Fidias Panayiotou

Fidias Panayiotou is an adventurer, and popular YouTuber.

He has more than 2.4 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, ‘Fidias’.

Introduction-

Fidias Panayiotou was born on 11 April 2000; he hails from Meniko, Nicosia, Cyprus.

His mother works as a nurse, and his father is a priest.

Fidias was raised close to the church; his parents wanted him to grow up to become a priest, but he became a YouTuber instead.

He has six siblings.

A navy SEAL-

As a part of the compulsory military service in Cyprus, Fidias chose to train for the navy SEAL.

At that time, he was 18; the training consisted of an initial 8 months, followed by another 6 months.

The training was so intense that only 13 people from his batch of 70 people were able to finish it; Fidias successfully completed the training and became a trained navy SEAL.

Even though he had an option to quit the arduous navy SEAL training, he took it as a challenge and finished it; this training was the most difficult challenge of his life.

Thanks to this training, Fidias developed a solid discipline, and mental capabilities which later helped him to take on many challenges for his YouTube channel and become a successful YouTuber.

Globetrotting & YouTubing-

At that time, Fidias got inspired by Nas Daily and Drew Binsky, and also observed that the successful people which he follows travel the world, and so, he decided to travel the world.

So, he took a break from the military, and became a full-time traveller, and a part-time YouTuber.

Fidias started his YouTube channel on 13 March 2019, and published the first video, ‘Fidias First Video (so bad)’ on 18 March 2019.

He initially named this YouTube channel ‘Fidias Panayiotou’ and later, renamed it to ‘Fidias.’

Fidias started travelling the world and documenting his journey on his YouTube channel; at that time, he wanted to become a full-time YouTuber after finishing his travel.

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His inspiration & struggles-

While watching the YouTube videos of MrBeast, Fidias got impressed with him as he observed that he is not only enjoying producing videos but is also making it a scalable business; and this inspired him to start his own YouTube channel.

Even though Greek is his first language, he started making videos in English, as he believed that English videos have more potential; initially, he received a lot of hate comments for his poor English, but nonetheless, he persisted.

While living in Cyprus, Fidias’s YouTube videos weren’t performing well as his English wasn’t good; he also felt that lacking a community of YouTubers in his vicinity to learn from was another reason for the underperformance of his channel.

In 2021, he became serious about becoming a successful YouTuber, and as he felt that YouTube in Cyprus and Greece is limited, he booked a one-way ticket to the United States, and moved to Los Angeles; he was issued a O-1 (talent) visa.

While living in Cyprus, Fidias was in a relationship with Cassandra Kamberi but decided to break up with her as he didn’t believe in long-distance relationships; at that time, he was travelling to the United States, and she was planning to travel to other places.

As he settled in the Los Angeles, which was expensive, and as he didn’t have enough money, he struck a deal with his host to pay only half the rent (the half the rent was $375), and in exchange for the remaining half the rent, he started working as a homemaker for his host and started washing dishes, sweeping the house, scrubbing toilets, etc.

Becoming a successful YouTuber-

On the first day of arriving in the United States, Fidias met Airrack, one of the biggest American YouTubers.

As Airrack liked his work, he joined him in his videos, and here, he learnt many things about YouTube; he also interacted with many other successful YouTubers and learnt from their way of presentation, camera handling, and video editing.

Fidias befriended many YouTubers, including his idol, MrBeast, and started learning about YouTube by watching others’ videos, and reading books.

Later, he left the Airrack’s team to focus on his own YouTube channel.

It took Fidias three years to understand and learn the process of making a good YouTube video which viewers prefer to watch till the end.

As he became knowledgeable, it took him just a couple of months to increase his channel subscribers from 20,000 to 110,000.

On 5 August 2021, Fidias published a video, ‘I Shook The Top 100 YouTuber’s Hands,’ this video became viral, and launched his YouTube career.

Initially, he used to publish prank videos onto his channel, and they used to get a decent number of views, but he felt that doing pranks isn’t sustainable; so, he started doing challenges; David Blaine, an extreme performer, is his inspiration.

Thankfully, Fidias’s challenge videos started gaining momentum, and now he gets millions of views on them, and this helped in the growth of his YouTube channel.

As of November 2023, he has 2.41M subscribers on his ‘Fidias’ YouTube channel, and 241K followers on Instagram.

Fidias earns from a variety of sources: advertisements, Membership, and ‘Super Thanks’ on his YouTube videos, sponsorships, and affiliate marketing.

He films his videos with a GoPro HERO11 camera and has a team helping him with his YouTube channel.

In addition to his primary YouTube channel, Fidias has three other YouTube channels: ‘Fidias Podcast,’ ‘Fidias Clips,’ and ‘Snakess’ (Greek channel).

Hugging Elon Musk-

As a part of hugging the world’s top 100 celebrities for his YouTube video, Fidias decided to hug Elon Musk, which wasn’t an easy feat.

He has been able to hug many popular personalities like MrBeast, Chris Tyson, Tanner Fox, Zach King, Jordan Matter, Danny Duncan, etc., and saved Elon Musk for the last.

In order to hug Elon, Fidias arrived at Texas, near the SpaceX Starbase facility and started camping outside the facility.

He started publishing a short video daily outside Starbase to attract the attention of Elon online, but it was futile, but the silver lining was that his short videos started reaching millions of people, who started supporting him.

After a couple of months, his hope of hugging Elon started dwindling; but on the 63^rd day, he came across a video in which a kid at the 2022 FIFA World Cup Final in Qatar was requesting Elon to hug Fidias, to which luckily Elon agreed, and Elon tweeted his intention to hug him.

Then, he waited for 10 days at a hotel next to Twitter, and then, Elon’s bodyguard texted him to come to hug Elon, and he hugged him.

On 23 January 2023, Fidias premiered this video, ‘I Hugged The World’s Top 100 Celebrities’; as of November 2023, it has more than 13 million views.

He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Some interesting facts about Fidias-

• He won a Lamborghini in a MrBeast challenge video.
• Fidias is a vegetarian, perfectionist, and loves to listen to audiobooks and recommends Audible.
• He is a fan of Tony Robbins; Argyris Argyrou, the founder of ‘Foody’ is his mentor.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Fidias Panayiotou?

Share with me in the comment section below.