Meet LATOYA KNIGHT

 

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful LATOYA KNIGHT. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with LATOYA below.

LATOYA, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

We all know how brutal it can be to be a teenager. This is primarily when confidence and self esteem issues develop because we care about what our peers think of us. I had it rough mentally in middle and high school. I was born in NYC and lived there until I turned eleven years old. Upstate New York eventually became “home” but I felt like I was living in a foreign country. Everything from the environment to the culture was so different than what I was used to. If you know, you know. I was teased about the way I talked, looked and dressed. I’ll never forget the boy I had a crush on told me I was ugly to my face. I guess it didn’t help that I was really skinny and not as developed as some of the other girls. Over time, being ostrasized became my norm and I was ok being secluded outside of school. Listening to music, reading books and writing songs/poetry became my safe haven. Eventually I went on to have boyfriends in my late teens and early twenties but they cheated on me. That truly put a damper on my self esteem and the little bit of confidence I was starting to develop.

One day I came up with a story concept about a woman having an alter ego. I decided to become the concept. Poof! Evona HotChocolate was born. I developed an alter ego that is confident and true to herself. She is not fazed by people trying to dim her light. This has also helped me to heal from those traumatic experiences I had as a teenager. . Beyonce has Sasha Fierce – I think that’s all the proof we need to show how developing an alter ego can be life changing.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I work remotely doing customer service work and I’m a content creator. I’m currently working on growing a following on Instagram. Before this platform though, I was an active Youtuber.

Back in 2009. My mother at that time was recently diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. She shared with me how painful it was to braid. She suggested that I learn how to do my hair. I’m not going to lie, this scared me a little. I had no idea what to do. Growing up, my mother was the main person who kept my hair in all the cutest styles. A simple Google search for hairstyles leads me to YouTube. I watched so many videos, sometimes for hours at a time. There was a particular hairstyle involving what’s called a half wig that was popular at that time and easy to do. A little bit after that, I found out how to make my own wigs using beauty supply store hair and human hair bundles. I want to give a shout out to my GOATED YouTube favorites : Tiarra Monet, Thomasadrianna, Ms Muffinismylovers, Ateya Rich, and Ivy. They inspired me to start my own YouTube channel to show my experience trying different hairstyles. I have two channels. The first one (evonalove) was started in September 2009 but I eventually lost access to it. I can’t believe my oldest video is almost fifteen years old. I still post on my current channel (Evona HotChocolate). I’m not as active as I’d like to be but that’s due to the transition from doing long-form to short-form content. So, that’s how I started my content creator journey.

I started growing my following on Instagram sharing my difficult pregnancy journey. I was able to reach a lot of people through blogging about my experience. I even wrote an e-book derived from the blog that I published on Amazon years later. I removed my book from the platform but it did awaken the “author” in me. One of my greatest writer accomplishments was contributing an article on Blackmomsblog.com about my first-time mom experience. In the next five to ten years, I’d love to have my books published and read by people all over the world. Although I still post hair videos, I also post a variety of different content like relatable everyday subjects, updates about my son, self-love videos, or even inspirational messages. Aside from my main Instagram page, I also create content on my Foodie page and share credited reposts of foodie content on my story (foodlover_est.1987). As a small content creator, I’ve been able to work with some amazing brands so far. My overall goal aside from earning money online, is to continue having fun doing content. I don’t want to be so focused on making money that I forget the reason why I started creating content in the first place.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I know they say curiosity is what killed the cat but I say, curiosity is the inspiration that helps along the way to creating the vision. Knowing what you want to do in life is sometimes one of the hardest choices to figure out. You might have a try a few different avenues before you find your passion. People around you may feel they know what’s best for you but only you know yourself. Don’t let anyone shame you for taking the time to find yourself.
Don’t downplay any skills and/or knowledge you naturally have in you. You’d be amazed how successful you can be by simply sharing it. Draw inspiration from people online. Access to the knowledge that you seek is easy nowadays. Patience is a virtue – This is very true. I was not the most patient person, especially in my twenties. Even though I’ve learned to let the regrets go, I’m sure I’d be further in my content creator journey by now. I’ve stopped and started over many times because I felt that I wasn’t seeing the fruits of my labor fast enough. When you start to question yourself, remember the goals you set and why you are even doing what you’re doing. Usually, the moment you want to quit is when the blessing is about to arrive.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?

I’m a spiritual person. Whenever I feel overwhelmed, I instantly know I need time to center myself. I have meditation playlists on YouTube and Apple Music that I listen to. Music has been and will forever be a safe space to calm my soul. I also pray and read affirmations. I’m still working on this right now but I’m doing better with voicing my issues out loud to someone I trust. I am one to bottle up my feelings naturally, however, I’m learning that it helps so much to let it out verbally.

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