Turning Food History Into a YouTube Channel That Grows  🔗 **Source:** [Turning Food History Into a YouTube Channel That Grows](https://share.snipd.com/episode/843314f9-c422-4034-af01-6bdb57b53797) ## Highlights - **From Theatre To Disney To A Side Hustle** - Max worked in musical theatre and then Disney marketing before starting YouTube as a side project. - He enjoyed creative work at Disney but wanted something of his own, so he experimented with side projects until Tasting History stuck. Transcript: Max Miller Right before youtube i was working for walt disney studios uh in their marketing department um i had been working creatively for years and years i was a performer in New York doing musical Theater for years and then did voiceover in L.A. And then I realized I hated auditioning and I needed a paycheck that was steady. So I started working for the mouse and loved it. It was very, very creative. I was there at a very fun time when Marvel and Pixar and Lucasfilm were all kind of taking off. While the job was fun and while it was creative, I was being creative for Disney. I, you know, nothing was my own. And so I decided, you know what, let's, let's give this a go and try something else. ([Time 0:01:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/43a60232-707b-463e-bcfa-226fafec94fa)) - **Set A Deadline To Learn Filmmaking Fast** - Learn production basics and set a launch deadline to force progress. - Max taught himself filming, sound, and editing and gave himself a date to publish his first video whether it was perfect or not. Transcript: Max Miller So I'm going to teach myself to animate very poorly. And that was not what I wanted to do. But that's just how I was going to showcase these and make short videos and, you know, put them up on the internet. And back then, it was basically Vine or YouTube. And my videos were, you know, three to five minutes long. So YouTube was the place to go. And for tasting history specifically it was i was working at disney and my kind of inspiration to not specifically the the the format of tasting history but my inspiration to actually Make a youtube channel was graham stefan who was another YouTuber who back in the day was like very low key finance YouTuber sort of thing, you know, in his garage. ([Time 0:05:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/10c3d83f-2290-4d94-9d86-d2d32a17da79)) - **Niche Bending By Following Your Habits** - Niche-bend by combining your genuine habits and interests to create a unique format. - Max merged his Sunday baking habit and love of history (inspired by Great British Bake Off segments) into Tasting History. Transcript: Max Miller But I used to love the Great British Bake Off, still do. But in the early days, before it got big in America, they would do a little segment on the history of whatever they were making and it was a lot more educational back then you could actually Learn how to bake from watching the show they would teach you how to bake what they were making and then they would tell you the history and when it came to america and got big over here they Got rid of that segment and a lot of the education behind the show um to make it just more entertaining for people i guess. And I was like, well, I missed that segment. And so I would always bring my baked goods. I would bake every Sunday and I'd bring them in on Monday to my coworkers. And I'd be like, here, here you go. Here's a plate of Madeline's. But if you want one, you have to listen to a little history about the madeline and how it started it was the late 18th century and at a christmas party um in 2019 i was telling a co-worker That i wanted to make a youtube channel i needed something creative i needed something to make a little extra cash and i was like, and I don't know what to do. Um, and I was actually thinking I was going to go back to the animation and she said, well, we love your, your little history stories. Why don't you put those up? Um, make that into the YouTube channel. Well, gosh, yeah. I mean, essentially I'm doing that already now. I just need to film it. ([Time 0:07:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/29913e00-272d-4ed4-b45b-ffe85b41b5f5)) - **Publish Widely Into Niche Communities** - Promote early videos aggressively in relevant communities to get feedback and views. - Max posted his first videos to Facebook and niche subreddits, accepting removals, and gained the initial hundreds of views and critiques to iterate. Transcript: Max Miller First video, the one on medieval cheese, I had low expectations, partly because my husband said, you need to have low expectations. He knew he knew he had a lot of friends who had been working on YouTube channels for years. And, you know, my goal was to hit 1000 subs in one year. And, and he's like, I've had friends who have been working on their YouTube channel for 10 years. Yes. So don't don't expect. Yes. So he kept me grounded. Yeah. He was wrong, but he kept me grounded. And so I published that first video and I knew that I needed people to watch it if I wanted to get better. Right. Because YouTube has comments. And so often, you know, if you're writing a book, say, you don't get feedback until you've, you know, put years of work into something and then hopefully people read it. And even then you're not actually interacting with the people reading it. So you're dependent on Amazon reviews or whatever with YouTube. It's like, you're going to get immediate feedback. And so obviously I had my mom watch it and my friends at work, but all of their comments for the most part were positive. I did get some, some, some good criticisms, but what i did that i think was the most helpful was that i um published it on every facebook page and reddit page that had anything to do with Food or history often to the uh you know i would get the reddit mod being like yeah you can't publish this here yeah yeah and i was like that's fine yeah uh because they're not going to come To my house and and hit me with a stone it's the only thing they can do is take it down right exactly so i published it absolutely everywhere and a lot of places it did stay up um and so it got A few hundred views uh and and i and it got some some feedback and it was enough that then i was like willing to move forward now i had batch recorded i think the first three or four before I put out the first one just so like yeah but i think it was the third video that I had third or fourth video. ([Time 0:15:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4212dad7-2ab1-4fe2-93c5-8f815cca806e)) - **Keep Signature Elements Even If They Hurt Metrics** - Prioritising a signature style may defy platform optimization but builds a loyal audience. - Max kept a long intro song and Masterpiece Theater vibe despite watch-time advice because it attracts the audience he wants. Transcript: Max Miller It works. It works, exactly. I will tell you there are aspects of how I set up the show that I'm pretty sure any YouTube expert would tell me don't do that. Don't have a nine-minute intro song 30 seconds into the video that's just stupid and the thing is from a from a watch time perspective it is um and and it still is to this day you see there Is this little dip um but i don't i don't care because so many people enjoy it and so many people that that's the feeling that they want. And those are the people who are going to stick with me until the end of the video and come back next week. ([Time 0:20:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/13fbe38b-6df6-4899-9414-f7f3e191ab61)) - **A Brutal Email Became A Useful Critique** - Early harsh critiques can be painful yet valuable if they come from informed viewers. - Max received a three-page critical email six weeks in that was rude but precise, and he used it to improve his channel. Transcript: Max Miller I think it was the video on the Sally Lun bun that I made, which was maybe a couple months in. I got an email that was just not, it really ruined my day. It wasn't the nicest email. It was a harsh critique of the channel. And it was, you know, in writing, it's hard to like necessarily have a tone or achieve the tone that you want. This tone was not nice. It was pointed and really quite unpleasant. And it ruined my day. It ruined my week. But after a few days, I calmed down and I read it again and it was still a jerk but his critiques were all valid interesting um he had clear he was he clearly was someone who was like in the Business of of entertainment and all of his critiques and he had a long list uh all of them were valid and so i was like damn it i need to be open to this and i'm going to you know see if if i can Get better by taking these critiques. And I did. So I thank him for being a jerk. Because honestly, it's kind of because he was a jerk and because he didn't leave it in a comment, because he took time to email me this three-page critique that I listened and it worked. ([Time 0:23:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/15a3ed30-6f3f-4c4b-8d93-ff26b56f1a02)) - **Garum Video Sparked A Rapid Subscriber Surge** - A June 2020 video on garum suddenly jumped from normal traction to 100k+ views overnight and added tens of thousands of subscribers. - That spike pushed Max past 100k subs within a week and validated the channel while he was already monetized. Transcript: Max Miller And again, was thanks to reddit i had posted it in a medieval reddit thread like r slash medieval history or something like that and it was on i think it was the one on reston which are like These medieval breads um and it it took off. It ended up getting like 10,000 views that brought in a lot of subs. And I think, uh, I was, I was at like eight or 9,000 subs then, um, by then. And, and I had just, and that actually was what got me monetized. Um, so I was monetized within the first two and a half months i think three months um which was nice because then in june of 2020 i did a video on garum and uh which is an ancient roman fermented Fish sauce though i had to do a version that wasn't fermented because i was in my kitchen living with something. I wasn't going to ferment something in my kitchen with me there. So I did an older, actually an old recipe that is for a quick garum. It was basically like, even in the fourth century, they were like, if you don't have time to make this, then you can do this instead. But then I talked about the history of this fish sauce. And so the video came out on a Tuesday and it didn't really do anything other than, you know, it was the same as every other video. It was fine. And then that Saturday, i looked down and like overnight it had jumped to like a hundred thousand views whoa and the subscriber count had i had gotten like 5 000 subscribers overnight Wow the next day 20,000 subs. The next day, 25,000. It was crazy. So by the middle of that week, by the time the next video came out, I had hit 100,000 subs. And by that Friday, I think it was at like 130 or something like that. And I'm just, I'm so grateful that I was monetized for that. Yeah. Of course. Right. ([Time 0:27:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/250941aa-233c-4949-b97f-2dbf4a0e9f64)) - **Viral Paycheck Didn’t Trigger Rash Decisions** - After the viral months Max remained cautious and didn't instantly quit his job mindset-wise. - He knew viral spikes can be temporary, so he kept fiscal caution despite a July check of $10,000. Transcript: Max Miller So I think like before that I was making like, you know, like $200 a month or whatever. My July check was $10,000. You must have lost your mind when that happened. Yeah. No, I mean, that honestly it was more money than i had ever had in one at any time right like at any one time yeah and it was in one check from youtube and it was yeah was that the moment where Travis You're like i don't even have to go back to work anymore or did you were you still kind of like no wait a minute you know no definitely not um because because like I said, I knew so many channels Max Miller Where it was like, oh my gosh, yes. And then it was, you know, and it's like, this is not a long, like most people don't get to do this for years and years. That's just not how it works. You know, everybody has their viral moment. You look at TikTok now, there are channel there, you know, people TikTok who have like 60 million views on one video and all their other videos are like 2000 views. And so that's what I was like, that could be that. And I am just in general, an extremely cautious person when it comes to that because I had lived so many years on the financial edge, constantly it broke. So no. But again, it wasn't my choice to go back to work. That was not an option for me. ([Time 0:30:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e64616fe-66d2-421f-99d8-e3718f61d8d4)) - **Short-Term Metrics Can Mislead Channel Health** - Comparing recent videos only to your last 10 can distort long-term performance. - Max suggested YouTube should let creators compare current output to a year or two prior to see real growth trends. Transcript: Max Miller I recently got to talk to the head of engineering at YouTube. I said, I wish that there was an easier way to compare your current video, not to your last 10, but to what you were doing a year ago or two years ago. Because if you're just looking at your last 10 videos, let's say you put out one a week, which is typically what I do. That's only two and a half months. So if you're doing terribly in those two and a half months, it's dejecting. And it's like, is this the end of pasting history? But then if you zoom out a little bit and look at how you were doing a year ago or two years ago, two years ago, when you thought you were on the top of the world and you're like, but I'm doing Better than that. Yeah. So, you know, that's, what's going to keep me motivated to, to keep working. Um, and, and he said, yeah, it is very hard to like make that comparison right now in YouTube studios. So he's, um, going to take that note back. ([Time 0:36:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d69084a0-55b0-4d50-9e61-d2524bea1d38)) - **Outsource Repetitive Tasks, Keep Creative Control** - Use a small team to offload repetitive tasks while keeping creative control. - Max's assistant handles website, recipe posts, and social cutdowns while he retains final edit control and his husband does subtitles. Transcript: Travis No help editing or anything? That's usually the first thing people get as an editor. Max Miller So, no, I do. I have a – she does the first pass of editing. So, you know, I will have hours of cooking footage. Wow. And, um, and maybe an hour of me talking with all of these little flubs and everything like that. And she cuts out all of the flubs and everything, um, and kind of distills it down. And then I go in and I add the images and all of all of that kind of editing stuff. So, no, she's she's helped. ([Time 0:39:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0aa3af8d-e222-4f7d-93d1-bc5a667fc209)) - **Make Videos You Yourself Want To Watch** - Make the videos you genuinely want to watch instead of guessing trends. - Max says his most passionate videos often perform better and you should prioritise content you enjoy because the right audience will find it. Transcript: Max Miller Make the videos for you, make the videos that you want to watch and stop trying to guess what people want to see because they don't know. And so when people, this, this goes from my channel, I don't know that this is the case for everybody's channel. And I don't know that it's the case for every creator just in general. But when I make a video that someone else wants me to make, but I'm not, and I'm like, Oh, this is going to do well because people are really into this topic right now or whatever, but I'm Not really into the topic. It doesn't do well. Travis Yeah. Max Miller Um, people can tell when I, people can tell when I do a video where I am super excited to make this video, even though I don't think it's going to do well, it does typically do better. And if it doesn't do well, I don't feel like it's a loss because I got to tell this cool story or I got to make this dish. And, you know, I finally covered a topic that I wanted to cover. Um, but in general, the best, the best critic of taste for your channel is you, you know, if, if, if you like it, other people will like it. ([Time 0:41:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/edc56c8c-c9c8-42ef-a7e7-ccf111b736db)) - **Shrink Your To Do List To Fight Burnout** - Limit your active task list to reduce overwhelm and beat burnout. - Max focuses only on the next video's editing and scripting, crossing off or deferring other items to keep productivity manageable. Transcript: Max Miller And if that list ever gets too long, I become overwhelmed and kind of feel the, I'm just not going to do anything. I can't even look at it. So I'm just not going to do anything. So at that point, I just crossed some stuff off the list. I haven't done them, but I just cross them off. And I'm like, they'll be on the next list because I can't even look at them. I can't think about them right now. Whether it's, you know, my thing is the only thing that matters is the next video. And so why on my list do I have come up with an idea list for June? Well, that can wait. Work on ideas for the podcast. I don't even have a podcast. Write the script for the short on whiskey. Well, that's not going for four weeks. I don't need to do that. All I need to do is edit Tuesday's video, write the script for the following Tuesday, and everything else can wait and it will wait. And so just having a smaller list for me actually helps a lot. ([Time 0:46:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f592b7f3-dc9d-471a-acca-f6b268042cca)) - **Prototype A Channel With Your Phone And Museums** - Start low-cost by using your phone and local resources to test a niche idea. - Max would film museum art on his iPhone and narrate context, calling it art appreciation that needs more explanation in museums. Transcript: Max Miller A little bit of money, but not too much. And I could start off with it basically costing nothing, actually, other than I would take my iPhone and I would go to museums. Oh, OK. And I would film the different pieces of art. And I would then talk about those different pieces of art in detail. And what kind of effect, like what was happening. So it's kind of in my niche actually. Travis Well, I mean, it's enough different. No, it's the passion i think that's what's important from this segment is that because you're passionate about and you have a knowledge of it this becomes your superpower for that particular Type of content and they're probably i mean there might be a couple channels do that but i mean i certainly haven't seen any where they just go to take a picture of a look at a video art and Like go into history without a whole bunch of stuff like if someone's starting out and they are really passionate about history this actually makes sense and it's something that doesn't Cost a lot you probably already have your phone and you can go to a museum and as long as you have the knowledge i think that that's a really interesting idea well yeah because so my mother Max Miller Was obsessed with art um and and she taught humanities and uh is obsessed with art, taught humanities. And so in her class, we would often look at a piece of art and it was like, oh, yeah, that's cool. I've seen that. It's famous, whatever. But then for the next two days, she would talk about not only the actual piece of art, like what went into it, but what was the context? What was happening in the world? What was happening with the artist? What was happening politically that you, if you just take a look at it, you don't get because you don't have the knowledge set. But then you learn about, oh, this was social commentary. It was mocking somebody, you would never get it because it's a, oh, he has a spoon next to him. Okay. That would totally go over my head. But in actuality, that was a comment because that is, you know, there are just so many things in art, um, in general, whether it's music or, or a physical piece of art where it's like, nobody's Explaining this to me when i go to a museum so often you go to a museum and just you know it has a little blurb at the bottom of who painted it the name of it where it was painted and when but what's The context behind this piece of art that makes it why is it in this museum why is this important why is this special? And I think so art appreciation is essentially what it would be. ([Time 0:48:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/386bb084-0b78-4736-8761-319f11d7c539))