YouTube Creator and Cookbook Author: Rosanna Pansino

27:27Yeah, or like panels about creating content that they would get as gigs. Some of my friends did like motivational speaking. Some of them, like Mike, my manager and boyfriend today, he was a gamer online. And for a long time, you couldn't monetize gaming online. And so he would travel. He would game to create content. But then he was a professional video game caster. basically like an announcer. You know, if you're watching a baseball game, the sports announcer who's kind of, you know, narrating what's going on on the field, who's up to bat. So I knew that there was some cool stuff you could do and there was some flexibility and people did tours and meetups.

28:16One of the, around this time, I mean, you were, some of your videos, I've seen a lot of your videos. And I mean, some of your most successful videos, started around this time, like My Little Pony cupcakes. Yeah. You made a rainbow cake with a unicorn on top. And it's beautiful. It's so cool with like a rainbow, different layers and different colors. So how would you just kind of walk me through how you would kind of come up with an idea? Because you were doing this every week. Yeah. So I got inspiration from everywhere. Like fans would suggest things. My family members would suggest things. I would see like different ideas.

29:00I'd be watching different shows. I started to have to define what's nerdy because people are like, why are you making My Little Pony things on Nerdy Nummies? Isn't it just video gaming? And I thought, well, I'm thinking of all the things I got teased, you know, growing up, why I was considered nerdy. And one of them was because I was a teenager who enjoyed watching cartoons. So I included a lot of series like that. Walk me through what it takes or what it took at the time to make one video. Because I imagine it was just you, right? Because you didn't have any money to have anybody else. And you would make, like, I don't know, a rainbow cake.

29:40Like, how much time did it take from start to finish when that was posted onto YouTube? I was extremely inefficient when I first started creating content. I would bake something start to finish and I would be up for days doing it and we'd have to wear the same outfit three days in a row because baking at home for yourself is so much faster than it is baking for camera and trying to film all the angles and things. And so I learned as I went and I also learned by going on to other professional foodies sets. And I learned that they prep bacon stages for camera. And again, it was just me. So it took me about to do one video was about 70 to 80 hours a week.

30:32I would come up with an idea, sketch it out, and then I would get the ingredients, develop a recipe. and weeks that I didn't have time to develop a recipe, I would just use a box cake because I really in the beginning focused on decorating. And then I would plan out all the stages and try to prep bake every stage so that I could just easily switch them in and out of camera and not waste camera time and filming time. Because at the time I had a bunch of roommates and I took up the whole kitchen and I felt like I was just in the way all the time. So I tried to become more efficient to even just get out of their way.

31:09And you would set up a camera on a tripod and just hit record and then run in front of it and start talking to it? Pretty much, yeah. Or Mike would film on my really crappy flip camera. We used that for a while. I had these really awful yellow lights that made my whole—I looked orange. It was just kind of learning and adapting as I went. I got feedback from the community like, hey, you need better lights. and I'm like, okay, what lights? And they actually, my community helped me become a better content creator because I would ask like, what kind of lights should I get? Or what kind of sound equipment should I find?

31:50And they were amazing and helpful and wanted to see me grow and we built together. Rosanna, as you were putting all this time and effort into making the videos, I've seen, as I say, a lot of these early videos, What was the first time that you got some kind of partnership or sponsorship or some money from making YouTube? Do you remember? I remember the first time I started to make money on YouTube was when they rolled out with their monetization program. I applied for it. And then I remember I got my first paycheck from YouTube. I don't even remember the amount, but it was very low, but I was so excited.

32:37And then my first brand deal, I don't exactly remember because in the beginning, they were not common and communities really discouraged talent from doing partnerships. Like if you were to partner with a company, even a company that you loved and used all the time, and you were to partner with them and talk about them, your community would just be like, sell out, screw you. And they would unsubscribe. So in the beginning, I turned down over 90 % of brand deals that were brought to me. And some of them very high paying, but it just wasn't worth it to me. this community just started growing and it started building and they trusted me and we had this like it was just so cool I just didn't want to do anything to break that trust.

33:32It's so interesting because today it's completely different I mean it's you just assume that most YouTubers are trying to get sponsors and brand deals and that and that viewers don't really care but back in 2013-2014 your audience really didn't like that And so you had to be really mindful of how much commercialization you had on your channel. Yeah. I mean, even this is kind of unrelated, but Mike's channel, gaming, they would rip you apart if you put your face in the lower corner of the screen. Wow. This is way back in the day gaming history. Which is what gaming streaming is now. Right. It's normal and natural now.

34:13But back then, the community would be like, oh, why do we need to see your face? Are you just trying to get famous? Blah, blah, blah. And they would rip you to shreds and they would destroy your channel. They would completely unsubscribe and move on. So the integration to integrate any kind of business had to be very slow, natural, and it had to be a perfect fit. Tell me how you started to think about expanding because you've got this channel that is just like it's a flywheel. is growing and more people are coming to it. So clearly there were going to be things you could do around it, extensions, brand extensions.

34:54And one of the first obvious things you did was a cookbook. So how would you start to evaluate what to pursue and what not to pursue? So when my channel started to grow, I needed some more help. And WME reached out, William Morris Endeavor, the agency, and I took a meeting there. And I was a little hesitant to work with an agent again after what had happened before, but we just kind of came up with a game plan. And so a lot of interest for a cookbook. That was the first opportunity that came in. And that was actually a suggestion from my community. So I felt comfortable kind of exploring that option because it wasn't a turnoff for them.

35:38It seemed like this is something they really wanted and they felt like would create value. So I said, let's do it. It became a New York Times bestseller. And then we ended up making another one. Talk to me a little bit about how you started to bring on sponsors and advertisers that were not the commercials that just run on a channel, but that you were bringing on to the channel. because earlier you talked about how initially the audience didn't like that, but at a certain point you were able to do that. You were able to have videos sponsored by brands. How did that come about? I think they kind of came up organically.

36:26You know what? One of the first ones was I love coffee, love Starbucks. I grew up in Seattle, home of the original Starbucks. and my friend said, wouldn't it be funny if we tried a bunch of different drinks on the Starbucks menu? And I said, yeah, that'd be really funny. Let's do that. So I did that as a video that was not sponsored. That was just, we were just doing that for fun. Um, just something we enjoyed doing, we thought would be entertaining, but also a little educational. Like we're giving some feedback of, you know, it's kind of like a food review, like what we like, what we don't like and why.

37:00and Starbucks saw the video and they loved it. And they actually contacted my agents and said, would she be willing to basically partner and do the same thing like for seasonal drinks? And I was like, I would love that because that's naturally a piece of content that I would make on my own. And so it was just this perfect meld, like a perfect fit. And that was the same with a bunch of brands, especially when you're working in food. There was a lot of brands that I was using because I love those brands. I've used them for years. And so the brands that I was using started to reach out and asked if I'd like to partner or integrate.

37:45And so basically all of my advertising and things happened very organically, slowly and naturally. Yeah. Help me understand how you started to, you know, I mean, as your channel, right, was getting bigger and bigger. And you started this just as kind of a fun project as an amateur baker, you actually decided to hire a professional baker to kind of up your game a little bit. And this was, I guess, a professor or teacher at Cordon Bleu, one of the cooking schools. Why did you do that? I mean, part of your appeal originally was that you were an amateur and what you were making could be made by people watching.

38:34So how did you decide to sort of step it up to that next level? I remember I was on a panel with some professional chefs. and we were getting asked questions from the audience about our training and our background. And they had all gone to very fancy food schools, culinary schools. And I was just self-taught and taught by my grandma, my Italian grandma who bakes. And I felt like I wasn't good enough to be on the panel. and I also got a few in private and I won't say who it was but I some of the guys from the panel said some really mean things to me about just being an amateur and it made me feel like okay well if I am creating so much food content and recipes maybe I should um I don't know go back to school.

39:41I mean, I don't know what to do here. So I actually, a friend suggested that I work with a food producer, professional food producer and food producers in the industry. They are, have tons of training. And the one I worked with was a teacher at Cordon Bleu. And the good news is, is that everything grandma taught me was correct. So that was the good news. The food producer, she was like, walk me through how you'd make a ganache. And then I showed her and she goes, this is correct. This is all correct. This is perfect. Bellissimo. We love it. Chef's kiss. But she really taught me the science behind what I was doing.

40:19Like my grandma would say, you know, bring the cream on the stove to a scald, not a boil. A scald is when the bubbles start to form all the way around the outside of the pot. Not the bubbles in the middle, just the bubbles around the outside. And then once you get a scald, that's the perfect temperature. You take that cream off and you pour it over a bowl of the chocolate melts. And then you let it sit for one minute. Then you mix it up. And that process is called emulsification. You know, you'd learn that in culinary school. But I never knew the science behind what I was doing. But I now have the vocabulary to match the years of skill.

41:02Rosanna, one of the things that I think is really interesting is you – and that natural kind of fit is your collaboration with cooking, like baking tools, right? Wilton is a brand that you collaborated and you launched like a line with them in 2017. So help me understand like a little bit about how you were managing the sort of the business of Rosanna Pansino, right? You had WME as your agent, and I know Mike, who was your life partner but also a professional partner, was involved. And then you had to start bringing on people. Your staff was as big as 12 people. Now it's a little smaller. But presumably you hired a camera person and an editor.

41:47Like you couldn't do those things anymore. Yeah. I had to identify things that were our bottleneck that were slowing us down. and my editing was a bottleneck because I'm not the best editor. And I'm like, boop, boop. I'm like, you know, two, two pointer fingers. Uh, so, um, just, I tried to hire people. The first hire we did was a full-time editor, um, which allowed us to make more content. And then a food producer, an assistant. My sister started working for me full time. I read that a little bit about, because you start the channel in 2011, and we'll get to the 10-year mark in a moment, but 2019 was a particularly challenging year for you.

42:37You lost your dad that year, and you also had a, you were hospitalized with an infection that year. Can you tell me a little bit about because I think you were still posting videos every week that year. Yeah. Yeah. How are you doing that? I still don't even know how I was doing that. I think I was just on autopilot and grief is such a weird thing. It's I honestly I took two weeks off and I thought, OK, for these two weeks, I'm going to grieve. I'm going to cry. I'm going to feel all the feelings. I'm just going to go there. And during those two weeks, I couldn't. I was in a zone where I was planning my dad's memorial.

43:26I was filling out the paperwork with the state for the death certificate. And I really took on the leadership role. So I think I just kept going and going and going until I couldn't. And then I took time away for a little bit and have some time to heal and some time for myself. But I was really surprised and I learned a lot about grief. I had never lost a parent before. And I just, I thought you could schedule feelings and you can't. Yeah. Yeah. I know this, after you took some time, I mean, this was around, I guess around 2021. And it was a 10-year anniversary, basically, of you launching the channel.

44:09And I think you'd essentially posted, you know, more or less something every week. And And I was thinking about this. It's really hard to do. I mean, I've posted at least one to five episodes of a podcast for the last 10 years every week, no matter what. Yeah. You know, and it just becomes part of your routine. You don't even think about it. And it doesn't mean you can't, like, take some time off and go on a vacation. You have to do a lot of things in advance. But it is, it becomes something where your audience expects it. You're like committed to serving them, right? Is that, was that what kept you motivated to continuously post every week?

44:55I think for me, we had just built this beautiful community, like this relationship together. And I didn't want to let anyone down. I didn't want to not show up for them. I just really like being a long-term relationship gal. That's who I am. I want my community to know that that's, you know, I'm always going to be here. In 2021, you got back into – I mean you've done some television appearances, but you got back into TV in a formal way with Max, the HBO channel. You did a show for one season called Bakedopia. And you've gone on to do other limited series and runs with other partners. Is that sort of the direction you're – because you started in wanting to go into that world and then you really grew this business around YouTube.

45:56And I wonder whether part of you is sort of was or is kind of shifting back or wanting to go back into kind of mainstream TV. Not exactly intentionally. I think what kind of started to happen over the years is that traditional entertainment wasn't as fearful of new media anymore. I think that they really understood, like, one, there's a ton of different options now for digital distribution. There's how many Netflix, Hulu, and every network, ABC, Peacock, Amazon Prime. But I think that faded. And I think they started to really open the door to digital content creators, to digital producers, to digital talent.

46:46And I wish I could tell my old agents, like, see, see, see, look, look, look. So there's this beautiful crossover that's just, you know, in the last few years have started to happen. And I've done two shows on Food Network now. I did a Nickelodeon show, a Disney show. I did a role on NCIS. Just kind of putting my feelers out there for anyone who's open to trying something to make something with me and just kind of, I don't know, feeling it out. Tell me what the status of Nerdy Nummies is because I feel like I've noticed you haven't posted those videos as much recently. I love Nerdy Nummies. I love making baking tutorials.

47:33They are, I would make them till I'm 90. And I probably still will. They just won't come out as regularly as I'd like unless I find a billionaire backer who is just like to finance all my food shows. Because that's expensive to produce, right? Very expensive to produce. Food shows, a lot goes into them that people don't realize how many hours goes into the prep work. And it really is a huge thing. Like when Martha Stewart was doing her, you know, cooking show, she had seven full-time chefs producing that show. And it's just hard to do. And now when I first started, the algorithm on YouTube was very light.

48:17It probably had a couple hundred lines of code. So the growth that you experienced on YouTube in the very beginning was much more natural. It was organic. People would find your videos and share them and your community would grow very organically. Now, fast forward a decade and the algorithm is very heavy. There is millions of lines of code. They write so many lines of code into that thing every day. And now it is extremely sensitive. It has certain metrics that you have to hit or it won't show your own videos to your own audience. It just breaks my heart because YouTube used to be people's choice.

48:59It was like if you were on YouTube and you were creating content, the people chose who they wanted to watch. The people chose who was popular. That was, I'm people's choice. I'm not the algorithm choice. When we come back in just a moment, how Rosanna builds a business strategy to fend off the tyranny of the algorithm. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

49:36Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2021, and Rosanna is getting a bit disillusioned with how YouTube and other platforms like Facebook keep changing their algorithms. So for example, on Facebook, if a fan wants to follow me, they want to get updates from me, I'll post on my Facebook wall and it will say this post reached 5 % of your audience. If you would like it to reach 50 % of your audience, pay us$1 ,000. Yeah. That's how it is on Facebook. And that's what it is on YouTube. YouTube has a button. It is legal. It is on everyone's page. It's the promote button.

50:15And now it is pay to play. And that was not the case for many, many years on YouTube. And now I think the math that I did, the cheapest I think you can do, because you can pick region and you can pick. But if you want, it's about a thousand bucks for a hundred thousand views. So if you want your video to reach a million views, it's about$10 ,000. Wow. So now I've noticed you've pivoted in your videos. A lot of it's like you do reaction videos or you test things or you try different foods or shoes. You've done like even home decoration with your sister. Presumably, these are just more like efficient videos to make.

51:00they're more economical and they're, yeah, they're just more efficient from a business standpoint too, right? Because they're not that expensive to make and you can kind of maximize as best as possible how many views you get. Yeah. Food is expensive to produce. Yeah. And I know that sounds silly because you're just making a cake and you're like, how is that? But it's the amount of hours that go into the prep and development and recipe, It's a lot more than I could even explain. And a lot of the original food content creators you'll see that I started with, none of them are doing it anymore. And what I've noticed is that when a food channel comes up and it kind of blows up and it performs well, it does so for about two years.

51:45And then the algorithm poops on it and it's gone. Um, so for me to stick around on the platform for over 11 years, I've had to adapt a lot to the algorithm, not my community, the algorithm. And that's, what's the frustrating part because my, my community wants those tutorials, wants those baking videos, wants to see all of those things. They miss nerdy nummies just as much as I do. I loved it. I still love it. Um, but the algorithm hates it and there's nothing I can do about that. But I wonder what you sort of do. I mean, as you, you're kind of dependent on the platform, right? Because that's where your audience is.

52:26You've got 14 and a half million subscribers on YouTube. That's your biggest audience. And then you've got followers and other channels. But when you put a video out now, what you're saying is it's much harder to reach 15 million people. You can't unless you pay for it. Yeah, which when Facebook rolled out with that, it killed my growth. It just felt very corrupt. I just because it's just whoever has the deepest pockets is going to get seen. And I would just say the biggest creators. Are paying for it. Yeah. They use terms like investing in their company or, you know, investing back in their company.

53:08But it's just buying views. But so so and that is a big part of I mean, this is so it's it's like a brand advertising, right? It's like a brand saying, basically taking a million dollars and putting it to marketing. I mean, that is essentially in order to like if you started nerdy nummies today, you couldn't reach 14 and a half million subscribers. Yeah. My biggest advice for anybody going into business is to, as soon as you have some success, start diversifying your finances. That's what I did. And why it matters so much and why it's so much a wonderful thing is because then, you know, whatever the algorithm's doing, you know, if they're adjusting it, they're playing with it.

53:55If you skip a beat, you're not going to stress out because the finances will continue to flow if you have different revenue streams. Tell me about how you've diversified your revenue streams. Where are they coming from? Well, we started to get into cookbooks. We kind of mentioned that. I've done a couple of those, and I have another one I'm working on. And also merchandise. And then I also do licensing deals. I did the Wilton licensing deal for three or four years. We had 70 products across every Michaels, Joann's. Under your name, Rosanna Casano. Yeah. And you did something with Container Store, too.

54:36Yes. iDesign. We made like home organizational stuff for your kitchen and pantry. And those were at Container Stores. And we just moved this year, I think, into the UK and Canada and also on Amazon. So you've got the licensing deals, cookbooks, your own merchandise. TV shows. Yeah. TV shows. Yep. which I'm hosting and some of them I'm also executive producing. I think that the diversified model is really smart because, look, anyone's business, anyone who's in the public eye, you, me, anyone who's got a YouTube channel or a podcast, it's fleeting. You know, tomorrow people can decide not to listen to this show or decide not to watch your channel.

55:25So as you kind of think about the future of the YouTube channel, do you think of it more as a place where you can showcase the extensions and the other things you're doing? Or like how does YouTube continue to be a source of revenue if in fact it will be? I think about five years ago when the algorithm started to change, I realized that it may not be as steady as I was hoping. Yeah. And so we already made financial adjustments across the board. So regardless of how the YouTube views, you know, whether I get lots of views or no views, the business is fine on its own. Every video is a standalone.

56:09Like you can upload a video, it'll get millions of views. And the next video I could upload, it'd get two views. It is so wonka doodle right now. Yeah. I just. What explains it? Like I'm looking at a video you did a year ago called, it was the ultimate cotton candy test that has 6 million views. And then you do another video, you know, called how to make a robot cake with 160 ,000 views also from a year ago. So what explains that? Do you have any idea why? Yeah, I have some insight. Like, engagement is king right now as a metric. Yeah. So what that means is, like, channels that are very, like, high drama channels, you know, where it's very high engagement.

56:59Like, people need to watch them right away when they come out because it's, like, hot, spicy gossip news. And it doesn't help content creators grow naturally. it rewards the people who play the analytical game. For example, I have a friend, I won't say who it is, very large creator who will upload a video. And then on the backend, anytime that there's a drop in retention, just for a split second, they will edit it out on the backend and they'll edit it out. Even if the video doesn't make sense anymore, they'll like, so like for a food tutorial, like if I edited it out, just those low points, people are missing steps of how to make this cake.

57:41So people who are successful are not doing it because they love the content or they care about the content or they want the content to make sense. They're doing it to gain the system. Like when you watch a movie that was made just to make money and on that sole purpose alone, no artsy fartsiness, it's just to make money. It's like a cash grab, a quick piece of shit that you just, you can feel it. Yeah. Part of me is like, it's kind of a zero sum game, right? It's like, you know, I guess for a time, depending on how you manage the channel or your audience, I mean, you can do very well, but often for a very short period of time.

58:23And so to me, it seems like, and it seems like you're doing this, the strategy is to take a long view and to understand that you're not always going to have years where you're making$10 million or$5 million or even$3 million. Some years you might, but then some years you might make less than that. Yeah, off of just that one revenue source. So that's why it's so important to diversify and have multiple revenue streams so that if one goes wonky, then you're still solid. You don't feel like you're in crisis mode and like, oh no, my views are down. code red panic. I'm more like, you know, I can see that the algorithm isn't liking this and isn't showing it to my audience.

59:08And what changes do I want to make if I even do want to make them? For example, for in December last year, my audience really wanted baking recipes. They just wanted cookie recipes for Christmas. And I knew that those videos were going to get no views. I knew the algorithm would hate them, but I did it anyways. And that was my Christmas present to my community. I filmed 12 tutorials with a guest in every episode. Duff Goldman came on. Jet Tila came on. I had my professional chef friends. I had Carnie Wilson. You made a Christmas cookies. I love her. Yeah, it's Carnie Wilson from Wilson Phillips.

59:50Yes, yes, we're friends. The daughter of mamas and papas. Yeah, she's amazing. So I just, I had a guest on every episode and we did a new, you know, recipe and we did this cute little intro and it was just a little mini series that I did. And you just funded it and paid for it, but you did not get the, the return on that was not a financial return. Zero. Right. Yeah. So, but I love making food shows and especially family friendly food shows. I love them. So I think in the future I might be creating different revenue streams so that I can produce food shows that I love. And then I just don't care about the views because I'm going to create what my community loves and, and it performs better on different platforms, uh, because they have different algorithms.

1:00:39Yeah. So when you, as you look out, right, cause you're now, you know, you've got a long rest of your life to live. You're still young, young person. Thank you. And I mean, I mean that in, I mean, just from a lifespan perspective. Can I say your age? Is that OK? Please do. Yeah. I think you're all you're I'm 38. You're approaching your 40s. Yes. But you have a long life to lead. And so when you think about the opportunities out there, is it do you think in the context of food and cooking or do you think I really want to go outside of that world. I think I'm going to be doing a little bit of everything.

1:01:21I don't know. I just have all this new experience now executive producing TV shows. And so I'm working with a bunch of really cool people to pitch and develop shows in a traditional space. And then on YouTube, I think I'm going to keep playing. There's a lot of possibilities there. So I'm going to keep playing, but I'm always going to be uploading something there because even if YouTube wants to make me pay thousands and thousands of dollars to reach my audience, I'm still going to be putting out those videos for the people that are fighting the algorithm and show up anyways. When you think about the journey that you took, you know, where you got to today and you built a nice business and you made some money off of this and you clearly are smart with your money and I'm assuming that you are careful with it and have diversified where you put it as well.

1:02:16How much of where you are today, you know, given that you didn't, you moved to LA to be an actor and you really was hard, but you built a successful career. How much of that do you attribute to how hard you worked and how much do you think has to do with luck? I think had I not worked so hard, I wouldn't have been as lucky. And I think that the continued success only comes from being tenacious and having drive and never giving up and continuing. Because I've been rejected so many times in acting. I've had thousands of auditions where they were close calls, close but no cigar. And I've learned to just, you feel the feelings and then you keep moving.

1:03:01You got to keep moving, keep pushing, keep swimming. because there's so many people who find success later in life. And I'm good. I'm golden. I'm not in a rush. I'm not going anywhere. And yeah, a lot of failure comes with when you try new things. And I'm excited. I feel like I've been doing this forever, but I also feel like the next 10 years are going to be so new and different. That's YouTube creator Rosanna Pansino. And by the way, if Rosanna were ever marooned on a desert island and could only have one kitchen gadget at her disposal. Oh, that's so hard. Okay, okay. I think it would have to be something electric, like an electric whisk, like an electric mixer, hand mixer, or the stand mixer.

1:03:51Like the KitchenAid, right? It could be the KitchenAid or the electric hand mixer. Because whenever you're making a meringue, you know, you'd have to do that for eight minutes straight. And oh, my God, my arms would just they would burn off. You can do it. It is possible. But it's like churning butter. Like who wants to do that? Like with it, you know, it's just no thank you. So electric mixers. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. This episode was produced by Carla Estevez with music composed by Ramtina Arablui.

1:04:26It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Malia Agudelo and engineering help from Gilly Moon and Robert Rodriguez. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, JC Howard, Catherine Seifer, Alex Chung, John Isabella, Carrie Thompson, Sam Paulson, and Chris Messini. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

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