Can You Start a YouTube Channel in 2023? With Cleo Abram

28:41I wanted it to exist like I had it in my head. And one of the things that's been difficult, actually, I didn't anticipate the extreme positive of having colleagues that were all of these people, internet folks that I've admired, one of the downsides that I didn't anticipate, one of the challenges I've been working on is when I was at Vox, actually Vox does let all of its video producers pitch their own stories. So I never did a story, maybe on some of the daily show that I made, everybody was pitching. But when I was making Vox videos for our YouTube channel, it was always like I came to my boss with a pitch idea.

29:20It looked very much like the pitches that I make for myself now, like there's a format to these things. And then I would go make it. And there's an expression, keeping the head and the hands as close together as possible. So the person who had the idea, then did all the research, then interviewed the expert, then probably created the actual edit. I am an animator, but I would always have help because my animations weren't beautiful. And then you know we could create the final video and um publish it that whole process came from ideas that that every video producer at box had had the thing that i forgot is that for every video idea that became a video i had pitched like seven others and so someone had been helping me the entire time figure out what would actually make a good video and what was just like an idea that i had in the shower that actually doesn't deserve to be 20 minutes on youtube yeah it's on filtering yeah Yeah.

30:13And that filtering exercise is not only important because only the really good stuff gets made, but also you don't spend time running down all of the worst stuff. And so early on, I was spending weeks like doing research for things that did not deserve to be videos. What do you what do you mean by not deserve? Because I feel like every topic will have some merit to it and you'll find like it's interesting enough to you to make something. So how would you figure out that it's not worth a video? There just has to be enough there there to merit like at least eight minutes of highly produced like animated Choreography of like a complex video now actually I make most of those ideas into shorts I was gonna talk about shorts because there's also like love that.

30:57Yeah, there's a there's a weird okay on YouTube There is people who do like the same format every video which can feel comfortable but also possibly get you stuck a little bit and you have obviously this tremendous long form format and then you have the short stuff and I wonder if like you had a four minute idea would you try to cut it down or would you try to bump it up like where there's I would be like all right I'm putting out a four minute video I need this to to be where it lives I would like it to just be if I would like every idea to be the length it deserves when I came up with huge and I was thinking about launching it, I wanted it to be a show where I could make a three minute video or a 25 minute video.

31:40And that would all be huge. And people would expect, you know, whatever length and I could have a publishing cadence that supported that a three minute videos, shorter, et cetera. Um, turns out that maybe because of the Netflix show, which I'd done, which is about 20 minutes, Vox videos are generally anywhere from five to 15. um answered was you know five or six um and glad you asked this was like 20 so those are all of the shows that i had been a part of before i went independent i just write like eight to 15 minute scripts i know like i just i just like i don't know why that is it's just the length that comes out um i'm not sure if that's because i choose ideas that feel like they merit that or because I could work on my script writing.

32:28Well, here's a test. When you make a short, do you run up against a 59 and a half second limit every single time? I'm getting better about it. I'm like coming up with ideas. And I have an associate producer who's wonderful who's helping me with this. Some of them only need to be like 30 seconds. So I'm working on, again, just like the idea should be the length that it needs to be. That's the principle. Like, Huge If True shouldn't, in my mind, should not have an episode length that we're shooting for. Right, yeah. Yeah, I really, I encourage my creator friends to not, like, lock into any one format or length.

33:04Even though it's really, like, you create this audience expectation, and it's sometimes really healthy to do that, and it creates them coming back for more. You do want to keep it, mix it up once in a while and, like, figure out, you know, this is a four-minute video, and I'm going to make a four-minute video. Yeah. But I do want to talk about shorts, because that's the thing. You've been prolific with shorts. Since we last talked about these, we were doing, it was only a couple of months ago, and I was like, all right, you're doing more shorts and either cutting down video ideas that aren't worth a full video and deciding, okay, this can be a short, or just coming with ideas that seems like they're for shorts in the first place.

33:37What is your top secret short strategy? Break it down for the whole podcast. We need to know. So shorts are awesome. I really, really like shorts. I, when I was at Vox, I was making a lot of TikToks, a lot of like explanatory work that just sort of belonged in that vertical short format. So I really enjoy that creatively. I don't think if I were just making short form content, I would feel creatively fulfilled. Like I think for me, I make a show. And for me, that means I'm aiming for like topics that feel like they deserve more time than that. And so the balance between like the creative outlet of shorts and the sort of final product of the long form videos feels really creatively important to me.

34:21I love that YouTube now has both. So shorts, for me, they are either – they fall into a couple categories. Shorts can be ideas about things in the world that I think are very interesting and important to explain, feel like they fit within the huge, if true, optimistic future category of stories that I do, but don't deserve anything longer than 60 seconds. Like if I can explain one simple little idea, one update, one whatever in 60 seconds, that again, to our point, that should be the length that it is. I would make an independent short and never make anything else about that topic or I don't need to.

35:03Another thing is, and these are all kind of like Venn diagrams blended, but another category is, is this an idea that could become a longer form video? So I made an episode, a short form video about the tracking technology in World Cup balls last year. Okay. And I was kind of interested in it. I hadn't covered much like sports automation stories, sports tracking tech. And I wanted to sort of feel out how people would respond to a story like that. It did incredibly well. And I was shocked to discover that one of the main debates within that the comment section of that video was whether or not people want tracking tech at all to that degree in their sports.

35:52Right. Or whether human element versus the AI out of bounds call. Right. Right. And that to me, like as a person who's really into technology, who, you know, like I have a sort of sentiment about this. It did not occur to me that someone wouldn't want a tracker in their soccer ball to understand if it like went off sides or like officially. People really, some people really hated it. And I found that fascinating. I love that. I think that's totally right for a worthwhile discussion. I wanted to understand that better. and so that's becoming a long form video that's coming out later this month.

36:28I love that. And then the other category is work related to an existing long form video that feels like it should be a sort of pull out 60 seconds or something that adds on to the story that I'm making. The way that I actually think about making this show is like imagine you're building a brick wall and your job is to go out and like find the bricks and lay all the bricks together and most 99 % of the work that I do is collecting all the bricks in the first place. Like I'm reading the books, I'm talking to the experts, I'm like doing these background interviews, I'm like cutting out the snippets.

37:05I'm like put like all of those are like my bricks and I'm like sitting there with this big pile. And then I'm the the journalism like some of the pieces naturally fit together, you like start to build a wall. And some of those little piles naturally become like how do you put the bricks together to make a beautiful thoughtful satisfying long form video how do you put them together in like littler piles to make um you know one 60 second video here and another there and like what are the bricks that you would maybe you were like repurposing bits of the original stack into the others or you might have too many of a certain type of brick so you put some of them into the wall but you have some extra some leftover that you can make a little castle out of later that could be a short form thing exactly and for me the important thing is i know that some people do this successfully and i do think that you can cut down videos in ways where you like change a little bit and then like podcasts i think can be cut down pretty well into little snippets that become good shorts for sure but my videos like my long form videos are like they're like writing a rubik's cube like it doesn't you can't just i was gonna say there's like it's like knitting a sweater where like if you just took a chunk out of it.

38:13You're missing threads from other parts of it, like the sleeve is connected and you'd be missing too much of it. Cutting little snippets doesn't work, and I think more people are in that category than they realize. I think more people try and, the way that I think about this is more people are repurposing the content, capital C, the asset that they created as opposed to the content, the work inside the work. The bricks. So that's what I try and think about when I'm in that third category of shorts when I'm trying to figure out how to make short form videos based on a topic that I'm already covering in long form.

38:44It's not about cutting down the long form. It's about like what what within these what are the bricks that merit short form videos? Super good analogy. I love that one. And also I've done the same thing where like I've made a short and had enough feedback that I go, yeah, there's many more bricks here to build a wall and we can make a full. That's what we're doing with the tablet right now. And that's happened and that's going to continue to happen. But I also wonder about the other way around where I don't want to cut out like a section of my video because that feels like I'm missing you know how like you'll see a wall where like the bricks overlap so you can't like cut a neat rectangle out you kind of you're like well you're missing some of these yeah like that's that happens a lot so I feel like I need to create a new piece specifically for the format that has a lot of the things from the main yeah and I think about that a lot in the actual delivery of the content as well I deliberately in my short form videos record on my phone as though I'm FaceTiming someone.

39:38And like, they're weirdly all from the same angle because I just hold my phone in my right hand and I'm like talking to the phone as though it's my friend. And for me, that feels better as a short form video compared to like the 4K static shot that I use for hosting my long form YouTube videos. Yeah, that is fascinating. The production quality thing also we could, I was gonna ask like, you're making videos you'd wanna watch and you're creating the show that you wish existed. for the shorts it's almost not to me it is to me it doesn't feel like a show as much as just feels like I was scrolling and I got this nice like piece of content and it was it was just a nice little burst of information for me how do you think about like what stuff like when you're creating a new idea for a short are you thinking I'm just amazed that you make these in under 60 seconds like how do you condense all of the relevant information to be in the short versus is something that you'd you collect and it turns out is relevant but doesn't fit in the 60 seconds like i don't i don't know how you made the entire soccer ball video under 60 seconds mostly it's in the idea choice okay it it you know for example the soccer ball was about the ball specifically right as opposed to the longer video that i'm making right now is about like the way that hawkeye was invented in tennis and then bled into all kinds of other automation and then you know here's soccer and here's what we're doing which is like so tempting to put in the short too yeah it's mostly just the one idea it's like if i if i called you and i had 60 seconds tell you something i wouldn't like start with like well you know in the early 2000s right i can't wait for that video the sports one yeah that's gonna be coming out soon i'm gonna try and put it out um right when the u.s open starts oh nice because it's so much of it came from tennis there's some in football i don't cover football as much or soccer yeah i was gonna say which one I don't follow any sports, but whenever I see a clip of football and I just see the crazy tracking and they do it under the players, even other people.

41:41And I'm like, when did this get so advanced? When I watched this as a kid, they didn't have any of this stuff. There's a lot of stuff like that now. It's crazy. And they try to go a little too far sometimes. Like in basketball, they had the three-point line light up for like half the season. And it was like, can you stop? That's a little too much. I'm very into the automated ref call tech specifically. Like not just making the viewer experience better, but actually changing the calls of the game. That feels to me like the most controversial area. And I do really like, to your question about like controversial topics earlier, I do really like to deliberately choose the controversial topic.

42:19And then imagine like if it's controversial, it's because people disagree about what the potential, generally the potential outcome of something could be. Like some people are worried about it and some people are excited about it. So it's like, okay, what are the people who are excited have in mind? What are the reasonable concerns from the people who are worried? Like that's probably a good, huge, if true episode actually. And sports fans disagree. Disagree about. I just got into soccer like last season. And I remember when my friend was explaining to me the whole VAR thing. And I was like, oh, that's a great idea.

42:48And he's like, no, it f***ing sucks. And I was like, what are you talking about? That's amazing. In my head, I'm like, why wouldn't you have cameras from every angle where you can literally know for sure. But then I'm sure there's a lot of sports fans that are like, it's taken away from the game. Every sport has a different amount of computer intervention to get the call right. The tennis one is obviously, I think that's the most black and white one. Oh, the ref made a call. I don't think it's right. Let's go to the AI who's going to tell us the real answer. In the U.S. Open, I believe it's the automated system that makes the call first now.

43:25Okay. So you wouldn't even get the replay anymore. It doesn't have to be. So some sports use a challenge system, which is what you just described. And some sports use the automated call first, which is very controversial. But I struggle with this because on the one hand, and this is like the place I try and get to with every episode. So I feel like this is a good example. But it's like, on the one hand, I really believe that we have asked athletes to spend their entire lives perfecting their ability to play this sport by these rules. And it's our responsibility to then enforce those rules precisely and accurately so that those people who have worked so hard to do that are judged fairly.

44:03I don't think I could possibly look at an athlete that I admire and say, like, no, I know we set up these rules. And I know that we have a tool that would judge you more fairly, but we're not going to use it because the uncertainty is enjoyable for me. Do people just love screaming at the referee? So that's one thing. People love fighting. However, once I dug into this, that was like my initial instinct. I was like, people just love getting mad. That's part of the sport. I get it. I love getting mad at the TV, for sure. But when you really get into it, it's actually less that than people naturally object to the precise enforcement of the rules, which I kind of agree with.

44:46So, for example, there's this famous case that I use in the video where this guy, he's offsides. There's a lot of automated tech to detect offsides in soccer. And he's offsides, but you can see it in the replay. It's like the tiniest, tiniest little amount. And he was like the player clearly believed that he was on sides. And any reasonable ref, I mean, I think would have would have said like that player is like basically in line with the final defender. Like this is on sides. But in a very, very precise system, you don't have that level of like natural buffer because you are enforcing the rules even more precisely and accurately.

45:24and you could that like and then that's so interesting to me because you could play out the use of that technology in line with people's values you just have to decide that those actually are your real values like you could say we want to build in a buffer into this system you could do that technologically that's fine you just have to admit that you want it first which is a very interesting thing and I think that's what people are actually fighting about it's like what what rules do we actually care about and how do we want them enforced and that's a much much more like rich conversation to me that technology revealed who won that case uh the the toe was off sides and they're like i forget what it was um i remember it was like leverkusen versus club bruga i think i forget who won but like the the the uh automated tech automated made a big difference that's wow yeah so i was thinking about basketball and like there are different eras of the game based on how it was refereed and the refereeing would dictate the play style so there is now there's like the the 20 year era of like the 80s and 90s which are more physical and the rules are also slightly different but they were enforced in a way that would allow certain levels of contact where now referees would call that same contact differently despite the same rules so the refereeing changes the game the way the league wants it to move changes the game all these things it feels like once we take that out of referees maybe sports fans object to the the human element being taken out of it so that that i can simplify i can simplify with that i can i can sympathize with that but it is fascinating that you object to the precise calls of everything it's really cool also there's like golf where it's like rules are really nebulous sometimes like the ball is buried in the face of a bunker but there's some grass underneath it so is it technically man-made because the bunker has a layer of like styrofoam holding the lip up or is it because of the grass that's touching the ball that it's not man-made so you get relief backwards and it's like it's just some guy's just going to tell you what he thinks of the rules and like you can kind of go by that you hit at the masters right did i see um i went to yeah the open at um royal liverpool yeah cool it was that's awesome it was incredible yeah but watch the video when it comes out that's the thing that matters yeah i don't know shorts are hard for me because i i kind of write like you which is i imagine you have a whole bunch of backstory and context to help you better understand something and by the time i crunch it all down into a short oops it's three minutes long i can't really make a short out of this uh and it's a challenge to try to cut it down um for tech i think about them like little experiments like i'm just like shooting a text off to a friend here's here's an update kind of thing um and also i have an associate producer who's helping me do you have like a criteria for what uh what type of video you'll make versus what now you decide not to make a video about um I mean I think the way that people generally like the the sort of jargon speak version of this would be you think about your brand I think about the way that I want people to the way that I want to show up in people's lives I want every time they see something from me for them to understand that they're gonna get a little taste of something really interesting a little taste of the future I want them to have a specific feeling which is we can make the future better and if I'm not really gonna be able to do that then I maybe if it's super important but it would be an exception Yeah.

49:00Okay. So the other question I have, since you were talking about a video you're working on that's later in the month and I'm, I'm jealous. Every time I ask a creator this question and I get an answer, I hate that I can't relate, but how far out do you know your content calendar goes? Like how far out do you know what you're going to be making already? I know for sure the next three videos and I only do one long form video a month right now. So you know three months. So I know three months for sure, like in production in research like planning those shoots and then I have maybe like six ish other episodes that feel really good feel like I never want to to get to the end of something and only have like one episode out because the the research process and the especially if there's a field shoot that the the scheduling process takes so long that if I'm not starting a couple months to do right so i have ideas that are good pitches that have been greenlit maybe maybe at least six months past that so the the longest version that i could pretend to say is like nine months that's not really true it's really three months you have three and then i have ideas that could exist beyond that yeah but so i i love that because you can you can kind of decide like when these will come out based on possible either events that they're going to line up with or something like that.

50:30I don't really have that other than like, we know certain products get announced every year. So we know what we're going to be doing roughly at that time of year. Like, oh, it's about to be September and October. What happens every September and October? We get a new iPhone and a new Pixel phone. So we know that that's happening. But if you ask me what we're doing in three months, I have literally no idea what we're doing in three months. Yeah, but the thing that you've done is that you've set up relationships with companies that want you to review their products upon launch. And sometimes those launches are themselves like massive holidays, basically like the Apple Vision Pro.

51:02How did that video come to exist? Because that was like immediate when they released and you clearly like tried it, set it up, planned it to be released right then. So something that happens with those types of events is these companies are very secretive. So we don't typically actually know exactly what's happening until it's being revealed. Or if you're fortunate enough, you'll get briefed on it a day or two or a week beforehand. And so you have an idea of what they're about to say on stage and then they'll say it. Apple notoriously does not pre-brief anyone. So when they announced the Vision Pro on stage, that was the first time that day that anyone outside of Apple was actually getting that real information.

51:42and then we got to go down to this sweet building that they built on their campus and like try it and get it fit for us and there was like a 30 minute product demo and basically I don't know probably 100 people got that demo and it was all of our jobs in that moment to decide what is our content strategy around this 30 minute off-camera demo that we just received and for me the idea was I'm gonna go back to this hotel room set up my camera on a tripod and just talk about what I just experienced and the idea was like okay you're not gonna be able to buy this thing yet but let me just tell you what I experienced and what I think of it because this will give you a good idea of if you might be interested in it or not other people had different ideas they were kind of trying to compare it to other things other people kind of the same thing just describe the experience but it was basically that it was go back to the hotel room talk about it chop it up and upload it on hotel Wi-Fi and cross your fingers.

52:36Wow. So that's how that one comes together. I think there's a lot of other versions of that where like a device gets announced on the spot and everyone actually I'm giving myself too much credit. I think I on the spot decide my content strategy but I think a lot of people go into it already knowing we're making this video this video and this short and when we show up we're going to make these things and I like to leave a little bit of room for and this wasn't worth a video. This wasn't this update wasn't really big enough to warrant a whole video. Maybe it's just is short but i kind of try to be flexible i would love to develop that kind of like even just being one of those hundred people to get access to actually try it like and film i mean you got to film trying it right like no no you didn't you try it and you describe their experience sometimes you do this is one of those weird top secret things can't even point a camera at it yeah So, I mean, I think, and also getting sent stuff to try beforehand.

53:34Like, I think for me, if I wanted to explain something complex that a company is working on, I would love to know about it before they tell other people. And as long as they're okay, journalistically, with me, like, not showing them the video beforehand, if they are basically saying, like, we know the premise of your show. and we know that you're going to explore this rigorously but optimistically like contextualize our tech within the future of what this category could be i would love to be able to do that like that for me would be much better than trying to like time our video on quantum computing happened to come out when a lot of people were talking about quantum computing that was an accident i had no idea that was gonna happen that was on purpose it was totally on purpose that was on purpose i knew that there was gonna be a massive development in quantum computing yeah no that's that's funny because I think you could do a lot of these types of videos.

54:24And we were talking about like, we're working on a video today that will come out tonight. And like our timeline, we've, we've sort of optimized in a way where we, that's kind of like the, the standard is like, uh, if you asked me to review, if you handed me a brand new phone that I'd never seen before right now at this table, within a week, I could upload the review of the phone. It would be like three or four days of like really using it and poking around and taking notes and all that stuff. And then by the time I get to like day three, day four day five i'm like i think i know this thing pretty well and i can form opinions based on what i know about the smartphone landscape and that's a day of production and a day of editing and then it's up and i just don't have any other like the longest timeline of an edit we'll work on is like two weeks which is incredibly long time for me because i feel like the need to get the video out for the entire two weeks and then it's finally out i'm like yeah there it is but But yeah, that's a big difference.

55:20But I do think you could do like a sort of a look into technologies that have a lot of potential. It's just so many of them are so short term that they wouldn't maybe feel like they're in line with the huge if true thing. But there are a lot of them out there that I think would do it. Big swings. Yeah.

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58:06So you also, in moving from working with Vox to going independent, have had to sort of build a team around a lot of the things that you do. And we were talking about this because we have a team here at the studio. And every piece of what everyone does is something that at some point I was doing. What is the pie chart for how you spend your time as a creator look like? And what are the pieces of the pie? What is it made of? This is something that I am thinking about a lot. and kind of like building the plane as it flies is the vibe right now. I can relate. So to rewind a little bit, when I was at Vox, Vox is amazing internally because it basically is set up to be, or at least it was at the time, dozens of independent creators within Vox.

58:50And then there's support in terms of story editing and, for me, animation and, you know, a lot of infrastructure. But people generally are making their own videos much in the same way that people do when they have full channels. So this is like Johnny Harris was doing this, like Sam Ellis, who recently started a channel with Johnny and Iz, me, like the team at Vox now. And so that was enormously helpful because in order to become, I don't know how much backstory you want, but in order to become a video journalist at Vox, I was actually already working at Vox on the business development side. and I went to night classes at the School of Visual Arts in New York which I highly recommend to learn how to edit and animate right so that I could make videos for Vox like nights and weekends like just trying to get better at this skill eventually started making videos for their YouTube channel but that that requirement basically that I be able to do everything in order to do the video production in the first place has become really important now because I know what I'm looking for and I know how to do it.

1:00:01Asterisk, not nearly as well as the people on my team now know how to do it. Well, that helps because you at least can give direction based on what you know is possible and what you've tried to visualize, things like that. Like the editor that I work with right now is way better and way faster than I ever could be. That's awesome. The animator that I work with is way more talented and just has a sense of style and is also just technically proficient in a way that like it would take me so long to get anywhere close. But that's the great privilege that I have of being independent, like to be able to go out and hire those people and make them a part of the team and make the show together because and have them add something that I never could add.

1:00:40It makes a show so much better than I ever imagined it could be and that it was than it was, you know, right when I was starting out. And I did work with an animator and an editor, different animators and editors from kind of the get go. I've never been a great animator. Like, I'm proficient but not excellent in animation. I took one class in motion graphics in college, and I can barely move things around the screen in After Effects, so I'm impressed. It's not gorgeous. It's functional. It's functional. But learning what the style of the show was and who could do it has been informed by the fact that, like, I was for a long time I was I was doing all parts of this myself including the actual journalism itself the the third member of my team is an associate producer who works on mostly the research side and helping write shorts and like making the videos um much more rigorous uh than they could be if I was just one person like having that additional person she also um Nicole you met her yeah um she uh quantum physics background exactly yeah yeah um and so she has a technical proficiency on the research side that I don't have.

1:01:55That combination of all of these people that are so much better at their thing than I am helps make obviously the work better, but also the fact that I can do some amount of what they can do is a big deal. So to answer your question about how I actually spend my time now, I would say it's mostly research, writing, um prepping for interviews the sort of traditional production side that I've always done the like journalism itself is still most of it um I also run the business myself I like do most of my negotiations like the bookkeeping too all the I have an accountant yeah but like I it has felt very important to me to like have my hands firmly on the wheel at least in the first couple years and not outsource a lot of those things like a lot of managers reach out to you and they're like want to run your business and like give me the reins I see yeah um and I probably spend more time than I will be able to long term doing that um but that's that's how I would say I spend like 20 % of my time doing the business stuff 80 % of my time doing production um and that production in part includes reading the books, writing the scripts, and then like giving notes and then traveling to various shoots and things.

1:03:20I'm trying to reduce the number of field shoots that I do because it just means that you're constantly waiting on other people's permission to actually make the thing. And it's important to have things that you can already create so that you're not stressed. But that's a big chunk of it too, is like traveling to different shoots, actually doing that production. I feel like the natural, like I've probably told you about my octopus analogy with like a creator. So it feels like you've already, like you've cut off some of the arms of like the, the super talented editing and animation and things like that.

1:03:49Are there things that you're also eventually going to like, what is ideally, what does the pie look like in three or four years when you're, you're in the dream workflow and you've, you've optimized your everything? I think the general principle is that focus is your friend. That the biggest mistake that I could make right now is getting too spread, launching too many things. You know, I have not, it's been a year and a half, we've hit a million. I don't have any merch. I don't have any like Patreon. I don't do anything except create this channel. That might be a mistake, but that level of focus has really helped me.

1:04:24I think that's what I was, yeah. And so I think increasing, not decreasing that is the task ahead so i am trying to figure out ways to um you know reduce the amount of time that i spend like miscellaneous time traveling or you know honestly like i don't i don't say yes to that many events because that's just not like uh being the the public figure is helpful on the show going around to a lot of events is like not actually part of my job the way that I see it. I do think that I probably could, like if I'm imagining the octopus and thinking about the arms that I could cut off, some amount of business support I do think would be worthwhile.

1:05:12I have an agent who does, agents who do a lot of sourcing and helping negotiate, but I also think that I could probably use some more support in running the business of Huge. that seems like a longer term thing to cut off like again i'm really excited about fully understanding all of the mechanisms and all of the business and all the finances of this running a production company is what we're doing yeah i feel like the the question that you'll start to get is like you still do that and that's when you know like okay i think i've learned all the ins and outs of this and it can probably you still you said you edit 75 of your work how did How did you make that decision?

1:05:49Well, I mean, I was editing 100%. So it's like, oh, well, we'll find someone who's incredibly talented at editing and slowly give them sort of reign to like not just not just emulate, but improve a lot of the videos that we're doing. But based on editing. But yeah, like literally everything that we do here at the studio was at some point something I was doing. This is the year 13 or whatever it is of making videos. and the first seven or eight of those years was just the videos and at this point i'll go to like a youtube creator summit and someone would be like oh yeah i'll put my you know chief of merchant and and touch with your chief of merchant i'm like i don't know what is how do you guys have all these people doing all these things like this all these things i never even thought about so i feel like the focus part is actually i relate a lot to that it's like you you do want to make sure your your primary function is as clearly defined as possible and then as optimized as possible it also we had this conversation a little bit in the car on the way to the quantum shoot um and when you told me the number of people on your team i it really changed a lot of the way that i think about the strategy of how i run my operation because from the outside like your audience is huge and you have multiple channels and you're like making so many different kinds of work and to know basically basically what I remember you saying is like we have a small number of full-time people that are really excited about the things that they're working on and that I think is pretty different than the way that a lot of people grow which is you know we need a person to do this we're gonna like like there's a lot of contracting there's a lot of like part-time work There's a lot of like sort of growth to do new things that results in like a wide many person operation at a part time level.

1:07:49That makes that that can work great, but it requires people to manage that, which is another body of work, which is either you or is more people. And for me personally, like what I was most excited about and what talking to you almost gave me like, like, oh, that works like permission to do is to hire a very small number of people who are really excited about the show or really committed to huge are better than me at their thing. And therefore, like our conversations are management sometimes like, you know, we you know how much people get paid, like progression, career progression. But most of the time it is like they are pushing me and inspiring me and they are running their their part of the operation.

1:08:29And that has just felt creatively like we're we're building something together. That feels really exciting. I'm not spending when I when I talked about my time distribution, I very little of it is in people management, which is, I think, important to preserve. Yeah, I was I think one of the things I generally I think is probably true about at any job where you're making stuff. But if you try to make more stuff, the quality typically has to go down. And if you try to make better stuff, the quantity typically has to go down. And so you know you're doing well when you're able to like cut off the arm one or two of the arms and those people's Functions are growing way beyond what they would ever do if it was just you trying to do eight things at once And then you're able to actually do more and better at the same time Then you know you're hitting something like well and it's working So totally I like I think the the philosophy is there and the strategy is there So I like I like all of it.

1:09:25I think it's going really well I got this comment. That is the challenge is like how to improve either quantity or both at the same time. I got this comment recently that was like, your videos are so highly produced. Why don't you make more of them? you answered the question yourself you've literally answered your question yeah I feel that a lot so what's next for Cleo what is the is it obviously you do want to make better you do want to make more you do want to give up the reins a little bit of some of the stuff but do you picture more topics is it another channel or is it just do you have a grail video that you want to make that you've been thinking about for a long time let me come back to that because I would love to have an answer to say and just like see if there's someone in the world who can make a video possible let me come back to that one yeah um in terms of what's next you know if you'd asked me just two years ago when i was at vox i would have had an answer that basically sounded something like well i'm gonna do this for a little while and then i'm gonna you know that will give me the opportunity to go do this and then it sort of was like tacking against the wind um which i think is very often the way that careers naturally progress i think that's great um but now it's just this amazing feeling.

1:10:36I don't know, do you have this? Like, I, I just want to do this. I want to do this for years. And I want to make this so much better. Like, I think the huge as a channel is just getting started. And the idea of this show, this, this genuinely optimistic, journalistically rigorous show about tech, for me feels like it could, it just has so much room to grow like this is we've hit a million in about a year and a half we hit a million like maybe two weeks ago we're at like 1.2 something now it just like feels like it's just it's it feels like it's just getting started and we're building this momentum and so again like I I don't have the second channel idea yet I don't have whatever you know I would love to figure out long term, like what the sort of products are that I might want to get involved with.

1:11:31I love the two five ones. I think that that's super inspiring for what someone can grow into. But for now, like just this, I just want to do this. And that freedom within constraints is feels incredible creatively. I think what happens is you start making the thing you were always hoping to make and your taste for what you're hoping to make is just a little bit above what you're making and you sort of develop your skills like I also took college classes in editing but it didn't learn a ton from it so you get all this real world experience and you get better and better and you're able to try new things and then your skill catches up to your taste but your taste the entire time was also advancing because you saw what other people were doing and you got other ideas and you had future ideas so now your taste is ahead and that goal post keeps moving forward and keeps you improving over time and I think as long as you you're looking forward at your taste of what I think this can keep growing this can keep getting better and I want to make a video that's kind of like this someday and have ideas that I can execute on someday in the future as soon as I get this figured out I can do this as long as you're moving forward like that then I think everything's in the right place, which is how I've hoped to keep it for like the last 10 years and hopefully another 10.

1:12:49That's my biggest question for you actually. It's like for someone who is not just pursuing success creatively on YouTube, but is also pursuing longevity, what advice would you give? The, the thing we mentioned earlier about focus being key is, is huge. And then I would also stress to not externally set any like criteria, especially when it's like a schedule or a format or anything like that. Because I do see that as a way to optimize. I think what a lot of people end up trying to do is like, oh, we want to optimize and like figure out what the algorithm is doing and like start making more stuff so we can feed into the recommendation system.

1:13:36And I think the second you start to get on that treadmill and the treadmill speed gets turned up, that like opens the door for like eventually burning out. And I think if I've never had a schedule for anything other than this podcast for as long as I've been making content and the podcast is like we can just sit down and chat and it's out every week. So it's great. But I think keeping it flexible and finding little ways to not reinvent everything, but reinvent parts of the show and reinvent parts of what you're making over time. that never gets old. That's fun no matter what part of the show you're tweaking.

1:14:10You'll get to year five and you're like, you know what I should have tried differently and what we can totally revamp right now and you'll just think of something and you'll see something new and that taste keeps going forward and I think that's the best advice I could give is to just keep the taste a little bit ahead of what you're doing. I have one last question. How fast can you type the alphabet? Let's go. Are you ready for this? Let's go. We have a typing test, as you may have heard. On the Waveform Podcast, every guest gets a choice of keyboard, and you just got to type A through Z as fast as you can.

1:14:46What is the fastest time anyone has ever had? 1.348 seconds. Wait, what? No, ever, ever, ever. Oh, no, no, on the podcast. On the podcast, do you want to know who or the number? Both. Really? Yeah. Okay, going right for the top. I mean, what if I told you the average with that? You just want to know all the data. OK, our first place is Tom Scott by a lot. Oh, my God. What? Tom Scott was almost a full second ahead of our second place at three point five five five seconds. OK, which is absurd. I know one should type the alphabet that fast, but I think our average is closer to about five and a half, six and a half seconds, which, again, sounds crazy.

1:15:30But when you type A through Z, you'd be surprised sometimes. we have a macbook keyboard here we also have a usb keyboard over there if you want to try that or a mechanical keyboard whichever one you want yeah so we've got your keyboard set up here you've elected to use i'm just going to show the show the audience cleo's gone with the the macbook pro keyboard but also the the desktop one magic so it's external magic keyboard there you go uh we give everyone three tries and you asked for the course record right off the bat so i'm just going to announce that Tom Scott got in 3.55 seconds, which is insane.

1:16:01But lots of people all over the leaderboard. Three full tries. Whenever you're ready. I'm pointing my mic at your keyboard.

1:16:17You got to Z? All right. Wow. I can do better. Okay. What was it? First try. First try is... First try was 5.3 seconds. What? 5.3? I can do better. Okay. Two more tries. Two more reps. Ready, set, go.

1:16:40Wow. Jesus, that's him. All right. Rep number two, 4.2 seconds. Guaranteed a spot on the leaderboard. I am off the leaderboard already. What? That's already second place. Finally, Marquez is all the leaderboard. I can do better. You already kicked me off the leaderboard. If you want to do better, you've got one more rep. I have one more chance to beat Scott. Coming for Tom Scott. Or Tom. Yep. Okay. A little more caffeine. Here we go. I'm like shaking. Okay. I was shaking and I got like a 20th place. It's more fun to take stuff seriously. It is. I agree. Yeah, I agree. It's like people get mad at me about trivia.

1:17:23Okay. Ready?

1:17:30hit the z there it is for so i think the second time was the fastest right which was like 4.2 we'll get the official number it has my top okay there you go 4.266 damn is the best time yeah second place second place on the leaderboard kicks me off i no longer have a podium position god i wouldn't want anyone else to kick me off the podium cleo thank you for joining us this was really fun that was super fun if you guys haven't already subscribed to huge if true on youtube do it i don't know how you got this far in the episode and didn't do that already but it's all it's on youtube you can search cleo's name or huge if true and uh we'll leave the link to the quantum computing video that we did in the show notes because i think that's a pretty good place to start it's nominated for a streaming it's nominated for a streaming and we'll find out shortly after this goes live if it won or not.

1:18:21That's good. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. We're competing against Mr. Beast collaborating with The Rock. So that was fun. Which, hey, we got nominated. So that's pretty sick, right? That's pretty cool. Thanks for watching and catch you guys next week. See you later.

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