Today we’d like to introduce you to Marissa Rachel and Shanna Lisa.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Shanna: Marissa and I started making YouTube videos for fun several years ago. We were very inspired by Elle & Blair Fowler, who were two sisters who were popular on YouTube at the time. We liked the idea that it was something we could do together as sisters to spend time with each other.
We decided to just have one channel together, and that Marissa would be the main face of the channel, hence calling the channel “Marissa Rachel.” I naturally fell into more of a producer-type role, although I appear on camera with Marissa in many of our videos. Our followers know that we’re sisters and view me as a character on the channel.
We weren’t very consistent at first! It took a few years before we learned the ropes and established ourselves as influencers! We’re extremely grateful every day to be able to do what we love and have built an amazing community of young women!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Marissa and Shanna: Learning how to grow our channel was a big learning curve for us! When we first started out, we weren’t very structured and would just post whatever type of content we wanted without much thought to the big picture or our overall brand. Our channel grew very slowly during that early period of time while we figured out what we were doing! It was very frustrating spending hours working on a video that almost no one would ever see.
Around the end of 2015 was when we really started to hit our stride as far as understanding what type of content audiences wanted to see, how to capitalize on Google trends, how to make our titles searchable, how to tag videos properly, how to drive engagement, etc. All the little pieces that make an influencer successful started to click into place. And voila, our channel finally started to grow! We hit 50k subscribers, and two months later, our channel doubled in size to 100k. Two months later, our channel doubled in size to 200k.
Less than a year later, we hit 1 Million subscribers, and today, we’re at 1.6 Million and growing! Another hurdle we faced was not being taken seriously. People in our everyday lives often thought YouTube was just a hobby or that we sat around all day doing nothing. In actuality, running your own business means our hours are incredibly long and there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work people don’t see.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
The Marissa Rachel YouTube Channel is a joint effort between two sisters, Marissa Rachel and Shanna Lisa. We’re known for making videos that range from beauty, fashion, women’s health education, fitness, DIYS, pranks, and comedy skits.
We make a pretty diverse array of content! Our demographic is primarily 13-24-year-old US-based females. We love working with brands in the beauty, hair, women’s hygiene, and lifestyle spaces!
We’re extremely proud to say we have become United Nations Ambassadors, championing causes such as quality education, ending poverty, and gender equality! It’s so rewarding being able to use the amazing platform we’ve built to effect change! Inspiring our viewers to help change the world gives real meaning to what we do.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Marissa: One day when Shanna and I were little, we decided to plant a “Money Tree” in the backyard. We shook all the coins out of our piggy banks to use as “seeds” and dug a big hole in the backyard. I imagined a big tree would grow that grew dollar bills instead of leaves and that we’d be able to go pluck them off.
A few days later, we smugly told our parents what we had done, expecting them to be pleased. Instead, they were furious! They made us go outside and try to dig up the coins, but we never found them again!
Shanna and I were always getting into crazy shenanigans together!
Contact Info:
- Website: http://youtube.com/missmarissarachel
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/missmarissarachel/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MissMarissaRachel/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Marissa_Rachel
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/shanna_lisa/?hl=en
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
