Michael Girdley argues that following your passion can work if you do it right, using Peak Rankings as proof. Sam turned skiing into a business that gets 10-50k views per video, employs ten people, and makes money from content, sponsorships, and paid ski trips with fans.
In this video, I want to talk about one of the coolest little businesses I've seen. And what's so special about this business is it goes against so much of what is conventional wisdom these days. And so in this video, I'm going to talk to you about what that conventional wisdom is. Then I'm going to tell you about this business and why it's so unique. And then, well, I'm going to tell you why I love this business because it's super cool. So stick around to the end and you'll get to hear that too. This channel is about me making videos for people like me that own businesses or want to own multiple businesses. So if you want to hear about issues relevant to us and things that I've learned, give me a follow and stick around. I'd love to have you. I write a newsletter for just those people. So here's a link here. It's free. I send you something once a week and it'll help you own a business better or own businesses if you want to do that too. Everything's on the table. One of the pieces of advice that I keep seeing on the internet now, and it comes from mostly like middle-aged rich guys, and they go on Twitter and they say, Hey, like, don't follow your passion. Nobody makes money following their passion. You gotta go find something that's valuable to other people, and very likely that's gonna be something that you're not that passionate about. This business, that totally proves that level of advice just wrong. And this business is called Peak Rankings. It's run by this dude, Sam. And Sam, the founder, has followed his passion, and his passion is downhill snow skiing. So what he's done is turned his passion, which is he loves to ski, into, well, a business that makes a lot of money. Audience for this business Peak Rankings is similar kind of skiing enthusiasts. I know about it because I'm a skiing enthusiast. And starting around 2018, 2019, this guy Sam said, hey, there's so many ski resorts out there, people are spending so much money on this, and I'm so passionate about skiing, I'm gonna go create a site that's basically like a rating site for all these ski resorts so people can well, know what they're getting before they go. A website where he would basically rank all these sites. And then secondarily, he said, okay, well, if I can do that, I can create videos of my visits to these ski resorts and people will watch them and, well, basically become aware of the rankings that I'm giving to these places.
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A lot of these videos on YouTube, like, they do super frickin' well. Like, he gets 10, 20, 30, 50,000 views per video. And to put that in context, my most popular video of all time, and I generally make one almost every day, has 75,000 views. And he's getting that like every single video. You can see now that he has this audience, he's starting to figure out ways to monetize it. And I looked at his team page. I don't know how much revenue they're doing, There's about 10 people working at this company now where he's taken his passion of skiing and turned it into a business. And he's gone to take it even further. It was one of the coolest things I saw him do last year was basically go through and go to his audience and say, hey, would you like to go skiing with me? You could pay me to run a trip for you and you can join us and come with a bunch of other skiing nerds and we'll go ski at this house and you pay me, Sam, to go do my passion and hang out with me skiing. Not only has this guy figured out how to make his passion into like a pretty lucrative business. He's figured out how to do his passion even more and get people to pay him to do his passion. I mean, it's freaking genius. And so you can see how just this example of Sam really disproves this whole idea from people saying, oh, you can't chase your passion, like, oh, you can't make a living off of that. With almost every passion, there's a way to figure it out. I mean, heck, people have taken their passion for video games, became video game streamers, and turned into pretty wealthy people. So in the end, that's where I disagree with this don't chase your passion stuff. Just like most advice, it's very black or white and not nuanced. Turns out to just have a lot of exceptions and total bullshit. I mean, it sounds good, but in the end, like, there's always ways people succeed. And if you take black or white advice and follow it blindly, man, it tends to lead you astray. Maybe I'm somebody that's a little too optimistic and is somebody that frankly just loves what he does every day. I think people can follow their passion, and I think they can create great careers out of that. Just some careers and some passions probably require you to do a little bit more homework to find a way, like Sam did, uh, to go make a living out of it. And man, but when it works, it's pretty freaking awesome. All right, that's it. Let me know what you think of this video, and specifically Sam and Pink Rankings. We'll put a link to it below. I really admire it, and I'll catch you next time.
