How Andrew Steele Went From RV Detailer to Full Time YouTuber In ONE YEAR! (Tips Anyone Can Use)

i'm sitting here right now with somebody that i think you as well as myself can learn a lot from when it comes to starting a youtube channel from literal ground zero taking into something that makes legitimate money and is you know really onto something big in a year just a little over a year this is andrew steele what's going on everybody from rving with andrew steele february of 2019 a couple months later i started taking it a little more seriously about a year and a half now so where are you at now 45 000 subscribers somewhere maybe a little bit more than that so the number one thing like you said you got to be passionate about a certain thing whether it's dogs or leather or upholstery or lighting or whatever you're passionate about baseball caps it could be rvs cars whatever you're passionate about that's number one being super passionate about that is most important number two whatever you need to learn get on youtube and type in you know how do i transport a file like i didn't you know like literally i didn't own a computer i was not computer savvy i had never i had never owned a camera other than a camera phone that i never even really used i knew that if i learned that stuff i was passionate about this subject everything that you need to know you can learn on youtube and that's the coolest thing like whatever you're going to hit like a million roadblocks to get to this level but every time you have a problem get on youtube there's a good chance some like eight-year-old kid will explain it to you you know that from experience yeah oh yeah i mean but hey like you know it works that's true yeah uh why don't you tell these guys what your channel is about it's about anything rv related so um rv parks rvs uh rv owner interviews anything to do with rvs and that's pretty strange to me because like i didn't know there was a segment of the youtube that even existed like this he did not have any shout outs or collaboration with larger channels to catapult him quickly like this is all organic growth using you know youtube algorithms just kind of you know that was his only method of doing it because there was nobody really ahead in that segment yet now like you're you're like the guy yeah i mean as far as i've tried to focus more on the high-end motorhome stuff that's kind of in my my niche uh my background is is washing rvs so that's kind of how i got into a lot of this stuff was through my job met a lot of rv owners wanted to share that information with people but um there's a couple big fifth wheel channels there's one big fifth wheel channel out there um kind of a tiny home more of that stuff the class b stuff but the real high-end stuff the prevos and the newels is kind of the segment that i've tried to carve out if you don't know what those are those are like the top two motor homes that like literally money can possibly buy what are they like two point three two point five minutes to 2.6 2.7 million dollars uh 2.8 2.9 i've heard all kinds of different numbers how i found andrew is through the videos that he made of these models but older so they were actually affordable and he did a really good job of showcasing what like the best money could buy in you know 1996-ish for a prevost what is that like now is it still good like how are they built is it something that you could buy something you would want to buy and i came across his channel while doing research for my own knowledge gathering i think in november of last year and you've just been hitting the ground hard ever since you actually this full time now don't you yeah yeah so the the video that you're talking about was one of my customers uh kyle uh kyle starkey with the 91 agnola coach uh with the 8v 92 in it we were washing and waxing uh his coach and i'm like hey man i'm getting the youtube channel started uh would you mind you know telling your whole story and uh so huge thanks to kyle because that was kind of a big confidence booster when i was like wow like a dude like this with this really cool story is like we're watching his rv and he's more than happy to just you know let me put a camera in his face and tell talk you know share everything that he knows that was really cool i don't know where i was going with that what was the question that you had you asked me a question that was the video that i found you from and when i watched that i was like i was like oh wow like here's a first-hand testimonial of some guy who's doing this because you would naturally think that oh man you know this thing's 25 years old it was really expensive if you use car logic on that a 25 year old top of the line like mercedes bmw is going to be a basket case of problems but when it comes to rvs that's just not not the way well it's just a little a little different you know they're gonna have problems as well but you know there's you know there's a lot of uh a lot of information a lot of cool things so the the thing for me that i've tried to do with my channel is uh get people the inside access and kind of the look that like no one else can get that's the stuff that i've been trying to get so what um what inspired you to like start a channel i don't even think you've ever told me this but i know you you know you're doing your detailing and stuff but when did you get that click in your brain and said i'm gonna do this and take it seriously well what happened is i wanted to buy an rv which i'm sitting in my tiff and fighting now that i ended up buying i knew i wanted to buy something nice i wanted to buy a diesel pusher and so i started asking everyone of my clients that i was washing their rvs and washing all these diesel pushers every day like meeting maybe five to ten different diesel push pusher owners a day and then asking them what they like and don't like about their rv those were the two questions and then i would try to ask them their maintenance expenses and i'm i started getting like every day i'd ask you know a handful of guys hey what do you like what do you not like about your coach and what are your maintenance expenses and like and people were just more than happy to talk about it and i was like i'm like i'm getting so much good information every day because i was like spending hours hearing all these stories and i was like man if i could get a camera to capture some of these stories um there's a lot of value that can be added in the different quality differences in different rvs i just wanted to share all this great information that i had with the general public and i thought that if i shared all this information that there'd be some value to it so that's actually really cool and kind of boils down to a core principle that i hear a lot of successful guys talk about is adding value to something is like the you know that's the basis for really just eating anything and that's exactly what you did and what you set out to do from the beginning and it it shows as far as getting your channel to grow like what what has been your approach to that as far as like how often you post what you post how long the videos are like the nitty gritty of stuff that could be applied to people who make videos that aren't about rvs dude me personally i have no idea i have no rhyme or reason like there's all these channels that are like we post every thursday at 5 00 pm or this you know they have most channels have a schedule and i don't know i kind of as weird as it sounds i remember watching like floyd mayweather and on like an espn special and he's like dude i have no schedule i might wake up in two and at two in the morning i might go to the gym like just whatever i'm feeling is what i'm gonna do so um you know i may just geek out and edit for 18 hours straighter like we've been here in sturgis just capturing mad content constantly now i have all these memory cards where i may just go be a just go sit and be a hermit for a week and just geek out with all these memory cards just editing hours and hours of footage um some days i might just you know film and edit and upload one video a day do it all in a day you know there's just you know sometimes i might uh edit and upload seven videos and then go goof off for a week and then just drop one a day i try to drop like one a day you know i try not to cram too many i mean sometimes i'll drop three videos in a day sometimes i'll drop two videos sometimes i go a few days without i don't have any rhyme or reason it's all about what content i can capture how quickly i can capture it and then get it to the public and i kind of feel like every video that i make and every bit of content that i capture i feel like i'm kind of sharing something with the world and i'm kind of doing my duty to share that content so i'm always in a rush to get that content out to the world just so that more people can have the opportunity to see it and so that's that's just how i look at it like right now i've got so much fire in the hole that i just cannot wait to get it out to the people because it's just so good so as soon as i get really good wi-fi and i can edit all of this i might start going to two videos a day you know just it all depends so you're all about the volume not really it's for me it's it's turned into volume because for me it's about sharing the content it's not really about the volume like if i don't have any content i'm not gonna like try to create content i'm i only try to capture the really cool stuff now a lot of that is creating contacts and creating conversations so that i can capture the right content but you know it just i happen to be a high volume because i just have so much stuff like i know so many different people and i'm exposed to so much different stuff that i'm always trying to capture what's in front of me and share that with the world so it just happens to be a lot of so i'm just in a lot of places and i just want to share a lot of stuff so um that's just that's just kind of how it worked you know i don't i don't try to do volume it's just it just happens that way have you noticed any like significant changes in your own mindset and perspectives and just the way you approach things from the beginning of your journey until like right now oh yeah i mean it's just it's a lot really quickly um you know i mean my fir you know the first there's a lot of it you know i was doing this for free and so now i'm at the point where i'm doing this full time uh just because i love it i enjoy it and it's enough like i'm probably taking a pay cut or taking a risk um but i just i i love it and i'm very frugal so it's just kind of like all right let's go take a risk and hope hope it pays off uh making all these videos but um that was kind of the risk i took you know when i started it you know i started you know it was like um you're you're taking a risk with your time and hoping that there's a payoff but if you enjoy it it's all good so i don't know i wouldn't say my mindsets really change that much it's definitely a trip like how many doors it's open but i still kind of look at youtube the same so i remember back in uh earlier this year so you were like man i could i can make more money detailing stuff and i can't these videos like i'm putting the youtube on ice and yeah so actually yeah so january basically so my goal my original goal was uh new year's my new year's resolution for 2019 was i need to start a youtube channel i'd already been thinking about buying an rv because i've been in the rv world and i did really well detailing rvs you know like i had a great reputation uh detailing rvs and i still have all my equipment i just put it on ice for right now because i'm focusing on the youtube january 1st of 2019 i made the goal and i wrote down all my goals at the beginning of the year that i'm gonna start a youtube channel and i'm gonna make 100 videos of the best stuff possible in the year of 2019 so i guess i was already holding myself to a high volume i had that volume measurement from which is a video every third day which most channels only do weekly so i was already already kind of holding myself at twice the standard of what the average channels were and and i went wait i mean i did i meant like 300 and almost 400 videos in a year and a half now so i've done way more than that original hundred but basically um i just wanted to try to make as many videos as possible and just see what would happen and then after the first year it was cool but it was it was taking away from my other business that i made a lot more money from you know it was like i was putting way too much time into this youtube which made a fraction you know like why am i investing you know half of my time or maybe even more than that into this youtube because i loved it it gets addicting i was putting way too much time into it so i was planning on basically putting it on ice and i really did like if you see like january 1st like i still like made some videos like if something was in front of me and it was like just while we were detailing like i'd shoot out a couple videos but then it just like i had so much good content like i went out and i was like trying to be on vacation and take the week off of my detail business and just hang out at barrett-jackson and i mean still run my detail business while i was there because it's like 20 minutes from my house but um like i got i got a newell interview there that's gotten over 400 000 views um got a lot of you know a lot of really cool interviews got you know and and then i just kept like just having all these different doors open and then like around that same time i had been out in florida and gotten hooked up with uh liberty coach and dean laux i think i can't remember exactly how it happened but like i was out in florida and dean got me hooked up to go out and do some sponsored videos with liberty coach so it was like i was as i was like gonna put it on ice like within one month i started to kind of get some calls for like some sponsored videos now and it was like all right it was enough it was like okay now this is maybe worth it a little more um and then i got like a bunch of traction pretty quickly i got some stuff with emerald coach liberty coach uh some some really cool stuff and then had a lot of conversations open too where other uh companies wanted to do some uh collaborations and some advertising on my channel i was like wow i was just blown away and then all the craziness hit and so that kind of all you know everything just everybody kind of hit the e-brakes on everything um and and with the detail business at that same time this is just such a weird year it's not a good time to be an employer and i was able to kind of just put everything on ice and just kind of uh put my detail business on ice and then all of a sudden use youtube started paying a lot more on the rv stuff because rv sales have gone up big time so the advertisers have been paying more for rv related search terms so all of a sudden you know and i'm spending a lot more time i'm spending all my time on youtube now instead of running my detail business so i have a lot more time to spend on youtube and it's been it's been really kind of snowballing it's it's it's pretty incredible it's even been really cool for me to like watch this happen because i feel like i discovered you when you were kind of you know just starting like i saw this i saw this guy's video and i'm like this is an interesting video and i see he's got you know 9 000 subscribers or something like you know he might be doing something and a couple weeks later i see another video you put up and you got like 13 000 i'm like all right he there's something going on here and then i had to go to your channel and see what you were doing and then i actually contacted you about my own plans to you know maybe sell my truck and trailer and get an old prevost renewal and that's how our dialogue kind of started and now we're out here and freaking they don't know where just south dakota yeah you you know like and you caught me like when i was still answering like there's no way i can't even answer any emails like i was still so mitchell kind of is we kind of got through the the cracks somehow because i stay extremely guarded like i don't they're just way too many people i've kind of crazy timing where uh where i was going go-kart uh riding with the guys from premium coach group and mitchell was shopping for prevos and newell's and he was kind of picking my brain a little bit and we had like shot some messages back and forth and i'm like yeah this guy's a cool guy but um you know i just i can't i can't help everybody i'm not a buying consultant so but it was a couple messages but then he like shot me a message like i'm in town and dude honestly i was like ah dude like oh you know i'm like you know what i'm going i'm already going to the go-kart track with premium coach group this guy might buy a coach from these guys he does racing stuff these guys do racing stuff it won't hurt just to invite him to the go-kart track and he showed up and he was a cool guy and i'm like all right we'll chop it up a little more so uh yeah you went go-kart even when we all went go-kart racing uh with the guys from premium coach group and that was kind of kind of how i met mitchell there after our first go-kart race he broke his phone and left and i ended up hanging out with chad and his people longer than you which was pretty funny like four days i think when i met you did you even have a youtube channel going yet or it was actually right before i went to premium coach group that i just you just started yeah yeah i got my macbook started yeah so no but uh but you've been putting you were just getting started then you've been putting in a lot of work so you know anything i can do if i can use my platform to try to help give you a little boost i'm more than happy to do that just because i know like there was a dude that like could have so easily done that with me but the guy was just so weird and kind of like protective of everything he was doing that he didn't want to like help bring anybody up into the same space and i think the space is bigger the more people in the space the better i think that's a really interesting point that this uh this guy who's ahead of you was you know real real guarded real protective of what you know in his head he had accomplished and didn't like want to share it with anybody and now you've passed it so let that oh yeah wait yeah way back like in like so much like it's all in the rear view but it's just kind of one of those one of those memories that comes up you know what's a it's a valid point to make because i've had people do that to me for like instagram and that kind of stuff with the escalade and racing they're just like you know they're you know they don't tagging stories they're just real stingy about it and i'm like well you look at those people now and they're stuck because the real way to grow in this whether it's youtube instagram whatever is through your network and if you don't help anybody no one's gonna help you either yeah so like it's you gotta you gotta have an abundance mindset when it comes to like there's not a finite amount of people out there that are like well you're only gonna watch my videos instead of his like that's not how it works yeah and the other thing is too is when you help something you can't expect anything in return like i don't expect anything like hey it's just i i choose who i want to help and it's like the same thing like with these rv dealers and you go and you help them and it's so funny how different rv dealers treat you so differently like literally mitchell and i were like literally went in and mitchell saw like you want to tell them what uh what you witnessed just when we went to that spot the other day that one dealership what happened was we went over there to uh make some videos about these renegade toter homes like the semi truck body…