6 influencers share what they wished they’d known before starting out

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As we scroll through the curated lifestyles of the influencers we follow on Instagram or YouTube, it can seem like they have it all together and never had to suffer a day in their lives.

But behind their accomplished exteriors are past trials and tribulations that gave these social media all-stars the motivation and know-how to get where they are.

“I have not met an influencer that is not having some sort of hard time,” said Tiffany Aliche, founder of financial education company The Budgetnista. “There is typically a lot of work involved before they can get to a level where they could share it and where they have enough knowledge … that they can actually influence people to make different decisions.”

We talked with six influencers in the areas of health and wellness, personal finance, relationships, career and life maintenance about what they wished they had known when they were starting out. People such as Brooklyn-based chef Sophia Roe and career coach J.T. O’Donnell are among those who shared how tough past experiences taught them important, life-changing lessons that inspire the work they do now to try to help others level up in life.

These are their stories.

When it comes to personal wellness, Roe wished she had known earlier that “anger is not the same thing as being strong.”

“It actually renders you a loss every single time,” she said. “Because when you walk around angry, you’re never even going to see a win.”

Roe, a 34-year-old Black woman, said she grew up in a traumatic environment: Her father was absent, her mother had “pretty intense” substance abuse issues, and she moved a lot. She dropped out of college twice and worked in a tough restaurant kitchen that she described as a place of ego and yelling.

“Things definitely didn’t get better as I got older,” Roe said. “I chose bad partners. I chose to isolate myself. I self-sabotaged a lot.”

All these experiences led to her feeling mad at the world, and she said that anger manifested as nausea,…