I started my YouTube career at 14 years old in my bedroom in the northern suburbs of Atlanta, GA. I used to fake illnesses so that I could stay home and help my clients (who had no idea I was a teenager) get brand deals and grow their YouTube channels. I eventually formed a small agency, which I had to sell when my parents realized that I was skipping school to run it. I moved Los Angeles in 2017, just after my 18th birthday and started working at ScaleLab who represented creators like Jake Paul, Team 10, Mr. Beast, and Unspeakable. Over the next year or so, I started to realize that I was on the wrong side of the business in some sense, and I decided to take steps towards owning content myself. But I had no desire to be a "YouTuber" or have any sort of public presence. In 2019, I partnered with a long-time friend and together we raised the capital necessary to start acquiring established YouTube channels. We made our first acquisition in the summer of 2019, in a transaction worth nearly $1M. It was a terrible deal, but the lessons learned were worth it. In 2020, we did a second deal, this one about $200K in value, and within 2 years, we exited that property in a deal worth $2.3M. Throughout the last 10 years, I've managed, run, bought or sold some of the biggest channels on YouTube, particularly in the educational space. Most recently, I headed operations for MagnatesMedia, Alux, and MegaloMedia. These days, I'm 25 years old, married to a beautiful wife and we have a young, beautiful son. I've stayed almost entirely behind the scenes through my career thus far, and now I've created Maven Lab as a way to connect and share the unique insights I've collected over the years.