Welcome to YouTube Millionaires, where we–in partnership with content creator tool Gyre–profile channels that have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark. There are channels crossing this threshold every week, and each creator has a story to tell about YouTube success. Read previous installments here.
First, we want to be clear: “Dumb little video” is Micah‘s description, not ours. But it’s the kind of thing we hear a lot of creators say–that they made one off-the-cuff, lo-fi video, something they didn’t really put too much effort into, and that was the one that went viral.
It’s exactly what happened to Micah and his wife Sarah on their honeymoon. Micah had always liked making videos. He started as a kid, using the family camcorder. And he and Sarah are both performers at heart; he’s in musical theater, she’s a professional dancer, and they met on a Beauty and the Beast national tour. So when COVID hit and had them both offstage and stuck at home, Micah channeled his childhood passion for videos into making stuff on TikTok.
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The honeymoon video was a quick clip of a pool with a curved glass side that warped swimmers funhouse-style. Micah tossed it on his TikTok page and didn’t think too much about it.
Until it went to 8 million views in less than a week.
“That started the bug,” he says. “It was like, ‘Oh, this can really become something.'”
In mid-2021, he convinced Sarah to join him in videos, and they haven’t looked back since.
Check out our chat with them below.
@micahandsarah I thought I was clear #micahandsarah ♬ original sound – Micah & Sarah
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: I’m familiar with you and your videos, but I would love to get just some background about the two of you, where you grew up, how you met, and your journey up to starting making content.
Micah: Yes, for sure.
Sarah: Totally.
Micah: Do you want me to go first?
Sarah: Yes, you can start.
Micah: All right. We both live in New York right now, but we both are not from New York. I’m from Wisconsin originally. She’s from Kansas. I grew up in a town of 3,500 people, tiny town. My family made up most of the town pretty much because I’m one of six kids, so big family. Then moved out to New York for musical theater. I got a degree in musical theater. She got a degree in dance. We actually met on the Beauty and the Beast national tour.
Tubefilter: Oh, very cool!
Micah: Yes. I know. That’s how we met. Then we met on that, and then that ended, and then we were like, “Well, let’s see where this goes.” Then we ended up getting married. We got married. The pandemic happened in 2020, and we were living– We actually had roommates at the time. It was six of us in a four-bedroom, two-bath.
Tubefilter: Six?? No…
Micah: I know. This is during the pandemic when the world shut down. Especially New York was pretty strict, so we were all locked away. 2020 happens, the pandemic lasts a lot longer than we all think. I was at home. My job was luckily paying for me, even though I wasn’t really working because they were, I think, hoping that it was going to be a lot quicker than it was. I was bored, and I started making dumb videos because I liked making videos.
I did it when I was younger. Our family, we would have camcorders and just make some fun, silly videos. I started doing that. TikTok was relatively new at the time.
Sarah: It was 2021 when he started doing this.
Micah: Yes, 2021. I was like, “Oh, I don’t have anybody on there. I’m just going to start posting on there instead of flooding my Instagram.” I started doing that. It was like the third or fourth post, it was actually a post from our honeymoon. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but we were in this pool, this was not intentional to be on TikTok either, but we were in this pool where the wall was curved, but you could see through it. It was glass. The curve made everyone look like their heads was separate from their body. Then I made a dumb little crap video from it. It took off, it went to 8 million views in a week or something. That started the bug. It was like, “Oh, this can really become something.” Then I pulled her into my content mid-2021.
Sarah: I was working still. I was not at home. I worked outside of the home all throughout the pandemic. I was not at home, which is why he was extra bored.
Micah: Yes, exactly.
Tubefilter: Makes sense.
Micah: Yes. I started pulling her into my content, and those did very well. I think people liked our dynamic. Then I would try to do stuff on my own, and those didn’t do as well. I was like, “Oh, man. Obviously, she’s the star of our content.” Then it became a couples content kind of thing. Then that started the journey. We both have performing backgrounds. A lot of our content is– We have a lot of singing and performing ones, but the majority is centered around couple-related content, like comedy content.
@micahandsarah The instant panic 🤣 #micahandsarah ♬ original sound – Micah & Sarah
Tubefilter: Is this your full-time thing now? Are you looking at going back to theater? How’s it working for you?
Sarah: I’ll just speak for myself. We stopped pursuing theater full-time prior to the pandemic, maybe 2018, I would say, because we wanted just a different life than what theater could give. We wanted more time with our family. We wanted more control of our time, more control of our finances, so we switched up our path in 2018 and have had the goal of being full-time entrepreneurs since then, even before social media came into our life.
We were already on a path of wanting to be able to be in business for ourselves, control our work, control our time, and social media ended up fitting really well into that, wanting to create that kind of lifestyle. We currently both have full-time 9:00-to-5:00 gigs, as well as our social media, and we have another e-commerce business outside of that.
Tubefilter: Oh, so not busy at all.
Micah: No, not really. [laughs]
Tubefilter: You must have a very intense schedule.
Micah: It’s definitely taken some practice. We have to be masters of our calendar to make sure that everything is getting hit and the things that we want to progress in are getting on the calendar because otherwise days just slip on by.
Tubefilter: What’s like the average week for you guys?
Micah: Right now Monday through Friday, we work around like nine to four, nine to five situation.
Tubefilter: Are you working out of the house or remotely?
Micah: We both work out. Neither of us work remotely. Now she’s going down to part-time–
Sarah: I am, yes.
Micah: –where she’s only going to be going in three times a week. I’ll probably look to try to do the same. We’ll see how that goes because ultimately, we’re running out of time. We just need more time to put in towards the things that we actually want to grow. We’re nine to five Monday through Friday, and then from five to ten, five to eleven-ish we’re building our businesses. We’re either filming, editing, scaling out our e-commerce business.
Then we tried to take Saturday and Sunday some time in there to just be with ourselves and connect in our relationship, obviously, in our marriage, because that’s important. That can be easy to lay by the wayside if you’re both really driven people that want to grow. We have to do that.
Sarah: Especially when being in business together, we do so much. Everything we do outside of work is together. It’s easy to be like, “Oh, we’ve spent so much time together,” but it’s like, “Did we actually have a conversation about how we’re doing as people or as a couple?” Learning how to be really intentional with that. We definitely have to put it on the calendar or else it doesn’t happen. We’re very much looking forward to letting go of our nine-to-fives.
Tubefilter: I can see why.
Sarah: We’ve had some major financial goals, and so we just have wanted to ride them out as long as we can. They’ve been blessings, but we’re definitely looking forward to the next season where we can be full-time working for ourselves.
@micahandsarah WHAT is that walk?! 🤣 #micahandsarah ♬ original sound – Micah & Sarah
Tubefilter: Do you have an average number of videos that you hit per week? Do you have a posting schedule, or is it just what you can manage to get together?
Micah: Since we really started in 2021, we’ve posted probably on average five to six times a week.
Tubefilter: Okay, wow. Walk me through the average video for you. Do you script, how much time does it take from conception to upload?
Micah: It depends. The singing ones, it depends on how well we sang it and how well we did it, but usually those are pretty quick because we try to keep those as organic as possible since a lot of them are her matching my energy, and so we are making that as quick as possible. We do it once, and then the editing takes about, well, I don’t know, probably it depends on the video, but probably around 20 minutes or so per video.
Then other ones, like the one we did for Father’s Day, that too–
Sarah: That was a quick one.
Micah: –maybe like 30 seconds to film and about 5 minutes to edit, and I posted it like within that time. It depends on the content that we’re doing.
Sarah: Yes, or like the skit type ones obviously take–
Micah: Those will take longer.
Sarah: –much longer to film. We could spend a couple of hours doing a skit type one, and then Micah does all the editing. Then how long does it take you to edit a video like that?
Micah: Yes, those take a little bit longer. Those would take 30 minutes to maybe 40 minutes, depends on how long it is, but skit type ones just take longer because it’s different editing styles of zooming in, doing the audio, matching audio to it, if I want to put sound effects in or stuff. Those take a little bit longer than the organic content where I’m filming her and asking her some questions or vice versa.
Tubefilter: Got you. TikTok seems to be your main platform?
Micah: Yes, right now, currently that and Instagram are our main.
Tubefilter: Instagram. Okay. I was going to ask where else you’re growing your presence outside of TikTok.
Micah: Yes. Instagram, we’re at like 231,000.
Tubefilter: Oh, nice. Okay. Are you on YouTube at all?
Micah: Yes, but YouTube does take, that one does take more time. I think we’re going to be working with a company soon that’s going to basically take our content and help grow our Facebook and YouTube account by repurposing our content. That can just take off some bandwidth and time to help grow those accounts, because we really do want to grow our YouTube. I know a lot of the potential is there, and money is there, and it’s also a different format I’d like to start exploring where we can start to talk longer-form and people can get to know us even more and be able to share our values and our just different outlook as well.
@micahandsarah The jump off the bed 🤣 #micahandsarah ♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys – Kevin MacLeod & Kevin The Monkey
Tubefilter: What was it like for you guys to hit a million followers on TikTok? Because that’s pretty significant.
Micah: Yes, it was crazy. Man, if you would’ve told me even three years ago that one time, one day, we’d have a million–or, I’d have a million. [Looking to Sarah] I don’t think you ever cared really that much. I didn’t either, to be honest, but I would’ve just…I looked at people that had a million followers, just being like, “That seems like such a pipe dream. It seems like so far away, they’re famous.” Then it happens, and it’s cool.
I try not to take it for granted because it’s very much a cool thing. We’re very grateful and appreciative of everyone that supports us. Our followers are awesome. They’re super supportive and super kind. We just appreciate everyone that supports us on our journey, and so we don’t take it for granted at all. It’s cool. I don’t know, what are your thoughts?
Sarah: The whole journey, honestly, including hitting a million followers has reframed what I see the potential of what social media can be because I used to be a bit negative about social media. I didn’t really experience the positive aspects of it or the real connection that can be formed, or how you can learn something from someone, or how you can bring hope to someone or joy to someone when they’re in maybe a valley of life.
Like Micah was saying, the community that we’ve built there is really delightful humans, and people, messages that they’ve sent where it’s like, “This video got me through this hard time.” We’ve shared certain aspects about our life, our journey, then people have resonated with and been like, “It was meaningful to me that you’ve shared that because I’m going through the same thing and I have felt very alone in that situation.” It’s just been really cool to see how, if you steward it appropriately, you can really be a beacon of hope for people that can make them feel less alone versus feeling more alone.
Tubefilter: Yes. That’s a very cool way of approaching it.
Micah: Yes. It’s cool. [laughs] I don’t know. I forget about the numbers sometimes, and then my friends will, if they’re talking to somebody who’s just meeting me, it’s like, “They have a million!” They all say, and I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, you’re embarrassing me.” It’s cool. I forget about that aspect or the number of it.
Tubefilter: Do you have any plans or goals? Clearly, going full-time is the goal, but any other plans or goals that you’re looking forward to for the next year or so?
Micah: That’s the main one this year, is we really want to put ourselves in a position to be able to do it full-time because it just will free up 80 hours between the two of us of not only time, but just bandwidth to be able to pour in. We want to be able to pour in more mental energy because then we’ll ultimately be able to put out better content too, and more.
Sarah: Just expand aspects of what having influence is. I want to have a blog. That’s been a goal of mine that I’ve crystallized across the journey when it comes to how I want to provide value to people, how I want to impact people, and it would be personal development, spiritual, things like that. I’ve never, don’t get me wrong, love makeup, love home stuff, but I’m not an authority on any of that. I spend my free time reading books about leadership.
It’s like if I can share things that have really allowed me to progress to help someone else progress, then that’s how we want to spend our time. It’s impacting people positively on deeper levels than just the funny video here and there. I love that. I love to make the videos. It’s a really cool way for us to scratch that performative itch that we have on our own terms, which I think is amazing.
It’s a beautiful blessing, but ultimately the ability to pour our bandwidth and time into projects that will impact other people for the long term is what we really want to be able to do. More of that will crystallize as we have more bandwidth, but just to be able to have the mental energy to pour into the other aspects of business and influence that we want to tap into.
Micah: If a TV show wants to pick us up, we’re fine with that too. [laughs]
Tubefilter: Okay. I’ll be sure to put that in the story. “Actively seeking TV opportunities.”
Micah: Yes, a sitcom. It’s been a dream of mine to be in a sitcom, just because I grew up watching Friends. I was like, “That just looks like it’s an absolute blast. It looks like such a fun time.” I love comedy, The Office, and all those kind of shows. That has been a secret dream of mine. If any are out there and think they can fit us in, we’re fine with that too.
Tubefilter: Okay. Deal. I will highlight that in my story. Thank you both. Is there anything else you want readers to know about you?
Sarah: I think if someone is reading this, we appreciate them.
Micah: Oh, yes. Absolutely.
Sarah: We appreciate them very, very much. We don’t take it lightly, having any kind of influence. Anyone whose eyes land on our content and they laugh or find some kind of value, it’s all meaningful to us.
Micah & Sarah are repped by Currents Management.
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