Sport Management Major Turned Social Media Influencer

Sport management major Chris Shepherd ’22 has always felt a pull toward entrepreneurship. While navigating college during the pandemic, the student athlete decided to enter the world of social media as a fitness influencer. Now, with a TikTok audience of nearly 100k, Shepherd is making sponsorship deals with athletic brands and earning an income from his work. Beyond Queens, he plans to continue building his online presence while leveraging the knowledge he has gained by finding a job in marketing or content creation.

As a transfer student from Winston-Salem State University, Shepherd initially came to Queens to play baseball. When his dreams evolved and he retired from baseball at the end of his junior year, Shepherd decided to take his passion for fitness online and began posting workouts and related content on social media. Within a year of creating videos and building his channels, he was able to grow his online presence to the point of earning an income from his work.

Shepherd understood he was entering into a saturated world of fitness content creators on TikTok and set out to make his content helpful and intentional.

“I did not start making social media content strictly to get sponsorships, obviously that was a goal in mind,” he said. “Ultimately, I hoped to help people and showcase my own story in an attempt to influence others.”

Building his online presence has required patience, consistency, and hard work both in the gym and in representing himself as an entrepreneur online. Though his experience at Queens was partially remote due to the pandemic, Shepherd is grateful for the connections he has made in Charlotte and the way he was able to maximize his time as a student to fulfill his passions outside of the classroom. You can find his channels @ShepCFit on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.