A Gift Economy Style of Education

Consider becoming a Patron with $1, $2 or $3 per episode Or donating one time multiple different ways on Slackline.com

When everyone chips in something, we get magic! I couldn't list the number of people that have helped with their time, talent, gear, platforms, education, and money. When I have put one foot forward, 10 other people have also. 4 years, 300 videos, 1400 break tests and several ebooks later we are growing to be an incredible independent resource of information. We want to keep answering every question that goes through ones mind when they are depending their life on gear. We value standards and want to help teach what they are and how they are achieved, but we also love testing things outside the box! It is fun learning and teaching how to manage risk. Help us continue to discover and make education on how to stay safe free for everyone around the world.

There are no pay walls for anything. We believe information should be available and free when it saves people's lives. So everything is free on our website. I'd love to give my donors something extra but it means I'd have to exclude some people, and globally, not everyone can afford to help but can benefit from the information.

2020 Income - Total $18,901
Patreon $7077Paypal $8792
Venmo $2501
Crypto $531
2020 Expenses - Total $19,676
Editing $3376
LLC $2400
Website & Software $673
Slackline.com $3000
Gear specifically to break $1837
Bolts & BB & SS machines $6,828
Production & Misc $1,562

100% of donations goes back into this channel and this channel only does what is donated. I just manage the vision. Thank you to those who have donated so far!!! In 2019, we had about 7k donated and spent about $17k. In 2020, we had about $19,000 donated and spent about $19,000. That's amazing and insane how many people donated! It gave me the courage to more or less quit my job and put 3x more energy into HowNOTtoHighline, so I can give the proper attention to these projects that I and so many people see value in. In 2020, I made $7,898 on ad revenue for over 2000 hours of work making videos! Prior years I don't even think they gave me a 1099 it was so low. I plan on painting just enough houses to pay my now lower bills (I reduced my personal expenses), and live on ads and affiliate links (affiliates are currently is less than $500 a year) and spending 100% of donations on making better content. I'm rolling the dice and jumping all in as I can't spend any of my personal money anymore on this and depend on donations, but enough of my audience have spoken loudly with their money that the show must go on.

DID: IN THE LAST 4 YEARS

Over 250 educational, timeless, videos on youtube
March 2020 is/was (depending when you read this) the release of the third version of the Bolting Bible with 200 pages, 500 photos, and 250 links (that work)
Highlining 101 - 80 short videos squished into 7 episodes plus a text book where you can learn everything you need in order to use a highline that is already set up
Fully re-bolted/bolted all 4 main highline areas in Yosemite
Coordinated our list of 1400 facebook groups with SlacklineGroups to make one single resource with 99% of all groups in the world so people can get plugged into their areas.
Built a slow pull 200kn break test machine called SlackSnap and have tested over 1400+ samples of gear
Built a portable hydraulic system called BoltBusters and have tested over 300+ bolts and hangers
Created a crowdfunding idea and help raise $300,000 in 4 days for LineScale3 to become a reality so everyone has access to a much much better off the shelf dynamometer than we had previously.
Designed, tested and built the 1600 square foot net for GGBY with a highline in the center of it
Wrote the History of Slack and Walking in Flow books

DOING: CURRENT PROJECTS

2 - 3 episodes a week in 2021
Writing and finishing Highline Anchors - a book similar to the Bolting Bible in which it will have everything on the topic in one place, with supplemental videos
- Then Highline Rigging
- Then Rope Jumping
- Then Space Nets
Building a new lab that is more efficient to use and better for filming
Getting AMAZING dynamometers that read 30,000+hz so we never miss a peak force and can share graphs of break tests
Building a 45 foot drop tower so we can do dynamic testing
Sprucing up an old squishing machine for purely entertaining reasons
Editing 8+ hours per episode instead of 2-3hrs per episode to make them tighter, have better B-roll and have a TON of links in each video of everything we discuss
How NOT to Climb - way more climbing videos in 2021
How NOT to Big Wall - people really loved those episodes, we plan on doing a lot more this year
How NOT to Cave - introducing this extreme sport into our education system
How NOT to ...... we love exploring any gear we depend our lives on
How NOT to Invest - We help people understand and manage risk with gear their lives depend on. Many people risk their money based on information that isn't always helpful.

WISH: ONE CAN DREAM

Have all the main finished books in 5+ languages
Have, or have access to, a cyclic loading machine
Get tours of rope and gear manufacturers and their break test labs
Have data scientist/programmers help do solid research in investment strategy "break tests"
Do extensive research on some topics worth researching (hundreds of tests for one 5 minutes video)
Make a legit movie - hey, we are dreaming here
Dabble in the industrial world. That world is so standardized, it would be fun to throw a little backyard science into it.
Build and donate full highline rigs to teams in countries that struggle to get good gear because it costs so much to import.
Sponsor re-bolting project
Sponsor athletes from developing countries, amazing talent that doesn't influence an audience with lots of spare cash so a for-profit company can't sponsor them. However, they can inspire many who are in the grind in life to live a more adventurous life... safely.
A lot more but I'll stop there :)

We can stretch a dollar! If you donate, we will get a lot done! When you donate, throw a stoke message in memo saying why you donated or what you want to see. The messages are as fun to read as receiving the money. We are currently not sponsored and choose to stay that way, but we celebrate and can give shout outs to those who want to support any of these overly ambitious goals with larger amounts. If that is the case, please email me at ryan@slackline.com.

I APPRECIATE YOU!!!

Consider becoming a Patron with $1, $2 or $3 per episode Or donating one time multiple different ways on Slackline.com