So Much I Want to Tell You

by Anna Akana

  You see, my dad’s obsession with collecting things had been passed down to me hard. I still have a strong memory of him purchasing entire packs of Pokémon cards that he would never open, in the hopes that they would appreciate. He’d collected comics too, before they were a thing. He had the first issues of Batman and Superman comics, stowed away safely in his garage, steadily earning their value for years until my grandmother gave them away to strangers. In many ways, the finance world was cruel to my dad.

  Mom and Dad grew up in poor families and had never learned much about finance themselves. The only financial advice they ever gave me was, “You want it? Save up for it and buy it.”

  Not “Save up at least a year’s worth of your expenses to cover yourself in the event of an emergency.”

  Not “Do not accumulate more credit card debt than you can pay off within a month.”

  Not “Here’s the difference between a Roth and traditional IRA so that you never have to search for it online as an adult.”

  If I wanted something, I saved up for it and bought it. Credit cards? Credit cards were just the reverse of that, right? Buy it, then save up to pay it off! Like layaway, right? Just way more convenient.

  By the time I was twenty-one, I was $20,000 in debt. This was also when I decided to move to Los Angeles and pursue comedy.

  What a horrible idea! Move out of your parents’ rent-free, food-filled home, just to be two hours away in the city. I bought my groceries (and food for my three cats) at the 99-cent store. My phone was shut down every other week. I often had to borrow rent money from Dad or Will. I had no idea how to pay off my debt, much less save up for an emergency or retirement.

  I had so many weird Craigslist jobs in my first years of living in the city. I once got hired as a cocktail waitress, but when I showed up to work, I was ushered into a room with a bunch of other ladies. When a customer walked in, we had to line up in a dark hallway and say our name when a flashlight was put on our face. If the customer picked you, you hung out with him all night. There was no drinking allowed, but there was hand-holding if you wanted (I couldn’t help but notice all the wedding rings on the men who wanted to hold hands). I made a video about it years later and someone told me it’s called “hosting.” It’s apparently very popular in Japan and quite normal there. But here? In the sketchy, dirty streets of downtown LA? I lasted a day, despite the $18-an-hour wage and the minimum $100 tip per customer. It was just too creepy. The whole place felt like it was sucking my belief in love and humanity out of me. But kudos to the women who could flash a smile and pocket the cash. I had respect for them. That was some of the finest acting I’d ever seen.

  Then there was the time I worked as a waitress and shoulder masseuse for an underground poker ring. I brought the guys alcohol, gave them shoulder massages when they asked, and offered them snacks. I’d been brought up playing poker and blackjack and it served me well when I was asked, one time, to sit at the table. Amused, my boss fronted me a grand and said if I won anything, I’d split it with him. Games (and shifts for us girls) could go on for twelve hours, sometimes days. I happily took the $1,000 worth of chips, sat at the table, and smiled and gabbed like a moron. They grinned and leered and flirted until I started taking all their money. I actually used a trick I learned from Kristina. She had always started a game by going all in on each hand, or at least consistently. We would all fold, bitterly glaring at her unturned cards, sure that they were duds but not willing to risk our money on it. Then when someone finally wanted to call her all-in bullshit, she got lucky. She was always lucky.

  I went all in a few times with duds and the guys folded, smiling and nodding, thinking that this silly girl had no idea how to play the game. Ha! I’m not gonna lie, that was probably the most badass I’ve ever felt. They had no idea I’d been raised on Texas Hold ’em and craps as our Thanksgiving and Christmas go-to games. They didn’t know Dad had taught me odds before we knew algebra. I turned my $1,000 into $5,000, split it with my boss, and was told I could never sit at the table again. Unhappy customers weren’t good for business. I used the $2,500 I made to pay off a credit card, quit the job, and started looking for something normal. I didn’t want to keep working jobs where I felt the need to text Dad my location with “If you don’t hear from me in two hours, send the police.”

  Minimum wage is supposed to be a wage you can live on, but I could barely make enough to cover my expenses when I was working four jobs: chiropractor’s assistant in the morning, waitress in the afternoon, babysitter in the evening, and an on-call personal assistant at all other times. And it still wasn’t enough to get ahead. I was barely treading water in the financial ruin I had created for myself. If I hadn’t eventually gotten into YouTube and amassed a following, there would be no way I could’ve survived living on my own.

  My early twenties were riddled with fear: fear of not having enough money, of not being able to pay bills, of not being able to take care of my cats. So I did what I always do when I’m stressed—I read every book I could find on the topic of my stress. I would go to the public library and pore over Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Personal Finance for Dummies. I scoured the Internet for personal stories of how people overcame their debt or managed their money. I learned a lot from those books. I learned that, first, I should save up $1,000 in case of emergencies. No matter what, I was to put 20 percent (or whatever was realistic for my financial situation) of every paycheck into savings until that number hit $1,000. Then I was to attack my debt. I had to put 20 percent (or, again, what was realistic) toward my debt, targeting the smallest amount of debt first. This way, victory would come quicker. Once I paid off my smaller debt, I’d feel better. You don’t want to tackle the huge debt and never feel like you’re getting anywhere. Tackle the smallest amount first. Give yourself a win.

  Next, you’re supposed to tackle the debt that has the highest interest rate. Interest rates can kill you. You could be making minimum payments for the rest of your life, but the damn interest makes those payments mean less than the amount they are. Kill the highest interest rate, kill the biggest thing working against you.

  After that, keep attacking your debt. If you were hit with an emergency situation (which I was all the time—I had a damn VW Bug that was always breaking down), go back to building up the $1,000 till you hit the mark, then return to attacking the debt.

  Once I put this financial plan into place, things were fine. Slow, but fine. I’d book a commercial here or there that helped with the monthly expenses. I wasn’t anywhere close to paying off all of my debt, but I did feel like I had some control over my life, and less stress because of it.

  As my YouTube channel grew, so did my AdSense earnings (my share of the ad revenue earned on my videos). They were small payments at first—$200 a month or so. Over the next three years I had a few viral hits: How to Put On Your Face, a satirical inner-beauty makeup tutorial, got a ton of press attention and circulated across Facebook, and I Won the Lottery, a fantasy exploration piece on everyone’s daydreams of winning big, was also hugely popular. I did a few collaborations with other prominent YouTubers that gave my subscribers a boost. After several years of making a video a week, I was finally making enough from YouTube to pay off my monthly bills.

  As I passed the one-million-subscriber mark, brand deals started coming in. At first I resisted the idea of sponsorships. The reaction on YouTube to sponsors was widely negative at the time. People often called you a sellout, accusing you of compromising your creative integrity for brand dollars.

  But I was growing bored of the weekly videos. I was lonely. I was using a vacuum cleaner as my stand-in, running my own lights and sound, and filming in my house alone. I felt isolated and creatively stuck. I wanted to do short films and direct a crew and interact with other people.

  In 2014, I told my audience that I’d be taking in brand dollars on my weekly show, but that I’d be putting the money toward short films. Brand money was twice or three times as much as my monthly revenue, and I could
put the sponsored messaging at the end of my videos so that anyone who didn’t want to watch could click off. To help people with the transition, I made the ads as entertaining as possible: taking audience suggestions for accents or characters, and delivering the branded message as such.

  And to my surprise, I loved the challenge of making sponsorships engaging and entertaining. I was hoping to make longer short films in 2015 (Loose Ends and Supers & Associates), so I started investing almost as much time into my branded spots as I did the weekly videos. Using ad dollars, I bought a green screen and a new lighting kit, and I hired a graphic artist, an editor, an assistant, and a director of photography. I was no longer a one-woman show, and my content benefited from it.

  In 2016, I realized I probably wouldn’t have a YouTube career forever. I’d seen people come and go, the viral memes burning out quickly. I decided that I should do adult things like start a retirement plan and an IRA and buy a home. I still worked hard on making my advertisements entertaining, but I took a break from short films to focus on selling movies and series.

  The best advice I ever received about money was from a friend’s father who is now my CPA. David said, “You should only ever spend your money in two ways: One, if it’s going to help you grow your business. And two, if it’s going to make your life easier.”

  If I had to pass on this advice, I would add, “And food. Good food is fine too.”

  When it comes to money, I’ve done it all: I’ve hoarded every penny, building up my savings account, and I’ve splurged, maxing out every credit card. Like most things in life, the sweet spot exists somewhere between those two extremes.

  Financial independence is a beautiful thing, and I’m grateful for it. It’s something I won’t ever take for granted. And for those of you struggling to get there, know that it’s possible. Know that you can do it.

  On Being an Internet Personality

  I came of age alongside a hell of a beast: social media. We both reached our adulthood at the same time, ready to take on the world while it took over us. When I was growing up, everyone wanted to be a movie star or a musician. Nowadays, teenagers grow up wanting to be YouTubers, Snapchat stars, and social media personalities. Thirteen-year-olds are making six-figure brand deals. Our pets are Instagram models with millions of followers. The average baby plays videogames better than I can. For better or for worse, the Internet has changed us. I didn’t have a cellphone till I was seventeen, and even then it was a piece-of-crap Nokia that had pixelated text and the snake game. I shudder to think if I’d been born five years later, just how many of my naked selfies would exist in this world? Too many. Too many. I thought I was such hot shit at sixteen.

  I have a complicated relationship with the Internet. On one hand, I love it. It allows me to look up anything I want to learn or know. What were these little red freckles on my face after I threw up? Oh, blood vessels that burst. Cool. Is it bad to stand with my face up next to the microwave? Definitely (I probably could’ve guessed that). I’m able to express my opinions through video or the written word and anyone can watch or read it. I have access to virtually anything and everything from the comfort of my own home. I can meet new people. It’s an amazing tool.

  On the other hand, it can be a frightening place full of misogyny, racism, and unbelievable stupidity.

  Maybe even weirder than the Internet itself, though, is Internet fame. It’s one big through-the-looking-glass experience. One minute I’ll be at VidCon (a conference for online creators), surrounded by hundreds of people who want to take a selfie with me. The next, I’m doing an open mic in a bar where no one knows (or cares) who I am. I go from being nobody to somebody every time I hit record, and I’m not always sure how to feel about it. Some days I feel like I have such an important part to play—being a role model, speaking up for suicide prevention and against bullying, making people laugh. Other times I wonder what my place is and whether this career in front of my computer is a fluke or a passing phase. I love my job because it allows me to speak from the heart, but it’s hard when your professional and personal identities are so intertwined.

  That goes double for when you’re dating someone. So just imagine how confusing it got when I was in a very public romantic relationship with another digital influencer in 2012. Being in the public eye put a lot of strain on our relationship. Like most online couples, we did daily vlogs and joint business ventures, which at first was great. It was fun working together and coming up with interesting ideas that we could film and send out into the world. But what I wasn’t prepared for was the amount of scrutiny we would get back from the world—or that I would get, I guess. From the comments on our posts, people seemed to assume that I was a gold digger, an idiot, not worthy of the guy I was dating. At times I felt like I couldn’t be my own person, always referred to as “the girlfriend.” As I grew my own YouTube following, some people implied that all of my success was due to him, and that the work I put into my own channel amounted to nothing. It got hard to face the comments. After you hear something enough times, you start to wonder if it’s true. The fact that our relationship was public made the breakup so much worse. Even now, years later, I still get comments about my ex on all my social media platforms. As I write this, someone just tweeted me a photo of my ex with his new partner. Sometimes it really does feel like it never ends.

  Reading that last sentence reminds me that because I’m an Internet personality, everything I experience feels heightened, whether it’s a relationship, an embarrassing photo, or a lighthearted joke being scrutinized. It’s hard to remember that you’re such a small part of the world. And all those numbers of views and likes and comments you can’t comprehend onscreen? It’s easy to forget that they’re just people.

  I think my biggest fear when it comes to online celebrity is letting it all go to my head. Falling into this trap of thinking I matter. Do you know how many channels get one million views per video? Over thirty-seven thousand. Yup.

  Plus, what do likes, subscribers, and followers amount to in the end? I don’t want to measure my self-worth with an algorithm. My self-worth is measured by the stuff that actually matters. So much of that is unquantifiable. What I do for the world. What I do for other people. How much I help.

  But it’s hard. Because it’s fun to watch your numbers climb on social media platforms. I rationalize the hours I spend poring over analytics as research. I tell myself that selfies are vital to expanding my Instagram following. I get wrapped up in reading comments, eager to hear what people think of me and what other topics I can cover that will appeal to the 1.6 million subscribers I’ve collected over the last six years.

  And yes, some of these things are important to my job. But there’s a fine line between analyzing data and being obsessed with it. Between creating assets for social media and being vain or craving validation. Between creating art and pandering.

  For anyone who wants to become an Internet celebrity, my best advice is to remember that the Internet isn’t technically real. I know that sounds obvious, but it’s become so ingrained in our lives (the first thing I do in the morning is check my cellphone) that it’s easy to ignore everything else in front of us.

  It’s easy to forget how valuable in-person experiences are. It’s easy to sit in front of the computer screen and “interact” with the world. It’s easy to go weeks without ever looking up from your phone, or leaving your house, or getting together with a group of friends.

  Social media is a lie. It’s what we want people to see. We curate our lives so that they look fabulous from the outside. We only show what we want to show. Sure, sometimes we want to show something vulnerable and true and honest, and those are beautiful moments. But for the most part? We’re all holding up a mask of happiness and fun.

  What you see on the Internet is part of me, but it’s not all of me. I am not that articulate in real life. I am not that put together. Hell, I’m not even as smart as I come across on the Internet. I have so much time to think and write and rev
ise and edit that what ends up onscreen is a perfectly polished essay. It’s easy to forget that what we put online is a persona. An extension of ourselves. True in some ways, but ultimately false because we’re presenting an image, not being ourselves.

  Remember that the world we can see is the one that really matters, and never lose sight of that.

  How to Be a Boss

  Being a boss has not come easily to me. I’m a people-pleaser. I’m generous to a fault. I don’t handle stress particularly well. I’m an excellent administrator, but managing people? Reprimanding them when things have gone wrong? Dealing with human error that has cost me money? Trying to be firm and fair without smiling and apologizing? I struggle with all these things.

  I constantly remind myself to avoid emojis in business emails, saying “sorry” unnecessarily, and overeager exclamation points to prove my enthusiasm. I don’t need any of these qualifiers. I’m a businesswoman! (I say this as I sit in my sweatpants with my cats underneath my desk. But I’ll say it again: I AM A BUSINESSWOMAN.)

  I still don’t like certain aspects of the job. Telling people that I’m not going to continue working with them gives me anxiety dreams. I hate having to deal directly with corporations and companies that don’t understand what I do, asking them to pay me more than they’re willing. I’m constantly frustrated by numbers that I have no control over, on a platform that shifts its algorithm on a whim. But I know I have to deal with all these things because I’ve come to accept that I’m going to be a boss for a long time. The following chapters tell you what I’ve learned.

  Give Yourself Permission

  Being a figure of authority is hard enough as is, but when you look like a petite teenager, it requires some extra work to make people take you seriously. I’ve walked into meetings where people have assumed I’m the assistant, or where men in the room refuse to make eye contact with me (and it’s not because they are shy or awkward; it’s a deliberate power move).