An Honest Conversation with MrWhosetheBoss

25:40Yeah. Plus, the specs mattered more. You know, I would pay attention to new chipsets that were announced because I was like, oh, if I want to play this game and I want it to run smoothly, that chip is going to help me to do that. Whereas nowadays, we've reached a stage where you can generally do everything you want to do well on your phone. Yeah. So it matters less. And the changes are kind of nominal. It feels like. Yeah. Like they're not that dramatic. so would you say then it was easier back then to make a video because the advancements were bigger yes i think so i think so with youtube videos it's all about telling a story right you guys know this so back then the story being told was much simpler it was like oh it's better in all of these ways i can show you i can tell you you can feel it whereas now it's like you receive a new phone and you've got to really think to yourself, what is the story here?

26:35You know, what is the story with the Samsung Galaxy A54 2023 edition, you know? So that's why we spend more time thinking now about that angle. So for example, this Samsung phone came in recently. If we just reviewed it, it would have not done very well. It would have probably been like a one and a half, two million video. What we instead decided to do was to research what it was about this series of phones that made it different. And it turned out it was one of the best selling series of phones in the world. So we thought, why is this the best selling? That's quite interesting. Let's make a video about that instead, using this phone as the subject.

27:15And that ended up being one of our better performing videos that month. That's cool. I also like when you ask questions because I feel like I'm in one of your videos. Yeah. Yeah. Which is really great. Yeah. I did want to ask and go back just a second of, for an somewhat underconfident, misunderstood kid, being on camera is like a juxtaposition to that. Yeah. What did it take to be on camera? Because you weren't on camera in the beginning. What did it take to put yourself on camera? And how did you get the confidence to be on camera? So, yeah. So I'm someone who pays a lot of attention to data.

27:48I was really good at maths. My degree was economics. So I love this stuff. And it dawned on me that all the data points were telling me to show my face. So eventually, like once I built up the confidence to do it, it was this feeling of this is what I should do. Now I'm so glad I did it. Like now, you know, I'm very comfortable on camera. People know me better. But it was this moment of like, I've got to do this. It's just it needs to happen because the numbers are telling me so. In what way do the numbers tell you that you should be on camera? So I guess part of it is the comments, right? You read the comments.

28:24Each comment is in itself a data point. But then also it's the watch time. Like what I would do is I would post the same video as other creators at the same time. And I could not understand why mine was not doing as well. Until it occurred to me that that video has a human in it. My video has a hand in it. And so it's that, I guess, the impact on the watch time or the viewer satisfaction that that difference was having. That was the difference. So were you nervous to get on camera? Horribly. And like the first time I get on camera, you can see how awkward I was. I was bad. And I was like, I think I was making eye contact with the screen and like just kind of looking around.

29:03And like, I don't think I even knew how to like edit the video properly either. So it was just this uncut sequence. Are you looking at any other creators for inspiration of how to act, how to move on camera? there was a lot of like what I thought being a tech YouTuber was at the beginning I was wrong about everything um you know I I used to think what you needed to do was to have a clean white background and so so the viewer could see nothing so it's professional right but it's it's the exact opposite like now we take advantage of the fact that we film every video in my bedroom that's that's the highlight it's like look guys I'm in my room this is sick um and I still you know I live with my parents.

29:43Like what I, what's really, I think what people like about our channel is that it's quite relatable. We're not in a massive warehouse. We don't use like, you know, like robots to film our videos. It's just like, it's my cameraman. It's me. I take it on my iPhone, in my bedroom. Like our desk is, our desk is where my bed used to be. I will say you don't use robots like Marquez does, but you do have some pretty intricate camera changes and movements and you'll like drop into a seat interplay between stable shots and handheld shots graphics like it is again the frame by frame breakdown of your videos are incredibly complex that's because we've watched actually side by side you're one of your videos and one of marquez's videos about the same phone and tracked the first 30 seconds interesting the amount of angle changes and graphics that you have in comparison to Marquez in the same amount of time is like, you're like up here and Marquez is here.

30:44It's just interesting that it's like two very different approaches. Yeah. Marquez makes really, really good videos. And I just think that the style is what we're going for is very different. I think Marquez gets really early videos. He's really fast turnaround and he's just so good at just being off the cuff speaking. His stand and deliver or sit and deliver is unparalleled on YouTube, in my opinion. Like listening to Marquez for 10 minutes, I watched his breakdown of the Apple event. And it's like, it came out so fast. And it was like 10, 12 minutes of him just sitting and talking. And I was like, this is so enjoyable.

31:17Yeah. But even like, because sometimes like when he just tested the Vision Pro headset, he came out and we were just sitting outside together, just chatting about the experience. And he's like that in person too. Like he can just off the top of his head, just rattle off some really precise, concise thoughts. The difference with your videos is one of the things that I think bumps the watch time is how good your writing is. You have a video about that breaks down kind of the history of Apple events and what makes Apple events so good. And it is so well written. I was four minutes into that video and I paused and looked at Colin and I was like, it's been four.

31:55It's been four minutes and I've just learned so much and we have another 11 minutes to go. And I think it's that writing process. You can feel the amount of research and intricacy that goes into how you write your videos. When did that come about in the trajectory? Like going from, okay, I'm on camera with this white background I'm filming. Like, were you off the cuff there? And when did writing and kind of the intricacies of research and all of that enter into the picture? It's a really interesting question. And I couldn't tell you an exact moment. I think it's probably all born out of this natural feeling of, I don't fit in.

32:37I don't want to waste anyone's time. Because that's what I've had growing up from the very beginning. So when I was making a video, every sentence is like, is this needed? Is this funny? Will this person get it? Plus, And I've always been very, someone who wants to understand things very clearly. So I was a good kid at school, but teachers would find me very annoying because I would ask a billion questions. I wouldn't stop asking questions until I understood this topic from every angle. And I think I try and do that in the videos too. I try and really think to myself, I actually think of three people when I'm writing videos.

33:11I think of my cousin, I think of my fiance and I think of my mom. And so with every sentence now, it's like, would all of these three people understand this? Would they find it funny? Would they relate to it? And so by doing that, I guess, I feel like I'm ticking the boxes of the widest possible group of people. That's super interesting. And what is that writing process like? Most of it is me on a laptop, just somewhere. I spend most of my time still is doing the writing. And I've tried to hire for it. And I have someone now who does help me with writing and researching and stuff. But it's very, very hard to replicate the tone that I've developed.

33:56So oftentimes, I will find myself looking at the script and being like, this is really good. But I would do it this way. so yeah I guess it's only at those points where you realize how much you've learned about telling a story yes is it I would do it this way in terms of the storytelling format or is it these are the main points that I find to be the most interesting when you look at a script that a writer gives you I'd say I'd say it's both yeah I I definitely am aware that with tech there's certain things that aren't interesting anymore like with phones for example like people don't want, the battery life is this and the display is this and all that sort of thing.

34:34So I pick what I want to cover, but also make sure that anyone can understand it. Yeah. So was that relatively gradual from, you know, from when you started to when you crossed a million subscribers was, I think, about eight years. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think so. It's a long time. And then from a million to now over 15 million is another six, seven years. and that's obviously an insane jump, right? A million to over 15 million is a crazy jump. And I think you've had incredible jumps over the past two, three years. Was that all gradual or was there another big hit like the hologram video or a series of those?

35:16Like what was that the past seven years like? The biggest hit the channels ever had came when I started uploading regularly. So the moment I decided not doing this consulting job, I'm doing YouTube. and I did one video every single day for like six months, I could see the numbers flying. I could almost see every single day I was gaining more subscribers than the last day and a community was forming. There were people who actually tuned in every single day, regular commenters. Before that, I was not a YouTuber, I would say. I would say it was at that point where I was doing it daily. That's when it became real.

35:49Whoa, daily is so hard. Insane. Yeah. How did you come up with enough ideas about tech every single day and then actually execute and edit every day. So one of the things that I found was software was way easier to cover than hardware for two reasons. A, the fact that new hardware doesn't come out every day. B, the fact that no one knew who I was. So with tech, it's a lot of it is about, can you get review samples? A company, before they release their product, will hand out samples to reviewers. If you're not in that first batch of samples, your video is late. and really you're automatically niche.

36:28So given I wasn't a part of the industry, but also I wanted to be a part of the industry, the only thing I had was a phone. So I was like, okay, let me make loads and loads of app videos. Let me find out how to customize your phone the best. I can do that too. How to speed up the phone you have. That was the bulk of my content because I didn't have the money or the connections to get hardware. that's amazing that what you would think is a disadvantage became your advantage in that scenario yeah like the constraint of just having to work with whatever was on your phone because you couldn't get the newest phones 100 was what sort of i guess propelled the career yeah it's that whole uh constraint breeds creativity yeah and so it was just you editing yeah the editing was simple back in the day yeah um it was only when i got to a point that i started to i guess value my own time, like put that time at a premium that I was like, now's the time to not do the things that I don't need to do.

37:27And actually you'll find people who are better at doing those things than you were, which it was hard for me to let go as a perfectionist. I don't know if you guys had this too. Yeah. I mean, Colin is the like, you know, main editor between us. I can edit, but you know, I was always like, my preference would be someone else does this. And I think And Colin was more of like the painter who, you know, editing was his painting. Yeah, I felt like giving up the work to someone else was like giving up part of my identity. Yes. In a way. A hundred percent. It's like, I may not be the best at it, but it's the most me.

37:59Uh-huh. And I like that about it. And when I found myself working with other people, I had no experience doing that. Yeah. So I didn't have a language to tell them. I was self-taught. You know, how do you tell someone to do something when you just learned over 10 years of making mistakes? A lot of times in the early days of like bringing on freelance editors to help us, I would find an editor, bring him in, you know, try and figure out how they, Colin and him would work together or her and they would edit and then Colin would get the project, undo everything and then re-edit the video. And I was like, okay, this is not efficient at all.

38:33Like we were just now paying people to basically. Make our jobs harder. Yeah. Make our jobs harder now. Now we're undoing things. I've been there before as well, funnily enough. One of the things we realized is really, really helpful is to have a document where you spell out all of the things you do, the things that make your videos your videos to the T, to the level where someone who had no knowledge of how to do it could walk in and recreate it. Like if it's for the edit, for example, you say, this is the font we use. This is the outline we use. This is the thickness of the outline. Do you know what I mean?

39:09You make it so granular. And that way you've basically created a format, this document, that you can hire people quickly and get them up to speed. Did you make that document before you hired your first editor? No. We've only done a lot of this stuff very recently. My first editor I hired when I had no idea, kind of like you were saying, no idea what I was doing. I actually could barely afford to pay my first editor. I just became very aware that if we have two people working on this at the same time, we're going to massively expand our revenue so that by the end of this year, we should hopefully make twice as much as we did last year.

39:47And when you talk about money here, is it all AdSense or were you doing brand partnerships? What does the business look like when you are able to hire an editor, but you're also a little bit worried you may not be able to afford it? Sponsors have only really started flooding in in the last five, six years, I would say. It was this weird, uncertain new thing back then. So the vast majority of the income was AdSense, and it wasn't a massive amount of AdSense. Yeah, the sponsorship market has also changed dramatically in the past two years. I would say since 2020, since the pandemic, is when I think the sponsorship market really changed.

40:21And you noticed that for your channel? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Were tech sponsorships at that time, were people paying for reviews? So because I was a software channel, one of the problems I had was all the people who had approached me were software companies. Got it. And they worked on a very, very heavy ROI basis because a lot of these were very small companies. And they'd be like, we can give you like$100. Yeah. Please promote our app. So, yeah, it was much more frugal than I think lots of these big corporations being like, we just want to promote our brand generally are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's kind of like, you know, there's, you have to look at the companies that are looking to sponsor you and understand if they're there for brand lift or brand awareness, right?

41:05Which is going to be the big companies who are, hey, I want to, I want to associate myself with Mr. Who's the Boss. I want to be on the channel. I want to be cool, right? I want to, I want to, I want that brand awareness. Then there's the like, you know, you have to kind of watch out for, I think the CPA, like the cost per acquisition. Where it's, hey, I'll pay you a, I'll pay you a hundred bucks and then I'll pay you 25 bucks for every signup you bring. Yeah. Because now you're playing into an evergreen video that's on your channel forever where you're talking about the sponsor. And if their funnel isn't great and they can't get signups, that's not on you.

41:39You still marketed the product. 100%. Right? So I really don't like affiliate marketing for that exact reason. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't capture the full value of what you're giving to them. And there's so much value to brand association. When you've built a brand over 13 years like you have, that's incredibly valuable to be associated. That's my perspective on marketing. Where does the name come from, by the way? I meant to ask you that earlier. We haven't revealed it. Really? Well, we kind of have, but I did it as a joke. Okay, so we'll leave it at that. Yeah, we'll leave it at that. So that's part of the lore too.

42:14That's like part of the Marvel movie is like one day you'll make the movie that reveals it. Yes. You know, we talk about building this community of people who understand tech and want to use it for the betterment. There's a part of it that's like, who's the boss of tech? Are you the boss or is tech the boss of you? That's one way of looking at it. Okay. I like that you're giving us fan theories as the creator. And yet you know. Yeah. There's also a really good association in the sense of like, it's unique as a name. Yeah. So like the temptation when you start a tech channel is you have the word tech in your name and then you stick some sort of adjective afterwards.

42:58Whereas this being something that's like when you hear it, it sticks in your mind. Right. You don't know what it means, but it's just a word that someone's invented. You don't have to know what it means to be able to remember it. And where was I going with that? the brand doesn't need to serve you on a silver platter like what it does yes right google is a great example of this yeah google is not a word or uber well yeah but uber is a word but google is based on a google which is like a really large number true yeah but just like these are never mind let's cut that part yeah but yeah yeah they'll just cut the entire thing yeah we'll just start the podcast now.

43:44So on that document that you bring up, I do want to talk about what is it that makes a Mr. Who's the Boss video? Because what I'm looking at now in 2023 has evolved over the years dramatically. But you are a watch time specialist. You are a retention specialist. The one thing I will say is I'm kind of allergic to retention editing, stuff that's kind of flying in my face. I'm like, I'm in my mid thirties. I can sit and have something move a little slower. But when I watch your videos, although a lot is happening in 20, 40, 60 seconds, there's text, there's a lot of stories, there's a lot of new questions.

44:22I don't feel the same overstimulation. I feel very comfortable in that. And it does keep me going. And I'm always impressed and surprised when I pause the video and say, how much time has passed right now? how has he done this? So I'm curious about that process of, or like that document of what is a mystery. Who's the boss video? What's the recipe for it? Um, so I would say, sorry, no, no, that's it. Yeah. What's the recipe for it? So I would say it is constantly changing. Like we're constantly thinking of how do we make this better? Um, so for example, about a couple of years ago, we thought it would be a great idea to have timers, timers everywhere, like ticking circles and next section in because we thought, oh, well, if people constantly know something's coming, then they, you know, they won't leave if they don't like this particular thing.

45:11Now we're realizing actually, it's much better to tell a story that's so interesting that people aren't thinking about time at all, right? To almost, instead of giving people so much stuff to look at, like a product here, like text there, like my face in a circle here, you just give them one thing and you're the director just guiding through what the best thing is to see at any one moment. That's like a tier above just blasting people in the face with editing. So we're going through changes, but I guess it's all in the name of how do we make this a video that gives the information in the most concise way possible, makes it understandable and makes it enjoyable.

45:50There's a Alex Hermosi quote that I just read that said, there's, there's no such thing as a video that's too long, just too boring. Yeah. Which I think is a really interesting quote to think about. Let's watch one of your videos, at least the first 20 seconds. I think it's an important thing to take a look at and give context to. This is the brand new Nothing Phone 2. And this is Carl Pei, the guy who made it. This is a rare opportunity to learn about not just what this phone is and the thought behind each decision, but also to really understand the secretive way that the world of smartphone building works.

46:26So I'm going to make sure we get all of that insights and then a couple of curveball questions at the end. So I think for us, it was important with that video because we knew it was going to be a slower paced video and that we wouldn't have as much control over the hook, the structure, because it's just an interview. So it was important to get out all the things at the start to be like, you're going to get this, this and this. I can't guarantee you in what form, but just know that it's coming. I like how you phrased it. You said, I'm going to ensure that you get all of this, all of these insights.

47:00And it's like, I hear that and I go, oh, thank you. I didn't even know I wanted those, but thank you. Yeah. It's important. I never want to lose people. I hate the idea of someone watching my video being like, I don't know what's going on. So the nothing phone two, I thought it was important for people to understand that there was a nothing phone one. Even though 90 % of people probably knew that, it was like catching the people up who weren't. And even the context that it had sold 800 ,000 units, which I didn't know, was it almost validates this person, right? Because you're sitting next to a person and you're like, you should listen to him, right?

47:36And that moment for me validated him, which I know I've seen him before, and he's the CEO of this company, but you gave me a proof point, social proof, right? Of, okay, if you had doubts, now you shouldn't. It's probably subconscious. I didn't actually think of that. That's interesting. Is there anything written in the document that shows up here in these first 40 seconds that you could point to? Well, I always jump into the chair. That's a given. And we actually asked Carl if he wouldn't mind jumping in the chair with us because that's part of the channel law, right? So people who have seen me jump into chairs for the last 10 years, that's actually their payoff, right?

48:15they get to see the CEO jump into the chair. That also proves he's in your environment. Yes. Right. A hundred percent. He has entered the universe. Good. Yeah. Good way of putting it. Yeah. So we even made sure that, so we interviewed the Google CEO Sundar Pichai a while ago, and I couldn't quite, I couldn't quite get the confidence to ask him to jump into the chair. So I filmed this, a take after he'd left where I jumped into the chair. Oh, interesting. So at least the viewer got that in that environment. The Google CEO, he also mentioned that his kids watch your channel, which was a really cool moment in that video.

48:53And I was looking at that. I was like, I wonder what that feels like for you. I wasn't really thinking of anything in that moment. I wasn't thinking straight. You're with the CEO of Google and he's not like, OK, I'm here for a press thing. I don't know who this guy is. It's like my kids talk about this guy. I know who he is. I have a ton of context on him. That's a pretty amazing thing. You think about starting out in the world of tech. That's like. It's pretty up there. That's up there. The CEO of Google is like. He actually he was just generally a very, very nice guy. There was some uncut bits like behind the scenes.

49:30Like when he first came into that area, he kind of made a beeline towards me. Like he just came straight just to say, hey, Aaron, I love your videos. And I was instantly just settled. I was so nervous before that. Right. I was thinking, oh, I've got to make sure I get my questions across. As soon as he said that, whoa. Like, it's not I'm here to interview you. It's just let's have a conversation. Yeah. It's amazing how those simple moments can take some of that air out of the pressure and the nervousness. Yeah. Of like, okay, actually, we're seeing each other at eye level right now. Okay, one more video.

50:03This is iOS 17. I've been using it for about a month. It's probably the single biggest update that iPhones have ever had. You can do multiple timers at once. You can automatically clear out any used verification codes from your emails. You can reply to messages by swiping right. You can show it a photo of a meal and it'll tell you how to make it. It even has an AI that can learn to speak in your voice, which we'll test later. And these are just the little things. So the video, that video we filmed quite quickly. That was like, we found out that news like earlier that day that we were allowed to talk about it because you don't find out before.

50:37So we were just like, let's cover this. so that's like a rapid fire compressed version of what we normally do in a sense so one of the things i was thinking with that intro is to deliver a lot of value very quickly to make it clear that you need to stay because that's that's like it's the it's a teaser right it's the trailer for the whole video that first 30 seconds um so i gave people the quick miscellaneous facts first to then dive into the major changes later, the more categorized ones. So you're like, if I get all of this up top, if my assumption was those were some of the 10 things, those are now out of the way, what could those 10 things be?

51:18It's 100 % that. Got it. Good way of putting it. That's interesting. What's interesting and different about you, though, is that a lot of creators, the first 30 seconds, of course, it's a hook. It's the most intricate when it comes to the edit. And then they calm down. They're like, we got you. You're here. Here's what I have to say. For you, 12, 15 minutes into a video sometimes, I'm like, the angles are still changing. There's still text. There's still graphics. You have such a serious dedication to visual storytelling. Why is that? I have to give a lot of credit to my team. I have one guy, Josh, who's like, he came in as a camera guy.

51:55He has a massive, massive eye for detail. And so now he's at the position of like director because he really thinks. Like when we were doing the Sundar interview, for example, it's not cut in a way of like, let's just keep the lines, the important lines in. Like there's so many times where you'll see his face while I'm saying something, but that wasn't his face while I was saying that thing. Like there's so much into cutting just to tell a story. So a lot of the times it's not just me, like I'll sit with Josh and we'll do this stuff together. So just having someone to bounce off. What does the team look like that can do this?

52:31Because I look at it and to do this on a consistent basis, sometimes multiple times a week, sometimes day in, day out, right? Like you, how have you built this team and what makes up the team? So up until very recently, my strategy has been slow, careful, mindful expansion. Like get to a stage where you really, really need a role to be filled, then find the perfect person for that. More recently, I'm realizing that given that YouTube is a higher profit margin type of company, because you can do it while being quite streamlined, it makes sense to actually, if you can find good people, get them in.

53:09We found recently that actually Josh, who I was just talking about, was probably working at about 110 % capacity. He was kind of had a little bit more work than he needed to do to get his job done. And I've been so reticent to actually get someone in to help him, because I'm like, well, then you'll have two people at 55%. That's no good. But actually, now I'm shifting my opinion to if I get someone who's really good, we'll have two people at 55 % who will then grow to two people at 80%, which is sustainable, and we will overall have more output. Interesting. So how many people are on the team now?

53:45So right now there's seven, but we're planning some expansion pretty soon. And what does everyone do? The vast majority is editors. Because we have a long-form stream of content and we have a short-form stream of content. So that all needs a lot. And we put a lot of editing into our videos. So that's most of it. Then it's one writer slash researcher and one guy who just helps me with all the setup. Because gadgets come with a lot of baggage. You know, you've got to connect the apps. You've got to set up the TVs and unbox everything. Oh, interesting. Takes a lot. And in terms of having multiple editors, are they working on one video?

54:22or are they working on multiple videos? Is there one editor per video or you're making that video all hands on deck, everyone needs to be involved? So the added difficulty of tech is things have to be responsive. You have to respond to the news cycle. So what I've actually set my team up as is two teams. There's an editing team A who focuses on efficiency, getting videos out quickly, and editing team B who focuses on our things that aren't time sensitive and does it with the mindset of this video should be everything I missed who's the boss video can be. Interesting. Really interesting. What does editing team A do if there's nothing topical?

55:00If there's no news or no new tech, do they help editing team B? They can do. Yeah. So the team is quite flexible. We've just actually added a new Slack channel that says help me for people who need help. But also developing presets is a big part of it. So if you don't have anything right now, spend that time making something that will make the next video quicker or better. Meaning like graphic presets or like text treatment presets. I was watching and thinking that's the only way these can come together this quickly because you're putting out multiple videos in a week. Yeah. And the only way that they could be that intricate is with a lot of process, a lot of templates.

55:36Yeah, a hundred percent. And it made me wonder, are you naturally that way when it comes to putting systems in place and even just managing people? Like, is it natural for you to oversee this many people? So I am, and my brain is very, very compartmentalized. So I see my day in like blocks and like, like the block of me traveling to this podcast, for example, was an hour. And I was like, that hour is a perfect time for me to script this part of this video. So I made sure I got that done. I got it done 10 minutes early. That was free time then. That 10 minutes was, I'm going to just treat myself to a video.

56:12um what did you treat yourself to oh i like watching uh gaming videos okay cool um i love playing games but watching gaming videos is kind of like the quicker way of doing that whoa um but yeah so we were saying am i naturally organized so i would say i am like 90 that my fiance drisha is a hundred percent that she is extremely detail oriented got it and this is actually something we haven't yet announced on the channel but we're about to so I can say here, she's actually just left her job to join our team. Whoa. Wow. So we've just started working together. I am the visionary and she is the general manager.

56:52So she's someone who's going to be able to orchestrate the team to get the output we want, keep track of all the little things while I can focus on just being the presence on camera, doing the thing that makes the channel work. So, okay. There's a lot to unpack there. The first thing I want to say is the concept of the visionary. Who were we talking to about the Michael Jordan? Ollie. Oh, that was Ollie. Yeah. We were talking about Ollie on the show. He talked about that. Yeah. He was talking about the concept that like Michael Jordan was not, his job was not to sell tickets to the arena. His job was not to market the team.

57:28His job was not to sell jerseys. His job was to be Michael Jordan. And I think hearing that from Ollie, I was like, that is such a great point when it comes to creators. we naturally flow into being the manager and the entrepreneur, right? Especially if we want to expand. Growing to seven people, you are the manager. Like you are the general manager. Yeah. And the thing that gets challenging, and tell me if this is part of it or has been part of it, it's like, let's say you're having a frustration with a team member and then within 10 minutes you need to be on camera. That's exactly what would happen.

58:00Yeah. That's like a, I mean, you're like the fun creator guy who's on camera making jokes doing, you know, and you're like pissed off at your team 10 minutes prior because something's not set up or it's not done right. What's, what was, what was managing or what has managing been like for you? So we, we totted up my hours recently and it was 92 is what it got to in a week. So 92 hours in a week is essentially two people's jobs plus some more. And all of those hours, a lot of those hours came from the micromanaging things, the little things that you're like, oh, I'll just quickly do this. And then I'll just quickly do this.

58:38And it adds into so much work because you have so many roles to play as a YouTuber. And every time you add one more person into your team, the amount of times you have to do those things multiplies. You've got to do one extra set of like organization because I was spelling out what each team member was doing on every single day. and then also like policing that, checking in on that, making sure they're happy doing that while doing the things that people see as well. So it got to a point where I was very, very overwhelmed. And it just so happened to be a time when Drisha was looking for jobs. And we had this discussion where we're like, Why don't you do this job?

59:15Yeah. So now the complications of, you know, working with a significant other, how are you approaching that? It's pretty common, actually, in YouTube businesses. It's not uncommon. Think about like Blogilates. Yeah. Or Michelle Corre. Yeah. There are a lot of - There's a lot of comps to it. I think about it, and I think my wife would vehemently agree, could never do it. I could not do that. That would be very challenging for me. um what how have you approached it or what do you think about going into that like have you created a document together of hey here's here's here's how we're gonna do this yeah there are already lots of spreadsheets um i think it's it's just constant conversation i think it's it's not been challenging yet it's very early stages yet so everything she's doing is like a bonus yeah i'm just seeing it as like if it was just me i wouldn't have done that so this is great yeah Yeah.

1:00:13I imagine, yeah, there will be times when we disagree with things, but she's quite happy to be like, you know, this is your baby. You created this. You make the call and I'll just I'll just do it. And what's your relationship to work life balance and how does that impact it? Because that now creates a situation where you go home and lay in bed and you're next to your general manager. Yeah. I think it's cool, to be honest. I think it's cool. Like we, last night, we were just walking round and round the garden, just kicking a ball. And we figured out what we're, our next step with the team, a problem we were having.

1:00:50Or, you know, we were playing a video game this morning together while discussing what we're doing today. And so it allows you to arrange your personal and your work life in a way that suits you both, as opposed to you both being slaves to separate operations. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I can see that. Like having a unified vision for life. And goal. So we've decided we're working this weekend, but starting from Wednesday till the next weekend, we're not working together as a couple. You both benefit from the flexibility of the same work environment. Yeah, and no one is going to be more aligned with your goals than the person you're sharing your life with.

1:01:28Sure. So like, I'm never going to feel bad asking her to do things. And likewise, because we're both in it together. Because you've set goals together, yeah. Yeah. That's nice. So you mentioned at one point that you were really overwhelmed. Was this also when you made the decision to go through the fitness transformation? I know like watching your channel, it's clear you talk about it. Yeah. That there was a point where you were really stretched thin and sort of at a rock bottom of sorts. Yes. Yeah. Around there. But it also comes and goes. Like sometimes you feel like you fixed it and then you wake up one day and you're like, oh, I just don't feel good.

1:02:02It's not like you suddenly just fix it and you're better. You can fall into traps, especially when you're perfectionist, like I would say I am. Like I want to micromanage everything. That's my gut. But yes, that was probably the biggest point where I realized is when I realized I have to let go. I have to like do the 80 % sometimes and not necessarily the 100%. Can you bring us into a day or a moment in your life when you kind of had that realization? It was, yeah. So it's very, very consistent. So let's say a normal day three years ago would be a filming day. So I do nine till about 7 p.m. I'm filming.

1:02:44Then as the team gets a little bit bigger, you add in a little check-in with the team at like half an hour after that. Then as your channel gets a bit bigger, there might be a podcast to go on after that. And so your day just, my day has slowly got busier and busier and busier with lots of these little things that add up that it was getting to a stage where I wouldn't finish till like 11 p.m., 12 p.m. And then it's like, okay, I'll cram in a quick video for myself to treat myself that evening. Then I'll sleep. Then I'll do it again. so just like very very consistent can't quite see the break in my future and not looking forward to the week yeah that is a dangerous place to be as a creator yeah because you're like i think this is supposed to be fun right yeah right it's not and you're the boss yeah well who's the boss i don't well that's that's true we don't know who exactly is the boss but in that scenario you're the boss yeah you it's almost like you've built yourself this um gilded cage right like a golden jail cell where you're like, it is really nice.

1:03:42It is my own thing. But I'm like locked in here. And I also have the key. So I'm not treating myself very well. But I can't unlock it and get out. I can't free myself. So what's happening? It's an interesting emotion to wrestle with. I think when you start, you have this like electric energy because you're experiencing success for the first time. And nothing can replace that. You can't get that again. Like that's a one-time thing, right? As soon as you go from, I don't know what to do with my life to this is it, I found it, that's once. That's true. So you can sometimes try and chase that feeling again and again, when actually what you should be doing is starting to think about what's my new goal?

1:04:24What's my North Star? What am I trying to do here? It's a really good point. I was journaling the other day and I was writing about the feeling when you reach the bottom of a mountain and look up, but you know you can climb it. That is a one-time feeling, I think, of like, you know, when you actually start catching some of that momentum on YouTube or in whatever your entrepreneurial journey is, and you're like, wait a second, I can climb this. You know, it's a very exhilarating feeling of that incredible moment of opportunity. And the thing is, once you do climb it, you become aware of what it means to climb the mountain.

1:05:02And so the next time you get there, you actually have almost too much context on what it means to climb. yeah does that make sense yeah yeah 100 and then all it can be is either better yeah that's rare but more than likely it'll be like oh okay well this was a bit underwhelming compared to compared to it or it was what i expected it was as hard as i expected or there was easier parts and harder parts like i have context as to what this was i forget what i was reading but there was actually an analogy based off this of climbing the mountain and that talked about how there are some people who when they get to the top of the mountain they sit and enjoy the view and there are other people who immediately notice how many other mountains there are to climb.

1:05:40Yeah. And aren't even thinking about what they just went through. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the Arnold documentary. That was the Arnold documentary, which was good. It's very good. On the team front, how do you build a team that has the attention to detail of your team? Because, you know, I also wonder, you know, like team morale and like as creators are building teams like us, you know the the channel is in our context it's colin and samir right and so no one's going to care about it in the same way that colin and samir care about it but we have interfaced with a lot of creator teams that take a lot of pride in the work yeah and sometimes that can be challenging because there's seven people but we don't you know we know josh because he's been in your videos we know um jose jose who's in your videos as well but we don't really know many of the other people who make up the team, but they have to have an incredible attention to detail and care for the work.

1:06:38How does that, how do you build a team like that? So I think it's, it's a few things. It's finding people who relish in the fact that they are going to be seen, what they make is going to be seen by millions, as opposed to necessarily feeling like I need to be the face of that. Because in itself, that is still a pretty cool opportunity, right? This is the bleeding edge of media right now. And so being a part of that in a startup like format is exciting for the right person. So that's, that's a part of it, but then it's also the way you incentivize people. So right now we have a mission to beat Apple in subscribers and that's both an external mission and an internal mission.

1:07:17And my team know that when we do that, everyone gets a bonus. So the troops are almost rallied toward this one objective. And I've made it very clear. And I, you know, I write out a team message every single week to make sure each person can see not just what they're doing, but what each other person is doing. And we make it very clear how each person's role contributes towards that objective, which has a bonus for everybody as a part of it, regardless of what part they're playing in that. So it creates this really like, oh, you need a hand. I'm going to help you do that because I can see we're all going together.

1:07:51That's cool. That is something we do not do. And I'm sure our team feels that. Our team editing this is like taking notes. They're like, okay, I should do that. But we're trying, yeah, we're trying to learn, you know, like we're trying to learn because it's, it's, we are entrepreneurs. We've built companies before, but in this context, like it is different because you are the talent, you are working on the craft of being a creator. And at the same time, you're working on the craft of being a CEO. And it is hard. Of course, you can hire, you can bring on a general manager, you can bring on a chief operating officer, but there's a different relationship to it.

1:08:26And in the early stages, it is mostly the majority of companies that we see that are creator-led companies are creator-led. You are the person walking in, having the meeting and saying, here's what we're doing. Yeah, 100%. You're not just the face on camera. You are the CEO of the company. How have you learned about all of this? Is it through reading books? Is it through conversations with people? There's part of me that feels like you've read Traction. No, I don't read. You don't read? No, I used to read loads. But since I guess YouTube became a thing, it's always, how do I get this information the fastest?

1:09:00So like summaries, conversations with people, YouTube videos. Got it. But yeah, so how have I learned to lead a team? Very much based on feedback. Like I would like to think I'm quite self-aware. Like I do listen to people. So if someone says, hey, I prefer it if you didn't do that, or hey, I guess a more specific example would be like my shorts editor coming to me and saying, oh, you know, when you make me work on long form videos, that doesn't fit with my bonus structure. Right. Because he gets paid based on shorts performance. So like something like that makes me think, whoa, yeah, I can totally see like this is bad.

1:09:42I've got to fix this. And then I think about all the other cases where I might have created similar situations in people's minds. So I think just when I get feedback, I really think to myself, where else does this apply? Where are the unsaid examples of this same feeling occurring? Yeah, you have a very interesting relationship with data and inputs, right? Signals and inputs. Yeah, yeah. That's really interesting. So everyone on the team is essentially incentivized by performance, meaning performance of content. Yes. So it's basically either the performance of the main channel or performance of the shorts on the main channel, depending on what they're mainly working on.

1:10:22You are no longer uploading to your shorts channel. Is that correct? Yes. All shorts are on the main channel. Yeah, we killed it. Was that an unfortunate decision you had to make? Yeah. So when shorts started, we were like, OK, this seems cool. We should be a part of it. But there's so many unknowns. Like at that point, there was, you know, there was no monetization at all. There was like, we thought this is going to kill your average watch time because the most you can watch a short is like a minute. So we started on a second channel. We built it up to like over 6 million subscribers before we were like, this is a mistake.

1:10:55And it was really difficult because if we just had those 6 million subscribers additive to our main channel, we'd be like the biggest tech channel in the world. Yeah. But we just decided it was for the best. Yeah. That was a realization we made early on too. We were like, if we're going to work on this and it's going to grow, it should grow this channel. Yeah. You know, like that's what it should grow. But we've taken our foot off the gas on shorts and short form content, mainly because we're not, it's not as fun for us to create. Like we are long winded guys. We're having long conversations. That's really fun to do.

1:11:28Shorts are sometimes fun and clips are sometimes fun for us to make. But, you know, they've contributed to a ton of growth, but just not as fun. Do you like window your long form content into shorts? Yeah, we sometimes do. Yeah. But not as active. I think we have this year specifically kind of taken a bit of our strategy hat off and leaned more into feeling of like, what does this feel like? I wonder if there's a way to like hire someone who takes that completely off your hands. Definitely. But I think we also are at our capacity when it comes to management without hiring a general manager or something like that.

1:12:07And you don't want to do that. that i'm open to i'm open to that but i think until we do that i don't want to expand any further i think i know how much of a process that will be to hire someone like that yeah yeah that is a process in and of itself and i'm curious you you mentioned you alluded to more expansion why and into what so for the longest time all i've been thinking about is subscribers right Ever since I started the channel, I used to have this like little sheet on my wall and I tick off. Yes, we hit like 100. Yes, we hit 200, 300. And ever since then, that's the only objective. And now it's like, let's be Apple in subscribers.

1:12:47But more and more. Which is 17.5 million? Something like that. Something like that. And you're at 15.5, I think. So you're 2 million away. Yeah. Which is actually not that big of a gap considering your growth. Things crossed. Yeah. Yeah. But more and more recently, I'd say the connection between subscribers and views is falling. You know, as algorithms get more and more smart at delivering content to just exactly the people who need it, not necessarily those that have clicked the red button, it doesn't matter. So I think as soon as we pass this Apple goal, we then see that as a massive achievement.

1:13:23We celebrate, we say, this is incredible. But we start to think broader about the human nature of what we're doing. The kind of like the North Star, the vision, the idea that like, we're here to try and make people make better decisions with their tech. We want people to use the tech they have to make their life better. And so every other decision about the company and building it out should be based on this vision. How can we achieve that goal? So that could mean a book, That could mean a podcast. That could mean products that help people get there. I see. Got it. When you say those three, a book, a podcast, products, is there one that you think might be first?

1:14:04I think books have a long lead time. So probably not that one. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also, it's hard to monetize a book. The book is like the business card to do other things, right? Yeah. Like the book creates a speaking tour or creates sales to a course, or it does it's a brand moment and authority authority yeah agreed um but yeah so i don't think the play is really money like i've got enough and we we have enough that we don't need anymore like the actual things i want are very simple like the most fun i have is like a board game night in or playing a game of like pokemon with my cousin yeah so like my needs are simple And you live with your parents as well.

1:14:47Yeah. My dad constantly asks myself and my wife why we don't just move into the house. We live in a typical Indian fashion. We don't live more than 10 minutes away from them. But he would prefer that we just live in the house. I'm curious if living in... Because you not only live there, you shoot there too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And do your employees work there too? So the people who come in person, yes. They work there as well. They work there too. So do they get like kitchari for lunch? and like, yes, they do. Nice Indian curry. Wow, amazing. And they like it. So the reasons are twofold, I would say.

1:15:22One, it's very, very convenient. Like the studio is there because that's where I've grown up and I can just walk downstairs and spend time with my family. And the second part is this kind of feeling of, as you get older, you come towards the tail end of the time with the people you've grown up with, right? Like you tell yourself, yeah, I've got 60 more years to live. I'm going to see these people a lot. But the actual time spent is much, much lower the second you move out. So it's kind of just knowing that I'm going to get married and move away and stuff and relishing this time now. Absolutely.

1:15:58Yeah, I always like, there's that study that shows the amount of time that you'll spend with your parents. The graph is so disheartening. It's like a gut punch when you look at it. So I totally understand that. Yeah. And also like, I like to treat them, you know, because they've, there's no way I could have done what I've done without like my parents support. So like to be able to use the channel to give them something that makes them happy and proud is like the absolute best thing. Yeah. I watched the video last night of you gifting your mom, the purple Mercedes. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent.

1:16:32It was amazing. Yeah. You've done such a great job of finding ways to tell a personal story with a tech channel. I was very skeptical when I clicked on the thumbnail of gifting my mom a Mercedes. I was like, this seems like it has nothing to do with everything else on the channel. And then you watch it and realize that you're going to add tech to the Mercedes that you've purchased. You're also going to just review the tech in the Mercedes. And then it kind of makes perfect sense. It's just a human way to get into tech. Even your fitness journey is, you bring tech into it. And I find that your ability to tell a personal story on the tech channel is very impressive to me.

1:17:15Thank you. But I would also say, I'm curious, because the trade-off of doing that is also a bit of lack of privacy. There's an opportunity to say, hey, this channel is about tech. Don't look into me. Don't look into my wife, my fiance, my family. Just look at the tech. uh opening that door is a decision at that scale at the scale of eight to ten million yeah you know it's it's a dramatic scale uh what is your relationship to opening that door to your personal life i would say i'm reserved naturally and with the first taste of success it was very much like i'm gonna do tech like i was very scared to say anything about myself But it's just been this very slow evolution of realizing that people resonate really, really well with it.

1:18:09Like it's very beneficial for them to know you. And it's also me noticing it about myself. Like all it actually takes is to see one video from a YouTuber that you really connect with to then just watch that YouTuber forever. That's true. And those peak videos stick in your mind at all times. So I guess I'm trying to create that feeling with the audience. You know, it's interesting. Your fitness transformation is kind of what brought me in. And granted, we were talking at that time as well. And I was personally getting to know you, but the fitness transformation, you were so honest in that video.

1:18:43You were talking about meditation and you didn't just say, I'm going to meditate. You were like, I've always struggled with meditation. And then you showed it was hard to do. You were like, for the first few days, it sucked. I just sat and I didn't get it. And that was very honest. And I was like, you're being honest in a way that's not, that doesn't feel like forced vulnerability or anything. It's just like straight up. I was like, I had that thought too. What I like too, is it in that it cuts to you and you're speaking to your phone and you go, oh, I get it. Yeah. And then it cuts back to you and your hosted version and you go, I didn't actually get it.

1:19:20Which I really like the like self-awareness of even replaying that moment because that's relatable too of kind of telling yourself i think i felt something i get it yeah yeah yeah it's it's it connects me to you more to know that you are self-aware in that way that's yeah it's good feedback actually like we're gonna try and do a lot more of that stuff just be real yeah the app not the app not the app okay got it you're not expanding into be real yeah okay got it yeah but it's it's similar to your when i watch your videos i think um Seeing that Apple video that you made about their events, you talked about how they always make it human, right?

1:19:59Everything is very human in an Apple event. And it always kind of connects you to how it's going to impact your real life. Yes. And I think your videos are that for tech reviews, right? You're like, yeah, I'm going to this is going to be a human experience. I'm a human, although I'm talking about this thing that's not human. I'm going to make this whole experience very human. And that is my opinion of what keeps me watching. But you are someone who's talked about watch time being very important to you. And obviously on YouTube, watch time is incredibly important. Can you explain why watch time matters to you and how you have thought about improving or increasing your watch time for your videos?

1:20:41Yeah, I thought about it in a very human way in that like, you know, if you're telling a story, you want the other person to be listening, right? You don't want them to just be like nodding like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so if I make a video and it has bad watch time, that's my equivalent of someone being like, nah, I'm not like this guy. I'm looking at you, but I'm not paying attention. Yeah, I'm not paying attention. Wow, that's a really powerful human visual. Yeah. I like that. that. So I want people to enjoy my videos enough that they don't have that feeling. Right. So that's the core of it.

1:21:13I guess it helps that your videos do better if people watch more. But the key thing is, are they satisfied? And this is something I'm thinking of more and more, because it used to just be watch time. That's all I would think of. But now it's more like if like potentially recapping, like if you've had a big story or a journey to get to the end, just being like, wasn't that incredible? Like we just did that. And it was amazing that we We did that. And I felt like this, even if it's not optimized, it's this kind of human satisfaction that's it's building like a goodwill towards your videos. This, this longer term play that means that the next time someone sees one of your thumbnails, they're like, oh, I remember how I felt during the last one.

1:21:52I'm going to click that. It's like a metric you don't see, but you, you experience it in the longterm. Let alone the way I felt at the very end. So like my last actual memory of the video, not just the way the entire video made me feel, but those extra 30 seconds at the end. Of the car video. Yeah, making sure that like there is some intentionality around feeling at the end of a video. Yeah. Because that is what people hopefully will remember. 100%. Even if it's not optimized for watch time. That's really interesting. Yeah. So I think optimization is important, but not everything. Earlier in the conversation, you talked about a video that you were like, that would be a one to two million view video.

1:22:31What is the difference between a 1 million view video, a 2 million, a 4 million, 10 million, 20 million? Like you've experienced all of those. Do you know what the difference is? Yeah. When we put a video out, we kind of, we already have an idea, a pretty strong idea of how it's going to do. Sometimes you do different videos for different reasons. Some video might have a sponsor that you really want to work with. So you do it. One of them might have like a passion project. One of it with tech channels is sometimes just for the core tech fans, because the things that lead you to have the biggest growth aren't necessarily the things that make you a tech channel, right?

1:23:09It's like the better the topic, the wider the funnel is, right? The number of potential people you can get. Everything else is just how well you execute on that, but you're naturally capped at how wide that funnel is. So this is why, like, before we decide we're making a video, it's title and thumbnail, right? Those two things have to pass the test. In the same way that before you sell a physical product, you do market research, right? You make sure there is actually demand for the thing you're about to try and fix the problem for. So that has to... So you can make an assumption, like buying the thinnest phones out there has a probably huge top funnel because it's an extremely visual experience.

1:23:53You don't have to be into tech. Then maybe reviewing one of the new iPhones than maybe the software, iOS. Yeah. Under that, maybe the nothing. Yeah, phone, maybe. And on the top of some of that is 50 facts about me. Somehow, somehow. Isn't that interesting? That was one you mentioned you didn't really expect, right? Not in the slightest. Because 8.5 or 9 million people interested in that is you're the subject. Yeah. And that, I think, in a channel that the subject is oftentimes this other object, you can maybe lose sight of, or I guess I'll ask the question, like the relationship to self-worth or like, am I the reason you're here?

1:24:36Or is this phone the reason you're here? I think people, you mentioned that we work like Apple and actually we do that in a lot of ways, some of which aren't as obvious. And one of them is we do a lot of things that we think are hard to recreate, but we don't tell people how we do them. So there's an implicit like mystery like how do I catch phones out of thin air? How do we suddenly transition the background while I'm sitting in the same spot? So there's unanswered questions with our channel and that creates I think a little bit of natural intrigue. That's good, I like that a lot. That's really good.

1:25:13It's fun. So you said earlier that we're at the bleeding edge of media which is really, I love that phrase, but it is true. And then when I watch your videos you've gotten to a point with your hosting where sometimes it feels like you're at a caliber that is of a television host, a really seasoned television host. Do you ever think that you would do a project that is on something like a Netflix? I have not thought about that. That was pretty cool, if that ever came about. I did a short film once for Xiaomi. It's like a phone company. And my dad was saying to me, Aaron, you're so good on camera.

1:25:55You know, you're, you're so natural. You're like the people on TV. I don't know if that's a higher bar than YouTube. Like, I don't know if YouTube is actually the place to be. It kind of feels like a lot of the people who are traditionally famous want to be famous on YouTube. Right. Yeah. Because I guess that's the fastest way to reach someone directly. Right. Yeah. And it's also, you have control over it. It's relatively democratic. Yeah. It's a direct line to the audience. So I think I find it cool in the same way that I'd find like me on a billboard cool or me in a magazine, but I don't think it would be the next step.

1:26:29Yes. For me, it's any of those traditional environments is when my parents like really understand what I do, like a magazine we were in, you know, featured in Rolling Stone magazine and they were like, Oh, now I get it. Which is always a nice, it's a nice moment because like your friends and family get it in that moment because they aren't on YouTube all the time. Like, you know, maybe some other friends or audience members. It's hard for them to get excited about the watch time of your latest video. Yeah. Let me show you this retention. Yeah. Yeah. What is the business of Mr. Who's the Boss? Is it, you know, primarily AdSense?

1:27:03Is it AdSense and sponsorships? Is there something else? Probably 50 % AdSense sponsorships. Oh, wow. We don't do much like affiliate stuff or anything because it's a gray area with the integrity of the channel. For sure. And so you don't accept sponsorships from tech brands, or do you? Sometimes we do. The general rule is like, if I would talk about this anyway, yes. You'll take it. But we also do a lot of digging into like, is it good? Yeah. Which I think is like what a lot of channels don't do with their sponsors. So like, you know, like there might be a wallet company, for example, and you know that their product is worth$20, but they'll sell it for$100 because it's got the YouTubers' names behind it.

1:27:47It's kind of leveraging that. That's the kind of thing we wouldn't cover. Interesting. And it's also the kind of thing I would never release. You know, like we've thought about product a lot of times. The challenge with that is you're up against companies who just have more economies of scale than you. We would never release something that we're like, this already exists, it's cheaper by that company, and it's just as good. Yeah, that makes sense. Because in a sense, you're under the spotlight. Like the tech audience is very, very looking out for the details, right? And you're going to be compared.

1:28:17Yeah. How do you, knowing that you'll be compared, how does competition affect you? In what sense? In the sense of maybe watching other people do things that they got maybe from your videos or watching another tech channel and going, ah, that's faster. It's better than we even would have done it. Yeah, we have it a bit. like we like to be first and best, but it's a constant thing we ask ourselves, like, even though it would be nice to be the first to cover something, is that what we want? Because if you're the first, I think in the tech world, you can't also be the best, right? So the way we see it is if we accept the fact that we're not first and we accept the fact that we want to be the best.

1:29:03So every time we make a video, we're leaving a lasting impression on the viewer that's building that long-term goodwill and that sort of positive energy towards your channel, that's a better long-term play. Because if you're someone who just chases, okay, the new iPhone's out, I'm going to post the first video on the new iPhone. You're a new source, right? The person, someone comes for the update. Whereas we don't want to be that. We want to be the person who people want to watch every video from, regardless of what it's on. And maybe regardless of when it came out, they can go back and watch, right?

1:29:35Yeah. And it's also, it's just a more stressful lifestyle to be constantly chasing the news. Like we do it to some extent, but if you tell yourself, okay, I've got to release the video the same day that news is announced, you'll never want to take a holiday or do anything. I also think there's better platforms for that. I think Twitter is where I go for news. If something just happened, I'm going to Twitter. That's how I operate. And then after a day or so, if I want a really well thought out explanation of what just happened, I'm going to YouTube. So you wait before going. Because I want someone to collect their thoughts before I don't want, like, the immediate reaction I'm going to get on Twitter, right?

1:30:14That's true. So I would rather get collected thoughts and well-articulated thoughts when it comes to, like, we always talk about, like, you want to be early and better, not necessarily first. Right. Like, it's good to be early because that's, the interest is there. But you do want to be early and better, not necessarily first. Yeah. And also because we kind of know that our video is naturally going to a wider audience, there's this higher sense of like responsibility. Like you have that brand to uphold. It can't be below a certain level. Interesting. So you're aware of the scale of your audience when you're obviously.

1:30:47I think so. I think we know what a Mr. Who's the Boss video is in our mind. And I assume the audience has the same kind of perception. We don't want to shock that perception. It will have some editing. It will have some music. Right. Do you feel competitive with Marquez? No, I'd say we see him as like a friend. There's a lot to learn. He's also hard to not, like he's so kind and fun to talk to and sweet that it's hard to be like, that's my enemy. You know, that would be hard. But does it push you and your team that he is there? Yeah, I'd say it's good to have like people who like are on the same level as you, who are doing what you're doing.

1:31:25Like when I was at the start and I had like an objective, I wanted to be like the largest tech channel in the UK. That was the goal. And so that fueled me that that was like a rocket fuel moment because I was like, how do I do this? This one objective is the singular thing I want in my life. Every decision I make can be geared towards doing that. And that's what made me go crazy. That's what made me do one video every single day, for example. And it made that process more satisfying because I had that end goal in mind. So in the same way, this gives us like a goal. It gives us a point of reference.

1:32:03yeah what's your relationship with achieving that goal though of being the best channel in the uk being the biggest tech channel in the uk so why did i want to achieve that goal uh and even what does it feel like now that you've achieved it it felt really really cool i remember at the time i like changed my like banner and stuff to like the largest tech channel i think it was in like my email signature and stuff as well. So that was, that was a great moment. Um, but then after we're a bit, we were like, actually the UK is kind of small on the global scale. We don't want to just be like a UK channel, right?

1:32:36We want to be the largest tech community on the planet. And then, yeah, then the objective changes. It's pretty big jump from the UK to planet. You could have gone Europe or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, going, going back to the kind of like healthy competition thing. I think that's when you're at your best. Yeah. I don't think you're at your best when you achieve everything and you just sit at the top and you know, you're the best, right? I think it's the journey. It's constantly getting better with a even potentially unreachable goal at the end. Yeah. Agreed. Um, is your audience us based or do you think about that?

1:33:16And when you say the planet, are you thinking about dubbing and multi-language audio? And how do you become the biggest? That's a good question. Yeah, so US is number one, closely followed by India. And then UK would be number three. And yeah, so we're already naturally very global, considering like tech, like anyone can find tech interesting, right? And everyone at different stages, even country development is excited in the latest that's happening. Yeah. So we have actually looked into AI dubbing. I don't know if you've seen like Papercup, the company, for example. We haven't seen that company, but we've, we've been working on AI dubbing as well and voice cloning and all that.

1:33:57It's really, really interesting what they can do. My hesitation with it is that I feel like YouTube is also working on a similar feature. They are. Natively. Yes. Yeah. So I'm almost like hesitant to commit myself to like a big deal with one of these dubbing companies. Because I also think like, it's really good in the stage it is, but right now it feels like a knockoff version of your normal videos in English. And so if you're making, let's say I make an iPhone review in the UK and in the US, that iPhone review stands as one of the best iPhone reviews on YouTube. Once you dub it, all the text that was written on screen, all the graphics, all the speech that's tailored towards an English audience, you lose all of that.

1:34:40And so you're sitting there, even the information is different for let's say like a Mexican viewer. So you're sitting there next to Mexican YouTubers who are like hyper tailored to the market they're in. Is that what you want Mr. Who's the Boss to be known for? Like to be a slightly less good version of the local YouTubers? Interesting. Like a cheaper brand in another country. That's really like a knockoff almost version. Yeah, that's super interesting. And a really, the thing that we're running into right now is dialect is challenging, right? With AI voice cloning. And then terminology, culturally, the way I say something in English does not really translate in Spanish sometimes.

1:35:19Right? Like I'm saying sentences that are uniquely American. And it will happen more and more with our context. It's very highbrow, like intelligent, sophisticated, nuanced points you're making. And then like when you get AI to do voices for you, even things like saying the word Apple, right? The AI needs to understand I'm not talking about an apple. Yeah, totally. I mean, there's a sentence that we're working on this AI dub of one of our Mr. Beast videos. And I say, man, it's cool to be here. And in Spanish, it translates to hombre. And that's just not something culturally that they would say, right?

1:36:00They would not, in the same way that in America, we say, man, that's cool. That's not a cultural thing that they say there. So there's a lot that's going to need to improve to make it truly global. Obviously, Jimmy's doing it with real humans who can read the script and go, okay, actually, this is how we would say it. Then you're dealing with speed. With your videos, you know, like the speed at which you deliver something in English, there might be way more words in Korean to be able to say what you just said. So now the video is operating at a place where the speed at which the Korean or Japanese or Mandarin needs to be said is exponentially faster than the cut of the video.

1:36:38I didn't even, yeah, consider that, but that's a major problem. It's a major problem with people who are editing the amount that you're cutting, right, too. And so I think it's complex in the AI, like to do this with AI, because it almost strips us of what makes us uniquely human in different cultures. And then you lose what we've been talking about is your videos are human. Yeah. Now I've lost that in another country. A hundred percent. Yeah. I think we made the decision based on that without realizing we made the decision based on that. Yeah. But yeah, so for now, I think it's not good enough.

1:37:17And having a human dub our videos is just not time sensitive enough. Yeah. And it's very expensive. Yeah. And it's expensive. It's not a cheap thing to do. Plus, like, I guess in a way, English is the highest monetizing language. Right. So like to pay extra to then access some of like the Hindi market or the Spanish market. Which is a lower CPM and yeah, there's not native advertising that you can do for that market yet. And I think also brands coming to you will want to know then, if you've got a Spanish dub, is each view you get on average worth less to them? That's a really interesting point.

1:37:50Those are all really good points for the use case for waiting, for dubbing. It almost makes what Jimmy was doing earlier make more sense of saying Mr. Who's the Paz in Espanol as its own channel, as its own syndicated content, rather than all baked into one video. Obviously, for scale, it's like it should be baked into one video, but it creates all types of new data considerations. Yeah. Is the watch time impacted? Like if the watch time in Spanish is 10 percent. It would be, right? It would be, right? And then the watch time in English is actually 80 percent. What just happened to the watch time?

1:38:23that's a really good point yeah there's so many considerations when it comes to multi-language audio that i think there's it's very exciting to roll out but like we have to take a step back and say wait how is this what does this all mean to syndicate like that i also feel like the culture of watching things that are not in your naked while naked yeah that are not in your native language is like becoming more acceptable like you boot up netflix korean show indian show and And I think like in my friend group, everyone wants to watch it the way it was shot, not the dub version. With subtitles. With subtitles.

1:38:56Yeah, I watched Squid Game with subtitles, which was really nice. Because it captures that human emotion. Right, yeah. And as AI enters our world, we're going to crave things that are uniquely human. We're going to crave more human experiences. Does actually AI in content creation scare you guys? it it scares me in the sense of my voice and colin's voice are some of the most available voices on the internet we're we're out there for two hours at a time and our voices have been cloned for you know ads that play for casinos and stuff and like what yeah like it's already that just happened we just had to get something taken down and like i had to sit down with my family and say, hey, if you get a call from me, we're going to have to come up with a secret word because my voice is so available that people are cloning my voice.

1:39:51So that scares me. I don't think we are prepared at all as a society for the scale at which AI is going to impact us. Yeah, the influx of audio and video that will be indistinguishable and unable to really tell if it's real or AI is going to be something we are definitely not ready for. Yeah. Everyone is a content creator, right? Everyone is uploading content to the internet. So we are essentially open sourcing our essence, right? Saying, hey, here's what I look like. Here's what I sound like. Here's how I dress. Here's how I'll most likely respond. Yeah. Here's how I type. Here's how I respond in email.

1:40:30Here's how I text, right? It's all like relatively open source. So as you start pulling these identities, whether or not it's for malicious intent or even commercial intent, what if in the future a phone company says, we're actually going to create our own avatar of a phone reviewer? And we really like Mr. Who's the Boss and how he delivers. So we're going to take some of his elements and we're actually just going to create a VTuber that delivers. What happens then? Is that your IP if it's delivered in the same way? What if they pull partially of what they like from you and partially what they like from Marquez and unbox therapy?

1:41:06And they just say, we're going to combine these into an avatar. It's not unfeasible given that the way data is trained now, like the way AI is trained now, like it'll learn what every artist, the way they work. How do we know that people aren't just building models already based on, hey, ingest every one of Mr. Who's the Boss videos? Scripts, style, voice. Like the doc that you've made for your editors could be made much easier. If an AI got that. If an AI just scanned your videos, it could probably make the doc in a way more detailed way that you couldn't even. It's like the average amount of seconds we go before a cut is this.

1:41:42Jeez, yeah. I mean, yeah, you're not wrong. And I see a lot of YouTubers on Twitter, for example, saying they're getting hold of AI. They can see the end of creators because this AI can just make the videos for you. That scares me. I don't know if it's the end of creators. I think it will all change. Like, you know, when I was, I was working in Hollywood before, you know, I took to YouTube and like, I remember that conversation too, of like, this is the end of, you know, Hollywood as we knew it. And like, everything still kind of ends up coexisting. And, you know, what about the end of radio? Like, what did radio end because podcasting?

1:42:20No, radio still exists. Content will not end. People will always want to consume content, but it's the skills required to deliver that content will change. They will change. Yeah. Agreed, which they have already. Yeah. But it's scary in the sense that I know I've hit the jackpot with YouTube right now. It turns out that the skills I have developed really align with what viewers want to see. I can't guarantee that in a new world with a new set of requirements, I will be as well adapted. True. So you can't control that whether AI comes into the picture or not. But AI changes the paradigm in a way that you just need to always make sure you're at the cutting edge.

1:42:58Thankfully, being a tech channel, we are quite versed in it. But it's this constant checking, like this constant creeping feeling of like, what if there's a new program that allows you to do this? And we're spending three hours doing it. Other people can do it in 10 seconds. I mean, that happened to us with post-production with podcasting. We use a program called Autopod that will automatically cut all of these angles for us. That's like, how much time is that saving you? An entire day. Multiple days, actually, because a two-hour conversation cut by a human to make sure that when you're talking, it's on you, when we're talking, it's on us, when we're all talking, it's on the wide.

1:43:32The fact that we can do that now in just under 60 seconds for two to three hours is crazy, insane. It's opened up a lot though for us, right? Like that opens up time. It opens up, that's also like the tough part of editing. It's like the monotonous part. And so now you can go, okay, that part is done by AI. Now what's the creative part, right? You're right, but it's helpful for you because you've twigged early and done it. Yes. So like if you were you, but you hadn't made that decision, you'd actually be falling behind. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's more stuff that we're unaware of that could impact it.

1:44:07But yeah, I don't know. I do think anyone who's not playing with AI on a regular basis, I mean, Colin knows. I pull him to sit next to me and I play with Mid Journey all the time and learn new prompts and show him what I'm learning. And I like the one that we, I showed you the other night was just jaw dropping. on mid-journey yeah yeah the knolling uh yeah yeah it was it was jaw-dropping to look at these images and say a photographer plot like it's like an editorial magazine shoot essentially that i created with uh a human and um you know like a bunch of stuff around them like perfectly laid out like a flat lay and it like all made by ai yeah yeah within a matter of seconds and it's like i'm looking at the future of like photography modeling magazine layouts editorial content like that to me is dramatic what's about to happen when when a fashion brand my family runs a clothing brand when they can upload the dress to ai and say use this dress and give me this type of model in this type of environment with this type of lighting uh and in a matter of seconds you have your campaign shot that is um a dramatic difference in creative right content And so, yeah, it does make you think what happens to us, right?

1:45:24Like, is there less room for creators if AI exists? Because fewer people will be able to make more stuff. Whereas people only have a limited number of time. We'll find out. I don't know. I do think this is one of the most dramatic shifts since I got the internet in my house, right? Like this to me feels like the most dramatic shift and it's yet to be seen. We didn't know what that was gonna be like when we all logged on to AOL. You know, we had no idea what was about to happen. I think we're at that same moment in time. And for creators, a lot has changed recently. Short form content changed the nature of our business.

1:46:05dramatically. I think AI is about to change it. And I'm curious for you, as you look to the future, we mentioned that tech is changing at really, at least hardware feels like it's changing in nominal ways. Software is changing a lot more dramatically with AI. Is that kind of how you see the next, like when you're looking out at the rest of the year, how planned out are you with your videos? Do you know that, okay, these big tech launches are in my calendar. I know these are coming? Or is it kind of week to week? Like, oh, this sounds cool. Like, how do those, how did the, how did the decisions on what to make come about?

1:46:42So there's, there's key windows of time, which you kind of assume you're not going to book anything in like an Apple launch, a Samsung launch. Yeah. Apart from that, it's generally very short notice. So like most things will be like, Hey, can you fly to Madrid next week? Kind of thing. Someone saying to you. Yeah. So you kind of have to be quite responsive. But I more and more want to engineer my life so that I don't have to worry about that. I don't want to have to constantly change my plans and not commit to things. Because that's also a problem on a personal level. You know, like one of my best friends got married in India last year.

1:47:21And I didn't go. And I feel bad for not going. And I hate the fact that I felt like I couldn't go. but it was just this feeling of like what if someone tells me they need me there for a video and it's really important so you didn't even have other plans necessarily like you could have attended but it was basically like it was a zone that was high risk for something coming up it was like a period of time where i know there's a good chance something comes up but i didn't know and so i kind of i what i would have wanted to say is i can't confirm or deny but when it comes to like planning a wedding you have to confirm or deny yeah i experienced this recently with a friend's wedding um the fear of loss of opportunity is a significant one exactly that yes because we are working do you have a fear that you'll lose your position as the number one tech channel in the uk is that where that because i've had to really unpack where my fear comes from Hmm.

1:48:21It's probably something I could benefit from doing, really thinking. But what it's meant is like I've tried to make a document with Drisha about the hierarchy of how I should make decisions so that I can do so without regret. Because I'm constantly having this battle of that family friend's wedding is great, but is it important enough that I should sacrifice this video? Well, Indian culture also, we get invited to like a distant, distant, distant friend. Yeah. You know. Yeah. And my gut tells me I don't want to go to that. That's not a good use of my time. Right. But I want to do so knowing that I've made the right decision.

1:49:00So I'm trying to build like a framework for making these decisions for me, essentially. An AI. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just build AI for it. Yeah. Should I go to this wedding? Does that ever make you feel like an outlier? I think it's interesting, like starting as someone who maybe felt like they didn't fit in, then feeling like you really fit in on YouTube. Then you've gotten to a point where your life is so unique that you have to make a checklist and a framework for whether you should attend someone's wedding or an event. Do you ever sit and go, oh my gosh, I've now taken myself to a place where I have problems that really not many people have and no one can understand?

1:49:37There's a bit of that. But I think it's always nice that there's always other creators who do understand. And I think more recently I've built up some creator friends. That really helps. That does help. It's super important. These conversations, we always say, sometimes we sit with creators on mic or off mic. And there's some things that get discussed that you just can't say in a casual environment. Yes. If even if you led with that, you're like, I'm trying to create a document to decide if I can go to events or not. I would understand that. Yeah. You know, and that's like that's a really funny thing to to connect over.

1:50:16But the emotion, the feeling you have is I would like to be someone who can go to these events, make the decision. Yeah. In a fashion that I trust. And that's easy. Yeah. Without the guilt. Without the guilt. Yeah. Without the regret and the guilt. Yeah. that's that's also like probably just classic entrepreneurship startup founder you know like that is you're always sacrificing you're like especially on the internet where it's just infinite the opportunity is infinite right there's no cap on the opportunity of the internet so you actually even in this moment you you're kind of negotiating like is this the right use of my time or technically could i be you know working on a video of mine or tomorrow when you're at breakfast It's like, yes, I could be here, but I also could be editing or reviewing a cut.

1:51:05And there's these constant trade-offs that you have to get really comfortable with. What's your position on that? You know, what's fulfilling to you? What's happiness? What's time, space? All of that. Because the internet will not tell you. It's not a job. It's not clock out at this time. It's always here for you. You can always refresh YouTube Studio. You can always look at your data. You can always. It's just constant. And because there's such a clear link between your output and what you get back from it, you just want to keep doing it. Yeah, it's crazy also because the arrows go green and then they go gray.

1:51:41And so it's built to keep you on, right? It's built to keep you on the cycle because you don't want those arrows to go gray. I guess there's this fear in the back of my mind that things might not stay the way they are. it's this awareness that things are great and i need to constantly tell myself this is good this is what i always wanted but just it may not always be like what's youtube in 10 years if someone asked me like what will i be doing in that period of time ahead i could not tell them who knows do you have aspirations though of building like a broader tech media brand like what the verge is or wired or you know is that kind of the vision for this is like hey let's build a scalable tech media brand or is it always it's me it's something that i've just started thinking about now basically now that drish has joined the team it's giving me the space a little bit to be able to think what do i want but i'm also aware that being able to think what do i want is in itself a privilege right it's a sign that yeah you should just like you should just be happy yeah it's such a luxury totally i would think that some of the next chapter could include written content about tech.

1:52:55Because I think you have very keen attention to detail about storytelling and how to make this stuff make sense and be uniquely human. And written content is scalable. And if you have a desire to potentially, at some point, safeguard against yourself as a creator, obviously we've invested quite a bit in written content. I just think written content is something that maybe us creators don't think about as much, but there's good comps in technology. That's very interesting. Yeah, newsletters have crossed my mind a lot. And the benefit of that is I can really set it up exactly the way I want it, and then there's a process.

1:53:36But yeah, that's food for thought. I do, like, when I was younger, I would look at traditional tech journalists as if they were like God's gift to mankind. They are the definitive authority on tech. It was only when I met a lot of these journalists that I was like, you actually don't know this as well as I do. It was this kind of understanding that I am one of them too. And I can be an authority on this. So you're not wrong. Where does this genre go in the next chapter? Is there space for more creators in the tech review genre? It's been one of the most prominent genres on YouTube since I started watching.

1:54:20But does it have a future? I think it's, if you're established, it's a really good industry to be in. Because you almost, it's carried by the things you're covering in a sense, right? Tech is becoming the world. Tech is at the top of the news cycle. By being the person who people come to to learn tech, you are that. But what it's really hard to do in tech now, I think, is to become known because it's much harder to be trusted as a person who gives a definitive opinion on how to spend your money compared to someone who can make you laugh. Becoming someone who's known for entertainment, I think, is easier because you just have to answer the question, do I find this video fun?

1:55:05Whereas to find, like to become a new tech reviewer, someone has to really build up an understanding of your natural biases and a real trust for the advice you give them. Interesting. I think the way that will happen will be similar to how you reviewed software. And that was your competitive advantage and your niche that as tech enters every part of the world, there will be some creators who are known at first for just reviewing tech in the kitchen or just tech in certain parts of a car or tech in the workplace, tech in sports. There will be so many niches, I think, where people can probably get their first entry into building that trust with a very like-minded person who's like, oh yeah, I'm also into tech in sports.

1:55:48And then maybe they get to expand over time like the way that you did. It's definitely always my advice to new creators is start with a niche because you're much more likely to make something that the bigger YouTubers aren't doing. Yeah, true. Yeah, true. because it's too small for them. Because it's too small for them. Yeah, that's a really good point. I get a lot of people who are like, why did you not cover this small phone? And there's an element of like, I don't have enough time in my life to cover every phone. I've got to really pick the ones that I think will make the biggest impact. Yeah, from a viewership perspective.

1:56:22Yeah, because in a sense, that's also an indication of what's most interesting to the vast majority of people. Yeah, true. Well, cool, man. what's uh what's success look like for you this year okay if you get to the end of 2023 what for you is like that was a successful year this is yeah this is going to be like a bumper year essentially because i spent a long time me being the ceo the everything for this company so being only very recently starting to think about how to do i've only recently started to realize i'm very overwhelmed and therefore get in the structures in place to take that off my plate and be able to think about the bigger picture.

1:57:04So like, I'm really, really excited about what we're going to do this year, but I don't fully know what that looks like because I've just unlocked the space to be able to give it. Yeah, that's powerful. What an exciting place to be. What a great moment to have this conversation and to look back on it and be like, that was a moment. I'll commit myself now. Cool, man. Thank you so much for the conversation. This was really fun. This was really, really fun, man. Yeah. Thank you.

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