Charlie started vlogging to find other designers sharing lifestyle content, not just tutorials. She made a best friend through the YouTube community and says new creators should start with whatever camera they have and stay consistent. Matt uses video to document life as a new dad at ConvertKit.
Chapters
Hey everyone, this is Matt and this is my friend Charlie.
Hi!
As you know, I'm going to be doing some videos, hopefully every day in February, going to be posting a video live on the YouTube channel. That's our friend Mark in the back. Mark, say hey! He's already gone.
Rude.
There he is. So Charlie has been vlogging for quite a long time and— what is a long time?
Like over 3 years. 3 years now. That's not a long time in vlogging, I don't think. Not a long time, but that's how long I've been doing it. Okay.
Yeah, it sounds like a long time to me with video number 3 to be at 3 years. So I wanted to— Charlie was nice enough to answer some questions because one of the things that I like is about getting people to talk with me about certain topics is that I just get to ask questions that I'm interested in but then share them you also. And so, Charlie, tell me what, what made you want to get into vlogging to begin with?
For me, it was the community on YouTube. So I was starting making YouTube videos, not just videos in general, like it was very specifically to upload to YouTube. And as someone getting started, I definitely want to encourage you to take part in the YouTube community and be watching others' content content and commenting on it, following them on Twitter and striking up conversations. I've made a lot of great friends that way, and I don't know, it's good for support as well. Yeah, because it's not a normal thing to film yourself and put them on the internet, and so having people around you who do that too is really good. But yeah, what was your question? Why I started?
Yeah, where'd you—
yeah, most mostly though, why I started was because I was watching a lot of YouTube videos and there wasn't a lot of people like me making videos. I'm a designer and I wanted to hear from other designers about their life rather than just tutorials for using the software, which there is obviously a lot of on YouTube. And now I make some of that too. But for the most part, I wanted to talk about my life and, yeah, put that out there for anyone else who's at this stage in their career.
You mentioned, obviously you mentioned the community and that you've connected with some, you know, some great people. Tell me about a couple of those people, whether it's like the most surprising or unique person, community, brand even that you've been able to connect with or work with, or just someone that is like, I met this particularly good friend now through vlogging?
Well, there's some people like, I was on holiday in Spain and I wanted to see if I could find some Spanish YouTubers, maybe to learn some Spanish from them. And I came across this one girl who was making videos about fashion and beauty and, you know, vlogs about her life. And I followed her, and now she is my best friend, and we live just down the road from each other. We both moved to London like within the space of a few months, and that's pretty cool. And there's been other people too who I started watching as a fan, and now I've gotten to make videos with them as a peer, I suppose, which is really awesome.
That is cool.
Yeah, that can happen on YouTube. I think there's so much less of a barrier between the viewer and the creator. And it feels very personal, and so you can actually get to know them.
What are some tips that you have for first-time vloggers or early vloggers that are out there, myself included? Like, what would you say to me, to us?
To like progress with what you're doing?
Yeah, just to progress, to get those like early— Yeah. To get those early videos out. Out feeling overwhelmed or weird, because that's, that's something that I, I feel like whether it's either going to take too much time or lighting or the sound is any of that, there's just, there seems to be more variables. Yeah, with video, and you wouldn't— yeah, so what, what do you think?
Okay, first off, on the equipment side, I would say make the best videos you can with what you have, and I think you can do that without owning a $1,000 camera., you know, and having the best lens that has a super low f-stop or whatever and a fancy microphone. Right now we're filming on an iPhone and this is going to be great. It's going to be fine. Um, so don't— I would say, yeah, don't worry about the equipment too much. Just do the best with what you can. And something else I'd say is to make sure you know within yourself why you're making videos. You see a lot of times people start, and I'm not saying this is what you're doing, just to put that out there. A lot of times people start and when they don't they don't see their view count rising as rapidly as they'd hoped, or getting the feedback that they'd hoped, they stop. And that shows that the reason that they were making videos was not for themselves, you know? You have to be sure about why you're making the videos to start with. An example here is when I first started YouTube, I was making design videos as well as a bunch of other content, like fashion and beauty and random stuff. And my design videos would get people unsubscribing from my channel. So that's not great feedback, you know? But those were the videos that I wanted to make, and I knew that if I stuck with it, eventually I'd find that audience who was out there. Sometimes your audience and like your niche is harder to find than you might hope, I guess. And so stick with it and they'll find you.
One of the things that along those same lines, I'm so glad to hear you say that is what has kind of pushed me into this February challenge is realizing, and for me, thinking about how videos are just a really good way even to review your— what's going on in your own life, your own work, uh, what things are like at a particular moment or week. Because— and one of the things that helped me realize that the most was becoming a dad. So I have a 20-month-old and I'll just flip back through his videos. And I was like, what? Because I don't feel like things are slowing down. Maybe we can get better at that. But seeing his videos helps me, you know, remember more of like what he was like at that time. And I want to document more of that in my own life. And we're like, oh yeah, because this is a really exciting and interesting but super busy time. You know, we both work at ConvertKit. And we're here in Oceanside, California, and it's— and I want to remember those things. And video, because it takes in so, you know, like all of the different, you know, inputs of life, you can, you can remember it and just kind of grasp it that much, that much easier.
Great.
Well, Charlie, thank you so much. This was— I really enjoyed chatting with you. Thanks for hopping on this with me.
I'm excited to see how you go with this video.
Yeah, thanks. All right, appreciate it. Thanks everybody. There will be some links in the show notes. Is that what you call it? The description box. I did podcasting before. There's gonna be links especially to Charlie's channel. You should check out her vlogs. All right, thanks everybody. Bye.
