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.”

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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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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:

Dream Achieve Workbook

20 Habits of Successful People! #girlboss routine

Connect with Hannah:

Hannah Ashton on YouTube

Hannah Ashton on Instagram

Shophannahashton.com

Podcast Music Credit: Boop by x50 @x50music
Music provided by Free Music for Vlogs youtu.be/o52xQkQWzyU

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