Max Chernov

Max Chernov is an entrepreneur, and a popular YouTuber.

He has 124K subscribers on his eponymous YouTube channel.

Introduction-

Maxim Chernov was born on 28 August 1984 in Sakhalin, an island in Russia, into a middle-class family to Russian parents.

His father is a surgeon, and military personnel.

At 2, Max along with his parents, moved to Vladivostok, Russia and lived there for 14 years.

Then, they moved to Volgograd, Russia and later, Max moved to Moscow on his own after graduating from the university.

He grew up listening to Limp Bizkit and Rammstein and watching Hollywood movies.

Education & career-

He did his schooling from a local school in Russia.

In 2001, Max joined Volgograd State Technical University, Volgograd, Russia to study electrical/electronics engineering.

And then, he did his master’s in automation of technological processes and productions in manufacturing, from the same university and graduated in 2006.

From 2007 to 2010, Max worked as a Product Manager at Kärcher; as a part of his job, he worked in Russia and the United Kingdom.

Then, from January 2011 to December 2013, he worked as a Senior Brand Manager for Gucci and Escada at Procter & Gamble in Moscow.

In February 2013, Max founded ‘PERFECTSMM,’ a social media marketing (SMM) agency and education company; he published a Russian book, ‘Из связей — в князи.’

He was a TV host of the ‘PR and Marketing Show’ on World Business Channel.

Later, Max became a full-time YouTuber.

A globetrotter; love for Singapore-

As he had a notion that people in the Western world live better than in Russia, at 21, he left Russia and lived for a year in London, while working at Kärcher.

As London has been a very expensive city, Max found it difficult to live there, as he wasn’t earning handsomely.

Then, he returned to Moscow and loved his time there.

In 2014, Max, along with his girlfriend, Lena Shloma, lived for half-a-year in Singapore; at the time, Lena was studying MBA at INSEAD, Singapore.

Both of them loved their time in Singapore.

Then, Max lived for a few months in France and Spain and settled in Ireland for three and a half years.

While living in Ireland, he badly missed his favourite country, Singapore, and longed to return there.

Max hated the cold weather of Ireland and was in love with the warm weather of Singapore; also, he felt Singapore to be safer than the European countries.

As at the time, he was running his own business, he didn’t like the relaxed environment of Europe but loved the bustling work culture in Singapore and compared to Europe, the income taxes in Singapore were lower.

So, in 2018, Max along with Lena moved to Singapore and made the country their home because he found that Singapore had similar values to his home country, Russia.

Even though he travelled to many countries like Japan, India, and Malaysia, Singapore has been his favourite country.

Previously, Max also lived in the United States and Luxembourg.

YouTube channels-

On 22 March 2012, he started his Russian YouTube channel, ‘Максим Чернов’ and started publishing videos on social media marketing and eventually gained more than 300K subscribers.

This channel greatly helped Max in his SMM business.

After moving to Singapore, he decided to start a YouTube channel and create content related to Singapore, its local market and community and contribute to the local society.

So, on 29 August 2020, Max started his English YouTube channel, ‘Max Chernov.’

On 21 June 2021, he published the first video on this channel, ‘Pros & Cons of Living in Singapore as a Foreigner.’

On 13 July 2021, Max published the video, ‘Weird Habits I’ve Adopted Living In Singapore!,’ which became viral.

After publishing a few videos, he stopped working on this channel in order to focus on his SMM business.

But in October 2022, Max relaunched the channel, started uploading again, rehired the 4-member team for his channel and went full-scale; at the time, he had 5000 subscribers on the channel.

He started working consistently and his channel started picking up pace in March 2023; having many years of experience on working with his Russian YouTube channel and managing his agency clients’ channels helped him in the success of his English channel.

Niche of expats-

After relaunching his YouTube channel, Max experimented with various types of content and formats.

He interviewed a few entrepreneurs in Singapore and after experimenting for around 4 months, he found the niche of interviewing the expats.

On 29 November 2022, Max published the video, ‘Pros and cons of moving to Singapore for American,’ and compared to his previous videos, this video garnered significantly more views.

Thanks to the success of this video, he found the niche of interviewing expats in Singapore and continued publishing interview videos which started becoming successful.

Max also started interviewing Singaporeans and expats in other countries like India and Malaysia, which are performing well.

Being successful-

As of February 2024, he has 124K subscribers on his eponymous YouTube channel, and 102K followers on Instagram.

Max earns from a variety of sources like advertisements, and sponsorships on YouTube, and sells the ’12-month Side Hustle YouTube Mastery’ program.

In addition to his YouTube channel, he also operates ‘PERFECTSMM’ from Singapore.

Personal life-

Max is married to Lena Shloma.

This couple has two daughters; Lisa is their eldest daughter.

Max is a polyglot as he knows Russian (native language) and English.

Singapore introduced him to Spikeball and he loves playing it; he loves Asian dishes like wet laksa, nasi lemak, and bak kut teh.

Max lives in Singapore.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Max Chernov?

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