Episode #26 - J.J. Thelen

#15MinuteFounder

J.J. Thelen built multiple channels to over 1 million views after leaving private equity, failing two startups, and figuring it out from Bogotá to Mexico City to Minneapolis.

In this episode of 15 Minute Founder, J.J. breaks down the exact YouTube strategy behind his channels, including why search-based content has a ceiling, the 80/20 rule for building a real audience, how to think about content you could create for 25 years, and why passion beats trending topics every single time.

Highlights from the chat

Q: How does a Wharton MBA and Lauder Institute grad end up becoming a YouTube creator?

It wasn’t a planned path. After Wharton, I went into private equity in Bogotá, Colombia, while also having ideas about starting my own business. My brother and I tried building a digital bank aimed at Latin America, where credit card interest rates run 20-50% with heavy fees, but raising the millions needed for a regulated financial company proved impossible for two people with no banking pedigree in the region.

Q: What happened with the custom clothing brand?

We built a made-to-measure clothing company in Colombia, solving my own problem of finding clothes that fit, since I’m tall. We raised a small friends-and-family round and went through accelerators like Parallel18 and 500 Startups Mexico City, but as a solo founder juggling fundraising and operations with only a few months of runway at a time, the business never had the capital to scale, and investors who didn’t know the Latin American market kept passing.

Q: How did The Figo, your current agency, come about?

After shutting down the clothing brand, my business partner Laura, who’d run marketing for the clothing company, and I, started a marketing agency because people kept asking us for help with Facebook ads and content. It almost became a “jack of all trades” mess early on, saying yes to graphic design, ads, and content work with no clear focus.

Q: What was the moment you realized YouTube’s algorithm actually works in your favor?

A tie-tutorial channel Laura created got almost no traction for months, until one video suddenly appeared as a suggested video on someone else’s huge channel, and views spiked overnight. That taught us that YouTube actively tests content across the platform looking for signals it should promote, rather than just ranking by subscriber count.

Q: You grew a channel to 600K subscribers and then killed it. Why?

The channel (originally style advice) took off after pivoting to dating content. Some videos hit over a million views. But my business partner Laura didn’t want to be publicly associated with it after being recognized on the street in Mexico City.

So we shut it down, after proving to ourselves that we understood how YouTube worked before moving on.

Q: How did doola end up connecting to your content?

While running a personal finance channel called “Greater Than Enough,” we made a few videos about LLC formation that performed well enough to realize the topic deserved its own dedicated channel rather than being a side topic, which became “Beginning of a Business” (with a Spanish-language version too, targeting the roughly 60 million Latino population in the US).

Q: If you could go back, what’s the single biggest thing you’d do differently?

I wish my brother and I hadn’t both quit our jobs simultaneously to pursue Startup Chile. One of us could have kept a salary while the other worked full-time, validating the business before both going all-in.

And today’s creator economy makes that staged approach even more viable: build an audience and income on nights and weekends first, then quit once the math works.

Q: What’s the biggest mistake people make starting a YouTube channel, and what’s your top piece of advice?

Pick something you could stick with for 25 years, not whatever’s trending. Passion sustains the late-night, early-morning grind that trend-chasing can’t.

I also tell people that search-optimized content (like “how to start an LLC in Alabama”) attracts one-time viewers who don’t care about your other content, making it hard to build a real community around it.

Q: What’s the 80/20 rule for content you learned from Patty Galloway at VidSummit?

80% of your videos should be things 80% of your audience is actively waiting to see: the biggest, most anticipated ideas for your specific audience. Straying into scattered, one-off search content makes it harder to build the kind of community where people wait for your next video rather than watching once and leaving.

Q: What’s your sleep and morning routine?

Sleep between 9-10pm and wake for sunrise. This is a habit I picked up from six months in Central America with my brother. I do deep, focused work in the first few hours of the morning before checking email or Slack, and plan the next day’s top three priorities the night before so I can start immediately rather than getting overwhelmed.

Q: What’s the most valuable piece of content you’d recommend to entrepreneurs?

“The 12 Week Year” for quarterly (rather than annual) planning, and Austin Kleon’s “Show Your Work” for the idea of building in public. These are about sharing your process to attract customers, co-founders, or investors.

Also, stop procrastinating by endlessly consuming content instead of building, when you should only consume what’s needed for your very next step.

Q: How do you think AI will impact content creation?

I expect in-person experiences (seminars, masterminds, retreats) to become more valuable as differentiation, citing research that AI-assisted work in consulting and medicine actually got worse when humans tried to “correct” the AI’s output.

I also expect more fully AI-driven creators over time as tools improve for script writing, editing, and thumbnails.

Q: Final billboard message for an aspiring entrepreneur?

Be more selfless. Ask what expertise you’ve already built that you could share to genuinely help others, rather than starting from “how do I make money.” I believe that mindset shift tends to produce both the most successful and the most fulfilling outcomes.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 – Wharton MBA to YouTube Mastermind

00:48 – From Private Equity to Emerging Markets

03:20 – Building a Digital Bank in Latin America

05:13 – The Custom Clothing Brand That Failed

08:38 – Shutting Down & Starting The Figo Agency

09:34 – Discovering YouTube’s Compound Power

10:56 – Growing to 600K Subscribers, Then Killing It

12:32 – The Algorithm Moment

15:52 – Starting “Greater Than Enough” & the doola Connection

18:18 – The Single Biggest Thing He’d Do Differently

21:48 – The #1 YouTube Growth Mistake

26:37 – The 80/20 Rule for Content

29:58 – Rapid Fire: Sleep & Morning Routine

34:33 – Best Book for Entrepreneurs

37:48 – How AI Will Impact Content Creation

40:54 – Billboard Message: Be More Selfless