Colin & Samir: How To Make $1M+ On YouTube

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk with YouTube stars and content creator experts Samir Chaudry and Colin Rosenblum about how to become a successful YouTuber. Also, want $5,000? Check out the My First Million Clips contest. ----- Links: * My First Million Clips contest * Colin and Samir * Ali Abdaal * Doug DeMuro * Blogilates * Yoga with Adriene * AmandaRachLee - Bullet Journal * Cloak * GFuel * UpOnly TV * Shelby Church * VidIQ * The Folding Lady * Shaan's Milkman Tweet * MFM TikTok Clips Contest Entry w/Neil Patel * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ----- Show Notes: (03:55) - Origin story of Colin and Samir (20:40) - What should creators be doing that they're not? (25:00) - How long did it take to get to 800k? (30:40) - What are the table stakes for getting a channel to 200k? (34:45) - What's your team for starting a YouTube channel? (39:20) - Tools that you wished existed (43:35) - Surprising creators (47:25) - What do you think about TikTok? ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  You just explained that like you're a machine learning thing tagging it like extremely visually compelling.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:05Shaan Puri?

  Piece of content, high engagement to the end, like, you know.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  I've seen, I've seen too many videos at this point. I have to put them in the bucket.

• 0:19Sam Parr?

  Colin and Samir, do you guys know what you're getting into? Do you know what this is at all?

• 0:24Speaker 01

  I thought this was a podcast about procurement.

• 0:29Sam Parr?

  Oh, all right.

• 0:31Shaan Puri?

  He's a fan. He's a super fan. I love it.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Is that not what this podcast is about?

• 0:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's about office supplies.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  I don't even know how to say the word procurement.

• 0:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, once you get, once you get around us, that word becomes a problem.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Right. And Ben, Ben is the systems integrations guy, right?

• 0:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:49Shaan Puri?

  And so give, uh, give y'all's story. So I kind of know a little bit of it, but let's assume people listen to this, don't know it, which is my way of saying, I kind of only half know it, but give, give me y'all's story.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, so I'm Samir, by the way, uh, this is my voice. If you're listening, um, I graduated college, um, in 2011 and I went to school to study film and digital media and I grew up in LA. So I was like really into the film business. I wanted to be a storyteller. I wanted to find a way to, um, you know, become a filmmaker and that was a really challenging thing.

• 1:23Shaan Puri?

  You look Indian. So, so how did you, how'd you swing this? I'm going to be a filmmaker.

• 1:26Sam Parr?

  Well, he's good looking though, too. I mean, he looks like an LA person.

• 1:29Shaan Puri?

  I know, but I'm saying the parents, parents don't care about that.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  No, you're right. I mean, I remember the moment when I called my mom and I was like, I'm not going to,

• 1:40Speaker 01

  be a business major. I'm going to be a film major. Uh, and it was a scary moment, I think for them, but I was a bad high school student. I was not good in high school. I was just not good in college. I didn't do homework. I was not someone who, uh, really lived up to the standard of what it was to be an Indian kid, whereas my brother was student body president. Uh, he became a lawyer, like he, he followed more of a traditional path. I think they had noticed that I was so unconventional that it was like, all right, at this point, do whatever. Um, but my dad's also really unconventional. He's an entrepreneur. He's a fashion designer, like he's, he's different. Um, so I think there was a bit of like, okay, I mean, you seem confident, figure it out. Um, and, and so for me, when I graduated school,

• 2:21Speaker 01

  You know, I had, I had an issue with being someone who wasn't good in school. Like I, I didn't, I wasn't great at like being an employee. That was really hard for me. I worked as an editor on a film called Ides of March in Hollywood. And I just, I just didn't like it. I didn't like doing a single task. I didn't like doing, you know, one thing. And I had become aware of, of YouTube primarily because I was up in, in Northern California in college and was really fascinated by it. So I felt like I had all the tools to, to just upload a video and just make something. And the subject matter that I picked was the community that I was a part of when I grew up. I, I grew up playing the sport of lacrosse. I played lacrosse in college and I decided

• 3:05Speaker 01

  to spin up a YouTube channel called The Lacrosse Network. And that is the origin of my first upload onto YouTube, really, outside of like student films. And at the same time, Colin was uploading a series or uploaded a trailer for a series about the Colorado Club Lacrosse Team. I'll let him pick up from there, but this is, this is in 2011, just for frame of reference.

• 3:28Shaan Puri?

  Let me jump in with one thing. I've seen a video where you said something dope, Colin. You go, my first video only had, I don't know if you said like a hundred views or a thousand views. You're like, but Samir was one of them and that view, that one view changed my life because then you guys ended up joining forces. You guys do a bunch of cool shit. Fast forward to today, you guys got this like pretty baller YouTube channel. And this is like, you get to do the thing you want to do. You get to like, I don't know. If I could do anything, I'd probably be like a professional basketball player. That'd be like the, the, the peak of like getting to play and like be super successful at the same time. But I feel like the second best thing might be being a YouTuber. And, and so like, you know, that's, I love that idea though, that like, okay, I only

• 4:12Shaan Puri?

  had a hundred views or only had a thousand views, but like that one view changed, that one of those views changed my life. I thought that was like an amazing little like nugget.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think for me, it was a real lesson in in community. Probably unlike Samir, you know, I actually was a really dedicated student, almost probably to a fault. And so when I finally had this experience in college of, you know, buying a camera and being a little bit more of a creative, you know, putting out my first video, which was about the lacrosse team, having it not necessarily be a huge success. But, you know, it did connect me with all of these like minded people, one of which was Samir. He sent me an email that day, basically saying, if you're going to be making these videos, even though you just started, why don't you put them out on my network because I'm trying to aggregate tons of of people who are fans of the sport.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  So, you know, from that point on, I was like, I don't even care about my past education. I am so interested now in just telling stories and having it connect with people.

• 5:11Sam Parr?

  But that didn't, the the lacrosse network, that was like kind of a failure, right? Like it got you to like a certain point and then you're like, shit, this isn't going to pay the bills is because.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I mean, I think it didn't, it didn't, it definitely didn't pay our bills in the first three years, right? It was something that was.

• 5:29Sam Parr?

  Not a failure, but you know.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, like, long story short, we sold the company in 2014, which was really positive. So that was a success for us, but like the pathway to get there was really challenging because there was no business model really surrounding YouTube in 2011, 2012. When we tried to to get advertisers, no one even understood that spending money on YouTube was a reasonable thing to do. That was like, the only way people could understand us was a video production company. So what we did to make money is we did creative jobs for people, like service jobs. Okay, yeah, well, you've seen that we can make pretty good videos on online, we can make you a video. Or we even did even more creative odd jobs, we made websites for people, we designed stickers for one company. It was just kind of like, oh, these guys are like creative internet people.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  So if we have a creative internet task, we'll we'll ask them to do it. And then what what was beneficial to us was that YouTube, the company was was very interested in what we were doing. And they basically came to me and they said, if you can secure live rights, we'll really get behind you. Because we're trying to explore live sports on YouTube. And that's what I did. I got rights to high school games first, then college games. Then we eventually distributed pro games and figured out how to acquire live rights and get YouTube behind us. And that that kind of grew our profile and got us to the point where we we could. We got acquired by a sports media company. And a lot of that, you know, I would say it was an aqua hire, to be very clear, like the benefit of that was that,

• 6:56Speaker 01

  you know, there was cash exchange for our company, but really the majority was in, you know, we had salaries and stock. And we got to actually have like very comfortable, stable jobs pursuing YouTube and exploring not only. There's a company called Whistle.

• 7:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So, by the way, I want to say something here. YouTube started in like, what, 2005, something like that?

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:21Shaan Puri?

  And you guys are saying it was 2010, 2011, and you're like, it really wasn't like, well, a well-trodden path of like, be a YouTuber, make money doing this. This can be like a business and this can be the platform versus the way you guys use it was kind of like, it's kind of our portfolio and we'll get some clients on this and it'll be a launchpad. Maybe, maybe we'll get picked up by somebody else bigger, like real traditional media that will pay us. That's kind of crazy, right? That's like six years into the game. And that's why I like, right, just a bigger point about like, let's say crypto right now. It's like, these things take a long time before they become a thing, before it's like, what YouTube is today, where it's like obvious now that you could be a YouTuber, you can make a bunch of money, you could be Mr. Beast, whatever.

• 8:04Sam Parr?

  It's still not even obvious if you ask me.

• 8:06Shaan Puri?

  I don't think it's that obvious. Yeah. I don't think it's that obvious.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Well, at least there's examples now.

• 8:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah, there's examples. But like, I watch YouTube on my Apple TV and that's TV to me. Most people only, only like, only teens do that. And like, I'm the old guy. Most people I don't think do it like that. But I think like, so I think it's still pretty like, not a thing yet.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  I do think if you take a step back and look at it, it operates exactly like most media companies. And that's like, if you just take business models from the past, like how the radio operated, or even how television operated, like any media company, a magazine, like that's, that's how YouTube operates too. There's a really unique version of advertising when it comes to YouTube in that we are uploading and the platform will actually pay us without us having to interface with clients, without us having to build a media kit, without us having to pitch anyone, which I think causes creators to not fully understand the business they're in, because they don't have to pick up the phone and sell their audience to someone, or sell what they're doing to a client, if they're primarily based on the AdSense that

• 9:12Speaker 01

  YouTube's giving you. When we were first starting out, AdSense was absolutely insignificant, because our audience was extremely niche. It was small, and YouTube was not that developed. There were people making good money from AdSense checks on YouTube, which is, again, the money that YouTube will pay you, part of their partner program. But that's never been that significant of a check for us, because we've always been very niche. And so we've had to learn the business of media, and apply that to what we're doing with YouTube. And I think that maturity is starting to catch up right now in the space, and why a lot of creators are able to build businesses today, and why there are roadmaps.

• 9:52Sam Parr?

  And fast forward to now, you have the Lacrosse Networks, no longer the focus, it's the Colin Samir Show, and it's basically this, it's a YouTube channel, you have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. And you kind of talk about like, creator economy stuff, but I think that's a little bit niche. But it's like, it's a little bit more than that. But you've got these like, really highly produced interviews that you do with people. But then you also have all these like, clips, and you do this thing where you're sitting in your car, and you like, give analysis of like, different videos of why they're going viral. But it seems like you do a little bit more than that. I watch, I watch it all the time. And so is that, how big is that business at this point, just to give the audience like, a little, who don't know you, like, to a little sense of how legit you are?

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah. So yeah, as you mentioned, we were, you know, we're on our way to 2 million subscribers. We have 813 as of this recording. The business is myself, Colin, and we have four full-time team members who work on the actual channel. That's myself, Colin. We have three editors as well as a production manager and then a data and insights person who works and looks at like kind of how everything's tracking from an analytical perspective. And then we also have a newsletter and there's a team of three that works on that. Two people, one, one general manager of the newsletter, one more in business

• 11:15Speaker 01

  development and sales. And then a writer who's on staff for the newsletter. So the total like people who work in the Colin and Smear ecosystem is 10. And it's split across two media properties, one being the YouTube channel and one being the, one being the newsletter.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  I don't know if you guys.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  And I would say, I would say too, like, we're primarily supported with advertising, advertising-based business. Our biggest clients are Samsung, Shopify, Jelly Smack, and other creator economy companies.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  What's the revenue now? Can you reveal or no?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're, I would say, we haven't been super 100% transparent with like exact numbers, but we're a seven-figure business.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  Are you getting close to eight?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 12:01Shaan Puri?

  Do you guys think this like gets there? Like basically, sometimes you get in a business and it's what got us here won't get us there. And sometimes we just got to keep on, keep it on. And so from a business model point of view, is it, if we just keep, okay, we're at 813,000 subscribers today, we're probably tracking to 2 million next year or whatever it is. And the ads will just keep scaling and this will keep going. This will be the business forever? Or is it like, we're going to have to come up with a second act at some point?

• 12:30Speaker 01

  So I think there's decisions you can make as a creator to get there. Like we, we are friends with a lot of creators who, you know, are pushing towards that eight-figure business mark, right? And, and a lot of that is, is at just ad-supported business. There's other creators who have launched, you know, course companies or education, direct-to-consumer content, Patreon, right? Subscription platforms and you can absolutely get there. It's just honestly, I think it's based on, there's this moment as a, an artist or filmmaker, or someone who wants to express something where you go from, like I mentioned, I studied film. I was very interested in being a filmmaker, but you go from being a filmmaker to a media maker. And I think that those are two different things and you have to decide, like Colin

• 13:14Speaker 01

  and I have to decide what we want the lifestyle to look like. I think you guys mentioned, I think it was your mother-in-law, Sam, who said, I like taking Tuesdays and Thursdays off. I think that's a really important thing for all creators and all entrepreneurs to look at and be like, what, what's enough for me? Like what, what is what, you know, what I want to do? And I think Colin and I, this is like a relatively recent success that we're having with this channel and we're trying to constantly evaluate which parts of this are really enjoyable and which parts of this start to feel like, okay, now we're just making stuff to make stuff. And I think we have to find that balance of how to scale what we're doing, but also recognize like, we, we got into this because we, we wanted to make something.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  And I think it's okay to, to lean in to be like, maybe there's part of this that's like, we just want to tell the stories that we're excited about. And yes, there's a ton of opportunity, but it might not match what the lifestyle that, that we eventually want.

• 14:11Shaan Puri?

  Who, who is crushing it? So like you mentioned, some creators do XYZ, like, uh, what's his name? Ali, Ali Abdaal? He's coming on, on the pod soon.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Oh, he's great.

• 14:22Shaan Puri?

  I think he reveals his numbers where it's like, okay, my, uh, my course business is going to do like $2 million this year or something like that.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:29Shaan Puri?

  Where he basically is like, you know, become a YouTuber or some shit like that. It's like, it's a course that's around.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  To 6 million. Uh, I think he's tracking to 6 million this year.

• 14:38Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Part-time YouTuber Academy.

• 14:39Shaan Puri?

  I signed up for it. Part-time YouTube Academy. So that's the, so that's the course he does. And so that's an example of like, um, somebody who's crushing it and the course model. Then, uh, Sam, you've talked about the guy who does like bring a trailer or what, which one was it? The, the car one? Doug DeMuro. Doug, you guys know Doug DeMuro?

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Cars and bids.

• 14:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Cars and bids. We bought a car from Cars and Bids for one of our episodes.

• 15:00Sam Parr?

  Me too.

• 15:00Shaan Puri?

  Amazing. Great.

• 15:01Sam Parr?

  So he is a car guy with, at this point, two or three million subscribers and he has a an auction website for cars that could potentially be a nine-figure company, I actually think.

• 15:11Shaan Puri?

  And Sam, was that launched off the channel or before the?

• 15:13Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah. No, he had the channel for five years, maybe. Many years.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  I think the unique thing that we're experiencing, right? Like, this is entrepreneurship. The difference is, we build an audience first and then solve how to monetize that audience through products, services, subscriptions, whatever, right? Whereas a lot of traditional entrepreneurship is build the business first and then try and find customers or audience second. And so I think that's, when you look at creators, how big this can become, it's really like, for a lot of creators who've built successful audiences and niche audiences, it's like how big you want it to become. The thing that's holding back the creator space right now, I think, is operators. Like, really good business operators to surround creators. Because to make, you know, like, to make

• 16:01Speaker 01

  on a consistent cycle, when you are the subject of your videos, it doesn't really allow you to operate as, you know, the business admin, the operator, the person who's pushing cars and bids, the website and that business while you're making the content at the same time.

• 16:17Sam Parr?

  Ask your question again, Sean.

• 16:19Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So what are some other examples? So let's take those two. So Ali Abdaal with the courses, Doug DeMuro with, you know, has a car channel, then launches a car auction site. Who else has done something cool? What are some other cool stories of people crushing it that are like, started with content, started with audience, and then have done, have created a cool business off their YouTube channel that that's impressive?

• 16:39Sam Parr?

  Particularly ones that like are not Mr. Beast, the ones that, you know, we all know about.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I would say an interesting one that keeps coming up is Cassie Ho. She started Blogilates, so like fitness yoga instruction on YouTube. And now she has two separate product companies that are both eight-figure companies, right, Samir?

• 16:58Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's there's one that's like an apparel company for athleisure and then one that's like yoga mats. And like, oh shit, I, I, yeah, I think like that's, that is another yoga creator called Yoga with Adrian, who started teaching yoga for free. She's so great, but her subscription platform's amazing, right? Like she, she's her own.

• 17:18Sam Parr?

  Awesome, man. I'm a customer.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:20Sam Parr?

  Have you seen this woman, Sean? Her name's Yoga with Adrian. She's got like the girl next door look where she's like, not intimidating, but she's definitely beautiful. And she's based out of Austin and she does yoga with her dog. And she's very calming. She's the best, man. I love yoga with Adrian.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Seen this. There's another creator named Amanda Raish Lee, and she started creating content with bullet journals. So she was showing like how she was setting up her bullet journals, how she was organizing her days. And then she's launched a line of stationery and of journals. And that's become her primary engine of business. And like, I think those are a few specifics. I think yes, theory, when it comes to merchandise and apparel, I think they've done incredible job with Seek Discomfort. And building a brand that can stand alone outside of the videos.

• 18:10Shaan Puri?

  And I believe they also just went into the fulfillment business. So they not only have their own merch line, they also do the printing, the warehouse of a pack for other creators too, right?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  That's right. I think it's really smart when creators start businesses like that where they say, okay, if we're going to solve all these problems independently and not go with a partner, then, you know, we can work, we can work with other creators to do the same.

• 18:36Shaan Puri?

  What do you think people should be doing that you don't see? So I have a couple of ideas. So if you don't have one, I'll throw a couple at you. You could tell me if they're, why people are not doing that. Maybe they're bad ideas, but what do you think creators should be doing that they haven't yet gone into that, that realm yet? It's not common.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  So I actually have a perspective that I think.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  I think I'm curious why we haven't seen creators band together, especially like let's, let's imagine the e-commerce space. Like, why have we not seen 10 creators come together and launch an e-commerce retail store? Like that to me, where they can bring a ton of traffic to it and, and pair together and all their audiences are maybe on one brand. Uh, I think that would be-

• 19:16Shaan Puri?

  That's exactly what I was gonna say.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  Like a Disney store, Discovery store type of thing.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Or even like one singular brand. It's happening with this brand called Cloak in like kind of the gaming world, but like, why not just if, if every creator had a, had a piece of this one apparel brand, like couldn't you make the next big apparel brand? Or could you make the next Urban Outfitters if, if, you know, Emma Chamberlain plus five creators came together and made a retail store?

• 19:41Speaker 03

  I feel like specifically in beauty and fashion and cosmetics, like there's such an opportunity to band together and have one brand because there are so many like standalone cosmetic brands for a singular creator. But-

• 19:52Shaan Puri?

  It can, it can really happen in any, like in gaming, this was, I always thought this should happen in gaming. So my, my company got acquired by Twitch. So when I was there, I was looking at like, what are these creators doing? One brand that stood out was there's a brand called G Fuel. I don't know if you guys have heard of it. It's very like gaming niche, but like basically Sam, I don't know if you've heard of this. It's like, um, I don't know what you, it's like a Red Bull. It's like, it's sort of like an energy drink, uh, but a G Fuel as in gamer fuel. So it's like, oh, this will be, you know, give you energy, help you stay focused when you're at those long gaming sessions or whatever.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  What was in it?

• 20:21Shaan Puri?

  And I don't know. It looks like a Gatorade. Who knows what's in it? And the guy who started it, he's like this absolute like 50 year old bro. Like he's like 55 and just like jacked to the gills. And you're like, oh, wow. This is like, I don't know what's happening in this company, but I don't want to drink this. But like what would happen is they would go to, they were like, oh, do these Twitch stars have influence? But the traditional brands aren't going to them. They're going to Instagram and YouTubers first. So he went to them and he was like, hey, I'll make a flavor for Dr. Disrespect. I'll make a flavor for Ninja. I'll make a flavor for each one of these and you'll have your own shaker that you'll like kind of promote that has like your brand on it. And like he had these, like, he got like nine of them to be like the sponsored athletes, basically. And they, they grew pretty big. I don't know what they were doing exactly. If I

• 21:06Shaan Puri?

  remember correctly, it was definitely over 20 million. It might be over 50 million in sales that they were doing just off of like, kind of this one real niche channel.

• 21:15Shaan Puri?

  And I, what I thought about was like, and then, and then each of the individual creators was doing their own thing. Like Ninja made a mouse, a gaming mouse, and then somebody else made a, another like a coffee or a stimulant or whatever. And I was thinking the same thing. If these guys just got together and the 10 big ones got together and they just launched a gaming accessories thing, like the best keyboard, the best mouse, the best whatever. Like they would be selling hundreds of millions a year if they like put their powers together, Captain Planet style.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  I, I think that goes back to like the lack of operators in the space right now. And I think it's starting to catch up, but I do think that, you know, there's a lot of short-term revenue to be had. And that's really exciting. And there's a lot of, there's like quick cash to be made in, in our space that I think now it's probably just happening where you're starting to look at these longer term. And there, like you said, there's more roadmaps, you know, of course, you know, Mr. Beast is, in my opinion, singular. Like it's, he's not, you can't, there's not going to be more of him, but you can look at some of the stuff he's doing with, oh, Feastables is interesting, or even Logan Paul and, oh, they made Prime instead of partnering. Like that's interesting. And they, they partnered together. I, I'm not positive. I would, I, from what they say, it's going well.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  So that's, I think that's all we know. I'm not positive. I will say it tastes great. We bought it here and it's, it's like a fantastic drink, but I have absolutely no idea how the business is going.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  I would say too, it seems like he's following the Beats by Dre trajectory of making sure to get it in the hands of celebrities and famous people with his podcast. Anytime he has someone on, they have Prime in their hand or they try it and they like it.

• 22:50Sam Parr?

  It's like a good strategy. When you guys got to, how long, how long did it take to get to 800,000?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  I think at least four years, right, Cole? Four or five years.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, probably four years to get to 200 and then.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  One year from 200 to 800.

• 23:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So let's, let's take this journey. One sec, Sam. I got a question on this. So if we strip away hard work and talent, because let's say those are like core ingredients that you guys have. But like every journey has like inflection points, like something where something just broke your way, or you realized something before others did. Or like the one thing went viral and that kind of helps step you up to another level. Cause like, if I go to the channel today, I see the, the top thing is like a video with Mr., an interview with Mr. Beast has 10 million views, right? And I'm like, how the hell did they get Mr. Beast? Like, that's a big poll.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:40Shaan Puri?

  So what were the things that were like, besides hard work and consistency and talent? What made you guys grow? And what made it work? How do you get to a million subscribers and Mr. Beast doing an interview with you guys?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  My first answer is time and market. I think like we've been in this market for 10 years and that has introduced us to a lot of people that have created opportunity for us as we started to grow, right? Like Jimmy shot us a message, Jimmy is Mr. Beast. He shot us a message when we made a video a couple of years ago and he was like, that was a cool video. And we struck up a relationship and we started talking about YouTube because we were both really into it. And authentically into it. And that created a situation that, you know, when we got to a point where we had an interview show or a talk show, we had a relationship with him such that we could fly out, get access in North Carolina to his new facility. And like,

• 24:35Speaker 01

  he was excited to be on our platform and we had that relationship. And I think even when I think about it, inflection point for our business prior to that was when we, you know, really weren't catching that much traction from a sponsorship perspective, but we had made some connections to the point that, you know, Samsung was looking for creators to partner with on like year-long ambassadorship deals. And our names were up there because of the relationships we had created in the market. So I would say the fact that we just stuck in it for 10 years has introduced us to people that created opportunity as I would say, we are late learners and we've like figuring out YouTube took a really long time for us. But as we figured it out, we were in a position where we had enough relationship

• 25:20Speaker 01

  that, you know, our first couple of interviews are like Marques Brownlee, Mr. Beast, like we were able to have these creators on who we had developed relationships with prior that now fit into a format that we had landed on. And collaboration on YouTube is like, that's how you grow, you know?

• 25:37Sam Parr?

  Time and market, time and market is an awesome way. That's an awesome phrase. I've actually never heard that before. Time and market is a great way, just because typically we would, Sean and I would just say like, well, I'm just like in the mix. And I was just like, I've been doing it for a while. But time and market is a far more like formulated way to look at it.

• 25:53Shaan Puri?

  People usually use it for investing, right? Like Buffett, I think said, you know, instead of timing the market, what matters is time and market. And it sounds pretty similar for what you guys are talking about.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  I would add too, that it's, it's time in underserved market. Because you know, the reason that Jimmy or Mr. Beast even reached out to us is because no one was really talking about creators or about the YouTube space for a long period of time. And we continued to talk about it while no one really was giving it the time of day. So I feel like it's not that we were just in the market. It's that we picked an underserved community. And so we happen to be that place where creators could turn.

• 26:30Shaan Puri?

  That's in crypto, that's happening right now. Like I created this crypto media company not long ago called The Milk Road. And it's doing really well, but we're so new and crypto's now cool. So you don't get credit for being there when it's cool. There's a guy, there's a show called Up Only that's on YouTube that's started by this, this guy Kobe and Leisure or whatever. And they've been doing it for a long time, back when like, there wasn't a lot of heat in crypto. They were still just every week going on and just talking about whatever, shooting the shit, talking about crypto. And so now when famous people want to go hit the circuit, they're like, well, we got to go there because they have

• 27:12Shaan Puri?

  the respect of people because they were saying they were hanging out here before the tourists arrived, you know, and you can't, you can't beat that.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  No, I agree with that. I think like, you know, we watched the people go from being not interested in what we were doing on YouTube to extremely interested. And then a lot of those people who are interested in the creator economy, I think shifted over to web three. And so like, I think you like time in market when you're just like, actually, like this is the, this is the career we've chosen. Like, we're going to be in this. We enjoy this. This is what we want to do. This is what brings us fulfillment. Then, you know, wherever this goes, the ups and downs of it, we're just, we're just here, right? And so like, I think that is, that is an important thing. As you're, as you're going on your entrepreneurial journey.

• 27:59Sam Parr?

  So right now, Sean and I have a really like our, our podcast is doing great. We're not, we're, we're a pod, we're like a podcast that sometimes it's posted on YouTube and, and so podcast numbers are first, but we've each toyed around the idea of like, maybe we should give this YouTube thing a try. Like maybe like separately, like in our own, like our, like, you know, like we'll pick a niche and go at it. And I've thought about it, but I'm like, you know, I'm not ready to go, whenever I'm going to do it, I'm going to go all in on it. And like maybe hire someone to help me do it. Can you give me and Sean some advice on like, look, here's like the, here, here's like the table stakes in order to get to a hundred or 200,000 subscribers inside six or 12 months.

• 28:42Sam Parr?

  Here's like the, the, the absolute minimum and keep in mind, like, assume that budget, this isn't for most people. Assume that budget is no big deal. Like we're willing to spend money.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  So here's something that I think is really important is like, you're creating a video podcast. So in your mind, the thought is there's not much marginal cost in posting this video to YouTube. You're already, we're producing a video and audio right now. There is not marginal production cost. There is marginal distribution cost. You're going to have to spend time thinking about how to distribute this show on YouTube and how that differs from audio.

• 29:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Think beyond, so think if it's, it's like Sean does, I do something on fitness or anything.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Sam becomes a YouTuber. Well, sure, sure.

• 29:25Sam Parr?

  And Sean has one on anything, building houses. I don't know.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think like you do need to go all in. You need to understand the audience that you're serving. And most importantly, you need to understand packaging and what works on YouTube from a search perspective, and what works on YouTube from a click through rate perspective. All of YouTube is, is click through rates and then retention, right?

• 29:45Sam Parr?

  Tell me what works.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. What works?

• 29:49Sam Parr?

  No, you're saying, you're, you're saying, understand what are like, what, what are you getting at?

• 29:55Speaker 01

  What's, what's the niche that you would want to tackle entrepreneurship?

• 29:59Sam Parr?

  Let's say, I'm just going to make, let's say, um, I bought a bunch of, I'm buying Airbnbs. Let's just use that for an example.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, short term rentals. Yeah. So I think like you would want to go long from a packaging perspective on basically how to make money through Airbnb rentals, right? So maybe you would create a series that's like zero to a million dollars in revenue on Airbnb rentals, episode one, right? And it's, and I wouldn't title it like that, but it's like, Carl, I don't know if you have ideas on titles, but I think brainstorming titles would be our first step from an audience perspective, because you're trying to transform people to understand how they can do the same thing, correct? Yes, that would be my assumption. Yeah. So Carl, I guess let's, let's spitball back and forth titles on something like that.

• 30:44Shaan Puri?

  Even that first thing you said, that's a like a story frame, right? Like zero to a million in rental income. First, you set the stakes already, like I'm a man on this mission, which I think is not what most people would just naturally think to do. But for you guys, it's like, well, if you have a mission, people are going to want to see if you can do it or not, and how to do it. They might want that, too.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think for that example, too, people are, people are doing that. And that's not a problem. That actually can be to your advantage. A lot of times we tell creators, you know, if there's something you want to talk about, search it into YouTube, sort by most viewed, and see what are the videos that are getting a million views. There are definitely videos about, you know, the business of Airbnbs, buying Airbnbs that have over a million views. So I think that's a good place to start in your journey is like, what's currently working, you know? And then what are those videos about? Like, I think the key for you would be, how can I actually make sure that when I get this title thumbnail, that's pretty sensational about making a certain amount of money, or, you know, converting some house or something like that? How can my video actually meet the expectation of the person who clicks? You know, that it's not maybe you just sitting

• 31:45Speaker 03

  down, talking about it retroactively, but, you know, maybe it is a video that took you two months to make or three months. Who knows? But it's got to match that expectation and be actually impressive.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  I think probably packaging it around like, I made a million dollars on Airbnb in 30. Let's say, let's cut the stakes to 30 days. And basically, over the next 30 days, you're going to track how you went from not making any money on Airbnb to even like, how do you make money on Airbnb? So I think that's, that's the packaging you'd have to, to fall into. And then you'd have to meet that expectation. Like, you'd actually have to do that.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  And then I would, I would think about like, where, where are people currently getting Airbnb education outside of YouTube? Are there places that are actually really popular where those communities already hang out? Where if you made your video? You could cede it to them, or it would be a success if they started talking about it and sharing it organically.

• 32:36Sam Parr?

  What would your early?

• 32:37Speaker 03

  Think about where on the internet do they exist?

• 32:39Sam Parr?

  What would your early team be? Would you have just an editor, someone filming you? Would you have a thumbnail maker? What would your skeleton bare bones team be?

• 32:50Speaker 03

  For you, I think if you said that like money's no option, right? That's not really a concern.

• 32:54Sam Parr?

  Just for the sake of argument, yes.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would hire a thumbnail designer who is part YouTube strategist. Most thumbnail designers have a lot of YouTube strategy in them as well, because they're so linked. So yeah, I would recommend trying to find someone who really deeply understands packaging

• 33:16Speaker 03

  and has seen things that work.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  I'm going to read some titles and maybe you guys can guess the viewership in this exact category.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  How to make your first million on Airbnb?

• 33:30Sam Parr?

  I would think that's over a million.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. 900 views.

• 33:34Sam Parr?

  Oh, 900?

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Yep. You can make a million dollars per year on Airbnb in 2022 with the U in all caps.

• 33:44Shaan Puri?

  Oh, I hate that. That probably has views. I'm gonna say low. I'm gonna, I'm gonna hope and pray it's low. Is it low?

• 33:49Speaker 01

  18,000. How much money my Airbnb?

• 33:53Sam Parr?

  Medium?

• 33:54Speaker 01

  I would say it's medium. How much money my Airbnb made in its first month?

• 33:58Sam Parr?

  That one crushed it. That's probably Shelby Church. Is that Shelby Church?

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Shelby Church, 235,000 views, right? So, so I think already through that exercise, you're starting to understand.

• 34:09Sam Parr?

  I watched that video, by the way. That's how I know. It was a great video. I love her. Do you know who Shelby is, Sean?

• 34:16Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  She's great. Yeah, she's amazing. Shelby Church's amazing. But I think like that's where do that exercise in packaging, like just go through all those and then the ones that are not working, upgrade the titles yourself. Like what was wrong with that title? What was wrong with that framing? Did that not match the expectation? And then for Shelby, like what was right about that? That framing is really great. How much money my Airbnb made in its first month?

• 34:41Shaan Puri?

  Great.

• 34:41Sam Parr?

  Me and Sean talked to this woman named Rebecca. Sean, what was her last name? Rebecca Z. She's got a.

• 34:47Shaan Puri?

  Zemirolo or something like that?

• 34:49Sam Parr?

  She's got a, she's got like across all of her things, maybe 10 or 15 million subscribers. She makes content for like 12 year olds, um, not like little kids, but 12 or 10, 12 year olds, where it's like plays and stuff. And, uh, she was, I was asking her, I was like, man, she was like, yeah, like I, I, we got to like a million subscribers pretty quickly. I think like within a year or two years. And I was like, that's amazing. How'd you, you know, what was the thing? And she was explaining it to me and I was like, okay. So basically what you're telling me is that you just like quit your job and like, you just made this like your nine to five and you just focused on it. And she was like, yeah, like no one else treated this like a job. And this was like, I'm at the office at nine, I'm working until six, seven, eight, nine, 10 sometimes,

• 35:30Sam Parr?

  but I'm showing up every single day. And I'm just like, I'm working and versus most people, they're just kind of like dicking around. It's like, oh, I'll get to it when I get to it.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think studying as well, like really being a student of the platform, like that's a, that took five minutes to look at some of the top performing in that category and dissect what you thought was good, bad, what worked, what didn't work. Um, you know, I think you have to do that first. It's like market research. I can't find this client info.

• 35:57Speaker 04

  Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot, grow better.

• 36:11Shaan Puri?

  Is there a good tool that shows you search volumes on YouTube? So, uh, like, you know, you could do this with Google search. You can figure out how many people are searching for these keywords. Can you do that within YouTube?

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a tool called VidIQ that you can use. There's, um, we do it on Google a lot because again, like Google and YouTube are obviously, you know, connected, right? So it's like.

• 36:32Sam Parr?

  What do you mean on Google?

• 36:33Speaker 01

  People are searching.

• 36:34Sam Parr?

  Like Google.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Like Google Trends.

• 36:36Sam Parr?

  Keyword tracker.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  Google search trends.

• 36:37Sam Parr?

  Google Trends, that's all you use.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. We'll use Google Trends to track like, okay, is this keyword better than this keyword or are people searching this more than this? But you know, on, on YouTube specifically, we do use VidIQ sometimes.

• 36:50Sam Parr?

  It'll tell you like how competitive maybe that, that keyword is. Is there a lot of search traffic on YouTube for that?

• 36:56Speaker 01

  And it'll also show you the, um, top videos for that keyword. So if you, if you go into VidIQ and you type in Airbnb, you're going to start to see like, okay, what, what are the trending videos in this category? What's working? What's not working? What are the thumbnails that are working?

• 37:11Shaan Puri?

  And do you guys like VidIQ is a great example of as you guys try to be successful on YouTube, you're like, ah, this is so, I wish it was easier to do this type of research and not just see what's popular, but how competitive it is and just quickly show me the top videos in that, in that thing, right? So VidIQ becomes this piece of software that you guys might pay for, you know, is useful to you guys. What are some, what are some tools or things you guys wish existed? I know this is a little bit of a hard question, but like, there's, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs who listen to this that will like, hear that and be like, oh, I could build that. I could build something like that where you guys aren't going to have the time to build it necessarily. But what are some opportunities you see that could serve YouTube creators?

• 37:51Speaker 01

  The two things I wish existed when we first started and that I still think there's opportunities for are legal zoom for creators and TurboTax for creators. And I know those two things exist for entrepreneurs, but something with a more creator lens. And I know there's people starting these now, but I think those are really helpful, especially on the tax side. I think a lot of creators like, because you just have this influx of freelancers essentially who are now starting to like, it goes really fast from, okay, I made a little bit of money on YouTube to, okay, wait a second, what do I, what do I do now? Now I just made a ton of money on YouTube. So I think some of that would be really helpful of, you know, the backend business side is what you need the

• 38:32Speaker 01

  most help with. If you're into it, like if you go nine to five into YouTube, you're going to figure it out. If you're really into it, you're going to figure out your niche, your category, how to find audience.

• 38:42Shaan Puri?

  Time and market, baby.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Time and market. Like you're going to figure it out. You might have to hedge your bets and have another job while you figure it out or have another source of income. But if you're really into it, you're going to figure it out. It's, it's the backend of, you know, the, the younger, like being 21 and all of a sudden landing, figuring it out really quickly and then being like, what do I do now? So I think some of that business ops, that business admin stuff would be really helpful.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  To to help with creators, to make sure things are like clean and and growing right.

• 39:13Sam Parr?

  You were talking about like partnering or like you, I mean, what you were saying was about operators. Creators need more operators. And in my head, I'm like, oh, that's cool. You just like,

• 39:25Sam Parr?

  someone like me who knows how to operate a business, I just partner with someone like you who's like famous. And we do like a 50 50 split and and I build a business that you just keep getting famous. And I agree that that's a great business. But in that example, as well as the example in your guys' partnership, and as well as just like a normal person who just wants to bail, what happens if one of you guys dies? Or you get in a fight, or you want to quit? Is your business just going to die? You know, are you going to be done? Do you think about this? I know Jenna Marbles, I think is huge on YouTube. I'm pretty sure she just bounced like she just said, I'm out. Same with Casey Neistat, he goes, I don't feel like making videos. So does your money just go away?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  I think creators are a lot like athletes. Like, I think the term creators and athletes are kind of, like, you can think of them in similar ways. So it's kind of like if if we stop playing, like, yeah, your income from playing is is gone. I think it's about figuring out the the businesses that can support you outside of of creating videos. Because the reality is like, you can't sell Colin and Samir and expect someone else to operate it. If one of us is gone, this version of Colin and Samir is done. That's the reality. But the things we build, like, it's it's a lot of why we built a newsletter. Because like, we we were like, okay, that follows a similar value prop. It's similar in creating content. I'd say Sam, like, inspired by a lot of what you did. And,

• 40:45Speaker 01

  you know, like, hey, we're educating people about this space. We think we can do it in this way. We can hire writers. We can scale our voice and our thoughts. And if we're gone, that thing can operate.

• 40:55Sam Parr?

  It's not called the Colin and Samir newsletter. Right. You know, it's called the published press for a reason, with that goal in mind, that it that it truly can scale beyond us.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  But what we do is is unscalable beyond us. And I think we we're okay with that. You know?

• 41:12Speaker 03

  So I think if we, if we were to separate in that hypothetical, uh, something were to happen, I would hope that like, let's say I'm no longer around. I think Samir like could continue the interview show that we're currently doing and serve the brand partners that we have if he wanted to do that.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  That sounds like Colin's thought about it. Yeah, that sounds like

• 41:33Speaker 03

  No, I'm just saying hypothetically, like whereas, whereas in the past, we had a format for, we had like a really high live format for creation that just wouldn't have worked. Like if one of us was gone, it wouldn't have worked. But right now we have an interview show. We have a talk show. It wouldn't be the same, but like you could carry it on.

• 41:48Sam Parr?

  What craters surprise you? Have you, have you guys interviewed anyone or come across a channel where you're like, dude, this fishing channel that just does fly fishing is making a million dollars a month? Or like, has, there's ever been anything, like, there's a guy I saw who has a channel just on, uh, breaking into locks. And it's got like, it's a huge channel. There's another channel that where they just smash stuff. It's like a, it's like a press. I forget what you call it. Yeah. But a hydraulic press. Is there any channel that you come across and you're like, man, these guys are killing it. No one knows about it. Or at least mainstream doesn't know about it.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Man, I wanna, I wanna pull up the exact name, but it's a barbecue channel. There's like, there's a whole barbecue genre on, um, YouTube that's massive. And they do huge partnerships with like brands that, that you know, Colin and I would never interact with, right? Like Sweet Baby Ray's or Stubbs or, um, and they're like, starting to sell their own rubs, right? Like spice rubs. And those are really high margin. And like, that genre to me is really interesting. And people who are into barbecue are really into barbecue. Um, so I love that genre. I think that's like, they're very good businesses there when it comes to selling spice rubs, um, and, and barbecue accessories, I guess.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  I'm always amazed by channels like the slow mo guys where there's literally no need for language. It's just the visual of something happening in slow motion. And the viewership is so high because those videos can be watched again and again and again all over the world, no matter what language you speak, that YouTube can place ads.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Globally, in every market. And so just the revenue that they get from YouTube, the platform is out of control. That to me is a fascinating business where it's just, let's film something in slow motion and rake in massive advertising dollars.

• 43:29Sam Parr?

  You guys want to hear something fucked up?

• 43:31Speaker 01

  So

• 43:31Sam Parr?

  Sure. There's this channel that I follow and it has a huge following and no one talks about it because it's really embarrassing. So there's this, there's a group of people, I'm one of them, that we like popping zits. But to take it a step, to take it a step further, there's one where people love seeing dandruff come off people's head. And so because, because like when you have dandruff, you like scratch, you're like, I need to get this out. It's killing me. And sometimes you can't do it. So when you watch other people, at least for me, when I watch other people do it, I'm like, oh, I feel the relief. Like, it feels relieving for me to see that. And there's this guy, I think it's just called like the Indian Dandruff Barber.

• 44:15Sam Parr?

  And he takes guys with dandruff and he shaves their head and you could see it all like, you could see like his scalp get like cleaned. And I was with my friend Neville recently and I went to his house and I turned on his YouTube and I go, hey, let me show you this video. It's hilarious, but don't laugh at me. Think I'm a creep. And he, and I went to that video and it was purple. He had already clicked on it. And I was like, dude, you fucking guy, you watch this dandruff shit too? And it's, there's like this whole genre of people, if you watch, if you do like, if you type in like dandruff removal, there's so many videos of people who just love watching. Or another one is like, like seeing cysts. You know what a cyst is? Like a lump in a body, seeing those get removed. I fucking

• 44:55Sam Parr?

  love those videos. I love them. You guys don't watch that? Don't make me feel like a freak.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Listen, listen. Whenever I come across a good pimple popping video, I'm diving in. Like, I'm not, I don't shy away from that. And I've seen the Indian dandruff guy. I don't think I haven't seen that. I also, there's one account that I like got really weirdly into, which was the folding lady on TikTok. She just folds clothes in different ways and that's it. And like organizes them in her drawers. And my drawers are a disaster. So it's like this, for me, it's like this aspirational account that I can watch where she organizes stuff. Well, there's a lot of weird stuff out there.

• 45:34Shaan Puri?

  And how do you guys look at TikTok? Cause TikTok is this like younger, sexier version of YouTube. It's like, you know, you're the 37 year old actress. And now you see this, you know, 21 year old come onto the scene and you're like, oh no, what's happening over here? You know, what's the perspective on TikTok from your guys' point of view?

• 45:55Speaker 03

  I see TikTok as a bit of like a content accelerator. But like, if you're new to content creation and you want to find out what works faster, then go to TikTok because it's a low barrier to entry to post. And if something doesn't get viewership, no one really sees it. Like there's not much weight on it because of the for you page, which is like this talent show style format. It's like, if it's good, it'll find people. If it's not, whatever. It doesn't feel like with YouTube, you know, when you start a YouTube channel, it feels like a statement. You're like, I'm here to make my own version of some big media company. And, you know, that is there for all of time. Every time you pivot, every time you make a bad video, it's just sitting there in your library. Whereas TikTok, it's like, it's not as much weight on it.

• 46:40Speaker 03

  So just move fast, put something out. And I think it's a great place to find audience. I don't know if it's a great place to monetize that audience though, I would say.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  I think a big reason for that is because it's like the closest thing to a lean back experience. Right? Like you just turn it on and you say, whatever's on the for you page, like it's really good at finding content that's good for me. I might not go in there and search for a creator. That's like not really a behavior that I think a lot of people do. It's just like, you feed me whatever's good here. So let's say you take out the top creators on TikTok, like the absolute top creators. All of our TikTok experience wouldn't be changed that much. Like it would still find content that's interesting to us. So it's actually not a great place for creators. It's a great place for content. It's not a great place for creators to build relationships with their, with their fans. That's why most TikTok creators move to YouTube to build that. They can build like longer lasting, more depth with their audience.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  They can build a library of content that, you know, you know, accrues viewership over time. It's where like you would, if you're serious about the career, I think you'd move to YouTube.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  You're you're you're there like Tik Tok is the creator. You're putting content into their system. So I think that's an important distinction between the two.

• 47:53Shaan Puri?

  What it sounds like you guys are not as bullish on Tik Tok. Like I've kind of thought about like, I'll give you an example. I put out a tweet the other day, Sam, I don't know if you saw that. You did. You did see it. You called the guy an idiot and you were like, this guy's an idiot. You should hire him. This I put it like, hey, I just want to hire a great content creator.

• 48:13Speaker 03

  Cause are we talking about the milkman?

• 48:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 48:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay, I saw it.

• 48:17Shaan Puri?

  So this guy, I tweeted out this thing saying, I'm hiring content creator. You just gotta be great at content and we will, we have distribution will help you accelerate here and for the milk road and we I get this tweet back yesterday. That's like, for those who haven't seen it's on my Twitter, you can go find it. But it's this, I don't know, Colin, you tell me, I thought it was amazing, but maybe it's just because it's about our thing. Was it amazing to you guys as it was to me?

• 48:38Speaker 03

  I think that's an extremely visual compelling piece of content with in a format where I have to watch to the end. You get to see him struggle and try and finish that gallon of milk.

• 48:48Shaan Puri?

  You just explained that like you're a machine learning thing tagging it like extremely visually compelling piece of content, high, high engagement to the end, like, you know,

• 48:57Speaker 03

  I've seen, I've seen too many videos at this point. I have to put them into buckets.

• 49:00Sam Parr?

  Summarize the video, Sean.

• 49:02Shaan Puri?

  So the guy's basically like, hey, you know, you're hiring, I saw your tweet, you're hiring a content creator and he like, he used our joke from my first million, I've moved straight to the end. He's like, so I've moved straight to the end. Here I am. I've got a gallon of milk. I'm going to drink this to show my commitment. I don't even know what his premise was, but he's basically going to chug a gallon of milk in order to show how bad he wants this job. And he made a funny Tik Tok out of it with the editing. And he's like, asking people, hey, can you hold this camera? I need to drink this milk. He's like in a car mechanics place. They're like, no. So he puts it on the ground and he just takes off his shirt and he just starts chugging this milk and it's just awful. And then he's like, has little cuts in between where he's like, why couldn't they have called it the juice road? And because he's like, you know, having to drink milk and

• 49:44Shaan Puri?

  like, you know, just little funny bits like that. And he, whatever, he finishes it, he celebrates, he pours the milk all over his head at the end. And he's like, whatever, he sends it over. So I hired him. So I tweeted out, I was like, this is amazing. You're hired. I just talked to him on the phone before this. And he's like, all right, like, what's the game plan? And I was like, well, I think the first thing we gotta do is we gotta pick the channel we want to be on. Cause I think the platform will dictate what content works on that platform. And so like, like I have a buddy, Steve, Steve Bartlett, who says this, which is like, you need to hack the algorithm, like you need to understand how the, what the algorithm wants. And then you have to be able to serve it to them. If you want to grow like faster than normal. And so, and so we were debating like, should we start on YouTube or should we start on Tik Tok?

• 50:28Shaan Puri?

  And in my head, I'm like, I use both, I love both products. But Tik Tok does definitely feel like a, um, I don't know, it just feels like the growing wave compared to where YouTube is. And so I'm like, I guess if you're starting fresh, you would just start on the platform. That's like more of a growing wave and like try to make it happen over there. But that was the downside is even if we get viral growth from it, like those people may never see us or hear from us again, because it's just the way that Tik Tok works. So that's why I was like, ah, I don't know, I'm not sure about this bet here. Which one should we go for? Your guys' perspective sounds like it'd lean more towards YouTube. Is that right?

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Well, well, I would say the opposite. Yeah, I would say the opposite.

• 51:10Shaan Puri?

  Go ahead, go.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think you have to pick and choose necessarily because let's say you're going to commit to short form, vertical content, which obviously you would put on Tik Tok.

• 51:20Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 51:20Speaker 03

  You could post that, yes, you could post the same thing on YouTube shorts. As well as on reels, maybe, and like, you know, keep that up for a certain amount of time and see what takes off. Cause you may find yourself in a situation where YouTube shorts takes off. And all of a sudden people are subscribing to your YouTube channel for shorts. And then if you wanted to transition to a long form video, you have a home for it. And that's a place where you could build a deeper connection on Tik Tok. You don't really have that option right now.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  A long form YouTube video, I would say like, that's the highest barrier to entry when it comes to content. So I think short form vertical is the lowest, is a lower barrier to entry, not the lowest. Like a tweet is probably the lowest barrier to entry. But like that is, you want to take more shots to figure out your format, your style. It might take a hundred videos to be like, actually that's our format. That one works. Or maybe you figured it out and this guy's just got to chug milk every day until you guys, you know, get enough users. But like, I think that's what it is. It's format development and you need a lot of shots on goal to, to.

• 52:19Shaan Puri?

  Can I tell you my, my first assignment I gave him?

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 52:23Shaan Puri?

  I was like, all right, here's the first, first thing. Man on the street style interview, you know, where you go, like you've seen this on late night shows, you go and you just stop somebody in Times Square, you're like, hey, Bo, do you know about this? And then they give you some goofy answer, you cut them together. I said, uh, go outside of a strip club and ask strippers if we're in a recession. And like, ask strippers how the economy is going. And basically, that's what he's gonna do. He's gonna go man on the streets style, outside of a strip club. And then when the strippers come out, he's gonna ask them, how's the economy doing? Because they are the front lines, they feel it first, you know, they see what, you know, is the cash flowing?

• 52:55Sam Parr?

  From all the drunk hedge fund guys.

• 52:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, they get the, they get all the scoop and they see the tips, how they're, how they're changing cash, you know, you know, in real time. So that's gonna be the first piece of content.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think that can work. Uh, I think that's a very specific audience and, and it'll work for that audience, right? So, yeah.

• 53:13Sam Parr?

  Dude, what happened? So the point, I was gonna make a point where, so our podcast gets one or two million podcasts downloads a month. And compared to like, a lot, like a website that gets 10 million, I'm like, I think we're, we have a bigger, a bit, we don't have a bigger, but we have a far more loyal following because people listen to us for an hour at a time with YouTube, they watch you for 10, 20, 30 minutes at a time. And I was gonna say, I would have thought that you guys had one or two million ish downloads a month, uh, views a month. I'm looking at your stats on Social Blade, you were at like a million a month, every month, 800, 400, 500. And then all of a sudden you got to like 27, 28, 42 million a month. What the hell happened? Is that from shorts?

• 53:55Speaker 01

  That's a lot from shorts, but shorts propelled the other content. Like, basically, the way we view shorts, like, a lot of people had a lot of problem with, like, oh, you can't monetize shorts. And I was like, but if I told you as, as any business that I had a way that was lower lift to get you in front of way more people, to get your brand exposure to millions of people, wouldn't you take it? And that's what we did, like, right when shorts kind of emerged, we were like, okay, we can make a short in a day. Whereas it takes us a very, like, a week to two weeks to make a, a full, long form YouTube video. We can make a short in a day. And so let's just try it. And as we started to try it, like, we had shorts that pushed 10 million views, 20 million views, 7 million views, 8 million views. And those people were subscribing.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  And then there was concern, like, are those people gonna watch the other content? But because the shorts were, you know, directly connected to the longer form content, we were just aggregating more people who then watched our library of content. So it worked for us. And that has fluctuated too. I think we're back to like, right now, I think we're in like the nine, 10 million views a month range on the channel. And shorts are not like as big of a factor. We're not putting out as many shorts, but a lot more people are watching our library now. And that is what YouTube is. Like you're building a library of content that, you know, our Mr. Beast interview, for example, you mentioned it, it's pushing 11 million views right now, but in the first month it did a million views. So, you know, you look at now it'll, it'll be a year in September, it'll probably have

• 55:23Speaker 01

  12, 13 million views. You know, and so that's, it's about this library, building a piece of content that can be viewed over the next year, two years, five years. And when you do that, it does have, you know, this compounding effect, especially when shorts are added to the equation as an accelerant.

• 55:39Sam Parr?

  We have a, we had a short go viral recently and it's Sean explaining who like, one of the Ball brothers is, and I have, I don't pay attention to any of that, any sports. And they're in all the kinds, I just randomly clicked on the comments and they're all like, these fucking guys are idiots. Like he doesn't know anything about Lamar Ball. I forget who it is, Sean, but.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  It's the dad, Lamar Ball. Yeah.

• 55:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And you're like, explaining this as people are just ripping us of the short comments.

• 56:05Speaker 03

  I think that's how you know you went viral, really.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:07Speaker 03

  Whenever any of our videos hit that mass scale, that's when the comments sort of turn. And it's just, it's kind of a good sign in a way. It's just, just what happens.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's one that, there's one, so we did this clip contest for the podcast. So we're like, hey, we'll take any of our content. You own a channel. So you make your own TikTok channel, your own shorts channel, and cut these clips. And basically, we just want our clips out there. So we're kind of doing it different than most where you guys want to, you guys want to build your specific channels. We're like, you can call your thing, my first million clips or whatever, and go hand with the content. You own that. We just want distribution. And we give out a prize for whoever like does the best job each month of cutting it. And people have like, what, so the first, first winner, they had a.

• 56:53Shaan Puri?

  Few million views on their like TikTok channel or whatever. And we paid him the five grand, you know, prize for our thing. But they've actually turned that into a business for other podcasts. And that business will do like a million dollars in revenue this year. As like a, you know, pretty young kid. Then with this one, just yesterday, somebody said, oh, here's the clip. That's gone, gotten 1.2 million views. And it's this clip from an interview we did with this guy Neil Patel. And he's talking about how he spends like 180 grand a month. That's like monthly lifestyle burn rate. And, um, and the title of it is like billionaire, like billionaire explains how he spends 180 grand a month. And like, the guy's not a billionaire, but like, doesn't matter. Like, you know, the kid who's running this channel is probably like, fuck it, that's gonna do better. Then the top comments are like, oh, like that's, that's Neil Patel.

• 57:38Shaan Puri?

  He's not a billionaire. And then like this guy's like egging it on. He's like, question mark, question mark, question mark. And this is the only response instead of being like, oh yeah, sorry, that's a mistake. And then somebody else says, who is this guy? And he just wrote, he writes, the founder of Google? Question mark. And then there's a hundred comments being like, that's not the founder of Google. And I was like, who is this genius that's hacking the engagement by putting dumb comments? As the creator, just to get people riled up. So that this, you know, the algorithm sees that this video has a ton of engagement in it.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  I mean, we've played around with that a bit. That's, that's, that's definitely something that creators do. We've, we've misspelled words sometimes in our subtitles. We've, um, we, we had a short where we, we interviewed the chief business officer of YouTube, Robert Kinsel. And the short begins like, we interviewed the, we were, we wanted to say, we interviewed the head of business at YouTube. We said, we interviewed the head of YouTube at business and just kept moving on. And like, people rewatched it so many times to be like, wait, what did they say?

• 58:37Speaker 01

  So like, I think there's, there's a lot of fun ways to play with that and play with the audience.

• 58:41Shaan Puri?

  And, oh, you know, we would never do that, me and Sam would not like do that. Like now we wouldn't do that, but this person who's doing this has nothing to lose. So they're of course gonna like, just crank the dial up to level 12 of like spamminess. Cause they're like, who cares? It's not my brand, it's not my content.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, why not? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think like your Drake steak short like that that piece, there's definitely a short there, right? Like that was really fascinating. You could tell that in a really concise, you know, like one clip bit like that was really interesting that you guys, what you guys talked about. And I think like that was one of your better thumbnails too, I would say that came across my recommended like, but the challenge there is that your timestamp at 100 or sorry, an hour 24. I think like anyone's expectation might be like, wait, is that an hour 24 on Drake? And steak? And then, you know, there might be an opportunity to just say, hey, can we just clip out the part that was about that? And then, you know, lead people to watch the full take or

• 59:40Speaker 01

  listen to the full thing on, on audio feeds.

• 59:42Sam Parr?

  I, the guys who edit the podcast, I think they also edit the YouTube. So, hey, guys, you hear that? Do it, please.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think that's your opportunity is like, hey, it's actually eight minutes on, on the Drake steak situation, right? And that was your best thumbnail, I think, like that, that caught my attention. That made me curious. So, yeah.

• 1:00:02Sam Parr?

  Well, dudes, thanks for coming on. This is sick. I've been listening to you or watching you guys for a while. It's really awesome that you came on and it's awesome that you knew about the pod. So that was really cool. And we appreciate it. This is great. And of course, thanks for having us. We both run, run or ran newsletter companies. So you've been helpful with us for new videos. If you ever want to shoot the shit about newsletters, we got you.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  Man, that'd be awesome. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. We definitely want to learn. So, yeah. Right on, guys. Cool.