Candor and Cohesion with Andrea Casanova
There’s a video on Andrea Casanova’s TikTok that shows her preparations for a day of content creation. It begins at eight in the morning with Casanova in sweats and slippers cleaning off her desk, and progresses with other mundane actions: cleaning, writing, setting up equipment, doing her hair and makeup. This lift of the veil is core to Casanova’s content practice, which acknowledges her humanity alongside the dutiful progress of her work.
Casanova was born on Margarita Island, the largest of Venezuela’s islands, despite encompassing only 414 square miles. Casanova’s family moved frequently due to the socioeconomic and political crises in Venezuela that began around the turn of the millennium. With millions of other Venezuelans, the Casanova family were a part of the largest recorded refugee movement in the Americas. Casanova’s childhood saw her raised in a total of five countries.
At 17 years of age, Casanova decided to move to the U.S. to pursue a new life. She landed in Florida and began to study media communications. Casanova grew up a self-described “musical theater girly” and saw the opportunity to merge her dramatic flair with the worlds of marketing and communications.
Casanova sees the progression as linear. “At the end of the day, [content creation] is storytelling and it allows me to reach massive audiences, which I think the role of theater also is, so I think that’s what made me want to pursue video and content creation in the first place.”
Casanova started her career in viral marketing at just 18. Eventually, she would be flown out to Los Angeles to produce viral content for influencers and made the move full time in 2017. Now, at 26, the digital marketing and branding expert has worked with the likes of Amazon, Universal Music Group, and TikTok.
A considerable portion of the young entrepreneur’s social media output hovers around topics of wellness and mindfulness. Her success has been cultivated and maintained with the help of routine and focus. Casanova passes on her story and helpful tools in her content. A video outlining her “sad girl routine” breaks down a system of habits and self-care tips that she looks to when she’s not able to show up completely to her own life. The routine highlights hygiene, beauty, social life, and work. Having a go-to hairstyle or throwing on a monochromatic outfit are shortcuts she offers that cut out the noise. But this routine isn’t just content — it’s how Casanova has managed to get where she is today.
“When people ask me ‘what’s your biggest strategy for your business or your content creation journey,’ I always say that I focus on just making sure I’m the healthiest and most stable person that I can be within my needs.”
There are certain commitments Casanova keeps that are crucial to her success. The routine of going to her accountant to check in on her finances, for example, is just as important as getting nine hours of sleep (“It’s my non-negotiable.”). She says it’s not necessarily about striking a balance, but instead about alignment, a framework pulled from the book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, award-winning designers responsible for noted tech hardware innovations at Apple.
“You get to a place of alignment when you find how to live a cohesive life over a balanced life,” she explains. “And that stuck out so much because I was always feeling so guilty about the fact that I actually enjoyed work and I wanted to stay up hustling.”
It's not about making money, achievement, or approval, Casanova insists, it comes from a genuine place — allowing for a certain ease within the concept of hustle. “I love what I do so much that it just flows seamlessly in the grand scheme of things,” she asserts.
Part of her orientation toward cohesion includes leading with honesty. The vulnerability and personal stories she showcases in her videos are keys to her success. She cites The 48 Laws of Power’s Law 46, “Never Appear Too Perfect.” Proximity to perfection ensures being placed on a pedestal and resentment that can follow when expectations are inevitably disappointed.
“I think the faster you admit [personal obstacles] to yourself and to the world, [they] cannot be used against you. I really started taking my power back when I started talking about living with Borderline Personality Disorder,” Casanova states, while acknowledging that the past year has been hard for both her father and her husband’s health. The transparency about her life, she says, also strengthens trust with her audience. Those that follow her work tend to hold a bit more space for her as a human. Naturally, she has had worries about the way such honesty could affect her business but trusts that there will always be challenges no matter how high she ascends. “New levels, new devils,” she quips.
Casanova joins a growing wave of creators, many of them young people, who are continually shrinking the space between private and public. It’s not about sharing everything in one’s life, so much as it is about cutting back on the need to cast a false image, maintaining an image that is so intent on professionality, it is impenetrable.
“I really think that entrepreneurs, content creators, and any figure of that sort can’t be two separate people in their lives,” she emphasizes. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as a successful entrepreneur who is not a person who devotes themselves to morning routines, to discipline, to organization, and whatnot.”
Ever the devotee to her own discipline, it seems Casanova will continue to flow in creativity and truth.
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