Jenny Hoyos is just 19 years old, but she has a thing or two to say about how you should spend your money.
“I’m a creator, but I’m an entrepreneur first,” Hoyos told Mashable at VidCon 2025. “And to sustain a creator career, entrepreneurship is very important. And that, what I mean by that is like understanding business because there’s a lot of creators who know how to get views, but they don’t know how to monetize the views.”
She’s best known for her ability to educate young audiences on responsible spending, like her YouTube video on making money on arcade games, using AI to make money on YouTube, and letting her dog trade stocks. But lately, she’s been making a lot of short-form content about everything from her relationship with her mom to cooking. And that kind of content has been working out pretty well for her, with 9.15 million subscribers on YouTube, 186,000 followers on TikTok, and 172,000 followers on Instagram.
We sat down with Hoyos at VidCon, where she was a featured creator, to talk about her workflow, the inspiration behind her videos, and how she monetizes her content.
If you had one piece of financial advice for your followers, what would it be?
The number one thing is people tend to get caught up in wanting to showcase that they have money to look cool. It’s funny because everyone’s making jokes about the Labubu, but it just makes me kinda sad. There’s some people who can’t afford it and I don’t want them to feel bad. That’s why I don’t like to show if I have nice things or things like that, because I don’t want people to feel bad, but also, no matter how much money I have, I’m never going to do that.
So I would tell people to be mindful of their money and don’t care about what other people have. There are so many people who buy a Mercedes and they don’t even have money — they got a loan for that. It doesn’t mean anything.
Another piece of advice: Invest in good quality — even though I said to save your money and be mindful of your money — except with food. Your food needs to be the highest quality because that’s going to prevent you from getting sick.
Like groceries or going out?
Don’t go out. Get good groceries. Get good quality foods. I know some people who will cheap out on food and then they go and spend on a Mercedes. Then they’re sick in their nice car.
How do you find inspiration for your videos?
Just living life. I try to capture relatable moments. Anything is a viral video. Something embarrassing happens that you can recreate? That’s a video.
What are some other tips for creating viral videos?
Study what other people are doing and twist it. Either combine trends or try and put a twist to a trend. If people are doing something in the color blue, try and do it in the color red.
Do you use AI at all?
Yes. I love it for brainstorming, especially if I see a trend, for example, and, and I want to make my own twist on it. I use AI to brainstorm a bunch of things and then I pick out what’s the best option.
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So you use it as an ideation tool. Do you use it as a creation tool as well?
The whole process, yeah. I just have it be my partner and assistant. And then I have to select what’s good, because it’s not always good.
Which AI system do you use?
I love all of them, but Google Gemini is really good.
Can you walk me through your process from ideation to publishing?
There are different ways I can get an idea. Either it’s relatable and I can just film it, like if it happens in real life, I’ll just recreate that moment. But if I’m like taking a trend or something someone else has done that’s an outlier, I will say [to AI], ‘I want to make a video based around this. Give me different hooks or ways I can execute this.’ And then it gives me a bunch of different hooks. Because the hook is your idea. I don’t even think about, ‘oh, what is the viral video?’ I just think about what’s a viral hook, what’s gonna shock people, and what’s going to have that viral hook. And then I select it and I’m like, ‘okay, what’s the best payoff?’ And I have it give me different ideas for different payoffs. And then from there we just fill in the gaps and I just do the same thing for each line. And I film the video.
Do you use a script?
Sometimes, but less than 50 percent of the time it’s a script.
And you’re filming on your phone?
On my phone. It needs to look relatable.
What do you edit on?
I use Adobe Premier Pro on the computer.
Do you ever edit on your phone?
No, unless like I’m doing it for my Instagram Story. But for YouTube I do it on my computer. You could definitely do it on your phone, but I like to do it on my computer because I like to have a hard copy of everything and I save it into my server. I have a server that’s 100 terabytes. It holds all of my footage and edits.
What do you use to edit your Instagram stories?
I actually like to use Instagram Edits. It’s a new app, but I like to use it.
What has your platform taught you about using your voice?
The biggest thing is how impactful my influence is. It makes me want to use it for more good. One time I was at Sprouts and I ran to a fan and she told me, ‘I’ve been waiting here for hours because I saw that you go to this Sprouts.’ And their mom was like, ‘She saw that you were eating like these healthy meals, so she picked it out from Sprouts, the same thing that you were eating. Thank you for inspiring her to start eating fruits.’ And I’m like, no way. That’s amazing. Like, first of all, it’s crazy that she found the place that I go to, that’s shocking. But it’s great that she’s eating fruit. The second part, the fact that she decided to get the same healthy groceries, that stuck with me more. The third thing I thought was like, ‘Sprout’s gotta sponsor me.’
How do you engage with your community beyond Sprouts?
Responding to comments is everything, especially now that they have a voice message feature. Viewers love that. I want to engage with them as much as possible. The best way has been live streams, because you get to engage with a lot more people and you can even run polls and more people can feel like they’re engaging with the content. People want to be acknowledged and recognized. And we try to do that to as many people as possible.
What platforms have helped you most with creating that community growth?
YouTube. Fully. Easily. YouTube. YouTube has a great community feature.
What was your first viral video?
It was a $3 burrito hack. Essentially I found this hack where instead of spending $10 a burrito, you make it for $3. And it went so viral, over a hundred million views across platforms.
How did you sustain that virality to ensure that it wasn’t just a one hit wonder?
It’s all about content buckets, which is essentially when you create a series out of it. Something does well? Create a series out of it or a format. After my $3 burrito hack, I did a $1 coffee hack at McDonald’s. I started doing all these different hacks and then I built that baseline level of viewership.
Mashable will be live at Anaheim Convention Center this week covering VidCon 2025. Check back in the days ahead at Mashable.com, where we’ll be talking to your favorite creators, covering the latest trends, and sharing how creators are growing their followings, their influence, and making a living online.
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