Thread by @CreatorStack

How do you go from 0 to 1M subs on YT in 365 days?

"Become" David Dobrik and ask him for his lifestyle

Haul a yacht that you won in a manhunt to MrBeast's private island

Skydive with Logan Paul's $90,000 sofa

Here's the YT success story of @airrack 👇👇

Eric Decker was born on Jan 12th, 1997 in Atlanta, Georgia.

According to his own admission, he wasn't a great student. But he was a star diver.

At the end of school, he was banking on getting a diving scholarship to get into a prestigious university.

But life had other plans

He fumbled the diving competition.

With it, he missed his chances of getting a scholarship.

Eric moped for a while. But he soon fixed his sight on his next target.

@YouTube .

He had been an avid consumer of YT for a while.

He had even tried his hand at making his own content and had started 2 channels in the past.

One called 'Fresh Flipping' and another called 'With the Bois'.

It was an early sign of his interest in the medium.

In April 2, 2015 he made his own private channel. He called it Airrack. Why Airrack?

Well, the YT channel name 'Eric' was taken. So he went with the closest sounding word.

And so, Airrack started uploading videos and blew up immediately right? Right!?

Wrong.

Yes, Eric wanted to be a YouTuber, but real life had come calling.

His parents expected him to get a college education. And so he started attending a community college in Georgia.

But in typically @airrack fashion, Eric already had a plan to get out.

His plan was this-make enough money between freshman and sophomore year at college that he could justify dropping out to his parents.

Simple enough right?

Except, 'enough money' to him was making a $100,000/year business.

He settled on building a video production company to make the money.

It made sense considering the demand for video content and the fact that he eventually wanted to become a YouTuber.

Only one problem though.

He didn't know how to make videos.

And so for the next few months of his life, Eric learned the grammar of video.

Who was his teacher? YouTube(and a lot of Casey Neistat).

He learned how to shoot, edit and make video magic all through his internet connection.

Eventually, he started his own production studio.

He began with videos for companies but realized that wedding videos had a better premium.

Way better.

So he hired a friend and became a studio that specialized in weddings.

In time, he found a way to double down on his advantage.

By outsourcing work to video makers all over the country & promising short turnaround times to customers, he was able to scale his business up.

It was an early indication of his entrepreneurial DNA.

Soon enough, Eric had made a $100k/year business.

He dropped out of college.

It was 2020 & Eric now had the skills & the funds he needed to pursue YouTube.

But times had changed.

YouTube in 2020 was a different beast altogether than YouTube in 2016.

And it took a lot more talent & a lot more persistence to make it as a creator.

Here are the numbers.

Over 2019, the no. of creators had increased by 23%.

By 2020, there were close to 38 million YT channels.

With people uploading 500 hrs of content. Every. Single. Minute.

However, only 22,000 of those 37,000,000 had 1M+ subs.

That's 0.05% of all Tubers.

Almost all of those 22,000 channels had started close to 10 years ago.

And they took their time to get to where they are today.

In 2020, to scale the 1M mark in one year was something most creators would consider impossible.

@airrack wanted to test that.

So in January of 2020, with a little more than 1000 subscribers, Airrarck began uploading videos onto YouTube consistently.

To prove that in 2020, you could still make it on YouTube.

And hit 1M+ subs in 1 year.

His first couple of videos were prank style videos-they were immediately attention-grabbing and well made.

However, they didn't perform as well as he'd hoped.

For YouTube in 2020, it just wasn't able to break through the clutter.

And so Airrack changed strategies.

He thought about what would guarantee him views.
A collab with another YouTuber, he knew, would get him a few extra eyeballs.

But collabs with 3 of the most popular YouTubers on the planet?

Now, that would get him millions of eyeballs.

But how do you collab with the biggest names in the business?

After all, it's not like Logan Paul or MrBeast or David Dobrik are just waiting to collab with a random YouTuber with 1.5k subs.

Well, you find a way around, through, over or under whatever obstacle is in front of you to get to where you have to go.

You make it happen, as @airrack would say, against all odds.

It's important to note here, that apart from his ability to make killer videos, Eric has one more signature ability.

He is able to get into & out of places he shouldn't be in. Almost at will.

He's so confident in his abilities that he's even finessed a bus into a concert.

Now, Airrack had heard that Logan Paul would be attending his brother Jake's fight(vs AnEsonGib) in Jan.

He also knew that Logan was looking for a new member to join his team.

This was an opportunity for Airrack to meet his (possible) future boss.

And collab with him.

@airrack flew to the event; snuck into the ultra-exclusive event as a member of the organizing crew; then dressed up as a reporter; interviewed Logan & hand-delivered his resume to him.

All while shooting the entire process. It made for great content.

@LoganPaul was impressed

However, Eric did NOT get the job. For whatever reason, Logan rejected his offer.

All that effort for nothing, you say?
Not exactly.

Airrack's channel went from 1.5k subs to 45k subs in 3 weeks.

He may not have got the job. But his strategy sure was working.

And so @airrack chose his next YouTuber-@DavidDobrik

Now, space on Dobrik's Vlog is one of the most expensive pieces of YT real estate there is.

In fact, as Airrack says, if you're under 25, your biggest dream is to be in a Dobrik vlog

Obviously, Airrack had to feature in it

But why are millennials so obsessed with Dobrik?

Well, he has the coolest lifestyle of anybody on YouTube.

Cool friends, fast cars and connections with A-List celebrities? It can be an addictive mix.

Airrack's plan was to "become" Dobrik.

And just ask him for his lifestyle

This was his entire plan:-

Get a fancy sports car that he got from an automotive YouTuber called Edmund;

Paint David's face on the car;

Dress up as David himself;

Present the car to him and simply ask for every part of his lifestyle.

The plan worked. Somewhat.

He obviously did not get Dobrik's lifestyle.

But Airrack did make an appearance on Dobrik's Insta story.

And increased his sub count by close to 35k

As his sub count kept increasing, @airrack had still kept tabs on @LoganPaul-to find a way to "collaborate" with him again.

He kept hitting dead ends until one day, he found an Insta story of Logan *desperately* looking to sell his $90k Mercedes Couch.

Airrack had found his in.

Airrack got his manager to negotiate the couches down to $17k (if he did it himself, he would be recognized by Paul's team);

Made a brand deal worth $17k to buy them;

Flew to LA and took a U-Haul to Logan's mansion(for the couches)

And hid in the back of the U-Haul

When they opened the U-Haul at Logan's mansion to load the couches, Airrack jumped out, surprised Logan, and once again asked to a part of his team.

But once again, Logan did not give him what he wanted.

And so, all Airrack had to show for his efforts was an empty bank account and 4 pieces of Logan's Mercedes couch.

That and 150k new subs of course.

Now what he did with those couches is YouTube Hall of Fame material.

He created a series called the "Couch Series"

In it, he did whatever the top comment on his previous video suggested he do with the couch.

In one episode, he traded the Mercedes branded couch for an actual Mercedes.

In another, for possession of the couch, he boxed @jakepaul

In episode 4, he literally surfed with it(couch surfing, geddit?).

For episode 5, he skydived with the couches.

And finally, as one does, Airrack blew the couches up.

Goes without saying that the videos blew up on YouTube.

By Sept 2020, Airrack had amassed over 500k subs on his channel.

Popularity came with it's benefits-Mack joined his team.

Mack had been a filmmaker in-training who had given up studying in film school to join Airrack's quest.

He became the Vlog's editor and cast member.

.@airrack and his team now had 4 months to get close to half a million subs.

It was time for him to up the ante if he had to reach his goal.

And so he put a target on another YouTuber-@MrBeastYT.

What was his plan?

In Aug 2020, MrBeast had gifted an entire island to @ChandlerHallow, the winner of the Island challenge.

Airrack's plan was simple-he would take the island (named Jeff) from him.

But how does one take an island from someone, you ask?

Well, you challenge a bounty hunter(Patty Mayo) to a manhunt;

Win a $100k boat from said bounty hunter;

Drag it from Florida to the Bahamas(where the island was), and finally challenge the owner of the island to a game of basketball.

Yeah. All of that happened.

Unfortunately, Chandler, the owner of the island, had sold it. So the basketball challenge was a bust.

However, MrBeast did give Airrack a call and said that he would feature him on his channel, the next time he did a YouTuber challenge.

But Airrack wasn't going to wait around.

In the month of September alone, Airrack got close to 130k subscribers.

A few of more insane videos later (like the one where he "steals" David Dobrik's girlfriend or another where YouTubers control his life) and...

Airrack could see the finish line-1 Million Subs.

At the start of December 2020, he was at 750k subscribers.

As impressive as that number was for 11 months effort, it wasn't his goal.

And Airrack had announced that if he didn't make the number of 1 million subscribers, he would delete the channel.

It was do or die.

So which YouTuber did he choose for his final act?

Himself.

For his final video of 2020, Airrack chose to maroon himself on a deserted island on a 24/7 live-stream.

And declared that he would stay there until he hit 1M subs.

He takes this 'do or die' stuff seriously.

By the start of the last week of December, Airrack still had a solid 200k subs still left to go.

For back to back to back days, Eric and Mack stayed on the island.

They called subscribers, played games, did pushups, and did what they could to stay sane while on LiveStream.

On 28th December 2020, Airrack hit 1 Million Subscribers.

He was on the island with Mack staring at the ticker when it happened. There was hollering, chair-throwing and some wiping away of tears.

Airrack had got over 250,000 subscribers during the month.

In the next video, Airrack said that he was taking a break for a few weeks to relax.

But he also gave us a promise, “I can’t say much, but if you thought this year was big, oh man, next year will be even bigger.”

As scary as that thought is, we believe him.

So to recap:- The recipe to go from 0 to 1,000,000 subs in 365 days is some ingenuity; a lot of elbow grease and (sort of) help from a few big-name creators.

That and a whole bunch of cojones.

@Casey

We'll know the recipe to go from 1 million to 10 million subs in 1 year(Airrack's supposed next goal), in about a year from now.

Till then...

"That's pretty much it. I'm leaving."