BURBANK, CALIFORNIA − Dhar Mann doesn't consider other digital content creators his competition.
The filmmaker behind Dhar Mann Studios, whose inspirational videos reach hundreds of millions of viewers each week, has his sights set on something bigger: Hollywood.
"I actually see other major studios as the competition," Mann tells USA TODAY during a tour of his Burbank, California, studios. "I don't really see a difference between any of the big studios and what they've built and the trajectory that we're on."
It's an ambitious outlook for a company that started nearly eight years ago in Mann’s downtown LA apartment, where he filmed videos on iPhones.
Today, Dhar Mann Studios has more than 170 million followers across social media and a team of about
250 people. The content, drawing nearly 300 million views a week, has expanded beyond social platforms through partnerships with Samsung, Fox and Disney, including a recently announced 20-episode order from Disney.
Mann is also expanding his influence within the creator economy. As Advertising Week New York's inaugural chief creator officer, he is working to facilitate $100 million in deals between brands and creators at the 2026 event, building on his own partnerships with companies including Gap, Adobe and Samsung.
The 42-year-old was also recently named to Rolling Stone's 2026 Most Influential Creators list and Adweek's 2026 Brand Genius Creators list.But his path to building the company wasn't nearly as straightforward.
When Mann was 30, after a series of business ventures didn't work out as he'd hoped, he found himself starting over and reconsidering what he wanted from his career.
"Instead of chasing money, I was going to chase the mission," the positivity influencer says. "And so I took all the pain that I had experienced and I turned it into purpose."
Mann began recording videos in which he spoke directly to the camera about his failures and the lessons he'd learned from them.
"In the beginning, only one person did actually watch my videos, and that was probably my mother-in-law," he jokes.
He set a goal of making 100 videos in hopes of figuring out what worked. By No. 99, Mann says he was ready to quit. For his 100th video, he tried something different.
Instead of talking directly to the camera, Mann had his mother-in-law and his wife's friend improvise a story in the background while he provided a voiceover. The video, filmed on iPhones in his apartment with what Mann describes as "no resources," went viral.
"As I started putting out more content, I realized that instead of giving life advice, if I shifted to storytelling and told a story, instead getting a hundred views on a video, I would now get a thousand views," he says.
His storytelling formula carried over to his Dhar Mann Studios. Mann says his stories begin with a moral message, often built around universal themes such as kindness or not judging others.
The approach has helped turn those apartment-shot videos into a sprawling production operation. And as Dhar Mann Studios expands beyond social media, Mann believes the distinction between creators and traditional entertainment will continue to fade.
"When people think of Hollywood as disappearing and creators [are the] new way of media, I see it more so as the line disappearing between creators and Hollywood," Mann says. "Because the real magic is when those two worlds work together."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dhar Mann says YouTubers aren't his rivals. Hollywood is.
