They Left Hollywood for Crypto… Then Everything Changed 👀 #Crypto #YouTube

but most people suffer from analysis paralysis. They're perfectionists, and that is the enemy of a successful content creator. If you wanna create a piece of art that's perfect, that's cool, but it's not gonna help you be successful on YouTube. But the thing about Hollywood, there's tons of gatekeepers.

Hmm.

And what I liked about YouTube and crypto, I mean, YouTube has problems, but one thing that's not a problem is you can post as much as you want. And in crypto, there are no gatekeepers. So, you know, we started leaning into that, and, you know, as that got more successful, that became our main thing. And, you know, that was, but that's kind of why we transitioned because a lot of gatekeepers in Hollywood as opposed to YouTube or crypto, no gatekeepers. So as much as you put in, you can get out.

Yeah, we've all heard that, you know, Hollywood has gatekeepers. It's hard to make it through. It's kind of a strange experience, right? Just being here in Hollywood, having been on those shows, it's gotta be an interesting scene to navigate for sure, right? I mean, at what point did you discover crypto then? I guess I could put it like that. Or how did you come upon it?

My brother discovered crypto and he changed my life. So you take this. Boom.

Yeah.

So we, I mean, we first heard about crypto, uh, probably around like 2013, 2014. I think I saw like the Bitcoin pizza story on Reddit back then. We didn't do anything with it. Didn't know much about it. We first, I first really got into crypto in the 2017 run-up just as a retail participant. At that time, I was, I think I was 26 or 27 years old, and me and my ex-ex-girlfriend, we broke up. So all of a sudden I had a lot more free time. I was going through like a little bit of a quarter-life crisis. I was like, I need to be doing something else with my life, like something more.

Right.

And at first I thought maybe I can trade crypto and make some money that way. And eventually I discovered crypto YouTube throughout the, throughout 2017. And I didn't realize it at the time because as I started diving more and more into it, we were getting towards the top of the, of the bull market in 2017. And I discovered crypto YouTube and I was like, wow, these guys are getting crazy views for, in my opinion, some of them subpar content. Now, there were a lot of good ones, actually. I mean, Ivan on Tech was around back then.

I love Ivan on Tech. Yeah, he's Swedish like my husband.

Yeah.

Like all the ones that are still around today were good. But there were a lot of bad ones back then, in my opinion. I just thought, because they were getting crazy views, because near the top of the market, I didn't realize it at that time, but I was like, I could do better content, in my opinion, than this and, you know, just get as much views. And anyway, dove into starting the YouTube channel. I wanted to do it like January 1st or 2nd of 2018. I procrastinated for a month. It took me a month. To finally like—

a whole month, huh? I know a lot of people that don't ever get started.

So yeah, exactly.

It was like a monumental task to you or what? Like, what was the procrastination?

It was just, yeah, it was just hard. You, this is the, you know, people ask us all the time how to be successful on social media and get big on YouTube, and we freely give the advice, but most people suffer from analysis paralysis. They're perfectionists, and that is the enemy of a successful content creator. If you want to create a piece of art that's perfect, that's cool. that's not going to help you be successful on YouTube. So that was what I was going through in that month. I was like, oh, it's not like my, uh, taste didn't match my talent. And of course, you can go back to some of those early videos and see, you know, how much we've grown in the, in the producing and just our own, uh, knowledge as well. But, um, yeah, so started the channel January or February 2nd of 2018, and that's also kind of when we went full-time into crypto. And actually, I brought Austin on shortly after.

So hence he changed your life, right? But you were along for the ride. You were up for it. So you both had this mentality of, you know, entrepreneurship and wanting to get involved.

Austin, what did you think when I said, hey, crypto is pretty cool, you should get into it?

Well, when Aaron first told me, hey, I've started a crypto YouTube channel, he told the family and he's like, this video got 1,000 views.

No, it was 1,000 subscribers.

I did. Oh, 1,000.

I didn't tell anybody about the YouTube channel till I hit 1,000 subscribers.

Smart move.

Good concept.

And then I only told my close family.

And then my first question was, how much did you pay for them? Because I thought it seemed unachievable. It seemed fake.

Yeah, 1,000 subscribers seemed unattainable.

Oh, this is really motivating to people watching, you know, because you all start somewhere. We don't ever imagine that big YouTube channels started that small, but they all do.

And for the record, the answer was I didn't pay for them. We've never paid for subscribers.

Okay, noted. Noted. So you hit those 1,000 subscribers and then what?

And little did, little did we realize that the bear market had started. And while we were trying to cultivate an audience, people were angry, leaving the space in droves. 2018, 2019, 2020. The good thing though is we built that foundation in the bear market. So we had a lot of trust, a lot of experience into the bull. And now we've been through many cycles and just kept building.

That's very cool. Very cool. So you started at those 1,000, just kept climbing at what? Well, then you hit the bear market, which must, must have been tough. When you start—

I mean, started in the bear.

Yeah, right. It started essentially at the end of the bull, beginning of the bear. Right. And so was it tough getting through that bear market? Were you able to gain traction or was it kind of like a rough road for a while?

We were gaining traction. I feel like we were like hungry and probably a lot of people who were making great content in 2017 who already did really well in crypto, they probably took a little time off. So we like jumped at that opportunity to put out great content at the time. And I felt like Yeah, we were, you know, we weren't, it wasn't much at the time, but, you know, for where we were, I felt like we were like, things were really going good. Of course, it was like hard to get, I mean, your first 1,000 subscribers are the hardest. Then after that, once you hit your first 1,000, that second 1,000 becomes so much easier. Then it's hard to get 10,000. But after that, you know, the next 10,000 get that much easier. I kind of felt like everything started lining up once we got about like 25,000 subscribers or 35,000 subscribers. After that, it just felt so much easier. It's probably because we were into We were better at making content and talking about crypto. And also probably there was like the social element. People saw that, oh, like 20,000 people subscribe to them. They must be—

Yeah. You then hit this point where people think, oh, this must be important or it must be good because so many others like that mass psychology, mass thing thing.

Yeah.

But so many people can't or don't make it to 10,000 subs or 20,000 subs. It is hard. I mean, that first year is hard because you're Your taste doesn't match your talent. You're putting in all this work for, you know, getting no compensation. A lot of times, like kids, like Dua Lipa on social media, they pop off. It's because they got nothing but time to sit at home and make content.

And they also don't overthink, right?

They also don't overthink. They're not afraid to put it out there and have their friends see it. But I would say, you know, just like going to the gym, if you lift that weight every day, you're going to get bigger and better. It's inevitable. It's the same kind of thing, even though you're not going to see the results that you think you deserve when you're starting out. If you just keep doing it and calibrating, eventually you're going to get bigger and better and succeed.

Cool.

So that's essentially— how long did it take you to essentially reach those 20,000 or a big milestone, I would say?

It was in the— certainly in the first year. I don't know, probably in the first 6 months. I don't know exactly. My goal was to get 100,000 subscribers in one year, and it took us like a year and a month or two.

And you failed.

Yeah, I guess I failed with that. But you kept—

Gotta have your brother to keep you accountable.

I used to, in the early days, I used to, to myself, curse my brother silently. Like, why'd you have to name it Altcoin Daily? Why do we have to do a video every day? And it just, in the bear market, I didn't know what to talk about. But I would say a cool thing about working with a brother or a twin is like, you can definitely trust your brother. Meaning even if I was working with like a best friend, I could trust him, but would he put in the same work ethic that I was gonna put in? Would that be that understanding? I know if Aaron says, you know, I'm making a video every other day, you get that other day, just like a workout buddy, it's gonna happen. We're gonna keep building.

Yeah, I was gonna ask about the daily part because, you know, I have my podcast and now I'm gonna be on DraperTV. This will be shared to DraperTV. And I did the daily stint just to see how it is, right? And it is a monumental task. I mean, just to try it out, right? And I learned a lot about YouTube doing so. And now, you know, we're going to have this show on a broader streaming platform, but it is really difficult. And so you guys do Monday to Friday, or do you also do Saturday, Sunday?

It's not called Altcoin Monday to Friday, it's called Altcoin Daily.

It's not Altcoin Daily Weekly, it's Altcoin Daily. Yeah.