My First Million: Samir Chaudry: Nerding Out on Creating Content

Tell me about Mr. Beast.

He like is is so unique in the fact that he is laser focused in a way

that I've never really experienced.

And and maybe at times like in a way that I don't want to experience.

Yeah, just so he doesn't want to.

You know, I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like days on.

You're about to hear a conversation I recorded with Samir when I went down to LA.

I've been following these guys for a little while.

They are knee deep in the YouTube game.

And if you're a content nerd like me, somebody who really thinks about, OK,

what is great content?

How do I use content to build my business, which is what I've done?

Then these guys are very interesting because they know everything about YouTube

and all the YouTubers, they've done interviews with Mr.

Beast and Dream and all bunch of the large YouTube channels.

We talked about a bunch of things.

What makes a great interview?

How do you do?

What are the questions you ask?

How do you prep and how do you show up the right way if you're going to do an interview?

We talked about quality of audience versus quantity of audience.

How do you think about not just the numbers, but like the real trick,

which is getting the right type of people to actually watch your stuff?

Hanging out with Mr. Beast.

So they've spent days and days with Mr.

Beast. I wanted to ask them, what did they learn about this guy?

He is the most popular YouTuber in the world.

He's one of the most popular entertainers in the world. Period.

It's rare you get that kind of access to that type of person.

And I wanted to hear some stories and he told me some good ones.

Then we did five great creator businesses that you've never heard of

and some predictions.

What YouTubers does he think have the potential to build

billion dollar empires under their content?

He gave me three that he believed could be the case.

And there's a bunch of other frameworks.

So things that you only really have these insights

if you've been doing something for like 10 years,

you've been thinking about the same thing from every angle for 10 years.

Those are some of my favorite people to talk to.

All right. So enjoy this conversation with Samir.

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.

And it was really interesting.

It's like the truth comes out in the car.

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 percent on the interview.

Why is that?

You think they're just performing basically when they sit down in a like

a artificial environment?

Probably. Yeah.

There's a lot of like self perception stuff that's going on right.

It's like, how am I coming across?

Who am I? Is the sounding right?

And if you're distracted, then you.

But you guys do your interviews at a table, basically.

Yeah. So you don't do that.

Well, we've been trying to explore like the concept

of creating the right energy for the conversations.

Right. Like you think about like this has a completely different energy

than if there was a table has a completely different energy

than if we didn't have mics and we were laughed or had booms.

So we've been trying to explore like where our show is moving

and what type of space we want.

That's essentially exactly where I wanted to start, which is basically you guys do.

So we came down here and we were like, oh, let's get like a place.

Let's have some in person interviews with people that we think are awesome.

And it's different than the like at home thing for sure.

Right. The vibe is different. You get a different energy.

But also you can do like high stakes interviews almost.

It's like the whole day kind of gets built around this interview,

which is not really the case when you do it online.

And you guys have been doing some high stakes interviews.

So you're doing stuff with, I mean, just recently,

as I saw the Tim Ferriss one, that was great.

And I'm guessing you're like me, that you grew up kind of like

really into Tim Ferriss's stuff and kind of admire him.

Yeah, it was pretty surreal.

And so that's a high stakes interview.

You did Mr. Beast. You did Dream.

You did a bunch of these things.

First, do you prefer like being the interviewee?

Or in this case, you're kind of like more the guests on the show.

Do you prefer guest or host?

I like to talk.

So like I like when we are the host and it is a conversation.

I think that's the most fun for me.

Like I do. I am a naturally curious person.

And, you know, along with higher stakes,

it's also like very, very interesting people

that I'm inherently curious about.

So that to me is really fun.

I think where it's, you know, where it gets challenging is

if you don't have chemistry,

but we actually now do pre-calls and kind of not like chemistry reads,

but we try and gauge what our chemistry is with the guest.

Because we've been in situations where the chemistry is not good.

And then you're like, OK, how do I like where do we go from here?

How does this work?

And when you're the producer of the show or it's your show in the middle of it,

you're like, OK, is this going to perform in your head?

Yeah. How do I edit this?

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

Yeah. So let's say you're doing one of these kind of like interviews,

your pump for a high stakes interview.

How do you kind of walk me through how you're preparing for that

and how you're like just kind of like getting ready to perform that?

Yeah. Yeah.

Actually, we've been really trying to establish our relationship with prep

because we found that sometimes if we're overly prepped,

I'm barely listening to the other person.

I just know where I'm going. My next talking point.

Yeah. I know where I'm going.

And also how much of them I listen to prior.

Because if I know their stories, I know their beats.

I'm kind of like, right, you know, a bit curiosity way.

Yeah. The curiosity way.

So been trying to explore that relationship.

We do have it like we have a team that essentially develops a research

doc with someone on our team who does that.

He's like, here's here's kind of like some origin story.

And we we structure it like a act one, act two, act three structure.

Where where is their origin story?

What's the inflection point?

Right. Where has that put them today?

Right. Because it's like, what was the tense part of the journey?

What what didn't work for them?

Do we know any of that?

Is there something we can ask about that creates an inflection point?

Because we are trying to tell a story with it.

Yeah. So we need to know the general themes

of what's happening in the origin, right?

The act one, what's happening in the conflict, the act two,

and then the resolution and the future.

Right. So that's like the most.

Without knowing all the details.

Without knowing all the details.

Yeah. So yeah, we're trying to establish a new relationship

with that of how much is it like curiosity and how much is it prep?

And I think that's become more substantial for us as the landscape

of interview shows is getting more and more saturated, right?

Like when we interviewed, you know, certain creators three years ago,

no one else was interviewing creators.

So it was kind of like, OK, this is a talk show for our own community.

Doesn't exist anywhere else.

Now we're a part of a group and that then pushes you to try and become

more singular and more differentiated and chemistry, how you show up,

who the hosts are matters. Right.

I think you guys have done actually a really good job of that.

I think about your show a lot because I think.

Tell me more. What do we do? What are we doing well?

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

Which is really hard, which is really hard in interviews.

But probably you have a better reception when it's just you and Sam.

Yeah. On a lot, right?

It's like when you're building a show that's guest dependent

or all about the guest bookings, it's like some people will look at this

and be like, I don't know where that is, so I'm not going to click on it.

Some people will give it a chance because they trust you.

But really, if if it's you and Sam, you can carry the show

and then you become less reliant on booking.

So I do think like Colin and I have been thinking a lot about that.

How do we instill some of that?

How do we think about that?

But we are just like the show takes us to really interesting people like Tim Ferris.

And so right now in this moment, it's like right in the way.

Yeah, you keep writing it like this is cool.

The type of outreach we have is really cool.

The people we get to talk to is really cool.

So you said something like, how do I show up?

Yeah, I think about this a lot because when it comes to like sports,

we're used to an athlete having like a pregame routine, a meal, a nap,

a stretch thing, a warm up, they're wearing the headphones,

they're listening to their song, they get the motivational speech,

they run out, they run out there, they do the warm ups and then they play.

Yeah. And but for other types of people who need to perform,

it's like, what are you doing?

Why do you need to do that?

Sit down and talk, right?

It seems so easy.

It's definitely presence.

Like you have to become very present in the conversation.

And so there's there's a couple of different things to try and do that for me.

Personally, I've discovered this 11 minute Wim Hof breath work.

Nice online.

That's just I think it's brutal.

I do that a lot.

Have you done it? Yeah.

Yeah, there's so many people who know this exact one.

It's like 11 minutes free YouTube, like top ranked YouTube.

And his his accent is amazing.

Like, come on, let's go.

Yeah, it's so good.

And like, that just gets me in the zone.

Like, I love doing that.

I want to do that right now.

Oh, guys. Yeah.

Do you do it laying down?

Yes, I do it laying down.

That's his way.

That's his way. On your back.

So we made a documentary about Wim years ago.

And so like, I've just been.

Which one? I mean, I might have seen it.

It's it's on Yes, There is Channel.

It's called Frozen Alive.

Colin and I actually edited that.

OK. Yes.

Yes, this is it.

This is it. It's so good.

Yeah.

Lie down, sit down, whatever it takes.

By the way, this is good as a like, I do this

like whenever we have like a team retreat or like we need to do something.

I'll be like, hey, guys, like if you if you're down,

let's do something a little bit weird.

Yeah.

Their boy, like what is he going to say?

And this is not so weird.

Totally. They're down with it.

And you definitely feel energized right at the end of it.

Yeah, I try and get present.

Like I try and take out a lot of the variables.

I think as we've built a team, what's been great is like,

it used to be me and Colin being like, OK,

where did the mics go? Where did the cameras go?

Or does lighting look good?

And that can be really stressful.

Yeah. I mean, for example, our most recent interview

with Mr. Beast when we went out to North Carolina,

you know, we were there for a full day prepping for the pod.

But at the last minute,

realized we didn't have a table and Colin and I went to a furniture store

in North Carolina two hours before we sat down with him.

And we're just scrambling to buy a table and then assemble it.

Had to arrange for it to be delivered.

And basically, it all happened within a matter of, you know,

that was a very stressful two hours prior to sitting down.

And I felt very not present in the first half of that. Right.

You know, I was I was just coming off like, OK, that that was intense.

Why didn't I think of that kind of immediately

already being retrospective of the process of, you know?

And so all of that stuff, I think you just have to eliminate.

I made a bunch of mistakes like that when

this podcast started with me doing long form interviews,

like the first 20 episodes were just me interviewing people at a studio and

whatever. And I kind of like got reps there.

And then it switched at like, I don't know, episode something 40 or something

like that to me and Sam as like a recurring thing, which was like way different prep.

You know, turnkey, turnkey set up, already have good chemistry.

Don't have to book guests, don't have to research guests,

just like be ready to talk about interesting things and like

just turn up the the the sort of charisma as much as you can.

But now that I got back into being like, all right,

let's try to like we have this amazing network.

These are fascinating people to talk to.

Let's just let's do it.

And I told Ben I called Ben after the first one.

I was like, dude, that was like an hour too long because I did three hours.

I was like, I thought I was Joe Rogan for a minute there.

I did three hours way too long.

And then I was like, I over prepped like crazy.

And I believe the thing you were saying where you're like, yeah, I'm listening.

But in my head, I'm like, OK, I'm supposed to be to this next.

I was like, that wasn't right.

And so hard before this, we went to Dave and 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.

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

If you don't have a local Dave and Buster's,

so you're unfortunate enough, I think you're going to say

if you don't have a local Wim Hof.

You always got Wim.

You've had a bunch of these.

Yes, 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

brains leaking out my ear like, who's done that for you recently?

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

You could say Tim. It's cool.

But tell me what was dope about the Tim one?

With Tim, it was the fact that he's been doing this for so long.

And and he really opened my eyes to this concept of having a very high quality

audience. And I look at Tim and I think he has like an incredibly high quality

audience. And I think we make a lot of sacrifices

because we distribute our stuff on YouTube for viewership.

Right, right. Like it is it's very odd that we have public performance

metrics next to our work.

There's very few other places where that happens.

Right. Like in business, it doesn't happen where you're like, here's

how well I'm doing.

And anyone can see that at any time.

If you go to a Shopify store, it doesn't just show you sales.

Yeah. How many sales has this had? Exactly.

The truest, rawest like benchmark.

Imagine walking into a grocery store and it just has like revenue under every

product. It's just it's a very odd thing that pushes us to make decisions

for larger viewership rather than higher quality viewership.

And I think sitting with Tim, it was a deep understanding of how he's built

a very high quality premium audience and a premium brand over a decade.

And I think that he said something in that interview to you.

He was like, there's always a market for like the best.

The best. Yeah. And he's like, so I wanted whatever the ads were priced at,

I was going to go like double that and do that.

That's how do I get that to be the thing?

Because that will always be there.

There will always be a market for whoever's got the highest quality audience

with the best ad read, you know, that's that'll always be there.

And I think that's played out.

Yeah. And I think 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 we're building audiences or media companies.

You know, like this has been done before and we should look far back at who's

done it really well. Yeah.

You know, and I think that sitting with Tim was that opportunity.

And, you know, almost as a self-fulfilling prophecy,

like the type of people who reached out to us after the Tim episode really

was emblematic of it is a high quality audience that watches Tim and that's

interested in him. It was not our highest performing episode.

Right. But it's one of my favorite.

And it's one that drove a lot of high quality outreach.

Right. And it reminded me of that, of we can get

really caught up in, you know, high viewership.

But I think that was something that that really pushed me in.

There's a lot of stuff in there.

There's something that I never forget that he said, which was if you do something

that is even slightly energy depleting, it will compound over time.

And to like really look at your day to day and recognize what is depleting your

energy, because it'll compound over 10 years.

When you say that, it's like, I feel like everybody can think of like the one

thing right away. Yeah.

That you haven't been like really paying that much attention to.

But when you did your brain is like, of course, it's this.

Yeah. And this is, you know, this is four hour work week from his book,

but he talked a lot about who are the right clients to have.

Like what you know, money is not we look at it as like, well, it's a lot of money.

So I'll sacrifice these things for it.

But if the client relationship isn't good, if it's depleting your energy,

if it's causing a strain on your team, it's not worth it.

And all those viewpoints are almost antithetical to our

the internet age of us being like, all of this is infinite.

Right. You know, we can always be making more money.

We should always be pursuing more viewership, more money, more of everything.

He came in with the perspective of what's the right money?

What's the right view?

So he said that energy depleting thing.

What did you think of for you?

I thought of like meetings.

Yeah, I'm like a creative person.

I like to be creative and I've kind of just spun myself up to be like,

we run a media company, so I need to operate like a media company owner.

And like, I think about hosting meetings or being on Zoom calls.

And I'm like, I really don't like it at all.

So the podcast once did a really funny rant where he was like,

you know, he's a long buildup.

He's like, you know, I've been, you know, we sold the hustle this many months ago.

It's been six months.

I've talked to this person, this person, I've thought about all these things.

You know what I realize?

I'm a fucking artist, man.

And I was like, it's not what he thinks is coming when he says it.

And he also doesn't like, like he doesn't come across like an artist.

Like some people that the way they dress, what they do, you're like, that's an artist.

Yeah. And he's like, I'm a fucking artist, man.

I just need to create and I wanted to keep doing that.

No matter what the situation is, I should have, they said, be an investor.

I tried. I don't want to do that.

I don't want to do that shit. You know, I stopped doing it all together.

I just want to be an artist.

And I think about that a lot, actually.

I think there's like a great way to like kind of draw a line in the sand.

Or I'm like, you know what?

This is what I am because it gives me a bunch of energy.

And like, what is what is that not like, you know?

And how do I just not have to do it?

Maybe I don't have to do it at all.

I think sometimes I operate from an old model with a new business where,

you know, I grew up, my dad's an entrepreneur.

I'm from an Indian immigrant family.

Like it was all about going to his office,

you know, clocking in the morning, clocking out, like being there every day,

being present in front of your team.

And I think we're just in a new world where it's like, is that do I need to operate

like that as a creative, as a creator?

I found myself that another thing that Tim said was it was a quote from Whitney

Cummings, but he said, if art imitates life, then you have to have a life.

And I think that the the mentality of like, I really want to succeed is,

hey, I'm going to go to my office.

I'm going to grind every day.

I'm going to work really hard.

But then as a creative person or as someone who's on a podcast, it's like, well,

now I have very little experiences to talk about.

Or, you know, it's kind of like I can tell you about the coffee shop

down the street from here where I get coffee every day.

And then I come and sit here all day.

Right. I'm so routine.

Why does anyone want to listen to this?

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

There's a thing I realized, which was my my grandfather,

like, what does your grandfather do or one of your grandfathers?

Like, did they like have like a factory job or like any like?

Yeah, my grandfather that I knew, because the other one passed before I was born,

had a like train engineering job in India.

Yeah, almost exactly the same.

My grandfather saw me engineering like a chemical plant of some kind.

He worked there and like, to him, work was you come to the factory

where the the ingredients are coming in, they're getting processed.

There's fumes everywhere and like, that's what work is.

And there's like a shift supervisor.

Yeah. And then if he saw what my dad did, which was like,

go to work with a briefcase, there's a computer on your desk.

You sit in it like kind of cubicle or desk like, oh, sorry, office.

And, you know, you take phone calls or you get on a flight and go to a business

meeting where you're going to shake a hand and maybe do a paper contract deal.

Like that was kind of my dad's job.

That's like what work became. Right.

It's just kind of unrecognizable and looks much less serious

than the chemical plant or the the fertilizer factory or whatever.

And then like to my dad, what I do, he's like, are you ever going to work?

Like, what are you doing? You're sitting in front of your phone.

You know, you're talking to who who's listening to this.

You get paid for this.

Like, well, if I get a bunch of views, then yes.

Or like, you know, sometimes, you know, if it's like I'm working,

it's like, no, you're just fucking around on YouTube.

It's like, right. That's exactly what I do.

I like I'm looking for the most interesting things in the world.

I'm synthesizing and I'm going to talk about it.

But it's like our version of work is unrecognizable to like

you know, our parents.

And I'm like, oh, like I just have kids and I just have two little kids.

I'm like, whatever they're going to do is probably going to blow my mind.

It's going to be so super unrecognizable.

It's super unrecognizable.

But every generation does that.

I'm like, oh, that's kind of interesting.

Like I should kind of not write off those things that look like complete not work.

And like our company got bought like Twitch,

which is like if you watch people playing video games for a living,

it's like what this is not work.

That was a very confusing era.

I mean, even now at, you know, in my mid thirties,

when I look at what a 20 year old creator is doing, it's it's hard for me to track.

You know, I spend a lot of time on YouTube.

I spend a lot of time talking to YouTube creators.

But this next wave of creators is kind of like, wait, what's happening?

What's going on?

What's the name of the girl who's like going viral because she's like a pinkie doll?

Yeah. Yeah.

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

I don't know. Is that what our kids are going to do?

They're going to bring a machine.

All of this is so like it brings so much about like, who are we as people?

Like, what what is that that we're into?

Have you seen this thing?

It's really strange.

Have you seen Pinkie Doll?

Basically, she's she's just standing there and like people are donating

using the TikTok live thing.

Have you guys seen this?

Yeah, there it is.

Ice cream is so good.

Take a Jackie.

Gang gang, gang gang, gang gang.

Oh, special gang gang, gang gang gang gang gang gang gang gang.

The moon gang gang gang gang gang gang.

That was good.

A little name. He had whatever if they donate the cowboy,

she always says the same thing the same way, like a like she's a bot.

And she's just making like, I don't know, like what was she making?

Like seven thousand dollars a day, seven thousand dollars a day.

Good gang gang gang gang gang.

There's all these funny memes to have like guys filming their girlfriend

like doing this now.

I know. I think it says a lot about what we crave as audiences.

Obviously, there's like a lot there to unpack of what we're into.

But the interactivity, like you think back to entertainment,

even when we were growing up, it was like the TV told you what was on

the lean back experience, right?

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

And you may not even know you don't know you're super into these

like niche cooking shows until the till chopped comes out.

And you're like, oh, exactly.

I didn't know I wanted to watch other people cook.

But I don't know if you remember the TV guide channel.

It was a TV guide channel.

You just waited, told you what was on Channel 12.

And if you missed it, you had to wait a whole another hundred channels

scrolled by. So that was like a very lean back experience where we were like,

OK, you tell us what's what to watch. Right.

And then as we progressed, there was like Tivo and it was more on demand.

It's like, oh, shit, we can record a show and like have it on demand or see what's coming up.

And now you accelerate it all the way to YouTube or Instagram.

And it's like, I can search for what I want.

I can curate my own entertainment.

Now it's I can create my own entertainment.

Right. I can pay money and she will do something.

Yes. That's like in that's the next level, right?

It's like interactive entertainment where I'm not consuming it.

I'm creating the entertainment.

I'm part of making part of it. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that's what, you know, Twitch, I think is a great example of that too.

Right. Like people people watching long live streams.

Why? It's because they can have an impact on it.

Yeah, I think people don't really even actually understand what's going on with Twitch.

Like now I think it's accepted that Twitch is a thing,

which took a while to be like, is that like a big deal?

And it's like, yeah, it's actually a pretty big deal.

But I think unless you use Twitch, I think people still sort of think

the default is probably like

Twitch is people watching other people with video games live.

And so maybe they're really good at the game.

It's like, yeah, that's part of it.

But then some people are, you know, like a lot of people are just there for the chat.

A lot of people just using this background noise in another tab.

Like I remember looking at some data when we were there about how many people are literally just

that's not the focused tab on Chrome.

And some people were like, well, we should we should like discount that.

And it's like you talk to users like, no, that's like how I like to use Twitch.

I'm not just it's not like an accident and it's just running in the background.

Like I listen to it while I work and I'm coding and I'm listening to this.

And I'll check back in like every every time something interesting is happening.

I hear the crowd war.

Basically, I go look at the score and I go see what's going on.

To me, it's like the reinvention of the radio, right?

Twitch has really operated like that.

But then again, where you get to play a part in it, Ludwig was another creator

that we talked to on the show where he has developed this kind of adversarial

relationship with his chat.

Yeah, because the way you said it was interesting, you go, it's kind of boring

if everybody just if there's also just supportive.

Right. Yeah.

It's like you're right.

And I was like, I never really thought of it that way.

And he's not adversarial like they hate each other.

How would you describe it?

Like what is what's an example of like what's going on on his channel?

It is so odd.

There's so many different things that go on.

I would say his subathons are probably the thing to to bring into focus,

which is essentially, you know, he'll go live for he initially started as 24 hours.

But every time you subscribe, every new subscriber, he extended it.

Right. So essentially, they worked for me.

Yeah, it was an adversary.

Right. It was like, I want this to end.

But when you take this action, it extends.

Right. Right.

Extends an hour.

So he ended up doing it for 30 days straight,

livestream for 30 days straight.

But again, now.

But it was OK.

It was fun while it lasted.

But that's an example of like having an adversary relationship,

which is, you know, kind of like you can interact,

but you're bringing me discomfort, right, you know, by by doing this.

So it makes it fun for the audience to to play with that.

And it's obviously like a joking relationship.

Yeah. But there's something that's, you know, fun about that.

And I think we should really think about these audiences,

the young audiences that are growing up with this.

What do they want next?

Right. Because we are we are thinking about

like the advancements of entertainment in the context of what we had

and how advanced this is that we can self publish on the internet.

Right. And that people can comment and we can have discord servers

and we can engage with them.

But there's there's a whole nother, you know, version of participation.

Even think about TikTok.

Like why do why did TikTok become such a big thing?

It's participation.

It's like it was easy to participate for anybody to make.

Yeah, it's easy to and they told you what to do. Right.

Here's the trend. Here's the dance.

Here's the dance. Here's how you do it.

Here's a hundred videos of people doing it.

Here's the sound. You try.

Click this. You try it now, right?

Yeah. So the even you look at Pinky Doll, right?

What we're just talking about for you to do that,

for your eye to start doing that, it's we just start a live account.

That's it. We just start like there's the participation is so easy

where we can either participate in the actual live stream

or become that creator within a matter of minutes.

What do you think's next?

Where do you see the puck going with that?

I think it's hard to predict, but it's hard to predict.

But I think anyone could, it might be you.

Yeah, but I think I think what we have to realize is that

TikTok taught us a lot about the fact that the platform is the creator

in that context, right?

Like if you take the top 10 creators off of TikTok,

TikTok still TikTok, right?

You still open it and it's a for you page.

You wouldn't even notice.

It's almost reverting back to the lean back experience.

I open TikTok and I say, you tell me what's going on, right?

Back to what we were just talking about with TV.

It's just that it's personalized to every single person.

Yeah, so it's hyper personalized, I think is number one, right?

When we think about the trends that are coming, which is already happening.

But I think also

like participation forward.

So it's like it's personalized,

but it's really easy for me to engage in the action too.

And I think that's where maybe there's like two extremes.

There's the Mr. Beast, where it's like, I can't do.

I can't buy a train and have it go into a ditch,

which is something he did in this last video.

And then the opposite end of the spectrum is like,

here's what's happening on YouTube Shorts or TikTok.

And actually really easy for me to do that and I can try it myself.

I'm in San Francisco.

If you walk around SF, you know, you can't like, you know,

you stub your toe is like, what did I step on?

Oh, AI, like nothing is the answer to everything is AI.

And I kind of wonder if the answer to this is also AI,

meaning you see that AI can draw amazing art, like a paint.

You know, it could paint better than, you know, a human campaign.

It could paint anything you want instantly, whatever.

It can write, it can make, you know, chat, you can make rap lyrics.

And so I wonder, you know,

do we just get to the point where actually the creator is the algorithm is the creator.

It just is hyper personalized.

And here's just like, it's going to just deep fake and create something

that it thinks you like, and it's just going to try 10,000 variations per second.

And then if anything starts to work, it starts to like go more down that rabbit hole

for, for more creators, for more people.

It might not even be a creator.

It might just be self-generating video, right?

That's what I mean. Yeah, that's an algorithm is just making the video.

It's just making the content.

OK, people seem to like, because they have, I mean, an unreal amount of data, right?

They're like, people like to hear people eat.

Have you and Sam been deep faked yet?

Have you heard of my first million deep fakes?

Yeah, I've heard of audio only, not a video one, but audio only version.

That's a fake conversation.

And how close was it?

I mean, it's like, like, OK, if somebody listened to it,

my family member who doesn't listen to the pod, listen to it.

They would just think this is the podcast.

Yeah, because it doesn't sound robotic.

Right. There's little moments, but it's like kind of passable.

If you don't know what deep fakes are, you'd be like, I guess it just sounded like that.

If you listen to the pod, you'd be like, oh, you're cool,

but you're not really, like, substantively saying anything.

Like, did you hear the one where they did Joe Rogan talking to Steve Jobs?

Yeah. And that one was pretty good.

I think they kind of edited it to make a cool demo.

I listened to Joe Rogan and Sam Altman, which is it's a YouTube channel

called the Joe Rogan AI experience.

And I genius idea.

Yeah, it's a genius idea.

But I clicked on it to find out, like, Joe Rogan and Sam Altman

talking about open AI and how ChatGPT works.

Right.

Started listening to it to be like, what does this sound like?

I want to hear one.

And then I just was like, wait, this is just good and interesting.

Right. And then I just found myself listening to it.

And then I was like, do I care?

So if we can do that with the like 0.1, then you just have to believe, like, OK,

inevitably, that's where it goes.

There's been a few of these that go viral, right?

Yeah.

Like the kind of AI, fake AI things.

Like there's one on Twitch.

I don't know if you've seen the Twitch one of Biden and Trump debating.

Yes. I think where we're going to see this all really skyrocketed is during the election, for sure.

Yeah. Right. And it's going to get really weird, crazy and weird.

I brought it up about you because it happened to me and Colin recently,

where it was a video of me, Colin and Mr. Beast talking about an online casino

that he had started.

And it was also our lips were also defaked.

And is it on YouTube or? No, it's taken down.

We got to take it down.

We got to take it down pretty fast.

But you're like, it's cool, but fuck that.

Yeah, it was really compelling.

But I mean, it was too compelling.

Like people could click on it to just the untrained eye.

It's like, oh, that could have been a moment from the podcast I didn't watch.

I've had conversations with my parents about like, hey, be careful if someone calls you

and you think it's me, let's develop like a safe word, basically.

With all this, like when you ask me what's next,

the thing that's been on my mind the most is physical experiences.

OK, I actually think that we're going to want things that are uniquely human.

In the coming years, I think we're going to want things that are like

collective human experiences where like stand up comedy.

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.

I think we're going to want that.

And I think there's a lot of digital creators

who are building really promising communities where people will show up.

But a lot of online creators who are building high viewership,

but no one would actually show up to something that they do.

And I think that's and what's the difference?

I think the difference is

the amount of personality that you inject into your videos

and if people are willing to connect with that, right?

Like long form podcasting is there's people who spend more time with you and Sam

than they do talking to their own mom or their their own best friend.

So they have this like really in-depth

parasocial relationship, you guys have done live events, people come.

Yeah. Right.

And I think there's other creators who rip all of that out

because they're looking at the algorithm and they're like, you know what?

When I inject my personality, right, 10 percent of people stop watching.

But they're looking at it on a on a view of like five million people.

And they'd rather have five million views than four point five million views.

But when I look at it, I'm like, I think I'd rather have

100,000 views or 100,000 dedicated fans who are who walk away knowing something

about one more unit of trust who are who are down to listen to me talk

and understand my personality, then try and rip all of that out

to make sure they get to the end of the video.

And that is that is how like the business of YouTube is predicated on.

Do they click and do they watch till the end?

But I think sometimes that can give you the wrong signals of

what should I keep in?

What should I keep out?

And again, back to the conversation of high quality audience.

I think the young creators, it's like it's like playing video games on YouTube.

Right. If I try this, then this number goes up.

Right. Right.

And I think that is too easy to manipulate right now.

And there's there's so much information.

I think we're we're part of that of like sharing information on how that all works.

But you do have to take a step back and be like, am I building a brand?

And a brand is about trust, credibility, depth of connection.

And that comes from some stuff that might not be optimized for the algorithm.

Yeah, there's a sort of like dropshipping versus like building

an actual brand around what you do, right?

Like, yeah, that's a good cop.

There's I don't know if you ever saw when Sony got hacked.

Do you remember that when the emails were hacked?

Yeah, there was one email that I remember came out that was like pretty interesting.

And I think it was one of the early Sony guys talking to the CEO.

And he was one of the it wasn't maybe the early center 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.

And he's like, basically, the more popular this gets, like, you know,

people streaming music at home, blah, blah, blah.

He's like, it's also creating a pent up demand for what he called.

He's like, I think out of home entertainment is going to be big.

And he's like out of home entertainment like he's like festivals will do well.

This was like a while back.

And there was like this kind of like pretty big music festival craze

that kind of came out of it.

But there was also a couple of other like trends like that, like

even things like Tough Mudder and Spartan Race.

All of a sudden people were like, you know what, I just want to like go

and voluntarily crawl through mud this weekend.

Right. Why would somebody want to do that?

It's like, yeah, kind of because you're sitting in front of a computer all day.

Life got too easy and you kind of feel soft inside.

So you go voluntarily have this like hardship,

but also you want to be able to Instagram it and put it online that you did it.

Yeah, I think I totally agree with that.

And I mean, obviously that that's what happened.

But I think AI is going to create like this homogenous nature to content

where everything's going to feel the same.

And that is going to make us crave something completely unique and different.

Almost like looking for like AI has brought a lot of efficiencies into our studio.

We use AI for a lot.

Like what do you guys use?

Autopod, are you familiar with that?

No, what are they?

So there's there's three cameras right now.

Right. And so basically you would bring these three

cameras in and you want to get a clarity on like,

if I'm talking the cameras on me, if you're talking the cameras on you.

Oh, it does those cuts.

It just does those cuts automatically.

If it's a three hour conversation, it'll do it in 90 seconds.

Oh, that's amazing.

And it'll be very precise when you start talking.

It'll go there.

If you have a human here live switching, which I don't know if someone's watching.

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

So if he's live switching with a switcher,

he actually can't predict when you're about to start talking, right?

He's going to be a second late.

So now I do I trust the human more?

Do I trust the AI more?

I mean, the reality is it's brought a ton of efficiency into our office.

That's cool.

We also explore YouTube titles and play around with AI to be like,

hey, here's the title we thought of, but give us 10 variations.

And sometimes maybe it's it's ours that we like.

Right.

But if we keep going down that path, you know, the other day we were in a chat

GPT or a different tool, chat GPT.

But there's there's other like creator specific AI tools.

There's some that aren't public, that can only be used if you're

partnered with certain, you know, creator companies, specifically,

there's a company called Spotter that has a really great AI tool that I was using this morning.

And the funny thing is like you're sitting in a room 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?

I don't know the answer to that, but I think probably it's AI, right?

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.

And right. It's like the slow food movement.

Totally. It's like from the table.

Exactly. Fast food gets too present.

Yeah. It creates the demand, the craving for the other for the inefficiency.

What I've seen, though, is that even though that gets created,

it does usually end up getting dwarfed by the thing.

Of course, you know, better, faster, cheaper, you know, like style of stuff.

The entertainment, I think, is different.

Like you go to a concert, it's the most inefficient way to hear the music.

Right. The Taylor Swift concert.

Right. If you like Taylor Swift music and you just want to hear it,

just go on Spotify. Right. You're one tap away.

So why do you want this collective experience?

Why do you want to drive, deal with parking, get in there,

you know, get to your seat?

It's kind of a pain in the ass to go to a concert, right?

So what is it about that that's, you know, it's a it only happens once, right?

It's like an experience that you get to happen.

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

Yes. And we'll go to that. I agree.

But, you know, she'll make a lot of money and monetize totally, totally differently.

Yeah.

Tell me about Mr. Beast.

So I've gotten to go to his place and hang out with him a little bit.

Pretty remarkable dude.

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 of working.

And you can kind of see some differences between how he approaches things.

Like for me, I was like, oh, how does he approach things?

How does he see situations and approach things differently than I do?

And he came on the pod, but it actually was like nothing he said on the pod

would have given me that insight, but actually watching him work

and like kind of being in a brainstorm with him.

Then you do start to see those differences.

I think you've gotten a lot of access to those moments.

Yeah.

What's what stood out to you that you've kind of like picked up or noticed

just by spending a little time with him?

I would say he's like the most unique human I have ever met.

I think he's like very, very unique in what he cares about.

You know, I think what he cares about is very different from,

you know, what I care about or what a lot of people care about.

He's what does he care about?

He like is is so unique in the fact that he is laser focused

in a way that I've never really experienced and and maybe at times

like in a way that I don't want to experience.

Yeah, just I don't want to.

No, I mean, him and I have this conversation a lot.

Like I I don't crave what he has.

I like to have more of a wide perspective on life

and a view of different types of experiences.

And he's very committed to his craft and very like he can laser focus in on something.

Like if you've been in one of those brainstorms with him, he's just like very blunt.

He's very, you know, he's just like, why would we do that?

That doesn't make sense.

Like no, doesn't it doesn't exist in the same way for him that it exists

for other people based on social context or based on like, well, it's saying this.

He said no, doesn't exist for him.

Yeah, the same way it exists for other people.

I think that's really accurate.

Yes. I have a story of an example of that.

Many stories of that.

Yeah, I think the time where I saw that the most was at the Mr.

Beesberger opening in New Jersey at the American Dream Mall.

Colin and I was insane.

We spent the 24 hours with him before and after

and lived with him through this like what felt like a hurricane storm of fandom

and new experiences for him and Reed and the whole team.

Did you think it was going to be go to the part where he walks out?

He walks out.

Dude, that was.

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

Are you this camera?

I'm this camera that I submit.

Yeah, like later.

He's famous.

But I was like, this is not what I thought was going to be.

I mean, there's multiple times where I had the chills filming this video.

So I filmed that clip and then Jimmy was like, that's crazy.

Send me that and I sent it to him and then he tweeted it.

And it was just like, it's completely insane.

But so that experience, there was the night before there was a question

around like how many burgers they could serve.

And there was already, I think, you know, 15 or 20,000 people

there the night before, right?

It was completely insane.

And they were sleeping in the mall.

Mall security was there and they were just like, OK, all right, I guess.

No, I don't think anyone fully understood how big he was at that moment.

And so they were like, OK, we don't know if we can serve all these people.

And Jimmy was just like, what?

What do you mean?

Let's just figure it out.

Like, what do we need to do?

And they're like, it's just not possible.

We can't get more supplies here.

And he was like, well, can can we pay for it?

Can we just pay someone to do it?

And he was like, well, I don't, you know, I don't think so.

I don't think that's possible.

And basically what ended up happening was it was possible.

And Jimmy just kept pushing right at a point where, again, it's like

a lot of people would be like, OK, that's a no.

If I ask three times, it's a no.

Yeah, yeah, there's no other possibility.

Oh, the fire marshal said it.

He's like, yeah, whatever.

Yeah. And I think he thinks in different ways, too, of like,

you know, that his immediate thought was around the staff.

He was like, I need the staff to be really into this.

I need them to be on it.

And so he's like, I'm going to pay everyone an extra $1,000 today.

And that is 30,000.

There's 30 people working.

It was $30,000.

And it's in our video where he says I'm going to pay all of you guys

an extra $1,000 to whatever you're getting paid today.

Right. That's like an irrational thing to do.

A lot of people would look at that and be like, that's kind of irrational

to spend an additional $30,000.

But, you know, he looks at that and he was like,

this is what I need to make this excellent.

Right. We're just going to do that, you know?

And you look at what he tweets about now, too.

He spends, you know, a million or $2 million on a video

and it makes 200,000 in AdSense revenue.

And, you know, obviously his sponsors and stuff,

but some of his videos don't make money.

And he's just like, but that's they're good.

Right.

You know, he thinks in just different ways like that.

Yeah, that's very unique.

I feel the same way.

He also said some things.

He also said some things that were like really funny to me.

Like he was like, I was like,

so do you want to like have kids or like, what's your like?

What do you want out of life?

Besides, I've heard the YouTube part and I was like,

what else do you want?

And I think he said he was like, I want to be president.

I want to do this.

I want to be a billionaire.

I was like, OK, cool.

But like, what about just like out of your life?

Like, forget the big, cool sounding things.

Like, do you want to get married and have kids?

Like, what do you want to do?

And he was like, he's like, yeah, you know, I he's like,

yeah, I'll I think I'll probably like, you know, date or get married or whatever.

He's like, I wouldn't want kids.

No, fuck, no, I don't want kids.

And I was like, oh, why not?

He's like, oh, he's like, actually, you know, like Steve and Elon,

they have kids, there's probably something to it.

So I'll do it.

And I was like, I'm first just hilarious to be like, yeah.

Just like the first name base literally like the dead Steve Jobs

who you never met and be like, he's just like, that's that's the class of people I'm in.

Yeah.

You know, if those people did it, it might be something to it.

So I'll do it just kind of for that reason.

But I don't feel the need for that because I'm on this mission.

And like, you know, that's where my head's at right now.

I have seen him, you know, just being friends with him and having conversations.

And we just did another podcast with him recently.

I have seen him mature quite a bit.

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

Of course. Yeah.

You know, he wasn't even I don't know how old is it.

I remember laughing at something and I was like,

dude, he's so much smarter, more mature than I was at 24, 23, whatever.

It's just different, though.

Again, it's that's not I don't I didn't have any friends like him

when I was in my early 20s.

I think he's he's a very rare individual and he's 25 now

and he's maturing into he runs a company with over 100 plus employees.

He's he's got this like whole massive operation, this massive platform.

And he's 25.

It's it's going to be interesting to watch the next five years.

If you were to advise him, what would you tell him?

I think he's already experiencing some of this

where he's looking at his content and injecting more storytelling into it,

which I think is really, really smart and something that Colin and I

have been talking to him about for a long time.

Yeah. You know, it's the same thing I was saying earlier of I think

it's OK to have a deeper connection with him and with the with the content

and with the contestants that he has on there.

And he can sacrifice some of the, you know, hyper retention editing for that.

I also, you know, a year ago, probably would have told him

he potentially is doing too many things.

And he's already, you know, refocused, right?

He's he's really just focused on the main channel and festivals.

And if you think about a year ago, Beesberger,

Feastables, Main Channel, Reacts, Gaming, right?

These are all different things he's doing.

Right. Plus 25 other amazing opportunities.

Yeah. People who want to meet him.

And this is not right.

Everything will tug your attention away.

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

But as you as you grow up, as you mature,

it's like, what do you say yes to what do you say no to?

And when you're at that platform where you have any and every opportunity,

how do you focus? It's it's hard.

Well, the way I put it is he can be excellent at any of those,

but probably not all of them.

Not all of them. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Not at the same time.

Yeah. You can do anything.

You just can't do everything at the same time.

Because as a creator in a creator led business,

you are the bottleneck for everything.

And I've spent time with him.

He is the bottleneck for everything, right?

Like he needs to be pulled into the room to look at something he has,

you know, say on all of that stuff, and he also has the right, you know,

mind for it. That's the reason that company is so big

and why he's built such a big platform.

So where do you inject that?

Is it across 20 projects or is it across two?

And, you know, I think they've they've really refocused

and focused on on and every one of these platforms has like a guy

at a certain time or a girl at a certain time.

That's like the one they're like, you know, you know,

whether it was like Casey Neistat or PewDiePie,

like kind of they have these like epic arcs

and they're the top of the mountain.

And then most of them either literally stop creating

because they kind of they transition careers.

They get burnt out, whatever it is, or they're still creating,

but they're just not like there's the new wave of new people doing new cool shit.

He is kind of remarkable, though.

So, you know, he may have a different path or trajectory than than most.

If you if I was to say, all right, make a prediction five years from now,

what is like today if Mr.

Bees is like, you know, the number one YouTube creator and like launching

a couple of these businesses underneath like Feastables and whatnot,

five years from now, do you think he's still the number one creator on YouTube?

I think he's probably the number one online digital media company.

I don't know that, you know, I don't know what creator is going to mean

in that many years.

Like, I think he has the best pulse on on online storytelling right now.

And I think, you know, we saw some people try this, like the BuzzFeeds,

the, you know, like these these massive media companies that emerge.

I think he's more akin to a media company than he is a creator.

So that's what I think.

I think he'll be the biggest media company.

The way he's building is like a true company.

It's a great vibe there.

If you've been there, you know, like it's they have good people involved.

So I don't know.

I don't I don't know, you know, what the content looks like.

I don't know what he as the creator looks like, but I think it will be

a a media company like when we sat with him last in our last interview,

he has a ton of aspirations to make content for Netflix.

He has a ton of aspirations to produce stuff.

And, you know, I don't think he's that keen or intent on he has to be in everything

or he has to be the lead in everything.

I think that's been the that is the draw right now.

But I think in the future, it Mr.

Beast is a content studio, you know, it could be we could be looking at

like we don't know if we're not looking at the next Disney or Paramount or,

you know, some massive studio that can build IP and monetize it in different ways.

Like Mr. Beast is the first.

If we look at it and saying that's the first show that was built out of there, right?

It's a game show that has a couple of different formats.

It's distributed.

It's the biggest show they built a chocolate brand out of that that operates kind of

like a game show.

You can win stuff when you buy the chocolate, right?

So it's like, OK, that looks and feels really similar to like a Disney and a Mickey mouse,

right? OK, let's let's build this big media platform.

Let's build a product connected to it there.

They have that skill set.

They probably replicate that, right?

And as you look at their cast of characters, you know, there is a cast of characters

there that can be built out.

There is more IP that can be built out.

It's like build IP connect product to it, right?

You know, or connect experiences to it.

It could be an experience, too.

Yeah, if he chooses to to go that path, I want to talk about this.

This is amazing.

Yeah. So your content, your content company did something pretty dope.

You guys did, I think it was a hundred editions or a thousand editions.

We had 500 of those.

No, no, no, but this was to celebrate.

It was to celebrate two years of our newsletter.

Two years. Yeah, two years of the newsletter, the published press.

So you got this newsletter, the published press, which is dope.

It's like, you know, what you guys do on the YouTube channel?

Sort of like creator, great newsletter for creators.

I mean, it was largely inspired by like the Morning Brew Hustle movement, right?

Yeah, which was like, OK, we are subscribers to these newsletters.

What if we made one about our own community?

Yeah. And then then you made an actual physical newspaper.

I'm very honored because you pretty much sold out of these.

This was dope. Why do something like this?

Because I'm asking because this isn't like an economic move.

This is not going to grow your audience.

It's not going to get you rich.

Yeah, it's not going to do any of those things.

It takes effort. Yeah, it's a risk in a little in a way.

What's your philosophy on just do dope shit like this? Why?

It just it's fulfilling.

Like it's it's hard to say that we have a hard nose philosophy on it.

It's just like we are creative people.

And as we've built a business,

like one of the things that's so interesting about being a creative

is you're really good at kind of zero to one and the like,

let's just do cool shit until something works.

What becomes startling is when something works.

And then you're like, OK, so what now?

I just keep doing this thing.

And that's like that's the really funny thing about Colin and I always say

that creatives aren't consistent people.

Right.

And so we've surrounded ourselves with really consistent people

who help us be consistent in the formats that we found.

But you need that occasional pop of just like, you know, it'd be cool

to make a newspaper. Right.

Like we we were rebranding the publish press.

That's a new logo for it.

We just were like, how do we how do we tell people that we've been doing

this for two years? How do we celebrate?

It also was we had just crossed 100,000 subscribers on the newsletter.

And it was like, how do we celebrate this moment?

Right. What is it?

Do we just put out a tweet that's like, hey, it's been great.

And we were like, well, as things are getting more increasingly more digital,

what if we did something physical?

And that was it. That was the impetus.

And then it was just, hey, is everyone excited about this?

OK, cool. Are we down to stay up late at night for this?

Great. And that's it just organically happens when you there's a lot of people

who we asked about this and they were like, that's, you know, we that's not

going to happen in the time period that we wanted to happen in.

And then that's another exciting thing for a creative person who's driven.

I found the challenge. That's another exciting thing.

So, yeah, I would say that it's again, like it cost us money.

We did not make money from this.

There's no sponsor in it or anything.

It didn't, you know, dramatically grow our audience.

But it has been a moment where a lot of people could understand what the brand was.

And a lot of big creators reached out to say, can I have one?

Yeah. You know, I want one in my house.

And then we were seeing that creators have framed it and put it in their house

seeing that there's just something for one.

Yeah, you asked me. You DM'd us and asked for one.

And like that to me is like, again, back to this concept of high quality audience.

It's like the people who reached out about this.

It's a premium.

And the real ask is because it's like in retrospect,

once you see the final product in school, then you hear these stories.

And it's like, yeah, all these things make sense.

And hindsight, it's up front when it's kind of unknown,

kind of unproven, tight deadline, you know, a lot of things to do.

That's when it's hard to do this or or sometimes you say yes to too many of these things.

Right. So it's almost like what you just said kind of reminds me of like Google

had like the 20 percent time.

Yeah, I would get hired the best engineers in the world.

And like this guy's fixing the bug in the AdSense platform.

But like we got to give these guys like 20 percent time to just tinker and hack

on stuff that that they get motivation from.

And like on logically, you'd say, well, you're losing 20 percent

time is basically one day, one day out of out of the week that they're not

working on on this on their main job.

But the reality is that like sometimes those hit and also it makes the other

four days out of the week more productive.

You don't actually lose anything totally because you attract the best people

and you gave them an outlet to like be creative.

And also if you're not following what's exciting you,

then you're just you built yourself a job.

And that's like, then you have to look at it and be like, wait, what did I just do?

What did I just do?

I also think that what we do with our merchandise and what we do with anything

physical, like most of it at the moment is not driving crazy revenue, right?

It's not like a revenue driver for us.

But we think about building our community and we're very niche.

And so for niche creators, we think about collectibles, like we want to create

collectibles. That's right. Yeah.

And when we have collectibles, then you get to be a part of our community

and be like, I'm it's the feeling of going to see a band when you were younger

and keeping the ticket stop.

It's like I was a part of this community at this moment.

Right. So these are collectibles along the way of of our journey.

You think about the the massive creators like Logan Paul and Mr.

Beast or Emma Chamberlain, they're creating consumables, which is great for mass creators.

Right. So these these things are like cool collectibles that we think are cool.

Like we're planning another drop in in October.

And our merchandise does not, you know, drive like crazy amounts of revenue for us.

It's relatively nominal.

But it's awesome when you walk down the street and see someone in the merch,

we sold, you know, 2000 of these hats and they're they're out in the world.

And right, 2000 people are wearing them.

And we we we see stories where people connect because they saw someone else

wearing the merch. So that to me is like the symbol of community,

building this tight knit group who can connect and be like,

I'm part of the same group as you identify in the same world as you do.

Totally. We I love the way you put it.

It's a great frame on that idea of consumables versus collectibles.

When we were about to launch like merch for the pod or whatever.

And it was like, oh, yeah, merch and it's like, OK, here's two things I know.

Number one, people don't want to wear our like for us.

It was like, they're not going to wear a shirt.

This is my first million. This is not going to happen. It's not cool.

I don't want to wear that. They don't want to wear that.

Let's just all agree on that.

What they will wear is like inside jokes and slang that only if you know,

you know, and if you don't, you don't know small stuff.

Yeah, no small boy stuff or like I have this shirt that

it's a we made that's a Polaroid of it's like a fuzzy Polaroid of Sam

when he had his hot dog stand.

It's like in the style of those like Kanye shirt or whatever.

It's like some like cool, cool looking like it's like an imitation of that.

It's like nobody will even know who that is.

Or what you can't even tell that it's a hot dog stand.

But like if you know, you know, and that's and that's it.

And I was like, we should just do.

I was like, 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

or it should be like as just sell it at cost.

But like and do like a limited run so that it's more interesting.

Totally. And just only like if you're going to try to make money,

only make money when you're going to make a lot of money.

Don't try to like trickle a little bit of beg for money everywhere

because that doesn't like nobody likes that.

And that's not the right approach for something like this.

And a lot of our merchants also a right way to think about it.

A lot of our merchant shipments are driven by a referral program

through the newsletter, right?

And so that's like, you know, again, that's like pulling from the playbook.

Yeah, the whole the newsletter playbook.

You had this tweet or this video that I saw that was like a nevol quote that I really liked.

It was it said like was it was like,

your problem is that you're writing to be read. Yes.

That resonated with you and me.

I want to like talk about that.

Why did that hit? Because so simple.

It's like, you know, seven words or something.

I think it hit me at a time where I felt like we were creating very scared.

The beginning of this year, I felt like we were creating very scared.

Like we had crossed a million subscribers last year.

We felt like we had built a brand in the space and opened up the year.

We made a few videos that we just can't.

We just didn't put them out because we were like, oh, those aren't going to work

for the audience, but we liked them and got really in our heads around, you know, again,

you're playing this dance as a creator of what you want to make,

what the audience wants to watch and what the platform wants.

Those are the three things that we think you're you're constantly playing with.

And if you overvalue what the audience wants, you will you're catering to,

you know, this group that obviously they have created your career if you know,

you've made it, but you can't forget that it came from what you wanted to make.

I think on one side of the spectrum of, you know, being a publisher or being a creator,

there is the artist who's like, I do not care what you think I'm going to make this.

And that has financial implications, right?

That are essentially very hard to make money like that, but very cool.

We respect artists like that, right?

There's some most respected artists like are misunderstood, maybe understood

once they pass or just didn't care about what the audience thought.

Right. Your interpretation doesn't matter to them.

Then you go on the love that you exist.

But like, sure, I like walk on my Chipotle.

You know, I'm just going to have a job. It's OK.

The other side of the spectrum is being a distributor.

It's like, why do we have so many Spider-Man movies?

It's because they put butts in seats, right?

So the person at the studio, the movie studio is not an artist.

They're thinking about what do we make?

What do we green light?

Spider-Man, that's going to get people in the seats.

That's going to sell tickets.

And I think as a creator, you have to be in the middle of that.

And some creators slide heavy on the side of distributor of just like,

what does the audience want to watch?

I'll make that whatever, you know?

And then on the other side of what do I want to make?

And so I think that Naval quote really hit me in this feeling of losing.

You know, I did grow up.

I went to film school.

I, you know, took playwriting and college.

I'm like, it really into artsy stuff.

And I think when money gets involved,

when you start commercializing your creativity

and when it doesn't work for years,

that's an important part of our story, right?

It didn't work for a long time.

We didn't make any money for a long time.

You get terrified of losing it.

And when you get terrified of losing it,

you start creating to be watched or writing to be read.

Would you say creating scared?

Yeah, creating scared. Yeah.

Let's take a book title right there. I like that one.

Yeah, it's something Colin and I talk about a lot.

It's like, let's not create scared.

You know, what are we scared of?

You know, again, 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.

And people can feel that, I think.

I think you can feel it as a creator.

It feels really uncomfortable to create scared.

Right. Yeah, it's not.

It's not fun to watch.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, you had Hussin on the show.

And I love Hussin.

He's very much on the artist side.

I think he like drew a line in the sand for himself.

He's like, OK, I either I'm going to get on TikTok

and I'm going to dance for the algorithm.

Yeah.

Or I'm going to go the other way and I'm not.

And he's like the soul searching moment.

It's like, you know, he sent me a voice memo once.

I was just like, bro, I'm going to just create great art.

I'm an artist and artist creates art.

That's what I'm doing.

I'm not a businessman first.

I'm not a creator first.

I'm this is what I'm going to do.

And he's like, so I got to be true to that.

And I'm going to work on projects that are like interesting

to me from that perspective and it's going to hit my bar on that.

And like, that's the vibe I got from him.

But, you know, this was a few years ago when I when we were talking

about that stuff, you had him on, I think, more recently.

Yeah, end of last year.

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

Totally. Yeah.

I mean, he talked a lot about he kind of changed my whole perception

on making YouTube shorts, because he kind of made he kind of made fun of it.

You know, it wasn't like so funny the way he talks, but he he described

making YouTube shorts as being a skinned rat for the engineers in San Bruno.

Which I thought was really funny.

He was just like your guinea pig.

You are, you know, essentially creating more data points for them for there.

You know, you're there, your boss, you know,

whatever works on their algorithm, you then pander to that.

Right. And so he kind of pushed us in that that direction of recognizing,

like, are we artists or are we creating for the algorithm?

And the second thing he said, which I heavily resonate with,

he's like, everything is about the PDF, which means like, what is the idea?

Right? Write it on a piece of paper.

Is the idea good?

Show it to someone, pitch it to someone.

Do they immediately go, that's a good idea?

Do they laugh?

Do they feel some sort of emotion before it's before?

Yeah, yeah.

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. And he asked us that question.

And I was like, oh, you're right.

What is the Hasan Minhaj, Colin and Samir interview?

Let's write it out.

Let's let's not plan it.

But what is it?

Like, what's the idea?

Why is this a good idea to do this?

What was the answer?

We talked about like, how can we

like, how can we bring forward his creator story

of starting on YouTube and using YouTube to go through

kind of this crazy, windy path up to Netflix, right?

And how he's now kind of left YouTube.

Because Hasan's origins are on YouTube.

Yeah, I didn't know that.

He used to upload.

He came up with shows and put them on YouTube.

If you go to his channel and search by oldest, like sketch shows,

sketch shows, he did hosted shows where he talked about the news,

like almost like Tosh, Tosh point, oh, yeah.

That for us was like, no one's no one has told that story.

That's interesting.

Let's talk about that.

And let's talk about your relationship with.

And he was like 18, 19 doing like comedy clubs, right?

Like he's been stand up at like San Francisco or something like that.

I think totally.

Yeah, I watched him do Kings Jester live.

Like we went out to go.

Did you go to one of his shows?

Yeah, it was really good.

So that's a stand up special.

That guy's like a performer, man.

Like he he really inspired me to be like this is like a comedy show.

Yeah, it's a one man show.

It's a performance.

And that to me, it really inspired both Colin and I to be like, this is a craft.

You have to work on it.

You know, performing is part of this craft.

Ideation is the biggest part of it.

You know, he has a writing partner that he sits and writes.

Did you meet Fred?

Or yeah, what's he like?

I've never gotten to meet him, but I'm very, I'm very, very fascinated by

kind of the the wingman.

Yeah, like there's a lot of popular people, but almost all of them are not.

Nobody's so low.

Everyone's got some kind of a team.

And usually they have like their confidence.

The person who's in the bunker with them, figuring things out,

compliments them, does all the shit they're not good at.

But like kind of like keeps them going in the right direction.

And those people are actually really, really fascinating to me.

And nobody really like asked them a ton of questions.

But I have a million questions for them.

What? Tell me a little bit about them.

I think oftentimes as as creatives and creators, we think we're we want to hire

an employee, but actually what we want is a collaborator.

Yeah. And if you're lucky enough to come up with a collaborator, then,

you know, those are the people, in my opinion, who typically make it,

fully make it when they have a collaborator.

So Pratt limited time with him.

But I find comedians to be like astute observers of the world.

And I found Pratt to be like very much that, right?

Like he he had a notebook and pen during the King's Jester taping.

It was I don't know if it was a taping or if it was just one of the shows,

but they were prepping for the Netflix special.

Yeah. And he was sitting there during the entire show,

sitting right in front of me, just voraciously taking notes on

what was working, what the audience was reacting to, when there was too

too much of a pause, when there wasn't like he was.

And right after the show, before

Hussain came back into the green room, him and Pratt were talking.

I love that. Yeah.

I love it when it's sort of like we're going back to the lab.

Yeah. It's like we kind of like we do our thing.

But like because I tell Ben's my collaborator basically.

So like we did a couple of businesses together,

but also when it comes to content, like we recently did

we're kind of new to YouTube, but we did.

We used to just basically put the podcast on YouTube.

Yeah, I remember.

And I was like, you guys are growing now, though.

I started really bad.

It was like we first on we did it.

I remember we had like 4,000 views and I was just like, oh, man, like.

But like which is fine for when you start.

But we already had the podcast was significant.

So it'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

because you've now experienced a different level of stakes.

But those aren't even in the same casino, Spotify or Apple pods on YouTube.

Yeah, there is a completely different group of people.

So exactly.

So we were like, all right, we think we could do this.

And so we started to grow.

But recently we did one.

And it's this says money one.

That's on the right there that has how many views they have now?

Yes. So 300,000 views.

And this was a video is the first video that I made YouTube first.

I was like, OK, I'm going to create a video that I think is going to be like

YouTube is not just a podcast and me and Ben were like,

what if we just took three days?

So like we just tried to make one great video for this.

And we did and we made that and we were basically collaborating on that.

For the first time we had done that that way.

But the cool thing is now we've been working together for a couple of years

and you get this like mind meld where it's like

it's almost like you only could you could speak in shorthand or reference.

Like it's like if you say something, I already know what part he's going to

be like, oh, we got to talk about that later, right?

Because that relates to these other three things.

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.

But when you have it, it's like, oh, fuck, this is that lets you go places.

I think you need someone who's excited and wants to be a part of a team

where their name isn't at the forefront, right?

Which which can be really complex, right?

But we know who Pratt is.

But if you're a fan of Hassan Minaj at scale, you're not going to know who he is.

So you have to find someone who's really into that too, right?

Who likes to be that person.

If you've ever tried to hire a lot of people, like, I want to work for you

because I want to be you because I want to be you. Yeah.

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

Like, especially with this group, I mean, yeah, yeah, this group right now,

it's hard to hire someone who doesn't want to be the creator or,

you know, is trying to become a creator and working with you to be like, OK,

now I get it, now I'm going to go do it.

But yeah, you have to find someone who's down for that.

But it is kind of like being an athlete where, you know, you guys,

when I leave, you're going to talk about the performance, right?

You're going to you're going to probably watch game tape back.

You're going to watch it back and be like, oh, maybe I should have asked

this question there or maybe this would have been more interesting.

Or he went a little long here.

I should have stopped him.

You know, like there's so much that goes into this that if you deeply care

about the craft and you have someone who cares that much about the craft,

you can get better at the craft, get better, faster, you can get better,

way faster. Yeah, it's hard to find.

Right. It's it's typically happens just organically.

And then you're like, OK, this is my guy now. Right.

How much do you guys you guys have your business off the back of your thing,

which is the newsletter, the newsletter is a kind of a different type of business.

It's actually a separate company.

And there's separate people writing that thing.

It's not you guys creating it necessarily.

Have you seen and I'm keeping track of these kind of creator driven businesses

where you have like almost like an audience co-founder and like the way

you used to have like a technical co-founder for a business.

Now you have almost like a distribution co-founder.

I love that. That's cool.

What have you seen that maybe everybody hasn't heard of?

Right. Because I think everybody's kind of heard of Mr.

Beast and maybe a couple others.

But what are some cool ones that you're keeping an eye on?

I should know about or the should know about the typical creator

business is make content sell ads, right?

Which is like that's that's baseline.

Some people never need to grow out of that because that's just a good business.

But like when when you go through those extensions,

like I think Ali Abdaal has a fantastic education business.

He's a creator out of the UK who talks about productivity

and he's built a series of courses and was a doctor too.

He was a doctor prior. Yeah, you're right.

The doctor is an excellent teacher, but he has built a great business

that is, you know, very much focused on online education.

I think he publishes his numbers.

He publishes his numbers like four million a year on his like four or five million

on his pushing to six this year.

Creator Academy, which is basically become a YouTuber.

Yes. Yes.

And he has a ton of courses on Skillshare about like studying for the MCAT.

Or he's just figured out that, OK, I'm really good at making online video.

Yes, one of those ways is to monetize through advertising.

But another one is through teaching all my video.

And that's the classic like build one sell twice.

Right. It's like you build it.

It lives on Skillshare or on your own website for years to come.

People can buy it. Right.

So I I really like the digital product business

because it's just scalable.

And we do very few things that are scalable as creators. Right.

I also think there is a

there's a future model now, which is potentially there's

a creator named Amelia DeMoldenburg, who has a show called Chicken Shop Date.

I think I've heard about this.

It's a great show.

Are you the one who showed me this?

It's a great show.

She she's had Jack Harlow on it.

She just had Jennifer Lawrence on it.

What's the what's the stick?

It's like at a chicken shop.

It's a date.

Yeah, it's a date at a fried chicken place in London.

And the chicken shop in London is like the last place you would go to have a date.

So there's comedy in it.

She's a comedian.

And through it. Yeah, through this.

So she's had like this has now spun her into essentially creating her own production company

where brands come to her and say, we love your stick.

We love your comedy.

We love the way you've created this show.

Like this show has no advertising in it.

No advertisers and will never have advertisers.

And this thing does, you know, the Jack Harlow episode is 15 million views.

This regularly does, you know, one to five million views in the first week,

but no advertisers.

And what it operates as is like it's a production company and Nike just came to her.

So she kind of created an agency, created an agency.

Yeah. So like Nike came to her.

She proved like I can create cool, likable content.

It's vertically integrated where she can come up with the idea,

then her company can shoot the idea, then she can be the talent in the idea.

And then the thing that I think we forget is like she's the distribution outlet for that idea, too.

Where does she post on her own on her own YouTube channel?

Yeah, so she wasn't new ads, but she'll put like full episodes of.

I saw Barbie. Yeah, she went and hosted the Barbie premiere.

That's smart. So I like that.

There's another creator named Amanda Raich Lee, who's who's based in Canada.

And what she did is she started YouTube by showing bullet journaling

and how she was setting up her bullet journals.

And what is it? I mean, so go to the channel, Amanda, R A C H and then Lee.

And now, yeah, like go to like one of these bullet journal setups.

This just looks like Etsy of YouTube.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And how many views does it have?

Three million. So when she started, she was doing these bullet journal setups.

Like, here's how I set up my journal.

And then what she did was swap out the journal she was using

and create her own custom journal company.

And that to me is like epitome of creator business, right?

Where it's what Colin and I call content product fit.

She didn't have to change the content to integrate the product. Yeah. Right.

You just I mean, to talk about a big example,

it's Chamberlain coffee when Emma Chamberlain launched that.

She drank coffee in every episode, right?

Swap her coffee out of placement.

Yes, done at like a whole another level. Yeah.

And I think, you know, it's something we're actually struggling with,

with our newsletter, which is like.

That's our version of that.

How do we integrate that in every episode?

Sure, we can bring it up, but that doesn't drive subscribers.

Right. So it's it's Logan Paul said this about prime.

He said a lot of creators when they talk about their own product,

it sounds like they're doing a brand deal. Yeah.

They don't know how to integrate it regularly, you know,

and like the milk boys with happy dad, right?

Their alcohol is in every single episode, right?

Because they're showing over here. Yeah.

Logan has prime everywhere with him.

So, you know, I think creators who have this like Amanda,

they can build really substantial businesses.

What do you call it? Content product fit?

Yeah, content product fit.

So this is a really impressive business to me because it's just it's niche.

But three million people watch this and she sells this journal.

Yeah, that's insane.

Yeah, she's got to be doing.

I mean, what do you think she's making on something like this?

I've spent time with her.

She's never told me.

But I will say that she speaks out a lot of Shopify events

as like a very good case study for them.

I know she's doing well.

She has a good team.

The thing I love about this business, too, it's its repeat purchases.

There's a new journal drop.

You can run out of pages in a journal once, you know,

once you have allegiance to this, it's like, yeah.

You know, great.

So I've had this idea for because I'm a big journal guy.

Yeah.

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.

So if I'm going to make it for myself, maybe I'll make it for others.

But the best example, my favorite example of this is actually a really small stakes one,

which is the Ryan Holiday coin.

Totally.

That's like such a good example of this because he was like he's the way he described it.

So first it was like the content product fit where he's just like stoicism.

Here's the like reminder coin that like you're going to die.

It says like, you know, whatever, remember, you're going to die or whatever.

But he was like, you know, I've done like t-shirts, t-shirts suck.

And he's like, I wanted something that was like I could fit in an envelope,

a normal envelope.

So like mailing was easy.

I wanted something like a manufacturer here.

So I don't have to like produce overseas or whatever.

He's like, no sizes, no colors.

It's like just like there's one.

Yeah, there's one skew and I'm going to sell.

And I think he sold like 20 million dollars of this one skew over the.

Really? Yeah.

I'm pretty sure he said that.

That's amazing.

I think pretty sure he's on our episode or we like.

You know, water boarded him out of it.

Like, you know, we were like, I think he's that wrong.

Is that in the ballpark?

And he's like, you know, not wrong.

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, which is like a subscription box or stem or something.

Right. Like yeah, exactly.

It's a science kit.

I got it for my nephews.

It is excellent.

They are hooked on it.

Nice. Like it is excellent.

I text Mark about it.

I'm like, dude, this product is crazy.

Like that's huge.

It's your big business.

Huge. That's a big business.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I know he said now that that makes more than his channel.

Yeah. For sure.

I mean, his channel is massive.

That's that's a great other rating because he does basically

crazy science experiments, right?

That's right. Yeah.

And he has big versions of that in his video.

So like he'll make a big version of it.

And then I'll be like, and you can make a miniature version of this at home.

I think this content model, this what you're just describing here, these examples is

like I always think about when I meet someone, I'm like, wow, you had so much

success like what'd you do?

And they're often the story is basically like, you know, there was like a moment

in time where like if you realized like X, like X thing works, which is like

in the early days of Google, it would be like, I could buy clicks for a cent

for like any keyword.

Like that's insane.

Okay, let me just work backwards.

What's the best keyword?

And like, so that's how I got into like selling leads to lawyers or whatever,

like, you know, asbestos, you know, removal company or whatever.

And then it's like, like our buddy created native deodorant.

And he's like, yeah, basically, like I started this when Facebook ads were

kind of like underused and people were only using them for like, like media

companies are trying to buy Facebook ads, but then they were like driving

them back to a blog post and monetizing with a Google ad there.

Right, right.

It's not really a good model.

I realized like you can sell just like a product through Facebook ads with

really simple ads and do you want like things that you used to have to go

into Target, get Target to carry you.

You can just start selling directly to consumer through Facebook, DTC.

I mean, there wasn't really like as much of a category yet.

But it's like, if you knew, if you knew that secret during that time, it was

kind of an open secret, but not like, wasn't obvious to everybody yet.

Yeah.

I mean, I think movement watches is another great influencers with led

marketing, but I think what's incredibly hard, especially for creators

right now is what you have to sacrifice to have that that view and that

long-term view of building a product because advertising revenue is so

available right now to us.

And again, you kind of pull the levers when it comes to YouTube.

It's the highest margin advertising dollars that I think, you know, has

existed in video content ever, right?

Because you don't get on the phone with the advertiser.

You're negotiating a contract.

There's no sales team.

There's no back and forth.

There's no revision.

Yeah.

But YouTube takes what?

Like 45 percent.

Yeah.

But still, it's like this.

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

It's just like, and like, you don't have to do any work.

You don't have to do any work.

You don't do it, right?

You just, you upload content and you get a check in the mail.

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 anywhere from 20, $50,000 all the

way up to 200,000 dollars, right?

And you're like, well, OK, all right, I'll make another one of those videos.

And then what I find is that a lot of creators never get to that moment of,

OK, now we should stop and put our focus in over here.

And how do we even do that?

And it's a totally different skill set.

Yeah.

How do I even do that?

How do I hire someone?

I think that's the biggest need in the creator economy right now is

operators are the biggest need.

Yes.

And education on how to hire is so it's just not there, right?

Because it's all young people who, who grew.

Funny, by the way, because there's so many operators because I'm coming

over and all the operators like, dude, I could if I just had the right

influence or this is a soap, we could sell a lot of the soap or whatever

the thing is, they don't pick your favorite widget.

And for them, it's like a total black box.

Like, how do I go meet these people and get them to trust me enough to do this?

And so it's like this.

And also they have to have the temperament to want that, right?

Like a lot of creators have to, they might conceptually think they want it.

But then when they get into it and their name is on a soap product and they

don't really like that, it went out to a customer and it wasn't perfect.

And then they're like, oh, I don't want to do this in front.

They freak out.

They freak out, right?

Because it's like, I have so much control over how my brand shows up that

when you start to scale that, it gets uncomfortable.

Right.

So.

And do you, I have this question up here, I put on this list.

So three creators likely to become a billionaire.

I gave you the one freebie, you can say Jimmy, and he could be one.

Yeah.

What other creators do you think have the potential to build a billion dollar

empire around what they're doing?

It's a combination of their content plus businesses, whatever.

I think Dude Perfect.

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

Well, they're working on it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A hundred million dollar project.

Yes.

Yes.

What does that mean?

That's what they're investing into this project?

I don't know the specifics of it.

I've spent a lot of, they're actually, I've known them for a really long time.

Like, you know, I've been on YouTube and around YouTube for 12 years.

They were the first group that I got involved with early on when we sold our

last company and they're kind of like their trick shots with their thing that

worked, but they make sports accessible to, you know, young kids through

trick shots and, you know, viral sports videos.

And the reason I bring it up is like, I think those guys have been at this now

since around 2006 or seven.

And they have remained at the top of their game throughout that whole experience.

They also went through a long period of time where, you know, they've done the

work, like I watched them hold the cameras for years, even when they were at 30

million subscribers, they would just go out themselves and hold the cameras and

edit the videos.

And they still sit there in the edit base and make sure they're perfect.

And I think they, if you've, if you've seen images of, they just did a tour,

see images of like the young kids who turn out for that.

The parents, I had a conversation with them one time where they said their

goal is to be the most trusted brand in entertainment.

And I actually believe that they are, they're on track for that, where parents

really trust that they can take their kids to a Dude Perfect event.

Right.

And that when you take that to an amusement park, when you take that a

couple of steps forward, I think that matters a lot in the future.

And I think they're, they're on track for sure.

That makes sense.

That makes sense.

I like that pick.

Anyone else come to mind that you think has the potential to do something

large like that?

I think, I think of some creators who have the potential, but I don't know if

they want to do it.

You know, like, I think Cody Koeh is actually someone who's.

He's coming here tomorrow.

Oh, yeah, I love Cody.

I know you went on his show.

Yeah.

I think Cody is like one of the most intelligent people I've met in the space.

I think he, he, even as he's like in starting to invest now and I can just,

I was thinking about it because him and I were texting yesterday and I was thinking

of my head, I was like, who's Cody Koeh in 10 years?

He's either like in the woods, you know, like he's a free man DJing and running

or he's like running the biggest capital company, you know, and I think that's

just a personal choice up to him.

It's all available to him.

Um, but yeah, I don't, I don't know that, uh, I'm sure there's others

that I'm not thinking of, but.

They're my favorite brand on YouTube.

TMG.

TMG is my favorite channel on YouTube.

I think Noelle Miller is like a true artist and special.

Like, I think there's very rare people like him and also very, not very many

people like Cody Koeh.

Right.

Um, so yeah, they're music videos are so goddamn good.

It's actually kind of frustrating.

Yeah, it's like a bit, it's a bit off putting like, dude, what, like, you

can't just do that.

Right.

And that you can do it as a joke.

It can't also be amazing.

It can also be good.

Yeah.

It can't also be good.

It can't also make me want to listen to it multiple times.

Right.

It's funny and amazing.

And you just did it like for kicks on the side.

Right.

On top of your other successful thing.

I find this like pursuit of being a billionaire to be very fascinating.

Like I, I, I don't really have interest in it.

I don't, if it, if it's the outcome of what I decide to do, that would be

interesting, but it's not like, I don't find myself to be focused on that outcome.

And I also found most creators I talked to are not focused on that outcome.

Totally.

Um, but I think it's in the video game of entrepreneurship.

It is the final boss.

Right.

So you're kind of like, if your final boss is actually walking away.

Sure.

Yeah, the person who says they have enough is, is like, like, uh, you know,

Paul Graham who created YC, which is, I think probably the most successful

tech startup actually, because it created sure all these other tech startups.

And like, it created Dropbox and it created Airbnb.

Like, they probably wouldn't like to say created, but like they, without them,

there is no Reddit.

There is no, there are, there probably aren't those, those businesses being

successful, including open AI, because right, 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.

He was like, this is like what it would be like to talk to a young Bill Gates.

Like saw that before and now he's created open AI, which is today the most, you

know, one of the most valuable private startups.

So anyways, YC, uh, gets the peak of its powers or gets like, you know, does

amazing, uh, amazing stuff 10 years in and Paul's like, Sam, here you go.

I'm going to the woods in the UK and I'm 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.

And that is the final boss of Silicon Valley.

Cause you see, most people just go right back into the hamster wheel and

they start running again.

But that's like the final boss of life, right?

It's like making that realization is not wanting anymore.

Yeah, yeah.

Being like content and, and developing a relationship with the term enough.

Uh, that's, that's a hard thing to do, but do you have that?

Do you have a number or like a, do you, do you feel like you have enough?

Like, what are you in pursuit of?

Um, I'm in pursuit of a really specific thing, which is, um, I heard a quote

once that I think Naval said, he goes, uh, the, the day you stop trading today

for a better tomorrow, you've retired.

So he's like, um, basically if the things you do today in and of

themselves were the reward of what you did today, you've now, you've

actually exited the game.

You've, you've retired, retirement doesn't mean you go sit down to do nothing.

It means you're not saying, all right, I'm going to do the shit today

that I don't really want to do.

I don't like to do, but I'm doing it because it's going to pay off in the future.

It's going to pay off in the future.

And like your whole life goes by doing that.

And so when I heard that, I was like, oh, guilty, you know, guilty.

Like, you know, put me, put me in cuffs, take me to jail.

Like that's me.

I'm, I've spent the first, you know, 15 years of my career, like, you know,

from 20 to 35 basically was that I was like, Oh, I'm going to do X.

And I want to say I didn't enjoy it necessarily, but like, definitely I was

like doing X because it might lead to Y.

I totally agree.

I've never just done that too.

Yeah.

I've never just made my main thing.

Like I'm doing X because I'm just doing X seems fun.

Yeah.

And so that's the, that's the game I'm playing now is to try to achieve that,

to craft my life sets that that's true.

And so even though it's like weird, it's like, you know, it's awesome.

It's like, well, what do I like to do best?

I don't know.

I like to, I like to do this podcast.

I like to read.

Right.

I like to talk and 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.

So I don't think they even like, or they don't clearly have one.

Well, you can also have the, there's another Tim Ferris moment in our, in

our episode together, he was like, something to the tune of like, you

can decouple the, the non-financial reward and the financial reward.

Right.

Right.

So like this experience, there's a non-financial reward to this, which

is like, we have a good conversation.

Right.

Cool.

This is fun.

We both go home.

That reward is complete.

Then you put it out.

If there's a performance reward to it, amazing.

If that leads to financial opportunity, great.

You know, like, but that's a separate reward.

And if you can decouple those things, then that is, uh, yeah.

And just basically, uh, like the way I think about stuff is like, there's

a car and, uh, you can have a bunch of passengers in the car.

It's like, you know, I have like my ego, but hopefully it's in the trunk.

It shouldn't be driving.

Like, you know, let's put him in the back.

You know, he's kind of annoying, but he's there.

And you got like, you know, the thrill of things that's in the car.

But I don't really want thrill to drive because he takes us off the cliff.

Like, who gets to drive?

And so, uh, you know, that's kind of the, so to me, I'm like, all right, who

gets to drive is like the version of me that is, uh, following my curiosity,

creating shit 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.

I'm doing it because it's enjoyable to do.

I'm doing it because it's challenging.

So even if it's not that enjoyable, like I'm struggling at it.

I'm enjoying the struggle of doing this thing.

Yeah.

And so that's who I want to drive, meaning that's who gets to ultimately

make the decision of where are we going in this car?

Other people might have input.

Other, the other parts of me might have input.

Like, I want money.

I want this.

I want that.

Yeah.

But I can't like, like basically money was driving for a long ass time.

And then it's like, hold on.

Wait, the deal was you get to drive till we get to this number.

We got to that number.

You don't get to drive anymore.

And maybe you shouldn't have been driving for the first time, 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 in my lifestyle.

And it's coming off of my investment income, not out of like my work income.

Yeah.

Uh, because then it's like, all right, cool.

Money works for money.

I work for me.

Man, I think that is a big opportunity with, uh, creators.

It'd be like a smaller group.

But I think as creators, we're really good at generating money, but we don't

know how to turn money into money.

Right.

Because we're, it's like, it's a totally different skill set.

And then we don't know who to trust with that.

You know, I think if there was a creator focused group that helped with that,

that, well, we went to this athlete thing yesterday with a bunch of

bad, there's a bunch of asphalt pairs there.

And it's the same thing.

Like literally we were joking.

We were like, this event would be cool if it was just the athletes who do

what they do and us, but then you have all the Klingers.

Yeah.

And you're like, who do I trust?

And then like, and like, and some of the Klingers are the people they trust.

And they're like, kind of safe choices.

They don't actually know how to do the thing for them.

Sure.

It's like, you know, actually, if they asked, I would for free help them or

tell them exactly what they should be doing so that their money works for money

and they don't piss it away.

Yeah.

But the incentive is not for me to go chase them and reach them and then beg

them to listen to my advice.

Yeah.

The guy who's trying to take their money is incentivized to chase them and

beg them and, and try to convince them that they're the guy who's going to help them.

And it's like this weird, like perverse incentive is like the guy who's

going to like work as hard as to break into your circle is the one who wants something.

Yeah, you actually don't want to work with someone who's like needs something from you.

Yeah, on the sports topic, there's one more de-strawing.

He is a sports creator, a football focused creator.

He he played football at UCF and this is pre NIL days.

Right.

So he played football.

He was making YouTube videos.

They brought him into a room and said, you have a choice.

You can either continue playing football or you can continue with a YouTube channel.

He chose YouTube and built this this really substantial YouTube channel.

He has this series called One on Ones that just partner.

They go live to places like you go to the city.

This is like live events and they get crazy.

Like in Arizona, it had to get called off because there was too many people there

and the police had to get involved.

I was going to go.

He I think he he messes or is management.

Somebody messes.

OK, OK, I mean, yeah, like he's an hour away.

I was like, oh, that sounds kind of fun.

But I didn't make it out.

What does he do?

So it's one on one.

So basically, it's wide receivers versus cornerbacks and they line up and they go

one on one and one dude wins $10,000.

And for some of the communities he's going into, that's life changing.

Right. Right. For a lot of communities, he's the guy in the thing.

Or it's he's the other guys.

I think he's the host.

You know, and like you can see like this is this is what it looks like.

If you go to his channel and go to most viewed.

So so that so that if that guy had caught it, he would have he would have

10 grants, no, it's a tournament and then you start to know these characters

and they travel to different markets.

This is the new N1 mixtape.

Exactly. This is great.

This is N1 mixtape for football.

And Colin and I spoke with at a YouTube event with D

and he was speaking with Roger Goodell.

And we were talking to Roger about destroying and he was like,

this guy is like really impactful for football.

Oh, wow. He's creating new fans.

And the NFL just partnered with him on this series, the one on one series.

And I think when I look at D, like the leagues are starting to get involved

with him in a way where I'm like, wait, he is singlehandedly

a really important part of the future of sports viewership.

Yeah. And that to me, I don't know that he I don't know if he has aspirations

to be a billionaire, but to solve that problem for the NFL is a big problem to solve.

And if you solve that for the CFL and you start solving that,

you know, you go down the line, this can also become camps.

This can become, you know, so many things.

Right. The world is his oyster.

He can become a host.

He probably should be one of the hosts for the NFL, like.

Or like the Pro Bowl, which no one's watching.

I think he can also create a.

Yeah, I mean, he can redefine the Pro Bowl because this is more interesting.

This is way more.

Yeah, I'm like half looking at you because I'm watching this.

I mean, I we pulled this up in our office

and we have a ton of people who don't watch sports and then they got hooked on it.

They're like this is primal. It's primal. Yeah.

And so he could redefine the Pro Bowl.

He can also create a NIL agency, right?

So you have college athletes who he represents this, you know,

where college athletics didn't let you monetize.

He knows how to do this, right?

So OK, now can D create a NIL agency

where he's signing athletes and getting them contracts.

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, it carries a very high dollar value.

Live sports, it carries such high dollar value

that I think he has that opportunity as well.

There was a guy at that event we were at that was you'll know him

because he's lacrosse Paul Raebal.

Yeah, yeah, he's a groomsman of my wedding.

He's one of my best friends.

Amazing. He is. I don't know much about this.

So you're at the boardroom event.

Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about it.

So basically, he what he was saying on stage was like, OK,

we created this professional lacrosse league. Yeah.

What he was interesting, he was like, there's like one of

it, I don't know, eight teams or something, but he's like, we own the teams.

Yeah, it's not like a franchise model.

And I think he's like, we pay the costs.

But then like all the players have upside in the thing.

Like, what is the business model of this?

This sounded pretty fascinating.

And yeah, so it's a good model also.

I'm an investor, so a biased opinion.

Yes, but I've, you know, what I've always seen in lacrosse,

if you pull up, go to the premier lacrosse league YouTube channel

and and play the last vlog from their all star game.

You get a sense for like the community.

That one, the fastest shot right there.

Yeah. So you get a sense for like what it looks like.

I mean, they were going wild, but like they packed the stadium out in Louisville

for their all star game.

So basically what he did was there was a preexisting league called Major League

lacrosse. They paid their players terribly.

They treated them not well. That was the best league.

That was the only pro league.

It was like and no one really cared about it.

I mean, like it was it was kind of interesting, but it was empty stadiums.

They didn't have health care.

It was like they weren't treated like it was tough to be a pro athlete

and not get paid much. Right.

And Paul became the, you know, number one lacrosse player.

He had the biggest media platform.

Colin and I actually ran his YouTube channel.

That's how we became very close.

We were running a lot of different athlete YouTube channels at one point.

And so we became really close to Paul. That's how we met.

And he had the best head on his shoulder for 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.

He had deals with Red Bull and New Balance.

And he had created the model for like, how do you make money as a lacrosse player?

Was he the best and he was the best at media

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

No, he's he's the he was the best.

He was the best player. Yeah. Yeah.

Those are those like Conor McGregor at one time is like, he's the champ.

Yes. And he's like the most marketable guy.

So he he decided, you know, at one point just to say, Hey, you know what?

We're going to go raise money and create our own league.

Like this league sucks that I play in.

That's what he did. He turned to Joe Tai, who's the Nets owner, you know?

Yeah, Nets owner who played lacrosse in college and loves lacrosse.

And he's a great dude, met him a couple of times.

And he became the lead investor and then they partnered with Rain Group

and they raised a bunch of money and said, we're going to pay the players

a reasonable salary and give them equity in the league.

We're going to give them health care and we are going to create media around them.

We're going to create media opportunities for them.

We're going to teach them how to, you know,

and the last thing that it is, they said, we're not going to stick these teams

in local markets, we're going to actually take the whole league on tour.

Make sense. So that makes more sense.

It's like a touring, you know, circus where it's like, is it coming to San Diego this weekend?

OK, everyone descends to this major major market. Yeah.

So, you know, if you have lacrosse people that come to town twice a year,

exactly, we'll go to that.

We may not go all the time or there may not be people to support a stadium.

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?

So you you you have youth camps, right?

Like there's a lot of young kids who want to play.

They come from affluent backgrounds.

Their parents are willing to pay a thousand dollars for them to get coached

by their favorite lacrosse player and Paul built a massive camps business.

And so alongside this, you go to a major market.

Now you have a weekend dedicated to you can have camps.

You can turn all these players into camp counselors and trainers and extra money.

Exactly. They can build their own bespoke businesses,

but that all, you know, connect to the league.

And that's so he and his brother are really sharp.

And they didn't sell franchises yet. Not yet. Yeah.

And they barstools involved in one of them.

OK, they got to name the expansion team.

And part of my take, like the owners, the water dogs,

that's a ridiculous name. Yeah.

But like, you know, there's that that creates

a kind of that inside joke with the part of PMT community that it's like

they have their own team smart. It's a collab.

It's a collab. Because when they play, big cats tweeting about it

when they won the championship last year, he got his own ring.

You know, it's like amazing.

They're able to build again, they're very media savvy.

And so they they understand that this is a long game lacrosse is not.

Well, to build any league, I think I texted you this during the event.

I was like, I think what this guy's saying is actually quite smart.

We should look at investing and I go, I'll go, man, building a league is hard.

Like fun if you do it, but that is like one of the hardest games

you could play in the world of entrepreneurship is creating a sports

league from scratch, because it's like kind of a 20 year arc.

Oh, yeah, you have to have such a long view

on the world and on your life to do it and doing live events.

You're doing all the hardest things.

I mean, every weekend, he's in a different city.

You know, I'm watching these and looking that the most promising thing

is look how young the kids are who are there, right? Right.

So if they grow up with this league, these teams, these franchises,

like they are playing a very long game here.

And I credit them for doing it, but it's it's not an easy thing.

They sign like a ten million dollar deal, something with ESPN.

ESPN, yeah, yeah, the media rights deal. That's good.

Yeah. So when they first started, Colin and I made a documentary about them for NBC.

We've had like many, many different lives of, you know, Colin and Samir.

But yeah, that's amazing.

Do you think that's going to be, you know, a good investment for you?

Where you like the first one in because he's like your buddy?

I was first one in, which is great.

So it's doing good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's doing. I'm happy about it.

Like you're going to get like, let's say this works out.

Hopefully, like, you know, like we all were rooting for this.

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.

It's like, all right, mom, I know I don't have health insurance.

I don't have a job.

I know I'm kind of filming this like failing

league like this, this like lacrosse thing.

It's like, and it leads to the thing.

Right. So it's Steve Jobs, right?

You look back, you see all the dots, how they connected.

But like when you go even further back,

like 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?

Like that was a bad idea when you really, you know, you zoom out.

But if you're into it, like a lot of creators ask me, like,

how long does it take to make it on YouTube?

Like how long does it take to make it?

I'm sure entrepreneurs ask that question too, right?

Or have that thought in their head, like, how long is this going to take?

And I was like, I always think it's such a ridiculous question

because I'm like, well, what's your relationship to making videos?

Do you wake up every morning and you can't not do it?

Like you're just like, all I can do is make videos.

And then you made it from day one.

Yeah, you made it and it will, there will be an outcome from that.

There will be. It will lead you somewhere.

But if you wake up and you're like, this sucks.

It's kind of what you were saying is like, I'm doing X so I can get to Y.

Well, the entrepreneurship version is startups fail, but founders don't.

So like I moved to San Francisco in 2012.

So that's 10 years ago.

And I met a bunch of people and we used to have like these like underground

founder like meetings where we're like trading tips and tricks and being like,

you know, what do I do at this person?

I need to fire them.

What do I say when I fire like basis is about to see those being like,

I can't like tell my team about this.

I can't tell my customers about this.

I can't tell my investors about this.

I can only tell you guys because you guys understand.

And look, unlike YouTube, everybody who was doing startups at the time was like

all living in the same seven mile radius city.

And so we would just all meet up all the time.

And sure enough, like as you watch, if you track that cohort,

it's basically only two outcomes.

One is got so burnt out from like the grind and failure that they just stopped

after like, you know, three, four years or even five years.

They just like did that company.

They're like, screw this.

I'm taking a job.

I'm moving back to Connecticut and like I'm going to live in a low cost place.

I'm going to de-stress and I'm going to do that.

But everybody else who stayed in the game, one, like literally like almost

like a hundred percent of my friends who stayed in the game.

Yeah.

And someone won in year two, someone in year five, someone in year nine.

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.

Wow, 12 years.

It's like, yeah, but we all started this when we were 21.

So like, you know, yeah.

OK, we're mid 30s.

Yeah, for us, we're 34 and rich.

Like, you know, it worked.

In the end, it worked, right?

The 15 year arc, you get like a then the odds flip

from like 90 percent of new businesses failed to actually like 90 percent

of you guys will succeed if you actually enjoy this enough

where you'll keep doing this, even though you have easier options.

Yes. I always I've said that multiple times

whenever I'm having something that feels like I'm struggling.

I'm like, this is the the least rational path to making money, right?

Is what I do at this point.

Also now I have enough exposure and enough of an abundance in my network

that I can go and get a good job, right?

But like I do this because it's it's just what I do.

It's just who I am.

I don't even know what to do in another context.

I don't know what that looks like.

I will say, though, like being it's hard to be not outcome oriented,

you know, like I think as an entrepreneur, you think about like exits

and you think about, you know, like these big paydays.

And I would say that even with with our newsletter,

like when I saw Milk Road, I was like, OK, I want that outcome, too.

But whenever I get too attached to that outcome, I'm like, OK, wait a second.

Right. That's like that's creating in a way

that's just like the product probably will not be great.

If I don't just put my head down and go, OK, it's Monday.

This Monday issue really great.

OK, it's Wednesday. This Wednesday issue really great.

And I've really tried to refine my focus on process and impact.

Like is I have to focus on the process of creating the thing.

And then the second thing is like my a lot of my reward is seeing

if we're having impact is this actually impactful, what I'm putting out, right?

Or is it just going out and, you know, no one's saying anything about it

or we're not getting any like I find I gauge the success of our stuff

from like the texts I get or the DMs or like, hey, that episode is really impactful

or, hey, that really changed the way I think about this.

Or, hey, that newsletter taught me about this.

If I see those, then I'm like, OK, we're doing we're doing something.

Let's keep doing that.

Hopefully that takes us to an outcome, but you also have to accept it might not.

It might just be this and we might just get, you know, five percent better,

you know, over the next two years. Right.

And that's it.

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.

And as long as you can accept that, at least for me, that's how I

I, you know, explore it for myself.

Yeah, the best test of a project is basically would we regret doing it

if it didn't work? Right.

Like, obviously, we don't want it not to work and we might be upset if it didn't

work, but like, would we actually regret doing it if it didn't work?

Because then it's like, oh, I'm just actually dependent on the success or

failure of what's usually a low odds of success endeavor.

Totally. Whereas other things are like, I wouldn't really regret it

because like, well, I'm still going to get this like still going to be fun to do.

Still going to learn a ton. I'm like, this is the type of thing I like to do.

Yeah. So, you know, if this doesn't work out, it doesn't really matter.

Like, I'm just going to ping pong to the kind of the next version of this,

but it was a forward, it was a forward step either way. Right.

Like there's this, like Tony Robbins does this thing where he does this

dabblers versus masters. I don't know if you ever heard this.

So he tells a story at his events where he goes, he goes, there's some people

that they go and they discover racquetball, which maybe now pickleball would be

sure, but it's like, you know, they go, they go to the gym.

They're like, they see somebody think racquetball.

They're like, I'll try it. They go and they have, they have some fun.

And they're like, for racquetball, this might be my thing.

And they're like, OK, I'm going to play racquetball.

And so the next day they come back to play again.

Next day they actually go and they, you know, they get better shoes

because they were like, oh, that was the problem last time.

You buy the racquet, they start playing, blah, blah, blah, and they're doing well.

But then they play somebody who's been playing for like 10 years,

who's like way better than them.

And that's, you know, for three days straight, they're playing

and they can't hit a good shot.

Everything's going off and they're losing all these games.

And they're like, this stupid, like stupid racquetball, like, right,

why am I in this box? I'm trapped.

Like, you know, this is it's too loud in here.

It is weirdly loud.

This is a sport for old people.

You start to find all these reasons to quit.

So they quit.

Like, I'm going to play a real game. I'm going to go play tennis.

So go outside. You play tennis.

You're like, oh, so much better on my doors.

This is way better.

And, you know, they're hitting the ball around.

They're starting to learn the strokes that they're enjoying learning a little bit.

Same thing happens.

They start to play somebody who knows what's going on.

They're hitting the ball in the net.

They can't really serve.

Well, that's getting frustrated.

It's hot out.

And they're like, stupid game.

Like, you know, what is this thing?

Like, this is this is like a girly game.

I don't want to play it.

I'm going to play like a real game and golf.

And they're like, just fuck from day one.

And he's basically like, you know,

most people go through their whole life doing a series of these dabbling.

And they're dabblers.

And he's like, what's the difference between a mast?

There's like, there's three categories.

A dabbler, a dabbler is basically like, try it as soon as it gets hard, bounce.

Then he's like, then there's the stressor achiever.

Stressor achiever is like, when it gets hard,

they just start gritting their teeth and they just get going to keep going.

But they don't enjoy any of it.

And like, all the hardships stresses them out.

But they've just been trained since they were a little kid.

They're like, push through it, just keep pushing through.

And like, you'll get a gold star later.

Like the joy will be later.

He's like, then there's the master.

And the master basically like, they're like,

they know that when you start something new,

there's the initial like joy of discovery.

There's the learning curve.

There's the hard plateaus.

And when the plateau comes, they greet it like an old friend.

Like, oh, there you are.

Like, I thought you'd be showing up soon.

I've been I've been playing for a week.

And usually that's when I'll hit that's when you arrive plateau.

And I know how to like deal with you because I know that after the plateau

comes the next uprise.

And I'm excited for that upswing.

But let me work through this plateau.

And they don't really get like flustered by it.

So they get the same or they get better results than all three,

way better than the dabbler,

significantly better in the stressor achiever.

But the difference is like the whole way,

they're kind of actually like enjoying the dance or playing the game.

Yeah.

Because they actually understand that this is like,

these are all normal for the game.

And you find that like the people who get really like into like struggling

or grinding or like get really overwhelmed by like, you know,

the adversity, it's really just like,

you haven't played the game enough to know that this is nor this is how

the levels of the game work.

Yeah.

You shouldn't be surprised that the roller coaster is going up.

And now like, you remember, you got on the you got in line to get on a roller coaster.

Right. That's a good point.

You know, one thing that I don't know why this made me think of it.

I think just because like the the ups and downs of the game

and the the conversation we're having in the beginning of the show about interviewing,

one thing that both Colin and I did was go to improv class to learn how to be.

To get better.

Yeah. Just to get better at like being present,

working with whatever the other person says.

Like what we found was my wife was listening to our interviews

and she was like, you're not listening to them.

You're just not listening to your guests.

They're saying something and then you say something completely different.

You're just waiting. You're just waiting to talk.

And so I went to improv class and it was really this incredible

lesson in the craft of how do you sit in the pocket and just be like,

I can't have any preconceived notions as to where this is about to go.

Right.

You're going to say something and I have to let go of where I want it to go.

I found myself in the first day of improv.

I was like, we were playing this game and I was like, OK,

I know exactly how to make this funny.

This is going to be funny.

I know where to take it.

And the person right before me said something and I was like,

why the hell would you say that?

And then I had to deal with it.

And then I was like, oh, this is the work.

Right. This is the craft or building the craft.

And I think, you know, in the roller coaster of being a podcaster,

like you have to be willing to do all of that in public as well.

Right. Right.

Like you go back and you watch your early episodes,

that roller coaster is there's a record of the roller coaster of like

times where it was going really well,

times where it wasn't going well, times where views were up,

times where views were down.

It's like all public.

And I think it's challenging because we have to practice in public.

I think that's like as as you build in public as an entrepreneur,

but if something incredibly just you're like naked as a content creator out there,

everyone can see everything.

So you guys are doing an amazing job.

I'm a fan. Thank you, man.

I look forward to kind of see if this is your kind of like learning phase,

then like, you know, I'm excited to see what it's like as you guys master this.

So I appreciate it. Thanks for doing this.

I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

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

Let's travel. Never looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.