Amber Scholl Bedazzles her Life

Our interview of Amber Scholl for “The Creative Influencer” podcast is available today for download on iTunes. When Amber graduated from Pepperdine University in Malibu she had dreams of becoming the biggest entertainment reporter in the world, the female Ryan Seacrest. Instead, she drove for Postmates. At her personal low point, Amber turned to YouTube and started to film all the things that made her life look great when it wasn’t. Her break out video, “How to Make Cheap Clothes Look Expensive,” increased her following from one thousand to one hundred thousand followers in two days. Amber now has over two million followers. Her interview is an inspirational story about following your dreams. Amber shared the following takeaways:  

Jon: Knowing what you know now, if you could get a mulligan and go talk to your younger self what would you tell yourself?

Amber: Oh my god. I think about this all the time and I often tell people like, “Wow what I would give to be able to go back and just say like it's gonna be okay, or—there's just some—there's truly a lot of things that I would love to go back and say, but I think the biggest thing is if I could truly go back to like freshman year of college be with all these big dreams and whatever like there's my mental state was different at many different points of my life. So if I could go back to her then and just be like honestly never let this die, like keep that. The kind of childish like I can do anything I wanna do. Like what age is it that you always are encouraging kids like yes like you can be anything you wanna be.Jon: Where do you get your ideas for the projects?

Amber: It depends. I have a lot of ideas in my head all the time. But some of the best ideas come from people commenting on my videos. Like I said, I don't read all of them but as many of them as I can, I will read. . . . People come up with amazing ideas like my most viewed video ever was the trash bag dress video and that literally came from people just being funny. They were like, “I bet you could wear a trash bag and look cute.”

Jon: When people talk to you about your presence online, do they assume that you’re personality online is exactly your personality offline?

Amber: When I meet—people are always surprised when they meet me in real life that they'll either say, “Wow, you're exactly like you are in your videos,” and my friends will say, “You are like you are in your videos” because I am, it's just a little bit of a heightened version of me, so I mean you know you put a camera on anyone and they like act slightly different so I put a camera on myself, and I'm just like oh well you know I need to be a little bit more cheery today to keep it interesting like my monotone you know it's very dull. So yeah, but I try to I try to keep it pretty real.

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A transcript of the full interview with Amber Scholl follows:

Jon: So Amber, thank you for sitting down with me.

Amber: Anytime, thank you for having me.

Jon: I checked last night. You have almost two million YouTube subscribers.

Amber: Yes! So crazy

Jon: You have over a half a million Instagram followers.

Amber: Yeah.

Jon: And, I want to talk to you about your journey to this point.

Amber: Ooo.

Jon: I know. But before I start many pairs of shoes do you own?

Amber: Oh, my god. Wow. You know, I would let you see my room, but it is not acceptable. Literally hundreds, truly hundreds.

Jon: Okay, I mean it comes through in the videos.

(laughter)

Jon: You went to Pepperdine right?

Amber: Yes I did.

Jon: You did, and that's where I met you.

Amber: Yes.

Jon: You took my class—

Amber: Way back in the day.

Jon: —way back in the day, and if you remember you filled out a questionnaire, and I write down everybody's career aspirations because I track them.

Amber: Oh no, I bet I said some weird thing.

Jon: Your career aspiration was be to become the female Ryan Seacrest as the biggest entertainment reporter in the world.

Amber: Well yep, that sounds like something I would’ve written.

Jon: Okay, so I want to talk about your journey in two phases. Your journey to Pepperdine and your journey after Pepperdine.

Amber: All right.

Jon: You grew up in Virginia.

Amber: I did. I grew up in Virginia, went to middle school high school in Arizona and then went to college in California and then I have never left.

Jon: So how did you pick Pepperdine? How do you pick California?

Amber: I always knew I wanted to live in L.A. because you know in my little sheltered bubble I was like oh L.A. is where everything happens so I must go there. And so I made it my life's mission to get there.

Jon: When did you know you wanted to be a personality?

Amber: If you asked my parents they would say day one of birth like they knew something was up because I would—when they would be filming like home videos, I would always crash into it like they’d be filming my sister walking and they would be like, “Oh my god, Alyssa’s,” that’s my sister's name, and I would just be like, “HELLO,” and I like crashed the whole scene.

Jon: You were the first photo bomber?

Amber: Yeah, I was the first, the original photo bomber. But yeah, very young. I was probably—I think I wanted to be on TV when I was like 5.

Jon: So you were an ice skater when you were little?

Amber: I was, yes.

Jon: I told you I watched these videos. And you were in pageants?

Amber: I did do—I dabbled yes

Jon: Yes, were you in front of a camera?

Amber: Yeah a lot. I mean like I said, my parents loved to film our lives growing up. But yeah, I think being on stage and generally performing with ice-skating, performing I did gymnastics, and I did dance and I did all sorts of things. I was always doing something.

Jon: And I'm going to get ahead of myself, but being in front of a live audience, do you have any problem with that?

Amber: I love that the most because it gives you such like I want to say high but almost like it's such a thrill to be live in action doing something.

Jon: Right, that adrenaline.

Jon: Yeah, now you said you had a sister. You have two sisters—

Amber: —I have two sisters, yeah.

Jon: How do they—what's their reaction to this?

Amber: They're both younger than me, and it's also funny because they—they think it's really cool but they're not as involved in the Internet as me like one is kind of detached from it a little and she's like, “Oh yeah, it’s really cool like you know you have a job.” It’s like, “Thanks Alyssa.”

Jon: Are they on social media?

Amber: Yeah, my littlest sister loves it and thinks it's so cool. But also, she knows me and she's like, “Why do people think you're interesting?” I’m like, “Um, first of all, (laughter), rude!” She thinks it’s fun.

Jon: What has been your parent’s reaction?

Amber: They are so proud. And they were confused at first let me tell you. They were like, “I don't understand how this is going to pay your bills.” But they I mean truly my dad has always been so supportive and so is my mom and they're like—so to see it now they watch all the videos, they comment on them, they love them they're always showing people, like “Look my daughter is on the Internet.”

Jon: Which, bouncing around but you mentioned they comment on them.

Amber: Yeah.

Jon: Do you read your comments?

Amber: I do read the comments. I don't read all of the comments just because—honestly I would try in the beginning I did when you would just get like you know a couple hundred you could actually read them all and I would. But you get you know, five, twelve thousand comments you just can't do it.

Jon: How do you deal with—I mean the positive comments are easy.

Amber: Yeah—

Jon: It’s like, “Oh, they’re right!”

Amber: “You’re right, I am so funny.”

(laughter)

Jon: How do you deal with a negative comment?

Amber: You know I really wish that I could un-read a lot of the negative comments, but it's ok because you think about—it's like I know people would never say that in real life. And sometimes I do respond like someone said something really nasty I'll be like, “Well thanks for watching.” You know whatever. And people respond almost immediately, “Oh my god I didn't think you would read it. Oh my God I love you. Oh my God. Hi.” I'm like what, you just called me ugly.

Jon: That's interesting so, so that's the tag you take—the mental tag you take is that they wouldn't say this in person?

Amber: Yeah, like it's ok. I mean you have to have something going on to leave hate comments on someone's life. Something has to be deeper than that so you can't take it too seriously so you know it's what it is.

Jon: Okay, there was a video you did, 10 Things You Don’t Know About Me.

Amber: Yes.

Jon: And I didn't know those 10 things. You said that you actually went to college. Why would you say it that way?

Amber: Yeah, people I mean I wouldn't say it's a character in my videos. It is me. But it's definitely a caricature of me. Like I always you know sometimes I'm having an off day, but I'm still like I’m not gonna show that so…

Jon: It’s Amber large.

Amber: Yeah, it’s me on—times 10. So people often mistake me as being kind of dumb because my videos are a little bit vapid in general like you know it's me gluing money onto a or like me shopping for shoes, it’s like how smart can she really be? So people often think I didn’t because most honest—I’m not most I don't want to generalize but a lot of people who do social media didn't have like a degree or didn't—they just got into it young. So, I always—people are like, “Wait really?”, when I mention it. I'm like, “Yeah. Really. Actually.”

Jon: When people talk to you about your presence online, do they assume that you’re personality online is exactly your personality offline?

Amber: When I meet—people are always surprised when they meet me in real life that they'll either say, “Wow, you're exactly like you are in your videos,” and my friends will say, “You are like you are in your videos” because I am, it's just a little bit of a heightened version of me, so I mean you know you put a camera on anyone and they like act slightly different so I put a camera on myself, and I'm just like oh well you know I need to be a little bit more cheery today to keep it interesting like my monotone you know it's very dull. So yeah, but I try to I try to keep it pretty real.

Jon: So I want to take you know back. I said I want to talk about the journey after Pepperdine—I watched that video too. But it's the interesting, it's—not the interesting part—but it is interesting because when people look at the numbers now, they don't know what it took to get there.

Amber: Yeah, it's a lot.

Jon: So you graduated Pepperdine. What was the first thing you did?

Amber: I did. I graduated in 2015 and like I had said on my little forum, I wanted to be the next Ryan Seacrest, and I've always been a really big like dreamer and had lots of ideas in my head of what I wanted to do and nothing has ever gotten in the way of them. So I was like oh well of course I could just walk into E and be hired immediately as the next million dollar contract like why would that not happen? So when that did not work, I was like oh wow. Reality check. Okay. So had to figure out what I was gonna do, and so I obviously downgraded my ideas of what I could do and slowly realized that no matter how far I downgraded them it still wasn't working. I was like oh my god I'm gonna be homeless. I don't know what I'm going to do. So yeah, I ended up applying to all sorts of jobs like things I was not qualified for at all, like accounting jobs. I'm terrible at that like—

Jon: Well yeah, that was the interesting thing. I heard you say you applied to 16 accounting jobs. How did you pick accounting?

Amber: My dad was an accountant so I was like maybe I can do it too, which I cannot. But yeah, I was like he can help me like maybe I can just be like it runs in the family. Like my cover letters, if I could pull some of them up you would cry. Like they were so funny, they made no sense, I was literally leaving smiley faces in the bottom, I was like please for the love of God hire me. I’m like this is not working so that's why I ended up doing background acting which was actually if you want to call it that isn't—background acting is a nice term. Extra work, like being an extra in movies which was fun like the first two times I did it, then it was not fun anymore, but it still haunts me to this day.

Jon: There's a lot of standing around.

Amber: Yes. Literally people still screenshot photos like, “Is this you in New Girl?” I’m like, “unfortunately that is me.”

Jon: Your LinkedIn profile lists you what your job title—

Amber: Oh wow, I still have one of those, wow.

Jon: Yes you do—as an actress.

Amber: That's funny.

Jon: Do you consider yourself an actress?

Amber: No. Um, in a way I guess but overall no I mean I actually am a member of SAG which is also funny but um yeah I, in a way I guess because social media is kind of like I mean I would say nothing on it is real. But that’s—we're gonna get into a deeper conversation. It's real in a sense. It's always a glamorized version of what's real so sometimes it is a little bit showy but overall I mean I, I can't act for my own life.

Jon: I've heard it said that Instagram is the perfect you.

Amber: Oh it is. I mean that—sometimes I look at my page I'm like oo this girl is amazing. I wanna be her.

Jon: Does anybody post bad pictures of themselves?

Amber: No, I know sometimes I wish I did. I’m like I need to keep this a little better than this. Her hair. Everything. Wow.

Jon: OK but let me take you back. So you were applying for accounting jobs.

Amber: Yeah, I was thinking this would be great.

Jon: What were you doing after that?

Amber: Driving for Postmates also, so of course nothing worked. I get no jobs, first of all. I can't even get—you're trying to talk to men. I was like no one’s even calling me back, what the heck. So yeah, not going well and driving for Postmates to make extra cash, which I also actually weirdly enjoyed at the time. I was very much like not wanting to be in the status quo 9 to 5 job cause I had an internship where I did that—was like never again.

However, then when I got desperate I was like OK yes 9 5, I am here for it, and I couldn’t get hired so I was like wow what do I do. So yeah, I was driving for Postmates around trying to enjoy my time delivering food for people. I delivered food actually to a couple of like random actors and actresses, I thought that was so funny I was like, “oh my god.” But yeah that didn't go super well really, which ended up making like four dollars a day like you're making no money.

Jon: You tell a story about getting in an accident.

Amber: Yeah, I was dumb. Literally it was the fourth of July and so they pay you like by the delivery so it's like—I figured I had no literally no money. I think my entire life was worth 200 dollars at the time. So, I really wanted to get a smoothie and they’re are like eight dollars, and like I cannot buy this, but if I do like two deliveries this morning and I make 10 bucks it'll be like kind of like this movie's only like a dollar and my doing my math in my head which isn't even correct but that's fine. So—

Jon: —you would have been a great accountant.

Amber: I would've been the best accountant. Hire me guys I’m available. No um but yeah I thought that was gonna be a great idea so I went out to deliver a smoothie on fourth of July. I was like alright—or like from the place cause I wanted to get one so I deliver one, and I’m driving and I was like where is this person's address, and I'm like driving like fast down this street looking for the person’s address out my window and literally like *sound effect* plow into a parked car like *sound effect* like ruined it. I was like *gasp* oh, I didn't even know what to do because I was like well I cannot pay for this. I know this is gonna be more than my lifetime's worth. So I was like what, what do I do. So of course I call my insurance and they’re like, “oh well you're driving for business. So not only are you not covered we're dropping you,” and I was like, but I'm gonna die though. So yeah that was a debacle and a half.

Eventually Postmates insurance ended up covering it after like a bunch of legal shenanigans that you would probably know about that I could not explain. And yeah, but then I couldn't drive for Postmates anymore. I literally had no job.

Jon: And I'm not going to put you through—but when you did the video you started to cry, I promised I would cry.

Amber: Oh thank you. Yeah, I tried to laugh about it now because in hindsight I'm like that was so dumb. But you know.

Jon: You had an, I had not heard it called this before, but a mood board. Essentially a vision board a mood board?

Amber: Yes, I still have room in my room. I look at them every day.

Jon: And you had on it—well first you said you threw it away.

Amber: I did throw it away.

Jon: But on there was YouTube. Why YouTube?

Amber: I couldn't tell you the true reason aside from I really believe in divine intervention like completely wholeheartedly because I don't know what else would have possessed me to do that when there was no reason for me to do it.

Jon: That was pre- you being on YouTube.

Amber: Yeah this was before I put that on there because I was like I want to start a YouTube channel just because I knew it people were killing it on there, and I was like well I mean if no one's going to hire me to do what I want to do—like hosting whatever. I could do it myself and put it on there and maybe someone will see that I'm good at it.

Jon: So to avoid taking you through the crying face, the video’s online you can check it out, but then the next day, so July 5th, you started recording.

Amber: I was like I am going to do this.

Jon: And how did you decide what genre to start in?

Amber: It was honestly—I had had a couple of issues that I've done years prior that were on there, like some of my old hosting videos from my internships, and I had had like maybe two other videos that I had filmed some years before that. I was like alright well what am I gonna do cause I'm not a makeup artist—I’m really—I always like to joke that I'm like literally the most talentless person—it's like who happened to—it worked out like I can't really do anything, can't sing, can't dance, can't act, can't do much. It's like what am I going to film then.

So people had always asked me—the reason I film the one video that I did was I was working on set of a Toyota commercial doing background, and I was complaining about being broke. I was like I have no money I'm gonna die like blah blah blah blah blah. And my friend was like, “Oh what do you mean, you don't look broke at all on Instagram. You look like you have a million dollars, so like what?”

I’m like *sound effects* uh what huh so confused. And they’re like, “No you're really good at like—you've got marble floors, you have such nice clothes, you look like you know you got a million bucks.” And she’s like, “How do you do that?” “Well, I don’t’ know.” She was like, “Yeah no you’re great at making cheap things look expensive.” And I was like *sound effect* well then, that’s what I'm gonna do. So I decided like okay, so I'm going to film all the things that make my life look great when it's not. And so, I started to film my marble floor, my vanity mirror, like all my clothes where I get them—

Jon: —and then you had a breakout video. Which one was that?

Amber: Yeah it was called HOW TO MAKE CHEAP CLOTHES LOOK EXPENSIVE. That one really did it in combination with the DIY marble floors video. It was like—that literally did it. I had zero subscribers—maybe like a thousand and then a hundred thousand in like two days.

Jon: And do you know how that happened?

Amber: You know again I don't know. Gonna go back to divine intervention. I think God had something to do with it like I—not even something everything to do with it because I—there's no reason that that happened at all, and it was like my breaking point was gonna be like—as if I didn't already have plenty of them. The true—it's not gonna continue after this was gonna be in like a day like I was at dinner with my sister and her boyfriend at the time we were talking, and I was like, “You know I think I'm just going to have to be OK with like never having what I wanted. Like I'm going to be complacent with my life and it's going to be OK and I'm going to be happy like this and two days later—"

Jon: So where were you when you looked at the statistics and saw how many people?

Amber: I was all over the place, but I was at home mostly like I kept checking, and I was like wait what? Wait what, because it was so fast and you could see it like every five minutes you'd refresh it and it’d be like ten thousand more. I know that—I didn’t even have my videos monetized at that time so I was like, “Um, wait is this really happening like is this gonna work, what do I even do?” And I remember I was going down—I go downtown all the time for my videos—and I was driving downtown to pick up something or other, I don't remember what it was. But I was driving, and I remember just playing the same song the whole way there. It was like some stupid random song, it was like Camila some song, and I was like OK I'm listening to it and I just kept check—even at traffic stops, I just kept checking it and like refreshing it and refreshing it, and that was like—that was when it—cause when you're at ten thousand that's cool, but you can't make a life out of that. But it was like thirty thousand. Next up like forty thousand. Next one fifty, sixty—

Jon: Wait, so you're the one checking at the stoplights?

Amber: Oh yeah I'm checking it. I am like out here being unsafe. I was like refresh refresh refresh, and I was sobbing in the car. It was like I know that this is like—it's happening—like what, something really cool is happening. And when you know that and you can watch it in real time is really interesting. And I knew that it was gonna be something cool.

When I got home later that day, and it was like over a hundred, I was like—I literally called my extra job, I was like “I am quitting.” And I was—I made no money. I was like, “I'm done I am quitting,” they were actually like, “No, you’re booked on Tuesday. I was like, “No I'm not coming in.”

Jon: So it was at that moment when you knew that this is going to work?

Amber: Yeah I was like, “I know you can do something with this, and if—it was like I just knew. It was like wow, all of the things that I always thought like a piece of me always knew I was gonna do YouTube, that doesn't make much sense but really it did. Like the first YouTube video I ever watched when I was like 12, I remember watching it and it had like I don't know 6 million views which at the time was like huge. The only thing like it was like there were maybe five videos on YouTube and that was one of them. I remember watching it with my friends thinking wow this is so crazy. I was like we knew we could make this video. Like how come we're not making this a 12, or however old I was. And when I was doing background and Postmates, people would always make little weird comments like you know, “You're really funny at telling stories or like you should make a YouTube channel, I could listen you talk forever,” and I’m like, “Only, what would I say. I don't have anything to say.” So it's really funny to look back in hindsight it's like damn, a little piece of me always knew I was gonna do this. I just never had the balls to do it.

Jon: You had a funny comment. This is right before you started YouTube, you had a variety of jobs and hadn’t bedazzled anything for a year.

Amber: Yes!

Jon: I heard that, and I wrote it down. Tell me about that.

Amber: I love bedazzling things and which is even funnier because I mean you can tell I love the crystals. I love it love it love, live for it.  Of course today I'm wearing this sweater. Yeah I love—my whole life I've loved crystals. I mean it started you know doing friggin ice skating competitions, and I those were sparkly and like ballet and I loved—I always loved rhinestones, and in high school people—I did not enjoy high school, let's be clear. You know people always made fun of me for wearing like a ridiculous amount of bling. Scottsdale, Arizona is like Queen land of tacky ass bling things. Like you got all the crazy moms with the crazy sparklies, and I was like that is my ultimate goal is to be that. So, I wore like crystals up and down my arms, bracelets, necklaces and really cheap ones, just like a dollar. I was like this looks incredible, I look like a million dollars, and I loved it. And people dragged me and my license plate literally was SPRKLN, ‘sparklin’. And I had a pink rhinestone license plate on it and people bullied me so hard for it. I decided I stopped liking them. I stopped doing it, and I was like damn like that makes me sad.

Jon: Did you do any of this in college?

Amber: Yes I did. I did. But again people kind of dragged me for it a lot actually so I stopped doing it.

Jon: I mean it's not it doesn't fit in the Pepperdine mold.

Amber: No it does not. I was like out here in high heels in my 8 am’s,  in black eye shadow and like crystal chokers and people were like wow prostitute, and I was like no like, I’m just trying to have a good time. Yeah, so it was—I stopped doing it in college. I would always make my own Halloween costumes and I loved doing that.

Jon: Oh I got to hear about those.

Amber: Oh boy. I have some fascinating images on my old Facebook if I could login to it. Yeah I loved it I always made it like—I made things all the time when I couldn't have them. I would make them like going to concerts you know be like I love you Britney Spears or whatever you say and I'm—I never really even thought about it as being crafty or anything that no one—like I want everyone to do that, I was like of course you can just do it, it's very easy. But no one did it. So it's funny now like when I got back into it, I was like, you know I love this so much. When after realizing like I really don’t care what people think it's like wow I genuinely love being sparkly, and like I love being tacky like I live for that.

So it was a big deal, especially now I can buy you know real diamonds much more fun.

Jon: Tell me about the first time someone recognized you.

Amber: Oh my god the first you know what I think the first time someone recognized me outside of—

Jon: Outside a few friends.

Amber: Yeah it's like my friends knew but whatever. But yeah it was actually because at the time that my YouTube blew up, it was like—it was right before when did I go to London like November. So it was like in the end of October, and I was going to London next week which I had spent my last again—God knew I was like I need to visit my friend Bailey who was studying abroad in London. I was like well you know what I need to go visit her because I've been saying I’m gonna visit her for like two years, and I never went like I'm going, I'm going to go, and I think—at the time I think I had I don't even know but I spent it was like—I got a great deal like 200 dollars one way, and I think my net worth at the time was 350 dollars, so I didn’t buy a return flight. I bought a one way flight there, and a week or two before was when my channel like exploded. So I was like, “Oh my god.” And I was there and no one had recognized me because I was just like at home you know. But when we were at Harrods in London, I was walking around—

Jon: You got recognized in Harrods?

Amber: Yes I was walking around and some girl was like and I was like, “Amber?” and I was like—

Jon: —yes?  

Amber: “Hello?” she was like, “I love your videos.” And at the time I think I had a hundred thousand something subscribers so not—I mean that is a lot but as far as the whole world goes like to run into someone across continents I was like that is insane. But yeah we took a picture, and it was super cool. And yeah I, I vividly remember that. I called my mom, and I was like,  “Mom someone stopped me and said they loved me.”

Jon: How often does it happen now?

Amber: It happens often and also not. I always joke that like I'm famous on the internet and not in real life because to be certainly honest, I go out like this a lot and no one recognizes me.

Jon: But you’re bedazzled right now.

Amber: Yes yes. So sometimes I like wear a hat you know, no one’s gonna say anything. When I go to places that I film a lot like when I'm downtown in Forever 21, in Michaels any of the craft stores, I’m recognized like 10 times like everyone almost will recognize me because it's the demographic you know. But if I'm just at the local grocery store, nobody knows me.

Jon: You have, as I walked in this morning, you have projects in process.

Amber: Yes always.

Jon: Where do you get your ideas for the projects?

Amber: It depends. I have a lot of ideas in my head all the time. But some of the best ideas come from people commenting on my videos. Like I said, I don't read all of them but as many of them as I can, I will read.

Jon: Like, why don't you do this?

Amber: Yeah, and people come up with amazing ideas like my most viewed video ever was the trash bag dress video and that literally came from people just being funny. They were like, “I bet you could wear a trash bag and look cute.” I’m like, oh well…

Jon: Well you just posted a wearing fake money video.

Amber: I did, I have stacks of hundreds over there if you want laugh at them. I kept them, I was like, I'm gonna keep these, I feel like a baller with these. So yeah it's just like you come up with things because people will suggest them, like I took a picture of a shoe that had money on it. I bet you could make this. I was like yeah, you’re right I probably could.

Jon: Do you save this stuff when you’re done with it?

Amber: I do. I have a whole box full of it. My mom has been trying to convince me to throw them away for like years. Like, “Why do you need a toilet paper wedding dress? It's just clogging up your storage.” I’m like, “I spent 50 hours on it. I’m gonna keep it gon’ where it to my own wedding.” No not really, but I need to keep stuff.

Jon: Which transitions in—how has this affected your personal life? Because, I'll tell you where I'm coming from is, I'm watching some videos and I'm thinking, I could date somebody for two years and not know as many personal details, as I know now. So how—has it helped, has it hurt, or has there been any impact?

Amber: You know I don’t—sometimes—what do I even say to this question, I don’t even know. I think it makes people— (laughter) “Shutup!” This is my friend who just laughs at me all day. This is what my friends do. I tell them about my life and they laugh at me.

Yeah it's like people know a lot about you. If they know what you do and so if they find out then they instantly know so many things. It's like I'm out here admitting stuff that I would not tell people on a first date, second date, third date—

Jon: --but isn’t that a good thing though if they've seen that and then still want to date you?

Amber: Yeah, I guess theoretically. That would take a lot of balls to still want to date me after watching my videos, to be honest. Yeah it’s like I feel like people in a way like you meet a lot of people who also do YouTube so then it's like well, we all do it so it's like not you know I could find out a bunch of stuff about you too.

So that's okay, but yeah it's always funny when people know or don't know because if I mention it—like a lot of times I just won't say anything. You know I do social media like oh that's cool. I’m like, “mhm.” So like “what?” and I’m like “ugh,” and then they’ll watch it and go wow that's cool, but they respect you a little more in a way because I mean I could drag you pretty hard online, if you’re gonna be mean to me. I'm not saying I would do that, disclaimer but like also I would though.

Jon: Okay I'm going to switch to some just YouTube questions.

Amber: Let’s do it.

Jon: How do you continue to grow your following?

Amber: You know, it's very—YouTube is really cool because I feel like other platforms you have to really like try to do stuff that's like growing around like worry about all the analytics and whatever but YouTube is fun because even if I post nothing, all of my videos are still there out existing so people will see them and subscribe. So it's like I can do literally nothing and still get people to follow me. But it's fun because when you post something it's like so many new people see it because especially depending on what you're posting like I post a shopping video that's gonna hit a demographic versus if I post a make up video which I should never post make videos. First of all let's be clear. But sometimes I do anyway and that is a totally other demographic and it's like you got 20 million people here watching and 30 million people here watching and they all combined and it's like a lot of people watching the Internet. It's crazy.

Jon: If you had to start over—

Amber: Oh God, yeah.

Jon: --but, I mean if you were to start over to build your following, what would you do the same and what would you do differently?

Amber: You know in an interesting way I think there is nothing I would do differently because I had actually start—story time. I had started my channel multiple times in the past and like tried to do things that I thought would do well. Like like when

Jon: --like tours of Pepperdine?

Amber: Yeah, like see, not to toot my own horn, but I knew that was a good idea and a lot of the videos that I did I knew were good ideas because I was like okay, so I have nobody following me currently. If I post something, nobody is going to see it, no one's gonna know, YouTube is not going to care, and whatever. But I posted that knowing that I would have killed for a video tour of Pepperdine. So I was like okay, well you know a hundred thousand people wanna know what Pepperdine looks like. Anyone who's going to Pepperdine or is even slightly interested is gonna Google it, and I'm gonna be the first thing, they’re gonna watch it.

Jon: --did you ever hear back from Pepperdine?

Amber: No one ever mentioned it. I was like I think this is probably illegal that I even did this but no one ever mentioned it so I guess it's fine. Yeah it's still up there. But yeah that was a good idea because I know like I wanted to post things that no one else had posted and I knew that would be the only things if people searched it, so that was smart on my end.

Jon: So reflection time. Because you actually went to college, do you consider yourself to be an influencer?

Amber: I would like to say no because I don't particularly love the term. However I once watched an interview with Oprah and Kourtney Kardashian and she was like, “You know you're famous right? And Kourtney was like, “I don't feel like I am.” And I was like, “HUH?” So, I realize that you can like showcase things and influence people in a way quote unquote. But it’s more like I am just trying to have fun with my own life and like share that. So if people are intrigued to like buy what I'm wearing because I'm wearing it, so be it.

Jon: Where do you see your next couple years?

Amber: Hopefully doing more—I love making YouTube videos, don't get me wrong, but I want to do that and more. Like I wanna create a whole big empire, gonna start a clothing line. I want to do a shoe line and eyelash line like I wanna kind of take over the world. Also like I kind of said I want to be the next Ryan Seacrest but maybe we're gonna do it in a different way. We're gonna to take over the world, you know, on a different different tour.

Jon: Second to last question. Knowing what you know now, if you could get a mulligan and go talk to your younger self what would you tell yourself?

Amber: Oh my god. You know, there's—I think about this all the time and I often tell people like, “Wow what I would give to be able to go back and just say like it's gonna be okay, or—there's just some—there's truly a lot of things that I would love to go back and say, but I think the biggest thing is if I could truly go back to like freshman year of college be with all these big dreams and whatever like there's my mental state was different at many different points of my life. So if I could go back to her then and just be like honestly never let this die, like keep that. The kind of childish like I can do anything I wanna do. Like what age is it that you always are encouraging kids like yes like you can be anything you wanna be.

And then at a certain point we stop telling them that and we're like—

Jon: --Yeah, and then it’s like no, don't do that.

Amber: Yeah, it's like actually no you have to do this. You have to do this this this and this. It's like. no—

Jon: --you can’t play football, you can’t go to space—

Amber: Yeah, and it's not true. Like you truly can do anything, and I wish I could tell her to never let that go because when I did, a true a truly a piece of me died with that. And cause I'm such a big part of my identity and then realizing it now like to keep going at something even everyone is telling you not to do it or like it's never gonna work, and then to have it work. I mean there's I would bet my life on saying you can chase your dreams and make them come true if you really want it badly enough.

Jon: This is a perfect place to stop. Where can people find you?

Amber: Find me on YouTube.

Jon: And what is the channel?

Amber: You type in Amber shopping, Amber DIY it’ll come up. Amber Scholl is my name. Then same for Instagram, Twitter, yada yada.

Jon: Thank you.

Amber: Thank you for having me.