Instagram: the Real Story of How I Started

Only a select few people have ever heard how my Instagram journey began. I keep it mostly to myself because it’s the kind of story that sounds a bit nuts.

It’s also embarrassing, and certainly vulnerable, as the woman who started it all for me, one unsuspecting Miss Kelly Potts, doesn’t even know that she did.

This is Kelly Potts (@kellypottssurfer) tearing it up on a longboard

People talk all kinds of smack about the negative aspects of social media, but as you will read here in my Instagram story, it can truly inspire us to live out our dreams.

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My Instagram Story

Early in 2016 I attended a horrific car accident as a paramedic. It wasn’t the worst one I had ever been to, but it was the one that ended my career.

Later that same week I flew up to the Sunshine Coast to compete in the Noosa festival of surfing. As the airport doors opened I was enveloped by the balmy tropical air, the sound of wind in the palm trees and the smell of salt all around.

Noosa’s First Point, where the Festival of Surfing is held very year in March

It was all the things I loved most in the world, travel, tropics, surfing; and yet I was restless.

My jaw was beginning to clench, the very beginning of the severe anxiety that would end my career only six months later. For the first time, I was beginning to search and dream for a way to exit my life as a firefighter and paramedic.

On that first afternoon, it was so hot outside that I hid inside the hotel. I lay on my bed, AC cranking and scrolled through a new app my little sister had downloaded for me. It was March 2016.

The app, of course, was called Instagram.

I wasn’t so sure. I’m a lover of mindfulness and I didn’t want to be on my phone more than I already was. (I still don’t, and I promise, its possible to manage social media and mindfulness at the same time!)

As I was scrolling, I got a notification from a friend that National Geographic was looking for a woman stand-up-paddler for a filming tour on the Grand Canyon.

My body went haywire. I’ll describe it to you as a lightness, a vibration, a tingling. It was a feeling that said, take notice, this is important, and it was the same feeling of divine guidance that I’d felt many times that year.

I took the feeling to mean that I would definitely be getting this Nat Geo TV show. That very soon I would be easily and instantaneously propelled into stardom, wealth and freedom, so that I would never have to work a day on the ambulance again (insert hilarious laughter here).

I followed the instructions to apply. Then, satisfied that the universe had my back (whatever that means) I put down my phone and walked out into the late afternoon sun.

I did not get the job.

On the Instagram post that next day it stated “@kellypottssurfer will be perfect for the job, thanks everyone for your interest”

I was crushed.

I almost vomited onto my hotel sheets as I clicked through to @kellypottssurfer and her 3000 followers, which at the time I thought was the greatest achievement in the world. She was beautiful, every photo a gorgeous depiction of her body, the ocean, and the earth.

Another @kellypottssurfer pic… #girlcrush

I had a huge awakening: It doesn’t matter how many competitions you’ve won, how many rivers you’ve paddled, or how good you are on a stand up paddle-board. If you don’t have a profile to show it, you mean nothing.

My body went wild once more. This was the reason, it told me, this was what you need to do: build yourself a platform.

So I did.

I came home and put @yoginisurferkate 13K on my vision board. It seemed ridiculous at the time. Who did I think I was? How would that even happen? I laughed because it was so silly.

But still I went to work. I researched what I had to do, organised a photo shoot with a friend who needed practice, and thought about the ways my words could inspire others.

I found ways to show the beauty of the earth, the ocean, and my own body, the way @kellypottsurfer had done.

One of my favourite photos from the first ever shoot I did with the amazing @brentonowensmedia

I surpassed 3000 in no time at all. And 13k arrived within a year.

The cool thing? @kellypottsurfer doesn’t even know. She inspired my journey, and became the source of so much goodness to come

I wonder how may people I might have inspired over the last two years?

I contemplate how Instagram has been good to me. How being brave enough to show myself to the world has resulted in amazing relationships with companies like Dkoko Bikinis, Perkii Probiotics, SwellWomen, and Kast Fitwear. Staying in amazing places like the Grand Wailea in Maui, the Telo Island Lodge in Northern Sumatra, and many other smaller relationships along the way.

Not everyone is going to love you, and often I feel the judgements of those who don’t understand the value behind the social media marketing and business. But overall, my Instagram experience has been one of positivity and opportunity.

But, the most important moral of this story is this:

If you decide that you need to do something, you’ll do it.

It’s that simple. I decided that I needed a way to express myself in the world, and that Instagram was a good fit for doing that.