If you know anything about social media, then you may have heard of Monica Church. The director, producer, influencer, and Youtube star got her start when she posted her first video to her beauty channel, Hairodynamic, 7 years ago. Today Monica’s Youtube channel, Hairodynamic, has over one million subscribers and her vlog channel, Monica Church, has nearly 300 thousand subscribers.
Monica may be famous online but she’s a lot like everyone else, the only difference is that she films everything she does. As you can see in her vlogs she loves coffee, baseball, gymnastics, traveling and time with her friends and family. Oh, and don’t forget her bengal cat named Leo.
The seattle native began to update her vlog (video blog) channel regularly because she decided to try to get a job with the Seattle Mariners (her favorite MLB team) after time living in LA and working as a Youtuber. In order to keep her viewers updated she began to upload daily to portray the ups and downs of going for your goals as a millennial. It’s as beautiful as it is exhausting to reach for a dream. As seen in her vlogs titled “millennial life crisis”, she didn’t get the job. After that Monica didn’t know exactly what she was going to do or where she was going to go. She didn’t choose LA and she didn’t choose Seattle.
She chose herself.
“Once I realized I wasn’t getting that job I kind of went full force in doing my own thing and working for myself. I’m a Youtuber but I went to film school for a year and I liked the production side of creating something from start to finish a lot more. I like making content that I’m not in as much. I’m on camera all the time and I like it but I also hate it because I actually am really shy,” Monica said.
Monica took everything she had learned from her years of being on Youtube herself and applied it to producing other channels. If you watch her vlog channel (which is separate from her beauty channel) you will see artistic shots of scenic locations with some just-obscure-enough to be cool but just-relevant-enough to be known music playing softly in the background. In addition to her personal channels she also founded a gymnastics based channel called “Flipping Out” and a collaboration channel with other Youtubers called “Just Like That.”
It seems to be what every 20-something kid wants these days- the fame, the money, the freedom to film whatever you want and put it online and call it your job. Everyone appears to be chasing a life of glamour if they aren’t already living it. Without the responsibility of classes or a 9-5 job it can seem as if the world is at your feet, and for Monica,it was.
“One day I just walking on the beach in Hawaii as the sun was setting and I felt this emptiness,” Monica said. “I realized that my life was cool, but it was also completely self centered. I thought- ‘I’m not even happy, I should be doing something bigger rather than just frolicking around on the beach.’ That’s when I felt like I needed to do something different. I need a reason to be doing the things I do, I’ve always been interested in giving back but I never took action until now.”
On February 26, 2017 Monica uploaded a video to her vlog channel titled “I’ve Been Waiting 10 Years to Do This.” In the video she stood in front of a camera and explained that at the end of March 2017 she will be participating in the Big Climb, which is the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s event to raise money through team and individual fund raising, sponsorships, and entry fees to put towards funding blood cancer research and support services for patients.
Monica first found out about this event when she was a 12 year old student at Illahee Middle School in Seattle. Physical education class was a big deal there and the teachers participated in the Big Climb every year. All the students, including Monica, at Illahee wanted to do it too but the cost of it always stopped her. Monica promised herself that one day when she had the money to do it, she would take on the Big Climb.
The Big Climb is in partnership with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s mission is “to cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.” The event? Oh, it’s nothing, no big deal. Participants just have to climb the Columbia Center in downtown Seattle. For those of you that are unfamiliar, this particular building is 788 feet tall. It takes 69 floors, AKA 1,311 steps to reach the observation deck which overlooks the entire Puget Sound region.
Monica explained that her vlogs would look different during the month of March as there would be less traveling and more training. She also explained how exactly she planned to contribute to LLS. It all starts with Monica and it goes back to you. Yep, that’s right, you sitting at home reading this on your phone or laptop. Monica makes money from her Youtube channels through ad revenue, which means the more views she gets the more money she makes and she has vowed to contribute all the money that her vlog channel makes during the month of March towards LLS. If you want to help but can’t afford to donate, that’s okay because Monica has created a way for anyone to contribute to the cause, simply by watching her vlogs. She hopes to raise $10 thousand to donate to the cause.
She plans to train everyday by climbing different sets of stairs throughout the West Coast. Some sets are outdoors that lead from the street down to the beach, or up a mountain, or through a mall. The world is her gym and she has taken full advantage of that. Monica has also committed to healthier eating habits in order to fuel her body to be strong enough to climb these flights of steps everyday.
Monica hopes that this will spark a movement among young people who have created a platform for themselves online like she has. It takes one spark to start a fire and there are endless possibilities for her fellow professional influencers to use their power for good and give back to a greater cause, even if you don’t know a single person affected by it.
“Even if you can’t relate at all, I can’t relate to having cancer at all and I don’t know what that’s like but I’m hoping that my viewers at home that don’t even know anyone affected by this, I can somehow touch them enough with my videos to want to make a change.”