Courtney (2:56)

That's about right.

Dusty (2:58)

Awesome. And you're Also over on TikTok, you have a website, you're doing a lot of things, so you're doing some really cool stuff. You've grown a great big community over there. Courtney, how are you doing today?

Courtney (3:07)

I'm doing wonderful. Thank you so much, Dusty, for letting me come on today.

Dusty (3:10)

Really looking forward to it. So give me the origin story of the channel. Like how did it start? Give me the whole thing. Tell us. Don't leave any stone unturned.

Courtney (3:19)

Absolutely. It started with hyper fixation and annoying everyone in my personal life because I simply could not stop talking about wavy, curly hair and how to care for curls. I may not look like I have curls today, and that is because I am actually in cosmetology school and the students get to practice on each other. So I had a student practice a blowout on my hair today. But usually I have decently wavy curly hair. How this all started was, is I was teaching preschool about six to seven years ago. I don't remember exactly because I've slept since then and I have small children. But there was a coworker who always had the perfect blowout when she would come in to work at the preschool. Gorgeous hair, always. One day she came in and she had ringlets, like perfect spiral curls. And my jaw hit the floor. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. And I asked her, what curling iron did you use? And she very sweetly laughed at me and said, no, these are my natural curls. And there was a whole handbook that she had just got done reading and she gave me the handbook. I became so interested in seeing if my own hair was actually wavy curly because honestly, anytime I'd let my hair dry naturally, it looked like I'd stuck My finger in a light socket. And that's not the look I'm going for. So I started teaching myself different styling techniques, different products that worked well for me and what didn't work well for me. And I was loving talking about it to anybody who would listen. And very quickly, all the people in my personal life got very tired of hearing about scrunching gel into your hair. So I created an Instagram account not only to talk about this subject that I was really interested in, but also to document my own progress with getting my hair healthier. Because oftentimes wavy curly hair is wildly unhealthy when it is being heat styled super frequently. But the more you care for it, the healthier it gets. So I wanted to document that process on Instagram. This was a long time ago. And in Instagram they didn't have video form longer than 60 seconds. And it was that cute tiny little square and you had 60 seconds. After a while my curls started to look better and better and I had more and more people asking me, what are you doing exactly? I need to know step by step every critical detail of what you're doing. So I thought, okay, I'm going to move over to YouTube where long form content is more functional. And I started sharing long form videos. They were terrible. I filmed on my iPhone resting my phone on the side of my bathtub, edited it on my phone and just went from there.

Dusty (6:18)

So over on the Swavy Curly Courtney YouTube channel, I'm looking at it now. You just have 639 videos, videos uploaded, 185000 subscribers. And you have a little campaign going right now where it says you're 89 of the way to 200000 subscribers. Good for you. That is so cool. So you obviously didn't and are not just focused solely on YouTube. So you are a creator that is on TikTok, that does Instagram, that has YouTube stuff and now has a website. So we'll certainly tackle those kind of. As we continue the conversation, I want to ask you, when was the moment when you thought to yourself, okay, this thing might go from just more of a hobby or more of something I'm really passionate about, to being something that could be a full time gig or a full time job for you. Do you remember when that might be?

Courtney (7:10)

I do. It was when the channel got monetized in June of 2019. I started uploading consistently in January of that year just for funsies, just for kicks and giggles, to see what would happen. And I made a commitment to Put three long form videos up per week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 10:00am Central Standard Time. I did not know what I did not know. And that is a very aggressive upload schedule. But it was a schedule that I was able to maintain for an extended period of time. And I got really lucky in the beginning. A couple of my first few videos really got grabbed by the YouTube algorithm, really got pushed well, and that gave me an inkling of hope. But it was when the channel got monetized in June that I was like, okay, boys, we're now off to the races. Let's go.

Dusty (8:03)

I love that. That is such a cool story. And just out of curiosity, I have a lot of listeners and people who approach me weekly who ask me, how do you handle the early phase of being a creator or trying to be a creator when you have a job or you have a family or you have things that you're juggling and this isn't the only thing you can comm time to, because you and I both know this. When you can wake up and this is what you do, you're allowed so much more freedom. Your life just opens up. But when you actually have another nine to five or something to do, what were some things that you put in place to make sure that you had enough time to do the upload schedule that you wanted to do?

Courtney (8:43)

Absolutely. My son was very young at the time and I was working from home as well, so I was a little bit stuck, spoiled in the sense that I got to work from home and could do a meeting, run to my bathroom, wash and style my hair and film it, and then run back to my computer and continue working for the day. For somebody who is working and wants to become a full time content creator, the passion is what drives it. It's the thing that you can't stop talking about. You can't stop driving your friends and co workers crazy about because you keep talking about it constantly. It's being really excited about the stuff that you're filming that will carry you through until it becomes a full time financial gig.

Dusty (9:33)

Yeah, I think that oftentimes when I think back of that season of my life, it was that it was the passion of knowing that I love what I'm doing and I would do this even if there wasn't a paycheck on the other side of it. That's an important thing is that you have to ask yourself, is this something that I would talk about or do and not get a dime for? Obviously, if you're a business and you're getting into YouTube or creation to help promote the business. That's a little different and that's a different story. So we're not really talking about those types of people. But yes, I love that you answered that question that way. Now you knew you were going to talk about curly hair, wavy hair. When it comes to niching down and talking to your audience, what did you discover about how important that was of knowing that, hey, you are talking about this one thing. Even in within hair care, you're talking about curly hair. So talk about how important you think niching down is and talking to a specific audience and demographic.

Courtney (10:34)

Like I said, I got real lucky that a first few of my initial videos grabbed really well. And I do think it's because of how far niched down I was. And at the time there weren't any other content creators uploading the same type of content. There had been people who had done it a few years prior and I had of course watched their videos and learned from them about how to care for waves and curls. But when I really started pushing hard from January to June of 2019, there, there wasn't anybody who was Caucasian who had a looser curl pattern. I don't have tight curls. Looser curls behave so differently than tighter curls. There were many things about my content that were so niched down. So yeah, it was critical and I got lucky that the thing that I got hyper fixated on was so niched down.

Dusty (11:31)

Is there something that you wish you would have known sooner? Like looking back now that you're almost 650 videos into this thing, years into it, doing it full time, Is there something that you look back at and you say to yourself, man, if I just would have known that sooner, if I just would have done that sooner. Is there any, anything of that nature?

Courtney (11:50)

I was so cripplingly scared and afraid of saying or doing something that was going to make the Internet mob angry at me. And I didn't say a lot of things, I didn't do a lot of the videos that I wanted to do because I was scared of people revolting and hating me. Turns out that no matter how perfect you are, there will always be somebody who hates you. No matter how nice you are, how kind you are, there will always be hate comments. If I could go back and tell baby YouTube Courtney something, it's that the hate comments don't matter and your people are going to find you and stick around with you. The best thing you can do is just to bring the best version of yourself that you can and don't water yourself down because you're afraid.

Dusty (12:44)

How do you handle comments? Not just negative, but just comments in general? Has it evolved over time and do you answer all of them or do you dedicate a specific amount of time? What are your thoughts there?

Courtney (12:54)

Oh gosh, I don't think I have the right answer on this one. I'm not sure I'm doing it right. I do my best. As for negative comments, I I'm very sensitive and I have a block button and I'm not afraid to use it. So if you even remotely hurt my feelings, thank you, come again. Actually, don't blocked, you're gone. But as for other comments, people who are genuinely being kind YouTube's gotten real nice to content creators lately. We have automated replies. You can click a lot of automated replies and that fits like you approve which of the replies sounds most like you. If somebody's asking a very specific question, I tend to answer that question as best as I can in a YouTube comment. I don't hit all of the comments, but I do allow myself roughly 30 minutes a day to sit down and comb through comments, answer as many comments as I can. But that's not I definitely don't get to all the comments.

Dusty (13:54)

Where would you say you foster the community the most? As far as YouTube has tried to do better over the past couple of years of giving us a community tab and making it more kind of community focused. But sometimes the comment section of a YouTube video can be avoiding. For education creator like myself, I use it as like a jumping off point for new videos and stuff like that where people are asking questions. But for a creator like yourself, yeah, you have your fans down there commenting, but oftentimes you're better served really taking them off site. Whether it be an email newsletter or a Facebook group or like a discord server like what I've done over on Patreon, there's a lot of things that you can do. How have you fostered your community?

Courtney (14:34)

I used Instagram for that. I really enjoyed doing Instagram lives in 20202021 and a lot of people from YouTube would come over to my Instagram specifically to sit and chat and hang out live with me. I tried doing lives on YouTube and didn't realize you had to have a moderator. Oops, that was a little traumatizing. So I don't tend to go live on YouTube as often now, but but I was able to really foster a good community over on Instagram. I think the thing that also pushed that besides the live, was Instagram stories People really like seeing you show up and just talk to the camera real quick. Chatty. So that's where I fostered the majority of my community.

Dusty (15:20)

Do you think if someone's growing a YouTube channel already has one that's established. Do you think it's a good idea to maybe branch out to Instagram and give a more. I don't know. I don't know if you would call it a more intimate place to connect with their creator of choice, but would you say that's a good idea? Bad idea.

Courtney (15:36)

I went the other way around. I started on Instagram and then branched out into YouTube. I don't think it could hurt. If you have the time and the resources and the bandwidth to start another thing. Absolutely do it. Instagram's kind of become its own beast at this point. Like, the quality of uploads that you have to have is a tad bit exhausting. It's not like it was five years ago. Five years ago, you could snap a photo and write a really sweet caption and people would feel like they were engaging with you and you could show up on stories. But now the production quality of the video on Instagram is a lot. Maybe something like Snapchat would be an option. I'm not sure. I don't think it's absolutely necessary. I think there are other better ways to do it than I am doing it. It's just how I did it because of the time frame when I started.

Dusty (16:25)

All right, guys, I interrupt the podcast episode this week to tell you about a new thing I have to offer all creators. I'm doing channel audits now. They're 15 minute recorded videos that I provide to you. You purchase the order and I go to your channel and I do an audit of your channel. I watch a couple videos, I look at your channel homepage, your description, all of the different things. So think of it as a channel review. So if you're looking for a channel review, there will be a link in the show notes. Very 50 bucks gets you one of these. I think it's very inexpensive and it could get you started or may lead into something, whether it be YouTube coaching or down the line figuring out something that you never would have seen yourself. So if you're looking for another set of eyes on your YouTube channel for a very good price, go check that out. Now, it'll be under the channel review section in the show notes. Now back to the episode. We all go about it different ways, but that's why I love this podcast, is because I can chat with people like you. And we can just talk about the different ways that we've done it and compare notes and it makes for a really interesting conversation. I want to ask you you now some more technical questions. So let's start with packaging, with thumbnail title description. What is your process there? Give us the details of how you create and optimize your packaging for all your videos.

Courtney (17:42)

Usually I start with the video idea. Every Sunday I sit down and I really think through what video I want to do for that week. Monday is my filming day, so that's why I do it on Sunday. I don't think I do this correctly either, but I tend to go video topic, film video, edit video, then create thumbnail and come up with a title. I know a lot of content creators have a lot more success going in reverse order, coming up with the thumbnail concept and the title concept and then filming the YouTube video afterwards. I start so topic based because of the type of content that I do. That's how I work that flow.

Dusty (18:23)

Do you do all of it yourself? And as far as the thumbnail goes, what tools are you using?

Courtney (18:29)

I love Canva. Who doesn't? Everybody and their grandmother is using Canva these days for YouTube thumbnails. It's just so easy. The background remover tool, the ability to adjust different levels and color correct and whatnot, makes it really easy. So I like Canva.

Dusty (18:44)

Yeah, when they released that background removing tool, I don't know, it was a couple of years ago, I was already paying for Canva anyways and when they released it, I was like, like I remember because I do tutorial videos on technology. I remember one of my more popular videos over 14, 15 years ago when I first started when I was in college was how to remove a background from an image on Photoshop. It's got over like a million, maybe more than that now views. And I was like, man, this is just so much easier. You just put a picture in here and boom, it just removes the background. So I do utilize Canva myself. So it's, it's encouraging to hear other creators do as well. As far as the ideation, you talk about doing some kind of ideation on Sunday and then Monday's kind of your filming day. What do you do as far as, where do you get your ideas from for the videos?

Courtney (19:28)

If you watch a few of my videos, it is subtle, but you probably already know I am a Christian and my whole purpose with being here on the Internet is to be as helpful as humanly possible. I want to serve the Lord by Serving women who hate their hair. Nobody has bad hair. Nobody should feel like they, they suck. Like their hair is just bad hair. No, it's not. It's wavy, curly, and it has very specific needs and I want to show up for you. So usually sitting in church on Sunday, I'm praying and asking the Lord, this is your YouTube channel. What do you want to do with it this week? And he hasn't not answered yet. So that's how I do that.

Dusty (20:10)

That is awesome. That is awesome. As far as SEO and your website and email newsletters, like, what are other ways that your audience who finds you on YouTube is able to connect with you and how have you enabled that?

Courtney (20:26)

I do have a newsletter which I am terrible at using, but usually it's just still a sweet little email saying, hey, thinking about you. I filmed this video. Would you like to watch this YouTube video? Okay, great, bye. I have also, back in 2020, launched an online course with all the minutiae of detail all in one place broken down into bite sized videos. That made it a lot easier than trying to search through 500 different YouTube videos that were varying lengths from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. I took all the information and put it into a very pretty package and we had a really nice community in that online platform. But I did take that down because it did become a little outdated and I was terrible at keeping it up to date. We have the newsletter. Let's see, what was the other part of your question?

Dusty (21:16)

No, that was it. You really tackled it. I do want to transition into monetization and how you're making money, so we'll do that. But before we do that, I do want to ask you about when Monday gets here and it's time to film it's recording day. What does your process look like? Can you walk us through that?

Courtney (21:30)

I absolutely can. I again, I am a mother of two small children, so usually the morning is spent wearing the children out really nice and thoroughly so that I can put them down for a nap. Nap and then have some time to run into my bathroom and wash and style my hair on camera.

Dusty (21:47)

That is awesome. And as far as I ask you if you outsourced any of the packaging, does any part of your YouTube workflow get done by someone other than you or is someone in your family? Is it all just internally done?

Courtney (22:00)

I do everything. I am a horrible delegator. So I do all the editing, I do all the thumbnails, I do all the SEO and titles and tags. I know we don't do tags anymore, but I still do. It makes me feel good to put tags on my YouTube video.

Dusty (22:16)

Me too. I don't like leaving that box empty myself, as far as that goes. People always talk about delegation and outsourcing, and I'm a big fan of it, a big proponent. But with that said, I don't think there's ever been a easier time than now to do it all yourself. Because not only is the equipment more budget friendly than ever, we all have phones with extremely great cameras. You can get a nice little tripod on Amazon, you can get some decent lighting, and if you find a good recording space, you're good, you're golden, you're good to go. It's really about creative juices flowing and getting the ideas and things of that nature. So I don't think there's ever been a lower barrier to entry of doing it yourself. But I do believe someone in your place, as successful as you've been, the delegation of the things that you hate the most might encourage you to have some more time. And so that might be something that you think about going forward. Always encourage guests that come on the podcast that don't do that yet. It's hard to let go of something, especially when you know how you want it done, and someone's never going to be able to do it the way that you do it. So completely agree with that. Now, as far as. Oh, go ahead.

Courtney (23:20)

I have worked with video editors in the past. It was actually something that Jimmy Donaldson said, Mr. Beast. He said that they're not gonna. I know the hardest part of YouTube is turning over your editing to someone else. They're going to edit it better than you would have. Just turn it over. I have worked with editors in the past. Unfortunately, I am not able to prepare enough to be able to work with an editor because they need some time to eat and sleep. So the Turnaround Time on YouTube videos tends to be really fast. Would be 48 hours. I don't work that far ahead. So I found working with video editors to be difficult because I just couldn't get on my game.

Dusty (24:03)

Yeah, and oftentimes too, you got to go through a few until you find the one that is right for you as well. So it's not just that initial conversation or relationship. It goes beyond that. I could not agree more. Now, as far as the way you're making money, the monetization buckets, before we talk about the amounts and things of that nature, let's talk about the ways that you make money from all of your content across the web.

Courtney (24:24)

First things first, AdSense from YouTube. Very nice. You have to have, I believe it's 4,000 watch hours and a thousand subscribers. We totally gamed that system for my YouTube channel. I don't know if it actually worked, but we think it did. My sweet husband found out that you could make money on YouTube and so what he would do is he would actually open up about 15 tabs with all my videos and play them on a loop. And it did actually push me over the 4,000 watch hours mark. And then because I was now monetized, all of a sudden YouTube grabbed my whole channel and flung it out on to the Internet. My reach got a lot better.

Dusty (25:04)

So I would have to say, knowing YouTube of today, I would discourage listeners to do that tactic. Back then it was probably, it probably did work and it probably did propel Courtney in a position to where she was able to get monetized. But I just don't want anyone listening to this, think that it might work and then happen to get reprimanded because I do know that some people, a lot of folks can get disqualified for invalid clicks and invalid traffic and stuff like that. So I don't want someone saying that is funny to hear like you, your husband really loves you, you got a great relationship and I'm. It's such a cool thing that he would do that for you. So the AdSense is phase bucket A what's next Sponsorships.

Courtney (25:43)

Because I am in a very small niche, I often get the opportunity to work with incredible brands that create curly hair products. And so I create sponsored content for them. I drew a very hard line of not working with any companies that I didn't actually like the products of. The hard part of sponsorships, if you're a smaller creator or you're starting to get into it, the thing that really I had to work through was the comments of people getting irritated when I would have sponsored content. The thing is that the viewers don't see the hundreds of thousands of dollars that content creators turn down anyway. So sponsored content. I did have an online course for a while. I don't currently have one, but I did. Now I am selling online digital products and product guides, downloadable PDFs. I also offer virtual curl coaching sessions so I can sit down with somebody who needs help with their hair and just wants to talk face to face virtually about their hair texture, the products they've tried, what's working, what's not, and sketch out a really good game plan for them.

Dusty (26:56)

I just, it's so cool hearing creators talk about their monetization methods because it makes me so proud and thankful for the platforms that are available to us like YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and places like that. Because now, as an influencer or creator or whatever you want to call it, there's so many avenues. To think that you are able to digitally sit down with a person and chat about their hairstyle and it makes them feel good and it allows you to make some money for your time is just such a cool thing. Now, as far as the amount of money that you're able to make, I know you can't tell me exactly what it would be, but with everything total, what are you able to make as far as, like, on average for a monthly income?

Courtney (27:37)

There was one more revenue stream that I did forget to mention. Oh, yeah. It's similar to sponsored content, but it's also affiliate links and commissions. So a brand will give me a trackable link and a coupon code specific to me, and I get commission from every purchase from that code being used. And if you have enough good relationships with brands, that can actually become a sizable income. I also make sure to use monetizable links anytime I talk about a product in a video. YouTube's affiliate program is really good. It. It just launched fairly recently. But if you link a product through YouTube, the commissions tend to be wonderful. They're not the 2 to 3% commissions that we were getting from Amazon. They're like 10 to 12 regularly that I have been seeing. Love that.

Dusty (28:28)

Yeah, yeah. The YouTube shopping program is really good in the way that you're able to. They've partnered with multiple retailers to allow creators to do that. So that's. You're exactly right. But as far as with all of those added together, what might you average in a month? Month?

Courtney (28:43)

I have a personal goal of hitting $10,000 a month, and I usually hit that.

Dusty (28:49)

Yeah, that's awesome. And as this, I tell you, there's people who've got mad at statements like that when I'll have guests on and they'll say, I make 25 grand a month. And then the guest will just casually say. They'll just say, that's not that much. And then I'll have angry comments mad at me. They're like, oh, man, where I'm from the. This X amount of dollars. So it's just amazing that creators are able to do that. And you and I obviously are thankful for that. That, that we're videos and podcasts and the different things that we do to bring value to the people that are in Our specific audience, which is really cool and unique thing that we get to do as far as. Go ahead.

Courtney (29:26)

The viewers. I totally understand where people are coming from with hearing a number like that and then somebody dismissing it by saying it's not really that much. It's because there are always content creators that are knocking it out of the park, quadrupling the number that we just said. Also, there are aspects of running a business behind the scenes. So while that does sound like a deliciously high number, you've got taxes, you've got business expenses. There's things that drastically reduce that number that make it more like a. Oh, that's like a normal living.

Dusty (30:02)

Yeah. People just don't. They don't think about that, though. They don't think that, yeah, that's what you may make in a month. But then after everything's taken out, it sounds a little more not reasonable, but it sounds a little lower than even what we're saying now. So I just appreciate you being honest with me and I ask you all fair if we could discuss that. And so I just really appreciate that. As far as your channel goes, what's next for you? What are you looking to do in the future to grow the channel and just grow your brand?

Courtney (30:26)

I am so excited. Because of YouTube, I am actually getting to pursue a lifelong dream. I am in cosmetology school at the moment and I plan on opening up a curly hair salon in my hometown. I live in sweet little old West Texas and there is not a curly hair specific salon here. While those are gaining in popularity across the country, we don't have one. And you know what? We need one. So I am actually going to cosmetology school and we'll be documenting some of that on the YouTube channel for fun, but also just sharing more tips and tricks on how to care for curls on a head of hair that is not my own.

Dusty (31:10)

That is so cool. I can't wait for you to open that. That's going to be so neat to hear the origin story from YouTube as a creator and now you're getting your own story after school. That's so cool. As far as a final question I want to ask you, there's people who are listening to this along the journey that haven't even started. They've just started their creator journey. They're trying to grow a channel, they're trying to monetize and make money from their content. What would be your parting words to these people listening? What would you say to them?

Courtney (31:39)

It's incredibly easy to get in your own head. When you're doing a solopreneur type venture like this, YouTube is very only you until it expands out. The biggest tip is to think about the person watching your videos. You're showing up for the person on the other side of the screen. That's why you're here. That's why you're even able to do this. Because of the people who choose to watch that show up and make their day better, make their life easier. Show up with a service heart and I think that'll carry you a lot further than anything else.

Dusty (32:16)

Very well said guys. You can go check out Courtney's YouTube channel over at Swabycurly. Courtney, and that's Courtney with a C. And hopefully you might could assist her in her pathway to 200,000 subscribers that she is so close to getting. Courtney, thank you so much for joining us this week and we'll talk to you next time.

Courtney (32:34)

Thanks, Dusty.

Dusty (32:35)

And that's a wrap on this week's session of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. Thanks for sticking around for this conversation. Don't forget, there's a few different ways you can connect with us. I offer one on one YouTube coaching. We have a Mastermind group that gets basically you the ability to rub elbows with other creators all throughout the week. Mastermind calls, exclusive podcast recordings, five to ten bucks. Check that out as well. And then now we're offering channel audits. If you're looking for a inexpensive way to get another set of eyes on your YouTube channel, I record 15 minute video reviews and audits of your channel. You can do it all. Throughout the process you'll see a link in the show notes called channel reviews. Check that out. It's a new thing that we're offering and we're also working on our new cohort. That's something that's going to be coming around the line. And if you're looking to be a part of a cohort, which is a weekly the Mastermind or hour and a half like call with other creators, I'm working on getting that out the door as well. Don't forget to subscribe to our email newsletter to be notified when that goes live. Thank you all for everything that you do, all the listens, all the downloads, all the positive reviews and you know what, any feedback. And with that said, we'll see you next week.