If you want to know what it takes to be successful on YouTube, you need to know Paddy Galloway. He’s mastered the art of crafting a viral video and growing a channel to millions of subscribers. He has consulted for some of the world’s biggest creators: MrBeast, Jesser, LoverFella, and Noah Kagan among others. 

While he’s worked with many YouTube greats, he still maintains his own channel with videos that deep dive into channel growth strategy and analytics, viewed by 520k+ followers worldwide.

We sat down with Paddy on the Backstage Careers podcast to discuss his career trajectory, what it’s like working with some of YouTube’s biggest creators, and the advice he has for anyone interested in working behind the scenes on some of the internet’s most viral videos. We’ve pulled out the key takeaways from the podcast interview below.

Check out the full episode with all of Paddy’s career experiences and takeaways on YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Where it all began

I've been making YouTube videos since I was 11 or 12 years old, on whatever I was interested in at the time. When I look back, it was always the audience building and the technicalities behind YouTube that really interested me. So, I started studying other creators, viral videos, the trending page….

One day I realized I had this channel with around 15k subscribers, but I didn't really have a purpose for it. I had a page of notes I had recently taken on Peter McKinnon, who had one of the fastest growing channels at the time, and thought it could be cool to turn those into a video.

No one was doing anything like this, which made me think either there's an opportunity or it's because no one wants this content. I made the video and uploaded it in 2017, called How Peter McKinnon Gained 1 Million Subscribers in One Year.

In the first few days it flopped. It made me think that maybe people weren’t actually interested. So, I kind of gave up on it and thought YouTube might not be for me. I actually signed out of the channel. 

Then someone mentioned liking the Peter McKinnon video to me and I logged back in and saw the video had 200k views. A few days later, Peter McKinnon tweeted it and it basically rose up to about 700k views in the span of a month.

I had just gotten a job offer from Accenture, a big tech consulting firm, but I decided I would give this YouTube thing one more try. I made one more video and that was on MrBeast. With that video, I told myself I would showcase everything I know about the algorithm and how to make interesting content. I would put it all in one video and see what happens.

I released that video on December 17, 2019 and as of today, it has 6.2 million views. It's completely changed my trajectory and I've been uploading ever since.

Becoming a YouTube consultant and joining LoverFella

Being a consultant originally came from wanting to have a bit of stability because YouTube cashflow can be very sporadic. I also thought it would help sharpen my ax and keep [me] getting better at YouTube.

I started working with LoverFella, a large Minecraft channel. We started in 2020 when he had around 1.5 million subscribers; now he's got roughly 3.5 million.

He sent me a message that he really liked my videos and wanted me to come onto the team as a creative director. It was while working with him that I realized I'd actually built up a really good skill set over years of making all these channels. I had a really good eye for it.

During that time, I was able to hone in on that because he was posting 10 videos a week and I'd be working on almost all the videos in terms of reviewing, editing, pacing, and which ideas to pursue in the first place.

When I first started working with him, he was seeing about 20 million views a month. By the time I'd finished, he was doing about 60 million views a month.

The journey to and lessons from MrBeast

In January of 2021, I’d agreed to take on four different clients, all over a million subscribers. I was fully on the path to building out that portfolio…. Then MrBeast came calling, so I put all that on ice.

When I actually made that first video about MrBeast in 2019, that video in itself changed my life. It made me a lot of money, but it also created this connection between me and Jimmy [Donaldson, aka MrBeast].

He reached out to me after that video and congratulated me on it. Every now and again, we would chat on Twitter. I think he was just interested in what I was doing and he had the same kind of philosophy of being very obsessive and data focused.

When you focus on one thing a lot and do good work with people, word gets around. Jimmy reached out to me and said, “I think what you're doing is really cool. I'd love to see if there's an opportunity for us to work together.”

We decided to just kind of feel it out and see what the opportunity looked like. That same night as our first phone call, he sent me a draft for one of his videos that was going to be posted in a few days.

It was 1 am my time (in Dublin), but he was in EST. I could’ve just gone to bed and done it in the morning. But I thought, you know what, I'm gonna blow him away. I got a cup of coffee and I worked for three hours, going through the video scene by scene with my thoughts.

I sent it to him and at first he was like, “Oh, thanks.” But then five to 10 minutes later, he responded with “Dude. What’s your number?” and called me up asking how I knew all of this stuff and where I learned it. So I described working with these channels and being really into data. Essentially from that point on, I started working full time and I worked with him for about four months.

I was focused on the main channel in a consultant role. For every video, I would help with the thumbnail and title concepts, and work with the editor on in-depth video reviews.

It’s all a game of numbers. It's this constant game of almost performing surgery on a video and asking: What do we leave in? What do we keep out? Every single scene, there’s a decision behind it.

The overarching thing I learned from MrBeast is how more channels should probably treat YouTube like a startup. He spends pretty much everything he makes and that seems crazy. But if you said, here's a Silicon Valley startup and they're spending everything they make, that wouldn't be that crazy. That's what startups do when they're growing. They pour money on the fire and try to grow faster.

The returns on YouTube are so exponential that it makes sense to burn money and really focus on building a team behind you.

If you want a career in YouTube consulting 

If I was advising someone at the start of their journey I would ask: What's an area you’re really passionate about? Great—become a specialist and get really good at that. 

If you get really good at that, you can kind of work with anyone because these big creators are constantly hiring and looking for talent.

I would advise people to—I'm not going to say work for free, because that's always an individual choice—but work for lower expectations of earnings. Find interesting channels, provide value, and use that to work with someone else.

I have seen some people jump the gun and try to be a consultant too early. The issue starts when they look at it as a good way to make money. If you're starting there, you're already starting with the wrong thing.

You don't need to be a YouTuber. You don't need to have made content yourself to be a good consultant or strategist. But have you worked with a YouTuber? I’d definitely advise people to get that experience in. If you want to be a thumbnail consultant, make a thousand thumbnails for someone.

I would also say don't overcomplicate it. If you've noticed anything about what I do, I don't really have any complicated systems. I have a very fluid approach to working with clients. I deliberately look for channels that aren't doing as well as they should be, because there’s usually easy fixes. Sometimes it's as easy as just sparking growth with one video that could take the channel to the next level.

Keep it casual, keep it fun. If you work with people who say, “I need you to come save my channel, it's broken. It's not working,” you're working with the wrong people. You're probably working with people who don't understand that your role is to optimize and make things better. It's not to turn the entire thing around and steer the ship.

Lastly, I really strive to get results early. For those first few weeks, I will maybe push the bow even further. I will do more than my usual hours or I'll over deliver or I'll put special effort into the video ideas. The reason for doing that at the start is customer buy-in. It’s insanely important for consulting because that’s what the client expects. People spend a lot of money on these things and they want to see results.

Results don't lie. Focus on the track record.

Backstage Careers is a podcast that shines a light on the linchpins working behind the scenes with some of the biggest entrepreneurs and creators. Led by YouTube expert Jeremy Mary, it has featured the influential team members behind pro creators and entrepreneurs such as Airrack, GaryVee, MrBeast, Tim Ferriss, and more.