From Call of Duty Clips to 15 Million Subscribers  🔗 **Source:** [From Call of Duty Clips to 15 Million Subscribers](https://share.snipd.com/episode/5e553819-331a-4475-8839-083e37d97d9d) ## Highlights - **How Call Of Duty Clips Grew Into Viral GTA Stunts** - Jordi began by uploading Call of Duty clips, then tutorials, montages, and myth-busting before branching into GTA stunts that sparked his first viral growth. - His breakout was a “how to defeat an unbeatable boss” clickbait that hit ~500k views and filled his inbox with subscribers. Transcript: Jordi "Kwebbelkop" Started off with that cold duty i i was a i played a bunch i played a semi-competitive i was so good at the game that every time I went to school, I told my friends, hey, guys, I did so well and They wouldn't believe me. So I thought, OK, you know what? What if I just start recording it? And then from that came tutorials to commentary to montages. And then slowly that rolled out into Call of Duty myths. So I did myth busting, Easter egg tutorials. And that's really how it started. And slowly that also a little bit of a GTA, but GTA tutorials. And then when I was doing GTA, I don't know, I stumbled upon an idea and I started filming it. And I called it Hit a Stunt. And it was really me doing a let's play like doing a funny funny stuff in gta 5 and that really started blowing up and then i branched out to many many many more games yeah let's talk about Travis The beginning i think um when you started uh call of call of duty is a huge game let's just be honest it's always been a huge game were you getting lots of views at the very beginning or was It, were you just uploading and it was more for your friends? Jordi "Kwebbelkop" Yeah. So you just post a video and then, and then that's it. And then nothing happens. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. Up until one day I uploaded a video and it was like a clickbait video on how to defeat a boss, but you couldn't defeat the boss. That was the whole point. So I uploaded a video, how to defeat him. And that video blew up like half a million views. And to me, that was insane. I got an email every time someone subscribed. So my inbox, I woke up one morning and it was packed with people. Travis But yeah, that was my first viral. Did that unlock something for you as far as content creation? You go, wait a minute, there's something to this, this impossible thing that I do to connect with people. Jordi "Kwebbelkop" I thought, hey, okay. Well, it's very clear to me there's a pattern here, right? Or at least for me, you know, a lot of people wanted to click on this video. There was a big demand for it. And then I started doing that more often, right? More of those type of videos. But that was a first taste. ([Time 0:02:37](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e16b390d-b47b-4f30-8e10-7fdf6adeb9c4)) - **CTR And Watch Time Still Drive YouTube Distribution** - Jordi found a clear correlation between watch time and click-through rate: high CTR plus long watch time drives YouTube distribution. - He then optimized for long videos with high average retention and strong thumbnails to chase repeatable virality patterns. Transcript: Jordi "Kwebbelkop" And then at some point, I dove into the analytics. I started seeing like, okay, there's a massive correlation between watch time and CTR. And if you have great CTR and you have great watch time, your video tends to get a lot of views. And there was a pretty clear pattern there. So with that in mind, I started to realize, okay, well, if I just optimize for long videos with high average iteration, and then high click through rate, surely if I can find patterns There and create the right results that result, that will result in virality and views. ([Time 0:05:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cbd5fb5b-1cd8-47bd-bcfa-1fa182634683)) - **Grind Daily Until Your System Works** - Post consistently to accelerate skill and results; Jordi posted at least once a day when he committed and reached a good wage within about a year. - Schedule and prepare content ahead so life events (e.g., surgery) don't stop uploads. Transcript: Jordi "Kwebbelkop" Uh, and he was just wake up, make YouTube videos, post at least one video a day. Didn't matter what I had, right? I had tons, my tonsils got removed for surgery. I had videos scheduled out, right? There's no excuse to fail this. I just said, if I do it every single day, I need to get really good fairly quickly. And then at some point I was making a good wage. And then from there on, I had even more commitment, more focus. And then a year later, and then it blew up. ([Time 0:10:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/64f4c1b6-bd46-4080-a94b-4cc7f556c1d3)) - **You're Not Scalable If You're The System** - Being the system is a short-term trap: if the creator is the bottleneck, you can't plan long-term. - Jordi realized building systems that run without him reduces stress and enables strategic planning. Transcript: Jordi "Kwebbelkop" No, you are the system and um i i built a great system and it works but the problem with the system was the fact that i was like completely uh inside of the system and i had to be in the system And and you know sure like you never you would never in that position think, oh, I can do this for 40 years or 50 years. You're only thinking like I want to be relevant next year or I want to be relevant next month. And I want to get views next week or this this week. Right. So because it's such a high stress environment, you're only focused on the short term. And the issue, though, is that if you build a system that doesn't need you, you're low stress and you can plan for the long term term. So it is like this vicious cycle where because you're so focused on the now, you cannot plan for the future. So you cannot build for the future. And it's a really hard balance to have. It took me a few years of stepping back and saying, okay, you know what? Let's chill for me to be able to build these systems, which is where I am right now. ([Time 0:15:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c6509cdc-c884-4a0a-a04d-8744176cd877)) - **Plan Business Risks Not Just The Next Video** - Do formal business strategy and risk assessment, not just optimize the next video; plan for scenarios that could derail operations. - Jordi recommends introducing backup hosts or systems when personal health or runway is a foreseeable risk. Transcript: Jordi "Kwebbelkop" I never really set down for proper strategy. My focus was always a lot on how to be successful in YouTube and then specifically how to make a YouTube video successful. I didn't really take too much time to focus on business strategy and risk assessment. So an example, let's say we're running a podcast channel together, right? And everything is going great, production is going great. I would have just said, okay, let's focus on the next video. Let's put our focus there. Let's focus on the next video. Let's put our focus there. What I think would have been better, you know, in hindsight, is to sit down and say, cool, well, we can continue producing, but what's the biggest risk? Like what's a hurdle that can surface in the next three to six months that could derail this entire operation? And one thing that you might say is, well, my lower back is starting to hurt. I don't know for how much longer I can do this. Right. And that then could mean like, okay, let's say we have two more years of runway before you might want to retire. Let's start introducing a new host or maybe two new hosts. ([Time 0:17:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d3230730-a1ad-4ee0-9be1-409c442bc8d1)) - **Rebooting With Big Curiosity Driven Videos** - Jordi pivoted from daily gaming clips to high-budget, curiosity-led ideas like buying lost parcels, auctioned suitcases, or renting a store of mystery items. - He frames this reboot as one-video-a-month productions funded by sponsors and systems to scale. Transcript: Jordi "Kwebbelkop" Right. So, you know, sometimes your parcel is lost, right? It gets delivered to your home. You order a package. It's lost. So we called up one of these places that collects these lost parcels. And we said, how about you sell us a thousand of them? And we're just going to open them up to see what's inside. Right? So that's kind of what we started off with. And then we thought, okay, well, we can do this with suitcases too. You know, the airports lose suitcases and they get auctioned off. So let's buy 100 suitcases. That's the video we're working on. And then we thought, okay, well, what if we go to a store and we just rent out the entire store, fill it with lost parcels, and then we say anyone who enters the store gets a free lost parcel To see like, okay, well, it's inside. ([Time 0:22:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/719a7a7e-c1c4-4f1b-ab4e-a2c4a0497c26)) - **Quitting Led To AI Experiments That Blew Up** - Jordi briefly quit and experimented with AI, launching Blue (a virtual influencer) and a faceless Quobbelkop avatar; Blue reached ~3M subscribers. - The Quobbelkop AI avatar launch unexpectedly went viral and triggered massive media attention and DMs while Jordi awaited a movie premiere. Transcript: Jordi "Kwebbelkop" OK, so so picture this. I've been doing YouTube day in, day out for multiple, multiple years and I'm kind of done. Right. I'm done for from the repetition i didn't have enough room to innovate and and it was just boring at this point so i thought okay well what would i love to do is i would love to start a youtube Channel that's not linked to me that can run without me so if i need to take a break i can take a break right because i couldn't take a break it's It was burned out. So that's where I started Blue, Virtual Influencer, and a few projects before. But Blue was the main one. And Blue's still up and running, 3 million subscribers right now. And I would say a wildly successful experiment. And it's going towards 10 million subscribers. So I started off with blue and and uh you know i was doing some other business things on the side but i just really was burned out from youtube so i thought well why don't i just uh slow down Or quit right uh because for i like sure i was making a lot of money back then like ridiculous amounts of money but i didn't i didn't need the money um so i stopped uploading i said hey you Know, I'm announcing my like sabbatical retirement, whatever, like just a break, whatever you call it. This is just a break, break slash quit. I didn't really know. And I started focusing more on other sides of the business, other business things. And I was doing that for quite some time, right? And was getting a lot of energy back occasionally I would do a recording and I would be like oh this this is fun but still like I wasn't really feeling it I thought you know what you know what Screw this I'm gonna quit I'm done like I don't have to do this I haven't posted in a year or so or whatever. And in the meantime, I have my research and development team in-house just working on tools, building things. And we launch projects all the time, like a thumbnail generator or a dubbing tool or like a new YouTube channel, faceless channel, movie channel, you know. I thought, okay, well, why don't we make Blue look better? We had a terrible avatar. Why don't we make him look better? Yay, let's do that. So we threw some money at it. Boom, now Blue looks like a Fortnite character rather than an anime character, right? Okay, we like that style. Blue's doing great. Blue's blowing up. And Blue has completely filled the gap of the Quobble Cup review at this point. Wow. So we're just sitting around the table and we're gathering a lot of this research on blue because we didn't know if we could swap voice actors off blue without the channel crumbling. Right. And then we thought, okay, well, we still have the quobble cup IP laying around here. Why don't we just do the exact same thing as what we did with blue, but then with the quobble cup IP. So we got called up the designer. We said, hey, that Fortnite character, make it of me. And then we launch it, and we have a friend of ours run the channel, and then we'll see how that goes, which we did. And to us, it was just yet another Friday afternoon. So we launch it. I'm on my way to a premiere, a movie premiere as like a paid appearance. And I'm sitting there, I'm wearing my Apple Watch. But it's like the first time this movie screening is occurring, right? So there's security guards everywhere. And the moment you grab your phone, you're done. Like it's game over. You're like, band. Don't touch your phone. And I'm sitting there. And the launch had just happened. And we were just like, oh, that's cool. Okay, whatever. And my Apple Watch is just vibrating. It's my friends texting me. It's like, I'm getting tagged. I'm getting DMs on Twitter. It's like Moist Critical made a video on you. Slogan made a video on you. Wire wants to interview you. This person wants to interview you. That person wants to interview you. The CEO of NVIDIA is interested in you. And I'm like, sitting there in this movie premiere. And I couldn't grab my phone because the security guards would catch me. And he's just looking at my watch. I'm like, how, what am I supposed to do now? So that went way more viral than I had ever anticipated. ([Time 0:28:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c91eaa9c-ca34-4280-a212-da2842f46ddc)) - **AI Backlash Was Loud but Not Always Business Critical** - Backlash often came from outside noise, not core subscribers; losing subscribers after controversial uploads signaled where criticism originated. - Brands were still interested and many asked Jordi to speak, so industry signals differed from social media outrage. Transcript: Jordi "Kwebbelkop" We did it, right? So that was the first thing. So that was the first signal to us like, okay, well, so it's a lot of noise coming from outside. It's not coming from our existing user base. So that was the first point for us that was like, okay, that's interesting criticism. And then we thought, okay, well, if there's a lot of noise here, let's just dig deeper into this wound and let's figure out, okay, well, what is it here that is so annoying to people or so Controversial? And because it's controversial, but it's also not. It's like just me doing some creative expression. And then everyone just has an opinion on it. I'm like, come on, man. And now everyone's doing it, right? So I guess I was just a little bit early um yeah so so that's kind of how that's kind of how we viewed it and it's not like brands wanted to stop working with us it's actually brands wanted More brands wanted to work with us um and and brands wanted me to speak about this and so i traveled the world and talked told the story to to a bunch of politicians and business people and Just key decision makers. ([Time 0:33:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ae82ed18-6e85-4586-b27e-6917a93c254e)) - **Use AI To Unlock New Audiences With Dubbing** - Use AI to add value, not to replace the human on camera; Jordi's most effective use was AI dubbing to reach new language audiences. - AI dubbing boosted average view duration in Spanish and unlocked subscriber growth across back catalogs for clients. Transcript: Jordi "Kwebbelkop" So we started testing this with Blue. We have all audio in English. We would then grab this English language. And the theory was, well, with AI, we can translate it to Spanish. And then we have AI read it out in Spanish, right? And capture the emotions well. So we built this tool for ourselves internally. And then we started adding these audio tracks to YouTube because they allow that, right? And our measurement for success, one of the key data points was average view duration. Guess what? Okay, we would have an eight-minute average view duration on a blue video on English. Travis We would dub it to Spanish. What do you think the average view duration was? Well, I would imagine a lot of Spanish people hadn't seen videos like that before. So maybe more? Jordi "Kwebbelkop" Yes, that's exactly what our theory is too. So the average iteration went up. So first of all, it meant that, okay, we can capture all the nuances and keep the video entertaining. But also we can reach this new audience, which is hungry for this type of content yeah so we did spanish and then we said okay let's do 10 more languages and that really helped us blow the Blue channel up even more and and you know gained a few hundred thousand subscribers very quickly and more recently did we start offering to other creators so we have this creator i don't Want to name any names because i haven't had explicit confirmation from them but they're um they're they do construction videos um and they came to us and and their subscriber count Daily was pretty stagnant um so you know they were hovering near a million subscribers and then we started dubbing videos for them into a few different languages one of them spanish One of them portuguese and a few more uh and they started like overnight blowing up so now i think since we started dubbing for them they've been gaining 3 000 subscribers a day and this Is on content on their older library this is on their newer videos i think they've posted like two videos since but on their entire their entire back catalog started blowing up again Because of the AI dubs. And I don't know exact numbers, but according to our math, they made a return on their investment within a month. So they paid us for the dubs. It blew up. And now it's just pure profit for them. And to me, that is the success, tying this back to like AI tools, AI workflows, it is an AI workflow that adds value to content, which wasn't possible before. So me replacing myself, it's a replacement, right? And it doesn't add value. Us doing AI dubs, it opens up things that weren't possible. Before this, I couldn't be dubbing my videos. It wasn't just realistic, right? ([Time 0:39:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a486d25c-3489-4428-b161-d6b202c24306)) - **Creator To CEO Mindset Shift** - Jordi now identifies as an entrepreneur-first CEO; YouTube is one department in a larger business with systems and leadership. - Content is a line item in his company spreadsheet rather than the entire business focus. Transcript: Jordi "Kwebbelkop" Now I'm an entrepreneur who is a content creator for sure. Before I was a content creator trying to be an entrepreneur. No, I'm a CEO first, 100%. I'm the unk in the company. Really, I have great leadership, but the majority of my day and the majority of my thoughts are focused on running a business and making sure the business is successful. And YouTube and the Qualbook of Brand, that's a part, that's a department of the business. It is one sheet in my entire Excel, right? ([Time 0:42:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e91dd608-9a8d-4998-9c80-410269a168d4)) - **Health And Therapy Fueled His Comeback** - Jordi prioritized health and therapy after burnout: he adopted strict fitness, diet, sauna, meditation, blood tests and full-body scans. - This personal cleanup coincided with rebuilding company systems and improved his enjoyment of recording and leadership. Transcript: Jordi "Kwebbelkop" Yeah, sure. So right now we've just been talking business. And alongside this journey of me quitting YouTube and stepping back, I also went on a personal development journey, right? So there were some things that decisions that I made that, you know, that wasn't really true to Jordi. And that kind of started nibbling on me, right? So I thought, okay, well, if I take a step back, like, how do we build this up? So thing uh prioritize my health and i mean physical health so i started eating healthy i started working out religiously sauna sessions meditation sessions whatever could you know Make sure my body is in a good state and and and i do regular blood draws now i do full body scans like i'm health obsessed uh because I feel like if I sleep well and if I if I if I live healthy, I can be way more productive in work and business. But alongside this, yeah, of course, I like I went to therapy. I spoke to a bunch of people and then I unwrapped a few a few few things that I didn't know were bothering me. And then I started realizing, okay, maybe I need some, some, some healthier friends around me. And I have a great support system around me and healthy friends, but it was very gradual. There weren't, there weren't any absolute insane situations that occurred, but it was more of a long, slow journey. And, and now I can look, look back on that and say, you know, I'm proud of myself for doing that. I recommend that to anyone. And yeah, that was just, that's just part of the story. ([Time 0:46:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c99860db-c3e7-4bb5-acbe-e680af7927eb)) - **Start Posting Now Then Improve The System** - Post a video now and build a publishing cadence; Jordi's first instruction for new creators is to stop waiting and publish daily or every other day. - Only after you can produce reliably should you optimize thumbnails, retention, and systems. Transcript: Jordi "Kwebbelkop" First of all start posting this is the the the rookie mistake is this focus like if you're listening to the podcast uh if you're listening to this i don't know it might end up as a clip who Knows if you're listening to this and you you're waiting for advice the first thing that i'm going to confront you with is have you posted a video yet? If you haven't, just go post the video. Don't care. Just don't worry about it. And then just post a video every day or every other day. Just pick a time frame and then post a video every single time frame, right? Start off with that because you need to start building a system that can produce content. And only then do you want to refine the system and make the system better. But first, make sure that you build a car and then figure out how to make the car faster. I think this is what a lot of people forget all the time. And it's always been like this. They come up to me, they go ask for advice, ask how many videos have you posted? They say, I've not posted a single video. And I'm like, my advice is pointless to you. ([Time 0:49:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b3e2bf9d-b0a7-4566-99f9-1b9f56f8a107))