Julian Dorey Podcast - 🤔 #86 - THE UGLY TRUTH About Family YouTubers; Bear Encounters In The Wild | Chris Giuseppini

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Chris Giuseppini is a YouTube Content Strategist, Director, & Producer. Currently, he is working with the “Johnny Drinks” (John Rondi Sr. & John Rondi Jr.) YouTube page. In addition to Johnny Drinks, Chris has produced/directed for many different channels over the past 6 years. ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Intro; Sake Bombs; Christ tells a story about a Tokyo Master Chef; The focus on everyone in a content world 14:33 - Chris asks Julian about a recent benchmark; Parasocial Relationships; Julian & Chris talk youtube strategy for the show; Changing the goal but not the plan; Opportunity divided by capacity; Chris’s expertise explanation 44:58 - Chris & Julian talk approaches to listening; The incremental change equation; Chris and Julian talk  Julian’s YouTube Shorts strategy; Julian explains the consulting Chris did for him 1:00:30 - Chris talks about his YouTube channel as a kid and his childhood dream; Julian and Chris debate the making money & art combo 1:17:55 - Chris’ hike out West in the Grand Tetons; Sleeping in the wild; How Bear Spray Works; The danger of Bear Cubs 1:32:39 - Chris explains a billionaire’s advice that he took to heart; Julian talks the balance between self-evaluation and determination; Perfectionism contrasting between Clint Eastwood and David Fincher; How Chris got his first YouTube job on Craigslist; Chris talks working with Matt Granger 1:55:35 - Chris talks about a family YouTube channel he worked with and what an awful experience it was; Julian explains the logic behind Chris’ modern parenting theory; Chris talks about dirt he has on the parents of the family channel he worked with; Julian compares the backstories of Justin Bieber’s rise to fame and Post Malone’s rise  to fame and why they’re so different; Chris brings up Seth Godin’s theory 2:23:03 - Back to the Billionaire’s Theory for further debate; Chris talks his battle with caring about what other people think; Why giving advice is often patronizing; Chris’ skill to guide people towards answering questions for themselves 2:42:45 - Chris tells a story about a breakup he had and why it was so positive for him; Julian talks about people who settle for relationships because of their age, circumstances, and social pressures they place upon themselves; Putting divorce lawyers out of business ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q  ~ PRIVADO VPN FOR $4.99/Month: https://privadovpn.com/trendifier/#a_aid=Julian   Get $100 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover: https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier  Julian's Instagram: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did you sign a non-disclosure? No, of course not. So you could put out that content if you wanted to fuck them. There's an edited 20-minute video I have of describing my entire account with them, with footage and evidence. Yeah. Because what sucks is you'll fuck the kids and it's not their fault. Oh, of course. Yeah, I would never put that out.

That's what sucks. I would send it to you privately, you know. But that's what I'm saying. Like, if you could just fuck the parents and not the kids that be yeah exactly that kind of be a public service Yeah, yeah. No the dad was a monster man Well, it's cooking everybody if you are on YouTube right now Please hit that subscribe button hit that like button on the video and as always if you have a second would love to see you leave a comment down in the

comments section as well to everyone who has been leaving likes and comments on these videos thank you huge help let's keep it rolling to everyone who's listening on apple or spotify right now thank you for checking out the show there also really appreciate those five star reviews let's keep those rolling we're doing great and if haven't already, be sure to hit the follow button on either one of those platforms. And I look forward to seeing you guys again for future episodes. Now, I am joined in the bunker today by my friend, Mr. Chris Giuseppini. Chris is a longtime YouTube content expert who's produced and consulted on content for various YouTube creators for years. And we had a good, nice random convo today. This one was all over. But

Chris works with my friend Johnny Drinks, who's been on this podcast for number 35. If you haven't seen that channel, it's a great one. They're doing a phenomenal job. John and his dad are the star team there. And Chris has been working with them i think for about eight nine months now something like that and they've really taken off so was glad to have them in and i hope you guys enjoy that said you know what it is i'm julian dory and this is This is one of the great questions in our culture. Where is the nuance? You're giving opinions and calling them facts. You feel me? Everyone understands this, but few seem to do it.

If you don't like the status quo, start asking questions. I'll get these out in a second. What's going on here, though? I brought something for you in celebration for 100 000 subscribers yeah 100 000 subscribers it's big deal right but thank you i have a story attached to this this is uh sake which is japanese uh liqueur you might have ever have you ever had sake sake bombs it's the same thing right i don't know what that is like if you went to a hibachi restaurant, they sprayed in your mouth. Yeah, yes, yes. That's what I was thinking of. Because I'm seeing these cups and I'm like, that's not what's happening here.

But, yeah. Right, right, right. So, I'm gonna pour, you know what, maybe you could pour this. Is that a, I'm forgetting now, is that a sake bomb or do they call that something different and this is the sake bomb? I have no idea. I different and this is the sake bomb i have no idea i just know there's a sake because i've only ever had it where they where you're all sitting around the thing and they like pour it in you from from the outside i've never had it in one of these well you know this is like uh this is actually a a tea cup um and when you drink tea like a really like you know the fancy tea drinkers they drink it out of this and what they do is they they pour the tea just like

one shot at a time and it just changes the flavor like you it grows more and more intense as the tea steeps longer and longer and that's kind of also like a japanese way but i got this for like an equivalent for a shot glass or this sake i'm gonna pour i'm gonna pour this so not tea not today not next time i'll come with an entire tea set. I forget what this tastes like. You know, when you try it, this is what it tastes like. I'm going to tell you before. All right?

It's like if white wine was a liqueur. That's how it tastes to me. This is like I'm doing it all over again. Cheers to 100,000. Hey, cheers. Thanks, brother. So there's a story attached this that's great it tastes really good you like it yeah all right well you can have some more um i'll fill this it's also it's also 15 uh percent alcohol so it's pretty i was gonna say it

can't be that heavy i was i was kind of expecting you to say it was gonna be like 22 okay or something like a little bit of a wild card, like a Mad Dog 2020 or something number. But still, 15 is not bad. So I wanted to bring this to not just celebrate 100,000 subscribers for you. Congratulations. But also just talk about a story. There was a time I went to Japan for five days in 2017. I was directing a commercial um and my business

partner the the director of that well the the producer of that commercial brought me to like a hole in the wall japanese restaurant it was off of the main road so so tokyo is the largest city in the world in terms of land size oh you were in tokyo tokyo yeah how sick is tokyo really sick um dude and we could get into that like all right tell your story yeah we will get into that yeah please i got i got a cultural difference is crazy like we'll talk about it yeah so he brings me to this hole-in-the-wall restaurant was that too much no it just went down really nice cool He brings me to this hole-in-the-wall restaurant that is off the beaten path. It's not even marked.

There's no sign. It's just like it feels like you're entering somebody's house, right? It's like off. It's in an alleyway, essentially. And we go in, and inside is like a sushi bar. You know, have you ever sat at like a sushi bar? Sure. Yeah.

This one wasn't a U. It was an L-shaped. And on one side there was like three or four chairs and the other side there was four or five chairs and so in total it was it was small i was slightly bigger than this room that we're in it was very small so really tight yeah really tight eight seats an entire restaurant we sit down and you can't find this place on google maps it doesn't exist you can't look it up you only if you know about this place you know about this place and i don't know how he knew about this

place those places it's crazy and the guy who owns it is a master sushi chef like literally world-class one of the best in the world and he comes out and he this restaurant's open for two hours a night 7 p.m to 9 p.m and all he does is serve the eight people that are there we were two people and i think there were like three others let's call it five people in the entire room um the three others were unrelated to our party thank you this scotch doers iers Scotch Whiskey, baby. Really cool. Okay. So, we're watching this master.

Now, literally, he is world class. He's the type of dude, he wakes up at 3 o'clock in the morning to go to the fishing pier at 4 o'clock, pick out his day's catch, spends the rest of the day preparing this fish for the two-hour performance. I call it literally a performance that he does for us at night um so we're sitting there watching him arrange each piece of sushi sashimi um which is sushi without the rice and sushi rolls um we ate crazy exotic fish i eat things that aren't even legal to eat here like puffer fish which if it's cut wrong it could kill you like really yeah it's not crazy because because if it's cut wrong they could cut the poison incorrectly like from the puff the puffer fish and it could bleed into the meat and do they

serve it as like one of the open fish head type things where it's like the full fish um no it looks like flounder you know like in a sense it's like It's like white meat kind of like flounder-like. So how do you know they cut it right? I don't. I just trust that he's a master. Yeah. Would I do it again? I don't know.

Better man than me. I see. So we're watching this guy operate for two hours. It's a performance. And one by one, he is giving us like our pieces of sushi, and we're eating, and then by the end, we're full, which is amazing. And it was a really intimate amazing experience um this guy could literally open up in the heart of tokyo like a five-star restaurant something immaculate like a pop-in sushi place but instead he's sitting here in front of us not even a full crowd there's let's say eight seats there's five of us there in the entire restaurant carefully

honing in on his craft giving us the custom attention now i don't know how much the meal cost i imagine a fortune but but it um it was really special and eye-opening to me because now i actually want to put a pin in that. Now I want to talk about something else. Okay? We're going to come back to it. Okay. I'm very intrigued. Yeah. This is going to all wrap together.

You got me on the hook. In our world today, like I listen to your podcast, I listen to the guests that you come, I read the comments, and I see all that stuff. There's a lot of confusion in the world that we have today.

You know, there's a lot of stress. There's a lot of opportunity for existential dread for us kids in our 20s, growing up in a world that's changing, evolving. We don't feel like we're in control, and we don't know what to do with ourselves. And it's really scary. And I call it a sense of existential dread. It's really, you know, the way I describe it is, dude, you feel helpless. Like, how can we make the world a better place?

You know, all these influencers, like, everyone's trying to give their voice and like, how can we save the planet? These people don't agree. Dude, it's chaos in the mind. Okay? And it's causing a mental health epidemic, which is really concerning. But, you know. It's a part of it, for sure. The thing I want to lay down in the foundation to the audience, to you, to everyone is no one, no one person, you just been doing crazy stuff, but he focused really on his craft to do what he was doing in front of an audience of only five.

Not an Instagram account, not a TikTok page. Five people intimately over the course of two hours when he could have been doing anything else with his talents in the world and i want to put the world at peace and just say hey tend to the part of the garden in which you can reach and the world will be okay influence one person make one person's day better and you will feel more fulfilled because you felt like you will feel like you changed the world because you know you changed the world for that one person that's that's a beautiful way to start it off, man. First of all, and I think I speak for pretty much anyone listening to this, I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment there. We do get caught up in this world, and guess what?

It's a part of business too. Like if you're a content creator, which you and I will talk about that, but we're both in that business in different aspects. But it's a part of this world where you have to build an audience build a community and all this stuff and it's numbers numbers numbers and they're they're important for certain things like that for sure but you can easily get lost in just tracking how you get the most attention and assuming that that actually constitutes influence big quotes there right like the term influencer when it was created was not meant to be what it became or how we came to view it it was actually supposed to mean that someone who has a level of

expertise or region or logic behind situation or expertise x whatever it is they then can speak to that and other people want to quote unquote follow them and get value from that and see them as a leader in that way and we incentivized the way to get attention is the most shock and the most i would say probably a lack of care in the value of what people are getting. And look, there's different levels to it. There's all different types of content if we want to focus on that one silo of it. But people, the overall point is people can get so confused as to what are real people versus what are just goals they have to pack their own bags. And to me, when I hear stories like that in the year 2022, and you said that was in 2017 when you were there, so somewhat recently still, and there are people out there and there's a lot of

them who love their craft in that way. and maybe they don't make nearly as much money as they could but they make plenty they provide for their family and they're fucking happy which i guess you don't know but i would assume it seemed like this guy was pretty fucking happy doing what he was doing when i hear stuff like that it gives me a lot of hope that there there are a lot of people out there who want to think that way, at least, even if there aren't a lot doing it, you know, there's fewer doing it. There, there are a lot of people who still want to use whatever their gift is to impact others. Dude, I, I feel you because like, at the time it was a cool experience, right? I had a fancy sushi at, at a Tokyo Japanese restaurant with a master person crafting right it was amazing at the time

but until years later dude for me it only clicks years later when i'm an adult i'm thinking about it and you can tell how how much it actually impacted me in retrospect for me to bring it up as the first thing we talk about on this public platform yeah isn't that crazy and yeah what you say yeah people are chasing influence but when is enough enough and and that's something that i really learned because i used to you know i dude that gary v wave of 2016 2017 that was me man and i lost all of my all all of my friends because i was a crazy, ambitious, hungry person. And I don't regret that. Because I don't know, I had to get it out of my system. And I was able to do a lot of great work. That hunger and all that stuff got me to Tokyo to work in the first place. I did a lot,

I've lived a lot of amazing lives doing it. But at 25 it's amazing for me to experience like wow i've learned i've seen i've seen people constantly chase for more thinking that would make them happy and it doesn't i'm gonna ask you this question so how different do you feel at a hundred thousand subscribers than you do at 15 000 you know you've looked at yourself you know the future the future you, wow, 100,000 subscribers. I bet you, you'd be like, man, that's kind of making it. But do you feel any different? You feel a little validation? Do you want the marketing answer or the honest answer? Oh, I mean, both, but honest. Yeah. Why not? I don't really give marketing answers. So it's going to have to be honest no matter what. I don't, and I don't want to undercut myself or anything or not recognize how cool that is and everything, especially people who reach out.

People have been longtime fans of this show, believed in it day one, and people have come on board and are getting here early and seeing what it's about. It is a humbling, humbling thing it's it's amazing but no i i don't feel any different because it's just interesting you started the show with that story and then with the theme you put with it because it can work a couple different ways for good and bad right and i feel like i can be a little bit of a hypocrite with what i said in response to that right now by saying that i look at the numbers that happen here as the the lifeblood and the result you have to do these numbers on a page to monetize yourself and like be able to let this thing breathe and survive but i also i don't you're separated from it you know even when people reach out to you

think about that they're not reaching out to you like you're on a stage and there's 10 000 people in the crowd and somebody's raising their hand it's not like that someone in their house or in their car on their phone on their computer whatever it is and they take the time to message you or comment on a post and go back and forth with you in negative or positive ways whatever it is they're taking the time to at least like get at it with you they're doing that alone it's one it's one-on-one in their mind you know so in a lot of ways i see all the one-on-one contact but when i see like a number like oh you have a hundred thousand subscribers it's just numbers on a page to me i don't really i don't think of it that way i i and i'm a little bit weird let me

ask you that. Okay. When, okay, I'm sure you get that at this point dozens of times a day where you get like a really personal comment, right? Sure. Right? Now, how does that make you feel? When I get a very personal one? It doesn't have to be. It could just be like I enjoyed this video.

But like someone took the time out to type something out. Oh, it's amazing. Right? Yeah, that never gets old. Like when people write that, I'm almost like I can't even believe you took the time out to type something oh it's amazing right yeah that never gets old like when people write that i'm almost like i can't even believe you took the time to do that thank you and that that means significantly more because it's a human engaging rather than the numbers and analytics right yes because now i'm in on that one you see what i'm saying i'm on that one-on-one with them now they're not comment number 200 or whatever it is it's no i'm talking with this person. And that's really special to them because they look up to you, right?

But there's something fascinating that happens. And I've worked with many, many influencers that do not recognize how special that is. Or they, you know, I guess you're newer to the numbers, but maybe it gets old for a lot of them in the sense that they're having this interaction 10 to 100 to 1000 times a day where they're responding. And I'm not talking about John or anyone that I'm working with right now. I've experienced this in the past, where, and a lot of people are very open about this where okay they're um people are pouring out their hearts to them but um they can only handle so much because they're human right now over the course of years months whatever however long the follower has been following

the influencer the content creator they've developed a one-sided relationship where they know the person and now um the content creator it's kind of it becomes it the reason they it gets old for them isn't because they're an asshole or ungrateful it's because life gets really heavy when you have to do when you have to be somebody's savior over and over again if that makes sense you know so there's a term for this thing, and it developed in the 20th century, but it's... Guys, I've been sleeping on my 8Sleep Pod Pro cover for the last almost a year at this point. And I got to tell you, I can't imagine life without it. 8Sleep's proprietary app goes

right into my cover. It's connected electronically, technologically, whatever you want to say. And it measures my sleep stages throughout the night to make sure that I wake up after an optimized sleep and therefore I'm very energized. So as I like to put it, you'll wake up in the morning after sleeping six hours and feel like you slept eight. So if you use the link in my description, along with the code trendfire at checkout, that's T-R-E-N-D-I-F-I-E-R, you can get $100 off your own 8 Sleep Pod Pro cover today and welcome yourself to the rest of your life of beautiful sleep. Ever so true now, and that's called a parasocial relationship.

It's a one-way street relationship that you have with anyone that you have there on your wall. It's like, okay, I follow Kylie Jenner. I follow her life. I've watched all 15 seasons of follow her life. I've watched all 15 seasons of her TV show. I've followed her since she was 15 years old. I feel like I know her really well. When you have the, if you ever meet Kylie Jenner, you know everything about her. She knows nothing about you. She never knew you existed. It's a very strange dynamic for an

uncomfortable almost when they, they're like, like okay what do you know so much about me like i don't know any you're a stranger to me if does that make sense and that term there's a vocab word and it's called a parasocial relationship and it's a big problem in our world today where everyone's uh you know trying to be famous and everyone's always well connected but oh you responded to my tweet 15 times but like you're still a stranger so yeah i don't really it's it's hard for me to concept it because first of all i'm i'm a little dude on the internet right now let's get that straight so i don't have these problems like you know some of the real people on the internet do but you know one day you grow big enough and you're facing that all the time that's that's a heavy

thought for me because i do take it i take people's personal stories personally right i i don't take comments personally at all when people give me a compliment i'm very grateful for it and like that that has a personal nature to it but that's like a one dimensional thing right when someone takes the time to like basically gas you up it's it's a beautiful thing it's simple you know exactly where that part of your brain is like wow this person took the time let me talk with them cool you know when you're doing thousands of them even it doesn't really get old because you're like wow that's like I can't believe these people are doing this when you are answering informational comments, that gets bland.

You know, you're answering this. What do you do for a job? You know, that type of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not even that. Not even that. That can be a little personal. I'm saying, like, when they're talking about the video or things going on.

Yeah. You know, people are going to have the same types of comments and stuff. And you're going back and forth. And you want to make sure someone raises a good point that it's seen. But that's more like work. And then the negative comments are fun. I have a lot of fun with those. Do you ever go into like, there's the, there's a section of YouTube comments that they spam filter it.

I forget what it's called, but like the ones that didn't go through that you have to like filter spam or not. No, I allow all comments. Oh my gosh. Good for you. No, I, I'm, I'm very very i hear people complain about like negative comments all the time and i those are the most fun they're fun yeah i was gonna say like you know once in a while i'll go back and forth if someone is making an argument about the subject matter and they just resort to name calling i'll go shot

for shot with them and have a little bit of fun right and it's very it's not like fuck you bro like there's none of that like i don't i don't do that the one place where i've ever gone in and made sure i'm firm like i lay down the law and this hasn't happened in like six seven months but whenever someone on tiktok would try to comment that it was a scripted podcast i would let because that's for three and a half hours yeah that's a public that's a public that's so funny about the about the literal quality of the product i would lay down the law and i actually converted a few fans from that where they dm me and they're like hey you know what my bad i i left that comment quickly you're right i went and checked it out

i said no problem man i hope you don't mind me. I got to defend that, right? When someone comes and puts that and it's towards the top and it gets a lot of likes or something, I got to make sure people know that's not what this is. Here's where you go check it out. I want to be transparent. But that's so rare, right? The negative ones I'm dealing with, I have fun with them. I mean, I think it's great. They're taking time out of their day to say, fuck you, die. And I right cool bet let's go wait who's ever said that i i don't know that's not a real that's not a real comment i think i would assume that that might automatically get banned if someone says maybe maybe i don't know but i'm saying like people be like you're the like literally you're the worst creator ever your videos are the worst things i've ever seen like what this kind of stuff oh my favorite ones i'll just say thank you like it's. The ones I see that are my favorite on the YouTube channel is this is always recommended to me and I see you on the shorts page, but I don't know why YouTube's recommending me. Like, come on. You can't even make a cocktail good.

You know, like that's pretty funny. Yeah. When I see those ones, I don't like they're so bland. I don't know that I've responded to those ones. Like it's got to be worth it. It's got to be fun. like they really got to rip you i love when they do like all kinds of emojis like a lot of clown emojis and stuff i'll give them hearts and say thank you do you get like celebrity comparisons at all celebrity comparison yeah like oh you look like this person

you know um yes there's but i don't know you don't know the names no like i literally i had to google who the people were they're like you look like this youtuber or whatever and then I googled it there were like two two or three over over the years or over the last year that I was like maybe all right yeah all right cool like I'll take it like I don't cool well I mean whatever people see it's their right to see it so when you respond to those comment what when you respond to positive comments and to go back to like the one-on-one relationship stuff, that's you changing the world for one person. Because they just sat there and potentially listened to you talk for three hours straight about something. And they took to the keyboard and wrote some sort of thoughtful response, whether complimenting the production or engaging in the conversation.

And for you to rebuttal on their opinion man that's special that's really cool for them because they they gave you three hours and you gave them 45 seconds but you you let them in literally into the podcast you let them into the world of the conversation to be you know isn't that cool it's so cool i i want people to feel like they're a part of it what What I never want to do, and here's where the line is that I think everyone should want for this, but I can't speak for people. It's like I'm never going to just appeal to the crowd to do whatever people want because two people said it or 200 people said it and then you know like you are never going to see me send out a tweet saying i'm talking to so-and-so today any questions you want me to ask them fuck that that's not what we do here there's no there's no script sitting here there's no there's no plan we sit down we took a sake whatever the fuck to start this thing

and i have no idea what we're going to talk about i can imagine there's a couple things based on your career but you know who knows where you're taking it you've already taken it to places i did not expect this to go right i love it that's how every fucking person that comes in here goes so i'm not going to sit here and be like oh so and so was wondering this if there's a huge hanging engaging thing that i was interested in i give you this was the only time this ever happened like with jim diorio he was in here for number 48 and there was an event he talked about on september 15 2001 that he did not he didn't he divulged what it was and then he cut it off at a spot and i was getting the signal from him in here based on me knowing him that like let's

not go past that because he had to make sure like he already shares so much on here he wanted to make sure like is that something I should say out loud and so there were people who were asking in droves because the clips ended up going viral like hey when you get him back in can you ask him about that and there was one other thing in there like a plane crash too so when he came in what ended up being six and a half hours two episodes in wow i guess like november yeah at the very end that full episode that was the like 9-11 stuff well yeah he came in again so he had two but like at the end of the six hours the last 15 minutes yeah i hit those two things because guess what i was also

interested too because the plane thing we had accidentally gotten off like to another subject without realizing it because we were just talking and so we never came back and i wanted to come back to it and fans happen to want to come back to it too and then with the with the september 15th thing everyone wanted people coming back to that and i'm like i had talked to him and he's like yeah i can say what it was i i'd asked him ahead so i'm like all right if i remember to do it and i'm sure i will i'll bring it up at some point and i almost forgot like it was at the end of six hours i was like oh shit let me ask about this so like i'll do stuff like that but in order like the reason that i feel like people adopted this and like now they're adopting on YouTube, which is really cool, but for a long time we were just on Apple and Spotify basically. That's where the – even when I was charting in the top 30 on Apple Podcasts, we had fucking 10 people watching on YouTube.

It was kind of funny. Is there any like – have you noticed crossover from the YouTube audience to the Apple and Spotify stuff? Sure, sure. Now, it's lesser since I started ripping on YouTube because a lot of the people who are finding me on YouTube consume their podcasts on YouTube. That's what I wanted. When I was on TikTok, a lot of the people finding me on TikTok, I would send them to my YouTube page. I didn't put my Apple and Spotify links on there on purpose. I put YouTube because I wanted them to see. Even if it didn't have numbers, I wanted them to see like, okay, this is legit. Like there's, there's a production here. Like, okay, wow. All right. Let me check

this out. I see. And 99.9% of those people went to Apple and Spotify when they would check out YouTube, they would hit the subscribe button early on, on YouTube. And they'd never come back because they consume podcasts on Apple and Spotify Now we're actually getting people who consume are a part of that 30 to 40 percent of people who consume their podcasts on YouTube Which is very cool Almost every podcast I listen to I consume on Apple podcasts There's one podcast which is the first podcast I ever started listening to back in 2011 2012 been listening ever since and

i podcast it's called painkiller already it started as like a gaming podcast but now it's uh it's literally a corner of the internet that's crazy uh it's just three um ever see fps russia fp i don't think really oh okay he he was a guy in southern georgia that did um gun videos um with a russian accent hello my friends it is fps russia today maybe i did see that a hundred yeah so anyway he's one of the hosts woody's gamer tag um wait on is he the guy on tiktok it's like i doubt it like in the sitting no that's a real guy from russia who's sitting in the ice he goes in mother russia we sit in in the ice and we wash our ice with the bulls or whatever. This guy's a professional Russian and he plays a character.

Got it. What was the podcast called? Painkiller Already. Got it. Now, dude, this is a crazy part of the internet where like I've been following these guys for years. They used to be big in the Call of Duty commentary community, but now it's not a gaming podcast anymore. They're all grown out of the video game world and they just have their own podcast and it's consistent dude it's it's incredible because they have consistent 200 000 viewers and all they do is just

for four hours a week they have reoccurring guests the subreddit is extremely dedicated and popular and all that stuff but love that but yeah it's it might be like what you evolve into where like you just have your hardcore fans that are just really into your universe now it's hilarious because their fans hate the show they hate it and they're trying to cancel them right now it's it's crazy their fans are trying to yeah dude it sucks it sucks because i i'm a big fan of the show i'm just a quiet listener you know why do the fans hate it um like unfulfilled patreon orders and like discord drama and like you know just bullshit just small bullshit not like it's just things like guys like it's you know it just it's whatever but um yeah anyway i forget why i brought that up i brought it up for a reason. Okay. So that's, it's a podcast that I listened to.

I would say 40% on YouTube, 60% on Apple podcasts. I honestly, I probably listened to every episode. I, there've been years where I maybe a year or two that I've missed many of them, but in my,

as my life has evolved, but, um, every other podcast I listened strictly just for audio, unless it's clips or the Pat McAfee show, which is – Yeah, he live streams that on YouTube. Yeah. Right?

Yeah, I have that on the background. Yeah, and there's different strokes, different folks with this kind of thing. So it was great when I was just building on Apple and Spotify for a long time. I felt like if I could get an audience on YouTube, you know, that would also help with discoverability. Because the thing about Apple and Spotify is there's really borderline zero discoverability on there because it's not visual, right? Like people don't go on there looking for stuff that much. There are some people who do. Most people don't.

They get their podcast from where they see it in their feeds and stuff or where they hear about it. And so when you can put the full fucking product on YouTube, it was like, all right, I got to figure out how to get this to people. And I posted – I mean you and I have talked about this a bunch. So also for people listening, want to understand a little bit. We're going to get into obviously everything you do and whatever. But you've been nice enough basically as a charity case on the side consulting with me a little bit since august since we got connected and that's because you know everything about youtube and i remember the first time we talked

i was like you know i posted the first five months of 2021 every single day i posted a video and i posted a lot of it was mostly on youtube remember it was like a short form clip six minutes exactly yeah so i would post those things like three to eleven minutes i'll test out all different times and if i got 75 subscribers from all those videos that's a lot i mean maybe i got that the discoverability was borderline zero for the for the time versus what you got so So once I started clicking on TikTok a little bit in April, April and May is where I started to realize I need to be spending more of my time on this because that's getting me way higher return for my time

versus these fucking clips on YouTube. And so I'd always looked at it like, all right, well, if I can grow a base on YouTube itself, maybe that changes. And I haven't gone back to those mid-form clips yet because it's still not quite worth my time versus making shorts on YouTube, for example. That's where I'm at. But I'm going to start working that in at some point. And that way I feel like you can give people little pieces of the show here and there, which is helpful. But it's not like

none of this was like planned this way you know what i mean like you just have to go with what's working and figure out everything that you're doing and what's working that's wrong to make it a little better every day and you never figure it out but you get a little better and then eventually like you get some results dude i so many people when they're chasing a goal and it's not clicking when it's not being accomplished or they're not making strides to it they go ahead and they change the goal but instead what you should be doing is changing the plan just change the plan the goal is what you want the goal is what keeps you up at night and getting up early in the morning just change the plan so you change the plan from the the short form three to eleven

minutes to 60 seconds you just transferred over or 30 and that didn't even work at first i remember when you called me and you know later on you're like this isn't working it's kind of hopeless what should i do it wasn't working on youtube it wasn't working on youtube yes correct yeah that's what i didn't get because i'm like it's working on tick tock and i said dude it's going to take time it's like just stay consistent it just takes like i don't know what to tell you and like really the only variable to success in your case because you put in the work is time right like i mean it's just at this point it's just you have to wait your turn and eventually you'll be chosen when you have something that needs to be seen um and and dude i guess for you that that second one you had one take off but it kind of became irrelevant towards the second toss away yeah this is the second one

that took off was a conspiracy theory one one right it was it was the first one that blew up two months ago a month ago right that. Well, there were a few. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. There were a few that clicked at once. You were saying the one back in the end of August when you and I were talking that happened to go. And then I'm like, well, why aren't the others going? And you're like, they'll do it eventually. No, for you, you called me upset because you're like, I wish this didn't go viral because it tanked all my other views.

Do you remember that? Oh, come on. I remember the – I think what I was saying though because we talked – that was a four-hour conversation when you and I talked. So there was a lot of information coming in there for the first time. Dude, you called me. You texted me and then I just called you because you were panicked because one blew up and congratulated – okay, so this was the second time we ever spoke. Yes, now I remember. the second time we ever spoke yes now i remember the second time we ever spoke the first time you're like okay should i do short form stuff yeah dude like you gotta do the 60 second 30 second um youtube shorts that's what worked for

me um now now you did it and you you got your big break you got your two million views on one video and you call me up complaining because you're like dude this broke my youtube channel no no no no i i was um i was you caught me at like my lowest moment even i have low moments once in a while i was that was a perfect storm where tiktok i got in trouble with tiktok and i've never done anything to, I've never posted a video that's even close to the line. Right. And I posted a video that said the word Nazi, cause I don't know.

I was talking about fucking world war two and it had clips of world war two in there and it got a hate speech ban. And so my entire TikTok was my entire lifeblood to drive people to Spotify, Apple and anything I got on YouTube. Right. And so that all came out from under me in a second. They basically put me in jail for what ended up being about two months, which killed me. And so at the bottom of that, I was so upset because I couldn had numbers, but like the numbers looked worse and it was annoying to take a step back when, you know, it was nothing out of my own cause. And it was very it was scary because you got to remember at the time, no tick tock, no podcast.

I know. I know. Right. I don't have that problem now. Now you have leverage. Now you have opportunity. And dude, like like what I said to you before, before we started rolling, I mean, now you have confidence. And what confidence comes from is when you divide opportunity by your capacity. When you have more opportunity in front of you than you have capacity to fill all that opportunity, that's when you become more confident. It's true in dating. It's true in business. It's true in restaurants. If you're in Miami, you know you're going to find good food somewhere because there's an abundance of good food how does that equation go opportunity over okay okay opportunity

divided by um capacity your capacity meaning how how much room you mental bandwidth um that's good equals confidence all right continue yeah that's great i love that so you're at a point right now where when johnny drinks guys found me they were dude they were like hot on tiktok but dude if tiktok went away fuck they're done you were done everyone was done my job my motivation for to help you is like yo dude let's diversify our assets here and let's get you off of the reliance of another foreign agency another government and and and into american soil i can tell you've been spending time with mr ron d i love it no you said that perfectly well done we were talking about tiktok not youtube um so uh yeah no that was that

was like my goal is like dude because like if you can look if you could just branch out i don't care if it was instagram if it's youtube or freaking tumblr instagram's a disgrace of a platform yeah it is um i don't know where i'm taking this honestly but uh you know i i i wasn't going anywhere where more relevant than what we just said but but yeah so so now you have confidence because if okay if tiktok died you would feel it but the game's not over anymore because you have steam rolling on another platform and that diversification is uh is pretty awesome and that's overall what i I'm saying is the NFT market should learn. And okay.

To diversify your assets. It's, it's a soil. It's a stacks. It's a, no, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

Okay. I'm just playing. I'm just making jokes here. Holy shit. I don't even know how to think about diversifying over there. That's scary. No, no,

anyway, but you're diversifying your attention right now, which is important're right it's it's it's it's something you have to constantly be looking to do as well like where you can't be you can't rest on your laurels with it and i'm not on mine i can control what i can control right now on a daily basis i'm building to a point where i can invest in this right i as i invest in this now i'm investing all me, right? You basically help me out as a consultant on the side. That's what I got. And eventually I'm going to have a producer in here. I already know the guy who will do it.

But I got to pay him. I got to pay him well. I want to pay him really fucking well. I have a question. What did I do for you? If you had to summarize, what did I do? A few different things. Number one, completely reset my strategy on YouTube.

Number two, pointed me in the directions of all the things to actually listen to to learn YouTube because I still know nothing about YouTube, but I really knew nothing about YouTube. Number three, you made me think about every single step to every single video that I put out as far as what makes people click. And not my favorite thing was pointing out the idea of legit bait. And so for people that haven't heard this, what's the guy's name again? The Viradium, Viradium, huge channel. The YouTube channel that talks about, oh, Viranium sounds right,

but I've never said it out loud, so I wouldn't know. We're going to have to find that. I want to give that guy credit. Did I send you that video? Yes. Okay. But then I watched the video,

but I'd already heard all of it because you explained it and then walked it through in the examples of channels you've worked with and everything. Dude, you know what I do for you? That's huge. You asked me what I do for a living and before. By the way, I'm sorry. I don't want to get off this though.

Just so people know so they follow what I just said. Legit bait and click bait are exactly what it sounds like. Click bait is when someone just puts out shit that doesn't really have content in it. They just do shock and awe for nothing. And it leaves people with nothing. Legit bait is when you put out stuff that actually has quality behind it, gives people some form of value, may entice them to have to do more after it, especially with short form content. Maybe you leave them a cliffhanger that they have to go actually check out the content to do it, but you have it there. It's no bullshit. And so what you explain to me is you're like well you don't have that problem you have a fucking podcast this isn't like a clickbait youtube channel or whatever you know so leverage that you just because

you have that doesn't mean people know it you have to give people an incentive to want to get there so when you work you talked about titles you talked about thumbnails the way to do it where it's like all right you know you're straddling the line a little bit you got to make it clickable so some people will say like clickbait no matter what but how do you do it to where most people are like god damn i got exactly what i just clicked here for where i got most of it that's amazing yeah i'm sorry go ahead i didn't want to cut you off people knew what that was yeah i remember what i was going to say but i don't remember how we got there and that connection is important um i think in very subtlety so like in order for something to click i need a good transition right so i'm not

like what i'm about to say is talk about like when you ask me what i do for a living but like i in order for it to resonate you need a connector and if you're looking for a connector between what you knew and what you know you have to do but don't – like don't find the motivation or don't – there's something missing. I'm the thing that connects the – that. You know you have to lose weight. Oh, I see what you're saying. All right. Let me walk this back for people. You're saying like within the content category, for example, which is one of the verticals that you work in, you're kind of like the consigliere.

That's what you are. I'm going to put a word to it. You're the guy that people go to where they kind of know that there's like three or four potential answers out there or maybe ten, but only three or four are right, and they can't figure out which three or four. And then within those three or four, they can't figure out which one to really focus on. And you're the guy that asks all the questions, uses examples, helps guide them in a certain direction to come to a very comfortable conclusion where they go, that one. That's the one we're doing. I'm going to clip that one, and I'm going to use it on my website. Okay.

No, exactly. I like being like the cobwebs that filter out a bunch of the bullshit. Dude, because you as an entrepreneur, other entrepreneurs, dude, there's so many opportunities, different things. And I'm like, okay, what does he really want? And then I just ask a bunch of questions. I sit there calmly. I let you vent. And when you feel heard, and I listen, this is a skill. Not a lot of people have this, and i listen like this is a skill not a lot of people have this and i'm i'm not good at a lot of things but one thing i am good at is is listening to make people feel heard and not just bullshit right how do you do that do you have a strategy

or do you is it pretty natural um the name of my company is called sonder media it It's spelled S-O-N-D-O-R, but the root word that it's from is Sonder, which is S-O-N-D-E-R. And that has a very amazing definition because it's my favorite word to ever exist. What it means is the, um, I'm going to mess this up a little bit, but it's the awareness that every stranger, every passerby that you meet lives an equally complex life to your own. And that recognition, my favorite word, sonder, that's what it means, is what allows me to be a good listener. Because dude, I'm a very complicated person. There's things that I do horribly wrong. I've made a lot of mistakes. I've done a lot of things right. I've done a lot of things right that have been seen as wrong and all the above. And I'm as

complex as you and every stranger on the bus, on the train, at the grocery store. So it's very easy for us to judge somebody off of a tweet. Like 10 years ago when somebody tweeted on the phone, haha, going to Africa, hope I don't catch AIDS. Do you remember that story? And they turn their phone off, they land, she's already lost her job, the news is there landing to greet her at the entrance, and she's canceled. The mob, the angry mob, forgets about her,

and now she has to live life with the PTSD of being canceled and all that stuff. And I make people feel heard just by the awareness that dude you're not judged by a single moment um by a single flaw and that everyone's capable of doing great things poor things mediocre ism all that stuff and i'm just able to to with that recognition recognition help people filter out what they got going on in their life and find what their true purpose is? It's a great answer. It's heavy, but it's also like, it's not. It's very to the point and it's a creative way of describing how I looked at it. If we started

with like the, I think you said the cobwebs thing that was pretty good right like but that's the that's the deeper denser fuller way of saying it but it's look i take it for granted a little bit because it's like a part of my job i gotta sit here and understand people right if i can't do that we got a big problem and sometimes like even when i'm i'm intensely focused when we're in here but someone may say some stuff and i gotta be like wait what say that and i'm good at picking up those things so like when i when i'm working with someone i know when they're listening when they're not and i'm like okay this isn't relevant to you to hear right now i'm gonna store that and bring up four months later dude that happens to me every day like you bringing it up yeah yeah so i'll bring up a good idea and they'll be like oh yeah yeah yeah oh and i'm like

oh you're not ready to hear this yet four months later they're like man i have this problem and i'm like i'm here for you i got i got this all figured out now you know because it was four months ago and dude and and that's that's part of the thing it's like you know how to adjust um well yes adjusting yes but here's the thing the secret to being that connector that we talked about earlier is like dude you can't connect something when they're not ready to be connected to it the thing when you're not ready to lose the weight when you're not ready to lose the weight you're not going to lose the weight you have to be absolutely ready when i first walked in here and we talked about somebody that i'm like yeah i don't chase people i i can't chase a client a potential lead or something like that because i'm not wired like that it's not because i'm a lazy piece of shit or or like think i'm entitled or something like that

it's that i dude to work with me and for me to be effective you need to be fucking desperate for change and then only then will i change the world like world for the one person so going back to your opening thing i guess it's all related yeah this isn't scripted no no no i i i appreciate how you think because you're always i i think this probably comes from being in context you've been in a long time but you know you're constantly in your head and then in like with content but then in your life thinking about how things tie together because you got to make sure like people can follow you know and so it's nice when you can pull a symbol like that and it makes sense. But it's interesting when you say they're not ready to hear it like that point. And they're not – I'm going to keep that for four months from now because what that requires is you have to instantaneously react to exactly what's happening right there. Not just what they say but how they say it

or what they don't say and how they don't say it and then make a judgment on your own communication to then retransmit in another direction and this is happening fast i mean this isn't any conversation it could be it doesn't just have to be business or something like that. It's personal conversations all the time. Like how many of us. And we're all prone to it. It's something you have to work on. But how many of us.

Constantly. Look to bring something just back to. Well we'll say the right thing. That needs to be said right now. Because I know this thing would make me feel good right now. i'll say this or this idea would be something i'd be pumped about so i'll say this and we don't think about like all right well let's not like suck each other off here but how can how can we put something out there that is going to be amenable like that they're going to listen to and be like wow yeah no that makes sense for whatever reason it is and at the same time potentially introduce something that's not so outside the box that

they're not ready for it and they're they're not even listening now that now they're not tuned in anymore like how do you stay on a level it's like a dance like how do you stay on a level where someone where the two of you have this intense focused communication that does not does not lose anyone's interest that's really probably the way of putting it and that is absolutely for common conversations up to the most emotional conversations interest is still a thing i mean interest is the key like is someone is someone just upset and they're you're not saying anything that makes any sense so now they're just upset staring at the wall while you're talking in the fucking air or they upset and they're staring at the wall while you're actually talking them it's going in their ear

and they're listening it's two very different things yeah there's a lot of ways to i mean it depends who you have to learn who you're working with too. Like you have to understand how they want to be, um, how, how advice transmit, like, and, and as you grow in a relationship with somebody,

you can read them better and, and all that stuff. So, so that communication gets better over time. Like who can I be to best serve you right now? And, and like, especially with a,

like a significant other or, um, like a business partner or um like a business partner or a client or a friend any of these individual types of relationships if you could read that person and understand who you can be what character you could play not to be fake but like what character what role you could play in that person's life to make them feel at peace with themselves yeah and and so when you ask like oh okay how can you um i forget the exact question but it was it was like how how can you uh pivot like that

what was the word you use the word for pivot anyway it doesn't matter i don't know um you asked me like how i could pivot how i could move around and it's just adjust there we go that was the word adjust and um it's just like dude like read the person be like okay how who can i be right now to to have to resonate with this person you know like is like yeah anyway no i i understand it's it's a complex thing to talk about it's like hard we're talking about one of the harder things to put in words that has happened in this studio and i think we're doing a pretty good job you're doing a good job it sounds like well thank you um it's like i think people listening know exactly what we're talking about

i hope they can follow it because it is difficult to like i can break it down that front cerebral whatever whatever cortex neo whatever the fucking brain part is i'm gonna break it down that front cerebral whatever whatever cortex neo whatever the fucking brain part is i'm gonna break it down better you're sitting across from somebody it's weird you know analogy giving is a very it's a skill you have to develop it over time it's a very difficult thing to master and i don't claim to be good at it but i'm better at it since i realize that it's a skill and you have to learn it what's written on my cup here is relevant to what we talked about. Now it's an equation. Okay.

An equation. I thought you were a creative. Yeah, but I'm also analytically brand, you know, so like I could, I could turn off and on when I need to. And that's what my unique trait.

So we were just talking about, remember when I referenced, oh, okay, this person's not ready to hear this right now i bring it bring it up four months later right yes okay so some people when they give advice they think no you need to do this now right okay but all change is incremental change you don't become an overnight success overnight it takes 10 years all 10 000 hours all that stuff right to be ready dude you worked for a year and a half straight before you got your first thing to take off, right? On YouTube.

You know. Okay. This equation answers that. So we've got here, we've got 1.01 by the 365th power. Now, what would that equal? 1 by the 365th power. Isn't that 1? That's 1.

Yeah, I was going to say. That's 1. Now, 1. See, I remember math. 1.01. Okay. by the 365th power that isn't that one that's one yeah i was gonna say that's one now one see i remember math one point zero one okay that's a lot more a lot more to the 365 fifth power is 375 right all you have to do is one percent a day yeah one percent a day incremental change and in a year 365 days your life will change you could change your thing one thing about you and it over the course of ten years You could change ten things about you and the other thing to add to that I think is important not that you want to use this as a crutch. It's very important to keep that

That's why I like that equation. It's yeah. I've never seen someone put it like that. I laughed at first, but that's pretty good, but Yeah, you have peaks and valleys right everyone has bad days everyone has days where if anything you subtracted shit right it's a matter of how do you average out over time over a long period of time how much progress are you making month two months three months six months twelve months right and you're constantly judging this and then you can see it in numbers i mean you can see it what one of the guys you're working with right now obviously john you can see it with his numbers and and what you guys are doing there yeah i can see it with my numbers you know i think

a year ago i was at like 100 fucking 25 subscribers like yeah that's that's growth that's good right and it's not one a day it's a percentage right and but it's also not like a straight line up like that it was more like this it was way and for people listening and not watching i'm like waving my hand and then you know and now it'll be like this again and there's like like right now i'm testing out different types of content over the past two weeks like it hasn't worked as well what's the different types of content because you're doing shorts and different types of shorts like different totally different types of hashtags totally different subject matters totally different have you noticed the form that's the same where do you put the hashtags in your shorts like how does how does that work for you and does do is there any effect

in that i'm so simple with it okay and this is mostly from learning from my friends in the YouTube Shorts pods. YouTube's done a really good job, I will say, over the past four or five months or so, really aggressively trying to learn about this. And so what they've done is they've taken creators and they've invited them into little pods of maybe like 100 per pod where we have a contact of someone who works on the shorts team right over at the company and we have phone meetings or zoom meetings and exchange ideas and stuff like that and so people are constantly talking about what's working so i try to find the simplest things and i'm always adjusting a little bit but i don't it's rare that i'll go hardcore and totally take a left turn on stuff i have done that a little bit over the last two weeks but with hashtags to answer your question yeah i'll use the same three that work on my actual description the hidden tags i'll repeat those and then i'll switch up i'll use like eight to ten hidden tags kind of

deal and i'll switch up like if the video was really similar to the last one maybe one or two if it was way different five or six why when you're having so much success doing one format would you decide to oh now's the time to experiment because we don't have a niche yeah okay a podcast is not a niche yeah it's a light niche for a sub for a type of content but that when so what i'm competing against all types of content yeah and feeds so we talk about all different shit in here who shows up in your feed with your show like is it other generalist podcasts or it's so random man like youtube and I know what you're asking for. People don't know. YouTube

will show you like your viewers also watch and they'll give you channels. I've looked at that. I looked at that twice. They're totally, they're all different. They have nothing. They have very little in common. So it's like, well, that's not a thing. Isn't it amazing that you're such a big company like Google, like youtube doesn't even understand their own creation yes and i would say i gave youtube personally like myself behind the scenes like a lot of shit for a few months like how the fuck you guys have the google algorithm yeah how are you just far behind tiktok i don't think it's a coincidence that once they took shorts out of beta and actually invested in it and now went to creators to ask for feedback i don't think it's a coincidence

that their numbers have gone up big time and they've gotten things to click in their own way it's different than tiktok it's like same type of content but it's a different audience it's different needs it's different it's different analytics that i can prove it with videos on platform to platform that do well on tiktok don't do well here do great here don't do well on tiktok but they have like i'll speak for our girl who runs our team, Michelle. She's awesome. Like, she's, they listen. Like, they want notes on everything. And she's like, I want to talk to the team about that.

And she does. Like, I can prove it, you know? So, to me, like, you talk about your job being listening and stuff. They've done a real, at least in my experience, they've done a really good job with it over the past several months and and now they're seeing some results wow it's helpful for me so i'm not complaining man it's crazy like how quickly things move i've been dude i i started making youtube videos myself in 2011 2012 really isn't it crazy i'm probably earlier but dude i was a youtuber in 2012 what were you putting out call of duty video game commentaries no shit isn't it crazy i've been doing this 0.08 kd and

i had a little bit higher than you but not much um dude and i was gaining momentum back in 2012 dude unlisted on my channel i watched it again in the last two years where I made a video and it was published. Let's call it early 2013, late 2012. It was like, is it too late to become big in the gaming community? And I just posed that question. And that was what the video was about. This is 2012, 2013. Because, dude, at the time, PewDiePie was just blowing up.

Call of Duty was as big as it got. And it felt like a flooded market of the top creators in that gaming community i had a thousand subscribers i was i was really like i it was fun man i got tens of comments a day you know and i was going dude i was on twitch in 2012 could you imagine if i stuck through it on twitch i was 22 yeah dude i didn't even know what twitch was yeah dude it was almost justin tv back then do you know what that is justin tv that's a justin tv is where joe rogan i think started his podcast it used to be a live stream didn't know that then it it turned into

twitch i don't know if they got bought by someone or what it turned into twitch.tv and it turned into a gaming platform where i i streamed my capture card was called an elgato hd capture card i i it was is hdmi into that into a computer cable and it it obs didn't exist back then or if it did i don't i didn't know about it but you know i had my own capture system all that stuff i was making call of duty video game commentaries back then and dude i was uploading every day and my numbers were going up and it was amazing and life was good damn and i stopped so long ago why'd you stop nobody's ever college no nobody's ever asked me that question it's crazy story dude back when we were in high

school when did you graduate high school i was 14 2012 all right there was no social media influencers back then there was one kid that got a thousand likes on vine once you know like and that was big deal right and but youtube wasn't cool dude and when my youtube channel got discovered holy fuck kids i did i might as well had nudes leaked it was really it was crazy i got a thousand subscribers surprised me dude but yeah dude okay back then in that call duty era everyone was doing like today everyone's doing the youtube boxing back then it was like youtube rap battles and you know like ashton larold was on this podcast it was like he was the big he was the guy that was the video epic rap battles yeah white kid

destroys a other kid and whatever but like it's got like 30 million views but yeah so 2011 2013 it was the era of not boxing but you but it was that big back then the rap battles there was epic rap battles of history there were different like everyone was rapping the call duty commentators like did their i got a thousand subscribers i got really dude i did a cover of of tupac's um no no no no oh yeah yeah man dude for a thousand subscribers i was like don't do this to me i was it was california love it was hilarious dude it was so funny you covered that like i mean no i wrote my own lyrics oh man yeah dude yeah so so so i just like did that you know for like you got

some flow still? No, of course not. You don't have flow? I didn't have flow back then. Dude, they – I'll give you a beat. I got canceled. I got canceled. You got canceled at high school?

Yeah. No, not in, like, 2022 canceled, but, like, in, like – Dude, kids would – Dude, here's how it started. My best friend in his computer class was like yeah look at this rap that we did over the weekend and he showed it to a friend who showed it to a friend it went viral in my school and bro kids i've never fucking met was like yo youtube dude and could you imagine how i felt at 14 15 years old and you know you know, like, I played baseball. You know, I wasn't a, you know, I wasn't a jock.

Like, dude, I fucking hated myself when I was 15 years old. I was like, all right, fuck this life. I always forget how petty high school was. Dude, isn't it crazy? And, dude, I had literal kids. I'm like, yo, back then, I don't know how it is today in high school. I'm sure it's just as bad. like it's gotta be worse but after the youtube leak i could call the nudes after the nudes leak um it was like dude people were like yo why don't you kill yourself no dead ass dead

ass because the rap leak kids were saying that oh yeah yeah dude but it's the best thing that ever happened to me because i was um i was in the high school uh like tv program but i wasn't too involved i knew i wanted to be like a filmmaker back then because i liked the youtube thing i loved all that stuff and um you know when i got kicked out of the lunch table i was like fuck where do i go so i went into the TV studio. All the kids that were, like, the top honchos at the TV morning show, like, we did the morning show and all that stuff, they would just skip lunch and they would just go work on projects there. So I started working on projects there and, like, became friends with them. And so, like, that's what started my entire filmmaker career.

Oh, so it was a jump. It did. Everything that I've ever done has, like, led up to the next thing it's incredible i could trace it back to elementary school i used to want to be a football coach you wanted to be a football isn't that crazy like yeah that's that was my passion i played for two weeks and then this kid named ryan fitzpatrick i i was in the i was in 120 pound is seventh grade 120 pound um you know weight class i weighed 92 pounds ryan fits may have weighed 107 he weighs more than i do now yeah yeah yeah and and so um we we we did i forget what like, you know, you go up against each other and you do, he flatlined me. And then there's this, it wasn't that, I don't know if we were doing that, but then there

was this other drill. Now the second drill where it was two lines perpendicular to each other. So one line was going straight and the other line was coming from the side, trying to tackle the straight line. So like it was perpendicular, 90 degree angle. The 90 degree was trying to tackle, it was a drill i counted i'm like one two three four oh my gosh i'm lined up with fits again i um i just outran fits and the coaches yell at me they're like what the fuck you're supposed to be tackled by that guy yeah not by that guy but here's the

thing so i um i mean i was small and like i never played so like i wasn't gonna get an opportunity they dude they put me on the fucking offensive line and defensive line on the third string and i'm like i never let up a sack and i would get sacks which is crazy and they just never noticed because i was like the little kid yeah and and on the third on the not not even jv whatever's under jv you know you know and like i like so you wanted to be a coach i wanted to be couldn't play in in fifth and sixth grade i would get all my neighbors in my community and we would run like not drills but plays i i would take like a white piece of printer paper carve out nine slots draw out plays i bought i went to barnes and noble i

got a book called the nfl coach or the football coaching bible which is from written like each chapter is dedicated to a scheme from a 20th century nfl or college football coach i would just highlight now do you see how i am today yeah where that came from isn't that crazy yeah yeah and and but like fast forward into your youtube channel like a year or two later whatever and like stop it with the peer pressure. That's a whole separate thing. That's interesting to me. But like, even if you stopped, first of all, you were really young.

Everyone stops shit when you're young, mostly. But it translated you into your thing. It did. It wasn't like you just kind of went your separate way or whatever. It was also a blessing in disguise. It would have been cool or whatever it yeah it was a it was also a blessing in disguise it would have been cool if that kept going though but it's also a blessing in disguise because then you get into production and you get into what you did yeah but this is

the real thing that i i've been curious about because we've talked about it in our conversations but there's always so much other shit going on that like you know i'll get tidbits here and there but you after college and majoring in fucking film and all that like you know i'll get tidbits here and there but you after college and majoring in fucking film and all that shit you went out west right and you worked on youtube channels i did this is what i don't get is that just because this is what like 2017 2018 yeah yeah okay yeah is that just you dming somebody and then you end up good question you want to do okay you want to hear that how'd this work so remember when in the beginning of the podcast i said like i had like a little gary v stint type of deal like in terms of like uh just gotta do it

man you gotta you gotta grind gotta hustle when you're 20 okay so that's how i lost all my friends no um um yeah dude i was like i'm not gonna graduate with debt i'm gonna pay off college and so granted like i my parents paid for a lot of school like half of school but like i was still gonna have a couple tens like maybe 25 000 plus in loans nothing it's not nothing nothing and i was like i don't want to graduate with debt i i can pay this off i gotta figure out how to pay this off and i had a um a very important conversation with a friend of mine. I was a junior. So this is, let's call it October 2016.

I was a junior. He was a senior. He was my roommate. He was the first one in any of our friend group to get a job where a production company flew him out to like, let's say Atlanta, Georgia to work on a car commercial. He was like an assistant camera or something on that crew he comes back and he's the hero you know he got a paycheck a hotel paid for flight you know we're like student filmmakers you know watching like film ride on youtube and stuff like that fucking ramen yeah and um he comes back got

his you know paycheck of 400 bucks whatever it would be and uh we're like you made it man and he i'm in this kitchen i remember having this conversation with him he's like dude i'm gonna be working this job we're never gonna retire being filmmakers we're just we're gonna die loving our craft and that conversation was really trans formative for me because i was like no that's not gonna be me i want to fund my art i want to do the art on the side. I could make money. I know I can make money. But I want to do my art, and I'm going to retire with dignity.

But you didn't – so what do you mean, though? Because you didn't view going to make films and going to make content for other people as art? We could get into that. No. That's curious to me. don't i do not um so i i don't i want to be i'm going to ask a clarification question here so like frank coppola yeah directing godfather one godfather two two perfect movies yeah he got a paycheck that's art of course that's art but that's what i mean yeah okay those people that say, oh, do your art, do your passion for a living, I'm not wired like that. I'm not saying other people can't.

All right? Like, I'm not wired like that. So, for example, I like photography, but there's no amount of money you could pay me to hire me to be your portrait photographer or landscape photographer or whatever. Right. Because I want my special thing to i got you know my special thing my outlet you know graphic design i'm not very good at it but i like doing it so you know you view art and the art you're talking about is the outlet stuff that maybe no one ever sees it's just for you yeah i made i made three pretty okay short films in college and um they're not public but

that's the thing what if they were it wouldn't be art now no i just don't know um i mean i i just i i make stuff literally just as my own creative voice to like in my own echo chamber i don't you know you could keep pressing against that but i don't know if i have a real answer why no i i fuck with this because a lot of people are like what the fuck is this guy saying i've heard this kind of thing though before it's it's like one of those creative gene type things but like that's a weird barrier to put on it and money money's a weird thing and like financing your life is a weird thing so it can complicate stuff but like if you had put out one of those and for some reason it was like a fucking oscar winner or something yeah the way you're defining

it to me right now is okay well now it's the job it's not art but like what if the intentionality behind it wasn't thinking even it wasn't business at all but like let's say it was it was going to be something that you knew was going to be public if you're not thinking of it like that and you're approaching it like yo we're we're fucking making something right now as by the way every artist who's made a fuck ton of money in their life in any type of medium has approached it that way they may not like the beauty of it is they may not be thinking about at all about like the amount of money or like what the bag's gonna be i love that right like that's not how i think of it and i i could tell the people that

don't think like that but like that's still they know what's on the other side right i know doing this podcast a lot of like the content i'll create for this it's on the other side right i know doing this podcast a lot of like the content i'll create for this it's art to me right like i sit here i make fucking movie trailers for this shit right you know they could take 30 hours sometimes right like that's fucking art and like i don't care if it's one that like i know less people are gonna fuck with it because it's not gonna get as many comments or whatever and not go as far there's sometimes it's like i want that for the library you know but i'm not thinking about like well how many subscribers does that get me and then if i get to x subscribers like oh well

how much money do i make i do know though as you grow yeah you make money yeah it's just like it's i don't know how much it is but like you may you fucking put food on the table i gotta do that i think um i limit i don't have a good reason, but it might be... I'm not saying it's this, but it might be along the lines of if my documentary or short film got some sort of recognition. Short films don't get recognition, but let's just say it did. Then it opens it up to... Not that I care about more scrutiny,

but obviously there's some ptsd from high school from the youtube stuff i'm not kidding man yeah um on top of that right i mean see this is my end like analyzing that that can affect you so long but it does and we could go into how it affected me in college because that's a very interesting psychological case study but stay with this first one for now i will um but more importantly everything i create is is like self-masturbatory almost in terms of my art projects because i just want a creative outlet and i genuinely do not care about the the opinions of others anymore i feel like in in in my own personal world like i don't seek outside validation that's what

i meant to say not that i don't care about opinions because like obviously somebody could call me out you could call me out anyone can because we all do but i don't extend i i do not seek outside validations from others i found it i found out how to validate my own creative itch and validate myself as my own independent human and it's a little bit stoic in that sense whereas it's uh yeah i don't need an outside stimulant in a sense and i'm okay just creating my my art that's cool man and that's i don't know if it is because i feel like i it's not that i half-ass the answer it's just I half know the answer right now in my life. Well, you seem to have at least a part of it very well compartmentalized. And some people would describe an element of that as stupid.

Like, well, why don't you get some money on something? Because I'm good at making money elsewhere. That's why. And actually, that's a good answer because you actually do have that. But if you didn't, people could make that argument. They could still do it even though you make money doing what you do it's like well what if this thing you created here whatever it is it's like fucking amazing and everyone wanted to watch it like yeah oh you're

gonna pass that up i think this is like where this is where i understand people like you because i can have some of these thoughts myself as well. I think people who have that gene, they're looking at the picture, right? Like when Michelangelo was looking at the Sistine Chapel when he was done fucking craning his neck and painting it, I don't think he was thinking about what the price tag would be if anyone was actually allowed to buy it, which they're not, but it would go for billions and billions and billions of dollars right literally

because it's in the vatican and everything like he wasn't looking at it that way he was like yo this shit's fire right like that's but that's what it is by candle too so yeah yeah and that's what i'm saying like and that's wild shit obviously but that's, that feeling you get when it's done and you know it's good. Yeah. Like, you know, I go, fuck. Like, you know, like, all right, yeah, that hit. It is. It's nice.

It's changing. That pays a lot. I agree. I agree. Because I'm fulfilled in my personal life. My financial life's taken care of. And now I just need other outlets, like my relationships. So those three things.

So I'm happy with myself as a creative person. I've found fulfillment in my creative stuff. My financial life is taken care of. And the relationship stuff is always working, you know, developing my friendships with people, my core partners, things like that. However, this year I'm doing a little A audible where i am working on two public facing projects of my own where my own names on it which is interesting one's a documentary film we could talk we could dive into it where it's going to be a silent hiking film silent hiking film i took a road trip with my friend the one who leaked the silent hiking a silent hiking film it's going to

be like 35 to 40 minutes long um no sound it's gonna have music but no like talking no voiceover things like that if that makes sense so like it's yeah uh it it flows and i what i did this summer um in june my friend and i took my honda accord and we drove across the country and for a month we just lived out of the car and slept in tents and bathed in rivers and just like it was fun we went to national parks it was it was amazing i'm glad you had fun count me out i no i i dude i think everyone needs to experience you know what that was it wasn't me being a hippie it was me that was me being happy but it was me um i needed to like self-sabotage because my i was coasting at that

point in june i i was making decent money and this is even before i met john um and i which i guess we should address eventually but um i was making very good money and i and my life had become stale and i needed to like mix up the puzzle pieces a little bit and kind of control suffer if that makes sense and control suffer yeah control suffering essentially is that what i call it it's like okay my worst problem isn't oh i'm bored it's dude how do we find shade you don't realize that that's a problem until it's a problem. You're just sitting out there and you're like, we can't just keep the car running. Okay. We're going to build, we're going to use our tarp and like build a shade for it,

like connected to the car doors. And then dude, and, and where do you shower? How often do you shower? Dude, there was a four or five day period where we didn't shower and me not showering for four days with like, I could go a day with, you know, like I shower once a day, but like I could maybe go two days and then before I feel like, ah, you know, um, but when you don't go for four or five days, when you finally bathe in cold river water, it's angelic almost because it's like you've never had a better bath in your life because you're so grateful for what you have, if that makes sense. So, like, I was overstimulated. Dude, the social media generation. Choice deprivation.

Yeah, choice deprivation, right? I had one focus sometimes, like, where that day was like, okay, we do our hike in the morning because we would wake up at 4 o'clock. We would do some sort of 11 mile hike, be done by 11 because by 11 it's 92 degrees. And this summer we had that heat wave. Where were you again? South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana.

Her great things. Beautiful parts of the country. We visited the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, a bunch of state and national parks. And it was, it was beautiful and the and what we tried to do was we tried to like beat the crowd so we we would wake up before everyone and drive into like a hiking place before everyone and get done as people were showing up

for the morning yeah it was it was it was really something else and we would be in bed by 8 30 at night but no he slept in a tent my buddy slept in a tent i slept in a hammock isn't that cool the best sleep i've ever had dude so you had to set up the hammock i had to set up a different every time yeah um don't you need like trees and shit for that yeah yeah so sometimes there's a lot of trees out there obviously there is but some places like so for example we're in in south dakota in an area called the badlands which is just basically rock desert he made a song about that yeah yeah there you go yeah and um and so i and so did well that was her album and and uh badlands is uh bruce springsteen wasn't badlands a single though on the album too or was i think that no that was the name of the album and bruce springsteen has bad

the song for someone who listens to so much much music yeah i know i can name the best albums ever like in my mind and then the rest of them like oh what was that one called again dude i just listened to i mean my favorite album of this past year i think it came out in 2020 but i discovered it this year it's the new abnormal by the strokes and it's so good anyway i listened to it on the way down here. But we were in the Badlands, and there were no trees. So I slept in a car. And sometimes we slept in Walmart parking lots, too. We did that.

It was great. And it's just like... Did you see any people this whole time? Dude, oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't know how deep it were. I'm asking genuinely. No, I mean, because mean because look when you go

to national parks they're flooded with people and do like it's like if you yeah no there's a lot of people but when we went hiking almost no people because we always beat the crowds when we went to yellowstone national park and they had a record year this year because no no i was i'm sorry i was asking specifically i should have been more clear because I heard you say that. But when you would go to sleep, were you sleeping on like the on the usually designated campgrounds? Oh, yeah. The question. There's this thing called dispersed camping, which is like technically technically designated campgrounds, but not as we know it. It's like government land that they okay here's here's a circle to park your car and here's a bear um

they call them bear vaults or something like that where you have to lock in your food because there's grizzly bear out there oh yeah that's nice very nice yeah a week after we got back someone got killed uh by grizzly bear but yeah we had our bear spray and we we interacted with a bear spray yeah bear spray is like very big pepper spray and dude i i can't like run away yeah it's very effective it's more effective than a firearm what does it smell like pepper it's it's oh it's it's literally like pepper spray but it's in uh it's looks it's about this size it doesn't burn you yeah it would kill a human actually i think uh wait how the fuck do you spray it on yourself then no it's a fire hydrant like oh yeah

yeah yeah it looks like hold it yeah bear spray yeah and you shoot it and then they go and they fucking run away yeah like it's more effective than a firearm and you came face to face with a bear a grizzly no not a grizzly we did not even see a grizzly we saw a couple bears but no we saw a lot of bear tracks we interacted with one bear on a trail which was actually scary because it was in the grand tetons and um it crossed our path and it was a very crowded trail so this is the one trail that we did where even though we got up early it's the most famous trail in in the uh grand tet Anyway, so on our way back, my buddy, who's walking in front of me, he pauses, and he's like, this.

And I'm like, what? And a bear, I have it on video, too. A bear crosses, and I see it. I'm like, holy fuck, it's big. How big are we talking? Yeah, it would be, okay, if if i was standing it would be under my shoulder like it was it was big it was it was brown in color but they still call brown bears black bears out there it just depends like black bears can be brown it's just the shape of the bear you can tell

oh wait on all fours it's right under your shoulder dude is that i was gonna say oh yeah yeah okay yeah oh yeah standing up it would be eight feet tall yeah like seven six to eight feet i didn't stand out but just cross no no no because it crossed it looked at him it paused and it kept going um and we had our bear spray out after it crossed i took my phone out and i in one hand i have my bear spray and the other hand i have my um my phone and i'm like dude and you know what's crazy about this dude is so we're no go ahead go ahead what do we got here okay um so we've got that's not i don't know what that is what do you have hold on okay um we had our bear spray on us like we were safe we did everything safe we did not leave food out all

that stuff you know like when we were camping we were very smart other people on that trail we were one of the few people on that trail that had bear spray you have to have bear spray out here here when like in north jersey and new york you don't you should have bear spray but you don't need it it's not even law but out there it's literally law that you have bear spray it was kind of like uh like people not following the mask rule or something like that you know like they just weren't nobody had bear spray and but we like we were right after we passed the bear or no right before we interacted with the bear we saw somebody that did not have bear spray walk by and literally within 10 seconds we saw the bear cross path and go into and we're like dude these didn't really look at you it just kind of went about its way uh yeah almost all engagements are like that and sometimes they do bluff charges

where they're like fake charges and then they back out like bears are actually pussies it's amazing but really yeah no they're scaredy cats have you ever seen a bear without their skin i guess i'm about to yeah that was that thing that you were flipping out about a minute ago which i like yeah it's creepy as fuck look at that thing i'll put it in the corner of the screen so people can see it but yeah it's like it's very weird like they're fucking they're demons like they're they're legit fucking like that, that's not. That's going to haunt my nightmares tonight.

Like, look at that. It's so creepy. Why do they not have fur? Like, a zoo, captivity or something? No, I think that was, like, a CGI or some shit, like, where they did that. Just to explain that. This one might actually be a legit hairless bear. I forget what it was.

But, like, either way, like, that's a bear without hair because we picture like these big cuddly fucking animals but really like like i'm surprised to hear you call them pussies because like they still if they get mad enough and they're close to you they'll literally eat you in like two and they'll they no they don't even eat you they just fucking maul you kill you and then it's no joke it's no joke okay the most dangerous thing you could see in the wild is a baby cub that's the most dangerous baby a baby because the mother's around and the mother's going to attack you most bear attacks happen because the baby's around yeah um did you see the did you see the lady who saved her dog? No. From, there was, I think it was, if I remember correctly, it was like a baby cub or something.

This was viral last year. I got to pull this up. This lady, there was, her dog was like barking at the bear. And she like just legit like, she pushed the bear. So, the bear was, like, on a ledge or some shit. Yeah, this is it. I got it. Okay. So, she literally takes the bear and this lady's not big either.

She's, I don't know, like, 5'2", like, little regular woman. Yeah. And she saw that, like, her dog her dog like this little fucking yapper was was you gotta buy youtube premium man look at this look at this so this is like a big it wasn't a cub but it had cubs with it that's what it was okay so that's the most dangerous thing you can see in the entire all of nature this is a this is a big motherfucker yeah and then suddenly this dog three dogs come up the Bears Watch the lady come in here. She comes

Bear like and the bear what like gets back up and walks away And then she just she pushes all the other dogs and then I have this in the corner I might have said that I'll have it in the corner screen So people could see it if they didn't see this but like she pushes the other ones away and then she has the little she picks up the little dog and fucking runs like a running back and the bear was like yo fuck this i'm out but like she just decked that fucking thing dude the balls that takes dude when okay you have like you watch all of the preparation videos you like okay this is how you use bear spray you know like you know like you know it's like 97 effective but dude when you see a bear close to you in the wild a big bear dude it's freaky it's yes dude i'm not doing this without like a very powerful gun

well here's the thing dude the very the powerful, you either need a very powerful gun, but still, that's only 75% effective. Bear spray is more effective than a very powerful gun. You're telling me that if I take out, like, a legit fucking shotgun, pretty close range. Because if you miss, you're done. The bear spray, the strategy is you do three-second bursts like this, a cloud in front of you at a time. Three seconds, one, two, three, one, two, three.

And that will protect you. It's literally a barrier. Instantly, boom, they go away. A shotgun, if you fucking hit them, you get one chance. How confident are you? You know what I mean? Again, it depends on the type of gun in the range shotgun it better be pretty close which means you know it's already dangerous i think the perfect

combo would be one shotgun one bear spray for first if you're with two people but yeah yeah it's true yeah um yeah it was a crazy trip anyway so a silent hiking trip is is uh something i'm working on with uh and so for the longest time i'm like how do i make this interesting and because i knew for some reason i wanted to make that public i don't know what compelled me right so like that's a shift in my logic now i wanted to make this film public you don't know what compelled you or you don't want to say no i don't know um you just woke up one day and you said i think i'll go public i filmed it because i felt like you know what i think this would be a nice like i don't know what the video version of asmr is i just think it'd be very nice

and peaceful and cinematic and night like i i feel like the world should see this is essentially it i don't i don't know why um but i hadn't touched it for six months until from july to december because i was like how do I make this interesting and I was just like I have no idea how to make it interesting do I do voiceover stuff do I you know because I and then I started really thinking about it and I figured it out and I have about like 80% done a rough cut then I'm gonna picture lock it sound design excuse me sound design and then uh um color correction and all that stuff and it should be pretty good and be done soon i have a lot going on in life right now but um it'll be done very

soon i when i work on it man it feels like an art project because one it is but two it's like i get energized working on it you know i just like i look forward it's a reward to have the privilege of editing it and stuff so do you have that like artist gene of like there's a part of you that says i have to i have to finish this because it has to be a thing that's in the universe like i know you talked about stuff that you're like oh no this this is never gonna be public and things like that so i'm kind of separating the two because this one you said like it's gonna be public and so when that went into your head were you looking at it like okay as i like when you go into work work on this are you thinking yourself like i'm taking this stone and i'm making my

statue of david with this and i'm gonna do it on my vision and i'm not making it for anyone to fucking the most people to watch it per se because this is like a fun endeavor in this case it's not business but I'm making it so that the exact one two or three main goals I have with what I want this to make me feel like is out there so that if the right person who that target audience is one day finds it they're like holy shit we fuck with this like is that a little bit like the wavelength actually no absolutely no it's not i you're nursing that's not you're nursing i put it again i put it again actually um i see that one though um no i don't i i'm i'm quick to start and quick to abandon if it it doesn't feel right, I move on right away. And if I never revisit it, no harm, no foul, I literally don't care.

I had lunch once in my life with a billionaire, and he said, you become a billionaire. I'm never going to become a billionaire. I don't want to. But I'm going to say never. I mean, I want a piece. We could go back to the when's enough is enough but um okay but yeah he said the billionaires the way they behave is they're quick to start quick

to abandon um and they went when the right thing sticks it sticks so there's a lot of creative projects i've just abandoned and i'm okay with that i'm at peace because i i feel like okay i know artists that have been institutionalized with mental issues in institute like literally institutionalized because they cannot let go of something they started four years ago and it's ruining them dude i know so many so many many. And it's so painful for me to watch because great talent, great humans, great friends, literally, they don't go to therapy. They go to hospitals over this. And they just can't let go because they'll either feel like a failure or it's some pride thing or their artistic integrity is going to be no longer it hurts this is a really interesting conversation i know exactly what you're talking

about and i think a lot of people listening know people like this even if they're not someone creatively inclined or whatever like they there's a part of them that at least has seen something like this even on a public stage. But this is the fine line. If you're looking to search the web privately and not have all these websites track you when you leave, and you're looking to search the web privately, not have all these websites track you and not lose any speed while you do it, check out my friends over at Privato VPN. If you hit that link in my description for Privato, you will go to my homepage with the company and you will see a plan for $4.99 a month. It is the same one I use.

It will check all those boxes, no loss of speed, complete privacy, no tracking, and oh, by the way, you can use it on up to 10 different devices at a time. So hit that link in my description, head over to my homepage with Privato, hit the $4.99 a month plan and i hope you enjoy the product of where i mean first of all it is finance versus not finance because we're usually talking about things where it's like someone's life is on the line like they in the sense that like they're either going to be homeless or you know they're going to make it right and it's based on this creative type thing whatever the endeavor is but outside of that base requirement per se which is that this is the thing that i make it with there is a very difficult question that goes into these moments that can only be answered truly by the person who is doing it which is the honest

question of is this good as in am i fucking at this? Is my vision something that other people will fuck with? Like, even if they don't know they're going to fuck with it, will they? And why? And can you answer those questions? And that is, I always feel when I talk about this, like a backhanded arrogance based on my own actions of building a fucking product myself right that you know you don't know if it's going to make it or not but i'm fucking doing it and i've been doing it for a long time and i'm every fucking week and going after it that it's like well clearly you know how how i've answered that question privately to myself which is it's good

enough right yeah who's to say i'm right? You don't know. Art is subjective. Yeah, 100%. And if I don't build an audience, if I don't build a community, right? If I don't build people, we talked about that personal relationship and shit. If I don't build that kind of thing where I'm going back and forth with people,

and even if it's that, what was that term? Parasocial relationship. Yeah, even if it's like that, I do my best to understand who is taking the time to talk with me especially in like you know reaching out in an email or something like that right like it can't be quite the same obviously as they get from me because i fucking put everything out here but it's an element to where i can do that even even as i'm doing that it's still it does money is building a large enough thing where enough people

fuck with it that it's whatever and so clearly even though and i've been open about this i still cringe editing myself on this i gotta edit this shit right and it's like every single thing i say i find something wrong with it despite that gene when i when i quietly with no one else in the room have had to have those moments where i step back and ask myself and this was before the podcast ever started to be honest and i continue to ask as it did i still do but like when i step back and ask that like are you like not the worst thing ever at this the answer is like okay you're not the worst thing ever at this like i know i can do it it's even if it makes me cringe like i know like all right this is kind of i'm not talented at a lot of things this is one thing that i have at least some natural ability

at i never thought of it that way until i started doing this or looked at doing it i never that's why i never did a podcast before but enough people said it that then and again that's people outside saying it voluntarily and then you have to watch the results and be viciously critical of it right as you're building it and when you get viciously critical of course you're comparing yourself to any of the fucking top 300 podcasts in the world which i did even podcasts people never heard of that i thought were good like you know you have to have that honest conversation how many people have that conversation where they legitimately think they're being honest but they're the kind of person that isn't self-critical enough to be like yo no like i suck at this which by the way and i don't need to get into go down rabbit holes right now but

there have been other things in my life that like i go to try and i'm like no you fucking suck at this stop like you if you sat there every day all day and tried to get better at this maybe you could maybe but like do you want it that bad and the answer was always no you know because it wasn't my thing whatever it was a lot of people don't have that conversation i think a lot of artists it goes beyond the fear of criticism it just goes on to the perfectionism and it's a base level of like it's a it's a that's such a generalization a lot of people say perfectionism but what does that really mean for them it's like what can they accept maybe they can't accept that it's never going to be perfect and they want to release something into the world maybe based off that fear of criticism but like they want to release into the world that their magnum opus every they think the current project they're working on is their

magnum opus which which means they're david you know they're david statue or they're um sistine chapel right but it's not and um my favorite director is clint eastwood clint is very cool clint eastwood directed unforgiven mystic river and my favorite movie of all time gran torino that's your favorite that's my favorite movie ever made i can't say my favorite lines in that because i'll get caught already but it is funny when he says it it's kind of funny yeah sorry so um he has a quote he says building a film is not it's not you don't have to worry about each individual brick you have to worry about the house you know if one brick is faulty it's uh it's okay it's not a big deal he does one or two takes david fincher for all of his movies does literally a hundred takes yeah and

um clinius what usually does one something has to go tragically wrong for him to do a second and fincher's movies also move they're like you know cut cut cut cut cut cut oh that's true you know what i mean like it's it's just actors suffer yeah yeah they're totally different styles though you know yeah but it's it's a great point right and so a lot of artists are perfectionists and like no this has to be the way i dreamed it instead of being able to let go take it as a learning experience and a stepping stone into what they're going to become me abandoning youtube was a stepping stone to what i became me abandoning i was i was directing music videos and fashion films for designer brands and commercials in Tokyo.

I abandoned that to become what I'm becoming. You know, like all of this stuff. It's all a stepping stone. And I need to let go in order to progress into whatever's calling for me next. What about the people who come back at that without knowing any details, by the way, because we got off some of your LA stuff. We will come back to that. But we've been talking about more interesting shit right now. Like that's pressing.

Yes. Mentally. What about the people that will look at that maybe without knowing the backstory and say, well, that could be just trying to validate decisions to move from X to Y to Z and say like, like, you know, those people who go, I don't regret anything in my life because it may be the person I am today. And, you know, they're sitting there and they're on their fucking fifth girlfriend that they knocked up and, you know, they can't pay their fucking bills. And they're like, they're sitting there ripping a fucking Marlboro saying like, oh, yeah, no, my life's going to be fine because they keep on. And I'm not saying that's what you are.

I'm saying, like, how do you respond to that? Because it's that human nature of you keep on saying, well, it's maybe where I am. So I'll get better. And that's really never the answer. I would say that they're living a parasocial relationship with me and I don't know that they exist. Who? The critics. No, I can't. You turned that on me. I did. No, look, sure, it can be. There's nothing I'm so religious about that I'm going to say is for certain. My ideas change all the time. My opinion about my, like, there's no core beliefs I have. There's core

beliefs I have, but like, I'm very fluid with a lot of things in my life. And I would take that comment and be like, where did it come from? And i would just be somehow become a better person because i would think about what had to what what had to come like what did i do to come across in that way to you know and then i would i would question myself and just go into my own deep head and not take take it too seriously but i don't know i um how would I respond to somebody saying I'm justifying? It just goes back to my comment of like, I'm just quick to let go. I'm like, I just quick to let go onto the next thing because I probably wouldn't be approaching a million subscribers with Johnny drinks if I hadn't let go with the other stuff. I had to be very, so when I was doing LA and other, when I was working with other influencers i let go of that because i saw an income ceiling and an opportunity ceiling because i was all right go back to the

beginning then if you're gonna go into this go back to the beginning of that because we start this is what i was talking about we started on this and i asked you like oh did you just dm these people to get out there like yeah what did you do how did that conversation i had with my friend yeah okay so when he okay my friend he he he was the first one of us that flew to um you know for a job got paid all that stuff he was a celebrity guy yeah yeah 400 bucks yeah and um he said chris i'm never gonna retire um i was like okay i need to make money how can i make money and so i was you know like i was like okay i could i know i could weaponize my skills in order to make money somehow.

Let's figure out how to do that. So I started doing Craigslist jobs, literally just going on the gig section of Craigslist. And I would respond to stuff. And I would do jobs for $150 or $500. What kind of jobs? Hmm. Like mostly being a production assistant on some indie commercial. Like let's say it had

10 000 or 30 000 budget and i was like pa your day rate as a pa back then was like 150 bucks a day it was pretty good uh you know i remember the first time i ever worked it was for an indie short film i got paid 40 i was so happy to be there because they had the fancy lights and all that stuff and i learned a a lot and all that stuff. And I worked for two or three days. They only needed me for a little bit, but it was a grateful experience. I was very grateful for it.

The DP went on to be like a pretty awesome DP and like popular in the Vimeo cinematographer crowd. And then I, you know, did the $150 stuff. Then people started hiring me to be a camera guy and all that happened. One day, a YouTuber posted Old Craigslist looking for like a videographer for their channel. And I clicked on it and it was a guy named Matt Granger who runs a photography channel. He's an Australian guy, just moved to New York. He was one of back then, he was a prominent photography youtuber and um he educational stuff teaching

people how to do stuff and i he had under 400 000 subscribers but that was big man that was giant and so i big to me i yeah i interviewed with him and uh as i like his he's doing other things now we could he's a cool story but um uh at the time you know he he was getting tens of thousands of views and like some hundreds of thousands of views i was like oh man like if i worked with him this would be big because i not only would i be making money but i'd be working consistently i'd have my work out there all that stuff so i started working with him like we really clicked and um i worked with him for about a year and i remember when i started working with him dude i it was it was night and day the content difference like his

his followers immediately noticed the content quality change the structure of his videos what did you do for him uh i was his camera guy and editor essentially okay so like i was his camera guy and editor, essentially. Okay. So I was his D-Rock for Gary Vee. Got it. But I didn't follow him around, and we didn't do daily vlogs. We did instructional photography videos. So he would send you the content, and then you would do your thing? He lived in New York, so I would just take the train in. Oh, you would go do it with him?

Yeah, I filmed him. Oh, that's sick. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Soup to nuts. I love it. I know, yeah. And then I got to travel around the country and this jamoke right here yes sir that's him um and we did a we did a lot of great stuff a lot of great brand deals i produced stuff from all over the world and like uh it was a lot of fun i learned a lot i learned more about the youtube

game um i i wish my i i have one little regret of my time i feel like i was nervous because i was probably 19 years old i wish i talked to him about money more in terms of how much he was making how he was making it um where his revenue sources were i just wish i got that insight now i'm 25 i know how youtubers and stuff work but like it would have been very valuable for me at the time to understand. And I think I would have been more valuable to him. Yeah. You could have monetized that like you have now.

Right. Cause you have all the, all the knowledge. I did something big for him though. Back then there was affiliate marketing worked in blogs, but nobody was really doing it. This is early 2017. Nobody was doing it in video form.

Really makeup channels were, but they were, that was it. Like the tech YouTubers weren't really doing it in video form really makeup channels were but they were that was it um like the tech youtubers weren't really doing it and i was like hey let's do an amazon affiliate program that first month we did a usbc um hub comparison video because that was the year that the usbc max came out um we're like english oh um your mac does not take usba it's like that oh oh like the the lecture port yeah whatever the fuck i'm really fucking okay that's okay yeah you're fine uh see i know they changed they changed they changed the road signs i point and i go that thing yeah yeah that one i want i need they don't talk you need a connector

right we found the best we we bought 25 connectors on you know sd card readers stuff like that on youtube we made a 15 minute video that thing got a million views and he made 10 grand a month that first month that it came out and from amazon affiliate links selling yeah oh yeah and he you know he had a product in there yeah uh yeah because he you know he had all the in there. Yeah, because he – He had all the products. If you have an Amazon affiliate link, the way it works is you use the URL. When somebody clicks it and buys that thing, you get kickback from that thing.

And what's the kickback? It changed. It used to be 6%. It might be 2%. I don't know. I was going to say they can definitely fuck people now. They totally can. There's no way that they – because they have ever they have all the data

They've ever had it used to be it used to be high but um But it goes even further So like for example if the person was like did their grocery shopping for the week had their thing in cart? Because they buy on Fridays now you get it affiliate revenue for everything in that cart Not just the item so if they had a couch or a $5,000 camera, he gets kickback 6% of that $5,000 camera, you know, like that's how affiliate marketing works. It's crazy. Anyway. So that was one of the big business things that I brought to the table and helped him, um, you know, I guess pioneer for his channel. And then he had another really cool business model where he did

tours where photography tours he would take a bunch of people that would pay about 10 grand each group of eight so trip would be well into the five figures in revenue and they would go to Africa or Bhutan or Tokyo wow and and they would and he would have a five day or two week long vacation scheduled for these people and they would shoot wildlife or street photography and like it would be amazing that's sick it was a really sick job how much will you charge again you just said it but what was it he um it was somewhere between like eight and twelve thousand and that's on top of the cost of the trip uh no it was all inclusive actually it was all it was an all-inclusive photography tour and how many people again what is like seven to twelve let's call it so call it ten yeah he's taking ten people you know all-inclusive let's say he makes fifty percent right i mean that's you know that's a

forty thousand dollar two weeks no problem and you get to go do it yourself and get content dude exactly holy shit so we had sponsor integration and dude that made the quality of our content better because he i didn't i didn't go on any of those trips there were other trips around the world that i went on with him but i didn't go on any of those ones because they were just so long because there were two weeks instead of five days um you didn't go on any of those dude i no i should have you were bathing in fucking rivers with bears and shit you know why i was africa with this guy i guess i i could have i'm just making excuses but it was during the school year but but yeah i i was still in college working fuck school i know that shit will be there forever i know i i went to

tokyo i did a lot of crazy stuff i i did a lot of crazy stuff i'm fucking with you yeah no i i know what you're saying i know you're saying and i i wish i went to bhutan someday i will and anyway um yeah working with him was amazing working with him allowed me to pay off all my i graduated college without debt oh that's amazing amazing and i got shit dude i got crap at 20 whenever i whenever you graduate college 21 22 i had so much stuff on my resume, my real, the brands I worked with, all this stuff. I was set. And then crickets. Dude, yo, when you graduate school, when you're away from the 18 years of structure and support and love and we want you to succeed type of mentality and you go into the real world, dude, oh, my God god is it dark it's like i would sit on the floor and i would say i would just like look up in the ceiling be like dude i have nothing to do this week there's no so you had a home i did all right well you're starting with something at least yeah uh i right

um and you know like i'd like there was it was a complete lack of purpose and um we're done with this guy yeah yeah you know relationships and um that i don't remember how it ended we just just grew out of it yeah we just grew out of it i remember bickering a lot um back then i was you know i wasn't very easy to work with back then. Why? Opinionated, for sure. I'm still opinionated, but I just articulate it differently. I was going to say, you, that's like, you know, it shouldn't be surprising to hear.

Because people develop their, I believe this, they develop some of their best strengths in their life, like as they out of being a kid from things that were weaknesses as a kid. And there's plenty of cases where that's not the case. But I'm saying this is more common than people think. Like as a quote unquote opinionated guy, you didn't have the ability to, like you talked about earlier at all, do that thing where it's like, oh, he doesn't need that right now. I'm going to bookmark that. I did not. One million percent. And you learned from this guy. Oh, yeah.

At least partially. Yeah. Like, oh, maybe that's where I could have done it different. Yeah. And that's all subconscious. That's not something I thought about organically. But, yeah, a subconscious like, dude, like, yeah, obviously you're different from 20 to 25. yeah and and that's all subconscious that's not something i thought about organically but yeah a subconscious like dude like yeah obviously you're different from 20 to 25 i stay i stay in touch

with him we're we're friendly we talk he he answers my instagram stories stuff like that and vice versa like like yeah like like i had a lot of fun with him um and i would love to see him again he lives in china now isn't that crazy he lives in China now. Isn't that crazy? He lives in China right now. I'm sorry to hear that. He loves it. He loves it. He might have moved to Australia back where he's from, but I don't. Last I saw. That's the same thing.

Yeah. Same latitude or longitude. That's not what I meant. Okay. We'll go with that. Okay. Then, yeah, after a period of nothingness i worked with other youtubers that one tried to scam me out of money i don't want to say their channel this is after college i'm just yeah after college so this is when you were sitting on the floor figuring out

everything was dark but yeah the light came in yeah okay i'm gonna work with someone now how'd that happen honestly that might have been craigslist too actually honestly it might craig i was a craigslist hero yeah i dude i took every job i wrote great emails i had crazy crap on my reel like and like i just wanted 500 bucks you know like like yeah just pay me a little bit like whatever i'll do whatever so yeah i worked for a family vlog channel uh two kids two parents and dude oh my god it was toxic and so so they the the fight happened when i called them out on the child abuse all right no i did not know this so all right walk me through this first of all what was the channel name i can't i. I can't. They're still around.

They're relevant. I thought I was going to get into it. They still exist. They still kind of get views. But how is, all right. I need to start with this question. How old were the kids, first of all? Under five.

Okay. Three to five how is organizing kids to be fucking an actor on camera against their will with money that they don't even know what's coming in how is that not i mean i it's the same thing as like these people to put their kids in fucking movies when they're five but i know some of those people and i i've known at least one before and like they were great about it and they just listen whatever the kid wanted but these youtube channels they're channels, a lot of them aren't like that. Let's put a small pin and talk about parenting really quick. This will lead into the...

I'm with you. Yeah, you with me? I love how you said that. Let's talk about parenting. How many kids do you have? I have zero. No, no, no, no. You have five.

I have zero kids. I'm one of four i'm fucking i'm i'm fucking with you like left and right and you're just taking it i'm just taking it straight okay i'm glad um you know i feel like a lot of people a lot of parents i guess i can't talk because i'm not a parent but like in the 80s and 90s when you had this like consumeristic society where people lived for the items and not a fulfilling life now they're raising kids and they're living vicariously through their children being what i call like a mominger like a mom manager and like they're like no you have to live life like i didn't live it but the way that i'm telling you to live it so that i can feel fulfilled in myself and that's i feel like that's what happens in a lot of the world

you know when you when when people say like oh they grew up on the on the tv watching video you know playing video games or now the tiktok generation things like that it comes from this abandonment there's an explanation for this okay let's talk yeah yeah let me know you're walking right into my lines down on this in a good way no this is great this is great you're very you're dead on okay and listeners some people will be like god damn he's talking about it again but it's a great example to bring it up so i'm gonna do it the fourth turning shit you familiar with this i have no idea what that i'm not gonna walk you through the whole thing i've done that like three times before on the podcast. So I'll get a link. So check that out.

But the short end of it is that there's these guys figured out that there's – society moves in 80 to 85-year segments, and it moves in four generations that repeat over and over and over again. And there are four different distinct types. Got it. And those generations also come of certain ages, the four different types of ages, 0 to 21, 21 to 42, 43 to 64, and 65 and above. They come of age during a specific time. So like I am at the back end of millennials, like the very back end. So millennials are what's called – we're a part of the – I don't think we matched this, but we're a part of the hero generation. We we matched us but we're part of the hero generation we actually that's not fair we do but it's in a different form maybe i'll get to that maybe i won't

but like they always come of age meaning like 21 to 42 when coming of age in the crisis generation right so during a period of crisis there's these there's different things that happen so you just talked about parents of of the kids who were raised in the 80s and 90s who are parents now yes yes okay yeah those kids their parents many of them were what you call nomads okay so nomads were one of the four types of generations that were born between say 1961 and like 1979 or 1980 and they're always the second part of the turning and what happens with them is that they are raised by parents who are either the generation right before them or the generation the back end of the generation right before that who in different ways don't they take for and i'm really over simplifying this so you need to go read this if you're listening to go really understand this and

read the book the fourth turning but like they don't take as much of an active role in parenting because either they had a very if they were the back end of two generations ago they had an extremely negative experience when they were coming up as a kid and so they kind of were expected to fend for themselves and they expect their kids to do the same thing or they had an overly they came into a crisis but had an overly booming youth and they're like everything's gravy why the fuck can't my kid figure it out right and so there's not the point is the end result is that the parents don't they're not overly like affectionate and and through the roof with their kids on top of them. And so those kids never, like there's a part of

them that always wants to be a kid in a way. And so you said it beautifully. You said they're living vicariously through their kids. They're living through their kids in an overly connected way that they wished they could have lived with their parents right or their parents would have lived with them and when they do it They also in the YouTube example here turn towards the things that were maybe Negatives to come out of voids in their life when they were kids which is that they turn Materialistic because they wanted to find love and something right they didn't get enough they didn't give even if their parents loved them They didn't get enough of it. Yeah, where they didn't get it in the right ways Maybe her parents didn't know their fucking love language, but like either way they didn't get enough of it yeah where they didn't get it in the right ways maybe their parents didn't know their fucking love language but like either way they didn't figure it out

and so now they're like we're gonna do that with our kids and they get blinded by also capitalism and yeah you know call it what it is like they're like oh and we can make money off it too and i see these channels and i i am mr no hate right if someone builds an audience like i'm all about it there are some exceptions to that where it's not hate but i'm like what are you really doing here and i'll see these channels with fucking 700,000 800,000 subscribers posting one to two videos a week that you know their subscriber to view ratio is so low because they're getting fucking 400,000 views on the latest video and you look through all of them they have a ton of you like they should have more subscribers but they still somehow get seven eight hundred or two million or

whatever and i'm like this they're openly like using their kid as like a fucking reality show and to me there's and and i'm not calling out specific accounts i'm sure some do it okay but like there's no way to do that where especially once the parents become actively the directors and and financially incentivized through it there's you see these stories over and over again this is why i want to know about it from you after i finish this bullshit monologue but like it's important to lay the groundwork like you see these stories where you know how that kid's going to turn so now you know okay so now we're all on the same page of why a parent would become something like this. This particular family vlog channel, I think the parent, the one parent,

oh, dude, I can't even, like, a blue-collar background, let's just say. Dude, I, yeah, I, okay. So a blue-collar background the father came from i'm pretty sure i don't know but now he's making 20 to 30 000 a month off of the cuteness of his kid now what's going to happen when the views dip and they're 10 years old you know like because like you know they're not the cute little you know they're on um tv talk shows and they get some viral clips and i I'm sure, you know, in today's age, they might be doing the TikTok thing. And I bet you today,

they were talking about it back then. I haven't checked on this channel in a while, but I bet you today, each of the kids have their own separate channels. I bet you, because I knew the parents had their own separate channels too. With a few 10, they were a million sub channel. The other channels had 50 to 150 000 subscribers and i'm sure the

kids now each and i'm sure it's a media empire with minors ruled by the parents but okay let's just say ethically the financials were like evenly split like because i don't know let's just say that was that wasn't that's not even the abuse i'm talking about it's like the kid the kid just doesn't want to do it they're putting up with their parents bullshit there was one one video what was your job specifically i was the video i was the same thing for matt granger it was just like but also i you're a strategist too um so for matt i was less of a strategist but i developed that towards the end because, you know, you just grow into a job. This, I kind of came into a strategist too.

I do, I wrote like a 20 page report on, on how to grow a family vlog channel because they were in a rut. Their views were on the decline. And when I came in the first video that we did together, thumbnail video, everything quality, it was their highest performing video of that year. And this was like December of that year that we published it. So, so like it was, it was immediately a hit and like, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm validated. Like my work's good. And, and that made the father who was the boss, trust me. And, um, you know, we, he, he was like, oh yeah, we're going to give you revenue share. Like I was going to, I was making 15% of what they were making. I was making 15% of all their revenue.

And so I was doing okay. It was, yeah. Until they tried to, they paid me through PayPal and tried to dispute it after. Isn't that crazy? They filed it. I won it. I kept my money. But anyway. You just skipped a line there. How did this happen? We'll get there. We'll get there. Okay.

All that comes from a fight derived from the abuse I witnessed. And it's just multiple examples. When you witness some abuse or something like that, it's subtle. Especially when you don't come from a world where that's recognizable. I can't identify. I think everyone's as nice as I am. or something like that. It's subtle, especially when you don't come from a world where you, that's recognizable. I can't identify, you know, I think everyone's as nice as I am, you know,

but like when it happens 15 times, you're like, Oh, wait a second. That person's an alcoholic. They're just functional. You know, and I'm saying the father,

the father was not an alcoholic, but like, you know, you start catching up. Right. And so the, the one thing that really kind of set it off was they were doing a um a hair straightening video the girls had curly hair and uh i'm gonna warn you okay i have this is my job to be able to do this be careful how much you say i know because the internet's

a powerful place i know this but i'm just reminding you while you're live talking about it if you want to if you want to keep this anonymous you got to be careful how many details you give um and uh hair straightening video and yeah and and the the mom like accidentally like you know burns like oh it hurts and like the girls are already like putting up with like a full day of filming and stuff like that like um and they're just you know they're not having it and then she got like actually burned and she and like the mom was like we gotta we gotta finish this we gotta finish this and i had this all on camera and um i i go home and i'm feeling i'm feeling shady like did you sign a non-disclosure no of course not

so you could put out that content if you want you know there's an edited 20 minute video i have of describing my entire account with them with footage and evidence yeah because what sucks is you'll fuck the kids and it's not their fault oh of course yeah i would never put that out i would send it to you privately you know but that's what i'm saying like if you could just fuck the parents and not the kids that be yeah exactly that kind of be a public service Yeah, yeah. No, the dad was a monster man. Okay, so so they burned the kid They've been the kid and anyway, that how old's the kid between three and five Jesus. Yeah, and their hair straightening. Yeah. Yeah and so

Anyway, I go home and i'm like hey i forget oh you know what it was he was micromanaging my edit because he used to edit the videos now he gave it to me and he he gave me um something called a histogram and in color correction it shows you the exposure levels it was like this is underexposed or you have a dark you have you have the footage darker than than it should be and then he's like this and and i said something i forget what and then he writes me a text he says just so you know you're replaceable so what did you do i You know, and so I was like, dude, I don't, you know what? I was with my friend when I got that text.

You were what, like 23? Yeah, I was 23. No, I was 22, 21 to 22. So you finished college. Finished college, though, yeah. This is six months after college, let's call it. Got it. And I'm a very calm person now but back then i was a hot head um

and i was in my friend and i got that text and i was just going off the wall he did not know i could get that violent with my words i did not i didn't call the guy i i don't know like i probably said some mean stuff back though. Like text? Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna lose forever, man. Um,

oh, I didn't say anything like that. Like I just said like, yeah, no. Fuck you. Yeah. Fuck you.

I didn't, I didn't say anything bad, bad. Um, like in terms of, you didn't want to work. You didn't want to, at that point,

you didn't want work for this guy anymore. Oh no, I was done. I was like, yeah, I'm done. Yeah. Um, you know what and and he said something back and trying to trigger me to go deeper and

i said i'm not going to i didn't i ignored the text and i think he wanted to do the good nature thing and he he paid me the final payment what he owed me which is interesting and then he texted me something to trigger me and then he filed a paypal charge back i disputed it and i kept the money but that's how it ended i have no idea how they're doing now but you don't check their channel no i never no not even like late at night like when you're thinking about no no no i don't think about that. No, not at all. Not one bit. Not one bit. Strong man. Yeah, no, I don't do that. I checked Matt's. I want him to succeed. The other YouTubers that I looked at, I looked them up. I looked like twice a year because I know they're less active now. By the way, I might've missed this. You were filming that with them live, right? Like you

were there. Yes, I was physically there. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. yeah you were filming that with them live right like you were there yes i was physically there yeah yeah okay yeah yeah wow yeah yeah i was physically there and it's just like man like what are you you know and it's just like i don't you know i don't know what to do and that's it's just like it's a power dynamic thing so like i don't know what to do in that situation and so i feel now as an adult like having experienced crap like that like i'm more assertive and whatever but like when you're 22 it's just a power dynamic you're just like oh you know yeah and if for some reason you ever want to work with another family again or something before you ever start working with them

and you're talking about working with them yeah you can use this as a guardrail example and be very upfront and blunt like hey i did this these were things that cannot happen if they do all family channels are trash all of them i mean i'd be the same minors yeah yeah i mean okay it's okay for a youtube vlogger to include their child but their child cannot be the face of the channel if that makes sense what about that kid who like opens up everything he's like the biggest i yeah the ryan toys i don't know i just to me i i have no idea how that dynamic is i'm so i'm not gonna have an opinion on it but i know um because it's the same thing with child actors like i like there there's people there's crappy people out there and then there's people that might you know not take advantage of their kids

and like you know i i don't know if your kid wants to do it that's and i've never had that There's people that might not take advantage of their kids. I don't know. If your kid wants to do it, and I've never had that experience. I've never had a kid, and I've never had a kid then, therefore, who wants to act when they're four. I don't know if that's – I assume maybe that's a thing. But you want them to go after the things they're good at? And I'm talking about the ones where they want to do it, not the ones they're also forcing it which happens a lot like that's that's that's a fucking no-brainer that's worse but you know psychologically like guy dude i have a lot of respect for a lot of respect for is justin bieber yeah right justin bieber blew up and had every

fucking 13 to 18 year old girl on his dick when he was like 12 years old whatever he was right during his most formative years right it's most formative years you don't think he's gonna be a little fucked up from that you don't think like some shits gonna happen like he's gonna make some miss of course he is right and like he seems to become a fucking somewhat nice like decent human being with like he's married and shit like and she's hot as hell that helps but i'm saying like he he seems to have gotten himself through all that to like a point where he's functional and i'm sure he deals with

his shit behind the scenes because i don't give a fuck who you are. You, me, anyone. No one's equipped to deal with that. I know somebody who's part of Justin Bieber's camp. You know, I'm friendly with him. Not Bieber, the person that was part of the camp. And you know what a camp is? A camp... I love this word, camp. I talk about this sometimes. Do you?

Go ahead. Dude, it's a crew of invisible chaperones. When did we start this? Camp. It's a crew of invisible chaperones. When did we start this? Camp. It's camp. Like a bunch of fucking people in tents sitting around. Literally. Their jobs are never to be seen by Justin Bieber, by Selena Gomez, you know, whoever.

Except the homies. The homies are there playing Xbox with them. They got to be seen. Right. Because they include those people in camps now like when the media reports according to his camp it could be like his buddy who's like ripping a joint with him like yeah justin thinks this yeah well that's all yeah camp could even mean the wife but no the industry term for camp is the invisible people

that when justin bieber books that well when his camp books the hotel his favorite three thousand dollars worth of juices are already in the fridge his favorite slippers the his his teddy bear you know all his stuff is already wasn't he wasn't completely fucked up and so you know i mean and and so uh yeah it's fascinating and and i had a conversation with this guy and i said you know that that feels like hell imagine never having to struggle because the the purpose of life is to overcome and succeed and when you never have to struggle to get what you want that sounds like hell because you don't get everything and now he couldn't comprehend that because he was like we pamper him we gave him everything he ever wants but when you get everything you ever want everything becomes worthless yeah that's why i bathed in the

freaking river dude because i realized wow when i retract and i limit my stimulus and all the good things in my life like this river bath even though i'm shivering is like amazing you know because i got to like struggle and and you know it's short stimulated i have so many privileges in my life and i don't mean to like minimize that but like and minimize other people's problems but it's it's it's this kind of thing where like when you get to actually struggle overcome that struggle and and achieve something that means a lot and when you have everything given to you it's hard another great topic right here yeah right another great topic i it also has to do with when like yeah justin blown up he was like 12 or 13 whatever it was it's like before puberty you know

like his struggle like he was he worked his balls off when he was like eight or nine and then like he worked like a madman he was a YouTuber yeah he had exactly he had those and he did himself it wasn't like his mom like in the videos right like he was literally like no i'm gonna play music and put it out there and usher found him but like it's almost lucky for other people that that happens later like let's look at another guy who has his own struggles clearly and is like open about it literally with how he looks like post malone who i love i talk about post malone yeah like i like him too post malone and i've known i think like six different people who are connected with him like first person so and none of them know each other or two of them know each other but all the others don't right like they all say the same things and like what an amazing dude he is and like he still talks about

like all his issues and whatever but a lot of that is like himself right like that's just kind of that was his own insecurities that already existed because he seems to have to me and i'm reading this from the outside and from what i hear so take this for what it is he seems to have a way better understanding of what was versus what is and what matters and you know i i guess his expectations of the world around him right and so you think about why it's really to me like it's not that hard to quantify he blew up when he was 21 something like that like he moved out to la with nothing lived on a cot in a closet and his buddy who was a successful gamer he had made it like he's not like a major celebrity but he had money he had a nice house he said that back room is yours yeah do you know i forget his name but i'll was he a professional athlete or a professional gamer

yes yes he was something like that we or a professional gamer yes yes he was something like that we'll look it up after but he was like yeah austin come out you know i i want you to try to make it he gave him a room and so post but i love i've told this story before but i love the story of dre london post manager talking about the minute he knew post was going to make it and the minute he wanted it he went over to post house well it wasn't his house but he went over this kid's house where post lived and he went into post room and he it was a make it wasn't that big of a room it was a makeshift studio he had he had some official equipment a lot of stuff like a sock on some shit and whatever like he was making it all work and this is where he recorded white iverson i believe i think i'm not sure about that i think it was and dre looked over in the closet and he

saw a cot in the closet and he realized that this dude used the room he was given as a studio put whatever sense he had into it yeah and put his fucking sleeping cot in the closet yeah that's awesome because he wanted it that bad and like he was old enough to know like i have nothing i drive college wasn't for him he dropped out of college like his freshman year he went out here to do this he's fucking drinking bud lights and living off of bud lights and cigarettes and basically this guy's couch this cot in the closet and like then he made it you know and so he already had his own struggles and whatever and still maintains that but like his joy and his understanding of that when you listen to him talk seems to be a lot

deeper strictly because he got to wait till he was older like he got to grow up he was the weird kid right like he was interested in all kinds of cool shit right you know he got to go through high school and be the normal whatever he has the high school yearbook photo guys like justin bieber people like girls like miley cyrus like they didn't have that they not develop yeah they grew up and so when i look at these people and i i see some examples of people who seem to at least have some grasp on things now. Like even if I hear that there's still some weird shit behind the scenes, of course there is. It's like, do they have some semblance of understanding?

And when I see that, yeah, I'm, I am very impressed with it because it's like, even if their parents remained active and were good parents, you know, you can't control the mob, man.

Like once the mob has you, you don't control the mob man like once the mob has you you don't have parents anymore the mob are your parents yeah raised by the public eye yeah dude it's amazing post and matt look how much purpose like when you find your purpose you're gonna do anything to accomplish it it's pretty like you know sleeping in the closet that you're recording your album in that's pretty freaking awesome like i mean discovering your purpose recognizing it that's the hard part recognizing it and dedicating to yourself like dedicating to it and then um seth godin do you know the author seth godin of course great his book the dip you gotta you know like, like the concept is when you start, hypertrophy is easy. It's easy to gain muscle easy, but then you're going to plateau and you're not even going to plateau.

You're going to regress in your pursuit of that purpose. But in that dip is when everybody quits. But the people that persevere and push through that dip become, I can't say they become post Malone, but they find the success in, they find the success in the purpose that they're striving for. And that's so beautiful because, you know, we have, um, there's so many mixed messages about this too. There's some people that we say we, though they don't know when to give up or there's people that are like, oh, hustle, hustle, hustle, you know? And so like, there's all of this confusion of, you know, when do you give something up? Because look at me, I'm saying, hey, give up fast, right? I said that the first third of this podcast was dedicated to, I give things up quickly,

right? Remember the billionaire said- Yeah, you said that. I want to come back to that, but okay. Yeah, right. i give things up quickly right because my heart or soul whatever tells me yeah this is not my purpose this does not serve the the direction in life that i want to go in i thought there might be something here i explored it it's done let's move on to this right but when you find that purpose and you're driven to go towards it um yeah it's it's a powerful thing and that's the guiding light because even even when you know like when you when you know it there's there's nothing that can stop it yeah let's let's go back directly at that quote though because i think and maybe it was right

after this maybe it wasn't but i'm putting it all together in my head right now i think i started to talk about off that point that honest question with yourself where it's like am i good at this or like you know whatever i i i kind of get afraid of quotes like that and you said that was a billionaire who told you that obviously the only one i ever met yeah that i know i i'm gonna meet one next week and i i think i i've sat with a couple before but i probably couldn't appreciate it when i did it so this is gonna be the first time where i could really have an appreciation of it but it's a dangerous quote to me because it can be used also similar to to the point i asked you about where it's like well do you use that as an excuse just to move on to the next thing it can be

used as that i think if if i were extrapolating what he probably meant seeing as he's a billionaire and i assume he's obviously extremely successful and earned it all for himself like or herself whoever it is like they when they did hit the stride where they felt they loved it and like they're good at it and that combination met and people want it like those three coming together that triumvirate they there wasn't anything that was going to stop them they weren't going to be like oh we hit it we hit a rut and that must mean this isn't the thing we're going to move to the next thing that's the dangerous part about that like the move fast and break is dangerous when you're constantly just breaking and moving fast and you're never breaking through so like i try to be careful with that because i mean man like i i didn't get listeners on this thing until

seven months in right you know like imagine if I had been like, oh, it's not working. And by the way, it wasn't. Well, you knew this was your purpose to some extent, right? I think. Because like what is it? Like purpose is the motivation, the engine that makes things run even when like the success isn't in front of you. You know, like isn't in front of you you know like isn't visible yet you know it's the the purpose that you felt ran the car that had no gas you

know that was the engine that drove that turned the tires i don't have the purpose to be a podcast host of course i would quit after the first episode that i ever host you know unless i felt some sort of magic in in me um but you know um i think what he meant and what i mean when i say um the the whole hey you could take mine um this is very one-sided that's what you're doing to me no um i think what he meant is like look when you you'll know quickly if something's serving your purpose or not and if you meant to abandon it then so be it it's not the right time and then yeah i i think that's that's the direction it's just you have to you have to have the nuance like we want to give all these one-liners on stuff, me and you included, right?

And that's the easy thing in life to try to boil it all down to one thing. And I think I understand exactly what that person meant. And obviously, like they probably backed it up in their life. But you have to at least have the nuance of, well, part of it is also the decision making of are you in the right zip code at least right like have you gotten you're you're in the right country that's kind of a given you better be right there right you're also probably in the right state but oh fuck now you're in the right zip code so even if it's like you gotta change a little bit you're staying in this in the same lane of what it is you're doing right now so that it's not like oh you know what i was

gonna be a rock climber today tomorrow i'm gonna run an insurance brokerage yeah well the person the person that believes that sort of thing hasn't found their purpose because once you find your purpose you're gonna do nothing yeah align yourself, like, to be successful in that position. And, you know, it's just like, you know, then the next question is like, oh, how do you get your family involved or your spouse involved? It's just like, well, I mean, the tough thing to figure out is you have to find and surround yourself with people that are aligned and willing participants to enable you to pursue that purpose. You know, if you have an unwilling participant in your life, it's not going to work, you know? And purpose you know if you have an unwilling participant in

your life it's not going to work you know and then you're going to be asking those questions like oh what do i do you know um what should do i what do i choose work-life balance when when you have a willing participant that enables you in order to succeed and pursue your purpose it's a it's a joint venture because they're kind of pursuing it too. That's a really important point, man. That's a really fucking important point. Yeah, man. Every relationship, every romantic relationship I ever had that has ended, has ended

because we looked at things differently in that regard. So like- Like in your career, especially? Yeah, yeah. Careers. Careers, yeah. in that regard you know so like like in your career especially yeah yeah careers careers yeah you know um it's just like i especially back then i was very go go go like workaholic type and whatever and the person was just like just chill man and then the pandemic happened and then in another relationship it's just like the opposite where i'm just like i'm gonna wait this out i'm all i'm gonna do is sit here,

do nothing and read some books. And that's what I did during the pandemic and that didn't work for that person. And so like that's, when you find someone and they're aligned with your purpose, they recognize it and they enable you and the key word,

the willing participant in your drive, in your purpose, what propels you, dude, that's what creates successful people when i was in film school i didn't you know i joke i lost all my friends because i was the gary v type trying to make money but really they were unwilling participants because they saw marketing as prostitution of art and so i got reached out to last week on linkedin by somebody from film school that i knew was in the camp that didn't like me. And they were just like, oh, this career pivot. It's interesting. What made you so successful? And I'm staring at it. I'm just like, do I answer it? And I did. I did it thoughtfully. I said, you know, I talked about a little bit of my backstory, a couple paragraphs,

and I sent it and I knew that my PTSD brain, like, oh, a bunch of people might hypothetically hear about this, you know? And so, like, but I was- You cared about that? Yeah, I think, because it, like, it affects me. Yeah, I do. And I need to let go. And I think I'm letting go because I'm surrounding myself with these new willing participants because before i was in this empty void where the old way didn't work and i haven't discovered the new the new way of life i was in this cavern i knew the the old way was unacceptable you know of my life and then the the new discoveries haven't been made in order the community that i surrounded myself with and when i found you when i found john ron d when i found gavin aiden when i found like the people that i'm surrounded by

today in the last in 2021 you know my other friends like josh boone who's a podcaster um you know sam mcnerny like i have a amazing network of friends that i've made through the internet over covid who are willing participants in my purpose and they they think like me and the internet helped me bring them to them i wasn't stuck in an art school where everyone looked at me funny and i was a prick to them and like you know like and you're worried about but that's the thing like you're worried about when you sent that kid a message back you're worried about oh but that's the thing. Like you're worried about when you sent that kid a message back, you're worried about, Oh, the other people are going to see this. And it goes like, you talked earlier about not caring about that validation anymore, but the, the old stuff that bothers you still will come up. Yeah. That's still, I think about it every day.

I think about it. So that one you do. Yeah. You know, like the high school stuff, that's long ago, but it's subconscious. It drives a lot of stuff in my – all of my behavior is that – is because of that. And – Because of being canceled in high school over YouTube. Yeah, I guess you could say that. Yeah, canceled in high school. It's hilarious. It was canceled before high school.

Yeah. And then the college stuff, when i was like trying to make a living and dude he it was crazy because in film school they teach you how to be an artist how to be a poor sundance striving starving artist yeah dude they like glamorize that in any way like and everyone's like how are you gonna make money you know they're waiting tables oh dude it's sad like i don't know how many people i graduated with that are actually working in this field and it's really sad because i feel like as a creative i mean the amount of money that's out there like they're going to replace like certain traditional high-paying jobs as now the next generation of high earners

because everyone knows hey just to be capitalistic you have to be able to tell good stories to be successful in business and generate revenue you have to relate to people you have to make connections you have to make stories dude writers designers um like uh videographers editors all these people, they could potentially be top earners. And I see it around me. I see so many creatives making so much money. I make a lot of money. There's no reason a filmmaking BFA major should be making money like that I do. And it's this ridiculous thing where I'm like, wow, I have something valuable to say. These people have something valuable to say. If they can break through that mold that, hey, you know, making money on your art is okay.

You're not feeding some sort of – you're not feeding Electronic Arts or Bank of America. You know, you're like – you don't have to. You could help local businesses. And you're feeding – by the way to you could help local businesses i and you're feeding by the way i gotta say this you're feeding them some of this shit that you struggle with yourself because you understand that because you think like that where you're like i don't want to put this public i don't want to make but you know what i mean like where you have that creative gene yeah but you know how to get because you and i'm just taking this away correct me if i'm wrong because you know that

struggle because you think that way when you go to other creatives that you're the consigliere for right like you're you're you're the tom hagen for these people right saying like a relationship with you yeah well me it could be anyone else like you you speak their language so that even when they pull out a weakness like that that you share just because you share it and maybe can't always handle it right yourself you know what you're supposed to do and so you can give that to them and they feel like they're understood because you get it i do yeah and i don't always get it but i i try to and like story is is everything and connecting and being human this is all important stuff and i mean i think one of my

purposes in life is really to help creative individuals find their financial independence because dude i know so many people i had a friend text me the other week who i haven't talked to in six or seven months he texted me yo i just paid off all my federal loans and i texted back i was like dude that's so amazing because i knew he was working for that since he graduated in 2017 he's been working on that for a very long time and like and he grew up in a uh in an environment where his family was not financially um you know they taking on a lot of debt not being conservative with their money you know like they weren't they weren't responsible and through watching my behavior my relationship with money he started asking questions i real dude the biggest mistake which is a blessing that i learned in college is that

people do not like being given advice i used to want to give advice i i used to do the successful stuff and be like hey all you kids that um that i look up to that i want to bring you up with me nobody nobody wants to be brought up with you because they see us patronizing and dude That was such a mistake. I made because I thought I'm gonna get you a paycheck. I'm gonna get you I'm gonna get to be Gary V No, I didn't in that respect and that you're not you're nothing like him. I'm saying in that respect Yeah, was Gary V do he pulls everyone up through his content? So yeah, I'm gonna go out of my world I see 21 year old and pull people up. Yeah, and like I stood and like they took my The money that I've tossed their way, but they did it begrudgingly because they saw it as patronizing and I I didn't recognize that and

Dude, there are people that like, you know, I try to help out but they just saw it as like Look at you like in a position to help out, you know, I don't I out, but they just saw it as like, look at you, like in a position to help out, you know, I don't, I didn't ask you for your help. And so I stopped, you know, being that type of assertive in that way. Like it very powerful lesson again, probably why I'm good at what I do today is I let people, I don't like the, I don't want to say I lead by example because that's not really relevant here, but I i i do something and then let i'll help people when they ask for that help and when they ask dude that's so important you have to be the willing participant to you know unsolicited advice is a is a treacherous trail

to repeatedly travel people don't like that and like you know whenever something even comes across as advice on this show if it's not something really simple let me tell you advice right like if it's and it's and it's second nature like it makes me cringe because I'm like I don't even listen to myself like people like what like don't even fucking listen to myself. Like people like, what? Like listen to me. But there are a lot of people who think that maybe they don't actively think it. But apparently every single thing they say is exactly what you should do. And they're a genius about everything. And they understand life.

And it's like there's advice that can be great one year and three years later. Now it's no longer great you know things change society changes people change and what when we were talking about your communication habits earlier and like ways that you're a good listener and can compartmentalize and move things back that you'll come back to and whatever that's where did that come from yes it came from the now i'm putting it together like it came from you being the person that used to be able to have all the answers and now you're like that doesn't necessarily need to be what it is instead if there are some things and you do this so i'll put this on the record if there are some things that you know you actually know to be true

which as a quote-unquote youtube expert in this case like yeah there are things you know you actually know to be true which as a quote-unquote youtube expert in this case like yeah there are things you know about youtube i'm not a youtube expert no i want to tell you you are but like there are things that you know yeah that maybe the first time talking to someone like me or talking to someone like john or whoever you're talking to like a creator it's not you know they're not going to get it or they're not going to want it maybe they don't want to hear it but it's also like it won't process to them right away so instead of telling them and you definitely did this with me at least three four times instead of telling them what it is you find a way to ask questions to get them talking to guide them to come to their own answer

without them realizing it now i'm a pro because i do this for a living so i and i actually really appreciate when someone's doing it i'm like oh this guy gets it so i knew you were doing it with me the first time i talked with you but i'm like oh he's one of those i love this and so there are like four times where i'm like i've never said that to you right i've never said that that's what i do i do i'm wow i'm very impressed that you picked that up well i better this is what i do but like you know i'm like by the end of our conversation i'm wow i'm very impressed that you picked that up well i better this is what i do but like you know i'm like by the end of our conversation i'm like well fuck me i am gonna spend five hours a week on thumbnails now aren't i and here i am five months later i do and it's funny but it's also like the numbers don't lie it's true like that's what it needed to be and when the conversation

started i like just having i like the tertiary shot it's simple i put the fucking text up here boom episode number there what's not to like it's it's like easy to swallow and you're like but it doesn't get attention and you didn't even say because it doesn't get attention you're like what's your click-through rate looking like and i'm like it fucking blows when i'm not going viral on tiktok yeah and you're like oh and and you're like well have you thought about you're making me sound like an asshole i swear you didn't ask you like you were so nice about it but like i'm like this motherfucker he's right because all i'm thinking of like even me like who doesn't do anything else and hasn't seen the sun in two years i'm still thinking about ways i can save time to do the things i'm good at and then it's like by the end you're like nope

i need to there's an extra four or five hours a week that now needs to be dedicated to this and right away even this struck right when i got the ban on tiktok and i went into my lull for a while when i was in my lull and my numbers were down i noticed that all my click-through rates on my native clicks which are things not being generated from a TikTok video going viral, which is what I had relied on, all the numbers were up about 400% to 700%. Wow. Based on a combination – well, I'll even say it was the thumbnails because my titles sucked. I still don't think my titles are good. But at first when I was trying your way, I'm like i was overthinking it right and instead of thinking of it the way i think of a lot of tiktok titles that i was good at

because they're not titles they're all captions i was thinking what's the smartest thing i could say and that's not the way to do it so now i feel like i'm a little better at that but for a while like those numbers were literally strictly the thumbnail so even if the overall numbers were down that was that had nothing to do with youtube that had to do with me driving outside people to YouTube. So I had a chance to see, oh, wait, I know what my native click-throughs look like before I get a video rolling that gets people here. I knew what those numbers were. And now I'm looking at it. I'm like, holy shit.

So I saw the result, but that was a result you already knew. It's data. And it's shit you've looked at a hundred million times. I'm like, holy shit. So I saw the result, but that was a result you already knew. It's data. And it's shit you've looked at a hundred million times. And instead of saying, hey, listen up, you fucking moron. Your thumbnail sucks dick. Like, do it this way instead. You're going to do a lot better.

You were like, well, you know, what's your click-through looking like? Oh, no, that's really interesting. So, like, where did it start? And, like, I was sitting there, and I'm answering all, and I'm answering all and i'm like i'm really gonna do this aren't i and i'm grateful for it because you weren't like no this is this is how it is you're doing it this way that's when even even for someone like me who knows what's going on because i'm a psycho and think about that because i do conversation like i appreciate that when it's happening that way and i imagine all the people who who aren't wired to think like that, which pretty much everyone else, like they definitely,

they don't realize it, but they appreciate the hell out of it. Could we reiterate what that is? Cause I maybe went on a tangent and just people didn't click essentially to get, if you, okay, you can't give advice to a person, but if you ask them leading questions, they're, when I work with people, I know each individual is probably at minimum as smart as I am and that they can come to the conclusions that I came to. You just have to enable them, give them the ammo and prime their brain enough for them to come to that conclusion. And so, yeah, i would ask you questions that would make you think you would come up with your own answers i would ask you another question

and then eventually the answer clicks and that's uh that's what i do for a day job you also said though somewhere in there yeah i forget how you said it but it was it was good talking about not just the people you surround yourself with, which is another conversation we can go to, but also like your closest relationships, like your family or like your significant other and stuff. And having – fuck, what was the phrase you used? Willing participants? Yes. Yes. Willing, right?

I find when I look at not content creators i'm saying like anyone who works hard at anything there is a common thread of people who don't seem to unders have an understanding of what their partner or you know people they're looking to partner up with what base level expectations should be right and if there's one thing i'm grateful for before doing this and maybe it's because i didn't do it when i was 21 because i fucking wouldn't have known this at all but i knew coming in like hey i said assume you're making zero dollars for three years from the day you launch and assume you can't hire anyone to do anything you're gonna have to do all this i'm like i have no time for anyone and so like you know there was and there were some

blessings in disguise there you know there were there was someone i was seeing right before the pandemic and it wasn't it was great but like it wasn't definitely wasn't going to be the one or anything yeah it's like i made that i made that i want to make sure i said this right i made that decision and then i started and now i'm thinking to myself once i started i'm like well how do i handle someone coming into my life and expecting what anyone else expects which is like an actual relationship with a willing participant from my end how do i handle that knowing that i am but that i'm also in the quote-unquote thick of it right now and in order for me to get that long-term vision of having freedom and therefore freedom to give another woman my attention as she deserves there's going to be

a period here where i can't do that at all and oh by the way this is when someone's supposed to come into my life like that does not for me that does not click at all so i have and i mean this like in a great way i have zero expectations of any women as far as like what they could get from me because it's like whenever i've been in a relationship and i'm talking even like you know which was most of what i've had in my life where it's like six ten week kind of things they get my full attention i am very good about that right because it's not like i'm gonna like roll over and ignore the rest of my life and and do it that like that's not the way to go

but that balance of how do you how do you make sure that like they are the priority and like you their needs are fulfilled and you're happy doing it right i don't sitting in a seat like mine or if you're someone who's like an entrepreneur or something building a company or trying to make it in something like i don't know how the fuck you do that uh yeah i guess it goes back to that willing participant it's sacrifice everything worth having has sacrifice attached to it and you have to figure out what you're willing to sacrifice to build a meaningful relationship you have to sacrifice something in order to build that meaningful relationship and everything you say yes to means you're saying no to something else. So when you do that, you just pick what's valuable to you at the time.

What helps you pursue that purpose? That's a really succinct answer. It's also pretty good. But it might oversimplify it a little bit. I'm not even saying it's it has anything wrong with that i think that was pretty much 100 correct but it's still a trade-off of like let's say miss wright walks into your life right and you know it but you're like okay in order for us to have the life that we want to have where it's not you know

you're fucking a billionaire or anything you like i'm a simple guy i don't need that but like where you don't have to worry about like how we pay in the bill next week and we're happy and like going and enjoying getting after it every day whatever it is and having the balance of seeing each other and doing our thing like in order to get there for example like right now can't be like that so how do you like you're you're actively in my case doing it right so you have the vision you know like all right three years from now you know we're gonna be chilling but right now that's not how it is and they don't they're not in here every day they don't they can't see that they they may be at a different point in their life they may have a different person of course they're gonna have a different personality like

they're gonna have different questions and they're gonna be like oh well how does this turn out well what are we doing right now well how does that translate to the future of our relationship there's so many things and it's like i never had to deal with that because i never was building something on my own right like it wasn't like the lights are on or off because of me and so it's always like yeah fuck yeah no problem even if i'm working hard i'll make some fucking time you know that it's it's not the ship isn't sinking when i'm doing that but now it's like well if i don't if i'm not working like that we don't get this and then the chart that we talked about like you and me where it's like yeah like no no it's just fucking because of that yeah i mean

when it like it when it's meant to happen it happens like that's cheesy answer oversimplifying it you could poke holes in it but yeah like it's just right time right right place i think an easier way to describe that is each i've had two serious relationships in my life and each one of them i don't see them as breakups i see them as graduations because we found each other at a perfect time and we were right for each other at that time we molded each other i grew so much from the two major relationships i had and at the point of separation we graduated from needing each other we became two independent people. So those two relationships I had, I have so much love for those individuals, even though I haven't communicated with them in potentially years.

I still to this day love them very much because of who they helped me become. And it's pretty important to me. And I just see it as, hey, I graduated because of you into a better human being. It's a great visual. It's a positive way of looking at it. It's a very positive spin. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of us, I'll speak for myself too, especially like I always look at things as a learning experience.

Yeah. Like I think I'm one of those people that can look back and say, well, that sucked did pick up this this and that and i had to go through this this and that afterwards and that i wouldn't want it but i did get this out of it you know like i'm i'm always looking for a silver lining but to actually put it like you're graduating and both people are in a way so it's like fair that's interesting to me yeah both, both. I mean, both situations where we separated, like, you know, they could happen in different amounts of how amiable it is, how nice of a separate,

how clean cut it is. But like, when I got this, the second relationship I'm referring to, I got dumped over the phone, over a year-long relationship, 13-minute phone call. And you know know it was sad call yeah not a text uh no i was also in a different state and she was like oh i want like

i want you know whatever it doesn't matter but like after i hung up obviously you're upset you're sad but like i was like really proud of her i was like oh it's like wow she did not i know so many people in relationships that just hang on to it because, well, I mean, being lonely is worse, you know, like. And so I was like, wow, she did the thing. Like, you know, and and so, like, I was really proud of that because I don't want to be somebody's limiting factor, like just sever the ties. That's fine. And so, like, she graduated away from me, even though I didn't see it like equally. I'm like, yeah, I guess this is meant to be. I mean, she obviously had nothing left to contribute

into my life if she saw it that way. How quickly did you see it that way? Oh, it was like instant. It was, it was really instant. So even in the pain of getting off the phone, it was that day you saw it that way? 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, of course I was sad because when you, when you're familiar with something and become comfortable as something, it's very difficult for us to experience change. So obviously there's hurt there, but I was not, I was not upset. Like I, I was not crippled. I was not crippled by it.

And I just moved on and I accepted it. And, uh, you know, I i like i did that thing where you contact her one more time she was like yeah no i was like okay yeah yeah peace with it yeah yeah because you kind of had your in a way though you at least had the closure of you did talk about it on the phone yeah yeah it wasn't like well yeah you see some worse ones it should have like a text and somebody would be like wow a year-long relationship you should do that over like in person but the thing is a four-hour conversation in person where you're like actually upset and you're you know like you suck yeah that sucks because i experienced you

know it also can help i mean when people do say that it's like that is a form of closure, you know? Form of closure. And yeah, so I think, yeah, so I see relationships ending as a graduation and making room for whatever new opportunity. You having the room and capacity in your brain to, you know, start a podcast. You know, it's the, when you have more opportunity in front of you, then you have capacity. You know, That brings confidence, but then you also created capacity by, I guess, having lack put in front of us that quote unquote everyone does, and it's like at a certain time, age, whatever, and it's a schedule and it's like, oh, that's how, 22, whatever it is, right? And then you're out. And now, oh, you get a job, and then you earn this and that, and then you get a family. Once it even starts getting past the graduation of college, now it gets to things where it's not a set date anymore, but it's a set idea and a time period. And so people get very bogged down

on trying to match those things. And so then especially when you get out into the real world and you're in your 20s and you're trying to figure it out and you have ambition and you're fucking around with a lot of shit and figuring what you're good at, what you're bad at. In the middle of it, forming all relationships, fucking things up, doing well with things. Yes, there are people who find their person and it works and it's great. There's plenty of people like that and it's awesome um but there are also a lot of people who then suddenly want to turn the schedule of life into the same things that the graduations of college and high school and eighth grade were and say well i'm 26 or 27 and this person is hot enough and you know oh my gosh you know so many people i know so many people like that oh she'll do i'll or if you're a girl he'll do or you know same sex that whatever like they'll do and so i can say to my friends you know what i'm with somebody they can at least

someone in this world can stand me enough my fucking dick works and boom we're happy we have a few pictures on instagram together we're gonna get engaged i got her a 13 fucking thousand dollar rock twenty thousand dollar rock we're gonna do the whole wedding thing there's gonna be people standing up there you're gonna take more pictures we're gonna go fuck on the honeymoon and have kids and you know what we'll figure it out yeah i like them yeah i like them a lot that must be enough that's love right yeah and then oh fuck wait now I'm 40 and I'm looking at every other fucking person walking around and saying she's got a nice ass that's a great rack oh my god wait why

am I not interested in my wife and oh fuck I have kids they're listening to me that's that's terrifying mm-hmm I see so many people who are either already at that age right there or they're gonna be and they're and they're settling and they're doing it because they want and they're settling and they're doing it because they want things on a schedule and maybe it's like the entrepreneur in me who doesn't operate like that and just builds and like focuses on one thing and like says all right we're gonna we're gonna fail and succeed and fail and succeed over and over and like kind of get there to the point where we're succeeding more and we fail like maybe that's me just being lasered in and being like well fuck that which is it which is a gift in a way that some of us have or maybe it's just like

it doesn't need to be a gift and if you just have some common sense and have the balls to accept that change happens and embrace it like you did things can be easier because it's amazing to me and i'm sure you were cracked up when she broke up with you on the phone like that but the way you described that as that day when you got off you're broken up about it but you were able to get through it let's say quicker over the next weeks and and short months than most people would because you had the the presence of mind to be able to say even if if I saw it a different way, and maybe he did, maybe he didn't. She didn't see it this way.

Therefore, this was not going to go to the promised land that everyone dreams of. And therefore, instead of letting it linger because you fear what's on the other side. You fear having to go into a bar and meeting somebody. You fear having to fucking go to the gym to look a little better so someone wants to fuck you you fear all these things that you say well you know what no that's good enough i won't have that picture on instagram with that person anymore i'm afraid of what everyone's going to think of that you know what they're good looking enough i'll i'll stand it we'll learn to love each other like that that's that's when it all goes wrong and so you look at that and go well she decided that's that's not what we're gonna do and therefore great job and now even whatever it is years later like i don't know how she feels but like at the

very least on your end you're fulfilled because you have an unbelievable level of respect and to use your words of love for that person for what they did yeah and that that's a beautiful thing i appreciate you saying that imagine imagine if marriage was like instead of a means to an end seen as a yo statistically this isn't gonna work out this is kind of crazy that you're actually doing this and tying your financial future to this other person are you sure you want to do this oh it's going to be challenging okay let's do it imagine if people saw it like that how many more successful marriages because it's complex and difficult and it's never always even 90 good it's sometimes 25 good but you have to dig through that and people just realize that marriage and relationships and being tied to another person is challenging yeah i think more

relationships would would succeed because you don't wake up every day completely head over heels in love you gotta and sometimes you might wake up and just hate well maybe not hate but like i don't know just like strongly dislike strongly dislike the situation you're in and you're like something needs to change and only out of love and commitment can you grow the balls to to say that to your partner and be like, hey, we need to work on something. Something's not right. Let's identify the problem, address it. And if we need help, let's fix it. If it's money, if it's whatever, let's figure this out. Health. Yeah. Imagine if just people went into relationships like that, just open-minded, realizing it's kind of crazy to do. I'll throw another curveball all right let's do

it because you're speaking some truth right now it's you i don't want to be that guy no you're on a roll you're on you're on a serious role and like i keep on i'm sitting over here and i try not to do this over and over but i'm like yep yep yep yep but i've said this before and the longer i go doing this the more i believe in it i truly believe that we would put divorce lawyers in this country mostly out of business if you forced couples include and i'm including within this bridge couples who aren't going to reconcile who are not for each other who need to separate if you force if you lock them in a room with no one else like this with headphones in their ears across from each other the windows darkened out no clocks around and made them

listen to each other and talk back and forth like this and they couldn't fucking leave for 12 hours no divorce lawyers would exist because there's something about and it's it is a luxury of doing this and i have i've had an intense appreciation of this since the beginning of doing it, and I'm grateful that I've always recognized that. The luxury of doing this is I get to talk to people for a living. I get to talk to all different people. I get to hear about every single thing that's going – not every single thing, but all kinds of things that are going on in their life or have been going on and then therefore also what their perspectives are on the world and my job is to process all this including people who come from opposite ends of even the political spectrum and make sense of why it all somehow makes sense and why we're not all these crazy fucking people yelling each other in

in in tweets online and i'm like god damn i i still have yet to have a bad guest in here like i walk away and there's something that fulfills me at least one thing from every single and it's more than one thing from every single person that's been in here and i'm like imagine someone that you were like fucking for even if it was like for five years and they didn't fuck for another five because like you were miserable like you have a history right like there's a thing going on there like you this is somebody who was a part of your life you met them them, something happened. There were some sparks. You banged it out on the first date. I don't know. The third date, something. Yeah. You ended up dating. Yeah. You had mutual

friends. Maybe you got married in this case. Like you had kids, like you have all these things. And I'm like, I never understand how it gets, how you let it get to a point. And I, I recognize that there are unique situations and I also can't understand all these things how you let it get to a point and i i recognize that there are unique situations and i also can't understand all these things but like you get to a point where you literally are disgusted by the sight of the other person if there were humanity in it where you didn't have to fucking go behind a lawyer on stuff like we have to do because that's what society says and you actually had to say you know what forget all the money forget all the bullshit and that's hard to do but like legitimately just like fucking forget about it. Go in there. Talk this out. I'd really think more – there would be a lot healthier relationships in this country. There'd be fewer divorces and most divorces would be very – I don't even want to use the word amicable, but there'd be a mutual level of respect there.

Wow, dude, I agree. That's so fascinating. Yeah. Block him in a room for 12 hours. Cause you know what the issue and you know what that solves? That solves the communication issue. Yes. That's it. Like you just got to learn how to communicate. If you can learn how to communicate better problems get solved. And, and, And yeah, dude, it's really profound. When you can just listen to hear someone and make them feel heard, problems get solved. Like all this aggression that comes in the world from any little bickering to full-scale argument to breakups, it comes from lack of communication be you know being on the same page um generalizations but like yeah it's a communication issue and and if everyone

could hear their side and and learn how to not just do the listening but also how to articulate what their emotions are telling them and i think that's what therapy is really good for and sometimes i behave as an unlicensed therapist for people but no you do yeah no i i mean that in a good way like you really i was gonna say that at some point earlier but it was in the middle of you going off on a point and so i was like no don't let's let him keep going here but yes that is exact you are and there's a lot of professions like this where people who are good at it i can say this about yeah you are an unlicensed therapist like especially i was comfortable enough after talking with you for a long enough time that like when i was at my low moment bro i didn't reach out bro yeah i like i didn't really call anyone i texted a couple

of my best friends just like vent and they laugh and get a kick out of it right but like Yeah, like I was on the phone with you for two hours talking about some shit like just numbers Do you remember how long it took me to answer? Because I called you but do you remember how long the duration was or I don't know if you like I don't know I was seeing red. I wanted to just someone in front of yeah. Yeah, so You texted me you probably I mean you texted me when I was asleep So it was late at night, but i didn't answer for that entire day i don't think i even answered that night but i think the following day i called you because i didn't like i wasn't at when when you texted me all you know what was going on with tiktok and all that stuff i was like all right i'm not equipped right now to handle this i'm going to

let this ferment figure out how i can who i can be to be the best person for julian that i can be and then i'll reach back out and i didn't even text back i just called you and i called you actually in a chick-fil-a parking lot i remember that i remember that yeah yeah yeah um and i i lighten the mood by saying that yo there's 40 cars in line and nobody inside so i just walked in i was like anyway how's your day julian that's what i did and you know so like you got to do stuff like that right so like if i had answered right away i'd be like oh joy what calm down come down come on yeah you know i could like any traditional movie scene it just wouldn't have the impact and i wouldn't know what to say in that situation and i i with time i was able to figure out how to articulate or myself to you i don't know no you dude you got to give for it 100 and like in what

you do we didn't even get to talk about like the shit with john like it's come up a few times today and we're like we're three hours in that time flies but like obviously our mutual friend john ronnie is murdering it you started working with him you insinuated this but he was doing very well on tiktok he and his dad they have an amazing channel there continue to it's at johnny drinks you can type in john ron d as well r-o-n-d-i i'm a great great ad guy for him but anyway like he was doing great over there and it was like oh how do we build out the youtube and then you then you came in at a perfect time and have really, I mean, where are they at?

Like 900,000 or some shit like that? Yeah, we're going to hit a million within the next 30 days, I think. And you guys were at 1,000 on like July 1st. Yeah, my personal YouTube channel had more subscribers than they did. Yeah. So, and this is,

when I talk with John about you and what you were helping him with the conversation did not at all at the beginning go towards the content and the strategy which then it eventually got to and all the things you were talking about because you had told me about some of it too and it's obviously all great but he was like he just understands like he just gets it like he he sits there and he's creative he's thinking he's asking questions about what we want to do how we see ourselves and then tries to solve the problems help us figure out how to solve the problems moving forward from there based on what it is we

want so it's like you you're not coming in there with like a cookie cutter that hey these are the things that work so here's what we're going to try to do let's try to fit your content into these boxes instead you're like all right well how do you envision this a year from now three years from now five years from now what do you want mr ronnie what do you want john okay well do you is it all together is some of it just you is it some of it just you and then like there's an understanding and then eventually like pretty quickly and i'll speak for him because he said this like you become the guy that it's like oh all the ideas are going off him because he'll lead us he what's the phrase you can lead the horse to the well but you can't make him drink it he'll help lead us to the well and we'll feel

like we walk there alone yeah that's that's a great thing man that means a lot i mean dude i just all i i love hearing people say nice things about me behind my back it just it means so much to me um so yeah no thanks john thank you julian um no that that truly means a lot um yeah just getting it, that's important. Well, listen, dude, I think we could cut it there just because we probably go for a long time more. Yeah, episode two someday. Yeah, 100%.

First of all, I really appreciate all the help you've given me, which, by the way, I paid this guy $0 on the charity case, so I very much appreciate that. And that'll, as I told you, that'll pay itself forward. Trust me. I know how to take care of my own. But listen, I really, really appreciate that, and I appreciate the way you think and talk with you on this.

I already knew this based on our phone calls, but I think people will hear this now. You have a very complex constantly moving mind and it even moves through five different sentences at once and i like that because in my seat i really got to be paying attention these conversations to see where you're going and i i appreciate that very much wow man i yeah thanks so much for having me here i hope this was an engaging conversation i don't know how it you know hopefully people resonate with it that's all i care about if they could take one nugget away that's dude that's hey change the world in one way for one person that's freaking that's awesome that's it that's how it began that's how it'll end chris thank you brother thank you

appreciate you all right everybody else you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace.