Shelly Saves the Day is a Seattle based video creator and YouTube Coach passionate about helping creators learn how to share what they love with the world through video and make money doing it.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone that understands YouTube to the depth and knowledge that Shelly does,” says Roger Wakefield of Roger Wakefield LLC.
“Shelly helped me to see opportunities for my channel that I never even considered exploring and they changed my business to the extreme,” suggests Jason T. Lewis of Painfully Honest Tech.
Shelly is the co-host of the Video Marketing Value Podcast, the creator of iMovie Made Easy, (a comprehensive online video editing course), and was the Sr. Video Manager and Product Expert at TubeBuddy. Shelly is the owner of Content Minis, a micro-content repurposing company for video podcasts and live streams.
Goldie Chan: Hi Shelly, thank you for joining us. Why have you chosen to focus on short form video content?
Shelly: I believe that the flexibility of being platform agnostic is truly what enables short-form vertical content to be the secret weapon in any creator, brand, or business’s arsenal to maximize returns without having to put in a ton of extra effort. You can’t escape it, it’s everywhere and it’s where the attention currently is. When people learn about the benefits of expanded reach and monetization options, it really becomes a no-brainer to fully explore what vertical can do for you.
Chan: What has your career path been?
Shelly: I’ve always been the person who wants to try everything, taste it all, have some experience when I talk about something. When I find things I like, I want to be the expert at it, I will continue to dig for little known facts and I love being able to thing about the what-ifs of every single scenario. This led me down many career path changes, some more abrupt than others. I worked in retail management for over a decade, sold real estate, went back to school to learn how to code only to end up being a Technical Program Manager at companies like Amazon and Google. Then I left that all behind and took half the salary to work at a YouTube analytics and tools company. Now, I’ve ventured off into my own company, launched a course on video editing, and now run my own editing company called Content Minis. We serve a very specific audience with a very specific goal. We create short-form vertical videos from your existing library of content so that you can distribute it and get more reach and exposure on your subject matter.
Chan: What has been your favorite project to work on?
Shelly: Honestly, the variety of everything that I’ve done, has been my favorite and led me to where I am today. Going to conferences, sometimes speaking at them, learning about what other people do, the issues that they have, and then trying to create solutions to fix those problems, that’s been my favorite project. My entire YouTube journey has been about how to remove obstacles and barriers that hold people back from what they want to share with the world, I love getting to help them do that.
Chan: Describe your personal brand.
Shelly: Not your typical YouTube guru I’ll tell you that. Just like I would say there are tons of fitness professionals, some who hold your hand, some who yell at you like bootcamp. I’ll say I lean more towards the latter. I’d like to think that when people think of me the following would come to mind:SmartHonestTransparentFunny
Chan: Who would you love to work with?
Shelly: I’d love to spend some time with YouTube analytics people that just fully get immersed in the data and see what it says. I’d love to learn from Paddy Galloway, Zach King and Mark Rober.
Chan: What is a failure in your career that you learned from?
Shelly: Ohh man, I fail a lot, so I learn a lot. It would be very hard to pick only one but almost every time I try to “launch” something, I am always afraid to talk about it, to publicize anything about it. I don’t know if it’s me, afraid that if I make it “real” people might think of me as a failure if I don’t actually succeed or sell anything, so I instead say nothing. This mentality and strategy (or lack thereof) has been detrimental to my progress because I have found that when I share, people don’t judge, they celebrate, and they want to see me succeed.
Chan: What are you working on now?
Shelly: Scaling Content Minis! I started with just myself, took on a few clients personally as a beta, didn’t pay myself, definitely overworked and overloaded myself, forced myself to hire help and learn how to train them. Then learn to delegate to them and do it again, and again, and again. I want to be at the point where I can say yes immediately to any new client, where sometimes now I say a delayed yes.
Chan: Any career advice for this year?
Shelly: Career, life, you take your pick how you want to interpret these: Try the scary things, say yes to things, when you feel overwhelmed, do the next best logical thing that you can think of at the moment, and when you have a moment to reassess and take measure of what you’ve done, learn how to do it again with less effort. Don’t be afraid to look up from your desk, and give yourself a pat on the back and acknowledge that you’ve come a long way. Don’t be the last one to admit that you deserve the good things that have come your way. Stay open, honest, humble, and willing to learn. Take your friends with you on your way to success.
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