CrunchLabs: Mark Rober

29:26Wow. Yeah. Wait, because they didn't want any reputational risk? There's just no upside for them, right? Yeah. They don't need press. They're like, hey, good news. One of our employees made a video. It's only downside. And I accidentally blow up a Girl Scout van. And then suddenly Apple engineer does this. Hopefully not. Yeah. Yeah. there's just no upside for them so like you oh yeah you can't make youtube videos and i was like uh well first of all you guys asked me to work for you so i'm not coming if that's your thing and so they backed off and just said fine wait three months and just get a lay of land on the culture and i'm like by the way guys i only have like 120 000 subscribers i don't get that many views per video yeah so just relax i'm not that big of a deal 99 of people at that point would It would have been like, well, it's Apple and the most desirable, one of the most desirable tech companies to work for.

30:24Okay, I'll do what you say. I won't make videos anymore. But you were willing to like not work there to continue to make videos? It'd been four and a half years of me making videos. I'd built up this channel, right? And by the way, like I really enjoyed it. And I also had done a few brand deals at that point. Right. So you had a little business going at that time. Yeah, a little bit of a business. It was a small little business. But when you said, I really want to do this, their response was, okay. I mean, this guy who was building this team clearly went to bat for you. He wanted you there. He did, yeah.

31:00So he or somebody on the team was like, okay, we'll let you do this. Just wait three months. Yeah. And then the first video I made with Megaviral.

31:14When we come back in just a moment, if you've ever wanted to jump into a swimming pool full of jello, well, Mark will tell you exactly how that is done. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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35:06Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2015, and just three months after Mark starts working for Apple, he has his first viral video. And you really have to see it to fully appreciate it. But basically, he's sitting down with a group of kids with a watermelon on a table in front of them. And then Mark slides off two halves of the watermelon rind to reveal a perfect red oval of watermelon flesh. What the heck? It looks like a pill. Oh my gosh, what the... You want to know how I did it? How? And of course the trick is you just have two watermelons that are about the same size.

35:46You cut one in half, carve it out, and the other one you just slice off all the rind and polish it down with a Brillo pad. Yeah. You can put it back together. And you blow people's mind at the party. Watermelon average prep time is about 10 minutes, which is less time than making most other summer party dishes like gross and lame potato salad, which let's face it, nobody really likes. And that video actually, because I had my niece and nephews in that and I was kind of like pranking them to see how they, they were like, what? You know, it was the first time I, first of many times that I would prank them.

36:20But Jimmy Kimmel saw that video. He sent me the email like a couple months back and he said, hey, this guy could be a good recurring guest. And he never does that. Usually it comes from the producers. Yeah. And Jimmy Kimmel says, come on my show. Come on, he's not, that's not, what's his? Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy Kimmel Live. Live. Jimmy Kimmel Live, yeah. And he invites you onto the show? Yeah. And then there I asked permission because it's like, and it went all the way up to, I won't name his name because you know his name. He was a senior VP at Apple. And he said, we should be focused on making great products.

36:59That was his answer. And it actually had the opposite effect because it emboldened me. I'm like, aha, he in writing is not willing to say no, which means he can't say no. So I just did it, and that was a very good decision in hindsight. But meantime, you're still doing videos. And tell me about internally at Apple, because I've been there, and it's an amazing, incredible company, but it's a very secretive, siloed organization. People don't know what other people – like husbands and wives don't necessarily know what they're working on if they're both working at Apple. um so what like what how did people start to react yeah i started getting like street cred around apple and people thought it was cool and like people quite a few levels above me in the food chain would call me into their office just to like chat and i was like okay people start just started to recognize me on the street so it started to be a thing where it's like all right there may be something here at this point maybe i had like i don't know a million subscribers maybe and 2017 you made a video that is now famous for people who know your work where it's a it's a dart you engineered a dart board that would move to where you threw the dart and you could essentially hit a bullseye every time um how did people internally at apple start to respond to you because, you know, this is really when YouTube starts to turn.

38:30That's right. You start to see YouTube celebrities emerge. Yeah, and that deal, that one specifically, I think, was a brand deal for like$40 ,000, which to me was like really big money, like to make that much money on a brand deal. So I started to make more money on YouTube than I was at Apple, for starters. And that money presumably financed that, creating that dartboard, because I think you spent three years. Yeah. trying to build a dartboard that would move to wherever you threw the dart. So it required a lot of really complex technology and money to do it. Well, but like the money was like, again, the trick is like find existing technologies and synergize them in a way to make the whole...

39:14Off the shelf stuff and then... Yeah, so we use Vicon motion capture systems. And that right there is like 90 % of the problem. Once you can track this dart with retroreflectors through the air, and honestly it's from from a bird's eye view it's simply y equals mx plus b from a side view it's a simple parabolic motion and you're just solving for the x y coordinates of the board now obviously that's an oversimplification but not by that much um so then it's just a matter of just putting together with some code in matlab and building the hardware for it and you would do this like in your garage yeah and and also i would work with buddies too like that one specifically was a guy named John who I knew he had very specific experience with that.

39:58So we'd kind of work together, but, you know, I started to get to a point where like he would be turning the bolts and that's how I could work my full-time job. How do you, I mean, you know, any business is, is starts out with an idea, right. And, and multiple ideas and, and, and eventually there's an idea that lands how were you getting ideas for what to do like the dartboard one for example like did it just pop into your head or i don't have a great answer to this yeah i get this question a lot but it's like the ideas part of the is the part i find easy and i think the answer is like my brain is just never turned off there's always a conversation i could be having and i start spacing out and then people are like oh you're probably you want to do a video on that i was like of course that's so good so i've always had about a year's worth of video ideas out in front of me as a runway including now we're all of we're doing we're working on videos that we will release a year from now 12 of them so tell me about your just your life because this was not like even at this point you were not building a business you were an apple employee right yeah at a certain point, right, you're watching your subscribers go up.

41:19You hit 2 million subscribers. In your mind, do you remember thinking, you know, maybe at a certain point, I need to just focus on this full time? I mean, I had a few fears. A big fear, like I said, I'm a fan of the side hustle. So, like, a big fear is, like, as soon as this is my real job, does it suck the passion out of it? And Is it then I feel pressure to do this as opposed to like, I get to do this on my free time because I love it, right? Another fear was that I would just feel very isolating because I had such good camaraderie with my team at Apple, same with it at NASA. I really like being around the people and it's like, then is it just me surfing the web at home all day and it just feels, and both of those turned out to be like very unfounded.

42:07At what point do you remember realizing that this could be a viable stream of, like this could support your life i think a big factor in the end is i ended up doing so i went on jimmy kimmel's show once right yep and then they're like he one of the producers like he kind of likes you like he really likes you and i'm like whatever you say that to everyone and then by like the fourth time i went on i was like he does like me like we're both kind of pranksters right yeah and eventually he was like hey dude i think we should do a tv show together and for Discovery Channel, and we called it like Revengeineers.

42:47That was like the moment where it was like, this is just a lot. I'm going to have to take three months off to film. He had approached you to make a show while you were still working at Apple. Yeah, yeah, I was still working at Apple. Yeah. And this was on the, I guess we should go into the stories, on the strength of this famous Glitter Bombs video you made, which was designed to take revenge on somebody who stole packages, Amazon packages from your front door. Yeah, someone came and stole a package from my porch and it just felt so powerless like all of us who've had that experience. It's a very familiar experience.

43:23You just feel violated. Police wouldn't do anything and then it's like, I was like, oh, again, in the mind for me, I will always think of video ideas. I was like, wait a second. I have the tools, I have the motive, I have the glitter. If anyone was going to make a revenge bait package and over-engineer the crap out of it, it was going to be me. So the idea was like, yeah, you make a package with four phones in it because they could record, they could upload footage to the cloud in case it got destroyed. And then when they lift the lid, it sprays like a pound of the world's finest glitter and a cup at the top and then a bunch of fart spray.

44:00But we keep repeating five sprays every 30 seconds until they throw the package out of their car or house before they realize there's four phones inside. They would throw the box out because it was so disgusting, and then you guys could retrieve the box because you had GPS in there, and then you could download the footage. Exactly. He takes the package and gets in his car and eventually makes it to this parking garage where this glorious sequence unfolds.

44:29No way! S***! Look at that! Look at my car, dude! Everything! things that video really was what i guess triggers jimmy kimmel to say hey we gotta do a tv show a prank show getting revenge on people who do bad things yeah i they wanted me to come on the show for like the fifth time i would do like pranks you could do with like junk lying around your house and he's like that's where he said like hey why don't we take this even let's not even do something for my show let's do a tv show together it's like yeah you engineer some way to get back back at people who are violating social norms. So you don't pick up your dog's poop.

45:09We build like an autonomous robot dog to like fire that poop back at you. Or you don't return your grocery cart at the grocery center, you know, small social violations, but we have an army of robotic shopping carts that will like chase you through the parking lot. So let me ask you from just a personal perspective, right? Because in 2019, I think by that, you decide to leave Apple. And I think by that point you had like, 10 million subscribers 10 million subscribers right which is and you were still an employee at apple um but i wonder whether i mean you had um you know a personal life you've talked about your son on your channel and and he was born with autism and presumably that you know that required some some stability to for you know sure therapy and other things that that were involved was a part of you, I don't know, worried about leaving the stability of Apple?

46:08I mean, even though you have 10 million subscribers, it's a lot of people, but I don't know. Was there any uncertainty like you thought, you know, this could just all dissolve one day? Totally. But it was like, I've always been pretty conservative in my decision making. And like, we had enough runway and enough deals on the horizon that it's like, I know I would at least have a two or three year run at this. And if it failed, like I could always go back and get another job, but I may not always have this opportunity in front of me. You were doing up until this point, everything pretty much. I mean, you were having friends that would help you build things, but you were filming and editing and scripting everything yourself?

46:48For the most part. Yeah, that's true. Why? I mean, a big part is like, because I enjoyed it. Yeah. And this is the problem a lot of YouTubers do, where it's like, they see a little bit of success. So it's like, well, what's the playbook say? Okay, I need to hire a manager. and I need to hire five editors and a video guy and a script guy. And then you're left just being a manager of people. And then they're surprised three years later when the content's changed because it's lost its heart. They hate it because they feel like they're just a manager and the money's not there because the public has seen that the content has changed, right?

47:22So I was just like, why would I give up the thing I loved? Which is like, to this day, I still write all the videos and I spend probably 60 hours in the edit. And I'm never going to give that up. Like, why would I? I'm happy to not make fewer videos and do what I love than to just be a guy who just like manages a team. So when you left Apple to go full-time into YouTube, who was like doing business development? Who was looking out for, I mean, at that point, did you sign with an agency? Did you, because there's a lot of incoming emails and messages and you're also filming and writing scripts and editing, you couldn't possibly have done all that by yourself.

48:05No, that's right. Like no full-time employees, but like I had a management company who'd been bringing me brand deals for five years and they were continuing to bring me brand deals, right? And so they would just tell me, hey, you have to say this at the end of the video, okay? And then the check would show up at my bank account. And then eventually, I can't remember the exact year, I hired my first employee. Yeah. Someone who just helped run errands and do little builds and help set up tech stuff and get the cameras rolling, stand behind the cameras and help me get focused. Just one person to do all that.

48:37You basically were like, I don't want to manage people. I want to just make stuff. Yeah, that's right. And to this day, now we have like 60 employees and still only one person reports to me and everyone else reports to the other person. Yeah. So you leave Apple, right? And this is 2019. and you've already at this point, I mean, you've had 10 million subscribers. So you're at this point a big YouTuber. When did you start to realize, or I know you're just my kids and I think a lot of kids are part of your fan base, right? By the way, do you think it's primarily kids? I mean, the analytics on average, it's like a 23 year old is like my median watcher.

49:24It's kind of tricky because some of those kids watch their parents' accounts. But I could just say when walking around, if you're under 30 years old, definitely more than 50 % chance you know who I am. If you're under 20 years old, it's probably 90%. If you're over 35, it's like 10%. And that's a function of do you have kids? I'm curious about how you thought and think about what you represent. Did you want and do you want your videos to be seen as educational? As something that kids or even adults can learn from? Like, are these basically physics videos? I'd say what I am is like the gateway drug to like that aha moment.

50:13like that lovely feeling of just like learning something new and being like that feels good i want more of that right so i think i hide the vegetables is what i like to say right where it's like you get you learn about parabolas from an automatic bullseye dartboard right and so it's like there's the cool story it's the clickbait title and thumbnail to bring you in but once you're there, once you click on that video of the 15-ton jello pool and you're in, then you better believe I'm going to sneak in a little chemistry on you. And so that, I just want to reach as many brains as possible with that message, which by the way, guy, you better not cut this out, but you do it too.

50:55I'm just like, they learn something and I don't realize they're learning something. Thank you for that. You're talking about, wow, in the world of my kids show. Thank you for saying that. That's what we try to do. Because every episode actually comes from a peer-reviewed scientific journal article. We just turned it into a cartoon for kids' ears. It's amazing. I'd love for you to sort of like walk me through all of the work that leads up to starting to put together. Like, let's talk, well, this is amazing because I don't know anybody who hasn't dreamed of jumping in a pool of Jell-O or hot fudge.

51:28Or like, I remember when I was a kid, we'd be in the pool and somebody would say, what would that be like to jump into a pool full of marshmallows or Jell-O? and you of course did too and you decided to see if you could make this happen now i'm thinking this is the world's first ever actual pool of jello oh no problem you just get a bunch of like i think most people like you just get a bunch of jello powder boxes and you just throw a bunch of water in there and and while it may look simple it's actually a very difficult engineering challenge to pull off so difficult and you're right that's everyone's intuition until you You actually sit down and do the math and scale it out.

52:03First of all, to make jello, you have to boil it, and then you have to basically cool it. In the fridge, so 38 degrees, basically. Super easy to do on a stove top. How do you boil and then refrigerate an entire pool? This seemed like a very worthy engineering challenge. So last year at Thanksgiving, my brother and I came up with a plan, and then in the middle of winter, we started digging a hole in his backyard. By the way, how many gallons was this swimming pool going to hold? It was 15 tons of jello. I would say, I forget the exact gallon size, but it's the size of like a small pool, in-ground pool.

52:41Yep. So first of all, how do we cool it? Well, I was like, my brother lives in Utah. We installed a thermometer and starting in January, we tracked the temperature in his backyard every night. And then got actual gelatin from a cooking supply company. and then we use potential energy because we'd boil them in these 55-gallon drums, open the spigot, it would drain into the pool. So basically, the idea was, let's just make this in layers. We'll pump up the jello mixture in layers, and we'll do it at the right time at night, so overnight it'll chill it. We didn't want to waste actual food, so this is just water and gelatin powder and food coloring, but there's no sugar.

53:19I lost 10 pounds filming that video because I was so nervous, And at that point I couldn't fail on this video. It had to work because there was lots of videos online of jello pool. And then it's like, it never solidified. It's super unsatisfying. And I have a reputation on my channel where it's like, I will deliver on what the thumbnail promises. And so this one was very binary. It either worked or it didn't. You had to have that shot of, of somebody jumping onto the jello and sort of like staying on the surface. Yeah. The belly flop onto the surface. And yeah, And we got it. And you got it. What did it feel like, by the way?

53:56Like swimming in snot. You go in, it just like fills your nose. Like to this day when I smell that smell, like my brother still has some of the 55-gallon drums in his backyard. And if I go by there, it's like 10 % good memories, 90%. Like, ooh, that was a rough week. Because gelatin is basically pig bones. Yeah, that's right. So it can get stinky. It's not a great smell when it's burning. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, how much does a video like that cost, do you think, to make? That one was maybe$80 ,000, I'd say. I don't do, most of my videos now are, they're almost never less than$100 ,000. Sometimes there's as much as$400 ,000.

54:38I have one coming up at the end of this year that will be$4 million. Right. These are massive productions now. I mean, we'll get to that later. But one of the things that happened to all of us, of course, was the pandemic. And YouTubers in particular, our show too, we were very lucky. We were well-placed because all of a sudden you've got billions of people around the world stuck at home. And you can capture their attention with videos. And a lot of Instagrammers became famous. And all of a sudden now kids aren't at school. And you kind of jumped into that fray. I mean, you sort of kind of became a science teacher during that time, in a more formal way.

55:22Yeah, I felt like I had a connection with a lot of these kids, and it just felt like I just wanted to do something to give them some sense of normalcy or something. So I decided to live stream some science classes once a week. And we did it for like three months. but it was that was the first domino in a series of dominoes that's led me to this position i'm in now which is like starting a company that's doing very well right because it was my first i've had this dream to be like a high school physics teacher and to teach science classes that was always my plan one day i would retire and just like do that as a volunteer yeah and so it was like my first chance to actually try this i read um something that you said in 2021 where you were like, you know, I kind of see what I do as a business, but not really.

56:14You know, if I saw it as a business, I'd have a bunch of people working. Like, you did not tell me why you didn't see what you were doing as a business. Because now by 2021, I mean, just from YouTube ads alone, well, it's a YouTube ads and sponsorship. I mean, you were bringing in a substantial amount of money. I mean, millions of dollars a year. yeah so did you see yourself more as like i don't know like an actor would see themselves or a performer rather than a somebody who was actually running a business i don't know business just sounds so boring guy yeah like yeah i didn't like i just didn't want to frame my it in my own head as that because now all of a sudden it's like you got to talk about taxes and stuff i'm more like i'm the guy who builds an obstacle course for squirrels in my backyard right like just in my own head, it's helpful to frame it that way.

57:03It takes the pressure off and going back, like treating your life's challenges like video games. Like when you call it a business, it feels less like a video game, right? Yeah. You must have had people coming to you and maybe, and you probably still do today saying, Mark, I know how you can scale this thing. You should have 50 channels and you should have like, you know, a bunch of different people who make videos and they're all under the Mark Rober, this and that. And have people come to you with those ideas? Yes, all the time. I would always ask to be like, okay, okay, for what? And then in the end, it's always so you can make more money.

57:38And it's like, I have enough money. So why would I put myself under all this pressure? It's like running on a treadmill. And I had a good jogging pace on my treadmill. And sometimes what people do is they take on all these ideas and they're cranking the treadmill up to a sprinting speed. And that's cool for a little bit. And you're getting the dopamine hit and you're getting that reward for that. But pretty soon the dopamine wears off. but you're still sprinting. And that's like the definition of burnout when you're not getting that reward for the work you're putting in. So I was very protective of my treadmill speed.

58:12When we come back, my mark eventually decides to speed up the treadmill and sell subscription science boxes to kids. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

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59:57Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2021, and Mark is getting more and more known as a YouTube personality. But he's about to add something new to the mix. Subscription boxes for kids and a company to sell them. Crunch Labs. What was the sort of genesis of that? Did you feel like, hey, I can actually create a product from what I'm already doing? So there's two genesis from it in a sense. One is Jimmy Kimmel and I did a live stream for my son to raise money for autism. This is during COVID. Yeah, during COVID. And it was three hours you guys did live stuff. Yeah, a bunch of his A-list celebrity friends, a bunch of my YouTube friends.

1:00:45and we raised three and a half million dollars or something. And that night afterwards at his house, he's like, you know, you really need to make something physical. And I gave him the standard line I give everyone where it's like, why? So I can make more money. I'm fine. He's like, no, not so you can make more money. You could just reach more kids with your message. And it's just a different experience to physically put something together to be in the trenches versus just passively watching a video. so they're going to bed that night i was like for the first time i'm like man i think he's kind of right and and then in conjunction with that around the same time i had created this class with monthly.com it's now called studio where i taught creative engineering and that did very well for them and i made a good cut of that and from that the guy who founded it was i told him i was thinking about doing this idea and i asked him if he thought it would be a good idea because he had all the analytics.

1:01:40And he was like, I would pay you$50 million on the spot if you would just do what you're saying you would do and give me ownership. And what were you saying? What was your description to him of what you were going to do? I would just make monthly boxes where they're paired with the video where I could teach the science of the cool physics that's going on. So kids would get this exclusive video. first and foremost it has to be fun and then beyond that what's the physics with it and each one would be paired together with a lesson we talk about the Coanda effect relative to this little mini disk launch and that's when he's like 50 million dollars right now if you do this and I was like okay well that's an interesting response but it confirmed that to be clear it did not give you 50 million dollars or finance it but it gave you the confidence that this actually could work.

1:02:35Exactly, because he had just seen the data and how well my creative engineering class had done. And ultimately what it comes down to is like the best situation you could have for a product is when you have IP along with the product, right? Disney does this very well. They launched the movie Frozen, but you better believe there's a million Elsa dresses being manufactured in backpacks and stuff. And basically what I had done is for over a decade, I'd been building this IP. And so there was all this pent up demand for a product. And so in June 2021, the first step I did is I got a product designer I really respected.

1:03:12So for about a year, we worked on the ideas. And then in June 2022, we hired a couple more people, someone to help with logistics and buying and sourcing from China. Took about, I think,$3 million in my own capital. No investors, no nothing. We had 30 ,000 subscriptions ready to go, like 12-month boxes. And we sold out in like five days. Wow. So we were cash flow positive after like two days or three days. And so this was entirely self-finance. I mean, by this point, you had enough capital, enough cash to self-finance it. Was a$3 million investment in this thing? I mean, you've referred to yourself as being conservative when you make business decisions.

1:04:03But did that feel scary? Because it's still a lot of money, you know? Not really, because it was a lot of money. And I'm not sitting on like Scrooge McDuck piles of cash by any means. That was a reasonable amount of my whole net worth for sure. But I just knew we would make enough at least to break even, you know? Yeah. I knew there was some demand there, again, from like the creative engineering class I did. so I did not think we would sell out in like less than a week that's for sure how did you so I'm wondering you know you mentioned oh do I really want to do this and that and I get burned out and so but now you were jumping into a business that requires a lot of attention and time and then videos your videos are increasingly complex they I can't imagine how much time just the filming of them.

1:04:57And then you're still doing a lot of the editing. So how, how were you able to kind of start to do both of those things and manage your time? It just like, I finally was able to hire people. I had the resources to hire good people. And eventually now we've got to the point where like, I've hired the person to do the hiring, but that's such a hard role to hire for, right? Because it's like, it's like trying to land something on Mars. If you're off by a half of a half of a degree, you're going to miss the planet by 5 million miles. And at this point, Crunch Labs itself has about 50 employees and my YouTube channel maybe has 10 employees.

1:05:37Wow. I mean, are they separate businesses or are they, they're not the same business, right? There's maybe like a superstructure, but are they with separate P &Ls and everything? They're separate P &Ls. There's a lot of shared resources, obviously, but like at this point, the YouTube channel is just there to advertise for crunch labs. I don't run it to make money. I basically, because I don't make money from sponsorships anymore because I always just talk about crunch labs because I realized it's a lot better for me to build up my own brand and IP. It makes more financial sense. So now, like for example, your latest video is testing if you can blow your own sale.

1:06:16And it's amazing because there's a, I feel like just for one shot, you went to like Quito, Ecuador, like just for one, like you flew to, maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like I was like, he just like. I would never fake that. And my team was like, really? Do we really need to go to Ecuador? It was like one standup. I was like, wow. But when you put a video like that out, like right now, this video has 20, almost 25 million views. and I'm sure it was expensive to make, but does 25 million views, just the revenue that you get from YouTube on that, is that enough to pay for the cost of the video and your team?

1:06:57No, but Crunch Labs pays me like a monthly fee to make the videos. Okay. So it's built into our CAC, basically. I am a sponsor. They sponsor my videos. Do you want to know how much I made on that video? I'll tell you. Yeah. Let me just see. That video has made me$67 ,000. Testing if you can blow your own sale right now. Is that a big number or a small number? I thought it was a lot more. Yeah. 25 million views. And that video must have cost, you know, at least a few hundred thousand dollars. Here's what I'll say, though. That's just that video. Whenever you release a video, there's a knock-on effect where then people will see a bunch of your back catalog.

1:07:41So the amount I made the month that I released that is closer to like$300 ,000. From YouTube videos. From YouTube videos. So that revenue is closer to like, oh, that can keep the lights on and pay for this video, right? Yeah. I mean, so essentially YouTube was the generator of income for so long. You were able to make really good money from YouTube. now YouTube is really it doesn't matter if it if you want it to break even at the very least you don't want to cost you money but it's not that important that it makes a lot of money because it's a way for you to also talk about Crunch Lab which is more important that's right and and just from a financial standpoint you can make more with your own business than you can just making YouTube videos and taking sponsorships from like NordVPN and it's like more importantly like Like my ethos on money hasn't changed, right?

1:08:41Like I don't have five Lamborghinis and I ran a three bedroom townhome. So it's like we're taking that money and we're reinvesting it and doing some really cool things. For example, for the classroom, all of the middle school science standards, we're making like a Mark Rober style video of those to teach them. And we're going to have lessons plans with it for all these teachers. And that's probably going to cost like$10 million. and we're going to make it free for teachers. Kind of like what Bill Nye did back in the day. So we're kind of reinvesting the money into efforts like that. And something like that becomes sort of sustainable or self-financing because of what?

1:09:24Because eventually there'll be ad revenue or people sort of discover Crunch Labs. I mean, there has to be some way to pay for it. I think it's more, truthfully, we have not figured that out yet. It feels like it's the right thing to do. Certainly there's a brand awareness play that helps, but that's a gamble and it's a long-term thing. Our North Star here for everyone at Crunch Labs is to reach as many brains as possible and to learn science and feel that it shouldn't be that intimidating. And against that metric, this is such an obvious thing to do. Maybe that sells more Crunch Labs subscriptions because kids know about it right but the plan is definitely not to like run ads for nord vpn yeah and you know like like you mentioned bill nye earlier and he's obviously an important science communicator and it's been for a long time you're the boxes right they're connected to the videos um that you deliver with the boxes where people can watch how to make them and it it's you It's Mark Rober.

1:10:32And so does that matter? I mean, the business depends on you. It depends on your name and your brand and your being in front of the camera. And a lot of times, you know, companies start to, you know, one of the ways that they mature, grow, it's not always the best thing, but sometimes they have this conversation like, how do we survive without this person? Like, in your case, does it matter? I mean, because you will always need to be the face of the brand. I think yes and no, right? Because some of this stuff is evergreen. So like once we make our four years worth of build boxes, they're done.

1:11:12The videos are done. If we do the videos for the classrooms, like once they're done, they're done. And those can live on and hopefully still be relevant. So yeah, the physics doesn't really change. Yeah, gravity is always going to be 9.8 meters per second squared, at least for the foreseeable future. But that's the nice thing about packaging up a video is like in this time that you and I've been talking, I am in just about a million homes, a million different views. Of your 144 videos. One of the 144 videos. That's right. So I think there's an element, like once I get these done, then they can live on and be evergreen.

1:11:55But I agree with you that like, you see this as I feel like it's a downfall when they try and totally pivot the channel and have eight different people on camera, people don't like it. And it's not what they subscribed for, right? It's not what they came for. And I do feel at this point that it's like, what I'm doing is working. And so it's like, nobody touched the controllers, nobody sneezed. Just keep doing this until somehow people get sick of it. Mark, when you think about the journey and like where you are now, I mean, you were a life for a JPL, you know, not that long ago. And here you are, you know, you're on every list of the 10 biggest, 10 most famous, whatever YouTubers.

1:12:40And I mean, when you think about where you started and then, you know, where you are now, how much of what happened do you attribute to the work you put in and the grind and how much do you think has to do with just the luck of the timing and the people and circumstances? my short answer that if you made me give it in half a sentence is luck is so much about the right time in the right place i will say this everything in life is a dice roll but what you can do is like stack the dice in your favor yeah and so that's very much how i view my success i do put in a lot of work and i try hard but so if you put my same brain in a hundred different situations on this world, you know, very, very, very few out of 10 million would end up in the position I'm in.

1:13:31I keep thinking about how remarkable it is. I mean, you mentioned that, you know, you made that video at JPL, seven years working on it. You had a kid, your mom passed away. I mean, particularly your mom, I mean, that happened before you became this giant YouTuber. I love that. Honestly, to me, it's like regardless of what you believe happens after we die, this idea that she had no idea.

1:14:06Because it's like she took being a mom so seriously, right? and so I love this idea that no one really knows the full ripple effect of like the effect you'll have in a life because when she passed away six months later is when I made my first youtube video um and so I think that's also sort of the lesson from my son is just like I'm just a sec is like the measure of success. The measure of success, it's, did you leave the world a better place than you found it? Like, what is your net positive effect on the world? And so by that measure of success, my son and his special needs buddies, and like my mom are just like, giants living amongst us mere mortals.

1:15:10Yeah. And to me,

1:15:15I'm following in their steps, or at least trying to.

1:15:23That's Mark Rober, YouTuber, engineer, and founder of Crunch Labs. By the way, How did you guys clean out that jello pool? Oh, this is great. We called a porta potty company and had them come hose it out. That's brilliant. They just sucked it all out. Yeah. Wow. For literally like 200 bucks. And then we just filled it back with dirt. And that was it? You just got to think creatively, guy.

1:15:57Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Sam Paulson and engineering help from Gilly Moon and Josephine Neonai. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Catherine Seifer, Alex Chung, John Isabella, Carrie Thompson, Malia Agudelo, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

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