Bold, Boss Bitch Business - Safiya Nygaard

It is incredibly hard to dive off into the unknown, open, anything-can-catch-you-and-kill-you sea when you are comfortable in a warm bed with freshly washed sheets and a steady paycheck. 

Safiya Nygaard inspires me. If you are unaware, she is a former Buzzfeed creator who ditched the seemingly green grass fields of the Los Angeles unit of the yuuuge online media company over a year ago to dive off into the cold, sometimes unforgiving seas of YouTube-land. She’s about my age but she has some of the most serious lady balls I ever did see. Her move has seemed to pay off and she has transformed into a total Boss Bitch in her own right. In the last 4 months, she’s been clocking at least 3 million views on every single video with seemingly nothing more than her boundless charm, relevant content, great production quality and cute boyfriend cameos.

When she left Buzzfeed in January 2017, she was one of the most familiar (and one of my favourite) faces there. Her video "Why I Left Buzzfeed", at this moment, has over 12 Millon views and is (at the writing of this article) still the most viewed video on her channel.

She was fearless and strategic with her move. She left near the peak of her exposure at BuzzFeed, when her face was quite recognizable and closely tied to the company. And I figure that must have been part of the impetus, right? She spoke, quite candidly in her video about being uncomfortable with her name and face being on Buzzfeed merchandise, which is understandable. Once they owned her name and face in that way it would have been tremendously difficult to branch off on her own and be her own person. She also talks pretty openly about the fact that she felt some kinda way about being left out of important creative & directional decisions related to the series that she created. A boss-er move I can’t think of.

Her videos now are on a similar vein to the ones that were produced on the series she co-created, Ladylike. But they don't have that whimsical happy-ending thing that is pretty standard in many Buzzfeed videos, they are a much more down-to-earth and showcase her personality.  She now has a team of 5 working with her, as detailed in the About section of her YouTube channel and it really goes to show that when you make bold moves, you’ll end up positively impacting the lives of other people as well.

I am trying to be more like Safiya - making bold, boss bitch moves. She saw changes coming that she didn’t agree with, left and became quite successful. She is actually almost TWICE as successful (in terms of the number of subscribers) as the Ladylike channel since her exit. Obviously, there’s a lot of work that goes into this. Just from what I can see in her videos, she has a proper studio set up where she does Demos and she clearly would not have the kind of resources that Buzzfeed has. But that does not stop her, not even close. Her videos get bolder and bossier and better. I'll keep watching and taking notes.