How a failed horror movie director co-founded one of the most popular yoga channels on YouTube

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/

There was a time 20 years ago where if you filmed a horror movie on a tight enough budget, you could plausibly turn a profit from the DVD sales alone. Unfortunately for Chris Sharpe, his entry into the horror genre came just as the DVD market was collapsing, and so his career as a movie director fizzled out after he made only one film.

Luckily, one of the stars of that film, Hilah Johnson, had a strong onscreen presence and a penchant for cooking, and together they launched Hilah Cooking, a YouTube channel that eventually grew to over 450,000 subscribers. Then a few years later Chris teamed up with another co-star from that movie, Adriene Mishler, to launch Yoga With Adriene, which now has over 13 million subscribers on YouTube.

In a recent interview, Chris walked through how he and his collaborators launched both channels, why Hilah decided to eventually end her channel, and the massive success they've seen building a yoga streaming app.