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

you just explain that like you're a machine learning bank tagging like extremely visually compelling piece of cool hi high engagement to the end like you know i've seen i've seen too many videos at this point i have to put them into buckets colin and sami do you guys know what you're getting into you know what this is at all i thought this was a podcast about pure procurement oh alright you have the speed he's a fan he's a super fan i love it is that not what this podcast as mouth yeah thought about office supplies i don't even know how to say the word procurement yeah once you get once you get around us you you that word becomes a problem right and ben so ben is the systems integration guy right yeah exactly yeah i know it's got it yeah and so give give y'all story so i i kind of know a little bit of it but let's assume people listen to this don't know it which is my way of saying i kinda only have know it but give it give me all story yeah so i'm sami by the way this is my voice if you're listening i graduated college in two thousand eleven and i went to school to study film and digital media and i grew grip in la so i was like really into the film business i wanted to be a storyteller i wanted to find a way to you know become a filmmaker and that was a really challenging thing you looking at so so how did you how'd you swing this i'm gonna be a filmmaker well he's good looking though too i mean he looks like an la person know but i'm saying parents parents don't care about that no you're right i mean i remember the moment when i called my mom and i was like i i'm am not going to be a business major i'm gonna be a film major and it was a scary moment i think for them but i was a bad high school student i was not good in high school i was just not getting in college i didn't do homework i was not someone who really lived up to the standard of what it was to be an indian kid as my brother was student body president he became a lawyer like he he followed more of a traditional path i think they had noticed that i was so unconventional but it was like alright at this point do whatever but my dad's also really unconventional he's an entrepreneur whereas he's a fashion designer like he's he's different so i think there was a bit of like okay i mean you seem confident figure it out and and so for me when i graduated school you know i had a i had an issue with being someone who wasn't good in school like i i didn't i wasn't grade it like being an employee that was really hard for me i worked as an editor on a film called ide of march in hollywood and i just i just didn't like it i didn't like doing a single task i didn't like doing you know one thing and i had become aware of of youtube primarily because i was up in in northern california in college and was really fascinated by it so i felt like i had all the tools to to just upload a video and just make something and the subject matter that i picked was the community that i was a part of when i up i i up playing the sport of across i played lacrosse in college and i decided to spin up a youtube channel called the la cross network and that is the origin of my first upload onto youtube really outside of like student films and at the same time colin was uploading a series or uploaded a trailer for a series about the colorado club across team i'll let him pick up from there but this is this is in two thousand eleven just for frame reference let me jump in with one thing i've seen a video where you said something dope calling you go my first video only had i don't know when you said like a hundred views or a thousand views you're like but same was one of them and that view that one view changed my life because then you guys ended up joining forces you guys do a bunch of cool shit fast forward till today you guys got this like pretty baller youtube channel and this is like you get to do the thing you wanna do you get to like i don't know if i could do anything i'd probably be like a professional basketball player that'd be like the the the peak of like getting to play and like be super successful at the same time but i feel like the second best thing might be being a youtuber and and so like you know that's i love that idea though that like okay i only had a hundred views or only had a thousand views like that one view changed that one of those views changed my life i thought that was like an amazing little like nugget yeah i i think for me it was a real lesson in in community probably unlike sami you know i actually was but a really dedicated student almost probably to a fault and so when i finally had this experience in college of you know buying a camera and being a little bit more of a creative you know putting out my first video which was about the lacrosse team having it not necessarily be a huge success but you know it did connect me with all these like minded people one of which was sami he sent me an email that day basically saying if you're gonna be making these videos even though you just started why don't you put them out on my network because i'm trying to aggregate tons of of people who are fans of the sport so you know from that point on i was like i don't even care about my past education i am so interested now in just telling stories and having it connect with people but that didn't it it the the la cross network that was like kind of a failure right like it it got you to like a certain point and then you're like shit this isn't gonna pay the bills is because right yeah i think i i mean i think it didn't it didn't it definitely didn't pay our bills in the first three years right it was something that was not a failure but you know yeah i mean the like long story short we sold the company in twenty fourteen which was really positive so that was a success for us but the like pathway to get there was really challenging because there's no business model really surrounding youtube in twenty eleven twenty twelve when we tried to to get advertisers no one even understood that spending money on youtube was a reasonable thing to do that was like the only way people could understand us was a video production company so what we did to make money is we did creative jobs for people like service jobs okay yeah well we you've seen that we can make pretty good videos on online we can make you a video or we even did even more creative odd jobs we made websites for people we design stickers for one company it was just kind of like oh these guys are like creative internet people so if we have a creative internet task we'll we'll ask them to do it and then what what was beneficial to us was that youtube the company was was very interested in what we were doing and they basically came to me and they said if you can secure live rights will really get behind you because we're trying to explore live sports on youtube and that's what i did i i got rights to high school games first than college games then we eventually distributed pro games and figured out how to acquire live rights and get youtube behind us and that that kind of grew our profile got us to the point where we we could we got acquired by a sports media company and a lot of that you know i say it was an aqua hire to be very clear like the benefit of that was that you know they there was cash exchange for our company but really the majority was in you know we had salaries and and stock and we got to actually have like very comfortable stable jobs pursuing youtube and it and not only it's a company called whistle yeah so so by the way i wanna say something here youtube started in like what two thousand five something like that yeah yeah and you guys are saying it was twenty ten twenty eleven and you're like it really wasn't like yeah no well a a a well t path of like be youtuber make money doing this this can be like a business and this can be the platform versus the way you guys use was kinda like it's kind of our portfolio and we'll get some clients on this and it'll be a launch pad maybe maybe we'll get picked up by somebody else bigger like real traditional media that will pay us that's kinda crazy right that's like six years into the game and that's why like right just a big point about like let's say crypto right now it's like these things take a long time before they become a thing before it's like what youtube is today where it's like obvious now that you could be a youtube youtuber you can make a bunch of money you could be mister beast whatever it it it's still not even obvious to if you i don't think it's that obvious yeah yeah i don't think it's that all least there's examples now yeah but like i watch youtube on my apple tv and that's tv to me most people only like only teens do that and like i'm the old guy most people i don't think do it like that but i think like so i think it's still pretty like not a thing yet i i do think if you take a step back and look at it it's it operates exactly like most media companies and that's like if you just take business models from the past like how the radio or even how you know television like any media company a magazine like that's that's how youtube operates too there's a really unique version of advertising when it comes to youtube and that we are uploading and and the platform will actually pay us without us having to interface with clients without us having to build a media kit without us having to pitch anyone which i think it causes creators to not fully understand the business they're in because they don't have to pick up the phone and sell their audience to someone or or sell what they're doing to a client if they're primarily based on the adsense that youtube's giving you when we were first starting out adsense was absolutely insignificant because our audience was extremely niche it was small and youtube was not that developed there were people making good money from adsense checks on youtube which is you know again the money that youtube will pay you part of their partner program but you know that's never been that significant of a check for us because we've always been very niche and so we've had to learn the business of media and apply that to what we're doing with youtube and i think you know that maturity is starting to catch up right now in the space and why a lot of creators are able to build businesses today and why there are road roadmap and fast forward to now you have the cross networks no longer the focus it's the college premier show and it's basically this it's a youtube channel you have hundreds of thousands subscribers and you kinda talk about like trader economy stuff but i think that's a little bit niche but and like it's it's a little bit more than that but you've got these like really highly produced interviews that you do with people but then you also have all these like clips and you did this thing where you're sitting in your car and you like give analysis of like different videos and my the going viral but you do it seems like you do a little bit more than that i watch i watch it all the time and so is that how big is that business at this point to give the audience like a little who don't know you like to to a little sense of how legit you sure yeah so yeah as you mentioned we we're you know we're on our way to to million subscribers we're of eight hundred and i think thirteen as of this recording the business is myself colin and we have four full time team members who work on the actual channel that's myself colin we have three editors as well as a production manager and then a data and insights person who who works and and looks at like kind of how everything's tracking from a analytical perspective and then we also have a a newsletter and there's a team of three that works on that to people one one general manager of the newsletter one more in business development and and sales and then a writer who's who's on staff for the newsletter so the total like people who work in the call it's your ecosystem is ten and it's split across two media properties one being the youtube channel and one being the one being the the newsletter i don't know if you guys and i would say i would say too like we're primarily supported with advertising advertising based business our biggest clients are samsung shopify jelly spa and and other creator economy companies what's the revenue now can you reveal or no yeah we're i would say we haven't been super a hundred percent transparent with like exact numbers but we're a seven figure business are you getting close to eight no no do you guys think this like gets there like basically sometimes you get in a business and it's what got us here won't get us there and sometimes we just gotta keep on keep it on and so so from a business model point of view is it if we just keep okay we're at eight hundred thirteen thousand subscribers today we're probably tracking to two million next year or whatever it is and the ads will just keep scaling and this will keep going this will be the business forever or is it like we're gonna have to come up with a second act at some point so i think there's decisions you can make as a creator to get there like we we are friends with a lot of creators who you know are pushing towards that eight figure business mark right and and a lot of that is is at just add supported business there's other creators who have launched you know course companies or education to consumer content patreon right subscription platforms and you can absolutely get there it's just honestly i think it's based on there's this moment as a an artist or filmmaker or someone who wants to express something where to you go from like i mentioned i studied film i was very interested in being a filmmaker but you go from being a filmmaker to a media and i think that those are two different things and you have to decide like colin and i have to decide what we want the lifestyle to look like i think you guys mentioned i don't think it was your mother in los sam who said i like taking tuesdays and thursdays off i think that's a really important thing for all creators and all entrepreneurs to look at and be like what what what's enough for me like what what is what you know what i want to do and i think colin and i this is like a relatively recent success that we're having with this channel and we're trying to constantly evaluate which parts of this are really enjoyable and which parts of this start to feel like okay now we're just making stuff to make stuff and i think we have to find that balance of how to scale what we're doing but also recognize recognized like we we got into this because we we wanted to make something and i think it's okay to to lean in to be like maybe there's part of this that's like we just wanna tell the stories that we're excited about and yes there's a ton of opportunity but it might not match what the lifestyle that that we eventually want who who is crushing it so like you mentioned some creators do x y z like what's the name ali ali he's coming on on the pod soon oh oh great i think he reveals his numbers where it's like okay my my course business is gonna do like two million dollars this year or something like that yeah where he basically is like you know become a youtuber or something shit like that it's like you're it's a course that's around think you're greater it's to six million i think he's tracking to six million this okay amazing youtuber academy i signed up for time of youtube academy so that's the so that's the course he does and so that's an example of like somebody's crushing it and the course model then yeah sam you've talked about the guy who does like bring a trailer or what which one was it the the car one tomorrow doctor you guys have doctor tomorrow and cars meyer car we bought a car from carson and beds for one of our he too me too amazing great so he is a car guy with at this point two or three million subscribers and he's he has a an auction website for cars that could potentially be a nine figure company i actually sam was that launched off the channel or before the yeah no he had the channel for five years maybe many years i think the unique thing that we're experiencing right like this is entrepreneurship the difference is we build an audience first and then solve how to you know monetize that audience through products services subscriptions whatever right whereas a lot of traditional entrepreneurship is is build the business first and then try and find customers or audience second and so i think that's when you look at like creators how big this can become it's really like how for a lot of creators who built successful audiences and niche audiences it's like how big you you want it to become the thing that's holding back the creator space right now i think is is operators like really good business operators to surround creators because to make you know like to make on a consistent cycle when you are the subject of your videos it doesn't really allow you to operate as you know the the the business admin the operator the person who's pushing cars and bids the the website and and that business while you're making the content at the same time ask ask your question again sean yeah so what are some other examples so let's take those two so yeah dealt with the courses doug tomorrow with you know has a car channel then launches a car auction site who else has done something cool what are some other cool stories of people crushing it that i like put started with content started with audience and then have done have created a cool business off their youtube channel that that's impressive because i don't particularly one that like are not mister beast the ones that you know we all know about yeah yeah i i would say an interesting one that keeps coming up is cassie h she started blog pilates so like fitness yoga instruction on youtube and now she has two separate product companies that are both eight figure companies right sami here yep yeah it's there's one that's like an apparel company for and then one that's like yoga mats and like shit i i yeah i think like that's that is another yoga creator called yoga with who started teaching yoga for her she's so great but her subscription platform is amazing right like she she's her awesome man i'm a custom peloton brett have you seen the sean her name is yoga with adrian she's got like the girl next door look where she's like not intimidating but she's definitely beautiful and she's based out of austin and she does yoga with her dog and she's very calming yeah she's the best man i love you yoga hey can't see this there's another creator named amanda ra lee and she started creating content with bullet journals so she was showing like how she was setting up her bullet journals how she was organizing her days and then she's launched a line of stationery and of journals and that's become her primary engine of business and and like i think those are a few specifics i think yes theory when it comes to merchandise and apparel i think they've done an incredible job with seek discomfort and building a brand that can stand alone outside of the videos and i believe they also just went into the fulfillment business so they not have their own merch line they also do the printing right warehouse of a for other creators too right that's right i think it's really smart when creators start businesses like that where they say okay if we're gonna solve all these problems independently and not go with a partner then you know we can work we can work with other creators to do the same you i think people should be doing that you you don't see so i have a couple ideas i i if you don't have one i i'll throw a couple that you you could tell me if they're why people are not doing there them maybe they're bad ideas but what do you think creators should be doing that they haven't yet gone into that that realm yet it's not common so i actually have a perspective that i think i i think i i'm curious why we haven't seen creators band together especially like let's let's imagine the e commerce space like why have we not seen ten creators come together and launch an e commerce retail store like that to me where they can bring a ton of traffic to it and and pair together and all their audiences are maybe on one brand yep i think it's exactly what i was gonna say that like disney store discovery store type of thing a hundred percent or even like one singular brand it's happening with this brand called cloak in in like kind of the gaming world but like why not just if if every creator had to had a piece of this one apparel brand like couldn't you make the next big apparel brand or could you make the next urban outfitters if if you know emma chamberlain plus five creators came together and made a retail store right i feel like specifically in beauty and fashion and cosmetics like there's such an opportunity to band together and have one brand because there are so many like stand alone cosmetic brands for a singular creator but it it can it can really happen in any like in gaming this was i i always thought this should happen in gaming so my my company got a car by twitch so when i was there i was looking at like look what of these creators doing one brand that stood out was there's a brand called g fuel i don't know if you guys have heard of it's very like gaming this but like basically sam i don't know if you've heard of this it's like i don't know what you it's like a red bull like it's sort like an energy drink but a g fuel as in gamer fuel so it's like oh this will be you know give you energy help you stay focused when you're in there's long gaming sessions i was in it and it looks like a gatorade who knows what's in it like and the guy who started he's like this absolute like fifty year old bro like he's like yeah fifty five and just like jacked to the gills and you're like oh wow this is like i don't know what's happening in this company but i don't wanna drink this but like what would happen is they would go to they were like oh dude these twitch stars have influence but the traditional brands aren't going to them they're going to instagram and youtubers first so he went to them and he was like hey i'll make a flavor for doctor disrespect i'll make a flavor for ninja i'll make flavor for each one of these and you have your own shaker that you'll like kinda promote that has like your brand on it and like he had these like he got like nine of them to be like the sponsored athletes basically and they they grew pretty much i know what they were doing exactly if i remember correctly was definitely over twenty million it might be over fifty million in sales that they were doing just off of like kind of this one real niche channel and i what i thought about was like and then and then each of the individual creators was doing their own thing like ninja made a mouse like gaming mouse and then somebody else made another like a coffee or a stimulant or whatever mh and i was thinking of the same thing if these guys just got together and the ten big ones you got together and they just launched a gaming accessories thing like the best keyboard the best mouse the best whatever like they would be selling hundreds of millions a year if they like put their powers together captain plan style i i think that goes back to like the lack of operators in the space right now and i think it's starting to catch up but i do think that you know there's a lot of short term revenue to be had and that's really exciting and there's a lot of right there's like quick cash to be made in in our space that i think now it's probably just happening where you're starting to look at these longer term and there like you said there's more maps you know of course you know mister beast is in my opinion singular like it's right he's not you can't there's not gonna be more of him but you can look at some of the stuff he's doing with oh feast is interesting or even logan paul and oh they made prime instead of partnering like that's interesting and they they have that current together i i'm not positive i would i from what they say it's going well so that's that i think that's all we know i'm not positive i will say it tastes great we bought it here and it's it's like a fantastic drink but i have absolutely no idea how the business is going i would say to it seems like he's following the beats by dr trajectory of making sure to get it in the hands of celebrities and famous people with his podcast anytime he has someone on they have prime in their hand or they try it and they like is a good strategy when you guys got to how long how long did it take to get to eight hundred thousand i think at least four years right call at was four or five years i mean yeah probably four years to get to two hundred and one year to two hundred to eight hundred yeah so let's let's take this journey one one second saying a question on this so if we strip away hard work and talent because let's say those are like core ingredients that you guys have but like every journey has like inflection points like something where something just broke your way or you realize something before others did or like the one thing went viral and that kinda helped step you up to another level because like if i go the channel today i see the the top thing is like a video with i interview with mister beast has ten million views right and i'm like how the hell they get mister beast like that's a big poll yeah great interview so what were the things that were like besides hard work and and consistency and talent what made you guys grow and what may what made it how do you get to a million subscribers and mister beast doing a interview you guys it my first answer is time and market i think like we've been in this market for ten years and that has introduced us to a lot of people that have created opportunity for us as we started to grow right like jimmy shot us a message jimmy is mister beast he he shot us a message when we made a video a couple of years ago and he was like that was a cool video and we struck up a relationship and we started talking about youtube because we were both really into it and authentically into it and that created a situation that you know when we got to a point where we had an interview show or a talk show we had a relationship with him such that we could fly out get access in north carolina his new facility and like he was excited to to be on our platform and we we had that relationship and i i think even when i think about an inflection point for our business prior to that was when we you know really were weren't catching that much traction from a sponsorship perspective but we had made some connections to the point that you know samsung was looking for creators to partner with on like a year long ambassadors ship deals and our names were were up there because of the relationships we had created in in the market so i would say the fact that we just stuck in it for ten years has introduced us to people that created opportunity as i would say we are late learners and we've like figuring out youtube took a really long time for us but as we figured it out we were in a position where we had enough relationship that you know our first couple of interviews are like mark has brown lee mister beast like we were able to have these creators on who we had developed relationships with prior that now fit into a format that we had landed on and collaboration on youtube is like that's how you grow you know time and market time and market is an awesome way that's an awesome phrase i've actually never heard that before time and market isn't is a great way just because typically we would sean and i would just say like well just like in the mix and i was just like i've been doing it for a while yeah time market is a far more like formulaic people for investing right like a buffet i think said you know instead of timing the market what matters is time and market and it it sounds pretty similar for what you guys are talking about i would to too that it's it's time and underserved market because you know the reason that jimmy or mister beast even reached out to us is because no one was really talking about creators or about the youtube space for a long period of time and we continue to talk about it while no one really right was giving you the time of day so i feel like it's not that we were just in the market it's that we picked an underserved community and so we happen to be that place where creators could turn that's crypto that's happening right now like i created this crypto media company not long ago called the milk road and it's doing really well but we're so new and crypto is now cool so you don't get credit for being there when it's cool there's a guy there's a show called up only that's on youtube that's started by this this guy kobe and leisure whatever and that they've been doing it for a long time back when like there wasn't a lot of heat in crypto they were still just every week going on and was talking about whatever shooting the shit talking about crypto and so now when famous people wanna go hit the circuit they're like well we gotta go there because they have the respect of people because they were sent they were hanging out here before the tourist arrived you know and yeah you can't you can't beat that no i agree with that i think like you know we watched the people go from being not interested in what we were doing on youtube to extremely interested and then a lot of those people who are interested in the creator economy i think shifted over to web three and so like i think you'd like time and market when you're just like actually like this is the this is the career we've chosen like we're gonna be in this we enjoy this this is what we wanna do this is what brings us fulfillment then you know wherever this goes the ups and downs of it we're just we're just here right and so like i think that is that is an important thing as you're as you're going on your entrepreneurial journey so right now sean and i have a really like our our podcast is doing great we're not we're we're a pod we're like a podcast that sometimes it's posted on youtube and and and so podcast numbers are first but we've each toy around the idea of like maybe we should give this youtube take a try like maybe like separately like in our own like our like you know like we'll pick a niche and and go at it and i've thought about it but i'm like you know i'm not ready to go what whenever i'm gonna do it i'm gonna go all in on it and like maybe hire someone to help me do it can you give me and sean some advice on like look here's like the here the here's like the table stakes in order to get to a hundred or two hundred thousand subscribers inside six or twelve months here's like the the the absolute minimum and keep in mind like assume that budget this isn't it for most people assume that budget is no big deal like we're willing to spend more so here here's something that i think is really important is like you're creating a video podcast so in your mind the thought is there's not much marginal cost in posting this video to youtube you're already we're producing a video and audio right now there is not marginal production cost there is marginal distribution cost you're going to have to spend time thinking about how to distribute this show on youtube and how that difference audio think beyond so think of it's it's like sean does i do something on fitness or anything samsung sean has well sure sure sean one of anything building houses i don't know yeah i think like you do need to go all in you need to understand the audience that you're serving and most importantly you need to understand packaging and what works on youtube from a search perspective and what works on youtube from a click through rate perspective all of youtube is is click through rates and then retention right how get some yeah what works no i mean you're saying you're you're saying understand what are like what what are you getting at what's what's the niche that you would wanna tackle entrepreneurship let's say i'm just gonna make let's say i'm i bought a bunch of i'm i'm buying airbnb let's just use that for an example short buying airbnb b's yeah short term rentals yeah so i think like you would want to go long from a packaging perspective on basically how to make money through airbnb rentals right so maybe you would create a series that's like zero to million dollars in revenue on airbnb rentals episode one right and it's and i wouldn't title it like that but like call i don't know if you have ideas on titles but i think brainstorming titles would be our first step from an audience perspective because you're trying to transform people to understand how they can do the same thing correct yes that would be my assumption yeah so call i guess let's let's spit ball back and forth titles on something like that well even the first thing you said that's a like a story frame right like zero to a million and and rental income thirty first you set the stakes already like man on this mission which i think is not what most people would just naturally think to do but for you guys it's like well if you have a mission people are gonna wanna see if you could do it or not and how to do it they might want that too yeah i think for that example too people are people are doing that and that's not a problem that actually can be to your advantage a lot of times we tell creators you know if there's something you wanna talk about search into youtube sort by mo viewed and see what are the videos that are getting a million views there are definitely videos about you know the business of airbnb bs buying airbnb bs that have over a million views i think that's a good place to start in your journey is like what's currently working you know and then what are those videos about like i think the key for you would be how can i actually make sure that when i get this title thumbnail that's pretty sensational about making a certain amount of money or so you know converting some houses or something like that how can my video actually meet the expectation of the person who clicks you know that it's not maybe you just sitting down talking about it retroactively but you know maybe it is a video that took you two months to make or three months who knows i know but it's gotta match that expectation and and be actually impressive i think crowley packaging it around like i made a million dollars on airbnb in thirty let's say let's cut the steaks to thirty days and basically over the next thirty days you're gonna track how you went from not making any money on airbnb even like how do you make money on airbnb so i think that's that's the packaging you'd have to to fall into and then you'd have to meet that expectation like you'd actually have to do that and then i i i would think about like where where are people currently getting airbnb education outside of youtube are there places that are actually really popular where those communities already hang out where if you major your video you could seed it to them or it would be a success if they started talking about it and sharing it organically what would you thinking about where on the internet do they exist what would early team be would you have just an editor someone filming you would you have a a thumb a thumbnail maker what what would what would your your skeleton bare bones team be for you i think if if you said that like money's is no option right that's that's not sake of just for the sake of argument yes yeah i i would hire a thumbnail designer who is is part youtube strategist most thumbnail designers have a lot of youtube strategy in them as well because if there's they're so linked so yeah i would recommend trying to find someone who really deeply understands packaging and has seen things that work i'm gonna read some titles and maybe you guys can guess the viewership in this exact category how to make your first million on airbnb that yeah i think that's over million yeah nine hundred views oh nine hundred yep you can make a million dollars per year on airbnb in twenty twenty two with the you and all caps oh i hate that that probably has to you i'm gonna say low i'm gonna i'm gonna hope and pray it's low is it low eighteen thousand k how much money my medium i would say it's medium how much money my airbnb be made in its first month hi that one crushed it that's probably shelby church is that shelby church shelby church two hundred thirty five dollars right so so i think already through that exercise you're starting to understand i watched that video by the way that's how i with it shelby video i love her do you know who shelby is sean no she's it she's great yeah she's amazing shelby church it's amazing but i think like that's where do that exercise and packaging like just go through all those and then the ones that are not working upgrade the titles yourself you're like what was wrong with that title what was wrong with that framing did that not match the expectation and then for shelby like what was right about that that framing is really great how much money might airbnb be made in its first month great man and sean talked to this woman named rebecca sean what was your last name rebecca z she's got z or something that she's got a she's got like across all of her things maybe ten or fifteen million subscribers she makes content for like twelve year olds not like little kids but twelve or ten and twelve olds where it's like plays and stuff and she was i was asking i was like man she was like yeah like i i we got to i million subscribers pretty quickly i think like within a year or two years and i was like that's amazing how'd do you you know what was the thing and she was explaining it to me and i was like okay so basically what you're telling me is that you just like quit your job and like you just made this like you're nine to five and you just focused on it and she was like yeah like no one else treated this like a job and this was like yeah i'm at the office at nine i'm working until six seven eight nine ten sometimes but i'm showing up every single day and i'm just like i'm working and versus most people they're just kinda like dick around it's like oh i'll get to it when i get to it yeah and i think studying as well like really being a student of the platform like that's a that took five minutes to look at some of the top performing in that category and dissect what you thought was good bad what worked what didn't work you know i think you have to do that first it's like market research i can find this client in full have you heard of hubspot hubspot is a crm platform so it shares its data across every application every team can stay aligned no out of sync spreadsheets are doing databases hubspot grow better is there a again cool that shows you search volumes on youtube so like you know you could do this with google search you can figure out how many people are searching for these keywords can you do that within youtube mh yeah there's a tool called vid q that you can use there's we do it on google a lot because again like google and youtube are obviously you know connected right so it's what i mean on google searching like google like google you tracker google trends trends i'll use yeah yeah we'll use google trends to track like okay it's this keyword better than this keyword or are people searching this more than this but you know on on youtube specifically we do use vid iq sometimes and tell you like how competitive maybe that that keyword is is there a lot of search traffic on youtube for that and it'll also show you the top videos for that keyword so if you if you go vid iq and you type in airbnb b you're gonna start to see like okay what what are the trending videos in this category what's working what's not working are the thumbnails that are working so yeah and do you guys like vid hughes is a great example of as you guys try to be successful on youtube you're like this is so i wish it was easier to do this type of research and not just see what's popular but how competitive it is and just quickly show me the top videos and that and that thing right so vid becomes a piece of software that you guys might pay for you know is useful to you guys what are some biz what are some tools or things you guys wish existed i know this is a little bit of hard question but like mh there's i don't know hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs who listen into this that will like hear that be like oh i could build that i could turn something like that where you guys aren't not gonna have the time to build it necessarily but what what are some opportunities you see that could serve youtube creators question the two things i wish existed when we first started and that i still think there's opportunities for are legal zoom for creators and turbo tax for creators and i know those two things exist for entrepreneurs but something with a more creator lens and i know there's people starting these now but i think those are really helpful especially on the tax side i think a lot of creators like because there you just have this influx of of freelancers essentially who are now starting to like they it goes really fast from okay i made a little bit of money on youtube too okay wait a second what do i what do i do now now i just made a ton of money on youtube so i think some of that would be really helpful of you know the the back end business side is what you need the most help with your if you're into it like if you go nine to five into youtube you're gonna figure it out if you're really into it you're gonna figure out your niche your category how to find audience time and market baby time and market like you're gonna figure it out you you might have to hedge your bets and have another job while you figure it out or have another source of income but if you're really into it you're gonna figure it out it's it's the back end of you know the the younger like being twenty one and and all of a sudden landing figuring it out really quickly and then being like what do i do now so i think some of that business ops that business admin stuff would be really helpful to to help with creators to make sure things are like clean and and and growing right you were talking about like partnering or like you well i mean what you were saying was about operators creators need more operators and in my head i'm like oh that's cool you just like someone like me who knows how operate a business i just partner with someone like you who's like famous and we do like a fifty fifty split and and i build a business that you just keep getting famous and i agree that that's a great business but in that example as well as the example in your guys partnership and as well as just like a normal person who just wants to bail what happens if one of you guys dies or you get in a fight or you wanna quit is your business just gonna die you know are you gonna be done do you do you think about this i know jenna marble i think is huge on youtube i'm pretty sure she just bounced like she just stood out same with casey neistat he goes i don't feel like making videos so just your money just go away i think creators are a lot like athletes like i think the term creators and athletes are kind of like you can think of them in similar ways so it's kind of like if if we stop playing like yeah your income from playing is is gone i think it's about figuring out the the businesses that can support you outside of of creating videos because the reality is like you can't sell colin and sami and expect someone else to operate it if one of us is gone this version of colin and smear is done that's the reality but the things we build like it's it's a lot of why we built a newsletter because like we we were like okay that follows a similar value prop it's similar in creating content i'd say sam i'm like inspired by a lot of what you did and you know like hey we're educating people about this space we think we could do it in this way we can hire writers we can scale our voice and our thoughts and if we're gone that thing can operate it's not called the common and sami premier newsletter right you know it's called the published press for a reason with that goal in mind that it that it truly can scale beyond us but what we do is is un scalable beyond us and i think we we we're okay with that you know so i think if we if we were to separate in that hypothetical something were to happen i would hope that like let's say i'm no longer around i think sami like could continue the interview show that we're currently doing and serve the brand partners that we have if he wanted to do that that sounds like colin thought about it yeah that sounds like no i'm just saying i like like whereas whereas in the past we format for yeah we had like a really high lift format for creation that just wouldn't have worked like if one of us was gone it wouldn't have worked but right now we have an interview show we have a talk show yeah you know it wouldn't be the same but like you could carry it on yeah what crater surprised you have you come have you guys interviewed anyone or come across a channel where you're like dude this fishing channel that just says fly fishing is making a million dollars a month or the like has there's ever been anything like there's a guy i saw who has a channel just on breaking into locks and it's got like it's a huge channel there's is another channel that where they just smashed off it's like a like like a press i forget what you call yeah but a hydraulic press was there any channel that you come across and you're like man these guys are killing it no one knows about it or at least mainstream doesn't know about it man i wanna i wanna pull up the exact name but it's a barbecue channel there's like there's a whole barbecue genre on youtube that's massive and they do huge partnerships with like brands that you know colin and i would never interact with right like sweet baby rays or stubs or and they're like starting to sell their own rubs right like spice rubs and those are really high margin and like that genre to me is really interesting and people who are into barbecue are really into barbecue so i love that genre i think that's like they're very good businesses there when it comes to selling spice rubs and and barbecue accessories i guess i'm always amazed by channels like the slow mo guys where there's literally no need for language it's just the visual of something happening in slow motion and the viewership is so high because those videos can be watched again and again and again all over the world no matter what language you speak that youtube can place ads globally in in every market and so just the revenue that they get from youtube the platform is out of control that to me is a fascinating business where it's just let's film something in slow motion and and rake in massive advertising dollars you you guys wanna hear some fucked up so sure there's this channel that i follow and it has a huge following and no one talks about it because it's really embarrassing so there's this there's a group of people i'm one of them that we we like like popping z but to take a step yeah to take it a step further there's one where people love seeing dan come off people's head and so because because like when you have dan you like scratch you're like i need to get this out it's killing me and sometimes you can't do it so when you watch other people at least for me and when i watch other people do it i'm like oh i feel the relief like it feels relieving for me to see that and there's this guy i think it's just called like the indian dan barber and he takes guys with dan and he shaves their head and you could see it at all like you could see like his scalp get like cleaned and i was with my friend neville recently and i went to his house and i turned on his youtube and i go hey let me show you this video it's hilarious but don't laugh at me i think i'm a creep eddie if i she went to that video and it was purple he had already clicked on it and i was like dude do you fucking guy you want this dan shit too and it's there's like this whole genre of people if you watch if you do like if you type in like dan removal there's so many videos of people who just love watching or another one is like like seeing sis you know what sis like a lump it body these seen those get removed i fucking love those videos i love them so when i feel you guys don't watch that the make we feel like a free i don't i want no listen listen whenever i come across a good pimple popping video i'm diving in like i'm not i don't shy away from that and i've seen the indian dan guy i don't think i haven't seen that i also there's one account that i like got really weirdly into which was the folding lady on tiktok she just folds clothes in different ways and that's it and like organizes them in her drawers and my drawers are a disaster so it's like this for me it's like this aspirational account that i can watch where she organized organizes stuff well there's a lot of weird stuff out there and how do look at tiktok because this tiktok is this like younger sex version of youtube but it's like you know you're the thirty seven year old actress and now you see this you know twenty one year old come the scene and you're like oh no what's happening over here you know what's the perspective on tiktok for from your guys in point of view i see con i see tiktok it's a bit of like a content accelerator that i give you're new to con con content creation and you wanna find out what works faster then go to tiktok because it's a low barrier to entry to post and if something doesn't get viewership no one really sees it like there's not much weight on it because of the four you page which is like this talent show style format it's like if it's good it'll find people if it's not whatever it doesn't feel like with youtube you know when you start a youtube channel it feels like a statement you're like i'm here to make my own version of some big media company and you know that is there for all of time every time you pivot every time you make a bad video it's just sitting there in your library whereas tiktok it's like it's not much weight on it so just move fast put something out and i think it's a great place to find audience i don't know if it's a great place to monetize that audience though i would say i i think a big reason for that is because it's the it's like the closest thing to a lean back experience right like you just turn it on and you say whatever whatever's is on the for you page like it's really good at finding content that's good for me i'm i might not go in there and search for a creator that's like not really a behavior that i think a lot of people do it's just like you feed me whatever is good here so let's say you take out the top creators on tiktok like the absolute top creators all of our tiktok experience wouldn't be changed that much like it would still find content that's interesting to us so it's actually not a great place for creators it's a great place for content it's not great place for creators to build relationships with their with their fans so my most tiktok creators move to youtube to build that they can build like longer lasting more depth with their audience they can build a library of content that you know you know cruise viewership over time it's it's where like you would if you're serious about the career i think you'd move to youtube tiktok you're you're you're there like tiktok is the creator you're putting content into their system so i think that's an important distinction between the two what what like you guys are not as bullish on tiktok like i've i've kind of thought about like i'll give you an example i put out a tweet the other day sam i don't know if you saw are you did you did see it you get you called the guy in idiot and you were like this guy's is an idiot you should hire up this i put it this i just wanna hire a great content creator because and we talking about the milk man yeah yeah exactly yeah okay i saw it so so this guy i tweeted out this thing mark content creator you just gotta be great content and we will we have distribution will help you accelerate here and for the milk road and we i get this tweet back yesterday that's like for those who haven't seen it it's on my twitter you can go find it but it's this i don't know caller you tell me i thought it was amazing but maybe it's just because it's about our thing was it amazing to to you guys and listen to me i think it's an extremely visual compelling piece of content with in a format where i have to watch to the end you get to see him struggle you just try and finish that gallon in milk you just explain that like you're a machine learning thing tagging it like extremely visually compelling yes piece cool hi high engagement to the end like you know i've seen i've seen too many videos at this point i have to put them in into buckets summarize the video sean so the guy's basically like hey you know you're hiring i saw your tweet you're hiring a content creator and he'd like he used our joke for my first meeting i've moved straight to the end he's like so i've moved straight to the end here i am i've got a gallon of milk i'm gonna drink this to show him my commitment i don't even know what his premise was but he's basically gonna a chug a gallon of milk in order to show how bad he wants this job and he made a funny tiktok out of it with the editing and he's like asking people like hey could he hold this camera and i need to drink this milk because he's like a car mechanics place to they're like no so he puts it on the ground he just takes up shirt he just starts chugging this milk and it's just awful and then he's like has little cuts in between where he's like what couldn't they they've called it the juice road and because he's like you having to drink milk and you know just little funny bits like that and he and whatever he finishes it he celebrates he pours the milk all over his head at the end and he's like whatever he sends that over so i hired him so i tweeted out i was like this is amazing you're hired i just talked to him on the phone before this and he's like alright like what's the game plan and i was like well i think the first thing we gotta do is we gotta pick the channel we wanna be on because i think the platform will dictate what content works on that platform yeah and so like like have a buddy steve steve bartlett who who says this which is like you need to hack the algorithm like you need to understand how the what the algorithm wants and then you have to be able to serve it to them if you want to grow like faster than normal and so and so we were debating like should we start on youtube or should we start in tiktok and in my head i'm like i use both i love both products but tiktok does definitely feel like a i don't know it just feels like the growing wave compared to where youtube is and i'm like i guess if you're starting fresh you would just start on the platform that's like more of a growing wave and like try to make a happen over there it's but but that was the downside is even if we get viral growth from it like those people may never see us or hear from us again because it's just the way that tiktok works so that's why i was like i don't know i'm not sure about this bet here which one should we go for your guy's perspective sounds like it'd lean more towards youtube that right well well i actually though the opposite yeah i would say the opposite go ahead go yeah i was gonna say i don't think you have to pick and choose necessarily because let's say you're gonna commit to short form vertical content which obviously you would put on tiktok right short you could post that yes you could post the same thing on youtube shorts as well as on reels maybe and like you know keep that up for a certain amount of time and see what takes off because you may find yourself in a situation where youtube shorts takes off and all a sudden people are subscribing to your youtube channel for shorts and then if you wanted to transition to a long form video you have a home for it and that's a place where you could build a deeper connection on on tiktok you don't really have that option right now a long form youtube video i'd say like that's the highest barrier to entry when it comes to content so i think short form vertical is the lowest is is a lower barrier to entry not the lowest like a tweet is probably the lowest barrier to entry but like that is you wanna take more shots to figure out your format your style it might take a hundred videos to be like actually that's our format that one works or maybe you figure it out and this guy's just got a junk milk every day until you guys you know get enough users but like i think that's what it is it's format development and you need a lot of shots on goal to to kinda to catch tell you my my first assignment i gave them yeah sure i was like alright here's the first first thing man on the street style interview you know when you go like you seen this on late night chairs you go and you just stop somebody in times square you're like hey do you know about this and then they give you some goofy answer you cut them together i said go outside of a strip club and ask stripper if we're in a recession and like ask stripper have the economy is going and basically that's what he's gonna do he's gonna go and man the streets fell outside a strip club and when the stripper come out he's gonna ask him how's the economy be doing because they are the front lines they feel it first you know they see what you know it the car talk from all the from all the drunk hedge fungi guys yeah they're they they get the they get all the scoop and they see the tip how they're how they're changing cash you know you know in real time so that's gonna be the first piece of content sure yeah i mean i think that can work i think that's a very specific audience and and it'll work for that audience right so yeah dude what happens on the point i was at a point where so our podcast gets one or two million podcast mh downloads a month and yeah compared to like a lot like a website that gets ten million i'm like i think we're we have a bigger of big we don't have a bigger but we have a far more loyal following because people listened to us for an hour out of time with youtube be watch you for ten twenty thirty minutes at a time and i was gonna say i i would've have thought that you guys had one or two million ish downloads a month views a month i'm looking at your stats on social blade you were at like a million a month every month eight hundred four hundred five hundred and then all of a sudden you got to like twenty seven twenty eight yeah forty two million a month what the hell happened is that from shorts yeah that's a lot from shorts but shorts propelled the other content like basically the way we view shorts it's like a lot of people had a lot of problem with like oh you can't monetize shorts and i was like but if i told you as a as any business that i had a way that was lower lift to get you in front of way more people to get your brand exposure to millions of people once you take it and that's what we did like right when shorts kind of emerge we're like okay we can make a short in a day whereas it takes us a very like a week to two weeks to make a a full long for a youtube video we can make a shorten in a day and so let's just try it and as we started to try it like we had shorts that pushed ten million views twenty million views seven million views eight million views and those people were subscribing and then there was concern like are those people gonna watch the other content but because the shorts were you know directly connected to the longer form content we were just aggregating more people who then watched our library of content so it worked for us and that has fluctuate too i think we're back like right now i think we're in like the nine ten million views a month range on the channel and shorts are not like as big of a factor we're not putting out as many shorts but a lot more people are watching our library right now and that is what youtube is like you're building a library of content that you know our mister beast interview for example you mentioned it it's pushing eleven million views right now but in the first month that did a million views so you know you look at now it'll it'll be a year in september it'll probably have twelve thirteen million views you know and so that's it's about this library building a piece of content that can be viewed over the next year or two years five years and when you do that it does have you know this compounding effect especially when shorts are added to the equation as an acc we have a we had a short viral recently and it's sean explaining who like one of the ball brothers is and i have i don't pay attention any of that any sports and they're it all the guys i just randomly click on the comments and they're all like these fucking guys are idiots like here's the ability to think about lamar i forget who it is sean but yeah yeah yeah and you're like explaining this as people are just ripping us the short comments or maybe just where you went viral really yeah yeah yeah whenever any of our videos hit that mass scale that's when the comment sort of turn and it's just it's kind of a good sign in a way it's just just what happens yeah there's one that there's one so we do this clip contest for the podcast so we're like hey we'll take any of our content hit you own a channel so you make your own tiktok channel your own shorts channel and cut these clips and basically we just want our clips out there so we're kinda doing it different than both where you guys want to you guys want to build your specific channels we're like you can call your thing my first million clips or whatever and go hand with the content you own that we just want distribution and we give out a prize for whoever like does the best job each month of cutting it and people of like what so the first first winner they had a few million views on their like tiktok channel or whatever and we paid them the five grand you know prize for our thing but they've actually turned that into a business for other podcasts and that business will do like a million dollars in revenue this year as like a you know pretty young kid then with this one just yesterday somebody said oh here's the clip that's gone got one point two million views and it's this clip from an interview we did with guy neil patel and he's talking about how he spends like a hundred eighty grand a month that's just like monthly lifestyle burn rate and and the title of it is like billionaire like billionaire explains how he spends a hundred and eighty grand a month and like the guy's not a billionaire but like doesn't matter like the you the kid who's running this channel is probably like fuck that's gonna be better then the top comments are like like that's not that's neil patel he's not a billionaire and then like the this guy is like egg it on he's like question more question mark question mark and this is only response instead of being like oh yeah sorry that's a mistake and then somebody else says who is this guy and he described he writes the founder of google question mark and then there's a hundred comments being like that's not the founder of google and i was like who's this genius that's hacking the engagement by putting dumb comments mh as the creator just to get people r up so that this you know the algorithm sees that this video has a ton of engagement on it i mean we've played around with that a bit that's that's that's definitely something that creators do we've we've misspelled words sometimes in our subtitles we've right we we had a short where we we interviewed the chief business officer of youtube robert kin and the short begins like we interviewed the we were we were wanted to say we interviewed the head of business at youtube and we said we interviewed the head of youtube at business and just kept moving on and like people re rewatch it so many times to be like wait what did they say so like i i think there's a there's a lot of fun ways to play with that and play with the audience and you we would never do that be sam would like do that like now we wouldn't do that but this person who's doing this has nothing to lose so they're of course gonna like just crank the dial up to level twelve of like yeah spam is because they're like what cares it's not my brain it's not my contact why not yeah yeah yeah i think like your drake steak short like that that piece there's definitely a short there right like that was really fascinating you can tell that in a really concise you know like one clip a bit like that was really interesting that you guys what what you guys talked about and i think like that was one of your better thumbnails too i would say that came across i recommended like but the challenge there is that your time stamp at a hundred or sorry an hour twenty four i think like anyone's expectation might be like wait is that an hour twenty four on drake and and and steak and then you know there might be an opportunity to just say hey can we just clip out the part that was about that and then you know lead people to to watch the full tank we're listening listen the full thing on right on audio feeds i the the guys who edit the podcast i think they also edit the youtube so hey guys to hear that do it please yeah i think i think that's your opportunity is like hey it's it's actually eight minutes on on the drake steak situation correct and it that that was your best thumbnail i think like that that caught my attention that made me curious so yeah well dudes thanks for coming on this is sick i've been listening to you or watching you guys for a while it's really awesome that you came on and it's awesome that you knew about the pod so that was really cool and we appreciate it this is great and or you sean we both run run or ran newsletter companies so you've been helpful with us for new videos if you ever wanna shoot the shit about newsletters we got you man that'd be awesome absolutely yeah definitely we definitely wanna learn that's yeah right cool alright