Walking Away From 15 Million YouTube Subscribers

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.

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1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. What's up, everyone? Welcome to this episode of the Colin and Samir show. So on today's episode, we're talking about YouTubers Outdoor Boys who walked away from their channel with 15 million subscribers. We're also going to tell you everything you need to know about YouTube's Brandcast event, which took place last week in New York. And right at the end of the episode, Samir and I are going to compare how many texts we got during the duration of recording this episode.

1:46All right, if you make it to the deep end, let us know.

1:53so on saturday one of my favorite youtube channels outdoor boys uploads a video titled goodbye i gotta be honest i saw it i thought it was probably a bait and switch it generally is generally it's generally like a goodbye from this format yeah because i'm about to shift a little bit right or like i'm launching a company it's always normally a hello actually right yeah it's not normally a goodbye but this was actually a goodbye a pretty short and sweet video where creator luke nichols who is the guy behind outdoor boys he explains that this is actually going to be his last video and the reason being is overexposure he cites that you know this channel has done two and a half billion views but people have clipped it so much that it's been seen over 4 billion times.

2:47And he talks about how he can't really even go out in the world anymore without him and his family being stopped. So that, essentially, it's gone too far. Like, his success is at odds with how he actually wants to live his life. Right. Now, to take a step back, if you don't know Outdoor Boys, it's an outdoor survival and adventure channel. It's kind of like Bear Grylls, like Man vs. Wild, but it's pretty lo-fi. It's generally just him solo with a GoPro going on a crazy multi-day adventure either, you know, into the Alaskan wilderness or, you know, in Australia or anywhere around the world. And he grew up in Alaska, so he's incredibly well-equipped to survive.

3:35But interesting to see that at his peak, he's walking away because he's gotten too famous. I mean, this also happened pretty fast. to be honest. Like if you just zoom out and go back to, you know, just about one year ago, I mean, he's a big channel a year ago. I remember like when he started to emerge because it was so unique and interesting. But a year ago, he had 8 million subs. This year he has 15 million. Like to grow at that pace is wild. And in 2022, he had 2 million subs. So like the past three years for him has been like completely insane. This, this guy has exploded. And this is the beautiful thing about YouTube.

4:17It is broadcast yourself. It is, you know, you're doing a thing. You don't know if anyone will be interested in it. Turns out millions of people are interested in it. That is, that is YouTube. That's like the beautiful thing. But I also think that, um, you know, just like what Patty Galloway said on our show, like the algorithm is a force multiplier. it will if people are into your thing it will exponentially explode and it's fascinating for someone like this for luke who's probably doing a thing he loves like making videos probably fun for him and doing these outdoor adventures it's probably just part of his upbringing right before he went solo uh and by solo i just mean independent on youtube he was a traffic attorney in Virginia.

5:03Like, so his life has transformed in an incredible way. And the concept of being at odds with your anonymity is so interesting to me. I think we've talked about this quite a bit. I think I've talked about this before here on the show of like, I live my life with a relative assumed anonymity, right? Like I walk into a restaurant and I'm like, I'm just here with my friends. Nobody knows who I am or I'm here with my wife or whatever. and we just came back from New York last week New York City is a place where that assumed anonymity gets questioned at a pretty big scale for us right like whether we're in a restaurant or coffee shop like oftentimes someone in New York City no matter where we are comes up and says hey I love the show or hey I watch your stuff or you know hey I know you guys from this and if we were 15 times as big you know like it would make me uncomfortable if that was happening and that's not a direct correlation.

6:00It's actually exponentially bigger if you're Outdoor Boys. Because not only does he have 15 million subscribers, you know, the guy does like 65 million views a month. In the last 30 days, he did 98 million views. Right. Which I brought up Bear Grylls, right? Who's like in traditional TV is the most well-known. Wait, did you say 98 million views in the last 30 days? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it should just go to say that his goodbye video in the past two days has done 12 million views. Mm-hmm. Like, that's how many people care about this guy and his outdoor videos. And regularly, his episodes, you know, within a month's time, do like 10 to 12 million views.

6:38Like, if not more. Yeah. So, you look at 98 million views in the last 30 days. Bear Grylls, who like, in traditional TV is the most well-known survivalist, right? Like, it's a similar comp to Outdoor Boys. his episodes average somewhere around like 3.5 million views per episode his biggest episode ever of man verse wild it was when the prime minister of india was on yeah modi it did like 47 million views wow okay these are like these are peak yeah that's like tv for his genre major tv success and outdoor boys on youtube is doing 98 million in the last 30 days right yeah we we don't have 2.5 billion in its lifetime as a channel we really don't have frameworks for this we don't because luke is more famous than bear grills presently what we do as creators is so dramatically different from traditional fame because we're just going week to week and if we're getting better at our craft it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and it never stops.

7:49You never pause to think. You never pause to look around. It's just one day you wake up and you're like, like, even when I reflect on our past 10 years, I think about like, when did it really start picking up? I can't really identify the moment when we like, did we ever like take a step back and be like, oh, this is really growing a lot more than before. I look at it as 2022, 2022 2023 when we started doing the show every single week but no it is a little bit gradual it's not like especially living here in la where people don't even really walk on the street right being honest right right right you don't really notice if people are recognizing you or not the places i've noticed it are new york london and mumbai because they're really densely populated and you are walking around a lot more.

8:40But I wanted to read this quote from Jonah Hill about fame. He said, you become famous for being you and then suddenly you can't be you anymore. There's more of a paradox today in the independent person making themselves that famous that they can't be an independent person anymore. And the fact that he's an independent, ordinary person who does not come from a system that's trying to make him famous is what makes a lot of people like him in the first place. Right. Sure, his stories are unbelievable. He has a skill set for survival that not many people do. But a lot of what people love about him is that it does feel super authentic.

9:18It's like your dad with a GoPro. He was telling you a story about going into the woods. It's just like it feels like a one-to-one connection. Yeah, it's some of the most radically authentic content I've seen on YouTube. The reason why I find this story fascinating, though, is because I wonder if this is inevitable or going to be really common for a lot of channels that see a ton of growth really quickly. The same way that like child stars kind of like burnout in a way because of the fact that the infrastructure is not there to really help or guide some of these people through a totally new level of fandom.

10:02Well, I think fame has never had a good track record with human mental health. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like it just hasn't, it hasn't had like a, an excellent track record. There's some people who can manage it in different ways and maybe who, who want it and are prepared for what the other side of it means. But even a lot of our friends who are, who are very popular YouTubers, like it can kind of limit them in their even abilities, like go to the grocery store, go to a coffee shop. And I think that is, um, that is likely going to be a consideration moving forward. I mean, if I'm being honest, it's been a conversation I continue to have with my wife.

10:41You and I have had it around like, it's just, I don't think I am, don't want more fame. I don't crave it. I don't want it. I want to do better work. I want to have more people watch our stuff. But those things that I just said are - Then you just got to take yourself off camera. But I like hosting and being on camera and being part of the storytelling mechanism. And what I'm saying is those two things are just at odds with each other. Yeah. Right. They are directly opposed because if we do our job better every single week in the studio, that means more people will know who we are. I think just to clarify the last point, you put this in the newsletter at Publish Press, which I liked.

11:29It's like, this is not a... Symptom of burnout. Burnout is a conversation that happens all the time on YouTube. This is not burnout. This is someone opting out of fame. That is a really interesting distinction of what happened. Opting out of success. Yeah. On YouTube. Yeah. Now, amazingly, with YouTube, this catalog will probably still generate viewership. Oh, yeah. That's amazing. His career and his fame is not over just because he stops uploading. It's not over because the only way he could actually do that is if he deletes the channel and takes off all the content but there's still like clips of it everywhere like the amazing thing is 98 million views last month next month i bet with no uploads this guy does 50 million views on this show and the next month maybe 20 million even if he comes down to the world of like 4 million views a month on old videos he'll make decent passive income from that.

12:24Now, I think the question becomes like, what happens to the future of creators in general? Like this will happen forever in fame and creators and celebrities. Like people will opt out of fame. People will go, I'm good. I actually don't want that what I wanted. But I think putting more infrastructure around creators in terms of their shows and seasons and episodes, I think allows a little space and time to evaluate things and move at a different pace. This pace is insane. To go from 2 million to 15 million subscribers in three years is really crazy. And I bring all that up because we're coming out of one week in Brandcast in New York City with YouTube.

13:11And Brandcast, if you don't know, is YouTube's big presentation. It's during the upfronts week where different TV networks are introducing their new slates of programming. And being at YouTube's Brandcast this year, it did feel heavily in the direction of like, here are our stars, here's the shows they make. And something I thought about was like the shows that they showed us are, you know, Michelle Carey's Challenge Accepted, Hot Ones, Brittany Broski's Broski Report, a new show from iShowSpeed called Speed Goes Pro. And the premise of shows like a Hot Ones is really interesting because it's very confined.

13:56It's here's the show, here's the episodes, here's the season. And I do think that that is very different from what the Outdoor Boys were doing, which is there's no framework to it. It's kind of like every week, new video, new video, new video. And I just think this concept of videos versus shows actually has a tangible difference on the mental health of creators. Are you with me or no? I'm with you. I just don't know how much creators are actually treating their shows seasonally. I think they are making shows. But does Sean Evans really, or Brittany Broski, take time off? Yeah, Hot Ones has long stretches in between.

14:40Long stretches. Yeah, when they drop episodes. It feels to me like it's always on, like from a consumer standpoint. It feels like it's always on largely also because it just like occupies a space and culture, but they do have breaks between batches of episodes. It's not a week to week show. Yeah. You know, and I think there's something to that. I could be completely wrong. I could be actually like speculating in a different way and maybe speaking from my own personal desire to operate in the context of shows versus in like an evergreen week-to-week format. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock.

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15:44Are you saying that like the way that these YouTube creators that were on stage at Brandcast operate is better for mental health is what you're saying? Yes, that is what I'm saying. Which is also more closely in the style of traditional TV. That's right. We've talked about it before, right? But I think the way that a Michelle Carre operates with Challenge Accepted is tangibly different. Maybe I'm not articulating it correctly, but I think that the framework in which they operate is tangibly different. I would just want to ask Michelle, and I'd want to ask Brittany. Yeah, that's fair. Do you feel like you are operating seasonally?

16:18Because I don't think they would. Maybe I'm wrong. But I bet you if you asked Brittany Broski, do you feel like you have an off-season? Okay, that's fair. Michelle Carre, do you feel like you have an off-season? Yeah, yeah. I just don't think. Speed, do you feel like you have an off-season? Speed definitely does not have an off-season. Okay, that's fair. Listen, I'm happy to be challenged here, and I think maybe you're right. I think I just felt sitting in the crowd there, I was like, huh, the modern version of YouTube is very different. Well, shows, I think, are really important. Yeah. Because shows are what TV advertisers understand, which is important at Brandcast because they're trying to get ad dollars.

16:57Yeah. But it's also what audiences understand. Yeah. Shows, right? It's like if you see Broski Report, Broski Report, Broski Report, Hot Ones, Hot Ones, Hot Ones, you see the names of these shows, Challenge Accepted, you can latch on. But isn't it interesting that over the past four years, like someone like the Outdoor Boys is not at a Brandcast?

17:17That doesn't surprise me. That doesn't surprise me. No. Why?

17:23Because who was at Brandcast? They were all young. really like of the culture. And Luke Nichols is a middle-aged man. Okay. All right. Yeah. Maybe you're right. Who, but I think Luke Nichols and outdoor boys speaks to the power of YouTube. Yeah. That someone that the platform is maybe not even paying a ton of attention to can come out of seemingly nowhere with a background that you wouldn't expect to make a hit show. Yeah. And all of a sudden he has one of the biggest shows. Like that's the beauty of YouTube is that they actually don't know what's coming out the next day. And you can have someone like Outdoor Boys where you're like, oh my gosh, this dude like grew up in Alaska and then he was a traffic attorney in Virginia.

18:09And now he's too famous that he has to stop. And he only films with a GoPro. Yeah, that's crazy. Like that's YouTube. Yeah, that's YouTube. That's what's incredible. But it doesn't surprise me that he's not at Brandcast. Yeah, I don't know why. I don't know why these two things feel so connected in my head and maybe I'm like just trying to connect two things in my head. But like I do find that I think the path to either burnout or opting out is the percentage is going to be higher in the Luke Nichols type versus in the Sean Evans Hot Ones type of format. Yeah, I agree. Does that make sense what I'm saying?

18:51like it when you're making a show like you are the character in that show and you do you are looking at it where like the idea of it is the star but i think those creators probably at a younger age first off they are younger but at a younger age probably always thought they wanted to be on camera or have a show if you i mean look at like okay yeah like michelle's going for emmys yeah sean evans hot ones is going for emmys like these are it's almost like there's this different subset of YouTube creators that are like the Emmys YouTube creators or the TV YouTube creators or something like that. Yep.

19:28There are, yeah. Yeah. So let's disconnect these things then. Let me disconnect these things. And let's just talk about this new form of YouTube then. Because I think that is a really interesting thing to talk about coming off of this week in New York. Like, Brandcast is such a clear-cut definition of what YouTube's narrative is. obviously it is the it is like the state of the union for youtube and as a creator i think looking at what youtube is talking about a brand cast informs you how to fit into the ecosystem now you should not if you're a creator listening to this pander to whatever they whatever youtube is talking about that is not what i'm suggesting but it is a really good thing to understand what youtube's narrative is and what they are pushing for and it's so cut and dry this is a really valuable event for YouTube.

20:20Yeah. And whoever they put on stage is very valuable to them. Yes. Right. Whichever creator is on stage is incredibly valuable to YouTube because YouTube is there to bring in more dollars from advertisers. Yes. Now the overarching narrative of Brandcast was YouTube has taken over television. One of the most interesting things for me was at the beginning of it, Neil Mulholland, the CEO is, uh, you know, kind of delivering the opening, uh, of brand cast and Mr. Beast comes out. Jimmy comes out, talks about how he's like diehard YouTube. And then he says, I'll, I'm never going to Hollywood. I'm going to stay on YouTube.

21:03That was a really interesting line because it's in the same week that beast game season two and three is renewed, uh, and, and picked up by Amazon prime video. And I guess the question is like, is that Hollywood or is that digital? Cause it's like streaming, but overall the whole thing was so definitive from a narrative perspective that like YouTube is television. There was a heavy emphasis on sports. I felt like more than other years, YouTube announced this, um, live game of the NFL that's going to be streamed on YouTube for free, which is the NFL's Brazil game. It's like Saturday football or something that NFL will add any game of the week to do a media.

21:44Yeah. The only night you can't watch the NFL is Tuesday and Wednesday. Is that right? Those are coming. I think pretty sure there's Thursday night football, there's Friday night. I'm not the biggest football consumer, but you like sports. I'm a sports guy. I'm pretty sure it's Tuesday and Wednesdays. Anyway, the NFL will do Monday morning football. They'll do, they'll do if the deal's right, they'll do it. But this is very cool. Like a free NFL game on YouTube, I think it's cool. but there was a heavy sports narrative. And then the creators that were on stage all made shows. That was just like, if I'm to say anything about UZBrandcast, everyone made a show.

22:20Everything about Brandcast was show. Even the food, the food was catered by last meals and hot ones, right? So it's like everything was show related. connected tv was number one like this was the whole um conversation and there's a really interesting thing that came up in brand cast in the context of sponsorship and and uh how they want to pitch sponsorship which was cultural moments sponsorships do you remember this yeah yeah so this this lets brand sponsor real-time moments and kind of take over real-time moments and uh meaning like the emmys yes exactly the super bowl that's right and that is like one of the most valuable things in advertisers it's it's called 100 share of voice right so it's like you're the advertiser that's 100 uh across the ad units of this thing but like the sidemen charity match is an obvious thing that should be a cultural moment on youtube where like for that period of time there's one advertiser that kind of wraps all of the sidemen stuff everything around the any video that has to do with it.

23:28Any video that has to do with it. We'll show the same advertiser. That's right. Owning the cultural moment. So all that to say, I think like the branding of what you are doing as a creator is increasingly more important. Trying to tie this all back together to the old version of YouTube, which is like creator led. I'm a creator. I'm uploading videos versus I make a show. I make a franchise. Yeah. I think it's the evolution of the platform, but I also think it's easier for YouTube to communicate to advertisers who understand what TV looks like to say, hey, here's our shows. Right at Disney's upfront, Jimmy Kimmel came out.

24:08He always comes out and they understand his late show and that he's a traditional star. So I think it makes sense for YouTube to go that direction. It is also, again, what's happening on the platform. I would imagine back in the day when they first started Brandcast, it's not that old of an event, but you put, I actually don't even know if it goes back this far. You may know. You put like Casey Neistat on stage or Logan Paul or something like that. It's probably much harder to explain why these people are unique and what they do if they don't have a show. You're like, oh yeah, this is Casey Neistat.

24:46He just tells us about his life or he explains whatever he wants to explain or he'll go on an adventure. and you're an advertiser and you're like, what? Totally. Like, this is Logan Paul. He makes a video every day that's really loud. And sometimes he pranks people. You'd be like, what? Yeah, totally. So it's the evolution of the platform, but it also is just good for business, I think, that now creators are making shows that audiences like and that advertisers understand. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I wonder how much of that is led by or just like connected to the rise of podcasting on YouTube. Because that's like the first iteration of like shows with branding, with episodes that emerged on YouTube and video forum.

25:34And I bring that up too, because YouTube has now announced a podcast leaderboard. So like it kind of definitively putting their foot in the ground and being like, we are a podcast platform and we have a top 100 podcasts. But just thinking about how like, podcasting on YouTube was one of the first iterations of like shows. And podcasting kind of teaches you a lot about media and media consumption when you go like, oh, ads fit in really nicely into podcasts. There's episode numbers. There's a catalog. I can binge a couple episodes. The more you put out with consistency, the more I trust you, right?

26:13Like it just can teach you a lot about video content on YouTube. Can we talk about the least understood moment at Brandcast? Was it Speed Goes Pro? Yeah. Yeah. So Speed comes out, which was pretty exciting. Tells his story as a creator. He was great on stage. It was really inspiring. Very cool. And then he announces that he has a new show coming out called Speed Goes Pro. And then he kind of just gets off stage. Yeah. But if you look into it, it's actually a six part series sponsored by Dick's Sporting Goods. Yep. Where pro athletes teach him how to be an athlete, basically. I don't know why he didn't say that.

26:50Yeah. Why didn't they feel the need to write that into the script to explain this is the first time ever that we've sort of launched a show? Yeah. And is YouTube involved in that? Do they put the deal together? It was very confusing. How do I get involved as an advertiser? If I'm like, oh, I like this guy speed. I've heard of him. My kids keep talking about him. Or not only how, not how do I get involved as an advertiser, but like is there another opportunity to do a show with a creator like because this is in collaboration with dick sporting goods but they didn't even say that during brand yeah yeah totally it was like it would have been cool if we were like and we already sold it to dick sporting goods hard pitch for us to creative direct brand cast that's all i felt in the crowd this year granted i don't think i could pick the musical act this year was lady gaga but the rest of the stuff the creators on stage i would love to creative direct that because i agree with you i think like that that was like um there was a there was a a lot of confusion around like what what did that meant and like even as a creator it's like wait can i come to you with a show how does the show work yeah what's going on yeah is this is going out on his youtube channel yeah it was it was very confusing um but if that is the world we're moving in that is super interesting how famous do you speed feels wildly incredibly famous he was walking like with a aggressive purpose when we got to brand cast like he he walks in a way where you have no opportunity to stop him were you trying to stop him no i just felt scared the way he was walking towards me did you i don't know if you felt i mean i think he's generally a fast guy he moves he moves am i wrong no you're right he's like you're right i just i felt like he had a good famous walk oh you know what i mean where it's like just like he he is walking it's like you are not gonna stop him like he's not gonna stop and take a picture with you he is he's just he's moving he's moving he's on the move whereas you're looking for people to take a photo with like does anyone someone want to take a photo walking real slow yeah anyone recognize me yeah i just hold up our logo next to me.