Maymay made a business out of a YouTube channel, and you can too
Posted On October 7, 2024
Businesses can start from all sorts of places and situations. For Maymay Helms, her business started with a house fire.
“In 2011, we lost everything we owned in a fire in our home,” she said. “I had been kind of a fan of YouTube. I’d been watching paper crafters and artists and things that I loved. And I remember saying to my husband: ‘I think I could do this.’”
Helms did just that, starting a YouTube paper crafting channel out of a 4×6 closet that now has more than 380,000 subscribers. Our guest in a recent episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston,” she says she never intended the turn it into a full-time business. It just turned out that way.
“I never did it to earn a living,” she said. “I did it as my therapy. I had to do something.”
Helms, who was featured recently in Business Alabama, said the channel took off, in part, because she identified an audience and wasn’t afraid to be herself. She also says establishing a regular schedule is essential.
“Social media is the soul of my business,” she said. “What I learned early on is the most important things with social media to me are a schedule and consistency. … They want to watch everything you do, but they need to know when you’re doing it.”
Helms now has a staff of nine, plus her husband, who handles purchasing and accounting. She has expanded her operation to create events – both online Zoom meet-ups and an in-person event in her hometown of Clanton, Alabama, called Craft-A-Cropolis – for her community to meet her and each other. That community shares one common passion – they love paper.
“I’m not really teaching the masses. I’m teaching my community,” she said. “That’s what’s so important in your social media journey. You have to know your community. … My viewers are tech-savvy 65- to 80-year-olds. And they are passionate about what we do.”