100,000 Subscribers! SPRAT Certified & Coming Episodes

I made it to 100,000 subscribers. Thank you guys for putting up with the like and subscribe crap that I have to put in every video. And I appreciate those who did subscribe. And of course, I do appreciate the other 70% who don't. Because the views still help get the video shared to other people. And it is nice that people are benefiting from the content. I mean, it's an obscure number. It's really not mean anything. I think I get some special plaque that's a participation award. But it's the fact that you guys like the kind of content that I'm doing that is breaking gear for all extreme sports. We were focused on highlining for probably the first three years. And now we are five and a half years deep. We are 400 videos deep. And I plan on doing another 1,000 videos in another five years. I don't know what that'll look like beyond that. But I know I can do what I'm doing now. Maybe not so much of what I'm doing right now since I work a little bit too much. I'll find a nice even pace. We'll be putting out more content, more break tests, better higher quality videos, and even courses. I'm actually really excited about the courses we have coming out. The canyon course is coming out in about a month. I kind of got hung up on caving videos that I wanted to pump out from a project we did last year that is now public. And so that'll be coming out on Wednesday. I'm very excited about that. And I've had patrons for probably four out of the five and a half years. And I haven't been able to do anything extra for the people that support this channel via Patreon or just PayPal or Venmo. And I now think that I could start to do early access and behind the scenes. So this may be one of the last general Monday update videos that I put public on YouTube. I'm gonna start doing smaller, more like more than Instagram posts, but less than a YouTube video. That is gonna go on Patreon probably about once a week, kind of like the Monday update videos. And that'll be more behind the scenes. I will never paywall anything that is educational, informative, or even courses. Never gonna charge for information, but I now want to give early access to people who are supporting this channel because I wanna do something for them. Right now we have about 200 patrons. I give out $300 per episode, which just takes the edge off. Extreme gear is still in the growth phase, so I'm not really making any money there. The t-shirts are selling, but it's still in the growth phase. The donations are literally what's keeping me afloat right now. Making money on ad revenue on YouTube is a myth unless you are getting tens of millions of views. Then that's actually good money, but we don't do that here. We do niche content, and I enjoy doing that and doing things that you can't find anywhere else on the internet. That makes me feel fulfilled in the work that I'm doing because it is a lot of work to make videos. We're going to release a two-part series of the Topless Cave Dome that we climbed last year, and those who are on Patreon will get early access to both videos and then the break test supplemental video after that, and all of it eventually will be public. But then I will do small update videos and posts and pictures and just general thoughts and really engage with my supporters. We're gonna either do $1, $2 per episode or an annual membership if you just wanna donate once because sometimes monthly stuff is not your jam, and that's fine. In about a week, I'm going to be in Iceland, and we are going to break test ice screws, V threads, show what ice climbing is, see how deep we can get into that. We might do some rope jumping in some glacier stuff. We're not quite sure how it'll all come out and play because safety third, but safety's on the list. So after the canyon course, Jeremiah and I are going to work on the big wall course, and instead of being a procrastinating perfectionist with it, we're going to write a really good script. We're gonna put a lot of thought into the videos before we start filming. We're gonna film the best we can. I'm gonna edit them tight, put words on the screen, and B-roll what we can and really dive into the gear. He has a lot of book knowledge. I have a lot of experience. So the two of us, I think we're gonna make some pretty good videos, but it's actually not gonna be the one and only stop shop for big walling if after we put those out, we'll do some more big wall videos with other experts that may approach things differently. And I think having multiple courses with different people within the same topic is actually gonna be super helpful. And I'm doing stuff to the website right now that'll make all of this super smooth so you can go A to Z. The playlists after over 400 videos on YouTube are gonna get all convoluted, and we're kind of getting away from the playlist style, and we're gonna go into organizing the website better. But I'll get into that more when it's developed. And for the last week, Bobby and I have been getting our Spratt Level 1 certification, and we both pass. And I learned a lot about double rope systems and how to maintain a backup at all times, which is very different than any extreme sports, essentially, where you're usually on either one rope or one system. And I got my certification in order to better understand my audience and how to make videos for rope access professionals. And Bobby got it to hopefully get different jobs. And I think it's pretty cool that you can, if you like ropes and stuff, go get a job being a pi and doing what you probably would do when you're climbing, but get paid for it. Now, you gotta be so safe while you're doing it. You're not gonna get your adrenaline rocks off at work, but I don't know, I thought it was super cool. And I painted for 20 years in a flat city that didn't have anything tall enough to really use ropes. So I never even was exposed to rope access as even a job idea until recently. Anyways, thank you for subscribing and getting me to the 100,000 subscriber mark. It does help me when I try to approach companies to make videos. It gives me more validity. It also gives my video shared more. And if you like what you see, write down in the comments below what you like, so I know to keep going in that direction. And yeah, I appreciate you guys. Cheers.