The Startup Ideas Podcast - How To Monetize On YouTube With Harley Morenstein

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

Are you watching your window of opportunity pass by? Today we share why you need to start now to create success, explore the lessons you will learn the hard way, and unpack how YouTube continues to disrupt industries. Hosts Sahil Bloom and Greg Isenberg are joined by Harley Morenstein, another member of the “Montreal Mafia,” who created the YouTube sensation Epic Meal Time. Together they discuss how the internet has shrunk the window of acceptability, offer advice on why content creators must check their egos, and share how false starts lead to future success.►► Want more community? Learn more here: http://trwih.comSPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR►► This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens https://athleticgreens.com/wihAG1 by Athletic Greens is incredible and we have been starting every day with it for several years. It’s just one scoop in 8-12 oz. of water each morning, and you're getting 75 high-quality vitamins, whole-food sourced ingredients, probiotics, and adaptogens to help you start your day right. It's one daily habit that supports gut health, supports the immune system, recovery, energy, and focus!Right now, Athletic Greens is giving you a free 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Take ownership of your health today by going to https://athleticgreens.com/wihLINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:Harley Morenstein: https://twitter.com/HarleyPlaysEpic Meal Time: https://www.youtube.com/epicmealtimeProduction & Marketing Team: https://penname.co/FIND US ON SOCIALSahil Bloom: https://twitter.com/SahilBloomGreg Isenberg: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergTwitter: https://twitter.com/_trwihInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/_trwihTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@_trwihWeb: https://trwih.comSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6aB0v6amo3a8hgTCjlTlvhApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/where-it-happens/id1593424985SHOW NOTES00:00 Sneak Peek00:54 Twitter Beef Introductions04:35 Proposing Tomorrow’s Future08:08 The Window of Acceptability10:47 Starting Epic Meal Time20:30 Monetizing Youtube26:09 Before the Creator Economy31:46 The Dark Side of Audiences36:24 Controlling Your Content41:18 Choosing Growth Over Clout44:30 Harley’s Future for Twitch50:27 Getting “Mom” Approval53:48 The Future of Reviewing59:20 The Learning Costs of Success1:05:20 Thanks for Listening

But like now I know firsthand, 300 viewers that will watch you when you go live every time that 300 viewers is literally worth more than 300,000 views on YouTube. 100,000 percent because these 300 people are like, they're all ambassadors. They're sitting here for hours, dude. They didn't watch your video. They're here with you and they want you to be here tomorrow. And I thought Twitch was so fascinating like that. And I was like, oh, I'm going to do Twitch for a long time. And then I got hit up by Facebook.

And this proved to be extremely fruitful for me. And this is, I'm not ahead of the curve now, but I was then because I was in a position where Facebook hit me up. And they're like, we want you to be part of our gaming program. Well, dude, nice to, nice to meet you. I came into the middle of a conversation about you guys, that you guys were having. So I apologize for interrupting. Not even the beginning. It was like 5% in.

I think we're like five, six percent into the conversation. All right, good. Well, I'll be there for the last 95% then. And hopefully it's on the up and up from here. Yeah, that's the podcast, right? That's it. G-fuel 69, bacon 69. Well, I need to hear the story of how you guys know each other as a jumping off point here.

I mean, my experience with Greg, I don't know. like my experience with Greg was like a close friend of mine like beefed him on Twitter when is this argued with him on oh ages ago literally like I didn't know Greg has been getting into beefs on Twitter for that long he wasn't he wasn't he just found himself in the crosshairs of a buddy of mine that like just enjoys doing that that's his I don't want to say that's his thing it might be a friend of mine that's all right here's what happened here's what happened. First of all, it was a one-way beat. Greg, I need you to lower your audio a little bit, man. You blew my ear out. Is it better now? Yeah, better. Here's what happened. So this must have been like 10 years

ago or something. I tweet. Yeah, you leave it longer. Maybe longer. Did you have a following at the time, Greg? I had like a small following. Yeah. Yeah, he, you know what? I could say that from in my city, they're like there's you know certain success stories and gregg was like a success story that was kind of circulating so gregg was a person whose name i heard before i ever saw his face okay okay gregg continue that's that's what that's how failure of a city we're from you know that like me and harley i'm not buying that anymore man we've had way too many of the like montreal mafia on this show and all of y'all are unbelievably legit in one way or another so i'm not buying that anymore in the water in Montreal that I missed out on as a kid.

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You won't regret it. I tweeted about how I was grateful for something. I was just like, yeah, feeling super grateful that so and so happened to me. Like I want a Webby Award or something like that, which is like some award. and then he responded and I didn't even know who he was and he was like bro he's like anyone who says the word grateful is like not grateful at all you and he like basically did a thread before threads were a thing and just like went deep on me and i actually don't i don't even i didn't even see the beef go down i also just i have a mutual friend who is his who's like

connected to him who also knew of gregg so she was like oh yeah him and gregg or like beefing on Twitter. And I was like, what's going on? What's happening? And yeah, that was just one of the first times that I. And were you already doing epic meal time at the time, Harley? No, I think I did it a year or so or two years after this maybe. Okay.

I think so. But then again, like it's just a weird time. The before before times were so crazy. It was just very weird. I hear you. So Greg. Like, you know, 2010 was a weird time. Yeah, for a number of reasons we can get into because I do want to hear the Genesis story of Epic Mealtime.

But Greg, it's funny that like the origin story of your guy's relationship is Greg getting into beef on Twitter because I feel like Greg, for one of the nicest guys I know in all honesty, Greg gets into more beef on Twitter, like gets more shit on Twitter from people than any nice person that I know. Like there are people that are assholes on Twitter that I see getting shit. And I'm sort of like, yeah, okay, you know, you brought that upon you set a bunch of abrasive things, whatever. like Greg will say something like propose an idea, you know, like he'll say NFTs are going to be like the future of everything, whatever. And it's like, yeah, I'm going to draw. You kind of got, you got to respect it, right? Like you, whether or not you agree with it, the person is taking a stance on something and proposing a version of the future that looks different than what it is today. And people like, I mean, honestly, people are like, yo, go burn in a house. Like, you know, like how dare you propose this? It's wild, man. I mean, that's crazy. It happens to me, honestly. It happens to me. Honestly, it has. happens to me like on Instagram comments someone will say something and I'll be like I don't know about that and then like all of a sudden like it's been like four messages each back and forth publicly in comments and then like someone will call me and they're like yo you're actually beefing a guy I know and I'm like oh shit I know him too I didn't even realize that was him

wow like friendly fire like didn't even know that was happening it's so good man I I would say Twitter is probably like peak of it too because I I don't know what this whole bot thing is going to land on with the like Elon Musk and the debate over whether he buys Twitter or not. But anecdotally, I do feel like there's just so many like anonymous bot like accounts on Twitter that just sit around, you know, like whether they're in their mother's basement or where they are, just trolling. Like that's their entire persona is driven around just like just hating on people and like saying mean stuff about your family and everything.

So I don't know if it's like the same. I'm not as big on other platforms. So I don't know if it's the same. But man, Twitter, Twitter is rough for that kind of stuff. Yeah. And even when I said, when I said like, oh, let me turn that off, when I said 2010 is, uh, was a weird time, like I literally was thinking of the things that professional comedians would say on Twitter at the time are what people, what they would tweet out or what was like like possible as funny then and everything. And it was just like it was really. What do you mean by that? Like are you thinking like like, you know, it's sort of before the rise of like wokeism, um, you know, for lack of a better way to. Yeah, yeah, like things like, you know, you'd go back and like, you know, I remember they, they semi-canceled James Gunn for a minute for something he had tweeted back in like 2011. And what he tweeted is terrible.

But back then, it was just a tweet. Like Twitter, for some reason, you were allowed to say the things that were like a step beyond inappropriate by just, yeah, it was Twitter. It's the Overton window. The Overton window has shifted. Have you guys heard that phrase? it's actually like a pretty important concept it's basically the idea that like there is a window of acceptability around you know it was originally around politics like there's a window of

acceptability around what political stance you can take like what you could propose in congress etc that might be acceptable at a given window and there are certain times in history where it expands or contracts or if it shifts left or right and so like the overton window at the time I think on social media was much wider like the realm of acceptability of things you could say was actually just much wider than like today. I mean, you could say something that's, you know, to your point, 10 years ago would have been totally normal and mainstream and you can get completely obliterated for it. Because I do think that Overton window has just narrowed significantly.

Oh, yeah. And it happens fast. I mean, like, like, I would hate to tell you what, you know, my buddy's grandmother was referring to a certain color of jelly beans and what she called them casually, amongst people in the room, which was like the most racist thing I ever heard in my life. And she was literally just casually asking for jelly beans in a full house. And it was like the most insane thing ever. And for her to be like, oh, yeah, different times.

I mean, old people are wild still. Like old, it's like young people and old people have no filters because they just like never learned to filter anything. Like young people because they just haven't learned to filter anything. And old people, you know, because they just didn't grow up in a time with it, perhaps. Or they just don't care anymore. they're like, I'm going to die soon. What the fuck do I care? Excuse my language.

And so I've always found that. Like people's grandparents sometimes, they'll say something. You're like, whoa. That's like zero to a hundred on something. My parents will say something. And I'm like, oh, I don't, I don't, you can't really say that anymore. They'll be like, why not? And now I'm like, hmm, I'm not going to be able to explain this appropriately.

I'm not going to be able to get this message across. I'm like just some people don't like it. Just know that. You're a good son. You're doing, you're doing the right. thing. I love it. Because she posted on Facebook and like tags me in it. So, okay, so it's a weird time pre 2010 or right around 2010. What led to you starting Epic Mealtime? Like what was the genesis of all of that? I think ultimately before, you know, before I were to comment on the fact that it was a lot of people

coming together at a certain point in time to create something, which was Epic Mealtime, the YouTube channel, I was desperate to make something happen. I was a teacher before. At this time, I was a high school teacher. I'm filming rap videos, rap music videos. I mean, there's rap music videos on YouTube with my phone number at the end still, like my exact cell phone number because I want people to watch the video and call me to make more rap videos. I would go to live shows.

Did your students know you were doing it? Film rap videos. Well, that's the thing. A lot of times I never put myself in front of the camera. because I had an education degree and I was like, oh, I'm not going to be able to be a teacher if I'm doing this weird stuff on YouTube.

So I never put myself on camera for like my first couple of ventures into production on YouTube. Then I just happened to end up connecting with a bunch of buddies from about like three different circles of friends. mine, friends of mine from here, friends of mine from there. And we kind of all came together and, um, started filming these food videos on YouTube.

But YouTube was so different in 2010. It was like you put up one three minute video in the week and you're like, oh, we did the video for the week and people will watch that video all week on their laptop. Like you have to understand 2010, you're consuming YouTube on the laptop. maybe on a desktop like very rare does someone have it hooked up to the computer I mean to the TV and even then it's still like that

and very rare like in 2010 are people watching it on their iPhone there's no YouTube app literally you're going to YouTube.com in the browser so you just weren't consuming a lot of YouTube then people in general and like shit we just got very lucky

with the timing timing's everything because I see people that are now they're like I want to be a YouTube and the rewards are much greater, but at the same time, everyone wants to be a YouTuber now. Like back then, there was a lot of people like,

you can make money off of this. You can make money doing YouTube videos, you know, explaining it to my mom that like, even though it's free for her to watch, somehow there is a means to get paid here. What was it? Like, in those early days,

I mean, this is like you started getting big 2010, 2011, 2012. I mean, I go back. and look at some of your most popular videos. They're still like, you know, they're 10, 11 year old videos, some of those early ones, like the Ben Rathos Burger, the ridiculous massive burger.

I remember watching that one back in the day. I think I was in college at the time. But what was like, what were the economics of this? Like, how were you guys monetizing? Was it through YouTube? Like, were you getting the YouTube ad revenue or was it sponsors people were paying for these videos? And for those people who don't know, could you tell them what epic meal time is?

and what the concept was. Yeah. So Epic Mealtime is a channel on YouTube. My name is Harley. I'm the co-creator of it. I started it in 2010. And it was within like a year and a half, it was the number one most subscribed channel in Canada.

And within two years for a period of time, it was in the top five most subscribed in all of YouTube. We have like 1.5 billion views and 7 million subscribers. on YouTube, way more on Facebook somehow. Things are weird. And yeah, we've been doing this. And although no longer a novelty and not in its heyday, I mean, some people will, you know, say, you know, epic mealtime.

We always say your dad's favorite YouTube channel because maybe in 2013, 2014, he was watching it. I think it was also, yeah, it was just a cooking channel. but we did one video every Tuesday and it was like silly it was like silly silly silly goofy young guys um goofing around so okay so go just route back to the economics of it because I'm curious like in the early days of YouTube how people were making money out this stuff you guys got huge um yeah I mean you had a novel concept right like no one was doing food this type of stuff like not like this no one was doing it like this. And what was really funny was the ways are 25-year-old brains, myself and my partner at the time,

the way our brains simultaneously tried to create something, but also try to navigate the mind field of being friends and conducting business together was really interesting. I look back on on the days and what we did was it was myself and at the time my best friend and we went into it and we're like you know 50 50 we're going to make a channel and then we start filming with other guys and this is where we're like okay like i bought this laptop with my teaching money and we split the camera you're the cameraman i'm going to edit we'll produce the videos together let's call up you know uh this buddy and that buddy you know um these are these are like you know guys that greg knows you know muscles classes

alex perot uh tyler lemko a guy that i worked with at summer camp super super funny person one of the funniest guys i've worked with until this date even um josh elkin who is an excellent chef um my good friend amir who is also an excellent chef um Dave huff who is just you know some guys were just there down to ride didn't know how they fit in but that was it and I like amassed this little team of guys that we all lived like within three minutes from each other but at the end of the day I remember like which I always find looking back now is as fascinating as I'm older and if I were younger I would have never spoke about this stuff but like our little 24 year old 25 year old conniving brains we were like we have

to keep the receipts no one splits the meal with us the first meal I remember we did it with Alex and he was like, oh, let me throw in for that. And we were like, no, no. We don't want your money. It is only our money that is going in toward it. And we were trying to like do something together because he and I had, we filmed the rap videos together for years. So we had this little production studio in our brains,

aka our camera in his basement. And we didn't want to complicate it. We understood each other. We understood each other's motivations. All those guys who I mentioned, which are great guys, we didn't know what they wanted, where they stood. We didn't want anyone to have a stake in this. And I look back on that now and it's so funny because he and I had a falling out.

At the end of the day, I ended up going to court and we ended up settling this as co-creators of the brand. And he's a guy I talk to now. he's just an old friend of mine and his name's Sterling. We had a falling out back then. We went to court for like two years. And it was so funny because it was just, I wanted to be a silly guy on camera. And then you find yourself in a position where you're like,

the boss of your friends. And, you know, there are different people putting in different amount of work, sweat. But then there's other people. people that are getting attention online. So now I'm the one that's like, okay, this guy is doing a lot of filming. He knows how to edit now. And I'm like, but they fucking love this guy.

So it was really, when I look back, I'm just like, damn, how, however I pulled that shit together for as long as I did, doing bacon jokes for the 10 years and, and juggling egos, most of all, my own ego was really. really the, the tricky part. And people are like, you know, they want to, they want to go into business with their friends to ask advice. Me and my friend, I'm like, for sure, do it. It's great.

It's great. You better figure out your relationship before success, though. Because the problem with Sterling and I was before we figured out what our business relationship was, success came in. And, you know, it's easy to think that I was like, oh, I'm the star. I have ultimate power. It's easy to think that that's how I would be thinking in my brain and it totally like comes off that way. But it's not entirely wrong.

I was like, oh, I'm the only one whose face this is. If, you know, someone's going to be making decisions, they're going to be making decisions on where I go. What I do. Early days in the in the show, it was just like, you know, it was a guy on camera talking about food. And we were stressed about money. He worked at a restaurant. on, I was a substitute teacher. Like in the very early days, you weren't making a bunch of money off this.

Yeah. You couldn't. You couldn't make money on YouTube until you've done a certain amount of things, like have three videos up, a certain amount of view, certain amount of, now they're more strict about it, but they still had it. So it was only on the fourth video where we were like, okay, this one's going to make money. And we went really big. We put, we sewed five birds into a pig.

and I like was stressing I was like this is $800 this is $800 we could literally buy like another dope ass lens so let's invite people to my house strangers even and we'll charge them $20 and they could be in the video

and that's a turban epic episode it's literally like some friends some strangers but people pay $20 bucks we were scared. That video in that week made, it ended up making like $750 U.S. dollars, like in the first week. And we were like, oh, thank God.

And that was through the YouTube like ad revenue or whatever. Like it was paying you out. Yeah. Was it? I'm curious if it's changed. I assume it has where like back then it was probably a lot fewer views and clicks to get $750 than it is today for a creator to make $750 on YouTube. Well, it depends.

It depends. They're more hesitant on what they put their ads on and what the cost of ads are. We're in the premium program of YouTube. So the ads on our channel because we're grandfathered into it are just great ads. And people sometimes request the brand specifically even to this day. But back then it was like like, because every, every situation was unique. You two handled it one way, but other people that I knew would sign to these MCNs that existed, these multi-channel networks and they would guarantee people like $4 CPM no matter what.

And us, it could be sometimes 60 cents CPM to like $6 CPM. It depended on the time, depended on everything like, you know, the timing, the year or, you know, what was going on. We ended up, I think we were one of the first YouTube channels that made our own. t-shirts. A lot of people did them elsewhere. You know, they would hire a company. We owned the inventory. And so me and the guys who were literally on the show would go into a warehouse and we're packing up these bacon shirts and we're like hiding beard hairs in there or like writing little letters and sending them out. And that was wild. I mean, you know, this, we made this shirt said bacon strips and bacon strips and we sold 60,000 of that t-shirt, like of that design.

You guys were just being enterprising. I mean, I feel like you guys, the story of the success and the trajectory that it took was like, you didn't have like MBAs and business degrees. You were just pursuing opportunities that came up that you were seeing and identifying as you were going and like being enterprising and having a bias for action around all these things, which is what to me makes it such a cool story. It wasn't like, you know, some grand strategy. your design. It was like hustling your asses off on a daily basis figuring out,

holy shit, there's an opportunity here, here and here. Let's go do that. And how do we make it work? Yeah, it was very much like, now is the time. Okay, we have a million views. You make shirts now. That is what a YouTuber does. They make shirts. And what's so funny is like now, like I'll watch my buddy's kid talk about YouTube. You know, he's like 10. And he's like, oh, I'm going to be a YouTuber. He's like, I'm going to make a channel. And then after two months, I'm going to have my merch drop or we're going to have t-shirts. And then after that, I'm going to do my face reveal. And after that, I'm going to congratulate. And he's got this whole road plan for a channel that doesn't exist. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, I thought I was such a fucking businessman at 25. And here's a

10-year-old just doing the same thing. Because it really was like a format. There was a template to follow. And if you were fortunate, we were fortunate, you got to like make. Make a little. that happened. You got to sell t-shirts, you know, shit, buying 60,000 of a shirt. I didn't do it all at once. But there is a point when you're like, oh, you're going to have to buy, you know, 25,000 t-shirts to make this whole thing worth it. And you're like, shit, I know people like it. But do they 25,000 t-shirt like it? My mom ran the merchandise. And I was like, and she was like, yeah, we could do it. And I'm like, are we going to ship out all these shirts like what's that going to be like um and it was it was it was a lot and it actually was it was like that's like one of the things where it was tricky because i i wanted to value everyone's

opinion and there were guys who were quote unquote day players but really they were there since the first day and they have input they have ideas you know why don't we sell like towels and why don't we sell apron my my mom knows a guy who could sell these things we could also do that. And I didn't want it to come off like, like, you know, like little like loot bag things that you would get like at a bar mitz or a Keyneson era. I wanted it to be like, you buy the t-shirt. We have t-shirts. Do you put your credit card in? Like you're going to get the $30 item. There is no $4. You were also doing all of this because you were doing it all before like all of the innovations that now exist that make it easier for creators to do this. Like it's, it's so fun. now just hearing you talk about some of those struggles and what you were dealing with, a lot of entrepreneurs have like heard those struggles and gone and built infrastructure to make

it not as much of a struggle. Like you talk about having to buy 25,000 T-shirts like the inventory problem. Holy shit, that's scary having to buy that up front and then hope I sell them. Well, now you can do drop shipping. They were like here. Just like buy print to fill. Yeah. Like these shirts.

These shirts were like in my house and we tried our best to fit them in. them up yourself, sending them out. Now there's just drop shippers or there's pickpack and chip, whatever. Like it's so cool to hear that early story because it does map to like all of the innovation that's now happened to make it easier for creators as they scale to go and monetize in all these different ways. Well, early YouTube also, the culture was people are like, are you trying to sell me something right now, bro? Why don't you shut up and provide the free content?

If you ever tried to sell someone something, they're like, sell out. Wow, Sky wants to make money. Like, get a real job if you want to make money. Now it's like, you know, you see people like Jake Paul, Logan Paul that like plug the merch in every single thing. They're happy to launch. They can do a video that they're launching an energy drink and people are hyped about it. They're happy that they're successful. They're happy.

They show off their like Versace onezy and everyone's applauding. When we were like, yo, this stuff costs money. So here is, you know, our T-shirts if you want them. and they're like, wow, wow, sellouts. So the culture of YouTube at the time was people really didn't support a YouTuber with a branded deal or anything. You know, I remember we did Netflix when Netflix was very, very new. And I'll never forget the pricing structure of this because I'm like, this was insane to me.

But for, we had to tell people, go to Netflix.com. slash bacon. And if you went there and you signed up for the one free month with your credit card, it'll automatically, okay, Netflix gave us $60 US per person, per person. So like the pricing structure is just so insane because like Netflix was new, but the service was so easy to convince someone. like because it was a good service. I hadn't had Netflix until that deal came through in 2011 and they offered it. And I was like, oh, can I get a free login? And they were like a free login.

We're giving you 60 bucks per person that signs in. I think you'll be able to afford a month or two after this. And that was the truth. And like, and they were like, so how do you want to do what a lot of YouTube? YouTubers like to be like, hey guys, don't want to bug you, but there's this awesome service.

And I was like, oh, no, we'll just by using the character. I played a character on the show. I'll just be like, oh, sign up. You get free movies. I get money for bacon. And it was just such a 2011, 2010 humor mentality.

And we did it. And I remember the comments. People were like, well, I really respect them for just being like up front that they're making money on this. Like I knew YouTubers that when I went to visit them, they drove escalades. They were successful. They literally had two escalades as YouTuber.

And he would go and dirty a dish on purpose and go to his second, like his back kitchen sink and pretend to wash a dish there and talk to the camera to be like, I'm just like you guys when he wasn't. And we were the ones that and we did it through characters because we still thought it was douchy to do it as ourselves. we did it as characters. We were up front about like, yeah, we're making money. We have so much money. We're so successful at the same time.

I was driving like a Nissan center and living in my parents' basement. But I was like, we have millions of dollars. We didn't. But we kind of leaned into that mentality on YouTube. And that's what the YouTube culture is now. And if it's not, it was for a long time and it's on the tail end of it. but I really feel like people were like, whoa, we kind of treated it like rappers. Believe it or not, like half the people on Epic Mealtime wanted to be rappers when they were growing up.

That was the form of entertainment that they wanted to be a part of. So I think they brought that showmanship. There was like a, there was a survey that scared a bunch of people. This might have been like a year ago. Maybe you guys saw it. That was like it basically asked a bunch of kids in the U.S. And then in China what they wanted to be when they grew. grew up and something in the U.S., like, it was like 40% said a YouTuber.

And in China, really? 75% now, by the way. And in China, it was like 75% of kids under the age of 18. It was like, you know, engineer. Like, I don't know. Maybe it was manipulated data in China because I don't trust much that comes out of there. But it was basically like, oh, shit, we're dead.

Like this is. It's like the Chinese Communist Party filling up the surveys over and over. Oh, yeah. They want to be out. astronauts. They all want to be astronauts and doctors, military doctors, technologists, all that. I do want to talk about, and Greg, you and I were chatting about this earlier this week, sort of like some of the darker side of these algorithms and of, you know, fame and audiences and all that happens with it. You know, there was this great blog piece that I think

Tim Ferriss had it in his Five Bullet Friday, so it went pretty. viral last week because of that. It was called the perils of audience captures by this guy, Gerwinder, who's an Indian guy who writes these really thoughtful pieces. And basically, the whole thing was built around this guy, Nicholas Perry, Nick Akato, for people who don't know him, who was, you know, original, he's a Ukrainian kid, was doing like violin and talking about veganism. It was an excellent. Excellent violin player. violent player. Excellent. And still is. And hadn't gotten any real traction doing that, but was posting like very authentic real videos of himself doing that. And then basically started

going towards these videos of him eating like absurd amounts of food. And as people saw those videos and liked them, there were comments like do more, do bigger, you know, eat this, eat that, whatever. And so he kept doing it because it was getting a ton of traction and a lot of views and he was making money off of it presumably. And it ended up really spiraling, you know, for his mental health and physical health for a lot of reasons. And I just, I want to, I want to say it because I don't know if you would say it. I don't know you that well.

But to those listening, he was an extremely lean vegan boy. And now he is the fattest, jigglyest marshmallow of a person. And you might be like, hey, that's not really nice. But no, this is a guy that has leaned into his fatness, sells merch on it. if you Google him, he is really like a gigantic marshmallow. And like that's kind of the brand that he's been. Yeah. And it went from, I mean, it's like, it's very sad to actually look at it before and after.

Because he went from like this, you know, kind of cute, wholesome living kid to what he looks like today, which it's fine. Like everyone has their own life. But yeah. Yeah, but he was poor. And now he's rich. Yeah. He was poor and skinny.

Now he's rich and fat. So, you know, the whole article kind of lays this out of how we. In a world of audience and in a world of these algorithms, we are progressively falling victim to what our audience wants. And effectively, we are slaves of our audiences or of these algorithms, if that's what you believe in. And I thought it ended with a really good line and said, this is the ultimate trapdoor in the Hall of Fame to become a prisoner of one's own persona. I thought that was just, it punched me in the face because I was thinking about it for myself. Like, how do you think about this, Harley, your own career in life, doing crazy,

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Again, that is athletic greens.com slash WIH to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. You won't regret it. I think, I mean, that's like, I'm so lucky personally that this happened to 25 and when it did. if this had happened when I was 18, things would have been disastrous. Epic meal time early on was frat mentality. It was like, get drunk, eat food, party, get drunk, eat food party, get drunk party, like lots of part.

That was the mentality. And when we started it, I was 25 and I was kind of over that already. So by 27, when that's what the audience were thriving off of, like they liked how much of a disaster we were sometimes. I was kind of comfortable enough to just be like, no. And I've done this from the very beginning. And it's such a, it's like, it's, it's such a thing that's always been discussed internally over the last like six years.

Since like, you know, my channel started to decline since it wasn't popping like it once was. I was like, what are we going to do? And there were lots of things that we could have done. And I didn't do. And whether it's the persona that. that you are that the audience wants or whether it's the meta the meta of the the you know um YouTube at that time like will we you know will I will I get drunk and like lean into being a

disaster will we start to do pranks because pranks are cool now and oh we didn't do pranks well that's good pranks are super uncool now uh will I go have a baby with someone start a family Those are popping right now. Wait, now family vlogs are looking kind of weird and filming your kids. Like things go back and forth. And I think maybe because it was the early success of it all or whatever, a perfect storm of my age and my experiences, I never, to the detriment of my success in some respects, I never leaned into the meta of the YouTube game,

whether that be the persona or whether that be, you know, what I'm doing. So like muckbongs, like the things that Nicocato did where he'll sit there and pig out, a part of me was like, yes, I kind of want to do that. People would watch that. We know it gets views. I'm like, but I've done a lot of this eating stuff for a decade. I don't want to start this next decade on the foot of like, I'm going to pig out constantly.

I would meet some successful YouTubers and they were in the mission. of like writing a battle rap against their own brother in a music video, like a drama music video where him and his brother are fighting each other in music video saying kind of fucked up mean shit. And I'm like, I'm so happy. I'm not beefing my brother. I'm so happy.

That's not my path to success. And I don't look down on people's hustle. I get it. Like, who knows? Some people, they're trying to get something popping. But I look at some things. I'm like,

oh, I could never do that. And I'm not like, I only do the best things. I just look and I'm like, oh, yeah, the pranks were taken off. I didn't want none of that. You know, like if eating yourself to get like so fat,

I was like, you know, I've had a little taste of success. I don't know if I want to go and chase success so badly. There are personality types on YouTube that you see in every line of business for sure. There is this type of person who is so ambitious and insatiable. and they are chasing something that is fleeting. Viewership. I know people look at me, some of these people that I know. And I can see it in their face.

I know they look at me or like my channel and they're like, ooh, that would be a nightmare. If I went from like getting 30 million views or like two million views in a week to like getting under 100,000 views. Oh my God. And I see that when I engage with people or I would engage with some. of these people and they would be like, oh, I'm growing in subscribers. And I'm like, I can't remember the last time I like sat there and, you know,

refreshed looking at the subscriber count. Maybe it's just being older. I'm 37 years old. Maybe it's like having this experience. Maybe it's, I felt like I did something. I don't have anything to prove. I'm not sure what it is. But the most successful people that I've seen on YouTube, they chase that fleeting number.

of likes, engagement, viewership. The video got a million. It's got to get two million. Oh, you're only getting 800,000 shit. My channel's dead. Got to do something crazy. Got to do something crazy to get back in the news, get back in people's thoughts.

And I think maybe the most clout chasing thing that I've done is I did a charity boxing match a couple months ago, a YouTuber boxing match, which I always thought like, I love YouTube drama. So I was like, is that where we are? in this weird form of gladiators where nerdy YouTubers are going to hit each other

for more clout. The nerdyest, the nerdiest YouTuber by the way. I watched it. I watched it. Like Graham seven. Oh, was he in it?

God. Oh, my God. Love. Oh, yeah, he is. He is. And he went against Michael Reeves. Also great. Just two great guys.

It was, and that's why I did it because I would never do the boxing thing, but this was for charity. and I really like the creators that were in it. They weren't like doing, they didn't weren't trying to prove anything. Everyone was like, hey, this will be a great journey

and we're doing it for a good cause. Let's go and do it. And we all did it. We had a great time. But it was different. And then I got offered to box on the KSI card, which is on the 27th of this month. And I was offered $150,000 to box one match.

in that card and I was like, nah, and they were like $150,000 some. Most boxers will never see anything close to that amount ever. A lot of championship boxing matches aren't that amount. And I'm not scoffing at the money in my current state. That is an incredible amount of money and an excellent opportunity. And I think it's a ton of money and I absolutely think it's so worth it and great. But I'm not a fighter. I did it for a personal journey

chasing the check and being a like come on being a boxer 37 what if I get punched stupid you know what if I come out of that dumb dumber or so what if I break a nose that's like just forever weird who knows it's just it's not like my passion

plus I didn't know who I was boxing but I looked at that and I've been fascinated by the YouTube boxing thing and even the fact that they're like hey you're a washed up YouTuber. Do you want to box someone for $150,000? And that's one side of one boat on a card with like eight matches. And I would probably be bottom of the card.

So as you go up, people are getting paid $300K,000, $600K. I'm sure whoever's fighting in the main event might be getting a million. I think when YouTube disrupts industries, that is like my favorite. that's my favorite thing when I see that. You know, I know some people are like, oh, it's boxing, like, you know, they're ruining it. The coach that I had here in Montreal, he was like, I have not had as many signups for boxing with young kids

since Jake Paul started boxing and talking about it. And I just love, I love, I've always loved, you know, same thing with like Twitch, whatever, like disrupting the gaming industry. When video games come out, something that wasn't that popular, happens to be popular on Twitch now, that entire company is like completely different. Talk about what you're doing on Twitch. I think that'll be interesting to people because you know, you seem to be always ahead

of the curve. So yeah, what do you work? What do you work on on Twitch? Yeah. Well, see, like Twitch, I remember in 2015, I saw an article that said after Netflix, the number one most streamed website was Twitch. And I knew justin. Dot TV.

So I was like Twitch. I'm like, well, that's careless of me. I'm on YouTube and I don't know what Twitch is. And I went over to Twitch and I watched people and I was like, so crazy. People watch someone play a game and I noticed a money culture that wasn't present on YouTube. People gave money. On YouTube, like that was, that thought was insane. Like, don't even ask for money, bro.

Don't even sell me something. Free video. Free video, shut up. I'm skipping this ad rate away. And then you go on Twitch and someone's like. like gets a headshot and they get like a $20 donation. And they're like, thanks for that donation. And like that's it.

I'm like, that's what that person paid for. It was so insane to me, didn't understand it. But I kept putting it on because I wanted to understand it. And then I found a streamer that I liked this guy. I'm a cutie pie. And I would start watching him. He would stream at 7 a.m.

I would wake up at 7 a.m. back then for work. And like he would be live and he would be there and I'd be great. And like, if he was late, I'd be like, that's weird. and like I just had like my first parasycial relationship on the other side where like I was a viewer and I'm like this guy and his cats. I love his music taste. He doesn't know who I am at all. And then I was like, I'm going to start streaming on Twitch. And I started in 2015 and you know what?

It ended up being really, really good because, and I only would get like, you know, at the time what was very difficult for me. And this was probably what really helped my ego or, or, or like destroyed my ego in the sense that I'm like, I'm not, I'm not my viewer numbers, you know, was I would stream and people didn't know I was on Twitch in like 2016. And I would have like 300 viewers. And people would come in and be like, oh my God, epic meal time fell off. They used to get millions of views. now he has 300 viewers, but like now I know firsthand, 300 viewers that will watch you when you go live every time that 300 viewers is literally worth more than 300,000 views on YouTube. 100,000 percent because these 300 people are like, they're all ambassadors.

They're sitting here for hours, dude. They didn't watch your video. They're here with you and they want you to be here tomorrow. And I thought Twitch was so fascinating like that. And I was like, oh, I'm going to do Twitch for a long time. And then I got hit up by Facebook. And this proved to be extremely fruitful for me. And this is, I'm not ahead of the curve now, but I was then because I was in a position where Facebook hit me up.

And they're like, we want you to be part of our gaming program. And they offered me a contract that per month dwarfed the biggest best month I ever had on Twitch. because it's like Facebook money. And so they gave me this deal to stream exclusively on Facebook for three years. And I did that. I streamed on Facebook for three years. And I had a guarantee. I just had to stream, you know, 80 hours a month.

And I was doing that on Twitch already. And that Facebook deal was great. I did that for a couple years. And that just ended recently last year. And I went back to Twitch because just Facebook. you don't pop on Facebook. People go on Twitch and pop, you know, Aidan Ross or, you know, even a lot of Andrew Tate clips are popping off like on Twitch,

him going on to people's podcasts. And I just was fortunate to be part of that Facebook thing. And I think I may have stunted my Twitch growth, having been gone for three years. But it was a risk I took and one I'm happy with because, you know, like I said, there was a guarantee there. And I got to just chill. And now I go on Twitch and, you know, I got weird sleep schedule.

It's midnight. Not really sleeping. I'm going to play games. And I'm like, I know, you know, through my, my Instagram and through my Snapchat, I'm like, I know my demographics, top audiences are Los Angeles and England. I'm like, okay, so it's 9 p.m. in L.A. And England's going to be waking up soon. I've just justified me being a degenerate playing fucking Mario all night long now.

And, you know, sometimes I'm there and sometimes there's 25 people there. There have been times when there's been 5,000 people. But either or there's just, and I'm like so grateful that it happened at this time in my life at this age, that these are the things that don't, they don't hurt me. You know what I mean? People will see me and they'll be like, oh my God, Epic Mealtime. I used to love your show.

And my mom won't be with me. And she'd be like, but why don't you watch now? Why don't you watch him now? He needs the views. And I'm like, oh, Heather, chill. I like that your mom's arrived. Chill,

chill. It's okay. You know, like, that's big. You need, everyone needs moms like that. Oh, 100%. 100%.

Yeah, last night at 3 a.m. I was like streaming on Twitch and, uh, you know, and I'm like, oh yeah, this. I was like, I went by my mom's house. And then like a chat pops up, Harley's epic mom. She's like, that's right.

and you need to check the mailbox. We're waiting for an important letter. And I'm like, there's my mom. I've got a funny. I've got a funny mom story. Like, she's been listening.

I've got a lot of, um, I've got a lot of my friends moms who like follow me on these different platforms or read my newsletter. Like my friends literally won't read my newsletter or do it. But for some reason, their moms love my shit. And I had,

I used to like, before I, you know, started doing the Twitter thing and got big on Twitter. I had this like kind of janky newsletter that I would send out once a month. Just saying like what I read during that month. And basically like a review of that. that book. And so, like, you know, I'd read four books a month and I'd put a review and a star rating

out of five. And I have this good friend from Stanford whose mom, um, was an avid reader of this thing. She loved reading books and so she would like read my things and then take them as suggestions. And I wrote a review on, um, this book, Where the Codadad sing, which was like a happy fiction, like novel, you know, like happy ending, like the whole thing, you know, right? I liked it. I'm kind of a simple guy when it comes to fiction. So I wrote, I gave it five stars. and I wrote this thing. I get a response from this guy's mom who, like, I think I had met one time in my life.

That was literally the most scathing response, angry. And she was like, yeah, she was like, you know, I normally really trust your reviews and have loved reading this. But I did not expect this from you, Sahil. You know, the, she said something to the effect of like, like, it was rated five stars on Reese Witherspoon's reading list. And she was like, I expected this from Reese Witherspoon's. but not from Sahill Blue.

And I kept it and I was like, man, I said to my friend, I was like, dude, I don't think I'll ever recover from this, man. There's the end. I love, I love how she burnt you and Reese Wetherspoon at the same time. Reese Wethershwin got boned. Yeah. And you know what? Like actually, Reese Wetherspoon's great, I'd be happy. Legally blonde, man.

You got to respect it. That's so funny. He, uh, she had, there's a lot. There's a movie of that, right? Oh, oh, where the content saying. Yeah, yeah. I think the movie came out like in July. I got to watch it and I'm going to send it to her.

Yeah, I think I saw that. Review and I'll send it to my friend's mom. Yeah, I was. Yeah, I'd be like, wow, I guess it was bad enough for them to make a movie on. Exactly. Exactly. I want to see if it's produced by Reese Witherspoon. Maybe she produced it.

She produces all types of things now. Yeah. That's, that's so funny. I think that's hilarious. And you know what? It took me a long time to realize it. But like, that's like one of your top fans. That is the behavior of literally a top fan.

33%. I hate this, by the way, about these freaking review sites. Rotten Tomatoes, I'm on Ron Tomatoes. Where are the crowd saying 33% on the tomato meter, like the critics review, audience score 96%. So like, that's all I care about, man. I don't give a shit about the critics. Like, you know, it's like, the audience is the man in the arena, man.

The critics are like going from the sidelines. You know what though? But sometimes like, sometimes rotten tomatoes like 30% or 100%. And I see that. I'm like, yeah, I'll see about that. There are a few. I'll see about that.

I'll be back. I'll see. I'll leave like a 30%. I'll be like, yeah. Sometimes I just completely. I'm not about it. No, no, no. I'm like, I go back and I'm like, yeah,

now let me see what you guys have to say. And you always wonder about who. I saw it. I want to read it on these things. Like, I always used to wonder that with Yelp. Like who, the customer who leaves a review on Yelp,

I think is like, it's not your average customer. And so there's like a selection bias towards the negative in my opinion. Like my, I have a family member. Or positive. You think so? Yeah.

It's very, the problem with, and someone should solve this, whoever, you know, there's a bunch of entrepreneurs listening right now. It's, yeah,

I should solve this. That's, signing myself on for it. bro. Basically, you have, the problem with it is you have a bunch of people who are so, you know, you go to an Italian restaurant, Nico's Italian restaurant. It's amazing. You love it. You get to know Nico five stars, five stars. He like was really nice to my mom. You write a whole long review. Or there was like a bunch of hairs in your pasta dish, you know, and you leave a one-star review. So what you end up having is this weird bifurcation. So inherently Yelp style. reviews are pretty broken. Yeah, I wonder who can fix that. I live in the New York area now. And say, Hill, where do you live? Okay, because I'll tell you, like, I've been operating this way, Montreal, like where I live, the reviews of places here, like, there's a chance that I'm, like, reading the review on Facebook and it's like a friend or a person that I know. So, like, I know them.

And I've seen reviews here. They're pretty pretty. accurate, pretty good. When I go to the States and I open up Uber Eats or I'm looking and I'm Googling restaurants, like in Montreal, if it's below a four star, I would never go there. Never. If I'm in the U.S., a three star, I'm like, that might as well be a four and a half here. Like a three star is very high in the U.S. Like people only go on Yelp and stuff for the most part when they're pissed.

It's literally when they're pissed off because the reviews. are so much more passionate in the U.S. Like, I read them here and they're like, we go there all every time. Tom's our favorite waiter. Hey, Tom, if you're reading this. And then I go like, like, I'm in like Orlando. And I'm reading like, or if you take one star, this motherfucker manager that works at this place.

And like it's like so much more aggressive. And so like when I see a three star, I'll bump it up. Mine is like, oh, that's like a four star. Mine's like a personal issue. Like I think I have a mental issue around this. where like I grew up in a household where I felt like excellence was the standard like that my parents demanded of me for better or for worse. Like that has a great side to it and that I always felt like, you know, I was pushed in a good

way. But I also think there's a downside to it at times where you like, you know, you feel like you can't do enough at times or you feel like there's a standard that's set that's really challenging to meet. But the result of that for me in like random things like this is that I don't feel the need to like praise someone for doing their job. You know, like at a restaurant, if I have a good meal at a restaurant, I'm not going on Yelp to say, yo, I had a good meal because I'm like, that's your job.

Like I was supposed to have a good meal at this expensive, nice restaurant that I just went to on a Friday night with my wife. If you did a bad job, then yeah, maybe I'm going to like figure out how to fix that for you in the future by leaving it something. But a good job, unless it's like unbelievably excellent way outperforming, you know, like anywhere in the eight to nine range, I'm like, yeah, that's kind of what I expect if I'm going to go pay $200 in Manhattan for a dinner with my wife. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. No, it's like that's the thing. I love playing video games. And people like, oh, yeah, they're so mad about this game. They're on Twitter. Everyone's on Twitter talking about it. But I'm like, no, not everyone. The people that like a game are literally playing it.

So the people that don't like it don't have a competing force on Twitter to be like, no, it's great because they're literally playing it. And sometimes games come out and they're like, taking these Twitter takes. And I'm like, that's a person, honestly, like, that might be a person like that loves Nintendo and this is a PlayStation game. So they're like, that game sucks. And people are like, you hear this?

Someone's saying something about something. And I never get caught up on, on any of that. Now, also, I'm like, I'm a Star Wars fan. So, like, I've been through one of like the most craziest fan bases of like, in the last, like, six years, the Star Wars fan bases just really went through it with each other. It used to be like, people like Star Wars fans. And then there was like Star Wars fans that also like the prequels. And it was like two types of Star Wars fans.

People that like Star Wars and people that like Star Wars and also like episode one, two, and three. Now it's like divided and divided and divided and it's just like toxic. I watch shit now. And I'm just like, I hope this show gets an ending. You know, sometimes things get canceled before they end. And like that's why I won't even like, I didn't even start watching Breaking Bad until it was like a sick. success in the fourth season. I'm like, I'm not going to watch a show and get caught up and then they're going to take it away or something like that.

That's the type of that's the type of guy who like gets heartbroken and like doesn't want to date anymore because it's like, no, they're all, they're all poison. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm like, I like, I like this show. The show gets cats. You've, uh, the writing was bad anyways. You've got this video on YouTube that I found. We're not researching for this episode that I want to ask you about because it's awesome.

That is like basically you it's got a bunch of your old bar mitzvah video clips in it. Yeah. It's a great. I mean, it's a great clip of you. This is the funniest clip. This is, I mean, the only reason why I could say this is the funniest clip is because even though I was a producer on the show, the actual like show runner producer, this guy, Greg Heller, he put that together. Like he calls my mom asked for the bar mitzzo. So when I was screening the episode, actually watching a cut of it, I was like, where the fuck did you get my bar mitzvah stuff?

He was like, I asked your mom. So like that was all him. That's why I'm allowed to. It was so good. I mean, it's a great clip and I encourage people to watch it. It's like, you know, you're kind of talking to your future self in the bar mitzvah clips out of it. And you're like, you know, you're going to be dope. You're going to be awesome, you know, whatever.

And then you're like reflecting on it in the future, talking to your prior self. So it brings me to the question of like. which I think is a fun place to end, and maybe we can all reflect on it. Like what advice would you have to give to your like 2010 self? You know, you're starting out your substitute teacher at the time. You're trying to figure out what's next. You know, you're wrapping on the side, doing your doing your thing, trying to figure out YouTube. What reflections or advice would you have for that, for that version of you?

There's so, you know, there was so many things that didn't play out the way I wanted it to. but at this exact moment sitting here right now like talking about everything talking about where I am right now I wouldn't change in any way so I as crazy as it is I wouldn't even go in and be like yo do everything you're doing except buy way more Bitcoin

that's all and maybe sell some of it in like 2021 like that's like maybe I would say that but beyond that like I really wouldn't change the approach. There were some things that, you know, definitely were sad, definitely were heartbreaking, definitely were stressful or hard to get through. But no matter which path I end up taking, that's bound to happen for everyone in life. But I'm very grateful for today right here. So I wouldn't change that. And I think, you know, if maybe now this year is someone else's

2010, you might be starting a journey. You might be doing it. Like just do it. Just do it. wing it. There's so many perfectionists out there. And I'm the opposite to a detriment. But like some people want to wait. I don't know, writing their book. I always say writing the book. That book you want to write. Like you actually just got to write it. Back then I was scared to go in front of cameras because, you know, I wanted to. I had the teaching as my backup plan. But it's very easy for your plan B to automatically become your plan A through your actions. And I'm, I'm, I'm, happy that I made that commitment to plan A. So, yeah, I mean, just do it. Maybe you get lucky.

I like that. You know, there was a lot of false starts before you get lucky. What about, you know, we talked earlier about how young people all want to be YouTubers and how you were lucky that you became successful in your mid, mid to late 20s. should teenagers sign up to YouTube and become YouTubers or should YouTube put like a requirement you need to be this high to sign up? No, I think they should.

I see teenagers like, they have their phone and I'm like, how could you not? How could you not? You absolutely should. Like I always think about that kid. Remember that kid someone took a picture of him at Target? And then he was famous the next day.

He had like 700,000 followers on Twitter the next day, Alex from Target. No, no, Alex from Target. He was just like a kid because like that, that yodling kid at least like, Oh yeah, I do remember that. This was just like a cuteish boy at the checkout line. Someone took a picture and like it was over.

His life was different. Do you know how many people like went and filmed the TikTok? And then that TikTok has 60 million views. And then now they have like 800,000 followers that are like, what's next from you? And I'm just like, yeah, you should. However,

anyone who leaves school or quit school to become a YouTuber, you don't have it, buddy. I'll tell you right now, if you cannot be in school and do your YouTube, you're definitely not built for it. Because you're not going to compete with the type of people that do this shit.

Like I know successful YouTubers that are so hungry about it, like they're still out there, no name producing other shows, or working like a real job or whatever it is. And like, if you're like, if you think you need to leave school to become a YouTuber, like you don't have the chops. Because when you are a YouTuber and everything goes great and you're super successful, well, that's when things come up. Obligations or travel or meetings or you're going to court or whatever it is. And like if you can't do both, like you're not going to cut it.

So if you happen to be a teenager listening to this or like an up and coming entrepreneur or whatever it is, like specifically for YouTube, but can't talk about everything. If you can't do school at the same time, like, you don't have it. So make sure you get, I think we can end it on that. If you're not ending it on stay in school,

I don't know what you do. Dude, this was awesome. So much fun. I hope you go get some sleep because, I mean, holy hell. I have a newborn at home

and I'm sleeping way more than you. I won't. I won't. No, I won't because it's going to mess up my schedule. Like I need to like, I need to like, Just drink some more than G-Fuel.

G-Fuel 69, Harley. Thank you so much for coming on where it happens, man. This was a blast. Thank you. You're the man. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you have any questions that you want featured in a future episode, email us at hi at t-R-W-I-H.com.

Leave us a review at Apple or Spotify to help us grow the reach of this podcast. Until next time, we will see you soon. world we go get in the 40s