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

Tell me about MrBeast.

He like is so unique in the fact that he is laser-focused in a way that I've never really experienced. And maybe at times, like in a way that—

I don't want to experience.

Yeah. Yeah.

He doesn't want to experience.

No.

I feel like I could rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road— All right, 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 MrBeast 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 ask? 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 MrBeast. So they've spent days and days with MrBeast. 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. It's rare 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 5 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 3 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. All right. So enjoy this conversation with Samir.

Oh, that's interesting.

And it, 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 100% on, right, the interview.

Uh, why is that? You think they're just performing basically when they sit down in a, 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? Right. 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? Yeah. Like you think about like this has a completely different energy than if there was a table, has a completely different energy than if we didn't have mics and we were laved 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, you're 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. Yeah. You get a different energy, but also you can do like high-stakes interviews almost. Mm-hmm. It's like the whole day kind of gets built around this interview. Yeah. 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 Ferriss one. That was great. And I, I'm guessing you're like me that you grew up kind of like really into Tim Ferriss's stuff and like, you know, kind of admire him.

Yeah. It was pretty surreal.

Uh, and so that's a high stakes interview. You did MrBeast, you did Dream. You did a bunch of these things first. Do you prefer like being the interviewee or in this case you're kind of like more 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 not like chemistry reads, but we try and gauge what our chemistry is with the, with the guest. Because we've been in situations where the chemistry is not good and then you're like, okay, how do I, like, what do, 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 going to perform?

Voice in your head starts going, how do I edit this?

How does it? And that then puts you into a whole, like a disadvantage spiral.

Yeah. So let's say you were doing one of these kind of like interviews you're pumped for, I'll call it high stakes interview. 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.

My next talking point.

Without knowing all the details.

Without knowing all the details. So yeah, we're trying to establish a new relationship with that of, How much is it like curiosity and how much is it prep? And I think that's become more substantial for us as the landscape of interview shows is getting more and more saturated, right? Like when we interviewed, you know, certain creators 3 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. I think you guys have done actually a really good job at that. I think about your show a lot because I think—

Tell me more. What are we doing well? Who's doing well?

Well, I think you have to be, it's similar because there's two hosts, right?

Which is really hard.

Which is really hard in interviews, but probably you have a better reception when it's just you and Sam on a lot, right? It's like when you're building a show that's guest dependent, 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 going to click on it. Some people will give it a chance because they trust you. But really, if it's you and Sam, you can carry the show and then you become less reliant on booking. So I do think 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 Ferriss. And so right now in this moment, it's like—

Keep riding the wave.

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. Um, 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 warmup. 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 warmups and then they play.

Yeah.

And, but for other types of people who need to perform, It's like, what are you doing? Why do you need to do that? Just sit down and talk. Right? It seems so easy.

It's definitely presence. Like you have to become very present in the conversation. And so there's a couple different things to try and do that. For me personally, I've discovered this 11-minute Wim Hof breathwork online.

That's just— Dude, I think it's brutal. I do that a lot.

Have you done it? Yeah.

Yeah.

There's so many people who know this exact one. It's like 11 minutes.

It's free YouTube, like top-ranked YouTube one.

And his accent is amazing.

He's like, come on, let's go.

All right, guys.

Yeah.

It's so good. And that just gets me in the zone.

I love doing that. I love doing that. I wanna do that right now.

Oh, God.

Do you do it laying down?

Yes, I do it laying down.

'Cause that's his way, right? On your back.

Yeah. So we made a documentary about Wim years ago, and so I've just been—

Which one?

I might've seen it. It's on Yes Theory's channel. It's called Frozen Alive. Colin and I actually edited that one.

Yes.

Yes, this is it. This is it.

It's so good. It's so good. So lie down, sit down, whatever it takes. By the way, this is good as a, like, uh, I do this like whenever we have like a team retreat or if we're like, we need to do something. Um, I'll be like, hey guys, like if you're, if you're down, let's do something a little bit weird. And then they're 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? And that can be really stressful. I mean, for example, our most recent interview with MrBeast when we went out to North Carolina, you know, we were there for 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 2 hours before we sat down with him and were just scrambling to buy a table and then—

Assemble it.

Had to arrange for it to be delivered. And basically it all happened within a matter of, you know, That was a very stressful 2 hours prior to sitting down, and I felt 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 a bunch of mistakes like that when, uh, this, this podcast started with me doing long-form interviews. Like the first 20 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 40 or something like that to me and Sam as like a recurring thing, which was like way different prep, you know, turnkey, turnkey setup, already have good chemistry. Um, don't have to book guests, don't have to research guests, just like be ready to talk about interesting things and like just turn up the, the, 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. These are fascinating people to talk to. Let's just, let's do it. And I, I told Ben, I called Ben after the first one. I was like, dude, that was like an hour too long. 'Cause I did 3 hours. I was like, I thought I was Joe Rogan for a minute there. I, I did 3 hours way too long. And then I was like, I over-prepped like crazy. And I, the thing you were saying where you're like, yeah, I'm listening, but in my head I'm like, Okay. I'm supposed to, I'm supposed to beat to this next. I was like, that wasn't right. And so it's hard before this, we went to Dave Buster's in between interviews and, uh, you know, played Pop-A-Shot and I got in a good, good zone and now I'm here.

It's either that or Wim Hof, you know, Dave Buster's or Wim.

Yeah. If you don't have a local Dave Buster's, so if you're unfortunate enough, I thought you were gonna say if you don't have a local Wim Hof, you always got Wim. Um, you've had a bunch of these guests. Who's somebody that's been a lot of fun, uh, that you guys have had on recently that's like,, you know, giving you those kind of like mind-blown, my brain's leaking out my ear. Like who's done that for you recently?

Yeah. It's, it's hard to not say Tim. Um, Tim Ferriss.

You can say Tim.

It'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 a Shopify store, it doesn't just show you sales. How many sales has this had?

Exactly. The truest, rawest, like Imagine walking into a grocery store and it just has revenue under every product. 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, 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—

He said something in that interview to you. He was like, "There's always a market for the best." The best, yeah. And he's like, "So I wanted to, 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'll always be there. And I think that's played out.

Yeah. And I think what's important is to, for us as creators to realize like what we are doing is not novel. It's been done before. We're building audiences, 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 think that sitting with Tim was that opportunity. And, you know, 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. And 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 over time.

It's funny when you say that, it's like, I feel like everybody can think of like the one thing right away 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 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 thought of, um, like meetings. Yeah, 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 buildup. He was like, you know, I've been, uh, you know, we sold The Hustle this many months ago. It's been 6 months. I've talked to this person, this person. I've thought about all these things. You know what I realized? I'm a fucking artist, man. And he just like, and I was like, it's not what you 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 and I'm gonna keep doing that no matter what the situation is. I should have, they said be an investor. Yeah. I tried. I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna do that shit. You know, I stopped doing it altogether. I just wanna be an artist. And I think about that a lot actually. I think there's like a great way to like kind of 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 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 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 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? 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 mentality of like, I really want to succeed is, hey, I'm going to go to my office, I'm going to grind every day, I'm going to 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. Why does anyone want to listen to this?

Why does anyone want to listen to if I don't have interesting life experiences?

There's a thing I realized, which was my, so my grandfather, 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, cause 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, some engineering, like a chemical plant, right? Of some kind. He worked there and like, to him, work was you come to the factory where the, 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.

And then 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, oh, 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 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, in the, totally the, the fertilizer factory or whatever. Yeah. And then like to, 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, 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 unrecognizable to like, mm-hmm. You know, our parents. And then I'm like, oh, like I just had, 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 kind of interesting. Like I should kind of not write off those things that look like complete not work. Yeah. Um, and like our, 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-30s, when I look at what a 20-year-old creator is doing, it's hard for me to track. You know, 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?

What's the name of that girl who's like going viral? 'Cause she's like an NPC.

Pinkydoll.

Pinkydoll. Yeah. I was like, that's like, yeah, that's the thing.

I don't know.

Is that what our kids are gonna do? They're gonna be like a vending 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, have you seen this thing?

It's really strange.

Have you seen Pinky Doll? No. 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. Gang gang.

Mm.

Ice feels so good.

Thank you, Jackie. Gang gang, gang gang, gang gang. Oh, special gang gang.

Gang gang, gang gang. Balloon gang gang, gang gang.

That was good.

Eliminated.

I think it says a lot about what we crave 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 TV told you what was on. It was a lean back experience.

Right.

Turn on the TV. If what you wanted wasn't on, you just waited.

And you may not even know that you're super into these like niche cooking shows until the— yeah, until Chopped comes out and you're like, oh, exactly. I didn't know I wanted to watch other people cook.

But I don't know if you remember the TV Guide channel. It was a TV Guide channel. You just waited. It told you what was on channel 12, and if you missed it, you had to wait a whole nother 100 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 was 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? I can pay money and she will do something. That's like, 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.

Part of it. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that's what, you know, Twitch, I think is a great example of that too, right? Like people, people watching long live streams. Why? It's because 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 a 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 were 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 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 roar. 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 developed this kind of adversarial relationship with his chat. Yeah.

'Cause the way you said it was interesting, you go, it's kind of 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. 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 bring into focus, which is essentially, you know, he'll go live for, he initially started as 24 hours, but every time you subscribe, every new subscriber, he extended it, right? So essentially, they torture me. Yeah, it was an adversary, 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 30 days straight, livestreaming for 30 days straight.

But again, dead now, but it was okay. It was fun while it lasted.

But that's an example of like having an adversary relationship, which, 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 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 a whole nother, you know, 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. 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 100 videos of people doing it. Right. 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 were 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 livestream or become that creator within a matter of minutes.

Right. Uh, what do you think's next? Where do you see the puck going with that? I think it's hard to predict.

It's hard to predict, but I think if anyone could, it might be you.

Yeah.

But I think, I think what we have to realize is that TikTok taught us a lot about the fact that the platform is the creator in that context, right? Like if you take the top 10 creators off of TikTok, TikTok's still TikTok, right? You still open it and 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 person.

Right, it's personalized. Yeah. Hyper-personalized, I think, is number one, right? When we think about the trends that are coming, which is already happening. But I think also, 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 MrBeast 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 his last video. And then the opposite end of the spectrum is like, Here's what's happening on YouTube Shorts or TikTok. And actually really easy for me to do that and I can try it myself.

I'm in San Francisco. If you walk around SF, you can't like, 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, like a paint, you know, it can paint better than, you know, a human can paint. It can paint anything you want instantly, whatever. Um, it can write, it can make, you know, ChatGPT can make rap lyrics. And so I wonder, you know, how 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 deepfake and create something that it thinks you like and it's just gonna try 10,000 variations per second. And then if anything starts to work, it starts to like go more down that rabbit hole for more creators, for more people.

Yeah. It might not even be a creator. It might just be self-generating video, right?

That's what I mean.

Yeah.

That's what I mean. The algorithm is just making the video.

Just making the content.

Just being like, okay, 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 deepfaked yet? Have you heard of My First Million?

I've heard a, I've heard a Uh, audio, audio only, not a video one, but an audio only version. That's a fake conversation.

And how, how close was it?

I mean, it's like, like, okay. If somebody listened to it, if my family member who doesn't listen to the pod listened to it, they would just think this is the podcast.

Yeah.

Cuz it doesn't sound robotic. Right. There's little moments, but it's like kind of passable. If you don't know what deepfakes are, you'd be like, I guess it just sounded like that. If you listen to the pod, you'd be like, oh, you're 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, but I think they kind of edited it to like make a cool demo.

I listened to Joe Rogan and Sam Altman, which is, it's a YouTube channel called The Joe Rogan AI Experience. And I clicked—

Genius idea.

Yeah, it's a genius idea. But I clicked on it to find out like Joe Rogan and Sam Altman talking about OpenAI and how ChatGPT 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. Right. 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 0.1, then you just have to believe like, okay, inevitably that's where it goes. There's been a few of these that go viral, right? Yeah. 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 brought it up about you because, um, it happened to, uh, me and Colin recently where it was a video of me, Colin, and MrBeast talking about an online casino that he had started. And it was also, our lips were also, um, deepfaked and was it on YouTube or is it, no, it's, it's taken down. We got it taken down. Um, we got it taken down pretty fast, but it was really, it's cool. Fuck that.

It was really compelling. But I mean, it, it was too compelling. Like people could click on it. It's like to the, to just the untrained eye, it's like, oh, that could have been a moment from the podcast I didn't watch. I've had to have conversations with my parents about like, hey, be careful. Be careful if someone calls you and it's, you think it's me, let's develop like a safe word basically. With all of 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, right, 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 and theater. Um, I think we're gonna want that. And I think there's a lot of digital creators who are 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 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, 10% of people stop watching, but they're looking at it on a, on a view of like 5 million people and they'd rather have 5 million views than 4.5 million views. But when I look at it, I'm like, I think I'd rather have 100,000 views or 100,000 dedicated fans who are—

Who walk away knowing something about me.

One more unit of trust. Exactly. Who are down to listen to me talk 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 how the business of YouTube 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. I think the young creators, 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. And there's so much information. I think we're 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 dropshipping versus like building an actual brand around what you do, right? Like, you know, there's, um, I don't know if you ever saw when Sony got hacked. Do you remember that? When the emails got 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, or one of the, it wasn't maybe the early syndicates, 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 do you call it? 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 like, there, there was like this kind of like pretty big, music festival craze that kind of 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 want to like go and voluntarily crawl through mud this weekend.

Right.

It's like, why would somebody want to do that? Yeah. It's like, yeah, 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. Totally. So you 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 totally agree with that. And I mean, obviously that, that, that's what happened, but I think AI is going to create like this homogenous nature to content where everything's going to feel the same. Um, and that is going to 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.

What is that? Okay. So there's, there's 3 cameras right now, right?. And so basically you would bring these 3 cameras in and you want to get a clarity on like, if I'm talking, the camera's on me. If you're talking, the camera's on you.

Oh, it does those cuts.

It just does those cuts automatically. If it's a 3-hour conversation, it'll do it in 90 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 live switching.

He's not live switching right now, but we talked about it like right before we started this.

Okay. So if he, if he's live switching with the switcher, he actually can't predict when you're about to start talking, right? He's gonna be a second late. So now, 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 10 variations. And sometimes maybe it's ours that we like, but if we keep going down that path, The other day we were in a—

Is this ChatGPT or it's a different tool?

ChatGPT, but there's other creator-specific AI tools. There's some that aren't public that can only be used if you're partnered with certain creator companies. Specifically, there's a company called Spotter that has a really great AI tool that I was using this morning. And the funny thing is you're sitting in a room with your team and is it more efficient to sit alone with AI and get hundreds of variations, or is it more efficient to sit together as a team for 30 minutes? I don't know the answer to that, but I think probably it's AI, right? So the question for me is like, if it's driving so much efficiency, I think I'm going to crave inefficiency in other places.

Right, it's like the slow food movement. Totally.

It's like farm to table. Exactly.

It's like, oh, fast food gets too present, then it creates the demand. The craving for the other, for the inefficiency. What I've seen though is that even though that gets created, it does usually end up getting dwarfed by the thing that's, you know, better, faster, cheaper, you know, like style of 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? If you like Taylor Swift music and you just want to 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, 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 only happens once, right? It's like an experience that you get to happen once.

But you know, by the numbers, a lot more people will stream Taylor Swift than will go to that.

Agreed.

Agreed. But you know, she'll make a lot of money and can monetize totally, totally differently. Yeah. Tell me about, um, MrBeast. So I've gotten to go to his place and hang out with him a little bit. Pretty remarkable dude. Mm-hmm. Um, and not like, oh, he's like an alien or whatever, but just like very interesting to just kind of see him in his like normal ways, uh, of working. And you can kind of see some differences between how he approaches things. Like, you know, for me I was like, oh, how does he approach things? 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've given me that insight, but actually watching him work and like kind of being in a brainstorm with him, then you do start to see those differences. Yeah. 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 kind of like picked up or noticed just by spending a little time with him?

I always say he's like the most unique human I have 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 what I care about or what a lot of people care about. He's different.

What does he care about?

He is so unique in the fact that he is laser-focused in a way that I've never really experienced. And maybe at times in a way that—

I don't want to experience.

Yeah. Yeah.

He doesn't want to experience.

No, I mean, him and I have this conversation a lot. I don't crave what he has. I like to have more of a wide perspective on life and a view of different types of experiences. And he's very committed to his craft and very like, 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 doesn't exist in the same way for him that it exists for other people based on social context or based on like, well—

Well, wait, say that again. 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 that.

I have many stories of that. What's one for you? The time where I saw that the most was at the MrBeast Burger opening in New Jersey at the American Dream Mall. Colin and I went.

That was insane, right?

Yeah. We spent the 24 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, where he walks out, where he walks Dude, that was—

so I was the only camera behind him at that moment.

Are you this camera or you this camera? That's your video. Yeah. Like later. I know he's famous, but I was like, this is not what I thought was gonna be.

Right.

At a point where again, it's like a lot of people would be like, okay, that's a no. If I ask 3 times, it's a no.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's no other possibility.

Oh, the fire marshal said it. He's like, you know, whatever.

Yeah, and I think that he thinks in different ways too of like, you know, 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 going to pay everyone an extra $1,000 today. And that is $30,000. There's 30 people working. It was $30,000. And it's in our video where he says, I'm going to pay all of you guys an extra $1,000 to whatever you're getting paid today. Right. That's like an irrational thing to do. A lot of people would look at that and be like, that's kind of irrational. To spend an additional $30,000. But, you know, he looks at that and he was like, this is what I need to make this excellent.

Right.

Yeah.

He's just very unique.

I, yeah, I feel the same way. He also said some things. So he also said some things that were like really funny to me. Like he was like, I was like, so do you wanna like have kids or like, what's your, like, what do you want outta life?

Besides, okay.

Yeah. I've heard the YouTube part and I was like, what else do you want? And I think he had said, he was like, I wanna be president. I wanna do this. Yeah. I wanna be a billionaire and all that. And I was like, okay, cool. But like, what about just like outta your life? Like forget the, big, cool sounding things like, do you want to get married, have kids? Like, what do you want to do? And he was like, he's like, yeah, you know, I, he's like, yeah, I'll, I think I'll probably like, you know, date or get married or whatever. He's 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 have kids. There's probably something to it, so I'll do it. And I was like, first, just hilarious to be like, like, yeah, just like the first name basis, literally like the dead Steve Jobs who you never met and be like, 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 because I'm on this mission, and like, you know, that's where my head's at right now.

I have seen him, you know, 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. Like, I think we, we do have to remember, like, that's a guy in his mid-20s.

Of course. Yeah. Actually, he wasn't even, I don't even know how old he was. I remember laughing at something and I was like, dude, he's so much smarter, more mature than I was at 24, 23, whatever he was.

He's different though. Again, that's not, I didn't have any friends like him when I was in my early 20s. I think he's a very rare individual and he's 25 now and he's maturing into, he runs a company with over 100+ employees. He's got this whole massive operation, this massive platform. And he's 25. It's, it's, uh, gonna be interesting to watch the next 5 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's the same thing I was saying earlier of I think it's okay to, to have a deeper connection with him and with the content and with the contestants that he has on there. And he can sacrifice some of the hyper-retention editing for that. I also, a year ago, probably would have told him he potentially is doing too many things. And he's already refocused, right? He's really just focused on the main channel and Feastables. And if you think about a year ago, Beast Burger, Feastables, main channel, reacts, gaming, right? These are all different things he's doing. Right.

Plus 25 other amazing opportunities.

Yeah.

And people who want to meet him and this and that, right? Everything will tug your attention away.

And it's— he's excellent. He can be excellent in all of those things. 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 hard.

Well, the way I would put it is he can be excellent at any of those, but probably not all of them simultaneously.

Probably not all of them.

Yeah. Right? Like, not at the same time. Right? You could do anything. You just can't do everything at the same time.

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, you know, whether it was like Casey Neistat or PewDiePie, like kind of they have these like epic arcs and they're the top of the mountain. And then most of them either literally stop creating 'cause they 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 kind of remarkable though. So, you know, he may have a different path or trajectory than, than most. If you, if I was to say, all right, make a prediction. 5 years from now, what is like today, if MrBeast is like, you know, the number 1 YouTube creator and like launching a couple of these businesses underneath like Feastables, whatnot, 5 years from now, do you think he's still the number 1 creator on YouTube?

I think he's probably the number 1 online digital media company. I don't know that, you know, I, 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 BuzzFeeds, 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's, uh, they have good people involved. So I don't know. I don't, 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 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 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, MrBeast is a content studio. You know, 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 studio that can build IP and monetize it in different ways. Like MrBeast 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 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 build this big media platform and let's build a product connected to it. They have that skillset. 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. So, yeah. So your con— your content company did something pretty dope. Uh, you guys did, I think, what is it, 100 editions or 1,000 editions?

We did 500 of those.

No, no, no. But this was to celebrate—

Oh, it was to celebrate 2 years of our newsletter. 2 years.

Yeah.

2 years of the newsletter, The Published Press.

Yeah. So you got this newsletter, The Published Press, uh, which is dope. It's like a kind of what you guys do on the YouTube channel, sort of like creator, a great newsletter for creators.

I mean, it was 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 and I'm very honored cuz you pretty much sold out of these. Yeah. Um, this was dope. Why do something like this? 'Cause I, 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. It's a risk in a way. What's your philosophy on just do dope shit like this?

Why? It just, it's fulfilling. Like, it's hard to say that we have a hard-nosed philosophy on it. It's just like, we are creative people. And as we've built a business, like 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 this thing. And that's like, that's the really funny thing about Colin and I always say that creatives aren't consistent people. Right. And so we've surrounded ourselves with really consistent people who help us be consistent in the formats that we found. But you need that occasional pop of just like, you know, it'd be cool to make a newspaper, right? Like we, we were rebranding the PublishPress. That's the new logo for it. We just were like, how do we, how do we tell people that we've been doing this for 2 years? How do we celebrate? It also was, we had just crossed 100,000 subscribers on the newsletter and it was like, how do we celebrate this moment? Right? 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 was it. That was the impetus. And then it was just, Hey, 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're, there's a lot of people who we asked about this and they were like, that's, you know, we, that's not gonna happen in the time period that we wanted it to happen in. And then that's another exciting thing for a creative person who's driven. I found the challenge. That's another exciting thing. Um, so yeah, I would say that it, it's again, like it cost us money. Uh, we did 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 were seeing that creators have framed it and put it in their house. We're seeing that there's just something for one.

Yeah.

You asked me, you DM'd 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 a premium And the reason I ask is 'cause 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 upfront 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 what you just said kind of reminds me of like Google had like the 20% time. It's like, all right, we get hired 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 20% time to just tinker and hack on stuff that, that they, you know, get motivation from. And like, logically you'd say, well, you're losing, you know, 20% time is basically one day, one day out of, out of the week that they're not working on, on this, on their main job. But the reality is that like sometimes those hit and also it makes the other 4 days outta the week.

Yeah.

More productive. Like you don't actually lose anything. Totally. 'Cause you attract the best people and you gave them an outlet to like be creative.

Yeah. And also if you're not following what's exciting you, then you're just, you built yourself a job, you know? Right. And that's like, then you have to look at it and be like, wait, what did I just do?

You know, what did I just do? 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 very niche. And so for niche creators, we think about collectibles, like we want to create collectibles. Yeah. And when we have collectibles, then you get to be a part of our community and be like, I'm— it's the feeling of going to see a band when you were younger and keeping the ticket stub. 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 MrBeast or Emma Chamberlain, they're creating consumables, which is great for 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've sold 2,000 of these hats and they're out in the world and 2,000 people are wearing them. And 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 who can connect and be like, I'm part of the same group as you. Identify in the same world as you do.

Totally. I love the way you put it. It's a great frame on that idea of consumables versus collectibles. When we, uh, were about to launch like merch for the pod 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 wanna wear our, like for us it was like, they're not gonna wear a shirt that says my first million.

Yeah.

Like this is not gonna happen. Yeah. 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 boy stuff.

Yeah. No small boy 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. It's like in the style of those like Kanye shirts or whatever. Yeah. It's like some like cool, cool looking, like it's like an imitation of that.

It's great.

And I'm like, it's like nobody will even know who that is or what hot dog. Like 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. Yeah.

And I was like, we should just do, I was like, if we're, my rule is like the Tim Ferriss 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, like, the right way to think about it, a lot of our merch shipments are driven by a referral program through the newsletter, right? And so that's like You know, again, that's like pulling from the playbook. Same. 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, was it, it was like, your problem is that you're writing to be read. Yes. That resonated with you and me. I want to like talk about that. Why did that hit? 'Cause so simple. It's like, you know, I don't know, 7 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 going to work for the audience. But we liked them and got really in our heads around, you know, again, 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. Right. 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 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? There's some most respected artists are misunderstood, maybe understood once they pass or just didn't care about what the audience thought. Your interpretation doesn't matter to them. Then you go on the—

It's like, love that you exist, but like, I like guac on my Chipotle. I'm just going to 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 because they put Butts in seats. So the person at the studio, the movie studio is not an artist. They're thinking about what do we make? What do we greenlight? Spider-Man. That's going to get people in the seats. That's going to sell tickets. And I think as a creator, you have to be in the middle of that. And some creators slide heavy on the side of distributor of just like, what does the audience want to watch? I'll make that, whatever. And then on the other side of what do I want to make? 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 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'd you say? Creating scared?

Yeah. Creating scared. Yeah.

That's like a book title right there.

I like that one. Yeah. I mean, it's something Colin and I talk about a lot. It's like, let's not create scared. You know, what are we scared of? You know, like 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 whatever you think is going to happen if you put out a video that people don't like. Um, and people can feel that. I think, I think you can feel it as a creator. It feels really uncomfortable to create scared and right. Yeah, it's not fun to watch.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, you had Hasan Minhaj on the show and he—

I love Hasan.

Yeah. He's very much on the artist side. I think he like drew a line in the sand for himself. Yeah. He's like, okay, I 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 the soul searching moment. It's not like, you know, 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, 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 you know, 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.

End of last year.

Yeah. Did he say anything that kind of resonated with you on that?

Right.

And he asked us that question and I was like, oh, you're right. What is the Hasan Minhaj, Colin and Samir 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? Right.

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, go through kind of this crazy windy path up to Netflix, right? And how he's now kind of left YouTube. Um, cause Hasan's origins are on YouTube.

Yeah.

I didn't know that. He used to upload, he came up with shows and put them on YouTube. If you go to his channel and search by oldest, like how like sketch shows, sketch shows, he did hosted shows where he talked about the news, like almost like Tosh, uh, 2.0.

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, he was also like 18, 19 doing like comedy clubs, right? Like he was doing standup at like 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? Yeah, that was really good. Yeah. So that's his standup special. Um, That guy's like a performer, man. Like he, he re— he really inspired me to be like, this is not like a comedy show. It's, it's, it's a one-man show. It's, it's a performance. 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. Ideation is the biggest part of it. You know, he has a writing partner that he sits and writes.

Yeah. Did you meet Pratt or? Yeah. What's he like? I've never gotten to meet him, but I, I'm very, I'm very, very fascinated by kind of the wingman. Yeah. Behind, like, 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 confidant, the person who's in the bunker with them figuring things out, compliments them, does all the shit they're not good at. Yeah. 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 asked them a ton of questions. Totally. I have a million questions for them. Uh, what, what would you tell me a little bit about him?

I think oftentimes as, as creatives and creators, we think we're, 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, 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— 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, too much of a pause, when there wasn't. Like, he was— and right after the show, before Hasan came back into the green room, him and Pratt we're talking.

I love that. Yeah. I love it when it's sort of like, all right, we're going back to the lab.

Yeah.

It's like we kind of like, we do our thing, but like, 'cause I tell, so Ben's my collaborator basically. Yeah. So like we did a couple businesses together, but also when it comes to content, like we recently did, um, we're kind of new to YouTube, but we did, we used to just basically put the podcast on YouTube.

Yeah.

I remember.

And now it's like, you guys are growing now though.

It started really bad. It was like we would, first time we did it, I remember we had like 4,000 views and I was just like, oh man. Like, But like, which is fine for when you start, but we already had the podcast was significant. So it was like, it's kinda like if you play poker at one stakes and then you go down to the micro stakes, like, you know, quarters and 10-cent table doesn't feel very fun cuz you've now experienced a different, uh, level of stakes.

But those aren't even in the same casino. Yeah. Spotify or Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Yeah. There, and it's a completely different group of people.

So, exactly. So, so we were like, all right, we think we could do this. And so we started to grow, but Recently we did one and it's this, uh, it's this money one that's on the right there that has, how many views does that have now?

300,000.

Yeah. Nice. So 300,000 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 3 days? It's like we just tried to make one great video for this and we did and we made that and, 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, uh, it's almost like, uh, you only can, you can speak in shorthand or reference. Like it's like if, if you say something, I already know what part he's gonna be like, oh, we gotta talk about that later. Right. Cause that relates to these other 3 things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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 be a part of a team where their name isn't at the forefront, right? Which can be really complex, right? But we know who Pratt is, but if you're a fan of Hasan Minhaj at scale, you're not going to know who he is. So you have to find someone who's really into that too, right?

Who likes being that person. Especially because if you've ever tried to hire, a lot of people will be like, I want to work for you because I want to be you.

Because I want to be you, yeah.

And it's like, okay, cool, but that doesn't really work.

Especially with this group.

That's all I need.

Yeah, 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 working with you to be like, okay, now I get it. Now I'm going to 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 going to talk about the performance, right? You're going to, you're going to probably watch game tape back. You're going to 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, get better faster, you can get better way faster. Yeah, it's hard to find, right? It's typically happens just organically and then you're like, 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 is a kind of a different type of business.

It's actually a separate company and there's separate people writing that thing.

It's not you guys creating it necessarily. Have you seen— and I'm keeping track of these kind of creator-driven businesses where you have like almost like a an audience co-founder and like the way you used to have like a technical co-founder for a business. Now you have almost like a distribution co-founder.

Oh, that's cool.

What have you seen that maybe everybody hasn't heard of? Right. Because I think everybody's kind of heard of MrBeast and maybe a couple others. But what are some cool ones that you're keeping an eye on or I should know about or other people should know about?

The typical creator business is make content, sell ads, right? Which is like, that's, that's baseline. Some people never need to grow out of that because that's just a good business. Yeah. Um, but like when, when you go through those extensions, like I think Ali Abdaal 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 numbers.

He publishes his numbers like $4 million a year on his like $4 or $5 million —on his—

Pushing to 6 this year.

Creator Academy, which is like basically like become a YouTuber.

Yes, yes. And he has a ton of courses on Skillshare about like studying for the MCAT or like 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 teaching through 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., because it's just scalable. And 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 Demoldenberg who has a show called Chicken Chop Date. Okay. Um, I think I've heard about this. It's a great show.

Were you the one who showed me this?

Yeah. It's, it's a great show. She, she's had Jack Harlow on it. She just had Jennifer Lawrence on it. And what's the shtick?

What's the shtick? It's like, At a chicken shop? Like a fried chicken place?

Yeah, it's a date at a fried chicken place in London. And a 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. And through— yeah, through this, it's just 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. 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 15 million views. This regularly does, you know, 1 to 5 million views in the first week, but no advertisers. And what it operates as is like, it's a production company and Nike just came to her. So she kind of created an agency. She created an agency, yeah. So like Nike came to her.

So she 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, she doesn't do ads, but she'll put like full episodes of like, cause I saw Barbie.

Yeah. She, she went and posted the Barbie premiere. Um, that's smart. So I like that. There's another, um, creator named Amanda Rae Schlee, 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 even know what it is. So go to the channel, Amanda R-A-C-H and then Lee. And now, yeah, go to one of these bullet journal setups.

This just looks like Etsy of YouTube. Sure.

It's like product placement, but done at like a whole nother level.

Yeah. And I think, you know, it's something we're actually struggling with with our newsletter, which is like, how do we—

The tar version of that.

How do we integrate that in every episode? Sure, we can bring it up, but that doesn't drive subscribers. Right. So 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 alcohol is in every single episode, right? Because they're showing over here. Yeah. Um, Logan has Prime everywhere with him. Um, so, uh, you know, I think creators who have this, like Amanda, they can build really substantial business.

What do you call it? Content product fit?

Yeah. Content product fit. Um, so this is a really impressive business to me because it's just, it's niche. But 3 million people watch this and she sells this journal.

Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, she's got to be doing— I mean, what do you think she's making 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 very good case study for them. I know she's doing well. She has a good team. The thing I love about this business too, it's repeat purchases. There's a new journal drop You can run out of pages in a journal. Once you have allegiance to this, it's like, yeah.

Subscription box. STEM or something, right? Like, is it like a science kit?

Yeah, 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." That's huge.

That's your big business. Huge. That's a big business.

Yeah. Yeah. And I know he said now that makes more than his channel. Yeah, for sure. And his, I mean, his channel's massive.

That's, that's a great other great example. Yeah. 'Cause he does basically 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. Right. And then he'll be like, and you can make a miniature version of this at home.

You know, I think this content model, this what you're just describing here. Yeah. 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 clicks for a cent for like any keyword. Like, that's insane. Like, okay, let me just work backwards. What's the best keyword? 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 kind of 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 blog post and monetizing with a Google ad there. Right, right. It's not really a good model. He's like, I realize like you can sell just like a product through Facebook ads with really simple ads and you don't want 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, D2C. 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 it wasn't obvious to everybody yet.

Yeah. I mean, I think MVMT Watches is another great influencer influencer-led marketing, but I think what's incredibly hard, especially for creators right now, is what you have to sacrifice to have that, that view and that long-term view of building a product because Advertising revenue is so available right now to us. And again, you kind of pull the levers when it comes to YouTube. It's the highest margin advertising dollars that I think has existed in video content ever, right? Because you don't get on the phone with the advertiser. You aren't negotiating a contract. There's no sales team. There's no back and forth. There's no revision. Yeah, but YouTube takes what, like? 45%. Yeah.

But still, it's like, dude, but there's still like, you don't see it.

It's just like, and the good news, you don't have to do any work. Work. You don't do it, right? You just, you upload content and you get a check in the mail. So creators who make really viral content that has reasonably high CPMs, it's like, well, I should, you know, I should make another video. And then a brand deal comes and that can be, you know, anywhere from $20,000, $50,000 all the way up to $200,000, right? And 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 over here? And how do we even do that?

And it's a totally different skillset. 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 it's all young people who grew up.

Which is funny by the way, because there's so many operators, 'cause I'm coming from an operator world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And all the operators are like, Dude, I could, like, if I just had the right influencer, this, this is soap. We could sell a lot of this soap. Or whatever the thing is, you know, pick your favorite widget. And, uh, and for them it's like a total black box. Like, how do I go meet these people and get them to trust me enough to do this? And so it's like this, this interesting—

And then also they have to have the temperament to, to want that, right? Like a lot of creators have to, 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 wanna do this anymore.

Right. They freak out.

They freak out. Right. 'Cause it's like, I have so much control over how my brand shows up that when you start to scale that, it gets uncomfortable. Right. So.

And do you, I have this question up here I put on this list. So I was, 3 creators likely to become a billionaire. I gave you the one freebie. You can say Jimmy and he could be one. Yeah. What other creators do you think have the potential to build a billion-dollar empire around what they're doing? It's a combination of their content plus businesses, whatever.

I think Dude Perfect.

I saw they did like an amusement park or something, right?

Yeah. Well, they're working on it. Yeah. Yeah.

$100 million project. Yes. Yes. What does that mean? That's what they're investing into this project?

I don't know the specifics of it. I've spent a lot, they're actually, I've known them for a really long time. Like I, you know, I've been on YouTube and around YouTube for 12 years. They were the first group that I, got involved with early on when we sold our last company.

And they're kind of like, the trick shots was their thing that worked, but like—

They make sports accessible to, you know, young kids through trick shots and, you know, viral sports videos. And the reason I bring it up is like, I think those guys have been at this now since around 2006 or '07. And they have remained 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 30 million subscribers. They would just go out themselves and hold the cameras and edit the videos. And they still sit there in the edit bays and make sure they're perfect. And I think they— if you've, if you've seen images of— they just did a tour. See images of like the fans, the young kids who turn out for that, the parents. Um, I had a conversation with them one time where they said their goal is to be 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, 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 Ko is actually someone who's, uh, he's coming here tomorrow.

Oh, he is?

Yeah. Yeah. I, I love Cody. I know you went on his show. Yeah. I think Cody's like one of the most intelligent people I've met, uh, in the space. I think he, even as he's 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 Ko in 10 years? He's either in the woods, chilling. Yeah, he's a free man. Free man, DJing and running, or he's running the biggest capital company. And I think that's just a personal choice. Up to him, yeah. It's all available to him. But yeah, I don't, I don't know that, uh, I'm sure there's others that I'm not thinking of, but they're my favorite brand on YouTube.

TMG. TMG is my number one 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 Ko. Right.

Um, so yeah, their music videos are so goddamn good. It's actually kind of annoying. It's kind of frustrating.

Yeah. It's like a bit, it's a bit off-putting.

Like, dude, what? Like, you can't just do that. Right. At that— you could do it as a joke. It can't also be amazing.

It can't also be good. Yeah. It can't also be good. It can't also make me wanna listen to it multiple times. Right. Yeah.

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, uh, very fascinating. Like, I, I, I don't really have interest in it. I don't— if it, if it's the outcome of what I decide to do, that would be interesting. But it's not like I don't find myself to be focused on that outcome. And I also found most creators I talk to are not focused on that outcome. Totally. 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. Yeah. The person who says they have enough. Is, is like, like, uh, you know, Paul Graham who created YC, which is I think probably the most successful tech startup actually, cuz 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 created, but like they, without them there is no Reddit. There is no, there aren't, there probably aren't those, those businesses being successful including OpenAI because He saw Sam Altman and made him president when there was tons of other more qualified candidates on paper. But he's like this, he even said 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 OpenAI, which is today the most, you know, one of the most valuable private startups. So anyways, YC gets to the peak of its powers or gets like, you know, does amazing stuff 10 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 like not wanting anymore.

Yeah. Yeah.

Being like content and, and, developing a relationship with the term enough. Yeah. That's a hard thing to do, but totally. Do you have that? Do you have a number or like a, do you feel like you have enough? Like what are you in pursuit of?

I totally agree.

I've never just done X.

I've experienced 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 game I'm playing now is to try to achieve that, to craft my life such that that's true. And so even though it's like weird, it's like, you know, it's awesome. It's like, what do I like to do best? I don't know. I like to do this podcast. I like to read. Right. I like to talk. I like to like, you know, work on these little, tinker with these little things or, you know, 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. 'Cause I don't think they even like, or they don't clearly have one.

Well, you can also have the, there's another Tim Ferriss moment in our episode together. He was like something to the tune of like, you can decouple the non-financial reward and the financial reward. Right. Right. So like this experience, 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. But that's a separate reward. And if you can decouple those things, then that is—

Yeah, and just basically the way I think about stuff is there's a car and you can have a bunch of passengers in the car. It's like, I have my ego, but hopefully it's in the trunk. It shouldn't be driving. Sure. Let's put him in the back. 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 'cause he takes us off the cliff. Like who gets to drive? And so, 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 following my curiosity, creating shit consistently, just creating things. Yeah. And is content with life and has like a, 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 if 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. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And maybe you shouldn't have been driving in the first place, but at least in my life I was like, I want to get to basically 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, right? Man, I think that is a big opportunity with, uh, 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 we're, it, it's like, it's a totally different skill set. It's a totally different skill set. Yeah. And then we don't know who to trust with that. Right.

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 ba— 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, yeah.

And like, and some of the clingers are the people they trust and they're like kind of safe choices. They 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 piss it away. Yeah. But 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. Sure. To chase them and beg them and, and try to convince them that they're the guy who's gonna help them. Right. And 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 know, you actually don't wanna work with someone who's like needs something from you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. On the sports topic, there's one more, um, D Straying, uh, he is a sports creator. Football-focused career. He played football at UCF, and this is pre-NIL days. 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 and built this really substantial YouTube channel. He has this series called One-on-Ones that just— Does he go live to places?

Like he goes to like a city?

Yeah, yeah, this is like live events and they get crazy. Like in Arizona, it had to get called off because it was like too many people there and the police had to get involved.

Right. I was gonna go, he, I think he, he messaged or management, somebody messaged. Okay. Okay. It was like, I mean, like he's an hour away. I was like, oh, that sounds kind of fun. But like, 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 $10,000. And for, for some of the communities he's going into, that's life-changing money, right? For a lot of communities.

Is he the guy in the thing or it's two other guys? He's the host.

He's the host. You know, and like you can see like this is, this is what it looks like. If you go to his channel and go to most viewed.

That's in my old high school. So cool. So, so if that guy, if that guy had caught it, he would have. He would have got 10 grand.

He would have danced. No, he would have danced. It's a tournament. It's a tournament. And then you start to know these characters and they travel to different markets.

This is the new N1 Mixtape. Exactly.

This is great. This is N1 Mixtape. For football. And Colin and I spoke with, at a YouTube event with Dee. And he was speaking with Roger Goodell, and we were talking to Roger about Destroying, and he was like, this guy's like really impactful for football. Oh, wow. 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 Dee, like the leagues are starting to get involved with him in a way where I'm like, wait, he is single-handedly a really 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 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? The world is his oyster. He can become a host. He probably should be one of the hosts for the NFL, like. Or like the Pro Bowl, which no one's watching. I think he can also create a, yeah, I mean, he can redefine the Pro Bowl because this is more interesting. This is already, this is way more interesting.

Way more. Yeah.

I'm like half looking at you because I'm like watching this. I mean, we pulled this up in our office and we have a 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 an NIL agency, right? So you have college athletes who he represents this, where college athletics didn't let you monetize. He knows how to do this, right? So, okay, now can Dee create a— NIL agency where he's signing athletes and getting them contracts. 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. It carries such high dollar value that I think he has that opportunity as well.

There was a guy at that event we were at that was— you'll know him because he's lacrosse. Paul. Paul Raybolt. Yeah. Yeah.

He was a groomsman in my wedding. He's one of my best friends.

Amazing. He is. I, I don't know much about the business.

So you were at 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, whatever, I don't know, 8 teams or something, but he is 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 in the thing. Like what is the business model of this? This sounded pretty fascinating.

And yeah. So it's, do you think it's a good model? Also, I'm an investor, so a biased opinion.

Yes.

But, but I've, You know what I've always seen in lacrosse, if you pull up, go to the Premier Lacrosse League YouTube channel and play the last vlog from their all-star game, you get a sense for like the community, that one, the fastest shot, right? That, yeah. So you get a sense for like what it looks like. I mean, they were going wild, but like they packed the stadium out in Louisville for their all-star game. So basically what he did was there was a preexisting league called Major League Lacrosse. They paid their players, terribly. They treated them not 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 was, it was kind of interesting, but it was empty stadiums. They didn't have healthcare. 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 lacrosse player. He had the biggest media platform. Colin and I actually ran his YouTube channel. That's how we became very close. 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. And he had the best head on his shoulder for media, how do you build a brand, how do you— He had the biggest— He was called lacrosse's first million-dollar man. He had deals with Red Bull and New Balance, and he had created the model for how do you make money as a lacrosse player.

And was he the best and he was the best at media, or he was actually the best at media and really good?

No, he was the best. He was the best player too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So those are those like Conor McGregor at one time. Totally. Champ. Yes. And yes, he's like the most marketable guy.

That makes more sense.

It's like a touring, you know, circus where it's like, Is it coming to San Diego this weekend? Okay. Everyone descends upon 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 lacrosse, the way you made money was by doing camps and clinics, right? So you, you, you have youth camps, right? Like there's a lot of young kids who want to play. They come from affluent backgrounds. Their parents are willing to pay $1,000 for them to get coached by their favorite lacrosse player. 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 and you can turn all these players into camp counselors and trainers. They earn extra money. Exactly. They can build their own bespoke businesses, but that all connect to the league. That's sick. So he, him and his brother are really sharp and they didn't sell franchises yet.

Not yet. Yeah. And they, uh, Barstool was involved in one of them.

Okay. Uh, they, they got to name the expansion team and, uh, part of my take, like, they're the owners. What'd they name it? Uh, the Water Dogs. Ridiculous name. Yeah. But like, you know, there's, that creates a kind of that, that inside joke with the part of PMT community that it's like they have their own team. That's smart. It's a collab.

It's like, oh, we're gonna collab. Yeah.

Because when they play, Big Cat's tweeting about it. When they, they won the championship last year, he got his own ring. You know, it's like amazing. 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, oh, 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 creating a, a sports league from scratch because it's like kind of a 20-year arc.

Oh, yeah. You have to have such a long view on the world and on your life to do it. And doing live events, you're doing all the hardest things. I mean, every weekend he's in a different city. You know, I'm watching these and looking. 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 are playing a very long game here. And I credit them to, for doing it. But it's, uh, it's not an easy thing.

They signed like a $10 million deal or something with ESPN. Like ESPN. Yeah. Uh, yeah. The, the media rights, uh, deal. Yeah. That's good.

Yeah. So when they first started, Colin and I made a documentary about them for NBC. Uh, that's right. We've had like many different lives of, you know, Colin and Samir.

Um, but yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Do you think that's gonna be, uh, you know, a good investment for you? Were you like the first one in?

'Cause he's like your buddy. I was first one in. Uh, which is great. So it's doing good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's doing— I, I'm happy.

Isn't that funny how like, um, like you're gonna get, like, you're gonna, let's say this works out. Yeah. 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 that that's how this whole thing would pay off. Sure. It's like, all right, mom, I know. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have health insurance. I don't have a job. Mm-hmm. I know I'm kind of filming this like failing league. You're like this. This like lacrosse thing. It's like, and it leads to the thing, right? So it's a Steve Jobs quote. Yeah. I mean, you look back, you see all the dots, how they connected, but like, you go even further back.

Like, and the way this happened was my first idea when I was 21 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 going to take? 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 you can't not do it? Like, you're just like, all I can do is make videos?

Then you made it.

From day one. Yeah, you made it and it will, there will be an outcome from that. There will be. It will lead you somewhere. But if you wake up and you're like, this sucks, it's kind of what you were saying. It's like, I'm doing X so I can get to Y.

Well, the entrepreneurship version is Um, startups fail, but founders don't. So like, I moved to San Francisco in 2012, so that's 10 years ago. And I met a bunch of people and we used to have like these like underground founder like meetings where we're like trading tips and tricks and being like, yo, 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. Because you guys understand.. And unlike YouTube, everybody who was doing startups at the time was like all living in the same 7-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 2 outcomes. One is got so burnt out from like the grind and failure that they just stopped after like, you know, 3, 4 years, um, or even 5 years. They just like did that 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 won. Like literally like almost like 100% of my friends who stayed in the game. Yeah. And some of 'em won in year 2, someone in year 5, someone in year 9. Now we're in like year 11 or 12. Yeah. People are winning like now, but like, and it's kinda like, it feels like a really long time. Like, wow, 12 years. It's like, yeah, but we all started this when we were 21. So like, you know, Yeah. Okay, we're mid-30s. Yeah. For us, we're 34 and rich. Like, you know, it worked in the end. It worked, right? The 15-year arc, you get like a— then the odds flip from like 90% of new businesses fail to actually like 90% 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've said that multiple times whenever I'm having something that feels like I'm struggling, I'm like, This is the least rational path to making money, right? Is what I do. At this point also now, I have enough exposure and enough of an abundance in my network that I can go and get a good job, right? But like, I do this 'cause it's just what I do. It's just who I am. I don't even know what to do in another context. I don't know what that looks like. I will say though, like being, it's hard to be, 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 I would say that even 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's like, 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 refine my focus on process and impact. Like, is— 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 this actually impactful, what I'm putting out? Or is it just going out and, you know, no one's saying anything about it or we're not getting any I find I gauge the success of our stuff from 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 something. Let's keep doing that. Hopefully that takes us to an outcome." But you also have to accept it might not. It might just be this, and we might just get 5% better over the next 2 years. And that's it. And you have to accept that that is maybe the most likely reality is that you just keep doing it. And as long as you can accept that, at least for me, that's how I explore it for myself. Yeah.

You know, 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 were 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 to talk.

You're just waiting to talk. And so I went to improv class and it was really this incredible 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 going to say something and I have to let go of where I want it to go. Right. 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 going to 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 go back and you watch our 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 it's challenging because we have to practice in public. I think that's like 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.

Right. So, yeah. Well, you guys are doing an amazing job. I'm a fan. Thank you, man. Uh, look forward to, to kind of 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 you.

Thank you so much, man.