The Pomp Podcast - 326: John Shahidi is the Architect Behind Your Favorite Digital Content

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

John Shahidi is a businessman, software developer, manager and producer. He and his brother started Shots Studios, a management company that produces content and serves as the creative studio for top internet talent. In this conversation, we discuss data-driven content creation, how audience is the new currency, why Shots Studios focuses on YouTube, the importance of Shopify, creators as a micro platform, and various monetization strategies for the modern internet. =============================== The Helium Hotspot is a new product that enables the people, not the telcos, to own and operate a wireless network in their city for Internet of Things devices. You can literally earn crypto for helping to build the network and providing connectivity to Internet of Things devices sending small bits of data. Join the movement and get your Helium Hotspot today with $50 off using the code POMP at helium.com.  =============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. John Shahidi is a businessman, software developer, manager, and producer. He and his brother started Shot Studios, a management company that produces content and serves as the creative studio for top internet talent. In this conversation, we discuss data-driven content creation, how audience is the new currency, why Shot Studios focuses on YouTube, the importance of Shopify, creators as a micro platform, and various monetization strategies for the modern internet. I really enjoyed this conversation with John, and I hope you guys do as well.

But before we get into the episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. The first is Helium. They've built the Helium Hotspot, which is a new product that enables the people not the telcos to own and operate a wireless network in their city for internet of things devices the telcos have had a monopoly on the wireless networks for years helium is now democratizing that ownership no longer are we going to be subject to the telcos now we the people can own the wireless network and you can literally earn crypto for helping to build the network and providing connectivity to internet of things devices by sending small bits of data you can Join the movement and get your Helium hotspot today with $50 off by using the code POMP at Helium.com.

I've got one set up, and it's pretty damn cool. Helium.com, use code POMP for $50 off. Also, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at POMPletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. All right, let's get into this episode with John. I hope you guys enjoy it. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek

Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion this podcast is for informational purposes only all right guys bang bang i've got the man here himself john thank you so much for doing this man of course of course thank you it's an honor i was excited all week to jump on here listen you are uh you're basically like the architect of uh of content on the internet you've been doing this a while so uh for like the couple of people who are watching this who don't know who you are let's start with just uh your background and kind of what you did before shot studios yeah so um we

actually founded shot studios 11 years ago so my life before shot studios was a little irrelevant even though i was in the uh the content business but but shot studios when we first started we were a production studio in 2009 um trying to take talent that wasn't onto the internet and bringing them onto the internet and going really after um like mainstream celebrities specifically athletes. So Mike Tyson, Usain Bolt, Floyd Mayweather, Chad Ochocinco, Cristiano Ronaldo were like early guys that we were bringing onto YouTube. Back then the social media and the internet was really YouTube and Twitter. There was nothing else yet. Facebook was out, but Facebook was private pages only, private profiles. So I think we were a little early for our time because

the monetization and the money wasn't there. And the guys that I just named right now are like used to bags of cash upfront for them to even like leave their front door. So the monetization wasn't there. We were just trying to build an online audience, which was a little too early for anyone to wrap their head around. So then we made a pivot to our business. We had a very talented team. We had amazing relationships with Hollywood. And that's when we moved to San Francisco and we launched an app called the shots app. And, um, we were trying to get into the platform business. We said, all right, so if we're trying to help the platforms, but no one's really getting it, let's create a platform business, which is what we created was a, um, a social network,

which was pretty much Snapchat stories and Instagram stories before both of them incorporated stories into the platforms. We were the first, no comments, no liking, no like counts, no follower number just post your day don't overthink what you're posting and get on with the day there's an option to delete it after 24 hours um or or the the post could stay the user could just decide whether they wanted to uh you know however way they had their settings so we did that but um you know what happened to us was really snapchat incorporated the future and if the future and it kind of uh hurt us um you know we were you know sometimes we in platforms take a future it sometimes not all the time it helps that platform and takes the person that was initially initially

the innovator out of business um most times it doesn't work when platforms just copy uh features but in the case of us it did work and it really hurt us but during that time a lot of content creators like early content creators like you know what you're called what you're talking you know see now is like influencers or whatever you want to call them we still call them content creators um were really emerging because of the vine app so that's when we went to plan a and instead of going after mainstream celebrities uh we said let's get these early uh you know these early early stage content creators who really know how to build an audience in their own as with their own niche and and help build a team around them a studio around them which is what shot studios is

today. Got it. And so one of the things that you guys are super well known for is, uh, you're not what I call kind of the dumb content creator, right? You're very, very smart and intelligent using data to drive a lot of the decisions that you do. You guys were pretty early in understanding that. Um, I previously worked at Facebook on the Facebook pages team and it always, you know, shocked me how, uh, as we were there building this growth team, like there wasn't that many people using the data that was provided in the analytics to actually inform the content that they created you guys pioneered that in many ways like talk a little bit about like what was the original impetus for focusing on the data and trying to use that to actually inform the decisions

you guys were making on the content creation side yeah well you know when when you talk about partnering up with an influencer or a creator um there's there's there's thousands maybe tens of thousands. So we had, you know, we wanted to identify people in two ways. One is what is a cultural fit for our company? And is there a real business to be made around this creator? And that's where the data came in. We would, you know, we have internal tools that we have built because the one good thing is when we had our engineers with the shots app, we were able to bring these in the engineering team to also pivot what they were developing into more back-end stuff and we have access to a lot of different apis some are open some aren't open and we are able to you

know just build our own internal software to see all right who is really driving watch time who can retain an audience um who is growing in markets that we could use growth in um so we're not lopsided with just a u.s audience and we could tap into some of these other emerging internet um markets such as brazil mexico india um some different parts of asia so you know but that all you know, the platforms share some data, but not a ton. They share what's, you know, how you got here so far, but they don't really share where can you go. And that's where we build is, you know, where can we go with this person? Where can we go with this? You know, if you have 22 million followers on a specific platform, what does that mean? What else can we do? How do we go

from 22 million to 50 million? Yeah. And so there's obviously a ton of attention right now on content creators, influencers, right? There's kind of two buckets, I'll call it. There's one that is like more, I think, generalizes like the Instagram influencer who just, they take photos, they get paid every once in a while to do some advertising, but it's pretty much a single revenue stream type content creation. They've got a single account. What you guys really have started to do, it sounds like, is build entire businesses or ecosystems around these content creators and approach it much more as they are a business, right? You already mentioned the fact that like when you're evaluating talent can we build a business around them and so maybe talk a little bit just kind of

philosophically how you guys think about these content creator led businesses and what that ecosystem kind of looks like uh today when you're kind of designing them yeah so we'd like to if you look at all the different creators that we work with and i believe there's 12 of them now everyone is in their own lane everyone um you know one is a you know one could be a comedian focused on a female audience one is a comedian focused on a male audience uh one has a very large middle eastern market which the middle east market is really growing um you know in the u.s and and throughout all the middle east and um and north africa um one has a very large audience out of mexico which is a really a top three market for instagram youtube spotify and i think it's netflix's

fourth largest market um one is a large brazilian following um one is being followed because of education one's being followed because of music so so there's all these different verticals within a creator and we're looking at the different verticals that they create content for and you know go you know obviously we look at the first thing that i mentioned are they growing but two is are they hitting a market where we could actually cross promote other creators so when there's a major collaboration it really benefits everybody and those are the things that we look for um those are the first two things we work look for uh later we look for look into you know and this is the hardest part in the influencer world is monetization you know where how do you

create which i'm sure we'll get into but you know um that's that's you know that's that's the third thing we look for you've not got those first two then you could you could you know control your own destiny when it comes to monetization yeah and so once you know kind of hey this is the right creator they're growing in the right audiences and we think that that audience has a lot of runway right so you talked earlier you know somebody's got 22 million followers you think you can get them to 50 million and and you kind of understand the audience building side how do you think about the monetization like how has that evolved over time um given the various things that now kind of are available on the internet yeah um monetization is you know it's it's um just

quick ways to make a money but ours also you know as we're looking into building long-lasting careers we're looking to building long-lasting revenue uh flows and um you know right now you know we we get calls every day i think we even had two offers already this morning with just different offers on like hey we want you know you know we saw you have this much engagement on instagram this much of engagement on tiktok we would love to pay to have these posts those happen all the time and those happen to almost anybody anyone who is on the internet could get those deals especially if you you have a you know your email address and your bio um then you know advertisers are just crawling looking for you that's um that's the easy one that's one i don't

really we pay i pay attention to obviously but i don't really i have a whole team within shots that handles that part. What I look forward to is how do we build businesses? How do we, we have our own audience. We, I look at a creator as a micro platform. So if you're a micro platform, how do we build businesses? Going back to the shots app, we never, when we were looking at building the shots app or when we had the shots app, you know, we had over 10 million users and you know, we had at one point over 6 million active users. We never, monetization was never meant to be you know okay so when do we start putting banner ads and sponsored videos and you know um all these different things inside the app that everyone else does how do we you know

we were looking for shots app and we're now doing that with shot studios is uh how do we build our own businesses how do we um how do we get into the merchandising businesses how do we get into beauty how do we get to food and beverage uh you know how do we get into other consumer goods products whether it's a toy a doll backpacks but how do we do this without one-offs you know someone coming in and giving you a couple hundred thousand dollars for a few posts and bouncing how do we actually own that how do we create our own beats by dre you know then those are the things that we think of you know um you know how do we create our own vitamin water you know and what 50 cent did with vitamin water how do we create these products for each one of our creators and those are the

things we're working on so to me this is the most interesting thing in all of the internet right and the reason being um a couple years ago i started thinking pretty deeply about this idea of like audience is the new currency and i think a lot of people use that as like oh some advertisers gonna come pay me money and then i can uh simply you know post or do whatever and i get that cash but what you're talking about um there's a very well-known author who one time said to me uh, if somebody is willing to pay me to reach my audience, that means that that audience is more valuable to me than it is to them. Right. And basically I can sell my own things through all this kind of stuff. And they started to walk me through, like, look, looking for very specific

types of products that were high margin that he could sell through that he knew that there was a wide enough kind of interest in his audience. And like, he was very, very smart about it. And it sounds like you guys are thinking through a lot of that same stuff. Has it been driven at all? Or do you see corollary kind of analysis to what, whether it's Kylie Jenner, Kanye West, like a number of these people have done where they already had built in audiences, and then they went and created a product. It feels like that's a much more repeatable, sustainable business model, given that you retain ownership of that audience, right? And so you can build multiple products and, and multiple companies and keep kind of bringing them more and more things

over time, rather than just an advertiser comes one time, you advertise once and then they're gone. like the company piece seems more sustainable and repeatable right of course of course yeah you control it i mean especially in the uh influencer and content creator business is advertisers are afraid they're afraid you know and and their expectations are so high because people are comparing youtube to television they're saying okay well you know you spent this much money on that tv show that had two million views well i'm getting 10 million views you know so i'm five times more and you know and you know there's always a tug of war between the creator and the advertiser and then the advertiser eventually says okay someone at the office says hey you know what

you might be right let's give it a shot and then the conversion is not the same um because people on the internet just don't want to see ads they don't have to see ads on television you know you're you're kind of stuck you're forced you know unless you know you're you're previously recorded and you fast forward to it through it but you know or if it's a radio you know station like you know you're kind of a force unless you just switch the station, but on the internet business, it's just like, you know, the conversion is so much lower that, you know, then the advertiser says that person was wrong. Oh, by the way,

look at this guy. He's not swearing in his content or he's smoking weed or he did this or she did that. And, and then, you know, and then someone says, Hey, why did you do that? That wasn't children friendly, you know, and then all this whole mess comes in and the advertiser pulls out and we never hear from them again. So, and, and, and I don't blame the advertiser, right it is the wild wild west on the internet right now people are just you know i mean the more yourself the better your content you're better your channel is going to grow but the

more yourself the more you know you're less political you're less um phony so you know it's not what the advertisers or advertisers want to see they want to see the picture perfect version of you so um so advertisers said okay this is not for us so then where does that leave you know when you went back bragging about getting 10 million views how are you going to now make money you know you're just going to brag about the 10 million views and live at home or live on your couch you know so that's uh that's when you know then you gotta go and you gotta create your own t-shirt and create a culture and a following and not a following the number following somebody that really cares about you and build and and have them join this culture have them

join this click or squad whatever you want to call it and buy a product and now that money goes directly to you you know shopify sends daily deposits you know i mean so you're literally making money every single day when you wake up how much data goes into determining what products are companies to build versus it's like the uh creator's intuition and just personal interest I think so you know it's like creating a video you know you're gonna sometimes we're even guilty of this we'll create a video that we just wanted to do and it just doesn't register with the audience and we'll just keep doing it and doing it and doing it until it's something that we're passionate about and then the audience like and then you see the views and engagement go up I

think a product a product that a creator really wants to get behind it's kind of gonna have to be the same thing you know you could take advice from people you could you know right like right now CAA has CAA labs where like they really take I haven't used it but I've heard about it and I know the people behind it they're very smart people so you know they're they're going in and they're you know they're looking at like your audience on across everywhere you are on the internet and pitching creators like we think your audience is going to like you know jarred pickles and you know and you know um seltzer water you know whatever it is you know like um

you know i i think that could work but at the end of the day it really depends on what the audience wants you know if you're a comedian with a very low follow i'm sorry you're a comedian with a very young following then maybe you know um custom suits is not your thing you know so um you just have to kind of really understand your audience no different than when you're making the video you're making the music is what does your audience want and the product has to be the same thing as shots right now we're trying trying to treat products like a creator you know and we want to turn products into creators um and that's why you know i mean i'm a big fan of this liquid death you know i mean like this is content it is you know people laugh they you know they you know

they ask questions um i had a call with their team last week about content ideas and you know it's like this is this is content this draws your attention you know it's like what is that you want to know more i've read everything on this uh can all the labels and everything just to get a kick out of it and you know it's all standard stuff that they have legal stuff they need to put but even like the fonts i'm looking at it you know i mean it's just like got my attention and that's turning a product into a content creator and and if a creator could get behind one of these and do that with the product and you have these two things it's just that much more explosive and you see a lot of youtubers do that with merch right now the best merch that

sells right now is merch built around their content and their fandoms versus like a picture of their face with their name on it you know those don't really convert well people don't really want to buy your name on a t-shirt they want to buy something cool that fun that you made that is that has been incorporated into your content so then they're part of the following they're part of the squad they're part of the uh you know the the audience that you've built yeah and how much of uh this is now being empowered by the stripes of the world the shopifys you know all of these kind of infrastructure companies that have made it dead simple for uh creators to actually do this themselves uh or is it even if those companies didn't exist this was already a trend that kind

of people were moving towards because you saw it happening uh where people weren't using shopify Stripe and things like that yeah um I don't think any of this is easily said to do if there was no Shopify you know it's not you know it wouldn't be something I was like just get up and do it you know um because when you right now when I tell you and you and you know your audience and whoever's listening or even our creators is um you don't have to worry about how to do this you just have to do worry about what to do and what to sell you don't worry about how how's the shopify has made it so damn easy that it's not even like like when we launched little shop.com which is our merch site like shopify and building property shopify was like action item number eight on our

like 20 thing to-do list you know it wasn't a you know before i used to be like all right build a website figure this out and have analytics and you know figure out emails and all this but now it's like all right just it's like saying create an instagram account for the brand it's just like that's not an important thing more important thing is what to sell right now the quality of it you know right now that's the the top three priorities to us with little shop and any of our consumer goods products is you know uh build something that the audience loves make sure it's of quality and have great customer service like like zappos level customer service you know i mean so the person comes back. You know, you did all this work to get them to go to the website and purchase

and put in their credit card and you want them to come back. And those things are what makes it important. And Shopify has made it a world where creators can focus on those three things and not worry about how do I build a website? Who do I call? Do I outsource overseas? You know what I mean? Like, I mean, you don't have to worry that I spent $50,000 on this thing. You don't have to worried about that you know because that's what a website would cost at the level of Shopify when you're talking about all the back-end stuff that they provide all the analytics everything you know I mean like it's not just a front-end thing that's the back-end thing that makes it Shopify what it is it's an absolutely incredible company and I think you nailed it in the sense of like it's

almost a foregone uh thought at this point right people just oh of course I'm gonna have a Shopify uh you guys are obviously creating content for all kinds of different platforms but everything kind of starts and ends with youtube and then you kind of go to these other platforms uh youtube's been around a long time it's obviously got a massive audience right i think of it even as like the second largest search engine in the world but why do you guys spend so much time on that platform compared to you know whether it's a new shiny platform that's come up or other ones that are that are even larger in some cases um a few reasons and they're all pretty much equally important. Um, I would tell you, um, uh, for one of them, one of the reasons

is, um, there's no, when you're in the video content business, there's no limits on what you could create on YouTube. You can make it vertical. You can make it wide. You can make it 20 seconds. You can make it 20 minutes or two hours. Um, you know, it's available. You know, the product itself is available everywhere all mobile devices desktop um all smart tvs um you know apple tv roku chromecast you know all um uh fire stick everything so it's available everywhere the product's great that's that's that's one of the reasons um another one of the reasons is um to me you know just being around this for so long just paying attention to the internet for so long it's the safest place for our content you know one thing google does not do is it just does not

mess things up that you know yeah they've had some flops when they've tried to launch things from start google plus wave i'm sure there was a few other ones that we just don't remember but we laughed at them when they try to do it but once a product is up and going they don't mess it up you know i mean they did not mess up google search they did not mess up gmail they did not mess up maps you know i mean like they you know um these are all products that you know once it's there they don't mess it up they don't make sudden product changes because someone got fired and someone came in and you know came from here and convinced someone that this works they don't do that um so to us like it's a safe place then another part is um monetization you know uh the

fact that there's monetization and and and very good money you know um you know i'll never get into how much money our creators make because that's really private to them and they don't really like talking about it that's why you never see us on the forbes list um they think it ruins the integrity of the content which i agree but it's no secret when you go and see what some of these top youtube creators make they make that you know i've been to youtube creators houses that you know that are 10 million dollars you know in calabasas um and they made it and they i know the money that's being made there so there's monetization and the better you do and the you know the better you do and the less of an asshole you are online am i allowed to cuss on

here of course okay all right i want to make sure you say asshole once i said ask the line meaning like if you curse on a you know piece of content which is what i did so i hope i didn't ruin your monetization but um but podcasts are different that's the beauty of podcasts you just now you could really be yourself but but as long as you do you know you can make a really good living off YouTube. Now, is it safe to be dependent on advertisers? No, but at least it helps you build that foundation. So you could go back to what we talked about with Shopify and all these other consumer good products, and you could build products yourself and fund your projects yourself and not be dependent on advertiser, you know, whatever, one, two, three to come in. So that's

another reason. And then one other part that's really important to us, and I always talk about this is the people that work at YouTube are some of the greatest people in the world. They're the greatest people I work with. They're the people that when they call, I'm not rolling my eyes saying, ah, you know, because I get a lot of phone calls, lawyers, accountants, business people, other managers, you know, other producers, all this stuff will call me. And I'm just like, oh man, I don't want to deal with this. But when someone from YouTube calls me, I'm like, oh, they're just, I don't know the culture, how they created this culture there, what robert kensel has done to create this culture where everybody is happy everybody is honest

everybody is open-minded that we work with there and that like that like drives us keeps you know so we don't have to worry about that part we know that the people that are behind um the platform that we're creating on are good people so we're just not ever thinking like oh man you know and been in this in these shoes before in the past like you know i'm in business here but i can't wait though they i'm not here you know and that's never really a thought um a lot of the platforms are really good people with youtube who we've had this relationship with so long um just that's that itself and that's why i'm saying all these things together are equally as important for us to say all right we're a youtube first company and everything else we're going to build we're going

going to build around this because it's important to be everywhere you can't be lopsided to just YouTube you got to be everywhere you know I mean someone's you know addicted to TikTok today and it's going to spend hours on TikTok I can't miss that person just because their habit was because they woke up this morning and got a link text to them to go about a funny TikTok and then they just got warped into this world of I'm just going to spend the day on TikTok you know I mean I can't lose that person because of that I can't control where they're going to be so it's important to be everywhere but at the end of the day youtube is you know the uh to us to our company the most important there's a reason why they're so big and they've been around so long right doing something

right uh how do you guys think about tiktok and uh and quibi's another kind of newer video uh platform uh what about those two um well well quibi we never really got on um i just really wasn't sure um i'm not sure about it currently you know um so it's just uh you know we'll just wait to see what happens and as they build their audience um you know we'll just take a look and if they have an audience and it resonates with our audience and we could actually you know get a jump start with their existing audience then maybe move our audience there we'll take a look but we haven't gotten there yet with quibi um and that's how i felt about TikTok one year ago this time and then about August September of last year I saw all right

there's an audience here and um and our audience does like TikTok by us just doing you know some R&D work and and then we launched our TikTok accounts I think it was the last week of August last year so it was that uh 10 months ago and now I think we have um we have like 15 channels and over 100 million followers on tiktok in just 10 months yeah like we're and we have you know we have uh an account with 16 million one with 14 two with 12 um yeah we have a we have a very large following on tiktok and um yeah it's what do you what do you attribute that growth i mean that that's astronomical growth for any platform but even for tiktok uh that's super impressive of like why is that happening is that because you guys are better than others at creating content

is it's the the content creators you have like what is the difference for you guys to have that type of success um i think it's um i think it's really us understanding the audience you know us understanding spending some time sitting back and paying attention for a little while who the TikTok audience is, and then, you know, understanding our audience, and then doing some testing, and going back to our development team, and just having them to kind of take a look at, you know, does us posting on TikTok help us in other places? And the answer is yes, specifically on Instagram. It really helps us with our Instagram growth, and our Instagram growth helps us with our YouTube growth. So does that help? And the team came back and said, yeah,

we said all right cool then that's when we put the foot down on the gas and said let's just go big and explain that more when you say tiktok helps you grow instagram and instagram helps you grow youtube how are those connected well they discover you because it's a whole different world can you hear me okay okay um when it's a whole different world of people on tiktok but it's a world that understands us so we're getting a lot of eyeballs on people who've never seen us anywhere else and are coming to us um you know finding us on tick tock and seeing that oh i like this guy i like his content or her content um or her as a person or whatever it is i want more well i don't want to wait till tomorrow until they post again where else are they

and and then tiktok has that feature where you can click on someone's instagram profile and it deep links you to the instagram map oh great they're posting something completely different different side this person i knew i liked this person glad i did this who is this person let me read more the link in bio youtube link oh wow youtube video this is going to be long oh my god i really love this person youtube link you know dang this video is great i want to subscribe turn on notifications and and now you've got this person who start found you on tiktok it's got deep link to instagram click the link in bio almost all our links and bios are youtube videos and um and came to youtube and now we got them you know on

three different platforms yeah and then it feels like you guys have done a great job kind of doing this for video i know that uh another area you guys are focused on moving forward is podcast you've built on a podcast studio you're going to go kind of build that as one of the pillars of of the business what's the uh intrigue or fascination with audio and the whole podcast world yeah so that um that world that i just told you about come let's just say like that's kind of the cycle let me find you on tiktok the hottest app out right now by far um then let me see more about you on instagram then let me go see even more and watch you more on youtube and subscribe we don't want to lose them there you know but you've already showed them a short video probably

something funny in 15 seconds show them a bunch of photos you show them a longer video what else you really want to learn about this person you really want to know now that you're really you know fascinated with this person like hear their brain you know subscribe now go to wherever spotify wherever and now here you know here's a clip on youtube go listen to this person on spotify apple wherever you listen to podcasts and here's a one hour of this person raw and on cut you know so it kind of goes to that cycle and while you're there you know go buy their t-shirt really be in this person's world you know you're in their brain you see what they like you see what their interests are you're part of their squad now with your piece your merch your your shirt

your hoodie your hat and you know and now you're part of this person's life you know now you got a friend yeah and i guess uh how do you think about the different types of content on these platforms So video obviously is a very specific medium. Right. And so you can change the types of content that you post on a TikTok, a YouTube, an Instagram, like there's different lengths, there's different types of content that does well in each of those. Audio is a whole different ballgame. Right. Maybe you can take a podcast and you do a video and post it on YouTube or something like that. But for the audio only platforms, how do you think about a different type of content? like what is the creators who are really good at video and on these kind of more traditional platforms what are they thinking about creating in the audio media yeah i think um in the audio world and you know i i have to throw out this disclaimer that i'm still learning and our team is still learning and we're hiring people to run their audio side that have more experience than I do or than my brother who's my who's the co-founder of the company do and we've hired

some really great people we have a we have an amazing partnership with Spotify that was announced earlier this year with the podcast that we're doing with Lele Pons and Spotify has been beyond helpful as well to helping us learn but the one thing I've got to say and the reason why I even agree to come on your podcast is people who your audience is tuning in right now to learn something and you know i could come in and talk about all the cool thing i have the cool things i've done and all the cool people i know and all the great life that i have but the podcast audience is really tuned in right now to learn something when you uh when you interviewed alex um from buzzfeed or formerly a buzzfeed big technology um sherman pishovar uh taylor lorenz you know these are all

former um episodes of your podcast that i listened to i didn't listen to you to know about them they're all three of them are actually my friends i talk to them all the time i know what they're up to you know i mean i know taylor's moving out of her apartment in new york city and going to another place you know i mean like you know i mean like i know alex is starting up his own thing but i learned something from each one of those podcasts i learned you know i learned so much from all three of them completely different things too three different people three different businesses but they are you know they they got my attention because they sparked my interest and that's what we've got to learn with our audience is what do they want to learn you know

are we going to come and Leila is going to talk about how great her birthday party in Miami's been and how much fun she's having or she's going to actually like someone going to walk away and and say wow I did not know that that was really interesting because that's when they go talk you know these are all like conversation icebreakers that's when they go talk i do it all the time i learn something from a podcast and i'll go back to my best friend who's my fiance and i just you know i'll say something and she's like how do you know that i was like i was listening to this podcast you know and i you know i mean like and i think that's what people really want at a podcast and that's what we're learning right now and that's what we're that's why we're building

this it's a whole different side of us that no one's been able to get anywhere else that they're going to get um with the podcast studio that we're building that's awesome and and i think you're right in the sense of um because it's usually longer form and it's audio uh there's definitely this learning element what i've been thinking a lot about and i don't have the answer to is uh how interchangeable audio content is so for example uh i know a lot of people a couple years ago with like the rise of audible and things would say hey look i don't really read books as much I actually listened to them. So I started to get really big into audio books. It feels like now podcast and audio books in some way compete with each other for time because both of them are

learning, but it's not, you know, one's a book that's kind of very well thought out. The other is either an individual kind of, you know, sharing content one-to-one or they're interviewing somebody, right? It just feels like it's a kind of an updated book or audio book to some degree in some weird way um how do you think about uh the creators you guys have are a lot of comedians or kind of comedy focused content how do they teach or or do education being kind of more of the the the humor side of of content creation yeah so you know i gotta find a different word in education when i'm when i'm talking about education you're not gonna like tune in and You're not going to learn from Lele's podcast, you know, how a Tesla is built, you know,

like that's not the kind of education, you know, you're going to learn something else. She might teach somebody, she might teach somebody that, you know, her audience, right? Because it would be awesome to listen, for me, or maybe even you, to listen to a podcast that talks about how a Tesla, it really is built. Where do they get the materials from? where you know what kind of metals are they using where are they mined you know all this stuff would be really interesting to me but not lele's audience lele's audience might want to learn what are the best times to post on tiktok yeah to go viral you know what are the best times to post

on instagram should i post videos or should i post photos on instagram what should the ratio be you know and though that's her audience and those are things that we're learning for each one of the podcasts that we're launching with each one of our creators is what does each person's audience want to learn in the case of Rudy Mancuso when he gets around doing a podcast he might talk about how to direct a YouTube video or and then how to direct a YouTube video that's 40 minutes long how to direct a YouTube video that's one hour long and how to get off YouTube and direct a film that's an hour and a half that could go somewhere outside of YouTube you know people want to learn those things um especially in the world now with sadly you know almost over 50

million um unemployed americans people are gonna look to the internet and say okay um i don't think my restaurant's gonna open up anytime soon um i've got a couple mouths to feed i keep hearing about youtubers making all this money i feel like i'm interesting i've never seen anyone do anything that's in that my brain is generating to to me how do i start where do i start where do i you know what do i do what what cameras are these guys using what you know i mean like and imagine a podcast that could break all that down for you and you know you don't have to worry about you know whenever it's time to go back to work and trying to compete with 50 million other people to get a job back what if you controlled your own destiny where do you start and i think you know if

if someone like rudy could create a podcast like that or anybody maybe one of your listeners could create a podcast like that they've got something there and i think those are the things that make podcasts so beautiful is that now you have all different verticals of podcasts you have talk shows you have um you know the crime stuff you know you have these other ones but to me you know, that's what we want to do. We want to take the things that we have learned over the years and share them with the world. Yeah. And so how do you think about, I'll call kind of the maturation or the rise of a content creator, right? So many of the content creators that you work with start out online, for example, then they've kind of moved over to YouTube. They

built these big followings. TikTok comes out, they build a big following there. We've talked a lot about kind of how you monetize that but there's also scenes at least from the outsider view looking in um certain inflection points from the the popularity or the audience right so things like getting a netflix show or getting onto traditional television um are those things actually in the eyes of the creator in the eyes of you guys uh seen as kind of uh further along in the maturation uh and popularity of a creator or is that more just the external folks think that getting on television or getting a netflix show is a big deal but actually the creators that they're not even really worried about that stuff or aspire to do that it really depends on the creator's

interest in what they want to do whether it's what their heart wants to do or what their talent allows them to do um it really depends you know we look at our company you know it's centered in the middle is youtube and then outside of youtube we have all these other ancillary businesses that shots is building and they're all like really based around what we feel like the world needs um you know one part is music one part's podcast one part's merchandise one part's consumer goods product one part is other social networks you know we have all these different ancillary businesses that are built around youtube and i'm sorry then there's a six parts there's really six and there's television and film um and it really depends on what the

creator wants to do uh we had tour touring as one of them it's been a little bit on hold but it really depends on what the creator wants to do you know what we do is we help them build we help all our creators build their youtube channels we build our own youtube channels we have our own completely different original side that is really one to have originals ourselves for the company for ideas that you know we could create an experiment and then share with all our other 12 channels to help evolve the channels as well this is also that's something i also always think about is you know there is a time where someone gets over somebody you know just because they subscribe to you at 14 years old does that mean that they want to watch you when they're 17 years

old just because they subscribe to you when they're 18 years old does that mean they want to watch what you're creating at 21 years old people age up so we create all these other business uh these are these other content which we call shots originals to um to really experiment other types of content so all our channels together could start growing um so it really depends on where the creator wants to go you know they might have some other random idea but we have all these different businesses within shots that a creator could really do whatever they want they want to become a musician we have a whole record label that has songwriters producers relationships with all platforms radio stations um obviously we have our own video production company and

shot studio so they can make a music video um everything everything you know every everything if someone wants to become an artist we have a podcast studio now with now as i mentioned a team producers that have come from different very successful podcasts that could help someone if they have an idea of a podcast we could build it yeah and and so you sit in a very interesting place i think because you've got uh folks who started out unknown and relatively small uh but have built incredible careers and incredible audiences in the tens of millions uh in terms of content creation on the internet you also uh are very close with people that i would consider more traditional celebrities, right? So this is the Justin Bieber's, the Floyd Mayweather's,

and kind of that entire group of people who really kind of got popular, not on the internet, social media platforms, but because of the nature of what they do, they've got to be on those platforms, right? So you see, they've got these massive followings. How do you think about the difference in approach for somebody who's built their popularity and celebrity on the platforms versus somebody who built it elsewhere and then kind of creates content as a kind of a secondary piece to what their career has actually grown into. Well, Floyd and Justin, I met both during phase one of our business when we had the studio at first. With Floyd, he always was a believer in us creating this content around different celebrities, including himself, which we launched

his youtube channel many years ago maybe almost 10 years ago um and and justin like i remember my first time i um not met justin but first time i talked to him about the business was um you know we were going to build like a cartoon studio and we were going to create cartoons with um with with different celebrities um and and then right around then is when they both actually invested in the company um shortly after they invested we realized that this phase is not working right now and then we launched the app which they were okay you know they were perfectly fine with the pivot and they actually said we actually maybe like this idea more the app sounds great and the product they saw the product and they loved the product the product was flawless at the time like it was

next level like the team they're up since though in san francisco and i always pay attention to the things they're building like the best out there um some of the apps major apps right now that most people really love were built by the team that actually created shots they've moved on obviously not working with us but um you know and then and then the app and then and then when it was time to go back to square phase one i don't know why i'm saying phase like it's coronavirus but you know but you know but plan a you know um they um you know they they were all about it and they were supportive and you know they've just been real big supporters as both investors and moral support um with us to creating to allowing us to create what we do and that's why we have

such a great relationship with both of them i'm gonna say i talked to both of them maybe um i don't know seven days a week you know floyd definitely i mean twice a day usually um just different things he always has ideas and we bounce off each other and um you know then he's asking about the company and what i've been up to and you know how is the day and what's tomorrow look like and whatnot and you know justin does the same as well you know justin obviously follows all our social accounts when we post something about a specific project he always always the first to call me he's like hey what is this about well how you know what is how's this tied and everything how's you know this and that you know you said it's a teaser can i see the

full thing and all that so they're both incredible and been i think lloyd invested in the company in 2010 and just invested in the company in 2012 or 2013 i don't remember and you know it's been quite some time they've been so supportive of everything yeah that's awesome and it feels also like uh a lot of the more traditional uh celebrities whether they're musicians artists athletes whatever they've gotten much much smarter over the years about how not only one they can build the online audiences but to also monetize them as well right and you mentioned a couple earlier, you know, the 50 cent with the vitamin water and things like that. How do you think about creators as investors, right? Because I think one of the things that is already interesting is like,

hey, I can build these companies, or I can use my audience. Another thing is I can take capital that I have, I can invest it into a startup, a company, whatever, and then I can help them get to my audience, right? But I'm doing it not as the majority owner, just as a minority owner. Like, what has that conversation been like if at all with with creators it really I mean that all really depends on the creator or the celebrity and the brand you know it doesn't um always make sense um but sometimes it does you know I think Shervin was one that really understood okay I've got this company um whether it was through his phone or when he worked at Menlo was like I've got this company and um i don't know the perfect person that can actually help this company

and you know he would you know fly down in los angeles i remember those days like he would fly down los angeles and have meetings with the right people that were great for that brand for that product for that company so he would always bring very very smart entertainment money into the startup and um and i think a lot of people have followed um that path and a lot of people have done it but some people still do it wrong you know it just it doesn't make sense you know a for a let's say a youtuber who has a very young audience that watches him or her because they do pranks to invest in a medical device company you know i mean like you know i mean like sometimes but it happens you know sometimes you know the medical device company gets excited because the

person has a lot of followers on youtube tiktok instagram and then this other person is sold on like hey you know your 50 grand could become 10 million dollars this is how you invest you could be part of suncoast valley and then this is like forced relationship and it just never really works and then the creator gets over it because they posted about it and no one you know they call the company say how'd it do it was like i didn't convert you know you're not the right person and creators like well why what do you mean i'm not the right person you know who i am you know i mean it becomes this big weird thing and then there's all this resentment built in you know like and i think that's one thing that shervin did a great job with i know there's a lot of firms that have

done a great job with it and i'm just not thinking of who they are but shervin was always the one i remember um really like pushing hard for um companies that he had investment to fly down to la and meet with the the perfect you know partner yeah that's awesome and then how do you and the uh and the creators that you work with think about uh kind of the legacy media right in terms of uh we're now seeing um specific reporters focusing on internet culture right so taylor lorenz at new york times is obviously probably the leader there um but how have you guys thought about that given that uh many of the creators are able to build such large audiences and talk directly to them via these other platforms like is that even part of the strategy to leverage

uh the legacy media and some of the more kind of incumbent publications yeah i mean um yeah i think you know people care they have audiences you know their audiences are human beings you know i mean like they're they're still reading the new york times or or or wall street journal or ad age billboard to filter so you know they're they're reading these you know and people care about them they have audiences, like audiences bigger than more people that these publications are covering. You just need to know, as a reporter, who has that audience, and not the one-off audience. I'm going to write about this person now, but they're going to fall off the face of the earth in three months, so my story is really irrelevant in three months. And I think that's where someone

like Taylor has nailed. She knows who has the audience, who is coming on. If they have gone because she was wrong why what happened to them you know michelle no she's just gonna say like oh i messed up i don't know what happened no no no this person self-destructed because they did this and they did that they did this bonehead move and blah blah blah you know she really does she's she's the best she she there's nobody like her you know and i've told her that i talked to her a couple weeks ago and i don't she probably thought i was maybe trying to pitch a story to her but i didn't wasn't even trying to do that i just want to tell her how awesome she is and what she's doing for the internet culture right now is awesome there's gonna be copycats you know i think maybe i don't

know you've got to have some you know um some some of these publications are so you know um old school thinking that i don't know if they would you know hire someone like taylor who will spend some time with tiktokers and travel with tiktokers to see you know what is this you know this this shift in culture um you know i think the the one publication that does a great job and because they really focus on this business is tube filter uh tubefilter.com like those guys really get it and they're just i mean they're every article on that site i'm just like okay yeah all right i'm never reading an article saying this isn't for me or this is bs or or less suck like they they really so as as a reporter taylor is the best out there and as a

and you know there's a lot of other great ones i just she's she just stands out to me as the the goat you know the greatest of all time right now you know i mean like she really is she's um she's um and then and then tooth filter as a as an actual site does an incredible job others are starting to copy them but yeah and and uh one of the last questions i have for you is uh as you think about creators as kind of this um platform or micro platform right and then you've got the products that you can really create as content help me understand the balance between what i'll call like more analog or physical products so t-shirts you know uh cosmetics whatever versus software products so working with the creator to actually build like a more

scalable technology company that then gets piped through to their audience how do you guys uh kind of think through physical products versus software yeah so um right now you know our focus is physical products it's something that you know because of shopify and how easy they've made it we're we're going down the route of getting physical products that our audience would um would would like would enjoy would come back would not feel ripped off buying and that that's our focus now um i've never thought of really virtual products i mean you know i had one of the best apps in the world at one point and you know it was like a little bit like i was still bit heartbroken on what happened so i've never really i get an itch sometimes on like building

another app um but then you know i shoot the idea down within you know a few hours of thinking about the idea and i just say you know don't be you know right now we look at us because we create for all platforms we look at like the platforms as like you know as i use this example once and i actually got some weird tweets about it saying bad example so i'm going to do it again is um is you know we look at the platforms as like you know if there's like a big war because they're all at war with each other um we look at them as like countries at war and we're like the ones building the armory you know like we're just you know whatever your needs are you need tanks we got tanks you need missile launchers we have missile launchers you need f-14s we got f-14s yeah i mean

we're the company um i always forget the company that uh the you know the you know that builds all these down in uh i think texas um but we want to be that for the platforms you know oh you get you have vertical video that disappear in 24 hours we got content for that you know you have 15 second videos we got that you know you have you know even if we were to do something for quibi you know which we haven't yet but you know oh you want videos that look both you know great vertically and horizontally we could do that you know we could just do anything you want audio you want music um and and so that because of that that's just like so fun and there's such a need for that that we don't really have um we're not really looking to build any software now now there are

softwares that creators can team up with and if we find the right company we'll do that i was talking a friend of mine um phase banks um he's from the part of the phase clan and one of the greatest human beings in the world and we're just catching up yesterday we just moved not too far from each other and you know he was just telling me how you know how much money you know they're they're uh um esports um um crew and he was telling me about how much money they make off like skins you know and the number was crazy crazy like way more i'm just thinking like oh and that's all profit you know you don't have to buy the product and build a fulfillment center which is what we've done and you know deal with shipping and deal with you know all this so you're just creating skins like that's

just pure profitability so if we get to that point where we can partner up with someone that makes sense and it makes sense for our audience we'll definitely do that yeah i love that uh you've been doing this for a long time what's uh what's one or two of the biggest lessons you've learned over the last call a decade or so in the content business on the internet um always be evolving you can't be comfortable you know an average creator last career last three years um you know like i said you know eventually people age up just like an average tv show last three years you know you have your you know game of thrones and these other ones that last longer but an average tv show lasts three years and average creators last three years so don't if the sink if the sink is

shipping you don't have to jump just figure out how to not sink and keep sailing you know so um you know that that's that's the one thing i think you know when when when when the ship is sailing you know i feel like you know they either you know you either drown with it or you just jump off but i think you know you got to always be evolving there's so many things to do you know like we just named all the different things that we didn't really get into snapchat or twitter or you know um i mean who knows you know some of these chinese platforms um yeah the other chinese platform not the tiktoks but there's there's dozens of other ones in china you know i mean we haven't talked about any of that we haven't talked about uh what's the one that reporters

are using right now to write their own articles um yeah not medium but there's a like a medium something yeah yeah them you know i mean like these are all places where you could like grow audiences so keep just keep doing that and don't be lopsided in one place yeah i love that um one of my favorite questions to ask people now is uh what is the best decision you've made in your career and what is the worst decision you've made in your career the best decision i've made in my career has got to be building this studio and a studio that is not a um that does not focus on one thing focus on different thing because i'm someone that does go to sleep with ideas and dreams and new ideas and wakes up with new ideas and you know to take away my anxiety um or this

not to take away the anxiety but take away anxiety before it's built up is like just experimenting think you know as a creative many creative people you know they they they get their anxiety um and which could lead to other bad dark things whether it's depression or drug use or anything like that is you just have to as a creative person not let it sit in your subconscious mind and get it out and i think that's one reason why we built the studio like we can do almost anything we record music record videos of film videos uh podcasts is is that and it's really helped me and you know not everything have we created has worked we've done a lot of things that haven't worked as well but at least i did it you know at least i'm happy about it i don't regret anything that i've ever

created whether it worked or didn't work we spent a lot of money on certain children's programming right before children's programming um took a hit on monetization i don't regret it i loved it you know and now we're doing other children's programming that's coming out of it such as need to be so you know like the you know there's things that i you know that that's the one thing that i'm really proud of is just keep creating and don't have and let anything stop us um the thing i'm not proud of you know you know i mean i mean there's not maybe a lot of little things but there's not like a major thing that sticks out now i think everything's always worked out you know um moving

from la to san francisco and back to la worked out helped save the company and helped me meet my fiancee you know like you know so i can't say i would have like been at the plate you know the the same place and time i was you know to meet her if i didn't leave and come back so there's I mean, there's nothing, no mistakes. I mean, the one advice I have to give to anybody listening is, you know, always save your money. You know what I mean? Like if you want to experiment something, experiment small, don't go huge because if you save your money, have money in your bank account, you could do the first thing I was

just not talking about is you're going to experiment anything you want, you know? So, you know, we were lucky. We raised a lot of money for the app. We saved a lot of it to be able to make this pivot. We didn't have to bankrupt the company and start another company. Yeah, I mean, like, it was confusing some investors who invested into the app. But at the end, they we did a service to everybody, every investor, they came along with the journey, you know, but we did that, because we were very, always very careful with how much we spent, no matter what it was. And you guys know, and those who know, listening, you know, how expensive rent and developers in San Francisco can be. And we always, you know, we didn't go and get the biggest place, we always treated it as if we were running on seed, seed round money. and i think that's the one thing that i have to say that you know mistakes that i've almost made but i didn't make it was like blowing through money um you know you know if you don't blow

through the money you can save and evolve and experiment you know i said you know i mentioned r&d earlier you know we have an r&d division but it's not an r&d division like it's four million dollars a year to build whatever it wants you know it's it's like hey build this you have a fifteen hundred dollar budget you know i know what i said sounds like it's going to cost 20 grand and i wanted to look like it cost 50 grand but you have 1500 bucks to experiment that you know i mean that's what that's one a bit of advice i have to give any content creator or anyone who's getting into the production business you know people blow through cash a lot you hear about companies raising a billion and you know filing for bankruptcy years later you know um you don't

to do that you know i mean like um you know sometimes you know it's like it's like alcohol sometimes the cheaper the better you know um so you know so you know you don't have to spend a lot of money to create content on the internet so don't do it i love it that's great advice uh two questions to finish up and then you're going to get to ask me one uh the first one is more serious which is what is the most important book that you've ever read most important book i've ever read um you know I try not to read too many business books so I don't can't really say recommend a book that is relevant to everything we just talked about this past hour um I think the most important book I've ever read has to be the autobiography of Malcolm X um it really um

but I read it early I read it when I was I think 15 years old and to me like it um it taught me a lesson at 15 to don't feel sorry for myself you know like the world is going to be very um the world could be very cruel um hopefully not as cruel to me as it has been to other people but if it is just keep keep your head up and keep going and that's the one thing I remember just always feeling and even if I felt bullied or you know felt down or just felt made to be inadequate growing up that song that that book always gave me courage I recommend the book now then I recommend the movie with Spike Lee and Denzel Washington after I don't recommend ever watching it before because I don't know maybe you can but I watched the movie after

and it just kind of like visualized everything I had just read that but the book is just something else that I try to actually advise a lot of friends and they hit some off guard I was like oh I thought you didn't tell me what to read the Steve Jobs autobiography I was like no or biography I was like no no you can read that too I'm sure that's good but read the autobiography Malcolm X love that answer you're the first person to recommend that one so that's a great recommendation that's great I hope I hope please you um anyone listening please let me know after you read it let me know if it was right wrong it's been a long time since I've read it so that remind me of some of your favorite parts yeah for sure uh last question is more fun

which is uh aliens believer or non-believer um man you asked somebody else this in a podcast it's a question you always ask right yeah you always yeah i remember hearing and i remember starting to think about it and then i got freaked out which means i've got to be a believer um i don't know much i probably don't know much more than almost anybody here except for uh who was the president you know i forgot what president i think it was the president before kennedy um had a like there's like this article like online that he had a meeting with the aliens out in like the desert in california yeah there's a there's like one of the u.s presidents had me it was like a legitimate site i don't remember which site but

It wasn't like, you know, aliens123.net. Like, it was, like, a legitimate, like, publication that I've actually, like, written at, like, one of the newspapers back then, read an article that so-and-so had a meeting. So, you know, I think they're there. I personally, you know, maybe this is, like, just how I feel in just general life is I think they're harmless. You know, I don't think they're going to come here and suck the soul out of us and throw us back. or you know i mean i don't think it's like that um i think they're gonna you know but i don't know well actually maybe they're not though maybe they do do that because i feel like we would do that to them if we landed on one of their planets so you know um you know i know they're there you know

are they gonna come after me i don't know um but i do think i do think there's definitely like it's very egotistic i think to say there is not um any other life but us you know i think there's got to be life out there now i don't think it's how you know these hollywood movies over the last few decades have kind of portrayed them because they have no idea yeah i i i tend to agree with you right it's one of these just like we didn't get flying cars you know i mean just like they're just like they were right about flying cars in 2000 supposed to be now wasn't it you know like you know um yeah i don't think they're right instead we got uh what is tesla they've got the uh like crazy mode or whatever you press the button and uh oh yeah it's like a

disco yeah or and i think uh also just goes like incredibly fast or whatever right and it's oh i don't know that one yeah yeah they got a button i think in one version of the car where you basically press it and it just you know takes off and so it's like we didn't get flying cars but we got discos and uh and like yeah i've seen a disco mode one a disco mode one of the creators we work with she has a tesla and like she hits a button and it starts like doing something crazy i don't know it's you know i think elon was like on something you know like when he's designing those things like god bless him in his brain he's one of my favorite people in the world like like i've actually because of sheriff and i actually have had an expensive time with him and

the dude is just you know it's what you see is what you get with him and um yeah i think yeah i think he's an incredible person and i think when it comes to innovation i believe he's just getting started you know i think this is all day one for elon musk love that uh you could ask me one question to wrap up what uh what one question you have let's see what um i'm gonna ask that to basic where do you see actually i want to ask this but more for me and even listeners because i talked about podcasts so much where do you see podcasts going like why you know where do you see it and you know and kind of maybe a second question but relevant to the first question is

and why has it been so explosive in the last couple years yeah uh so i don't know for sure right obviously just my personal opinion um the two things i would say is uh i think podcast i forget who said this to me it just it just stuck in my head when they said it but the idea that right now, you have AirPods in your ear and you hear someone's voice in your ear. That's a very intimate experience, right? You're just hearing them and it's just so close and kind of intrusive in some way, but you're inviting it in. I think that is a really big piece of it. It's a very different medium than watching somebody or, you know, consuming an Instagram post or whatever, for whatever reason. It's just like podcast audio only in your ear, very intimate experience. So I

think that is one piece of it. The second piece is it's very repeatable and it's very, um, kind of action oriented, meaning that, uh, I can open up Instagram and I'm kind of at the, uh, will of Instagram. So the feed may give me your content. It may give me somebody else's. It may give me whoever else's now they're trying to predict what I want. Right. So there's an element of like, they're trying to give me that but for a podcast i actually have to click and say play right and so that action of like i'm constantly coming back and i'm listening to john's podcast and i'm actively clicking in and playing it it builds this habitual thing where like again to your point like people become fans right they literally that they're there uh because they want to be there

it's not something where they just are kind of mindlessly scrolling and it counts as a view or whatever. And so I think that naturally, people pay more attention to things that they actively have to engage in. And so when you think of it from that standpoint, it feels like a medium where if you can build the repeatability, right, and kind of the retention of people listening over and over and over again, that relationship between the creator and the audience goes much deeper than let's say if somebody follows me on Instagram, right? So if you said to me like, hey, pick a platform where somebody is a follower subscriber, I would say either Twitter or podcast. Now Twitter for me is just because I create so much content there. Or the podcast is like,

if I can get somebody to listen to a podcast every day or multiple times a week, like that is such a strong relationship with that person. They're going to understand, you know, everything that I talk about. They're going to share everything the guests talk about, right? They're going to learn a lot but like it's such a deep relationship that i think uh people probably don't listen to like hundreds of podcasts right they probably have you know 10 or less and so you just go much deeper on that medium with those 10 people versus you know at this point instagram tiktok youtube wherever like people subscribe because the platform's been around for so long so many different people that it's much harder i think to build that like deep relationship with uh

with the audience yeah yeah yeah no that makes sense um and i think it's really maybe the only way to do it unless you actually do a thing where hey you can come and sit down with me you know one-on-one you know but you know how are you going to scale that now those are both very helpful and you're right you're right about the airpods in your ear and you know and now you can find them almost anywhere um it's just crazy to me and i think about this all the time and i even think about this sometimes when my mom calls with spotify is how did apple not just own this like how did they let this go you know like here's the thing so i keep hearing this right and i hear from creators i hear from uh like management companies i even hear it from other like um

podcast like service companies whether they do hosting or whatever but every single creator i talk to 50 of downloads come from apple and it feels like you know i think to your point like they're not even trying right like they're not going out and acquiring a bunch of content they're not doing a bunch of things spotify has made a massive push you know it's a priority at the company they're both the team and like and they're really going after it but every creator i talk to 50 of downloads come from apple and i think i think it's really just they're on the iphone devices most likely you know for me i think 50 60 of the audience is in the u.s right so you only get 40 to 50 outside the u.s the iphone market share penetration in the u.s is off the charts right

and then android kind of internationally you know really makes up for it and so when you think of it that way it's like it's very weird that they haven't tried or at least it appears they haven't tried but they still 50 compared to everyone else yeah yeah they're still 50 but those numbers are going to change as the audience gets younger right like now you're seeing a lot of content creators launching the podcast you're going to see a lot of tiktok creators launch podcasts um and that audience is that's going to be a younger audience which is always almost has been android i mean it was it was almost all android at one point and now they hand me down phones that you know are becoming older iphones but it's still android and as the audience gets international

into markets like you know say you know get down to brazil mexico indonesia you know these are all top markets i mean indonesia is not really a top market for spotify it's a top market for youtube and and and others but you know these these market you know as as you these audiences start growing you know podcasts become a thing in non-apple penetrated markets you know they're really going to lose a lot more market share you know i could tell you right now like apple music consumption for songs in brazil is something you know is like less than 10 i even think i don't i know it's definitely less than 10 i even think it's maybe even one or two percent you know and you know but the music is a little bit different because uh you know someone in brazil who you know

which most of their population speaks portuguese will still listen to a song by uh you know a non-brazilian artist um they might not listen to an hour podcast so but still like there's still like market share you know i mean brazilians um when when brazil gets into podcasts and i mean they have already like i know spotify had like a um some road show down there and some like 600 different creators showed up at the spotify one so but once podcasts really blow up in brazil whether it's in portuguese or or english um apple's gonna have none of that market share zero yeah i mean like music's only a couple percent what's podcast you know i'm gonna be so and spotify is just going to own that or youtube whenever you know they're you know i mean

everyone uploads clips onto youtube but almost everyone uploads clips on youtube but if youtube actually you know gets into that has a podcast division vertical team you know they'll be on spotify or youtube and it just blows my mind that apple but that doesn't blow my mind like i don't care about podcasts you know i mean we're selling millions of these devices at thousands of dollars like shut up about free podcasts you know 200 billion dollars of cash or whatever it is right that's what i mean like maybe like we don't care yeah we'll buy everybody well you know i mean we're yeah yeah exactly we'll buy spotify we'll buy you know i mean they can't buy any google products but they could buy spotify um they could buy almost anyone else it's not a you know top

tech company so uh our top five type of company but um yeah maybe that's what it is you know And I always think to myself, like even music, like how are they not so much more bigger? But then I'm not, you know, or even a lot of things, even like the, the Mac mail app is so bad. And I'm like, I don't care. Go ahead and use Gmail. You know what I mean? Just give us the thousand bucks for the phone.

Okay. Like shut up and just give us a thousand bucks and $3,000 for the laptop. And that's it. Somehow everything keeps getting more expensive, right? Remember when the iPhone was, you know, 600 bucks or 700 bucks right now is a thousand. I remember what computers right there keep seem to get more and more expensive. so yeah it's something but it's something apple did drop the ball on and actually alex i think alex talks about it with you on your one of your previous podcast episodes is um um in home

hardware yeah like how did they let that one slip because it's too late at this point i mean yeah i'm a google guy so i use all nest products but you know between google and amazon you know like you know maybe facebook portal maybe but you know between google and amazon like how are you going to come close to competing with that so like i think like that i don't know i don't know i think you know i won't see the that changing you know but again maybe don't care that's fine go ahead use the the doorbell for 200 bucks just buy our phone you know it's not 1500 it's not 2000 it's not 3000 you know so it's going to be interesting to see what they do because they got the big push into services now and uh you know they're uh they're doing pretty well but i i

definitely agree that there's areas where ui and others would have thought they went and didn't so yeah definitely all right john listen i really appreciate the time to do this this is fantastic i think yeah yeah and we'll have to do it again i hope so yeah i would love to anytime