HowNOT2

HowNOT2 is 9 years old 🎉!

Sept 21st, 2016, I hit publish on my first youtube video. This was before it was popular to have a channel, when “doing social media” was not something you bragged about. I’m lucky to accidently get in early on something that is hard to shortcut today. I’m lucky I started in a genre (highline tutorials/vlogs) that had an infinite feedback loop to keep me in the game. I’m lucky to have discovered breaking gear was a hole in the online educational market because the content made up for the lack of editing and story skills. I’m lucky to have a personality type that can do things that suck for a long period of time, because having a channel is 10% fun and 90% suck, like climbing a mountain! I’m lucky I burnt out from painting houses and shopify made ecommerce easier(ish) because the gear store is the only way to make this sustainable. I’m lucky I have enough people watching me answer every question about gear fear to justify the effort. I’m lucky I’ve had the help from hundreds of people to make the content better. After 9 years, it’s an overnight success.

On the channel side, we’ve made 671 longs, 412 shorts, 116 newsletters, and have broken thousands of things. Views and subs are irrelevant to impact imo but it’s what people measure: 172M views on Youtube and 336k subs. 100M+ views on IG and 194k followers. The store has been open almost 2 years now and we’ve sent out 35,000+ orders the day people ordered it, or their order would be free. We have a 0.003% screw up rate which we of course always take care of the customer. We have 5000+ skus and $1.4M on the shelf ready to ship. We have 15 full time people (not counting me) on team.

I didn’t realize how many questions there were about gear when I started. After about 4 or 5 years in, I wanted to answer every question about life supporting gear. Now that we have an economic engine, a team of people and clarity on what the questions are, we plan on building a system over the next 12 months to where we can answer the questions as fast as they come in.

Thank you for watching, liking and getting your gear at hownot2.com/. This wouldn’t exist without you.

When did you start watching?

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3 months ago | [YT] | 781

HowNOT2

EXPERIENCE GIVEAWAY: Come canyon in the PNW for a full day guided by Wild Sky Adventures wildskyguides.com/ and Brent Roth www.instagram.com/whitewaterpirate/. We’re covering $1000 for your travel and/or store credit:

Live nearby? Use more of the prize for gear.


Flying across the country? Use the prize for travel.


Either way, it’s flexible — and epic.

How to Enter:
August 2nd we send out an email newsletter. At the bottom of it is where you enter to win. On the 7th we pick the winner and schedule it to happen within 4 weeks (by Sept 7th). If you don’t get the newsletter, sign up at hownot2.com/signup

When & Where:
When: Sometime between August 7th and September 7th, 2025.
Where: One of the canyons permitted to be guided by Wild Sky Adventure, in the Pacific Northwest.


No purchase necessary


Must be 18+ and a U.S. resident (We’d love to include everyone, but international giveaways get legally complicated and flying overseas for a one-day trip just doesn’t make sense.)


Fine Print (Legal Stuff):
Cost of guide does NOT count against the $1000 prize.


You'll have 48 hours to respond and confirm if you are selected. If we do not hear from you within 48 hours, we will pick another winner.


Ryan Jenks will NOT guarantee he will join this adventure. He may join if his schedule allows.


To share the stoke, by entering to win, you agree to be on camera just enough so people know we did the thing we promised. Though we want to, we do NOT have to tag you or bring you up by name. However, we do need you to smile and wave for the camera when we are out having fun.


If, for any reason, WE are unable to make the trip happen after you’ve won, we’ll compensate you with a $1500 gift card to the store ($1000 original budget + $500 bonus). If YOU cancel the trip, you get the $1000 prize but not the other $500.

5 months ago | [YT] | 90

HowNOT2

We spent 3 days summarizing 7 different stick clips in a full video https://youtu.be/v3OdUpLSkd0 and spreadsheet which you can see at hownot2.com/collections/stick-clips. There are not good or bad ones or any that are perfect for everything, but it really depends what you are looking for. Hopefully you find this helpful!

6 months ago | [YT] | 129

HowNOT2

Sign up for our Full Value Saturday Newsletter — where we give something away every week at hownot2.com/signup

May 31st we’re doing something special. It’s our 100th newsletter, and to celebrate, we’re hosting a massive giveaway:

🎉 The Prize:
Come climbing for a full day with Brent from @avant_climbing_innovations and me (Ryan from HowNOT2) — guided by a certified climbing guide to keep things safe and smooth. We’re covering $1000 for your travel and/or store credit:

Live nearby? Use more of the prize for gear.

Flying across the country? Use it for travel.

Either way, it’s flexible — and epic.

🧗‍♂️ When, Where & What:
WHEN: Late summer or fall 2025

WHERE: TBD — we’ll pick somewhere fun, based on guide availability and what gets us all stoked

WHAT: Totally depends on your climbing level. It’ll just be you and us, so we can tailor the day to whatever will be the most fun for all.

✅ How to Enter:
No purchase necessary

Must be 18+ and a U.S. resident

Newsletter sign-up does NOT enter you into giveaway… keep reading

Every newsletter has a button at the bottom that links to a Google Form — that’s how you officially enter.

Why this way?

We want stoked folks who actually open our emails.

We want direct communication with our audience — not depend on the algorithm to share our latest content.

⚖️ Fine Print (Legal Stuff):
This giveaway is not affiliated with YouTube.

Signing up for the HowNOT2 newsletter will not put you on any other mailing list.

However, if you click through and enter to win on May 31st, you agree to be added to Avant’s newsletter too (don’t worry — it’s good stuff).

Cost of guide does NOT count against the $1000 prize.

To share the stoke, you would agree to be on camera just enough so people know we did the thing we promised.

If, for any reason, we’re unable to make the trip happen after you’ve won, we’ll compensate you with a $1500 gift card to the store ($1000 original budget + $500 bonus). You cancel, you get the $1000 prize but not the other $500.

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7 months ago | [YT] | 154

HowNOT2

hownot2.com/hiring
If you know of anyone qualified and interested please share this with them.

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9 months ago | [YT] | 179

HowNOT2

Having this available for everyone is exciting for me. The effort put into the bolting bible helped people learn but the options were limited. THIS actually helps. Our prices are already good but Bolter+ members getting 20% off makes developing WITH GOOD HARDWARE affordable. Let’s put in safe hardware that lasts longer than us.

hownot2.com/products/bolting

11 months ago | [YT] | 96

HowNOT2

2024 OVERVIEW 💥 160M TOTAL VIEWS 💥
*47 New Full Episodes (excludes update videos)
*160 Original Shorts (excludes recuts)
*52 Newsletters to 22,000 people with a 55% avg open rate
*Youtube longs 9.3M views
*Youtube shorts 57.8M views
*From 238k to 308k Youtube subscribers
*Instagram reels 64.8M impressions
*From 62k to 176k Instagram followers
*Tiktok 25M views
*14,788 orders fulfilled the day people ordered it (by 1PM PST Mon-Sat)
*From 30ish brands to 75 brands on the shelf
*2000SKUs to 3000SKUs
*2 employees to 7 employees on the team

2025 we plan on doubling the content, but also working on books. Hopefully, we’ll have one printed by end of 2025!

I appreciate everyone watching the show and getting their gear at hownot2.com/ 🙏

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11 months ago | [YT] | 482

HowNOT2

Remember all those dyneema splicing videos I made in the past? We’re going to be carrying all the options and testing all the things and I’m pretty excited about it. The rest of Marlows stuff should come soon but we also have 24 kilometers of HMPE ordered from 1mm to 10mm with soft shackles, loops and eye to eye in all the diameters and colors. I never would have thought it’d grow to all of this when I made “how to splice a soft shackle video” with horrible audio in 2016. Thanks for participating in the journey and have a good Christmas.

11 months ago | [YT] | 302

HowNOT2

We love your recommendations! Everything you see pictured here is a product that one of you has specifically emailed us about and asked for!

When you carry 60+ brands and some of them have as many as 1000+ unique SKUs, it becomes really hard to know which products to stock. If it was financially feasible to stock them all we certainly would!

We typically aim to bring in the brand’s best sellers first. From there we look for products which offer a significant value proposition, are completely unique, or complement the more popular products. But even with a team of 7 unique climbers, we can’t understand the unique desires of every climber, caver, canyoneer, mountaineer, bolter, arborist, rope access worker, or any of the other disciplines!

We have really enjoyed interacting with all of you and gaining a better understanding of what you might want from the store. If you need something that we don’t stock, or just think it would help us become a better store, please email us at: contact@hownot2.com

Find the ever evolving store at: HowNOT2.com/

1 year ago | [YT] | 124

HowNOT2

When you do something every day it feels like you are crawling. Stay consistent and it gets you somewhere. This is a neat milestone. Thanks for subscribing! How long have you been watching?

1 year ago | [YT] | 1,067