Meet The Magician Who Spends $100,000 Every 10 Seconds | Zach King

So, welcome back to the Ice Coffee Hour. We are really excited to have on Zach King today. He's got 66 million followers on TikTok. Being the fifth most followed person on the entire platform. And he's got 12 million subscribers on YouTube. He's been on TV shows, movies. You've probably seen him online, and he's about to reveal how much money he makes. Are you excited? I am beyond excited. Are you? I I am. But did you subscribe? I subscribed so hard. Hey everybody, I'm Zach King. Welcome back to the Ice Coffee Hour. And guess what? This podcast is made up to this date $72,000. Ooh. That's under guessing. Wow, you under guessed by a lot. I under guessed. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Let's let's re-guess. Um then if it's an under guess, then probably $265,000. Wow, now you really really over guessed. There, now we're honing in. It's a great between 180. Oh, 130. 123. That's great. Yeah, $123,000. Yeah. I mean you guys know this, but that's some people's whole year income. Yeah, no. It's been in about a year and a half, so that's pretty impressive. Yes, we are very But I know for you guys it probably feels small. Not for me. No. Not for me. Okay. Yeah. It's I'm Am I Am I allowed to ask this, but what's the split on the channel like Have we ever No, we've we've never disclosed this publicly. how about the That's going to be exposed. Should we Should we just start it off with a banger? Should we disclose that? I'm I'm okay with it. I'm okay with it. Yeah, you're okay with it? Yeah, I'm fine with it. I've always wondered, I've never heard you talk about Yeah, sure. Yeah, and this is the This is across the board between sponsors and ad revenue. Everything that the this channel generates and all the expenses are split with this number. So, I get 99% Jackets 2%. Yeah. Wait, 99 and then 2%? Yeah. How does that Is it 98? No, uh it started out I think I had like in the beginning what? 15%? Dude, I think it was 20. No, it was 15. And then we moved it up to 20 cuz you saw how much work I was doing with each episode providing the outline and everything. Yeah. And then when I dropped out of college Well, I get my outline by the way. Wait, where's my outline? Oh, your outline? Yeah, I don't think you did it for this episode. uh yeah, yeah, we don't do that anymore. I have to cut his commission back a little. [laughter] I got lazy. We we had it at it started at 20. 15. It started at 15. Those first few episodes were just Jack and I talking, and Jack would come out with a list of questions to ask me, and it was just him and I for the first like two or three. Yep. Each episode was probably taking me at that point like 12 to 14 hours. Okay, good. Just between the pre-planning, which would be like the pre-planning would be like three to four hours. It's just literally just researching like fun money quizzes and stuff like that, topics we can discuss. Uh and then also like recording was an hour and a half or so, and then editing lit- it took me so long to edit. a podcast. insane, yeah. So, probably like 12 to 14 hours, and he saw how much work I was putting in, so he was like, "I'll bump you 5%." So, he was making an extra like 70 bucks a month, pretty good. So, it's everything the channel brings in, whether it's commission thing or AdSense. Yeah. At the time it was just AdSense, and we had no expectation. This was just Jack being like, "Hey, if we spend an hour a week, all you got to do is just show up." Yep. And I'll set up the cameras, yeah. I was like, "Okay, for an hour a week, we'll do this, we'll get out of podcast." And then it and then it started growing a little bit. And then when I dropped out of college, I requested a larger portion of the second channel, which I I like to do a lot of work on that. And Graham won- he didn't want to give me that larger portion, so we decided to the Graham Stephan Show. Graham Stephan Show, yeah. So, we decided to roll that into the Iced Coffee Hour, so he was like, "I'll give you a huge portion of the Iced Coffee Hour and a smaller portion of the second channel." I know. Little did he know. Back then, yeah, the the this podcast was making nothing. I mean, like 700 bucks a month. Maybe that, but Jack was spending like 20 hours a week just like just through miscellaneous stuff. I was spending probably about two hours a week between titles and thumbnails. Uh it was taking a long time, so that was uh basically a part-time job for both of us. And uh yeah, so I ended up giving Jack You want to say it? 45%. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. Whoa, that's awesome. Congrats. you, thank you." And that's very that's generous, but as soon as he gave me 45% the channel exploded. It was so it was crazy. And I gave 45% thinking, oh you know, it's and I calculated how much money I thought the podcast would make and I was like, okay, well this is compensating Jack for his time. Yeah. And then within like a few months after that we started getting on up with sponsors. Sponsors [laughter] You think it's all you're going after the sponsors yourself? Uh I was back in the day but now we have like a few agents. Oh I was organizing all the sponsors. I still do but we'll Alex Yeah, even when you have agents you're still meant like checking all the bullet points and you're reading the contracts and yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have to be the, you know, I agents we found over the years are awesome when they get to know your brand. You know, I'm repped by CAA and we and we do brand deals directly to with brands but it's you're still even if it's going through an agency or another agent you're checking everything to double check cuz it's on you. Like if something else got in there Exactly. or whatever. It's important, yeah. Yeah. But uh yeah, back I mean now I would probably have negotiated stronger Hey, man. But it's you know what motivated He didn't even want to continue doing the podcast back in the day. There was there was a point for me where I was so busy. Yeah, there was I was so busy and this room was like, I don't have time to do a podcast. I just I can't do it. I don't have the time. And Jack was like, no, we got to do it. I was like, well we had done like seven episodes so far. I didn't want to miss an episode. So it was just wanting to continue that cuz I didn't want to like do seven and stop. Nice. So Yeah, I I think it's super important that people have skin in the game. They're excited and they have ownership over it. Yes. And now you can just run it. I mean you're basically plugging and playing into this, right? At this point? No, titles and guests. Yeah. Guests a lot and then you do title thumbnail. The guest makes sense because like I met you you know, in LA recently. It's like that happens, right? You just meet people and it's like it makes sense for you to kind of book it. It doesn't take too much time. Yeah. [clears throat] But Yeah, that's awesome. So those for us are good networking opportunities because it's different when you're like DMing people back and forth and it's it's not the same as like getting to meet somebody in person. Totally. Especially someone if you've been watching them for like 2-3 years you finally get to like interact with them in person. It's so much fun. I'm so awkward about that though. It's like you go to all VidCon or all these different events and you watch people for so long and you kind of become a fanboy or you know of of their channels and then you meet them and I like I freeze up. I'm like Really? A little bit. Yeah, totally. Say say some names. Say some names. Everybody. Like anybody. Me I met Graham the other day at the the ping pong thing. Yeah. And I was like like I just forget. No, never mind. Totally. It's weird. It's weird meeting YouTubers. Like being in this space. But like who who shocked you the most? Who shocked me the most? you it's like you were probably one of the biggest YouTubers I've ever met. You're probably the biggest person we've had on the podcast. But I like watch YouTube so it's everybody I watch. I'm like when I meet them I'm like a little bit thrown back, you know? Yeah. No, I I feel that. I watch a like a little bit in the you know fi- like what I listen to on my drive. I have a long drive in LA so I listen to a lot of finance stuff cuz you guys actually make a long form like this you know podcast. Not everybody does that. So like I'll be starstruck to meet Andre. I'll be starstruck to meet Are you meeting them? We've See we've DM'd but it doesn't mean we're meeting. I will I will next time. I will next time cuz I want to spend time with you guys. Um Right answer. Like Andre and and Kevin. Like I mean I listen to Kevin every day. Me too. At some point during the day. [laughter] So and he's like he's like right down the street from me, too. But I feel like one I think he's super busy. Like I don't even want to DM him to say let's hang out. We briefly DM'd. No, because I've seen Does he sleep? No. Like 3 hours a night. Yeah. Yeah, that's insane. So I feel like it's taken away from family time or like some sort of he I Here's what I picture. You're hanging out with Kevin. He's like dang, we hung out for an hour and a half. I could have made two YouTube videos. You know, I could have No, you would not believe it. We were playing poker over at Jeremy's house and it was like it was like And it was like midnight probably and Graham's like all right, dude. I have to go home. Like, I got to get some sleep. You know, got to work tomorrow." Kevin's still there. He's already down three grand in poker. And then, we keep playing. 2:00 a.m. rolls by, and he's all, "All right. You guys going to the club?" 2:00 a.m. Yeah, 2:00 a.m. And the next morning, he probably woke up at 6:00 and pumped out seven videos. live at 6:00, yeah. Yeah, it's like it's ins- He's nuts. Kevin will find a way to make a video with you during the time that you hang out. Mhm. Yeah. It's either with you, he'll just monetize that conversation, or he'll be like, "Wait a second. I'll be right back." And he'll be outside for 10 minutes recording a whole video. He'll upload it. It's nuts. You won't even notice. In one take, and it's like a fully scripted video. His post-production pipeline, I have no idea. I've seen, you know, seen his tour of the I think it's in a Is he in a garage still? No. It's a room in his house. Yeah, okay. Oh, he upgraded to a room. He's always had He's always had a room. That's still impressive that he hasn't gone out to like a studio. Never. Um so, one room in a in a house. And his room, by the way, is smaller than this. That's amazing. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah, my my space is like it just doesn't translate to a I wish it did. That'd be awesome. Yeah. We want to hear about what you're doing now. What are you Because I have to say, it's it's very impressive across all the platforms. Like, you found a way to dominate like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. Your YouTube Shorts, by the way, Yeah. Yeah. That was never the master plan, though. Like, I never wanted to go after Wait, at this point, when you look back, doing this for 12 years starting on YouTube, it's gone It's always added on slowly, you know? And then, some don't stick around. There's actually so many that don't stick around that you don't realize Like, my my idea uh is always to be on a platform first, and see if there's anything interesting about it. Like, with Vine, it was the six-second things. And I kind of wait Now, I try to get there a little before my friends are talking about the app. Um but in Vine, I was like way behind. I remember that was even a thing. Like, when I got on nine months later, and it blew up for me, a lot of the other Viners were like, "Well, you're not an original Viner." And it's so funny how that that like nuance conversation has gone uh for platforms now. But it back in the day it was like if you weren't on it within a year, you weren't the OG of that platform. Um but it's been bouncing around platforms. Like YouTube is my first love. I started with tutorials. So like Uh you don't you guys don't have a monthly training or master class or any of that. Final Cut? Oh wait, we have a monthly group. group? Shout out to the mentorship group. Shout out to the mentorship group. Yeah, there's a coupon code down below. [laughter] Yeah. So you have Is it monthly? Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah, so like I was kind of doing those, but like making my own site for Final Cut Pro and teaching people. And that was my business like YouTube was my business just with that monetization aspect. There was no AdSense when I started. Um and then I think a year after I started my channel, there was they were rolling out secretly or privately the uh invite to the partner program. Um when you guys started YouTube, you could just sign up, right? Like you had to the threshold. Oh yeah, you're monetized basically immediately. I think they monetize people who don't even ask anymore. It's just you're rolled into something. Right, but you don't receive the money. Oh, is that right? Yeah, yeah. They can Now YouTube has the right to monetize any channel they want to and run an ad. But they could they have to tell you, right? And and I know, I believe just by default. By default, I think by uploading YouTube, you I mean, you're giving them the rights. recently changed, right? Isn't that kind of Yeah, a few months ago. So I have like 1,700 subscribers. Uh-huh. And when my family watches my videos, they get ads, but I don't get any of that. Right. Yeah. Oh, interesting. But first, I want to thank our sponsor, Front. Jack, what are you doing on your phone, man? Dude, I'm just checking my Robinhood portfolio. I'm buying the Bitcoin dip. That's great and all, but why are you not using Front? It's the ultimate companion app to Robinhood, Webull, Coinbase, and more. It basically shows you all your investments in one place. Wait, so you're saying if I download Front, I can see all of my investments with all of those different brokerages and exchanges in one place? Exactly. That's amazing. Not only that, Jack, but it actually gives you a unique front portfolio score. It basically sums up the health of your total portfolio within a single number. And the AI that gives you the front score actually takes into account diversification, asset performance, company financials, and much more. Plus Front shows you the top stocks to increase your front score so you can build a stronger portfolio. And there's even a community feature where you can follow your friends portfolios and see how you compare to them. Jack, I'm actually going to follow you on Front and every time I see your portfolio's up, I'm going to ask you for lunch. Alex, you can't say that. I already said I would do that exact same thing to you. So if you guys want free lunch, just follow Alex on Front. His username is applepie and anytime his portfolio is up, just Venmo request him like 10 bucks or something. So go ahead and download Front with the link in the description down below to see how your portfolio stacks up today. That's right, guys. You can see all of your investments all in one place on the easiest UI ever. So that's Front. Thanks, Front, for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast. Kind of makes sense that YouTube is is Yeah. I mean, there's probably I would love to know the calculate how many videos are out there that typically wouldn't get monetized because they're not a creator hit the threshold. Right. It's probably a lot. I have a feeling what it is, the ad rates were getting so high on certain certain channels that they need to spread them out because otherwise advertisers are going to get to a point where it just doesn't make sense. But if they have twice the channels now to advertise to, they're getting twice the exposure. Yeah. Yeah, I just jumped around platforms. You're like YouTube, I loved it, but then Vine took off and it was like I was still running like one-man show, had just hired my first producer to help me with the Vine stuff, but the bandwidth was like going to Vine. What year was this? Did you go to college? to college, yeah. You did. What year did you study? 2008 through 2013. Oh, the recession, the Great Recession. That's when I would have gone to college, by the way. If I went was 2008. Yeah, I went to college and I paid through college with those training courses. So I started my channel like that freshman year of college and uh it's cuz I didn't get into film school. So I needed like an outlet to do. I was still doing music, but I really wanted to pursue film. I knew I like film was going to be my end all career. It's kind of lucky to know that, but I was teaching the Final Cut Pro stuff at night. I was doing tutorials and live training and that's how I was paying through school and selling DVD courses. And then eventually right when Amazon launched their cloud service, I uploaded all my stuff, my courses, digitized them, and started selling them through PayPal and I think there was like a uh not Venmo, but another like weird pay or payment service. And uh I did that all the way to graduating college. Um and then the first year out of college, I think it was when is when Vine came out. And that really I was already making these videos. They weren't like if you look at my videos now, you'd say that they're you know, I describe them as magic just cuz it's simple and that's what everyone's like, "Oh, yes, I know what you're talking about." Um like jump in a car and you kind of phase through and now you're in that item. So, that was really a spin-off of like my VFX training that I had learned in and taught myself in film school. And Vine, because it was 6 seconds, it just forced me to like figure out how to like make those in a short story that had a beginning, a middle, and end and like had a good punchline, which was really visual. And that's like how that format that I'm known for now really was birthed. But I I I love the constraints of limitations. Like it's kind of crazy that on YouTube there used to be a ton of limitations. Like it was for a while 15-minute videos and and it slowly grew and now it's like what unlimited? Yeah. I think 24 hours, isn't it? Yeah. But I I love the constraints still. Like it would be fun if YouTube was like, "This month you can only post 3 minutes or whatever, you know." You can't do that now, they're too big. But you see every platform like slowly when Instagram was a thing it was like 15 seconds and then they upped it to 60 and then 90 and then 120. Same with TikTok now. I don't even know what their limit is now. 3 minutes. Is it 3 minutes? Yeah, nobody watches a 3 minute. Well, I think People do. Sometimes People do. Now, the 3 minute videos give you the option to skip around. Yeah. So, that's their thing. Because sometimes I've seen I hate these videos. There was one where it was like a a river on TikTok and it was like a minute long and it was just like wait for it. And then after 10 seconds you're not going to believe this. Yeah, and then the whole thing was like watch watch part two. No. That's the worst. But this video had like 10 million views on it. So, I figured like it's got to be good. No. And then the part two was literally them like throwing a brick [laughter] over the side. That's pretty satisfying. But but it wasn't that. It was just a brick. I mean it was like what you would expect chop that into 10 seconds. It's like you were you knew your retention tricks. That's funny. So, at least their 3 minute videos they don't hold you to that for 3 minutes. You could skip and be like all right, well this sucks. So, you're saying that the time constraint on Vine being 6 seconds kind of taught you how to condense like very exciting content into like short time constraints. I absolutely love them. It's like one of the you know, I think when people think creativity they think oh, like well I want endless. I want no rules. I want no boundaries. I want to have like endless space to do my art. But people especially young creators I always tell them like when you're making something go on the weekend your goal is to make a 30 second thing or a 10 second thing and then go whether you want to publish or not that's on you. But that's the iteration you need is like ideally start shorter and then you can add up the time. That's fascinating. And I now I think like to the other Viners that then made it to YouTube like Logan Paul and Jake and like David Dobrik. They're all very like quickly cut, right? It's very condensed content. Yeah. Maybe they learned it from Vine, but it's done them very well. Yeah, I think cuz like they know what holds attention and they know what makes a good story and it's funny like being with when you're with Logan or David when they're you'll go with them and then you'll they'll be at events and not show it. Like they'll be at these awesome events and not show a piece of it. Like be at a premiere. I remember be at a premiere with uh David and I went back in the vlog the next day and I was like, "Oh, I wonder what how much of that he used?" And none. And it's cuz I I to me I was like that was pretty entertaining, right? Like you could use a piece of that. Nothing. It's like you got to cut it. And I think like great editors know when to cut stuff out, too. Like it's like, you know, they call it killing your baby um in editing in Hollywood. Like a lot of directors get attached to the certain shot they got. They spent They remember being on set all day getting that really cool dolly shot and they want to use it, but if it's not adding to the story or taking away from a moment, like you got to be okay to cut it. Wasn't it David Dobrik or someone was talking about him being at like a Tesla event and like there was something big that happened and he didn't use any of it, just like you said. Yeah, I could totally picture that. "That was like the the coolest thing I've ever seen and it didn't even make his video Huh. of that week." Yeah, I mean that's that's a lot of YouTubers, you know, that know really to trim the fat. And I think Mr. Beast Jimmy's great at that. Yes. Oh, yeah. You see them shoot and half over half doesn't make it in. It's amazing. I would imagine of that. Yeah. They're probably using like a sliver of the day. Right. I've heard that like Mr. Beast his like total gigabytes that each video occupies is like several terabytes. I believe it. Oh, hands down. Yeah. And they cut it down to like, you know, 13 minutes. videos where they have like a hundred GoPros, you know, on individual people. And I don't know. I asked him that was the first question I asked him. I was like, "Who is going through that?" And he's like, "Yeah, our Do we have editors?" But like he was like, "Usually it's two editors a video." I'm like Oh my god. It's [laughter] two. But that to me that's Is that a lot to you? That's little to me. No, that's very few. Yeah, I'm I'm mind-blown. Yeah. But then again, communicating between 10, I feel like it would lose that feel. As just like two people themselves doing it all would know every bit of it versus 10. So, here's the trick I learned um being on I was on a show called The Amazing Race with my wife a couple years ago. You are you were on that show? Yeah. Were you traveling You traveled it's a great show. I watched it as a kid growing up with my family. Wow. And I. on the to let people know who don't know the show with The Amazing Race, you go around the world, you're hunting for clues, and you, you know, go on these different legs of the race, and you're trying to get to the finish line of these multiple day legs. And what I learned is, you know, they're obviously capturing terabytes and terabytes footage from multiple teams every single day. But they have a producer go with you, a story producer. And the producer like is not affecting the game at all. They won't give you They don't even know what's happening. But they have just in their notes a little app that has a timestamp, and they're just saying like, you know, Zach and Rachel fight at whatever this time over this clue. That's an And they're like rating these story points. So the editors, you know, you're not I mean, maybe that somebody will go through everything of course. Yeah. But really the main even assistant editors will just skip through most of it. And it's same with Jimmy's videos or all these reality shows. Like, they don't need to go through everything as long as they've got this the story producers there just giving the timestamps. It's so much easier. You know, cut to the good stuff. That's incredible. And so then all the story producers meet at night after you check into the hotel or whatever that leg of the race, and they'll all just kind of compare notes. Like, was this team who had the most, you know, kind of drama? Let's like It seems to like kind of And like, they're not changing it in the edit. That's what's amazing to me. I always wondered cuz I was a fan of The Amazing Race. Like, are they like fake making up this drama and like editing it in a way that made it seem way worse than it was or is the order actually accurate in the edit? But it's like 100% true. So through college, you paid for it with these with these programs. Which college did you go to? Went to a school called Biola University out in Fullerton, La Mirada, California. Okay. Yeah. And how much was it? Oh. Uh Expensive school or it was a private Christian school. It was probably 30,000 a year. So, 220,000. Can you say how much you were making then with this like the mentorship program that you had? just enough to cover school. So you're making 30 grand a year or 40 probably. Yeah, probably and then AdSense kicked in. I just recently looked too. I was like, "How much was I making in AdSense?" It was barely and you know, I was definitely in the ramen days of of college. My thing was like chicken wings. There was You guys know Albertsons? Yeah. Yeah. So they have Albertsons out here. Um they had like a really good chicken wing lunch deal. I ate every single day. It was that and I would have pho for dinner for like $7.50. There you go. And I was like $7.50 was splurging for me on pho. Yeah. So that was my my college meal. It was like every day pho. Like every day chicken wings. So you're probably making about 40 grand a year. Yeah. How much of a falling following did you have at that time? Um I had at [clears throat] most on Final Cut 200,000 followers subscribers subscribers. That was at the peak before I left Divine. And I remember like within 3 months of Vine, I'd already passed it to like almost uh half a million on Vine. There was a point where the it actually backed You know like platforms don't really grow your YouTube that quickly anymore. But back in the day if you said like from your Vine account, if you had a couple million followers, you're like, "Hey, go follow me on YouTube." It would just shoot up. And uh I never took advantage of that. I always was nervous about cross-pollinating and it's The game is totally changed on social media now. Now everybody wants to cross-pollinate cuz it's kind of hard to get that conversion. But back then, I never wanted to I was actually really wary of collabs. I never wanted my following to be from, you know, King Bach's audience. I didn't know like if they would stay with me or if they were just following for that one collab. So uh I actually wish I took advantage of collabs earlier. Like it was something I think it's a it's a great huge way to grow your channel. Yeah, it's a huge way. Um but it's actually slowed down a lot. Like if I were to shout you guys out or you were to shout me out, it's just slow. Like it's not like back in the day you used to you would be Like if I shouted you out back in the day with the followers I had 2013 2013, okay. Like maybe if what I don't know what do we have now you might get like a million followers somewhere. You know but that doesn't happen anymore like it might be like 10,000 like so it's there's no conversion right. So did you decide to pursue any sort of normal career after college or was that your cue you making 40 grand a year got a good following I did I I had a great offer cuz I was making 40 and then I think somewhere I was probably making 60,000 on the training courses and I thought like okay that's a great I could make a living doing that I could grow it slowly too and I had all these ways to like do different courses and kind of spin off I was only focusing on one software and there's way more softwares coming out of Adobe Cloud is getting pretty popular at the time. Um. But I. Didn't I got a job I did a road trip with my buddies. Before YouTube video we wanted to like make a video in different states and it was kind of like a content trip and so we spent like 40 days going around the country and in Washington DC I stopped at Discovery Channel we had a a fan reach out and say hey I work as a producer at Discovery Channel you want to come hang out and get lunch at the cafeteria and so I went in there and it was my first time in like a corporate kind of film TV building. And I met one of the higher up producers and they made us a job me and my buddy a job offer for over six figures and and it was super tempting like my channel was looking at like one it's YouTube I don't know I mean it's so easy to look back now and be like oh yeah YouTube was the obvious front runner and the good decision decision but. I was really conflicted like I remember calling my parents on the drive back and it was the drive back was like 5,000 miles so I was like slowly talking over the next couple weeks as we were making our way back to LA like should I do this interview in LA that I have to do for Discovery and so I I ended up doing the interview and it was such a like a blessing in disguise interview cuz me and my buddy go in we had a great interview but my last question for the guy he was like do you have any more questions for me?" Like, for he was like the head LA branch guy. And I was like, "Okay, would you if you were me, would you take this job?" And I had explained the YouTube thing cuz I was really conflicted. I was like, "My YouTube channel has maybe I think I had had 200,000 followers at that time, but I wasn't making great money. It's like 1,200 a month on AdSense." So, I was like, "I don't know if like I can actually get married and and have kids with this." So, he was like, "I don't know. Like, YouTube is an interesting space." I think he had a lot of great insights. He was like, "I don't know if I would take that yet." And he's like, "What's the risk of you, I don't know, playing this out another year, year and a half, 2 years?" I was like, "Oh, there's there's no risk. Like, I'm eating fa. I can afford that." That's it. Yeah. So, need, really. all I needed. And so, luckily that like decision, I walked out that meeting so peaceful. I was like, "Yeah, I'm not going to take this." Me and my buddy looked at each other and he had and he started a channel at that time, too, which is Do you guys know Aaron's Animals? I briefly heard of him. Yeah. Yeah, the VFX bro, dude. Yeah. The VFX guy. Yeah. So, he started his channel at that time, too. So, we both have kind of changed directions with our content or we do, you know, just he does animal stuff, I do the magic stuff, but both of our channels are like kind of equally successful just because we put the time in. But That's amazing. And that's crazy to me, too, because you had like 200,000 subscribers, but you're making $40,000 a year. It's like nowadays, if you have 200,000 subscribers, you're golden. Basically, on YouTube. Well, for some channels, you know, I think it really depends. Really depends. are in the finance space, so I think you're you're skewed. But uh [laughter] If you have a good engaged audience with 200,000 views. Yeah. Yeah, I I think in any niche cuz you could at least have sponsorships, affiliates. Like, there are other ways that you can market an audience. business. I think the training course aspect is still highly interesting. Um I don't do it anymore, but I'm jealous of the people that have an obvious like, "Oh, yeah, teach that. That makes sense." Right. So, you're building out this thing over for next year. At what point do you begin to realize that it's like a significant amount or or at what point for you is it like, all right, I'm all in, like, this was the right choice? I mean, I was all in at that point. Um what I wasn't sure of is how to scale I think the hardest part for creators and I for me back then and uh what I see now is it's hard to scale yourself cuz you're figuring out like what part of yourself you need to scale. Is it like your editing? Is it your writing? Is it your production time? Is it for me, a lot of it was like the set building took a lot of time and like trick engineering. And I enjoyed that part, but it was like, what what part am I good at? And for the first one I had to let go was like the editing of the videos. Um so, I started training editors like, okay, here's my exact style, like, here's how I make these cuts and here's how I here's how I shoot them and this is why I shoot them that way. Um and it's not like anybody can't reverse engineer what we do, but it's just like a specific kind of angle of how we shoot and edit it. Um but like I had to let that go and you know, the thought I had in my back of my head I think so many creators have is like oh, I'm the only one that can do this. I'm the only one that's skilled enough to do this. Or like I'm the only one to know when to cut cuz that's my style. I know he's looking at you. [laughter] Yeah. Why is it so hard to let go? Uh because I'm worried that that's like that's that's the personality of the channel is that at least for the main channel is that everything is done by me. So, every word you hear from me is scripted by me. Every topic is picked by me. Yep. Um I film everything myself. It's and I like the aspect, especially in finance, that it's just it's a guy in a room talking to a camera by himself. Yep. Doing all the work. And there's something I think that's really authentic about that. Yeah. That once you start outsourcing things and trying to streamline things, you just you lose that feel. Maybe. Um okay, let's take Jim Cramer for for I don't know if you like Jim Cramer. [laughter] People have mixed feelings about Jim Cramer. some people I'm just saying cuz he's a general finance person that most people on your channel will know, like Dave Okay. Dave Ramsey. Sure. Dave Ramsey. Let's talk about Dave Ramsey. What is Dave Ramsey's Like why do people follow him? For his advice. For him. Yes. nothing about the editing. No. Nothing about the production value. Like all those things are standard. Correct. That's what I think. So like Uh For That's where I'm coming from. Yeah, but who cares who edits it? I I do because I think half the video or honestly, I think of the video I think 20% is knowledge or 20% is just what the information is. The other 80% is entertainment. So throughout my script, I try to keep it entertaining. I try I try to like throw in jokes or make comparisons that people might think is funny. And the editing is very visual, so I like to throw in a little jokes and things here and there that I feel are important to the viewer that I would want to see. what I think you'll be surprised to find. I don't know if you've ever reached out to fans, but I think we actually just put a job posting for fans cuz for many years I was like against working with fans. I thought it was weird because you know, when we had hired a few fans, like they get really excited. They're overly excited to be around you, but after a while like after 6 months it dies off. They become, you know, just chill with you and but they know your brand and style. They literally know like some of my team know my library better than I do. They'll be like, "Oh, but we already did that." Remember like you did that in 2014 in this one video with this person. And I'll be like, "Oh, yeah, we did a Wow, the jump cut. I forgot about that." And that's I'm Here's my bet. Yeah. There's probably a dozen people watching your channel who are editors that if you said, "Hey, will you edit for me?" They actually already are editing your style. One reason they might like your videos and they understand some of the humor. And so I think there's an editor. I know there's multiple editors. I'll interject. I've been teaching Alex Yep. how to edit those videos. And so, what I've been doing this last month is uh I'll have Alex edit my video, and I edit mine separately. And then we compare our videos Yep. the next day. Yep. And we'll go through them each side by side. And what I've noticed is that Alex is now starting to make the same jokes in the same places as me. Yep. So, I'm talking about like endless money printing is using the same thing that I'm doing. It's funny you're you're doing you're doing it that way. I did that briefly, and I was like, "Why the heck am I editing this twice? I'm just going to use my version." I know. Um versus there's a point where you have to let you actually just have to let it go. was one of the first ones that Alex did that I posted. Alex Yeah. Round of applause for Alex. Let's see how it's doing. Alex. Thank you. Appreciate it, guys. It did Yeah, I don't know why it didn't do well initially, but I'm hoping it's uh let's see if it's picking up. blame it on Alex. You can't blame that on Alex. That's too much pressure. It's picking up a little bit. Okay, it's picking up. I think what Yeah. Your your money sauce is obviously your your personality, but your insights into topics that you pick and how you talk about them. Yeah. So, you should be involved in the writing process. I even would totally gamble that you don't need to write the video. So, you could just Oh, I don't know. I The same thing with editors, there's so many writers out there Yeah. who are in and I don't want to offend you, but better than all of us. Like, even when I look at my stuff, I'm like, "There's writers that are better than me that have ideas." And so, if they can work into your process where like what if you had a list of five people that they don't have to be in-house, they could be freelance that you like, "Hey guys, make it a competition kind of like you're doing with Alex. Whoever writes the best script will get the higher end fee or whatever." But say, "Hey, I want to talk about I'm really interested in talking about this new NFT platform or whatever." Um or maybe you're not, I don't know. But like whatever it is, boom. Um and then here my three main points I want to hit for sure. Um maybe you have a specific joke, you know, you want to make in it, and you have them write that, and then see what is in you know, cuz there is some fleshing out in the middle of that, in meat, that you probably don't need to spend your time writing. Like, looking up You probably do a lot of research, right? Like, but part of that is I have to really understand to be able to pick out the points that I feel are worth emphasizing. So, sometimes in my research, I'll think I know it all, but then as I'm doing the research, I come across something different, and I'm like, "Wow, this is actually a better angle." And I'll reorient the video about something new. Yeah. What if somebody brought you a script that that said, like, you read it and you're like, "Oh, man, I actually don't know. Is that true?" Like, hmm. And from there, you you Like, they do the legwork. This big 80% push. Yeah, it's it's hard for me because what I've done is worked so well, and it's still working. So, I'm like, why try to mess with it right now? Yeah. That's all. Are you a control freak? Uh yeah. Yeah, I I would say so, but I I I I don't want to say it's a control freak. I think I'm very particular, and I and I I have a vision for something, and if it's not exactly that, I don't want to I don't want to do it. Yeah. I I didn't know about your guys's uh partnership that you explained in the beginning, but that makes me excited for you because I think it empowers Yeah. And Jack's going to be stoked and take on a bulk of the work, and that's what you need to do, not necessarily on the main channel, not overnight, but leverage, dude. You got to leverage other people. Yeah. Well, that's That's Alex. You got to listen to that That's Alex's goal right now for the end of the year. I want to train him perfectly for the main channel edits, so that by January 1st, I want him to be able to take over. is it a thing for you Is it a thing for YouTubers, though, like, okay, so what's what's Kevin's team like? Does he Is there any It's pretty small, yeah. Is it just him? It's him, and he has two assistants that will help him with anything. They do research for him. They They will do that. So, now they like They just started doing that, but that was like as of a month ago. What about What about Andre? Just him. Just Just him. Yeah. Yeah, you guys got to leverage. But how many videos is Andre posting per week? He's posting twice a week, and we're posting like, I don't know, 10 times a week across nine times a week across like five channels. So, What and what's your guys's production team? Is it Alex? Is it the three of you? Yeah. Right here. This is the production We're in the room with the production team. The three musketeers. This is entirely everything across five channels. Wow. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. So, but that's what I like. It's like it's a small team. Yeah. We we just hang out. We're friends. Yep. We don't have to be friends with the new person we bring on. We don't have to That's That's usually what That's usually what happens. Yeah. I think it's really important that your business doesn't like Okay, when we moved into our first studio, we went from house that was uh 2,200, maybe like 1,900 square feet. There was like 12 of us jammed in this thing. Super family vibes. Like we were all friends. And then we moved into this warehouse that's 15,000 square feet. Our offices are like we had to We were racking up like the steps just to walk around to go meetings and talk to each other. It felt super corporate for like the first 6 months in there cuz we were like how do we manage this in a weird like we like being in a house and in the neighborhood. And but it What it did is like help streamline the operations. Then we realized like kind of separating each other. It wasn't just like a Hey, you're right here. Let me ask you this question that I really should like maybe we should set a meeting for and like think about and talk about um versus like randomly kind of interjecting here and there. And it's almost like the house version is uh when I look back like it was fun. But it's so much chaos. And we were getting a lot done. But it's like the the warehouse and the studio version allowed us to like figure out what the like really break apart what is the process that needed to happen for the videos. Maybe you guys are already good at that in this setting. I think we are. We each got We each got rooms. Alex just upgraded. This is now his office. He was working in the laundry room. Yeah. For the last 8 months. And now he's uh moved into is This is an upgrade. a huge upgrade. Yeah. Yeah, we're all We're all introverted. So, realistically we don't go and bug each other. No. Like if I want to see works out. I want to see Graham, um I have to text him ahead of time. Like I'll never just barge into his office. And he does the same for me. That might be a That might be a good rule. I understand that. I'm an introvert, too. I just can't imagine going into an office. That's the thing. I love just being able to walk 20 ft and it's right there. If I need Alex, I knock on the door. I love it you guys are going to take this clip someday and I'm on your side. You're like, "Remember when I said that we're never going to be in an office?" Cuz But yeah, that's just me though. kind of I mean, it's kind of inevitable, right? Yeah. Like it's It stresses me. Why does it to continue to grow with the same team? Why is it inevitable though? I I don't get Because like it's I mean, okay. People and overhead and obligations. Then then I got to pay either rent or a mortgage on a place, more people to keep track of. I love that. be excited to pay a mortgage on a place though cuz you'd be I just I don't want stress. Like I've been trying now to like have the least amount of stress as possible. And that's a great goal. Like if that's your goal It is. That I mean, that's a sweet I get that. I'm the same too like payroll and and team members and doing HR and all that. can't yeah. You know. All I want to think about is what topic am I going to talk about? That that's the only thing that I want to think about. Yeah. That's it. But you could you can put like a great relations person between you like you don't have to be the person that you know, is hiring or even talking to people and my my like I hate conflict and I really hate anytime I have to like or back in the day when I was the one that had to say like, "Hey, here's what you're doing wrong or like the oh, the worst is yearly reviews, right? Like employee reviews of which I was doing for a long time and now I don't do that because emotionally like will take me out of that for 2 weeks from what I'm making like all I'm thinking about like 2 weeks I have these meetings that I have to like tell people what they're doing wrong or build them up in these ways. Um, I just love the collaboration and creating. That's what's fun. So tell us about your team. Yeah, how many people you have working for you? Like what what is involved in in behind the scenes for your operation? So at the studio we have like 20 full-time team that do the You're already stressed. Yeah, I'm stressed out. All right, so You can get people to manage the the team for you. Well, let's see. Yeah. But so a lot of it is a production team, right? Um but it's through the whole process. So the beginning is pre-production team, which could be writers. Um it's development a lot of the trick development. So uh there's a trick development team that will say, "Hey, you know what? In a couple of months, let's do let's do an upside down room that can like maybe it can turn. You guys figure out how to like if it needs to turn or whatever." And I'll pitch the concept and they'll go off and like engineer how that could be done, both the building of it, the fabrication, but also like what is the aesthetic visually of that trick. And they might input on that. We'll just meet for a couple months on that. Um and that's like the writing prepo pro. And then we have an art team with the production team. Um but really it's like this arm of producers that kind of do everything from in that process. So there's seven producers that are like, "Well, every Monday go over all the concepts that we want to do." Anyone on the team, even if you're in um like our CFO joins the meeting for pitching an idea. It's like an hour and a half creative room. We put all we put what's called the T sheet. So you literally draw a T. On one end, you put the uh paragraph like little two sentences about what the idea is. Maybe it's we're at Gram's uh house and we're going to do something with uh Bankroll Coffee and then grab the beans and turn it into coffee. And then I draw a little image of that just so it can be visualized for people, just a a thumbnail. Mhm. And then write the idea. It's called Gram's Bankroll Coffee trick. And we put them all on the wall. We'll have, you know, 50 ideas up there. And then at the end, everyone gets two little votes and just a little smiley face. It's not like for a competition at all, but it's just mark your favorite idea. Like which one would you want to watch? Which one would you if it was on your feed would you like? Or which one would you share with a friend cuz it's interesting. And it's just a matter of taste. And that that actually gives us a really good gauge uh of like usually two or three concepts rise to the top. And I love that because it's it's based on everybody's taste as a group. And generally, those aren't always the ones that get made, but uh usually they're the ones that get work shopped and then eventually there's kind of light bulb moments in there and we we make those ideas. So, it's like a group writing process um cuz a lot of people have come up to me and they're like, "How do you get these ideas?" And it's not you know, in the beginning it was me um but now it's really just kind of my tone and some of my sentiment in there and I love the visuals and and obviously polishing along the way, but it's really these the producers that take these concepts and make them come to life. Then once you green light them on to the next day on Tuesday there's a green lighting process. So, you have to have a mock-up video. We could have them quickly go out after a Monday meeting, they go out and shoot the video like on their phone or on a DSLR. Really rough mock mock-up. They're really janky. You can't If you guys watch them, you wouldn't know what's going on, but we understand like the visual language that they're playing with, but it shows us the framing, it tells us if if the joke is going to If we're doing a kind of a humorous thing, that's going to play off or if just the trick visually will work. Then from there we sign a budget and it's off to the races. They have 2 weeks to make that video. What's a What's a normal budget for something like totally depends. Like some of our stuff, obviously the brand stuff uh we could spend six figures to make. Um for our stuff it it it's all over. Like a lot of it So, if we're using a rotating room which could cost six figures to build, uh we've already got that and we'll use that for multiple videos. Um Can you explain a rotating room? [snorts] A rotating room. Okay, so a rotating room has been a concept since like uh pretty early film days actually like Nickelodeon days, but obviously people know um Inception. The scene where the the room is rotating and they're they're where the room's rotating is how they're doing it. They're running on the walls and it looks like they're running on the ceiling. So, what you do is you have like a fixed circle cylinder and then you put a camera here and it's locked to that room. So that because the camera's moving with the room, you can't notice the camera move and that's why you know, I'm able to walk on on the ceiling or on the side of the wall. Cuz gravity's actually changing for me. That's crazy. Yeah. So, those are the fun stuff in the you know, because of the studio space that we're able to build. So you're saying it takes two weeks to make a video? On average, yeah. For our what we call like our personal content, which is our main slate, what you guys see as the the videos that are unbranded, that's what it takes. long because I've seen some of your TikToks of like 30 to 60 seconds. I've seen some of your shorts that could be like 10 seconds long. Is that how long it takes you to make the 10-second video? Yeah. It's usually a minimum two weeks now. No. Cuz the one I saw that I really liked was the tap dancing video. Yeah. Where you were tap dancing with a mirror and then it comes out and you watch how you did that that kind of stunt. Right. two weeks? Yeah. Two weeks. And and then those are fun cuz they're all on camera. Is that a lot of time? I can't tell if that's a lot of time. That is so long because that was a six-second video. Oh, to me two weeks is is pretty fast. Early days like I could knock them out, but they were really simple. Like the concepts now are way more complex from a production standpoint. So, two weeks is a short amount of time. We've gotten that down. Like it used to be it could have been six months. I'm curious how you make your money back on that because the one that I saw that I really like too was the one you did with ZHC and you bought the the picture for $100. And we should throw up some B-roll of this if we can. And then you went into the picture to drive the car and it was like the real thing was behind it. Right. How do you make money on that cuz it was such a short clip? It's like where do you monetize? Yeah, we we don't make money on that. We lose money on those. That I mean the really one I want to do them unless I'm really excited about making them like as a filmmaker, I love doing what I do. So, it's like I'm excited that I get to fund it, but the our business is really leverage on the branded side, right? So, like these pieces are just growing the audience. It's building the audience so that we could go out to a brand um do a production for them, and then take that paycheck and put it back into the videos again and disperse them across all the personal content. that's your main source of income is just brand deals. Yeah, that's about 75% cuz AdSense for us is really low. Our CPM We have a huge international audience, too, which is awesome, but on the the backside of that is like the CPM kind of gets washed out a lot, so share any of those numbers? I'll show you. I'll show you. Uh I can't share them, but they're really bad. Okay, can can we see it? We're not going to I'm not going to mention what it is. You're just going to get my reaction. live reaction, guys. And we're going to to understand that this is before your own expenses. Um while you're sharing that, would you mind going over like what what your overhead is a month for running something like this? Oh, I can't I can't share that, but it's expensive. Um this is the revenue. Yeah. [clears throat] You're going to be shocked because you guys make a ton. Oh, wow. So, and and these ones These Don't let these skew you because those are like Those are I know what it is. The YouTube, yeah. Okay. Wow. Can I see the uh the views? What do you mean? let's go back. Just the real time? So, most Swipe over on the All right, all right. All right. Go to the top overview. Oh, wow. Now, okay, so this is Is this the just the shorts or this is every Oh, this is everything. That's um that is the main channel. The shorts is a separate one, which I need to show to Well, you saw it the other day. caught a glimpse of it, yeah, at the ping pong event. Wow. million real-time views. Yeah, I think that's the highest I've ever Well, aside from the ping pong thing. Yeah. Most real-time views I've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, here you go. Yeah. Wow. So, it's not like we don't make really any money on AdSense. It's never been a big business for us. Oh my lord. So, we have to do, you know, the branded projects, which are awesome cuz they empower us to like keep paying off It's a just It's a different model. And there are a lot of YouTubers uh especially in like the kids and family that have to do it that way. Like the CPM is just not great on some channels. That's why I was saying, you guys are skewed on finance. Right. don't know how good you have it. Apparently not. That CPM is money. See, it's it's interesting cuz all of our like all of our friends and like the people who we talk to, they're all in finance. Everybody. So, we'll compare AdSense numbers with each other. We're all about on the same par in terms of like, you know, per thousand views or whatever. Yeah, that's why I hate Social Blade. Uh Oh, yeah. for my our channel totally off. Right. But, you know what? Another channel that we that we compare with was Carter Sharer. Yeah. Um his CPM was really good, I would say. But, he his is just really clean, family-friendly content. But, his was like really decent, actually. making a lot of money. Right. Yeah, I think there's some that it just does really well. And then I'm not sure I think the reason why is maybe your your content was a little bit shorter. Cuz I for him he does his 10 to 20-minute long videos. But, it's always been We've had the channel even when we weren't uploading shorts. It was always we would do compilations or whatever. And they just never the CPM I think it's demographics. I think it's demographics. I mean, yeah, who's who's buying magic apps? Right, exactly. So, right now your main source of income would you would say sponsorships then? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, 75% of our business is through branded content. And where's the other percentage going? Um probably 10% AdSense or less. Uh probably way less. And then um we also do a lot of production. So, stuff where I won't be in them, my team will produce them. I might direct them or or help executive produce, but um we are doing just you won't see me in those. So for example, if you watch an Amazon ad right now online, you might even watch it be like, wait, that was like was that magic or was that like a VFX trick? Um so we we did those pieces. Wow, okay. So we'll do a lot of just commercial work that, you know, as a production company. Wow. It's It's just interesting to hear all of these I just think of expenses. Because I think for us, it's like when we talk about our overhead, we don't really have an office space. Everything is just like really what you see here in my office over there. There's really I'm so jealous of that. Yeah, it's like I would say realistically probably 98% of what we make is probably just profit. Mhm. And then whatever we spend on top of that That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's just do we need something? Can we improve something? Great. How can we improve it? It's just we don't need to do it, but See, I I enjoy the payroll payroll used to stress me out. I was like, oh man, like if uh the business doesn't do well, like there's all these families that are depending on me, but when I took away that stress knowing that like, you know what, if a business fails, like people are okay. They can go find they'll it will work out for them. Um especially the people I work with, they're really talented. They have other options if that happens. So that got it rid of that fear. But the other one is the the payroll, like I love actually paying my friends or my team and like working with them and and being able to collaborate like I'm secretly like I'm or I tell them all the time, but like I love that they're giving me their a piece of their life, like a piece of their 9-to-5 time and sometimes beyond to collaborate on my stuff. So I'm I'm really excited that I am able to finance that. And I don't care if it comes from, you know, like I'm paying way more than I should. Like I could do this solo or or not so I couldn't. I could do this with four or five people maybe Mhm. and try to take more profits, but that would be kind of lame. Can you say what percentage of profit you take from the total gross revenue? Oh, I pay myself a salary, so it's not based on any profit. It's just a flat salary. Yeah. Years ago with my CPA, we just set a salary of what Yeah, every company does that though. You just within S corp, I'm guessing it's salary and you take everything else is like a dividend or a distribution. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut distributions. Just a set, you know, salary. Yeah. Why not take a distribution? Or is is Because For me, I don't like I feel like I'm slightly hurting the business if I were to do that. Like I just want to use that money. I'm not as extreme as Jimmy where I'm like everything has to go back into the content. Like I want to be able to slowly pull out some as a salary to save, but I am more on that extreme where it's like I want to be able to fund these cool projects. And part of it's been like I don't need a lot of money for myself to live for my family. We live very comfortable, but we don't need excessive amounts. So for me it's uh taking enough to invest and then taking enough to uh save. I'm trying to build purchase a building in LA for the warehouse for the studio space. And so over the years it's just been saving for that project, saving for other film projects, longer form stuff. So that the dream is to put it back into like the longer form stuff that we want to do. question is why stay in California? Oh. You're talking about getting a building in Los Angeles and I know. Warning signs are going off in my head. I'm like you want to run a business in Los Angeles? What? It's insane. Why? Why? Why do you It going to say that. Yeah, it's that is probably the worst place I would say for anything film related. Terrible. And I've heard stories of people in the film industry that are are leaving because of how restrictive it is for anything film related. During COVID, a lot of people flocked away from the city. I don't know I would love to know how many crew or production people left. Um for me, when I did that road trip on in YouTube or years ago. [clears throat] Like we went to 30 states and I don't want to stereotype all the states but we we hit up most like the major cities in them and and went to the suburban areas and the urban areas and we just had I mean we saw a lot and we stayed several days in each place and we all I went with two other good friends of mine, best friends. We came back we all said like oh man Southern California is the best spot. Like it is so prime geography-wise, like weather-wise, climate-wise, the fact that we can shoot every day, almost every day of the year and it's like beautiful out. You're next to the ocean. Like there's so it's just like I love Southern California as a climate. So that's uh I now there's like I've been there for 15 years. That's where my friends are. That's where the group is. Like how was it moving here? Like you had but you had your friends move out here, right? Like A lot of people were here like well a lot of people were here already. So we didn't move here knowing nobody. If 80% of my friends move somewhere and it was a great tax incentive, too. Sure, I would think about it. But I don't know. Traveling like I already do a lot of traveling. I don't want to have to travel to LA to go shoot. I mean like we shoot in LA all the time. That's where That's where everybody comes. Yeah, why I was shocked because I was shocked. Now because I thought initially when when I moved to West LA and I was like this is awesome because everyone was around like the same area, so easy. And I I remember thinking, this is before even considering a move anywhere else. This is like you can't really live anywhere else because there's an opportunity cost of leaving and what is that going to be cuz everyone's like I ran into Colin and Samir on on Main Street in Santa Monica and it was through just randomly running into them there that that like a friendship built from that. So yeah, I'm going to miss that." But, little did I know more people are excited to come to Las Vegas. I was shocked. I was shocked. Yeah, that's pretty and it's like a short flight. 45-minute flight. It's easy and I've I've never like getting people to LA was difficult unless they already live there. But, I'm shocked I'll tell people like, "Hey, we're in Vegas." They'll be like, "Oh, yeah. I'll I'll do a trip there anytime." And it's just like they'll make a weekend of it and they'll just come on the podcast. So, I don't know. I I think it would be surprising especially for filming just the amount of space you could get is incredible. The The tax savings are incredible. They're very business-friendly. And I remember even setting up an S corporation in Los Angeles and have I think it was like a 1% S corp tax that I had to pay on top of everything else on whatever was left over in the S corporation. It's like an extra 1% for what? And then I I I hit I got hit with a Los Angeles city tax that they just assumed I made money on an on an LLC that I opened up. I didn't do anything for 4 years with it. Nothing. And because I forgot to file an exemption on this. My fault. But, you're supposed to file an exemption every single year that it's inactive. I just forgot about it. There was nothing. There was nothing. There was like 100 bucks in the account. Never used it. I just forgot. But, they sent me a tax bill for like 17 grand because for those 4 years they're like, "Well, because you didn't do anything we're assuming you're going to make $200,000 a year." I'm like, "200 grand a year for what?" But, they taxed me based on that. It was a mess to unravel all of that. But, that was Los Angeles and I had to file that for every single LLC that I opened up. Everything. It was just horrible. So, I was I was surprised to get out and just Now that I was out after a few months I can't even think about going back. I don't mind going back for a weekend and I find it really cool to like get out. But, no. I couldn't I couldn't go back. It would take a Joe Rogan level deal for me to move. That makes sense. Yeah. But uh I did look at some warehouse space in L in Vegas though. I just online when I was here. I was like I was like Graham's going to ask me about this. What what do we have here? Um yeah, your prices are definitely enticing. I mean, it's not it's actually not I was was surprised. Like it's it's expensive. Yeah, because everyone from California is moving there. Yeah, warehouse space is like slightly cheaper here, but uh Yeah, I would say it's probably 30% cheaper. But I don't have the spaces I was looking at though. Like here's the thing. Warehouse and distribution space, which is kind of what I'm looking for hasn't dropped a lot at all. Yeah, like it's it's only going up because everybody needs that. So yeah. It's uh it's yeah. I'm okay I'm okay paying taxes to have what we have in LA though. Like it's the vibes are great. And and not even LA city like not all of LA's awesome to be, but just uh I know where else can you be like 5 minutes from the beach also in the mountains Mhm. also near one of the biggest production cities in the world. Mhm. Still. I know a lot of people left, but you know, when we do our shoots and productions, it's hard to know, right? Like are they really coming there and I'm part of them because we're there or would that be [clears throat] the same amount of work in Vegas? I don't know. I think you're right though. Having Vegas like the strip right there and just Vegas being what it is and everyone knows it for. Sure, you're going to probably entice it's like oh yeah, you could do that too and do Graham's thing. That makes sense. Yes. Yeah, it's just easy. Yeah. I think it would be fun to discuss why you're here today and how we met because what happened what yesterday was it 2 days ago? Uh Oh, yes. I I have a question for you guys. So yeah. Um 2 days ago I won $120,000 on a table tennis [laughter] a table tennis tournament That's it. Which is uh I looked up. I was asking some of the Olympians there. I was like wait, how much is a regular like table tennis prize purse? They're like maybe 60, 70,000 like high-end ones. I was like you're telling me this is like the most of course it'd be a YouTuber that maybe you know um But okay, what do I do with the 120,000? Not what do I do but so what what I wanted how do I invest it to grow it and then I want to go back with Eric and like do some sort of giveaway uh eventually or like figure out some I wanted one take time to figure out what to do that's clever. Um but investment [clears throat] wise what do I do with the money in the meantime? Where are you investing right now? Like what's what's your portfolio kind of look like? Uh I'm like 70% real estate, 20% stocks, 10% cash reserves waiting to buy. Got it. No crypto? Uh well in in sorry my stocks yes there's crypto in there. All right, so of the 70% real estate how much of that is rental versus business versus primary? Uh almost all of it's rental. Oh good. What about your primary? Do you own that? personal? Yeah. Uh I have a mortgage on it yeah. Okay. And of the stocks that index funds or It's uh 75 it's 70% stocks, 15% ETF, 15% crypto. I think I did the math on that wrong but it's uh I know 15 on crypto is correct. 15 on ETF is correct. So overall then if it's so it's I'm trying to calculate what's your crypto total in relation to everything else like what percentage? It's got to be like 2%. Uh yeah 2% Yeah, not even maybe like 1/8. I would I would I think it would be fun to put it in crypto. All crypto that's what I'm leaning towards. I Yeah because I think that if you have a long enough time horizon let's say 15 to 20 years. I I don't know if anything's going to happen in the short term and then that's why I say like 10 15 years. Probably 10 years so let's just say that. I I think it's going to do well but it's also small enough in relation to everything else where if it goes to zero it's not going to be the end of the world I don't know, to me I I probably do 60 Bitcoin, 60 Ethereum. It's just a one-time thing and forget about it. Just forget about it. But didn't you say you wanted to do something with Aerac with the 120 grand? Yeah, that would be interesting. I mean I mean this the chance of it going to zero I mean like it's I think But I also think I also don't think I would just do it all in one thing. Like I think I would take my time and do It doesn't have to come from that. It could be if you invest 120 you could pull in 120 from somewhere else. From the cash you So you're just asking how he would invest 120. [clears throat] Not necessarily the 120 grand he got Yeah, I mean if you're doing it for the purpose of like from where it's you know from in that moment but yeah So let's just say you have 120 grand to [laughter] Yeah, and he could spend 120k on something else giving it back. Not that you got a windfall. No, no, no. It's just having 120 I would have fun with that. Okay, crypto crypto. Even But it depends on play like say if you want to play it. I think you have enough to fall back on where it doesn't matter and you could you could make a riskier allocation with it with a small portion. crypto? Yeah. How much? How much How much percent percent? Uh nearly 10. Okay. So would you have recommendations for what which crypto? I have Okay, so someone drops you someone drops you 120 right now. What do you put it in? If I were to do cryptos I would probably do I would probably do 45% Bitcoin, 45% Ethereum and then 10% just like maybe some like altcoins. Which altcoins? I don't know. [laughter] He hasn't found them yet. Yeah. Dogecoin Elon balls. I'm not sure. Maybe maybe Solana. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Marty has some Solana. I do I I'm excited about that one. Yeah. Cardano. Maybe. Mhm. Cardano would be, yeah, would be interesting. Just some random stuff that could pop off, probably. Yeah, I don't think you could go wrong with that. And maybe you could. Maybe we could look back at this, but I don't know. not financial advice, you guys. Right. But No, no, no. But it's interesting. But I don't think you can go wrong with that. [laughter] You'll definitely not lose money on that. But no, but it's interesting, at least for me with Bitcoin and Ethereum. The more research I do, the more excited I get about it. And I I've never had that with any other investment where like Usually, the more you research, you reach a point where like, "Ah, I think I understand it enough. I'm not exactly sure. Anything can happen." But it's I see such a big potential. And what's really interesting to me is that uh the more I see that millennials and Gen Z are choosing crypto over stocks, and there's like this mental shift of like, "Oh, stocks are for boomers and old people, and I'm not going to be a part of that." Mhm. Uh and what's What's odd is that a lot of millennials feel like the stock market is is more corrupt and more manipulated than cryptocurrency is. Even though I think right now cryptocurrency is way easy uh way more easily manipulated. there's like I by like probably tenfold. I don't know what your guys' view on this, but like I feel like YouTubers are moving some of these coins. Oh, certainly. Certainly. They can't. like pump and dump stuff. It's It depends on the cryptocurrency, the market cap, the context, and if they are actually behind it. Mhm. Um So I I think of anything, probably Twitter has just as large of an impact because it seems like a lot of this tends to start on Twitter. Or usually what what actually what what what I've seen behind the scenes is that it seems to like the Discord groups, which then will talk about it, and then it goes to Twitter, and it'll go from Twitter to YouTube, and then like then then the big mainstream outlets start to pick up on it, like the CNBCs and the CNNs and the MarketWatchs. And they'll do things on it. But I don't know, but I think there's a new type of investing right now that's based on momentum, community, and attention. And And it's You can't You can't value that. Yeah. Like GameStop was a perfect example of that where it's like the the community came together, all really liked the stock, and it's I still trading it like a over $200 for GameStop. Doesn't make any sense and a year and a half ago, not even was it a year No, yeah, year and a half ago it was like $6 a share. Not that much I mean not I don't want to say not that much happened, but it's from $5 to 100. Yeah. A year and a half, but it's the community that's so strong behind it. And Sam I I think also plays with Tesla is that it's such like this um this cult-like following for Elon Musk. Is it worth any I don't know, but the community and the momentum says it is. Yeah. And so how long could that continue and what what price do you value that on? So I think with a lot of these coins um in a long term who knows what's going to happen, but with Dogecoin it's like it's stupid coin. It it's it's a me literally I mean It's not stupid. Okay. But be still careful. Watch your mouth. Yeah, I should I should educate myself better. [laughter] It's a silly coin. I mean it's silly. It's silly. Nobody could buy into doge and say it's not it's it's a silly coin. They started it off as a joke. But now it's got a market cap of 30 billion dollars. I think it'd be fun to discuss some of the content creation process because for some reason you have some ability to just go viral on every single like form of social media ever. And I don't understand it because you've also gone mainstream. You were on Ellen DeGeneres and you were on like you said the Amazing Race. You've been in a movie. I saw that. Zootopia's in my credit my IMDb credit I don't know how to do my IMDb, but Zootopia's listed. You're on Zootopia. Cuz I have one voice cameo. Yeah, yeah. Which they gave me when the first time you go in the police scene you can hear me saying like I he bore his teeth first. It wasn't me. That's But yeah, you've done everything well. TV shows, too. Here here's here's my thing. I go to a lot of different conferences and and speak at them and I also attend where YouTubers they always try to break down which is fine the algorithm and figure out like what is the best SEO, you know, year couple you remember a couple years ago it was like really with thumbnails, right? Like red circles, like figure out what the you know kind of the Jake Paul days everyone's like, okay thumbnails is the new thing and then um but instead of reverse engineering the the algorithm, which I think is important. The one metric today I think creators should be watching is retention because um that will drive up the suggested viewers. But for me it's always I mean I'm looking at from the long tail of like doing this for 12 years, I think it's about the only thing is the stories and the content and the characters in your videos and you know building that relationship with your audience. It doesn't matter what platform you're on. I think YouTube's a really really strong one. Like I would bank most if it was a you know it well it is a stock but if it was a tradeable platform just if you had platforms, uh I would put most of my money on YouTube being the frontrunner still for a long time. Because you can build a whole ancillary, you know, a bunch of businesses around it. But [snorts] that doesn't mean you don't need other ones to help build your brand. I think Instagram and TikTok, especially TikTok lately has been great. What I noticed is um YouTube you have a core audience, right? They just come back, they watch your videos and if you keep making great stuff, they'll continue to come back and it'll kind of grow over time slowly. But I you need the TikToks and the Instagrams or you don't need them but they're really helpful for branding and sometimes uh mainstream. Like with TikTok we found like more people come up to me now versus like a lot of people still came up to me on YouTube but way more come up based on TikTok and you could just see in throughout the years like when it was Vine people coming up or when it was Instagram blew up, you know, or when it was Snapchat even you could see these waves and you could tell because when people were taking selfies, you can see what what apps they're on and how they're doing it and it was pretty obvious where they're coming from where they would just say like, oh I saw this TikTok, you know, or they call you that. So my title has changed so many times over the last 12 years it you You um at one point it was like, you're a musically star." I know you from musically, you know. Um, but like those platforms are all helpful for kind of breaking into the mainstream. It's weird though, like I I wonder when we're going to stop using the word mainstream cuz YouTube is mainstream. Like why are we still calling it? I don't know. YouTube creators, that's that's fine, but like eventually it's just like, "Oh, I watch this person." Right, right. You know, like I feel like I watch if you're talking about Dave Ramsey, like you watch him on YouTube. Yeah, yeah. He's a YouTuber. Uh, not in the traditional sense, but it's like we're all watching on the same place at this point. That's interesting that you've paid attention to the I I don't want to say the back end, but like the metrics of the video itself. Because for us, it's always title thumbnail. That we could have the most amazing video in the world, and if we don't have the right title and thumbnail, nobody watches it. Yeah. And I've had it so many times where I posted a video, and it's been a 10 out of 10, which means it's like the worst video we've posted out of the last 10. Okay. And the video itself is awesome. And all we do is change the title and the thumbnail to something a little more you do that? In the first like First hour. Oh, if what if you don't do it in the first hour? Uh, it has less of an effect. Okay. I've noticed at least in the first hour, YouTube is recommending the video enough to get immediate feedback on the video. So, when you post, are you just waiting like kind of watching it and in the first hour you're ready to pivot or do you already have other thumbnails ready? so the way it works is that we post, and usually I don't look at any of the metrics for the first 15 minutes. Okay. Sometimes it's like things can happen in the first five or 10. Yep. Uh, usually though after about 10 minutes you could kind of tell, but 15 minutes in, we look at what the initial click-through rate was of the title. So, we could see on the on the analytics, if you get a big spike the first minute past a certain like number, like for us it's past 1,500. Mhm. Uh, anything above 1,500, we know the title's correct because enough people clicked on in the first minute. Then we see what is the momentum like those next 15 minutes. Is the graph going up? Is it going down? And how does that do in relation to every other video we've posted? Yeah. And at this point we have a backlog of probably 2 to 300 videos mentally in our minds that we could compare it to and we're like, this is our usual, this is good, this is bad. These topics do good and these topics do poorly. Sometimes we'll post a video and we will know it's going to be like a nine, which means it's not the worst, but it's pretty bad. those ones ones like we have a lot in our library that randomly, sometimes years later, just blow up out of nowhere? Do you guys have that in your library? No, the videos that that do well long-term are long-tail videos. So like we'll say, how to invest in the stock market for beginners. I know 100% I'll post that video, it'll do terribly. It'll be my worst performing video in the first like two months. But those videos get such consistent views that within about six months it'll be one of the top performing videos. Uh so you can't do that all the time, but those videos are great as like those are kind of like you're building out a spider web to collect like new subscribers and viewers and that'll just consistently get like new flies in there. Just made that up. But those videos are really well. Um just those provide the foundation because they always get views. So if you could get a hundred of those in the pipeline, every day each of those will make, you know, a few bucks. So that's like that's your foundation and everything else is, you know, just entertainment along the way. See, we yeah, we don't even I don't even know what my title click-through rate is because for us like I'm not trying to SEO. So we have for example a video that's incredibly I think it's got a hundred million views on our YouTube channel. It's called furniture illusions. The most random topic of all things, right? Like not many people are looking up illusions in the first I mean there's a lot, but relative to other things. Um and then furniture, like that's a pretty low search thing. But that randomly takes off not, you know, the first week, not even the first two weeks. It was like months later and a lot of our videos do that. It seems to be it somehow goes into the algorithm at some point and it says like, "Oh." And this is where I think retention is really important. Um it knows that it's getting a higher watch time. And but it's weird that our videos are like could be months later. That's yeah. So, for us the content creation isn't about like title or thumbnail. It really is like the step above that, which is what is this video is about? What like what's interesting about this? Yeah. I think every channel has a slightly different algorithm, it seems like. Maybe. And mine is going to be different than yours. Yeah. Cuz I've seen some other channels, too. Uh it was interesting we were talking to The Stradman a while ago. And each of his videos consistently will hit between 1 and 1.2 million views, no matter what he does. He could post a bad video, a million views. Huh. A great video, 1.2 million views. It's always within that range, no matter what he does. Huh. And it's interesting that like that's his baseline. Like YouTube sets that as his recommendations, regardless of how much his subscribers grow. Yeah. It's like that's his that's his thing. And for us, we have a certain range that like almost no matter what video we post, as long as it's, you know, on par, it's going to do, you know, a certain amount of views. What about on the ice is the ice coffee hour different? Like have you seen different metrics? You guys do the same thing, like you look at the title similar. A few videos end up getting recommended. Uh we had one with Jennette McCurdy that did really well. And at first it it was a good video at first, but I think it just it hit her audience. Or it was the same time that what was it? I the iCarly thing came out. Yeah, we had her on us. That was just the reboot was coming Yeah. So, we had her on and posted What was it? by coincidence at the same time that her iCarly a bunch of search terms. Yes. And then I think YouTube saw that that video was being searched, people were watching it, and it started recommending to that audience. So, every now and then we What happens? It also happened with the King Pokemon thing. Like I remember we we released, you know, King Pokemon? Yep. We released a an episode with him, and immediately it was like a 10 out of 10 or a 9 out of So bad. Like really really poor performance. And then it was like I think it was about 6 days after we posted. I remember I was at a Spikeball tournament, and all of the sudden there was a huge bump in the views. And Graham texts me, he's like, "Dude, look what's happening." Yeah. And I looked What was it? Uh like after like when I tell a news thing that happened? it was just it hit the audience that likes the Pokémon content like his fan base and everything and we didn't change title, we didn't change thumbnail. Literally and all of a sudden every single day just got more and more and more views and then it was a one out of 10 by far. Yeah. Yeah, we have certain videos where I feel like YouTube is really YouTube wants the video to succeed Yeah. and I really believe that they're trying to find it they're trying scrambling to AB test different audiences. Yep. And if it could test and then this is successful and it test that's success it finds like the right person for the video and then it's like if this person like this video we're going to recommend it to other people who have also watched them. Yeah, exactly. Lock lock it in. So like a good example of two was I did a video with Michael Reeves and I was so excited for this video and I thought for sure this would have been like a knockout video. It was a It's a 10 out of 10. by far. I mean it was half it did half the views of the next worst performing video half. Yeah. I was like, "Oh crap, I guess this isn't going to work anymore." Yep. And then I think it was like 3 days later same thing is boom. And it and it hit Michael Reeves' audience and started recommending to people who watch Michael Reeves. Yep. And so so it's just it's interesting how that video. That's the video where yeah, I watched that one. He talks about Simon Property. You're like, "What do you invest in?" He's like, "Simon Property Yeah. [laughter] But looking at it he that did well. Dude, it did well. Every time I see that stock I think of him because of that Michael I hope he's still in that. I thought it was Tesla too. Wasn't it Tesla? No, it was He said he was like only Simon Property Group all he had. [laughter] Which is kind of a random one to even know about. Yeah. Was he in it for the dividends or something? I think it was didn't he say his friend told him or something? And he just went all in Simon Property. [laughter] So It worked. They're doing well. I like Simon Property. Yeah. Yeah, I have I I got it because of that actually. So across all of your different like social media platforms, uh do you is your goal to like redirect everything to YouTube? As you have a It's not an intentional goal, but I do like that because that's where we grow the real community. Like the people who really care about our work and uh even it attracts more of a filmmaker uh to the channel. Like that's kind of my vibe and my MO, so ideally that's where people go. And it's just long form. I really think sitting down with your favorite creator and spending 6 minutes in a video is way way more powerful than having, you know, 60 million people watch it for like 15 seconds. Even if it doesn't I don't know. They're swiping onto the next thing on most other platforms. Well, they don't even like individually select to watch your content on TikTok. It just gets recommended if they're just going through their feed, which is how everyone searches. But on YouTube, if you're going to click on like like someone's channel or a recommendation or something like that, you actually have to actively click on it. So, I feel like that also can establish a different relationship with the uh with the viewer as well. But have you also noticed that there is there are different viewers on each platform? Like your fans are different on this platform or Or does it kind of like cross hatch? No, it's interesting like they don't like a lot of people, I mean, makes sense because we are most our followers are on Instagram or TikTok or um other platforms. Not many people know we have a YouTube channel. Like they're usually pretty shocked. They're like, "What?" And I'm always like, "Wait, you seem like a pretty in-depth fan, but you don't know we have a YouTube channel." It's just a lot of people are either I think this is depends on how you use social media. Like my wife is only on Instagram. She doesn't really watch many YouTubers. She kind of just know I mean, again, like people she follows do minutes of stories or like they could do 8 minutes of stories a day, right? So, she's kind of watching a version of it chopped up. Um so, it's just it's different, I think, uh based on how the It's It's really weird to me though, even in Vegas, like people meeting people on the strip. They're like, "Dude, I am the biggest fan of your TikTok videos." And I was like, "Did you watch our YouTube videos?" And they're like, "What? Oh, wow. channel? Like what's different there?" And that I think that's the thing though. You have to if you have if you're drawing people to it, it has to be really different. So for us it's like we're still really only a year into redeveloping the YouTube channel like at the for many years it's just we we have like 10 or what 12 million subscribers on YouTube, but most of them are because we ran them. We didn't know we had a channel for a long time. We were uploading the shorts. Not as short not YouTube shorts, but like the short little clips and we're just putting them on I was just uploading them when I'd make a new one same as I'd put them on Instagram and Tik Tok and then we looked one day and we're like holy crap this channel's like actually growing. We need to make long form content which is one reason I think the CPM isn't good because we've kind of just started figuring out in the last year and a half like we need to do longer form. Like if you do look at the library of from years ago it's all like 20 second videos and the watch time is just like it's been pulled down because I'm thinking about like maybe I need to go through and YouTube says it's not worth doing or doesn't affect it, but I feel like it does. Like I need to go delete delete those. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't delete it. That's the worst Why is that bad? Oh my god. We heard from Todd View Pro himself that deleting videos is bad. Okay. I heard it from Todd View Pro. I asked him in Clubhouse back in the olden days when we used to use that and he said basically yeah, I know this is like 6 months ago, but the algorithm Todd View Pro who's like the head of the algorithm at YouTube you know, he said that once you delete a YouTube video like YouTube collects it mess up the web or something? Yeah, it kind of YouTube collects data based off of the viewer. It's not based off of the video and basically if you delete a video YouTube will treat each viewer that saw that video as if they had never seen that video or interacted with that video. So if a viewer or your channel so no just just that video which obviously is tied to your channel. So like let's say like you have like 10 viewers that went and watched this one video of yours and they liked it or something. Then YouTube's going to be like oh these 10 viewers they're going to probably want to see other content similar to this and they're going to recommend other of your videos to this to these people, right? Right. But if you delete that one video, that's the that is the vessel between like you and the viewers. a pool. just it basically treats it as it as though they'd never seen that video or they've never interacted with your videos. let's say I mean I might have a lot I have to look, but like it could be like two or 300 shorts. you'll screw your videos. No, leave it. We I we've tested this so many times in our channel that we never delete videos anymore. I remember the same I ended up deleting What about unlisting now? No, we literally go into the YouTube I'll I'll get to that. So So here's what happened on my main channel. I was 4 months into doing YouTube videos and my channel started getting recommended and I ended up taking down two of those videos because they were videos that I just like back when I started by them? No, it was I swore. I swore in those videos and I really tried to clean up some of the I just made like stupid jokes. Yeah, on the video. Not nothing inappropriate. Well, I would say it's like It's not going to cancel you. It's not going to cancel you. No, it was inappropriate. Well, yeah, it's not cancelable. It's not cancelable. But it's just People are now Googling they're leaving they're leaving the podcast. toilet humor that a like a teenage boy would joke about. That's all it is. Yeah. It's like when you think of stuff like Okay, so it's immature adult swim sort of humor that I was making in videos talking about how to make passive income. Yeah. That was it. I mean it's innocent enough. But when I but when those videos I never thought anybody watch the videos. Then when people watch the videos and I and I was still I was full-time as a real estate agent. I didn't want those videos coming back and clients thinking I was not professional. Sure. Talking about like making these stupid jokes. Oh, so you were working at I mean you were a real estate agent at the time, right? Oh yeah, I was full-time real estate agent. Like I wasn't making money from YouTube. Like that was just a side for fun hobby. on the channel since then? No. So So basically So I took down those videos because I was like, I don't want clients to see this. I want a professional image still. So I'm going to take down those videos and not swear anymore. As soon as I took down those videos, there were like two of them, my channel just like 80% drop off. Huh? Like almost immediately. And it took me months. It took me like 8 months to build back up the you just you swear it's from that? And it was from that. It was instantaneous. It took down those videos, 8 months to build back up that same momentum, 8 months. And then there was another time where I deleted a video, the same thing happened. Um Yeah, it was [snorts] it was another it was another video. I think I just took it down. Um same thing happened. The algorithm went down. It took a few months to get back. But the real test was on the second channel. We had a guy call in. Um I guess we could talk about it. It's been long enough. I won't reveal anything. But we had a guy call in who owned a franchise. And he was telling us all the details about this franchise, and like how much he was making from the franchise, how you could own a franchise, like the inner workings, which was really interesting because it was this whole culture. And nothing bad. It was just like information. Yeah, kind of No, it was. He said it was public information. Okay. Well, anyway, board that got upset. He revealed too much information for him. And the board saw the video, which I don't know how they saw the video. It must have gotten recommended or someone sent it to him or something like that. It was a great video, and it was one of our most successful videos on the second channel. And he called and was like, "Hey, I'm really sorry. I don't want to do this, but like I'm this is going to impact my ability to open up another franchise unless this video comes down." Like, "All right, we're going to take the video down." So, we took it down, and instantly the whole channel How many months did it Yeah, the channel went like it was probably like 4 months. Wow, okay. So, I'm not deleting anything. do it. Yeah. So, what we do instead, what we found a good workaround. So, we had another person call in on the second channel, and uh she said some things that she later regretted saying. And so, she asked us trim them out. Uh yes. So, basically Well, the entire premise of the video was all centered around something that she did not want later regretted. Dude, you People just need to sign a paper that says like, "Yeah, I know that's what she said." I'm going to regret. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But basically, what we did was we went to the YouTube editor and made the entire video just an intro. Yeah, so it's So it's literally, "What's up, you guys? It's Graham here, and welcome back to the second channel." With that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. Everything You literally chopped out like what, an hour and a half of something in the middle of it? No, it was No, it was a It was probably Yeah, 15, 20 minutes. But all it is is it's 30 seconds now watching that like, "What is this?" Yeah, there was no thumbnail. We changed the title thumbnail, so it's unsearchable. Yeah. And I think we decided to upload outro.mov or something like that. It's literally so stupid. [laughter] like, "Oh, he accidentally uploaded this." Yeah. But that means all the data's retained in that video. Yeah. Oh, and then And then we hid comments, so people wouldn't be able to tell what it was. is just revealed what the video was about. And it worked. And we didn't suffer any like, you know, algorithm damage. Oh, it's It's challenging. It's It's very confusing. No. But there was another video, too. We did a a house tour. And the lady was all fine with us using it. I'm not going to ask you to delete the video. And then apparently, the person who was buying the house was a a high-profile person. They wanted the video down. And she's like, "You got to take the video out." I said I I refused. Because this video took a long time to make, and it was going to throw off the algorithm. The channel was on an upswing. So I said, "How about this? We'll keep the video up, but I'll change the title and thumbnail to make it unsearchable." She's like, "That's fine as long as nobody could see it." I'm like, "Nobody's going to find it." So I hid this video, basically. It doesn't show up in search anymore. You have to scroll back like 2 years to find it. You know, nobody's going to find it. But anyway, it's a very interesting Okay. Those are the tricks. Yeah, but it works. In short, don't delete any of the videos. Yeah. Yeah, but there's no point unless unless there's something on there that you don't want up there anymore. There's no point in changing title and stuff like that. Unless you have to delete a video, in which case just edit it out. Yeah. That's a good tip to know. Yeah. Try that. So we've learned everything just through trial and error, seeing what works. And we're just like, anything with the algorithm we watch it. Everything. Yeah. So Does it affect your content though at the end of the day? Do you go back to the Does it affect writing the next one? Um yes and no, but I'm I'm vigilant on how user interaction is going to go throughout the video and I'm really cognizant of like are people going to continue watching? So like every minute and a half there's a hook. Yeah. And I change the scenes on purpose cuz I notice if I'm just at a desk talking, it's boring. So every 2 minutes or so guys' retention? Do you know the number? 50 to 60%. pretty that's really good. Yeah, so it's average view time is 7 to 8 minutes. This the family is like we can get up to like 75% on this the family, but the second channel and the main channel is 50 to 60%. Yeah. Wow. It's high. Yeah. So for finance, but that's because I like I I all So what I do is I'll script out the video and then I read it back to myself. And if there's any point where I'm reading where it doesn't make sense or I I lose my own focus, I'll either cut it out or I'll put a hook in there or a question. I think that's important as long as the going to the analytics and the data is changing positively Oh, yeah. the content, then that's great. Well, at the end of the day it's just about keeping retention and entertainment at the same time. So if if if someone's not entertained, there's no point in watching my video. So I [snorts] would say yeah. It's like that mix. I mean for you guys it's probably entertainment, but it's also highly on value, right? Like if you're not providing value and you're just entertaining, like unless that's why we're going to watch the channel, then you're missing the mark. It has to be It has to be a mix of both. Yeah. So That's awesome. So Zach King, if you could rank the least important to the most important form of social media to have a presence on, how would you rank it? If you don't have a presence on YouTube, you won't be able to survive for the long tail of it. If the If social media you're trying to make that your career. Mhm. Like being a content creator, you have to have YouTube. Um but it doesn't mean the other ones aren't important. It just means I think I If I were to rebuild a channel, I would do it from YouTube as a base and use the others to build it up. But, you know, [clears throat] I wouldn't have a TikTok channel alone. Wouldn't have an Instagram alone. That just doesn't make sense anymore. So, they all need each other, but you would say YouTube is the most important, but then what would it go? Would it go like as most important YouTube and then TikTok, then Instagram, and then Snapchat? Like The order right now is And it again, it changes on the climate. Like feels like it was moving a lot faster. It's kind of slowed down. I feel like we're in a weird plateau of like no new platforms in a long time. No new innovation on social media. So, yeah. YouTube is your base. Absolutely have to be on TikTok. Are you You're on TikTok? Are you guys on TikTok? Yeah. We have Ice Coffee Hour clips on TikTok. He's got like 90,000 followers. I'm going to post to my TikTok today. Are you really? Yeah. Right here. Right here. I want to ask you a question for before TikTok. If you Oh, I wanted to film a TikTok with Zach. Oh, too late. Great. You can both You can both shoot it now. no, no. Jack can't do it. I called it first. Well, Wait, I wanted to film a TikTok with Zach on TikTok. All right. Fine. Alex gets a TikTok. Gosh. All right. So, you got You got YouTube, then you got TikTok, and And but it depends who you are. Like I've seen I I follow a lot of podcasters and it's like Twitter is some of their That's the way I find out there's a new podcast. Um it really depends like a news journalist, I'm going to follow them on Twitter, you know. I'm not going to follow them on Instagram. Yeah. So, it it really depends what you do. I've seen the biggest engagement from Instagram. Because for me like YouTube is is is good, but then my Instagram is the concentration of the people who really care about the YouTube channel and myself will follow me on Instagram. So, anytime I do it Well, I used to be the swipe ups, but when I used to do the swipe ups, I'd have such a high click-through rate that like it would eclipse YouTube by like 10 times. So, it it depends how you build it. Like me, I'm stuck in where I built my Instagram as a so I built every platform as a solo thing. It didn't have a purpose. So, like you started as YouTube and you probably I'm guessing said, "If you want to know more about me and you're really into my stuff, go follow Instagram. So those Instagrammers, you're able to just to always say swipe up or go see this or new video here. For me, I built it just on Instagram and they came for the short stuff and so now if I do anything else, they're like, dude, why am I why are you sending me to YouTube because this is where I started following you and this is what I want to follow you for. So it if if you don't you it's hard to pivot later on those platforms like what you use it for. What questions do you have for us? Okay, I want to know about your process. I want to know about I when I hear your recently it was a uh you had a Jimmy's manager on and uh super smart guy. You guys it sounds like there's bandwidth issues. Like you're always like, I'm so busy, so so you're almost burning out. I don't know if you're burning out, but I'm like from my perspective it seems like if you had a writer and if you had an editor. I know you have Alex, he's awesome. Yeah. So Alex my my goal January 1st, I want Alex to take over the videos in the the main channel so he would edit them. So like my goal in a perfect world is like after this I'm going to be filming. I think I filmed that video. I'm going to be done let's say 8:00 p.m. I would love for him to edit at night and then that way the next morning we could review the video together and have it done so I could plan out the next video. Alex, you ready for the night shift? I've actually been working my regular job and the night shift for the past couple of weeks. have another job? No, this is his No, the the night shift is in like editing videos, yeah. How how many years have you been doing the this YouTube? Five. Five years? Yeah. Wow, you've been in What what's your schedule like? How many hours you work a week? Uh usually I try to take weekends like half days, but I would say Monday through Fridays definitely 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. usually. Monday through Friday. Saturday is usually a half day so it could be I like working mornings, so I I love going from like 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 on a Saturday or 7:00 to 3:00 or whatever. And then Sunday would be maybe another half-day or a full day off. So, I would say within a week, I definitely get at least one full day off. Usually the weekends are both half-days. what it is, Graham? You need to have a kid. Now, once you have a kid no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't even. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. priorities just seem to change. Uh and you realize like all the little things you do, half of them somebody else can do. And it just forces you to do that. want to I don't want to I don't want [laughter] to have to have a kid just to just to change up my schedule. I love Listen, I love my schedule. I really value the freedom of being able to work this many hours. So, I'm I'm really not in a rush to So, what would you Okay, if you had more time, what would you do with it? Uh [laughter] It sounds good. I'd work more. Yeah, you'd work more. But like what what would the output look like? Is it like your goal Are you trying to like ramp up to like four or five videos a week? No, I don't really want to ramp up. I I want to just continue. I don't know. If If I had more time, honestly, I'd probably go to the gym a little bit more. Yeah. Um You'd be happier. Oh, yeah, yeah. Honestly, I'd probably be a little bit happier. I would be a little less stressed out. to you. You mentioned that earlier. That That would translate into the content. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. True. Um I'd probably go to the gym more, uh be a little happier, and spend more time uh both with Macy and with the aquarium. Mm. I love the I love the aquarium. As you as soon as you right when you want to like that is like pride and joy. I'd spend more time tinkering on that. Yeah. That's great. So, that's Yeah. So, of me would see that as like, "Ooh, this This means I could work more." Yeah. I could do a better job now. Yeah. I would I would just ask what in your process is the your least favorite part? See, it's weird for me because I like editing. For me, it's like it's it's a way Yeah, cuz I I know I could look at the time and like, I just zone out. Yeah. And it becomes like this thing where I could do it with my eyes closed and just the time stops and I look down and be like, oh, the video's done. Yeah. Or hours went by. Great. really happy with like the way it turned out and it's perfect. Yeah. I would say the hardest part for me is planning and thinking of a good topic. Cuz it's hard to cuz once you commit to a topic, there's 10 hours right there. Yeah. Between planning and filming. What's your involvement in the main channel? Nothing really. He just runs by title thumbnails by me, sometimes video ideas, sometimes I watch the videos and give him my opinion on the editing and stuff like that. Yeah. Cool. Well, it sounds like one role that'd be interesting as a like a producer. Like a and you could start it super low, so it's not like becoming [clears throat] with that title and you feel like you're having to listen to every suggestion they give, but maybe it's training another person to bounce those ideas off or or Believe it or not, we got we got a sub We tell him about the DGB. Mhm. Should we mention Oh god, he's like 15. What's DGB? Okay. I don't know if we're going I don't include this, okay? Okay. I I don't know if we're going to include this. Uh [snorts] we have a subscriber. He's watching us right now. What's up? It's It's awkward It's one of the most dedicated, loyal fans. talk about it. Okay, so yes, so DGB has commented first on every single one of my videos for probably what, a year and a half or two years? He gets almost He usually gets it. Like 90% he's the first comment across all the videos. And it got to a point where this was like what, 5 months ago? He started to calculate the rankings of the video within the first 5 minutes of posting. [snorts] And I'd post a video and within 5 minutes you'd be like, I could tell this is going to be a six. I could tell this is going to be a four. Yep. This video's not doing that well. It's probably the title. And we noticed month after month after month he was correct. Yes. Before we and we were we had all the analytics. He didn't have access to it. He was literally just going off the video itself. Yep. And so there was a point where he was right so many times. And uh he said that like this video I could tell is a seven. And I said, "But wait a second. But But the the views are lagging on your side. Right. How could you tell? Because we see the real time. You're seeing what YouTube is showing you." He said, "I don't even look at the views anymore. You could tell how well it's doing based on the like ratio of the video." I was like, "What do you mean a like ratio?" He's like, "Well, if you take your likes in the first 5 minutes and you multiply that by 10, that's how many views you're getting." And so, based on the first 5 minutes, I created a this this spreadsheet of all of your past videos and I could rank now based on the likes of the video how well it's doing. Yeah. I was blown away. Turns out he's 15 years old. At his age, he is more skilled than I would say that than I am at this, than Jack is at this, or Alex, or any of us with fewer pieces of data at his disposal. And he was so good at that and he and he watches all the videos and all of our videos, by the way, between me and Jeremy, Kevin, and Andre. Like, he knows everything and he has for years. That I now trust him to pass by video topics and and titles and thumbnails by him first. And he gives better title and thumbnail ideas than than I than I even have. That's right. so in it, more than more than I am, which I didn't think was possible. I really think it is if you can find the right fit and it's a fan that wants to work with you, that will That's like they you know, employees, there usually is a time in their period of employment with you that they just need that fire and that passion and excitement for what you do [clears throat] to carry them through those like lulls of like, "Uh, I don't want to do this work or this is the difficult part." And that's like when a fan is in that role, that's what carries them. Yeah. What's even What's even crazier is that he noticed, based on the subtleties, that the editing was different, that it was Alex. Mhm. And and I went through Alex's videos to make it as close to mine as possible. He noticed like the little subtle changes in editing. It's like, "Is that Alex?" Yeah. Yeah. So, it's very cool. Yeah, I would try to find ways to outsource. Again, like you want to do it in a way like a producer is a great role for it if it can encompass maybe that title means for you. They do some of the writing. They do a lot of the research or topics and they're well versed in that and then they help you just do the logistics of like maybe it's coordinating a guest, other things that might not seem like they take time but actually kind of do. Alex, we're going to call you a producer now. How's that? Uh does that come with a But I I get Hey, let's not But I get nervous I get nervous of the night shift stuff though. Why? We used to do it a good amount um because of the same reason. Hey, we want to see this at in the morning and we would have US people do it but that doesn't last super long. Like there physically there's only like a certain amount of time. Like my mom's a nurse and she used to do night shift for many years and it just literally can see it physically change your body over time. So, it's like you're going to at some point the person's probably going to say no or just mentally not be able to would be Alex. So, Alex, what do you think of that? That's a great question. I mean, there was one day I came in here uh just because the edit went longer than I expected. Uh Graham and I reviewed and then I went home and I was like Graham, I need to go get some sleep. Um so I don't think that editing videos on the night shift is sustainable forever. However, I do think that it's necessary especially with a quick turnaround time. So, I think as long as it's not the op you know, the route that you go every night but let's say, you know, 10, 25% of the time that's what needs to happen long term. I think that would be fine. Yeah, it's it's tough because there there are sometimes where it's Tuesday night and I finish filming at 8:00 p.m. and that video needs to post the next day at at 3:30 without fail. It has to post and we have to have enough time to I would just make it a I don't think the night shifting So, I think the issue is that he has a day job plus he's doing a night shift. Well, no, no, no. Well, this this would this would this would turn into just that. Yeah, so he could sleep in till 12 if he wants to as long as the video's done. Yeah, this would be after training. After training, yeah. He's He's in the the training phase right now. Yeah. The hazing. But the goal is that either you, ideally not you, but Alex then trains two more people to do it that may not full-time I don't want you on payroll and stuff, but they could be freelancers, they could be maybe part-time that you know you have X person from Monday to Wednesday if video gets shot during that time needs to be night shift or whatever you want to do and then another person for Wednesday through Friday or through the weekend or whenever that you just book their time and you know yeah this is my schedule cuz you know your schedule, right? When you're when you're shooting though? When I'm by the time I'm filming but sometimes I could be last minute. Okay, yeah. So Yeah. We do all our shoots on a Wednesday and Friday pretty much without fail. I know it doesn't work like that. Yeah, and so but if there is a rhythm what is it because it's new it's Yeah, yeah. I would say probably 80 75% of the content is on current events where if I miss it by 24 hours it's irrelevant to me anymore. That's why it's so hard I can't compete with Meet Kevin and there are [clears throat] some some videos that I know he'll get out of a video within 30 minutes. He's faster than CNBC now because as soon as he sees something he has better thoughts cuz he knows the market that he can explain everything 30 minutes and usually after that if Kevin does a better job than I would be able to do on a video I won't even make anymore. Cuz I'm like what's the point Kevin just did a better job that if if I can't at least feeling where you get depressed you're just like why am I even doing this? Yeah, well the thing is I know if if I can't at least keep up to that caliber or do better I'm not going to do it if someone else has already done it. See I actually disagree with that though. Yes, cuz your followers I don't think it's like I follow a group of you but I think there's some people who definitely follow just you. There's definitely people who follow just Kevin and it's also styles like you look at news anchors like there's some people I don't like listening to. It could be a tone of a voice, it could be the way they talk, it could be the way they present their viewpoint. Like, you still are adding your viewpoint to that thing. So, I don't know. That's true. I don't think it's like one person gets to cover it and they beat it to it like Yeah, some of it though, it really does become outdated after a day. Yeah. Uh and once everyone covers it, people lose interest. It's only a matter of Is that worth doing? All those Is it for those topics? Because usually those are the best performing videos for 24 or 48 hours and it keeps up that momentum. So, it's just another thing to throw another cog in the wheel. Throw it in there, it does exceptionally well. It's not going to long tail at all. But, that that keeps people coming back. Yeah. Why are you not doing shorts? Well, because I'm wearing jeans right now. [laughter] You guys You don't like You don't like short No. form content or what is it about? Like, making it, watching it? for me, it's the um It's like time out of your day and all you want to focus on is pumping out the next video on the main channel. Yeah, the the main channel's my pri- If anything is taking away from the main channel, it's just not worth my mental stress or just thinking of another thing. Um you hired a producer. Uh I'll let you you pick in your mind your salary that you pay them, whatever. Take deduct that. You have this producer and their job is just TikToks, short-form content for you. And they run the your TikTok or whatever you're going to make a maybe a Reels channel, uh maybe it's and then shorts, separate channels. Uh and if in in um if in 2 years that was able to generate a million-dollar additional revenue opportunity for you. Is that worth doing? Yeah, how do you come to a million dollars? Um it would come in the form of eventually I mean, right now there's like funds, right? So, those aren't going to pay out or but over time I would imagine that there's going to be a battle over creators and their content. And so you have a little bit of either the funds grow. You also have monetization and ads figured out at that point. And I imagine if you're doing sponsorship deals, you would have other short form sponsorship deals you could do. So that's how I come to that evaluation. I don't know. Honestly if it takes away from the main channel or stresses me out any more. Like I feel like at this point I'm like I like I can only retain so much in my head and right now I'm at like 95% capacity. It could be a little sharky but it's like hey this is my goals for these channels. This is my goals for your job. If you don't do it, sorry you're out cuz I have no capacity to either train you or just hang around, follow me, you figure out the content and because there are people who do that. Um and are great at it. it's but it's even committing an extra hour a day to filming something. Maybe not though. It's like okay that person would sit in the corner of the room, listen to our conversation. At the end of it, they would come up to you and and just or you and Jack and spitball like hey I think we should grab this one Tik Tok with with Zach. Here's the idea. I think it'd be funny if like we're by the aquarium whatever and then can we go shoot it? 15 minute shoot at the end of the interview and then that's the one piece from the podcast. They watch your edit a few minutes before it goes out or I don't know your process. It sounds like it gets edited overnight. Do you review it in the morning? With Alex I do. Usually I'll edit the same day as post. point they've watched it and when you're right after you're reviewing with Alex, they grab you for 10 minutes cuz they understand the concept and they already knew from the day before and they've got a quick like they've written a 15 second version in case I I have time as a viewer to listen to your video of that. I want the quick snippet to almost kind of tease and see if I want to watch it. That would go on a short channel, but actually, you know, has little value. I would consi- I would consider it. Again, like the person I'm describing is like fairly high level or they've done this for another, you know, YouTuber probably or somebody. Um as a content creator or they want Usually that person wants to be one themselves, but doesn't like they'd rather tap into your audience and just help you do it. Sure. Um and they're a fan of you. That would be Yeah. Interesting. I would consi- I would consider it. But right now I feel like like really 90% of everything I do is the main channel. So like I feel like my time is probably better spent spending that extra hour doing something on the main channel. Part of the million-dollar exposure or that value I'm giving it in two years is also the accounting for the growth that your channel would get. Um the new eyeballs that would learn about you. Mhm. Cuz again, I'm thinking like this whole thing even finance YouTube uh is so new. And early days, and you need to be capturing like building that real estate. Basically, you know, it's like beachfront YouTube real estate for you guys right now that you're like building that exposure. And that's the exposure part that's like Even if they don't know your name, it's like, "Oh, I've seen him." Like remember the the guy that met you? He's like, "Oh, I've seen your videos, actually." He didn't think he knew you. Yeah. But like though that's where like when you look at platforms, I'm always measuring like, "Oh, shoot." They're giving like within a swipe you can see all those shorts. Whether that's here to stay, you know, who knows, but like that's what scares / fascinates me. You know, and the reason I'm into shorts. Also, I mean, Yeah. be fair, my content is rather short, so it kind of works. I would I would consider it, but I'm afraid of growing too quickly. Like even bringing on Alex was like a huge thing for us. Like even even Jack for me was was huge. Yeah. And then bringing on Alex was another huge thing. Like mentally it's it's tough. It's tough for me. So like I would consider it. Yeah. But it's a it's a big ordeal to bring someone else cuz then it's just another thing that even if they do their own thing, it's just like that's taking my capacity to 97 now. Yep. You know. I already have someone that is like they're not even receiving compensation yet for it, but they are now clipping up and posting all the Ice Coffee Hour clips into TikToks. They have like Reels or something ready. He's clipping up Graham's main channel videos and Graham's apprehensive to post it on his TikTok, but he's open to the idea and this person's clipping up his main channel videos like into one uh you know, the concepts into one, you know, short TikTok or whatever and we can post it on Graham's TikTok as well. So, it wouldn't necessarily require any of Graham's time. Yep. I think the clips are interesting. You can always unless you're shooting extra wide, it's hard like viewers is just no. Like there's something about like seeing a clip, you're like, "Ah, this is a someone's repurposing." Like that's why I think it really needs to be custom and that's the stuff that does really well. I agree with you on that. just like they do it on their phone, they shoot it, But is it better than nothing? I don't know. I I Really? See, I was kind of thinking it's better than nothing, but the ideal would be doing something new. Yeah, it is I would agree it's maybe [clears throat] better than nothing, but it's if you're going to go through that work, like you might as well shoot a few custom pieces. Like we see a difference. Like we don't do this anymore, but we don't cut down like if we shoot a video for TikTok and also shoot it for YouTube, we shoot it twice. Like it's a little ton of work, but we'll literally flip the camera and shoot it horizontal and then we'll shoot one vertical because the framing matters. Like people can tell. That's true. cut down is just always punched in. Yeah, I could always tell. And it doesn't look good. That's really interesting. Yeah, that would actually wouldn't I mean it wouldn't require that much more time if the person already said, "Hey, this is what we needed. This is these are the video bites that I need from you or whatever." You just flip a phone vertically and say it. That's true. That's really interesting. Like if I were you guys, I would literally pay somebody to sit here on an iPhone or whatever DSLR iPhone manually just film the interview vertical and like they'd have to really be paying attention but like when we were going over the the what's the what's the opener of this going to be the cold open? Is it going to be the ranking the Like what do you mean? Are you are you talking about the the cold open for like a Tik Tok? for the ice coffee Oh no it's going to be Jack and I doing an intro for you. Yeah we're going to introduce you. Oh oh you're you don't throw like a little an impulsive thing? Yeah. No we talked about doing it. Why you should have you tried it? Uh we did it a few episodes probably in like the 10th through 15th episode. Oh dude try that again. You should yeah I think that's really really important. Uh I don't remember. Hold on we got to have a fake argument for that. Can we do it like no here here's what it is. No fake argument. I don't trust you Zach King. I don't trust you man. Those ones don't work. Fake arguments don't. But if I showed you like the reaction you guys had to seeing the shorts the other day when I showed you it's that and you're like no way. Like and if we actually talked about that in depth like that's [clears throat] your that's your opener. That's why we always save it for the podcast. So I I think you should [snorts] maybe not this one but the future one. But it what I was saying with that person shooting vertical like they would be able to pick apart after they shot that and they're going back and forth and you can tell it was like in the room it was shot on a phone it was vertical you're kind of like leaning in like wait what is what are they talking about? That's like what's going to make me then if I see that and there has to be a giving value in there. Like I give the either you or I give the guest that valuable little tidbit that they were kind of looking for but they know there's a podcast that has way more then I'm going to go to that podcast. Got to hire someone to stand right there. It's the only solution. Yeah we'll figure yeah. We'll figure it out. We'll figure we'll figure it out. I don't know if we will but we'll try. I know there's chances are I know there's somebody watching. Yeah there's somebody watching who wants to be on the you put out hey if you guys are fans of Graham Stephan he's hiring. Um you have to be super good cuz he's really picky. But uh he is hiring and uh Jack will and um Alex will go through the applications. Where can they send you applications? Uh alexnava@ Go ahead. You know what? Just You know, I'll go through a few. Not saying we're going to hire, but Okay, here's here's the key to the hiring video cuz you're hiring a producer. We did this uh and we were um blown away by the results. We said there's no applications. Don't send your resume. We don't want a list of things you've done. Make a You have 60 seconds to tell us why we should hire you. Tell us about you on a video. in a video format. Ooh, I like that. guys. All right, guys. So seconds, why should we hire you? Well, we got to have a title that people can do No, they would just be emailing it. Email it? Yeah. Email literally email. And here's the test. Part of it is like make that subject line the best title for your 60-second resume. That's the test. Literally that's the title. what we did when we hired Alex was we had people just title their video Graham Stephan interview and then we got to watch them all. And everyone else got to watch what people were sending You could do that, too. But then other people prayed on our people that tried to get the job cuz they were just smart. Yeah. It is smart, but also I not everybody is comfortable like even putting their stuff online. Yeah, a few people wanted to leave it unlisted. Yeah, so I would just say take it privately and I mean we were blown away by like It was It was clear. It was like the 20 frontrunners come to the front and you're like, "Wow." All right. Okay, so info@alexnava.com. Oh. info@ We're going to put it up on the screen here. Listen up, everybody. Graham Stephan and team is hiring. Do you want to submit a video, uh an application? They're not taking applications. They don't care about your resume today. They want a 60-second video. Uh shoot it I might My hint is shoot it vertically, too, cuz we're this is a social media business. Um and then in the subject of that email, write the catchiest title why they should click on that cuz they're not going to even click on all of them. Well, thanks for coming on, Zach. This has been a pleasure and an honor to have you on. Yeah, seriously. Crazy, I was watching you on Vine when I was I don't even know, in middle school, maybe. Which is insane now that I'm actually sitting across from you. No. But it's just it's an honor. Thank you so much for coming on. course. And if you guys haven't picked up your Bankroll Coffee yet, go do so in the description. of it? Be honest. Wait, was it Those are your beans? Yeah, they're really good. Yeah. That I think was the put some cream in here? It's really sweet. Yeah, so I did So I put What is it? Cap- Captain Not Captain Crunch. Cinnamon Toast Crunch. You know what? I can taste the cinnamon. It's a holiday It's a holiday flavor. Oh, cool. Well, go pick up a Go pick up a Is it a Is it come grounded or is it all? Both. Okay. Whole beans. Pick up whole beans. Get a grinder. Nice. Wow. That's good. Well, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. And did you get your free stock down below in the description when you sign up for Public? It's worth all the way up to a thousand dollars when you use the code Graham. There Stock trading brokerage that's social media profile platform where you [laughter] can get a free stock. All right, that's what it is. Can I follow like and see public trades? Yes. That's a thing. Yeah, yeah, that's the advantage of That's the Public advantage is that you could see your profile so you can see exactly what I buy and sell. Thanks, Zach. All right, thanks, guys. Great. Thank you, man.