If you haven’t heard about the “Taco Person” nonetheless, be sure to enable me introduce you to Elyse Myers. Residing in Omaha, NE, Myers has turn into a TikTok feeling after her story about the worst date she’s ever been on – where by her day questioned her to invest in 100 tacos from Taco Bell – went viral. Possessing a website design business, Myers turned to TikTok as a innovative outlet for her funny, each working day tales during the pandemic. When the “taco dude” story went viral, she understood that she experienced started to establish a local community all around the hilarious and mundane matters we all working experience in our each working day life.
I was ready to job interview Myers to chat about what it’s like to create a community close to staying her reliable, each and every working day self and what’s next for her.
Elyse Myers Teaches Us That Authenticity Is The Finest Way To Make Local community | Stephanie Burns
Lauren Wade
Stephanie Burns: You have a website style and design company and then went viral on TikTok for your funny tales. Were being you initially working with it to promote your business?
Elyse Myers: Honestly, TikTok wasn’t one thing I prepared on executing, it was a little something I utilized to go time. I downloaded it at the height of the pandemic lock down and my spouse, Jonas, and I would just share videos again and forth, as a way to entertain each and every other. So then I started out earning films due to the fact I wanted a tiny bit of an outlet that wasn’t do the job. It wasn’t my spouse, it wasn’t my son, just something that was individual, my individual matter that I could do and develop. I chose it as a imaginative outlet and started off telling my stories.
I would do matters in the minute, just begin recording a considered that I experienced, or a story that was humorous, and I didn’t consider it would reach any individual, truthfully. I was not making an attempt to be thriving on TikTok, so I hardly ever had the forethought that hundreds of thousands of men and women would want to check out me talk about my appreciate for coffee at 4 in the morning, but in this article we are!
Burns: You’ve created a local community of thousands and thousands of people today, a great deal of whom do impressions of you and seem forward to your material. Why do you believe your neighborhood has developed so rapidly?
Myers: Honestly, I am nonetheless form of making an attempt to determine it out! This feels like a enormous present that I have been presented to be equipped to relate to folks on a quite standard stage. I consider I have discovered that by sharing these seriously simple stories of my everyday living that I notify in a way that helps make them seem so absurd and unbelievable, that l conclusion up becoming relatable. If you boiled down each and every story I’ve explained to, like I went on a undesirable day, I got bullied or I spoke way too loudly in a general public place, they’re the same stories that most people have. And due to the fact people today can connect to these tales, it feels like I am holding up a mirror to 2.7 million individuals and expressing your life is this incredible, as well.
I want to continue on to share the ordinariness of my existence, and to keep on just showing people that there are incredibly incredible things that happen in everyday times. That is potentially why so a lot of persons have adopted me.
Burns: How are you fostering authenticity within just your community?
Myers: I believe that the greatest issue that I can do for them, and truthfully for the wellbeing of myself and my household, is just to keep on remaining grounded in all of this. I assume that the even larger this all gets, the easier it would be to invest in into this strategy that I’m much more significant than I am, or that now I’m too great to be living the way that I was when this all started off. It appears actually very simple, but I think that the ideal issue I can do to care for these people that are investing so considerably time, vitality and focus into me and my household, is to preserve grounded.
No matter what doorways open to me or option is presented my way, it just isn’t heading to improve me on a fundamental degree. I will nevertheless be sharing stories with individuals in 20 yrs and be sporting graphic tees that I received from the thrift shop. If I companion with a manufacturer, it’s going to be since I like it and I think in it. If I am offering anything it really is going to be due to the fact I consider it is remarkable and will deliver price to someone’s daily life, not mainly because I just want to make a brief buck. I imagine that authenticity is significant to my local community and the persons who present up for me each working day. I’ve presently mentioned no to a good deal of matters. If I marketed out to just make income, selling issues I really don’t believe that in, I would not be relatable to people and I would not have been specified this platform. And so all that to say, I believe just keeping grounded and sustaining this thought that I am an regular particular person that highlight’s the ordinariness of everyday living, is genuinely lovely. I consider it is worthy of safeguarding.
Burns: How have you been giving back again to your neighborhood?
Myers: Within the local community, I’m seeking to carry consideration to the men and women who are previously accomplishing the perform and are results in and organizations that I want to serve and spotlight. I informed a story on TikTok about how I would often go onto the humane society web site and Jonas would practically walk into the dwelling area to locate me sobbing into my phone seeking to adopt all of the animals. I ended up blocking that IP and area so I are not able to go on that web site any longer, but we did adopt a pet dog and mainly because of that publish, the Humane Culture dueted the online video and it is been very thriving for them. They have been exhibiting all of their animals and obtaining residences for them.
I also experienced a girl who created a movie in my style in hopes that I would see it and share it. She was raising dollars for Christmas offers for foster young children, and her purpose was to sponsor someplace all around a hundred young ones. I’m positive when she started off that movie, she never could have imagined that she could get presents for all hundred youngsters, but she was heading to work all month to get to her target. She tagged me her movie and I went to the movie, then dueted it to give her some publicity to assistance her get to her purpose. Her goal was $3,000 and she experienced raised around $15,000. Rosie O’Donnell saw my online video and she dueted it as well, bringing even much more recognition to it.
I think it is this kind of a attractive detail, that all it took was me to like or duet a video so this girl could make the kind of influence she preferred to make. And that is all her, she’s performing the hard perform. It feels good to aid people in my neighborhood amplify the awesome matters they are accomplishing.
Burns: So what is up coming for your small business? Will you continue managing your world wide web style company or are you transferring into much more written content development complete time?
Myers: It’s all so new and fresh new, it really is hard to say what is actually subsequent. It could be a ebook, a exhibit, I’m not genuinely sure. I do know that I want to maintain creating material and finding greater. I seriously come to feel like possessing my organization to go again to if all of this had been to go away tomorrow, is an incredible blessing. I’m not determined. If I you should not consider totally in an option that will come my way, I am not heading to jump at it. My family will have almost everything it demands to realize success and be okay. And so it definitely will allow me to be intentional with the matters that I do. It allows me to have the house to get better at what I do due to the fact I really don’t have to get each individual chance. I can invest time discovering and bettering these techniques that will be so a great deal more refined by the time I do say indeed.
I have been speaking with Leslie Jones who has turn into a mentor and we had this incredible dialogue where she was talking to me desperation. She reminded me that desperate persons make desperate choices and they get them selves into sites exactly where all of a sudden they are in this period of their job they don’t feel in, or that does not align with their values. She told me that you happen to be by no means heading to regret ready a pair of days, or even a pair of a long time, to make a selection. But you will normally regret doing a little something also quickly or some thing you were not prepared for. I am keeping on to that, it was a pretty impressive discussion for me, especially as a lady in organization. I feel like it would be quick to say, “Well, no one’s at any time going to consider a opportunity on me ever again. So I may possibly as nicely acquire this possibility when it arrives.” But I believe in myself way much more than that. I know that I’m fantastic at my task, and to not be desperate is a extremely strong placement to be in if you happen to be blessed plenty of to be there. I experience that way about my small business. It will often be there to fall back again on and that gives me peace and area to be intentional about what comes following.
