How to Have More Freedom as a YouTuber and Content Creator with Erin Busbee: The YouTube Power Hour Podcast 346
“The people who really find tremendous success are always coachable.”
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Erin Busbee of Busbee Style is the go-to style expert for dynamic women over 40 who want to uplevel their lives. Erin started the BUSBEE brand as a wardrobe consulting business, specializing in styling “real” women one-on-one. Now, she focuses her attention online on both the blog and YouTube channel … providing women with the simple tools they need to look and feel amazing! Erin is proud to lead a community of more than 1-million vibrant women in the prime of their lives! Before Busbee Style, Erin was an award-winning journalist, most notably at WCBS in New York. Erin has appeared as a style expert on, “Good Morning America,” and “CBS 2 News This Morning.” She regularly works with major brands like Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, and Express. She was named a “Woman to Watch” by YouTube, and has been featured in a national spring beauty campaign for Ulta Beauty.
The last time I interviewed Erin in 2019, she had been on Youtube for a few years and had seen a lot of success, but she wanted to take her channel to the next level. Like any business, there are ebbs, flows, ups, and downs with YouTube, and Erin felt like she was in a slump. She was losing the kind of excitement you have when you first start your channel. Erin has always been a proponent for continuing education, and she had hired other coaches for one-off sessions, and while there’s always something you can learn from any coaching, she was looking for something more strategic. Working with me was a way to get to the next level in the strategic way she was looking for.
1:1 YouTube Coaching
Erin was looking for someone to oversee the small details, components, and mechanics of her channel in a way that she didn’t have the time, nor the energy or interest to do. Lucky for her, analyzing data is my JAM! When we started working together, Erin’s channel had just under 300k subscribers and was pulling in about $5k/month in AdSense revenue. As we started working together, Erin’s AdSense started to go way up, and got as high as $20k a month! The increased revenue allowed Erin to give herself permission, so-to-speak, to stop focusing so much on affiliate sales and create what she wanted to create without the pressure of needing to create sponsored or affiliate content. She started working more on evergreen videos that will withstand the test of time and continue to drive traffic to her channel. We worked together a lot on titles and thumbnails, often with several iterations of both to find the right ones. The coaching and strategy really reinvigorated Erin and the excitement she used to feel toward YouTube.
Erin’s Biggest Breakthrough
Through 1:1 YouTube Coaching, Erin’s mindset began to really shift and it started a snowball effect on her channel. The increase in AdSense allowed her to have more creative freedom in her content, and even though she enjoyed the guidance with titling and creating thumbnails, she realized that it wasn’t the best use of her time. So Erin hired more team members. I worked exclusively to train and guide Erin’s new team member on the process of YouTube and helped give her the confidence she needed to be the one to work on the thumbnails, titles, and data. This then snowballed into Erin having more freedom and flexibility to spend that extra time with her family, traveling, and more.
Erin also decided to change her content from focusing on accessible and affordable pieces to more higher end, luxury, sustainable pieces. Erin feels more aligned with this, not just because she has a mission of promoting sustainable fashion, but on a personal note, Erin grew up poor, and it took a long time to break out of the scarcity mindset and be able to buy herself nice things without guilt. If she shows her community that she buys nice things because she feels like she deserves them, then it’s ok for them to as well.
“As a creator, it’s very exciting when you start to see the numbers go up.”
Shifting to One Video per Week
Erin had consistently been uploading two videos a week for years, but during the pandemic, her anxiety level was at an all-time high, and having that kind of debilitating anxiety forced her hand to tone things back to make everything more manageable. She’s a go-getter and a doer, but that’s not always a good thing, and trying to do it all can get overwhelming. She knew she needed to cut back, and she wanted to, because isn’t the whole point of having your own business having the ability to do something you’re passionate about but also having the freedom and the flexibility to do what you want to do in life? Dropping down to one video a week was a big deal for her, and it symbolized the shift in her channel and her life. She was now able to hire new team members. Her business grew by 30%, she was able to work half of the time as before, and travel for 8 months! Erin was finally able to really create the freedom she always wanted.
So how was she able to make that happen? The strategic change that allowed Erin to work less and make more was making every video over 20 minutes long. Why? Because Erin’s analytics showed that her viewers tended to watch well over 10 minutes, and YouTube likes watch time and viewer retention, thus suggesting more of your videos to potential viewers.
Final Thoughts
My goal whenever I work with my clients is to give them the tools, the knowledge, and the strategy to keep the momentum going when our time together is up, and I can’t think of a better example for this than Erin. For Erin, she’s learned to outsource as much as she can so she can rest, recharge, and relax. You can’t have the energy and magnetism and authentic excitement that Youtube requires if you’re burning the candle from both ends. Anyone can learn something, but you have to love it! You can’t fake love, and you can’t pretend to love YouTube. On the fence about investing in coaching or a course? Remember: what got you here isn’t going to get you there. You can’t possibly know all of the things, so you have to invest in yourself and in your business if you want to take it to the next level.
“You cannot fake it on YouTube. If you’re not genuine and don’t have that magnetic energy, you’re not going to grow.”
Mentioned in the Episode:
Connect with Erin Busbee
Resources
Add your name to the Zero to Influence YouTube Bootcamp waitlist so you are notified when space becomes available!
Watch my replay of my FREE Zero to 100k Subscribers Masterclass
FREE GUIDES:
Creating Content During Crisis: How to Create Impactful Content During COVID-19 Pandemic
Getting Started on YouTube: YouTube Niche Workbook
How to get onto PR lists and receive a TON of free product even if you have a small following: PR List
YOUTUBE OPTIMIZATION PLUG-IN I RECOMMEND
TubeBuddy [Use the code ErikasBuddy to get 20% off]
MY FAVORITE BUSINESS TOOLS
Course Creation: Looking to create a course? Kajabi is the BEST platform hands down. I use this for my course after extensive research on all the other platforms.
Live Calls and Interviews: I use Ecamm for my podcast interviews, both audio and for YouTube that you see here on YouTube. It makes it super easy to share my screen and create the split-screen with my guest. I’m not super techie and this software is really easy to use!
Webinars and Live calls: I use Zoom.us for my group coaching calls in my private membership group for female YouTube creators. It’s also the software I use to record my Road to 100k YouTube Subscribers Masterclass!
THE BEST YOUTUBE/PODCASTING EQUIPMENT
After interviewing HUNDREDS of successful YouTube creators, these are the pieces of equipment that hands down get mentioned time and time again. You can’t go wrong with anything on this list!
- 4k Camera: Great for starting out and vlogging
- Lens: This lens is recommended highly by many of my podcast guests, it gives the blurry “YouTuber” background look.
- Audio: If you want to upgrade your set-up, audio should be one of the first investments (after a good camera). This microphone is unanimously the favorite amongst my podcast guests.
- Podcast/Voiceover Microphone: If you are looking for a great microphone for a podcast or video voiceover, this is it! This is the one that you see in all of my videos and the one I’ve recorded my podcast on for years.
- Webcam: For my interviews, that you see in my videos, this is the webcam that I use. Super inexpensive and easy to set up!
- Inexpensive Lighting Kit: Need to pick up some lights but don’t want to spend a ton? This is a great set that will get you started and help improve the look of your videos.
- Ring light: Looking for that beauty look? Invest in a ring light! This is an inexpensive light that does that trick!
FACEBOOK GROUP
Podcast Music Credit: Boop by x50 @x50music
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**Disclaimers: all opinions are my own, sponsors are acknowledged. Links in the description are typically affiliate links that let you help support the podcast at no extra cost.
