A YouTube primer from Lone Fox

Business of Home Podcast - Business of Home, Dennis Scully

Drew Michael Scott, aka Lone Fox, shares his journey from a teenage YouTube beginner to a top DIY and design content creator with 2M+ followers. He discusses building an authentic brand, leveraging YouTube's strengths ov

Key takeaways

• YouTube fosters deeper audience connections than short-form video

Transcript preview

This is business of home. I'm your host Dennis Sculli. Every week I'll be speaking with leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guess this week is content creator Drew Michael Scott, better known as Lone Fox. Drew grew up on YouTube starting his first channel at age 12. Almost two decades later, he's become one of the biggest voices. Drew grew up on YouTube, starting his first channel at age 12. Almost two decades later, he's become one in DIY and design on the platform with nearly 2 million followers, not to mention his 1.5 million on Instagram. Drew doesn't pretend to be an interior designer. He loves to learn alongside his audience and embraces the journey clip by clip. I spoke with Drew about why he's opened up a shop dedicated to vintage pieces, which social media platform has the least friendly algorithm, and why he's every video himself. This podcast is sponsored by Kohler. Kohler has always embraced the belief that design is more than aesthetics. 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That's Ernesta.com.com. And now on with the show. Well, I want to tell people about your background and how you got started. I feel I feel like you've been doing this almost your entire life. So I mean, tell me. Literally, yes. I have been on YouTube. I started on YouTube and like I think my first upload was in 2013. It literally says on YouTube uploaded 13 years ago. I still have my first channel. And my first channel was a scrapbooking channel. So it was still in the creative realm, but I actually had. I got a cricket cutting machine for my birthday one year and I was looking to YouTube to figure out how to use it and I was like I want to make videos too so I started posting my own like tutorials on how to use a cricket machine and it kind of evolved from there I had that channel for a couple years and then from there I had a fashion channel I went to a fashion college and so I thought they coincided nicely and then I actually got a job at West Elm towards the end of my fashion school because I needed just extra income on the side and that's where that's where I kind of and they quickly changed me from an in-store sales associate to be an in-home stylist. So I was going to people's houses and like restyling their homes and I had literally no background in interior design. But I was good with like I think the scrapbooking I swear helped me because I look at rooms honestly like a scrapbook page. You have like your focal points, you have like your embellishments, you have like all your little accents and things. And they're all layered in a way that's supposed to feel kind of cohesive and artistic. So I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I kind of, so I feel. So I kind of went from there and started sharing what I knew on my YouTube channel, which then I still going I kind of dabbled into DIY because I really wanted to kind of I really wanted my room and my spaces in my house to start looking like these ones I was seeing on Architectural Digest and on Pinterest and so I started to DIY a lot of what I was using in my space so like a new chair for my desk or a new desk for my computer and I was sharing those and I was sharing those projects and I was sharing those projects and I was which kind of started the Lone Fox channel. Okay, and so what made you, so what made you want to create Lone Fox and what's Lone Fox? And who is? Who is Lone Fox? Yeah, so Lone Fox actually kind of stemmed, it's probably like my fourth YouTube channel that I had. So I've gone through iterations, which I think is fine and people can also realize that your first thing doesn't have to be like what it is, you can always change things up because I realize after my first three channels kind of what I wanted to change channel and I knew I wanted it to be something that was more branded as its own thing and not like branded as my name because my fashion channel was my name and I just felt like it didn't have the strong enough push to go where I wanted it to I just wanted it to I just wanted it to kind of be able to Create this new world that people can kind of immerse themselves into and like lone fox it kind of was a random name that I came up with but essentially Fox is typically travel in packs so they kind of they follow the masses so lone everyone else is doing and kind of does their own thing. Yeah, they really like that unique original feel and so I think that also comes with the nature of DIY and a lot of like I love doing things by hand and a lot of my makeovers I'm very hands on with my projects so I'm the one doing all the woodwork and all the painting and swapping the knobs and the plumbing as well so like I really like being hands on with my projects and understanding and then sharing that knowledge on YouTube with my audience so they can kind of feel more comfortable their own projects. Well and that's one of the things I find so fascinating about you is you seem to be a speed learner. Yeah and right and so you throw yourself into understanding the process and then you educate others about it through your YouTube. Yeah that's that's very true because a lot of times my my videos to are the first time I've done something. It's like me documenting the first time I've tried this technique but through the process of that it's also nice to be able to share with like what I've noticed that I've noticed that I didn't like it's not. It's not. It's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it's not like it and I haven't been able to share, you know, what went wrong. A lot of times I am sharing also what went wrong in the process, why I don't actually like this product anymore and how I would change this to get a different result. I actually do a lot of things twice, which sounds funny, but that's for my short form content. A lot of times now with the rise of like short form, I have to film it vertically and I have to film it horizontally. And I actually do a lot of my projects two times to do that. outline but to catch listeners up what I what I'm really trying to to get for them from this conversation and I and I love how you talked about sort of different iterations of your of yourself over various YouTube channels and made it clear that you can just create something completely different on another channel yeah yeah and and so I want to help people understand YouTube as this entrepreneurial tool as this as this way to build whether it's an enterprise, a business, whatever you might want it to be and you might figure it out as you go along. But you just mentioned, so now the rise of short form versus longer form. So tell me what you mean specifically and what's coming up for you. Yeah, definitely. So I would, I've always had YouTube as like the primary focus of my social platforms, even with the rise of TikTok and Instagram Reels and the short form content. I definitely. So I would, I'd had to adapt and like I started posting a little less on my YouTube channel just because I'm still someone that edits all my content I'm just control freaking that aspect of it but I do think that the YouTube audience I build is definitely or have built is definitely my strongest audience and it's also my like whenever I come with like a new idea or I want to share something it's also where I feel like I get the best response and like the most fulfilling comments and the people are most engaged with my content and I feel like that's just because you're with that person normally for around like 10 to 20 minutes per video whereas short form you really are just with them for 20 to 50 seconds and then you're kind of on to the next thing and it's so easy to kind of forget about what you were just watching but there's something about YouTube that you just have you just build more of a connection with that viewer even if you watch one video you're most likely to build more of a connection with a connection with that viewer than if you were to watch another content creators ten different Tik-talk videos but I also love YouTube because I feel that hasn't, like the algorithm on YouTube has always stayed the same. Like your videos, I've never noticed over my 13 years of videos like a decline in my views unless the video was genuinely not a good video. And I also, the thing I love is YouTube gives you a description box where you could put 55 links in it and it's not hiding it from anybody and it's not if you put 55 links in it, it's not dragging your video down in the algorithm so it doesn't make people leave the platform if that makes sense. I've always. I've always found place if you want to promote a product. Because a lot of times on Instagram Reels and TikTok you can't put a link on either of those. They're watching the video and you're hoping that they're going to the site and purchasing the product. Whereas on YouTube you can put a direct link. I mean you can post a story and put a link there but it's very different. It's not the same and then when you post a story link, all my other platforms too. I pushed people from my YouTube channel and it was a lot easier for me to be like, go follow my TikTok and go follow my Instagram from YouTube, whereas I feel like it's a lot harder to go from like Instagram and be like, go follow my TikTok or go follow my YouTube, the kind of call to action doesn't seem to go through. I just have noticed YouTube being such a strong conversion platform and also people really like tuning back in and they like