Joe Robinet

Joe Robinet is an outdoorsman, and a popular YouTuber.

He has more than 1.5M subscribers on his eponymous YouTube channel.

Introduction-

Joseph Allen Robinette was born on 22 June 1984 in Canada and grew up in Windsor city, Canada.

He has French and Irish ethnicity.

Joe was raised by his single mother, and she took him on car camping a few times, which he enjoyed.

He has a brother and a sister.

Love for outdoors-

As Joe grew up in Windsor city without any wilderness around, he didn’t have knowledge of the outdoors.

Later, he watched ‘The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams‘ film and similar shows on television and thanks to these, he fell in love with nature and outdoors.

At 15, Joe started watching ‘Survivorman’ and Ray Mears TV shows and started reading survival books and all these attracted him towards the outdoors.

He was particularly inspired by Les Stroud and Ray Mears and started camping while in high school.

During that time, Joe used to build shelters, track animals and used to try to hunt rabbits with a fake bow and arrow.

At that time, he religiously followed Les Stroud and researched exhaustively about him and watched his ‘Snowshoes and Solitude’ VHS.

Joe wrote a letter to Les explaining his impact on him and requesting his suggestions to make a career in outdoors.

After a couple of months, he received a letter from Les who wrote the letter while he was in Africa on a Survivorman show.

The letter contained a signed autographed picture of Les and he gave him tips and tricks to get outdoors and suggested Joe attend the school of David Arama.

Later, Joe personally met him.

Education-

Joe studied Park Operations from Sault College in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada.

Here, he learnt tree identification, animal tracking, survival skills and orientation and also learnt building quinzhee (a Canadian snow shelter).

Joe also took a bushcraft course taught by Caleb Musgrave.

Career-

After graduating from high school, Joe worked in a variety of jobs.

Initially, he worked at a few retail stores, then, he worked at Tim Horton’s Canadian Tire and then, he managed a couple of pet stores.

He also worked at Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville and his job involved leading people on guided tours and snowshoe hikes.

Then, Joe started working at Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, University of Windsor.

Here, he worked as a research assistant in the biology department laboratory for five years.

After Joe got laid off from this job, he started focusing on his YouTube channel.

Entering YouTube & finding his mentor-

Joe joined the Bushcraft USA Forum, and, in this forum, he was impressed by Terry Barney who was offering free online bushcraft courses.

In order to impress Terry and get his courses, he decided to start his YouTube channel and showcase his skills.

So, on 13 September 2007, Joe started his eponymous YouTube channel.

On 8 March 2010, he published the first video, ‘Shelter part 1’.

At that time, he wasn’t earning from his channel and used to publish videos only as a hobby and as a response to challenges in the forum.

On the Bushcraft USA Forum, Joe found many like-minded individuals and he used to interact, attend classes and camp with them.

Eventually, he attended the courses of Terry and chose him as his mentor and also camped with him many times.

First solo camping-

After camping in groups many times, Joe did his first solo camping.

He camped in a farm bush near Windsor with his dog, Scout.

During this trip, Joe cooked up a snake and ate it along with Scout and both of them stayed overnight in the camp.

Later, he recreated this trip many times which became very popular on YouTube.

Working seriously & becoming popular-

Once, Joe took a six month break from his YouTube channel and didn’t publish any videos in that period.

After six months, he observed that some new YouTubers have surpassed him.

This ignited the fire in him and he started working on his channel with full vigour.

During that time, Joe set up a goal to surpass The MCQBushcraft Archive YouTube channel.

Initially, he used to use a Nikon D50 camera but later upgraded to Nikon Z6 and Canon 80D cameras.

One of his videos of him overnighting bushcraft with his dog got shared on the front page of Reddit and instantly became viral.

This was Joe’s first video to become viral and this made him very popular.

Becoming a full-time YouTuber-

As Joe continued working consistently and effortfully, eventually, many of his videos started getting good views.

And he was earning twice with his YouTube channel than that with his university job.

So, Joe quit his job and became a full-time YouTuber and never looked back.

Becoming successful-

In 2017, his YouTube channel grew exponentially.

As of December 2023, Joe has 1.55M subscribers on his YouTube channel and 140K followers on Instagram.

He earns from advertisements on his YouTube videos, sponsorships, affiliate marketing and selling merchandise.

Thanks to his success, he was able to purchase a couple of houses and his wife was able to quit her job.

His favourite channels, & book-

Joe’s favourite YouTube channels are Scrambled O, Coyote Works, Primal Outdoors – Camping and Overlanding, Survival Lilly, and Kent Survival.

On 27 June 2019, Joe published a book, ‘Scout Goes Camping.’

In 2015, he appeared on Alone, an adventure reality show.

Later Joe filmed a television show for National Geographic.

Personal life-

Joe married Wilhemina and they have two daughters, Emerald and Autumn Robinet.

He met Wilhemina in grade 12 and at that time, she was a grade older than him.

Some interesting facts about Joe Robinet-

Joe wanted to grow up to become a herpetologist and so he had many pets like boas, chameleons, frogs, cats, rats, turtles, etc.
He also loves canoeing and fishing.
Initially, apart from camping, Joe was also into skateboarding, rollerblading and mountain biking but only camping stood the test of time.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Joe Robinet?

Share with me in the comment section below.