Rosanna Pansino
Appearances
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
But I hadn't hit the threshold yet. But I knew it was headed there. I could feel it. And that's where I didn't tell my dad. Yeah. That's why I didn't tell my parents that, hey, dad, remember how I saved 10% of my paycheck my entire life? Like, what's that nest egg?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And instead of buying a down payment on a home that I've worked my whole life for, I'm going to throw it all into this YouTube channel. But nobody knows what it is. Nobody knows what it is. Or, you know, we didn't know.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Yeah, I would say that I made the decision, but really my agents at the time, I think that they guided it and they kind of made it for me because they sat me down for a meeting and they gave me an ultimatum in person. This was a time where new media was really scaring traditional media at the time because it was rising and they were like, what's going to happen? We don't know.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I was like, it's going to be fine. You guys are still going to be making all the shows. Just distribution is going to change. And no one was listening to me. It was like they just couldn't see that. And everyone was all up in arms and they just said, you need to pick a lane. You can either keep working in traditional or new media and you can't have both. And I said it was short-sighted.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I thought they were being silly. I begged them to just look in the future because I said, I think these things are going to complement each other. I think it's a great tool. I told them the only commercial I had booked that year, this big Sony project, was because the casting director's daughter liked my YouTube channel. So she felt really familiar with my content and how I would perform.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
So I was like, see, it's a huge asset. This is a tool. These are working together. This is a beautiful thing. And they still couldn't see it. Yeah. They made the decision for me. So two weeks after that meeting, I got a letter in the mail, a letter typed, signed. that they dumped me from the agency.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
No, but I should have. That would have been a moment. I mean, that was the pretty woman moment, right? That was a big mistake. Huge, huge. No, but I never talked to him again. They did reach out later wanting to do lunch and I didn't respond. I think that I just really decided to just keep people in my life that have been supportive. And I did have a really good moment though.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I had a pretty woman moment where... We were driving, I was doing this morning show on the back lot of Universal Studios and we had just wrapped and we're driving back home and I said, Mike, pull over. That's my boyfriend. And we pulled over and he goes, what? And I said, I just need to take this in, this moment.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I started crying and I looked and there was the building of my old agency and right above it was this huge billboard for my YouTube original show. show that was coming out and it was just floating right above it. And I still have the video today. And it was just this trusting my instincts. This is why you trust yourself. This is the moment. I'll never forget that moment. It was big for me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
That goes to living in a house with six people, a three bedroom apartment with six people and three cats. I'm sleeping on a couch and I am just in startup mode where you are just every second, you know, you're working seven days a week. You're in starting in buildup. And I did that for two years straight. And then after two years is where it started to financially take off.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And it became more than a part-time or full-time job. It really became a career and then developed into a brand. And it changed my life. And I learned so much, not just about YouTube, but about becoming an entrepreneur, like how to build a startup, the process. And I learned that building businesses is all about building systems. You just create systems. And I'm really nerdy.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I guess I like doing that. And I'm really curious, too. So I like to figure out what wasn't working and then play and figure out, OK, if this doesn't work, then we'll figure out something that will. So I think I just find a lot of joy in the problem solving like that. It kind of excites me. It feels like an adventure. Amazing. And why the name Nerdy Nummies? It was so funny.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
It was either going to be like geeky goodies, because it was a lot of things that were based on video games, comics, and things that were really considered... People called me geeky for liking or nerdy for liking back in the day. It was nerdy back in the day if you played video games at your computer and you were into comics. And now those things... Geek very much became chic.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
It went more mainstream, where now there's all these Marvel superhero movies, but... When I was growing up, that was not the case. And especially when YouTube was first starting, that was still not the case. I remember this very cool time where Felicia Day, this geeky actress who I adore, she was really at this pivotal moment of where geek was becoming chic.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I just remember her face as the poster of geek becoming chic.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
When we first started, I would film everything myself So come up with a creative concept, get all the materials and supplies, actually shoot it, film everything, then be on camera talent and then be the editor afterwards and then figure out ways to market and promote it and interact with the community once it came out. So you were kind of basically a one person production company.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. And I love nerding out and talking about this because it's not often where I get the chance to like kick back and reflect on these things. And it's really meaningful because it's like, wow, so much has happened in the last 10 years. And then you don't really notice it until you take a step back and look at everything and go, hmm.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And as time went on, we were able to add to this one person production company and become a 10 person production company. And today I think there's about 10 of us and we keep it really a skeleton crew. I enjoy working with a skeleton crew because we're all very knowledgeable at very specific things. We fill each slot perfectly.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I don't know how to say this, but we're just like a steel iron production team. I think people would be shocked to see how much my team can get done. We're just extremely efficient in the systems that we've made. We're able to make things that people wouldn't think we'd be able to do.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Like the cookbook or like we've helped partner with HBO where my production company executive produced my very first baking show with HBO, Bakedopia. That was both of our companies working together and making that. And I think that's what I've just learned is small and mighty. It can happen.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Um, let's see. Well, before I had a culinary producer, I think I was baking and testing recipes, maybe about 60 to 70 hours a week. I was in the kitchen doing recipe development, which is a full-time job.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I learned that Martha Stewart's show and Rachel Ray, they have multiple chefs who develop recipes and produce all of those things in stages so that when you're shooting for camera, everything's laid out in stages. So you don't have to wait for something to bake and in real time when you're shooting the show. That would be a huge waste of time.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
So I learned from those professional food sets how to produce food for camera and I ran with it. So I just learned what they did and I put together a team and we would block shoot all these recipe videos. At one point, we were seven months ahead in content. And for YouTube, that just doesn't happen very often. And then we would do that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And then while I had that off time, I could then start tackling new projects like cookbooks, TV shows, our baking line that was all over every Walmart store. All of these things I could do once I learned how to do block shooting. So it was just learning the systems and then applying them.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Pretty soon. So about three or four years after I started YouTube is when Project Beacon came about. And that was a program where YouTube used to focus on uplifting and highlighting individual creators who they thought were doing something really cool in the space.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Because at this time, it was known for being a free video hosting site, but it wasn't really known as a huge entertainment platform at that time. And they were trying to really educate the public and media, traditional media, that we weren't just silly cat videos anymore.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
That there's people on the platform who are incredibly talented musicians, comedians, fashion gurus, makeup gurus, cooking and food gurus. They're Rachel Ray's, but we're just on YouTube versus on traditional. And so they took a handful of people and they put us on these press tours and all over New York and they set up all these interviews. I was doing interviews at CNBC.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I was on the New York Exchange stock floor. What was I doing there? And I was educating basically journalists about how YouTube works and why it's just not silly cat videos anymore. It's really evolving and changing and entrepreneurs are... flocking to YouTube, because it's how you can really build businesses. It's just such a great ground to build, because it was my home base.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
There's a lot going on here.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And then from it, I built so much from it. And I really just owe my life to Susan Wojcicki, a former CEO of YouTube. She handpicked me out of a crowd of thousands and thousands and thousands. I had never even met her. And she asked if I'd like to be a part of this program. Changed my life. I still get emotional because I miss her so much.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
She just really believed in the good that YouTube could do for the world. And she really supported creators. And she just had the same values in business that I do. I know it's about numbers. I get it. Business is about numbers. Everyone wants to get the good numbers and be in the good profits. That's good business. But it's also about people. And I just feel like Susan got that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I just really admired her.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
She was just such a light. And she really changed my life. I've thanked her in person many times when we got to go do these YouTube summits and they were really intimate and they would invite a hundred of the top creators to these summits and we would spend four days together.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And she took the time, even though she's so busy, to spend days with us and just listen to our feedback and give us info and just collaborate. And it was just wonderful. I learned so much from her. I think she was just one of my guiding forces. It was when she took an interest in me and encouraged me is when all those things changed. And it was just one person.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I know that she was a big deal, but just one fellow female opening the door for me that it all changed. And that's when publishers started calling my agents and wanting to do cookbooks. And that's when Large companies like Walmart wanted to do a product line and it all changed.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
People's perspectives started to change about digital creators and their influence, like influencers, this new star power. And that was Susan's initiative. And it just showed that it worked. It was working. And I couldn't express more gratitude than for her to bring me into that experience because it changed my life.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I grew up in Seattle with my mom, my dad, and my little sister. We were very close. We still are today. My dad passed, but my mom and I are very close. She moved in with me, so she's my roommate now. And my sister actually moved right next door, so we're neighbors. And we work together full-time. We've been working together now for over a decade, running my businesses.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Yeah. So my dad was diagnosed with leukemia and luckily we got six years with him, but we lost him to leukemia that year. And at first I was in shock. I think that that initial stage of grief, I got to speak to a leading grief expert, David Kessler, about this stage. And he says it's almost a grace where I just had to handle everything, be the rock for my family and take care of things.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And it's that And then my team really, really helped me. If I was by myself, I don't think that I would have been able to continue. It really does take a community like a village. And those systems that I set up in the business are the same systems that saved me. Because those systems, when I wasn't emotionally okay, were already in place and they were just steadfast and ongoing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
So if I'm having a terrible day, Everything else is already taken care of. So my team really, really helped throughout that time and give me the grace that I needed when I needed to take some time ups and downs and just be I don't know, I'm very adaptive.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I think that that's the other thing is I learned that life is short and on my mental health, it switched something and me switched where I didn't want to just be on YouTube anymore. I wanted to really grow. I wanted to really diversify. I wanted to spread my wings even bigger so that I could have more time with my friends and family.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Because I could still see systems that I had created that could be more efficient, and they weren't. And it was just bigger. So YouTube up until then had been my entire life. And then I was learning how to diversify with that success. in other avenues.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
So like publishing, baking line, but also opening new businesses, investing in businesses, investing in even just charities, philanthropy work that fulfill me, that I am passionate about.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
So when I started to do all these things, and that's my biggest advice to everybody is once you get there, once the financially, you have some stability there, diversify, diversify, diversify, diversify as much as you can.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
As much as you feel comfortable, as much as you, you know, and I diversified into low risk, medium risk, high risk, all over so that the day-to-day pressure wasn't all on my shoulders. If I had a bad day, if grief hit me, grief stricken, and I needed to really just go take the day to heal, I could do that. And I also learned, hey, you got to get out of startup mode.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
You can't keep going like that seven days a week and have longevity to sustain. So I need to change my mindset to be more of a marathon, not a sprint. So I started doing things like taking care of myself. Now I sleep eight hours every night. It's like a non-negotiable.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
It's so important. And I apply it now. I've been doing it for years and it's just made a huge, even bigger difference. And I think I'm going to be working until I'm 110 or whatever. But it's because I want to be. I'm always going to be doing projects that I enjoy, that fascinate me. That's a big part of it, too. A lot of the questions I get asked this last year was sustainability.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
So she's just very analytical. So she's a great fit for me. My little sister, she's into data. She has that beautiful, tedious mind that I don't have. She's so good at that. And we compliment each other that way. And growing up, we didn't have a lot of money. So I definitely learned a strong work ethic from a young age.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Like, how do you sustain being a digital creator when the average lifespan of a YouTuber or influencer online is three to four years? That's the average. And we've been doing it for I don't know how many years. Michael, what year are we on?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I don't know. Gosh, geez. But something that's really helped is not doing burnout. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
As soon as I was legally allowed to have a job, I had a job and I was working in the state of, Washington, you could work if you were 15 years old, if you had a note from your parents, otherwise it was 16 years old. So I was waitressing on and off for about eight years. And I had plenty of other oddball jobs. But in Seattle, I liked learning. I'm very curious.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
But school was really difficult for me because I noticed that I didn't process information the same as my peers. Reading and writing was really difficult for me and I learned later in college when I was diagnosed with dyslexia that that was it. But then I just thought I was slow and teachers didn't know what to call it then and they just thought I was slow, I was dumb.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I heard that language a lot. And it kind of messed with my self-esteem, I would say. But then also a year, I could not understand why I could barely read and write. I mean, it was really a struggle. I could do it, but it would just take a lot of time. But then I was in an AP advanced calculus class. Riddle me that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
So many things. I could literally just make a list. I was joking about this with my friend just earlier today. Actually, if we could write a letter to ourselves, send it back in time 20 years, we wouldn't tell ourselves.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I was like, so many things. One would be take better care of myself from the beginning, meaning sleep enough, you know, eat good, just better care of yourself on the daily. And then the biggest thing that I've learned is that the people that you keep closest in your life, like closest to you, affect you the most. And I didn't realize that for decades.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And that is just the most important thing that I could tell anyone and I would want to tell myself is, really create the environment, create your tribe. You want friends who are supportive, encouraging. When you're down, they're gassing you up. You want all that positivity, people you have fun with. That's who you want to keep near and dear to your heart.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I wish I could have gone back and told myself that years ago because I have a big heart and I love people and I think I always try to see the good in everyone.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I think because I always see the potential for people, I'm like, oh gosh, if just these things didn't exist, that your potential to fly could be, you know, and I just hold on to those things and these relationships that they aren't the healthiest for me and they aren't positive for me and they're negative. And I just don't want to give up on them because I'm just that fighter.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And then I realized now that, No, the people closest to you truly affect you, like on a deeper level, not just business, but your mental health. And so be more thoughtful of that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
That was my position where I just didn't understand where I fit in and I didn't understand what was going on. I just thought part of my brain didn't work or something. But then later on in life, you grow and you realize that... standardized school systems were not- Just not the right thing for everybody.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
It's the people pleasing. You start teaching yourself to not do that and go, hey, step back and go, is this actually good for me? Is this healthy for me? Is this creating more stress in my life? Or is this making me more anxious? And then when you do that, your life changes. Your life changes. I can't believe it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I love it. There's a comedy sketch that this comedian, Cat Williams, does. And it's a joke where he jokes, if you have 10 haters right now, good. But by next summer, you better have 100. Your goal should be to have a hundred because it means you have a voice, you have an opinion. And when you don't have one, no one opposes you.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
You know, there's no beef and it's usually means you're doing something right. That's ruffling the feathers of somebody else. So it's, it's pretty. I love that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I love it. Thank you for having me. I cannot wait for the future. I think I'm going to be leaning more into entertainment, but also into, I don't know, helping people who are dyslexic and have ADHD like me. I love it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Basically growing up, because we didn't have a lot of money, we would choose from basically what my parents called functional hobbies. You know, they were hobbies. You could be creative, but they were also helping the family. So that was gardening, cooking, baking, or sewing. I love the name, by the way, Functional. I mean, I liked all of those things.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
How do you sustain being a digital creator when the average lifespan of a YouTuber or influencer online is three to four years?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I was very much a homebody because we didn't have a lot of money to go out. So I enjoyed all of those things. But I think I liked baking the most because I had a sweet tooth. So I used to bake with my grandma all the time. And that was really the way that I showed love for my friends. That was my gift to them because I couldn't afford a big fancy gift for like their birthdays.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
So I would bake them their favorite cookies or their favorite cake. And that was my way to express love through food. Because sugar and flour, especially back then, pretty cheap. I mean, you could get very cheap sugar and flour. So it was a very affordable gift to give to somebody.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Yeah, just went to school, got through college, which was rough, but I did it. I learned so much. And, you know, YouTube didn't even exist when I was going to high school. I didn't even think that this would be a career path for me. I stumbled into it as some friends were doing it, and they thought it would be a good creative outlet for me. They thought I would enjoy it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
So I thought, well, let's just give it a go and have some fun.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I'm a very curious person, I've realized. And I was interested in so many different fields. And I think my best advice to people would be just try everything. There's no harm in it to see if you really love it. I thought I wanted to be a journalist. So I volunteered, you know, I interned at one of Seattle's top news stations.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I learned being dyslexic that writing press releases on the fly is not for me. That is not my pacing. That was not made for me. Even though I enjoyed how fast paced it was, I liked the energy of it. It just wasn't a great fit for my skill set. And it often left me feeling frustrated and dumb. And I would have all this negative self-talk about it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
So there was elements that I loved of journalism, like the deep dives. I think documentary style is more my speed. to explore stories and get to know people on a deeper level. I think that that is something I really enjoyed, but I've learned something from each failure. So I worked so many different jobs. I failed at all of them.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
No one ever fired me, which nowadays I learned is called the personality hire. So I basically was a personality hire in many of these situations, but it didn't, at the end of the day, I didn't feel good. You know, you go home every day and you hear all the time of how many mistakes you're making and how much you're messing up. And I just felt like I didn't fit in anywhere. And that was rough.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Reading and writing was really difficult for me. Teachers didn't know what to call it then, and they just thought I was slow, I was dumb. It kind of messed with my self-esteem, I would say. I used to bake with my grandma all the time, and that was really the way that I showed love for my friends. because I couldn't afford a big fancy gift for like their birthdays.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I was working a bunch of jobs in Seattle, a bunch of random jobs after I graduated college. I taught English in China for a little bit, random program. I was a dog sitter. I was a church secretary. I was a waitress, a go-go dancer. I mean, you name it, I've done it. A go-go dancer? I need to hear what that is. You just like stand on a platform and basically two-step.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Like it's not... Well, for where I worked, it wasn't very risque. It was so funny.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Yeah, my girlfriend owned a bar and I tried to be a bartender. I got my bartending license in the two weeks training and I was awful at it. I couldn't remember one drink order. I couldn't remember any of the combinations. And they had a go-go dancer who had gotten in a fight and quit. And she was like, well, look, Ro, you can't be a bartender, but you can try to be a go-go.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I said, okay, well, let's do it. I just basically said yes to everything. I tried everything and I just was looking for a home. And I got a call from an agent in California and they said I was also a part of this Star Trek's largest fan fiction series that was being made in Seattle and it aired on TV. And I was a PA on the set and one of their actors quit. So they put me in there.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
So that was my first little acting role. And an agent saw it and said, if you moved to California, I would take care as a client. And I was like, what? They were like, we think you're good at this. And I was like, I have not heard that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
That was, oh my gosh, I'll have to look it up. A hundred years ago. No, I'm okay. But I have a picture from it too. I could probably send you as well. I would love that. I played Ensign Kelly, who was a love interest of Sick Bay, the doctor. So that was really fun. And so I moved here and I took, again, every oddball job I could get in entertainment to just get more experience being on sets.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
behind the camera, in front of the camera, really everything to, again, figure out where the best place was for me. I didn't know if maybe one day I'd want to direct or one day I'd want to produce or if acting was for me. I just didn't know. I think it was just all new and fresh and exciting, and I wanted to figure it out.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And that's when I met some friends while working on some sets who were also creating YouTube content. And I was like, what's YouTube? What is this? I've never heard of it. And they said, it's digital media. It's this new video hosting site where you can post your own videos. They just rolled out a YouTube partnership program. So you can earn an income doing this.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And it was really had just started, just emerged. And it was exciting and new and no one knew where this was going to go. So I started creating content on YouTube just for fun to get more comfortable in front of the camera. to learn about lighting, camera angles, equipment, because I'm learning about all this stuff on sets that I'm working on. And I'm like, this is so fun and cool.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I didn't receive a check for YouTube for probably a year or two. I didn't even think that this would be a career path for me. I stumbled into it and I went all in. I took all of my savings. I took a big risk, changed my life.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I was just vlogging my everyday life. I vlogged doing an earth cleanup day with my sister. That was my very first video on YouTube. We were just kayaking down the Duwamish River, picking up trash out of the river for Earth Day. I vlogged going to flight school. I vlogged, God, just random stuff. And then one day... We were having friends over for an E3 party.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
We have a lot of gamer nerdy friends. And I thought, let's make a themed cake because I love to bake. So I thought, let's make a Mario star cake. I'll make little one-up mushroom cupcakes. And we decided to film it. And that was my very first quote-unquote nerdy nummies. And after I uploaded that video, the internet went on fire.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I don't know what happened, but everybody, the whole community was like, we want more of this. More. And it was the first time that the online community, I had ever gotten that response. And they just, hundreds of people were writing me and said, no geeky baking show exists online or on television. We need it. We want more of this.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
So every week I would just keep asking my community, all right, well, what do you want me to make this week? We couldn't do polls back then. They didn't have that feature. So I would just actually look through the comments and see what people wanted the most.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Now I use a really pretty Canon. But back then, my first was this really cheap, oh, I think my mom got it for me for Christmas. It was an $80 flip camera. where I'm not sure what the resolution was, maybe 720, 480. And I was like, whoa, fancy. Like this is high def. Back then that was. So I mean, how funny. And I learned as I went.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
And I think the scariest moment was when I realized that the time I put into it, I was getting results. My community was growing and financially things were returning on investment. So the more hours I was putting in was returning on investment. And that clicked in my brain because I had never thought to be an entrepreneur ever until that moment. That is where I went, wait a minute, I can do this.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I understand this. I can do this. And I went all in. I jumped all in. I took all of my savings. I took a big risk. I bought better equipment. I hired an editor because that was my bottleneck.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I was making YouTube videos simultaneously while working on sets. I was working on the set of Glee full-time at this time as a union dancer. So I was like a union cheerio cheerleader and I was auditioning a lot. I had booked... two speaking roles pretty quickly.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
So I'm not like a Meryl Streep, but for just getting started, I was already working full time and I had full health benefits because I was on so many union shows So that stability is something that just in entertainment, a lot of actors just crave. And that was my goal was to be a full time someone working in entertainment so I wouldn't have to waitress or anything. And I didn't.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
That goal was achieved. I didn't have to do any other side jobs. I was just doing entertainment gigs.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
I didn't receive a check for YouTube for probably a year or two because there was a threshold. And I don't know what their threshold is today. I'm pretty sure they do have a threshold still, but I heard it's a lot more lenient now than when it was when I started. So I was creating content online and I could see the community growing, views growing and financial opportunity because of the numbers.