Samir Chaudry: Why 99% Of Content Creators Fail At YouTube

Tell me about um Mr. Beast. He like is is so unique in the fact that he is laser focused in a way that I've never really experienced and and maybe at times like in a in a way that I don't want to experience. Yeah. Yeah. No.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like no day song on a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a lot of it. You're about to hear a conversation I recorded with Samir. When I went down to LA. Um I've been following these guys for a little while. They are

knee deep in the YouTube game. And if you're a content nerd like me, somebody who really thinks about okay, what is great content? How do I use content to build my business, which is what I've done. Um Then these guys are very interesting because They know.

Everything about YouTube. And all the YouTubers. They've done interviews with Mr. Beast and Dream and a whole bunch of the large YouTube channels. We talked about a bunch of things. What makes a great interview? How do you do What are the questions you asked? How do you prep? And how do you um show up the right way if you're gonna do an interview?

We talked about Quality of audience versus quantity of audience. How do you think about not just the numbers, but like The real trick, which is getting the right type of people to actually watch your stuff. Um hanging out with Mr. Beast. So they've spent days and days with Mr. Beast. I wanted to ask them. What did they learn about this guy? He is

The most popular YouTuber in the world. He's one of the most popular entertainers in the world. Period. R you get that kind of access. to that type of person. And I wanted to hear some stories and he told me some good ones. Then we did five great creator businesses that you've never heard of.

And some predictions. What YouTubers does he think have the potential to build billion dollar empires under their content. He gave me three that he he believed could be the case. And there's a bunch of other frameworks. So things that uh You only really

Have these insights if you've been doing something for like 10 years. You've been thinking about the same thing from every angle for 10 years. Those are some of my favorite people to talk to. Alright, so enjoy this conversation with Samir. Colin and I, you know, spent a lot of our career making documentaries and What we noticed was like if we were interviewing a subject and we were just interviewing them head on.

we wouldn't get good answers. And then we started taking them like driving or have them do something else. And then you would get The truth. Oh it was really interesting. It's like the truth comes out in the car. I think it's something that uh some documentarians say where it's like if someone's doing something else, they're much more open if their mind isn't a hundred percent on right. The interview. Uh is that you think they're just

performing basically when they sit down in a sh like a Artificial environment. Probably, yeah. There's a lot of like Self. perception stuff that's going on, right? It's like how am I coming across? Who am I? Is this sounding right? And if you're distracted, then you But you guys do your interviews.

At a table, basically. Yeah. So you don't do that. Well, we've been trying to explore like the concept of creating the right energy for the conversations, right? Like you think about like this has a completely different energy than if there was a table has a completely different different energy than if we didn't have mics and we were laughed or had booms.

So we've been trying to explore like where our show is moving and what type of space we want. That's I said exactly where I wanted to start, which is basically you guys do So we came down here and we were like oh let's get Like a place, let's have some in person interviews with people that we think are awesome. And uh

It's different than the like at home thing for sure, right? The vibe is different, you you get a different energy. But also You can do like High stakes interviews almost. It's like The whole day kinda gets built around this interview.

Which is not really the case when you do it online. And um You guys have been doing some high stakes interviews. So you're doing stuff with uh I mean just recently

I saw the Tim Ferris one, that was great. And I g I'm guessing you're like me that you grew up kind of like really into Tim Ferris' stuff and I'm gonna kind of admire him. Yeah, it was pretty surreal. And so that's a high stakes interview. You did Mr. Beast, you did Dream, you did a bunch of these things. First, do you prefer

Like being the interviewee, or in this case you're kinda like more The guest on the on the show. Do you prefer guest or host? I like to talk. So like I like when we are the host and it is a conversation. I think that's the most fun for me. Like I do I am a naturally curious person and

You know, along with higher stakes, it's also like very, very interesting people that I'm inherently curious about. So That to me is really fun. I think where it's You know, where it gets challenging is if you don't have chemistry. But we actually now do

Pre calls and kind of It not like chemistry reads, but we try and gauge. Yeah. what our chemistry is with the g with the gas,'cause We've been in situations where the chemistry's not good and then you're like Okay, how do I like what where do we go from here? How does this work? Uh and and when you're the producer of the show or it's your show in the middle of it, you're like

Okay, is this gonna perform. How do I edit this? How does it and that then puts you into a whole like a disadvantage. Yeah. You're so let's say you're doing one of these kind of like Interviews you're pumped for a I'll call it a high stakes interview. Yeah. How do you kind of Walk me through how you're preparing for that and how you're like just kind of like Getting ready to perform that. Yeah.

Yeah, actually we've been really trying to establish our relationship with prep. Because we found that sometimes if we're overly prepped, I'm barely listening to the other person. I just know where I'm going. Yeah. I know where I'm going. Um And also how much of them I listened to prior.'Cause if I know their stories, I know their beats, I'm kind of like You know a bit. Curiosity wanes. Yeah, the curiosity wanes. So

Um been trying to explore that relationship. We do have a like we have a team that essentially develops a research doc. Like we've someone on our team who does that. Who's like here's Here's kinda like some origin story and we we structure it like a Act one, act two, act three structure.

Where where is their origin story? What's the inflection point? Where has that put them today? Right,'cause it's like what was the tense part of the journey, what What didn't work for them. Do we know any of that? Is there something we can ask about that creates an inflection point? Cause we are trying to tell a story with it. Yeah. So we need to know the general themes of what's happening in the origin, right? The act one. What's happening in the conflict, the act two, and then the resolution and the future. Right. Um

So that's like the most knowing all the details. Without knowing all the details. Yeah. Um so yeah, we're trying to establish a r a new relationship with that of How much is it like Curiosity and how much is it? Crap.

Uh and I think that's become m more substantial for us as the landscape of Interview shows is getting more and more saturated, right? Like when when we interviewed um you know certain creators three years ago

No one else was interviewing creators. So it was kind of like, okay, this is a talk show for our own community. Right. Doesn't exist anywhere else. Now we're a part of a group. And that then pushes you to try and become more singular and more differentiated. And chemistry, how you show up, who the hosts are matters. Right. I think you guys have done actually a really good job of that. I think about your show a lot because I think Tell me more. What are we doing what are we doing well? Well, I think you have to be it's similar because there's two hosts, right? Um which is really hard. Which is really hard in interviews, but

probably you have a better reception when it's just you and Sam. Yeah. On a lot right? It's like it when you're building a show that's guest dependent Um Or all about the guest bookings. It's like some people will look at this and be like, I don't know who that is, so I'm not gonna click on it. Some people will give it a chance'cause they trust you. Um

But really if If it's you and Sam, you can carry the show and then you become less reliant on Booking like Colin and I have been thinking a lot about that. How do we instill some of that? How do we think about that? But we are just like

The show takes us to really interesting people like Tim Ferris. And so right now in this moment it's like riding it with Yeah, you keep riding it like this is Cool. The type of outreach we have is really cool. The people we get to talk to is really cool. So You said something like uh how how do I show up? Yeah. I think about this a lot because When it comes to like sports, we're used to an athlete having like a

pregame routine, a meal, a nap, a stretch thing, a warm up, they're wearing the headphones, they're listening to their song. Yeah. They get the motivational speech. They run out they run out there, they do the warm ups and then they play. Yeah. And but for other types of people who need to perform It's like what what are you doing? Why do you need to do that? Just sit down and talk. It seems so easy. It it's definitely presence. Like you have to become very present uh in the conversation. And so there's a there's a couple of different things to

to try to do that. For me personally I've discovered this 11 minute Wim Hof breath work online. Dude, I think it's brutal. I do that a lot. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many people who know this exact one. It's like 11 minutes. And he's his accent is amazing. Come on. So good. Uh And like that just gets me in the zone. Like I I love doing it. Yeah. Do you do it laying down? Yes. Or do I do it laying down? That's his way. That's his way. On your back. So we we made a documentary about Wim years ago. And so like I've just been Which one? I might I might have seen it. It's uh it's on Yes Theory's channel. It's all called Frozen Alive. Colin and I actually edited that.

Um Yeah, Yes, this is it. So good. So By the way, this is good as a like uh I do this like whenever we have like a team retreat. Or like we need to do something.

Um I'll be like, Hey guys it like if you're if you're down Let's do something a little bit weird and then their boy like what is he gonna say. And this is not so weird. They're down with it and You you definitely feel energized right at the end of it. Yeah, I I try and get present. Like I try and take out a lot of the variables. I think as we've built a team, what's been great is like it used to be me and Colin being like okay, where do the mics go? Where do the cameras go? Are the does the lighting look good?

Um, and that can be really stressful. Yeah. I mean, for example, our most recent interview with Mr. Beast when we went out to North Carolina. You know, we were there for a uh a full day prepping for the pod, but at the last minute realized we didn't have a table. And Colin and I went to a furniture store in North Carolina. Two hours before we sat down with him. And we're just scrambling to buy a table and then had to arrange for it to be delivered.

And basically it all happened within a matter of, you know That was a very stressful two hours prior to sitting down and I felt th very not present in the first half of that. Right. You know, I was I was just coming off like okay that That was intense. Why didn't I think of that kind of immediately already being retrospective of the process of you know and so

All of that stuff I think you just have to eliminate. I made uh a bunch of mistakes like that when uh the sp this podcast started with me doing long form interviews. Like the first twenty episodes were just me interviewing people at a studio and Whatever and I I kind of like got reps there.

And then it switched at like I don't know, episode something, forty or something like that, to me and Sam. As like a recurring thing which was a way different prep. You know, turnkey s turnkey setup, already have good chemistry. Um, don't have to book guest, don't have to research guests, just like be ready to talk about interesting things and like

Just turn up the Uh the sort of charisma as much as you can. But Now that I got back into

Being like, All right, let's try to like We have this amazing network. It's a fascinating people to talk to. Let's do it.

And I the I told Ben I called Ben after the first one, I was like Dude, that was like an hour too long,'cause I did three hours. I was like I thought I was Joe Rogan for a minute there. I I did three hours, way too long. And then I was like, I over prepped like crazy and uh the thing you were saying where you're like I'm listening, but in my head I'm like

Okay, I'm supposed to be to this next. I was like That wasn't Right. And it's hard. Before this we went to Dave and Buster's in between interviews and uh you know played Papa Shot and I got in a good good zone and now I'm here. It's either that or Wim Hof, you know? Daven Busters or Wim. If you don't have a local Dave and Buster's if you're unfortunate enough. I thought you were gonna say if you don't have a local Wim Hof.

You've had a bunch of these guests. Who's somebody that's been a lot of fun, uh, that you guys have had w on recently that's like you know, giving you those kind of like mind blown m brains leaking out my ear like who's done that for you recently? Yeah, it's it's hard to not say Tim. Um Tim Ferris. You can say Tim's cool. But tell me what was Dope about the Tim one.

With Tim, it was the fact that he's been doing this for so long and and um He really opened my eyes to this concept of having a very high quality audience. And I I look at Tim and I think he has like an incredibly high quality audience. Um, and I think we make a lot of sacrifices because we distribute our stuff on YouTube for viewership. Right. Right. Like it is It's very odd that we have public performance metrics next to our work. There's very few other

places where that happens, right? Like in business. It doesn't happen where you're like, Here's how well I'm doing. And anyone can see that at any time. If you go to Shopify store, it doesn't just show you sales. How many sales has this had the truest, rawest like benchmark is. Imagine walking into a grocery store and it just has like revenue under every product. It's just it it's a very odd thing that pushes us to make decisions for larger viewership rather than higher quality viewership. And I think sitting with Tim Uh, it was a deep understanding of how he's built a very high quality premium audience and a premium brand over a decade. And I think that'd be said something in that interview to you, he was like, um

There's always a market for like the best. And he's like so I wanted whatever the ads were priced at, I was gonna go like double that and be like that's How do I get that to be the thing?'Cause that will always be there. There will always be a market for Whoever's got the highest quality audience with the best ad read. You know, that's

That'll always be there. And I think that's Played out. Yeah, and I think uh what's important is to for us as creators to s to realise like what we are doing is not Novel. It's been done before. We're building audiences, we're we're media companies. You know, like this has been done before and

We should look far back at who's done it really well. Yeah. You know, and I I I think that sitting with Tim was that opportunity. And You know, to almost as a self fulfilling prophecy, like the type of people who reached out to us after the Tim episode. really was emblematic of it is a high quality audience that watches Tim and that's interested in him. It was

Not our highest performing episode. Right. But it's one of my favorite and it's one that drove a lot of high quality outreach. Right. And it reminded me of that, of of we can get really caught up in, you know. high viewership, but I think that was something that that really pushed me in. There's a lot of stuff in there. There's something that I never forget that he said, which was um

If you do something that is even slightly energy depleting, it will compound over time. Um, and to like really look at your day to day and recognize what is depleting your energy. Um, because it'll compound everything there is when you say that. It's like I feel like everybody can think of like the one thing right away. Yeah. That you haven't been like really paying that much attention to, but when prompted your brain is like, Of course it's this. Yeah, and this is you know, this is four hour work week from his book, but he talked a lot about who are the right clients to have. Like what you know, money is not

We look at it as such like well it's a lot of money, so I'll sacrifice these things for it. But if it if the client relationship isn't good, if it's depleting your energy, if it's causing a strain on your team, It's not. Worth it And

All those viewpoints are almost antithetical to our the the internet age of us being like all of this is infinite. Right. you know, we can always be making more money. We should always be pursuing more viewership, more money, more of everything. uh he came in with the perspective of what's the right.

Money what's the right view. So he said that energy depleting thing. What did you think of for you? I I thought of um Like meetings. Yeah. I I'm like a creative person.

I like to be creative and I've kind of just spun myself up to be like, we run a media company, so I need to operate like a media company owner. And like I think about hosting meetings or being on Zoom calls and I'm like I I really don't like it.

Right. At all. So on the podcast once did a really funny rant where he was like You know, he's like long build up. He was like You know, I've been uh You know, we sold the hustle this many months ago. It's been six months. I've talked to this person, this person.

I thought about all these things, you know what I realized? I'm a fucking artist, man. And I was like, What it's not what he think is coming when he when he says it. And he also doesn't like Like He doesn't come across like an artist. Like some people that the way they dress, what they do, you're like That's an artist. Yeah. And he's like, I'm a fucking artist, man. I just need to create

I'm gonna keep doing that no matter what the situation is. I I should have they said be an investor. I tried. I don't want to do that. I don't wanna do that shit you know, I stopped doing it altogether. I just want to be an artist. And uh I think about that a lot actually. I think there's like a

a great way to like kinda draw a line in the sand around like You know what? This is what I am because it gives me a bunch of energy and like What is What is that not like, you know, and how do I Just not have to do it. Maybe I don't have to do it at all.

I think sometimes I I operate from an old model. with a new business where You know, I grew up my dad's an entrepreneur. I'm from an Indian immigrant family, like It was all about going to his office, you know, clocking in in the morning, clocking out, like Being there every day, being present.

uh in front of your team. And I think we're just in a new world where it's like is that Do I need to operate like that as a creative? As a creator? Um I I found myself that Another thing that Tim said was it was a quote from Whitney Cummings, but he said, If art imitates life, then you have to have a life. And I think that

The the mentality of like I really want to succeed is hey I'm gonna go to my office, I'm gonna grind every day, I'm gonna work really hard. But then as a creative person or as someone who's on a podcast, it's like, well, now I have very little experiences to talk about, or you know, it's kind of like I can tell you about the coffee shop down the street from here where I get coffee every day and then I come and sit here all day. Right. I'm so routine. I doesn't want to listen to this. Why does anyone want to listen to if I don't have interesting life experiences? There's um Uh a thing I realized which was my gr so my grandfather Uh

Like what does your grandfather do or one of your grandfathers? Like did they like have like a factory job or like any like Yeah, like my my uh grandfather that I knew, because the other one uh passed before I was born. Um had a um Like train engineering job in India. Yeah. Almost exactly the same. My grandfather saw my engineering like a

chemical plant of some kind. He worked there and like To him. Work was you come to the factory and Where the f the ingredients are coming in, they're getting processed, there's fumes everywhere and like That's what work is and there's like a shift supervisor.

Yeah. If he saw what my dad did, which was like go to work with a briefcase, there's a computer on your desk. You sit in a like kind of cubicle or desk, like uh sorry, office, and You know, you take phone calls Or you get on a flight and go to a business meeting where you're gonna shake a hand and

Maybe r do a paper contract deal, like That was kind of my dad's job. That's like what work became. Right. It's just kind of unrecognizable and looks much less serious. Than the chemical plant or the f in the the the uh fertilizer factory or whatever. Yeah. Um And then like to m to my dad, what I do, he's like are you ever gonna work? Like what are you doing? You're Sitting in front of your phone.

Uh, you know, you're talking to who who's listening to this? You get paid for this? Like, well, if I Get a bunch of views, then yes, or like You know Sometimes you know, if it's like I'm I'm working, it's like, No, you're just fucking around on YouTube. It's like right. That's exactly what I do. I like I'm looking for in the most interesting things in the world, and I'm synthesizing and I'm gonna talk about it.

But it's like our version of work is unrecon unrecognizable to like Mm. And I'm like, Oh like I just have uh kids and I just have two two little kids. I'm like whatever they're gonna do is probably gonna blow my mind. It's gonna be so Super unrecognizable. It's super unrecognizable. But every generation does that. I'm like, Oh, that's kinda interesting. Like

I should kind of not write off those things that look like Complete not work. Yeah. Um And like our p our company got bought by Twitch, which is like if you watch people playing video games for a living, it's like what this is not work. That was a very confusing era. I mean Even now at

You know, in my mid thirties when I look at what a twenty year old creator is doing. It's it's hard for me to track. Uh, you know, I I I spend a lot of time on YouTube. I spend a lot of time talking to YouTube creators, but This next wave of creators is kind of like Wait, what's happening? What's going on? Um What's the name of the

girl who's like going viral cause she's like a NPC. Poll. I don't know. Is that what our kids are gonna do? They're gonna be like machine. All of this is so like uh it brings so much about like who are we as people? Like what what is that that we're into? Uh you seen this thing too. Have you seen Pinky Doll? Basically she's She's just standing there and like

People are donating using the TikTok live thing. Have you guys seen this? Yeah, there it is. Mm, ice cream, so good. Thank you, Jackie. Gang. Gang, gang gang, oh special, gang, ra ra ra. Gang.

Gang gang. Balloon. Gang. Gang gang. Mm, that was good. Eliminate. He has to be a little bit of a So she just whatever if they donate the cowboy, she always says the same thing the same way. Like a like she's a bot. And she's just making like what was she making? Like seven thousand dollars a day. Seven thousand dollars a day. Gang gang. Gang gang. There's all these funny memes too of like uh guys filming their girlfriend like doing this. I think it says a lot about what we crazy as audiences. Obviously there's like a lot there to unpack of what we're into, but um the interactivity. Like you think back to Entertainment.

Um, even when we were growing up, it was like the T V told you what was on. The lean back experience. Right. Turn on TV. If what you wanted wasn't on, you just waited. And you may not even know you're super into these like niche cooking shows. Right. Until the yeah. Until chopped comes out and you're like oh Exactly. I didn't know I wanted to watch other people cook. I don't know if you remember the TV guide channel. Yeah. It was a TV guy channel. You just waited. It told you what was on channel twelve. And if you missed it, you had to wait a whole nother hundred channels scrolled by. So that was like a very lean back experience where we were like, okay, you tell us what's What to watch. Right.

Um And then as we progressed, there was like TiVo and it was more on demand. It's like, oh shit, we can record a show and like have it on demand or see what's coming up. Um, and now you accelerate it all the way to YouTube or Instagram and it's like I can search for what I want, I can curate my own entertainment. Now it's I can create my own entertainment, right? Right. I can pay money and she will do something. Yes. That's like an That's the next level, right? It's like interactive entertainment where I'm not

consuming it, I'm creating the entertainment. I'm part of making it. Yeah. And I think that's what you know, Twitch, I think is a great example of that too, right? Like People w people watching long live streams, why? It's'cause they can have an impact on it. Yeah, I think people don't really even actually understand what's going on with Twitch. Um like Now I think it's accepted that Twitch is a thing, which took a while to be like, is that like a big deal? And it's like, Yeah, it's actually pretty big deal.

But I think Unless you use Twitch, I think people still sort of think um The default is probably like Uh Twitch is people watching other people play video games live and so maybe they're really good at the game. It's like

Yeah, that's part of it. But then some people are you know, like A lot of people are just there for the chat. A lot of people just using this background noise in another tab. Like I remember looking at some data when we were there about how many people are literally just That's not the focused tab on Chrome.

And some people are like, Well, we should we should like discount that. And it's like You talk to users like no, that's like how I like to use Twitch. I'm not just yeah. It's not like at an accident and it's just running in the background. Like I listen to it while I work and I'm coding and I'm listening to this and I'll check back in. Like every every time something interesting is happening, I'll go I hear the crowd war, basically, I go look at the score and I go see what's going on. To me it's like the reinvention of the radio. Right. Twitch has has really operated like that. But then again, where you get to play a part in it. Ludwig was another creator that we we talked to on the show where he has

develop this kind of adversarial relationship with the his chat. Yeah,'cause in the way you said it was interesting, you go It's kinda boring if everybody just if there's also just supportive, right? Yeah. It's like you're right. And I was like, I never really thought of it that way. Um

And he's not adversarial like they hate each other. How would you describe it? Like what is what's an example of like what's going on on his channel? It is so odd. There's so many different things that go on. I would say his subathons are probably the thing to to bring into focus, which is essentially You know, he'll go live for he he initially started as twenty four hours, but Um, every time you uh subscri every new subscriber, he extended it. Right. So essentially

Torture me. Yeah. It was an advertary, right? It was like I want this to end. But when you take this action, it extends. Right. Right. Extends an hour. So he ended up doing it for thirty days uh straight, straight live streaming for thirty days straight. But again, it's dead now, but it was fun while it lasted. But that's an example of like having an adversary relationship, which where which is You know, kind of like you can interact, but you're bringing me discomfort. Right. You know, by By doing this. Um so it it it makes it fun for the audience to to play with that. And it's obviously like a joking relationship. Yeah. But there's something that's

You know. fun about that. And I think we should really think about These audiences, the young audiences that are growing up with this. What do they want next? Right. Cause we are

We are thinking about like the advancements of of entertainment in the context of what we had and how advanced this is that we can self publish on the internet. Right. And that people can comment and we can have Discord servers and we can engage with them. But there's There's a whole nother in a version of participation, even think about TikTok, like why do Why did TikTok become such a big thing? It's participation.

It's like it was easy to participate. Oh, for anybody to make it. Yeah, it was easy to and they told you what to do. Right. Here's the trend. Here's the dance. Here's the dance. Here's how you do it. Here's a hundred videos of people doing it. Here's the sound. You try. Click this. You try it now, right? Yeah. So the the Even You look at Pinky Doll, right? What we're just talking about. For you to Do that. For you or I to start doing that. It's we just start

a live account. That's it. We just start. Like there's the participation is so easy. Um where we can either participate in the actual live stream or become that creator within a matter of minutes. Uh what do you think's next? Where do you see the puck going with that? I think it's it's hard to predict, but I think if anyone could, it might be. Yeah, but I think I think what we have to realize is that Um

TikTok taught us a lot about the fact that the platform is the creator. uh in that context, right? Like If you take the top ten creators off of TikTok. TikTok's still TikTok, right? You still open it. And you it's a for you page. You wouldn't even notice. It's almost reverting back to the lean back experience. I open TikTok and I say, You tell me what's going on.

Right. Back to what we were just talking about with TV. It's just that it's personalized to every single thing. It's personalized. Yeah. Yeah. So it's hyper personalized, I think, is number one, right, when we think about the trends that are that are coming, which is already happening. But I think also Um like participation forward. So it's like it's personalized, but it's really easy for me to engage in the action too. And I think that's where maybe there's like

Two extremes. There's the the Mr. Beast where it's like I can't do I can't buy a train and have it go into a ditch, which is something he did in this last video. And then the opposite end of the spectrum. Here's what's happening on YouTube shorts or or TikTok and Actually really easy for me to do that.

And I can try it myself. I'm in S I'm in San Francisco. If you walk around S if you uh Yeah, you can't like you know Y you you stub your toe, it's like what did I step on? Oh, AI. It's like nothing is the answer to everything is AI.

And I kind of Wonder if the answer to this is also AI, meaning You see that AI can draw amazing art. It can paint you know, can it can paint better than uh you know a human can paint. It can paint anything you want instantly. Whatever.

Um it can write They make You know, Chat GPT can make rap lyrics. And so I wonder You know

H do we just get to the point where actually the creator is the algorithm is the creator. It just it's hyper personalized and here's just like It's gonna just deep fake and create something that it thinks you like. And it's just gonna try ten thousand variations per second. And then if anything starts to work, it starts to like

Go more down that rabbit hole for for more creators, for more people. It it might not even be a creator, it might just be self generating video, right? That's what I mean. Yeah. People seem to like'cause they have I mean an unreal amount of data, right? They're like People like to hear people eat. Have you and Sam been deep yet? Yeah. I've heard a

Uh audio audio only, not a video one, but a audio only version. That's a fake conversation. I mean it's like Like, If

Somebody listen to it. If my family member who doesn't listen to the pod, listen to it. They would just think this is the podcast. Yeah. Cause it doesn't sound robotic. There's little moments, but it's like kinda passable. If you don't know what deep fakes are, you'd be like, I guess it just sounded like that. If you listen to the pod, you'd be like, Okay, cool, but you're not really like substantively saying anything. Like Did you hear the one where they did

Joe Rogan talking to Steve Jobs. Yeah. And I that one was pretty good. I think they kinda edited it to like make a cool demo. I listened to Joe Rogan and Sam Altman. Is which is it's a YouTube channel called the Joe Rogan AI Experience. And I guess it's a genius idea. Yeah, it's it's a genius idea, but I clicked on it to to find out like Joe Rogan and Sam Altman. um talking about open AI and how chat GPT works. Right. Started listening to it to be like, what does this sound like? I want to hear one. And then

I just was like, Wait, this is just good and interesting. And then I just found myself listening to it. And then I was like, Do I care? So if we can do that with the like V zero point one. Then you just have to believe like okay, inevitably that's where it goes. We there's been a few of these that go viral, right? Like the kind of AI, uh fake AI things. Like there's one on Twitch I don't know if you've seen the Twitch one of Biden and Trump debating. Yes.

I think where we're gonna see this all really skyrocket is during the election. For sure. Yeah. Right. And it's gonna get really weird. Crazy and weird. Um I I brought it up about you because um it happened to uh me and Colin recently where it was a video of me, Colin, and Mr. Beast. talking about an online casino that he had started. And it was also our lips were also defaked. And Is it on YouTube or No, it's it's taken down. We got it taken down.

We got it taken down pretty fast. But it was cool. Yeah, it was really compelling. But I mean it It was too compelling. Like p people could click on it, it's like a to the To just the untrained eye. It's like Oh, that could have been a moment from the podcast I didn't watch. Um

I've had had conversations with my parents about like Hey. Yeah, I'm careful. Be careful if if someone calls you and it's it you think it's me, let's develop like a a safe word, basically. Um, with all this, like when you ask me what's next, the thing that's been on my mind the most is physical experiences. Okay, I actually think that we're gonna want things that are uniquely human.

Um, in the coming years, I think we're gonna want things that are like collective human experiences where Like stand up comedy. I think we were gonna want to sit and be like That human is standing there delivering that entertainment to me.

or plays in theater. Um I think we're gonna want that. And I think there's a lot of digital creators. Core building really

promising communities where people will show up. But a lot of online creators who are building high viewership. But no one would actually show up to something that they do. And I think that's And what's the difference? I think the difference is

Um The amount of personality that you inject into your videos and if people are willing to connect with that. Right. Like long form podcasting. is there's people who spend more time with you and Sam than they do talking to their own mom, right? Or their their own best friend. So they they have this like really in depth parasocial relationship. You guys have done live events.

People come. Yeah. Right. Um, and I think there's other creators who rip all of that out. because they're looking at the algorithm and they're like, you know what? When I inject my personality. Right. Ten percent of people stop watching, but they're looking at it on a on a view of like five million people.

And They'd rather have five million views than four point five million views. But when I look at it, I'm like I think I'd rather have A hundred thousand views, uh or a hundred thousand dedicated fans who are Who walk away knowing something about one more unit of trust.

Who are Down to listen to me. Talk and and understand my personality. then try and rip all of that out to make sure they get to the end of the video. And that is that is how like the business of YouTube is is predicated on do they click and do they watch till the end.

But I think sometimes that can give you the wrong signals of What should I keep in, what should I keep out. And again, back to the conversation of high quality audience. Um I think the young creators it's like it's like playing video games on YouTube, right? If I

Try this. then this number goes up. Right. Right. And I think that is too easy to manipulate right now. Um and there's there's so much information. I think we're were part of that of like sharing information on how that all works. But you do have to take a step back and be like, am I building a brand?

And a brand is about trust, credibility. Depth of connection. And that comes from some stuff that might not be optimized for the algorithm. Yeah, there's um it's sort of like drop shipping versus like Building an actual brand around what you do, right? Like there's um

I don't know if you ever saw when Sony got hacked. Do you remember that when the ET were hacked? Yeah. There was one email that I remember came out that was like pretty interesting and I think it was um One of the early Sony guys talking to the CEO. And he was uh or one of the uh it wasn't maybe the ear the early center guys, maybe it was like one guy from like a Like a music a record label.

Talking to him and he was like, You know, here's what we're seeing and he's like Basically the more popular this gets like, you know, people streaming music at home, blah, blah, blah. He's like It's also creating a pent up demand for what he called he's like he's like, I think out of home entertainment's gonna be big. And he's like, out of home entertainment, like uh he's like festivals will do well. This was like a while back and there there was like this kind of like pretty big

music festival craze that kinda came out of it. Um, but there was also a couple other like trends like that. Like Even things like Tough Mudder and Spartan Race All of a sudden people were like, You know what? I just wanna like go and voluntarily crawl through mud this weekend. Right. Like why would somebody want to do that? It's like kind of because you're sitting in front of a computer all day. Yeah. Life got too easy and you kind of feel soft inside.

So we go voluntarily have this like hardship. But also you want to be able to Instagram it and put it online that you did it. Yeah, I think uh I I totally agree with that and I I mean obviously that that it that's what happened, but I think AI is gonna create like this.

homogeneous nature to content. Everything's gonna feel the same. Um, and that is gonna make us crave something completely unique and different. Almost like Looking for Like AI has brought a lot of efficiencies into our studio. Um

We use AI for a lot. Like what do you guys use Autopod? Are you familiar with that? No. Okay. So th there's there's three cameras right now, right? And so basically you would bring these three cameras in and you want to get a clarity on like if I'm talking the cameras on me, if you're talking the cameras on you. Oh, it does those cuts. It just does those cuts automatically. If it's a three hour conversation, it'll do it in ninety seconds. Oh, that's amazing. And it'll be very precise when you start talking. It'll go there. If you have a human here live switching, which I don't know if he if someone's watched. He's not live switching right now, but we talked about it like right before we started. So if he if he's live switching with the switcher

He actually can't predict it when you're about to start talking, right? He's gonna be a second late. So now I do I trust the human more or do I trust the AI more? I mean the reality is it's brought a ton of efficiency into our Office. That's cool. We also explore YouTube titles. and play around with AI to be like, hey.

Here's the title we thought of, but give us ten variations. Right. And sometimes maybe it's it's ours that we like. Right. But if we keep going down that path, you know, the other day we were in a chat GPT or it's a different tool. Chat GPT, but there's there's other like creator specific AI tools. There's some that aren't public um that can only be used if you're Uh partnered with certain you know creator companies, specifically uh there's a company called Spotter that has a really great uh AI tool that I was using this morning. And the funny thing is like you're sitting in a room with with your team

And It's Is it more efficient to sit alone with AI and get hundreds of variations.

Or is it No. Is it more efficient to sit together as a team for thirty minutes? I don't know the answer to that, but I think probably it's AI, right? Um So the question for me is like if this if it's driving so much efficiency, I think I'm gonna crave inefficiency in other places. Right. It's like the slow food movement. Like find the table. It's like fast food gets too present. Yeah.

It creates the demand, the craving for the other. For the inefficiency. Yeah. I've what I've seen though is that even though that gets created It does usually end up getting dwarfed by the thing that uh you know, yeah, better, faster better, faster, cheaper, you know, like style stuff. Entertainment, I think, is different. Like You go to a concert. It's the most inefficient way to hear the music. Right.

The Taylor Swift concert. Right. You if you like Taylor Swift music and you just wanna hear it. Just go on Spotify. Right, you're one tap away. So why do you want this collective experience? Why do you want to drive Deal with parking.

Get in there. Oh you know, get to your seat, it's kind of a pain in the ass to go to a concert, right? So what is it about that that's You know. It's a w it's it only happens once, right? It's like an experience that you get to happen.

But you know, by the numbers, a lot more people will stream Tim Swift than will go to that. But you know She'll make a lot of money and can and monetize totally uh Totally differently. Yeah. Tell me about um Mr. Beast. So I've Gotten to go to his place and hang out with him a little bit.

Pretty remarkable dude. Um And not like oh he's like an alien or whatever, but just like Very interesting to kinda see him in his like normal ways uh of working. And you can kinda see some differences between how he approaches things. Like for me, I was like, Oh How does he approach things d how does he see situations and approach things differently than I do? And

He came on the pod, but it actually was like nothing he said on the pod would have given me that insight. But actually watching him work and like kind of being in a brainstorm with them. Then you do start to see those differences. I think you've gotten a lot of access to to those moments. Yeah.

What's uh what stood out to you that you've kinda like picked up or noticed just by spending a little time with them? I would say he's like the most unique human I I've ever met. Uh, I think he's like very, very unique in what he cares about. You know, I think what he cares about is very different from You know, what I care about or what a lot of people care about. He like is is

uh so unique in the fact that he is laser focused in a way that I've never really experienced and and maybe at times like in a in a way that I don't want to experience No, I mean him and I have this conversation a lot. Like I I don't crave what he has. Um

I like to have more of a wide perspective on life and a view of uh different types of experiences and he's very Um committed to his craft and very like

He he can laser focus in on something. Like if you've been in one of those brainstorms with him, he's just like Very blunt. He's very You know, he's just like, Why would we do that? That doesn't make sense. Like No doesn't it it doesn't exist in the same way for him that it exists for other people based on social context or based on like well it's the same thing. So you said no doesn't exist for him. Yeah.

The same way it exists for other people. I think that's really accurate. Yes. I have a story of an example of the thing. The time where I saw that the most was at the Mr. Beesberger opening in New Jersey at the American Dream Mall. Colin and I went insane, right? We w we spent the twenty four hours with him before and after. Yeah um And lived with him through this like

what felt like a uh hurricane storm of fandom and new experiences for him and Reed and and the whole team. Did you think it was gonna be go go to the part where he walks where he walks out. Dude, that was so I was the only camera behind him at that moment. On this camera video like he's famous. But I was like, this is not what I thought was gonna be. No, I mean there were multiple times where I had the chills filming this video. Um then Jimmy was like, That's crazy, send me that. And I sent it to him and then he tweeted it and it was just like It's completely insane. Um, but so that experience, there was you know, the night before there was uh question around like how many burgers they could serve. And and there's already I think

you know, fifteen or twenty thousand people. there the night before, right? It was completely insane. And uh they were sleeping in the mall. Mall security was there and they were just like Okay, all right, I guess. No, I don't think anyone fully understood uh how big he was at that moment.

Um And so they were like, Okay, we don't know if we can serve all these people. Jimmy was just like Wha what do you mean? Let's just figure it out.

Like What do we need to do? And they're like, it's just not possible. We can't get more supplies here. He was like Can we pay for it? Can we just pay someone to do it? And he was like well I don't

You know, I don't think so. I don't think that's possible. And basically what ended up happening was it was possible. And Jimmy just kept Pushing. At a point where again it's like A lot of people would be like, Okay, that's a no. If I ask three times, it's a there's no other possibility. Oh, the fire marshal said it. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, and I think that he he thinks in different ways too of like, um, you know, the the his immediate thought was around the staff. He was like, I need the staff to be

really into this. I need them to be on it. And so he's like, I'm gonna pay everyone an extra thousand dollars today. And that is thirty thousand there's thirty people working who's thirty thousand dollars. And it's in our video where he says, I'm gonna pay all of you guys an extra thousand dollars to whatever you're getting paid today. Right. Um that's like an irrational thing to do. A lot of people would look at that and be like, that's kind of irrational. Um to spend an additional thirty thousand dollars. Um but

You know, he looks at that and he was like This is what I need to make this excellent. Right. We're just gonna do that. You know, and you look at what he tweets about now too. He spends, you know, a million or two million dollars on a video and it makes two hundred thousand in AdSense revenue and you know, obviously his sponsors and stuff, but some of his videos don't make money and and he's Just like But that's they're good. Right.

You know, he he thinks in just different Ways like that. Yeah. I uh yeah, I feel the same way. He also um said some things. He also said some things that were like

really funny to me. Like um He was like I was like, so do you wanna like have kids or like what's your like what do you want out of life besides I've heard the YouTube part. And I was like, What else do you want? And I think he'd said he was like, I wanna be president, I wanna do this, I wanna be a billionaire and I was like, Okay, cool, but like what about just like out of your life? Like forget the

Big cool sounding things like Do you wanna Get married, have kids, like what do you want to do? And he was like, um He's like, Yeah, you know, I uh

He's like, Yeah, I'll I think I'll probably like you know date or get married or whatever. He's like, I'm like, I wouldn't want kids. No, fuck no, I don't want kids. And I was like, Oh, why not? He's like Oh he's like actually You know, like Steve and Elon, they they have kids. There's probably something to it, so I'll do it. And I was like

First just hilarious to be like uh just like the first name basically literally like the dead Steve Jobs who you never met and be like He's just like, that's who that's the class of people I'm in. Yeah. You know, if those people did it, might be something to it, so I'll do it just kind of for that reason, but I don't feel the need for that'cause I'm on this mission. And like, you know, that's where I'm where my head's at right now. I have seen him, you know, b just being friends with him and

having conversations and we just did another podcast with him recently. Um I have seen him mature quite a bit. I think We we do have to remember, like, that's a guy in his mid twenties. Of course, yeah. You know he actually he wasn't even I don't even know how old is it. I I remember laughing at something and I was like

Dude, he's so much smarter, more mature than I was at twenty four or twenty three, whatever it is. Though. I g again, it's it that's not I don't I didn't have any friends like him when I was in my early twenties. I think he's he's a very rare individual and he's twenty five now and he's maturing into He runs a company with uh over a hundred plus employees. Uh he's he's got this like whole massive operation, this massive platform.

And he's twenty five. It's it's uh gonna be interesting to watch the next five years. If you were to advise him, uh, what would you tell him? I think he's already experiencing some of this where he's looking at his content and injecting more storytelling into it, which I think is really really Smart and something that Colin and I have been talking to him about for a long time. Um

You know, it it's the same thing I was saying earlier of I I think It's okay to to have a deeper connection with Him and and with the with the content and with the contestants.

That he has on there. Um And he can sacrifice some of the, you know, hyper retention editing for that. Um, I also you know, a year ago probably would have tell told him He potentially is doing too many things.

Uh and he's Already you know, refocused, right? He's he's really just focused on the main channel in feasibles. And if you think about a year ago, Bees Burger, feastables.

Uh Main channel, Reacts, Gaming. These are all different things he's doing. Right. Um plus twenty five other amazing opportunities. Yeah. People who want to meet him and this and that, right? Everything will tug your attention away. And it's he's

X he can be excellent in all of those things. Uh But as you as you grow up, as you mature, it's like What do you say yes to? What do you say no to. And when you're at that platform where you have any and every opportunity. Um, how do you focus? It's it's hard. Well the way I put it is he can be excellent at at any of those, but probably not all of them simultaneously. Not at the same time. You can do anything, you just can't do everything at the same time. Because as a creator in a creator led business, you are the bottleneck for everything.

And I've spent time with him. He is the bottleneck for everything, right? Like he needs to be pulled into the room to to look at something. He has Uh you know, say on on all of that stuff and he also has the right you know, mine for it. He that's the reason that company's so big and why he's built such a big platform.

So where do you inject that? Is it across twenty p uh projects or is it across two and Um you know, I think they've they've really refocused and focused on on Two private. Every one of these platforms has like a guy at a certain time or a girl at a certain time that's like the one. They're like, you know.

Yeah, whether it was like Casey Neistad or PewDiePie or like Kind of they have Epic arcs. And they're

Top of the mountain and then Most of them. either literally stop creating because it kind of They transition careers, they get burnt out, whatever it is. Or they're still creating, but they're just not like

There's the new wave of new people doing new cool shit. Um He is kinda remarkable though. So you know, i he may have a different path or trajectory than most. If you if I was to say, all right, make a prediction Um

Five years from now. What is Like today, if Mr. Beast is like, you know, the number one YouTube creator And like s launching couple of these businesses underneath like feastables and whatnot.

Five years from now, do you think he's still the number one creator? On YouTube? I think he's probably the number one online digital media company. I don't know that You know I can cre I don't know what creator is gonna mean in that many years. Like I think He has the best pulse on on online storytelling right now.

And I think You know, we saw some people Try this, like the buzz feeds, the you know, like these these massive media companies that emerge. I think he's more akin to a media company than he is a creator. Um

So I I that's what I think. I think he'll be the biggest media company. Um the way he's building is Like a true company. It's a great vibe there. If you've been there, you know, like It it's uh they have good people involved, so I don't know. I d I don't know.

You know What the content looks like. I don't know what he as the creator looks like, but I think it will be a a media company. Like When we sat with him last in our last interview, he has a ton of aspirations to make content for Netflix. He has a ton of aspirations to produce stuff and

You know, I don't think he's that keen or or intent on he has to be in everything or he has to be the lead in everything. I think that's been the That is the draw right now, but I think in the future. it Mr Beast is a content studio. You know. It it could be we could be looking at like we don't know if we're not looking at the next Disney or Paramount or

you know, some massive m studio that can build IP and monetize in different ways. Like Mr. Beast is the first if we look at it and saying that's the first show. That was built out of there, right? It's a game show. that has a couple of different formats. It's distributed. It's the biggest show. They built a chocolate brand out of that that operates kind of like a game show. You can win stuff when you buy the chocolate, right? So it's like

Okay, that looks and feels really similar to like A Disney and a Mickey Mouse, right? Okay, let's let's Build this. big media platform and let's build a product connected to it. They they're they have that skill set. They could probably replicate that, right?

And as you look at their cast of characters. You know, there is a cast of characters there that can be built out. Um, there is more IP that can be built out. It's like Build IP. connect product to it. Right. You know, or connect experiences to it. It could be an experience too.

Yeah, if he if he chooses to uh to go that path. Uh I wanna talk about this. This is amazing. Yeah. So your con your content company did something pretty dope. Uh

You guys did I think was it a hundred editions or a thousand editions? We did five hundred of those. No, but w this was to celebrate Oh, it was to celebrate two years of our newsletter. Two years. Yeah, two years of the newsletter, the published press. So you got this newsletter, the published press, uh, which is dope. It's like a What you guys do on the YouTube channel sort of like creator A great newsletter for creators. I mean, it was uh largely inspired by like the morning brew hustle movement, right? Which was like, Okay, we are subscribers to these newsletters. What if we made one about our own community? Yeah. And then uh then you made an actual physical newspaper I'm very honored because you Yeah.

Pretty much sold out of these. Yeah. Um This was dope. Why do something like this? Because I I'm asking because This isn't like an economic move. This is not this is not gonna grow your audience. It's not gonna get you rich. Yeah. It's not gonna do any of those things. It takes effort. Yeah. Um, it's a risk in a in a little in a way. Um What's your philosophy on just

do dope shit like this. Why? Uh it just It's fulfilling. Like I it's it's hard to say that we have a hard hard nose philosophy on it. It's just like we are creative people. And As we've built a business.

Like one of the one of the things that's so interesting about being a creative is you're really good at kind of like the zero to one and the like, let's just Do cool shit until something works. What becomes startling is when something works. And then you're like, Okay. So what now?

I just keep doing the day. Uh and that's like that's the really funny thing about Colin and I always say that creatives aren't consistent people. Right. Um And so we've surrounded ourselves with really consistent people who help us. be consistent in the formats that we found. Um

But you need that occasional pop of just like, you know it'd be cool. To make a newspaper. Right. Like we the if we we were rebranding the published press. That's a new logo for it. We just We're like how do we How do we tell people that we've been doing this for two years? How do we celebrate? It also was we had just crossed a hundred thousand subscribers on the newsletter and it was like, how do we celebrate this moment? Right. What what is it? Do we just put out a tweet that's like, hey, it's been great.

Um And We were like, Well, as things are getting more increasingly more digital, what if we did something physical? And that that was it. That was the the impetus. And then it was just Hey, yeah, is everyone excited about this? Okay, cool. Are we down to stay up late at night for this? Great. And that's it just organically happens when you there's a lot of people who we asked about this and they were like that's

Yeah, we That's not gonna happen in the time period that we want it to happen in. And then that's another exciting thing for a creative person who's crazy. I found the channel. That's another exciting thing. Um So Yeah, I would say that it it's n again, like it cost us money. Uh, we do not make money from this. There's no sponsor in it or anything.

Um It it didn't you know, dramatically grow our audience, but Um it's it Has been a moment where

A lot of people could understand what the brand was. And a lot of big creators reached out to say, can I have one? Yeah. You know, I want one in my house. And then we we're seeing that creators have framed it and put it in their house. We're seeing that There's just something for one. You DMed us and asked for one. And like that to me is like again back to this concept of high quality audience. It's like the people who reached out about this. It's it's a premium And the reason I ask is because it's like in retrospect, once you see the final product and it's cool, and then you hear these stories, and it's like, Yeah, all these things make sense in hindsight. It's up front when it's Kind of unknown, kind of unproven, tight deadline, you know, a lot of things to do.

That's when it's hard to do this. Or or sometimes you say yes to too many of these things, right? So it's almost like Ever what you just said kind of reminds me of like Google had like the twenty percent time. Yeah. I re hire the best engineers in the world and like this guy's fixing the bug in the AdSense platform.

But like we gotta give these guys like twenty percent time to just tinker and hack on yeah stuff that that they, you know, get motivation from and like Well logically you'd say, Well, you're losing you know, twenty percent time is basically one day one uh day out of out of the week that they're not working on. Yes. b uh on their main job.

But the reality is that like Sometimes those hit and also it makes the other four days out of the week more productive. You don't actually lose anything. Totally. 'Cause you attract the best people and you gave them an outlet to like be creative. And also if you're not following what's exciting you, then you're just you built yourself a job. Yeah. And that's like then you have to look at it and be like, wait. What did I just do? What did I just do? I I also think that the you know what we do with our merchandise and what we do with anything physical, like

Most of it at the moment is not driving crazy revenue, right? It's not like a revenue driver for us. But we think about building our community and we're we're very niche. And so for niche creators, we think about collectibles like we want to create collectibles. Yeah. Um and when we have collectibles, then you get to be a

part of our community and be like I'm It it's the feeling of going to see a band when you were younger and keeping the ticket stop. It's like I was a part of this community at this moment. Right. So these are collectibles along the way of of our journey. You think about the the massive creators like Logan Paul and Mr. Beast or Emmanu Chamberlain. They're creating consumables. Yeah. Which is Great for m mass creators, right? So

Um These these things are like cool collectibles that we think are cool. Like we're planning another drop in in October and Our merchandise does not You know

uh drive like crazy amounts of revenue for us. It's relatively nominal, but It's awesome when you walk down the street and see someone in The merch. We sold. you know, two thousand of these hats and they're they're out in the world and Right. Two thousand people are wearing them and we've we've we see stories where

people connect because they saw someone else wearing the merch. So that to me is like the symbol of community building this tight knit. group uh who can connect and be like I'm part of the same group as you identify in the same world as you do. Totally. We uh That's I love the way you put it. It's a great frame on on that idea of consumables versus col collectibles. When we uh were about to launch like merch for the pot or whatever.

And it was like, Oh yeah, merch and it's like Okay, here's two things I know. Number one. People don't want to wear our like for us, it was like they're not gonna wear a shirt that says My First Million. Like this is not gonna happen it's not cool. I don't wanna wear that, they don't wanna wear that. Let's just all agree on that.

What they will wear is like inside jokes and slang that only you if you know, you know, and if you don't, you don't. No small voice stuff. Yeah, no small voice stuff. Or like I have this shirt that It's a uh we made that's a Polaroid of It's like a fuzzy Polaroid of Sam when he had his hot dog stand. But it's like in the style of those like Kanye shirt or whatever. It's like some like cool Cool looking like it's like a imitation of that.

And it's like nobody will even know who that is or what's hot. You can't even tell that it's a hot dog stand, but like If you know, you know, and that's it and that's it. I was like, we should just do I was like if we're n my rule is like the Tim Ferris rule is basically if you're not gonna make A ton of money on it?

It should be free. Or it should be like as Just sell it at cost, but like and do like a limited run so that it's more Interesting. Totally. And just only like if you're gonna try to make money, only make money when you're gonna make a lot of money. Don't try to like

trickle a little bit of beg for money everywhere because that doesn't like Nobody likes that and that's not the right approach for something like this. And a lot of our merch is the right way to think about it. A lot of our merch shipments are driven by our referral program through the newsletter, right? And so that's like You know, again, that's like pulling from the the playbook. Yeah, the the the old the Newsletter Playbook. You had this um

tweet or this video that I saw that was like a Naval quote that I really liked. It was um It said like uh Well it was like Your problem is that you're writing to be read. Yes. That resonated with you and me. I want you to like talk about that. Why did that hit?'Cause so simple. It's like you know, seven words or something. I think it hit me at a time where I felt like we were creating very scared. The beginning of this year I felt like we were creating very scared. Like

We had crossed a million subscribers last year. We felt like we had built a brand in the space. And opened up the year, we made a few videos that we just canned. We just didn't put them out because we were like, Oh, those aren't gonna work for the audience, but we liked them. Um And got really in our heads around

you know, again, you're you're playing this dance as a creator of what you want to make, what the audience wants to watch, and what the platform wants. Those are the three things that we think you're you're constantly playing with. And If you overvalue what the audience wants, you will You're you're catering to you know, this group that obviously they they have created your career if if you know you've made it. Um, but you you can't forget that it came from what you wanted to make. I think on on one side of the spectrum of

you know, being a publisher or being a creator. There is the artist who's like, I do not care. What you think I'm going to make this. And that has financial implications, right? That are essentially very hard to make money like that, but very cool. We respect artists like that, right? Um, there's some of the most respected artists like are misunderstood.

maybe understood once they pass or just didn't care about what the audience thought. Right. Uh, your interpretation doesn't matter to them. Right. I love that you exist, but like Sure. I like guac on my Chipotle. I'm just gonna I'm gonna have a job. It's okay. The other side of the spectrum is being a distributor. It's like why do we have so many Spider Man movies? It's'cause they put Butts and seats. Right. So the person at the studio, the movie studio, is not

an artist they're thinking about What do we make? What do we green light? Spider Man. That's gonna get people in the seats. That's gonna sell tickets. And I think as a creator, you have to be in the middle of that. And some creators slide heavy on the the side of distributor of just like what does the audience want to watch?

I'll make that. Whatever, you know. And then on the other side of what do I want to make? Um And so I think that Naval quote really hit me in this feeling of losing

You know I did grow up, I went to film school, I You know, took playwriting in college. I'm like really into artsy stuff. And I think when money gets involved, when you start commercializing your creativity.

Um, and when it doesn't work for years, that's an important part of our story, right? It didn't work for a long time. We didn't make any money for a long time, you get Terrified of losing it. And when you get terrified of losing it, you start creating to be watched or writing to be read. What did you say, creating scared? Yeah. Creating scared.

Yeah. It's like a book title right there. I like that one. Yeah, I it's something calling and I talk about a lot. It's like let's not create scared. You know, what are we scared of? You know, like i again, it's it's it's all this mix of the public view count, the perception, the tweets of like these guys have fallen off, or you whatever you think is gonna happen if you put out a video that people don't like. Um And people can feel that, I think. I th I think you can feel it as a creator. It feels really uncomfortable to to create scared. And Um

Yeah, it's not it's not fun to watch. Yeah, absolutely. You know, um You had Husan Minaj on the show and he I love Hussein. He's very much on the artist side. I think uh he like drew a line in the sand for himself. He's like, Okay, I uh Either I'm gonna get on TikTok and I'm gonna dance for the algorithm. Yeah. Or I'm gonna go the other way and I'm not and he's like had like a the soul searching moment. It's not s like you know, he

He sent me a voice memo once I was just like Bro. I'm gonna just create great art. I'm an artist and an artist creates art. That's what I'm doing. I'm not a businessman first. I'm not a creator first. I'm I'm This is what I'm gonna do. And he's like, So I gotta be true to that and I'm g I'm gonna work on projects that are like

Interesting to me from that perspective. And it's gotta hit my bar on that and like That's the vibe I got from him, but yeah, this was a few years ago when I yeah when we were talking about that stuff, you had him on I think more recently. Yeah. Um last year, yeah. Did he say anything that kind of resonated with you on that? Totally.

Yeah, I mean he he talked a lot about he kind of changed my whole perception on making YouTube short. Because he said he kinda made he he kinda made fun of it. Uh you know, it's Husin's like so funny the way he he talks, but he he described making YouTube shorts as being a skinned rat for the engineers in San Bruno. Uh which I thought was really funny. Uh he was just like you're a guinea pig, you are Um you know, essentially creating more data points for them for their, you know, your your they're your boss. Um

You know, whatever works on their algorithm, you then pander to that. Right. And so he he he kind of pushed us in that. that direction of recognizing like are we artists or are we Creating for the algorithm. Um

And the second thing he said, which I heavily resonate with. He's like everything is about the PDF. Which means like what is the idea? Right. Write it on a piece of paper. Is the idea good? Show it to someone. Pitch it to someone. Do they immediately go, that's a good idea? Do they laugh? Do they feel some sort of emotion? Before it's made. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like people

Even when we got on our pre-call with him, he was like, All right, what are we making together? When we sit down. Right. And he asked us that question and I was like Oh, you're right. What is the Hussein Minaj Colin and Smear interview? Let's write it out. Let's let's not plan it, but what is it? Like what's the idea? Why is this a good idea to do this?

Uh what was the answer. We talked about like how can we Um Like how can we bring forward his creator story of starting on YouTube and using YouTube to um

crazy windy Pat. Up to Netflix, right? And how he's now

Kind of left you to Um because Hustle did he use origins are on YouTube. He came up with shows and and put them on YouTube. If you go to his channel and search by oldest like sketch shows sketch shows, he did hosted shows where he talked about the news, like almost like Tosh uh Tosh point oh, yeah. That for us was like no one's no one has told that story. That's interesting. Let's talk about that and let's talk about your relationship with with And he was on the line eighteen, nineteen doing like comedy clubs, right? Like he's doing stand up at like

Yeah. San Francisco or something like that, I think. Totally. Yeah, I I watched him uh do King's Jester live. Uh like we went out to go did you go to one of his shows? So it's a stand up special. Um That guy's like a performer, man. Like he he re he really inspired me to be like this isn't like a comedy show. Yeah, it's it's a one man show. It's a performance. Uh And

That to me, it really inspired both Colin and I to be like, this is a craft. You have to work on it. You know, performing is part of this craft. Um, ideation is the biggest part of it. You know, he has a writing partner that he sits and writes. Did you meet Pratt or what's he like? I've never gotten to meet him. Um, but I o I'm very alm I'm very, very fascinated by The wingman.

Yeah. There's a lot of popular people. But almost all of them are not nobody's solo. Everyone's got some kind of a team. And usually they have like their c they're confidant. The person who's in the bunker with them, figuring things out. compliments them, does all the shit they're not good at. Um but like kind of like keeps them going in the right direction. And those people are actually really, really fascinating to me. And nobody really like

Ask them a ton of questions. I have a million questions for them. Uh tell me a little bit about him, but As creatives and creators, we think Worth we want to hire an employee, but actually what we want is a collaborator. Yeah. And if you're lucky enough to come up with a collaborator, then

You know, I those are the people in my opinion who typically make it, like fully make it when they have a collaborator. So Pratt limited time with him, but um I find comedians to be like astute. observers of the world. And uh I found Pratt to be like Very much that. Right. Like he he had a notebook and pen during the King's Jester taping. It was a I don't know if it was a taping or if it was just one of the shows, but they were prepping for the Netflix special. Yeah. And he was sitting there during the entire show, sitting right in front of me, just ferociously taking notes on

What was working, what the audience was reacting to, when there was Too m too much of a pause. When there wasn't like he was um and right after the show before Hussan came back into the green room, him and Prat were talking. I love that. Yeah, I love it when it's sort of like all right, we're going back to the lab. Yeah. We kind of like we do our thing, but like 'Cause uh I tell Ben so Ben's my collaborator, basically. So like we did

couple businesses together, but also when it comes to content. We recently did a um We're kinda new to YouTube, but we did we used to just basically put the podcast on YouTube. Yeah, I remember. And that was like you guys are growing now, though. It started really bad. It was like we would first time we did it, remember we had like four thousand views, and I was just like, Oh man, like Which is fine for when you start, but we already had the podcast was significant. So it's like It's kinda like if you play poker at one stakes and then you go down to the micro stakes like

Doesn't feel very fun'cause you've now experienced a different uh level of stakes. But those aren't even in the same casino. Spotify or Apple Pods on YouTube. Yeah. And it's a completely different group of people. So Exactly. So we were like, all right, we think we could do this. And so we started grow, but recently we did one, and it's this uh Says money one, that's on the right there. That has how many views does I have now?

We're one thousand. Yeah. So three hundred thousand views. And this was a video it was the first video that I made. YouTube first. I was like, Okay, I'm gonna uh Create a video that I think's gonna be like YouTube it's not just a podcast. Mm-hmm.

And me and Ben were like, What if we just took three days? Like we just tried to make one great video for this. And we did and we made that and we were basically collaborating on that. For the first time we had done that that way. But the cool thing is now we've been working together for a couple years. And you get this like mind meld.

Where it's like Yeah, it's almost like uh you only can s you can speak in shorthand or reference like It's like if if you say something, I already know What part he's gonna You're like, Oh, we gotta talk about that later. Right. Cause that relates to these other three things. And then earlier we talked about this, but that's and it's like

If you can get to that point. That's like a pretty like formidable thing that I think most people don't have. But when you have it, it's like oh fuck, this is that lets you go places. I think you need someone who's excited and Wants to to be a part of a team where their name isn't at the forefront, right? Which which can be really complex. Right. Well we know who Pratt is, but if you're a fan of Hassan Minaj at scale, you're not gonna know who he is.

Uh so you have to find someone who's really into that too, right? Who likes the person. If you've ever tried to hire a lot of people be like, I want to work for you because I want to be you. Yeah. And it's like, Okay, cool, but that doesn't really work. Like Especially with this group. Yeah, this group right now. It's hard to hire someone who doesn't want to be the creator or you know, is is trying to become a creator and and working with you to be like, okay, now I get it. Now I'm gonna go do it. Um but yeah, you have to find someone who's who's down for that. But it's it is kind of like being an athlete where You know, you guys when I leave, you're gonna talk about the performance, right? You're gonna you're gonna probably watch game tape back. You're gonna watch it back and be like, Oh, maybe I should have asked this question there, or maybe This would have been more interesting, or he went a little long here. I should have stopped him. You know, like there's so much uh that goes into this that if you deeply care about the craft and you have someone who cares that much about the craft

you can get better at the craft. You can get better way faster. Yeah. It's hard to find. Right. It's it's typically happens just organically, and then you're like, Oh, okay, this is my guy now. Right. How much do you guys you guys have your business off the back of your thing, which is the newsletter. The newsletter's a kind of a different type of business. It's actually a separate company now. And there's separate people writing that thing. It's not you guys creating it necessarily. Have you seen any uh I'm I'm I'm keeping track of these kind of creator driven businesses where you have like a almost like a

An audience co founder. And th like the way you used to have like a technical co founder for a business, now you have almost like a distribution co founder or an audience co-founder. What have you seen that maybe everybody hasn't heard of, right? Because I think everybody's kinda heard of Mr. B. Maybe a couple others, but Um

What are some cool ones that you're keeping an eye on or I w I should know about or other people should know about? The typical creator business is make content sell ads, right? Which is like Th that's that's baseline. Some people never need to grow out of that'cause that's just A good business. Yeah. Um But like when when you go through those extensions, like I think Ali Abdal has a fantastic education business. Uh, he's a creator out of the UK who talks about productivity and um

He's built a series of courses and wasn't he a doctor too? He was a doctor prior. Yeah, you're right. He's a doctor. He's an excellent teacher. Um, but he has built a great business. Um, that is you know, very much focused on online education. I think he publishes his number. He publishes his number. Creator Academy. Yeah. Which is like basically Become a YouTuber. Yes. Yes.

And he has a ton of courses on Skillshare about like studying for the MCAT or like he he's just figured out that Okay, I'm really good at making online video. Yes, one of those ways is to monetize through advertising. But another one is through Page online video. And that's the classic like build once, sell twice, right? It's like you build it, it lives on Skillshare or on your own website. for years to come, people can buy it, right? So I I really like the digital product business.

Um because it's just scalable and it we do very few things that are scalable as creators, right? Um I also think there's a um There's a future model now, which is

Potentially there's a uh a creator named Amelia De Moldenberg who has a show called Chicken Chop Date. Okay. I think I've heard of it. It's a great show. Were you the one who showed me? Yeah, it's it's a great show. She she's had Jack Harlow on it. She just had Jennifer Lawrence on. What's the sh what's the stick? It's like at a chicken shop, or it's a chicken place. Yeah, it's a date at a fried chicken place in London. And the chicken shop in London is like the last place you would go to have a date. So There's comedy in it. She's a comedian. Um

And through the Yeah, through this so she's had like This has now spun her into essentially creating her own production company. Where Brands come to her.

and say, we love your shtick, we love your comedy, we love the way you've created this show. Um like this show has no advertising in it, no advertisers, and will never have advertisers. And this thing does, you know, the Jack Harlow episode has fifteen million views. Um, this regularly does, you know, one to five million views in the first week. Um but no advertisers.

And what it operates as is like It's a production company and Nike just came to her. So she kinda created an agency. She created an agency. Yeah. So like Nike came to her proved like I can create cool, likable content. It's vertically integrated where she can come up with the idea. then her company can shoot the idea, then she can be the talent in the idea. And then the thing that I think we forget is like she's the distribution outlet for that idea too. So where does she post? On her own feed on her own YouTube channel. Yeah. So she doesn't do ads, but she'll put like full episodes of like I saw Barbie. But yeah, she she went and hosted the Barbie premiere.

Um that's smart. So I like that. There's another um creator named Amanda Raishley. Who's who's Uh based in Canada. And what she did is she started YouTube. By showing bullet journaling and how she was setting up her bullet journals.

And what is it? I don't know what that's so g g go to the channel Amanda R A C H and then Lee. Uh and now yeah, like go to like one of these bullet journal setups. This just looks like Etsy of Tube. Yeah. And How many views does it have? Three million. So

When she started, she was doing these bullet journal setups like S Here's how I set up my journal. And then What she did was swap out the journal she was using and create her own custom journal company. And that to me is like

epitome of creator business. Right. where it's what Colin and I call content product fit. She didn't have to change the content to integrate the product. Yeah. Right. You just I mean, to talk about a big example, it's Chamberlain Coffee when Emma Chamberlain launched that, she drank coffee in every episode. Right. Swap her coffee out. Yeah. And I think You know, it's something we're actually struggling with with our uh newsletter, um, which is like How do we integrate that in every episode? Sure, we can bring it up, but that doesn't drive subscribers. Um

So it it's Logan Paul said this about Prime. He said a lot of creators when they talk about their own product, it sounds like they're doing a brand deal. Yeah. they don't know how to integrate it regularly. You know? And like the Nelk boys with Happy Dad, right? Their their alcohol is in every single episode. Right.'Cause they're so present. Yeah.

Um Logan has prime everywhere with him. So I you know, I think creators who have this, like Amanda They can build really substantial businesses. Yeah, content product fit. Um So this is a really impressive business to me because it's just It's niche.

But Three million people watch this and she sells this journal. Yeah. That's insane. Yeah, she's gotta be doing I mean What do you think she's making on the on something like this? I've spent time with her. She's never told me, but I will say that she speaks at a lot of Shopify events as like a a very good case study for them. Uh I know she's doing well. She has a good team

Um, the thing I love about this business too, it's it's repeat purchases. There's a new journal drop. You can run out of pages in a journal. Once it you know, once you have allegiance to this, it's like Yeah. You know, great. Uh so I I've had this idea for because I'm a big journal guy. Yeah. And so uh I was like, Oh, dude, I want to create my own because I don't know, I'm like I have an idea of what I want mine to be. I just haven't made it. So if I'm gonna make it for myself, maybe I'll make it for others. But the best uh example my favorite example of this is actually a really small stakes one, which is the Ryan Holiday coin.

Totally. That's like such a good example of this'cause he was like He s the way you described it. So first there's like cont the content Uh product fit. Where he's just like

Stoicism, here's the like reminder coin that like you're gonna die. It says you know, whatever you're gonna die or whatever. But He was like, You know, I've done like T shirts. T shirts suck. Yeah. And he's like, I wanted something that was like I could fit in an envelope a normal envelope. So like mailing was easy. I wanted something I can manufacture here, so I don't have to like produce overseas or whatever. He's like no sizes, no colors.

It's like just like there's one. Yeah. Like there's one skew. And I'm gonna sell and I think he's sold like twenty million dollars of this one snow over the I'm pretty sure he said that out. I'm pretty sure he said that on on our our episode or we like Yeah, waterboarded him out of it. Like you know, where we're like I think you've done is that I think probably one of the

Biggest creator led companies. um right now that that maybe isn't as as Prominent in the mainstream conversation is Mark Roberts Crunch Labs. Mm the which is like a subscription stem or something, right? Like it's like a science kit. Exactly. It's a science kit. I got it for my nephews. It is

Excellent. They are hooked on it. Nice. Like it is excellent. I text Mark about it. I'm like, dude, this product is crazy. Like it's huge. It's your big business. Huge. Yeah. That's a big business. Um Yeah. Yeah, I think now that that's Makes more than His channel, yeah. For sure. And his I mean his channel's massive.

That's that's a great example'cause he does basic crazy science experiments, right? That's right. Yeah. And he has big versions of that. in his video. So like He'll make a big version of it. And then he'll be like, And you can make a miniature version of this at home. I think this content model, this what you're just describing here, these examples is um like I always think about when I meet someone, I'm like, wow, you had so much success. Like, what'd you do? And they're

Often the story is basically like You know, there was like a moment in time where like if you realized Like X like X thing works, which is like in the early days of Google, it would be like I could buy clic for a cent for like any keyword. Like that's insane. Like Okay, let me just work backwards. What's the best key word? And like

So that's how I got into like selling leads to lawyers or whatever, like you know, asbestos you know removal company or whatever. And then it's like, um like our buddy created native deodorant and he's like, Yeah, basically like I started this when Facebook ads were kinda like underused and people were only using them for like like media companies were trying to buy Facebook ads. But then they were like driving them back to a f blog post and monetizing with a Google ad there. Right, right. It's not really a good model, is it? I realize like you can sell just like a product through Facebook ads with really simple ads and you don't like

Things that you used to have to go into target. Get target to carry you. You could just start selling directly to consumer through Facebook, D to C. I mean there wasn't really like as much of a category yet. But it's like if you knew if you knew that secret during that time, it was kind of an open secret, but not like Wasn't obvious to everybody yet. Yeah. I mean I think movement watches is another great influencer with that led marketing, but

I I think what's incredibly hard, especially for creators right now, is the what you have to sacrifice to have that that view and that long term view of building a product because Um, advertising revenue is so available right now to us. And again, you you kind of pull the levers when it comes to YouTube. It's the highest margin advertising dollars that I think You know, has existed in in video content ever.

Right? Because You don't get on the phone. You're you're negotiating a contract. There's no sales team. There's no back and forth. There's no revision. Yeah. But YouTube takes what, like Forty five percent. Yeah. But still it's like you know the just like and the killing work. You don't have to do any work. You don't do it, right? You just you upload content and you get a check in the mail. Um so

Creators who make really viral content that has reasonably high CPMs, it's like well I sh You know. should make another video and then a brand deal comes and that can be, you know, anywhere from from twenty, fifty thousand dollars all the way up to two hundred thousand dollars, right? You're like Well, okay, all right, I'll make another one of those videos and then

What I find is that a lot of creators never get to that moment of Okay, now we should Stop and put our focus in. Right. over here and how do we even do that? And it's totally different skill set. Yeah. How do I even do that? How do I hire someone? I think that's the biggest need in the creator economy right now is

Operators are the biggest need. Yes. And Education on how to hire is So It's just not there, right?'Cause they were it's all young people who Who which is funny, by the way, because

There's so many operators'cause I'm coming up to an operator world. Yeah, yeah. And all the operators are like Dude, I can bl I if I just had the right influencer, this pro this is a soap. We could sell a lot of this soap. Right. Well, whatever the thing is. I know pick the pick your favorite widget. And uh And for them it's like a total black box, like How do I go meet these people, get them to trust me enough to do this? And so like this

And then also they have to have the temperament to to want that, right? Like a lot of creators have to they they might conceptually think they want it. But then when they get into it and their name is on a soap product and they don't really like that it went out to a customer and it wasn't perfect. And then they're like, Oh, I don't want to do this at right. Cause it's like I have so much control over how my brand shows up. Um that when you start to scale that. It gets uncomfortable. Right.

So and do you um I have this question up here, I put on this list. So it's three creators likely to become a billionaire. I gave you the one freebie, you can say Jimmy. And uh He can be one. Yeah.

What other creators do you think have the potential To build a billion dollar Empire around what they're doing. Combination of their content plus businesses, whatever. I think Dude Perfect.

Um I saw they did like a amusement park or something. Yeah. Well they're working on it. Yeah. A hundred million dollar project. Yes. Yes. What does that mean? They're that's what they're investing into this project? I I don't know the specifics of it. I've spent a lot they they're actually I've known them for a really long time. Like I I you know, I've been on YouTube and around YouTube for twelve years. They were the first group that I got involved with um early on when when we sold our last company. Um and they're kind of like the trick shots was their thing that worked, but they make sports accessible to, you know, young kids through trick shots and and um, you know, viral sports videos. And

The the the reason I bring it up is like I think Those guys Around two thousand six or seven. And they have remained.

At the at the top of their game throughout that whole experience. They also went through a long period of time where You know, they've done the work. Like I watched them hold the cameras for years, even when they were at thirty million subscribers. They would just go out themselves and hold the cameras and edit the videos and they still sit there in in the edit bays and make sure they're perfect and

Um I think they if you've if you've seen images of they just did a tour. See images of like the young kids who turn out for that, the parents Um I I had a conversation with them one time where they they said their goal is to be the the most trusted brand in entertainment.

And I actually believe that they are They're on track for that. Where Parents really trust. that they can take their kids to a dude perfect event. Right. And that when you take that to an amusement park, when you take that a couple steps Forward.

I think that matters a lot in the future. Um, and I think they're they're on track for sure. That makes sense uh that makes sense. I like that pick. Uh anyone else come to mind that you think has the potential to to do something large like that. I think uh

I th I I think of some creators who have the potential, but I don't know if they want to do it. You know, like I I I think Cody Co is actually someone who's He's he's coming here tomorrow. Oh he is? I love Cody. I know you went on his show. Yeah. I think Cody is like one of the most intelligent people I've met, uh in the space. Uh, I think he he even as he's like in starting to invest now and

I can just I was thinking about it'cause him and I were texting yesterday. And I was thinking in my head, I was like, Who's Cody Co in ten years? He's either like in the woods You know, like chilling DJing and running, or he's like running the biggest capital company. You know, like I and I think that's just a personal choice to him. It's all available to him.

Um But yeah, I don't I don't know that uh I I'm sure there's others that I'm not thinking of, but they're my favorite brand on YouTube. TMG? TMG is my favorite channel on YouTube. I think Noel Miller's like a true artist and special. Like I think there's very rare people like him And also very Not very many people like Cody Co. Right.

Um music videos Are so goddamn it's actually kind of frustrating. Yeah. It's a bit off putting like dude, what like You can't just do that. Right. And that's it.

You can do it as a joke. It can't also be can't also be good. Yeah. It can't also be good. It can't also make me want to listen to it multiple times. Right. It's funny and amazing and you just did it like For kicks on the side. Right. On top of your other successful thing. I find this like pursuit of being a billionaire to be s uh very fascinating. Like I I I don't really have Interest in it. Yeah.

If it if it's the outcome of what I decide to do that would be interesting. But I it's not Like I I don't find myself to be um focused on that outcome. And I I also found mo most creators I talk to are not focused on that outcome. Totally.

Um But I think it's in the video game of entrepreneurship, it is the final boss, right? So you're kind of like if your final boss is actually walking away. Sure. The person who says they have enough. Is is like like uh you know. Paul Graham who created Y C, which is I think probably the most

successful tech startup actually. 'Cause it created Sure. all these other tech startups. And like it created Dropbox and it created Airbnb like I they probably wouldn't like to say creative, but like They without them, there is no Reddit. There is no there are there probably aren't those those businesses being successful, including open AI because

Right. Made him president. when there was tons of other more qualified candidates on paper. But he's like this he even says something. He was like This is like what it would be like to talk to a young Bill Gates. Like Saw that before and now he's created open AI, which is Yeah

Today the most v you know, the m one of the most valuable private startups. So anyways, Y C Uh gets to the peak of its powers. Or gets like, you know, does amazing uh amazing stuff ten years in and Paul's like Sam, here you go.

I'm going to the woods in the UK and I'm gonna live in the woods with my family and I'm gonna Basically like write essays. paint and code and like, you know, that's what I'm gonna do. And that is the final boss of Silicon Valley'cause you see most people just go right back into the hamster wheel and they start running again. But that's like the final boss of life, right? It's like making that realization is not wanting anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Being like content and and

developing a relationship with the term enough. Yeah. That's a that's a hard thing to do, but Totally. Do you have that? Do you have a a number or like a do you do you feel like you have enough? Like what are you in pursuit of? Um I'm in pursuit of a really specific thing, which is Um I heard a quote once

I think Naval said he goes. Uh the The day you stop trading Today for a better tomorrow. You've

Retired. So he's like, um Basically If The things you do today in and of themselves

were the reward of what you did today. You've now you've actually exited the game. You've you've retired. You retirement doesn't mean you go sit down and do nothing. It means You're not saying, All right, I'm gonna do the shit today that I don't really wanna do or I don't like to do, but I'm doing it because it's gonna pay off in the future. It's gonna pay off in the future. And like your whole life goes by doing that. And so When I heard that, I was like, Oh

Guilt you know, guilty, like you know, put me in put me in cuffs, take me to jail, like that's me. I'm I've Spent the first you know, fifteen years of my career, like you know, from twenty to thirty five, basically. Was that I was like oh I'm gonna do X and I'm gonna say I didn't enjoy it necessarily, but like

Definitely I was like doing X because it might lead to Y. I I totally agree. I've never just done that too, yeah. I've never just made my main thing. Like I'm doing X'cause I just Doing X seems fun. Yeah. And so that's the that's the game I'm playing now.

is to try to achieve that. Um to craft my life such that that's true. And so, um even though it's like weird, it's like you know it's awesome. What's it's like what would I like to do best? I don't know I like to I like to do this podcast, I like to read. Right.

Like it's like to like. Uh, you know, work on these little tinker with these little things or Yeah, just Understand go down rabbit holes and just see how things work in the world. And it's like Those are the things that I do without thinking about some like future payoff. I don't think they even

Like or they don't clearly have one? Well you can also have the uh there's another Tim Ferriss uh moment in our in our episode together. He was like something to the tune of like you can decouple the Um the non financial reward and the financial reward. Right. Right. So like this experience, um There's a non financial reward to this, which is like we have a good conversation. Right. Cool. This is fun.

We both Go home. That reward is complete. Then You put it out, if there's a performance reward to it, amazing. If that leads to financial opportunity, great. You know, like

But that's a separate reward. And if you can decouple those things, then that is uh Yeah, and just basically a uh Like the way I think about stuff is like there's a car And uh you can have a bunch of passengers in the car. It's like, you know, I have like my ego, but hopefully it's in the trunk. It shouldn't be driving like you know, let's put him in the back, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's kind of annoying, but he's there. And you got like, you know the thrill of things that's in the car, but I don't really want thrill to drive because he takes us off the cliff. Like

Who gets to drive? And so uh, you know, that's kinda like so to me, I'm like all right, who gets to drive is like The version of me that is Uh Following my curiosity

creating shit consistently just creating things and is content with life and has like a Uh I'm doing it because I want to do it. I'm doing it because it's enjoyable to do I'm doing it because it's challenging. So even though it's not that enjoyable, like I'm struggling at it, I'm enjoying the struggle of doing this thing. Yeah. And so that's who I want to drive, meaning that's who gets to ultimately make the decision of where are we going in this car. Other people might have input. Other the other parts of me might have input. Like I want money, I want this, I want that. Yeah.

But I can't like like basically money was driving for a long ass time. And then it's like Hold on. Wait. The deal was you get to drive till we get to this number. We got to that number. You don't get to drive anymore. And maybe you shouldn't have been driving for the first place, but at least in my life, I was like. I wanna get to basically a f a financial freedom number, a number where I can spend whatever I want on my lifestyle and it's coming off of my investment income, not out of like my work income. Yeah.

Uh because then it's like all right, cool. Money works for money. I work for me. Man, I think that is a big opportunity with

Yeah. Creators it'd be like a smaller group, but I think as creators, we're really good at generating money. But we don't know how to turn money into money. Right. Because uh we're it it's like

It's a total skill. It's a totally different skill set. And then we don't know who to trust with that. You know, I think if there was a creator focused group that helped with that, that Well, we went to this athlete thing yesterday with a bunch of bat there's a bunch of basketball players there and it's the same thing, like Literally we were joking, we were like This event would be cool if it was just the athletes who do what they do and us But then you have all the clingers.

Yeah, and you're like who do I trust? And then like and like and some of the clingers are the people they trust and they're like Kind of safe choices, but I don't actually know how to do the thing for them. Sure. It's like, you know, actually if they asked, I would For free. help them or tell them exactly what they should be doing so that their money works for money and they don't

Puss it away. Yeah. But um The incentive is not for me to go chase them and reach them and then beg them to listen to my advice. Yeah. The guy who's trying to take their money. is incentivized to chase them and beg them and and try to convince them that they're the guy who's gonna help them. It's like this weird like perverse incentive. It's like the guy who's gonna like work his hardest to break into your circle. is the one who wants something. Yeah. You actually don't want to work with someone who's like

Needs something from you. Yeah, yeah. On on the sports topic, there's one more um destroying. Uh he is a sports creator, a football focused creator. He he played football at uh UCF. And this is pre-NIL days. Right. So he played football. He was making YouTube videos. They brought him into a room and said you have a choice. You can either continue playing football or you can continue with your YouTube channel. He chose YouTube.

Um and built this this really substantial YouTube channel. He has this series called One on Ones. Uh that just part of it go live to places like it goes to like a city and like this is like live events and they get crazy. Like in Arizona, it had to get called off'cause it was like too many people there and the police had to get involved. Uh I was gonna go he b I think he he messaged or management? Somebody messaged an hour away. I was like, Oh, that sounds kinda fun, but I didn't make it out. What does he do actually? So it's one on one. So basically it's wide receivers versus cornerbacks and They line up and they go one on one and one dude wins ten thousand dollars. And for for some of the communities he's going into, that's life changing to me, right? For a lot of communities. Is he the guy in the thing or it's the host, two other guys. He's the host. Um

You know, and like here you can see like this is this is what it looks like. Um If you go to his channel and go to most viewed I said my old ice. So cool. So that so that guy if that guy had caught it, he would have events. No, he'd have to it's a tournament. And you and then you start to know these characters and they travel to different markets. Exactly. This is N1 mixtape from football. And um Colin and I spoke with uh at at a YouTube event with D And he was speaking with Roger Goodell and we were talking to to Roger about destroying and he was like This guy's like

really impactful for football. Oh wow. He's he's creating new fans. And the NFL just partnered with him on this series, the one on one series. And I think when I look at D, like the leagues are starting to get involved with him. In a way where I'm like Wait. He is single handedly

A really uh important part of the future of sports viewership. Yeah. And That to me, I don't know that he I don't know if he has aspirations to be a billionaire. But to solve that problem for the NFL Is

a uh big problem to solve. And if you solve that for the CFL and you start solving that. You know, you go down the line, this can also become camps. Totally. This can become, you know, so many things, right? He can become a host. He he's probably should be one of the hosts, uh For the NFL, like Or like the Pro Bowl, which no one's watching. I think he can also create a uh Yeah, I mean he can redefine the Pro Bowl because this is more interesting. I'm like half looking at you because I'm like, then I mean I we we pulled this up in our office and we have ton of people who don't watch sports and then they got hooked on it. They were like this is primal. It's primal. Yeah. And so he could redefine the Pro Bowl. He can also create a N I L agency.

Right. So you have college athletes who He represents this You know, where college athletics didn't let you monetize. He knows how to do this. Right. So okay, now Can

D creator. N I L agency where he's signing athletes and getting them contracts. It he the world of D, like the world of sports, no one is really approaching it like him. And I think that like sports is still high carries a very high dollar value. Live sports Yes. Um it's it it carries such high uh dollar value that I think he has that opportunity as well.

There was a guy at that event we were at that was um you you'll know him'cause he's lacrosse Paul Paul. Ray Paul. Yeah. Yeah. He's a groomsman at my wedding. He's one of my best friends. Amazing. So I I don't know much about the boardroom event. Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about it. So basically he what he was saying on stage was like, Okay, we created this professional lacrosse league. Yeah. What he what was interesting, he was like, There's like what if I don't know, eight teams or something. But he's like, We own the teams. Yeah. It's not like a franchise model. And I think he's like, We pay the costs, but then like All the players have upside into the thing. Like

What is the business model of this? This sounded pretty fascinating and you think it's a good model also. I'm an investor, so a biased opinion, yes. But but I've uh You know What I've always seen in in La Crosse, if you if you pull up um go to the premier lacrosse leg YouTube channel and and play the last vlog from their all star game, you get a sense for like the community that one, the fastest shot. Uh right there. Yeah. So you get you get a sense for like what it looks like. I mean, they're they were going wild, but like they they packed this stadium out in Louisville for their all star game. So basically what he did was there was a pre existing league called Major League La Crosse. They paid their players

Terribly. Uh they treated them not that well. That was the best league? That was the only pro league. It was like And no one really cared about it. I mean, like it it was it was kind of interesting, but that it was empty stadiums. They didn't have health care. It was like they weren't treated like It was tough to be a pro athlete and not get paid much, right?

And Paul became the, you know, number one uh lacrosse player. He had the biggest media uh platform. Colin and I actually ran his YouTube channel. That's how we became very close. Um, we were running a lot of different athlete YouTube channels at one point. And so we became really close to Paul. That's how we met. Um And he had the best head on his shoulder for like media. How do you build a brand? How do you

you know, he had the biggest he's he was called La Crosse's first million dollar man. He had deals with Red Bull and New Balance and Um he had created the model for like how do you make money as well. And was he j was he the best and he was the best at media, or he was actually the best at media in really good. No, he's the he's the he was the best. He was the best player. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that those are those like Connor McGregor at at one time was like he's the champ and he's like the most marketable guy. So he He decided uh

you know, at one point just to say, Hey, you know what? We're gonna go raise money and create our own league. Like this league sucks that I play in. Um that's what he did. He turned to Joe Ty, who's uh The Nets owner. Yeah, Nets owner, uh, who played lacrosse in college and loves lacrosse. And is a Great dude, met him a couple times and Uh He became the the lead investor and then they partnered with with Rain Group and

Um They raised a bunch of money and said, We're gonna pay the players a reasonable salary, we're gonna give them equity in the league, we're gonna give them health care. Uh and we are going to create media around them. We're gonna create media opportunities for them. We're gonna teach them how to You know.

And the last thing they did was they said, We're not gonna stick these teams in local markets. We're gonna actually take the whole league on tour. Make sense. It's like a touring, you know, circus where it's like

Is it coming to San Diego this weekend? Okay. Everyone descends about this major major market. Yeah. So you know, if you have lacrosse people that come to town twice a year. Exactly. Like, all right, we'll go to that. We may not go all the time or there may not be enough people to support a stadium. Well, I think also what he knew and what what we saw was that the model in La Crosse that when you made money was by doing camps and clinics. Right. So you you

You have youth. camps where like there's a lot of young kids want to play, they come from affluent backgrounds. their parents are willing to pay a thousand dollars for them to get coached by their favorite lacrosse player. Um And Paul built a massive camps business.

And so alongside this, you go to a major market, now you have a weekend dedicated to you can have camps. You can turn all these players into camp counselors and and trainers and extra money. Exactly. They can build their own Bespoke businesses, but that all you know connect to the league and that's um so it's uh he he him and his brother are really sharp. Not yet. Yeah. And they uh Barstool's involved in one of them. Okay. Uh they they got to name the expansion team and

Uh pardon my take. Like The ownership. Uh, the water dogs. Yeah. But like they you know, there's that that creates a kind of that that inside joke with the part of PMT community that it's like they have their own team. Smart it's a collab. It's a collab.'Cause when they play, big cat's tweeting about it. uh when they they won the championship last year, he got his own ring. You know, it's like amazing. They they're able to build again, they're very media savvy and so they they understand that this is a long game. Lacrosse is not Well to build any league I think I texted you this during the event, I was like

I think what this guy's saying is actually quite smart. We should look at investing and I go I'll I'll go. Man, building a league is hard. Like Fun if you do it, but that is like one of the hardest games you could play in the world of entrepreneurship is be creating a a sports league from scratch.

Kind of a twenty year arc. Oh, actually. You have to have such a long view on the world and on your life to do it. And you're doing live events. You're doing all the hardest things. I mean every weekend he's in a different Ready? You know, I'm watching these and and looking. The the most promising thing is look how young the kids are who are there, right? Right. So if they grow up with this league, these teams, these franchises, like They're

Playing a very long game here. Um And I credit that to for doing it, but it's uh it's not an easy thing to do. If they sign like a ten million dollar deal or something with ESPN, like ESPN the the meteor rights uh deal. That's good. Yeah, so when they first started, Colin and I made a documentary about them for NBC. Uh we've had like many many different lives of, you know, Colin and Samir. Yeah. That's amazing. Do you think that's gonna be uh

You know, good investment for you. Were you like the first one in because he's like your buddy? I was first one in, uh which was great. So it's doing good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you're gonna get like let's say this works out, hopefully. Like you know, like we we all were rooting for this.

Like you're gonna make a bunch of money from this thing that was so impossible to predict. But that's how this whole thing would pay off. I don't have health insurance. I don't have a job. I know I'm kind of filming this like failing league. And it leads to the thing, right? So it's a Steve Jobs quote. You look back, you see all the dots, how they connected, but like You go even further back. And the way this happened was my

first idea when I was twenty one was to just set up a laptop and make YouTube videos about lacrosse. Commentating, right? Like that was a bad idea when you really you know, you zoom out, but If you're into it, like a lot of creators ask me, like, how long does it take to make it? On YouTube. Like how long does it take to make it? I'm sure entrepreneurs ask that question too, right? Or have that thought in their head, like how long is this gonna take? Um

And I was like I always think it's such a ridiculous question because I'm like, Well, what's your relationship to making videos? Do you wake up every morning and it's y you can't not do it? Like you're just like all I can do is make videos. Then you made it. Then from day one. Yeah. You you made it and It will there will be an outcome from this. There will be. It will lead you somewhere. Um, but if you wake up and you're like, This sucks, it's kinda what you were saying. It's like I'm doing X so I can get to Y. Well the the entrepreneurship version is

Um startups fail, but founders don't. So like I moved to San Francisco in twenty twelve. So that's ten years ago. And I met a bunch of people and we used to have like these like underground fashion founder like meetings where we're like creating tips and tricks and being like, Yeah, what do I do? This person I need to fire them. What do I say when I fire them? Like basically there's a bunch of CEOs being like I can't

Like tell my team about this. I can't tell my customers about this. I can't tell my investors about this. I can only tell you guys. Yeah. Cause you guys understand. And look unlucky. Everybody who was doing stars design was like all living in the same Seven mile radius city.

And so we would just all meet up all the time. And Sure enough, like as you watch if you track that cohort. There's basically only two outcomes. One is

Got so burnt out. from like the grind and failure that they just stopped after like, you know, three, four years. Uh more even five years. They just like Did that current company they're like, Screw this, I'm taking a job, I'm moving back to Connecticut and like I'm gonna live in a low cost place, I'm gonna de stress and I'm gonna do that.

But everybody else who stayed in the game One. Like Literally like almost like a hundred percent of my friends who stayed in the game. Yeah. And some of them one in year two, some one in year five, some one in year nine.

Now we're in like year eleven or twelve. People are winning like now, but like And it's kinda like it feels like a really long time. Like, wow, twelve years. It's like Yeah, but we all started this when we were twenty one. So like, you know Yeah um Okay, we're th mid thirties, yeah. Thirty four rich. Like you know, it worked. In the end, it worked, right? The fifteen year arc. You get like a v then the odds flip from like

Ninety percent of new businesses failed to actually like ninety percent of you guys will succeed if you actually enjoy this enough. Where you'll keep doing this even though you have easier options. Yes. I always I I've said that multiple times. Um, whenever I'm having something that feels like I'm I'm struggling, I'm like This is the uh uh the the least rational path to making money. Right, is what I do.

Th I at this point also now I have enough exposure and enough uh of an abundance in my network that I can go and Get a get a good job, right? But like I do this'cause it's It's just what I do. just who I am. I don't even know what

to do in another context. I don't know what that looks like. I I will say though, like being it it's hard to be uh Not outcome oriented. You know, like I think as an entrepreneur you think about like exits and you think about You know, like these big paydays and uh

I would say that even with with our newsletter, like when I saw Milk Road, I was like okay, I want that outcome too. But Whenever I get too attached to that outcome, I'm like, Okay, wait a second. Right. That that's like uh that's creating in a way that's just like the product probably will not be great if I don't just put my head down and go,

Okay, it's Monday. Is this Monday issue really great? Okay, it's Wednesday. Is this Wednesday issue really great? And I've really tried to um refine my focus on Process and impact. Like is the I I have to focus on the process of creating the thing.

And then the second thing is like my a lot of my reward is seeing if we're having impact. Is d is this actually impactful what I'm putting out? Right. Or is it just going out and you know no one saying anything about it or we're not getting any Like I I I find I gauge the success of our stuff from like the texts I get or the DMs or like Hey, that episode was really impactful. Or hey

That really changed the way I think about this, or hey, that newsletter taught me about this. If I see those, then I'm like, Okay, we're doing we're we're doing something. Um, let's keep doing that. And hopefully that takes us to an outcome. But you also have to accept It might not. It might just be this.

You know Five percent better. You know, over the next two years. Right. And and that's it. And you have to accept that that is

a that is the m maybe the most likely reality. Is that you just keep doing it. Right. And as long as you can accept that. At least for me, that's how I I You know. Explore it for myself. Yeah.

Would we regret doing it if it didn't work? Right. Like Obviously we don't want it not to work and we might be upset if it didn't work, but like would we actually regret doing it if it didn't work? Cause then it's like, Oh, I'm just actually dependent on The success or failure of what's usually a low odds of success endeavor. Totally. Whereas other things are like, I wouldn't really regret it because like

Well, I'm still gonna get this like still gonna be fun to do, still gonna learn a ton. I'm like This is the type of thing I like to do. Yeah. So you know, if this doesn't work out, it doesn't really matter. Like I'm just gonna ping pong to the kind of the the next version of this, but it was a forward it was a forward step either way, right? Like This is uh

Uh like Tony Robbins does this thing where he does this Um, Dabblers versus Masters. I don't know if you ever heard this. So he's he tells a story at his events where he goes, um He goes, uh there's some people that they go and they discover racket ball. Which maybe now pickleball would be the shirt, but it's like Yeah, they go they go to the gym, they're like

They see somebody playing racket ball, they're like, Oh, I'll try it. They go and they have Had some fun. And they're like racketball. That this might be my thing. And they're like, Okay, I'm gonna play racketball. And so then they the next day they come back to play again. Next day they actually go and they uh you know, they get better shoes because they were like, Oh, that was the problem last time. Buy the racket. They start playing, blah, blah, blah, and they they they're doing well, but then they play somebody who's been playing for like ten years. Who's like way better than them.

And that's you know, th they' for three days straight they're playing and they can't hit a good shot. Everything's going off and they're losing all these games. And they're like This stupid g like stupid ragged ball, like this box, I'm trapped. Like, you know, this is it's too loud in here. It is weirdly loud. This is a sport for old people. You start to find all these Reasons to quit. So they they they quit.

Like, I'm gonna go play real game, I'm gonna go play uh tennis. So you go outside, you play tennis, you're like, Oh, so much better I'm outdoors. This is way better. And you know, you're they're hitting the ball around, they're starting to learn the strokes, they're they're enjoying learning a little bit. Same thing happens. I start to play somebody who knows what's going on. They're hitting the ball in the net.

they can't really serve well and that's it's getting frustrated because it's hot out and they're like Stupid game. Like you know what is this then I like uh this is this is a this is like a girly game. I I don't wanna play it. I'm gonna play it like A real game and Golf. And then they're like, just fuck. From day one like fuck. And he's basically like, you know Most people go through their whole life

doing a series of these. And they're dabblers. And he's like, What's the difference between a masked uh there's like there's three categories. A dabbler. A dabbler's basically like Try it. As soon as it gets hard Bounce.

Then he's like then there's the stressor achiever. Stressor achiever is like When it gets hard. They just start gritting their teeth and they just get gonna keep going, but they don't enjoy any of it. And like All the hardship stresses them out. But they've just been trained since they're a little kid to like push through it. Just keep pushing through and like you'll get a gold star later.

Like the f The joy will be later. He's like then there's the master. The master's basically like They like they know that when you start something new, there's the initial like Joy of discovery. There's the learning curve.

There's the hard plateaus and when the plateau comes they greet it like an old friend, like oh There you are. Like I thought you'd be showing up soon. I've been right. I've been playing for a week and usually that's when I'll hit That's when you arrive, Plateau. And I know how to like deal with you Because I know that after the plateau comes the next uprise and I'm I'm excited for that upswing. But yeah. Let me work through this plateau and then don't really get like flustered by it.

So they get the same or they get better results than all three. Way better than the Dabbler. Significantly better than the stressor achiever, but the difference is like The whole way They're kind of actually like enjoying the the dance or playing the game. Yeah. Cause they actually understand that this is like these are all normal for the game. Mm-hmm. And you find that like the people who um

get really like into like struggling or grinding or like get really overwhelmed by like, you know The adversity. It's really just like you haven't played the game enough to know that this is No. This is how the levels of the game work. You shouldn't be surprised that the roller coaster is going up and down. Like you remember you got on the you got in line to get on a roller coaster, right? One thing that uh I don't know why this made me think of it. I think just'cause like the the ups and downs of the game and the the conversation we're having at the beginning of the show about interviewing

One thing that both Colin and I did was go to improv class. To learn how to be to get better. Yeah. just to get better at like being present. Working with whatever the other person says like

What what we found was my wife was listening to our interviews and she was like, You're not Listening. To them. You're just not listening to your guests. they're saying something and then you say something completely different. You're just waiting. You're just waiting to talk. And so I went to improv class and it it was really this incredible

Uh lesson in the craft of how do you sit in the pocket and just be like I Can't have any Preconceived notions as to where this is about to go. Right.

You're gonna say something and I have to let go of where I want it to go. I found myself in the first day of improv. I was like We were playing this game and I was like, Okay, I know exactly how to make this funny. This is gonna be funny. I know where to take it and then the person right before me said something and I was like, why the hell would you say that? And then I had to deal with it. And then I was like, oh, this is the work. Right. This is the craft or building the craft. And I think You know in in in the

The roller coaster of being a podcaster, like you have to be willing to do all of that in public as well. Right. Right. Like you you you go back and you watch your early episodes That roller coaster is There's a record of the roller coaster of like times where it was going really well, times where it wasn't going well, times where views were up, times where views were down. It's like all Public.

And I think um It's it's challenging because we have to practice in public. I think that's like as as you know, you build in public as an entrepreneur, but there's something incredibly Just You're like naked as a content creator out there. Everyone can see everything. So Well, you guys are doing an amazing job. I'm a fan. Thank you, man. Uh look forward to to kinda see if this is your kind of like learning phase, then like, you know.

I'm excited to see what it what it's like as you guys master this. So appreciate it. Thanks for uh thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, man. Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to Put my all in it like my day's off On the roadless travel never looking back

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.