HIBT Lab! Babish Culinary Universe: Andrew Rea

Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So you know the scenes in movies and TV shows where the characters are eating an incredible meal, or maybe eating something really disgusting? Have you ever thought, I wonder how that would really taste, or even could I actually make that? Well, that's the kind of thinking that inspired Andrew Ray to start a YouTube channel in 2016. He called it binging with Babish, and whether it's the burger cook-off from Parks and Recreation, or the Prison Pasta Sauce from Goodfellas, or Remy the Rat's cooking from Ratatouille, Andrew has made them all, and many, many more. And along the way, he's built binging with Babish into one of the most popular cooking channels on YouTube.

with nearly 10 million subscribers. He's also published two cookbooks and helped to create his own line of cookware. Now Andrew is not a professional chef. In fact, his videos often feature his failures as well as his successes. And in the past couple of years, his channel has expanded to include videos on cooking techniques, simpler recipes, and even guest chefs. The channel is now known as the Babish Culinary Universe, and as you will hear, It's become a very big business. Alright, so you

Uh you grew up in upstate New York, right? Yes, uh outside Rochester, uh home of uh Xerox, Kodak, and Bashulam. When did you first start getting into cooking? Oh when I was very young, uh my

Mother taught me how to make some very basic stuff before she died when I was eleven. And it became kind of like a you know a nice way to feel closer to her and remember her, you know. Mm. Tell me a little bit more about um I mean you start cooking as a kid and you have this incredible trauma earlier in in in your life and I'm a dad to two boys, one of whom is eleven and I

You know, losing a parent at that age I cannot I just can't imagine it. Um Tell me a little bit about About cooking with your mom. Was she a great cook? Did she have a love for cooking?

She was a great cook in that she was a mom and she could beautifully nourish her family. And uh just making the same stuff that she's been making for years. So uh you know spaghetti with canned clam sauce and different stews and Nestle toll house cookies, you know, just just classic as mom as you can get. You know, this tastes good. Mom made it. Yeah. But you aren't like even as a kid thinking, Oh, I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna become a cook, like this was something that you kinda did for fun and you weren't like this sort of s savant at sixteen, like oh this is gonna be a Michelin three star chef one day. Absolutely not. Um I I cooked some some some really objectionable meals.

Uh, so I was doing things like stuffing chicken breasts with cream cheese and artichoke hearts and throwing them in the oven and then getting like really huffy and embarrassed when my family wouldn't eat them. Uh 'cause they didn't want to get sick or whatever. Uh I might have been cocky about it, but I sure didn't know what I was doing. Yeah and I sure didn't think I would pursue it as a career. Uh I was pretty intent on going to film school after college since I think ninth grade. That's what you wanted to do.

You wanted to make movies. Yeah, I uh what I really wanted to do was have my dad let me take my college savings and just use it on a film and be the next Robert Rodriguez or whatever. But uh I'm really glad he didn't do that because I was stupendously inept and it would have been a massive failure. So I'm glad I went to college instead. Uh and uh and learn the ropes, so to speak. From from what I understand, your dad taught photojournalism at Uh Rochester Institute of Technology is a very good school. And so were you around like cameras and and and video editing equipment from a pretty early age? Absolutely. And my dad wasn't

uh just if professor of photojournalism he was um a major advocate of digital photography Well before it was mainstream. In Rochester, home of Kodak. So he was selling solar panels in a coal mining town. And uh you know, so I think I I think he he was alienated from some parts of his community as a result, but he saw the potential in digital and eventually became its, you know, main spearhead at R I T. So you decide to pursue a career in filmmaking thinking that you want to be the next

Francis Ford Coppola or like I don't know, what were were you like the kind of kid in high school who would watch And study films. I would study them in that I would watch them over and over and over and over. I I watched your favorite directors. Well, it changed as I was getting older. You know, if you ask me in ninth grade, it'd be Guy Richie and whatever. Uh, if you ask me in college, it'd be Federico Fellini and it would be uh Woody Allen. And uh if you ask me now, it's it's frankly it's the Russo brothers. Uh I think that they're they're complete geniuses. Um And and John Favreau, the

person who I actually know and am friends with. But yeah, that was my dream. I really wanted to become a filmmaker and after college I just kind of went into the film industry in the post production world and didn't really, you know, scratch the itch. What what did you do? Did you move to Los Angeles or New York City um after you 'Cause you went to Hofstra in New York when you studied film and so you you presumably you graduated from college, kind of knowing the basics of how to Maybe make a film. Where did you where did you go work after?

Yeah, my senior thesis film was like seven minutes long. It was shot on sixteen millimeter. It was uh you know, edited front to back. It was so yeah, I had the I had all the the basic skills to create a short film. So I sold my car to my brother for two thousand dollars and I used that to procure a A room in a five bedroom. uh legally probably a one bedroom uh in in uh in Brooklyn Atlantic and uh and fifth I think it was the corner where there was a restaurant called um Brooklyn Grange that's gone now. So being directly above a restaurant, it was a m a Roach Motel, you know, I'd put glue traps underneath my bed and I'd pull them out in the morning and they would be covered with roaches. Like four or five or six. It was it was disgusting. Uh And

the I was working in a restaurant. And I was working at anthropology as the guy who goes through your purse when you set off the alarm. The the clothing store. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so I basically was the guy that everybody hated because I'm the one who's like, ma'am, I have to look through your purse you set off the alarm. Uh and I was um interning at a now defunct post production house for free, thirty five hours a week, um learning visual effects software, smoke and flame. Yeah. And uh eventually

I came across the right listing, I gave the right interview and I finally Got a job. in my field, which just that alone was a huge accomplishment for me. Do doing what? uh visual effects for commercials, television commercials. This little company of four people called Switch Effects. I started as an assistant and I worked my way up to a senior flame artist, uh, which you know it's not hard to do in a company of four people, but still. Um I uh it it was an amazing job with amazing people, but it wasn't scratching my itch creatively because my job was to get rid of Nike logos off of like actors shirts and stuff in commercials. Or like lightening up the bags under their eyes or getting w rid of flyaway hairs or just all the things you're never supposed to notice.

But the really hard stuff is in post production, like spending hours and hours on a frame. Oh yeah. I remember we did a commercial for Swiffer once, uh where uh it was like breakup with your mop was the campaign and the the mop was was drinking through a straw for some reason. And they'd shot those practically like they did puppetry. So this mop was being held up by a medusa head of fishing line and wires and strings to control it. So every tendril of the mop was was shaking and had to be isolated and painted out frame by frame. This was one of my earliest projects at my new gig and that would be what my career was like was just these very, very slow

weird minutia, like one time I had to change the direction a woman's eyes were looking. Yeah, but the I mean, and it sounds super tedious, but at the same time, what incredible training To learn how to make Film to make film come alive.

Absolutely. it it gave me an attention to detail, that's for sure, because, you know, I would end up doing client sessions where they'd be looking over my shoulder and we would be going through it frame by frame and they'd be looking for any, you know, little bit of green screen or a little visible wire. And and uh I'd have seven people sometimes standing behind me. just pouring over every single image. Uh, so yeah, the it it definitely was great training for attention to detail and making sure things are clean and crisp.

I I'm sure during this part of your life you were exhausted at the end of the day and probably just collapsed and went to sleep or watched a a movie. But did you ever Do anything on uh on the weekends, would you ever take out any any camera equipment and just film stuff yourself or or not really? So I um let's see, back in like twenty twelve, I think is when I started doing Documentary production.

Freelance. So I would do fundraising films for organizations like The Opus Project, Team Lift, and Harlem Academy. Um These are all nonprofits in New York, I'm assuming. Yes, and they afforded me the opportunity to do some pretty incredible things. I got to go to Malawi. I got to go to Haiti. Um and document some really beautiful, incredible and difficult work. So that was also a really great training because

You know, documentary production. both shooting and editing you're the director because you have to piece together the story from whatever actually happened and you managed to capture. It I mean sounds like I mean then this was d freelance work, but it really sounds like this this was kind of a shift, right? Because now Doing post production is important, but but m but actually

making the documentaries a different skill set that you're developing at that point. It was something I tried to develop a long time ago, me and uh Sawyer, who's my business partner, uh today. and our friend Rashid from high school, we all tried to make a documentary our freshman year of college down in New Orleans, uh after Hurricane Katrina. We went down there to gut houses and we brought a camera with us and tried to whip together a, you know, post Katrina Documentary and it didn't come out great. But uh it was an early indicator of our uh

our interest to tell compelling stories like that. So yeah, I thought that documentary was a means to get my foot in the door because it was low production cost and it was mostly just like we said, attention detail and ability to tell a story. And it eventually culminated in doing what I so often do, which is bite off way more than I can chew, and I agreed to edit a feature documentary about the prison system and I was gonna do it in my off hours. So I did it after work. So at uh my work ended at seven PM and me and the director would crank until one, two in the morning, sometimes all night. And so to answer your question, yeah, I was I was really trying

to get my foot in the door as a creator of any kind. This is before creator was a job title. uh in in this in this industry and try to get noticed w by telling a story. I I read that around um this time in your life you've talked about this, you were going through some personal challenges you were experiencing, uh quite a bit of depression. Tell me what was going on in your life at that time. Well, it was really that documentary film that I had chosen to work on. We uh worked on it for a year and a half and

You never really went anywhere and it was one of the most defeating and depressing creative endeavors of my life, it made me think I don't have the ability to tell a story. I don't have a unique voice. I don't have a unique perspective. And I'm not gonna make it in this industry. So that's what landed me in bed. uh not wanting to get out for about two weeks. Uh and yeah, it put me in a pretty deep depression.

And I think you were also would be going through a divorce around that time. This likewise precipitated that divorce because basically My pulling myself out of bed. was uh The decision to go.

Si. therapy and seeking therapy uh put me on antidepressants. And antidepressants gave me a little bit more And with. Uh two.

build and create things. To function. Yeah, and and and after this massive creative defeat. Uh my therapist recommended. Back. I find a new creative endeavor, something that gets me excited, something that makes me, you know

want to work on it instead of dread working on it as my entire, you know. Creative. So I, you know, bought a camera and a light and a microphone and I wanted to shore up my documentary production ability and just do more side gigs, uh, to make some money, see if I could go freelance, whatever. Well, I'm yeah, I mean I'm curious about that. I mean you're you're in this

challenging place in in your life. But you decide a form of therapy was going to be to make your own video and it was going to be a cooking video would become binging with babish. But how would that even start? Well, um I was messing around in my kitchen.

And I was like, you know, I love food. I love cooking. Maybe I should do some food photography or something like that. I was like, Oh, I can put my my interests together. That's a good idea. And so I was just trying to get a good angle on some food in my kitchen. It was a very prohibitive kitchen to shoot still or video in. So I was just trying to find like any viable angle where it didn't look unnatural, where it didn't look, you know, weird or fake.

And I try to make the light look like natural you know, daylight through a window and I I just tried to get it right and as I was Fiddling with that. I was watching Parks and Rec for, you know, probably the fifth or sixth time and watched a scene that I had seen a dozen times because it's from a great episode where there was a a burger cook off and they were discussing some pretty exotic ingredients that I was like, I wonder what that would actually taste like. Papaya chutney, black truffle. Tolegio cheese crisp, how would that work? Would that work together? And uh

Turns out it's it's okay. Um, but uh that's really where the idea came from. We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, how Andrew Ray recreated that iconic parks and recreation burger cook-off and eventually grew binging with babish from this single video into one of the most popular cooking channels on YouTube. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Lab. Welcome back to how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. My guest is Andrew Ray, the creator and host of Binging with Babish.

So Andrew, before the break, you were telling me about this idea that you had to recreate the burger cook-off scene from Parks and Recreation. And I guess we should mention this is an episode where the character uh that Rob Lowe plays, uh Chris Traeger, he he wants to get rid of beef burgers in the cafeteria and replace them with healthier turkey burgers. Yes. Uh so I can tell you the whole scene. I could recite it but by heart. Yes. Um the idea is Chris wants to see if we can make a turkey burger that tastes better than beef burger. I humbly place before you my easy patent turkey burning. An Asian fusion burger. Made with something farms organic turkey.

Papaya chutney, black trophée, and microgreens gluten-free Rio Spine. Yes, I remember. And then she's eating it and w one of the uh panels says saffron in here. Saffron? Wow, and uh another guy's like I like the umami flavor and then Yeah. I love Marks and Right. And Ron makes a beef burger. And he's a good thing.

Um, and I tend to agree as an omnivore, I I think beef does taste better than turkey, especially in a fatty, you know, um texture forward thing like a burger. So he was absolutely right. Oh my god, it's so much better, it's crazy. Turkey can never beat cow, Chris. Sorry. So all right, so you um inspired by this scene from Parks and Rec, you decide to um make a cooking video on how to make these two things, and you're not in it. I mean you're in it, but just your arms and your torso and you're wearing an apron and it's basically you're showing how you make this thing and um first of all, why w why didn't you want your face in it?

Um I wasn't trying to remain anonymous. Uh I think later in my career that anonymity uh helped me a little fun mystery for people to to finally uh unveil my face at a million subscribers. Um But uh I I what I wanted to do was put the the focus first and foremost on the food. That's where I why I wear a black apron. And so the food pops and so you can see the steam coming off of it. And I shot things at a very, very shallow depth of field, not only because it looks, you know, pretty and because I'm a complete sucker for any shallow depth of field.

It also really narrows your focus in the frame on what you're looking at. So if the food is in focus and everything else is blurry, you got not only is it front and center, it's it's uh symmetrical and any personality that I'm bringing to it is ancillary and um incidental. Uh it's more about the food. And and the name you introduce yourself as Oliver Babish, not as Andrew Ray. Tell explain who Oliver Babish is for people who don't know that character. Oliver Bavis shows up in eight total episodes of the NBC seminal drama The West Wing. Uh

And it it is a uh uh I like making um online uh usernames uh named after obscure characters from my favorite shows. And I made the the video specifically for Reddit, for the food subreddit, because I had been posting there. I had been enjoying getting a little bit of no notoriety posting my dinner and, you know, having fun, pithy conversations with strangers and getting to the top of the subreddit. And I was like Oh, a video's like a moving picture. I could make that and post it on Reddit. And uh I did. And and that's why in the first episode you'll hear me say, Hey, what's up, Reddit Food. 'Cause that's who it was intended for. So you post this video on Reddit, but you still have your day job working in post production and doing documentary freelance work?

Yes, uh, because I didn't monetize any videos for a year, so I would continue to make this show as a hobby for a year after its inception. You continued with this theme of trying to recreate food from T V shows or film? Yes, uh I I've always enjoyed food and movies and television and what I really love about it is that it really combines my mother's love of food with my father's love of imaging. Like it's it's her heart and his eye. And I I really I really appreciate the thematic.

Uh symbolism of that. Yeah, and the thing I love about the idea is it's a great device, a great concept, right? Because you want to do something in cooking, but but then what? And then you're making things that that so many people are familiar with. May it might just be like a one line in a movie or a f of or a T V show, but It's such a great concept. Um

And it really did connect. I mean you that that first video you got a lot of great feedback. But really It blows up like eight months later with a video you make uh about uh about a sandwich. From friends called the Moistmaker Sandwich. What what happened? How do you explain its its virality? Is there any way to explain it?

Is there anything you did to make that happen? I didn't do anything but I can trace I can tell you the sort of path that it took, which was you know, I was repeatedly Submitting. my videos to Reddit, but somebody posted this episode, the Moist Maker episode, on the video subreddit and

Reddit videos, at least at the time and still to this day can be a sort of front line for what's gonna go viral on the internet. Uh that's often where I see it first. And uh it climbed up to I think like the fourth position, which at the time I had never gotten that high before and it receives, you know.

I think like a hundred thousand views from that. And then like I said, since it dictates when and where videos sometimes go viral. I think a lot of um news outlets and and magazines and whatnot go to that subreddit to see what's hot right now. They saw this and it ended up being republished on uh Food and Wine and and uh Entertainment Weekly and a bunch of, you know, traditional

media outlets and that helped bolster it even further. And I think it ended up trending, which uh again, unbelievable watershed moment for the channel. Uh and I think in the in its first week it pulled down about six hundred thousand views, if I remember correctly. Wow. Making a video like that. You know, the friend's moist maker. You roasted a turkey, you did a bunch of things, and you show this video, and the video is only a few minutes. The night before sandwich day we want to prep our twenty pound bird by butterflying it. This means

cutting out the spine and flattening, which is a long arduous process if you don't have the right s so go out and get some poultry shears because this is really super hard unless you have the right tools. How long? We're just gonna break down actually how many hours, including the filming and post production. From buying the ingredients

To filming to post production does it take to make what amounts to a you know, I don't know, what six, seven minute video? I mean I'd say at the very least, an episode from front to back, if it's super simple and easy, will take about twenty hours. So you're looking at like uh maybe four hours of production if it's, you know, some kind of simple um Then you're looking at probably ten hours of post production. Uh then you got color grading, some some graphics, uh sound mixing. The voiceover is far and away the hardest part because I don't write it beforehand. I just sort of do it.

And not not in one shot. I'd I I mess up a billions. Uh but I don't write it. I just kind of stream of consciousness it and that becomes very creatively draining. And if we're talking about something with exotic ingredients and or exotic preparation that takes days or huge amounts of effort, you know, we're talking about the better part of a weekend. uh spent shooting and then all my evenings after work spent editing, uh to keep

making it at this period. And and this was still a a fun project that you were doing. You were not thinking.

Hey, this could be my job. Definitely not. This was definitely still a um an after school activity and even when it Blew up. Initially I was very resistant.

W why? Because you thought that wasn't real. filmmaking or real like'cause you wouldn't study film, so did you have like conception of what that meant? Yeah, it was a little bit of a snob, I'm sure I like I d I didn't want to become a a content creator because in my mind that was, you know um handicams and stunt videos and pranks. Yeah. And I was like, you know, that's just not for me.

Um And it just turned out to be utter creative freedom. That's what YouTube offered. So as I leaned into it and discovered that I could start making money doing it. Yeah, it became my dream job real fast.

Yeah, when did that happen? I mean, by twenty sixteen you get this video that just getting is blowing up, the moist maker At what point did you say to yourself You know I can make money off of this. Well, that's where Sawyer comes into the picture. My oldest and dearest friend, his name is Sawyer Jacobs. We met in ninth grade, uh, and he is currently my partner.

Um He before anybody else saw the marketability. Uh and And brand.

recognition. Potential in this product. Uh Which, you know, he he was characterizing what I was doing that way. And I was like, dude, I'm just messing around after work. Yeah, this is just this is a YouTube show, like seriously? And he was like'cause he worked at

kinda nast at the time. And he was seeing these legacy brands doing these ad deals and he was getting a better and better understanding of How? the advertising industry works and how important it is to have name recognition in a brand and how much that's worth. And he very early on wanted to work with me on it. And very he was the first one to sort of come in with me as my attorney initially. So he he was the first one to see that. And he was also the first one to be able to help me monetize it by helping me sign with a management company out in Nashville.

Uh so that was probably I think that was about Uh four months after the Moist Maker video is when we started monetizing. And one of the early things you did was set up a Patreon account where you basically Asked.

You know, people who who want to support you to Sign up on Patreon and think he had bonus content and You know, eventually you were getting like ten thousand dollars a month just from Patreon subscribers.

Yeah, that was the first thing that really enabled me to step away. Thank you for reminding me because that came in before the YouTube dollars. Um I was lucky enough to have a robust set of fans that were kind enough to contribute to what I was doing and enable me to leave my job. And that's what

I it was June of twenty seventeen that I uh gave Seventy days notice to my employer because they're dear friends still are Um And uh decided that I was gonna Do this gig full time.

Yeah, I mean when you're making ten thousand dollars a month, that's a hundred and twenty thousand a year. Like that's that's pretty great. And that was It sounds like that was clearly the the impetus to get you to just quit your day job in post production filmmaking and to focus on making these videos full time. Yeah, it's very rare that small business owners get to start their business making more money than they were making at their day job, but I sure do appreciate it. Cause it was it's a nice safety net to have. Yeah. And did the growth just occur kind of organically? I mean

Or or were there things that you were able to start to do to get people to pay attention to these videos and to get more subscribers. Once again I leaned on Reddit. Reddit is a is a really cool community because They found me, you know? They're the ones who like Gave me a stage.

And They take a certain amount of pride in that. So every time I put out a video Everybody on Reddit would upvote it to the top of the videos of subreddit, which would get it a huge amount of traffic and just eyeballs on. And

the algorithm, YouTube algorithm, when you suddenly and massively just get an influx of views from an outside source, it's going to prioritize you in the algorithm. So my videos would end up trending after that. Like um It was a surprise when they didn't trend. Wow. So Reddit was really this important conduit.

that uh enabled you to just grow but but at this point, I mean you're making some money from Patreon, so that's giving you the steady stream of income. And then you you and anybody can do this, I think, at a certain point, you open your YouTube videos up for monetization, right? Which essentially means that you get a small percentage of of the fee when the ads are are played on it. And

From from all the conversations we've had on this show At least initially and and maybe even m longer than that, it's not a lot of money that you're getting from YouTube. Yeah, I mean initially it wasn't. And Probably within a year and a half that changed because

our CPMs started rising. Um cost per milli, so y y the amount that YouTube pays you per thousand eyes on and um R C PM. start rising because we are family friendly content. We um attracted a uh very robust advertising sector and

just our CPMs would rise and rise and rise along with our viewership. So before too long it became absolutely nothing to sneeze at and then You know, became For a minute it was the lion's share of our income, but then it that was superseded by integrations. So immigration's w explain that. for for people who aren't familiar with how how that works. So integrations are basically

product placements in videos on YouTube. Um so We do a fifteen to thirty second ad read at the top of the video and a forty five second ad read on the tail. Yep. Top and tail. It is tail as old as time and how YouTubers Bring home the bacon. And uh The first partner that we

worked with who we still work with today is Squarespace. They did a three episode deal with us and that was enough for me to like get champagne for me and Sora. I was like, look at us, we did this. And um they they brought in our first deal, which was our first uh, you know, kind of cash windfall. But really it's still You what Filming and producing and editing And voicing doing everything?

Yeah, and I mean Sometimes just for the sake of nostalgia, I still do that. Um The show is a Sort of um Template that I can build.

very easily and very quickly and then I can cut as I do the voiceover and as I bring, you know uh episode specific personality to it. I can I can I can make it into something unique. Um So it was something that I handled myself for a very, very long time. When we brought on Made in Network, they would edit together episodes of Basics with Bavish, which we launched in twenty seventeen. Um And yeah, it's just a general cookery show, which I was very, very nervous to watch because Before that I was resting on this sort of pop culture.

Crush. and thinking, you know, nobody's gonna want to watch me if there isn't, you know, a Marvel movie attached to it. But Turned out people enjoyed it. And were you ever nervous about I mean, you're not a a a trained chef, right? You didn't go to culinary school.

No, sir. Were you ever worried about getting criticized by professionals that you were not I don't know, professional enough or did did you just kinda lean into the fact that you aren't. Well, you know, like most YouTubers I know, there can be a hundred

nice comments and one mean one, and all you see is the mean one. Uh, so I listened very carefully whenever I received criticism because it's all I saw. 'Cause I have a complex. But uh I I knew I was gonna be met with. incredulity from people who really, really know what they're doing. So

That's why I made it. As patently obvious as I possibly could that I was an amateur. And that meant showing my mistakes. That meant You know.

having a laugh if I spilled something or burnt something. That meant being very, very honest with the audience. And I think that's something that people resonated with, which is why they kept watching me even if I wasn't making food from their favorite movie. We're gonna take another very quick break, but we'll be right back with more from Andrew Ray of the Babish Culinary Universe. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Lab. Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and I'm talking with Andrew Ray from the YouTube channel. Babish culinary universe.

So by this point in twenty seventeen you've Launched Uh basics with Babish the show. And then in I guess in twenty nineteen you go on to launch Another show called Being with Babish

And that that features a lot more of you, right? You're like interacting with fans and uh sharing And And you'd go on to release cookbooks and and cookwear products so you Grew really quickly. I need to I I have to assume that that you're a multi million dollar company today.

Yes. Uh I'm really thrilled and humbled with how well the company has done financially because yeah, we're a pretty lean organization. As of right now, we're six employees strong, myself included. Uh and our expenses are extremely low.

And our revenues. are extremely high because they're based off of just the sheer number of viewers that we've been able to generate. Yeah. And We're actually very proud of our compensation model that we've built with our creators because now on the channel there's more than just me. There's uh Kendall, there's Alvin, there's Rick. Um we have a number of different shows we want to make more with more personalities. And the way that we've been compensating our talent is via percentage.

Which I'm not familiar with any media brand doing that where uh our our talent and our creators are paid commensurately. with what ads are placed on their videos and how well their videos do. Um

And w it's not only than a way to generously compensate our talent, but I think to fairly compensate them. So We have a new system now where we have advertisers coming in for Talents that aren't me. on the channel and

It's a new way that we get to Fairly pay people for their time on camera. How dependent is the success of your model on the number of subscribers you have? It really depends on the advertiser. Some advertisers only see that subscriber number and

You know. just see that as the potential number of eyeballs that their product is going to get in front of. And other advertisers are a little more, you know they delve deeper into the numbers. They want to see how our videos have been performing recently. They want to see how they're projected to perform. Uh so we work with advertisers in any way we can to get them data they need. Um, tell me about some of the

smart I think decisions you made, um, particularly as the food the sort of the mainstream food media world really kind of imploded. in twenty twenty, a lot of these big publications, many of which produce great videos and and recipes. I follow them, I'm a home cook, I love them. But many of them went through some really challenging times, um, including Bon Appetit. Um, and there was uh very well known examples of people of color who felt that they were being exploited on the videos and and you you reach out to some of them and said, Hey, come come work with me including Famously, um so lili.

Yes. Uh Like I was saying before, we we had an idea. Of how we could fairly compensate our employees and our talent. And we wanted to try it out.

And You know I make it a habit not to speak ill of my contemporaries. Um but uh We saw a free agent. Um a creative who needed a new home.

And somebody who we could potentially really openly, transparently compensate. But there was yeah, there was sort of a corporate reckoning happening at that time. Um, there was like a half dozen companies that went through major reckonings in their corporate leadership and uh we were

very grateful to be as small and lean as we are because we're just a bunch of friends who haven't, you know, done awful things to each other behind closed doors. So that's that's a nice position to be in. You know, Andrew, some uh and and I'm I mean I'm just gonna be straightforward about this and I know pe some people listening are going to like it, but I I see a lot of very famous YouTubers My kids watch'em and I don't understand. I don't understand what the appeal of them is,'cause some of them are just mean. Or they're incredibly self absorbed. And it's funny because I watch my kids or other people watch them and they don't perceive it in the same way.

I watch your videos and you're very likable. And I'm not just saying that'cause you're on the show, but you are. You have a likable persona. 'Cause you gotta develop a persona. If people listening to how I built this hate me. They're not gonna listen to the show. And so I have to work really hard to make sure that, you know, people like me'cause I want you to stay with the show. And I want and and you know, this is not an act, it's who I am, but

you still have to kind of cultivate that and you have this ability to connect with people And so what do you How did you think about being that person? I really appreciate that. First of all, that's an extraordinarily kind thing to say. And I think that my my viewers share a genuine connection with me when I meet them on the street.

They always say, like can we grab a beer? Like, yeah, I feel like we'd be friends or something. I I hear that a lot. And I believe it because the things that we do are kind. We want to make uplifting, encouraging content. So we make it encouraging by showing how much of a doofus I am and how hard it is for me to, you know, cook. And Uh We make sure not to, you know.

Do it at the expense of anybody else. Like. criticizing anybody or, you know, trying to generate controversy with e anybody'cause those are like you said, very, very common tactics with YouTubers. And can be very successful. Yeah. You go after somebody, you're all of a sudden you're blown up all over YouTube and and social media. Yeah, I mean

That's a way you can do it. But You might also notice that I've never ever said like and subscribe. Which is a a very common YouTube bird trope to say to finish begin and finish a video with hey guys, like and subscribe. And I've never said that. So you don't say smash that like button. Never said smash that like button squad. And luckily what that's built us is a very robust audience who only subscribed because they wanted to subscribe. Yeah. Uh

And I think that's why we have such high viewership retention. Like we have a really loyal core of those subscribers who will watch our videos no matter what we put out. And so we try to meet them with quality content that's also kind and and uplifting. And you have also been pretty straightforward about your own ups and downs and you've been open about just like going

But at the same time somebody could look at you in your life and say, Oh, this this is amazing. He's got ten million subscribers, all the success, all these channels, he's he's famous, he's making lots of money. What Why does he go down these these rabbit holes of despair and I know it's a very Superficial question to ask, but What happens when when people ask you that question, or you see those kinds of comments?

Not a superficial question to ask at all. I'm very grateful for you asking it because I want to be w as loud a voice I can in the conversation about mental health. Uh it's Uh everything that they say about it being underreported, under discussed, under treated is absolutely true. I have access to the best treatment that I could possibly get now. And um it it's sometimes still not enough because if you have chemical imbalances in your brain. Um

It's akin to Wanting to run a marathon, but being mad at yourself for having a broken leg. Yeah. Uh And personally I have um Depression ADHD

general anxiety disorder and uh I don't want those to be shameful things. I want those are part of my personality. They're part of my brain chemistry. And In terms of being a public figure and being a success. with them. I I honestly

I know very few people who are public figures who don't have Problems like this. It's part of being an entertainer sometimes. I wonder if you ever feel like there are days are just like I wanna get off this hamster wheel, I just want to stop making this stuff. I don't wanna have to make something every other day. Well, I took a break a couple months ago. Um I took a month off.

Back in Uh April. Yeah. Um I disappeared from the channel, uh we put out a little Uh

notice and it was because I had had a uh Just a complete breakdown. Um I the the the moment when I screamed Eureka at the top of my lungs and fell onto my bed.

I had a a really sobering moment where I was like, I am not myself right now. I am I am not. Andy. I am not Andrew. I'm neither of those people. I am uh uh so obsessed with This company and hitting these deadlines and putting out two episodes a week. Uh and I started to feel

Joy and and and extra energy and not need sleep and, you know, borderline mania from it. And uh Luckily my friends. You know.

It had a friendship intervention, you know, and not just be like, Hey, you're gonna you're gonna burn out here. You need you need to, you know, take care of yourself. And In that time, I learned a lot about Uh. I've always been an adamant Meditator, but

I learned a great deal about just how to cope with my uh my anxiety and my my Sometimes. crippling depression when it starts to show its head. And now conversely when I'm too

Excited and I'm too worked up and and and anxious and and it starts to Blind me to how poorly I'm taking care of myself. And is it is that pressure come from you? Is it from some I don't know, part of the universe that tells you you gotta make more stuff or it's not g as good as this stuff, or I don't know, where where does it come from?

I have a little voice in my head. I think a lot of us do. Um That tells me. Whenever I'm Not working.

Or whenever I'm doing anything really, that I'm either, you know, you should be working. Or you're not working hard enough or you're not doing good enough. Yeah. And I know that sounds like universal because it is. I feel like most of us have that nagging voice in our head that's just like you aren't enough.

Yeah. It's taken a long time to identify that voice as Not Me.

It's never Had My health or my Well being in mind. Yeah.

And the day I realized that voice Hates me. was the day that I kind of spun out there and decided to take a month off because I was just working myself into a grave. And uh so I recognizing that voice as the malevolent presence that it is. was very important moment for me this year.

I I wonder whether I mean your business and what makes your business so valuable is the audience it reaches, right? And anybody who has a big audience is very lucky. We're you know, we're lucky too on this show. And what makes it valuable is that advertisers See value in in those people, especially a specific type of audience, a kind of person who is attracted to your videos, they are desirable to advertisers.

Um But you are still the center of it. Of course you've got other people But um Ultimately.

Do you have a view a vision for how to D emphasize you. Andrew As the person as the main focal point. In the Babish.

World. I I always want to to you know, the the name of the brand is babish and I I always want to be me and Sawyer at the center of the thing that we've built here. Um

I still want to be the face of it. I still enjoy being on camera and making my show. Hell, after we're done with this interview, I'm gonna go and edit together tomorrow's episode. I have to do the voiceover for it tonight. Yeah. Because it's gotta go out tomorrow. But I'm excited to do it because it's fun. Yeah. Um what do you think uh sort of long term? I mean what what do you want this brand to be? Do you want it to be

like a Food Fifty Two or like a Martha Stewart kind of brand where you know you've got all these product lines and Um and and just m different media channels and different partnerships and books and publishing. That you just compared me in the same sentence to Martha Stewart? I mean the point is is that it's an empire of a person and and all this these things around it, gardening and cooking and products and T V and film. I mean now that you're really growing What do you want the

this business to be in the future. I'm gonna dream big with you real quick. I'm just gonna shoot for the stars here. I envision us as a multimedia brand. that is still doing what we're doing right now, which is creating Informative, entertaining.

Uplifting. Positive. Evergreen. High utility content. Uh

On a much larger scale. That is creator first and human first. I want it to be one of these companies that pioneers in taking care of its employees and and fairly and transparently compensating its creators. I See

creating lines of products that are affordable for people who are setting up their kitchens. I see a slate of content that we can create for streaming platforms and Television networks. That

that is positive and up and uplifting, like uh Great British Baking Show. Uh you know, something that feels like a warm hug when you're watching it, but also maybe teaches you something or encourages you to try something you might not have otherwise. And seeing that on a much larger scale, basically just a much wider version of what we're doing right now. I mean I thought this was my dream job, but like that's that's now within

very distant realm of possibility and that is an intoxicating and really exciting prospect. Angel Ray of the Babish Colinary Universe. Thanks for joining us. Thanks so much, man. Thanks for having me. Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built This Lab.

Please do follow us on your podcast app so you always have the latest episode downloaded. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at HowI Built This, and mine is at GuyRoz, and on Instagram, I'm at guy.ros. If you want to contact the team, our email address is H I V T. at id.wondery.com. This episode was produced by Chris Massini with editing by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Neil Rauch. Our music was composed by Ramteen Ariblui. Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Carla Esteves, Casey Herman, JC Howard, Liz Metzger, Sam Paulsen, Carrie Thompson, Catherine Seifer, Josh Lash, and Elaine Coates.

Neva Grant is our supervising editor, Beth Donovan is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening. How I built this.

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