Have you heard of the Youtube channel, Chicken Shop date?

I just heard of it recently but apparently its all the rage in the UK... with funny interviews of A-list musicians like Ed Sheeran

Chicken Shop Date was started over a decade ago by Amelia Dimonldenberg. And it was a MrBeast-like story of her posting videos for years at first… making no money.

But having an amazing passion for what she was doing. So strong that she was spending most of her savings to shoot these shows.

Back when she started 12 years ago… Youtube was a very different place. Content didn’t have the standing it did now. And virality was next to impossible.

Instead you needed to go and beg and plead for blogs and websites to post your content. It was painful and slow.

But she never gave up. And now it has paid off big time.

Just how popular is Amelia now

Amelia has over 2 million Youtube subscribers and published close to 200 videos. The format is always the same.

It is set up as a mock date between her and a guest. And they use an actual chicken fastfood shop as the set.

What is even more interesting about her is how she has seemed to transcend beyond just Youtube into the offline world.

For example here you see her on the red carpet interviewing Ryan Gosling at the “Barbie” premiere in London.

And tons of celebrities have been on her show. She’s gradually moved up from the no name musicians to the A-listers and going beyond musicians to actors and other types of celebrities.

In other words… she’s just starting to hit her stride on taking things to the next level.

Amelia is known for her dry humor

So as she describes it… she mixes a kind of eager fan side with the knack for coming off bored. And its pretty funny.

For example one of the hilarious moments I saw was when she was interviewing Ed Sheeran and he says he’s a singer and gives her a small example of his singing… but she recommends him to “keep his day job”.

Plus she’s involved in lots of funny interactions with celebrities on social media like this one with MrBeast.

Her team was one thing I found interesting

So despite her rising fame… she only has two employees.

Her producer and her social media manager.

Everyone else is freelancers. Video editors, etc.

Basically the producer schedules the people she interviews and handles all the logistics of organizing the set. This is sometimes complex as they go and find a chicken shop that is near the location of the guest.

Then the producer also handles all the logistics at the time of the shooting so that she can focus on the content.

And since they are dealing with A-listers… time is often tight. They get 1-hour with the celebrity from the time the person arrives.. and aim to get at least 40 minutes of raw video footage.

My other takeways from having watched Colin and Samir interview her

First, the strategy needed to continue to up your game with celebrity guests. I’d never thought of it before but there’s a lot of time and effort involved.

And you need to try to land one at the next level. Which other celebrities than kind of look at and say “ok if you got him. Than i guess i can do it too.”

Second, how she focuses on storytelling and style over the analytics. For example, she uses an intro that is pretty atypical for the Youtube world where everyone typically optimizes for the initial dropoff at the start of a video.

Third, humor and originality. Her mix of creating humorous moments in a dry way is quite unique to Youtube.

Fourth, how even though now she is the ‘talent’ she still very much retains the angle of the producer and video editor. She thinks about what angle to shoot from, the lighting, how to capture the right moment with the editing, etc.

This is one thing that is quite unique to the Youtube world. In that folks like her and MrBeast started by having to be a one-man team and do it all. And this helps them in how they think about creating great content from all angles.

Which is very different from Hollywood where folks evolve as either the producer, the director, the actor, etc.

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