Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - JerryRigEverything on Tearing Down Phones and Building EVs

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

This week Marques sits down to chat with Zack Nelson from JerryRigEverything. Yes, his name is Zack, not Jerry. They talk about the beginnings of how the name came about before diving into the Hummer EV project, how Zack gets devices for his videos, and the Not A Wheelchair project. Of course, we end up with A Race to Z to see how fast Zack can type the alphabet. Links: JerryRigEverything YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/JerryRigEverything Hummer EV Project: https://youtu.be/RQzW0RT1YSg Not A Wheelchair: https://notawheelchair.com/ Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Shop products mentioned: Check out the iPhone 14 Pro at https://geni.us/eBQaA4 Check out the iPad Pro at https://geni.us/Lb3QepB Check out the Rivian R1T at https://geni.us/X2sA Check out the GMC Hummer EV at https://geni.us/IhyKN Twitters: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/adamlukas17 https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Uncertainty. Self-doubt. Stressing about not knowing where to start. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Word art. Sorry, we have laugh lovers. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today.

BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk, an authorized gaming partner of the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sports book worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA.

BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge betmgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario all right what's going on people of the internet welcome back to another fun episode

of the waveform podcast we're your hosts i'm marquez and i'm andrew and this week we actually have a guest that we're going to bring on in a second that i have a pretty fun conversation with fellow youtuber zach aka jerry everything i think some people think his name is jerry so i want to make that clear zach aka jerry everything um fellow tech youtuber i've loved his channel for a long time you've watched his videos of course who hasn't i feel like we kind of all have seen a lot of them including some of the more famous ones where he snaps an ipad in half he's got some deeper grooves at a level seven always remember the um the legion duo two right where snapped twice in two places yeah yeah some fun some fun moments i got to ask him a lot of stuff that I've been sort of wondering about.

I think this is the fun part about interviewing creators is inevitably we have a lot in common in some areas of our workflows or our topics, our interests. So we talked about how we got into being a tech person, but also a lot of the projects he's working on. I'm fascinated. I hope you ask this. I've always wanted to know whenever we get a review unit in the embargo, it says like you cannot purposely damage.

Okay. I literally asked him about that and he had a great answer and it's sort of examples to go along with it. So that's really fun. I talked to him about the wheelchair project he's working on, sort of building a little company over there. And also the electric vehicle that he's built by himself and how that project came to be awesome there's a lot going on over there at jerry everything headquarters which turns out to be

uh several buildings all on one property that he can sort of move back and forth in between and make his stuff that's amazing it's a good time it's a fun lesson it's great for this week so without any further ado let's roll the interview all right zach thank you for joining me welcome to the waveform podcast uh good to have you happy to be here so it's uh it's the middle of techtember right now there's a lot going on uh i feel like we both have very different versions of a lot going on at this point in the year. But I just wanted to jump in with the sort of intro that you give, like when you have to explain to someone what you do, who doesn't know. Do you have like a quick elevator speech version or a succinct thing you explain to family at the Thanksgiving table or something like that? The super short version is just I review technology from the inside. Um, and that encompasses a portion of what I do, you know,

taking things apart, seeing how they work, how they're put together, how they're manufactured. Um, that's kind of what I enjoy doing and what I enjoy showing off. I feel like that's one of those things that you hear it. And the natural follow-up question is like, Oh, have you always been into like working with your hands or like taking things apart? That sort of thing. I imagine it's probably a yes. Yeah. I mean, one of my earliest memories, and this is super illegal now, but when I was a little kid, there weren't as many laws until like which seat you should be sitting in and like which car seat you should be in and stuff. into like which seat you should be sitting in and like which car seat you should be in and stuff and so i would sit in the passenger seat next to my mom but i would sit upside down with my head

underneath the dashboard so i could look up and see all the wires behind the dashboard like next to the glove compartment yeah and like she would just drive around and i'd be upside down with my head in the dash just so i could pretend like I knew what was going on. Sounds weird, but it was super interesting to me at the time. That is like a thanks in hindsight, mom, but also what were you thinking, mom? But thanks, mom. Like, you know, it's cool. Yeah.

Yeah. That was my secret. There's no way to be close to being gone at that point. Don't try this at home now or in your car now kids if you're if you're listening um okay what is the story what's the story behind the name i think you probably have the this sort of like people don't know if your name is jerry or not happening um i wonder where jerry rig everything came from it it makes intuitive sense to me but maybe you have like a story behind coming up with it yeah so most of the time like when someone recognized me on the street, you know, at a

restaurant or at the store or something like that, they'll be like, Hey, you're the, you're Jerry, right? And I'll just, just kind of roll with it. Um, but my name is actually Zach. Um, the Jerry everything came from, um, I was, when I originally started YouTube, my channel name was Green Dew Ocean because I really liked Mountain Dew at the time. But I realized as I had a couple thousand subscribers that YouTube could actually be a viable job. And I would have to come up with a slightly more memorable and reputable name, I guess. And so I was laying in bed when I like 2 AM when most of my good ideas come. And I realized that, um, you know, my channel and kind of like the theme of what I do is, you know, Jerry rigging stuff. And Jerry rig is also the name of my grandpa,

who is kind of like one of the people I really look up to. Um, you know, when he first got married, he lived in the back of a gas station. And then when he died, he, you know, was a very, very successful businessman, had a bunch of houses. It was just a really cool, he's someone I look up to a lot. And so Jerry Rigg is both a combination of the phrase Jerry Rigg, as well as kind of like a way to remember my grandpa, Jerry. as well as kind of like a way to remember my grandpa, Jerry. That is pretty cool. I know now, I think when I first was watching your videos,

I was like, oh yeah, Jerry, I definitely thought that that was your name. So I'm glad that that's much more clear. Was that your current account though? You had that name for your current account that you changed to Jerry everything? So back then, so I think I've been doing YouTube for like nine or 10 years back then you couldn't change your name. You had to just delete your account, start over. And so you'll notice if you go back to my first videos, there's like 40 of them that are kind of all uploaded on the same day or the same week. And that's because

I deleted my old account and uploaded all the videos to a new account with the correct name. Now YouTube is way more, you know, you can change your name whenever you want. Wow. So you had like a moment where you were like, oh, I'm going to be doing this YouTube thing to a degree where I want to be proud of the name of it. I think I should make that conscious decision. When in your life cycle of a YouTuber was that exactly? It was. So like when I first started uploading videos, I kind of just wanted to do it. Um, just kind of like a video journal of all my different projects. You know, I used YouTube, um, for a lot of things and I just kind of want to contribute back to that,

um, that platform. Um, and one of the ways I was using it is I was my Jeep at the time broke down. And so I got on YouTube and I found someone with the exact same problem I had. And one of the ways I was using it is my Jeep at the time broke down. And so I got on YouTube and I found someone with the exact same problem I had. And instead of taking it to a shop to fix it for $1,000, this guy could fix it for $80 by himself. And so I messaged him and I was like, you know, your video is so helpful to me and saved me so much money. Like, why do you do this? And he said, it's because I want to decrease world suck, help people out. And at the same time, you know, YouTube pays me a little bit of money. And so that was kind of like what got me going on the platform. And I kind of, you know, filmed my my automotive projects, motorcycle projects,

and then I realized it was a conscious decision that if I wanted to grow my audience past, you know, the small circle of people interested in automotive repairs, I would have to expand the type of content I made into phone teardowns and then durability tests and then into EVs and then building my own EV and then accessibility and just kind of grow it out from there. Each kind of chapter of my channel is a conscious growth decision, I guess. Yeah. I feel like a lot of the same, a lot of the same stuff I've done where like you have a core topic that you start off with, but you, you have more interests and you're able to sort of loop

them in because they work with the theme and you're good at it. Obviously. Like I, I watched you tear apart a phone sometimes and I just sort of like mesmerized a little bit. I'm like, Oh, that's kind of awesome that you just sort of know right off the top of your head. Also, do you know right off the top of your head? Like you open a phone, you, you know, where all the ribbon cables are supposed to be when you put it back together. You, you've done this many times. Does it ever go wrong? Like how long did it take you to get good at taking apart phones? I would say most phones I take apart, I have one or two screws left over afterwards. So I would not say I'm like the most professional at putting them back together again. Although, um, when does this podcast go up?

Uh, call it a week and a half, week and a half. Okay, cool. So by the time this podcast goes up i will have already um done the fold four teardown oh the flip four teardown and i actually took that completely apart screen off and everything and put it back together so i'm very impressed with the build quality of that i am also i mean that seems like probably one of the harder ones to take apart and put back together i haven't actually taken apart well okay this is the question I was going to ask you. This is something that's been on my mind for a while. When I get a review unit of a phone, there's a very specific set of things that you're

allowed to do with it and not allowed to do with it. And at the top of the list, every time is like, you can't take it apart. You can't durability test it. You can't break it. You can't do any of the stuff that Zach does to the phone. So don't even think about it. So I see all that. I'm like, all right, Zach. So you, you spend the extra time, you probably buy it from the manufacturer. You do what you got to do. But is there a difference in the way you work with some manufacturers? Are there some that are cool with sending you something knowing that you're going to take it apart? Yeah. I mean, I've always been super, super upfront. Like there's been several times where a company has reached out to me and been like, Hey, um, you know, can we send you a review unit?

And I'm like, do you know who I am and what I do to phones? And then they're like, Oh yeah, nevermind. We're all out of review units. And so that's happened several times. Wow. Um, but I mean, there has been companies that have been okay with it. Like, you know, nothing sent me their phone knowing what I was going to do with one plus sent me their phone knowing what I was going to do to it. Um, and you know, that's super, and like, I've been straight up front, like, you know, there's no special favors or anything like that. Um, even though I get the phone and you know, that has kind of come back to buy it one plus a little bit, but no, those are, I was going to say, those are literally the two companies I would have

thought of, of who would be cool with getting you a device, knowing what might happen, but being fine with it. Um, okay. Have you been, have you been surprised by any durability test results? I mean, you squeeze an iPad, it breaks in half. That's kind of nuts. I'm imagining your face off camera is a little bit wide-eyed when that happens. But have you been impressed by something passing or super shocked by a failure? I would say the one that comes to mind, first of all, is just the folding phones. Like, I seriously thought that they would be able to be snapped in half. You know, every single time I grab one, I'm like, yeah, this can definitely break, but then it doesn't. Yeah. And so that's just nuts to me. Yeah. Bending it backwards seems like it should just snap right in half, but they do survive with impressive, with impressive

consistency. That's pretty sick. You've seen the, uh, the Apple watch ultra. I have. Do you expect that to fare any differently or do you, do you even want to test a watch like that i do i mean i've done watches in the past i do want to check their sapphire and i think it'd be fun to test it up against um google's new or was it samsung they just came out with a sapphire watch one of them just came out with one and so in the past apple has been using kind of like a subpar impure sapphire and i want to see if they've continued that and to see if um samsung has the same supplier of sapphire as apple does yeah has there ever been uh deeper grooves at a different level than we typically see i i've watched probably 50 or 60

videos and it's always scratches at a level six deeper grooves regrives at a level seven. Is that every time? Got it. Except for HTC had a Sapphire phone that came out a while back. Duraforce, Kyocera Duraforce Ultra is a Sapphire phone as well. So there are a couple Sapphire phones out there. And then Apple has a Sapphire watch

with the same Sapphire as their camera lenses. And those get all the way to nine? No, Apple Sapphire is a level six still, even though they say it's Sapphire. But if you look at like a Tissot watch, which is actual Sapphire, those are level eight with deep readers of level nine. Or seven and eight. I can't remember. Yeah, that's interesting. I want because there's like a obviously it's built to like sustain drops and all sorts I can't remember. Yeah, that's interesting. I want, because there's like a,

obviously it's built to like sustain drops and all sorts of other weird things. You might hit it up against a rock or something, but it's just, it's always fascinating watching the tests that you get to do. Okay, what is, this is from one YouTuber to another. What is your workflow like? You get a new idea or a device for a video. Walk me through like the steps that you go through to make a Jerry rig everything video.

Oh man. I mean, I've been doing this for so long and you've been doing this for so long. Like your, your flow has probably changed quite a bit over the years. Back when I was in college, when I think I was around, like when I was hitting like one or two million subscribers, my bed was in one corner of the room, my computer setup was in the other corner of the room, and my phone teardown setup was next to my computer. So like I could literally wake up in the morning, do a teardown, edit all day and go

back to sleep all in the same room. Um, and that workflow was, was pretty tight. Um, then obviously I kind of, you know, expanded, um, got my own warehouse. Um, and then I kind of branched out into other projects as well. I would say currently I try to do like two videos a week. And my team, I have a bunch of people with the not a wheelchair side of things, which maybe we can get to later. But my core like jerry-rigged team is just me and one of my buddies from high school who's my editor. And he's been living, he's been doing the job for the last six or seven years. Wow.

And he just, he lives in Texas and does everything remote. Um, but he's been a super time saver for me. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say my, my college setup reminds me a lot of what you just described. It was like a bed on one wall and a desk on the other wall and then a computer under the desk and you just roll out of bed and just shoot and then roll back into bed that was the whole thing um no i didn't i didn't know you you had a team for the channel or at least a second person helping you edit so you send them footage i imagine and they they just send you back the finished thing yeah and he handles all the facebook stuff um personally i i really like Twitter and Instagram those are the two that I you know kind of contribute myself to but my editor handles Facebook say that

platform is not my favorite and so I've realized that the Facebook audience is completely different than the YouTube audience and I can post the same video on both platforms and no one ever cares yeah we have a lot in common i i also don't spend too much time on facebook but have also been convinced of the the lack of overlap and so figured might as well have that post in some way which is interesting uh yeah so i do talk a lot about evs on the Waveform podcast, like just car stuff in general. I don't know. I've gotten into it a lot in the past few years. And I've noticed you also getting into EVs and a lot of the cooler projects or one project in particular seems to be going pretty

well. First, I'll ask you about the Rivian because we both have this electric truck. How do you like it so far? You've gone quite a few more miles than I have, but anything break yet? I think I'm right at 5,000 miles and I've had it for like six months or seven months, give or take. The only thing that's still broken is the tonneau cover. And Rivian reached out and said, you know you know hey we'll totally fix that under warranty i just haven't had time to go in and get that fixed yet um and then i have two rock chips in my windshield that are cracked all the way across um yeah um one thing with the truck though and i've been trying to put this into words um

like when i had my tacoma i felt like attached to it like i put the lift on i put the winch on and like when i would park it in a parking lot and walk away and turn back and be like yeah that's my truck and like i felt like attached to it yeah with the rivian i was like super super super looking forward to getting it but now that i have it and it's been like six months that attachment isn't the same as it used to be and i'm trying to figure out why and i think it might be because of the way that it looks because like it has more power and more ability than almost any other truck on the road yeah but it looks like docile like it's almost like it's almost like a serial killer you know like you see a serial killer and they're

like yeah you would never know they're a serial killer but underneath they're just like this this evil thing and like the rivian you would never expect it to be the most like bad a hardcore truck on the road but it is and i think it's just the looks are throwing me off after having owned it for six months okay i have a suggestion that i kind of think might work and this is kind of the way i felt about tesla at the beginning you just you just described like working with your truck before you do some customization to it you kind of you get your hands dirty a little bit, maybe do something to make it feel different from all the other Rivians. So you could, you know, get that, that wrap going, get a PPF, get maybe some just, it could even be small things, just

the door handles or like the, the, the lights or something just to make it a little bit your own. Cause that's when I first started looking back at it in the parking lot like oh yeah that's nice i did that you know yeah your rap is sick i like your rap oh thank you would you would you trade the rivian for i was going to ask like did you consider any other evs but i imagine the the rivian was pretty high on the list it wasn't really there wasn't really any competition when it came out as far as trucks you could buy but if like a tacoma ev or another nice one came out today would you would you consider cross shopping any other stuff for sure um i would say like it would have to be semi-comparable and i do like the smaller trucks you know like the

cyber truck is massive and the ford f-150 is still pretty big um so the only other one i would like legitimately consider is probably like a tacoma or like another mid-sized truck that came out with an ev yeah i mean yeah i'm not emotionally i'm there's no attachment to rivian that's going to be like this is my truck for life fair fair yeah i mean i when i decided to place the order of the Rivian, it was right after we'd used an F-150 Lightning for a video shoot. And it was like, dang, this worked extremely well. Let's just get a smaller version of that. And so that's basically what it is. It's like the only option I could buy that actually fit those requirements.

But you also... Did I hear you right in one of your videos? You were like, you have a camera rig on top of a car and you just leave it there permanently. So you have a MKBHD production car with a crane on the top permanently? Yeah. Okay. Here's the thing. So we did that build and that was a motor crane build and that's a super awesome rig.

Yes. Built on top of a car uh the problem with that rig not that it's a big problem but it's like you can't just go out into the streets and just start shooting with it wherever like you can't drive through a neighborhood or drive down the highway without not only people staring at it but like probably getting pulled over and asked for your permit and things like that. So we really have reserved that for like track use, closed roads, things like that. And we can get the craziest shots we want when we do those occasional videos. But we had the F-150 Lightning for a week and Ford actually gave us two. And I was like, you know, they gave us two different

trims. I didn't really have much to do with two at the same time, but the idea we had was to shoot some, some rolling shots with this rig on the tow hitch of the F-150 with the other F-150, because it was the only vehicles we have here with the tow hitch. So that is what we did. And we rolled around for, I think we shot basically two full days and nobody even blinked. Nobody even batted an eye. It was just like another truck driving by and it's quiet too. It's even less high profile than a normal truck. And so that was kind of a no brainer where it was like, yeah, if we, if we actually want shots on real roads in neighborhoods around town,

like wherever a normal vehicle drives, you need to be as low profile as possible. And a silent pickup truck with a tiny little camera rig on the back that nobody even blinks at is that. So that was a kind of a breakthrough for our little workflow there. Does it have like a controllable like camera tilt and pan and all that stuff on the hitch? Yeah, yeah. So it's a remote controlled Ronin basically. If you flip a Ronin and put it on a shock mount, you do have the ability to use the

motors in the Ronin to spin it around and point it at stuff. So it's fully articulating remotely. So someone's in the back of the truck controlling everything. And that's... Back seat or back bed of the truck? Whatever they prefer. I think they prefer the backseat with a seatbelt. But it's also it's nice to be able to look backwards so that you're not like reversing all the axes in your head.

Sometimes they like spin around in the backseat. But, yeah, it's it's worked pretty well. I was just going to ask, since you were talking about getting pulled over and permits and stuff like that with the other camera rig, have you ever gotten in trouble flying a drone or filming on public roads with that setup? Not in trouble. The closest we got was we went and did some scouting for a sort of a local park. Not a national park, but a park that we wanted to shoot in that had some nice looking roads, completely empty on a beautiful day in spring, drive up one morning, empty, massive parking lot, acres and acres of land. And on the horizon, you see a little parks mobile or whatever. And you're like, oh, whatever, they're not going to bother us.

And before we even finish setting up the camera to start getting our first shots they've driven all the way over to come investigate what's going on in their parking lot so you know it's it's clearly an it's an eye catcher it's one of those things where you drive it around and you see everyone look at it and you're like oh yeah clearly this would not work on a regular basis yeah that's like hollywood level equipment on that thing so it is It is, it's super capable. It's also terrifyingly capable. Like if you mess up, you know,

that's a big metal arm swinging around on the top of a car. So you gotta be really locked in with that for sure. All right, that's a perfect spot for a quick break, but we'll be right back with Zach. This episode is brought to you by HelloFresh. Be honest. Between meetings, workout classes, and the kids' clubs,

who's got time to cook? That's where HelloFresh comes in. No matter how busy you get, HelloFresh makes it easy to get a home-cooked meal on the table. With flavor-packed recipes like crispy chicken parmigiana, you'll be filling your kitchen with the cozy aromas of a homemade meal in no time. Visit HelloFresh.ca and use code SPOTIFY for your exclusive offer. Tis the season to treat your family to the great taste of Popeyes. The Festive Family Box is here to make your holidays brighter with all your Popeye's

favorites. For just $25, you get four pieces of delicious Popeye's signature chicken, four tasty chicken tenders, four regular sides, and everybody's favorite, four buttermilk biscuits. Hurry up, though. Like the holiday season, Popeye's $25 Festive Family Box deal will be over before you know it. So, so you have the Rivian, but you've also been building an EV. I've never been able to say that to anyone. You've been building an electric Hummer. Why, why a Hummer? Why an electric Hummer?

Why build it yourself? Please explain. So several things. One is I've always thought the Hummers were just super, super cool, but I would never actually, I think they're super, super cool, but also like the other half of me is like, you know, EVs 24 seven. And so like, I wanted to combine like the worst gas mileage, you know, hardcore vehicle and like make it into what i'm all about these days which is like ev and like you know being nice to the environment and all that stuff um so yeah that's why i chose the hummer and i thought it would just be like a super super fun project to teach myself about electricity but also to kind of like show people that, you know, electric vehicles

aren't golf carts anymore. Like they are, they are insanely powerful, capable machines. And kind of the only way to reach the demographic who thinks they're still golf carts is to take something that that demographic likes and turn it into an ev and i think you know that series of videos i think it did a pretty good job of like reaching that demographic or that group of people i agree uh it's an interesting strategy like the we'll talk about the actual hummer ev in a second but like that well actually i'll just go straight to the there is a real hummer ev now like they made a new one and it's it's a 9 000 pound just terrifyingly fast rocket of a of a truck it's weird that it exists but it is funny because now people who only cared about hummers

kind of are forced to be at least a little bit interested in an electric vehicle which is fascinating yeah um but this is also like way more complicated than taking apart a z-flip and putting it back together uh i imagine there were some doubts along the way some roadblocks did you ever not think you'd be able to finish it or would you, were you just going to do as much as possible no matter what? True. Well, once, so I was probably like six or seven videos in before I posted anything, you know, like I would just film the video, edit it, save it, not post it anywhere. Just, I wanted to wait until I knew that I could do it.

That way you don't have like a million people being like, ah, you fail. You suck. You know? Cause like that, even though like creators say that comments don't bother them, you know, but like when you have that many people, you just, I wanted to know that I could do it before I posted anything. Right. So I waited.

So that was never a doubt. And at the same time, like it was not a cheap project. And so I'm in it, not quite six figures, but also not quite any less than six figures. And so it's like, I also couldn't quit because of that part of it. Um, no, you can't throw that much money at something and then just not finish it. Right. sunken cost yeah and all the time would have almost been cheaper it almost would have been cheaper just to buy the real hummer ev instead of making your own well that the thing about the real hummer ev is they've made so few of them that they are like marked up to double msrp or something ridiculous because you just can't get

one anywhere yeah yeah uh i talked to somebody who had a reservation yeah yeah well i talked to someone who had a reservation for one it was like a hundred grand or something and they were like yeah i could i think they flipped it for two something it's like insanely hard to get which is crazy but it's also like wow there's a real human out there who loves the Hummer so much that they would pay a quarter of a million dollars for the electric one. Who are these people? Like, what is the normal person watching the Hummer EV series, you think? Like, what kind of person is the normal person watching it? Yeah, it's probably a very different demographic than the phone teardowns.

Probably. I had, so when we bought my new warehouse, um, in Orem for the not a wheelchair project, um, we needed a forklift, um, to get a giant box out of a semi and my forklift wasn't big enough for it. And so we went to the automotive store right next to us. And as soon as I walked up the guy was like whoa you're jerry rig everything and he was like probably 55 60 years old not one of the tech people you know not a tech you demographic type person right um but he had been watching my umber videos and because he knew who i was he came over with his forklift and helped us unload the semi

but yeah definitely a different group of people watching that series. That's awesome. What is the, what is the typical interaction between you and your viewers in real life look like? Cause I know, I know mine is 95% of them are, they pull a phone out of their pocket and hold it up and they're like, I got this because of your video. And I'm like, Whoa, okay. I hope you like it. Um, well that's definitely not, I assume it's not the same for yours. Are they, are they disassembling things, fixing things? No, I mean most honestly, like when we go to take a selfie, I would say probably like almost, I would say maybe like eight out of ten times i go outside like someone recognized me if i'm especially if i'm not like home depot or

something i got recognized three times at home depot um the last time i went like a few weeks ago which i love like don't get me wrong like if anyone ever meets me in real life come say hi like i love that um but usually when someone pulls out their phone for a selfie it's an iphone so you know that they're not going off of my recommendations for phones. Interesting. I think that it's like watching, I don't know, maybe the entertainment value or something. Like they watch it because they're interested in the tech, not necessarily because of what I tell them to get. Right.

There is definitely a good amount of that. I can see that in the comments. a good amount of that. I can see that in the comments. Sometimes people are like, I wasn't really going to buy any of what you were talking about, but I just kind of like watching the videos, which is cool too. I like that. But, you know, I feel like a part of watching your videos is like almost this advocacy for right to repair. And then it's kind of interesting seeing, you know, the part that activates on that. And then the other part, which is just sort of passively watching like, oh yeah, it kind of would be cool if i could repair this iphone and then just gets another iphone the next year yeah that's fun i really like making the videos um lately my

i mean don't get me wrong i'm like nine i think i have like 950 videos or something that i've made um and i still enjoy the whole process, but I'm really, really enjoying having a whole kind of like warehouse dedicated to accessibility and like making off-road wheelchairs and stuff. And like, I see that becoming a much bigger part of my channel going forward, not stopping where I've been, of course, but it's just adding on to and developing new products of my own. I think it's really, really fun. Yeah. I think a question a lot of creators probably get is like,

oh, you have a YouTube channel, but what are you going to do with this? And maybe there's a product, maybe there's an idea you have. And so yours has been the Not A Wheelchair Project, which I think is super unique and obviously very successful and on brand. What does that operation look like for you? You mentioned you had a team for it. You have a warehouse for it. What is happening with that project?

So I've been doing it for about two years now. We launched our first off-road wheelchair kind of made out of bike parts, and it's got four tires. It's like half the price of other off-road wheelchairs out there um and that's kind of just been our goal is to take something that already exists cut the price in half make our own version and then sell it um and so now we have a warehouse in Orem Utah and probably four full-time guys and then a couple of part-time guys who are, they're running that facility and kind of like,

you know, designing and working on our new projects. We have three different projects going at the same time right now. Um, and it's just super, super fun. Like YouTube's great, but like being able to incorporate a production and like manufacturing into

it. And obviously I'm going to film the whole thing because that's what brings in the revenue to make the accessible equipment super fun yeah it's interesting i don't know enough about the specifically off-road wheelchair market but i'm curious so you you've made essentially a design that you have people helping you put together over and over and then ship and then warehouse and things like that. Yeah, kind of our first, our first, um, off-road wheelchair is manufactured by a company named Utah trikes and they probably have like 40

or 50 employees and they are the ones assembling that, um, specific product, but the ones we're making in the future, that's where my team will start assembling those. Um, the ones we're making in the future that's where my team will start assembling those right now we're just getting the all the equipment set up and the manufacturing kind of nailed down which is I mean I've been doing every single day of it so far so yeah that's fascinating I'm like putting my shark tank hat on now like okay is there are you there are other wheelchair there are other off-road wheelchair competitors i imagine and you're you're undercutting them all in price but you have a design obviously that you've worked with is that fair to say yeah i mean

if you think about like a powered wheelchair even like you've seen you've seen those big track chairs right like you've seen videos of those on youtube where there's a seat and there's two giant tank tracks on the side right like those things start at like fifteen thousand dollars oh and so which is way outside of the realm of most people in wheelchairs like 15 grand like you're looking at a car you're looking at like a truck for that price and so most people just you know they don't buy an off-road wheelchair because the price is just too extreme for them. And so our machines with its four tires and off-road capabilities is only $5,000, which is still expensive, but way more reasonable than anything else that's out there. Right. So that's, there's, when your Shark Tank hat is on, there's not a lot of profit in there because my goal, I don't want to take money from people in wheelchairs.

I have other ways of making money. And they're not a wheelchair business. It's just about accessibility and getting people out and exploring and stuff. That makes a lot of sense. I do remember Shark Tank pitch, which was pretty memorable, which was, this is so off topic, but it was like a farmer who had a really good product and he was like i think one of the sharks was like why don't you charge 10 times the price for this and he was like well i'm selling to farmers so that's not really gonna work i'm just kind of doing this because it's the best product and they want to use it and i feel like it's kind of similar like

you you obviously can speak to that market and you've used it and you know what's good for people who use off-road wheelchairs so that's a bunch of advantages that a lot of people probably don't have. So you can make something really great for them. Yeah. And I'm all for, you know, capitalism and making money and stuff like that, but I have plenty of other avenues of doing that. The wheelchair market doesn't need to be one of those avenues. Right.

I am curious, though, how many people are on the MKBHD team? How many people do you have? Because you just got a new warehouse as well, right? Like a new facility? About two years ago, we moved into this new space, yeah. So it is entirely built around the channels and the videos and the production. So as of right now, it's 12. It is 12 total people for all,

it's multiple channels now though. Like if you'd asked me a few years ago, what are you gonna have 12 people doing? That wouldn't make any sense to me, but we have the main channel, we have this podcast that we're doing, we have the autofocus channel, we have all this stuff going on

and all products behind the scenes as well. So it is currently 12 which sounds crazy to say out loud one thing i love about the autofocus channel is if i remember correctly you're using the phones you're reviewing to film that right yes that's that's what we've been doing and i've been it's been really positive feedback so far the hardest part is actually audio i don't know how much you shoot with your phone for your videos. I feel like I've seen some iPhone shots in your videos. But the wind...

iPhone shots or Android shots? Oh, that's actually fair. I'll ask then. What phones have you used to sneak shots into videos? Well, the reason I bring it up at all is because I love that you're using just a phone. Because people always say, oh, I need a bunch of equipment to start a youtube channel but like no just use your phone they're so good yeah um but the phone that i currently use obviously and i'm on this uh podcast with right now is just the note 10 plus and so i've been using that for like three years yeah yeah

the the hardest part has been audio and the wind. When you shoot car stuff, you're always outside, and the wind coming across that mic really messes with audio and dialogue. So I'm messing with some solutions, some external mics you can plug in, things like that that may work really well. But yeah, fully agree. I've been telling people for years who ask. I get people in like middle school asking like i want to make a computer and a video setup so i can start my youtube channel i'm like no no

no no no that's not how you start a youtube channel just because you see people doing it now uh yeah shoot with your phone there's there's endless stuff you can shoot with just the camera in your pocket it's really good all right're going to take one more quick break, but we'll be right back with Zach from JerryRigEverything. With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead. Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights. To all the planners, now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. See Uber app for details. Support for the show today comes from NetSuite. Anxious about where the economy is headed? You're

not alone. If you ask nine experts, you're likely to get 10 different answers. So unless you're a fortune teller and it's perfectly okay that you're not, nobody can say for certain. So that makes it tricky to future-proof your business in times like these. That's why over 38,000 businesses are already setting their future plans with NetSuite by Oracle. This top-rated cloud ERP brings accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, and more onto one unified platform, letting you streamline operations and cut down on costs. With NetSuite's real-time insights and forecasting tools, you're not just managing your business,

you're anticipating its next move. You can close the books in days, not weeks, and keep your focus forward on what's coming next. Plus, NetSuite has compiled insights about how AI and machine learning may affect your business and how to best seize this new opportunity. So you can download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash waveform.

The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform. netsuite.com slash waveform. What is the future of this operation, this Jerry Big Everything operation? You have the videos that you're making on YouTube. You have the wheelchair, and then you kind of have them feeding into each other. Is there more growth plan for one or the other or both? Um, I used to be really scared of hiring people. Like I was always like, you know, I'm going to do everything myself. Like, you know, it's Jerry rig everything. Life is a do it yourself project. Like I need to handle every aspect of the whole business all by myself. But then I realized that like, I can accomplish so much more when I have a

team. And so I made that realization probably like three years ago. So I've been expanding slowly, expanding my team so that they can like help take aspects of J-Rig everything, giving me more time to like make content and stuff. And so I think that is going to be one of the things is expanding the team i think i'm still going to be um the main like obviously the script and the hands and the voice all that

still has to be jared everything but i can delegate other portions of the the video making to people i want to do another ev project after I finish the Hummer. I think the Hummer has like another four or five videos in it before it's like done. And then I have some other big projects for JerryRigEverything. And then, yes, put my time 50-50 with the Not A Wheelchair project and JerryRigEverything. You mentioned hiring.

How do you decide what to hire and how to hire and what to hire for because you know you know you just said it yourself you know your voice your hands the script that's you but there's other parts of the video making process maybe there's behind the scenes maybe there's strategy maybe there's the books what what do you decide to hire next? I think it's people just making sure people have the right skill set. When I started researching for the Hummer Project, I realized that if I wanted to learn everything there is to know about constructing an EV, I would be spending full time just researching on the internet. But if I found someone who could be there physically helping out with the

project to answer questions immediately it would cut the research time down exponentially and so there i had two guys helping me with the ev project and so just finding people with the right skill set um that are reliable that's my hiring process that That's fair. And it's usually pretty simple on the surface. And then you have to like really dig into the details of like, all right, how do we find this person? How do we make sure this person actually has the skill sets they need? How do we train them, integrate them into the team, all that sort of stuff. But I feel like if you have the skeleton of what you require, then it's pretty easy to fill in and make it work. But yeah, it's like you got to, I wonder if you have any other like itching side project passions that you haven't been able to tackle yet.

Because you do have a pretty wide variety of interests. You've got a lot going on, but is there anything you haven't done that you wish you were doing? a lot going on, but is there anything you haven't, haven't done that you wish you were doing? The one thing that caught me by surprise is when I went and toured that glass recycling facility, like that video got 10 million views. And so I didn't think that like touring a recycling facility would be that entertaining, I guess, for people. Um, but that's something I want to hit way harder. But having said that I've reached out to probably five or six different similar recycling places. And it is a lot of them don't want to show off what they're doing, which is very interesting. Um, even knowing like a lot of the times like i'll reach out and say hey this youtube

channel we get x amount of views per video and people are like oh yeah let's do it um but for some reason it's been hard to find people who want to show off their recycling facilities but i think that's something i definitely want to branch into yeah that's kind of a is that a red flag that they don't want to show what they're doing even though they're supposed to be doing one specific thing huh that's fascinating like in here in utah we have someone who says they specifically recycle styrofoam which i think would be fascinating no response no phone calls emails nothing yeah nothing. Yeah. Super weird. You know, I have this series that I've done sort of occasionally where I tour other YouTubers' workspaces. They're sort of studios, if you want to call it that.

If I were to do one in the J-Rig Everything studio right now, what would that look like? I've seen some wide shots. You've got the overhead camera and the lights and everything and the monitor set up, but what does the that look like? I've seen some like wide shots. You've got the overhead camera and the lights and everything in the monitor set up. But what does the setup look like? So imagine my house is on this property and we have like a mother-in-law building behind. And so that building's like my bed isn't in this room right now, but my computers are.

The buildings, I work from home, but in that separate building. So I have one now but my computers are um the buildings i work from home but in that separate building so i have one room for my computers and editing um one room where all my jerry rig knives are since we fulfill those out of this um building um also like my hummer shirts my jerry everything shirts and then i have a side room where I do like the top down video stuff. And then on my garage is next to that with the Hummer. Wow. So that's my studio. It's pretty compact.

I mean, I obviously have a separate space, but you're, you know, you stroll across the yard, you get the work done, and then you walk back across and you're back for dinner. Easy. Yeah. That's nice. Super great. Very short commute. Yeah. Man. dinner easy yeah that's nice super great very short for me yeah man i i also have one more

question which might be i don't know how the logistics of how we'll pull this off but i'm going to ask you anyway which is how fast can you type the alphabet whoa yeah yeah it's a it's kind of off the cuff but the the fun way of finding out is i have a link for you of a alphabet typing test and this is actually something okay something we ask everyone who comes on the podcast to do now you're on your phone i'll say if you're next to a computer this is definitely going to be easier on a computer because you have your keyboard uh we would yeah so if you want to if i do this like right now oh yeah right now we're live baby we're gonna do a where are we doing a three round a three round test because this is a this is something where you probably need more than one chance to get your best score.

All I ask of you is a screen recording, and you give your best three shots. All right, so type here, ProTip, press Enter to restart. So just E-F-G all the way to? Yep, you get all the way to Z, and then don't hit Enter at the end. It'll just show you your score as soon as you hit Z, whatever your time was. Okay, let's see. Alt F9. Okay.

8.9. Okay, 8.9. It's not bad. Should I go faster what do i know who the leader is right now well so typically the first chance is who's the fastest um should i tell you i'll let you i'll let you get two more shots in so the typically the first shot the first shot's never the fastest one so i bet you go under 8.9 all right so if i reset 6.6 oh see that's way way faster you just moved way up the leaderboard okay okay one more time yeah okay okay okay one more time yeah okay oh no screw that 9.8 okay all right so six point was it exactly 6.6 even uh 6.6 something i'd have to look at the recording again okay we've got a couple 6.6s? 6.6 something. I'd have to look at the recording again.

Okay. We've got a couple 6.6s on our leaderboard. I'll tell you, you're probably right around Mark Rober and Colin and Samir. Both got 6.6s. Good company. Good company. That's pretty good. Zach, this has been fun.

Hopefully this is fun for you too. I imagine we'll have many more chances to speak and probably we'll end up at an event or two at some point. It'll happen. Thanks for taking the time to chat. We have to have a real life collaboration. I reached out to you right before the pandemic and we were going to do

the collab I reached out to you about but then we got slammed with the worldwide virus so we'll have to get back together and do that one again. 100%. I'm down. Sick. All right. Thanks again for chatting, man. Appreciate it. Well, like I said, that was a fun one. Shout out again to Zach for the time

and for answering all of my incredibly interested questions and all the stuff that he does. Yeah, it was really good. I love that he has like all these different places like his little space for shipping and also filming and then he has like his garage in his warehouse for the humvee stuff and then he also has all the wheelchair things i i we haven't done a studio tour video in a long time i would love to go out and see all his different places i do yeah i i want to bring it back it was really fun also like selfishly, it helps me see things that I can adapt for our own studio.

And I feel like no matter what type of videos somebody makes, anytime you visit someone's space, you go, oh, I should do that. So yeah, I'm super down. Maybe Zach's down to do that too. We can do a video there. Either way, that's been it for this week. Thanks for listening. It's still Tech-tember, which means you know what that means.

It's just a lot more coming up. It's rolling, man. Lots more rolling in. So we'll see you very soon in the next one. Peace. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We are partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network, and our intro-outro music was created by Bane Sill.

First take wonder. One take wonder. Let's go. First take wonder. One take wonder.