around, grab your headphones now.

Hey there, it's Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV. The place to be to create

a business and life you love. Now, if you've ever wondered how you can take all your passions

and your gifts and your skills, and create a thriving and world-changing career, you

are gonna love today's guest.

Franchesca Ramsey is an actress, comedian, and video blogger with over 29 million views

on YouTube and over half a million followers across Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Her

videos have been featured on MTV, the New York Times, and the BBC. In 2012, “Shit

White Girls Say to Black Girls” was viewed 5 million times in five days, garnering coverage

on MSNBC, ABC, and Anderson Cooper. Most recently Francesca worked as a writer and contributor

for the nightly show with Larry Wilmore on Comedy Central and as the host of the MTV

web series Decoded.

Franchesca!

Yay!

So damn happy to have you here. I'm so excited. I've been such a fan of

yours for such a long time.

That makes me thrilled.

Back in the brick wall days.

See, this is…

Old school.

Old school. And we can even go like further back from the brick wall – my ass was jumping

around on my couch.

Oh, I remember those.

Like, being so silly.

Yeah.  We still do it now, we just do it like green screen and other stuff.

Oh, yay.

So, you know, you are brilliant in so many ways and we have so many good things to talk

about. But I want to take it back to what inspired you. I know you were blogging in

middle school and then you got on YouTube. What was the impulse to start creating, to

start sharing, to start putting stuff out online?

I am very much an only child. And so I think when you don't have siblings, you need to

find ways to entertain yourself, and the computer was really that for me. And I always wanted

to be an actor, I was always interested in the arts and media, and so the internet was

really a great place for me to combine my interest in technology and also creating content

and media. And as someone that was just struggling to get acting work, YouTube was a really great

place for me for that reason.

So your initial idea was “actor.”

Yeah, actor and also like beauty. So when I started – I've had locs for 14 years

and it's really exciting because now the natural hair space is so, you know, vibrant.

There's so many places that you can find things, stores you can buy products for natural

hair. But when I started there – it just did not exist.

And so I was looking for help with my hair and I couldn't find it, so I started making

videos about my hair. But they were funny because that's like my personality, and

so I started expanding into more characters and sketch and really just making things that

I felt needed to be in the world.

Was it ever – like when you were thinking about comedy, like did you have training in

that or was that just your natural personality?

I went to school for acting. I went to a performing arts middle and high school and then I went

to University of Michigan for acting, and then I transferred schools and studied graphic

design. But then I did stand-up for about four years before I got really serious about

YouTube. I like to go to bed early and so stand-up shows always start super late. I

was like, “Do you guys have anything at like 3:00 or like mornings?” And they don't.

So I was like I'm not gonna do this anymore. I'm gonna just stick to YouTube because

I can make my own schedule and meet people and also make a little bit of money, which

I really enjoyed.

Yeah. And one of the things that I love about you, you know, so many people in our community

– I consider them, they consider themselves, multipassionate entrepreneurs. They do a bunch

of things. And I love – first of all, your website is gorgeous.

Thank you.

It's done by our mutual friend Krystle.

Yes, she's so talented.

She's so damn good.

Yeah.

But I loved – it was like actress/ comedian … or actor/ comedian, blogger, graphic designer,

like all the slashes. And I was like yes, yes, yes.

It's funny because there – when I was growing up and when I was in school and I

was interested in all these different things I would constantly run into people in my family

and at school who would say, “You have to pick one.” and I thought, “Well, I don't

want to pick one. I like all of these things.”

And I very much think that if you have lots of different interests, you should explore

them to the best of your ability. Because you never know how they're gonna interplay

or which one is gonna really take off. And for me, like my graphic design stuff helped

me have a great website and make sure that I had beautiful business cards and help me

edit my videos. My interest in beauty and hair, you know, make sure I look cute when

I go on auditions. Like, all of those things really work together for me.

Yeah. And then it seems like they all – in my life too, they converge at some point.

Yes.

In the beginning it could almost feel like you're scattered. At least that's how

I felt. All these different things that I wanted to do, but if you have that sense of

courage and the willingness like “I'm just gonna keep going for it.”

Absolutely. And even if they don't fit together in a traditional sense, I feel like all the

more reason for you to try and figure out a way to make it work. Because that's gonna

separate you from the pack. You're gonna be able to differentiate yourself and create

a brand that's really unique to you because someone's gonna say, “Huh, I never thought

of fashion and fitness fitting together,” but maybe there's a way that you can, you

know, do that that no one else is doing.

Yes. So speaking of multipassionate, because I know what's a struggle for a lot of folks

that are watching, when they do have multiple interests, if things do start to take off,

have you ever had a point whether it's in, you know, the past 10 years or even more recently,

where the multiple passions are almost fighting with each other?

Where you're starting to get stuff – maybe it's rolling in the beauty sense or maybe

it's more people want you to speak on tech or you're like, “Oh, my goodness. But

I have these projects that I want to do and start pitching shows.” How have you been

able to navigate some of that?

I am someone who lives by my calendar. So I love making sure that I schedule everything.

Whether it's “I'm gonna be on MarieTV” or “I've got an audition” or even when

it's just like getting coffee with a friend or doing a phone call catch up with someone

I went to high school with, I put it all on my calendar.

And so I really try to stick to that, but also keep myself a personal day. So I really

try to keep Friday as my day that I don't take auditions, I don't take meetings, and

I really stick to that. So that's my day to kind of explore maybe some things that

I didn't get to do during the week or work on some more personal projects. And, you know,

my team knows that if it's on the calendar, that's a time that is blocked off and they

can't have that time. So I think that you kind of have to set those boundaries for yourself.

Yeah. And, you know, you and I share a few things. One, we're both Sag sisters.

I didn't know that!

Yes, fireside. And also the Friday thing. I actually – Fridays I try. I don't have

as strict boundaries as you do, but Fridays, my team knows on the calendar. They're like,

“Oh, that's Marie's kind of off day.”

I mean, if something happens and I need it to be an on Friday, it's fine. But I really

try to keep that day for myself. And you need it. I learned that actually from someone that

I worked with years ago and she used to do that at like 6:00. She would have an email

responder that would say “I don't answer emails after 6:00.” I don't do that. I wish

I did. But for me I turned it into a Friday thing. So setting those boundaries I think

is really important so that you can explore your passion projects if you're not doing

them elsewhere within your career.

Yeah. So you mentioned in an interview that you were part of YouTube's Nextup program

and that you learned a lot from other content creators, especially when you were first starting

to come up. And one of the things, I believe, that's in your heart now is you want to

be able to pass along some of those lessons because you've learned so much. I mean,

you're out there in such a big way.

For anyone watching who feels like they have something to say but they're not quite sure

how to say it right or how to do it right, what are some of the lessons you would pass

on now?

I think one of the biggest things that I learned was just doing your research. I think a lot

of times people say, “Well, I want to do this thing but I'm not really sure how.”

I always say go look at somebody whose career you really admire, somebody that's doing

what you would like to see yourself doing. Maybe not exactly, but there's some element

of it that you kind of feel drawn to, and go look at their very first videos. Go listen

to some podcast interviews. Go comb through their website. You know, that's the cool

thing about social media is you can really learn a lot about someone and their career

trajectory and some of the things that they've done.

And really I love to write lists in notebooks and things. So really make yourself a list

of all the things that they've done that you can learn from, things that they've

done right and things that they've done wrong. And really kind of help use that as

a roadmap for whatever it is that you're working on.

And I also think that's so important because often times you might have a really great

idea and then realize, “Oh, crap. Somebody's already doing that or someone did that and

it failed.” Why did it fail? Or what am I doing that's possibly going to lead me

down the path where this will not be successful? So I think that research step is really important.

And then I also just thinking working with other people, you know, you can just learn

so much from other people and you can also kind of help lift each other up. Maybe there's

a skill that they have that you don't have that you can partner in a project together.

And also just you never know who they're gonna meet that you will be perfect for a

project or you might meet someone, and vice versa. I'm so lucky I met so many people

through Nextup who I'm still really good friends with today and have gotten to work

with in a variety of different ways.

That's so cool. You know, one of the things we were talking about off camera while we

were just getting ready was this idea of comparison. You were sharing a MarieTV video.

Yes.

Let's talk about that – one of your favorite ones from early on.

Yeah, I – it really spoke to me just talking about the downside of comparing yourself to

other people and how especially for entrepreneurs it's hard not to do that. Because there's

so much time where things aren't working out and you're taking this risk and you've

got people around you telling you like, “Is this a good idea?” You're, you know, putting

money into something that doesn't necessarily see an end goal in sight.

And then you see somebody appear, you know, that's doing what you want to do and they're

being really successful, and it's just hard. And that really spoke to me because, you know,

in any creative field there's gonna be times it's just not working yet. And so I really

kind of built on that and I've started saying “stop hating, start studying.”

I love it!

Because I've had so many times where I'm like, “Mm, she ain't all that.” And

then I was like, “Wait a second, she is all that. She's doing so well.” Then instead

of like getting upset and, you know, like going down that Facebook k-hole and looking

at all their pictures and seeing all the stuff that they're doing. I started thinking,

“Let me study this person and see how is it that she booked that job? How is it that

she got that client?” And I think that once I started doing that it's helped me so,

so much. And I think that more of us need to put that into practice, especially because

social media makes it so easy to just hate and consume everything that's going on in

someone else's life.

Yeah. And, you know, we were also talking too about how so much of what's on social

media, it's just kind of bullshit.

Oh, yeah.

Because it's a lot of fakeness.

Yeah, exactly. That's a hefe filter. I know it and I see it. Nobody looks that good all

the time. And so much of it's not real, right? Like think about about how many selfies

you have to take before you get that perfect selfie.

Oh, I am the queen of having my eyes closed.

Exactly.

Queen.

Right, so you have to take a ton of pictures. Or you have to like jump to get that one flawless

jump picture and you've got all the ones where you're like on the ground, you know,

and your like skirt is up. I think that we look at what's happening on social media

and we think, “Wow, that person's life is perfect,” but we don't know about – oh.

A perfect example. I remember I had bedbugs in my apartment.