Of course, YouTube views alone were not enough to get the old guard at the record labels to give Bieber and Braun the time of day. "The obstacles were that people didn't want to sign him because he didn't have a Disney or Nickelodeon show, and because no one had ever broken in through YouTube," Braun, who was personally footing all of Bieber and his mother's bills in their new home and running perilously low on funds, recalled. "There was no validly and no proven track record. The only ways minors have broken over the past years was through having their own Disney or Nickelodeon show and every label told me that unless I had a TV show attached to one of those networks, they were not interested whatsoever."

So, he did what he had to do to get the label executives to pay attention: He convinced a proven superstar to cosign on the kid's talent. With Justin Timberlake showing signs of interest, Usher entered the fray after coming across videos of Bieber online and plead his case, eventually edging JT out. After Braun made a production deal with Usher, the singer then introduced Bieber to Island Def Jam head L.A. Reid, who signed him to the deal he and his manager had been chasing for so long. And while that record deal was certainly instrumental to Bieber's career, as the Belieber fandom continued to swell in ranks, Braun insisted that it was due to all that hard work he and his client had put in on YouTube.