Ep. 131 Consistency & Commitment: An Empire in the Making

Consistency & Commitment: An Empire in the Making

While most 10-year-olds are consuming games, videos, and merchandise, my 10-year-old is doing things a little differently. I tried to interview her about her empire, but her shyness took over, so Sean and I instead chatted about our youngest’s empire-building skills.

From video editing and collaborations to merch and branding this girl is going places, and I am proud to break down her journey thus far, her amazing consistency and commitment, and how you can apply this to your empire building.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 131

[00:00:00] Torie: I asked her, I said, I just want to ask you some questions. She was like, okay. I’m like, you want to do it? She’s like, yeah. And so we got down here and yeah, it didn’t, but I think what she’s doing is so amazing that I still want to talk about Bella’s YouTube channel.

Hey, what’s up. It’s Torie Mathis, your host, and I’m here with the one and only Sean Mathis, founder of Miles Through Time Automotive Museum. 

[00:00:27] Sean: What’s going on? 

[00:00:29] Torie: I tried to do an episode of me talking to our daughter, Bella, about her YouTube channel, but it didn’t quite work. 

[00:00:40] Sean: Did you get her down here? 

[00:00:41] Torie: I got her down here. She sat in the chair and then she went like this and she’s like, Look, I got a little head. I’m like the beetle juice guy. She leaned way back and then she slumped down. And so I started talking and I’m like, you gotta kind of sit up because the microphone is here and she kept slumping. And then she went onto the floor. Oh, she did the Blinky thing for awhile. When she doesn’t want to talk. I did.

[00:01:07] Sean: So you got the footage. 

[00:01:08] Torie: I do have the footage. I deleted it, but it’s still on there. It was because I don’t want to embarrass her. 

[00:01:13] Sean: That’s funny. I would have totally embarrassed her. She doesn’t care. 

[00:01:16] Torie: She does care. She cares quite a bit and she is super shy and she is super judgy on herself. 

[00:01:22] Sean: I don’t care. 

[00:01:23] Torie: You don’t get. And so she’s slumped onto the floor, blinked at me a whole bunch of. I asked her. I said, I just want to ask you some questions. She’s like, okay. I’m like, you want to do it? She’s like, yeah. And so we got down here and yeah, it didn’t, but I think what she’s doing is so amazing that I still want to talk about Bella’s YouTube channel.

[00:01:44] Sean: It’s pretty impressive. I mean, she has from her, from her beginning to where she is now, she has gotten there faster than either one of us. That’s what we’ve done. 

[00:01:53] Torie: Yeah. She’s like your channel is isn’t growing too fast. You’re not getting as many views as you probably should. For how many subscribers you have?

I’m like, oh my gosh. I have been, I’ve had this YouTube channel forever and I never really did anything. So I had some subscribers from that, but yeah, you know, you’re, you’re killing it. And so I want to talk about how Bella Mathis is killing it on her YouTube channel. So a little over a year ago, Bella decided she wanted to be a YouTuber, probably like every other kid out there, they see, they see these YouTubers and they decide they want to do it.

Luckily she didn’t want to do like pranks and things like that. Cause that would have been a big fat. No, she decided that she wanted to do stuff on Minecraft and Roblox, which are two video games that she plays with her friends and her brother plays as well. And she wanted to do some crafts. ’cause she does lots of art projects and things.

And so she decided that like, that was kind of what she wanted to do. And she said, so help me make a YouTube channel on them. I told Riley the same thing. You make a couple of videos, prove to me that you’re actually going to make a couple of videos and then I’ll get you all set up. And so she did that and I was like, awesome.

And so, you know, w when the kids start off with these things, I never really know. If it’s just going to be one of those things. 

[00:03:08] Sean: Go for two weeks. 

[00:03:09] Torie: Oh my goodness. Is it going to be a two week Dan thing or are you actually going to like stick with it? Some things like with Riley literally lasts a week to two weeks.

Some things with Riley lasts a month or days or days with Bella she’s a little bit more hit and miss, but when Bella decides she doesn’t want to do anything, she’s like, screw you. I’m not doing anything like she’s, when she’s done, she’s done. And there’s no real convincing her to go further. We did this with gymnastics.

Once Bella decided that like gymnastics were boring and it wasn’t bringing her joy anymore, she was like, I’m done. And I’m like, well, what if we do this or do that? I am done. And then she literally was none and I really could not convince her to do more. So I was a little bit concerned about the upfront work that it was going to take.

However she has just done amazing. One thing I did get out of her before she slumped onto the ground is that she started her channel in August of last year. So she has been a little over a year and her growth was a little bit slow at first. And I think she was kind of trying to figure out what she was doing when she first started her channel.

She was UwU wolves. What is an UwU Wolves? I don’t know, but that was the channel that she had. And so she was very pink and she had like little wolves and things on her first. All of her branding type staff of nowhere. She had an idea of, I think it was from her character in roadblocks because when these kids come up with their avatars, their little character, they buy all this stuff for it.

And so they design it to reflect their personality. And it’s a constantly evolving thing and is a way that roadblocks makes more money because it actually costs money to put money into your little Roblox account to spend money on your. So these kids all have their own avatar, their own little character that they have built.

So she started off with that. And so I taught her how to use Canva and how they have the sizes already worked out in there. So I showed her like, this is how you do your I didn’t do any of this stuff for her. This is how you do your banner for YouTube. And so she took one of mine, duplicated it and then made hers.

And since then she has changed it. Over time. And if I can find some of the old ones, I will put them when I do the video of this. And it just really changed. It starts with a couple of little wolves and then she had some girls that she’s friends with do videos with her a little bit. And so she actually drew out the characters.

And so she had her drawings up there and she’s redone it a couple times. And so she learned Canva and learned how to do that. And she learned how to make her own YouTube thumbnails in canvas as well. And those have really come a long way too. Cause she used to ask me about them and then she stopped asking me about them.

Like, you know, how is this? Is it good? Now she sends me one set she really like. She’ll send me them and just text me then YouTube. She’s like, yeah, look what I did. So she’s super proud of, you know, the, the thumbnails that she’s making. So she learned how to use canvas so that she could get all of her artwork and things like that set up.

And then she had to be able to edit her videos and record them. So we figured out, you know, with her system, what was going to happen. And so she wants to do everything on her iPad. So I showed her how to edit on the The laptop, the Mac laptop, and she really wants to keep everything on the iPad. So she actually went and researched and found a program that would work. And so she uses cap cut and we actually do the paid version of cap cut because it is a little bit better. And that is what she’s in. She has a screen recording program. I have not she’s, she’s editing them in a program that we don’t even know how to use.

I know how to use, but it’s similar. I mean, like other, every other editing program, there are, you know, little timelines and things like that. So I kind of showed her like very, very basic of like, this is kind of how it works and no, no. I figured that all out on her own. 

[00:06:53] Sean: She’s a smart cookie. 

[00:06:54] Torie: I have not done that. So she did do all of the video editing stuff herself. She has done some craft videos and so she has set up her iPad to do like up above and she puts music to it and she cuts it and, and she’s done a really great job at it. A lot of the videos that she creates are Roblox edits, meaning she goes into different games and you’ll, I finally got under Roblox with them to see they’ve been wanting me to play this forever.

And I’m like, man, like, I don’t know if I’m ready to get this far involved. So finally I have myself a Roblox account. I went and they’re like, she’s like follow me. We’re going by the waterfall. And so we went into this world and we went down and she’s like, there’s this really good place? I know. And so we went down there and there’s like this waterfall and all this water and a beach.

And so we, you go in there and you pick a dance and then you sync with the other person and then the characters in whatever you dress them up as dance. And so you can change the camera angle of it. And so she took some screenshots of us doing this whole thing, and then she went and edited. So I got to see, like, what did, I mean, she’s really picking up.

The civic, what she’s wearing and what the music is going to be and what the camera angles are and all this kind of. So I got to see it. I know it’s so interesting right now. I understand. It’s a big thing. 

[00:08:17] Sean: I get it. I just don’t care. But Hey, as long as people are watching it and like her and she’s enjoying it, that’s all that matters.

[00:08:25] Torie: Absolutely watching the videos. And there are other kids that are doing what she’s doing better. 

[00:08:31] Sean: Well, I’m sure there’s a bunch of kids that would wish they could do. What she’s doing? 

[00:08:37] Torie: Yes. There are ones that have talked to her about, especially like she was doing for a while. These drawing videos where she would take somebody she’s like said I’ll draw your avatar.

So she would, people sent them what their name was she would go and look up what their avatar was in Roblox. So, right. That’s the character that the person has built. And then she would actually draw it. On her iPad and she would film herself drawing it and then she would speed it up. So it was like really neat to like, watch it all go through, and then she would send them the finished artwork.

And so not only did she create herself a piece of content with the drawing, but then she also reached out to all these different people. Some people that asked her and some people that she wanted to connect with, she went and did this drawing for them. And some of them made it their YouTube your profile pic.

So it’s a really good way that she’s connected herself and it started building this community. You know, she did it to the Bentist, but the Bentist didn’t reach back out. Nope. The Bentist did not. She drew this whole thing for the Bentist, but the Bentist is very popular on Tik doc. She knows him from Instagram because she has a private Instagram account. And so she follows him on Instagram and watches his YouTube videos, but he’s got like millions of followers. So she is probably not the only person that has sent in drawings, but Bentist, Bella Mathis sent you a drawing. 

[00:09:53] Sean: I can reach out to him. 

[00:09:55] Torie: So she’s done a really good job, but she’s like, it’s so crazy that she gets in these positions that she is so shy, but she is so not shy about so much of this. Like, she is very putting herself out there. Like even like sending it to the dentist and stuff like that. She’s like, This girl that she wanted to do a collaboration with. She reached out to her so many times, so many times. And when this girl finally said, yes, She was so excited and she knew it was a really big deal, but she’s I know for sure. She asked at least eight times because on the video she had finally did this collaboration with her. So she did the little dancey thing and put it to music and everything. It actually says. Eighth request asking you to collab. And the girl said, sure, he does no collaboration in the video.

So that’s a very forward and very like, oh man, I think. Yeah. And so she’s super brave putting herself out there with all those kinds of stuff. So I was really hoping that she was going to sit here and talk, but man, Beetle juice and then melted. Right?

So the video editing the collabing, that is all her she’s really done a really, really great job. She’s getting better at storytelling because that’s one of the girls that the girl that she wants to do to do the collab her editing is beautiful. She works on the computer, not on an iPad. So she’s using after effects to edit, which is like that’s professional editing software, where you can do all kinds of really cool things.

And then she’s also recording her videos on a computer, which has some different things that you can do to the styling of actual, the video game itself so that it looks nicer. But this girl’s editing is beautiful. Like she, how she changes the colors and how she has things go with the beat. I even subscribed to her channel on YouTube because it’s she does beautiful work. And so I can see that, like, Bella does so good already, and I can see how much Bella’s improved from when she started that, like, this shows me like, wow, like if Bella keeps up with it and does a little bit, oh, and this other girl, it’s so good. And I know it’s a little girl because Bella saw what her name was in Roblox but I don’t know how old she is.

My guess is she’s a little bit older, but she’s definitely been doing it a little bit longer and she’s got some editing skills behind her, but it, it really is like, nice considering, like they’re literally taking screenshots of a video game and setting them to music. So it’s going to be interesting to see what she does, but that other girl, she does some really good storytelling and like setting up these different scenarios that are really neat.

And so I can see that Bella if she improves on that, Taking chances of doing that kind of stuff. That it’ll really be really neat. Cause I know a lot of these video editors, even in business type stuff, like once you get the art of video editing and storytelling and like keeping people going with music and with cuts and with that kind of stuff, like it’s a big thing. 

[00:12:55] Sean: Right.

[00:12:56] Torie: I didn’t learn any of that. I don’t do very well with that. Probably something that I could study, probably something I could do a little bit too, but it’s like if she could just like keep working on those types of skills like she could be really, really, really good. And I could see her continuing to do it for a long time.

[00:13:12] Sean: You could employ her in the future. 

[00:13:14] Torie: She wants her own stuff, man. Like Riley, I can get rally will do little things for me. She doesn’t want to, she wants to do her stuff. 

[00:13:24] Sean: She wants to be famous, but nobody knows she’s famous, except she wants you to know if she’s famous and it makes no sense. 

[00:13:33] Torie: Ten-year-old logic. Yeah. So what else? So another thing that she did, which was really cool is she was like, show me how to make t-shirts. So I showed her how to use Teespring, which she didn’t really like it as much. I want to switch her over all the way to Teespring. She liked cafe press. I showed her cafe press as well, but I think stuff gets a little lost in cafe press.

And it’s harder to actually build like, it’s easy to build products, but it’s harder to build a store. And so she did it all with her first thing, which was Ooh wolves. And she begged me to change the name all summer. And I’m like, no, you can’t just change it and then change it and change it. If you’re trying to build a brand, you need to keep with it.

And so finally I’m like, if you are super serious about it and you’re not going to keep changing and changing, you can change EJ. Rebranded and she is MissBeloved. And so she has pulled all of her merch down. She had shirts and cups and hats and all kinds of stuff. And so she still has links on her channel that goes to that, but she’s like, I don’t care.

I’m like, it doesn’t go to anything. You know, I told him, you better make sure you do not pull into your old videos. And she said, she wouldn’t because it’s got the old name on it, which now, you know, oh, that’s super lame. I can’t believe that that was mine. You know, get it was so long ago. 

[00:14:47] Sean: Well the cool part of doing stuff like that and doing it for such a long time is it’s super neat to see your own progress.

[00:14:54] Torie: Can you, I haven’t really talked to her about that. I should talk to her about that and see, but she said she will not pull. 

[00:14:58] Sean: I think, you know, just like, I dunno, like, like us with kids, you know, you don’t really see them age. It’s just all of a sudden they’re older, but you know, a parent, a grandparent or something that doesn’t seem on daily basis and comes in like, oh, you’ve grown so much. You know, you’re like really, like, they all look the same. The V like your progress, whether it’s, you know, videos on YouTube channel or, you know, the website or any social media or anything that you create, you are going to have to start, you know, in one spot and there is going to be a progression. And so to be able to go back and see that progression is one of the most fascinating things about creating anything is to see where you’ve come from because you are, you are, it is inevitable that you get better, right.

And so two. To not acknowledge that is like throwing it all away. Cause nobody’s just starting at this high level. You’re starting at the bottom. Your bottom may be different from other people, but the more you do it, you, I mean, you’re going to get better. And then that also helps inspire other people to, you know, if they’re looking at, they look at MissBeloved’s YouTube channel and they’re like, oh, she’s got all these subscribers.

She’s so great. They can go back and go like, wow. She started. Ooh ball for whatever it is, you know? And you’re like, what happened here? You know? But they, they see, oh, you know, I can do it too because she did it. 

[00:16:20] Torie: Yes. And so I tried to think Grant Cardone, Grant Cardone said his wife will constantly remove her YouTube videos. Cause they’re not good enough. Like once she does new ones and he’s like, I won’t remove anything tied to be Grant Cardone. Like he said, if somebody finds me for some hokey, as you know, when I did however long ago, that was crappy, wait till they come to my channel and see how great I am now.

[00:16:40] Sean: Right. 

[00:16:41] Torie: Right. So I try to like for, even for my stuff, like don’t delete anything. And so what I haven’t, I’ve talked to her about that. So hopefully she does not she continues that and does not. 

[00:16:49] Sean: This is all Bella. Pre-buying her own. And then there’ll be Bella after she’s purchased her own jet. 

[00:16:55] Torie: You know, Bella has been so amazing on this. So Bella’s iPad. Like she used the crap out of this iPad and her iPad, all of a sudden stop charging. Last battery. There was no fixing it. And so she’s like, I have videos that have to come out. I’m like, I understand. But so like, let’s take it in. So we took it into the apple store and we took it in right away. I got in right away, and she was like, I have videos until Sunday scheduled out. And that was like a Saturday. We went down there and they were like, we can’t fix it. Like once they do this, it’s done. And you know what I did, I went and bought her a brand new iPad. Because she is so incredibly dedicated and she has been so great, like once summer hit and she really got to spend some time on her channel because I think she was just putting out videos like once a week.

Cause we talked about consistency and that, you know, you like YouTube likes it. If you constantly put out videos and you’re, you know, you’re putting them out. And so she was doing, I think one a week and she would schedule them. Like she wouldn’t just like do them and put them out. She would schedule them out.

And then summer came and she was able to do one a day and she would schedule them out for like a week. And so she was always like a week ahead. Well, when the iPad broke, she was only good till Sunday. And I think it was like Thursday or Friday that it happened. And then we got her, like, she was. I’m not gonna be able to get a video out.

Like she was really serious about her schedule and I knew how dedicated she has been that I went and bought her a brand new one, just like that, because I had to, because I think that’s what I mean, that would have been such a bummer that her iPad breaks and like how well, you know, you’re just a kid, you know, trying to do the, you know, I think it’s important to give her so much credit for how much time and energy and effort and how dedicated she has been to.

[00:18:40] Sean: Well in that new iPad, it’s nothing has changed it’s every day doing every day. 

[00:18:46] Torie: So it’s been really cute that she has had these parties. She had him for, I think 600 subscribers was the first party that she had. So all of her little girlfriends came over. She did like a little YouTube video and put some stuff out. And then I think she did one for, oh, she’s done a couple of them. But since that last collab that she wanted to, she was at 900. And something subscribers and just doing that one collab push her over a thousand, like instantly. And this was only maybe a week ago, a week and a half ago. She’s at like 1300 like she was growing like over a hundred a month.

And then this has given her like another, like 400 in just a week. So it has been pretty crazy. And I think that’s something for my YouTube channel and my stuff that I have a hard time with is like, I haven’t done a good job of building that community and having fans, or like being fans of somebody else enough.

And she has just really done a great job of that. It’s pretty amazing. She did a squid game party. And I had some friends over and they all dressed up and did squid games in the backyard and we made the cookies and all that. And then she made videos of the whole thing. And like, so they all died. All the kids, one of them lived only one of them, Bella didn’t she died. She was one of the ones that wasn’t able to make it. But you know, in talking about that, that’s another thing that she’s done. This girl. Picked up on trends. And so when squid game came out, she did squid game videos. So she did there’s in roadblocks. There is a squid game that it’s called like octopus game.

Like there’s a couple of them in there. And so she went and made videos inside of that game and did it to the music. When we did the test run of the squid game cookie things for her party, she made a video of that and put it out. And her videos are just constantly getting pretty good views. Everyone saw one doesn’t do too well, but she’s, they definitely get more views than mine.

[00:20:43] Sean: Consistency is key. 

[00:20:45] Torie: Yep. And so in doing all of this and something that I was a little bit worried because she is not so brave sometimes. The melting and running out of the room. And she is really big on not wanting to perform, like when she did gymnastics when they said you have to memorize this and perform it. She was so upset about it. Like, she doesn’t want to say things in front of people or do performances really in front of people too much. She definitely has that stage fright. I was worried about people making comments, ’cause some of her first videos, I think she did do them for kids. And so if they’re for kids, I think the comments are turned off.

And so some of these videos that she’s done since then, they, she does not mark them as for kids. And so you can make comments on them. And she has done a lot of YouTube shorts, which are videos that are all vertical and under a minute. And so those get a lot of views and apparently these kids. Really give them a lot of views. And so, because you’re getting in front of so many people, YouTube really puts these videos in front of a lot of people. There’s been a lot of comments and people are like, what are you seven? She was like, no, I’m 10, but she has made she’s, she’s gotten a lot of bad comments.

A lot of them are like, she says that the what’s that game. Fortnite kids. They’re the mean ones. Like if they have like Fortnite characters as their profile pictures, they always go on her page. They’re boys and make rude comments, but she responds to all of them. She doesn’t fight with them. And when I realized that she had really something going was before she even had a chance to say something in response to a bad comment, all these other kids that had been watching her videos and she’s been watching, these are kids that she doesn’t know in real life. They like jumped on the Fortnite kids and were like, how dare you? And we’re like defending her in the comments. And she’s made a couple of videos that posted all the comments like that what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger song.

And then she actually like put up all, like, when it’s talking about that, she has like all these little the bad comments that came up and you know, saying like cringe and lame, and then she doesn’t care. And then she puts up all the ones that are like, you’re amazing, you know, and all this stuff about her.

So she’s really figured out how to push through the fact that Fortnite kids are mean, and she doesn’t give a fuck. That’s good stuff. So you’re talking about that. She did all the video editing stuff herself. We have a program that we use for our YouTube accounts so that it helps us do the keywords and descriptions and things so that you can get video set up for before you publish them so that it tells you if you’ve done everything really well. And so she has that also. So we have like an account that is for three channels. So we have it for all of ours and she has learned how to use that. She even figured out how to like put all the steps. She wants to do everything on our iPad.

She doesn’t wanna do it on the computer. So I showed her how to do everything on the computer and she has figured out how to get the right programs and do what she needs to. From the iPad. So she uses vid IQ as well. And that’s how she picks. I mean, she writes her own descriptions and her own titles and puts keywords on there and she doesn’t care if stuff’s spelled wrong and it’s still on there.

And it’s funny on the link to all of them at the end. She’s like, and here are my friends and here’s my merch and here’s my mom and here’s my dad’s channel. And she’s got a link to both of ours on the, on the bottom of all of them. So she’s written herself this whole entire like template that she puts on all of her videos.

And then she like puts all of her stuff. Like she’s done a really great job. You know, and seeing that like Riley did do the YouTube channel thing. He did make a couple of videos, so I helped him get his whole YouTube channel out. He got eight subscribers. It’s probably all of us. And then he came up with excuses on why he couldn’t make more videos.

This software doesn’t work. I can’t do this, I can’t do this. And then he really has not done much with it. But seeing how well she has done now just sticking with it, but going kind of above and beyond with like the, the posting every day and still after summer figuring out what she needed to do to post every day. It’s, it’s been super cool. 

[00:24:42] Sean: Yeah. I mean, she can be as creative as she wants and I think that’s. I mean, she has a mini hue, so it’s pretty neat. It’s gotta be, you know, especially neat for you to watch her because it’s exactly like if I could see if you were her age in this, in this time, you’d be the exact same way.

[00:25:03] Torie: I don’t know if. 

[00:25:05] Sean: If you were under her same circumstances. 

[00:25:07] Torie: Yeah. It’s hard. Cause I don’t know if I would be that outgoing, but she’s not really that outgoing either now. So it’s, it’s, it’s neat to see how outgoing she is when she’s not always outgoing. So yeah, if they just perhaps, and I’ve sent her some ideas of stuff to do, and she’s like, I’ve sent her some ideas to do. And she did that.

Yeah, definitely. Super true. So you know, she follows a lot of these YouTubers. She follows some that she’s watched for years and she follows some of these, you know, people that do YouTube for video games like Minecraft. You tubers and roadblocks YouTubers and stuff like that. And these people are huge. They have huge followings. She just dressed up for Halloween as a YouTuber that does Minecraft, like that was her costume, like for, for Halloween. And then she thought it was kind of funny. Cause she said that all the little kids thought that she was a princess, but really she’s a grown male YouTuber that plays video games.

10 years old. So it’s going to be really interesting to see what else she does with this channel. Like I said, the last couple of weeks, her channel is really blown up with doing this new collaboration and, you know, I can see her, this getting a little bit more confident to go out and get more collaborations and, and just keep kind of pushing it to that next level.

Super excited to see what she does next. Because I, I, I can’t suggest what to do. Because, like you said, that was going to do what I was going to do, and she’s made some good decisions on what kind of videos to do and how often to do them. 

[00:26:46] Sean: And the sky’s the limit. We’ll see where she goes. 

[00:26:48] Torie: It is. It’ll be exciting to see.

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