The Iced Coffee Hour - The Ultimate Side Hustle | Inside The Millionaire Empire Of FroKnowsPhoto

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

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Welcome back to the iced coffee hour. I'm Jared Pullen from fronosphoto.com. And this podcast has made $227,000, $227,000 and $12. Close. $190,000. That's the closest one we've had yet, actually. All right. Good.

That was better than what my first guest was going to be. It was going to be about $137,000, but I'm like, two years, roughly, a little more. Nice. Thanks so much. for making it out, man. We really appreciate it. Yeah. No problem. This is also the latest podcast we have ever filmed. It's 10, 15 p.m. on a Friday night. We really appreciate it.

Friday night in Vegas? This is what we do. Have you seen my room? No. So, it's at the Rio. Okay. Which is not, it's an older hotel. Yeah, you're getting a good deal. I don't put it down. No, I didn't pay for it though.

Oh, okay. That's the perks of being, uh, making connections. But they have villas over there. Okay. The Palazzo suite. I think it's like four or five thousand square feet. There's five bathrooms. There's four showers and they all have saunas in them. There's two hot tubs, one on each balcony.

It's stupid. But you have that all to yourself? Yeah, it's just me. One backpack and a roller bag with camera gear. Who gave you this from? The Caesar's people. I reached out and this is how I've done a lot of things. You ask.

And it's not the typical, I'm an influencer, give me free shit stuff. It's, hey, I'm coming to town. I asked a friend and they connected me with these people. And they have a whole influencer department. They're like, oh, well, where would you like to stay? I'm like, well, the thing that I'm doing is over by the Rio. And they're like, that's perfect. Well, we'll see what we can do.

And they're like, here's a villa. And it's massive. It's the coolest thing. So what do you have to do in return for that? I did some Insta stories. And just for fun, I'll make. a crib style video they're not paying me yeah it says it's a $15,000 nightroom 15,000 dollars now that's what they say you know that's how they say it

and no one pays that though because now gamblers yes for the high rollers or the concierge lady was like well for celebrities like you I'm like I'm so I make YouTube videos what do I have to do so the making a crib style video is good I can say what would let's think of some clickbait titles right yeah What a $15,000 a night tour of a Vegas hotel room. I mean, people will watch that stuff all day. How did you get the influencer department? Are you reaching out to hotels or is there like some like?

So I asked a friend, you see the Maverick helicopter stuff lying around there? Yes. So they've always been awesome. We flew with them for Canon was doing an event and they put us up there to fly and to doors open and shooting photos out of it. So I reached out to the guy from there because he was a follower of my channel as well. And I was like, do you know anybody that would have rooms that wants to do some content? And he got back to me. And he's like, I know these people. They got on the phone. And I'm like, look, I don't gamble. I don't drink. I'm looking for a cool spot. I don't mind paying. Like, give me it. You want a discount for a cool room? I don't care. That's cool. That's fine. I'll make some content. They're like, well, we love doing this stuff. So how about we do this? And you'll just make some videos. And I'm like, some Insta stories. I'm like, yeah, sure.

I've been doing it all wrong. about asking. For me, it's been building a network of people so you can always be like a super connector and know someone who knows someone and know someone. And it's not about, I hate that I'm an influencer, you know, on Instagram thing and give me free shit. It's not a, it's not about that. I just asked.

I'm like, I would like a cool room. If you give me a discount, it's fine. I am so worried I'd come off the wrong way. Like, I'd be getting pokey with Jack and I'd be like, hey, by the way, here's my follower account on Instagram. What can I get? You literally did that, Grant. Didn't say that, though.

No, but we went to Pokey and you're like, who I'm posting you up on my Instagram? You should check it out. No, because he gave me a free Pokey Bowl. I forget why. It was free. Yeah, yeah, it was free. And then I said, I'll tag you because I was like, that's really cool.

And they said, I don't have an Instagram. And you should say, I think you said something like to the tune of just get an Instagram, I'll tag you, and just check it the next day. Yeah. That's what you said. Because it's fun to see the comments because every time we'll tag a place, I look at their latest picture and everyone's like, who's here from Graham? Graham sent me.

It's like 50 comments like that. It's cool. And I go and like all of them. Yeah. So. Before we got too ahead of ourselves, guys. You have a microphone? Yes.

Can you believe the treatment I get here? When I had a podcast, when we used to do the live podcast, we always never gave our guy over there a microphone just for fun. So we could always say, you don't have a microphone. You're not allowed to talk. I think I like that better, actually. It would be a lot quieter. I actually like the chiming in off from the side.

I have the worst camera, though, and people always complain about this. We purposely don't put a card in the camera because this is a really old camera. And it aggravates the audience, actually. Alex is a huge fan of yours. Huge. You say this every time. I don't, but this is the truth. I think he was most excited to see you.

We were all excited to see you. Were you? Yes. Did you Google me? Yes. I did. No, that's cool. Ask Jeeves you.

I reached Alex a while back and I was cool. He's like, oh, I've been following you for a long time. Like when I started in 2010, he's almost as long as that. I want to actually say something really cool here. So Jared used to have a podcast called Raw Talk. And I was a huge fan. I was like, hey, man, why aren't you doing the podcast anymore? And we can get into that later.

But something cool that maybe Jared doesn't know. He came to Chicago to do a live. episode. Yeah, it's some, some, uh, comedy place. Yeah, yeah. And I was actually, uh, I was like 18 or something and like I didn't have a credit card. And so like I emailed Jared. I was like, hey, Jared like, I want to come to your thing, but like I don't have a credit card. Can I give you cash? And Jared, to my surprise, he responded. And he said, um, hey, yeah, yeah, man, just, uh, you know, show them the email or whatever. And, uh, I think it was like 10 bucks to get in. And, uh, I think I made it eight. He came out. Or, you know,

I can explain why later. And long story short. I gave you a free ticket, I hope. He gave me a free ticket and I helped switch the cameras. You did? Yes. So look at me now, guys. Look at me now.

You were the one that I yelled at probably 15 times. Like, are you recording? Yes. Are you recording? Because I always do that. I'm like, are you sure? You hit the button. Because if you hit it too quick on those nighons back in the day, it would not actually hit record.

It would not do it. Well, that's cool. God, thankfully, thankfully I gave him a ticket. Imagine he never got in. No, imagine he, I charged him $8. I mean, like, what an asshole that guy is. You got cash. He was a dollar short and you'd be like, there's an ATM writer.

That's my lunch money. So, yeah, anyway, so for those who don't know, Jared, he makes content online about photography, video, what the latest cameras are coming out, anything to do with, you know, creating on a camera. Jared basically covers it all. And you've been doing it for like 13 years. That was when your first episode or first ever video. was uploaded to YouTube.

It's a long time. 2010 was the first. Well, that's when I officially launched. But yeah, I, you know how you do that. Started. It gives you that starter. You start in 2008. I'm like, no, I started on YouTube in 2008 because I thought with this thing called YouTube,

I could get porn on it. Did you really? Yeah, I thought that's what it was. I mean, I didn't know. Didn't you search first before making an account. But that's what I searched for. You made an account first? I was young.

I'm going to sign up first. I don't remember. I honestly don't remember. That was my first recollection of YouTube was. like, can you find porn on this? And that was back then. That was a long time ago. But no, I started in 2010.

Yeah. Did you find the right websites, though, after that? I mean, that was easy. Okay. Look, I just up until that point, yeah. I bought a computer with my Bar Mitzvah money when I was 13. And I got really good at AOL and chat rooms and all that stuff. That was before your time.

Like all. How old are you? 41. Okay. Now, unfortunately. And not unfortunate, but, you know. You could have told me 30. I would have guessed that.

Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate it. It's, yeah, if I shaved my head. It's the fitness routine. No, I appreciate that.

But yeah. Yeah. Lots of videos, 2010. It's been good. It's been good. How do you get started doing that? YouTube.

So. Yeah. Photography in general. It's always a passion of yours? Same reason as I started YouTube. So I'll start with the photography thing. I was in junior high school, 13 years old.

And I was watching one of the basketball games. and the yearbook photographers were taking pictures during practice and nothing was actually happening. And I'm like, why are they taking pictures now? Like, there's no action going on. And so instead of telling them that they suck, I went home, I borrowed my mom's point and shoot camera, came back to the next game,

sat on the baseline and did what I thought would work. And I just had the timing. I could anticipate the moment and capture it. And we got the role of film back and it was like, oh, even with a point and shoot camera, I was like able to, anticipate because there's a delay and I worked with the delay and

boom, got the shots. And so that's how I started taking pictures. And it just built from there. Before you could search online and I was not smart enough to be like, oh, there's a library, I think on a library. I could go there and get books on photography. I didn't. So it was all self-taught.

It was film. It was just trial and error. Just slow. You know, you take a roll of film. It takes you a week to shoot it. And then you get it developed and then you don't remember what settings you had. so you don't know how to actually get better. So it was a lot of auto shooting. And it was all training me to get to the YouTube world, I guess.

Got it. Go for it. I was going to say the reason I started YouTube is I was watching a video that came up about a lens. And I thought the guy gave absolutely terrible information. I'm like, this has 36,000 views and you gave this information. And so instead of telling him he sucked in the comments, which is what most people do today. I was like, I have a camera. It shoots video.

I can sit in front of it and do this. Let me try, which is what we tell everybody when they say things and comments. Like, let me actually try to do this. And I did. And that was one of the reasons I started. And my hope was that I would actually get more jobs out of it. And what ended up happening is I got a lot of questions. Every time I got a question, I'm like, well, if this person has this question, that means a ton of other people do.

YouTube is not for porn. It's for searching for information. and I'm going to put this stuff up there. And so every day I started making videos, just one a day or two a day. And it averaged out to one a day for seven years. Wow. But it was a different world.

Like YouTube in 2010 was it was about putting out a lot of content. I was basically a daily vlogger before vlogging was even a thing. And how long did it take until you started seeing substantial growth and realizing that like, okay, this maybe monetarily is something that I can do as a career? Like, what were you doing for money? I was shooting wedding. Yeah. I was living at home, which was helpful.

Yeah. I'm 30, no, not 30 yet. I was like 28, 29, living at home and struggling as a photographer through my 20s. And I shot weddings, which I'm not a big fan of weddings, but shooting them can be lucrative. You know, you clear $2,500 to $3,000 on a wedding. And you're like, I got paid this much money to go take pictures. That's great. But I never made a lot of money.

And that's why I started, partly starting YouTube. to try to get more jobs. And that didn't happen. I got more followers. The growth was slow. I didn't hit a million subscribers until like a couple years ago. It was a slow growth, but I still thought, you know, 800 views in a video. Well, that's pretty good.

A thousand views. And it just climbed slowly, 25,000 subscribers, you know, 26,000 subscribers. And it just was a slow build. And I think it was probably good that I didn't ever have a video hit a million until about seven years. in because if you got a million on your first video and then you try to chase that every time, you're chasing the wrong thing. And so it was a slow build. And I thought I was hot shit at 25,000 subscribers. And there was no money at the beginning. It was 2010. They didn't have a program yet. And the story of when they announced it, I was like top 2,500 YouTube channels at the time.

And there weren't a lot of us. But first, you want to thank our sponsor, Titan. Jack, I've been trying to figure out where to invest my money, but with everything going on in the market right now, it's so hard and I don't know what to do. Sure, Alex, you could try to do everything yourself, or you could use Titan. Titan is the first investment app that gives you an award-winning investment team who strategically manages her wealth, regardless of what's happening in the world. And all it takes is $100 to get started. All you have to do is deposit your money, select your portfolio, and Titan's team of analysts

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announced the partner program and I submitted and I got denied. I got an email back and they're like, no. And I'm like, what do you mean? I've got 26,000 subscribers. I'm one of the largest photo channels out there. I really think you should reconsider. And this, I just hit reply to the email. The day later came back was like, okay. And I was like, oh, I'm a YouTube partner. I made 18 cents on something. And so it just, I just started making a couple bucks. there but the biggest influx was I worked at a store called Alan's camera a mom-and-pop camera store that still exists today, been around since the 70s. Okay.

4401 New Falls Road. I used to work there. Yeah. And Alan, who passed away a couple years ago, there was always this advertising money. So when he would buy gear, like from Canon, every $3 he would spend, he would get, or, yeah, he would get a dollar back to do newspaper ads or something and he would never use it. So it was just sitting there. And he's like, if you can get them to approve canon to approve online ads, which they didn't

at the time in 2010, they're like, they didn't believe that that was a good way of advertising, which was how dumb can you be? Why would you, they would spend like $5,000 doing an ad in a newspaper. It's like, that's not targeted. That's, you're pissing into the wind. And so I was able to talk them into it. And he said, if you can get them to approve it, we can split all of the money. And I got a $24,000 check the first time that happened.

So he had like $48,000 in ad money that would end up going away if he didn't use it in time. And so now I did the work. He signed off on it. They approved it. And I mean, to get $24 grand at the beginning was just awesome. Plus, he allowed me to go to the store and do unboxings and sniff tests. I started sniffing gear. What is that?

Explain that? I would, uh, you know how people. sniff wine and Gary V would sniff wine. I borrowed it from him. Okay. He sniffed wine. I'm like, I'm going to sniff gear and say it smells like something. So I would smell a lens.

I'd be like, you know, it smells like a Lincoln log. You know, it's like really good smell. It passes the sniff test. Once I did, it smells like, don't buy it. Which I didn't make it out of too happy. I know that smell all too well. Yeah. Everything smells like that.

He didn't like when I said, don't buy it. But I was being honest. Yeah. So, yeah, that's that's that. The money wasn't, there wasn't a lot of money at the beginning. Did you go to college or did you go straight from high school wedding photography? I did a two-year photography school. Okay.

I was a home body. I wasn't, I wasn't ready to go away. I wish the parents maybe would have pushed me. But I don't regret past things ever. I don't like playing revisionist history because you don't know where you would have ended up otherwise. So I'm not a big fan of being like, well, I should have done this. You chose to do this. Yeah.

You go with it. Are you really doing that, Alex? Come on. What is going on over there, man? I know you can clink a thing. Are you nervous? I'm okay. So, okay.

Are you Instagramming? Bailey chewed a wire and there's been like, you guys have probably noticed at the audience. There's been noise on the podcast a little bit. I'm trying to finish, you know, mess around with stuff so the noise goes away. And you know what? I think I finally got it to go away. So I think you were, you were getting to the point. Okay, you were talking about college.

And then also maybe like when the money on YouTube started getting to be pretty easy. Rolling in. Yeah, yeah. rolling in $26. You know, it wasn't a lot of money at the beginning. But there was some, the Allen's camera thing helped a lot. 24 grand right up front was pretty helpful. Companies start coming out of the woodworks.

They want to pay you. I really didn't accept much back then. It was like, you can give me gear to review and I'll review it, but I'm going to say what I want to say. And you have no say in what's happening. So there wasn't, there wasn't a ton of money. I think the first year I may have made $48,000 or something or 50 grand. And that came from a lot of the Allen stuff.

And I started selling T-shirts 10 days in. Yeah, now I'm thinking back. It's a long time ago. 10 days in, I'm like, I'm going to start selling merch because I used to tour with bands. And that's how they made money. So I'm like, I'm going to make a shirt. I got, I shoot raw. And I would have the shirts made.

I would only charge like $11.99. I may have made three or four bucks. but I took all of the profits, put it back in the shirts, because when you can order more shirts, it costs less money. You make more money in the long run. So I started to add a shirt color or two, and I would set it all up in my brother's bedroom because he moved out.

He got married. He was gone, and I had my bedroom, and then over here I used this as my office, and I would ship everything myself. Fold the shirts, write the envelopes out, go to the post office, ship everything, and I just started making a little bit of money here and there. How many sure three shipping out every day?

At the beginning, it was maybe five a week. Okay. Not a lot. You know, it's kind of funny because I had a printer. I drilled a hole in the wall so I could pass the cables before wireless. And I had the printer run from the IMac in the other room, the cable, and it would automatically print when a sale came in. So it was like two in the morning, and I'm getting woken up, and I'm like, this is amazing. This is awesome.

And then what would happen is you start selling five a night. And then you would, I'm like, yeah, I need to move. the printer. So I moved the printer back into the, into my brother's room. And my dad used to like walking down the hallway in the morning just to see. Because he didn't understand what he did. Like, how do you make money? He's like, I don't know what to do. He's like, I don't know what you should be doing. I'm like, this is what I do. And then he would physically see an order come out and be like, wow, you're actually making money. And so it started to be like 20 shirts, a hundred shirts. And we started to sell, I started to sell a lot of shirts. Because I would promote it in the video.

I'm like, guys, you want to show the world that you shoot raw? It was a controversial, controversial thing about back then with Raw versus JPEG, people embraced it and they ordered it. And then I moved the entire, I went from one shirt to three shirts, different colors. Then I put racks in the basement and I expanded how many shirts I had. And for my 30th birthday,

I did a three shirt deal for 30 bucks. And I printed all the orders out and I put all the envelopes on the floor and my dad would throw me shirts. I would be like, I need a large blue. I need to give me three large blues or whatever. And we had like a hundred different packages on the floor. So it was just making money and doing merch.

How much were you making? I mean, so I started to sell the shirts for $11.99. Then I just wanted, see, it was more branding, right? I think one year when shirts were really good was like $200 grand. Wow. On merch. Profit. That wasn't all profit.

Oh, got it. But it was generating that much in selling shirts. It was a slog. I promoted it quite a bit. And I didn't want to just over-promote that. But I raised the price. I think I made them $14.99. And then I was able to get shirts, get blanks for $4,

get it directly sent to the printer. Print at a local printer. It's a mistake a lot of people make is they print somewhere else and they have to ship them everything. Now you're spending $200 on shipping. It just eats away at your profit. So if you keep it local, you go pick it up or they drop it off to you. You're saving on shipping right there.

So it was just every little buck you can save there was really helpful. Wow. I think I remember an interesting story, Jared, about your shirt. This is a long time ago, but didn't you get kicked out of six flags? I didn't get led into six flags in the first place. Why? The woman at the gate that was running security was like, that's a dirty shirt. And I'm like, what are you talking about?

I believe, I'm an idiot. I understand there's a double entendre. It could go any different way. That's the whole point of it. But I'm like, it's a photography term. And I have, my logo is on the back. It says, Froeno's photo. She's like, you know what's wrong with it.

I'm like, I don't know what's wrong with it. And I filmed it. I was that guy. I filmed the whole thing. And they got their supervisor. And they're like, well, she says you can't come in. I'm like, you could, you're more than welcome to go get another shirt from your car. I'm like, who travels with multiple shirts?

I'm like, the multiple shirts in the car are all I shoot raw shirts. And my buddy had an I shoot roll shirt on too because he liked it. Yeah. they're like well you can you're more than welcome to go buy another shirt in the store like all right let's go buy a shirt in the store and then i saw let it roll i'm like that's a drug reference guys you have let it roll you have i like it rough really you're a kid you're you're you're telling me i shoot roll is bad there's you like guns i'm like but i'm telling you it's not guns like i it's it like and so i go in there and i go to the kids rack little girls rack find the small

a shirt. It says, it says, what did it say? Something princess. Something perfect princess or something. And it had cupcakes on it. And so I wore that all day. I'm like, you guys are just going to see me in a belly shirt all day if that's what you want. And so I did. I wore that all day. And then they gave me my shirt back at the end of the day. And then I was hoping that I'd get an apology from them or something for putting them on blast. But no, it got picked up by a bunch of people.

It did. It was just bullshit, though. It's like, it's a shirt. I'm like, I've been to Disney with this shirt. Couldn't you have just turned shirt inside out. They wouldn't allow it. It was a great question. I was like, I'll just turn it inside. They're like, you might reverse it. Oh, my go, now you're telling me I'm an like, now you're telling me I'm not a man of my word. And then you go and you buy a tiny little. I did. It said perfect little princess. And it was a, it was a perfect little princess. And it was a perfect little princess. And it's a, it was a perfect little princess. And cupcakes on it with sparkles. I still have it. Jeez. Do you ever wear it? it still? No, it's not going to fit around the arms anymore. You should bring it back. I'll bring it back.

It's in the closet. If you could return it. I'll return it to them. I haven't been back. I don't like six flags. Never like six flags. How did your business life progress? When did YouTube really the dough start to come in?

Do you still do photography outside of YouTube? If so, why? Good question. And also, okay, I'll save too many questions. Those are good. Yeah. So money. I think second year was,

like $84,000 and that was a lot of merch and a couple of advertising things. But the real growth came two years in. I created a product, digital product, education. The Fronos photo guide to getting out of auto was three hours of education that was fun and informative. It wasn't boring bullshit. That was my whole thing. It's fun and informative.

It has to be. And I wanted to create a product. And right around this time, I was looking to buy a house. house. My first property. I never wanted to rent because rent to me was like just lighting money on fire. I'm like, why would I just do that when I could save up and buy a house? So it's 2012.

Interest rates are super low at that time. Not as low as they were a couple months ago. It was like 3.375 on a 30-year fixed. And I didn't have enough money for the down payment. I had half. My dad, my mom passed away a few years prior and she had a pension. He's like, she would want this. I'm going to, I'll help you.

And then I released the Fronos photo guide to getting out of auto. And after two weeks, the first check I got was $26,000. And I was like, Dad, I got it. Like, I got it. And there were very few people doing online sales of digital products back in 2012. Right. I figured out how to do it. It was like only four gigabytes.

You know, you got to keep it pretty small. People that dial up. We, we, I had DVDs produced that could, the coolest thing was in the package. There were two DVDs. You got two. You got one that was computer ready. So it was a ROM. I guess is that what we called them back in the day?

ROMs read only memory. So that would play in the computer, but there was also one that would play in a DVD player. Because I was just like, I need to do both just in case. So people could have the files, and then they could have the actual DVD. And we were selling them on sale for everything was $47. 67 was the launch, what it was,

cross that out, 47. And it was just doing $2,000 to $5,000 a day through the end of the year. That's crazy. And it was just through my list. And I may have only had 25,000 Instagram. Instagram didn't exist. I only had 25,000 people on my email list at the time.

But it was just through YouTube. Right? I'd make a video. Every video is an advertisement for myself. I tell people that. Every video you make is an ad for you. And it's all right to ask for the sale. You have to at some point.

They understood. I'm like, I'm giving you all this free content. If you want to support me, if you'd like to support me, or you want to learn as well, to help you get out of auto, I got this product. And so a lot of people that have followed me for two years are like, I don't need to know how to get out of auto. I'm already there, but I'll support you.

I ordered, I ordered your digital download. And one of the things I also did is I did a camera giveaway too. And I had to learn the whole raffle thing and what's legal and what's not. Yes. Because you can't. Sleep stakes, right? Right. The whole thing is you have to do no purchase necessary option too.

But I did do this. And it just, it helped influx sales because people are like, I have a chance of winning one of these awesome cameras and I get this education. And so it was just, dude, it was stupid. I remember showing my dad my tax return. And he's like, I've never made that in a year ever. And it's just crazy that it's a digital product. So what was it back then?

$600 grand, $700,000? You're doing like $2,000 a day. There's no overhead on that, right? Very little. Well, very little. It was digital sales. I think I made like 400,000 bucks or something at the end of the year. And he was just like, holy shit.

He's like, what's the scam? No, he was, he's like, I finally get. He's like, I didn't know what the hell you've been doing in your room, all these. In the backyard. I would sit in the backyard. I would tackle mannequins that said I shoot JPEG. I would take the mannequin to the firehouse and talk them into shooting it with a fire hose. You know, just doing weird.

Other people weren't doing. Sniff tests. I didn't do wind tunnel test yet at that point I just literally blow on the lens and say it passes or fails. Just something stupid. Just something to make people go, what the fuck does that even mean? Right? Because everybody else was doing boring shit.

And I'm just, they would say I'm like the Howard Stern of the photo world. Yeah. Not afraid to say it like it is. Fuck you. No, no, it's a good thing. I just say it's back. I love mine. I love Howard. I love Howard. His sister is a follower. Ellen, his sister, watches my videos,

and is a really good photographer. And Howard became a photographer for a minute as well before he got into painting. He's taller. That's what I meant. Oh, I just thought the hair kind of... Maybe not. I don't know.

He has different features. He's taller than me. We're Jewish, too. I mean, if you're trying to say that. I'm Jewish, too. And so is Graham. We're all Jewish. Yeah.

I'm half. But anyways, so you were selling a course to go off of auto. What is to go off auto? Get out of Otto. Get out of Otto. So basically, You know that you ever look at the D80 or the ADD over there?

Yes. You know the green mode up top, this green square. That's always auto on all the cameras. And so the whole point is to get people out of that mode and into manual. So they understand shutter speed, aperture, ISO. Shutter speed control. Do you want me to go into all this? Yes.

I'll do it. Yeah, yeah. Shutter speed controls, like, you have a fast shutter speed is going to freeze motion. A slow shutter. In this video, we actually used a swing set. as an example at the park while people looked at me. I'm like, it's a fucking park. I pay taxes.

I can be here. Your little shit, your kid, not shitty kid. Your little kid can go swing over there. I got here first. Literally, I said that to people. Slower shutter speeds give you some blur. So I try to teach people the cause and effect. If you do this, this is going to happen.

Aperture, how much light you're lighting in. ISO is the brain. Teach all that stuff. So helping people take control of their camera, get into manual so that they can control the light. I didn't understand this. It took me a decade to get out of auto with film. So my whole selling point was, look, I've done all the damn hard work,

and I've condensed this into something that I guarantee you you will get out of auto after three hours of watching this. And you can get your money back if you really want your money back. Like, I don't care. Someone asks for their money back, give them their money back, right? And so does that explain what get out of auto is? It gets people out of auto so that they can take control of their camera. And they did.

There's people that always say that, like, I started with that. Because I wanted to make it, I like to say that I'm, you know, the mix of Howard Stern and Bob Ross meets Mr. Rogers. Because I love Mr. Rogers was he showed things. He didn't just say it. He showed it. And I was a Montessori kid growing up, like, you know, Montessori school. It's a great way of learning. It's hands on.

You don't know that you're learning because it's a different classroom environment. You learn through play. You learn through, like, okay, you. you, Jared, go get a bowl, giving out snacks, right? You got the pretzels. They're like, okay, give two to each person. Okay, so now you have to go talk to the person in the class. Now you have to say, okay, you can have two of those.

Then you have to make sure they have two of those. And if they don't, you get to punch them. Not true, you didn't get to punch them. But just Montessori school stuff like that. It's like you learn by doing. So I learn, that's how I learn. I learned by watching and doing. And so that's how I wanted to teach.

And so that's how I got people out of auto. and it works. They don't have to go to college, really. I basically put my college out of business. People, I like to say I put them out, but people like me on the internet who did education and sold education, basically put Votech schools for photography out of business.

Why spend $20, $40, $50,000 to learn the shit that I'm teaching you for 67? Why? But why'd spend two years in school to learn things that you could Google? Yes, it's a good question. It doesn't make any sense. People think that they need to go because that's what everybody's done before them.

People say, should I go to college for photography? And my answer is no. You shouldn't go just for photography. If you are going to go to a school, go to the biggest four-year school that you can find because they have the most athletics. You can get involved. You can travel with them. But don't go for photography.

Minor in photography, do video, do audio engineering, do advertising, do marketing, of this shit that you can because when you come out of school, when someone says, can you shoot video? Yeah. Can you edit video? Yeah. Do you know how to take photos? I do. They're going to hire you. Because you're a quadruple, so many threats, you can do it all. And so that's what I tell people for going to school. But I would never just go for a two-year photography school anymore. Yeah. How much was that for you? You said 50 grand? It was 20 grand at the time. It was 1999 to 2001. So that's when I went. It was a two-year school and I think it was $21,000 total. my parents.

It's still a lot of money back. Yeah. I had student loans and thankfully it wasn't a ton and I did end up paying them all off. But yeah. You wanted to ask about the price of the house? You were talking about real estate. You bought in 2012, which was like the low. I mean, you could say low.

So I bought into a place called Fishtown. It's like the Brooklyn of Philly. It's just exploded 20% a year for like many years now. And I had a, I wanted to spend like, $400,000 on a place. And it came down. They were at like 450 and we ended up at 4.5.5.5 because my dad always said to me,

you know, $25,000 extra is like $80 a month in the grand scheme of things. So don't skimp out. And so I got this place. It was the most expensive place on the block at the time. And now it's worth close to eight because that area just has exploded. And now I rent that because I ended up buying another place during the pandemic getting super low interest rate.

It was like 3.275 or something. And then refied eight months later because I got 2.7 on a 30. You got 27. Yeah. How? I don't know. I asked. Did you have to put any money down or anything?

No. I just refied. It was 27. It was a jumbo. And someone took the jumbo at 27. And I refined. I don't think it keeps. It was Chase.

Okay. Yeah. The original one was Wells Fargo. Yeah. And the original was Wells Fargo. And then we redid it and got 2.7. It was what, talk about a savings. It was like 800, $800 a month or so.

And yeah, I basically refied every property because I bought the Frow factory a couple years, about six years ago because I never wanted to rent. We literally worked out of my loft. The house that I bought, it's a loft. So it's a 120. year old, 130 year old factory now that was an elevator factory. And I had the upstairs place that was built for the people that renovated.

They did a double unit. So 2140 square feet. A freight elevator opened up into the place. I basically bought the place from Big. That was a goal of mine. I loved Big and I always wanted that place. So basically had the place from Big. And it was set up that I had keynote flows, the lights all set up.

My podcast table was my kitchen table. It's a poker table with my logo on it And then you put the lid on it So I could have dinner But it was all set up to basically It was like a studio But I lived upstairs Right right in the loft area

Because I just thought it was a waste of money To go rent something And then a couple years later As we started to expand and get larger And I had two employees coming to my house Every morning And I'd roll out of bed While they walked in the door

Because they had the key And he's like You know we would save a lot of time If we didn't have to break down The lights every day And do all of this So I started looking for a place, found a place in what they call Kensington, which was big in heroin at the time, not as big anymore in heroin. And it's a mile and a half from my place.

And I bought that place. And that place I bought for 535. And it's a million bucks now because there's a plot of land right there. It's just, I never intended to buy multiple properties. It just was, it just happened. So how many do you have now? Three or four? Four. During the pandemic, right before the pandemic, my friend showed me this cool building.

It's 5,000 square feet. It's another loft style building. And I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. And I didn't think about, I wasn't thinking about moving at all. But if I want to have a family and grow, I didn't want to have a family in a condo building. And so I talked to some of my financial people. And I'm like, I'm not looking for you to give me approval. I don't need you to tell me yes or no, like I should do this or not.

I just need to know financially, am I sound enough to purchase? It was a million dollar. They wanted a million 50. I'm like, am I in the right place? Can I do this? And they're like, yeah. And so I made an offer the day after doing a walkthrough. My realtor went and took a look.

And he's like, oh, we'll make an offer Monday. I'm like, f*** that. I'm like, someone's going to come in with. way more money than me and offer to buy this. And he's like, well, what do you want to, what do you want to offer them? Like, make it of what I call a fuck you offer, which is a million bucks. Give them what they want. I mean, if they ask for 10 million, you know, a million 50 and they walk away from a million,

they're not serious. And so they took it. And then like they got three cash offers as soon as we signed the deal. Wow. There was no. What realtor would ever say, if you like it, let's wait the weekend. It was a Sunday. I don't know.

I don't know. They just had a realtor's open house. And I just moved on it quick. Because I knew this, this is, it's such a unique property that there's so few of those left in the, in the country. But Philly has a lot of lofts. And they've all been converted to 1,000 square foot, 1,250 square foot apartments. And this place could be turned into four different apartments if you really wanted. But I was just like, do it.

And then the pandemic hit. And I was under contract. And people were like, are you still going to buy it? Are you still going to do it? And I called the financial guys again. They're like, are you good? I'm like, am I good to do this? They're like, yeah, nothing's changed for you.

Like, you're fine. You got your YouTube. No one knew what was going to happen. We didn't know what's going to happen, but I still went through with it because why would I back out? So I had the mortgage. Everything was there. And I did that.

And I didn't move out. I closed on March 29. Not to, oh, geez, it's been two years. It's April 1st. So it was like March 30th, two years ago. and didn't move until June 25th because I still had my loft. And it was the middle of a pandemic. I couldn't get movers.

You couldn't do work on the place. Not that you couldn't get anything done. I got people to rent my loft on a two-year, a two-year lease, $3,500 a month. And I moved, and it was great. What's your mortgage on that? What's my mortgage is, I was like $1,800 now?

Yeah, well, that's without taxes. But it's still, I think, I think I, make like $24,000 a year off of it. It's cool. And I'm not bragging for people out. This isn't bragging. Yeah, thanks for cutting. Wait,

where's my camera? Right there? Yeah. This isn't bragging. This is a financial podcast. I mean, it's a coffee podcast. I don't drink coffee.

I didn't want to tell anybody, but I've never had a coffee. Really? Yeah, really. Why? So you also don't drink alcohol or party. I don't party.

I'll have a mixed drink every once in a while. I just don't have any desire to drink or get plastered or do drugs. I just, I've smoked weed in the past. and it's just like, I feel like an idiot the next day. I feel like I'm in a fog, and I don't want to feel dumb. And it makes me feel dumb, and I don't want to do it. Yeah.

Yeah. But I'm not bragging. Like, it's not bragging. It's just, I worked my ass off to do it. So, it's good, man. Yeah. I like that. So tell us a bit about the, about the look that you've crafted.

I was just going to pick my hair because it needs to be poofed. A little bit. There we go. Just. So. This kind of reminds me of like the Dogecoin millionaire haircut. Like a little bit. If he poofed it out a little bit more?

How much is his million? What's that worth now? 300 grand. Did he ever sell any now? So tell us about the afro, the hair. So I had the hair a couple years before I even had the idea for Froano's photo. I just, I've never had my hair grow because I'm Jewish and I get Jew curls. And if I let it go past like two or three months, it just looked weird.

It just didn't work. So there's like a weird moment. But I said, screw it. I just want to see what's going to happen. So I got past like four months and then started to pick it out and it had this awesome shape to it. One of the other things more personal is my mom had cancer at the time. And I said, you know, if you ever lose your hair from the chemo, you can have my hair. And then she ended up, she died eight months later.

And I decided instead of shaving my head like everybody else does, I just kept it. And part of the reason, there's multiple reasons for starting the channel. I told you like I wanted to get more jobs. But one of them was that my mom was interested in photography. She always had an eye for images. She always took our pictures when we were in Disney. And she had a beta camera in the 80s, a beta max. And she had an interest in learning.

And I never took the time to really teach her to say, mom, let's go shoot. Let's go to the park and do something. And so I don't really do regrets. One of the regrets I have, the only thing is that I never took the time to just say, let's go and shoot. I was young. I just was stupid. I wasn't doing anything else. I should have just done it.

And so a lot of people are like, well, now you help teach the world. You know, you teach other. You've taught, I've taught a ton of people how to take photos and then inevitably make money doing that and change their lives for the better. And so that, you know, that's the hair.

Fro. Got it. And then I came up. Do you cut it at all? Or at this point, you just keep letting it grow. Let it grow. Let it grow.

Let it grow. How many years is this? It was October 2007 when I had a buzz cut because I went on tour in September with Perry Farrell from Jane's Addition. Yeah, that's cool. I had a buzz cut. So we have all the photos. I have photos because I had a buzz cut and it's been growing ever since. One little trim.

Yeah. And then my mom got scared and sent me to live with no. Will Smith jokes. Yeah. Too soon. I had one trim job with a person did it and I looked like a Jewish grandmother. I'm never again. So you're just always going to, how

is it not longer? That's what I thought. Because you said 2007? People, people ask that, I don't know. I don't know why it's not longer, but it curls out. I get really nice ringlets. What's a ringlet? Ring. You know, what's that girl's name?

From the movies? Shirley Temple. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful Jewish curls, as I will call them. I have no desire to cut it. People are like, do you think you could still have a channel? I'm like, yeah, I could still have a channel and not be Froano's photo.

But sometimes I'll leave my hair down in videos just to do it, just to change it up. And people are like, where'd your hair go? It's like, yeah, same hair. I'm worried if you didn't need any change to this, that it would be less you because this has become a bit of a brand. I think I'm at the point where it's okay. Okay. It's so ingrained that it's not just the hair. I think people at the beginning are like, this is just a schick, right? They're like, you're going to burn out after eight months and no one's going to follow you anymore.

You're just a guy with hair who does interesting things with cameras or runs around the backyard and does dumb shit, but still doing it. Yeah. And hitting the gym, I see. These things? Those things, yeah. Can we get a close up on the go? That's crazy. We were supposed to leave the guns at the front door, but I brought mine in too.

Yeah. So I attribute. Jack, I see you left yours at home. Whoa, they went out of the way. Oh, God. Right before I started YouTube, I wanted to, I photographed a fitness conference, and I was like, I want to look toned. I was never overweight, but I was never fit, like, toned. And it's easy to find trainers to help you lose weight.

It's not easy to find trainers that help you tone up and gain muscle. I found one. I couldn't afford it. We worked out a payment plan. And in 2009, I just started going three days a week. I was making YouTube videos, so I had time, right? I would go and I'd work out. And within two, three months, I was, I was toned.

And I was ripped. Two, three months. It was quick. It was quick. It was quick. I was dedicated, man. I just went every day. Well, three, not every day, three days a week.

But I attribute the change in my body, giving me the confidence to be in front of the camera. Because before that, There's a video. If you go to my, if you go to Fronos photo, YouTube.com slash Fronos photo. There's a, when I hit a million,

we did a retrospective video. And there's a video I did in 2008 where I tried to make a video in my basement talking about cameras. And it's 10 minutes of me failing. Hi. I'm just, no.

And it was just me going, no. And I would just keep trying. But I put the video up. Yeah. Now just to show people, I'm like, if I could be that guy,

and I turned into this and I'm able to be in front of the camera, there's no excuse that you can't do it. Because I went from that, and that's why I put the video out to show people that I sucked in front of the camera. And I think what changed is I felt better in my body for me. Like I do this for me. I don't do it. It's not a show-off thing.

I mean, I do like the way they look, but it's not for others. It's for, it made me feel better. Yeah. And so I think that's what helped me be in front of the camera. And then what is even worse. is when I moved into the city in Philly and my trainer was 45 minutes away and I stopped doing it.

I'm like I'm going to go to the gym myself and then someone leaves a comment like where did your arms go? It's 2011. I'm like and you know it's true which can sucks when a comment is actually true. You're like asshole. So I made the commitment again. I was dedicated to I would drive out of the city 45 minutes each way to go work with the trainer two days, three days a week. Wow. Because I want I didn't want to lose them.

They were right, but commenters are assholes most of the time. And, but that's the worst. So, like, pick something out and you're like, damn it. And you know it. Yeah. It's just, it's terrible. But yeah, that's the fitness. Alex also tells me that you've maxed out your credit card to start the business.

It is. It's true. Yeah, but it was a zero financing card for 15 months. Hmm. Hear that, Alice? So what changes the story a little bit. Yeah. But what happened was it showed up to my house with my name on it, my dad's house.

Yeah. I think they thought they were sending it to my dad, but my name was on it. And it was, what, 2009? So they weren't giving credit cards to people like me. They weren't given any credit cards after that crash. There was a zero financing. It was like $15,000 limit. It was for either, I think it was 12 or 18 months.

And I did. I started, I put all the T-shirts on there, put all my expenses on there. I paid the minimums. I just, I didn't carry, I mean, I carried a balance, but it was. was paid off by the end. That's how I started it. I maxed, I had about 400 bucks in the bank and I, and I just put all the money on there and I reinvested all the money back into more merch so that I could get better pricing,

make more profit, and it was paid off by the end because it didn't hurt to get the $20,000 from Allen's camera. Right. That helped pay it all back. But yeah, no, my parents always instilled in us like never carry a balance. Don't buy it if you can't afford it. And it just made sense. Yep. And I don't care what they say.

I don't know if it's even true that if you pay off your card every month, that the credit card company doesn't like that. Well, fuck you credit card company. I don't give a shit that you don't like that. I don't like giving you 18 to 36 percent. Agreed. Was that too much? That was good. Are you even allowed to curse on your show? We do. We bleep it. Most of the time.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Why didn't you say something earlier? No, no. It's all this work? No, no, no. Alex isn't editing this one. Fuck.

Andrew, you got to believe that one. No, it depends because sometimes we don't want to stifle the guest and we feel like if it comes out naturally, it's better not to have the guest think about, like, not swear. Yeah, I can do it. If there's a kid around on there, just put a kid on the table, I won't curse. I'd rather you probably just swear and we'll handle it. Yeah, we'll handle it.

One of the big discussions I think that Darren and I had was, he he's very adamant on not letting the algorithm rule our life or rule his life oh yeah this was a good conversation something that in this household we swear by the algorithm we have an algorithm shrine in the living room right so um yeah Jared how come you uh don't like deep diving into the analytics and and why don't you worry about you know the algorithm uh because it may benefit you or it may i just don't want to Because mentally it just becomes a strain. It becomes too much. It's all I think about.

And I don't want to. I mean, obviously it's worked for you guys. It's clearly worked. I just, the conversation we were having was about changing the title within 10 minutes of putting it up. Based off of looking at numbers. And I've started to do that on occasion, Alex.

But I don't like to worry about it. Right. We pick a title. We pick a thumbnail. We think it's good. We go with it. And if it's totally flopping, maybe I'll switch it up to something else. But I just, I don't want to second guess everything I do.

And it just creates too much mental strain for me. And I just, I don't want to be beholden to that. We're good. We make money. I'm happy. Yes, I could make more. If we chase the algorithm, I just don't want to, I don't want to do it. What about hiring somebody who then, didn't make it, it's their problem.

Yeah, but then I don't, I won't listen to them. I won't listen to them. But the thing is you don't have to listen to them. It's you listen to the results. Like, anytime we post a video and it doesn't do well, I never feel like, oh, man, I screwed up. It's the audience giving me real feedback right then and there that they don't like that title thumbnail. And they're not clicking on it. There's nothing to do with the content.

Like, if anything, the fewer the people click on the content, the less it is about the content. And if your message is about teaching people photography, there is an element that you want people to see it who need to see that. Of course. So if you either do that yourself or you hire somebody. And it's just the audience will tell you. And usually 10 minutes is long enough to say, is this good or bad? Sometimes you know based on your content, like some will be too niche. And it's like it's not going to be.

So part of the other issue is are you chasing the right now views or are you chasing views that might be long term that you might be missing out on over the long term? It's a balance. But you have to balance that. Right. And what I like to say are long burn videos. A video that I make today that's going to freaking flop. But in four years we'll have like two million views. It's all valid.

I would try it. I just don't. I've gotten to the point after 12 years of doing it that you know how a lot of people have burnout in YouTube. I've never stopped in the 12 years of doing it. I've never gone a week without putting a video up. I even got upset when I one day got to midnight. and didn't have a video ready to go and put up a video every night or every day. And I had to get past that.

Like my following isn't going to disappear because I don't put up a video for two days. And now we've gone to a place where it's two or three, two or three a week. Yeah, I mean, I would like someone to give me advice on what to do there to see what could be better. But I think we, I think I had a downturn in 2015, algorithm change in 2015. Peter McKinnon comes along in 2015. a bunch of other people come along in 2015 out of nowhere and start shooting up. And that messed with my head.

I'm like, why are all these channels growing so fast? It's not like, you know, Peter's great. The content that he does is fantastic. And he followed, he did that first video that went viral. He followed it with another video that popped. And he had like 50,000 subscribers, but getting 200,000 views. YouTube's like, holy shit, this is amazing.

We're going to shoot this. And it was at 2050. It was a perfect storm. He's in Canada. And I always, I told him. this. I'm like, I think you started to do part of the benefit of being in Canada, less competition for the photography world. And if you rank high in Canada, the algorithm's going to say, well, if it's number one in Canada, we let's show this to other people around the world. And it just

skyrocketed. And in 2015, they started to downplay YouTubers that were around for a long time. And I started thinking, do I build a new channel and try to capitalize on this? Do I kill what I have? and I took a look at the content and some bit was I was just putting out too much. So at the beginning it was put out a lot of content because that was YouTube. It was a different world. Then we started to put out better, still consistent, but more quality. Spend a little more time on each video, put out less. I wasn't thinking about titles very well.

I'm like, but this is what the video is. I'm just going to call it this. And that wasn't working. And then we found our way through it. We started to make better content. and we grew much more in terms of views. How many employees do you have? What does the workflow for a typical video look like?

So photo news fix is something that I do weekly. It's a what I call a staple piece of content that averages 80 to 100,000 views for us, which is pretty good. When we went from 20 to 30,000 and then 50,000, to do 100,000 is pretty good weekly for that. I'll write that on a, Monday or a Tuesday and I'll film it on a Tuesday. I give it to my editor and by Wednesday after,

by Wednesday evening it's out by three o'clock, four o'clock. That's, that's a quick turnaround. Basically we say they, they, they, my editors tell me that every minute of video is about an hour of editing. Um, so some long form videos, they take maybe four, five, six working days to do. Um, we film them, they take them, they edit them. I mean, that's, yeah, two full timers doing it.

And how's your business broken down now between YouTube sponsorships, your own products, merch? Good question. YouTube accounts for like 112th. That's very direct because I've done the numbers. But it's like 112th of the revenue. We do about $140,000 to $150,000 on the YouTube ad rev, which is I know not a ton. We're only doing like anywhere from 1.2 to 1.7 million views a month.

It's not a ton. but we make it, I cursed, darn it. It's fine. We made, we do really well with presets, digital products.

There's Squarespace was the greatest deal I ever had, made at the beginning. They did an affiliate deal back in the, they used to do affiliate deals back in the day. When Squarespace was all over podcasts, they started to expand into the YouTube world. And we did a test, and they offered me an affiliate deal.

I'm like, nah, give me the money. And I think it was like four grand. and then we did a test and they wouldn't tell me how many people signed up. And there were probably a lot. So then they came to me and they offered me like 50 grand for the year for 20 video plugs or something. And the guy that gave me the, offered me the deal said, don't take it.

Take the affiliate deal instead. I took the affiliate deal and that was, that's how I, partly how I bought the house too. Really? Yeah. Because at the time, this was like 2012, 2011. not a lot of people were promoting Squarespace. Not a lot of people had their own website. It wasn't easy to build.

I'm a photographer. The people watching me have photos. They need to build their own websites. They don't want to go find another someone to build it. Because every time you try to have someone build it, you have to reach out to them. Then they never do the work. And then you're stuck.

And it was just such an organic way to do. I would do rapid fire critiques of websites. And I would say, this is brought to you by Squarespace. If you have your own photos and you'd like to build your own gallery and you don't have your own website, this is easy. It's like eight bucks a month. And you get a 14-day free trial. Use my code fro at checkout and you get 10% off your first order. But look, you get 14 days.

I guarantee you 14 days, it's going to be easy. Build it within 30 minutes. You're going to have a site that's fully functional. The affiliate deal was interesting because you don't get it. You didn't get the kick in, the kickback once someone signed up. They had to stay a customer for three months of paying customer. Most people would say, no, I don't want to take that deal because if I bring someone to you, I want to get paid as soon as they sign up.

And I'm like, I don't want to get paid when they sign up. I want to get paid if they stay a customer. That's good for you. That's good for me for the business, like for them. And it wouldn't be right if someone signed up and then they cancel and I still got paid. But the first year, we had 2,090 signups paying customers that stayed for three months or more is $100, bucks a sign up. Wow.

It was like insane. That was the first year. The second year was like 184,000. It's just, it tapered down and now we just have a, we have a deal that they changed how their structure is, and it still works out well. So it was just, it was just a perfect time. There weren't a lot of people promoting it like they are today or the past couple years.

And it was the perfect fit for my audience. And so that's why I was able to generate a lot. And yeah, if I had more subscribers, more subscribers, it was more people. you can reach. But I just, I wanted to not have the burnout thing like everybody else to be so focused on every, eight months in when I started YouTube, I was, that was like the closest I ever got. Eight months in at the beginning, I was like, I can't sustain doing two videos a day. And this is, these commenters, this has heard it. Like, I don't know what to do. And I was such a small timer at that time. But yeah, I just don't want to burn out. It's not even

the burnout. I just don't want the stress. Yeah. It's not worth it. Like, I'm, I'm going to try not to compare myself to other people, like Peter's doing this, that that was one of the hardest things is watch Peter's growth. And I told him, I'm like, I'm like me watching you go from 50,000, 100,000, and I'm watching my subscribers. And I'm looking at you adding, you know, 5,000 subscribers a day. That was painful. I've been doing that for a long time. Look at his content and say, I want to do something similar to that. Because I remember him making very specific content about, like, Photoshop tutorials.

I remember one that I loved from him is like how to Photoshop about a person and I watched that and that was yeah I had stuff like that back in the day what was he doing different I thought he was like welcome back you know yeah oh he would do like the very like

he's likable I'm in he's super likable he had the magic he's got a great look he's got the tattoos he has a quality content shot extremely well it's very likable yeah I'm not very likable I just rub people the wrong way

and that algorithm change at that time was very helpful. He came around at the perfect time and had great content and followed it up with more great content. And it just exploded because it was good. And then YouTube was like, we're just going to keep showing this to people. While the other people who made content for a long time were like, hey, I'm still here. Please help. But part of it was the content I was making wasn't the right content, right?

I was starting to do not quality stuff. and so I had to look within the stuff we were doing and analyze and be like yeah yeah no you you part of the reason is you're not changing and so I've had to evolve like every two years YouTube seems to change it does yeah and so I mean been doing for 12 years I'm happy like I make really we make great money my employees have health care they have they get paid well um I have my properties, would I like to do more better? Sure. I'm 41. I don't want to work hard. Harder. I work really hard, but I don't want to work harder. I mean, I don't know. How long do I want to do that? Do you do this? How do you avoid burnout though? Because going 12 years,

a very long time. Well, the employees helped. Yeah. You know, I edited the first couple hundred videos and I haven't edited video since hiring my first editor. I just how not analyzing everything that you go into super detail on, right? Like analyzing every every, when YouTube changed to that studio where it's like, you're an asshole, this video isn't doing well, you need to do something different. I sent them an email. I'm like, guys, you're trying to have people not burn out and you're telling us we suck with these arrows saying our video isn't performing well.

And so it just made That that's bad Because it makes you second guess everything you're doing And then try to change the title right away So I don't know I think it's helped Because I love seeing how my videos performed Over the last 10

And then seeing where they rank And where they should rank And if it's not ranking where it should Then I know it's a title thumbnail issue Which brings up a suggestion I gave them and I'm sure plenty of people have had I'm like why can't we have A-B testing Of thumbnails and titles

at the same time that it launches. We put in two thumbnails, we put in two titles, all different. You guys know within a thousand view. You guys know within seconds, which one's performing better? You'll make more money. Facebook came up with something like that.

I would love that. I'm like, guys, figure it out. Because more views helps us, but more views helps them sell more ads. I wish there was a way that you could do that. I would love that. or before it notifies everybody, maybe you get like 10,000 people.

Yeah, 5,000 this. Send out to your dedicated things. And people could sign up and be a part of it and just see which one gets more clicks and you could go with that for the rest of them. I would love it. After like 60 seconds, they would know. After the first 500 clicks,

they'd know that 473 people clicked on this type. Well, it wouldn't work like that, but their nerds would figure out how to make it work. that would be the best thing for us. Then I wouldn't have to second guess everything. I hate second guessing my stuff. That's why I try not to stress. That's why I don't go in deep, super deep into the analytics.

I just, I just won't do it. I don't. I'm happy. Yes, what I like to do better? Absolutely. Of course. But I don't want to,

I don't want to work that hard. Gosh, if YouTube's watching this, I would love that. I've told them that. I know other people have as well. And I know. There's like two buddy and all those other companies.

They offer you, they're like thumbnail split testing, but it only changes the thumbnail once a day, and it's after it already launched. So by the after 48 hours, it doesn't matter. Right. I mean, it does to some extent, but not for that initial first. I found it always, it's always the first one to two hours max that you could make a meaningful change.

And then after that, sometimes I've done drastic changes. And the views are the exact same. So I know after like two hours it kind of locks in, at least for that next day. We also know that sometimes the content that we're putting out isn't doing well because it's just not meant to do well. Certain pieces of content just aren't going to do well. Certain lens review. We know that a lens review for something like a new Nikon lens comes out. We know it may not be a super popular lens.

You can't clickbait it. And I say clickbait in a good way because people again don't understand. Titanic sinks, 1500 die. Is that clickbait when you? you see that on a newspaper headline? The answer is yes, but it delivers on the inside because unfortunately,

1,500 people died when the Titanic sank. Right. And so where is I going? Clickbait. You have to click bait for lens. Oh, yeah, the Nikon stuff. The, you can't clickbait the lens review

because that's what it is. It's a Nikon 100 to 400 review. You can put something at the end like, this lens sucks, right? But if you tried to clickbait it, it would be dead. this video will just get tons of views in the in the future over years because lenses will stay for five, six years. They'll stay new before they replace it with something else.

So people just keep searching those out over time. So that's why I don't want to want to come up with a clickbaity title for it that's going to be dead after a couple of days. Got it. And I don't want to change it too soon because it's not meant to be a great, it's not meant to be a video for everybody. It's for those Nikon people. So you avoid burnout by not looking at the numbers. Yeah, those numbers kill me. They do.

It's just too much. And so I'm happier by not even looking, ignorant, being ignorant, you know. What do you think about that? It's killing them. Could you do that? No. I look at all the numbers. See, to me, it's like kind of playing a game of chess.

It's like you try to perfect the perfect title thumbnail. If it doesn't work, it's a race to try to fix it, get it to something that works. And I know some videos are long tail. And I know going in, okay, this is going to be a 10. It's not going to perform well. 30 days in, it's good. A 10. Do people understand that?

I talk about it so often. They do. Yeah. I've described those tens. Yeah. It's the worst performing video of the last 10s, a 10 out of 10. It's frustrating. But yeah, but unless I know going into it that this is going to be a 10, I set the expectation.

I know it. But some videos will post, and this should be much. better. This should get double the views. Why? And I could see pretty quickly is did I not get the click through from notifications? If not, it's a title issue. Then I'll change the title. If I don't see an immediate uptick within 10 minutes, thumbnail. What's wrong with the thumbnail? Change the thumbnail. And so two hours, I'll usually have something where I'm okay with it. I mean, it works. I mean, you get a ton of views. I just, so I don't crop for anybody out, like images.

I don't crop my images. This leads into what we're talking about. The reason I don't crop my images in this day and age is I don't want to second guess every composition that I take. And so it comes to the same thing with the YouTube videos. I, we, we spend sometimes an out,

we spent a day on one title once because I just wasn't happy with what we were coming up with. And I think it was, we ended up with did I fail? So we knew, there's certain videos that you just can't. title right. And it was a video where we used a $60,000 microscope to try and get the grooves of a record. Get a needle in the grooves of the record. I had to call Olympus, I got them to send

me down the $60,000 microscope with a technician to run it to do this. And it's a great video. We knew nobody would watch it if I wrote taking a picture with a $60,000 microscope. And I did, didn't want to put the, well, Stephen, who I bounced the ideas off of, didn't like that I did a thumbnail that showed what the final image was. Because we found that if I'm not in the thumbnail, it's people don't recognize. Same thing. If I posted a picture on Instagram, that's a great picture, but that people don't know it's me because I'm not in it, it doesn't get as many likes on it. But as soon as I post a picture of me flexing and saying, give me a comment or like, what am I thinking? It's going to get 10 times the views. It's so annoying.

Why didn't you just, because you have a $60,000 camera, find a $60 camera and then just compare. $60 camera versus $60,000? Okay, the challenge was I had a band member from a big band, say they have a new album coming and he had an idea, can I accomplish this? And that brings up a question you asked earlier, do I do shoots anymore?

Hold that thought. I've been holding it. Yeah, he gave me a challenge. I didn't know what to do, but I said yes, because I'm like, yeah, I can figure this out. And so that's why I didn't get a $60 camera because it's not possible to do it that way.

But we went through the titles. I didn't like anything like using a $60,000 microscope to do this. I didn't like the thumbnail. And he showed me one in the video. He's like, used this screen grab. And it was just me looking off to the side, a tighter shot, which normally doesn't work. And I'm wearing a mask because it was during the pandemic.

And normally people would just go nuts because it's a mask. And then I was like, don't we say, did I fail? Because it's not clickbait because it was a challenge. And we knew that we did that. And it got like 110,000 views in the first couple of days. That was a success. We knew that if we didn't do that, it would get 20,000 views.

So that's what we had to do. Can I answer that question? Yeah. Because you brought that back. Do I take jobs? The answer is no. I tell people I cannot be hired. I say, I will not be beholden to someone else's expectations.

But you still do shoot for jobs. I shoot what, no. I shoot what I want. You cannot pay me. You can pay me if you really want to pay me and pay me well. I just don't want to go through the bull of back and forth of negotiating what I think I know what I'm worth and having people try to undervalue me and then tell me how to do my job. I don't want to do that. So that's why I say I will not be beholden to someone else's expectations.

I shoot what I want. I do photo shoots for people because I love giving the gift of photography. I love being able to be in a position where, If I want to go photograph my oldest fan, Lawrence, Larry is 85, and he lives in Owasa, Oklahoma, and he's been following my channel for like five years. And he always comments. He's like, I'm 82 and how do you think I should do this? And so I emailed the guy and it became a friend with him just through email. And I said when the pandemic is over, which it never is, I will fly out and spend a day with you.

and I flew out on my I didn't tell anybody but I flew out on my own dime and I'm like I'm gonna come spend some time with you he picked me up at the airport and I took photos of everything I made a photo story I'm like you sure you can drive like you're 85 you good and he's like I used to ride I used to drive race cars and so yeah man he was there picked me up we went to eat I spent a day and a half with him he taught we played backgammon for like five hours and and and I then create a photo book I always do a photo book I love giving me a half with him I thought we played backgammon for like five hours um and and and and I then create a photo book I always do a photo book I love giving the gift. So I make these photo books and they're leaf behinds. There's just something that nobody's going to throw out when you give them the gift. So I'd like to do the shoots and then mail them this book and get their reactions to it because they don't expect it. And I just love that most people will never have a professional photo taken of them. They're not used to seeing what quality is, especially with cell phones. They're so used to just garbage that when they see quality, they're like, oh, that's the difference between a great image and a snapshot. So I like being able to do shoots for people that may not be able to afford it.

And then I don't have to charge them. And they're like, that's amazing. So I can pick and choose what I want to shoot. And people will give me shit. They're like, you're not a real photographer because you make your money doing something else. And I say, isn't it the goal of every photographer to get to the point that you can shoot what you want when you want to? Right? Like if it's a landscape photographer, why would you have to, why would you still shoot weddings if you hate it just to make money so you can go do

the landscape stuff. So if you make money elsewhere, there's nothing wrong with doing whatever, whatever you want to shoot. And so, yeah, can I be hired theoretically? Yes. If someone, the right person came along and would pay me like to the $10,000 a day to do what I want to do and leave me alone, sure. But I, like the thing I'm doing now with the bowlers, the professional bowlers, there's a

guy named Kyle Troop. He has an afro on tour. I send him an Instagram message and I'm like, I had it first. And then because I have the check mark, it's helped me get in touch with a lot of people. And I'm like, look, I want to do a photo story with you. And he's like, well, like, what's that? I'm like, as I explained, I showed him some other stuff.

And I'm like, I'll come out and photograph you. All I ask for is access. You give me the access. I'll pay my flight. I'll pay everything. Just give me access. And I'm going to give you the images to use however you want. He's like, really?

I'm like, yeah. He's like, well, we'll be here, here and here. I'm like, all right, I'll be out for this. tour for this stop and and I did that that's how I've gotten access to a lot of musicians because sometimes when musicians come to town I have a bigger following than a lot of them or some of them some of the the mid-level bands and it's like I'm gonna give you these photos and I'm gonna make content and it doesn't cost you money and I'm gonna let you do stuff with it so that's how I get

access and that's how I get to shoot what I want to shoot but I also can make content out of it which then makes me money so that I don't have to get paid in the traditional sense of it because I know I can make content out of it to educate people and make revenue. I hope that answers that. That's awesome. I will not be beholden to someone else's expectations. It's just something that I just, I've never worked, I mean, I've worked a nine to five, barely.

I just didn't last long because my dad always worked for himself as a, as a salesman, a shmata salesman, clothes salesman, kids, children's wear back in the day. And he always said that his, I will not be beholden to someone else's expectations was, I will not be told. when I can go take a piss. So he worked for himself. I like it. He says that wasn't his quote, but I'm like, I'm pretty sure that was your quote.

So you never finished answering the question how your business is still broken down. No, a different question. This is Graham's question. Because you said like 150 or whatever for the YouTube ad. It's 112th.

Yeah, you can figure out math. Okay. That's $1.7 million? One a half. It's close. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's YouTube revenue is nice. Like, I didn't care as much when it was like 40,000, 50,000. But when you start making 150,000 extra dollars just from ad revenue, it's a nice chunk of change.

Merch, don't really push merch that much anymore because it's not as profitable as selling a digital product. When we sell a preset, preset pack for $90 and you're clearing $88,000 because that's less the fees, that's a hell of a lot easier. to sell than something you have to ship and do. So we make a really nice amount with digital products. We make a nice amount with the Squarespace deals. We have some other things. We use Canon in the studio for video. We get in our videos, we have a pop-up that says this was shot with Canon cameras.

That's a sponsorship. But they cannot tell me what to shoot when it comes to stills. It's abundantly clear that no one can pay me to use their gear. I was a Nikon shooter from 15 to 38 years old. Two years ago, two and a half years ago, started using Sony because it was the right tool for the job. And right now I've started to use Canon because it's the right tool for me. And so you cannot buy me for making a good review. I'm going to say, you want to pay me money.

You can pay me money. I'm still say your shit sucks if it still sucks. And so that's the breakdown of the revenue. There's like six, seven different revenue streams. So if something goes away, you still have something. else to pick it back up. But the digital products control your destiny, your own destiny. It's just people that try to make, if you have a large following and you don't know how to

monetize it, that's on you. You have to find a way to monitor. That's why comedy channels were failed in the past because they didn't have the ability. What are you going to sell? How to be a comedian, right? How to be funny. It just doesn't work. Tell a joke.

Exactly. All right. Is there anything else, Alex, you can think of? No, not really. Do you want to rip apart my photos? No. I'm tired. Do you do it right now or after?

It's almost midnight. I mean, it's pretty late. What are we at for time-wise? An hour 40. Holy crap. That's long. It's hot in here. Your watch time is going to go down.

Why? I don't know. Do people watch? How long do they watch these? We've got 20. 20, 30 minutes. Yeah, that's cool. That's good.

But we have two and a half hour ones and people will watch to the very end. Do you put this up as audio too? Audio, it gets like 50 minutes average you or average watch. Where do you hear that? Where do you, what metrics? Oh, on anchor.com. Oh, you use Anchor for that. Do you use Libson?

Yeah. That's where you messed up. We started out on Libson. Well, Anchor didn't exist when I started on Libson. I hate Libson. So bad. But it was okay. Anyway, I think we're good.

Thank you for having. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming this late. Thank you. There's a Grammy party for me to go to. Is there actually? The Grammys are in town. Wow.

Someone texted me and they're like, I'm putting you on a list. I'm like, you could go there and get a free stock when you sign up for public down below in the description because that could be worth all the way to $1,000 at the good Graham. You don't like that? I love it.

Join the mentorship group, guys. Link down below. You can talk to Graham and I once a week. You could. Nobody takes advantage of that. All right. Also, thank you so much. Thanks, Jared, for coming on.

We're going to link you down below. We'll link you down below the description as well. Do you guys want to learn about photography, taking good videos and stuff like that? Check out Jared. With that said, until next time. Cool. Thank you, man. Really appreciate it, man.