The School of Greatness - 222 Casey Neistat on Writing Your Own Rules to Creative Success

Episode Date: September 2, 2015

"It's what you do with the tools, not what the tools are themselves." - Casey Neistat If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and video at http://lewishowes.com/222.

This is episode number 222 with the one and only Casey Neistat. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone to episode number 222.

And a big shout out to our sponsor for today's episode. And that is the School of Greatness book. That's right. If you want to live bigger, love deeper, and leave a legacy in your life, in your business, in your relationships, in your health, then make sure to pre-order a copy of my new book today. Go to Amazon. Go to barnesandnoble.com.

Type in the School of Greatness and pre-order a copy or even 10 to give away to your friends. Or you can head over to greatnessbook.com and sign up there to learn about all the bonuses and goodies we're giving away and get your book there at greatnessbook.com. We have a special guest in the house today. His name is Casey Neistat. And I learned about him through a few different friends, Gary Vaynerchuk, Ryan Holiday, Rich Roll, and just started kind of following him on Snapchat and seeing what this guy was up to and became fascinated with him and his life. and seeing what this guy was up to and became fascinated with him and his life. Incredible storyteller, incredible director, video editor, movie maker, all those different things.

But also has an incredible voice and shares his story on a daily vlog right now on YouTube. Has over 1.1 million subscribers on YouTube. Huge following on every social media site. Also launched a new app called Beam, which we'll talk about today. But I think you guys are going to really enjoy this episode because it comes from a creative's mind, comes from a creator's thought process on how to live a great life. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive in this one with the one and only Casey Neistat. Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited today. We got

Casey Neistat in the house. Good to see you, man. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we got introduced, I believe, through Ryan Holiday originally. Was that right? Yeah. Or Rich Roll, maybe. One of the two. And then I saw you at VidCon in the Instagram lounge, and I was like, I gotta go say hi because we've been trying to meet and put a face to the face. And now we're here. That Instagram lounge was like... It was amazing, right?

Thank God for Instagram. It was unreal, huh? Yeah. VidCon was like this sort of mosh pit of an event of just a weekend, really. And there were a few areas of refuge in that Instagram lounge. And that was it. It was it, yeah. Because you were like probably swamped everywhere you went.

Right. It was tough. It was tough. Yeah. Everyone wanted a selfie with you. Yeah. It's just like VidCon was an amazing experience. I'd never done it before, but it is just a concentration of all sort of YouTube fandom

kids that really love and have really great relationships with YouTube and they're all in one place. So when you would step outside, there was really overwhelming, exciting at first, which quickly turned into overwhelming. Like I needed some space and time to like, and all those delicious free cookies they have in the Instagram. Oh my gosh, it was amazing. Yeah.

So that was, I met a lot of people in there. I was hanging out with iJustine and had her on the podcast and a lot of other good people in there. So it's good times. Now for my audience probably doesn't even know who you are, to be honest. It's mostly entrepreneurs, mostly people doing online business, people trying to get to the next level in their life, but not a lot of big YouTube personalities that they follow. So I want to let you share your story really quickly about how you got to where you are now. You just hit a million subscribers a week ago, and then you got a million point one in the last six days, right?

Yeah, really just tremendous, exciting growth on YouTube. Yeah, it's amazing. But yeah, the abbreviated bio. And you're also the founder of a new company called Beam. Yeah, the technology company. Which Gary Vee's an investor in, right? Yeah, Gary's a part of it. He's a good friend of mine as well.

Great guy. Yeah. Great guy. That's cool. So sorry, go ahead with the little bit of backstory. Yeah, so the abbreviated bio is like I started making movies when I was really young, like as a teenager, and sort of wove my way through the industry until late 2007, produced a couple of feature films that were very successful. And that mainstream success kind of crescendoed, peaked for me in like 2010 when I decided that I just, I wasn't so into it. It wasn't, it didn't really mesh well with what turned me on, what excited me about making movies.

And that's when I really defected and I left the mainstream space, left TV, left films, and shifted all of my focus to new media. Creating your own content on YouTube and other places. Yeah, just really embracing the channels of distribution that I think young people were embracing. And moreover than just the numbers, but the relationship that young people were embracing and moreover than than just the numbers but the relationship that young people were developing via these new distribution platforms versus the relationships that historically people like you and me old people like you and me have always had with television and film that's right okay so what was the relationship you had with it when you're on

hbo how long were you on h for? It was just one season. One season. And you did some other movies. Were you just feeling like you weren't connecting with your audience that well? Or were you feeling that the industry itself wasn't fun because it was all the politics? It's all of those things. But really it was, I mean, it was all of those things very much. Like the political aspects of mainstream media are really uninteresting to me.

The time it takes to release all of it. It was like, I was such a last night I was at the VMAs and it was such a harsh reminder of just how stagnant and stodgy and uninteresting the bureaucratic process is that is mainstream media. Yeah. Um, and I think it really mitigates,

marginalizes what is sort of the artistic and creative spirit of making movies, making videos. Or making music or anything creative online. Anything creative. You bureaucratize the spirit of the creativity. And what's left is the mush that you see on TV. Now, if you're an artist or a filmmaker or a content creator in general, do you feel like you shouldn't even go mainstream towards TV or towards film or towards working with a music label? Or should you focus on creating it all yourself?

Because it still helps a lot of people who don't know how to do the online stuff. Yeah. I mean, look, there's no answer to that question. I think that it's one thing that everybody but the successful people fail to realize about any creative industry is that there is absolutely no defined path. There isn't one. So it's about paving your own path. And now for me, my path meant mainstream just didn't work and new media did work. And for other people, it's entirely antithetical to that where mainstream is exactly the right place for them.

So there is no formula that's right or wrong. I'm just much better versed in my own, the trajectory that I follow myself. And that includes really running away from the establishment into whatever the most forward thinking space is. And when was that time, did you say you started moving online? It was a pretty aggressive inflection point in my career. It was 2010, but it just happened at once. Right. Gotcha. 2010. And when did you start to realize once you went online and followed your path that, oh, I'm picking up traction and it's actually doing something. It's giving me money. It's making me opportunities. What was that? It was much slower than you'd think. Much slower. It was like a year ago or something. Yeah. I mean, it manifested in a number of different ways. Like my early career wise, my early sort of means of income when I was online is by doing advertising.

YouTube ads. Not YouTube ads, just doing any kind of advertising, branded content, because I would make the very best movies I could possibly make. I'd put them on YouTube and they wouldn't always get huge numbers. But I think important people, the people who made decisions in the branding space would see them and they had an appreciation for the style or the tone or the perspective. And they saw an opportunity to sort of partner with me for their companies. And that's how, you know, early in those days, like 2011, 2012, I was doing big branded content deals with companies like Nike and Google, huge companies, even though my reach and my audience wasn't that big,

it was because I think of an appreciation. Yeah, for what I was making. It was art and they liked it and it matched with their brand. Yeah, I don't know about, yeah, I think calling it art is a determination that you can make. I don't know that I would call it art, but I think they just saw something like, okay, we have an appreciation for what this is. Sure. What can we do what this is. Sure. What can we do with this guy?

Yeah. And those branded deals were sort of the earliest. Money makers for you. Yeah. I think it's the first thing that really quantified what would be called success in that space is showing that appreciation and then figuring out how to turn it into something that actually helped pay the bills. What was that first branded deal that you're like, whoa, this is actually something, you know, was it a couple grand? Was it 20 grand?

Was it like, oh, okay. I mean, no, these are real money deals. And when I say real money, that's because prior to jumping into this space, I had historically worked in advertising. Gotcha. I mean, literally since the early, like 2005-ish, 2004, even before that, I was always doing ad deals

because ads are how I paid the bills. And I was never successful work doing TV commercials. I'd get a lot of them because people would like my work and I'd get the job. So I was a terrible TV commercial director. I just didn't know what to do. You show up on a union set with a half a million dollar budget and you have everybody doing everything. And like, I literally was like like what do you need me here for you have a storyboard and a dp so you have like a drawing of what the picture should look like and then a cinematographer to capture that picture like what do you need me here to direct yeah do my best but whether i like gave it everything i had or i just like slept in my trailer for the whole shoot it got done at the end of it it looks the same which was something

that was like the mushy invisible commercials that your entire audience sees on TV every day and forgets them before they're over. And that was frustrating for me. And when I shifted to online, I remember saying to the commercial production company I worked with that represented me, that got me the jobs, I said, I don't want to do this crap. For the online stuff, yeah. No, not for the online stuff, for television um i said i don't want to do this like crap i don't want to make tv commercials anymore i'm gonna go make online content get me deals where i get to

work directly with brands no agencies and i just put videos on the internet and they said like that will never happen wow so i stopped working with them right then and there screw you yeah and and went in my own direction and that's when like that's when the real brand deals started to happen you know were they your relationships or people just came to you it was a combination of both you know like referrals and whatever nike for example like i look back and i did a tiny job for nike that was like nike has some brilliant people working for them. And one of them is a good friend of mine named Julian. He was like a special forces guy. So he just had like a tiny tertiary budget that he was able to do interesting things with. And he asked me to make a bike video. And nobody that saw this video, and this is like really early on, way back in the day.

And I made this video and I put it online and they loved it and I loved it and nobody saw it. But about a year and a half later, Nike called me and they're like, let's do – we want to do something big. And it was a three-video deal, real money, really big deal. Multiple six figures. Yeah, yeah, big time. And the kind of money that would be spent on a typical TV commercial except for it was a budget that was given to me entirely with full discretion on my end. Amazing. And we made three videos, and the first two were very successful.

They starred their huge AAA, $100 million athletes like Hope Solo, just kicked ass in the World Cup, and Indomitian Sioux, and the NFL, really amazing. And we made a fantastic movie together and they were very successful. And the third video, three of three videos for Nike was this video that I pitched them that they were totally hip to. And at the ninth hour, I decided not to do that video at all. But to just take the whole budget and do something I've always wanted to do, which is like travel around the world until the budget evaporated, until I was out of money. And then I figured I would turn that into the Nike video. And Nike...

How did that do? It's, I think, still the most watched video that Nike's ever put online in the history of... No way. Yeah. And what did they think about it? It might be number two. We might have been displaced.

But I know I held that spot for like well over a year. Wow. They were nervous at first. More than any LeBron James video or any... You know, i have to check numbers but it killed it was like between nike's channel my channel is like 20 million views amazing um but not only that but because of the narrative which was very open and i discussed this with nike ahead of time so it's not quite as nefarious as it sounds but like i took a budget that i was supposed to spend on making a commercial and instead i spent it doing something that i personally wanted to do, which is like run around the world like a crazy person.

And have fun. And have fun. But really it didn't diverge at all from the narrative, which is this idea of like make it count. Just do it. So even though it was a really indirect commercial, it was much more about a brand. It had nothing to do with the product. In fact, I was not wearing any Nike gear in the entire commercial. I'm wearing a Patagonia coat. Shut up. And the product that it was supposed to In fact, I was not wearing any Nike gear in the entire commercial. I'm wearing a Patagonia coat

and the product that it was supposed to be for I didn't have in my possession for the entire shoot. No way. There's no Nike branding in it whatsoever. But the story was Nike. Sure, but when they saw it, they were like, we don't know what this is, but we think that people are going to like it.

Just put it on your YouTube channel and let's see what happens. We spent a few hundred thousand dollars, so let's see what happens. Yeah, but I think they didn't know, but it was wildly successful. It thrust me way out in the limelight. It was all over the news. It was in newspapers. It was in the homepage of Yahoo.com. It was everywhere.

And it really was exciting for me and I think exciting for Nike. And I look at a company like Nike and you wonder why they are such a kick-ass brand. You wonder why there are so many people so loyal to that company. And it's not just the product. It's the ethos behind the brand. Yeah. And when I look back and I say, like, who's the maniac who wrote me this big fat check and then just let me do my thing? Like, that's crazy.

How do you get that approved? You realize that that is what makes nike great and you know like being at the vmas last night where i had both hands tied and both feet tied and like a babysitter and a minder and like all these leashes put on me by viacom of what you can do or you can't do everything everything you realize that like okay this is why m MTV is quickly getting more and more irrelevant. Wow. Is because it's like the stodgier and more bureaucratic you are when trying to apply or appeal rather to today's youth, today's young people, the people that are this, that comprise this generation, they only respond to honesty, integrity, and like a real sort of forward looking perspective on, on what's, what creativity is. And I don't think you can bureaucratize that. And now there are more and

more companies, Nike certainly always been one of them that realize that and they know that they have to take chances and you're seeing more and more of that. And I think that that in itself is why online content is proliferating in the way that it is. And television and these sort of old media is depreciating at such a rapid, rapid pace. If someone offered you a TV show, would you take it? No chance. Even if the biggest network? No chance.

No chance. I was on the biggest network. Right. No chance. There's no way. The viewerships I do now, it's... Crush it. Yeah.

So you put out a video, how many viewers in the first week? I mean, right now, and this changes daily, but right now it's like a bad day for me on YouTube is about 700,000. A good day is about a million and a half. So that's about where I am. When you post a video every day or... In aggregate.

So my YouTube channel does anywhere close to around a million views a day. And if you just appeal it like raw numbers, apply that to television, that would be a hit show. That's like the biggest show. It's like the biggest loser or something. It's getting that many. It would be considered a very successful show.

But it's not just the numbers. It's the relationship that young people have with content that they see online that they choose to watch versus the content that they see on TV, which is fed to them. And that is a sort of a profound idea that I didn't understand until my show on HBO. Uh huh. Huh.

It was the kind of thing where it's like, how old are you? I'm 32. Okay. I i'm 34 so when we were kids like we watched however much nickelodeon or mtv as we possibly watched yeah before our parents yelled at us but you have no control over that yeah you turn on the tv and you're at the behest of whatever whatever the channel is putting in front of you and if you liked it you kept watching if you hated it you kept watching and that was it that was your relationship but when it comes to online content, like I look at

the way my son consumes this stuff and it's like, if he's not interested, he doesn't watch it. You go to the next video. There's a billion channels on YouTube. That's crazy. And the inverse of that is if you do watch it, it's because you genuinely want to consume that stuff. So the relationship that the people who choose, who take their precious time to watch my stuff online versus the people that maybe passively consumed it on TV, that relationship is so different and so huge that it makes it very

hard for someone like me to be attracted at all to something like TV. Man, that's fascinating. And I see you running around with all the big YouTube and Instagram and Snapchat influencers, and you guys are constantly doing cross promotion. And that's just building you even bigger than any TV show as well. When you get a group of you together shooting video, it's like no one can compete with that viewership. Yeah. And I also think it's like, this is so new, this space,

and it's so undefined. Still. Oh, of course. Still new. Not even, you know, five years ago, people feel like they're not in unless they were in five years ago, but you can still jump in today.

It's infancy. It's more competitive. It's much harder to get to, to get anywhere in the space now, but it's so new that, for me, what's most interesting about any overlap with other other big youtubers or big people in the space is that like we just share our experiences and share our

understanding because it's such an undefined space yeah that there's no other way to really learn about it um than by being in it there's no it can't be taught youtube doesn't know they're building the best tools they can but it's they're just providing us the tools it's up to us to build the house yeah so being around other youtubers um like at VidCon, for example, where we first met, is just a tremendous opportunity for me to really share my own understanding and then to learn from other people. And that's what's most exciting about the collaborations I do with other YouTubers. Sure. How long was that video shoot with Nike where you went around the world? How long did it take? We did that shoot. We said said 10 days it was actually nine days and then there was a huge battle on

reddit because nobody believed that i did that in 10 days how many different countries i don't know the number but it's a it was absurd you're flying everywhere yeah and the reality of it was it was like much less room it was incredible but it it was much less romantic. You weren't sleeping. You were like, you know. We went the first five days without laying vertically. I'm sorry, without laying horizontally. So that meant we were sitting in like, you know. Trains and planes.

Trains, planes, coach seats in the back, piled in the middle. And these aren't coach seats on like British Airlines or something nice. This is like inter-African airlines that are just like really punishing day in and day out. And most of the locales we were in, we were in for an hour or two. Just shooting and then it's on the next. That's exactly right. Get the shot, go. That's exactly right.

Grab a bite to eat, see ya. There was no sitting on that beach. We literally got to the beach, ran through it, and then got jumped on a plane. Shut up. Yeah. Wow. What's the key to being successful on youtube or creating content online right now is it having the nice fancy camera is it the production value is it personality look if i

could if i could define what it took i think a lot more people would follow that trajectory because it's the greatest job in the world but so i don't know what's right but i can definitely tell you what what it's not and what it's not is having the best gear, first of all. You know, like the vlog that I posted this morning, which is, I posted it like five hours ago, and it's really, I'm looking at my cell phone right now to figure out, to tell you guys exactly how many views it's done in the last couple of hours. You lost your cell phone? I don't know what I did. It's on the ground. Is it on the ground?

How do I lose a cell phone? Like I'm sitting in one spot here. But what the key is not is the gear. And I think that's what's so limiting for people when they think I've got to have the right gear, the right mics, the right everything. Yeah, that's wrong. Like my HBO show was shot on a point and shoot that we bought at Walmart. But I mean so much of my YouTube, one of my most watched videos on YouTube called Bike Lanes, which has over 15 million views. That was shot on the crappiest of point-and-shoot cameras. Yeah. It's not. It's what you do with the tools, not what the tools are themselves.

So I'm just looking at my stats right here. So my video that I posted this morning, so I posted it three hours and 58 minutes ago, and it has 140,000 views. On YouTube? Yeah, in the last three hours. That's amazing. This video primarily was shot on my cell phone wow because iphone 6 because um mtv didn't allow any cameras at the vmas but they did like allow cell phones so i'm like standing there being like you guys realize that every cell phone is a video camera built in how ridiculously contrary All this means is that there's gonna be a million bad videos posted instead of a million videos. But regardless, like, you know, half that video was shot on my cell phone.

Yeah. And it's just not, it's like, if you can do great things with a terrible camera, you can do great things with a great camera. So I really like to drive home that point because my favorite aspect of creating online is how accessible, democratic, egalitarian it is. Like we all, you know, me selling a TV show for a couple million dollars to HBO, I believe that it was like primarily the merits of what we made. But I also know that we had Christine Vachon as our producer who's tremendously influential. She's a big time producer. She's the one who got us to the meeting with Carolyn Strauss,

the former head of programming at HBO. They had a relationship. There's nepotism involved. There are big Hollywood producers and agents and facilitators involved. And your average kid sitting in Ohio right now in front of his computer doesn't have that kind of access. What he has is an internet connection and a crappy camera from Walmart. And that should be enough.

And I think right now, because of technology, for the first time ever, that is enough. And I love that. I love that. I love how fair that is. Yeah. What about when editing comes into play? When people are like, well, I don't know how to use these editing tools and I can't edit the way you do. You've got incredible.

When I say you're an artist, it's like your editing is so stylistic and beautiful in my mind. When I watch your videos, I'm like, I love the way you do you've got incredible when i say you're an artist it's like your editing is so stylistic and beautiful in my mind when i watch your videos i'm like i love the way you edit it and i feel like that's an art form and that takes time and energy it's like how do you if you're not casey nice dad who's been doing this for 15 years and can whip it out and edit and in a couple hours after he shoots it or 10 minutes. How does someone get over that? I mean, work. You know, I watched LeBron James play basketball and I'm like, it's bullshit that he's so much better than I am. But the guy's been like,

he's dedicated his life to something. And of course he should be incredible at it. And something like editing, like there's only one way to get good at editing and that's to put your 10,000 hours in. Or outsource it. You know, I don't know. I've never outsourced any of my vlogs. All or outsource it. You know, I don't know. I, I,

I've never outsourced any of my vlogs, all your editing, soup to nuts, top to bottom. That was just me. And I have worked with collaborators that Nike video, which I think is one of the best videos I've ever made. My friend,

Max Joseph edited that cause he's a better editor than I am. But you know, Max is a big famous Hollywood director. So he's not the kind of person to be able to edit my stuff. But the truth is my HBO show is edited in iMovie, which is a free download. There you go. So again, it's like— It doesn't have to be this elaborate editing with text overlays and graphics or anything. It can be simple and still be effective.

Yeah, I don't even think it's that. I think it's less than that. I think it's that these tools are accessible by all. These tools are free, and we can all use them. And it really doesn't matter what the tool is. It's what can you do with it. What was the dream for you growing up? Because I know you lived in a trailer home, I saw, for a while.

And you had a kid when you were 16. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I was one of four kids and we kind of like lower middle house uh lower middle class household um and it's just tough because there's my older brother who's the first born and he's so incredibly good looking and then my sister was the second born and then my little brother is the baby yeah and i was like this accident that happened 13 months after my sister was born and i think like when you're in that position as a kid,

you learn quickly. You have to scream the loudest to get noticed. I was the youngest of four, so I get it. Yeah. I get it. So I don't know. But yeah, I got in a lot of trouble in school. I never did well.

I never did well at all. Dropped out of high school in the 10th grade, ran away from home kind of thing. Never went back. Never finished? Never finished. Never went back to my parents' house. Never looked back on kind of thing. Never went back. Never finished? Never finished. Never went back to my parents' house. Like never, yeah, never looked back on either of those.

Have you talked to your parents since? Yeah, I have. Very, very close relationship. You just never went back to them? Just never went back, like never moved back in with mom and dad. Where'd you live? I mean, like bounced around to friends' apartments for a while. At 16?

No, I was at 15. Wow. I was 15, yeah. But yeah, then had a baby when, uh, my son was born. It was two weeks after my 17th birthday. So the whole pregnancy, I was 16 years old. That's gotta be emotionally heavy, man. Were you okay with it? No, you know, it's, I say this with much reluctance, but honestly looking back and this is unique to me, this is not advice to any kids that might be listening to this great podcast. It was the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me. Having a kid when you were 17. Yeah. Yeah. Why is that? I mean, you know,

I have a, another daughter now and like, I really like believe I was put on this planet to be a dad. It's my favorite. I've never not been a dad. I was a kid when i had a baby so i was either a child or a parent and i never not want to be like it's it's it's this this the profundity that is living for something bigger than yourself and for me that's what having a child was and it seems a little bit absurd to say that at age 17 that it had that impact on me and i don't know how cognizant of it I was then. But looking back at it, it was like, that was the inflection point. Wow. Because prior to that,

I was just like another selfish little punk ass high school kid who- Getting in trouble. Yeah, sold dime bags in the parking lot and like just caused trouble. But immediately after OWN was born, it was like, okay, now if I screw around, it's not just me, but like-

Wow. And that is a huge deal. And like everything that I've ever done, especially since then in the really, really hard years, right after he was born, it was just like, you do it because you're, you're fighting for someone else. And the motivation that is that I think is so much stronger than anything else out there. Any of my other selfish sort of ego-driven ambitions pale in comparison to the ambitions that are wanting to succeed for someone else. That's interesting. A couple of things. One is some people would just go get a normal job to pay the bills so they could pay for their child at 17 or 18 and not go after their dream. But it seems like you went after your dream even more so.

How were you able to handle that? Because I'm assuming you weren't making a lot of money when you were 17 to 23 doing film. I mean, hunger is a very, very powerful motivator. And when I was living in that trailer park with the kid, like we were on welfare for a while. I was a dishwasher. I worked in a crappy seafood restaurant as a dishwasher,

which now just sort of parenthetically, my favorite piece of advice to give to young people saying, I don't know what I want to do with my life. I said, get a job doing something you hate. Because the fastest way to figure out what you love and where you want to be in life is by spending a lot of time doing something you hate. So it's miserable. Yeah.

So, you know, spending 50 hours a week scrubbing pots and pans was like I was just in my head the whole time fantasizing about what I want to do in life. It's brilliant. I was a truck driver for three months driving from Columbus to Cincinnati and back every day and I could only go 55 miles an hour, pedal to the metal, and it was so loud and obnoxious and I couldn't do anything. It was just like the most draining time of my life. But it got you thinking. It got me thinking. I was like, what do I need to do to get out of this? Yeah. And for me at that time in my life, it was sort of, I mean, I guess

you could say I was making okay money. I was making enough to like feed my kid and pay my, I think it was 300 bucks in rent, 300 bucks a month rather than mortgage on my trailer. 300 bucks a month rather than mortgage on my trailer. But my biggest fear was not being broke because when you're at rock bottom in your own welfare, you can still afford food. Get by, yeah. Get by might be a stretch. I could afford food and I could afford my trailer.

So it was like we weren't homeless and we weren't starving. So to me, that was absolute destitution. It wasn't really that bad. There's no dignity in it, but still it wasn't. You weren't on the So to me, that was absolute destitution. Wasn't really like that bad. There's no dignity in it, but still it wasn't. They weren't on the streets. That's right. So with that, like my, it's like, what is it? Laszlo's hierarchy of needs. Laszlo's hierarchy of needs. So like once the-

Basic needs were met. Basic needs were met. Then I started to look around and I realized like the greatest fear for this like beautiful little baby boy was that he would grow up and see his dad as a loser. And that is a, once those basic needs are met, that's an incredibly powerful motivator because you know, my dad who's, who's, um, absolutely not a loser. Um, but I watched my dad to provide for his family of six. I watched him work 60 hours a week, hating every minute of it. And he came home from work just hating his job. But feeling trapped, probably.

I'm sure. Yeah, he had a family to take care of. He struggled. Now he does what he loves. He has a coffee shop now and he's never been happier. But I watched that and I just saw myself going down that trajectory. And it wasn't just a job that I hated. It was a job that I watched that and like, I just saw myself going down that trajectory and it wasn't just a job that I hated. It was a job that I hated that, that didn't provide. It was a job that I hated that did nothing but cover those basic needs. And that was the motivator. That was when that was the motivator. Um, the catalyst for me giving up and moving to New York and going for it was, I still look back and I don't know what that, what that was. Like I, there are only like two times in my life where I genuinely have no idea what I was thinking. And I moved to

New York city in June of 2001 with $800 and a three, a place to stay for three months. And that was it. Where'd you move from? Uh, Connecticut, like three hours outside the city. Gotcha. So you'd probably been in the city a number of times. Sure, yeah, yeah. Take the train. But I knew one person there, and I had- And they let you stay for three months. Yeah, that's exactly right. Three months and 800 bucks.

No job, no prospects, no education, no skills. And how old were you then? 19. 19. And what was the dream to do? I mean, I wanted to make movies. But you didn't have the skills yet. You were kind of doing a little bit.

I knew how to edit an iMovie. Wow. No, I didn't have any skills. Nothing. Okay. So you wanted to make movies in New York City, but you had no clue, no connections. I knew one thing,

and I knew that I would never be able to do it in Connecticut. Right. You knew you had to be there to see what was possible. Yeah. Okay. And what happened? What was the turning point? I mean, it was tough.

I bounced out as a bike messenger. It's a horrible job. I was a bike messenger. And this is back, this is 15 years ago, but it was back when you paid for your cell phone minutes. Remember those days? Oh my gosh, yes. And they would call me on my cell phone to let me know where I had to deliver and pick

up packages. And at the end of the first week, my pay was $280. And my cell phone bill for that week was $350. No. So it cost me $70 to pay my cashier. To work for a week. That's right. Oh, my gosh.

Miserable. I also got hurt. It was a nightmare. By a taxi or a car. Yeah. I got doored. So you're not making money. You're losing money working for people.

No health insurance. Yeah. But, you know, like, eventually I met this artist guy. And I did some, like, grunt work for him. And when I say grunt work, I mean grunt work. Right. And showed him some of my movies and kind of met some other people. I showed my movies to anyone who would listen, anyone who would watch.

And eventually the first paid gig I got was I was hired by this guy who was an art collector. And he's like, I want you to make a movie for my husband for his 50th birthday. And I was like, great. I would love to make a movie for your husband for his 50th birthday. Like was like great i would love to make a movie for your husband for his 50th i would take any job sure that bar mitzvah videos wedding videos and um he was like okay here are a list of people that that we were going to want you to interview for his wedding his birthday video and it was like no joke like hillary clinton mario cuomo president bill clinton I was like, oh, my God.

Really? And they knew all these people. Yeah. They were connected. It wasn't like, go find them. So this man's husband, Fred Hochberg, he is the, I mean, I think he's currently, if they didn't just shut him down, I think they just shut him down. The chairman of the Import Export Bank. He's in the Obama administration.

He was the dean of the new school. He's a major guy. He's a very dear friend of mine as a kid. And the wife asked you to make this video? No, his husband. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. And yeah, so we just kept showing up in places with our camera.

We had no idea what to do. So it's you and a buddy. You hired a guy? It was my brother, Van, and I. Oh, my gosh. But I just remember when we went to interview Bill Clinton, which was terrifying. And you're 20? I'm 20. What the heck?

And we set up our camera and hit record, and we're in this room. And we're like, here's what we're thinking of doing with the president. And Secret Service is like, we have a teleprompter, pre-recorded message for him. No way. And we're like, okay. And we just sat there. And then they went to go get the president, and they leave us in this room with a teleprompter pre-recorded message for it no way and we're like okay and we just sat there and then they went to go get the president and they leave us in this room the teleprompter and i grabbed the laptop and i did like control alt delete shut down the laptop so the president walks in and they sit

him down and he's looking at us and he's like what's going on here and secret service is like or who his handlers were like we have a pre-recorded message i'm just having some trouble with my computer i'm very sorry mr president And as we're waiting, I just like, look at secret service, look at my brother. And I like gently walk up to the president and I introduced myself and I was like, here's my idea. No, he did not. And he was like, he like, I remember him kicking back, clapping and being like, I love it, boys. Let's go. Camera's already rolling. He said the joke we wanted him to say. And we like hit record. He was out of the room before she got the teleprompter back.

Shut up. It was like a two minute thing. It was like 15 second thing. What was the joke? Do you remember? I do remember. Can you say it? Yeah.

So Fred Hochberg was the guy whose birthday it was. Fred Hochberg's mother is a woman named Lillian Vernon who started the Lillian Vernon catalog, which is like the first mail order catalog ever. Wow. And she sold that company, I want to say, for $500 million in 2002 or something like that. In any event, she is a big campaign donor. So we made a T-shirt for the president that said, Fred Hochberg had Lillian Vernon donate to my campaign. And all I got was this silly t-shirt,

something like that. Something like it was really crass and funny. And when like that video played at his birthday in front of the president and everyone else, like everyone laughed and loved it. But you know, like that video, people watch that and they're like, this is great. This is great. What else have you done? Wow. And then that little kernel just like slowly slowly rolled down the hill amazing and it was like tough like the paycheck for that i think just covered maybe covered expenses no the computer and camera that we had to buy to actually shoot it yeah right and like which is a crap you got a couple grand or something it was like literally like i don't think we made any money on that right right but you made the connections you you experienced storytelling. Sure. I mean, like, there was never,

we never said no. Yeah. Didn't matter what the job was. You had to do a 20 when you... You say yes to everything. Wow. And then, like, made a bunch of little silly videos

and, yeah, and that sort of, that kept going. And this is pre-YouTube? Pre-YouTube. Five, because YouTube was 2004, 2005? Yeah,

2004, 2006 is YouTube. Yeah, somewhere around there, yeah. But, yeah, and I think it was 2003 I made a movie called uh ipod's dirty secret it's a movie i made with my brother where i had a gen 1 ipod and the battery died and apple refused to replace it their policy was just to instruct you to buy a new one so i made a video that spray painted a disclaimer on every ipod advertisement in new york city that said ipod's unreplaceable battery lasts only 18 months. And they made a little three-minute video of that, my brother and I made it. And I posted that online.

Pre-YouTube. Yeah, this is three years pre-YouTube, and it got six million views. What? Where? Where did you even post it? This is pre-social media, too. So it was not posted. It was purely from email. Oh, my goodness. If you can imagine. It was purely from email.

Oh my goodness. And that, like the term viral movie was coined talking about that film in the Washington Post. And that really put us on the map in a huge way. Like that was gigantic. Yeah. A huge, huge leap forward. What happened after that? What happened after that is people looked and they said, have you done anything else?

And the answer was, yeah, here's 50 other movies I've made that nobody wants to see. And that really, that started to pick up some traction. One of the movies was a movie series I shot in my apartment with my brother called Science Experiments, which was literally, we bought Mr. Wizard's World book of little experiments you can do on a kitchen table. And we just made films about them. And that did well in the fine art world. And we just made films about them. And that did well in the fine art world. That was introduced.

That was invited, rather, to the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil, which is their national art show. I was 24 at the time. I was the youngest invited artist in the 52-year history of the institution. And that was a big deal. I'd flown down there, and all of a sudden, I was the big deal. It was a movie that we shot. And the reason why we shot a movie about science experience we couldn't afford to shoot anything else all we had was my apartment yeah and so we just would shoot things on a kitchen table because we didn't have anything else to shoot wow um and that all led into bigger bigger mainstream stuff

eventually hbo other movies nike campaigns commercials and then it brought you back to where we are now, which you're doing, which is just taking over the world with everything and your new app. I'm curious, what about your new app? Why did you come up with the idea with Beam and why? Yeah, well, it's actually a very organic transition

from that story to leapfrogging all that mainstream stuff from those early days. It was at the height of the mainstream success that I said, why am I so miserable right now? And I realized that like, the reason why I loved making those videos so much in the early days was they were a means of me sharing my ideas and perspectives with the world. And then with success came all these other things. And I realized at the end of that, like, it's not about sharing perspectives and ideas. It's about all these other things. And I realized at the end of that, it's not about sharing perspectives and ideas. It's about all these other things like ego and money and all this stuff that I really don't care about. It's just not that interesting to me.

And that's why I said, the hell with it. Let me go to YouTube where I can just make whatever I want and then share it where it's purely about ideas and perspectives. And Beam, my technology company, is a product that it's something I thought up while at MIT last year. I was invited to MIT as part of a fellowship with the Media Lab, MIT's Media Lab, the Sundance Institute, and the Rockefeller Foundation paid for it. So I lived at MIT. I lived on campus, and I worked out of MIT for the first half of 2014. And while I was there, I was incubating this idea. MIT is not involved at all with the company, but it was an idea that it always existed in the back of my head. And while at MIT, my biggest takeaway when I looked around the people I was surrounded by is that with technology, anything is possible.

So when I left MIT six months later with that understanding, I really set off in this mission to achieve this, this goal, this dream of mine, which is to figure out how to enable others to share their perspectives and ideas via video without, uh, without the burden of creation. So the aspect of creation, I think is the biggest barrier. You want to share something that you think is amazing, but first you have to create something. And creating something is not for everybody. We're not all artists. We don't all have the means that you and I have been discussing for the last 30 minutes. So what can you do? How can you enable everyone from my mom to a kid in junior high school to share and share in the most dynamic medium ever to exist, which is moving imagery, which is video, but without having to create. How do you do that? And that was the problem that I wanted to solve. And that's a problem that we did solve and have solved with Beam.

With Beam, yeah. And what's the difference? So people know what Beam is. What's the difference between Beam and Snapchat or anything else? So Beam is a social network. It's the difference between Beam and Snapchat or anything else? Yeah, so Beam is a social network. It's a platform that we launched five weeks ago now. My business partner in Beam is a guy named Matt Hackett. Matt was the VP of engineering at Tumblr before he joined Beam, before he and I partnered up.

Very well-versed in the technical side. And the way Beam works is it's an app. You download it, but when you're looking at the app, you see a feed, a feed that's not so dissimilar from maybe a Twitter feed or even your email feed. And it's everyone's name. So it'll say your name or my name. And when you hold down on my name, you get to see a short video, which is, that's fairly typical. There's nothing super progressive about that. But the way you capture is, is I think what, where we're headed when it comes to these sorts of platforms. And the way you capture is there's no interface for video recording. There's no big red button that you hold down. There's no

cinematography. There are no effects. There's nothing. Um, you literally cover the proximity sensor. You cover that little sensor and it's the ear speaker on your phone, on your iPhone. And the screen goes black and it immediately starts recording four seconds of video. Only four seconds. Only four seconds, yeah. And the minute those four seconds are up, it makes a noise. Or the second those four seconds are up. Thank you.

It makes a noise and it's immediately posted. It's sent out to everyone who follows you. Wow. And if you want to share more than four seconds, you cover it again and it'll capture another clip. Keep going over and over. Sure. And what that manifests as, what that ends up being is sort of the anti-duck face selfie where people look into their phones the way they look at a mirror. And what it starts to look like is a true perspective on how people interact with the world around them.

world around them. And the sort of wishy-washy way I like to phrase it is that social media has become about how to share with the world how you want to be seen. And Beam is about sharing with the world how you see it. And like I said, we're a month out now. We have several hundred thousand users. So we're able to really get an understanding of how people use this beyond an anecdotal like beta group. And it really is just that you go through the feed. I follow like a couple in Russia. I follow some teenager who lives in a hotel in Dubai. Like I follow all these people that I just discovered on the platform beyond all my friends. And yeah, every time I hold down that cell, I'm seeing the world through their perspective, um, in these quick little clips. Wow.

Can you do a demonstration for the video real quick? Yeah. I don't know how interesting this is going to be for everyone at home. But one of the ways that I like to capture with this is you can cover that proximity sensor with your thumb. You can cover it by holding it up to your shoulder or up to your chest or something like that, and itates a record but what i like to do and it looks a little bit ridiculous but i hold it up to my chin like this and while you're holding it at your chin what's interesting about it is you know it's capturing what you're seeing and the other thing about holding it up to your chin um is that it's very close to your mouth so you can sort of narrate what you're seeing in a very natural way

and when i say hold it up to your, what that accomplishes is that your chin actually covers the proximity sensor. So you see the proximity sensor, you cover it like that and it shuts off the screen, it's recording. You can't even see what you're recording. No, there's no preview. There's no review. Wow.

So if you try to reverse it and do it to yourself, you wouldn't be able to see what you're looking at. That's exactly right. So when I say the anti-duck face selfie, it doesn't mean that there's no way to capture yourself on here. I film myself all the time. But you can't see what you look like first and censor it. That's exactly right.

The difference, the way I like to describe it, is the difference is like when you're doing a selfie on any other platform, it's the way you look when you're looking at yourself in the mirror. That's exactly right. And when you do it on beam, because you can't see yourself, you look the way you look when you're actually speaking to another person. And that in itself

is what we really tried to capture with Beam is like how do we emulate the human interaction as much as possible. Wow. Okay. And how are you feeling?

How do you feel people are enjoying it compared to, I would say, Snapchat's a competitor, I'm assuming? You know, I don't know.

Competitor, I think, is a really strong word. It's a similarity. It's a competitor, I'm assuming. You know, I don't know. Competitor, I think, is a really strong word. It's a similarity. It's a cousin. I'm a huge Snapchatter. Yeah, you're big on it. I do like a quarter of a million views or something like that. Wow.

200,000 views per Snap. Like, I love Snapchat. Crazy. It is such a great platform. And I look at Beam to Snapchat as the same way that I look at maybe an Instagram to Facebook. Yeah. I use Facebook all the time. I check Facebook every day, just like apparently a billion other people. And I also love Instagram. But Instagram for me is a place where I put one picture up.

Every few days or something. Yeah. And that's it. And it does that really, really well. And Facebook's this big thing. And when I look at Snapchat, I think Snapchat's this big thing. It's where I go to stories for messaging for all these other features that they have, but it's not it's this big thing. It's where I go to stories for messaging for all these other features that they have, but it's not a singular sort of interaction. And that's why I think like, I think there's a real place in this world for a product like Beam. I think again, comparing Facebook to Instagram is probably a fair comparison to where Snapchat has a relationship, to where Beam rather has a relationship to that cognitive space that is Snapchat. Gotcha. What's the vision for it for you?

The vision for it for me is obviously take it as big as it can, but what we're seeing right now, like I said, with hundreds of thousands of users on a beta product, we launched as a public beta, it's not finished, not even close to being. So can people download it right now? People can download it right now. It's available right now, no codes. No code. You just download it off of the Apple Store, the App Store, and it works. We had a code system up until literally last week because it was such an early beta that we wanted to make sure we can control capacity and onboarding and things like that. So you had to punch in the code. But now anybody can use it.

But even so, I think it's still beta. It's still growing. It's still beta. It's also there are core functionalities that still aren't there. People have expectations. They're not built yet. We are a team now of 13, growing as fast as we can. We hired three people last month.

But it's going to take some time until this product matures into a platform. Right now, the functionality is pretty narrow. Yeah, gotcha. But the core functionality is there. And the vision that you asked me about is what I want it to be and what functionality is pretty narrow. Yeah. Gotcha. Um, but the core functionality is there. And the vision that you asked me about is like what I want it to be and what it is right now. But in a, in a wider spread adoption,

it will be this in a much more, um, I think impactful way is that you scroll your finger down this list and you hold down in any cell and all of a sudden you're in that person's world and you're seeing it from their perspective. And our, our company manifesto is to promote empathy by sharing perspective and if you think like you know what that girl who lives in nebraska who gets bullied every day the power of her being able to share what it's like to live the world as her

that's a that's a really big idea yeah and look i I make no misconceptions. This is primarily used for teenagers and people who have a lot of fun with it and things like that. But I do think in aggregate, at scale, a product like this could have a meaningful social and cultural impact on people when it comes to the promotion of empathy because you're able to better really understand

what it means to live as someone else. Someone else's perspective. I like that. Why only four seconds? I think four seconds is the minimum amount of time that you can capture a moment without it getting boring. So when I compare Beam to a product like Periscope, I think the trouble with live broadcasting, with live sharing apps. You're on for a minute or two and then it's like well i think the reason why they're utilities and not platforms

is because live is by definition boring the only thing that's ever succeeded in media live is the news and is sports yeah and those are pretty pretty narrow they're not dynamic at all yeah and that doesn't mean that there's not interesting things around us all the time. But like, you know, my daily videos are essentially a documentation of my life. But if they were 24 hours long, they would be incredibly boring to watch. Instead, I pluck what is eight or 10 minutes of what's really interesting out of my life. So how do you emulate that in a way that removes that burden of creation from the user, but addresses what is the struggle or the battle for interestingness yeah and you're you there's a forced compartmentalization so

i see something like like jack who works at beam he's a head of community he's here with me he's just here a minute ago and when he saw your amazing view i saw him immediately beam it and he was holding the phone yeah and after four seconds the phone went back in his pocket yeah now if he were given an option to have 30 seconds or a minute and a half, he would have posted 30 seconds. But I can tell you as a storyteller and as a filmmaker, four seconds

is enough to capture exactly what he wanted to share. It's funny because I'm on Snapchat. I only get like a thousand views every time I snap or something. So it's not even a fraction of what you get. But I noticed that even myself as a user, like I will thumb through, like 15 seconds is too long.

You know what I mean? I get bored after like four or five, six seconds of watching someone else's perspective or whatever. And I'm constantly trying to get to the next thing. So it's kind of interesting. Yeah, look, 10 seconds, to me, 10 seconds is an eternity. Yeah, it's a long time.

It's an eternity. And when you're consuming on mobile, like I have no idea the numbers because they're not public but uh that thing you're describing where you just tap through through through is i think is not a everyone does that it's a common behavior because 10 seconds is a really long time is that what it is 10 seconds of snapchat 10 seconds i think is the longest you can post a clip and look on beam if you want it to be two minutes you can you just hold it down again yeah yeah you just have to it forces you to stop every four seconds and say did i just capture that?

And if the answer is no, keep going. But usually the answer is like, yeah, I captured that. Four seconds. That's powerful. Um,

I'm curious now with your, you know, you're, you're married now, you've got two different children, but you're constantly on the go. You're constantly traveling. You're up to big things.

You've got this technology company, you've got YouTube, your other content that you're creating. You've got sponsors paying you for things. How are you able to have a great family life and be this father that you say you were born to be while you're gone a lot? Do you bring your family with you?

Is it more about the quality of time you have when you're with them? How do you manage that all? It's a daily struggle. Really? It's a battle. And with your wife, because you're gone constantly. I see you on the road all the time. I don't travel like I used Really? It's a battle. And with your wife, you know, because you're gone constantly.

I see you on the road all the time. I don't travel like I used to. That's for sure. I've almost stopped altogether. My speaking engagements and production is almost non-existent when it comes to, you know, going to produce big movies elsewhere. So, primarily, I am in New York City. And, you know, like we bought a house last year in the city that is across the street from my office. Amazing.

Literally like 120 feet from my office. What part of town are you in? Tribeca. Nice. Sweet. So there's all these sort of shortcuts to spending as much time with the family as humanly possible. And then, you know, the traveling, like it's not that frequent. But when there have been big trips, like, yeah, the family as humanly possible. Um, and then, you know, the traveling, like it's not that frequent, but when there have been big trips, like, yeah, the family comes with, and, um, you know, we were

all just in Texas a week ago and we were on vacation earlier this year for my birthday and the baby came and my son came and we brought baby to South Africa or my wife's South African when she was a month old, um, two months old. So you just, you just do it. But the truth is it's like on that grand scheme of, of priorities in life, like family's number one. So everything like any decision point is requires like, is this what's best for the family or

not? And if it's anything but yes, you don't do it. If you didn't have the two children and the wife now, where would your life be? I have no idea. I really don't. And honestly, I don't know. I appreciate the question, but I don't know that that is a... No, I think that living in retrospect is a really bad idea. I say this about everything. I look forward with a laser focus because to pay too much attention to the past and what could have been

is just a tremendous exercise in futility. Instead, looking forward and saying, where do I want to be? Just having all the momentum be there I think is what's the best practices for me. I know that if given an opportunity to go back and change anything, I think is, is what's the best practices for me. I know that if given an opportunity to go back and change anything, I would change nothing because I'm incredibly happy right now. And, and I love it. And I think if it wasn't for those hardships, even really terrible things

happening, um, I don't know that it would have added up to where I am right now, but, um, you know, I work as hard as I can every day to always make the best decisions i can to contribute to that sure what's the movie you've yet to shoot that you've always wanted to create you know you'd be surprised how often i get asked that question and the answer is i don't know and the answer why i don't know is a somewhat like not somewhat is an extremely egotistical answer but it's true and it's that in life I've only ever done exactly what I want to do. And if I'm not doing exactly what I want to do, I shift focus and do everything I can until I realize that. So if there was something that I were dying to do, I mean really dying to do, especially if I would have done it.

Yeah. And like right now what I want to do is I want to see how far I can take this daily video thing because it's been 159 days of posting. On your YouTube channel? That's correct. Every day. 159 days. That's right. And the impact has been greater than any other singular thing I've done in the previous 15 years of making movies.

Wow. So where were your subscriber and life at? What is this? Half a year ago, I guess? Yeah. I mean, mean well somewhat ironically uh you know when i started being the technology company i always knew that i'd be leaning on my social reach to promote it of course uh and the irony comes from the place that as this company

that i that i run and day to day i'm in there it's my company um demanded more and more from me my social reach was an atrophy really well? Well, I wasn't able to make movies. So I made a decision in March that I would start doing daily vlogs. And my intention to daily vlog was to have it be almost a reality show about the technology company. Smart. So they're all interested in when's it launching? What's happening? Exactly.

And then on like day two, I was like, there's not enough content here. I already talked about it all. I said it all in like half of the first episode. So what else do I have? My life. Sure. And I realized that I think it's much more interesting to sort of be able to focus on a character, focus on me than it is on a company.

And I think that a lot of people's at least intrigue in being, whether they like it or not, it's up to them. But certainly their intrigue enough to get them to step foot in the door first, has been because they understand the relationship that I have with this company. And I think that the problem with most technology companies or most technology companies face is that most people just see an app or see anything that's consumer facing, something that just exists exists it's very hard to understand there are people and passions and and missions and ambitions behind that and real work and that's something that the vlog enabled me to do is like you see all of us in this space you see us you know busting our ass you see us working until the middle of the night to make this thing and then you get to see the

power of it and all of that happened um via this vlog that I started under much more literal pretenses and has now become this incredibly dynamic thing that's giving me a platform to discuss almost anything. But no, I can't underscore enough the profound impact, the overwhelming impact that uploading daily has had on me, has had on my company, has had on everything. My understanding of filmmaking, my understanding of media and the space and everything. What was your subscriber base app before you started that? It took me the first, it took me five years to get to, let me see, I'm probably going to butcher this, but I'm just going to throw it approximately in front of you. So it's like line, line, score before I say this,

but this is close. Five years to get to a hundred million views and 500,000 subscribers and three months to get to a million subscribers and 200 million views. And now we're at, I think closing in on 220 million views might have just passed 220 million views 100 000 a day or a week it looks like right i mean the last week but that was a particularly good week i don't know there's some sustainability issues here across the board else i haven't slept since i started this vlog but you would say the daily posting a video and it's not just random content you're editing it you're spending you're up at night editing it for whatever a half hour maybe longer and putting it up whatever, a half hour, maybe longer, and putting

it up every day. Did you say a half hour? I don't know. How long are you editing for? An hour? My fastest edit is four hours. Holy cow. The edit this morning was about nine hours. Yesterday's edit was 11 hours. You spent nine hours yourself this morning? Yeah. What time did you get up? Well, I was up at six, but last night I left the VMAs

early. I was home by 8.45, edited until I passed out at about 1 in the morning. Woke up at 6. Edited more. Yeah. So you're spending most of your time editing every day. Not most, but my routine in New York City is I leave the office what I would call early, like at 7, 6.30, get home an hour with the baby.

She goes down to bed. My wife says goodnight. She goes into the bedroom, i like hold myself up in the corner of the apartment and i usually work until midnight or one in the morning fall asleep editing that's correct yeah exclusively and then wake up at 4 30 in the morning to finish the edit by 8 a.m that's seven days a week and you've never thought about bringing on someone else it doesn't work it doesn't work they can't capture your voice your story your message there isn't a voice or a story in the message the story is told in the edit the edit is where it's written and

they can't be you and how are they supposed to empathize with what my day was because the the sum of the vlog the narrative of the vlog is not a collection of the parts it's like me taking a step back and saying what did i actually experience today and what affected me? Wow, man. And you can't have a third party emulate that emotional relationship. Your life is editing. Yeah, it's a big part of my life. Oh my goodness. But I love every, I mean, I don't love the fact that I don't get to sleep. I'm like permanently exhausted, just beaten up.

But I like- You love the process of editing and telling the story. It's like you get the crap beaten out of you and it takes everything that you are. And at seven 59 every morning, I'm a completely broken man. And then at 8am I have this, this rush of adrenaline. And that is when I click post. And then everyone's like, they all know it's coming. It's just like in that thrill, that rush is like, I can't survive without this.

And it drives me through the next 23 hours and 59 minutes until I'm a broken man at 7.59 the next morning. And then I click upload and I get this rush. Oh, my goodness. And that is the cycle. That is the virtuous cycle that is a daily upload. Now, how long can you sustain it for? Well, that's the million-dollar question. Did you give yourself a year or six months?

I mean, I didn't think I would go this long, but I tell you like, this is a quote from my, my very talented friend, Ben Brown, who's been daily blogging for three or four years now. Um, he said, you know what happens if you keep doing it, but you don't know what happens if you stop. And I'm sorry, I butcheredered that you, you know what happens when you stop, but you have no idea what happens when you keep going. What's possible. Yeah. It's something like that.

Anyways, I'm either telling that backwards, but the point is like this, this, I mean, you've doubled your subscribers. You've impacted the world. I mean,

yeah. Forget about those numbers. All I know are like, what's actually, what actually happens. Like I know what, I know what like people say i know like i can feel it and i don't mean that in any sort of spiritual way i mean like that's quantifiable based on the feedback the comments like the things people say to me when they stop me in the street you probably get stopped all the time right it's in new york in New York City there's a crowd outside my office all day every day waiting for you to snapchat them like uh and waiting for me to come outside

but they see you snapchatting from the window i've seen a couple where you're like here's what's happening in my back alley or something and it's nuts it's not um but like anyways like that impact the idea of like being able to build that by doing this thing that i do all by myself and the idea of giving that up to me is just like what's the biggest fear that that those people will go away no it's not about that i just think it's like i think that as a filmmaker anyone who's in the creative space is is to be an artist and i hate that word artist but to be an artist, and I hate that word artist, but to be an artist is sort of... A creator. Sure. It's predicated on one thing. And that one thing in its most crass definition, it's that you are such an egomaniac that you believe the world actually cares about your opinions enough to share them.

Okay. So based on that assumption, which I think is pretty accurate, then what is the greatest quantification of success it's how many people choose to hear your perspectives or ideas like that to me that's the only quantum that's why that's why for me like somebody watching my youtube video on their cell phone is not a bigger deal or a lesser deal than premiering a movie on at the can film festival which i've done twice um to me it's one in the same it's like somebody chooses to watch your stuff but they don't right and and the fact that

it's happening at such a crazy rate and the relationship is so so great with the content to sort of give that up after working so hard to get there something i just i wouldn't want to do man this is this hour has flown by it's been an hour I said it was going to be like 45 minutes but this has been like

flying by I've got a few questions left for you and I know Tim Ferriss said he said he needs like four hours with you when he did the recording

now I know why I would need more time so hopefully we can do another session when I'm back in New York and get part two with you but a few final questions and thanks for sharing so much that you've shared. I want to know, what are the tattoos you have and what do they say?

You know, I'm covered in tattoos. And the only thing I like more than tattoos, because I love tattoos. Crystals now. No, is bad tattoos. You love bad tattoos. Oh my God, they're my favorite. How many do you have? Bad tattoos. I mean, I have no idea. I love all my tattoos.

How many do you have, period? If I could, if Bad tattoos? I mean, I have no idea. I love all my tattoos. How many do you have, period? If I give you a number, I have no idea. Really? But for me, what a tattoo is... You have them all over you. And I should say, I don't like tattoo culture. I think it's really stupid. But I think the idea of a tattoo is that something affects you so much in life that you want to

preserve it forever. So the reason why I love bad tattoos is that girl with the rose on her ankle. The dolphin. The butterfly on her shoulder. The tramp stamp. Yeah, spring break, Daytona Beach, 1996. So she's a mom now in her 40s who has this faded butterfly on her shoulder. But when she looks at that, and I hope she has the same optimism that I imagined,

she has to remember what it was like to be 21 years old at spring break, Daytona Beach, in 1997. And that I imagined. She has to remember what it was like to be 21 years old at Spring Bay, Daytona Beach in 1997. And that's awesome. So all of my tattoos are literally just that idea. They're just notes written on me. So I will remember a specific moment in my life. Like that says, it says 30 on my right, I'm sorry, my left forearm, the number 30. And it was just like, that means very little to me right now. But when I think back at when I got that tattoo, it's like the day I turned 30. And the idea of being 30 that day, I was like, holy shit, I'm an adult. Like it was the most overwhelming feeling ever.

It's happened a couple years ago for me. It was crazy. Yeah, well, it happened four years ago for me now, and it seems like nothing. I was a kid back then. But in that moment, it was such an overwhelming feeling that I wanted to make sure I never lost that. So I wrote it on my arm in a way that couldn't be erased. And that's what that was for me. It was such a moment that I had to make sure I remembered it.

And every one of my tattoos is just that like i have a tattoo on my my right calf and it's literally teeth marks and it's because like this is two years ago i think i was swimming across three years ago two years ago i can just look at my i'm literally just checking the date on my 2013 two years ago well august 26 2013 so exactly two years ago. Whoa, August 26, 2013. So exactly two years ago. I was swimming across the Zambezi River from Zambia into Zimbabwe with my son, who was 15 at the time. Wow.

And I was bitten by a tigerfish, which is very dangerous, but it was a small one. I dare you viewers, listeners to Google tiger fish, you're going to see some gross images. And it bit my leg and my kid and I made it across the river safely. And when I got back, like I was looking at this bloody bite wound on my, on my leg. And I was like, my God, this is probably the last one of these trips that I get to take with my kid. Cause he's going to be 16 soon and not want to hang out with dad right and it was such a special trip and that moment in the trip was such a crazy thing to happen to you like what a wild story right it was just such a big moment for me that was all like that that this tiny little bite fish bite mark represented I didn't

want to let that go so I literally like got the bite mark tattooed under my leg like the exact bite mark I had to wait for it to heal. And then she traced where the teeth marks were. And then it says to it, you know, like Zambezi River. And then it says the date. So it's like no matter what, I look at my calf and I'm just like, I'm stuck with that moment. And I could not be happier to be stuck with that moment. Amazing.

What's the next tattoo you want to get? Well, they're never premeditated. Something has to hit me. Okay. So you don't already have the next one. No. I hope I never get any more tattoos. Okay.

Final two questions. Okay. First off, where can we go and connect with you? What's the main place? Beam? Go download the app? Yeah. You should download Beam, first of all.

Download the app. Be patient with us. It's getting there, but you should download it right now. Follow your friends. Follow some strangers. But my YouTube channel is it. Just type my name into YouTube. Actually, I think if you just type in the word Casey now, it's the first auto-populated.

Yeah, it's pretty sweet. It's funny how we judge success. Right. Google Lewis. Yeah. The first thing. But that's it. YouTube is my Lewis. Yeah. The first thing. But that's it. YouTube is my main outlet for that kind of thing.

And then Beam is the main focus of my entire career right now. Nice. We'll have everything linked up in the show notes too, where to follow you. So that's good to know. Daily videos. Every morning, 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Check that out. I love it.

Final two questions. And you're going to want to record this for yourself too. If there are three truths that you knew to be true, so every video you've ever created has been deleted from time. It's your last day, and you get to write down three simple things on a piece of paper that leave with your family and the world, three things you get to say, what would those truths be? God, you know, I think I'm too verbose to say this.

That's all you got. Three short terms. Three truths. I'm going to hold that up for you right now. Way to put me on the spot. No, this will be like a 77-hour vlog if I try to encapsulate it. Three truths. You get one piece of paper.

It's your final day, 100 years from now, whatever it is. You write down truth number one. Truth number one. About life. Is that a life not shared is a life not lived. And I totally believe that. I think that if you are the most successful person ever, but you don't share your life, that it doesn't count. And that's why family is everything to me. Friends are everything to me. That's one. Okay. Number two is I think the secret to success, and this is for anybody in any field, is working hard and being brave. If you work hard

and work harder than everyone else and you're brave, meaning that you take chances that no one else will take, you will succeed. It will be the scariest, most arduous road that you could ever take, but you will succeed because there are two things that most people are just unwilling to do uh and the third truth is that uh is that health is probably the best gift you could ever give yourself and i think young people and by young people i mean anybody, anybody who's, who is healthy by definition, take that for granted because like everything you are is, is only facilitated by your physical being. So to not preserve that is to, is to cut everything short. And I think that that's something that is so obvious but every time i see somebody drinking a dr pepper um you realize that it's not obvious enough yeah i'm not i don't mean to

shit on dr pepper i just mean this idea that like people casually drink things like soda and constantly every day or yeah just like don't look after themselves because like the brain that you have is is everything and this body is just a – that's your shell. That's it. And once the shell goes away, like the brain dies, and that's terrifying. So if you can prolong that or have it be better because of fitness, because of taking care of yourself, you'll live a better life. Was that three? That's a three.

I like it. I like it. You have to write those down for me so you forgot them. Yeah, I'll write them down. Before I ask the final question, I acknowledge all my guests at the end. So I want to acknowledge you, Casey, for a moment and acknowledge you for your creativity and your consistent creativity. I think it's incredible what you're creating and putting out in the world, constantly evolving over the years, constantly evolving every day to put out something powerful to share your story with the world and inspire millions of people. It's incredibly inspiring for me to watch what you do and constantly pushing the envelope, pushing your health even to create something that's magical and creates possibilities for people.

So I want to acknowledge you for, for your service and what you're doing. Well, thank you for those kind words. I do appreciate it. It means a lot. Yeah. Final question.

It's what's your definition of greatness? Oh God. Really? I thought appreciate it. You're welcome. It means a lot. Yeah. Final question. What's your definition of greatness? Oh, God. I thought we agreed you were going to be lobbing me softballs today. This is pretty easy. I think the definition of greatness is to die broke and leaving the world a better place than it was when you were born. Casey, thanks for coming on, man. Appreciate you.

Yeah, this is great. This is great. There you have it, guys. Thank you so much for being here. And make sure to share this episode over on Twitter with myself, at Lewis Howes, and at Casey Neistat. And also with the link, lewishowes.com slash 222. That's right. Share this with your friends over on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.

The link is lewishouse.com slash 222. And make sure to tag Casey everywhere. Go download the app, Beam, and try it out a little bit. I've been playing with it. It's been a lot of fun. Make sure to follow him on Instagram and Snapchat and all these other places to see behind the scenes of what he does on how he creates such incredible content.

I think you're going to be really inspired by this guy. Again, share it with your friends. lewishouse.com slash 222. Go back to the show notes to see all the information about how you can connect with Casey. Check out his videos and also watch the full video interview of

this episode. You can go watch it live as well. It'll be up on YouTube here also. So thank you guys so much. Make sure to pre-order a copy of my new book, The School of Greatness, coming out October 27th. That's right. Go to greatnessbook.com or Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Buy a few copies and get ready for greatness

to drop into your doorstep soon when it comes out October 27th I love you guys so much I appreciate you you know what time it is it's time to go out there and do something great Bye. Outro Music