As identical twins, we always felt like we had this gift to share to the world. Something that has stuck with us to this day is when we were on vacation in Newport Beach, CA back in 2020 and ran into a middle aged guy who happened to be an identical twin. He stopped us on our run and gave us this look we’ve been used to seeing our entire lives. Both of us just silently held our breath for the next words that are engrained in every new encounter we have… “are you guys twins?” Before I could make a sarcastic remark, this guy said “I know it’s so annoying and I even feel bad asking, but I’m an identical twin as well and I just had to say something.” Instantly, we felt a sigh of relief and didn’t have to go through our whole spiel we give, every time we meet someone new. We started sharing with him how we were here on vacation and how we’ve been coming to Newport the last 3 years with a dream of having a place of our own here one day. He lit up and said, “my twin brother and I bought a house right here on Balboa Island a few years ago and have been vacationing here every year since.” What he said next resonated with us on a whole new level. “You guys can do it too. As twins, we have have something special about us, a gift, and twins can do anything they put their minds to.” It sounds so cliche and cheesy but from that moment on we realized, we can literally dream up anything in this life, and we can achieve it.
We grew up in Buffalo, NY and were always extremely close. We motivated each other and in some ways were competitive throughout high school, college, and even in our careers. Thankfully, it felt like the healthy kind of competition, giving us that extra fuel to never settle and keep going. When we were in high school, we got really into health and fitness and had dreams of starting our own blog or own our own gym. We had visions of us working with companies like Nike and being able to partner with them and wear their products. We cared so much about what other people thought back then, that it prevented us from ever going after that dream. Flash forward 11 years and we finally launched our own social media business.
About 2.5 years ago, we started hearing about TikTok and saw people making a career out of it. We thought, maybe this is finally our chance to go after that business together and share aspects of our lives on social media. At the time, Amanda was working for Nike (funny how life works out) at their World Headquarters in Beaverton, OR in Product Management and Lauren was working at PepsiCo in Digital marketing in Dallas, TX. We initially started posting what our mornings looked like in a very aesthetic, minimalistic way. We saw steady traction from that but nothing that was going viral or growing sustainably. We kept at it and also started throwing in some videos of our apartment decor which had a very neutral, minimalistic design. To us, decorating an apartment came naturally to us. We found pieces that worked and tied everything together to create a space we loved, similar to what we saw our mom do growing up. Our mom had an eye for interior design and even opened up her own interior design company at one point. What we didn’t realize was the appetite there was for this type of content on TikTok. Our apartment videos started to gain traction and became our first viral video of over 1 Million views.
Now, it’s been 2 years since we started our TikTok account @conawaytwins and we’ve grown a community of almost 50,000 followers, had over hundreds of brand partnerships, one of our most favorite, Nike Strength – you could say that 13 year old version of ourselves is smiling big, and have started to monetize from that.
Today, Amanda works for Starbucks HQ and Lauren continues to work for PepsiCo while we balance that with our social media business, Conaway Twins. We both now live together in the Carolina’s and are able to balance both. We share a combination of home, health, wellness, and day in the life vlogs to continue to grow our community and can’t believe what we’ve been able to accomplish. We’re constantly thinking of new ways to expand our business through service or product offerings and this blog, The Twinfluencer, is a part of that. If we have any advice to give to people it would be that it’s never too late to start and through consistency, hard work, and the right mindset, you can do anything you put your mind to. Starting today, put that dream of yours out into the Universe, and watch how crazy life can make it happen for you.
Love,
Amanda and Lauren (aka The Conaway Twins)
