Building Your Brand Authentically with Lissette Calveiro – Episode 13

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Building Your Brand Authentically: What the Creator Economy Really Wants From You

If you’ve been scrolling through Instagram lately wondering why your carefully curated content isn’t landing while some random fifteen-second video of someone’s lunch goes viral, you’re not alone. Building your brand authentically is one of the most talked-about, and most misunderstood, concepts in the creator economy right now. On a recent episode of Bon Voyage Besties, we sat down with Lissette Calveiro, founder of Influence with Impact and a sought-after voice in influencer strategy, to dig into what authenticity actually means for creators in 2025 and beyond.

Spoiler: it’s less about your follower count and a lot more about trust.

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The Shift From Followers to Community

The creator economy has changed dramatically since the early blogging days. The days of chasing big, shiny follower numbers as the primary metric of success are largely behind us. What brands, and audiences, actually want now is community over followers.

“Even if you have less than 50,000 followers,” Lissette explained, “do people actually trust you? How do they engage? What’s the sentiment in the comments?” That’s the real question brands are asking when they’re vetting creators for partnerships. A loyal, engaged community of 8,000 followers who genuinely trust your recommendations is worth far more than 100,000 passive scrollers who barely notice your posts.

This is a huge opportunity for emerging creators who are building their brand authentically from the ground up. You don’t need to hit a magic number before you’re “ready.” You need to show up consistently, be genuinely yourself, and give your audience a real reason to trust you.

Authenticity Isn’t a Buzzword — It’s Your Business Model

Rosa, my co-host, shared a relatable early-career lesson: she spent time doing beauty and makeup campaigns early on, even though her audience had followed her specifically for travel content. The posts flopped. Her friends aka her actual community, saw right through it. “Girl, we know you barely wear mascara,” they told her.

That’s the thing about building your brand authentically. Your audience signed up for you. The moment you start chasing trending content or partnerships that don’t align with who you are, you’re not just risking a bad post, you’re eroding the trust you’ve worked so hard to build. And trust, as Lisette puts it, is the actual currency of content creation.

This extends to pitching brands, too. Lissette’s advice is to only pursue partnerships that make organic sense for your platform. If you’re a solo travel creator, a meal prep kit campaign probably isn’t your moment. But if you’re genuinely always sipping a certain sparkling drink on your road trips? That’s a story worth pitching, and doing it in a way that shows you actually know and love the brand.

How to Pitch Brands (Without Sounding Like Everyone Else)

One of the most valuable parts of our conversation was around pitching. So many creators either wait to be discovered or send generic cold emails that get immediately ignored. Lissette breaks the path to brand partnerships into three channels: brands reach out to you, you pitch yourself, or you get discovered through influencer marketing platforms like Aspire IQ, Collectively, or FOHR.

For pitching specifically, the secret to building your brand authentically in brand outreach is doing your homework. Don’t just say “I love your product.” Show the brand you know what they’re actually doing — reference a recent campaign, explain why your audience would connect with their current direction, and present a genuine idea. “That to me is so much stronger than ‘hey, I’m another creator who wants to work with you,'” Lissette said.

And warm up those relationships before you pitch cold. Engage with brand accounts on social, mention products you genuinely use in your stories, and let those interactions create a natural opening for outreach.

Red Flags to Watch Out For (On Both Sides)

Building your brand authentically also means protecting it, and that requires reading the fine print. Lissette highlighted four key contract terms every creator needs to understand before signing anything: timeline, deliverables, usage and licensing, and exclusivity.

That last one catches a lot of creators off guard. An exclusivity clause can lock you out of working with competitors for months, which is lost income you need to account for in your rate. Usage rights matter too. If a brand wants to boost your content as a paid ad for three months, that’s your face being used far beyond a single post, and you should be compensated accordingly. And perpetuity clauses? Run. No one should own your content forever.

The biggest red flag of all? Any brand that asks you to pay for something upfront. That’s a scam, full stop.

On the flip side, creators: be professional, be on time, and don’t be rude to the people on the brand side. Your best revenue as a creator often comes from return partnerships: brands who loved working with you and come back again and again.

Start Before You’re Ready

The piece of advice Lisette left us with is the one that stuck with me most, especially for anyone still sitting on the sidelines waiting until they feel “ready” to start building their brand authentically.

“Start before you’re ready,” she said simply. “You’re never actually going to be ready for anything.”

Rosa and I launched Bon Voyage Besties after I sent her a text on my morning commute. No experience. No equipment plan. Just an idea and a willingness to try. Lisette started talking to a camera when she was nervous and unsure, and those early shaky videos led to where she is now — featured in Business Insider, Fortune, and CNBC, and running a consultancy that helps creators build real careers.

The creator economy has room for all of us. But only if we actually show up.

Listen on APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE

Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been at this for a while and feel like you’ve lost the thread, the answer is almost always the same: come back to what’s real. Share what you actually care about. Talk to people, not at them. Build trust slowly and protect it fiercely. That’s what building your brand authentically really looks like, and it’s what will carry you further than any algorithm ever could.

Want more creator tips and travel content? Follow Bon Voyage Besties on all platforms, and check out Lisette Calveiro at @LissetteCalv and influencewithimpact.co for free resources.