How Kall Me Kris Built a Creative Career Out of All Her Interests

Kris Collins went from cutting hair to building KallMeKris, her viral Tik Tok account and expanded it into a multidimensional creator career spanning viral comedy, YouTube, true crime, podcasting, entrepreneurship, and filmmaking. But her real achievement is not that she did so many things. It is that she moved from niche to niche without losing the audience, personality, or creative identity that made people care in the first place.

I’m breaking down how Kall Me Kris turned one clear entry point, character-comedy into a much larger multihyphenate career. You’ll learn how to change niches without losing your audience, find the common thread connecting your multiple interests, and expand your work without making your brand feel confusing or scattered.

I explore how Kris Collins adapted her content creation for different platforms, why moving from TikTok to YouTube gave her more room to experiment, and how she successfully expanded into true crime, paranormal storytelling, products, podcasts, and film. I also break down the strategic choices that made each move feel like a natural evolution rather than a complete reinvention.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There's this big misconception that if you have a lot of interests, it means you lack focus. But what if, in your heart of hearts, you feel like you're meant for so much more than being just one thing? Well, you guys, that is exactly what Chris Collins, aka Call Me Chris did. From creating content in her parents' basement, she exploded as a viral TikToker, turned YouTuber, turned entrepreneur, turned filmmaker, with no formal background in any of those things. In fact, she didn't even get her start in entertainment. Before she went viral on TikTok and launched her multidimensional career, she was a hairdresser. And by the way, this is no shade to hairdressers. This episode is just to show you how possible it is to go from doing one thing to doing all of the things. All she had was these ideas swirling around in her head and an internet connection. Something every single one of us has. So I'm gonna tell you exactly how she did it with the hopes of inspiring you that, gosh darn it, anything is possible. Anything at all. Anything. So Canadian creator Chris may have blessed your for you page during one of your many existential crises in 2020, where she published short comedy skits of her voicing her own characters in her own made-up world and using these little hands in her videos that were absolutely hilarious. Anyway, fast forward to today, she has 50. That's 5-0 million TikTok followers and over 12 million YouTube subscribers. In fact, she has several YouTube channels where she covers things from true crime to paranormal videos to Reddit reactions. And she has her own line of merch and a brand of candy, and she also wrote, produced, and starred in a horror feature film. So, okay, you could look at all of these and think I'm talking about 12 different people, but this is what happens when someone has so many interests and decides to go after all of them. Because honestly, free will and why limit yourself? So, how did we go from cutting hair to being an enormous public figure? And how can you, if you're someone who doesn't want to just be one thing, go about pursuing multiple passions? Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Hey there, I'm Melody Fose, your host of Jeans with the Blazer, a podcast about rewriting the rules of work and life.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

So in another episode, I talk specifically about being a multi-hyphenate, which is exactly what this is. It's someone who has multiple skills and professions. And I talk about all the ways it can be a huge strength in your career and how to navigate that. If you're feeling fancy, go check it out. But for today, I want to go into the life of someone who is really well known who has done this and done it really well. And this is just to show you how possible anything is. So the point here is not to suggest pursuing five different careers simultaneously, which you could, but how a core set of talents can really express themselves in many ways. Because we are in the future and you don't have to just stay in one lane anymore, ever. Alright, so let's back up a bit to the beginning of Chris's story. So before she went viral, she worked as a hairdresser in Abbotsford, British Columbia. When the pandemic interrupted that work in 2020, like it interrupted all of our works, her brother introduced her to TikTok. Now, Chris thought what a lot of us did when we first saw TikTok. We thought, oh, this is the app where people do those weird little dances. But then she learned that people were doing it for comedy. Boom, idea. So whoa, whoa, whoa, let's just pause for a second. That is something that I want to point out because even Chris had a little bit of bias and reservations around TikTok. Had she just written it off as an app where people post themselves dancing, she wouldn't have her massive following and successful online career. So, food for thought. So her very first video wasn't even original comedy. She used audio from the movie Stepbrothers like a lot of TikTokers do in trendy kind of videos. Hey, listen, um, I like to have a lot of fresh fruit around. But then she decided to create original material and introduced her first character, Janet, who was inspired by the mothers that she had encountered while doing hair. Then came Riley. That's where she had the introduction of the little tiny plastic hands, followed by Chad the Bro and a grandmother, Nona. She reached 1 million followers by her 24th birthday in July 2020. Happy birthday, girlfriend. By the end of the summer, she had 2 million. But guess what? She still went back to work at the salon because, like most people, she thought there's no way this could be a job. In fact, Chris did not leave her full-time job until the end of the year when she had accumulated several more millions of followers and scored some brand deals. So I feel like this is important to note because for everyone that is creative or building a career online, most of us have this number in our head thinking, okay, like when we reach this many followers or have this many subscribers, we'll have made it. But guys, that is where the real work begins. And you can have hundreds and thousands of followers, even millions, and be virtually unknown outside of your corner of the internet where you have created this niche community. And despite reaching levels of early success, that can be so, so challenging to achieve. You can still doubt yourself and question if this is good enough to bet on yourself and take that leap. Chris could have stayed at the salon. She could have not poured herself into her content and her art. It's almost like we're faced with these decisions sometimes to expand into our full potential or stay comfortable in our current reality because even if we don't love it, sometimes that feels safer than doing something completely different. How many of you have been there before? One or two or three hundred times. All right. Back to Chris. So you may look at her job as a hairdresser and then her drastic change to a TikToker and be like, okay, well, those are two completely different things. Now hold on, there's a lesson here. Chris's advantage was not simply that she could perform several characters, it was that she had accumulated recognizable human material, material that she got from her exposure to different clients. Chris took interactions from the world she was living in to create something completely new. And that is the basis of a multi-hyphenite career. That's where it often begins, by synthesizing existing experiences, not inventing an entirely new self, which sometimes we feel like we have to do if we want to pursue something different. It does not have to be that way. So if you're a creative, you shouldn't stop at asking yourself, well, what am I good at? Ask yourself, what have my previous jobs or things that I've done trained me to notice that others might miss? Boom. All right, so by 2022, Chris has created more than 30 different characters, all recognized by their own voices and mannerisms and storylines. This is work, you guys, and this is strategic work because she created this universe that was essentially run by her. So every time you came across her video, you connected to these characters. All the gurus are always telling creators to stay in your niche, but Chris was like, nah, hold my beer. And she took things a step further. She made her own rules of the game, you guys. And she became this like content engine that's basically a human SNL. So when she created this recurring cast, she offered a bunch of things to her audience that kept them coming back. I'm going to read them off. Recognizable audience expectations, ongoing storylines, a repeatable ideation system, characters that could survive beyond one trend. Like, okay, think of your favorite TV show. For example, friends, you have a relationship with each of these characters. Some you connect with more than others. Even if you don't like a character, you still watch it for the plot. You know that Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe are always going to be on their couch at Central Park, having their drama, breaking up, getting back together, going to their apartments. They weren't doing anything trendy or particularly cool, but they were so real. Chris was able to create that storytelling world as one person. So the diversity she created existed inside this stable universe, and that is why having dozens of characters did not necessarily make her look scattered. The audience understood the governing format. Chris plays heightened versions of people that you recognize. That's it, it's that simple. And here's what also made it different. She also said that at least half of her characters had emerged partly from audience suggestions. So what she did is she regularly reviewed comments to see what people liked and disliked, requested, or felt was missing. Now, here is this level of engagement that really has only started happening in the world of social media that we have present day. Where before you couldn't directly connect with the directors and showrunners and writers of friends, they were like this mysterious group of people that exist somewhere off in Hollywoodland. But with creators, you have that direct connection. And now, as the audience, knowing that you could have contributed to a piece of a character, it makes that more meaningful. Once Chris reached approximately 4 million TikTok followers, she added YouTube to the mix to diversify her audience and give viewers longer form content. This was a deliberate expansion. She did not assume identical content would work everywhere. No. So this is important because she did not do the same exact thing that she did on TikTok. She took a different approach. Yes, she posted the content that she had created on TikTok, but she also did more than that because different platform, different audience. In interviews, she described organizing her schedule around different platforms and learning how each format worked. She also noted that her TikTok sponsorships could become sketches while YouTube required a different integration because she used her characters less frequently there. That shift accomplished something strategically important. TikTok introduced the characters. YouTube allowed viewers to become attached to Chris herself. So on her TikTok, she would give tidbits of her everyday life, and you kind of got to experience that. But YouTube really allowed her to do that even more on a larger scale. Where at the time, TikTok, you had one minute or maybe two minutes to post content. Which, by the way, interesting. On TikTok, you can now post content that's up to 60 minutes long. So I wonder if TikTok is trying to go down the YouTube route, but just fully vertical. Mmm, interesting. Anywho, so this expansion that I'm talking about is somewhere where creatives can see themselves really getting stuck. So if you're known on one thing on one platform, what happens if you try to diversify that content? You might not necessarily get as much engagement because people come to you for a specific thing that they're looking for. But by moving onto a different platform and understanding how that platform works, testing out different formats, you can dip into your existing audience base as like a core for sure. But now you have the freedom to experiment and the audience may be more open because they're different to watch things like reactions, personal videos, collaborations, or longer narratives because the relationship has migrated from I like this recurring sketch to I like spending time with this storyteller. So Chris really used YouTube to grow up and explore different interests, where if she had pivoted just from one platform, she might have lost her audience. Her YouTube channel today is evidence that the brand that she's created has outgrown the original TikTok format without entirely abandoning the personality that made it great. Now we got to talk about the shift from comedy to true crime because that seems like that seems like a reinvention, right? But while that was a genre shift, it was not a complete identity shift, right? It seems like you're starting over and starting from scratch, but let me walk you through it. So when I first stumbled onto her YouTube channel, I didn't know it existed, but it was because I was searching for something completely different. I had just watched the Hulu Docki series show on Jeffrey Dahmer and was really interested in Jeffrey Dahmer content. I feel a little exposed for sharing that, but whatever. So anyway, I guess I was looking for more related content on YouTube because I had completely burned through every other Jeffrey Dahmer show. I wasn't interested in skits by Chris or anyone. But in my search for JD, guess who popped up? Miss Chris. And I'll be totally honest, at first I was like, hmm, that's an interesting choice. Wasn't expecting that from this creator, but cool. But I already had that familiarity to her versus other creators I've never heard of. So I was like, all right, well, let's give this a whirl. And I didn't really have any expectations. And guess what? I loved it. She brought her whole personality into it, and she did a really great job of covering it. The editing was really good. I was like, okay, wow, I never imagined this crossover, but here we are. So on the surface, character comedy and true crime appear to be unrelated niches. However, they overlap considerably. Stay with me here. Think about it. Both require characterization, narrative pacing, escalation, setup and payoff, identifying, revealing human details, moving between tension and release, maintaining attention through voice. So yeah, the emotional register changed from predominantly humorous to darker and more suspenseful, but the storytelling function remained. So to me, this suggests a useful principle. A creator can change subject matter more safely than they can change the entire audience experiences. Her audience may arrive for different topics, but Chris herself, as the niche, is that through line. She's the interpreter. Her delivery, pacing, personality, humor, and accessibility supply continuity. Another thing Chris did was she created containers for different audience expectations. One of the clearest reasons her career does not look completely chaotic is that every idea is not being forced into one undifferentiated feed. For example, her current brand architecture includes main YouTube channel, longform true crime mysteries, Reddit stories, entertainment, and larger uploads under the core Call Me Chris identity. It therefore adds a consumption format without requiring an entirely separate research operation or subject matter identity. Then we have her merch store called Otto. So Otto extends the ethos of her channel's language and the internal culture into merchandise. For example, some of her current products use names and phrases such as Emotionally Offline and Introvert's Social Club that kind of references her previous videos and content as like an inside joke with her audience. And it's not like she's just selling t-shirts that have completely unrelated quotes on it. It dies directly back to her community. Now, the lesson here isn't that every creative needs 12 different channels at the same time. No, because if you go back to the beginning, Chris focused on just one channel. And even when she did start to grow, her expansions usually changed only one major variable at a time. Here's the breakdown. From TikTok to YouTube, what changed was the platform and the length of her videos. What stayed similar was Chris's humor, performance, editing rhythm, and personality. From comedy and true crime, what changed was genre and emotional tone. But what stayed similar was story structure, narration, curiosity, and accessibility. From content to her merchandising store, what changed was the business model, but what stayed similar was inside jokes, community symbols, and Chris's tone. Do you see how this is all a natural progression and not a complete 180 reinvention? So creators can become confusing when several variables change simultaneously. Now, if Chris just decided to be like a tech finance bro and have a channel that was like really serious and talked about, I don't know, all the things going on in cryptocurrency, that might, you know, throw audiences off a little bit, especially your core audience. Her audience and followers would have to relearn that entire relationship, and it might not necessarily be for everyone. Chris's career has more often followed a safer pattern. Keep several recognizable anchors while introducing one meaningful new dimension at a time. This is one of the coolest lessons because while technically these were all risks, like some of her audience may not have resonated with her new content or her new niche, and maybe some of her audience did fall off, but she was able to expand into new audiences that may not have known her before. That's pretty cool. Now I want to talk about her move from online to her feature filmmaking, which is that's a huge, huge transition. But this is the clearest expression of her multi-hyphenate strategy. So in 2025, RLJE Films and Shudder acquired worldwide rights to House in Eden, which Chris wrote, directed, produced, and starred in. It received a theatrical release on July 25th, 2025. But this is not a random jump from TikTok comedy to horror directing. Chris explained that she and her collaborators had already been making paranormal videos together. She wanted to create something in that space where they could control the narrative rather than waiting for something to happen during a real investigation. The movie was intentionally designed to begin like one of their familiar paranormal videos before becoming something more unexpected. The production also used capabilities they already possessed, found footage aesthetic compatible with online video improvisation rather than a rigidly scripted performance, right? Okay, so she didn't completely switch from going online to filmmaking. She used a format that her audience is already familiar with to transition into this. Chris is like the queen of synthesis. She moves like a dolphin going from ocean to ocean. Chris and her creator friends Selena and Jay played versions of themselves. So again, she's not playing an entirely new character and throwing a new genre out there. She's taking something familiar. So she kept it small. So she kept it small. She had a small cast, a limited number of decision makers, and a seven-day filming schedule. Chris actually wrote a detailed beat sheet, but did not want a fully fixed script because the group was accustomed to improvising together. She said portraying versions of themselves made the seven-day shoot more manageable, and the team deliberately kept the production small and comfortable. This is an excellent creative business lesson. When entering a larger medium, choose a project that converts your existing limitations into stylistic advantages, right? Okay, familiar characters, a short shooting schedule, and including improv as opposed to just like this fully fleshed out script that, you know, could have taken her a long time to produce and a huge cast that she hired an enormous production company. That didn't happen here. The paranormal subject matter gave her established audience a familiar doorway. It was a stretch, but it was an adjacent stretch. So when we look at all of this from the top down, here's how Chris avoids looking too scattered. So she has a core capability, not just a core topic. Her identity is broad enough to accommodate multiple genres because the through line is performance and storytelling, not one narrow subject. She creates repeatable franchises, recurring characters, Reddit stories, true crime deep dives, paranormal investigations, and joint podcast episodes are recognizable series rather than isolated experiments in a vacuum. The audience doesn't need to understand every individual upload from scratch. Familiar series reduce cognitive load. She also retains a consistent emotional signature. Even when the subject becomes darker, her content generally retains directness, informality, heightened reactions, humor, and a feeling of intimacy and connectedness. I love her true crime deep dives because she pauses for a second and she like kind of trolls whoever the um person is. Like she's make totally made fun of Jeffrey Dahmer. It was hilarious. So you kind of feel like you're participating in this conversation with her and she's not just talking at you. And that's a format that Chris is really good at doing that transferred so, so well from TikTok to YouTube and eventually film. So I totally get how looking at all of this and what she's done can be really overwhelming with the content machine that she's created. But I want to point out something very important. Chris's career does not demonstrate that enormous output is sustainable. She has said that she produced five to eight videos per day for more than a year and experienced multiple periods of burnout. She later shifted towards quality over quantity and acknowledged that taking a day off would not cause the audience to disappear. The strongest lesson is not work hard as Chris did. It's don't build every new hyphen as a separate production factory. For creators, multidimensionality becomes exhausting when every dimension demands a completely different audience, a completely different skill base, a separate research system, and a different team. A coherent multi-hyphenate career should create stuff that compounds, not just more work for yourself. Okay, so here's a framework that you as a creator can apply the one variable expansion test. Before adding a new platform, genre, offer, or professional identity, ask, what is my real core? Define it as a capability or audience experience, not a platform. You don't want to say, hmm, yeah, I make Instagram videos. You want to say I make complex professional ideas feel understandable and entertaining. Then look at that and ask yourself what familiar element will remain. Keep at least two or three of those anchors, such as voice, subject format, audience. Then ask, what is one major variable I am changing? Choose one format, platform, genre, audience, product, business model. Then ask yourself, does this need a new container? Determine whether it belongs in an existing feed, a clearly labeled series, a second channel, a collaboration, a collaborative brand, a podcast, a separate product company. Then what is the bridge? Create content that connects the established identity to the new one. This I think is the most important one. Do not make the audience perform the strategic reasoning for you. What can be reused? So, what can creators and storytellers learn from Chris Collins? Not that we all need to become comedians and filmmakers and podcasts, unless you want to. But definitely not that the answer is to work harder, post more, or attach another title to your bio. The real lesson is that a multidimensional career still needs a clear center. Remember, Chris began with one recognizable doorway, character-driven comedy. From there, she gave her audience time to really understand her voice and her humor and the way she tells a story. Then she expanded into longer videos with her true crime stuff and her products without completely asking people to forget why they followed her in the first place. So as you think about your own career, the question may not be, which one thing do I have to choose? A better question might be: what is the core ability, perspective, or experience that connects everything I want to create? Start with one clear doorway, build trust there, then add the next room intentionally. Because becoming a multi-hyphenate is not about proving that you can do everything, which you can. It's about building a body of work in which every new dimension still feels unmistakably yours. Thanks for hanging out.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

That's a wrap on this episode of Genes of the Blazer. If today's conversation gave you something to think about, a mindset shift, or just the push you needed, do me a favor. Subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. Leave a review wherever you enjoy your podcast. It helps more people find it and it keeps these conversations going. And I love hearing from you. Follow at Jeans with the Blazer and tag me with your biggest takeaways, your latest wins, or just tell me what topics you want to hear about next. See you next time.