How Nick DiGiovanni Gained 8.5 Million Subscribers in 1 Year

**Zack Blank** (0:00)
We really never leave anything up to chant, that that's what allows us to stay toward the top of the space. It went from like 50 to 100 views per day, to now like 15,000 views per day. A good video is something captivating, it probably sparks interest. It has a story that you can follow. It's for film and TV, it's like, it's visually appealing, it's nice to look at. We, at this point, kind of, we're trying to shoot videos at least like two to three months before we post them.

**Unknown** (0:23)
Can you talk about your most popular one, the 500 million views one? Oh my god, how do you go about to find the right idea to be sure that it's going to go over 10 million views?

**Zack Blank** (0:34)
You just have to think through every tiny detail and just make sure everything's there, because when you're filming, things are crazy, there's chaos.

**Unknown** (0:41)
Over a billion views in long form and 10 billion views in short form, you're the producer for Nick DiGiovanni. So for those who don't know you, can you tell us more about your background, how you became the producer for Nick?

**Zack Blank** (0:52)
Yeah, of course. Well, thank you guys for having me today. It's awesome to be here. So it actually all started out, this whole thing with Nick. It started out because of a love for food that I had since I was a very young kid. Basically, when I was like even as young as four or five years old, I was obsessed with the Food Network, which was a big channel in the US. And every day when I got home from school, I would just love to watch the Food Network, and then I learned to cook, and I helped my mom cook in the kitchen. And I was always just so excited and passionate about cooking and food and everything like that. So, as I got older, I also started to get interested in startups and entrepreneurship. And then I kind of decided one day that my dream career, like the goal was to find a career mixing business and food, was kind of the goal because those are my two big passions. And so growing up in high school, I kind of got some internships that were in business and food, like a local catering companies and restaurant groups. In college, I kind of did the same thing. And then around early 2021 is when I first started seeing Nick blow up everywhere on my social media. And I started seeing him on TikTok, and then followed him on Instagram and YouTube and everything. And I just became really instantly excited and passionate about what he was building. For me, as someone who grew up watching the Food Network, I was just really inspired by how well he was able to connect and resonate with this next generation of people who like food. All those people on TV, they kind of fell out of relevancy.
As the times went on because TV grew smaller than social media grew bigger. So Nick was the first one I saw who just like impressed me as much as those Food Network people. And then one day, what I did was I sent him a cold email, and I figured out what his email was, sent him an email. And we started talking and we kept it going from there. Originally, we started working on just a couple of projects together, and then it really blossomed into this relationship where now I basically help him run the YouTube channel and also help oversee all of our other operations and things that we do under the Nick brand.

**Unknown** (2:56)
In what year did you send that email?

**Zack Blank** (2:58)
That was early 2021 So now I've been working with Nick for about three and a half years. And yeah, that was when I was a software in college at the time. I was probably 20 years old at the time because now I'm 23 years old.

**Unknown** (3:11)
Got it. And I'm sure a lot of people who watch this podcast want to work with, let's say, their dream creator, right? So I'm curious, what did you put in that email that led...

**Zack Blank** (3:21)
Yeah...

**Unknown** (3:22)
.to him replying back and forth?

**Zack Blank** (3:24)
Definitely. It's a great question. And it's something I was curious myself about recently. So I actually pretty recently looked back at my original email. There's a couple of things that I think are really important for a cold email. One is a clear purpose. Like, what I did was I asked Nick... At the time, Nick had this company that was like a veggie pasta company that he started in college. And I very specifically asked Nick if I could help him with marketing for this veggie pasta company. That was like the one thing that I figured I could help with. Because at the time, I knew nothing about videos or video production. And even then, he was doing well with his videos, but they were much smaller than they are today. So I knew at the time I just couldn't help him with videos. I knew I could help him with marketing, food, whatever. That was something I was good at. So I reached out about that. So I would say that's something always that's really helpful is reach out with a very specific ask and something that you know will resonate with the person.