Dog Breath, Poop, Bitcoin, and YouTube: My 2013 in Review

One year ago my wife and I both had strong feelings that 2013 was going to be a year of transition. Our feelings were right. Beyond moving and having baby number two, here is my 2013 professional life rolled up into one post:

JANUARY:

Utah Business Week

The PR team at Orabrush somehow convinced Utah Business Magazine to put my mug on the cover. This cover is very valuable to me… and my grandparents show their copies to everyone.

FEBRUARY – ORAPUP LAUNCHES

We sold over $1 million dollars of Orapups using a hairbrush with an OXO handle and a bunch of Orabrush bristles glued to it (look closely at the video below):

Orapup gave us two record breaking quarters in the first quarter of this year!

APRIL TO PRESENT – #BITCOIN

My oldest brother Theron approached me about a great idea. He was recruiting a team for a documentary film about bitcoin. That same day Austin Craig said he would be interested. Lucky for us Beccy, his bride-to-be, was also down. I wrote and directed the Kickstarter video. We raised the funds on Kickstarter. Beccy and Austin were the world”s first couple to live on bitcoin for 101 days and they literally traveled around the globe. The film “Life On Bitcoin” will be completed in 2014.  It is going to be fantastic.

AUGUST – THE HARMON BROTHERS LEAVE ORABRUSH

It seemed like just yesterday Neal and I were in Bob Wagstaff’s house forming Orabrush Inc. That first year I was “CEO” (really Neal and I were running the company together). Neal had been the backbone of Orabrush but I had always had the opportunity to be the face. 3.5 years later it was time to move on to another opportunity. We were going from tongue gunk to poop.

SEPTEMBER – WE REBRAND POO~POURRI

DECEMBER – ANNOUNCING VIDANGEL

VidAngel is founded by 4 Harmon brothers: Neal, Daniel, Jordan, and myself (there are 6 Harmon brothers in case you were wondering). After spending 3 years working on YouTube we were CRAVING a way to control our experience better.  I get so tired of cleavage thumbnails and rampant profanity and vulgarity on YouTube. Not just that, but YouTube now allows nudity and sex in some circumstances. In 2012 we started working on VidAngel at nights.

There is ClearPlay, their DVD player filters out sex, profanity, and violence on DVDs. I am a customer. But they have been around for 15 years and they are like a dinosaur with technology. After all these years they were acting like a monopoly and they need some good healthy competition. Also we needed a solution for streaming, so that is the problem we set out to solve with VidAngel.

After over a year of stealth mode we should be launching in early 2014. Our goal is to not only give people control over their movie streaming experience, but also over ALL of YouTube. Imagine being able to let your kids get on YouTube without ever needing to worry about them stumbling across an F-word? 

INTERESTED IN HIRING HARMON BROTHERS?

I just went into my blog comments and I had over 250 comments asking me for help on their businesses. We don’t do a lot of service agreements or consulting, but we take them on when we have extra time. After plowing through the comments we decided to create HarmonBrothers.com. Just go to HarmonBrothers.com/contact to let us know you are interested in work!

VidAngel.com – Imagine YouTube WITHOUT F-Words Or Cleavage Thumbnails…

Imagine if you could browse YouTube without ever hearing the F-Bomb, or seeing another stupid cleavage thumbnail? VidAngel is on a mission to make that possible.

VidAngel is an idea that my brothers and I had about a year ago when we were still at Orabrush. Why had no one had built a browser app plugin that would filter out sex, nudity, swears, and graphic violence on streaming video? We decided it was a problem we wanted to solve.  A year later, and a lot of long nights, long talks with legal teams, and saving up cash, we just went public with VidAngel. VidAngel mutes profanity and skips sex, nudity and violence right while you are watching your online video.

 

Clean up all of Hollywood

(thousands of filters coming):

Our first goal is to clean up every TV show and Movie available on Google Play.

Eventually we want to do the same for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Vudu and others, but VidAngel is starting with Google Play because it has a good selection (including new releases) and we understand how to use Google for marketing better than anyone (see 18 million views on our Orabrush ad, 7 million views on Orapup, and 19 million views on our PooPourri ad).

Clean up all of YouTube

(hundreds of thousands of filters coming):

If you are a member of the VidAngel community  you will be able to use your VidAngel app to filter any video on YouTube for your kids, adjust filters that others have created, and have access to the entire communities filters for FREE. Think Wikipedia for YouTube filters. Our goal is to have every popular YouTube video filtered so you don’t run into soul destroying landmines while enjoying YouTube.

YouTube has always attracted foul mouthed vloggers. R-rated language is common.  But more recently YouTube has started to allow nudity and sexual content onto the site. Traditionally YouTube has not been known for family friendliness.

There are over 100 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.  YouTube is now more popular than Facebook with teenagers. YouTube and Netflix account for over half of the Internet’s traffic.  There are loads of great Internet filters out there that make the web a more family friendly place, but we want to provide an option for YouTube.

Google Chromecast can Stream VidAngel to your TV

With the launch of Google Chromecast, our timing couldn’t be more perfect. Right now we are giving away a FREE Google Chromecast when you sign up for VidAngel.

 

 

 

iPad 2 PUNKED (Parody)

On March 2nd I was watching the iPad 2 video intro and this video concept came to my mind. I have several ideas everyday but this one stuck. Luckily I had the team to pull it off. It wasn’t as timely as I would have liked because we had to wait for the iPad to come out on Friday at 5pm.  I got the last iPad available at Verizon.

We asked Chris Hansen to do the make-up. Austin Craig played each of the parts. Dave Ackerman and Austin Craig wrote it. It took two days of shooting simply because of the hours needed to change the makeup.


At least 500 YouTubers are now making their living on YouTube alone

This brought tears to my eyes. Shaytards story is very inspiring. They paid off about $195k in debt in 4 years.  This family is making several hundred thousand dollars a year on YouTube!

YouTube is just getting started. Even though YouTube hasn’t yet been recognized in the same way, their growth resembles Facebook’s growth. If my calculations are correct then I can safely estimate that at least 500 channels on YouTube have already created full-time jobs. Orabrush’s YouTube channel alone has been the source of over 14 jobs.  I LOVE IT.

Interview with Rick Mathieson (part 1 and 2)

Last week I had an Interview with Rick Mathieson. Here are the LINKS:

INTERVIEW: ORABRUSH CMO JEFF HARMON ON THE SECRETS OF A SOCIAL MEDIA SENSATION (PT. 1)


INTERVIEW: ORABRUSH CMO JEFF HARMON (PT 2) – A ‘DIRTY TONGUE’ GOES VIRAL

Rick Mathieson is an award-winning writer, author, speaker and frequent media commentator on marketing in the digital age.

Heralded as “a strategic marketing expert” by Harvard Business School”s Working Knowledge, his insights on postmodern marketing have been featured in ADWEEK, Advertising Age, Wired, Forbes and on MSNBC, CNN Radio, CBS Radio and NPR.

His research into next-generation business models has earned praise from USA Today.

Nightline ABC – The Story of Orabrush

I love it how they contrast our ads with Super Bowl ads. It was a lot of fun to have Brian Rooney and his team here for an entire day.  The NYTimes article was awesome, but I think the fact we are a very visual company makes me like this story even more.

18 months ago, I couldn’t have imagined anything like this. Orabrush has been a blessing in my life.