Hello, friends.

Meet Miles du Bois. He is…

• A lacrosse creator

• A Division III lacrosse player

• A rising junior at the Stevens Institute of Technology

• In his early growth phase with between 10K and 20K followers on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok

Du Bois has big long-term goals, as you’ll learn today, and the seemingly right mix of personality, passion and thoughtfulness to turn them into a reality eventually.

You can follow du Bois on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

Let’s dig in.

An Early Taste

Du Bois has always had a keen focus on YouTube, plus a belief that he could succeed on the platform. That’s why as a junior in high school he borrowed his mom’s camera to film a lacrosse game, then bargained with her to buy an even better one – a Sony A6400 – by telling her he would pay her back.

And he did.

Du Bois repaid the money by filming lacrosse games and working with local companies on media projects. It gave him an early look at the potential money in the space. But du Bois, who continued to film games, grew tired of the repetition. So as a senior in high school, he decided to begin doing something that had intrigued him since middle school when he was a daily Logan Paul viewer: Vlogging.

“I was like, I have the personality for this, I need to just get in front of this camera,” du Bois tells me. “Watching guys like Jesse James West, Mitchell Pehlke, these guys that are in the lacrosse niche that were filming themselves, I was like I need to do this too.”

Du Bois overcame his nerves to drop his first vlog, and then soon dove in by committing to a seven-videos-in-seven-days series near the midpoint of his senior year in high school. The first video – a Division I vs Division III challenge – popped off. First day? Over 25K views. Within a couple days, it was over 75K views and he had topped 1K subscribers.

The rest of the videos in the series didn’t reach nearly as many people, which du Bois says “humbled” him. But it was a spark of what could be possible and enough for him to continue vlogging the rest of his senior year of high school before further ramping it up once entering college.

Everybody knows Everybody

The lacrosse community is tight-knit, and its creator community even more so. As du Bois’ following has grown, so has the number of lacrosse creators he has met. He has known OnlyVarro since his senior year of high school and begun to get to know Connor Eck last year. He has traded monetization intel with Scotty Royster.

“It's such a small space where you DM somebody saying you want to talk, they'll be like, yeah,” du Bois says. “People that DM me, I see every DM. It's still a small space. It's awesome that it is small because of the relationship that you can build with people. There's no bad blood in the creator economy here.”

One lacrosse creator in particular – Mitchell Pehlke, an ex-Ohio State lacrosse player with a large following – has helped du Bois most.

Du Bois met him through sheer luck: His best friend is the younger brother of Pehlke’s best friend. A nervous du Bois hopped on a call with Pehlke as a senior in high school. The call ended with Pehlke offering du Bois to join him for a video.

Since then, they have stayed in close touch, texting weekly and connecting regularly on Zoom calls to dive into their respective content. This spring, Pehlke even brought du Bois on as a co-host of the Mitchell Pehlke Lacrosse Show he launched with The Lacrosse Network this spring.

Mindset Change

Another way Pehlke has helped du Bois? Thinking deeper about the why and how of content creation. Du Bois says Pehlke is who he “talks about YouTube the most” with. Recently, Pehlke has helped du Bois adjust how he considers his YouTube content, especially vlogging.

“I didn't really hop on the train until these past three, four months,” du Bois says.

Here are some of du Bois’ thoughts on the current creator landscape:

• Vlogging days are over: “YouTube's changed a lot, though. Those vlog-style videos are not really a thing anymore.”

• Title and thumbnail are king: “If your content is bad but your title and thumbnail are the greatest things on the planet, you're going to get like 100 million views. It doesn't even matter.”

• The first minute matters most: “The first minute of the video matters because that's the retention piece and the intro, so that has been a huge focus for me and other creators in this space these past couple months.”

How to Make the Money Work

Du Bois is walking a tightrope. On the one hand, he is careful not to let chasing money get in the way of his platforms’ growth – for example, he is reinvesting by hiring an editor for an upcoming video for the first time. On the other, he is keen to begin building multiple revenue streams. He points to Pehlke, who makes money from youth camps and merchandise sales on top of the typical revenue streams, as somebody to model.

“I need to start building those new revenue streams because YouTube and everything I'm doing right now is really inconsistent right now because I haven't done a long contract with anyone,” du Bois says.

For now, though, du Bois has a trio of primary avenues to make money: YouTube ads, brand deals and work with club lacrosse teams.

YouTube ad revenue: Typically, du Bois sees about $1K per month for his work on YouTube. Sometimes, he has a video become a hit, or old videos get unexpected bumps in viewers, shooting his ad revenue to as much as $1.5K. Other times, it’s slower. Du Bois calls it “inconsistent money.”

Brand deals: Du Bois is careful not to overdo brand deals for viewers to not tire of them. He denies many, in fact. But they’re also an important revenue source, bringing him anywhere from $1K to $3K in a month. They are generally short-term agreements, with Hackees Lax and Lacrosse Unlimited among the recent collaborators. 

Working with club teams: Some club lacrosse teams pay du Bois to film them. When the work is available, it can be “the majority of the money” coming in. But the demand is entirely inconsistent, making it something he can’t always rely on.

Long-Term Visions

Recently, du Bois uploaded a video, I Tried an Olympic Athlete’s Daily Routine, in which he filmed with a Paris-bound fencer, Mitchell Saron. Uploading a video he had put 20 hours of work into that featured a US Olympian, he thought it was a slam dunk. It wasn’t. It tallied about 3K views in a week. 

“I’m like, this is horrible, what am I doing wrong? I've had conversations with people telling me this video is so good but I think that it's because it's not your niche that it's not doing well,” du Bois says. “I just think it's because it didn't have the word lacrosse in the title and didn't have a lacrosse stick in the thumbnail. I'm just like, alright, looks like I've got to make a change here and just keep doing lacrosse until I really blow up and then I'll make the switch.”

That switch du Bois refers to is becoming a creator with a wider appeal rather than focusing solely on lacrosse. He hopes to do so eventually in order to achieve his two big long-term goals:

1. Reach 1 million YouTube subscribers. For as long as du Bois has been uploading this has been a goal of his.

2. Be a full-time creator. Du Bois isn’t interning for a company this summer. He’s working for himself. Upon graduation in the spring of 2026, he plans to continue to do so. Du Bois: “I knew as soon as I started going hard on these videos that I do not want to have a normal job out of college.”

Thanks to Miles for sharing his story with Creating Sports! To put this in writing: I would buy stock in Miles du Bois. He’s fully committed to what it takes to be a creator, and I’m excited to see where he goes from here.

If you haven’t subscribed to us (or Miles!), now is the time to do so!

Talk soon,

Colin