Between the 675,000 subscribers of his YouTube channel (That’s Good Sports) and owning a premium coffee company, in conjunction with his hilarious and affable nature, I have to admit that YouTuber Brandon Perna inspires strong love/hate feelings within me.

Yes, all the aforementioned qualities I’ve listed are utterly admirable and worth the adoration. The hatred comes from the jealousy I feel over the fact that he has done IT …

By building a highly successful career doing the thing he loves, Perna has achieved what literally everyone who enters a career predicated on a creative endeavor wishes for; financial independence. However, before you start muttering “what a lucky son of a bitch” under your breath, it’s important to know that to get to this point, he’s had to work his ass off.

I recently spoke with the Denver native about the history of his YouTube channel and coffee company, as well as what the future holds for this YouTube star. During our conversation, I learned that the road to the Gold Play Button is possible, so long as you “just try not to fuck it up.”

For Perna, the first step on the road to the gold began in college.

“I went to school here in Denver, at the Art Institute for video production. Like a lot of people, I thought I would become a filmmaker and do really cool and important things. [After graduating] I moved to San Diego because I didn’t have the balls to go straight out to LA, and I had some family and friends in San Diego.”

After working in San Diego for a while, in 2010 Perna was told about a job opening at Maker Studios where he would learn about the nuances of video production for an up-and-coming juggernaut: YouTube. When I asked about his early experiences with YouTube, he made it clear that this point of his life was both financially taxing, yet essential to his future success.

“At the time, YouTube was still kind of new. I graduated college in 2006, so, it wasn’t seen as a thing where you could make a living on.” He continued, “[Though] it paid like, a thousand dollars a month or some shit, and I’m like, ‘I can’t live off that in LA,’ I finally took the leap. And that’s where [I began] meeting people working in the YouTube space, working for other YouTubers, that’s where I learned what was happening, and eventually decided to start my own channel. That’s how I got to LA and actually learned about making videos for YouTube.”

He said it was during this time that the nugget of an idea for a football-themed YouTube channel began swirling around in his brain.

“I was editing and directing videos for other people. I was working on the channel, Ray William Johnson, the show I was doing was called ‘Equals 3.’ That was under Maker Studios, and at the time it was the biggest channel on YouTube. I think it was the first channel to hit six million subscribers or some shit like that. So, I had the opportunity to start working on [That’s Good Sports] there and I did. Through that, I learned a lot about the process of being consistent.”

It was from these experiences in LA-LA Land that he learned he could make a decent amount of money doing freelancing work for other creators. While all of this was happening, he interviewed with Bleacher Report for a producer position at a daily show. However, this would’ve required him to move to New York City and to get up at 4 am to make the 6 o’clock recording.

He declined.

Though the thought of working for Bleacher Report was incredibly enticing to Perna, he knew his passion for sports and his background in the digital video sphere could be combined in such a way that a successful football-based sports channel could come about. And it was on the flight home from that interview when Perna designed the logo for That’s Good Sports—the channel that would be his life for the next decade-plus.

“I started the channel in 2012 and did a handful of videos, and then it kind of sat there for a while, then I started up again in 2013. That was really the first year I kind of focused on it. I can remember it by the seasons of the Broncos. So, 2013 is when they had their insane year on offense, and that was the first year I recapped every single Broncos game.”

Thankfully for sports fans around the world, his love for his hometown team would eventually see the channel get its first breakthroughs; helping to ensure its longevity on the video site.

“It wasn’t until I focused on the Broncos that I found an audience and people paying attention, versus uploading a video and [having] maybe 200 people watch it.”

When I mentioned to Perna that I didn’t find this fact too terribly surprising given audiences can sniff out authenticity, and this is a trait that comes through in spades when watching the of joy and sorrow brought about by the Broncs in his videos, he agreed.

“You have to care, that’s a really good point. And I think it was learning that I cared a lot more about football first than any other sport. And learning that this is my passion, and that’s where people will click on your videos to see what it’s about. And then, once you lock down that part of it, then you kind of, have to reverse engineer yourself out of just being a ‘Broncos Guy,’ to grow.”

Even though he has definitely grown past being the Broncos Guy, when that was his primary bread-and-butter, he learned another valuable lesson. “I think in sports, a lot of your success is predicated on your team’s success, and I didn’t learn until the last couple of years to capitalize on your team being horrible, or bad, or irrelevant. I think if I would have learned that earlier, I could have turned a lot of mediocre years into better years.”

For Perna, it didn’t take too long for those “better years” to appear.

“I think 2016 is when I committed to [the channel full-time]. And it wasn’t at a place where I really could do that yet, it was more like. my wife and I moved from LA back here to Denver. We were engaged, but we were living at my parents’ place until we kind of saved up some money and figured out all that shit. So, I was doing the freelance stuff here, I was still doing my channel, and then we closed on a house and got married. And I said, ‘OK, I’ve got to figure this out, or I have to commit to a regular, full-time editing gig.’” Perna said that, ultimately, “It was just committing to my channel because I didn’t have any other choice.”

After making the plunge, “[I kept] Just grinding through 2016 and 2017, and then I landed with this management company called Table Rock and they started bringing me brand deals and ads. That’s when I started working with companies like Manscaped, and then that’s when I was like ‘OK, now I can actually make a living doing this.’”

It was through this heightened level of confidence that he forced his way into the world of coffee via his Benchwarmer Brew brand.

“The umbrella company for that is called Akira Coffee Company. Somebody I knew from Maker Studios started the coffee company and I just reached out to his post on LinkedIn about his coffee business. I was like ‘Hey man, I fucking love coffee. I know my channel is a little bit smaller, but I’d love to have a coffee brand;’ It took some convincing. After some convincing, he finally agreed to it under the idea that I would bring in a couple of other guys to launch the coffee with, and that was 2019.” He admits, “It was more of a vanity thing, honestly. I like the idea of selling coffee versus just different types of merch. It didn’t turn into something I would call a good business until the last year and a half.”

He attributes this success of Benchwarmer Brew to the hatred ALL sports fans share for the field zebras known as the refs. “Until we did the ‘Fuck The Refs’ blend, [sales] were pretty mediocre,” he said with a laugh. It was at this point he realized, “I just need a fucking gimmick. Because it’s good coffee. So many people say, ‘I bought this coffee and it turned out to be really good.’ And I’m like, ‘I wouldn’t ask you guys to buy $18 bags of coffee if it wasn’t good.’”

Finally, with everything going so swimmingly, I had to know what the future holds for Perna and his business empire.

“I don’t know. I think I kind of operate under the ‘just try not to fuck it all up’ approach. I would love, really, just to focus on continuing to grow a good audience. And I think the longer you work in this space you detach yourself from the numbers. Like, ‘Oh, I need to get X amount of subscribers,’ it’s more about building the community there and building a strong foundation and adding more people who are going to ride or die with you through everything. I learned a lot of that through Tom Grossi. As long as that continues to happen sponsors will want to work with you, all those other opportunities will come.”

Whether you love the Broncos or not, as long as you have a passion for football and you like to laugh, then I promise you will love the content found on That’s Good Sports. With that being said, I do have one warning: though the “curse wheel” that Perna spins during the regular season to curse a Top 10 team with a defeat the following week seems legit, DO NOT log on to your favorite sports betting app and put your full month’s rent on the wheel’s prediction … it won’t end well … TRUST ME.