Today we’d like to introduce you to Andy B. Scheidemann.
Hi Andy, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Hello, my name is Andres but everyone knows me as Andy or The Real Andy of Beverly Hills, I’m a content creator and run a youtube channel where I talk about everything that is happening in pop culture around the world. So many people might thing that pop culture is not important or so vain, but pop culture is an expression of the world itself and it represents a part of humanity that i have always been so curious about, something like a reality show, will show you more real human emotions than a tv show or a movie sometimes.
My story, I was born in Colombia, and all my life I was on a constant struggle to find a place I could fit in, I was never the popular guy in high school, a gay closeted guy who wanted to be an actor but in a country, like Colombia, specially back in the day, you had to be either a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer to be succesful in life, that’s a concept that was put in our brains since we were a kids, after high school I left the country and I went to Germany, as my family is half german, but that didn’t work out either, i was constantly alone, I’m a very shy person who struggled with social anxiety, so make friends was never and still isn’t easy for me, and also i was too latino for germany, I wanted to live in LA, i always loved USA and in my mind LA was that place where all dreams come true, i wanted to be happy and do something more, but life would have another plans for me, so I came back to Colombia and after being basically gaslight by my parents, not that they are bad people but they didn’t knew better, I gave up my dream of acting and i end up enrolling in college, see I have a curse or a gift depending how you see it, and its that I am academically very smart, so I had the best score in like the SAT of Colombia and I had an open invitation to join every college in the country to study anything I wanted! The problem i didn’t wanted to study anything i wanted to be an actor, but next thing i know I ended up studying biomedical engineering with a second degree in industrial engineering! I went for seven years and graduated from both of them. But inside I was empty, I didn’t want to do any of that, I wanted to leave and be who I really was supposed to be! However something happened during that time, four of those seven years i met someone and i was a victim of Love, and again, i gave up not only my dream but my very essence to make him happy, i changed all my life and beliefs to be with him, a closeted guy two years younger than me, but i was blind to everything, he was studying the same as me, so it was perfect, again academically everything was so easy, i became the popular guy, with friends, money, still in the closet but with a boyfriend, i had it all, until i hadn’t. After 4 years this guy left me for a girl because his family will never accept him as a gay guy! He crushed my heart and open my eyes, so here i was 4 years into not one but two carrers that i didn’t care for, and again, my parents convinced me to just finish them and well i did.
In 2012, I met my husband in Colombia and we fell in love, immediately something that confused me for a second because i was so badly hurt i never thought i would love again, but there he was, with a perfect smile, he was so cute and funny, he made me laugh all the time which is what i loved the most about him and still is, his vision of the world was unlike anything i experience before, so we move in together literally four months after! My husband became my inspiration as he was a free spirit, he was American and he had the most supportive family I have ever seen till that point in my life, we were together for two years living and hustling in Colombia because he loved there until one day I got enough, I had a breakdown and I told him I was moving to LA with or without him, because i realized i have had given my dream for so many people and what about me?, what about my happiness?, my future?, I didn’t care if I had to be a dishwasher or a gardener I just couldn’t stand Colombia anymore, the lack of opportunities and I had 2 degrees, there were no jobs, and then the homophobia, we were being harassed by our own neighbors constantly, people would not understand us or see a future for us, even our doorman was bullying us, I knew I couldn’t be there so I was like I’m leaving! Fortunately, his dream was also to live in LA, and he said i will go with you wherever you wanna go until the end of the world, i couldn’t believe i would be so lucky to find someone like him, so we sold everything we had, and with 2000 dollars we move to USA, since then we have been in this country for 8 years already, we got married on 2015 but I didn’t get my green card until 2019 and the things that I had to do to survive, i could write a whole book about it…I was scammed by a couple who made me work for a month cleaning their house, cooking for them, taking care of the dogs etc. and never pay me right before Christmas, I was a cleaning person, a dishwasher, a busser, a cashier, an uber driver….I did it all, but with all of that I never lost hope and weirdly enough I was happy, I was not living in fear, i knew i was where i was suppose to be and that things will be better someday, because i was not living for money, i was living for myself. the city of West Hollywood took us with open arms, it change my life completely and even with no money at all we were always happy because we were fighting for our dreams.
In 2020 during the pandemic I was working in a hotel as a receptionist during the day and in a hostel as the graveyard shift during the night, it was so empty so I had a lot of time in my hands and I decided to create my youtube channel as a hobby, and talk about my favorite thing, pop culture, specifically my favorite show, the real housewives of Beverly hills, I never expected anything big to happen and then boom, little by little the numbers started growing and growing and it became very successful! I reached 10k subscribers so fast, I was so excited so i kept going, i was let go from the hotels and i just started doing uber and there i was working 60 hours plus a week in uber and doing my videos from my car, i knew this was something else, i just needed to make it happened, so i put all my energy and my time on it, no matter what i had to do, because this was my chance in life, so i never stopped and now to see where this journey has taken me i couldn’t be more thankful and greatful, to my subscribers for letting me be a part of their day to day life, to my family who weirdly didn’t believe in me until they saw i could live from it, because they gave me the strength to prove them wrong and eventually the support i really needed from them and now they are my number one fans, i love my mom, my dad and all my family with all my heart, and over all to my husband for giving me the love, the patience and the inspiration to get where i am, i couldn’t do this without him. Now I get to travel the world and take my subscribers with me on different adventures and I wake up every morning with a smile on my face! And this is just the beginning! I’m still working every single day to keep growing my channel more and more! There are so many stories still in between this story from all the things we had to endure to get where we are now but this is in a nutshell what went down. My lesson is to never give up! To work hard and keep your goals always in front of you, but overall to never sacrifice your happiness for money or anything or anyone.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Girlll if I would tell you the amount of obstacles, from homophobia to racism and xenophobia. Scammers and assholes along the way. It has definitely not been a smooth road, but with all of that i dont regret anything, the pain, the anger, the good the bad and the ugly, at the end everything happens for a reason, so I never let nothing divert me from my end goal and i took every lesson that the universe sends me to my heart.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I put my heart out there for everyone, im a content creator but im so much more than that, i still hope one day i could do some acting, but for now my youtube channel give all the happiness i need, so much that i ended up creating a second channel, where i do travel blogs and travel is another one of my passions, i love to explore new culture, meet new people, and explore the world, i also do a lot of vlogs on that channel so many of the stories of my life are there is called “the Real Real Andy”.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
It’s a combination you know, luck comes and goes, but the trick is to be smart about those moments, either good luck or bad luck is all about the lesson behind it, what is luck but a way from the universe to tell us that we are or not in the right path, so listen to it, if you feel like you are going through a bad luck moment, look at the big picture, look the signs and the lesson because the universe is telling you “not like this” so listen to it. Remeber the universe will never give you what you think you need, but what you really need!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @realandybh
- Twitter: @realandybh
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@TheRealAndyofBeverlyHills
- Other: Tiktok.com/realandybh
