He Hit 50K Subscribers in Under a Year | Here's Exactly What He Did

0:00I think that that's what people are craving now. I think a lot of the, the slot, like the AI slopped at people are hearing, they're really sick of it. And they want to, I think YouTube is going to river back to the way that it started where it's just people in front of a camera just talking because I'm seeing a lot of smaller channels. The algorithm is feeding me a lot of smaller creators that are doing just that. Hello everyone and welcome to this week's conversation on the creator's hub podcast. My guest today is James Hayes from the YouTube channel, Dad Mode in Dark Mode. I love the name of your channel, it's wonderful. Where he explores fatherhood, masculinity, and modern life through philosophy and real world experience. After launching his channel in March of 2025, you're gonna see how quickly it grew to nearly 50,000 subscribers with long form story driven commentary. He also works with men through private coaching and consulting is the author of Dark Mode Protocol, the survivor guide for men, the world can't control

1:02and a lot of other great stuff over at his community and his YouTube channel, James, how you doing today? I'm doing great, Dusty, I appreciate you having me on. Yeah, looking forward to it. So let's start here. How did the YouTube channel start back in March of last year, 2025 as we're recording this? What was the thought process and how did, what was the origin story of the channel? Right, so it really started with just my own life experience. I've been wanting to do YouTube since 2018. I used to watch a lot of Casey Neistat, so just watching these different YouTube channels and maybe wanted to do my own and I had a few different ideas for things, but it didn't really materialize until last year. I watched a video where this individual, he said that, you know what, you really need to stop over thinking things and just get a camera and hit record. And for me, complexity was really the bottleneck and I was able to find this really great setup

2:03with the DJI Osmo Pocket 3, where the mic connects directly with Bluetooth. So that fixed that whole problem because before I tried to do this and this really wasn't happening, I just kind of getting burnt out because of all the complexity with all the technical stuff. And so I just bought that. It was just a studio all in one, really helped me with that process. And I wanted to communicate the things that I had been going through as a single father, the things that I've seen throughout my life, dealing with the family court system and then also wanted to really make it philosophical and articulate and kind of academic so that it's not just some guy that's ranting on a camera. I wanted to provide something of value to other men and also be able to be a help to other men and be the kind of source of information that I needed when I was going through hard times. Give me a synopsis of what the channel is. If someone were to, you were to sit down and give someone a paragraph or a brief introduction

3:05to the dad mode and dark mode YouTube channel. Can you tell us exactly what we would expect? Yeah, I mean, you would expect for me to talk about really hard truths that are uncomfortable for people. So it's me diving into and also embracing that uncomfortability and just shining a light on the systems that men have to operate within and how it makes them feel and how we got there, why the world looks the way that it does and really just some things are solutions based but also just being able to acknowledge, hey, this is the way that things are and men are having a tough time. Let's talk about it. So that's what it's about. Dad mode and dark mode is that just something that you came up with on your own? Did you always have that name in mind? What kind of got you there? Because I love the name, the name of the channel. Thanks. Well, I just came up with it on my own. I was thinking of something to call it. I didn't want to use my actual name.

4:06Just wanted to be a little creative and it's kind of got a double meaning because obviously, dad mode because I'm a dad but the dark mode thing is just because, well, I'm talking about dark things that can be dark and I do embrace that. The Jungian psychology and me embraces the darkness, the shadow, if you will, but also I have all of my electronics in dark mode. So it was kind of like a tongue-in-cheat kind of thing. Absolutely, love it. I had to ask that question because I'm a dark mode guy as well. So I didn't know if it had anything to do with that. So it's good to hear that I wasn't too far off base. What do you think? I've got a couple of questions about the pace at which you have grown. I work with creators almost every day and consistently, the same question gets brought up. Why am I not growing? Why am I not seeing any movement on my channel? So the first question I want to throw your way is what do you think you did or what do you think you landed on that allowed you to grow so quickly

5:07from basically a year ago today, your channel's a year old. What do you think was it about your channel that saw such quick growth? It was authenticity. I was just a normal guy just saying the quiet part out loud in a lot of ways. I suppose that when men watch my stuff, because I get a lot of comments from men saying that is exactly what I'm going through, right? Just my message resonates with a lot of men today. And so I think that's really what it was. It was just me just being authentic and just speaking plainly and saying what a lot of people, maybe they didn't have the words for it. I think that that's a huge part of it. I'm able to articulate these things that men are feeling, but they just don't have the words. Do you think we're going to see an even bigger congregation around authenticity in the future with artificial intelligence? It's a conversation that I've been trying to start. I think we may see a shift

6:07because people are going to get so tired of this AI-generated content. Do you think we're going to see even a more shift towards the authenticity and transparency that you're talking about like in your channel? I think so, yeah. I think that that's what people are craving now. I think a lot of the, like the AI slopped at people are hearing they're really sick of it. And they want to, I think YouTube is going to revert back to the way that it started where it's just people in front of a camera just talking because I'm seeing a lot of smaller channels. The algorithm is feeding me a lot of smaller creators that are doing just that. So I think that that's what people, that's what the market wants and that's what seems to people be responding possibly to. So a lot of your content is commentary and react style content where you play a video or you have a clip and then you respond to it. Can you walk us through your process? How do you, if someone's listening and they're thinking to themselves, I'd love to add reaction content to my channel as a bucket of content or programming, but I just don't know how to go about doing it.

7:09How do you do it the right way and yours probably has evolved over time, but can you just walk us through your process of pulling the clips, respond, you know, the whole, the whole thing? Yeah, so my process, sometimes I will just kind of go off the cuff and just riff from the top of my dome other times, depending on what topic it is, if it's more in-depth topic, more cerebral topic, then I will go through the video and I'll just make different sections. I'll do a timestamp of I'll make a section from zero to two or three minutes. I usually let it play out for several minutes and then I pause it and give my commentary that I've created. I do create, I'll write my commentary and then I basically just keep that as a talking point so that I can stay on track so that I refer to that while I'm doing my video. And the technical side of things, how are you doing it? Are you just pulling up the video and then doing a screen grab or what's the tech stack as far as like getting that done

8:09and uploaded the proper way? So where it looks, doesn't look janky. As far as the process of just making it or uploading it. Yeah, making it, yes. Making it. So I use OBS for making it and as far as the process, I use ChadGPT to kind of organize it. So I will use just a word talk and I'll watch the video and in real time while I'm watching the video, I'll type my answers on what I think about it. I'll give my own opinion and also maybe do some research if it's something that they're talking about and I wanna get a better understanding of it. That's where I'll do my own deep research and then I'll just have, I'll make sure that ChadGPT does it to where it uses my exact wording. It doesn't change anything, but it makes it to where it's organized and timestamp properly. And then I have my essentially my script ready to go. Did it surprise you at how quickly it took off? Yeah, I wasn't expecting it to take off that quickly.

9:12What do you, as far as the hard part of YouTube and the things that you've had difficult with, like difficulties with, what have been the things that you've struggled with the most as far as the hurdles that you've had to get over as you've done this now for a year? Well, that's the thing when you finally have the successful video because, because well, first off, you're talking to a big audience. So there's always that and a lot of people they stop because they don't think they're getting anywhere. I think a lot of people just give up too early and I had the will to really push through that and it was four months of me. I mean, I had 37 subscribers starting out that I had gotten and then it was July. I'd started in March. It was July that I had 397. And then I just had a video do really well. And of course, through that process, I made a lot of really bad content, made some okay content and I've improved. And that's the thing is during that time frame, you really need to focus on just getting better

10:13and you naturally do if you really want to be serious about this. And of course, I understand some people want to do this as a hobby. I wanted to do this to replace my nine to five because I was in sales and I hated sales so much that I wanted that needed to be successful. And so I really focused on making sure my video, my audio were great and I had the equipment to do that. I made sure that I had a very simple process to use to where I can upload and have quality and have volume and not really get burnt out and bottlenecked. So I was able to do that. And then really it was just coming up with the ideas and I did use AI to help me kind of figure out new ideas because I would come up with my own. But it is great to use AI for brainstorming and also looking at other content creators and their what they're doing and what's relevant for that time. But I was really focused on making evergreen content that could continually be watched. And of course, when you're monetized, that's always important as for people to continually watch your videos. And so yeah, it was that and then also just negative comments

11:17because when you finally do get people, then you get a lot of praise, but you also get a lot of negative comments people saying, but worse things imaginable to you because they can because there's complete anonymity. So that was huge having to get a to grow thick skin because of that. And also, once you do have a successful video, you're always chasing that again. And then when you have a video that doesn't, that's the thing is that the videos that you think that you're really passionate about sometimes that you think will do really well. They flop and nobody cares. So it's really trying to find things that you still wanna talk about, that you think will, I mean, because if you're doing this for a living and you're making money, you still need to, you wanna talk about things that are of interest to you, but you also have to keep in mind that it's kind of like being an entrepreneur, you gotta find, you gotta provide things that other people want. You gotta think about, well, what does my audience want? How did you get through that gap or that dip? You mentioned it at the beginning of that answer.

12:18And by the way, that was some great content. That was a great answer to that question. Thank you for sharing that. How do you think people can do what you did where you had four months where you basically were speaking to the void? And I give this example all the time. When I launched my podcast, it, you know, it sat at around nine downloads per episode forever. And it was so discouraging because I felt like the guests were amazing. I felt like the conversations were fluid. I felt like the information was valuable, but it was my mom and my grandmother, God rest her soul, who were downloading it on multiple devices. But, you know, after I pushed through and I stuck with it and I got to 50 downloads and then 1,000 downloads and then 5,000 downloads in episode and then I was like, okay, I'm glad that I didn't give up, even though I wanted to at times. How did you kind of push through that and how would you encourage others? Push through it because it was something, because I had to do it. It was a half due for me.

13:18I wanted this to be my career path. I felt like this was, this was what I was meant to do. And I knew that it was gonna, it wasn't gonna look like much in the beginning. And it's kind of weird talking to a camera with very little people, but that's the thing is, you're able to do it if it's something that you're passionate about, whatever you're talking about. So I think a lot of it is, because I wasn't just making some review, like I wasn't reviewing electronics or something that was very benign or neutral. I was doing something that came from the heart. And so I think that that's a huge component of it is doing something that it made me feel fulfilled to make those videos and to create something that I was proud of, like going through that creative process and then seeing the end result. That was huge for me. And I understood that it was going to take a while for the algorithm to figure out who were the candidates for that information, who were the best people to send that out to. Then, because the things I talked about it shifted

14:21and people were, I got views doing, talking about certain things versus other things. And so it was just this process of figuring out, what are all the topics that are in my tool belt that I can talk about that get great engagement? Because that's the thing about the algorithm is it only pushes your content if it's getting engagement. So I like to keep that in mind when I make my content. I want to talk for a minute on the end of that answer about navigating controversial topics. You tackle a lot of heavy subjects. How do you approach sensitive topics to ensure that you're building a supportive community as opposed to just sparking outrage and negativity? It's one of the things that I dislike the most about the internet and have for a long time is that negativity surfaces to the top for the majority of the time where I think and would like to see positivity. I mean, we look at the news and we get sad

15:21and the news is such a feed of just turmoil and downfall. And I'd love to see what's on the internet be like less click baity and outrage clicks and more what you're doing where you're really having open dialogue about these controversial topics. So how do you navigate that? Right. Well, I do get accused of being a doomer all the time in a black pillar. That's something that's pretty common but I think that a lot of those individuals they just see the surface level. Like maybe they watch a few seconds or a few minutes and they see a title or a thumbnail which I wouldn't say are incendiary and are dishonest but of course you do have to, you have to get attention from people. And so I design all of my own titles and thumbnails but I don't make them dishonest. But I do create an open loop. I do have a background in copywriting and so I do utilize that skill for that. But I, and I'm not somebody that's like, I don't, I'm not, I guess I'm realistic about things like that what I usually tend to talk about.

16:23I do, that's the thing is I do talk about a lot of positive stuff in the midst of a lot of those dark things and I get a lot of people that reach out to me and say that my content helped them in a lot of ways because of the way that I frame things. But that's why I tried, that's why I was saying like, I think I'm different because I like to take, I mean, I'm not an academic. I'm an auto-daptic person. I'm well read, I read a lot of books and so I wanted to take that into this. Not just, not just say things, just have outrageous things to say but having data to back them up and also saying them in an appointed articulate way. I think it was the delivery mechanism that I wanted to change because yeah, I mean, people can say a lot of things that are true but they're not really gonna resonate and they're not going to be delivered and accepted and they're not gonna, you're not gonna be able to, you know, scatter seeds and plant roots. So that's what I try to, that's what I keep in mind when I make content. Hey guys, I interrupt the conversation just for a few seconds to tell you about our services.

17:26I do one-on-one coaching for YouTube creators. We have a mastermind group, five-ten bucks gets you in. You get to rub elbows with other creators if you're looking for a place to just ask your questions. You can do so on our Discord forums and our mastermind calls that are monthly as well as exclusive free podcast that I record just for that group. Also, I do YouTube channel reviews where I do six to eight minute screencast recordings looking at your channel and where I think you should be spending your time the most efficiently. And if you're looking for a couple of free resources, my email newsletter is weekly. I never spam your inbox. It's on Fridays, it's just about my personal life, my business and what I'm doing to kind of move the needle. And then I have something that's called the Entrepreneurs Toolbox, which is just a running list of links of things that are mentioned here in every conversation that I have on the podcast. Now, back to the show. Great answer. Yeah, it's one of the notes that I had made. I wanted to ask you about that because it is hard on the internet when you're making claims or you're talking about specific topics to get kind of pigeon hold. And I think you've done a really good job of navigating that and not being kind of in a box

18:27about some of the topics that you cover. And so I appreciate that about your content and what you do. I want to transition now into making money. I want to ask you the first kind of softball question is how close are you or are you now doing this full time? So yes, I am doing this full time. Okay, great. I just wanted to kind of start there. The next conversation I want to have is about how you are monetizing. You do something very unique. You offer consulting in the description of every one of your videos where you do $3 a minute or like an hour long consulting session and people can book singular sessions with you all the way up to 12 sessions with you. Can you talk about and break down how you're making money on a monthly basis and on average, how much you might bring in now on a current month? Yeah, so essentially for the booking sessions, those are for men that are dealing with high-conflict situations with co-parenting, parentalination. A lot of things that I have experienced with. And so they book for those specific reasons. And then I have the connect with me,

19:30which is that $3 a minute. And that's just there for people, usually those are for people that just reach up to call. I've had people just talk about anything and everything, usually for an hour or two, just to really talk about what's going on in their lives and they want to just have a normal conversation. So that's how those usually go. Those are more casual, but I just have that there. And that's made me a good amount of money. But then also, yeah, I've made some decent money from doing the one-on-ones with men and then also from my book sales. And so I want to continue to scale that. But yeah, I do. I would say anywhere from, well, do you want the total without the AdSense revenue or? Yeah, let's break it down like before AdSense and then after AdSense. I think that's a good way of looking at it. Okay. So I would say anywhere from with the consultations, the $3 a minute thing, and then that number and then the ebook, I would say starting out,

20:32it wasn't sustainable, but now it's anywhere from like 15 to 3,000. Sure. Maybe like I've done the numbers, but I would say maybe it's the most like on a good month, like 4, 5,000. And with AdRevenue, getting a channel of your size just so people know your channels right at 50,000 subscribers looking at some stats here. It's about 100 to 130,000 views per week. What are you looking at like AdSense-wise on average now on a good month? It obviously will go up and down. Right, yeah, my best month was December, obviously, and then of course January, tapered off. So I would say on my best month, I did a little over 3,400. Sure. Yeah, and on my worst month, like 1,700, so whatever the average of that is. Yeah. This is just something that people can get a perspective of knowing kind of where they might could be when their channel gets monetized or kind of where maybe their ad rates are if they are monetized.

21:33As far as the making money side of things go, you are at the very beginning phases. This thing that you're doing can be scaled infinitely, which is the beauty of YouTube. So what is your plan now that you're a year into this? You've made some decent money. What are your plans now and what are things you're setting up for the future to where you can turn, you know, four, five K months into 10 or $15,000 a month? Right. So that's where the reaction, the commentary came into play because before I was just doing talking head stuff. And then that was me pivoting to kind of a lot of other creators in my niche. That's really kind of the direction that they go because a lot of people want to see that type of content. So I really just adapt and evolve. And that's kind of how things have evolved. And I plan to evolve that even further. And really it's all about just coming up with really good ideas and making sure that they're relevant. So in perfecting my delivery and just growing as a creator and being able to make some more complex content

22:33that really, I would say maybe getting more incendiary but really just diving into those really hard topics even further. And I've made a lot of friends in the space that are in my same niche. And so I learned from them. I've reacted to some of their videos. So, and I think as far as, and then also I do need to, I don't really average other than having it on my videos in the video description. I don't really talk about my services too much. So I think that being able to, maybe that's maybe that's the anti-sales person in me because I was in sales for over a decade. And so I just hate, I don't want to sound like I'm selling my, I just don't like the sound of sounding, the sound of selling my services to people. I do know that I can provide a lot of value and I have provided a lot of value. And so I think it's really getting past that and actually being able to, to figure out a good strategy for, for providing my services and being able to make, make those known to other people. Because I think that there's still a lot of people

23:33that don't realize that that's what I, I do in addition to YouTube. Yeah, that's great. That's a good answer. What's something that you wish you would have known sooner? Now that you're a year into this thing, is there something you look back on thinking, man, if I would have just flipped that switch sooner or known that thing? I think, because, well, before, back to the, like, the trolls and all the, the negative people that you get in your comments section, that is kind of, especially if you're touching topics like the ones that I'm touching, that's an inevitable thing that's going to happen. And before I would respond to them and defend myself and, and, and of course, I talk about philosophy and, and there's a Machiavelli and I usually go about his approach by not giving those people any, well, I'm still growing. I mean, I'm not perfect. Because some people say some pretty crazy stuff. Sometimes I feel like I have to address, but it's, it's really, I'm trying to learn how to not give them any power in their statement because they don't know me. And a lot of that says more about them than it does about myself. And so being able to really just come to that understanding

24:36a lot sooner, but like, hey, man, just because they said it, obviously, it's not true. You don't have to respond to everyone or anyone. You can still live your life and not have to pay any attention to the mob. Yeah, I think what you just said, it tells more about them than it does about you and being able to ignore. It's easier said than done, especially with the insane things that people say, depending on the space and niche that you're in, yours probably feeds to it more than a lot of the creators that I have here on the show. I think that most people are just so discouraged on their YouTube journey in the beginning and middle phases, we talked about the dip and being able to persist through that. But they get so discouraged that they think that their voice is never gonna get hurt. I hear the statement a lot. My content is so much better than X, Y, or Z. And yet they have so many views, why don't I? What would you say to these people who are just so discouraged that they feel like

25:37their channel's not getting any views, it's not getting the traction they think that it should, what advice would you tell that person? Yeah, well, I also expanded my services to helping people out in this particular situation because there are a lot of people that reach out to me with this exact issue. And I just walked them through what I went through. And I think it's being able to identify like, oh, well, you went through those same things that I'm going through. Yeah, I didn't start off making stellar, I mean, my logic could still be improved every day. I didn't start out where I am now is not how I started out. So I think that needs to really be highlighted. My, I had very humble beginnings. I still am in a very humble beginning phase. And people just really get stuck on their own head and they get in their own way. And they also think they care too much about what people think. I'm one of those people as well. I can admit that. It's really hard because it's easy to get defensive when people, they attack your work, something that you spent a lot of time on, something that they kind of pick it apart

26:39or they misread it or say that it's one thing and it's really another thing. They don't, they don't know your intentions. And so I think that's really, that's what I, that's held me back for so long was just giving, giving too much energy to those people and too much authority to them. You really have to not read the comments a lot of times. I read them a lot less, but that's in the beginning, you want to have that engagement. And so you want to talk to your audience, but through doing that, you have, you come across all of this hate and you really have to figure out how to navigate that. And I'd say that YouTube is not for the faint of heart. It's not for people with thin skin. You do have to have thick skin and grit to make it through this. It's not easy. It's very hard. It is a job in a lot of ways. And you, yeah, you get to work for yourself, but you also do have to, you do have to provide things of value to your audience and you do have to answer to them in a certain way. If that makes any sense, just, because you can't just think about what do I want to give

27:41to people like you also like I said, you got to think about well, what would help them? What would benefit them? And it's not just about you. And the trolls are going to troll no matter what. You just have to not give them any power. Just let them do what they're going to do. And of course they're, they're said, I talk about like they're setting things. You can block certain words to kind of help with that. But at the end of the day, I just read the YouTube comments a lot less than I used to and I don't engage as much. And you know, I agree with that, but what that makes hardest is community, right? Is being, you know, being able to respond to those folks who do want to add valuable insights to the conversation that you're having, which is kind of what you're doing on your channel, is you're evoking people to talk with you and to have dialogue with you about a specific singular topic authentically, which is what you talked about at the top of this interview. So the final question I have for you is, how do you curate community? Because I think the thing that you've done so well is that your videos really lend themselves to a ton of interaction in the comment section. Just because of the topics you're covering,

28:43the way you present them and you do a really good job, how do you grow a community in 2026 on YouTube? What are things that you're doing to make sure that you foster a healthy and positive community around the channel, right? Well, one thing I've started doing also is more live streams. I want to do more of those because that's where you really get, because there are a lot of people I do recognize that have been following me since the beginning. There is an option on YouTube where people in your community they can post to the channel as well. Not a lot of people do that, but I think it's really just having more of those posts, like engaging an actual post so that they can do that. I mean, I do need to engage more, it just depends. Sometimes you do get pretty burnt out and stressed out from, because I mean, I get hit pieces done on me all the time, people saying things about me and it's not just comments, sections, a lot of stuff, so it's being able to kind of push through that and being able to sift through the wheat and the chaff

29:46and answering those people's questions as much as you can, and that does take a lot of work and effort for which I can get better at. And also being able to do more live streams because that's the thing is the same people tend to show up. You get trolls too that show up almost like burner accounts and whatnot, but that's what I think really helps foster that. And then of course you can create, I wanna create a school or a discord or something. I've had to do that in the past, but I think I do need to make that pay like $5 a month because if it's free, you get a bunch of traffic in there that's not really good. So it's a lot of work for a creator to create all these avenues for community because that's the thing, there are a lot of trolls that come in and they do what they do best. But yeah, I think having to build a community, there's gotta be some type of small paywall so that you have people that are intentional. And then if you do get a troll, you at least get $5 from them. And then they can kick them out of the community and without a refund. So you do get maybe that, but it's a double-edged sword.

30:46And I'm not perfect, I'm still trying to figure things out because I'm only a year in, I don't have all the answers, but that's kind of my, that's me shooting from the hip if that's helpful at all. It is very helpful. And I think your channel's helpful and I think that having you on this podcast is a great insight into what creators can do on the platform. YouTube provides us an amazing platform where people like you can start something a year ago and find an avenue where they're making full-time income on their creative endeavors and you're doing that now on your channel. And I hope that encourages people who are listening. If you wanna check out James' YouTube channel again is Dad Mode in Dark Mode. I'll link that as well as his e-book. So if you would like to reach out to him, you can do so that way. Don't forget to reach out to us and to find out the services that we have to offer a link down in the description below. But with that said, James, we appreciate you coming on the show and we'll talk to you later. Thank you, appreciate it, Dusty. And that's a wrap on this week's conversation. I really hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did. Definitely go check James out if you haven't

31:47in the show notes below. And if you are looking for a place to connect with other creators, check out our mastermind group. It's very inexpensive and it's, I believe one of the best bangs for your buck in the YouTube space. You're looking for something a little deeper. I do offer one-on-one coaching for creators. And then if something a little less expensive is the YouTube channel reviews where I take a look at your channel for about five to seven minutes until you where I think you should be spending the most of your time. Don't forget to check out our email newsletter as well as the links that are mentioned in these conversations in the spreadsheet. And we'll see you guys in the next conversation.