The Iced Coffee Hour - Meet The Magician Who Spends $100,000 Every 10 Seconds | Zach King

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

See How Your Portfolio Stacks Up Today With Front! https://getfrontstore.onelink.me/zceN/icedcoffee Skip the waiting list and get access to Masterworks today! https://mw-art.co/icedcoffee This week we are joined by Zach King, who has amassed over 20 Billion views by preforming magic/optical illusions you wont believe. We discuss how he got to where he is today, how he was able to grow across all platforms, and much more! Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_photography Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w DOWNLOAD MY NEW FINANCIAL APP: https://hungrybull.page.link/graham GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $1000 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES - USE CODE GRAHAM: http://www.public.com/graham  MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ Join the 2x weekly mentorship group: https://tinyurl.com/yaexko4o The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Rode NT1, Rodecaster Pro The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Please See These Disclosures For Masterworks: https://www.masterworks.io/about/disclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So welcome back to the iced coffee hour. We are really excited to have on Zach King today. He's got 66 million followers on TikTok. Being the fifth most followed person on the entire platform. And he's got 12 million subscribers on YouTube. He's been on TV shows, movies. You've probably seen him online. And he's about to reveal how much money he makes.

Are you excited? I am beyond excited. Are you? I am. But did you subscribe? I subscribe so hard. Hey, everybody. I'm Zach King.

Welcome back to the. ice coffee hour and guess what this podcast is made up to this date 72,000 dollars. Ooh, wait, it's that. That's under guessing. Wow, you underguess by a lot. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Let's re-guess. Then if it's an underguess, then probably 265. Oh, no, no, you really, really overguess. Now we're honing in. It's 180. Oh, 130. 123. That's great.

Yeah, $122,000. Yeah. I mean, you guys know this, but that's some people's whole year income. Yeah, no. And you've done it in about a year and a half, so that's pretty impressive. Yes, we are very fortunate. But I know for you guys, it probably feels small.

Not for me. No? Not for me. Okay. Yeah. It's for track. Am I allowed to ask this? But what's the split on the chint?

Like, have we ever, we've never disclosed this publicly. You know, how about this? That's going to be exposed. Should we, should we just start it off with a bang? Should we disclose that?

I'm okay with it. I'm okay with it. Yeah, you're okay with it. Yeah, I'm fine with it. I've always wondered. I'd never heard you talk about. Yeah, this is the first time we've ever said that. And this is across the board between sponsors and ad revenue.

Everything that this channel generates and all the expenses are split with this number. So I get 99% jackets 2%. Yeah. Wait, 99 and then 2%. Yeah. How does that, isn't it 98? I'm kidding. No, it started out.

I think I had like in the beginning, what, 15%. I think it was 20. No, it was 15. And then we moved it up to 20 because you saw how much work I was doing with each episode, providing the outline and everything. And then when I dropped it, out of college. Oh, I get my outline.

That was it. Where's my outline? Oh, your outline? Yeah, I don't think you did it for this episode. Yeah, yeah, we don't do that anymore. I have to cut his admission back. So I got lazy. We had it at...

Okay, so it started at 20? 15. It started 15. Those first few episodes were just Jack and I talking. And Jack would come out with a list of questions to ask me, and it was just him and I for the first, like, two or three. Yep. Each episode is probably taking me at that point, like, 12 to 14 hours.

Okay, good amount of time. Which would be like, the pre-planning would be like three to four hours, just literally just researching like fun money quizzes and stuff like that topics we can discuss and then also like recording was an hour and a half or so and then editing it took me so editing a podcast it was insane yeah so probably like 12 to 14 hours and he saw how much work I was putting in so he's like I'll bump you 5% so it's making an extra like 70 bucks a month pretty good so it's everything the channel brings in whether it's a commission thing or ad sense yeah at the time it was just ads sense and we had no expectation this was just jack being like

hey if we spend an hour a week all you got to do is just show up yep and I'll I'll set up the cameras. Yeah. I was like, okay, for an hour a week, we'll do this, we'll get out of podcast. And then it started growing a little bit. And then when I dropped out of college, I requested a larger portion of the second channel,

which I do a lot of work on that. And Graham won, he didn't want to give me that larger portion. The second channel is the Graham Steffin Show. Yeah, got it. So he decided to roll that into the iced coffee hour. So he's like, I'll give you a huge portion of the iced coffee hour.

And a smaller portion of the second channel. Little did he know. So back then, this podcast, was making nothing. It's probably like 700 bucks a month. Maybe that. But Jack was spending like 20 hours a week, just like just through miscellaneous stuff.

I was spending probably about two hours a week between titles and thumbnails. It was taking a long time. So that was basically a part-time job for both of us. And yeah, so I ended up giving Jack. You want to say it? 45%. Whoa. Yeah.

Whoa. That's awesome. Yeah, I left out. Thank you. That's very generous. And then as soon as he gave you 45%, the channel was, It was so, it was amazing. And I gave 45% thinking, oh, you know, and I calculated how much money I thought the podcast

would make. And I was like, okay, well, this is compensating Jack for his time. Yeah. And then within like a few months after that, we started getting on. Just loaded it up with sponsors. Sponsors. It really took a guest. So you're going after the sponsors yourself.

I was back in the day, but now we have like a few agents. I was organizing all the sponsor. I still do. Yeah. But, well, Alex. Yeah. Even when you have agents, you're still meant like checking all the bullet points and you're reading the contracts.

Yeah. Yeah. You have to be the, you know, I, agents we found over the years are awesome when they get to know your brand. You know, I'm rep by CAA and we do brand deals directly too with brands. But it's not. You're still, even if it's going through an agency or another agent, you're checking everything. Right, right.

Because it's on you. Like if something else got in there. Exactly. Exactly. Or whatever. It's important. Yeah. But, yeah, back, I mean, now I would probably have negotiated stronger.

Hey, man. But you know what? Yeah. He didn't even want to continue doing the podcast back in the day. Yeah. There was a point for me where I was so busy. Where he literally wanted to quit. Yeah.

I was so busy. And this room was like, I don't have time to do a podcast. I just, I can't do it. Yeah. I don't have the time. And I was like, no, we got to do it. I was like, well, we had done like seven episodes so far. I didn't want to miss an episode.

So it was just wanting to continue that because I didn't want to like do seven and stop. Nice. So, yeah, I think it's super important that people have skin in the game. They're excited and they have ownership over it. Yes. And now you can just run it. I mean, you're basically plugging and playing into this, right? At this point?

No. You organize. I just guess a lot. And then you do title thumbnail. The guess makes sense because, like I met you, you know, in L.A. recently, it's like that happens, right? You just meet people. Exactly.

It's like it makes sense for you to kind of book it. It doesn't take too much time. Yeah. Those for us are good networking opportunities because it's different when you're like DMing people back and forth. And it's not the same as like getting to meet somebody in person. Totally. Especially someone if you've been watching them for like two, three years.

You finally get to like interact with them in person. It's so much fun. I'm so awkward about that, though. It's like you go to all VidCon or all these different events and you watch people for so long and you kind of become a fanboy or, you know, of their channels. Yeah. And then you meet them and I like, I freeze up. I'm like, a little bit. Yeah, totally.

No. Say some names. Say some names. Everybody. Like, anybody. No, come on. I met Graham the other day at the ping pong thing. Yeah.

And I was like, uh, like I just forget. No. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. It's weird. It's weird meeting YouTubers, like being in the space. But like who, who shocked you the most?

Who shocked you the most? Who shocked. me the most. Because for you, it's like you were probably one of the biggest YouTubers I've ever met. You're probably the biggest person we've had on the podcast. But I like watch YouTube. So it's everybody I watch. I'm like when I meet them, I'm like a little bit thrown back, you know. Yeah. No, I feel that. Yeah. I watch like a little bit in the, you know, like what I listen to on my drive. I have a long drive in LA. So I listen to a lot of finance stuff because you guys actually make long form like this, you know, podcast. Not everybody does that.

So like I'll be starstruck to meet, Andre, I'll be starstruck to meet. Are you meeting them while you're here? See, we've DMed. You should meet him while you'd love to meet you. Next time. I will next time because I want to spend time with you guys. Okay, cool. Right answer.

Like Andre and Kevin. Like, I mean, I listen to Kevin every day. Me too. At some point during the day. And he's like right down the street from me too. Yeah. But I feel like, one, I think he's super busy. Like I don't even want to DM him to say, let's hang out.

Oh, he'll do it. We briefly. He'll see this. No, because I've seen, he, does he sleep? I don't know. Like three hours a night. Yeah. Yeah,

that's insane. So I feel like it's taken away from family time or like some sort of, he could, here's that I picture, you're hanging out with Kevin. He's like, dang, we hung out for an hour and a half. I could have made two YouTube videos.

You know, I could have not heard about that. He's really good about that. Yeah, yeah. We were playing poker over at Jeremy's house. And it was like, it was like midnight probably.

And Graham's like, all right, dude, I have to go home. Like I got to get some sleep, you know, got to work tomorrow. Kevin's still there. He's already down three grand in poker.

And then we keep playing 2 a.m. rolls by. And he's all, all, all right, you guys going to the club? 2 a.m. Yeah, 2 a.m. And the next morning, he probably woke up at 6 and pumped out 7 videos. Live at 6. Yeah, it's like, he's nuts. Kevin will find a way to make a video with you during the time that you hang out.

It's either with you, he'll just monetize that conversation or he'll be like, wait a second, I'll be right back. And he'll be outside for 10 minutes, recording a whole video, he'll upload it. It's not. You won't even notice. And one take. And it's like a fully scripted. His post production pipeline, I have no idea. I've seen his tour of the, I think it's in a garage still.

No, it's a room and he's actually, okay. Oh, you upgraded to a room. He's always had a room. That's still impressive that he hasn't gone out to like a studio. Never. So one room in a house. His room, by the way, is smaller than this. That's amazing.

That's incredible. Yeah, my space is like, it just doesn't translate to a room. I wish it did. That'd be awesome. Yeah. We want to hear about what you're doing now. Because I have to say, it's very impressive across all the platforms. platforms like you found a way to dominate like Instagram TikTok YouTube your YouTube shorts by the way fine yeah yeah that was never the master plan though like I never wanted to go after right at this point when you look back doing this for 12 years started on YouTube it's gone it's always added them slowly you know and then some don't stick around there's actually so many that don't stick around that you don't realize like my my idea is always to be on a platform first and see if there's anything interesting about it like with Vine and

it was the six second things. And I kind of wait. Now I try to get there a little before my friends are talking about the app. But in Vine, I was like way behind. I remember that was even a thing. Like when I got on nine months later and it blew up for me, a lot of the other Viner's like, well, you're not an original Viner. And it's so funny how that like nuanced conversation is gone for platforms now.

But back in the day, it was like if you weren't on it within a year, you weren't the OG of that platform. But it's been bouncing around platforms. Like YouTube was my first love. I started with tutorials. So like, you guys don't have a monthly training or master class or any of that.

Final cut? Oh wait, we have a monthly. Do you guys have a monthly? Shout out of the mentorship group. Shout out of the mentorship group. Yeah, there's a coupon code down below.

Yeah, so you have, is it monthly? Yeah. Yeah. So like I was kind of doing those, but like making my own site for Final Cut Pro and teaching people.

And that was my business, like YouTube was my business just with that monetization aspect. There was no ad sense when I started. And then I think a year after I started channel there was they were rolling out secretly or privately the uh invite to the partner program um when you guys started youtube you could just sign up right like you get the threshold oh yeah you're monetized basically immediately yeah i think they monetize people who don't even ask anymore it's just you're rolled into something right right but you don't receive the money oh is that right yeah yeah

now youtube has the right to monetize any channel they want to and not and run an ad but they could they have to tell you right and and i know i believe can you just by default by default i think by uploading YouTube. I mean, giving them the rights. That just recently changed, right? Isn't that kind? Yeah, a few months ago. So I have like 1,700 subscribers. And when my family watches in my videos, they get ads, but I don't get any of that. Right. Oh, interesting. But first, I want to think our sponsor, Front. Jack, what are you doing on your phone, man? Dude, I'm just checking my Robin Hood portfolio. I'm buying the Bitcoin dip. That's great and all. But why are you not using Front? It's the ultimate companion app to Robin Hood, Weville, Coinbase, and more. It basically shows you all your investments

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I see your portfolios up, I'm going to ask you for lunch. Alex, you can't say that. I already said I would do that exact same thing to you. So if you guys want free lunch, just follow Alex on front, His username's Apple Pie. And anytime his portfolio is up, just Venmo request him like $10 or something. So go ahead and download Front with the link in the description down below to see how your portfolio stacks up today. That's right, guys. You can see all of your investments all in one place on the easiest UI ever.

So that's Front. Thanks Front for sponsoring this episode. And back to the podcast. Kind of makes sense that YouTube is. It would be smart. Yeah. I mean, there's probably, I would love to know the calculator how many videos are out there that typically wouldn't get monetized because they're not a creator hit the threshold.

Right. I have the feeling what it is the ad rates are getting so high on certain channels that they need to spread them out because otherwise advertisers are going to get to a point where it just doesn't make sense. But if they have twice the channels now to advertise to, they're getting twice the exposure. Yeah. Yeah, I just jumped around platforms. You're like YouTube. I loved it, but then Vine took off and it was like I was still running like one man show, had just hired my first producer to help me with the Vine stuff. But the bandwidth was like going to vine. What year was this? Did you go to college? I went to college. You did. 2008 through 2013. Oh, the recession, the great recession. That's when I would have gone to

college, by the way, if I went was 2008. Yeah, I went to college and I paid through college with those training courses. So I started my channel like that freshman year of college. And it's because I didn't get into film school. So I needed like an outlet to do. I was still doing music, but I really wanted to pursue film. I knew I like film was going to be my end all career. It's kind of lucky to know that but I was teaching the final cup pro stuff at night I was doing tutorials and live training and that's how I was paying through school and selling DVD courses and then eventually um right when Amazon launched their cloud service I uploaded all my stuff my courses digitized them and started selling them through PayPal and I think there was like a uh not Venmo but another like weird

pay payment service and uh I did that all the way to graduating college um and then the first year out of college, I think it was when Vine came out. And that really, I was already making these videos. They weren't like, if you look at my videos now, you'd say that they're, you know, I describe describe them as magic just because it's simple and that's what everyone's like, oh, yes, I know what you're talking about. Like jump in a car and you kind of phase through and now you're in that item. So that was really a spinoff of like my VFX training that I had learned and taught myself

in film school. And Vine, because it was six seconds, it just forced me to like figure out how to like, make those in a short story that had a beginning, middle, and end, and, like, had a good punchline, was really visual. And that's, like, how that format that I'm known for now really was birthed. But I love the constraints of limitations. Like, it's kind of crazy that on YouTube, there used to be a ton of limitations. Like, it was for a while, 15-minute videos, and it slowly grew, and now it's, like, what, unlimited? Yeah. I think 24 hours, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. But I love the constraints still like it would be fun if youtube was like this month you can only post

three minutes or whatever you know you can't do that now they're too big yeah but you see every platform like slowly when instagram was the thing it was like 15 seconds and then they opted to 60 and then 90 and then 120 um same with ticot now i don't even know what their limit is now three minutes is it three minutes yeah yeah nobody watches a three minute well people do sometimes people do know the three minute videos give you the option to skip around yeah yeah so that's their thing because sometimes i've seen i hate these videos there's one where It was like a river on TikTok, and it was like a minute long. And it was just like, wait for it.

And then after 10 seconds, you're not going to believe this. Yeah. And then the whole thing went by and it was like, watch part two. No. And like, that's the worst. I clicked, but this video had like 10 million views on it. So I figured like it's got to be good. No.

And then the part two was literally them like throwing a brick over the side. That's satisfying. But it wasn't, it was just a brick. I mean, it was like what you would expect off of a lot. But you could also chop that in 10 seconds. You're like, dude, you knew your retention tricks. Right. That's funny.

So at least three minute videos, they don't hold you to that for three minutes. You could skip and be like, right, well, this sucks. Yeah. So you're saying that the time constraint on Vine being six seconds kind of taught you how to condense, like, very exciting content into like short form. I love time constraints. I absolutely love it. It's like one of the, you know, I think when people think creativity, they think, oh, like, well, I want endless. I want no rules.

I want no boundaries. I want to have like endless. space to do my art, but people, especially young creators, I always tell them, like, when you're making something, go on the weekend, your goal is to make a 30 second thing or a 10 second thing, and then go, whether you want to publish or not, that's on you. But that's the iteration you need is like, ideally start shorter and then you can add up the time. That's fascinating. And now I think, like, to the other Viner's that then made it to YouTube, like Logan Paul and Jake and, like, David Dobrick, they're all very, like, quickly cut, right? It's very condensed content. Yeah. Maybe they

learned it from Vine, but it's done them very well. Yeah, I think because they know what holds attention and they know what makes a good story. And it's funny, like being with, when you're with Logan or David, when they're, you'll go with them and then you'll, they'll be at events and not show it. Like, they'll be at these awesome events and not show a piece of it. Like be at a premiere. I remember premiere with David and went back in the vlog the next day and was like, oh, I wonder how much of that he used and none.

And it's because to me, I was like, that was pretty entertaining, right? Like, you could use a piece of that. Nothing. It's like, you got to cut it. And I think, like, great editors know when to cut stuff out, too. Like, it's like, you know, they call it killing your baby in editing in Hollywood. Like, a lot of directors get attached to the certain shot they got. They remember being on set all day, getting that really cool dolly shot and they want to use it.

But if it's not adding to the story or taking away from a moment, you've got to be okay to cut it. Wasn't it David Dobrick or someone was talking about him being at like a Tesla event? And like there's something big that happened and he didn't use any of it just like you said. Yeah, I could totally picture that. And they're like, that was like the coolest thing I've ever seen. And it didn't even make his video of that week. Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of YouTubers, you know, that know really to trim the fat.

And I think Mr. B, Jimmy's great at that. Oh, yeah. You see them shoot and over half doesn't make it in. It's amazing. 95% I would imagine of that. Yeah. They're probably using like a sliver of the day. Right.

I've heard that like Mr. Beas, his like, total gigabytes that he's, each video occupies is like several terabytes. I believe it. Like per video. Yeah. And they cut it down to like, you know, 13. Especially the videos where they have like a hundred go pros, you know, on individual people. And I don't know.

I asked them. That was the first question I asked them. Like, who is going through that? And he's like, yeah. Do we have editors? But like, he was like, usually it's two editors of video. I'm like, oh, my. It's two.

But to me, is that a lot to you? That's little to me. No, that's very few. Yeah. Yeah. I would imagine like 10. Yeah. But then again, communicating between 10, I feel like it would lose that feel.

as like two people themselves doing it all would know every bit of it versus 10 So here's the trick I learned Being on I was on a show called The Amazing Race With my wife a couple years ago You were, you were on this show Yeah I love that show

Yeah it's a great show I watch as a kid growing up with my family Wow So did I On the to let people know who don't know the show The Amazing Race you go around the world You're hunting for clues And you know go on these different legs of the race

And you're trying to get to the finish line Of these multiple day legs And what I learned is you know, they're obviously capturing terabytes and terabytes footage from multiple teams every single day. But they have a producer go with you, a story producer. And the producer, like, is not affecting the game at all.

They won't give you, they don't even know what's happening. But they have just in their notes, a little app that has a timestamp. And they're just saying, like, you know, Zach and Rachel fight at whatever, this time over this clue. That's an, and they're like rating these story points. So the editors, you know, you know, I mean, maybe that somebody will go through everything, of course.

Yeah. But really the main, even assistant editors, we'll just skip through most of it. And it's same with Jimmy's videos or all these reality shows. Like, they don't need to go through everything as long as they've got the story producers there. Just giving the timestamps. It's so much easier. You know, it cuts the good stuff. That's incredible.

And so then all the story producers meet at night after you check into the hotel or whatever, that leg of the race. And they'll all just kind of compare notes. Like, was this team who had the most, you know, kind of drama? That seems like kind of kind of. And like, they're not changing it in the other. edit. That's what's amazing to me. I always wondered, because I was a fan of the amazing race, like, are they like fake making up this drama, like editing it in a way that made it seem way worse than it was or is the order actually accurate in the edit? But it's like 100% true.

And so that's why I had a lot of respect for that show. And I think Survivor's similar in that way. I think it's pretty fairly accurate to what actually happens. That's incredible. But first, we have to thank our sponsor, Masterworks. Guys, the stock market has been going absolutely insane lately. And now inflation is at a 30-year high. I don't know about you, but I want to invest some cash into alternative assets to hedge against inflation. You know, Jack, if you ever want to invest in my buy Alex a lunch fund, I'm always taking new people. You know, Alex, with inflation soaring, you're going to need way more investors than just me to fuel your Uber Eats addiction. You're probably right on that one. But I do know of a new

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I went to a school called Biola University out in Fortin, La Marotta, California. Okay. Yeah. And how much was it? Oh, expensive school. Yeah, it was a private Christian school. Wow. It was probably 30,000 a year, so 120,000. Can you say how much you were making then with this, like, the mentorship program that you have? I made just enough to cover school. So I made a 30 grand a year, or 40 probably. Yeah, probably. And then AdSense kicked in.

I just recently looked too. I was like, how much for them making an AdSense? It was barely, and, you know, I was definitely in the ramen days of college. My thing was like chicken wings. There was, you guys know Alwortsons? Yeah, so they have Albertsons out here. They had like a really good chicken wing lunch deal. I ate every single day.

It was that and I would have FUF for dinner for like $7. There you go. And I was like, $7.50 was splurging for me. Yeah, yeah. on faa. Yeah. So that was my, my college meal, and it was like everyday, fah, like everyday chicken wings.

So you're probably making about 40 grand a year. Yeah. How much of a following did you have at that time? I had at most on final, 200,000 followers, subscribers. That was your YouTube subscribers. That was at the peak before I left to Vine. And I remember, like, within three months of Vine, I'd already passed it to like almost half a million on Vine.

There was a point where it actually backed, you know, like platformers. don't really grow your YouTube that quickly anymore. But back in the day, if you said, like, from your Vine account, if you had a couple million followers, you're like, hey, go follow me on YouTube. It would just shoot up. And I never took advantage of that. I always was nervous about cross-pollinating.

And the game has totally changed on social media now. Now everybody wants to cross-pollinate because it's kind of hard to get that conversion. But back then, I never wanted to, I was actually really weary of collabs. I never wanted my following to be from, you know, King Batch's audience. audience. I didn't know like if they would stay with me or if they were just following for that one collab. So, uh, I actually wish I took advantage of collapse earlier. Like it was something, I think it's a, it's a great strength way to grow your show. Yeah, it's a huge way. Um, but it's actually slowed down a lot. Like, if I were to shout you guys out or you're to shout me out, it's just

slow. Like it's not like back in the day. You see you would be like if I shouted you out back in the day with the fall. What's back in the day? 2013. 13. Okay. Like maybe if what I don't know what do we have now um you might get like a million followers somewhere you know but that doesn't happen anymore like it might be like 10,000 right yeah like so it's there's no conversion right so did you decide to pursue any sort of normal career after college or was that your cue you make it 40 grand a year got a good following i did i um i had a great offer because i was making 40 and then i think somewhere it was probably making 60 000 on the training courses and i thought like okay that's a great i could make a living doing that i could grow it slowly

too and I had all these ways to like do different courses and kind of spin off. I was only focusing on one software and there's way more software's coming out. Adobe Cloud is getting pretty popular at the time. But I didn't. I got a job. I did a road trip with my buddies for YouTube video. We wanted to like make a video in different states and it was kind of like a content trip. And so we spent like 40 days going around the country.

And in Washington, D.C., I stopped at Discovery Channel. We had a fan reach out and was like, hey, I work as a producer at the description. at Discovery Channel. You want to come hang out and get lunch at the cafeteria. And so I went in there and it was my first time in like a corporate kind of film

TV building. And I met one of the higher up producers and they made us a job, me and my buddy a job offer for over six figures. And it was super tempting. Like my channel was looking at it like, oh, one, it's YouTube.

I don't know. I mean, it's so easy to look back now and be like, oh yeah, YouTube was the obvious front runner and the good decision. But I was really conflicted. Like I remember calling my parents on the drive back

and the drive back was like 5,000 miles so it was like slowly talking over the next couple weeks as we were making a way back to L.A. like should I do this interview in L.A. that I have to do for discovery and so I ended up doing the interview

and it was such a like a blessing in disguise interview because me or my buddy go in we had a great interview but my last question for the guy he was like do you have any more questions for me like he was like the head L.A. branch guy

and I was like okay would you if you were me would you take this job? And I had explained the YouTube thing because I was really conflicted. I was like, my YouTube channel has maybe, I think I had 200,000 followers at that time,

but I wasn't making great money. It's like, 1,200 a month on AdSense. So I was like, I don't know if I can actually get married and have kids with this. So he was like, I don't know. Like YouTube is an interesting space. I think he had a lot of great insights. He was like, I don't know if I would take that yet.

And he's like, what's the risk of you, I don't know, playing this out another year, year and a half, two years. I was like, oh, there's, there's no risk. I'm meeting Fah. I can afford that. That's it.

Yeah. That's all you need. Yeah, that's all I needed. And so luckily that, like, decision, I walked out of that meeting so peaceful. I was like, yeah, I'm not going to take this. Me and my buddy looked at each other. He started a channel at that time too,

which is, do you guys know Aaron's animals? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The FX, bro, do? Yeah. Yeah. So he started his channel at that time, too. So we both have kind of changed directions with our content or we do, you know, just he does animal stuff.

I do the magic stuff, but both of our channels are like kind of equally successful just because we put the time in. That's amazing. And that's crazy to me too because you had like 200,000 subscribers, but you're making $40,000 a year. It's like nowadays, if you have 200,000 subscribers, you're golden basically on YouTube. Well, for some channels.

If you can pull views. You guys are in the finance space, so I think you're skewed. If you have a good, engaged audience with 200,000 views. I think in any niche, because you could at least have sponsorship. affiliates, like there are other ways that you can market your audience. Yeah, business. I think the training course aspect is still highly interesting.

I don't do it anymore, but I'm jealous of the people that have an obvious like, oh yeah, teach that. That makes sense. Right. So you're building out this thing over the next year. At what point do you begin to realize that it's like a significant amount or at what point for you is it like, all right, I'm all in. Like this was the right choice.

I mean, I was all in at that point. What I wasn't sure of is how to. I think the hardest part for creators, for me back then. And what I see now is it's hard to scale yourself because you're figuring out what part of yourself you need to scale. Is it like your editing? Is it your writing? Is it your production time?

For me, a lot of it was like the set building took a lot of time and like trick engineering. And I enjoyed that part. But it was like what part of my good at? And for the first one I had to let go was like the editing of the videos. So I started training editors like, okay, here's my exact. style like here's how I make these cuts and here's how I here's how I shoot them and this is why I shoot him that way and it's not like anybody can't reverse engineer what we do but it's just like a specific kind of angle of how we shoot it and edit it but like I had to let that go and you know the

thought I had in my back of my head I think so many creators have it's like oh I'm the only one that can do this I'm the only one that's skilled enough to do this where I'm like I'm the only one to know when to cut because that's my style I know he's looking at you Yeah. Why is it so hard to let go? Because I'm worried that that's like, that's the personality of the channel, is that at least for the main channel,

is that everything is done by me. So every word you hear from me is scripted by me. Every topic is picked by me. I film everything myself. And I like the aspect, especially in finance, that it's just, it's a guy in a room talking to a camera by himself,

doing all the work. And there's something I think that's really authentic. about that. Yeah. That once you start outsourcing things and trying to streamline things, you just, you lose that feel. The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road, that's the Volkswagen TIG-Wan.

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Okay, let's take Jim Kramer, for example. I don't know if you like Jim Kramer. People have mixed feelings about Jim Kramer. I'm just saying because he's a general finance person that most people on your channel will know. Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey. Sure.

We like Dave Ramsey. Let's talk about Dave Ramsey. What is Dave Ramsey's, like, why do people follow him? For his advice. for him. So like nothing about the editing. No. Nothing about the production value.

Like all those things are standard. Correct. That's what I think. So like, that's where I'm coming. I don't like the viewer cares who edits it. I do because I think half the video, or honestly, I think of the video,

I think 20% is knowledge or 20% is just what the information is. The other 80% is entertainment. So throughout my script, I try to keep it entertaining. I try to like throw in, jokes or make comparisons that people might think is funny. And the editing is very visual, so I like to throw in little jokes and things here and there that I feel are important to the viewer that I would want to see.

Here's what I think you'll be surprised to find. I don't know if you've ever reached out to fans, but I think we actually just put a job posting for fans because for many years I was like against working with fans. I thought it was weird because, you know, when we had hired a few fans, like they get really excited, they're overly excited to be around you. But after, like after six months, it dies off. they become, you know, just chill with you. But they know your brand and style.

Like literally know, like some of my team know my library better than I do. They'll be like, oh, but we already did that. Remember, like, you did that in 2014 in this one video with this person. And I'm like, oh, yeah, we did. Wow, the jump cut. I forgot about that. And that's, here's my bet. There is probably a dozen people watching your channel who are editors that if you said,

hey, will you edit for me? They actually already are editing your style. one reason they might like your videos, and they understand some of the humor. And so I think there's an editor. I know there's multiple editors. I'll interject. I've been teaching Alex how to edit those videos.

And so what I've been doing this last month is I'll have Alex edit my video and I edit mine separately. And then we compare our videos the next day. And we'll go through them each side by side. And what I've noticed is that Alex is now starting to make the same jokes in the same places as me. So I'm talking about endless money printing. He's using the same thing that I'm doing. It's funny you're doing it that way.

I did that briefly, and I was like, why the heck am I editing this twice? I'm just going to use my version. I know. Versus there's a point where you have to let you actually just have to let go. Well, today's video was one of the first ones that Alex did. Nice. I posted. Alex.

Yeah. Round of applause for Alex. Let's see how we do. Good job, Alex. Thank you. Appreciate it guys. Yeah, I don't know why. It didn't do well initially, but I'm hoping it's, let's see if it's picked up on

Alex. You can't blame that on Alex. That's too much pressure. It's picking up a little bit. That's picking it. I think what, your money sauce is, obviously your personality,

but your insights into topics that you pick and how you talk about them. So you should be involved in the writing process. I even would totally gamble that you don't need to write the video. So you could just, I don't know. The same thing with editors. There's so many writers out there who are in,

and I don't want to offend you, but better than all of us. Like, even when I look at my stuff, I'm like, there's writers that are better than me that have ideas. And so if they, if they can work into your process where like what if you had a list of five people like

they don't have to be in-house it can be freelance that you're like hey guys make it a competition kind of like you're doing with Alex um whoever writes the best script we'll get the higher end fee or whatever but you say hey i want to talk about i'm really interested in talk about this new nftm platform or whatever um or maybe you're not i don't know like whatever it is boom um and then here my three main points i want to hit for sure um maybe you have a specific joke you know you want to make in it and you have them write that and then see what is in you know because there is some fleshing out in the middle of that the meat that you probably don't need to spend your time writing like looking up you probably do a lot of research right I do but part of that is I have to really

understand to be able to pick out the points that I feel are worth emphasizing yeah so sometimes in my research I'll think I know it all but then as I'm doing the research I come across something different and I'm like wow this is actually a better angle and I'll reorient the video about something new yeah what if somebody brought you a script though that said like you read it and you're like oh man I actually don't know. Does that true? Like, hmm.

And from there, you, you, like, they do the leg work. It's big 80% push. It's hard for me because what I've done is worked so well and it's still working. So I'm like, why try to mess with it right now? Yeah. That's all. Are you control freak? Yeah.

Yeah, I would say so. But I don't want to say it's a control freak. I think I'm very particular and I have a vision for something. And if it's not exactly that, I don't want to do it. Yeah. I didn't know about your guys's partnership that you explained in the beginning, but that makes me. excited for you because I think it empowers him.

Yeah. And Jack's going to be stoked and take on a bulk of the work. And that's what you need to do not necessarily on the main channel and not overnight. But leverage, dude. You've got to leverage other people. Yeah. Well, that's Alex. You got to listen to it.

That's Alex's goal right now for the end of the year. I want to train them perfectly for the main channel at it. So by January 1st, I want to be able to take it over. Okay, is it a thing for, it's a thing for YouTubers, though. Like, okay, so what's Kevin's team like? It's really It's pretty small, yeah Is it just him?

It's him and he has two assistants That will help him with anything They do research for it Okay So now they like They just started doing that But that was like as of a month ago What about what about Andre?

Just him Just him Yeah, you guys got a leverage But how many videos is Andre posting per week? Twice a week. He's posting twice a week And we're posting like

I don't know 10 times a week Across nine times a week Across nine times a week Across like five channels So And what's your guys's production team? Is it Alex?

Is it the three of you? Yeah right here This is the We're in the room with the production. Yeah. This is everything across five channels. Wow. That's what I'm saying.

So that's what I like. It's like, it's a small team. Yeah. We just hang out. We're friends. We don't have to be friends with the new person we bring on. We don't have to.

That's usually what happens. Yeah. I think it's really important that your business doesn't like, okay, when we moved into our first studio, we went from house that was, uh, 2,200,

maybe like 1,900 square feet. There was like 12 of us jammed in this thing. Super family vibes. Like we were all friends. And then we moved into this warehouse that's 15,000 square feet. Our offices are like, we were racking up like the steps just to walk around to go meetings and talk to each other. It felt super corporate for like the first six months in there because we were like, how do we manage this? And we like being in a house and the neighborhood.

And but it what it did is like help streamline the operations. Then we realized like kind of separating each other. And it wasn't just like a, you're right here. Let me ask you this question that I really should. maybe we should set a meeting for and like think about and talk about um versus like randomly kind of interjecting here and there and it's almost like the house version is uh when i look back like it was fun but it's so much chaos and we were getting a lot done but it's like the the warehouse the studio version allowed us to like figure out what the like really break apart

what is the process that needed to happen for the videos maybe you're guys already good at that in this setting i think we are we each got we each got rooms Alex just upgraded. This is now his office. He was working in the laundry room for the last eight months. And now he's, uh, move. Hey, this is an upgrade. This is a huge upgrade. Yeah. We're all, we're all introverted. So realistically, we don't go and bug each other. Like if I want to see, if I want to see Graham, um, I have to text him ahead of time. Like I'll never just barge into his office. And he does the same for me. That might be it. That might be a good rule. I understand that. I'm an advert too. I just can't imagine going into an office. That's the thing. I love just being able to walk 20 feet.

and it's right there. If I need Alex, I knock on the door. I just love it because you guys are going to take this clip someday. And I'm on your side. Remember when I said that we're never going to be in an office? Because it's, it's kind of,

I mean, it's kind of inevitable, right? Yeah. Like it stresses me. How are we going to continue to grow with the same team? Why is it inevitable, though?

Because, like, I mean, people and overhead and obligations. Then I got to pay either rent or a mortgage on a place, more people to keep, track of. I love that. Wouldn't you be excited to pay a mortgage on a place though?

Because you'd be starting to own it? I just, I don't want stress. Yeah. Like, I've been trying now to like have the least amount of stress as possible. And that's a great goal. Like,

if that's your goal, it is. I mean, that's a sweet. I get that. I'm the same too. Like payroll and, and team members and doing HR and all that.

Oh gosh. I can't. Yeah. You know. All I want to think about is what topic am I going to talk about. That's the only thing that I want to think about. Yeah. That's it.

But you can, you can put like a, great relations person between you. Like, you don't have to be the person that, you know, is hiring or even talking to people. And my, like, I hate conflict. And I really hate any time I have to like, or back in the day when I was the one that had to say, like, hey, here's what you're doing wrong. Or like, oh, the worst is yearly reviews, right?

Like employee reviews, which I was doing for a long time. And now I don't do that because emotionally, like, will take me out of that for two weeks from what I'm making, like, only thinking about like, two weeks I have these meetings that I have to like tell people what they're doing wrong or build them up in these ways. I just love the collaboration in creating. That's what's fun. So tell us about your team. Yeah, how many people you have working for you?

Yeah. Like what is it involved in behind the scenes for your operation? So at the studio, we have like 20 full-time team that do the, you're already stressed. Yeah, I'm stressed out. All right. You can get people to manage the team for you. Well, let's see. Yeah.

But so a lot of it is a production team, right? but it's through the whole process. So the beginning is pre-production team, which could be writers. It's development, a lot of the trick development. So there's a trick development team that will say, hey, you know what? In a couple of months, let's do an upside-down room that can, like, maybe it can turn. You guys figure out how to, like, if it needs to turn or whatever, and I'll pitch the concept, and they'll go off and, like, engineer how that could be done, both the building of it, the fabrication,

but also, like, what is the aesthetic visually of that trick? And they might input on that. We'll just meet for a couple months on that. And that's like the writing pre-pro, and then we have an art team with the production team. But really, it's like this arm of producers that kind of do everything in that process. So there's seven producers that are like, we'll every Monday go over all the concepts that we want to do. Anyone on the team, even if you're in like our CFO joins the meeting for pitching an idea. It's like an hour and a half creative room.

We put all, we put what's called the T-sheet. literally draw a tea on one end you put the paragraph like little two sentences about what the idea is maybe it's we're at graham's house and we're going to do something with a bankroll coffee and then grab the beans and turn it into coffee and then i draw a little image of that just so it can be visualized for people just a thumbnail and then write the idea it's called graham's bankroll coffee trick and we put them on the wall we'll have you know 50 ideas up there and then at the end everyone gets two little votes and just little smiley face. It's not like for a competition at all,

but it's just mark your favorite idea. Like which one would you want to watch? Which one would you, if it was on your feed, would you like or which one would you share with a friend because it's interesting? And it's just a matter of taste. And that actually gives us a really good gauge

of like usually two or three concepts rise to the top. And I love that because it's based on everybody's taste as a group. And generally, those are always the ones that get made, but usually they're the ones that get workshoped And then eventually there's kind of light, bold moments in there, and we make those ideas. So it's like a group writing process.

Because a lot of people have come up to me, they're like, how do you get these ideas? And it's not, you know, from the beginning it was me. But now it's really just kind of my tone and some of my sentiment in there. And I love the visuals and obviously polishing it along the way. But it's really the producers that take these concepts and make them come to life. And then once you greenlight them on the next day, on Tuesday, there's a greenlighting process.

you have to have a mock-up video. We have them quickly go out after a Monday meeting. They go out and shoot the video, like on their phone or on a DSLR. Really rough mock-up. They're really janky. If you guys watch them, you wouldn't know what's going on, but we understand the visual language that they're playing with. But it shows us the framing.

It tells us if the joke is going to, if we're doing kind of a humorous thing, that's going to play off or if just the trick visually will work. Then from there, we sign a budget, and it's off to the races. They have two weeks to make that video. the budget? What's a normal budget? It totally depends.

Some of our stuff, obviously the brand stuff, we could spend six figures to make. For our stuff, it's all over. Like a lot of it, so if we're using a rotating room, which could cost six figures to build, we've already got that and we'll use that for multiple videos. Could you explain a rotating room? Rotating room.

Okay, so a rotating room has been a concept since like, pretty early film days actually like Nickelodeon days but obviously people know inception the scene where the room is rotating and the room's rotating is how they're doing it they're running on the walls

and it looks like they're running on the ceiling so what you do is you have like a fixed circle cylinder and then you put a camera here and it's locked to that room so because the camera's moving with the room you can't notice the camera move and that's why I'm able to walk on the ceiling

or on the side of the walls. Wow. Because gravity is actually changing for me. That's crazy. Yeah. So those are the fun stuff because of the studio space that we're able to build. So you're saying it takes two weeks to make a video. On average, yeah.

For what we call like our personal content, which is our main slate, what you guys see as the videos that are unbranded, that's what it takes. How long? Because I've seen some of your TikToks of like 30 to 60 seconds. I've seen some of your shorts. Yeah. That could be like 10 seconds long. Yeah.

Is that how long it takes you to make the 10 second video? It's usually a minimum two weeks now. No. Because the one I saw that I really liked was the tap dancing video. Yeah. Where you were tap dancing with a mirror. And then it comes out and you watch how you did that kind of stunt. Right.

That was two weeks. Yeah. Two weeks. And those are fun because they're all on camera. Is that a lot of tie? I can't tell if that's a lot of time. That is so long. Because that was a six second video.

Oh, to me, two weeks is pretty fast. early days like I could knock them out but they were really simple like the concepts now are way more complex from a production standpoint so two weeks is a short amount of time we've gotten that down like it used to be it could have been six months how you I'm curious how you make your money back on that because the one that I saw that I really like to was the one you did with ZHC and you bought the the picture for a hundred dollars yep and we should throw up some B-roll of this if we can yeah and then you went into the picture to drive the car And it was like the real thing was behind it.

Right. How do you make money on that? Because it was such a short clip. It's like, where do you monetize? Yeah, we don't make money on that. We lose money on those. I mean, they're really one, I want to do them unless I'm really excited about making them. Like as a filmmaker, I love doing what I do.

So it's like I'm excited that I get to fund it. But our business is really leveraged on the branded side, right? So like these pieces are just growing the audience. It's building the audience so that we could go out to a brand. brand, do a production for them, and then take that paycheck and put it back into the videos again and disperse them across all the personal content. So that's your main source of income is just brand deals. Yeah, that's about 75%.

Because AdSense for us is really low. Our CPM, we have a huge international audience too, which is awesome. But on the backside of that is like the CPM kind of gets washed out a lot. Can you share any of those numbers? I mean, I know that's... I'll show you. I'll show you. I can't share it, but they're really bad.

Okay. Can we see it? We're not going to, I'm not going to mention what it is. You're just going to get my reaction. You're just going to get our live reaction, guys. And we're going to understand that this is before your own expenses. While you're sharing that, would you mind going over, like, what your overhead is a month for running something like this? Oh, I can't share that, but it's expensive.

This is the revenue. You're going to be shocked because you guys make a ton. Oh, wow. So, and these ones, these, don't let these skew you because those are like, those are, I know what it is, the YouTube. Yeah. Okay. Wow. Can I see the, uh, the views?

What do you mean? Let's go back, just the real time. So most, uh, all right. Go to the top overview. Oh, wow. Now, okay. So this is, is just the shorts or this is every, oh, this is everything. That's, um, that is the main channel.

The shorts is a separate one, which I need to show. Well, you saw it the other day. I caught a glimpse of it, yeah, at the ping pong event. Wow. So it's 8.7 million real-time views. Yeah. I think that's the highest I've ever. Well, aside from the ping pong thing.

Yeah. Most real-time views I've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah. Here you go. Yeah. Wow. So it's not like we don't make really any money on AdSense.

It's never been a big business for us. Oh, my. So we have to do, you know, the branded projects. Which are awesome because they empower us to like keep paying off. It's just different. model. Yes. And there are a lot of YouTubers, especially in like the kids and family that have to do it that way.

Like the CPM is just not great on some channels. That's why I was saying, you guys are skewed on finance. Right. You guys don't know how good you have it. Apparently not. That CPM is money. See, it's interesting because all of our, like, all of our friends and like the people who we talk to, they're all in finance.

Right. Yeah. So we'll compare ad sense numbers with each other. Right. We're all about on the same par in terms of like, you know, per thousand. and views or whatever. So that's why I hate Social Blade. Oh, yeah.

It's like for our channel, totally awesome. Right. But you know what? Another channel that we, that we compared with was Carter Sharar. Yeah. To CPM was really good, I would say. But his is just really clean,

family-friendly content. But his was like really decent, actually. Yeah, he's making a lot of money. Right. Yeah, I think there's some that it just does really well. And then I'm not sure. I think the reason why is maybe your content was a little bit shorter.

For him, he does, he's 10 to 20 minute long videos. But it's always been bad. We've had the channel, even when we weren't uploading shorts. It was always, we would do compilations or whatever. And they just never, the CPF. I think it's demographics. It's magic. I think it's demographics.

I mean, yeah, who's buying magic ads? Right, exactly. So right now your main source of income would, you would say sponsorships then. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, 75% of our business is through branded content. And where's the other percentage going? Probably 10% ad sense.

or less, probably way less. And then we also do a lot of productions. So stuff where I won't be in them. My team will produce them. I might direct them or help executive produce. But we are doing just, you won't see me in those. So for example, if you watch an Amazon ad right now online, you might even watch it, be like, wait, that was that magic?

Or was that like a VFX trick? So we did those pieces. So we'll do a lot of just commercial. work that, you know, as a production company. Wow. It's just interesting to hear all of these. I just think of expenses because I think for us, it's like when we talk about our overhead, we don't really have an office space.

Yeah. Everything is just like really what you see here in my office over there. And I'm so jealous of that. Yeah. It's like, it's like, I would say realistically, probably 98% of what we make is probably just profit. And then whatever we spend on top of that is discretionary. Yeah.

It's just do we need something? Can we improve something? great how good improves it's just we don't need to do it but see i i enjoy the payroll payroll used to stress me out i was like oh man like if uh the business doesn't do well like there's all these families that are depending on me but one i took away that stress knowing that like you know what if a business fails like people are okay they can go find it will work out for them um especially the people i work with they're really talented they have other options if that happens so that got rid of that fear but the other one is the the payroll like i love

actually paying my friends or my team and like working with them and and being able to collaborate like I'm secretly like I'm or I tell them all the time but like I love that they're giving me a piece of their life like a piece of their nine to five time and sometimes beyond to collaborate on my stuff so I'm I'm really excited that I am able to finance that and I don't care if it comes from you know like I'm paying way more than I should like I could do this solo or not so I couldn't I could do this with four or five people maybe and try to take more profits, but that would be kind of lame. Can you say what percentage of profit you take from the total gross revenue?

Oh, I paid myself a salary. So it's not based on any profit. It's just a flat salary. Yeah. Years ago with my CPA, we just set a salary of what. Every company does that, though. Just with an S-Corps, I'm guessing, it's salary and you take everything else is like a dividend or a distribution.

I don't even take distributions just a set, you know, salary. Really? distribution or is because for me i don't like i feel like i'm slightly hurting the business if i were to do that like i just want to use that money i'm not as extreme as jimmy where i'm like everything has to go back into the content like i want to be able to slowly pull out some as a salary to save but i am more on that extreme where it's like i want to be able to fund these cool projects yeah and part of it's been like i don't need a lot of money for myself to live for my family we live very comfortable but we don't need excessive amounts.

So for me, it's taking enough to invest and then taking enough to save. I'm trying to purchase a building in L.A. for the warehouse for the studio space. And so over the years it's just been saving for that project, saving for other film projects, longer form stuff. So the dream is to put it back into like the longer form stuff we want to do. The question is, why stay in California?

You're talking about getting a building in Los Angeles. I know. Warning signs are going off of my head. Like you want to run a business and Los Angeles. It's insane. What? It's insane. Why?

Why? Why do you? I knew you were going to say that. Yeah. That is probably the worst place, I would say, for anything film related. Terrible. And I've heard stories from people in the film industry that are leaving because of how restrictive it is for anything film related. During COVID, a lot of people flocked away from the city.

I don't know. I would love to know how many crew or production people left. For me, when I did that road trip, on in YouTube or years ago. Like we went to 30 states and I don't want to stereotype all the states. But we, we hit up most like the major cities in them and went to the suburban areas and the urban areas. And we just had,

I mean, we saw a lot and we stayed several days in each place. And we all, I went with two other good friends of mine, best friends. We came back where we all said like, oh man, Southern California is the best spot. Like it is so prime geography-wise, like weather-wise, climate-wise. The fact that we can shoot every day, almost every day of the year and it's like beautiful out, but you're next to the ocean.

Like, it's just like I love Southern California as a climate. So that's, uh, and now there's like, I've been there for 15 years. That's where my friends are. That's where the group is. Like, how was it moving here? Like easy. You had your friends move out here, right? A lot of people were here already.

So we didn't move here knowing nobody. If 80% of my friends moved somewhere and it was a great tax incentive too, sure, I would think about it. But I don't know, traveling. Like, I already do a lot of traveling. I don't want to have to travel to L.A. to go shoot. I mean, like, we shoot in L.A. all the time. That's where everybody comes. Yeah.

Why? I was shocked. That's where all the, like, I was shot. No, because I thought initially when, when I moved to West L.A., and I was like, this is awesome because everyone was around, like, the same area. It was so easy. And I remember thinking this is before even considering a move anywhere else. It's like, you can't really live anywhere else because there's an opportunity cost of leaving

and what is that going to be because everyone's, like, I ran into Colin and Samir on Main Street in Santa Monica. And it was through just randomly running into them there that, like a friendship built from that. I'm going to miss that. But little did I know, more people are excited to come to Las Vegas. I was shocked. Yeah, because there's something else to do here, though. Like you have that for the, that's, that's pretty, and it's like a short flight, 45 minute flight.

It's easy. And I've never, like getting people to L.A. was difficult unless they already lived there. Right. But I'm shocked. I'll tell people like, hey, we're in Vegas. Be like, oh, yeah, I'll do a trip there anytime. And it's just like, they'll make a weekend of it.

Yeah. And they'll just come on the podcast. Yeah. So, I don't know. I think it would be surprising, especially for filming just the amount of space you could get is incredible. The tax savings are incredible. They're very business friendly. And I remember even setting up an S corporation in Los Angeles and I think it was like a 1% S corp tax that I had to balance off of everything else on whatever was left over in the S corporation. It's like an extra 1% for what?

And then I got hit with a Los Angeles city tax that they just assumed I made money. on an LLC that I opened up. I didn't do anything for four years with it. Nothing. And because I forgot to file an exemption on it, it's my fault. But you're supposed to file an exemption every single year that it's inactive.

Even if there's cash sending in there. Just nothing. There was nothing. It was like a hundred bucks in the account. Never used it. I just forgot. But they sent me a tax bill for like 17 grand. Because for those four years,

they're like, well, because you didn't do anything, we're assuming you're going to make $200,000 a year. I'm like, 200 grand a year for what? But they taxed me based on that. It was a mess to try to unravel all of that. Huh. But that was Los Angeles. And I had to file that for every single LLC. Yeah. They opened up. Everything. It was just horrible. Yep. So I was surprised to get out and just now that I was out after a few months,

I can't even think about going back. I don't mind going back for a weekend. I find it really cool to like get out. But no, I couldn't get back. It would take a Joe Rogan level deal for me to move. That makes sense. Yeah. But I did look at some warehouse space in L in Vegas though, just online. There you go. Okay, Graham's going to ask me about this.

What do we have here? Yeah, your prices are definitely enticing. I mean, it's not, it's actually not. I was surprised. Like, it's expensive. Yeah, because everyone from California is moving here. Yeah, warehouse space is like slightly cheaper here. But, yeah.

I would say it's probably 30% cheaper. But I don't know. The spaces I was looking at, Like, here's the thing. Yeah. Warehouse and distribution space, which is kind of what I'm looking for, hasn't dropped a lot at all. Yeah. It's only going up because everybody needs that. So, yeah. It's, it's, yeah. I'm okay. I'm okay paying taxes to have what we have in LA, though. Like, it's, the vibes are great. And not even LA City. Like, not all of LA is awesome to me, but just, uh, I let, nowhere else can you be like five minutes from the beach. also in the mountains, also near one of the biggest production cities in the world still.

I know a lot of people left, but when we do our shoots and productions, it's hard to know, right? Like, are they really coming there and I'm part of them because we're there or would that be the same amount of work in Vegas? I don't know. I think you're right, though,

having the strip right there and just Vegas being what it is and everyone knows it for, sure you're going to probably entice, it's like, oh, yeah, you can do that too and do Graham's thing. That makes sense. Yes.

Yeah, it's just easy. Yeah. I think it would be fun to discuss why you're here today and how we met because what happened yesterday was it two days ago uh yes i have a question for you guys so yeah um two days ago i won 120 000 on a table tennis a table tennis tournament which is uh i looked up i was asking some of the olympians there i was like wait how much is a regular like table tennis prize purse yeah and they were like maybe 60 70 thousand

like the high end ones and I was like no way you're telling me this is like the most of course it'd be a YouTuber that may you know but okay what do I do with the 120,000 not what do I do but so what I wanted

how do I invest it to grow it and then I want to go back with Eric and like do some sort of giveaway eventually or like figure out some I want it one take time to figure out what to do that's clever but investment wise what I do with the money in the meantime

where are you investing right now? What's your portfolio kind of look like? I'm like 70% real estate, 20% stocks, 10% cash reserves waiting to buy. Got it. No crypto? Well, in, sorry, my stocks, yes, there's crypto in there. All right. So of the 70% real estate, how much of that is rental versus business versus primary? Almost all of it's rental. Oh, good. What about your primary? Do you own that? Like my personal? Yeah. I have a mortgage on it, yeah. Okay. And, of the stocks, that index funds?

It's 75, it's 70% stocks, 15% ETF, 15% crypto. I think I did the math on that wrong, but it's, I know 15 on crypto is correct, 15 on ETF is correct.

So overall then, if, it's, I'm trying to calculate what's your crypto total in relation to everything else, like what percentage? Oh,

that's got to be like 2%. Yeah, not even, maybe like 1 8. I would, I would, I think it would, be fun to put it in crypto. All crypto. That's what I'm leaning towards. Yeah, because I think that if you have a long

enough time horizon, let's say 15 to 20 years, I don't know if anything's going to happen in the short term. And that's why I say like 10, 15 years, probably 10 years. I think it's going to do well, but it's also small enough in relation to everything else where if it goes to zero, it's not going to be the end of the world anyway. I don't know to me. I'd probably do 60 Bitcoin, 60 Ethereum. It's just a one-time thing. And leave it. For Just forget about it. Steak it somewhere. But didn't you say you wanted to do something with ARAC with the $120,000?

I do. Yeah, that would be. I probably would not then put it in crypto. Like, I don't even know. But you could always, depending on your time, it's on that. The chance of it going to go to zero. I mean, it's, you know, it's. But if you're going to utilize it.

But I also think, I also don't think I would just do it all in one thing. Like, I think I would take my time and do. It doesn't have to come from that. It could be, if you invest 120, you could pull on 120 from somewhere else. So you're just asking how he would invest $120. Yeah. Not necessarily the 120 grand he got. I mean, if you're doing it for the purpose of like.

Well, I mean, mentally, yes, that's where from where it's, you know, from in that moment. But yeah, we're going to be somewhere else later. So let's just say you have 120 grand 20, yeah. Yes. And he can spend 120K on something else giving it back. Not that you got a windfall. No, no, no, it's just having 120. I would have fun with that.

Okay, go crypto. Even. But it depends on, like, say if you want to play it, I think you have enough to fall back on where it doesn't matter. And you could, you could make a riskier allocation with it with a small. So what's the, are you in crypto? Yeah. How much? How much?

How much percent? How much percent? Uh, nearly 10. Okay. So would you have recommendations for which crypto? I have, okay. So I have, if someone drops you 120 right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What do you put it in? If I already do cryptos, I would probably do, I would probably do 45% Bitcoin, 45% Ethereum and then 10% just like maybe something like altcoins. Which alt coins? I don't know. He hasn't found them yet. Yeah. Elon balls.

Yeah. I'm not sure. Maybe, maybe Salana. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Marty and some Salon. I do. I'm excited about that one. Yeah.

Cardano. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It would be interesting. Just some random stuff that could pop off. Yeah. I don't think you could go wrong with that.

And maybe you could. Maybe we could look back at this. But I don't know. That's not financial advice, you guys. Right. No. I don't think you can go wrong with you. You'll definitely not lose money on that.

But no, but it's interesting, at least for me with Bitcoin Ethereum, the more research I do, the more excited I get about it. And I've never had that with any other investment. We're like, usually the more you research, you reach a point, we're like, all right, I think I understand enough. I'm not exactly sure anything can have. But I see such a big potential. And what's really interesting to me is that the more I see that millennials and Gen Z

are choosing crypto over stocks. And there's like this mental shift of like, oh, stocks are for boom. and old people, and I'm not going to be a part of that. And what's odd is that a lot of millennials feel like the stock market is more corrupt and more manipulated than cryptocurrency is, even though I think right now cryptocurrency is way easy, way more easily manipulated by like, probably tenfold. I don't know what your guys view on this, but like I feel like YouTubers are moving some

of these coins. Oh, certainly, certainly. They can. It's just like pump and numb stuff. It depends on the cryptocurrency, the market cap, the context, and if they are actually behind it. I think of anything, probably Twitter has just as large of an impact because it seems like a lot of this tends to start on Twitter, or usually what actually what I've seen behind

the scenes, it seems to like the Discord groups, which then I'll talk about it, and then it goes to Twitter, and it'll go from Twitter to YouTube, and then like, then the big mainstream outlets start to pick up on it, like the CNBCs and the CNNs and the market watches, and they'll do things on it. But I don't know, but I think there's a new type of investing right now that's based on momentum, community, and attention. And it's, you can't, you can't value that. Yeah.

Like, GameStop was a perfect example of that where it's like the community came together, all really like the stock, and it's still trading it like over $200 for GameStop. Crazy. Doesn't make any sense. And a year and a half ago, not even, was it a year? No, yeah, a year and a half ago, it was like $6 a share. Not that much. I mean, I don't want to say not that much happened, but it's from $5,200.

Yeah. a year and a half, but it's the community that's so strong behind it. And Sam, I think, also plays with Tesla, is that it's such like this cult-like following for Elon Musk. Is it worth any of? I don't know, but the community and the momentum says it is. And so how long could that continue? And what price do you value that on? So I think with a lot of these coins, I know long term, who knows what's going to happen,

but with a Doge coin, it's like, it's a stupid coin. It's a, literally, I mean, it's stupid. I'm still holding my doing. Watch your mouth. Yeah, I should educate myself. It's a silly coin. I mean, it's silly. It's silly.

Nobody could buy into doing it and say, it's a silly coin. They started it off as a joke. But now it's got a market gap of $30 billion. I think it would be fun to discuss some of the content creation process because for some reason, you have some ability to just go viral on every single, like, form of social media ever.

And I don't understand it because you've also gone mainstream. You were on Ellen DeGeneres. And you were on, like you said, The Amazing Race. You've been in a movie. I saw that. Zootopia's in my, my IMDB. I don't even know how to do my IMDB, but Zootopia is listed. You're on Zootopia.

Because I have one voice cameo. Yeah, yeah. Which they gave me. When the first time you go in the police scene, you can hear me saying like, he bore his teeth first. It wasn't me. But, yeah, you've done everything well. TV shows, too. Here's my thing.

I go to a lot of different conferences and speak at them and also attend. where YouTubers, they always try to break down, which is fine, the algorithm and figure out, like, what is the best SEO? You know, remember a couple years ago? It was like, really it was thumbnails, right? Like red circles, like figure out what, you know, kind of the Jake Paul days.

Everyone's like, okay, thumbnails is the new thing. And then, but instead of reverse engineering the algorithm, which I think is important, the one metric today I think creators should be watching is retention because that will drive up the suggested, viewers. But for me, it's always, I mean, I'm looking at from the long tale of like doing this for 12 years. I think it's about the only thing is the stories and the content and the characters in your videos and, you know, building that relationship with your audience. It doesn't matter

what platform you're on. I think YouTube's a really, really strong one. I would bank most if it was a, you know, well, it is a stock. But if it was a tradable platform, just if you had platforms, I would put most of my money on YouTube being the frontrunner still for a long time because you can build a whole ancillary, you know, a bunch of businesses around it. But it doesn't mean you don't need other ones to help build your brand. I think Instagram and TikTok, especially TikTok lately, has been great. What I noticed is YouTube, you have a core audience, right? They just come back, they watch your videos.

And if you keep making great stuff, they'll continue to come back and it'll kind of grow over time slowly. But you need the TikToks and the Instagrams are, You don't need them, but they're really helpful for branding and sometimes mainstream. Like with TikTok, we found, like, more people come up to me now versus, like, a lot of people still came up to me on YouTube, but way more come up based on TikTok. And you could just see in throughout the years, like, when it was Vine people coming up, or when it was Instagram blew up, you know, or when it was Snapchat, even, you could see these waves. And you could tell because when people were taking selfies, you can see what apps they're on and how they're doing it. And it was pretty obvious where they're coming from where they'd just say, like, oh, yeah. saw this TikTok, you know, or they call you that.

So my title has changed so many times over the last 12 years. You know, at one point it was like, you're a musically star. Oh my God. I know you from musically, you know. But like those platforms are all helpful for kind of breaking into the mainstream. It's weird though. Like I wonder when we're stop using the word mainstream because YouTube is mainstream. Like why are we still calling it?

I don't know. YouTube creators, that's fine. But like eventually it's just like, oh, I watch this person. Right, right. You know, like I feel like I watch, if you're talking about Dave Ramsey, like you watch him on YouTube. Yeah. Like he's his YouTuber. Not in the traditional sense, but it's like we're all watching on the same place at this point.

That's interesting that you've paid attention to the, I don't want to say the back end, but like the metrics of the video itself. Because for us, it's always title thumbnail, that we could have the most amazing video in the world. And if we don't have the right title and thumbnail, nobody watches it. Yeah. And I've had it so many times where I posted a video and it's been. 10 out of 10, which means it's like the worst video we've posted out of last 10. And the video itself is awesome. And all we do is change the title and the thumbnail to something a little more.

When do you do that in the first hour? Oh, what if you don't do it in the first hour? It has less of an effect. Okay. I've noticed at least in the first hour, YouTube is recommending the video enough to get immediate feedback on the video. So when you post, are you just waiting, like kind of watching it and in the first hour you're ready to pivot?

Or do you already have other thumbnails ready? So the way it works is that we post, and usually I don't look at any of the metrics for the first 15 minutes. Sometimes it's like things could happen in the first five or 10. Usually though, after about 10 minutes, you could kind of tell. But 15 minutes in, we look at what the initial click-through rate was of the title. So we could see on the analytics, if you get a big spike the first minute, past a certain number. Like for us, it's past 1,500. Anything above 1,500, we know the title's correct, because enough people click.

done in the first minute. Yeah. Then we see what is the momentum like those next 15 minutes? Is the graph going up? Is it going down? And how does that do in relation to every other video we've posted? Yeah. And at this point we have a backlog of probably two to 300 videos mentally in our minds that

we could compare it to. And we're like, this is our usual. This is good. This is bad. These topics do good and these topics do poorly. Sometimes we'll post a video and we'll know it's going to be like a nine. Yeah. Which means it's not the worst, but it's pretty bad.

And are those ones ones like we have a lot in our library that randomly, sometimes years later, just blow up out of nowhere. Do you guys have that? No, not really. No, the videos that do well long term are long-tail videos. So like we'll say how to invest in the stock market for beginners. I'm 100% I'll post that video. It'll do terribly. It'll be my worst performing video on the first like two months. But those videos get such consistent views that within about six months, it'll be one of the top performing videos. So you can't do that all the time, but those videos are great as like, uh, those are kind of kind of like you're building out of spider web to collect like new subscribers and viewers and that'll

just consistently get like new flies in there yeah just made that up but those videos are really well um just those provide the foundation because they always get views yeah so if you could get a hundred of those in the pipeline every day each of those will make you know a few bucks yeah so that's like that's your foundation then everything else is you know just entertainment long see we yeah we don't even i don't even know what my title click through rate is because for us like i'm not trying to SEO. So we, for example, a video that's incredibly, I think it's got 100 million views on our YouTube channel. It's called Furniture Illusions. The most random topic of all things, right? Like not many people are looking up illusions in the first, I mean, there's a lot,

but relative to other things. And then furniture, like that's a pretty low search thing. But that randomly takes off not, you know, the first week, not even the first two weeks, it was like months later. And a lot of our videos do that. It seems to be, somehow goes into the algorithm at some point and it says like oh and this is where i think retention is really important um it knows that it's getting a higher watch time and but it's weird that our videos like could be months later so for us the content creation isn't about like title or thumbnail it really is like the step above that which is what is what is what's interesting about this yeah i think every channel has a slightly different algorithm it seems like maybe and mine is going to be different than yours yeah

because i've seen some other channels too uh it was interesting We were talking to the Stradman a while ago, and each of his videos consistently will hit between one and 1.1.2 million views. No matter what he does. He could post a bad video, a million views. A great video, 1.2 million views. It's always within that range, no matter that's his baseline, like, YouTube sets that is his recommendations, regardless of how much his subscribers grow. It's like, that's his, that's his thing. And for us, we have a certain range that, like, almost no matter what video we post, as long as it's, you know, on par, it's going to do, you know, a certain amount of views. What about on the ice, is the ice coffee hour different? Like, have you seen different metrics? You guys do the same thing. Like, you look at the title. Very similar. A few videos end up getting recommended.

We had one with Jeanette McCurdy. It did really well. And at first, it was a good video at first, but I think it just, it hit her audience. It was the same time that what was the I Carly thing came out. Yeah, we had her on us. That was just, the reboot was coming out. Yeah. So we had her on and posted by coincidence at the same time that her I Carly reboot.

of surged her. Yes. And then I think YouTube saw that that video was being searched. People were watching it and sort of recommending to that audience.

So every now and then we hit vain. What happens? It also happened with the King Pokemon thing. Like I remember we released you on King Pokemon. Yep. We released an episode with him and immediately it was like a 10 out of 10

or a 9 out of 10. It was so bad. Like really, really poor performer. And then it was like, I think it was about six days after he posted. I remember I was out of a spike ball tournament and all of the sudden

there was a huge bump in the views. And Graham texted me, he's like, dude, look what's happening. And I looked. What was it? Like after, like, what a news thing that happened? No, no, it was just hit the audience that likes the Pokemon content, like his fan base and everything.

And we didn't change title, we didn't change the thumbnail. Literally, and all of a sudden, every single day just got more and more and more views. And then it was a one out of ten by far. Yeah. Yeah, we have certain videos where I feel like YouTube is really, YouTube wants the video to succeed. Yeah. And I really believe that they're trying to find, they're scrambling to A, B, test different audiences.

Yep. And if it could test, and then this is successful. and a test that's exciting. It finds like the right person for the video and then it's like if this person like this video, we're going to recommend it to other people who've also watched this. Exactly.

Lock it in. So like a good example too was I did a video with Michael Reeves and I was so excited for this video and I thought for sure this would be like a knockout video. It was at 10 by far. I mean it was half, it did half the views of the next worst performing video half. Yeah.

It was like, oh crap. I guess this isn't going to work anymore. Yep. And then I think it was like three days later, the same thing is boom. And it hit Michael Reeves' audience and sort of recommending to people who watch Michael Reeves. Yep. And so, so it's just, it's interesting how that works.

That's the video where, yeah, I watched that one. He talks about Simon property. You're like, what do you invest in? He's like, Simon Property Group. Yeah. But looking at it, that did well. It did. Every time I see that stock, I think of him because of that.

I hope he's still in that. I thought it was Tesla too. Wasn't it Tesla? No, I think he was literally, he said it was only Simon property group. All he had. Kind of a random one I didn't even know about. Yeah. Was he at it for the dividends or something?

I think it was, didn't he say his friend told him or something? Yeah. And he just went all in Simon property. So it worked. They're doing well. I like Simon property. Yeah.

Yeah. I got it because of that actually. I know. So across all of your different like social media platforms, do you, is your goal to like redirect everything to YouTube? It's not, it's not an intentional goal.

But I do like that because that's where we grow the real community. Like the people who really care about our work and even it attracts more of a filmmaker to the channel. Like that's kind of my vibe and my MO. So ideally that's where people go. And it's just long of the way. I really think sitting down with your favorite creator and spending six minutes in videos way, way more powerful than having, you know, 60 million people watch it for like 15 seconds. Even if it doesn't, I don't know, they're swiping onto the next. thing on most of their platform. Well, they don't even like individually select to watch your content

on TikTok. It just gets recommended if they're just going through their feed, which is how everyone searches. But on YouTube, if you're going to click on like someone's channel or a recommendation or something like it, you actually have to actively click on it. So I feel like that also can establish a different relationship with the, with the viewer as well. But have you also noticed that there is, there are different viewers on each platform? Like your fans are different on this platform? Or is it kind of like crosshashed? No, it's interesting. They don't, like a lot of people, I mean, make sense because our most, our followers are, on Instagram or TikTok or other platforms.

Not many people know we have YouTube channel. They're usually pretty shocked and like, what? I'm always like, but you seem like a pretty in-depth fan, but you don't know we have a YouTube channel. It's just a lot of people are either, I think this depends how you use social media. Like my wife is only on Instagram. She doesn't really watch many YouTubers. She kind of just know.

Again, like the people she follows do minutes of stories or like they could do eight minutes of stories a day, right? So she's kind of watching a version of it chopped up. So it's just, it's different, I think, based on how do you, it's, it's really weird to me, though, even in Vegas, like meeting people in the strip, they're like, dude, I am the biggest fan of your TikTok videos. And I was like, oh my gosh. Did you watch our YouTube videos? And they're like, what? Oh, wow.

You have a YouTube channel? Like, what's different there? And I think that's the thing, though. You have to, if you have, if you're drawing people to it, it has to be really different. So for us, it's like we're still really only a. year into redeveloping the YouTube channel, like for many years, it's just, we have like 10 or 12 million subscribers on YouTube, but most of them are because we ran them. We didn't know he had a channel for a long time. We were uploading the shorts, not a short, not YouTube shorts, but like

the short little clips. Yeah. And we were just putting on, I was just uploading them when I'd make a new one, same as I'd put them on Instagram and TikTok. And then we looked one day and like, holy crap, this channel's like actually growing. We need to make long form content, which is One reason I think the CPM isn't good because we've kind of just started figuring out in the last year and a half. Like we need to do longer form. Like if you do look at the library of from years ago, it's all like 20 second videos. And the watch time is just like it's been pulled down because I'm thinking about like maybe I need to go through it. YouTube says it's not worth doing or doesn't affect it, but I feel like it does.

Like I need to go delete those. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't delete videos. That's the worst. Bad. Why is that bad? Oh my God. We heard from Todd Bupro himself that deleted.

videos is bad. Okay. Who do we hear from? I heard it from Todd B. Pro. I asked him in Clubhouse back in the old days when we used to use that. And he said basically, old days like a month ago. Yeah, I don't, no, this is like six months ago. But the algorithm. Yeah. Todd B. Pro, who's like the head of the algorithm at YouTube, you know, okay. He said that once you delete a YouTube video, like YouTube collects- Does it mess up the web or something? Yeah, kind of. YouTube collects data based off of the viewer. It's not based off of the video. And basically, if you delete a video, YouTube will treat each viewer that saw that video as if they had never seen that video or interacted with that video. Meaning or your channel. So, no, just, just that video, which obviously is tied to your channel.

Yeah. So, like, let's say, like, you have, like, 10 viewers that went and watched this one video of yours and they liked it or something. Then YouTube's going to be like, oh, these 10 viewers, they're going to probably want to see other content similar to this, and they're going to recommend other of your videos to this, to these people, right? But if you delete that one video, that's the, that is the vessel between like you and the viewers. So it's a pool. And it literally just, It basically treats it as though they had never seen that video or they've never interacted with your channel. So by deleting, let's say, I mean, I might have a lot. I have to look, but like it could be like two or 300 short.

Oh gosh. Now you'll screw it. Just leave it. No, leave it. We've tested this so many times in our channel that we never delete videos anymore. I remember this. So I ended up deleting. What about enlisting?

No. No, we literally go into the YouTube. I'll get to that. So here's what happened on my main channel. I was four months into doing YouTube videos and my channel started getting recommended. and I ended up taking down two of those videos because there were videos that I just Like back when I was

Were you embarrassed by them? No, I was, I swore. I swore in those videos and I really tried to clean up some of the, I just made like stupid jokes in the video. Not nothing inappropriate. Well, I would say it's like, it's not going to cancel it. It's not inappropriate.

Yeah, it's not cancelable. It's not like can't, but it's just, it's not going to Googleing. They're leaving the podcast and Googling it. It's inappropriate toilet humor that a, like a teenage boy would joke about that's all it is yeah it's like when you think of stuff like okay so it's immature adult swim sort of humor that I was making in videos talking about how to make passive and come that was it I mean it's innocent enough but when I but when those videos I never thought anybody

watched the videos and I and I was still I was full time as a real estate agent I didn't want those videos coming back and clients thinking I was not professional sure talking about like making these stupid jokes oh so you were working I mean you were a real estate agent at the time oh yeah I was full-time real estate agent like I wasn't making money for from YouTube, like that was just a side for fun. So you haven't sworn on the channel since then? No. So basically, so I took down those videos because I was like, I don't want clients to see

this. I want a professional image still. So I'm going to take down these videos and not swear anymore. As soon as they took down those videos, it was like two of them. My channel just like 80% drop off, like almost immediately. Really? And it took me months. It took me like eight months to build back up.

You just, you swear it's from that. And it was from that. It was instantaneously. I took down those videos eight months to build back up the same. momentum eight months and then there was another time where I deleted a video the same thing happened yeah it was it was another it was another video I think I just took it down same thing happened the algorithm went down took a few months to get back but the real test was on the second channel we had a guy call in I guess

we could talk about it now it's been long enough we I won't reveal anything but we had a guy calling in who owned a franchise and he was telling us all the details about this franchise and like how much he was making from the franchise how you could own a franchise like the inner workings which was really interesting because it was this whole culture and nothing bad it was just like public information yeah kind of no it was he said it was public information okay well anyway he revealed too much information for him and the board saw the video which i don't know how they saw the video it must have gotten recommended or someone sent it to him or something like that it was a great video and it was one of our

most successful videos on the second channel and he called and was like hey i'm really sorry i don't want to do this, but like, this is going to impact my ability to open up another franchise unless this video comes down. Like, all right, we're going to take the video down. So we took it down and instantly the whole channel. How many months did it? Yeah. Oh, it was probably like four months.

Wow. Okay, so I'm not deleting anything. Don't do it. So what we do instead, what we found a good workaround. So we had another person call in on the second channel and she said some things that she later regretted saying. And so she asked us, trim them out? yes so basically well the entire premise of the video was all centered around something that she did not want

that she later regret it on the internet you people just need to sign a paper this is like i know i'm gonna say things they don't regret yeah but basically what we did was we went to the youtube editor uh-huh and made the entire video just an intro yes so it's literally what's of you guys it's graham here and welcome back to the second channel with that said you guys thank you so much for watching everything you literally chopped out like what an hour and a half of something in the middle no it was no it was No, it was probably, yeah, 15, 20 minutes. But all it is is, it's 30 seconds. Are people now watching that?

Like, what? No, there's no, yeah, there's no thumbnail. We changed the title thumbnail, so it's unsearchable. Yeah. And I think we just had to, like, outro. M-O-V or something like that. It's literally so,

and it's like, oh, he accidentally uploaded this. Yeah. But that means all the data is retained in that video. Yeah. Oh, and then we hid comments. Yeah, we wouldn't be able to tell it. Everything is just. Because the comments revealed what the video is about.

Yeah. So it worked. And we didn't suffer any of any of it. like, you know, algorithm. How is the YouTube trimmer? Oh, it's,

it's challenging. It's very confusing. But you can't get it down to the frame, right? You're just like, scrubbing. Yeah, but there was another video too. We did a house tour.

And the lady was all fine with us using it. I'm not going to ask you to delete the video. And then apparently the person who was buying the house was a high profile person. They wanted the video down. Right. And she's like, you got to take the video down.

I refused. Because this video took a long time to make and it was going to throw off the algorithm. The channel was on an upswing. So I said, How about this? We'll keep the video up, but I'll change the title and thumb-mail

to make it unsearchable. She's like, that's fine, as long as nobody could see it. I'm like, nobody's going to find it. So I hid this video, basically. It doesn't show up in search anymore. You have to scroll back like two years to find that. You know, nobody's going to find it.

Yeah. But anyway, it's very interesting. Okay, those are the tricks. Yeah, but it works. In short, don't delete any of the videos. Yeah. Yeah, but there's no point. Unless there's something on there that you don't want up there anymore,

there's no point in changing title and stuff like that. Unless you have to delete a video in which case, just edit it out. Yeah. That's a good tip to know. Yeah. Try that. So we've learned everything

just through trial and error, seeing what works. And we're just like, anything with the algorithm, we watch it. Everything. Yeah. So does it affect your content,

though, at the end of the day? Do you go back to the, does it affect writing the next one? Yes and no, but I'm vigilant on how user interaction is going to go throughout the video. And I'm really cognizant of,

like, are people going to continue watching? So like every minute and a half is a hook. Yeah. And I change the scenes on purpose because I notice if I'm just at a desk talking, it's boring. So every two minutes or so. What's your, guys, is retention.

Do you know the number? 50% to 60%. Oh, that's pretty, that's really good. So average view time is seven to eight minutes. This to family is like, we can get up to like 75% on this to family. But the second channel and the main channel is 50% to 60%. Wow.

It's high. So for finance. But that's because I like, so what I do is I'll script out the video. and then I read it back to myself. And if there's any point where I'm reading where it doesn't make sense or I lose my own focus,

I'll either cut it out or I'll put a hook in there. Or a question. I think that's important. As long as going to the analytics and the data is changing positively the content, then that's great. Well, at the end of the day,

it's just about keeping retention and entertainment at the same time. So if someone's not entertained there's no point of watching my video. Yeah. So I would say, yeah. It's like that mix. I mean, for you guys,

it's probably entertainment, but it's also highly on value, right? Like if you're not providing value and you're just entertaining, like unless that's why we're going to watch the channel, then you're missing the mark. It has to be a mix of both. Yeah. So that's awesome.

So Zach King, if you could rank the least important to the most important form of social media to have a presence on, how would you rank it? If you don't have a presence on YouTube, you won't be able to survive for the long tail of it. If social media, you're trying to make that your career. Like being a content creator,

You have to have YouTube. But it doesn't mean the other ones are important. It just means I think if I were to rebuild a channel, I would do it from YouTube as a base and use the others to build it up. But, you know, I wouldn't have a TikTok channel alone. I wouldn't have an Instagram alone. That just doesn't make sense anymore. So they all need each other. But you would say YouTube is the most important.

But then what would it go? Would it go like as most important YouTube and then TikTok, then Instagram and Snapchat? The order right now is. And again, it changes on the client. I'm at. Like, it feels like it was moving a lot faster. It's kind of slowed down. I feel like we're in a weird plateau of like no new platforms in a long time.

No new innovation on social media. So, yeah, YouTube is your base. Absolutely have to be on TikTok. Are you on TikTok? Yeah. We have ice coffee hour clips on TikTok. It's got like 90,000 followers. I'm going to post my TikTok today.

Are you really? Yeah. Did you just, right here? Right here. I want to ask you a question for prefer TikTok. I wanted to film a TikTok with Zach. Well, too late. Great.

I said it first. No, no, no, Jack can't do it. Okay. I called it first. Well, wait, I wanted to film a TikTok. No, no. All right, fine. Alex gets a TikTok.

Gosh. All right, so you got YouTube, then you got TikTok. But it depends who you are. Like, I've seen, I follow a lot of podcasters, and it's like Twitter is some of their, that's the way I find out there's a new podcast. It really depends, like a news journalist, I'm going to follow them on Twitter. You know, I'm not going to follow them on Instagram. Yeah.

It really depends what you do. I've seen the biggest engagement from Instagram because for me, like YouTube is good, but then my Instagram is the concentration of the people who really care about the YouTube channel and myself will follow me on Instagram. So anytime I do, well, I used to be the swipe-ops. But when I used to do the swipe-ops,

I'd have such a high click-through rate that would eclipse YouTube by like 10 times. So it depends how you build it. Like me, I'm stuck in where I built my Instagram as a sole, I built every platform as a solo thing. It didn't have a purpose. So like you started as YouTube and you probably, I'm guessing, said,

if you want to know more about me and you're really into my stuff, go follow Instagram. Correct. So those Instagrammers, you're able to just to always say, swipe up or go see this or new video here. For me, I built it just on Instagram

and they came for the short stuff. And so now if I do anything else, they're like, dude, why are you sending me to YouTube? Because this is where I started following you and this is what I want to follow. All right. That makes sense.

So if you don't, it's hard to pivot later on those platforms, like what you use it for. What questions do you have for us? Okay, I want to know about your process. I want to know about, when I hear your, recently, it was a, you had Jimmy's manager on and super smart guy. You guys, it sounds like there's bandwidth issues. Like you're, I was like, I'm so busy, so, so, you're almost burning out.

I don't know if you're burning out. But I'm like, from my perspective, it seems like if you had a writer and if you had an editor, I know you have Alex. awesome yeah so Alex my goal January 1st I want Alex to take over the videos in the the main channel so he would edit them so like my goal in a perfect world is like after this I'm gonna be filming yeah I'm gonna film that video I'm gonna be done let's say 8 p.m. I would love for him to edit at night yep and then that way the next morning we could review the video together and have it done so I could plan out the next video Alex you ready for the night shift I've actually been working my regular job and the

night shift for the past couple of weeks Well, you have another job? No, this is. The night shift is in like editing. Okay. So, yeah. How many years have you been doing this? Five.

Five years. Wow, you've been at, what's your schedule? How many hours do you work week? Usually I try to take weekends, like half days. Yeah. But I would say Monday through Fridays, definitely 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. usually. Okay. Monday through Friday.

Saturday is usually a half day. So it could be, I like working morning. So I love going from like 7 a.m. to 12 on a Saturday or 7 to 3 or whatever. And then Sunday would be maybe another half day or a full day. So I would say within a week, I definitely get at least one full day off. Usually the weekends are both half days. You know what it is, Graham? You need to have a kid.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't even. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Priorities just seem to change. And you realize, like, all the little things you do, half of them somebody else can do. And it just forces you to. I don't want to have to have a kid just to just to change up my schedule. I love, listen, I love my schedule.

I really value the freedom of being able to work this many hours. Yeah. So I'm totally not in a rush to. So what would you, okay, if you had more time, what would you do with it? It sounds good. I would work more. Yeah, you'd work more. But what would the output look like?

Is it like, are you trying to like ramp up to like four or five videos? No, I don't really want to ramp up. I want to just continue. I don't know. If I had more time, honestly, I'd probably go to the gym a little bit more. Yeah. You'd be happier. Yeah, yeah.

Honestly, I'd probably be a little bit happier. Okay. I would be a little less stressed down. Which is important to you. You mentioned that earlier. That will translate into the context. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, true. I'd probably go to the gym more, be a little happier and spend more time both with Macy and with the aquarium. I love the aquarium. As you had seen right when you walked in, like, that is my pride and joy. I'd spend more time tinkering on that. That's great. So that's, yeah.

But part of me would see that is like, ooh, this means I could work more. Yeah, yeah. I could do a better job now. Yeah. I would just ask what in your process is your least favorite part? See, it's weird for me because I like editing. For me, it's like, it's a way. Yeah, because I know I could look at the time and be like, I just zone out.

Yeah. And it becomes like this thing where I could do with my eyes closed and just, the time stops and I look down and be like, oh, the video's done. Four hours went by. Great. And I'm really happy with like the way it turned out. It's perfect. I would say the hardest part for me is planning and thinking of a good topic.

Because it's hard to, because once you commit to a topic, there's 10 hours right there. Between planning and filming. What's your involvement in the main channel? Nothing really. He just runs by title thumbnails by me. Sometimes video ideas.

Sometimes I watch the videos and give him my opinion on editing and stuff like that. Yeah. Cool. Well, it sounds like one role. that would be interesting as a like a producer like a and you could start it super low so it's not like coming with that title and you feel like you're having to listen to every suggestion they give but maybe it's training another person to bounce those ideas off or at or idea believe it or not we got we got

we got a should we tell them what's dgb should i mention oh god he's like 15 i know what's gb okay i don't know if we're going to include this okay okay i don't know if we're going to include this uh we have a subscriber he's watching this right now What's up? Because he's one of the most dedicated, loyal fans. But it's awkward to talk about it. Okay, so, yes. So DGB has commented first on every single one of my videos for probably, what, a year

and a half or two years? That he gets almost. He usually tries to get first. Like 90% he's the first comment across all the videos. And it got to a point where this was like, what, five months ago, he started to calculate the rankings of the video within the first five minutes of posting. and I post a video and within five minutes you'd be like, I could tell this is going to be a six.

I could tell this is going to be a four. This video is not doing that well. It's probably the title. And we noticed month after month after he was correct. Yes. Before we, and we were, we had all the analytics. He didn't have access. He was literally just going off the video itself.

And so there was a point where he was right so many times. And he said that like this video I could tell us is a seven. And I said, but wait a second. but the views are lagging on your side. Right. How could you tell? Because we see the real time, you're seeing what YouTube is showing you.

He said, I don't even look at the views anymore. You could tell how well it's doing based on the like ratio of the video. I was like, what do you mean the like ratio? He's like, well, if you take your likes in the first five minutes and you multiply that by 10, that's how many views you're getting. And so based on the first five minutes,

I created this spreadsheet of all of your past videos and I could rank now based on the likes of the video how well it's doing. Yeah. I was blown away. Turns out he's 15 years old. At his age, he is more skilled than I would say that I am at this than Jack is at this or Alex or any of us with fewer pieces of data at his disposal.

And he was so good at that. And he watches all the videos, and all of our videos, by the way, between me and Jeremy, Kevin and Andrade, like he knows everything. And he has for years that I now trust him to pass by video topics and titles and thumbnails by him first. Yeah. And he gives better. title and thumbnail ideas than I even have because he's so in it more than more than I am which

I didn't think it was possible I really think it is if you can find the right fit and it's a fan that wants to work with you that will that's like they you know employees there usually is a time in their period of employment with you that they just need that fire and that passion excitement for what you do to carry them through those like lulls of like oh I don't want to do this work or this is the difficult part and that's like when a fan is in that role, that's what carries that. What's even crazier is that he noticed, based on the subtleties,

that the editing was different, that it was Alex. And I went through Alex's videos to make it as close to mine as possible. He noticed, like, the little subtle changes in editing. It's like, is that Alex? Yeah. Yeah. So it's very cool. Yeah, I would try to find ways to outsource

again, like you want to do it in a way, like a producer's a great role for it if it can encompass, maybe that title means for you. They do some of the writing. they do a lot of the research or topics, and they're well-versed in that. And then they help you just do the logistics of, like, maybe it's coordinating a guest,

other things that might not seem like they take time, but actually kind of do. Alex, we're going to call you a producer now. How's that? Does that come with a pay raise? Or I get nervous. I get nervous of the night shift stuff, though. Why?

We used to do it a good amount because of the same reason, hey, we want to see this at in the morning. And we would have you as people do it, but that doesn't last super. were long. Like, physically, there's only, like, a certain amount of time. Like, my mom's a nurse, and she used to do a night shift for many years. And it just literally can see it physically change your body over time.

So you're going to, at some point, that person's probably going to say no or just mentally not be able to. Well, it would be Alex. So, Alex, what do you think of that? That's a great question. I mean, there was one day I came in here, just because the edit went longer than I expected. Graham and I reviewed, and then I went home and I was like, grandma, I need to go get some

sleep. so I don't think that editing videos on the night shift is sustainable forever however I do think that it's necessary especially with a quick turnaround time so I think as long as it's not the you know the route that you go every night but let's say you know 10 25% of the time that's what needs to happen long term I think that would be yeah it's it's tough because there there are some times where it's Tuesday night and I finish filming it at a p.m. And that video needs to post the next day at 3.30 without fail. It has to post. And we have to have enough time. Well, I would just make it, I don't think the night shifting. So I think the issue is that

he has a day job plus he's doing a night shift. Well, no, no, no. Well, this would this would, this would turn into. This would turn into just that. Yeah. So he could, yeah, so he could sleep until 12 he wants to as long as the video is done. Yeah, this would be, uh, after training. After training. Yeah. He's in the, uh, the training phase right now. Yeah. The hazing. But the goal is that either, you, you know, you, ideally not you, but Alex then trains two more people to do it. That may be not full time. I don't want to scare you on payroll of stuff, but they could be freelancers.

They could be maybe part time that you know you have ex person from Monday to Wednesday. If video gets shot during that time needs to be the night shift or whatever you want to do. And then another person for Wednesday through Friday or through the weekend or whenever that you just book their time and you know, yeah, this is my schedule. Because you know your schedule, right? Sometimes now. when you're shooting though when i'm by the time i'm filming but sometimes that could be last minute okay yeah so yeah we do all our shoots on a wednesday and friday pretty much without fail i know it doesn't work like that yeah and so but if there is a rhythm why is it because it's new it's

yeah i would say probably 80 75% of the content is on current events yeah where if i miss it by 24 hours it's irrelevant anymore that's why it's so hard i can't compete with me kevin and there are some some videos that I know he'll get out a video within 30 minutes. He's faster than CNBC now. Right. Because as soon as he sees something, he has better thoughts because he knows the market that he could explain everything. 30 minutes.

And usually after that, if Kevin does a better job than I would be able to do on a video, I won't even make it anymore. So I'm like, what's the point? Kevin just did a better job. If I can at least... It's the feeling where you get to pressure, it's like, why am I even doing this? Yeah, well, the thing is, I know if I can't at least keep up to that caliber or do better, I'm not going to do it if someone else has already done it.

See, I actually disagree with that, though. Really? Yes, because your followers, I don't think it's like, I follow a group of you, but I think there's some people who definitely follow just you. There's definitely people who follow just Kevin. And it's also styles. Like, you look at news anchors, like there's some people I don't like listening to. It could be a tone of a voice.

It could be the way they talk. It could be the way they present their viewpoint. Like, you still are adding your viewpoint to that thing. So I don't know. That's true. I don't think it's like one person gets to cover it and they reach it to it. Yeah, some of it, though, it really does become outdated. after a day.

Yeah. And once everyone covers it, people lose interest. Well, hey, I mean, that's a question. Is that worth doing all those? Is it for those topics? Yes. Because usually those are the best performing videos

for 24 to 48 hours. And it keeps up that momentum. So it's just another thing to throw, another cog in the wheel. You throw it in there. It does exceptionally well. It's not going to long tail at all. But that keeps people coming back.

Yeah. Why are you not doing shorts? Well, because I'm wearing jeans right now. You guys You don't like short form content or what is it about it? Like making it, watching it. It's for me, it's the, I feel like time out of your day. And all you want to focus on is pumping out the next video on the main channel.

Yeah, the main channel is my pride. If anything is taking away from the main channel, it's just not worth my mental stress. I'm just thinking of another thing. I'm going to give you a hypothetical. You hired a producer. I'll let you pick in your mind, your salary that you pay them, whatever. Take deduct that. You have this producer and their job is just TikToks, short form content for you.

And they run your TikTok or whatever you're going to make maybe a Reels channel. Maybe it's and then shorts, separate channels. And if in two years that was able to generate a million dollar additional revenue opportunity for you, is that worth doing? How do you come to a million dollar? it would come in the form of eventually I mean right now there's like funds right so those aren't going to pay out but over time I would imagine

there's going to be a battle over creators and their content and so you have a little bit of either the funds grow you also have monetization and ads figured out at that point and I imagine if you're doing sponsorship deals you would have other short form sponsorship deals

you could do yeah So that's how I'd come to that evaluation. I don't know. Honestly, if it takes away from the main channel or stresses me out anymore, like I feel like at this point, I'm like, I could only retain so much from my head. And right now I'm at like 95% capacity.

That's why I'm saying producer. That's what I'm saying producer who literally comes in. It's like, it could be a little sharky, but it's like, hey, this is my goals for these channels. This is my goals for your job. If you don't do it, sorry, you're out because I have no capacity to either train you. Just hang around, follow me. You figure out the content.

Because there are people who do that and are great. Yeah, but it's even committing an extra hour a day to filming something. Maybe not, though. It's like, okay, that person would sit in the corner of the room, listen to our conversation at the end of it. They would come up to you and just were you and Jack and spitball like, hey, I think we should grab this one TikTok with Zach. Here's the idea. I think it'd be funny if like we're by the aquarium, whatever, do, da. And can we go shoot it?

15 minutes shoot at the end of the interview. And then that's the one piece from the podcast. They watch your edit a few minutes before it goes out or I don't know what your process. It sounds like it gets edited overnight. Do you review it in the morning? With Alex, I do. With Alex. Usually I'll edit the same day as posts.

By that point, they've watched it. And when you're at right after you're reviewing with Alex, they grab you for 10 minutes because they understand the concept. And they already knew from the day before. And they've got a quick. like they've written a 15 second version in case I don't have time as a viewer to listen to your video of that. I want the quick snippet to almost kind of tease and see if I want to watch it. That would go on a short channel, but it actually has little value.

I would consider it. Again, like the person I'm describing is like fairly high level or they've done this for another, you know, YouTuber probably or somebody as a content creator or they want, Usually that person wants to be one themselves, but they'd rather tap into your audience and just help you do it. And they're a fan of you, that would be interesting. I would consider it. But right now I feel like really 90% of everything I do is the main channel.

So I feel like my time is probably better spending that extra hour, doing something on the main channel. Part of the million dollar exposure or that value I'm giving it in two years is also that you're accounting for the growth that your channel would get, the new eyeballs that would learn about you. Because again, I'm thinking like this whole thing, even finance YouTube, is so new. And early days and you need to be captured, like building that real estate. Basically, you know, it's like beachfront YouTube real estate for you guys right now.

They're like building that exposure. And that's the exposure part that's like, even if they don't know your name, it's like, oh, I've seen him. Like remember the guy that met you? He's like, oh, I've seen your videos actually. He didn't think he knew you. Yeah. But like, that's where like when you look at platforms, I'm always measuring like, oh, shoot. They're giving, like, within a swipe, you can see all those shorts.

Whether that's here to stay, you know, who knows. But, like, that's what scare slash fascinates me. You know, and the reason I'm into shorts. Also, I mean, be fair, my content is rather short, so it kind of works. I would consider it, but I'm afraid of growing too quickly. Like, even bringing on Alex was, like, a huge thing for us. Like, even Jack for me was huge. Yeah.

And then bring on Alex was another huge thing. Like mentally, it's tough. It's tough for me. So, like, I would consider it. Yeah. But it's a big ordeal to bring someone else. Because then it's just another thing that, even if they do their own thing, it's just like, that's taking my capacity to 97 now.

Yep. Yeah. I already have someone that is like, they're not even receiving compensation yet for it. But they are now clipping up and posting all the ice coffee hour clips into TikToks. They have like reels or something ready. He's clipping up Graham's main channel videos. And Graham's apprehensive to post it on his TikTok. but he's open to the idea,

and this person's clipping up his main channel videos like into one, you know, the concepts into one, you know, short TikTok or whatever. Yeah.

We can post it on Graham's TikTok as well. So it wouldn't necessarily require any of Graham's time. Yep. I think the clips are interesting. You can always, unless you're shooting extra wide, it's hard, like,

viewers just know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's something about like seeing a clip. You're like, this is a, someone's repurposing.

Like, that's why I think it really needs to be custom. That's the stuff that does really well. I agree with you. And it's just like, They do it on their phone. They shoot it. But is it better than nothing?

I don't know. Really? See, I was kind of thinking it's better than nothing, but the ideal would be doing something new. Yeah, I would agree. It's maybe better than nothing, but it's, if you're going to go through that work, like, you might as well shoot a few custom pieces. Like, we see a difference. Like, we don't do this anymore, but we don't cut down.

Like, if we shoot a video for TikTok and also shoot it for YouTube, we shoot it twice. It's a ton of work, but we'll literally flip the camera and shoot it horizontal, and then we'll shoot one vertical because the framing matters. Like, people can tell. That's true. The cut down is just always punched in. Yeah, I could always tell. And it doesn't look good.

That's really interesting. Yeah, that would actually, I mean, it wouldn't require that much more time if the person already said, hey, this is what we need. These are the video bites that I need from you or whatever. You can just flip a phone vertically and say it. That's true. That's really interesting. Like if I were you guys, I would literally,

pay somebody to sit here on an iPhone or whatever DSLR or iPhone manually just film the interview vertical and like they'd have to really be paying attention but like when we're going over the what's the what's the opener of this going to be the cold open is it going to be the ranking the like what do you mean are you talking about the cold open for like for the ticto no for the ice coffee oh no it's going to be jack and i doing an intro yeah we're going to introduce you oh oh you're you don't throw like a little like an impulsive thing yeah yeah No. We talked about doing it.

Wait, why you should. Have you tried it? We did it a few episodes, probably in like the 10th through 15th episode. Oh, dude, try that again.

You think so? Yeah, I think that's really, really important. I don't, hold on, we got to have a fake argument for that. Can we do it like a,

no, no, no fake arguments. Yeah. I don't trust you, Zach King. Get out of you. I don't trust you,

those ones don't work. Fake arguments don't. But if I showed you, like the reaction you guys had to seeing the shorts the other day, yeah. When I showed you,

It's that. You're like, no way. And if we actually talked about that in depth, like, that's your, that's your opener. That's why we always saved for the podcast. So I think you should maybe not this one, but the future one. But what I was saying with that person shooting vertical, like, they would be able to pick a part after they shot that. And they're going back and forth. And you can tell it was like in the room.

It was shot on a phone. It was vertical. You're kind of leaning in, like, wait, what are they talking about? That's like what's going to make me then if I see that. And there has to be getting value in there. Like I give the, either you or I give the guest, that valuable little tidbit that they were kind of looking for, but they know there's a podcast that has way more than I'm going to go to that podcast.

You got to hire someone to stand right there. It's the only solution. Yeah. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. I don't know if we will. I'll try. I know there's somebody watching.

Yeah. Or somebody watching. Yeah, that's what I think you put out. Hey, if you guys are fans of Graham Steff and he's hiring. You have to be super good because he's really picky. But he is hiring and Jack will and Alex will go through the applications. Where can they send you applications? Alex Nava at.

Go ahead. You know what. I'll go through a few. Not saying we're going to hire. Okay. Here's the key to the hiring video because you're hiring a producer. Yeah. We did this and we were blown away by the results.

We said there's no applications. Don't send your resume. We don't want a list of things you've. done. You have 60 seconds to tell us why we should hire you. Tell us about you. In a video. In a video format. Oh, I like that. All right, guys. In 60 seconds. Why should we hire you? Well, so we got to have a title that people can do. No, they would just be emailing it. Email? Yeah. Email. Literally email. And here's the test. Part of it is like make that subject line the best title for your 60 second resume. That's the test. Literally, I like what we did when

we hired Alex was we had people just titled their video, Graham Steff and Inner. And then we got to watch them all and everyone else got to watch what people were submitted You could do that too. But then other people prayed on our people that tried to get the job because it was smart. Yeah, it is smart. But also not everybody is comfortable like even putting their stuff online. Yeah, a few people wanted to leave it on list. Yeah.

So I would just say take it privately and I mean, we were blown away by like it was, it was clear. It was like the 20 front runners come to the front and you're like, Wow. All right. Okay. So info at Alexnava. com. No,

Alexander Nova. Oh, info at Alex, we're going to put it up on the screen here. Listen up, everybody. Graham, Stefan,

and team is hiring. If you want to submit a video in application, they're not taking applications. They don't care about your resumes today. They want a 60 second video. Shoot. My hint is shoot it vertically too

because we're just a social media business. And then the subject of that email, write the catchiest title, why they should click on that. Because they're not even click on all of them. them. Well, thanks for coming on, Zach. This has been a pleasure and an honor to have you on. Yeah, seriously. It's crazy. I was watching you on Vine.

Yeah. When I was, I don't even know, in middle school maybe, which is insane now that I'm actually sitting across from you. No, no, no, no, no. But it's just, it's an honor. Thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, of course. And if you guys haven't picked up your bankroll coffee yet, go do so in the description. What did you think of it? Be honest. Wait, was it, that was your beans? Yeah. Oh, really good. Yeah. That I think was the Did you, was there? Was there cream here? It's really sweet. Yeah. So I love it. So I put, uh, What is it? Captain,

not Captain Crunch. I usually go. Cinnamon toast crunch. You know what? Yeah. It's a holiday. It's a holiday flavor. Oh, cool.

Well, go pick up a, go pick up a, is it a, is it come grounded or is it all? Both. Okay. Whole beans. Yeah. Pick up whole beans. Get a grinder. Nice.

Wow. That's good. Well, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. And did you get your free stock down below in the description when you sound up for public? It's worth all the way of $2,000. What's public?

When you use the code gram. There are. Stock trading your book. grid social media profile platform. All right, that's what it is. Can I follow like and see public trades? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the advantage of,

that's the public advantage is that you could test your profile. See exactly what I find. Thanks, Zach. Nice. All right, thanks, guys. Great. Thank you, man.