0:00
Yeah, tell me about Mr. Beast.
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0:02
He like is is so unique in the fact that he is laser focused in a way that I've never really experienced and and maybe at times like in in a way that I don't want to experience. Yeah, yeah.
0:13
Just so he doesn't want to Colin and I, you know, spent a lot of our career making documentaries and what we noticed was like if we were interviewing a subject and we were just interviewing them head-on, we wouldn't get good answers and then we started taking them like driving or have them do something else and then you would get the truth. Oh, that's interesting. was really interesting.
0:40
It's like the truth comes out in the car.
0:41
I think it's something that 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?
0:52
You think they're just performing basically when they sit down in a like a artificial environment? Probably, yeah.
0:57
There's a lot of like self- perception stuff that's going on, right?
1:02
It's like how am I coming across? Who am I? Is this sounding right?
1:04
And if you're distracted then you But you guys do your interviews that at a table basically. Yeah. So you don't do that.
1:10
Well, we've been trying to explore like the concept of creating the right energy for the conversations, right?
1:15
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 lav'd or had booms.
1:25
So we've been trying to explore like where our show is moving and what type of space we want.
1:29
That's actually 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.
1:37
Let's have some in-person interviews with people that we think are awesome."
1:40
And uh it's different than the like at-home thing for sure, right? The vibe is different.
1:46
You you get a different energy.
1:47
But also you can do like high-stakes interviews almost.
1:51
It's like the whole day kind of gets built around this interview which is not really the case when you do it online.
1:56
And um you guys have been doing some high-stakes interviews.
2:01
So you're doing stuff with uh I mean just recently I just saw the Tim Ferriss one. That was great.
2:06
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.
2:13
Yeah, it was pretty surreal.
2:15
And so that's a high-stakes interview you did. Mr. Beast, you did Dream.
2:18
You did a bunch of these things.
2:20
First, do you prefer like being the interviewee or in this case you're kind of like more the guest on the on the show?
2:27
Do you prefer guest or host?
2:29
I like to talk so like I like when we are the host and it is a conversation.
2:33
I think that's the most fun for me.
2:35
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.
2:46
So that to me is really fun.
2:48
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 cuz we've been in situations where the chemistry's not good and then you're like okay, how do I like what do we where do we go from here? How does this work?
3:06
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?"
3:14
head starts going I edit this?
3:15
How does it And that then puts you into a whole like a disadvantage. yeah.
3:19
You're So let's say you're doing one of these kind of like interviews you're pumped for a I'll call it a high-stakes interview.
3:24
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.
3:32
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.
3:40
I just know where I'm going. I know where I'm going.
3:43
Um and also how much of them I listen to prior.
3:47
Cuz if I know their stories, I know their beats, I'm kind of like Right. you know, a bit. Curiosity wanes.
3:53
Yeah, the curiosity wanes.
3:53
So um been trying to explore that relationship.
3:56
We do have a like we have a team that essentially develops a research doc.
3:59
We have someone on our team who does that.
4:01
He's like, "Here's here's kind of like some origin story."
4:04
And we we structure it like a act one, act two, act three structure.
4:07
Where where is their origin story?
4:08
What's the inflection point?
4:11
Where has that put them today, right?
4:13
Cuz it's like what was the tense part of the journey?
4:15
What what didn't work for them? Do we know any of that?
4:19
Is there something we can ask about that creates an inflection point?
4:21
Cuz we are trying to tell a story with it. Yeah.
4:24
So we need to know the general themes of what's happening in the origin, right? The act one.
4:27
What's happening in the conflict, the act two.
4:31
And then the resolution and the future. Right.
4:33
Um so that's like the most valuable Without knowing all the details. Yeah.
4:37
Um so yeah, we're trying to establish a a new relationship with that of how much is it like curiosity and how much is it prep?
4:45
And I think that's become more substantial for us as the landscape of interview shows is getting more and more saturated, right?
4:54
Like when we interviewed um you know, certain creators 3 years ago, no one else was interviewing creators.
5:00
So it was kind of like, "Okay, this is a talk show for our own community.
5:02
Doesn't exist anywhere else."
5:04
Now we're a part of a group and that then pushes you to try and become more singular and more differentiated.
5:10
And chemistry, how you show up, who the hosts are matters. Right.
5:15
I think you guys have done actually a really good job with that.
5:16
I think about your show a lot because I think Tell me more.
5:19
What are we doing What are we doing well?
5:21
Well, I think you have to be it's similar because there's two hosts, right? Um Which is really hard.
5:26
Which is really hard in interviews, but probably you have a better reception when it's just you and Sam on a lot right?
5:32
It's like when you're building a show that's guest dependent um or all about the guest bookings, it's like some people will look at this and be like, "I don't know who that is so I'm not going to click on it."
5:40
Some people will give it a chance cuz they trust you.
5:41
Um but really if if it's you and Sam, you can carry the show and then you become less reliant on bookings.
5:48
So I do think like Colin and I have been thinking a lot about that.
5:52
How do we instill some of that?
5:54
How do we think about that?
5:54
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.
6:01
Yeah, you keep riding it. Like this is cool.
6:03
The type of outreach we have is really cool.
6:04
The people we get to talk to is really cool.
6:06
So You said something like how how do I show up? Yeah.
6:07
I think about this a lot because when it comes to like sports, we're used to an athlete having like a pre-game routine, a meal, a nap, a stretch thing, a warm-up.
6:19
They're wearing the headphones.
6:20
They're listening to their song.
6:21
They get the motivational speech.
6:23
They run out They run out there.
6:24
They do their warm-ups and then they play. Yeah.
6:25
And but for other types of people who need to perform, it's like, "What what are you doing?
6:31
Why do you need to do that? Just sit down and talk." Right, it seems so easy.
6:34
It it's definitely presence.
6:35
Like you have to become very present Right. in the conversation.
6:39
And so there's there's a couple different things to to try and do that.
6:42
For me personally, I've discovered this 11-minute Wim Hof breath work Nice. online.
6:48
Dude, that thing is brutal. I do that a lot. you done it? Yeah.
6:50
Yeah, there's so many people who know this exact one.
6:51
It's like 11 minutes like it's free YouTube like top-ranked YouTube one.
6:56
and his accent is amazing. Like come on. All right, let's go. Yeah, yeah. It's so good.
6:59
Uh and like that just gets me in the zone.
7:02
Like I I love doing that.
7:04
to I want to do that right now. I got it. Yeah.
7:06
Do you do it laying down or do you do it laying down? That's his way. your back.
7:11
So we we made a documentary about Wim years ago and so like I'm just been Which one?
7:16
I might I might have seen it.
7:17
It's it's on Yes Theory's channel.
7:17
It's called called Frozen Alive.
7:19
Colin and I actually edited that. Okay. Um yes. Yes, this is it. It's so good. Yeah.
7:28
So By the way, this is good as a like I do this like whenever we have like a team retreat or if we're like, "We need to do something."
7:37
Um I'll be like, "Hey guys, like if you're if you're down, let's do something a little a little bit weird."
7:42
And they're Yeah, they're probably like, "What is he going to say?"
7:43
And this is not so weird.
7:45
And they're they're down with it and you you definitely feel energized right at the end of it.
7:48
Yeah, I I try and get present.
7:50
Like I try and take out a lot of the variables.
7:51
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?
7:57
Or does lighting look good?"
7:59
Um and that can be really stressful.
8:01
I mean, for example, our most recent interview with Mr.
8:03
Beast 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.
8:13
And Colin and I went to a furniture store in North Carolina 2 hours before we sat down with him and we're just scrambling to buy a table and then Assemble it.
8:21
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.
8:32
You know, I was I was just coming off like, "Okay, that that was intense.
8:36
Why didn't I think of that?"
8:37
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.
8:44
I made a bunch of mistakes like that when uh this this podcast started with me doing long-form interviews.
8:51
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 episode something 40 or something like that to me and Sam as like a recurring thing which was like way different prep.
9:07
You know, turnkey so turnkey setup.
9:09
Already have good chemistry.
9:10
Don't have to book guest.
9:10
Don't have to research guest.
9:12
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.
9:17
But now that I got back into being like, "All right, let's try to like we have this amazing network.
9:25
There's some fascinating people to talk to. Let's just let's do it."
9:26
And I I told Ben I called Ben after the first one.
9:31
I was like, "Dude, that was like an hour or 2 long." Cuz I did 3 hours.
9:34
I was like I thought I was Joe Rogan for a minute there. I I did 3 hours. Way too long.
9:39
And then I was like, "I over-prepped like crazy."
9:41
And I the thing you were saying where you're like, Yeah.
9:44
"I'm listening, but in my head I'm like, okay, I'm supposed to I'm supposed to beat to this next."
9:47
I was like, "That wasn't right."
9:49
And so before this we went to Dave & Buster's in between interviews and you know, played Pop-A-Shot and I got in a good good zone and now I'm here.
9:56
It's either that or Wim Hof, you know. David Mustards or Wim.
10:01
If you don't have a local David Mustards then you're unfortunate enough.
10:04
you were going to say if you don't have a local Wim Hof. Now you always got Wim.
10:06
Um, you've had a bunch of these, yes?
10:09
Who's somebody that's been a lot of fun 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?
10:19
Yeah, it's it's hard to not say Tim. Tim Ferriss.
10:23
You can say Tim, it's cool.
10:23
But tell me what was dope about the Tim one?
10:25
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.
10:36
And I look at Tim and I think he has like an incredibly high-quality audience.
10:41
And I think we make a lot of sacrifices because we distribute our stuff on YouTube for viewership. Right?
10:45
Like it is it's very odd that we have public performance metrics next to our work.
10:53
There's very few other places where that happens, right?
10:55
Like in business, it doesn't happen where you're like, here's how well I'm doing.
11:00
And anyone can see that at any time.
11:02
you go to your Shopify store it doesn't just show you sales.
11:03
Like how many sales does this have?
11:06
The truest, rawest like benchmark is it's like Imagine walking into a grocery store and it just has like, you know, revenue under every product.
11:11
It's just it's a very odd thing that pushes us to make decisions for larger viewership rather than higher-quality viewership.
11:18
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.
11:26
And I think that something in that interview to you.
11:28
He was like, there's always a market for like the best.
11:34
And he's like, so I wanted to whatever the ads were priced at, I was going to go like double that and be like, that's how do I get that to be the thing cuz that will always be there.
11:41
There will always be a market for whoever's got the highest-quality audience with the best ad read.
11:46
You know, that's that'll always be there.
11:48
And I think that's played out.
11:50
Yeah, and I think what's important is to for us as creators just to realize like what we are doing is not novel. It's been done before.
11:56
We're building audiences.
11:58
We're we're media companies.
12:01
You know, like this has been done before and we should look far back at who's done it really well. Yeah.
12:05
You know, and I think that sitting with Tim was that opportunity.
12:08
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.
12:20
It was not our highest-performing episode.
12:22
But it's one of my favorite and it's one that drove a lot of high-quality outreach. Right.
12:27
And it reminded me of that of we can get really caught up in, you know, high viewership, but I think that was something that that really pushed me.
12:35
And there's a lot of stuff in there.
12:36
There's something that I never forget that he said, which was if you do something that is even slightly energy-depleting, it will compound over time.
12:45
And to like really look at your day-to-day and recognize what is depleting your energy because it'll compound over time.
12:52
Funny, when you say that it's like I feel like everybody can think of like the one thing right away.
12:54
That you haven't been like really paying that much attention to, but when prompted your brain is like, of course it's this.
13:01
Yeah, and this is you know, this is Four-Hour Workweek from his book, but he talked a lot about who are the right clients to have.
13:05
Like what you know, money is not we look at it as like, well, it's a lot of money so I'll sacrifice these things for it.
13:10
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.
13:18
And all those viewpoints are almost antithetical to our the internet age of us being like all of this is infinite. Right.
13:27
You know, we can always be making more money.
13:28
We should always be pursuing more viewership, more money, more of everything.
13:33
He came in with the perspective of what's the right money, what's the right view.
13:38
So he said that energy-depleting thing, what did you think of for you?
13:41
I thought of um like meetings. Yeah.
13:45
I'm like a creative person.
13:45
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.
13:55
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.
13:59
So on the podcast once did a really funny rant where he was like you know, he's like long build-up.
14:06
He was like, you know, I've been uh you know, we sold the Hustle this many months ago. It's been 6 months.
14:12
I've talked to this person, this person.
14:14
I've thought about all these things.
14:16
You know what I realized? I'm a artist, man.
14:20
And he just like and I was like, boy, that's not what you think is coming when he when he says it.
14:25
And he also doesn't like like he doesn't come across like an artist.
14:28
Like some people that the way they dress, what they do, you're like, that's an artist.
14:32
And he's like, I'm a artist, man.
14:34
I just need to create and I wanted to keep doing that no matter what the situation is.
14:37
I yeah, I should have they said be an investor. I tried. I don't want to do that.
14:41
I don't want to do that you know, I stopped doing it all together.
14:43
I just want to be an artist.
14:44
And I think about that a lot actually.
14:46
I think there's like a a great way to like kind of draw a line in the sand around like you know what?
14:51
This is what I am because it gives me a bunch of energy and like what is what is that not like, you know, and how do I just not have to do it?
14:59
Maybe I don't have to do it at all.
15:00
I think sometimes I I operate from an old model with a new business where, you know, I grew up my dad's an entrepreneur.
15:06
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.
15:18
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?
15:24
I I found myself that another thing that Tim said was it was a quote from Whitney Cummings, but he said, if art imitates life then you have to have a life.
15:33
And I think that the the mentality of like I really want to succeed is, hey, I'm going to go to my office.
15:37
I'm going to grind every day.
15:39
I'm going to work really hard.
15:40
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.
15:53
Why does anyone want Why listen to this?
15:55
anyone want to listen to if I don't have interesting life experiences?
15:57
There's um a thing I realized which was my So my grandfather, like what did your grandfather do or one of your grandfathers?
16:06
Like did they like have like a factory job or like any like Yeah, my grandfather that I knew cuz the other one passed before I was born had a like train engineering job in India.
16:19
Yeah, almost exactly the same.
16:19
My grandfather was some engineering like a chemical plant of some kind.
16:23
He would work 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.
16:36
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 sorry, office and you know, you take phone calls or you get on a flight and go to a business meeting where you're going to shake a hand and maybe do a paper contract deal.
16:53
Like that was kind of my dad's job.
16:55
That's like what work became.
16:57
It's kind of unrecognizable and looks much less serious than the chemical plant or the in the the fertilizer factory or whatever. Yeah.
17:04
Um and then like to to my dad what I do, he's like, are you ever going to work? Like what are you doing?
17:10
You're sitting in front of your phone.
17:13
You know, you're talking to who? Who's listening to this? You get paid for this? Like, well, if I Mhm.
17:18
get a bunch of views then yes or like you know, sometimes you know, if it's like, I'm I'm working.
17:22
It's like, no, you're just around on YouTube. Right.
17:25
That's exactly what I do.
17:25
I like I'm looking for in the most interesting things in the world and I'm synthesizing and I'm going to talk about it.
17:31
But it's like our version of work is unrecog- unrecognizable to like Mhm. you know, our parents.
17:36
And then I'm like, oh, like I just had kids and it's like I just have two two little kids.
17:40
I'm like, whatever they're going to do is probably going to blow my mind.
17:43
It's going to be so super unrecognizable.
17:46
It's super unrecognizable, but every generation does that.
17:47
I'm like, oh, that's kind of interesting.
17:49
Like I should kind of not write off those things that look like complete not work.
17:56
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.
18:01
That was a very confusing era.
18:01
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 it's hard for me to track.
18:09
You know, I I spend a lot of time on YouTube.
18:13
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?
18:21
Um What's the name of that girl who's like going viral cuz she's like a NPC? Finki Doll, yeah.
18:25
I was like That's like yeah, that's the thing. I don't know, man.
18:28
Is that what our kids are going to do?
18:29
They're going to be like a vending machine?
18:30
All of this is so like it brings so much about like who are we as people?
18:34
Like what what is that that we're into? It's really strange. Finki Doll?
18:40
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.
19:04
She just whatever if they donate the cowboy, she always says the same thing the same way like a like she's a bot.
19:10
And she's just making like I don't know, like what I mean is she making like $7,000 a day? $7,000 a day.
19:18
She uses all these funny memes too of like guys filming their girlfriend like doing this now. I know.
19:23
I think it says a lot about what we crave as audiences.
19:25
Obviously there's like a lot there to unpack of what we're into, but the interactivity.
19:31
Like you think back to entertainment even when we were growing up, it was like the TV told you what was on.
19:38
It's a lean back experience. Turn on the TV.
19:40
If what you wanted wasn't on, you just waited.
19:44
And you may not even know that you're super into these like niche cooking shows until the Yeah, Chopped comes out and you're like, oh. Exactly.
19:51
didn't I wanted to watch other people cook.
19:54
And I don't know if you remember the TV Guide channel. Yeah.
19:55
It was the TV Guide channel. You just waited.
19:57
Told you what was on channel 12.
19:58
And if you missed it, you had to wait a whole another 100 channels scrolled by.
20:01
So, that was like a very lean back experience where we're like, okay, you tell us what's what to watch. Right.
20:08
Um and then as we progress, there was like TiVo and it was more on demand.
20:12
It was like, oh we can record a show and like have it on demand or see what's coming up.
20:15
Um and now you accelerated all the way to YouTube or Instagram and it's like I can search for what I want.
20:21
I can curate my own entertainment.
20:22
Now it's I can create my own entertainment, right?
20:25
I can pay money and she will do something. Yes.
20:28
That's like an that's the next level, right?
20:30
It's like interactive entertainment where I'm not consuming it.
20:34
I'm creating the entertainment. I'm part of making it. of it, yeah.
20:37
Yeah, and I think that's what, you know, Twitch I think is a great example of that, too, right?
20:40
Like people people watching long live streams. Why?
20:42
It's cuz they can have an impact on it.
20:44
Yeah, I think people don't really even actually understand what's going on with Twitch.
20:51
Um like now I think it's accepted that Twitch is a thing, which took a a while to be like, is that like a big deal?
20:57
And it's like, yeah, it's actually pretty big deal.
20:58
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.
21:12
It's like, yeah, that's part of it.
21:12
But then some people are, you know, like a lot of people are just there for the chat.
21:18
A lot of people are just using it as background noise in another tab.
21:20
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.
21:28
And some people are like, well, we should we should like discount that.
21:29
And it's like, you talk to users like, no, that's like how I like to use Twitch.
21:34
I'm not just It's not like I an accident and it's just running in the background.
21:38
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 happen.
21:43
I'll go I hear the crowd war basically.
21:44
I go look at the score and go see what's going on.
21:48
To me it's like the reinvention of the radio, right?
21:49
Twitch has has really operated like that.
21:52
But then again, where you get to play a part in it.
21:54
Ludwig was another creator that we we talked to on the show where he has developed this kind of adversarial relationship with the his chat.
22:01
Yeah, cuz the way you said it was interesting.
22:03
You go, it's kind of boring if everybody just if there's also just supportive, right? Yeah. It's like, you're right.
22:08
And I was like, I never really thought of it that way.
22:11
Um and he's not adversarial like they hate each other.
22:14
How would you describe it?
22:15
Like what is what's an example of like what's going on on his channel? It is so odd.
22:19
There's so many different things that go on.
22:20
I would say his subathons are probably the thing to to bring into focus, which is essentially you know, he'll go live for he he initially started as 24 hours, but um every time you uh subscribe every new subscriber, he extended it.
22:35
So, essentially Like torture me.
22:37
Yeah, it was an adversary, right?
22:39
It was like, I want this to end, but when you take this action, it extends, right?
22:42
Right, it extends an hour.
22:44
So, he ended up doing it for 30 days uh straight.
22:46
Straight live stream for 30 days straight. He's dead now. but it was okay.
22:52
It was fun while it lasted.
22:52
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.
23:00
You know, by by doing this.
23:03
So, it it makes it fun for the audience to to play with that.
23:05
And it's obviously like a joking relationship. Yeah.
23:08
But there's something that's you know, fun about that.
23:10
And I think we should really think about these audiences, the young audiences that are growing up with this.
23:15
What do they want next, right?
23:18
Cuz 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 and that people can comment and we can have Discord servers and we can engage with them.
23:30
But there's there's a whole another, you know, version of participation.
23:34
You can think about TikTok.
23:35
Like why do why did TikTok become such a big thing? It's participation.
23:39
It's like it was easy to participate. anybody to make one?
23:43
easy to and they told you what to do. Here's the trend. Here's the dance. Here's the dance. Here's how you do it.
23:48
Here's a 100 videos of people doing it. Here's the sound. You try. Click this. You try it now, right?
23:51
Yeah, so that that even you look at Pinky Doll, right?
23:55
What we're just talking about.
23:56
For you to do that for you or I to start doing that, it's we just start a live account. That's it.
24:01
We just start like there's the participation is so easy um where we can either participate in the actual live stream or become that creator within a matter of minutes. Right.
24:12
Uh what do you think's next?
24:14
Where do you see the puck going with that?
24:15
I think to predict, but It's it's hard to predict, but I think anyone could, it might be you.
24:18
Uh but I think I think what we have to realize is that um TikTok taught us a lot about the fact that the platform is the creator.
24:28
Uh in that context, right?
24:28
Like if you take the top 10 creators off of TikTok, TikTok's still TikTok, right?
24:33
You still open it and you it's a for you page. even notice.
24:37
It's almost reverting back to the lean back experience.
24:39
I open TikTok and I say, you tell me what's going on, right?
24:42
Back to what we were just talking about with TV.
24:45
It's just that it's personalized to every single person.
24:47
Yeah, so it's hyper-personalized I think is number one, right?
24:49
When we think about the trends that are that are coming, which is already happening.
24:52
But I think also um like participation forward.
24:57
So, it's like it's personalized, but it's really easy for me to engage in the action, too.
25:03
And I think that's where maybe there's like two extremes. There's the the Mr.
25:07
Beast where it's like I can't do I can't buy a train and have it go into a ditch, which is something he did in his last video. that.
25:15
And then the opposite end of the spectrum is like here's what's happening on YouTube Shorts or or TikTok and actually really easy for me to do that. And I can try it myself.
25:23
I'm in S- I'm in San Francisco.
25:26
If you walk around SF, you uh you know, you can't like, you know, you you you you stub your toe, it's like, what did I step on? Oh, AI.
25:32
It's like nothing is The answer to everything is AI. yeah.
25:36
And I kind of wonder if the answer to this is also AI, meaning you see the AI can draw amazing art.
25:44
Like a paint, you know, it can paint better than you know, a human can paint.
25:47
It can paint anything you want instantly. Whatever. Um it can write.
25:51
It can make, you know, ChatGPT can make rap lyrics.
25:53
And so I wonder you know, do we just get to the point where actually the creator is the algorithm is the creator.
26:01
It just it's hyper-personalized and here's just like it's going to just deep fake and create something that it thinks you like.
26:07
And it's just going to try 10,000 variations per second.
26:11
And then if anything starts to work, it starts to like go more down that rabbit hole for for more creators, for more people.
26:18
might not even be a creator.
26:18
Might just be self-generating video, right? That's what I mean.
26:21
Like the algorithm is just making the video. content.
26:25
people seem to like cuz they have the I mean, an unreal amount of data, right?
26:28
They're like, people like to hear people eat.
26:31
Have you and Sam been deep faked yet?
26:33
Have you heard of My First Million deep fake? Yeah.
26:35
I've heard of uh audio only, not a video one, but an audio only version that's a fake conversation.
26:41
And how how close was it?
26:43
it's like like okay, if somebody listened to it, if my family member who doesn't listen to the pod listen to it, they would just think this is the podcast.
26:50
Cuz it doesn't sound robotic.
26:52
There's little moments, but it's like kind of passable.
26:55
If you don't know what deep fakes are, you'd be like, I guess it just sounded like that.
26:59
If you listen to the pod, you'd be like, oh, you're cool, but you're not really like substantively saying anything.
27:03
Like, did you hear the one where they did Joe Rogan talking to Steve Jobs? Yeah.
27:07
And That one was pretty good.
27:08
But I think they kind of edited it to like make a cool demo.
27:11
listened to Joe Rogan and Sam Altman is which is it's a YouTube channel called the Joe Rogan AI experience. And Genius idea.
27:19
Yeah, it's a genius idea, but I clicked on it to to find out like Joe Rogan and Sam Altman talking about OpenAI and how ChatGPT works.
27:26
Started listening to it to be like, what does this sound like?
27:29
And then I just was like, wait, this is just good and interesting.
27:33
And then I just found myself listening to it.
27:34
And then I was like, do I care?
27:35
So, if we can do that with the like V0.
27:38
1, then you just have to believe like, okay, inevitably that's where it goes.
27:44
There's been a few of these that go viral, right?
27:45
Like the kind of AI fake AI things.
27:48
Like there's one on Twitch.
27:48
I don't know if you've seen the Twitch one of Biden and Trump debating. Yes.
27:52
I think where we're going to see this all really skyrocket is during the election, for sure, right?
27:56
And it's going to get really crazy and weird.
28:02
I brought it up about you because um it happened to me and Colin recently where it was a video of me, Colin, and Mr.
28:10
Beast talking about an online casino that he had started.
28:13
And it was also our lips were also deep faked.
28:15
And Is it on YouTube or No, it's it's taken down. We got it taken down.
28:20
Um We got it taken down pretty fast, but it was really but that.
28:25
Yeah, it was really compelling and but I mean, it it was too compelling.
28:27
Like people could click on it.
28:29
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.
28:34
Um I've had to have conversations with my parents about like hey, Be careful.
28:41
be careful if if someone calls you and it's you think it's me, let's develop like a a safe word, basically.
28:45
Um 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.
28:51
Like I actually think that we're going to want things that are uniquely human um in the coming years.
28:59
I think we're going to want things that are like collective human experiences where Right. like stand-up comedy.
29:03
I think we were going to want to sit and be like, that human is standing there delivering that entertainment to me. Or plays in theater.
29:12
Um I think we're going to want that.
29:15
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.
29:28
And I think that's And what's the difference?
29:31
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?
29:41
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?
29:47
Or their their own best friend.
29:49
So, they they have this like really in-depth parasocial relationship.
29:52
You guys have done live events. People come. Yeah. Right?
29:54
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?
30:01
When I inject my personality Right.
30:04
10% of people stop watching."
30:06
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.
30:13
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.
30:22
Like one more unit of trust.
30:24
Who are who are down to listen to me talk and and and understand my personality than try and rip all of that out to make sure they get to the end of the video.
30:32
And that is that is how like the business of YouTube is is predicated on do they click and do they watch till the end?
30:38
But, I think sometimes that can give you the wrong signals of what should I keep in, what should I keep out?
30:43
And again, back to the conversation of high-quality audience.
30:47
Um I think the young creators, it's like it's like playing video games on YouTube, right?
30:50
If I try this, then this number goes up, right?
30:54
And I think that is too easy to manipulate right now.
30:57
Um and there's there's so much information.
30:59
I think we're we're part of that of like sharing information on how that all works.
31:04
But, you do have to take a step back and be like, "Am I building a brand?"
31:09
And a brand is about trust, credibility, depth of connection.
31:11
And that comes from some stuff that might not be optimized for the algorithm.
31:15
Yeah, there's um it's sort of like drop shipping versus like building an actual brand around what you do, right?
31:22
Like Yeah, that's good comp.
31:23
There's um I don't know if you ever saw when Sony got hacked.
31:25
Do you remember that when the emails got hacked?
31:29
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 the early Sony guys, maybe it was like one guy from like a like a music record label talking to him and he was like, "You know, here's what we're seeing."
31:45
He's like, "Basically, the more popular this gets, like, you know, people streaming music at home, blah blah blah."
31:51
He's like, "It's also creating a pent-up demand for what he called it.
31:55
He's like he's like, 'I think out-of-home entertainment's going to be big.'"
31:57
And he's like, "Out-of-home entertainment like he's like, "Festivals will do well."
32:02
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.
32:08
Um but, there was also a couple of other like trends like that like even things like Tough Mudder and Spartan Race.
32:14
All of a sudden, people were like, "You know, what?
32:15
I just want to like go and voluntarily crawl through mud this weekend."
32:19
It's like, "Why would somebody want to do that?"
32:20
And it's like kind of cuz you're sitting in front of a computer all day, life got too easy, and you kind of feel soft inside.
32:25
So, you go voluntarily have this like hardship.
32:30
But, also you want to be able to Instagram it and put it online and that you did it.
32:33
Yeah, I think uh I I totally agree with that and I I mean, obviously, that that it that's what happened.
32:38
But, I think AI's going to create like this homogeneous nature to content.
32:42
Everything's going to feel the same.
32:44
Um and that is going to make us crave something completely unique and different.
32:48
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?
32:59
Are you familiar with that? No, what is that?
33:01
What is Okay, so there's there's three cameras right now, right?
33:05
And so, basically, you would bring these three cameras in and you want to get a clarity on like if I'm talking, the camera's on me.
33:11
If you're talking, the camera's on you. Oh, it does those cuts.
33:14
It does those cuts automatically.
33:15
If it's a a 3-hour conversation, it'll do it in 90 seconds. Oh, that's amazing.
33:18
And it'll be very precise.
33:20
When you start talking, it'll go there.
33:22
If you have a human here live switching, which I don't know if if someone's live He's not live switching right now, but we talked about it like right before we started this.
33:28
So, if he if he's live switching with the switcher, he actually can't predict when you're about to start talking, right?
33:34
He's going to be a second late.
33:34
So, now I do I trust the human more or do I trust the AI more?
33:39
I mean, the reality is it's brought a ton of efficiency into our office. That's cool.
33:43
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."
33:52
And sometimes maybe it's it's ours that we like.
33:54
But, if we keep going down that path, you know, the other day we were in a ChatGPT or it's a different tool?
34:00
ChatGPT, but there's there's other like creator-specific AI tools.
34:02
There's some that aren't public um that can only be used if you're uh partnered with certain, you know, creator companies.
34:10
Specifically, uh there's a company called Spotter Yeah.
34:12
that has a really great uh AI tool that I was using this morning.
34:16
And the funny thing is like you're sitting in a room with with your team and it's is it more efficient to sit alone with AI and get hundreds of variations or is it is it more efficient to sit together as a team for 30 minutes?
34:31
I don't know the answer to that, but I think probably it's AI, right?
34:34
Um so, the question for me is like if this if it's driving so much efficiency, I think I'm going to crave inefficiency in other places.
34:42
Right, it's like the slow food movement. It's like farm to table.
34:46
It's like fast food gets too present, it creates the demand, the craving for the other.
34:52
For the inefficiencies, yeah.
34:52
I've what I've seen though is that even though that gets created, it does usually end up getting dwarfed by the thing that's you know, better, faster, better, faster, cheaper, you know, like style of stuff.
35:02
But, entertainment I think is different.
35:05
Like you go to a concert.
35:06
It's the most inefficient way to hear the music. Right?
35:09
The Taylor Swift concert. Right?
35:11
You if you like Taylor Swift music and you just want to hear it, just go on Spotify.
35:16
Right, you're one tap away.
35:16
So, why do you want this collective experience?
35:17
Why do you want to drive, deal with parking, get in there, you know, get to your seat.
35:23
It's kind of a pain in the ass to go to a concert, right?
35:27
So, what is it about that that's, you know, it's a it it only happens once, right?
35:31
It's like an experience that you get to happen.
35:32
But, you know, by the numbers, a lot more people will stream Taylor Swift than will go to that. Agreed.
35:38
But, you know, she'll make a lot of money and can and monetize totally uh totally differently. Yeah. Tell me about um Mr. Beast.
35:45
So, I've gotten to go to his place and hang out with him a little bit. Pretty remarkable dude.
35:50
Um and not like oh, he's like an alien or whatever, but just like very interesting to kind of see him in his like normal ways uh of working.
35:58
And you can kind of see some differences between how he approaches things.
36:02
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?"
36:08
And he came on the pod, but it actually was like nothing he said on the pod would have given me that insight.
36:12
But, actually watching him work and like kind of being in a brainstorm with him, then you do start to see those differences.
36:19
I think you've gotten a lot of access to to those moments.
36:21
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?
36:27
I would say he's like the most unique human I have ever met.
36:31
Uh I think he's like very, very unique in what he cares about.
36:35
You know, I think what he cares about is very different from you know, what I care about or what a lot of people care about.
36:40
He's What does he care about?
36:43
He like is is so unique in the fact that he is laser-focused in a way that I've never really experienced.
36:48
And and maybe at times like in a in a way that I don't want to experience.
36:53
Yeah, just Sam doesn't want to experience.
36:55
No, I mean, him and I have this conversation a lot.
36:58
Like I I don't crave what he has.
36:58
Um I like to have more of a wide perspective on life and a view of uh different types of experiences and he's very um committed to his craft and very like he he can laser focus in on something.
37:15
Like if you've been in one of those brainstorms with him, he's just like very blunt.
37:18
He's very you know, he's just like, "Why would we do that?
37:21
That doesn't make sense."
37:22
Like no doesn't it it doesn't exist in the same way for him that it exists for other people based on social context or based on like, "Well, Well, it's say that again.
37:31
So, you said no doesn't exist for him the same way it exists for other people.
37:35
I think that's really accurate. Yes.
37:37
I have a story of an example of that from a What's what's what's one for you?
37:42
The time where I saw that the most was at the Mr.
37:43
Beast Burger opening in New Jersey at the American Dream Mall.
37:46
Colin and I went That was insane, right?
37:47
Yeah, we spent the 24 hours with him before and after. Yeah.
37:53
Um and lived with him through this like what felt like a a hurricane storm of fandom and new experiences for him and Reed and and the whole team.
38:01
Did you think it was going to be Go go to the part where where he walks out? where he walks out.
38:07
Dude, that was So, I was the only camera behind him at that moment.
38:10
camera or are you this I'm this camera. That was me. Yeah.
38:12
So, like later he's famous.
38:14
But, I was like, "This is not what I thought was going to be there's multiple times where I had the chills filming this video. Um so, I filmed that.
38:21
Yeah, I filmed that clip and then Jimmy was like, "That's crazy. Send me that."
38:25
And I sent it to him and then he tweeted it and it was just like it it's completely insane.
38:29
Um but, so that experience, there was, you know, the night before there was uh question around like how many burgers they could serve.
38:37
And and there was already, I think, you know, 15 or 20,000 people there the night before, right?
38:42
It was completely insane.
38:44
And uh they were sleeping in the mall.
38:46
Mall security was there and they were just like, "Okay. All right, I guess."
38:50
No, I don't think anyone fully understood uh how big he was at that moment.
38:54
Um and so, they were like, "Okay, we don't know if we can serve all these people."
38:58
And Jimmy was just like, "What? What do you mean?
39:03
Let's just figure it out.
39:03
Like, what do we need to do?"
39:05
And they're like, "It's just not possible.
39:06
We can't get more supplies here."
39:07
And he was like, "Well, can can we pay for it?
39:10
Can we just pay someone to do it?"
39:12
And he was like, "Well, I don't you know, I don't think so.
39:14
I don't think that's possible."
39:15
And basically, what ended up happening was it was possible and Jimmy just kept pushing right at a point where again, it's like a lot of people would be like, "Okay, that's a no."
39:24
If I ask three times, it's a no.
39:27
There's no other possibility.
39:28
Oh, the fire marshal said it. Yeah, whatever.
39:30
Yeah, and I think that he he thinks in different ways, too, of like you know, his immediate thought was around the staff.
39:36
He was like, "I need the staff to be really into this.
39:39
I need them to be on it."
39:41
And so, he's like, "I'm going to pay everyone an extra $1,000 today." And that is $30,000.
39:45
There was 30 people working. It was $30,000.
39:47
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.
39:53
Um that's like an irrational thing to do.
39:55
A lot of people would look at that and be like, "That's kind of irrational."
39:58
Um to spend an additional $30,000.
40:00
Um but you know, he looks at that and he was like, "This is what I need to make this excellent.
40:05
We're just going to do that."
40:09
You know, and you look at what he tweets about now, too.
40:10
He spends, you know, a million or two million dollars on a video and it makes 200,000 in AdSense revenue.
40:16
And, you know, obviously the sponsors and stuff, but some of his videos don't make money.
40:19
And and he's just like, "But that's they're good." Right.
40:24
You know, he he thinks in just different ways like that. He's just very unique.
40:28
I Yeah, I feel the same way.
40:29
He also um said some things He also said some things that were like really funny to me.
40:36
Like um he was like, I was like, "So, do you want to like have kids?
40:39
Or like, what's your Like, what do you want out of life?" Besides Okay. Yeah.
40:44
I've heard the YouTube part.
40:46
And I was like, "What else do you want?"
40:47
And I think he'd say He was like, "I want to be president. I want to do this.
40:50
I want to be a billionaire." And all that. I was like, "Okay, cool.
40:50
But like, what about just like out of your life?
40:53
Like, forget the big cool-sounding things.
40:55
Like, do you want to get married? Have kids?
40:57
Like, what do you want to do?"
40:59
And he was like, um He's like, "Yeah, you know, I uh He's like, 'Yeah, I'll I think I'll probably like, you know, date or get married or whatever.'"
41:06
He's like I He's like, "I wouldn't want kids. No, no. I don't want kids."
41:10
And I was like, "Oh, why not?"
41:10
He's like, "Oh, he's like, 'Actually, you know, like Steve and Elon, they have kids.
41:15
There's probably something to it. So, I'll do it.'"
41:16
And I was like, And first just hilarious to be like uh Yeah.
41:21
Just like the first name basis literally like the dead Steve Jobs yeah. who you never met.
41:24
And be like, he's just like, "That's That's the class of people I'm in." Yeah.
41:28
"You know, if those people did it, it might be something to it.
41:31
So, I'll do it just kind of for that reason.
41:33
But I don't feel the need for that cuz I'm on this mission.
41:36
And like, you know, that's where I'm where my head's at right now."
41:39
I have seen him, you know, just being friends with him and having conversations.
41:42
And we just did another podcast with him recently.
41:43
Um I have seen him mature quite a bit.
41:46
Like, I think we we do have to remember like, that's a guy in his mid-20s. Of course, yeah.
41:51
You know, he He wasn't even I don't even know how old he was.
41:53
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 is." though.
42:01
I got Again, it's it That's not I don't I didn't have any friends like him when I was in my early 20s.
42:04
I think he's he's a very rare individual.
42:06
And he's 25 now, and he's maturing in two He runs a company with uh over 100-plus employees.
42:13
Uh he's he's got this like whole massive operation, this massive platform, and he's 25.
42:18
It's it's uh going to be interesting to watch the next 5 years.
42:23
If you were to advise him, uh what would you tell him?
42:27
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've been talking to him about for a long time.
42:38
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 and with the with the content and with the contestants that he has on there.
42:53
Um And he can sacrifice some of the, you know, hyper retention editing for that. Yeah.
42:57
Um I also, you know, a year ago probably would have told him he potentially is doing too many things.
43:04
Uh and he's already, you know, refocused, right?
43:06
He's he's really just focused on the main channel and Feastables.
43:10
And if you think about a year ago, Beast Burger, Feastables, uh main channel, reacts, gaming, right?
43:15
These are all different things he's doing. Um Right.
43:20
Plus 25 other amazing opportunities.
43:22
People who want to meet him and this and that, right?
43:25
Everything will tug your attention away.
43:27
And it's he's ex- he can be excellent in all of those things.
43:30
Um 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?
43:36
And when you're at that platform where you have any and every opportunity, um how do you focus? It's it's hard.
43:42
the way I'd put it is he can be excellent at any of those, but probably not all of them simultaneously. Right?
43:46
Like, not at the same time.
43:46
Like, you could do anything, you just can't do everything at the same time.
43:51
Because as a creator in a creator-led business, you are the bottleneck for everything.
43:54
And I've spent time with him.
43:56
He is the bottleneck for everything, right?
43:58
Like, he needs to be pulled into the room to to look at something.
44:01
He has uh you know, say on on all of that stuff.
44:04
And he also has the right, you know, mind for it.
44:06
He That's the reason that company's so big and why he's built such a big platform.
44:09
So, where do you inject that?
44:11
Is it across 20 uh projects? Or is it across two?
44:14
And um you know, I think they've they've really refocused and focused on on two primary things.
44:21
of these platforms has like a guy at a certain time or a girl at a certain time that's like the one.
44:24
They're like, you know, you know, whether it was like Casey Neistat or PewDiePie or like kind of they have these like epic arcs.
44:33
And they're the top of the mountain.
44:33
And then most of them either literally stop creating cuz they kind of they transition careers, they get burnt out, whatever it is.
44:42
Or they're still creating, but they're just not like there's the new wave of new people doing new cool Um He is kind of remarkable though.
44:50
So, you know, he may have a different path or trajectory than than most.
44:53
If you If I was to say, "All right, make a prediction um 5 years from now, what is like today, if Mr.
45:00
Beast is like, you know, the number one YouTube creator and like launching couple of these businesses underneath like Feastables and whatnot.
45:08
5 years from now, do you think he's still the number one creator on YouTube?"
45:13
I think he's probably the number one online digital media company.
45:17
I don't know that, you know, I cre- I don't know what creator is going to mean in that many years.
45:19
Like, I think he has the best pulse on on online storytelling right now.
45:25
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.
45:33
I think he's more akin to a media company than he is a creator.
45:34
Um So, I I that's what I think.
45:37
I think he'll be the biggest media company.
45:39
Um the way he's building is like a true company. It's a great vibe there.
45:44
If you've been there, you know, like it it's uh they have good people involved. So, I don't know.
45:49
I don't I don't know, you know, what the content looks like.
45:51
I don't know what he as the creator looks like.
45:55
But I think it will be a a media company.
45:58
Like, when we sat with him last in our last interview, he has a ton aspirations to make content for Netflix.
46:04
He has a ton aspirations to produce stuff.
46:06
And you know, I don't think he's that keen or or intent on he has to be in everything or he has to be the lead in everything.
46:12
I think that's been the That is the draw right now.
46:14
But I think in the future, it it Mr.
46:16
Beast is a content studio.
46:19
You know, it it could be we could be looking at like, we don't know if we're not looking at the next Disney or Paramount or, you know, some massive studio that can build IP and monetize it in different ways. Like, Mr.
46:32
Beast is the first If we look at it and say, "That's the first show that was built out of there, right?"
46:36
It's a game show that has a couple different formats. It's distributed. It's the biggest show.
46:41
They built a chocolate brand out of that that operates kind of like a game show.
46:44
You can win stuff when you buy the chocolate, right?
46:47
So, it's like, "Okay, that looks and feels really similar to like a Disney and a Mickey Mouse, right?
46:53
Okay, let's let's build this big media platform.
46:55
Let's build a product connected to it."
46:56
They They're They have that skill set.
46:59
They could probably replicate that, right?
47:00
And as you look at their cast of characters, you know, there is a cast of characters there that can be built out.
47:05
Um there is more IP that can be built out.
47:07
It's like build IP, connect product to it. Right.
47:13
You know, or connect experiences to it.
47:15
It could be an experience, too.
47:15
Yeah, if he if he chooses to uh to go that path.
47:19
Uh I want to talk about this. This is amazing stuff. Yeah.
47:23
So, your your content company did something pretty dope.
47:25
Uh you guys did I think What is it?
47:28
100 editions or 1,000 editions? 500 of those.
47:31
No, no, but this was to celebrate to celebrate 2 years of our newsletter.
47:36
Yeah, 2 years of the newsletter, the Published Press.
47:37
So, you got this newsletter, the Published Press, uh which is dope.
47:40
It's like a kind of what you guys do on the YouTube channel sort of like creator a great newsletter for creators.
47:46
it was largely inspired by like the Morning Brew Hustle movement, right?
47:49
Which was like, "Okay, we are subscribers to these newsletters.
47:51
What if we made one about our own community?" Yeah.
47:54
And then uh then you made an actual physical newspaper.
47:56
And I'm very honored cuz you Yeah.
47:59
pretty much sold out of these. Yeah. Um this was dope.
48:01
Why do something like this?
48:03
Cuz I I I'm asking because this isn't like an economic move.
48:06
This is not This is not going to grow your audience.
48:09
This is not going to get you rich.
48:10
It's not going to do any of those things. It takes effort. Yeah.
48:13
Um it's a risk in a in a little in a way.
48:15
Um What's your philosophy on just do dope like this? Why?
48:22
Uh it just it's fulfilling.
48:22
Like, I it's it's hard to say that we have a hard nose philosophy on it.
48:27
It's just like we are creative people.
48:28
And as we've built a business, like one of the one of the things that's so interesting about being a creative is you're really good at kind of like the zero to one and the like, let's just do cool until something works.
48:41
What becomes startling is when something works.
48:43
And then you're like, "Okay, so what now?
48:46
I just keep doing this thing." Yeah.
48:49
Uh and that's like that's the really funny thing about Colin and I always say that creatives aren't consistent people.
48:54
Um and so, we've surrounded ourselves with really consistent people who help us be consistent in the formats that we found.
49:01
Um but you need that occasional pop of just like, "You know what'd be cool? To make a newspaper." Right.
49:07
Like, we we were rebranding the Published Press.
49:10
That's the new logo for it.
49:10
We just we're like, "How do we How do we tell people that we've been doing this for 2 years? How do we celebrate?"
49:15
It also was we had just crossed 100,000 subscribers on the newsletter.
49:19
And it was like, "How do we celebrate this moment? Right. What What is it?
49:22
Do we just put out a tweet that's like, 'Hey, it's been great.'"
49:25
Um And we were like, "Well, as things are getting more increasingly more digital, what if we did something physical?" And that That was it.
49:32
That was the the impetus.
49:32
And then it was just, "Hey, Yeah, everyone excited about this? Okay, cool.
49:36
Are we down to stay up late at night for this? Great.
49:38
And that's it just organically happens when you There was a lot of people who we asked about this and they were like, that's you know, we that's not going to happen in the time period that we want it to happen in.
49:48
And then that's another exciting thing for a creative person who's driven.
49:51
Yeah, that's that's another exciting thing.
49:52
Um So, yeah, I would say that it it's again, like it cost us money.
49:58
Uh we did not make money from this.
50:00
There's no sponsor in it or anything.
50:02
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.
50:11
And a lot of big creators reached out to say, can I have one?
50:13
You know, I want one in my house.
50:15
And then we we're seeing that creators have framed it and put it in their house.
50:19
We're seeing that There's just something Yeah, you asked me for You you DM'd us and asked for one.
50:23
And like that to me is like again, back to this concept of high-quality audience.
50:26
It's like the people who reached out about this.
50:28
It's it's a premium group of people.
50:31
is cuz it's like in retrospect, once you see the final product and it's cool and then you hear the story then it's like all these things make sense in hindsight.
50:37
It's up front when it's kind of unknown, kind of unproven, tight deadline, you know, a lot of things to do.
50:42
That's when it's hard to do this.
50:42
Or or sometimes you say yes to too many of these things, right?
50:47
So, it's almost like what you just said kind of reminds me of like Google had like the 20% time.
50:52
It's like I would get I hire the best engineers in the world and like this guy's fixing the bug in the AdSense platform.
50:58
But like we got to give these guys like 20% time to just tinker and hack on stuff that that they you know, get motivation from and like on logically you'd say, well, you're losing you know, 20% time is basically one day one a day out of out of the week that they're not working on on this on their main job.
51:15
But the reality is that like sometimes those hit and also it makes the other four days out of the week Yeah. More productive.
51:21
Like you don't actually lose anything cuz you attract the best people and you gave them an outlet to like get be creative.
51:28
And also if you're not following what's exciting you, then you're just you built yourself a job, you know?
51:32
And that's like then you have to look at it and be like, wait. What did I just do? What did I just do?
51:39
Um I I also think that 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?
51:47
It's not like a revenue driver for us.
51:49
But we think about building our community and we're very niche.
51:52
And so for niche creators, we think about collectibles.
51:55
Like we want to create collectibles. Yeah.
51:59
Um 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.
52:08
It's like I was a part of this community at this moment.
52:09
So, these are collectibles along the way of of our journey.
52:13
You think about the the massive creators like Logan Paul and Mr.
52:15
Beast or Emma Chamberlain, they're creating consumables, which is great for mass creators, right?
52:22
So, um these these things are like cool collectibles that we think are cool.
52:26
Like we're planning another drop in in October and our merchandise does not you know, drive like crazy amounts of revenue for us.
52:36
It's relatively nominal, but it's awesome when you walk down the street and see someone in the merch.
52:39
We've sold you know, 2,000 of these hats and they're they're out in the world and 2,000 people are wearing them and we've we've we see stories where people connect because they saw someone else wearing the merch.
52:49
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.
52:56
Identify in the same world as you do. Totally.
52:58
We uh that I love the way you put it.
53:01
It's a great frame on on that idea of consumables versus collectibles.
53:04
When we uh we're about to launch like merch for the pod or whatever and it was like, oh yeah, merch.
53:10
And it's like, okay, here's two things I know.
53:12
Number one, people don't want to wear our like for us it was like they're not going to wear a shirt that says my first million.
53:17
Like this is not going to happen. It's not cool.
53:19
I don't want to wear that.
53:19
They don't want to wear that.
53:21
Let's just all agree on that.
53:22
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.
53:29
Yeah, no small boy stuff.
53:31
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.
53:40
But it's like in the style of those like Kanye shirts or whatever.
53:41
It's like some like cool cool-looking like it's like an imitation of that. Great.
53:45
And like it's like nobody will even know who that is or what the hot You can't even tell that it's a hot dog stand.
53:50
But like if you know, you know, and that's it and that's it.
53:51
And I was like, we should just do I was like, what if we're not My rule is like the Tim Ferriss rule is basically if you're not going to make a ton of money on it, it should be free.
54:00
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.
54:07
And just only like if you're going to try to make money, only make money when you're going to make a lot of money.
54:11
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.
54:19
Yeah, a lot of our merch is also A lot of our merch shipments are driven by our referral program through the newsletter, right?
54:24
And so that's like you know, again, that's like pulling from the the playbook.
54:27
Yeah, the the the old the newsletter playbook.
54:29
You had this um tweet or this video that I saw that was like a Naval quote that I really liked.
54:36
It was um It said like uh what was it?
54:39
It was like Your problem is that you're writing to be read. Yes.
54:44
That resonated with you and me.
54:44
I want to like talk about that. Why did that hit? Cuz it's so simple.
54:48
It's like you know, it's I don't know, seven words or something.
54:51
I think it hit me at a time where I felt like we were creating very scared.
54:54
The beginning of this year I felt like we were creating very scared.
54:57
Like we had crossed a million subscribers last year.
54:59
We felt like we had built a brand in the space and opened up the year.
55:02
We made a few videos that we just canned.
55:04
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.
55:08
Um and got really in our heads around, you know, again, you're you're playing this dance as a creator of what you want to make, what the audience wants to watch, and what the platform wants.
55:19
Those are the three things that we think you're you're constantly playing with.
55:22
And if you overvalue what the audience wants, you will you're you're catering to you know, this group that obviously they they have created your career if if you know, you've made it.
55:32
But you you can't forget that it came from what you wanted to make.
55:36
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.
55:45
And that has financial implications, right?
55:47
That are essentially very hard to make money like that, but very cool.
55:51
We respect artists like that, right?
55:53
Um there's some most respected artists like are misunderstood, maybe understood once they pass or just didn't care about what the audience thought.
56:02
Your interpretation doesn't matter to them. Right.
56:04
Then you go on It's like love that you exist, but like Sure.
56:07
I like guac on my Chipotle.
56:07
You know, I'm going to have a job. It's okay.
56:09
The other side of the spectrum is being a distributor.
56:13
It's like why do we have so many Spider-Man movies?
56:15
It's cuz they put butts in seats.
56:17
So, the person at the studio, the movie studio, is not an artist.
56:21
They're thinking about what do we make? What do we green light? Spider-Man.
56:25
That's going to get people in the seats.
56:26
That's going to sell tickets.
56:27
And I think as a creator you have to be in the middle of that.
56:29
And some creators slide heavy on the the side of distributor of just like, what does the audience want to watch? I'll make that. Whatever, you know?
56:36
And then on the other side of what do I want to make?
56:41
Um and so I think that Naval quote really hit me in this feeling of losing you know, I did grow up. I went to film school.
56:47
I you know, took playwriting in college.
56:50
I'm like it really into artsy stuff.
56:52
And I think when money gets involved, when you start commercializing your creativity, um and when it doesn't work for years.
56:59
That's an important part of our story, right?
57:01
It didn't work for a long time.
57:02
We didn't make any money for a long time.
57:04
You get terrified of losing it.
57:07
And when you get terrified of losing it, you start creating to be watched or writing to be read.
57:11
Would you say creating scared? Yeah, creating scared. Yeah.
57:14
And that's like a book title right there. I like that one.
57:15
Yeah, I mean it's something Colin and I talk about a lot.
57:17
It's like, let's not create scared.
57:19
You know, what are we scared of?
57:19
You know, like it 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.
57:30
Um and people can feel that, I think.
57:33
I I think you can feel it as a creator.
57:34
It feels really uncomfortable to to create scared.
57:37
And um yeah, it's not it's not fun to watch. Yeah, absolutely.
57:41
You know, um you had Hasan Minhaj on the show and he he's very much on the artist side.
57:46
I think he like drew a line in the sand for himself.
57:49
He's like, okay, I uh either I'm going to get on TikTok and I'm going to dance for the algorithm Yeah.
57:56
or I'm going to go the other way and I'm not.
57:58
And he's like had like a the soul-searching moment.
57:59
It's like you know, he he sent me a voice memo once that was just like, bro, I'm going to just create great art.
58:05
I'm an artist and an artist creates art. That's what I'm doing.
58:08
I'm not a businessman first. I'm not a creator first.
58:12
I'm I'm this is what I'm going to do.
58:14
And he's like, so I got to be true to that.
58:16
And I got I'm going to work on projects that are like interesting to me from that perspective.
58:20
And it's got to hit my bar on that.
58:21
And like that's the vibe I got from him.
58:23
But you know, this was a few years ago when I when we were talking about that stuff.
58:27
You had him on I think more recently.
58:30
Um Did he say anything that kind of resonate with you on that? Totally.
58:34
Yeah, I mean he he talked a lot about He kind of changed my whole perception on making YouTube shorts cuz he kind of made he kind of made fun of it.
58:44
You know, Hasan's like so funny the way he he talks, but he he described making YouTube shorts as being a skinned rat for the engineers in San Bruno.
58:54
Which I thought was really funny.
58:54
He was just like, you're a guinea pig.
58:56
You are you know, essentially creating more data points for them for their you know, you're you're they're your boss.
59:04
You know, whatever works on their algorithm, you then pander to that. Right.
59:08
And so he he he kind of pushed us in that that direction of recognizing like are we artists or are we creating for the algorithm?
59:14
Um and the second thing he said, which I I heavily resonate with, he was like, everything is about the PDF.
59:20
Which means like what is the idea, right?
59:22
Write it on a piece of paper. Is the idea good? Show it to someone. Pitch it to someone.
59:29
Do they immediately go, that's a good idea? Do they laugh?
59:30
Do they feel some sort of emotion?
59:33
Before it's packaged and made. Yeah. Yeah.
59:35
And he was like, people even when we got on our pre-call with him, he was like, all right, what are we making together when we sit down? Right.
59:41
And he asked us that question.
59:43
And I was like, oh, you're right.
59:45
What is the Hasan Minhaj Colin and Samir interview? Let's write it out.
59:49
Let's Let's not plan it, but what is it? Like, what's the idea?
59:52
Why is this a good idea to do this? Right. Uh What was the answer?
59:56
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?
1:00:11
And how he's now kind of left YouTube.
1:00:14
Um cuz So, he was on YouTube first? I didn't know that. I didn't know that.
1:00:18
He used to upload He came up with shows and and put them on YouTube.
1:00:20
If you go to his channel and search by oldest Like, kind of like sketch shows, like shows.
1:00:25
He did hosted shows where he talked about the news, like almost like Tosh uh Tosh 2. 0. Tosh 2. 0, yeah.
1:00:28
That for us was like, no one's No one has told that story. That's interesting. Let's talk about that.
1:00:34
And let's talk about your relationship with with And he was also like 18, 19 doing like comedy clubs, right?
1:00:40
Like, he was doing stand-up at like Yeah.
1:00:42
San Francisco or something like that, I think. Totally.
1:00:44
Yeah, I watched him do King's Jester live.
1:00:46
Uh Like, we went out to go Did you go to one of his shows? really good.
1:00:49
So, that's his stand-up special.
1:00:50
Um That guy's like a performer, man.
1:00:52
Like, he he really he really inspired me to be like, It's not like a comedy show. It's Yeah. It's a one-man show. It's a performance.
1:01:00
Uh And that to me it really inspired both Colin and I to be like, this is a craft. You have to work on it.
1:01:07
You know, performing is part of this craft.
1:01:08
Um ideation is the biggest part of it.
1:01:11
You know, he has a writing partner that he sits and writes Pratt or Yeah. What's he like?
1:01:15
I've never gotten to meet him.
1:01:16
Um but I I'm very I'm very, very fascinated by kind of the the wingman Yeah.
1:01:22
behind like the collaborator.
1:01:24
lot of popular popular people.
1:01:26
But almost all of them are not Nobody's solo.
1:01:28
Everyone's got some kind of team.
1:01:30
And usually they have like their their confidant, the person who's in the bunker with them figuring things out.
1:01:35
Compliments them, does all the they're not good at.
1:01:36
Um but like kind of like keeps them going in the right direction.
1:01:39
And those people are actually really, really fascinating to me.
1:01:41
And nobody really like ask them a ton of questions.
1:01:44
But I have a million questions for them.
1:01:46
Uh what Tell me a little bit about him.
1:01:48
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.
1:01:55
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.
1:02:01
Like, fully make it when they have a collaborator.
1:02:04
So, Pratt limited time with him, but um I find comedians to be like astute observers of the world.
1:02:11
And uh I found Pratt to be like very much that, right?
1:02:13
Like, he he had a notebook and pen during the King's Jester taping.
1:02:18
It was a I don't know if it was a taping or if it was just one of the shows, but they were prepping for the Netflix special.
1:02:22
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.
1:02:35
Like, he was um And right after the show, before Hasan came back into the green room, him and Pratt were talking. that.
1:02:41
Yeah, I love it when it's sort of like, all right, we're going back to the lab. Yeah.
1:02:44
It's like, we kind of like we do our thing, but like cuz I tell Ben So, Ben's my collaborator, basically.
1:02:49
So, like we did a couple businesses together, but also when it comes to content, like we recently did a um We're kind of new to YouTube, but we did We used to just basically put the podcast on YouTube. Yeah, I remember.
1:02:59
And then it's like You guys are growing now, though. I started really bad.
1:03:02
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 for like which is fine for when you start, but we already had the podcast was significant.
1:03:10
So, it's like It's kind of like if you play poker at one stakes, and then you go down to the micro stakes, like you know, quarters, 10 cent table, doesn't feel very fun cuz you've now experienced a different level of stakes.
1:03:21
But those aren't even in the same casino. Yeah.
1:03:24
Spotify or Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Yeah.
1:03:26
And it's a completely different group of people. So, Exactly.
1:03:28
So, so we were like, all right, we think we could do this.
1:03:30
And so we started to grow.
1:03:31
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 it have now? 300,000. Yeah. So, 300,000 views.
1:03:40
And this was a video It was the first video that I made YouTube first.
1:03:44
I was like, okay, I'm going to uh create a video that I think is going to be like YouTube It's not just a podcast. Mhm.
1:03:50
And me and Ben were like, what if we just took 3 days?
1:03:51
It's like, and we just tried to make one great video for this.
1:03:57
And we did, and we made that and we were basically collaborating on that for the first time we had done that that way.
1:04:02
But the cool thing is now we've been working together for a couple years.
1:04:05
And you get this like mind meld where it's like uh it's almost like 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 going to be like, oh, we got to talk about that later.
1:04:17
Cuz that relates to these other three things.
1:04:18
And then earlier we talked about this, but that's 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.
1:04:27
But when you have it, it's like, oh this is That lets you go places.
1:04:31
someone who's excited and wants to to be a part of a team where their name isn't at the forefront, right?
1:04:36
Which which can be really complex, right?
1:04:38
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.
1:04:42
Uh so, you have to find someone who's really into that, too, right?
1:04:46
Who likes to be that person.
1:04:48
if you've ever tried to hire, a lot of people are like, I want to work for you cuz I want to be you. want to be you. Yeah.
1:04:52
And it's like, okay, cool, but that doesn't really work.
1:04:53
Like, especially with this It's not what I need. Yeah. Yeah.
1:04:56
This group right now, it's hard to hire someone who doesn't want to be the creator or, you know, is is trying to become a creator and and working with you to be like, okay, now I get it.
1:05:05
Now I'm going to go do it.
1:05:05
Um But yeah, you have to find someone who's who's down for that.
1:05:08
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?
1:05:14
You're going to You're going to probably watch game tape back.
1:05:15
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.
1:05:24
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. better faster.
1:05:32
You can get better way faster. Yeah. But it's hard to find. Right.
1:05:35
It's It's typically happens just organically.
1:05:36
And then you're like, okay, this is my guy now. Right.
1:05:39
How much do you guys So, you guys have your business off the back of your thing, which is the newsletter The newsletter's a Yeah.
1:05:43
kind of a different type of business.
1:05:46
actually a separate company now.
1:05:47
And there's separate people writing that thing.
1:05:48
It's not you guys creating it necessarily.
1:05:51
Have you seen any uh I'm I'm I'm keeping track of these kind of creator-driven businesses where you have like a almost like a an audience co-founder. Mhm.
1:06:00
the way you used to have like a technical co-founder for a business, now you have almost like a distribution co-founder or an audience co-founder.
1:06:05
What have you seen that maybe everybody hasn't heard of, right?
1:06:07
Cuz I think everybody's kind of heard of Mr.
1:06:08
Beast and maybe a couple others.
1:06:10
But um what are some cool ones that you're keeping an eye on or I I should know about or other people should know about? Yeah.
1:06:18
The typical creator businesses make content, sell ads, right?
1:06:19
Which is like That's That's baseline.
1:06:22
Some people never need to grow out of that cuz that's just a good business. Yeah.
1:06:27
Um But like when when you go through those extensions, like I think Ali Abdaal has a fantastic education business.
1:06:32
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.
1:06:43
He's an excellent teacher.
1:06:46
Um but he has built a great business um that is, you know, very much focused on online education.
1:06:52
I think He publishes his numbers, like he makes like 4 million a year on his like 4 or 5 million on his uh creator academy.
1:06:56
Which is like basically like Pushing to six this year. become a Yes. Yes.
1:07:01
And he has a ton of courses on Skillshare about like studying for the MCAT or He He's just figured out that, okay, I'm really good at making online video.
1:07:10
Yes, one of those ways is to monetize through advertising, but another one is through teaching through online video.
1:07:16
And that's the classic like build one, sell twice, right?
1:07:18
It's like you build it, it lives on Skillshare or on your own website for years to come people can buy it, right?
1:07:25
So, I I really like the digital product business um because it's just scalable.
1:07:30
And we do very few things that are scalable as creators, right?
1:07:34
Um I also think there's a um there's a future model now, which is potentially there's a a creator named Amelia Dimoldenberg who has a show called Chicken Shop Date. Okay.
1:07:43
Um I think I've heard about this. show.
1:07:47
Were you the one who showed me this?
1:07:48
Yeah, it's it's a great show.
1:07:48
She She's had Jack Harlow on it.
1:07:49
She just had Jennifer Lawrence on.
1:07:51
It's And what's the what's the stick?
1:07:52
It's like at a chicken shop, like a fried chicken place or something?
1:07:56
a date at a fried chicken place in London.
1:07:59
And a chicken shop in London is like the last place you would go to have a date.
1:08:03
So, there's comedy in it. She's a comedian.
1:08:05
Um And through Yeah, through this she's had like This has now spun her into essentially creating her own production company where brands come to her and say, we love your stick. We love your comedy.
1:08:18
We love the way you've created this show.
1:08:22
Um like this show has no advertising in it, no advertisers, and will never have advertisers.
1:08:26
And this thing does, you know, the Jack Harlow episode has 15 million views.
1:08:31
Um this regularly does, you know, 1 to 5 million views in the first week. Um but no advertisers.
1:08:36
And what it operates as is like it's a production company, and Nike just came to her.
1:08:42
So, she kind of created an agency. an agency. Yeah. Yeah.
1:08:45
So, like Nike came to her.
1:08:48
like I can create cool, likable content.
1:08:50
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.
1:08:56
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?
1:09:03
On her own YouTube channel. Yeah.
1:09:03
So, she So, she doesn't do ads, but she'll put like full episodes of like cuz I saw a Barbie She She went and posted the Barbie premiere. Um That's smart. So, I like that.
1:09:12
There's another um creator named Amanda Rach Lee who's who's uh based in Canada.
1:09:18
And what she did is she started YouTube by showing bullet journaling and how she was setting up her bullet journals. And what is that?
1:09:26
I don't even know what it's called.
1:09:27
go go to the channel Amanda Rach and then Lee.
1:09:31
And now, yeah, like go to like one of these bullet journal setups.
1:09:33
This looks like Etsy of YouTube.
1:09:38
And how many views does it have? 3 million.
1:09:41
So, when she started, she was doing these bullet journal setups like here's how I set up my journal.
1:09:48
And then, what she did was swap out the journal she was using and create her own custom journal company.
1:09:53
And that to me is like epitome of creator business.
1:09:58
Where it's what Colin and I call content product fit.
1:10:00
She didn't have to change the content to integrate the product, right?
1:10:04
You just I mean, to talk about a big example, it's Chamberlain Coffee when Emma Chamberlain launched that.
1:10:09
She drank coffee in every episode. Swap her coffee out.
1:10:15
And I think you know, it's something we're actually struggling with with our newsletter.
1:10:20
Which is like what's our version of that?
1:10:22
How do we integrate that in every episode?
1:10:23
Sure we can bring it up, but that doesn't drive subscribers.
1:10:28
So, it it's Logan Paul said this about Prime.
1:10:31
He said a lot of creators when they talk about their own product, it sounds like they're doing a brand deal.
1:10:37
They don't know how to integrate it regularly.
1:10:38
You know, and like the Nelk Boys with Happy Dad, right?
1:10:40
Their their alcohol is in every single episode cuz they're so present.
1:10:47
Logan has Prime everywhere with him.
1:10:51
So, you know, I think creators who have this like Amanda, they can build really substantial businesses. That's a big business. Yeah, for sure.
1:10:59
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. That's insane.
1:11:06
She's got to be doing I mean, what do you think she's making on the on something like this?
1:11:13
I've spent time with her.
1:11:13
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.
1:11:24
The thing I love about this business too, it's it's repeat purchases.
1:11:26
There's a new journal drop.
1:11:27
You can run out of pages in a journal.
1:11:29
Once you you know, once you have allegiance to this, it's like, yeah.
1:11:35
I've had this idea for cuz I'm a big journal guy.
1:11:36
And so, I was like, oh dude, I want to create my own because I don't know I like I have an idea of what I want mine to be. I just haven't made it.
1:11:43
So, like if I'm going to make it for myself, maybe I'll make it for others.
1:11:46
But the best example my favorite example of this is actually a really small stakes one which is the Ryan Holiday coin. Totally.
1:11:50
That's like such a good example of this cuz he was like, he's the way he described it.
1:11:55
So, first it was like the content product fit where he's just like stoicism.
1:12:00
Here's the like reminder coin that like you're going to die.
1:12:02
It says like you know, whatever.
1:12:03
Remember you're going to die or whatever.
1:12:06
But he was like, you know, I've done like t-shirts. T-shirts suck.
1:12:07
And he's like, I wanted something that was like I could fit in an envelope a normal envelope.
1:12:14
So, like mailing was easy.
1:12:14
I wanted something I can manufacture here so I don't have to like produce overseas or whatever.
1:12:19
He's like, no sizes, no colors.
1:12:21
It's like just like there's one.
1:12:23
Like there's one skew and I'm going to sell and I think he sold like $20 million of this one skew over the years. Yeah.
1:12:29
I'm pretty sure he said that on I'm pretty sure he said that on our on our our episode or we like, you know, watered boarded him out of it.
1:12:36
Like you know, we were like, I think you've done $20 million. Is that wrong? Is that in the ballpark?
1:12:39
And he's like, it's not you know, not wrong.
1:12:41
I think probably one of the biggest creator led companies right now that that maybe isn't as as prominent in the mainstream conversation is Mark Rober's Crunch Labs.
1:12:53
Which is like a subscription box.
1:12:56
Science or something, right?
1:12:56
Like he's like a science kit. Exactly. It's a science kit. I got it for my nephews. It is excellent. They are hooked on it. Like it is excellent. I text Mark about it.
1:13:05
I'm like, dude, this product is crazy. Like that's huge. That's a big business. That's a big business. Yeah.
1:13:12
And I know he said now that that makes more than his channel. Yeah, for sure. His channel's massive.
1:13:18
That's that's another great example cuz he does basic crazy science experiments, right? That's right.
1:13:21
And he has big versions of that in his videos.
1:13:23
So, like he'll make a big version of it and then he'll be like, and you can make a miniature version of this at home. You know.
1:13:32
This what you're just describing here these examples is like I always think about when I meet someone I'm like, wow, you had so much success. Like what'd you do?
1:13:40
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.
1:13:49
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.
1:13:55
Like, okay, let me just work backwards. What's the best keyword?
1:13:58
And like so, that's how I got into like selling leads to lawyers or whatever.
1:14:02
Like you know, asbestos you know, removal company or whatever.
1:14:06
And then it's like like our buddy created Native Deodorant.
1:14:09
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.
1:14:17
But then they were like driving them back to a blog post and monetizing with a Google ad there.
1:14:21
It's not really a good model.
1:14:23
He's like, I realized like you can sell just like a product to Facebook ads with really simple ads and you don't have 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.
1:14:35
And like there wasn't really like as much of a category yet.
1:14:37
But it's like if you knew if you knew that secret during that time, it was kind of an open secret, but not like wasn't obvious to everybody yet.
1:14:45
I mean, I think Movement Watches is another great influencer with influencer led marketing.
1:14:50
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.
1:15:02
And again, you you kind of pull the levers when it comes to YouTube.
1:15:06
It's the highest margin advertising dollars that I think you know, has existed in in video content ever, right?
1:15:12
Because you don't get on the phone with the advertiser.
1:15:16
You aren't you aren't negotiating a contract. There's no sales team.
1:15:19
There's no back and forth. There's no revision. There's nothing. 45%.
1:15:25
But still, it's like dude, but there's still like you don't see it.
1:15:28
It's just like and you don't have to do any work. You don't do it, right?
1:15:32
You just you upload content and you get a check in the mail.
1:15:36
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 from 20, 50,000 dollars all the way up to 200,000 dollars, right? You're like, well, okay.
1:15:50
All right, I'll make another one of those videos.
1:15:51
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.
1:15:58
And how do we even do that? How do I even do that? How do I hire someone?
1:16:03
I think that's the biggest need in the creator economy right now is operators are the biggest need.
1:16:07
And education on how to hire is so it's just not there, right?
1:16:13
Cuz they were it's all young people who who grew There's so many operators cuz I'm coming from an operator world.
1:16:20
And all the operators are like, dude, I can if I just had the right influencer. This this is soap.
1:16:24
We could sell a lot of this soap.
1:16:27
Or whatever the thing is.
1:16:29
Like you know, pick pick your favorite widget.
1:16:30
And and for them it's like a total black box.
1:16:34
Like, how do I go meet these people get them to trust me enough to do this?
1:16:37
And so, it's like this this inefficiency in the market. To want that, right?
1:16:41
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.
1:16:52
And then they're like, oh, I don't want to do this anymore. They freak out. They freak out, right?
1:16:54
Cuz 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.
1:17:04
I have this question up here I put on this list.
1:17:06
I said three creators likely to become a billionaire.
1:17:08
I gave you the one freebie.
1:17:09
You can say Jimmy and he could be one.
1:17:14
What other creators do you think have the potential to build a billion dollar empire around what they're doing?
1:17:20
It's a combination of their content plus businesses or whatever. I think Dude Perfect.
1:17:26
I saw they did like a amusement park or something, right?
1:17:28
Well, they're working on it. Yeah.
1:17:29
100 million dollar project. Yes. What does that mean?
1:17:33
That's what they're investing into this project?
1:17:34
I don't know the specifics of it.
1:17:36
I've spent a lot of they're actually I've known them for a really long time.
1:17:39
Like I you know, I've been on YouTube and around YouTube for 12 years.
1:17:42
They were the first group that I got involved with early on when when we sold our last company.
1:17:50
Kind of like their trick shots were their thing that worked.
1:17:51
But like they make sports accessible to you know, young kids through trick shots and and you know, viral sports videos.
1:17:57
And the the reason I bring it up is like I think those guys have been at this now since around 2006 or seven.
1:18:05
And they have remained at the at the top of their game throughout that whole experience.
1:18:12
They also went through a long period of time where you know, they've done the work.
1:18:17
Like I watched them hold the cameras for years.
1:18:19
Even when they were at 30 million subscribers, they would just go out themselves and hold the cameras and edit the videos.
1:18:25
And they still sit there in in the edit bays and make sure they're perfect.
1:18:29
And I think they if you've if you've seen images of they just did a tour, see images of like these young kids who turn out for that. The parents.
1:18:41
I had a conversation with them one time where they they said their goal is to be the the most trusted brand in entertainment.
1:18:45
And I actually believe that they are on track for that.
1:18:49
Where parents really trust that they can take their kids to a Dude Perfect event.
1:18:54
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.
1:19:03
And I think they're they're on track for sure. That makes sense. That makes sense. I like that pick.
1:19:06
Anyone else come to mind that you think has the potential to to do something large like that?
1:19:12
I think I I think of some creators who have the potential, but I don't know if they want to do it.
1:19:17
You know, like I I think Cody Ko is actually someone who's he's coming here tomorrow. Oh, he is? I love Cody.
1:19:24
I know you went on his show.
1:19:25
I think Cody is like one of the most intelligent people I've met in the space.
1:19:31
I think he he even as he's like in starting to invest now and I can just I was thinking about it cuz him and I were texting yesterday and I was thinking in my head I was like, "Who's Cody Ko in 10 years?"
1:19:40
He's either like in the woods, you know, like Yeah, he's free. He's a free man.
1:19:46
DJing and running or he's like running the biggest capital company.
1:19:49
You know, like I And I think that's just a personal choice.
1:19:53
It's all available to him.
1:19:53
Um But yeah, I don't I don't know that I'm sure there's others that I'm not thinking of, but They're my favorite brand on YouTube. TMG?
1:20:04
TMG is my number one favorite channel on YouTube.
1:20:07
Noel Miller's like a true artist and special.
1:20:10
Like I think there's very rare people like him and also very not very many people like Cody Ko. Right.
1:20:16
Um so yeah, that's together.
1:20:18
videos are so goddamn good.
1:20:18
It's actually kind of annoying. Yeah.
1:20:23
It's It's like a bit It's a bit off-putting like, "Dude, what like You can't just do that." Right.
1:20:27
And that You could do it as a joke.
1:20:30
It can't also be amazing.
1:20:34
Yeah, it can't also be good.
1:20:34
It can't also make me want to listen to it multiple times. Right.
1:20:36
It's funny and amazing and you just did it like for kicks on the side right on top of your other successful thing.
1:20:43
I find this like pursuit of being a billionaire to be very fascinating.
1:20:47
Like I I I don't really have interest in it.
1:20:50
I don't If it if it's the outcome of what I decide to do, that would be interesting, but I it's not like I I don't find myself to be focused on that outcome.
1:21:01
And I also found most creators I talk to are not focused on that outcome. Totally.
1:21:06
Um but I think it's in the video game of entrepreneurship, it is the final boss, right?
1:21:10
So, you're kind of like The final boss is actually walking away. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:21:16
who says they have enough is is like like you know, Paul Graham who created YC, which is I think probably the most successful tech startup actually cuz it created Sure.
1:21:27
all these other tech startups and like it created Dropbox and it created Airbnb.
1:21:32
Like I they probably wouldn't like to say created, but like they without them there is no Reddit.
1:21:38
There is no There are There probably aren't those those businesses being successful including Open AI because Right.
1:21:44
he saw Sam Altman and made him president when there was tons of other more qualified candidates on paper, but he was like this even says something.
1:21:51
He's like, "This is like what it would be like to talk to a young Bill Gates."
1:21:55
Like saw that before and now he's created Open AI, which is today the most you know, one of the most valuable private startups.
1:22:01
So anyways, YC uh gets to the peak of its powers or gets like you know, does amazing amazing stuff 10 years in and Paul's like, "Sam, here you go.
1:22:13
I'm going to the woods in the UK and I'm going to live in the woods with my family and I'm going to basically like write essays, paint and code and like you know, that's what I'm going to do."
1:22:24
And that is the final boss of Silicon Valley cuz you see most people just go right back into the hamster wheel and they start running again.
1:22:29
But that's like the final boss of life, right?
1:22:31
It's like making that realization is wanting anymore.
1:22:34
Yeah, yeah, being like content and and developing a relationship with the term enough.
1:22:39
That's that's a hard thing to do, but Totally. Do you have that?
1:22:43
Do you have a number or like a Do you Do you feel like you have enough?
1:22:46
Like what are you in pursuit of?
1:22:49
Um I'm in pursuit of a really specific thing, which is um I heard a quote once that I think Naval said.
1:22:55
He goes, uh the the day you stop trading today for a better tomorrow, you've retired.
1:23:03
So, he's like um basically if the things you do today in and of themself were the reward of what you did today, you've now you've actually exited the game. You've You've retired.
1:23:16
You know, retirement doesn't mean you go sit down and do nothing.
1:23:18
It means you're not saying, "All right, I'm going to do this today that I don't really want to do.
1:23:22
I don't like to do, but I'm doing it because it's going to pay off in the future.
1:23:25
It's going to pay off in the future."
1:23:26
And like your whole life goes by doing that. Yeah.
1:23:29
And so when I heard that, I was like, "Oh, guilty yo, guilty.
1:23:33
Like you know, put me in You put me in cuffs. Take me to jail." Like that's me.
1:23:36
I'm I've spent the first you know, 15 years of my career like you know, from 20 to 35 basically was that.
1:23:44
I was like, "Oh, I'm going to do X."
1:23:44
And I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it necessarily, but like definitely I was doing X because it might lead to Y.
1:23:50
I I totally agree with that.
1:23:52
I've experienced that too. Yeah.
1:23:55
I've never just made my main thing like I'm doing X cuz I just doing X seems fun. Yeah.
1:23:59
And so that's the that's the game I'm playing now is to try to achieve that.
1:24:05
To craft my life such that that's true.
1:24:07
And so even though it's like weird, it's like you know, It's awesome.
1:24:09
What's It's like what do I like to do best? I don't know.
1:24:12
I like to I like to do this podcast. I like to read. Right.
1:24:15
I like to talk I you know, 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 cuz I don't think they even like or they don't clearly have one.
1:24:32
Well, you can also have the Is another Tim Ferriss moment in our in our episode together.
1:24:36
He was like something to the tune of like you can decouple the the non-financial reward and the financial reward. Right?
1:24:43
So like this experience there's a non-financial reward to this, which is like we have a good conversation. Cool. This is fun. We both go home. That reward is complete. Then you put it out.
1:24:56
If there's a performance reward to it, amazing.
1:24:58
If that leads to financial opportunity, great.
1:24:59
You know, like But that's a separate reward.
1:25:01
And if you can decouple those things, then that is uh Yeah, and just basically like the way I think about stuff is like there's a car and you can have a bunch of passengers in the car.
1:25:12
It's like you know, I have like my ego, but hopefully it's in the trunk. It shouldn't be driving.
1:25:15
Like you know, let's put him in the back, you know.
1:25:18
He's kind of annoying, but he's there.
1:25:20
And you got like you know, the thrill of things.
1:25:22
That's in the car, but I don't really want thrill to drive cuz he takes us off the cliff. Like who gets to drive?
1:25:28
And so you know, that's kind of like So to me I'm like, "All right, who gets to drive?"
1:25:32
Is like the version of me that is uh following my curiosity, creating consistent, like just creating things and is content with life and has like a uh I'm doing it because I want to do it.
1:25:46
I'm doing it because it's enjoyable to do.
1:25:48
I'm doing it because it's challenging.
1:25:50
So even though if it's not that enjoyable, like I'm struggling at it, I'm enjoying the struggle of doing this thing. Yeah.
1:25:55
And so that's why I want to drive.
1:25:56
Meaning that's who gets to ultimately make the decision of where are we going in this car?
1:26:02
Other people might have input.
1:26:02
Other the other parts of me might have input. Like I want money. I want this. I want that. Yeah.
1:26:06
But I can't like Like basically money was driving for a long ass time.
1:26:10
And then it's like, "Hold on.
1:26:10
Wait, the deal was you get to drive till we get to this number. We got to that number.
1:26:14
You don't get to drive anymore." Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:26:16
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.
1:26:30
Um because then it's like, "All right, cool. Money works for money. I work for me."
1:26:34
Man, I think that is a big opportunity with creators.
1:26:38
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.
1:26:46
Because it's like It's a totally different skill different skill set.
1:26:49
And then we don't know who to trust with that.
1:26:50
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 There's a bunch of basketball players there and it's the same thing.
1:26:58
Like literally we were joking.
1:27:00
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."
1:27:07
Yeah, and you're like, "Who do I trust?"
1:27:10
And And like And like And some of the clingers are the people they trust and they're like kind of safe choices, but don't actually know how to do the thing for them.
1:27:16
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.
1:27:25
but um the incentive is not for me to go chase them and reach them and then beg them to listen to my advice. Yeah.
1:27:33
The guy who's trying to take their money is incentivized to chase them and beg them and and try to convince them that they're the guy who's going to help them.
1:27:40
And it's like this weird like perverse incentive.
1:27:42
It's like the guy who's going to like work his hardest to break into your circle is the one who wants something. Yeah.
1:27:48
You actually don't want to work with someone who's needs something from you. yeah, yeah.
1:27:52
On the sports topic, there's one more Deestroying.
1:27:55
Uh he is a sports creator, football-focused creator.
1:27:58
He He played football at UCF and this is pre-NIL days. So he played football.
1:28:04
He was making YouTube videos.
1:28:06
They brought him into a room and said, "You have a choice.
1:28:09
You can either continue playing football or you can continue with your YouTube channel." He chose YouTube.
1:28:12
Um and built this this really substantial YouTube channel.
1:28:17
He has this series called one-on-ones uh that just partnered Doesn't he go live to places?
1:28:21
Like he goes to like a city Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:28:24
This is like live events and they get crazy.
1:28:25
Like in Arizona, it had to get called off cuz it was too many people there and the police had to get involved.
1:28:30
I was going to go he but I think he he he messaged or his manager messaged Somebody messaged Okay, okay. So you know what I mean? like he's an hour away.
1:28:36
I was like, "Oh, that sounds kind of fun."
1:28:38
But like I didn't make it out.
1:28:39
What does he do actually? one-on-one.
1:28:41
So basically it's wide receivers versus cornerbacks and they line up and they go one-on-one and one dude wins $10,000.
1:28:47
And for for for some of the communities he's going into, that's life-changing money, right?
1:28:52
And is he the guy in the thing or it's two other guys? Okay, he's awesome. Okay. Got it.
1:28:58
You know, and like you can see like this is this is what it looks like.
1:28:59
Um If you go to his channel and go to most viewed, That's in my old high school. Oh, cool.
1:29:06
So So that guy If that guy had caught it, he would have got 10 grand.
1:29:08
No, he would have advanced in the tournament.
1:29:11
It's It's a tournament and you And then you start to know these characters and they travel to different markets to compete.
1:29:18
This is N1 mixtape for football.
1:29:20
Colin and I spoke with at a YouTube event with D and he was speaking with Roger Goodell and we were talking to to Roger about D Shroying and he was like, "This guy is like really impactful for football." Oh, wow.
1:29:31
He's he's creating new fans and the NFL just partnered with him on this series, the one-on-one series.
1:29:35
And I think when I look at D, like the leagues are starting to get involved with him in a way where I'm like, "Wait, he is single-handedly a really important part of the future of sports viewership." Yeah.
1:29:48
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.
1:29:57
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, this can become, you know, so many things, right? is his oyster, right? become a host.
1:30:08
He he's probably should be one of the hosts for the NFL like Or like the Pro Bowl where no one's watching.
1:30:14
I think he can also create a Yeah, I mean, he can redefine the Pro Bowl cuz this is more interesting.
1:30:20
This is already I'm like way more Yeah, I'm I'm like half looking at you cuz I'm like watching this. in.
1:30:24
I mean, I we 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. Yeah, it's just primal. It's primal. Yeah.
1:30:30
And so he can redefine the Pro Bowl.
1:30:32
He can also create a NIL agency, right?
1:30:36
So you have college athletes who he represents this, you know, where college athletics didn't let you monetize, he knows how to do this, right?
1:30:44
So again, now can D create a NIL agency where he's signing athletes and getting them contracts?
1:30:49
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.
1:30:58
Live sports, it it carries such high dollar value that I think he has that opportunity as well.
1:31:07
There was a guy at that event we were at that was you you'll know him cuz he's lacrosse. Paul Rabil, yeah. Yeah.
1:31:10
He was a groomsman at my wedding.
1:31:13
He's one of my best friends. Amazing.
1:31:14
He So I I don't know much about this sport.
1:31:16
He was at the board room event. So tell me about it.
1:31:18
So basically he what he was saying on stage was like, "Okay, we created this professional lacrosse league." Yeah.
1:31:24
He what he What was interesting he was like there's like whatever I don't know eight teams or something, but he's like, "We own the teams." Yeah.
1:31:29
It's not like a franchise model.
1:31:32
And I think he's like, "We pay the costs, but then like all the players have upside in the thing."
1:31:35
Like what is the business model of this?
1:31:37
This sounded pretty fascinating and Yeah, so it's Do you think it's a good model also?
1:31:40
I'm an investor, so biased opinion, yes.
1:31:44
But I've uh you know, what I've always seen in in lacrosse, if you if you pull up go to the Premier Lacrosse League YouTube channel and and play the last vlog from their All-Star game, you get a sense for like the community that one, the fastest shot. Uh right that, yeah.
1:31:58
So you get you get a sense for like what it looks like.
1:32:02
I mean, they're they were going wild, but like they they packed the stadium out in Louisville for their All-Star game.
1:32:06
So basically what he did was there was a pre-existing league called Major League Lacrosse.
1:32:09
They paid their players terribly.
1:32:10
Uh they treated them not well. league.
1:32:14
That was the only pro league.
1:32:14
It was like and no one really cared about it.
1:32:18
I mean, like it it was it was kind of interesting, but it was empty stadiums.
1:32:21
They didn't have health care.
1:32:23
It was like they weren't treated like it was tough to be a pro athlete and not get paid much, right?
1:32:27
And Paul became the, you know, number one uh lacrosse player.
1:32:33
He had the biggest media platform.
1:32:34
Colin and I actually ran his YouTube channel.
1:32:36
That's how we became very close.
1:32:38
Um we were running a lot of different athlete YouTube channels at one point and so we became really close to Paul. That's how we met.
1:32:43
Um and he had the best head on his shoulder for like media, how do you build a brand, how do you you know, he had the biggest He's He was called lacrosse's first million dollar man.
1:32:52
He had deals with Red Bull and New Balance and um he had created the model for like how do you make money as a lacrosse player?
1:32:59
just Was he the best and he was the best at media or he was actually the best at media and really good?
1:33:03
No, he's he's the he was the best. the best player, too. best player. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:33:05
So that that those are those like Conor McGregor at at one time was like He's the champ. Yes.
1:33:10
And he's like the most marketable guy.
1:33:12
So he he decided uh you know, at one point just to say, "Hey, you know what?
1:33:17
We're going to go raise money and create our own league.
1:33:20
Like this league sucks that I play in."
1:33:21
Um and so what he did, he turned to Joe Tsai who's uh The Nets owner.
1:33:25
You know, yeah, Nets owner who played lacrosse in college and loves lacrosse and is a great dude.
1:33:29
Met him a couple times and uh he became the the lead investor and then they partnered with with Raine Group and um they raised a bunch of money and said we're going to pay the players a reasonable salary.
1:33:40
We're going to give them equity in the league.
1:33:41
We're going to give them health care and we are going to create media around them.
1:33:46
We're going to create media opportunities for them.
1:33:47
We're going to teach them how to you know, and the last thing they did was they said, "We're not going to stick these teams in local markets.
1:33:53
We're going to actually take the whole league on tour." Makes sense.
1:33:59
So they they developed a tour It's It's like a touring, you know, circuit where it's like Is it coming to San Diego this weekend?
1:34:05
Okay, everyone descends upon this major major market, yeah.
1:34:07
So that you you know, if you have lacrosse people that come to town twice a year, it's like, "Oh, I'll go to that."
1:34:13
We may not go all the time or they may not be the people to support a stadium.
1:34:17
Well, I think also what he knew and what what we saw was that the model in lacrosse that we made money was by doing camps and clinics, right?
1:34:25
So you you you have youth camps where like there's a lot of young kids who want to play.
1:34:29
They come from affluent backgrounds.
1:34:29
Their parents are willing to pay $1,000 for them to get coached by their favorite lacrosse player.
1:34:35
Um and Paul built a massive camps business.
1:34:38
And so alongside this, you go to a major market, now you have a weekend dedicated to you can have camps.
1:34:45
You can turn all these players into Ah, okay.
1:34:47
camp counselors and and trainers They're earning extra money or whatever. Exactly.
1:34:51
They can build their own bespoke businesses, but that all, you know, connect to the league and That's it.
1:34:56
Um so it's he he him and his brother are really sharp and they're really good. franchises yet. Not yet.
1:34:59
Yeah, and they uh Barstool was involved in one of them. Okay.
1:35:05
Uh they they got to name the expansion team and Pardon My Take like they're the owners. name it? Uh the Waterdogs.
1:35:10
Like ridiculous name, yeah, but like they're Yeah, 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. It's a collab.
1:35:21
It's like, "Oh, we're going to do a collab, yeah."
1:35:22
Cuz when they play, Big Cat's tweeting about it.
1:35:26
When they they won the championship last year, he got his own ring, you know, it's like they're able to build Again, they're very media savvy and so they they understand that this is a long game.
1:35:35
Lacrosse is not Well, to build any league, I think I texted you this during the event.
1:35:38
I was like, "I think what this guy is saying is actually quite smart.
1:35:41
We should look at investing."
1:35:41
And I go, I go, "Man, building a league is hard."
1:35:45
Like fun is That is like one of the hardest games you could play in the world of entrepreneurship is creating a a sports league from scratch cuz it's like kind of a 20-year arc to actually get there.
1:35:57
You have to have such a long view on the world and on your life to do it.
1:35:59
And you're doing live events.
1:36:01
You're doing like all the hardest things.
1:36:03
I mean, every weekend he's in a different city.
1:36:04
You know, I'm watching these and and looking that the most promising thing is look how young the kids are who are there, right? Right.
1:36:10
So if they grow up with this league, these teams, these franchises, like they are playing a very long game here.
1:36:17
Um and I credit that to for doing it, but it's it's not an easy thing to do.
1:36:21
like a $10 million deal or something with ESPN like they got that.
1:36:23
But the media rights deal, that's good.
1:36:25
Yeah, so when they first started, Colin and I made a documentary about them for NBC. That's right.
1:36:32
We've had like many many different lives of, you know, Colin and Samir. Yeah. That's amazing.
1:36:37
Do you think that's going to be uh you know, good investment for you where you like the first one in cuz he's like your buddy?
1:36:42
I was first one in, uh which is great. So it's doing good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:36:47
Yeah, it's doing I'm I'm very happy about it.
1:36:49
like um like you're going to get like you know, let's say this works out hopefully.
1:36:52
Like you know, like we we all we're rooting for this.
1:36:57
Like you're going to make a bunch of money from this thing that was so impossible to predict that that's how this whole thing would pay off.
1:37:02
It's like, "All right, Mom, I know I don't have health insurance. I don't have a job.
1:37:06
I know I'm kind of filming this like failing league."
1:37:08
And you're like this this like lacrosse thing.
1:37:10
It's like And it leads to the thing, right?
1:37:14
So it's the Steve Jobs quote, right?
1:37:17
back, you see all the dots how they connected, but like you go even further back.
1:37:20
Like I mean, the way this happened was my first idea when I was 21 was to set up a laptop and make YouTube videos about lacrosse. Commentating, right?
1:37:28
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?"
1:37:37
Like how long does it take to make it?
1:37:38
I'm sure entrepreneurs ask that question, too, right?
1:37:39
Or have that thought in their head like, "How long is this going to take?"
1:37:42
Um and I always say I I always think it's such a ridiculous cuz I'm like, "Well, what's your relationship to making videos?
1:37:49
Do you wake up every morning and you can't not do it?
1:37:51
Like you're just like all I can do is make videos." made it from day one.
1:37:54
Yeah, you made it and it will there will be an outcome from that. There will be.
1:37:59
It will lead you somewhere.
1:38:01
But if you wake up and you're like, "This sucks."
1:38:03
It's kind of what you were saying.
1:38:04
It's like, "I'm doing X so I can get to Y."
1:38:05
Well, the the entrepreneurship version is um startups fail, but founders don't.
1:38:09
So like I moved to San Francisco in 2012.
1:38:12
So that's 10 years ago and I met a bunch of people and we used to have like these like underground fast founder like meetings where we're like trading tips and tricks and being like, "Yo, what do I do I this person I need to fire them.
1:38:24
What do I say when I fire them?"
1:38:26
Like basically there's a bunch of CEOs being like, "I can't like tell my team about this.
1:38:28
I can't tell my customers about this. I you guys understand."
1:38:36
And luck unlike YouTube, everybody who was doing startups at the time was like all living in the same 7-mile radius city.
1:38:42
And so we would just all meet up all the time.
1:38:43
And sure enough like as you watch If you track that cohort, there's basically only two outcomes.
1:38:48
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.
1:38:58
They just like did that company.
1:39:00
They're like, "Screw this. I'm taking a job.
1:39:01
I'm moving back to Connecticut and like I'm going to live in a low-cost place.
1:39:05
I'm going to de-stress and I'm going to do that."
1:39:07
But everybody else who stayed in the game won.
1:39:11
Like literally like almost like 100% of my friends who stayed in the game Yeah.
1:39:14
and some of them won in year two, some won in year five, some won in year nine.
1:39:18
Now we're in like year 11 or 12, people are winning like now, but like and it's kind of like it feels like a really long time.
1:39:24
It's like, "Wow, 12 years?"
1:39:25
It's like, "Yeah, but we all started this when we were 21, so like, you know, Yeah. Mid-30s, yeah. Cuz we're 34 and rich.
1:39:34
Like, you know, like it worked.
1:39:35
In the end it worked, right?
1:39:37
The 15-year arc 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.
1:39:49
I always I've said that multiple times.
1:39:51
Um whenever I'm having something that I feel like I'm I'm struggling, I'm like this is the uh the least rational path to making money, right? Is what I do.
1:40:01
The I at this point also now I have enough exposure and enough of an abundance in my network that I can go and get a get a good job, right?
1:40:10
But like I do this cuz it's it's just what I do. It's just who I am.
1:40:15
I don't even know what to do in another context.
1:40:17
I don't know what that looks like.
1:40:18
I I will say though like being it's hard to be uh not outcome oriented, you know, like I think as an entrepreneur you you think about like exits and you think about you know, like these big paydays and uh I would say that even with with our newsletter, like when I saw Milk Road, I was like, "Okay, I want that outcome, too."
1:40:34
But whenever I get too attached to that outcome, I'm like, "Okay, wait a second." Right.
1:40:39
That 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.
1:40:49
Is this Monday issue really great? Okay, it's Wednesday.
1:40:51
Is this Wednesday issue really great?"
1:40:52
And I've really tried to um refine my focus on process and impact.
1:41:00
Like, is I I have to focus on the process of creating the thing.
1:41:01
And then the second thing is like my a lot of my reward is seeing if we're having impact.
1:41:07
Is Is this actually impactful what I'm putting out?
1:41:09
Or is it just going out and, you know, no one's saying anything about it or we're not getting any Like, I I I find I gauge the success of our stuff from like the texts I get or the DMs or like, "Hey, that episode was really impactful."
1:41:21
Or hey, "That really changed the way I think about this."
1:41:23
Or hey, "That newsletter taught me about this."
1:41:26
If I see those, then I'm like, "Okay, we're doing we're we're doing something.
1:41:29
Um let's keep doing that."
1:41:29
And hopefully that takes us to an outcome.
1:41:31
But you also have to accept it might not. It might just be this.
1:41:34
And we might just get, you know, 5% better, you know, over the next 2 years. Right. And and that's it.
1:41:41
And you have to accept that that is a that is the maybe the most likely reality is that you just keep doing it. Right.
1:41:49
And as long as you can accept that, at least for me, that's how I I, you know, explore it for myself.
1:41:53
Yeah, the best test of a project is basically would we regret doing it if it didn't work? Right.
1:41:59
Like, obviously you don't want it not to work and we might be upset if it didn't work, but like would we actually regret doing it if it didn't work?
1:42:04
Cuz then it's like, "Oh, I'm just actually dependent on the success or failure of what's usually a low odds of success endeavor." Totally.
1:42:11
Whereas other things you're like, "I wouldn't really regret it because I well, I'm still going to get this like still going to be fun to do, still going to learn a ton.
1:42:18
I'm like this is the type of thing I like to do. Yeah.
1:42:23
So, you know, if this doesn't work out, it doesn't really matter.
1:42:24
Like, I'm going to just going to ping-pong to the kind of the the next version of this, but it was a forward it was a forward step either way, right?
1:42:29
Like, there's this uh Tony Robbins does this thing where he does this um dabblers versus masters.
1:42:34
I don't know if you've ever heard this.
1:42:36
So, he tells a story at his events where he goes um He goes, uh "There's some people that they go and they discover racquetball."
1:42:45
Which maybe now pickleball would be the thing, but it's like you know, they go to they go to the gym, they're like they see somebody playing racquetball, they're like, "Oh, I'll try it."
1:42:50
And they go and they have they have some fun.
1:42:53
And they're like, "Racquetball, that this might be my thing."
1:42:54
And they're like, "Okay, I'm going to play racquetball."
1:42:57
And so they the next day they come back, play again.
1:42:59
Next day they actually go and they you know, they get better shoes cuz they were like, "Oh, that was the problem last time."
1:43:05
They buy the racket, they start playing, blah blah blah, and they they they're doing well, but then they play somebody who's been playing for like 10 years who's like way better than them.
1:43:13
And that's you know, the the for 3 days straight they're playing and they can't hit a good shot.
1:43:17
Everything's going off and they're losing all these games.
1:43:19
And they're like, "This stupid like stupid racquetball.
1:43:23
Like, why am I in this box? I'm trapped.
1:43:25
Like, you know, this is it's too loud in here.
1:43:26
This is It is weirdly loud.
1:43:29
This is a sport for old people."
1:43:30
You start to find all these reasons to quit. So, they they they quit.
1:43:33
They're like, "I'm going to go play a real game.
1:43:34
I'm going to go play uh tennis."
1:43:36
So, you go outside, you play tennis, you're like, "Oh, so much better outdoors. This is way better."
1:43:38
And you know, you're hitting the ball around, they're starting to learn the strokes, they're they're enjoying learning a little bit. Same thing happens.
1:43:46
They start to play somebody who knows what's going on.
1:43:49
They're hitting the ball in the net.
1:43:51
They can't really serve well.
1:43:51
It's getting frustrating.
1:43:53
It's hot out and they're like, "Stupid game.
1:43:54
Like, you know, what is this?"
1:43:56
Then I like this is this is this is like a girly game.
1:43:58
I don't I don't want to play this.
1:44:00
I want to play like a real game and golf.
1:44:03
And then they're like just like, "Fuck."
1:44:05
From day one they're like, "Fuck."
1:44:06
And he's basically like, you know, most people go through their whole life doing a series of these. dabbling, yeah. dabblers.
1:44:12
And he's like, "What's the difference between a mast There's like there's three categories.
1:44:15
A dabbler A dabbler is basically like try it, as soon as it gets hard, bounce."
1:44:20
Then he's like, "Then there's the stressor achiever.
1:44:23
Stressor achiever is like when it gets hard, they just start gritting their teeth and they just going to going to keep going, but they don't enjoy any of it.
1:44:31
And like all the hardship stresses them out, but they've just been trained since they were little kid to like Push through it.
1:44:36
just keep pushing through and like you'll get a gold star later.
1:44:39
Like, the the joy will be later.
1:44:42
He's like, "Then there's the master."
1:44:43
And the master is basically like they like they know that when you start something new, there's the initial like joy of discovery, there's the learning curve, there's the hard plateaus.
1:44:49
And then when the plateau comes, they greet it like an old friend.
1:44:53
They're like, "Oh, there you are.
1:44:54
Like, I thought you'd be showing up soon. I've been Right.
1:44:57
I've been playing for a week and usually that's when I'll hit I'll That's when you arrive, plateau.
1:45:00
And I know how to like deal with you because I know that after the plateau comes the next uprise and I'm I'm excited for that upswing, but Yeah.
1:45:08
let me work through this plateau."
1:45:09
And they don't really get like flustered by it.
1:45:10
So, they get the same or they get better results than all three, way better than the dabbler, significantly better than the stressor achiever, but the difference is like the whole way they're kind of actually like enjoying the the dance.
1:45:22
They're playing the game cuz they actually understand that this is like these are all normal for the game. Mhm.
1:45:27
And you find that like the people who um get really like into like struggling or grinding or like get really overwhelmed by like, you know, the adversity, it's really just like they haven't played the game enough to know that this is Normal.
1:45:40
This is how the levels of the game work.
1:45:41
You shouldn't be surprised that the roller coaster's going up and down.
1:45:44
Like, you remember you got on the you got in line to get on a roller coaster, right? Like good point.
1:45:48
You know, one thing that I don't know why this made me think of it.
1:45:52
I think just cuz like the the ups and downs of the game and the the conversation we're having at the beginning of the show about interviewing, one thing that both Colin and I did was go to improv class to learn how to be To get better. Yeah.
1:46:01
Just to get better at like being present, working with whatever the other person says.
1:46:06
Like what what we found was my wife was listening to our interviews and she was like, "You're not listening to them.
1:46:14
You're just not listening to your guests.
1:46:17
They're saying something and then you say something completely different.
1:46:19
You're just waiting to talk. waiting to talk.
1:46:20
And so I went to improv class and it was really this incredible uh lesson in the craft of how do you sit in the pocket and just be like, "I can't have any preconceived notions as to where this is about to go." Right.
1:46:36
You're going to say something and I have to let go of where I want it to go. Right.
1:46:40
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.
1:46:46
This is going to be funny.
1:46:47
I know where to take it."
1:46:47
And then the person right before me said something and I was like, "Why the hell would you say that?"
1:46:52
And then I had to deal with it.
1:46:54
And then I was like, "Oh, this is the work.
1:46:55
This is the craft or building the craft."
1:46:57
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?
1:47:08
Like you you you go back and you watch your early episodes, that roller coaster is there's a record of the roller coaster of like times where it was going really well, times where it wasn't going well, times where views were up, times where views were down. It's like all public.
1:47:22
And I think um it's it's challenging cuz we have to practice in public.
1:47:25
I think that's like as as, you know, you build in public as an entrepreneur, but I have something incredibly just you're like naked as a content creator out there.
1:47:33
Everyone can see everything. So.
1:47:36
Well, you guys are doing an amazing job. I'm a fan. Thank you, man.
1:47:38
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.
1:47:45
So, thanks for thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. you so much, man.