Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Rosanna Pansino Overcame Dyslexia, Risked Everything, and Built a YouTube Empire
Thu, 10 Apr 2025
Growing up with dyslexia and ADHD, Rosanna Pansino struggled to find her career path. After being fired from every job, she found her calling on YouTube, combining her love for baking with nerdy pop culture. Despite financial struggles, she invested her life savings into building her channel, Nerdy Nummies, which quickly became a sensation. With over 14 million subscribers, bestselling cookbooks, and her own product line, Rosanna turned content creation into a thriving business. In this episode, Rosanna joins Ilana to share how she sustains a long-lasting digital career, navigates platform algorithms, and diversifies her entrepreneurial ventures. Rosanna Pansino is a YouTuber, actress, author, entrepreneur, and baker, best known for her channel Nerdy Nummies, where she creates visually stunning baked goods inspired by pop culture. In this episode, Ilana and Rosanna will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:24) Growing up with Dyslexia and ADHD (05:07) Discovering a Passion for Baking (06:51) Lessons from Random Jobs and Failure (10:13) Transitioning from Acting Career to Nerdy Nummies (14:09) Investing Her Savings in YouTube Growth (17:04) How Getting Fired Sparked YouTube Success (25:44) Grief and Mentorship from Susan Wojcicki (31:40) Expanding Beyond YouTube (34:03) Sustaining a Long-Term Digital Career (36:52) Adapting Content to Platform Algorithms (41:24) Balancing Family and Business Partnerships (47:03) How Your Inner Circle Drives Success Rosanna Pansino is a YouTuber, actress, author, entrepreneur, and baker, best known for her channel Nerdy Nummies, where she creates visually stunning baked goods inspired by pop culture. With over 14 million subscribers, she has become one of the most influential figures in the baking and YouTube communities. Rosanna is the author of two cookbooks, The Nerdy Nummies Cookbook and Baking All Year Round, and hosted the HBO Max series Baketopia. Connect with Rosanna: Rosanna’s Website: rosannapansino.com Rosanna’s YouTube: youtube.com/@RosannaPansino Resources Mentioned: Star Trek: Phoenix - Cloak & Dagger Part I: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1704271/ Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW way for professionals to Advance Their Careers & Make 5-6 figures of EXTRA INCOME in Record Time. Check out our free training today at leapacademy.com/training
Chapter 1: How did Rosanna Pansino's early life shape her career?
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.
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.
Chapter 2: What inspired Rosanna Pansino to start her YouTube channel?
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Rosanna Pansino, a YouTuber, entrepreneur, author. She's the creator of Nerdy Nummies. I love that. The YouTube hit baking show with over 14 million subscribers. Like, come on, Rosanna. That's amazing. And she has multiple bestselling cookbooks and things.
And we'll talk about all your ventures, but really from overcoming this dyslexia and ADHD to becoming one of YouTube's highest paid creators and now multiple businesses and endeavors. It's really an inspiring story. So first of all, thank you for being on the show, Rosanna.
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.
There's a lot going on here.
And I love what you said, because as high achievers, we're always moving the goalpost. It's so rare that we actually look back and we're like, oh, my God, look what I created. But take us back as a kid, Seattle. How did you grow up?
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Chapter 3: How did Rosanna transition from various jobs to YouTube?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And I love that. And we chatted a little bit about Richard Branson right before you joined. We have an amazing episode with him. So listeners, if you haven't checked it out, listen to the podcast with Richard Branson. He is a classic speaker about dyslexic thinkers, and it sounds like we both love him, Rosanna. He's such an inspiring role model. But
You started, I think, cooking was, or baking was your grandma. So there was a baking element. Talk to me a little bit about that.
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.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Rosanna face in choosing between traditional and new media?
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.
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.
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.
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.
And that sounds interesting because it sounds really rough, but it also sounds like later, and we'll show it, it sounds like you picked... the best pieces and you actually stitch them together to what you're doing now, which is fascinating. But you decide to move to LA. First of all, why? And what did that do for you?
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Chapter 5: How did Rosanna Pansino build Nerdy Nummies into a successful brand?
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.
Like it's not... Well, for where I worked, it wasn't very risque. It was so funny.
It was...
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.
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.
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.
Oh, my God. That's so cool. What year is this?
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.
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.
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Chapter 6: What was the turning point in Rosanna Pansino's YouTube career?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And right now, you're still not with a fancy camera or anything. You're still with, what, a flip phone? Like, how do you do all these things? Oh, now I use a really pretty Canon. No, not now.
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.
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.
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Chapter 7: How did Rosanna Pansino's instincts lead to her success?
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.
It was just I had just a really good feeling. The fact that you had that hunch is in that conviction. That was amazing. So tell me about the day that you decided, OK, I'm going all in. Do I want the stability and the comfort or am I like leaping into this unknown world?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I meant to ask this at the end, but did you ever go back to them and say, you know, kind of like the pretty woman, big mistake? Did you ever actually go back? No.
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.
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.
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