The Exchanges

Q Yeah. So walk me through the process of educating yourself about do-it-yourself work, 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?

A I would say it's a good mix of watching other tutorials online and trying to educate ourselves, but for me at least, it's a lot more of just trial and error. I just like to give my best go at something, and if it doesn't work, then that's the best way to learn how to do it better the next time. But yeah, I have no official training in most of this stuff that we're doing these days. It was a very slow Progression. I think the first time I picked up a drill ever was when I was in college, and then you slowly work your way from there. When we were working with wood, you know, I definitely only used a handsaw to start, but years later, you get more comfortable to use a power saw, and that's a really big, scary move for you, but I think the thing that was really successful for us was showing that online, that this is our first time using this, and we're going to gonna show you how it's not so scary, and it really made it feel more accessible to people out there as well.

AI assessment note: “a good mix of watching other tutorials online and [...] a lot more of just trial and error.”

Q 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, you know, no one knows what you are about. Um, so when you were kind of thinking about what kind of videos to make, How much, you know, sort of analysis were you doing around what worked and what didn't?

A There's definitely a lot of, you know, paying attention to what's trending at the moment, what our peer group seems to be interested in, but I think a lot of the success of what we've been doing comes from just doing what we are naturally passionate about at the time, and our audience seems to respond really well to that, so kind of fading out of the Halloween costumes and maybe the fashion stuff a little less, too, just because we were so genuinely passionate about home decor and design, And the audience really loved that. I mean, we started our DIY journey by just shooting our hands, essentially, and showing us making something with, like, a simple voiceover, and then we got more confident to have our face on it and explain as we were going, and now, I mean, we're creating things that feel more like full-blown shows where we have a whole storyline to the DIY process as well, and that's just because it's been what we're passionate about making at the time, and it's, it's really worked well.

AI assessment note: “There's definitely a lot of, you know, paying attention to what's trending”

Q a, such a high demand. You know, I hear stories, I'm sure you do, of people waiting, you know, 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?

A Yes, absolutely. And actually, even before I think supply chain became the issue you're talking about now, it was really at the start of the pandemic when everyone went working from home. I think people really started to consider their home spaces and their work from home offices way more than they ever have since they were spending 99% of their lives in home now. They were looking at their spaces thinking, I want to do something to this room. Uh, how do I do it? And then they found us online, which was a funny story. Uh, place to be in, seeing as, like, the world was going through something so horrific, and then hearing people losing businesses and jobs, but somehow our views were still keeping up, if not doing better.

AI assessment note: “Yes, absolutely. And actually, even before I think supply chain became the issue”

Q 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?

A Well, I think this happens for a lot of people that start making careers online is when you build up an audience, even of a small size, you start getting emails to your inbox asking you to promote certain things, and the first couple offers you get might not be for the most exciting companies for the largest amount of money, but it's a really good place to start, and just showing that you're able to work a brand seamlessly into your content is a way that a Since then, have grown more into kind of an outreach where we actively go look for brand partners for our videos now. But in the beginning stage, it was definitely, you know, if we got an offer, maybe once every few months, we were really excited about that.

AI assessment note: “when you build up an audience... you start getting emails to your inbox”

Q I'm sorry. Yeah. Um, how did that come about? Why are you called the Sorry Girls?

A Well, when we way back then made that first fateful highlighter video, we were going to put it online. Everything was done, ready to go. And we realized, oh wait, we actually have to have a channel to put this video on. And we were signing up for a YouTube channel, and it comes to that question where it asks you, what are you going to call this channel? And at that time, there were so many other creators that had just resorted to using a bunch of numbers and characters in their names, because finding a unique name online can be difficult. So we thought we wanted to come up with something that was unique to us, and something that might be timeless, because we had no idea what was going to happen after this first video, if we were going to use the channel after this first video. We, I think we're hesitant to call it something about Halloween or costume, because it might not be that, and we kind of wrote a list of what are things about us that might not change, and the fact that we were Canadian came up a lot, so one of the going names was the A girls, perhaps, because we say A a lot in Canada.

AI assessment note: “the fact that we were Canadian came up a lot”