Sara Dietschy gives us a look into the life of a successful YouTube tech reviewer.

In The Know by Yahoo

Sara Dietschy isn’t your stereotypical tech reviewer — and that’s what makes her so great at it. This is her journey from a tech-savvy teen to a notable camera wiz and influencer.

Video Transcript

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SARA DIETSCHY: YouTube was really like an experiment for me, and it was just for fun. I never thought it was going to be my job. I really learned very quickly that it doesn't matter if you teach someone how to edit videos or teach them how to use a camera, at the end of the day, it's about your storytelling. And that's what gonna make you unique. You know, that one viral video that really put me on the map, and it was kind of game over. I haven't stopped since. My name is Sarah Dietschy, rhymes with peachy. I'm a tech and creativity YouTuber based in New York City.

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When I tell people what I do, usually I say, YouTuber. And luckily in 2020, that's more exciting than it used to be. It's fun that people now recognize what that is. I make camera, laptop reviews, I share the behind the scenes of creative process, whether that's video editing or what cameras I'm using. And then I also have a podcast called That Creative Life, where I interview CEOs, artists, YouTubers, anyone in between. People like Gary Vaynerchuk and Chase Jarvis. And it kinda teaches you how to live, you know, that creative life.

Beyond the tech events that I get to go to and you know, just the things that I get to review, the fact that my YouTube heroes, now that they're my peers is probably the coolest experience. You know, Gary was the first guest on my podcast. For those people to just, I wouldn't say I'm on the same level, goodness gracious. But to be able to interface with them in a way that oh, yeah, they're my buddies, that's kind of unreal.

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So I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and I was obsessed with basketball as a kid. So I started out as an athlete. But it wasn't until middle school when I got my dad's Canon T3i, which was kind of the camera that a lot of people started making videos on.

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And I started making music rap videos for school projects. And that's kind of when I got hooked into editing. It was really this exciting thing that you could just make stories. Whatever was in your brain, you could put on the screen. So my first YouTube video was in 2011, which seems so far away now, when I was trying to sell a guitar pedal. So I posted a YouTube video of me playing with the pedal. And I posted it on this guitar forum.

And a year later, I noticed the video has literally like 10,000 plus views. I was like, what? Excuse me. Like, what is happening? That was my first realization, oh OK, this is not only a platform to maybe share with my family and friends, but it's something I can use to help people if they want to know about gear. So it turned into camera gear.

Hey, guys, I just got my first Canon 80D. I want to show the unboxing, I want to show you this lens, how does it look, what do you guys think? And it became this cool community and just like gear heads in the beginning. It is a lot of hard work, but the feeling of completing a video, exporting it, uploading it, seeing that instant feedback is so satisfying. And I think at the heart of it, I love showing off tech. I love the storytelling behind it. And that's what I still do today

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From the outside, you know, my family members, when I dropped out of college, oh, my gosh, that's so risky, Sara. It's almost like, what is the alternative? I am way more scared of the alternatives to actually pursuing my dreams and pursuing a creative life.

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I think looking back at it, I kind of oh, wow, why did I do that? That's kind of crazy. But at the time, there's really no other option. And I think that's the common theme throughout my entire journey, is just going from idea to execution.

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I'm always going to these conferences, I'm on these panels that are maybe like, women in tech, which is great, because I think there are some very specific conversations we need to be having. But I'm more striving to be in a world where maybe there's just a tech panel and half the people are women. I'm a person who had a lot of support from my mom and dad. I was like, mom, I want to play boys baseball. And she didn't think about what the parents were going to say. She didn't think about anything. She's like, OK, let's go.

And so I think just throughout my entire childhood, they just embraced my strengths and my curiosities. And I think as we have more women in these cool spaces, like in tech, you know, the more they're visible, the more those ideas can be in young girls' head. Like, go, I want to be an engineer, I want to be an astronaut, I want to be a tech YouTuber, young girls can start visualizing that, which is so powerful.

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