Adam Riemann – Detailed Biography

Adam Riemann is a rider and a popular motorcycling YouTuber.

He has over 970K subscribers on his eponymous YouTube channel.

Introduction-

Adam Riemann was born in 1975 in Australia and grew up in the dirt, close to nature.

His father, Bernie Riemann, was a builder.

Adam has an older brother who was into BMX.

Respite in bikes-

Adam and his brother found respite in their bikes, after their parents broke up.

He left home at 15 and started living with friends.

At the time, he prioritised bikes and associated them with independence as he could remove himself from the situations by just hopping on to the bikes.

Dropping out-

The young Adam was good at art, used to draw and paint and wanted to grow up to become an artist.

He thought of getting into graphic designing straight out of high school.

Adam enrolled in technical and further education (TAFE) to study graphic design.

But after six months, he deferred as he had stage fright and insecurity to deliver a speech in front of seven people in his class.

Within a couple of weeks, Adam secured the job as a waste collector in a garbage truck. He made good money with which he bought another dirt bike at 18.

At the time, he befriended some motorcycle racers and upon their invitation, he started racing.

Travelling & racing-

Adam was apprenticing as a heavy-duty diesel fitter and machinist. But he didn’t want to spend his time underneath hot oily trucks out of a mine.

Later, he was expected to go into the mines which he didn’t like.

At the time, Adam felt an urge to travel and rode around Australia on a Honda XR600 in 1997 and became a dirt bike racer.

He also wanted to write freelance stories for bike magazines but the magazines rejected him.

He started his motorcycle trip in 1998, rode to eastern states of Australia before riding up to New South Wales.

Adam raced in Australian 4 Day Enduro on XR600, met Geoff Ballard and started working for him.

Geoff not only taught him to ride faster but also taught him about life.

Later, Adam bought a van and continued racing motorcycles.

Then, he headed north and started living in the van along with his girlfriend.

They rode to the northern tip of Australia and in the way, rescued an orphaned wallaby, which was christened Rocky.

They returned to Western Australia and in 1999, Adam bought another bike and continued racing.

He published A Wallaby’s Tale book.

Winning championships-

Adam upped his riding and racing. In 2001, he cracked the top five in his state enduro.

A year later, he broke up with his girlfriend and started completely focusing on racing.

Adam won his first outright state championship in 2004 and backed up his second state championship.

He moved to Sydney with just $700 and in 2005, started racing the nationals and started contributing to the magazine full-time. He started appearing on consecutive ADB covers.

Adam also started desert racing and won a Finke award.

He finished 31st outright in Erzberg Rodeo in Austria in 2007 and was the only Australian to compete there.

Later, Adam got a guest ride on the KTM team for Australasian Safari aka Dakar downunder, where he won the 450-production class and finished fourth outright.

Adam made it onto a factory team in 2008 and started getting paid to race.

He is two times West Australian Enduro champion and also rallied all over Europe.

Writing-

Adam received sponsorship by the time he was winning his first West Australian Enduro championship.

But at the time, he was very timid and found it difficult to speak in public.

Adam was shy on the podium but realized that the more he presented himself, the more support he would get in his racing career.

So, he was forced to get comfortable speaking and appeasing an audience. This put him on the radar for the magazines.

Scott Staines, in 1999, wrote articles about Adam riding around Australia and racing on the same bike.

Scott was a columnist and used to write the “Way Out West” monthly column in Australasian Dirt Bike Magazine (ADB Magazine), Australia’s biggest dirt bike magazine. He suggested to the magazine that Adam is the right person to take over his column.

Adam started this apprenticeship and as he was winning, he started writing himself into the results.

This kickstarted Adam’s journey into motorcycle media and he started writing features and testing a variety of bikes.

Becoming a content creator-

Even though Adam worked for the magazine and raced for many years, he wasn’t able to earn a decent income.

The ADB Magazine made him redundant in 2009 and he had to survive on the shuffling freelance gigs.

Adam knew he had avid readers who would read all his magazine articles every month. So, he decided to start his own brand.

In January 2009, he started Motology, which he later renamed to Motology Films, to write and share his racing experiences.

Adam loved the photography side of the work and the photography that he learnt while working for ADB greatly helped him.

He had access to almost all top Australian off-road riders as he was riding, racing and training with them. But the website was able to attract only a small audience and was not growing fast.

And it faced stiff competition from the established websites.

So, Adam decided to publish bike and gear reviews on Motology and produce related videos.

So, he started his YouTube channel on 17 June 2009.

Adam tried a couple of names and named his channel as ARiemann1 as this name wasn’t taken, but later he renamed the channel after himself.

Initially, he had no plans of becoming a YouTuber. He just wanted to use YouTube for hosting the videos and embed the videos in his website.

At the time, Adam was filming himself as he couldn’t afford to pay for a cameraman.

He did work on freelance magazine gigs for some time after starting his website and YouTube channel.

Persistence pays off-

Even though working in the motorcycle media gave Adam many opportunities and he raced all over the world, he couldn’t earn from his YouTube channel for years.

But he continued working as he was investing in his name and the manufacturers kept giving him bikes.

Adam made a dirt bike movie, with his father, in 2012 and published those videos on his channel which became viral.

His viral videos, “World’s Most Dangerous Ride on edge of cliff. Himalayas” and “World’s Most Dangerous Ride Part 2 Himalayas” helped his channel become successful both in his home country and globally.

The Himalayan trip inspired him to later do several adventure trips.

His channel became a marketing platform and bike manufacturers started giving him bikes and gear and his channel never looked back.

His YouTube channel hit 100K subscribers in 2015.

Currently, Adam Riemann channel has more than 970K subscribers.

He relies mainly on the support of bike manufacturers rather than YouTube ad revenue.

Adam uses a DSLR with a single 70-200mm lens and a GoPro.

He has a 1992 Honda XRV750 Africa Twin and a 2007 Honda CR250.

His films-

Adam wanted to ride a KTM 500EXC from the KTM factory in Austria to the pyramids in Egypt but didn’t have the money.

Luckily, the KTM supplied the bikes and Adam, along with Mark Portbury, rode 7000 km from Austria to Egypt, in 2013, traversing seven countries on their KTM 500EXCs.

Adam made this into a film “Motonomad” and showcased it at the Orpheum Cinema theatre.

Later, he produced “Motonomad II” which was also screened at a cinema theatre and made the final selection for the Motorcycle Film Festival in New York.

In this film, Adam along with another couple of riders ventured into Siberia’s Altai Mountain range and attempted to cross the Steppes of Mongolia.

He also produced “Motonomad 3” in which he, along with a couple of riders, rode through Chile’s Atacama Desert to La Paz, the world’s highest national capital.

All these films are available on Gumroad.

Farm-

Adam returned to Sydney with his family in 2015 and later moved down south.

He bought a 160 acres property in a rural bush landscape and built his house.

Personal life-

Adam is married to Amena Baghdadi.

They have two daughters, Ayla and Ruby.

He loves watching movies.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Adam Riemann?

Share with me in the comment section below.