Olympic Medalist Shawn Johnson Reveals the Surprising Reasons Why She Jumped onto YouTube (You’ll want to know this!): The YouTube Power Hour Podcast 254

“Having the freedom that YouTube allows you to have is truly unlike any other job in the world.”

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At 28 years old, American gymnast Shawn Johnson has accomplished a lifetime of achievements that include Olympic medals, a New York Times best-selling book, several businesses, a career in broadcast, and a mirror ball trophy after winning Dancing With The Stars. Born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, Shawn’s girl next door charm led her to be named “America’s Sweetheart.” After retiring from gymnastics in 2012, Shawn made appearances on several TV shows including The Apprentice and Adventure Capitalists. Shawn married Andrew East, with whom she has documented her life with on their shared Youtube channel which has over 100 million views and 1.1 million youtube subscribers, and a podcast which has climbed to #2 on the overall charts.

Shawn started her YouTube channel in 2015 after feeling tired of having other people share her story for her. She wanted to keep the channel unedited and raw, to show something the world hadn’t seen yet. At first, Shawn was the face of the channel while her husband Andrew ran the back end. They had no idea what they were doing at first, and even had the humbling experience of having to build subscribers. With both Shawn and her husband being professional athletes and having over a million followers on their instagram accounts, they figured it would be an easy transition. They had to learn that YouTube is so completely different from any other platform. After 2 years, they only had 50k subscribers despite their large instagram following. They were able to grow their channel to 350k subscribers within a few months by just doing collaborations (namely, the Bratayley family, Rebecca Zamolo, Madilyn Bailey, Jojo Siwa, and Maddie Ziegler to name a few), which were easy given their athletic careers. When doing their collaborations, they were careful to make sure it was authentic to their brand (like gymnastics-related videos). Once they started getting momentum, they realized they had to give in a little to the trends. For a good year or two, they followed the trends to build their audience, and through doing those trends, they really found their voice and the direction they wanted to take their channel in. Within 6 months, they had half a million subscribers.

“We wanted to show a different side of us that professional athletics would never show. They always made it so serious, and we wanted to show the human side of the athlete.”

The absolute turning point of their channel was when Shawn had a miscarriage, and she and Andrew made the decision to share the story so that Shawn could lean on the community they had built to help her heal. The response from this video was incredible, with millions of people reaching out to Shawn to thank her for sharing her story and also sharing theirs, confirming that nobody is alone when navigating such a devastating event. With that video alone, they hit a million subscribers and their video was the #1 trending video. The vulnerable video is their highest viewed video, despite Andrew’s  initial reservations about posting it. It was Shawn who felt compelled to post it, because she needed to feel support from others. She read the comments for hours and cried at how touching the comments were. This video is where they found their niche of personal, vlog-style posts, which is now the majority of their content. As an elite gymnast, Shawn was taught that showing any kind of vulnerability was a sign of weakness, so coming forward and showing a vulnerable, relatable, human side of the professional athlete has been both challenging and cathartic.

“It’s a beautiful opportunity to share with the world a story that isn’t already out there.”

3 Key Interview Takeaways

1. YouTube is a learning process.  Shawn and Andrew were both professional athletes with over a million followers each on instagram, but they learned very quickly that YouTube is unlike any other social media platform. As Shawn says, “YouTube is a whole different world.” Shawn and Andrew had no idea what they were doing at first, and tried collaborations and trends before finally settling on raw, relatable, family vlog videos. It’s a learning process and you won’t be perfect on the first video. It’s going to take awhile, but keep chugging along and keep learning!
2. Finding a balance. As a vlogging channel, Shawn’s biggest struggle is finding a balance between sharing too much and not sharing enough. Often, that line is blurred. With a daughter she now needs to protect and a husband who is fully involved with the channel, it’s important to find the balance between what is your personal life for you family only, and what you should share on Youtube.
3. Importance of Brand Partnerships. Partnering with brands can be a huge source of revenue for you and your channel, and for Shawn, it was a natural integration since they use so many products in their life and in their videos, however, they never partner with a brand that they don’t love. They take the trust of their audience seriously, and if you break that trust, you break your channel. 

Mentioned in the Episode:

Pregnancy + heartbreak | Shawn Johnson + Andrew East

ZERO GRAVITY GYMNASTICS | Shawn JohnsonPregnancy + childbirth | the East Family

Connect with Shawn + Andrew:

Shawn Johnson on YouTube

Shawn Johnson on Instagram

Shawn Johnson on Facebook

Shawn Johnson on Twitter

Andrew East on Instagram

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

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