It might be intimidating to say hi to a social media star if you see them on the street, but Caroline and AnnCatherine Conneen love meeting the people who follow their platforms.
“[I don’t get recognized] all that often, so it makes it really special when it does happen,” Caroline said. “One time I got a DM from someone and she was like, ‘I think I just walked past you on the street.’ And I was like, ‘why didn’t you say hi?’”
Twins Caroline and AnnCatherine are fourth-year international business majors at Northeastern University from New Hampshire. Both of them have significant followings on Instagram and TikTok, and they also have a podcast, “Girls with Goals,” where they discuss topics such as wellness, relationships and building a healthy lifestyle.
Growing up, the twins had a YouTube channel long before they gained popularity on Instagram.
“Especially [with] growing up traveling, I was like, ‘I want to be a travel blogger one day,’” Caroline said. “And so I think in the back of my mind, [I always thought], ‘maybe I could do something creative [in the future].’”
During her junior year of high school, Caroline began getting into independent fitness, which she stated “became a pretty positive pocket of [her] life.” After her senior year, she began posting fitness content on Instagram, including workouts and recipes.
Though she received some hurtful comments and DMs at first, rather than letting those messages bring her down, she decided that she owed it to herself not to let other people’s negative comments get the best of her.
“I was 17 years old [when I first started posting] — I hadn’t even turned 18 yet. [The old content] haunts me,” Caroline said. “No matter what you do and what it is you want to do, everything that eventually becomes cool is going to be cringeworthy at some point whether it is to yourself or to other people. And to me, I wasn’t cringing at myself at that time.”
Despite the fact that she is “haunted” by her old content, Caroline is happy that she started social media when she did.
“I think [starting social media] is a hard thing to do at any point,” Caroline said. “I don’t know if I would want to put myself through the beginnings of that again, but I’m really glad I did. People say consistency is key, but I’m also definitely not someone who went viral overnight.”
In September 2021, the summer before their sophomore year of college, the twins decided to start a podcast, “Girls with Goals.”
At the time, Caroline’s content was shifting from strictly fitness content to more lifestyle content, discussing the transition to college and finding balance in everyday life. She found that when she opened up more on social media about topics such as confidence, body image and balance, she was able to resonate with a lot of people.
“I was like, okay, this is great. I love that it gives me a sense of purpose with what I’m doing, but maybe Instagram isn’t the right platform for this because it’s just hard to have a long in depth conversation,” Caroline said. “[AnnCatherine and I] also always wanted to bridge our stuff and do something together.”
Starting completely from scratch, they had to learn everything about podcasting from how to structure episodes to how to get their content on Spotify.
“Starting something completely new is so scary for so many reasons … you’ve never done it before … and [there are also] other people’s perceptions of you,” Caroline said. “But once you do start and you get over that hump of starting, there’s no turning back.”
One of their goals for the podcast is to fill the gap between the health and wellness community and their younger audience. Caroline noticed that while many health and self-growth influencers were a little older than herself, there weren’t many people “who were also 20 and also just figuring out life a little bit.”
When it comes to picking topics and choosing what to discuss on the podcast, they often share their personal anecdotes and current experiences. Though they acknowledge that they are not going to be experts in everything concerning health, wellness and relationships, they are passionate about discussing these topics with their audience.
“I think balance is reflected on social media as like, ‘don’t go super hard into health and wellness,’ and the alternative of that extreme is being the complete opposite,” AnnCatherine said. “Whereas we say, no, we’re gonna go hard in health and wellness but we’re also gonna go hard in living our lives. … [I’ll] eat healthy and feel good, but if I’m going to go get a Levain cookie, I’m going to go get a Levain cookie.”
One might wonder how the twins balance their busy lives between their careers and being college students, but they make it work.
“I thoroughly enjoy everything that I do,” AnnCatherine said. “If I didn’t enjoy it, I would not be doing it. And because I enjoy everything I do, I’m going to make the space for it, and I’m going to actually dedicate the time for it.”
In addition to their social media presence, the twins also sell merchandise that is inspired by one of their podcast episodes.
“We’ve launched merch, which is a result of one of our favorite episodes — “Impress Yourself,” which I think is a super core value to what we’re doing both on the show and on social media,” AnnCatherine said. “Whenever I see someone wearing the merch, it’s such a cool thing. … It has such an important impact both in ourselves and within other people, and when other people support that, that’s just the best feeling in the world.”
Caroline stated that she loves when people send her messages saying they resonated with something on the podcast or a post because it can be hard to remember there are actually people on the other side of their digital platforms.
“Anytime someone makes a comment or a message and calls me a role model, that makes me feel really proud,” Caroline said. “Sometimes, I’ll have somebody who’s a lot younger, and if they say that they look up to me, that makes me so emotional … I’ll get a comment every once in a while [from someone older] being like, ‘[you’re] such a good role model, and I wish my daughter can have somebody like that.’”
Confidence and stress management are two lessons Caroline has learned from doing social media. Since she has so much to balance between her job and schoolwork, when she is stressed about something, she asks herself, “okay, is this actually worth me getting stressed over?”
“I think that your confidence and your trust in yourself is one of the most important things you can build because without that, you’re not going to do anything,” Caroline said. “It’s really easy to let fear hold you back in life … but it’s the difference between letting fear … threaten you or letting it take over you.”
While the Conneens were born in New Hampshire, they lived in Hong Kong and attended an international school from the ages of 9-13, which were “very formative years” according to Caroline. It was a difficult transition back to New Hampshire after living in a fast-paced, international city for five years.
“That was kind of our first experience with travel and then coming back to New Hampshire, it almost felt like we backtracked a little bit,” Caroline said. “In Hong Kong, we could jump in a taxi or public bus, and it felt very safe.”
Both Caroline and AnnCatherine credit their experiences in Hong Kong with shaping them into the people they are today.
“I think [living in Hong Kong] opened us up to a lot of different cultures and lifestyles and a faster pace of life,” AnnCatherine said. “We gained a lot of independence really young … I now carry a lot of autonomy in my day to day life because it feels natural and comfortable.”
Caroline also agreed that Hong Kong was “full of so many different perspectives.” She said that the experience made her realize just how much opportunity there was in the world, especially since so many of her middle school classmates had completely different life stories from each other.
In fact, it was the twins’ upbringing in Hong Kong that sparked their love of travel and influenced their decision to come to Northeastern.
“The International Business program at Northeastern has a requirement of spending a year abroad,” Caroline said. “That paired with the co-op program just felt to me like it was giving me more of the opportunity I was looking for … I wanted something that would kind of force me to get out of my comfort zone.”
While Caroline and AnnCatherine are both International Business majors, Caroline has a concentration in marketing, and AnnCatherine has concentrations in management and entrepreneurship. Though Northeastern’s dynamic campus might not be suited for everyone, the twins have found that the model works well for them and their busy lifestyles.
“Northeastern makes it possible to [balance everything],” AnnCatherine said. “[Having the podcast and doing social media is] the best thing ever, but it also takes a lot of time and effort. And through the co-op program, we’ve worked, so we’ve had a lot of experience that we can take back and forth.”
The twins have both done two co-ops; for their first ones, they self-developed separate co-ops in Singapore in 2021. Last year, they both had co-ops in Boston. Caroline worked in marketing for McKinsey Consulting, and AnnCatherine worked for — and still works for — a startup in Seaport. They both stated that they have learned a lot from their experiences, and Caroline said that it was nice to be able to apply the concepts she learned in school to the real world.
In terms of getting involved in the Northeastern community, AnnCatherine was a group fitness instructor during her sophomore year, which she described as “so fun.” This year, along with their friends, the twins have taken up a new activity on campus — broomball.
“It’s the first year since freshman year that all of our friends are all in one place,” AnnCatherine said. “We’re trying to make the most of everyone being back for the last semester that we’re all together. Every Sunday we go and play at the Northeastern hockey arena and just have so much fun.”
Last semester, the Conneens took a leave of absence from school to travel and focus on their podcast and social media full-time. The decision started almost as a joke; before course registration, they asked each other in jest, “what if we didn’t register for courses?” After looking into it more and contemplating the idea, they decided that it was the natural choice for them.
For Caroline, worry about burnout played a role in her decision to take a leave of absence. She worried that if she stressed herself out too much over the hard work she was putting into school and social media, she wouldn’t enjoy what she was doing. It was after this realization that she decided it was worth slowing things down for a bit.
“If I’ve worked hard to give myself this opportunity [with content creation], I want to let myself enjoy it for a minute,” Caroline said. “And so we kind of let ourselves take the time off … I was like if nothing else, I just want to give myself time to step back for a moment and have a minute, and it was really really beneficial.”
Though their original plan was to live and work in LA during their leave, they ended up traveling much more than anticipated. They made trips to London and Rome to visit friends along with a trip back to Hong Kong.
“When we graduate, we can [stay in one place] … but if we have a really really short amount of time and the interest and resources to go travel, that’s what we want to spend our money and time on,” AnnCatherine said.
Caroline and AnnCatherine both hope to continue working on their podcast and social media after graduation.
“I don’t know exactly what my future plan is, but I don’t want to be scared of [not knowing] exactly what I want to do in the future,” Caroline said. “I just want to keep myself open to as many opportunities as I can and just kind of trust that the path that seems like the right path when I’m ready to make that choice will be it.”
Fast facts and advice!
On traveling:
- Caroline: “We hit six countries in the last six months, but we only took two trips, so we weren’t going home every time. We [said that if we traveled for] three weeks, we can plan a loop where we fly [to different locations] for each week … it’s cheaper and we get more out of it … I use an app Skyscanner that finds the cheapest flights and helps you track a flight … [also], our dad has always said, ‘don’t go cheap if it’s risking your safety.’”
“Nothing is ever going to go perfectly smoothly whether it’s missing a flight or anything else, and so anytime that you travel, it’s a time that you’re deciding when you want to have highs and lows right now. And so it kind of gives you a bit of a different pace of life, and you always learn something from it.” - AnnCatherine: “I think my overall favorite thing [about traveling] is that no matter where you go or what you do, it does push you out of your comfort zone because everything’s going to be new. So I think that it’s a really natural time for self growth in a way … you’re on electronics less. And you’re doing more, and you’re spending your whole day doing something … It’s a time where you’re going to learn a lot about yourself even when things go wrong.”
On budgeting:
- Caroline: “[Budgeting is] definitely just about being mindful … [if] what [you] really care about is gonna make [you] happy then that’s what you budget for … the first step is just understanding where you want to actually put your money towards … [for traveling], it’s about trying to choose locations that are a bit more budget friendly to begin with, like some places just naturally have great safe pretty Airbnbs that are less expensive.”
- AnnCatherine: “[Be] really intentional about spending your money. The way I always put it is like, ‘this is where I want to spend my money. I love traveling. I’m happy to spend money on that experience, whereas I’m not as happy to spend money on buying new clothes all the time and constantly spending money on going out.”
On maintaining relationships and friendships:
- Caroline: “There are always other groups and other niches out there. It’s kind of about putting yourself in [different] environments … maybe it is joining clubs and things like that, [or] maybe it is like who’s in your classes … there’s always different pockets of people. I like that thought that you never have to settle for friendships that don’t feel like they’re actually good just because people are there.”
- AnnCatherine: “A good solid friendship takes a lot of time to build … it’s not something that’s going to happen overnight. It takes a while [to build] that trust and [prove to yourself and] that other person that you’re trying to build a relationship.”
On social media/lessons:
- Caroline: “No one knows what is cool. No one knows what’s trending. That’s all just made up stuff that people choose to believe because they’re told to believe it. And so to a certain extent you can kind of shape or control that or tell people, ‘this is what I’m doing.’ And at some point, people are going to accept it … There’s always going to be somebody that you can look at who seemingly has astronomically more successes than you, but then there’s also so many people who haven’t even tried, so it’s like, who are you comparing yourself to?”
- AnnCatherine: “I think what it comes down to on the podcast and social media is constantly reminding ourselves of what the actual purpose [of the podcast] is when we get trapped in the numbers and the success of it. And I think us having a purpose that feels pretty big in what we talked about on the podcast and social media is always pretty grounding in being like, ‘okay, even if nobody new ever listened again, I’m pretty proud of the impact that we are making and the message that we do have.’”
Favorite spots on campus/study spots:
- Caroline: Tatte, ISEC
- AnnCatherine: Tatte, Pavement
On balance:
- Caroline: “You have to let different things take priority at different times. Like there will be a six month block where school is the number one priority. And I’m not really traveling during that time, and I’m keeping up with my fitness … So you may have an hour in the middle of your day where it’s really easy to scroll on your phone. But you could also go to sit at the library or a coffee shop and write that paper. You can also go for a walk to the park. It’s about selectively changing your time in terms of the day to day balance of things.”
- AnnCatherine: “I always talk about this ratio rule — you have a set amount of things that you’re going to do in your life. You have buckets of interest, like relationships, self fitness, work, hobbies. Sometimes work and school are going to take up a lot of your time, and the others are going to have to adjust to fit the ratio for that.”
Favorite spots/activities in Boston:
- Caroline: Walking or reading at Boston Commons, walking the Charles River, Lolita
- AnnCatherine: Walking down the water, around Beacon Hill, and the South End
Hidden facts:
- Caroline: “We’re both fluent in Mandarin. [But] if someone got really technical on me then I may get a little scared. We [also] live in a beach town in the summer.”
- AnnCatherine: “I’m a beach lifeguard … [and] I love to build things … I have a Jeep at home. And I will be out there in the summer with a wrench taking the bolts off of it, [or I] will switch the resistor.”
Role models:
- Caroline: “Our parents are definitely the biggest support system. I think they’re the only people who fully know the ins and outs of everything that we do and the positives and negatives. And they’re also very motivated people in themselves … they pretty much put themselves through college.”
- AnnCatherine: “We’ve definitely learned by example … our dad has kind of carved his own path in the business world. And he was an engineer — he went against the typical path, and we saw that he was capable of doing so, so we’re just as capable of doing so.”
Words they live by:
- Caroline: “Do what you say you’re gonna do. It’s very simple. You can apply it to any realm of your life.”
- AnnCatherine: “Rise and motherf*cking shine, for a lot of reasons. One, it’s hilarious. Two, I like getting up early, and I like getting after it. And three … I think throwing the ‘motherf*cking shine’ in there makes it kind of silly; it’s more of the vibe that we’re going for.”