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Welcome to our fourth edition of Self-Timer — a fresh look into how successful creators run their businesses.

This month's guest is Folasade Daini, a Canada-based creator and founder of Beyond Borders, a global community helping more than 240,000 creators start, grow, and monetize their content.

In this issue:

  • 💰 How she almost tripled her creator income in less than 12 months

  • 📱 How "building in public" landed her first LinkedIn brand partnership

  • 🎯 The video series that generated 412K views and shaped her entire strategy

— Natalia Pérez-González, Assistant Editor

❝

P.S. We crossed 2,500 YouTube subscribers last week. All thanks to you! Help us hit 3,000 by the end of August. If you enjoy Creator Spotlight, subscribing is one of the best ways to support our work.

Folasade Daini is a Nigeria-born, Canada-based content creator and community architect who helps underrepresented creators monetize their stories and build sustainable businesses.

As founder of Beyond Borders, a global membership community for BIPOC and immigrant creators, she teaches positioning strategies that helped her go from $50 to $5,000 per video after relocating to Canada. She’s partnered with brands including Claude, Disney, Sony, and Wealthsimple while building a global audience of 240K+ across platforms.

Learn more about Folasade.
Join her paid community, Beyond Borders.

The answers below have been edited for tone and clarity. Bolding and italics our own.

Creator Spotlight: You've built a following of more than 240K across your platforms — what were the key inflection points in your growth?

Folasade: The biggest shift happened in August 2022 when I met someone at church who'd grown incredibly fast using story-led, short-form video. I'd been stuck at 30K followers for two years, so I adapted their strategy to my audience. I started batch-shooting videos and posting consistently — hit 60K, then 100K followers in under 9 months.

But the real breakthrough came when I stopped creating generic content and started sharing actual behind-the-scenes moments: my struggles staying consistent as a mom, how my husband supports my career, and my actual creator income.

Three game-changers:

  1. Sharing specific numbers (followers, income, failures): People want to see what's possible — if someone who looks like them can do it, they believe they can too.

  2. Building in public — posting actual goals and progress. When I started building my platform as a LinkedIn influencer, I’d worked with brands like Kajabi, Zoho, and Flodesk on Instagram but had zero LinkedIn partnerships. So, I recorded a video publicly committing to reaching 15,000 LinkedIn followers and landing my first LinkedIn partnership. That transparency led directly to working with Claude — they could see I was already creating quality content while actively pursuing my stated goals. I'm now just 161 followers away from hitting my goal.

  1. Creating content with super-specific details that make people feel seen. Relatable content works when you use exact locations, ages, and pain points written exactly how your audience would say them. I knew this, so I began being more intentional about incorporating it into my content.

Tara Knight from Creator Match once said I share content so real it feels like reading messages from a friend rather than a professional connection. That's exactly the vibe I'm going for. I use stories to share the behind-the-scenes moments that make people think "She gets it."

CS: How do you use audience insights to inform your content strategy and business decisions?

Folasade: The DMs tell me everything. Last week, two creators asked about pricing their first brand partnerships*, and one has since become a paying community member. A former colleague asked about LinkedIn strategy, which led me to create my 7-day LinkedIn content calendar.

Even my creator community started this way. After a 2-day workshop on influencer marketing, participants said, "We don't want this to end. We need a community." I'd just had my second baby, so I waited until I had capacity and launched in January 2025.

My best business decisions come from actual conversations with my audience. They share their struggles; I create solutions.

*When creators ask about rates, I give them three strategies:

  • Ask other creators for market rates (people are surprisingly willing to share),

  • Calculate your hourly rate but factor in the value of your community access

  • Tosin Olaniyi, a fellow Canadian creator, also offers a great rate calculator that you can use.

  • Always add a few hundred dollars more than you're comfortable asking — if you underprice and they have the budget, they won't tell you.

CS: What single piece or content series has performed best for you?

Folasade: I've had a lot of videos go viral, but my favorite was this 2-video series I made about how creators end up doom-scrolling in search of content ideas. I didn't set out to make it a series; I was just practicing how to film cinematic videos, and as I was editing the clips, I realized I could tell a story about doom-scrolling, and it unexpectedly took off.

I eventually realized I wasn't the only creator struggling to come up with content ideas and decided to create a follow-up video on how using my 4H method helped me find unending ideas. They’re my best-performing videos to this day.

CS: Walk us through your content creation process for this series.

Folasade:

  • Tools and equipment used: I filmed with my iPhone and Eucos tripod, and edited with CapCut.

  • Production timeline: About 2 weeks. I played with the b-roll footage for a while before figuring out the story I wanted it to tell.

  • Any collaborators involved: None.

  • Distribution strategy: I shared my free Notion content calendar, which included links to samples of various posts using the 4H method, and that really helped push the post out. I also used Manychat to automate the replies, which really helped with reach.

CS: What impact has this content series had on your business and audience?

Folasade: The series garnered 412,000 views, with 15,000 shares and saves, and each video gained me over 2,000 new followers. My newsletter also grew to 6,000 subscribers, with several of those joining my paid creator community.

It showed me I could really empathize with other creators' struggles and should lean into creating more content around how we figure those out together. That realization basically shaped my entire content strategy moving forward.

Folasade earned $59,315 in H1 2025 across four income streams. It’s a 158% increase from her total 2024 income of $23,000 — a spike she attributes to clarifying her positioning and value proposition.

So far, fractional marketing work has comprised the bulk of her income at $21,200, followed closely by her creator community at $17,965, and brand partnerships at $17,400. Speaking engagements round out her portfolio at $2,750.

  • Her first dollar as a creator: A breast-pump brand paid me $55 for one reel.

  • The most she’s made from a single piece of content or deal: $5K for one video.

  • Her most effective monetization strategy: Launching a community with a yearly subscription model, where creators get access to workshops, courses, one on one sessions with real-life mentors from companies.

Folasade runs her multi-revenue stream business on six key tools while keeping costs minimal; her tech stack totals $1,549 annually. Her biggest investment is in LinkedIn Premium, reflecting her focus on B2B marketing and business development on the platform.

Here’s how she powers her business:

One newsletter she’ll never miss…

One creator who inspires her…

A podcast she regularly listens to…

Any books, courses, or resources that have significantly impacted her creator journey…

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