Marques Brownlee

I spend time on YouTube almost every day, and yet I’m subscribed to just eight channels. MKBHD, Marques Brownlee’s channel, is one of them.

Marques is perhaps the earliest tech YouTuber who’s still active today. He's also interesting in that even his oldest videos from over 12 years ago are still available on his channel. As I had recently written about the “law of 100” and the importance of consistency, I thought that a brief overview of MKBHD's journey might be worth sharing as there are many lessons that can be learned.

So let's take a trip down memory lane together to the early days of YouTube, and get a glimpse of how his passion and perseverance produced one of YouTube's biggest stars.

Marques uploaded his first tech video review on January 2, 2009. He was 14 years old, and he recorded it with the webcam on his new HP laptop. Looking at this teenager sharing his thoughts on his laptop's infrared remote to a handful of viewers, I'd be lying if I said I could tell from just this video that a decade later, each video he makes will be watched by millions.

His 100th video was uploaded on February 19, 2009. To reach this milestone in under two months, he was posting more than two videos per day on average. In the video, he happily announced that he had accumulated 74 subscribers (!), and he planned to do a giveaway if he hits 100. (It's worth noting that gaining 74 subscribers after 100 videos is significantly below average growth. Fortunately, he did not do one video per week like most YouTubers, as that would have taken two years. The grind was real back then.)

Fast forward through the years to today. He went through puberty (listen to his voice change in his early videos!), graduated high school, and completed a bachelor's degree at a local university. But he's still making videos that focus on tech today, more than 12 years later. Video quality has improved, and though his rate of posting new videos has slowed, he still puts out about two videos per week. Some quick math tells us that he has uploaded more than 1,000 YouTube videos over the years.

His most recent video was uploaded on July 16, 2021 (yesterday) and discusses being a "YouTuber" as a profession in 2021. He now has over 14 million subscribers. Collectively, his videos have been viewed a total of about 2.6 billion times. Aside from being the most influential tech reviewer on YouTube (or perhaps because of it), he has interviewed Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Kobe Bryant, and Barack Obama for his channel, to name just a few eminent personalities.

So how did he get from being a teenager with a passion for tech to essentially being royalty in the YouTube world? Reflecting on MKBHD's highly public journey, I see a few key takeaways.

Perseverance requires passion

I want to say that it's difficult to do something every day for 12+ years if you don't have a deep and abiding interest in it, but that's not true - many people go to jobs they dislike every day. A more accurate statement is: it's nearly impossible to keep doing something you don't enjoy if you repeatedly gain nothing from it.

The catch with YouTube and compounding is we won't see results until we've done hundreds of videos and/or years have passed. Even if we had the patience to keep making videos, if we lack interest, it would be evident to our audience and reflected in our rate of improvement.

In the case of Marques, it's clear that his passion for tech and for helping his audience through his videos allowed him to get through those first few years when YouTube was a time sink that generated no income. We might even suspect that making YouTube videos became less "fun" when he started making money from it. It's noteworthy that in his latest video, Marques states that while he loves tech and making videos about tech, "it's still work."

Rate of improvement matters - a lot

I'll start with an analogy. In investing, the future value of our assets are based on three things: our initial investment, the rate of return, and how long we invest for. Likewise, our level of mastery in any skill is based on three things: our initial skill level, our rate of improvement, and how long we practice the skill.

The same can be said of building a YouTube audience (or any audience for that matter). Our growth rate is directly tied to our rate of improvement, and over extended time horizons, this matters more than anything else.

Marques had 74 subscribers after posting 100 videos, but his rate of improvement was high. Even nowadays (especially nowadays?) he and his team experiment with new intros and sophisticated editing that go far beyond what a typical tech product review video should need to. His commitment to pushing the boundaries of his capabilities is reflected in his subscriber acquisition rate. As I mentioned in my post on compounding, it normally takes nearly 4,000 videos to reach 1 million subscribers. However, it took Marques a fraction of that to reach 10 million subscribers, despite accumulating just a handful with his first 100 videos.

It's not too late to start

YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, a podcast, a blog - whatever it is you want to do, you should start it now. Building an audience has never been easier, and it's still much less competitive than traditional endeavors for at least three reasons:

• Many platforms are young, and new platforms are constantly appearing. TikTok hasn't even been around for 10 years yet. There's no one who's truly hit the limit of what these mediums are capable of, and comparatively few who are trying.
• Rate of improvement is more important for online platforms. Because technological innovations can suddenly impact or even change the way we build audiences, the ability to adapt to them or incorporate them quickly is key. This levels the playing field between newcomers and incumbents.
• There are just fewer people on the Internet who have persevered over the years. Think of all the people who devoted decades to a sport, or a musical instrument, or a hobby such as chess, or scientific research; then think of how many online personalities you know who were also popular a decade ago. Online platforms are still in their infancy, and opportunities remain plentiful.

Marques Brownlee's story is just one example of how most starting points are amusingly inconsequential. We can also witness it in numerous other places, such as large companies back when they were early-stage startups. For example, back in 2008, Airbnb was still called Airbed & Breakfast, there was no map view, and there was no option to pay for your bookings on their website.

Of course, I'm not saying that you necessarily need to start a company or a YouTube channel. Instead, I urge you to consider what you're truly passionate about, and develop that passion in a way that compounds.

If you choose wisely and persevere, I suspect the journey will be worthwhile.