How Michelle Khare Became YouTube Famous: The YouTube Power Hour Podcast 327
“When you centralize and speak from the heart, that is when true community can be built.”
Be sure to check out my Free 2022 YouTube Goals Workbook! Inside you’ll find you’ll find an exercise that I do with my clients and in my Bootcamp that will help you stick with and achieve your goals on YouTube. The journaling and reflection exercises in the workbook have three different components that we’re going to focus on: money, lifestyle, and mindset, and will help align your life goals with your YouTube goals to help create the 2022 that YOU want.
Michelle Khare is a content creator, actress, and host of HBO Max’s adventure competition show Karma. A former professional cyclist, Michelle lives life to the extreme by taking on intense physical and mental challenges. Each week on her channel, Michelle documents her raw, unfiltered journey into a new community. Michelle’s channel is about pushing herself to the limit, overcoming her fears, and encouraging other people to do the same. Over the course of her videos, you’ll see her train with NASA astronauts, compete in a Miss USA beauty pageant, and even join a clowning troupe. Michelle sets out to prove that with enough hard work, perseverance, and failure, anything is possible.
As a kid, Michelle was always watching the Disney channel, but she never saw anyone who looked like her on those shows, so she never imagined a career in entertainment in front of the camera was even possible for her. After college, she got a job at Buzzfeed and started to experience the YouTube side of the entertainment industry, and this experience opened her eyes to the possibility of taking control of her own destiny. What YouTube offers, as opposed to traditional Holywood, is the ability to put the content and the choice in what to create in your own hands.
Michelle is very “type A.” She’s a planner. So like any good planner, she saved some money and had a plan to leave Buzzfeed and start out on her own; a task that initially seemed daunting. Her goal in starting her own Youtube channel was to take a risk on herself that she had never taken before. She wanted to be creative, have fun, and work hard at a specific dream while having autonomy, the ability to own the content she created, and the freedom to try different types of content. Since then, she’s experienced steady growth, and now, she has 2.5 million subscribers.
Michelle is known for her Challenge Accepted series, but these videos take anywhere from 3-12 months to make from start to finish (from idea to upload)! The editing alone can take a month! She works on about 2-3 videos at a time and has a lot of people on her team to make it all happen. Michelle made her first full-time hire when she was at around 700k subscribers. Hiring someone can be a lot of pressure, because you now have people relying on you. It’s so different when it’s just you, rather than a family of people who rely on you for income.
“You always want to be pushing forward and finding that metric success, but you also want to be making content that is meaningful to you and is meaningful to whoever is going to be watching it, and sometimes those two don’t always align.”
Finding a Balance
YouTube is all about continuous self-improvement and growth, and even someone as successful as Michelle can be questioning themselves every step of the way. Michelle’s biggest struggle? Working with and letting go of the quantifiable aspects like views, subscribers, likes, etc. These numbers can be inspiring and invigorating when they’re working in your favor but debilitating when they aren’t. You always want to be pushing forward and finding that metric success, but you also want to be making content that is meaningful to you and is meaningful to whoever is going to be watching it, and sometimes those two don’t always align. When Michelle struggles with this balance, she returns to her center: what kind of videos does she want to make?
Some of her best performing videos are ones that she didn’t necessarily want to be on her resume or what she wants her channel to be known for. She had to take a moment and let go of that Buzzfeed mentality of making whatever is going to get views. The problem with that strategy is that you can’t build a community with a hodgepodge of videos. When you centralize and speak from the heart, that is when true community can be built. Of course, the pressure for a video to do well affects how much a brand might pay you, your own ego, etc., but Michelle is trying to let that go because it’s not really within her control, so she just tries to focus on making great content.
The Freedom of YouTube
The greatest thing about YouTube is that YOU are the product, and unlike traditional media, you don’t have to wait for a Hollywood executive in a suit to give you the green light. YouTube is accessible to anyone and has given a platform for everybody to have a voice. Michelle’s advice to anyone looking to start a YouTube channel? Make the channel. Make the video. Upload it. That’s the hardest barrier to overcome. The hardest part is putting up a piece of content that may not be your best and seeing what happens. You usually have to create several videos before you really find your niche, and that’s ok! Make uploading content and putting yourself out there a habit.
Final Thoughts
Michelle’s channel is all about throwing yourself in the deep end and trying something new, and few people get the opportunity to challenge themselves in that way. So take a page out of Michelle’s book and try something new!
“It is such a treat to be the captain of your own ship.”
Mentioned in the Episode:
I Trained Like an Olympic Figure Skater
I Trained Like a Professional Clown
I Tried Solving A Rubik’s Cube in Under 60 Seconds
Connect with Michelle:
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
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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.
