We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cleo Carter a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Cleo, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
I found my purpose by connecting back with my younger self. I remember being younger and having so many dreams and aspirations I truly believed I could make come to life. I had a strong sense of self and was confident in everything I was interested in. With growing older and becoming influenced by friends, sharing dreams with loved ones and them not supporting or understanding or caring as deeply about my dreams as I did, I found myself in a loop where I started to support everyone else’s vision besides my own. I don’t know if it happened unintentionally or perhaps subconsciously, but I know I wanted other’s to feel the support I always wanted to feel deep down. Regardless of how pure my efforts were, I became a background character to my own life for a long time. I got lost in other people’s perception of me or who they wanted me to be while also being an ex-people pleaser, I was inclined to want to make people proud of me. For a while, I thought that If I was doing what people wanted me to do, then I was doing the right thing. Now I know that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It wasn’t until now, in my 20s that I started to find my voice and put myself first. That coincides with my purpose. My purpose wasn’t to make other people happy for their own desires that had nothing to do with me. My purpose was to make me happy and what made me happy was getting back into the hobbies and talents that I was blessed with and that my younger self wanted to shoot for so surely and confidently. So for everyone who keeps asking themselves “what’s my purpose?”, “what was I put on this earth to do?”, I’m here to tell you that your dreams that scare you to go after and the reoccurring creative ideas that keep you up at night is your purpose. I urge you to get back in touch with your younger self. Sit and talk with the person you were before the world stripped you of free thinking and individualism. Go back to when you could freely dream big and you believed in yourself more than anyone else. That’s how I found my purpose and I’m grateful for full circle moments because I know the little girl in me with a list full of dreams is smiling and proud of me right now.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
As my tagline says, you’re gonna love it here. I started my content journey back in 2020, and boy has it been a journey. However, with each passing year, I find myself and my voice more and more. I was able to get back to the place of passion in my endeavors and also found the strong feeling of caring for the opportunities I’ve been granted. When I first started out, all I wanted to do was make an impact, leave my mark and represent for the people who look like me, sound like me and resonate with me. Currently I am focusing on finishing what I started when it comes to my goals and aspirations. Recently, before the end of 2024, I was able to kick start my Youtube channel, revamp my Twitch channel and brand aesthetics to be able to start 2025 off strong. I also put out my first official song on Spotify called “Smoke” by Cleo Carter and now I have two interview articles under my belt. What’s exciting about all of this is that I’m able to see the fruits of my labor and be rewarded for them. Whether it’s through external support from my community or just having the internal feeling of being proud of myself for following through with what I said I was going to do. As someone who in the past has listened to others more than self, this current era of me feels very freeing and empowering as I’m following my own path and marching to the beat of my own drum. The special part about it all is that I get to inspire and create community. All I wish for those who support me is for them to see that they can follow through and be successful with an unconventional life path too. I’m on a mission to tie all my ventures with music, cultivating a community, Youtube and Twitch and make it into a cohesive brand where everything is in alignment to who I truly am. I also want those who are being introduced to me for the first time to know exactly who I am when they look at my content. As a black woman who would categorize her brand as being charming, nostalgic and warm, it’s very imperative to me that I provide that experience to all my viewers, new comers and regulars alike. With that being said, this year I want to turn it up a notch. I’ll be releasing music and performing more consistently. I’ll be cosplaying more characters and not just Beyoncé whom I love (haha), and the all girl content group I’m apart of called “FLVR” (forever living a vibrant reality) will be making waves in the content scene more prominently in 2025. Not only am I excited, but I am ready to see my manifestations come into fruition.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three skills that were most impactful in my journey were one, being able to adapt to my surroundings, two being able to think for myself and lastly, three knowing when to recognize needing to rest and reset. For me personally, these three skills are still very crucial to my journey because I still stand firm in them. If you’re reading this and you’re just starting out in your journey, or maybe you’re somewhere in the middle of it, I would say that these are great strengths to implement in your journey and here’s why. Being able to adapt to your surroundings means that you can fit in everywhere. You can easily mesh to different communities and also learn a lot about the people around you just by listening and observing. To master this skill, you have to learn how to read the room. Learn how to take mental notes and become a chameleon to your environment. When it comes to being able to think for yourself, you have to know who you are. When you don’t know who you are, it’s easy to be swayed and persuaded to doing whatever the crowd can convince and influence you to do. Therefore, you have to be discerning and in tune with self and your boundaries. Before you even start content creation or anything that would put you in the public eye, you should ask yourself, how far are you willing to go when people present you with opportunities to essentially “make it”. Hopefully, your morals and beliefs will be a guide that can encompass you in all your decisions and everything you chose to do and say. Finally, knowing when you need to rest and reset has been the game changer for me the most. The age of social media has made us feel like we always have to be grinding and that if you rest, then you’re lazy. That’s why so many people feel dissatisfied and burnt out because they don’t take a second to check in with themselves to make sure they’re actually okay mentally, emotionally and every other area that could affect their overall wellbeing. Recently, I’ve come to know an identification term of being a “pro-rester” and I’ve never resonated with something so much. I know social media is going to promote having a hunger for your goals, sacrificing sleep and having tunnel vision for your dreams and only your dreams and I would even agree. However, I personally promote that to fuel your dreams and to continue to have the energy for them, you have to be able to rest and reset to smell the roses from time to time to get inspiration. Rest and reset so you can be able to keep moving forward in your goals and have the energy to keep striving for success.
What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?
Letting myself be seen in my good, my bad and my ugly. I think people believe when they put themselves in a position to be known or perceived by outside viewers, they have to be perfect and they can never have a weak or vulnerable moment. There’s power in vulnerability and it actually shows relatability. I don’t want to always pretend to be strong or like I always have it all together. The persona of playing perfect or being “media trained” for another perspective of viewing it can be extremely tiring. I do believe there is a time and a place, and not everyone has to know everything, especially not your audience. However, when there is a moment to be transparent and honest, it can be beautiful and it can create a space where grace and support can bloom. It also gives individuals the opportunity to get a clearer picture of who you are beyond the image they’ve created in their heads based off the initial first impression you’ve gave them. The more you allow yourself to be seen, the more imposter syndrome disappears. Additionally, the more you believe in yourself, the more you’re able to really step into the creative you were meant to be. I’ve experienced that personally with my own content journey. Showing up for myself with the ventures I set out to do really allowed me to trust myself and motivated me to see how much more I could achieve and be proud of. It has been such a rewarding feeling to let my hair down and just be my true authentic self in content mode and outside of it. I have come to terms with the fact that I won’t be everybody’s cup of tea and I’m 100% okay with that. As long as I like myself and who I present myself to be, that’s all that matters and the people who are meant to join me in my most honest state will gravitate to me with no questions asked. I encourage anyone whose reading this to be you and do you. Faking it can only get you so far for so long, but taking ownership of your individuality is so powerful. When we honor the whole essence of who we are, that’s when our souls break free.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://beacons.ai/cleoxcarter
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cleoxcarter/
- Twitter: https://x.com/cleoxcarter/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cleoxcarter
- Other: Twitch.tv: https://www.twitch.tv/cleoxcarter
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