In short
The Colin and Samir Show: Episode Summary - 3 Books That Made Us Better YouTubers
Podcast Description The Colin and Samir Show features YouTube creators Colin and Samir as they discuss the latest in the creator economy, sharing insights from their experiences in building communities and brands through digital content.
Episode Overview In this episode titled "3 Books That Made Us Better YouTubers," Colin and Samir explore their favorite books that have significantly influenced their journey as creators. They also share insights from their recent experiences at the Streamys and discuss the implications of using the Nebula streaming platform.
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Key Concepts and Discussions
- Introduction to Creator Support
- The show is positioned as a resource for creators navigating the business of content creation.
- Colin mentions using Microsoft Copilot for generating podcast ideas and research efficiently.
- Favorite Books as Creators
Colin and Samir delve into three essential books that have impacted their growth as YouTubers.
Book 1: Unleashing the Idea Virus by Seth Godin
- Concept: The book discusses how ideas spread like viruses, emphasizing the importance of making ideas worth sharing.
- Key Takeaways:
- The term "remarkability" and identifying "sneezers" (influencers) who can spread ideas.
- The value of giving away content for free to encourage sharing and growth.
- Real-life examples such as Hotmail's growth strategy illustrate the principles discussed.
Book 2: Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull
- Concept: Insights into the creative process at Pixar and the importance of constructive feedback.
- Key Takeaways:
- The concept of the "brain trust" where a team critiques ideas openly.
- Importance of separating personal identity from creative ideas to foster a productive environment.
- The phrase "exploring the neighborhood" captures the necessity of investigating ideas fully before deciding against them.
Book 3: The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
- Concept: Focuses on the psychological aspects of creativity and lowering stakes to foster innovation.
- Key Takeaways:
- Lowering the stakes can alleviate the pressure on creators.
- Emphasizes the idea that mistakes can enhance creativity rather than detract from it.
- Encouragement for creators to see their work as part of a long journey rather than a high-stakes endeavor.
- Honorable Mentions
- Tribes by Seth Godin: Discusses building communities around ideas.
- Start With Why by Simon Sinek: Highlights the importance of understanding the rationale behind one's actions.
- Shoe Dog by Phil Knight: A personal narrative about the creation of Nike.
- Is This Anything? by Jerry Seinfeld: A collection of Seinfeld’s work emphasizing the quantity of “bad” work necessary to produce the “good.”
- Challenges Faced
- Production Mishap at the Streamys: Colin and Samir discuss a significant audio issue that arose during their roundtable production.
- The decision-making process surrounding whether to publish the flawed audio.
- Reflection on the need for excellence versus the benefits of experimentation.
- Nebula Streaming Platform
- Discussion around the Nebula platform as a creator-backed service and its value to creators.
- Insights from Wendover Productions about Nebula’s revenue model and creator incentives.
- Emphasis on high-quality, premium content and the importance of effective marketing strategies.
- The Streamys Experience
- Colin and Samir reflect on their experience at the Streamys, including their feelings about winning or losing in their category.
- The significance of community and networking within the creator industry during events like the Streamys.
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Key Takeaways
- Investing in timeless literature can provide creators with essential skills and perspectives for long-term success.
- Constructive criticism and collaboration are crucial for creative growth.
- Experimentation, even with potential failures, is an important part of the creative process.
- Understanding the intricacies of platforms like Nebula can better inform creators about monetization strategies and community-building.
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Conclusion Colin and Samir's discussion highlights the importance of continual learning and adaptation in the creator economy, emphasizing that timeless concepts and practices can significantly impact a creator's journey. They remind listeners that embracing imperfection and community engagement are essential to thriving in the ever-evolving landscape of digital content creation.
Links to the discussed books will be provided in the episode description.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.
0:38Today, we're diving into the remarkable story of Colin Rosenblum. Wow. Did you pay it to say that? That's crazy. That's very kind. It's crazy, but it's my favorite way to learn about a subject matter. I'm learning about so much more now that I can turn this research into like a seven minute podcast that I can listen to just when I'm walking. Did you tell it that I worked at the front desk of a hotel? Dude, the prompt is just, make me a podcast about Colin from Colin and Samir. That's it. I may be biased, but I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm hooked. So if you guys haven't checked out Copilot, check it out.
1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. What's up, everyone? Welcome to Creator Support, the show where we answer your questions about the business of being a creator. On today's episode, we're going to talk about three books that have made us better YouTubers. We're also going to be talking about one of the biggest production mistakes we've ever made. We're going to be talking about our experience at the Streamys, and then we're going to talk about what you can learn from Nebula, the streaming platform.
1:42All right. If you make it to the deep end, let us know. All right. Our first question comes from Kevin Lowe. What the hell? I thought I'd shake it up a little bit. For everyone listening, Colin just opened up a LaCroix, and it just exploded all over the mic, and himself. All right. Here we go. All right. Our first question comes from Kevin Lowe from Discord. Hey, Colin and Samir. My name is Kevin and I am from Los Angeles. The question I have for you guys is, what are some of your favorite books that you use to level you up as a creator, whether that's in skills, mindset, or creativity? Thanks.
2:18Okay. This is a great question. We get this question all the time. There's a big meta on YouTube of people talking about their favorite books and it's always like a stack of books and then them in the middle. It's generally like, I read a hundred books in one month. So here's what I learned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or like the X best books for being an entrepreneur or this book made me a millionaire. So we are going to talk about books. We've never, we, we in passing mentioned books, but we don't go in depth about the books. Have we ever brought up Rick Rubin's book? There are some very important books to me that are sitting here on the desk right now.
2:54Yeah. And some very important authors. And we boiled it down to three, but we'll probably end up talking about more than three. So yeah, we're gonna talk about three books that have really impacted our YouTube journey. And even now, 12 years after uploading the first YouTube video that I personally still reference as like what is the DNA of what we've been doing for the past 12 years, a lot of that is in these books. These are the type of books that you can read again and again and again because you always wanna be reminded of what's in there. Yeah, totally. I think you should start because you read a book at the beginning of your YouTube journey.
3:28It was super impactful that I read once I met you. I read this book called Unleashing the Idea Virus by Seth Godin. I don't even remember how I got my hands on this book. I have no idea how it happened, but I read it on a flight. And it's not very long, but it was probably one of the first books that I just could not put down. and the book was written in the 90s, which I think is a really important thing that has informed a lot of my journey. But the book is essentially about the way that ideas spread and he connects that to being like a virus, like the concept that to make a viral idea, it's to put something out into the world and it's not the idea that spreads.
4:15What happens is it gets to people who then tell other people who then tell other people. And so the base premise of the book is, how do you make an idea that's worth spreading? What is the DNA of an idea that can even replicate? And it was the first time I heard the term remarkability, like worth making a remark over. Like how do you set your idea up for success where someone else can repeat the idea? Who are those people? He calls them sneezers in the book, where it's like someone who receives the idea and then sneezes. And that, you know, is what passes the virus along. Who are those people, those influential people you have to explain the idea to, who are then going to explain the idea to someone else.
4:58The line early on in this, that really got me and got me thinking about YouTube was ideas that are free spread and ideas that spread win. And the concept of like, when I was first exploring making videos after college, I thought about it in the context of like making films where someone had to buy a ticket or like, you know, should I charge people for these videos that I'm making? And it was the first thing that had helped me really understand the value of YouTube and the concept of giving things away for free, quote unquote. And, and alongside of that, it's like setting your idea up for success for someone else to say it.
5:33And when we first started working together with TLN, I used to say this a lot of like, we used to talk about lacrosse practice and stretching lines. The way we used to talk about how we wanted our videos to spread was in a physical sense where a group of people who were interested, there was one influential person in that stretching line who would say, hey, did you guys see that video on the lacrosse network? And they were sitting with 30 people who would potentially be interested too. So that's how we thought about virality of ideas was, is this easy for that kid to talk about and spread to the 30 kids that they're with?
6:09Yeah. I also think back in 2012, that line and that idea that if you made something good and you gave it away for free, that you would win. What he's really talking about is like your idea, your business will be adopted. And if it's adopted by enough people, you'll find a way to monetize. And I think for us back in 2012, YouTube, it was so unknown of like, wait, so we just publish videos to YouTube at our own cost. And then we'll make money. Yeah. And it gave us the confidence to, I think, keep pushing because people were talking about it on lacrosse fields. Yeah. And it was picking up. We were like, okay, people are adopting this idea of the lacrosse network.
6:49We're going to be able to find a way to make money. Yeah. And that's what happened. Yeah. Which is amazing to really think about. But one of the most important parts about this book is that it was written in the 90s. So you're learning about the concept of YouTube prior to YouTube. And I think it's really important to learn timeless concepts as a creator, as a marketer, as anyone who is trying to make ideas that spread to a lot of people. I think you should pull from history of how people did it in the past and then apply it. You don't only want to read books about right now. Like the fact - Or just about YouTube.
7:22Or just about YouTube. One of the most interesting things is he talks about how Hotmail spread. That's one of my favorite examples. And he's talking about what they did was at the bottom of every Hotmail email. It said sent with Hotmail and that linked you to create your own account. So like the sheer product of sending an email was the marketing of sending the email because like the experience of receiving the email, you were like, how did this person do this? I want to do this. Weren't they also one of the first platforms to give email away? Oh no, they weren't the first to give it away for free.
7:51Yeah. But Yahoo did that. Was it Yahoo or was it Microsoft Outlook? Not sure. Anyway, it was like, he's telling the story about how Hotmail grew because with every email that was sent using Hotmail. At the bottom, it says this was sent using Hotmail. So it's like this loop where more people start signing up. And then the company that finally like put the nail in the coffin for them was a company that just was like, you know what? We're giving away email for free. And it was Microsoft Outlook, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Or Yahoo. It was either Yahoo or Microsoft Outlook, but it was like, because it was given away for free, done.
8:24Give it away for free. And then they find other ways to win. There's a, there's a good piece in there about permission marketing, which is essentially that. It's like you're receiving the email. And so all of a sudden you're in an environment where you have permission to market to these people. The last thing I'll say is that, you know, it really helped me understand that marketing is about connecting to and creating tribes, which is another book that Seth Godin wrote called Tribes. And I went down this rabbit hole of Seth Godin. There's a ton of Seth Godin books here. He's someone I'd love to have on the show.
8:52He's influenced my career like so much. But this book, Unleashing the Idea Virus, if you're a creator, I highly recommend it. One thing we are culprits of, Colin, is that we recommend things and never link them. And so this episode, we will, this is my promise to you, we will link these books in the description of the YouTube video and the description on podcast. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID, and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info. And if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft.
9:32LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40 % your first year at lifelock.com slash podcast. Terms apply. Okay, book number two. Jake Paul, you gotta want it. Jake Paul. That is sitting on the table. You gotta want it. We bought that for a creator merch episode. Yeah. I've never read it, but I just get up in the morning and I look at it and I go, I want it. You got to want it. I want it. You got to want it. Yep. Okay. No, the actual book number two, a book we've spoken about before. This is a book that both you and I started reading.
10:12Was it just last year? I think last summer. Yeah. Yeah. And it was given to us after we went to a summit with Shopify. And it really is more so about like creative collaboration. and how to persevere through a creative project. And for me, one of the biggest concepts that I learned about here was what they did at Pixar when they were making some of their hit movies. They had a brain trust, they called it, which was a group of elite, trusted storytellers where they basically would, like, rip apart your idea. They would get into a room, and you pitch your story, you show them an example of what you've got, and you trust these people in the room to give you harsh, like serious feedback.
10:54And along with that, there's a quote that I loved where it says, you are not your idea. If you associate too closely with your idea, you'll take offense when it's critiqued. And I just paraphrased that. But that, it was a moment for me when I thought back to so many times in the office where I've pitched you or I've pitched different people in our office an idea and they have a critique of it and I take it personally. Sure. And you just realize you're not gonna get anywhere in a team collaborative environment when you're making anything, specifically YouTube videos, if you can't handle critique.
11:28And if you take it as a personal assault, because it's not. Like you can't associate with your ideas. You have to go for the idea that's best. Yeah. And that's a lot of what this book talks about when they're making these hit movies at Pixar. It was movies made by committee and that's really difficult to do. Like creativity by committee is not easy and they found ways to do it. Yeah, they put a lot of terminology in there to the creative process that I think is really important. One of my favorite things that I'll never forget is the description of exploring the neighborhood, which essentially means like you kind of have to go all the way through a creative idea to see it.
12:08And it's okay if you turn around and decide not to do it. It's exploring the neighborhood. Like you drive into a neighborhood, look around and it's okay for you to be like, no, I don't like this and drive out. The only way to know is to fully drive there. And we've had a lot of experiences when you're building a creative team. I'm sure a lot of YouTube creators and entrepreneurs can recognize this. When you're building a team, you're like, hey, we're going to just grind for this week to see this idea through. And as you're going through it, you're like, I actually don't like this. This idea doesn't work.
12:40And it's really overwhelming to you turn out of there to just turn to your team and be like, guys, we're just not going to do that. Yep. And you think about canning YouTube videos. You think about all like a ton of work on a graphic or a project that you then just cut and you don't like it anymore. Like that is part of building a creative business and putting in terminology there of like, we're exploring the neighborhood. Like just throw out this idea. Cool. We got to explore that now. We got to turn over that rock and just see if we like it. If we don't like it, that's okay. There's a great quote that I pulled here.
13:13Failure isn't a necessary evil. It isn't evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new. And specifically when it comes to new formats as a creator, when you're making a new format, you look at when we started doing studio tours. Yeah. Remember how many versions of the Rhett and Link mythical studio tour we made? I mean, it was unbelievable. I think we released V48. Yeah. We just went back and forth and it was so, it felt painful at times to explore the neighborhood so much so and then realize, oh my gosh, I need to explore another part of this neighborhood. And then you're like, all right, let's forget what we just did.
13:48Let's go the other direction. And then you get to the end and you go, it's not that either. And if you can sit in that mindset of this is actually a necessary consequence of doing something new, it's not us making mistakes. It's not us failing. It's part of us getting to the answer. The interesting thing about that studio tour that we put out is that the version we ended up putting out was extremely close to V1. Yeah, that's happened to us many times. Many times where you make something and you reiterate and reiterate and reiterate and you end up just with the first version. And that is actually a premise in the Creative Act, Rick Rubin's book.
14:26Yeah. That we have upstairs. Printed and hung on the wall. Yeah. But yeah, Creativity Inc., if you're building a creator business, any business, I actually think it has some, you know, management and just like really, it was the first time I felt seen in our business of being like, oh yeah, okay, I guess this has existed for a long time. Like building a creative company is just, this is what it is. there's so much irrational stuff you do as a creative and as a creative company how do you justify that to your employees or people you work with it feels crazy but putting terms to it is really helpful they're they're talking about at pixar how they do this day every year where yeah everyone comes in and they get is it like they get mixed up into teams yeah they work from different departments but they don't work on Pixar stuff like they kind of like work on just new ideas and random things so they yeah and there's people from like accounting that are working with people from the graphics department from animation yeah yeah and they have to solve creative problems together yeah and the mix of inputs is what ends up developing new ideas yep okay there's some honorable mentions on here that we should talk about before we get to number three which you know I'm gonna suggest tribes to everyone.
15:46Like these two, this one, two punch, Seth Godin unleashing the idea virus and tribes can't suggest it enough. Start with why is great. Start with why by Simon Sinek. People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it. Yes. And if you don't want to read the book, just listen to the Ted talk. Just look up Simon Sinek's start with why Ted talk. It's fantastic. Um, shoe dog. This is one of the only books that has made me sob. Yeah. The last page I just started crying. Um, but this is the story of Nike. If you want to learn about building a company, like Shoe Dog is just unbelievable. And pursuing an outrageous idea.
16:20Yeah, yeah. Completely ludicrous idea. Shoe Dog is fantastic. Like Brothers, which is by Mark Duplass and Jay Duplass. I think I gifted you this. You did. For your birthday. It's a lot about having a creative partner, but also just about being young and trying to pursue a creative career. He talks a lot about like, which cities you should think about living in and how to like keep your burn low so that you can make what you want. And it's just, I really connected a lot with like brothers. Jerry Seinfeld, is this anything? This is a collection of Jerry Seinfeld's writing. What's amazing about it is so much of it is bad.
16:57It's one of my favorite things about this is that you look at it and you're like, this is how much bad work you need to make good work. And I don't, I think it was Jerry or maybe someone else, but you know, in creativity, It's like, if you want to be great, the first question that, um, you know, someone will ask you is show me your bad work. Where do you keep your bad work? You don't have enough bad work. You're not going to make good work. Are you trying to find a good quote from the Jake Paul book? Yeah. I mean, it's easy. Okay. Hit me with a quote. Own what you do. If you don't, someone can take it.
17:28I mean, pretty good advice. Own your work. Yeah. Pretty good advice there. Um, okay. There's a lot to the third book that we're going to talk about, which is The Creative Act, A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. There's a lot to it. We've talked about it a lot. Like, I think if you are a creative and you're trying to understand yourself, this is a great book. One of my favorite things from this book is there's like a very simple, there's a lot of simple lines, but just one that I wanted to bring up was one of the best strategies is to lower the stakes. that it's very similar to what Mark Rober told us about the Super Mario effect saying like, how can you create situations in your creativity where like a video game, if you quote unquote die, you just have another life.
18:15Like you can just try again. And I've experienced that this year of just even mentally lowering the stakes of putting out a video. If you lower those stakes and you're like, okay, yeah, I'm not trying to put out a 10 out of 10. I'm not trying to put out the worst video, but if I do, it's a very long career. I can come back from that. Like I can solve that. Yeah. Um, if you lower those stakes in your head of like, this is not life or death. Like it's okay. It's a long career. I'm going to keep trying. I'm going to keep making stuff. I used to feel like the stakes were really, really high. And that kind of paralyzes you from putting out stuff.
18:50And I still think sometimes the stakes are too high in my head about trying new ideas or exploring new things. But that line to me, it's like a very kind of in passing line in the book. But it's just one example of like what the book is about. It's about the mental state of being a creative. Yeah. It's a lot about the psychology of being a creator. There's a moment where he talks about working with other musicians and how a lot of them he finds assume that they've peaked, that their best work is behind them. And it's just not true. Like, you don't know when you're going to, I guess, quote-unquote, peak again, but it's completely false.
19:29Like, it's a false belief if you think you've done your best work. Yeah. All right. So, I flagged this quote last night. Sometimes the mistakes are what makes a work great. Humanity breathes in mistakes. I feel like on YouTube, that's so pertinent. Like, that's what makes creating on YouTube so different than what you're going to find on Netflix. A lot of times on like streamers or in movies, you don't get to breathe in like humanity. Except when Game of Thrones showed that Starbucks cup. That was hard to find though. That was crazy. That was crazy. Right? Like if you really think about it, that's crazy.
20:03That was, yeah. Shocking, really. Yeah. For someone who was so deep in Game of Thrones at the time. Oh, I saw one episode with you. You saw one episode with me. Clearly that still haunts you though. Yeah, yeah. It was a weird episode. Another great one. Yeah. the person who makes something today isn't the same person who returns to the work tomorrow. Yeah, that's a great one. Like you are not consistently going to be the same artist every day. Yeah. Everything you're experiencing, everything you're doing is going to impact the work that you do. So I think just to, like in closing, I would say that this collection of books, we will link.
20:40Highly recommend it. But I think just turning to literature and books is really important in your creative journey, like learning from some of these authors. I'd love to sit down and speak to more authors. Like this year we got to speak to Tim Ferriss and Austin Kleon who wrote Steal Like an Artist. Steal Like an Artist is another one. You got to read it. I'd love to sit down with Seth Godin. I think Seth Godin is someone who's really impacted our career. Rick Rubin obviously would be a dream to sit down with. I don't even know what that would be like. Didn't Tim Ferriss interview Rick Rubin in a sauna?
21:10Yeah, in a sauna. Right? Yeah. But I wanted to talk a little bit about like this concept of lowering the stakes and address some commentary on Discord. Before we get to that, if you guys have any books that you think we should read that we didn't mention, put them in the comments. If you're listening, you can tweet them at us or go over to YouTube, put them in the YouTube comments for this episode. I'd love a new book for the holidays. Last thing I want to say about books is the reason we didn't bring up any books that are specifically about YouTube is because I think the YouTube landscape and what works changes so much.
21:43and what you really need are the skills to adapt and sort of weather whatever changes come. You need the timeless concepts. You need timeless concepts about like marketing, about work, about dealing with self-doubt, like - Brand building, yeah. Yeah, you need to be armed to handle whatever changes come from a platform or business perspective. Those concepts can stand the test of time, algorithms, you know, the ever-changing landscape of YouTube. Pull books from like a long time ago and they will, if they're good, they'll apply today. which is great. Okay. So we put out our round table last week, which was an awesome conversation, a great experience.
22:22We did a round table with a ton of creators. It's out on our channel now. But there was a massive, you know, kind of issue with the production of that. Yeah. Probably one of the biggest production mishaps we've had ever, ever, ever. Yeah. Considering what it took to get all those creators in one place. Yeah. to have that opportunity and then have this production mishap. Yeah. And as a producer and as creators who have their own, like part of what we do as creators is we handle everything, right? So like if we're going to distribute something, it doesn't matter who is involved in the production.
23:00The buck stops with us. Like it's our show. It's our production. First off, let's explain what the production mishap was. Yeah, yeah. I'm just saying before we get into it, The blame lies on us because it's our show. It's okay that there's other people involved who were operating some things, but it all comes down to us. It doesn't matter. It all comes down to us. Absolutely. So here's what the problem was. Everyone at the table was miked with a lav mic. Yep. And we had a safety shotgun. And then we had a safety microphone, a shotgun microphone above. So what happened was all of that audio, all of those eight sources are coming into a mixer.
23:41The end product was that all of those sources. The mixer got set to auto. The mixer got set to auto. So at random times, it's switching from one person's lav mic to potentially someone else's because it picks them up. Because they go. Yep. Yeah. And it also is switching at times to the shotgun mic above. And the main problem is that all of that auto mixing got combined onto one singular stereo track. So normally what we would want, if we have eight audio sources, is eight separate files so that we can adjust everyone individually. But we didn't have that. Yeah, we did not have that. And some people were lower than others.
24:20Some people were making noises and it's picking up and it's switching. So it was a really difficult audio file to edit. Yeah, it was impossible to edit. And it just wasn't like podcast quality. No, no. And it wasn't the quality that we normally put out. It wasn't at all of the quality that we put out ever. So, you know, upon first listen and showing it to some serious audio professionals, there was a lot of conversation of like, we can't put this out. Like we can't, we cannot put this out. And I think it's interesting to talk about kind of the decision matrix that got us to putting it out. And, you know, I don't know, I don't, I don't know what the, you know, right or wrong decision exactly, if there's like a definitive right or wrong decision here, but I, there was a lot of nebulous kind of like, are we going to put it out or we're not going to put it out?
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25:15Like maybe this guy can help us. Maybe that guy can help us. Like just trying everything we could to make the audio sound as best as possible. Um, I think what was really tough for us was it was a first of its kind format And exactly what you just said about Creativity Inc, it's like failure is a necessary part of experimentation. I think for me, like the sheer fact that the conversation was great and that we did it and that all these creators invested time into it, I listened to it a few times and I was just like, you know what? We're putting it out. We're just going to put it out. I think it opens the doors for us to explore the format fully, but there was a lot of concern also that it closes those doors because other creators might look at it and be like, I'm not going to come on that.
25:57Like that's not a high quality. Not as premium as I would want. And the verdict is out still. What repercussions it has or doesn't have, either positive or negative. I think the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. There's definitely a lot of comments that keep coming through about the audio, which is to be expected. Yeah. the quality of what was said is, I think, really high, which is great. And I think we will get the opportunity to do it again. But yeah, there may be some people who look at it and they're like, oh, how could they not figure that out? I think we also catastrophize a bit more in our heads and let things ruminate than there are in reality, right?
26:34Like I think, again, back to the Rubin thing, like one of the best strategies is to lower the stakes. Like those stakes don't, we can create those stakes in our head, but they don't exist yet. No one has said that yet, right? That they wouldn't come on. Yeah. Because of that. So like it's possible, but we also can just, that is not a thing that has happened yet. So we can just eliminate that fear. It was just a weird experience in the office because it was both exciting and disappointing at the same time. Yeah. I think even people who have, you know, we were at the streamies and a lot of people are like, dude, the round table is so awesome.
27:04I have like a mixed, I have mixed emotions about it. Like I loved it. All those creators opened up in a way that was amazing. I felt like you and I had an experience of hosting that was so unique and so fresh and so fun. And then getting the files and being like, oh, and then dealing with that kind of struggle of, you know, dealing with this audio. Yeah, it's not just tough on us. It's tough on the team too. It's tough on the team, yeah. Big credit to the team for spending the hours and hours and hours trying to make the audio as good as possible. Jesse spent hours in his office, just door closed, slicing everyone's lines and going like, okay, this line sounds better if I bump the gain here, if I do this, that.
27:43Like it was wild. Trying different AI software. People externally who really helped. Alex Knickerbocker, who's a creator, you know, immediately picked up my call and helped. And just like, I just appreciate everyone who tried to help as much as they could. And I appreciate everyone who liked the conversation and to just address all of the Discord comments about trying to figure out what happened. You know, like there's comments here, like, I think it was short notice. They couldn't rent audio gear. This felt more like a raw VOD of a VidSummit panel or something like that. Like just that, we just wanted to explain what happened and just, it was like an internal turmoil of figuring out if we should put it out or not.
28:20I think my biggest fear, which was unfounded, was that people would look at it and go, oh, here's a bunch of digital creators trying a traditional format. Right. and going like these digital is their landscape and they can't figure out. Yeah. Like it, like digital creators might be perceived as lesser than because it's normally sure actors and traditional media people manning the cameras. Yeah. But even that I haven't seen anything that has, that has, I think you have to expand to be true. You always have to expand the timeline of everything. Like, you know, if you look at this in isolation, yes, you know, that there is an audio mishap there.
28:55If you expand it and we adopt this round table format and do it over the next five years, this will be a very small blip, you know? And that's, that's part of lowering the stakes and saying like, you want to treat everything like it is, it is like you need it to be excellent. And that is something that you and I deal with a lot is like this pursuit of excellence, but it does sometimes stop us from experimenting because this is the risk of experimentation. Yeah. You know? And two, two weeks ago it was 95 % of our mind share. Yeah. And now it's, I look back at it actually just fondly. Yeah. Like it's a totally, pretty much positive experience now.
29:32Totally. So. We should talk about the streamies, but let's answer a question real quick. Let's hit it. Are money giveaways cringe? This is from Sam the Sham on Discord. I'm thinking about doing a giveaway for subscribers in my next video. And my partner said it didn't feel right after describing it. Do you think the focus should be solely on creating the best video possible initially and not worrying about giveaways until I've reached a certain subscriber slash view count? The purpose is so that the winner could have the opportunity to buy products reviewed in the video. The giveaway would be teased around one minute, and the prize details would follow later.
30:03$300 Amazon gift card. Look, we've done giveaways. For money, for gift cards. They work. There's no doubt about it. Money is a great incentivizer. Yeah. It is probably the great incentivizer. I do think there is a way to ensure that the people that subscribe or the people that sign up to your newsletter or whatever it is are the audience you want by picking the prize and curating it in a way that is targeted towards the type of audience you want so that you don't have a bunch of people just saying like, yeah, I want this money, but I actually don't care about this creator's content. I'm not coming back.
30:43Yeah. You don't want your content to be dependent on giveaways. Yeah. Right? Like you don't want people to be there and then like, they're like, oh, he stopped giving away stuff. All right, I'm out of here. Yeah. You know, what's really interesting is this might be helpful to you, Sam, but we did a thousand dollar gift card giveaway to grow the Publish Press, our newsletter. And that's been something we've been trying to figure out and solve is like, how do we do these? how do we grow that newsletter list on a more regular basis? And we found that attracting the right audience through giveaways, like it can happen, but here's the learning.
31:21So the first one was we gave away a thousand dollar gift card and we grew like 10 ,000 or 15 ,000 subscribers, which was awesome. Huge. The second time around, I thought about it and I was like, I don't want to give away a gift card. What I want to do is curate a gift basket, basically, like a bundle of gear that we would give. This is also heavily inspired by watching Ali Abdaal do it. I saw him do it and I was like, oh, that's cool. He picked out stuff. And there's a lot of allure to the fact that Ali picked stuff out. Yeah. And so I went to Best Buy. I like literally was driving into work and passed to Best Buy.
31:57And I was like, I'm going to walk in here, just bought a thousand dollars worth of gear and talked through buying it. That giveaway pushed us, like we gained over 30 ,000 subscribers in that giveaway. and those subscribers stuck to the newsletter. Like they are there, they open the newsletter, they're part of the community. And I was like, oh, that's great. That was the right audience. Not just any audience, that was the right audience. I also think if you're a creator and you're not in a position to give away$1 ,000 or enough money that's even really interesting at large to people, I wouldn't discount the opportunity to give away something that's personal to you that's more of like a collectible, right?
32:35Like something that your early audience can look back on as being, you know, as remembering like I was the one who won that thing. You know, with Lacrosse Network early on, we would do t-shirt design contests where people would submit, right? And then they got to be the person who designed it and then they got the shirts. The first person who ever won that giveaway is now like a big YouTuber. It's Jesse James West. Jesse James West, yeah. If I can pull up the photo of him, I think I just saw it recently. He's like 13 years old, like with us holding up like his design of a t-shirt. that just ages us significantly.
33:08That like one of our subscribers at that time was so young and now is like an early 20s YouTuber. It is what it is. It'll keep happening. So I think like what makes giveaways exciting as a audience member is the interactivity. You know, like it's interactive entertainment. You get to like participate in something, take an action, and then you have the potential of receiving something. and if you expand your mind outside of money and start thinking about different ways, I think about when Fun for Louie was vlogging really regularly. And what was really cool was that it was a different subscriber doing the intro for Fun for Louie every time.
33:46It was like, it would be like, hey, I'm Samir from Los Angeles and welcome to Fun for Louie. And that's just another angle of incentivizing a subscription, right? Like I pick a subscriber every week to feature. I, you know, like there's different ways to think about how to incentivize. What you're trying to incentivize is community building. You can offer a 30 minute Zoom call. Yeah, it's like, again, what you're incentivizing is community building, not necessarily just like people looking for handouts or something, you know? Like you don't want a bunch of people just waiting and being like, all right, I'm watching your vlog, but like, are you gonna give me money or what?
34:21Like this vlog sucks because you didn't give away a thousand dollars. So I would reshape that and think about it in the context of like, is this building my community or am I just trying to get numbers up? Can you give away a marker of community? Can you give away an experience or a memory as opposed to just cash? Yeah. All right, man. Streamies. Streamies. We lost. Yeah, I didn't even, but I didn't even go in this year. I said it. Like I didn't even go in this year thinking that we should win the education award. You know, like I look at, I think Veritasium is a brand that I hold very, like from a standard perspective, they are the height of like educational content on YouTube.
35:05And I don't think we are educating in that same way. I think our show is educational, but there's something different to like the learning and education category. Yeah, I don't know if it's the best fit for us. I still know that it's our category. So I was - I missed the announcement. I think we were backstage or something. And then I didn't even realize that we had lost. I kept watching all of those announcements. you know like the the groupings of when they just announced them all quickly on stage and i was like oh yeah we're next we're next and then madeline turns to me and she goes you guys lost tier zoo one who i i actually had not heard of until of that evening and then looked into tier zoo and was like this is a massive channel with millions of views on each video and like very unique perspective on on education so um yeah i think uh we i went in this year more thinking about like like our presenting and like how we were going to show up.
35:54And we improv'd, which was very nice. We had a conversation with Katie and Madeline on the way and came up with a little bit. And we were like, okay, we'll improv that and do that. And that was really fun. You know what was cool? Right when we got on stage, before we even said anything, there was a pretty big applause. Yeah, that was really sweet. And it kind of kept going. Yeah. And I almost got choked up a little bit. Yeah, it was really sweet. It took me out of the moment. I was just like, wow, this is so cool. I like the streamies because it's a moment where our whole industry gets to come together in a way that's not a conference, in a way that's just a celebration.
36:29Yeah. You know, we just get dressed up and hang out together. And like we had Ryan Trahan at our table. We had Michelle Carre at our table, which felt like a very cool table to be at. Ryan won first person creator of the year. And Michelle won show of the year, which was one of the most emotional. Such a cool moment. And she's so deserving of it. even in the round table conversation, we all talked about that because she was like, I'm up against hot ones. But the thing I really liked was that the final award of the night was show of the year, not creator of the year. And I think that's actually really, really cool and a good signal for the future of like people developing formats and shows.
37:07That's what's being rewarded in our industry. Yeah. It inspired us in the office the next day. We were brainstorming. We're like, we want a show of the year. Like, obviously we have the Colin and Samir show. Yeah. But is there another format? Is there something else we could experiment with that we think is, you know, it's just, is there another show out there we could make that one day we could totally see winning show of the year? It's a good thing to strive for. Yeah. It's cool. Totally. All right. The award that we gave away was short form creator of the year. Yeah. Made a good joke about height.
37:40we literally said in the car there's two ways to make a joke about short form creators it's height or length and Rhett and Link did length of time in the year prior so we went height I don't even think I've watched the clip back we were improv-ing so we fumbled through the bit a little bit it wasn't super clean MatPat also called us peak sus and then Colin said pink sauce or something which is like understandable you were like what is pink sauce and then I I like kind of so peak looked at you peak sus yeah it was what he was saying yeah yeah based on among us he was coming off in an among us bit i just need you to tap into the culture i can't tap into the culture tap into the culture in general i mean i don't know if this is a gripe i have with my myself or if it's a delight but the the pace at which i am aging out of culture is like so rapid it's the past three four weeks it's been more rapid than i've ever experienced yeah i mean i was at Chris's birthday party.
38:36Okay. Right. And I'm telling a story and they're like, have you met that guy? And I was like, no, no, no. But we've, we've Skyped. What? It just came out. I was just like, do you have Skype? I was searching. I was like, is it Google hang? Is it video call? Is it zoom? And then I just came up with like the software of, of like three years ago. I used that when I was studying abroad in college. I was like, how old am I? That's like a payphone of the internet. Yeah. It's crazy. It's a mess, man. Yeah. Yeah, we were at - While we were at the streamies, I saw Emma Chamberlain's boyfriend. Yeah. I said to Madeline, is that Emma Chamberlain's boyfriend?
39:12And she was like, what are you doing? He's right there. He was literally like right at our table when you said that. I know. Yeah. I'm just like, I am accelerating. You're like, honey, I think that's Emma Chamberlain. That's the man who's with Emma. I am accelerating towards like dad. Yeah, you are. So fast. You are. We were at David Dobrik's pickleball tournament at his house. and the DJ group Two Friends was announced that they were playing. I was like, and now Two Friends. And I was like, oh, cool, Two Friends is playing. And you turned to me and you went, which Two Friends? Which Two Friends are playing?
39:46And I was just, I looked at you and I got like scared. I don't know why. I was like, dude, no, stop. Please don't say that out loud. I need like a culture consultant right now. I need someone to send me like a recap every morning of, hey, here's the terms, here are the people. Here are the bands. Here are the bands. Here's what's in. This is what's in because you're out. You know what was cool? The music. So Rolling Stone got involved in the streamies this year. The musical acts were unbelievable. Oh man. Iconopop. And Armani White. Like it was, it was really good musical acts. And they also did these portraits of everyone, a bunch of creators, the Rolling Stone portraits.
40:19We were in line for it and I got impatient and I was like, let's get out of this line. And now I'm bummed because they look so cool. They look so cool. Yeah. Yeah. Bummer. Okay. All in all, successful night at the streamies. I had a great time. I was so happy to see everyone who won. There needs to be a new creator of the year. You know, it's hard because like, is Jimmy the creator of the year? He's doing the most, he's doing the most like visible things, but it's kind of like we need to, it's been five years in a row. He's won creator of the year. Yeah. Last year he even said, don't give it to me anymore.
40:50He said on, he was like, please don't give this award to me anymore. There was some big, there were some good wins this year. Like the editing podcast pushed for the editor's names to be on the editing award, which I think is really positive. To not just be the channel name. Not just be the channel name. Put the names of the editors who are editing for those channels. And I retweeted that on Twitter and was like, absolutely. This is like so important that in our industry, the craftsmanship is in the post-production of these videos. Those names should be recognized. And then another one for me, I don't have to shave my head.
41:27Yes Theory 1 editing. I forgot you made that. I made that very public. That wager. very public. With yes theory on the round table. But I was really confident. I made that wager actually prior. Would you have actually shaved your head if they lost? Definitely. 100%. I actually was planning it. I don't know. I was planning it for after. We were talking in the office before you came in today and everyone was like, he wouldn't have shaved it. No, no, no. I told Katie when I would have done it because I have like a family event next week. And then I was like, I would just shave it after that on September 10th.
41:52I was like, I would shave my head. I'm going to keep trying to find ways to wager that with you now. As long as you wager it too. No, no, no. That's not part of the deal. but I'll try and find some sort of wager where you'll agree. Lower the stakes, man. Shave your head. Those are massive stakes. What are the stakes? That's a T-bone. Just wear a hat. Okay, shorts question for CNS. Now, YouTube shorts, some news this week. You can now link YouTube shorts to long-form videos. I linked two this morning. So we have two shorts that perform really well. They continue to pick up evergreen. And I linked them to our most recent Mr.
42:31Beast interview because they have to do with that interview. It's really cool. Great opportunity, I think, for clips, specifically from podcasts. Yeah. It's a huge moment because the thing about podcasting is that a podcast clip viewer is not necessarily a long form video viewer or a long form audio. And so that conversion is not typically, there's no way to even know if that conversion works or like people blow up podcast TikTok channels with clips, but it's not necessarily growing the pod. In some instances it does, but it's hard to know. So linking I think is really big and it makes a really good case for podcasting.
43:11I wonder how it'll engage in other places, but I also think it's a great move for YouTube in the quote unquote monetization of short form content. I'm not gonna say who, but we did see someone's YouTube backend who exclusively posts shorts. And it was the most impressive revenue. I just couldn't even believe, it was jaw-dropping revenue for pure short form content. It was upwards of what,$25 ,000 a month? Yeah. For the last 28 days? I think it was more than that. But it was, and it was close to 400 million shorts views. That's a lot of views. It's a lot of views, but - But it's significant revenue.
43:47It's significant. It was pretty impressive. But outside of that, like for us, it's been, I think we've on the main channel, you know, we've done probably 30, 40 million shorts views and that has equated to like one to$2 ,000 maximum. Um, and so thinking about the monetization of if I can go viral on a short, but that pushes people to watch a long form video, that's really positive because that helps monetization. So I like this move from YouTube. I think it's fantastic. I hope to see case studies of people where it like really works. What do you think about on the desktop version of YouTube, how much they push shorts?
44:29Like there's a whole shelf of shorts. Shorts show up in the search. I am never, for the most part, going to watch a short, maybe this specific to me, on my laptop or on my TV. I have, but I don't get spun into like a scrolling. Like the culture of it for me is like I'll watch the short and then move on. I'm not going to scroll on my desktop. But even visually, it just doesn't look that good because it's a bunch of like faces and weird positions. Yeah. I don't know. I'm, I'm not that into short form content right now as a whole. Like I'm just, I'm, I'm not that into it. I think it's like a bit predictable and kind of like not very fun for me to scroll through.
45:06Yeah. Um, so I haven't seen something fresh in short form content in a while. Yeah. There was a rush of TikTok during the pandemic that for me has not been hit. Yeah. then of like all these new faces, great comedy, great moments, interesting stories. And there still are like great things happening, of course, all the time. And like interesting cultural moments that I'm missing clearly. Yeah. But I agree with you. Yeah. I don't, I'm not as interested in short form. So the question is from Jesse Medina. He said, why are shorts being used to grow the second channel, but not the main channel? So that means this channel creator support.
45:42Curious to hear your thoughts, considering shorts were a large growth factor for the main channel in 2022. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, that is absolutely true. Shorts were the biggest factor when it came to growth on the main channel last year. The answer to why shorts are being used here is because the stakes are lower on the second channel. It feels like, yeah, let's experiment. We have a group that's cutting clips. I like some of the clips. I am completely fine with them coming out and some doing well, some not doing well. And I think if we can link them to the long form stuff, like great. I think we'll probably fully evaluate it at the end of the year to say if we want to continue with that and evaluate all of our strategies at the end of the year.
46:25But yeah, the short answer is like I'm not feeling that inspired to make short form content for the main channel right now. That's it. I just don't feel that inspired. I think we could do a better job with clips from our episodes. Yep. But I also find that other people clip our stuff and go super viral. What I would love is if those could link back to the main video. If that could happen, I'd be happy with other people clipping, even if people are monetizing. Like, yeah, that's fine. But if it linked back to us, that would be helpful. So that's the short answer. Short answer. All right. Any gripes call?
47:04Well, I had the gripe slash maybe delight with myself and the pace at which I'm aging out of culture. Yeah. So that's kind of my gripe slash delight of the day. The audience kind of has a gripe with us. What's going on? Which is, I read this a lot. This one is from the subreddit. When are CNS going to talk about Nebula? I'm surprised that Colin and Samir have never once made a comment about Nebula, especially since Wendover just released a video giving an in-depth analysis of their journey to build a platform to support creators. I feel like this is a huge underappreciated accomplishment in the creator economy.
47:39I do want to quickly caveat this and say we cover Nebula a lot in our newsletter. True. In the published press. Like we do cover Nebula a lot. Fair critique though that we haven't talked about. It's a fair critique that you and I have not talked about this. We even have interviews with some of the jet lag guys in the published press. We do cover that beat quite a bit in the published press. But Nebula. Yeah, Nebula, if you don't know, a streaming platform that is creator-backed, creator-owned. And I watched the video from Wendover Productions last night, valued at like 150 million. Crazy. Over, I think, you'd have to watch the video, but around 650 ,000 subscribers to it.
48:24It's crazy. And a really interesting model where they started it with, you know, he talks about it,$100 ,000. Like they intentionally kept it, which is not a lot for a streaming platform. It's not a lot. It's kind of like an expanded Patreon model, right? Like, cause it's like if you bundled content behind a paywall, which is, I guess, just a streaming service. Yeah, I mean, it's just a streaming service. I mean, it's interesting. Some of the elements of it, you know, because it is in many ways like creator owned, there's 50 % of like the revenue pool, I believe, that creators have access to. So they get paid out according to watch time.
49:02And if Nebula were to ever sell, they also get paid out. I mean, that's big. Which is big. That's really big. If it sells for a billion dollars, that gets split. So as a creator, when you are advertising on your video for Nebula, if you get people to subscribe, they watch your videos, you're then getting kind of like paid back. Yeah, yeah. So there's clear incentivization. Yeah, it's a really cool model. It's actually something that years and years ago, we got pitched. Remember this? We went to like a Hollywood studio and they pitched us that. This style, not Nebula. No, not Nebula, but this style of like bundling creators, giving them access to a revenue pool.
49:39It's just been hard to do because you kind of need an anchor show or an anchor creator, which they have in jet lag. Yeah. And then the other ones will fall. But yeah, it is. It's a very hard thing to do. And I agree that this is an underappreciated accomplishment. Yeah, totally. There's some really interesting learnings from the video, actually. that I think apply to creators, whether you're going to like join Nebula or not. One of which is Sam from Wendover's talking about marketing, paying creators to market Nebula. And what they found was if there were two call to actions, if it was sign up for Nebula, and then also they promoted their Patreon, the secondary promotion hurt viewership so much that it actually resulted in like less revenue overall.
50:24So they wanted to make sure that it was, they were going to pay creators to be like the exclusive call to action. Which I just think is interesting because we've spent many years where it's a video and we ask an audience to do two things. And then we ask them to comment below with this. And it's like, you have one. You have one. You kind of have one opportunity, which I thought was good. I think the anatomy of a call to action is something that should be broken down. Definitely. Like what makes a good call to action? And then when I think what just bodes well for creators and like the level of production that we're capable of when it came to like the value prop that creators were talking about when they were advertising for nebula and for people to sign up he said advertising for bts content did not work advertising that there would be no ads okay not great traction but advertising that there would be high quality premium long-form content that's what worked which is cool and so nebula started funding and creating a lot of originals right and that's what like you see with jet lag.
51:23Yeah. And that I think is really cool that they like, they didn't make a BTS platform. It's not just like a super fan platform. Right. It's like a straight up streaming platform. High quality original content. Yeah. I think this world of digitally native creatives is going to influence the broader entertainment ecosystem so much in the next 10 years because we just know how to do things and make things look really high quality. but with like one person behind the camera, you know, or like a very skeleton crew. Or maybe more people, but with a deep understanding of retention. Of internet retention.
52:03Yeah. Of like, we create knowing that you have so many options literally at your fingertips. That the cards are stacked against us. Like upon clicking on my video, you are already one foot out the door. That's how we create. And so that is a completely different style of creation. Yeah. Well, yeah. Okay. Audience, I know you guys want us to talk about Nebula. I'm sure we will talk about it more. We'll talk about it more. I agree. It is an underappreciated accomplishment in the creator economy. Okay, cool. That's our episode this week. I do want to acknowledge that over the next two months, we are going to be traveling quite a bit, which means that the most consistent place to find creator support is going to be on our audio feed.
52:48So if you don't yet listen to this show on Spotify or Apple pods, wherever you listen to podcasts, check the audio feed. If you don't see something on YouTube, because there's going to be times where we don't really want to film outside of the studio. So we're going to be super cognizant of, of not necessarily uploading to YouTube if we don't feel confident in the video product, but it will be there on audio. So check the discord, check our Twitter, but audio feed is going to be the place to get this show on a more consistent basis. And again, if you're interested in reading some of the books that we talked about, we're going to put all those links in the description.
53:25All right. We will see you next week.
From the publisher
Today on Creator Support, we talk about our favorite books, Nebula, and recap the Streamys.
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