Samir Chaudry: Why 99% Of Content Creators Fail At YouTube

32:35And there's so much information. I think we're part of that, of like sharing information on how that all works. But you do have to take a step back and be like, am I building a brand? And a brand is about trust, credibility, depth of connection. And that comes from some stuff that might not be optimized for the algorithm. Yeah. It's sort of like drop shipping versus building an actual brand around what you do, right? Yeah. It's a good comp. There's, I don't know if you ever saw when Sony got hacked. Do you remember that? when the emails got hacked. There was one email that I remember came out that was like pretty interesting.

33:08And I think it was one of the early Sony guys talking to the CEO. And he was, or one of the, it wasn't maybe the early Sony guys, maybe it was like one guy from like a music, a record label talking to him. And he was like, you know, here's what we're seeing. And he's like, basically the more popular this gets, like, you know, people streaming music at home, blah, blah, blah. He's like, it's also creating a pent up demand for what he called. he's like i think out of home entertainment is going to be big and he's like out of home entertainment like uh he's like festivals will do well this was like a while back and like there was like this kind of like pretty big music festival craze that kind of came out of it um but there was also a couple other like trends like that like even things like tough mudder and spartan race all of a sudden people were like you know what i just want to like go and voluntarily crawl through mud this weekend right like why would somebody want to do that it's like yeah kind of because you're sitting in front of a computer all day yeah life got too easy and you to kind of feel soft inside so you go voluntarily have this like hardship but also you want to be able to instagram it and put it online that you did it yeah i think uh i i totally agree with that and i mean obviously that that it that's what happened but i think ai is going to create like this homogenous nature to content where everything's going to feel the same um and that is going to make us crave something completely unique and different almost like looking for like AI has brought a lot of efficiencies into our studio.

34:33We use AI for a lot. Like what? Do you guys use Autopod? Are you familiar with that? No. What does that mean? Okay. So there's three cameras right now, right? And so basically you would bring these three cameras in and you want to get a clarity on like, if I'm talking the cameras on me, if you're talking the cameras on you. Oh, it does those cuts. It just does those cuts automatically. If it's a three hour conversation, it'll do it in 90 seconds. Oh, that's amazing. And it'll be very precise. When you start talking, it'll go there. If you have a human here live switching, which I don't know if someone's live switching.

35:02He's not live switching right now, but we talked about it right before we started this. So if he's live switching with a switcher, he actually can't predict when you're about to start talking, right? He's going to be a second late. So now, do I trust the human more? Do I trust the AI more? I mean, the reality is it's brought a ton of efficiency into our office. That's cool. We also explore YouTube titles and play around with AI to be like, hey, here's the title we thought of, but give us 10 variations. Right. And sometimes maybe it's ours that we like. Right. But if we keep going down that path, you know, the other day we were in a - That's just ChatGPT or it's a different tool?

35:36ChatGPT, but there's other like creator specific AI tools. There's some that aren't public that can only be used if you're partnered with certain, you know, creator companies. Specifically, there's a company called Spotter that has a really great AI tool that I was using this morning. And the funny thing is, like, you're sitting in a room with your team and it's is it more efficient to sit alone with AI and get hundreds of variations? Or is it is it more efficient to sit together as a team for 30 minutes? I don't know the answer to that, but I think probably it's AI. right um so the question for me is like if this if it's driving so much efficiency i think i'm going to crave inefficiency in other places right it's like the slow food movement totally like the table it's like fast food gets too present yeah it creates the demand the craving for the other for the inefficiencies yeah i've what i've seen though is that even though that gets created it does usually end up getting dwarfed by the thing that of course uh you know yeah better faster cheaper you know like yeah style of stuff entertainment i think is different like you go to a concert it's the most inefficient way to hear the music right the taylor swift concert right if you like taylor swift music and you just want to hear it just go on spotify right you're one tap away so why do you want this collective experience why do you want to drive deal with parking get in there you know get to your seat it's kind of a pain in the ass to go to a concert right so what is it about that that's you know it's a it only happens once right it's like an experience that you get to happen but you know by the numbers a lot more people will stream taylor swift yes we'll go to that agreed but you know she'll make a lot of money and can monetize totally uh totally differently yeah tell me about um mr b so i've gotten to go to his place and hang out with him a little bit pretty remarkable dude um and not like oh he's like an alien or whatever but just like very interesting just kind of see him in his like normal ways uh of working and you can kind of see some differences between how he approaches things like you know for me i was like oh how does he approach things how does he see situations and approach things differently than i do and he came on the pod but it actually was like nothing he said on the pod would have given me that insight but actually watching him work and like kind of being in a brainstorm with him then you do start to see those differences i think you've gotten a lot of access to those moments yeah what's uh what stood out to you that you've kind of like picked up or noticed just by spending a little time with him.

38:04I always say he's like the most unique human I have ever met. I think he's like very, very unique in what he cares about. You know, I think what he cares about is very different from, you know, what I care about or what a lot of people care about. What does he care about? He like is so unique in the fact that he is laser focused in a way that I've never really experienced. And maybe at times like in a way that I don't want to experience. Yeah. He doesn't want to. No, I mean, him and I have this conversation a lot. Like I, I don't crave what he has. Um, I like to have more of a wide perspective on life and a view of, uh, different types of experiences.

38:45And he's very, um, committed to his craft and very like, he, he can laser focus in on something. Like if you've been in one of those brainstorms with him, he's just like very blunt. He's very, you know, he's just like, why would we do that? That doesn't makes sense. Like no, it doesn't exist in the same way for him that it exists for other people based on social context or based on like, well, you said no doesn't exist for him. Yeah. The same way it exists for other people. I think that's really accurate. Yes. I have a story of an example of that. I have many stories of that. Yeah. I think the time where I saw that the most was at the Mr.

39:20Beast Burger opening in New Jersey at the American dream mall, Colin and I went, That was insane. Yeah. We spent the 24 hours with him before and after. Yeah. And lived with him through this, like, what felt like a hurricane storm of fandom and new experiences for him and Reed and the whole team. Did you think it was going to be, go to the part where he walks out. Where he walks out. Dude, that was, so I was the only camera behind him at that moment. Are you this camera? I'm this camera. That's me. I know he's famous, but I was like, this is not what I thought was going to be the situation. times where i had the chills filming this video um so i filmed that yeah i filmed that clip and then jimmy was like that's crazy send me that and i sent it to him and then he tweeted it and it was just like it's completely insane um but so that experience there was you know the night before there was a question around like how many burgers they could serve and and there was already i think you know 15 or 20 000 people there the night before right it was completely insane and uh they were sleeping in the mall mall security was there and they were just like okay all right i guess no i don't think anyone fully understood uh how big he was at that moment um and so they were like okay we don't know if we can serve all these people and jimmy was just like what what do you mean let's just figure it out like what do we need to do and they're like it's just not possible we can't get more supplies here and he was like well can can we pay for it can we just pay someone to do it?

40:48And he was like, well, I don't, you know, I don't think so. I don't think that's possible. And basically what ended up happening was it was possible. And Jimmy just kept pushing. Right. At a point where, again, it's like a lot of people would be like, okay, that's a no. If I ask three times, it's a no. Yeah. Yeah. There's no other possibility. Oh, the fire marshal said it. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. And I think he thinks in different ways too of like, you know, his immediate thought was around the staff. He was like, I need the staff to be really into this. I need them to be on it. And so he's like, I'm going to pay everyone an extra thousand dollars today.

41:21And that is 30 ,000. There's 30 people working. It was$30 ,000. And it's in our video where he says, I'm going to pay all of you guys an extra thousand dollars to whatever you're getting paid today. That's like an irrational thing to do. A lot of people would look at that and be like, that's kind of irrational to spend an additional$30 ,000. But he looks at that and he was like, this is what I need to make this excellent. We're just going to do that? You know, and you look at what he tweets about now too. He spends, you know, a million or$2 million on a video and it makes 200 ,000 in AdSense revenue.

41:52And, you know, obviously his sponsors and stuff, but some of his videos don't make money and he's just like, but that's, they're good. Right. You know, he, he thinks in just different ways like that. Yeah. It's just very unique. I, uh, yeah, I feel the same way. He also, um, um said some things he also said some things that were like really funny to me like um he was like i was like so do you want to like have kids or like what's your like what do you want out of life besides okay yeah i've heard the youtube part and i was like what else do you want i think he said he was like i want to be president i want to do this i want to be a billionaire i don't know i was like okay cool but like what about just like out of your life like forget the big cool sounding things like do you want to get married have kids like what do you want to do and he was like um he's like yeah you know i uh he's like yeah i'll i think i'll probably like you know date or get married or whatever he's like i think i wouldn't want kids no fuck no i don't want kids and i was like oh why not he's like oh he's like actually you know like steve and elon they have kids there's probably something to it so i'll do it and i was like i'm first just hilarious to be like uh like yeah just like the first name basically literally like the dead steve jobs jobs who you never met and be like he's just like that's that's the class of people i'm in yeah you know if those people did it might be something to it so i'll do it just kind of for that reason but i don't feel the need for that because i'm on this mission and like you know that's where my head's at right now i have seen him you know just being friends with him and having conversations and we just did another podcast with him recently um i have seen him mature quite a bit like i think we we do have to remember like that's a guy in his mid-20s of course yeah you know actually he wasn't even i don't know how old is he i remember laughing at something and i was like dude he's so much smarter more mature than i was at 24 23 whatever he is though like again it's that's not i don't i didn't have any friends like him when i was in my early 20s i think he's he's a very rare individual and he's 25 now and he's maturing into he runs a company with uh over 100 plus employees uh he's he's got this like whole massive operation this massive platform and he's 25.

43:57It's going to be interesting to watch the next five years. If you were to advise him, what would you tell him? I think he's already experiencing some of this where he's looking at his content and injecting more storytelling into it, which I think is really, really smart and something that Colin and I have been talking to him about for a long time. It's the same thing I was saying earlier of, I think it's okay to have a deeper connection with him and with the content and with the contestants that he has on there. And he can sacrifice some of the hyper retention editing for that. I also, a year ago, probably would have told him he potentially is doing too many things.

44:40And he's already refocused, right? He's really just focused on the main channel and Feastables. And if you think about a year ago, Beast Burger, Feastables, main channel, Reacts, Gaming, right? These are all different things he's doing. Right. Plus 25 other amazing opportunities. Yeah. People who want to meet him and this and that, right? Everything will tug your attention away. And he can be excellent in all of those things. But as you grow up, as you mature, it's like, what do you say yes to? What do you say no to? And when you're at that platform where you have any and every opportunity, how do you focus?

45:17It's hard. Well, the way I put it is he can be excellent at any of those, but probably not all of them simultaneously. Probably not all of them. Yeah. Not at the same time. You can do anything. You just can't do everything at the same time. Because as a creator in a creator led business, you are the bottleneck for everything. And I've spent time with him. He is the bottleneck for everything, right? Like he needs to be pulled into the room to look at something. He has, you know, say on all of that stuff. And he also has the right, you know, mind for it. That's the reason that company is so big and why he's built such a big platform.

45:46So where do you inject that? Is it across 20 projects or is it across two? And, you know, I think they've really refocused and focused on two primary ones. And every one of these platforms has like a guy at a certain time or a girl at a certain time that's like the one. And they're like, you know, whether it was like Casey Neistat or PewDiePie or like kind of they have these like epic arcs and they're top of the mountain. And then most of them either literally stop creating because they kind of they transition careers. They get burnt out, whatever it is, or they're still creating, but they're just not like there's the new wave of new people doing new cool shit.

46:26He is kind of remarkable, though. So, you know, he may have a different path or trajectory than than most. if you if I was to say all right make a prediction um five years from now what is like today if Mr. Beast is like you know the number one YouTube creator and like launching a couple of these businesses underneath like Feastables whatnot five years from now do you think he's still the number one creator on YouTube I think he's probably the number one online digital media company I don't know that you know I don't know what creator is going to mean in that many years like I think he has the best pulse on online storytelling right now.

47:02And I think, you know, we saw some people try this, like the BuzzFeeds, the, you know, like these massive media companies that emerge. I think he's more akin to a media company than he is a creator. So that's what I think. I think he'll be the biggest media company. The way he's building is like a true company. It's a great vibe there if you've been there, you know, like it's they have good people involved. So I don't know. I don't know, you know, what the content looks like. I don't know what he as the creator looks like, but I think it will be a, a media company. Like when we sat with him last in our last interview, he has a ton of aspirations to make content for Netflix.

47:41He has a ton of aspirations to produce stuff. And, you know, I don't think he's that keen or intent on, he has to be in everything or he has to be the lead in everything. I think that's been the, that is the draw right now. But I think in the future, it, it, Mr. Beast is a content studio. you know, it could be, we could be looking at like, we don't know if we're not looking at the next Disney or Paramount or, you know, some massive studio that can build IP and monetize in different ways. Like Mr. Beast is the first, if we look at it and saying that's the first show that was built out of there, right?

48:13It's a game show that has a couple of different formats. It's distributed. It's the biggest show, right? They built a chocolate brand out of that, that operates kind of like a game show. You can win stuff when you buy the chocolate, right? So it's like okay that looks and feels really similar to like a disney and a mickey mouse right okay let's let's build this big media platform let's build a product connected to it they're they have that skill set they could probably replicate that right and as you look at their cast of characters you know there is a cast of characters there that can be built out um there is more ip that can be built out it's like build ip connect product to it right you know or connect experiences to it it could be an experience too.

48:52Yeah, if he chooses to go that path. I want to talk about this. This is amazing. Yeah. So your content company did something pretty dope. You guys did, I think, what is it, 100 editions? We did 500 of those. No, no, no, but this was to celebrate. Oh, it was to celebrate two years of our newsletter. Two years. Yeah, two years of the newsletter of the Publish Press. So you got this newsletter, the Publish Press, which is dope. It's like what you guys do on the YouTube channel, sort of like creator, a great newsletter for creators i mean it was largely inspired by like the morning brew hustle movement right which was like okay we are subscribers to these newsletters what if we made one about our own community yeah and then uh then you made actual physical newspaper and i'm very honored because you yeah pretty much sold out of these yeah um this was dope why do something like this because i i'm asking because this isn't like an economic move this is not this is not going to grow your audience it's not going to get you rich yeah it's not going to do any of those things it takes effort yeah um it's a risk in a little in a way um what's your philosophy on just do dope shit like this why uh it just it's fulfilling like i it's it's hard to say that we have a hard nose philosophy on it it's just like we are creative people and as we've built a business like one of the one of the things that's so interesting about being a creative is you're really good at kind of zero to one and the like let's just do cool shit until something works.

50:18What becomes startling is when something works. And then you're like, okay, so what now? I just keep doing this thing. And that's the really funny thing about Colin and I always say that creatives aren't consistent people. And so we've surrounded ourselves with really consistent people who help us be consistent in the formats that we found. But you need that occasional pop of just like, you know, it'd be cool to make a newspaper. Like we were rebranding the published press. That's the new logo for it. We just were like, how do we tell people that we've been doing this for two years? How do we celebrate?

50:53It also was, we had just crossed a hundred thousand subscribers on the newsletter and it was like, how do we celebrate this moment? What is it? Do we just put out a tweet that's like, Hey, it's been great. And we were like, well, as things are getting more increasingly more digital, what if we did something physical? And that was it. That was the impetus. And then it was just, Hey, is everyone excited about this? Okay, cool. Are we down to stay up late at night for this. Great. And that's, it just organically happens when you, there was a lot of people who we asked about this and they were like, that's, you know, we, that's not going to happen in the time period that we wanted it to happen in.

51:25And then that's another exciting thing for a creative person. I found the challenge. That's another exciting thing. Um, so yeah, I would say that it, it's again, like it cost us money. Uh, we did not make money from this. There's no sponsor in it or anything. Um, it, it didn't, you know, dramatically grow our audience. But it has been a moment where a lot of people could understand what the brand was. And a lot of big creators reached out to say, can I have one? I want one in my house. And then we're seeing that creators have framed it and put it in their house. We're seeing that there's just something - Yeah, I asked you for one.

51:57Yeah, you DM'd us and asked for one. And that to me is like, again, back to this concept of high quality audience. It's like the people who reached out about this, it's a premium group of people. And the real ask is because it's like in retrospect, once you see the final product and it's cool and then you hear these stories and it's like yeah all these things make sense in hindsight it's up front when it's kind of unknown kind of unproven tight deadline you know a lot of things to do that's when it's hard to do this or or sometimes you say yes to too many of these things right so it's almost like what you just said kind of reminds me of like google had like the 20 time yeah i would get hired the best engineers in the world and like this guy's fixing the bug in the adsense platform but like we got to give these guys like 20 time to just tinker and hack on yeah stuff that that they you know get motivation from and like on logically you'd say well you're losing you know 20 time is basically one day one day out of out of the week that they're not working on on this on their main job but the reality is that like sometimes those hit and also it makes the other four days out of the week yeah more productive you don't actually lose anything totally because you attract the best people and you gave them an outlet to like be creative and also if you're not following what's exciting you then you're just you built yourself a job.

53:09And that's like, then you have to look at it and be like, wait, what did I just do? What did I just do? I also think that what we do with our merchandise and what we do with anything physical, most of it at the moment is not driving crazy revenue, right? It's not like a revenue driver for us, but we think about building our community and we're very niche. And so for niche creators, we think about collectibles. We want to create collectibles. That's right, yeah. And when we have collectibles, then you get to be a part of our community and be like, I'm, it's the feeling of going to see a band when you were younger and keeping the ticket stop.

53:44It's like, I was a part of this community at this moment. Right. So these are collectibles along the way of our journey. You think about the massive creators like Logan Paul and Mr. Beast or Emma Chamberlain, they're creating consumables, which is great for mass creators, right? So these things are like cool collectibles that we think are cool. We're planning another drop in October and our merchandise does not drive crazy amounts of revenue for us. It's relatively nominal, but it's awesome when you walk down the street and see someone in the merch. We've sold 2 ,000 of these hats and they're out in the world and 2 ,000 people are wearing them.

54:22And we see stories where people connect because they saw someone else wearing the merch. So that to me is like the symbol of community building this tight knit group who can connect and be like, I'm part of the same group as you identify in the same world as you do. Totally. We, I love the way you put it. It's a great frame on that idea of consumables versus collectibles. When we were about to launch like merch for the pot or whatever. And it was like, oh yeah, merch. And it's like, okay, here's two things I know. Number one, people don't want to wear our like for us. It was like, they're not going to wear a shirt that says my first million.

54:54This is not going to happen. It's not cool. I don't want to wear that they don't want to wear that let's just all agree on that what they will wear is like inside jokes and slang that only if you know you know and if you don't you don't no small stuff yeah no small boy stuff or like I have this shirt that it's a we made that's a polaroid of it's like a fuzzy polaroid of sam when he had his hot dog stand it's like in the style of those like kanye shirt whatever it's like some like cool cool looking like it's like an imitation of that great and it's like nobody will even know who that is or what you can't even tell that it's a hot dog stand but like if you know you know and that's it and that's it and i was like we should just do i was like if my rule is like the tim ferris rule is basically if you're not going to make a ton of money on it it should be free or it should be like as just sell it at cost but like and do like a limited run so that it's more interesting totally and just only like if you're going to try to make money only make money when you're going to make a lot of money don't try to like trickle a little bit of beg for money everywhere because that doesn't like nobody likes that and that's not the right approach for something like this and a lot of our merchants also a way to think about it a lot of our merch shipments are driven by a referral program through the newsletter right right so that's like you know again that's like pulling from the the playbook yeah the the whole the newsletter playbook you had this um tweet or this video that i saw that was like a naval quote that i really liked it was um it said like uh was it was like your problem is that you're writing to be read.

56:19Yes. That resonated with you and me. I want to like talk about that. Why did that hit? Because so simple. It's like, you know, seven words or something. I think it hit me at a time where I felt like we were creating very scared. The beginning of this year, I felt like we were creating very scared. Like we had crossed a million subscribers last year. We felt like we had built a brand in the space and opened up the year. We made a few videos that we just can't. We just didn't put them out because we were like, oh, those aren't going to work for the audience, but we liked them. and got really in our heads around, again, you're playing this dance as a creator of what you want to make, what the audience wants to watch and what the platform wants.

56:55Those are the three things that we think you're constantly playing with. And if you overvalue what the audience wants, you're catering to this group that obviously they have created your career if you've made it, but you can't forget that it came from what you wanted to make. I think on one side of the spectrum of, you know, being a publisher or being a creator, there is the artist who's like, I do not care what you think I'm going to make this. And that has financial implications, right? That are essentially very hard to make money like that, but very cool. We respect artists like that, right?

57:31There's some most respected artists like are misunderstood, maybe understood once they pass or just didn't care about what the audience thought. Right. Your interpretation doesn't matter to them. Right. Then you go on. I love that you exist, but like. Sure. I like guac on my Chipotle. way. I'm going to have a job. It's okay. The other side of the spectrum is being a distributor. It's like, why do we have so many Spider-Man movies? It's because they put butts in seats. Right. So the person at the studio, the movie studio is not an artist. They're thinking about, what do we make? What do we green light?

58:01Spider-Man. That's going to get people in the seats. That's going to sell tickets. And I think as a creator, you have to be in the middle of that. And some creators slide heavy on the side of distributor of just like, what does the audience want to watch. I'll make that. Whatever. And then on the other side of it, what do I want to make? And so I think that Naval quote really hit me in this feeling of losing. I did grow up. I went to film school. I took playwriting in college. I'm really into artsy stuff. And I think when money gets involved, when you start commercializing your creativity, and when it doesn't work for years, that's an important part of our story, right?

58:37It didn't work for a long time. We didn't make any money for a long time, you get terrified of losing it. And when you get terrified of losing it, you start creating to be watched or writing to be read. What did you say? Creating scared? Yeah. Creating scared. Yeah. Let's take a book title right there. I like that one. Yeah. It's something Colin and I talk about a lot. It's like, let's not create scared. What are we scared of? Again, it's all this mix of the public view count, the perception, the tweets of these guys have fallen off or whatever you think is going to happen if you put out a video that people don't like.

59:08Um, and people can feel that. I think, I think you can feel it as a creator. It feels really uncomfortable to, to create scared. And right. Um, yeah, it's not, it's not fun to watch. Yeah, absolutely. You know, um, you had Hassan on the show and love Hassan. He's very much on the artist side. I think, uh, he like drew a line in the sand for himself. He's like, okay, I, uh, So it's hard to find sites that are harmful for people. Thank you. either i'm gonna get on tiktok and i'm gonna dance for the algorithm yeah or i'm gonna go the other way and I'm not and he's like had like the soul-searching moment it's not like you know he he sent me a voice memo once I was just like bro I'm gonna just create great art I'm an artist and an artist creates art that's what I'm doing I'm not a businessman first I'm not a creator first I'm this is what I'm gonna do and he's like so I gotta be true to that and I'm gonna work on projects that are like interesting to me from that perspective and it's gonna hit my bar on that and like that's the vibe I got from him but you know this was a few years ago when I yeah when we were talking about that stuff, you had him on, I think, more recently.

1:00:06Yeah, end of last year. Did he say anything that kind of resonated with you on that? Totally, yeah. I mean, he talked a lot about, he kind of changed my whole perception on making YouTube shorts. What did he say? He kind of made fun of it. You know, Austin's like so funny the way he talks, but he described making YouTube shorts as being a skinned rat for the engineers in San Bruno, which I thought was really funny. He was just like, you're a guinea pig. You are essentially creating more data points for them. They're your boss. Whatever works on their algorithm, you then pander to that. And so he kind of pushed us in that direction of recognizing, are we artists or are we creating for the algorithm?

1:00:52And the second thing he said, which I heavily resonate with, he's like, everything is about the PDF, which means what is the idea? right write it on a piece of paper is the idea good show it to someone pitch it to someone do they immediately go that's a good idea do they laugh do they feel some sort of emotion before it's before it's made yeah yeah and he's like people even when we got on our pre-call with him he was like all right what are we making together when we sit down right and he asked us that question and i was like oh you're right what is the hassan minaj colin and samir interview let's write it out let's let's not plan it but what is it like what's the idea why is this a good idea to do this uh what was the answer we talked about like how can we um like how can we bring forward his creator story of starting on youtube and using youtube to um go through kind of this crazy windy path up to netflix right and how he's now kind of left youtube um because hussan's origins are on youtube yeah i didn't know he used to upload he came up with shows and and put them on youtube if you go to his channel and search by oldest like kind of like sketch yeah sketch shows he did hosted shows where he talked about the news like almost like tosh uh tosh.0 yeah that for us was like no one's no one has told that story that's interesting let's talk about that and let's talk about your relationship with with and he was also like 1819 doing like comedy clubs right like he's doing stand-up at like yeah san francisco or something like that i think totally yeah i watched him do king's jester live uh like we went out to go did you go to one of his shows really good so that's a stand-up special um that guy's like a performer man like he he really he really inspired me to be like this is not like a comedy show yeah it's a one-man show it's a performance uh and that to me it really inspired both colin and i to be like this is a craft you have to work on it you know performing is part of this craft um ideation is the biggest part of it you know he has a writing partner that he sits and did you meet pratt or yeah what's he like i've never gotten to meet him um but i i'm very i'm very very fascinated by kind of the the wingman yeah like there's a lot of popular popular people but almost all of them are not nobody's solo everyone's got some kind of a team and usually they have like their their confidant the person who's in the bunker with them figuring things out compliments them does all the shit they're not good at um but like kind of like keeps them going in the right direction and those people are actually really really fascinating to me and nobody really like ask them a ton of questions when i have a million questions for them uh what tell me a little bit i think oftentimes as as creatives and creators we think we're we want to hire an employee but actually what we want is a collaborator yeah and if you're lucky enough to come up with a collaborator then you know those are the people in my opinion who typically make it like fully make it when they have a collaborator so pratt limited time with him but um i find comedians to be like astute observers of the world.

1:03:48And I found Pratt to be like very much that, right? Like he had a notebook and pen during the King's Jester taping. It was, I don't know if it was a taping or if it was just one of the shows, but they were prepping for the Netflix special. And he was sitting there during the entire show, sitting right in front of me, just ferociously taking notes on what was working, what the audience was reacting to, when there was too much of a pause, when there wasn't. Like he was, and right after the show, before Hassan came back into the green room him and Pratt were talking I love that yeah I love it when it's sort of like all right we're going back to the lab yeah it's like we kind of like we do our thing but like because I tell Ben's my collaborator basically so like we did a couple businesses together but also when it comes to content like we recently did um we're kind of new to YouTube but we did we used to just basically put the podcast on YouTube yeah I remember and I was like you guys are growing now though it started really bad it was like we would first on we did i remember we had like 4 000 views and i was just like oh man like but like which is fine for when you start but we already had the podcast was significant so it's like it's kind of like if you play poker at one stakes and then you go down to the micro stakes like you know quarters and 10 cent table doesn't feel very fun because you've now experienced a different uh level of stakes but those aren't even in the same casino spotify or apple pods and youtube yeah it's a completely different group of people so exactly so we were like all right we think we could do this and so we started to grow but recently we did one and it's this uh it says money one that's on the right there that has how many views i have now yeah nice so 300 000 views and this was a video it was the first video that i made youtube first i was like okay i'm gonna uh create a video that i think is gonna be like youtube it's not just a podcast and me and ben were like what if we just took three days is like we just tried to make one great video for this and we did and we made that and And we were basically collaborating on that for the first time we had done that that way.

1:05:38But the cool thing is that we've been working together for a couple of years and you get this like mind meld where it's like, it's almost like you only can, you can speak in shorthand or reference. Like, it's like, if you say something, I already know what part he's going to be like, oh, we got to talk about that later. Right. Cause that relates to these other three things. And then earlier we talked about this, but that's, and it's like, if you can get to that point, that's like a pretty like formidable thing that I think most people don't have. But when you have it, it's like, oh, fuck, this is that lets you go places.

1:06:06I think you need someone who's excited and wants to be a part of a team where their name isn't at the forefront. Right. Which which can be really complex. Right. We know who Pratt is. But if you're a fan of Hasan Minhaj at scale, you're not going to know who he is. So you have to find someone who's really into that, too. Right. Who likes especially because if you've ever tried to hire a lot of people like, I want to work for you because I want to be you because I want to be you. Yeah. And it's like, OK, cool. But that doesn't really work. Like, especially with this group, I need. Yeah, yeah. This group right now, it's hard to hire someone who doesn't want to be the creator or, you know, is trying to become a creator and working with you to be like, OK, now I get it.

1:06:41Now I'm going to go do it. But yeah, you have to find someone who's down for that. But it is kind of like being an athlete where, you know, you guys, when I leave, you're going to talk about the performance. You're going to you're going to probably watch game tape back. You're going to watch it back and be like, oh, maybe I should have asked this question there. Or maybe this would have been more interesting. Or he went a little long here. I should have stopped him. You know, like there's so much that goes into it. this that if you deeply care about the craft and you have someone who cares that much about the craft you can get better at the craft you get better faster you can get better way faster yeah it's hard to find right it's typically happens just organically and then you're like okay this is my guy now right how much do you guys so you guys have your business off the back of your thing which is the newsletter the newsletter is a yeah kind of a different type of business it's actually a separate company now and there's separate people writing that thing it's not you guys creating it necessarily have you seen and uh i'm i'm keeping track of these kind of creator driven businesses where you have almost like an audience co-founder and the way you used to have a technical co-founder for a business, now you have almost like a distribution co-founder or an audience co-founder.

1:07:40I love that, that's cool. What have you seen that maybe everybody hasn't heard of, right? Because I think everybody's kind of heard of Mr. Beast and maybe a couple others, but what are some cool ones that you're keeping an eye on or I should know about or other people should know about? The typical creator business is make content, sell ads, right? Which is like, that's baseline. Some people never need to grow out of that because that's just a good business. But when you go through those extensions, I think Ali Abdaal has a fantastic education business. He's a creator out of the UK who talks about productivity and he's built a series of courses.

1:08:16Wasn't he a doctor too? He was a doctor prior. Yeah, you're right. He was a doctor. He's an excellent teacher, but he has built a great business that is very much focused on online education. I think - He publishes his numbers. He publishes his numbers. I think he does like 4 million a year on his, like 4 or 5 million on his - Pushing to 6 this year. Creator Academy. Which is like basically become a YouTuber. Yes. Yes. And he has a ton of courses on Skillshare about like studying for the MCAT or like he's just figured out that, okay, I'm really good at making online video. Yes. One of those ways is to monetize through advertising, but another one is through teaching through online video.

1:08:53And that's the classic, like build one, sell twice, right? It's like you build it. It lives on Skillshare or on your own website for years to come. Some people can buy it. Right. So I, I really like the digital product business, um, because it's just scalable and we do very few things that are scalable as creators. Right. Um, I also think there's a, um, there's a future model now, which is potentially there's a, a creator named Amelia de Moldenberg who has a show called chicken shop date. Um, I think I've heard about it. It's a great show. Are you the one who showed me this? It's a great show.

1:09:25She, she's had Jack Harlow on it. She just had Jennifer Lawrence on it. And what's the shake? What's the shtick? it's like at a chicken shop it's a date yeah it's a date at a fried chicken place in london and the chicken shop in london is like the last place you would go right to have a date so there's comedy in it she's a comedian um and through yeah through this so she's had like this has now spun her into essentially creating her own production company where brands come to her and say we love your shtick we love your comedy we love the way you've created this show um like this show has no advertising in it, no advertisers, and we'll never have advertisers.

1:10:04And this thing does, you know, the Jack Harlow episode has 15 million views. This regularly does, you know, one to 5 million views in the first week, but no advertisers. And what it operates as is like, it's a production company and Nike just came to her. So she kind of created an agency. She created an agency. Yeah. So like Nike came to her. She proved like I can create cool, likable content. it's vertically integrated where she can come up with the idea then her company can shoot the idea then she can be the talent in the idea and then the thing that i think we forget is like she's the distribution outlet for that idea too where does she post on her own on her own youtube channel yeah so she doesn't do ads but she'll put like full episodes because i saw barbie yeah she went and posted the barbie premiere um that's smart so i like that there's another um creator named amanda rachel lee who's who's uh based in canada and what she did is she started youtube by showing bullet journaling and how she was setting up her bullet journals and what is it i don't know what so go to the channel amanda r-a-c-h and then lee uh and now yeah like go to like one of these bullet journal setups this just looks like etsy of youtube yeah yeah yeah and how many views does it have 3 million.

1:11:17So when she started, she was doing these bullet journal setups. Like here's how I set up my journal. And then what she did was swap out the journal she was using and create her own custom journal company. And that to me is like epitome of creator business, where it's what Colin and I call content product fit. She didn't have to change the content to integrate the product. Right. You just, I mean, to talk about a big example, it's Chamberlain coffee when emma chamberlain launched that she drank coffee in every episode right swap her product placement but done at like a whole nother level yeah and i think you know it's something we're actually struggling with with our uh newsletter um which is like that's our version of that how do we integrate that in every episode sure we can bring it up but that doesn't drive subscribers um so it's it's logan paul said this about prime he said a lot of creators when they talk about their own product it sounds like they're doing a brand deal yeah they don't know how to integrate it regularly, you know?

1:12:16And like the Nelk boys with Happy Dad, right? Their alcohol is in every single episode. Right, because they're chilling over beers. Yeah, Logan has Prime everywhere with him. So, you know, I think creators who have this, like Amanda, they can build really substantial businesses. What do you call it, content product fit? Yeah, content product fit. So this is a really impressive business to me because it's just, it's niche, but 3 million people watch this and she sells this journal. Yeah. That's insane. Yeah, she's got to be doing, I mean, what do you think she's making on something like this? I've spent time with her.

1:12:50She's never told me, but I will say that she speaks at a lot of Shopify events as like a very good case study for them. I know she's doing well. She has a good team. The thing I love about this business too, it's repeat purchases. There's a new journal drop. You can run out of pages in a journal. Once you have allegiance to this, it's like, yeah. You know, Grady, so I've had this idea for, because I'm a big journal guy. Yeah. And so I was like, oh, dude, I want to create my own because, I don't know, I have an idea of what I want mine to be. I just haven't made it. So if I'm going to make it for myself, maybe I'll make it for others.

1:13:22But the best example, my favorite example of this is actually a really small stakes one, which is the Ryan Holiday coin. Totally. That's like such a good example of this, because he was like, the way he described it. So first it was like the content product fit, where he's just like, stoicism, here's the like reminder coin that like you're going to die. he says like you know whatever remember you're gonna die or whatever but he was like you know i've done like t-shirts t-shirts suck yeah and he's like i wanted something that was like i could fit in an envelope a normal envelope so like mailing was easy i wanted something i can manufacture here so i don't have to like produce overseas whatever he's like no sizes no colors it's like just like there's one yeah like there's one skew and i'm gonna sell and i think he sold like 20 million dollars of this one snow over the really yeah i'm pretty sure he said that amazing i think pretty sure he goes on our our episode or we like you know waterboarded him out of it like you know we were like i think you've done is that wrong is that in the ballpark and he's like yeah it's not you know not wrong i think probably one of the biggest creator-led companies um right now that that maybe isn't as as prominent in the mainstream conversation is mark rober's crunch labs which is like a subscription box stem or something right like He's like a science kit.

1:14:34Exactly. It's a science kit. I got it for my nephews. It is excellent. They are hooked on it. Nice. Like it is excellent. I text Mark about it. I'm like, dude, this product is crazy. Like that's huge. It's a big business. Huge. That's a big business. Yeah. Yeah. And I know he said now that that makes more than his channel. Yeah. For sure. I mean, his channel is massive. That's another great example. Because he does basically crazy science experiments, right? That's right. Yeah. And he has big versions of that in his videos. So like he'll make a big version of it and then I'll be like, and you can make a miniature version of this at home.

1:15:06I think this content model, this, what you're just describing here, these examples is like, I always think about when I meet someone, I'm like, wow, you had so much success. Like, what'd you do? And they're often the story is basically like, you know, there was like a moment in time where like, if you realized like X, like X thing works, which is like in the early days of Google, it would be like, I could buy clicks for a cent for like any keyword. Like, that's insane. Like, okay, let me just work backwards. What's the best keyword? And like, so that's how I got into like selling leads to lawyers or whatever, like, you know, asbestos removal company or whatever.

1:15:42And then it's like, um, like our buddy created native deodorant. And he's like, yeah, basically like I started this when Facebook ads were kind of like underused and people were only using them for like, like media companies are trying to buy Facebook ads. But then they were like driving them back to a blog post and monetizing with a Google ad there. Right, right. It's not really a good model. Yeah. I realized like you can sell just like a product through Facebook ads with really simple ads. And you don't like things that you used to have to go into target, get target to carry you. You can just start selling directly to consumer through Facebook DTC.

1:16:12I mean, there wasn't really like as much of a category yet. But it's like, if you knew that secret during that time, it was kind of an open secret, but not like it wasn't obvious to everybody yet. Yeah. I mean, I think Movement Watch is another great example. Influencers with them, right? Influencer-led marketing. But I think what's incredibly hard, especially for creators right now, is what you have to sacrifice to have that view and that long-term view of building a product. Because advertising revenue is so available right now to us. And again, you kind of pull the levers when it comes to YouTube.

1:16:43It's the highest margin advertising dollars. that I think has existed in video content ever, right? Because you don't get on the phone with the advertiser. You aren't negotiating a contract. There's no sales team. There's no back and forth. There's no revision. Yeah, but YouTube takes what? 45%. Yeah. But still, it's like this. Dude, but there's still like - You just don't see it. You don't see it. It's just like - You don't have to do any work. You don't have to do any work. You don't do it, right? You just, you upload content and you get a check in the mail. Right. So creators who make really viral content that has reasonably high CPMs, it's like, well, I should make another video.

1:17:18And then a brand deal comes and that can be anywhere from$20 ,000,$50 ,000 all the way up to$200 ,000, right? And you're like, well, okay, all right, I'll make another one of those videos. And then what I find is that a lot of creators never get to that moment of, okay, now we should stop and put our focus in over here. And how do we even do that? And it's all totally different skillset. Yeah. How do I even do that? How do I hire someone? I think that's the biggest need in the creator economy right now is operators are the biggest need yes and education on how to hire is so it's just not there right because they were it's all young people who who grew which is funny by the way because there's so many operators because i'm coming to an operator yeah yeah and all the operators are like dude i can if i just had the right influencer this probably this is a soap we could sell a lot of this soap right or whatever the thing is like don't pick your favorite widget.

1:18:08And, uh, and for them, it's like a total black box. Like, how do I go meet these people and get them to trust me enough to do this? And so it's like this, this inefficiency in the market. And then also they have to have the temperament to, to want that, right? Like a lot of creators have to, they might conceptually think they want it, but then when they get into it and their name is on a soap product and they don't really like that it went out to a customer and it wasn't perfect. And then they're like, Oh, I don't want to do this anymore. They freak out. They freak out. Right. Cause it's like, I have so much control over how my brand shows up.

1:18:35that when you start to scale that, it gets uncomfortable. Right. And do you, I have this question up here I put on this list. Three creators likely to become a billionaire. I gave you the one freebie, you can say Jimmy, and he could be one. Yeah. What other creators do you think have the potential to build a billion dollar empire around what they're doing? It's a combination of their content plus businesses, whatever. I think Dude Perfect. I saw they did like an amusement park or something, right? Well, they're working on it. Yeah. A hundred million dollar project. Yes. Yes. What does that mean?

1:19:10That's what they're investing into this project? I don't know the specifics of it. I've spent a lot. They're actually, I've known them for a really long time. Like I've been on YouTube and around YouTube for 12 years. They were the first group that I got involved with early on when we sold our last company. And they're kind of like they're trick shots with their thing that worked. But they make sports accessible to young kids through trick shots and viral sports videos. And the reason I bring it up is I think those guys have been at this now since around 2006 or 2007. And they have remained at the top of their game throughout that whole experience.

1:19:50They also went through a long period of time where they've done the work. I watched them hold the cameras for years, even when they were at 30 million subscribers. They would just go out themselves and hold the cameras and edit the videos and they still sit there in the edit bays and make sure they're perfect. And I think they, if you've seen images of, they just did a tour, see images of like the young kids who turn out for that, the parents. I had a conversation with them one time where they said their goal is to be the most trusted brand in entertainment. And I actually believe that they are on track for that, where parents really trust that they can take their kids to a Dude Perfect event.

1:20:31Right. And that when you take that to an amusement park, when you take that a couple steps forward, I think that matters a lot in the future. And I think they're on track for sure. That makes sense. That makes sense. I like that pick. Anyone else come to mind that you think has the potential to do something large like that? I think of some creators who have the potential, but I don't know if they want to do it. You know, like I think Cody Ko is actually someone who's. He's coming here tomorrow. Oh, he is? Yeah. I love Cody. I know you went on his show. Yeah. I think Cody is like one of the most intelligent people I've met in the space.

1:21:07I think he, he, even as he's like in starting to invest now and I can just, I was thinking about it because him and I were texting yesterday and I was thinking in my head, I was like, who's Cody Ko in 10 years? He's either like in the woods, you know, like shilling, he's a free man, DJing and running, or he's like running the biggest capital company, you know, like, and I think that's just a personal choice. Up to him. It's all available to him. But yeah, I don't know that. I'm sure there's others that I'm not thinking of, but. They're my favorite brand on YouTube. TMG. TMG is my number one favorite channel on YouTube.

1:21:43I think Noel Miller's like a true artist. And special. Like, I think there's very rare people like him and also very, not very many people like Cody Ko. Right. So yeah, their music videos are so goddamn good. It's actually kind of annoying. It's kind of frustrating. Yeah. It's a bit off-putting. Like, dude, you can't just do that. Right. You can do it as a joke. It can't also be amazing. It can't also be good. Yeah, it can't also be good. It can't also make me want to listen to it multiple times. Right. It's funny and amazing. And you just did it for kicks on the side. Right. On top of your other successful thing.

1:22:20I find this pursuit of being a billionaire to be very fascinating. I don't really have interest in it. Yeah. So if it's the outcome of what I decide to do, that would be interesting. But it's not like I don't find myself to be focused on that outcome. And I also found most creators I talk to are not focused on that outcome. But I think it's in the video game of entrepreneurship. It is the final boss, right? So you're kind of like if your final boss is actually walking away. Sure. The person who says they have enough is like, you know, Paul Graham, who created YC, which is, I think, probably the most successful tech startup, actually, because it created all these other tech startups.

1:23:07And like, it created Dropbox and it created Airbnb. Like, they probably wouldn't like to say created, but like, without them, there is no Reddit. There probably aren't those businesses being successful, including OpenAI, because he saw Sam Altman and made him president when there was tons of other more qualified candidates on paper. But he even said something. He was like, this is like what it would be to talk to a young Bill Gates. Saw that before, and now he's created OpenAI, which is today one of the most valuable private startups. So anyways, YC gets to the peak of its powers or does amazing stuff 10 years in.

1:23:46And Paul's like, Sam, here you go. I'm going to the woods in the UK and I'm going to live in the woods with my family. And I'm going to basically like write essays, paint and code. And like, you know, that's what I'm going to do. And that is the final boss of Silicon Valley because you see most people just go right back into the hamster wheel and they start running again. But that's like the final boss of life, right? It's like making that realization is not wanting anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Being like content and developing a relationship with the term enough. Yeah. That's that's a hard thing to do.

1:24:18But totally. Do you have that? Do you have a number or like a do you feel like you have enough? Like, what are you in pursuit of? um i'm in pursuit of a really specific thing which is um i heard a quote once that i think naval said he goes uh the the day you stop trading today for a better tomorrow you've retired so he's like um basically if the things you do today in and of themselves were the reward of what you did today you've now you've actually exited the game you've you've retired retirement doesn't mean you go sit down and do nothing it means you're not saying all right i'm gonna do the shit today that i don't really want to do i don't like to do but i'm doing it because it's gonna pay off in the future it's gonna pay off in the future and like your whole life goes by doing that yeah and so when i heard that i was like oh you know guilty like you know put me put me in cuffs take me to jail like that's me i'm i've spent the first you know 15 years of my career like you know from 20 to 35 basically was that i was like oh i'm gonna do x and i'm gonna say i didn't enjoy it necessarily but like definitely i was like doing x because it might lead to y i totally agree i've never just done x that too yeah i've never just made my main thing like i'm doing x because i'm just doing x seems fun yeah and so that's the that's the game i'm playing now is to try to achieve that um to craft my life such that that's true and so um even though it's like weird it's like you know it's awesome what it's like what i like to do best i don't know i like to i like to do this podcast i like to read right like to talk and i like to like yeah uh you know work on these little tinker with these little things or you know just understand go down rabbit holes and just see how things work in the world and it's like those are the things that i do without thinking about some like future payoff because i don't think they even like or they don't clearly have one well you can also have the there's another tim ferris uh moment in our in our episode together he was like something to the tune of like you can decouple the um the non-financial reward and the financial reward.

1:26:20Right. Right. So like this experience, um, there's a non-financial reward to this, which is like, we have a good conversation. Right. Cool. This is fun. We both go home. That reward is complete. Then you put it out. If there's a performance reward to it, amazing. If that leads to financial opportunity, great. You know, like, but that's a separate reward. And if you can decouple those things, then that is, uh, yeah. And just basically, uh, like the way I think about stuff is like, there's a car and, uh, you can have a bunch of passengers in the car it's like you know i have like my ego but hopefully it's in the trunk it shouldn't be driving like you know let's put him in the back you know he's kind of annoying but he's there and you got like you know the thrill of things that's in the car but i don't really want thrilled to drive because he takes us off the cliff like who gets to drive and so uh you know that's kind of like so to me i'm like all right who gets to drive is like the version of me that is uh following my curiosity creating shit consistent like just creating things yeah and is content with life and has like a i'm doing it because i want to do it i'm doing it because it's enjoyable to do i'm doing it because it's challenging so even though it's not that enjoyable like i'm struggling at it i'm enjoying the struggle of doing this thing yeah and so that's who i want to drive meaning that's who gets to ultimately make the decision of where are we going in this car other people might have input other the other parts of me might have input like i want money i want this i want that yeah but i can't like like basically money was driving for a long ass time and then it's like hold on wait the deal was you get to drive till we get to this number we got to that number you don't get to drive anymore and maybe you shouldn't have been driving for the first place but at least in my life i was like i want to get to basically a financial freedom number a number where i can spend whatever i want on my lifestyle and it's coming off of my investment income not out of like my work income yeah uh because then it's like all right cool money works for money i work for me man i think that is a big opportunity with uh creators would be like a smaller group but i think as creators we're really good at generating money but we don't know how to turn money into money right because it's like it's a totally different it's a totally different skill set and then we don't know who to trust with that you know i think if there was a creator focused group that helped with that that well we went to this athlete thing yesterday with a bunch of there's a bunch of basketball players there and it's the same thing like literally we were joking we were like this event would be cool if it was just the athletes to do what they do and us but then you have all the clingers yeah and you're like who do i trust and like and some of the clingers are the people they trust and they're like kind of safe choices they don't actually know how to do the thing for them sure it's like you know actually if they asked i would for free help them or tell them exactly what they should be doing so that their money works for money and they don't piss it away yeah but um the incentive is not for me to go chase them and reach them and then beg them to listen to my advice yeah the guy who's trying to take their money is incentivized sure to chase them and beg them and and try to convince them that they're the guy who's going to help them right it's like this weird like perverse incentive is like the guy who's going to like work his hardest to break into your circle is the one who wants something yeah you actually don't want to work with someone who's like needs something from you yeah yeah on the sports topic there's one more um destroying uh he is a sports creator a football focused creator he he played football at uh ucf and this is pre nil days right so he played football he was making youtube videos they brought him into a room and said you have a choice you can either continue playing football or you can continue with your youtube channel he chose youtube um and built this this really substantial youtube channel he has this series called one-on-ones uh that just partner they go live to places like he goes to the city yeah this is like live events and they get crazy.

1:30:02Like in Arizona, it had to get called off because it was too many people there and the police had to get involved. I was going to go, I think he messaged or management, somebody messaged. Okay, okay. It was like, I mean, like he's an hour away. I was like, oh, that sounds kind of fun, but I didn't make it out. What does he do actually? So it's one-on-one. So basically it's wide receivers versus cornerbacks and they line up and they go one-on-one and one dude wins$10 ,000. And for some of the communities he's going into, that's life-changing money, right? For a lot of communities. Is he the guy in the thing or it's two other guys?

1:30:32He's the host. You know, and like, you can see like, this is what it looks like. If you go to his channel and go to Most Viewed. That's in my old high school. Oh, cool. So if that guy had caught it, he would have got 10 grand. No, he'd advance. It's a tournament. It's a tournament. And then you start to know these characters and they travel to different markets. This is the new N1 mixtape. Exactly. This is great. This is N1 mixtape. For football. And Colin and I spoke with, at a YouTube event with D and he was speaking with Roger Goodell. And we were talking to Roger about D stroing. And he was like, this guy's like really impactful for football.

1:31:07Oh, wow. He's creating new fans. And the NFL just partnered with him on this series, the one-on-one series. And I think when I look at D, like the leagues are starting to get involved with him in a way where I'm like, wait, he is single-handedly a really important part of the future of sports viewership. Yeah. And that to me, I don't know that he, I don't know if he has aspirations to be a billionaire, but to solve that problem for the NFL is a big problem to solve. And if you solve that for the CFL and you start solving that, you know, you go down the line, this can also become camps. Totally.

1:31:42This can become, you know, so many things, right? The world is his oyster. He can become a host. He's probably should be one of the hosts for the NFL, like - Or like the Pro Bowl, which no one's watching. I think he can also create a, yeah. I mean, he can redefine the Pro Bowl because this is more interesting. This is way more - I'm like half looking at you because I'm like, because you're watching this. I mean, we pulled this up in our office and we have a ton of people who don't watch sports and then they got hooked on it. They're like, this is primal. It's primal, yeah. And so he could redefine the Pro Bowl.

1:32:09He can also create a NIL agency, right? So you have college athletes who he represents this, you know, where college athletics didn't let you monetize. He knows how to do this, right? So, okay, now can D create a NIL agency where he's signing athletes and getting them contracts. The world of D, like the world of sports, no one is really approaching it like him. And I think that like sports is still high, it carries a very high dollar value. Live sports, it carries such high dollar value that I think he has that opportunity as well. There was a guy at that event we were at that was, you'll know him because he's lacrosse.

1:32:47Paul. Paul, Raybalt. Yeah. Yeah. He was a groomsman at my wedding. He's one of my best friends. Amazing. I don't know much about this. So you're at the boardroom event. Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about it. So basically, what he was saying on stage was like, okay, we created this professional lacrosse league. Yeah. What was interesting, he was like, there's like, whatever, I don't know, eight teams or something. But he's like, we own the teams. Yeah. It's not like a franchise model. And I think he's like, we pay the costs. But then like, all the players have upside in the thing. Like, what is the business model of this?

1:33:14This sounded pretty fascinating. Yeah. Do you think it's a good model also? I'm an investor. So a bias opinion. Yes. but but i've uh you know what i've always seen in in lacrosse if you if you pull up um go to the premier lacrosse league youtube channel and and play the last vlog from their all-star game you get a sense for like the community that one the fastest shot uh right that yeah so you get a sense for like what it looks like i mean they're they were going wild but like they they packed this stadium out in louisville for their all-star game so basically what he did was there was a pre-existing league called major league lacrosse they paid their players terribly uh they treated them not well.

1:33:50And that was the best league? That was the only pro league. It was like, and no one really cared about it. I mean, it was kind of interesting, but it was empty stadiums. They didn't have healthcare. It was like, they weren't treated like, it was tough to be a pro athlete and not get paid much. Right. And Paul became the number one lacrosse player. He had the biggest media platform. Colin and I actually ran his YouTube channel. That's how we became very close. We were running a lot of different athlete YouTube channels at one point. And so we became really close to Paul. That's how we met. Um, and he had the best head on his shoulder for like media.

1:34:24How do you build a brand? How do you, you know, he had the biggest, he's, he was called lacrosse's first million dollar man. He had deals with Red Bull and new balance. And, um, he had created the model for like, how do you make money as a cross? Was he the best? And he was the best at media or he was actually the best at media and really good. He's, he's the, he was the best. He was the best player. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those are those like Conor McGregor at one time. He's the champ and he's like the most marketable guy. So he, he decided, uh, you know, at one point just to say, Hey, you know what?

1:34:54We're going to go raise money and create our own league. Like this league sucks that I plan. Um, that's what he did. He turned to Joe tie. Who's, uh, the nets owner, you know? Yeah. Nets owner, uh, who played lacrosse in college and loves lacrosse and is a great dude. Met him a couple of times. And, uh, he became the lead investor and then they partnered with rain group and um they raised a bunch of money and said we're going to pay the players a reasonable salary we're gonna give them equity in the league we're gonna give them health care uh and we are going to create media around them we're going to create media opportunities for them we're going to teach them how to you know and the last thing they did was they said we're not going to stick these teams in local markets we're going to actually take the whole league on tour makes sense so they developed that makes more sense it's like a touring you know circus where it's like, is it coming to San Diego this weekend?

1:35:42Okay, everyone descends upon this major market. If you have lacrosse people, they come to town twice a year. Exactly. It's like, all right, we'll go to that. We may not go all the time or there may not be enough people to support a stadium. Well, I think also what he knew and what we saw was that the model in lacrosse that we made money was by doing camps and clinics, right? So you have youth camps, right? Like there's a lot of young kids who want to play. They come from affluent backgrounds. their parents are willing to pay a thousand dollars for them to get coached by their favorite lacrosse player um and paul built a massive camps business and so alongside this you go to a major market now you have a weekend dedicated to you can have camps you can turn all these players into okay camp counselors and and trainers they earn extra money exactly they can build their own bespoke businesses but that all you know connect to the league and that's um so he him and his brother are really sharp and they didn't sell franchises yet not yet yeah and they uh barstool involved in one of them okay uh they they got to name the expansion team and uh pardon my take like they're the owners what they name it uh the water dogs that's a ridiculous name yeah but like that you know there's that creates a kind of that that inside joke with the part of pmt community that it's like they have their own team that's smart it's a collab it's a collab yeah because when they play big cats tweeting about it uh when they they won the championship last year he got his own ring you know it's like amazing they're able to build again they're very media savvy and so they they understand that this is a long game lacrosse is not well to build any league i think i texted you this during the event i was like i think what this guy's saying is actually quite smart we should look at investing and i go i'll go man building a league is hard like fun if you do it that is like one of the hardest games you could play in the world of entrepreneurship is creating a sports league from scratch because it's like kind of a 20-year arc oh yeah you have have to have such a long view on the world and on your life to do it and you're doing live events you're doing all the hardest things i mean every weekend he's in a different city you know i'm watching these and and looking the most promising thing is look how young the kids are who are there right right so if they grow up with this league these teams these franchises like they are playing a very long game here um and i credit them to for doing it but it's uh it's not an easy thing they signed like a 10 million dollar deal something with espn like espn yeah yeah the media rights deal.

1:38:03That's good. Yeah. So when they first started, Colin and I made a documentary about them for NBC. We've had like many, many different lives of, you know, Colin and Samir. Yeah. That's amazing. Do you think that's going to be a good investment for you? Were you like the first one in? Cause he's like your buddy. I was first one in, which was great. So it's doing good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's doing, I'm happy. Isn't that funny how like, like you're going to get like, you know, let's say this works out hopefully like, you know, like we all were rooting for this like you're gonna make a bunch of money from this thing that was so impossible to predict that that's how this whole thing would pay off it's like all right mom i know yeah i don't have health insurance i don't have a job i know i'm kind of filming this like failing league like this there's like lacrosse thing it's like and it leads to the thing right so it's the steve jobs quote right you look back you see all the dots how they connected but like when you go even further back like and the way this happened was my first idea when i was 21 was to set up a laptop and make youtube videos about lacrosse commentating right like that was a bad idea when you really you know you zoom out but if you're into it like a lot of creators ask me like how long does it take to make it on youtube like how long does it take to make it i'm sure entrepreneurs ask that question too right or have that thought in their head like how long is this going to take um and i was like i always think it's such a ridiculous question because I'm like, well, what's your relationship to making videos?

1:39:26Do you wake up every morning and you can't not do it? Like you're just like, all I can do is make videos. Then you made it from day one. Yeah. You made it and there will be an outcome from that. There will be. It will lead you somewhere. But if you wake up and you're like, this sucks. It's kind of what you were saying. It's like, I'm doing X so I can get to Y. Well, the entrepreneurship version is startups fail, but founders don't. so like i moved to san francisco in 2012 so that's 10 years ago and i met a bunch of people and we used to have like these like underground fast founder like meetings where we're like trading tips and tricks and being like yo what do i do this person i need to fire them what do i say when i fired like basically there's a bunch of ceos being like i can't like tell my team about this i can't tell my customers about this i can't tell my investors about this i can only tell you guys yeah because you guys understand and look unlike youtube everybody who was doing startups of time was like all living in the same seven mile radius city and so we would just all meet up all the time and sure enough like as you watch if you track that cohort is basically only two outcomes one is got so burnt out from like the grind and failure that they just stopped after like you know three four years uh more than five years they just like did that company they're like screw this i'm taking a job i'm moving back to connecticut and like i'm gonna live in a low-cost place i'm gonna de-stress and i'm gonna do that but everybody else who stayed in the game won like literally like almost like a hundred percent of my friends who stayed in the game yeah and someone won in year two someone in year five someone in year nine now we're in like year 11 or 12 people are winning like now but like and it's kind of like it feels like a really long time like wow 12 years it's like yeah but we all started this when we were 21 so like you know yeah um okay we're mid-30s yeah for us we're 34 and rich like you know yeah it worked in the end it worked right the 15 year arc you get like a then the odds flip from like 90 of new businesses failed to actually like 90 of you guys will succeed if you actually enjoy this enough where you'll keep doing this even though you have easier options yes i always i've said that multiple times um whenever i'm having something that feels like i'm struggling i'm like this is the uh uh, the, the least rational path to making money, right.

1:41:38Is what I do that I, at this point also, now I have enough exposure and enough of an abundance in my network that I can go and get a good job. Right. But like I do this cause it's, it's just what I do. It's just who I am. I don't even know what to do in another context. I don't know what that looks like. I will say though, like being, it's hard to be, uh, not outcome oriented, you know, like I think as an entrepreneur, you think about like exits and you think about, you know, like these big paydays. And I would say that even with our newsletter, like when I saw Milk Road, I was like, okay, I want that outcome too.

1:42:12But whenever I get too attached to that outcome, I'm like, okay, wait a second. That's like, that's creating in a way that's just like, the product probably will not be great if I don't just put my head down and go, okay, it's Monday. Is this Monday issue really great. Okay. It's Wednesday. Is this Wednesday issue really great? And I've really tried to, um, refine my focus on process and impact. Like is I have to focus on the process of creating the thing. And then the second thing is like my, a lot of my reward is seeing if we're having impact is, is this actually impactful what I'm putting out or is it just going out and, you know, no one's saying anything about it or we're not getting any, like, I find I gauge the success of our stuff from like the texts I get or the DMS or like, Hey, that episode is really impactful or, Hey, that really changed the way I think about this.

1:43:00Or, Hey, that newsletter taught me about this. If I see those that I'm like, okay, we're doing, we're doing something. Um, let's keep doing that. And hopefully that takes us to an outcome, but you also have to accept it might not, it might just be this. And we might just get, you know, 5 % better, you know, over the next two years. Right. And that's it. And you have to accept that that is maybe the most likely reality is that you just keep doing it. Right. And as long as you can accept that, at least for me, that's how I explore it for myself. Yeah. The best test of a project is basically, would we regret doing it if it didn't work?

1:43:35Right. Obviously, we don't want it not to work and we might be upset if it didn't work, but would we actually regret doing it if it didn't work? Because then it's like, oh, I'm just actually dependent on the success or failure of what's usually a low odds of success endeavor. Totally. Whereas other things are like, I wouldn't really regret it because like, well, I'm still going to get this, like still going to be fun to do. Still going to learn a ton. I'm like, this is the type of thing I like to do. Yeah. So, you know, if this doesn't work out, it doesn't really matter. Like I'm just going to ping pong to the kind of the next version of this.

1:44:04But it was a forward, it was a forward step either way. Right. Like there's this, uh, like Tony Robbins does this thing where he does this, um, dabblers versus masters. I don't know if you ever heard this. so he tells a story at his events where he goes um he goes uh there's some people that they go and they discover racquetball which maybe now pickleball would be the sure but it's like you know they go they go to the gym they're like they see somebody think racquetball they're like i'll try it they go and they have have some fun and they're like a fracketball that this might be my thing and they're like okay i'm gonna play racquetball and suddenly the next day they come back play again next day they actually go and they uh you know they get better shoes because they were like oh that was the problem last time you buy the racket they start playing blah blah blah and they they're doing well but then they play somebody who's been playing for like 10 years who's like way better than them and that's you know for three days straight they're playing and they can't hit a good shot everything's going off and they're losing all these games and they're like this stupid like stupid racquetball like right what am i in this box i'm trapped like you know this is it's too loud in here just it is weirdly loud this is a sport for old people you start to find all these reasons to quit so they they quit like i'm gonna play a real game i'm gonna go play tennis so go outside you play tennis you're like oh so much better on my doors this is way better and you know you're hitting the ball around they're starting to learn the strokes that they're enjoying learning a little bit same thing happens they start to play somebody who knows what's going on they're hitting the ball in the net they can't really serve well and it's getting frustrated it's hot out and they're like stupid game like you know what is this then like this is this is like a girly game i don't want to play someone play like a real game and golf and they're like just fuck from day one and he's basically like you know most people go through their whole life doing a series of these dabbling yeah and they're dabblers and he's like what's the difference between a mast there's like there's three categories a dabbler a dabbler is basically like try it as soon as it gets hard bounce then he's like then there's the stressor achiever stressor achiever is like when it gets hard they just start gritting their teeth and they just are gonna keep going but they don't enjoy any of it and like all the hardship stresses them out but they've just been trained since they were a little kid to like push through it just keep pushing through and like you'll get a gold star later like the joy will be later he's like then there's the master the master basically like they're like they know that when you start something new there's the initial like joy of discovery there's the learning curve there's the hard plateaus and when the plateau comes they greet it like an old friend like oh there you are like i thought you'd be showing up soon i've been right i've been playing for a week and usually that's when i'll hit that's when you arrive plateau and i know how to like deal with you because i know that after the plateau comes the next uprise and i'm excited for that upswing but yeah let me work through this plateau they don't really get like flustered by it so they get the same or they get better results than all three way better than the dabbler significantly better than the stressor achiever but the difference is like the whole way they're kind of actually like enjoying the dance or playing the game yeah because they actually understand that this is like these are all normal for the game and you find that like the people who um get really like into like struggling or grinding or like get really overwhelmed by like you know the adversity it's really just like you haven't played the game enough to know that this is this is how the levels of the game work yeah you shouldn't be surprised that the roller coaster is going up and down like yeah you remember you got on you got in line to get on a roller coaster right that's a good point that you know one thing that uh i don't know why this made me think of it i think just because like the the ups and downs of the game and the conversation we're having at the beginning of the show about interviewing one thing that both colin and i did was go to improv class to learn how to be to get better yeah just to get better at like being present working with whatever the other person says like what we found was my wife was listening to our interviews and she was like you're not listening to them you're just not listening to your guests they're saying something and then you say something completely different you're just waiting you're just waiting to talk and so i went to improv class and it it was really this incredible uh lesson in the craft of how do you sit in the pocket and just be like i can't have any preconceived notions as to where this is about to go right you're gonna say something and i have to let go of where i want it to go right i found myself in the first day of improv i was like we were playing this game and I was like, okay, I know exactly how to make this funny.

1:48:23This is going to be funny. I know where to take it. And then the person right before me said something and I was like, why the hell would you say that? And then I had to deal with it. And then I was like, oh, this is the work, right? This is the craft or building the craft. And I think, you know, in, in, in the, the rollercoaster of being a podcaster, like you have to be willing to do all of that in public as well. Right. Right. Like you, you, you go back and you watch your early episodes, that roller coaster is there's a record of the roller coaster of like times where it was going really well times where it wasn't going well times where views were up times where views were down it's like all public and i think um it's it's challenging because we have to practice in public i think that's like as as you build in public as an entrepreneur but there's something incredibly just you're like naked as a content creator out there everyone can see everything so yeah well You guys are doing an amazing job.

1:49:14I'm a fan. Thank you, man. I look forward to kind of seeing it. If this is your kind of like learning phase, then like, you know, I'm excited to see what it's like as you guys master this. So thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, man.

1:49:45Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. And as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

1:50:15If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit Mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC.