The YouTube Prankster Who Lost Everything

The story of Andrew Hales, a YouTube prankster who rose to fame, faced financial struggles, and rebuilt his life with honesty and new content.

Key Takeaways

Consistency and authenticity helped Andrew gain early YouTube success.
Facing and sharing personal struggles can strengthen audience connection.
Financial mismanagement can quickly derail online success.
Adapting content strategy is crucial when facing platform and life changes.
Transparency about failures can lead to a positive turning point.

What the video covers

Andrew Hales, known as Loaf, quickly rose to fame with unique and relatable prank videos on YouTube.
He maintained a strict upload schedule and gained over 1 million subscribers within 18 months.
Andrew faced challenges competing with fake prank channels and openly discussed his personal struggles.
He transitioned from pranks to interview-style content with his 'Chatting With' series, earning significant income.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted his content creation, leading to a decline in views and motivation.
Poor financial management, including overspending and tax issues, led Andrew into significant credit card debt.
He sold his YouTube gear and moved to a more affordable living situation to manage his debt.
Andrew openly shared his journey of losing everything, which resonated with his audience and boosted his social image.
He took on part-time jobs like Taco Bell and delivery services to rebuild financially.
Andrew continues to create content while balancing side hustles and learning from past mistakes.

Chapters

How did Andrew Hales initially gain popularity on YouTube?

Andrew Hales gained popularity by posting unique, funny, and relatable prank videos with a confident yet awkward style, quickly attracting millions of views and over 500,000 subscribers within a year.

What caused Andrew Hales to lose his financial stability?

Andrew lost financial stability due to poor money management, overspending on travel and rent, neglecting to save for taxes, and accumulating around $50,000 in credit card debt.

How did Andrew adapt his content after leaving the prank genre?

After leaving pranks, Andrew started the 'Chatting With' interview series, featuring unique guests, which initially brought success and significant earnings before the pandemic disrupted production.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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From millionaire prankster, if I saved every penny I had, I think I would have close to a million dollars. To part-time Taco Bell employee, I got a job. I work at Taco Bell. I've been there since February. This is the story of how Andrew Hales

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lost everything while maintaining a mature attitude about his own poor choices. Let's see how I became broke. His channel, going by the name of Loaf, flew up unbelievably quickly during the early days of YouTube. Within two weeks of posting his first two videos, they'd

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gained more than 60,000 views each, and it's really no wonder why. The ideas were unique, funny, and enticing, which, when combined with Andrew's mellow yet relatable personality, made for incredibly entertaining content. On top of this, Andrew was able to develop his

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own style where every interaction was confident yet simultaneously awkward, with these reactions being so entertaining that Andrew ended up on the news after posting only nine videos. What would you do if a total stranger came up to you in public and tried to hold your

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hand? Well, a group of guys found out and posted the results on YouTube, and now it's gone viral. The video in question was simply titled "Holding People's Hand" and it would gain over 5 million views in only three weeks, which, when combined

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with two other viral videos titled "Awkward Elevator" and "Actually Picking Up a Girl," Loaf was able to achieve over 500,000 subscribers only 12 months after posting his first video. In the process, Andrew maintained a strict upload schedule, posting a prank every

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single Monday for over 50 weeks straight while showing strong accountability in each video description, such as "This is the first week after 50 weeks in a row that I didn't upload on Monday. I hope you'll forgive me." Andrew's consistency

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and desire to improve the content led to two new innovative videos titled "Tipping Service 200" as well as "Paying for People's Groceries." And while this type of content has since been popularized by MrBeast, it was basically unheard of in

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2013, helping Loaf to pass 1 million subscribers only six months after hitting 500,000. However, while it seemed as though everything was going perfectly, Andrew began to experience a few major problems with the prank genre. Now being significantly more popular on YouTube,

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Loaf had to compete with other channels who were able to achieve better reactions by faking their videos. Andrew would diss these fake channels in a video titled "Easy Way to Go Viral" before posting a series of his own ironic, obviously fake

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videos showing just how easy it was to achieve an inauthentic reaction. Andrew went on to state that despite his success, this was a pretty depressing period in his life. So, I called my mom and she didn't pick up, with my dad and he

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didn't pick up, and I hadn't seen any of my friends in a month or so, and I just felt like no one cared about me. Yet these kinds of videos would only add to his charm as a relatable guy who

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was willing to talk about his darkest moments. This gave him a positive social media image as someone who was unconcerned about always looking perfect, which would continue into videos such as this one simply titled "Crying," where Andrew would talk about some of his

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deepest insecurities before receiving comments such as, "Dang Andrew, I love you so much. Thank you so much for being so real. It allows others to be in their feelings and be okay with how they are. It does that for me. Thanks, man. I love

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you so much." "What's crazy is that every person that watches this video can relate in some way. Much respect to you, sir. Andrew, you are a goddamn legend for posting this vulnerable of a video. I love you, man. Ride the wave." But while

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Andrew's reputation was at an all-time high, his motivation to produce content was at an all-time low, leading to the announcement that he was done with the pranking genre altogether for now. I really need to just take a break from

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social experiments and pranks, and I can't do them anymore. They're all the same to me, and it's just really boring. It's making me depressed, and I don't know. I just need to try new stuff. This new stuff that Andrew planned on trying

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was also explained in the video "Where Interview Stuff." We have like a little set set up at my apartment now. We're going to try this Jimmy Fallon between two phones type thing with YouTubers, models, or whatever, with the teased

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interviews eventually becoming a series by the name of "Chatting With." He began by talking to other YouTubers such as That Was Epic and Cody Ko. However, the real success began when he'd interview increasingly unique humans such as "Chatting With a 400 Plus Day Fapstronaut,"

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"Chatting With a Flat Earther," and "Chatting With a 23 Year Old Stock Trading Millionaire," each of which helped Andrew to earn $250,000 in 2018.

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Andrew would back this up by earning a further $200,000 in 2019, and by all accounts, it seemed as though there was nothing that could derail his success. He'd announced that the "Chatting With" series would continue

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into 2020. Yeah, like four interviews already planned out, ready to rock and roll for 2020. Although there was no way that Andrew could have predicted what was just around the corner. I was doing this "Chatting With" COVID canceled, like

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the first five I had going into 2020, and so I had to start walking and experimenting. As mentioned, the pandemic put a stop to the "Chatting With" series, forcing Andrew to experiment with various unrelated videos. He posed

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dancing, skating, and reactions, yet none of these blew up to the same degree as his content had in the past. When Andrew returned to the "Chatting With" series after isolation, each episode averaged only 50,000 views each, leading him to

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admit that the channel wasn't doing so well. My channel's been dying. I've been pretty lost this year. It's been a very humbling year, definitely, which had been the partial result of a few poor habits. March, April, in quarantine, watching

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movies, smoking weed, drinking. It was awesome but also depressing. However, in all actuality, Andrew's worst habit might have been overspending, as only two weeks later he'd upload a video titled "Credit Card Debt," in which he'd explained that he owed approximately fifty thousand

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dollars to the bank and his credit card companies. Are the banks or whatever? Yeah, they really sneak up on you, and then whoops, 200 bucks a month of interest accruing every month. By this point, Andrew's channel was only gaining a

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million views per month with no foreseeable increase in the quality of the content, as he had to sell most of his YouTube gear just to service the loans. Attic 70D and a Canon 5D and two SM7Bs, and, uh, yeah, I just sold it all,

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and that paid off one credit card. In the process, Andrew moved out of LA to a more affordable area. We found this Airbnb about two months ago for 400 bucks a month, and yeah, we're just pinching pennies and

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just trying to rapidly get out of debt, where he'd film a video titled "How I Became Broke," summarizing the situation that he found himself in. Didn't manage my money wisely. I traveled a lot. I went to Russia, Japan. Another big thing is

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taxes. I always like forget to save money for the taxes, and it's like boom, yo, 40 grand. It's like, oh. All the while paying 3,600 a month for this rent. That was a big mistake there. That was just a dumb

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flex. Weird flex. I didn't know what I was doing. On top of managing his money poorly, Andrew would add that he'd become complacent. I partied too much, and I got lazy and less focused and didn't upload as much. So I had like 10 grand coming in

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a month every month for hardly doing anything, and YouTube kind of just spoiled me, and I don't know, I guess I thought it would last forever, but it started to go down and down and down. And while it was depressing that he'd spend

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every dollar he ever made from YouTube, this video would also become a turning point, as it was seen in the early days of his channel. Andrew's audience simply appreciated the honesty, with the entire comment section offering words of

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encouragement. Andrew's ability to just keep it real and

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to admit and truly reflect on the real Mistakes One made and in order to move forward and do better you have to do just that these comments combination with the video strong performance LED Andrew in a brand new Direction Where

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he'd basically document what it was like to be someone rebuilding from zero which turned out to be an incredibly entertaining genre on the 1st of October 2021 Andrew uploaded a video titled I got a job in which he'd explained that

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he'd returned to Old School employment so I got a job it's with this company called Amazon it'll be like Mr Price job in about 10 years foreign I'm actually kind of excited however while Andrew seemed excited about his

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new position at Amazon it didn't take long before he was already talking about quitting like night three that started to become less fun yeah so I don't know how much longer I'm Gonna Last it took only a month before Andrew confirmed his

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resignation yeah Amazon's hard I can't I couldn't do it after which you tried doordash and instacart yet the pay was somewhat disappointing all in all it took about almost three hours I made about 22 bucks Andrew knew what he

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needed to do he had to return to content with a new successful series still need to figure out some kind of thing where I wasn't just shooting in the dark you know I had some kind of set thing still

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figuring that out taking inspiration from his chatting with videos Andrew launched a series titled people on in which he went out on the street to talk about a range of interesting topics one of which being people on credit cards in

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which it's obvious that Andrew has learned his lesson do you feel like credit cards are a good or a bad idea I think they're a bad idea because nobody's talking how to use it I agree the series is yet to rival his previous

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work in terms of view count yet the idea has a lot of potential with some of his fairly basic episodes having achieved almost 200 000 views with a bit more effort the series could easily do over 500 000 views per episode however until

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then Andrew seems pretty content with his new position at Taco Bell I got a job I work at Taco Bell I work the drive through Wicked easy love my boss and my co-workers it's all very chill I work

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Wednesday Thursday and Sunday it's just a side hustle I I'm still doing YouTube Andrew even stated that this wasn't the first time that this kind of thing has happened because I've done this like two or three times and then I just

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eventually get out of there and get rich again so surely he'll be able to rebuild in the future

Topics:Andrew HalesLoafYouTube pranksterYouTube success storyfinancial strugglescredit card debtYouTube interviewsChatting With seriescontent creator burnoutYouTube pandemic impact

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