Rhylan Streloff, manager at JJ's Fashions in Trail,has been featured on the cover of a romance novel.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Rhylan Streloff
September 04, 2021 - 7:30 AM
A Kootenay man who became TikTok famous when he was deemed a “hot boss” by his employees has taken up a few gigs modelling for romance novels.
JJ's Fashions in Trail has more than 2 million followers on the social media platform. It all started last year when employee Madi Dobie came up with the idea to feature her manager Rhylan Streloff in videos as a “hot boss.”
The videos show her and other store employees swooning over Streloff in an attempt to get him to notice them.
READ MORE: Brand deals, sponsorships in works for Kootenay clothing store's ‘hot boss’
The massive following has landed the store brand deals, they’ve launched their own hot boss clothing line and Streloff was even asked to model for romance novels.
“The trouble with me is making the content and being able to keep up with it. It takes a lot more time than you’d think,” he said.
“As far as the book cover goes, I’m just starting to get into that world,” he said. A novel published by Illinois author Jennifer Hartman called The Wrong Heart features Streloff on the cover. It was released Aug. 10.
As soon as the book launched, Streloff’s Instagram went crazy.
“There’s this whole sub-culture on Instagram for romance novels,” Streloff said.
Two more books with Streloff are in the works from different authors, but he doesn't have the titles or release dates at this time. He now has an agent, and authors have been reaching out to him via Instagram, he said.
Streloff prefers to model for his business so he’s more focused on those avenues than modelling for others.
It took some time to develop a social media audience but Streloff said their online sales now compete with sales in-store.
“I've done a lot of research into it and they say you should be posting between seven to 25 pieces of content per day on three to nine different platforms. It’s a full-time job trying to keep up with it, but the payout is there for sure,” he said. “At first it was hard to get used to and we didn’t know what we were doing at all but we’re starting to figure it out now.”
Now one of their biggest challenges is dealing with website loading speeds after a viral TikTok will send up to 50,000 viewers across their website.
“I can’t stress this enough, like the importance of creating content. The biggest thing is you’re scared of what people are going to think. You’re scared of it you want it to be good, you want people to like it but honestly, you just have to do it,” he said.
TikTok is the best social media platform to be able to reach the largest audience with the least amount of effort, he said.
“If you’re a business and you’re not on TikTok, you’re missing out.”
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