LiveLikeAViking YouTube Channel… gets shut down! Why that happened and other advice I’d like to offer…
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As some of you know the Live Like a Viking Youtube channel was removed yesterday. Right after I found out I spent about four hours writing a video about what had happened and outlining where I plan to go from there. Obviously we’re back up and running so the video I wrote is a moot point but I still wanted to share with you the events that transpired and I want to give you some advice, just about life in general.
I went to sleep and all is well I wake up the next morning to find two years of work and somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 videos followed by over 21,000 subscribers vaporized! Gone! The only reminder that a channel even existed was an email from YouTube telling me I had violated something in their content policy. The email further said because of that your channel has been terminated. No description of what the violation was, no phone number, just a link to an appeal form if I felt so inclined to waste my time filling it out. I suppose the logical response should have been anger, anger at YouTube for not notifying me of whatever it was they found offensive, for not giving me a chance to fix it before they whack the entire channel. But that’s not how I felt and I’ll tell you why. First, I’m sure I did violate multiple parts of their content policy – maybe not my last 40 or 50 videos but before that, in fact, I’m not even sure I knew there was a Content policy back then, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were multiple videos where I didn’t even give a disclaimer, but as we know ignorant of the law is no excuse. Because of this YouTube had a valid point – guilty as charged your honor. Second, I knew SARS and peptides were a risky topic- research chemicals not intended for human consumption. Is it really surprising that something catastrophic was bound to happen? I was fully aware I was talking about substances that are legal to possess but illegal to inject or ingest as a human. I was fully aware I was operating in a very gray area. Of course, I believe in SARMS, of course, they work, but my belief that they’re highly beneficial does not negate the fact that they’re still illegal to consume. Guilty as charged your honor. To make matters worse, it’s not even the topic itself that YouTube has the problem with, it’s the links I put in the description of my early videos that show people where to purchase those items. You can mention research chemicals, you just need to give a legal and medical disclaimer first and you can’t tell people where to get them. I can’t name the specific videos but I’m sure that in a few of them I told people exactly where to shop. Guilty as charged your honor. Did I freak out? Of course, I did.
This YouTube channel indirectly brings in a shitload of money, almost an embarrassing amount, but I wasn’t mad, I deserved everything I got, I think sometimes we want to blame everybody and everything for our misfortunes when in reality it’s usually our own choices that caused our pain and discomfort in the first place, Own it, change it, learn from it. Make sure when you’re passing out blame you include yourself on the distribution list. Let’s take money for instance.
I get messages from people all the time about not being able to afford something that’s ten or twenty dollars. I’m not being harsh or judgmental, but those people are the reason ten dollars matters in their lives. We all know by the time we’re three years old that life without money sucks ass, yet people choose to drop out of high school, they get menial jobs, they decide not to go to trade school, they decide not to go to college, they decide not to do anything that benefits their lives or the lives of those that they’re responsible for. It’s a choice, a bad choice, but a choice nonetheless.
Before you give me that silver spoon treatment, let’s put things into perspective. I don’t come from money = my mom was a schoolteacher, my dad was an electrician. 10 years ago I was broke. I owner financed the sale of a thriving business that took me over ten years to build. A business I started in my basement and grew to eventually become the largest in the entire country for that specific industry. The guy that bought it from me paid me for one year and then just stopped. I’m not sure how, but he ran an extremely profitable business into the ground which shows that just because you own a business doesn’t mean you can run one. I never got that business back and even if I had. it was past the point of being salvaged. He never paid me another dime. They came and took my cars. They foreclosed on my house. My wife at the time decided to leave me. I lived in an apartment. I remember digging money out of my couch to buy gas for a rusted red truck that my brother was kind enough to let me borrow while I got back on my feet. My daughter came to me with her school supply list and I had to tell her we can’t afford half of this. I’ve spent far more time in my life wondering where I was going to get grocery money rather than wondering where I’m going to spend it all. I know both sides very well, yet I get the argument all of the time. My parents didn’t have any money so I couldn’t go to college. I joined the United States Army. I went to the Gulf War and I signed up for the Army College Fund. I went to college on Uncle Sam’s dime. Very few people in this country have a valid excuse for becoming a failure. Just own it, admit it, and then change it. If you can’t change it for yourself make damn sure you change it for your children. If you don’t like your life there’s a good possibility your kids won’t either.
Moving on to another bit of advice – work for yourself. If you aren’t self-employed you’re just putting money into someone else’s pockets. Come up with something that’s easy to you and difficult for others. That’s what you need to be doing – and drinking beer doesn’t count. Choose something with barriers to entry, meaning something that’s difficult to get started. If something is easy it’s not going to be profitable because even if it does make money initially everybody and their brother is going to start doing it too. That will saturate the market and drive down profitability. If you aren’t struggling while you’re getting your business up and running then get your ass back in that room and choose something else. Don’t be lazy. Don’t be stupid.
One of the most important pieces of advice I could probably give you is to make sure you choose a partner in life that believes in you. I’ve been on the other side of that one. My wife is probably a majority of the reason I was able to bounce back from adversity. She believed in me from day one. In fact, She rode around in that rusty red truck without any air-conditioning in the middle of summer and she didn’t bitch about it one time. She lived in a cardboard box with me. She’s loyal to me. I give her the same respect. I’ve always said the perfect relationship is where both parties feel like they got more than they deserved. I don’t fancy myself as a lucky man, I got damned lucky when it comes to her.
It’s not my intention to get all preachy on you. I just wanted to share some wisdom I’ve accumulated over the past 52 years and I wanted to tell you what happened to the channel yesterday .
In conclusion, life is what you make of it. You make your own luck. You’re either prepared when opportunities present themselves or you’re not. If you’re not it’s nobody’s fault but your own.
As far as the YouTube channel goes even if they had erased it from YouTube land yesterday, it was all about the message, not the videos themselves. This all started with the intent to help as many people as I possibly could. It was about getting the word out – how to change your life and how it could be drastically changed through this process called hormone replacement therapy. Nobody, not even YouTube, can stop that message from being delivered, but they sure as hell can slow it down.
Yesterday I questioned whether or not I’d ever be able to say this again so today I say it proudly – Always remember you are never too to live like a Viking!
