How to Use YouTube to Start a Business with College Student and Entrepreneur Hannah Ashton: The YouTube Power Hour Podcast 284
“What’s great about having a lifestyle channel is that it adapts with you.”
Be sure to check out my FREE eBook: How to Create Impactful Content During COVID-19 Pandemic! This 32 page guide will walk you through how to create content during a global crisis PLUS it includes over 75 YouTube video ideas that you can use TODAY to grow your channel!
Hannah Ashton is a 21-year-old, Latina YouTuber, entrepreneur, and college student. She has grown her following to over 175,000 subscribers as she uploads videos weekly about women’s lifestyle, college, and productivity. In 2019, Hannah launched her e-commerce business where she sells her own self-designed planner, The Dream Achieve Workbook, along with other products to help busy, driven women succeed. Hannah is a Junior at Belmont University in Nashville, TN and is majoring in Entrepreneurship. She strives every day to inspire young women to pursue their dream career and lives, no matter their age.
Hannah started her first channel when she was 10 years old, and the content centered around American Girl Dolls. Like most people, she watched YouTube before creating this channel and she had found a community of girls her age who liked talking about American Girl Dolls, so she started her channel to foster that community. Her current channel was started in 2013 when she was 13 years old, and that’s the one she still has today. She wanted to be a beauty youtuber, even at 13, and by the time she started high school, she had 20k subscribers. By her sophomore year, she had 50k subscribers and then her content shifted to a more lifestyle channel. Her content is decidedly much different now from when she first started on YouTube. She posts videos about college, entrepreneurship, lifestyle, and faith. Hannah has had a remarkable journey of entrepreneurship even at such a young age. She has practically grown up on YouTube, and her dream was to become a full-time YouTuber until she discovered the world of female entrepreneurship online. She even started doing YouTube consulting when she was still in high school, and held her first in-person event when she started college!
“Something I’ve learned through this journey is that creating a sale and processing a sale is a lot more than getting a view or a subscriber on YouTube. That’s free. Getting someone to pay for something, to see the value and give their money is a different transaction.”
When she got to college, naturally as a budding entrepreneur herself, she majored in Entrepreneurship, with the ultimate goal of being a content creator and a business owner after college. Hannah has even launched her own planner line called the Dream Achieve Workbook that she created and sells online, and realized how much different it is to get views and subscribers and actually convince people to pay for something and make a sale. Hannah’s channel has two major content pillars: college (studying, finals, etc.) and business (how to start a business, how to manage a business) and she floats in between the two when she decides what to post next. Her business videos don’t do as well, but she makes them anyway because eventually she will graduate from college and she won’t be able to create college-related content anymore. Being in college has helped Hannah’s channel tremendously, because it totally opened up a new market for her, and believe it or not, sponsors are looking for college Youtubers, because there aren’t many of them when the window of opportunity to create this kind of content is only 4 years. The best thing about having a lifestyle channel for Hannah is that it adapts with you, and especially if your subscribers are around your age, as you get older, so do they, and as your content evolves, it still remains relevant to them too.
“If you’re in college and you want to start a YouTube, I highly recommend it because there aren’t a ton of YouTubers that are still in college.”
3 Key Interview Takeaways
- Productivity tips: Hannah is balancing a lot… she’s a full-time student, a small business owner, AND a content creator. How do you balance all of that? 1. Have a daily to-do list and time block it. 2. Be strategic with 4-5 productive work hours. 3. Have a change of scenery for different tasks, even if that means going from one room to another. Hannah also tries to keep her weekends free for her own mental sanity and so she can enjoy her time in college with her friends.
- Focus on your community. It’s about quality, not quantity. Focus on building a relationship with your subscribers, whether you have 10 or 10,000. Respond to your DMs and comments. Get to know them. Talk to the camera the way you would talk to a friend so they will make the connection. Hannah has even held Zoom events where she could talk to her subscribers face-to-face and really get to know them.
- Plan ahead. The college-related content niche is HUGE, but it’s fleeting. You can’t create college content forever, so plan ahead to what shift you will make in your channel when college is over and you can no longer make those videos about studying for finals or decorating your dorm room. Hannah has started building her personal brand, not just her YouTube channel, so that when she graduates, she can still keep creating relevant content.
Mentioned in the Episode:
20 Habits of Successful People! #girlboss routine
Connect with Hannah:
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
Music provided by Free Music for Vlogs youtu.be/o52xQkQWzyU
*Erika Vieira is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to www.amazon.com.
**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.
