In short
The Colin and Samir Show - Episode Notes: VidSummit Takeaways, Colin and Samir Growing Pains, and Dax Shepard's $80M Deal
Podcast Overview
- Hosts: Colin and Samir
- Description: A podcast providing insights into the creator economy from a creator perspective, discussing trends, challenges, and news.
- Episode Date: September 9, 2024
- Episode Focus: Takeaways from VidSummit 2024, personal challenges faced by Colin and Samir, and insights on Dax Shepard's new YouTube channel and its $80 million deal.
Key Themes
- VidSummit Insights
- Discussion about the evolution of the creator economy and how platforms have shifted focus to YouTube.
- Recap of their keynote panel titled "The State of the Creator Economy."
- Emphasis on the challenges new creators face in a landscape where long-form content is increasingly popular.
- Content Creation Dynamics
- Shift in viewer habits with 60% of Colin and Samir's watch time coming from connected TVs.
- Analysis of how longer content formats are becoming the norm as audiences enjoy binge-watching similar to traditional TV.
- Exploration of the concept of "familiarity" in content creation and how it helps in audience retention.
- Dax Shepard's YouTube Channel
- Discussion around Dax Shepard's $80 million deal with Wondery and the implications of moving his podcast "Armchair Expert" to YouTube.
- Suggestions for enhancing Dax's channel, including improving thumbnail designs and leveraging the nostalgia of his original recording space.
- Challenges in Hiring
- Insights on the difficulties creators face when hiring editors and the importance of effectively communicating creative vision.
- Discussion on how scaling taste and maintaining a consistent artistic voice can be challenging in collaborative environments.
- AI in the Creator Economy
- Exploration of AI tools and their potential to streamline the ideation process for creators.
- Introduction of Spotter Studio, an AI tool designed to help creators with content brainstorming and video production.
Detailed Takeaways
VidSummit Takeaways
- Keynote Panel:
- The panel included discussions on the shift of attention from traditional platforms to YouTube, highlighting its status as the most-watched streaming platform.
- Creation of repeatable formats to encourage binge-watching behavior.
- Audience Engagement:
- The average view duration on connected TVs is significantly higher than traditional views, indicating a need for longer episodes.
Content Creation Dynamics
- Familiarity & Discovery:
- The importance of titles and thumbnails that resonate with audiences to enhance discovery and viewer return rates.
- Acknowledgment of the balance between strategy and creativity, especially regarding originality in content creation.
Dax Shepard's YouTube Channel
- Advice for Dax:
- Recommendations for improving video presentation, focusing on branding consistency and leveraging his established narrative from his original podcast space.
- Suggestion to adopt a more authentic, lo-fi aesthetic that resonates with the show's history.
Challenges in Hiring
- Scaling Taste:
- The struggle to communicate a creator's vision to new hires effectively.
- Importance of establishing a singular artistic voice to avoid creative chaos from committee-style decision-making.
AI's Role in Content Creation
- Spotter Studio:
- An overview of Spotter Studio as an AI-powered tool aimed at helping YouTubers brainstorm content ideas more efficiently.
- Benefits of using AI to generate titles, thumbnails, and improve the overall creative process.
Conclusion The episode provides a rich discussion on the current state of the creator economy, touching on personal experiences, industry insights, and the impact of technological advancements such as AI. Colin and Samir's reflections on their journey as creators highlight the evolving landscape they navigate, while also offering valuable advice for both emerging and established creators.
Call to Action
- Check out Spotter Studio for content creation support.
- Engage with Colin and Samir on their social media platforms for more insights and updates on upcoming episodes.
- Look out for new content formats being experimented with in the future episodes.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.
0:38Today, we're diving into the remarkable story of Colin Rosenblum. Wow. Did you pay it to say that? That's crazy. That's very kind. It's crazy, but it's my favorite way to learn about a subject matter. I'm learning about so much more now that I can turn this research into like a seven minute podcast that I can listen to just when I'm walking. Did you tell it that I worked at the front desk of a hotel? Dude, the prompt is just, make me a podcast about Colin from Colin and Samir. That's it. I may be biased, but I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm hooked. So if you guys haven't checked out Copilot, check it out.
1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. Hey, what's up everyone? Welcome to this episode of the Colin and Samir show. This is an audio exclusive episode. We are on the road right now chatting with you guys from an Airbnb in Dallas, Texas. Today on the show, we recap some of what we learned at VidSummit here in Dallas. We also talk about some challenges that we're facing with our own content on our channel. And then lastly, we get into some advice and feedback for Dax Shepard and his Armchair Expert podcast, which just came to YouTube.
1:51After landing an$80 million Wondery deal, Are podcasters the new NBA players? Are they new athletes? Like, what are we talking about? Best deal in entertainment. Best deal in show business. I just wanted to say the same thing, but say show business. Understood. Okay. All right. If you make it to the deep end, let us know.
2:13So it is Monday, September 9th right now. And VidSummit ended on Thursday. How many days have we been in Dallas? And we are still in Dallas. We've been in Dallas for a week now. More than that. No. Yeah. No. The whole trip is nine days. Yeah, but today's Monday and we got here on Tuesday. So it's been... Six days. Six days. Yeah. Feels like more than a week. Yeah. We've lived many lives. We've lived many lives. We kicked off the trip with VidSummit and then we transferred into this Airbnb and we've been shooting episodes in Dallas, which has been super fun. They've been very different, very unique.
2:53I don't want to spoil too much about them, about what we're shooting, but you can probably gather. I mean, there's only so many creators here in Dallas. So I want to kick off this episode. We're going to recap VidSummit. We're going to talk about our experience. We've been going to VidSummit for six years. Yep. It'd be more. Yeah, I think six years. I remember the first time going there and rolling up and feeling really nervous and seeing Casey Neistat speak. You remember that? On the main stage. And Peter McKinnon. Peter McKinnon. Yeah. Yeah. And VidSummit has since moved over to Dallas. We were lucky enough now, six years later, to be able to do the keynote panel, which was awesome to kick off VidSummit.
3:31It was called The State of the Creator Economy. And let me tell you, everybody. I know what you're about to say. Samir made a joke. He said, what's the state of the creator economy? And then he said, Texas and crickets. I don't think I've ever experienced... Listen, I will go for it when we're on panels. I'll try. I'll try. I'm not afraid of bombing. I'll throw a joke out here and there. That was one of the most uncomfortable bombs I've ever experienced. It was a room full of 2 ,000, 3 ,000 people. Yeah, I couldn't even help it. I think I went, sheesh, just in front of everybody. I wasn't even trying to make a joke or respond, but that's just what came out.
4:16Well, let me read a quote from Francis Ford Coppola. Colin. Okay. An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk, then how are you going to make something really beautiful that hasn't been seen before? You know, Hasan Minhaj, when he came on the show, said something similar. Comedy is risk. He said, comedy is risk. The best stories involve some risk taking. I took a big risk with that joke. Okay. Anyway, that doesn't matter. It didn't land. The joke didn't land, but the panel was really, really fun. It was the two of us. It was Canigra Dion. It was Aaron Debovoss, the CEO of Spotter, and Todd Beaupre from YouTube.
4:52Now, we got to talk about a lot of interesting things, but this was broken up into a few different sections when it came to the state of the creator economy. The first thing we talked about was the shift of attention from all streaming platforms to YouTube. So we brought up our episode with Scott Kimple, which if you haven't listened to, I would definitely recommend listening to. and talked about how when TV went from this week-to-week model to the binge model, meaning that they put all the episodes out at once on a streaming platform, YouTube creators stepped in to take place of week-to-week television.
5:24And YouTube is the most watched streaming platform on connected TVs, which means people are watching more YouTube content in their living room for more time. Now, just to give you a sense of our own experience with this, In the last year, 60 % of our watch time has come from connected TV. That's pretty crazy. Like 60 % of the time that people are watching Colin and Samir is on connected TV. And the average view duration on connected TV for the Colin and Samir show is 42 minutes and seven seconds. So a bit of what we talked about on stage at the keynote was what does that mean for creators at scale?
6:01The fact that more and more people are choosing to watch YouTube on their TV. What it means is that what is being watched is longer. You're looking at creators who are making episodes in the 20-minute plus range because if you're sitting on a couch, it's more comfortable to put something on, sit, and watch. Now, what we're also seeing is that creators are making repeatable formats, very similar to television as well, right? If you're sitting there, you're watching your favorite creator, you watch one show. if the creator has 12 episodes, if you like it, you're going to keep watching and continue that session.
6:38But what that means is that if you're a new creator, it can be overwhelming and difficult when you're getting started. Because how can you be expected to come out of the gates as a new creator with 20 minute plus TV style episodes that are formulated like a season of television. Right? It's a totally different landscape than when we started over 10 years ago. It's kind of funny because, you know, 13 years ago when we started, I remember I called the channel the lacrosse network. Cause I was like, Oh, this TV for the internet. But at the time it wasn't that now we are actually 13 years later getting to that point where YouTube is more like television, where people have repeatable shows that they want to come back to.
7:24and the same way that I thought it was overwhelming to try and break into the world of television, it's probably that same feeling for a young creator now of like, you know, we have to just think about this from the audience's perspective and the concept of like timeshare. If one of our audience members is on average watching 42 minutes of our content in their living room, we have to now think about how long is a YouTube session for an audience member? Is it three hours? is it one hour? Because there was a time where YouTube videos, a long-form YouTube video was seven minutes long. And so you could watch 10 YouTube videos in a sitting.
8:03You know, a Casey Neistat vlog, when you look back at how long those were, those were like at times eight minutes, 12 minutes. Like they pushed into the 20 minute reign like at the end there, but it wasn't really ever that long. Now everything is like 40 minutes, 20 minutes, you know, back to good, good, Good Good Golf is putting out hour, two, three hour long videos. Yeah. I mean, sometimes essentially they're putting out, you know, an entire 18 holes worth of golf, something that normally would have just been like live on NBC. They're editing in a way and putting it out for you to watch on YouTube and people are watching it for a long amount of time.
8:42So you also with us on the panel was Canigra Dion and Todd Beaupre from YouTube talked about how Kanegra's videos are 70 % viewed on connected TV and 94 % of her viewers in the past month were returning viewers. Yeah, that is when you look at her viewership where she'll put out an episode and granted this is scripted narrative content. So this is not something that's happening really on YouTube. She's putting out scripted content three times a week. In a matter of a couple days, she's looking at four to 500 ,000 views. in a week, a week plus, she's getting close to a million. So that is like must-see TV, a million people watching her episodes.
9:29So we're entering a different era right now. Like just definitively, we're entering a different era. And the question to Todd Beaupre was, hey, how do we think about discovery in this era? And he had a really good insight when it came to new creators getting discovered, as well as legacy creators holding on to their audience, right? How do you get to that point of returning viewership in the 90 plus percent range? He said the thing that we should all be thinking about is familiarity. If you are a brand new creator, think about what your audience is watching and think about from a packaging perspective, how can you be familiar to that audience?
10:07I thought that was a really interesting insight. And if you're a legacy creator, If you're a creator who's been on the platform for a long time, you need your titles and thumbnails to look familiar at a glance. I think about the concept of like Phil DeFranco. If I open my YouTube app, whether it's on my TV, my mobile device, or on my desktop, I can instantly recognize a Phil DeFranco thumbnail. And I can instantly see, oh, there's Phil DeFranco. I'll watch that. And you think about like the long-term familiarity and recognition of your brand on the platform, it gets increasingly more important.
10:43The longer a session time is on a single video, the more it's on connected TV, which is incredibly hard to navigate around and choose other videos. We have to be building as a community in the direction of like deep familiarity. The problem that I have though, with Todd's note about familiarity is that it lends itself to people being too familiar, I think. Like, yes, to break out on YouTube in your category. Let's say you want to make videos like Ryan Trahan. What do you do? You should make thumbnails and concepts like Ryan Trahan. But there's this problem that we've talked about on YouTube before where there is so much imitation because it's what works.
11:30it's how you become familiar quickly in a category. And I think he's right. That's how it works. That's how it works in movies and TV. You know, it was shared in our Slack a bunch of movie posters from similar genres, from horror, from romantic comedies. They look exactly the same. We're looking at 50 to 100 movie posters. Dude, the one that was shared about Christmas movies. Oh my gosh. It's like a zoomed out shot of a bunch of Christmas movie posters. So this is not new. This also is part of television and film.
12:07But I don't know how I feel about it. It's difficult because you want people to break out, and that is how you break out and how you succeed. It's very hard to break out and be original. It's why a lot of original shows don't get greenlit. It's only every once in a while that something truly original, someone takes a chance on it. Yeah, it brings into question the role of originality and creativity in our world, right? Because a lot of what we're talking about is strategy. That is a great strategy, right? To be familiar to an audience. That's a great, great strategy. That's a way to capture audience.
12:41It's a way to capture attention. And if you can't capture attention, you're definitely not going to monetize that attention, right? So as we're building businesses, that's a great strategy. As a creative, that is an overwhelming thing. Like when you open YouTube and everything looks the same, it is very overwhelming. Yeah, and I have the problem even with our own content. It's difficult. You know, you look at our titles and thumbnails now for a podcast episode. There's some originality there, and we've done some things that I feel really good about that are innovative with how they look and how they feel.
13:15But it also fits in a category and is familiar. You look at Diary of a CEO. Yeah. Looks very similar to that. There are a ton of podcast interview channels of which we fit into and it looks familiar. And part of me is like, that's actually what should happen. That's good. Right? Because people, again, like we're part of that group. And so someone who watches Diary of a CEO might watch one of our videos and like it. That's what we're implying is that like we're a part of this world. But part of me hates that. Yeah. Yeah, there's nothing I dislike more than when I see another podcast thumbnail with the yellow box with the same white Helvetica text.
13:57But I'm looking at it, I'm like, oh, someone probably is in the same way that we were like, we need to look like a podcast. I remember when we made that definitive decision, we need to look more familiar to people on YouTube looking for long form podcasts. But when someone else looks like that, it makes me not want to look like that. Totally. It's like what Austin Kleon said when we talked to him. It was like sometimes when you get imitated, it just makes it less fun for you. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But it's an almost insurmountable, Samir, insurmountable or insurmountable? Maybe just surmountable.
14:37Oh no, that's like we could surmount it. Yeah, nevermind. It's an incredibly difficult task to truly be original. Can I show you one of the most original kind of titles and thumbnails I've seen in a while? It's from a channel called Seen It, which is a channel that tells stories about movies. One of my favorite movies of all time is Swingers. I absolutely love Swingers. Old Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau movie. Now, this thumbnail came across my screen. It's a shot of Vince Vaughn from Swingers, but it just looks like a screenshot. Yeah, I've seen this. You've seen this. And it says, when an actor got dumped, dot, dot, dot, and decided to conquer Hollywood.
15:15it's amazing because like the the the what that is is just the wild story of swingers yeah but what a unique way to position that in that title it's positioned at a much larger audience yeah you don't need to know swingers the movie to want to hear that story and it has 1.4 million views and and i love that i think that's like an original way of doing like movie and cinema youtube yeah i I don't think it's too dissimilar to our episode about Wesley Wang. We titled it the YouTube video that broke Hollywood. Right. That implies a unique story. We didn't title it an unfiltered conversation with Wesley Wang.
15:55Sure. Right? Yeah. I think actually also being, you know, again, you go strategy versus creativity. They definitely intersect at a lot of moments. but our challenge in our career, one of our challenges has been not being willing to trade
16:18creativity for strategy. And I'm actually okay with that. Or maybe it's the other way around what I'm saying. What I'm saying is like, there is a strategic version of this where it doesn't irk us that we look very similar to someone else and that we imitate someone else because that's the right strategy. but it does and so that's just this is all in that context of i did think todd's note was actually really sound about familiarity yeah i mean i didn't think about it till you said it i i we've been talking about this familiarity thing and i've never once thought is that a problem that you should look familiar to other people i thought oh that's a good strategy yeah right it wasn't until this recording that i thought to myself hmm that may be a problem for me personally yeah it's it's almost like those images of retail aisles in grocery stores where all the packaging looks the same.
17:07It's a reality of what's going on. So I do think that was a really interesting note though. If we have less and less potential timeshare from an audience member, then how do you get discovered? Shorts was discussed here. Shorts as a vehicle to get discovered because that is actually a lean back experience where it doesn't really follow the same rules where someone has to click into the video. They're being fed the videos. And so discovery in that context is really interesting. It's the difference between deciding when to stop watching versus deciding when to start watching. That's what Todd said.
17:47With shorts, you're just deciding when you're done watching. And with long form, you're deciding when to start and which video to start with. Very different mindsets. Those are totally different mindsets. And I think about like Cleo Abram, who's on the show next week. Absolutely excellent at short-form content. Puts out so much short-form content. And she uses an incredibly underutilized feature, which is related shorts. So when you make a YouTube short, you can add a related video that you can click through to watch a long-form video. Now, Aaron Debovaz from CEO of Spotter you know, in the catalog of content that they represent, he said that it's under 6 % of creators utilize that feature, but the ones that do see a 10 % lift in viewership.
18:39So just a thought for all creators that like discovery, not only of new creators, but discovery of content can happen in short form. And they can use that related shorts to get into your long form video. Max Fox is another creator who does this extremely well. So yeah, I thought that was a really good insight as well from this. Now, the other bit we talked about was that right now, especially VidSummit, like there's a time where you go to VidSummit and you go upstairs and it was like lighting companies and camera companies. This VidSummit, AI. And that's just generally in the world right now, right?
19:19Whether it's like AI software to clip short form content, AI software for dubbing. AI everywhere. The Apple keynote just happened. And so much of it was about open AI being in the new iPhone. Yeah. But what I wrote here, and granted this was AI assisted. You're becoming like 90 % AI. I am. Yeah, I am AI. You are. Yeah, you're Samir AI. You can't spell Samir without AI. That's true. Yeah. So AI in the creator economy is like the industrial revolution for content. And the software is like the steam engine. Let me tell you, everybody, I've heard this from Samir so much from the moment that he prompted it and got it out of open AI.
20:05Like I can't even, I can't even act like I'm going to respond to hearing that with any sort of awe or excitement because I've just heard it 10 times. I'm happy that you have that and that it pairs well with your LinkedIn. So there's a lot of utility to AI in the context of technical stuff, right? We use it all the time for, we talk about this, we use Autopod to cut our episodes, we use it to enhance our audio, we use it quite a bit. But where I think it's really game-changing and something that we discussed two years ago after hearing a discussion from the OpenAI team at Spotter Summit. After we heard that discussion, we all sat around, talked to the team at Spotter and talked about how the best use case, the best case scenario for AI in the future in terms of solving problems for creators was not necessarily in the technical side, but in the ideation side, in the pre-production side.
21:04In a world where one of our biggest problems our like default problem as creators is what's our video next week, right? Or what's our next video? And that suggests that we need like an extremely high quantity of ideas. And so over the past two years, the team at Spotter has been developing a suite of AI tools that is now put together into something called Spotter Studio. And that officially launched at VidSummit. And so that was also a lot of the discussion in this concept of the state of the creator economy and this panel. And that was, first of all, that was super fun. It's been two years in the making.
21:41We've been, you know, seen it at every iteration. We've given feedback. We've consulted on it, as well as a ton of other creators, including Dude Perfect, Canegra, who was on the panel with us. But seeing people react to that and recognize, like, this was a software that is specifically tailored for YouTube, that was also very cool. Yeah. In short, it is a supercharged brainstorming partner specifically tailored to your YouTube channel. So helping you come up with titles, thumbnails based off of what works best and what has worked best on your channel, as well as just videos in your category. Yeah.
22:16Yeah. And it gives you like, look, the way that you need to learn how to use AI in this process is recognizing that it's giving you thoughts like that, that you can take into your ideas as well as like when it comes to the thumbnails. Those are mock-ups. It's giving us mock-ups. It's giving us really unique composition ideas that we probably wouldn't have thought of. Yeah, I'll give a quick example here. We have a studio tour coming out. And as we were brainstorming with Spotter Studio for the thumbnail, without prompting it for this item, it showed Samir and I, the studio in the background, and attached to me was a GoPro on my shoulder on a backpack strap.
23:04That is something that I would have never thought to include in the thumbnail for a studio tour. But when I looked at it, I was like, hmm, that could be interesting because that GoPro on my shoulder implies a really authentic, raw version of access to this studio. It is not big cameras in production. You as the audience can expect like a bird's eye view or like a really candid view. at this studio tour. And this is going to have to, this has to do with what we just talked about in terms of familiarity. It has to do with starting to get unexpected thoughts, ideas, and pushing us outside of the bounds of like what our thumbnails look like today.
23:45Yeah. What else can they look like? And like we might, we have to start evolving. We have to start exploring new variations of titles. Another thing is for that studio tour, I used spotter studio to, to explore concepts and story beats. And of course what we're doing is unscripted. We're touring the studio, but it's like, what are specific ideas? And what was amazing is that it's familiarity with not only our channel, but you know, the subject matter recovering and going, okay, what if you did this or here's a concept that's different? What if you actually talk to these people instead of those people.
24:17What if you stumble into this room, which was crazy that it suggested that, but it was like, that's actually a great idea. We should do that. And so in storyboarding, you're like, here's this kind of supercharged partner in creativity. And creativity is, I've thought about this a lot, about how does AI fit into this premise of creativity? And I really think it's about seeing as many things as possible and bouncing off of them. I don't think I've taken anything fully at face value. Actually, a couple of titles, I think, have been 100 % at face value. Like, that's a good title. But a lot of them just give us phrases and thoughts that are like, ooh, let's combine that with one that we already thought of.
24:59Yeah, it's actually really about how fast you can fail or how fast you can find things you don't like. Because if I'm not mocking up thumbnails in a second, if I'm not mocking up five of them in a split second using Spotter Studio, I am actually mocking up thumbnails or searching through photos. Like I'm actually mocking something up that I know may not be the final. It's going to be the inspo we're going to use to take the photo, but I'm mocking something up in Photoshop and talking through it with Jay. And then we're deciding that it's not good. Right. As opposed to being like, okay, here's five.
25:35Right. Here's 10. What elements do we like? And we just move a lot faster and find things like you were saying that we just wouldn't have thought of. It's hard to explain, but you know, you can try it out yourself. We'll put a link in this podcast description, you can get a free trial of Spotter Studio and check it out for yourself. If you have a YouTube channel, it's a really fun thing to play with. Our session time in it has gotten longer and it's just been a really fun thing to be a part of and to watch it launch. I felt really excited for that whole team to finally launch it because working on anything for two years is like, it's exciting when that finally comes out.
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26:08Yeah. I just love the opportunity to yell and scream about the importance of titles and thumbnails. Yeah. I just can't. I think my excitement for it also has to do with how hard it is for us and on our channel. Like I'm so passionate about titles and thumbnails. Meanwhile, I am like racking my brain sometimes over our own titles and thumbnails. Sometimes, all the time. That is our whole life. Yeah. I mean, every once in a while you hit and you just... Totally. Sometimes I think though, I saw an amazing tweet from Jay Klaus that just made me think. He said, imagine if you could not reach any new viewers, what would your next upload look like?
26:48I thought it was a really interesting prompt. Hmm. Isn't that interesting? Basically, it's just a reframe of being like, make videos for the audience you have, not the audience you don't. Exactly. And like, how would you package it differently? If you knew guaranteed, like you were in a world where you could not reach any new viewers. And it actually hit me in a way because I think like a lot of the fear is like, how do we reach, you know, a extreme large scale of individuals. Just to give some interesting stats, like, you know, on an episode, I was looking at this last night in our YouTube studio, on an episode of ours that has, you know, three to 400 ,000 views on YouTube, typically we're in like the 150 ,000 to 200 ,000 returning viewers range in those episodes, which is awesome.
27:32That's a great amount of returning viewers. Our most recent episode, which is with Scott Galloway, on YouTube is moving a lot slower than typical. I think it has about 50 ,000 views right now. And it has about 26 ,000 returning viewers. It's actually the same ratio. It's about 50 % returning viewers, but much less. That's a significantly less amount of returning viewers. And that means that while you and I, massive fans of Scott, we missed something in the packaging to explain to our returning viewers that this person was part of our world, right? Like on an immediate glance, it was like, okay, if I'm a regular viewer of Colin and Samira, this one is not as interesting to me.
28:18Yeah. And it's just, it's weird and difficult to rank and judge performance based off of the person you put in the thumbnail. It's just strange, right? It's super strange. Yeah. I think it's about how you position them, you know, like, could we position that more as like, we got to talk to this person or in some, some descriptor of, we asked our favorite. Yeah. We asked our favorite. We asked a finance expert. Yes. Something like that. Our favorite business coach or something. Literally everybody. We're still working. Yeah. We're still working. See guys, this is what it's like. Okay. It's not easy.
28:56Yeah. But I thought that was a really interesting prompt of like, Like, now imagine if the Scott Galloway episode that we just did had no opportunity to reach anyone else but the people who regularly watch comics. Yeah, how would we have titled it just for our core audience as opposed to his audience? Yeah, I think it's a really good prompt because this whole premise of like familiarity, returning viewers, long watch times, this has to do with building a core. I just think more and more that the only familiar constant that we can guarantee, especially visually, are our faces. Yeah. And trying to think about how that potentially plays a bigger role in some of our packaging moving forward.
29:42Yeah, it's the one thing that other people couldn't do, right? Like, it's just, you can't do it. And a lot of our guests, like, there was a time where we were the, we were one of the few long-form video podcasts that had creators on it, if not the only, in 2019, 2020. Today, we're absolutely not the only, right? And so we have to keep pushing and differentiating that at a glance. That's Colin and Samir. That used to be yellow text and yellow and black. Yellow, black, and white has now become a thing or a big block of highlighter behind text is a thing. So we have to push to differentiate. But anyway, I thought that prompt for all the creators out there, and I think anyone who's even running a business, it's like, what if you couldn't reach a new customer?
30:26What if you couldn't reach a new audience member? How would you operate differently? And I think that's kind of, you know, it's starting to happen in new environments. When you think about like, we're in this like, this algorithmic environment where we're trying to reach as many people as possible. But it's interesting to start to look at, there was an article about the Try Guys, Second Try TV, and how already it is making up over 20 % of their total revenue. It's only been a couple months. that's 20 % of their revenue. And I'd imagine this time next year that might even be more significant. Second Try TV, every video that's posted there is with that premise that they're not going to reach new viewers.
31:10They might try and reach new viewers and get them to subscribe to Second Try TV. But a new upload in Second Try TV is not trying to algorithmically reach a new viewer. I think that's a really interesting premise as things move forward, how much do we move in the direction of subscription-based, closed environments, environments where you are just reaching your core community? And there's a level of trust there. Yeah. I think that comes down to the appetite that each creator has for risk. Right? And how comfortable they feel with the way that YouTube operates. Because it's pretty fun and it's pretty explosive if you understand the YouTube algorithm.
31:51Totally. Just lean on the algorithm. Yeah. It's a lot more nerve-wracking to put content behind a paywall. And I don't think it's or. It's and. It's and. It's and. It's not or. But, you know, maybe Hassan actually also did this with his own news network. It's pretty amazing. Four months in, it's called Zeteo. Four months in, Zeteo has pulled in 31 ,000 paid subscribers through Substack, including more than 1 ,000 at the 500 and up founder level, accounting for$3 million in annualized revenue. yeah and a lot of this comes down to another problem that a lot of creators face and it's the reason they go towards paid environments is that you know depending on your community the amount of viewership you have may not work that well for advertising or volatility may not work very well it never works well for advertising and so that's where going back to our episode with Scott Galloway I loved that episode.
32:52I enjoyed it. I listened to it many, many times between being there in person, editing it. I enjoyed it every time I listened to it. I was very excited about it. But you look at an episode that underperforms and it'll get there over time. Yeah, it'll take... The AVD's really good. The AVD's really good. It's just one of those immediate hits where you're like, ugh, you can't have that many of these. Yeah, you can't. Yeah, and it also proves to you that... You know, different from, by the way, in this podcast feed, not an underperformer, an overperformer. True. Which is really interesting, right?
33:27Again, running a podcast that's across both YouTube and Spotify and podcast platforms, there's different metrics and they hit these feeds differently. True. Again, when you look at an RSS feed, the next upload, like even this one, if you didn't expect this episode, you might have given it a shot and you might be here at this time because it showed up in your RSS feed and you're like, oh yeah, call it in some air. here it is it's tuesday morning i'm going to listen to these guys that's that same that that same framework of like what if you couldn't reach a new viewer so anyway i just i thought i think j klaus is like one of the most articulate guys in our field um around introducing concepts like that and i just really like that concept and it got me thinking a lot about all this so the other thing i want to talk about in the context we're just talking about rss feeds and video podcasts.
34:20There's been a lot of news recently in podcasting. A lot of big deals. Scott Galloway said this on our episode last week. He said the greater economy is income inequality on steroids. No, he said income inequality gone berserk. Okay. Same sentiment, Colin. Not a direct quote. It's not steroids, Samir. Okay. Income inequality gone berserk. Now, at the top, you have podcasts like Call Her Daddy getting a$120 million deal with SiriusXM for three years, and Armchair Expert getting a deal with Wondery for$80 million. Now, what I just wanted to quickly explain is what that means is not an exclusive deal.
35:02Armchair Expert and Dax Shepard are not exclusive to Amazon Wondery in terms of like where they're posting the content. Actually, it's quite the opposite. I don't know if people have noticed, but Dax Shepard and Armchair Expert are now posting all their content on YouTube, which was not the case before, and additionally have video in the podcast. First or second video episode of Armchair Expert on YouTube is with Dr. Mike. So Dax is now moving in the direction of almost being like a YouTube video podcast. He's like coming into our world. Watch out, Dax. But I wanted to just explain that what this deal is, it's a advertising sales deal, Meaning that Wondery represents the show in the context of advertising.
35:47So what they need is they need that show in as many places as possible to do as many views as possible so they can sell ads. Which means if you're a podcast and you don't have a YouTube presence, that is a huge opportunity, but also a huge uphill battle to climb if you do not have a podcast or a YouTube presence on YouTube already. Right? I mean, Dax and the team there just released all of the episodes in basically a single day. I would not have done that. He didn't have video, so it's just a static image, which is not really going to do well. I'm sure they just had to contractually put it all up there to start building the library.
36:30Yeah, I wouldn't have done that because some of those videos have 82 views and some of them have nine views. like they're just it's just you just dumped an entire library into a youtube channel with just like not not great thumbnails and they're just floating there like i don't know i just i don't think i would have done that but then the addition too is like he has to add video to the show um but i'm i'm just wondering last week um we talked about cristiano ronaldo or two weeks ago we talked about cristiano ronaldo and tom brady joining youtube it's interesting to start to think about the new podcasters joining YouTube, right?
37:07Like not new podcasts, sorry, legacy podcasters. Alex Cooper is back on YouTube. Joe Rogan's back on YouTube. Dax Shepard's back on YouTube. The competition for long form audio podcasts is getting larger. And with YouTube being the only algorithmic feed for podcasting, most likely the guests that generate the highest viewership will start to become the guest that everyone wants. Yeah, it's an incredibly competitive landscape. The video podcast specifically. The video podcast is wildly competitive right now. And it's going to be really interesting to see how that plays out on YouTube and also how that plays out on Spotify with video on Spotify, right?
37:58to see how these two platforms kind of compete with each other and in some ways work well with each other. Yeah, I'm not sure yet. I'm like curious to see how this plays out. But seeing Dax bring his whole library on and start to produce video content, I feel like the video podcasting world on YouTube is going to look pretty different in a year. I think YouTube is. I think Neil Mohan said this to us in our interview with him. He said YouTube accidentally became one of the largest podcasting platforms. But it's fascinating to see that some of these mega deals, these$100 million,$80 million deals, a large part of the value is, hey, we need you to start putting your podcast on YouTube.
38:45Best deal in entertainment, though, is these mega podcast deals. These are the best deals in entertainment. Best deals in entertainment. Yeah, that's not even a question. So seeing what's happened on the Armchair Expert YouTube channel, What advice would you give to Dax and the team? I mean, I'm going to sound, this is going to sound ridiculous, but you got to work on your thumbnails. And I know that like, I just saying it sounds ridiculous because I feel like that that's the obvious advice right now. But right now everything looks just like podcast art and maybe that can work, but I would go in the direction of Jay Shetty and Jay Shetty's podcast and think about like Dax guest quote in the middle.
39:24maybe as I'm saying this out loud and we're having this whole conversation around familiarity it's like you probably need an initial jump of familiarity of people going oh wow there's a long form podcast but Dax did this one that like without a paddle reunion and that's with like Seth Green and Dax and there's this big yellow branding and it looks like Armchair Expert I would just go if you're going to go all in on that go all in on that but if you look at the channel if you guys go check out the Armchair Expert channel. It's that. And then there's these other like mini squares with podcast art on them.
39:59I just think you got to go all in on one style. Yeah. I don't really like the monochrome look where everything's sort of in like a black and white yellow. I would, I would actually like put the guests faces in color, make sure they stand out, put some podcast mics there. And I would say as well that they should film in, right now they're filming in the garage, which they've turned into like a full-blown, really high quality set. I think they should film in the room above the garage where they've always recorded the show for years. It's like legendary. You always heard about it. Maybe they're just preserving the sanctity of that space and keeping it like an audio-only space, but it's so funny.
40:40You know everything about that space, how guests go to the bathroom and there's no door on the bathroom. There's so much lore to that space that I would just do it like pretty lo-fi, even if it's a small kind of crappy room and just keep it the show. Because when I look at the episodes now, it feels like a set that could be anywhere in the world. Yeah, there's like deep authenticity. And this is the whole thing about the world that we're in right now when it comes to podcasting. Like obviously right now we're doing an audio only episode. I have to say, this is such a delight. Making an audio only episode is amazing.
41:14It's the best. And I was very envious of Dax and other podcasts that were pure audio only. I think about Smartless. That's done on Zoom. It's just audio. If those guys have to add video to that show, it's going to change everything. It changes how comfortable you are. And you can kind of see it a little bit. And I'm sure they'll get used to it because they're still so new to it. Yeah. But, you know, I watched Dax on Seth Meyers talk about, you know, the Wondery deal and the new season and the YouTube channel. and he's joking about how he's serious, but he's also joking about the fact that he has to do his hair and makeup essentially three times a week now.
41:50And he's like putting on bronzer. He's putting on some matte finish on his face himself three times a week. That's a pain and annoying when otherwise, you know, it's annoying to think about your appearance and your look because it's going to get clipped and it'll be out there in the world. It's so easy to just turn on the mics like we're doing right now. Oh, I mean, dude, when we record an episode, we have to touch base about what we're wearing so that our outfits complement each other. And they don't clash or we aren't wearing the exact same thing. It's a small thing, but it also can affect you.
42:20Like, we'll record episodes sometimes and then I'll look at the recording back and realize that my hair shifted and just looks really weird or I look really tired or I didn't like the way I actually looked in that outfit or I'm slouching. And it's just annoying because you finish that episode and first off, if you notice that you feel uncomfortable before you're recording, you realize that your discomfort is going to be captured and eternalized for all of time. Right. And if you find out after the fact, it doesn't matter. It's still going to be recorded and captured for all of time. Right. Yeah, there's a beauty to the audio-only podcast experience.
42:52It's almost like reading a book versus when they turn the book into a movie. It's like, even as the audience, you do a little more work when you just listen to audio. Agreed. You know? So it is amazing. I mean, like, I'm so grateful for video because it's allowed our show to get discovered. Totally. Without video, you don't get discovered. You don't build a brand as a personality. Like it just, I said it in this Spotify masterclass that we did where I said, it's like the difference between playing in the NFL and playing in the NBA. Like when you're playing the NFL, you're doing your craft, but you have a helmet on.
43:22People don't know what you look like. So it all makes sense, but there is a beauty to it. And I can feel that with this, with Dax's show, which I've been a fan of for a long time. I just wonder, I'd love to like sit with him and talk to him and be like, how are you feeling about turning the video on? Yeah. And how, how could we help you try and make it as comfortable as possible? Yeah. How could we come up with a filming style that feels really authentic? Yeah. I mean, you think about like the all in guys, they're doing it on zoom and like, you just accept it. I think again, it's whatever it is, you just accept it.
43:53And then it's just familiar. People podcast in their car. Yeah. People do all. Madeline RG. Madeline RG just does it in her car. Like whatever your vibe is, I think this is actually extremely important when it comes to a new creator or a new concept or a new show. Just like whatever that thing is that you start with, just make that a thing. Whatever you're comfortable with, just make that the thing. All right. Well, hopefully we actually do get to sit down with Dax. I honestly would really love that, whether it's on camera or off. Yeah. Shoot us an email if you are Dax Shepard. If you're not, then just carry on.
44:22Keep listening. Okay. Yeah. So another thing that was discussed quite a bit, we did a creator support session at VidSummit. That was really fun. We stood in a room and creators came and they stood in this really long line and asked us questions. And the room was packed and it was super fun. And I like just absolutely loved the whole thing. I thought it was so great. A moment like that puts into context, you know, when you're disappointed about 50 to 60 ,000 views after a week, you're like, this is ridiculous. Like I'm sitting in this room with a thousand people and it feels so unbelievable and overwhelming.
44:56And oh my gosh, I can't believe people will wait in this line. to talk to us. Yeah, it's an unbelievable moment. And like, I appreciate everyone who came to that. Like that was amazing. All I want to do is more of that. Like that was so cool. I want to do more of that. But one of the things that came up a lot at VidSummit, whether it was in that room or people coming up to us after and asking questions, was a lot about hiring. Like when you should hire, who you should hire, how you should hire, all the above. Hiring was a major topic. and I took a step back and thought about it. There's some creators who asked me about, they just hired an editor and they were like really frustrated because they said that they were just going in and editing it themselves after.
45:41That is an age old conversation. Classic. Classic conversation. And I thought, you know, one of the issues that happens in YouTube, in our world right now, is not necessarily that there's not enough people to hire. Actually, technically, when it comes to editing, camera work, like anything. There's enough technical skills for people to come work at your company or work at our company. The hardest thing, one of the biggest pressures facing our entire industry for people to grow is scaling taste. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two-factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected.
46:24But many other places also have it. and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40 % your first year. Visit lifelock.com slash podcast for 40 % off. Terms apply. Yeah, but I think it's because a lot of creators don't know how to teach, don't want to teach, don't have the patience to teach, or they enjoy doing it themselves anyway, even if they don't want to say it. I think that's a huge part of the reason that it is difficult to transfer taste, to scale taste from one person to another.
47:05Right? It takes a really long time to sit with an editor. It takes months. And you may not even, I'm speaking for myself, I may not even have the language to communicate what I want anyway. It's a really difficult process. Your taste also might change. Yeah. Which is one of the craziest things. That's frustrating for the editor and for yourself. And that's a whole other thing. But yeah, as I was having conversations, Like I think hearing more and more like hiring has been one of the biggest problems in the creator economy, but I don't think it's the act of hiring. I think it's, I think hiring is actually pretty fun.
47:39It's pretty fun to sit with someone who is creative and gets your channel and, you know, and bringing them in, like, and giving, giving them an offer. Like that part's actually pretty fun. The challenge is how to communicate after that of like how to make something look and feel good or feel like your channel, how to keep a creative motivated. If it's not working out, how to cut things off, how to let someone go. All of those problems are what's facing the creator economy. And then that comes back to the question of like the lack of operational support and what operational support looks like in the space.
48:12How do you hire the person that does the hiring? Yeah. That still continues to be, you know, three, four years later into this. That is still one of the biggest challenges in our space. Who was it that told us if you don't want to fire people, you shouldn't hire people? Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss. If you don't like firing people, you shouldn't hire people. Yeah. And, you know, just to go to advice that we've gotten in the past before, J.J. Abrams, when we sat with him in January at Spotter Summit, you know, he talked quite a bit about the concept that every good project has a singular artistic voice.
48:53And so what that means is that no good creative, according to him, is created by committee. It's not like a bunch of people in the room being like, hey, what do you think? What do you think? What do you think? It's one person being like, here's what this is supposed to look like. I think that's getting increasingly harder because everyone has their own taste that they're developing through the stuff that they're watching all day long. Right? And their algorithms are reinforcing their taste. And so you walk into a room and like, I think the expectation is that when you join a creative team, it's made by committee.
49:26And that's actually one of the fun parts of being a creative is like, hey, what's your idea? What's your idea? What's your idea? But when you're on a week to week schedule, you kind of just have to have someone who has the ultimate say and the taste. I think that gets hard in creative environments. Yeah. It's hard to bring in creative people and not let them be creative. Right. That sucks. That sucks. Because I also empathize with that. Yeah. When I'm working with our editors too, I'm like, wait, you're creative. You have good ideas. Let's play with those for a bit. But then sometimes I think one of the frustrations with our editors is like, we'll end up undoing stuff because it doesn't match the brand or the taste or the tone.
50:05Yeah. And that might be also because we have not given them proper feedback over enough time. Right. That they have and understand what the expectation is. Yeah. I want to see Stephanie Patrick's show Bibles that she made for game theory and all that. Because I just want to know what it's supposed to look like. You know, to teach. What is it supposed to look like? Because they scaled really well. And this is Matt Padden, Stephanie from Theorist Media. They scaled extremely well. And with them gone even right now, I know they're involved in the company, but it all still feels like that brand. Yeah, it feels like a Herculean task to make a show Bible, but it really shouldn't be for us.
50:43It should be. For a podcast. like we should be able to do it. Yeah. Okay, that's a good action item to end on here. Yeah, that's good. All right. Well, we are still in Dallas. We are shooting quite a bit, man. We're shooting so much. It's so fun to shoot, but now we're about to enter the phase of we got to make all these episodes. And we're pushing it at the end of this year. We're going to make some different stuff. We are pushing it and experimenting a bit. It's going to get a little bit wild. I do before we go. Yeah. I want to note that this episode was brought to you by the wonderful people at Wayward Coffee in Dallas.
51:18And not actually, but just in spirit. Oh, wow. I was like, did you sell your own personal brand for this episode? Yeah, I can tell. You looked at me like, when did you sell the brand? I was like, did you sell a sponsorship right now? It's just a joke. But Wayward Coffee, it's so good. It's unbelievable. We've been multiple days in a row, both locations. I just want to thank Noah and everybody at Wayward Coffee. They were really nice to us, too. We had some very productive editing sessions in Wayward Coffee. It felt like home away from home. I know you don't always like probably when like five people roll in and everyone sets up laptops, hard drives, plugs into the outlets.
51:48You know, by the way, just while we're on this and we're in the deep end right now, you know when you roll up to a coffee shop and someone brings a second monitor? Have you ever seen that? Have you not seen that? No. Dude, that is like, it's such a wild thing. Like they bring a mouse and a mouse pad. I'm speaking from experience of one guy and I hope he doesn't listen to this show because I see him like quite often. Sounds like our core demo. Yeah, brings like a laptop and a second monitor with a mouse and a mouse pad and an external keyboard. Sets it all up at the coffee shop. Yeah, that's a no-go.
52:21You shouldn't do that. That's wild, right? Yeah. That's a gripe. But I mean, you probably also shouldn't show up with your whole office and take over an entire table. Table is there for the take, man. It's not a co-working space. Well. Or is it? Or is it? What are the rules? I don't know. Either way. Yeah. Thank you to the people at Wayward Coffee. All right. Stay tuned to the channel. We are trying some new formats out at the end of this year. Again, that comes back to like strategy brain versus creative brain. The back half of this year is definitely utilizing creative brain from Colin and Smear.
52:52We are pushing it with some new unique formats, some different styles, trying to have some fun on the channel on the back half of this year. There'll definitely be some long form interviews that still come out. You can expect an episode every Tuesday here on the RSS feed. And you'll see almost every Tuesday on YouTube, but we'll see you next Tuesday.
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