From Homeless to YouTube's 2nd Biggest Channel (Stokes Twins Interview)

37:40I know to not like step on his toes. I know to like, Hey, it's okay. Like, don't worry about it. I'll give him his space. I'll go and figure it out without him. And I think, so I genuinely mean we don't really ever fight and ever, uh, yeah, of course we have small disagreements, right? Hey, like why this? Why that? Hey Alex, come on. Like you're being you're not focusing right now let's come over here what's taking you so long but it's never like what the f like are you doing you you know yeah it's it's funny because we've never been into a fight with each other never been in a fight in real life ever either so we're just very very non-confrontational to each other yeah and it's uh it's hilarious because everyone thinks like we always fight they're like oh you're twins you have to fight i fought with my sibling and i'm like no like the worst we've done is just like maybe i'll just call him don't call him a dumbass on a basal court for like the worst has ever gotten honestly it's on the basal court where he does something dumb and that's it and it's just like a thing or two like why'd you do that that's right yeah funny i was interviewing dude perfect and even they talked about disagreements they had and like there are five guys who aren't related but they've spent so much time together that they are like brothers you guys are literally brothers and yeah it's interesting to hear um i'm wondering were tensions high after you made that fake robbery video like can you tell me about that because you guys have like done a lot and turned things around since then like tell me about the fake robbery video you guys got arrested is that right um and like like tell me about like yeah yes so so wait alex yeah i guess what do you think happened you said you guys i would love i would love to hear like what you think happened and i can we can we have not been able to talk about it But it was one of the things that was able to get us remonetized.

39:22And I'm not even sure if us talking about it could get us demonetized. I'm not sure. But I'd love to hear from your perspective. What do you think happened? We'll tell you exactly what happened. Yeah, it seemed like you guys faked a robbery. The police got involved. You guys got taken in. Then YouTube got involved. And then they demonetized your channel. But set the record straight. Tell me if I'm wrong there in that recollection or if there's something that the public doesn't know. yeah well right off the bat nothing happened until two years later and there wasn't an arrest or anything uh we got off with a warning because we explained how so it's funny because i i called a week before um the irvine police department how hey we're gonna be doing this video um where we're kind of just walking up to people and like ski mask or like just asking them directions for the bank and once they tell us the directions as we're having this mid conversation I'll be putting on a ski mask and just walking away after they give me the directions.

40:17I'll come back like two, three minutes later with a duffel bag full of fake money and try to give them their share just to get a reaction. Right. That was the main premise of the prank. And I thought it would be super helpful. And to kind of think ahead and be like, hey, like maybe someone could call the cops over this. So we I called the Irvine Police Department the week before. I called them the day before and the day of to let them know, hey, we're shooting this prank on this day. and you proactively reached out yes yeah we even talked to and i spoke to a dispatcher we talked to the um the campus police because there's we also shot it at um university of irvine they have their own police department there as well we talked to them talked to beforehand just because we've seen the video online multiple times and they call like anytime the cops like come in they're like oh yeah hey you're the guy that we received the call on and i was like oh like we should probably call too it's like yeah it's a no-brainer to like call so they don't you know they don't waste their resources waste their time and that's pretty much what we did we even called like during the prank show hey we're still going on we said it was going to be for an hour but it's going to be about two hours oh yeah yeah of course you know talking to multiple people about it on the phone on the phone on the phone with the non-emergency non-emergency number talking to the police and we're not on the phone with 911 that's dispatch we're on the phone with the actual police department their office talking to multiple people and you know we have the whole like body cam of even the cause as well just to keep us protected.

41:39And pretty much we were, like I said, I would go to bus stops where it made sense for the people to still be there a few minutes later and just kind of mess with them. Like he said, it was, I would go up to them and be like, hey, where's the nearest bank at? And I'm, I'm in full block, right? And then, not a ski mask. Yeah. So like, I'm, there's, I think there's one and as I'm like listening and under conversation where the nearest bank is, I'm like putting on my gloves and he's like, why is this person putting on gloves? And they're making super funny faces. yeah it's right down there all right and i'll be like all right throw on my mask thank you and they'll be like wait did i just give a guy directions to the bank to rob the bank so i would walk down the street like just maybe like 50 feet away come back three minutes later with a duffel bag all calm and be like hey would have never been able to do it without you here's your shirt no man i don't want any of that like and some of them would know it was a joke it was like very light-hearted to the camera too yeah and be like and some of the hey i know you're recording man i see the cameraman up there i'm like dang it like but yeah where it got where it got out of hand was it was outside of our apartment and let me i just want to preface this by saying we were never near a bank yeah at all never even near a bank the nearest bank was i believe 2.3 miles away there wasn't that scene where you guys were going down the stairs that's the universe that's outside the community center at the universe at the college yeah that's not a bank that's a lecture hall that clip was because i was taken by the news yeah that's the lecture hall where we ran down where it made it look like a bank for the intro shot so that it just we're okay what's a good intro make it seem like we're actually running out of a bank like in the joker the joker making a bank heist so okay this building looks like a artifact like a old ancient bank so we it's actually like i think the auditorium so we ran out of the auditorium for that opener shot clipped together multiple scenes to make it look like that one take when we did that initial rundown there was i don't think there was that many people there but the second angle we made it seem like there was a lot of people that were running through because it's a different background so like it was a bunch of clips like shots clipped together but regardless that opener shot was outside the um auditorium so the nearest bank was like i believe from the college was like a few miles away from our apartment was like two something miles away so we were nowhere near a bank and like if it's going to be near a bank like not only am i not going to do that for my own safety, but also for like other people's safety as well.

43:59But yeah, we were the part that I think a lot of people saw and got upset about was we were outsider. It was different segments at a prank, right? Like that first segment was, I told you asking people for directions to the bank. That's the first segment. Second segment. And that's as far as we got to was we were outsider. We would call an Uber and run into the Uber with duffel bags outside of our apartment, right so we would get these uber drivers to show up and we would already be running into the car with duffel bags and we only did it to one uber driver we ran in and i was like go go go go go and are you alan yeah i'm alan i gotta go man and like you know just kind of making it seem like it's an emergency and he's like the uber driver you could tell you really wasn't messing with a prank he was like um i don't feel safe get out of the car and i was like oh man really he was like yeah please get out and you immediately got out of the car yeah we have the whole thing on like it's recording the whole time we immediately got out of the car and what ended up happening was a newport police responded to it so you know you're in urban yeah we're in but we live like next to john wayne airport which is like yeah two miles away from newport as well so a different police department responded to it and they sent out like a patch of like i from my memory the newport police got involved in it and then irvine police also got involved in as well going like hey like what like what is this prank came up to us and told us hey the uber driver could have been pulled over at gunpoint um so it's a very dangerous prank what you're doing also like you're putting your life at the line and pretty much like one of them recognized us and was like hey like i see the videos you guys make and one of the people is actually the people that we spoke to there as well so long story short that was filmed two years ago and then two years later like we randomly see a press release going like hey like the da is gonna come after the stokes twins for doing this robbing a bank and there were all these headlines that we saw where it was like you know i get it's the news they're like all trying to out clickbait each other one news station said we went into side of bank shot it up and then said it was a prank we have people saying we pulled the uber driver held the uber driver at gunpoint um and at the end of the day like youtube demonetizes over it all over the press coverage over the press coverage we never went we never never approached by the police the only time we were approached by the arrested no no we were never approached by the police other than inside the prank when a newport police showed up was like oh like one of them recognizes oh it's you guys like and then one i believe he was like more of a senior officer he wasn't part of the call but he was like hey like can i speak to you candidly like what you're doing is stupid yeah you know like you're putting your life at the line you could be putting other people's life at the line like and also what if that's for other youtubers i think that's a piece of yes yes yes yes of course of course and and yeah i just know i just remember seeing that press release youtube we immediately got demonetized from youtube they wanted to charge us with uh kidnapping an uber driver um which i was like okay like holding the uber driver hostage i was like okay like they're never gonna be able to get that i had the footage but they really really wanted that they really really wanted that and youtube was like hey like that's a felony charge we're not going to remonetize you with a felony like even as like an alleged felony yeah so the only way you can get out of it is it's a misdemeanor so we i was like hey i'm innocent i'm going to take this to trial yeah they kept filing motions to like delay it and after six months i was like this is during covet this is during covet by the way like this is post covet and we didn't film the prank during kobe filmed it wait it was like i want to say seven years ago when we filmed the prank was one of our first pranks we ever filmed and basically don't during covid every single time they filed a motion it would push the court date back but like three to six months and they just kept doing it repeatedly because they didn't want us to be remonitored on youtube not the da didn't what why did why would the da they wanted to send an example the nelk boys also lived in irvine and they were also like doing pranks there as well like they were the whole like they brought they even brought the nelk boys during like the deposition stuff like or our lawyer would be like hey this guy's after the nilk boys as well they want to send an example that irvine's going to be safe there's going to be no pranksters in irvine yeah because irvine's like you know can regard it as one of the safest cities in the world so they wanted to keep that reputation they wanted to set the precedent hey if you're going to mess around in irvine we're going to lay down a law on you so they want really wanted to make an example out of youtubers so unfortunately that happened to be us but after the motion got filed like three different times that we were demonetized for six months i was like hey like if this goes to trial even though i know will be proven innocent it's gonna take two years to get to trial i we're not making a dime off of youtube we're not making a dime off of instagram and that's during the same time period when i had our thumbnail guy like um you know just put our face everything was hitting at once so we were like dang like we're just trying to like you know have a little bit of leftover money trying to cut down on the costs.

48:54Um, we even let go of like, you know, one guy because we couldn't afford him because we were, didn't make a dime at the time. So we were, that's the main way you guys were making money. Yeah. That's the only way we made our money. So we just, I just didn't think it would take that long. So it was, Hey, it made more sense to, um, take a plea deal and not wait two, three years when it goes to trial, even though we will win. And it was just kind of sitting there. It was like, but we're pleading guilty to something we didn't do, but we definitely needed the money to like be able to make money again from youtube because that's our only source of income so taking the plea would mean that the like demonization would be lifted soon yes because we would plead down to a misdemeanor that's what they were i think they've never lost the case the da and he wanted to keep a perfect record so technically by us pleading guilty it would mean that he won the case so basically that's that was their game plan they wanted to say like hey like we got you anyone else who's going to do this same thing is going to happen to you and yeah i guess fast forward like when we did plead guilty we had to plead guilty to i believe it was reporting a false emergency which isn't what we did they said that we called the cops to get the cops to show up for the video so the video would seem more epic we never did that it's the our neighbor called the cops you know thinking that oh like what's going the uber driver is doing something weird there's a sketchy there's a sketchy uber driver because because but but you guys get away drive the getaway driver yeah get away but you guys were there with the mask with money yes yes he had a reason to be alarmed yeah so we we told all these people it was a prank afterwards so it's not like we tell them and they just like wonder off on the end of the day like oh my god like does someone just rob a bank like we tell these people it's a prank but yeah long story short we pled guilty and we were re-monetized on youtube but the press that was there was like a second round of press that was like stokes twins plead guilty to uh robbing bank so explicitly guilty to uh reporting a false emergency it's just you know these headlines really all trying to like out clickbait each other but i you know looking back at it it is a dumb prank to do but we did the take the you know proper precautions you know like considering other people safety our own safety um you know i believe that parts of the video were harmless and i believe that parts of the video like getting into the uber driver like it could scare the uber driver Right.

51:15But like, as far as going up to someone asking for directions to the bank, like, I think that part was like pretty lighthearted. And I just do not like how it was really, really spun out of proportion on us walking inside a bank, shooting it up. Then, you know, there's that whole like before that, there's this whole stigma of like YouTubers. It's a prank, bro. It's just a prank, bro. You can get away with anything. And, you know, that's definitely not what happened. But at the same time, too, was something very dumb that we did. But yeah, definitely way blown out of proportion. and we definitely definitely paid a price for it yeah and yeah you know to this day like gave us a lot to think about when we were demonetized yeah obviously that uh like bank robbery prank was dumb and like yeah um but you're saying like there's nothing else that happened there that no like like false reporting an emergency yeah yeah they were saying that we called 911 to get the cops to show up uh wasting resources for like you know obviously an intro shot of a video where like we're running outside a bank and there's like you guys were running it like out of a university yeah yeah that's everybody thought it was a bank everyone thought it was a video yeah and it's what we wanted for the entertainment right like you know you the the the joker driving the bus out of the bank like that's an amazing shot right like and you see the cops chasing him right after oh wow that's such a great hook to an opener of a movie we were trying to recreate that as well where it's like we're running out of a bank um you know a fake bank but obviously um that's what people thought that we were doing by they said that we called the cops to have them show up to the scene when we called the cops to let them know multiple days before hey we're doing a prank this is my full name this is how we look like you know just talk to multiple people about it just kind of so they didn't waste their resources but unfortunately that is something we had to plead guilty to and why not why not address it because like hearing your side like when i was trying to research for this interview like it's all their side you know i like everything i found like they're taking your clips like i know again the context of it and and and and the prank was like you know it's it's it's uh like it's a pretty dumb prank but but like hearing you explain it i have more of an understanding that i didn't and you guys have such a huge platform like why not come out and be like exactly what you said like there's more nuance to it i i really believe in well to me like i think it's more so like not reliving the past i think when i'm repeating it like i try to move on with my life because like if i'm just dwelling on the past i feel like i'm missing like the present and the future and it's just to me like reliving that it just reminds me of a really crappy time in my life and i just i just personally don't like to talk about it we're super private people too yeah and it's just i just i'm just not the kind of person to share overshare i feel like we're just we're creators we just want to make entertaining videos and it's just not something I think I it's like worth like sharing even like I don't really there's a lot of things people don't know about us right so that's just we're super like honestly we're very introverted we're private people and me I just my personal choice was to just not even you know like me like I'm kind of against him sharing this whole story too because like I'm just kind of reliving everything it's kind of like making me feel a little bit like weird so it's just like i definitely don't um like relive in the past if that makes sense because it really takes away um from my main focus in the future but of course it's like one of these things where it's like oh like why not address it because i really me personally i don't care if people like i'm not over here trying to impress like a random neighbor going oh so you didn't rob the bank you want to come in and have coffee hell yeah and i just made a new friend like i don't really care i appreciate you guys even talking about it like i know that's hard i also think people who haven't heard your side of it are gonna think differently about it um and uh i i think the more remarkable thing is like how far you guys have come since then you know and like what you built and like looking around um was there a moment after that you're like okay things are turning around like we're really like on the up and up like we talked about like that moment yeah i mean when we were demonetized like i feel like the smart thing to do would have been like hey let's post on other other platforms to make money yeah but to us it wasn't like about making money with youtube like we genuinely love making youtube videos like when i say like we love making videos we genuinely do so it's like we just wanted to like keep posting for our audience and also even though at that point you weren't making yeah well we weren't making a dime we've consistently still posted um a week and of course we had to scale back on a few things and kind of cut out like you know costs and you know be more hands-on and i think that's also what taught us to be a lot more hands-on yeah as well like every single little uh part of the way but no i i definitely think um that situation just it you know gave us a lot of perspective and we kind of like figured out hey like what do we do do we still keep posting videos and you know that conversation was had but i was like absolutely like we love posting videos like why would we stop we posted videos and we were like little kids without making any money like i love posting videos why would we stop so of course like you know it was never about the money to us it was more so like the passion and making videos and that's just i just didn't want that to stop like at all so that was um definitely something that i remembered and just wanted to like keep doing or tell me about that day where you guys were re-monetized again and like thinking about like you know using that money to build a team and like like almost like the next chapter of the stokes twins like how guys how were you guys thinking about that after you got your monetization back and oh i mean right when we were re-monetized i think you can see like a huge spike in views where it's like, you know, right now we're cost efficient when it comes to like certain things.

57:04But back then we were to the point where it's like, hey, like we could use a couple hundred dollars, a couple thousand dollars extra to make this more, you know, epic. And I believe a few months after we were re-monetized, I think our views like 5X'd and it's just, it was definitely, we definitely used a lot of, you know, we didn't stop posting obviously. So we were getting better each video and then when we combine that with you know thinking of hey how do we actually elevate this video by spending more like just figuring out like what exactly can we do to make it like elevate this piece of content for the viewer yeah the main thing is we were just able to kind of like you know if we wanted to get uh we we got this kevin hart voice imitator who was going viral on tiktok we flew him out to be in our video and that's something we wouldn't have been able to afford at the time when we were demonetized.

57:56So we were just kind of posting as normal, but we were able to do like, Hey, like we can finally go to this trampoline park, rent this trampoline park out or, uh, get this actor to come out here and be in our video. Right. So we were just posting like everything was normal. And, you know, we just, like I said, we didn't think too much of it. We just wanted to move past. It was a very hard time in our life. so we definitely posted like nothing ever happened so just scaled up in a way that we weren't able to beforehand financially yeah uh i want to ask about a big turning point in february of 2024 because i pulled up this graph that i want to share with you guys for years you were getting like a few million views per day and then in february 2024 it skyrocketed to you guys averaging 50 million views per day what what happened what changed view bots i'm joking you're not okay now it sounds suspicious alex i thought okay well our goal like for every year is to try something new and originally in 2023 going into 2024 we wanted to try to globalize our content more and we always thought we our content really appealed to mass audience and i know like uh with that in mind we definitely wanted to try dubbing and making our content it more globalized well tell me about so how did you make it more globalized because i think dubbing a lot of people know about like what do you guys do to like did you guys like try to speak less in your videos or like what else do you because that's that's a crazy jump i definitely want to say that we filmed some videos that were very targeted towards dubbing which was like which country has the best school lunch um uh which country country competes for this that where it's just more like appealable on the homepage.

59:43When you see it, you're a new follower from like a different country. And I definitely would say like our content is a little bit more globalized, right? I feel like if you look at what videos are doing well globally, I feel like challenges play a huge part of that. Um, blogs, pranks that definitely plays like a huge part in it as well. That along with, um, I do want to mention that we also got a new editing team as well. Right. So literally we got a new editor in february who kind of really understood like our vision what we wanted to do in the video someone who specialized a little more in editing graphics yeah vfx 3d and he was really helped able to help us storytell our videos a lot better on the way that we wanted to um you know better retention better storytelling better graphics really elevating our video to like the next level yeah i think that combined with like dubbing tracks really really helped um with a huge boost in views as you can see yeah and then just around this time like another graph that i thought was fascinating was your subscriber count this is from view stats you guys jumped from around 15 million subscribers around february 2024 to again 110 million because of all the things you said which is fascinating to see yeah yeah you start from 15 million yeah 15 million to 111 wait so we've grown 100 million subscribers this year i had no clue i mean wait look at your can you pull up your youtube studio i had no clue we grew that much oh my god i really didn't know I had no clue.

1:01:07Wow. I had no clue that we were... Yeah, look at your past year, your past 365 days. Jeez. 85 million. 85.3 million in the last 365 days. Wow. Oh my God. Okay. Well, I thought the number was closer to 50 because we don't really necessarily... What are some other stats on there that kind of jump out on your YouTube studio? Can you share your AdSense? Oh, AdSense? I mean, it's amazing how far you guys have come. I want you to guess what our AdSense is. Man, you guys are... It's so interesting because I feel like you guys are doing crazy views, but I also wonder about the CPMs. Yeah, the January.

1:01:46Let's keep that in mind, too. Yeah, it's January. Well, for the last 365 days. Oh, the last 365 days. Yeah, the last 365 days. Oh, God. Wait, do we want to just throw that out there for the world to know? 10 million. 10 million? Under. Under. 5 million. 5 million? Under. 2.5 million. 2.5 million yeah so on adsense alone he's joking i'm joking i'm joking i'm joking no but it's under 10 million in between 5 million 5 5 to 10 million 5 yeah between 5 to 10 million in adsense last year yeah wow that's wild that's wild yeah how does that feel like making 5 to 10 million dollars on youtube adsense alone after coming from you know basically oh wow like we it's honestly like a blessing.

1:02:29Like we love what we do and just being able to like do wake up every day, you know, have like, obviously we have a huge passion for what we do. It's like, you know, there's people always ask me like, Oh, do you need, do you need time off? I'm like, no, like I love doing this. This is my hobby. This is like my joy. So to be able to make a living out of this and that much of a living from it is just truly a blessing. So yeah, it's, it's incredible. It's incredible. Can you tell me about your time in AMP, the creator collective founded by Brent Rivera? you guys were part of that you guys made videos with him and his crew for many years rewind the clock like why did you guys join that group instead of you know making content on your own yeah um i think that takes us back to like i guess during that time when we first came out here trying to make it on our own um i believe this was like even i think this was six months after we did try to do social media on our own um we were obviously uh we were homeless we needed like um support And after like our first like breakthrough, like Instagram videos, Instagram pictures that really went viral, Brent stumbled upon some of them along with the other creators.

1:03:35Right. You know, there were like multiple people who were like popular at the time. Shoot, like pretty much like all of them like approached us at the time. Like who? Like this is Jake Paul, Team 10 era, right? Yeah. It's just more so like a lot of groups approached us. They're in your hands offering you deals. Yes. Yes. Yes. and even handing us contracts but the one that made the most sense to us at the time was amp and you know we signed with them hopefully wanting to get you know you know like a place to stay uh like a content group to film with and at the end of the day it's just you know our time there we did learn a lot like you know seeing another creator who had done it for all these years and definitely we were able to kind of see and learn and almost felt like an internship right where i'm able to be like, oh my God, this is a whole creator economy.

1:04:25This is what creators do. This is how creators mingle. Like these are how creators interact with other creators. This is how they make content and this is how they think. And I was able to kind of see what I liked and what I didn't like. And I guess after a few years, uh, we just, you know, wasn't the right fit for us. And we kind of, we're more so alone was we like thinking our own. We like doing things on our own. We like having our own team, own people that we can train up, which is why we have such a lean team. but yeah at the end of the day we kind of um you know it was a definitely a great learning experience from them and we were kind of able to take that and apply that knowledge to like our parts of like what we do and yeah i think we were with them for roughly two years three years three years around three years yeah what was the most surprising thing you guys learned during that time how much money you can make from social media really yeah how much yeah how like this is an actual living, right?

1:05:17Like ways to monetize like through content, right? Like, you know, I always associated, I always thought like, you know, you just kind of do it and you have followers and you only make money from brands, but there's monetization from YouTube. There's a brand deals you can get from Instagram. There's brand deals you can get from TikTok. And just being able to like, see that really was like, Oh my God, this is a, you can make a real living off of this. And that's precisely what we did with it. What was the offering? Like what, what did, like a lot of a lot's been said about these creator groups like like some are super helpful some are not they sell you a big dream like what what do they offer do they say we're going to put you in this many cross promotions of other people in the group who have tens of millions of followers do they say we're going to source brand deals for you like what what made you guys say like oh this is going to help us versus doing us on our own because obviously right now you guys are super successful as lone wolves yeah i mean that's precisely what it is uh there's a group of people that you can like collaborate with, you know, other creators or other people that will be under Brent.

1:06:16Like Lexi. Yes. Yeah. Those people where you can kind of just like collaborate with them, make content with them, you know, kind of, you know, and just hang out with them as friends. Yeah. Right. And also there is like a manager that Brent had who would source us deals if the opportunity ever came. And I think that right there was very, very appealing to us. Okay. Like Like we would have access to Brent to help us grow. We would have access to a manager to get us some deals. And that at the end of the day was, okay, this makes the most sense for us. And I guess culturally, like, you know, we don't drink, we don't like do smoke or any of that.

1:06:54And he was the same way. And a bunch of other groups, they're very into like party heavy. So that's just wasn't like, that's not what I was trying to do. I've never really enjoyed that. And when I saw that my vision was aligned, Brent's vision was also that I was, oh my God, like I want someone who's going to help us grind. So that's what ended up making us go with Brent. Not necessarily like the brand deals, people inside of it, but just his goals and the kind of person he was. Yeah. Where it's just like, we're going to grind, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. And I'm going to learn a lot from it.

1:07:23So that's what made us go with him. Yeah. You can add. Oh yeah. Just like the ecosystem, having creators there and just surrounding yourselves with people who also want to make content as well. just like taken as an opportunity to learn and use others to kind of be in you know help them and vice versa just kind of I just thought like the ecosystem there was definitely appealing and yeah we definitely learned a lot from that so that was one of the main reasons why yeah what was the trade-off like what cut did they take of your revenue I do not think we're I don't think yeah i mean is it was it like just do you want to know personally i mean i'm just curious because i know a lot of creators who enter these agreements and some are really happy with it but some like become too big for what they initially agreed to yeah resentment as i'm just curious like um yeah it's just complicated a lot of these deals but you don't have to share the number no of course like so whenever money gets involved i feel like everyone that's when things oh it always gets messy.

1:08:26And of course, when you're like going into at such a young age, like people do have resentment. But you know, as you get older, you realize, hey, like everyone's living life for the first time, we're all learning. And I just don't really hold any bad blood for anyone in that regard. But yeah, it's just it got to a point where the money we were splitting just didn't make sense at all, because we were really operating outside of not really utilizing their resources or their team. And it just made so much more sense to kind of have things, um, build our own schedule, build our own team and just kind of, uh, go from there.

1:09:04But of course, you know, we, things we learned there and all that was definitely, uh, super valuable. Yeah. And I think there's a lot to be said about like these content houses, like team 10 amp, um, they've been around YouTube for a while, but I think a lot of people think like, Oh, the members of those groups like they have to be members of that group for life but that's not true i view them more as like saturday night night live you know like snl you guys come in you're like there for a bit and then you go on your own and you graduate which it sounds like you guys have done yeah yeah i think the difference between like the group that we were in versus like them um i think they all get like uh have like a certain ownership of the channel where it's like you know if they leave they kind of don't get that anymore right like it's yeah they all get like a certain percentage of the channel wait they all get rev share yes it's all like split like pretty evenly i think oh interesting i don't know if that's still the case anymore with like a lot of these like groups that have been around i'm not gonna name any specific ones but obviously you know when you're when you own a certain percentage of like uh you know a successful channel like it would be not a wise mood to leave unless you're unless you have like your own channel that is more successful that hey if i dedicated more of my time to my own channel i could be making this much more and I would be you know more so free and doing what I love to do and make more money which ultimately is what happened to us yeah and it just made more sense for us to do our own thing have our own schedule have our own team and not be tied down to like their schedule and like appear in everyone's content because that would eat up a lot of our time like I was believed like we were not able to make like certain videos because of the fact that we had a certain schedule that we had to go to how to make ourselves available for collaborations like mandatory collaboration so at the end of the day it made more sense for us to just kind of do off do our own thing make our own videos and just start up our own team yeah so that makes sense and and you know brent deserves a lot of credit for building that up and like a lot of people to try but he's done it um you know with a lot of different creators and for many years now so um that's interesting like the economics of it so were you guys given like you don't say how much but like a rev share of like other creators or that it was just no no no no it was just uh you know everything that essentially we owned and created would be shared shared yes got it got it like what's your relationship with brent river now uh we're still you know um you know like we i regularly text bin we you know we actually saw him at the spotter summit we had some you know we create a lot of core memories together right so it's just um one of these things where you know just because we lost touch doesn't mean like there's any like bad blood but it's just when with any opportunities yeah i'm going to be excited to see like ben or like someone else where it's a hey like you know we we were both young experienced this journey together and you know i'm of course i'm going to be excited to see someone who reminds me of my past and it's just yeah it's just one of these things where it's very uh reminiscing seeing him just reminds me of we were times were more simple we were younger and you know we're also trying to learn and grow and do the same thing together so yeah yeah today forbes lists your net worth at 20 million dollars i would love this is that accurate or is your net worth higher lower like what do you think about that number if you want to like a like i guess calculate a like accumulative earnings like everything we've earned i would say it's accurate but in terms of like liquid and all these things and the fact that we like reinvest a lot of our um into like payroll into like a bunch of you know everything we have it's just i would say it's not accurate but it is accurate in terms of like everything i guess we've made in our lifetime like everything we've generated from adsense or whatever what have you right but no in terms of like hey like let me buy a private jet like that kind of money i'm like nope that is not uh yeah it's not let's long story it's not accurate it's not accurate yeah yeah i wish i wish um how much are you guys spending per month because it seems like you're reinvesting a ton in your kind of you mentioned payroll like i would love you to kind of just what do you think it is i love this little pop quiz back and forth over 150 000 a month that's our you think that's our um i guess on videos or everything just on video like um our team our payroll how much money every month on average oh on on leaves our bank account so everything in general right well like we don't ever like buy anything for ourselves i think the suit was like the most expensive thing we bought for ourselves no no no um yeah so like we don't we don't have any designer stuff we don't ever buy anything for ourselves at all like given this is a very nice luxurious house yeah but at the end of the day it's all for content.

1:13:52Yeah. Right. So, um, shoot, like I don't want this number to be spun out of proportion, but counting everything, what leaves our bank account, I would say 90, probably 98 % of that is all in our business. Yeah. Each year we probably spend around$10 million on our videos just to run everything. Yeah. The last three years has been roughly that. Wait, I want to make sure I heard that right. how much do you spend a year on videos? The last three years we spent roughly 30 million on our videos. So roughly 10 a year. Um, some months it's like a million, some months it's 500 depends on. Wow. Yeah. It's to me, I'm like, I sit down, I sit down, I open up, I open up my own.

1:14:41I look at the, I look at my bank account. I'm looking off through all these like PDFs and I'm like, where in the hell am I spending this much money at? And I look at them, Oh my God. Okay. Like, so to build this was like$22 ,000, uh, to do this was like 15 ,000. Like, and I'm like, okay, like that really, really adds up. Right. Like, um, and like, I honestly, like I thought a huge portion of that was like electricity, like electricity for this house is only like, I think like what, like under a thousand, like electricity, water, all of that's like under a thousand so you'd imagine it's a lot more because it's a pretty big house so i was like okay like i gotta be spending this much on like electricity water gas all these things but like i said like 98 of that is all like video costs right like the team um we do have some very high level employees that we do pay like a premium rate to um and just you know uh video costs uh yeah i would definitely say it's like um the payroll is definitely payroll is definitely like yeah the biggest biggest chunk a bit and that makeup of your team mostly editors or i would kind of folks in there i would say definitely the biggest cost is um editors yeah uh then production then right now we have like i said like people that i'm training up as well and a lot of them are from like you know different parts of like the world so obviously having to pay for like their stay um you know food um their salary as well.

1:16:14So I would definitely say payroll, just payroll alone probably makes up 4 million a year, probably four, four. Yeah. I would say four million a year, just payroll right now. And you're fueling this through YouTube ads. Purely adsense. Well, how many, I looked through your past videos. I couldn't find a brand deal. Yeah. Like how many brand deals would you say you've done in the past three, four years? I think we've done maybe like three or four, one a year is that like because they're not coming in or because you guys aren't reaching out i would definitely say like we turned down majority of the brand deals i just kind of almost see it as like a i okay so it depends on if it's a good fit or not we're very selective on who we work with and i just almost view it as like hey if it's not a good fit my fans are going to be at oh like that's a obviously like when you put an ad in a video like people like to say like oh like this many people i'm able to do it like and keep this many people on that's never the truth um it's definitely like a lower point in the video and we're just super super critical in our videos and i know for a fact that hey like here's how much the brand deal is going to make me here's how much more i would make from the video if it were to have if it were to have this watch time if we're to have this click-through rates um these analytics that and i kind of factor in okay over a five-year course like maybe i'm making an extra this much money from the brand deal which counting factor my time communicating with the brand doing this if it's not the right fit it's not a right partnership it's almost not worth it to us but given like we have been approached by like you know we have done like a few brand deals over the years that we think are good fits um as well so it's just like i said it's i believe that right now we have a lot of fresh followers.

1:18:00We just grew a lot, a lot, and we have the trust of our followers. So not only do I want it to be a good fit for the brand, I don't want to disappoint the brand, but I also don't want to disappoint my fans. I don't want to, I don't want to just kind of force them to like, you know, sit through an ad read, you know, cause that's the part I get most annoyed at in someone's video. I'm like, okay, like I'm just, I fast forwarding that part when I see it in other people's videos, but if it's the right fit, if it's an organic placement in a video, like absolutely that makes sense right so that's the way we see it as but you know over the last few months we've pretty close to closing out like a few partnerships that i think definitely make a lot of sense in our content so yeah it's kind of just back to like us not thinking it's worth our time or not a great fit what's the biggest brand deal you've said no to shoot

1:18:50i think like 120 million i'm making this up

1:18:57um that's wait that that's a good question that's a very good question because like all of this happened really recently like like our growth so of course we have like new rates with you know i feel like we're worth but the the funny thing is a lot of these brands like when they come to us they're like think that we're still at like 20 30 mil yeah like they don't know that in the last few nine months we've grown like 80 to 90 million subscribers right so they're like they don't know our views they're like oh you guys are still getting 20 million views a video right like over time and um averaged out like you know in the last i want to say last like 10 11 months like we're averaging close to 100 million views per video given give it like a few months but we've had a few like i would say like a seven figure deal where i'm like hey like based on these posting requirements, it just really wouldn't be worth my time.

1:19:45And I don't think it's a great fit for like our audience either. So we're just super, super like selective with the brands, especially this year too. When we do find that right brand and right partnership, we're also so hands-on in the creative process as well, where it's like, hey, like I know if this is going to be the right fit, we can create that spectacle and really drive excitement about the product or whatever it is that we're trying to advertise. So it's just more so like being careful about that. Because I just never at any point, since we're so hyper, you know, specific on like our retention, we just don't want any like low points.

1:20:20And if we can find a way to really think of a creative solution and hey, like we can find, we can do like the ad read here or like a super organic placement right here throughout the videos. and just finding like the best conversion for us and for the brand is definitely something we're super focused on when it is, when we do find like the right brand we do want to work with. I mean, the way you guys think about retention is fascinating. I was watching a lot of your shorts and without fail, you almost always have a call to action to subscribe. But it's well done. What's the most subscribers you've gotten from a short?

1:20:55Shoot. Oh, there's multiple ones where it's like over a million, like multiple ones. Yeah. yeah um how do you think about that because like it's almost like you know like you could take time for a brand deal you could take time for your own call to action for subscribing like how do you think about um like breaking up the story to say subscribe or do you guys have any tips or tricks to integrate like the subscribe call to action in your shorts yeah we typically try to tie it in with like what we're doing in the video right like we went to this um park in the philippines it was it's called dino it's called dino island and there's just like these dinosaurs bite you this gorilla punches you right and it punched them in the face and um pretty much i was like okay like punch that subscribe button i mean like it's like feels like you know it's kind of like wordplay and it's oh my god like during the replay we're like you know saying like punch that subscribe button and it's just i feel like this is more of like an organic fit where it's not like us after the video standing there going hey thank you guys so much for watching make sure you're subscribed blah blah blah blah blah which is what we used to do and i was oh my god like why did no one watch that part it's a huge dip so we just found ways to make it a little bit more organic and it's like it's not too much thought process of it but like you know it depends on what we're doing right like getting punched punch that subscribe button um it's just i just feel like it's just more wordplay and think of creative call uh ways for like cause to action as opposed to like just straight up saying subscribe and i think that's like that's also important because when I'm watching something like that and let's say let's say like he filmed the shorts without me knowing I'll watch and I'm like oh like that didn't feel annoying that subscribe gimmick and vice versa like we're you know we'll watch and we're like okay that's more of like a self-aware sort of um call to action we're just kind of putting that word in our head and you know of course it definitely converts a bit better for us versus not saying subscribe versus not saying subscribe is like like five times difference yeah let's say typically you only earn like a hundred thousand subscribers yeah if you say subscribe it can be anywhere between five to ten times the difference oh wow literally just saying the word oh yeah yeah oh or i mean not just straight up saying the word but like if you find a really organic placement for it that is i would say yeah i pulled this video where i thought the intro was just a master class in getting people's attention i was wondering if you could play it pause it break down what you guys did and have the script in front of you guys as well today i'm building a secret 7-eleven in my room and hiding it from my twin brother he says we don't look like twins anymore because of my recent weight gain so he started a 90 day okay so first of all the intro shot right so we always think of a way to like all right like first off right when you click on a video like especially when it comes to secret room we always think of all right like what youtubers haven't done like um certain like you know spots for example like the one we did with the five secret rooms we were no one's ever done one underneath the floor under a bed or at least to my knowledge so we wanted to do that so we're like okay that's not only does that fit like okay that's super visual and so that's something no one's ever done and that was the same thought process behind the intro shot for the uh 7-eleven where it's oh it's a Mona Lisa painting something everyone you know and that's the part that's super important too where it's like it's not just a painting of a random person it's also something that people worldwide know about so when we're like right off the bat you're like okay like what is this and it's like a secret entrance to a 7-eleven and 7-eleven is also super global as well so it's like we're combining these things and really thinking like okay how do we get the hook like i mentioned that secret entrance oh my god okay that's super impressive and then 7-eleven people are familiar with that and you know the weight gain people always comment about like okay alex is gaining a lot of weight and yeah i was surprised you put that in the video like no there's been rumors you've been gaining weight also for like the retention jokes like is there there's been rumors i mean i think it's it's not a rumor it's all the comments it's all the comments I think it's the truth.

1:24:45You're gaining weight to increase your YouTube retention? Yes. No, no, of course not. No, it's just, it's, you know, like, that's a whole thing. You know, it's, I definitely would say that it's really, really, just the last 2020, 2023 to 2025. Now, I, you know, when you're your own boss, like you feel like you can never do enough work. Right. And it's like, oh, I could work out or I could spend an hour improving my intro to my video. or sitting there with the editors, teaching them what I want, or training up someone new and having them understand what it is that I do. And it's just like a never-ending, I feel like I never can do enough.

1:25:26And it's like, okay, I'm my own limit, if that makes sense, right? However long I work, however much I work, is going to be put back in a video. It's going to show in the views. It's going to show in our business. It's going to show in all those aspects. So I've kind of my health has kind of been like a side hustle to me recently to where I just kind of eat Postmates, eat DoorDash. It's just more convenient. It saves me time. I'm able to eat and talk as opposed to like cook my own food like I used to. And obviously when we were homeless, like there was no food to eat. Right. So I was a lot skinnier than wasn't able to.

1:26:01So I've been introduced to a lot of amazing Postmates DoorDash food. and throughout the years a lot of our fans have noticed like hey like they don't look like twins anymore like and it did hurt my feelings initially but now i kind of just play into it i'm like hey like you know i don't you know i know i'm i know i'm fat now so might as well just play into it you still look great man yeah yeah but tell me more about the intention behind each of the words in each of the shots because i also saw this interesting post from mario juice who worked with you guys. Oh, yes. Yeah. He said that in his post, he said you guys had 18 page scripts for your videos where everything was thought out.

1:26:39So I know we're talking about the intro, but like what's in those 18 page scripts that makes your videos go so viral? Yeah. I mean, it's, it comes ultimately from studying like our retention, right? With, I would say our best planned videos, the ones that have gone the most viral are the ones where we're able to like capitalize on multiple times, right? Some videos are like one off. You know, if we film a video, that's a one out of 10 or like a two or three out of 10 we're probably going to plan like a part two or part three to that video right but if it's like a obviously 10 out of 10 like you know we're going to kill it off we're not going to do part two to that yeah but with the secret rooms like i mentioned that was such a huge one out of 10 for us where we were like okay like we're gonna have to make multiple series of this um and from there we're kind of just able to see like what people enjoyed in the video what they didn't enjoy and when you're able to study like a video and able to do it like five, six times, you can kind of the next, by the time we do the next one, like I want it as perfect as possible.

1:27:35And from, because I'm able to see exactly what the audience is enjoying, what they're not enjoying, where they're clicking off at, we're able to write like the perfect script where it's like, okay, maybe they didn't care too much when I'm not making progress and finding my room. If I'm making a joke, too many jokes back to back, I got to cut that out. So when I walk in, I need to have intent on, okay, this is where I'm going to look first. And when I go and look for it, here's why it doesn't work as opposed to just, you know, a lot of times when we like find these rooms, I genuinely want to build a secret room in a pool, but I'm not going to do that because it's too cold.

1:28:12And I'll say that in the video. Okay, I'm not going to do that. It's too cold. And you can see right through it. Yeah. So like from there, I'm like, okay, like I'm peeking the audience and just like, is he going to build a secret room in a pool? That would be really, really cool. And we do a graphic of it and everything, but then not able to do it. so i settled for a kind of a cool spot underneath the floor here which that was a whole like cut into the marble all of that stuff very expensive to talk about the construction and like set building you guys because it's insane um but tell me about like like this video can you show me the retention graph wait so so this is the retention graph for the 7-eleven yes yes but it definitely looked a lot different when we first posted it but when it's like reaching 100 million views sometimes like the graphs aren't i thought the whole video said top moment but then you know when you check back months later sometimes you know the intro shot people are you know i mean this is 94 million views it's getting 226 000 views every 48 hours uh 41 retention on a video that's about 20 minutes long um can i see how much ad sense they got or can i scroll or like Oh, I mean, you can.

1:29:23Okay. Like, yeah, you can. Holy shit. On one video. I can't say this number out loud. Wait, can I say? I don't even know what it is. I don't know what it is. I would love to see what it is. I mean, this is probably pennies for you guys, but that's a lot of trips to Costco. Yeah, that is. That's a lot of buffets. Yeah. What's your video with your best retention or what's like most subscribers or like any other videos that have like an interesting. i mean which video this is our most viral video yeah that's like 100 i think 170 wow yeah 168 million views can i scroll to the adsense on this yes yes this one's definitely a lot better oh my god well first of all can i say the subscriber number you got from this yes yes on this video alone you guys got 924 000 subscribers wow oh my god that's how much you guys made on ad sense from this video yeah how much was it let me see yeah oh wow okay that was a lot more than i thought you guys don't look at your numbers like this i feel like some well i mean we check it in the first week i just don't want to dwell on it yeah and like a lot of times it goes down as it reaches more people wow the ad slots aren't don't get filled up so how long ago was this video uh posted this has been like 10 months or 10 months wait really no way we're in 2020 that's wild i mean that that's a lot more renovations uh yeah a lot more yeah construction costs yeah cover um that's insane if you made it this far it'd mean the world if you could hit the subscribe button and ring the bell as we try to hit 1 million subscribers this year plus we have so many big videos coming up from studio tours to behind the scenes to interviews that you won't want to miss and just thank you for everything guys to be able to do this full-time has been a dream come true and now back to the video yeah great audio sync what does that do when you clap like you're able to sync all of them because you see like that huge like yeah yeah you didn't know that that's why they do the thing so they can find it too in the clip well you knew she knew that come on no if i knew it and you don't know it you're kidding me no i didn't know that i didn't i actually didn't know i thought it was for like a visual thing but the clapping like i put that together but i've never done that i've never seen people do that because we don't we don't hang around other creators and they don't do behind the scenes stuff like this oh wow or like i mean we've never been we just up until like two months ago we just hang out with creators like jimmy was the first creator we hung out with in the last three years wait right wait to shoot that so wait when you guys shoot that video with jimmy he was the first creator we hung out with in three years jordan matter came he was the other only other creator in fede yeah where they just came and like we just filmed a video but jimmy was the first one that we i would say fed a too like we hung out with him a little bit but jimmy was the first one we actually got to talk to as like people right like there was a little bit of language barrier with fed a but yeah for three and a half years jimmy was the first creator we got to talk to and he really opened up my eyes on a lot of stuff so wow wait there's so many why why did it take three and a half years to like hang out with the creator i mean you guys are one of the biggest ones on youtube i mean like what just happened recently i guess yeah i mean yeah i mean the growth was recent too no you guys have been big for a while this is just another level um i mean he reached out and then we talked on the phone and you know i feel like um i learned a lot from him and surprisingly he mentioned like oh my god like you guys are a little bit or he mentioned that we were smarter than like what he initially thought of us and i was like really like what's people's perception of us like i didn't ask him that but i'm thinking in my head i was like if this is all they see of us they don't know like our lives personally they don't know our operations Like anytime I tell anyone up until recently that our team is only this many people that we had five employees.

1:33:06That was it for like the last like six, seven years. And we didn't even get those employees until three years ago. Yeah. And it's everyone goes, how in the hell did you scale up to this? And I would definitely say it's because I were super obsessed with what we do. We really I pretty much can spend all day on YouTube. And it's just also because I love it. I love every step of what we do. So I'm constantly, I just see it as, oh my God, like I can't wait to like, you know, look over my video. Can't wait to like see how I can improve it. Can't wait to look over the analytics. And I just love every moment of it.

1:33:38So that's honestly like how we do it. So I just love being involved every step of the way, given that it has kind of felt. Come with a weight gain? Yeah. I was going to say like come with like a little bit of a weight gain, but that is not for the videos. That would be crazy if it was. I actually gained weight. So like the fat jokes made sense. I mean, I think you have a lot of confidence to self-deprecate like that. But what else did Jimmy say? Cause that's an interesting moment. I was actually surprised to see that you guys collaborated because for a while it's like, you know, you guys had put out similar stuff.

1:34:12It's like, what's the relationship like? So to see you guys collaborate, I mean, that's another full circle moment right there. Yeah. Yeah. It was, uh, it was definitely like very, very refreshing. Like seeing another creator who like loves what they do. a lot of creators that we've met and you know part of part of like our past everyone almost feels like they hate what they do and they just kind of feels like a job to them and i was like it's almost like they're only doing it because they're like i need to do this to make money yeah so like seeing him like we were going to walmart and he was just smiling the whole time going hey let's go do something fun we went to walmart and he was like uh looking at his chocolate bars organizing them and i just thought it was like the like coolest thing ever like someone who was like that in love of what they did and like cared that much that passion about everything i was oh my god like it was just so nice to see and it was just very very like a huge like i don't know like a huge like um i don't know i i wanted to cry when i saw it honestly so it was very very like special to me yeah like me someone like that now i had a chance to go with jimmy to a grocery store and seeing him like go down the aisle and like analyze the products like youtube thumbnails was fascinating uh whole another side to it yeah yeah no there's yes beyond the videos yeah looking ahead where does the stokes twins empire go from here like are you guys i mean you guys are so huge i'm actually shocked you guys haven't launched a product yet like done something like a lot of the other creators have ryan trey and joyride jimmy obviously with feastables um are you guys thinking about like other business moves just doubling down on content like where do we go from here yeah i mean that's one of the things that i wanted to kind of free up my time for right i feel like there's only a certain cap that i can like you know 100 of my time going to the videos i would only maybe get like 10 20 more return for like my videos so if i'm able to free up 20 30 hours a week to where i'm able to like you know start my own product learn more about the business world that's also where i'm also super fascinated as well that's definitely next for us i i mean the reason why it's taken so long because we want to create that perfect product right like the product has to be good in our eyes and it's just these things take time and right now our time is really tied up which was the whole purpose of hiring the people you see in there like half of them weren't even here like a few days ago even so right now it's just um figuring out a way to free up a portion of our time so we can dedicate it to building something else like this.

1:36:40And yeah, we definitely just want it to be good. Not just something like one and off. It's has to make sense, has to be good, has to fit what we do and what we're also passionate about. So we're definitely close. Um, I would say maybe in a few months, sometime this year, very close. Um, we'll definitely have something exciting. Yeah. Do you think you'll age up your content as you guys get older like right now what what's the primary demographic of your content i would say 18 plus for it um yeah i would say at the core our fan base is definitely around like pre-teen i would say it's definitely it's not even like a uh calculated effort or anything it's definitely i just think subconsciously we try to like deliver and make videos where i feel like i was on YouTube the most as a kid and that was around 12 13 14 and watching creators that you know I which made me fall in love with YouTube more and that kind of inspired us to like make content like that deliveries like that and I think that's more so like when we have like these jokes in our videos I would definitely say it's more catered towards like like pre-teens teens and And yeah, I wouldn't say it falls under one specific age group.

1:37:58I definitely would say, especially this year, we've built like a huge reason for our success is also because we've tried to make our, not age up, but I would say we definitely made it more where everybody can watch it, right? Like you could watch it, you know, with, we've had parents come up to us saying, hey, like I'll watch a lot of your videos like by myself too, older brothers, older sisters. Parents watching by themselves. Yes. Oh my gosh. And it's just like, sometimes like, you know, we have some of these jokes where they're like oh like i can't let them watch that so i'll watch you guys have a lot of sexual innuendos no we do not you have a dirty mind that's you you got the dirty mind not us no come on i mean but are those you do put those jokes in there deliberately to try to age up your content or do you think about the responsibility content for kids i feel like we've just been doing that since like ever since we started youtube i feel like it's just um no we when we first started making youtube videos in elementary school we literally those were the kind of jokes that we did yeah in our videos as well so it's almost like being able to like relive that as well like a huge part of our childhood like being able to have those jokes and obviously we were very very inspired by the youtubers we watched at a time yeah and it's almost like a huge part of our humor comes from youtube like you know a lot of people their humor comes from shows um movies our humor comes from youtubers we watched when we were younger so a lot of that is tied in with like those other youtubers yeah and given that like so like we're not on youtube kids i know a lot of people think like oh our views are from youtube kids um the app we don't yeah the app youtube because we don't have a single view from youtube kids and see like the direction that like you know that's a very interesting question because now you're like do you want to age up your content or because like we almost want to age it down and make it a lot cleaner so we can be on youtube kids because i've recently found out a lot all the creators who are who are on youtube kids and the views that they get from it yeah i'm like oh my god like this is a whole untapped market for us like this can really help us compete with like you know a lot of these like top views top to most viewed videos if we are on youtube kids so like it's like a whole nother market that we're really trying to tap into given like we're gonna have to do like a whole revamp on like some of the jokes in our videos but at the same time too like a lot of people watch our videos for that as well and yeah no it's uh it's just super interesting like the different age groups that we get depending on where we go like yeah i would say definitely globally we have way older especially like you know um southeast Asia primarily those regions they're all like I would say around our age um they're like you know definitely a lot older than the U.S.

1:40:45you're typical like U.S. fans but yeah back to his point of saying like you know um kind of like aging up our content and all that I just feel like at the same time it's uh primarily it's like people on YouTube YouTube at its core like primarily it's going to be people around like the age of like 10 to like 15 i feel like 10 15 male and it just so happened like we don't like try to target that but that's just we were that like typical youtube viewer consumer at the time and i think that's just kind of a lot of where subconsciously when we're like thinking of scenes thinking of jokes it's just we just default back to that because it's yeah like i said it's just when we spent the most time on youtube back then because now it's more so like for research purposes.

1:41:32Back then I used to consume YouTube for like entertainment, watching all these like, um, big like YouTube channels, but, but no, it's interesting. Common thread throughout all of this is like, you create what you consume, you know? So whether it's for research purposes or not, as we wrap up here, you know, the sun has gone down. You guys have opened up about so many things. I say one of the most touching videos that you guys have put online was the video about your grandpa because most people may not know you guys were born and raised in China we'll go there and you'd you know raise you guys and spend a lot of time with you guys I'm wondering what what were your parents and specifically what would your grandpa say about what you guys are doing now today well it's just right off the bat like you know he raised us when we were little kids and we would go back every summer so he was technically we saw him as our dad or our parents so a lot of like the kind of people who we are today a lot of like you know who we are like personally and whatnot was heavily influenced by him like I definitely try to I try to be more and more like decisions where it's like hey like don't be angry be more patient things like that's because of him right and i know he at the time we were so like nose deep on youtube and super extremely busy to the point where we used to call our grand grandparents like every week over um just to check up on them and i think there was a time where we didn't speak with him for like a whole month because we were just so busy just figuring out the videos because we finally had like you know we were re-monetized we were things were vamping up we kind of got like so buried in the work and we kind of lost touch with like what was important and we you know we had the opportunity to pick up a phone call that night when we were outside like planning out this next video and you know the very next day like we got news that he passed and you know it kind of just made us realize like i i feel like to this day if a part of me thinks if you know we would have picked up he would have been in a better mood he would that what situation would have happened but yeah so it's definitely um he is the reason why like we work so hard too i feel like i because like to ignore like what we did because we already sacrificed so much i don't want it to be in vain now where it's like if we just like give up and quit it's just kind of like okay so what was all that hard work for like what was the purpose behind all this and of course we love what we do but obviously there's moments where you know we're working 18 hour days we get stressed out and having a reason to do it like i i never the reason i'm able to go push myself is because i I ultimately don't do it for myself.

1:44:32I do it for others. So I think it's just, he's definitely provided that, that stuck with me. And I would like to say, I know he would be proud, but I definitely feel like there's better ways I can grow and me as a person and whatnot, just in everything we do, is just try to like honor his legacy see and yeah I'm not sure if you want to add anything to it but yeah it's a no it's very very touchy for Alex yeah I mean that was

1:45:20yeah

1:45:33So, like, obviously, like, a lot of people don't know about her background, but, like, you know, we come from, like, a super struggling in China. And, like, we're originally from Tennessee. You know, we keep this to ourselves, but we come from, like, you know, very, very struggling background. where like some days like we want to eat and that was like the case with like our grandpa like our family here as well but like

1:46:17you know when we were younger he always made sure like we ate even you know if they didn't eat and our family didn't know that we were homeless for even up until recently because like I just didn't want to stress them out more than like they needed to be, right? Like, and it really helped us, you know, push through with everything because our family in China, they were sick and, you know, they raised us to the core, like, you know, they're our parents and we wanted to be able to take care of them because, you know, they were sick.

1:47:04And, like, by the time we could help out, it was too late. So, like, between, like, being demonetized, those days when we stayed up super late trying to figure it out, trying to earn extra revenue, like, was so we could pay for those things.

1:47:33I had the opportunity to pick up his call, and I declined it. And he called like 20 more times. And then three hours later, he passed. So I was doing it all for him. And to take care of those clothes to me, and I wasn't even there. in their final moments. So it is a huge part of why we do what we do and why we push through because I feel like everything would have been for nothing if we just never quit or ever get into arguments or ever do things that could put our business in jeopardy. so he has a huge reason why we do everything so that's why it's very important to us to take care of those close to us and off camera on camera like you know i just want i don't want anyone to go through anything they shouldn't have to especially if i have the power do that because i wasn't able to at a time that i wish i could have so i just always want to make sure that's something that never happens again so that's a huge motivating factor for us yeah i'm so sorry yeah i'm sure you'd be so proud of like what you guys are doing now and uh even to have that attitude throughout to take care of everyone i mean yeah i appreciate you opening up like that yeah is there anything else like on your mind I mean that was so beautiful I think that's a you know like anything else that is on your mind or like things that you guys want to talk about I mean I appreciate you guys being so open throughout this interview anything else that you guys wanted to share or put out there before we wrap not that I can think of I mean we do have a present for you you do yeah can i see what what what is it is it a uh it's probably something we should have you at the start of the video but you know retention it's something to look forward to i'm down i'm down yeah what uh what are we talking about here oh god oh god okay i don't know but i think it's your size look at this a tuxedo so we can be triplets yes It's so good.

1:50:07All right, guys. Oh, skinny fit? I love it, man. I love it. I love it. Well, I'm going to have to wear this next time. There's so many more things. I feel like you guys are building that entire space over there, the warehouse. I feel like there's endless things to talk about. But I just want to thank you guys for your time and your openness. And, I mean, we've talked now since the sun has gone down. It just means a lot the trust you guys put into this interview because I know you don't. I mean, you guys, it's not even that often. And yeah, I know this is the first time you guys have sat down. So thank you so much for everything.

1:50:37And yeah, I'll give you guys the final word, but thank you for the gift as well. It's crazy. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming out and interviewing us. This was very, very fun. Very glad we got to talk. Thank you. And yeah, thanks for giving us the opportunity to share all of this as well. Thank you. All right, cool. Let's find a prom or somewhere to go crash.