Mike Thurston went from personal trainer in Newcastle to full-time YouTuber by committing to two videos per week in 2017, living on just a $1,000 monthly sponsorship from EHP Labs while his channel grew from nothing.
And so Mike, what was the first entrepreneurial online thing you ever did? I knew I didn't want to be a personal trainer forever. I knew I didn't want to be in that gym forever. I wanted to travel. I wanted to basically make money online. And I knew in order to do that, I need to create some sort of demand online. I started off whenever the gym was empty, I would just get a tripod and camera, just start making videos in the gym. And bear in mind, to begin with, it was absolutely terrible. But, uh, after filming loads, editing loads, I got better because I was speaking about stuff I was educated about. It came across as being more confident, I guess, after a couple months of kind of semi-consistent, I built up a bit of a following on YouTube. When I left all of everything in Newcastle, friends, clients, literally everything, so my revenue was basically zero. I had a sponsorship from EHP Labs, $1,000 a month. I was at a point of desperation where I was like, I need to make money. And the only way for me to make money was to do it online. So I just said to myself, 2017, 2 videos every week for the whole year. Nice. And then the YouTube just blew up.
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