How Airrack Made YouTube's Greatest Comeback (Interview)

I made a million mistakes. Like, I think nine out of ten decisions of I look back now, I'm like, that was the wrong choice. I'm just wondering if you could clear the error on that. That's the thing about YouTube you're trying to do something that's never really been done before, you're set up to make mistakes. Everyone was saying, "You're gonna be the next Mr. Beast." Talk about pressure. You know what I mean? It was like, encouraged to incinerate money, and I was not afraid to do it. Did you feel like you leaned into that two-month? That was like $150,000 down the drain. I was actually shocked you shared this. I don't want to play the spectacle game, dude. I want to play my own game. You may have made the greatest comeback in YouTube history. Are there things that you're doing now that any YouTuber can learn from? I can get very granular here. I don't know if you're gonna be able to do this. Yeah, yeah, no, let's go eat. Wait, where's my phone? I actually have a thumbnail mock-up. It's sick. Do you like that one? Should I make that video? Content will ooze out of this idea naturally. Previous error is gambling every single week, but the version of me that gets the channel to a hundred million in a way that I'm proud of is a very different version of Eric. But what happened with you and Mac? What do you try to do to me, Mac? Bill Quick, this is actually one of two videos that we filmed with Eric. Next up, we have a breakdown of one of Eric's biggest videos. So stay tuned. And if you haven't already, go to ythackpack.com to get our best templates, tools, and tips to grow on YouTube all for free. From our thumbnail templates to our intro templates to our viral ideas for any niche, we constantly update it as we do more interviews so you get the latest and greatest for free. Make sure you're subscribed. Make sure you hit the notification bell. Come on. Help my boy John out here. Because when we get to one million subscribed, I mean, we talked about this before. I'm gonna box him. We did not talk about that. We talked about that. Is it in a video now? It's official. Let's go watch it. Eric, thanks for coming on the show, man. I'm so excited to have you here. Mr. Ushai, it is my pleasure to be here. Dude, I was looking back at our first ever interview. I think it was 2022. My wife was still cutting my hair after COVID, and a lot has changed since then. Dude, was it your first interview? I think it was my third interview. Dude, it's so crazy, the looking back on its nuts. Yeah, we've been at it for a minute now. I mean, we're kind of becoming OGs. Yes, it's happening. It's happening, man. I mean, you've been doing so much since then. And I think you have one of the most unique stories on YouTube. Like, the way you've gone about your journey, your career, and I wanted to play a quote from Jimmy from Mr. Beast about you that I thought was really interesting during your early days. And just get your reaction to it, because I thought this was a big statement from him. Like, I think Eric shares that same, like, just almost dumb, right? Like, you have enough money where you just don't have to work anymore, but you keep going because you love this. You could tell he got an air act from the beginning, though, too. Yeah, and you just tell he's the next. Yeah, we'll try it all the thumbnail. Yeah, then you watch the video. It's like, okay, this guy's a YouTuber. He gets it. And he's a cycle path. Like, he's the kind of guy that would walk across America or do crazy shit like that. So I think he is. I think he's the next person to get 100 million subscribers. Oh, yeah, talk about pressure, you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, so that was Jimmy on the Nell podcast. Like, and at that time, you had about 10 million subscribers. Uh-huh. And for Jimmy to say, you were the next to get 100 million subscribers. I mean, that's a big deal. Like, how were you feeling at the time? Did you see him say that? Like, take me like in your shoes during that moment, because I think a lot changed after that. Yeah, I remember one of my boys showing me that clip at the time. And I mean, we thought it was awesome. We were like, hell yeah, we're big shots, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's funny looking back on it because I think when you don't, it's like the deeper you get into something, the more you realize you don't know. And at that time, I was like 36 months into YouTube. And things were going amazing, like with no breaks. And you just assume that you don't need to change or adjust anything. And that's just going to like go into forever. But I think the reality is, the version of me that got to 10 million subscribers, the version of you that gets to 100 million or 100,000 subscribers, the version of you that gets to a million subscribers, the version of you that gets to the 10, the version of you that gets to 100 are completely different people. And you see channels stall out at all of these benchmarks because it's hard. It's so hard to change and readjust and learn. You have to have an open mindset. And I think, yeah, you hit 10 million. I always call it the Sahara Desert. It's like the, there's so many people that you've seen. Hit 10 million subscribers. And then 10 to 100. Bro, you can count the amount of people doing in a one hand. It's like just a wide expanse of the unknown. I mean, for kind of two years ago. So a lot has like happened. It's just crazy, but yeah, it's just crazy. It's happened in two years. And at that time, like you had this huge year to get to the 1 million subscriber mark. And it seems like in a blink of an eye, you're at 10 million subscriber mark. I'm wondering, were you making a lot of decisions that looking back on it, you would have done differently? Okay, because I don't know about you. But I'm feeling as we grow, like my default state feels like drowning. Like I don't feel like it's like swimming towards the deep end. I just feel like I was putting the deep end and I have to figure out 10 things at once. And I think there's very few people to understand. And you did that like to a crazy extent. Like, did you feel like you were drowning in that moment? Dude, oh yeah, speaking of mistakes. Yeah, no, I made a million mistakes. Like I think nine out of 10 decisions of I look back now. I'm like, that was the wrong choice. Like repetitively. If you think principally, how I was thinking was clips like that go viral? And then it becomes my brain's job to get me to 10 million subscribers or a million subscribers or whatever the next milestone is. Not how do I build a sustainable YouTube channel? Those are two completely separate goals, fundamentally two separate goals. You have to take short-term sacrifices for long-term gain and like that's not what I was building at all. I'm building how fast can I get to the goal? By any means necessary. Yeah. And so yeah, you look back and you're like, I mean, if I really thought about my actual goal here, which is grow this channel over time. I'm passionate about YouTube. I want to be here. I would have made very different decisions. But that's the thing about YouTube. There's no playbook. And there's so few people trying to do it at the level I'm trying to do it at. There's only a handful of people you can ask and they might not even have the right answer. You know. One of those decisions you actually posted about in a video on your second channel, also Eric. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I want you to place, because context here, this is a behind the scenes of your most popular video today. Okay. 48 million views on this walking on water prank. And you talk about how much it costs and how much you made from it. Yes. Okay. How much does it cost? Like how much does it cost? I spent $100,000 on this bit. Actually, I avoid looking at this number because I know how much money I spent on this video. I made a $166,000 in this video. Dude, it's crazy. Everyone thinks that YouTubers are like, bajillionaires, but like, this is like your most successful feat on YouTube. And we just lost money. That's awesome. Yeah. No, that's a true story. That's what, and yeah, that's a whole separate thing. But I got, at the time of making that video, I was in a mindset where it's like, the videos have to be perfect. They have to be bigger than my last one. And money is no object because everyone I talk about is a professional. Everyone I'm talking to on the phone is a professional money incinerator. And so we're all just a bunch of boys who are great up incinerating money and making videos. And yeah, like that video, I re-ran the walking on water bit, three separate times that we never even filmed. We filmed the third take. But the first two, we set it all up. There's scuba divers in the water, setting up the invisible platform. And I get there and I'm like, the platform doesn't go far enough out. Like we're not going to get the shot. And so we do that two separate times before we actually-- And different dates, different shoots. Another bit on that video is where we have Mac and my friends throwing people up against a wall in a sushi shop. And it didn't go correctly. Or it wasn't set up correctly the first two times. Or the machine that we were using to do it broke. And so I re-shot that bit three separate times. I definitely spent $100,000 on that video or more until it was perfect, you know? Which is, it's a tough standard, right? It's honestly a game that you choose to play of making perfect videos, which is, in my opinion, a losing game. But that's where I was at at the time. And yeah, I, you know, after a year or so of that video, I ended up making money on it. But definitely not at the gates. Yeah, I wanted to dial into like your videos now versus your videos then. Because I actually spoke to a lot of members of your team. One member of your team, I'm actually not going to say his name. He's like, we were making videos that were poorly thought out and way too expensive back in the day. Yeah. And there was a reference to your world's most and possible trick-trogged videos as being like, like a poor man's attempt at dude perfect, that dude imperfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. From back in the day. I actually a very fun video to film. But yeah, no. It doesn't feel like an air-act video though. It does not feel like an air-act video. It's very confusing. Yeah, and just to put some numbers around it. So back in the day 2023, 2024, your videos were averaging around two to three million views. I saw, and it seems like from what you said, they were costing above six figures. Yeah, so that's right. Now, 2025 going to 2026, your videos are getting five to 10 million views on average. It seems like they cost less. I want to ask more about how you're thinking about that. And they feel more on brand. So I'm wondering, are there tips or things that you're doing now that like any you can learn from because you're kind of reinventing the wheel as YouTube goes along here like how did you make this switch like tell me more about those changes that you made in terms of the content, the team. Well, I can get I can get very granular here. I don't know how granular you know, let's go deep. If you put effort at different parts of a YouTube channel, different things happen, which is so interesting. And I think if you just hire like a crazy person and just you just somebody says, we need that we need four more producers. And you're like, I want to get to tell my subscribers, I don't care what you do, just get the videos done. You end up with four producers, you know what I mean? Or just four bodies, but you're not vetting or they're like talent or competence. Yeah, do you know, do you actually, but but this is real cost when it comes to a YouTube channel? This is a real cost that you now can't spend somewhere else. So I think for me, it was like when we broke the whole thing down, it was like measuring a YouTube channel by multipliers. Like how powerful is every dollar spent towards this? How powerful is every dollar spent towards this? And like tearing this is the channel. And like, is this actually necessary? Because I don't want to play the spectacle game, dude. There's a guy with a bunch of money in North Carolina that will beat me every time in the spectacle game. Like I want to play my own game. Like I just want to play my own game. If we're going to restart this whole thing, right, like this is where my head's at, I am going to sign up for the games that I want to play. And if it works great, if not, I'll go become a real estate agent or something. I don't know, but I'm not going to sign up to like be forced to make videos that I'm not even that passionate about again. And so we took that and then we broke it down on like, where do we get the most outcome for every unit of effort that goes into the channel? You know, I think there's like a few core things that we like have written on a whiteboard that are like rules we don't deviate from, which I think every channel should have. I think the first thing that's the most important is like, if you can't explain your brand in one word you're already done for. Like it's already over. And so I think being able to clearly explain your brand in a word, like when somebody says, what type of videos do you make? You should say one thing and it shouldn't be confusing for you to explain your own thing in my opinion. And like that was a filter that we thought through for a long time because I don't think ever before I've been able to explain that to somebody before they would ask me and I would be like, I would never I wouldn't I had no answer. So for us, it's the word. Yeah, what's your one word? Yeah. The word for us is mischief. And so like we look at that word and it's like is the video we're talking about right now mischievous? Like is it and like mischievous can be good? It can be bad. Does it will people be laughing at the end? Or will people be like, I just saw like the underbelly of society? I don't want to I don't like that. If it can't be mischief and everybody's not laughing at the end, it's like a chaotic good. We don't make it. It just doesn't get made. It just gets thrown to the incinerator. What's an idea that didn't pass that filter? We had we had an idea that was it was me going on the dark web and ordering stuff. And then I got on the dark web and I realized like I'm like, Oh, dark web, amazing YouTube title. And then you realize what the dark web is actually. And then it's like, yeah, it's mischief. But is this like positive mischief? Like is this mischief we can make fun out of the answers? No. And so we don't make it. Like there's there's adjacent things that will think are great ideas. And then you put them through a filter and it's just it doesn't work. Yeah. So it's almost like playful trouble making. Has to be playful. It has to be playful. Interesting. I know we were talking before as I think about that a lot with our videos. And I think our one word is like actionable or tactical. Like are we talking about something with this guest that an aspiring YouTuber can watch and write down it and apply like take action on. You know, dude, I can pull up wait, where's my phone? I can pull up bad ideas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to hear it. Yeah. Because how do you think about that filter? Millions of bad ideas. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us. Good ideas. That's the hard part. Okay. Here's here's an idea. There's there's different reasons that ideas are bad. Like I told you the like the dark web video is bad because it's evil. It sounds awesome. But it's evil. Another reason a video idea could be bad is because it lacks ability to actually be pulled off in the physical world. So there was a whole thing there was a vital these viral TikToks about how there's these underground tunnels in LA with Starbucks's and this is how Will Smith and all the biggest celebrities get around. Amazing idea. I actually have a thumbnail mockup. Oh wow. It's sick. Problem can't actually be done in the physical world. If that existed, they would not let me inside of it. It's not going to happen. So okay, this gets thrown into the trash. Wait, it's not happening because you don't know if the tunnels actually exist or you can't get access to them. That's a question for the conspiracy theorist out there. I don't know. I hope that they do exist. Guys, so that one's not going through the filter of is it mischievous or not? Is it that one's is it possible or not or is it actually really real or not? Who is pitching these? Is it the team? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or like all find other smaller YouTubers that I like their ideas and then I'll just pay them to pitch me ideas as well. Oh wow. Okay, here's another bad one. I ranked the most painful insect bites. Check out these thumbnails. These thumbnails are sick. This is like a, this is like a map of the size and it's like right there. Close up. Yeah. There's like all these thumbnail. Wait, this is an amazing pitch page. So this is how you're getting ideas. That's right. Is this like a template that you say you have to pitch me in this way? That's right. Yeah, exactly. And they have to give you three thumbnails. Yeah, they have to give me three thumbnails. They have to give me a breakdown of the video and they have to give me a how. So how does this video actually exist in the physical world? That is such a genius way to pitch an idea versus like, hey, we have this idea for a video. It can involve it. Like you're like, show me what I'm going to see. Yeah, yeah. Like I don't want to be pitched unless it has like a clear, does it fit the brand? Tell me about what's inside the video. Yeah. These questions honestly aren't even for me. They're for them because it prompts your own brain. You'll think of a good idea and then it'll be like what's the content inside and it'll self eliminate itself nine out of 10 times because you can't think of the content on the inside of the video. Wow. And then yeah. So this is an amazing video idea for coyote Peterson. He's the guy who gets bid by books and stuff constantly. Amazing video for him. Terrible video for me. This is me doing trick shots. Part two. I'm making a trick. What are we doing? Making a trick shot video. Great video for dude. Perfect. But again, terrible video for me. What am I? What are we doing? Yeah. I tested the world's most deadly militaries. That's an amazing video for Austin Alexander. His whole channel is about military stuff. It's not a good video idea for me. Ideas that I also have in here that are actually pretty funny, but I won't make them as sneaking into a zoo as a fake animal. You like that one? Your disguises keep getting over it. I think it might be the last video I ever make. That's the other thing about some of these. Sneaking into the president's top secret bunker lacks a how awesome idea if we could do it. Amazing. It does exist. I know where it is. Can I get there? No. Okay. I can't make it. You know, oh. Another video I wanted to do was I actually I tried every cult and I basically me and my friends go to every single cult and existence like all the biggest ones. The problem is I have heard that these cults have like infinite money to chase you down for the rest of your life and make your life horrible. And so I'm not doing that video. But somebody should, well, somebody should not do that video actually. Yeah. No. What's the process? You just get these on your phone taxi. You have a weekly meeting to go through these and decide. Yeah. Weekly meeting. There's a way of a weekly meeting. There's a few people on the call. They'll pitch ideas at the same time. Most of the time the meetings nothing comes out of them or like really what I'm looking for is a piece of inspiration. Like I'm not looking for a perfect video idea. I don't think it'll ever happen because at the end of the day, I'm the decider of what gets posted on the channel. And I'm looking for high quality inspiration. Like a really good seed. The way that the whole hiding and streamer streams video came about was I had one of my buddies pitch me in that meeting. I lived in mafia thon back when mafia guys mafia thon two came up. Yeah. And I was like, that's a bad idea. But what if I hid in the background of his stream and then like five other streamer streams? And then that becomes a bucket. So I'm like, yeah, I'll pay for high quality inspiration all day. One that I posted recently was $1.00 versus $100 million road trip. I don't, what am I doing making that video? How long have I been doing make that six months ago? So it's not like you're still kind of I think we have it locked now. But it was a, it was a rough road to figure out the direction. Yeah. I think having a one word filter, like you said, it is so powerful for any YouTube. I mean, for you, it's like, is this video for Eric? Or for me, it's like, is this interview? Like, like, if it's not actionable, do we spend time on it? Or, you know, I feel like that filter can work for so many creators. So I thought just as an interesting exercise, I took a video from you from Ryan Trayhan and from Jimmy and put it through a one word filter. So we use the word spectacle or money for Jimmy. Yeah, we use the word quirky for Ryan. Yep. And we've used the word mischief. Like you said, for your video, the topic of island yeah, can be filtered and made so differently. Yeah. Based on how well-defined you are on your one word. Totally 100%. Something that we'll do in exercise a lot of times where we'll think of a word. and then we'll do a shoe-swapping exercise where it's like, yeah, if the topic is island, what would Mr. Beast do? He would do the least expensive to the most expensive island. If Trayhan were to do an island, what would he do? Probably like worlds lonely as island. - Yeah, banger, yeah. - If I do island, I snuck onto a secret but billionaire private islands. It's like, that's mischief, that's quirky, that's spectacle. And you can use other adjacent YouTubers, I think, to build ideas like this, just giving one word if the brain is strong. - Yeah, another example of that, the topic of Disney. Okay, like Jimmy rents out Disney World for a $500,000 date of Ryan tries out all the different hotels and rides at Disney. And you sneak into Disney and try living there for seven days. - Yeah, I secretly live there. - Same topic, different one word, brand filters. - Yes. - Different end results. - That's right, completely different videos. Distinguished, distinguished, different videos for each creator, given one word. - Yeah, how do you think about like giving your take on something that is already happening on YouTubers a popular topic? 'Cause that validated interest, it still matters. - I think, I mean, literally these guys, and I will talk about identifying and innovating off of these videos. So, Jimmy will get a hotel banger. Ryan and I are like, what's our version of hotel? Ryan will do flights. Jimmy and I are like, what's our version of flights, you know? And I think that's like a cool, healthy way to deliver on a topic of interest while making completely separate videos and serving the audience in different ways. Which I think is so exciting. 'Cause you can build adjacent to creators. And I do believe that there are so many ideas out there that haven't been done. You just have to really invest time into it, yeah. - Yeah, identifying and innovating. That's a really interesting way to put it. And I wanted to break down this video, where you made a video called How Long? Can you secretly live in a grocery store? - Yeah. - And I'm wondering if you could talk about the inspiration that led to it. Like what did you identify that was working on YouTube and how do you innovate on that? - These are so fun to like work through because it's like, it's funny talking about it 'cause I would never think that any of this would make the light of day ever. But this is, yeah, this is like, I mean, this is days worth of work, basically, backing an idea. When we're making a new format, we're gambling. You know, this is, this is, previous Air Act 2022, 2023 is gambling every single week. I have no idea what's gonna work. I'm reinventing the wheel every single week. But there's a smart way to do it, which is like this. So basically, how along can you secretly live in a grocery store? It's a brand new idea. It's never been done this way before. The pieces of inspiration are a combination of things. So we see, there's like this stealth camping trend. That's like nobody's really talking about, but there's a dude who stealth camps and roundabouts. He's stealth camps in like sewers. He's stealth camps all over the place. He's the coolest guy, by the way, I'm subscribed to this guy. Forget his name at the moment, but he's awesome. What is stealth camping just so people. Stealth, oh yeah. The idea of stealth camping is that you set up a camp in a place that you're technically not supposed to or a place you wouldn't normally do. Like a freaking roundabout. Yeah, and you're doing hardcore survival, but in a place that you would never expect, like a roundabout, like in the bushes and a roundabout, or under in the sewers, like under a grate, you know what I mean? Like this dude's secretly camping in public urban spaces, basically. It's like he's in the middle of the woods. He's surviving like he's in the middle of the woods, but he's in the middle of the city. Amazing. These videos are so entertaining to watch. You watch a guy who's amazing at what he does, does what he does best for 20 minutes straight. So awesome. And then you have food theory. They made a video four years ago, which was how long could you secretly be locked in a grocery store? And so they go through the theory of this, like breaking it down, like how many meals could you make out of all the food in the grocery store if you were stuck there for like a zombie apocalypse? They're basically proving out concept. They're not doing any challenge, anything. They're just talking about the idea. That video gets 21 million views by itself, just talking about the theory of living in a grocery store. Jim makes a video called $10,000 every day you could survive in a grocery store. I'm pretty sure one of his split tests of his thumbnail on this video is literally the Matt Pat thumbnail, but Jimmy's face on it. I think because Jim took heavy inspiration from food theory on this, we take these three data points. We say, hey, what's the air act version of this? That ends up being how long could you secretly live in a grocery store? And so yeah, this is, I think and now yes, we're gambling. We don't know if the audience is gonna like it. This video has 17 million views now. I remember, you know, we're talking about it internally and we didn't know what was gonna happen. Like this could easily be a 10 out of 10. But if it's a 10 out of 10, I'm okay with that because we took so much time in prepping the idea. If the audience doesn't like it, that's okay. And we'll move on to the next idea that we did the exact same thing with. And I think that's the smart way to approach YouTube. Eric, we also analyzed your past 20, 30 videos. And I thought it was fascinating how like they could fall into very clear buckets. And I'm wondering, when you're thinking about the initial idea, how much can you turn it into a series factor into your decision to do it or not? - One of the rules that we have is if it doesn't have a follow up, we're not making it. We're not gonna make a video if it doesn't have a natural follow up. It's not gonna happen. It could be a video that's gonna get 100 million views. I'm not going to make it. Making new videos every single week, I've done it and you have to rebuild a from scratch and reinvent the wheel every single week you're purposefully living on hard mode. And I'm saying like that because I've done it myself. Like this is, I did this for years. And something when we were sort of reinventing the channel we looked back on was there was a few different series that were like really successful. But I never was thinking in, how do I do more of these? I was just thinking, that's awesome, that there's follow ups. All right, go on to the next video. Like I wasn't thinking dependently on series, but I think good ideas are marked by this. Good ideas are marked by it. There's more content in there than you can make with one video. Like right now our buckets that we're currently doing, there's more that we haven't launched yet. But we just dropped our new apparel for created. I'm talking about new sweatshirts, hoodies, ball caps and more. And we were putting together our merch. 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So if you're a creator selling online or even just planning to or thinking about it, then get your branded dot store link before somebody else does by going to this link below. Just do it and do it with the domain that just makes sense. dot store domain. So thank you guys again for sponsoring and now back to the video. - Our buckets are like, there's I secretly lived in. There's I hid in streams or content or YouTube videos or TikTok or whatever. There's instant karma. So that's giving thieves, cheaters, instant karma. - You scam scammers. - Scam scammers. And there's a bunch more buckets that are rolling out that exist, but. Why is it my mind while I say, "You've been God on Get God"? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, there's some good Get God's coming to the channel right now. But yeah, like Pranks is another one. Like we've been really successful in a series of pranks. And then the cool thing about these is if they're really good ideas, they branch into additional concepts. So like, it's like breeding horses. Where like, so we have I secretly hid in Kaisenets live stream. And then we have I secretly lived in a grocery store. Now we cross those two together and you get I secretly lived in Kaisenets house, right? And now it's a mix of these two ideas that both have proof to work. And now instead of taking bets that are like 87% likely to work, you're taking like 99% shot that these work. And you have specific leverage to do. So you're in your position to do it well because you've already been working at these ideas. It makes your life easier. It makes the editors lives easier. It makes the producers lives. Anybody who touches a video gets reps. And so your videos actually get better as you do them over and over and over again, which is like such a simple concept. But it took me five years to realize it. So here we are. - Yeah, I mean, even like dialing it in, like we were talking about the production of like, living somewhere, like you have to like set up the cameras. You have to think about, you know, like getting investing. Like for us, like when we do the interviews, Like we've now got so dialed in because we're doing it obviously is a much simpler format but yeah Yeah, like restarting from scratch, like that's like also restarting your costs. - Yeah, it would be like doing an interview one week and then doing 50 other formats of different types of YouTube every other week of the year. You never get better at it. You don't get good at it. Everyone's always starting from zero and so the product is always suboptimal. Unless you can build buckets of types of videos and you, it's cool. Like the second version of the third version of video will actually get more views in the first version because you're a pro at it. You're better than anybody else on the internet and making a specific type of video, which is awesome. That's such a valuable skill set, you know? - What are some of those things you like learned or like made it easier to go? Like secretly live in a grocery store to then secretly live in a water park to now secretly live in a mall. Like what is happening behind the scenes that's making those videos like easier to make or things that you're doing on screen? Like, yeah, what's happening? Yeah, that makes it kind of compound. - There's little things for every different type of video where they have their idiosyncrasies. Like for a secret living in a grocery store, you're working with security footage for the first time. And so I don't-- - You're actually pulling security footage from there. - From the security. - Very existing cameras. - That's right. Yeah, so I'm like hoping to God that these record, right? And then they did, but like I've never pulled security footage before, so I have to get a technician to pull the footage. This adds a week. It takes a week to get it off the server 'cause I didn't prep for it 'cause I didn't think about it. And now I know how to get security cam footage off of a thing. But if I never did a follow-up to that, that would be something that one of my great amazing producers learned and then never used again. It's just a waste of effort. But now, because I get to run that video back four or five times, they have a specific skillset. They're probably better than any other YouTube producer at pulling security footage. And we go into a new location where picking locations based on their security cameras. Because that's the actual thing I'm optimizing for. When we did mall, my first thought was, let's do it at America Dream Mall. And then we find out that they have like 1200 cameras. And I'm like, it's too much. And it's too hard to pull from. But then we talk to another mall where their security cameras are much more similar to ours or what we've done in the past. And I'm like, let's do that mall because we already know how this works and it'll make the production so much easier. That goes into post-production seamlessly. They already know how to edit it, which is a whole other thing, you know? The stories get better because you build lore on top of them. The, you know, I have reps at doing it. So I know what makes a better video. I get to study the retention graphs and find out what people weren't as interested in. And I just make a more optimized version of the last video every time over and over and over and over and over again, you know? But it all starts with the idea. - Yeah, I guess, yeah, doubling down on it. I mean, another way I've been seeing that is your disguises and your costume. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've seen the real life. - Oh, I've seen you in the makeup chair. - Yeah, yeah. - You're getting it and like, like what was that process like making it more ridiculous and even more professional? Like these are looking like movie level costumes that you were putting on and you're in the makeup chair for like seven, eight hours. Like is that a process of like developing that bucket of hiding or secretly living in and then kind of helping that improve your costume design? - Yeah, I think number one, when you do makeup 30 times in three months, high SFX makeup, you learn who all the best SFX and body painters in the world are. And so I have all of them on a context list. So whenever I need to do makeup now, we just call up whoever's closest to us are available and we get the world's best makeup artist. Me knowing I'm gonna do a follow up allows me to prep. So like now I have a mold of my exact head that's been 3D scanned and so they can build custom disguises for me. Because I know I'm gonna shoot part three in two months from now. So I have two months to prep this and I'm not paying the last minute expedited fees for like getting stuff done and it's not bad. It's like getting better. As I go down the series, like the disguises are getting better and better and better. You work with people over and over again. Those, you're, you know, you get more chemistry with them of what you like and what you don't like. Yeah, no, I've, I've rotted in a makeup chair for like 100 hours in the last three months. You've seen it maybe more. Well, it's the most expensive costume for a hip-hop. - Man, so many expensive ones. I'll do honestly, they're less expensive than you would think. That's another thing is better ideas are usually not as expensive unless you're that guy that lives in Greenville, North Carolina. And then I actually think he probably even has depreciating value on money at some point. But maybe that rock costume I did in my last hiding video was hilarious. - I do, that one was nuts, that one. - You look like the thing from the Fantastic Four on steroids. - Bro, it took, that costume took like a month of prep and I think it might have cost like three or four thousand for that one. - Which like, I feel kind of like dumb for even saying that's expensive because I used to spend that on nothing. But that's for us now for budgets. That's like pretty expensive. - What is the budget now for videos? - Under $10,000. - Really? - Yeah, probably we probably average out of like $6,000. - Wow. - Yeah. - What do you think about, what do you think when you, 'cause I've, I know this. - Well, I'm thinking about your last video or one of your last videos. You had a higher like 20 air act doubles. - Not expensive as you would think in LA. - No, like those are extras. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - They're like, you just backstage extras, yeah. - Like a few hundred bucks a day. - Yeah, yeah. - Okay, got a couple of. - And then the costume was another part of it, travel. I guess it is interesting. Like your reinvention of the channel is better ideas, cheaper production. - Yeah, if you, something I learned as the more expensive an idea becomes, it's usually a worse idea. There are outliers, but usually you're compensating for not brainstorming enough by spending more money. - Wow. - Big time. - Any ideas that come to mind, they like, that's too expensive. - For me? - Yeah. - Like right now or once that I made in the past. - Either. - Like I think about ideas like, you know the video where I had YouTubers date an AI robot. - Yeah. - That video cost $65,000 and it was filmed in my own house. How did it cost that much money? I don't know. I don't know. I look at some of my past budget sheets. It's like, unbelievable. I bought every seat on an airplane. That was an idea that I did. I had to film that video twice. I don't think people know that. I rented out an airplane and ended up being a scam. I had a hundred people show up to a tarmac. The plane never showed up. I had to come back a month later, bring the hundred people back out by another airplane, didn't get my money refunded. Fundamentally, I am competing at the wrong game. Like what? Even if that video wins, what's the upside? I don't get to run it again. There's no second part of this. It doesn't build anything for the channel. I'm just doing it for the sake of doing it. You know, it's tough. Like this is a tough game to compete at. - Yeah. - And so, as I get older, I get a little wiser. - It kind of goes against those rules that you've outlined so far. It's not on brand, it's not misgivious. It doesn't have that one word definition. There's not a clear follow up to it. You can't turn into series. You can't learn into production editing. - Now I know how to get a commercial airliner to charter me anywhere I want in the world. What am I going to do with that information? There's no follow up to this video. I already got a 747 with 150 seats on it. Like, I should have started it. You could have done it if you started like private jet. And then you did like a little bit bigger of a plane. And then you do like the 747. But I already did it. I did the biggest version of the video. What do you do next, you know? Yeah. So the newer rules that we're working by are super helpful for topic selection. - Yeah. On the finances, it's interesting. 'Cause we just co-founded a business with Zach, your manager, like Hanover. And my business partner, Amanda and my wife. And it's called Boring Stuff. You know, we had all the Boring Stuff accounting book even for Chris, you're one of our first clients. - Come on. - Which is really exciting. 'Cause I think so many people make these accounting and financial mistakes. Is there any other like huge expense or like big mistake that you look back on? You're like, we wouldn't do that. Or other YouTubers are making that you're like, they don't realize what's coming. - Something I messed up on big time was I rented out a giant studio space. And I was like 24 when I signed on to it or 25. And I didn't realize that commercial leases are like five years long, like baseline. And I rented out a studio space as studio spaces went down, down, down, down, down, and depreciated and value like nobody's ever not wanted studio space more than they've not wanted it in Los Angeles than right now. And so I had the studio space that I'm like trying to rent out and like nobody wants it. But you do taking on big fixed costs as a YouTuber is like the dumbest thing you can possibly do. Every dollar counts. And you can, the being agile as a YouTuber is the biggest advantage you can possibly have being able to quickly turn the boat and change directions. But when you start putting down fixed costs on things, you really limit your optionality on what's the next direction. And you get locked into a certain direction. It's a huge thing. I've had to like fundamentally restructure the whole channel based on a couple of different decisions I made like that. - Yeah. - Borked up is awesome though. Shut up, Roon. - Shut up, shut up, Roon. - You got me right. - Yeah, yeah. Roon, Zach, Amanda, we're so excited about that. And yeah, I think you're absolutely right. YouTube is a speedboat, not a cruise ship. - That's right. - Yeah. And YouTube can be one thing today. It can be something completely different in a month from now. And you need to be able to adapt to that. So as much liquidity, as much ability, you have to change directions. You have to build the channel around that. Because that's just what YouTube is. - Yeah. - What else? What are the rules of YouTube? Do you have now, or do you feel like other aspiring YouTubers can learn from? - Hmm, I hear a lot of people talking about like A plots and B plots. I think it's-- completely overrated. I think if you require a B-plot, your A-plot sucks. And so it's all about the A-plot. I used to get really like in my head about A-plots, B-plots, C-plots, like bringing stuff in. And then in the edit, it just becomes so confusing. I think I watch people mess it up on most videos as they probably listen to me two years ago on a podcast talking about A-plots and B-plots. And now they're doing it and their videos just get so messy. Give me an example, just what folks who may not understand. What is an A-plot in the video and is it B-plot? Maybe the past example. - An A-plot in the video would be, for example, if I'm secretly living in a grocery store, the A-plot is me secretly living in that grocery store. And is my action that I'm taking right now related to me secretly living in a grocery store? A B-plot would be like, I love mangoes and I'm gonna see how many mangoes I can eat while I'm here. And all of a sudden, this mango storyline becomes a giant distraction. And every time I talk about mangoes, I'm like not delivering on the video that the viewer clicked on. And I'm doing some random other side quest because I thought it was important for some reason. If I just focus on secretly living in a grocery store, content will ooze out of this idea naturally. And like, yeah, we can set up a couple bits here and there, but the further you get away from the A-plot, the more confusing a video gets. The harder it gets to film as the creator because now you have all these things to remember as you're doing it, it's not fun anymore. And it becomes 40 times harder to edit because you're like, no, there was this whole storyline about mangoes, like trust me, it's good. And they're like, dude, it doesn't make any sense. And then you get in an argument with your editor and then the video comes out and it's like half about the grocery store and half about mangoes and all the video sucks. - Yeah, A-plot equals the title on YouTube. - A-plot equals the title. B-plot would be a separate store you're trying to set up outside of a side quest. - Yeah. - But it is interesting, and I grossed your sort of video. You had hope and you going to date. - Was that not a B-plot or was that adding, I found that one of the best parts of the video. How do you think about those little moments? - I think it's a fun bit, but it's not a B-plot. Like, it's a bit that I thought would be fun, but us doing a date is directly correlated to me secretly living in a grocery store. Like I'm gonna live here, like I'm gonna bring my girlfriend here, like this is like, and now there's security in the building at the same time, right? Like, this is sneaking in, like it hurts through the back door to have the date. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's awesome for the A-plot of the video. Like this, it's in line with what I sold on the title thumbnail, it's not a complete distraction. Like me trying to run a marathon inside of the grocery store would have been a distraction. It was a real idea that I thought of, and I was like this is gonna be such an undertaking and such a distraction from the video. I'm going to rob the content that would naturally be in this video because I'm gonna be so focused on the goal of running a marathon in the grocery store. This is stupid. - Man, it is so funny hearing you say this, 'cause I feel like these are things that people believed were good on YouTube just a few years ago. - Yeah. - Stack your plots. Cut fast, you know? It's like, just so many things have changed in terms of, yeah, we used to think that YouTube videos needed to be eight minutes, and now YouTube rewards hour long videos, right? Like, this is what I'm saying, the platform is so agile, and you have to optimize your operation and your channel to be agile, 'cause it can change so fast. What about your intros? Like, I feel like those have changed a lot. I actually pulled up a few of them here, and I'm curious, like, if you could break down, like, what's going on in this one? - Uh-huh. - Oh yeah, this is going. - Over the past three months, I've tracked down four real-life scammers. ♪ Check, check, check ♪ - Today, using some ingenious methods, I'm gonna be giving them a little taste of their own medicine. (upbeat music) - Take the money. (upbeat music) - We're doing hard, I just feel it, I feel it. - You are about to meet God. (laughs) - Yeah. You know, I got in a heated discussion, like, six months ago, with another YouTuber, and they basically said, "Every month, we talk about intros and thumbnails, "and every month, we come to the realization "that they're more important than we thought they were last month, "and we've been doing that for a year." And I was like, "That's really interesting. "Tell me about that." And it's just, you've heard it a million times, but if you really think about it, like, dude, YouTube has done what we asked. They've given us so much mobility with YouTube editor, with AB split testing, with title split testing. There's no, there's a reason that those are there. And if you're not taking them seriously, you're handicapping yourself. Because I always think about life as it's like, there's a thousand parallel universes you're living in, and they're all half a percent different. And you have an opportunity with YouTube to live in pretty close to the most optimal reality. Because we can split test into infinity, we can split, we can work on our intros over and over and over, we can run them by a million people. You can use YouTube better to cut stuff out if you want to, but yeah, like the first 30 seconds of a video, and like, I'm telling you, it's really smart people, really smart YouTube people are meeting in a room every month. And the only conclusion they come to is that the title and the intro are more important than they thought they were last month. Over and over and over and over again. So I've tried to keep the intros a lot tighter than I used to. I try to really work on making them representative of the content. I think that's so important. And for both title and thumbnail, I think it's like, does this feel like an air act video again? If I'm going to do a thumbnail, it needs to feel representative of brand. Crazy thing is about like working with brands and on YouTube and building a reputation on YouTube, is people don't really watch your videos. Like they take your channel face value. So like is this thumbnail representative of the brand? It's like, this is important stuff to think about. Yeah. Specifically on intros, it is a video becomes exponentially less important every second that goes by in a video exponentially. So it's like the first one second of the video is the most important second of the entire video. It is the most important second of the entire video. And sometimes I've had this habit of thinking about it not very hard and I get so focused on the bits and making sure the content is good. If I minute three or four of a video of viewers already decided to watch, they're probably going to stay to the end. So it's like from second number one to like second, like two minutes in, I think is the most important part of a video. And then from there you've either earned or not earned to the viewer. Everything else can get a little bit abstract past that point. But it is interesting the point about brand and perception because I do feel like a lot of brands like Glance and look at the thumbnails. The channel header and maybe watch the intro. And so creators don't realize like, that doesn't just help the retention. It helps their bottom line in some ways. - Big time. - 'Cause these sponsors are looking at that. And they're just trying to show their boss that they're making a good financial decision by giving you sponsorship money. - Yeah. - And that is like, their boss is like, not even glancing, they're squinting, you know? And just like taking a look at it. So it's interesting, I haven't heard too many creators like talk about that 'cause it is a big perception play too. - Big time. - I didn't realize it until like two years ago. And I started getting on calls with brands that we wanted to partner with. And they started saying like, we have qualms with this video idea or like with these videos that you've made. And I'm like, did you watch the video? Because the content is so different from what you think it is. And they're like, you know, they haven't watched the videos. But your title and thumbnail, the brands are watching. They're not watching your videos, they don't care. Is your brand representative of their values? Yes or no? - Yeah, that's how they decide, yeah. - I guess yeah, they take away like, some brands only read, they don't watch. That's right, yeah, it's interesting. What does the team look like now? Like 'cause you guys are putting out so much like content. Like so quickly, highly edited, highly produced. Like what's the makeup of their acting now? - It's a lot smaller than it was. My values have like shifted a lot to like a small amount of great people. And that's the goal. There's two people and creative, but there's a lot of that spider webbing that goes out for finding new inspiration. Like there's little feelers out everywhere looking for inspiration. Editing takes up the most amount of people, six people in person, two or three overseas. Production is like two or three people. - And how big was it before? - 20 plus, something like that. Maybe 25, yeah, like peak people. - And like obviously a big part of your channel back then was Mac and being an editor. What happened with you and Mac? - Dude, Mac is a dog. Like it's hard to overvalue what he is capable of. Like you have to think that guy was with me, living in a bunk bed in a basement, editing videos in a garage for years. And he would edit the videos for two days and then he would go out and shoot and be my cameraman and talent in the videos and then come back and then edit the video in two days. And we did that for years. It's like, dude, he's on a different planet of work ethic, willingness to work. One of the most, he might be the most creative person I know. I think it's similar. to when we talk about the person that got me from 0 to 100,000 or 100,000 to a million or a million to 10 million, the version of the team that got me there won't be the same either. And Mack and I are still very close. And I think that we will be friends for a long time. But there's a time and a place for two people and two collaborators to work together on something. Like we don't have to work together and be friends. We can do one or the other they're not mutually exclusive, you know. And so yeah, Max gone on to do amazing things. I'm so, so, so, so, so, so, so proud of him. Like he deserves everything that he's done and more. I'm so proud of everything he's done. And we've been through a lot of stuff together. Like we've been through a ton. And yeah, it makes me emotional to think about him because he's done so much for me. Like, I wouldn't be here without him. Like I would, I would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever have gotten this far. If he didn't come in and help me, he believed in me when I had nothing. I had like 10,000 subscribers. And Mack was there living on my couch, making videos with me. And Mack is his own creative powerhouse, you know. And I think him and I have pretty different goals. And we'll probably, we will support each other's goals forever. But there was a cool blip in time when our goal was the exact same thing. But I don't think it has to stay like that. I don't think it will stay like that. He's got some cool stuff coming. And I'm really excited for it. Yeah. I mean, one of the moments that made me emotional watching. And I feel like it's just tattooed on my brain in terms of like stuff up. You know, you and Mack crossing the one million subscriber mark on your channel. Yeah. Like you guys, I think staked out on an island somewhere. Yeah. New Year's Eve, just freaking out together. And when I saw this, like, oh, this is the dynamic duo of YouTube. They're going to be together forever. Yeah. Was there something looking back on it? You could have done to keep Mack around. Or do you think it was inevitable that you guys are going to go down separate paths? I don't think my goal was ever to keep Mack. Like I think my goal was to, for us to work together for as long as it made sense on the same project. And I think it's so important to like love and be friends with the people that you do these things with because doing them alone is lame and it's not fun. And our friendship has gone through ups and downs. And there's so many things. And on from my side, I'm not going to speak for him, but on my side that I wish I would have done differently over time. But at the end of the day, there's a lot of stuff that has happened that only him and I will ever have the mutual human experience of going through together. And that will, that bonds us forever. I think to answer your question, there's a million things I could have done differently or I wish I would have done. But that's the same thing you have with any good friend, you know, like relationships aren't always perfect, especially when you mix business, especially when you mix one of the fastest growing YouTube channels on planet earth. It's hard. It's really, really, really hard to do YouTube with your friends, especially when you're both on camera together. I ask that because I think if you trace back anybody's journey, like behind every crazy creator is a super supportive partner, a spouse, an editor, like videographer, somebody who grinds with them. And I'm wondering is there things that if it was not doing it forever, but like things like you mentioned, you could have done differently to maybe like keep that ride going a little bit longer or keep good people around because I think it's like YouTube gets emotional and there's like decisions that, you know, in hindsight, I've made or things I've said that was like, oh wow, that's definitely in the heat of the moment. And you know, it would have been great to keep working with that person. I think if I were giving advice to creators out there for retaining great people, my advice would be to show appreciation more than you think you have to. If you're the creator, you're the only person getting praise by the way, if you didn't realize it, you get all the comments, you get all the views, it's all attached to your face. They don't get any of the glory for all the hard work that they put into making your thing. So you're the most important person to appreciate them. What forms does that appreciation take? Like there's like, is it more on camera time? So people know them and all the hard work they put in, is it money and like helping compensate like what, what do you feel like are some of those things that everybody's different, everybody has different values. I think if you can understand the person really well and what they value the most, I think you can, that will help you do a much better job. So if you don't know what your team values, I would figure it out quickly and what that individual exactly what each person values and how to do a great job for them. If you don't think that that's your job as a YouTuber, you already lost. What is your job? It is your job as the leader of the channel. I think as much as you can incentivize the team as possible reasonably, this is also your job. I think there's a lot of stuff that I overlooked where I had huge upside from their work, but didn't necessarily include them in all of the upside. And I think it's important to include really great people in the upside of the channel. There's all kinds of ways to do that, whether it's money, whether that's experiences, whether that's time off, there's all kinds of equity, there's all kinds of important ways to incentivize a team. And if you want to do it for the long run, don't expect somebody to stage us for money. It's just not the key. And I would say for important people, you can never underestimate the value of your relationship with them. People usually sign up for a YouTube channel because they respect, love, appreciate the person and the helm of it. And it's unrealistic to expect somebody to continue to be excited about the channel. If there's an inverse relationship to the amount of time when you spend with them at the beginning to the time you spend with them as the channel grows, I think it's really important in person time with them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like personally spending time with them. Yeah. Outside of the videos, outside of the filming, outside of the everything is really important. Yeah. And it gets much harder to do when you have a big team like you did before. Exactly. It's super hard. And so the leaner you can keep the team, the more time you'll have to suspend with people and the more money you'll have to incentivize them and the more experiences you can include them on. And I think that's your job as a YouTuber. By the way, that wasn't the job of a YouTuber 10 years ago, 10 years ago, daily vlogging. You can do it by yourself. You might be able to edit it yourself. That's not this version of YouTube. And I think I was confused on that for a long time. Yeah. What inspired you to start the countdown series? Because you were already like doing so much. And now here's a series where you're promising 30 videos and 30 days, 30 spectacles. Like why start that series and maybe give some context about what it was for people may not remember. Yeah. So we did. It was basically a series of videos, it was 30 videos in 30 days. Yeah. And this is where it's like there's no playbook to YouTube, right? And I'm trying to find my absolute. What am I capable of? What works? What doesn't? I don't know. And I think, well, so I had a vlog channel the time, which was also Iraq. And I posted a vlog every single day for 30 days, which was so fun. Because at the time, I'm competing, it's practical. I get to post like one time a month. And then my buddy Doha starts living with me. And he's like, dude, we should daily vlog on an iPhone. And I'm like, that sounds fun. Because I got into this to film videos. Like I feel like I posted 13 videos that year. And I'm like, what if we made it up and we posted 30 videos all at the same time. And we gave the audience like the content that we shrouded them from the for the entire year. And we had so much fun vlogging. The vlogging was so successful. We were like, what if we what if we added more production value to these and actually thought about it? Like I wasn't even thinking about the vlogs. And so, yeah, I think we just adopted vlog, but bigger. And can we attach a bigger goal to it? Can we make this more exciting for the platform? And I think I remember specifically going into that and I was just thinking about uploading 13 videos that year. And I'm like, there's no way, like, if we're going to do YouTube, we're going to try this hard. I want to at least give myself a chance at being like creator of the year. Like is there a chance that what I'm doing this year could get me into a position to be creator of the year? If no, I'm never going to find out what I'm capable of. And so it comes from a little bit of success over here. A big question over here. I want to find out what my absolute abilities are. And so yeah, we basically start producing 30 videos for 30 separate days. And we start the series going live when I'm halfway done. So I'm halfway done filming the first half of the videos. We proceed filming the series as like I'm uploading on my phone at eight o'clock in the morning. And then I'm stepping on to the next video I'm shooting. And so we gave ourselves like a 15 day buffer. Maybe it was more than that. For some of the videos, they were shot further out. Yeah. And we freaking ripped videos every single day for 30 days. Yeah, when you were uploading, I mean, doing 30 videos in 30 days is hard enough, doing 30 spectacles in 30 days is even harder, managing like the emotional toll that comes with the videos that were made about you. And to give context to folks about the response and the criticism about your countdown series, you know, you said in your launch video that you'd be doing 30 videos in 30 days. And then a lot of folks claim that 13 episodes of the series were filmed in advance. You said you would go around the world, but seven of the videos are so we're in LA where you lived. And a lot of the things may have been fake or fabricated allegedly. Did you think that going into it, people would find this out? Because like, some of these creators did a ton of sleuthing, looking at like your date on the watch and realizing that, wait, that was filmed in September when the series came out in December. Or was it you just trying to keep the content hamster wheel going at all costs? Yeah, like I completely, I'm so empathetic of like, yeah, duh. You have to be more clear. Like I need to, there needs to be a sentence there of like, hey, guys, I have a head start. I filmed these ahead. I wasn't, I'm not, you know, I'm, I'm see my watch on my arm. I'm not like trying to hide it. I, yeah, I think I just thought that I could film it chronologically with a head start and the audience would be okay with that. Yeah. And I think when you get so deep in the sauce, you know what I mean? And you're trying to do something that's never really been done before. You're set up to make mistakes, you know? And the thing about YouTube is like, like I said, there is no playbook to the platform. And if you're trying to stretch the absolute limits, you're going to mess up. And I'm only appreciative on those videos for giving me feedback. Like I, a lot of these guys that made videos about me, I don't think they would know as much as they knew about me if they weren't fans of the channel currently or at some point. And so I think the perspective is like these are people who care about the brand and they're like giving you real feedback. And I think you can either be in denial about the feedback, or you can take the feedback and make better videos. And yeah, that's my goal. I just want to make better videos. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny because I remember making the series and it's the hardest I've ever worked in my life. That's the hard part for me is it's me and my friends and my employees have never worked harder ever on anything I've ever made. And it being received negatively was hard like that was something that was tough for me. But at the end of the day, I say this all the time to everybody that I work with, the audience, we make the videos for the audience. You make every decision you make about making anything with the audience in mind. And I think I was completely off track with like not making something the audience wanted. I'm making something I'm selfishly passionate about and I'm structuring it in an abstract way, which is so, it's just the antithesis of everything I know and everything I'm passionate about about YouTube. But I think this is a version of me who was stuck making spectacle videos once a month and I just want to make stuff. And I don't have great counsel around me and I'm just doing what I know best to be the next move, you know? Yeah. And I think it's hard to empathize with that like I won't even pretend to understand what it's like uploading that level of videos for 30 days. But you know, I had this 45 day shoot with Jimmy, you know, filming this documentary series for Beast Games. You and I spent probably, can I say? Yeah. You were there for like a week to ease your filming series of videos coming in and out. And I will say it is very exhausting going from film mode to manager mode or respond mode. And so like, that gave me just a little bit more like understanding of what that's like. I'm also wondering like, do you feel like that's some of the backlash was harder because you were kind of the guy who said you don't fake stuff? Yeah. Because if we're being like fair, like Hollywood, YouTube, like things get filmed in advance all the time. Yeah. Like that's just like part of the industry or things can get fabricated in the edit. Like do you feel like there's a subtext here of like, Eric is the guy who doesn't fake stuff? And that's why things kind of fell down harder. Yeah. I think it's half me having a huge enormous borderline indestructible ego at the time. I felt like I could do anything. I had only ever taken big risks and been rewarded for them. Right? What's the worst thing that could happen? Like, I'm going to go film this thing and I can do anything creatively I want to do. And what's going to happen? Like, if you put yourself in my shoes, you're this kid who lives in Georgia, who loves and loves YouTube so much and you're such a big fan of everybody. And within this span of 24 to 36 months, you become best friends with all the biggest YouTubers in the world who you once looked up to, you've only grown, you broke every record in growth. Every idea you ever have works, you know what I mean? Where does your head go? Like your ego is just so big. And I think the way I talked about the brand and like the way I'm like calling people out and I'm like, saying these things, it's like, I look back and I'm like, even if I'm right about everything that I'm saying, there's no reason to have an ego about it. There's no version of me that is successful, that is better because I have an ego, you know? And we call it the humble era now. Like me and my voice call it the humble era and it's like air accident as humble era. And it's genuinely, you know, either the world will humble you or you'll humble yourself and like I said, the feedback I've gotten from that like I guess a year or two ago now was only helpful for me to become a better version of myself outside of YouTube and everything like that. A better manager for the people around me and a better YouTuber. It's only helpful and I'm so appreciative and I've been shaped and like molded, you know what I mean? And like you know, when you meet people, you know the difference between somebody who's never gone through anything hard and somebody who's bent through some shit. And I think that experience I look back and I'm just grateful that the fans are still here and the fans gave me as harsh a feedback as they did and I'm only grateful. I look back with it with extreme gratitude because if I just kept going the way that I was going with such a huge ego and a belief that I could do anything and it would work, I think it would have been a lot worse. It's a necessary part of the process and it's almost like again, I thought me and my boys coming up on YouTube thought that our job was to tell the best stories on YouTube, but if you pull that thread too far, you end up on some really slippery territory. You know? Yeah, it's it's just cringe. It's like it makes me cringe because of it's like there's no reason to have that ego, you know, it's and yeah, it's just tough. So much of the transformation between that Eric and this Eric has happened off camera. So it's like weird to talk about it, but it's yeah, it's a, that's a different human being, you know? Yeah. That is the version of me that got the channel to 10 million subscribers. That is the version of me that did it. You need a psychotic confidence that the impossible can happen. There's no way that what happened to me in my life getting the 10 million happens without that version of me, but the version of me that gets the channel to 100 million in a way that I'm proud of is a very different version of Eric. And that is what I have been working on for since that all went down, yeah? Yeah, I mean, there's so much crap you have to go through to, you know, build a channel that you have to have that like delusional optimism. I want to just submit another second, like talking about like that era of Iraq just for like that moment. I felt like there was this chase to catch up to Mr. Beast, like everyone's labeling you as like the next Jimmy, and I'm wondering like, did you feel like you leaned into that too much? Because this video that like I saw like I trapped 24 tiktokers in a box. I think you renamed it to I trapped celebrities in a box. You were playing a host. There was contestants. There's challenges. Do you feel like that was an Iraq video now looking back on it or was that you chasing Mr. Beast? It's an interesting mix like going back into my head of where I was at. I definitely think like I call it calculated gambling when you roll out like a new video or a new series that could have follow ups. And for that one specifically like at the time, I don't think Jim was making any of those videos. But I think for me, it's like how dynamic can the channel be like what are my absolute limits of making videos? What's the point at which people stop watching the videos and like I want to find my absolute boundaries? And for me, it's like those videos, the motivation is more of testing my artistic abilities and testing my abilities to make what videos. I think Jimmy actually made that video later with YouTubers, like the exact same video with the exact same title with YouTubers. So I think in that video, I'm definitely chasing the trend of spectacle at the time. That's what YouTube was. Yeah. I think everybody's just chasing spectacle. But you know, I think those videos are fun. Like we were the first people to ever bring people into a house like that. And tell a cohesive story with 15 terabytes of footage and like that video took a month with 15 editors to make that. It's just so huge and like I've never been done before. I remember finishing it and we all looked at each other and we were like, bro, we just made something no one's ever seen before. And then we looked at the amount of footage and we realized that we were. we were done for. And then we never made that series again because it was so painful to make the video. Yeah, but I think there was a moment in YouTube where it was like encouraged to incinerate money and I was not afraid to do it. Like, I've said a million times, like I will succeed a YouTuber die trying. And like so if I have to at least find out if that's the correct thesis or not, I'm gonna try. Yeah. How much does that video cost? Do you remember? The Stranger Streft in the Box videos. Bro, I got to a time when I was spending so much money on videos was so stupid. I think I spent probably 60K on that video each. Yeah, so it's probably 120 between. Now I was more, I mean, it's in the six figures. Every one of those videos is in the six figures. Total, yeah. With staff costs and everything. Like, there's the video budget and then there's all the cost that goes on top of the people that make the video. You know this, it's easily over six figures for every single one of those videos. Wow. And at that point, are you like thinking about like the money you just like, let's get to the next upload. Like, I know I'm not thinking about it because I'm optimizing for a singular goal, which is how fast can I get to 10 million subscribers? I'm not trying to build a sustainable machine. I'm trying to get to 10 million subscribers. This is my singular goal in life. I wake up every day. How do I get to 10 million subscribers? That's the only thing I'm trying to solve for. If I make money great, if I lose money great, I'm trying to get 10 million subscribers and I'll do whatever it takes to get there. Like that's where my head was at at the time. Yeah. Take me into the humble era, like now, after the countdown. And also like, it took a while for your channel to get back to where it was. Like, how are you thinking about that rebuilding phase to make the comeback that you have? I think the slowdown of videos wasn't even, it's not because of any like controversy or negativity. It's like genuinely, I'm trying to take this feedback in, understand it from a fundamental level and then build around it is the goal, you know? And I had to change from that version of me to this version of me. Like, there's so much that has to happen off camera to become the version that I'm proud of that the fans like that they, that we're all in the same page about, you know? And that took a lot. Like that took everything. And it's like, behind the scenes is me doing a ton of work on myself, me doing a ton of work on the Air Act machine. And I think fundamentally deciding what the brand is. Like, what is the brand? What is the brand? Like, if this isn't the brand, if I'm this far off from what I've created expectation around, I need to get back on to like, what's the expectation and set it clearly, you know? And so yeah, there was that there's that this is a, this is a metric ton of work that just goes in behind the scenes that'll never see the light of day. It's just me in a room by myself or with my friends solving problems. And yeah, I don't know, I could go into anything, but it's yeah. - Yeah, what were some of those problems? Or what did that Air Act machine look like in terms of overhauling it? Like did the team change? Like, like take us behind the scenes? - Yeah, there's a few core things. I would say number one is if you're making decisions in the head space of, I'm trying to get to 10 million subscribers as fast as possible. You have this mindset of, I'm going to hire people or bring on like team to help me get there. And this is my goal regardless of hell of help or whatever. And I think that whole thought process was so flawed and so short-sighted. 'Cause the correct answer actually is, I will only grow this channel as fast as I can find great people to help me get there. That's the right way to think about it. And if you would have told me that then, I would have told you, I would have said horrible things to you. No, I'm just gonna, I would have said you're thinking too slow, I'm gonna go and move on and, yeah, I would have never bought into that theology, but it's played out in my life so many times now. So. - Well, let me understand the difference, because to get to 10 million subscribers, I know it's the vanity metric now on YouTube, but it's still a wrong way to channel. - Simple, to make it simpler. - Yeah. - There's two ways to look at the channel or at a business or anything, which is like, you set a goal and you just hire people to get there, or you flip the whole thing on its head. And it's, I will set the goal based on my ability to build a great team. The team decides, like you can't, you're setting uncontrollable goals or short-sighted goals. Yeah, I can get to 10 million, but what happens after that? We can force our way to 10 million, but I built the wrong company to get there. Like I built the wrong YouTube channel, getting to 10 million. That was what the feedback was, you know? It's like, we have to flip the whole thing on its head. And like, I think a channel is a, it's not me. It's a conglomeration of great people. And so I, the thing between me and where I wanna go on YouTube is building the right team of people to help me get there. And that's really hard. That's, that's building a recruiting business. That's learning about what makes a good person. That's what learning about like company culture. This is, there's, this is all things that I would have said, whereas it was a distraction from me growing YouTube channel. But they're fundamentally important for me to get to my goals. And to put this in kind of a hold of you now, Eric? 28. 28. 28. To hear you talk about all these things in the context of YouTube, which most YouTubers like don't even think about, I think is refreshing. And I'm also wondering, was it around the same time that you did the world's biggest pizza party? Yeah, yeah. I was there. I just remember that that was still in that spectacle. Let's do the world's biggest, the world's largest, the world's fat. So, so take me through it like, because if the countdown was this moment of realization, what was the world's largest pizza party? Because that seemed like another version of like pushing the spectacle. Like, I remember being at your world's largest pizza party and just, I was like, how are they working this hard? Yeah, you know, and it's like, I'm looking at the pizza, I'm looking at my watch. It's like 2 a.m. I think your skis are still going, like putting sauce on things. Like, like, what, how did that moment fit into, you know, your journey? I mean, yeah, it's like, I think that was like, that's like one of the coolest things of all time. But at what cost? Like, I don't think many people were having fun doing that. I don't know how we did it looking back. I don't know how we did that. I genuinely don't know how we did it. The team at Pizza Hut was great, but like, at that time, I remember we were doing weekly videos. We were planning for the streamies and creatively directing that for me to host. And hosting, yeah. And we're prepping for the world's largest pizza party, which is not just making the world's largest pizza, but it's also multiple pizza parties for the fans in different parts of the country. Exactly the exact same time. I think I had a lot of great people, like I can't do it by myself. I have a lot of great people. And there's a lot of different decisions I would have made with those people at the time. I probably wouldn't have said yes to all of that stuff, but when you're in a position of growth on the platform, a million shiny objects get thrown at you. And when YouTube's all you've ever dreamed of doing, you say yes to all of them. And again, if your mindset isn't in, I can only do so many projects as I find great people to help me do them. If your mindset is, I'm going to say yes to the projects and figure the rest out later. You're already done for it. And so yeah, we did, you know, the pizza party stuff, the world's largest pizza. This is all stuff. Like, I'll never forget it. Amazing. Like, thank you. It's all the fancy. We came out of that and supported it. It was beautiful. But that was like the first thing where it's sort of, I think I started learning a lot about what it means to build a team. Yeah. And that's so interesting to hear you talk about because that mindset is what is required to even get to 100,000 subscribers or anything. I remember your like famous couch series way back in the day. Yeah. Like you had to put $17,500 to buy Logan Paul's couches. Yeah. To go back and to the surprise and visit and make content out of that. And that's you saying yes to something and I'm figuring it out. Mm-hmm. But it sounds like it takes on a different meaning when you say yes to too many things and you're big and you have a lot of people working for you, a lot of expectations from the fans. The difference is I'm signing myself or something versus me signing a team of people up or something. And I can sign myself up for something because it benefits me and my face is on the channel. And I am a dog and I will do whatever it takes to succeed at the thing. But that doesn't mean that you should sign a bunch of other people up to do the same thing with you. You find great people that can help you do these things, but inevitably signing them up for something that you didn't do the work to prepare for as a leader. What's going to happen? We already know what happens at the end of this, you know what I mean? And so that's what I was doing at the time. And yeah, there's just a lot to learn from it. Yeah. I mean, you've always taught me a lot. I remember when we were filming at Beast Games and I saw your editors there. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, Eric, wait. You brought your editors here. Yeah, it's like you're talking about how it's an experience for them so that's a win. But then, you know, it's a win for the business because they're getting context of what they're about to edit. And that actually fundamentally changed like how we now run our team where I want my guys who are going to be editing. Let's go. Shooting. Yeah. And seeing this or there's a big experience like I want them coming out for that as well. That's awesome. Um, are there other little things you've learned? I mean, I'll share another one that also fundamentally changed how we edit because something you said, like, um, I remember on these like big shoot days where, you know, we're doing behind the scenes for Jimmy and Beast Games, we're following like three people, like five to six camera operators. It's just a crazy day. I was asking you for advice because, you know, you go through these experiences. So many cameras, like so many people like hours of footage. and you told me this thing I'll never forget. You're like, every night after you end your shoot, record a voice note, just stream of consciousness, and then go to Claude, which is this AI app. And you literally gave me this prompt, like verbatim, like you texted it to me, maybe I could put it on screen for anybody else to use it if you're comfortable with that. And that prompt takes your voice note or transcription of it, which is easy to get. And outputs is basically take my voice note and turn it into a scene-by-scene breakdown for my editor to edit my video. And I did that every night. Did it work? Yes, yes. We use that as a paper edit. Just about every night. I mean, there's some nights I was just bleary. But just using that help guide our post-production process, any other little tricks like that or things you learn, like giving people experiences, like helping with the post-- I mean, they're just like little thing I keep-- Yeah, there's so many little things, like something that changed another big thing that we did to change the post-room was, I gave all the editors mics. Like a lot of editors, I think, use AI voice overs, which I don't think is representative of tone. So when I'm doing voice overs, all right voice overs, but I'll usually start it off of inspiration from the editor. And so every editor at the studio has their own mic. They have their own camera on their desk. So they're their own YouTuber. And so they actually rip-- They're editing desk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an editing desk, and they have a camera at the top of the desk, and they have a mic, just like this, at the desk, like a nice mic. And as they're editing the footage, they're actually-- you'll go into the room, and you'll hear them doing voice overs as they're editing their sections. It can mimic your ultimate voice over. Yeah, they're not mimicking my voice over. They're just doing storytelling. They're just me if I was editing my own videos, which is like, if I was editing my own videos, I'd be laying in voice overs as I'm making the video to help context and help communicate ideas. So they're basically doing fill-in. Sometimes I'll take inspiration from their voice overs. Sometimes it's just building space to where there should be a voice over here to explain this. They'll do their best at it. But that is a huge deal. It skips three rounds of revisions, because they're telling the story as they're editing it. So buying six mics was one of the best investments. Buying six cameras, one of the best investments. They also use those cameras to do loom recordings of their timelines for overseas editors. They're helping tell them what's going on in the timeline. And there's so much that got lost in translation for a long time. We're communicating from one of my guys to an overseas person. They're typing it up. So we ended up, they just screen-record what they're doing. And the editor can see them. I talk with my hands a lot. And so I would have to sit in the room with editors and shape things out with my hands. And I was like, you guys should do the same thing, because I think it actually does help a lot. That's what humans are for. So they get on video and actually make videos for overseas team. And the revisions from overnight became like 10 times better immediately, just because communication was so much more clear. Dude, I think-- and I think there's so many of those little bottlenecks in making videos. And my goal is always hyper-fixating on them. I'm like, how do we eliminate those? Because the videos just come out so much more natural when there's not robotic systems and problems in the way blocking videos. Yeah, because ultimately, you are doing a straight to camera and delivery or voiceover. So they're almost like trying to put themselves in your shoes or give you something to react to. Which I think is the way people have stand-ins in Hollywood. People have 10 voiceovers. These are the way that videos get made at a high bar and a high pace. Consistently? Consistently. I've just never heard it apply it in the way that you just described. Yeah. Maybe to talk more about the business side of ARAC. You've launched a lot of businesses over the years, or been part of them. How do you think about the business of ARAC? And what does that pie chart look like right now? Like, rough percentages of ad sense, sponsorships, products. I know you just launched another business called Clip Farm. Here's to hear about that. But the latest states, what does that pie chart of ARAC look like today in terms of income? Yeah, the pie chart is different now than it was then. And it'll probably be different again in six months. Right now, I'm sickeningly focused on making weekly YouTube videos. And so I'm not taking my foot off the gas of making weekly YouTube videos until I finish it. I'm kind of banned from shiny objects for right now until I can figure out how to do a great job at this. Because I've done it before, but I didn't have a system. So right now, specifically, almost every-- so I would say my ad rev is 50%, my brand deals are 50%. And that's it. Because that's the core competency of the business. Ad rev, meaning YouTube ad rev, Snapchat, Facebook, cut downs on different stuff. But it's mostly ad rev. I think that chart changes once I'm through this phase. But yeah, it's a constantly adapting. I used to try to compete at how many different things could I break it down into, but I'm in my humble era. And I'm sticking to the simple basics, you know what I mean? I just learned about so many YouTubers whose entire business was just on ad revenue. Like huge, unimaginable businesses just off of ad revenue. And I'm like, OK, I just need to make ad revenue great. And then I can go work on something else. Yeah. You had a boring honestly, but that's-- Yeah. You had a video where you talked about your ad revenue publicly. OK. This sent Shockwave throughout YouTube. Like, yes, yeah, I didn't watch this. This dude is nuts at pulling up clips, by the way. He did this on my first interview. I could not believe the lore he found. This clip thing is underrated. You just hand it to me. And you're like, oh, yeah, watch this clip. It's like some deep lore he did because when you do this, it's impressive. I don't know anybody else who does this. What's the most you've generated in a month from your YouTube channel? Oh, man. It's so funny watching you back, because now my goals are like the antithesis of every goal I had at this time. Like, I'm like, how little can I spend? And how little can I flex? It's like, I'm like, this is like the ego version of me trying to like say how much money I spent it. I'm like, looking back, like, you fucking idiot. It's so stupid. Like, you don't understand how dumb you are. Do I want to tell them? I think my best month was probably like 480K off of AdSense. Wow. Just two years ago, you made your first $0.07. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now you're doing multiple cents a year. Yeah, OK. A lot of money. There's a lot of money. Have you had better months of AdSense since then? What are you trying to do to me, man? What are you trying to get? Yeah. No, I have. I have. I mean, people don't realize that a lot of that money goes towards the team. Definitely. Definitely. And there's a lot there. But here's the thing. You probably know. You've seen some crazy backends. Yeah, I've seen some crazy backends since that clip. Yeah. There's people doing a lot better than you and me. Oh, it's, it's wild. We're like a little tiny minnows. There's giant whales out there with unimaginable YouTube studios. It's unreal. Yeah, their metrics are crazy. I'm wondering are there other ways that you're like trying to, like, grow the business? Like, and I'm also noticing you started a second channel recently, like, also, Iraq. The new business you announced, Clip Farm. Like, how do you think about making those bets? Maybe versus pizza-fi? Because there's not as much they talked about with pizza-fi. Have you shut down pizza-fi? Like, I mean, I mean, what? Yeah, it's like, because I seem to come during the surge of like, creators doing consumer products. Yes, yeah. And that was a moment. I'm just curious, like, beyond the adsense, beyond the sponsorships, like, yeah. How do you decide what to do? And what happened to pizza-fi? Dude, it's really invested in pizza-fi. No, I think the people, I think the people want to hear. I was in the habit of starting new things constantly. And I have tried to go away from that habit as much as possible. I talked to a really, a really successful mentor of mine who talked to me about this idea of sawdust businesses, which the idea is basically, don't go start something completely new that you know nothing about. Start something that you can monetize without any additional meaningful impact on staff or input. Which I thought was a great framework of choosing opportunities. So a bad example of me doing this would be me starting House Party, where I literally have to build a brand new production company to export videos. And like-- Yeah, well as House Party. So House Party was a white cycle channel that I had where I basically did different social experiments in the back of my studio. It's a really cool setup. I have a one-way glass where we can see in and react from a desk, and then there's action happening out on this giant white cycle that I built. Oh, similar to like Jubilee or the cut. Exactly. So it's like a cut video happening in front of you. But I'm behind a white cycle and they can't hear anything I'm saying. Got it. And so me and my friends can react as loud as we want or like talking to a mic to talk to them. But it's a really cool format. Somebody should do it well, but it's not me. Because that's not a sawdust business. What do you mean by sawdust? Just like kind of-- OK, so I'll work her. A sawdust business means if I'm a woodworker or I'm a lumber guy, I make lumber all day long. I cut lumber all day long. I ship out lumber all day long. On the floor is sawdust. Some guy came along one day and said, what can we do with all this sawdust? We throw tons of it away literally every single day. They created plywood. Wow. They just took the sawdust. They took all the leftover stuff. And they just used the tools they already had. They were already forming wood and cutting. wood and they just created a brand new product with glue called plywood and so this company just opened up an entire like they basically increased the revenue substantially by creating plywood which is a brand new thing that they had no additional cost for it was all upside does that make sense? Yeah, 100%. So I think in creator world, I'm trying to think of my business. It's so hard already to be a youtuber. I don't want to add more distractions. I don't want to like do the loudest most most amount of effort for at least amount of outcome like I've done in the past. The goal is how do we find more sawdust businesses? Examples of this are like clip form where you know, clippings already a huge business model. I have, I'm specifically positioned to find to attract great clippers and bring creators in who need clipping. This is no additional work for me and then I can hire an awesome operator named Nate Ryan who can run that business separately for me and I'll take a smaller piece of a bigger pie. Awesome. What are you doing right now? Like what's the start? You're already hiring people to clip your stuff and then you're like what take me through the existing. Yeah, so create like my friends creators, myself, other creators. Pay clippers. Yeah. You have a huge trend. Yeah. Thousands. I know people spending seven figures a month on clipping. I'm already best friends with these creators and I have a giant funnel. My YouTube channel videos I already make where I can bring in the most amount of clippers. I have the most leverage for clippers are really just editors at aspiring creators who want to make content and make money doing it. Who are great at editing short form content. Yeah. And in many cases have their own like Instagrams or TikToks where they could distribute them. That's right. Yeah. And most people don't know just to give context like these people are paid tens of thousands of dollars per month to clip people's content. Sometimes they use like AI tools like Opus Clipper or sometimes a clip on their own. And now like even like big studios are hiring them to clip their shows. That's right. Yeah. And put out like it's a huge trend. These games. Paul American. Paul American. Yeah. Big shows along with big creators. Yeah. Higher. People who have the ability to make clips of the show to post those clips on TikTok because that's distribution. Yeah. Streamers higher clippers. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the thought there was I'm already making videos about streaming. I'm like the only YouTuber really making videos about streaming, right, which is the biggest pool of people hiring clippers. People hiring clippers. I'm already collaborating with them. And the audience watching is probably pretty likely to be a clipper or have interest in becoming a clipper. Yeah. And so I can bring those people and whether they know how to clip or not teach them how to clip by getting a great operator and pair them up with my friends who actually need clipping done with no additional effort from me. All I do is send some text and connect people on the back and I have high leverage to pull this off. That's a sawdust business. So the sawdust in that case are your existing relationships. Yeah. The sawdust in that case are my existing relationships and my reputation on YouTube. A aspiring creators like the channel so I can help those aspiring creators make money by clipping. Yeah. But it's interesting. Why is house party not sawdust? Like to me, it's like you are doing that. You're one of the best at it on the platform in terms of making that type of kind. It's just kind of a slight tweak of having a cast. You would think. You would think. Yeah. Maybe like break that because I do think a lot of creators will be like, oh, let me make more content and let me launch a product. But you did that. It's interesting to hear that. So I'll give you the wrong way to do it and the right way to do it. Yeah. So house party is the wrong way for me to do it currently at my stage. Yeah. It's a cool idea. But in order to do it, I have to hire brand new editors because I already have my main channel video going out, right? I can use my current team. Yeah. I have to hire brand new editors. I have to hire a guy to run the channel who's not me. I'm the creative nucleus of my channel. I'm making a brand new channel that takes new ideas. I have to make new ideas. So now I have to hire and find, impossible, a new creative nucleus, right? Yeah. I have to hire editors around them. I have to hire producers around them. I have to hire them. Staff on day. I have to hire filmers. We have to get new people in. We have to shoot on different days, right? Yeah. An entirely new production company. That's not a sawdust business. That's a brand new venture, which is cool if you have space and time to do that. Sawdust business is an example would be this new channel that I just launched called Also Air Act. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For example, we just posted three videos on there. One of them is my walking on water video, which is like the most popular video on the channel. And these are extended cuts, like behind scenes, like almost like a director of commentary channel. So these videos, we shoot five terabytes of footage for it. And then they get turned into 14 minute videos. Yeah. So for my core audience, I'm basically making a version of that video that's extended. But do there's so many funny moments? I don't even remember filming, but there's so many funny, awesome moments from those videos that just didn't make the main cut because I'm optimizing for how do I make a 50 million view video? Yeah. But they're not going to get me three million views. But as we get closer to a YouTube that favors TV, an hour long cut of these videos actually could be really great. And there's all this content sitting on a server doing absolutely nothing. So if I can find somebody that I trust to do topic selection on the channel and they can get one editor, one editor can take my timelines and go through and find the additional content that I did, including the first one, separate. So like I have a computer at my studio where you just see the mouse moving around all day long because I have one of my editors promoting into that computer and editing old videos off of my server all day long. And so then those get exported as brand new pieces of content. I film brand new intros for them, but I can film four intros for those in 30 minutes. Like the time and effort ratio between house party and also air act is otherworldly. Like if we took a bar graph and there was a bar graph for the amount of effort necessary for house party, you wouldn't even see anything for the amount of effort that goes into also air act. But I can make the same audience of people happy. I can add entertainment value, I can add Lord of the channel with very little additional cost. Yeah. I think it's such an important distinction because people may hear you talk about sawdust business or like find something that's like right next to what you're already doing is like, Oh, I'm making content because you make more content. But what you're describing in terms of the hiring and the process and your time as a bottle neck. That's right. Is it deciding factor? Yeah. I'm the ultimate bottle neck. Yeah. And then the cool thing about that is it's like unexpected revenue, so you can do all kinds of fun stuff with that. You can incentivize your current employees better. You can hire new people. You could get a new space. You could spend a little bit more on your videos. You put it in the bank and save it for a rainy day fund with no additional cost to the channel, which is pretty cool. Yeah. You sound like much smarter beds than the previous. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So then we'll go through the other ventures I guess. Sure. What else do we have here? Shopify. Yeah. I love Pizzify. I really do love Pizzify. Pizzify is still a company. I sold a piece of that company to our manufacturing company. They're awesome. And so they basically run with Pizzify. We still sell Pizzify. It still exists. You can go buy it online. I know people, personally, that love the sauce and still buy it on Amazon. So it still exists. You know, we've been in talks with Walmart of like putting it in the stores and stuff. They're excited about it. For me, it's just like, that product is funny. It was awesome. It was a passion project. Again, I'm in a place in my mind where I can take any risk ever and it always works out for Eric. Back then. Back then. Yeah. That's not me now. Yeah. Yeah. And I had this idea of like sauce and it's like this fun. It's just what I learned with that product was that it was very hard. I would get into meetings with buyers at like a target or a Walmart. And I would explain the product and how excited I was. And they would ask me where in the store it would go. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like when you're going into stores, you have to think about what product already exists or you're innovating off of. Jimmy just repackages and makes a brand new chocolate bar, right? Prime makes a brand new gatorade. They have a place to put these products. If I'm making a sauce, it's not ketchup, it's not mustard, it's not barbecue sauce. It's a sauce that makes anything taste like pizza. You're asking Walmart to open up a brand new space for a brand new product. You've never tested or heard of before and put it on the shelf. Trust me. It's just, it's a hard, it's a hard thing to convince them to do, you know? So I have some stuff coming up in the CPG space that'll be really fun and exciting, but it's a little bit better thought through. But you can still buy pizza fi for the people out there who love pizza fi. It's still on Amazon. Still being made. I love that product. I eat it myself off camera. It's a great product. Yeah. It's so interesting here because I think the tendency of so many creators is like, I want to launch something that's totally new in terms of a product because that's kind of like our DNA of like we just want to do every wheel. We want to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, just looking ahead, how do you keep this going? Like, like I'm thinking, like, you know, it's always interesting to hear like you choose as they get more successful. You're doing these buckets. You're doubling down on things. Like, like, where does this go as you get older, you know, is is 40 year old Arux sneaking up events still is, is it like you see a five year horizon like, like do you think about what this could look like once you have a family like, yeah, what's the future of this? Because it seems like you're figuring out things in this era. I'm just wondering how does a look are you building or thinking about like that future? Yeah. I think about it a lot. And I think it used to scare me like growing up on YouTube because it's a young platform, which means everybody in the platform is young. Yeah. But I think the deeper I get into it, the more exciting it becomes because it's like where the first people to ever grow up in Hollywood, you know, like nobody's ever really done that, you know? And I think we have an opportunity to recreate some of the coolest careers in Hollywood on YouTube. And so I'm here for the long game. I love YouTube. It's my passion. I don't know when it ends for me. It could be two years. It could be five years. It could be 20 years. But I'm really passionate about making things on the internet. And I think we're living in the reinvention of entertainment. And that it like that fires me up to wake up to every day. You know, I don't think I'm speaking into events at 40. Maybe I am. I could be. The beauty of about having a clarity around your brand is you can sort of pivot in any direction you want. As long as it's on brand and the fans like it. So I think there's plenty of cool formats that I can do when I'm 40. I think there's plenty of cool formats. I can do what I'm 90. And he comes to mind. Rick. I lived in a senior citizen center. I haven't really thought about 90-year-old. I'll put some I'll put some thought into this. Yeah, we'll get some pitches out there. I'll hit you with that. And do you think about let's say God willing one day there's a little Iraq or a little, you know, you have a son or daughter. They're asking about like a daddy. I want to sneak into this event. Like do you think about the example or you just think about the con probably asking because I'm a new dad, but the or like other. There's a lot of young people watch your content too. And it's mischievous. It's playful. It's fun. Do you think about that example? That you're setting for either your kids or other kids that are out there? Yeah, I met a lot of these kids, you know. And I think in the beginning, it was definitely a little bit more edgy and maybe potentially a bad example. And as I've gotten closer to having kids myself, you really think about that. And you think about the footprint you have. I think I have the coolest dad lore of all time. Nobody's ever going to beat me. It's just not going to happen. It's I'm excited to get to show these videos to my kids. You know, I'm not I'm excited for them to get to see these things that I did. I think the content changes over time. And yeah, I think a lot now about the viewer at home. And my editors were laugh if they were here because there's stuff that they'll put in the videos that I will take out now that I wouldn't have before because I just think it's important to set a good example for the youth. I think it's one of the coolest things that me or any any top creator on the platform gets to do is TV doesn't exist anymore. We do. And so that means we get to set the tone for culture. And so you have a lot of power. It's like a great power comes great responsibility. And we are responsible for setting the tone of what culture looks like. And I want to be I want to look back and be proud of what I did. And I think it's a value that has come with time. I'll do it out. I mean, I appreciate you just like talking about so much. And also it's not more personal. I appreciate everything you've done for me and my channel and my family. And you believed in me when I was just like coming up and it just means a lot, dude. I feel like every time I talk to you, like you share something or words of encouragement that, you know, this is a tough business and just fires me up all over again. Of course. Dude, I I'm I'm this set is nuts by the way. This is a nuts set. The first time I saw this guy did an interview with him, it was at my house in my living room with like one other guy. And this guy was stressed out of his mind. Look at you, bro. Your cool comment collect. You got a whole giant set here. You got to look at this. You got five people running this thing. It's no joke. I'm proud of you, man. I'm so proud of you. There's a few people that, you know, it's cool doing YouTube for like five years now. There's a few people who stay in the game and go at it as passionately as I do. And you're one of those people. And I'm like so grateful to get to hang out with you out off camera on camera. It's it's fun. And I'm so proud of you, bro. It's done a great job. I get I'm grateful to have seen the growth of the whole thing. It's it's awesome. Thanks, man. You've been a big part of it just so much. So dude, I'll let the bro man say like we could go on for hours here, but I'll give you the final word if there's any other thoughts, reflections or things you want to say. I don't have anything else, man. I'm excited. I'm excited about the new wave of air act. We're going back to the basics, the simple stuff, making great videos. And that's what I'm most passionate about. And I'm freaking here to learn and here's stay. I'm showing up every week on the platform. This is this is I'm focused on the basics. If you if you guys don't see me doing anything shiny or distracting, it's for a good reason. Trust me. That's pretty much it. I'm leaving. Play the outro music.