Casey Neistat: Why I Quit YouTube & What I'm Doing Now!

It got scary. We had to move into a high security building and I didn't know what to do. That's when it got dark. Casey Neistat of YouTube, the king of vlogging. One of the most prolific creators in history. Throughout your story there's this objectively delusional persistence towards a goal. The word I've been using is patience because patience is so unattractive and I think you need to remove this idea of success being this romantic, beautiful thing. It's not. When I started my daily vlog, making a video a day 800 days in a row, it took eight years to go from zero to a couple hundred thousand subscribers, failing year in and year out, and I was $200,000 in debt. Awful. You're a loser. But patience will smash into opportunity and then it went to 10 million subscribers in like 18 months. So in life you can get whatever you want, but are you willing to do that for 20 years? If you're not, don't bother, man. You've sold the company, you've built the channels, you've made a huge name for yourself. At that point That's when it got hard because the only goal that anyone should have in life is one of happiness and fulfillment. And like this idea that you have to win to be happy could not be further from the truth. I had by every definition achieved success, but I wasn't running the marathon because I wanted to get across the finish line. I was running it because I loved the running and the fame was insane. Like we had to move to LA and I didn't know what to do. Until now. Is this a new Casey? What can we expect? Casey is a legend. He's a legend to so many people. He's one of the originals as it relates to creativity, content, video, and YouTube. And although most of us know Casey, what most of us don't know is the underdog story, the true, deep, uncovered motivations that drove him to become arguably one of the world's most famous, most acclaimed, most celebrated online creators ever. And it's a story that you'll relate to. It's a story of a completely normal dude that was down and out, that had a very big, indistinguishable passion. And more interesting, maybe for me as someone that's watched Casey's journey from afar, is what he's doing now. For the first time ever, he talks about what his life is right now. Now that he's not uploading videos every day. Now that he's a little bit further out of the spotlight. And Casey gives us this blueprint for how we can take that thing that we enjoy doing, that thing we consider a passion or a hobby, and drag it up the mountain and make it an incredibly lucrative job. How do we turn our passion into a career? And how do we become number one at the thing we do when everything everything seems to be against us? That is the story of Casey Neistat and that's the story you're going to enjoy today. Before this episode starts, the one favor I'll ask, if you enjoy what we do here and you enjoy the guests that we bring, please join the Diary of a CEO journey by hitting the subscribe button. And if you do, I'll make you a deal. I'll do everything in my power to make this show bigger and better for you. Do we have a deal? Enjoy this episode. Casey, what do I need to know about your earliest years to understand the man that sits before me today? I I almost think of people's lives, like a set of dominoes that have fallen. What are those first dominoes that fell to create the man that sits here today? Oh, man. How much time you got? Plenty. So my whole childhood was just completely unsupervised. Like there was no did you do your homework tonight? There was no like dinner at 6:00. It was like be home before dark or you're going to be in trouble. Trouble never being defined and like dark never being defined. And it was just kind of like a very loose, kind of [ __ ] up, wandering childhood of exploration. You know, like I was telling this story recently, but we there were railroad tracks behind our house. And one of the things we used to do for fun when we were little kids is we collect pennies and change and we'd lay them on the railroad tracks and the train would go over them and flatten them. Very cool. But the train would vibrate the tracks as it approached and the coins would fall off of it. So what the only way to to to address that is you'd put the coins on the train tracks when the train was really close. So I you know, I don't know. I was in grammar school, which is sixth grade. Like how old are you then? I was like 10 years old. It's a little kid. And like, you know, train tracks, huge freight train coming and me putting nickels on the train tracks to try to get a flattened coin. That's kind of what my childhood was like. As you look back, what is the power and the the gift that that unsupervised gives you cuz I resonate with that so much. I think the reason I became an entrepreneur was because I I've always said this, when I was 10 years old my parents weren't there when I went to bed and they weren't there when I woke up. And being the youngest of four, it was like they'd assumed I'd also been parented already. So they just they like gave up or something. They just got busy. So in that void of independence I conducted a lot of experiments and I almost hear that in what you're saying as well. That unsupervised allowed for exploration that allowed for something. Yeah, I think it's um or like necessity is the mother of invention and I think, you know, if you're 10 and your parents all of a sudden are absent, you're just forced to figure [ __ ] out. It's funny because like all I want to do as a parent now is protect my children from the hardships I had when I was little. But it is those hardships I had that made me who I am. And it is like this impossible dichotomy to address. It's impossible as a parent. Like I constantly think I'm [ __ ] up my kids. Like we send them to a private school because we can. Like if you can afford it, which we can, we're fortunate. Like why would I not send my kids to the best school? But in the back of my brain, I think what's best for them is to be in some New York City public school figuring it out. Like I think that's what's best, but I don't do that. Um because I had a terrible time at public school. I hated it. So I want to protect them from that. So I send them to a really fancy school that's lovely and warm and cozy. And like am I helping them? I don't know. But no, I think that exactly what you were saying, like I had no choice but to figure it out when I was little. Like I worked from like when I was super young I figured out how to make a dollar. Like I was a paper boy when I was really, really young delivering newspapers and I'd make like 30 bucks a week and then, you know, when I got to um eighth grade and I started smoking pot and I realized like the math behind weed sales. I was like, okay, there's like a there's a 400% a 4x return if you buy quarter ounces and you break them down and you sell them as dime bags, but if you buy a quarter pound and you sell them as eighths, you're looking at a 1600% return. I was like, okay, so how do I come up with 250 bucks to buy the to buy the QP and then let me break that down and then like I haven't hit puberty yet. I'm a little kid. Like these guys are going to beat the [ __ ] out of me if I mess with the wrong people. So I need to befriend the guys that can protect me and like figure out that business. Um all of that was because I had like I had no choice. Why were you unsupervised? Where were your parents? Um and this is what I mean when I say my parents were accidentally um great and I do think they tried their best. You know, like my dad worked a zillion hours a week. He had no choice. Um I think we lived like a very middle class livelihood. You know, like my parents had like nice cars. They had Volvos, but they always bought like five-year-old Volvos, not never new cars. And like we lived in a house that was like comfortable, but like, you know, there's never any food in our house. It was like it was fine. We always made it by. Like we'd go on vacation, but it was always like in the back of the station wagon and we'd go to like a town two hours away and stay in a shitty motel for two or three nights. But my dad worked all the time and I only understood later that it was very like hand to mouth. You know, he's paycheck to paycheck kind of guy. And my mother, you know, I don't I still don't understand my mom. I think she she was one of eight kids. My mother is the tail end of an aristocracy. So it's like I would describe her side of the family as like all the privilege and entitlement of an aristocrat with none of the money. So I you know, I don't my mother was just always kind of an enigma, always kind of absent. Um and I think that they were just they tried the best they could and we were just kind of left wandering as kids. They divorced at some point. Yeah, that's when things got really hard. In what way? I think that childhood always felt like you were sort of hanging on by a thread. It was like one of four. My older brother Van was the firstborn and he's such a Van is such an incredible guy and he's so magnetic. And then there's my sister who's the only girl. And then there's my little baby brother Dean who was the baby. And then I was just kind of this like accident that happened 13 months after my sister and two years before my brother. Like it was this So it was like I I was always the loudest and the squeakiest to get the most attention. And you know, that was I kind of think that like characterized what my the challenges was were for me as a kid growing up. And then it just got, you know, the the the the tumult of living in that house just kind of precipitated until my parents split up, which happened under very like auspicious, shitty, [ __ ] up circumstances and kids being blamed when the kids shouldn't have been blamed and um I say all that without faulting my parents. again I think they were trying their best but looking back at it it's like what the [ __ ] guys. I I had you say previously that you you had to tell your father that your mother had been had cheated on him. Yeah I remember that vividly and I can picture the table we were sitting at I can remember his posture I can remember his response to it but yeah you know my mother you know she's a she's a you know she's a good woman she has faults like all of us humans have faults but I think she let those manifest in a way that were really dark at that time in her life and it was apparent to me as a 14 year old exactly what was going on. Exactly what was going on it was so [ __ ] crystal clear. As a 14 year old? Yeah like abundantly clear. And I never really understood my own father's perspective on that. But I understand that his perspective now it's like you know he's working a million hours a week to keep his head above water and also like you don't want to see that you don't like the truth sucks so just like put your head in the sand and ignore it is a very natural response to it but I was like fighting with my mother at the time about you know all kinds of [ __ ] that a teenager fights with their parents about getting in trouble at school and all of that so I I was mad at her and I think I you know part of part of me addressing that was just sort of confronting my dad like what are you going to do about this woman? At 14 years old you knew your mother was cheating on your father and and you told him? Yeah. How does one know that? I mean it's it it was it was super apparent I mean there were very there was a handful of very specific situations that just made it abundantly clear um and you know I think that's why I like you know at the time obviously I fault my mom through and through but looking back at it it was you know it was probably something closer to like a cry for help or a cry for attention or oh but just a way of her you know her letting the struggles she was facing in their totality of her life manifest like this is the only way I can express it is by doing this kind of [ __ ] up awful thing. As you step out of that chapter of your your childhood what are the fingerprints the character fingerprints that are left on you that still are with you today? What did that chapter of your life those first sort of 15 years do you think think anything has changed I don't think it's even fingerprints there was so like acute the way that I had that I saw my future when I was that young. Like I knew exactly my plan. Really? And exactly my plan and then look the specifics of how that plan was going to come together were ambiguous at best but like I had I knew exactly my plan. Like New York City was always the plan and I remember it was like page 41 in my social studies book was a two page spread of the New York City skyline and I wouldn't let myself look at that page cuz it would I would have such an emotional response to it like Tom Hanks in the movie Big I would play that movie on repeat cuz I was like that's me like that's me I'm going to move to New York City and get to be the kid that I wish I could be like that's me to this day like I know every word of that movie that movie is like a bible for me it is a road map for me but you know like I've I've made 500 YouTube videos about this single idea but like the mission of my life and this was defined then when I was a little kid the sole mission of my life is to realize all the promises I made to myself as a kid. Like when you're a little kid and you're like someday I'm going to be an astronaut and like your mom yells at you and it's like well someday I'm going to have kids and I'm not going to yell at them or like you're [ __ ] hungry and you're all out of mac and cheese and you're like someday I'm going to have a refrigerator that's always filled up with food like whatever it is. You know you have a boss that's an [ __ ] and it's like someday I'm not going to have any boss and like all of those promises like my promises could you know they could fill up a phone book and my sole mission was always like you know I have to check every single one of these off. Um the how was always gray but the the to do it was always vivid and there was never even a doubt that it was going to happen like there was never an if never there's nothing even close to that. But life throws at you at that age things that you could never have predicted and those things don't seem to have deterred your pursuit of that mission. You have a child that's what 16 17 years old? Yeah that was it yeah so I moved out moved out is such a funny way of characterizing I say moved out and I picture like a moving truck pull up I got in a fight with my mom at age 15 on a Monday night um school night and she gave me this ultimatum this is when she and my father were like you know really they they were splitting up and getting back together it was like a really gnarly time in the family but we got into this fight and I just remember thinking like I was so mad at her at the time I was like you can't tell me what to do and she was like you need to do this this and this or get out of this house and I was like all right I'm going to go. And I just like left. Where where did you go? I like that I just stayed at a friend's house down the street cuz his parents were like weirdly religious but also kind of absent they were always like really warm to me so I was like can I sleep here and he's like yeah sure. And I slept in another friend's house and then So you ran away from home? Yeah so I say moved out it wasn't like you know put the couch over there and it was like I just took a backpack and it was as close to like a stick with a red handkerchief on the back um but I eventually moved in with these two girls they were great they were super fun um and you know they were like let's see I was 15 I think they were 17 or 18 and then yeah I started you know one of them she and I kind of got close and then like immediately she was pregnant and a year later we had yeah we had a kid. And that was challenging but even so like I never I remember one moment where like she started freaking out in the car cuz she was like you know eight months pregnant and she's like crying and just like you know dealing with it and I pulled over and I was like what are you upset about and she was like what are we going to do? We don't have any money like you don't even have a job like what are we going to do? And I was like it's going to be fine what do you mean what are we going to do it's going to be fine we're going to have a kid it's going to be great it's going to be fine. Were you not scared? Then no it just everything made sense I was like oh this is great. There's a naivety to there's beautiful Now I'm scared I always say that like I had nothing to lose then I had nothing and nothing like I had I had no reputation you know like my friends parents all thought I was a [ __ ] degenerate they wouldn't let me hang out with their friends cuz I was such a bad influence so it wasn't like I had like a reputation nobody knew me I had nothing I had no money I had no resources I knew no one and when you have nothing to lose you're just like a you're like a rat that's cornered and it was like all right I'm going to chew my way out of this one um and now I'm like so scared of everything I do in life cuz I'm like it's so good right now I don't want to [ __ ] anything up take it really easy like I'm really happy right now like this is I want to protect what I've got. But no there was a naivety then that was just uh that was it's hard for me to empathize with how like bright eyed bushy tailed naive I was I remember like my son Owen when his mother when she and I split up um you know she dumped me cuz I was just such a pain in the ass and God bless her for doing so but I remember it was like then I was like okay I've got a plan in five years I'm going to move to New York City and I'm going to figure this out and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. What were you going to do in New York? know I had some cockamamie plan there's always a plan. Um I don't know what this is but I knew that like up until that point in my life I'd only ever worked in the back of restaurants washing dishes or like being like a prep cook or just being like the low man in the totem pole takes out the trash and scrubs out the garbage cans and like does all the [ __ ] work mop um is the only job I'd ever done. My my father sold used restaurant supplies so like if you needed a new oven or walk in fridge so he could always get me jobs in restaurants and I remember like moving to New York City my only plan was like I'm just not going to work in a restaurant that's my plan I'm going to do anything that's not work but I had this five year plan to move to New York City and like six months later I quit my job and moved to New York. When you look back at that sort of like 19 year old kid that quits his job and moves to New York so up until that point what do you now know as a guy that's in their 40s about the brilliant accidental decisions you were making at the time? Like what are the brilliant you know like the accidental brilliance that is probably objectively stupidity like that's a stupid decision but in hindsight you go I was a genius. You know it's I never would say in hindsight I was a genius it's just be it was raw stupidity and fearlessness but it's like all those stupid [ __ ] quotes that everybody posts on Instagram that like I hate about like you know you only live once follow your dreams pursue this like [ __ ] you [ __ ] every one of you I hate that [ __ ] I hate inspo porn even though I'm very guilty of fanning the flames of inspo porn but like there's so much truth to all of that and the reason why I hate that [ __ ] is like if you have to be told that too late if you're going to learn that from an Instagram post it means nothing nothing to you it's just masturbation like it's it's doing nothing for anyone people just put it up there to feel good about themselves but all of it is true and what I mean by that is like I could never do at age 42 what I could do at age 19 which is just say [ __ ] it I've got a 10th grade education no high school diploma no work experience no life experience and a two year old what's the best thing I can do right now I know let me move to the most expensive challenging city in the world with no plan. If I hadn't done it then I don't I don't know if you could ever do that and I think that like when I say those cheesy quotes are true, it's like you kind of have an obligation in in life that if you feel something that is so powerful to you, like follow through with that. And I'm not naive to that now. I wasn't naive to it then, but I think now I can articulate it, which is like this idea of privilege. Like if you're like born in the United States of America, if you like get to sit at a table and do this, like no, I wasn't a rich kid and like yeah, I was like on welfare and got free diapers and milk from the state, otherwise I wouldn't be able to feed my child and like I work 60 hours a week in a kitchen making eight bucks an hour. I think I got 7.25 an hour was my starting um salary. And like I that was like I'm like the luckiest person in the world to get to do that. Are you crazy? Like do you know what some kid in South Sudan would do for that opportunity? And I just walked into it. I'm like a healthy guy. I've got two legs that work and like like I got a brain like I'm like I'm the lucky the lotto on life. So like if you start life with this winning lotto ticket and it's like a little hiccup. Accidentally had a baby when I was [ __ ] teenager. It's like oh, no big deal. Like they'll just push through this. This is going to be great. And it's like I want to live in New York City. It's like let's go for it. Let's do it. The privilege that sounds like a privilege of mindset. Not this objective privilege I guess from being a Yeah, like I push back and when people say that, my response is like [ __ ] you. Privilege of mindset. No, that's an objective privilege. Name one time in the history of humanity Like where the Sumerians invented the written word 5,000 years ago. Name one time when people had the kind of opportunity that like people like us born in the West have. Like there's never existed before. Never. Ever. Maybe it was a little bit easier for our parents. You know what I mean? Like maybe like post-war USA was like a little bit easier than it is now. Maybe now is a little bit harder than it was for me 20 years ago, but like still, give me a [ __ ] break. Like this life is like it's it's the hardships we face now are so menial compared to what they were 100 years ago. Objectively, 200 years ago. You ever see that thing that went viral and it was like the reasons why people died in London in the year 1892 and like the fourth most popular cause of death was teeth. Like it was like if 60% of the population are dying cuz their teeth are [ __ ] up. Like we have it pretty easy. What Why don't people So there's going to be another guy right now that's like washing pots in the back room at the seafood restaurant on the $7 an hour. And he might be listening to this right now and he hears you say that, but why why don't people take action beyond that point and take the big bet when they have objectively potentially nothing to lose? Oh, what's that line from is it Caddyshack or Fletch when he's like the world needs ditch diggers, too? That's a very cynical take on it, but I think a very practical take is like not everybody wants it and I think that's okay. I think it's a wonderful thing. I never understood that. I think like in life you can get whatever you want, but you can't want whatever you want. If you don't want it, there's no creating that. But do you think think sometimes people want to want it, but they don't really want it? course. Of course. And I think that's okay. Like if you really [ __ ] wanted it, you wouldn't need this like inspirational podcast to make you make that decision. You'd already be [ __ ] doing it. Um and that's not it to be defeatist. It just means that like the only goal that anyone should have in life is one of happiness and fulfillment. And like this idea that you have to win to be happy could not be further from the truth. Like why do we hear about rock stars and famous actors and these people that we see as sort of like the the absolute apex of success in the industry, why are they all [ __ ] killing themselves and dying of alcoholism and like all that darkness happening at the highest level? It's like cuz that doesn't equal happiness. Like what is happiness for you? And the example I like to point to is like my best friend in the whole world, we grew up together like um I like ran away from home. I stayed with them for a little while. Like we've been together since we were kids. You know, like when I moved to New York, he stayed in the hometown. And like when I quit my job washing dishes, I gave him that job. He literally took over that job. And now, you know, here we are 25 years later. He still lives in that town. Um you know, he still has a a job very similar to what he had 25 years ago. He's got three amazing kids. He lives like a very what I would say is like very classic archetypal middle class American life. And like I look at him and I'm like that is the embodiment of like happiness and fulfillment. He has this amazing relationship with his amazing wife. He has these three brilliant little kids that he gets to, you know, make sure you get they get to school every single day. He's got like a cute dog that he goes on runs with. He has this amazing life and no part of that life was being like [ __ ] this. I want to like live on the moon someday. I need to run away from all this. Like his his focus in life was something completely different. And I think that I didn't understand I I struggled to appreciate that when I was younger, but now I see like so much to that and that's why I think like adjusting the pie in the sky is just one of happiness and fulfillment and defining those it is up to you. Bronnie Ware meant was talking about the other day. She's a I think it's called palliative care nurse in Australia who interviewed people with one day left to live and she asked them what their biggest regret in their life was. The number one regret of the dying was not living a life true to myself. Mhm. And for those people, those that do have this aspiration to start that business or I don't know, become a ballet dancer in Europe or whatever that are held back by potentially some form of fear, you know, is there is there anything that one can offer them to get them just to take that that first initial step, which seems to be the hardest, like getting off the couch or getting out of quitting the job that you you you might offer to your children if they came to you. Yeah, yeah. I just think that failure is um I think failure is like the greatest gift. I think failure is like it hurts so bad, but failure is like is a part of life and if you're not willing to accept that, like failure is part of it. You've got to keep failing. Um Anvil. The story of Anvil. You know, this I made a whole video about this. I made a YouTube video about this. Um and then the leads the there's a movie called Anvil. I think it's called The Story of Anvil or something like that. Anvil was this like big hair rock band in the '80s. And they opened for like Def Leppard. You know, like 50,000 people kind of thing, but they never headlined. They never broke through. They were the always the opening act. They were always like the bridesmaid, never the bride. And the movie opens showing these huge concerts in the '80s and Anvil just rocking out and then it cuts and it shows the lead singer. And he lives in Canada and he drives a little van. He delivers food to old people making minimum wage, like barely able to keep his head above water. And he performs still in his leather outfits as like this middle-aged 50-year-old guy to like six people and they'll be just drinking beer and he's there giving it his all. And the movie is about how relentless this guy like he's just not willing borrows money from his sister to record an album. Nobody buys it. Can't pay her back. She had kids and [ __ ] Like it is the most devastating story you've ever seen because he's unwilling to give up that dream. Like he just wouldn't let it go. It was his whole life. And then this documentary comes out and it's [ __ ] fantastic. And because of the documentary, Anvil blows up. And all of a sudden he is that superstar. Like on tour selling out arenas in Japan and [ __ ] Like he did it. Had he given up at any point in time, the the documentary wouldn't have been interesting. It would have just been another person who threw in the towel. But they made the like a filmmaker saw this story and was like that's crazy. I need to tell that story and it yielded that success. Had he not been willing to take on 40 years of failure, 30 years of failure, um he would have never found success. And I think that's the most extreme version of that. The reason why I was interrupting myself is because I made that YouTube video about that's basically the story I just told you. And like the director reached out and was like whatever the little guy's name, the lead singer of Anvil. He's like, "Dude, he loved your YouTube video." And I was like, "Yes!" I was like starstruck. You know what I mean?" Um but I think failure is overrated. I think failure people are so scared of failure and I think the fear of failure is that it's the fear of what other people are going to think about you. Persistence. That's what I heard through that story as well. Just this almost objectively delusional persistence towards a goal. And I don't know if those words are correct because in that situation I I question whether Anvil's success was ever really making it or the journey itself was the success. But in your story I see the same level of like persistence that a bystander would go that guy's crazy. Because there was various stats I saw about how long it took you to get to various success milestones. Even when you started daily vlogging, I think it took you five years to get to like 400,000 subscribers. Yeah. Throughout your story there's this there's this persistence where I go this guy would have carried on doing this because he wasn't doing this for any particular milestone. What role does persistence play? It's funny cuz persistence is such a it's a more accurate word, but the word I've been using lately is patience because I think it's so much less sexy. Mhm. I think persistence is like like under the picture of the like little kitten hanging off the branch, it's like persistence. You know what I mean? But they'll never say patience. Patience is so unattractive. And when people say to me like what's the one piece of advice you give to an aspiring creator and you know, patience. Like patience above every because like if you're not willing to give up, if you're willing to stick with it for you will find success or you'll die trying, which case [ __ ] it. Like whatever. You know, you're not going to be that person in the palliative care saying, I wish I had hadn't given up cuz you didn't give up. You just kept going. You're going to be that person that's like, I've got one day left. I can still pull this [ __ ] off. But patience is a really unsexy way of saying it and I think you need to remove the sexiness. You need to remove the sensationalism that has that has that inspiration has been perverted with. Is this idea of like it's this romantic beautiful thing. It's not. It's [ __ ] awful. Like failing year in and year out and having everybody roll their eyes at you and like you know, whether you're a musician who's performing at the mall and no one's paying attention to you or you're that YouTuber uploads and you get zero views. Like it's [ __ ] awful. It's embarrassing. You're a loser. Like I talked to to Mr. Beast Jimmy and it's like his war stories from when he started YouTube and he was using his like mom's busted compact computer with the built-in webcam making these videos that no one watched. They're all deleted scrubbed from the internet now. They're terrible. And just like him going to school the next day and it's like two of his friends from school saw him and both acknowledge how terrible they were. Like that kind of like being told you're that's that's failure. Being told you suck over and over and over and over and then seeing how much you suck be quantified by a lack of views or no one showing up to your concert or no one laughing at your jokes cuz you're a stand-up comedian or no one showing up to your restaurant cuz you're a chef. Like that sucks. Starting an online store no one buys your [ __ ] t-shirts. That sucks. Failure sucks. So like combine that with patience. Like that suck? Are you willing to do that for 20 years? If you're not, don't [ __ ] bother, man. Don't bother. And that's why I like the the plainness of the word patience is cuz it's it that is what it is. Persistence. Persistence is like, oh, you're at mile 22. Persist, man. You'll get across the finish line in four short miles. That's beautiful and fun and hardcore. That patience that you and Mr. Beast have both shown and many others, where does it come from? Because objectively any any sane person, if everyone's telling them they're a loser and they suck and their parents are saying you better go get a real job. Anyone who's acting in line with their their apparent incentives in that moment would quit. I think very simply it comes for for me and I think probably for Jimmy, too. We've talked about it. He and I have talked about it, but there was no plan B. There was no other option. You know, like I I had no backup plan. There was nothing else I could do. It wasn't like I had a college education and there was like a job in an ad agency waiting for me where I could just say [ __ ] you'll make 80k a year and get a nicer apartment and relax and have a nice go of it. It was like if this doesn't work, I'm back in the kitchen making 725 an hour. Like you know getting money from the state so I can pay for like groceries on a [ __ ] wick. I was on wick. Women, infants, and children. It was a card. You'd swipe it and you would pay for your diapers and milk and that's it. If you tried to buy like a Nintendo with it, it wouldn't work. Like that I remember that. That's was the fallback. That was the alternative. Um every single turn that was the alternative. Like I moved to New York City and I was here for 3 months. I had a 3-month sublet that my brother's ex-girlfriend paid for. She was like, I'll loan you the money. I was like, cool. It was her parents' credit card that paid for it. And it was like 1,800 bucks. 600 bucks a month. 400 bucks a month for 3 months. I shared a In any event. That lease was up. I had nowhere to live in New York. I was like, [ __ ] what do I do now? I moved in with some This this guy was like, hey man, I need extra money. If you want to sleep on my couch, my dad pays my rent so you can sleep on my couch and just give me like 300 bucks a month and that way the money goes to me. I was like, deal. And I slept on his couch for exactly 11 nights from September 1st to September 11th, 2001. And then the morning of September 11th, the entire apartment blew up with me in it and him in it. And I remember like later that day like getting on the phone with my dad and like the towers are still on fire and my dad being like I think it's time for you to come come home now. Come back. And I was like, what are you talking about? Like what what are you talking? What do you mean? Why would I come back? And he was like, terrorists blew up your apartment. You have no job. You have no prospects. You have no money and now you have nowhere to sleep. I'm I'll figure that out. I'll be fine. Later, Dad. Um like that's that that's patience. That's delusional patience. But you asked why. Like what fuels that patience? The plan B was literally moving back to southeastern Connecticut and getting a job in a restaurant. I read a study once about this whole idea of plan A thinking and they take a group of people and they tell them to do a puzzle and it and in exchange for doing the puzzle um correctly, they'll get a a snack. So they take two groups and they say, okay, do this puzzle. If you do it correctly, you'll get a snack. Then they take another group and they say, do the same puzzle. If you do it correctly, you'll get a snack. But then they say to the group, you can also get the same snack just down the hall in the vending machine. And in the second group where they're given a plan B to get the snack, motivation level levels drop. They spend less time trying to do the puzzle um and their performance towards doing the puzzle comments as well. Just by being aware that they can get the same reward down this down the hall, performance drops. And if there was ever a case for this psychology and they've done this multiple times in multiple studies, but it is pretty solid evidence that even the presence of a plan B can reduce motivation towards your plan A. Completely. Completely. I mean I wish I knew that study cuz that's such a beautiful beautiful illustration of what it is and also what it means to have a a knife at your back. Mhm. Do you remember the thing I used to say back then when I first started to find success and I would always be like my life is like I'm running from a pack of starving wolves. If I slow down at all, I will be eaten alive. Like I have one choice and it's to keep going as fast as I can or I'll be torn to pieces. And that's what it felt like and I love that. Like that sounds so like negative and dark, but like I love that. It was such like a motivation. And I pitied the friends. Like I remember I first moved to New York City, my first summer here. I don't know how, but I like fell in with this like clique of because I thought the girls were pretty, but like these rich kids. And I'd go out with them. And I just remember like the way they would pick up the tab. And they're my age. We're all like 19, 20 years old and they're picking up like, you know, hundreds of dollar bar tabs and like always had taxis. Like a taxi to me was like you know, it's like a private jet. Like you They were like I had all this money and I would always kind of look at them with this kind of like jealously and like it was less of a jealousy and more just fantasizing. Like imagine if I was the same age I am now, but I had a credit card with an unlimited amount of money. Like I went to her apartment. She lives on like the 26th floor. She has a two-bedroom apartment and she lives alone. I'm sharing a 300 square foot studio with strangers I met on Craigslist. We have to wait in line to use the bathroom in the morning. And I fantasized about what that would be like. And then seeing as they got older and as I got older and them sort of them sort of wandering and not sure where they want to go in life and all of that whereas for me it was such a you know, there was such a defined path. Cuz I didn't have any of those luxuries or any of those benefits that I now look at back at that as like being virtuous. So how do you do that for your kids? Well, that's the million-dollar question cuz it's like I never want my kids to feel the that [ __ ] that I had to feel. Like the shame of like always hiding in the bathroom when the bill came. I was like I would always you know, like I would always do something. I wasn't just like a total take, but like I just you know, like I always kind of felt like a scumbag cuz I was never able to contribute the way that other people were and like that's a really shameful thing and like I can remember so many times like when I would meet a young lady and she'd be like, can we go back to your place? And the excuses that I would come up with cuz I like lived in an SRO for a while. I lived in a halfway house that I bribed my way into. A halfway house for anyone that doesn't know in Europe is a It's where you get out of jail and you're not allowed to live normally yet in in the public. That's right. So they put you into a building where they can monitor you. How did you get in there? I bribed the guy at the door. Um there was like a guy behind glass with like a little slot. And you'd have to check in and check out. And I went there and I was like, hey, do you have any open rooms? And he was like, no, get out of here. And I came back with a carton of cigarettes with a hundred-dollar bill in it and I was like, I need a room. And he was like, all right. He was like, 531 is yours, right? Your name there. And he was like, it's $450 a month cash or whatever it was. Interestingly, when you tell that story of being in a halfway house and having no money and all these things, uh objectively someone who looks at that situation and goes, oh man, I feel so sorry for you. Like I was so psyched. But this speaks to how perspect like a mindset and a perspective can turn hell into heaven or heaven into hell. Yeah, I mean like I I've That's some The reason why I learned about that is it was my I had a friend her cousin lived there. And he was like, here's how I got in. I bribed the door guy. And he's like, it's cool. It's like, don't talk to anybody in the building. And he's like, you know, some of the people in here are undocumented immigrants and a lot of them are like they just got out of jail. I was like, all right. That's cool. And he's like, some of them are homeless people that were given these rooms. I'm like, okay. I can handle all that. And they like told me the whole thing of how to get in there. And you had no bathroom and no kitchen. How did this change, Casey? I know video had come into your life around Video came into my life before I moved to New York City. That was the catalyst is um my baby mama dumped me. I came into New York to hang around my brother Van, who I like worshipped, and he had just bought He was doing like temp work. Right. He lived in Brooklyn. He had bought the first iMac, like that the one that was like shaped like a big blue TV, and it came with like footage of like a dog in a um plastic like kitty pool, a pool for children to play in, and the dog was getting a bath. So, you could play edit with the footage that came with it. And he and I would just kind of edit that footage over and over. So, we didn't have a camera. So, I bought a camera, and he had a computer, and I came in and we'd like film stuff and edit videos of it. And I was like, I can figure this out. And I like maxed out a credit card and started making terrible videos. Then I was like, that's it. I'll become a filmmaker. And then I moved to New York. Like it was one of the three things I brought to New York when I moved here was this huge iMac and like a backpack full of clothes and then like my BMX bike, which was stolen the next day. And you're like 19 at this time. Yeah. What was it Do you ever think about the psychological reasons why you were so drawn to video and storytelling generally? I don't know I I have an answer to that, but I don't know if this is the why I was drawn to it or maybe I've just said this so many times it's become my default response, but I definitely felt like I never had a voice. You know, I think it's because I was like a third out of four kids or like I never did well in school. I was always in trouble, so the teachers never listened to me. I was always in trouble and getting in fights and stuff, so my friends' parents never liked me. Um and I just felt like I I was never heard. And then I started to make videos, I was able to kind of articulate my thoughts or an idea in the form of a video, and people would respond to that. So, I think that was part of it, but I don't know. I think I also just liked it. Like there was something about it that felt so fun. And there was something in the end that you would have that was like this finished fun thing. Did you like movies? Yeah, but I was never like a cinephile as a kid. You know, like I had my favorites. You know, like I loved the movie Big. And I do remember in seventh grade we got to do um this program where you could like choose a profession and then you got to go do that job. And like there's a Pfizer pharmaceutical had like its headquarters in nearby town. So, like a lot of the kids went there to be chemists or scientists and like they got to go spend like two hours at Pfizer. There's a submarine military base, a lot of kids got to go onto the base and see what it's like to be in the Navy. Um and mine was, I want to work at a video rental store because I want to get paid just sit and watch movies all day. And they're like, all right, I guess we can organize that for you. And I remember going there and it was like this kid and he was like, yeah, I work the day shift, nobody ever comes by. And I was like, what are we doing? And he's like, you have to put away those movies. It took like three minutes. And I was like, now what are we doing? And he's like, just wait for customers. So, we just sat there and watched TV for like eight hours. I was like, this is a job I could get into. But I don't think it was like the you know, like the Quentin Tarantino where he worked in a video store and studied film. I never had that. Do you think that's part of the reason you were successful at it though? Because your style has always been so clearly original in so many ways. That's how it feels. It feels like you are in fact someone that didn't go to movie school, and that's why people resonate with it. Yeah, and I I I always say that like my filmmaking style is because I was never taught the right way to do it. So, I was forced to find my own way to do it. And I think that kind of thinking is at the same time as sort of like consumer grade video creation became this ubiquitous thing with computers and editing software and cameras for the first time ever in the history of humanity, you could like the early 2000s, you could buy like a DV digital video camera and you could buy a computer and plug it in and you could edit your own videos. So, my aspiration to make videos and this machine that let you do it, those happened at the exact same time. And because of that I was forced to create my own style. Like my hard drive was 10 GB, so I could edit like it was like 12 or 16 minutes of video before the hard drive was full. So, no, I made really short videos, and that's why. Cuz like I didn't have a choice. It had to be a short video. Um but I do think, yeah, like the lack of formal education in that capacity forced me to be uh a different kind of filmmaker or approach it differently anyway. Do you look back at I'm so compelled by originality as like a subject and the power of originality because when you when a couple of people in society or the world or business or creativity or movies take the risk of being original, the issue is they draw in a and that originality is resonant, they draw in a big audience who then look up to them and almost confuse that admiration for that person with their aspirations for themselves and go, I will create like Casey. And that is the way to be successful. It's a very logical deduction, but it seem but it's clearly flawed. Because there can be no other Casey. It is tremendously flawed. It's what I [ __ ] hate about YouTube. Um I call this like the the Mr. Beastification of YouTube. And I have to be very careful here. Jimmy's a genius. What Mr. Beast has done on YouTube is brilliant, and it's because of his brilliance. So, if this is not to take away from him at all, I think he has incredible what he's done. And he has no control over the fact that millions of people are trying to copy him. But the fact that millions of people are trying to emulate what he's doing, that is the Mr. Beastification of the platform that I hate. Because Jimmy's always been very honest. His goal has never been like Ask me my goal and now, in the most sort of intellectual of terms, I'll look back at it and I'll be like, video for me has always been a way of um a refined self-expression for me to take my thoughts and force them into this sort of articulate six, eight-minute compartmentalized little video and share it with the world. Like that's been my motivation. Jimmy's from day one has just been find success. He was a kid who had no money, had no resources, had no friends, he had nothing. And he's like, this is a tool I can use to take me to the highest planes of of business and all of that. Jimmy is just as passionate about his chocolate company, Feastables, as he is about his his video creation company, you know, Mr. Beast Enterprise. He's just as passionate about his philanthropy um being successful and helping as many people as possible as he is about making a video about what it means to live in a million-dollar house. Like his passion is about that winning. So, for him it's beautiful. But in the most reductive sense, when people look at that, they're like, okay, that's what it means to be a YouTuber. All that matters is views. And I put next to no value on that. None. Again, this isn't to take away from Jimmy cuz what he's done is incredible, but when people aspire just to get that view count up, to me it's a race to the bottom. I [ __ ] hate it. I hate it. And I do think it's because of people not knowing what to do, so they look to see, well, who's successful? That's how I'm successful, let me be that. And it will never work. It will never work. Um it requires sort of an introspection of like, no, why do I want to do this? What is true to me? And then you go and do that. And maybe you'll find success, and maybe you won't, but at least it'll be true. Why does truth end up mattering more in that case than views? So, if there's one path here and I can get a million subscribers by just doing a Jimmy uh or Casey knockoff channel, or there's this other path which I go, oh, there's no blueprint here and it's never been done before, and I don't think anyone's going to like this stuff, and it's probably not going to pay my bills. Why what's the case for pursuing the latter, the true path? I I think that truth lasts. Truth matters. Like there's a direct There's uh no correlation rather between the movies that have won Best Picture the Academy Award for Best Picture over the last 80 years and the highest-grossing movies. Those two things have been the same like three times, four times. Like one of them I think was Gone with the Wind. Meaning that the movies that that the movies that the world determines are the most quality, most important, greatest films, the greatest contribution to culture and humanity are almost never the same movies that make the most money. Transformers 9 was a really cool movie. I don't [ __ ] remember what happened. I think there was a dinosaur in it. But like you see a movie that affects you. You see a movie that that matters to you. You see it, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, this documentary by Werner Herzog. You see The Anvil Story. And you're thinking about it. I haven't seen The Anvil Story in five years. I think about that movie every day. That lasts. So, that matters. And me as a 42-year-old grown adult, like I know in life that's what matters. There's always There was always going to be junk food, there'll always for it. There'll always be an appetite for [ __ ] reality TV and [ __ ] and you know, like whatever pop stars are popular this week and will disappear next week. But the musicians that like change you, the ones that write that song that like uh makes you cry, like you'll never forget that. So, for me, like if if you if you want to be an artist or you say you want to be an artist, how could there be any other goal but that? And just to bring this full circle, I think the magic of Mr. Beast or Jimmy in particular, I don't think he's ever wanted to be an artist. And that honesty is why I have so much respect for him. He's a He's a He's an empire builder, and that's what he's wanted to do, and he's done that through video creation. But um again, not neither here nor there, not to digress. For me, it's like great work matters. And it does. It changes people. Changes me. Look at the work that like Spike Jonze did. Not his Oscar award-winning movies, but like I look at his little weirdo music videos that I used to watch when I was a kid. And I watched those music videos over and over. What's up Fat Lip? The music video that he made with Fat Lip who was like a kind of a popular hip-hop artist who didn't have any money and he was like I got this new song Spike, but I don't have any money to make the video. So they went out and they like put Fat Lip in a clown costume and they filmed it on a VHS camera. It's like one of the my favorite music videos ever. But I saw that and I was like I can be a filmmaker. Now if you had made a video just trying to get the most views or whatever it was instead of just him and his friend Fat Lip trying to make something great, it might not have done that for me. And that changed my world. So like if you're going to share your [ __ ] inspirational quotes on Instagram, then step up. Like make the thing that could change the world. Make the thing that could affect someone. Don't just give me Mickey Mouse [ __ ] that's going to get views. I I look at both you and Jimmy as pioneers, but for very different reasons and seemingly for with very different motivations. You strike me as someone that was really inspired by the art form and the storytelling side of like the the creative production process. And Jimmy took this seems like he took this other approach where it was much more about what the data was telling him to make. Yeah. Both of them created originality though. Completely. You know? Completely. I think Jimmy is in the history of I think Jimmy is the most important YouTuber in the history of YouTube. And I think that arguably I think he's one of the most important people in the history of entertainment. Full stop. I don't know that anyone has built an empire that reaches as many people as what he's doing. I think like there will be case studies taught about him at Harvard. Um I think what he he is a true pioneer in every sense of the word. Do you care about the views? No, but that's easy to say. I'm like you know, I don't worry about paying rent anymore and like I don't usually don't check the prices at restaurants before I order dinner. So it's easy for me to say. Um Obviously like it's it's there was a time when that really mattered to me and was super super important to me. But I've grown up and I've you know, a level of financial security which is super real. So it's it's less about that and more about doing good work. If one of your kids came to you and they said dad I want to be a YouTuber. And what would be the what would be your response to just that first surface level I mean it's happened. Little Francine is like she's so good, too. But Candace always gets not mad, but she's always like take it easy Casey cuz I have a tendency to over intellectualize it, but I'm like Frannie, you can make whatever you want, um but you're not allowed to share it. And she's like why? I want to get subscribers and views. And I'm like well if you make it, like I want I just want to make sure you're making it for you cuz you want to make something not because you're looking for that I don't know words I use with her, but like that validation. I don't know if she would know that word, but And that's when Candace is like take it easy Casey. She's eight. And I'm like okay. All right, just do your thing kiddo. But um Yeah, I think like the concern What is the concern? Is why? Like if she wants to do it cuz she wants to be an artist, [ __ ] yes. I will drop everything to help you on this mission. If you want to do it cuz your little girlfriend at school did it and she got 35 likes and you want to get more likes than her, then like pump the brakes kid. Like that's you know, like that's What if she says I want to be bigger than Mr. Beast? The same thing. Then you know, it's like why? Like why? Why do you want to do that? You know, and also like I have fame is a very weird very strange thing. Um And I think the what the most strange thing about fame is it's not what you think like There are people who have achieved and felt some degree of fame and there are people who haven't. And if you're in the haven't camp, there's no way to understand the have camp. There's no way. There's no way. And um having been over here you know, like to see someone aspire for that is like you know, I like no way. What's the warning? The warning is just like if if if fame is a byproduct of what you're doing, then it is what it is. But if fame is the end game then you're just like one of those [ __ ] reality stars with the [ __ ] up faces cuz you've had so much plastic surgery and like what are you doing? What are you offering the world? Like why are you here? Like you're give you're you're benefiting the world in no way whatsoever. You're elevating the world zero. This is pure like narcissism. This is just just just for some weird ego journey that you're on. Um again, this is one of those moments where my wife would be like back off Casey. She's eight. Let her finish her mac and cheese. I wouldn't say that to the kid, but like yeah, if she says I want to be bigger than Mr. Beast, like then yeah, I get nervous. What if she I say she says okay, I want to do I want to make YouTube videos cuz I love creating videos, but I would like some advice dad on how to be a successful YouTuber. Yeah, you should see her. She has a whole channel that is stop frame animations of her stuffed animals. You're not allowed to have her voice in it or her hands in it. You're not allowed to identify that it's in our apartment. But she makes those and they're [ __ ] great and they're funny and they're really good. So that like yeah, we support we support her so much. We buy her the equipment. We help her make it. We're part of the audience. We have like a family I message thread that we distribute the videos on. Um she even has her own Instagram handle that has zero followers. Candace and I don't follow it. We pass the phone around to watch her Instagram because we don't want her to even associate one like with why she's doing it. Even if that like is from us. My sister texted me and was like hey, you you sent me a screen capture of Francine's Tik Tok or whatever. Can you send me her account? We're like no. This is clearly coming from your experience, right? Protect them as long as you can, man. Keep the kids so far away from that. Keep them far away from views and likes. Yeah, for from seeking validation. Did you ever fall prey to that? Uh Did I ever fall prey to that? Uh yeah, but I'm I'm different because I'm I was old. Like I was literally your age that you are right now sitting across from me before I had an Instagram account. Think about how much more you know than an eight-year-old. Yeah. Like for an eight-year-old to that's the world that she's growing up in, it's a really scary place. Like social media we're seeing social [ __ ] kids up. We're seeing the mental health crisis. We're seeing how it's manifesting. We're seeing eating disorders because of Instagram. We're seeing like all of these social issues because of social media. And I think wanting to protect your kids from that is sort of a universal thing, not just someone who has lived in that space. Um you know, I think about I've had a unique experience with it because I was I had achieved some level of success outside of social media in the world of regular old media. Um and then it was on social media that I found real success. Uh but I was able to do that with that kind of hindsight and with that kind of clarity of being an adult, being pursuing this career for 15 years before. On social media you found real success. Yeah. Was that due to your daily vlog predominantly? Is that the was that the real catalyst moment to the growth? yeah, 100%. You know, like I I Van and I my brother Van and I had a television show on HBO that we sold to HBO in 2008. And that television show was exactly my daily vlog. Full stop. Only eight episodes or something, wasn't Eight episodes. 22 minutes 22 to 24 minute episodes. But if you watch that daily show, it looks like an early version of my vlog. It's identical. It's the same exact [ __ ] But that was before YouTube was really a thing. YouTube was invented in 2000 or launched in 2006 and it was really just a place for watching like basketball highlight reels and like Charlie bit my finger. So you know, we put that show on HBO. Very highly reviewed, but nobody watched it. It was on at midnight on Friday nights. Like it wasn't a breakout success. Um and then Van moved to California. So I was kind of on my own and I was like I just want to do that. So I I tried to sell it to MTV. And they didn't get it. They're like we know this is great. Like I showed it to someone there and they brought me in and I met with the heads of MTV. Like met with some really powerful people. They're like this is unlike anything we've ever seen. This is fantastic, but we're not sure this works on TV. I was like okay, cool. And then yeah, and then I put it on YouTube. And how did that go? Well you you know, you talked about the numbers before. Like so before my daily vlog I was considered like a successful YouTuber. Like a celebrated YouTuber. I had I think it was 280,000 subscribers. And it had taken me almost a decade to get there. I started in my YouTube channel in 2007 maybe and by 2014, 2015 I had 280,000 subscribers. I had a couple movies that went truly viral that had like 5 10 million views. Um all of my movies did more than like 50 60,000 views which is amazing. Uh and people liked my videos. Like the New York Times saw my YouTube videos and like make videos for us. I was doing that back then. So I by all definition very successful on YouTube. But then I started my daily vlog. And it took whatever that was eight years to go from zero to couple hundred thousand subscribers and my daily vlog went from couple hundred thousand subscribers to 10 million subscribers in like 18 months. It was a kind of like explosion that I had never felt in any other capacity in my my career, my life. What's the lesson that you take away from that about consistency or compounding or you know? Yeah, yeah, that's that thing, patience. I wasn't really doing anything different. I mean, certainly I was working much harder to create a video every day. Um it was hard work. But really it was just like I had this square peg and I tried to knock it through thousands of uh round holes for 15 years. And like sometimes I was able to jam it through and sometimes it would kind of fall through and I wasn't able to duplicate it. And then all of a sudden, like the moons aligned. Like the [ __ ] planets aligned, Pluto was lined up, the sun the sun shined through like right as the locked ark, the light came through, the city illuminated. And like 2015, YouTube was just becoming something more. It's the first generation that grew up on YouTube. Like it'd been around for, you know, nine years and people had a relationship with this platform. And no one was doing anything of any significant production quality. And I had 15 years of experience in making short videos. I brought all of that to YouTube. And then just the episodic aspect of it. So it was like, you know, make one video of me running around New York City, hanging out with my wife, having lunch, doing something else and then the video is over and it's like, oh, who's this funny looking guy in New York? Whatever. Do that seven days in a row and you're like, oh, this is kind of fun. I get to hang out with this guy. Do it 300 days in a row and it's like I've become part of your life. And that just snowballs. Like it snowballs in every way. It snowballs algorithmically. And that's what those that quantitative explosion was. It snowballs financially. Cuz you get paid whatever, call it a tenth of a cent per view and that doesn't mean much if you're getting 10 views. But if you're getting a hundred million views, the money starts to become substantive. Um brands, the kinds of companies you always wanted to work with. Maybe one out of every hundred creative directors at an agency has seen your videos, but all of a sudden you go from getting a hundred thousand a month to a hundred million a month. And now every creative director has seen your videos and like, we want to work with that guy. And it just it just was, you know, just it happened so quick and was so explosive and so exciting and so fun. Sounds like that was your anvil moment in some respects. Like the you'd put in 15 years of work and then your craft and patience had met opportunity in a way. And people might look at those moments and go, oh, that was, you know, that's luck because, you know, you just But what is the rebuttal to that? What's the like right. It was luck. But like luck is What is it? Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. I'd just been preparing myself for that moment for 15 years, you know? And then the opportunity opened up and I was right there. And the truth is like most of us, yeah, opportunity just flies by us all day every day when we're not ready for it. Um I was seeking it for that long. And you know, there's some other circumstances too. My friend Max pointed this out to me when he and I were having a meeting last week, which was like when I launched that YouTube channel um the the daily vlog rather, when I launched that in 2015 I had had a show on HBO that they bought for $2 million. I had had movies that I produced, two of them, in the Cannes Film Festival. I won the Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards, which was like the Academy Awards for indie films. Like I had a I worked at the New York Times. I made movies for Nike. I had by every I had worked for myself at that point in time for 12 years in my own studio. I had by every definition achieved success. But at the exact time I launched that YouTube channel I was $200,000 in debt. Meaning I was more broke than than when I was on welfare getting checks for my kid because I was so deep in debt because, you know, the the year preceding that I was invited to MIT um as a fellow. And as a high school dropout, it was like no greater honor than to get to go to one of the most prestigious academic institutions on the planet and be invited there. Um and I remember going there and being like, whatever I do on the other side of this is going to be different from what I'm doing now. And what I was doing then was making TV commercials and doing fun stuff like that at a good career. Around that time you read this book. Yeah. What was um what was so inspiring or perspective shifting about that book, Hatching Twitter? It wasn't around that time. So I went to MIT as a fellow. Mhm. I worked out of the MIT Media Lab. And my lab group was called the Social Computing group. Mhm. And it was, you know, eight or 10 technologists, one artist who was a painter, and then me. And I never and still to this day I don't know what I was doing there. I'm incredibly close to the professor. I talk to him all the time. He's since left there and he is a mentor of mine, somebody I speak to regularly. I still don't know what I was doing there. So mostly I just observed. Like I was given no assignment. I just observed. And I didn't have any friends. I was living in Boston. My pregnant wife was alone in New York City hating me cuz I abandoned her. And I read this book. And all I knew is that when I was there I wanted to figure out what to do next. And the magic of Hatching Twitter By the way, Nick Bilton has since become a good friend. But the magic of this amazing book is it reveals the madness that was a technology startup. Like the chaos. Like, you know, these guys are all very smart, all the guys that started Twitter. But like I don't think they're smarter than me. Like I think that like there's like you have like regular people and like smart people and then like these geniuses that you just can't relate to. And I think that like I live somewhere between like regular and close to smart but not fully smart. And I think these guys were like they're just smart, persistent people that wanted to do something. I was like, I can do what they did. I can do that. And when I left MIT I was like, I'm going to start a technology company. And I didn't know what that meant, but it just sounded like a great idea. Um but the whole time I was at MIT I wasn't making any money. So I was living off my credit cards and off my debt. My business had a revolving line of credit at Chase Bank that was maxed out. And then I started this company, which was basically just meeting with people and telling them I wanted to start a company. And yeah, and so six months later I was $200,000 in debt. I couldn't afford my half of rent that I owed to my wife who was pregnant. Um and that's when I started a daily vlog and started a technology company. And it made sense. But the reason why I give that long preface about like I had found all this success is it was like I found all that success. I knew there was snack down the hall if I didn't want to do the puzzle. And I was like, [ __ ] that. Let me burn it to the ground. Like let me go $200,000 in debt and do something that I have no idea I've never written a line of code in my life. Let me start a technology Let me start a software development company. I've still never written a line of code in my life, but let me do that. That's a good pursuit for me. Um and that's what I did. I don't know what I'm not sure what I was thinking. What were you thinking? I don't know. It felt like a great idea. It also like How old are you at this point? You're what, 30? 35? Yeah, and I also like those guys were such superstars to me. Like Mark Zuckerberg, like that in The Social Network, the movie The Social Network, that scene that juxtaposes him just sitting in his dorm room writing code with all the cool kids getting on that bus, going to the party with all the hot girls and he's just I was like, I want to be that guy. And also like I didn't think of anything more explosive. It was like I was still, you know, I'd had financial success, but like the $2 million from the HBO thing didn't make me a millionaire. It's like cut in half from taxes, you're at a million, pay back our investor, you're 400,000 left over, there's two of us, give half that to Van, it's $200,000. And then three years goes by and it's like you're making like middle class income for three years. You know, we're not rich. And I was like, I want to be rich. Like I want to be a billionaire. Let me start a tech company. That's how I'll get there. Unqualified. I mean, when I look through your story I see someone who was seemingly unqualified to pursue the things that he pursued over and over again. You weren't qualified to get into movies. There was no formal education by any objective standards. You weren't qualified to be starting a tech company. Um What was I thinking? What is unqualified and like cuz I think most people would say, well, I I'm not a tech entrepreneur. They would like self-label and then disqualify themselves from doing that. And I think in most people's lives they're actually spending more time disqualifying themselves psychologically, but you seem to be taking the opposite approach, which is you seem to be qualifying yourself for things that you're objectively unqualified to be pursuing. I I had this conversation with Candace, my wife, last night because it was like what do we do with these little girls, our daughters, to show them they can do anything? And if they were boys, I knew what to do. If they were boys, force them to work with their hands. Like it's one of my regrets with my son. My son is 25 now and he's a superstar. He's fantastic. But, you know, he is he loved academia and I I indulged him in that. And I wish I'd been more forceful in encouraging him to learn to work with his hands. Why? Because I think you learn something about life by learning how to build and do things. There's this great South Park special that's on TV right now and like the handymen who like fix your broken toilet become the billionaires and all the intellects are standing outside of Home Depot like holding up signs that are like, I'm a I'm a biologist. Please hire me." Like we'll trade for the because it's like and they're sitting around like, "I wish I just learned to work with my hands. Why didn't anybody tell me?" And I think what they're saying with that or what I feel what I was able to deduce from that is it's just like there are universal aspects of life and humanity and the world that you learn from working with your hands. And like this rule of mine which is that if you don't know what you want to do in life, do something you hate. And through that process you'll figure out what it is that you love. Like I learned that I wanted to be a filmmaker by scrubbing out chowder pots in that [ __ ] seafood restaurant in Connecticut. 40 50 hours a week just hating it. 90° back there in the summer. Stinks. Scrubbing that pot. Hated it. It's a lot of time thinking about what do I wish I was doing. So for like kids, it's like, "Yeah, no no no. You know, you don't get to go to college. Instead I'm sending you to this school where you're going to learn how to rebuild diesel engines. Enjoy it." I don't know that I can do that to my little blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughters. Um so you asked me about what it means to be unqualified. I don't know. But I think like, you know, when my bicycle was broken at home when I was a little kid like I didn't have the tool to fix it. I first had to build the tool that I could then fix my bike with. Like I wasn't qualified. I had to find that qualification. And everything that I did it was the same kind of thing. So why wouldn't I think that I'm qualified to do anything? Is part of that I say you say that and thinking about this idea of doing stuff with your hands. Is part of that because like the what it teaches you and I'm thinking about your bike example there is that when something is broken or when there is a challenge, you're learning you learn at that very young age that Casey can solve that problem himself. And that lesson of I can close the gap between what I want and where I am is like an overarching superpower for the rest of your life where it's you know, the gap. The gap between where you are and where you want to be. The gap between Casey being a guy that's you know, making videos to the tech entrepreneur. You learned very early on in your life that Casey can close the gap. And a lot of people never learn that. They think, "Oh, I'm unqualified to close the gap or I don't have the skills to close the gap or the money or I'm scrubbing pots in the back room. I can't close the gap." But that's evidence and evidence comes from you know, closing the gap a couple of times with a bike and I had a friend DM me uh this week and it was something like I don't know what it was but it was this thing that was like how to figure out who high agency individuals are or something like that. And like there was like five bullet points and number five was like the goals in question. Who would you call? George Mack, friend of mine, former Is that what it was or it was like who would you call if you're stuck in a Thai prison to break you out? Yeah, so that's George Mack who's a former employee of one of my former companies. He's a superstar. He's an incredible guy. He does tweet threads and he did one like last week which is how to how to spot a high agency individual. I think about that a lot because someone very close to me uh couldn't couldn't find his partner. He couldn't find his wife. And in a moment of panic he thought she had been kidnapped. Um and he's thousands of miles away from me and he didn't know what to do. And he called me in that moment. He was like, "What do I do?" And I was like, "Give me all of the information." And he gave me all the information and he said I was like, "I need more." And I'm like asking him all these questions and I'm writing it all down. And then I'm like, "What are you doing right now?" He's like, "I'm going to the police station." I was like, "Do not go to the police station. Here's what they're going to do." And I was like, "This is why you don't do that. Here are the things you can do to be effective. Call the Call the bank. Find out when her last transaction was. Figure out what her password is on her iCloud account." And like going through all these facts. I was like, "Do all that and call me back." And then I hung up with him and I'm like, "How do I solve this problem?" And it wasn't there was never a moment of is there someone that can solve this problem that's not me. It was that thing that's like says either in Lockheed Martin or at NASA where it says in like 100 ft letters, "It won't fail because of me." Like that's what that moment was. I was like, "No, I'm the only person who can solve this right now." And like sure enough the next phone call that I called him it was very Jason Bourne. I called him like 11 minutes later. I was like, "She's at the tennis club. She's asleep on the couch." And like it was much credit to my younger brother Dean who is a um who is an actual like jet pilot in the Air Force for helping me figure that out. But like it it was interesting like I was there was something about the fact that he called me. There's something about the fact that I could hear in his voice a total uncertainty. And his instinct was there has to be a higher authority that can solve this problem. And how antithetical that was to my own thinking which is there's no higher authority. There's no one that can solve this better than I can solve this right now. And I think I applied that to most of what I've done throughout my whole life. Um I remember like when I was really broke way back in the day I had a 1986 I think Volvo 240. Whatever the one that had the dual halogen headlight was great year. And somebody crashed into the front of the car. And the estimate to fix it was like 2200 bucks. And the insurance company just gave me that money. And I was like, "Fuck this." I was like, "I can fix this car myself." I remember like but my baby mama being like, "What do you know about fixing cars?" I'm like, "How hard could it possibly be?" And like in that moment I took the whole front of the car apart. I did not do a good job. I did a good enough job. And I pocketed like all of it like 150 bucks to replace those halogen headlights. Like screwed all back together. Um I mean before we started this podcast you're like, "Casey, what are you doing with your time?" I'm like, "Just building out my studio. I wanted to build my girls a tree fort in there." There was never of like who what carpenter do I hire to build a tree fort. I was like, "No no no. I'm going to do this." How hard can it be? How hard can Yeah, how hard can any of it be? Like give me a big enough pile of balsa wood and enough time I will build you a spaceship. As a mantra for life, how hard can it be? It There's an air of naivety which And once you realize how hard it can be it's like Like I will never do a software development company again. If I knew now if I knew then what I know now about building that company, no [ __ ] way. No chance. There's no chance. It sold for what? 36 million dollars though which is a a success. It was a success. A million failures though for that one success. And the failures keep me up way more than the success puts me to sleep. What are those failures? Um You know, like some of the really key failures were like the naivety that an exit is the holy grail. Like for me like we were all out of money. Like my partner Matt and I cut our salaries and the last year and I think the last couple paychecks was paying out of my pocket. Um so when we sold the company and everybody got to have a job and everybody got paid out. One of the one of the aspects of the sale was that every employee that had equity would get a full cash payout immediately upon the sale. Um I thought everybody would be psyched. But when I told everybody they weren't. Because for them it was like, "No no, we signed up to build this company with you. This is fun. This is a startup. This is why we didn't take twice the salary from Facebook. We wanted to do something novel with you. And now we just get to go work for a big company." In that moment I feel like I was letting down all of these people that helped me get there. It was like, "Yeah, I got to get this fat check. It made me a millionaire." It was like, "I got to be a millionaire but I I feel like I disappointed the people who got me there. Like the people who like held me up so I could reach the top. I let all of them down." And maybe that's unfair but that's how it felt. That's how it still feels. Um feels weird. I have zero employees right now. I don't have an assistant. Your producer had to call a friend of ours last night to be like, "I haven't heard from Casey in 3 weeks. Is he going to show up tomorrow?" Because I don't check my email. I don't have an assistant. I don't have a schedule. I have no one. I mop my own floors. And I think a lot of that is like the the post-traumatic stress of having 35 employees at my tech company and feeling like I let a lot of them down and never want to feel that way again. So I'll just like, "Fuck it. I'll just mop my own floors. I might make I might miss an appointment. But there's a million failures that fall underneath that umbrella of being a manager, being a terrible manager that um I think about way more than the moments of elation that were you know, selling that company. What was that moment like then? If I zoom in on your psychology throughout that period, you you go on this incredible journey to build this business, twists, turns. And I mean that's the story of most tech startups. Most of them fail. Most of them run out of cash. And then you get this exit. Um objectively people look at that and go, "Oh, congratulations. Amazing. You you know, smashed it. You're rich. You know, you got money now." What's going on in your psychology? The day you get the call, you call your investors. One of your investors I think is a good friend of mine and an investor in one of my companies, Gary Vaynerchuk. Um and then it's done. How are you feeling? If I was a fly inside your head. Eh. I mean good. It was like super thrilling to get across that finish line. A month after then? So a month after that, you know, like to get specific like the company CNN Turner bought our company and you know, Matt, my business partner and I signed a three-year deal with them to stay on and work with them for 3 years. And Just to tell the finish line, they fired us 11 months later. 11 months later. So for the a month into that it was about how How we build this business into a success underneath this bigger company? And it was exciting, but I also think there was a huge amount of naivety on my part about what the realities of that looked like. The what I interpreted as ambiguity from CNN about what to do wasn't at all ambiguity. It was them looking to me to lead. And my lack of awareness of that um is something I look back at now and just sort of shake my head like this is what I mean by like a thousand failures. Like I can tell you and I don't think this is an unfair characterization that like I think they bought my company because they're like this kid is a star and we want to we want his reach alone is worth this amount of money and as a bonus we're getting all of this technical know-how and skill and we're getting the brilliance of his partner and like this is a great deal for us, but we want that influence and then he'll use all of these brilliant people that he has around him to help promote that influence. Like that's what they wanted. Um I can say that. Uh they also wanted to exploit my reach doing stupid Mickey Mouse [ __ ] like they had some million-dollar deal for me like do commercials for a watch company and I was like guys this isn't why I want to work with you. And I said no to that and it was a huge Um I can point to all these things like them being a big corporation and us being a small nimble startup and them wrecking that culture. But the reality is the reason why we didn't succeed under CNN is because of me and only because of me. It was my failure to recognize the opportunity and build within that. Um and I attribute that to ego. I attribute that to naivety. Someone like you doesn't belong at CNN, mate. Sure, easy to say now, but like [ __ ] you, man. I can build a spaceship. I can do whatever I want. I'll fix that Volvo. I can build a [ __ ] company for CNN. You know how incentivized I was? Like if I built that company it'd be a success. Like the incentives that they gave me were out of this world. The people I was working with at CNN were incredible. They're brilliant people. But the only reason it didn't succeed was because of me. And um I don't know. You asked how I felt a month later. When I look back at it it's like a month later is when I was probably at like peak hubris. Like I know it all. Look what I did. I know everything. What about 11 months later? 11 months later I was just exhaustion. I wanted to get out. Just let me let me like when they said we're shutting down the company I remember it was like super weird. Like I was in South Africa with my family and they're like we're going to let you know before the end of the year and like December 31st I like called my kind of boss at CNN. I'm like what's going on with the company? Are you guys shutting us down or are we going to keep going? They're like we're going to talk when you get back. And we got back and we're like we're going to meet here and I'm like why don't we just meet at our offices or your offices? They wanted to meet in like a neutral location. And there was like a head of HR or something in the meeting. And they're like we want to let you both know we've decided to shut down the company and release you from your or whatever they said. And I was kind of like okay, cool. Like it like it it was not a big thing. It was kind of what I expected. Um but it was like a sigh of relief weirdly. What what what's your what's your plan become for your life? After that? Yeah. You know you're this you're this guy that's checking off your bucket list, the bucket list you had as a child. You've sold the company, you've built the channels, you've you know you've made a huge name for yourself in movie making. At that point 11 months later after leaving the HR meeting with the at the neutral location what is what's the what's the future? That's when it got hard. Um dark. That was like a moment of real darkness in my life because not because of those external factors, but just internally. Like the fame that was something that I just did not understand. Like the only way to quantify it was I had done like 3 billion views in 2 years. Something like that. And the content was all me. It was the real version of me. I wasn't playing a character. I wasn't acting. I didn't have on a Superman costume. I wasn't like I always say like I love Tyler Durden, Brad Pitt's character in Fight Club, but if I met Brad Pitt, he's not that person. You meet me, I am the person you think you know. And the fame was [ __ ] insane. Like we had to move into a higher security building in New York City. Like it was it got scary. That kind of fame. And when I was winning like putting a video out every day and I had this company I was cool [ __ ] to talk about. It was it was like you know you're like coasting on that. But I felt like I wasn't winning. Like I didn't want to do my daily show anymore. I was exhausted from it. CNN had just kind of fired me so I wasn't building anything with them. I wasn't sure what to do, but I still couldn't step outside without like being like like Justin Bieber kind of swarmed. And I didn't know what to do and I kind of like started the solar company called 368 with my partner at the time Paul. That was a cool project. I started up a new daily show with my other friend Dan. That was kind of exciting. Um but basically it just felt like a bunch of sort of slow Why'd you say dark? It's a very interesting Because because it was the first time like it was that thing that I I I I referred to before which is like you attribute happiness and fulfillment with winning. And I had won. Like this was the first time in my life where I achieved like a level of financial security that you know like if I played my cards right could have meant financial security for the rest of my life. Like for guy who couldn't afford diapers, that's a [ __ ] journey. That is a big box on the list to check off. Um you know like for a guy who like made would drive around in my car giving people VHS copies of my videos. I had 3 billion views in 2 years. Like that's a big box to check off. Like I'd done those things. And instead of feeling like I was like you know I I had done it and I'd earned it. Instead of feeling like I was standing on the top of the mountain I just kind of was like what what what now? Like this isn't this isn't it. It wasn't like I wasn't running the marathon because I wanted to get across the finish line. Like I don't know where I've run 24 marathons. I don't know where any of my medals are. I was running it because I loved the running. Like I loved it and it kind of felt like that was over and I didn't know what to do. And it kind of yeah got weird. Got dark for a little bit. That's when we decided like leave New York and move to LA and If I was a fly on the wall then in that moment in your life where it's dark and weird, what what do I see in in the walls of your home? Well, first of all the house is really nice cuz CNN had just bought my company. So it was a really nice house. Candace bought the fancy wallpaper. Um but no, it was mostly like I had a little baby at the time and then uh um like a three-year-old. So I was kind of at home chilling hiding. I didn't want to go to my studio. There'd be too many people outside. Uh and yeah, I'm just unsure, uncertain. Like I think so much of our decision to move We moved to LA for like 3 years. It was a disaster. We moved back to New York, but so much of my enthusiasm to leave New York was it was just like I need to get away from all of this. And I pictured like LA like I was moving to the moon. Like nobody would know me there and I could just go to the beach every day and chill out. Couldn't have been further from the truth, but that's so there was like we decided to move to LA and we didn't move for another 7 months or whatever and those 7 months were just kind of me hiding and waiting. And Candace, she you've kind of indirectly made her famous as well because of that whole you know everything that happened in that chapter of your life, which means that both of you can't just like leave live a normal life, can't just walk down the street together. Um how is she feeling in that moment and does that add strain to the relationship? Yeah. I mean it was always the the whole that's a whole 'nother podcast, but like you know my daily show was effectively uh uh I was just pulling stories from my life, my own real life experiences. Let me figure out how to make turn that into a narrative. I'm coming on your podcast and let me film my journey here and then talk about what this is about and then my journey home and let me make that today's video. And so it was just this vacuum. And whatever was closest would get sucked in. So she's my wife. She's my partner. She's my best friend. So she would get sucked into the content all the time. Mostly she's willing and supportive, but not all the time. But I still had to make my videos. So it had this you know this burden on her, this stress on her. Some of it was positive, you know she's building her own company then and it brought enough exposure to her that people were like oh I love what she's doing and it yielded a a kind of it shined a light on her brilliance as a designer and a jewelry designer and an entrepreneur herself and she embraced all that, but ultimately yeah, it was it was a big stress on our relationship. As you know, Whoop are a sponsor of this podcast, which came about from me being the biggest fan of their product. It's been an absolute game-changer for my sleep, for my recovery and for my overall well-being. Whoop is a wearable device, this thing on my wrist right here if you're watching me, that not only tracks your health 24/7, but also guides you to improve it. It's probably the perfect gift for the person who has everything or is impossible to buy for, which is what my friends say to me, because it's the kind of gift that keeps on giving offering real-time benefits for their health and their wellness forever. So if you're on the hunt for the perfect present for a loved one or a team member or even for you this festive season, I would highly highly recommend checking out Whoop and they've very kindly offered our community here on The Diary Of A CEO a special discount just for you, but keep this to yourself. If you head over to join.whoop.com/ceo, you can get that discount. Let me know who you get one for and how they get on. A quick word on Huel. As you know, they're a sponsor of this podcast and I'm an investor in the company. It's moments like this in my life where I'm extremely busy and I'm flying all over the place and I'm recording TV shows and I'm recording shows in America and here in the UK that Huel is a necessity in my life. I'm someone that regardless of external circumstances or professional demands wants to stay healthy and nutritionally complete, and that's exactly where Huel fits in my life. So, if you're looking to try Huel for the first time and to get into it and to join the Hooligan family, I'd highly recommend you try this out. If this next 10 years of your life is a movie, what is the narrative of this this movie? I don't know. You ever seen Koyaanisqatsi? No. It's this amazing movie. There's no story at all. It's just beautiful establishing shots of cities with weird music and nothing happens. I was like, that's it. That's what I feel like my life is right now. It's just like it's so beautiful and wonderful. I'm doing [ __ ] all right now. I'm doing nothing. And I feel guilty cuz I still like I get paid jobs and I take those paid jobs. I do them as best as I can and I think I do a good job with them. But I feel a little bit like a um a little bit like I'm I'm selling out or something cuz I you know I still need to make a living and I still can. But I'm mostly just riding the momentum that I created years ago. And then just like like I race home from work every day like 4:30 in the afternoon so I can be home when my kids get home. And I just like sit around like you can ask me out to dinner, you can invite me to go to the Met Gala. I'm like, ah I can't, man. I just go home and play with my kids every day. It's my favorite thing. Like kids go to bed at 7:30, 8, whatever. Go to the gym for an hour. Come home like bother Candace for an hour. Watch TV, go to bed. Like that's my life and it's fan And then during the day like go hang out in my studio. It's just this clubhouse. Like fun [ __ ] in it. Like build stuff. Make things out of wood. Go home. Tell Candace I worked a lot today. Play with the kids. I just do that over and over and over. And then it's like Christmas and we go visit our family or it's like summertime and we like go to the beach. I'm just coasting through life right now and it's fantastic. Is this a new Casey? Because the other Casey seemed to really like as if they were striving towards some bucket list thing that they'd written when they were a kid. This Casey seems to be Yeah, I mean look, I'm at peace right now, but this is not a sustainable I'm at peace right now, but I'm hyper cognizant that this is not sustainable. Why? I mean cuz I'll just be broke in like 3 years, but um moreover like the only thing that brings me a sense of true like fulfillment in what is a big part of my life is when I make something that I think is good. Um creatively. So, like I think I'm a good dad, that's that part of my life and I think I'm a good husband, that's that part of the life and I'm super fitness focused and I care a lot about my my physical um existence of it's a part of my life, but then there's the majority of the pie chart is like my professional life. And if I'm not making something even if I make something that's good and I don't share or post it, that checks that that does that. I made something great. Um What did I do recently? Like I made my mother-in-law's for 70th birthday. And she was like, will you make me one of those slideshows? And I know she was picturing like, you know, you drop all the photos into like Windows slideshow maker and push a button. But I made it like this great video. We like played it at her 70th birthday to all of her old lady friends. Nobody saw that video. Like that did it for me. And I don't feel like I'm like cashing that check right now. I don't feel like I'm if if if I'm looking at that as like a staying healthy, it's like instead of going to the gym, I'm like eating junk food. Instead of going for a jog, I'm like sitting on the couch. Like when I get to the office, instead of like putting my head down and just making something great, which I can do, I just kind of putz around and like reorganize my tools every day. Do you know what I said earlier this before we started recording about this word boredom? I I used the word boredom not because I'm implying that nothing is happening, but so many of the creatives I've spoken to tell me that you need to have chapters and seasons in your life of like basically where you're just chilling. Because those they kind of cultivate an energy towards the new thing. Maybe maybe it gives you enough time and space to stand back from the picture to see the whole painting or to I don't know, get some inspiration from something your kid says to you one day or Yeah, you yes. Look, absolutely. Like there's a pendulum and my pendulum swung so far when I'm making a video a day 800 days in a row while running a company with 38 employees, while having a wife and a brand new baby at home. Like you know, I didn't sleep for 3 years. Like I was running at full speed and millions of people with their eyes on me every day. And like you could definitely justify as like the pendulum swinging in the other direction now like I just need this time to decompress. But I don't accept that cuz to accept that is to sort of justify my current laziness and general sort of laissez-faire attitude towards life. Like I recognize how indulgent it is right now and I'm not doing this cuz I need it. I'm doing this cuz I can. If I was broke right now, I'd be [ __ ] busting my ass every day. If my kids were hungry right now, I'd be busting my ass. I'm doing this cuz I can. I'm not solving the puzzle cuz right down the hallway are all the snacks I could ever want and I'm very aware of that. So, I hear you, but I do not accept that justification. This is just pure indulgence. And that's all it is. It's great. Go do what have some snacks and build a shelf this afternoon. It's very honest of you. I don't think anyone's ever said that to me because people do justify justify their indulgence. It's very interesting. What can we expect from you? Like can we expect anything? Do you know the answer to that? Cuz so many people are like ultra fans of you. I think there's a anticipation of what's Casey what's the next big thing Casey's going to do. I you know, I don't the the short answer like what I've been saying this for a while and I haven't done it is like this version of my life right now that I do love, I really just I have all these movies written. When I say movies, I mean YouTube videos. Written, they're like really meaningful and awesome and some are deep and some are shallow and some are one-day shoots and some are 3 weeks of of writing. I just want to make those. I just want to go to my office every day alone and make these videos and put them out on YouTube. And like I deleted the YouTube Studio app from my phone. I don't look at comments or views anymore. I don't check AdSense. I don't do it. I just click upload and then go back to work. That's what I want to do right now. And when I'm beating myself up about my laziness, it's cuz there's no there's nothing stopping me from doing that. I just I keep kicking the can. But like that's what I want to do right now. Like that's it. I just want to put my head down and make the things that I think are great. Give a [ __ ] if anybody watches them. You talked about privilege earlier and acting on your privilege. Yeah, that is the that to do that is the ultimate privilege. Like there is nothing more. And there there's nothing more. That's like the most privileged existence. So, why aren't you acting on your privilege? You've got the lottery ticket. Uh you know, I I I think if like just to go back and be as honest as I is because I don't I don't I don't have to. And I'm embarrassed to say that, but that's the truth. Jack over there, Jack Sylvester, he's a produced this podcast and directed it with me since the very beginning. And you're the reason why he got into video. He told me many years ago, I think he told me 2 years ago when we first started this, he says he said Casey is his dream guest. Um Jack, I'm glad I uh didn't cancel today. Thought about it. It's like, you know, instead of doing that podcast, sure it'd be cool just to sit in my office and do nothing again. I'm glad I'm here. But my my question really is about 19-year-old Casey when he first arrived into New York City. What is the advice that Casey needed to hear at that point that he did he just didn't get? And I'm speaking to all the Jacks out there that are 19. [ __ ] that's tough. Um a quick digression. Like hearing that and then knowing that I'm like my notes app I have 25 great movies that I wrote that I really care about. It makes me feel like Spike Jonze has this great idea for a music video to make with Fat Lip. And if he just decided to go make shelves and have lunch and not make that video, it might not have made me get off my Like that's a [ __ ] motivator. Like that makes me want to create stuff. But what's the one piece of advice? I think that like nobody cares about you is something that was never made clear to me. And I mean that in the most positive, optimistic, inspiring, motivating way. Like I think that especially if you see yourself as a creative or you want to exist on YouTube or as a filmmaker or as a musician or as an artist or a painter any of those things like you think that everybody's paying attention. And because of that, it kind of controls how you think. And even when I was young and fearless and nothing to lose, I was still so cognizant of like how are people going to react to this and what's the best way to do like I was so aware. And the reality is nobody gives a [ __ ] Everybody is so focused on themselves in this world. Nobody has time for you. And the sooner you accept that as a creative person, the sooner you're free. Like you're totally free. Like do exactly what feels right to you. And if you can get yourself on that trajectory, then it goes back to what we were talking about before about being novel, about being an original, about not being a photocopy of somebody who did something. If you're that photocopy, you will never be the original. But the moment you accept the fact that you know, nobody cares. Do your thing. Nobody cares. And then you start to go down that path, you will just get better and better and better. Then you sprinkle on that patience I I talking about, you just keep going. You keep going. And eventually, like that persistence will just smash into like opportunity with the preparation will smash into opportunity, persistence will smash into opportunity, and like your moment of explosion your your detonation will happen. I was verbose, but you asked a big question. Thank you so much, Casey. We have We have a closing tradition on this podcast, where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. But I I did have a question, because you are I mean, many people consider you to be the very king of vlogging. And we've started a a weekly vlog, where which is going really well. We've uploaded I don't know eight eight or so videos, and we've got got a engaged audience. I Cuz you are the king of vlogging in my eyes, I The question I want to ask you selfishly is what do you make of that whole medium? It It's got It's been on a journey. There was a lot of daily vloggers back in the day. I used to watch the Shaytards, and I used to watch you, and and then, you know, doing these daily vlogs. And as you said, I felt like I was your friend, living your life with you. The algorithms changed, things changed. It doesn't seem to be the case that there's daily vloggers anymore. Even like vlogging on the platform seems to have kind of fallen down a little bit. What do you think of I mean, I Well, at the time, like when I was doing my daily vlog, I really thought that it was like the ultimate like um maturation, if that's a word, like of reality television. Because you've got Kim Kardashian, and then you have her TV show, and in between those two things are all these producers and directors and writers and all of this fabrication. So, what happens if you remove the middle part, and it's just the sharing your world? Like that was the That was the most sort of optimistic, whimsical trajectory that I saw the genre taking. And I think it just never happened. It never manifested Instead, it was a pursuit of sensationalism and views. I think it was corrupted by the view count. I don't fault anyone. I was susceptible to that, too. It was corrupted by the view count. So, what could have been something virtuous turned into something I think much less interesting. And that crashed and burned. And now, in the ashes of that, I think we're seeing really, really interesting things. I think we're seeing niche succeed, which is so [ __ ] wonderful to see. You had to be a YouTuber to succeed back in the day. Like one of those. You had to fit in. So, you had to be one of those. And now, it's like, we have these micro creators that are finding their audiences. Like friend of mine, all he's into is like fish tanks. It's all he does is fish tanks. His channel's huge. He's so good. Like these guys, Retro Dodo, they're friends of mine. Like I was on They came to New York to film with me. Their whole channel is just retro video gaming devices. They're so wildly successful. They've released books. And that is so amazing. Like you have eight episodes of your vlog out now. I haven't seen any, but like I'm sure they're much more about this than they are the intimacies of your life and how you got You know, like you're able to lean into that niche. So, I think like this thing had all this potential, and it crashed and burned. And now, out of those ashes, we're seeing these sort of beautiful little things sprout up. And I I hope that that's the trajectory it continues. And you're not tempted to vlog again on a daily basis? If I could do it without having any notoriety or attention from it, I would do it. That's the only reason you don't do it? Um it's a big part of the reason. So interesting. But like the thing that I fantasize is about is like um Quentin Tarantino just disappears off the face of the earth for like six years. And then it's like, "Hey guys, I have a new movie coming out in six months." And he is the only thing anyone talks about is that movie. And then he goes and disappears, crawls back into his cave. And it's like, that is the ultimate. I don't [ __ ] know anything about that guy. Is he married? I don't know. Does he have kids? Like where does he live? I don't know. What is he doing right now? I have no idea. Kind of car does he drive? Don't know. What are his hobbies? No idea. I know nothing about him. But his work, I know every word to every movie he has ever made. I appreciate that man for one reason, and that is his artistic contribution to the world. Like that is the ultimate. So, for me, with like daily vlogging, it's like I don't know how to separate the like selling of me and my personality with the art, and that uh conflation starts to [ __ ] with my head. And then, when people in the street come up to me and engage me, yeah, it it's it's that turning into something in the real world that just freaks me out. How long have we been talking? We're we're done. A while. The question that he asked is, "What is one piece of feedback you want to give to me?" Oh gosh, [ __ ] "What is one piece of feedback you want to give to me? Yes, me, Steven, but might be nervous to tell me." When you set up a studio in New York City, don't do it 40 minutes out into [ __ ] Brooklyn. You figure out how to build this studio in downtown Manhattan, so all of your guests are 5 minutes away, instead of 40 minutes away. You were really busy today? No, putting up shelves and watching TV. Doing nothing. Our Our studio was in low low Manhattan until This is the first time we've ever done it here, but that is great feedback. Don't do it again. Did you get come here on your skateboard? I thought about it, but it doesn't have the range. Oh, [ __ ] I appreciate that. Casey, thank you so much for the inspiration. is fantastic. I've talked about you for many, many years, and it's really about the principles of towards life, but also creation and the artistic side of your work that have inspired me so profoundly. And even hearing the import You speak so clearly on the importance of truth and authenticity in what you produce has has made me rethink a lot of things that I do, and I think in a really important way. And you're someone that is further further up the ladder that I think creators like myself are climbing. So, if you to shout down these messages mean that I don't have to go through the darkness or the confusion or all of those things that you've been through. So, I thank you for that. And I'm very excited to see what you do, because you're a pioneer. And people that are creating for their own authentic reasons always make the most interesting [ __ ] And so, that's going to be a source of inspiration for me, if you do make those 25 videos in your in the notes of your phone. So, please do. I appreciate that. I will. I'll do it for you. Thank you, Casey. Yeah, thanks for having me. Do you need a podcast to listen to next? We've discovered that people who liked this episode also tend absolutely love another recent episode we've done. So, I've linked that episode in the description below. I know you'll enjoy it.