Brandon Baum

And I remember very avidly pretend or like hiding that fact from my friends, but just being so obsessed with it.

It was the first time I sort of experienced this idea of like parasocial relationships where you would watch and sort of every day you just kind of be with these creators and it felt like they were just your friends.

And I was indulging into the worlds of, at the time, much earlier stage YouTube creators, but just falling so in love with this idea that I almost felt like I had this like direct communication with these amazing creators.

Of course, by about the age of 12, it was then my dream to become a YouTuber.

So I started uploading videos every single day.

And of course they got the grand total of about two views.

Yeah, that's good.

You and someone else or you twice.

Exactly.

And then probably I'd say five years on from that, I then decided it was time to get some, you know, traditional experience under my belt.

I started working in TV for a bit, trying to learn how, I guess, real production pipelines worked and how real sets and infrastructure came together.

Then I guess four years into that journey, I was kind of looking around, I was like, I'm not really watching TV myself and I'm still obsessed with this YouTube thing.

I want to dive back into it, but I don't want to make videos that get two views again.

So at that point I started reaching out to pretty much every YouTube creator I could and saying, hey, I'm just desperate to start shooting content.

Please let me come on board and help you make your videos.

Thankfully, there was a bunch of incredible creators that really took a shot on me and opened the door.

And they really taught me the ropes.

They were kind of like my first mentors in the space and showed me how to create content.

There were two guys specifically called Woody and Kleinie that I had the honor of getting to work with directly for four years as their producer director.

Awesome.