#892 - Kyle Forgeard - The Rise Of NELK, Donald Trump & Global Chaos

25:08Like having a partner is like, it's like a marriage. You got to like, you got to be careful who you get into business with. So what's the overall lesson there? Is that move slowly, so they don't make rash decisions? I think so. Yeah, you got to move slow. I think, yeah, you got to get a team of people around you that you can kind of trust, whether it's friends. You know, someone that you can at least bounce ideas off, because yeah, yeah, I would say just move slow, you know. Don't react too quickly to things, sit back, and just kind of see how things play out sometimes. Yeah, I get the sense that especially in the fast moving world of internet, content creation, whether it's brand deals, even if you're trying to build a business, there's always this sense that somebody else could be doing this.

25:56What if someone else is starting the same business at the same time as me? Oh my god, I need to get in, I must get a moving and so on and so forth. But the risk of ruin of getting it wrong is 100%. And the risk of being second or third or fourth to market, the likelihood of somebody else having the exact same idea and executing it as well as you can if you take your time. Seems way slower. So yeah, I've I've never give a shit about what anyone else is doing really. Like maybe I'll get some inspiration from other people, but like yeah, even some people on our crew will be like, yo, like this person's doing this.

26:26Like we should be doing this. And I'm like, dude, just relax. Like this is this game too is a marathon. It's not a sprint. Like the entire social media business is like, it is such a mental marathon that if you get caught up in like what other people are doing or you know you're gonna lose it. And I think the most important thing with this is you gotta keep your mind right too. That's why I personally don't get caught up in like if I need like a month off from doing something or like videos, I don't get caught up in that because I feel like if people look back in 10 years, they're not gonna remember like oh they took a month off or whatever it is.

27:01So from the business side, what's the most revenue that you guys have generated in a day? Revenue. I mean, our merch business. I don't think anyone's ever really, I feel like we were putting up like Kylie Jenner numbers at that time in the in the peak of our like merch business when we were uploading milk every week on the road. I think our biggest our biggest was 30 million in gross in about 30 minutes, 30 million in rep, we had 350 ,000 people waiting on the site at the time of the drop. Like even Shopify was like, what the fuck is going on? Yeah, and that's revenue, right? So that's, that's top line.

27:46That's one thing I've never really talked about too much to is, and I know my partner, Jessie, could would agree to is that the revenue sounds nice, but when you talk about profit and how much we were spending on videos, maybe people that we pranked were suing us. There's so much, that number sounds amazing, but in terms of what me and Jesse were able to pocket, and Steve will do it, he was getting paid directly off merch. So what me and Jesse were even able to pocket was like nowhere even near that. It's that line about revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. Yeah, I don't even like talking about revenue too much to be honest.

28:27It sounds great and it's great to brag about. But I think it's a good, I understand what you mean. And it's nice that you're like sufficiently humble that you don't want to flex the biggest number that you can. Yeah. But on the flip side, what it teaches people is what you can drive in terms of just raw traffic, right? In order to take 30 mil, you need to be able to have... 350 ,000 people on the site. Yeah. Correct. Yeah, that's impressive for sure. Like, we'd look at the map of the Shopify. I don't know if you've ever done a live drop and you can see all the little, it shows where people are on the site from and then entire world.

29:04So you just see all these little dots and like, you're seeing people in India and like, it was cool. It was a really cool. That era of milk was like. When was that? That had to be like 2017, maybe 2016. So this is before John, your now business partner manager. This is before that. Yeah. And you were able to still spend this up just all internally. Yeah. I mean, that's what drew them to us was the type of numbers we were putting up. I don't, I don't think, I don't know. I don't want to say it. but I don't think anyone's ever really done what we've done with merch and like a YouTube business. What does this sort of structure of that stuff look like internally?

29:54Back then? It was all in -house. Everything was in -house. So we would like, we had designers on payroll. We had a bunch of different people that would source stuff from China. All the marketing was done by OzGod. He was like our creative genius. He's the goat. He edits all our videos. Everything was done in -house, which was even crazier. So when we would do a drop, there'd be like 25 people and we'd all be in our milk, frat house. Just all everyone else, their laptops open and we're all watching the numbers. Four white five connections. But at that time it was crazy because like that was the only thing we were doing, you know?

30:33There was no There was no happy dad. There was no brand deals. Not even any podcast. There was no podcast. The only thing we were doing was pushing merch. And our fans literally helped us build this because we weren't getting paid off YouTube at all. What? We never got paid off YouTube. We were demonetized since day one. Like for swearing, for alcohol, for drug references, our videos never got monetized. So that was like, that's how we built our merch business. Like we were getting paid. Because you needed something that was partner program, because the partner program didn't exist. Yeah, we weren't getting paid.

31:09So it was kind of a blessing in disguise. We had to get smart and build the business around our audience So we weren't lying when we were looking into the lens and telling our fans like hey guys if you guys buy merch Like you're keeping the I can eat dinner. Yeah, I can eat dinner and not only that I can make we can continue to make these videos so that's how It was like a reoccurring thing where our fans literally kind of helped us make all these videos I think there's something cool and it probably another important lesson there to just linger on about focusing on one thing. So you need to learn how business works, how what a good deal looks like, what a bad deal looks like, what good release and build up schedule, building the anticipation, all of that stuff.

31:55And if you try and do it with too many things at once, it's difficult to learn what the lesson is because you're so distributed, just as spread across all of these different projects that you're not actually focused. You're not drilling in the learnings from this one thing. So for me, it was nightclubs and for running 15 years of all of these different events. And I would really, really dial in what a good build -up sequence looked like. And I would understand how to use anticipation to get people to really care about what the outcome was going to be. And then I'd understand what the drop -off in terms of interest was.

32:26And then how you can then restart that with more things and more things and more things. And that now gets ported across. When we did the launch for Newtonic, I did exactly the same thing. It might as well have been a club night. If you changed it from productivity drink to new club night, Fridays at whatever club, it would have been the exact same process, the exact same thing that I'd learned. And I'm gonna guess that it's the same thing that you learned from the merch that you then poured across onto Happy Dad that you then poured across. Oh, we've got a new guest coming out. It's just building hype.

32:52Everything in this business is just building hype, right? And once you learn how to do that, I feel like you can apply it to anything. Talk to me about the principles that you sort of think about when it comes to building up hype around either a drop, new video, new podcast episode, new happy dad collab. What are the main areas that you're looking at? I don't know. I'm not the best at defining the way that my mind works sometimes. But building hype, you can't go wrong with just literally what it is. Building hype is like, You know say it's dropping on this date and then maybe two days later post something else about it remind people Two days later post something different and engaging remind them again and then the day of you know Posting like a bunch of times before something happens.

33:40I think sometimes it is fire just hitting them with a sneak attack drop too Because that goes crazy sometimes, but yeah, you can't go wrong with with building hype and doing multiple posts building anticipation Yeah, I mean, there was this really interesting study that was done that I loved because I was starting to learn about psychology, but I was still in nightlife. And they did a, they got people to track their level of happiness throughout the entire day and night of going out on a night out. And you'd think at what point would happiness be at its highest, maybe 12 midnight when you've got a good enough buzz on and you're with your friends and the music's amazing, but you're not too messy and so on and so forth.

34:21It was way before that the time when people were happy. That's part of the night's the pregame getting ready with your friends when the music So what does that tell you it tells you that the absolute bullseye of human pleasure is Things are about to be awesome. It's anticipation, right? It's not about the payoff. It's about waiting for the payoff like the hottest part of sex is not the sex bit It's the bit as you're taking your clothes off before sex. Yeah, that's the hardest part Yeah. Because it's the anticipation of what's about to happen. And I think that, you know, what you guys have landed on and certainly what I've landed on.

34:54It's the same reason that we release clips from this podcast before we release the full episode. So this will have a Tuesday clip and a Friday clip. And then the episode goes on the Monday. Because it builds up that anticipation. And sometimes people say that it's cruel, but I think it's just effectively utilizing the human reward system. That's a good way of defining it. Yeah, because the pre -game is the best part of the night, for sure. When all the boys are just there before the girls pull up and you're just cranking beers, just chilling so I can, I can definitely relate to that actually. Talk to me about the other side then.

35:25So if that's the most revenue that you've made in a day, what about the most money that you've spent in a day? Most money I've spent. I'm not like a huge, I have a few watches and I have like a car but I think yeah, the most money I've spent I guess was probably, it's not like a purchase but probably I retired my parents in the same day about four or five years ago. So that took about $700 ,000. So one year at Christmas, I just, I had enough money to do it. And like one thing about me is like a lot of people said their parents never supported them, but for me, I would be like, nowhere without my parents.

36:03I got so fucking lucky. And like my mom just says too, like they just had blind faith. Like they just believed in me and they supported me. So when I kinda had enough money to do that, I just did it. So that took about, yeah, like $700 ,000 to do that. Yeah, that's a big issue. And then my mom got carried away. I guess she has the free spirit like me. She invested it and like a bunch of like, she didn't fucking retire. Ethereum. No, she put it in crypto. She put it in the fucking housing market and Trudeau fucked us over the last five years. So now I gotta, I just told her this Christmas, I gotta re -retire until she can sell those houses.

36:40So when Trudeau gets the fuck out, but she'll be able to sell the two houses that she bought. And then, yeah, but that's probably, I like spending my money more on like memories and like taking all my friends on like a trip. What about some of the trips? I mean, we just set up, yeah. Like this week for New Year's, like we just went like a bunch of different places. Like we just did like fun shit with everyone like yachts and like stuff like that, or like we'll go to Cancun and rent a house and just chill, stuff like that. Like I feel like spending your money on memories and I love bringing my friends with me and just having a sick ass time.

37:20I feel like I spend too much money on that type of shit. But in terms of watches or jewelry or shit like that, I'm not super into that. I don't hate it. That's a good, I guess. Memories is the best. I was gonna say it's the fucking best. Is the lesson from that, that as somebody who's come into young wealth, You've tried, I'm gonna guess, buying expensive car. You just got me a car. New watches, clothes. But Steve will do it. He bought me my first car, a shadow at Steve. So I've actually, this is actually a first car I've probably ever bought, to be honest, because Steve will do it, bought me my first car.

37:54He bought me an Audi RS7. So that was like 140 grand, showed up to Steve. He's bought like 40 people cars. So then this, the Audi just shut down. Thing was a piece of shit over like four years later. So I was able to just trade that in as the down payment and then just get this new car my business manager So it was a great investment to just finance it. So it's actually the first car by everybody. Thank you business manager Yeah, but yeah, the overall lesson there is as you start to accumulate some spare wealth that you think on balance spending it on Experiences especially experiences that you can share with your friends is the best way to do it I love that.

38:32Yeah, that's my favorite that it's just because you never forget that shit too you know, and it's like, yeah, not everyone can do that shit. So to just, I don't know, that to me is just stuff you never forget. And it just makes you so happy having a good ass time with like your boys. Nothing beats that. What are some of your favorite memories from the last few years? Maybe once I haven't been captured on camera. I mean, if they haven't been on captured on camera, it's probably for a reason. So I probably can't really talk about them. Well, all right, including the ones that I think after I go.

39:06Yeah, definitely last week we can't talk about. But I mean, best memories. I think like probably, yeah, one of the coolest things we ever did, I think, was probably the first time we went to Abu Dhabi I was telling you about. That, that to me, was like one of the craziest thing. It was the craziest two weeks I've ever had in my life, because the UFC brought us out to Abu Dhabi for a cabeebs last fight during the COVID bubble, the heat of COVID. So we had to quarantine for a total of like four days to get there. And then that's when we met like Dana White for the very first time in Abu Dhabi. We got like a whole full -scale treatment there.

39:48And then one week later, we went on Air Force 1 with Dana 2 and Met Trump for the first time in 2020. So that was like, that's probably the coolest two weeks that like really changed my life. I think that just like every time I think back to it, I'm just like, this is a mind fuck. Like, how did this happen to me? It's just, yeah. There's been so much crazy shit with Nelke and like over the last 10 years, it's just so surreal. I can't even believe it. Talk to me about what you've learned since being friends with Dana White. A lot. I've looked up to Dana White like my whole life honestly. Like, me and my dad would watch UFC.

40:31like when I was on Spike TV, when it was just like, it was nothing, you know? I've been watching since I was probably in like eighth grade. So I've looked up today in a white and a lot of the UFC's like way bigger now. I don't know how long you've been following it, but it wasn't the UFC that it was today. Like right now it's just like, it's such a big brand and stuff, but they had to like, battle to build that. So I've kind of seen the evolution of the UFC as I'm sure a lot of people have listening. and like this shit wasn't even like legal in states. Like it used to not be legal in New York.

41:05Like I watched these guys like battle state by state, never give up and just build it into this like incredible fucking brand that it is today. And you see all these other MMA organizations now. It's never gonna compete with the UFC. Like the UFC is fucking unmatched, but yeah. So I've always looked up to Dana White for that and just what he's been able to achieve. And he's just, you can see he's not a quitter. From the outside and then when I met him you can really see like that guy's not a fucking quitter How so well even like look how he handled covid right that's what blew up the UFC so much like every other sports shut down UFC was the only one that kept going like dainna white was the only Commissioner of a sport that was able to keep that sport going all throughout the heat of covid not only keep it going Blow with the fuck up Like covid was actually a good thing for the UFC because it was the only thing on And that guy, yeah, just behind the scenes too, he doesn't quit, you know, and he'll call me and give me advice Whenever something's going on that that he'll see and Yeah, he's like I told you before he is just the most loyal fucking guy you will ever meet like it's so crazy Like for us, he'll just I don't know.

42:19It's almost like blind loyalty to in the same way. It's just like He's always there for us, no matter what. And even sometimes, he just doesn't even need to be. Even if I'm sick or calming, be like, yo, you good bro, you need an IV. I'll send, he's just always there for us. So having a friend like him is, it's truly insane. What about the way that you've observed him sort of operate from a business perspective, the way that he runs the UFC, the way that he sort of deals with his own interaction with press, with exposure, with scrutiny, with stuff like that. Yeah, I think, I mean, he's obviously a savage, right?

42:58Like, even though I'm friends with him, like, I'll literally watch almost every day in a white post UFC press conference because the guy's just a fucking savage. Like, if a media guy goes at him, he's gonna fucking ring them out. You know what to get with day in a white, right? He's himself. He speaks his mind. So with the UFC stuff, we don't, we kind of stay away from that. We let him handle the business of that. We don't even really talk UFC business with Dana ever because he talks about that shit all the fucking time. When we're with him, if we're talking business, we're talking about happy dad, we're talking about howler head, we're talking about the podcast or we're talking about maybe new ventures that we want to do together in the future.

43:36And we've never had like any type of partnership, like with Dana or the UFC besides like some clothing, but there's no like formal agreement. There's no formal agreement. Like even with happy dad and howler head, I know Dana had offered me like a little piece of howler head back in the day. And like I kind of just told him in the most respectful way, like I'm really appreciative of this, but like I just want to do whatever you want me to do. And I don't want to take a percentage of your company. Like I just want to remain friends and like let's just help you. And he was on the same page. and I think he really respected that.

44:15So with happy dad, he's fucking helped us so much. Like, we'll go and do happy dad, howler head tours together and stuff. So he's kind of like the uncle of Nell, right? He's pretty much like a Nell boy. The big scary uncle. The big scary uncle. You don't fuck around with. Yeah. No, if that guy's, he's a legend. Everyone that knows him in real life knows how great a person he is. It's wild, you know, to think that that's able to come across. I haven't met Dana, but from conversations that I've seen him have, from stories that I've heard behind the scenes, from stories that I've heard in public, it is absurd to have somebody that's kind of a head of an organization like that, who's the one that seems to have the most credibility, this sort of unwavering commitment to his word, like even to a fault a lot of the time, even when he fucks up and he just decides to be as upfront as possible.

45:15I don't know how he does it, but he does it. And that's why he's day and away. He's just a fucking well, I think what people are really desperate for is authenticity. Yeah. Like they're really, really hungry for authenticity. One of the problems is that if you realize the authenticity is something that people like and resonate with, you can try to sort of speedrun it or growth hack it somehow, which is the exact opposite of authentic. You can't inauthentically be authentic, you know? And I think people can just tell. They know when you're playing a game, when you're trying to manipulate them. And even if you don't know why, even if you can't say what it is, we've got this weird sixth sense that exists behind the back of our head somewhere.

45:56And you go, I don't know, man, there's something, something Coming up here, I just don't get, Trudeau, perfect example of this with Trudeau. Like tell me what it is about that guy that makes you not trust him. Maybe you can point to specific statements he's made in all the rest of it, but - He just tell you he's a fucking slimeball. Largely it's just the fact that he's got this slippery demeanor. Yeah. You think, hey, I don't fucking trust you. Guy. And - He fooled everyone with the free weed legalization when he first ran. What's that? I think that's like, when he first ran, it's just because he was going to legalize like that's why everyone loved them.

46:32Okay, that never came into fruition. No, it did. It's legal in Canada. Okay. Yeah, so I guess he did one good thing. To live it on a promise? Yeah. But yeah, it's watching Dana operate, especially at that level, especially with the additional amount of scrutiny and all the rest of the stuff that's happened is wild. It's very, very... He just likes to win too, one thing about him. I know what drives him and it's proving people wrong. And that's kind of one thing I think me and him having common is we both like just like shutting people up, you know, like whether it's fans in the comments or for him it's the media, shutting people up is a good fucking feeling.

47:10You know what I mean? When everyone's saying something and they're all counting you out, it just drives you and you're like, I just want to shut these people up so fucking badly. I think that's one thing that drives both of us. And then you come back with the W. You come back with the dub. Yeah. Yeah, that's an interesting energy. You know what I mean by that or no? I know exactly what you mean by it. It's a really interesting energy to think about how... You need that sometimes I feel. What, dude? Proving people wrong, I think. It's a fucking potent fuel. Yeah. It's an incredibly potent fuel.

47:43And it's one that you can use very, very effectively. Especially, you know, I've heard Dana talk about this a couple of times, especially with regards to Trump. you know, that he is happy to burn everything down. I mean, he said, does it story that he talks about to do with Rogan, I think where somebody didn't want Rogan to be a part of something moving forward, or maybe it was one of the scandals that - Oh, yeah, it's probably when Joe said something, fuck you. Yeah, the CNN thing or whatever it might be. And Dana was prepared to burn everything for one guy. Yeah, of course. And you think that's in some ways that's really not good business Ackerman, but what you're up you're You're working off of such unbelievable loyalty That the business gets ripped along for the ride and what does it tell people?

48:37What's the subtext that it tells people about the business? This is a business that is going to do what it says And you can have complete and utter faith in it. Yep, and And especially, you know, the world of fight sports, we've seen it how many times over the last couple of months, Tyson and Jake Paul and the number of criticisms, oh, it's a thrown fight, the three fight clause, etc. Usek, Fury, rematch clauses, they're not actually fully throwing punches, all of this sort of stuff. And I think that it's really important to have for something like the UFC where you could trust it. That's the fucking sniff that this wasn't legitimate.

49:17Yeah. The entire organization. I'm sure there has to have been some fights that have been a little manipulated hero there because the UFC's done. Well, once they're in the cage is done. Yeah. I mean, it's the UFC. But you've got to have the guy. They obviously help put people in the cage that they want to, I mean, that's obvious, but like, once they're in the cage, it's up to you. Yeah. You know, they're not fighting for you when you're in the cage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can we talk about the Bob situation? Yeah. That full arc thing. So give us the 30 ,000 foot view of Bob Manry. I still don't really understand it.

49:53I mean, we still like chirp each other about it. I don't know what he was looking for. I mean, if you asked Drew our guy, like he said that we owed him money and we just didn't. So he's a part of the pod. He started the pod, then he was part of the pod. Bob was doing his thing, right? He was Bob's and Bob me and Bob are great friends now and like I hope I we will remain great friends. Hopefully He's a great guy. He's talented. He's funny So I wanted to start a podcast and I was always thinking of who to start it with and I was like, yeah I think this Bob guy's really funny, right? so we gave him a great fucking deal.

50:27I think it was like 7000 7500 to $10 ,000 an episode 30 % of the ads and by the way, he has no YouTube channel He's launched like four unsuccessful pods at this point like four different ones. So it's like Bob just show up Make some good money. Let me keep this consistent. Let me bring the structure to this. So we're doing good and then Yeah, I think I don't know if he had bad people in his ear that were Connitalinum stuff or whatever it was but Yeah, I don't know. I think he just thought for some reason we were screwing him and Or he was missing out on money that he just wasn't missing out on and that he just freaked out.

51:08I don't know if he was at a bad place. And then everything went nuclear. Yeah, I don't know if he was at a bad place in his life or something as well too, but yeah, we weren't cool for a while. And that was like the first time I ever really went through some like, I stayed quiet for a while, which I always will. I stayed quiet until someone really fucking pushes me to the edge, you know, because I don't wanna, I never got big by like attacking people online like airing out personal shit. So that's just not, even though I could get views doing it, you know? That's just not me. So I kind of just had to sit back and wait till Bob kind of forced me to a point where I had to like just kind of own his ass a little bit.

51:50And people kind of saw right through it and we just came with the receipts. And that was it. And yeah, we weren't, that need like suit us and shit. And it was a whole thing. we did like a thing that we like joke about now too. We had to do a mediation, which is like, that was like part of the clause. Like if there's ever a different disagreement, you guys have to go into mediation. So we had to get onto a, to a divorce counseling. Divorce counseling. So we had to get on like our side and his side with this lady judge, Nagel, who we like joke about now. And like he got on and his side was just, they were like internally arguing like in front of like all of us.

52:26It was just like, it was a complete mess. And the judge told us she came into our room and told us like listen, I'm not gonna lead a horse to water But they have absolutely no case Against you guys whatsoever like the judge told us that I don't even know she was supposed to but that's what she told us So to me the whole thing was just hilarious But we both waste a legal money for no reason. So we eventually came to just agreement to drop it. And I was like, Bob, if you wanna come on the pod whenever you want, like come promote whatever you want, you can bring ads on the podcast if you want, like just like any other guest, you know?

53:04Like if Wiz Khalifa comes on and he wants us to talk about his weed, go ahead, but he hasn't, he's been on the pod and he hasn't brought one single ad. So he's just, but he's back on the pod now. He's back on like in and out. Yeah. I mean, we're cool. It was kind of just, I don't know, we'll see what happens. but he's not back on like full time, he's just kind of in and out. But yeah, it was a very, it was an interesting situation. One of the things that we were talking about in the gym earlier on is keeping your private life private. And the, you can run a business and have people talk about the business, but having people talk about how you run your business, having people talk about how you run your podcast, I think, not good, like people are talking about the wrong things.

53:53So was that degree of operational exposure was that that's for what? When you and Bob are having this sort of fallout and there's all of this kind of exposure of internal backbiting and stuff. I don't enjoy that shit. Like I know everyone on the internet now it's all about drama. Correct. And like, I mean, we could start drama with people too or like whoever it is, but that's It's just not how we got big, you know? Like we've never started drama with people. It's always just been about making funny shit. So for me, any opportunity we have to like, I don't know, I just don't look to that to get clout or views.

54:32That's just not me. It's my least favorite kind of piece. Yeah, like that was when I was just pushed to the edge. You know, so like I'm all, I'm just gonna stay quiet until it's to the point where I have to defend myself. I don't want to, but that's kind of the way that I work. I just, I don't know, there is, we're really kind of in the, the era of criticism. Yeah, drama, drama's huge on the internet. All people wanna see is people fight and fucking just go at each other. They said this thing, oh my god, this singer with that girl and she's releasing these texts and so on and so forth. Yeah. I don't know, man.

55:12That's my, the streamers, the whole streamers, It's a lot about beef and stuff like that. It's all about beef. It's just, it's that energy. Yeah, the clip error, I feel like the clipping error that we're in kind of changed that, right? It's so quick, it's so fast. Well, the biggest thing that you can get on YouTube is timeliness. So we realized this last year. I know that it was a big deal for a while that you're sort of basically being a musish channel, but as mainstream news is declining, people are looking to YouTube for their news so much more. and search volume is such an important driver.

55:46So Trump gets shot and then 36 hours later, I bring Tim Kennedy on, whatever it is, 72 hours later, I bring Mike Baker on. So I've got one green beret, one XCIA guy who's still involved in intelligence stuff. And it was nice or whatever that people are interested and that I have people that have got genuine expertise and we can talk about this sort of stuff. But it was almost in some ways a little bit disheartening how much those episodes blow up because you think, oh, there's no reason, the episodes were great, but they didn't need to be great. It was just something that was timely. And what's the most timely thing that you can do?

56:23Be start drama and be involved in the drama and just keep talking about it back and forth. And if you look back, I guess that's just human nature, right? 100%. It's the most... It's the most important. I don't know why we're like that, but we just love to see negative shit about... Well, there's some really interesting potential evidence about why the human brain grew to be as big as it did, which is that it wasn't so we could use tools correctly or so that we could remember the location of plants, but because when you have a 150 person tribe broken down into 30 person pods or whatever, for me to be able to remember Kyle and Kyle's relationship with Dean and the fact that Kyle and Dean used to be friends, but they're not anymore, and John has actually come in and John is now Kyle's best friend, so Dean's kind of feeling you, that when you start to scale that up is really computationally difficult.

57:13Choose why you need a lot of ability. But it also means that that is so important and salient to you. Like, if you... I don't think humans are particularly good at working out. This is some dramatic social information that I need to pay attention to versus some dramatic social information that has absolutely nothing to do with me. It's just drama. Therefore, I must be able to pay attention. And therefore it's gonna pull me in. It's gonna suck me in. And if you were to look back, I think across your weeks, watch time history, your pie chart of that, the I would doubt if anybody looks at the however many percent, 30 % 50 % more that they look at drama farming stuff and go time well spent.

57:59Like who's saying that? No one's saying that. No one looks at it and goes, really glad that I watched that. Yeah, Brianna chicken fry, take down summary video again for the third time that I've seen from two of the different channels before. I don't even know that shit though. Yeah, that shit got crazy views, which is, I watched it. Of course we all watched it. You can't not watch it. It's like the black hole of content. It just sucks you. No, it's just, yeah, it's just human nature, I guess. I don't know why. We like to see negative shit about each other. I'm talking about YouTube and stuff. Is it weird having Steve, right?

58:36We bumped into Steve this morning in the gym. Is it how odd is it being playing that balancing game now? It sucks, bro. I mean, you know, like, Nelk's not the same without Steve. Like, there's no, and you can't show him on YouTube. There's no question about it. I mean, Steve will do it was like, he was like the biggest one in Nelk. I mean, like he was like, he was more, he was bigger than me, like at the time too. So, yeah, it's a very weird situation. I don't quite understand it. I mean, I guess he was banned for like putting a gambling link in his URL, but I don't know. I think that was just an excuse.

59:19It's something deeper going on. Yeah, I think. I mean, he was repping Trump pretty hard at the time and that was a different time back then too. and then Steve is just like a lot of people, I don't know if people know, but he is one of the most like naturally funny guys in like his own way. Like he has like very dark humor. And like I personally love his dark humor too. Like I think it's hilarious, but I guess there's just certain shit that you just can't say on YouTube. You know what I'm saying? So I think YouTube was seeing like some of his dark humor shit and they're like, this is a ticking time bomb waiting to happen.

59:57And one thing I've learned from YouTube too is they don't, YouTube doesn't like negative press about YouTubers. YouTube, because that's gonna fuck their right, right? Like their advertisers don't like that press too. So I know we learned that during COVID, during COVID we were like kind of traveling, still making videos, and we showed up to a college to film something and we didn't even post anything ourselves. Like we just like went to the college and we were filming, but other people were taking snapchats of us. And through that it gained huge crowd. So it looked, all the articles were YouTubers, host, mass gathering, YouTubers, this, YouTubers that.

1:00:42And we got like a manual email from YouTube, which you never get. You always know and it's like automated, right? And this said like, hey, Nelkboys, which is like, NELK boys is not even on our channel at YouTube at all. It's like NELK. So, and it was a custom email. It said, you guys need to watch your off platform responsibility, which basically means like, we're giving you guys one last warning before we delete you, or your channel's deleted. So at that time, and we're like, Jesus, like we're walking on eggshells. So, I think since I've had that experience, it's kind of the, at the end of the day, they're just trying to make money in that YouTube office, right?

1:01:17So if they're looking at Steve and they're saying this guy's making a bunch of Crazy Sun flying and not probably flying in the sun He flies in the fucking Yeah, like his videos were fucking hilarious like the in the jokes that he makes are fucking hilarious So he was flying in the sun for sure probably right in the fucking center And I think I think they just use the gambling thing as an excuse to be honest and then And I think Steve knows probably he probably could have handled after the strategy of after getting deleted. He probably could have handled it a bit more diplomatic and more diplomatic and strategic.

1:01:57But still, I think, I mean, for them to take his channel down is just like, all of them is fucking crazy. And then not only that, to tell us that we can't even have him in our videos. So the edges or our channel will be deleted the edges on the backend must permanently have this Steve filter Well, then it now it's created this weird thing where it's like Steve also When I met when it's like created this weird thing where Steve's around and he obviously wants you know He wants milk to be successful too and he wants milk to keep going He's not the guy that's like yo put me in the shit put me in the shit.

1:02:31That's not him right our ultimate goal was Steve When I first met him. I feel like was to just just kind of like help them and make them financially successful. And our main goal was to start this happy dad. So that Steve, Steve in mine's ultimate goal is to build happy dad up into a billion dollar company. So Steve wants obviously milk to be successful. He wants us to keep pushing happy dad. But yeah, I really think that they at least need to start with letting him be in milk videos or something else. And it's weird because he'll go on other people's channels. And like they won't pick on those channels.

1:03:14But for some reason, like why, why is it only us that you told specifically that he can't be in videos? Yeah, we were told very specifically. That's on the like on the like I know it's like somebody being unpersoned. It's fucked. Yeah, and I think it's you can even bring Tate on, you know, the most take it's deleted on our shit too. Okay. which is weird. Maybe you can't. Yeah, full -send podcast take out deleted. But I know what you mean. Yeah, it's just your Trump one got taken down as well, right? The first one. Yeah, but we need it. I think we need enclosing that we need to like they should let his channel come back.

1:03:49I think eventually it's been long enough and then to start they should let him be in like or they like they don't let him be in Bradley Martin's content. Like it's fucked. Like they got to let him be on YouTube now. like the culture shifting now to like well let's talk about it's time to bring to the back on Zuckerberg Chad transformation yeah I'm conflicted about this Zuck thing because part of me thinks moving in the right direction nice to see return to freedom of speech etc. but another part of me thinks this is just just blowing with the wind. You were cucked when the cuck's were in office and you're bigoted now, the bigots are in office, like judge randomly, only half joking.

1:04:37And I don't know, I get it. I get that people like the idea of it moving in the direction that they want, but it does seem like kind of a pretty thinly veiled now that the free speech people are in power. We'll just do whatever they think is cool. Does no one see that? I see it. I see it. And I kind of saw it coming too. And I think that's what people don't get too is like at the end of the day, these are all companies that just want to make money. Like whether it's YouTube or Facebook, meta, right? Like I feel like it's not really a personal vendetta they have against these people. It's just like they're sitting in a boardroom and they're trying to figure out how to make money, right?

1:05:18So they're going to follow the money. So now like obviously, Zux, he's what's happening with X. He's smart too. And at the end of the day, it's a W for everyone. Like, what was about to happen if Trump didn't win was fucking scary. Like you're further down that road. We were about to lose like free speech. Like I think we would have lost it completely. I mean, it's hard to imagine, but thank God like the, he won and the way that he won reflected where culturally we're at. But yeah, I think Zach obviously, he probably sick of just getting chirped all the time too at the same time too, right? Like Elon Musk gets to be the man and gets all this praise and like everyone's always ripping on Zach and Zach's probably just like, fuck, I wanna be the man too, like Elon.

1:06:06But I think it was very smart. I mean, there's no better person again to bring on than Dana. I think that's so smart because Dana's always gonna be for the people. He loves social media too. Like he gets a kick out of just like seeing, like he's always showing us numbers and stuff too, like we're sending like our biggest reels that do well and shit. So he understands social media and then yeah, he's for the people. He's always gonna be for free speech, like UFC's for free speech. So yeah, I think Zack just, he had no choice. That transformation is crazy of his visually, ideologically in terms of the way that he presents.

1:06:46Zack, yeah. Yeah. Crazy. I know. I think it was just that. I think he just wanted to like, I think he just wants to be kind of cool, right? Boise club. Yeah, he wants to join the boys club. We'll see you all later, man, right? Yeah, well, I too was weird when you're thinking about the ecosystem of social media that you don't have an equivalent front and center person on YouTube. You don't have, I mean, is it still that Susanna lady? Maybe Steve will do it soon. Wow, I mean, that would be an absolute U -turn. But yeah, look, I, yeah, she's gone. I like, I like the fact that, I like the fact that things go.

1:07:21Twitch has someone now too, right? I think that older guy that's like, I think he's like the CEO, something. Maybe. But yeah, YouTube, that's interesting. I like the fact that Facebook, and that obviously means downstream from that WhatsApp and Instagram, Instagram too big. I'm still shadow band. I've been shadow band since the week before the election on Instagram for sharing. You remember Kamala Harris had the phone up and then showed it and it was her camera? Yeah. I got, I'm still, since then, whatever it is, down -regulated in feed, all of the little yellow orange circles on the back end.

1:07:54Got tons of orange circles that I can't get rid of because it's a story, so I can't delete the thing. And it's because of the fact checkers. So the exact thing that they just brought up is the reason that I've been... I'm thinking that I am glad about... And overall it is a good thing, but I'm just a little... I don't know, skeptical about the... Purity of the motivations for why? There's no purity. There's no purity. They're following the money. They have no choice. I mean, the election was like a reflection of where society's at. Like, they have to be idiots not to like see like holy shit. We gotta adjust.

1:08:30But at the end of the day, it's a W for society. So they got the two topics that they highlighted as well were gender and immigration. that probably the two most, at least from a campaign perspective, the two most aligned talking points when it came to what the candidates were driving home from ads, right? There was that ads that the Trump team, Kamala, is for they, them, Trump is for you, one of the most successful political ads in the recent history. I think a third of their budget was spent on that one ad, some absurd amount of the budget. And then immigration was the flag that was planted in the ground by the Republican side as this is the thing that we're pushing back against.

1:09:18I think interesting that those are the two flashpoints that you're enabling now on matter. What would you mean they're enabling it? Well, when they talked about these at the sort of topics, there were two topics that they specifically called out as being ones that would be discussion would not be censored around as much and it was gender and immigration. They also happened to be the two biggest talking points when it came to the campaign trail as well. A lot of new thing they're doing, they just said. Yeah, it was part of the big announcement. A couple of the guys, some representative went on Fox and was talking about it, but I think it's actually written in something.

1:09:56I mean, yeah, if you're a Zuck, you got to be like, he's obviously not an idiot, but you to be a complete tool to not see where, like he has no choice. Like it's pretty obvious, right? I mean, and they're going to have to make all those adjustments. I mean, yeah, I don't know why people don't see it. It's people are just going to follow the money always, right? Mm -hmm. I'm interested in what keeps driving you. You've mentioned proving people wrong is a part of it. But that only takes you so far. I mean, doing something for a decade, however many hundreds of uploads, thousands of uploads, including all of the shorts and all of the work and sourcing and creating, spending something up internally, I don't think people realize just how much work that is.

1:10:38What is it that keeps you motivated and keeps driving you forward after doing this for so long? I mean, I really fucking like enjoy what we do, honestly, like I really do. and like I'll go through waves of maybe there's a bad video or there's a bad moment on social media but for the most part like I really fucking love this shit like I started doing this for fun just making videos uploading them not making any money and I was making like all types of videos like see I wanted to be a director when I was younger so I was making like short films that were serious, I was making skits and then we were doing pranks.

1:11:19I just loved creating, like thinking of something, filming it. I would edit it myself, post it and then you get that. It's like entertaining. You know, you get that reaction back from people saying they loved it. It's like a good feeling. So I don't think I've lost that whatsoever, you know? Even our latest milk video I was telling you, like the tribe video we did, it was just fun. Like the whole process from thinking of the idea to planning it, like getting on the call with Forest and talking about doing it, to traveling there, to filming it, and then when we get home, sitting with the editors editing it and, you know, we're choosing the music, we're choosing the font, we're choosing just the storyline and then posting it and getting all that great feedback, watching the numbers go crazy.

1:12:06The entire process is fun. And I don't, I mean, I don't know what else I would be, I would be doing. I don't want to go back and work at the golf course. Um, that's one thing I do really love it. And then yeah, I mean, obviously want to be like financially free. I think, you know, I don't, I don't know if we can do milk forever. Maybe we can. Like maybe it's like, we have kids and we're still doing like dad's trips or some shit and we're bringing the babies and stuff. Happy dad in one hand, child. Exactly. There you go. Oh, yeah. We're going to definitely keep going. But yeah, I mean, it would be with happy that our ultimate goal is to build it into a billion dollar business.

1:12:45And yeah, so there's two sides to it. There's the content. And then happy that is our main. What are you more passionate about the moment?

1:12:56I think I'm passionate about both equally. I love I think that's one thing that like my partner or like John tells me too, is like, I can just switch from like a creative side to like a business side like that like with a light switch, you know? So I love like being completely creative and like making a video. And then I also love getting strategic and like helping build a business. So it's almost like I have two hats that I get to wear and I'm constantly switching them, which I think fucks with my mind a little bit too. And then sometimes I got a babysit that all these fuckers to, I don't know if you know Stiney, all these guys are fucked, I'm fucked too.

1:13:36But so there's a few different hats that I have to wear. That's a strange one I suppose that you made a name for yourself and still now continue to as being the fun older brother, oh, I guess a younger brother and then now older brother for most of your audience. But because you're the front man and the leader and one that's under a lot of scrutiny and one that has to make a lot of the decisions and stuff like that. There's a sense of obligation as well. So balancing, I wanna have fun with, I wanna be the fun uncle, fun older brother type thing, with the, I also need to be the responsible leader figurehead thing.

1:14:15That's something I feel fine. And never used to be like that too much, but now I find myself doing that more than ever. But you're the boss. I know, but I never, like, it gets fucking annoying sometimes too, yeah. To be the buzzkill? Yeah, of course. It's like it's like it's also like just don't make me be a buzzkill like I don't want to fucking have to like Rip you in the reason I don't want to have the reason you're stepping in to do it is because you haven't done the thing that I asked you to but like Some people just don't learn unless you fucking rip them a new asshole. So it's like it gets but it does it does frustrate me and it gets annoying so now some things I just kind of let go.

1:14:49I'm kind of only focused on What affects Nelk? Like I can't I've learned I also can't help everybody I can tell you something once, I can tell you something twice. If you're gonna keep doing it, that's gonna be up to you. You know what I'm saying? Like, there's not enough time in my day to babysit everyone's personal lives. I thought, I get like, I don't know, I care about people that are close to me a lot too. So, I try to help people as much as I can, but yeah, it gets, there's only so much time in a day. At the end of the day, people are gonna do what they kind of want to do. Yeah, there's a few, I think Elon's probably a pretty good example of this, but I read sci -fi and novels and stuff like that.

1:15:30And in those books a lot of the time, the person that's the figurehead, that's usually the protagonist in the book or whatever, you get to observe inside of their own mind, the price that they need to pay in order to be a leader, the fact that they need to do things or say things or make sacrifices. Ernest Shackleton, the guy who attempted an Antarctic crossing in the sort of 1910s, he had so many self doubts that he wrote in his diary, he had so much concern and didn't know if people were going to survive, didn't know if they were going to be able to make it through multiple Antarctic winters.

1:16:09And you sort of see him writing these things down in his diary and then stepping out there to put on this brave face that inspires everybody around him. And it's kind of interesting the unique cost that a leader has to pay in order to keep driving something forward. And there are certain, very unique challenges that only maybe within, even within an organization, maybe only two people, a one person, or a couple of very, very small group of people actually have to deal with. And everybody else kind of gets to come along for the ride. Everybody else gets to be coached along. And main character energy and sort of assuming that you're the most important person in the story is kind of how everybody sees their life, right?

1:16:53Everybody sees their world as the main character. But if you actually look at anybody else's world, at best, you're a side character, at best, you're like some ancillary dude that came in part way through. But if you really want to be that main character, if you like the idea of being the leader, if you like the idea of being a figurehead, the person that's driving this thing forward, there will be prices that you need to pay very, very particular, unique, lonely prices that you can put a brave face on it. You can grin about it as much as you want, but ultimately there is a lot of shit to eat.

1:17:22And you are going to have to eat it. 100%. It comes with the territory. I would never complain about it. It just, yeah, that's something kind of that I've had to deal with more recently as our business has grown. As like you said, yeah, the stakes are higher now. There's more responsibility. So back then when we're just fucking around and we were you know now it's the stakes are higher So there's a lot more on the line. There's a lot more on the line What's the what's the toughest part of your job? I don't want to sound like a bitch or like complaining because like They're like what I'd I'm so fucking grateful for like my life and my job and stuff But I mean if there's one thing that just burns me out.

1:18:04Maybe it's just traveling like a lot all the time, the lack of a routine and like structure. That can burn me out like if we're traveling all the time. Back when we were probably like drinking a lot and partying, that was that was starting to burn me out a lot. Starting to lose it a little bit maybe but also not like lose it but just I mean as you get older bro two we were talking about like bro I obviously just can't fucking I can't drink like I can't drink like I used to like obviously when I'm 21 I didn't even know what a hangover was I'm 30 now so I get hung like a fucking it feels like I got hit by a bus you know so I think it's just it's that too so when we're part if we're like traveling and drinking a lot too that can burn me out I love I mean I love I love having a routine too.

1:18:57Like when I'm in Miami and I'm just on my shit, like just exactly what we did this morning, dialed, working out. That feels really, really good to me now. The older I get, I think the simple things just become more and more important. And just taking care of yourself, keeping your mind right. So if there's one thing, it's just that. It's just the traveling sometimes burns you out. But do you lose motivation or do you have low points? It seems like you have this sort of quite upbeat mentality a lot of the time. Not only that that's your disposition, but also that you need to be that for everybody else.

1:19:30They're going to look to you while Kyle's got to bring the vibe to this thing. But I think I definitely lose motivation sometimes. I mean, I think everyone goes through points where yeah, maybe you just get low or you kind of question like, like, oh, do I want to do this? Like, what's the point of this anymore? You know, I've gone through phases like that where it's just like, yeah, you're just like, why do I need to do this? You know, what if, but I think those are just like little funks that everybody has and you kind of just got to break out of them and you got to kind of like look at stuff from like an outside perspective too.

1:20:14Yeah, I think I'm so grateful to have this life and everything I've built. So if you think about other people's lives or what they have or what their problems are, compared to yours, I find that's like a great thing I do sometimes just whenever you're complaining about something, like really take a look at what you're fucking complaining about compared to other people's problems. So anytime I find myself in a funk, I'll kinda just think of that and be like, you know, this is my problem compared to like, someone else's problem. Like look around me, look what I've got, not even material -wise. like I have fucking a great family, I have fucking great friends, I have a great life, like some people don't have that.

1:20:53So all the stuff you kind of take for granted sometimes, not everyone has. How much do you rely on the sort of group around you? Do you think you can do this? It's everything. You can do this on your own. No, the group we have right now is like fucking really, really solid. Like obviously I have Gabe, who's like my assistant, like That guy has a flash life slave. He's the best. Like, we've become best friends too. And he's like, there's no one better than him in anything. Yeah, I mean, Oz God, who edits all our videos, Sean Haney, Brett, Judd, they're just like a whole crew of like, our whole team is just like so good.

1:21:34And I think that's what's, as we get bigger and bigger, that's what's really important is like having this team. It's never a one -man army for sure. And yeah, now like the crew we have, it's like we're all great friends. We hang out, like we work out, we party. So I'm telling you, team's key. I've been spending more time around bands and I think a lot of what is happening in new media is reinventing what already happened in old media. So there's ad breaks, right? And sometimes it's a little transition sounds between ads and there's regular guests that come up and sometimes there's segments. And so it's like all of this existed in radio, all of this existed in TV.

1:22:14But when I was thinking about how people that travel a lot, like what is an existing artistic endeavor or project that has some degree of travel in it, some degree of sort of difficult sleep and wake schedule and maybe there's some partying, there's an obligation for performance, all of this stuff. Like, well, comedians and bands are two good examples of this. So I've been looking quite closely at how bands sort of maintain their motivation. And one of the fascinating things around that is you can have somebody who is an amazing musician who would perform phenomenally on stage that the audience might love, but they're a shit hang.

1:22:58And or vice versa, there's someone that's an amazing hang that's great for the morale behind the scenes, but can't deliver what they need to do when it comes to this. And basically my point being that even with comedians, a lot of them will have some sort of tour manager or a warm -up act that goes with them. And yeah, sure, the TM's got a job to do, checking into the hotel, dealing with delays, etc. The warm -up act's got a job to do. They need to make sure that the crowd is nice and ready for you to come on stage and they'll give you a hand. But what do they really do, therefore? They're from a rally.

1:23:28That they're just to keep your vibe good. Yeah. And yeah, I think that's something that I being the solo printer type D Gen thing working away in his room in solitude for a long time. I think that's a lesson that I kind of overlooked that I've done this on my own for You know seven years now I need anyone the fuck it. I'll just keep doing this and go yeah You're gonna get yourself to the stage where you need to lean on other people because you're just gonna your tanks gonna be empty And yeah, that's something, especially observing you guys and seeing how important that group dynamic is and everybody's here.

1:24:07They're your house. Right? It's our house. But everybody's in here. Everybody's there for the hang. It's on orthodox. Something blows up, you know, someone's coming for you, someone's criticizing you. They're there to help support you. Something goes well. They're there to celebrate it with you. And we glorify the sort of sigma male loan ranger I'm going to do on my own. thing. I don't think that that's the best way to do it to enjoy the good times and I don't think it's the best way to do it to weather the bad times either. I agree. Yeah, no. The crew we have right now is like, we're all just friends.

1:24:43So it's like, yeah, we celebrate the good times, we battle through the bad times. And yeah, there's a lot of like, it's like a friend group, so it's like you're working and you're also having fun. So some things aren't done the most professionally, but I think that's always been the magic of milk. And like what we've created, like you never even sometimes maybe we got a little bit too corporate and stuff too. Like that never fucking, that never works. I don't think like for content, like we got an office in OC for a bit and not that it like killed our content for anything. It was just like waste of money for for for milk.

1:25:19Happy that completely took over that office because they needed the space anyway. But for us, it's way better for me. Like now the editing office you saw is like right over there. I don't want to fucking drive to the office every day. Like this is the way that we've always done it. It's like I wake up. I can just go walk over there after the fucking cold tub and be like, what's good? How's the video looking boys? And I can just go sit with them for 10 minutes. And we just like, boom, we just did like two hours worth of work like as I was coming back to like shower. Yeah, it's funny. The need for slack and calls and check ins and updates and where are we at, project management.

1:25:54I think that works in a business obviously, like these businesses, obviously you need that, but I think in a creative business, and obviously filming or a YouTube crew, any of that typical shade I find, it doesn't work. You gotta do it your way. You gotta keep it fun. You gotta keep it, you gotta keep good energy. Yeah. The second people don't wanna be there, it's not gonna be good. Yeah, it's a really interesting challenge. And it's part of the thing that people don't see where... Behind the scenes, the energy that you bring to something, this is something that Rogan's got so right, it's so seamless, going and working, like he has just removed all of the friction.

1:26:38There is zero friction involved in his entire process and the team that he's got around him and the guys that he likes hanging with are just fire. Yeah. You know, he's got his little squad and you turn up at the studio and he doesn't need to think at all about anything that's going on. He gets to turn up and do his thing and then he goes away and nothing saps that energy from him. And I think that... Yeah, observing you guys, I've learned a lot from sort of seeing how you've held that energy together. And I think it's really impressive. And obviously as well, the proofs in the pudding you've kept going for 10 years.

1:27:11So it evidently works. Yeah. It's been a long -ass journey for sure. What would you like to do next? Like what's from a content perspective, from a business perspective? Um, I wanna, this year, I'm pretty fucking motivated right now. Me too. I think, uh, yeah, I mean, I think last year, I got a little bit comfortable maybe for a different, a couple different reasons, but I think this year, um, even just after the reaction of our last video, like, the NELK channel is so fucking unique what we have. like even the videos at like five mill or something, like that's a lot of fucking views for a YouTube video.

1:27:49Not a lot of people are getting views like that in our genre. Obviously Mr. Beast gets like crazy numbers, but for our genre, that's awesome to me. So, and I had such a great time doing that. So a lot of people have been asking for us to like upload more, which I want to. It's slightly tough if you're going to an uncontacted tribe. Yeah, yeah, but I want to get back into like trying to do a lot more milk videos for sure and then keep in the podcast going to We Next week we're going to UFC LA So we're gonna do like a pod with all those with all those guys when we got a couple good guests in the works And then we got the inaugurations will probably well a lot of you have to film at the inauguration We're trying to we want to try to make an inauguration video for milk But we'll see it might just go who gets to go with you because you must have a limited number of tickets.

1:28:40Yeah, it'll be it'll be me and Steini and then it'll be Ozgod our Filmer and then probably Gabe. Gabe will be in charge of suits. He's in charge of suits. He wants to be in charge of suits though. Gabe you in charge of suits. like a job we throw on them. Okay. Yeah. Well, let's see. Yeah. That'll be cool. But yeah, no, this year we just want to, uh, we just want to kill it with content. Short, snelk, full -sem pod. How do you come to think about what makes a good, uh, knelk video or what makes a good piece of content? The first thing, the first thing we'll think of is, I guess you think of it at the same time, but what's going to make a good video, obviously, but then you have to think of a good title and thumbnail.

1:29:24know. I mean, you know, it works, but that's that's the main thing. So if you think of a good idea, then the next thing you think of is, okay, well, what's the title and thumbnail? And then if we can't think of that, you don't really have a full concept, you know, what makes it is the title and thumbnail and then actually good quality. Delivering. Yeah. But title and thumbnails, everything on YouTube, right? I mean, that's the very first thing you should kind of be thinking about. And yeah, just what's gonna be digestible to like a large audience. Our whole team likes getting views too. Like I think that's what we wanna make a video and what's gonna get the most fucking hype, what's gonna get the most fucking views.

1:30:05Like that's what really motivates like me, Seleme, Steini, everybody on our team. What's just gonna like make noise? So what's the watch time on a 40 minute vlog for you guys, do you know? I don't even, I'm not a fucking huge YouTube analytics guy. Honestly, I let like, our guide Judds like super into that, like, oh, they're like, bro, the short had fucking 110 % retention. I'm like, dude, yeah, like, I don't really, I'm not a huge YouTube analytics guy, but, yeah. Lots of completion though. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, there's, I wish that there was a way that we could see more sentiment on YouTube than just click through and watch time.

1:30:49And I guess likes kind of contribute a little bit to that and comments kind of contribute. But we're getting a lot of likes is nice too. It is good. It doesn't do shit. I tell the audience, but it just it fires the whole team up. Yeah. You see like a lot of like. Yeah, this isn't going to make it go any further, but thank you. It makes everybody in the office. Yeah, fires everyone up. Yeah, I wish there was this idea that Twitter had, I guess, about but golden hearts or super likes, I think they were called. And what they had was, you maybe got three per week or one per week and it meant that because there was a limited number that you had to use, you had to be really selective about what you gave it to, but that meant it was a really big deal.

1:31:26You know, like on Reddit, you can kind of gift people stuff. YouTube should do more shit like that, right? It would be so good. Because they've lost like that, I don't know, like yeah, there's not really that much point of even having and account that much, right? Like before, it was all about subscribers and you know, you'd subscribe to people like, it kind of sucks now too. I don't know if you notice, but it's a lot harder to gain subs now, right? Way harder. I mean, there's no point of subscribing to someone. No, because if you watch three videos in a row from the same creator, whether you've subscribed or not, you're now going to be delivered that.

1:32:00YouTube used to be all about your subscriptions. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I like the fact that they need to add, They need to bring like a Dana White on for like they they should do something like that they should bring someone on and like Add some stuff like that. I wonder if they'll follow suit. I mean, we've certainly seen you know the Person that broke through was Elon with them what he changed with regards to Twitter into X and now with matter as well I wonder if that's gonna put some pressure on on YouTube and That would be great to sort of I think X X has been putting pressure on YouTube because they've got the video uploads.

1:32:36Yeah, I know. I mean, where John is pretty tight with, he helps out a lot with X, and yeah, they're definitely what Elon's doing is putting pressure on every other social media network, you know, because they have to follow suit. I've actually even noticed, YouTube is, I want to give credit to YouTube because we shit on them a lot, but at the end of the day, YouTube is fucking great, and they've been a lot more lenient, I've noticed. I've noticed since X, I don't think we've gotten like an age restriction in like a long ass time. We used to upload everything, age restricted, age restricted, age restricted.

1:33:18Like now, like I noticed, yeah, I think it's during the time of X2, like we would do a podcast with like Donald Trump Jr. And like he's just going off about like trans and stuff like that. Like usually that would be like, yo an absolute no go and just like no a restriction, no nothing. So I started to really notice like YouTube is, they're following suit as well. Like they're gonna have to follow the money. Everyone's gonna have to follow the money. I've noticed they've been way less picky on us. Yeah, well they rolled back the language policy thing that they brought in about a year or 18 months ago or so it was within the first two minutes of a video.

1:33:59Am I going through and thinking, oh, got someone said shit within this time. We've got to get rid of that. Found out that the C word is just an instant demonetization, no matter how deep it can be an hour and a half into a three hour long video. It's like you're getting popped. But how much are you tracking this world of kick and twitch and rumble and whatever the other ones are, the streaming stuff? because I kind of see it's huge right? I watch it like even like some people on our team are like should we do this should we stream? I just think that I don't know. Streaming is a that's a big commitment you know and I think to like back in the day when we were younger and we were drinking five times a week to make a video every week I think we probably could have competed in that streaming space but the amount of work that these guys are putting in now for content I mean and they're streaming what, six days a week.

1:34:54Like, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, like, hi, sonat, too. He's like, what, 21, like, he's fucking, yeah, they're putting in a lot of work. Streaming's not the type of thing that you can just do it once a week. Like, you gotta be streaming 30 to whatever hours a week. So I just know how content gets done on the milk side. It's a little more wilder. There's, there's drinking involved and there's things that need to be cut out. There's things that, oh, fuck, yeah, that's a whole different story. Yeah, a live stream with milk, depending on the video would be yeah, we might be fucked on that honestly, but Yeah, it's just so it's it's a grind for sure and I think if In like 2017 I think we would have been able to like destroy that space for sure what when we were just young and not even thinking but I don't know.

1:35:41I just like the YouTube stuff. I like making more of like a finished product and like like polishing our videos and I just love the style that we do. Who is it that's orchestrating the stuff behind the scenes? Like you say, hey, it would be great if we went to go and see an uncontacted Amazonian tribe, but flights need booking and licenses to get filming rights and the kit needs organized. I'll probably like, I'll probably mostly like think of the ideas or we just have a group chat with everyone too that we're just always spitballing shit, but yeah, I'll kind of, I'll press play on the video and tell him like, all right, we all like this idea, everyone like it, all right, boom, we're doing it.

1:36:20And then we have a producer Griffin. He used to do some stuff on like the air gondratio. He's a beast and then Gabe to Gabe and Brett, they'll do all the flights, all the logistics. So I just, my job now is like, I press play and I dish it off to them. And they're all on top of logistics. Austin and Sean, we'll hang out in any video. No, no, we used to do everything back in the day. I mean, I used to edit the videos myself back in the day. So I've had a hat, I was my own assistant back in the day, like if there was a prop that needed to get it, I would have to go to three different Halloween stores to find the costume.

1:36:58So I've like played all those hats that everyone's doing now. So I kind of know what needs to be done. That's why when I'm hiring them too, I'm kind of knowing what needs to be done. Straightenizing, great. I know exactly what needs to be done in each situation, but no, we have a fucking All -Star team. So when we press play on a video, it's like bang, bang, bang. There's like no fucking bullshit. That's one thing like Gabe knows too. There's no bullshit when it comes to like videos. Like we did a bachelor video recently. The stiny is the bachelor and that was like huge budget. We did like five days.

1:37:33We did like Miami, Nashville, and Cancun. And it was just like completely dialed to a T. So that's one thing I have no complaints about. is our video process is like 10 out of 10. That's why I'm just like, yeah, we gotta run this shit up on NELC. Yeah. Because you've got the systems in place. We have the system and it's just like such a powerful channel. People want more videos. I'm fired up. That's sick. Dude, I appreciate the fuck out of you. Yeah. It's awesome. It really is. It's cool to see what you're doing. I love seeing someone that's passionate about what they do and is able to scale it and get out of their own way and just hand stuff off.

1:38:11I know yeah, I'm excited to see what 25 ,000 store for both of us crash at this year appreciate you man. Appreciate you brother. Let's go Any more drops any other shit that people need to check out Not really just watch us this year. I mean, I just talked a big game. So everyone watching if we don't do it come come to me Come fuck me give me shit. Stay on our ass as I love it. Fuck yeah, appreciate you guys