Transcript
Rachel Allen (0:00)
With the YouTube thing, I wish I would have known how hard it was going to be to dive into long form content because I feel like I can be funny and entertaining and storytelling in one minute. I got it. Like I've mastered that one minute. Boom. Got you. But to make it longer, that's a lot.
Dusty (0:25)
Welcome back to another episode of the YouTube Creators of Podcast. Dusty here as always, and today I'm just going to tell you really quickly, we're brought to you by the fine folks over at Tubebuddy. If you're looking for a YouTube coach, I believe I can be the perfect person for you. We also have a place called Creator Communities over on our Discord server. For five bucks, you get access to that community, plus you get access to the Mastermind calls. The February Mastermind call is happening on the 26th, so go ahead and lock in your spot now to be a part of that. We really appreciate you guys doing that, supporting the show and you're going to get tenfold what you put into it. It's a great community over there with some wonderful people. I really love what this show is becoming. I love talking with creators every week. So let's go ahead and jump into this week's conversation. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's conversation on the podcast. I'm joined today by Rachel Allen, who is in her 20th year as a public school teacher, spending the majority of that doing middle school band. She started creating band content in 2022 and has grown to almost 200,000 followers over on Tik Tok. And then in the fall of 2024, last year, as we're recording this, she decided to take the jump into YouTube and within four months she has 100,000 plus subscribers, millions of views, sometimes per day, and a great community over there. Rachel, how you doing today?
Rachel Allen (1:48)
I'm doing great, Dusty. Thanks for having me.
Dusty (1:51)
Absolutely. So you got to tell me the story behind this. You're a band teacher, you're in middle school, which, by the way, God bless you for doing the Lord's work. Middle school teacher doing the band stuff is just. It's got to be fun, chaotic and all of the above. But give us the story and the journey of everything as far back as starting the TikTok channel and then transitioning to YouTube. Give us the full story.
Rachel Allen (2:19)
I started on TikTok January 2022 and I, I started, I made a video because I was like, I'd been watching for over two years. I joined TikTok during the pandemic because I was bored and I was like, I could do this. I. I consumed a lot of content, so. And watching so many teachers and just so many other people on TikTok, I was like, I could do this. This isn't that hard. And I finally took the plunge one day and was like, okay, I'm gonna make my own video. And it was horrible, but some people watched it, and I was like, wow, this is cool. So then I kept making more, and I started gaining some traction. And the main reason I started doing it, though, was because as a music teacher in your school, you are often very lonely. I teach middle school band, and at my school, we also have a choir teacher. But our choir teacher, who had been my best friend, ended up leaving that year. So I was all alone, and we had. Didn't have. That was when there was a huge teacher shortage, so there was no one to replace her. So we just didn't have that teacher for the year. So I was really alone, and I needed to connect with other music teachers online. I was desperately seeking a community, and. And that's what I started to get. I started to get more band students than band kids or than band teachers, actually. So I started creating content for them, connecting with as many music teachers as I could find, especially band directors. And so after posting consistently for, like, almost three years, I have created a huge community, and it's been way bigger than I ever thought it could be. So I got onto TikTok. That's my TikTok thing. And then you want to hear about my YouTube getting on to that is. I give all of the credit for YouTube to my cousin Cole, who listens to your podcast and had been telling me for over a year, listen to this podcast. You need to put your stuff onto YouTube. Why haven't you done this yet? And I finally listened to him. I was like, okay, fine, I'm going to listen to your podcast, and then I'll decide about. About putting myself on YouTube. And it was the. It was an episode. I think it was in October. I'm not exactly sure when it had aired, but it was with Roberto Blake, and it was about big creator energy. And this was October. I'd had a huge video or a very decent video go mega viral back in August with 22 million views on TikTok. And so I'd started gaining followers very quickly on TikTok. So I was like, let me see what else I can do. Like, where else can I take this? So I listened to that episode with Roberto Blake, and I was like, you know what? I'm Going to do this. I'm going to dive in. And kept listening to your podcast. Started just dumping content over into YouTube. Every time I'd listen to your podcast, I'd get a different idea for how I could make my page better, how I could improve my thumbnails, even if they were just my shorts, thumbnails. And 113,000 followers later or subscribers later, here I am on YouTube and it that journey was the fastest journey I've ever experienced. And I'm still dealing with the jet lag from.
