Ottawa YouTuber and entrepreneur Elle Mills celebrated Valentine’s Day with a couch talk at Carleton University on Feb. 14, hosted by Carleton University Students’ Association’s (CUSA) Hatch centre.
Mills, an Ottawa native now based in Los Angeles, started her YouTube channel in 2014 and has since amassed a total of 1.84 million subscribers. Known for her narrative style videos, Mills described her video editing style like a “mini teen movie.”
During her talk, Mills spoke about her career, how she deals with her mental health, and what it was like for her to come out on the internet. As someone who grew up as a huge fan of YouTube, Mills said it was always a dream of hers to pursue a YouTube career.
“Once I graduated high school I was going to Ottawa U[niversity]—sorry guys—for marketing. It was terrible and I was like, ‘Okay, all these YouTubers that I watch started at zero subscribers.’ And I had like 400, and I knew that every time I posted a video, I gained like 10 subscribers. So, I made this game plan in my head,” Mills explained.
With this plan in mind, she managed to gain 10,000 subscribers by the end of 2016. Mills said in order to grow her following, she knew she had to be consistent and think outside of the box.
“I would say that my First Kiss video and my Coming Out video, I think that those are stories that I told very well,” she said, adding storytelling is something very important to her.
While in university, Mills said she became “so sad” and eventually left after realizing it wasn’t for her, adding she was fortunate her family could afford for her to leave school and pursue her dreams.
“When I think about the rest of my life, I want to do something I’m passionate about, and I ultimately realized that it was YouTube video making,” she said.
“[School]’s always going to be there, and you can always go back to school,” she added.
Mills said she feels taking a year off before going to university is beneficial for many people, though not all students at the event agreed.
“My mom would kill me,” said Pauline Gahunia, a second-year architecture student who considers herself a big fan of Mills.
“But it is really cool to see that people who have done that are very successful in what they do,” Gahunia said, adding she’s interested in entrepreneurship but hasn’t considered leaving school to pursue it.
“I would for sure consider having my own business after university,” said Basma Hafez, a second-year economics student.
Hatch, a student-led entrepreneurship program run out of Carleton since 2013, regularly hosts events to “help promote student enterprise,” said Kathleen Quinn Steeves, co-director of Hatch.
“We offer many services in terms of networking opportunities both in and outside of the university,” Steeves added, which range from seminars to one-on-one networking sessions.
“It’s really good that [Hatch] promotes stuff like this so that people can learn about Hatch and their events,” Hafez added, saying she hadn’t heard of Hatch before but now plans to look out for their events on social media.
With the increased presence of social media and those like Mills who want to pursue a career with it, Hatch said they are open to offering services for students that would address this nontraditional career route.
“I would definitely incorporate someone who wanted to be an influencer,” said Brendan McGann, co-director of Hatch. “I’m a big believer in social media and marketing yourself.”
Featured graphic by Sara Mizannojehdehi.
