How Adam W Grew Comedy Clips Into A Global Media Company

Adam, a former college football player from Queens, moved to L.A. ten years ago with aspirations of becoming an actor. After a year of working odd jobs like valet and assistant, and getting no acting gigs, he decided to try creating online content on YouTube and Instagram, hoping it would lead to a director noticing him. He learned how to shoot and edit by Googling, and his first 30-second video took four months to make. With only 200 followers, the video garnered 90 views, leading him to consider quitting and moving back home. However, while waiting for his flight money, he decided to shoot a few more videos. The second and third videos received 70 and 60 views, respectively. His fourth video, posted one morning, had 1,000 views by night, which was more than his follower count. The next morning, it had exploded to 400,000 views, going viral overnight – a significant achievement at the time. This prompted him to quit his job, believing he was "famous now." Despite his next video only getting 400 views, he realized he had created something people loved and committed to making a video every single day to replicate that success. This discipline led him to gain half a million followers in six months, and now, ten years later, he has approximately 65 million followers. Adam maintains an incredible discipline, having posted a video every single day for five years straight, and now posts every other day without fail. His creative process is described as "toxic" by him. He wakes up at 6 a.m. on a post day, scrambles for hours to come up with an idea, often discarding the first few. Once an idea is settled, his team of five gathers props, books locations, gets actors, and shoots the video. He's actively involved, yelling directions, and an editor is on-site to edit immediately for posting. He deliberately avoids thinking of ideas on non-post days, meaning every video is conceived the morning it's posted. A one-minute video he created, which garnered 500 million views, took nine hours to shoot, involved prosthetic faces, and nine locations, highlighting that short-form content can be anything but short to produce. The attention to detail and meticulous craft are key to the success of his mini-movies. He emphasizes that a common misconception is that social media content is always "low lift," when in reality, a one-minute video can take a full day or two to create. When discussing brand partnerships, Adam advises both brands and creators on best practices. For brands, it's crucial to understand the creator they're working with, ensuring a good fit beyond just follower count or engagement. Brands should avoid cookie-cutter briefs and recognize that each creator's craft and genre are different. He stresses that it's a two-way street, a collaboration rather than a "work for hire" scenario, where both parties work together to create organic content that resonates with the audience without upsetting them. Adam's approach to brand deals involves leading with relatability and comedy. For example, if promoting a phone, he'll think about the funniest and most relatable aspects of phones, create a video around that idea, and then subtly incorporate the brand. This "backdoor" approach ensures the content is entertaining and shareable, making the ad feel organic rather than a cringey, direct promotion. Often, viewers don't even realize it's an ad until they see comments suggesting the brand should pay him, which they already are. He prioritizes creative content, with the brand being secondary. He once turned down a significant deal with a gambling company because it didn't align with his page's foundation or his audience's interests, despite the substantial financial offer. Regarding different social media platforms, Adam advises creators to never put all their eggs in one basket. He advocates for posting content across all major platforms to increase the chances of going viral and maximizing monetization. While his comedy content works universally across platforms, he acknowledges that long-form content has a different strategy, emphasizing the underutilized potential of Facebook for both audience and monetization, given its 3.5 billion active users. He makes one video and posts it across all platforms without changing the edit. Adam attributes his massive audience and high viewership to consistency and relatability. He produces more content than many others and ensures his videos are relatable to anyone, even those seeing him for the first time, within the first five seconds. A unique aspect of his creative process is that he will not post a video if it cannot be understood on mute. This visual-first approach caters to viewers watching in noisy environments or where they shouldn't be watching content, making his humor universally understood regardless of language. For aspiring social media creators, Adam's advice is to not care about what others think, especially when starting out. He believes that early on, when viewership is low, it's the best time to experiment and have fun without the pressure of a large audience. He regrets that caring too much about others' opinions held him back initially. Adam is also venturing into the app software industry with DoubleView, an app he created to solve a personal struggle with long-form content creation. The app allows users to film vertically and horizontally simultaneously, producing two files from a single shoot. This effectively doubles a creator's revenue without doubling the work, enabling them to create short-form content for platforms like TikTok and Reels, and extended landscape content for YouTube and Facebook from the same footage. He promotes the app through relatable comedy videos about the struggle of filming in different orientations. Looking ahead, Adam doesn't foresee stopping content creation but might slow down. His ultimate goal is to make comedy films. He plans to release his first movie exclusively on YouTube, leveraging his existing audience rather than pursuing traditional Hollywood. He cites Markiplier's self-released film "Iron Lung," which grossed $60 million at the box office through self-distribution and audience engagement, as an example of this evolving model. Adam has a script ready and plans to shoot his self-funded, YouTube-distributed movie in November.