sisters started sharing my snaps with their friends until basically their entire high school was
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seeing my doodled adventures. By this point, Snapchat was growing super-fast. A local news station saw some of my snaps and wanted to feature me in a story on the new app. That’s when I realized that maybe I could turn Snapchat into something more than just a fun little app to use in my free time.
I started creating more and more Snapchat adventures, pushing the limits of the platform as much as I could. Bigger news outlets like Forbes and The New York Times featured me in stories. I saw influencers on other platforms turn social media into a business, which motivated me to try the same on Snapchat. I began reaching out to brands to see how we could work together. Ironically enough, smaller brands kept turning me down – remember, Snapchat was a scary platform for businesses back in its early days – but I eventually landed my first brand deal with Disney. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better first brand to work with!
Brands eventually started reaching out to me, allowing me to quit my job and pursue Snapchat full-time. My adventures have led me around the world, from snowboarding trips in my home state of Utah to playing with elephants and tigers in Thailand. This platform changed my life completely; it allows me to have fun making content that will make people smile. And that makes me happy, too. I’m always thinking of ways to help my Snapchat homies have the best day ever.
- Shaun
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Cyrene and I met through Snapchat, which is awesome, and we started snapping back and forth sharing unique ideas and creative content!! Eventually we met in person, where I was able to see beyond her incredible Snapchats and could see her as the incredibly nice and very smart person she is. We talked business, family, and fun, only to find we were very similar in every category. From that point on we have remained the best of friends and oftentimes see each other at big events or on branded Snapchat campaigns. Definitely BFFs for life!
Her art completely removes you from reality; it tells an entire story! Whether you are side by side with Ele on some art-splashed adventure or side by side with Cyrene as she travels to a fun event, the art grabs you and keeps you in the story. I love how she oftentimes will completely fill the entire phone screen with art! Her style is a favorite among all Snapchat users.
Meeting CyreneQ
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Snapchatters like Cyrene and I make content that is unique to the platform, and it has allowed us to connect with our fans on a special level. We receive snaps all the time from our snap homies about how excited they are about the adventures we create. You just can’t find this level of engagement on any other platform, and I love being a part of making someone’s day better. If you smile or laugh when you see my doodles and adventures on Snapchat, then I know I’m doing something right.
11 Seconds to Success
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My name is Cyrene, known across all social media as CyreneQ. I never would have expected that downloading a messaging app would create so many opportunities for me. Who would have predicted even in their wildest dreams that sending one picture message would eventually lead to brands inviting me to red carpet events, VIP backstage access to film premieres and exhibits before the public saw them, appearances on national TV and coverage in top publications, being flown on awesome vacations with my family, and even a book of my own – who knew?
Some may call this luck, and it may be, but I know I’ve worked hard to prepare the puzzle pieces so they could fall into place when the time was right.
It all started with a dream; a desire to live my own dream, not someone else’s. Everyone always told me to find a stable job that I could stay for years and then retire. Get a 401k, a good salary, work for a nice boss – things like that. Right out of college, I found
Introduction
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a salary job as a graphic designer for a cosmetic company. I liked it, but something didn’t feel right. I wasn’t feeling fulfilled. I thought it was about money, so I started looking for a higher paying job. Luckily, I remembered I had a job offer in my junior year in college from a large telecom company. At the time I couldn’t take on a full-time job because I wanted to finish college and get my degree. I looked for the old email and asked them if there were still job openings – and there were! I got in at the right time, the beginning of their very first in-house design team. I had the opportunity to see the team grow and expand. It wasn’t long before I found ways to do the work in a couple of hours, and then counted ceiling tiles the rest of the time until 5pm hit. The job
paid great, with awesome benefits - but again, I didn’t feel fulfilled. People said I did a great job,
I won a few awards for projects I worked on, people were great to work with, but I still didn’t feel
satisfied. I often found myself in a daze, asking myself, will I be in this exact same cube 20
years from now? Is this what life’s all about? Will I grow old inside these walls? I’d studied
graphic design in college. This was what I’d hoped for, what I thought I wanted, so why was I
feeling so unfulfilled? This couldn’t be it.
And so I downloaded an app to kill time. Snapchat.
I started following these really talented people on the app. Snapchat is known for its disappearing content, and I was constantly taking screenshots and saving art that I was seeing. I felt it was a waste when they disappeared. I started researching more and more and found there were more people creating awesome art on Snapchat. I followed them and again took screenshots and saved their artwork. I had collected so many works of art, and I thought, what
Chapter 1
11 Seconds to Success
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should I do with them? With the artists’ permission, I decided to create a blog called The 11th Second, named after Snapchat’s famous 10-second disappearing posts – if you save them, that means they’ve gone beyond 10 seconds, and you are now giving them their “11th Second.”
I started
