success by how well it functions without him. “Half the people that show up have no idea who I am, which is what I want,” he noted proudly, explaining how community members are self-organizing based on other sub-interests.

His approach leverages a more sustainable model for creator communities, ones that outlive their facilitators. As a source shared in my recent piece on how creators can authentically build communities, “a community is when you can leave, and the party goes on without you.”

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok.
Learn more about For the Firsts.

Reach is the new resume: Building your career safety net

For professionals looking to build stability in an era of increasing layoffs and career volatility, Colin’s "reach is the new resume" philosophy offers practical strategies for creating your own safety net through content.

Find your unique angle in a crowded space

After reaching 100,000 followers with generic career advice, Colin realized he needed something distinctive to break through. His experience as a first-generation professional became his unique value proposition:

• Document the gaps you had to bridge: Share specific challenges you overcame that others might face silently. Colin's most successful content addresses knowledge gaps that traditional career education misses.

• Lead with stories, not just advice: "If I don't have a story, I don't necessarily have a video," Colin emphasizes. Without personal experience anchoring your content, it becomes indistinguishable from countless others offering similar tips.

• Adjust your story types as you grow: Colin echoes our former guest Adam Biddlecombe's observation about audience-appropriate content strategies: smaller creators need thoughtful, genuine, and specialized content to establish authority. As Colin’s audience grew past 100K, he’d built enough content capital and the freedom to incorporate personal stories and vulnerability.

Operate like a business, not a hobbyist

Colin's consultant background shaped his methodical approach to content:

• Apply data-driven testing: "I can create three versions of the same video, put them up at the same time," Colin explains about his TikTok strategy. This allows him to identify which messaging resonates without clouding his main feeds on his other social media accounts.

• Allocate time for relationship building: Beyond content creation, Colin dedicates significant time to "biz dev" – ensuring he's visible at industry events and connected to potential partners. "Wherever you go, I want you to see Colin Rocker," he states.

• Be strategic about community building: The most-clicked links in Colin's newsletter are those promoting in-person events, demonstrating that people crave connection beyond content. For his professional meet-up club, Colin deliberately avoids the term "networking event" to create a specific atmosphere. He wants people to show up as themselves; he wants them to feel like they're joining something ongoing rather than attending a one-off event, creating built-in momentum while removing the pressure and awkwardness often associated with traditional networking.

• We went to the Webbys! Here’s our scene report (Creator Spotlight)

• 30 simple hooks that stop the scroll and engage an audience (Instagram)

• How the “friction economy” shapes our lives (Kyla’s Newsletter)