I am honored to finish in the top 4 in Ryan Seacreast’s YouTube fitness contest. I do realize that without the help of my special friends, I wouldnt even have made it past the first round as I only have a fraction of the subscribers that Mike Chang and Elliott Hulse do. Appreciate the help in bringing a bit of attention to my website and channel!
Will placing #4 change what I do? Not at all. I still do the videos I think are important, rather than the fitness videos I think will be popular. I started my website and videos in 2004 as a way to give back to the community after I retired and I still have that passion. Its funny, many people fail to grasp that I am not in this for the money. I was financially independent before I started my fitness website and YouTube channel. The only reason I put my videos on YouTube in 2006 was because it was starting to get expensive to self host my videos at 25 cents per video download in bandwidth charges. Of everyone in the top 10 in this contest, I am probably the only one who does everything myself (script writing, filming, editing, website, online calculators, mailing t-shirts, etc) and probably the only one who views their channel as a public service and not a meal ticket. Fitness is a part-time passion for me and not a job, making it a job would take the fun out of it. Not to downplay how great everyone else’s channels are, in fact, because they can spend full time working on their channel and afford to hire lots of experts, their channels are probably even better than mine. My unique perspective is that I dont want people to buy anything, I dont care whose workout plan they use, and I dont care how many views I get – all I want is for people to get leaner, healthier, and stronger. I can tell it like it is, and if it turns out to be bad advice, its an honest mistake and not some attempt to make money.
As an aside, I have heard people say very funny things like “I look creepy”. LOL! I am old enough to be the grandfather of pretty everyone in the top 20 of Ryan Seachrest’s contest. Imagine your grandfather shirtless, yep, shirtless grandfathers are creepy. To those who think I look creepy, let me ask you this – what do you think you will look like at age 55? Will you have abs? Will you be doing Ironmans? Perhaps you should be thinking less about how “creepy” I look and focus more on my message which is that health and fitness is more important than looking like the king of aesthetics.