Produced By - Mastermind Behind The Best Documentaries on YouTube | #56: FINAiUS aka Rocky Xu

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

Embark on a journey into the life of FINAiUS aka Rocky Xu, a seasoned fintech entrepreneur and visionary driving his media endeavour forward. With a YouTube channel that boasts an impressive following of over 500k subscribers, Rocky has earned recognition for his engaging storytelling and profound financial insights. From his humble beginnings in a small Chinese town to his current leadership role in the US, Rocky’s journey embodies resilience and innovation at every turn. Join us as we traverse through the twists and turns of Rocky’s entrepreneurial odyssey, navigating through challenges and celebrating triumphs along the way. Delve deeper into the inner workings of Rocky’s acclaimed YouTube channel, FINAiUS, and uncover the strategies behind its success. Prepare to be captivated by Rocky’s unwavering determination, boundless creativity, and visionary spirit as we explore the compelling narrative of his extraordinary journey toward success. Elevate your online presence with the help of Trailblazed, your (and our) favourite digital marketing agency. ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://trailblazed.digital/⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you enjoy the show, please, consider supporting it on Patreon or by buying a virtual coffee (or chocolate). ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/ProducedByPodcast⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.buymeacoffee.com/producedby⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Boost your creative career by joining our new Skillshare course and feel free to let us know how you liked it. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://skl.sh/3Rh7ZtY⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date, get the latest news and much more. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7092551882589528065⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Connect with Rocky: https://www.instagram.com/falcon.xu/ Follow FINAiUS: https://www.youtube.com/@Finaius https://www.finaius.com/ Connect with the host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow the podcast: Links: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/produced_by⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Web: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://produced-by-podcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://instagram.com/produced_by_podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT5LHnM6YCaeVzIr0WatOsw⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/41BiG5YvGIgITz1N14hF2E ⁠⁠⁠ Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/produced-by/id1684669642⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you enjoy listening to the podcast, please, leave a review on your podcast app, subscribe and share it with your friends. You can also send us a message and share any feedback, advice and tips for guests. About Produced By: Produced By unveils captivating stories of courageous people who set out to pursue careers in highly competitive fields, despite often challenging circumstances. Enter the spotlight with our guests and get inspired, whether your interests are in the creative industries, personal growth or you simply want to have fun. Listen to individuals who represent a wide range of professional backgrounds, geographic locations and career stages. So come along to follow their adventures and learn from life's experiences as we kick off on this epic journey. Thanks for listening and see you soon! Connect with Tomas:X: https://x.com/TomasLoucky⁠⁠⁠Stan: https://stan.store/TommenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/⁠⁠Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/⁠⁠Unproduced:Newsletter: https://unproduced.substack.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unproducednotesSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Ddo8ibDlLYoaP7FFLIWMore:Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_by⁠⁠⁠Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://producednewsletter.substack.com/⁠The Podcast Club: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25420030/Tools & gear that support the show:Metricool: https://f.mtr.cool/HRJBZKRiverside: https://riverside.sjv.io/vDnDodFavikon: https://www.favikon.com?fpr=tommenRa Optics: https://ra-optics.myshopify.com/discount/TOMMEN?rfsn=8803777.591d19JamX: https://jamx.ai/podcasters-offer?ref_id=e02d48af-ef66-4e76-b804-c2e8d282a8bfSome links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you find them useful, using these links helps keep the podcast running. Thank you!  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to Produced Buy. Just quickly before we begin, if we enjoy the show, please consider supporting it by joining our Patreon. You can choose from a list of memberships and we'll receive some exciting rewards. Thank you and back to the episode. Hello Rocky, thank you for joining us today and welcome to the show. All right, thank you for having me. So Rocky, can you please introduce yourself? Yes, my name is Rocky.

So I have a YouTube channel that is about finance history, economic history. It's a series of documentaries that I produce. It's called Phineas. It's hard to pronounce. I should have changed that name, but it's too late now. People already know the name. So sometimes when I look at YouTube analytics, people are literally searching Phineas, and they spell it the wrong way. They're missing the eye or missing you.

but it goes to show that people are actually searching for my YouTube channel, so I can't change it anymore. But I've been curious, why is it called that way? Why is there that I? Or what does it mean? Yeah, so the pronunciation is Phineas. So it sounds like a name, someone named, you know, like there's a name called Phineas. And also, in 2017, I was part of a startup. We came out with his name. we were doing financial technology, a fintech startup. We were trying to create a

AI that could answer finance questions. So we named it Phineas Financial AI US. So that's the origin of the name. I mean, yeah, that makes sense. And I guess it's too late to change it now

since people know the name. Yeah, yeah, it's really to change it now. And after that, I mean, the start I didn't take off. So I had a, you know, it was just me left. So I decided to pivot. So I started doing other things like trying to sell data. That didn't work out either.

So I tried a lot of things. And then I also tried a YouTube channel. And that one worked. So the name just stuck. Yeah. So before we dive into with more, I always like to get to know you more. So can you tell us more about your background, such as where you come from and something about your childhood?

Well, that's a long story. Yeah, so I grew up in a small village in China, actually. It's a, it's a, it's close to a city. It's a coastal city that's like six hours away for in Shanghai. That's the city that most people know about China. So it's very close to a nuclear plant. So there used to be a village full of Russian nuclear experts living there. So it's an hour drive away.

So when I was 14, I used to just to go there with my cousin because we didn't see any foreigners before. So we went there and we saw Russian girls. And I was always very fascinated. At that time, I was 13 or 14. So I decided it's like I want to go to the West, go to America. At that time, I didn't know that I thought all foreign countries were similar. So I didn't know that, you know, the difference of Russian-Americans at the time when I was a kid. And, but that sort of like left a mark, you know, like I wanted to come to America in high school.

So I studied a lot of English. And I even took the SAT exam. I don't know if you know what that is. it's a insurance exam for American universities. So I went to Hong Kong and did that. So I got accepted to a college in Mississippi, which is a state that the most people don't even know about. And I think it's one of the poorest states in America.

But the college is a very, it's a prestigious. And it gave me full scholarship, which was like very, generous of them and I didn't I would not have been able to finish my college if not for their generosity so it's called Millsab's College so I went there I study economics and also business I had a double measure there but in college I read a lot about all these hedge fund uh billionaires I read a lot of books about them. And I try to find a lot of YouTube videos about them as well. But, you know, at that time, there weren't a lot of videos about them actually on YouTube.

So this was 2013, 2014. There were Forbes videos talking about how rich they were, but there were no documentaries about them. So, yeah, I try to start companies. I try to start a hedge font in college. So it was a crazy idea. Nowadays, I don't think it will, nowadays, knowing what I know, I don't think I would do that in college. But at the time, I try to like start a hedge fund. I had like two classmates and we drove around.

We went to Florida, try to raise money and nobody will give us money. So in the end, by 2014 when I was in junior year, we decided just to. put together our own money, like about $50,000. We just started our own little hedge fund. We invested in a few stocks. But after college, we all had to, you know, do other things. So and but at a time, I just decided to pivot to other startup ideas. So, you know, I had a bunch of other teammates.

We came out with a different idea, try to create an AI for finance. So which is similar to chat JBT today, you know, we try to, at the time, we had this idea of like having AI that could answer general natural language questions and finance. The idea was that you could ask how does Apple stock perform during January? You could ask this kind of question. The idea was that the AI could answer that. We came very close. We even raised some money. we raised some money from the government,

from the state of Mississippi, actually. And we also got into an incubator program. This was like a wheatwork office space. They just provided us all the resources that we need. Yeah, that went on for one-half years. But we were in Mississippi, not Silicon Valley. So we just, we could not get any more funding and also could not get a talents. And it just didn't pivot.

It just didn't take off. So, but I was the kind of guy who just like, who didn't want to give up so easily. Yeah. So after a while, I try that over and over again. I even went back to China for a year just so that I could have, don't have to worry about the expenses in America. So I spent a year in China studying more about finance. And I came back and to finish my MBA degree. around 2019

and it was mostly night night class I just during the day I just started you know looking into

YouTube being a YouTuber I was watching Casey Nice Day I don't Do you know who he is? Yeah of course Oh yeah yeah

Casey Nice Day I mean he's not around He's not around anymore I mean he's not around anymore I mean he's around But he's not very active anymore But at a time he was very active So I just watch all his daily

the locks. So that was a very motivating for me. And during 2020, you know, because of the pandemic, I moved to a friend's home because, you know, I was living alone in America and

decided to move to a friend's home so that you know, it was a lockdown mode. So it's better to me with someone. And yeah, I started making YouTube videos. So by the end of 2020, It sort of it just took off. Yeah.

And let me ask you before, when you went to study to US, how actually hard was it to get, you know, accepted into especially such a prestigious school, as you said, for someone from China? Was it easy or difficult? What was the process? Very, very hard. Very hard, actually. I grew up in a village. So there was no one in my high school that actually did that. So, but I was very passionate about it.

And I just decided to study English by myself. I mean, there were English classes, but they didn't really teach as much besides the grammar that, you know. And I just study a lot of English by watching American movies, repeating after all the lines in over and overgame. I guess that's probably when I started first learning about filmmaking, I guess. And yeah, I just decided to call all the schools to kind of like a salesman, trying to sell myself. Like, you know, I did this and that. You know, please accept me. I guess something that will be helpful later on in the career, trying to get partnerships with companies and supply.

Exactly. Exactly. I did that so much at some point this director of a mission for my college. And he said, Rocky, you got to stop calling me. I thought he was upset, but later that afternoon, he emailed me. He said, Rocky, congratulations. You know, you're accepted. And with the full scholarship.

And that was that story. So you really got to just work for it and have the passion for it, you know, just persisting longer than other people. Yeah. And then after moving there, how did you find the new environment, new place, new people? Was there a culture shock? What was it like? Oh, yeah. totally a cultural shock.

I could communicate in English before coming to America because I worked really hard at it. But there was this element of culture the way people behave that was totally different. Yeah, I mean, for example, in America, people are actually very sensitive about politics because people have different belief systems. Like you might believe in the Democratic Party or you might belong to the Republican Party. Sometimes people avoid talking about them to incite, you know, a fight. You know, they don't want to offend each other. And there was also the issues of race in America.

America is a diverse country. And when I arrived here, I did not, you know, I did not know a lot of those cultural sensitivity. So I asked a lot of questions in classes that people were like, oh, don't say that. Yeah, that was a big cultural shock. And also, it just, I pretty much lived alone for a majority of the time. And that kind of, that sense of solitude was very foreign to me because I grew up in China in a village where everybody knew each other. It was a very tight community. And I knew, never had to live alone. But it was a very beneficial period for me because I learned to be self-sufficient, you know, to grow, I guess. That's really interesting to hear because I come

from a similar background from a village where everyone knows everyone. And London is completely different place, lots of people, multicultural. So that's something I can relate to. It's interesting to hear. Definitely, definitely. You're the city and there are a lot of people live in a city but you also feel very lonely that's the problem in the modern world in the city environment it's just that there's this sense of loneliness that nowadays people struggle with i can totally relate to that yeah and then as we spoke about the hedge funds during your studies can you introduce or say what is it actually a hedge fund i guess people may not know what it is?

Yeah. So a hedge fund is actually not a complicated thing. Almost anyone can claim that they have a hedge fund. But from the legal perspective,

you have a you start a partnership where investors will invest money in your partnership. And you are the general manager, general partner and the other investors are the limited partners. And so that's a fund. And then you start

another company called Capital Management Company. And that capital management company becomes the general partner for that fund. So now you have a hedge fund. You can call itself a hedge fund or private equity. And then what you do is that you charge typically charge 2% management fee. suppose they invest 100 million, you take out 2 million, you know, as your management fee. And then you also charge 25% of the return from on the profit you make from the 100 million. Suppose you make 10 million. So that 2.5 million, you take 2.5 million for that 10 million as your incentive fee. So if you structure like that, you can call yourself a hedge fund or a private equity.

So in college, I started that. So I started that with two other partners. They were classmates. They didn't have money either. It sounds quite like a bold and brave move. Oh, yeah. I don't regret it because although we didn't raise any money at all, But to build the fund, we went to a lot of places.

You know, we went to give presentation to the CFA society. CFA are, you know, certified chartered financial analysts, whatever. So, and they have their own organization. They give, they have launches and they have events. So we got invited to those events. We gave a presentation to a lot of people. So which really helped us, help me. to learn about finance to be comfortable talking to people.

We even did a presentation to the board of the school in a college. Yeah, so the experience was very valuable, although it didn't work. Yeah, and definitely, you know, because for example, people are often scared of public speaking or pitching and presentation in front of lots of people. So I can imagine this must have been invaluable experience, especially for later on. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And the good thing was that because I was so passionate about finance, I learned all about it

even before I took finance classes. So in American schools, colleges, you only get to select your major after the sophomore year. So before the sophomore year, I knew I was going to do finance. So I already learned everything about it. So when I started taking classes in finance in my college, I was pretty good at it. Because I already learned everything about it. I didn't even have to spend much time doing that. So that was another benefit.

You just really have to be passionate about a subject. And when I was into something, I was totally immersed in the subject. Yeah. I totally agree. if you find something that you enjoy, it's not, you know, you just enjoy learning. So it's different than if you have to study something that you don't like or you don't see yourself working in the future. So it's awesome. Absolutely.

So after that, did you start or try that AI startup with others? Yes. So my senior year in college, I was doing a lot of trying to other. ideas. I even started a Amazon shop that didn't work. So I tried a lot of things. You know, this is about being entrepreneur. You really have to be an action-driven person. If you have an idea, just go try it. And I think part of it has to do with the personality of that person, you know. But yeah, I tried Amazon. I tried selling stuff on the street. Just try all sorts of things. because I wanted to get rich, I guess.

And yeah, and we came out with this idea. There was this competition called a startup weekend competition where people get together. It's hosted by the state. And people got together and they pitched ideas one by one. And then they were like judges sitting there and trying to decide which one is, the best we won the first place i think oh nice yeah um it was the idea about uh doing the i

search at the time search engine to search questions all that stuff and then we took that idea to uh you know an investor so and we got something funding and so i pretty much just spent the next year and a half doing that and i'm sorry to interrupt but then there wasn't product like that Yes, at the time there was Google search engine, there was this Or maybe like Yahoo or something like that Yeah, there was Yahoo, there's all kinds of news stuff But at the time, the idea was very hard to do actually Because AI wasn't as advanced as it is today with chat GPT

So it was pretty much chat GPT for mostly for finance You can, for people to ask simple questions and simple language without having to code, without having to search for it, it just, you know, feedback the right answer to you. And I just spend a year and a half learning coding. I learned a little bit of coding in college. But because of the startup, I had to learn coding. I had to learn everything. I had to learn algorithms. And, but we didn't make much money.

So I had to, because I learned coding. I had to do apps development for other people. So I make 5,000 here, 2,000 there, just to support myself for a year and a half. So it was a good period. You know, again, failure doesn't mean it was a bad experience. Yeah. And what was the reason that it didn't succeed or you didn't continue with that? It was just too hard to do.

I mean, the idea was so, the idea of building AI. would take a large team and a lot of resources, a lot of AI, a lot of researchers come up with an idea and to build something like that. But the good thing was that because I learned all the skills, I even got certified as a machine learning specialist. I even went to do competitions. There was this hedge fund competition.

on a Google called Numeri, where they got people, different PhDs, different data scientists to write algorithms to trace stocks, and then they will rank your results based on their money. They put money in their algorithms. And if your algorithm does better, they will give you cryptocurrencies as reward. And I did that. And it's because all the hard work I learned, all the heartwork and all the lessons, I as a startup entrepreneur. And I was able to master a lot of these skills and managed to win a second place, you know, at some point. I was the second place.

They even interviewed me. I was like, you know, who are you? How did you do that? And they were surprised that I wasn't even, you know, educated. as a computer scientist in college. But, yeah, that was the benefit of it. That was the

struggle that allowed me to master, you know, algorithms and quantitative finance. And yeah. I really like the mindset of learning and going for it, like, you know, for the idea and to not to be lazy or afraid to learn in order to succeed.

So I guess that's something that more people should adopt mindset like this. Yeah, I think most people overestimate risk. They think risk is something that's too horrible. So imagine in my situation, what's the worst that can happen to me when I was doing that startup? So the worst that could happen is I didn't work out in two years. But during the face of building a startup, I got to. to meet a lot of investors, I got to meet a lot of VCs. I got to meet a lot of people that could help me down the road if I really need to find a job

to support myself later on. You know, it's really about the learning all the skills you build along the way. Even if the project fails, you still have all the skills with you. And now you become a more valuable person, more valuable employee. in the work market if you really have to get a job. It's really not that bad. In the long run,

if you have a brand, if people know you as a capable individual, a hardworking person, there's just no chance that you will fail in life, you know? Yeah, exactly. And especially, for example, if you are pitching or, you know, speaking with investors for the second time,

it's going to be much easier because you already went through it. know what it's like you've got the experience yeah unless okay here's some exceptions unless you get yourself into a lot of debt that's hard that's going to be hard to get out of um and also unless you break the law you got you know sent to prison uh or you ruin your health so if you don't do these things you're going to be fine so i'll make sure the fundamentals are okay i'm you know i don't do anything legal you know i'm not getting myself into a lot of debt and not breaking the law.

If you don't do these things, there's virtually nothing that can happen in life that will truly destroy you, you know? Yeah. So moving on from this, is that then when you started your YouTube channel? Mm-hmm. So it was during the COVID, right?

Yeah, so after my MBA, it was actually, I guess, a rock bottom for me because the startup, Also, sorry, but before we move on, let me just ask you about MBA. I feel like that this is a topic

that all of people say that it's not really necessary, that it's a waste of money. So from your perspective, as someone who did it, what's your opinion? It's, you don't need it.

You don't really need to have an MBA unless you have a very clear, defined path of career choices down the road. Like if you want to, become a management consultant. If you want to work for a bank, if that's what you want to do,

I think it's necessary to have an MBA to do that. But if you want to be entrepreneur, if you want to start your own business, if you want to just be in business in general, you don't really need that. With MBA, it's just that it's better, if you want to learn better

than being in a business school, you start a company. That's actually a better training ground for you. So what was the main motivation for you to do it in the first place? To remain America. So put it simply, put it simply because I picked that class, I picked the simplest program that I only had to attend three classes per week at night. So during the day, so I have all the free time from 2019 to 2020 to think about my ideas to pursue more business ventures.

Yeah, that's when I started doing that online competition with this hedge fund. And I also try to start a YouTube channel. And all these things happen around that time. So yeah, so doing NBA for me was just a way for me to remain America, to put it simply. To be honest, yeah. If I was American, I wouldn't have done that. Yeah. And did you actually enjoy it or not really?

The NBA classes? Yes. Yeah, I mean, again, it was the same school I went to. So I only had to do it for one year. Yeah, the Millseps College Business School was really good, actually, if you compare it to other schools. And it ranks pretty high in America. And they really emphasize on case studies and also having you doing real practical stuff.

For example, I was on the, so I was pursuing an MBA degree with finance specialization. and they even give you, they even had a little class that let you manage a real fund. So that's some responsibility. Yeah, yeah, they have a million dollars fund and a Millsaps College. And they have two classes. So both of the classes are supposed to manage the same fund. And they spend an entire semester of researching companies. And then they do presentation to the board of that fund.

And then they would decide to decide if they want to invest in that company or not. So it was more like a value investing fund. Yeah. Yeah. And definitely always great if you learn practical, not just theoretical, of course. Yeah. So then with your YouTube channel, I'm curious, weren't you, you know, afraid? to put yourself out there to speak on a camera and, you know, go on YouTube?

Yeah, I mean, I... Yeah, so, and by, you know, by the end of 2020, there was a period of time I had to look for a job because after NBA, I sort of hit rock bottom because of the COVID, it was really difficult to look for job and the startup didn't work, didn't work. and I was in quarantine with my friends. I had a lot of time. I was in my room all day.

I had a lot of times where I doing YouTube videos. I was like, you know, I could, since I know about finance, you know, why not just make YouTube videos about finance instead of trying to do something like Casey Nistad, you know? Yeah, I never even thought about it. I just realized that it was. I could shut my face in the video, you know. But now I realize that it was actually the right move because what you really want is to build a personal brand. If you have faceless YouTube channels, the data, I don't know how correct this data is, but I believe it makes sense that the data says that the talking heads videos, meaning the videos were.

the creator actually show up, has a higher rate of subscription per views, you know, per 100 views, whatever, because there's a trust associated with the face, you know? Yeah, I agree. I feel like I heard already the same with just with thumbnails for the video. Yeah, when there's a person. The thumbnails, it's better to have a face on a thumbnail. It's actually This is more technical now

It's actually better to have a Face that has some kind of strong Emotion on the face And that because people are very sensitive To other people's faces And they're especially sensitive Their mind is very Especially sensitive to other people's eyes

So that's why You see a lot of finance YouTube videos Have glowing red eyes And it's because because it gets people to pay attention, you know? Yeah, I've got one channel in my mind. I guess I don't want to mention it. I'm pretty sure that you would know what it is.

And the thumbnails are, don't want to say clickbait, but that's what I was imagining when you were describing. You're talking about Jake Trans? Yes, exactly. I think he started this whole trend. Yeah, but now the glowing eyes thumbnails are totally overdone. So I don't, I want to do that for my videos.

And when you started, did you actually do some research if there are channels like the one that you wanted to do? Or if there was like a niche or a gap in the market? I did not think any of that. So my only thought was that I could not find those finance related videos that I wanted to watch in college. And I was really into hedge fund billionaires. and there were enough good quality videos about them, you know? And I just decided to start making videos, making documentaries. But now I realize that high-quality, non-fiction films on YouTube are actually really underserved.

And I mean, nowadays there are a lot of documentaries, but at a time they weren't enough. especially talking about finance and our economic history, the financial history of America is full of dramatic stories, it's full of interesting personalities. And none of these are getting screen time, getting enough screen time yet. I feel like I was inadvertently feeling that need because the stories in the corporate world, all the balance. battles in the corporate world are just as interesting as, you know, other documentaries. Yeah, totally. I absolutely agree because often hear these stories. Maybe you know someone famous, someone successful, but you don't know what's behind. And thanks to this documentary such as yours or even other channels, I find this story is just fascinating.

If you know how to convey and share the story and the idea through the video, it's just art. and masterpiece. Yeah. If you want to boost your online presents, check out our digital marketing agency called Trailblazed. You can also enroll in a Skillshare course called the 10 Tips on How to Succeed in Your Creative Career, which was inspired by the podcast.

Lastly, make sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter called Creative Spotlight to stay up to date with the show and more. Links are in the show notes. Thanks. And when you started with your work, videos. How did you actually get it out or how did you market it? Did you just publish it and try to spread the word or did you have some strategy in mind? Yeah, so that's the thing about being a YouTuber is that you don't really have to worry about that. Actually, it would actually hurt you

if you try to buy views or pay for traffic. So YouTube algorithm is very sophisticated right now. It's able to analyze if your video has, you know, quality or not. So all I focused on at the time was making the video as good as possible. And the way I did that was picking good documentaries that I liked. There were this Bloomberg documentaries on Warren Buffett, on finance people. I just studied them. I took one of them. I just like I write down all the things that were said in the video.

I just started analyzing. Okay, at this point, the narrator is talking about the childhood of this guy. At this point, the narrator is stating an event. And then some talking head will show up to explain that event. And that's when I realized all the patterns. to make engaging documentaries. And I try to make sure with every video I made at the time was slightly better than the previous one. So, and I just spent a lot, one third of the time just studying.

Yeah. What was the average length you spent on making a video? Oh, okay. In the beginning, it was a video every week or 10 days. and but to stay competitive I had to make sure that the video got better and better it actually doesn't matter how long it takes you to make a video as long as it's good

you know unless you take years to make it unless you take eight months eight months is actually pretty long as a YouTuber so nowadays it nowadays it takes me two months to make a video I like to do one every month or three weeks. So that's the goal for the rest of the year to release faster. And do you feel the pressure that you need to make it, that you need to release it?

The pressure, yes. So much pressure. This is the part that people don't know about being a YouTuber. And I don't know if you notice this trend on YouTube. So many YouTubers are quitting because, they got burnout. I saw the recent wave of YouTubers posting. Yeah, yeah.

There's a lot of people are talking about this. So what happens is that being a YouTuber is that with every video you do, there's a chance of it totally just, you know, destroys your channel. Your career could end at any moment. So there's, with every new release, the days leading up to a new video release, it's always very stressful.

Yeah, there's a lot of pressure as YouTube. It's not as glamorous as most people seem. For me, I live pretty much in solitude, reading, studying, try to get the next video out. But again, the best part of a YouTuber, is that you have the freedom. but you also have to suffer for the uncertainty. It's like the difference between a dog and a wolf, you know?

A dog has everything given to him or her, but they don't have any freedom. They have to live in a place. They belong to someone. But as a wolf, you're free. You're pretty much free to do whatever you want. But you have to faint for yourself. You have to find food for yourself.

yourself. Yeah. So it really depends on how you look at it. When it comes to ideas on next videos, do you still have plenty of ideas, what to do videos about? Yeah. So I'm lucky that I have had been able to find a niche that has a lot of, has streams of ideas. So I'm doing biographies on finance people. There are a lot of them. So they're like, probably a few hundreds of them left that I could do. And also I'm covering the histories of big corporations and financial corporations. And there are a lot of those. So what I realize is that most of these companies like Citibank, Morgan Stanley, they're well known.

So meaning that they have inherent traffic. Like if you do them, the topic itself will attract certain traffic. And all you have to do now is to make sure that the documentaries you make about them are good or interesting. And if you do that, the YouTube will rank you a slightly higher. So I don't struggle with ideas, although I still do polls. Sometimes I still ask my audience, which one do you want to see first? Yeah, it's very important. Having the right idea is very important.

And do you work on more videos at the same time? or do you do one and then jump to the other? It's one at a time. Because I can't really. So what happens is that when I get into one idea, it's, you know, it becomes a sooner of how I operate. And it's hard to think about a different idea at the same time. Although nowadays, I have a editor who was high school classmate.

I only work with classmates. high school classmates and he just he's a really good at 3D works I used to do everything myself but now I sort of outsource some of that to him what I do is I write research and write

in a script and I send it to him and then I'm done for a few weeks and then I focus on a different idea and when he's done with editing then I have to switch back and take his raw edit and do my own final revision. Yeah.

Yeah, that was my next question. And what about thumbnails? Do you do them? Does he do them? Because it's such important part? Yes, I do thumbnails myself. I pretty much, I study some Netflix, posters, movie posters, and I try to find some lessons, you know, on how to do thumbnails.

Can you share some tips? Yes, I'm sharing some of that. now. So you have to have expressive face on it. It's better to have eyes that look slightly uncanny. That's why I changed the colors of the eyes because it's just to, you know, get the attention from people. And it has to have a high contrast in terms of color. And it's typically, you know, bright colors is better. If it's a dark background, make sure the foreground has a bright color. So create that contrast.

Yeah. And it's better to have people in it. You know, like if it's just a, um, something abstract is, it's hard to get people's attention. Yeah. What about the text in thumbnails? Yeah. I mean, a text should complement the, the title.

Yeah. And with, with the title, uh, is it better shorter or longer? or something. Yeah, the title is also an important work. I would not choose to do an idea before I could think about the title of thumbnail first because there's some idea that are just you cannot create a thumbnail or title about. So it's best to have some extreme, something extreme in the title, the biggest, the most powerful. A bit of click bait. Yeah. Yeah. the mysterious, the secretive, the untold. Yeah.

So that sort of helps me finding next ideas. So if I want to do a company, an insurance company, I would do, what I would do is I'll do the biggest insurance company or the one that's or the one that has a lot of scandals or the most evil, whatever. I was going to say the most evil. Yeah. Also, the word evil is being overly used. I never used that word in my titles. And especially make it all capital. Yeah.

What are some channels that are maybe your inspiration or that you follow or that you like? Yeah. So the first channel that really motivated me to do documentaries was this. space channel called Melody Sheep. It's a guy who lives in Seattle by himself, and he just makes awesome 3D animations, and he talks about space and aliens. So I'm into this kind of topic during my downtime.

And yeah, I saw one of the documentary he made about aliens, species, a different kind of alien species and the documentary was so well made I was very blown away by that so that's why I actually used a lot of 3D elements in my work it's yeah part of it's because of him

yeah and then I also on that channel we'll check it out yeah another guy that takes inspiration from is Johnny Harris he talks a lot about geopolitics yeah it's also my like this video well. Yeah, yeah. And I study a lot of history channel documentaries too, try to learn their style,

because traditional media, they have done the work for you, meaning they have figure out all the formulas to capture audience intention. They have figured out all the topics that will attract audience. So I study a lot of them. Yeah. And I had a look before what's your most successful video when it comes to views. Do you know which one it is? I mean, the Ross Child, I guess. Yes. I think it has more than 5 million views. Yeah, yeah, over 5 million views by now. Wow, that's crazy. So what do you think is, is there is it the quality, the topic, everything, why? It's, yeah, many, many, many factors. The idea about Ross Child is that the topic itself has inherent traffic enduring interests from people.

A lot of conspiracy theories about them as well. And my goal has always been to pick a topic, a little bit niche topic, not too broad, and make the best video about the topic. It's better to be the best in a smaller arena than, you know, third or fourth place in a broader arena. You know, this is part of the Harvard business school lesson. Yeah, so I pick a niche topic, make me the best video about it. And I think my Rothschild documentary is probably the most comprehensive in terms of detailing its entire history out there.

Every other video about Rothschild is full of conspiracy theories, you know, like things that are not really backed by facts. I mean, that's not to say that they haven't done any shady stuff. It's just that my goal was to tell their actual story from beginning to today. I think there has not been a video like that. So when people watch that video, they have an idea about where they came from and stuff like that. So based on the information that you know about them, is there, I don't know, some truth to these theories? To the conspiracy theories. So the way they got started was very controversial, I guess.

They made money from funding wars. They made money by lending money to both parties of war. And so that is not very glorified way of making money, but they made a lot of money. And yeah, I mean, to say that they're behind everything. thing is probably a stretch. But they are behind a lot of companies, a lot of operations. Even they have influence on YouTube. They have influence over some of the company that sponsor me.

Be careful what you're saying. Yeah, exactly. That's why I'm not going to say too much about them. Yeah. And what's the story or the video that you did? and for some reason stuck in your mind or you enjoyed it or was unique for some reason. Oh. My video about Jamie Diamond was very surprising because I did that one in a hurry.

And for the first month, that video didn't do. Sorry, can you introduce him? Jamie Diamond, JP Morgan CEO, Jamie Diamond. JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Diamond. And that one probably get almost 3 million views by now. I mean, I wasn't expecting for that video to do that well. And for the first month, it didn't do very well. But the story is very inspirational for me because I read that, read his biography in college.

And I listened to his interviews, Harvard speeches. And I was really looking up to Jimmy Diamond. Some people even commented on under the video saying that I even try to, mimic Jamie Diamond's mannerism. So that video was, yeah, that video is, it was very, you know, special. So is he still like your inspiration or motivation for you? Yeah, he's still my motivation. He's, Jamie Diamond is a type of guy who, um, who has a no bullshit approach to life.

He, he writes down all the things, uh, that are important to him, all the principles. all the principles that he follows and he just stick to them. He tries to treat everyone very fairly, I guess. And he's very smart. His way of doing things is very, you know, motivational for me. I would be curious to ask you what you think about Elon, not only as entrepreneur, but also because you said you are interested in space. Elon Musk, yes.

I was really into Elon Musk in college. I mean, I read a book about him. His idea of first principle thinking was really, you know, impactful for me to learn. Try to, you know, analyze things from yourself rather than form opinions based on other people's opinions. You know, one of the biggest lesson I learned from Elon Musk is, that try to distinguish between facts and opinions. For example, I don't know if he said a story, someone else said a story. He's like, if you want to know how long the emperor's knows it, you can ask 10 people

about it, ask them, like, how long do you think the emperor's nose is? You get different numbers, you average them. or you could go measure Emperor's nose. So these two are completely different ways of learning. And oftentimes most people just like, they ask 10 people's opinions about Emperor's nose doesn't make them more correct, you know? Yeah, so that really sort of changed how I think about things.

And if I want to pursue an idea, I just think about it from the first principle. think about it, you know, how to accomplish it. It's important. You know, as a possible to do, is it valuable, stuff like that. So, I mean, there are a lot more things that Elon Musk do, and there's a lot more lessons from him. Yeah, he's a one of a kind, you know? He's probably one of the most important people in this century.

if not Vime was important. The book you read, was it the one from Walter Isaacson? Oh, I haven't read that one. I read the one about him long ago, long ago. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, the new one, I haven't. And when it comes to creativity, you sometimes struggle with creativity.

And if so, what do you do then? Yeah. So when it comes to creativity, I think, most people who are doing YouTube or who are writing are sort of over

you know over like they put too much emphasis on creativity I come at it from a engineering perspective I try to have study good works I try to study good documentaries

I try to find patterns and then I create a system of producing good works in a reliable way. So this is like engineering approach. For example, I looked at some history channel documentaries. I realized that every minute there must be a turn. And they focus on characters' conflicts. And they have talking hats to introduce facts or to show reactions, to show expositions.

And they chain together different names. narrative together, you know, with an arc, you know, up and down. So for me, writing a good story is almost like a process of engineering, a process of building something. Yeah, so I rely on that. My only problem is that being a YouTuber is so stressful. Sometimes I do feel slightly burnt out, and I'll have to just relax and just focus on other things in life, you know.

What about the comments? Do you read them or you don't? Yes, I read at least half of them, at least half of them. Because I'm really fortunate that my fans are very they're very special because they don't really say a lot of negative things about me.

In the comments, they often they just praise my videos and yeah, there's not a whole lot of negativity there. So sounds like you've got a good community. Oh yeah, there's yeah, it's a very good community. And I try not to

treat them as if they're dumb, you know. A lot of creators, they will pull up, they will just pull some schemes, sell some shitty products. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Invest in this is crypto. Yeah, yeah. Try to push cryptos and, you know, know, assuming that the audience doesn't know, you know, doesn't know the truth. You know, anytime you assume your audience is dumb is when they will leave you, you know. And then maybe Cafizela will do a video about you and you're done. I hope he doesn't do any video about me. And when it comes to other social media channels, is it important or do you actually focus

Are you on the group? I don't focus on any other social media channels. But I do think they're very important. If you, yeah, I just don't have time. If I have a lot of times on my hand, I would try to build a tech talk presence. I try to build, you know, Instagram. I'll have lots of Instagram accounts. There are just so many.

I have so many ideas that I don't have time to do them, you know? Yeah. And I'm not sure if you want to what you're comfortable discussing this, But can you say something about when it comes to monetization and if you're, let's say, able to sustain living from what you make from YouTube? Yeah, I mean, I'm totally able to sustain my living with YouTube income, you know, from Ascent and also for sponsors. Sponsorships I do. And I also spent, I said I was trying to do a hedge fund in college. It didn't work.

but now I'm actually running a fund. It's not a hedge fund. It's a private equity, which is pretty much structured a similar way. And I do that. And I have, you know, raised, you know, this one is successful. I have raised some money for that to do a private equity fund. And, yeah, I spend some time doing that.

And this is what I, this is why I feel very fortunate. about doing a YouTube channel and the finance niche that I don't really have to monetize the way like Jake Tran or all these other people by trying to sell courses, by trying to do affiliate marketing, all that stuff. And because my niche is high finance, I got to meet a lot of these people in finance. And because the fact that put my face out there

and I tried to build a trustworthy brand, A knowledgeable brand. I try to build myself as someone who knows what he's talking about. And as a result, I'm able to do partnerships actually in hedge funds, in private equity. So that's a new project I'm doing right now. Try to actually build a fund myself, try to get deals. Yeah. I think also your YouTube channel shows that you're passionate about the top.

that you're not trying to raise money or do the hedge fund just for the money, but that you actually know something about this area and you are passionate about it. So I'm pretty sure it helps. Oh, thank you. Yeah. So that's also a barrier to entry for other YouTubers. It took me a while, took me all the way since college to learn everything about finance that I'm able to articulate all the insights and all the knowledge.

the financial knowledge that requires people to spend a lot of years to learn. And if someone wants to start a channel like mine, he will have to hire a writer who also knows finance, who also has MBA education to write the scripts the way I do. So I'm fortunate that that has become a barrier to entry for other people. That's why my channel, Kim, is pretty consistent with. in terms of viewerships. Yeah. Out of curiosity, do you know how many videos have you posted?

Oh, I probably posted 60 by now. I checked. I think there were 46, if I'm not in this thing. Okay, I guess I'm overestimating it. I did. Okay, I did make a few more videos that I didn't get posted. Why not? Didn't like the result in the end?

Yeah, I just didn't like it. So do you want to share what are your ambitions with the channel? Or do you have any future plans besides producing great content? Yeah, it's very important to have ambition for it. Even though I think my channel has, this is my speculation. My speculation is that I have reached a certain saturated status because I think they're, they're, They're probably only 5 million really passionate of finance people in the world.

That's already over-assimating it. So to grow my channel, I'll have to sort of focus on slightly broader topics. I cannot make a video talking about credit default swaps, which is like very, you know, focused topic, very small niche. So to grow, I have to like broaden up. And yeah, I want, I mean, my goal is to make sure that every video I do is the highest quality I can do it. And the rest would take care of yourself. Just do your best.

The rest will take care yourself. Yeah. What about some advice for starting YouTubers or people who want to, or maybe what advice would you give to yourself if you were starting again? Yeah. I mean, the common advice you hear. is that just start, you know, just do it. But unfortunately, it's not going to work anymore on YouTube because they're just so competitive, so competitive.

Everything, you know, you cannot just put yourself out there just talking to a camera and I hope to give views. That's, you have to, if you really, if you're really serious about it, then you will have the passion, the determination to do what it takes, right? you have to have that. It's a really long game. So my advice is just to take my video, take other people's video, any video like, break it down, study it, and take a few months just to master it. Just get better and then make your first video and your first day might not even do well.

But that's going to be a good stepping stone for you. Still take action. You really got to be action-oriented. Yeah. And also be willing to do it for the long term and don't think too much about money. You know, during my rock bottom in 2020, I told myself that I was going to do this YouTube channel even if it doesn't pay me in a long run. Because I had a lot of failures before then. Everything I tried pretty much failed up to that point.

I thought it was mostly because I didn't stick to my ideas long enough. or I put money above everything else. So when I started this YouTube channel, I said to myself, I'm committed to this for two years, even if it means after two years, I only get one subscriber. I would do that. I do that not for that subscriber account.

I do it not for the money. I just do that to see if I'm a person who doesn't quit. When you internalize your motivation, you're able to sustain it. You're able to persist a lot longer. And surprisingly, by switching that mindset to become a person who doesn't quit, that translates to success that I didn't have before. So this channel succeeded because I was able to just put quality, put work, don't quit, and put all of that above money, above vanity matrix, like subscriber accounts and viewership. Yeah.

So it's a mindset. You really got to do it for the long term. No matter what, make sure you've got to do it for the long term. Yeah. Yeah. As I said before I like the mindset. So before we finish, let me ask you a few quick questions. So do you have a favorite quote?

Do you have a favorite quote? I can't think of them on top of my... I think I don't memorize a lot of these quotes. I think in terms ideas, Another idea that I really like from Gary Vee is that you don't really have to focus on just one thing Being an entrepreneur is like probabilistic gain You don't even have to have a full conviction

To pursue an idea If you have three ideas that have 30% chance of success, You can pursue all three of them You can learn to outsource. You can learn to delegate. You can work smart. But if you do all these three things, if one of them works out, if one of them works out, then it's a success. And when that one works out, then you double down on that one.

So we entrepreneur, you don't really have to focus on one idea because oftentimes you don't know if that idea will work. Right. So it helps to try a lot of things, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So the next one will be if you got a favorite book and why? Yeah, so to get started in finance, there was this book that really helped me that lay all the foundations for everything. It was called, it's a very boring textbook, actually.

It's called Valuation. It was written by McKinsey Consultant. It helped me think about companies value as cash flow in terms of, cash flow in terms of how much cash flow this company can generate in the long term and use that to gauge the value of company. Once you read that book, once you master that, you realize that everything, all the assets in finance are related to cash flow. And that one really helped me. But I have another book that really helped me think better, really helped me with problem solving is called the art of complexity.

It's written by a physicist, theoretical physicist, but it helps you think about different problems in life, different scenarios in life, how to do estimation. Like, in order to think better, you don't even have to be precise. You just think and estimate.

You know, one of the very interesting question was in that book, it was about, if I ask you this question, can you estimate how much a pianist make in London? Just that question. Most people are like, you know, they don't know even how to start. But in that book, it sort of shows you a way of thinking.

Like, you know, you think about average salary, you think about London, you think about like the GDP of London, just to like start asking. estimating, start like, gradually come to an estimate of how much a pianist will make. Sounds interesting.

I've never heard of this one. Yeah, yeah. So it helps, it really makes you smart, I guess, if you read that book. And in finance,

you don't really have to learn everything, you know, but it's important to have a set of problem solving skills. Yeah. To succeed, yeah. So before we finish, is there something that you want to share

and I forgot to ask you? I mean, nowadays, there's no, if you really want to make a lot of money, I guess, it goes back to what I said. You really can't think too much about money. And also in the end, I noticed that this habit really helped me a lot, is that when people ask for help, I help them unconditionally, meaning that I help them without asking anything in return. I try to practice this way of life.

And when I do that, I realize that I tend to get more returns down the road, even without me asking for it. You know, someone asked me, someone came to me, some YouTuber, some upcoming YouTuber who want to make a YouTube channel. I just helped with his script a little bit. I didn't even ask for anything. And then he got really inspired. And then he just, you know, he came back a few months later.

You know, wanted to pay me more to help him with more works. Yeah. And yeah. So it just try to help other people. When you help other people without expecting anything in return, it's actually a great investment in your personal brand. And that personal brand in the long term will generate a lot of return for you, whether it's opportunities or money.

Yeah, stuff like that. Yeah, that's awesome. So we all know that people should follow and subscribe your channel, but are there any other social media or where people can find or follow you? I mean, I'm mostly active on Instagram. I answered a lot of followers questions there. And on my YouTube channel, I never asked for a subscribe or comment. I don't feel like, I just don't feel like asking for it, though. People will do it by themselves when they see our videos.

Yeah. If you text me on Instagram, I'm more likely to respond there. I don't really respond to LinkedIn all that much. I don't respond to YouTube and everything else. I actually just respond to Instagram messages a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect.

I think that's it then. We can finish it. I want to say huge thank you. I enjoyed so much and I was so pleased that you joined me on the podcast because I've been one of your followers for a long time since the first video. So it was really a pleasure and thank you so much for joining. All right. Thank you, Tomlin.

Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast app, get in touch to provide your feedback or share any ideas for future. guests. Thank you and see you soon.