My Thank You Speech to YOU (2023)

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This video is from my Million Subscriber Party in December. I gave a thank you presentation, and this is the video of that presentation/speech. I define phrasal verbs and idioms that I use as they come up as I talk, like “longwinded”, “to go south”, “to point out”, to be “spot on”, and more.

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Video Text:

I recently celebrated reaching one million subscribers. You helped me get there. So in this video I’m gonna share scenes from the party where we celebrated in New York City. As many of you know, back in September I reached one million subscribers, and then in December YouTube threw me a party where I got to meet some of you. It was an amazing night I loved every minute of it.

And as a part of that party I gave a presentation. A thank you presentation to my fans, my friends, and my family. And you have been an integral part of my channel growing, so I want to thank you too, and I want to show you the presentation that I gave at my party.

Now of course, any time an American is speaking, it’s possible that an idiom or a phrasal verb will come up. And as I watched my presentation, I realized
that I used some of these. So while you’re watching the presentation, when I use an idiom or a phrasal verb, I’m going to stop the presentation and we’re going to talk about that, we’re going to teach that, so you’ll learn idioms and phrasal verbs that come up naturally in American English conversation as you watch this presentation.

Thank you so much for coming. So what I wanted tonight to be about was thank
you. I’ve put together a little thank you presentation and I’m going to be thanking three groups of people: YouTube, my fans, my friends and family. So to start, YouTube. That’s an obvious one. YouTube is awesome and they have I feel like really taken the time to invest in me … YouTube Youtube is awesome and they have I feel like really taken the time to invest in me, which has been special. I’ve been in two different YouTube programs. They gifted me some technology, some cameras, but the biggest gift they gave me was friendships of other YouTubers, which is what grew out of the program that I was in, was getting to know other people and more than anything that is why I’m still doing this really are those friendships. And also, I don’t know if Matt is here.

I wanted to thank Matt and NanaAmma for helping me plan this event. And Matt has managely ran the first YouTube program that I did like six years ago and works in this space, worked in the old space and has just always been a friendly face. So thank you Matt so much for just helping me feel like a part of the family and helping me feel like very welcomed at YouTube.

Matt: Of course.
Rachel: Thank you.
Matt: Thank you.
Rachel: Okay. Thank you YouTube.

Oh yeah. So I almost forgot this part. It’s a good thing I put together slides. So now I’m going to tell you my YouTube story in two minutes. Or a little bit longer, depending on how longwinded I get. Or a little bit longer, depending on how longwinded I get. Okay so it all started with this guy who I actually haven’t been in touch with since before I even started my channel. I think it’s probably time for me to reach out to him. His name is Giray and he’s Turkish and we were living in Germany together studying German.

And so he was interested in language, and Hollywood is this amazing exporter of the American accent and he was interested in sounding more American. So you know, me being one of the few Americans there, he asked me to help him, and I was giving him some tips. And he said, “Oh, you’re really good at that,” and I thought, “Really? Okay.” I’m not even really sure what inspired me, but I got home and I started making videos.

So this is in my dorm room. You can do the next slide David. This is in my dorm in Germany. It’s the first video I ever posted. And you can see it was , like over nine years ago, and I shot it on my laptop and like the fan is spinning and it’s like right by the mic and it is horrible. This video is no longer on YouTube, like no one can see it. But just for fun we’ll watch just five seconds of it.

Video: And V is voiced. Make it sound with your vocal cords. Rachel: So thank god I learned how to smile on camera and thank God for increased production value. So, when I left Germany after my time to study was up, it was and like many people in the world at that time I lost my job as the
economy was sort of going south. And so what do you do when you’re not sure
where to live and you’ve lost your job? You live with your parents, which is what I did.

So for the next months I worked full time on Rachel’s English and I chose this beautiful set of closet doors to be my backdrop. And so this is where I really kind of dug in for months doing it full time. And it was during this time that something amazing happened, which is people started watching my videos.

So that was about here. This is the year I was living with my parents and it was like hundreds of people a day where watching these videos. I couldn’t believe it. And of those people some of them were actually contacting me and saying, “Could you help me with my accent?” And so I started teaching some people on Skype and from there it just sort of built. I made some videos, I taught, and it was in the teaching that I really learned what I was doing. It was not in front of the camera. It was with the students. And so then they gave me more ideas about a better way to teach something or what might be hard for somebody, so I made more videos, more people came, and it just sort of went like that.

And another thing that started happening is I started paying really close attention to what Americans do, which people never really do that with their own native language unless they’re a language teacher maybe, and I just started realizing why Americans are so hard to understand. And like when David and I started dating and I would point these things out, he would just be like, “Oh my god. How can anybody learn English? It’s insane what we do to language when we’re speaking.”

You can go the next slide. And so I started having more fun with language,
noticing what was happening and a couple years later at Kmart, which is a major retailer here in the US, came out with an ad where they were using like as the main point of their ad campaign a pronunciation joke. And I was like, “This is incredible.” Of course, I thought it was the funniest thing
ever, and so I made a video explaining why the pronunciation joke was funny. And let’s just watch a little clip.

Video: In the commercial, Kmart takes advantage of our use of stop consonants in American English. They use the word ship to sound like the word shit in the idiom to ‘shit your pants’.

So I started having more fun with it and I think the videos just become more fun, I became more relaxed and I got to know more and more what I was doing. So that is my YouTube story in two minutes. Was that longer than two minutes? It probably was. You can go, hit to the next slide. Okay, Yes. So this is the story of my channel, slow and steady. I never had a viral video. It’s just always been learning from the people who were learning from me to understand how to better teach and relate to students and that kind of thing.

So, now slow and steady after nine years got me to a million people, which is incredible. So now I just really want to take a minute to thank the people in this room who … raise your hand if you are not friends and family. You only know me from my YouTube channel. That is amazing. I don’t even know what to say. I mean just incredible thanks to you. I recognize that time is the most precious resource we have and that you guys have chosen to spend your time with me, your educational time with me, just to say, “This person knows what she’s doing enough, I’m going to subscribe, I’m going to come back and watch another video,” is just, it’s incredible. And I can’t thank you guys enough for doing that.

So I just want to get to know you guys a little bit more here in the moment. How many of you maybe found my channel somewhat recently, and maybe you’ve been watching for like a year or less? Wow. Anyone one to two years? Two to three? Three to four? Anyone in here watching for over four years? Wow. That’s awesome. I also just want to acknowledge that I know that some people had to travel a little bit to be here. So well, first of all, raise your hand if you live in one of the five boroughs because you guys know I’m jealous because you know it’s my favorite place on earth. What if …

Did anyone have to travel a little further like two, around two hours or three? Anyone travel three to four hours? Anyone travel four hours? Five? Where did you come from?

Speaker : Egypt.
Rachel: You came here? You came to this? Wow. Are you doing anything else in New York? I hope so. Okay. Egypt and did anyone else travel like from
another country? Wow. Okay, where did you travel from?
Speaker : From Montreal.
Rachel: Montreal. Are you the one that I was emailing?
Speaker : Yes.
Rachel: Okay, awesome. Okay, who else was from another country?
Speaker : From Saudi Arabia.
Rachel: Saudi Arabia. Did you come here for this event?
Speaker : I came here for an exam and I was lucky to have this event. Rachel: Okay. I’m glad it worked out. I’m glad it worked out. Who else is from another country?
Speaker : From China.
Rachel: From China?
Speaker : Yeah. Just for the party and just feel like
Rachel: Just for the party. How long are you staying? How long are you staying?
Speaker : Three days in New York.
Rachel: Three days. Okay, and then you’re going to travel around?
Speaker : Yeah, a little bit.
Rachel: A little bit. Awesome. Welcome. Thank you. Where were the other country hands? Who else came from another country today to
be here? Where are you from?
Speaker : From Canada, Toronto.
Rachel: From Toronto. Awesome. Welcome. Where there a couple of other hands? I don’t want to miss anybody.
Speaker : Australia.
Rachel: Austria or Australia?
Speaker : Australia.
Rachel: Australia. Oh my god. That is an incredibly long flight. Did you come just for this? Or you were in town and it worked out?
Speaker : I will be here for about four weeks.

Rachel: Okay, awesome. Welcome. Did I miss anybody? It’s like it’s kind of hard to see you. I might need some like serious waving going
on. The lights are right in my eyes. No? Okay, well. Wow. I do not know what to say. Well, first, I will say in case anyone’s wondering
there is going to be a moment for meeting me everybody after this, so know that that is coming.

So guys, thank you. I’m not sure what else to say other than thank
you. You spend this precious resource with me and you uplift me with your comments and so thank you. This is really a celebration of you, one million
of you, so …

Speaker : I’d like to say thank you.
Rachel: You’re welcome.

Okay, so let’s get real. I think that one of the things that makes my channel special is that I use real English conversation in it. And so I need to thank my friends and family for that because I’m not very good at having an interesting conversation by myself. I need to have other people there as a part of it. And so to my friends and family who are here, raise your hand if you’re friends and family. Beautiful people. So to you guys I just want to say look to everyone who is here and just know that these are the people who you have made a positive impact on their lives by doing this. And behind me now is a reel of videos.

So one thing that I do every so often for the past several years is I’ll do a video challenge where I will ask people to make me a video on a certain topic and send it to me and it’s the ideas you practice your English. I put them all together and then it’s a way for us to get to know other people in the Rachel’s English community. And so not only are the people who are physically present here, people you’ve impacted, but these are also the faces of people in whose lives you’ve made a change. So when I made a video announcing I was having this party, inviting people, I got an email from a student of mine in Florida who said, “I can’t be there. I wish I could. But would you please read this email out loud.” And when he gets towards the end, it’s spot on. I really appreciated what he said about my friends and family.

So, If you would let me read this letter. My name is Ulises Goznalez Horta. I’m originally from Cuba, but since I’ve lived in Miami. I will always follow you because you teach all that nobody does. You never do like in the normal English schools where they try to teach a language with slow and fully pronounced videos that a normal or advanced student is able to understand. But later when you get home and you turn on the news, you realize that is not the same English you learned in school. I see the way you interact with your friends, your family in our videos, and yes, that’s American English in real conversation. My grandpa was an English teacher in Cuba. He taught me a lot of English, but of course he failed to teach me the American way to speak or listen to the language.

So I came to this country and I was able to read the newspaper or a book, if people talk to me slowly I was able to understand, but all of you know that is not the way it works. People on the street talk at a normal speed. So this is my history. I was unable to understand TV, and the worst of all, was when someone talked to me by phone. That was a mess. After studying with Rachael for one year, and of course having other resources, today I’m able to understand TV, listen to people from different states of the US without big troubles, and furthermore, today I give remote phone support in a call center. This sounds incredible but it’s true and % of this is due to Rachel’s videos.

Each time I see you in a video with your loved ones, I guess they should be a little bit upset because I think you push them to be in the videos and act … and act in a normal way, and it’s possible they don’t want to do it. So I want to ask for one round of applause for them right now. So thank you friends and family. I’m going to start by thanking my parents. Okay mom and dad, where are you? There they are. So not only did they teach me English many years ago, but they let me live with them when I was working on the channel and they’re always game. They never made me feel bad about pulling out my video camera to get a little bit of footage to teach this concept, to teach this idiom, or whatever. So you guys, thank you so much for being in my videos.

Speaker : Welcome.
Rachel: Okay, next. David’s family raise your hand. I think David’s family did not know what they were getting into when he brought me home for the first time. But you guys are so positive and you know you live with such good energy, so vivacious, and you I feel like have welcomed me and my camera into like family vacations and it’s just so supportive the way you also don’t make me feel bad about trying to get this shot, making the video about family and relationships, and just, yeah, just recognizing that it’s part of my work of what I’m doing and thinking that that was important. So thank you guys so much for being in my videos.

HaQuyen, raise your hand. So HaQuyen is amazing because not only is she native in Vietnamese and English, but she also speaks French and so she’s a really fun person to like have language nerd jokes with, and on top of that she has definitely helped me understand a little bit of the Vietnamese perspective, challenges they might have. We’ve talked through some things that could help me be a better teacher. So HaQuyen thank you so much for being in my videos.

Laurie. Hey Laurie. Laurie was in one of my all-time favorite videos. It’s the Lower East Side. I’m wearing this rubber horse mask and we were like, “Horse idioms, let’s just look them up. Maybe there’s a couple.” And we could not believe how many horse idioms they were and it was like each time we discovered a new one that was good, she would just would like all this energy, be like, “Oh my god,” and it was just so fun. So Laurie, thank you so much for being my friend.

Mark and Hill, is Hillary here? All right, yeah. Crazy zany, the camera loves you.
Speaker : God no.
Rachel: No, but you guys also let me bring my camera to your house. You’re having parties. I’m like, “Let me get that shot,” and you were always open to it. Also, just such a positive energy in the videos and willing to taste chili on international television, so thank you guys so much for being here.

Vicki! Is Vicki here? Oh Vicki. She was going to come but maybe she’s tied up in traffic. Well Vicki actually lives very close to me in Philly and so we shoot these videos in her house. And guys she has a YouTube channel called Simple English Videos. It’s very good if you’re not subscribed so check it out. But it’s so fun to shoot with her and her husband Jay because we shoot in the living room with this green screen, and like a city bus will go by and we have to stop because it’s too loud. And then in post she makes these amazing things happen with the green-screen. She has a lot of video editing skills. Vicki, I’m sorry that you’re not here for this right now but thank you so much for being in my videos. Okay

Lynne, hi Lynne. Okay, Lynne is the number one most requested person on my channel. Whenever she’s in a video I get comments, “Who’s the blonde? She’s so friendly. She’s so bubbly. She’s so cute. We want more of her.” And Beads, it’s true, you bring your vivaciousness, your bubbly personality, you bring them to my videos and just the videos that we made in that Prospect Heights apartment are just some of the best videos ever. Pick it a turkey. I mean like she lets me bring my camera to Thanksgiving. So Beads, Lynne, thank you so much for being in my videos.

Renee. Hey Renee. Renee, I have some news for you. When I was putting this reel together I realized you have only been in one video.
Renee: What?
Rachel: So I am coming for you with my camera today. For this video and all the future videos you will be in, thank you Renee for being in my videos.

Sarah, I had to put this together this morning. Thanks to Renee who had miles to donate, Sarah took the red-eye here last night, surprised me. So she lives in Portland and when I was putting these reels together I was like, it’s so wrong that Sarah is not gonna be here because we lived together for several years and so we made tons of videos together and not only
was she on camera but she was like the steady handed camera lady who was always willing to shoot with me. And so it was … I’m just, I’m just so tickled. Thank you Renee, thank you Sarah for making the effort, that you were able to come. What a friend. Thank you for being in my videos.

I don’t even remember who’s next. Oh gosh, Tom and Julie. I nearly killed Julie with a straight dart in my hit the bull’s eye video. Thank god she survived. And Tom, a lot of you know I’m sure if you’ve been watching my videos for a while, Tom has been in a bunch of videos, he’s been behind the camera in a bunch of videos and he’s created concepts for videos, he’s written some of the videos. He’s a wonderful actor here clearly in the job, in the job interview series, and he’s also a fantastic Rachel’s English teacher.

So Tom, for all that you’ve done for me with Rachel’s English, thank you so much and thank you for being in my videos. And last but not least is David. This is actually the first video that I ever introduced him. He’s definitely more comfortable behind the camera than in front, but he does recognize that sometimes I need people in front and he’s always game to do that. And you know I don’t make any big decision without talking it through with him, and more than anyone else, especially in the last few years you just really nurtured what I’m doing and helped me do it, and still be a person and be a mom and all of that stuff. So for all of the support you’ve given me in so many ways, thank you, and thank you for being in my videos. Okay so just one last huge thank you to all of you. Over behind where this black curtain is, around to the corner there, there’s a camera set up and Cindy is there.

And because I might not … There is Cindy waving. Because I might not get tons of time with each person, I want you guys to know that there is a camera there. If you want to leave me a video message, I will watch all of them and I would love to know a little bit more about you, if you’re comfortable doing that, tell me a little bit about your story so I can know you. That’s going to be going on there all night and yeah, that is that. Matthew: Hi everyone. I’m Matthew and this is Josh from YouTube. On behalf of YouTube and all of you it is our honor to present Rachel with this one million subscriber gold plate. Rachel: To those of you that were there, I can’t thank you enough for the effort that you made to be there. And for those of you who couldn’t be there, I still can’t thank you enough because I feel your presence even though I didn’t get to meet you. So for all of the support you’ve offered me over my nine years of being a YouTuber, thank you. That’s it and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.

Video: *coming soon*