San Diego native and current New York resident Kayli Sandoval, is a 21 year old powerhouse with creative insight in her veins. After graduating from San Diego State where she majored in journalism and minored in film, Kayli decided to relocate because she knew she wanted to be a full time creative. Now that she’s in NYC, she’s not leaving any time soon, as she expresses that she’s “never been surrounded by so many like minded people.”
Her initial drive for a creative lifestyle is simple: Covid. Rather than drowning in solitude during quarantine, she took the time to learn more about Premiere Pro. “I found out that my school offered the whole Adobe cloud for free,” she explains “and when me and my best friend found out we were like, oh my God, that’s so cool-- the first video that I posted using Premiere Pro went insanely viral, and after that I thought wow, maybe I can actually do something with this.” Fast forward, she began to get more and more clients over time, and in her words, it became a game of making connections and showing these brands what she could do.
When asked what inspires her the most she admits, “I consume so much media that I get my ideas from everywhere.” Music and skate videos are her main sources, and she’s also into A$AP Rocky’s creative direction. Cole Bennett, and Tyler the Creator are other's she admires. “One creative that I look up to as a whole is Pharrell,” she says, “he’s able to tap into so many different realms and be dominant in each of them.” In fact, Kayli has quite a few interests as well, including film, painting, drawing, and more. Overall, creativity is an outlet for her.
Whenever questions come up about a specific niche, she explains that she can’t limit herself to just one thing. At times when she doesn't feel as confident, she reminds herself that as long as she f*** with it, that's all that matters. “When you get to that point where you feel so confident in your work, not a single comment from anyone, anywhere can make you feel less confident.”
As stellar as it all sounds, her interests have come with their challenges. “Honestly there have been a lot,” she confesses, “it looks all fun, happy, and good, but behind the scenes there are actually a lot of unfortunate things that take place.” She explains that people take advantage, and “if you don’t know your worth, it's hard for other people to guess your worth-- I was a ‘yes man’ for the longest time, and it led to my first creative burnout which took me months to get out of. When I was doing work that I wasn’t really passionate about I became so burnt out that I was like, I don't think this fun anymore.” Eventually, she got out of the funk by taking a podcasting class that forced her to communicate her feelings not only to others, but to herself. “Being creative is a way for me to express how I feel,” Kayli states. Her best advice is to simply not care. “It's your world,” she says, “you do you- post and promote the f*** out of your stuff- don't care about what anyone else says or thinks because it literally doesn't matter. You're only going to benefit from pushing out your own work.”
Furthermore, she remains aware that everyone is on their own timeline. “We can all make it to the top, you don't need to pray on other people's downfall-- I used to look at other creatives my age like, oh they're doing this, and doing that, or doing more than I am, but it's okay to not have everything figured out-- tell
yourself I love what I'm doing right now-- you’re not going to have support from everyone. That's just a fact. Try to stay grounded, stay authentic to yourself, and be genuine.”
Kayli discloses how she knew her passion wasn't a phase. She didn’t have as much support as she does now, and it would have been easy for her to just drop it before. However, she explains “I just had a deep feeling inside that I was doing the right thing-- one way or another, I was going to make it work, and when it did work I was like yeah, I knew this was meant for me. With or without support from whoever, I know I can do this.” Kayli has inspired us all to make our passions more than a phase. We support her, and as she ventures into niches outside of video editing, we hope you will too.