Raven Elyse: How We Help a Superwoman Get Some of Her Time Back

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

At Now Creatives, we know that the service we offer might sound too good to be true. Fast, reliable, high-quality editing that adapts perfectly to your schedule and does not take any creative control from you? Come on!

Well, here is a real-life case study of one of our amazing clients to show you how many benefits you could be enjoying by teaming up with us.

Raven Elyse’s YouTube journey started 10 years ago with fashion and DIY videos, and over time expanded into a series of lifestyle vlogs that give us an inside peek into her day-to-day life as a single mom to her adorable 4 year-old, Ziya. Her entertaining, funny and smart content gained her over 1.6M loyal subscribers that appreciate the relatable and positive way she shares her life and inspires others.

We had a chat with Raven to discuss how our editing service helped free up the time that she wanted to spend working on other things or recharging batteries. In her interview, she tells us about some things she was expecting to get and others she (and we) hadn’t even considered. Read on to get a full picture of what it’s like to collaborate with an editing team like ours!

From Hobby to Business

Our collaboration with Raven started in November 2019. At the time, she was doing most of her editing, but was finding it hard to keep up with it in between filming, traveling, a growing number of brand deals and being a single mom to a 3 year-old. We edited a sample for her after researching her channel and style, and she, on top of liking our take on her brand, greatly appreciated the added creativity we brought to the table. Thus began a very fruitful and fun collaboration that is still going strong almost a year later.

For some background, since Raven has been making content on YouTube for 10 years, and videos weren’t even monetized when she first started making them, her career and team have expanded exponentially as her platform has grown. It went from a hobby to a full-time job, which obviously demands more time and management than anything you might do just for fun. When asked when she first realized she would need to delegate some tasks related to her channel so that she could focus her attention on continuing to create, she replied that it was around 2015, when her channel became her main source of income.

“That year, I started to realize that I needed some help because, up until that point, I’d been doing every single thing myself. I had no management, no editing team, nothing like that”.

The first person she delegated to was her own mom (who also features in some of her videos and is known as ‘Chef Toni’ among her following). She helped Raven by filling the role of a business manager/assistant to her, and after that initial addition, she has been building up her team, which now consists of a photographer, graphic designer, talent manager, editing team (yours truly) and more.

“I would definitely say, over the past two years, I’ve been growing my team because it has turned into a full-time business. It’s almost more like a full company now.”

Editing as Branding

Through this experience, Raven stated that she has learned that delegating tasks to those who are best at it (instead of her trying to do everything herself) was the smarter option in more ways than one. However, despite already having seen the fruits of delegating and getting support from a team, the editing of her videos was the hardest thing for her to outsource.

“That was the thing that I was kind of hanging on to because I was nervous about it […]. Editing is so important in terms of relaying your message and solidifying your brand. I told my manager ‘I really don’t want to hire an editor, I just prefer to do it myself because I’m really picky about it and I’m not sure any editing service or editor would ever be able to really understand how I want things done.’”

Although reluctant at first, she did initially try working with a freelance editor (originally a subscriber of hers!). Even though her concerns about understanding her brand had not turned out to be a big problem, she quickly realized that she needed a better quality of editing and a quicker turnaround time, which was not something that a freelancer could deliver. So the next logical step was to try teaming up with a full editing service – a pre-built team of editors, if you will. And that was our cue.

“I was pleasantly surprised -because you are a full-blown company with multiple people on your team- with your ability to take on multiple projects at a time and be able to get things done so quickly.”

Although this is exactly what we set out to do and it is music to our ears to hear back from happy customers, Raven did have some initial concerns before trying out our service, which were all absolutely valid and logical:

“I kind of was concerned about your process not being personalized enough […] in terms of asking for a different editing style on every video or wanting to switch things up a lot, or needing flexibility with scheduling and stuff like that, because I do a variety of different content and my schedule is constantly changing”.

Fortunately, none of these turned out to be problems in our collaboration and, in her own words, she “had basically complete freedom and nothing has been a problem”.

The Advantages of Now Creatives

But up to this point, the full benefits of hiring an editing service might still not be completely evident. We asked Raven what the biggest change to her creative process, schedule and even her life in general had been since working with us, and this was her reply:

“Definitely the time management and the scheduling. It’s a huge change because editing can be so time-consuming […] – I would spend multiple days working on one video, up to 24 hours total, and now that time is completely freed up for me to just work on creating more content.”

With her newly light schedule, Raven has been able to focus on growing her other platforms (like Instagram), to do more outside of YouTube, and to have a break more often as well!

[Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPtKKkCH3iI&feature=youtu.be]

All in all, our collaboration with this ever-growing and innovative creator has resulted in a noticeable improvement to her workload and freeing up of her time to focus on more and increasingly exciting opportunities (as well as super fun content for us to work on weekly, if we do say so ourselves). Raven is the perfect example of someone that chose to take a chance on a service that promised tall orders and actually delivered, and which continues to function efficiently and without much input from its clients.

We hope you enjoyed getting to know her and her experience with us. You can find Raven on YouTube (Raven Elyse), Twitter (@RavenElyseTv), Instagram (@ravenelyse) and TikTok (@ravenelysetv).

Get in touch here if you’re also interested in getting back your free time to invest in whatever you choose.

Tags: Creator, Feature, Now Creatives, Raven Elyse, Time Management