Welcome to Millionaires, where we profile creators who have recently crossed the one million follower mark on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch. There are creators crossing this threshold every week, and each of them has a story to tell about their success. Read previous installments here.
The McCarty family needed to stay sane.
In 2020, Kevin McCarty was a teacher. His wife Stephanie was a healthcare professional.
Subscribe to get the latest creator news
“Then COVID hit and I had no more students,” he says. Stephanie, meanwhile, was suddenly a vital frontline worker. “She had to go to work every single day while I was home with a then four-year-old and six-month-old.”
So, “To just keep our sanity, we started making goofy videos,” Kevin says. He had some experience–he used to make videos with his students–but he wasn’t prepared for how popular his videos about his family would be on YouTube and TikTok. By the end of the first COVID quarantines, the McCartys’ TikTok account was at almost a million followers. In 2021, with life and school resuming, Kevin had to make a choice: did he go back to teaching, or commit to content full-time?
He decided to go for it.
“I had 8,000 subscribers on YouTube and I had about 4 million followers on TikTok,” he says. “It was super hard to make that leap, but I did, and fast forward to today, we’re over 10 million. It’s been a crazy, crazy ride.”
Front and center in that ride is Kevin and Stephanie’s daughter Audri, who’s now seven years old and stars in most of the McCartys’ wacky, costume-filled skits opposite her dad. (Her younger brother Braxton, who’s 4, also makes regular appearances.)
“[P]eople fell in love with my daughter and I and our relationship immediately,” Kevin says. “When I tell people about our content, I’m like, we’re like if the Addams family and the Simpsons had a baby, we popped out. We’re not your normal vlog family. We’re comedy skits, sketches. It’s like watching a show every day, and people fell in love with Audri, and it’s just evolved from there.”
With over 10 million subscribers on YouTube and over 6 million followers on TikTok, the McCartys’ content has become a full-time career for both Kevin and Stephanie, and right now, they’re looking at longevity. Do they focus more on long-form? Do they license a cartoon about their family?
“We’re really trying to figure out a way to what’s beyond this point,” Kevin says. “I think that’s the goal of 2024. I think that this is the breakout year that we get the opportunities from all of the hard work and, hopefully, we can capitalize on it.”
Check out our chat with him below.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: I’d like to start with, the purpose of these is to give people who know you and your family a deeper look at you behind the camera, but also to introduce new people who may not have heard of you. For anybody who doesn’t know you and Stephanie, give me a little bit of background about the two of you.
Kevin McCarty: Absolutely. Prior to all of the content creation stuff, I was actually a teacher. I was a teacher for 15 years. My wife was in the healthcare industry. I used to make videos with my students, and that was how my whole thing started. I’d make videos to help them learn for athletic events and things like that. Then COVID hit and I had no more students. My wife at the time was in the healthcare industry, so she had to go to work every single day while I was home with a then four-year-old and six-month-old.
To just keep our sanity, we just started making goofy videos and we started posting them. By the end of the quarantine, we had gotten to almost a million followers on TikTok. It was cool. I kept working and posting and working and posting. Then in 2021, I was talking it over with my wife, and I decided to make the leap to try to do it full-time. At that time, I only had, this was two and a half years ago, I had 8,000 subscribers on YouTube and I had about 4 million followers on TikTok. It was super hard to make that leap, but I did, and fast forward to today, we’re over 10 million. It’s been a crazy, crazy ride.
Tubefilter: I think you are one of the fastest-growing channels I’ve spoken to.
Kevin McCarty: Yes. We’ve been called the unicorn.
Tubefilter: So you had 8,000 subscribers. What was the first video that really took off for you guys?
Kevin McCarty: For YouTube, it was actually a posted video that I made with my students. I can’t even remember it completely, but it was something about kids throwing away stuff during classtime and instead of throwing it away, making a basket with it. Anyway, that video started to gain some traction, and as soon as that video started to gain traction, all of the videos started to gain traction and people fell in love with my daughter and I and our relationship immediately.
When I tell people about our content, I’m like, we’re like if the Addams family and the Simpsons had a baby, we popped out. We’re not your normal vlog family. We’re comedy skits, sketches. It’s like watching a show every day, and people fell in love with Audri, and it’s just evolved from there.
Tubefilter: What do you feel has been the biggest contributing factor to your growth on YouTube?
Kevin McCarty: I think that, honestly, I’ve always felt confident in our content, and I’m self-taught on everything, editing. I do everything. I edit, I write, I direct, I film. I do all of that stuff. It took a couple of years to finally find my groove, and by the time I made that leap to YouTube, I had gotten pretty good at all of that stuff.
I think that everything just came together at the right time, and the audience that was watching my stuff, I think we have over 14 billion views now, the audience that was watching our stuff just took a liking to it. It’s that type of content that in such a crazy world with all the crazy things are going on, you flick us on and you just forget for a minute, and you just laugh. I think that connected with people.
Tubefilter: Are you and Stephanie both full-time on this now?
Kevin McCarty: Yes. It’s crazy. I did the leap by myself and Stephanie stayed at her job for a year. We were successful enough to have Steph come on, and now we’re all in, the whole family.
Tubefilter: How big is your team now?
Kevin McCarty: Right now, it’s just me, my wife, and then every once in a while, I’ll have a production team come in from LA to help me film. I would say 90% of the time it’s me, directing, writing, producing, editing, doing all the things, and then 10% of the time I call in for help.
Tubefilter: I know you’ve been into making videos since you were a teenager. What makes you so enthused about it?
Kevin McCarty: It was just always like a hobby. It was something that I thoroughly enjoyed doing. I used to make these little family videos with my sister when I was a teenager growing up. I had the worst camera ever, and I would edit it on the worst software ever, but we just laughed and enjoyed it. Then when I got my first teaching job, I took that camera and I decided, I taught history, so I started recreating battles with my students and had to teach them what they were like. It’s just something that I never thought would get to where it is today, but it’s something that I’ve just always loved doing since I was young, for over 30 years.
Tubefilter: This might be a tough question, but what does the average day or week look like for you in terms of video production?
Kevin McCarty: During the school year with my daughter, we try to make her life as normal as possible. That’s our number one goal is to put the kids first. She goes to normal school and she has extracurricular activities. What I try to do is, during the summer, we’ll try to film three videos a day. Then by the time we get to the school year, it’s not as intense. When she has a day off from school, we’ll film.
In the meantime, I have at least 10 hours of editing a day because I do it all by myself. I take meetings with my management company, with brands, with other opportunities. I’m sitting writing with my wife. Now she sits and writes with me too. There’s never a dull moment. For example, so especially during the school year, we have my production team come in. We filmed 50 videos in three days.
Tubefilter: Oh, so huge batch film.
Kevin McCarty: Yes, for sure. Especially during the school year, yes, just so that Audri, now she’s good, I post one a day, so she’s good for a couple months. And we’ll see where we’re at then.
Tubefilter: How does the prep work for you? How long does it take you to write scripts for those 50 videos? How much prep time goes into those 50 videos before those filming days?
Kevin McCarty: It takes about two weeks of full-time just sitting on the computer to hammer them out. Then it takes about another three to five days to go over them all with my wife before production. Then it takes about two days to go and get all of the props and costumes ready. We have over 120 costumes for our videos. We set everything up, we get everything ready. We’re as prepared as possible for that day when we start to film that we don’t have to scatter around. All in all, it takes about three weeks of full time prep.
Tubefilter: Where do you get your video ideas?
Kevin McCarty: I’m really weird. I am so weird. I don’t know. I know that that’s why I’m successful, but I’m like, there’s funny, there’s super funny, and then there’s really odd humor. I’m like really beyond the odd humor. People just seem to take a liking to it. Every idea comes from my head. I just have the ability to take a normal idea that somebody might have, and totally make you watch my video and go, “What did I just watch? What is happening in that mind?” It’s been that way since day one.
I can get an idea, and I have a book of ideas, where when I’m driving around or I’m at home, I write it down and then I expand on it later. The ideas, a lot of them start as something relatable, something that happened in my life, something that happened as a parent, and then I just make it cartoonish, almost.
Tubefilter: Your daughter is your biggest creative partner. You and your wife, obviously Stephanie has a huge part in the channel, too, but your daughter has so much face time on the channel. I’m curious, you said you accommodate for her having school time and to make sure that things are normal for her. What are the other things that you do in terms of mitigating having your kid online? That can be a tough situation to be in.
Kevin McCarty: Absolutely. We are very protective. Her teachers at school will actually sit and talk with the whole school, and we’ll say, “Hey, we just want her to be normal Audri.” We get them all on the same page. Even though everybody at the school knows who she is, they’ve done a really good job of just treating Audri like any other kid. That’s our MO, me and my wife. We want her to be a successful independent adult. We live in Michigan. We could live in LA, but we live in Michigan. We do everything from here and we make sure that our family always comes first no matter what that is. As long as she continues to enjoy doing this with us, we’ll continue to do it.
Tubefilter: Does she have any input in coming up with video ideas?
Kevin McCarty: Actually, recently over the last couple of months, she’s been writing with me. She made one completely. I’m usually in costume, and she came up with this idea. It was called Why you never eat this candy. It was about a unicorn candy. It actually got over 100 million views. It was her idea. I just did a little bit of input on it, but I would say 99% of it was all her idea. She really enjoys doing that part.
Tubefilter: Clearly good feedback on it. The creativity seems to run in the family.
Kevin McCarty: Yes. She’s definitely a goofball like her dad.
Tubefilter: Her younger brother, I know has featured occasionally, but I’m curious if he’s going to feature as much on the channel too.
Kevin McCarty: Yes. He’s been working more and more. He started out and he still is, I don’t know if you’ve watched any of the content, but we throw him. We had a stunt double specially made, looks like him. He’s been in doing that since day one. We’ve been throwing that baby around for the three-year-old, four-year-old. Now that he’s four and a half, this last batch of videos that I just did, he was involved in a third of them.
He’s starting to come into things. He actually loves filming. It’s been a minute to be able to get him, as a four-year-old, able to just go, go, go. Finally, we’re at that point. It’s really exciting because not only does he love doing it, it’s hilarious to watch. I don’t know if it’s just because he’s my son, but I enjoy it.
Tubefilter: What are you looking forward to in the next year or so? How are things developing for you guys?
Kevin McCarty: We’re so young in our business. This is only year three, and we’ve just hit the 10 million mark. We’ve got some larger brand deals on the horizon that we’re currently negotiating. We’re really just trying to figure out a way to take this as far as we possibly can while it lasts. We have our names in, our management is working on possible cartoons and things like that. We’re really trying to figure out a way to what’s beyond this point. I think that’s the goal of 2024. I think that this is the breakout year that we get the opportunities from all of the hard work and, hopefully, we can capitalize on it.
Tubefilter: Interesting that you’re looking at building that longevity because you guys are such a new channel, which is funny to say when you’re sitting at 10 million.
Kevin McCarty: It’s insane. It’s surreal. When I hear the number, it sounds awesome, but it’s been a crazy, fast, super hard journey. I wouldn’t have changed anything about it.
Tubefilter: What was it like hitting 10 million for you? Was it a big day or was it just sort of like, Okay, now we’ve got to film the next video?
Kevin McCarty: It was crazy because the lead up, I was on pace–because you have your analytics on YouTube–to hit 10 million at the beginning of December. Then all of a sudden, of course, the month that it’s supposed to happen, everything just slowed down a little bit.
Tubefilter: It was very slow across the board. We saw that too.
Kevin McCarty: I was like, Gosh. Am I going to hit it before the new year? Am I not? It was a very surreal and wholesome moment. I was in this office right now that I’m in, I was watching the counter by myself. My daughter was playing with her toys and my wife was doing something, and I hit the 10 million. I came on out and I let them know we hit 10 million, and we all gave each other a huge hug and we celebrated with poppers and all that stuff. Just the family, no filming it. Then we actually threw a 10 million party at our house. We had a party to celebrate that. There’s going to be 60 people here in costumes.
Tubefilter: Are you thinking about the potential of bringing on a bigger team this coming year?
Kevin McCarty: I think that’s the end goal. We have this team come in and they’re fantastic. The reason why we like them so much is because we trust them around our children and they’re great at what they do. I think that the biggest thing is like what opportunities come now to where it financially makes sense because we’re not in LA, we fly, it costs extra money to fly everybody in.
I think that the ultimate goal would be to finally be able to hand off, which is still my baby, but the editing part of it. If I could delegate the editing part of it to that team, I think that would definitely open up room to grow even more. I think that if we ever, when we do continue to grow, we’ll have that team. They’re a great team. We’ll have that team come in more often and not only film Shorts. Right now we film 50 Shorts. We’ll get more into the long-form stuff and things like that as well.
Tubefilter: What are your plans for long-form? What are you looking at doing?
Kevin McCarty: I still post a long-form every week. We really focused on long-form at the beginning of 2022, when I first started. It just made sense that the growth, everything, every opportunity seemed to be coming from my Shorts. I decided to focus straight on those Shorts, how high we could go, and it worked. We’ve become super successful that way. Over time, over the last six months, the viewership and retention rate and everything on my long-form videos has increased as well. They’re going up over the last six months, which is great. I think that if I put as much attention on my long-forms as I do my Shorts, we would grow even faster.
I think that that’s where we’re at. We’re trying to decide what’s the next right move. Is it a cartoon for us? Is it just focused on long-form? Is there something that I have no idea that’s going to happen?
Tubefilter: Definitely. A lot of creators I speak with feel like Shorts take away from their long-form views, but it sounds like you’ve hit that threshold where Shorts are feeding your long-form.
Kevin McCarty: Actually, it’s my favorite type of content.
Tubefilter: Short-form or long-form?
Kevin McCarty: Short-form. I would prefer short-form. It’s my favorite. The attention span of my fans and me. [laughs]
Tubefilter: It’s still interesting to me that you batch filmed that many videos.
Kevin McCarty: It was a record last time. We always aim for 50 when they come in. We finally got to 50. That was one of the ways we’ve grown. We knew that the most we can film in a day, just me, my wife, and my kids, the most we could film is three, two is the magic number for us. We usually just do two when we have time to do it. We don’t. Having somebody come in and film, and having somebody come in and get in costumes, so I don’t have to get in costumes all the time, it just cuts things right in half.
You have the scripts, the scripts are super detailed, and we just roll. We get into a groove. I think we did 18 the first day and 17 the second day and finished up with 15 on the third day. We started at like 9:00 AM. I think each day we ended around 4:30.
Tubefilter: The fact that’ll sustain the channel for so long is cool. It’s an interesting strategy.
Kevin McCarty: We had to figure out a way to make sure that Audri, I never want her to feel like she has to do this stuff. She’s at school right now. She’s at recess actually, and she’s just being a kid. By doing that, we’re able to have it where, when the kids come home from school, it’s just family time right now. We do Legos, we do all the kids stuff, we watch movies together, we’ll go on out. There’s no pressure whatsoever.
Tubefilter: That’s good. This life is tough on kids, especially young kids.
Kevin McCarty: It really, really is. Before I made that leap to do this full-time, that was one of the biggest things we said, was we want to always put our kids first. If that means work is tougher for me, then so be it. I don’t care if I’m editing at midnight, just because my kids have a normal life. I’m so lucky I get to do this because I get to spend time with them after school too. I can just go and be there for them.
I think that filming every day totally leads to burnout. Most of the family creators that I know homeschool their kids. That’s just not something that we want to do. Nothing against it at all. That’s just not for us.
Tubefilter: Ironically, with you being a teacher.
Kevin McCarty: Right. [laughs] We don’t want to feel like, why are you homeschooling? Is it for YouTube or is it for your benefit? We just want to be as normal as possible and push her out there.
Tubefilter: Got you. What is the one thing that you would want people to walk away from this story knowing about your family?
Kevin McCarty: I think that the biggest thing that the misconception is that people feel like the McCartys, because we have 10.1 million subscribers on YouTube and 6 million on TikTok, that we just have this huge team coming in and work. This job is the most–I would never trade for the world, but it is the hardest mentally and physically. There is true blood, sweat, and tears in what we do. The workload itself…I would love for people to realize, and I would love to get it out there, that I am the one, now my wife with me, we write, direct, produce, and film 365 new videos a year. I think that if that story gets out, I just feel like it’s very unique that 90% of the time, it is just me and my wife figuring it out. I’m completely self-taught, and I do everything on my phone. I think that everybody wants to be a YouTuber, but I think that the people who truly succeed are the ones that just grind. It is a grind.
