How Cassey Ho went from fitness instructor to YouTube millionaire (Our full interview)

0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.

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1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. What's up, everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Colin and Samir show. On today's episode, we are joined by Cassie Ho. Now, Cassie's been on YouTube for a very long time. She has a YouTube channel called Blogilates with over 8 million subscribers. I like to think of Cassie Ho as essentially Prime, Feastables, and Chamberlain Coffee, but many years before those brands were making headlines. Over the years, she grew a really tight-knit community on YouTube and started out like most creators do, selling them merch, putting her logo on a shirt, but today has two separate brands that both do over eight figures each in revenue per year.

1:58The two brands are called PopFlex and Blogilates. PopFlex is available online and Blogilates is actually a partnership with Target. So it's available in physical retail stores. Pretty cool. In this episode, we talked to Cassie as well as her husband slash business partner, Sam, who you will hear on the episode about how she grew her YouTube channel and then was able to turn it into these colossal businesses. Now, we actually went to go visit Cassie at her home when we filmed this episode. So we have a video that goes along with this, but it's a little bit different. It includes more of us walking around her home, learning more about her strategy of how she promotes her products through YouTube shorts.

2:35So if you want to check that out, you can check that out. It is a different experience from this. So you can totally listen to this and then go watch that. It's live on the YouTube channel now. All right. There's so much to learn from a creator who's been on the platform for as long as Cassie, but also someone who's built two massive brands. So we hope you guys enjoy this episode. If you have something you want to say about the episode, you can head over to YouTube, put a comment in the comment section there. All right, here's our episode.

3:03So you started on YouTube in 2009 and we were speaking with you earlier and you said that 2018, 2019 was this point for you where you were close to quitting and you had told Sam you wanted to move to Hawaii. Yes, that's right. What was going on at that time that this career had become so difficult 10 years in? Yeah, so internally and externally, I felt like I was just being eaten alive. So internally, I had some bad hires and so I just really didn't feel supported. People were not in it for the vision and the mission. Outside, there was a lot of body shaming going on. A lot of people just commenting things about my body when I was just trying to teach some Pilates videos.

3:47And so that was really messing with me. And the business side of things, we added plus size. And this was something completely new for us. I did not understand. And so when we launched it, the fit wasn't quite right. And for a couple of collections, it was so inconsistent. And as you guys probably know, fit is the most, like you have to be consistent or else you don't have a brand. And so sales actually kept declining. All of that was happening at the same time. And I I really felt like I was not made out to do this. I'm a terrible CEO, I'm a bad designer, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't even look the part to be a fitness instructor and I just wanted to quit.

4:24And Sam said, okay, just give it 30 more days and if after 30 days it doesn't work out, okay, we'll think about what to do next. And it was crazy because in those 30 days things started to change. Wow. Before we go any further, I want to acknowledge we're in your home. Thank you for inviting us here. It is like a completely beautiful space. And it is also so cool. We spent a large portion of the day just seeing how functional this space is and getting to explore kind of where you are in business through the space here, through all the apparel that's hanging in racks to the weights that we get to see that you make, to the food we got to eat, we get to eat pancakes.

5:08Yeah. And really like exploring what you've built through YouTube. is honestly extremely inspiring to me because one thing that's really unique about you is you didn't build a business that is YouTube. You know, you aren't the type of creator who like built the business and it was like, it's brand deals, it's advertising, you're in the advertising business. You built an audience and a community and then were able to build businesses on top of that. It's pretty amazing where you've come to here. and I wanted to like go back in time to that first upload. Just walk me through why you uploaded that video in 2009.

5:48Like what was the thinking behind it? Why did that first upload come about? Yeah, I had been teaching Pilates at 24 Hour Fitness at the time and I had gotten a job offer for a corporation on the East Coast and so I needed to move cross country and my students were like, who's gonna teach pop Pilates? And at the time it was the only Pilates format that was choreographed to pop music. There was nothing like that at the time, only Pilates are classical music or no music. And so I decided to upload a little routine for them and I emailed it to them and I was like, Hey, do this if you miss me. And that was it.

6:22It was literally for 40 people. And then a few months later I check it and there's thousands of views, hundreds of comments asking me to do more like it. And I didn't even have the concept of what is a subscriber? What are these comments? Like I didn't understand. But that really was the beginning of building the community and listening to the people in my community, which truly is what has led me to where I am today. It's always been that feedback and that constant back and forth of serving them. Because when I serve them, I serve me too. Did you, like, when people asked you to make another video and you came back and saw like, oh, wow, thousands of people have watched this video.

7:03Did that excite you to make another video? Um, I think I was confused. Yeah. Cause I didn't think I would ever make another video. Right. And it was like probably a few months between me doing the first video and the second video. Cause I had moved already to the East coast. Right. I didn't even know where to film this video or what to film it on. Um, I was just like, okay, I'll just do it. And they kept watching it. And I was like, okay, I'll do it a little bit more frequently. And it wasn't until I quit my job, um, that I began to do it a lot more frequently, but that is a whole nother thing.

7:33I quit my job because my bag ended up in Shape Magazine. And I took that as a sign to quit my job, which I absolutely hated. And I bought a ticket to China on Friday. I left on Sunday. I said, I'm going to go to the Canton Fair, find a manufacturer and like, let's go big. Because if I don't give myself the chance to 100 % succeed, I'll never know. And so I went for it. And when I came back, I had to make ends meet. I taught Pilates 12 times a week. 12 times a week, wow. 12 times a week, yeah. Yeah, morning, middle of the day and evening. That's the only time you teach group fitness. And it was hard, but it was such good training because that's when I really became a great Pilates instructor.

8:12And that could translate on camera too because it was the same. And it was all those weird pockets of time when I would film videos. So it was perfect, but it was also like such a struggle. Everything was such a struggle. Yeah. Yeah. So let's zoom into that bag because in your first YouTube video, that bag is featured above you. It's like a product placement that you did, And it was just, it's so interesting to me that you had that, you know, early on of like, let's put some product in here that I designed, but also evident from our conversations with you that like design and making physical goods has always been at the forefront of what you wanted to do.

8:45What was the story behind that bag, that yoga bag? Okay, so I had been, like, if we rewind like a couple years, I was teaching at a very small studio, Pilates to like literally three people. And I had to carry my yoga mat, my bottle, my towel, my CDs and my keys at the time. And there was nothing cute to carry it in. I was like this. And then when I went probably to Target to like look for a bag, it was just like disgusting hemp designs. I was like, I want something feminine and beautiful. And so I went to downtown LA, bought some scrap fabrics, made myself a cute bag. I brought it to class and my students were like, what's that?

9:24Like, we want one. And so that inspired me to like make it a thing. and so that's when I flipped through the yellow pages like the literal yellow pages like this and I looked up like probably something like sewing or something like that and I like found someone and I called them up um and actually the business like during the day like a laundromat or something but like part of the business was also we manufactured little things it was just enough for my teeny tiny units and um that's how I made my first batch of bags and that bag that you see in that video was one of those first bags that that teeny manufacturer did for me.

10:00And that was because you felt like you wanted a more aesthetic or more, just like a yoga bag that you wanted. Yeah, it was just a bag that I wanted. And that's it. That's how it is. I want this sweater, so I'm going to make the sweater. That's it. Yeah. How did you get it into the magazine, into Shape Magazine? So, I was looking through some physical magazines. I was looking at like, okay, who's the fitness editor? Who's like, I don't know, the hot picks editor or whatever. and I decided to just find their address and attention them and just I sent out a bag with a note I don't even know if I emailed them honestly I think I just sent them out and every bag was like gold to me because I didn't have that many um and luckily like I think it was eight months or so into my job my sister sends me a text message and there's a picture of her finger pointing to something that looks like my bag in something that looks like a magazine I'm like what?

10:56And so I run out to Target during my lunch break. And then I go grab Shape Magazine and I'm flipping through it. And then I see my bag and like, it's like a little mentioned, but still, oh my God, like someone actually thought it was a real brand. Like, what is this? And then I just started crying and I was like, okay, this is a sign. I'm going to quit my job. I'm going to give myself that chance to succeed. And that's how it all started. Wow. You're, you know, first and foremost, you moved because you were going to med school, right? No. So, I actually, so I majored in biology, minored in business, and I was supposed to go to med school, but I actually, last second, dropped out of organic chemistry to sabotage the med school track because my parents weren't listening to me about how much I didn't want to do this.

11:46And I just decided that it'd be better if I just ruin everything. So that became a really bad strained relationship with both of my parents. But no, I actually moved to the East Coast to enter into a buying program to find a fashion buyer. Because that was the closest way I could get to fashion without having any design degree. So I thought, okay, I'll use my analytical skills from science and then we'll figure it out later. There's a few things happening at once. You're exploring like, how do I get a job in fashion, right? You're teaching Pilates, you know, cause that's what you do and that's what's, you know, paying the bills, right?

12:22At the time. And then you're making videos in between there. And then like merchandise emerges through, you know, or you're making merchandise like the yoga bags and then the blogilates shirts. Merchandise is not an easy, not the typical or not an easy first monetization Avenue for a creator. And this is also what, what year is it? 2010, 11? Yeah, something like that. When was the first time that making a video translated to sales in even like a significant way? Did the creator career kind of take off first and then product after? So the first time that it translated into sales was when I posted, at the time the only social media was Facebook, if we don't count YouTube.

13:09and people were like, hey, Cassie, can you make a shirt? And I'm like, with what on it? And they're like, with blogilates on it. I'm like, why do you want my screen name on it? Like, that's weird. And then so we had a design contest and then we ended up printing this, someone's design on, after the community voted, whatever that was on some Forever 21 shirts that we screen printed. And then they sold out within minutes. And I was like, oh, okay, there's something here. what what was paying the bills at this time while you were doing these different things and when did youtube start to play a factor in that i was paying the bills at the time i don't know i was trying to teach a lot um and how much does a pilates teacher at that time like how much do you make oh no no definitely not a lot especially when you're teaching in a big box gym it's like under 20 dollars an hour a class a class and there's 50 to people in the class.

14:05And you don't teach that in any classes. No, I think one of my biggest, first big breaks in YouTube, in my YouTube career was when Livestrong reached out and asked if I would do a full series for them. And they paid me this day rate that I had never even imagined was possible. What was that day rate? It was 5 ,000. 5 ,000. 5 ,000. And I negotiated myself. Wow. I mean, that is like an extremely good day rate. Yeah, that was really good. Bottom line, there wasn't a roadmap to monetization at that time as a YouTube creator. No. Right? There wasn't like, oh, this is what you do. First, you make some money on AdSense, and then you do brand deals, and then you launch a D2C brand, or there's memberships, there's Patreon.

14:50That didn't really exist at that time, right? No, it wasn't. And then real, when merch, or at least my products became so much more of a bigger thing, was when we went into these inspirational shirts that is like so 2012, 2013, 14 vibes, like neon colors and like all these words on top, that and inspirational water bottles with the timer. There was a month when we sold 30 ,000 units of one bottle. Like it became a thing. Like, and the great and sad part of that is that because it was so easy to copycat, because it was just like graphics on a thing that I bought to print on. A bunch of like Etsy stores started to do the literal same thing, even literally take my graphics, and then some big box stores started to sell them to, and that's when I was like, ah, can't do this anymore.

15:43Also, didn't want to wear it anymore. And so that's when I decided to do real clothes, which I had kind of avoided in the beginning because I knew sizing was going to be a problem, which it almost ended me, the sizing. Wow. Yeah. I'm just going to ask, what's your first thought? I'm making fitness videos. People are watching these. Now I'm going to charge for fitness videos. Because that was the model of fitness, right? It was DVDs. There was memberships, online memberships. Was that not your first thought? Or you wanted to be a designer so bad that it was like, I'm building this community and I have an opportunity now to become a designer and pursue my dream in fashion?

16:22Yeah. I think the design has always been there from the beginning because i need to use my products and my videos anyway but the other things made sense along the way like the dvds like the book deals like having an instructor training program so that eventually pop pilates that format that i started teaching back in college ended up becoming the official pilates of all 24-hour fitnesses within a training program yeah so that ended up happening and then um having courses uh in like cookbooks and ebooks that sold like crazy. Like, in fact, my first ebook sold more in the first day than my entire random house like book deal.

17:02Oh, wow. Yeah, it's like, it was like that. And so these things happened as I was going along my own fitness journey. I would write programs for me that ended up working for other people too. Cookbooks with my recipes that worked for me that ended up being with other people too. But these were things that I think were very in line with like Casio me as a person and where I was on my fitness journey. And then behind all of that, the design was just always there. It just like became more as I kind of did less fitness stuff. Yeah. And who was helping you during this time figure this out? Yeah. Because this is a lot, right?

17:38Like once you build an audience and all of a sudden, like you mentioned the Livestrong deal, like you're kind of like, how do I price this? What do I do? Like were you just, were there other creators? Like who was, did you have a manager? Who was helping you along this way? So from the very beginning, Sam, my husband, has been helping me. And he's definitely the numbers guy. That's how the work is generally split. But today, like I'm the CEO head designer. He's the COO, also CFO, deals with all the numbers and analytics and logistics and all that kind of stuff. Back then, it was split in a similar way, but like on a much smaller scale.

18:13But also in the very, very, super, very beginning, my parents allowed me to send all these boxes of clothes and bottles like to their garage and their living room and ended it like piling up the whole house. And we started shipping out of my parents' garage. And eventually we got a warehouse in Fremont and that's where all the, you know, 30 ,000 bottles that were. And like we tried to figure out what warehousing was and customer service was. But now we have a different facility that handles that. But yeah, my parents were evolved a little bit in the beginning as well. So what's the journey of Blogilates?

18:46because today, like today Blogilates is available in Target and it's a licensing deal that you have. Like that brand went from fitness videos on YouTube and it's gone through a lot of transformations. And that's still what the channel is called today. And tell me about the journey from, you know, Blogilates from like that era, you know, of selling merchandise and getting things going and having books to where it is today. Okay. Okay, so Blogilates actually started as a blog. That's why it's blog. Hence Blogilates. Blogilates, Blogilates. Blogilates, Blogilates. Blog, and then YouTube, and then really just making fitness videos because I put one up, and then people started asking for more.

19:30Yeah. And then that inflection point of people wanting merchandise, so I did that one design contest on Facebook, and that led to more motivational bottles and shirts and things like that until there were too many copycat designs. And so I switched in around 2016 to creating our own activewear. And this is like probably a few years until Lululemon being like so huge and everyone wanted like actual activewear. So started that the first two collections were good, but we only had standard sizes and no plus sizes. And I guess like if I'm just going to stop there for a second, original fans were not happy about that because my original collections were priced in a way that made sense for the fabrics and the quality that we were doing, but they were used to those like 15 or$20, like train and senior main senior shirts.

20:15And they were really upset with me and had thought that I had left them behind. So there was a lot of that to battle through to prove like, Hey, no, I'm like actually doing something different and it's good. And I'm a real fashion brand and a lot of kind of stuff. So that was the beginning of Popflex. That's when Popflex was his own brand and blog a lot. He was like the fitness videos and I would wear Popflex. And anyway, that went on for a little bit of time. And there was struggles, like I said, with the sizing and Popflex almost died. At the same time, Blogilates was dying too. Well, me, Cassie Ho, Blogilates was dying because I was not happy with what I was doing.

20:49And I had felt like with the employee drama, the internet drama and everything, I just didn't know who I was anymore. Cause I felt like I just kept doing things that people wanted me to do, but I never looked like what they wanted me to look like. I never like did workouts that made them happy enough or like, I just felt like, who am I living for? So I decided to go on this 90 day journey where I was just going to figure out who I was again, but through fitness. So I was like going to go on a super clean diet. Like I just, I find myself through fitness. Like this is how I emote kind of, and I was going to diary every single day.

21:21And after that 90 day journey, I really found myself again. I looked better than I ever did. I felt stronger than I ever did. And then I realized like, I know exactly what I want to do with my life. And it was after that 90 day journey that everything changed for me. The business changes was 2019 and Popflex began to grow again after that. And now it's 2023 and we've seriously like have over then doubled every single year after that 90 day journey. So yeah. And then, And so, yeah, and then in 2020, at the end of 2020, Blogilates launched at Target. And that's when there were two brands because I never thought Blogilates was really going to be like a brand brand.

22:04Now it's a brand brand and like Popflex is a brand. So it's really cool. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info. And if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40 % your first year at LifeLock.com slash podcast. Terms apply. Can you give us a sense of the size and scope of each of the brands of Blogilates and Poplux?

22:43Yeah. Now you have two brands. So each business on their own is an eight-figure business and they've both been growing tremendously. That's like truly unbelievable, right? Like do you sit back and think like, wow, you had, like had you actually become a fashion buyer, this wouldn't have happened? It would have never happened. And had you not uploaded fitness videos to YouTube, you would not have successful clothing brands. I know. It's crazy. But it's always been about following my heart first and also listening to what people are saying. The right people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The right people are saying.

23:19Even just the fact that it started by serving your physical community. The first video was there so that 40 people could follow along because you were moving and you weren't going to be able to teach anymore. I think that's so representative of how you make content today. The fact that you will scroll through the comments and pick a specific comment or three or four, put them in a short and right there address problems or concerns or questions or whatever from your direct community. Yeah. Yeah. It's always been like that. And that is like, not only do I let that guide me, but also it helps the community feel like they're heard because they are, and not just by me, but we share these comments on Slack with our entire team.

23:59People are always screenshotting things. We have a specific channel called Customer Improvements where people just screenshot ideas and stuff from what our community is saying. It's really important to me because I know I would not exist. Our business would not exist. Our, the jobs that our employees have would not exist without our fans. Like they have supported the dream, like literally. You have probably, you know, 10X the visibility of your brand and also yourself personally. You cannot be in a space with, you know, 100 plus million views a month where everyone agrees with you. How does it change when you add that scale of visibility and that scale of voices to the creative process?

24:38Like how do you know who to listen to and who not to from a feedback perspective? Yeah, luckily now with the 10x more views, it's on my designs and not on my body. So that I'm grateful for. So I'm glad that I'm dealing with that. But yeah, there's going to be people that they're like, oh, why is this neck hole so big? Like, it's like not even that big, like, you know, stuff like that. And it's just like, okay, like, I have to make sure that I first, I have to like the design, because if I don't like it, I'm not going to wear it. I'm not and talk about it, it's not gonna sell. That's one very important.

25:14Secondly, we make clothes for all types of bodies. And so one thing that comes out may not work for someone, but it may work for someone else. So it's also about educating our fans about like, hey, just because this doesn't work for you, doesn't mean like you need to hate on it. Like the next thing could be for you. And so I think I have to really just follow my aesthetic because if I begin to like, oh, make the sleeve a little shorter, make it a little, I'm gonna look like a Walmart brand. Like you end up looking so mass when you listen to everybody. You have to have a strong backbone. You have to know exactly where you're going to go.

25:48And fashion should make you feel emotional. It like should make you feel something. Either you're going to hate it or you're going to love it. Like, but if you feel like meh, like what's the point of existing? Wow. That, that I feel like you, you're speaking about fashion, but I feel like you're also speaking to just artistry and like creativity. I think we're seeing that on YouTube right now too, where there's a path to kind of figuring out what's going to work right now and what a mass amount of people would like. But it's kind of creating this homogenous nature to YouTube where everything kind of looks and feels the same, right?