Welcome to E!'s Tales From the Top, our series on women who are leaders in their fields and masters of their craft. Spanning industries and experiences, these powerhouse women answer all the questions you've ever had about how they got to where they are today—and what they overcame to get there. Read along as they bring their resumés to life.
So, you just earned a shiny new college degree—congrats! But you have no idea what to do with it. You're watching your fellow alums head off to grad school and six-figure starter salaries in engineering and you're struggling not to feel just a little bit like a loser as you piece together rent money from copious odd jobs.
Here's what you're going to need—straight from lapel-mic-wielding advice guru Tinx.
Because she recalls a similar period in her own existence, when she was fresh out of Stanford University. An interest in fashion led her to Gap's retail management program ("Kind of like a bootcamp for people who want to be retail executives," she explained), then gigs with Banana Republic and Poshmark until her love of writing led her to New York City and Parsons for a master's in fashion journalism.
"I just felt like, 'Oh my god, I'm not a real grownup. What am I doing?'" she recalled to E! News of the stretch that saw her hustling through multiple jobs to piece together what exactly she wanted to be when she grew up. "Meanwhile, my friends were all killing it and really moving up the ranks and just making a life for themselves where I just felt so lost."
If she could talk to twentysomething Tinx (born Christina Najjar), "I would say, first of all, finding out that you don't like something is just as important as finding out that you do like something," she shared. "Second of all, comparison is the thief of joy and everything looks shinier and better from the outside and you just have to focus on you. And thirdly, I would say, I had this professor at school and he was like, 'It feels very overwhelming to tell people to follow their passion. Instead, think about following your curiosity.'"
Though there are some who might have known since age 6 that they were destined for med school, "That's not true for everybody," the 31-year-old reasoned. "So whenever I would feel like, 'Oh my god, what am I doing?' I'd be like, 'Just follow your curiosity,' and that's eventually what led me to where I am today."
That place, on the off-chance you've never ventured onto the Internet, is atop TikTok's list of star influencers, a job she happened upon in May 2020 when freelance writing gigs and consulting work dried up due to the pandemic.
Not quite two years after she gave herself a January 2021 deadline to figure out life as a content creator, she's amassed a following of 1.5 million on the video sharing site, another 449,000 on Instagram and enough love for her dating advice, pop culture commentary and equal parts appreciative and skewering observations (her "Rich Mom Starter Pack" series is a must-watch that attracted the likes of actual rich Brentwood mom Gwyneth Paltrow) to warrant her own podcast, It's Me, Tinx, on SiriusXM's Stitcher and It's Me, Tinx Live radio show on SiriusXM's Stars Channel.
Eager to carve out your own successful journey? Don't worry, she'll tell you what you need so you fit right in with everyone else killing it at the career game.
E! News: What was your first hint that creating content might be your "curiosity"?
Tinx: Throughout my time at Banana and Poshmark, I had always been freelance writing and I was like, "This feels more like me." I noticed that the times when I was happiest was when I would write a piece about, you know, being confident or something and someone would email me or DM me. And I was like, "This feels really good. How can I do more of this?" I just never ever thought of myself as an on-camera person.
E!: Meanwhile, you were collecting odd jobs to make things work.
T: I decided New York was far too cold, moved back to California and was doing the most random jobs. I mean, I worked for a cannabis company, doing marketing or something. And I will never forget—I was at a weed conference and I remember calling my mom in the bathroom, "Mom, can you look up what indica and sativa means? Can you just text me what it means?" And she was like, "I feel like this is not the right job for you."
E!: Then the pandemic hit and the work vanished.
T: I was like, "Oh, God, I'm going to have to move home anyway, I might as well give TikTok a go." And the second that I made my first video, I was like, "Oh, I was wrong. I actually love being on camera. I actually don't care that I don't look like a movie star or a supermodel, I have something to say and I love this way of speaking to people directly." And it just has been a total whirlwind ever since.
E!: The influencer market is not exactly unsaturated. Did you think your background in storytelling would help you break through?
T: I didn't feel like I could connect to a lot of the people that I saw on social media. And I heard somewhere along the way, "Create the content that you want to see." And I always wanted to see the 360 of someone's life. Like, I wanted to see them going to the fancy events, but I also wanted to see them lying in bed talking about what they ate for lunch. And I just felt like Instagram had become so overly curated and the whole perfect grid thing, I just didn't relate to it. So I was like, "Well, if I don't relate to it, there's probably other people out there who feel a bit put off by that level of perfection as well." That era of the perfect, you know, only have pictures on vacation with your washboard abs and your piña colada—that's so boring.
E!: You gave yourself about six months to make it work and obviously you did. But what did the in-between part look like?
T: This is one of my tricks: If you have a massive goal that seems so impenetrable, write a list that's so broken out it's almost ridiculous. Like, get an accountant, have this much money in your bank, understand what's an LLC, understand how influencers' taxes work. You write a list of everything and you just go one by one and cross them off.
One of the big things was, get a manager. And as soon as I met the manager that I would work with, I just said to him, 'This is my goal. I spent the last decade of my life working and now I finally found the thing that I want to do, so I don't want to take it slow. I will have a plan and I want to do this and I want to support myself from my passion." So many people come into the influencing world when they're extremely young. I worked. I've lived in many cities. And, yeah, it's a bummer that I'm literally 10 years older than everybody else on TikTok, but, also, I have the advantage of knowing how to make a business plan and how to save and how to strategize. So in a sense I feel extremely lucky.
E!: You've been quite choosy about brand deals you've taken. Was that difficult in the beginning when you were just trying to make things work?
T: Totally. I mean, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. But, I feel strongly that what I have is my word and my relationship with my followers is of the utmost importance to me. Sometimes I wish I could be like, "You guys, I turned down all of this because it wasn't quite the right fit, so when I do post some brand deal that I actually like, please just throw it a like, you know?" I think audiences don't trust easily, because we did just come off this era of influencers selling fit tea and gummy hair vitamins and so they're kind of like, "Do you really like this?" And I'm lucky that I'm quite an opinionated person so they can tell when I really love something.
E!: You're coming up on two years of doing this. What's been the highlight thus far?
T: There have been so many pinch me moments. I mean, obviously, collaborating with Gwyneth Paltrow [on the "Rich Moms" series] was something that I dreamed of. When I saw her holding the mini mic and she was saying the jokes that I had written, I was truly like, "Wow. I live in a simulation. This is not real. This is so cool."
E!: Were the radio show and podcast big dreams as well?
T: At Stanford I took a radio class because I wanted so badly to be the host of a radio show one day. It feels like the natural step. I really wanted to spend the last year learning who my followers are. You know, like, What's on their mind? What are they thinking about? What's bothering them? What makes them laugh? How do they have fun on the weekends? And I've learned so much through my "Ask Me Anything" on Mondays and Thursdays, so I really see this as the natural extension of the already close relationship and community that I already have.
The podcasts, I wanted them to feel short. I always say, "I want you to be able to pop them like M&Ms." Like, you're running to work, it's a 20-minute update on all of the burning topics and a really intimate look into my life.
E!: Now that you're crossing off dreams left and right, what's next?
T: My followers know there's only one person who I would be truly and utterly starstruck if I ever met-slash-worked with and that's Adam Sandler. I would pass out. I would freak out. Because I would want to be funny so bad. I would want to think of something funny to say, and I would just freak.
If there's one thing I've learned over the past two years, it's that thoughts become things and the words we speak become the house we live in. So you've just got to put it out there and even if people roll their eyes, you know, find people who don't think the things you say are crazy. Because when I said to my manager, "I want the first person who I ever collaborate with on 'Rich Moms' to be Gwyneth Paltrow," he was like, "Okay, I think you can do it." So I'm putting it out there into the universe that I want to write an Adam Sandler movie with him.