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How One Video Changed Everything: The YouTube Pivot That Led to Success
00:27:39
In this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast, host Dusty Porter interviews Laryssa, the founder of the YouTube channel 'Beekeeping Made Simple.' Laryssa shares her inspiring journey of moving across the country to become a beekeeper and...
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's conversation on the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. My name is Dusty Porter, the host of the show. As always, I am joined today by Larissa. Larissa runs the YouTube channel Beekeeping Made Simple. So she took a leap and moved across the country to become a beekeeper, learning from the ground up. Her journey from losing her first hives to running a successful apiary in Hawaii and teaching beekeeping classes has led her to find Beekeeping Made simple, which is her YouTube channel and business. And her goal with it is to help others learn how to keep bees the simple, sustainable way. Larissa, how are you doing today?
- [00:41]
B
I am cold. How are you doing?
- [00:44]
A
I'm doing great. We've had a couple of mishaps trying to get this interview scheduled, but you know what? We are here now and I cannot wait to dive into your YouTube channel. What inspired you to start the YouTube channel? Give us the origin story of, okay, you moved across the country then, now you've moved back, but give us the origin story of how Beekeeping Made simple started.
- [01:07]
B
When I first started keeping bees in Hawaii, started working for two apiaries. One was a beekeeper and one had a beekeeping museum. And they wanted me to do beekeeping tours. And I was talking to people about opening up a beehive, showing them the queen to all the tourists that come to Hawaii. And I got really bored with the basics of honeybees, and I wanted to learn more. And so I started a podcast at first, just as a way to record and talk about the things I was learning about bees, because my husband, he's not a beekeeper, listens, but I didn't want to bore him with the specifics all the time. So I started a podcast. And then I started giving beekeeping classes to people that wanted to learn how to keep bees in Hawaii because there really wasn't anyone doing it on the west side of that island. And then when I had my son, I started putting the classes online because I couldn't do the in person classes anymore. And that's when I realized that the podcast wasn't a great way to show people how to keep bees. It was a great way to talk about bee biology and stuff. But once I wanted to start teaching people online how to keep bees, YouTube and that class with the videos was really the best way to show people what I was doing. YouTube really just started getting the exposure. It was a really great way to get exposure for my course.
- [02:45]
A
What was the moment that you realized that YouTube was more than a hobby or it Was moving towards something that could really be a big cog in your business.
- [02:55]
B
Probably about a year in, I filmed a video that was terrible. It was terrible shooting. It was raining out and cloudy. I finally finished editing it and put it on YouTube. And I had given up on. I was using YouTube more as a way to advertise. I was paying for Google, paying Google to advertise on other people's YouTube channels to get people on my course. But when I put this one video up, I forgot about it because I had had a baby and was busy with that. And when I finally went back to YouTube, like four months later, I saw that I made a couple thousand dollars off of this video. And I was like, oh, this is actually. Maybe there is something to it. I'm just not making the right videos. And it can actually be a little bit more than just generating leads to my online class.
- [03:56]
A
So what was the pivot that you made after you stumbled on that video? You came back. What were the things that you put into play when you realized, okay, I want to take this serious. I want to use my videos as a lead gen for my courses and my website. I did some research prior to this interview. And whenever you search for beekeeping on YouTube, you're always in the top list of videos that come up, so you've obviously done something right. What would you say were the pivots or the things that you did to make sure to set yourself and your channel up for success?
- [04:29]
B
A lot? One, Even if I was too busy to make a video and go out to the bee yard and do that, I at least went live just to continue making that channel there and to continue giving people help that have been supporting my channel so they didn't think I just fell off the face of the earth. The other thing I did was I realized that I couldn't just make. I thought beekeeping was a very niche field, and that was enough. If I was just in this topic, I didn't want to get any more specific than that, because how many people are really researching beekeeping in comparison to, like, cooking and how to lose weight and how to run a business, those really popular topics. But then I realized that if I focused even more on the beginner beekeeper and the basic. These like, basic principles, this video was what I wanted. I wished I had seen when I was getting started, I was so confused. I read so many books, took a class, but I still was just very confused about these basic principles. And once I figured them out so that I could keep my personal beehives alive. I made videos that was just like when you open a beehive, this is what you're looking at and this is why they do this. And there's only two different kinds of things you're going to see here. It's going to be this or this. And just like breaking it down to like really simple terms as opposed to say, a lot of beekeepers aren't trying to talk to the beginners, they're talking to the sideliners, the people with 50 hives. And they're using all these terms that people don't know. And you're left with more questions than when you started. And so then my bow became instead of people having to do five more, you look at five more videos to answer their question. I want to fully answer a question so that they can actually be like, okay, now I know what to do.
- [06:31]
A
You mentioned live streaming. You stream the first Friday of every month and you've stayed consistent with that. And it's really helped you form and build the trust in the community around the beekeeping community. What would you say, what role would you say that live streaming has played in the growth of the channel? And just you as a creator, the, the streaming aspect of things, where did that, where does that fit in?
- [06:54]
B
I'm thinking about the live streaming a little bit differently now and considering doing it a little bit more often. I really put myself out there to sound like an idiot sometimes, honestly, with the live streams, which I don't really see the other beekeepers doing, other people will say, give me your questions and I will address them in the live stream. And I just sit there and exhausted from taking care of a three year old and a five year old and I'm like, okay, give me your questions. What can we talk about? And they just throw them at me like while I'm there. And so I think I've gotten a lot of support from some of the more advanced beekeepers and people that have been doing it a while too. And they join in on the chats, even if they're not learning much, as like an additional person to offer their help and support and what they've been doing. And so I think just putting myself out there and just saying, okay, what can we talk about? In addition to this one topic I've prepared everyone just works together to offer in their experience, which I really love.
- [08:04]
A
And would you just say the live streaming has really fostered the community aspect of kind of your channel and the content you're creating because you are able to spend long amounts of time with these people and they're asking questions and they're bouncing ideas off of each other. So as far as a community building aspect of YouTube, would you say streaming is one of the key ways that, that you and others could do that?
- [08:29]
B
Yeah, I definitely am hoping to figure out ways to encourage that even more. Like once the stream is over, how can we encourage people to take that step to be a mentor for other beekeepers or to connect people? A lot of my students will sign on. I do a private live chat with the people that are members of my channel and my students and it's commercial free. And then I do the live chat for everybody on the first Friday of the month. And so they're both really great ways for, for the community to get to know each other. But since I offer mentoring through my online program, it's a good way for me to get to know my students and for us to talk through problems and for people to learn from other people's problems. But that is something I've been thinking about is like how to encourage even more community amongst people. Which is the trouble with all of these online things is that you don't, you don't have that physical community and how do you keep it going?
- [09:33]
A
And you're fostering. You've been mentioning the membership site and you obviously had the YouTube ad revenue. And we're going to be talking about how you monetize here in a few minutes. I'm really interested to hear the different ways that you've been able to leverage this YouTube community other than just building the brand around beekeeping and what you're doing. But you're building a brand around you and the services that you offer. Can you give us a full walkthrough of the creative process of one of your videos from idea to upload? What does that look like for you?
- [10:04]
B
I've been spending a lot more time just sketching things out. I try to sketch out. At least I've shifted a little bit. I now acknowledge that you really need people to click on your thumbnail or else what's the point of the video? It doesn't matter how good the video is. That video that did really well, that made me pivot in my channel. That video took months. It took three months before people started to watch it and YouTube started to recommend it. And it was a very slow process. So now I spend a while sketching out my thumbnails before I even make the video and the outline. And I always try to think about what tips I try to give because I'm an educational video. So what I have, I think to keep people watching is I keep trying to add in tips on top of what I'm teaching. Don't do this. Or you could save time by doing this or try this gadget or something. So once I'm done my outline and sketching my thumbnails and work on my different titles, I'll just go through it and think about what tips I can add in. And I go through it again and readdress like, what is the real question I'm trying to answer with this video? Am I actually answering it? And then I go back to the intro and try to figure out whether the intro is going to lose people in the first minute or not. And then the filming process is a real pain in the butt, to be honest. I don't know if you've tried to film a video outside in the rain with a veil over your face, but it's a real. It's hard right now. It's wintertime. We just moved back to Pennsylvania in August. It's not so bad. I have a light. I'm filming inside, but outside the filming is a real pain in the butt. I went to college for graphic design. I was a graphic designer full time for 10 plus years before even starting the channel. So I use the Adobe products because that's what I have on my computer. Try to add in as much like B roll and text to follow up what I'm talking about in Premiere Pro. And I spend a lot more time than I should editing my videos, that's for sure. It's definitely something that's a goal of mine for this year, is to cut back on that.
- [12:31]
A
Either cut back or maybe hire someone to take care of it for you. That's something that I've been considering. And a lot of my things in my business is I've made a list of things that I love doing, I'm passionate about doing in the content creation, the ideation, those kind of things. But the things that I really dislike, there's some really mundane things that I could take away and I wouldn't have to worry about them. I could offload those. And that's something that I'm considering myself now. You mentioned thumbnails and you mentioned that there's no reason to even make a video if people don't click on the thumbnail. So what are some things that you've learned along the way about thumbnails? Because as I look at your channel, as we're talking, and before this interview, I've seen the evolution of your. Your channel and the different thumbnail styles that you've used. So give us the things that you've learned along the way that have helped you to make sure people do click and that you're not just uploading to the void.
- [13:25]
B
I have been adding a lot more photos of myself on my channel. For better or worse. Some people might not want to learn from me just by looking at my face. I've. I've done that too. I'm like, oh, I don't like the look of that person. I don't want to. I don't want to click on that video. Beekeeping is a hobby for people that a lot of people are retired by the time they get into beekeeping. Some people don't want to learn from someone younger than them. But for the people that have watched my videos and like my style, I still put my photo on there so that they can easily recognize. Oh, this is one of Larissa's videos. I haven't noticed that those videos do better than non videos that don't have my face on them, but that is something that I've just chosen to do to help my followers click on them. Definitely. Nice pictures. I finally got a really nice camera for video and still photos. And hippies are hard to take pictures of. They don't stand still. So I've taken a lot of pictures. And if you can get a really nice photo in there, especially a photo that just like, shows what's going on or at least has a beehive on there so that when someone's looking at it and it's this big, it's like, easily recognizable. I spend a lot of time on the thumbnail because it's just. Yeah, it's so crucial.
- [14:57]
A
It is. Do you do your thumbnails before you start working on the videos or do you do it after?
- [15:02]
B
I do it after. Oh, a lot of times I forget to take a picture of myself. So then I'm taking a still frame from the video and putting it in there. Comb my hair so that it looks nice for you too.
- [15:17]
A
Yeah, I. It's funny. I've evolved how I do thumbnails and when I coach clients, and that's obviously a hot topic. And one of the things that people hate oftentimes is taking pictures of themselves and editing for hours, like, images and videos of themselves. And I always tell people, if you have a problem listening to your own voice or you can't look at your own face, there's still times where I just. I'm like, man, I'm tired of looking at myself. I'm tired of hearing myself. Especially when you're working in podcasting, like what I do, but understanding that you got to grow to love it and grow to try to optimize it and the things that you're offering. So it's funny to hear you tell stories about fixing your hair and trying to get the images of that. Now let's talk about monetization and how you make money. You've got a great, wonderful website that you have a course, you have consulting and some classes that you do. You have some apparel. So break down how you make money and how YouTube plays a role in all of that.
- [16:14]
B
Most of my sales is from the course. I especially once I changed it from a flat fee to giving people the option to pay a monthly fee, that's really increased sales quite a bit. And YouTube advertising, it's nice, but it's definitely not paying the bills. It's just help assist. And the apparel also, those things are all just like small additions to it. What I'm working on next really is a sponsorship. I had one beekeeping supply company contact me about sponsoring my live streams. And so now that's the next route for me is really getting more sponsorships. I'm trying to not chase the ad revenue in YouTube. I feel like that's going to be a bad route. If anything, I'm going to offer more advanced courses for people that have already signed up for my course that want to continue to support me. But the ad revenue is. I'm making like, I think last month was like eight something, eight hundred and something a month. And it's helpful, but.
- [17:27]
A
And how much do you make on the course a month?
- [17:30]
B
That's about 3,500.
- [17:32]
A
Okay. And would you say that a lot of the people who are purchasing your course are consuming your free content on YouTube first, and then that's what you're using as a lead gen to get people into the course.
- [17:45]
B
Cause when people sign up for the course, there's a little survey in the beginning or I asked them their experience with bees and what they really want to learn about and how they found out about the course. And a lot of the people say that they found out about it through YouTube. And that's really like when I'm making a video, sometimes I'll make a video that I think is just a popular topic. But most of the time I'm like, is this going to get the attention of somebody that wants to take a beekeeping class and is serious about Learning beekeeping. Because if they're not and they just are curious how bees make honey, that's okay sometimes. But that's not really what I should be focusing my time on because I am not doing. This is not a full time job for me right now. This is a part time. I am spending one to three days a week, sometimes half days on this when my kids are full time in school, then maybe it can be a full time profession and I can focus more on YouTube sale like making money from YouTube. But at the moment the online course is really what works best for me.
- [18:50]
A
Let's talk about that for a minute. You mentioned not doing this full time. A lot of my listeners are not full time creators. They're people who are aspiring to be or they'd love to be. But right now they're people who are doing it as a hobby or a side hustle or whatever you want to call it. With that being the case, how do you manage your time as a creator, as a mom, as a partner, as someone who has their kind of hands in a lot of different things. How are you able to manage your time? And obviously I know you could answer it by saying I really don't. I think we all probably could answer it that way. But what are some tactics that you put in place? What are some tactics that you put in place to some guardrails to where you can manage your time as a creator?
- [19:30]
B
At the moment, my husband is not working full time, so that is helpful. We are taking. He is self employed as well and we just moved across the country. We have made a schedule with each other when he is in another area of the house with the children and the door is shut and I am working, Mommy is working and that means leave mommy alone. I do a lot of work in the evenings, to be honest. That's when I have preferred to do it before. I used to wake up early and do it before everyone woke up in the morning and that was my time. I really just am trying to carve out a consistent time that I'm making myself that everybody else knows what I found to be the worst. I barely know what not to do. What not to do is to try to squeeze little bits and pieces of trying to get work done when I'm with my kids because that only leads to mom guilt. The best thing is to just find time when I'm not going to feel guilty or, or the kids aren't going to be like destroying something because I'm not paying attention.
- [20:35]
A
Yeah, it's really hard, especially when you're not able to say, this is my full time job, where you have to say, okay, I have to divide and conquer. And especially when you have kids like you do and I do, it's extremely difficult. And so it's nice to hear people that you can resonate with. If there was one thing that you wish you would have known sooner about YouTube and content creation, what would that one thing be?
- [20:59]
B
Really getting people to click on your video is more important than everything else that I'm making in the video. I focus so much on the content in my video and then really think about the process, the process of having a title for the video that's something someone's searching for in Google. So that Google says, hey, why don't you check out this YouTube video? And a thumbnail that makes someone look at it and want to click on it. And those first minute or two before someone just switches to the next video, I focus so much on every other part of the video than those first 30 seconds. And those 30 seconds are so much more important than the next 15 minutes. So I wish I had just thought about that. It seems so simple. But it wasn't until I was listening to this audiobook about YouTube that I was like, which I was doing while cooking dinner, like the typical multitasking while being a parent, listening to YouTube audiobooks while driving my kids to school and stuff. And then I was like, oh yeah, that makes so much sense. Why didn't I ever do that?
- [22:06]
A
Yeah, that's awesome. What's next for the channel? What are you working on? You mentioned maybe some more courses, but as far as the YouTube channel itself goes, are there anything for the short and long term future that you're working on right now?
- [22:20]
B
Yeah, this year is a little scary for me because so I started keeping bees in Philadelphia for two years. They died both years. So I went to Hawaii for an internship and ended up staying there for 11 years. And now that I'm back in Pennsylvania, I am going to be keeping bees for the first time in this climate zone again. And everybody says that beekeeping is harder when it's cold. And, and I've always said it's hard in Hawaii too. It's not cold, but when insects never have a frost, all those pests that kill the bees never have a frost and die either. And so beekeeping in Hawaii can be incredibly difficult. But now is the test. Can I actually keep bees in this cold climate? Will they survive a winter? I have told people that I can do. And so there's that A lot of people have now say now that you were in my climate zone, I signed up for your class or now I'm tuning in more because I can ask you more questions. And I was always a fear of mine was that people wouldn't listen to me because I was in Hawaii. And how many people are in this tropical climate like me that can learn from me now? This year, in addition to just it being wintertime, I started a series called the Beekeeper's Diary. And that's in addition to just step by step how to explanations of videos. This is just me opening up hives and checking the bees and seeing what's going on with my hives and all the problems that come up. Just this last week my husband told me he thought he saw a bear scat in the backyard, which is not good for bees. Bears will destroy hives and they will go past an electric field fence. This is like the kind of stuff that I'm talking about in the diary and I've never done that. I've always just heavily edited my videos and cut out all of the slow stuff. But I am now showing this opposite extreme for the people that want to see all of those steps in between that people cut out and all of the mistakes and things that be super sick.
- [24:37]
A
You mentioned with your process of video editing. You mentioned watching the first minute and making sure that people aren't going to fall off. We know. And people listening to this know how important it is as a creator to capture the attention of the viewer right off the bat really quickly. So what are ways that I could imagine being a beekeeper and you could show some kind of just crazy thing happen or something with the bees or whatever it may be. But how are you capturing the attention of the viewer early on and how has that evolved over time with you learning about, hey, I really need to make sure that I get these people's attention early on in the video.
- [25:14]
B
I have played around with showing things that are going to happen in the video in the very beginning as a little bit of a teaser. I stopped doing that though. I was in a didn't think it was really in with the way my videos were. Mostly I just try to cut to the Js. The intro should not be more than like 30 seconds or a minute. And let's get to it. Let's get to why you're here. And really the intro should be small, if almost existent at all. I used to even give people my experience. I had that typical imposter syndrome, which maybe it's Also, something about people when you're in your 20s or 30s that you wonder, is someone that's twice my age going to want to listen to me? Who am I? Or don't I need 2,000 hives, not 25 hives? And so I used to start my videos with, like, I've been beekeeping for 10 years, and I worked for a commercial AP area for seven, and I'm like, okay, that's enough of this. I don't need to say this in every single video. Maybe some people care, but I think they care more about the reason why they clicked on the video and getting the answer to their question.
- [26:32]
A
I love the realness in that answer because I completely resonate with that. I go back and watch my old intros even a year or two ago, and I say to myself, why did I even mention that? What am I doing? And it's something that I'm actually assessing with this podcast that this thing, this show's been going on now for almost 14 years, and I've been doing interviews and have done almost 500 interviews, and I listened to some of the old episodes, and I just say to myself, it's time to evolve. It's time to take that intro and cut it down and figure out ways to really capture people's attention early on. So I really love the realness in your answer there. All right, guys. I really have enjoyed talking to Larissa. This has been a great conversation. It's one of my favorite things about the show is that I can go one week and talk to a business professional, and the next week I'm talking to a beekeeper. And it's the beauty of YouTube is that it's a platform for everyone, and we can just find our own little niches, our own little spaces on the platform. So, Larissa, thank you so much. If you want to see what she has going on Again, it's@beekeepingmadesimple.com YouTube. It's Just Beekeeping Made simple is her YouTube channel. She's got a great community over there. And, Larissa, thank you so much for joining us this week.
- [27:37]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me, Dusty.