The Iced Coffee Hour - Meet The Million Dollar Man Behind MrBeast

Episode Date: September 1, 2021

Get 20% off your order plus FREE Shipping  At https://www.ettitude.com/icedcoffee . Use Code "ICEDCOFFEE" at checkout! This week we are joined by Reed Duchscher, Reed is the manager for some of the largest creators on YouTube like MrBeast, and Dude Perfect. We talk about how he started off as an NFL Agent but quickly saw the attention YouTube was gaining and how he started managing large creators. He also talks about how mrbeast burger started and gives us some advice for our own channel. Reed: https://instagram.com/reedjd 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 GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $50 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES: http://www.public.com/graham  MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Don't miss the Devil Wears Prada 2 in theaters. Merrill Street, Ann Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci are back. In light of the recent scandal, I'm here to restore your credibility. I did not hire you, and all I need to do is buy my time until you fail. On May 1st, I'm going to make something of this job. Rain. Take the bridges. I burn. Night my way. Forever.

I just love my job. Get tickets now. The Devil Wears Prada 2 in theaters May 1st, directed by David Frankel. Welcome back to the Ice Coffee. My name is Reed, and we're here to talk about literally anything, guys. I'll talk about Mr. Beast. I'll talk about talent management. You guys lead the conversation. Cool.

Well, thank you so much for, first of all, coming out to Las Vegas. You're happy to be here. We did a poker tournament. We did. That was a lot of fun. And Jimmy got out two hands in, which I'm sure we'll get into, but a lot of fun. It was a blast. But I'm excited you could come on here.

We could talk about how you got started because you're the CEO of Night Media. You manage a whole bunch of people, including Mr. Beast. So. Yeah. I mean, just a little, like, I'll give you guys kind of the context of, you know, I was an NFL sports agent, so worked with a lot of different NFL players, like, right at a college, ended up meeting a YouTube group named Dude Perfect, too I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with at this point. And then started my business in 2015, really representing video game YouTubers and Twitch streamers. And that was kind of the start with typical gamer, who was still the biggest live streamer today. And then I met Jimmy through a Twitter DM in 2018, a friend of ours just started a Twitter. group and he was like you guys need to meet jimmy had like 1.3 million subscribers at the time which is crazy to say now and we just kind of hit it off from the beginning and it's now been you know almost three years that we've worked that we've been like working together now when mr base was at

1.3 million what were the amount of views he was getting back then like was he was he was he a big 1.3 million was he getting like you know 20 000 views a day what what was his status like back then he was actually so this was like right when he did his like giving pizzas away and giving $5,000 to a homeless person. And he had just got done watching It's Everyday Bro for 24 hours straight. So he was actually pulling like one to two million views of video. Wow. So he was significantly pulling more views per video than subscribers at that time.

But he still hadn't hit that like crazy growth. Yeah. So when you stepped in, how did the relationship form as you managing him? Yeah. So it was a small team when I first started. It was him and Chris. And then he had an editor. And then his mother kind of helped with all the management, financials, everything like that.

And so it was just like me building a rapport with her and Jimmy over the course of like four months. And then I just started taking over basically all the brand stuff that he was trying to do. And then now pushing into like different companies and things that we wanted to do together. But it was a slow burn. I'm more about like liking the people I work with, having a relationship with them. And so it wasn't something where I was like, hey man, I want to manage you. I know I just met you last week. we actually took a lot of time to get to know each other, spoke a lot on the phone. I could tell

the moment I met him, he had a different understanding of YouTube that I had not heard before. And so it was a really interesting, like, few months, just like getting to know this kid who at the time only had a million subscribers, but he kept telling me, he's like, I will have 10 million subscribers by the end of the year. And this was February of 2018. And we ended up, I think he ended up with 13.6 million by the end of that year. Wow. And what exactly does like managing mean to a creator and what kind of creator would need a manager? Yeah, I like to say it's more like babysitting than anything, especially with some of the bigger creators now because they have just so many things around there, like, I'd say,

like ecosystem, right? They have all these people asking for things. They have all these brands wanting to spend money. They probably have like a charitable initiative. And my philosophy has always been, you know, if you can grow enough, like distribution, if you can grow a big enough brand, then we can build businesses around that, right? And so with Jimmy, like we do things like Mr. Beasberger. We did things like Finger on the app and we're going to continue to launch companies.

And so I think my role as a manager has changed from, hey, I'm going to help you with brand deals to now. Really just your business partner helping you execute on all these other things outside of just content. Yeah. How do you get into the management of creators on YouTube? A cold email to Dude Perfect in 2014. That's how I got into it. So I didn't have any help or handholding. I had to learn this all by myself.

there wasn't a book that I could read of like how to get into this. And at the time, in 2014, people weren't really managing YouTubers. It was more like MCNs at that time. And they were just rolling up creators. And so I tell people this all the time. If you want to get into talent management, just start small. Go find a creator whose content that you really like that has 100,000 subscribers that you're willing to bet on.

And just hopefully you get along with them and hopefully you guys hit it off. And you should just start working for that person and being their manager. That's how I would tell someone to get in the business. But you were in sports before. So why did you leave sports to go for YouTube? My cousins, they were watching. So I was working with amazing. I was working with like Barry Sanders and Marcus Allen,

like amazing Hall of Famers, Heisman trophy winners. And when I met Dude Perfect, at the time I was loving working as an NFL sports agent. But I just thought that, you know, I was a little concerned that they weren't taking advantage of Twitter and YouTube and these different social mediums that were popping up. And so when I met Dude Perfect, it was just like a breath of fresh air of someone that was actually like living on the internet, creating content every day, being in like the attention. And so when I spoke to my little cousins about it, the first question was like, hey guys, do you know who Dude Perfect was? And they flipped out. And Dude Perfect at this time only had like 2 million subscribers.

They were small. And I just kind of knew like, okay, if my nine-year-old cousins are freaking out about this creator, they have no idea of like any of the football players that I worked at that time, didn't know any of them, didn't care. And it's just kind of hit me They're like, okay, this is where I think the attention's going. This isn't going to stop. YouTube's going to continue. More channels are going to continue to pop up. And there's just something I dove into, left my job as a sports agent,

which I tried very hard to get into. And that's when I lived in Las Vegas. And I think everyone in my life kind of thought I was crazy because YouTube in 2014 wasn't really a job. Right. People didn't think it was a business yet. And so it's like just kind of had to prove myself over those like two years. How do you prove yourself with Duke Perfect, though?

It was just providing value. So the interesting conversation I had with them really early on was I thought they were doing a really good job with basketball, football, like traditional sports. But they were missing golf, soccer, some of these other things that I thought they should be doing trick shots in. And so I went to Calloway Golf and I spoke to the CMO and I convinced them to spend a lot of money on like multiple dude perfect videos. And then they started making golf trick shot videos. And the first one was with Jamie Siddlowski, won the Long Drive Championship. And that was kind of their inroads to golf. And that's really how I built trust with them,

was just providing value before anything else. So when you do something like that, do they sponsor the videos or how does that work? So like the ball that they play within is like product placement in the sense. Ball, clubs, bag. We played at like a Calloway Performance Center. Like they literally outfitted the whole video. But there was no,

they never stopped the video to do like an ad read, which you see YouTubers do now. Right. You stop for six seconds. This is brought to you by Calloway Golf. That's not how Dude Perfect did it. And so it was just organic branding throughout the whole video. And at the end of the video, they were like,

hey, guys, thanks for watching. If you want to buy these new, like, Calloway XR irons, go to the link. We're going to have exclusive videos on Callagolf.com. And that was kind of the call to action. And that's how Dude Perfect Soul videos. That's such a good pitch. That's super smart. Gosh, because if I'm into golf and I saw that,

watch the entire video at the very end, I'd want to do that. That's really good. Now, can we ask, like, what they pay for something like that? Oh, six figures, yeah, at the time. And Duke Perfect was averaging, you know, five, six million, maybe a little more views per video. And so it was a six figure per video deal. For, again, like you're like, hey, I'd stop my videos and do a 45 second ad reading. And it sometimes hurts your average view duration.

Yeah. For them, it was like, we're not going to kill our AVD. Like, we're just going to show them throughout the whole video. And it works better. Wow. So from there, what do you take from something like that? Like a percentage, right? I take it, is it a percentage?

Yeah, so how talent managers usually work is they take a percentage of income. It's similar to an agent, right, where revenue brought in or found money is then commissioned, right? And so that's how I made all my money with dude perfect, which is commissionable income. Wow. That's super interesting. I see a lot of parallels actually between what you did at the time and what I did. And I first started working with Graham. Like I just shot him a cold email and basically provided as much value as I could, basically free because I would effectively take commissioned.

amount, you know, based off the money that I brought in for Graham. Yeah. We developed a relationship from there. And then I just tried to provide value and grow the brand in any way that I could. Yeah. That's really interesting. Yeah. And it's different.

Like it's, it's for the, to sign like an NFL football player, you had to like travel to the college and watch the games and talk to the parents. It's like a recruiting process. Yeah. That's why I think that there's a lot of YouTube creators out there that need help. They really do. They need help. And so back to like, if you want to be a talent manager, just provide value to create.

that you enjoy and you'll eventually have yourself probably in a unique position to help that person like you did in the rest of their career that's nuts yeah who is after dude perfect uh typical gamer he was on twitch which was justin tv and he was making the transition to youtube gaming which was completely new at the time and i met him at an event with an NFL football player that we represented and uh we just kind of hit it off and continue to talk for like a year and a half that was different though So Andre, his name's Andre. He didn't answer my phone calls or texts for like weeks on end, but I just stayed persistent. I just like every other week I would text him and be like, hey, what do you think about this?

What do you think about this? And that took like two years to grow that relationship. And now we're extremely close to this day. But I just wouldn't lay off. I was like, I truly believe that this guy's going to be in a unique position in five years. And I really got along with them. The only issue is just didn't answer my phone calls. Yeah.

So when you call them, though, what was the pitch? Or what did you want to bring to him that he was ignoring? There was really no pitch. Like I don't pitch creators. I think that's like something an agent does. They like bring you in a room. They give you the whole like dog and pony show of like here's what we're going to do for you. To me it's more about like, hey, I really enjoy your content.

Let's get to know each other. If we get along, let's see if we can do business together. There's like no pitch, right? Like hopefully my track record speaks for itself with all the creators I've worked with now. And it's to me like we don't represent a lot of creators. I think we represent 22 creators right now. Yeah. It's just,

it's more about like having a deep relationship with those creators. And then we also, we try and represent the number one or number two channel in each content vertical. And so that's, that's kind of our interesting thing with night media is like, we're not going wide. We're not just like signing a thousand creators. That's not our business model.

But with Andre, it was just a slow burn. I just liked him as a person. And I was like, I want to be close to this person if I'm going to have a business in this industry. Yeah. What was the first thing you did for Mr. Beast? other than all those phone like late night phone calls at 1 a.m.

about him talking to me about like the YouTube algorithm. The first thing I did for him was the Honey ad. I got introduced to this guy who used to be at Meandies and he had just left to go to this company called Honey. Meondies. I remember this is years ago. They partnered with Casper and Casper was one of my first clients in real estate, believe it or not. It was 2009. this guy Samir, was working in a different startup,

represented him on a deal, and then he was one of the first people at Casper. Then they IPO. I haven't talked to him in years, but yeah, and then they did a partnership with Mianties. Great company. Indirectly, yes, but not directly with Miondi's. All right, we need to get you back in the Nandis.

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Thank you so much, Editude for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast. Back to the podcast. But anyway, so Brian left to go to Honey. Met him through Twitter DMs. Again, like Twitter's like the plug to meet people. It still is today. And just had a conversation with him about Jimmy. He thought the channel was interesting.

and we inked our first Honey deal. Honestly, don't remember what the video was, but I remember the second video we did with Honey was donating $40,000 to Ninja. Ninja was doing a charity stream. And this was like 2018 Ninja when he was like bigger than life, right? Fortnite was huge. And we did a $40,000 donation to him on Twitch.

And it was like over the course of an hour, we were like donating $1,000 and $5,000. And he was playing Fortnite. And the charity stream was if you donated like $500, he had to drop his. guns. If you donate like $1,000, he had to drop all his mats. And so it was more of a game. It was like a donation game. And Jimmy ended up donating $40,000, all of which was what honey basically paid us to do that ad. And he just gave it all away. That was like the first one

that I remember. Who came up with that idea? That's got to be Jimmy, right? Jimmy, 100%. Yeah. And it started with the homeless person. Like he did a video with a quid. Do you remember that? They had like stickers, like mobile stickers. Oh, yeah. This was like three years ago. And anyway, he did a deal with quid and I can't remember what they paid him, but he gave it all away to a homeless person. And that video did well. And that kind of started that trend of just like giving away the brand money. Got it. What about the logistics behind the scene? How do you play into that? Because I know with a lot of his videos, it's so intricate. There's so many moving parts. Do you have a hand in that? I'm glad I don't. The only time I have a hand it is if they need something difficult done.

Like for, I don't know if I can say this, but we booked a massive venue last week. And they're like, hey, we need this venue for a specific video. And I was like, all right, I got it. So if I need to do something big or get a space or a celebrity or something in his videos, I'll step in. But he has a large production team now that handles logistics, pre-production, post-production. It's a little bit different machine than it was when I first met him.

Yeah. What was the weirdest request? In my life or just like from Jimmy. Let's do both. Let's start of Jimmy and in your life. Oh, man. I think the weirdest request, I mean, there's probably a few I can't talk. about just because we will have like future videos and stuff coming out.

But I think some of the weirdest requests have just been some of the celebrities we've tried to get in videos. And then what's funny about it is, well, I'll usually talk to their agent or their publicists and their kids are huge fans. That's like our in. And so this one, I won't say his name, but big name actor, contacted us. And he was like, hey, my kids really want to FaceTime with Jimmy. We're like, all right, great.

Like here's his number, do it. And we're going to need a favor from this person because we want them in a video down the road. Yeah. But I've had some interesting celebrity requests from Jimmy that I would have never thought that he wanted to have in videos. Wow. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. And we have, I mean, we film at a lot of locations. I think like the conversation that I had to have with him about, remember when he gave away an island? Yes. It's called Jeff. Anyway, like, try taking that phone call. Hey, we're going to film a video in two months. I need, we need to buy an island. Like, I was like, how do you buy an island? Like, who sells islands? Right. And so that was an

interesting phone call. Like, we need to find an island so I can give it away. And you basically just needed to do the entire part of finding the island, finding someone who's willing to sell their island and organize that. Yeah. I mean, thankfully, his cousin knew someone that knew someone that owned an island, which ended up becoming Jeff and then given away in that video. But I had absolutely no idea. And so it was just like a few days of brainstorming about like, how on earth are we going to do this? And actually, how expensive is an island? Like, is this millions of dollars? Like, we had no idea. Here's something before we go into the weirdest request of your life, but how do taxes work? Because I'm so curious if someone gets, let's say, $10,000 worth of a mystery box, are they claiming that?

Or is Jimmy paying the tax? That's a good question. So early on, we would pay most of the taxes. So if we would give away a car or something, we would always pay the taxes. Now it really depends on what we're giving away. We're pretty good about having them fill out forms, especially on PayPal. So if we're giving away X amount of money on PayPal, we'll have them fill out a 1099, so they handle taxes on their end.

But it's something that we actually used to take care of. And then we just, like, had a conversation about it. Like, hey, we probably shouldn't be paying taxes on everything we're giving away. Because if you're giving away a million dollars for the stuff, in that tax bracket, I mean, geez, you could be paying 30% of that just in tax on top of what you're giving away. Yeah. Well, did, okay, so the million dollar video, do you guys remember when they did the last to take hand off, This giant thing of money and had a million dollars in there.

And in the video, Jimmy actually did like two minutes of meeting an accountant, talking about paying your taxes, talking about being like financially responsible, then meeting a financial advisor to set aside a certain amount of money for him. And so we actually talked about that in that video. Because yeah, you give away a million dollars, 40-ish percent of that is going to just go right to Uncle Sam. Right. I did a reaction. This is actually, I think, how I got introduced to Jimmy. this was two years ago

he did a video spending a million dollars in 24 hours that was the video right after the year Yeah And so many people reach out to me Dude you got a comment on this He's blowing out of his money He's gonna go bankrupt

And I was like you know what I'm gonna actually watch this video And put a thoughtful response together And I made this video Put a thoughtful response together And I think Jimmy sent me An Instagram DM Or you know what it was

I was blown away I was just checking Instagram and randomly, I'd said, Mr. Beast is following him. Like, just as a notification. I was like, wait, what is this? I thought it was fake. So I clicked on it. It was like, it's actually him.

Like, why? I think at the time he was only following like 190 people. And so I sent him a message, and I guess he watched the video. He liked it. Yeah. Him and I talked about it. Yeah. But I was blown away.

And that video did really well. But I was so careful because I didn't want, because I knew like he had done this incredible gesture. It's like, give me a minute. I've never given away a million. So who am I to sit behind a computer and criticize this? So I was so careful and like coming off the right way and like making sure it was respectful. But like provided some humor into the situation.

But what was your thought on that? I remember watching the video and then Jimmy and I kind of had a discussion around it. The thing was we were a little worried when everyone started talking about the paying taxes and having an accountant. Because then that started the conversation on the internet of like, how much is Jimmy paying taxes? Is Jimmy paying taxes? And then I get a call from his accountant. And he's like, there's people calling me. There's people sending me emails, like asking about Jimmy.

I had no idea how people got his email address. And so it kind of just like spiraled. And people started talking about it. Remember there's like articles that came out and like business insider about Jimmy paying taxes and things like that. So that was our, I think I remember that was our initial reaction is we're like, is this going to draw light to this? And then are people going to just like start asking questions about like Jimmy's giving away all this stuff? Is he paying taxes?

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Save the everyday with Amazon. And so that's actually like what was the biggest worry of that. But it was a really well done video. Thanks. Yeah. But yeah, that was the conversation him and I had. I'm curious what were the worry about with taxes. What's the concern on that?

I mean, not really anything because we pay our taxes. Right. But we just didn't want people digging into it and like talking about it. Like we wanted people talking about the spectacle of the videos. We didn't want people talking about like, does Jimmy pay taxes on a million dollars, right? Or how does Jimmy give away all this money?

Like we just wanted people being like, wow, I can't believe he's like giving. money to homeless people and doing all this good and these videos are crazy and so we just just want people having that conversation that's interesting because uh usually that i i feel like um at a certain point people are going to look for anything and i'm sure especially with him every single piece of information he puts out there there's someone looking for like what angle could i spend this i totally agree we just had that i showed you guys that picture of john

Sina. Yeah. So Jimmy had his stock X. So you got these easies from stock X and you remember there's like a little emblem on them when you get them. It's like green and he left the that little thing on the shoes and the sneaker Reddit is on fire this morning about Jimmy leaving. So it's like every little thing people look at. I think they just think it's funny that he didn't take the tag off it. And so they're just like meaming him for it on Reddit. So it's just like every little thing is under a microscope. Got it. So you have to be super, super careful whenever he's in like. like, you know, the public eye or anything. You said he went on a podcast yesterday.

Yeah. And that you had to kind of like hyper monitor him while he was speaking on the podcast because, you know, he's under like a microscope. Yeah. I can't do much because they're filming it. Like I can, I can stand up and be like, we can't talk about that. Yeah. But yeah, he said something about a company that, you know, we didn't want out yet.

And I mean, it's out there now when that podcast comes out. So I try. We've had situations in the past where we've had to cut little snippets out of like, like a podcast that he's film because we're like, hey, we're announcing that in two weeks, and this podcast is going to come out before that. But for the most part, he's really good. He's gotten a lot better. It's just like interviewing, talking to people, not spilling information for things that we've

been working on for two years. I feel like, he just gets excited about stuff. He's like, I just want to talk about it. Yeah. He's like, I just want this out here. I know we're announcing. I'm just, you know, I'm just going to talk about it. And then I stand up and I'm like, no.

Change the subject. Is there anything you've had to say no to? Tons. Yeah, so a good example. So it was about three years or two and a half years ago and I started working with Jimmy. What was becoming really popular were these like mystery, Luke crate, like internet sites where you, it's basically like CSGO skins, but you'd go on and be like, here's the Supreme Box and you'd pay $50 for it.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, didn't write, Rice Gum did, uh, yeah, quite a few people. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they got a lot of hate for that. Jimmy was, he wanted to work with that company when he heard about it because there was a lot of money and we wanted to give that money away in a video. And I had to talk him back on it. I was like, listen, we're not promoting gambling.

I think people are going to see this negatively. So there's a long conversation that him and I had to have, which eventually we passed on the deal. And then Jake, Paul and Rice Gum ended up doing that deal and got a lot of hate for it. So we've sidestepped a few situations by just having longer conversations. Him and I have a really good relationship.

So when stuff like that comes up, like him and I just get on the phone, I hear him out, he hears me out. and we just kind of discuss what we think we should do. And we ended up passing and it was a great pass. That was a smart move to pass. Have there been other things like that where you've looked back and you're like, I'm so thankful I didn't do that?

All the time. Really? All the time. Not just like on brands, but just on like PR and appearances and yeah, all the time. How does he remain out of the spotlight for like negative controversy? Because I've noticed very little with him or pretty much nothing or anything that does come up.

I'm like, I'm usually siding with him. Like that's kind of silly, you know, taken out of context. Yeah. I mean, he just like he's in North Carolina. Like he films YouTube videos. He's not in the L.A. drama scene. He doesn't engage with drama on the internet.

And also, like, he doesn't drink. Like, we don't do any of that. Yeah. We don't really go to parties. We're not part of that crew. Yeah. And so that's how he stayed out. And he didn't do anything in the past that was wrong,

which, you know, usually people are penalized for being a 14-year-old that said something stupid. because when Jimmy became famous or started to become famous, he was 20 years old. And so, like, yeah, I mean, people say stuff that when they're 14 or 15 that they regret, but they also don't know they're going to be this internet icon when they're 20 years old. But yeah, he just doesn't have a troubled past. He doesn't really have skeletons in the closet at all. So it's not really sidestepping. We just don't have anything to hide.

I'm interested in exactly what you do with Jimmy. So you basically just see him as a company and then act as like, like branches to just to just reach out to any other business opportunity possible yeah so i mean it's again changed a lot uh it used to be like i was facilitating his brand deals which you know there's a lot and now there's five channels so brands across all five channels we have a charity channel that now is working with brands thankfully like i have other people within night media that handle that so i'm not as involved because we have a massive burger company that i have to be really involved in on a day-to-day or weekly basis on the marketing end and what are we doing for like lTO items

We have another company in the software space. You guys saw it like the finger on the app. We had the second version of that. And then we're working on another company that will be announced probably in the next 90 to 100-ish days that him and I actually have been working on for two years. Wow. It was an idea that we had like in a parking lot

and came up with a name and everything like two years ago. And so we've been working on this company that will eventually come out. So a lot of my time goes into like his other businesses talking to as publicist. I'm here with him, right? So he played in that celebrity poker tournament with you. So it's just, it's transitioned a lot from, hey, do this brand deal to, hey, I need help on everything business, right? Everything on the business.

But how do you get compensated, if I can ask, like on those different things, such as like finding the island? You don't. I mean, that's just nature of being a manager, right? You don't really make money on a lot of things you do, but you do it to provide value to that creator. I would never say no. If one of our clients called up and they were like, hey, I really need help on this. Can you guys help me?

I know you're not going to make money on it. We would never be like, no, sorry. And we also don't work with that many people for that reason. Like we like to be in the weeds in their businesses. We like to understand their pain points. And we like to identify people for them to hire that we think will help them grow. And so it's just you do those things as a manager without any just monetary upside. But that's just part of the business, right?

That makes sense. Yeah. So in terms of vulnerability. of these businesses, where do you see the future going for a lot of this? Because it seems like you could set up some of these apps as something to sell off. Yeah. Because finger on the app, do you have any idea how much that's worth? Finger on the app. Yeah, like if we were to put evaluation on that, because I would imagine, gosh, how many millions of people signed up for the app? Yeah, I mean, we had over two million downloads, 1.5 million concurrent players on the second one. I mean,

a huge, huge game. But so, but I think the only only issue a finger on the app is it's not repeatable right now. We just did it as like a spectacle on a weekend for people to play. I think if we could figure out how to turn that into like a repeatable gaming like business, then maybe it would be worth a lot of money. We're just like pretty focused on a few other projects right now. So Mr. Beasberger is I think a good example of something that him and I put a lot of work into. I think there's a massive valuation on that company as well as this other company that we're going to launch that we raise capital for. And so yeah, eventually like we either sell those companies, we go public. I think there'll be a liquidity like three, four years down the road. I'm

not sure what that's going to be yet. But that's the goal, right? That's why I work with Jimmy and some of these creators, because I think they have a really unique opportunity to build these businesses. It's all about attention, right? The world is about attention right now. And I think Jimmy is one of those people that just always has the attention on him because of his videos. And now if we can figure out how to like solve different pain points or, you know, build like a restaurant business that people actually want to consume because they believe in the person running it. Those are the things that I think are like the long term wins. Got it. Who came up with Mr. Beast Burger? And why? Why Mr. Beastberger? Yeah. So we got pitched by this company who's our partner in Mr. Beastburger. And it was just

a single restaurant in L.A. that they were opening. And we ended up passing on it. But they like lightly touched on, hey, we're also working on this virtual dining business where like you launched. And it was like at the time, they were just like you launch, you know, 100 virtual locations. It's like, wait, wait, hold on. Tell me more about that because that sounds interesting. And so we started having this conversation with them about what that would look like, how big could this get? And with everything, Jimmy, it's all about like, is it a spectacle? Like, is it big enough for people to be like, holy cow, that's amazing? Like, of course Mr. Beast did that. And so our first question was like, if we're going to do this Mr. Beastberger thing, can we launch

it day one where it's a big enough spectacle where the internet's going to be like, I can't believe he pulled this off. And so after a lot of conversations between myself and that company and our president and a few other people in Night Media, we decided that, hey, we think we should take this to Jimmy. They're confident they can launch with 300 plus locations day one. And we could have a pretty sizable restaurant business in the next 90 days, which was crazy to think about. And so when we pitched it to Jimmy, it was like, it was a no-brainer. It was like big enough spectacle. Also, we had a video idea. So it was opening the world's first free restaurant, which is like the next big thing. It's like, yeah, great idea.

How do I make a good YouTube video out of that? Because that's all he's concerned about. And so once we had those two pieces figured out, it was just sprinting to get as many locations as possible. Wow. Yeah, I was actually blown away because initially I thought it was just a bit like, not gimmicky, but that it was like a short-term thing. Like it would just be up.

You kind of talk about it. You get it once and never again. How many people now reorder? Yeah, about 40%. Wow. Yeah. I mean, the business is doing great. We have over 800 locations. I think we're closing in on 1,000, actually. We open the UK. We have a lot of locations in Canada and we're working on different countries right now. And so it was never supposed to be like just a gimmick. I think for us, we're like, we know this can be a big business. It's all about in the virtual space, like getting to scale as quick as possible. Because I think a lot of creators in the next year are going to launch like, I don't know, five. in LA. And it's fine. That's cool. But think about launching a thousand Mr. Beasburger locations. And then you can launch LTO items. We did the Mr. Dreamburger. And so now we can do all these

different collabs. We can do new menu items. We can also fulfill other items through those locations. So instead of just selling hamburgers, we could do merchandise. And people can get merchandise in 30 minutes or 40 minutes. And so there's just so many possibilities. I like that. I like that's like you know, almost have like almost like distribution center. across the world where you can, instead of someone getting a t-shirt three to four days, you know, from Shopify, we can be like, hey, we're actually going to fulfill this through Mr. Beasburger. And with your hamburger, you can also get a hat or a t-shirt.

That's cool. Are these businesses that you're building up all, like something that you're planning on selling off at some point in the future, or do you plan on just continuing to- That hasn't been the goal. Like we never started any of these businesses to be like, hey, we're going to build this and sell it. I think for us, like, especially with Jimmy, we're just like, well, let's build sustainable businesses that people care about that we think can last beyond Jimmy's just

YouTube career. And so I think eventually like we might be in a position to be like, hey, should we sell this? Should we take this public? But it wasn't something that we had thought about like when we started the business, which I think too many people do, to be honest. I think a lot of and it's like we have a venture firm and we invest in a lot of software companies. And I think one thing that I don't like is when founders talk about just like selling the business, hey, I'm starting this to sell the business. Or some of like that, I never started Night Media to sell Night Media. I started because I loved YouTube.

I love the space. I love content creators. And I think a lot of successful businesses that have been built are started by founders who are just hyper obsessed about building that product. And now it's a lot of like, hey, we see a need. We're going to build this. We're going to sprint for two years and then hopefully sell it. And that happens a lot.

But for us, that's not the goal. Yeah. Where do you see the future going for YouTube? The future, I would bet on YouTube over. I'll probably get a lot of criticism for this. I'll bet on YouTube over any social platform that currently exists over the next five years, without question. Instagram, Twitter. Not even close.

They're not even in the same atmosphere. I don't even think TikTok's in the same atmosphere as YouTube right now. Monetarily, and there's no other social platform on the internet where you can build a business right now as a content creator, like an actual business. I think you can have an Instagram with five million followers and you can do a couple sponsored posts a month. But you can't really build a massive business around that. Just think of how many YouTubers now have 10 million subscribers that have massive production companies that have multiple channels that just doesn't exist on any other platform to this day. And I just still think YouTube is just strategically in a different spot than anyone else. I see YouTube though integrating a lot of TikTok's features in terms of both YouTube shorts.

And they're really pushing that homepage where I scroll down like three videos and there's like a few things where once you click on it, it basically takes me to what I feel. like is just TikTok, except on YouTube. What are your thoughts on YouTube shifting in that direction? I mean, I think it'd be hard for them not to build that product. What's been really interesting is someone launches a product or feature and then every other social company copies them. We saw that with stories, right? And then it was like reels and I can't remember what the one on Twitter was. So everyone copies them. I think the same thing's happening right now is TikTok has grown significantly quick because of just short snippet bit videos, YouTube has no choice but to implement that.

To me, it'll be interesting to see if YouTube is just shorts in five years. And long form is just, it's hard to get to. So let me tell you, Jack, I had this conversation last night, okay? Here's my thinking. YouTube is pushing the TikTok format a lot. YouTube's smart. You're not dumb. My thinking is this, okay?

Okay. YouTube, you go on YouTube, you're watching at least like five, 10 minutes of content, let's just say. I've seen the effect of TikTok on people, including myself. I hate TikTok. Same. But I go on there, and all of a sudden I'm on there for six to 11 minutes, just endlessly scrolling.

My brain, something happens, and it's short circuits, and I'm just sitting there, just like with drool coming out of my mouth. It's like, da, da, da, da, da. And it's a great thing. I've seen what, not what it does to Macy, but I've seen how much Macy enjoys that. I would say, and maybe I'm way off here, I dare say she'll now,

she now spends more time on TikTok than YouTube. Just all the, you know what, you know what it is? It's, it's filler. That's all it is. With YouTube, I'm sitting down. Like, I'm eating something. I'm like taking time out of my day. I'm going to put it on YouTube video,

watch it. That's got my full attention. TikTok is something. I've seen from Macy. is she could literally just be like walking to the kitchen. TikTok, TikTok, TikTok, TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. Getting ready. She's getting ready, TikTok, TikTok.

And sure, there's YouTube that mixes into that. But I'm wondering if YouTube sees that people are spending more time on the app watching 30-second clips than they are a really intense 15-minute video. Yeah, that's my question. And I bet that's the direction. Is the session time higher for shorts as, you know, it is, are long-form videos? That's an interesting thing that I would like to see from YouTube.

It's a session time on an individual basis actually increasing because now, like you said, you go to the app and instead of trending button, it's now shorts. But eventually are we going to hit the YouTube app and it's just going to pull up shorts automatically? You're not even going to need to press another thing to get into it. Yeah. That is interesting. You know what? One other thing I want to mention, I don't know if it was with you or somebody else or maybe it was with you.

we talked about ridiculousness on MTV. Was that, I don't know who. I don't know if that was me. Okay. So anyway, we were talking about the success of ridiculousness and why MTV paid so much money. Rob wanted to retire from that show, and he had no intention of renewing that contract,

but MTV offered him so much money to continue for five more years and he's like, I would be stupid to turn this down. It's worth it for me to take this money. But the reason why ridiculousness did so well is because they needed good filler content in the background, where you could keep it on. You don't have to pay attention to it. You could walk out of the room for 10 minutes

and come right back and you missed nothing. You could keep it on. There's music in the background. You could be in a party, but have that on in the background. And you could pick up and leave anytime. And it's just like every 30 seconds is something new. That's the direction I think we're going,

is that filler content, where's just new, new, new, new, new, new, new. Even with YouTube, I feel like it's honestly moving in that direction where if it's not like something new, something new, something new, change, change, change. Our attention spans are blown. You've got to think about it. Like to sit down and watch 10 minutes anymore.

Like even going and watching a full-length 30-minute TV show, like that doesn't happen anymore without pulling out your phone. And like the boring spots, you're just like scrolling something else. Right. It's mind-blowing. That's the direction I think we're going. It is interesting. But what is more valuable?

Like if you have a lot more people watching TikTok or whatever and more time spent on that than on YouTube, like could YouTube still be more valuable because of the relationship that the consumers build with the creators? Because you can build, like you said, businesses and stuff off of YouTube, but on something like TikTok, it's not very valuable to be scrolling and not to be developing relationships with the creators. And it's just like something that your mind. You're saying it's like a TikTok creator versus a YouTube creator? Well, obviously YouTube creator is more valuable, but for a business model, right? Like even if you do have more people spending time on TikTok versus YouTube theoretically, wouldn't YouTube?

YouTube still be more valuable because you can make more money off of it. You can do more, like you said, build businesses and stuff. Yeah, I mean, that's my bet, right? That's why I think TikTok's great and a lot of our clients use it. I would just rather they focused all of their time on YouTube, right? And that's been what, I mean, you guys have seen like what our roster looks like. It's all YouTube creators. Like we don't represent really any native TikTok creators.

Yeah, you can't really monetize TikTok. Here's what I'm thinking, okay? Here's my thought. For the creator, YouTube is 100 times better. Yeah. But I think if you look at what you get as a company, I think as a company, you could be more valuable with just that quick, short,

for content, but as a creator, it's way more valuable to have the long-form content. So it just depends. And here's what I think, too. Imagine instead of, like, the top 10 creators make an 80% of the money. Instead, it's reversed. It's 80% of the creators make 10% of the money.

And maybe that business model is going to be better in the long term. So as a creator, imagine I earn a hundredth, but I share that with a bazillion other creators who are all making a hundredth, and we each contribute our little 20 seconds into, you know, every day, 20 seconds, 20 seconds, 20 seconds, but we share that split among a bigger group. A lot of the creators that I know are transitioning from TikTok to YouTube, and a lot of the YouTube creators I know are struggling transitioning from YouTube to TikTok. It's true. Because they don't see any point.

So I feel like just as you're right, yeah. Just send everyone to YouTube. And the creators are, I mean, that's... They're doing so well. But yeah, I would agree with Jack, it's so hard for me to get into TikTok. I tried and, God, I hate it. I really do. Even with YouTube shorts, everyone has told me to do YouTube shorts,

but I'm like, I just, I like the long-form content. And everyone knows it's good for you too. Like, everyone knows TikToks are good for creators, but no one wants to transition. And the reason why you need to do shorts is because it's really good for discoverability. Right? It's like new audience on YouTube is tough. Like to get, I mean, I know Jimmy's gaining like two million subscribers a month, but that's like really tough to get to.

The discoverability of YouTube shorts is why you need to be there, right? You need to look at it as like top of funnel, right? If I can, if I, in the big conversation is actually, do you put it on your main channel or do you create another channel? I think that's the conversation. It would need to be another channel. Why do you say that? Do you think because it would hurt your algorithm?

I do. I think it would destroy the algorithm that, I feel like I've spent so much more. crafting this algorithm that works for the main channel. And people are accustomed now to three videos a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, they know the time. And throwing in more, I personally, like, I look at this where I get upset when I see shorts.

I don't know why. When I'm in my subscription feed and I see a short, I'm like, that's taking a valuable space that I'm not interested in. Yeah. I don't mind if it's within the shorts section of the app because then I'm looking for it. But otherwise, it's like, you know,

you're walking down the street and there's like a big stone in the middle of the way. I'm like, you know, if I want to start, I go hiking. It's in my path. So I don't like it. So if I don't like it, I feel like other people wouldn't appreciate it either. I think as a new channel, I don't care.

You're exactly right. And I spoke to a lot of creators about this, and they'd say the exact same thing. But what I think is coming is you're going to be able to upload a YouTube short to your main channel and you're going to be able to categorize it, whether it's a short or it goes to your long form video feed. Right. And so when you upload a short to your main channel, it's not going to show up on your video feed. It's just going to get sent directly into shorts. And I think that's when, like, you and some of these bigger channels can take advantage of it. Because I totally get it.

I don't want to follow someone. And then my subfeed, which I actually don't really click on. I just go to home page. But then it's just littered with their shorts videos because they're uploading three a day. I've unsubscribe from those channels. And it takes a lot for me to unsubscribe. But when I see a channel that I'll watch once a month, but they're posting every day a short. And it's just, it's more for me to sift through every day.

And I'm just trying to hone in on the content I really want to see. Yeah, but it is working. If they found a way to do that, yeah. So a good example is Lanky Box, who's a client of ours, and they were big before YouTube shorts. They were doing like 500 million views a month on YouTube shorts. They implemented, or just on, without YouTube shorts. They implemented YouTube shorts in their main channel,

and they're now doing 2.5 billion views a month. So it's incredibly valuable from like a new audience growth perspective. And they've gained like 1.5 million subscribers last month, but it clogs up their feet because they're posting three shorts a day. I'm curious two things. One, what does the revenue look like on that, on a short? Right now, YouTube has the shorts fund. And so you basically cash in a shorts fund.

You go into your dashboard and then YouTube's paying people out to create shorts, basically. So there's no like CPM model yet. And I don't know if we'll get there in the next year. I think YouTube's got to figure out like, okay, how are we running ads on YouTube shorts for each individual creator? Not like how Snapchat does it, where they're like running ads. in between each clip. Yeah. Right?

Susan, you really don't know how to, like, which creator are you paying? Yeah, the other question I had, what is the conversion between the type of person who wants to watch a short versus the long-form content?

Because if it is a funnel, I would say, just thrown out of numbers here, maybe 85, 90% of the people who subscribe for shorts are not necessarily interested in watching a 15-minute video. They just want more shorts.

So it seems like you're building out two divisive audiences that each want something different. Yeah, that's the big question. And that's the question the YouTube channels that are just creating shorts are going to have to answer and figure out is if I'm building an audience that's just here for YouTube shorts. And I've seen YouTubers that I'm sure you have now, they're doing like 500 million views a month just doing shorts, right? The big question is like, how do you create long form content on that channel? And when you do upload a video that's like eight minutes long, is anyone going to watch it? Or are they just there for shorts? And it's a battle that a lot of creators are fighting right now because they're not making any money. You pull forward. 500 million views a month. You don't really make any money. So you want to upload long form videos so you can actually run ads. And a lot of these channels are really struggling. They'll pull, they'll do like a million views per short. And then they'll upload an eight minute video that will get 20K views. Yeah. And so that's, that's the question is like how do you, if you're,

if you're bringing in this audience, are they converting to watch your long form videos? Are they just there for your shorts? I have a couple of questions like, first off, why doesn't Jimmy start a podcast? And second off, do you believe that a creator can over expose themselves? on social media and that they could put out so much content that people aren't as excited for when they do post. For example, for me with David Dobrick, he posts once a week, or Michael Reeves or Idubs. They post so rarely. Idubs. But when they do post, it's like, it's so exciting because you haven't seen them in such a long

time and you are just that thrilled to watch their content. But someone else who like, for example, we put out, I don't even know, like nine videos a week. It's like, do our, the people that consume our content, are they less excited to watch our content? Does it overall like negatively affect our video or our performance? Is there like a curve to this? I mean, would you watch, if David Dobrick uploaded three vlogs a week, would you watch all three? Yes. That's it.

You're right. I mean, if David uploaded a vlog, if David Dobrick uploaded a vlog a day, like I would watch his four-minute vlog every single day. Do you watch his content? Yeah, of course. I mean, he's great, right? So it's true. And let's just look at another example.

So like Gary Vee, I think is a good example of like just content. Spam. It's everywhere. And he's done a really good job of building his brand. Like, everyone knows who Gary is, but Gary posts a lot. But here's the thing. Gary is an example where I feel like he did too much. And he was, again, I like Gary's content, but he was one of the first people I unsubscribe from because he posted so much.

And sometimes it's like two to three times a day. Meet Kevin is the only one where he'll post like three times a day and I watch all of them. I watch like 90% of his videos. But it's like business up there. So I'm interested. But you're also not Gary's like fan base, right? Like you don't need his motivation.

You don't need that stuff. Right. But I feel like his view to subscriber ratio is not that good. Some of this videos get like 19,000, 20,000 views and he's got like three million subscribers. So you think that it could be just because his quality is suffering by like, you know, I think it's too similar. That's the only thing. You think so?

I think it's very similar content every day. Whereas David Dobrick, if he was able to do three times a week, it would be so unique. He did in the past. He did. He used to upload three times a week. Yeah. And they were still very good vlogs.

But he again, he's like, it's very difficult for me to get three good vlogs a week. I mean, Jimmy only uploads two a month, right? We would love to upload eight videos a month. Didn't he used to upload once a week? We did. I mean, it's like, it's been like a giant roller coaster of trying to upload once a week. It's just the videos have gotten so out of control that it's hard to film like, what was the latest video week?

Let's just take like, spending 50 hours buried. alive, right? It's hard for Jimmy to like prep for that video, get buried alive for 50 hours, come out of that coffin that's 10 feet underground and then film another video two days later. So it's like when these videos start to get this crazy, it's really tough to consistently film every week. Do you ever feel like he's taking it too much to an extreme in the sense that like every video he has to find a way to top it? Like I feel like he can't go down from this. It's like you're at the top. you have to keep building higher. Yeah.

Is there ever a point where you feel like how crazy, like at what point do we realize, like we can't top this? Yeah, I mean, I've seen the, you know, videos ideas that he has down going forward. Yeah. And they're crazier than they are now. So at least for the next couple of years, like I don't see the videos going down at all. Can you give us a few ideas?

You kill me. Yeah, really? No way. Because they have to hit, they have to hit YouTube and you guys have to be like, holy cow how did this video happen sure right i think there's one of those videos coming up next month you're going to be like i again like i don't know how jimmy did this and he talks about it on logan paul's podcast actually because we he filmed it a couple days ago yeah um he's actually spending when's this come out this will be a week from today about a week yeah i don't know if i can talk about

well you'll see it when it comes out um so i'm not sure when logan's podcast is coming out um but when you see the video title you're going to be like i don't understand how he pulled this off like why would he even put himself through this suffering at this point in his life. And again, I've seen a lot of the video ideas. Like, it gets bigger. Everything's getting bigger. Now, I've noticed he's expanded and really brought on a team on his channel. Was that strategic?

Because it's gone from really just him to now he's got, you know, Carl and he's got everyone else in the group. Yeah. He's always, you know, when I met him, it was him in front of a computer donating to Twitch streamers. But Chris was always there. And so we just expanded. the talent a little bit.

And it's been more of like making it a crew of people that like some people show up to watch Carl. Some people show up for Chandler. And it's like the dynamic between all those guys. And then also a lot of our videos are challenges that involve a lot of people. Like hide and seek, for example. We need like eight people to play hide and seek. Right.

And so you have to have those crew of characters in your videos. And so it's taken a long time to find people. And to be honest, a lot of them had different jobs at his production company, like in internally and then they've been like, hey, this guy's actually really funny. Like, let's try him out in a video. And then they turn into Carl Jacobs. Right. So it's just like we're continually looking for talented people to be on the channel.

Got it. No, but is that strategic in the sense that like if Jimmy wants to step back, he's still got a team of people who have an audience who could continue moving a whole brand forward? Yeah. I don't think he'll ever not be the main talent on the channel. Okay. I think that's a conversation that, you know, a lot of YouTubers are going to have to have like, Dude Perfect. Like what happens when Dude Perfect no longer wants to be in the videos, right? I don't know.

Jimmy, I think, is like five to seven years away from that decision. But he'll always be like the guy, the number one guy, like the reason people come. And then we have all these other like funny characters in his like ecosystem of that video. Got it. I want to ask you a question about our vlog. We have a vlog called the Stafamily down below in the description. We have been, I don't want to say struggling. Struggling. We've been struggling. Yeah, I would say struggle.

It's, we got off to, I think, a false start that gave us a lot more confidence. The first vlog we posted got like 100,000 views just like right off the bat. The second vlog we posted, 100,000 views. And we're trying to find out how to do this in a way that's sustainable. And we've gone back and forth. You know, right now we're posting an 8 to 10 minute video once a week. Okay. But I was thinking once a week isn't enough.

So we need to do twice a week. So then my idea was let's post shorter videos like four to five minutes twice a week and just spread it out, you know, mid a week. But then the average view duration goes down significantly. And we're noticing less views on a shorter video than a longer video. But then we're also struggling with where do we find the time to do stuff for the channel. Jack and Alex want to do content that I think is, I'll say, is immature like putting a whole bunch of rubber ducky in the pool. Putting a whole bunch of rubber duggies in the pool.

I'm like, yeah. They're trying to pull views though, right? Like, people want to see that. My thought, but that's not sustainable. My thought was, yes, it is. It's only sustainable if you start making enough money in your eyes, right? It's like if the brand, if this the family can start making enough money where it makes sense to do that kind of stuff, then it's sustainable to you. But just because it doesn't make money right now doesn't mean that it's not sustainable.

And also, let me ask you a question. How long did it take you to get a million subscribers, right? That's like five years? No, no, two, two to three years, two and a half years. Okay, well, anyway, that's a long period of time, right? Yeah. So it's like, I think everyone now thinks that they can just launch a new YouTube channel and it's going to be successful.

It takes time to like build and, because you're really building a new audience for that channel. Because I would imagine a lot of people that watch your actual channel don't go to that side channel to watch you guys fill rubber ducks or watch a, you fill a pool with rubber ducks, right? They won't learn about stock market, real estate, at least me. Like I watch your channel. I don't know if I'd watch this to family if it was like for, you know, 12 year olds, depending on what you guys are doing. See, but I don't know if that's the audience I want.

Like I thought a vlog about like the behind the scenes of both running the channel, the dynamic between all of us here at the house, doing some fun stuff here and there. And that's like the first few vlogs are my favorites because they were like, Jack and I trying to do a thumbnail. And it's me on top of the roof of the Ford GT. Try not to break the car while there's a drone hovering above. and I'm trying to like that for a thumbnail and like stuff like that. But I don't know if I want to film rubber duckies.

People are going to get bored of that. If you if you film our everyday life and stuff like that and the behind the scenes of Graham's main channel content creation, we are section like we're basically. There's so much of that though on YouTube like behind the scenes like of videos. Yeah. There's just there's so many channels like that. And we're only pulling from our audience of your channel. And the reason I feel like the best reason why we should. creative vlog is so we can diversify our content to go to a whole different audience because right

now we are in the personal finance niche you know and i feel like it is important to try to break free of that so we can be a little more diverse on youtube why do you guys want to break free from that you because you're it like you're the biggest channel in that vertical yeah my thinking is how long could i be in front of the camera three times a week making videos and finance as long as i can is the answer but at a certain point i know this is just going to be something where it's like i want to something new. And I think if I could build up a vlog channel big enough, then I could start doing some other stuff that I've wanted to do, like traveling. And then I could vlog the entire thing, turn it into travel, van life, stuff like that. Van, Graham stuff and Van. Yeah, Van Life. I think

would be really cool. Oh, yeah, that'd be good. So I'd watch that. Yeah. So why isn't that the channel? The Van Life? Yeah. We can't do that yet. Not yet. So my thought was it like by the time I want to start scaling back in the main channel. So I had maybe three a week. I'm going down to like one a week or something like that. Going and traveling, doing other stuff, but then the vlog channel is going to be big enough where we could start transitioning over to that. Did you ever think that if you potentially build up the vlog channel in that way by putting rubber duckies in the pool and then you all of a sudden switch it up and you're like, well,

guys, we're transient people and we're going to be traveling now, you think that that would have an impact on views like because what if you build it up to millions of stuff? Yeah, but that's why I don't want to do rubber duckeys. Because I want this to be a mature audience who could appreciate travel. So then start traveling now and start your travel channel. If that's what you want. I also think that I'm not ready to step back on that. I also think you could upload less and you'd pull more views per video or you'd pull the same amount of views per month by uploading one video less.

I don't disagree with that. I think that's an interesting. One video less a month or a week? A week? I don't disagree with that at all. I've had this conversation with so many creators that were that used to do like five videos a week. And they've now scaled back to two to three. And they actually pull more views per month than they did when they were up on five.

I've noticed three seems like the sweet spot. And I'll tell you, there's a few other channels in the finance space that have uploaded three and gotten out of two. And you see the views half. But you just need to make better videos. They make great videos. But if you're filming less videos per week, then those two videos you post per week have to be exponentially better because you're only posting two. That's how you have to think about it. I don't know if those videos could be exponentially better because I feel like the three I do.

Maybe with the exception of maybe like one every other week is like kind of just I'm trying to rush it out. But most of them I put everything I have into those videos. So I'd like in my mind, I don't know how I could possibly make those videos any better. Yeah. I'll be honest. But if you had more time to think about those two videos because you didn't have to worry about a third. Do you think it would change? No, because sometimes I have to get those videos out so fast.

Like I'll tell Jack the day before I'm like there's a topic that. If this happens, I got to get this video out. So I'll plan the whole video ahead of time. Just in case that thing happens, I have a whole outline that'll wake up early, film, edit, get it out the same day. Yeah. Well, I mean, back to the vlog channel.

I don't know. If you want the same audience on your regular channel as the vlog channel, I just think you guys need to think a little bit more about, like, what is a 35-year-old want to watch on a second channel? I think with the vlog channel, it would make sense to post a little bit less. Because a lot of the times, we don't go out of our way so much to create great content.

And because of that, you just see a slow decline on views. Like although subscriber growth is like it's continuing to grow, I mean, slower granted, the views are continuing to decline because the content, we're just not putting as much thought into it. That's, it's a simple as that. So what's your recommendation? Because my thought is we need a schedule and I like having that schedule. Like every Tuesday at 10 a.m. we post a vlog no matter what.

we could just say when we get enough content, we'll both the vlog. Are we talking about the new channel? The Svla family. Yeah. Family. The Ska family. The scufufel family. Yeah, first of all, we need a new name.

We need a name change on the channel. You don't like the Stafanley? No, no, honestly, listen, if you didn't like it, I would be, yeah. I would seriously. I would change it right now. I would seriously be open to changing it. It definitely doesn't say, hey, Graham Steffin's in this channel, right? Like, I would never see that and be like, oh, that's, you know.

I thought Graham Steffin's. And Stiff family. Yeah, that's like that was. Did you not get that? That was a big miss. I think we got renamed the channel. But anyway, that's a- You know what?

I'm good with that. I'm good. So I'm- Stefan vlogs? I got to think about it. I can't throw like something out here and then you guys rename and I'm like, I absolutely hate that.

But let's be clear, you do not like the name the Stiff family. I absolutely do not like it. That works for us. Okay. That's enough for me. If you guys would have said, hey,

there's this channel called This is the family. What do you think that they make? And I'd be like, it's probably some family, like the ace family that like makes like cringy, like family videos. That was the initial idea.

It was like kind of like joke on that, those types of channels. And that's why we called it this the family. But see, I guess, no, I never, I didn't even know that.

What? That's what I thought this whole time. Dude, that was being serious. In the first vlog, we were like, welcome back to the stuff family. Because I thought we were making,

that I always making fun. That's because I always intro like, welcome back to this to family. Like that's how I was, but that's the joke. But the name itself, I was serious. The name. All right. We got some creative differences.

We got to settle. Thank you. I'm glad. Okay. No, I'm good. We'd settle this. If we get anything for today, let's change the name of the vlog channel. Yeah, but the more important thing is the content.

What was the question? You wanted to know if, like, he uploaded less. You guys could do more to, or you said that you guys are pulling less views now. Correct. Still uploading three videos a week. I think I know. No, no, no, no. The vlog channel is once a week.

Yeah. We did twice. a week, but with shorter videos, and we noticed no difference in views, no difference in ad revenue. Watch time went down significantly. When you guys make switches like this, it takes time, right? You can't like give it a week or two weeks. It's not a big enough use case to be like, hey, did this work or not? That's true. You have to commit to it. You have to be like, we're going to do this and we're going to commit to it for four months. And at the end of four months, like, let's see what happens because what usually happens is like a content creator will make a pivot for a week

and they're like oh my views dropped and then they'll go back to doing the same thing where I've seen a lot of our clients like do that and then I've convinced them to be like just give it like two to three months and they've seen the same decline and then all of a sudden the rest it's shot up right and but they don't give it enough time to see if that change actually makes a difference interesting okay See, I guess the hard part for me is that Like, I feel like I could only allocate so much time to everything And like the main channel is my priority. That comes over everything.

Like, that's the bread and butter. I'm not sacrificing anything on that. So the main channel is it. Right after I'm done with the main channel, my second priority, the second channel. So no matter what, it's then it's the second channel. After that, then it's the podcast. This. Get this out of the way.

This is fine. I would say the lowest thing on the totem pole is probably the vlog channel. Just because there's so many other things I can't dedicate to the time. Because otherwise it literally will take away from something else. Yeah. Well, you upload a video. So you upload three times a week at the same time, same day. Main channel.

Well, you upload a video that like you're just like, eh, it's not very good. But we still got to upload. Yes. But I make everything good enough for at least I would be happy to post it. Yeah. I've never posted a video where like, I hate this video. It sucks. I don't want to post it.

I'm just going to post it anyway. Every video is like, it's not my favorite. It's a boring topic to me. But sometimes those are the ones that do the best. Side hustles. Side hustles and passive income. Those are the videos for me. I hate them.

I hate making these videos. But they do the best. People love them. It's the best like ratio. They get the most views. Almost every passive income video gets over a million views. But I hate making them. But people love it.

Yeah. I can see how that would be really popular on your channel. Oh yeah, but it's the same stuff. So, but sometimes like every video will reach a new audience. So my current audience will be like, that's a passive income, whatever. But every new video is just like, oh, here's this audience over here who needs a new video posting last week on passive income. This is what we're going to recommend to that group of people. So they all reach a completely new audience.

I think like you're in such a unique position because the YouTube audience that, like me that has been watching now for seven, eight years is older. Yeah. And now a lot of my cousins that were nine years old that started with Dude Perfect are now 17. And they're like on their way. They're like they watch Mr. Beast. But when they become 25, they're going to find your channel. And so as the YouTube audience gets older and older and older, your audience is just going to continue to go up. Yeah.

So I think it's just like doubling down on making the best videos possible for the main channel. And the like Ska family channel. I'm not sure. I need to watch the video. videos. It seems like a cool side project. I just think you guys need to figure out what the hell of the content is. Yeah. You know what? I mean, after after talking, I would be okay. First of all, changing the name. I'd be good with that. And then maybe we just vlog stuff. And when we post a vlog, it's special. And that's what it is. Yes. I agree with that. That's what Alex and I haven't talked about.

Yeah. And that's what we've been trying to mention to you. I am such a, I'm such a stickler for a schedule. Because like the second channel, every, all of the channel, we have such a schedule we're like down to the minute every video for years so to do something where it's like you just posting on a whim it's weird for me i i despise more than anything posting bad content or content i myself would not like to watch and sometimes when we put out those to family videos it's like i'm just thinking to myself like see now you get it you like no you know no it's not that no it's the you said this to family and now now i can't get this out of him and this scuff family maybe you should rename it to Scuff family. Yeah, the scuff family. That might be better. The scuffs family. That's, well, you know what? Honestly, it takes a huge load off my mind mentally, but not worrying about that blog. Seriously, I've, because every time we're like, you also need to put it in more effort in it. It's like the amount of effort. It's like, maybe I'm not thrilled on it. Maybe it tried it. It was fun when I, when it was just like behind the scene stuff where it was just like I felt it was natural. I enjoyed it. But when I'm putting effort into something, it's taken away from other stuff. Maybe it's, I guess we have a different.

idea. It's like I enjoy filming stuff for this to family. Like if we go and we do something silly or stupid or fun, but then we can film it organically. Yeah, but with this to family, it gives us a reason to go and do those things. But if we don't have that, we won't go out of our way to like do fun things. What do you think? Be your, be our moderator. No, I think that I love you guys having more channels. I think I just need to understand like what the videos are. Like when you say experiences, like, are you guys going to certain places to experience or like, because I, the rubber ducky example is like we're just filling the pool with rubber ducks and then it's like a prank video right right yeah so like what's going out of our way to do like big bigger things uh that are fun

and exciting for the reason of filming it you know like i've also had a few ideas i should chair by the way is making the sound no that's not my chair i guarantee you it is i thought i thought a duck was flying overhead no i swear that's not the chair See, this is I swear it's not. I would hear it. It's not the chair. I wanted this family. Anyway, stuff like this.

Another thing that I struggle, and maybe this is just me, like, I feel like we also need like at least a little bit of a budget. Graham doesn't let me spend any money on this. Shocker. Like I wanted to. Can't believe that. Yeah. Like I like I tried to get him to play poker the other night. He was like, I did.

Because I knew I was throwing my money away. I knew that. I gave it to Jimmy. He took all my money. Did he really? Yeah, he did. Oh, I went,

because he blocked. Yeah, his strategy, by the way, before we go to this, his strategy is bluffing 60%. That was it. You heard that,

right? I did not move. But you heard that. I heard it. Yeah. It sounded like you came from that side of the room. Yeah.

Look. Are you stepping on Ramsey? Like, what is the... Oh, could it be the table? Move the table. That's it.

Is the mic? Are the mics picking? Yeah, the table. But it was you. So you don't have a budget for the channel. Yeah. So the whole rubber ducky idea came about because the whole video concept was I filled my boss's pool with rubber duckeys.

And I didn't want to tell him what it was. I was like, Graham, can you trust me on this? Can you give me a few hundred bucks to like, Matt, you know, buy some. No, it was not a thousand. And, you know, he doesn't want to give me any sort of budget. Not even, you know, a few hundred bucks. You know, I'm not going to like spend the whole. Do you want me to give you the $100?

How much money do you need? Probably about $700. I was like, $700 to $700. I was like, well, $1,700 to $700. No, it was like, I estimated it to be like no more than $500. Is the video going to do well? We haven't tried. Well, because he...

No, it was like surprising my boss like with something like that. So ideally it would be a surprise. We have other surprises we want to do, but it does require funding. And we just know for a fact that. Yeah, we're going to need to put aside a budget for this channel if we're doing this. Yeah. But do you like the idea? I mean, it sounds fine.

My only worry is like you're building a new, from my perspective, you're building a new audience because I don't think your fans will watch this show. Yeah. Right. So, yeah. Let's just take the Jimmy example, right? Main channel starts a gaming channel. We're like organic. His fans are going to watch them play Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, whatever.

Does a React channel. We're like, we're confident his fans are going to watch the React. channel. So we're like remonitizing is the same fans over multiple channels. And yes, there's a new fans for certain channels. But for the most part, he was confident that, hey, all my fans are going to watch my videos on these four to five channels, right? Or it's like my, my like concern is your main channel is all about like, let's say, financial literacy. And now you're doing like this like prank, pseudo family, the boys channel. I don't think there's a crossover. I agree with that. But I don't think that there is a way we can orient this to family into being like...

Well, you just got to pivot the content. It needs to be a different channel that has an overlap. What would you recommend? Because I agree with you. The second channel, I was confident people would see me react to finance content. The podcast, 100% was confident. People want to see an hour long video would watch it. Everything. This to family is the only one where I felt they would, a smaller portion would want to see the behind the scenes. But yeah, we just have to figure out another content vertical that appeals to an older audience, right? Like, I think in my mind, it's like cooking appeals to an older fan base, travel, things like that.

So I think it's just, you have to think about what's, and I don't know what your average fan is. I'm guessing 30, right? I would say probably 18 and the low end of 35, hiring. Okay. Yeah, so what to 18 to 35 year olds watch? I don't know, not the Ace family. You know what?

It probably honestly is Van Life Travel. Really? I love that idea. I think it's living vicariously. I think, you know what it is? It's doing all the things that you wish you could do. And you can all, in those videos, you can also talk about the budget, right? Of like, how much money do we spend on this?

Like, how do we keep, like, these costs low? So I think there's a little bit of overlap between the two channels on the budget of, like, traveling and having unique experiences on a low budget. You know, it would be a good one? Like, staying in Shelby Church's new, um, Airbnb. Yes. You could do like the five things you can do for less than, a thousand, the five experiments, experiences you can have for less than $5,000, stuff like that.

Yeah. I like that. And then you guys can do your funny stuff. Yeah. Right? Because you can do an experience where you're going to the world's largest, I don't know, string of cheese. That's like 200 bucks to get in, right?

So you could do like stupid experience. Like it could be a humorous channel. That's out of the budget. Back into like spending money. I like that a lot. Yeah, 200 bucks is out of the budget. The ones that did take off in the beginning were like, we're like more finance related, like the $40,000 aquarium, like, you know, buying a new car.

Like the finance. That was on the Ska family? Yeah. Oh, I need to see the channel first. Okay. But let me look at it. But I think that should be the channel. I honestly, I like that.

And then we could spend money and experiences like buying a $50 hamburger or something like that, like trying. Do you like that? The world, yeah, the world's cheapest hamburgers or the world's, yeah. Listen, you could probably put 100 ideas down now that you kind of have a framework for the channel. But just, again, you want it to appeal to the fan base that you already have, right? At least at the beginning, because you guys are like, we want to pull views. We're only doing 50K views a video.

It's because nobody that, you know, watches your other videos cares. Yeah. I like that. Honestly, this is so insightful. Yeah. And for that, would you recommend stick and do a schedule and doing that? Or would you recommend, be honest, or just when we, we have time, we'll post a good episode.

I would rather you guys start like that and be like when we post, it's going to be an amazing video. Okay. Not like, hey, let's force out two videos a week. Right. Yeah. Jack. Okay.

Let's just, just real quick. Thank you. I got to say, this has given me this last like 15 minutes more clarity on that channel because that channel has, of my stress level, I would say that channel is up there with the main channel. Believe it or not. Really? Why?

Because I have to think about like fitting. it in. Where can I fit it in? What do I have to take a little? I don't fit in it in. I don't spend any time anyways. Because I think about it because it takes up my mental capacity. Also, you guys are in Vegas. We're in Las Vegas right now. You know how many videos you can film like experiment, like experience videos for like certain amounts of money or expensive? I know you're going to need a budget like what. Like what? Like you give us some. Like the helicopter. Like there's a hundred helicopters flying around Vegas last night. That's a really unique experience experience for under, I don't No, it's not $700.

It's $500 if you want to, I owe them a helicopter. $500. Yeah. So it's like those things you guys need to take advantage of. And then you get to be, the boys can go on the helicopter. You're filming the video. People know how much money it is. Yeah.

You know, that stuff. I like it. I got to say, I like it. That, uh, wow. Okay. So what, what else is your advice for us or for me or for the channel? Do you have a general advice for the brand? Yeah, just general life advice or like, uh, what do you, what do you think?

I'm 32. Really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. You're older than I thought you were. There we go. That's yeah.

Yeah, you know what? You could pass anywhere from 26. That's what people always tell me. You look younger, but you act older. I'm a millennial. Yeah. Like I'm like at heart, I'm a Gen Z. I'm a Zoomer.

Yeah. Yeah, you could look like you could honestly pass for like you just turned 21. Yeah. But I think it's like it's how I dress. It's how I talk. It's what I work in. Like I totally get it. Yeah.

That's good. Yeah, that's complex. But general advice, like, I don't know. I think hopefully, like, my conversation we just had about this whole side channel helps. I think if I was you, I would be doubling down on making the best videos possible for the main channel. Because I'm telling you in the next three years, you're going to find a lot of new fans. Okay. People just aging up to your content.

And you have to be the guy. You have to be the financial literacy guy, whether it's crypto, real estate, investing, whatever. You have to be the guy in that space. Got it. And so when people age up and they're like, hey, I'm 25, I now, like, didn't learn anything in college. I don't know how to invest my money. I don't know what to do in real estate.

They shouldn't even think of any other YouTuber. It should just be out of Graham's up. And if I'm getting to the point where I'm like, not burnt out, but getting overwhelmed with three a week or just like, then it's just go to two a week. Yeah. Okay. Take it down.

I mean, yes, would Jimmy pull more views per month? month if he uploaded six videos as opposed to three yes but he's still averaging 60 million views per video right so the bar is still incredibly high so you're saying that i would still add most likely still average the same amount of views but i would just be well and i also think per video yeah the question is like um at at some point do the view does it matter if you're pulling 25 million views a month or 40 million views a month like in the in the in the in the whole like grand scheme of like money does it actually matter? Like is your personal like happiness and mental health more important than an extra X amount

of money? Yeah. Right. Because again, I think I don't even think the 10 to 15 million views per month matters. I think you're so uniquely positioned to win in this space on YouTube that now it's just continuing to like make good videos and you not burning out. Got it. I guess for me my biggest, I know we're kind of going off a little bit.

My biggest fear is that I need that sort of. to schedule and I know as soon as I skill back I can't ramp back up it seems like you have a lot going on you have now you have the you know this family and you have all these like channels and side projects you still invest in real estate right you got to like have a prioritization list and then the bigger question is like when you make that list is like are these two things at the bottom important enough for me to put any time into or should we just kill them yeah right because like your mental health you're the most important thing and especially that the main channel is the priority is then you know a lot of the works just going to continuing the main channel at the highest level without you taking a hit

on your mental health okay yeah i think this is a family unless i think we just post if we have a good concept a good video we should we should probably try to post twice a month on that sure yeah i agree with it just a good video for fun but uh all right Alex you good with that it frees up Alex this time now yeah yeah but it had you do in some other stuff it has to be like a great video yeah i agree Go to Pond Stars and talk to them about their business. And, like, I don't know. I would just have to think about it a little bit. But you guys are in Vegas.

Like anything's possible. All right. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you. It was great meeting you. I feel like we had a good, like, business meet. Like, I feel like, I feel a little hype now. It's like, yeah, me too, honestly.

That's my, I'm a professional hype man. I'm in the business management, YouTube, or space. Thank you so much. Oh, and then I also, I got to give you some bankroll coffee before. Do you have room in your bag? I ordered, so we did the podcast. And I ordered a bunch and it came into the Dallas office, but I'd already moved to Austin.

I was like hoping that I would catch it on the day that it came in, but now all my employees just absolutely destroyed it. So it's all gone. I'll give you more bags. Yeah, yeah. Congrats on that as well. You too much creating products. Like it's just, we're not even at first base yet.

I love it. And we're doing one with Kevin. He wants 1337 coffee. So we're releasing that in support of him running as governor. So it's like elite. So that should be for sale very, actually by the time this goes up, It's going to be for sale, and then all the profit that we make from that, like basically all the proceeds, go to support his cause.

Nice. Okay. I'm into it. Cool. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you guys so much for watching. So, Reed, we'll put all of your information down below in the description where you could also get your free stock that's now worth all the way to $1,000. When you sign up for public, all you got to use the code gram. That's it. Enjoy the free stock. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thanks for me. Okay. Until next time. Welcome back to the Ice Coffee Hour. My name is Reed and whatever you want to say. Okay.