Re-launching my Youtube Channel

So, with my son's 4th birthday fast approaching, I thought now would be as good a time as ever to Re-launch my Youtube channel, and to do so in a major way. I say so because the last major thing I did for YT was Fists of Absinthe, which was produced and released right when my son Ty was born. (My wife was literally securing locations for us, handling insurance, etc while she was in the hospital). Around that same time (largely because of the production of the film), I also started Quiet Flame Productions and the Quiet Flame Stunt Team, and between all of these things, my Youtube channel, (as well as my own film career) pretty much just fell off.

While I don't regret any part of any of that, and I'm generally happy with where everything is, in recent months I've really come to realize just how much of the process of building out these things and taking care of family has cost me personally. In getting my functional fitness certification from IHP, and redeveloping my core, I realized just how much strength I had lost (and how generally out of shape I had gotten), and it made me stop and reflect on a lot of other things as well. I think at the end of the day, there always has to be a certain balance to everything and one way that I had gotten out of balance was in taking care of myself. Both of my parents basically lived their lives in the service of others, and while I agree on it's importance, I also think you have to do for you too. When I was training in Taekwondo in Korea, I was good friends with a member of the Canadian national Olympic team, and one of the things he told me that always stuck with me was "If you wanna win, sometimes you just have to be selfish." As long as it's in under the auspices of balance, I agree with him and think he's right.

In any event, when I was going hard on Youtube 4 years ago, I was getting about 30,000 hits a month, and had around 17,000 subscribers. Now, I'm at about 14,500 subscribers and about 15,000 hits a month. You are officially a "social media influencer" at 5000 subscribers, so I am still well in that range, although nowadays you aren't something serious until you have about a million or so.

In any event, in order to re-launch the channel, I am filming all new episodes of "How to Defeat Dudes" (my flagship show) and launching 2 other new shows: "Martial Strengthening" and "Inside the Stunt Actor's Studio". The first, as the title would imply is a show dedicated to showing people how to strengthen their bodies specifically for martial arts. The second runs along the lines of How to Defeat Dudes, and is also comical in nature, but centers around teaching fight choreography techniques as opposed to self defense techniques.

Beyond this, the one video that I'm the most proud of right now is the Re-launch video itself- 36 Weapons of the Human Body. This video represents the culmination of a 20+ year career of martial arts and I couldn't think of something more appropriate to Re-launch with. It's something that I have had bouncing around in my head for forever and I feel super happy to have finally shot it and edited it...and can't wait to share it.  Interestingly enough, I can also see a big jump in my maturity as a producer/editor as well because the quality of this vid is well above things I have made before. In any event, lots of good of stuff on the way, and this is just the beginning. At 15K now. My goal is to have 100K of followers by the end of this year. Lofty, but certainly not impossible.  To put it ebonically, Ain't nothin to it, but to do it! YOSH!!