HIBT Lab! Osmo Salt: Nick DiGiovanni

Do you know who holds the record for making the world’s largest chicken nugget? How about the world’s largest sushi roll? If you know Nick DiGiovanni, then you know the answer to those questions. Each week, more than 15 million followers across YouTube and TikTok gawk and drool over Nick’s masterful and over-the-top culinary creations. Nick is at the helm of some analog business ventures too, including a DTC salt and seasoning company and his debut cookbook, Knife Drop, which publishes later this year. This week on How I Built This Lab, Nick talks with Guy about overcoming shyness to become an on-camera personality, and his recent decision to forego Harvard Business School to continue on his path as a creator. Nick also opens up about his struggles to set strong work-life boundaries and speculates about his professional future. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 2:16Guy Raz?

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• 3:00Guy Raz?

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• 3:45Guy Raz?

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• 4:27Guy Raz?

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• 5:07Guy Raz?

  Visit mobilefuels.com for details. Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So I cook dinner for my family every night. It's my me time. Anyway, a few months ago, I noticed that my kids were hanging out in the kitchen with me a lot more while I was cooking, and they were asking questions, even wanting to help out. And it turns out that my kids, like apparently hundreds of thousands of other kids, were watching videos from a YouTuber named Nick Di Giovanni. His videos have been viewed over 3 billion times since he started posting them on TikTok and YouTube in 2019. Some of his videos are how-tos, how to make ramen, how to make beef Wellington, how to

• 5:52Guy Raz?

  grill a wagyu steak. He's even made the world's biggest chicken nugget. And Nick comes to his craft from a place of real expertise. Years before he became a YouTuber, he took courses at the Culinary Institute of America, he worked in Michelin-starred restaurants, he did his college thesis about food and climate change, and he even competed on the TV show MasterChef. Today, Nick's got about 15 million followers across his social media channels, and he's also started a food company called Osmo that sells salts and seasonings. And when it comes to his passion for cooking, it started when he was just eight or nine years old, making pancakes.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  I think every kid at some point helps their parents make pancakes. But for some reason, and I couldn't really tell you why, I started to play with the pancakes. So I'd put lemon zest in there, and I'd put orange zest, and, you know, orange and chocolate chips. And so I remember experimenting a lot with simple stuff at first, like pancakes. And then I was doing this in part, I'm sure, because I was watching my grandmother and my great-grandmother and all of them cook. So, you know, I was very impressionable, I guess, when it came to food and cooking, and I just soaked it all in and wanted to do it myself.

• 7:06Guy Raz?

  But from what I gather, you were actually an athlete, which takes a lot of time and commitment, right?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, but I will also say, growing up with three younger brothers, you have to play every sport. So I think the only sport that I didn't get into is football, but I played lacrosse, I played hockey, ice hockey. I, I mean, I literally, I can do any sport in the ocean.

• 7:29Guy Raz?

  But you still were into cooking. Like, you went to a cooking camp, I think, your freshman year of high school, right? Like, a summer camp at the Culinary Institute of America?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was the only sort of younger kid there, and the rest of the people were, I don't know, I want to say in their 50s.

• 7:45Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I wanted to go there and learn more formal training, because the routes that you can take when it comes to the food world are, you know, you can either go to culinary school.

• 7:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  And take out a huge loan and do that, or you can go to restaurants and get paid right away and hope that it kind of pays off even more from the learning experience in restaurants. So I did that in part as a test, you know, do I want to go to culinary school, or do I want to jump straight into restaurants and learn that way?

• 8:10Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Clearly, you were taking this seriously already in high school. What was it about cooking or like the idea of cooking that appealed to you? Cause you're an athlete, a student athlete. A lot of times, you know, there's like a path, right? Like kids who are really good at sports or really into sports, like that's what they do. Focus on that. And you were on that path as an athlete, but what was it about cooking that kept drawing you back?

• 8:33Speaker 01

  I think my parents were great in the sense that, you know, they especially encouraged us to be well-rounded. Try to be a student athlete or whether it was a, you know, an instrument or whatever. But like you sort of hinted at, cooking was always there, no matter what was happening around me.

• 8:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  And in trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I think especially when, when that crossroads came in college, when you have to start deciding, what do you want to be when you grow up? The question becomes real. And then that's when I looked to food and just said, food's the thing that I love the most.

• 9:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  And I want to do something in the food world.

• 9:05Guy Raz?

  All right. So you take this summer program at the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. And in that time at that camp, I mean, obviously you can't learn, you know, what it takes to become a professional chef, but you can learn some knife skills or you can learn how to make a hollandaise or, you know, brown butter sauce or presumably basic techniques like that.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it was a lot of the more sort of basic stuff there. But as I like to say in food, I mean, you have to learn the foundations and the techniques before you can break the rules, which is what I think leads to good food.

• 9:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah. All right. I think already in high school, you got a job in the kitchen at an Italian restaurant in Providence. What were you doing? Like, were you, were you doing prep work in the kitchen?

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's called, you know, when you stage.

• 9:52Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  That's sort of the culinary world equivalent of an internship. And so, you know, I, I went in and I would spend the whole day, you know, every day throughout this whole summer I spent there. Doing prep work. I was sort of taken under this one cook's wing and he helped me. You know, they let me do more and more as time went on. It was fun. It was fast paced and I learned how the ins and outs of a restaurant worked. It was amazing.

• 10:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Nick, you obviously did not go to culinary school because you had a different offer, which was to go to Harvard. And I know you created a major for yourself called Food and Climate. So while you were in college, before your senior year, did you have a sense of what you were going to do? Like, did you think, oh, maybe I'll, I'll become a restaurateur, or, you know, or maybe I'll, like, become a food consultant? Or maybe, like, did you start to think about what you might do?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Totally. So my master plan was to go to college, get a degree there, and then finish school and go get an MBA to know the business side, and then also work in more restaurants, and perhaps go to culinary school after. And so my thought there was, I'd worked in restaurants, and I mean, anytime I'd been in a restaurant, I noticed this one interesting thing, which was that oftentimes, there was a kind of a sharp divide between the people actually running the restaurant day to day, and then the people on the business side of it, who just were investors, and they had no idea. You could probably ask any of them to go in and fry an egg, and I'm sure some of them wouldn't know. And to me, that seemed crazy. So my thought was, I will learn the side of business, and then learn how to be a good cook, and then be able to come in

• 11:32Speaker 01

  from this totally different angle on it, and, and know the inner and outer workings of a restaurant. But obviously, that didn't happen.

• 11:40Guy Raz?

  That didn't happen because you, I guess your senior year, you had an opportunity to compete on MasterChef, which you did, and you took a semester off. Tell me how that came about.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I just remember senior year was the time that I really started digging deep with food. I was working in this seafood restaurant. I was working multiple nights a week. I'd show up at 2 o'clock, get all my prep work done. I remember chopping lots and lots of chives. That was always one of the big, they loved using chives at this place. And then, I was a teaching fellow in this big food course at Harvard that a lot of kids took. I did everything I could with food senior year. And then MasterChef, I just saw a flyer. I saw a little flyer, and I was already doing everything else with food. So I figured, let's go to the audition. It doesn't hurt to try.

• 12:28Guy Raz?

  And what did you prepare for the audition?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  I wanted to show something, you know, that highlighted my background. So I'm Persian and I'm Italian, among other things. And so I took those two things and I made lamb and mint raviolo. And I thought it was a nice representation of the family that I learned from and, and just me as a person.

• 12:47Guy Raz?

  All right. So you're there. And, you know, obviously now with your YouTube videos, you are charismatic and funny and, but that takes time to learn how to be that persona on camera. And I'm imagining, you know, you were a college student and probably maybe a little nervous. And maybe there were people there who were more charismatic than you. Obviously you knew how to cook. But were you nervous in that audition?

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sure I was. I'm very shy. And this was very far outside my comfort zone.

• 13:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you get there and how'd it go? I mean, what, what do you, I mean, obviously they picked you, but was it based on your food? Was it based on an interview, on questions they asked you?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Well, funnily enough, I went to the audition expecting to be gone from school for maybe an hour. And then I'd get back for my midday afternoon class.

• 13:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  And I never made it back for the class. I, I was there till it got dark. Cause I kept moving on to another room and then another smaller room. And then, you know, with, with fewer and fewer people, until you met the executives there, who sort of hinted at the fact that you would be going further with the process. And it was the same mindset there that I had for the actual show where I thought, you know, okay, I got onto the show, I'll probably last a couple of episodes and then come home. And then I ended up being gone for three and a half months. So same sort of deal there.

• 14:04Guy Raz?

  Three and a half months. That's, that's, that's how long the commitment was to be on MasterChef?

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a long time. No technology, no contacting your family or friends other than every Sunday, get a couple of phone calls. And you hear it at first and you think that's terrible, but it's actually amazing. You sleep better than you've ever slept before. You, I mean, you wake up at four or five AM with the sun and you feel fresh and new every morning. It's amazing. It was amazing, actually.

• 14:30Guy Raz?

  How did you overcome that shine, that sense of shyness? You know, cause you would have, you had to answer questions and. Was it hard for you at the beginning?

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think MasterChef was a time in my life that helped me become a little bit more confident and perhaps a little bit less shy, even though I'm still extremely shy.

• 14:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  But the other thing that I think I had to my advantage that I was very lucky to have was that I had a fallback plan of going back to college, which I, again, I was lucky to have, but I could take all the risk I really wanted to. So when I walked in the room with everybody, I think I had, you know, perhaps less nerves than anyone else did because I, I was just gonna go back to school and finish up school.

• 15:11Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Uh, and some people are taking a much bigger risk being there. I mean, people lose their jobs for going to these shows.

• 15:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So, all right, so you, you're there, you do this, it's fun. And spoiler alert, I think people probably know this, who know you, you end up third place, which is pretty awesome.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Young man, you plate food with such maverick-ness. Tonight's the dish looked incredible, but young man, let me tell you, your dream does not end tonight.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  I love you, man. You're the man, Nick.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  I don't think I knew what I was getting myself into when I went to that audition.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  But I can't thank everyone enough. It's been amazing.

• 15:59Guy Raz?

  And you go back to college and you finish your degree at Harvard. And obviously I'm sure on campus, people are like, dude, I saw you on MasterChef and, you know, but you're back in school. And at that point, when you're now wrapping up your time at college, were you starting to think, you know, maybe I should just get on YouTube and make videos? Or were you still thinking, no, I'm gonna go to business school and follow this path of learning the business of restaurants?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  So my senior year of college, I applied to a couple business school programs where I could defer, so take a couple of years to work and then go.

• 16:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  And I applied to just a small handful and I actually got rejected from all of them, except for Harvard Business School.

• 16:37Guy Raz?

  Wow, you got rejected from all of them except Harvard Business School, okay?

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did, I did. And, and, you know, that was the one side of my plan is maybe two years from now, I'll go to Harvard Business School. And then on the other side of it, I was preparing to accept a job at McDonald's. And it was actually, you know, it was a really cool job that I had gotten lined up with them. So it was a corporate job and if you boil it down, frankly, I was just gonna be an undercover food inspector for McDonald's.

• 17:04Guy Raz?

  Hmm. But that didn't happen, obviously.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 17:08Guy Raz?

  What happened? What derailed that plan?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  I mean, I figured I'd gotten this tiny little spark, this little jumpstart from MasterChef.

• 17:14Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  And despite being such a shy person, all the cameras, all that kind of stuff, didn't seem to bother me. And I'd always loved cooking, and it just seemed like this really unique path that I might be able to take. So I started making some videos on TikTok when COVID hit, which is, you know, about the time I finished school. And then a couple of them took off, and I hadn't looked back.

• 17:39Guy Raz?

  We're going to take a quick break, but we'll have more from Chef Nick Di Giovanni on how he built internet fame after competing on MasterChef. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

• 17:55Guy Raz?

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• 21:35Guy Raz?

  Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz and my guest today is Nick D. Giovanni, chef, internet personality, and founder of Osmos Salt.

• 21:46Guy Raz?

  One of the videos on TikTok is how to make chocolate from a cacao pod, for example.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:51Guy Raz?

  Super cool. Did you have like a massive following on TikTok? Or you're just kind of a, you know, a normal following, but then you'd post something and then it just somehow went viral?

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. TikTok is fascinating in the sense that I always explain it to, let's just say, parents or my grandmother as, you know, they ask, how does it work? And I say, it's really cool. It essentially finds the very best videos. And no matter how many followers you have, you know, you could make an account right now and post a video that's a really funny, silly video and you have zero followers. And it can have 10 million views in 20 minutes. And that's just a fact and a reality of a platform like TikTok. That's totally kind of transformed the way that videos are shared and found, I guess is a good word. And so I didn't have very many followers at the time, but just posting this

• 22:41Speaker 01

  very unique and interesting thing, I guess there was never a video out there that was, you know, widespread about chocolate, but there was a giant audience of people out there that eat chocolate all the time that were curious to see how it's made. So it worked out.

• 22:55Guy Raz?

  I want to ask you, I'm going to put you on the spot here, but you, you did grill an A5 wagyu in butter. And I think that's controversial.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Now, this might sound crazy, but turn your heat to medium and add an entire stick of butter. Adding an entire stick, it, it sounds insane, but what this butter is going to do is really toss a ton of flavor into this steak and it's basically going to allow us to use this like- Yeah, you know, it's hard.

• 23:22Guy Raz?

  That's a, that's a fat bomb right there. That is a self-basting piece of meat.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  I know.

• 23:27Guy Raz?

  And you basted it in a whole stick of butter.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  I know it's a lot of butter, but trust me, it's, it's worth it. And now we're going to keep this down at around medium.

• 23:34Guy Raz?

  That was your first video. That was your first YouTube video, I think. I think it was one of them, right?

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't, I don't doubt it for a second.

• 23:41Guy Raz?

  It was an A5 filet and, and you cooked it with a stick of butter and bason butter. And I think that's controversial.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  You know, Guy, you got me on the spot here. What I'll say, though, if there's any defense for this is this has all been a learning experience for me too. Right? I mean, at the time, I might not have known how to cook a piece of wagyu. I, I don't know, but I have learned so much over the last couple of years, just by cooking every single day. And I would go so far as to say that I spend a lot more time cooking now than even I was back when I was working in those restaurants for full-time jobs. Because I'm here in my kitchen every single day, even on weekends, a lot of the time, just cooking and experimenting. So, uh, I mean, I can't come back from what you just said, but I learned so much.

• 24:28Guy Raz?

  No judgment. I'm sure it was delicious. It just added more, more deliciousness, maybe. But I'm looking at that A5 wagyu and I'm, I'm looking at that hundred dollar steak and I'm thinking, a lot of butter.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  It's the age old question and issue of when you try to make videos that are supposed to go viral online, how far do you take it? And how, how far can you skew from the true techniques before being ridiculous?

• 24:54Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 24:56Guy Raz?

  All right. So you start making videos and presumably the first earliest videos you're making is just you, right? I mean, how are you, or did you have a friend that filmed you or, or what?

• 25:05Speaker 01

  So to this day, because I'm very shy, I film all my TikToks by myself.

• 25:09Guy Raz?

  The TikToks, just you, you're holding it or you set it up on a tripod or something?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  No, yeah. No one's allowed in the room. I got a camera on a tripod.

• 25:16Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  My camera guy, Manny, taught me how to use it all and, and run it. So I, I can use a camera really well now to the extent of, again, I'm, I'm certainly not a camera professional, but I can use a camera. I know how to turn it on. I know the settings. I know how to work it. And I think that's important anyways. But I'm too shy to have people in the room for TikTok.

• 25:36Guy Raz?

  All right. So you start making these videos and. Tell me, I mean, this, obviously, this is a show, How I Built This is a show about business, about building a business. And one of the things we do here on How I Built This Lab is we're talking to creators about how they built a business around being creators. Most of the time, there's an intentionality, like a person's like, yeah, I wanted to become a YouTube creator, and so I had this strategy, or like, I just started making videos and people liked them. And with you, it like, it doesn't sound like you went into the saying, you know, business school, all that stuff, like, I want to be a YouTube creator, I want to be a content creator. But I mean, that essentially is what happened very quickly.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  I like to say to people that you can't really one day wake up and say, you know, I want to be a TV star, I want to be a, you know, but there's a lot of people I know now that just said from day one, I want to be a YouTuber, and they work so hard at it, and they make it work.

• 26:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  But at the same time, honestly, I've just taken this journey, day after day, and week after week, and I've been taken on this wild ride, and I work really, really hard, you know, with every, every opportunity that comes my way, but I never know what's going to happen a week from now, or a month from now. And I kind of like it that way.

• 26:49Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so let's talk about, about the business side for a moment, because you wanted to learn the business side of restaurants, but turns out that you, you've been having a crash course in the business side of content creation.

• 27:01Guy Raz?

  At what point, and maybe you haven't done it yet, did you at a certain point say, all right, let me form a production company and a team around me, or have you not done that yet?

• 27:10Speaker 01

  So I have a nice, you know, really well thought out team around me now. Initially, it was just sort of, and I'm still figuring it out as I go, truthfully.

• 27:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  But initially, it was just, you know, we'll work with whatever people we need to, when, you know, when the time comes, and just deal with things on a case by case basis.

• 27:28Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  And now, it has to be much more sort of planned and figured out. So now I've got, you know, I've got three editors, I've got still the same camera guy, Manny, that I work with.

• 27:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  But also, we're always getting extra contractors now to kind of come help on videos. So it's just sort of, it's changed a lot over time. But, you know, we've got a nice, large team now.

• 27:51Guy Raz?

  How many people are working around you now?

• 27:53Speaker 01

  I would say when you count for like my agent and people like the lawyer and this and the CPA people that we talked to a lot.

• 28:00Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  I would say 12 to 15 people. It's constantly and then there are, you know, there are now video shoots where we have, we've had up to 35, 40 people working with us for some of them.

• 28:11Guy Raz?

  So how many videos do you make a week?

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Well, I film pretty much every day, but I would say on a day of filming, if I'm just doing TikToks, I probably do five. But I made a rule for us that we will never spend, we will never do more than one YouTube video in a day because I don't want the quality to suffer.

• 28:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And some of the videos are straight up cooking videos, like how to's, but some of them are more like, let's break a world record, or let's make the biggest this, or let's like, do something kind of crazy, right? So it's a combination of the two.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it started out with more tutorial cooking type stuff where I might be a little bit goofy in them and, and make a few jokes and try to keep it lighthearted and fun. And through COVID to now, it shifted more to these sort of challenges and honestly, just whatever comes to mind. There is no set formula to the ideas that we pursue.

• 29:10Guy Raz?

  Yeah. How do you, I mean, let's talk about the economics of YouTube for, for a moment. I mean, you know, we, and we've talked about this with other creators that, you know, to just make money off the ads, you know, and the rev share that YouTube provides is, you know, there are some people who can make huge, significant amount of money from that because there are tens or hundreds of millions of views. But can you walk me through the economics of it? I mean, could you run your business sustainably with just the revenue share from YouTube alone?

• 29:41Speaker 01

  I don't think so anymore. Doing what I'm doing now, I think has, has forced me in a good way to put on a lot of different hats and kind of learn, you know, to be in the managerial role and then in the actual creator role.

• 29:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  And I try to pay everyone on my team really, really well and really generously.

• 29:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Because also at one point. I had this person that I put a lot of time into and then they ended up getting some job that was paying way more somewhere else.

• 30:07Guy Raz?

  And that was the first time that it happened to me and I I didn't really know what to do about it.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  I couldn't pay them what this place was paying them.

• 30:14Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  And I'd spent so much time. And so there's been so many crazy things like that, but I built this to not rely on getting extra advertisements outside of the YouTube ad revenue. But I I do think that I need to take them on once in a while to be able to keep everything moving and sustain everything.

• 30:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Um, okay, so now you've got, I think today you've got about 20 million followers across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:40Guy Raz?

  And so that's a huge audience and then you have this content that you create and there's advertising that comes in. What are other ways that you can bring in revenue?

• 30:49Speaker 01

  So the way I look at it is I have this kind of one bucket of YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. And those those all make their their ad revenue and also brand partnerships through those. So there's that one area.

• 31:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah, right.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  And then I have Osmo, the the salt seasoning company.

• 31:05Guy Raz?

  This is a company that you founded, co-founded. It's a sells salts and seasonings and it's on it's direct to consumer company, right?

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's direct to consumer and I mean, it's doing quite well and and we have wholesale. You know, we're selling wholesale now. It's it's getting crazy, crazy eyeballs just online because there are so many different creators that love it and use it. So that's another area, which again, we're trying to let it run itself. Um, I haven't ever taken a dime from it.

• 31:33Guy Raz?

  And have you raised money for it or did you self fund it?

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, we raised, we raised some money pretty early on to just, you know, go crazy on the advertisements and that kind of thing. And so that's, I mean, again, that's another area where for me, it's amazing because I've learned a ton. It's what I like to do. I get to taste this food, this salt, make these really creative, unique flavors. I mean, I was working on a pizza flavored salt today, just fun stuff like that.

• 31:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  And and then I get to see all the numbers in the business side of it. So we've got Osmo, the salt company. And then on the other side of it as well, I mean, I'm now launching my first ever cookbook. So.

• 32:10Guy Raz?

  And what's the name of the book?

• 32:11Speaker 01

  It's called Knife Drop because I do that little knife throw in some of the videos, so.

• 32:15Guy Raz?

  That makes sense.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'll be great. I'm excited. And so that's a whole new area where it'll be really interesting to see how that all works out and just a totally new area of, you know, getting, getting my name out there, getting my food out there, which I'm excited for.

• 32:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 32:32Guy Raz?

  I'm just, just curious from a business standpoint, right? Cause this is, what you're doing, right? Creating a media, your own media business. This is something that a lot of particularly younger people are looking at, like, could this be a model? Could I build my own media company around what I do around content? So at this point, you know, you're still early days. You've got the salt business and brand partnerships and advertising revenue. Um, and so there's lots more that presumably you could do. But in terms of just like overall revenue, can you give us a sense of like how much revenue, roughly all this generates a year?

• 33:09Speaker 01

  I mean, to be honest with you, I'd have to even just kind of look more carefully to get a really great sense of it. But what I will say is that our revenue is higher than I perhaps could have ever imagined going into a space like this. And especially, especially higher than I thought something could be for, for a career where I didn't set out to make money. I just was doing what I, what I enjoy doing.

• 33:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  But at the same time, I don't even think about the money. I just don't because as long as I have enough to do these crazy projects, then I'm happy.

• 33:40Guy Raz?

  Right. Well, we hear about YouTubers who are making like 50 million dollars a year, and I think that's

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:45Guy Raz?

  very rare and unusual, but I, and imagine probably somewhere between one and 10 million dollars of revenue a year, something like that.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm certainly not at 50 million, but yes, I'm in that range and it gives me more than enough money to do whatever I want to do, which is great.

• 34:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 34:05Guy Raz?

  So let's talk about building out the business, right? Um, presumably the biggest expense is the business is Osmo Salt, right? Or is the biggest expense actually making the content, making the YouTube videos?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Osmo funds itself. It's amazing.

• 34:18Guy Raz?

  Got it.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  It's the content. I mean,

• 34:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  We spend a lot of money on some of these videos. I mean, you know, we made the Guinness World Record largest sushi roll.

• 34:26Speaker 04

  Just take a look at how truly massive this sushi roll is.

• 34:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I saw that.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  You could fit a whole fish in this thing.

• 34:31Speaker 05

  Today, you guys have just completed an official Guinness World Records attempt for the largest sushi roll by width.

• 34:37Guy Raz?

  I was very impressed with your salmon butchering skills.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you. Thank you.

• 34:41Guy Raz?

  Amazing.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Sushi-grade salmon, too. All expensive sushi-grade salmon. And that's, again, that's all me and kind of my company buying that stuff. And we donated everything to a food pantry.

• 34:54Guy Raz?

  And people should check this out. Giant roll, huge fillets of sushi-grade salmon just piled into this giant sushi roll.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:03Speaker 05

  Seven feet, one inch. Congratulations. You're officially amazing.

• 35:09Guy Raz?

  How much did all the salmon... Cucumbers aren't expensive, but how much did the salmon, for example, cost in that?

• 35:15Speaker 01

  All in all, all in, I can say this is about a 30 grand video.

• 35:20Guy Raz?

  Wow. The whole video is 30 grand. And that includes all the food and all the editing and all the people involved to make it.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Yes. And if you sit down and you look at the numbers, then I won't make my money back on that, nor did I expect to.

• 35:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  But I would also argue to you that I absolutely will in the bigger picture of just, you know, we got so many eyeballs on it. It did some amazing things. And we got a lot of press out of it. And so I look at it as a win. But if you actually look at all the numbers and you go granular, then technically, we're not going to make that money back.

• 35:52Guy Raz?

  All right. In that video, you're with another YouTuber named Linja. And then people who know your videos know who Linja is. And you've collaborated with Linja on several videos, The Biggest Cake Pop, The Biggest Chicken Nugget. You both went to almost 70 fast food restaurants in 24 hours. You broke a world record there. How did you come across Linja? She's, I think, in her late 60s. Um, she's a small petite woman, lovely cancer survivor.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:21Guy Raz?

  How did you guys connect?

• 36:23Speaker 01

  She's amazing. So I DM'd her on Instagram and it's funny. I thought I was DMing Linja. I thought I was DMing that, you know, 60 something year old, year old woman.

• 36:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  And it was really her son that I was talking to, who runs all of her, all of her content. She's had cancer four plus times now and she's run eight marathons. She, she puts me to shame, honestly.

• 36:46Guy Raz?

  And she's got kind of a potty mouth, too.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  So she actually doesn't, she won't swear. We just, we just bleep it.

• 36:52Speaker 04

  But before we get started, we have a little bit of measuring and weighing to do. Guinness World Records doesn't [BLEEP] around.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  So she, she won't even swear, but it's hilarious because she's just.

• 37:02Guy Raz?

  Oh, you, you put the fake bleeps in there. I go, so she's not really saying those words?

• 37:05Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. She, she won't.

• 37:06Guy Raz?

  It's so funny.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  She refuses to. And so, and we bleep it anyway. And, and she, she, she's totally good with it.

• 37:13Guy Raz?

  And would you, you connect with them and you were like, hey, I want to do something with her?

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was actually really early on where I sort of figured, let me reach out to a bunch of people and collaborate on videos and just keep things fresh and, and make it fun.

• 37:26Guy Raz?

  And now you guys are breaking world records.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, we just got our seventh the other day, I think. And it's just been, it's been a roller coaster.

• 37:35Guy Raz?

  We're going to take a short break, but when we come back, more from Nick about how he's creating food videos with millions of views and turning that into a successful business. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

• 38:04Guy Raz?

  Welcome back. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab. And my guest today is Nick Di Giovanni, chef, YouTuber and founder of Osmo Salt.

• 38:14Guy Raz?

  So I mean, how do you kind of manage your time? Cause you're still young and you're learning how to do this as the face of this thing. And also, I guess, the CEO of the company?

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's something that I have a difficult time doing still. There's plenty of areas with all of this where I just realize that I need help. And I also need to figure out how to do it better. So I would say time management is still something that I need to work on because I, I work pretty much from, let's say, nine AM to nine or 10 PM every single night consistently. And then I don't take the weekends off ever anymore, which is just, and I'm not saying that to brag. I'm actually saying it is a bad thing and something that I want to work on and change.

• 38:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  You know, you might look at that from the outside and sort of say, that doesn't even sound possible. But if it's something that you really enjoy doing and you love it, it doesn't feel as painful as it might sound. But it's, it's a problem. It's definitely not sustainable. And it's what I've been doing for well over a year now into all this, and it's not good.

• 39:14Guy Raz?

  So how do you unwind? If you're working from nine to nine, how are you able to stay mentally healthy and physically healthy?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Well, so the reason I say I'm work from about nine to nine is because I'm super serious about my sleep. So I will get eight hours every night. I can't run on no sleep and I learned that a long time ago. So that is one giant chunk where right away, that's it. And I mean, outside of that, I don't know. I mean, to be honest, I don't really unwind that, that often anymore. Cause it's just hard to get my brain thinking about anything, you know, other than YouTube and, and you know, what's the next big idea? It's really, really hard. Once you get stuck in that ecosystem to think outside of that.

• 39:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because you, I get that you're super grateful for this, this audience you have and the fans. My kids told me about you. That's I found out about you. I'm not a big YouTuber just because I'm, I'm kind of aged out of it a little bit, but a lot of kids, like nine, 10, 11 year old kids are watching your videos.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:15Guy Raz?

  And it must be incredibly gratifying, but at the same time, like, I hear you. It's a lot. It's a lot to, and probably more and more you get recognized on the streets and you've got to be on all the time. And, you know, you've got to 24/7 be this, the best version of yourself.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's tough. It's tough. There's a lot of, there's a lot of things to get adjusted to. And I also want to set a good example and be a good role model for all those kids.

• 40:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Cause it is true that our audience, it has a nice sort of range between, you know, young kids and then, and then eighteen to twenty-four and twenty-five to thirty-six, that kind of whole area. I've traveled around the world and had kids come up um from all over the place and, and, and ask for a picture because they enjoy the, the videos and I'm

• 40:59Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  still to this day, almost sort of unsure of why or how so many kids think that food and cooking is interesting. But I love it. And yeah, it's stressful. Like you said, it's stressful and there's a lot of things to get used to. And for somebody so shy, it makes it even more difficult.

• 41:15Guy Raz?

  This interesting point here that you raised, you know, we, Hank and John Green are, are guests on How I Built This.

• 41:21Guy Raz?

  They talk a lot about burnout, especially that they've seen among younger YouTubers and I mean, you are making so much content and you are incentivized to make more to grow your audience. So then you can expand your reach and maybe build new products and extensions. And I'm sure there are a lot of people coming through the door who want to work with you. You know, brand consultants and business consultants and all kinds of people who have ideas for what you could do and you know, probably some of those meetings are certainly worth taking, but it's like a ping pong match. You're just like looking all around, like what do I do? Which direction do I go in? Meantime, you're making all this content working all the time. And burnout is a real thing, right? It's a real thing that certainly could happen.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. There's days now where I come in, and this didn't used to happen, where I just don't feel like filming a bunch of TikToks, just getting the kitchen disaster and, and getting all like oily and, and

• 42:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  I just don't feel like it some days anymore.

• 42:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  And what I try to do now is just say, you know what? That's fine. Just turn around, take your computer and go do computer work or go do something else. Go think of ideas instead.

• 42:32Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  But it's hard. You're being pulled in a lot of directions.

• 42:36Guy Raz?

  I guess my question for you is, you know, there are different things you could do, right? You know that, like Mr. Beast just opened a burger joint and, you know, I don't know him, but I would venture to say you're a better cook than he is. You could maybe open a restaurant, right? There are lots of things you could do or, or a takeout place, whatever. Like you can just decide, you know what? I don't want to do this TikTok stuff and YouTube stuff anymore. I'm going to go to business school and pursue the path and actually be a restaurant group owner or whatever. Like, do you think that there's a world where you might decide to do that? You might say, you know what? This was fun. I'm done. Or do you think that now this, what you do now as a content creator is what you should continue to do because you have an audience that wants more content from you?

• 43:22Speaker 01

  You know, one large area of my audience is kids. And for me, the mere fact that I could inspire even a single kid or just to want to cook, especially in a time where it's easier than ever to just go get, you know, food delivery or, or go to a quick, fast casual place like Chipotle and get a quick lunch.

• 43:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  For me, that's one of the biggest drivers that just keeps me going on it and makes me think that, no, I don't think a time will ever come where I want to, where I want to stop. I do think I need to sort of shift the direction of everything anyways and just sort of keep, you know, keep it sustainable, however that might look. But no, I, I know that I want to do this. In fact, I just recently, literally a couple of days ago, finally told Harvard Business School that I'm not going to go. And that was a door that I never thought I would close.

• 44:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  It was weird sending that email, to be honest with you.

• 44:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I'm sure.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  It just, it was my dream forever to go there. I mean, that's a dream come true. You know, I sent off that email and I said, all right, I'm in it now. I mean, there's no, there's no fallback anymore.

• 44:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah. But it sounds to me like what you're trying to figure out now is, as you say, how to make it sustainable, right? Because you cannot make all that content yourself and.

• 44:33Guy Raz?

  Um, you know, and not burn out for the next 10 years. And at some point, you're going to want to figure out how to maybe have other people make videos under your, you know, your umbrella, or, you know, maybe you just make one video a week and there are other people who are making different kinds of content around you, stuff like that.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know what it's going to look like, to tell you the truth. It's funny, in a way, all it would really take is me just taking a couple of days to slow down and think bigger picture for a second.

• 45:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  And to an extent, it almost feels like right now, that's even that is not even possible because I have this to do and I have this to do. And I've never gotten the time to actually go and do that. But it's been this thing that I just keep pushing away because I have this brand deal to get done, or I have this video to make and I have this new idea. And so at some point, I know the time's going to come where it just hits me and I have to slow down and stop and say, okay, enough is enough. You know, where are we taking all of this? So I, I need to slow down. It's just a matter of when.

• 45:31Guy Raz?

  Do you actually, uh, like when you're done at nine at night, are you actually going home and eating takeout?

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, every single night.

• 45:42Guy Raz?

  Do you get to cook for people at like ever for fun, like friends? Or are you just so busy that there's any time for that?

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I used to, but at this point, I'd so much rather go and meet friends out at a restaurant or.

• 45:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  It's sort of, it's sort of sad in a way, if you think about it, because it used to be this thing that I, and I'm not saying all that I've done has made cooking not fun, because that's definitely not the case.

• 46:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  It's more leisurely cooking is just not a thing in my life anymore.

• 46:07Guy Raz?

  No.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Because why, why would I, you know, it just doesn't make any sense for me to do. I just need to take a break from it sometimes.

• 46:14Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Do you think that you'll ever, uh, one day pursue the idea of opening or owning restaurants?

• 46:21Speaker 01

  We certainly had conversations about it already. I just, I don't know enough about it still, but what I do know is that you need to find the right people for it. And I also think that you need to dedicate a lot of time. And just working on this cookbook took way more time than I ever could have imagined because anytime I take on a project, I want to be a part of it and I want to make sure that I do it right. If I'm going to put my weight behind something, I want to make sure that it's done right.

• 46:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I mean, it is amazing how. You know, 20 years ago, a lot of the kids who you graduated college with would have gone into finance. Probably still a lot of them do. And there's a well-worn, you know, path down that road. But you ask most kids, say, what they want to be, and most of them say, or significant chunks say they want to be YouTubers. Kids, you know that, kids now say they want to be YouTubers. There are millions and millions of YouTube channels and YouTubers in the world. And just a small, tiny number of them can build a sustainable business. And you are, you know, you have a massive following. And even you struggle to kind of stay on top of it because it's hard. It's a lot of, lot of moving parts.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. I have this feeling now, everyone's looking to me and sort of saying that I've got a lot of, a lot of it figured out, right? Or all of it figured out.

• 47:38Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  And I think when you look closely at a lot of different people and businesses, and that's probably not the case. And for me, I mean, I'm totally transparent in the sense that I still need a lot of help. I mean, I think I am not alone in saying that a lot of YouTubers probably work way too much. Cause it's just a space where it's so uber competitive now.

• 47:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  And it's easier than ever, every single day to post a video online. And it is a stressful, stressful, stressful job.

• 48:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Tell me what, you know, what's on the horizon for you? What, what do you kind of, what's 2023 going to be for the Nick D Giovanni empire?

• 48:16Speaker 01

  I'll be honest, I've thought about a lot of stuff. I've thought about a restaurant. And if I could find the right people to do it, I would love to have a restaurant by the end of 2023. Although I know that's ambitious. I think I could also see myself looking into some sort of TV show. I've looked into that with a bunch of different people now, and that could be something. But I, I think 2023 should be, you know, the year for me to slow down and look bigger picture. Instead of just taking things so day by day and say, okay, how could, what could this whole business of what we're doing right now? Look like in five, 10 years? And try to really build something that's more sustainable and that's much, much bigger than just me.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  And so I would be very happy if I had an answer for that in 2023.

• 49:06Guy Raz?

  Nick DiGiovanni, founder of Osmo Salt and YouTuber. Thanks so much for joining me.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Guy. I will think of you next time I'm about to baste a whole piece of Wagyu in butter.

• 49:24Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built This Lab. Please do follow us on your podcast app so you always have the latest episode downloaded. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at HowIBuiltThis and mine is at Guy Raz. And on Instagram, I'm at Guy.Raz. If you want to contact the team, our email address is [email protected]. This episode was produced by Carla Estevez and Susanna Brown with editing by John Isabella. Our music was composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Our audio engineer was Neil Rouch. Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Elaine Coats, J.C. Howard, Liz Metzger, Sam Paulson, and Kerry Thompson.

• 50:09Guy Raz?

  Neva Grant is our supervising editor. Beth Donovan is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

• 50:21Guy Raz?

  So like in the last, I don't know, five or six months, my kids, they started to be more interested in what I was cooking. And then I discovered that they were watching your videos. And they kept asking me to buy Wagyu beef. They're like, Daddy, can you get A5 Wagyu beef? Anyway.

• 50:38Speaker 06

  Sorry.

• 50:39Guy Raz?

  Go ahead.

• 50:39Speaker 06

  Um, how did you get all that chicken from the World's Largest Chicken Nugget with Ninja video?

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good question. We bought it. We just bought it.

• 50:50Speaker 06

  Was there like a specific manufacturer or something?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  For all that chicken?

• 50:54Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that's a good question. I don't know, actually. I have to look back and see. I don't even know where we got it. But it was in these really big industrial bags, so.

• 51:05Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Um, it was fun. But even harder was getting all the sushi for the World's Largest Sushi Roll. That was hard.

• 51:12Speaker 06

  All the sushi rice?

• 51:13Speaker 01

  All the sushi rice, yeah. We had probably five, five or six restaurants making rice nonstop all day for a whole day to get us enough rice for that. Isn't that crazy?