The Professional's Media Academy is open now. Turn your expertise into a media career right here: ...

the-story-of-how-i-got-10-million-subscribers

The Story Of How I Got 10 Million Subscribers

the journey to 10 million subscribers has been a wild one which means we get the diamond play button but I want to tell you the story of how we got here of how 10 million Subs happen in the course of just five short years because I think it's an interesting story with a lot of good takeaways and some instances where the 10 million Subs may never have happened and I think that's where we should start when I was in my final year of residency I knew I was passionate to start a YouTube channel because it was already at a time where I was getting some popularity on Instagram and even on some television shows and all they wanted to do was talk about my looks or something superficial and I was passionate about talking about myth busting about preventive care of how to empower people to take control of their health so I said forget these producers who don't get it I'm gonna be my own producer and launch a YouTube channel to debunk all this BS that I see across medical media video and there was a lot of it I didn't know much about editing or what it was like to have a successful YouTube channel so I said you know what let me put on my webcam and try and record a video about a recent medical study that came out and I did it and it was absolute garbage a new article from Jama a respected medical journal puts into question luckily Dan Owens reached out to me and said hey I see you do well on Instagram why don't you do video content and him and I met talked about this concept of starting a YouTube channel and we both seem to be very passionate about it so I said let's team up let's do this but we need some help and I actually reached out to an MCN called style Hall at the time very few of them actually exist today because of the way that they conducted their business essentially five to ten years ago these mcns were huge businesses that brought on a bunch of YouTube Talent took a percentage of the revenue that these YouTube Talent brought in and then helped them with small things on their Channel like getting issues figured out with YouTube or helping them figure out content strategy or content planning more so than anything it was a lot of empty promises I didn't know that at the time signed with this company called style Hall and I started making content with Dan and and I will say when we first started making this content I was terrible on camera welcome to my YouTube channel talk to your doctor so for that first year I said I'm going to follow the rules be consistent upload the same time every week we struggled with a small team but we got the content up 52 videos first year we only got about 200 000 subs and for most people first year putting up content 200 000 Subs is pretty solid however for me having 2 million Instagram followers at the time we thought that they would all come over and follow me on YouTube or at least half of them would or some number and in reality almost none of them did maybe a few thousand did that was a big struggle for us because we were continuing to put money into the channel but we say we're gonna push on we believe in this message we believe people need this information this is for the greater good it's not about money it was at the one year mark that style Hall essentially said we're firing you literally they said we're firing you we don't want to pay you what we owe you if you want us to pay you you have to sign this NDA to not talk badly about us but we're not and I was like what this is ridiculous like I Believe in Us I think we could still do great things and they basically lost all hope who cares that they fired us we're gonna keep pushing on and this is a reason to do better and if you fast forward maybe like two months later maybe three months later we were sitting in the YouTube space in New York City to use their own studio and equipment to film videos so we were filming a video where the topic of it was the difference between real doctors and TV doctors we even had a med student there who was rotating with us at the time after I filmed that video the team says Michael well you know so many people are asking you to watch and react to these medical dramas because that was a something that was going viral at the time on YouTube like reaction videos in general if you get this video to 10 000 likes I will watch a Gray's Anatomy episode you guys smash that like button and I had to watch Gray's Anatomy so we picked the first episode of the first season watched it and that video blew up I have never gone viral like that before I think I still have all the screenshots on my phone of the real-time analytics like going high and then falling off like a normal video does and then still going even higher than that initial first point that almost never happens so we said okay we have to do another one very quick so we then watched the good doctor and it blows up then we're like all right we have to watch house now that blows up the channel started blowing up we picked up a million subscribers in a few short months and my agent Keith actually ran into some of the folks at style Hall at an event and they refused to talk to him because I get it they they were probably upset that they just fired me and now my Channel's on fire making the money that they could have been in on but instead they chose to fire me because they didn't believe in me I will say that that felt really sweet because the team that did believe in me shared in that success from there we said we're going to continue the medical Mission keep debunking keep educating so we kept making new forms of content I remember that year we created the medical meme review which meme reviews a popularized Thing by PewDiePie we said let's do the medical version that exploded brought even more life to the channel a million more subs came in as a result of just launching that series other series that have done quite well to responding to comments watching other shows that are not MediCal dramas doing the day in my life videos all of these essentially were ways that me and the team felt we could leverage something that is known to people with something that is unknown and we make it medical and we lean into it with some of my knowledge of what I can bring to the table that was a tremendous success for the channel because we saw the views just consistently grow grow and grow then came 2020 when the pandemic happened you know I remember it was December 2019 and people were in the comments section of my video saying you have to talk about this this virus thing that's happening in China you know I didn't want to talk about it in late December I didn't want to talk about early in January when it was all over the news because I felt like I didn't have enough accurate information to put in a YouTube video which is in stark contrast to what media does nowadays everyone wants to be first to break a story regardless of its accuracy or its value and even if you watch our first videos on the pandemic they are still pretty accurate I think we approached everything with reason with honesty and transparency as to why we're saying certain things what we know what we don't know how things may change and I think we did a good job with it as far as education goes during those early days of the pandemic we were the source of of medical information on YouTube we were debunking the misinformation we were watching these ridiculous fake documentaries about it and I think we served a really good purpose for people who needed accurate easy to understand information at a critical time so I was really proud of the channel for succeeding eating there it continued to grow honestly some of my favorite videos of the channel happen during that time of when we got a hundred doctors to talk about what they were experiencing during the pandemic when we ended up buying 50 000 worth of n95 masks and donating them to my Hospital through like a black market or gray Market Source but all of that was unique content and the reason I point out that unique content is because I think that's where the success of the channel really comes from it's that experimentation of constantly willing to try new things and push the boundaries as far as the channel can go I mean this year we did a tour I did two boxing matches so many things reaching so many audiences with a message of health and wellness and accurate health and wellness not BS Gunk and while hitting 10 million subscribers certainly does feel good and obviously we've been rewarded substantially financially with it the things that I'm most proud of of the channel is the fact that we've educated so many people about their health we constantly get emails of people who say saved someone's life by performing chest compressions because they've heard about it on this channel the messages of support that people send that they've been able to turn around their lives with the advice that they've gotten on this channel the amount of fundraising we've been able to do whether it's donating a hundred thousand to feeding America for Ryan trahan's campaign to donating my last fighter pay he is donating his entire purse to the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem to donating all of our patreon money that we get from our patreon community every single month tens of thousands of dollars over the last few years it's been amazing and then the final point is that despite all of these positive things happening and a lot of offers for ridiculous sums of money we've never sold out our medical ethics it's very easy to do that especially as a person who does not come for means you know I grew up on the welfare system coming as an immigrant to the United States and when I started the YouTube channel I was 300 plus thousand in debt or some figure like that and believe me we turned down 95 of sponsors that come to us there were periods of time when the channel struggled and I was wondering if this was going to be a long-term project that could even continue I remember you know after having this tremendous growth there was a period of time where the channel stumbled heavily where its subscribers dropped by like 80 90 percent new subscribers and I thought okay well we reached the end of it this was my 15 minutes I remember laying on the floor with Dan and pounding the floor and saying I wish there was something I could do to change this what we did was we changed our mindset into thinking that it's not the algorithm that we're trying to please or the algorithms that's mistreating us it's I am not pleasing the audience I am not reaching the audience I'm not engaging the audience instead of the algorithm and the more I started thinking about the audience and what we needed to achieve with the audience the better the results were and I think that was a major mindset change that happened in that year as well as understanding that hitting 10 million Subs getting one of these is beautiful but this is not why we do it that if you set your goal to be get 10 million Subs you're going to be so disappointed not if you don't hit it you're going to be disappointed once you hit it because once you hit it and the high of that moment leaves which it leaves very quickly the number itself is not what's satisfying it has to be the things you achieved along the way that bring you intrinsic happiness the real lasting success comes from the experiences the things you built the people you met along the way the relationships that have been created and the lasting change that came from getting 10 million Subs you can't talk about getting 10 million Subs without talking about burnout because for the last five years we've never really missed an upload date in the last four years that means two videos a week so there's a lot of videos that need to be uploaded edited ready to go but I will say in creating content and constantly having to up the quality makes it for a very tough mental space because you're essentially never stopping you know Game of Thrones makes season one very good and you enjoy it you're gonna come back for season two but the algorithm is not like that where the algorithm will serve you episode one if a bunch of people clicking on it watching and enjoying and getting high satisfaction but if Episode 2 suddenly has a slightly lower click-through rate because the thumbnail sucks or maybe it's not as engaging of a video and people watch it for a shorter period of time it'll drastically decrease its reach and Impressions therefore it won't get the same viewership as episode one so you constantly have to earn your views with a quality thumbnail quality title quality content and high viewer satisfaction that's why by the way so many of you people comment why is the thumbnail changing all the time why is it because we're trying to figure out what works best to get the most views remember I can make them the best video in the world but if people don't click on it because the thumbnail is off it's not going to do well so that's why I'm constantly trying out new thumbs Dan's been a whiz at getting some of the best gear for us to make sure that the quality of the content is fire the lighting's on point the background the set is on point the cameras are delivering the best most accurate image the computers that we're editing on so constant reinvestment into the channel has been key so the bar is always to the roof and that's good for the viewer because you're going to get the best content served to you that's going to make you enjoy your time on YouTube but really rough on creators because it sets a precedent that we always have to make fire content I like this Challenge and I think we need to own it as creators and know that it's going to happen so maybe setting some boundaries as as far as taking time off giving yourself breaks for me because I have so many different jobs being a doctor being a boxer doing YouTube other projects I'm involved in when I'm making those pivots I feel refreshed because I'm not doing the same thing and because I'm constantly doing those pivots I don't feel as burned out don't get me wrong do I feel overworked at times apps absolutely that any job anytime you're trying to be the best at anything you're going to feel that way and there's different strategies you can do to cope with that you know therapy having a good social support system making sure you take care of your physical health and quality sleep food exercise Etc but it's most definitely part of the journey whether you like it or not and obviously I can't go without mentioning that we've grown the team you know Dan and I started the channel together Sam has come on in the beginning of 2020 he's been a rock star producer Caroline our new editor from Canada Juan our new editor from Costa Rica we're constantly expanding the team trying to figure out new ways to make the things work and we've tried different things we've tried hiring other producers we've tried going under management firms PR firms none of that has been successful except really hiring people that were self-starters self-motivators who were excited and shared in that same mission statement of wanting to be a part of something amazing it's bigger than just us it's more so a goal that we all uniformly share now where do I go from here I want 10 million more subs because we always want to set High marks for us and continue to grow and get billions of more views educating people about health so there will be new formats coming we just launched the podcast had some amazing first guests I'm really excited for what the future holds with that podcast having intimate conversations with big names with giving you good takeaways is a format I love and I want to continue to nurture we also have new merch coming out I have a book that I'm working on we're going to potentially do the tour again maybe more boxing fights if my body will hold up and the thing I'm excited about most is I'm launching an academy called the professionals Media Academy where if you're an expert in your field whether you're a doctor lawyer real estate agent and you have a message you want to share with the world and you want to be on television you want to be on the big shows you want to launch a social media platform but you don't know where to start my professionals Media Academy is exactly where you start so I'm actually linking that down below for people to check out I think the more we have good quality experts study from what I did learn from my successes and my mistakes the better you can do and that's what I'm a fan of I want to up the level of competition up the level of quality education content here on YouTube and on television and uh professionals Media Academy is the place to do it click here for 10 natural remedies that actually work click here check it out as always stay happy and healthy get your merch [Music] thank you

Dr.

Related Videos

Consultation & Treatment

Consult With Loading Doctor Data