One way to change your life, learn to vlog like Jack Coyne
Up until a week ago, Jack Coyne had around 4000 followers on YouTube. As I type this blog post, he has 163,207 and growing with a recent video over 1 million views. This is most definitely going to change his life, I mean he basically just became famous, if he wasn’t already. But I need to give you a little bit of a background first on how he got here, because I’m making it sound easier than it is.
I don’t want to give you the false sense that it is that easy to succeed on YouTube. It’s definitely unusual to grow a channel this quickly; 4000 to 160,000 subscribers in one week, it is actually crazy! But that video was 8 years (or more) in the making. It was all about the hard work he put in over the last 8 years and the connections he made to make this past week happen.
In the spring of 2010, Jack was just finishing up his first year of college where he was studying film. A buddy of his mentioned a couple of guys named the Neistat Brother’s and mentioned they had an HBO series coming out the following week, actually called The Neistat Brother’s.
After Jack watched the series, he decided that he needed to figure out how to be around these guys. So once Jack found a contact email, he emailed them and offered them a bunch of free work; just whatever it took to be in the same room as the Neistat Brothers. And in the process, he learned a ton of skills including electrical wiring, carpentry, how to mop the floors, and I’m sure many others.
He kept working for Casey while he was in school and by the time he graduated, was offered a job to work for him full time. If you know anything about Casey right now, this is huge. Casey has 9 million subscribers on YouTube and his reach is vast. But at that time, this wasn’t quite they case.
Casey and Matt Hackett were just building out their startup company Beme which Jack helped them build. They grew this thing from the ground up and started with just an idea and Google Glass.
To grow the company, Casey started daily vlogging (video logging). The daily vlogs were about his life but each time he would mention Beme on the channel, the app downloads would sky rocket. It was a very effective marketing strategy.
So Jack was there through this whole thing; watching Casey make videos, start daily vlogging, and just being around Casey and a talented team of people with skills that he could learn from. That is, until Beme was shut down and he got fired a couple weeks ago. But I’m going to bet that being fired from Beme might be the best thing that ever happens to Jack.
Based on the first few videos I have seen from Jack this week, he learned a lot and it is now paying off. One of the most iconic things about Casey Neistat is his ability to tell a story, and I now see that in Jack’s work. Jack knows how to walk us through the whole story. He knows each of the shots he needs to make the story work and he is comfortable in front of the camera. And he knows how to edit, which is critical to the plot line.
Jack boarded a plane last week bound for California and is driving up the west coast with a couple of other videographers as they create vlog style YouTube videos. The growth of his channel may have started from a tweet by Casey Neistat, but it was all of the skills and the hard work that Jack put in to make this possible. So while it may seem like he became a YouTube star overnight, the real story is 8 years, or a lifetime in the making. Congrats Jack, keep it up!
