Kris Collins was working as a hairdresser at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, and like so many others lost her job. But she soon found solace in posting content on TikTok that made her — and her fast-growing audience — laugh.

By July 1 that year, she hit 1 million followers on her TikTok page, @KallMeKris. Once that number quadrupled to 4 million, she decided to add YouTube into the mix to try and diversify her audience and give fans more long-form content.

“After that first million I thought it was going to stop [but] then it just kept going,” said Collins on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. “I think I was in a constant state of denial until I was over 10 million [followers] on TikTok.”

Now Collins has over 43 million followers on TikTok, 5.7 million subscribers on YouTube and almost 2 million followers on Instagram. Collins built her following without qualifying (as a Canadian) for TikTok's creator fund, which made it all that more pressing to have direct brand deals across all three platforms. Those deals have become Collins’ primary source of income though she didn't say how much she earns from brand deals, she discusses why she takes a calculated approach to which brands she works with and how many sponsored posts go up per week.

For the second episode in a limited series covering creators, Collins discussed how TikTok helped her rapid rise to stardom, how she’s been able to strategically balance brand deals with original content, and why jumping on TikTok trends isn’t the only means of building an audience.