How Much Money Colin and Samir Make on YouTube | EP. 13 Ft. Colin and Samir

Welcome to the 13th ever episode of the Iced Coffee Hour. At this point, we have gained $2,359. Gained? Earned? I think we're Yeah, that means we're averaging about $30 a day. That's pretty good. That's really good. Yeah, and we were able to secure some guests for this week. about these guests today. Really excited. So, why don't we welcome them to the show? Welcome Graham and Jack. COME ON IN. JUST right there, happy to have you guys. Thank you so much. I think you're a better host than we are. We are ready to take over. No, our goal was to come in and just take over. You have no idea how many takes sometimes we'll have to do in the beginning. And just to say welcome. Yeah, that's like that takes us four times to go and say that. And usually Jack is like we just got to do it. We're warmed up. We've been filming all day. Yeah, we're warmed up and we've also been hosting content together for 10 years. So, it's uh it's kind of like that's just what we uh do. You could tell when I said gained. We had to roll with it there. Yeah, you have to just improv at that point, you know. Beautiful. It's an art. It is. Welcome to the Iced Coffee Hour. We're super excited to have you guys on. I mean, we're really excited to be on. I did not know that um you were a local creator. Yeah. And I think I mentioned to you when we ran into we ran into each other on Saturday. This is like a couple days ago. how this came to be. Outside of a coffee shop. Yeah, which was amazing. I also was in a hat, sunglasses, and had a scarf around my neck, which was uncharacteristic for me. And I had no idea how First, I saw you and I was like I think I I think that's Graham Stephan. And I was like act cool be chill. And I told my fiance, I was like I think I I think I know that guy. And then I turned around and you were staring at me and I was like all right, I know that guy. Yeah, because you looked familiar. It's weird. I've been recognized where I wear the little like the mask and everything. I'm like how did you know? Yeah. There's no way. But then I saw you and I'm like look familiar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny there's that look um both from like creator to um audience member or creator to fan and fan to creator and then creator to creator. Yeah. where it's just like wait a second. Yeah, but see I'm a fan of your content. Like I really like it. It's good. You guys are too good. Now, really quick we should do a background like like some back story here of of who you are on your channel. Sure. Um you tell us actually. Okay. How did this start? You're making some really good videos right now and you did like it's too good I think. Like the quality I think is is is too too much too high of quality. I really really appreciate that. Yeah, that means a lot. Um our history dates back to um 10 years ago in in or about 10 years ago. In 2011, we started making YouTube content. Um I had just graduated college. I grew up here in Los Angeles and um I played lacrosse, which was a very foreign sport to play in Los Angeles. I had this idea coming out of high school and going into college that there should be a network for the sport. Like there should be the NFL network for lacrosse. And when I graduated college it was unlikely that that was going to end up on television, but I still wanted to do the idea and so just took to YouTube to start making content about lacrosse. Mhm. Um and at the same time during that exact same you know, two month span of us starting this network, um myself and a friend, Colin was making content about his lacrosse team in Colorado. There was only two people making lacrosse content on the internet and it was us in LA and Colin in Colorado. And so it was like Small community. Yeah, it was a small community. So very quickly. I uploaded and I think 30 minutes later I had an email. Yeah, so That's so cool. were really viewing it as like a network. So, we wanted to acquire content. And um he was making like a docu-series. It was like very good filmmaking, very good storytelling and we wanted to acquire his series. So, that's how we met um convinced him to move out to LA for a three month internship. Yeah, and then he stayed for nine years now. years. We've been making content together ever since. We had a we had a really great ride with um that company. It's called Lacrosse Network. We built it from 2011 to 2014 and we ended up selling the company uh to a New York based uh media group called Whistle Sports. Um At the time they had just brought on Dude Perfect as their primary partner to go into YouTube and we then became, you know, we we brought on our company uh and our goal was to build that brand, but then also join the team and help build out athlete and sports content across social platforms. I got to know how long does it take you to make a video? The amount of work that I bet you put in it it's mind-blowing to me. Cuz I know like as as a creator it's like it's not that that easy. People always think you just turn on the camera and it's like whoa derpty derp and there's like there's a viral video. It's never like that. It's really funny as a creator cuz like when I first started watching your videos, I thought the same thing. I was like how long like what's the process what's the workflow here what's the process like yeah, it's like how how long are you researching? What what does your like script look like? Like I'm so curious about that. me yours, I'll tell you mine. Uh it varies. We're actually, you know, in this ever evolving process of trying to pin down um and balance between letting your creativity flow, but then also being efficient and making sure that you're getting enough videos out to support yourself as as a company and and uh you know, for us we oscillate between some of our videos take 10 days because they have interviews, they have a ton of different pieces of b-roll, they have writing sessions, rewriting sessions. Uh Colin you know, totally leads on that process and he from day one since the day I met him, he's just like super intensive on storytelling. And if the story doesn't make sense, it doesn't go out. Uh and that means like every frame builds on top of each other and if it doesn't, we're going to lose people's attention. We're going to not, you know, create something that's conversational at all. Um and so now we're starting to work into spaces where when we started talking about ourself, like we made a video that you commented on called How Much YouTube Pays Us, which was kind of like a I see anything money related and comment on that. it. Very on brand for you. Um but that video took less time because the storytelling of it was like personal and we were able to tell our own story and doing that it was it was a lot easier to uh flip that video around. So, we're trying to balance now and understand what are the videos that are the big swings? Like, you know, the video we made with Mr. Beast. Obviously, that's a big swing. that video. That that's going to cross a million views uh you know, probably in the next week or or 10 days and that was a big swing. That's worthy of spending a ton of time on. Um now we also need the frequency of building a community and having a conversation with our audience. So, we have to tier off our videos and say this is a tier one video that is a big swing and here's a tier two video that's, you know, probably in the we're aiming for 100,000 people to watch it. Mhm. And tier one most likely is involves us interviewing someone. You look at the Mr. Beast video. There are three different interviews incorporated in that video, each of which were about an hour long that we recorded. So, the process of going through and sifting through it, finding which parts of that interview you want and then putting them into a story and then filming our hosted, that's what really makes the process longer. Trying to figure out the story when you have so many different sources that you're using. Again, like when it's just us, it's much more linear. Yeah. Why does it take 10 days? But our goal now, even if we have a video that's going to take 10 days, is to make sure that we have multiple other videos going on at the same time that are potentially lighter lift videos. So, that when 10 days go by, we're not just sitting with one YouTube video. We have a couple more in the works. Right. I found that really interesting when you said you have tier one and tier two videos because something I wanted to ask you guys is that it's so clear like when you post a video, at least when I see it, I'm like okay, this video is going to be a banger and tons of people are going to watch it. It's going to blow up like the David Dobrik video. Like there's a reason why you guys have done like more than one of those cuz they just they blow up immediately. But at the same time I've I I feel like you guys are there's something in you guys that are trying to like post videos maybe that don't totally blow up. Such as like a day in quarantine. You know, like I feel like like you guys would see that and think like maybe this video isn't going to blow up. Yeah. And and you kind of know in making it that it's not going to blow up. Maybe it's a filler or it's a you guys go into it knowing it's a tier two. It's not necessarily a filler, but I think we've we've moved away from that a bit. But that comes from just the inherent creative desire to make other things and not be like in a box. Um But I would say we're very different creators even then from that time. Putting out, you know, a day in the life video. I don't think we would ever do that and that was two months ago three months ago. Yeah, yeah. We've evolved quite a bit over the past couple months. Um But yeah, I wouldn't even consider that now on the chart of something that we would consider anymore. Um but yeah, that the past we we've had this channel for over three years and it's been so much experimentation around from when we started the channel where you remember the days of Casey Neistat daily vlogging and people just making cool stuff about their life. We tried that. We tried to tell stories about our life and it just wasn't interesting and we it was just very hard for us to do. And it was really surprising because it was like we're very confident in our video making ability, but we couldn't find a way to tell stories about our life that was interesting. But then once we shifted that to the conversations we were having about the creator industry and just made that the topic, it like immediately was able to find an audience. How do you know everybody? Like how do you get Mr. Beast for an interview like that? It seems like you know a lot of people in this space. It's like you are you are the one who's interconnected. I think uh we've always I've I've personally always prided myself on networking. Mhm. I think somehow it just happens. Coffee shops? Yeah, coffee shops. But also But also we've used videos as networking tools. Okay. We made a video about Will Smith uh two years ago. Mhm. And within an hour we got an email from his management company and then we were able to connect with them and and work with them. to put Will Smith in the title of Yeah, I know. Featuring Will Smith. What? But yeah, and That's How was that? What was that like? like that one about Will Smith was sort of almost free consulting cuz Will Smith had just joined YouTube at the time and we thought, "Well, let's give him our take on what he's doing on YouTube." Right? So, his management company is going to be on that immediately because that's their world. It's almost like the real audience for that video, even though it hit maybe 300,000 views, was actually the five people in the Will Smith management office. That's who it was directed at. So, they got it immediately. Even like you said, like you'll see anything about money. So, there was a purpose. You knew going into it that that was your intention. That was just a better version of cold outreach in an email. Okay, but what about Mr. Beast? Because you had him in the video. How did that happen? Beast came from I So, we also met Yes Theory in that way. We made a video about them and that's how we met them. We became very close with them. Yes Theory ended up doing a video with Mr. Beast. Um we made a video about Mr. Beast. He saw it, didn't reach out to us, and then uh I had a I had one of the Yes Theory guys on my podcast talking about the experience of working with Mr. Beast and right after he DM'd us and he was just like, "Hey guys, I really like your videos. Um can I call you?" And I gave my number and since then he's just been That's fun. a super close connection. Uh a guy who's like an amazing mentor. I think he's a great person to be who he is on our platform because of who he is. And he just has a very vested interest in creators growing and he's taken an interest in in us and that's awesome. Like it's super cool. And so, it's very it's very cool to have someone like that to be able to reach out to and connect with. And so, that's Over time we've built a relationship to the point where I can send him a text and say, "Hey, when your finger on the app game is done, can we hop on a on a Zoom call for a video?" And he's like, "Yeah." That's awesome. was really cool and really special. That is so cool. Congratulations. I think it's just the the quality that you put in reminds me a bit of that that Casey Neistat style. Yeah. 100%. it's it's But I honestly like I tell Jack like it's too good. It's too good for YouTube. Like this is like movie quality stuff you can put on YouTube. I appreciate that. That's really nice. Yeah, I appreciate that. I think I think a lot of that comes though from us having to work like So, in the early days when we are like when we first started The Lacrosse Network, I I always had this vision of working with Nike. I was like, "I want to work with Nike." And so, when you got to make a video about them now. Yeah, well, when Colin when Colin came in, that was the goal. Like that was our North Star as a as a business was we have to build something that's elite enough and premier enough that a brand like Nike would want to advertise with us. And again, this is such an early stage in YouTube that um it was really hard to convince anyone that YouTube was worthy. So, we had to make sure that our stuff looked like stuff that Nike would want to put their name on. And eventually Nike did work with us. And when we did work with them, we wanted to use the money to level up and make ourselves look like a TV network. Uh so, we always viewed YouTube as just like the democratic television channel. It wasn't like I don't think I fully understood exactly what it was in the beginning. Um I just always viewed it as that. And so, working with brands, working with athletes, you have to have a certain standard of production and filmmaking and storytelling for them to feel excited about who you were. Otherwise, they thought you were showing up with like a flip camera and like saying, "Hey, we're doing a YouTube video with these guys." felt so low budget So, yeah. We we made up for it in storytelling and filmmaking. ever feel like that works against you though? That you put like 10 days of work into a video and like all of this stuff and and it just maybe doesn't do as well versus you see some of these guys with like, "What's up, guy? I'm going it's like 20 minutes of zero editing and a million views. I mean, we talk about it all the time. There are commentary channels that talk about similar topics to what we talk about and they're just sitting down with a low-fi webcam basically and it'll be a 30-minute video with a few cuts, their thoughts on a on a topic. And they'll get exponentially more views than we did on a video where we decided to tackle that topic. So, it's definitely something that we talk about. I I think we're really interested though in finding that middle ground, I think, of where our brand sets apart and it is unique and someone can look at it and say, "Wow, that's really dialed. That feels like a show." But it also doesn't take as long as a TV show would take to make. Yeah, I'll tell you my perspective. I liked your channel and it caught my attention because you were making videos like you had millions of subscribers, but I think I found you at the time at like 30 or 40k or something like that. And I was like, "Why Why is it so good?" I really believe and I tell it's like it's too good. And from my perspective too, like some of these video topics that I do, we'll talk about the stimulus briefly. I will spend like 5-6 hours compiling like weeks worth of information talking about the upcoming stimulus package. Meet Kevin goes on his computer for 20 minutes and just talks for 8 minutes. His videos will double my views. Which is and with no editing whatsoever, it's just him talking to camera. And I'm putting so much thought into this to make it very concise. Sometimes it doesn't make a difference. And so, like you said, there is that fine balance between just how much work do you want to put in it? How much risk do you want to put in one video potentially not doing well versus really well. Also, like like growing a audience online, like your goal is you're basically aggregating a bunch of people to point them in a certain direction. And um your ability to point them in that direction determines the value of you as a creator. And even if you're getting a million people to watch you, if you don't have that ability, it doesn't matter. And so, I think our style, our quality, um like we made a video about sports, about the NFL, and about Cam Newton that um didn't do well. But it caught the attention of Cam's team. And we were able to get a meeting, get some opportunities, get in the room with them. So, you start to redefine what does it mean to do well? Um same thing is like we've talked about our networking ability has come from our ability to make make videos and make videos that have a certain quality about them that it catches the eye of people and they're have the same reaction that you have of like, "Hmm, there's something to these guys that's different. Yes, this video didn't get a million views, but there's something about these guys that I want to I want to engage with." Did you meet David Dobrik? We have met David in person, but not after that video. It was prior and um after that though, he did So, the interesting thing about that video why David Dobrik laughs so much is that he pumped that video as if it was a brand deal. He did a swipe up on Snapchat. He did a swipe up on Instagram. He commented on the video. Wow. He promoted it like he was promoting a brand deal I've never seen a video explode like that video. Yeah, and it exploded. And I was telling Colin that video. Brands pay would pay a lot of money for what he just did for our brand. Uh which is really cool. And so again, it's like that the amount of effort that we put into the videos, we we've seen uh like high returns on the investment. But we are trying to find the balance to make sure that we can be more frequent cuz that is a part of the YouTube you know, algorithm. Yeah, we got a we got a shrine over here above the fireplace. It's for the algorithm. So, before we leave, we need to chant, you know, smash like button, smash like button 10 times for the algorithm. That's good luck. There's two things I wanted to bring up. One was that we do intentionally also film in our car cuz it feels very like homey. Yes. Yeah, and like and like it is it did start because it was just like, "Okay, this sounds really good in here." But I do feel like that grounds us a little bit in our um ability to not feel so distant in our cuz our editing is very like intricate and it's important to feel close to your audience. And being in that car setting feels so relatable. Um Now, the second thing is one thing I really love about what you do is you're talking about such complex topics that to me like when I'm watching your videos, there's so much value. And I think value goes way beyond production value. It's the value to the audience is what the true value of the video is. And in your last video, I told Colin about this this morning. I loved that you keep these Easter eggs that are just so YouTube where you said I think you said "What's up, Graham? It's guys." Yeah. And I was like, "That is YouTube." And that's what I love about YouTube is you're just catching someone for a moment and then you go down to the comments and you're like, "Did everyone else see that?" And it's like it's just such an awesome thing that um I think is just not something that someone on television who talks about money would ever They would be like, "What are you talking about? Don't do that. That's weird." But it's so good. Oh, thanks. so relatable and it's so like it builds that connection. And again, that ability to point your audience in a direction because now I'm like It's to save money. That's all. That's the whole direction. Save money and hit the like button. Like those are the two things I say in every video. Don't spend money, guys. I think your channel though very recently has pushed us to try and offer more value and get more specific in all of our videos. If you've been following lately, like we went into the specifics of an influencer marketing deal. I don't think we would have done that before watching your channel heavily. I just try to appeal to the biggest audience possible, which is a little bit difficult because then you start regurgitating the same information over again. But my thing is like what could every 20-something take away from this video that's a little bit different from the last video I did. And here's the thing too, no one goes and watches my old videos. Very rarely. So, I could have said something a year ago. No one watches it cuz it's not new. So, I just repeat myself really. I looked up how many views you're doing in a month and I was pretty impressed. Yeah, but most People are watching your library. Not really. I would say probably 80% of the views are from the last 30 days. And then the other 20% is from previous videos. And honestly, I would say there're maybe 10 videos or 15 videos out of 500 on the main channel that just consistently get views every single month no matter what happens. And those are usually the biggest viewed videos. Everything else, like my videos from 2 years ago that I that I spent so much time on, there's so much value, but they'll do like 12 views a day. Are they like really topical to that time or No, those are those are videos that did really well at the time. It's just that curve that, you know, spikes up and then it's and then it dies down and then no one goes back and watches it all the videos. Interesting. could remake the same video every year Yeah. and it's new for those people who never go back and see the old videos. I think what's interesting about your channel, Colin and I always talk about transformative storytelling and how things that suggest transformation and that's why Mr. Beast does so well is cuz from the start of his video to the end something amazing happens, right? There's some sort of transformation that you're watching, but your videos are on the topic of money, which is arguably the most transformative thing there is in the world. Like me going from not having money to having money or saving money or like just an increase in money is the most transformational thing that a person could go through, which is what makes your videos so um immediate, I think, from a click-through rate perspective. It's just like, yes, I'm going to click on that. It is the universal language. Yes. Everybody needs money. Everybody needs money. That's something I didn't realize until I started making videos is like this applies or can apply to anybody. Yeah. Even if you don't think you're into money, like you you got to pay the bills. a good topic for I think actually maybe you could tell us, but I think it's a good topic for YouTube because people who talk about money there's a lot higher CPMs for them and there's a lot more people who want to engage with them. If you're giving advice to people about or talking about money. Yes, it's it's hard to stay relevant in that because mostly the principles for saving money, personal finance, investing are really basic. There's only so many times you can say the same thing of investing in index fund, do that consistently, hold long term, build up your credit score. I could summarize everything in a 20-minute video, but then you have to spice things up. Right. Especially posting three times a week. Yeah, and that's super impressive. It's a topic though that doesn't hurt to be reminded about as an audience member though. That's how we justified it. There's a feeling of bettering yourself after watching one of your videos. Like taking feeling a little bit more financially secure, even if you have yet to actually take an action after watching your videos. I've noticed, at least for myself, cuz I went through the same curve of like for a few years you're really into like personal finance. Like I would go on Reddit every single day and read like the financial independence subreddit, the investing subreddit, be so into it. After a few years you're like, ah, it's all kind of the same stuff now and you just stop checking it and you you kind of grow through that phase, but this is something for me I'm trying to like throw in entertainment, too, so you could keep those people engaged to know it all, but they keep coming back because maybe there's something else or maybe it's he'll tell a joke. Maybe he'll say, "What's up, Graham's guys here." And like that keeps you so like stuff like that. It's Yeah, I think that's the most dynamic thing is when the personality becomes bigger than the topic, then you can talk about anything. And I think Casey did that, right? Casey was just like Casey can still to this day talk about anything and I'll watch it. Um and I think that's where, in my opinion, when you're starting to when you're starting to catch like onto the algorithm in YouTube and like people are just there willing to watch you, but they're there for a specific topic, I think the opportunity is to start to build in things into your show like that, like what's up, Graham's guys, and like funny moments that happen more often than you talking about the topic. So, over time basically your personality takes up more of the time on screen than the topic. Yeah. And you lock in a certain group of the audience that will be there no matter what. I've been trying to expand. I gave relationship advice thanks to Jack. Jack set me up crazy story. You want to you want to explain this? I gave a woman like marriage advice. I don't know if you've seen this video. Yeah, it was a it was a phone call interview where a woman was going to divorce her husband okay because like High stakes. Yeah, the husband said like And they were like, "We need Graham's advice." Yeah, the husband literally said he he was like, "Okay, so I don't want to marry a woman who's making less than 20% of what I make in a year." And then they ended up getting married anyways. And then she started making like five times the amount he was making. Wow, tables turned. So, she was making like 80K a month, right? So, he was making 150 a year. Okay, she was making like 20. She was making 20 a year. Now she's making 80 a month, like a mill a year. And by the way, a lot of people felt that like that story was fake or something, but Completely real. Legit. We can't disclose exactly what the business is. It's a very niche business. I would have no idea that this even exists, to be honest. Play off camera. Or you know, I'll tell you. And just bleep it out. Do you remember what it was? Okay, that that's really exciting. Yeah, she she sells like You guys couldn't hear that, but what he just said was the most unexpected thing you could have heard. No one would guess it, but Yeah. 80 A mill a year. Yeah. Yes. Wow, what are we doing? That's why I say we're in the wrong business. You would never think in it it's just like neatly packaged together. slime, right? Like slime every like people are making so much money on selling slime. There's like an audience for irrational things. It's okay. If there's an audience for everything. just kind of gave them a hint that it's irrational. Yeah, but you said slime, dude. Slime's irrational. Interesting isn't it? Yes, it is. And she started making an like crazy amount and now all of the sudden she's wondering if they should get a divorce. Cuz the tables have turned. Because the tables have turned. So, now she's saying, "Listen, buddy, you're making under 20% of what Yeah. But the plot also thickens because there's no pre-nup involved. No pre-nup and they got married after knowing each other 3 months. For 3 months. Yes. So, oh, we we'll get your take on this. It'll be interesting. He married her knowing that he was making 150, 170 a year. She was making 20. He did not ask for a pre-nup out of good faith, he says. Now that she's making all this money, she was concerned that like, "I'm making all this money and he might take half of my business and half my money." And then I brought him on the call and said, "What do you think about this?" Wow, Graham, what show is this? Yeah, it's the Graham Stephan Show. Okay, the second channel, the Graham Stephan Show, yeah. That's the show I want to be on. Graham Stephan Show. So, I brought him on. I said, "What was the what was the thinking behind this?" And he was saying, "Well, listen, like in good faith, I married her knowing that if we got divorced, I would owe her as per, you know, whatever the California judge rules, but now that she's making more money, she wants me to sign a postnuptial agreement. How is that fair?" And so, there's a lot I think they already filed for divorce. I got in too late. I could have saved this marriage I could have gotten in a little sooner. I would have I would have recommended, I think, just investing some of the money into marriage counseling and and trying to explore that. And then also I would probably recommend to people who are listening out there, if that's a thought that's crossing your mind before you get married, re-evaluate it. Yeah, you don't want to you don't want to base your marriage like it's a like a base on your revenue and her revenue. I hate to interrupt. I brought that up to him and I said like, "Who says that?" He said it was it was done in a in just like a joking manner manner, but And she said it wasn't. Yeah, she said she chimed in and said it wasn't. But he also said that he wanted to he wanted to marry someone It was one of the most viewed phone calls that we got on that second channel, but Can we guys clip that out and like put it on Tik Tok? I feel like that would It's so intriguing. We'll have to make like 10 10 parts of it. But he said he wanted to be able to marry someone who was self-sufficient, who could at least provide for themselves. And I I kind of got that that like you you don't want someone who necessarily relies on you for everything and at least can can, you know, pave their own way. So, I kind of get that, too. If he did say it as a joke, the joke is now on him. It's not a funny joke. It's not it's not something where you say that everyone laughs. I can't imagine saying that at dinner with my fiance and her laughing. It'd be just really super uncomfortable. Yeah. Such a jokester. Wow. But we I totally agree with you when you say it's really important to market yourself and maybe not like the content that you're putting out, but just you as a person, as a brand. And that's exactly what we've been trying to do with Graham, right? Like we created a podcast so we could talk about things that weren't so finance related and people could see more raw Graham because on his main channel it's heavily like cut and stuff like that. Right. That's that's Graham playing a character. Graham. Yeah, to a certain some to a certain extent, I mean. know. I know. I would say that the the main channel, the Graham Stephan channel, is like 95% accurate, to me. Obviously I'm hyped up for the camera. Like no one is that energetic and you know, all the time. Second channel is more myself just exaggerated a little bit for comedic effect. The podcast is just whatever. Podcast is whatever. Yeah, I think you have like a different responsibility to each audience on the different channels. Like your main channel actually has a a pretty serious responsibility at this point to deliver the information. Like the information is the most important part. Is it correct? Is it easy to understand? And as you get to the Graham Stephan Show, obviously it's like it's entertainment. It just goes downhill from there. But that was our purpose of the Graham Stephan Show as well because, you know, we started doing reactionary content and as well as the phone calls where a lot of, you know, on occasion we'll have phone call people that aren't really even about finance. Like the, you know, the the dating or the marriage one. And then we also had one where a guy was going to break up with his girlfriend because she cost too much money. And it was $100 a month. Yeah, the title was, "Should I break up with my girlfriend?" Or like what Wait, what do you mean she costs him a hundred? Yeah. Cuz well, he would go on dates. Yeah, so he would go on a a date with her every month, one day to month. Once a month. Yeah, and it would cost on average about $100 a month. Okay. And then Graham These are real people, by the way. Yeah, he's he's like Dr. Phil on these phone calls. He sorts it out. And then that's Yeah, this sounds like a dream show for me, by the way. Yeah, this sounds like a blast. That's what we're trying to do. phone What I really envision for Graham on the second channel is to have something like like Maury. Like you know Maury Yeah. Of course. Okay, first of all, I grew up I grew up in the Maury era where you stayed home from school to watch Maury, yeah. Yeah. Those were the my favorites and my mom hated it though. She hated that show. Maury was good. Maury was really good. I learned a lot of my life lessons You get like a boyfriend and a girlfriend or something and and they have financial troubles they they disagree on some I don't know their finances or whatever and Graham would sort it out. I think it's great. I mean money is one of the biggest problems that people have in relationships in life. hearing about it. Everyone. No one hates hearing about money. That's an interesting point that we could do is like Not like marriage counseling. Sure, yeah. I'm not qualified to do on your website, yeah. But but like but financial Yeah. Somehow people think that I'm qualified to talk about this. I'm not. But that's what we're trying to get It's No, I love it. I think it's great. It's funny. Like Brandon Graham more so as a person rather than as like a source of news, you know, where you can see Graham Oh, I agree. But I But I think after I started watching your videos again, I was like I'm comfortable listening to you give me information. And like over time it's like you start to develop a relationship with this person that you're like Yeah, you could you could like even if I'm tangentially interested in the topic, I'm like but I enjoy listening to Graham. Oh, thanks. what I mean? Like so that that I think is what we're trying to get to on our channel where we have to get to a point where people are like what you you mentioned the day in the life video, it doesn't work unless people are just generally interested in Colin and Samir. And right now we might be building towards that, but we're we're we're quite a ways away from people just being like throw me anything with these two guys in it and I'll watch it, you know? And that's it also is kind of like a cruise ship. It takes a really long time to move your audience. Now we found a format, we're going to stick to this thing for you know a long time. challenges that you guys can do together? Yeah, we've talked about that. Have you top comment and then they do that thing? Yeah, I have. The cheeky boys. Yeah, the cheeky boys. Yeah, yeah, they're they're managed by a guy out in Venice. So they were just there, yeah, they were just in Venice. Telling you, man, Venice is campus. It's a college campus of creators, yeah. Oh, introduce us. Jeez, I I don't know if he Yeah, I I we do actually know a lot of people in the creator space, which is uh which is really cool. I think also because it becomes very relatable to have conversations with other creators. I think that's so important so you can empathize with each other and kind of like understand what other people are going through. Everyone's the same, I've noticed. Yeah, it's all it's all very similar. We did a video with Pokimane. Yeah, and dude, that was a that was a great video. I sent it in our Slack to to some of the people who help out with our videos saying this is what I want to graduate to like the next time we do a video with Beast, I want to be actually on campus with him. It was a nightmare to do that video. But there was you said something about that, didn't you? Like it was like The amount of work that went into that video and just the pressure and the stress. Like that morning I was just like so nervous. It was hard. I also think it was because that's not the type of content that we're used to producing. So since it was different, it required a lot more what I loved about that? You guys did like a breakdown of her staff in that and it was so well articulated and that was one of Yeah, yeah. That was one of the most your idea, right? Yeah. Yeah, that was Jack's idea to come up with that and then I sat in Photoshop and just did like the jankiest thing I could come crazy? So you did that yourself. Yes. See, that's one thing that I'm always interested in is like how much of the process are you know, a creator like yourself who I think is like like you're delivering like expert knowledge in a certain space. I don't necessarily consider you on first glance as like a video editor or like someone who's like proficient in Photoshop, but it's interesting to hear that you're like sitting in photo Like I'm sure large portion of your audience is not imagining you sitting in Photoshop making those graphics. It's such a unique part of the process. I actually think something that'd be really fun is if in certain videos you like the animation's going on and you like pull out of the frame and show yourself actually creating it. Because like it it'll create a really deep connection where it's like wait a second. Graham's not outsourcing this part of the process like Yeah, it would change it would change the audience's relationship with you to know that when I'm watching a graphic it's Graham who made that and then you can make that a bit like how was my graphic rated, you know, have that be a conversation. Yeah, we're starting to add to our Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, that's the reason why I never wanted like a big team or anything like that cuz it's just been me. And Jack is only now recently full-time. Only now. Wow. Welcome Jack to our podcast. 13th ever. 13. Yeah, 13. But that that news was delivered in 12th episode, correct? Yes. That's true. Yeah, yeah, 12th episode. But yeah, the main channel I still do pretty much everything myself. Jack and I will deliberate over titles and thumbnails. And we'll sit there for an hour being like do you think this title? No. Cuz sometimes you will have an idea for a title and a thumbnail and you'll do it and then I'll show it to Jack he's like I don't like it. Interesting. So we uh it's crazy. We we now are pretty strict and we won't even make the video if we can't title it. title and thumbnail me. And and thumbnail it. Sometimes I mean we have a video that we're making that we want to talk to you about, I mentioned it to you about education that we've already made the thumbnail and it's probably going to come out in 3 weeks. So like we will craft the thumbnail long before. Like go out, take a photo, Photoshop it, take a look at it and be like would people click on this or no? I found the thumbnail is always something you do later. For me it's always the title because I will come up with the title first and then it make the video around that title. Got it. Like one of the ones that that took me a while. Like I wasn't even going to make the video until I came up with the title was I finished my duplex renovation and I was trying to think of a title because I knew this had to be like a before and after renovation video and it was not going to be big unless it had a big title to it. So I came up with the title after hours of thinking about it and I thought we thought of a thumbnail. But that was one of those videos. It ended up doing really well just because of the title and I crafted the entire video around that title. Yeah, most videos will have to come up with title first. Yeah, I mean what do you look at metrics on your like on your videos? Like do you track Oh, we don't. Yes. Okay, all right. We know that if it doesn't get a certain amount of views in the first minute, we got to change something. So what we do, our whole strategy is first 5 minutes we'll just see how the video does cuz sometimes they don't send out notifications in the first like minute and then it'll be you know, 3 minutes in, fine. After 5 minutes if we don't see a high enough click-through rate from the the notification, we know it's the title. So we'll change the title. Wow. If we get a big spike but all then all of a sudden it starts dropping, we know it's a thumbnail because people clicked on the title from the notification, but now they're not clicking through to the video afterwards. It's thumbnail. So we'll play with the thumbnail and sometimes it's both. Sometimes we'll get just like just people won't click on the video and they don't watch the video and we're like well, that's the most stressful part because you have a live video. It's already posted. You can't do anything to it and you have to scramble like you have like maybe 30 minutes to nail this otherwise video's done. And sometimes you change the thumbnail and it works. We've had a lot of success and then sometimes you change the thumbnail and title and nothing happens. I think what's interesting we were talking to Thomas from yesterday yesterday about the ranking system that the YouTube Creator Studio has. That it just Why don't you explain that to everybody? Okay, so the ranking system basically when you put out a new video, YouTube ranks where it stands over the amount of time that it's been out against your other videos that you've put out. Last 10 videos. Last 10 videos. So basically like we recently put out a video. I think right now it came out 2 days ago or yesterday. Yesterday and right now it's three out of 10. Good. And uh what's it's a really interesting thing cuz over time it shifts based on how your videos have performed. You know, 5 days when your video's live for 5 days it'll say in 5 days and 30 minutes this has X amount of views which ranks it number four out of your last 10 videos in 5 days and 30 minutes. Um so it's become this very they know what they're doing, uh but it's become you compete so much with yourself. And like I've been so hooked. We've had a couple that have hit number one, number one, number one and then you're like number three, what the hell? Like It's Jack and I have an agreement where if we get a number one we go get happy hour sushi. Seriously, that's our that's our celebration. Hinoki sushi. Nice. Graham feels like physically ill if we get a 10. Oh, yeah, me too. Of course. If you start you don't know who you are as a person. I I seriously believe like my channel's done. I'm just no one watches me anymore. No one cares what I'm doing. I literally have to tell him I'm like Graham, it's okay. Like it's just a 10. I had one video turn around though. I will tell you there is hope. I posted a Tesla video like like the Tesla What is it? Tesla Model 3 like my regrets of buying a Tesla Model 3. That was a 10 Right. by far. I mean that was half the views of like the nine. And I remember that Friday night I think we went we went to a Mexican spot down the street. And I remember being so sad that night. Like my whole night was ruined. I told Macy I'm like listen, heads up I'm not going to be like Seriously, you think it's a joke. The Creator Studio told me something today though. She knows. I If I get a 10, I tell her up front like listen, if I'm not myself tonight, it's it's not you, it's it's a 10. It's the algorithm. It's not good. And it just That was a night. The next day it was okay. Now that video is one of the most viewed videos on my channel. It just The algorithm decided like you know what, Graham, we know you We had a bad night. Going to make it up to you next week. Yeah, I mean as a frame of reference right now our video's been out for 2 days and you know, X amount of hours, it's number three. Our Mr. Beast video's number five on this list right now. Wow. And that has 900,000 views. So, that kicked up like 5 days later. Yeah, the Mr. Beast video was disappointing when we first released it. it out and we were like, "Ah, I guess no one cares." I remember thinking like, "Well, that's that's as much as we can possibly do." Yeah. He's the biggest YouTuber on the platform. And we really went for it. Like we we full 14 minutes, a good title. He workshopped the thumbnail with us. Yeah, it was a really interesting experience. if that doesn't work, I don't know what's going to work." Yeah. And then it just picked up 5 days later and then just went on a rocket ship. And it And everything was okay with the world. Whoa, yeah. It's probably watch time. Or I'm guessing What's your retention rate on that video? The average view duration was really good um in the beginning. I watched all the way through. I rarely watch a video all the way through. 9 minutes originally. Wow. Yeah, but now it's a little less. Let me look. Now it's 6 minutes. So, not as good now, but that's across you know, the past 700,000 views. So, Wow. um Originally, it was pretty high, which was which was great. Should we talk revenue? Do you want to talk revenue? revenue, yeah. Okay. Yeah. money do you guys make? What's your household uh uh what what what what does Dave Ramsey say? Household income. He doesn't say that. What What does he say? You're What does Dave Ramsey say? I'm blanking. Average gross income? What's your household I forget what he says. Geez, never mind, guys. Ignore that joke. Was that a joke? I was I was supposed to imitate Dave Ramsey. That didn't go over well. um Edit that part out. Yeah, I think I think people were really surprised in our how much money YouTube uh pays us video when we talked about our expenses. Mhm. um I had a couple people text me being like, "Yo, why are your expenses so high?" Right. Cuz we said uh we our expenses are in the hundreds of thousands, um which I'm saying like our our total operating expenses like they include our salaries, includes our team, our uh um our our new space that we have. um So, you know, the reality is like we're now at a point finally where we're able to like actually do this full-time as YouTube creators, which was not the case over the past 3 years. We've been operating as like a creative agency. um We've been uh like doing uh doing projects for other people that don't have anything to do with our YouTube channel. There's even a point where we made videos for a real estate company Mhm. about a building. Yeah. Which was super interesting and um Yeah, now we're doing YouTube full-time. YouTube, like from an AdSense perspective, it's pretty small. Like I think Can I see it? Yeah. All right, let's see it. Uh I'm going to I'm going to see $12,000 in the past Let's see. Uh I want to see this. How many people do you have working with you? So, we have a full-time editor uh named Jesse. Shout out to Jesse. I know his wife watches the show. software Jesse uses? Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah, we all use Premiere. I mean, we're all editors. You all use Premiere? Yeah, we all use Premiere. Uh I'm trying to choose what I'm going to like transition to. revenue over the past 4 weeks. And then you can go to lifetime. How? How did you Look at that. What the I I How is How? So, I I Do you want Do you mind if I say it or No, please say it. Yeah, we don't care about this. One Let's Let's Let's round it up. 1.4 million views in 28 days. $2,800. That doesn't make any sense. No, it doesn't make any sense. Can we see the But it's our CPM. What is a CPM? Our CPM is probably somewhere around $4, maybe five bucks. Why is it so low? Let's Let's check the reason is but but that's what I was saying, Graham, is that you talk about money. And money has a trades at a really high CPM. our Iced Coffee Hour is not like here. Yeah, we talked about Here's the Iced Coffee Hour. Literally, 130,000 views, $1,000. Yeah. And what what CPM are you guys at in revenue? Got it. Australia. Hey guys from Australia watching. Thank you so much for watching. You guys are trading at over double our CPM, almost triple. Yeah, but but even then, that doesn't make sense. I think Even double. Why? Are you You know why I think it is? You're not putting uh mid-roll ads in your videos. blast in mid-rolls. Yeah, we just started. You are? Okay, you just you just started. Well, why isn't your ad revenue going up? What Do you see Dude, I literally don't know even double. Cuz even double Well, the monetized playbacks are What's their cuz they got about a million? Yeah, but they got nine times what we have. Even if we're double, they should be four times. There's We have videos that also trade at like a $2 CPM. See, all all all If I show you our CPMs, you'll be really interested in um our video called how much you money YouTube pays us is a $10 CPM. Our Mr. Beast video is a $4 CPM. So, we range in CPMs cuz basically YouTube's saying how much like what type of advertiser should go on this. When you look at your channel, like I get a lot of Amazon FBA Yeah. uh ads on your channel. And you're generating like significant revenue on um on on those ads cuz they're paying a higher premium. I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't understand it. You You need to be paid way more. Well, from our from our beginning days on YouTube, um we always said we never ever ever will base any part of our business. We will never attribute AdSense revenue to any part of our business. Like we will never say AdSense covers our rent. AdSense allows us to hire a new employee cuz it's too variable. So, we'll never do that. I would disagree with that because AdSense, I think my theory is that that is going to be correlated to the algorithm. I think YouTube is a business, obviously, and I think they're going to be promoting content that not only makes them look good, but is also good for advertisers. So, I think if you make monetizable content that also happens to pay well, the algorithm is going to see this and be like, "Ooh, we can make a little bit more money from this." That's how I see it. And the algorithm is just as variable. Yes, it is. And so, that That's what I'm saying is that I think that we've never We haven't seen it yet. Graham, we're friends with a lot of creators who I mean, do super well on AdSense. And I'm sure your main channel uh is pretty significant from an AdSense perspective. Uh we've never experienced it where AdSense is significant. Doesn't matter if we do a couple million views in a month. Doesn't matter if, you know, it's it's like Again, we make some videos that do pretty well and it's just like not that significant. We've made more money in AdSense this month even though it's not much than we've ever made before. More money this month than ever. And And part of that I think has to do with the fact that three out of our last five videos have to do specifically with money. Right. Yeah. So, I think that's that's one thing. But, you know, we're lucky to have a very significant brand partnership with Samsung uh and that really changes the way that we operate. Uh we also have long-term partnerships with uh Storyblocks and a couple other brands. And so, that allows us to have recurring revenue that then bases like how we're operating as a business and lets us experiment. We've just moved into the direct-to-consumer space um with our paid educational course. What is that? So, it's an It's not sponsored. Yeah, it's an I'm I'm going to plug it every time I get, but uh it's a uh online storytelling course. It's about our process of coming up with ideas and and filmmaking and um how we basically uh brainstorm and craft an idea before we turn on a camera. Uh so, it's a very extensive process, an hour and a half of content. We're adding to it throughout this year. That is selling at a $100 price point. It's been out for a week and we've been able to convert 265 people uh to purchase that course uh in the past week. And so, for us, that's a really interesting model. I think that's where we fit in more naturally. We feel like we are kind of educators. We feel like we're building a relationship with our audience where they are willing to pay to uh uh learn from us and to be a part of our community and to workshop ideas. And uh we see ourselves as being able to turn into kind of a modern-day film school and a modern-day um you know, media academy. Yeah. Uh and I think that's where when I look at our revenue, like I definitely think we'll have uh brand partners like a Samsung that's just like we're with them. They're like our our uh ambassador brand or we're ambassadors for them. um But, I don't see the content that we're making being that advert like ad supported or advertising based. I think we'll probably move into direct-to-consumer content. So, you really want to make this then eventually about yourselves. Like where you have your own audience where people follow you for you. Yeah. Well, I think always within the context of uh you know, our our mission the mission statement that we have is to educate and empower the next generation of storytellers. And so, for us, whenever we're talking about ourselves is in the context of helping others um become creators as well. So, like when we talk about how much YouTube pays us, the goal of that video is to educate people on how we view creator businesses and how you could diversify a creator business and how you should be looking at it if you are an aspiring creator. um And after we made that video, the interesting thing was we had a ton of outreach from career creators, creators with uh millions of subscribers reaching out about consulting and saying, "Could you guys maybe consult with Something I actually talked to uh Jack about earlier today. Yeah. So, that was a really interesting experience to be like, "Oh, okay. Maybe we do view this space a little different and maybe we do have experiences that um are valuable to career creators." Yeah. Even if they don't result in the best titles and thumbnails for the masses. I mean, to to close the loop on like money, like you know, I think in total now we've made $12,000 on YouTube AdSense. Okay. um Which is obviously not enough to to pay our bills. So, our brand deals are really what Yeah. We can't say exactly how much those pay us, but you know, again, our our expenses are are in the in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and we're able to I would say you got to post more. Yeah, we do. That's my thing. Post twice a week, maybe even three times a week. That's overwhelming to think about. That is. But, we know that that is important. We're trying to um you know, Rode, the the company that has all these mics, is sending us podcast gear. And we're trying to sort out like how can we have a more frequent uh you know But the thing is every video has to be a banger for the Yeah, it does. Like you can't throw in like a crappy episode in the middle of the week cuz that'll screw up the next video. Totally, yeah. I'm really impressed with your output. Like are you constantly making episodes or do you have days where you're like I'm going to shoot three today and then we're going to No, almost never. You shoot every day. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So we got a new video posting every single day between three channels. And it's just me and Jack. Main channel is just me. We collaborate on titles, thumbnails. Second channel Jack edits. So you edit the main channel, too? Yeah. Wow. and I was editing the second channel until just recently. Start to finish with the first channel, how long does a video About 12 hours. A video. So you got to think about 12 and that that includes days where it's just like you just feel like crap and you don't feel like doing anything and you're frustrated and like 5 hours goes by and there's nothing to talk about and you're like it's 11:00 a.m. now. I've wasted all this time. What am I doing with my life? Should I take the day off? No, I can't afford to do that. Let's keep going. So that includes a lot of downtime like that, but yeah, about 12 hours from start to like once I hit on a topic from research, planning, filming, editing, title, thumbnail, answering comments, about 12 hours a video. Reaction videos are easy. That's Jack usually finding a video. Watch it. That's about 40 minutes. also really fun to watch. Um I know you did one with uh Shelby Church video that I really liked. Yeah, that one did so well. That was great That was great cuz Shelby's awesome. So it's just like all in all a very cool video. Oh yeah, I like the like the weirder videos like that. Like that was a bit like living on a boat for $600 a month. Like I like those over the Millennial Money episodes now at this point. I like Millennial Money when they were bad. Right. And in a bad sense like people were blowing money left and right. Like Really cover cover someone who's making like 70 grand a year in Los Angeles spending 80. Like that's the person I want to see. Right. You know, going to the clubs. She's like yeah, every Friday night like I don't know, 100 bucks on drinks, 50 on food, Uber back. That's what I like to see. you spend the most money on? Uh probably food at this point. And even that Well, are we not talking like housing? Yeah, I think just like in day-to-day Just day-to-day? Yeah. Uh food. I would say. But even that's like like Macy and I got the Cheesecake Factory the other night. But what we do is we'll get like a like a big thing and then split it. So that was like 30 dollars. Yeah, I think food and coffee is just Coffee for me is like I love going out for coffee. That's like my number one. It's not for you? No, uh-uh. You make it. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. Cuz you don't like Wait, you got I think it's a waste of money. That's Yeah, but that's why I bring it up cuz I think about it every time I buy a coffee. I'm like I don't Wow, this is like I did the calculation of like How often do you go out and get a cup of coffee? Every day. How much does it cost you? It's expensive. You go to Groundwork, I'm guessing, right? Don't go to Groundwork, but I do go to Menotti's, which is which I love. When Intelligentsia was open, I went to Intelligentsia. Yeah, Intelligentsia was expensive. Cool place. Are you working from there or you just go there for the coffee? when I was, I would, but like I that is a part of my ritual that I'm not Yeah. really willing to compromise on. And I've just like baked that into my expenses where I'm just like I can't I can't not do that. It's so easy to not, but I'm like that's something I love. I can't I used to go five days a week, but it was a mistake. Like I You stopped? Oh, yeah. Yeah, a lot of that though had to do with quarantine and and Yeah. So I think it's a I think it's a good thing though because I just started having cold brew at home and now I save that money and it's great. The only reason now I spend so much on food and I would say at this point maybe I don't know, 100 bucks a week, Do you think? Maybe about How much do you spend? Yeah, Maybe maybe 80 to 100 dollars a week uh just going out to eat is because when everything is shut down and like you're working from home all day long and you don't really leave the house. Like that is your treat to be like okay, I'll go out to dinner and we can like, you know, have a meal. Yeah. So that that's my like Totally. my my thing now is doing that. But otherwise like for coffee, I just think it's a waste of money. Yep. I don't see the experience of it. Unless you're going to work there or unless you're going to meet somebody and it's like a hangout spot, fine. Uh but also I believe for a lot of people I'm not accusing you of anything, but for a lot of people Joey. I think you're about to accuse me. For a lot of people in this area I know I'm kidding. Uh no, for a lot of people when they spend money on coffee and they just figure oh, you know, it's what's five bucks, six dollars every now and then. Usually they let that spill over into other areas cuz it's never usually just the coffee. Interesting. Usually it's a biscuit. It's the coffee and the biscuit or it's the coffee and something else or I went to coffee. Let's let's Let's spend a little money over here and you you you go and you get one of those little food things. Ramsey, please. Wow. I didn't think it was an earthquake. I thought there was someone outside can't see rattling the door and I was like oh my god, guys, what are we about to go through together? Oh my god. So this Is is Graham doing like a prank for us right now? is just he's Oh. Hey Macy, it's fine. We're going to open it. This is Macy. Hi Macy. I think I think we met on Saturday. Yeah. Yes, sorry. Um so anyway, so back to my point. What I'm saying is this. It's same thing with with when you just go and like you buy a new shirt. It's never just to go and buy a new shirt. It's you go and buy a pair of pants with it. You go and buy a new car. It's never just a new car then it's like ooh, let me get some of the upgrades. You buy a new house and it's like let's buy new furniture. It it It starts with the coffee and then it's always little things here. That's usually how it is. I had that feeling when when we when we first scoped out renting this new studio, like as I was financially planning for it, I was like all right, we're going to sign a year-long lease, so I have to be prepared for that. Then additionally, when you get a new space, you have to get things in that space. And additionally, when you're video creators, we also want to make the sound as good as possible, the lighting as good as possible. Um and so I think a lot of times when I was younger, I overlooked that that okay, I'm I'm renting a new space and that's the cost is the rent every month for the next 12 months. But then you start to recognize like there are so many costs associated with having this new studio that you um actually have to plan for in advance. And I think that is uh Yeah, that's just something that happens and I never thought about that with coffee. Like where if I'm going out for coffee every day, I'm like out and about, which means I'm probably more likely to then make another purchase and you know, if I'm comfortable spending five bucks a day, what's another three, what's another five, what's another six and then it Yeah. adds up. It's super interesting. That's why I like the home office so much. So I'll show you my studio in it after this, but it's just that room right there. Right. And then this. That's it. And in my previous place, it was the garage. Yeah. transformed the whole garage into a studio. It was awesome. It just saves a lot of money doing stuff like that. Yeah. Well, I I have a question for you if uh we can ask you a couple of questions. ask me whatever you want. Yeah. Great. So speaking of saving money, um we just watched your video today about uh you not going to college. Oh, that was an old video. Yeah, today. We watched the old Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We watched the deep tracks. Okay. And curious about your um position on like what's happening with college now. Uh obviously it's a very different situation. A lot of this college is Zoom-based, uh but tuitions are kind of staying similar. Yeah. So what is your position on or like what do you think about it's I think it's stupid. But now I'm very biased on college because I just I was I always had an aversion towards school. I hated school. I just didn't get the point. For me, my mind works like very practically. It's like how is this going to help me get my end goal? What whatever that might be. And if this doesn't help me do that, I just don't see the point in it. Uh so for me it's college seems like that's a waste of time, it's a waste of money. That's how I felt. And a lot of what you learn at least for me it was online. It's like watching YouTube videos, like reading the internet. If there's something you want to know, just Google. You could Google whatever you want to know and there are people talking about it. You want to network with people who are doing exactly what you want to do? BiggerPockets.com for real estate investing. There's stock market forums out there. Whatever you want to do, there's a community around it online. I feel like you could learn anything you want to through these people. But that's what I did. I I think college is a waste of money. And I think especially right now people are realizing like wait a second, I can learn everything I need to online. Um it it can help in certain industries I think if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or you have an end goal where a college degree is just opens the door for you. But I think for most people, if your goal is just I want to make money or I want to be my own boss and I want to do my own thing, I don't think it's necessary. Jack might have a different opinion on this though. Uh yeah, I think that college I have I obviously like place it with a little bit higher of like on the important scale. Like I think college is is very important for a lot of people. And uh I think if you don't necessarily know what you want to do, college has like benefits and it also maybe it doesn't make sense. But I think that like overall, even if you're not learning material that's necessarily applicable in like a specific job, having a degree shows an employer that you have some sort of discipline and you have like maybe you're like you have good enough work ethic and obviously if you graduated from like a uh a better college, then they say oh, this guy's worked hard consistently throughout their entire life. You know, maybe they're very reliable in the workforce. I think Yeah, like I I think college is a fairly important thing. I mean, yeah, I had a blast in college. So but I'm very intrigued now or I wasn't that great of a I I was actually I was not a good student. I couldn't do well in the classroom, but I liked being I liked the social setting of college a lot. Uh and like my ability to just like make friends and and network and like a lot of those people I'm still really close with. So that was a really fun part. But for me now when I look at it, I think I would have taken a gap year probably and reevaluated and like given myself one year to evaluate if I should go to college or not, which I think probably will start to happen more now. I think you'll start to see more people take a gap year, especially after this. I want to see YouTube make a YouTube Academy. Of If if you want a skill set, what YouTube should do is create a whole course around it. Like you want to be a plumber, for instance. You could watch these videos. At the end of every video, there's going to be a test. The end of that there's going to be like a whole you know something you could do maybe in person to prevent cheating. Like the real estate exam. Like it's all done online and then you have one state test, which is monitored. Google could could seriously like pump out their own like graduates if they really wanted to. For coding is but like anything. I think that's something that we'll actually see is like the partnering of like Google with universities and Scott Galloway's talked about this. Yeah. Uh what about like Google partnering with MIT to offer remote online certifications. Granted it's not going to be for probably like plumbing. Um but they can just scale their business that way. But here's what I did I I never understood too. Like let's say a professor he's giving a lecture to 70 people. He could do the same thing online and 200,000 people can watch him. Jordan Peterson was one of the people that mentioned this that he just he was a professor, right? And he was giving lectures and realized that all of a sudden he could make videos on these topics and reach hundreds of thousands or millions of people with this video. And it got to a certain point where he just there wasn't enough value to give in person because his time was wasted instead of putting himself online. But the challenge there is that like a lot of educators aren't entertainers and a lot of entertainers aren't educators. Uh so I think bridging that gap the few the select few who can do that well uh I think can win. Okay. So here's what I'm going to say. To educate you need to entertain because otherwise people are going to zone out. even the best professors Yes. Yeah, they're the best entertainers. Oh yeah. Of course. Yeah, you're right. Do you consider have you ever thought of cuz you're essentially a personal finance professor. Have you ever thought about offering a course behind a paywall? Uh I do I have two. Oh, you do? Yeah, so we have the YouTube Creator Academy down below in the description, guys. That was a plug. And the Real Estate Agent Academy. I'm glad you asked about that. Call this give me a layup. Yeah, that was a layup. Mentorship program. Oh, and we have the mentorship program linked down below in the description where you could talk to Jack and I twice a week. Jack three times a week. Linked down below in the description. a divorce call these guys. Marriage counseling, too. Whatever you need. No, so we When Yeah, when did you start doing that and Oh, jeez. That was the scariest thing. I waited until I hit 100,000 subscribers before I monetized a single thing. I was running ads on the videos, but I chose purposely never to sell anything until I hit 100,000 cuz I wanted to prove that like I wanted to do this on my own. Get to 100k. Uh shortly after 100,000 I came out with the YouTube uh no, not the YouTube the Real Estate Agent Academy. And uh that was a program that would teach people how to become a real estate agent and grow their business. And that was the scariest thing because I made fun of people who sold programs on YouTube. Like that was my thing is like I'm not going to be that guy who sells programs. And I would poke fun at them and I'd like you know call them out. And then I realized like wait a second, it's not all scammy. I paid I put myself in a corner now where like it makes sense. People are asking for more content that just doesn't make sense for me to put on YouTube. That's too niche. I'm spending all this time doing this. So I spent 6 months creating this thing. And the amount of work that went into that was a nightmare. Uh it went live. So I got an email list. So what I did, created an email list for Mailchimp and I said for anyone who's interested in this just put your email address down below. I think I got like 800 people who signed up in like a day. And I sent out this email blast. I priced it $497 and I think I offered $150 off or like something like that for the people in the first 24 hours. Guess how many sales I got out of 7 800 people? 650. 650 people? No. That'd be a crazy high conversion. 300? One. Wow. One person. Why do you think that is? Do you think the price point was too high? Uh price point was too high and I didn't understand what I was doing. Mhm. So the discount was not enough. Um the email list about half the people even opened the email to begin with. It was really no urge Like I made so many mistakes with this program that I I fixed them on the next one. But yeah, even to this day the Real Estate Agent Academy was probably the most intensive thing I've done in terms of information and content, but it's too niche. Yeah. Um and there's just not that many people want to be a real estate agent and I just missed the mark on marketing and just everything that I then fixed on the YouTube Creator Academy. So the Creator Academy is the most successful offering you have? Yeah. And how where do you sell that through? Is it through your website? Teachable. Oh, through Teachable. Cool. Yeah, 99 bucks a month on Teachable. 99 bucks a month? Yeah, it's how much I pay for Teachable. Oh. Wait, for the students? No, no, that's what I Oh, that's what you pay. That's the overhead. What's the what's the cost for the students or like what's the price? Um so it ranges 397 if there's no sales. I like to do a sale every now and then on like a major holiday and I'll do I think it's $200 off. So they'll get it 197 on like those are usually like the Black Friday sales, Christmas. Have you ever thought about like a membership where it's like recurring? Yes, that's why we have the mentorship group down below in the description, guys, as well. Yeah, that was another layup. So So that's something So that's something too that I realized is that I was doing these uh like the YouTube Creator Academy, the Real Estate Agent Academy. Typically what most marketers would tell you is that you have like a low cost thing like under $500 to get people in. And then I'm supposed to have an upsell after that where they buy the 397, let's just say. biscuit with the coffee. Right. And And then I'm supposed to offer something at 1,500 to 2,000 dollars. Like some premium package. And then that's a funnel to get people to spend 20,000, spend 50,000. So far I've just been against that. Usually I find that just to be a little sketchy. And from what I've seen a lot of people it's just I don't feel good. I want to offer like here's the price you pay. It's everything you need to know. There's not going to be like ooh now now to learn more you need this. So and and because I didn't have anything else on the back end that I was supposed to have created the mentorship program or at least it's it's recurring. But that's also a lot of time that goes into that, too, because it's a community of people. We Oh that that was a Zoom call I did right before you came here when I said I had to live stream until 6:00. That's every Thursday from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. and every Sunday from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. No matter what I'm always doing this. And how many people are on those? Uh depends. Usually like worst case 20, most 40. Wow. That's a lot of people. Yeah. That's cool. That's awesome, man. It's a fun community and it's just like now you become friends with everybody cuz you see them like twice a week since the beginning of the year when we started this up. So like you have to think twice a week since I don't know 7 months ago. You get to know these people and like you you start to become friends with them. Very cool. And is do you see like direct-to-consumer content offerings as a big path for you in the future? I don't know. Uh because it's a lot of time to create something. Like people have asked me to to make like a house hacking course or like a real estate investing course. I just don't have the energy to do it. I was so burnt out from the last one. yeah, that's crazy. It's it's a it's like making a movie. That is. It's like making a feature film. It's really it's really difficult. Well, for my YouTube one it's about 9 hours of content. Oh my god. And it's similar format to like my my YouTube videos. So imagine making like 9 hours of YouTube videos Yeah, that's at the same time as you're making YouTube videos and planning it out and having it be good because my biggest fear is that people buy it and it's like this sucks. I was terrified the night before we went live. Right. I was terrified. I was so relieved to see someone be like this was awesome. I was like oh thank god. Thank god someone thought it was good. Oh yeah. But you I I've always felt like if if they buy it at let's say 300 bucks, you have to give 600 dollars worth of value. I agree. Cuz if they get what they pay for, they're going to be like cuz cuz they know what to expect. But if you exceed their expectations, that's when they're like this was really good. Right. So yeah, I'm burnt out on that. Maybe at some point I might do it, but I just physically I can't put myself mentally I would I would go nuts. Um what are your like maybe you've said this on your channel, but I'm just curious what are your goals with with YouTube? Like where do you want Still trying to figure it out. I don't know. Um I want to not burn out is number one. I want to keep I want to keep this going as long as I can. And I look at people like Kevin O'Leary or like Mark Cuban who become like these personalities just them. So I really like that, but I also want to do more than just uh be in front of a camera all the time. Like I think at some point I want to start a business. I don't know what. Something something about saving money or like credit cards or something like that. I just don't know what it is yet. Financial freedom movement. What's financial freedom? know. That was Jake Jake Jeez. Sorry, that was a bad joke. It was a very YouTube specific joke. Anyway. Didn't land. Didn't land. My my Dave Ramsey joke didn't land either. So we're even now. That's all right. We're even. But yeah, I don't know. I feel like a business would be the next vertical to go to because now it's like you have an audience and there's no marketing expense on that. And if I could create something that saves people money in some way or another like it's a no-brainer. Like I look at the Honey app, for instance. And I'm like that saves money. I want to make a Honey app. Yeah. look at the amount of work And my other thing is too, I hate I hate being like really stressed out. Yeah. like like my current schedule I'm I'm at a little bit of stress, but it's manageable. Right. But I like just being laid back and just like casual. That's something we've been talking about. Like we obviously there's so many directions we can take what we're doing right now and there's been a lot of people who have contacted us and want to you know do something and um you just have to evaluate the lifestyle. Cuz it's it's a trade-off. Like at the at the core of it, yes money is a currency, but time is also the actually the most significant currency. Cuz you can never get it back. You can always make more money. You can't make more time. Yeah. Yeah. I Yeah, I think it's more important at least now for me is is this personal fulfillment and feeling like I'm at least doing something that when I'm gone like people would remember like oh they Graham Stephan. Yeah, I I saved some money and you know because of his advice. Yeah, that's what I want. Yeah. You know? Um but it's it's doing something a little bit more significant at some point in the future. But right now it's like I just want to keep going and expanding and growing. I don't feel like I'm done growing yet on that to move on to something else quite yet. Right. How are we doing on Are we missing anything? We're at 1:30 on time, which is fine. How many mid-roll have played at this point? even We honestly we don't load these up with ads too much. So, one thing that I I really like about you guys' content is how you do deep dives on specific creators and why they're so successful in their space. What would you guys say about Graham? Why exactly you think he does so well in the finance community? And if you guys could give Graham any advice on like how he could better market himself or grow his channel brand. Cool. Love that. That's fun. Yeah, I think to start the success comes from the value that's in each video. And you've stuck to a similar audience each time. And like Sameer said before, it's so transformational. There's nothing like more transformational than money and having more of it. And so, I think that's where I would start with with you with why it's so successful is because there's so much value and it has to do with a topic that's so transformational for so many people. I also think when it comes to the content that you're like when you're when you're making a video um one thing that we talk about is like you want stakes to rise over time. And so, when I'm watching one of your videos, I don't want to click off cuz I'm there for the long haul. I'm there to hear every bit of information that you're telling me. And it typically culminates in the piece of information that I was there for, but that might come 17 minutes later. Um and because of that, your AVD is high. And when your average view duration is high, you're I mean like people are sitting there listening to you talk, potentially looking at the screen and like looking into your eyes and hearing you talk for 20 minutes. Um that develops a relationship that is different from a lot of personal relationships. It's pretty rare outside of the context of us we've been sitting here for an hour and a half talking to each other, but outside of that, there's only a few people in your life that you listen to. That's true. for 20 minutes and look into their eyes. Uh And that develops a very intimate relationship with an audience. Mhm. Um different from a channel like ours that's like heavy editing and you know, you you're getting an a very edited version of kind of us and our storytelling. You're getting a pretty raw version of you. And I think that keeps people coming back. And then when you pair that with the concept of the value that you're delivering and the fact that you can change my life. When I come to your channel if I watch your channel over time, like you said, if you save me money, you've just changed my life. Mhm. So, I'm actually investing time in watching Graham and coming out on the other side a better version of myself. It's the most transformational. You should write a sales pitch for this. Yeah. Jeez. So, I think when you look at the value prop of watching your channel, it's all there. Right. Um and I think that's what's so dynamic about why you've amassed millions of people watching you, of course, uh is because of all those things. I think your next frontier is understanding that people are sitting with you for 20 minutes and um pushing the limits of your own personality and your own personal um touch into the videos. way? I think just adding a little bit more about like like we talked about before of like making yourself bigger than the topic um over time. And that's not immediate, but I think there's a world where people start to get um like where where you can like these types of podcasts and stuff having this format is really smart because you can have a raw version of Graham. Mhm. Uh and then as you add in more of your personality into your main channel, it's going to convert audience members over to this channel who just want more Graham. Yeah. Uh cuz once I'm used to having like that 20-minute dose of Graham three times a week, um you're delivering me topics about finance, about how I can save money, but over time if I'm less concerned about you saving me money and more like I want Graham five times a week, then you're going to convert more of those audience members over to the other channel. That's interesting. Uh and so that's what I would say is going to be the X factor of converting having three channels that are all like significant um at the same scale as your main channel is when uh your personality outgrows the topics. That was really well said. Jeez. Yeah. It seems like you like recited that. Yeah, you planned that out man. I wish I could talk like that. Did you touch on relationship advice? No, that is also another thing that's great. As much relationship advice Yeah. I think yeah, that's the other thing because I think money and relationships are probably the things that that everybody will go through at some point. So, and I think those are the biggest That's why people watch Jerry Springer and Maury and Dr. Phil and they love to be like that fly on the wall be like, "Look how dysfunctional this is." I think I kind of want to see you go through more experiences too as an audience member. Like I love Me personally, I thought the Pokimane video was so cool cuz I got to see you outside of your normal environment and you were going through an experience. So, I think watching you go through an experience like it's why I don't know, like it's why like cooking content is fun to watch cuz you're watching someone take something from nothing to something. And it's why like some of those videos pop off on YouTube like turning $1 into $1,000 or something like that. When you mean experiences, what do you what do you That's kind of what I mean is Are we talking like new new types of content? Like can you can you you're giving me a lot of information, but can I watch you discover new information which then allows me to discover that new information? Right. So, when you went into Pokimane's house, I'm discovering new information at the same pace as you discovering that new information. You're the vehicle for me to discover new information. Okay. Uh that is an an example of an experience. So, if if you could do that more with like if you pick a topic and you're like, "Okay, this is a topic where I could sit and tell you this or this is a topic where I could go through the experience and show it to you." That's cool. Okay. That's where I think like if you add that format in, then I'm getting to know you better because naturally you know, when you're interacting with Pokimane, I'm getting to know you through that experience because I'm watching you interact with someone else. That's well said. Yeah, well, we plan to do more like that. That's exactly one of the reasons why we did the Pokimane thing is because it was totally out of the ordinary for Graham's type of content and A different graphic, I mean. Yeah, yeah. Totally different than any money-related thing, yeah. We wanted to just introduce Graham's like finance-heavy audience into a different kind of video and see if they liked it. And if they did, then that's great because that means that Graham can do what he wants and he'll still get views because he's Graham, not necessarily because he's consistently putting up same like informative You ever watch The Profit, Marcus Lemonis's ep- video I don't know what it's called. His his called it a video, it's a television show. But anyway, it's it's basically like he goes into struggling businesses and helps them turn things around. But it's he gets into like the nitty-gritty of like their P&L sheets and like how it all works. It's a really fun video to watch. All right, video again. It's really fun show to watch. Um my fiance is not interested in business in the least, but she's grown to love Marcus Lemonis and will watch him turn around any business. Anything. like Gordon Ramsay with his business or Mike Rowe Dirty Jobs, yeah. It's just like when that host becomes bigger than the subject of the video, then it's like MythBusters. the audience gets interested in whatever the host is doing. Yeah. And that's like a really interesting turning point. Yeah. So. Yeah. All right, well, that's that's what's next, I guess. That would be a good segue. That would be a good transition into whatever's after that, yeah. Like if you could if you could I think a really cool series would be really tough to develop and you'd have to have people who are really interested in it, but if you came in and helped, you know, creators or person save up for something. And it was a series that happened over time. want to invite random people who I could go over their finances and just roast them. Like I want to be Judge Judy. like help them. But then No, no, no. Roast them first. That sounds like a second channel. Roast them first and then help them after. one Yeah, if episode one is roasting them and then you set financial goals and then you track those with them over time and you get them to the point where they're saved enough to do something amazing. Like that's going to connect me to you times 10, right? Cuz it's like, "Whoa, I just watched Graham go through this experience. I saw his how he interacts with people. I saw him at his, you know, when he's angry, when he's sad, when he's Once you get those human elements added in, then it's like, "Well, I'm really connected to Graham now." Got to start a daily vlog. Yes, that's I mean you probably could do it. We can't do that. That's really hard for us. Yeah, it's really hard for us. It's me sitting at a computer for like seven hours a day. All right, guys. Now I'm going to sit Yeah. Be interesting just to live stream that 20 like not 24 hours a day, obviously, but like nine hours a day. And just have a camera just always going. Totally. Yeah. What do you guys think we could do to make the podcast better? That's Coffee Hour. Yeah, this. Go ahead. Yeah, I I would recommend uh similar to what Sameer's talking about for your YouTube videos, but coming up with some structure and some format around them that make the format of the show itself almost more valuable than the episode, if that makes sense. So, that like the audience has an idea of what to expect from each show, whether like you know, at this point we know we're at the halfway point and at the end we always answer this one question from a viewer or something like that. Like just having a better understanding of where it's going to go with some branded moments. So, that as an audience member, I know where I am. I like that. be it could be something like you guys are mentioning how much money the show has made. If you let the guest invest in like 10% of how much you've made in something and they get to choose. That would be fun. And and I don't know, just like fun things and then like or like the audience could save that amount towards the end. Yeah, we could invest that in something. Yeah, yeah, cuz I was thinking Cuz that's interesting if you invest it and then week over week you're tracking something and like the audience can actually play the game too. They can look at how the stocks doing. They can see I think that's really fun. And if the guest can chime in and do something with it, I think that's really interesting. So, like those interactive segments where um there's three people or there's three groups involved in the podcast. There's the guest, there's the host and there's the audience. So, how does the audience get involved in what we're doing? Do they submit questions in advance? Uh do they get to chime in on where the investment goes? Do they get to guess how much money every week? Like what is that element of It's just like building more IP around the show. Right. Mhm. Yeah. So that even if you have the biggest guest in the world, they still are here to fit into your show. Right. Mhm. Yeah, I've been wanting to throw in some recurring segments. Exactly. Mine have been pretty weak. Like for example, every single week we do an update on um you know how much money the podcast has made. And then I also do an update on how my options trading has been going cuz I started doing options trading at the beginning which is a kind of investing at the beginning of the podcast. And then I give updates every week which by the way guys, I'm seven for seven. So I haven't lost money on the yeah, seven trades all seven trades that I've done. So We had an idea. Uh every week I think it would be fun if Jack brings on a Tinder date. That's a great idea. There is an idea. There's an idea. Or you get to pick his date for the week or the audience. I don't know. Something fun like that. That would be that Yeah, we were joking about that. Yeah. Graham gets to pick your date for the week. I think that'd be interesting. Or Graham or Graham gets to or the guest gets to respond to you know, gets to go into your Tinder account. Have them have them ask questions that you have to ask the Tinder date. That would be super fun. Like awkward. Yes. Whatever whatever the questions are, you guys have to tell me. Yeah, or like you hand us your phone and we respond. We operate as Jack for the hour that we're on the show. Then there's a double narrative happening where we're operating Jack's Tinder and he doesn't know what's going on until we give him the phone back. And then he has to recap. That's right. For me for me I would I would think it's really funny to watch like a Tinder date meet in person. Like I'm sitting here and she just will walk in the door and sit down. Like hey, how's it going? Like I'm Jack. Nice to meet you. But then again like one thing I thought about this, right? Like one thing once Graham brought it up, one thing that I I'm worried about is when Graham and I do Hold on. Do what he always does in the most pivotal parts. Yeah. Tension is high. Yeah. Oh, I was saying that I'm just worried like I think that would be a really funny concept. Um And maybe even like talk finance with the Tinder date. Which is the most cringey thing to do, but I think it'd be really funny and just weird for the viewers. But I'm so scared that you know, like if we do go out of our normal kind of content here, maybe people will tune out because a lot of people are like finance diehards. Like they really really come for the finance and that's it. I remember in the beginning when we first started posting podcasts, a lot of people were saying like oh we just want to hear more about investing and stuff like that. Like that was that was a pretty common critique of our podcast. And I'm scared if we do stray away from from finance that maybe people won't you know, they'll tune out. Like I know it's a good idea, but at the same time I have this doubt. You know? Yeah, people really like finance. Yeah. In this in this business that we're all in. There is a reality also that the audience is right. You're right, but the audience is also right. And you have to find a bit of a middle ground, but the audience typically wins if it's a product, right? And and if it's a business. Um so if you have a channel like if this channel for you is like this is where I get to just be myself, I really enjoy this, then it's one thing. But uh if you are trying to say hey, we want to make you know, we want to make this into a product that's uh monetizable, then you do have to listen to the audience a bit and say, okay, let's root it in finance. Like there's things that we talked about where start top of the show, you announce how much money there is, you evaluate which stock you're going to invest it in or how your stocks are doing that you did invest it in. This one's not working. There we go. Oh, wow. Oh, you know what? Let's finish up on this one, can we? Yeah, so that's what I would say is like if you root it in finance, then you can build on top of that. Yeah. Yeah. Ask the duck duck question, duck horse question. Well, anyway we used to do this every podcast. Would you rather fight a hundred duck sized horses or one horse sized duck? Mhm. I would go a hundred uh duck sized horses. Yeah, I I agree. A hundred duck sized. Everyone So we got to find a new question. Everybody How many could you take though? I think I would just be able to go for a while, you know? Like I I would recognize that that's going to take a long time. Like a hundred thousand. Yeah, and it's also the horses which are pretty beefy. They're pretty muscular. Yeah, but it's it is muscular, but it's like duck sized. It's a lot of duck horses. Maybe I'll go duck cuz I feel like I could like just focus in on it, run away, get a little bit more strategic cuz I only have one enemy. Mhm. Yeah, but horses are massive. And Right. Right. It's a big duck. All right guys, well that's it for the 13th ever episode of the Ice Coffee Hour. Thanks for joining us. Our guest is Jack and what was your what was your name again? Graham. And Graham, thanks for coming on the show. Uh Tell them about the two free stocks that they could get down below in the description when they deposit a hundred dollars on WeBull because one of the stocks is worth one thousand four hundred dollars. Up to. Check out the description to see uh what Graham just said. And they can join the mentorship group. You can join the mentorship group. Uh you can do all kinds of things in the description. You can just hang out there for a bit. Click some links. See what happens. So with that said you guys, smash the like button, subscribe, add us on Instagram, social platforms, and everything. Oh yeah, just tell them to smash the like button. Smash the like button. Smash the like button. Yes. Yes, for the YouTube YouTube algorithm. algorithm. Yeah. Cool. Thanks guys. See you till next time. Oh, we got to work on a thumbnail really quick. We're just going to do like a selfie or something. Would you mind um clicking off of Let's get scooted in here. Is this the first time we've had four people? This is. Yeah. Exciting. All right. I'll figure out how this works. There we go. Cool. Oh, what I wanted to do is you guys intro the Ice Coffee Hour. Oh yeah, please. Sure. So wait, we should Graham, like we're out. Oh, we're out? Okay.