A Serial Entrepreneur's Failures Led to YouTube Success

0:00I really believe that curiosity is a powerful trait as an entrepreneur. it's almost like you're a scientist. You're kind of like, I wonder what would happen if I tried this. Hey, what's up? Benjamin Gottlieb here with Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. To be an entrepreneur, you have to get comfortable with failure. And our guest today knows that feeling very well. He's here to tell you how to bounce back from it. Will Young has drop ship violins. He's made coconut milk. He started a brick and mortar music school, taking wedding photos, and so much more. And now he's built a business around his YouTube channel called Young Man Cooking, which has nearly one and a half million subscribers.

0:43Will, thank you so much for doing this. That was such a generous and awesome intro there, Ben. Well, you're so welcome. By the way, I'll collect my fee for that introduction after the interview is over. So we'll take care of that later. But Will, you started a bunch of businesses and you've also closed some. So I'm curious, how do you define when something succeeds versus when it fails? Yeah, I think this is probably one of the, if not the biggest objection with starting entrepreneurs, even when you're kind of in the thick of it as well. It's kind of a constant thing that always is just always there.

1:20So you kind of have to get used to it. So regarding the previous businesses. Yeah. Like when I was running those businesses, a lot of them did not make very much money. Um, I always tell people that I would probably make more money flipping burgers at McDonald's opposed to doing that for like a decade. And these are the drop shipping businesses or selling coconut milk, that kind of stuff. That's correct. Yeah. The coconut milk. Oh my God. I was literally cracking coconuts, like physically cracking coconuts every single day. it was pretty intense. That business, I think I did that for one year.

1:58And at the end of the year, I think I only profited like a thousand dollars for the whole year. It was pretty insane. What you're saying though, is that you define, are you defining success versus failure based off of how much money you make or are there other inputs as well? During that time when I was running those businesses, it definitely felt like there was a lot of self-doubt I was questioning myself like what am I what am I doing man I'm not making any money I'm working literally 24 7 one of the times I was actually literally making this coconut milk overnight because we had to fulfill an order and I did not sleep the entire day and then the next day I had to go actually deliver that coconut milk to the vendor so yeah there were just almost every day it'd be a lot of self-questioning a lot of self-doubt and of course in that time it felt like that traditional sense of failure but the long-winded answer is now I put a lot of effort to try to rewire my brain to define that traditional definition of failure into kind of almost something different so in retrospect now with young man cooking there's so many transferable skill sets that I acquired during my previous, you know, quote unquote, failed businesses.

3:17For instance, photography, videography, all those skill sets I've learned from doing that in the past, doing wedding photography, commercial video. And of course, during that time, like, I wasn't making that much money as a photographer, as a videographer. However, now, because I've acquired those skill sets. It's completely accelerated how I run the YouTube channel because I do film it. Yeah. And you brought up some of your skills as a videographer, a photographer. You can really see those on display in earnest on Young Man Cooking, your YouTube channel, also youngmancooking.com, which is your website with us.

3:56And you can see, I'm just taking a quick look, all of the product images, right? All of the videos that you have on your channel. These are skills that you were able to develop in some of these other projects that you were working on kind of leading up to this point. I guess it almost sounds like a no duh kind of question, but in retrospect, those businesses therefore were not failures because they prepared you for this success you've had now. That's correct. That's precisely it. But of course, like I said, when I was living that during that time, it did not feel like, I mean, how would you know right no one has a crystal ball so i didn't plan on acquiring those skill sets so that i could build young man cooking so all the photos in the cookbooks with four cookbooks and all of the photos are like i i took them because i wanted to and i i really wanted to build the cookbooks from ground up all of the videos on the youtube channel all because i had filming skill sets acquired from the past.

4:56The e-commerce part of it was because I, back when I was in university, I think I was in second year university, I was studying music. I was studying violin as my principal instrument. And this is in Ontario, right? In Toronto? That's correct. And during that time, I was just like flipping violins because I had a lot of interest in being a violin maker. So I was really interested in the actual instrument. And yeah, at the time I was flipping violence here and there, just for a little side catch. I wasn't making that much money. But again, did not know that more than a decade later, I would revisit those acquired skills for e-commerce.

5:36And Young Men Cooking is kind of, I suppose, coincidentally, just became an amalgamation of all those skill sets. Will, we talked to hundreds of entrepreneurs on this program. And when you do that, you start to glean a number of themes, which our audience, our listeners are familiar with. Resilience is one that I think really is integral and also universal for all entrepreneurs, right? This is something though that is difficult to build, right? To become resilient. It's a tough skill. I'm curious, how did you get yourself through some of these failures and continue pushing? Given that, like you said, you didn't have a crystal ball.

6:14You had no idea that young man cooking was going to exist down the road and be successful? That is an incredibly great question. Thank you. It's my job, but go ahead. I think if I were to be completely, completely honest, I have no idea. And I think if you were curious enough, and I really believe that curiosity is a powerful trait as an entrepreneur. It's almost like you're a scientist. You're kind of like, I wonder what would happen if I tried this. I wonder what would happen if I tried this or do it this way or do it that way. it's that ongoing curiosity that really kept me just fired up and fueled to you know if this business didn't work but you know what i like this aspect of that business why don't we try this new project and that aspect that i liked and discard the aspects that i didn't like so kind of stuff like that so it was always almost like a refining process going back to that failure notion.

7:13It is kind of like in retrospect, I'm so glad and grateful that I went through those because if I didn't, if I didn't do photography, if I didn't do videography, if I didn't try to sell violins on eBay, if I didn't go through that intense nonsense with the coconut milk business. I was going to say, maybe you could have skipped out on the cracking of the coconuts, but the concept is right, right? If you didn't go through all of these different experiences, you wouldn't be you. And I think that's fair. I mean, we are the sum of our component parts. There's no question about that. And what you're talking about a little bit is the tinkering that many entrepreneurs do, where you take something and you iterate around it and you kind of change your approach, or you pick up skills from something else and take it to another spot.

8:00My guest today is Will Young. He's the founder of Young Man Cooking. Will, you've had all of these experiences. You've had some failed businesses. Why do you think it's so difficult for other entrepreneurs, once they experience failure, to continue? I think that's kind of like the golden question. How do you know when your current project or business is a quote-unquote failure? How do you know when to stop? How do you know when to keep going? What was it for you for some of these examples you've shared? I suppose the answer will be different for everybody. And I always say just because something worked for me does not mean it will work for everybody.

8:41For me, it's just, I suppose I had that hope and that drive of, you know, one day this will become something. And at a certain point, if something, so for instance, like the coconut milk business, at some point you kind of hit that precipice of okay you need to decide whether to really go all in on this or to take the skill sets that you've acquired from it and just move on to something else and yeah that's really hard to know the youtube channel actually was born slightly because of the coconut milk business because during that time the we had a youtube channel but it wasn't a cooking show at all.

9:25It was literally just a place for me to film a couple videos to show customers what they could do with this coconut milk. So it's really just like a couple recipes here and there. It wasn't a consistent ongoing show, but because of that, it kind of planted that seed. And some years later, I was like, Hey, you know what? Why don't we try actually building this cooking show? If it goes somewhere great. If it doesn't, you know what? At least we tried it. And clearly it has gone somewhere and you were not afraid to try. And again, congratulations for your success on the channel. You strike me as someone who has a relatively positive outlook on things, right?

10:03You're not afraid to fail. You have in the past, you can take the silver linings from those experiences and apply them to your next venture. But that probably isn't how you are or feel every single day, right? I mean, there are times I'm sure where you felt like, you know what, I got to throw in the towel. I'm going to go work for somebody else. Were there ever moments in your career where you felt like giving up and throwing in the towel and how did you keep going? This is like the crazy part because especially with the nature of YouTube, YouTube is kind of unpredictable in many ways. We'll put out a video, we'll put a lot of effort, a lot of attention, a lot of energy into a video.

10:44And we're like, yeah, you know what? This is going to do great. People are going to love this. They're going to so much value from it and then we put it out and it completely bombs and it just does horribly performance wise it doesn't reach very many people and it just doesn't do well and we're like you know what we spent so much time energy and resource on that episode and just does not do well now in the traditional sense of failure i mean is that does that mean that we failed well if that's the case then we potentially could be failing every single week that's kind of the way i see it so you kind of never really know and just have to keep on going keep plugging away and be resilient everything has an element of risk everything has an element of that quote-unquote failure it really is up to you personally what you feel like is is truly something that you failed at or if there's something that you can learn from it and make the next video or the next thing better, then that truly is not a failure.

11:46It really is just a stepping stone that was required. A stepping stone that's required. And as you just mentioned, if you want to use the analogy of YouTube for your business, if you're listening right now, yeah, if a video doesn't do well, is that a failure? You could think of it as such. And in fact, you're failing almost every day, Right. So yeah, well, it's a, that's a great point. There was also a key failure in your life. And when I say key, I mean, key in so far as the development of your resiliency as an entrepreneur in this music school that you had started, you had thought in that moment, like, Hey, I might just have to throw in the towel with this.

12:19It was very frustrating. Tell me a little bit more about that. I love talking about the music school because this is something I started. It was my first brick and mortar business right out of teacher's college. And I had no money, no resources we had to take out a loan but it was just fueled by passion i was like you know what i love music i still do uh i really would just want to open my own music school and teach music so we took out a loan and and started this music school really bootstrap and of course first first couple of years no money and i was i was making negative money because we had to pay rent i had to pay utilities.

12:58I had to pay the teachers and I will never forget how it made me feel. I will never forget the feeling of going into work, not only not making any money, I was actually making negative money. I was going into work so that everyone can get paid. It just made absolutely no sense. And that was so discouraging. I will never forget that feeling. And eventually you had to close that school down, right? We actually eventually sold that school. So we actually turned things around fairly quickly. In about a year and a half, we broke even. And we started a team that would play wedding music and corporate events and stuff.

13:39So we kind of added a lot of new things to the business. And eventually it was very profitable. And in four years or after four years, we ended up finding a interested buyer and we ended up selling the business. And we're like, you know, we love how it was built up and it was very profitable. The students were very happy and just kind of thought, you know, it's time to move on and do something else. Well, again, it's incredible how you can take a moment like that where you're walking into work, paying to be there, paying people, making negative money, turn that around to a profitable business, not get discouraged along the way, which is really important for entrepreneurship in general.

14:20Again, my guest today is Will Young. He's the founder of Young Man Cooking. Before we continue with the interview, let's take a quick break. And I want to talk to you, the listener. If you haven't already, please take a moment and subscribe or follow to Shopify Masters wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you don't miss an episode. You know, we publish episodes twice a week, 104 episodes a year with interviews that feature founders and experts alike. It's incredible content for entrepreneurs, regardless of where you are on that entrepreneurial journey. So if you haven't already, subscribe and hey, why not?

14:53Leave us a review. Let us know what you think. Back with Will Young, the founder of Young Man Cooking. Will, I'd like to get into cooking itself and how you taught yourself to cook. We were talking before the break that you had all these other projects, one of which was a music school. You were selling violins. Where did cooking come from? Cooking was always an interest of mine. Never thought at a professional level. I wouldn't even say I'm at a professional level today. I'm really just a home cook, just like everyone else. Although it was always an interest of mine. And I think the cooking really came out of necessity because this was during the time when I was working as a photographer and videographer.

15:37I was always kind of on the go because the projects were always not at your house. And I always had to make quick meals that were easy to put together. but I also really wanted to use real ingredients and not just something that was pre-packaged or highly processed so it kind of just came about because of necessity and then when I first started obviously like I did not know what I was doing and just find a lot of inspiration from other creators who I think are fantastic and of course like celebrity chefs like everybody else. So you found that inspiration but it wasn't just, you know, cooking for yourself, you started to find out or you started to think at some point, like, Hey, um, what I'm doing could become its own thing.

16:29It's on business, something that I'm doing for myself to feed myself on my way to these shoots, right? These photo and these videography shoots, but young man cooking really found its niche with plant-based cooking. Where did that come from? On the channel, I do say that I'm not vegan or, or whatnot. and the plant-based cooking is exclusive to the cooking show so we only make plant-based food and naturally at home I mainly cook plant-based anyways off off camera and what really drew me to plant-based I suppose cuisine is the kind of going back to that curiosity notion it it's really amazing it really is incredible how far we've come from just carrot sticks and celery sticks the the world of plant-based food is just ever evolving there's so many new innovations and i'm definitely not uh kind of talking about like the the really highly processed stuff that you find on the supermarket shelves a lot of which is really good but being able to make say for instance like an alfredo sauce just literally made out of cashews and water and it tastes has the same mouthfeel as traditional dairy-based alfredo sauce but having that same mouthfeel and texture and taste is truly incredible and that's just the tip of the iceberg there are so many different techniques and innovations and it keeps on evolving with client-based food so it keeps me very curious and interested and fascinated.

18:10And that's kind of how the theme of plant-based cooking kind of stuck with the show. Well, and you've really found your niche. And I think what makes shows like yours and companies like yours successful is this process of, you know, having a problem to solve, which is what you had. You needed to go out and you were shooting stuff around town. You needed to eat something quickly, but it needed to be healthy. taking that idea, that problem you solve for yourself, and then bringing it up a level so that you can solve this problem for others, right? But how did you know that that was the right niche for you?

18:45Did you just kind of throw something at the wall or were you like, hey, I think there's an opportunity here for this channel and for my products to focus on being plant-based? I don't think I really ever, like I never had an official business plan made up or anything like that. It literally was just a, I always tell people that, or especially people who you know want to start a project want to start a business want to be entrepreneurial i always tell people just get started everything starts as a side hustle and that thing that you're interested in that hobby that you really love doing you're excited to come home from work to you know start working on that hobby you know that that's all you really need it's it always starts as something you wanted to do for fun or you wanted to do as a side hustle.

19:31And it really just goes from there. Well, let's talk about what happens from there. So you start the channel and then you start monetizing your channel, selling merch, selling your cookbooks, which you showed me a little bit earlier. How did you decide what the right products were and the right recipes were to sell? Yeah. I think one thing I've really come to learn and to appreciate is, of course, as an entrepreneur you do need to make money in order to keep things running in order to continue building your business and it is one of those things where if there's no profit there's no production so resources do matter however i think it's always better to think in a mindset of how much value can you add for people and the money will be a byproduct of that so always within the priority on value that's kind of what i always ask myself with with the current cooking show is thinking about recipes and videos episodes that will add a lot of value to the viewers and it will really help them out with their daily life so on the channel for instance i'm not at least not right now looking at making the fanciest meal or fanciest recipe that you need 50 ingredients for not many people will actually have the time and effort or resource to make something like that so right now at least on the channel we try to focus on stuff that is easy to put together not too many uh out there ingredients stuff that people have access to And one of the main goals of the cooking show is for me to genuinely, I just want people to feel empowered, feel capable, and be able to make great meals for themselves, for their family, for their friends, right from their very own kitchen.

21:31Yeah, it's a simple and genuine goal. And I think it's great work that you're doing with that channel and the mission itself as well. Back to this idea, though, of recipes and finding out which ones are going to fit in your books, which ones you're going to talk about. Coming up with recipes in and of itself is a process of trial and error. And you could even call that a process of success and failure, right? I'm sure it would be impossible for you to recall how many failed recipes you've tried to make that just never made it in a cookbook, never reached that level. And in some ways, that's a metaphor for what you've been doing with your whole life, if I may, right?

22:11This idea of iterating and not being afraid of failure. Do you find that cooking, perhaps it's a good place to experiment with failure if you're uncomfortable with it? Absolutely. And it definitely hits hard when, and it has happened, cooking something or making a recipe and even actually filming it. so taking the whole day of doing that and deciding afterwards you know what this is just not that great let's just let's just scrap this whole thing so that was it does happen sometimes and it's completely disheartening it hurts a lot because that's a huge waste of resources but again it's that ongoing experiment that is literally how i've or at least ongoing that's how i rewire my brain to think is everything is essentially an ongoing experiment you don't know unless you try one of the things that keeps me going and have that urgency all the time to keep innovating keep building keep going is you can ask yourself what you fear more there's one trying something and it not working out or two you know you're 75 80 years old and looking back like, you know what?

23:26I wonder what would have happened if I tried that, but it's too late at that time. At the end of each episode, Will, you have this sign-off and I may be misquoting it, but I'm going to do my best. You say you can now make this with absolute confidence. That's right. Fascinating in the context of this interview. I'm curious, how did you come up with that? And what does that mean to you now after years and years of building businesses and experiencing different levels of success. I actually have no idea where that came from. I think in our older episodes, it just happened. And I'm like, Hey, you know what?

24:02That'll be a cool, a cool thing to have consistently done every episode, just kind of a cool little quirky thing. And it ended up being the name for the second cookbook cook with confidence. And it just became this thing that I say every episode now. So it's just something you say, but coincidentally, it lines up very appropriately with our conversation today, being comfortable with both your failures and also being able to recognize when you've been successful. Will Young, founder of Young Man Cooking. Will, thank you so much for your time today on Shopify Masters. Thank you so much for having me, Ben.

24:41Shopify Masters is produced by Megan Coyle, Gogo Zoger and Schweng Esther Shan, our engineers, Miku Betlam and Matt Schwartz. And I'm your host for today, Benjamin Gottlieb. Come back every Tuesday and Thursday to catch a brand new episode of Shopify Masters. And hey, if you're still here, go share this episode with another entrepreneur. Until next time, take care.