The Biggest Lesson From TikTok

Whether it comes back or not.

A comic style image of a digital house of cards made of smartphones and social media app icons, with some cards slightly tilted or about to fall, symbolizing the precarious nature of digital platforms.
(Image: DALL-E 3)

(This seems like something I’d more commonly post on Ask Leo!, but it feels a tad off-target for my audience there, so here it is in my personal blog. Enjoy. Smile)

As I first wrote this, the TikTok platform was no longer accessible in the United States. It’s since returned, at least temporarily. For how long we don’t know. 90 days? Longer? Permanently? Who knows?

TikTok allowed for the rise of what I’ll call the “accidental entrepreneur”. These are folks who began posting for fun, and then gained popularity to the point of generating enough revenue to be a small business. Several even quit their day jobs in favor of content creation on TikTok. It’s an awesome story.

Unfortunately, though, some of them are learning a hard lesson today. It’s a lesson every online business person needs to learn, and be periodically reminded of.

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