The Art of Reinvention on YouTube - ft Speeed

32:25Samir Chaudry:When they were at BuzzFeed, what they told us was there was one day, there's four of them. And the show concept was these four guys go try something. And they got pulled into a meeting and they were like, we don't think it's efficient for all four of you to go try something? Can just one of you do it in an episode? And I think that is a metaphor for the turning point of all of these companies of how do we get a little more efficient with this media? Do we actually need the four guys to go do it?

32:58Colin Rosenblum:And prioritizing efficiency over the show that's actually performing the best. So looking at the show that's the hit and being like it's not working yeah right yeah yeah i am pretty adamantly against the concept of like efficiency being good i think it's been shoved down our throats like convenience and efficiency it's like some of the best stuff ever is extremely inefficient like kind of like everything we're working towards is to be allowed to be inefficient and so i think like especially i think especially in that time where like so much money was going into youtube from like private equity and like big like buzzfeed and donut and stuff like there you kind of forget that it is an artistic thing you know and 100 and once you start cutting stuff that like doesn't make sense to like some guy it's like well i mean this is like a tale as old as entertainment i guess the bean counters man it's like you know you you you start whittling away the magic like wasting time is kind of the

34:03Samir Chaudry:point yeah i felt like there was this moment in time where a creator or like media startups started getting treated like tech startups where venture money came in and the assumption was like let's let's pour gas on the fire of what's working let's increase the output of this product and our users which is like the audience, but let's decrease the cost. And I think you can do that in software. You can solve how that math equation works in software. But over here, you're solving how that works with like people's emotions. Cause the second, you know, the, the four try guys are like, no, the show's the four of us going out and having fun.

34:41Samir Chaudry:That's a dynamic. The second you're like, can it just be one of you? Your emotional connection to it is lost. And I don't think at the, the, the largest scale, people understood that if you lose the emotional, like if you guys stop caring about the show that's that the show stops totally and that's actually a really bizarre thing in business and i think probably a misguided um assumption of how you can invest in media companies or how you can invest in creator companies yeah it's super fragile it's very fragile yeah yeah and i think like someone especially if it's like a new boss or like a new superior or something if someone comes in and gives you that note that's like could it just be one of the guys could it be a try guy like i just feel like that's so disheartening because like you're you're like wait you're in charge yeah like you don't get my boss and like you don't get it at all like you don't even get why this is good or you you once got it but you now your mind is in the spreadsheet right and like Like you've created a situation where you don't have a choice.

35:50Colin Rosenblum:Were there any specific moments at Donut where the two of you felt that on a specific piece of content where you're like, damn, this really isn't the same type of experience but on the same type of agency. The things that we value are not valued and we need to move on. I don't know if we have one as clear-cut as the Try Guys example. This is pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Ours was sort of like a slow whittling away of our enthusiasm. Yeah. I think like once like scheduling kind of took over and there were like five hosts and I think also like Donut, we kind of like blew up during COVID. And so we were very, we were very much individual creators or like these individual show teams when we were all just like making our own shows and then uploading them to the same channel and kind of like waving the same banner and like wearing the same logo on our shirts and i think i don't want to discount how big of a part of the um sort of like vibe of donut that was like we were sort of like i've always been attracted to like collectives um and i think in a lot of ways donut very much was like this collective of individuals that sort of just like repped the same set um and then once we got back into like that big studio and especially once we got um acquired yeah the efficiency and like okay well we'll have like james here and then he's got to like go over here and like it it was like wildly inefficient before um and we were kind of like on our own schedules like i would shoot at night a whole bunch or like uh early donut like jesse and i would like go in on saturday and shoot or like i'd like rewrite this whole thing like an entire script right before we shot and so like once it got like super dialed um between like where the hosts were and started treating i think when it started treating all the online or on-air guys as like um resources like nodes nodes to like move around like you will be creative during this time yeah and then you go to this room and then you do your thing that you do stupid and like i think that was like the moment for me where I was like, this isn't the same.

38:20And yeah, it started treating, yeah, the guys who were talking as equipment kind of, I think.

38:29Samir Chaudry:So you guys got acquired by Recurrent Ventures. And did you know about that prior to it or no? Before we got acquired? Yeah. Yeah. Because one thing you said in your video of why I left Donut, you said the original sin of Donut was that you guys weren't equity partners, that you didn't have equity yeah i mean they raised money to start donut um and i think from the beginning donut had a lot of like ownership that was never in the building got it um and so i think that was the original that was the end of it yeah yeah and we were kind of nobody's um when we started you know so we didn't we didn't even know uh you know that we of course Nor was that even like a, probably a thought at that time.

39:18Samir Chaudry:But as it grew, like, again, it's like a lot of media companies are based on the talent. Like people follow people. Yeah. And I think you guys proved that as you've started over on YouTube on a separate channel. like um when when you left donut did you have were there any fears of like losing even the like the the audience the validation the like any of the things that came from being on a channel that was very beloved yeah yes certainly there was a night where i was like i was like literally i was like i've ruined my life like i had it pretty good and I've ruined my life. Was that... Anything deeper on that?

40:07Samir Chaudry:Was that rooted in financial stability? Was that rooted in like just the whole... Identity. The identity of being on Donut. What was that? Where were you when you were... I was in my... I think I was in my bedroom or like I have a mirror between my bathroom and my bedroom. I was like, I was looking in the mirror. I was like, idiot. We had just put out our... We just put out our first video, I think is what you're talking about. And the first couple of days, it took a while to catch because we had just made a new YouTube channel. And so the algorithm had no clue. And so basically all the views came from James's Instagram account and the analytics source.

40:50And we're like, hmm, that doesn't seem good because it's usually super low.

40:54Samir Chaudry:So you spin up a new channel and you do the YLF donut. That's like classic. you leave a media company why i left buzzfeed was like a meta yeah yeah uh in and of itself and you do that but like today that video has almost eight million views so in those first few days first few days it had less than 100k okay got it uh yeah i was like i've ruined my life um but then within a couple days the algorithm like found us or something and i woke up on we released it on thursday i woke up on sunday and like the graph was like straight up and i was like i just started crying i was like oh my god really like thank god yeah because i was like i was like i've wildly overestimated how much people liked me i guess they just like donut yeah you know um and so there was like it's not just the performance of the video it's how much

41:45Colin Rosenblum:you think people care about what you've spent the last nine or whatever years it was yeah on this project totally i'm not like good at anything else like i'm i found this like weird thing where it's like and i'm like kind of funny and i kind of teach you stuff funny you know i'm like so grateful that i've been able to build a pretty neat little life for myself based on that but yeah we put out the video and like oh i guess nobody liked it i was pretty confident that some people would follow and like we gave each other like a talk like jesse and i went to lunch with like a guy Billy and then like on the way parks yeah like while we were super bummed about it and uh like I was like you know what dude like to Jesse I was like we did it before we're gonna do it again brick by brick like we didn't bring a lot of the audience over with us but we'll just build a new one like they're out there and then it like it ended up being okay that video too it's not like it's just a 15 minute talking head video it's 45 minutes with a lot of music and people like that's also part of it you put a lot of time into that video and it requires a lot of

42:55Samir Chaudry:my time as a viewer to watch that which is i think maybe what people don't think about too much is that the weekends are like the big like you put it out on thursday people are looking at that and being like i don't have 45 minutes right now i got 45 minutes on saturday yeah i don't have 45 minutes right now we've noticed with recent really long videos like the camping video like yeah they'll perform better starting on the weekend but uh like that video has had a peak during prime time so like people would watch it like after work yes eating dinner yeah it'd feel really cool yeah i mean that's it's because people are watching youtube on tvs so it makes a ton of

43:33Colin Rosenblum:sense yeah do you have a sense of how much new audience you found maybe not with the why i left donut but like you know i did not follow you at donut i did not watch why i left donut when it came out i really came across you pretty much for the first time with the carhartt video which i think is video number two right do you know how much explain that video so the carhartt video i believe was a history basically of carhartt and and deep dive into the brand yeah and that's the video that was the first true speed how did you come across that video i'm wearing car hearts right now yeah i'm like i'm like a speed like i'm not the speed man but i'm like an aspiring speed man.

44:15Samir Chaudry:It's hard for me to imagine you coming across that video naturally.

44:17Colin Rosenblum:Really? Like a deep dive about a brand? Yeah. Okay. No, that's actually like how I came about you. And I was like, oh, this is cool. This is the type of stuff I'm into. Do we know how much audiences knew? I mean, it's hard to say. I think anecdotally, obviously a huge percentage of it is Donut, but I would say anecdotally in the comments, especially in the last few months in particular, there's been a lot more of like I didn't even know you at Donut, but like, this is, this is great. So I mean, I didn't,

44:48Samir Chaudry:I didn't watch Donut, but I watched Speed. Uh, I, what, what was the plan though when you guys left? Cause I remember Colin and I also left a media company to start calling it Samir. Yeah. We had no plan and it showed for years, for years. You guys, I mean, when we, when we met, I remember sitting on, on our couch at our, at our old studio and you told me what Speed was going to be. And you said it was, you were going to modernize the men's magazine. And I was like, wow, that's, that's really interesting. But I was like, is that going to work? Who knows? Like, I don't even know what these guys are talking about really, but like you guys had a vision for it very clearly.

45:29Samir Chaudry:Um, and I said this to you guys on the phone, but I've only seen two people execute a vision like that. One was when Cleo Abram told me the idea for huge of true. And two is when you guys told me the idea for speed, um, where those visions actually came to life exactly. But prior, like when you guys left Donut, was this the idea? Okay, we're going to start our own channel. We know how to build a show team. We know how to make weekly videos. We like making videos together. But was there a clear cut idea of what this was and what the business was going to be? And like, did you have a business plan or was it just like, we're just going to keep doing what we do, but just not in this company anymore.

46:02Samir Chaudry:We're going to do it over here. I would say that we assumed that we were going to do something together but there very much was not a plan around it um like i actually quit i quit before james because he was under contract but uh i quit and just went to new york for like a couple months to like not think about videos especially car videos um and james and i talked a you know a bit back and forth and james would volley like different variations of like a car channel kind of concepts what if we like bought this kind of car and like built a drift car like i learned how to drift and like you know she was like that sucks and i think like the natural thought was like yeah i guess we'll just like do what i the part of that i did it donut alone and i think that jesse being so uninterested in car content like definitely influenced me having to like think about other ideas um because like whatever we were gonna do we had to be excited about it and so i started thinking about like what we did like i think when we started at donut we were a lot younger um and i think we kind of only liked cars but like because our job became cars we had to find other things that we liked and i also from donut was like i think we're like older now you know we have like we've had jobs for a number of years and like we were able to sort of like indulge in other parts of life you know so like i got especially like designing merch for donut and like the apparel program like we like started liking fashion and like i'd say like at the end of donut i wasn't really paying attention to car media as much as i was like menswear and like it's still a big deal when a menswear guy will like dm me or like follow me like that's kind of how i felt early on at donut when you know a guy from hoonigan would like follow me be like dude fucking leery from throwing fits like dm'd me dude um yeah uh and so that kind of started the the thoughts of like okay cool like we have learned how to do all this stuff maybe it's not cars at all and then zach redpath was the first person i pitched the idea of speed to and it was like donut but with menswear i was like so i'll do like history of like supreme i'll do like the history of carhartt um and i'll do like these video essays based on like um like menswear stuff like fashion stuff and that'll be the first thing i do because that was the first thing i did at donut and from there i know that we can like read that and then start these other formats based on it and so like eventually we'll do like product testing videos and eventually like we'll figure out some like travel format and we'll like grow it but because of what we did at donut we know that we can start with this like little thing that i can shoot in my dining room and we can figure out how to put a video out like pretty consistently and i think within a couple weeks it of like air and i told it to zach first and i told it to matt levin who who was the CEO of Donut, I told it to both of them to make sure that they thought it was a good idea before I told Jesse, because I know that Jesse respects both of those guys.

49:44And if I was like, well, Zach and Matt think it's a good idea. Then you could sell him on it. Yeah, he might be more excited. And so he was, and we started doing it. And then I think within a couple weeks, we realized, you know what, I actually do really like cars. And so we should do some car stuff. um and so like yeah the way we think about it now is like speed is like a men's magazine like a men's style magazine but like cars are part of a man's style and so i think it would be cool if gq had car stuff in it and so that's just kind of like what it is but that's that's not typical

50:23Samir Chaudry:youtube advice right like a typical youtube advice today is like hey you got to be pretty pretty sure about who you're talking to and what the subject matter is you're talking to and I guess those are two different things of like pick a niche which is like in my head is a subject matter like finance is a niche or you know our first business was in lacrosse like that's a niche but then you guys approached it as like hey we're actually going to talk to a specific person which is also a niche like a demographic is a person but it's harder to it's more abstract in my head yeah I wouldn't say it's not the smartest way to do it um but i also don't think that if we came out with the james pump free car channel that it would be as successful as speed you know i think we're trying our best and this is as good as it can be right now like successful wise too um and i don't know like i think i i mean there's a million things that like went into that i think that like when we started donut we were in meetings with brands and like investors and stuff and we would have to explain to them what a niche was and like what niche content was and like millennials like to like watch something about like one thing and like we're explaining the concept of what is youtube now essentially and then when we started speed like we would get that note from like agencies or like money guys or whatever like yeah but like you really should be doing like niche stuff yeah yeah pick a lane and i kind of feel like that's not really their job to to tell us what is cool and like what the wave is like that's my job and as soon as like somebody like that is like you know what you need to do and like they're all saying the same thing like my thought was like yeah that's over like that wave is over if like if you know what i'm supposed to do then i don't think that's what i'm supposed to do anymore and i think that like identity is different now and i think for a long time people like really decided to be a thing and they were just like that thing and i think nowadays people are more open to being like a bunch of different kind of things and like kind of cosplaying as a mechanic for three days or um like i'm an outdoorsy guy today and just like kind of embracing the nuance like in our lives a little bit and so they got that was kind of the bet that we made i love that you said that if they are telling you what the wave is yeah then that's gone It's already gone.

53:15Deciding the wave is not your job respectfully. That's really interesting. Yeah. I'm talking to this suit.

53:21Samir Chaudry:Yeah. But did you have, as you went into it, did you have like an understanding of how revenue would come in or even like, because I think one of the reasons why an agent or someone would give you that advice is like then like, okay, advertisers know who the audience is. It's much more clear. And I do think that like, because I've wondered this myself, I think that like, that might influence the thought that like you need to be niche yeah more than the audience like i think like well it's really hard for advertisers to understand it's really hard to sell ads to like a men's lifestyle uh channel versus like a technology channel or an automotive channel and i wonder how like i wonder if the audience has a hard time understanding it or if like the brands have a hard time understanding it so like i wonder like what the yeah percentage of influence there is there i mean the one thing i'll say is like i had this feeling but we've whenever we've talked about your channel to other people who kind of live and breathe youtube the the common expression is like, it's a refreshing channel that it's like, oh man, thank God there's a channel that's doing something like this.

54:40Samir Chaudry:It's like the ingredients for me that feel really special is it's a very relaxed. Like your hosting ability is very relaxed. You don't feel like you're screaming at us. You don't feel like you're hitting lines. Like it feels like you are just talking to us which is a really as much as that has been youtube i think we lost it for a little

55:02Colin Rosenblum:bit yeah i would say you have your own theatrics too like there's an element of you could see what a late night monologue would be like yeah if james was hosting you know what i mean like you like you go down directions that feel like a late night host or even like uh a john oliver like you have that which i think is unique obviously that was the first job i ever wanted was really yeah i wanted to be conan yeah interesting i told my dad and he's like you know you're tall and you have a lot of hair i was like i don't know about the comedy we can learn the comedy stuff yeah that's the first job i ever wanted in like uh uh last week tonight like kind of started when we started doing donut and so like was just like a huge influence on the way that we wrote the way we delivered stuff the way we edited things the way that like you can make things that aren't breaking right now um feel extremely relevant so like carhartt is a good example it's like that story starts in the late 1800s but there was also a conversation going on last year that was like is wearing workwear stolen valor and so like very last week tonight.

56:22It was like, all right, here's something that you've seen on TikTok today. Yeah. Now let me spend an hour talking about like this other thing. And so, yeah.

56:34Colin Rosenblum:Yeah, if I think about the ingredients, it's like there's this ability to deliver in an engaging way. There's a refreshingness to the variety of the topics. There's an element of like, oh, I didn't even realize I was about to learn something. like I was telling you earlier like you drop into like a casual explanation of like calories yeah right in one of your recent videos but the graphics are actually as if it's Cleo Abram like it's like pretty intricate which is surprising and then I think there's an added element a fourth element of like a surprising sincerity that I think is actually pretty hard to achieve on YouTube like in your video about how men can dress better at the end you're like speaking to the audience in a way that's like, hey, you can actually just like feel better and be a better version of yourself.

57:22Colin Rosenblum:And that sounds really cheesy. Like when I say it. Yeah. And when most people say that type of stuff, you're like, okay, like everyone like enough. But I think you found a way to deliver it with a level of sincerity that feels real. Yeah. I don't know how you do that. I think that's got to be natural, but I think that's an element too of like, as an audience member, I'm like, oh, I feel like this guy cares about men and the people on the other side without it feeling performative i do man i'm like incredibly grateful that i'm allowed to do this like my job is so dumb like not dumb it's like i don't want to be like self-deprecating my job is like so made up yeah like i i made my job up like i hang out at my house and then around nine or ten two of my best friends come over and then we talk about stuff we like and then we like riff and then they're like all right are you ready to joke around on camera and i'm like yeah and then i do that and then an incredible editor makes me look even better and and then a bunch of like dudes are like dude you're cool yeah that is crazy it's amazing so like i am so grateful for that and so like every time i ask someone to like give me their time like my whole currency is a bunch of dudes time and so like if i'm asking them for their time like i'm gonna give them like everything i i can you know i think the variety of some of these topics are so interesting

59:01Samir Chaudry:to me like that that was something that fascinated me when i first started really watching your channel like you know just to read some of the titles nine cool cars for cool guys in 2025 that has three million views how nike finally hacked skateboarding that has almost 700 000 views 10 habits to unlock a better life 1.5 million views why are leica cameras so expensive 1.1 million

59:28Colin Rosenblum:views like these are that one was gonna bomb it did it came out and i was like oh that they don't like that one that's not gonna work the first video zach directed we're like maybe we should

59:41Samir Chaudry:have waited to make him an owner i tried 30 viral health trends for 30 days to see what's worth like it did end up performing very well and brought in a ton of new audience it has over a million views like it's pretty rare for you guys not to hit a million views now which is incredible because again like the more recent videos that i was even watching like how i lost 65 pounds without really trying right next to testing old versus new camping gear right next to doing a simple engine swap in 48 hours right next to the most regretted college degrees like just advice we would never give like the network model on youtube still to this day in my opinion like doesn't work but could you see them all next to each other in a magazine yes yes and that is but nobody has ever suggested you know it it was the thing back in the day right like buzzfeed essentially was a magazine like just that era of those those media brands were magazines this era has not been but you guys are now bringing us back to showing us that it could be yeah i'm not sure this works with different

1:00:44Colin Rosenblum:hosts though i'm not sure i watch camping with a different host or two different hosts than one of the other videos about like weight loss or something for sure i think the difference yeah the difference between buzzfeed like the magazine that buzzfeed is i feel like buzzfeed is like a rolling stone or something like a big buzzfeed's obviously a big company and i think speed is more like george like john f kennedy jr's magazine like it's a magazine but like the editor-in-chief is like you can feel him in it like you can very much feel the guys that are making speed yeah and so i think like it's more like these like it's more of a zine right now you know where like the creators have faces and that's why i think it's like important from the get-go that like i mentioned jesse in the first video like against his will like i was like i'm gonna film you i want them to see you because then i'm not alone and we started i started pushing zach into videos like i mentioned sr and i think it's important to know the people behind it um is that the extent of the company right now of speed and then before and tim and then we just hired a second editor tom so you have six people six total yeah two editors what does tim do tim is like our coo so he's like doing ops stuff.

1:02:13He does all of our merch as we get into events and stuff. He's producing more and more videos.

1:02:19Colin Rosenblum:Could you explain everyone's role, including you guys? Like, here's everyone. Of course, like, roles change a little bit. I'll do my best. Yeah. Okay, I'm James. I, we just decided I'm CEO, which I was very reluctant. This has been like a week and a half. Congrats, man. We gave ourselves a CEO. You're a CEO, dude. That's pretty crazy. Yeah, because I'm the boss. and my therapist said that I need to be okay with it so I am so I'm super fine I'm cool with it uh it's great um I host the videos I think I probably think about like the voice of it and like where I think it can go the most um and then and i talk about it with them a lot jesse's the president um president are you is that newly the president after some sort of meeting yeah pretty much we had to give ourselves james therapist was like and i think jesse needs to be okay with being president yeah yeah we had to look up what all these titles entailed as well um yeah i mean we all wear a lot of hats but um yeah i do all the emailing um the coordinating with the brands yeah the phone activities yeah um for the most part um but also be involved in ideas and the scripts and jesse's the first person that hears about anything and so like jesse's like i couldn't start a youtube channel alone like jesse figured out how to like do it um and then zach is probably chief jack is chief creative officer um and he directs all of videos and um works on like the visual style um with me and jesse and sr who's our like main editor and the four of us we own speed okay and then we have a second editor this guy tom which he edits um strictly um and sr is responsible for like There's cohesion between all the edits and the tone.

1:04:28Like when we said Speed is a magazine, he makes the videos feel like a magazine. And then Tom just edits and then Tim, like I said. Yeah, Tim's the newest addition to the team, but we lean on him for all ops stuff. he helps with like producing he the merch is like a whole operation that um he and his wife uh run for us and yeah kind of plays safety yep yeah yeah you will so you're the ceo so do you are you responsible for the pnl of the business like do you that would that would be me that's you okay

1:05:09Samir Chaudry:and so how does the business make money like percentage wise is it mostly brand deals is it brand deals, AdSense, merchandise? How does it look? It's a, yeah, it's about roughly thirds. The brand deals are more, um, but you know, some months merch will outpace the brand deals, um, on good months. Um, but yeah, brand deals, AdSense, I would say usually the brand deals are a little bit more than the AdSense, but if we have longer videos in a month, um, you know, the AdSense might outpace the brand deals that's cool that's great yeah what what surprised you going into running your own media company like coming from donut to running your own media company we used to sit around donut at like the end like when we left there were like 45 employees there and jesse and i were like what are all these people doing and then we started our company we're like oh

1:06:10Samir Chaudry:everything yeah there's a lot of ancillary things when you're not just the creator there's a lot of things yeah yeah even describing jesse as the phone guy like i deeply understand that there's just a lot of things yeah which does make it hard to fill your day with just creating like one of the gifts that i think you guys got at donut was like your days were just thinking about the shows totally and i think it's a thing where you have to like prioritize um being creative and like even like having a creative vibe yeah like in the space where i think there's so many opportunities real or fake or potential that you can waste a lot of time and burn yourself out and i think it's important to remember that like at the core of it is like making videos and so like if you don't make good videos then all that other stuff goes away so even if you like don't answer the phone or send that email in a timely manner that the core is like the important yeah and it gets

1:07:15Colin Rosenblum:harder to keep making good videos because the better the videos are the more people call and the more interesting the phone calls get yes and the easier it is to be like we should prioritize that call yeah yeah yeah yeah 100 like we just said no to something that was like pretty cool and would be pretty fun just because we were like i think it would just like destroy compromise the video without like naming the brand or going too much into it could you talk about like what was the type of opportunity um it was like a brand that we have wanted to work with for a long time uh even like at donut and never did and we worked with every other company in that like space um we worked with all their competitors and that was like the one that we wanted um and it was like wasn't the biggest opportunity but it was just like getting in bed with those guys and so um yeah but i think like the sometimes a no is like powerful in a cool way and so like i think that relationship is like still there we just had to say no to this one thing but i think it's like responsible sometimes to say like well that would just like totally ruin three weeks for us and i think the like the wave of uh consequences of just like ruining three weeks for us um isn't like worth it yeah and i think honestly the discipline required to put

1:08:47Samir Chaudry:out a video every week is pretty dramatic. And I want to get into that of like, what's the process, how far out are you guys with the process? Like of green lighting one of these ideas? Like when you're sitting in a room being like, we should do the nine cool cars for cool guys. Like when is it clear to you? Like, yeah, that's a speed video. How do you green light a video for speed? Cause it feels like it feels pretty open. Um, and I would say that's like, you know, in the, in the next chapter of YouTube, what I've noticed as we've even sat and like kind of come back to the drawing board of what our channel can be and what our show can be, there's so many things I'm interested in.

1:09:33Samir Chaudry:There's so much openness to like what I could pour myself into. And I think that, that decision making is one of the keys to a good youtube creator is like knowing what to make how do you know what to make i'm positive we have a lot of fear around that decision oh for sure for sure we definitely take swings and i think i think that fear is a big part of where we're at right now um like we know we can make car videos kind of um although we have had like some surprise flops we're like really um what do you define as a flop in viewership uh i don't i don't watch i don't track views uh after like 30 days so there are a lot of videos that ended up not being flops right and we're like kind of a longer play um i think like not necessarily a viewership um piece of it but sometimes we'll we'll know if we like really took a swing with a video like i would say we have a pretty good track record but there's been a few times when we've been like just had to get something out and yeah just put like a list video out or something that you know we still put effort into but it certainly wasn't like our best work so like i think outside of like what we know we can do every time we're every time we like introduce a new type of subject or whatever or like go into a new niche we're basically asking the audience permission um like a big one for me was like how to dress better and so like i was basically asking youtube if i was allowed to make videos about this and they were like yeah i'm like great because i really want to um with the like we tried 30 viral health trends we were like are we allowed to make these kind of videos and they were like yes we were like great because we really want to and there's been a couple like we're not allowed to make like what um i don't think people so like we were like can we make a video about how like ai is so scary and we're all fucked and they were like no we don't think we want you to make those kind of videos there's enough of those please stay away from us yeah and i think that's the thing too like every video is getting made Every type of video is being made by somebody.

1:12:00And some people are just going to do it way better than me. And so sometimes the audience is responding where it's like, hey, an AI video about the world being really scary, we don't really need that from you. And I'm like, noted. Got it. You kind of cheer us up. Yeah, totally. And we made a crypto video. And they were like, we don't really want that from you. And I was like, you know what? Good point. I wasn't super comfortable making it anyway. And I think the takeaway from those two and a few other ones were exactly that, where it's like, that was a bummer. And I think speed is sort of an escape from people.

1:12:42And I think we're beaten over the head by so much. I don't need to make people more aware about how fucked up everything is right now. I can kind of help a little bit. and so yeah so like every time we introduce something new it is asking permission um like what's the next speed video coming up the next one is 47 things everyone should know how to do

1:13:07Samir Chaudry:and so when who pitched that idea and how did that go like that's the one we're gonna make that idea came from zach just had a baby a year and a half ago and he realized that there's a ton of like basic things that his dad never taught him and so he started making this list of things my dad never taught me how to do that he wants to teach his son um and that was like we've been talking about that idea since the first conversation we had with him about joining speed and he was like would this be a speed video and we were like yeah um and so like we're like for a video we shortened it to 47 um and kind of focused on like the more practical ones because there's a lot that are like um sort of like ethereal but like these are like uh cut an onion and iron a shirt and don't stand in a doorway and take a compliment um here's five knots you should know how to do know how to change a tire um and so and i think like ultimately

1:14:17what we do think of it as like a magazine and if they they can be wildly different but we've sort of put in the work and continue to put in the work aesthetically and like vibey um and like the voice and the pov so that we can i feel like we can cover a number of different subjects but still be very specifically us and very nuanced in the way that we do them so that they all still feel like they're coming from the same place and that same group of guys that we've been um really like like presenting to people do you have like a scheduled pitch meeting where you decide like okay these are the next four videos we should we do we don't we we'll have it on the calendar and we'll be good for like two months and then it will we'll be busy and it'll once once you start making videos it falls off yeah exactly um so that's comforting theory yes but yeah practice sometimes but yeah i think that's like a best practice like we it you do have to sit down and come up with like not every idea is like oh and then i was like struck by this thing a lot of times it is just like the work like i think our best um like runs are when we just do the thing where we're like all right come with 25 ideas each and then we like read them and then if it's not one of those or like it'll be a number of those and if like one thing gets like starts the conversation that leads to the thing um but yeah we do i think the best work when we're like make ourselves work so what's coming out after things you need to know um let's see put me on the spot um didn't know this we shot it oh oh oh we're testing time-saving products um because there's a lot of gadgetry that uh you get served on instagram ads or whatever but um we got a bunch of those things like a high-tech toothbrush uh yeah the toothbrush is what sparked the idea for the video okay it's like have you seen it it's like a mouthpiece yeah it's like a smart toothbrush apparently you can brush your teeth in 20 seconds and i just sent a link to that and i was like is this something and then we went from there because i i thought it was funny yeah yeah yeah it's a fun format on the surface but we use it a little bit to kind of discuss them a little bit more like ethereal um point of our societal obsession with uh efficiency and time saving like james was

1:17:00Samir Chaudry:And how much do you think about like how it'll be positioned, like how visual it can be in a, in a thumbnail or anything like that? Or is that, is it mostly driven by like, this is something I'm personally kind of interested in and I can expand upon that. And that we think like the, the men on the other side are getting served these ads too. So let's like dig into this time-saving concept. i do like it when something is like happening like it's like in the ether i think that's best case scenario especially if we can connect it to like something bigger and so like for me best case scenario is the conversation is happening it's kind of in people's minds and so like when our video pops up they're like oh yeah i've seen this like let's see what these guys have to say about it got it and then we kind of like can expand on that um i mean it's like different like with the camping video we kind of just wanted to do a big video outside but it was a number of things you know we comparing we knew that like comparing old versus new is not only like a great youtube title but it's also like a pretty interesting like curiosity gap that we're curious about personally.

1:18:16Like how much has this stuff changed? And so we didn't really have the title or the thumbnail specifically dialed in. In fact, we've A-B tested probably like 12 versions of that. But we knew that just intrinsically in that concept would be packaging that would like work for YouTube.

1:18:35Colin Rosenblum:It was a great video of yours that I also thought was going to bomb when I saw it come out, but that I really enjoyed was how to have a great summer.

1:18:43Samir Chaudry:guaranteed i think it was yeah that was a great idea thank you thank you that one was wild because i looked at it i was like yeah nobody on youtube wants to watch this video and then it turns out a lot of people on youtube want to watch that video that one certainly was one that the packaging was we're less sure yeah about but we put a lot of effort into it yeah yeah like we bought stuff for the thumbnail which is not normal for us like we did like a and then that's the one that didn't even win an A-B test. We had like a barbecue grill going. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I think like the speed channel internally for us has represented this creative freedom that I think we've always wanted, um, as well as like kind of a line of sight into the potential to reinvent.

1:19:31Samir Chaudry:And I think we're getting to the point now of a lot of people who've been doing YouTube for a long time, like decades or a decade, uh, 10 to 15 years where you've been making videos on YouTube. And as creatives, we all change. And so I want to get into this concept of reinvention and even just starting a channel, because you guys put together this checklist of nine things that you need to have to start a YouTube channel. Is that right? And this is also one of the things that makes the channel so wonderful is a lot of the 2020 to the 2023 era of YouTube, especially on our show, was heavily talking about retention.

1:20:10Samir Chaudry:How do you keep someone's attention from the beginning of the video to the end? Like, why would they watch until the end? And this is one of the most simple mechanics to say why I would watch until the end where there's a one through nine checklist and I want to know what all of them are and I can't know unless I watch the whole thing. It's like, it's a very simple analog mechanic to keep me watching. so it's one every video is a list every video is every video yes i have heard that um yeah we were a little apprehensive to do a list the first time i think it was nine cool cars for cool guys just because it is so like base um yeah but i think i think there's a reason why it works like yeah it's just work well i pitched i pitched that video as a short and we were going to do it as a short.

1:20:59And then I think Nike SB video didn't do very well. And I was like mad at it. And so I called Jesse. I was like, fuck it. I'll just do like a car list. And it like did really well. Cool. What does this mean? Yeah.

1:21:14Samir Chaudry:All right. So let's do number one. Number one. We've covered a lot of. There we go. One to nine.

1:21:19Colin Rosenblum:Tell us also what is this list? What is this list of? Okay. So this is a list of nine things that you need to have if you're going to start a YouTube channel and have some success. I think there's a million other ways to do this. This is just the only way we know how. These are basically the important things to us, I think. And if someone asks me what we do and what they should have, this is what I would say. All right. Hopefully this works. A POV, a point of view. um every video has been made every idea has been made every subject has been covered um you can still make a video about it you just have to make it yours and give people a reason to watch yours not even instead of someone else's but in addition to somebody else's like there's been a million videos about roasting a chicken um and i don't think that people only watch roasting chicken videos to learn how to roast a chicken.

1:22:28And so I think like there's been a million videos about dressing better, but people watched mine in addition to some other great videos about dressing better because my position and my point of view, I'm saying a thing.

1:22:46Samir Chaudry:Yeah, I agree with this that I actually think now you need more POV and more conviction than ever before. And it's also, it's classic in media where like news is a great place to see this where you go, the news is the news. Like there is something that happened, but the different networks and the different hosts give you opinion on that thing that happened and they have diehard communities. For better or for worse. But they have diehard communities.

1:23:12Colin Rosenblum:There's no opportunity to connect with you or share this with someone else if you do not have a strong and clear POV. Totally. and i think like i used to be able to just make a video on the history of a thing at donut up to speed was just like here's what happened yeah and with speed we've had to pivot it to like volkswagen is turning their back on us like i told the history of volkswagen in that video but it's also like saying something like carhartt we were talking about the history of carhartt but through the lens of like are you allowed to wear carhartt and so i think like right now i agree it's 100 more important to have a pov than like ever yeah there's so much stuff also my ability to get

1:23:59Samir Chaudry:just the information even from just typing it into chat tpt or gemini is like i can get the history of carhartt in like a second so i i i don't want the efficient version i want the perspective version yeah why are people watching your thing yeah i love that

1:24:20partners oh partners partner up i think you can do it alone i couldn't do it alone um i'm sure you guys can relate partners are great i'm i'm good at the specific things that i'm good at doing i think i'm also very good at realizing what i'm not good at um and i'm a fan of anyone who is good at something and so like there's just no way that i could be as good at four things as four people could be a one thing and uh sr spent 200 hours editing uh the last build video you know jesse is like so good at the phone stuff and um zach like can visualize things in a way that like i never could so i think creatively i've always been a fan of like collaborative creation like i've always wanted to be in a band and we treat a donut like a band we treat speed like a band um so creatively it's really important i also think it's important especially with speed where we like kind of do give like advice or like perspective if i were doing that alone i wouldn't feel very comfortable doing it but because i respect jesse so much and i respect zach so much and i respect sr and tim so much the five of us together kind of make one really good guy and we can keep each other honest and bounce things off of each other and sort of like um make sure that i don't sound like a pretentious asshole and so like by the time we get to me shooting they've gone we've all gone through it and like we've decided what i'm gonna say so i can like very confidently deliver the things that i'm about to say which sometimes are like very vulnerable things and i am putting myself in a position where like i could look like a dumbass you know um and because i I trust these guys so much, I can do that confidently, which I think is a big thing.

1:26:25Colin Rosenblum:I like that, yeah. Like if a POV takes risk and takes courage, you want to mitigate the risk by having good people around you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It keeps me from being like, what did I, what? Come on. Yeah. And taking the wrong cues. Like if you take cues from a comment and go a direction that you actually shouldn't go, but the people around you are like, no, you're fine. Totally. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I'm more personally connected to the comments, obviously and jesse is able to be like you know don't worry about it yeah yeah yeah we also keep each other accountable yeah because we something's due you're ruining a bunch of other people's week absolutely you don't get it done yeah and like zach has kids and sr has kids and i i don't think jesse and i would necessarily need to make a video every week to just support ourselves but like we're some we have like a group of guys that are relying on we're all relying on each other so yeah it's not about there is no like i don't feel like it anymore and um so because of that i think it pushes us to like try our best at everything easier said than done to find partners

1:27:36Samir Chaudry:yeah for sure but but a team does create accountability which is something you guys mentioned with which i think is important um and then yeah it'll also like to gas each other up totally yeah it's like creativity is only fun because other people look at it and go like damn that's cool yeah otherwise it's kind of like it's kind of i don't know you need that yeah element

1:27:57Colin Rosenblum:otherwise like it's unless you're like a savant yeah yeah yeah but i don't even know how i would internalize this entire career if i didn't have you being like that was cool yeah that was exciting and then also that was bad yeah like we have a reference point right knowing what was fun what wasn't yeah it's why the channel's not called james pumphrey it's called speed because like it's a project and it's a gang and it's like a group and so like it's easy to think of it like in that way so yeah i just like i like partners number three gross references um that's good you gotta like stuff if you're gonna make stuff i think sometimes this is overlooked um if you're gonna work in a medium or an art form you have to be a fan of the medium in the art form and therefore you have to like have favorites and you have to i think it's helpful to have things that like are like north stars like i love certain things about casey neistat and the way he shot stuff i love things about van neistat and the way he shot stuff i love stuff about will tennison um and the way that he writes i love stuff about emma chamberlain the way that she shoots the way that she's built her career the way that she's like 100 herself and how she talks to her audience is a huge influence with how i talk to my audience with speed and so i think like if you're going to be a really great musician you gotta really love music and um if you're going to direct movies you have to really love movies and so i think to do really well in this you have to like really love the thing and love little pieces about um what people are doing you know because then you can like you steal like 16 things then that's your style you know what i mean um and so like there's a reason that we use tape and there's a reason that all of our stuff is labeled and you know like casey does that because tom sax did that you know and um yeah so references i'm assuming you've read steal like an artist no you haven't you should read that book i mean

1:30:14Samir Chaudry:it'll take you maybe two hours to read it's not very long um but it's the whole book is about this concept is about like and we had austin come on the show to talk about this this concept of like stealing like an artist because we we were noticing that on youtube it's like there's a lot of stealing but it doesn't feel it's referential yeah yeah you know it feels exact you have to like steal reverently like you gotta be like oh fuck dude like and i think yeah like he talks about

1:30:44Colin Rosenblum:he always says like uh there's honor amongst thieves there's honor amongst thieves and he came up with something called the elevator test where if you uh were in the elevator with your inspiration do you feel like they'd want to punch you in the face yeah yeah or give you a high five yeah right yeah well we had lunch with van and he and he punched you in the face so we stopped we cooled it back a little bit um i love that before videos you actually want to make um i've made a bunch of videos i didn't want to make uh i've made videos i do want to make and i think specifically in like starting a thing um this seems like an obvious thing that is overlooked quite a bit because i think a lot of people say like oh i want a youtube channel it's like great what are your videos going to be like what do you want to make um and so like even with speed like the dress better video is something i wanted to make eventually i wanted to put that out that first uh habits video that's something from the beginning that i like wanted to make um specifically with speed like i think speed to me was an opportunity because i owned it to allow myself to be even more personal than i was at donut because i think eventually with donut i I was like protecting myself, not from the audience, but from someone else owning those parts of myself.

1:32:11And so almost like as an act of, not rebellion, but like I was looking forward to like sharing my story and these things that I've done and learned with my audience in a way that was like 100 % me. So like I couldn't wait to make that video. And so I think before you start shooting stuff, there should be a lot of videos that you want to make, even if you can't figure out how to make them yet. And you're working, you're working towards being able to make a certain thing, I think is like a beautiful thing. Like you can't wait to make it, you know?

1:32:47Samir Chaudry:Yeah. I think this one is so important. And I think I would even like, there's another version of this of you actually have to want to make videos. right yeah the video making process is not easy it's hard so you have to want to do that because if you just want what's on the other side of it yeah it's then then now you have videos you need to make not videos you want to make and that's a that's now a very different dynamic 100 and i think so often the conversation with youtube especially is well what's going to perform well yeah like what can i do that's going to perform well and i think like in a lot of ways like like with youtube it's like self-inflicted all the bad things you've heard about hollywood yeah yeah or like you only want to make a blockbuster like you can upload it for free and like make it for nothing but like i only want to make the hits um and like brand deals like yeah like well i just think yeah it's like self-inflicted the worst part so like there is something to us at least like with this project where it's like what do we want to make what are we going to feel good about making so is your recommendation there that like before going into launching a channel or something you should you should write down like you should have a certain amount of videos you absolutely really want to make can't wait to make you can't wait to make them and like some of them you can't afford to make and you're making other videos saving up for like the money or the equipment or like the support to like one day oh yeah dude one day i'm gonna make this video that's really good you know yeah i think to your point like especially as a new channel you should be thinking about it in the context of like making videos and not making a youtube channel because like the youtube channel what is it besides just these individual nodes of videos and so it's like you know you shouldn't be thinking about like i want to start a business it's like what are you what's the business do um yeah all right number five

1:34:53a camera and a computer yeah if you can figure out how to do it without them

1:35:01Samir Chaudry:good i would argue there's some people who could do this with a phone yeah but a phone is a camera and a computer uh self-contained okay jesse brought that up

1:35:14yeah that's fair yeah i'm not gonna push back on that yeah six um oh a vision um and uh also be ready to change it so like a vision like know where you want to go you're not going to know how you get there you should make a plan on how to get there but like in my experience that's gonna kind of go uh out of the way um i think with speed i know what i want it to be i want speed to be bigger than a youtube channel i want it to be like a respected entity in like the male influence space and i think like again the closest thing to that is a magazine but i want you know the website to be a destination i want um to be respected by certain groups of people i want to work with certain types of brands i i can see what speed can be and i and like in five years i think like there is this like very aura based like green tinted idea of what i think this thing is i have no idea how it's going to get there i have certain plans we had a plan of what speed should be like now it's pretty much kind of what we wanted but getting there was like way different at the very beginning of the channel zach said like you know what like we'll just cross the river by feeling the stones you know that's cool and so it's like an old chinese proverb i think and so like we know that we want to get across the river we don't know how we're going to do it but like we'll take a step and okay this is pretty sound footing right here we take a step this is pretty sound footing right here um and so like you know where you're going but you don't know how you're gonna get there

1:37:04Samir Chaudry:i think the only thing i would add to this one i love this one i think this is super important is that the vision has to be outside of views yeah because i do think there's a lot of vision going into youtube channels like i'm gonna make a youtube channel and get a lot of views totally And that is, those are some of like the stones along the way, but like it's not the vision. I think it's a lot harder to latch on to a channel or a media brand without that. like yeah you guys said that to me verbally but i think if you're on the outside even if i had never heard that pitch of like this is a men's magazine you would feel it now and i think that is really important that like your stuff you have to also look back at your work and go is this is this painting the picture of that vision or not totally absolutely you know like i'm not it's not easy to get a bunch of views on youtube but it is easy to get a bunch of it's easier to get a make a bunch of videos that you're trying to get views and then like you look back at it and you're like that makes zero sense who was i speaking to yeah totally whereas like i think for the most part there's some exceptions for sure but if you look at our and i do it a lot like i'll look at i'll go to like youtube studio and look at all of our videos and i'm like yeah those fit pretty good together you know yeah um yeah which is like an active thing that we're trying to do with this channel like i want it to feel like a thing oh um balanced slash nuanced quality standards so i think what like i agree with like perfect is the enemy of progress and i agree like put stuff out like it's never going to be ready like you're never going to be 100 happy with it we often refer to our stuff as like we make pop songs we make pop videos and so we put them out and like hopefully a lot of people like them and then we're like on to the next thing like nothing so far has been our opus like there has been stuff that we were pretty invested in and we really wanted it to do well but um so does billy ireland you know like i think there's a a freedom that comes with like a lack of pretension you know like nothing we do is like that important and just keep going keep going i think that's the medium keep going keep going keep going i think you should also be honest with yourself about how good you are at it because i think i hear a lot especially like with youtube where it's like i'm making like really good shit nobody's watching it it's like impossible that's impossible like if you were making really good shit a lot of people would be watching it it could be like good a good short film or like a good little movie or something but it's not a good youtube video because if it were a good youtube video people would find it and they would watch it and so i think that goes back to like references and being aware of what other people are making and like honestly positioning yourself against your peers and your competition and being like am i making dope shit and every time one of our videos doesn't perform well or if it does we always do like extensive post-mortems like what nuanced part of this didn't work what what part of this didn't work the last engine swap video we did was like it performed pretty well but it was a really hard edit and it's because like i didn't bring it like i did a bad job as like a host like i was kind of in my head about some comments that i got from like high low during don't i was like james just comes in and like jokes around and it was like a bigger technical video which is something that like i'm not the best at and so we had like a lot of like help to do it and so like i was like self-conscious about oh i don't want to just be like the clown and so like i didn't do my job and So like SR ended up having to write like a lot.

1:41:15And so I think like just being very honest with yourself. And these guys are great at like taking responsibility as well. So like we know why stuff isn't doing well. And I think that's an asset for us to like improve constantly. And I think we're always improving. Setting that standard is important internally.

1:41:36Samir Chaudry:Like one thing Matt Pat said to us on our show about theorist media, because they put out so much content across so many channels they have a ton of channels that are publishing once a week so you're putting out you know eight videos and he was involved in all of them um and they said they were they were trying to get to 85 percent like you were never going to be 100 happy with with the thing but like the medium is get it to 85 and get it out yeah and i really like that for sure that thought yeah totally great loose slash optimistic oh yeah lose slash optimistic bookkeeping yeah talk to me about this um it's a fresh take yeah so this goes back like we've been talking about optimization a little bit like again this is based on personal experience but we've been a company for about a year we are profitable which i think is good for a small business after a year but yeah we just kind of look at the account balance and we say like all right this next video is going to cost about this much how do you feel about that we're like i feel pretty good about it and sometimes there's been big videos that made us a little bit uncomfortable with how much they were going to cost like we're like oh that's surprising and so we all like which videos the camping video is way more expensive than i thought it was going to be like what's expensive for you guys to invest in a video um i think just with all the products it was like over 20 grand yeah just for the stuff yeah and so that was the first that was a that video is a big deal for us because it was the first expensive thing we'd ever done that wasn't a car and so like we've bought cars and done like car stuff um so it was like yeah it was like a big swing for us it was like a big bet to be like all right we're gonna do a non-car thing we're gonna ask permission to make this kind of video but we're also making a pretty big investment that at this point would make a difference for each of us.

1:43:39And so we bet on it and it did pretty well.

1:43:41Samir Chaudry:So is loose slash optimistic bookkeeping another way of saying bet on yourself or invest in yourself? Bet on yourself, but don't be stupid about it.

1:43:52We put together the budget for the camping video and Jesse texted me and was like, dude, it's going to be like 25 grand. And Zach was championing that video. And I was like, dude, I don't know. And so we had to have the conversation and it was like can we make it a little bit cheaper we do this this and this okay will that make the video worse no it actually make it better cool um and then like ultimately the question that you have to answer is like literally it's like zach do you think it's going to be a banger and he was like yeah i think it's going to be a banger and we're like okay um and so like yeah if you think it's gonna yeah bet on yourself yeah but be smart about it well i think especially whenever you're in like a new channel phase uh it's like important to not get caught up in optimization because like you need to be able to play and like make misses break things um and i think you know getting too caught up in the weeds of like is this going to like make an exact return and you know there's so many cool features in like quickbooks and stuff now that uh it's easy to be loose yeah yeah it's easy to get loose yeah quickbooks camping video financially might actually

1:45:00Colin Rosenblum:be currently a loss between like AdSense and how much it's spent but the reality is over time it's opened up an entirely new subset of videos you can make totally it will continue to generate revenue over time yeah there might be potential sponsors that you just opened up really like to work with now all of a sudden we're guys in this space you know every time we do a video like that camping like uh uh dress better health trends the weight loss one i start getting dms from guys that i follow and that's like really cool to me that's the currency like other like blue checks that's on the books yeah yeah yeah yeah the the thing that honestly changed my

1:45:41Samir Chaudry:vantage point on our business was simplifying our bookkeeping to ins and outs what was coming in and what was going out and it was like elementary school bookkeeping it was just how much is coming in and how much is going out and that's it and as long as there was at the end of the year more in than out we were good yeah and if you simplify it down to that you get a little bit more comfortable investing in those ideas because you have confidence in what could come in or what is coming in already yeah and i think it's also important to acknowledge that other things have value other than money um like especially early on relationships getting in front of certain eyes building that audience being considered by a new group of people i think is more valuable than 20 grand you know i would lose 20 grand over something like that um and so yeah i think especially early on i'd say i'd add to that like look for the value outside of money um and i think that includes like saying yes to doing podcasts and um like i did like right when we launched i did this podcast blammo with jeremy kirkland and he was like so what brands do you like right now i was like oh i really like this one fugazi and from that trevor the owner of fugazi like dm'd to me and was like hey man like thanks so much and you know now we've done like one little project together we're gonna do like bigger stuff like they're like a very cool peer friend group and they're like doing a totally different thing than us but i don't know it just like validates what we're doing in some really cool way and um yeah i think we're gonna do like a cars and coffee together starting next year monthly which is cool and just because i was like yeah i'll do that podcast all right the final one yeah um a desire to entertain i think there's so much discussion about analytics and packaging and niches and audience and all this stuff that I think sometimes people overlook that YouTube is an entertainment platform and it's TV.

1:47:59And so if you don't want to entertain people, then you don't want to do this job and you should go do something else. Because I think like YouTube can be an educational platform, but like you said, a book is better. chat gvt is more educational it can be news but like it's entertainment news and so at the end of the day you are trying to make things that people want to watch and you cannot do any of this other stuff if you can just figure out that one thing all of these are to get to that thing make something that other people want to spend time watching you're an entertainer and i think remembering that i think is the most important thing about all of this like this is entertainment and like don't get lost in the sauce like this is entertainment it's tv the show business show

1:48:48Samir Chaudry:biz baby yeah yeah what are the three e's e um zach made this up after we killed this so number one is entertaining every video we make has to be entertaining if it is entertaining and it's also educational that's better that's um and then if it's if it is entertaining and educational then we're allowed to be expressive expressive so like i'm allowed to express myself if i'm entertaining and educational because if i'm just expressing myself and it's not entertaining then like why did i upload it you know um or like with it works with music too like if it's entertaining it's allowed to be expressive it's just expressive nobody's going to listen to it you know what i mean so that one is incredibly important yeah we talked to the ceo of twitch dan clancy and we were asking him like what makes like a good streamer on twitch yeah and he was very blunt about just like yeah some people have it some people don't yeah he was like you just can you control the camera or not are you entertaining to watch he was like there's nothing there's no like sure once once you're there you can come up with other things but like are you fun to watch or not totally and i think people have the longest conversations about like everything but that and it's like it's like authenticity and it's blah blah and all these things it's like none of that matters if it's entertaining and people want to watch it so like you can deconstruct what it means to want to watch something but like yeah make good tv and people will watch it.

1:50:25Colin Rosenblum:We got the feedback one time from a creator we really admire named Iz Harris. We were asking her advice on this show and she said, you shouldn't have anyone on the show who isn't funny. Yeah. And I was like, oh, really? Because we're an educational show. And she was like, yeah, but it needs to be funny first. I'm like, you guys are capable of being funny. So you should have people on that are funny.

1:50:43Samir Chaudry:Totally. That's a really good list. Those are nine things I've never heard about starting a YouTube channel. Same. Outside of the camera and computer, that one. That one's important. Yeah, yeah. That one's objective. but those are really good i i think uh i think that's a that's a really good indicator of like where where we need to go next even as a platform because so much of this is just like do you want to do it you know like are you good at it and do you want to do it and even like can you get better at entertaining like colin and i both maybe two three years ago took improv classes and I was like oh this is like I need to be doing this totally if I'm gonna be on camera I have to be in these types of classes yeah um so yeah that's that's a really good list I mean in a lot of ways speed is our like everyone involves second band like we had a band that was like pretty big yeah and we don't need this new band to be as big as that old one but we want to like do other stuff with it yeah um stuff that we weren't allowed to do with the other one because the other one was so big um so yeah like we are we are starting this new thing after 10 years of doing this other thing and so like all of this is like a reaction to what we learned doing that other stuff how do you not become that how do you how do you avoid speed becoming donut i would being donut ain't bad Bean Donut sold for tens of millions of dollars.

1:52:17Donut was a successful company. I wouldn't mind if Speed accidentally became Donut. It was pretty good. I think like... Well, for one, we haven't taken on investment. Yeah, we haven't taken on investment. So we're totally in charge of the ship. Yeah, we don't have to make a certain amount of money. We don't have to tell people how we're spending it.

1:52:37Samir Chaudry:The one thing you said to us that I thought was really interesting was you kind of described some of the time at Donut as like a gluttonous pursuit of growth. Yeah. I thought that was a really interesting thing to bring up and talk about because I thought I've seen that with a lot of media companies where it's just, you know, once you get to that point, it's just like we have to grow. We have to grow, grow, grow. And then you're doing things that are like, I don't know, like that is almost inevitable if you have a certain desire going into being a creator. Like if you have a desire - We've met a lot of creators like that.

1:53:09Samir Chaudry:Yeah. If you have a desire for just like big and lots of money and lots of everything, like you are going to fall into the gluttonous pursuit because YouTube is also built for it. Right. It rewards it in a way.

1:53:21Colin Rosenblum:Were you guys like drinking the Kool-Aid of that growth? I mean when Donut started it was like that time you know like it was peak startup time when like I was making like 60 grand a year but I was like oh 100 million dollar valuation like that's not very much like just like this fake money time where like everyone had a slip and slide or like a water slide in their office like cold brew on it was like peak millennials being millionaires time so we're just like yeah dude money's fucking fake bro uh so i think it was just sort of like a roaring 20s gluttonous totally and yeah let's buy a fucking car and drive it off a cliff like i just bought a million dollar blah blah blah but i think uh i think speed is also like a reflection of like what it kind of feels like right now yeah and i think like in car youtube like how many times do I have to see someone buy a shitty car and wreck it like how many times I have to see someone lift a something that shouldn't be lifted and like jump it uh how many times I have to see someone like this car cost 17 million dollars it's like I don't care you know and I think that I you can kind of see that like everywhere like Taylor Swift's last album flopped Charlie XCX is the biggest thing on the planet right now like i think that are in pop like i think that polished and kind of like this fake perfection is what that like gluttonous like mr beast like hey guys yeah like photoshopped uh thumbnail that was a wave that happened and i just think culturally across the board that's hair metal and we're going back into like a grunge phase where things are more a little bit more authentic not just fake relatable i think like seeing the pieces a little bit more and actually like having a community but like providing something for that community is like something that's really important to us i just think things move in waves and and it's an interesting time because i think this is one of the first times that youtube has been such a part of culture when culture as a whole is shifting completely and it's pretty fun to watch and be like a part of what that means as like a person like us i love that yeah i think that's that gives

1:55:47Samir Chaudry:me a lot of hope for the next chapter yeah of youtube yeah i think it's gonna be cool within

1:55:51Colin Rosenblum:a more like toned down somewhat reserved calmer vibe and channel what are the the bigger i guess more eccentric swings when you do think out like five years with speed like what we want to do yeah i know you guys mentioned something interesting about like a physical space yeah i think the i think the most interesting thing for us right now is like like dono was so big on youtube but i didn't we didn't really feel it outside of youtube yeah yeah and so we'd like go to this office and we'd all hang out we'd make a bunch of videos and get a ton of views and that was kind of it you're kind of down in the mines you're like a new factory yeah towards the end i was like when i would shoot or like film a podcast i'd be like all right back to the content minds right i was just like mining views it was pretty joyless at a point you know there was amazing times sure like so i think like and i think that might this might be the wave across the board where it's like i want a really good youtube channel and we're that's what we're the best at i guess the most experienced doing i wanted like a really good youtube channel but like speed is a magazine so like next year we're gonna launch a magazine like a physical premium magazine i want the website to be a destination so like part of that you know we'll probably do two issues next year but with like the intention of doing quarterly in 27 so like to support the in between of that and also foster writers and stuff like i want a tumblr ass blog on speed.co i want speed.co to be like a place people go every morning um i really do want a physical space uh i'd love to have a gas station is like the dream that's a cool idea you want to do like an air one gas station

1:57:46Samir Chaudry:that is ripe for la yeah yeah that's super right yeah just pump me with cacao or something yeah and so like yeah i think yeah i want to build this like kind of thing that means something to that that's what i want it to be i want speed to be a thing that means something to a lot of people um and a place that like they can get information that they can trust from and like for us it's mostly like culturally like what's cool that's it like yeah i want people to come to us to to to be cool yeah you guys have really you know both like implicitly through us just watching the videos and then explicitly today i think uh are giving us a lot of confidence in being like 36 year old dudes who are trying to reinvent on youtube hell yeah i think just being like we are now we're into a lot of different things like how do we express that and i think uh your channel and even this conversation is has given me a lot of confidence in that so yeah thanks man appreciate that guys if there is one video like if youtube was gone tomorrow but all you could do was like save one video that everyone could watch and remember you for what would that video be and why

1:59:04I'd say probably 10 habits. I think as far as like saving something, I think that video tells my story the most.

1:59:22And I think offers like some sort of value to people who might watch it. and it's i think i spent a lot of time hurting myself um and other people to learn those lessons um and so i think like if like i think we put that video out and jesse was like you know this will change four people's life and i was like that's cool at least four yeah at least four people's lives and i was like that's cool and so to me like if what i've gone through could um do that then like yeah i think that would make like those 20 years of almost killing myself kind of worth it that's cool well thanks guys yeah appreciate your time i can't wait to see

2:00:15Samir Chaudry:what you guys uh do next and can't wait to see the entire list of 47 things i need to know yeah yeah thanks guys thanks guys

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