How Airrack Made YouTube's Greatest Comeback (Interview)

39:46Yeah. What else? What other rules of YouTube do you have now or do you feel like other aspiring YouTubers can learn from? I hear a lot of people talking about like A plots and B plots. I think it's completely overrated. I think if you require a B plot, your A plot sucks. And so it's all about the A plot. I used to get really like in my head about a plots b plots c plots like bringing stuff in and then in the edit it just becomes so confusing i think i watch people mess it up on most videos is they probably listened to me two years ago on a podcast talking about a plots and b plots and now they're doing it and their videos just get so messy give me an example just what for folks who may not understand what what is an a plot in the video what is a b plot maybe past An A plot in the video would be, for example, if I'm secretly living in a grocery store, the A plot is me secretly living in that grocery store.

40:43And is my action that I'm taking right now related to me secretly living in a grocery store? A B plot would be like, I love mangoes, and I'm going to see how many mangoes I can eat while I'm here. And all of a sudden, this mango storyline becomes a giant distraction. and every time I talk about mangoes, I'm like not delivering on the video that the viewer clicked on and I'm doing some random other side quest because I thought it was important for some reason. If I just focus on secretly living in a grocery store, content will ooze out of this idea naturally. And like, yeah, we can set up a couple bits here and there, but the further you get away from the A plot, the more confusing a video gets, the harder it gets to film as the creator because now you have all these things to remember as you're doing it.

41:29It's not fun anymore. It becomes 40 times harder to edit because you're like, no, there was this whole storyline about mangoes. Trust me, it's good. They're like, dude, it doesn't make any sense. Then you get in an argument with your editor and then the video comes out and it's like half about the grocery store and half about mangoes. Now the video sucks. A plot equals the title on YouTube. A plot equals the title. B plot would be a separate story you're trying to tell outside of a side quest. Yeah. But it is interesting in that grocery store video. you had hope uh and you go on a date was that not a b plot or was that adding i i found that one of the best parts of the video like yeah how do you think about those little moments i think it's a fun bit but it's not a b plot like it's a bit that i thought would be fun yeah but us doing a date is directly correlated to me secretly living in a grocery store like i'm gonna live here like i'm gonna bring my girlfriend here like this is like and now there's security in the building at the same time right like this is sneaking in yeah like her through the back door to have the date yeah yeah yeah but it's awesome for the a plot of the video like this it's in line with what i sold on the title thumbnail it's not a complete distraction yeah like me trying to run a marathon inside of the grocery store would have been a distraction it was a real idea that i thought of and i was like this is gonna be such an undertaking and such a distraction from the video I'm going to rob the content that would naturally be in this video because I'm going to be so focused on the goal of running a marathon in the grocery store.

42:59This is stupid. It is so funny hearing you say this because I feel like these are things that people believed were good on YouTube just a few years ago. Yeah. Stack your plots. Cut fast. You know, it's like, yeah, just so many things have changed in terms of. Yeah. We used to think that YouTube videos needed to be eight minutes and now YouTube rewards hour long videos. Right. Like this is what I'm saying. The platform is so agile and you have to optimize your operation and your channel to be agile. Yeah. Because it can change so fast. What about your intros? Like I feel like those have changed a lot.

43:32I actually pulled up a few of them here and I'm curious like if you could break down like, yeah, what's going on in this one? Oh, yeah. This is a good one. Over the past three months, I've tracked down four real life scammers. Chat comes in. today using some ingenious methods i'm going to be giving them a little taste of their own medicine

44:04yeah um you know i got in a heated discussion like six months ago with another YouTuber and they basically said every month we talk about intros and thumbnails and every month we come to the realization that they're more important than we thought they were last month and we've been doing that for a year and I was like that's really interesting tell me about that and it's just you've heard it a million times but if you really think about it like dude youtube has done what we asked they've given us so much mobility with youtube editor with ab split testing with title split testing there's no there's a reason that those are there and if you're not taking them seriously you're handicapping yourself because i always think about life as it's like there's a thousand parallel universes you're living in and they're all half a percent different and you have an opportunity with youtube to live in pretty close to the most optimal reality because we can split test into infinity we can split we can work on our intros over and over and over we can run them by a million people you can use youtube better to cut stuff out if you want to but yeah like the first 30 seconds of a video and like i'm telling you it's really smart people really smart youtube people are meeting in a room every month and the only conclusion they come to is that the title and the intro are more important than they thought they were last month over and over and over and over again so i've tried to keep the intros a lot tighter than i used to uh i try to really work on making them resent representative of the content i think that's so important and for both title and thumbnail i think it's like does this feel like an air rack video again if i'm going to do a thumbnail it needs to feel representative of brand The crazy thing is about working with brands on YouTube and building a reputation on YouTube is people don't really watch your videos.

46:07They take your channel at face value. So is this thumbnail representative of the brand? This is important stuff to think about. Specifically on intros, a video becomes exponentially less important every second that goes by in a video. Exponentially. So it's like the first one second of the video is the most important second of the entire video. it is the most important second of the entire video. And sometimes I've had this habit of thinking about it not very hard, and I get so focused on the bits and making sure the content is good. By minute three or four of a video, if a viewer's already decided to watch, they're probably going to stay to the end.

46:45So it's like from second number one to like second, like two minutes in, I think is the most important part of a video. And then from there, you've either earned or not earned the viewer. Everything else can get a little bit abstract past that point. It is interesting, the point about brand and perception, because I do feel like a lot of brands like glance and look at the thumbnails, the channel header, and maybe watch the intro. And so creators don't realize that doesn't just help the retention. It helps their bottom line in some ways. Big time. Because these sponsors are looking at that and they're just trying to show their boss they're making a good financial decision by giving you sponsorship money.

47:23Yeah. You know? And that is like, their boss is like not even glancing, thing they're squinting you know and just like taking a look at so it's interesting i haven't i haven't heard too many creators like talk about that because it is a big perception play too big time uh i didn't realize it until like two years ago and i started getting on calls with brands that we wanted to partner with and they started saying like we have qualms with this video idea or like with these videos that you've made huh and i'm like did you watch the video because the content is so different from what you think it is and they're like oh you know they haven't watched the videos yeah but your title and thumbnail the brands are watching they're not watching your videos they don't care is your brand representative of their values yes or no yeah that's how they decide yeah i guess yeah the takeaway is like some brands only read they don't watch that's right yeah that's interesting um what what does the team look like now like because you guys are putting out so much like content like so quickly highly edited highly produced like like what's the makeup of their acting now it's a lot smaller than it was my values have like shifted a lot to like a small amount of great people and that's the goal um there's two people in creative but there's a lot of that spider webbing that goes out for finding new inspiration like there's little feelers out everywhere looking for inspiration um editing takes up the most amount of people.

48:50Six people in person, two or three overseas. Production is like two or three people. And how big was it before? 20 plus, something like that. Maybe 25. Wow. Yeah, at like peak people. And like, obviously a big part of your channel back then was Mac and him being an editor. What happened with you and Mac? Dude, Mac is... is a dog. It's hard to overvalue what he is capable of. You have to think that guy was with me living in a bunk bed in a basement, editing videos in a garage for years. And he would edit the videos for two days, and then he would go out and shoot and be my cameraman and talent in the videos, and then come back and then edit the video in two days.

49:42And we did that for years. it's like dude he he's he's on a different planet of work ethic willingness to work one of the most he might be the most creative person i know i think it's similar to when we talk about the person that got me from zero to a hundred thousand or a hundred thousand to a million or a million to ten million the version of the team that got me there won't be the same either and Mac and I are still very close and I think that we will be friends for a long time but there's a time and a place for two people and two collaborators to work together on something like we don't have to work together and be friends we can do one or the other they're not uh mutually exclusive you know and so yeah Mac's gone on to do amazing things I'm so so so so so so so proud of him like he deserves everything that he's done and more I'm so proud of everything he's done um uh and we've been through a lot of stuff together like we've been through a ton and uh yeah it makes me emotional to think about him because he's done so much for me like I wouldn't be here without him like I would I would never ever ever ever ever ever have gotten this far if he didn't come in and help me he believed in me when I had nothing I had like 10 ,000 subscribers and Mac was there living on my couch making videos with me and Mac is his own creative powerhouse you know and I think him and I have pretty different goals and we'll probably we will support each other's goals forever but there was a cool blip in time when our goal was the exact same thing, but I don't think it has to stay like that.

51:33I don't think it will stay like that. He's got some cool stuff coming, and I'm really excited for it, yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the moments that made me emotional watching, and I feel like it's just tattooed on my brain in terms of stuff I've seen, you and Matt crossing the 1 million subscriber mark on your channel. Yeah. Like, you guys, I think, staked out on an island somewhere on New Year's Eve just freaking out together. And when I saw it, I was like, oh this is the dynamic duo of YouTube they're going to be together forever yeah um was there something looking back on it you could have done to keep Mac around or do you think it was inevitable that you guys are going to go down separate paths I don't think my goal was ever to keep Mac like I think my goal was to for us to work together for as long as it made sense on the same project and i think it's so important to like love and be friends with the people that you do these things with because doing them alone is lame and it's not fun and uh our friendship has gone through ups and downs and there's so many things and from my side i'm not going to speak for him but on my side that i wish i would have done differently over time um but at the end of the day there's a lot of stuff that has happened that only him and i will ever have the mutual human experience of going through together and that will that bonds us forever uh i think to answer your question there's a million things i could have done differently or i wish i would have done but that's the same thing you have with any good friend you know like uh relationships aren't always perfect especially when you mix business especially when you mix one of the fastest growing youtube channels on planet earth uh it's hard it's really really really hard to do youtube with your friends especially when you're both on camera together.

53:25I ask that because I think if you trace back anybody's journey behind every crazy creator is a super supportive partner a spouse, an editor somebody who grinds with them. I'm wondering is there things that if it was not doing it forever but things like you mentioned you could have done differently to maybe keep that ride going a little bit longer or keep good people around. because I think it's like YouTube gets emotional and there's decisions that in hindsight I've made or things I've said that was like, oh wow, that was definitely in the heat of the moment and it would have been great to keep working with that person.

54:04I think if I were giving advice to creators out there for retaining great people, my advice would be to show appreciation more than you think you have to. If you're the creator, you're the only person getting praise. by the way if you didn't realize it you get all the comments you get all the views it's all attached to your face they don't get any of the glory for all the hard work that they put into making your thing so you're the most important person to appreciate them um what forms does that appreciation take like there's like is it more on camera time so people know them and all the hard work they put in is it money and like helping compensate like what what what do you feel like are some of those things that everybody's different everybody has different values i think if you can understand the person really well and what they value the most uh i think you can that will help you do a much better job so if you don't know what your team values i would figure it out quickly and what that individual exactly what each person values and how to do a great job for them yeah if you don't think that that's your job as a youtuber you already lost that is your job it is your job as the leader of the channel um i think as much as you can incentivize the team as possible reasonably this is also your job i think there's a lot of stuff that i overlooked where i had huge upside from their work but didn't necessarily include them in all of the upside and i think it's important to include really great people in the upside of the channel there's all kinds of ways to do that whether that's money whether that's experiences whether that's time off there's all kinds of equity there's all kinds of important ways to incentivize a team um and if you want to do it for the long run don't expect somebody to stay just for money.

56:05It's just not the key. And I would say for important people, you can never underestimate the value of your relationship with them. People usually sign up for a YouTube channel because they respect, love, appreciate the person at the helm of it. and it's unrealistic to expect somebody to continue to be excited about the channel if there's an inverse relationship to the amount of time where you spend with them at the beginning to the time you spend with them as the channel grows. I think it's really important. Like in-person time with them. Yeah, like personally spending time with them. Yeah, outside of the videos, outside of the filming, outside of the everything.

56:46This is really important. Yeah. It gets much harder to do that when you have a big team like you did before. Exactly. It's super hard. And so the leaner you can keep the team, the more time you'll have to, uh, to spend with people and the more money you'll have to incentivize them and the more experiences you can include them on. And, uh, I think that's your job as a YouTuber, by the way, that wasn't the job of a YouTuber 10 years ago, 10 years ago, daily vlogging, you can do it by yourself. You might be able to edit it yourself. That's not this version of YouTube. And I think I was confused on that for a long time.

57:24Yeah. What inspired you to start the countdown series? Because you were already like doing so much. And now here's a series where you're promising 30 videos in 30 days, 30 spectacles. Like why start that series and maybe give some context about what it was for people who may not remember. Yeah. So we did, it was basically a series of videos. It was 30 videos in 30 days. Um, yeah. And this is, this is where it's like there's no playbook to youtube right and i'm trying to find my absolute what am i capable of you know uh what works what doesn't i don't know and i think well so i had a vlog channel at the time which was also eric and i posted a vlog every single day for 30 days which was so fun because at the time i'm competing at spectacle i get to post like one time a month and then my buddy doha starts living with me and he's like dude we should daily vlog on an iphone and I'm like that sounds fun because I got into this to film videos yeah like I feel like I posted 13 videos that year and I'm like what if we made it up and we posted 30 videos all at the same time uh and we gave the audience like the content that we droughted them from the for the entire year and we had so much fun vlogging the vlogging was so successful we were like let's what if we what if we added more production value to these and actually thought about it like I wasn't even thinking about the vlogs and so um yeah i think we just adopted vlog but bigger and can we attach a bigger goal to it um can we make this more exciting for the platform and i think i remember specifically going into that and i was just thinking about uploading 13 videos that year and i'm like there's no way like if we're gonna do youtube we're gonna try this hard i want to at least give myself a chance at being like creator of the year like is there a chance that what i'm doing this year could get me into a position to be creator of the year if no i'm never going to find out what i'm capable of and so it comes from a little bit of success over here a big question over here i want to find out what my absolute abilities are and so yeah you know we um we basically start producing 30 videos for 30 separate days and we start the series going live when i'm halfway done so I'm halfway done filming the first half of the videos we proceed filming the series as like I'm uploading on my phone at eight o 'clock in the morning and then I'm stepping on to the next video I'm shooting and so we gave ourselves like a 15 day buffer maybe it was more than that uh for some of the videos they were shot further out um yeah and we freaking ripped videos every single day for 30 days yeah when you were uploading I mean doing 30 videos in 30 days is hard enough doing 30 spectacles in 30 days is even harder managing like the emotional toll that comes with the videos that were made about you and to give context to folks about the response and the criticism about your countdown series you know you said in your launch video that you'd be doing 30 videos in 30 days and then a lot of folks claim that 13 episodes of the series were filmed in advance uh you said you would go around the world but seven of the videos or so were in la where you lived um and a lot of the things may have been faked or fabricated allegedly did you think that going into it people would find this out because like some of these creators did a ton of sleuthing looking at like your date on the watch and realizing that wait that was filmed in september when the series came out in december um or was it you just trying to keep the content hamster wheel going at all costs yeah like i completely i'm so empathetic of like yeah duh like you have to be more clear.

1:01:02Like I need to, there needs to be a sentence there of like, Hey guys, I have a head start. I filmed these ahead. I wasn't, I'm not, you know, I'm seeing my watch on my arm. I'm not like trying to hide it. I, yeah, I think I just thought that I could film it chronologically with a head start and the audience would be okay with that. Yeah. But I think when you get so deep in the sauce, you know what I mean? And you're trying to do something that's never really been done before. you're set up to make mistakes, you know? And the thing about YouTube is, like I said, there is no playbook to the platform.

1:01:37And if you're trying to stretch the absolute limits, you're going to mess up. And I'm only appreciative on those videos for giving me feedback. Like a lot of these guys that made videos about me, I don't think they would know as much as they knew about me if they weren't fans of the channel currently or at some point. And so I think the perspective is like, these are people who care about the brand and they're like giving you real feedback and I think you can either be in denial about the feedback or you can take the feedback and make better videos and um yeah that's my goal I just want to make better videos yeah yeah it's funny because I remember making the series and it's the hardest I've ever worked in my life that's the hard part for me is it's I me and my friends and my employees have never worked harder ever on anything I've ever made and it being received negatively was hard like that was something that was tough for me but at the end of the day I say this all the time to everybody that I work with the audience we make the videos for the audience you make every decision you make about making anything with the audience in mind I think I'm I was completely off track with like not making something the audience wanted I'm making something I'm selfishly passionate about and I'm structuring it in an abstract way um which is so it's just the antithesis of everything I know and everything I'm passionate about about YouTube but I think this is a version of me who was stuck making spectacle videos once a month and I just want to make stuff and I don't have great counsel around me and I'm just doing what I know best to be the next move you know yeah and I think it's hard to empathize with that like I I won't even pretend to understand what it's like uploading that level of videos for 30 days but you know I had this 45-day shoot with Jimmy filming this docuseries for Beast Games.

1:03:24You and I spent probably, can I say, we were on set? But you were there for a week, two weeks. You were filming a series of videos coming in and out. And I will say it is very exhausting going from film mode to manager mode or respond mode. And so that gave me just a little bit more understanding of what that's like. I'm also wondering, do you feel like some of the backlash was harder because you were kind of the guy who said you don't fake stuff. Because if we're being fair, like Hollywood, YouTube, things get filmed in advance all the time. That's just part of the industry. Or things can get fabricated in the edit.

1:04:05Do you feel like there's a subtext here of like, Arak is the guy who doesn't fake stuff, and that's why things kind of fell down harder? Yeah. I think it's half me having a huge, enormous, borderline indestructible ego at the time. Yeah. I felt like I could do anything. I had only ever taken big risks and been rewarded for them. Right? What's the worst thing that could happen? Like, I'm going to go film this thing, and I can do anything creatively I want to do. And what's going to happen? You know what I mean? like if you put yourself in my shoes you're this kid who lives in georgia who loves and loves youtube so much and you're such a big fan of everybody and within the span of 24 to 36 months you become best friends with all the biggest youtubers in the world who you once looked up to you've only grown you broke every record and growth every idea you ever have works you know what I mean where does your head go like your ego is just so big and I think the way I talked about the brand and like the way I'm like calling people out and I'm like saying these things it's like I look back and I'm like even if I'm right about everything that I'm saying there's no reason to have an ego about it you know what I mean like there's no version of me that is successful that is better because I have an ego, you know?

1:05:41And we call it the humble era now. Like me and my boys call it the humble era. And it's like Air X in his humble era. And it's genuinely, you know, either the world will humble you or you'll humble yourself. And like I said, the feedback I've gotten from that, like I guess a year or two ago now, was only helpful for me to become a better version of myself outside of YouTube and everything like that, a better manager for the people around me um and a better youtuber it's only helpful and i'm so appreciative and i've been shaped and like molded you know what i mean and like you know when you meet people you know the difference between somebody who's never gone through anything hard and somebody who's been through some shit and i think that experience i look back and i'm just grateful that the fans are still here and the fans gave me as harsh a feedback as they did and I'm only grateful.

1:06:35I look back with it with extreme gratitude because if I just kept going the way that I was going with such a huge ego and a belief that I could do anything and it would work, I think it would have been a lot worse. You know what I mean? It's a necessary part of the process. And it's almost like, again, I thought me and my boys coming up on YouTube thought that our job was to tell the best stories on YouTube. but if you pull that thread too far you end up on some really slippery territory you know uh yeah it's it's it's just cringe it's like it makes me cringe because of it's like there's no reason to have that ego you know it's and yeah it's just tough so much of the transformation between that eric and this eric has happened off camera so it's like weird to talk about it but it's yeah it's just it's a that's a different human being you know yeah that is the version of me that got the channel to 10 million subscribers that is the version of me that did it you need a psychotic confidence that the impossible can happen there's no way that what happened to me in my life getting to 10 million happens without that version of me but the version of me that gets the channel to 100 million in a way that i'm proud of is a very different version of eric and that is what i have been working on for since that all went down yeah yeah i mean there's so much crap you have to go through to you know build a channel that uh you have to have that like delusional optimism i want to just spend another second like talking about like that era of yeah just for like that moment i felt like there was this chase to catch up to mr beast like everyone's labeling you as like the next jimmy and i'm wondering like did you feel like you leaned into that too much because this video that like i saw like i trapped 24 tiktokers in a box i think you renamed it to I Trapped Celebrities in a Box.

1:08:29You were playing a host. There was contestants. There's challenges. Do you feel like that was an ARAC video now looking back on it? Or was that you chasing Mr. Beast? It's an interesting mix, like going back into my head of where I was at. I definitely think like I call it calculated gambling when you roll out like a new video or a new series that could have follow-ups and for that one specifically like at the time i don't think jim was making any of those videos but i think for me it's like how dynamic can the channel be like what are my absolute limits of making videos like what's the point at which people stop watching the videos and like i want to i want to find my absolute boundaries and and for me it's like those videos the motivation is more of uh testing my artistic abilities and testing my abilities to make what videos um i think jimmy actually made that video later with youtubers like the exact same video with the exact same title with youtubers so i think in that video i'm definitely chasing the trend of spectacle at the time that's what youtube was yeah i think everybody's just chasing spectacle but you know i think those videos are fun like we were the first people to ever bring people into a house like that and tell a cohesive story with 15 terabytes of footage and like that video took a month with 15 editors to make that it's just so huge and like had never been done before i remember finishing it and we all looked at each other and we were like bro we just made something no one's ever seen before and then we looked at the amount of footage and we realized that we were done for and then we never made that series again because it was so painful to make the video uh yeah but i think i think there was a moment in youtube where it was like encouraged to incinerate money and i was not afraid to do it like i've said a million times like i'll i will succeed a youtuber die trying and like so if if i have to at least find out if that's the correct thesis or not i'm gonna try yeah how much did that video cost do you remember the uh strangers trapped in a box videos bro i got to a time when i was spending so much money on videos was so stupid i think i spent probably 60k on that video each wow yeah uh uh so it's probably 120 between no i was more i mean it's in the six figures every one of those videos is in the six figures total yeah wow with staff costs and everything like there's the video budget and then there's all the cost that goes on top of the people that make the video you know this yeah yeah it's easily over six figures for every single one of those videos wow yeah and at that point are you like thinking about like the money you're just like let's get to the next upload like i'm no i'm not thinking about it because i'm optimizing for a singular goal which is how fast can I get to 10 million subscribers?

1:11:10I'm not trying to build a sustainable machine. I'm trying to get to 10 million subscribers. This is my singular goal in life. I wake up every day. How do I get to 10 million subscribers? That's the only thing I'm trying to solve for. If I make money, great. If I lose money, great. I'm trying to get to 10 million subscribers and I'll do whatever it takes to get there. That's where my head was at at the time. Take me into the humble era. Now, after the countdown, and also it took a while for your channel to get back to where it was. like how are you thinking about that rebuilding phase um to make the comeback that you have i think the slowdown of videos wasn't even it's not because of any like controversy or negativity it's like genuinely i'm trying to take this feedback in understand it from a fundamental level and then build around it is is the goal you know and i had to change from that version of me to this version of me like there's so much that has to happen off camera to become the version that i'm proud of that the fans like that they that we're all on the same page about you know um and that took a lot like that took everything and it's like behind the scenes is me doing a ton of work on myself me doing a ton of work on the air rack machine and i think fundamentally deciding what the brand is like what is the brand what is the brand like if this isn't the brand if i'm this far off from what i've uh created expectation around i need to get back on to like what's the expectation and set it clearly you know and so yeah there was there's that this is a this is a metric ton of work that just goes in behind the scenes that'll never see the light of day it's just me in a room by myself or with my friends solving problems and yeah i don't know i could go into anything but it's yeah yeah what what were some of those problems or what did that airac machine look like in terms of overhauling it like did the team change like like take us behind the scenes yeah there's a there's a few core things i would say number one is if you're making decisions in the headspace of I'm trying to get to 10 million subscribers as fast as possible you have this mindset of I'm going to hire people or bring on like team to help me get there and this is my goal regardless of hell of help or whatever and I think that whole thought process was so flawed and so short-sighted because the correct answer actually is I will only grow this channel as fast as I can find great people to help me get there that's the right way to think about it and i if you would have told me that then i would have told you i would have said horrible things to you no i'm just kidding i would i would have i would have said every i would have said you're thinking too slow i'm gonna go move on and yeah i i would have never bought into that theology but it's played out in my life so many times now so wait help me understand the difference because to get to 10 million subscribers i know it's the vanity metric now on youtube but it's still growing a channel like simpler to make it simpler yeah there's two ways to look at the channel or at a business or anything, which is like you set a goal and you just hire people to get there or you flip the whole thing on its head and it's, I will set the goal based on my ability to build a great team.

1:14:35The team decides like you can't, you're setting uncontrollable goals or short-sighted goals. Yeah, I can get to 10 million, but what happens after that? we can force our way to 10 million but i built the wrong company to get there like i built the wrong youtube channel getting to 10 million that was what the feedback was you know it's like we have to flip the whole thing on its head and like i think a channel is a it's not me it's a conglomeration of great people and so i the thing between me and where i want to go on on youtube is building the right team of people to help me get there and that's really hard that's building a recruiting business that's learning about what makes a good person that's learning about company culture this is all things that I would have said was a distraction for me growing a YouTube channel but they're fundamentally important for me to get to my goals and to put this in context how old are you now Eric?

1:15:3228 to hear you talk about all these things in the context of YouTube which most YouTubers don't even think about I think it's refreshing and I'm also wondering, was it around the same time that you did the world's biggest pizza party? Yeah, yeah. I was there. I just remember that. That was still in that spectacle. Let's do the world's biggest, the world's largest, the world's best. So take me through, because if the countdown was this moment of realization, what was the world's largest pizza party? Because that seemed like another version of pushing the spectacle. I remember being at your world's largest pizza party and just, I was like, how are they working this hard?

1:16:10And it's like, i'm looking at the pizza i'm looking at my watch it's like 2 a.m i think you guys are still going like putting sauce on things like um like what how did that moment fit into you know your journey i mean yeah it's like i think that was like that's like one of the coolest things of all time uh but at what cost like i don't think many people were having fun doing that i don't know how we did it looking back i don't know how we did that i don't i genuinely don't know how we did it uh the team at pizza hut was great but you like at that time i remember we were doing weekly videos we were planning for the streamies and creatively directing that for me to host and hosting yeah and we're prepping for the world's largest pizza party which is not just making the world's largest pizza but it's also multiple pizza parties for the fans in different parts of the country all the exact same time um i think i had a lot of great people like i can't do it by myself i have a lot of great people and there's a lot of different decisions I would have made with those people at the time I probably wouldn't have said yes to all of that stuff but when you're in a position of growth on the platform a million shiny objects get thrown at you and when YouTube's all you've ever dreamed of doing you say yes to all of them and again if your mindset isn't in I can only do so many as many projects as I find great people to help me do them if your mindset is I'm going to say yes to the projects and figure the rest out later you're already done for and so yeah we did i you know the pizza party stuff the world's largest pizza this is all stuff like i'll never forget it amazing like thank you to all the fans who came out of that and supported it was beautiful um but that was like the first thing where it's sort of i think i started learning a lot about what it means to build a team yeah and that's so interesting to hear you talk about because that mindset is what is required to even get to a hundred thousand subscribers or a million i I remember your famous couch series way back in the day.

1:18:04You had to put$17 ,500 to buy Logan Paul's couches to go back to the surprise and visit him and make content out of that. And that's you saying yes to something and then figuring it out. But it sounds like it takes on a different meaning when you say yes to too many things and you're big and you have a lot of people working for you and a lot of expectations from the fans. The difference is I'm signing myself or something versus me signing a team of people up for something. And I can sign myself up for something because it benefits me and my face is on the channel. And I am a dog and I will do whatever it takes to succeed at the thing.

1:18:42But that doesn't mean that you should sign a bunch of other people up to do the same thing with you. You find great people that can help you do these things, but inevitably signing them up for something that you didn't do the work to prepare for as a leader what's going to happen. We already know what happens at the end of this. That's what I was doing at the time. There's just a lot to learn from it. You've also taught me a lot. I remember when we were filming at Beast Games and I saw your editors there. I'm like, Eric, wait, you brought your editors here? Yeah, you're talking about how it's an experience for them, so that's a win, but then it's a win for the business because they're getting context of what they're about to edit.

1:19:24That actually fundamentally changed how we now run our team where I want my guys who are going to be editing shooting yeah and seeing this or there's a big experience like I want them coming out for that as well that's awesome um are there other little things you've learned I mean I'll share another one that also fundamentally changed how we edit because something you said like um I remember on these like big shoot days where you know we're doing behind the scenes for Jimmy and Beast Games we're following like three people like five to six camera operators just a crazy day I was asking you for advice because you go through these experiences so many cameras, so many people hours of footage and you told me this thing I'll never forget you're like every night after you end your shoot record a voice note just stream of consciousness and then go to Claude which is this AI app and you literally gave me this prompt verbatim, you texted it to me maybe I could put it on screen for anybody else to use if you're comfortable with that and that prompt takes your voice note or transcription of it, which is easy to get, and outputs is basically take my voice note and turn it into a scene-by-scene breakdown for my editor to edit my video.

1:20:35And I did that every night of this game. Did it work? Yes, yeah. Nice, nice. We used that as a paper edit. Yeah. Just about every night. I mean, there's some nights I was just bleary-eyed, but just using that helped guide our post-production process. Yep. Any other little tricks like that or things you've learned like giving people experiences like helping with the post. I mean, they're just like little things that keep like, yeah, there's so many little things like something that changed. Another big thing that we did to change the post room was I gave all the editors mics. Like a lot of editors, I think, use like AI voiceovers, which I don't think is representative of tone.

1:21:13So when I'm doing voiceovers, like I'll write voiceovers, but I'll usually start it off of inspiration from the editor. And so every editor at the studio has their own mic. They have their own camera on their desk. So they're their own YouTuber. And so they actually rip voice. Like their editing desk? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an editing desk, and they have a camera at the top of the desk, and they have a mic just like this at the desk, like a nice mic. And as they're editing the footage, they're actually, you'll go into the room, and you'll hear them doing voiceovers as they're editing their sections.

1:21:42To mimic your ultimate voiceover. Yeah, they're not mimicking my voiceover. They're just doing storytelling. They're just me if I was editing my own videos, which is like if I was editing my own videos, I'd be laying in voiceovers as I'm making the video to like help context and like help communicate ideas. So they're basically doing fill in. I mean, sometimes I'll take inspiration from their voiceovers. Sometimes it's just building space to where like, oh, there should be a voiceover here to explain this. They'll do their best at it. But that is a huge deal. It skips like three rounds of revisions because they're telling the story as they're editing it.

1:22:15You know what I mean? Yeah. So like buying six mics was like one of the best investments. Buying six cameras, like one of the best investments. um if they they also you know use those cameras to do like loom recordings of their timelines for like overseas editors they're helping tell them like what's going on in the timeline and like there's so much that got lost in translation for a long time we're communicating from one of my guys to an overseas person they're like typing it up um so we ended up they just screen record what they're doing and they can the editor can see them i talk with my hands a lot yeah and so i would have to sit in the room with editors and like shape things out with my hands and i was like you guys should do the same thing because i think it actually does help a lot like that's what humans are for you know what i mean so they get on video and actually make videos for overseas team and the revisions from overnight became like 10 times better immediately just because communication was so much more clear dude i think and i think there's so many of those little bottlenecks in making videos and like my goal is always like hyper fixating on them i'm like how do we eliminate those because the videos just come out so much more natural when there's not robotic systems and problems in the way, you know, blocking videos.

1:23:19Yeah, because ultimately you are doing a like straight to camera delivery like or voiceover. So they're almost like trying to put themselves in your shoes or give you something to react to. Yeah. Which I think is like the way like, you know, people have stand-ins in Hollywood. People have like temp voiceovers. Like these are the way that videos get made at a high bar and a high page. Consistently. Consistently. I've just never heard it applied in the way that you just described. It's fascinating. Yeah. Maybe to talk more about the business side of ARAC, you've launched a lot of businesses over the years or been part of them.

1:23:56How do you think about the business of ARAC and what does that pie chart look like right now? Rough percentages of AdSense, sponsorships, products. I know you just launched another business called Clip Farm. I'm curious to hear about that. But to lay the stakes, what does that pie chart of ARAC look like today in terms of income? Yeah, the pie chart is different now than it was then, and it'll probably be different again in six months. Right now, I'm sickeningly focused on making weekly YouTube videos. And so I'm not taking my foot off the gas of making weekly YouTube videos until I finish it.

1:24:30I'm kind of banned from shiny objects for right now until I can figure out how to do a great job at this. Because I've done it before, but I didn't have a system. So right now, specifically, almost every, I would say like my ad rev is like 50%. My brand deals are 50%. And that's it. Because that's the core competency of the business. Yeah. Ad rev meaning like YouTube ad rev, Snapchat, Facebook, cut downs on different stuff. Yeah, across all digital. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's mostly ad rev. I think that chart changes once I'm through this phase. But yeah, it's a constantly adapting. I used to try to compete at how many different things could I break it down into, but I'm in my humble era.

1:25:12I'm sticking to the simple basics. You know what I mean? I just learned about so many YouTubers whose entire business was just on ad revenue. Huge, unimaginable businesses just off of ad revenue. And I'm like, okay, I just need to make ad revenue great, and then I can go work on something else. It's kind of boring, honestly. You had a video where you talked about your ad revenue publicly. this sent shockwaste throughout YouTube really? let me watch this this dude is nuts at pulling up clips by the way he did this on my first interview I could not believe the lore he found this clip thing is underrated you just hand it to me and you're like oh yeah watch this clip it's like some deep lore he did when you do this it's impressive I don't know anybody else who does this what's the most you've generated in a month from your YouTube channel?

1:26:00oh man it's so funny watching it back because now my goals are like the antithesis of every goal I had at this time. Like, I'm like, how little can I spend and how little can I flex? It's like, I'm like, this is like the ego version of me trying to like say how much money I spend. And I'm like looking back like, you fucking idiot. It's so stupid. Like, you don't, you don't understand how dumb you are. Do I want to tell them?

1:26:24I think my best month, I think my best month was probably like 480K off of AdSense. Wow. Just two years ago, you made your first seven cents. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now you're doing multiple six figures. Yeah, okay. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. Have you had better months of AdSense since then? What are you trying to do to me, man? What are you trying to get? Yeah. No, I have. I have. I mean, people don't realize that a lot of that money goes towards the team. Definitely. There's a lot there. But here's the thing. you probably know. You've seen some crazy backends. I've seen some crazy backends since that clip.

1:27:09There's people doing a lot better than you and me. It's wild. We're like little tiny minnows. There's giant whales out there with unimaginable YouTube studios. It's unreal. Yeah, their metrics are crazy. Are there other ways that you're trying to grow the business? And I'm also noticing you started a second channel recently. Also, ARAC. The new business you announced, Clip Farm. um like how do you think about making those bets maybe versus pizza fi because there's not as much that you talked about with pizza have you shut down pizza fi like or what i mean i mean what yeah it's like because i seem to come during the surge of like creators doing consumer products yes yeah and that was a moment i'm just curious like beyond the ad sense beyond the sponsorships like yeah how do you decide what to do and what happened to pizza by dude's really invested in beats if I know I think the people I think the people want to hear uh I was in the habit of starting new things constantly and I have tried to go away from that habit as much as possible I talked to a really uh a really successful uh mentor of mine who talked to me about this idea of sawdust businesses which the idea is basically don't go start something completely new that you nothing about start something that you can monetize without any additional meaningful impact on staff or input which i thought was a great framework of choosing opportunities so a bad example of me doing this would be me starting house party where i literally have to build a brand new production company to export videos and like yeah what was house party like so house party was a white psych wall channel that I had where I basically did different social experiments in the back of my studio.

1:28:59It's a really cool setup. Like I have a one way glass where we can see in and react from a desk. And then there's action happening out on this giant white psych wall that I built. Oh, similar to like Jubilee or the cut. Exactly. So it's like a cut video happening in front of you. Yeah. But I'm behind a white psych wall and they can't hear anything I'm saying. Got it. And so me and my friends can react as loud as we want or like talking to a I'd like to talk to them. Yeah. But it's a really cool format. Somebody should do it well, but it's not me. Because that's not a sawdust business. What do you mean by sawdust?

1:29:27Like that it's just like kind of, you're a woodworker. Yeah. A sawdust business means if I'm a woodworker or I'm a lumber guy, right? I make lumber all day long. I cut lumber all day long. I ship out lumber all day long. On the floor is sawdust. Some guy came along one day and said, what can we do with all this sawdust? We throw tons of it away literally every single day. They created plywood. Wow. They just took the sawdust. They took all the leftover stuff and they just, you know, use the tools they already had. They were already forming wood and cutting wood and they just created a brand new product with glue called plywood.

1:30:04And so this company just opened up an entire, like they basically increased their revenue substantially by creating plywood, which is a brand new thing that they had no additional cost for. It was all upside. Does that make sense? Yeah, 100%. So I think in creator world, I'm trying to think of my business. It's so hard already to be a YouTuber. I don't want to add more distractions. I don't want to do the loudest, most amount of effort for least amount of outcome like I've done in the past. The goal is how do we find more sawdust businesses? Examples of this are like Clip Farm where clipping's already a huge business model.

1:30:43I'm specifically positioned to, attract great clippers and bring creators in who need clipping. This is no additional work for me. And then I can hire an awesome operator named Nate and Ryan who can run that business separately from me. And I'll take a smaller piece of a bigger pie. Awesome. What are you doing right now? You're already hiring people to clip your stuff. Take me through the existing... My friends, creators, myself and other creators pay clippers. It's a huge trend. Yeah, they spend thousands. I know people spending seven figures a month on clipping. I'm already best friends with these creators.

1:31:20And I have a giant funnel, my YouTube channel, videos I already make, where I can bring in the most amount of clippers. I have the most leverage for... Clippers are really just editors and aspiring creators who want to make content and make money doing it. Who are great at editing short-form content and in many cases have their own Instagrams or TikToks where they could distribute them. That's right. Yeah, and most people don't know, just to give context. These people are paid tens of thousands of dollars per month to clip people's content. Sometimes they use AI tools like Opus Clip or sometimes they clip on their own.

1:31:51And now even big studios are hiring them to clip their shows. That's right. It's a huge trend. Beast Games. All American. All American. Big shows along with big creators hire people who have the ability to make clips of the show to post those clips on TikTok because that's distribution now. Streamers hire clippers. That's right. Exactly. To post their streaming clips. It's a huge business. Yeah, it's huge. So the thought there was, I'm already making videos about streaming. I'm like the only YouTuber really making videos about streaming, right? Which is the biggest pool of... People hiring clippers.

1:32:28People hiring clippers. I'm already collaborating with them. And the audience watching is probably pretty likely to be a clipper or have interest in becoming a clipper. And so I can bring those people in whether they know how to clip or not, teach them how to clip by getting a great operator and pair them up with my friends who actually need clipping done with no additional effort from me. All I do is send some text and connect people on the back and I have high leverage to pull this off. That's a sawdust business. So the sawdust in that case are your existing relationships? Yeah, the sawdust in that case are my existing relationships and my reputation on YouTube.

1:33:01Aspiring creators like the channel so I can help those aspiring creators make money by clipping. But it's interesting. Why is House Party not sawdust? because to me it's like you are doing that. You're one of the best at it on the platform in terms of making that type of content. It's just kind of a slight tweak of having a cast. You would think. Yeah, maybe break that. Because I do think a lot of creators will be like, oh, let me make more content or let me launch a product. But you did that, but it's interesting to hear that. So I'll give you the wrong way to do it and the right way to do it.

1:33:31So House Party is the wrong way for me to do it currently at my stage. It's a cool idea, but in order to do it, I have to hire brand new editors because I already have my main channel video going out, right? I can't use my current team. I have to hire brand new editors. I have to hire a guy to run the channel who's not me. I'm the creative nucleus of my channel. I'm making a brand new channel that takes new ideas. I have to make new ideas. So now I have to hire and find, impossible, a new creative nucleus, right? I have to hire editors around them. I have to hire producers around them. I have to hire them staff on day of.

1:34:00I have to hire filmers. We have to get new people in. We have to shoot on different days, right? This becomes an entirely new production company. That's not a sawdust business. That's a brand new venture, which is cool if you have space and time to do that. Sawdust business is, an example would be this new channel that I just launched called Also ARAC. For example, we just posted three videos on there. One of them is my walking on water video, which is like the most popular video on the channel. And these are extended cuts, like behind the scenes, like almost like a director of commentary channel.

1:34:33So these videos, we shoot five terabytes of footage for and then they get turned into 14 minute videos yeah so for my core audience i'm basically making a version of that video that's extended with dude there's so many funny moments i don't even remember filming but there's so many funny awesome moments from those videos that just didn't make the main cut because i'm optimizing for how do i make a 50 million view video yeah but they're not going to get me three million views but and as we get closer to a YouTube that favors TV, an hour-long cut of these videos actually could be really great. And there's all this content sitting on a server doing absolutely nothing.

1:35:07So if I can find somebody that I trust to do topic selection on the channel and they can get one editor, one editor can take my timelines and go through and find the additional content that I didn't include in the first one, separate. So like I have a computer at my studio where you just see the mouse moving around all day long because I have one of my editors remoting into that computer and editing old videos off of my server all day long. And so then those get exported as brand new pieces of content. I film brand new intros for them, but I can film four intros for those in 30 minutes. The time and effort ratio between Houseparty and also ARAC is otherworldly.

1:35:47If we took a bar graph and there was a bar graph for the amount of effort necessary for Houseparty, you wouldn't even see anything for the amount of effort that goes into also ARAC. but I can make the same audience of people happy. I can add entertainment value. I can add lore to the channel with very little additional cost. I think that's such an important distinction because people may hear you talk about sawdust business or find something that's right next to what you're already doing. It's like, oh, I'm making content. I should make more content. But what you're describing in terms of the hiring and the process and your time as a bottleneck is a deciding factor.

1:36:23Yeah, I'm the ultimate bottleneck. And then the cool thing about that is it's like unexpected revenue. So you can do all kinds of fun stuff with that. You can incentivize your current employees better. You can hire new people. You could get a new space. You could spend a little bit more on your videos. You could put it in the bank and save it for a rainy day fund with no additional cost to the channel, which is pretty cool. Yeah. You sound like much smarter bets than the previous. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. So then we'll go through the other ventures, I guess. Sure. What else do we have here? we have pizza fi yeah i've i've loved pizza fi i really do love pizza fi pizza fi is still a company uh i sold a piece of that company to our manufacturing company they're awesome and so they basically run with pizza fi we still sell pizza fi it still exists you can go buy it online i know people personally that love the sauce and still buy it on amazon um so it still exists you know we've been in talks with walmart of like putting it in the stores and stuff they're excited about it for me it's just like that product is funny it was awesome it was a passion project again i'm in a place in my mind where i can take any risk ever and it always works out for eric back then back then yeah that's not me now but uh yeah and i had this idea of like sauce and it's like this fun it's just uh what i learned with that product was that it was very hard i would get into meetings with buyers at like a target or a walmart and i would explain the product and how excited i was and they would ask me where in the store it would go.

1:37:56And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like when you're going into stores, you have to think about what product already exists or you're innovating off of. Jimmy just repackages and makes a brand new chocolate bar, right? Prime makes a brand new Gatorade. They have a place to put these products. If I'm making a sauce, it's not ketchup, it's not mustard, it's not barbecue sauce. It's a sauce that makes anything taste like pizza. So you're asking Walmart to open up a brand new space for a brand new product they've never tested or heard of before and put it on the shelf, trust me. It's a hard thing to convince them to do.

1:38:33So I have some stuff coming up in the CPG space that'll be really fun and exciting, but it's a little bit better thought through. But you can still buy PizzaFi for the people out there who love PizzaFi. It's still on Amazon. It's still being made. I love that product. I eat it myself off camera. It's a great product. Yeah, and it's so interesting here because I think the tendency of so many creators is like, I want to launch something that's totally new in terms of a product. Because that's kind of like our DNA of like, we just want to, we want to get every wheel. We want to innovate. Yeah. Yeah.

1:39:00Yeah. Dude, just looking ahead, how do you keep this going? Like, I'm thinking, like, you know, it's always interesting to hear like, you choose to get more successful. You're doing these buckets, you're doubling down on things. Like, where does this go as you get older? You know? Is 40-year-old Airex sneaking into events still? Is it like, You see a five-year horizon. Do you think about what this could look like once you have a family? What's the future of this? Because it seems like you're figuring out things in this era. I'm just wondering, how does it look? Are you building or thinking about that future?

1:39:37Yeah, I think about it a lot. I think it used to scare me growing up on YouTube because it's a young platform, which means everybody on the platform is young. But I think the deeper I get into it, the more exciting it becomes. because it's like we're the first people to ever grow up in Hollywood. You know, like nobody's ever really done that, you know. And I think we have an opportunity to recreate some of the coolest careers in Hollywood on YouTube. And so I'm here for the long game. I love YouTube. It's my passion. I don't know when it ends for me. It could be two years. It could be five years.

1:40:17It could be 20 years. but I'm really passionate about making things on the internet and I think we're living in the reinvention of entertainment and that fires me up to wake up to every day I don't think I'm sneaking into events at 40 maybe I am, I could be the beauty about having a clarity around your brand is you can sort of pivot in any direction you want as long as it's on brand and the fans like it so I think there's plenty of cool formats that I can do when I'm 40. I think there's plenty of cool formats I can do when I'm 90. You know what I mean? Any come to mind? Rick. I lived in a senior citizen center.

1:41:03I haven't really thought about 90-year-old Eric. I'll put some thought into those ideas. We'll get some pitches out there. I'll hit you with them. Do you think about, let's say, God willing, one day there's a little Eric or you have a son or daughter and they're asking about, Daddy, I want to sneak into this event. Like, do you think about the example or you just think about the content? I'm probably asking because I'm a new dad. But there's a lot of young people watch your content, too. And it's mischievous, it's playful, it's fun. Do you think about that example that you're setting for either your kids or other kids that are out there?

1:41:35Yeah, I've met a lot of these kids, you know. And I think in the beginning, it was definitely a little bit more edgy and maybe potentially a bad example. and as I've gotten closer to having kids myself, you really think about that and you think about the footprint you have. I think I have the coolest dad lore of all time. Nobody's ever going to beat me. It's just not going to happen. I'm excited to get to show these videos to my kids. I'm excited for them to get to see these things that I did. I think the content changes over time. And yeah, I think a lot now about the viewer at home and my editors would laugh if they were here because there's stuff that they'll put in the videos that I will take out now that I wouldn't have before because I just think it's important to set a good example for the youth I think it's one of the coolest things that me or any of any top creator on the platform gets to do is tv doesn't exist anymore we do and so that means we get to set the tone for culture and so you have a lot of power it's like a great power comes great responsibility and we are responsible for setting the tone of what culture looks like and I want to be i want to look back and be proud of what i did and i think it's a value that has come with time well dude i mean i appreciate you just like talking about so much and i also just i'm more personal i appreciate everything you've done for me and my channel my family i mean you believed in me when i was just like coming up and it it just means a lot dude i feel like every time i talk to you like you share something or words of encouragement that you know this is a tough business it just fires me up all over again dude of course weird dude i i'm i'm this set is nuts by the way this is a nuts set the first time i saw this guy and did an interview with him it was at my house in my living room with like one other guy and this guy was stressed out of his mind look at you bro you're cool common collect you got a whole giant set here you gotta look at this you got five people running this thing it's no joke i'm proud of you man i'm so proud of you there's a few people that you know it's cool doing youtube for like five years now there's a few people who stay in the game and uh go at it as passionately as i do and you're one of those people and i'm like so grateful to get to hang out with you out off camera on camera it's it's fun and i'm so proud of you bro you've done a great job i get i'm grateful to have seen the growth of the whole thing it's it's awesome thanks man you've been a big part of it just so much so dude i'll let the bromance like we could go on for hours here but uh i'll give you the final word if there's any other thoughts, reflections, or things you want to say.

1:44:11I don't have anything else, man. I'm excited. I'm excited about the new wave of ARAC. We're going back to the basics, the simple stuff, making great videos. And that's what I'm most passionate about. And I'm freaking here to learn and here to stay. I'm showing up every week on the platform. I'm focused on the basics. If you guys don't see me doing anything shiny or distracting, it's for a good reason, trust me. That's pretty much it. I'm leaving. Play the outro music.