Today we’d like to introduce you to Heartlyn Rae.
Hello Heartlyn Rae, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
We met in first grade. Alexis was loud and outgoing; Julia was quiet and reserved. It was a match made in heaven, and we have been inseparable ever since. We grew up doing community theatre together and putting on singing performances for our families. We always shared the same passion, which was singing and performing.
In high school, we formed a girls’ country singing group called Arrowheart and we got signed to a label. We got to open for acts such as Little Big Town, Dierks Bentley, Dustin Lynch, Miranda Lambert, and much more. We grew as performers and had many amazing opportunities, but the label situation wasn’t great, and we decided to part ways and start over. That’s when Heartlyn Rae was born.
Heartlyn Rae consists of our last names, Rae and Lynn, with the word heart because our moms always told us growing up to follow our hearts. We moved to Nashville to pursue singing and songwriting because we knew this is what we wanted to do, and there was no plan B. After years of knocking on doors of the music industry, the world shut down in 2020, and we decided to take control of our careers. That’s when we started posting videos on social media.
It began as videos of us singing. Then it evolved into showing our everyday lives as best friends who live together and sing together. From pranks to vlogs, to singing, to driving up to strangers singing to them, to acting crazy, our account grew to 6.9 million followers on TikTok, and we were finally living life on our terms and making a living doing what we loved, which was performing, singing, and being us.
We now live in Los Angeles and continue to make content on social media, and we have a podcast called Excuse My Friend, which includes our original song in the intro and outro.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There have been struggles our whole lives. Before we did Arrowheart and Heartlyn Rae, we were pursuing our own separate careers. Alexis with her acting and singing which included theatre, voices lessons, and acting lessons from a young age. Julia with her singing, acting, modeling, dance lessons, music lessons, art lessons, also from a young age. We both were constantly going on auditions, performing in talent shows, trying everything to elevate ourselves. The struggle of always being told no, or that we weren’t good enough was a challenge. We also both did not go to college, and being told this was a mistake and to get a real job, that was challenging, but it never got in the way.
When we moved to Nashville, we both had no money, and we shared one bedroom with two mattresses on the floor. We worked every odd job you could think of. From working at a Halloween haunted house to babysitting to dog sitting, to catering weddings, to driving tourists in golf carts, to sign spinning, to brand ambassador work, all without any experience, we faked it till we made it; there’s no excuse, you figure it out.
It is still a struggle today coming up with ideas and staying creative and relevant. But every path has its challenges, and we’re here for it.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
We create content on social media. TikTok is our main platform, but we also post on Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat, and Pinterest. We create comedy content showing our friendship and our crazy lives as best friends who live together. We create short-form and long-form content. We create videos for brands who want to advertise to our audience. We also have a podcast called Excuse My Friend that can be streamed on all podcast streaming platforms. It is a comedy podcast about relationships, and we also interview guests from reality stars, therapists, matchmakers, body language experts, and much more. What sets us apart is our friendship, and what we are most proud of is how far we’ve come and how we’ve stayed consistent throughout these years and haven’t given up, and how we continue to work hard.
What matters most to you?
What matters most to us is staying authentic and to be able to live life on our own terms and to be our own boss. Our goal is for people who watch our content to feel good and laugh and to feel like they can relate to us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/excuse-my-friend/id1644480933
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heartlynrae/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heartlynraeofficial
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/heartlynrae?lang=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2dH7NurjX4gBMLw80Urytw
