🔴 A 3 billion-view YouTube editor shares trade secrets

Behind every viral YouTube moment is someone who never logs off.

Rachel Kisela has built a six-figure editing business that spans everything from working with top creators like HopeScope and Bunny Hedaya to founding EditHers, a one-of-a-kind online community supporting female video editors in the creator economy.

Two years ago, after a year leading an editing team at MrBeast, she returned to freelancing with an abundance of clients competing for her time — and rates that reflect her true value.

In this episode:

— Natalia Pérez-González, Assistant Editor

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By Natalia Pérez-González

You can't teach decades of being chronically online. Rachel Kisela is proof. She believes most video editing training completely misses the point: technical skills are learnable, but the skills that truly make her content compelling come from a lifetime of obsessive consumption.

Rachel grew up glued to YouTube in its rawest form — 45-minute Trisha Paytas grocery hauls, unedited and meandering, the kind of videos most people would click away from in seconds. She devoured them. That obsessive viewing, which began when the platform was new, gave her an innate instinct for pacing, humor, and what keeps an audience engaged.

At 26, she's spent virtually her entire conscious life consuming YouTube content. That instinct — internet video as second language — is her superpower.

In high school, she’d have her brother film videos for her to edit, and she’d often make videos just to entertain her classmates. At the time, she had no idea what that could mean for her career, but her intuition proved invaluable; during the COVID shutdowns, Rachel turned to Upwork, taking any editing job she could get — even $20 projects, she was excited to be paid for editing at all.

She reached out to TikTok creators during the first platform ban threat in 2020, offering no-fee editing services, asking only to be credited in the video descriptions. Gradually, she built a respectable client base, including Bunny Hedaya, who she's now worked with for four years.

After graduating from USC Annenberg's documentary journalism program in 2022, Rachel worked for MrBeast, where she led a team of editors on videos that reached tens of millions of viewers. The role taught her delegation and leadership skills; it also taught her she preferred the in-the-weeds work of editing over managing. When she returned to freelancing, she had both the specialized skills and industry credibility to command premium rates.

Today, Rachel's business includes three main revenue streams:

"Do you know any other girls who do what you do?” was a question Rachel heard constantly from creators looking to hire editors. The question revealed a deeper industry problem: as of 2022, women accounted for only 24% of working video editors, while 77% of influencers were women who often needed to hire editors. Women were getting left out of the conversation — and the money.

This frustration — and striking imbalance in the industry — prompted Rachel to fill the gap; she founded EditHers, a network and 223-member Discord serving as an informal labor union for women editors.

EditHers now functions as a job board, rate transparency hub, client vetting system, and support network. The community features an editors-only section for salary transparency and technical support, as well as a self-promotion channel where members can share and promote each other's work.

Before taking on any project, Rachel asks herself one question:"Is this content making the world a better place?" It's a filter most freelancers can't afford to use — but she’s built the leverage that makes it possible. Her rates reflect this positioning: by combining specialized expertise with long-term client relationships and genuine mission alignment, she's moved beyond commodity pricing into partnership territory.

EditHers extends this same philosophy to other editors, creating the collective leverage and infrastructure creator businesses need to stay sustainable.

A few things that stuck with me as I listened through this week’s conversation:

Connect with Rachel on LinkedIn.
Learn more about EditHers.

Creating is, at its core, a communal endeavor. Building infrastructure and protective systems around your work is, too.

The EditHers community taps into a growing movement of creator service providers building their own safety nets in an industry that offers none. There’s no HR department, no standardized pay scale, no guardrails against scope creep or late payments. Rachel saw the gap clearly after hearing the same frustrations repeatedly from other female editors: the loneliness of freelancing, uncertainty over what to charge, and clients who undervalued their skills.

Rachel's approach offers a replicable framework for any group of freelancers tired of competing alone; here's how to build these protections into your own communities:

The most powerful function of creator communities is salary transparency. EditHers has an editors-only channel where members share specific rate information and can troubleshoot software problems, share techniques, and receive feedback on their work.

This mirrors successful tactics from former Spotlight guests — communities that level the playing field by creating spaces for continual knowledge transfer:

Rachel deliberately keeps EditHers application-based and curated, focusing on "people that love YouTube and are passionate about YouTube" rather than maximizing membership. This approach maintains quality and relevance — crucial factors that many professional communities struggle with as they scale.

The application process filters for commitment and cultural fit, ensuring members genuinely contribute to the community rather than just extracting value from it.

The most effective creator communities don't operate in isolation. EditHers connects editors with creators who need their services, but also links to broader conversations about fair labor practices in the creator economy.

Rachel's community represents a model that other creator service providers can adapt: identify the specific labor protections your field lacks, build community infrastructure to address those gaps, and maintain focus on genuine value creation rather than networking theater.

As the creator economy matures, we're seeing more examples of this community-as-labor-protection model. From newsletter creators sharing revenue data to video editors coordinating on fair rates, these informal unions are creating the professional standards to ensure the industry’s continued sustainability.