Seth Alvo (Berm Peak)

Seth Alvo is a mountain biker and a popular YouTuber.

He has more than 2.5 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, ‘Berm Peak.’

Introduction-

Seth Alvo was born in 1985.

He hails from Long Island, New York State, United States; and grew up here.

Seth is a Jew and has a sister.

Riding bikes since a young age-

His father grew up in Brooklyn, New York City and used to extensively ride his bike.

At 3, Seth learnt to ride a bike with training wheels, with the help of his father.

As he kept getting better at riding his bike, his father used to lift the training wheels higher and higher every day.

At 3, Seth started zipping down the street with the training wheels off the ground in Bayville, New York; thanks to this, his father removed the training wheels.

Since then, he has been riding bikes; he learnt balancing at a young age.

Seth started with a 12-inch bike and then graduated to a 16-inch bike, which at the time, was too big for him.

At a young age, he was also into photography.

BMXing & mountain biking-

Seth grew up on Long Island where BMXing and BMX Street riding are popular.

Props videos, aggregations of videos of BMX pros, got him excited into BMXing.

Seth grew up riding BMX bikes; he rode a lot in skateparks and also did BMX Street riding.

Then, he graduated to mountain biking.

As a kid, Seth couldn’t do mountain biking unless his dad helped him.

At 7, he got his first mountain bike.

As a teen, Seth was into BMXing, then got into road biking and later, returned to mountain biking.

At 15, he spent a week BMXing at Camp Woodward during summer and loved the place.

An interesting fact- Phil Kmetz, a popular mountain biker and YouTuber, also attended Camp Woodward for BMXing.

Later, after becoming YouTubers, Seth and Phil collaborated for a YouTube video.

Education-

Seth holds an associate degree in science.

He moved to Florida to attend school for a bachelor’s degree.

Initially, Seth started studying liberal arts, then switched to electrical engineering and later, switched to business.

While studying for the business degree, he started his web development company and started earning money and as none of his clients had asked for his degree, he felt the degree to be unimportant.

Seth was just 12 credits shy of earning his bachelor’s degree but wasn’t ready to spend the money and time on the degree; so, he dropped out from the college.

Career-

Since 14, Seth has always been working; he worked at various jobs ranging from technician to salesperson to office worker.

He worked at Movin’ On Sounds, a car stereo place, in New York.

Here, Seth worked with vehicle electrical systems and was a car audio installation technician and used to help the store with marketing, he also learnt coding and helped with their website.

He started taking on the IT side projects, and as he gained many clients, he was required to do invoicing, for which he started his web development company.

Seth ran his managed IT services business from home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; his work included web designing, providing remote support, etc.

He became a full-time YouTuber in 2017.

Starting ‘Bike Hacks’ & his inspiration-

While working at his web development company, Seth observed that his clients had blogs and were doing well with affiliate marketing; so, he thought of producing videos and earning by affiliate marketing.

So, on 30 January 2015, he started his YouTube channel, ‘Bike Hacks,’ in his free time in Florida.

On the same day, Seth published the first video, ‘DNM Cheap Dropper post unboxing and review.’

James Rolfe’s show ‘Angry Video Game Nerd’ of ‘Cinemassacre’ YouTube channel inspired him; he was inspired by his storytelling format.

As Seth continued publishing videos, he became addicted to the video production process and started spending all his earnings on the video gear.

As his YouTube channel started growing, he wanted to start an accompanying website; but the ‘Bike Hacks’ domain was already taken.

So, Seth changed his YouTube channel’s name to ‘Seth’s Bike Hacks’ and started a website with the aforementioned name.

Later, he renamed his YouTube channel to ‘Berm Peak.’

Becoming a full-time YouTuber-

As Seth has always been into bikes, they have been the focus of his YouTube channel since the start.

In 2015, he bought an affordable DNM dropper post; as he was excited about it, he made a review video on it; this is the first video of his YouTube channel.

As people loved his review, Seth started posting more videos and fell in love with video production.

He was amazed upon realising that his YouTube channel started accruing loyal viewers, who started requesting him to release more videos and wishing him more success.

Seth continued working on his YouTube channel part-time while working full-time in his web development company.

In 2017, he accrued a little over half-a-million subscribers on his YouTube channel and became a full-time YouTuber; at that time, he was more interested in biking and YouTubing than working as a web developer.

YouTube allows Seth to make a good living by following his passion for bikes.

Becoming successful-

After Seth reached 10,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, he monetized his channel.

And with his channel’s earnings, he started investing in camera gear and bought other equipment for running his channel like a computer for editing, hard drives, etc.; thanks to this, the growth of his channel skyrocketed.

As the growth of his channel continued, he moved to Asheville, North Carolina and shut his web development company, as he found it difficult to manage it alongside with his channel; and became a full-time YouTuber.

As of October 2023, Seth has 2.53M subscribers on his ‘Berm Peak’ YouTube channel and has 1.01M subscribers on his second YouTube channel, ‘Berm Peak Express.’

And has 323K followers on Instagram and 351K followers on ‘Seth’s Bike Hacks’ Facebook page.

Seth earns from a variety of sources like advertisements and ‘Super Thanks’ on his YouTube channel, affiliate marketing, selling merchandise; he also accepts donations on Patreon.

He uses Panasonic LUMIX GH5 and GoPro cameras and edits his videos with Final Cut Pro; he loves video editing.

Personal life-

On 5 March 2016, Seth married Amie Alvo.

This couple has a daughter, Rebecca.

Seth’s height is 5′4″.

He lives in Asheville, North Carolina and built his own trail system in his backyard.

Some interesting facts about Seth-

The Pacific Northwest is his favourite place to ride.
Seth has a Long Island accent.
He is an introvert and a reserved person; was never a pro mountain biker.
Seth opened a public bike park, ‘Berm Park,’ in Canton, North Carolina in April 2022; this bike park was funded through his channel, himself, his sponsors, Patreons and people who donated on his channel.
He raised $200,000 for the bike park.
In 1986, Rad, a popular BMX film was released; a year after Seth was born.
He loves travelling; Markham Park is his favourite place for mountain biking.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Seth Alvo?

Share with me in the comment section below.