The Vergecast - The tech YouTuber who opened a coffee shop

Episode Date: October 20, 2024

For the last eight months, David Cogen has been living a double life. By day: a YouTuber and creator, the face of the TheUnlockr channel, reviewing phones and testing ebikes and explaining how food smokers really work. By night and morning and every single other available in-between moment: a coffee shop entrepreneur, working to get a Brooklyn spot called Coffee Check up and running. In this episode, the second in the two-part miniseries that we’re calling How To Make It In The Future, Cogen tells the story of how a YouTuber becomes a coffee shop owner — and how to bring those two things together without ruining them both. Further reading: TheUnlockr on YouTube David’s Coffee Check announcement Coffee Check’s website Another fun YouTuber story: Me, Myself, and iJustine Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Robot Buristas. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here doing cold brew research. So about a year ago, I started making overnight oats a lot. I really like the idea of being able to, right before I go to bed, basically make my breakfast ticket in the fridge and then it's ready for me when I get up in the morning. It's really helpful having a kid around in the house who also needs breakfast and likes to just run in circles starting at 5 a.m. But it also just feels nice.

It's like one less decision I have to make when I first wake up in the morning. So I've started trying to do the same thing with coffee making cold brew. I drink iced coffee of some kind, basically 365 days a year. But I also like the idea of being able to do it the night before and then wake up and the thing is ready for me and I just pour it and start the day. That seems nicer than what I do now, which is like a 10-minute process of weighing things on a scale and gently pouring in concentric circles. It's just too much. But boy, did I not realize how deep the rabbit hole of, cold brew is. The ratios, the amount of time you're supposed to do it for, the thing you put the

cold brew in, it's supposed to be really simple. You put in beans, you pour in water, the end. Time happens and then you have coffee. Nope. Turns out like all coffee things, it is super complicated. But luckily for me, this is what we're doing on the Vergecast today is we're talking about coffee. For this episode, which is the second episode in our miniseries that we've been calling how to make it in the future, I'm talking about. to a guy named David Kogan, who you might know as the Unlocker on YouTube. He's been a tech creator for a really long time doing lots of reporting and lots of cool camera test videos recently. And he's been a creator on YouTube since 2009. He's been around this for a long time.

And very recently, he opened a coffee shop, just a full left turn pivot in his career. He's still a YouTuber. He still wants to be a creator. He's still trying to make all that work. But he also open a coffee shop in Brooklyn. And I have a lot of questions about that. I think this question of what does it mean to marry those two things? And can you be both a small business owner and a content creator without those things blurring together? I had a really fun time talking to him. And I think you're going to enjoy this conversation too. He had a lot of thoughts about what it means to be a creator, what it means to be a coffee shop owner, how the grind of YouTube changes the way that you think about your career and what you want out of your life. Why making YouTube

videos and being a creator is so intoxicating in the first place. It was incredibly fun. I had a really good time hanging out with him in his coffee shop in Brooklyn. We're going to get to all of that. But first, apparently I have to do cold brew 24 hours ahead of time. So I'm going to go do that. Then I'll come back. Then we'll get into it. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run. critical operations on duct-taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing

what you need. Proms something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. Welcome back. Two Thursdays ago, I took the train out to the Greenpoint neighborhood in Brooklyn to meet David Cogan at his new coffee shop.

I got there about 8.30 in the morning. It would have actually been a few minutes earlier than that, except that the street the shop is on is otherwise so residential. It's just brownstones everywhere that I assumed I was on the wrong block or had overshot and turned around. But I wasn't. I was in the right place. I found the shop with this white coffee emoji light and a green checkmark emoji light on the front

and otherwise no sign whatsoever that this is a coffee shop, which means it's a very, like, cool hipster coffee shop. That's how you know they're doing it. Found the place, went inside, and found a spot to sit. So I ordered a bacon, egg, and cheese personal pie. Not 100% sure what that means, but we're about to find out. I got a large coffee that I'm very excited to try.

It looks like the coffee here is called Founders Blend, which is extremely on-brand, I approve. Now the plan is just to sit here, try to get them work done, have aggressively judgy thoughts about the Wi-Fi and all the coffee gear they're using here, and then wait for David to show up. Let's do this. I found out later, by the way, that David himself had made that pie.

It was very good, one of those, like, hand pie-sized things that comes in a little personal tin. Delicious, no notes. The Wi-Fi in there was also extremely fast. There were so many outlets in the room that it actually kind of made me laugh trying to count them all, and the coffee year was also pretty on point.

I had annoyingly few complaints in my first couple of hours at coffee check. At about 10.30, David himself showed up. He'd been out filming for the morning, but he came in, stopped at the counter, said hi to the baristas, checked in to see how things were going. and then came over and said hi to me. He gave me a quick tour of the place, the shop in the front, the production studio in the back,

we walked around the kitchen. He was very excited about an outlet thing that you could press on the counter and it would pop up. He showed me all the USBC ports. He was very excited about that. There were a bunch of e-bikes just sitting around. There was a gigantic Samsung TV that he'd been sent to review. It all felt very familiar to me as a person who has too many gadgets and loves USBC. And then at the end of our tour, we see.

sat down in this huge podcast booth that he got from Finland at a huge discount in exchange for letting the company use it for occasional demos and sales stores. It's so big they like didn't have a place to put it. So his studio is now also the sales floor for this podcast booth. It's wild, but it seems to work. It fits four people and three cameras in it all at once, just in this little booth. And so while the coffee shop continued to operate around us, David I sat down and recorded this episode. I asked him to begin with just to tell me his story, and to start with the story of how coffee

became part of his whole persona and brand in the first place. So I started doing these videos occasionally where I would do like a battery test or a camera comparison, and I was just kind of interested in vlogging and that kind of style, but I wasn't doing that on the channel because I was a tech channel. And so I started kind of making these battery tests and these camera tests while kind of bouncing around

and like filming them in a very very... vlog-esque style. For those not familiar, a complete walk through through those channels where I try to go through every single feature on a new device

that I possibly can so that you guys are better prepared should you be in the market to actually go buy one. Now with that said, there is a lot to go through. And then I was like... Somewhere between

like Casey Nystatt and Marquez Brownlee was like... Sure. Scientistically like dead center was where you were in this area. Yeah, with like, yeah, let's go with that.

Yeah. Because it was like not not terribly technical but not, but also just kind of like running around and showing you things. Yeah, right.

and then editing it to a beat. So, yeah, so that happened a bit. And then pandemic happened. And during that, I was filming in my apartment, like, I remember other creators was doing it? And I, like, kind of lost my mind as we all did. And as soon as, like, we were allowed, really, to kind of go outside again, I was like, screw it. I'm filming this outside now because I've just done however many videos literally on the same coffee table.

And so I went outside and just naturally went and got a coffee in the beginning of the video and sat down and got my coffee. I went coffee check. Like, I got a coffee, right? Coffee, check. And then I, um, then I would talk about the phone a little bit and then I kind of bounced around and I did that. And then the, I posted that and, and I even, I think you even talked about like history in the first one. I like, kind of just went off the rails a little bit because I was losing my mind. Sure. And you didn't do that going like, I have just invented a catchphrase. No. Okay. Not at all. I literally just naturally went coffee check. Like I got it. That was it. Yeah. And then I went away.

And then posted that. People were stoked. And they were just like, this is so different and fun. whatever and I was like, oh, you like this too. Oh, great, because I enjoy this. And so then I started doing more and more of that. And I did a few and I got comments. They were like, where's the coffee? And I was like, oh, oh, this is a thing now. And I didn't realize, okay. And then in the next video, I went, coffee check and like got the coffee. Like, there was a few videos that didn't have coffee and people were upset. So people told you it was a bit before you realized it was a bit. It was the audience that told me that I had to do a bit. That's so funny.

And that just became a thing. So do you then take that thing and you're like, okay, coffee is now part of what I do here? How can I blow this out? Right? Like there's a, there's a particularly like ruthless thing you could do in that moment that's like, okay, coffee's part of my thing now. Who's going to be my coffee sponsor? I'm going to start selling a coffee bug as merch. Like there's a very simple, like, how do I monetize this road that you can.

and go down in that moment. Did you start going down that road? I think in my head I was like, oh, wouldn't it be really cool if I had a coffee sponsor? Okay. But I never, there was never anything beyond that. I was never like, oh, I'm going to go find one.

But if we're honest, that's also because I don't generally reach out to sponsors. Like, and I'm very fortunate in that way that most sponsors have come to me. And then I kind of decide whether I'm work with them or not. And it just happened to be, there wasn't any conference sponsors that had come. I think I did one,

which I was very excited about to this point, Aeropress came out and did an integration in a video where I made at Aeropress with, you know, the S-24 alter, whatever it was at the time. And so that was really neat. But it was never like, I wasn't trying to go do that. It just felt like, oh, wouldn't it be a great fit if someone reached out and did that way. I've been watching David's videos on The Unlocker for a long time.

And it's honestly sort of shocking to me that he doesn't have more coffee content. So many of his videos start with a quick intro to the video, like what's about to happen. and then he just barrels the camera and goes first things first. And then there's a long montage of him getting coffee at some cool place around New York. And then he goes, coffee, check. And then the video starts. That's the thing. It's a good bit.

But like lots of people drink coffee. You know what I mean? And I've always wondered whether he was really into coffee this way or if that ends up being just a useful construct to set up a lot of these videos. Like I've filmed camera tests before. I know how hard it is to find interesting stuff to film and find. photograph on a camera to show on video. But then again, to be fair, we're sitting recording in his coffee shop. So this fact should not surprise you. I was a coffee snob at that. I'd like to admit that here. That was the word I was trying to not accuse you of, but I'm glad. No, it's totally

fine. I've accepted it. Anyway, all that coffee love went from intros and AeroPress into something very different last year. That was when David's lease was up. He had this space that he'd shared with a couple of other creators just a few blocks away in Brooklyn. And when their lease was ending, he started looking for a new space and a new project. Initially, my idea was to try to make something for creators. I wanted to make, like, I wanted a larger space that could then have some sort of community. I was just kind of craving that, I think, like a bigger community of creators to, like, you know, inspire each other and do other things. And then I was like, okay, cool. Like, I went looking for a space. I found the space that we are currently in. And I loved it. And then I did the math on

on, you know, how viable was this business model of like creators coming in and like, cool, we all, you know, can use the space and film in it and whatever. So you're just grabbing like, we work for creators. Essentially right. And I literally would have said those at some point to someone, I'm sure. So we were for creators. And the problem is, I realized quickly after finding the space

and doing the math was that you have to limit the number of creators that join because, you know, people have to be able to film in here and you can't all be in here at the same time when someone's filming. Sure. And so inherently it limits the number of members. you can have, which means you have to charge a lot more. New York rent is not cheap. It just made zero sense. And I went, cool, great, done. Glad I figured it out before I started. And then I was literally in the space and be like, what else can I do with this? Because I just really liked it.

And originally when I walked in, I immediately thought, okay, a roastery. I would love to have a roastery. One, I would love to do something on my hands. I'm just been a creative for so long. I feel like we all crave that to some degree at some point. And I love coffee. It was already part of the brand. I was like, okay, well, now this also makes a little bit more sense. So maybe I could start a roastery. I could roast my own coffee, and that could be my merch. I could then sell that to the audience. I can sell that to wherever, maybe other stores.

You become your own coffee sponsor. Interesting. In every video was definitely part of that. Okay. Right? And I've been doing that the last few videos. I'm sorry to anyone who's listening. We're watching my videos.

I'm so sorry, but I'm going to keep doing it for a little bit longer. So your thought was like maybe I'll just do this myself. Like this will be a something? It seems like a side project? Is that amazing? Is it the side project or is YouTube? No, I'm just kidding. We're going to get to that.

Yeah. I would say, yeah, it was. It was kind of just like a, hey, this felt like a good, I don't know, like a side project. Let's just call a side project. That's what it was. It felt like a good side project that also, though, had a lot of ties in with what I was already doing, which is another reason why I did it. Because if it didn't have that, it wouldn't have made as much sense. It was just like, cool, let me, you know, I already have no time.

Like, I'm as busy as it was with YouTube. Ask anyone that knows me. They're like, yep, David's always busy. So, like, then I was like, cool, let me start another business. It was probably not the best idea, but it's okay. So wait, but on that front, actually. Like in those first moments, like, if the spectrum of ambition is like guy brewing beer in his basement all the way to like, I want to start Starbucks. Where would you say your ambition was?

Way closer to the guy in the basement. Okay. Yeah. No, because like I don't, and it's funny because even people have said stuff to me about like, oh, when you can open your next one and do, you know, like, oh, no, I'm never. That's not going to happen. Because, like, it's so much work for just one. Yeah. And I kind of like the idea of it being a smaller thing.

The point wasn't to make an empire out of this thing. It was just to do something good. Okay. Right? Something that, like, felt good for me. Generates revenue, sure, but, I mean, you know, more so. Right now I just care that it pays its own bills. That's all I really hope for.

And it just was something that, like, yeah, I was something I, something felt good about the idea. And it wasn't necessarily like building an empire. Okay. we have to take a break, but when we get back, we're going to talk about how you actually do all of this. Because it's one thing to say, oh, I'd love to open a coffee shop. Honestly, I feel like lots of people have at one point had that specific dream. You know what I mean? Mine, personally, is not a coffee shop.

It's to, like, throw all this away and go open a divey sports bar somewhere. It's even another thing to actually find and lease a space and say, okay, I'll figure this out later. and then to decide I'm going to do a roastery, and then I'm going to do a coffee shop because there's a door, you start to go down this road, but actually pulling all of that off and doing it well and do it without turning it into the exact thing and grind and lifestyle that you're trying to get away from in the first place,

that's all way harder. We're going to talk about how all of that went for David. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if, given the right tools, I've really put my all into this. One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify.

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It's time to turn those what-ifs into a thriving business with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash vergecast. Go to Shopify.com slash vergecast. That's Shopify.com slash vergecast All right, we're back. So just to reset here, we have David Kogan,

longtime YouTube creator, tech reporter. Apparently, according to his website, some people call him a geek a later, which I don't even know what that means and I don't really want to ask. Seems terrifying. He's been doing this for a very long time.

And he's just kind of, not exactly on a whim, but also not exactly not on a whim, decided to get weirdly into the coffee business. So then the question is, I suppose, what does it take to get weirdly into the coffee business? Where do you even start? So you have been a creator for a long time. Too long.

You know how to do that. I would not assume there are a ton of transferable skills between being a YouTube creator and becoming a coffee roaster. Sure. How do you start? How did you go about that process? I will say that there's some things that are translatable, which is like a love of data and, like, having to look at data. I feel like I bring that to the coffee shop in a way that I think is healthy.

We'll have a lot of questions about coffee shopping. We can talk about that. Yeah, we'll talk about that. I might need my laptop. We can talk about that. But, yeah, like, how do I go about starting it? So, well, first off, so when I did that, the roastery idea, I realized that there was frontage,

which is essentially just like a term verb, there's street access. A door to the street. There's a door, yeah. So I might as, I might as well. Because if we're going to be roasting beans in here, there might as well be something in the front where people can just buy them and hang out and sit. And so that's where the coffee shop then came from that. And then this back production space, which is what we're in now, just kind of made sense for what I was on YouTube and everything.

Do you think about past you now thinking about it like that? Like, oh, there's space. I might as well do a coffee shop. And you're like that moron. No, no idea what he was setting up for. Nope. Nope. Yep.

Question that every day. Okay. Yep. Just curious. I will say actually like, that's the most like casually I've ever heard someone decide to open a coffee shop. Yeah. So I, it's funny because I went from like thinking. about this to signing a lease in about three months. Oh, wow. And so, like, I look back at that now.

One, it was dumb, but also there was a blessing because I didn't have time to sit there and question all of the things. For sure. And, like, now it's like, oh, it's too late. Cool. I'll just figure it out. First thing I did was I started to learn as much as I possibly could. I went to coffee events. I went to coffee conventions. I started seeing coffee classes, roasting classes, barista classes. I'm, like, certified in certain things. Like, because I just, like, I just, I think a lot of us do this, especially like most people I know that are in tech stuff, like if we're going to do something, we obsess about it until we're good at it. And so I started that process first.

Okay. Well, sign the lease and then went, cool, now I've got to start this project. And then the lease wasn't, you know, it took a few months for that to actually start. So this is like, and during the last year, it was just, yeah. Yeah, correct. So it's like, so I think I signed the lease in December, okay, is. Yeah. And so like December, January, February, like, and then started starting construction in here.

But so while all of that process was happening, I would fly off to, I think Chicago, I went to the SCA Coffee Expo, which is like, were the biggest ones, took us all of the free classes they offered as many as I could. That would fit in my schedule. Went to Javitt's Center had one recently. I went and did that. Started taking coffee classes at another coffee roastery nearby. Like, just obsessed as you do. Yeah. Right?

And so that is step one. It's like I felt like I needed to know enough that I could obviously do this thing. once and then throughout that process though it was getting built so then it just took a long time took about eight months before it finally you know became looking like a coffee shop and not just a warehouse you know what's fascinating about that by the way and i've been thinking about this ever since we talked in youtube time eight months is like an eternity if you work for eight months on a single project youtube's algorithm will almost certainly have forgotten you exist by the time you reappear you just cannot work on that kind of timeline. But in building terms, like physical putting up buildings,

eight months isn't bad. And I think one of the reasons it felt so long to David was that he was actually trying to live in both of those timelines simultaneously, to both be a creator at the pace the internet demands, but also do this deliberately slower and more personal and more thoughtful thing at the same time. It seems like it might be a healthy balance. But it also seems like it might just tear your brain completely to shreds trying to do both at the same time. For David, I think it was a little bit of both, but mostly the second one. I knew it. I knew what I was doing and I did it anyway, which maybe that was the mistake. But it was running two businesses at once.

Like, YouTube is a full-time business. Like, I don't know anyone knows, but like it's a lot. Yeah. And it's a constant grind and it's very draining. Everybody burns out, right? It's a very normal thing. Were you burned out on it? Yeah, I think I get burnt down every three months.

It just comes and goes. You know, it's like a cycle. I'm just used to it now. Yeah. But I mean, I wonder, like, there's a definite, like, there's a definite, like, armchair psychology thing I could do to you that it is, like, what a lot of people who burn out on YouTube do is, like, make the why I hate YouTube video. Yes.

Or they, like, go make a product or something just as kind of a reset to use a different part of your brain. Sure. And try to, like, diversify. Maybe this is what I'm doing is what I think you're telling me. Whereas like, if I wanted to really try and, like, psychoanalyze you, maybe that's a reaction to it where you're like, the grind gets everybody. Like, it does. You're absolutely right.

For sure. And I can see why it would feel, like, romantic and exciting to do something so sort of diametrically opposite of grind on YouTube. Yes. And I think, and I think that's like that, you know, people wanting to do stuff with their hands when they work on the internet all day. Right. That's why everybody got into sourdough. Correct. I missed that, actually.

You just went, I wish I got into sourdough. I went, yeah, this is my sourdough. Yeah, please come in and try my sourdough. No, it's, it's, yeah, I totally agree with that. I think that's definitely a part of it, even if that was a little more subconscious than like a conscious effort. It was definitely a part of it. Okay.

But you also kept the YouTubeiness of this space. Like there's a, I would say, what, 60% of the square footage in here, maybe half, 50%? Yeah, let's say 50. It's designed to be like a production space. Correct. Was that part of the plan from the beginning? So I always wanted to have that for a number of reasons.

Just as a business person was like, I need to differentiate as much as I can in this space because I just got to pay rent. Sure. And I don't know how long the coffee is it's going to take. I don't know how long the roastery's going to take, et cetera. So what's something else that I have, some experience in, obviously, and was like that could maybe also help just pay the bills for a bit.

And I did research on peer space and started to look at all the other like rental studio spaces around here, realize none of them had a kitchen. And so that was my choice for building the kitchen. It was like, cool, differentiator, kitchen. You know what else they don't have? A podcast booth, which way you're in right now. So got that as well.

So it's just trying to like create a separate, another business, obviously, but another part of this business that like could help pay the rent because that's all I cared about and still do. And so, yeah. So that, but the truth is like, because this isn't, as we're talking about at some point, I don't, I don't need the backspace. Like I film most of my videos outside now, as we've discussed. And so I don't really need to have a space that I'm going to film in. I, the bigger intent was for this to get rented out, help pay rent.

But I do use it. And I also kind of designed some things within here. For example, the kitchen has a very standard width of the oven. That way it can be swapped out so that maybe I can start doing appliance videos and not just phones and laptops and bikes and whatever else I do that are outside of a kitchen that are not as large. Can't do any of that in my apartment because I rent it. They won't let me. Yeah. And then I did the same thing for the fridge. The fridge is positioned in a way where it's on the side

where I could get a double-sized fridge and it would still fit. And I tried to do as many of the things as possible. Same thing with the, I'm never going to mount a TV in here because I want to be able to swap them out to do more TV reviews is something else. So I try to add some elements of the space

to benefit my YouTube channel in some way. But it's a small percentage of what the space should be used for, right? Really needs to just rent it out. Okay, that makes sense. So, and to that point, actually, more broadly, like, how did you think, think about sort of connecting the coffee shop to the YouTube channel. There are a bunch of ways in which

they are very connected, including the name. Like it's, it's, you said coffee check in a lot of your videos. You open a coffee shop called coffee check. Yes. Which is dumb to anyone who doesn't know the YouTube channel, but it's fine. There's a, there's an easy thing you could have done, right? Back to the like, how do I monetize this thing on my channel question? Where you make this whole thing kind of about your YouTube channel, right? And you have a TV that's always playing your videos. And it's the background of all of your videos. And you try to make these things sort of symbiotic.

Yeah. My sense is you have like deliberately run the other direction of that, except for the little touches of the name. Like why not push these two things closer together? So to me, I think I wanted to make sure that I could do a good coffee shop. And then it stood on its own for that. I didn't want it to have anything to do with the YouTube channel as far as like, You know, you know, I dread those, those headlines that are influencer opens coffee shop, right?

And then, which are inevitable. Sometimes a lot of the people go to those coffee shops, though. Yeah, which is great. But like, there's an implied, like, a lot of people don't like that word. A lot of people don't know what an influencer does or, you know, and I don't think I would ever call myself an influencer, but, you know, media marketing company call me that. So it's fine, you know. But it's like there's a connotation there that I think that is negative in a lot of people's minds.

and I didn't want that, firstly. I also just, again, I wanted this to be, to live on its own. I wanted to kind of be Easter eggs for people that know, like the coffee check symbol, like the name, right? But everything else is just, oh, it's just the local coffee shop that we enjoy and we like, and it's just, you know, whatever, that's it's it. I didn't want it. I think on the YouTube channel, I don't mind doing the other way around, right? Because for me to on YouTube to be like, hey, here's the coffee shop that I made and, like, come check it out and, like, here it is and, like, here it is. and filming in it,

I feel like there's less of a, like, it's less weird to me that people on YouTube know I have a coffee shop. It's more weird to me that the people in the coffee shop know I have a YouTube channel.

Interesting. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yes. And yet, I feel like every time you bring it up on your channel,

you apologize for bringing it up. Absolutely. Why? Because I'm annoying. I'm because a big part of it is that I keep bringing it up. And I'm doing that partially

because I need to, like, get worried out about the coffee shop to some. degree and like and so it's almost like feels like a bit of an ad to myself right so i don't want you know so i'm apologizing for that and everyone has been very sweet which i very much appreciate all the comments have been like dude don't apologize like amazing like so glad you're like you know living a dream whatever and it's very very very sweet um well i think this is this is the thing i still feel like i'm

going to apologize so it's fine but this is the weird thing about being a creator in this moment i think right where like you could uh your point about influencer opens coffee shop is like i tend to agree with you that it feels sort of gross. Yeah. But like a lot of people will go to that coffee shop because for whatever reason they feel attached to that person. Sure. And that's a thing you can use to for evil or for good, right?

Yeah, true. But if you use it for... Right. But I think if you use it for good, there's not, there's nothing inherently wrong with it, right? And I think like even what your original story about how coffee check became a thing, it's like that that's people being connected to you as a person. And like, they want to know what you're up to and they want to.

want to know where you're going and you're traveling and they're having the coffee. Right. And so you get to a point where it's like, okay, actually what I'm doing is I'm bringing you along on this ride with me. Correct. And that would have just required a very different approach. Like to some extent, it's surprising to me that you didn't make eight months of videos out of building the coffee shop.

Seriously, like a lot of creators would have done that. I don't know if it's pride. It's something. There's like, I want this to stand on its own. I want to do a good job at this. You want it to work because it's good, not because you're... Exactly. I want to have that because it's you.

that to influence it in any way. I want it to just do well. I want to have this coffee shop do well, the roast tree do well, because they merit such things, not because of some other outside influencer marketing or whatever else. I mean,

I've seen enough creators hawk the things that they're doing and kind of being like, hey, yeah, do it. I'm doing this thing. And like, you know, I wanted to actually do something with my hands, like be in the space, like not just like white label something,

like actually make it and do the things. And like, I don't know. I think there's, I think I start to also, a good way to put it too, right, I think I start to skew my own data when I introduce those other things. If I want to make sure

that this does well on its own, I need to not kind of push all of those other things into it because then I won't know what helped it do well. I have a very long lease, right? I did that on purpose. I want this to be a thing that doesn't just like get a bump of traffic because of influencer word and then dies.

Right? So it needs to be something that literally just can like be a part of the neighborhood and be a good thing and grow with the neighborhood and outlast my YouTube channel. This is the retirement plan, man, okay? All right, we've got to take one more break, and then we will be back with the rest of my conversation

with David Kogan. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers.

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Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, we're back. now we're kind of back to the present in our story. David just spent eight months creating a coffee shop from scratch while still kind of sort of maintaining his YouTube channel. The thing is open.

People are here. I ate a pie. It's all real now. The thing opened in late August. People are coming. It's doing the thing. You can find it on Google Maps, which I think is how you know you're really legit.

Which means David has to decide not just what he wants coffee check to be, but now what will become of the unlocker. our YouTube channel. And most importantly, and maybe most complicated, what he, David Cogan, YouTuber and now coffee shop proprietor, really wants to do all day. And because of the way the tech industry works, he has had to make that decision really fast and really intensely, because it is gadget season. I think there were two days for the first time because I had events to go to, because I'm now trying to go back to events and starting to travel again and starting to get back into the normal routine of the YouTube stuff.

there were two days that I was not here at all, and that's it for the last six weeks, maybe. But now, because of that, I'm starting to try to get back to doing videos. I have such a backlog. Again, I apologize everybody. There's, like, all of these, you know, like all of the pixel devices,

I'm still going to do a video on. I just having a time. I finally did the flip, like six. Yeah. Two weeks ago, I think that came out in July. So, like, I'm just, I'm trying to get through the backlog. And the way I'm doing it is I'm literally coming into the coffee shop. and I'm writing somewhere in here, as you do, in a coffee shop anyway,

and, you know, being pulled away to, like, fix this or do this and do that, and that's just, it's just kind of doing both things at the same time. And then I'm now filming all of the videos. I still do them outside, but they're all within a very short distance of this coffee shop for now because I just don't have the time. I can't go any further. So I, like, come in here, you know, write the scripts for, you know, a day or whatever, and then run out, film that video and, like, check back in on the coffee shop in between scenes.

And then, you know, wait for sunset because I need that. to like get the night shots of if it's a phone, for example, and I go back out for that, come back into the coffee shop, clean a little bit, you know, reorder stuff and, you know, do inventory and something.

So it's just been, it's literally just like a mix of the two worlds every day. Is the context searching of that brutal? Yes. Are you going to survive that? No. To be determined. Okay.

No, it's been, it's, I've been feeling pretty burnt out, to be honest, but like, but there's something, it's a different burnout. Sure.

Right? There's, there's because, and I'm sure, some of it's just it's novel right the coffee shop is new it is a different thing it is very to what you've already talked about it's very different than the youtube channel and so i enjoy it a lot even if it's stressful and there's things going wrong and everything else there's there's something about it that is just so enjoyable that it kind of tempers the burnout um from all the things that are happening and i and i can

see a light at the end of the tunnel i think you know i feel like there's there is a world where this where i'm here less and less i can you know not have to worry about doing certain things i'm trying to figure out inventory, for example, right? Like, how do I make sure that the inventory I can project in a certain way that I don't have to order every time things get low, obviously, right? So it's a goal you have to get to getting there. So, like, that's helpful. Is that the goal? Like, is the goal to spend less time on this so you can go back to making videos? I, yeah, I'm questionable. I want to do both. I enjoy both to some degree. I think I enjoy the coffee show more than YouTube at this point. But again, I think it's something to do with it being novel and it's with your hands and everything,

and I've been doing the other thing for 13 years. But I, you know, YouTube is still the thing I've been doing for however long, right? It's also, I assume, the business. It is. Yeah, this is just losing money. This is just a very expensive hobby. So, yes, YouTube is paying the bills. And it is kind of the thing that I've built over all this time.

I can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Fair. Not that I would. I still enjoy YouTube, but, like, you know what I mean. So I've now just, I'm trying to just get back to a better case. cadence of making the YouTube videos while still being involved in the coffee shop. Okay. And I think that's the goal.

It's not necessarily like step completely away from the coffee shop and then just run YouTube like I was. I think there's an element of like if I could figure out more things to to hand off in YouTube and make that a little more efficient, make the coffee shop more efficient. There's some, and maybe this isn't real, but there's some ideal world where I can kind of do both in a healthy balance and still have a social life somehow. Then I'll figure that part out later. Yeah. Details. Details. I think one of the things people burn out on YouTube and really kind of creator life in general is just that it asks so much of you

in so many different directions all the time right like I hear from creators all the time who are like I started making videos because I like making videos they were fun either the thing in the video is fun or the process of making the video is fun or something and then all of a sudden you're like

oh my God I'm spending all my day essentially doing data analysis like that's actually not a good time and then your option is either grind until it burns you out. Yep. Not worry about it so much

and kind of limit your cap of success on the platform. Sure. Or basically try to systematize, right? Like hire people, outsource some of that stuff, make it no longer your problem, and you just get to do the parts of it

that you like and sort of solve the rest around you. And it sounds like that's the thing you're aiming for. After a long time of just grinding. Yeah, look, so I think there's a couple things there. Like the, I think that is the goal I would like. But not quite, right? Like, I don't, I don't want to be Marquess. Like, that's just never a goal for me.

I don't want to have, like, or a Linus or, you know, whoever else. Which are essentially media companies. Correct. That's never a goal. I don't want to do that. That sounds like more stress for me than I want, to be honest. It also, like, I don't need to be that big. Right.

I'm happy to, like, you know, I just want to, I think I need to let go of more things. And this coffee shop has proved, it's, like, kind of forced me to do that. Not to the point where it's like, I come in and I talk on camera for more four seconds and I walk away. And that's the end. I don't, and also just the nature of my videos, it's very difficult as well, right? Because I enjoy having this, like, you're coming along with me, very vloggy style. Yeah. As soon as there's a cameraman holding that camera, it gets a very different vibe, which I just don't want.

As a creative choice, I just don't like that. Maybe it'll happen one day because I won't have a choice. But like, that's, you know, like, I kind of like bouncing around with the audience and, like, kind of, and I even enjoy making those videos where, like, it's literally me, like, exploring places with you. I'm a lot of these places are new to me, too. So I don't think I'm going to let that go. So there's somewhere else that I think I can hand things off but still be as involved as I can be without, you know, killing myself and going insane. But I do, but I also think like creators in general, we have this issue too, which is the fact that like in order to do what we do, especially YouTube or Instagram, whatever, social media, you, you have to make everything formulaic, right? So in other words, like, in order to churn out as many videos as I do, I have to make everything so.

like fit into a box, like, I'm going to write the script, it's going to be like this, I'm going to get this shot like this, I'm going to do, there's no area for creativity at some point. Because the only way it'll get done is if you make it as efficient as possible. And that is where I think we all start to burn out. Because then you're just like, I'm just a hamster on a wheel. Nothing feels gratifying at that point. It's just cool. Making a video, putting it out. Right. And especially around this time of year is even worse. That's what the audience demands of you, right? Correct. That's what the industry demands over and over and over and over and over again. That's a, that's a, that's a time of year is. That's a way. That's a way. That's a way. what the algorithms like. Yep. That's what the audience expects. And at some point, it just becomes easier and way less fulfilling to just deliver the thing. Correct.

Yeah, and like, yeah, and you need to, the optimization in order to be able to do it. And the only way you can, you know, keep up with that cadence is to make things as smooth as possible,

not as creative as possible. Has that, like, that's not transferred to the coffee shop? Does it feel the same way? No. No? No, which I think maybe is that's another reason

why I enjoy it so much. Like, there's, there is a lot of, because we just opened, there's a lot of creating all these processes and optimizing. And I do enjoy a lot of that, which is interesting.

I enjoy it in this respect, more so than like, I think I enjoyed trying to figure those things out with YouTube, but now that I've figured them out, they're just, building systems is much more fun than living in them. Yeah, correct. Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

But yeah, so like, I'm building those systems for the copy shop. And every day, like, I get feedback from the baristas or I'm behind the counter with them sometimes. I'm like, I see, okay, there's a bottleneck. Like, let's figure it. out, you know, hey guys, what do you think, you know, what is a better setup for this? Like, is what's slowing you guys down? And like, that's fun. There's something, I think, as humans,

we like to solve things, especially when there's small problems, like, where the cups should go. You know, like, bigger problems, terrible. But, like, you know, these kinds of things are, like, they're fulfilling. They give you, like, a nice, ah, I did that. I checked the box, right? And so there's a lot of those right now in the coffee shop that are fun to do. So back to this, like, content coffee shop mix. I can now imagine a world in which you become a coffee content person. Like the, the rosary is going to happen. You already do a lot of filming of cups of coffee.

As someone who has watched your channel for a long time, I can vouch for. There are hours of videos of coffee cups on your channel. I don't even create new content. I can just splice all that together. Boom. Exactly. It's a real. To reverse all the questions I asked you at the beginning, right?

You're like, oh, now I have a room full of coffee equipment. Maybe I should just point a camera at it. Yeah. Yeah, it occurs to me. In the way a bad habit occurs to you, right? Like, I sit there and I'm like, hmm, should film this. That'll make some good content.

Look at that. Yes, I think I always think that. It's like a junkie thing. It is legit that. And after a decade of YouTube, you see the world as content opportunities. It's real. You're not, worse.

No, it's real. It is absolutely true. And so I have thought about it. And I think I, I think there is a world where maybe more coffee stuff ends up on the channel. or the audience, you know, if they want that,

maybe I'll try it and let's just see how they feel about it would be the way to do it. I mean, I did, of course, grab all of the social things for the coffee shop just preemptively because I was like, well, we're going to have to start doing content here as well. So, I mean, I think... But that's different.

So, like, I think in the world in which we exist, you are going to have to take pretty videos of your espresso machine and put them on Instagram occasionally. And I think, to some extent, again, those things are symbiotic, right? Yeah. It brings people into the shop.

People watch the thing. People like the thing. Like, that's all good. But I also think it changes the way you think about the thing when it becomes most lucrative as a content opportunity. Right. And I then become the thing I hate. Exactly.

And so I think for you as someone who is like, who is in part this all appealed to as a thing that is not content. Yeah. To then have that pull of what if I make content about this? Yes. And what if the content could help the coffee shop? But then eventually you get to a point where the coffee shop is just helping the content.

Yeah. Like, how to pick all those things apart in your brain just strikes me. It's very complicated. So, so I think I've simplified it because I'm just so, I so don't want that last part to happen, right? I don't want that coffee shop to ever be making more money from the content than from the coffee shop. It becomes like a studio that it happens to serve real coffee. Which I don't want, right? Because then, to the point, I would then just be doing the thing again that I'm sure. So, like, I don't, I won't ever let that happen. And so that, like, in the same way that like I don't want the influence are part of this.

Like, and I just want to have one coffee shop, I don't have more. Like, I think these are ways to limit that chaos that would normally happen in my head. I've given myself this hard no. And so like, I think we need to make content and we will. Like right now we're posting photos and stuff and like, whatever, I'm terrible at writing captions.

I just have too much, too much to do, though, is the other problem. Sure. Right? So if I was going to try to make content in here and like try to get back to my own channel like that, it's just, I'm burnt out as it is. That's just going to throw me over the edge.

So, but I do, I do like the idea of doing some sort of coffee content, maybe when things start to settle and they start to get like, at least I get caught up on all the Tectober stuff that I need to get caught up on. I just don't know actually in my head if that's something that maybe lives on its own channel and is kind of just the coffee check channel. And I host that maybe to some degree, maybe someone else can, so maybe I can set that up in a way where it's not just me. Because then that would be more scalable, easier for me to not have to be a part of all the time. Whereas, like, YouTube, take the unlocker, I'm not, I can't do that. Right. If some other face showed up, it just would be a totally one dream. I just, again, I want this to be a good coffee shop, roastery, like, known for the things that are those things.

And not tied to an algorithm and other things like that. All right, that is it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to David for being on the show and for lending me his podcast booth to do it. And thank you, as always, for listening. As ever, there's lots more on all of our coverage of the creator universe and YouTube and links to David's channel at the verge.com. I'll put some links in the show notes, but as always, read the website. A lot of stuff going on right now. And if you have thoughts, feelings, questions, or other places I can record a podcast in the back of cool coffee shops, you can always email us at Vergecast at theverge.com or call the hotline

866 Verge 1-1. We love hearing from you. Please keep all your questions coming. It's the best. This show is produced by Liam James, Will Por, and Eric Gomez. Vergecast is a Verge production and part the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll be back on Tuesday and Friday to talk about smart rings, Kindles, and all the other news happening right now because, again, I know I say this every week, but there just continues to be a lot of it.

We'll see you then. Rock and roll.