Coffee with: ‘Missy Chrissy’ makes the jump to YouTube

Chrissy Sandhu is busy jotting something down in her notebook of ideas.

At a window seat in a North Richmond coffee shop, the YouTube beauty expert is thinking about her leap from a steady job in health care to an uncertain one on the web. It’s a grey weekday morning, a sip-coffee-out-of-a-straw kind of morning, and the early-30s Bridgeport area resident says she’s not sure where her new venture as an online video personality will take her.

“I was sitting at a desk at Richmond Hospital, and in Lions Manor right across the street here, wondering what am I going to do with my life. Then suddenly, this volunteer walks in: ‘Why don’t you do YouTube?’ And everything changed.”

Sandhu started her Missy Chrissy YouTube channel two years ago. She’s been building a following ever since with regular videos on fashion, makeup and finding the best beauty deals on a budget. There’s money to be made on YouTube — in advertising, sponsorship and multi-channel network deals — and the platform is allowing Sandhu to do what she’s passionate about.

Born and raised on the North Shore, Sandhu headed to Prince George after high school and signed up for women’s studies and First Nations studies at University of Northern B.C. When class was out, she’d spin records and show off her sense of style.

“I started DJing up there. I would go to raves wearing these crazy outfits that I designed myself,” she said. “I had a following of people who really loved my fashion, my designs and the way I put things together... So it was only natural to try fashion school.”

Her shift in studies took her back to Vancouver. The promise of stability eventually called her to a job in health care, but she didn’t give up on her true interests. On leave after the birth of her daughter, Sandhu used baby’s naptime to practise styling and makeup.

Back at work, now as volunteer co-ordinator at Richmond Hospital, her teenaged recruits couldn’t help but ask about her impeccable makeup and hair. One suggested sharing beauty secrets on YouTube. So two years ago, she neatly laid out her makeup, set up a camera and recorded her first video.

“I had no idea what I was doing. I had a lamp pointed at my face. My husband bought me a camera for Christmas and I had no idea how to use it.”

Since then, she’s uploaded many more videos and found enough success that she left her hospital job last fall to pursue the online platform full-time.

“I had this turning point where I was starting to get a following,” she said. “It just felt like suddenly that job was getting in the way of my existence. It felt like it was more of a burden than it was fun anymore. It had nothing to do with the workplace...it was just something inside of me one day that turned.”

Through her video channel, and as a freelance makeup and styling consultant, Sandhu’s goal is to provide beauty advice that goes a long way on a budget. One of her posts even details beauty gems waiting at the dollar store.

“That’s always been my mantra: you don’t need to be a millionaire to look like a million bucks,” she said. “You don’t have to walk into Aritzia and spend a thousand bucks to be stylish. There’s different ways to accumulate and develop style.”

Sandhu also believes in enhancing inner beauty. Her goal of a makeover, for example, is to allow a client to feel like a better version of themselves.

“It’s bringing out what’s on the inside to the outside. I don’t like to change people’s features. There’s a lot of makeup artists out there that change people’s faces with crazy contouring, really masking the face to look good in photography, for example. But what a lot of makeup artists don’t realize is that doesn’t look good in real life.”

As for her channel (YouTube.com/MissyChrissssy), she’s learned that starting one isn’t a guarantee of success. Some videos she thought would have a far reach have only generated a few hundred views. Yet others surprise with 100,000 clicks.

“Do what makes you happy because the universe can hand you something so out of the blue. If it makes you happy, take it and run with it.”