GETTING TO KNOW DO IT WITH DAN

My name is Dan. I run the YouTube channel Do It With Dan. I do motovlogging, which is you basically just put like a camera on your helmet and you go around and talk and it's actually a lot cooler than it sounds, but you just ride around and talk and interact with people and do wheelies and usually get messed at with the cops and stuff like that. You know, it's a lot of fun. I started originally the YouTube channel as a event, kind of like my own way away from people. So the idea was that I could get on there completely anonymously and just complain about anything that was going on in my life. I shared all my experiences with it and then it just snowballed into this like entertainment page, I guess, if you want to call it entertainment. YouTube has landed me in some hot water more than once. I've met wonderful friends through it. I've made so many enemies through it. I have lost relationships over it. YouTube has been the weirdest thing. It's like being famous except not being famous in a weird way because you will have people who are surprised to see you and they get all excited about it. But then at the end of the day, you know, you're just some dude on a motorcycle being a jerk from time to time. You'll be walking somewhere and then you hear your name. You'll say, dude, what's that? And instantly you're like doing like, what, who is it, you know? And then you'll see like either some kid or, you know, a person run up to you and be like, oh my gosh, I'll watch your channel. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you have to watch my channel. I've been riding motorcycles now since I was about 13 and I'm 23 now, so just about 10 years. As a matter of fact, that Harley-Davidson was my first real bike that I ever rode. It would belong to my uncle. I think I was 13 when I first started riding that. So this is my 1994 Honda Magna VF750. The Magna has almost become like the pulp fiction of my YouTube channel. It's got its own niche, you know? It's like there's people who are following me only for this bike. They don't care about anything else that I do. They don't care about what I say. They just like to listen to it, look at it. They want to build something of their own that's similar to this, which is, I find is so cool because that's inspiring to people. They want to get out and create their own thing. I bought it from some guy in North Carolina. Drove up to North Carolina and I rode it back the same day I bought it. Hard-tailed. No motorcycle license, no insurance, wasn't registered. I mean, just the most illegal you can get on a motorcycle besides popping wheelies down 95. In 2012, I lost my job. I had to sell the bike in order to continue to live. I had to, you know, continue to pay bills and stuff like that. And I ended up selling it for I think $2,500 and I regretted it every day that I sold it. I hated that I sold it. And time went on. I looked for it, could never find it. I ended up buying a CBR 600 at 4i, ragged it out, wheelied it everywhere I went. And after a while, I get a message from a fan with a link saying, hey, is this your old bike that you always talk about? And sure enough, this bike was for sale. Same VIN number, had been through two different people, they destroyed it. The wiring was destroyed, the suspension was destroyed, the paint, whoever had it kept it outside and it was, it was heartbreaking. The fan suggested that I buy it back. Said, hey, they want two grand for it, you should buy it back. At the time, I was a broke college student. I didn't have that kind of money. So I woke up the next day with another link to a GoFundMe with all the money already there. So after I got it back, I decided to eventually sit down and rebuild it. We repaint the tank, we dropped the motor, we painted the frame, we did a custom hardtail. But during that time, I had applied six months prior for an acting position on The Walking Dead. So they called me saying, hey, at 10 o'clock at night, my name. Hey, we're filming tomorrow at 6 a.m. in Atlanta. Can you be here? And I was like, that's a five-hour ride and it's 10 o'clock at night. I'll be there. Thing is, is that if people want to become YouTubers, I highly suggest it. It's a non-competitive market, meaning that if you want to watch Jake the Garden Snake's videos, you can also watch my videos. There's no competition between us because it's a free market. You don't pay anything to watch either one of us, so the only thing invested is your time. So if you want to become a YouTuber, there's no competition other than yourself. How good of content you can put out. So yeah, I suggest that anybody who wants to do it, do it. Just make sure it's for the right reasons, I guess. If anything, I feel like I've been absolutely blessed to be able to do this. This is not something that everyone gets to do. Even though anyone can do it if they put in enough time and effort, just not everyone gets a chance to do it. And I feel extremely lucky to have the strong supporting followers that I have. I mean, there's people who message me on the daily, you know, just to talk to me. And there's people who say that they've backed down from suicide because of my videos. That's a heavy burden to bear, but I mean, it's got some rewarding to it. So if anything, I feel blessed to do this, and I hope to continue doing it as long as YouTube is allowing me to upload my videos. I mean, as long as I can still walk and talk, I can ride. I've seen people without legs riding before, you know, so as long as I got functioning controls over myself, I'm going to be riding until the day I die. Happy Halloween from Dude with Dan!