Did you have a partner or was this all yourself?
At what point did you hire employees? (If at all)
"A boutique YouTube talent management firm specializing in the servicing of top-tier YouTube celebrities." - Did you have any experience in this beforehand? How did you break into this sector? How did you initially prove credibility to potential clients?
Nice questions.
I started the company alone and (foolishly) didn't hire anyone for nearly 2 years.
When I finally saved up enough money to be able to afford to hire people, that's when things started to take-off.
I scaled the team to about 20 full-time people (including a 16 person international sales team).
I hosted sales training conference calls 3X a week over Skype from my apartment at 6 AM (the best time that worked for our entire team) and we grew the company exponentially from there (generating $10MM+ in total sales by our 3rd year).
I started working in the YouTube industry when I was 12 (making silly Minecraft YouTube videos) and eventually took a job as a talent recruiter at a large YouTube talent management firm (at 13).
From 13 - 16 years old I worked sales positions at 3 different talent management firms, learning everything there was to learn about sales and YouTuber management.
At 16, I left my job as a Senior Exec at a large talent firm I was working for at the time (forfeiting all of my recurring commissions and year-end bonus, I should add!) to found my own talent management firm, PowerTV.
At our peak, generating 10 billion annual views and $10MM+ in sales, representing some of the
largest talent on YouTube.
Fast forward, 3.5 years later, here we are! As of last month, I exited PowerTV and am now self-funding my latest venture, MailTag.
Regarding "how did I prove credibility to potential clients", I was an expert (still am, haha) on everything YouTube. I can tell you more about YouTube than you will ever want to know. And I studied everything about YouTube optimization you could find -- literally, everything. If there's an ebook, article, or YouTube video, I've consumed it!
I learned everything there was to learn about YouTube and eventually built a "portfolio/track record" of clients that I helped build into major successes that my YouTuber prospects would recognize. For instance, Jake Paul joined our firm when he "only" had 20 million monthly views. Within 6 months of becoming a client, he was generating nearly 500M monthly views.
The early days were the toughest (getting my first few clients), but once you get over the initial hump, it's a lot easier.
Hope this helps.