YouSaid · the spoken record

Kelsey McDermade

lines on the record: 47
first: 2022-12-29
most recent: 2022-12-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Hey, thanks so much for listening to how I built this lab. Please do follow us on your podcast app so you always have the latest episode downloaded. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at how Ibuel This and mine is at GuyRaz. And on Instagram, I'm at guy.roz. If you want to contact the team, our email address is h-t at id.wondery.com. This episode was produced by Carla Estevez with editing by John Isabella. Our music was composed by Rumtin Arab Louis. Our audio engineer was Brian Jarbo. Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Chris Massini, Elaine Coates, JC Howard, Liz Metzger, Josh Lash, Sam Paulson, Catherine Cypher, and Carrie Thompson. Neva Grant is our supervising editor, Beth Donovan is our executive producer. I'm Guy Ros, and you've been listening to how I built this.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the thing because you are both the business, but you're also the brand too. And so I guess the question you have to ask yourselves is, how do we decouple ourselves in the brand? How do we keep this brand and business growing without us as the face of it?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So if you're looking out in 10 years' time and you're thinking about how to evolve the business, what do you see it becoming?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you're like, wait, we have 300 million YouTube views. And you're telling me I'm on local TV, and all of a sudden it's a big deal?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you think about the opportunities that people have now to make their own essentially media brands, right, you don't need to go through Canadian broadcasting company. You don't have to go to the CBC. You don't have to go to NBC in the US. You don't have to go through that. You can do it yourself, right? It's pretty remarkable that In theory, anybody could build something with a big audience if they do it well enough and get lucky. In your view, are traditional media outlets less important for people who want to build an audience and want to build a brand?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As the competition for eyes, earballs, and eyeballs grows,'cause we're all competing for the same thing, right? I want people to listen to my show and Netflix wants people to watch their stuff and Apple TV does and Disney does and YouTubers do and ultimately that's what we need. That's the commodity we're all after. But as the competition heats up, especially on YouTube, is it becoming harder to grow the audience now? Have you noticed a slowdown?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thanks for stopping by You know, I mean, we're living at this very strange moment. We just got through the pandemic. We're still kind of in it. And there's a supply chain crisis. And there's also a massive shortage, certainly here in the United States, and I'm assuming Canada of workers available. There's just such a high demand. I hear stories I'm sure you do of people waiting five, six months for a piece of furniture to arrive or people to come and repair something at the house. So I have to imagine there's been a huge spike in DIY all over North America and probably even overseas. Have you noticed that? Do you see any evidence of that?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, from what I gather, the goal here is to produce content that's useful, that people can walk away with and use and integrate into their lives. But what are the peculiar things that happens to creators, whether you're making video content or like this show audio content is you give it away for free and then you get people who are just mean. And you're just like, wait, I'm making this for free. It is ad supported and you get it for free and you're sending mean stuff, comments? How do you feel about it? I mean, Does it ever rattle you?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've noticed this in the last few years, a lot more DIY videos are women, and it makes so much sense because if you are watching a video and it's a man, a lot of people watch that and they think, well, that person's not speaking to me in any way. It's not that you can't do that. It's just he's not speaking to me.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, okay, so there are a lot of different ways you can grow. And it seems like you're really grinding into those possibilities now. I'm sure you get a lot of people who want to become YouTube creators, who get in touch with you and they'll say, how do I do this? How do I start? Or what's the secret? And of course the secret is work really hard and do it consistently and just grind away. But I mean, do you think there's room on YouTube to capture attention around design, aesthetics? Is there room to stand out now, or do you think it's overly saturated?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I know. I hear you on that. I've been doing this for 25 years, and I still get nervous about my interviewing skills every single day. So I hear you. I mean, I think it's what keeps people good at what they do So, in the long run, is there any value in, like, for example, trying to make a television show? Or is it not really necessary? I mean, your reach with YouTube is enormous, but is there value in, I don't know, doing an HDTV show or working with one of those companies?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And really, I mean, you've chronicled your journey of learning as you've moved forward. And now, ten years in, you've developed a reputation as arbiters of interesting tastes and ideas and design schemes. I mean, people go to your site to learn about these things and to see what you've done. So you don't have as much to prove.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've got to take a quick break to thank our sponsors. You're listening to how I built this lab back in a moment. Hey, welcome back to how I built this lab. I'm talking with Kelsey McDermade and Becky Wright, better known as the Sorry Girls. Know, I think a lot about the creator economy because we've done a lot of episodes now about it and I find so interesting is that how it can lead to so many other businesses, right? So for example, in your case, there is a world where because you've already built up a brand and a reputation through your videos, you create a business that renovates homes or redesigns homes or redecorates homes, a business that is franchised, that is based on your design principles. I mean, there are all kinds of things you could do with that brand.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So when you say it conflicts with your values, do you mean that you guys are sort of wary of being overly commercial and selling a bunch of stuff on your site?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I notice on your website you have a shop, and I love it, but I also look at it and I think, wow, there's so much more you can do here. And I'm sure you're thinking about it because, you know, you can sell things on your shop, products that you curate. But what's cool about your shop is it's basically templates. It's like DIY templates. And most of it's free. A lot of these templates are free. Like if you want to make a tissue box cover, you give away the template for free or a template for a face mask. And then people can make it themselves. It seems like I'm assuming part of your strategy or long-term strategy is to build out an even more robust shop.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you've got the brand partnerships and the ad revenue, what other sources of revenue are there? I mean, I know it's sort of fundamentally what you're trying to do is to help educate people and it's a mission, but also you've got to create a sustainable business. And there's a business side of the story that's really interesting. And I think lots of people who are trying to do something like this find it particularly helpful. So besides the ad revenue and the brand partnerships, what are other ways that you can generate revenue for the business?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Help me understand your approach to branded content, right? Because running a YouTube channel, especially if a successful one, when you have people now, it's a dance. It's delicate because on the one hand, you don't want to alienate your viewers, right? But on the other hand, you need to create a sustainable business model. So there are some YouTubers who will just do any brand partnerships, they'll do whatever comes through the door, and there are others who have a different approach around that. How do you know if it's the right brand partner? What is your criteria?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And obviously, because of what you do, because you're renovating rooms, you're showing people how to decorate rooms, the natural partners, right, like paint companies and furniture companies. And I think IKEA is one of your sponsors, right”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know that there's that revenue stream, but it's not enough to sustain a company. So you've got to do other things to turn this into a sustainable business. And one of the things you do are these brand partnerships. Tell me how you got into that and how you, I mean, how did that begin?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the actual amount of money you make on an ad is it's fractions of a penny, right? I mean, you might get a million views on a video and the ad revenue is really not that much.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I asked this, and we've had some YouTubers on who've kind of broken it down for us, and it's eye-opening because actually, I mean, of course there are some YouTubers who can rely entirely on advertising, but can you give us a sense of sort of a ballpark revenue that you bring in a year of the company?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, let's talk about the economics of turning what initially started out as YouTube videos into a full business, a media company, which is what you have now, sorry girls. Let's break it down first. Let's talk about advertising. So you've got about 2 million subscribers to the channel. But our views alone to your videos enough to sustain your business. Is there enough ad revenue just from that to support? Because I think you've got like eight or ten employees now. Is the ad revenue enough or not even close?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So at what point did you guys start to sort of strategize and say, well, okay, we can make videos and maybe make some revenue from the YouTube ads, but we know that it's very hard to make money from the ads alone unless you're Mr. Beast. So when did you, how did you guys start to have the conversation around turning this into a sustainable business?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How did you grow your audience? I mean, part of it has to be luck, right? Like, I'm lucky. We have a very large audience, and people ask me, how did you get your audience? What'd you do? And we didn't do anything. There was no like tricks. It just over time we did a lot of work. We do a lot of work. We work really hard on making a quality show. What about you? I mean, is it similar story? Is it just grinding and grinding and slowly, but surely people finding out about you?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tell me how you started to evaluate what worked and what didn't. I mean, you initially were responding to people's requests to make videos, but very quickly thematically it became about DIY projects because you had to be focused. You had to be focused on one thing, right? Otherwise, no one knows what you are about. So when you were kind of thinking about what kind of videos to make, how much analysis were you doing around what worked and what didn't?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're going to take a quick break, but back with more from the Sorry Girls, Kelsey McDermade, and Becky Wright in just a moment. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this lab. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm talking with Kelsey McDermade and Becky Wright, better known as the Sorry Girls. Alright, so in 2015, what was the plan? Was the idea, let's just make content, let's just make a lot of content and videos and see where it goes.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Apologize the furniture, yeah So you have this channel, and at what point? I mean, because you're both working in the film industry because you've got to pay rent in Toronto. At what point were you guys able to say, wait a minute, you know, we're doing pretty well here. Maybe we should just quit our jobs and do this full-time, turn this into our job.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, my wife's Canadian. So I know this. You go to a store in Canada and you're like, sorry, but your assets are buy. You're going to spend your money there. Like, you're apologizing for that, but that's just Canadian.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be preemptive in your apologies, just like, I'm sorry, like, you go into a store and you're apologizing for asking to buy something in a store”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And at what point in sort of putting these videos up, was it pretty soon after you became YouTube partners that you thought, let's make this our full-time jobs?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So walk me through the process of educating yourself about do it yourself because now you do serious stuff like you're putting up drywall and stuff. But how did you teach yourself how to do that stuff?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So eventually people were like, yeah, I want you guys to do more DIY stuff. Like, how do you transform a room? And from what I understand, you guys did not know how to do this stuff initially. You weren't children of contractors and homebuilders, right? Like, this was all new to you.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this really kind of evolved organically simply by reading comments and people saying, hey, can you do something on this or on that?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So once that happened, was there an intentional conversation between the two of you where you were like, okay, let's do something here. Let's make more stuff on YouTube.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow, I just do not remember that Halloween. Remember seeing a bunch of black swans. I just don't. But I don't know. Maybe I wasn't paying attention. But I guess 2011 was the year of black swan H”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Write a passage. Yeah. All right, so you make the second video. And does it get similar kind of traction compared to the first one?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No shame there. You got to start. By the way, if you made those first videos and they were perfect, we wouldn't put you on the show. You have to make crappy stuff at the beginning.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, Halloween 2011 rolls around and you decide to do this again to make a video showing how to make your own Halloween costume?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Still, a good way to experiment because you are in film school and why not make your own stuff and see what it looks like.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you put this Halloween video out, get 1,000 plus views, pretty great, and you just leave this channel dormant. You do nothing for almost a year after that, right?”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you were in film school. Presumably, both of you thought, oh, you know, we'll pursue a career, I don't know, working on films.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They'll explain the name in a moment. It's a YouTube channel dedicated to do it yourself projects and homemakeovers. The channel now has over 2 millions subscribers and they're small media company now employs about 10 people full-time. At the time, they were both film students in Toronto, Canada, and their first video was really just a one-off. It was never intended to turn into a business. They simply wanted to make a video showing people how to create a Halloween costume.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Ros. So just the other day, I was trying to figure out how to get a coffee mug stain off of my coffee table. I thought and I thought and I thought and then I thought wait there's probably a YouTube video on that. And guess what? Indeed there is. So basically you put a damp towel on the coffee table, you gently run a warm iron over it and voila. The ring usually disappears. But please, I am not an expert, so don't blame me if it doesn't work for you. The point is, there are a lot of people out there who know how to do a lot of things, things they happily put on YouTube. And if you can find an audience, those skills can help you build a business, which is exactly what the Sari Girls have done. Calcium McDermade and Becky Wright are the sorry girls.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About the videos that they started to put out that would unknowingly launch them into fully fledged YouTubers, content creators, and they were generous enough to share their insights on what it took to grow and sustain an audience, which for them included taking the risk of quitting their day jobs. And now they're running their own production company and learning to say no to the wrong deals. Hope you enjoy”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when you're ready to launch, you offer code built to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Loans issued by Celtic Bank and serviced by Stripe. All loans subject to credit approval. Hello and happy holidays to all of you. This week our producers, as I hope you can appreciate, are taking a quick break. We produce eighty eight episodes of this show a year for you, so I hope you can understand they very much deserve some time with our friends and family to do things that they can't do because they're producing how I built this, like gardening or reorganizing or woodworking or, you know, drywall or something, which is a great segue into the episode we're about to play for you because this week's guests, YouTubers, Kelsey, McDermott, and Becky Wright, are better known as the Sorry Girls, or if you're Canadian, the Sorry Girls. And they talked to us at the beginning of this.”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
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2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, one of my favorite parts of traveling is getting a feel for a neighborhood, the way locals do. A few summers ago, I was in Rome and stayed in an apartment I booked on Airbnb. It was tucked in a quiet neighborhood just outside the Roman forum. Every morning I'd walk to the corner cafe, grab an espresso, and just watch the world go by outside. I even managed to chat with the owner about the neighborhood he lived in for nearly forty years. And he got me thinking about my own neighborhood. There are incredible hiking trails and great restaurants and, of course, the beach. And when I'm traveling this summer, listing my own place on Airbnb could be a really smart way to let someone else experience the area the way I do, like a local. Listing your home on Airbnb while you're traveling is a great way to make some extra money. You could put the money toward your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much”
2022-12-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · ICYMI... HIBT Lab! The Sorry Girls: Kelsey MacDermaid and Becky Wright · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT