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My First Million7 Creators Who Make Over $50 Million/Year From YouTube (#408)
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At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Creators Who Built $50M+ Businesses Off YouTube, Plus Sam Altman
- Shaan Puri says he's starting YouTube content and wants to follow proven creators who built $50M+ businesses rather than pioneer, so he crowdsourced examples on Twitter.
- The creators discussed include Derek of More Plates More Dates, Kayla Itsines, Mark Rober, Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire, Pat McAfee, Dani Austin, Mindy McKnight and Guzman, each tied to a product, brand or media deal.
- Sam Parr digs into Bring a Trailer and Doug DeMuro's Cars & Bids, and the two brainstorm other categories where curated online auctions could work, such as golf equipment, homes and livestock.
- In the Billy of the Week segment, Shaan walks through Sam Altman's early investing success, his contrarian bets, his big checks, and quotes about thinking big and keeping things simple.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasThe biggest creator money comes from products, not YouTube ads
Shaan's examples, such as Divi, Cute Girl Hair and the Sweat app, show creators building a brand or company on top of their audience instead of relying on shout-outs or ad revenue.
Alignment between creator story and product drives launches
Shaan says Mindy McKnight's hairstyle content, personal story and product lined up, and he says her Walmart launch was its second-biggest and is doing over $100 million in sales. He says Dani Austin's content about hair loss led to a scalp care brand that did $20 million in its first ten months.
Turning a conflict into a brand can work
Sam describes Jeremy's Razors as a response to Harry's dropping The Daily Wire as an advertiser, built as an us-versus-them product with a viral launch video. Shaan calls it genius and says it opens the door to other categories.
Curated auctions can make big-ticket online buying work
Sam says Bring a Trailer looks like a basic blog but sold about $1.2 billion in cars in a year with around 80 employees. He argues that curation and good presentation can open other high-priced categories.
Early investments often do best, and Altman's came from non-obvious bets
Shaan compares investors' first 5-10 deals to the golden cohort of early D2C customers. He says Altman told an interviewer that four of his five biggest winners were ideas nobody wanted to fund and that smart people tried to talk him out of them.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
4 quotesI'm not really interested in being a pioneer. The pioneers get slaughtered, right?
— Shaan Puri
I don't know why it's bad for you, but someone on Twitter told me it was, therefore it's true.
— Sam Parr
there's a never ending appetite for more. More fame, more money, more everything.
— Shaan Puri
total alignment between creator, their personal story, their content, and then their product once they have the distribution.
— Shaan Puri
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
