This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. On the road today in Pittsburgh, excited for an event that's coming up soon. And I'm also excited about today's episode. It features a really great artist success story. I think the story has
some lessons even if you're not an artist. It's essentially a lesson in persistence and tweaking or modification. I think it's really important to do both these things to be persistent, to believe in your goal and keep working toward it, but at the same time also be willing to make some changes or modifications or tweak as I call it. So, so important to have both perspectives and both perspectives come through today in this story about a Mexican artist who was a struggling painter and sculptor, even though he was known and successful, he wasn't financially successful, but then becomes a YouTube superstar with more than 50 million views. Like I said, this is another great one. And I'll bring it to you in just a moment.
Right after this quick, thank you to our sponsor. Leonardo Pereznieto isn't your average artist. He was in some ways, a child prodigy. His first painting exhibit was held in his native Mexico city when he was just eight years old. He then grew up seeing his art and galleries in Mexico, the United States, France, Italy, and Germany. As an adult, he studied art in
several countries before returning home to Mexico where his sculptures and paintings received numerous awards. Now, before I continue, you might be thinking that Leonardo had a bit of an unfair advantage when it came to starting a popular YouTube channel, but that actually had very little to do with his career as a painter and sculptor at all. In fact, despite his critical acclaim back home, he was struggling to pay the bills and he was even in debt. So his YouTube success wasn't a result of startup capital or even a big marketing campaign. It was just the result of messing around one day. That one day was in September 2011, when
Leonardo found himself with some extra time. He pulled out his iPhone 4, some paper, and a pencil. Then he rigged a homemade tripod to hold his phone and videoed himself sketching a realistic eye. The drawing took just over five minutes. He then moved the video to his computer and sped it up as a time lapse using iMovie. He topped it off with some cheesy
piano music and uploaded it to YouTube. By that point, Leonardo's work had been in those galleries but he had very little social media following. Still, to his surprise, dozens of people watched the video in the next few hours and his whimsical channel Fine Art Tips already had its first few subscribers. So a few weeks went by and he decided to do it again. Then another month later, he did one more, a few months went by, did a couple more, and after nearly a year of random uploads, he had several thousand views and over a hundred subscribers. Which is good, but not amazing, right? That's when he decided to take it seriously.
And he realized he might be on to something, so he set up YouTube ads and began collecting a small amount of revenue each time a viewer watched an ad before a video. A year into the project, he began publishing a new video every single Tuesday, Rain or Shine, which now that I say that doesn't really have much to do with producing online videos, like it doesn't matter if it's raining outside, you know, but still, every Tuesday. The consistency resonated with his audience and his views began to rise exponentially. He also started titling all of his videos how to this or how to that. In other words, how to draw the human figure or how to draw faces or something else. That basic framework performed well in the
YouTube search because everybody's searching how to. And he also picked out clear, engaging thumbnails for his videos rather than letting YouTube do it automatically. And this was a great combination because his great titles and thumbnails drew in the viewers, but it was the excellent content that made them subscribers and loyal fans. By popular request, Leonardo started recording voiceover narrations in English. And four weeks into his consistent posting, he launched a second channel, Arte Divierte, which featured Spanish narrations of the same videos. Now, because of his YouTube partner contract, Leonardo can't divulge too
many details about his videos earnings, but he could say that it took about four months for each channel to begin earning at least $500 a month. Now that was back in 2013, and he's got a lot more views now. These days he earns less per view than he used to when he started. But since his channels have erupted in popularity, it's safe to say he's making much more money overall. Once your videos start getting hundreds of thousands of views and then millions of views like his have, we're talking about real money. Now, Leonardo
used his home rigged video setup until he had a hundred thousand subscribers. Once he crossed that line, he invested in a pro-level camera, some lighting equipment, and the video editing software Final Cut. He didn't, however, replace his homemade tripod, which still worked well with a larger camera and remained a source of DIY pride. He made videos that his viewers requested, but he also went out on a limb with his own ideas. For example, his how to draw a circle freehand video was watched over a million times in just a few weeks. Similarly,
the unrequested how to draw a water drop tutorial quickly became his most watched video at three million views. As this turned into a real side hustle, Leonardo encountered some challenges. The drawing itself was always his favorite part of the creation process, spending a few hours a day on emails, updating social media, and typing out his narrations. Not so much. So at some point, he reached out to one of his most loyal Facebook fans and offered to pay her for her help. They started with social media marketing and eventually moved into
answering emails. Eventually he gave her full responsibility over the video uploads. Then he was invited to speak at an art-related event. A fellow speaker offered a trade. Leonardo would show him the YouTube ropes, and in exchange, he would find Leonardo a contract video editor for free. In just a few weeks, Leonardo had interviewed and hired a video editor who he
has now used for years. And this brought about some much-needed change in his process, especially as he was taking the side hustle more and more seriously. Editing videos was especially time consuming and not exactly what he loved about running his channels. Now he could simply send off the video and narrations and have the final cut in his Dropbox folder a few days later. With editing off his plate, Leonardo began making two to three drawings for each video with shots from different angles. This gave his videos more depth and provided viewers
a greater perspective on the drawing techniques. And things kept rolling along. Leonardo paid off his school debts with the YouTube revenue. He appeared on a Korean documentary. He was hired by Google to test their virtual reality artist tools, and he even signed a deal with a New York publishing company. His videos now receive 60,000 views daily. His channel
has over 2 million subscribers, and his videos have been watched over 50 million times. But not only that, the rewards also arrive in the form of feedback from viewers. He says, "I get messages or comments all the time telling me how people are realizing their dream of doing what they love, learning to draw thanks to the tutorials." He also said, "I feel a social responsibility to publish the tutorial every Tuesday." I love that perspective. I almost feel something similar with the show. And in his case, there are grandmothers who watch his tutorials with their grandkids, retirees who have picked up drawing again after years of neglecting their passion, and high school students who've gone on to art school and drawing careers after not being able to afford drawing lessons. All of this happened because
Leonardo took a chance, and he experimented. He wasn't thinking much about paying off his debts. He was thinking about exploring a new model. But when he whimsically uploaded that first drawing video to YouTube, it ended up changing his entire life. Maybe there's something like that waiting for you. You just have to take a chance.
Well, I really like this story. I hope you did too. Like I said in the beginning, I think the important thing here is to be persistent, keep working on your dream, keep pursuing your goal, but also be willing to change, improve, modify, tweak as you go along. And you notice in this case, even though he was a successful artist, traditionally speaking, had his work in galleries, he didn't have much of a social media following. And that first year of uploading videos, he got a bit of response, but it wasn't huge. It was only
in the second year when he decided to first of all, take it more seriously and be consistent about publishing a tutorial every Tuesday. I think consistency is really important in any kind of online publishing. If you're trying to establish relationship with fans and cultivate loyalty over time, you want to show them that you're reliable, that if you say something's coming out at a certain point, it's going to be out and they know they can expect it from you. But also Leonardo became more successful. Once he made some changes, he wasn't afraid to apply some marketing strategy to his videos. He probably could have just said, I'm an artist.
I don't care about marketing, but instead he was open-minded. He paid attention to how other people titled their videos. He noticed that that how to format was very popular. So he began using that and he began picking out the thumbnails that he wanted to be displayed rather than letting the YouTube algorithm just do it automatically. Over time, he also got smart about operations, bringing in a contractor to help with the stuff that he didn't want to do. And when you do those kinds of things as an artist or a creative person
of all kinds, it's really going to allow you to do more of what you're good at and spend your time in the way that you want to spend your time, not just doing the stuff that you have to do because somebody has to do it. So obviously this guy has a ton of talent. You should check out the videos. I'll link them up in the show notes because some of them really are amazing. But I also know there's a lot of talented people out there in the world who don't have an audience who haven't figured out how to monetize their skill. And so success in this kind of format comes not only through
talent, but also through that persistence, also through that adaptation, being willing to learn as you go, and then being consistent week after week, month after month, and now for him year after year, more than 50 million views so far. Let that be a lesson to you. I feel inspired by this story myself, but as I always say, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action, that's the way to go so much better. Today's show notes, including links to Leonardo's work in both English and Spanish are at sidehustleschool.com/312. Let me know what you think. Come say hi on Instagram. I'm 193 countries,
193 countries. Thank you for listening today. My name is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
