We had the good fortune of connecting with James & Mark and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi James & Mark, what is the most important factor behind your success?
We’ve committed time and energy to get to know our audience. Hosting a livestream twice a week and chatting with our viewers in real time, remaining active on multiple social media platforms, and meeting up with our subscribers are some of the ways we have strengthened our brand.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
We both have careers in the nonprofit sector – James as the Director of Marketing for Project Access which provides on-site health, education, and employment services to families living in affordable housing communities and Mark as the CEO of WTLC which provides services to survivor of domestic violence and human trafficking.

Our Youtube channel is something we can express ourselves creatively outside of our jobs and has been something we collectively have worked together and grown.

Starting out was not easy mainly due to the fact that we weren’t used to being an on camera presence. It was also discouraging to start out because we weren’t seeing much traction. However, with every upload, we took a look to see how we could improve on what we were creating. That has been the fun part of growing our brand.

While food has been the cornerstone of our channel, it also has been a creative outlet for us to share our love for one another – something we had not been public about until we started the channel. Once we were authentically true to ourselves, it really helped us blossom and be more comfortable about who we are.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Orange County is a great spot – close enough to the beaches, close enough to the mountains, and wedged between Los Angeles and San Diego for a quick day trip. We’re also fortunate to live in an area where there’s no shortage of good food.

As resident foodies, we would be able to show our best friend a great time – we have spots for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and drinks! With Mark being Korean, and James being Vietnamese – we know exactly where you can go to get the best foods. We also love sushi so you’ll probably have that for at least one meal with us.

To wrap up the evening, we’d love to take them our favorite hangout spot – Isse in Fullerton where we will enjoy delicious Korean fusion food, drink some soju, and bob our heads to the great selection of music there.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
We’d like to shout out Heather Ramirez (https://www.youtube.com/c/HeatherRamirez). Six years ago she challenged her network to create videos on any topic they wanted – the goal was to get people to feel comfortable creating videos, to inspire people to just create more!

With her encouragement, we created a short 2 minute video – we filmed ourselves learning how to count to 10 in Swahili. From there, we’ve gone on to create 800+ videos that have amassed over 4.5 million views on Youtube.

Instagram: jamesvanle

Yelp: https://jvle.yelp.com/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtq9QuVaiYfON5zduqk8cAA

Nominate Someone: ShoutoutArizona is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.