Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Conversations with designers, founders, and builders behind some of the best work
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:17:08
Unknown
it's really similar to a garden, like when you're gardening, you're growing like a so you plant seeds in the ground. The seeds are growing up. Biomass is being generated right by the water, sun and nutrients. If you continue to take from that system without adding any nutrients back to the soil, eventually a depleted soil and nothing grows.
00:00:17:10 - 00:00:23:07
Unknown
It's literally the same thing. If you take too much from the audience without giving enough value, you don't have an audience anymore,
00:00:23:09 - 00:00:24:19
Unknown
the what we're trying to do now is
00:00:24:19 - 00:00:44:03
Unknown
So the theme this week is all about new media, and specifically what it means for people like you and I who are trying to promote our work. And if you've been paying attention, VCs in tech are fascinated by new media companies right now. For Kevin, a spear to who runs Epic Gardening on YouTube. This is not news to him.
00:00:44:04 - 00:01:05:06
Unknown
He's been doing this for over 13 years. I first met him in the underground marketing forum world of the 20 tens. We were all optimizing for search engines and link farms and keyword stuffing our websites. But eventually I moved on to software and Kevin moved on to making quality content. And both of our bets were pretty similar. We were done with the hacks.
00:01:05:06 - 00:01:30:02
Unknown
We wanted to build something durable, and now epic gardening is worth tens of millions of dollars and has just as many subscribers. It's a media company and a commerce company with its own warehouses, gardening products, software products, and TV show partnerships. So as Silicon Valley makes its way into internet media, I wanted to ask Kevin, what does new media mean for people like you and I?
00:01:30:04 - 00:01:38:12
Unknown
Let's get into it.
00:01:38:14 - 00:02:00:13
Unknown
I've seen, a16z who's got their new media division. Now, we saw OpenAI just acquired TBN for, I think it's like rumored around a nine figure deal. There's other VC firms, slow writing these, like, creator checks. And so it seems like Silicon Valley, has just discovered the creator world, right? And you've been in this thing, I think, like for 13 plus years, man.
00:02:00:13 - 00:02:15:18
Unknown
For me, for the kind of stuff we're doing. It feel it does feel a little validating to see some of that attention. What was kind of the first time you were like, yeah, it feels valid. What I'm doing right now. I mean, a long time ago, bro, like I was a blogger, you know? 2013, I started the blog.
00:02:15:18 - 00:02:37:09
Unknown
I didn't go full time on epic until about three and a half years later. So? So it was like a hobby project. You know? But I mean, in 2013, having a YouTube channel, you were eight years late compared to when the platform actually launched. Like if you look at a company like Smosh, who's been on the platform as long as YouTube existed, 20 years or so, 21 now, I came on as a second generation YouTuber.
00:02:37:13 - 00:02:59:22
Unknown
You know, like most YouTubers have a life span of like 5 to 7 years or so before they either like, get canceled or like crash out or, you know, something. They just evolve or retire. And so for me, coming on 2013, I was like, is it too late to start a YouTube channel? Obviously not true. Right? But, you know, seeing seeing a lot of the stuff going around in tech right now has been cool to see for sure.
00:03:00:00 - 00:03:17:19
Unknown
At the same time, slightly amusing, I think. I had a tweet where I was talking to Isaac Medeiros, who runs. He ran many katana. He had a kitty brand. He's a fantastic shortform content creator. And I said something like, it's kind of like, if I was a boomer watching my child get into like classic rock and then like, tell me how legendary Jimi Hendrix was.
00:03:17:19 - 00:03:41:07
Unknown
It's like like, yeah, I was at the show. So I know, you know, it's kind of how it feels. Yeah, it's been wild. And actually, for people don't know, we ran in some of the same circles back in like the early 2010 era on internet marketing forms. And if I remember that time correctly, people were were buying offshore articles like top level domains were were named exactly the keywords.
00:03:41:08 - 00:04:03:22
Unknown
There was a lot of this gamification around, like link packages you'd buy for websites. And the pendulum swung and it became actually content is King made something that people actually want to spend their time on. And it feels like that had a moment. And then like as we got back into short form, it was like thumbnails. It was optimizations.
00:04:03:22 - 00:04:25:10
Unknown
It was all the things again, outside of like, make great content. What do you think? What are we over optimizing on right now? Well, back then, YouTube, although it was around and video content of course was around, it just wasn't as ubiquitous, of course. Right. And like the genres weren't as expanded the formats. There wasn't a playbook for YouTube as much as there is now.
00:04:25:12 - 00:04:45:23
Unknown
So back then, you know, when you're talking blogging, like these internet marketing forms you and I were on, that's a non I mean, that's effectively anonymous. Unless you're putting your face on the blog, it's kind of like not having an identity on Twitter being an an add on like troll comments or something. So you start to see the strategies developed back in those days of black hat, gray hat, white hat, etc..
00:04:45:23 - 00:05:13:06
Unknown
Right? Because there's there wasn't as much of an incentive on your reputation to be white hat or aka just like a normal ethical person in my opinion. But back then, you know, people would would do all these sort of links, spam and create all these networks and this and that. Because the dominant form of, of online attention, so to speak, was just to get traffic to a website and then you're monetizing that traffic with affiliate links or referrals or Legion or whatever the case may be.
00:05:13:07 - 00:05:33:08
Unknown
E-com, of course, these days the whole concept of like an influencer is a real thing. Now, like back then, there were some early ones, like definitely there were some early ones. It's just like very few of them were doing like full stack businesses back then. Whereas these days I would say like the legibility of of how to be a creator has never been higher.
00:05:33:10 - 00:05:53:03
Unknown
You know, you can buy a course on literally how to master any of these platforms, whether the course is good or not. That's different story, but you can buy a course on like becoming a LinkedIn master or a short form master, or a YouTuber or a educational YouTuber. I mean, it's like it's down to the point where it's it's niche down based on the platform and the type of creator you want to be, you know?
00:05:53:03 - 00:06:20:19
Unknown
So we're almost we're almost over optimizing on optimizing it in general, you know, if that makes sense. Like I think if you see, look, if you look at the rise of like, someone like a Sam Sulak who came out firing and like maybe 20, 24 or so early 2024, you know, he was dropping 50 minute vlogs, lifting no standard YouTube intro, no standard thumbnail, very actually suboptimal title, so to speak.
00:06:21:00 - 00:06:48:11
Unknown
But he was still cranking views out. And then there were all these think pieces on. Well, why is why is Sam still like doing so. Well like actually it's the return to authenticity in this. And that's like media to some degree always is about authenticity in a way. You know, but but at the same time, like, you can be authentically boring too, you know, like like Sam Soo, like, is authentic and interesting because he looks like a, like an over juiced cattle, like he's huge, you know what I mean?
00:06:48:13 - 00:07:08:01
Unknown
And so, yeah, if I was that giant, maybe I had my thumbnail entitled, don't have to do as much work. You know. So like becoming something worth remarking on is is almost its own challenge. Like, you can't teach that in the course. You have to be it. There's this there's this like fluctuation of trends. Like something pops off, something gets proven.
00:07:08:01 - 00:07:29:07
Unknown
Sam Soo like everyone says, race to authenticity. Then all of a sudden TBN gets acquired, so everyone's racing. Oh, we need live streaming now. Live streaming. You know, and we need to be responding to what's happening as soon as it's happening. So it just feels like, for me, it's always been. Where do I think the pendulum swinging next?
00:07:29:07 - 00:07:54:11
Unknown
Are you somebody when you think about formats, is that something like you try to predict or do you just go with like, I think this would be interesting. I mostly go with what I think is interesting. I mean, I think if anything, we might lag behind on like chasing, you know, like we're not we're not dropping epic gardening live right now, for example, or when su like stuff or like the return to authenticity, like an unscripted longform, kind of rambly, vloggy type videos went out.
00:07:54:13 - 00:08:20:12
Unknown
I didn't just immediately start doing those either. You know, I think the truth is, thing with online content is like every true outlier is a one of one, every single one. And so when like if you look at the TBN guys, I mean, people have written a million things on why they think that worked. And the simplest answer, at least in my opinion, it was something no one had done exactly like that before.
00:08:20:14 - 00:08:42:16
Unknown
And it hit the market that it wanted to hit. You could do something no one's done, and it's trash, right? You can you got to do something. No one's done that they didn't know they wanted, you know, and the, like, super slick production value with two cool dudes who are making tech cool in a way that, tech like, inherently inside tech people genuinely just don't seem to be able to do.
00:08:42:18 - 00:09:06:23
Unknown
If you look at like MTS and some of these other things coming out, it's just my take. Obviously, it's no shade to anyone, but like, they made it cool in a way that no one had made it cool yet. And clearly communicated like the value of tech. And they were fanboys of it, right? You know, so I think you also saw like part, part of what made that so interesting to me is like tech has always been for as long as I follow the space at least antagonistic towards the media.
00:09:07:05 - 00:09:29:13
Unknown
Right. Like, oh, they're picking on us all the time, they hate us this and that. And then so, so their dominant message oftentimes was just like, everyone hates us, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, they're like the best comms people in almost any industry. Super rich. A lot of the changes they make affect society in like a huge way. You know, it's like pretend it's like this sort of pretend oppression, you know what I mean?
00:09:29:15 - 00:09:58:01
Unknown
So a lot of their messaging was just like complaining all the time. And having a show come out that just kind of showcased it in a more chill way, like, like almost like a comedy podcast, but but with a different tone. It just hit had a very Pat McAfee vibe to me. I kind of like saw your show some parallels there, and I look for a lot of parallels in things that, you know, when I think about, I'm maybe four years into this, but two years seriously thinking about the YouTube side.
00:09:58:01 - 00:10:13:16
Unknown
And you've as you've been doing this for for over a decade, 13 years, you had like a cohort of people that you could probably point to who were trying to do the thing that you consider peers at that level. And I do the same now of the people who who made it anywhere close to where epic gardening has made it.
00:10:13:16 - 00:10:36:14
Unknown
Now, what are the ones you know of those who didn't? What did they optimize for that you chose not to? Okay, so there's so many there's so many ways that you go wrong online as far as like not having a longevity to your career, you know, so one of them is you, you get platform stuck. And so, you know, the blog at back in the day, man, like when I quit to do it full time.
00:10:36:14 - 00:10:50:03
Unknown
Epic news. Make like five bucks a month, you know. But the blog but did become a powerhouse of revenue for like a 1 or 2 person team. It was like 40 or 50 grand a month. Like no one's no one's mad about that in any in any part of the world. If you're earning that much a month right.
00:10:50:05 - 00:11:09:19
Unknown
So you could get complacent and be like, okay, well, this is this is fine. I'm going to ride this. And some of the cohort you're talking about of that era for me was a lot of like food bloggers, garden bloggers, mommy bloggers, lifestyle bloggers, and all of them, except the ones who have continued to be successful, just never evolved past a blog, like, ever.
00:11:09:20 - 00:11:26:17
Unknown
I'm talking like I was at a retreat with an ad network like 2 or 3 months ago. And some of the people I know from back in those days still literally just have a blog, and they just write articles about whatever their niches, and they're like, yeah, you know, ad rev's down, like, I don't know what to do next.
00:11:26:17 - 00:11:46:21
Unknown
I'm like, what to do next was ten years ago. You should have been building a different platform, you know what I mean? But that's that's, that's personal. Tastes like some people don't want to to have a content empire scale to the moon, right? There's nothing wrong with that. But if you do, like, even within YouTube, I was just at YouTube's Creator Summit and hearing what some of the top, top YouTubers in the game are doing.
00:11:46:21 - 00:12:02:00
Unknown
I'm like, yeah, I'm not thinking on that level right now, you know what I mean? And it's a choice. Do I, do I start doing that or do I like, focus on other parts of the business? Like for me, it's products. Products are really important. Maybe they aren't, top YouTubers making money off ad rev. So it's all choices.
00:12:02:00 - 00:12:27:10
Unknown
But like, you have to keep you have to keep playing the game and you have to keep getting better at a rate at which you can continue to play. You know, like if you think about finances, if you're not making as much as inflation, you're losing money, right? As the same with like skills online. If you're not skilling up at the at the base rate of what the entire, you know, content creator population is skilling up at, then you're actually getting worse.
00:12:27:12 - 00:12:55:13
Unknown
So you have to continue to improve. And ideally at a faster rate than everyone else is improving. You know, one thing that I really appreciate about you is you're very transparent on on how epic gardening runs as a business. You share a lot of takes out there on on just everything you've learned so far. And I think for, you know, as I think about, what would it take to build a media studio, like a media empire the size of 40, $50 million?
00:12:55:14 - 00:13:12:13
Unknown
You know, it's it can't just be ad sponsorships. Meanwhile, we do hear like that TBN was, you know, close to 30,000,000 in 1 year on that alone. Yeah. I'm curious. Hear from you. How would you rate kind of your panel on this, like YouTube ads, brand deals, the botanical wholesale, all that well products is products is over 90% easy.
00:13:12:16 - 00:13:39:12
Unknown
Yeah. So, so, like, you're right. Like, can epic be a $40 million brand on ads? Absolutely not. It's just not possible. The gardening media is not that large. If we took all of it, there's probably not $50 million to spend. Especially because, like, these are this is an industry where, you know, teaching someone what an influencer, a creator or new media, so to speak, which we I'm sure we could talk about the phrasing.
00:13:39:14 - 00:13:59:21
Unknown
They don't have a level of sophistication on that. You have to teach them that. Whereas if you look at TVP, I mean, like Collins here did a good piece about this niche media, right? If you're going to go niche, will you better have like if you have a like a low Tam, like low consumption rate, like streams and YouTube videos, it's not like they're getting hundreds of thousands of views, right.
00:14:00:03 - 00:14:22:20
Unknown
But they don't need to because the views that they're getting are from like the C-suite of every important AI, tech, etc. company, on planet Earth and the CMO who's paying for the marketing budget and all those people are sophisticated enough to know that. So they know if they buy a spot that it's worth whatever they were charging for it, I think acquired, just just put out their price list.
00:14:22:22 - 00:14:41:05
Unknown
They're sold through maybe 27 on like mid roles and title sponsorships for like many millions of dollars. So if you are going to go into a niche media, audience, then hopefully they have dollars to spend. If you're not going to offer a product or service, if you're going to offer a product or service, then you can just say a few to the media revenue.
00:14:41:05 - 00:15:11:15
Unknown
You don't need it. How do you think about licensing and owning the IP of the media itself? You have to, I think. I mean, you have to we you made some mistakes in the past where we didn't, and there was no point to doing that, you know, because you're paying for for media creation that you don't own. And it's very difficult to monetize on the back of that, because now you need to make a direct ROI in the media itself, because you don't own the media, you know, so you don't have any sort of like second order use for it down the road.
00:15:11:17 - 00:15:29:03
Unknown
So like hypothetical example, you come across a gardening creator, right? And you say, hey, we love your stuff. You know, we don't talk so much about bonsai, but we want to bring you in as a bonsai creator, and we're going to pay you X a year. And, you're going to post bonsai content. But they own the IP of it.
00:15:29:05 - 00:15:49:00
Unknown
It's a nonstarter. I can't do it because if I'm funding the creation of the media, I need to own the media. Right. Because oftentimes, I mean, even back in the blog days, the math was very simple. It would be like, you know, article costs X to create and it takes Y months to generate that much ad rev off of the article.
00:15:49:02 - 00:16:11:02
Unknown
So it's almost like a calc to LTV type situation in ecom where it's like, okay, well it takes ten months to even earn back enough ad rev on average for this article to pay for the article. So in a year I'm slowly basically making like an ad revenue 80 off of this. This article, you know, so yeah, you have to I don't see how you do it without owning the IP.
00:16:11:03 - 00:16:33:08
Unknown
I mean, I know that with Epic Gardening, and I'm curious if you can talk about any of this with your home Depot series. You've got Samsung fast. You have a lot of things, projects happening there. How do those types of deals like shake up for you? Well, I mean, the beauty of having a platform, right, is that especially in one that's like pretty ubiquitous, like, you know, generally everyone I think loves the idea of gardening.
00:16:33:08 - 00:16:52:16
Unknown
If they're not even if they're not gardening, and so in some of these cases, like the Samsung deal, we have a great partnership there with the woman who runs it, and she's just been an epic fan. She likes to garden, you know, and so when she's thinking about some of these new media creators to bring on, a channel, we, we pop up.
00:16:52:16 - 00:17:13:17
Unknown
Right. And so there's, there's a little bit of a warmth to that lead, which is great. Similar with our Home Depot deal. You know, we have some fans in the organization, even down to, like, the the seed company acquisition that that was, I think partially helped by simply the fact that, I wore their hat for six months in our YouTube videos before we had closed the deal.
00:17:13:19 - 00:17:32:01
Unknown
And, you know, a lot of people in there or any new us. And so there's a little bit of that going on, but, it doesn't mean you need it. You don't need, like, a warm lead. It just helps a lot now with deals and brand deals. And we're thinking a lot about this too, because, you know, at first it was like, yeah, we'll sell some mid-roll.
00:17:32:01 - 00:17:51:05
Unknown
You'll get a mention. And I think there's still a lot of that happening. Short form seems to have had a great moment with a lot of this just dedicated. UGC how are you guys thinking about? I mean, is it pretty straightforward? Do you see that changing? Well, we had a phase. I mean, for most of Epic's life I basically did no brand deals.
00:17:51:10 - 00:18:06:06
Unknown
Yeah. Because I just didn't I just didn't want to, I just don't I'm not the biggest fan of doing them, and I certainly wouldn't do it for a brand I didn't like right or didn't trust. And unfortunately, like whatever's coming through these YouTube agencies, a lot of times it's those, right. So you got to say no to those.
00:18:06:06 - 00:18:23:13
Unknown
But we started doing a little bit more because our content or it became more expensive to run. And so if I can, if I can make that piece of media, let's just say a YouTube video in this case, break even off the back of, of a, of a sponsorship immediately, instead of having to wait for ad rev to kick in.
00:18:23:13 - 00:18:45:19
Unknown
If the video performs, then that's really good for for us as a org, because I can pay for the team and then we can continue to create. Right. The problem is like kind of like what you're saying, like how do you do the integration? Yeah. If you if you integrate it in a way that, alienates the audience slowly over time, then of course, you're going at you're like kind of like on a sinking ship, downward spiral.
00:18:45:20 - 00:18:51:23
Unknown
And so I think we just jam packed a little too much brand partnership in, in a time when
00:18:52:01 - 00:19:07:01
Unknown
you think about someone watching with no YouTube premium, think about the average viewer. They're getting pre-roll, mid-roll and post roll ads, like every video. You're probably recommending something to them in the video. Like in our case, maybe we have a seed variety we think you should check out.
00:19:07:03 - 00:19:34:16
Unknown
And then I'm going to give you a burned in 62nd read and or like dedicated video sponsor. That video has to be so good for you to put up with as a viewer. Three different monetization paths, right? And so to me, if you have the benefit of having a service or product that's downstream of the media, you should try your best to do not monetize super hard upfront because, you're just taking too much out of the system.
00:19:34:18 - 00:19:52:21
Unknown
You know, like it's really similar to a garden, like when you're gardening, you're growing like a so you plant seeds in the ground. The seeds are growing up. Biomass is being generated right by the water, sun and nutrients. If you continue to take from that system without adding any nutrients back to the soil, eventually a depleted soil and nothing grows.
00:19:52:21 - 00:19:59:04
Unknown
It's literally the same thing. If you take too much from the audience without giving enough value, you don't have an audience anymore,
00:19:59:06 - 00:20:00:03
Unknown
you know?
00:20:00:03 - 00:20:00:23
Unknown
And so
00:20:01:01 - 00:20:13:04
Unknown
the what we're trying to do now is we're doing way less brand deals in general. If we are doing them, we're being very, very strict on what kind of integrations we allow and like the pushback we'll give to a brand.
00:20:13:04 - 00:20:30:11
Unknown
If someone says, like, you know, we need you to say exactly this, or we need to watermark up here, we'll just say politely, like, we're not going to do that because it's not in your best interests, because it's not in our audience's best interest. And whatever's in our audience is best interest is in all of our best interest.
00:20:30:13 - 00:20:42:17
Unknown
So I'm not going to make a stupid, a stupid or a more stupid video, basically, or worse video. And, you know, some brands get it and some brands don't. And the ones that don't, you just, you just can't work with them.
00:20:42:19 - 00:20:49:04
Unknown
Now, I think it's interesting how you think about this, because you are thinking about how do we make this worthwhile as a video.
00:20:49:04 - 00:21:10:12
Unknown
And I do want to ask like what your process is for that, but you've also introduced, I think you said that, a huge percentage of your viewership is coming from televisions. They're watching it. And so how did you to put it? That's crazy. That is a crazy number. It's like exactly 50% it's climbing to. And so that seemed like that sparked this idea for a QR code.
00:21:10:12 - 00:21:28:15
Unknown
Right. Which solves like one of those massive issues of attribution which all of us are trying to figure out in our brand deals. I mean, how how creative are you trying to be with these integrations, or is that like, was it as simple as two things that you are is like QR was like the only way in a world where YouTube hadn't pushed out updates for TV.
00:21:28:17 - 00:21:49:09
Unknown
But YouTube has a whole department of their company called Living Room Now, which is what they're calling their TV viewership sort of segment. And I just got back from the Creator Summit, and I can't say exactly what the releases are yet, but like, what they're doing in television right now is is pretty wise. So a lot of things, because most people are second screening anyways when they watch freaking TV, right?
00:21:49:09 - 00:22:14:01
Unknown
And their, their, their phone out or doing a texting whatever. So knowing that, the phone can effectively become an interactive device to the YouTube is on TV, right? And so maybe QR codes won't be as relevant because you'll actually be able to browse whatever's being referenced on the TV YouTube video on your phone. Right? You'll be able to maybe you'll be able to do comments on your phone, on the actual video that you're watching.
00:22:14:01 - 00:22:33:03
Unknown
You know, so I think that's that's going to be interesting to see kind of where that all goes. Because you're right. Like, if you're on TV, first of all, it changes the type of content you have to make because the TV, like the psychographic experience of watching television, is different than browsing on your phone, and it's different than on your desktop.
00:22:33:05 - 00:22:54:21
Unknown
You're probably not clicking around as much on a desktop to find a good video than you are on mobile, right? You're not. You're probably not navigating shorts on mobile or television the second you go to TV. For almost anyone alive, you're used to watching movies and television shows, meaning the runtimes that you're expecting when you turn the TV on is like 30 minutes, 60 minutes or 2 hours, right?
00:22:54:23 - 00:23:15:17
Unknown
So what you're seeing now is everyone on YouTube who knows what they're doing on television production is making longer videos because no one's sitting there most of the time. Click like, you can't click around that fast on TV, you know? So you're going to stick with the video a little bit more often, or you're just going to watch it in the background, like while you're making a loaf of bread or something.
00:23:15:19 - 00:23:50:01
Unknown
And so we've stretched our episode a little bit, and I think we there's a lot more we can do there. Producing for television. How do you how do you think about format experimentation and like, what are some examples of where you've said, okay, we're going to kill this format because of, you know, why criterion. Yeah. I mean, you know, the way, the way I try to think about it is like you're always either putting video out, you know, is in a format that works, or you're putting a video out in a format that you hope will work one day, you know, because why would you do anything other than that if you do
00:23:50:01 - 00:24:08:14
Unknown
something other than that, you just like this is going to suck. You know, so you don't do that. But, yeah, I mean, we're we're hunting for formats. Hopefully ten, 15% of the are uploads, the other uploads we're trying to put out something we know the audience already likes, because you can't have a channel offering very few examples.
00:24:08:16 - 00:24:25:02
Unknown
You can't really have a channel that is so unpredictable as you never know what's coming next, because then it's like, well, why am I subscribing here? Why? Why am I a part of this audience? If it's like one day I do this, next day I do that next day. It's a completely different thing that no one in my audience really cares about.
00:24:25:02 - 00:24:48:02
Unknown
You know, the only caveat to that is like, sometimes there are channels, and I admire these ones where basically the audience is coming simply for the persona, and that that person is so engaging, it doesn't actually matter what they're doing. So in a way, you could say it's a, it's a random channel or a variety channel, but to me, the correct way to think about it is it's actually a single format channel.
00:24:48:02 - 00:25:06:03
Unknown
And the format is I just want this person on the screen, you know, like, moist critical is a good example of that. And he's maybe the best example, because he can talk about drama. He'll put a music video out, he'll like randomly drop a one hour episode where he's like, blind dating someone, you know what I mean?
00:25:06:05 - 00:25:23:01
Unknown
So he's known for it, but you got to be known for it, right? You can't, like, switch your channel to that. But anyways, yeah, we're always hunting for for better formats. When I think about the YouTube channel and I feel like we've we did this, I did this incorrectly. I started in a single lane single format and then we kind of branched out.
00:25:23:01 - 00:25:39:08
Unknown
But then when I branched out, I tried to do too many things at once and it was really hard and it's still very hard. But then I'm starting to realize we were able to make maybe three formats work, and they all live on the same YouTube channel. And I fought with this idea on whether that was a good idea or not.
00:25:39:08 - 00:26:00:04
Unknown
And I thought, what are these three like a podcast that I do like this. Right. Okay. We've got like this, this rich documentary series that we're producing go on location, and then we have kind of a middle ground, which is like a video essay that I talk through here in the studio. It's all me. It's all similar topics, but they're just kind of like, those are the three formats.
00:26:00:04 - 00:26:22:22
Unknown
And we've we've long considered should we spin off a new YouTube or should we like, consider our channel like a menu of these three different formats. And it's and so far we've done the you know, we've we've kept it in one. But I mean the, the maxim that I've used and I've heard other people say in kind of a, the like how to be a creator space on YouTube is like same audience, same channel, different audience, different channel.
00:26:23:00 - 00:26:42:15
Unknown
So if the audience is truly differentiated, then it makes sense to make it a separate channel, especially because we're now in an era where subscriber counts are effectively meaningless. It's vanity. Right? And so there's so many channels I find these days that are it 1K2K5K ten k 20 k subs getting 300 k on a video, so your sub counts irrelevant.
00:26:42:15 - 00:27:09:20
Unknown
You know, if the video does well and can like coalesce around a specific topic, even if it's like, you know, you talk about design, tech, etc.. The best example at least I have for this is there's Epic Gardening, which is our main channel. In 2020, I bought a house and I knew when I bought that house the logic, business logic at least, was I'm going to probably be able to pay this house off just by making more content here and expanding my garden and being able to show people how to grow more things.
00:27:09:22 - 00:27:31:12
Unknown
That ended up being true. But at the same time, I was like, well, I want to get into cooking chickens. Like different aspects of what a life as a gardener is. So I made a channel called Epic Homesteading and this is during the pandemic. So of course we had a lot of attention during that time. Gardening was really hot, and we got to 40 K subs on that channel with no videos.
00:27:31:14 - 00:27:50:22
Unknown
There was simply there wasn't a video up yet. So. So I bought a house. I put a picture up on our community tab and I said, if you want more than just gardening, check out this next project. The videos coming first, videos coming soon. And so that channel has two different differentiators. Number one, it is not strictly an education channel like epic is.
00:27:51:04 - 00:28:14:20
Unknown
Epic is edutainment for a broader audience and a more beginner audience. Epic homesteading is almost a lifestyle vlog day in the life type. Content will sometimes mix in education, but the through line is it's almost like there's edutainment and then there's like tainment edu. It's like the reverse. You know, that's not a great way to put it, but entertainment leads on that.
00:28:14:21 - 00:28:32:18
Unknown
And, and I've never really dropped many lifestyle or vloggy type episodes on epic epic gardening. So it is a truly different audience and it's a little bit more of a core audience. It's almost like, hey, your channel gets big enough. Sometimes your superfans want deeper, right? And so that's where I gave them their. In your case, it's hard to say.
00:28:32:18 - 00:28:52:10
Unknown
I mean, I would do an audit on like, are these three formats really crushing it. And if if performance not crushing it then it probably has to go anyways. But if one's doing super, super well, it's like not sitting with the current audience that then. Yeah, it's generally not great for a channel because the algo is going to say.
00:28:52:12 - 00:29:10:00
Unknown
Like the results here are very spotty. You're going to get like A5K video and then 100 K banger and the, the, the I was like, what is this channel actually about? That's where I find it better to separate it out. That makes a lot of sense. You know in in 2020 the feature for like I don't know what the formal name is.
00:29:10:00 - 00:29:37:07
Unknown
Cross Collabing of two channels listed as the author of the video that wasn't around back then is that is that a strategy that you would use if you were starting homesteading today? You'd post on both, you know, well, I, I guess probably I think if I was to launch that channel again, what I would do is the first episode would be on epic gardening collab with epic homesteading prob probably.
00:29:37:09 - 00:30:01:02
Unknown
Or maybe the reverse. It's hard to say, but yeah, collab feature has been great. I mean, like I mentioned, we just did a big series with Home Depot, eight episodes with them, which includes us and some of the people in our gardening network that aren't like literally on our team. They're just like collaborators of epic. And if you go to The Home Depot, so it's anyone who's in that video is collabs on a major brands channel, which is like great for all people involved, you know?
00:30:01:02 - 00:30:16:11
Unknown
So I think that's one of the better features YouTube's put out recently. Just to like, get more names out there on a title of a video. That's interesting. Yeah. So one person would post it that's whose leads on the collab feature, and they're essentially the owner of the video and the rest, it just appears on their feed.
00:30:16:11 - 00:30:49:23
Unknown
They're listed in, in the The Author headline. Yeah. It's like it'll be like epic gardening and for others. And then when you click subscribe, it will actually pop a modal up and it will ask you which one to subscribe to. And you can just span subscribe all of them if you want, which is great. That is interesting. You know, when you when you're putting together a video, I mean, how how much intentionality do you put into like all of the the first 10s the title, the packaging, like, you know, making sure that this is a certain, into all the things that, you know, are going to retain an audience.
00:30:50:01 - 00:31:08:13
Unknown
I mean, in a perfect world, that's what you would put most of your time on. It's kind of like, what kind of shoes would you get if you have no legs? You know, you would. You would get legs first and then get shoes, I guess, you know, there's there's almost no point. Right? Because we've run into this issue a few times.
00:31:08:13 - 00:31:36:01
Unknown
We're not perfect at it by any stretch. Like we've done videos where we're kind of running and gunning, let's say a tour, and then we go, wait, this tour does not really have a strong hook, a compelling reason to watch it. It's just sort of like a tour, you know, there's no like a good example would be one of my best tours I did is, a tour with my friend Andrew, who runs a one acre farm up here in San Diego, and his his hook is that he really runs that farm basically by himself.
00:31:36:01 - 00:31:57:13
Unknown
He has a little bit of help with his family, and he makes you grosses over six figures. I think you might net over six figures, which is a farmer like that's a very lucrative and appealing lifestyle for a huge amount of people. Like how many people want to, like, go return to the woods or whatever. If I didn't know that going into that tour, though, I wouldn't have been able to frame the conversation to like, how are you achieving this?
00:31:57:13 - 00:32:17:09
Unknown
You know, and so the title and thumb we came up with there was He Farms. I'm actually going to look it up. So it's a picture of him. And this is the one man farm, and it's him standing in the farm kind of looking like very small in comparison to the far right, which which exaggerates, like kind of the scale that he's dealing with.
00:32:17:11 - 00:32:38:08
Unknown
And then it's, it's he farms 35 hours a week by himself and makes six figures. So the by himself is like the key that unlocks that whole title to me, because farms 35 hours a week and makes six figures is good. That's still interesting, but the by himself makes you go like, wait, that's not even possible, right?
00:32:38:08 - 00:32:52:21
Unknown
But it is in this case, and so, so if you don't if you don't do that before you make the video, you're sort of it's sort of like, why are you making this video that you're not giving yourself the best chance to succeed? I don't know, is that the way you guys approach it? No. Not yet.
00:32:52:21 - 00:33:08:23
Unknown
I mean, it's like I do a lot of research. There are topics that I want to talk about where, you know, we dig into, like the, the labor economics of what's happening with AI in design or and then it's like, okay, we have a lot of really great data that I think there's a spine of a story inside of it.
00:33:09:01 - 00:33:24:16
Unknown
And then I think about, okay, and then how do I package that up front. The way I've been thinking about it, which is probably wrong, is, you know, I have to make some airplane noises to get the vegetables in. And what are those airplane noises going to be? Yes, I know, I mean, that's that's right though. I mean, that is right.
00:33:24:18 - 00:33:42:14
Unknown
It's, it's why edutainment is a thing instead of just I mean, back in the early days of me going on YouTube, literally, I freaking read a blog post I screen recorded and read a blog post and and word for word and scroll down. And so I would call that raw education. Yep. It's just it was the only video on the topic.
00:33:42:14 - 00:33:59:23
Unknown
So it did well. So that I it's not like I was a good creator back then. It's just that if it's the only video that exists, it will be the best video by default, right? We now live in a world where, nearly any video that does it could exist does in some form or fashion. Like obviously there's other videos on design, etc..
00:34:00:01 - 00:34:26:10
Unknown
If you can bring something fresh from the ideas perspective, it is the causal. It's like the first link in the causal chain of making a video. You know, so if you're starting with an input that's like 50% as good as it could be, aka the idea is just like, okay, you could make bangers on the rest of the part of the production process, like the filming, the editing, etc. it doesn't really matter that much because you've gated yourself at the first step, you know?
00:34:26:10 - 00:34:45:11
Unknown
And that's the hardest thing for me, for other creators, I think as well, the best creators don't really have this problem. They literally only spend their time on the ideas. And the second idea gets greenlit. They're then making it all of a sudden it's much, much easier to produce, because you have a, you have something that's strong enough to actually get done.
00:34:45:13 - 00:35:03:05
Unknown
Now, the thing that's that's interesting and I think about this and we're not solving it right now, but and I think a lot of channels and you've had to think about it is the key person problem where, you know, it's given a spear to at Epic Gardening. But you've obviously brought on other people. How how was that transition for you?
00:35:03:05 - 00:35:20:12
Unknown
And how do when you see people do that incorrectly, what patterns have you noticed? The first time we ever did it, it was pretty natural because Jack on our team, who he's got a half a million subscribers on his own channel now, he he was just helping in the garden. And so I started showing him on Instagram.
00:35:20:12 - 00:35:35:22
Unknown
People started enjoying him being on there. At the time, he had no desire to be a creator. I floated the idea. I said, look, I think the way you approach gardening is different than me. I think it'd be interesting if you had a second, channel and I'll teach you how to be a creator, and I'll fund the channel.
00:35:36:00 - 00:35:52:09
Unknown
And so we actually ran the same playbook where I said, hey, I put him in a video on harvesting potatoes is the first one he ever showed up in on the main channel. And people were excited to see, like, a new face. And they liked our dynamic. You know, our bands are. And then, you know, he showed up in a couple more and I said, you know what?
00:35:52:09 - 00:36:16:18
Unknown
Jack's going to have his own channel called Jack in the garden. You guys should go check it out. We haven't put a video out, but it'll be coming here 13 K subs before we get the next video. Well, first video, so like preceding. Now does that is that good? I actually don't think so. I think it's probably better in today's era to, to have maybe five videos up on the channel and then say the channel exists, because then you're automatically feeding the algo with, with data.
00:36:16:20 - 00:36:32:19
Unknown
And hopefully those videos are good. So I'm not like trying to flex by saying, oh my God, like we did so well with no videos. I think it would have been better if we had them. That being said, that was a boil the frog type thing I think is one of the only ways you can do it really well is you build familiarity, builds familiarity.
00:36:33:01 - 00:36:55:03
Unknown
He's he's showing up here and there. You're looking at the audience feedback. Do they like him? Do they not like him or whoever it is. And then the people that they enjoy, you escalate into deeper collaborations. So like someone we've had on the show a couple times is this woman Meg, who she's been in our What's a Plant series, which is basically a monthly guide on what we think is great to plant in a particular area.
00:36:55:03 - 00:37:10:14
Unknown
So she lives in North Carolina. She'll give you her picture. North Carolina people have just enjoyed her presence on the channel. So I said, hey Meg, what are you growing right now that you think you could make a really good like, tutorial video on how to actually grow it end to end? She's like, I got some blueberries, you know, and I go, okay, great.
00:37:10:14 - 00:37:33:09
Unknown
So what I'll do is I'll introduce my I introduce her, I'll say like, you know something I've grown a lot is blueberries. But here and there I've had some problems with them. There's someone on the team that's crushing them. So let's go watch North Carolina and check out Meg. She'll do the meat of the video with heavy sort of hand on scripting and delivery from us, because a lot of the times a creator might be good in certain areas, but they're not like good for your channel.
00:37:33:11 - 00:37:58:03
Unknown
So you have to kind of coach them on the way to deliver, etc. and then I outro that video that has like two, 3 million views. And if you think about it from like if you put your media operator hat on, you think about the scale of scaling media. All I had to do in that scenario was intro and outro of that video to sort of soft get her on the on the screen, and then the team had to help her out with presentation and research and stuff like that, you know.
00:37:58:05 - 00:38:14:04
Unknown
So that's like from a labor perspective, it's a lot easier for me to make. Right? And it performed well. If it didn't perform well, that just be slop. And I would be like outsourcing and it would be stupid. It performs really well. So the audience liked it and the audience is sacrosanct. Right. So, for me that's a big win.
00:38:14:04 - 00:38:31:00
Unknown
That's kind of how I think about it. Now. I want to talk about something that's a little niche to people like us who've been in, in the space, in like a really trying to grow something. And I think your team is at least 80 people. It's probably much more than that at this point. Our, our team sizes, I think it's me plus five.
00:38:31:02 - 00:38:50:14
Unknown
Yeah. And our team is like, I mean, our, our companies like bifurcated and like, if it's if it's commerce, it's a totally different game. And that team does not overlap much with content. Content team is much smaller. It's closer to your it's bigger than your size, but it's closer to it. So so like let's scale. Let's scale back a few years for a second.
00:38:50:14 - 00:39:12:05
Unknown
And what I'm what my question is about is the different ways when a YouTube studio starts to recognize, okay, we've got to grow or we can grow now, but to make the kind of content we're trying to make, it's going to require more, more spend. And there are a lot of ways I've seen people do this, obviously, like, okay, merch and courses were kind of this, like easy path for a long time.
00:39:12:07 - 00:39:27:10
Unknown
But then outside of that, it's like, okay, well, maybe we can maybe we can paywall content. And so people will go to Patreon, but then you see things like what happened with watcher, you know, you see like these situations that don't really. Yeah. You know, and but then you also see like the over the top networks that do work.
00:39:27:10 - 00:39:44:22
Unknown
Right. The big outliers like Nebula and stuff like that. So then there's licensing opportunities, but then there's also the, you know, someone comes in and backs a channel. And we've seen a lot of that and you don't hear about it a lot. And I and I think maybe you guys had an opportunity with that at one point.
00:39:45:00 - 00:40:06:04
Unknown
What what do you think is working and and what would you recommend to people to either avoid or pursue now who are like in the stage that we're at, frankly? Well, maybe we do like a little live consulting here or something. Like what? Where where are you trying to go? What do you want it to be? Yeah, I would love to build.
00:40:06:06 - 00:40:38:20
Unknown
You know, the mission that we have is to bring people away from cynicism. I know it sounds that's a that's a very, like, abstract idea, but it's it's this idea that that builders and kind of this like American dynamism, like is is a worthwhile thing. But in order to do that, we don't want to make media just for the people who already buy into this just for the Silicon Valley folks, it's like, let's show people how you know that from the 18 year old my son, who is trying to learn to build right now and is just having a good time with it and wants to know what's the next step to the people
00:40:38:20 - 00:40:56:12
Unknown
who are who have been in this field for 20 years and are like, I have to make all these changes and I don't really know what to do. So how do we make, content that inspires those people rather than, you know, is dumber? Is or is overly hype? I think, I think you're at a good starting point there.
00:40:56:12 - 00:41:14:01
Unknown
Like, I think, I was listening to a chat with, Alessandra, who's the CEO of Smosh. She talk about team structure, etc. and, you know, a lot of it is like basic company building stuff that almost seems trite and you don't respect it when you first start. Actually, like, I know better than this mission statement, core values.
00:41:14:03 - 00:41:32:01
Unknown
Right. Of intersecting with the audience because we're we're content businesses, right. So for us, like early on, for me, it was I want to help 10,000 people learn hydroponic gardening back in the blog days. And then when I hit 10,000 uniques a month, I was like, well, I guess technically that is one way you could say you fulfilled that.
00:41:32:01 - 00:41:49:06
Unknown
So I'm going to change it to 100,000, you know, and I changed it to a million and then 10 million. Now the way we've put our mission statement together, which is similar to your, like, move people away from cynicism, is we we want a garden in every home. And the way we do that is we exist to help you grow.
00:41:49:08 - 00:42:11:23
Unknown
So if we're putting something out on our channels, it needs to pass the bar of will this help put a garden in every home? And and does this help someone grow? If it does not, then we can't make it. And so that's a that's a piece. I think that's interesting. I think yours is slightly vague. More vague than it potentially could be.
00:42:11:23 - 00:42:31:20
Unknown
Like you could perhaps tighten it a little bit. I believe smashes is like we make, videos that make people smile. And she was referencing a time when, you know, they used to do videos that perhaps were a little bit more mean in spirit. Like every time you mess up, you get slapped or something, and they're like, we don't want to be a company that slaps our team or something like that, right?
00:42:31:22 - 00:42:50:20
Unknown
Which which you could take at the opposite position and be like a prank channel and be like, we do want to slap art or something, right? The culture of the team just has to accept it either way. And so in your case, it's like, okay, what is that mission statement? Driving, driving the, the thesis of the channel.
00:42:50:22 - 00:43:13:07
Unknown
And then how does that get expressed? And then of course, there's like the mechanisms of, how do the videos get better over time, you know, and a lot of that is like, who's on the team and who's responsible for what parts of it, you know. So that's something I've been weak at in the past is when you're when you're the creator, especially for me, like up until 20, 20, 21, like I was five, six years into epic, like I was not.
00:43:13:09 - 00:43:34:13
Unknown
I had an editor, blog editor and an assistant and a garden assistant. So. So what were the creative responsibilities? 100% on me 100% of the time? Every part of it. Which idea, which thumbnail, which title? What's the editing? You know, and so you have to start giving that to other people on the team so that they can be iterative improvers of their own accord.
00:43:34:15 - 00:43:55:08
Unknown
You know. So my thumbnail designer now I say here's your here's your priorities. You're making the net new thumbnails for upcoming videos. That's most important. If you're not working on any of those, you're working on a back catalog. Getting some of our older thumbnails up to snuff. If you're not working on those, or you're burnt out on that, or you don't want to do something else, you're studying thumbnails and trying to break fresh ideas to our organization.
00:43:55:10 - 00:44:15:11
Unknown
So now our thumbnail guy is a vector of improvement on one aspect of the creative production, you know? And of course I'm going to help him. But like I'm going to trust that that's he's actually doing that so that I don't have to worry about the thumbnails getting better and better over time. And if that's not happening, then I have to, like, go back and communicate or whatever.
00:44:15:11 - 00:44:33:11
Unknown
And so I think, I don't know if I'm really answering the question at this point, but I'm just kind of waxing on like, ways to structure things, and it makes me think of some things. So, for example, I really appreciate like calling out. And I do think we could probably tighten that mission, statement to be a little bit more actionable when we think about everything we produce.
00:44:33:13 - 00:44:50:02
Unknown
And then I would, I would go as far as saying, how do you know? So, you know, how do you measure? Yeah, I'm happy with what we produced here. Is it is it like the view count? Because there will be times where, you know, we'll put out a video and I think, like our highest long form video is in like 137,000 views.
00:44:50:04 - 00:45:06:08
Unknown
And we felt really good about it. You know, we got the we felt good about it, not just because of the viewer reception. We felt good about it because of the type of comments we were seeing. So much so I was screenshotting every single share on social media or comment that that had a positive thing that said yes.
00:45:06:08 - 00:45:26:13
Unknown
This inspired someone or it made them feel something in the vein of our mission. But I have other videos where they also have good comments or the people who they seem to be reaching certain positions that I'm happy were able to reach. But the view count is like 2000. And so, you know, we have to say like, how do we feel about that?
00:45:26:13 - 00:45:49:12
Unknown
Is that a qualified keep going? Is that like we got to rethink that. You know, I mean, the way I think about it is there's there's niche and there's and there's broad I don't think one channel is it's, it's wise to have one channel do both. So if I'm in your spot and I'm loving getting 130,000 views on, it was the design episode on that one guy, right?
00:45:49:12 - 00:46:12:16
Unknown
Red. Yeah, yeah. If I'm doing that and that's working, I'm probably going to keep doing that on a particular channel. And if I'm getting like a really niche, high importance audience, let's say, is similar to like a TV site approach, I'm probably isolating that to a second channel. I'm probably not trying to make both work on the same platform.
00:46:12:18 - 00:46:36:16
Unknown
Like you'll see this. It's a truism across all YouTube. Like if you look at like, what's a good example, Joshua Weissman, he's a YouTube chef. I used to consume it because I don't watch it too much these days. He went the viral route with his main channel. His main channel used to be him opening a closet door or something, or cabinet, talking and saying like, here's how to make, the best sourdough pizza.
00:46:36:22 - 00:46:51:20
Unknown
And it'd be like a 6 to 8 minute video. And it's literally how to make the pizza. And there's jokes, and it's kind of funny in this, in that right now, his main channel is literally like, let's look at the latest videos. I tried every famous Mexican food. I cook for the world's best chef. I test these wilderness cooking hacks.
00:46:51:22 - 00:47:13:18
Unknown
Every single one of these is getting over a million views. So that's broad, right? But is it what the channel started as? Not even close. Right. So he sacrificed like literally cooking, in a more traditional sense for going broad. Now what did he do? His response? Because of course any big YouTuber is smart enough to realize like these patterns.
00:47:13:20 - 00:47:35:06
Unknown
He then created Joshua Weissman recipes. That's that's it. So as many channels at ten mil his this channel's at 740,000. And if I look at the oldest video was a year ago and he's basically recreated the original thesis of his original channel, but he pivoted that channel to become basically like Mr. Beast Food, you know, that kind of thing.
00:47:35:06 - 00:47:59:14
Unknown
View maxing. So his, his secondary channel is, is the deeper, more niche channel. Even though of course, these, these videos still get hundreds of thousands of views. The food's just a huge category, you know. So the Tam, let's say of one of these videos, the best cinnamon buns at home is lower than I tried every Mexican food, because you don't have to like cooking at all to watch the the lot of video.
00:47:59:20 - 00:48:21:11
Unknown
You have to like cooking in general to what to watch, how to make the best of them, and buns at home. Right. And so it a long way of saying like different audience, different channel. Yeah, yeah. That's, that's and that's such a terrifying thing to me. Like even hearing you say it, I, I find myself finding all of these, reasons to push back on it.
00:48:21:13 - 00:48:49:01
Unknown
And I don't and I don't really know why. Like, for example, when we started our YouTube channel, it was just shorts. We weren't posting any long form videos at all. And in fact, we had shorts that were like hitting like millions of views per short. And it was typically me reacting to designs. Right. But but in like a very entertaining or comedic way that doesn't that that looks very different to what we do now and I and there was a part of me saying, well, should I just start a new YouTube channel?
00:48:49:01 - 00:49:07:22
Unknown
And it was like, no, let's go ahead and stay here. But let's consistently produce the type of media that we're about today and slowly train the algorithm and the audience of of what we're what we're trying to be. But it's almost like maybe we should have just started and maybe even now you're making me think, like, I should segment these shows.
00:49:08:00 - 00:49:27:10
Unknown
Well, here's here's the best example. Like, I won't say the channel's name, but there's a friend of mine who he had a channel about one topic, and then he just didn't want to do it anymore. And so he it was it was more niche. Let's call it a more niche topic. So he changed it to a broader version of that same niche, but much more broad.
00:49:27:15 - 00:49:47:15
Unknown
Right? Then he changed it to a, I guess you could say slightly, it's like slightly overlapping niche, but from my estimation it was very different. Right. And I think it channels it like in, in the low hundred thousands. Right. And you know, we're having coffees like and like the audience just doesn't watch this. Like the views are just bad.
00:49:47:15 - 00:49:48:17
Unknown
I'm like, bro,
00:49:48:19 - 00:50:08:23
Unknown
you don't have the amount of subscribers you think you have just because the number says in your, let's say in your case 169 K. Let's just imagine you use his strategy, which I would advise. You know, every time you meaningfully change the entire content perspective on your channel, you start it over without without saying it.
00:50:09:05 - 00:50:34:20
Unknown
Right? Yeah. You started a new channel. You just didn't make one, you know what I mean? And so, you know, in the case of, of you guys with, with shorts going into long form, I would try I mean, what would I have done? I probably would have compiled maybe these reaction videos into like a longer reaction video or something like that, or I would have, maybe just done a horizontal format of that.
00:50:34:22 - 00:50:51:01
Unknown
But if you really didn't want to make it any more and you're like, okay, how do I pivot? You could you could try. That strategy that I tried was your bringing a new host on. It's similar with bringing new content on. You can't just say I'm never doing this again that you all came here for because I don't like it and I want to do something else.
00:50:51:03 - 00:51:16:05
Unknown
And you have to watch the new thing, right? You have to overlap them enough so that people start seeing you for more than what you they already saw you for it. You know, like anyone who's done like, good brand transfer, like, look at, like, like filthy Frank to Joji, you know, there's like a couple of ways to do it if you're going to do it on the same sort of persona, then you have to slow bake it a lot of the time, if you're not like, he just disappeared from the internet and then came back as a new thing, you know?
00:51:16:07 - 00:51:36:02
Unknown
So there's like there's a lot of ways to do it, but the ways to do it are pretty well defined at this point. Like, it's not generally a good idea to, put like 3 to 4 different formats on, the same channel that aren't performing. If they're performing, it's a very different equation. I've talked to so many people who at some point they're like, well, I guess maybe I should raise money.
00:51:36:04 - 00:52:11:20
Unknown
You know, I think we're we're at a point where we've got an operation. It's a real company. Maybe we should think about raising money for our studio. I mean, what's your general thoughts about that, that idea and and kind of. What are you seeing lately around that? Well, there's definitely there's definitely channels that have raised. And a lot of the reason why is because YouTubers are getting older as a like cohort of people, you know, like when I became one, the dream career was to be a celebrity or a rock star or something.
00:52:11:20 - 00:52:36:17
Unknown
You know what I mean? These days, the dream career is to be a YouTuber, or an influencer or some kind of creator. And so what that tells me is that we now are the establishment, even if it's not recognized in so-called traditional media, which has already been destroyed. Right. So raising money, a lot of times, you'll see, you know, like Veritasium raised money recently, one of the biggest channels in the world.
00:52:36:19 - 00:52:56:20
Unknown
And part of that is like, I believe, Derek put out a video saying, like, the future of the channel, you know, and I was, oh, he's quitting. He's quitting. He's like, well, no, it's that I've been doing this for 12 years or something like that. I need to I'm not going to not make videos, but I'm just not going to make them all the time in the way that I was before.
00:52:56:21 - 00:53:19:00
Unknown
And other people are going to help. And so we brought on partners to help scale that out, because like I was saying, when you're the creator, generally you're literally the full stack. And so you have to start abstracting out some of your skill sets. And unfortunately, unless you in my opinion, unless you are a creator through and through, you can't just hire someone who can do everything you've ever done, you know?
00:53:19:00 - 00:53:36:10
Unknown
So you're going to need like an editor, a thumbnail designer, and a writer when you literally could do all three of those yourself. So you're going to spend more money. So you probably going to need more money. And also sometimes, you know, a creator wants to take some money off the table and recognize the value for all the media they've put out.
00:53:36:10 - 00:54:04:15
Unknown
You know? So there's a lot of different reasons. You're you're somebody who's gotten pretty, you've gotten the bets, right? I mean, heck, you used to play poker professionally. You've got the best right in the format. So any predictions on where things are going right now from what you've seen in the conferences you've attended? I mean, I think that I think we'll see a further sophistication of creators building like, pretty scaled businesses and pretty professional, I would say businesses.
00:54:04:17 - 00:54:24:20
Unknown
Because a lot of the time what we've seen is, is creators, like, doing kind of like slap on physical products, you know, we're now seeing that not really be the case. People are going end to end down to the manufacturing level, which I think you really have to do otherwise. Again, you're not making something truly differentiated.
00:54:24:20 - 00:54:51:18
Unknown
What's the point? So I think you'll see that I think you will see more money probably come into the creator space. I think you'll see more professional operators who've run, quote unquote, actual companies not to disparage our industry, you know, but they've run scaled businesses, whether they be media or product, come in and start operating these businesses, behind the scenes, not in a nefarious way, just like they're doing the day to day operations of running these companies because they're real companies.
00:54:51:18 - 00:55:12:17
Unknown
You know, there's like 15 people, 20 people on them, and they sell in 5000 stores. I mean, we sell in 5000 stores around the country. I can't make all this media and and do these collaborations and this and that and talk to you, etc. If I'm also figuring out how to get orders to those 5000 stores. Right. There was a time when I was doing that, but now we've scaled past that point.
00:55:12:18 - 00:55:35:01
Unknown
I can't, I could I master it? I'm sure that I could or should I? Definitely not. You're right. So you got to have other people come in. So I think you'll see that. I think like you'll see. Based on like TVM getting bought and, and, and putting basically propaganda out because that's effectively what MTS is. I mean, the irony of calling it an investment when they're running it, it's like, who did it?
00:55:35:01 - 00:55:56:23
Unknown
Who were the founders? They didn't even say who the founders are. I think it's literally just their own media image. It's not saying that. That being said, these sorts of exits and or entrances, I think is going to make, everyone else in like C suites around, other other industries kind of go like, oh, like, we really we really are dropping the ball here.
00:55:57:01 - 00:56:21:18
Unknown
You know, like in my space, the media sophistication of big brands is extremely low. And I think more people are going to start realizing that. Kevin's best analogy is that media is the soil before distribution. You can clip harder posts more and maybe squeeze an audience for a quarter or two. But if you take more from that relationship than you put back into, it will eventually nothing will grow there.
00:56:21:20 - 00:56:54:13
Unknown
And this Wednesday I am diving even further into that idea. It's all about cultural campfires, why follower counts are getting weaker, companies are buying media discourse instead of ads, and why the best thing you can do as a builder is to create your own campfire discourse. Instead of focusing on reach, subscribe to get notified when that drops, and on Friday, I am launching our documentary on Khan and Samir, two people who turn making home movies into one of the biggest creator movements on YouTube.
00:56:54:15 - 00:56:55:05
Unknown
I'll see you then.