Abbie Herbert Reveals a ‘Big’ Misconception About Her Life as an Influencer: ‘A Lot of People Just Assume’ (Exclusive)

Abbie Herbert is giving her followers a behind-the-scenes look at her reality as an influencer.

The Ohio native successfully evolved her career from model to influencer who now creates short-form lifestyle content across her social platforms, which attracts the eyes of her 20 million followers to her pages daily.

Like many popular creators today, Herbert was a part of the viral wave of TikTok videos that saw random overnight success amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. She uploaded a wedding video that featured her husband, Josh Herbert, and it racked up nearly one million views in less than a day.

Herbert, who was modeling at the time, then attempted to capitalize off the viral momentum and intertwine fashion-focused content into her uploads. "The videos got two views," she tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview reflecting on her rise to internet fame.

Naturally, Herbert reverted to her costarring subject who in part helped entice an audience: her husband Josh. "It had a million views in an hour — and then it just from there went viral," she says of an early post that featured her ranking her husband in the clip.

"I was like, 'Okay, Josh is my ticket to TikTok fame'," realized Herbert.

From there, the mom of two continued creating videos that included Josh, who is a musician, though worked for a real estate company before the pandemic hit in March. They filmed "couples content," which included everything from "corny silly pranks" to comedy bits.

"Everything was shutting down, no one was doing anything," Herbert explains. "Josh lost his job. I wasn't able to travel for modeling, so we were all at home with our phones... We were on it at the right time."

Herbert says she instantaneously went from "a hundred followers to 15,000 followers" after that video went viral. Within four years, she's seamlessly expanded her content to include her kids — daughter Poppy, 3, and son Jagger, 1 — as well.

"It has changed so much," she says of her videos. "We started off as the couple. Then I got pregnant. Then it was all pregnancy stuff. Then I became a mom, so then it turned into heavily mom content. Then I got pregnant again... Then it was postpartum with two kids."

Being a self-described "over-sharer" is what Herbert credits as the key to her videos' successes. This, however, has led to a slew of misconceptions about the content creator and her family's daily life.

"Even though I overshare so much, I feel like they think I'm on my phone 24/7," Herbert says of what her followers surmise just from watching her clips. "But I am never on my phone," she reveals.

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"I don't really share my friends... half of my friends don't even have social media!" the content creator explains. "My close circle, my family, no one's on social media. Josh's family, half of them don't even know what we do," she jokes. "So I think that's a big thing."

While Herbert was sure to point out that there are influencers who "are constantly filming and vlogging and live streaming," she considers that lifestyle "very rare for most content creators." She adds, "They're not constantly filming as I think a lot of people just assume."

The extent to which she chooses to share her children publicly online was something that she and Josh carefully considered, especially since they've built a platform and career with an emphasis on their family life.

"We kind of went into it so blind," admits Herbert. "I didn't ever watch YouTube before all of this... I didn't know the influencer world. I didn't know what this space was."

After the pair gave birth to their second child, Jagger, they "did a hard reset" to reconsider what they shared online. While they initially chose to take their little ones "completely off" for a bit, they slowly decided to intertwine them back into their content because "they are such a big part" of their lives.

"Finding that balance" is the approach Herbert and Josh take when deciding what to post, noting that they "came up with a good compromise of what to share and what not to share" online. In fact, she says her eldest daughter Poppy "understands now" and "loves making videos!"

Ultimately, Herbert rests assured that she and her husband "found what works" for their family, which includes "making sure everyone is just safe and protected." She concludes, "We're in a good space."