The Exact Moment D’Angelo Wallace’s Career Ended: 12:37pm 01/13/20

all right so this is gonna be a surprise for graham this is the first time we've ever done this where graham has no idea who the guest on the podcast is i'm really excited i've kept a great secret do you have anything to say i have no idea i have no clue under promise and over deliver is usually a motto i like to go by uh hello hello hello graham hey do you have any idea yet we keep talking how's it going good to be here d'angelo wallace you got it there you go no way yup hey welcome to the 54th ever episode of the ice coffee hour podcast my name is d'angelo wallace and so far podcast has made hundred and forty 66 dollars and eighty cents oh that was awesome the best one so far he loved it that was awesome what a surprise d'angelo hey i'm just glad to be here thank you so much for doing this how did this come about how did you how did this happen we have the same sponsor agent mary mary yep wow was it was this mary's doing i asked her the other the other people that she she she does brand deals for and uh d'angelo came up and i said wow like i'm a fan of d'angelo and i know graham loves his content as well so i'm just surprised that he i mean you're so gracious to come on here he's so kind to come on here oh no i'm just you know nobody has much going on nowadays i enjoy talking to people i'm just excited to see what we're gonna get into today well thank you so much man have you seen our content before all of this or not so much um actually i am familiar with your channel specifically because of one video you made i don't remember the exact title but i show it to my actual the people in my life it was about how much you're making from youtube or something along those lines and in it you kind of get into specifics about how you got started and how you were working a full-time job but doing youtube full-time at the same time and i actually related to a lot of things in that video just because the way i got started has similar origins in terms of me having to make it my full-time job even though it wasn't paying me like that so yeah i actually really appreciate the content you put out and even when people don't like necessarily get what i'm saying like no anyone can do youtube from any stage you just gotta put stuff into it and things will come out of it i show them that video that's awesome man well thank you how did you get started because i saw your video what was it what was it the the moment was it the moment shane dawson's career and what what was the title the exact moment what was the taurus um the exact moment shane dawson's career ended and then a time stamp how did you think very direct how did you think of that title well honestly i'm gonna be frank i just need people to click so i figured instead of you know fluff or anything like that it would just be like a headline style title because now i've made it a definitive statement so you kind of got to see why exactly i think it's thus wow how did you get started um i started youtube well for context i've been creating videos since before i ever uploaded them to youtube like when i was 13 years old we had this horrifyingly slow computer in the hallway it would crash with you loaded up windows movie maker i'm not sure how that works but i would use it to make like little fake commercials and stuff like that and then i wound up going to school for mass communication with a concentration in digital film and television production so i was still making videos um all throughout my teenage years and then into adulthood and then finally in 2018 i want to say it was 2017 and 2018 i would have to check i uploaded a video with audio narration to youtube and that happened to take off for me and from there i've been through a couple of niche changes but it's been all up i guess the rest is history for me wow how did you get into the uh i don't want to say that the drama niche but commentary yeah how did you fall into that yeah drama t commentary all of that stuff i really just talk about it because it mirrors conversations that i have outside of youtube i feel like the best youtube videos are when you can tell if that person was right in front of you they would just say the exact same thing so all the things like my friends or i would come to me and ask me about like hey do you know what's going on with this and i would be like yeah actually i do know what's going on with that i started just um putting them into video format just because i enjoy analyzing situations i enjoy breaking things down i especially enjoy looking for angles where maybe i can use a trending topic to make a larger point about something that's been weighing on me for a while so i would say it was a natural progression just if you look at kind of where i wound up in the commentary space but i'm pretty grateful because people do seem to enjoy the videos how long do they take you to make because i'm watching these videos and it's like an hour long of super well researched i know and thank you i never watch video rarely do i watch the video more than like 20 minutes rarely but for me to put on a video watch it in regular speed for an entire hour says a lot and it's like it's what's watching a m it's like it's a movie how long has it like walk us through that process of creating a video like that like how do you come up with the topic do you how do you plan it out how do you gather information how do you edit it like just everything i'm intrigued well i would say everything is reverse engineered starting with um audience retention like before i think about click-through rate or anything like that the most important thing to me is like if i'm going to be putting this much work into a video how am i going to make sure that people are actually watching the video so i would say the reason people kind of get like you know docu vibes or things like that from my videos is because i absolutely always adhere to a three-act structure even if i don't necessarily verbalize that or lampshade that in the video all the long videos i've uploaded recently i've written the synopsis i treat the um people i'm talking about as if they're characters in the story because we all are at the end of the day i just try to make sure i'm telling the most accurate version of that and then i instead just tried to present the video as if it was something you might find on netflix instead of just some dude ranting in his room and then for um laughs i add all the rants back in after i make sure that all of my information is correct and the structure is good enough to facilitate actually sitting through a one hour video so i would say in terms of how long that takes me i might get the initial idea for a video a couple months before i actually start working on it just because there's a lot of people watching the videos i've gotta make sure it's not a situation that's gonna randomly change details halfway through and then you know leave me with egg on my face so once i've actually locked in a topic which might take a few weeks it's relatively straightforward i draft up the outline i make sure the synopsis is solid and from there to the day it goes live it could be anywhere from three weeks to maybe a month and a half or so like for example one of my videos or rather the most recent video i uploaded on that channel was about um you know cover 19 and a lot of interesting things that influencers are doing yes and i would say that videos when i got the idea for a couple months before i actually got into it and then the process of it took maybe a month and a half two months or so but yeah i try i try not to linger on things too much just because perfectionism is not what's going to drive the algorithm forward instead i just try to make sure i'm factual and entertaining wow so when you're planning through something like that what happens if you're not in the mood don't you have to be like just inspired about a topic to really get that like authenticity and excitement coming through absolutely uh i have scrapped entire video topics ones that i have put a lot of work into just because i feel like the easiest thing like a lot of people don't necessarily know what goes into a youtube video right there's a bit of magic a bit of things that get left unsaid between the viewer and the youtuber but i feel like one thing that you can't really hide is if you're watching someone who doesn't actually care about what they're saying that is just i feel like it comes through from the very first sentence of a video so even if i start feeling for a moment like you know what i actually don't think that this is worth talking about for this long i started i tried to make it work it didn't pan out i will scrap the video topic i would say i've done that two major times because obviously that's not great for business but there was just two times when i was like this seems like something that would get views this is definitely something i could turn into a good video but that being said i just don't see myself being able to bring the same level that i have in previous videos and so i'm really not afraid to let time pass between uploads i know that's the one thing you've got to be consistent so i have my other channel for that where i'm very consistent but as far as the channel with the longer uploads if it takes me a couple months to make sure i have something that's worth watching i'll take that just because i know the um ratios are so high in that channel specifically because people know i'm not there to waste my time so i'm not going to waste their time either what are the two videos you scrapped one of them was about uh it was just supposed to be this magnum opus about kids channels not the cool ones that like you know my little family members watch but the awful ones that you know use their platform for wrong and like even though i had edited the intro and i found somebody to sponsor a video with such a dark topic and i had hyped it up a little bit i was just starting to realize hey this is actually a little bit depressing a little just a tad depressing i don't want to make a one hour video about the worst of the worst so i kind of just put that one on the shelf you never know the outline's so good maybe i'll come back to it if i just feel the need um and then i would say the other major video i scrapped was just supposed to be a surprise follow-up to one of um the videos i uploaded but halfway through i was like you know what i don't think we need a part two i said everything that i meant in the first video so we're just gonna move forward and there's always new things to cover anyway but first i want to thank our sponsor stamps.com are you still making those long and cumbersome trips to the post office while blasting that nickelback album that was released in 2005 well it is time to eliminate the trip to the post office and stop paying full price for postage with stamps.com that's right aside from the time savings you get with 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sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast that's fair enough are you want to go yeah quick question how helpful were your college studies in like photography and video and stuff like that to creating these like amazing hour-long youtube documentaries thank you well i'll say this i learned a lot in college about how to write and i feel like writing is like my secret superpower no one really thinks about it too much but that is the backbone of everything i've posted that's like over a certain time frame is just my writing ability which i'm trying to hone day in and day out i'll even write things and then not turn them into videos just so i can get that practice but that's it anything that you see visually like even right now my bright setup i've got kind of like this daylight emulation thing going on and you know what are my angles and what equipment do i need to use and why does everything sound so crisp i got all that from youtube so i try not to be bitter about it because i'm like you know what no it's fine i learned how to write in school that's the thing that you learn how to do when you're in school but as far as teaching me how to like make video i really had to get out there and do it all myself if you're interested in doing this kind of thing like you do not need to go to school you absolutely can watch the same youtube videos that i consumed and get some like bingo quality yeah i was the same way i learned everything from youtube i would say now like basically half my adult life is just learned from youtube if there's something you don't know there's already a youtube video on it someone's nice and explaining it not only that but sometimes you could comment on those old videos like three years old unlike niche topics any comment hey i got a question about this they'll respond and they get so into it when you comment on an old video like that you're like wow someone watched it from three years ago um i love it but going back to that video you scrapped um i was about to say that sounds like a really interesting topic that i think even though even though it might be a little bit dark couldn't that still be a benefit to highlight a potential issue like what what did you find from that video because i almost want to learn a little bit about what's going on and i feel like it might be important that's a good highlight great question yeah well funnily enough i still have all the research done so the synopsis for this video was like an expository uh documentary style video like an hour long minimum about nine youtubers that i had selected of course i don't want to run through the names today some of them are very well known some of them not but they were eerily study they were really similar case studies to me about how easy it is to build up a following and then kind of use that following for the wrong reason and so my main thesis for this video was maybe we can look into ways of preventing this from happening in the future instead of just getting shocked every time it happens as far as potential solutions unfortunately i was just more so gonna make the case of like you've got to be careful in terms of um you know kids watching content because youtube thankfully does not just you know ban people left and right which i think is a good thing that they don't do that you've kind of got to be the band hammer in your own um kid's life just make sure like they're not interacting just stranger danger never went away and i think parasocial relationships in a way have convinced an entire generation of children that stranger danger is not an issue anymore so that's kind of just where i was going to go with the video and honestly i really do still like that thesis so much i may still see if i can turn it into something or get something out of it because i feel like it's an important point to make especially just if you look at nowadays the way people get so obsessed with internet personalities it kind of winds up excusing a multitude of sins and i think there's interesting psychological aspects at play but bottom line you've just got to be careful what are the dangerous aspects because the first thing that comes to mind i'm like it's advertising it's like it's it's getting to their emotions and having them go mommy daddy i gotta get the new the merch just dropped i gotta get the merch and it's like some 80 shirt that's what i'm thinking what is the danger from your perspective maybe i'm totally off maybe it's something something else i don't know there's there's a range of behaviors undisclosed advertising or just flat out misleading advertising to kids is definitely a pretty big one there are some great videos about that though already like um i want to say nerd city perhaps has a video along those lines um but in terms of just the um i guess immediate danger the imminent danger of the people i select i had selected it was more so people who would like establish inappropriate creator fan relationships whether that was through dms or things like that and so some of these people like when they got caught they were just kind of like oh that's it the jig is up and i'm like yeah maybe it is and then other people are just still uploading and getting hundreds of thousands of views like nothing happened and it's just like i feel like people don't realize maybe the extent to which this sort of thing happens just it's really interesting but at the same time i was going to be careful with the video to not kind of do a repeat of um i don't remember which adpocalypse it was or how many we've been through but do you remember there was that one scare in the media of like youtube is running a secret ring of like inappropriate videos yeah that was um pay money wubby did that video yeah it was pay money wubby and that was like uh yeah i mean we won't go into too much detail here but yeah it was basically a series of videos like the algorithm was so in tune to what people wanted to watch that if you started going down the rabbit hole of videos on youtube featuring people who are underage the algorithm would be like here's more here's more and then when you're in it then it's like then it like hyper focuses into a community of people on youtube commenting on underage creators channels uh inappropriate remarks and like networking with each other it was wild it was pay money wubby's video highlighted this and it was because of his video that uh i believe youtube really changed their policies and that's where they started like saying this is this is meant for children and then if it is um you can't comment on those videos they got very selective about like which videos are recommended but yeah it's it's up to the creators i feel like to bring awareness to these topics because you would have no idea um uh you know even even for for pay money what like i i don't know how you find stuff like that but but i would imagine that youtube like you wouldn't think of something like that until it gets brought to your attention yeah absolutely well i find like a lot of things that go on that people just have no idea about are what happens when you sign out like i know this youtube is an extremely different platform when i'm signed out versus when i'm signed in because when i'm signed in it's a lot of streamers a lot of commentary channels obviously because that's my niche and so i watch a lot of that content as well for inspiration and entertainment but then when i sign out it's like what is this website and why do all these videos have like 15 million plus views and i've never seen any of them it's like almost most people this is not my original idea by the way i want to was it true gooden someone has already done the theory behind this but there are like bubbles on youtube and a lot of us are within i would say like the main youtube bubble we consider ourselves youtubers or youtube enthusiasts we watch you know car videos beauty videos commentary etc anything like that that you think of when you think youtube but there are other bubbles that we rarely cross over into for example kids youtube i feel like the majority of adults are not 100 familiar with kids youtubers which makes sense unless you of course you have a kid so that was another thing too you actually jog my memory one of the things i was going to mention was part of why people keep getting away with this sort of thing is because understandably nobody's there to see what's really going on except the kids and the creators so when there's no sort of like anybody watching and being like hey this is really weird don't you think you should call this out just the most nonsense things wind up happening but yeah i find youtube as a whole just pretty fascinating in terms of the way the website subdivides itself every few years into various communities and the interplay between them for sure yeah so it's okay so your danger was then the relationships that creators were making with an audience that was maybe too impressionable was that was that yeah for sure like there's a there's a range of this right like maybe um you've got creators who are just trying to scam kids with a free iphone giveaway that's like i would say mild obviously not good but then if you want to scale it upward we have like the austin jones of the world's god forbid so it's just like anywhere between there basically you just gotta be careful i would say and it's like something i'm familiar with too just because i don't have any kids yet but my siblings for example are a lot younger than me so sometimes i'll just like see what they're watching and i'm just like wow if i wasn't in this room right now like no adult really would have seen this no one would know like what these kids killers are popping out it's so strange do you have insurance um what kind of insurance media insurance um no what do you mean oh you gotta get insurance man go and get media insurance it's gonna cost you anywhere from five to fifteen oh and even fifteen m i paid twelve thousand dollars a year for media insurance that covers me in the event something were to come up and i say the wrong thing i think especially when you start going into those areas be important to have insurance hopefully you'll never need it but the last thing that i'd want to see happen to you is you say something about like a creator even if you cover it objectively and they say you know what you painted me in a bad light i disagree with that that's not true my business suffered i lost out of sponsorship and all of a sudden now like you know i it's you know i'm not making money anymore well then they come to you and they say well you know what i'm going to be suing d'angelo wallace uh for for spreading these rumors that are not true um even if you cover it objectively and you kind of remember facts you might want to i just it's a tax write-off and it's good peace of mind i like tax write-offs yeah i would do it i would do it for the first two years uh i did not have any sort of media insurance and then when i came out with my video about apple like i got sued by apple no way so many yeah i mean that was just an april fool's joke but i've so basically i made a video about why i'm not getting the apple credit card and it got like i said yeah it got like a million views in like two days and april fools was coming up so i thought oh it would be really funny if i made a video i'm getting sued by apple and i post that video i'm getting sued by apple and that video blew up and i think it got like 700 000 views the first day on a channel by the way where i think i had like 300 400 000 subscribers max yeah and i got really like worried i'm like oh my like is this bad that i'm like lying in an april fool's joke and apple sued me and so of course i called the insurance company and uh i was like hey i want to get media insurance i set it up they call me back like a few hours later and they said they're denying me coverage and i said what why they said because you're in the middle like you're getting sued like you we can't we can't cover you after you're getting zombies okay that's iconic you gotta watch the ending it was a joke and then sure enough it's like no it's fine but uh still i would say it's hilarious it's worth it yeah no definitely something i would look into it wouldn't be the first time i've had people who didn't agree with my you know analysis of situations trying to come after me how often does that happen are you worried about that um i wouldn't say i'm overly worried specifically just because i consider it important to fact check everything thankfully i don't have any videos on my channel that are just like blaringly wrong information or like i had to make something up to be sensational so for the most part i find that people find it difficult to really get mad at just me you know showing here's what happened and here's what i think about it but um i've definitely had incidents in the past where i guess somebody did not appreciate my analysis of the situation and they uh tried to escalate it into like a weird legal situation but thankfully it didn't pan out how do they try to do that you don't you don't have to say who it is but like okay well how would they do they make a video response or right so you would think or at least i would think right first of all people make all kinds of videos about me i really don't think like it's my job to make sure that this person goes down but let's say i was thinking along those lines i probably would just try to get the video taken down or something like that that's my assumption but no instead this individual tries to convince everyone that i doxed them um and that i was actually they reported me to the police i think they explicitly said that and that they can't talk about it anymore because now it's being investigated but first i want to thank our sponsor ladder life is amazing and full of beautiful surprises whether my ears are being blessed 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l-a-d-d-e-r-life dot com slash iced coffee ladderlife.com iced coffee thank you so much ladder for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast so that was a lot different than hey i'm just gonna try to use uh copyright tools to get your video taken down so i had to go on like this extended part two of like hey i definitely didn't dox anyone i understand you might not have liked what was in that video but i don't know why we're trying to go down this path and of course nothing came of it because nothing was filed because nobody was dogs but yeah people i don't know i just feel like just reach out to me maybe say hey do you do you um do you want to have like open line of communication but yeah no people really do the most i would say is there anyone that you would be nervous to make a video about or any concept you'd be nervous to make a video about due to like legal repercussions legal repercussions not necessarily well i would have to think about it because i tend to do like risk assessment in the planning phase before i ever actually commit to a video so but i don't know in terms of that i would say youtubers are kind of good about not trying to take any and everything down i mean there's a precedent established i forget the year but um when matt what's his name i forgot tried to sue h3h3 and then that got taken all the way to court and the president was set there so most of the time i don't have to um like factor that into it because honestly it probably wouldn't wind up going well as long as everything is fair use but that being said i still just try to be rather be safe than sorry because like who really wants the headache of it all and i do definitely recognize with so many people watching the videos it's just important to me that the content in the videos is accurate something that stands a test of time something that people can come back again because they were able to verify independently that what was in there was correct and that saves me a lot of problems versus just an approach of i have to be right and i have to get this topic right the second before it fizzles out you know what i mean yeah do you have people reaching out after you make a video on them um i don't check so i um yeah i don't really read my dms or even check my email uh my manager helps me out with that just because i don't really need to know for the most part i would say yeah i've noticed too on youtube you're very much right there seems to be a line between different creators where it's like you don't take their video down like that's too far you can make a video about them you could call them out you can get angry but you don't take their video down that's like the biggest no-no because they know for themselves like how they would feel getting a video taken down is the same for somebody else so that's like that's the line nobody crosses that if you're unhappy with the video you make a response to it that's the proper way even when you two alerts me in the content uh not the content id or yeah this kind of the content id section and youtube's like hey there's a 100 match of your video in someone else's video i still won't take it down the only time i did was it wasn't a 100 match it was literally just my video which was still up on my channel someone downloaded it and put it on their channel with like five subscribers and i was like okay this doesn't make sense so uh um but no like even if you like watch my video all the way through and it takes you two hours and you include 100 of my footage i'll just still leave it there because i understand it's transformative you know what i mean like i feel like creators don't want to be like the youtube bots because anytime i'm interacting with old media content like things from nbc or umg because content id the bot system is so incapable of distinguishing between fair use and re-uploads just everything gets claimed struck down blocked worldwide so i just feel like we don't want to facilitate that upon ourselves when it's already just everywhere if you use any bit of copyrighted material what percentage of your videos do end up getting claimed not very many thankfully because i tried to um proactively edit them in a way where that's not gonna be a problem but anytime i do any sort of music content because i have a few music reviews on my channel that's i can just know that's gone like that's not something i'm gonna make money from also i do a lot of live streaming and every single live stream that i upload to youtube gets claimed and half of them get blocked which is why um very counterintuitive well because on my twitch stream i just react to a lot of content like for example on the twitch stream i might say hey i was on the ice coffee hour podcast let's check me out there so obviously like watching a youtuber's content i know i'm gonna be fine but then if i'm on stream like hey look at this snl skit it's relevant to today's topic oh yeah they're horrible kevin did an snl skit i think it was like a two-hour long live stream and uh i think you watched them for like 15 seconds the whole gosh it was like blocked in countries the whole video was demonetized they were so bad for just a few seconds in the background while he was talking over them i yes snl was definitely the biggest one that jumped out to me because i was like this was a very short video in this six hour live stream how does this facilitate blocking it worldwide but hey them is the rules apparently so again i just try to work around them instead of you know running into that wall but um it's just such a hassle i can definitely understand why there's like an unsaid etiquette like just leave the video up don't be someone else's headache in that regard yeah so when you were making these videos were you going to college full-time how did this transition for you into a career so i graduated college in 2018. yes i always have to remember and um i had 3 000 subscribers that was like the last sub count i remember having while i was in college and it was interesting because i had just started getting like traction because i remember telling my friends like um isn't this so weird i didn't call myself a youtuber because i didn't have a bunch of videos on youtube i had just put one there and i was telling my friends like look this video has over a thousand views isn't that so interesting and we were all like yeah that's so cool because we weren't youtubers so it was just like funny that one of us had gotten like a crumb of youtube engagement and then i just remember like walking out of the cafeteria and my friend brandon from the other side was like you have 3 000 subscribers now you're famous joking of course because 3000 is not that much but i remember thinking that seems like a lot it was kind of in that moment when i realized okay if i went from 36 subscribers to 3 000 subscribers i want to see what the logical extreme is and now of course we're approaching um what 2.5 million or something like that so it's been all uphill from there thankfully yeah so were you just how often were you making videos and what what grew your channel so quickly i would say initially it was the consistency so right after college having graduated with honors um with my bachelor's degree of course i immediately got the job at a gas station unironically as one does and the whole time i was there i said to myself you know what and maybe this was dumb but instead of like trying to force my way into this industry whatever nebulous industry you're supposed to enter after college i was like i'm just going to make this youtube thing work so simultaneously while i was working part time at the gas station it was about 32 hours a week i was working full-time youtube and making like nothing and i said to myself the very first month that i make the same amount of money or more from youtube than i'm making at this gas station job i'm quitting and i'm going all in even though it's already going all in there were several nights i didn't sleep so i did made that decision in february i want to say it was february of 2019 i was like 2019 or 2018 time is not real but either way i made that decision in february i remember that and by april just because of the sheer amount of work i had done hitherto and the fact that i had uploaded six weeks in a row i made enough money that month to justify quitting my gas station job and then from there i've been fortunate enough to get like you know brand deals and different partnerships and of course ad revenue and now looking back at my life i can see that if i tried to go throughout of like i'm out of college i'm gonna apply to every studio in my city and i'm gonna you know go up the chain i would not be here where i am right now so i'm very glad i did what i did wow how many subscribers did you have at the time of going youtube full time and quitting your gas station job now that's a good question let's find out if you don't mind me to show you guys one second hold on so conveniently i used to say my subscriber count at the end of every single video in that specific time and i can see right here i had 111 000 subscribers when i made the decision like that's a lot that's it yeah definitely it's the thing about like sub count views and monthly revenue is it fluctuates wildly the reason i don't like really pay attention to social blade in terms of like how much estimates other people are making is because so much of it has to do with cpm and frequency more than anything like if you have a hundred thousand subscribers and you're uploading every single day and you're getting 50 000 views per video okay well then you're definitely going to get like what is that over a million uh views in a month you're definitely gonna be making some but because i was only really able to upload once a week um and the videos were not the kind of content that gets like the views i'm getting now it just wasn't unnecessarily enough to justify plus my cpm used to be pretty bad that i never was able to put my finger on um it's definitely gotten a lot better i mean i don't have you know finance cpm by any means but um we were able to pick that up off the ground but yeah right at um april 8th 2019 was the very first video i uploaded immediately after quitting my gas tasted job and it felt good because i was like this is it now and if this goes away i'm gonna have to walk right back down the street and so there while i find another job it was very interesting that would be a funny title for hours the day d'angelo wallace quit his job i don't know that's good well yes i like it i like it you want to do some play on words we got to figure out something on that so can you talk a little bit about like uh how your income is broken down now like can you can you share how much you make on it on a video like that um it fluctuates so wildly it's almost pointless to track for example i have two videos that have the exact same amount of views and one of them has precisely half the revenue of the other so it's pretty goofy but an easy way to break it down just from my experience is um you can estimate that per 100 000 views you may be netting um one thousand dollars so for example if you get a million views maybe you could be like oh uh five figures right there that's the baseline that goes so that i can plan like business ventures like okay if i upload these and i'm gonna get this amount of views maybe i'll make this much but then we went into crazy issues like videos getting demonetized 19 days after they were approved by youtube or clips i didn't realize were copyrighted just completely negating any revenue potential i had but yeah in terms of just like if i had to break down an average i would definitely say like 10k per 1m is the easy analysis got it and then you're also now doing sponsors in the videos definitely is there any other uh income source that you've that you found from through youtube yes twitch is an income source as well um it's like not a super big one that one's mostly for my enjoyment because i like live streaming and um like for example i know people make a lot of donations or they make a lot of money via donations on twitch but i capped my donations at five dollars because honestly i'm just there to have fun but if you um if like the things i send to my cpa are the revenue i'm getting from adsense which is pretty substantial brand deals which thanks to my manager being like super on top of it this year it's kind of scary has become much more substantial than it was before and um twitch is now social revenue um not through ads though that's one thing no one talks about i guess because like no one wants to be that guy but i would go ahead and complain twitch ads are terrible they don't pay i don't understand why twitch lets you run ads like i'll run an ad during a stream and then realize i made like less than one dollar off of an ad run with over a thousand viewers it's so strange so that's negligible but thankfully we still get twitch revenue through um subscriptions and other things like that um that should be yours it would be video twitter like twitch ads are terrible terrible yeah must be stopped me complaining about not making enough for ads and i have like five ad breaks in the video ads have gone too far out of control ads and why they should go away forever no but i mean it would be great it would be the best thing in the world if obviously i was keeping all the money that i'm making but obviously like what with me being self-employed taxes are pretty substantial just got into the wind despite everything i do to make sure that i being as efficient as possible working with my cpas giving me all these tips like no don't do that you're so dumb please do this instead i do all these things and then it's still like the money evaporates so there's that and then of course i'm paying um editors and a moderator as well as well as my manager like there's honestly i spend a lot on the business itself because if i don't treat it like a business then it's not gonna run like a business and that's not gonna come in handy in the future right now i'm very lucky i'm extremely fortunate that i can kind of theoretically i guess upload anything and get views is one way of looking at it but i understand that's not gonna be the case forever so i'm really just looking at it as how can i maximize where i am right now and build a foundation so that in the future i can transition into more eclectic projects and still maximize the potential of those as well how many people do you have on your team um off the top of my head it depends on like what you consider like for example my manager is definitely on my team as well as my two editors plus um i have one staff moderator though i do have other moderators on my team and then um so i guess you could say those are like the four core people in terms of like who's actually being paid but then outside of that i have my whole moderation team they're just like a flawless moderation team they keep my twitch stream running so well of course i have my cpa as well i have um people like from you know how you get like a partner manager via youtube they reach out every few months i definitely consider them to be you know they don't work for me but we definitely work together as well so there's a lot of people who do a lot of things to make sure that things go smoothly for me so i'm appreciative and because of that i'm able to just try to get out the most consistent and most quality uh product that i can how much would you say that cost you every month um i try not to think about that but in terms of just like who's getting paid what it's definitely five figures for sure okay no matter what happens and that was a big that was a big commitment i made at the beginning of this year because i was like am i gonna can am i gonna commit to paying other people um a total of uh five figures a month that means i'm gonna have to make substantially more than that every month which means i can't stop and i was like but you know what i like the idea of like not being able to stop i like i like the idea of like supporting other people and having a reason to do this because the worst part of being self-employed is technically not having a reason there's real no really no impetus when like you're your own boss it's like yeah i could upload today or i could just stay in bed and not not do anything so structuring it the way i did it was an extreme overhaul at the beginning of this year was very intentional just so it could facilitate me being in a place to treat this the way i should which is just you know stay on topic continue to provide quality otherwise people are not going to want to watch and just most importantly like more than anything have something that i can look back and be proud of we've uploaded an absurd amount of videos this year considering the quality level and i can look back at all of them and be like yeah those are all really good videos because i had people helping me and because you know i did the things i was supposed to but 5k or five figures yeah do you do your own editing right now or no for the videos that you watch yes the very long videos no one has ever like touched a single file of footage for those other than me but my other channel where i upload multiple times a week those videos are i have a my two editors for that and then i upload a couple of them but i try not to because it's inefficient that reminds me very similar of uh my main channel it's just like it's i want to see 95 me and then jack and i will convene at the usually either before or after uh i film a video about like titles thumbnails but yeah all the editing planning all of that is uh is all me and i've always wanted to maintain that and then jack does the second channel uh alex's is now editing the pod this podcast hey alex hey so yeah would you ever give up the editing privileges of your primary channel your your long-form content channel or is that something that you want to do forever um i definitely would not trade that over just because i feel like and this is maybe not something i should feel like but i think a lot of the reason that that channel is successful is because people kind of get the vibe that it's just me it's just something i'm very passionate about and i was able to transition that into a video and of course there are like the most talented editors out there who could absolutely bring my vision to life um and they do for my other channel as well but it's just a passion project that's something i've come to the conclusion of like sure i could treat this like a for it is business but i could treat it like it's just a business and i'm just a businessman and every out waking hour of my life has to be efficient and nothing should be done that someone else can do but i really been teaching myself like honestly passion is a big part of longevity in the first place so just because i am so so passionate about the videos i go up there i probably i foresee myself doing all the editing do you think i relate to that you could see yourself burning out at some point in the future or have you created such a good balance that you think you could coast on this for forever um i've done it at some points in the past already for sure um as far as burnout goes it's it's an interesting concept right because in many ways i do consider this job to be easier than other jobs i've had but then at the same time i also consider it to be the hardest thing i've ever done which i feel like is hard to explain because like as like a youtuber or influencer or whatever people want to call you if like you start talking about my job is difficult of course you know you get shut down but i feel like if i'm like careful about explaining what it really is that i find difficult and where the burnout comes from people understand a large thing i think is just having other people that you're responsible for because that's what happens when you are like employing people and for context i am 22 so i'm obviously you know fully grown man but at the same time i'm not that old in terms of like having all this business experience to necessarily match the level that the business has gotten at so that's certainly something that um weighs on me from time to time on a good day i'm just like i'm fortunate enough to be able to support all these people on a bad day i'm like oh no if i don't perform it's a bunch of people who are not going to get paid that doesn't seem right but um that's one factor that can contribute to burnout another is just trying to be too good if that makes sense because first of all like you're never going to be that good you know like you've always just got to do your best but you can't turn it into like a high art form so the periods of time i can look back where i was just getting obsessed with having quote unquote the best videos um definitely has led me to burn out but i just remind myself people are not watching me for the best videos or because i'm the smartest in the room or anything like that i'm not it's just because they can tell i put a lot into it you know what i mean so because i've experienced so much burnout in the past i take precautions to avoid it in the future if that makes sense wait hold up for a second um you said you're 22 yes and you graduated from college in 2018 yes how did this happen because i started when i was 15. um just about to turn 16 in it was yeah august because that would have been fall august of 2014 entered college it was um it was about what you would expect from a 15 year old stream hold up hold up so how did that how do you do it like did you just watch high school yeah you straight up just you went straight from like middle school middle school to college how does that like did you go from eighth grade to be like all right i'm going to college well i was like fortunate enough to not have a traditional grade structure if you will because i was homeschooled so instead of just like yeah that's it yeah efficiency yeah they could speed up through a lot of that so anyway so explain that that whole process then so the main milestones that i guess my parents were looking for in terms of like are you good were can you pass the sat because obviously that's the entrance to american college so i took the sat once and passed it and um i was 15 because you can take it at any age i feel like that's something not everyone knows like you don't have to have um quote unquote finished any um grade if you will you just have to meet the requirements and then you can take it so i took it initially and it was definitely good enough to get me in but i said and i would not do this today by the way this was just me being like a cocky 15 year old i was or maybe i was 14 i don't remember i was like i can do better i was i was like i'm going to take the sat again and i'm going to get a perfect score on the reading section and i took it again i did not get a perfect score on the reading section but i was only two points off or something like that it was before they had yeah it was before they changed the structure of the test like if i whatever my score was like 1700 or something like that doesn't mean anything because shortly after me taking it they changed it and i think the highest score is like higher than that now but it was a pretty darn high score i was very like lucky enough to get through that and so that was enough to get me into the honors program and they were super excited to have me so the college helped facilitate a lot of that as well honestly though like i don't consider myself like oh i'm super smart and you know i was 15 years old doing a bachelor's program it was more just like i can just narrow things down to what i need to take from it if that makes sense it's the exact same thing i do my youtube videos which is why people watch them so instead of just being like i need to have all the wherewithal of an 18 year old which of course is not very much i can say that now that i'm in my 20s i was just more so like how much do i actually need to know to do well on the sat and that's what i took from that and so from there forward it was all you know funny games did you get your ged or you just your parents sped you through like every grade instead of spending a year you're spending like seven months on it yeah basically the way the requirements work in my state is like it's a full graduation thing because texas is pretty lenient which is like either good or bad there's a lot of interesting things that go on um in terms of homeschooling but my parents were just so gosh darn efficient they were like at the end of each year they just took a stock of like okay what level are you with this and do you think you could pass this and if i couldn't they didn't push me into it they were like okay so this year we're gonna work on this so like for example i remember one year was kind of like an essay workshop because obviously essays are a pretty big part of um the college experience so i came out of that like writing a mean essay which unironically i would say still contributes to my videos today because i can write a mean video in a very short amount of time um and i remember one year i was like stocking up on math credits as well just because it's like you know you got to be able to do the little bit of math that's used because my parents like went to college so they understood it's not the way it's structured people make you think you need like every single credit from every single class that way you can be a fully functional adult you don't you just need to take the required courses and take everything from each one that you need and then just move on with your life so that's kind of how i survived college who are your parents i want to know about them what do they do yeah um funnily enough my dad has the exact same job just not on youtube it works for me basically exact same job he's on he's a commentary channel yeah oh gosh his name is ethan klein i've been kidding imagine if my dad was a commentary channel he would probably have more subscribers than me because i think he's i think he's funnier but the thing about that is um my dad just knows video that's from my understanding as a son that's all he ever did that's all i ever remember was just like he was editing something and um even now he works for a bank and he does internal video stuff for them which i didn't know banks had internal video teams and so like i showed up at his job and like he took me through all like the computer rooms where they have and i was like wow video is universal and this was before i was even thinking about being a youtuber i was just kind of like i guess shown the power of like video content to convey ideas and how you can go anywhere in life but you're always going to need somebody to film it in some way shape or form like no matter what it is schools need videos for presentations banks need videos to show their internal teams etc and then so i would say the main thing i got from my dad was just like an absolute love of all things video like even now like what i'm submitting you with this sony a6600 and we got a short sm7b it's pretty clean it might be peaking a little bit because i need to work on the um distance but i'm obsessed with that and i definitely blame him um as far as my mom she the main thing i got from her was just efficiency she's just so smart like i know people say like i'm smart and i appreciate it but legitimately that woman is just scary smart she can look at any sort of problem i mean she raised me so she could definitely look at problems and analyze the best way of dealing with them and um just from like a young age instead of i guess like me going to her for everything she would always help me but she would always explain ways that maybe i could have approached myself as well and that was such a good blend because i feel like so many parents they either do it for you and you don't learn anything or like they force you to figure it out or you and you still don't really learn anything but because my mom had this like i'll help you but i'm also gonna walk you through it i've always just believed i can tackle any problem that way and it's definitely true so shout out my parents for like the actual rock solid foundation i've been able to scale it upward into where we are today and hopefully on to bigger and better things what do they think about what you're doing right now and you quitting the gas station job were they upset you left the gas station of course they were upset you left a gas station because from their point of view their point of view was like you have a job and you're working at a gas station even though you have a bachelor's degree why are you exiting the job force why are you exiting the workforce and i was like uh don't worry about it because i knew i knew like how much money youtubers could make even though i was making i made a thousand dollars by the way that was the number in one month where i was like yay i can quit it was not very much so with like some extreme extreme budgeting i um when i told them and that was my mistake for saying yeah my um i'm just waiting until i make the same amount of money from the guests because they knew how much that was so they were just like why would you quit a job when you just made kind of not enough from youtube but having been analyzing my own analytics for so long i was just like every time i was just like just wait just wait just keep watching and i was kind of telling them like hey i kind of made twice as much this month as i did before and they were like skeptical but now fast forward and it's just like hey i just signed like a five figure deal again and now they just they understand why i quit the gas station job were they were you worried or were they worried about you um being homeschooled and not having that like socialization of like going to a school with all your buddies around or whatever oh oh yeah yeah yeah i always hear and i understand i understand that i'm concerned but honestly i just got out of the house so much i was fine like we would go to the park or like um just to various events and i never felt like i was starved of attention or friends or anything like that part of that too is because i wasn't an only child maybe if i was i might not have had anyone but trust me the house was never empty i had no shortage of like friends either just um it was fun but yeah just there was no real like bump in the road i guess it was a natural progression from home school into college it was very fun you know i take it on college you're not gonna you you weren't living in the dorms right or were you no i was i think i was too young i don't know if it would have been allowed did you go to any college parties um no honestly even though i'm sure i wasn't quote unquote allowed to i wouldn't have went into anyway i was extremely like kind of cutthroat in college like i got there and i gravitated towards this friend group and um maybe i shouldn't admit this and so at the end of the semester i took stock and i was like how much time did i spend with these people and how much did we all accomplish together and i came to the conclusion it wasn't enough so i dropped that entire first semester friend group um nicely of course and i kind of found my core crew and they were all people who were very similar to me like we were people who it was a miracle that we were going to college you know what i mean like sure my dad obviously has a degree and my mom i think spent some time in college as well but it's still a pretty big deal that i was the first person to really get like a bachelor's degree from um a university so it was important it just i did i didn't feel like i was allowed i guess you know to like mess around now me being slightly older i completely understand it wasn't the end of the world i definitely could have stood to have some fun but um there was no shortage of it with my friends because like our idea of fun was like we're gonna all finish this godforsaken essay um that none of us care about and then we're just gonna watch youtube interestingly enough we watched a lot of team four star i remember at the time wow was youtube something you knew you always wanted to do or when did you decide that that is what you wanted to pursue i it just came from me always wanting to make videos you know what i mean i my only regret is that i don't have every single video i've created because i feel like i'm trying to scale them up so high in terms of quality i would love to like look back at where i started but the main one i remember the main one i remember and i was definitely 13 years old because i just i remember having just turned 13 it was quite the riot as the 13th birthday is i had made a fake advertisement for visiting niagara falls a very a very teenager young teenager thing to do because it was like no money to be made off of it i was just like this is funny i can download pictures off the internet and put them into video this is insane so i created like this fake advertisement i i want to say that my dad shared it in some capacity i don't remember how but even just a little bit of engagement if you will i was like hmm very interesting so i've always showed the videos that i've created to my friends even before the youtube channel that people know me for either one was in existence there was a different youtube channel that i would upload videos to um and that one wound up getting less than 200 subscribers but still just some subscribers as well but it wasn't even for like public consumption i was just leaving the videos public and sending them to my friends because they wanted like art advice it was just but yeah i would say more so than always wanting to be a youtuber i have just always been driven to create things and i feel the most fulfilled when i work hard on something it turns out the way i want it to and then i can see that people are getting some form of enjoyment or entertainment or education or enlightenment for it then i'm like yay i'm here for reason and i did what i was supposed to do we should talk about some drama now probably we need some views i know when's the david dobrik video coming out i feel like that's right that's the yeah that's the next isn't that the hot topic um interestingly enough i'm not releasing a video about david dobrik um i know from like a business standpoint that's a very strange thing to say but the reason i'm not doing it is because i've recently been kind of the same thing i did after my first semester of college where i took stock of like who am i hanging around and what am i getting for this i really realized i can still make all these valid points i have to make but some people in some situations are just so played out i don't necessarily have much to add to it you know what i mean i know like i literally know deep down even now if i just went back on my word and just put up a david dobrik video anyway it would probably get seven to 10 million views initially it might have 15 in a year or so but the problem is it's right back to what we were talking about initially like is my heart in it no i think most people know what the situation is you know what i mean um i think everyone knows what the daily doping situation is even though i have points to make about it i was happy to make them you know kind of on the stream outside of that and that's not the only situation either uh there's him for sure i know james charles is uh going through it if you will as well just there's a list of people now that i try to think if i don't have anything to contribute is it possible that i may actually be losing something not financially obviously but of myself from you know diving too far into this and that's definitely part of my risk assessment before videos now so you just like being first to the chase like with the huge ground breaking no you can't because no but he but he was saying earlier it's like you got to wait for like the dust to settle so you can get all the so it's my biggest video series which is not online anymore but my biggest video series um i made a good one month after the whole situation ended and on top of that one of the videos in that series focused on something that had happened like a year and a half beforehand i would say i it's some sort of fluke which i will forever be grateful for but i am kind of able to still bring up older situations and have people watch like once a series i'm very proud of is my um paul brothers series because that wasn't just another i don't like logan paul video i actually did like an analysis there's a lot of storytelling about my personal opinion of how logan paul has evolved a little bit and it's kind of underrated and um that was just like old news though like for me it was more about the story i liked that video a lot and uh what's up yeah i did i i watch i would say probably of of that main channel of yours i probably watch i've seen every video uh at least going back like a year and a half um yeah that's where all the good ones are right uh but i remember watching that logan paul video and initially going into it being like okay he's gonna be a hater i'm not gonna agree with some of these points maybe he's changed and but i i remember watching the video and thinking like you you were very fair and it was very you covered every perspective you covered all the sides and i walked away thinking like you know what maybe you went into this with a bit of an agenda or like you had some preconceived thoughts of where this was gonna go but you had the humility throughout the throughout the video to kind of shift your perspective a little bit and and i thought was very fair thank you well that's the thing i don't like need to be correct i just need to be right like more so i don't always have to have the last word i just need to know that i gave the most fair interpretation of the situation so that i can feel good about it and yeah i was like bro this is easy paul brothers i'm gonna get some views nobody likes them but the more the more i dug into logan logan paul's channel specifically i was like this is freaking fascinating like i am obsessed more than anything with like growth for myself of course but the inspiration from my personal growth comes from other people i would say more than anything just because i haven't had that experience so like looking at him just come from where he was to where he is now instead of just seeing like random internet dude bro that everyone hates number four i was like this is crazy this is like a small town kid he just got everything way too quickly didn't know what the heck to do with it made the biggest mistake in the world for that week anyway and then instead of just i guess embracing his new villain era he took that as like a signal that he could change things around and now if it takes stock of where he is and the kind of ideas he's putting out there i find myself agreeing with a lot of it i like you know where he is of course i don't agree with everything that dude does but i was like i was like even though i would still get views and i still give the video a negative title by the way because i didn't need the views but even though i would still get views and appreciation for just like trashing look and fall for 45 minutes to an hour i was like maybe people will be receptive to the same journey i went through in terms of research and thankfully people were a lot of people were like no i'm not i'm still not a fan this is nothing from me but there are a lot of people were like wow i never thought of him like that and that was really like a teachable moment for me i was just like oof i have a lot more power then i realized not something i gave myself but i can be mindful i can tell other versions of stories that we're all familiar with would you make videos on on positive topics and like highlight good uh in a sense that like because right now it's leaning into like and i get it the negative aspect i i if anyone who understands that the stock market falling does ten times the amount of views is the stock went up i get it um do you do you have this uh the same mindset is that it's it's easier to lean in with the negative and then change perspectives or would you ever do a video like highlighting let's say like mr beast goes and does you know donates blah blah blah like would you ever do something like that i really just look for points i can make more so than like whether situations good or bad the point i was going to make with of the populace initially just wound up changing so far of course and that became a journey in them of itself but i have like a few videos on positive topics they're not the ones that i'm known for interesting of course not why would i be known for those i have a couple of really good album reviews on there on my other channel i did like just a whole um it was obviously shorter video but like about dolly parton and the things i like there but as far as just like me like doing the exact same process to a more positive topic i don't want to give too much away but i've been toying with the idea of just going off on this really obscure obscure thing that nobody cares about because the thing is like you've got to experiment first of all i'm very grateful to have the subscribers and the views i have but if i just keep doing the same thing over and over and it's like bad thing of the week number four sure i'll keep getting that but am i gonna get any growth from that no because clearly that's one thing i can do well so i want to make a video where i bring the same level of obsession with detail but to something very obscure i just want to see how many people i how many people watch it and what they think about me what is it we want to know um i do i i don't want to say because then we'll bleep it out deal okay okay perfect bleep it out alex okay i want to upload wow you know what that's it that's interesting i don't know if it would hit with me i would okay so you know what i'm going to tell you from my perspective and this is this is now your non-audience i'd click on this and if it doesn't hook me in the first minute or two i'm out uh because it's not a topic that i would be intro but if you hooked me after a minute or two i'd be like all right let me give this five minutes if i'm still hooked let me give this 10 minutes and then after like 12 you got me for the rest of the video i would say no worries i would love a video no worries i i always go through that reverse engineering process just because i understand i would say more than the first minute like the first 30 seconds are it no matter how many sponsors i have well it's only everyone for video no matter how big the sponsor is or how many topics i'm talking about if you don't provide some sort of road map um or just even a teaser of what to expect or some sort of flash or appeal i i tend to lean into the flash aspect like i will edit this like banger intro i'll download music and i've got like the um instrumentals going off with the audio clips like something you would see on netflix just because i need people to be like i see that you've chosen to spend an hour very interesting i spent a lot of time in this as well so we can like spend this hour together so yes were i to do this sort of topic i would absolutely treat it with the same like hey i'm gonna respect your time because i'm just grateful for one view let alone however many it's gonna get but also you're about to see how much time i spend on this as well i feel like it's it's so infectious wow um what other what other topics do you think you might want to talk about that you would want to bring light to that maybe people don't know about or like issues that you see doesn't need to be youtube related it could be something probably something outside youtube or something that you see where it's like that might make a good video i don't know about that but this is an issue that i think is worth bringing up i guess if i was to make some sort of like like the last video i would ever make or the most important video i would ever make that i don't see too many people talking about i would just want to upload a video telling people like what it's actually like to be a youtuber if you will because obviously the only thing people see is like um well this is the only thing people can see it's like a box basically which is a window into your room you know we have a play button we have some cool stuff studio lights but so much work goes into it so much money of your own pocket money is involved so many feelings and experiences and relationships that you have to form as well and um it does affect you i feel like because i had no idea and i only ever saw people playing video games or talking about funny videos i was just so wildly unprepared because so many people want to be youtubers understandably i would love to just spend the same amount of detail like outlining how it's been for me things you might have to look out for you know why a lot of it is as good as it seems and why some of it is not that's definitely something i feel like people don't talk about enough and i understand why again people are not i guess receptive to having the magic broken because then they can start feeling alienated very easily but i feel like the majority of the problems i experience as a youtuber just come from the fact that i am not a youtuber i'm just a person you know what i mean anyone in this situation would probably just have similar feelings there's just so many things that don't get solved i guess by having your dream job and that's kind of what i would love to make a video about where do you take it from here in terms of just general do you want to continue making youtube videos for the rest of your life oh that's a great time i tell everybody politics you gotta you give me a good voice for politics i think people would vote for you that's that's true actually forget the policies i could deal with i could deliver them very compellingly you could you would you would do your policies through like a one-hour youtube video yes wait like that's kind of not a terrible idea and you would and you would just you know demolish all your competition by putting it together absolutely i'm uploading a reaction video to your speech tonight look out for that reacting to that be horrifying no that would be so good yeah imagine videos and like coming out with your own hit pieces of just like why you shouldn't vote for the other person coming yes i would love that oh gosh i would so watch that no um as far as what i'm going to be doing in the future certainly not youtube for the rest of my life i will probably be uploading videos to this platform in some form or another just because this is where i put my mp4 files that's how it started off before i had any subscribers and that's how it'll be no matter how many people are there to watch them but i definitely do have i would say bigger um projects on the horizon things i'm trying to work really hard behind the scenes with like a team of people that i've brought on because i want to create just other things for people to experience i'm really really really glad and fortunate i've just been too lucky it's almost a little suspicious how well this has all worked out for me but because i've been given this opportunity i can i'm gonna do the same thing i did when i had like 3 000 subscribers how far can i take this so all manner of um upcoming content whether that's like fiction instead of non-fiction whether you see me i don't know on the bigger on bigger screens than youtube or anything like that or behind the scenes anything like that or just things i've been working on for a while now and once i'm finally ready to kind of debut where i've been headed with this i think everyone's gonna be quite excited for it but even if they're not i've only ever needed what i've only ever had which was just the will to create these things and enough people who are interested in seeing what it was i have to say this time where are you saving your money now that you're making i'm investing all of my money as far as investments i have a lot of it stored away for investing in the future but i'm trying to secure a house first just before we start looking into like putting money into um other places not like anything crazy i'm not moving into a tick tock mansion but after that yeah i'm definitely gonna look into ways of diversifying everything that i have to make my money work for me because after you have a certain amount it's like there's no reason to run out ever again and i'm like oh wait a minute i might kind of be getting there so yeah i'm bringing on advisors for sure got it you don't need advisors you don't need invite i mean i have my dad that's advisor number one two and three sure and then my cpa helps me as well okay maybe just one other individual got it so so you say you're saving pretty much all of it is that is that the truth almost all of it just gets yeah it's like you would think i sell drugs that's how much money i that's how much i just leave the money in the account and don't touch it if you stumbled upon it you would be like what's going on here but again it's just there for a split second because i gotta get um these bigger purchases of the way and then yeah i'm gonna look out what can i do with this some of it's gonna work for me some of it i'm gonna invest right into my bigger projects um i can start additional businesses other than the one i'm running right now um i just it's like the sky's the limit it's very exciting stuff but yeah as far as like spending i'm just not a big spender like my car for example is uh i don't think it's a bentley bentega yeah well no it's it's it's a royce no it's um it's a chevy impala 2019. nice it's nice it's not the best ever it's like not even a tesla oh is it the sport is it the ss no it's just yeah i um first of all i don't even do enough driving for that but yeah as far as like paying for a lifestyle that's something i've completely opted out of so like the money i'm able to make kind of winds up going a long way for me which i'm very fortunate it gives me more to like put into the projects i'm excited about and stuff like that but yeah i um i happen to not have expensive taste which is a cool combo with making some cash every now and then how many credit cards do you have um not too many my credit score is actually this isn't like doxing or anything i guess but my credit score is excellent according to credit karma um it's it's barely if i like do one wrong thing it might drop back into good incentive excellence is it but yeah i've been killing it 50 above 750 yeah barely higher 753 yes yeah and we're going to get it up higher than ever yeah it's it's our running joke that everyone has a higher credit score than jack how much dogecoin do you have um one million that's pretty good actually yeah like you could have bought a million dogecoin not to like you know six months ago wouldn't have been that much yeah actually it wouldn't because it was less than a cent right yeah i bought in a less than half it was a third of us yeah i actually probably could have bought a million jeez but um you bought in a thousand so you got like two 220 fifty thousand yeah yes quarter million nice gosh man uh i was about to ask something what was it about the end i wanted to ask how methodical and like analytical were you in growing your youtube channel or did you just kind of have an idea like i'm just going to put out as you know the best possible content it doesn't matter when just whenever it's done and you just post it and you had like grow through that or were you very analytical with your with your stats and stuff like that and posting dates and times and stuff it was a it was a mix of things the beauty of youtube's algorithm being an algorithm are that there are pathways within that to replicate and predict success and there's also a level of random numbers just being thrown everywhere controlling who gets seen where so it's not very random i'll tell you that it's certainly not as mystical as people seem to think it is so yes a lot of the youtube success i would absolutely attribute to just me being cognizant of what i was posting when i was posting and how i was presenting the content in a way that maximizes um viewers but me getting like over 2 million subscribers now a lot of that did just come from videos just popping off i was like i made a good video and it just went way crazier than anyone could have expected which i'm very lucky and um so yeah i can't like take credit like yeah i from day one knew i was gonna have you know two million subscribers by this date i was just more like yeah i'm probably going to be able to continue an upward trajectory and then like last year just it was just went like this yeah oh this is the question i was gonna ask do you think jack should sell his dogecoin um to me yes okay at a discount probably so jack put in a hundred dollars and it's now worth 15 grand fifteen thousand dollars i'm telling him to sell don't you point it's not an all-time high no you know there we go i'm sorry cell doesn't sound like hold to me yeah it's a it's a weird spelling of hold yeah thank you that's what i thought what would elon musk say you know what i mean if elon musk was sitting on that couch right across from you would you really look that man in the face and say i'm going to sell my damaged coins you know what that's actually a great point thank you for raising stuff so right now for reference at the time we're filming this it's 64 cents and nice i this is it's tough for me because i remember us uh filming a podcast a year ago almost a year ago like exactly almost where it was trading at 0.03 cents each and i put a thousand dollars in it and that today would be worth i think it was a hundred and fifty thousand hundred and fifty five thousand immediately after the podcast was over i'm like that's stupid i sold it oh no i would have turned a thousand into 150 i would have made uh like three times the amount that this podcast has made over the last year from 60 seconds of a joke in a podcast that hurts so bad i feel like when time travel inevitably gets invented it's not going to be nasa it's not going to be some offspring of neil degrasse tyson it's just going to be someone who's so determined to go back in time and invest in the right crypto and stocks that they pull this off if if that existed then wouldn't we now be like receiving people coming from the future like yeah not if they were very careful about it because here's so here's so here's uh here's an interesting thing that uh that someone was talking about on reddit and the concept was if you could go back 10 years from now and you would have a choice to go and invest in bitcoin 10 years ago and you knew what it was going to do but your future wasn't guaranteed would you go and take that opportunity and the topic was like absolutely i would go and i would invest in bitcoin back then and i would get to relive like the greatest moments of my life and i could have all my friends invest with me and we could all be mega wealthy and our lives would be great imagine this is a movie though where somebody today goes back 10 years from now and somebody today by the way who has like an amazing family they have a happy job they're living in but they just want like hey i want to help out my family and like and have all this money and be able to help everyone else around me but they have a loving family imagine if they went back they bought bitcoin but somehow by them buying bitcoin or like one little action along the way caused bitcoin to become worthless and now all of a sudden that because they bought bitcoin they didn't meet the love of their life they didn't have their family they screwed everything up along the way and not only that but what they came back in time for is now worthless imagine that as a movie imagine that and just the whole that's that's the that is i think that would hurt my feelings yeah i think he wants you to make a movie about this no i i just thought that would be that would be such an incredible movie because it's not what you would expect uh you would have to find a way for this to be like uh you know for there to be some sort of happy ending but uh yeah you know how would you resolve that i guess you would have to do it or something like that i don't know but but he presses the weight go back button but no it's an interesting thing that even if you were able to go back in time for certain things just want like you'd make the wrong turn on one street and maybe because of that someone gets delayed from their job and because of that they get fired and because they got fired they started the business that competes with like there's just so many different things that i think could happen it is crazy to think about i mean even in context of my own life it's exactly like that what if the one video i put up was one of the many videos that was just on my pc i'm like eh i'm not going to upload that like right this second i'll do it when i come back home and then i didn't i thought it was a crazy moment yeah crazy moment free i've actually never shared this uh ever uh when i was i was probably just i was i think i was 18 uh years old and i this was right before i sold my first house as a real estate agent so maybe like six or seven months in doing all these leases but uh i i think i i got onto the show i think it was like entourage or something like that i think i think it was one of those sort of shows and for like a week i thought like you know what i haven't sold a house as a real estate agent i'm going to be a talent agent and i'm going to be able to represent like celebrities and so like during my down time late at night i was sitting there writing an email to like the top person at caa and now for those that aren't aware like in order to be a talent agent you either need to have a direct like connection or like be kind of like born into that sort of family um or you have to work at the mail room and then you work your way up it's it's very much one of those business you don't just start out as an agent you gotta work your way up so i like i got the top person at caa and i had got their email address and i wrote out like this really detailed email uh basically pitching myself of like why i wanted to work with them and why i would be like the perfect person for that position and uh i i was about to send it uh but the guy i was working with at the time came in the office and this must have been like 9 30 10 and uh he brought his son in with the office and uh his son must have been like four or five years old at the time and goes in and just presses the off button on the uh not not the monitor but like the actual computer itself the whole computer turns off and i was like i spent all this time doing the email and like right yeah and then of course i turn it back on the whole thing is gone no draft no draft nothing i don't know what happened oh my gosh and uh i was like you know what i'm not going to send that email i put so much i was so like i was like i can't put because i couldn't recreate that like when you're in the mood and i was like i was just like fed up that i didn't sell a house and i was just like i put my heart and soul in this email right this is my chance you can't you couldn't i couldn't get in that same mindset again to write that at the same caliber and obviously now but but part of me wonders what would have happened if that email had sent and i had gotten a response back and i had chosen to leave real estate a month before i would sell a house to go and work as like some talent agent and maybe that didn't work out then i'd have to go back to college and like so that was one of those moments in the moment i was really upset i'm like oh why did you come in but like looking back that might have been like that saving grace for me where he just turns off the computer and this is like fate being like no graham nope you're not sending that email but i wonder like in an alternative universe what would have happened maybe nothing maybe just that email goes on red didn't matter anyway but it's fun to think about i have enough of those moments where i can say yeah this is definitely one of those but it makes me wonder how many of those moments do i have where i didn't know that was even like that big of a deal right like something small happens and i'm like but then that could have been life-changing i always believe that and this happens all the time and i'm sure this happens to everybody but sometimes they're like i love my phone inside like you know you get in the car i don't have my phone and then i go back inside and look for it for a minute and then i'm on the freeway and then there's like you know the whole bunch of traffic and then you look at your phone it turns out there's an accident that's like a minute ahead of you so many times i'm thinking like wow had i left a minute sooner i would have been right where that accident was so i don't know but i always believe that i always believe that like any time i'm delayed i never get upset because i'm like for some reason this is like the universe telling me i need i need to be looking for my phone and like delaying me for some that's always that's what i think i believe it i really like it d'angelo uh i just want to know what's your opinion on the content cop series i mean first of all it's iconic you know there's nothing to deny there in terms of its sheer impact on the commentary genre on youtube um have they withstood the test of time it's hard to say i mean some of those videos are what five years old six yeah i remember like just by the time i watched them i don't think they had all come out yet but a bunch of them had and i watched every single content cop and i of course not being ingrained in youtube culture was like this is insane there's this dude just dropping bombs on all these crazy people not knowing that's kind of where i would wind up in very short amount of time but um i just think like idubbbz was ahead of the curve in terms of youtube commentary for sure i know a lot of people have a lot of opinions but um they're just funny videos you know what i mean i really consider like hey and h3h3 in their prime to have just kind of really set the tone for a lot of things that are still going on in commentary youtube today part of me doesn't know if that would be if if if idubs were doing the same videos today if if that would be acceptable i almost feel like that you could get away with that stuff five six years ago but today for sure it doesn't have the same punch to it like it would back then because yeah back then no one was doing it making these 30 minute long you know whole like displays uh that was big but now i feel like uh you know has it been watered down a little bit um you know i'm sure if you made a video everyone would watch it i would love it i would love it but i don't that but i think if anything he'd have to be more careful today back six years ago he didn't say whatever he wanted to and it was just it was good but today it's like like i'm watching some of his old unboxing videos and i did that like seven months ago to to do a lot of research and like i i don't know how he was able to get away with saying the things he did back then even as a joke you couldn't do that today well i just think i know there's definitely like a debate about youtube's changing culture but i just follow the money i'm just like of course things are getting more and more sanitized because honestly advertisers have more and more money to bring to the table and the bigger the advertisers get the stinger they are which is why we wind up with like you know various levels of youtube monetization coming from different advertisers so whereas i of course would find it funnier if i was just able to say any and every joke that comes to mind having to temper things to stay within a reasonable um you know realm so that i can make sure i'm still maximizing my own reach i i'll allow it for the adsense yeah it's tough for me sometimes because i do want to make some like some edgy jokes or like you know say some dirty jokes that you know some people might be like oh that's that's that's in a that's pg-13 but yeah i've done my best to maintain as as clean as an image as i can because uh yeah i just want to be family friendly and yeah it works out in the long run more than anything right i would say like individually from video to video i'm just like ah i have to cut this out because i don't think it comes across the way i want it to and then it might not work but if i look back at the amount of times i've done that i'm just like oh i'm so glad i did that because now i have a whole um back catalog of content that works for me instead of against me riots i just want to say what idubbbz did with the content cops was a little different though i feel like even today in youtube's landscape it would be pretty tolerated just because of like the the lasting impact those videos had on you i remember like i would watch those videos and i would feel so great afterwards but then i watched someone else's like expose video like for example leafy is here like i i would binge all of his content but still even after like watching those videos that i loved it would still leave somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth you know what i mean which i think is just entirely different to to idubbbz content cause which i yeah but i do some of his videos got removed for bullying well yeah that policies are changing and it's and it's kind of scary too that they could go back and you could make a video today that that complies today but that doesn't get grandfathered in that you could make a video it's fine but three years from now something changes they could go back and say oh that we don't allow that anymore it's it's a little scary for sure and that's why i'm just diversifying and forging a path that leads to opportunities off platform because i definitely see it's just it wouldn't be a problem if things didn't change so much like if you look at traditional tv old media things change over decades so for 10 years maybe you're allowed to do this but then someone's super bored and they write a new law now oops we've all got to change over to this new format and so you can very slowly and deliberately track changes in etiquette or even just like technical specifications like i remember when everything had to be hd for it to air before that was the case but um with youtube it's just like surprise we have new guidelines and half of your videos are not following them and it's just like what that huh what is what is promoting all of this so yeah instead of just trying to get too caught up into all that i'm just like oof what is there to be gained from the situation for me it's mostly just the connection i have with the people that are here so i will just make sure i facilitate being able to get the content out to them as efficiently as possible you know if youtube gets in between that i will just find other ways of doing it you know what i mean yeah did you get your free stock down below in the description when you sign up for public because it's worth all the way up to 50 dollars wait are you serious where's the link again down below in the description oh snap well i think after this amazing podcast i should follow that link and get my free stock yes because it's worth all the way up to 50 dollars thank you guys so much for watching i really appreciate it and angel thank you so much for coming on this this has been the best surprise i feel like every episode jack you should just surprise me with somebody how am i supposed to run up this i don't get mr beast next but seriously guys thank you so much for watching if you guys like episodes like this go and destroy the like button go and subscribe because it's totally free you get to see an episode every single week and then daniel we'll link to all of your information down below in the description go and check out this channel watch these videos they're absolutely incredible and uh ever episode of the iced coffee hour