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Creator Generation brings you behind the scenes of the creator economy, featuring top YouTubers and experts who share the strategies, lessons, and stories behind building successful channels, growing incredible businesses, and driving the world’s biggest online video successes.
We're at a 110,000 members, I believe, currently. Huge. It's doubled in the past, like, six or eight months.
Fred:Today, we're speaking with Robert Kaliati, president and COO of Hammer Media, the company behind Caleb Hammer. You've probably seen Caleb on a variety of formats, but his most popular one is financial audit where he gives people budgeting advice.
Ant:Robert is the operator, not the on camera talent. He's the one who has to plan for all the ups and downs. We're here to get his take on protecting a business built on one person's name.
Robert:Robert,
Ant:welcome to Creator Generation.
Robert:Thanks. Pleasure to be on with you guys.
Ant:Super. Hey. To just give a bit of context, the Caleb Hammer channel, can you just briefly describe it, the format, and, like, the evolution over over the last couple of years?
Robert:Yeah. So financial audit is really a tough love, personal finance channel. Caleb came from a background of poor personal finances himself, and he created a channel that's really the Tough Love approach on personal finances that he really wanted. Because the result financial audit is a real combination of people understanding and learning how to budget and improve their finances, but in Caleb's own rambunctious style that everyone loves. So there's entertainment in it, there's finances, there's learning.
Robert:And in my opinion, it's the best of both worlds.
Ant:Nice. It's basically like tear downs of people's personal finances. Right? Like, one on one tear down.
Robert:Like Yeah.
Ant:It's addictive watching as well as, like, it's entertaining and educational.
Fred:One thing is that is interesting you mentioned, how did how did you guys meet? How did you and Caleb meet?
Robert:Yeah. Caleb and I have actually known each other since, like, middle school. So we we used to play, music together and then we went to college. Eventually I moved into Austin for this, sales job. And, you know, I was like, hey, Caleb.
Robert:He was talking about moving to Austin to do his music thing. And I was like, hey, how about you like do sales instead? And so he came down in like a couple of weeks. And then we started doing sales together. Eventually I moved into like product marketing and, Caleb moved into product management.
Robert:He left, started the channel, channel started taking off after a year. And then we just, you know, stayed in touch. And I was like, hey. You know, I was looking to leave, and I wanted to, you know, do what I was doing, but on my own. I was gonna start with Caleb, and I was gonna move on to other creators.
Robert:But eventually, like, the snowball started rolling and we started having fun and here we are.
Ant:You were too successful. Yeah. Yeah. I love that story. Like, the channel, the business has grown really fast.
Ant:Like, I I think it's fair to say, like, in the last few years, like, quite a a huge media company or quite a big viewership and and amazing story. But, like, with that mediocre rise comes, like, has come a little bit to controversy, which we don't need to go into, but you're the president and the COO.
Robert:Yeah.
Ant:When these sorts of things go public, what does that look like inside?
Robert:So, like, on my end specifically, obviously there's the content and what Caleb's going to do, but really on my end, if I'm actually doing the right thing, I'm walking in the next day and just living my life as normal. And so what I've come to learn, just being on YouTube for however long we've been on and, you know, Caleb just being an honest person and him being committed to that on the channel is that you're always going to have about, you know, 10% of people that really don't like you that much, right. Or are detracted from the channel. There's like that middle 80% where there's people in there, they don't like you, but not enough to really care about you and what's going on outside. There's the middle guys who really don't care about you at all.
Robert:And then there's the people that like you, but not enough to change their lives for it. And then there's like the 10% where you could like, I don't know, denounce the Pope or whatever religious figure they believe in and they'll still follow you. And so often these controversies I think are just the bottom 10% of people that you're not winning over anyways. And generally the best thing to do is nothing, at least on my end. And it has very little effect on the business.
Robert:Where I do like most of my work is not during the controversy or as the controversy is coming up, but honestly I've learned to do it beforehand. The biggest risks are probably the brands, they're your business partners, they're your employees, they're people you work with closely. And the reality is you need to have those conversations ahead of time, or at least I have those conversations ahead of time and make sure that everybody that I'm working with understands who I'm about, understands what Caleb was about, what financial audit is about, what we're really about so that a small group of people taking things out of context or Caleb saying and speaking his mind, which is what is good for the show, doesn't detract from their opinions of us. I think if you're in a position where a controversy comes out, granted you're not hiding anything from the audience and no like bombshell discovery was made or whatever. You shouldn't be in a position where the people around you are surprised as to what you've said.
Robert:They should understand who you are and they should be able to understand the nuance. Cause that's one thing I think the internet has lost lately is the ability to have that nuanced conversation. And you have to train your audience and the people around you that, Hey, this is a nuanced show. As my audience, this is a nuanced, I'm a nuanced person and I'm not going to mince my words for, you know, just PC ness. And that, like, has helped a lot in those controversial situations.
Ant:Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Life is is definitely not black and white. It's gray and nuanced.
Ant:And then yeah. You're you're right. It's it we've we've lost that particularly in the Internet. Your I love, like, how you've said this is all mitigated upfront. Right?
Ant:Like, I think that that's it it before anything happens, you mitigate it in those conversations. How much of that mitigation or that planning is sits on your shoulders or it it's across everything that's done within the company and the and the content, etcetera. Like, how how is that across the business?
Robert:Yeah. A lot of it sits on the shoulders of of myself and and and Caleb. So how Caleb and I split responsibilities is I'm very much responsible for our partnerships, very much responsible for our relationships on the business end. And Caleb is very much responsible for our audience. And so, and the content that goes out as well, obviously.
Robert:And so when it comes to that mitigation, there is definitely a lot that Caleb has to do himself. It all starts with the content, who he is and who he is as a person and being an honest and straightforward person. You know, he's got to have that honest communication with the audience. He's got to be, upfront about who he is and so that they build that trust ahead of time. So that's one side of it.
Robert:And so then when the controversy comes out, the audience is obviously in a point where they know who Caleb is and that they're not, you know, jarred by things that are a little bit more nuanced. On my end, I'm responsible for talking to our partners and maintaining those relationships. I want to make sure that anybody we work with first, you know, who we are and what we stand for and what we do. If you're doing a brand deal with us, we want to come on as like an agency partner, or you want to start a business with us, like, or even want to just work here at the company. So also our employees, you have to understand what that comes with.
Robert:That comes with the show financial audit, our other shows and like our online presence. And so I'm making sure that everybody understands the mission and the vision, where we want to go, where things may get misconstrued. And making sure that, the relationship that we have with the people around us is very much a personal relationship. So at the end of the day, it's like, you know, you have your friends and the people close to you and they know things about you that, you know, maybe the rest of the world doesn't know. And as a result, they're able to, you know, maybe put up with a little bit more.
Robert:And so, you know, I wanna treat those partners around me as those friends, as those people that I can talk to, I want them to know me in a way that is, and the company in a way that's really strong.
Fred:You know, you run the my guess, you're part of that next generation of interview talk shows that are so popular now because of the connection between who you're talking to. Right? So Caleb talking to the interviewee, obviously, in a in a with a level of connection and depth that is probably not seen previously. What's it like trying to effectively be at the forefront of these new formats, develop these new formats with, you know, new controversies, new business partnerships, all these things in the background.
Robert:I mean, it's a lot of just figuring things out as we go. You know, being at the forefront of the show, for example, it's it's hard to know and it it was hard to tell like where the show was going to go. And so a lot of what we did was focus on innovation and collaboration and just throwing out ideas and just looking at the numbers. Right. So, you know, you would think that the show has just been like a straight up rocket ship and there's been no ups and downs or there's been no hiccups, but the reality is, is when there are hiccups, we sit down in a room together and, you know, from the very beginning, it's been 12 less, however many people need to be in the room working together to decide, you know, what the next direction is.
Robert:And, you know, we're throwing out around a 100 ideas, 99 of them are terrible. And the one that works is the one that we, that we go with. And then on the other end of it is figuring out, okay, we're growing this podcast. We have a captive audience. There's a lot of like business opportunity and there's a lot of opportunity around us.
Robert:How do we find it? How do we navigate it? I think first of all, it's a 100% about finding the right people and getting help when we need to. We got really lucky in the early season of our business. We found people like, you know, our legal team and we were able to connect with other agencies and able to connect with other people in the industry that, you know, could really help us navigate.
Robert:The hard part is nobody could tell us exactly what to do because not many people are building a business exactly like we are, which is very like product led, a lot of different products, a lot of subscription businesses, a lot of subscription models. I don't know if any other creator with a budgeting app, but they were able to help us say, okay, here is what you need to avoid. Here's some of the guardrails need to put for yourself. Here's how you need to be able to think about these different opportunities and different ways to go. And eventually, like we stumbled upon, you know, a business that I think works for us and works for our audience.
Robert:There were definitely issues along the way. And I think a lot of it was like trial and error. And one thing that, you know, Caleb, especially I think has been incredibly good at is speed of market. It's how quickly can we get things out there and we test it. And if it doesn't work, we put it down.
Robert:If it works, then we're asking ourselves constantly how we can make it better. One of our flagship shows are our memberships, Hammer Elite, right? We want to start a YouTube subscription service. It started on Patreon actually, and the Patreon kind of flopped a little bit. And at that point, were on the verge of honestly just taking it down.
Robert:Right? We tried it, it didn't work. But eventually we put it on YouTube. And I think what we realized from there was there's a little bit less friction when you have a membership on YouTube and that allowed it to, you know, take off. Right?
Robert:So we didn't believe in it, but it was a trial and error process that helped us, you know, eventually find our footing. And then we just started doubling down. We started making better content, more content. Now that we had people in the membership, we started asking our audience. And that's really been how we approached all of our business lines going forward.
Fred:Do you think people oversimplify the show and what it is? Because, you know, if you watch it, you think, oh, Caleb's interviewing someone talking about these issues, and they go to the next one. They're talking about, you know, the issues, financial audits and they think, oh, it's a very straightforward linear trajectory between where he started to where he is now, but there's obviously a lot of layers in the background, isn't there?
Robert:Yeah. Totally. At the base, obviously, it's a finance show and, you know, Caleb was talking about personal finances of people, right? You know, hey, like you need to be better with your money. You need to budget more.
Robert:You need to get out of debt. You need to, you know, stop spending money on DoorDash, whatever it is. But I think what really resonates with people is not just the finances, but the stories. And that's one of the more intricate parts of the show is matching the finances with those really, really awesome stories. And we put a lot of work into that.
Robert:We get, you know, hundreds of applications a week, thousands a month. And we have an individual producer that like sorts through all those applications and figures out, okay, here are some people who seem a bit interesting. We have a good financial situation for the show. And then from there, they get on the phone with them and just really figure out, okay, this person legit? Is their finances real?
Robert:Are they an actual real person? And then we have even longer conversations with these people after that with our show producers, where we're really taking the time to dive in to their stories, to who they are, and really just figuring out how in the show we can present that to Caleb and get that information out there in a great way. And so a lot of nuance comes into the show's evolved. It's all about finding new topics, finding a wider range of people and showing people's real life circumstances. Even when we make our courses, it's like, what's that life circumstance that we haven't really shown to people before and how do we get that on camera and relate to more people in that in that sense.
Fred:When I first came across Caleb, it was really interesting because it was in short form content. And it's, I think, pretty hard sometimes to make, an impact in short form because people watch so much of it. Right? And I'm seeing the format and the way he was talking about finances. I'm like, oh, that that was really interesting.
Fred:I just remember thinking that that story, that that little segment of the story just seemed really interesting because it was the person's background, but then that next layer of depth is like, this is how my finances work, then Caleb coming up with a solution and there's like a whole setup and ending in one hit and it felt really, really well structured.
Robert:Yeah. We, you know, it's all about figuring out what the audience what will resonate with. And, you know, I think it's not necessarily like scripted or anything, but, you know, after Caleb has done it for years and years, I think one thing we found out is how to, you know, get that story and get that financing and find that little, little piece of magic in the, in those clips.
Ant:I won't hop onto it too much, but you you guys basically running a a full casting process. Right? Like, were casting real people, and and, like, it's a it's a in-depth casting process. Has I assume you get people trying to slip past who who aren't genuine all the time. Has anyone gone through has anyone gone through that that that filter?
Ant:And you've, like, sat them down in front of Caleb. It's like, oh, this is they're they're just pretending. This is an act.
Robert:Yeah. Honestly, that's part of the reason why the casting process now is so extensive. But in the past there used to be situations all the time where somebody would sit in the seat, you'd have that conversation and you'd be like, you know what, this isn't real. And you can feel it very tangibly in the room. And then it's like, all right, we can't post this.
Robert:Or like this person, I guess this is over. And it's like an awkward situation, but, you know, and it's such a waste of time too. It's a waste of their time. It's a waste of our time. You know, we spend resources and time talking to these people that were like, we got to make sure now that before they fly out to Austin, we know that they are a real genuine person and like that they can talk on camera and have a conversation.
Robert:Cause I mean, it's a podcast in the day. We don't have the luxury of working with, you know, people that are camera trained or people that are used to being on camera. And so that's another part of the job is can you actually get on camera and talk to Caleb and explain your situation and have him help you?
Ant:Yeah. There's so much going under the hood to get there. It's like, I love sort of unearthing that. It's really great. I wanna backtrack a little bit because you're talking a lot about you you know, this experimentation, this test and learn and and fail and innovation and how you continue to do that across everything, not just the content, the products, etcetera.
Ant:Is there an underlying basis or underlying framework or anything that enables you guys to do that across the business? Like, how do you continually experiment and test in public confidently?
Robert:Yeah. It's it's one of those things that's that's really built into us and, and our culture. And, you know, I, I think honestly the answer may be that we just, we just put a lot of work into it. So like when I think about the show, for example, testing on a, on a show that big is very risky because at the end of the day, don't want to put out an episode and it just flops towards a 10 out of 10, right? You want to, make sure that if you're testing, you're not really ruining the format.
Robert:So what we do is, you know, we, in the background, again, we're always talking and throwing out ideas and we're always poking holes in all the different ideas that we can put out there. So if we're trying to make a change to the show, for example, if it's a thumbnail change or a title change or a format change, that's a multi hours long conversation. And eventually we settle on something that we want to put out and it'll be like a micro adjustment, right? We see how that performs. If that performs well, we do more of it.
Robert:Then, you know, we keep going and then do like these micro adjustments over and over and over again. And we're just putting a lot of effort into it so that we can make those micro adjustments on the show very, very rapidly. When it comes to other entities like our membership or DollarWise, everything is an innovation. Everything is a test. Those things aren't as risky when it comes to, you know, putting out an episode and it kind of like flopping and then you ruin the algorithm.
Robert:And so one of my frameworks or rules is that everything goes out with some sort of AB test if possible. So we're always in our newsletters, testing headlines. We're always in the sales pages and landing pages, testing messaging. We're always in the app and I'm always asking for people to test things wherever we can. And what happens is you pick the thing that works and you just continually do that over and over again.
Robert:Where this started for me personally is where I used to work. It was like a stock trading company. 2022 happened, stock market went down, stock educational things were not doing really, really well. And you couldn't really like rest on that COVID like hype anymore. And so basically what I said in my kind of domain was, yeah, we're just gonna keep testing.
Robert:And over time the product got 10 times better because we were slowly throwing out the things that weren't working and adding in things that were working until you kind of have a completely different product if you need one. Yeah, I love testing. I love that innovative attitude and it's something that, especially as we grow that I really like try not to lose in the business.
Ant:What's your thoughts around failure? Like if you're like, what if something does fail or do you have a fear of, if someone has a fear of something failing?
Robert:I think that's always, that's always there of that, that fear of failure and failure for me and like the business and us, like, again, it's, it is very public. We have a large audience and so, and so it hurts. But you know, for me, I kind of like try to take that failure and I just try to eat it and I still release anyways. And that's kind of how I've, I've, I've dealt with it. You know, there was, there was a situation, you know, a couple of weeks ago where we were, we were, we have a big launch coming for dollar wise, in a couple, a couple of months here.
Robert:And, we wanted to test something, it didn't work. And now the dollar wise launch got delayed by a little bit and that, that hurt really, really bad, if I'm being honest. And, the reality is, is, you know, at the end of the day, like if we aren't going to test it, nothing's going to get better. And so, you know, you just got to eat the fear and just keep doing it over and over again. But yeah, for me, like I feel like fear is okay.
Robert:And fear is like something to accept. And if you kind of go into this land of trying to grow a business, you're going be scared of stuff, you know? I'm not the front of the camera guy doing a podcast is not like always the most comfortable thing for me, but I'm going to do it anyways. So that's kind of how I think about it.
Fred:And it sounds like you and Caleb both run the company with, you know, looking at the different perspectives. What happens though when there is disagreement? I mean, it is a creator centric business. You are running operationally things in the background. When you guys have a difference of opinions, how do you work that out?
Robert:Yeah. So, you know, first of all, I think it's important for myself and one of my core philosophies is Caleb is the content creator. There's a content creator business and it isn't my job to kind of get in the way of that. It's my job to support that because at the end of the day, like if we didn't have the creator and we didn't have the content, then we would be like nothing. Right.
Robert:And so I try to trust Caleb as much as possible when the situation where like there is a disagreement, the best thing that I can do is, I can't speak out of like feeling I can speak on data and information. And so if there are things that are going out there or there are things that are happening that I feel a way about, I'm gonna say, Hey, here's what the numbers look like. Here's how it's affecting the channel. Here's how it's affecting the business. And then at that point Caleb and I can have a constructive conversation.
Robert:So I think it's really important, at least to me, to set up a situation where I can be objective. It's all about numbers. It's all about metrics. And I'm not talking about like just revenue. It could be just retention or ABD, or it could be customer satisfaction or an audience survey.
Robert:I'm bringing that to table and I'm supporting Caleb in his decision making.
Ant:Super interesting to unpack a little bit because, like, most creators start making content from a position of passion. Right? Like, something they are personally interested in that they wanna put out into the world. Does that sometimes, like, cause, like, you're having different conversation then? Caleb is coming from that position of passion.
Ant:You're coming from a a more grounded position. Do they do they clash sometimes? And how does how does that then reconcile once it's gone through the washing machine together?
Robert:Yeah. Totally. You know, obviously, my angle is is business. Caleb's is, you know, content creation and the passion for the content. And a lot of the times it is a clash there, but you know, at the end of the day, yeah, like the content is king.
Robert:And so if, you know, I can't, I don't want, I don't want to ever like present a business case that clashes with Caleb's content case. I think another way to look at it is I always try to adjust a little bit as well. And I try to make sure I understand what Caleb wants from a content perspective. Like for example, some of the shows we create come out of his, passions. We have front page, that's a show that he's passionate about.
Robert:Caleb Hammer show, a show that he's passionate about. Financial Audit, that's even a show that he's passionate about as well. And what I try to say is, okay, great. Like, you know, maybe if we went on Netflix and, you know, made this super generic show, I'm sure that'll do better with the numbers, but knowing that this is the direction you want to go in, how do I support that? And one of the reasons I don't like to fight that too much either is content creation is such a rat race.
Robert:You're constantly trying to churn out new content. And the creator can burn out pretty easily. And, you know, you've seen it happen so many times. And so one thing that I'm always asking myself is like, you know, how do I keep Caleb from burning out? And one of those ways is by helping him make the content that he's excited about and figuring out and doing the hard work on, okay, I'm on the business side.
Robert:How do I, how do I support this? Sometimes, I mean, there's situations where it's like, dude, okay, we had goals at the beginning of the year. So we sit down and we talk about that and I'm like, you are moving drastically, or this decision may move us drastically away from our goals. Then at that point, it's like, okay, we've already had that conversation. Now I'm at liberty to bring it back.
Robert:Then we have a real conversation about, you know, is this worth moving away from the direction that we were, we were trying to go in the first place.
Fred:You've obviously grown very rapidly. You've evolved as a channel, evolved as a business, gotten on new partners, working with CAA, developed products, premium offerings. You mentioned that obviously burnout is still an issue. Creator needs to be creative. Do you, to some extent, have to shield Caleb from a lot of that, from a lot of the other stuff that's coming up in the background?
Robert:Yeah. And I really think that's a major part of my job when, you know, I came on, Caleb had all these amazing ideas. Right? And the problem was that he didn't have the time to get that off the ground because the content takes up so much time. It's so much work to put out all of this content, you know, on the internet, especially when you're filming three to five times a week.
Robert:And so as a result, like when you had something like a partner negotiation or you're looking at the things like the website, it's a huge distraction and it takes away from the content. And so one of the biggest things that I think I did was come in there and just say, Hey, I'm going to handle this. I'm going do the hard work. And when we talk, I'm going to lay out all the options, super well thought out, super well built out. And so that all you have to do is really, really choose what the best path is unless you wanna get involved.
Robert:And I think what that allowed Caleb to do is focus more on making the show and making it better and doing that thing that only he can do, which is be on camera with his best energy. And so, I think that shows in what happened. I joined like late twenty twenty three and then early twenty twenty four. That's when the channel started taking off because he didn't have to worry about all that stuff. And so, yeah, I think a core part of my job is shielding him from that stuff.
Robert:And it's part of why I think a lot of creators should bring on a business manager, an operator, a COO, a CEO, whatever position you think you need is to take off the things that you particularly don't want to do. I know some creators don't want to even make content. So maybe you're, you're bringing on a content creator that can come in and take some of that off of your plate. But yeah, I think it's different from everybody. And it's like, my job is to do the stuff that, you know, drains him and so that he can focus on the stuff that, you know, only he can do and can really push the needle on that.
Ant:I love that. A lot of, a lot of the advice out there is like your first hire is an editor. Like, hey, Creator. Your first hire is an editor. Right?
Ant:Like and it's it's it's like a simple catch all. I I don't I don't really agree with that, and you were sort of alluding to that too. It's like how but how can then a creator identify their need? Like like you said, it could be content or, you know, someone operationally taking the thing that drains you. How do you identify that?
Robert:Yeah. I think I think it's really about like sitting down and just identifying to your point that thing that really actually annoys you. Right? Like they say like hire an editor, but if you like editing, why are you gonna hire an editor? It's like, okay, I'm I'm sitting down every day.
Robert:I'm spending a lot of time on this thing and it's making me miserable. That's probably like the first place that I would look to hire. Right? And for most creators, to the other point, like, is an editor. A lot of creators don't wanna sit down for hours a day and I'm like, Oh my God, I'm just dragging lines and Ugh, this is mundane.
Robert:But if you love that and that's maybe like your core skillset, then what else is there? Maybe you don't want to be like Caleb and film five episodes a week. So maybe at that point you're like, wow, I'm sitting down every day just filming episodes. Well, look for some other cast members now that can help take a little bit of that content load off, join you on the show you're making or make a new show. Or I think about my end on the business side.
Robert:One of my first major helpers was an HR director. A lot of companies our size at that time don't really have an HR director, but I didn't want to spend all of my days sitting in interviews and hiring people. That's where I went to first.
Ant:How big is the team?
Robert:Right now it's about 35 people in office. We have about 20 contractors. So, we hired 17 this year so far, 13 last year. So we're kind of moving.
Ant:It's a lot. And that spans what sort of activities does that span?
Robert:So the business right now is split about half and half between content and we call it our business side. On the content side, about fifteen, twenty people, half of them work on financial audits solely and the other half work on everything else. So front page, Caleb Hammer show our memberships, any other shows we're piloting or testing out, they're all just working on all of those shows, together. On the other side, we have the business team and most of that is split between marketing and engineers. We have three engineers soon to be six in a couple of weeks that are working solely on the budgeting app.
Robert:And then we have a team of about six people on the marketing side that work on everything from brand deals to, we do paid ads for dollar wise. We even run ads for casting sometimes, and we do newsletters and manage, you know, Caleb's brand presence on our websites and all of those things. So, that's what the team make up. We've got an HR, director, we've got, you know, a security guy and then, you know, a bunch of contractors here and there when things get busy and we need a little bit of help.
Fred:And how many days a week are you shooting content?
Robert:Well, audit shoots four days a week and we're shooting content all day, every day, five days a week. So usually financial audit shoots Tuesday through Friday in the mornings. Then in the evenings we're shooting Caleb Hammer show front page membership content. And then on Mondays, that's Caleb's kind of morning off. Maybe he's doing like a podcast or he's, recording a voiceover for front page or he's, you know, or we're doing membership content in the afternoon.
Fred:And at that point, does he just turn up and he's given, you know, the background and so forth compared to the early days when he was doing all that ground up work himself?
Robert:Yeah. Back in the day, you know, Caleb would prepare all the finances himself. He would cast everybody himself and he would grab that sheet of finances and just like start rolling nowadays. Yeah. All that is done for him.
Robert:He comes in the filming with like limited knowledge on the guest. We kind of hand him a stack of redacted financial papers from our finance producer. Guest sits down and then they just kind of start working through things, working through topics for about two hours. We keep about 95% of the content. So we cut very little and it's just a really, organic conversation.
Fred:Interesting. Well, it's obviously done well. You've got a huge membership and look, speaking of membership is one of the largest, if not the largest YouTube memberships in the world, right?
Robert:Yeah. Yeah. Definitely like one of the largest. So it's up there. We're at 110,000 members, I believe currently.
Robert:Shoot. Shoot. It's doubled in the past, six or eight months. It's been kind of wild. So, I don't know how we got here, but we're going to keep working on it.
Robert:We're going to keep trying to trying to grow it.
Ant:Don't tell me. Don't tell me that. What my next question was, what's the secret sauce?
Fred:Yeah. What's the value you create that people say, I really wanna be part of this?
Robert:I mean, I think honestly what the value is, is people, they want more of Caleb. They want more of us. And in the membership we're able to really just give them that and we're able to give them a lot of it. So, you know, audit is super incredibly highly produced. It takes so long to make a singular episode, but behind the paywall, we can say, Hey, let's put up a vlog.
Robert:Let's put up, you know, a fun, easier content to film, right? It's high quality, it's high production, but we can put up a lot more of that content. And we don't have to worry about titles and thumbnails and all the stuff that we're worried about on the front end. We can just put out content that people want to see. And so how we've really evolved the show is like, we started with a lot of stuff that like we wanted to do.
Robert:Like we wanted to play Mario Kart all the time and we wanted to just get on like live streams and like talk crap and hang out after work. That was all fun, but eventually the membership has evolved to ask the audience what they want. They want more financial content. So we've put more financial audits behind the paywall. We put shows like Budget Buddies.
Robert:We put shows like Hammer It Out, which is Caleb's, like Dave Ramsey style talk show behind the paywall. Stuff like that, that is more like what the audience that watches financial audit is looking for. And as we've continued to revamp shows and add shows that people like and remove ones that don't, it has just made the membership more sticky and people see the value prop and they continue to come back. I think the stat that I'm most proud of honestly, when I think about memberships is the fact that people are actually watching the content. And so I was looking at our stats on YouScreen the other day and it was like 80% of people that are subscribed are actually coming back week over week and watching the content from us.
Ant:Nice. That's a really good point. And then yeah. So you've got your YouTube membership, and then you've recently worked with YouScreen to launch your your own off platform membership. Why?
Robert:Yeah.
Ant:And, like, what's the difference?
Robert:So you screen really allows us to do and create a membership experience. That's very unique to us and very unique to the content that we want to make. And so for example, like the backend works a lot better than it does on YouTube because all membership content, we can organize it in ways that we want to organize it. We can also speak to our customers and, you know, get their like customer emails and, you know, send them newsletters and have like a deeper connections with the people that want to have those connections. And we can also like market in the way that we want to market.
Robert:Right. So, you know, we want to make certain custom packages and offerings. It's a lot easier to do on you screen than it is on YouTube. And I don't know that's like a knock on YouTube at all. YouTube is a big platform and they serve a huge community and a lot of different people and a lot of different niches really, really, really, really well.
Robert:We serve one small niche. And so on YouTube, you're getting a product that works well for that wide variety of people that are on YouTube. And so it'll always have a place in our product suite because it's easy to sign up on YouTube. If you're not enough of a super fan that you want to have two different logins for Caleb Hammer content, YouTube is the best place for you. But if you want the Caleb Hammer experience, you want your own dedicated app, you want to log in, be able to find the content the way that you want to find it.
Robert:You want to communicate with us in a way that's super personal and you want to, you know, get special offers and products from us, then Uscreen is the way to go. So it's almost a way to connect with our deeper fans and our true fans and those people that, you know, are really with us for the long haul.
Ant:Yeah. I like that distinction. Right? Like, it still has a fit. It's not just about, like, completely migrating everyone from one place to the other.
Ant:And the fact that before when you said previously, like, Patreon didn't work out well once you went to YouTube and had less friction that that then was a a bit of an unlock for you. Shifting gears a little bit, like and this is something that a lot of creators face. Right? Like, is that Caleb is the face and the name of the channel and the business. Right?
Ant:And and Yeah. You know, there's a significant business behind that. There's a lot of people working for that. Right? Like but there there's, like, a a big key man risk.
Robert:Generation's rock on the mic.
Ant:How do you, how do you, how do you navigate that? Like what happens if something happens to Caleb?
Robert:Yeah. And I'm sure like other creators, like this is always in, in the, in the back of our minds is how we deal with the key man risks side of things. And, you know, for us, we focused on subscription products and we focused a lot on like good products that if Caleb was to stop filming or whatever for a day or two, we wouldn't be in trouble. So that's kind of it at a base level is when all you're doing is like brand deals and, you know, most of what your revenue is coming from is like links in the description and your AdSense, then you're in trouble. But now we've kind of got two revenue streams really in the memberships and in dollar wise where even if Caleb isn't to make a video, like we can still make revenue and we can still pay our bills.
Robert:What that specifically has allowed us to do actually already is, you know, this year we give the team four weeks off a year. We used to never be able to do that. So they get one week off every single quarter. And we know that we can still kind of rely on some of those subscription products to drive us through those dry periods. But obviously that still doesn't take away from like the entire key man idea.
Robert:Like there's still like a risk where Caleb can't like drop dead and we we'd be okay. And that's where like dollar wise comes in for us. And when we set the build out dollar wise, like if you look at the branding and you look at the product, there's very little of Caleb in the product itself. And we even message it a lot different than we messaged the show. And that's because we want to build like a product first product so that people are using it, not just because they like Caleb, but because it's a good product.
Robert:So success for us is, you know, sure our audience is going to get in. You want to utilize the audience to get them in, but when they show it to their friends or when somebody sees it via a paid ad, somebody sees it in organically, they say, Hey, this is an amazing product. And as a result, I'm going to continue to use it. And, you know, one, one brand that like I'm super inspired by is, sour strips, by Max tuning. Cause I thought he did an amazing job with this where he created that sour strip candy.
Robert:And at first it was definitely his audience buying it, but it was a good sour strip. And after a while, you know, the audience, regular people on the street who didn't even know like what his content was were the ones like buying it. And so that's our goal for dollar wise. And we're putting a ton of investment in it. We have a whole full time team that's working on the actual product every single day.
Robert:We're really doing the work to make sure that this is, something that, you know, people is one of the best budgeting apps on the platform, regardless of whether, you know, Caleb or not.
Ant:So the strategy there is build a product that transcends the individual creator's name and likeness and their audience. Right? Like, that's that's that's what you're trying to that's the whole objective essentially with
Robert:the Yeah.
Ant:Product strategy there.
Robert:Yeah. A 100%. And I feel like it's so tempting to, to, to like not do that and say, Hey, I'm going to call this hammer budget, or I'm going to, put Caleb's name and face all over it because you know, it would grow quicker that way, at least at the beginning. But you don't eliminate that key man risk as you were talking about in the long run, which is what we're trying to do.
Ant:And is that something then, like, extrapolating that out to other other creative businesses? That thinking around, like, name and likeness, Keyman Risk, this this time shall pass. Right? This this too shall pass, right, from a content perspective, then thinking about how to build something that lasts beyond the content, beyond the upload, or beyond the moment of time of influence?
Robert:Yeah. All creators I think should be thinking about that because you just never know what's gonna happen with the content and the algorithm and your time on YouTube could be short. And so, you know, for, for other creator businesses, like, you know, honestly, one thing that like I'm hoping for, and I'm hoping to talk about a lot is, Hey, like diversify a little bit and, you know, one day you may not be interested in making a video every single week for the rest of your life. It's like, what are you going to do? Are you going to go back and work for, you know, another person?
Robert:Probably not. But what you can rely on is, you know, this creator product that you built. Obviously you don't want to forsake the people that help you build a business, the audience themselves. I used to want to put content out in front of the paywall, in my opinion, but you want to have something there where if that audience disappears or you don't have it, then you can still survive as a content creator.
Ant:Love that. So for someone to be thinking like that, like, what's the underlying framework or thought that they should have to to sort of be actually be able to do that? Like, if if you're talking to a creator out there, their name, their face, their likeness is the brand, is the content, how do they how do they trans transform or build for something that lasts?
Robert:Yeah. And I think there's two ways to transform and and two different ways to to to think about this. And for us, the question is what can I build that my audience would love, but the world would love to? Right. And so constantly thinking about your niche and what in your niche does your audience really love, right.
Robert:If you're making movie content, you know, maybe there's like, I'm not in this niche at all, but maybe there's, you know, a certain, you know, carrying case for your movies. You can take, I guess it'll be carries movies around or, you know, something that you can give them that's like fan content or lore. Right. I would think about things like that all the time. And then I would say, okay, how do I, how do I build that thing or find a partner or a contractor to build it?
Robert:The other route is how do I create content with people that aren't me and find other creators that can work with you or for you that can make content that's not on your own, right? That does not just requires your face. I think that one is a different challenge. I think that one in order to grow it to be the size of your own brand, it takes a little bit of time, at least a year or two where maybe you're featured on that content creators work a lot until eventually they get to the place where they can run the show on their own and they can fly. Yeah, hope that answers the question, but that's how I think about it at least.
Ant:That's great. Robert Caliardi, thanks for joining us. It's been a great conversation.
Robert:Awesome. Yeah. Pleasure meeting you guys and, I appreciate the conversation as well.