Also available on: Apple Podcasts · Spotify
Musician, actress, filmmaker, and content creator Nicole de la Cruz shares how she built an audience of over 900,000 followers and 650 million views across social media platforms. We discuss creating ongoing series through TikTok sketches, balancing multiple creative outlets, avoiding burnout, and pursuing her passion for music and filmmaking.
Key Takeaways
Consistency is something you practice. Nicole's initial commitment to posting every day helped build her creative habits before she had an established audience.
Pay attention to what works without making it your entire identity. Her sketches attracted followers, but music and filmmaking remained important goals.
Give your audience opportunities to discover other sides of you. Livestreaming helped Nicole introduce her existing audience to her original music.
A production system can make content creation manageable. Separating brainstorming, filming, and editing helps her manage a demanding posting schedule.
Enjoying the work matters as much as reaching people. Burnout made Nicole reconsider what she wanted to create rather than continuing to make only the content that performed best.
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Related Episodes
How to Build a Creative Identity That Feels Like You (Rivkah Reyes)
Rivkah's path across acting, music, writing, and filmmaking offers a close parallel to Nicole's efforts to bring her different creative passions together.
Your Creative Career Needs More Than Talent (Kenny Feinstein of Water Tower)
Kenny's experiments with social content and building an audience around a recognizable creative identity connect with Nicole's TikTok growth story.
Host: Michael Zimmerlich
Post-Production: EarthtoMoira
Music by: Daphne Greene
A podcast by Omelette Prevail, a creative company connecting creators, brands, and ideas through partnerships and collaboration.
Transcript:
00:00 Introduction and the Value of Attention
Mike Zimmerlich: Hey, Nicole, how are you?
Nicole de la Cruz: I'm good, I'm good. How are you doing?
Mike Zimmerlich: Thanks for asking. I really do appreciate you being on the show. I'm really excited to have you because you have accomplished so much already, and I'm really excited to dive into this.
But one of the things that I did notice that I think felt like a common theme throughout everything that you've done so far is this word attention. And I know that's a word that gets thrown around a lot right now, but I'm very curious what attention means specifically to you.
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah. I guess for me, what attention would mean is doing something that brings some kind of value, right? It could be entertainment, education, whatever it is that gets people's attention, that grabs their mind, like in an intellectual way, I would say.
Not always, right? There's the funny videos that really don't have a lot of, I would say, substance to them, but it still has value because it grabs our attention.
So I guess I would say providing value for people in whatever capacity that is, is what attention is.
Mike Zimmerlich: I agree. And also to say this, you said it best yourself, that there was entertainment value. So I would argue with that, that it's still value. It's entertainment, right?
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah.
Mike Zimmerlich: When you're doing sketches and things like that too. And that's the thing, right? As a creator, you are usually providing a certain level of different buckets, if you will, right?
There's the educational aspect, and then there's the entertainment aspect of it too, right? And even entertainment itself can mean a lot of different things. It could be comedy, it could be music, it could be just visually interesting, right? There's a lot that can cover under there, and a lot of those can go hand in hand.
Sometimes they're together, sometimes they're completely separate. Some are just straight-up informational. They're not entertainment, they're just delivering information of some sort, right?
And there's the other side too, where, as you mentioned, maybe they have no substance to them, but they're just purely meant for entertainment reasons. And there is validity to both of those, and actually all those in different situations.
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah, definitely. I would definitely say so. And like you said, information is another tier of getting attention, but also getting value out of it, for sure.
Mike Zimmerlich: And I noticed too, we'll talk about the fact that you are both an actor as well as a musician. So of course, it sounds like you really are passionate about the craft of performance in general.
Nicole de la Cruz: Yes, definitely. I've always been a creative. I always say that I dabble in different mediums, but at the heart of everything, it's storytelling.
Whether it's acting, singing, whether I'm writing a book, a script, whatever it is, it's storytelling at its finest, and I do have a really good passion just for telling stories.
It's how we experience life, of course, every day. Even the mundane things like, "Oh, all I did today was go to work and made a PB&J, and then I went home and watched TV." That in itself is a story, and I think everything can be an interesting story if you just tweak it and say it a certain way.
So yeah, for sure.
Mike Zimmerlich: Did you like telling stories when you were younger?
Nicole de la Cruz: Yes. Oh my gosh, I really did. I've always told stories.
My mom has pictures of when I was three or five, and I was just in front of the camera making funny faces or making up things, stories that didn't exist. So that's always been a part of me, for sure.
And then when I was a bit older and I could actually kind of put pen to paper and really flesh some stuff out rather than just playing around with a camera, that's when I really started to get into the craft of storytelling.
I used to write little YouTube skits when I was very young. I think when I was nine or 10.
And there's probably one on an old YouTube account that's probably out there still, and then the rest have been taken down.
So that started pretty young. And then I would write books, small books, right? Stuff like that when I was young. So storytelling has always been in the picture for me, for sure.
Mike Zimmerlich: That sounds like a fun content piece. If you're ever able to find that video, doing a then-versus-now situation.
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah, or a reaction. Yeah, yeah.
Mike Zimmerlich: A reaction, yeah. Like my first YouTube video or something like that.
Is your mom like that too? Is she a storyteller?
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah. Well, she's a musician.
She started music when she was 13 years old, so she was a violinist. Well, she still is a violinist.
And that's kind of how I started getting my love for music. It was introduced to me at a very early age. She tried to teach me how to play the violin.
I had a little baby-size, kid-size violin. But you know, kids don't like to listen to their mom that much. So I don't think she had a lot of success, but I did get that love from her, and then she kind of taught me some piano.
And then I used to be obsessed with the show Hannah Montana, and I told her, "You know what? Out of all the things in music, that's what I wanna do for the rest of my life, sing."
And Hannah Montana also acted, so it was a bit of both. And so I told her, "That's what I wanna do," and she ended up putting me in singing lessons specifically because she's like, "Well, I can't teach you how to sing. I can teach you music theory and piano and some violin, important things in music, but I can't teach you how to sing, so let me find somebody else for that."
But I definitely got the passion for music through her, for sure.
Mike Zimmerlich: So it sounds like you started early off in music and that you knew that's something you were passionate about, the music. And then did acting come a little bit later?
Nicole de la Cruz: I get this question a lot. I would say it was simultaneous.
Even though she wasn't the inspiration for acting, like I said, I was always doing stuff like that. I always loved the camera.
She was always telling me and showing me pictures or videos where I was acting things out.
So that was just always innately in me. I would say singing might have come in a more professional sense first, meaning that's the first formal education I had, through music and singing, and then acting came a few years after that.
But they've always coexisted. I've always done things that were quote-unquote acting or making videos and stuff like that.
07:00 From Acting to Recording Music
Mike Zimmerlich: So you started releasing singles in 2019.
Nicole de la Cruz: Mm-hmm.
Mike Zimmerlich: Why then, starting to record and release music?
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah, I actually haven't been asked this before.
So around that time I was working with a vocal coach, and she was kind of giving me, she was a vocal coach but also a mentor of the industry and kind of teaching me. Because at that point, I hadn't had my own music out, but I had been writing my own music.
And she's like, "Yeah, this is the time."
So she linked me up with some producers that she knew to create the tracks and create the songs that came out in 2019, 2020. We spaced them out a bit.
And that was a very interesting process, and it was fun because it was the first time I ever got to make a song, per se, in the traditional sense, not just the lyrics and the melody, and work with somebody, a producer that knew what they were doing and could really put my vision out there.
So it was definitely a learning experience all around.
Even now, my newer music, working with a different producer is also a learning experience because I've learned every producer brings their own sauce and their own flavor to your own music.
And I think it takes finding the right match, the right producer, the right team to get what's in your head out into the world, right?
But yeah, that journey started in 2019 mostly because of my vocal coach and mentor telling me, "This is your next step. You've been performing since you were seven. You've got the stage presence down. You've got the vocals down. Now it's putting your work out there."
Which is the point of singing and songwriting. Songwriting is another version of storytelling.
Mike Zimmerlich: You mentioned it being a learning experience, which is great. I was gonna say inevitable, but it's a never-ending learning experience, right?
Every time you go into the studio, you're going to be learning something new. But I'm also curious, what was something that you learned when you recorded and released your first single?
Nicole de la Cruz: Okay. Also, it is inevitable. Learning is also inevitable. You're gonna learn whether you want to or not.
Mike Zimmerlich: Well.
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah, and it's never-ending.
Something I learned from my first single, I learned how the recording process truly worked in a professional, traditional sense.
Because up until that point, I had been recording my own covers or scratch demos of my music, right? And so I would do it a certain way, and working with a producer and seeing how they work in the studio.
One of the singles that I was recording, my dad was in town to listen to, and he was like, "I just thought you guys sang through the whole song maybe a few times and that was it."
And I was like, "No."
Because we go section by section, recording the first verse, the chorus, the second verse, and then even in that, sometimes you have to go back and just do a few lines a bunch of times, right? And it's a whole four-hour process.
So learning how that worked was really cool, and it was cool to see that what I had been doing on my own was kind of very similar.
It wasn't too much of a shock for me. I definitely wasn't recording the whole song straight through in my room.
So that was cool to learn the similarities, but also seeing how that producer worked. And I guess seeing the song come to life with the track, because a song is lyrics and melody, but obviously us as consumers, we don't consume music like that.
We do like the track and the beat, and it brings so much to the song.
So learning how my song can work with a track and what I like around the song and the music and the melody and the lyrics.
And then post working on that project, learning how to write keeping that in mind.
Because I had never had to write keeping the production process in mind. So after working on those few singles, I learned that's definitely another thing you have to take into account when you're songwriting.
Mike Zimmerlich: During this time, you were pursuing acting as well. You mentioned that was kind of going hand in hand.
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah, definitely.
So around 2019, I had been, well, I guess always, I've always been in acting classes, so that's obviously one big way that you learn and pursue acting.
And then I had an acting manager. At one point I had an acting agent. It just depended on the part of my life, what kind of team I had around me.
And for that, when your agent sends you out on auditions, you go out on them.
Now post-COVID, a lot of them are online, which honestly is good for your schedule, and you can kind of record and try again and again before you send it in, rather than going in person.
But it's funny because now I'm used to it, and now I appreciate the whole, it's called a self-tape when you're doing it online.
But at the beginning I actually missed the in-person auditions because I thought that I was just overthinking it too much now that I had to record it and watch me doing it 20 times, and I was like, "I don't know which one to choose."
So I kind of missed the days where you just go in and it's like, okay, you're on the spot.
Because I feel like I work well under pressure, and what's similar is performing live or singing is kind of the same thing, performing live in an acting audition, right?
So yeah, I kind of miss those days a little bit, but I do see the benefits of being able to do your acting stuff a few times.
Mike Zimmerlich: I've never auditioned for acting before. I've auditioned for music many times when I was younger, but never auditioned for acting.
But I've always loved hearing stories of well-known actors and their audition experience.
And many times when they talk about how they landed the role, in a number of cases it's because they were in the room and they were doing something that was improv right then and there in the moment, and being in the moment.
And the way that they handled that was the reason why they secured the role.
And I do agree with you that spontaneity, that spontaneous aspect of it, is something that you miss when you're doing something like a self-tape where it's a lot more, you can obviously do multiple takes.
They're not seeing you necessarily in your element. They're seeing something that is being edited over time.
And I think there's pros and cons to each way, right?
So this way, if you're having a bad day, let's say you just didn't get enough sleep the night before, whatever the case, right? And you go in and just do a lousy audition.
In comparison to where you can do it on your own time, and you can get it to the point where you know that this is a good representation of your performance instead of just a fleeting moment that you have to nail.
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah, definitely.
Mike Zimmerlich: Now, was your acting background the reason why you were gravitating towards developing sketches for content creation?
15:00 Building an Audience Through TikTok
Nicole de la Cruz: I would say so. Well, actually, there's two answers to that question, I guess.
Yes, because like I mentioned previously, when I was seven or 10, I don't remember how old I was, I was making the same kind of skits or sketches on YouTube with my friends.
But it was with my friends, so I kind of recruited them, and then I would do all the editing and stuff. So that had always been there. That was at that time my way of being able to act more.
And then flash forward to 2020, this is where the second kind of answer comes in of a little bit of a no, but yes.
That's when TikTok was getting really big, and I think that's when they switched over from Musical.ly, and TikTok was getting big, and a lot of people were talking about it.
And somebody specifically told my mom while I was there, so they told me too, but they said, "Oh, you should've just been in this store an hour earlier. We had two record label executives in here, and they were talking about how now they're signing all these people from TikTok. So you gotta get on TikTok."
And that was not the first time I had heard that, but it was one of the times where it really hit, I guess I would say.
And I was like, "Okay. Well, I'll think about it."
And I think I posted one cover of me singing, and then I didn't do anything for nine months.
And I would say over the years I have tried to make a YouTube channel. I have tried to put content in places, but consistency is a really hard thing for people to achieve, especially when they're not seeing the results they want to see.
So in February of 2021, I decided, "Okay, I'm going to post on TikTok every single day."
Unless I really can't, but every single day, at least once, even if it's a really bad video, whatever it is, if it's kind of dumb, if I don't like it, if it's really short, it doesn't matter. I wanna build the muscle of doing this every single day.
And what I liked about TikTok, I like YouTube too, of course, but what at that time I liked about TikTok was that it was very unpolished.
A lot of people were posting content that wasn't Instagram perfect or YouTube quality, cameras and lights and everything.
So it was very much, I feel like, doable for me to do by myself because I didn't have a team. It was just me.
And I said, "Okay, this is gonna be the thing."
And I started with talking-to-the-camera kind of videos about my day or something that happened or a thought that I had. And then I did a few singing covers.
I literally was just throwing spaghetti at the wall, see what sticks, see what works.
And then a few months, I think two or three months in, I had quite a bit of followers. I think that's when I hit 10K followers, and I was like, "Okay, this is actually a thing now. This is kind of cool."
And I said, "I've always wanted to do sketches on YouTube. Maybe this can be easier," because I had seen people doing them, but with the green screen background.
And I was like, "That's good," because I live in LA in a small apartment, and I was sharing it with my mom and my brother, so there wasn't really a lot of space to have a real set that you can just go to every day.
So I was like, "I like this. I like that I can just block out what's behind me with the green screen."
So I started doing that. I started with skits based on things that had happened when I used to work in customer service.
And then my love for writing came in after that, and I was like, "Okay, wait, now I can kind of write stuff out and act stuff out."
So even though, I guess to answer your question, even though I was starting to make those acting skits, it was because of the passion that I had for it, but it was also because I saw they were doing really well.
Those videos, out of all my videos, were capturing the most attention, like how we were talking about attention earlier.
It's entertainment. So it had the most entertainment value for people, and I said, "Well, this is good. This isn't music, but if I can build a platform off of this for now and garner that attention, I can bring the music in a bit later."
Kind of like how I always tell my people, I think about it like how Disney stars in the beginning, they were on Disney, and then afterwards a lot of them went on to do music after they had built their name on Disney.
So in my mind, my TikTok was like my Disney in a way.
I was like, "Okay, this is the start, and then we can transition later."
Mike Zimmerlich: So, I mean, also getting to 10K is an incredible feat on its own, by the way. So that's an amazing accomplishment.
But was there a moment in time when you really started to see things take off, where it started essentially growing exponentially? Was there a particular moment that you saw that happen?
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah, there were a few.
So after that 10K, when I started doing the skits, that was definitely a jump in views because I think before then I had been getting 500 views per video, and the first skit or something that I put, it had 3,000.
And I was like, "Oh, that's kind of cool."
So then that was the first jump where 3,000, 5,000 became the norm.
And then I made a specific video. I used to have a character. Her name was Sarah, and she would say, they were really short.
Oh wow, I really forgot about that.
She would say, "Come on, Mom," and then she'd say something really outrageous.
And that was it. I think it was eight to 10 seconds usually.
And one of those did really well. It was the first time a video got 250,000 views, something around there.
And I was like, "Oh, that's crazy. This is actually crazy."
And with those viral videos, right, that's when I would start to see the numbers spike in my follower count.
And then the next era, I would say, where I think after that the change to the trajectory of my account was I had a series. I just called it, I never named it. I just called it the girl's name, like an Ashley series, where it was this five-year-old girl who finds her dad that she's never met before in an amusement park.
And her mom's like, "No, don't look at her."
And then turns out the mom used to work for the CIA or something, like she's a spy.
So it becomes this very crazy adventure for her, and it was two seasons long.
But I would say that was another point where I feel like that's when my account really took off.
I started getting a lot of followers, a lot of views on all of those videos, and people just kept being like, "Where's part 10, part 11, part 12?"
And I was like, "Okay, I'll keep making them."
Which, a little bit of a tangent, but an interesting point to that is usually writing is rewriting, right?
You write something, and then you go back and you fix it, especially if it's episodic or whatever have you.
The TikToks were interesting because I never planned on making a part two for any of them.
I just, I guess, accidentally leave people on cliffhangers. Didn't mean to.
So a lot of the times I'd get, "Oh, can you do a part two to this video?"
I'm like, "Oh, okay. Now I have to come up with something else. I need to know what happens next."
I wasn't writing in reverse, which is very interesting because usually that's what writers do.
So especially for the two seasons of that show, I guess we'll call it, or mini web series, I didn't know what was gonna happen in the next one because I had never planned them out.
I never thought I was gonna make a whole series out of it, which is interesting because people don't usually know that.
Mike Zimmerlich: So what do you do when you're in that position where, okay, I did this particular piece of content, had no intentions of continuing this to become a series, right?
And now found out, hey, people are really liking this, and they're asking me when's the next part coming out, when's episode two, episode three, whatever the case is.
You even mentioned the effect about rewriting, so what did you do there? Did you go back to the drawing board? Did you start planning it out more over multiple episodes, or just focus on each one?
Nicole de la Cruz: It depends, especially for the longer Ashley series.
That one, there was a point where I was like, "Okay, let me plan the next five," or, "Let me really think about where this is going."
But for the majority of them, I actually took the improv approach, which is yes, and.
So once it exists, I mean, I literally cannot take it back because everyone has already seen the previous video, right?
But I did take it as an improv kind of exercise, so just yes, and. Okay, that happened, what's next?
And to keep people interested, plot twists.
That's one of my top comments. People are like, "Oh my God, the plot twists, queen," or whatever.
Because I love plot twists, so I'll think about, okay, what's the next really crazy thing that could happen that maybe isn't 100% believable, but why not?
That's the whole point. We're consuming the content anyways.
But yeah, I would say it was a mix. A lot of improv kind of elements, but then there would be times where I'm like, "Okay, let's try to do the next..."
I think for the Ashley series, season two, I really kind of did think, "Okay, where is this gonna go now that it's a whole different season?" Right?
Season one, I kind of didn't know that was happening. That was locked in. But season two was a bit more structured, I would say.
Mike Zimmerlich: I'll say without necessarily spoiling it, because I want people to go check out your channel, but I did appreciate one of the more recent posts that you did where basically it was a couple and one of the partners caught the other at the airport and on the plane, and there's a certain situation of why that's happening and so forth, which I thought was very amusing.
So that was super fun. I really enjoyed the content.
And I'm curious too, because you talked before about having that consistency and especially posting on TikTok every single day, which sounds like an enormous responsibility, right?
Because I know how hard it is. And people know even listening to this podcast, watching this podcast, I try my best to post every single day, but even I have an hour's worth of content all ready to go, and it's still really hard to think about, okay, what is actually going to post? What's the caption going to say?
I also know that you use thumbnails, which I'd like to talk about a little bit later as well.
But there's a lot that goes behind the scenes in getting even just one piece of content out the door.
And you have to pay a lot of attention. It's the detail, right? The detail matters.
And I'm curious, do you do a full run of content ahead of time? How does your production work?
Do you do a whole bunch of segments all at once? Do you kind of spread it out? Do you do them every single day? Do you prepare all what you're gonna write ahead of time, or do you just kind of figure it out as you go?
How does that all work for you?
25:00 The Content Creation Process
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah. First, I wanna say I don't post every single day now. That was in the beginning.
And I feel like those were lower-effort content, if that makes sense, because I wasn't doing any editing. I didn't have the skits. I wasn't changing clothes. Definitely lower effort, like I could just do that.
But yeah, now, like you said, there's a lot that goes into it because it's writing, it's scripting.
I would say I'll take days. So some days it'll be a brainstorm day where I'll write out a bunch of ideas.
And a lot of the ideas never see the light of day either, right?
So I could write 20 ideas, and only seven of them get filmed, and maybe three of them, four of them do really well.
And then I'll have a day or two where I'll make a lot of content, and that'll be the content for the week.
And yeah, I'll script it out, and then I'll film it in the same day.
I guess I could have a separate day for that, but I don't at the moment. I do script it and then film it on the same day.
But I think the hardest part is getting those ideas. That's why that's on a separate day.
And then editing, usually for shorts, not for a long-form video, but for shorts, I usually edit it the day that I'm gonna post it, so then I'm a little bit more connected again to the storyline.
So when people are commenting, I'll also remember what we're talking about.
And I'll caption the videos and all of that.
So yeah, it is a system. It's like this is the film day, this is the writing day, this is maybe a break day or a music day instead of a content day.
Mike Zimmerlich: How often do you post nowadays?
Nicole de la Cruz: Nowadays, it's fluctuated this year.
So I took the first half of the year, I don't wanna say off, because I was still posting older content onto my other channels, because it took me a long time to get into the reposting onto other platforms thing.
I didn't want to. I wanted every platform to be different.
But then I noticed, a lot of people were saying this, and I really did notice that the demographics between platforms are so different.
So I was like, there are people missing out on my content, so I guess might as well repost onto the other platforms.
I forgot your question, sorry. What was your question?
Mike Zimmerlich: How often are you posting these days?
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah, yeah.
So the first half of the year I was focusing more on music and traditional acting.
So I was just doing the reposting, but not posting a lot of newer skits and stuff like that.
And I was testing out lifestyle. I feel like I went back to the throwing spaghetti at the wall kind of thing, and was trying out lifestyle content.
So sporadic, I would say.
And then now that I'm back, I would say maybe three times a day, but five days a week.
I'm gonna say that's an average, because sometimes I'll skip three days but then post a bunch of videos.
Sometimes I'll schedule them out so it looks more consistent, but I would say maybe 10 to 13 videos a week. Let's just say that, I guess.
And that's more because right now my new song just came out, so I'm marketing the song a lot, mixed with the skits, and that's kind of why it is a bit high right now.
And those are shorts, for short-form stuff. But if it was long-form, yeah, I can't imagine doing 13 long-form videos a week. That would be crazy.
Mike Zimmerlich: That's crazy. Wow.
So you do post quite often right now, especially because you're also promoting your music and so forth.
Some days may be nothing, but then other days you'll be posting twice or three times throughout the day.
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah, yeah.
30:00 Introducing an Audience to Music
Mike Zimmerlich: Do you find that because you're promoting more music now, and it sounds like you got a lot of your following based upon your work with the various different series that you were doing before, and music of course is something very different.
What is the response there from your audience? Are people very open, encouraging? Are they looking for the other types of content that you've been producing?
What has been the overall reaction?
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah. That was also a journey in itself because I would say a few years ago, which is when that kind of journey started of shifting people over, was I had posted...
I had always had singer in my bio, singer, actress, but no one apparently reads your bio, and I learned that now.
Because I think it was in 2022, so about four years ago, I posted a video of some place that I performed at, and people were like, "Wait, since when does she sing?"
And I was like, "Oh no, I messed up."
Because I was like, this was kind of part of the whole point of starting the platform.
But I did understand at that point, yeah, if you don't see me singing all the time, I can understand why you'd be like, "Oh, she's starting to sing?"
So that was not a negative reaction, but it was a reaction that I was like, "Oh, I guess I have to really put more music out there."
And so I did it, and there wasn't a negative reaction, I would say. It just wasn't like the videos weren't doing as well as the skits were in terms of views.
So there was still a big amount of people that were only seeing the skits, and they still didn't know about the music.
So it was kind of like, okay, a few people knew, but not a lot.
And then flash forward to last year when I really was like, "Okay, I really need them to just know," because I knew that I was gonna put out these new singles, and I wanted to ramp it up.
I started livestreaming, and that I think has been the biggest thing.
Livestreaming, specifically on TikTok, it was my management team that pushed me to do it.
And then I said, "Okay, well, what am I..."
They didn't say specifically music either. They just said, "Go livestream."
And I was like, "Well, what am I gonna livestream? Music, obviously."
I feel like that's a really easy thing to do on lives.
So I started doing that, and that's where I saw the biggest, "Oh yes, you sing? This is cool. I'm so glad I discovered your livestreams."
And I was like, "Okay, finally. This is, I think, the avenue to transition to more music stuff."
And then from there, I started putting a bit more music content on YouTube, and I also saw YouTube was a really good...
People were open and, I don't wanna say converted, but they kind of did.
They were so open right from the get-go. Like, "Yes, music."
And I noticed that my YouTube audience did that faster than other platforms.
So yeah, it's been a transition, but it's been great. I love it.
Mike Zimmerlich: That's really great to hear that your audience has been very supportive and excited.
I won't say supportive, I'll say excited. Excited about the fact that you also are a musician and they didn't realize that you were a musician as well.
I mean, that's fantastic because I know that it can be challenging.
Because I have seen a number of creators over the years where they would start with either sketches or they would use exclusively covers, right?
And then when they started to transition their content into their own original work and into music, they would lose a lot of their audience because they originally came there for a completely different reason.
So sometimes it's hard to keep that going.
You mentioned before about throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, but how much does that go into your decision-making as far as what you want to produce for content?
Are you very much adamant about, okay, I'm gonna keep on finding what is actually attracting attention, and I'm going to stick with that?
Or is it a combination of I also want to post the things I really want to post?
Nicole de la Cruz: I would say a bit of both, but more like what I want to post and what my audience wants to see too.
Especially because now I'm doing a lot of livestreaming. They'll tell me, "Oh, you should..."
I only just started posting new skits again last month, and it was because there was a livestream where everyone was like, "Can you post new skits?"
And I was like, "If y'all want."
So I was like, "Sure, let's go for it."
But also, I feel like you have to love what you're doing or else it becomes a chore too.
So in terms of the other part of your question of, do you wanna just do what works, right?
I do wanna do what I like.
And how I said I was doing the spaghetti sticking to the wall thing at the beginning of the year again, to reevaluate my content, because people talk about burnout, and I was a little bit burned out at the beginning of the year.
Because my dream has always been traditional acting and singing, right?
And so I was a little bit burned out just making skits. I wanted it to be a combination of everything, so that's partially why I took a break.
And so during that break, I was like, "Well, let me try new things."
And yeah, I guess in that time I was trying to see, well, people who are trendy do this. Let me try this.
I liked some of it, but some of it I didn't like.
And I realized if I don't like it, I'm not gonna make it because then I feel like you can tell that I don't like it or that I just don't enjoy making it.
So definitely would have to enjoy it, for sure.
Mike Zimmerlich: Absolutely. I totally agree with you.
I feel like I've gone through the process as well, and still working on trying to build the audience.
But it's one of those things where I tried, especially in the beginning of TikTok, I tried doing talking heads, doing music industry tips because my background's in the music industry.
So I started doing those things and so forth, and I just absolutely hated it. I just did not like it. It just did not feel like me at all. It didn't work.
But I kept it up. I wanted to give it a shot to see what would happen from it, and nothing really came of it, so I stopped that.
But then not too long after that is when I started this podcast, and that's when I found that this is what I really love.
I love just talking to people, engaging with people, and for me, it's a lot easier.
Because instead of, well, nowadays it's a little bit different, but when I first started the podcast, there was nothing scripted.
It was just me having conversations with people, and I would just take clips, and then that becomes the social content, right?
Nowadays it's a little bit different.
I found that ironically, I started doing these, I call them talking-head promos, and it's me doing a promotion of the episode that just came out.
And I find that me doing those gets more views than the podcast clips themselves, which makes a lot of sense, but it's just very ironic.
So I went, "All right. If this is what's getting more people to watch and hopefully convert into actually watching the podcast itself, I'm all for it."
So I just accepted that fact.
Now fortunately, I only do it once a week, because that's how often the podcast episodes come out, so I only have to do it once a week.
But let me tell you, I am not an actor by any means, and it took a lot of practice, and it's still something I'm trying to work on, getting those promos down.
And I do have a little bit of a script to go off of, but yeah, it's so hard.
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah, definitely.
Mike Zimmerlich: So one other thing I did wanna, and I appreciate you going into the weeds of all this, because it's all really fascinating, is especially social media these days, right?
Because again, there was the time of growth in TikTok where you really were at the right place at the right time to really get that kind of growth going.
And I'm curious now that I would consider TikTok to be a mature platform now, if I was starting off, like, "I wanna be a content creator," right?
Nothing, there's no accounts, there's nothing, zero.
These days, how would you start?
38:00 Advice for New Content Creators
Nicole de la Cruz: I would say the same way for the most part.
The TikTok algorithm, though, has changed quite a bit, but I think still at the core of all the different platforms' algorithms is watch time.
If people are watching your video long enough and they're interested long enough, the platform's gonna give it out to more people.
I've heard people say this many times, and I've said it even though I know it's not true.
When I've had a slump of videos not doing well, I'll say, "Oh, the algorithm just hates me, man."
But it's really not true. It's really not.
The algorithm wants you to succeed, because if you succeed, it succeeds, and then the company gets money, right? Like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Meta, whatever.
So it doesn't hate you.
So I would say my advice starting now, or starting even back then, would be to be yourself and whatever that means to you.
Maybe you don't even know what it means, right? But figuring it out.
Not being afraid to try things, try new things, try different content styles, and find your voice.
Because like you said, you tried something first, and then you realized it wasn't really speaking to you.
So then you tried something else, and you're like, "Actually, this is what's working for me, and I like making this content."
So that's the advice I would give to start off with, right?
Find out what your voice is.
And then another thing to that is finding out what your voice is, but also finding out who your audience is that has your same voice.
Because those are the people that you want to watch the video, and they're the ones that if they watch it long enough, then your video will actually kick off, right? And your account would kick off.
So finding the common denominator between you and the audience you wanna make content for, right?
I use this one because it's very easy, but if you're a mom and dad channel or something, right?
Obviously, if you're making content that's very much targeted, like, "Oh, come with me to take my son to school," or something, then obviously your target audience of other moms are gonna eat up that content right away.
They're gonna watch it, and then your channel's gonna kick off.
So I think having a good idea of who you are and who you want your audience to be would help a lot.
Sorry about that.
40:00 Finding Her Sound and Debut Album
Mike Zimmerlich: Okay. So I want to shift gears to you working on your debut album right now, which is really exciting, by the way. Very, very exciting.
So can you talk a little bit more about that?
Because this is your debut album. You've never done this before.
Can you talk a little bit more about what the album is and what you're doing with it, and what the learning experience is like with this?
Nicole de la Cruz: Definitely. Lots of learning, I'll say that for sure.
So right now to kick off the album, I guess the marketing or whatever, however you would call that, the timeline, I started by releasing my first single in a long time, my first studio single in a long time, "The Tower."
And that will be on the album or EP, but it is the precursor and it sets the theme of the whole album.
It's about self-empowerment and going through struggle and coming out stronger.
And so my single, "The Tower," is the main message, and it's one of the lyrics, "survive, rebuild."
So I always think of that song as it's about a loss of control.
When you lose control over yourself, your life, whatever it is, whether it's mentally or in the physical world around you, what can you do except rebuild the foundation of your life?
Because if it's already crumbling, I mean, I guess let it fall, is what the lyrics say.
And so that is the beginning of the album.
And that whole project I've been wanting to make for a few years, right?
But with finding the right team and finding the right budget and all of that stuff, it's been pushed back a bit.
But I'm so glad I waited until now because the learning experience that comes in is I really learned over the years, the last three or four years, because I started writing some of those songs back in 2022.
So it's been four years in the making.
So I would say I'm a very different person from four years ago, not just personally, but even music-wise.
I feel like I have found my sound.
And it's so funny because that's so cliché as an artist to say, and I always thought to myself, "What does that even mean? How am I gonna find my sound? It's just pop or whatever, right? I don't know."
But I really did find my sound, and in that, I found myself.
Because I started blending my love for, I read fantasy when I was a kid and still do. I love reading.
My mom, she's like, "I'm gonna ground you by taking away your books. I don't know what to do."
So I loved fantasy reading and I said, "You know, that'd be cool to mix the fantasy aesthetic into my music."
And that also comes with my mom being a violinist.
I grew up listening to a lot of classical music too, and I just thought that would sound really cool in pop music as well, and kind of combining all of those little influences that I had in life.
So that was a learning experience in itself, finding my sound.
And then actually starting to produce the album and produce the singles for the album have also been a learning experience.
Because now that I have the right team, I can see now how important it is to have the right team.
Because the producer I'm working with, she really does understand what I'm trying to say.
I give her a few references and I kind of talk about what I want, and somehow whatever was in my head came out.
For this new single, I listened to it and I'm like, "I think this is the first song that actually came out the way I was imagining it."
And that's why I feel so happy about it and proud about it.
And I listen to it, I'm just like, that's what little Nicole would've wanted, or something I would've loved, you know?
Mike Zimmerlich: I also really like the song "The Tower," by the way.
Nicole de la Cruz: Oh, really? Cool. Thank you.
Mike Zimmerlich: And I really also appreciate the fact that you have been taking your time to release this album.
And I find it's a very interesting balance, something that I've witnessed because I used to run a record label for many years.
And so I've discovered this when working with artists, and we released, I've lost count now, but dozens and dozens of singles and albums and EPs and so forth.
And there's this balance between making sure that the album is something that the artist is proud of, but also not necessarily keep on kicking the can down the road as well.
There is a middle ground there between those two things.
And I feel that's important to note because I feel like when you're talking about anything creative, creative shouldn't be rushed, but creative should always be pursued.
So what I mean by that is the fact that you're working on the album, as long as it becomes the vision that you want it to be or at least as close as it possibly can get to what you're looking for, right? And you're proud.
To me, there's a certain point of diminishing returns where any more additional work you're doing with it is not gonna make any kind of difference, and you need to be done.
Okay, let's move on to something else now.
But I think that you also need to give yourself grace as far as giving yourself the ability to explore and to experiment and to try and to put effort in.
And if something's not working, to put more effort into it or maybe put it on the side or completely abandon it and then work on something else.
And I think you need to give creators the ability to do that in addition to, okay, let's keep things moving because otherwise this thing will never come out, right?
And you'll have an album that's 10 years in the making and just never gets released.
So you still want to get to the point where you're releasing something, but to also give yourself the time to put something out that you're proud of.
Nicole de la Cruz: Definitely.
47:00 Writing and Producing Films
Mike Zimmerlich: I also do wanna talk about the fact that you're, if there's not so much on your plate already, you're also working on a debut film in addition to all this.
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah, so I started that project in 2020, actually.
That was also another, I guess I was just really, I feel like a lot of people during COVID, they were just like, "Okay, let's see what we can make in the world."
So I've always been into writing, obviously we talked about that, but writing in different mediums, and screenwriting is one of those mediums.
So I had written a feature film, and it's funny because it started off as a short film, but I just write too much and it just kept going.
So it's a feature film about this guy who has an estranged father that he hasn't seen in many years, but his father's from a wealthy family and he's off, kind of on the wrong side of the tracks, the kid.
I should say the young adult, because he's 21.
And after a drug deal gone wrong, because he's in that part of the world, his, not his foster dad, but his only type of father figure that he had, because it was his friend's dad, ends up dying and he's blamed for the death.
So he goes on the run from the law, and he seeks asylum.
Or he doesn't want to seek asylum, but somehow he ends up seeking asylum with his estranged father and that family, and he has to learn how to coexist with them.
And it's very much a family drama mixed with action.
And so the project itself is on hiatus right now because, yes, there's a lot of things happening.
And I don't think I can do all of it at the same time.
But we have done, over the years we've worked on it. We've reworked the script 12 different times.
We did a proof-of-concept shoot, short film with some of the actors as well, to kind of get the idea more away from paper and on video as well.
So I'm excited for that project, and other projects that I have in the making right now too.
So that one's on hiatus because a feature film does take a lot of work, but I have some short films that I'm working on right now that I would love to put out, honestly for my audience, possibly on my YouTube channel too.
Just because I do content creation, but I also think the end goal too is filmmaking, because I do have my film production company.
So traditional filmmaking would, it's funny that I do comedy sketches and skits because I have always been a drama girl.
I love serious drama. Not like, and I do drama, but it's like dramedy right now.
But I mean, I've always been a serious drama girl, more heavy-hitting content.
So I would like to make stuff like that.
So while that project's on hiatus, definitely some short films are coming out, and I actually am writing another feature film too.
So we'll see which one gets made first. One of them will.
Mike Zimmerlich: You never know, right?
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah.
50:00 Creative Inspiration and Final Advice
Mike Zimmerlich: You never know.
All right, we can start wrapping things up here. I do have a couple of fun questions for you to end this interview.
First question I have for you is what was the very first concert that you ever went to?
Nicole de la Cruz: Ooh, okay.
So it was One Direction, and it was because my friend's mom got us all tickets to go for my, technically for my birthday, but probably just to go, to be honest.
So yeah, that was pretty special, and it was a big stadium concert too, so that was super cool.
I was like, "Oh my gosh, it's like Hannah Montana but in real life."
Because I had only up until that point, yeah.
Mike Zimmerlich: I would say One Direction's really good, but I was this close to being like, "Oh, I bet it's Hannah Montana."
Nicole de la Cruz: No, no.
It's actually really funny. I've not been to a lot of concerts in my life, ironically, because I'm always spending money on lessons or my own music or stuff like that.
So I've only been to a handful, I think four or five.
But that was the very first one, and it was the biggest one too, so that was pretty cool.
I was like, "Ah, this is cool."
I didn't know Hannah Montana did concerts, by the way. I learned that as a...
Mike Zimmerlich: Yeah, she did. It was a long time ago.
Like, Hannah Montana tour, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus tour, and she would kind of do the dual role thing and do a full concert thing.
Nicole de la Cruz: I learned that last year, and I looked at my mom and I was like, "What the heck?"
I was like the biggest Hannah Montana fan. How did I not know this?
But anyways.
Mike Zimmerlich: So next question I have for you, I'm actually changing it up based upon our conversation, and I'm curious, what is your favorite fantasy book?
Nicole de la Cruz: Ooh, that's also a good question.
I would say maybe The Glass Spare, and I feel like it's not a really widely known one, but it's one of my favorites.
It kind of has a little bit of gothic punk vibes too in the way that it's written and the stuff that it talks about, so that's kind of interesting.
Because usually I don't like gothic punk stuff, but I like that one.
So I would say The Glass Spare, and I don't remember the author.
I'm trying to see if it's on my shelf. No, but if you look it up, it'll come up.
The Glass Spare.
And yeah, I've always been somebody who reads, I feel like not whatever's super popular.
I don't know why. I've never read Harry Potter. I probably should at some point.
Mike Zimmerlich: I think people would be more asking if you read Lord of the Rings. I think that's the...
Nicole de la Cruz: That's the one I get asked.
I have to read Lord of the Rings too.
Like I said, I was explaining it on a livestream the other day because somebody was asking me, they were like, "Wait, how have you never read Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter?"
And I was like, when I was a kid, and now especially now, obviously there's more social media, now there's BookTok and things where people talk about books more online.
But back then I wasn't really online that much. I didn't really know what was trending.
It was just me going to the library and I was like, "I wanna read that."
So I feel like I read a lot of books that people probably don't know.
Mike Zimmerlich: There's something there.
But you know what? There is something to be said about that, going into a physical space like the library and then just finding something, not because it was a recommendation or somebody else was talking about it.
You just saw a book on the shelf, it looked interesting, and you picked it up and read it.
And I think there's something wonderful about that too.
Nicole de la Cruz: Mm-hmm.
But Lord of the Rings is on my to-do list of things to read, so my, what do they call it? The TBR, to be read.
Mike Zimmerlich: Yeah, to be read. Yeah, something like that.
To be honest, it's always been challenging for me to read fictional books.
I love film. I always get excited when very famous books are adapted, and I obviously love the Lord of the Rings films.
They're just masterpieces.
Nicole de la Cruz: They're great.
Mike Zimmerlich: So I always appreciate that.
But yeah, it's always, I actually get more intrigued by nonfiction books, like autobiographies and things like that.
That's usually what books I like to read.
But I'm still always open. I'm always trying to find that fictional series.
I remember when I was a kid, I read Jurassic Park from start to finish, so I know they're...
Nicole de la Cruz: Oh, wow.
Mike Zimmerlich: It's just hard for me to find a fiction book that I can really get into.
Nicole de la Cruz: Yeah, yeah. No, that makes sense.
Mike Zimmerlich: All right, last question for you.
If you were only able to give one piece of advice, what would that one piece of advice be?
Nicole de la Cruz: Be yourself.
And that's for anything. It could be for work, it could not be for work, it could be for life.
Just be yourself, and I feel like everything else will follow if you're being authentically yourself.
Mike Zimmerlich: I agree.
And it's one of those things that I think needs to continuously be repeated, and it's something that I know I talk quite a bit about, being yourself.
And we talked about this with both of us, right?
One of our goals is to find ways of getting attention.
In addition to that, we have to enjoy what we're producing to get that attention, and that part is the most important part.
I talk about this all the time. I'm gonna continue talking about this, that you have to enjoy, you have to be proud of what you're creating.
And whether it's pure entertainment value or pure education or somewhere in between, you have to be proud and enjoy the work that you're putting out.
Because it doesn't matter if you have hundreds of thousands of followers, right?
It doesn't matter at the end of the day if you're miserable and you feel like, "Oh, I'm creating now this content just because this is what everyone's expecting."
That's not good. That's not healthy. That's not a good way of being professional.
You wanna do something that you fully appreciate and enjoy.
And sometimes it takes a long time to figure that out.
Like you said, putting spaghetti to the wall.
I'm a big believer of that. Some people are like, "No, you want to have more structured things."
I'm a big believer in that. I'd rather experiment.
Throwing spaghetti to the wall feels like there's no organization there, and I find that to be furthest from the truth.
I feel like there is organization.
It's experimenting. It's trying things out. It's seeing not only what resonates with others, but also what you enjoy to do.
And I always say this all the time, and I wanna end on this note.
I always ask somebody this question, which is, "If your audience was zero, is it still worth doing?"
Nicole de la Cruz: I like that question.
Mike Zimmerlich: I ask you that question, and it's a rhetorical question, but it's also even to yourself.
If all your audience left you tomorrow, right?
Let's say tomorrow comes and your TikTok and Instagram went from hundreds of thousands of followers to zero.
Nobody cared at all.
Would you still do it, right?
And I think that's always the question you have to ask yourself.
Nicole de la Cruz: I like that question.
And to that question, that's kind of what I was saying.
It kind of ties into consistency, right?
Because that's kind of what I was saying earlier.
When I started, I was like, "I'm gonna make this every day."
Consistency's hard because if no one's watching, people are like, "Okay, so what's the point?"
But if you like it, there is a point.
You're making the content for yourself then until other people catch on.
So yeah, you worded that really well.
Mike Zimmerlich: Thank you.
And I will also attribute to one of the things that you mentioned as well, which is besides the fact of enjoying the process itself, you even talked about that it was practice.
It was practice acting, it was practice brainstorming, it was practice scripting, right?
And that goes towards filmmaking, right? So it is practice.
And I also take that as well.
I say, "Okay, do I enjoy it? But also, is it helping me with something else? Is it helping me with my interviewing process, being more comfortable in front of the camera?"
Right?
Just recording myself in general, being more comfortable with that aspect of it, and being comfortable about myself as well, connecting with new people.
Right?
You mentioned about the pandemic. That's when this podcast started, for that exact reason.
Nicole de la Cruz: There you go. Yeah.
Mike Zimmerlich: So that was because I wanted to find a vehicle that I can connect with other people and to learn their stories, right?
So to me, that's why I always ask myself that question all the time, and the answer continuously comes back as yes, it is worth it because of those reasons.
And I think that for any endeavor that you get yourself into, especially on a creative level, I think that's always something you have to ask yourself.
If your audience is zero, is this still worth doing?
Nicole de la Cruz: Definitely.
Mike Zimmerlich: Well, Nicole, thank you so much for being on the show.
This was such a blast. I loved every minute of it.
So we'll make sure that in the show notes everyone can check out all of your stuff.
So excited for your album to come out. Can't wait to listen to it, and very excited to also see which short film or feature film is going to be coming out first too.
Nicole de la Cruz: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.