Ep. 114: How he makes educational content go viral ft. Kobi Brown

**Kobi Brown** (0:00)
Within the first 10 or 20 videos that I've made, I've probably got nearly 50 million views across everything.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:05)
And fast forward to today, you've got around 8.5 million followers across platforms.

**Kobi Brown** (0:09)
I started making these short form videos, honestly, mainly as a way to just learn.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:13)
So this brings up this idea of education versus entertainment.

**Kobi Brown** (0:16)
Algorithms reward attention. If you can get people to pay attention and entertain them and sort of sneak the vegetables in education as well, that was my goal. Like my goal was to build a long-term career communicating science accurately.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:29)
One year from now, what would you like to have achieved that you have not yet achieved?

**Kobi Brown** (0:34)
Next month, I'll actually put out a video that I've been working on for nearly two years.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:41)
So I want to get just to kick it off like a brief bird's-eye view timeline of your career so far, just to set the context for all that's to come. So what I know is that you started making these short form space videos at the start of 2022 It's your second year at college. By that summer, you're making longer YouTube videos. Your content has quickly taken off. And fast forward to today, you've got around 8.5 million followers across platforms. The Astro Kobi brand is thriving. But I'd love for you to fill in those four years, that gap. When does this become a job where you're making money to live on? What are some of the milestones or an audience size? This is the first brand deal.
This is when I made enough to actually pay my rent, etc. Give me like the abbreviated timeline.

**Kobi Brown** (1:27)
Sure. I mean, you covered it well, to be honest. Yeah, I was still, like you said, I was at college studying physics and astronomy, and I started making these short form videos, honestly, mainly as a way to just learn, like learn better for school. I found making stripped back sort of shorter descriptive videos helps me understand the content intuitively. And I did get pretty lucky that, honestly, within the first 10 or 20 videos that I had made, some big news had dropped in the sort of astronomy space world. They had taken this picture that they'd been sort of searching for of a black hole, and they'd been taking, they took this picture and released it. Yeah, like I said, within the first 10 or 20 videos that I made, and so I'm like, great, like that's good. I'll make a little short about that. And I look back at it now, and it's this horrible video, and it looks terrible. But, you know, I tell them about this picture.
And it did so well basically immediately. It got like probably nearly 50 million views across everything, across TikTok and Instagram and YouTube.
And so that was pretty much the kickstart. And I had always wanted to do this YouTube, social media stuff more professionally. And I sort of saw this as my opportunity. And so I just started posting daily basically. And yeah, like you said, it was it was daily short from stuff for a while, quite a while. And a lot of that was like learning how to make good videos. I look back and so many of them are now I'm like, that's a terrible idea or a terrible hook or it's edited bad.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:00)
Let me let me say that really quickly. Like I went back, you know, sorted your YouTube and your TikTok by oldest and watched some of these early videos. And you know, you're you're a little more formed already than you're giving yourself credit for. Because whenever I speak to anybody who has the TikTok short from history, I always sort by oldest. And compared to a lot of people I've spoken with, you were already fairly formed. But again, that there's the earlier gaming content I think that that factors in there.

**Kobi Brown** (3:24)
Yeah, I think I think part of it was that and like already being familiar with with a little bit of how these platforms work, like you need a hook and try to keep people engaged. Those things I had those rough ideas floating around in my head. But I think a big part was being comfortable on camera. I think that's like the biggest difference when I look to to today. Back then, I think I was very much still, you know, quite robotic and a bit. Yeah, but that's OK. That was all part of it. And it didn't take long, honestly. I think it was around five months from that initial sort of kick with that short form stuff to where I started taking long form more seriously. And then I signed on with a talent agency to help sort of figure out some brand deals and stuff. And I did that. Yeah, I think it was about five months, five, six months.