Life of an influencer and business owner

Eldrich Palino is an Edmonton-based TikTok influencer and an owner of Morals on Sundays, specializing in casual and street apparel. 

He is an alumnus of NAIT Business Administration in Marketing from 2021-2023.

He started his influencer career during the pandemic and later used it to develop brand deals such as Yesoul, Lumin, Forte Series, etc.

What made you start as an influencer?

It was definitely because of COVID, it was just “what do we do now,” so everyone just kind of hopped on that TikTok and just started filming whatever. I didn’t really expect much from it, it was just more for fun. From there I decided I should do marketing, so I would know how I would market myself in other businesses. I just enjoyed combining the creative and analytical elements into videos and I think that’s where my strongest skill comes from.

What made you start to own a business?

That’s also during COVID, I was reading a lot of books, so the books that I read were entrepreneurial and how to make money. From the books that I learned and the stuff that I was learning from school, I realized I could use my followers to make more money and pay my bills, so it kind of worked out pretty well.

As an alumnus of NAIT, what do you think is the hardest you’ve faced during school?

I want to say it was the classes. I’m a math person but I’m not that determined to do calculations, accounting, or finance. I think I learned a lot from those classes because I can apply it to my daily work and my personal life, but I think that the most challenging was getting up in the morning during COVID and hopping in Zoom and learning about accounting, finance and marketing.

What do you think was the hardest challenge you’ve faced when you started your first business? 

I think the hardest part was organizing everything and you got to challenge yourself whether you want to know if you could do this and with what you have currently, I think that was the most challenging part and also just looking for suppliers or where do I start and I think if you have that drive and you treat everything with the sense of urgency then I feel like you can get to anywhere you want.

How do you handle your personal, business and influencer life?

I think having a calendar and just having balance and limit to yourself like being kind to yourself, having enough self-care like “this is my limit, I got to stop for now, I did everything I can now so I can move that one for tomorrow,” pushing yourself to create the best quality of work. I know it is easy to say but you always have to challenge yourself, you have to tell yourself this is for me, this is for my future, I wanna be where that person is.” So you just have to challenge your mentality. 

Do you find it challenging to handle those things? 

I’ve been doing it for two years, so right now I’m kind of just chill with everything. It was challenging at first but now I have a routine, and sometimes routine fall out of place but you just have to understand and adapt to the changes in the world.

Are there any ventures you are seeing in the future years?

I definitely want to be a mentor to other people so like “Oh I can be the talent manager or I can run your business, I can help you market your business.” So that’s why I venturing into more in businesses maybe a marketing agency. And I say it now, my business partner and I are planning a Filipino coffee shop on Whyte Ave. where we can present the Filipino culture and combine what we love to do like marketing, coffee and connecting with other people into a place.

What advice do you have for people planning to have their own business? 

I think the biggest advice I can give is to treat everything with a sense of urgency. So let’s say you have a deadline due tomorrow, get it done now. If you have to go to the gym, go to the gym later. If you have time now then do it now.  So I think that by treating everything with a sense of urgency, you’ll get everything done quickly and with quality. 

Eldrich still works as a barista trainer at Starbucks as well as a marketing manager at Pure Orthodontics while being a content creator and an influencer.

He is mainly doing his content creation in TikTok but he is planning to go back and expand to YouTube. 

He worked as a Digital Marketer for the Canadian Skin Cancer Foundation and for the Multicultural Family Resource Society.

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