# How To Monetize On YouTube With Harley Morenstein

Channel: Greg Isenberg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjL2aL60bTg
Duration: 1 hr 6 min
Language: English
Words: 12280
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/NjL2aL60bTg

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[0:00] but like now i know firsthand 300 viewers that will watch you when you go live every time that 300 viewers is literally worth more than 300 000 views on youtube 100 000 because these 300 people are like they're all ambassadors they're sitting here for hours dude they didn't watch your video they're here with you and they want you to be here tomorrow um and i thought twitch was so fascinating like that and i was like oh i'm gonna do twitch for a long time and then i got hit up by facebook and this proved to be extremely fruitful for me and this is i'm not ahead of the

[0:39] curve now but i was then because i was in a position where facebook hit me up and they're like we want you to be part of our gaming program [Music] well dude nice to uh nice to meet you i came into the middle of a conversation about you guys uh that you guys were having so i apologize for interrupting not even the beginning it was like five percent in i think we were like five six percent into the conversation all right good well i'll be there for the last 95 then and uh hopefully it's on the up and up from here yeah that's the podcast

[1:12] right that's it g-fuel 69. well i need to hear the story of how you guys know each other um as a as a jumping-off point here uh i mean my experience with greg i don't know um like my experience with greg was uh like a close friend of mine like beefed him on twitter argued with him oh ages ago literally i didn't know greg had been getting into beefs on twitter for that long he wasn't he wasn't he just found himself in the crosshairs of a buddy of mine that like just enjoys doing that that's his i don't want to say that's his thing it might be a pretty good thing that's all

[1:54] right here's here's what happened here's what happened first of all it was a one-way beat greg i need you to lower your audio a little bit man you blew my ear out is it better now yeah better here's here's what happened so this must have been like 10 years ago or something i tweeted yeah you leaving longer maybe longer did you have a following at the time greg i had like a small phone yeah yeah he you know what i i could say that from in my city there uh like there's you know certain success stories and greg was like a success story that was kind of

[2:31] circulating so greg was a person whose name i heard before i ever saw his face okay okay greg continue that's that's what that's how failure of a city we're from you know that like me and harley i'm not buying that anymore man we've had way too many of the like montreal mafia on this show and all of y'all are unbelievably legit in one way or another so i'm not buying that anymore something in the water in montreal that i missed out on as a kid today's episode is brought to you by a company and product that has literally changed my life and one that i use every

[3:03] single day i started taking ag-1 in 2011 because i wanted to feel great it's been a staple of my morning routine ever since yeah that's 10 years and 99 compliant i met the ceo when we were training at the same strength training facility way back in the day he had been creating an early version of the product to battle his own gut health issues when he realized how challenging and expensive it was to create an optimal routine on your own i started taking it during those college baseball years and was completely hooked over the years it has kept me feeling on point physically and mentally the best

[3:43] part it fits into whatever lifestyle or diet i'm currently experimenting with from keto to paleo to vegan and more it's a tiny micro habit that you can execute daily that has large long-term and compounding benefits the product has over seven thousand five star reviews and is trusted by a long list of professional athletes and leading health experts i love it they do and i know you will too to make it easy athletic greens is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune supporting vitamin d and five free travel packs with your first purchase all you have to do is visit athletic greens dot com slash w-i-h

[4:24] again that is athletic greens dot com slash wih to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance you won't regret it i tweeted about how i was grateful for something i was just like yeah feeling super grateful that someone so and so happened to me like i won a webby award or something like that which is like some award and then he responded and i didn't even know who he was and he was like bro he's like anyone who says the word grateful is like not grateful at all you and he like basically did a thread before threads were a thing and just like went deep on

[5:02] me and i actually don't i don't even i didn't even see the beef go down i also just i have a mutual friend who is his who's like connected to him who also knew of greg so she was like oh yeah him and greg are like beefing on twitter and i was like what's going on what's happening and yeah that was just one of the first times that i um and were you already doing epic meal time at the time harley uh no i think i did it a a year or so or two years after this maybe okay i think i think so um but then again like it's

[5:36] just a weird time the before before times were so crazy it was just very weird i hear you um so greg like you know 20 2010 was a weird time yeah for a number of reasons we can get into because i do want to hear the genesis story of epic meal time but greg it's funny that like the origin story of your guy's relationship is greg getting into beef on twitter because i feel like greg for one of the nicest guys i know in all honesty greg gets into more beef on twitter like gets more [ __ ] on twitter from people than any nice person that i know like

[6:09] there are people that are [ __ ] on twitter that i see getting [ __ ] and i'm sort of like yeah okay you know you brought that up you said a bunch of abrasive things whatever like greg will say something like propose an idea uh you know like he'll say nfts are gonna be like the future of everything whatever and it's like yeah i'm gonna draw you you kind of get you have to respect it right like you you um whether or not you agree with it the person is taking a stance on something and proposing a version of the future that looks different than what it is today

[6:35] and people like i mean honestly people are like yo go burn in a house like you know like how dare you propose this it's wild man i mean the internet's crazy happens to me honestly it happens to me like on instagram comments someone will say something and i'll be like i don't know about that and then like all of a sudden like it's been like four messages each back and forth publicly in comments and then like someone will call me and they'll be like yo you're actually beefing a guy i know and i'm like oh [ __ ] i know him too i didn't even realize that was him

[7:04] wow like friendly fire like i didn't even know that was happening it's so good man i i twitter is i would say twitter is probably like peak of it too because i i don't know what this whole bot thing is going to land on with the like elon musk and the debate over whether he buys twitter or not but i anecdotally i do feel like there's just so many like anonymous bot like accounts on twitter that just sit around you know like whether they're in their mother's basement or where they are just trolling like that's their entire persona is driven around just like just hating on people and like

[7:36] saying mean stuff about your family and everything so i don't know if it's like the same i'm not as big on other platforms so i don't know if it's the same but man twitter uh twitter is rough for that kind of stuff yeah and even when i said when i said like oh let me turn that off when i said 2010 is uh was a weird time like i literally was thinking of the things that professional comedians would say on twitter at the time are what people what they would tweet out or what was like like possible as funny then and everything and it was just like

[8:08] it was really cool what do you mean by that like are you thinking like like you know it's sort of before the rise of like woke-ism um you know for lack of a better weight yeah yeah like things like you know you'd go back and like uh you know um i remember they they semi-canceled james gunn for a minute for something he had tweeted back in like 2011 and what he tweeted is terrible but back then it was just an interesting like twitter for some reason you were allowed to say the things that were like a step beyond inappropriate it's not yeah it was twitter it's the overton

[8:42] window the overton window has shifted have you guys heard that phrase it's actually like a pretty important concept it's basically the idea that like um there is a window of acceptability around you know it was originally around politics like there's a window of acceptability around what political stance you can take like what you could propose in congress et cetera that might be acceptable at a given window and there are certain times in history where it expands or contracts or if it shifts left or right and so like the overton window at the time i think on social media was much wider like the realm of acceptability of

[9:14] things you could say was actually just much wider than like today i mean you could say something that's you know to your point 10 years ago would have been totally normal and mainstream and you can get completely obliterated for it because i do think that overton window has just narrowed um significantly oh yeah and it happens fast i mean like like i would hate to tell you what you know um my buddy's uh grandmother was referring to a certain color of jelly beans and what she called them casually amongst people in the room which was like the most racist thing i ever heard in my life and she was

[9:50] literally just casually asking for jelly beans in a full house and it was like the most insane thing ever and for her to be like oh yeah different i mean old people are wild still like old it's like young people and old people have no filters because they just like never learned to filter anything like young people because they just haven't learned to filter anything and old people uh you know because they just didn't grow up in a time with it perhaps or they just don't care anymore they're like i'm gonna die soon what the [ __ ] do i care excuse my language uh and

[10:17] so i've always found that like people's grandparents sometimes they'll say something you're like whoa oh that's like zero to a hundred percent my parents my parents will say something and i'm like oh i don't i don't you can't really say that anymore but like why not and now i'm like i'm not going to be able to explain this appropriately i'm not going to be able to get this message across i'm like just some people don't like it just know that you're a good son you're doing you're doing the right thing yeah because she posted on facebook and like tags me in it so okay so it's a weird time pre-2020 2010

[10:51] or right around 2010. what led to you starting epic meal time like what was the genesis of all of that i think ultimately before um you know before i were to comment on the fact that it was a lot of people coming together at a certain point in time to create something which was epic meal time the youtube channel um i was desperate to make something happen i was a teacher before at this time i was a high school teacher i'm filming rap videos rap music videos i mean there's rap music videos on youtube with my phone number at the end uh still like my exact cell phone number

[11:29] because i want people to watch the video and call me to make more rap videos i would go to live shows did your students know you were doing rap videos well that's the thing a lot of times i never put myself in front of the camera because i had an education degree and i was like i'm not gonna be able to uh be a teacher if i'm doing this weird stuff on youtube um so i never put myself on camera for like my first couple of ventures into uh production on youtube um then i just happened to end up connecting with a bunch of buddies from about like three different

[12:09] circles of friends mine friends of mine from here friends of mine from there and we kind of all came together and um started filming these food videos on youtube but youtube was so different in 2010 it was like you put up one three minute video in the week and you're like oh we did the video for the week and people will watch that video all week on their laptop like you have to understand 2010 you're consuming youtube on the laptop maybe on a desktop like very rare does someone have it hooked up to the computer i mean to the tv and even then it's still like that and very rare like

[12:49] in 2010 are people watching it on their iphone there's no youtube app literally you're going to youtube.com in the browser so you just weren't consuming a lot of youtube then people in general um and like [ __ ] we just got very lucky with the timing timing's everything because i see people that are now they're like i want to be a youtuber and the rewards are much greater but at the same time everyone wants to be a youtuber now like back then there was a lot of people like you can make money off of this you can make money doing youtube videos you know the you know explaining it to

[13:27] my mom that like even if it's free for her to watch somehow there is a means to get paid here what was it like in those early days i mean this is like you started getting big 2010 2011 2012. i mean i get i go back and look at some of your most popular videos they're still like you know they're 10 to 11 year old videos some of those early ones like the the ben roethlisberger uh the ridiculous massive burger i remember watching that one back in the day uh i think i was in college at the time but um what was like what were the economics of

[13:56] this like what how were you guys monetizing was it through youtube like were you getting the youtube ad revenue or was it sponsors people were paying for these uh for these videos and for those for those people who don't know could you tell tell them what epic meal time is yeah and what the concept was yeah uh so epic meal time is a channel on youtube um my name is harley i'm the co-creator of it i i started it in 2010 and it was uh within like a year and a half it was the number one most subscribed channel on in canada and within two years for a period of

[14:31] time it was in the top five most subscribed in all of youtube we have like uh 1.5 billion views and 7 million subscribers on youtube uh way more on facebook somehow things are weird um and uh yeah we've been doing this and although no longer a novelty and not in its heyday i mean some people will you know say you know epic meal time we always say your dad's favorite youtube channel because maybe in 2013 2014 he was watching it i think uh it was also um yeah it was just a [ __ ] channel but we did one video every tuesday and it was like silly

[15:12] it was like silly silly goofy young guys um goofing around so okay so go just route back to the economics of it because i'm curious like in the early days of youtube how people were making money off this stuff you guys got huge um yeah i mean you had a novel concept right like no one was doing food this type of stuff like not like this no one was doing it like this um and what was really funny was um the ways our 25 year old brains myself and my partner at the time the way our brains simultaneously tried to create something but also try to navigate the

[15:56] minefield of being friends and conducting business together was really interesting i look back on on the days and what we did was it was myself and at the time my best friend and we went into it and we're like you know 50 50 we're gonna make a channel and then we start filming with other guys and this is where we're like okay like i bought this laptop with my teaching money and we split the camera you're the cameraman i'm gonna edit we'll produce the videos together let's call up you know uh this buddy and that buddy you know um these are these are like you know guys that greg knows you know

[16:38] muscles classes alex perot uh tyler lemko a guy that i worked with at summer camp super super funny person one of the funniest guys i've worked with until this date even um josh elkin who is an excellent chef my good friend amir who is also an excellent chef um dave huff who is just you know some guys were just there down to ride didn't know how they fit in but that was it and i i like amassed this little team of guys that we all lived like within three minutes from each other but at the end of the day i remember like which i always find looking back

[17:16] now is as fascinating as i'm older and if i were younger i would have never spoke about this stuff but like our little 24 year old 25 year old conniving brains we were like we have to keep the receipts no one splits the meal with us the first meal i remember we did it with alex and he was like oh let me throw in for that and we were like no no we don't want your money it is only our money that is going into word and we were trying to like do something together because he and i had we filmed the rap videos together for years so we had this little

[17:52] production studio in our brains aka our camera in his basement and um we didn't want to complicate it we understood each other we understood each other's uh motivations all those guys who i mentioned which are great guys we didn't know what they wanted where they stood we didn't want anyone to have a stake in this and i look back on that now and it's so funny because he and i had a falling out at the end of the day i ended up going to court and we ended up settling this as co-creators of the brand and he's a guy i talk to now um he's uh

[18:31] um just an old friend of mine and his name's sterling we had a a falling out back then we went to court for like two years and it was so funny because it was just i wanted to be a silly guy on camera and then you find yourself in a position where you're like the boss of your friends and you know there are different people putting in different amount of work sweat but then there's other people that are getting attention online so now i'm the one that's like hey this guy is doing a lot of filming he knows how to edit now and i'm like but they [ __ ] love this

[19:11] guy so it was really um when i look back i'm just like damn how however i pulled that [ __ ] together for as long as i did doing bacon jokes for the 10 years and and and juggling egos most of all my own ego was really the the tricky part and people are like you know they want to they want to go into business with their friends they'll ask advice me and my friend i'm like for sure do it it's great it's great you better figure out your relationship before success though because the problem with sterling and i was before we figured out what our

[19:49] business relationship was success came in and you know it's easy to think that i was like oh i'm the star i have ultimate power it's easy to think that that's how i would be thinking in my brain and it totally like comes off that way but it's not entirely wrong i was like oh i'm the only one whose face this is if you know someone's going to be making decisions they're going to be making decisions on where i go what i do early days in the in the show it was just like you know it was a guy on camera talking about food um and we were stressed about money

[20:27] he worked at a restaurant i was so you weren't making money on like in the very early days you weren't making a bunch of money off this yeah you couldn't you couldn't make money on youtube until you've done a certain amount of things like have three videos up uh certain amount of views certain amount of now they're more strict about it but they still had it so it was only on the fourth video where we were like okay this one's gonna make money and we went really big we put we sewed five birds into a pig and i like was stressing i was like this is eight

[21:00] hundred 800 this is 800 we could literally buy like another dope ass lens so let's invite people to my house strangers even and we'll charge them twenty dollars and they could be in the video and that's a turban epic episode it's literally like some friends some strangers but people paid 20 bucks we were scared um that video in that week made it ended up making like 750 us dollars like in the first week and we were like oh thank you and that was through the youtube like ad revenue or whatever like it was paying you out yeah was it i'm curious if it's change i assume it has where like back then it

[21:46] was probably a lot fewer views and clicks to get 750 than it is today for a creator to make 750 on youtube well it depends it depends they're they're more hesitant on what they put their ads on and like what the cost of ads are like we're in the premium program of youtube so the ads on our channel because we're grandfathered into it are just great ads um and people sometimes request the brand specifically even to this day um but back then it was um it was like like i i cuz every every situation was unique you two handled it one way but other people that i knew would sign to these

[22:30] mcns that existed these multi-channel networks and they would guarantee people like four dollars cpm no matter what and us it could be sometimes 60 cents cpm to like six dollars cpm it depended on the time depended on everything like you know the timing the the year or you know what was going on um we ended up i think we were one of the first youtube channels that made our own t-shirts a lot of people did them elsewhere um you know they would hire a company we owned the inventory and so me and the guys who were literally on the show would would go into a warehouse and we're packing up

[23:09] these bacon shirts and we're like hiding beard hairs in there or like writing little letters and sending them out um and um that was wild i mean you know this we made this shirt said bacon strips and bacon strips and we sold 60 000 of that t-shirt like of that design you guys were just being enterprises i mean i feel like you guys the story of the success and the trajectory that it took was like you weren't you didn't have like mbas and business degrees you were just pursuing opportunities that came up that you were seeing and identifying as you were going and like being enterprising

[23:44] and having a bias for action around all these things which is what to me makes it such a cool story it wasn't like you know some grand strategy or design it was like hustling your asses off on a daily basis figuring out holy [ __ ] there's an opportunity here here and here let's go do that and how do we make it work yeah it was very much like now is the time okay we have a million views you make shirts now that is what a youtuber does they make shirts and what's so funny is like now like i watch my buddy's kid talk about youtube you

[24:18] know he's like 10 and he's like oh i'm gonna be a youtuber he's like i'm gonna make a channel and then after two months i'm gonna have my merch drop or we're gonna have t-shirts and then after that i'm gonna do my face reveal and after that i'm gonna congratulate and he's got this whole road plan for a channel that doesn't exist and i'm looking at it and i'm like i thought i was such a [ __ ] businessman at 25 and here is a 10 year old just doing the same thing because it really was like a format there was a template to follow and if you were fortunate we were

[24:48] fortunate you got to like make that happen you got to sell t-shirts you know um [ __ ] buying 60 000 of a shirt i didn't do it all at once but there is a point when you're like oh you're gonna have to buy you know 25 000 t-shirts to make this whole thing worth it and you're like [ __ ] i know people like it but do they 25 000 t-shirt like it my mom ran the merchandise and i was like and she was like yeah we could do it and i'm like are like are we gonna ship out all these shirts like what's that gonna

[25:22] be like um and it was it was a lot and it actually was it was like that's like one of the things where it was tricky because i i wanted to value everyone's opinion and there were guys who were quote unquote day players but really they were there since the first day and they have input they have ideas you know why don't we sell like towels and why don't we sell apron my my mom knows a guy who could sell these things we could also do that and i didn't want it to come off like uh like you know like little like loot bag things that you would get like at a bar

[25:57] mitzvah or quinceanera i wanted it to be like you buy the t-shirt we have t-shirts do you put your credit card in like you're gonna get the 30 item there is no four dollars you were also doing all of this because you were doing it all before like all of the innovations that now exist that make it easier for creators to do this like it's it's so funny now just hearing you talk about that some of those struggles and what you were dealing with a lot of entrepreneurs have like heard those struggles and gone and built infrastructure to make it not as much of a struggle like you talk about having to

[26:30] buy 25 000 t-shirts like the inventory problem holy [ __ ] that's scary having to buy that up front and then hope i sell them well now you can do drop shipping like we're gonna go beers like buy print to fill yeah like these shirts these shirts were like in my house and we tried our best yeah you're like packaging them up yourselves sending them out now there's just drop shippers or there's pick pack and chip whatever like it's so cool to hear uh that early story because it does map to like all of the innovation that's now happened to make it easier for creators um as they

[26:58] scale to go and monetize in all these different ways um well early youtube also the culture was people like are you trying to sell me something right now bro why don't you shut up and provide the free content if you ever tried to sell someone something they're like sell out wow skye wants to make money like get a real job if you want to make money now it's like you know you see people like jake paul logan paul that like plug the merch in every single thing they're happy to launch they can do a video that they're launching an energy drink and people are hyped about it they're happy

[27:34] that they're successful they're happy they show off their like versace onesie and everyone's applauding when we were like yo this stuff costs money so here is you know our t-shirts if you want them and they're like wow wow sellouts so the the culture of youtube at the time was people really didn't support a youtuber with a branded deal or anything you know i remember we did uh netflix when netflix was very very new and um and i'll never forget the pricing structure of this because i'm like this was insane to me but um for we had to tell people go to netflix.com bacon and if you went there

[28:18] and you signed up for the one free month with your credit card it'll automatically okay netflix gave us sixty dollars us per person per person so like the pricing structure is just so insane because like netflix was new but the the service was so easy to convince someone like because it was a good service i hadn't had netflix until that deal came through in 2011 and they offered it and i was like oh can i get a free login and they were like a free login we're giving you 60 bucks per person that signs in i think you'll be able to afford a month or two

[29:08] after this and and that was the truth and like and they were like so how do you want to do what a lot of youtubers like to be like hey guys don't want to bug you um but there's this awesome service and i was like oh no we'll just by using the character i played a character on the show i'll just be like oh sign up you get free movies i get money for bacon and it was just such a 2011 2010 humor mentality um and we did it and i remember the comments people were like well i really respect them for just being like up

[29:41] front that they're making money on this like i know youtubers that when i went to visit them they drove escalades they were successful they literally had two escalades this youtuber and he would go and dirty a dish on purpose and go to his second like his back kitchen sink and pretend to wash a dish there and talk to the camera to be like i'm just like you guys when he wasn't and we were the ones that and we did it through characters because we still thought it was douchey to do it as ourselves we did it as characters we like we were up front about like yeah

[30:16] we're making money we have so much money we're so successful at the same time i was driving like a nissan center and living in my parents basement but i was like we have millions of dollars we didn't but we kind of leaned into that mentality on youtube and that's what the youtube culture is now and if it's if it's not it was for a long time and it's on the tail end of it but i really feel like people were like whoa we kind of treated it like rappers believe it or not like half the people on epic meal time wanted to be rappers when they were growing up that

[30:52] was the the form of entertainment that they wanted to be a part of so i think they brought that showmanship there was like a show there was a survey that scared a bunch of people this might have been like a year ago maybe you guys saw it that was like it basically asked a bunch of kids in the u.s and then in china what they wanted to be when they grew up and something in the u.s like it was like 40 said a youtuber um and in china really seventy five percent by the way and in china it was like 75 of kids under the china it was like you know

[31:25] engineer like i don't know maybe it was manipulated data in china because i don't trust much that comes out of there but it was basically like oh [ __ ] we're dead [Laughter] it's like the chinese communist party filling up the surveys over and over again they want to be astronauts they all want to be asking astronauts military doctors technologists all that um i do want to i want to talk about um and greg you and i were chatting about this earlier this week um sort of like some of the darker side of um of these algorithms and of you know fame and and audiences and and all that

[32:01] happens with it um you know there was this great uh blog piece that i think tim ferriss had it in his five bullet fridays so it went pretty viral last week because of that it was called the perils of audience captures by this guy gurwinder who's a uh an indian guy who writes these really thoughtful pieces and basically the whole thing was built around um this guy nicholas perry nicotto um for for people who who don't know him who was you know original he's a ukrainian kid was doing like violin and talking about veganism he was an excellent excellent violin player excellent and still is and absolutely

[32:43] gotten any real traction doing that but was posting like very authentic real videos of himself doing that and then basically started um going towards these videos of him eating like absurd amounts of food and as people saw those videos and liked them there were comments like do more do bigger you know eat this eat that whatever and so he kept doing it because it was getting a ton of traction and a lot of views and he was making money off of it presumably um and it ended up really spiraling you know for his mental health and physical health for a lot of reasons and i just i wanna i wanna say it

[33:18] because i don't know if you would say it i don't know you that well but to those listening he was an extremely lean vegan boy and now he is the fattest jiggliest marshmallow of a person and you might be like hey that's not really nice but no this is a guy that has leaned into his fatness sells merch on it if you google him he is really like a gigantic marshmallow um and like that's kind of the brand that he's been yeah and it went from i mean it's like it's very sad to actually look at it before and after um because he went from like this you know kind of

[33:50] cute wholesale kid to what he looks like today which it's fine like everyone has their own life but yeah yeah but he was poor and now he's rich yeah he was poor and scary now he's rich so the whole article kind of lays this out of how we in a world of audience and in a world of these algorithms we are progressively falling victim to what our audience wants and effectively we are slaves of our audiences or of these algorithms if that's what you believe in and i thought it ended with a really good line and said this is the ultimate trap door in the hall of fame to become a prisoner of

[34:24] one's own persona um i thought that was just it punched me in the face because i was thinking about it for myself like how do you how do you think about this harley your own you know career in life doing crazy eating videos and crazy cooking videos did it impact you um and how do you think about that for creators today today's episode is brought to you by a company and product that has literally changed my life and one that i use every single day i started taking ag-1 in 2011 because i wanted to feel great it's been a staple of my morning routine ever since yeah that's 10 years and 99

[35:03] compliant i met the ceo when we were training at the same strength training facility way back in the day he had been creating an early version of the product to battle his own gut health issues when he realized how challenging and expensive it was to create an optimal routine on your own i started taking it during those college baseball years and was completely hooked over the years it has kept me feeling on point physically and mentally the best part it fits into whatever lifestyle or diet i'm currently experimenting with from keto to paleo to vegan and more it's a tiny micro habit that you can execute daily that has large long-term

[35:43] and compounding benefits the product has over seven thousand five-star reviews and is trusted by a long list of professional athletes and leading health experts i love it they do and i know you will too to make it easy athletic greens is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune supporting vitamin d and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase all you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com wih again that is athleticgreens.com wih to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance you won't regret it i think um i mean that's like i'm so lucky personally that this happened to 25 and when it did

[36:32] if this had happened when i was 18 things would have been disastrous epic meal time early on was frat mentality was like get drunk eat food party get drunk eat food party get drunk party like lots of part that was the mentality and when we started i was 25 and i was kind of over that already so by 27 when that's what the audience were thriving off of like they liked how much of a disaster we were sometimes um i was kind of comfortable enough to just be like no and i've done this from the very beginning and it's such a it's it's like it's it's such a thing that's always

[37:14] been discussed internally over the last like six years since like you know my channel started to decline since it wasn't popping like it once was like what are we gonna do and there were lots of things that we could have done and i didn't do and whether it's the persona that you are that the audience wants or whether it's the maida the meta of the the the you know um youtube at that time like will we you know will i will i get drunk and like lean into being a disaster will we start to do pranks cause pranks are cool now and oh we didn't do pranks well that's good pranks

[37:55] are super uncool now uh will i go have a baby with someone start a family vlog those are popping right now wait now family vlogs are looking kind of weird and filming your kids like things go back and forth and i think maybe because it was the early success of it all or whatever a perfect storm of my age and my experiences i never to the detriment of my success in some respects i never leaned into the meta of the youtube game whether that be the persona or whether that be uh you know what i'm doing so like mukbangs like the things that nicotto did where he'll sit there and pig out

[38:36] a part of me was like yes i kind of want to do that people would watch that we know it gets views i'm like but i've done a lot of this eating stuff for a decade i don't want to start this next decade on the foot of like i'm going to pig out constantly i would meet some successful youtubers and they were in the midst of like writing a battle rap against their own brother in a music video like a drama music video where him and his brother are fighting each other in music videos saying kind of [ __ ] up mean [ __ ] and

[39:14] i'm like i'm so happy i'm not beefing my brother i'm so happy that's not my path to success and i don't look down on people's hustle i get it like who knows some people they're trying to get something popping but i look at some things i'm like oh i could never do that and i'm not like i only do the best things i just look and i'm like oh yeah the pranks were taken off i didn't want none of that um you know like if eating yourself to get like so fat i was like you know i've had a little taste of success i don't know if i want to go and chase

[39:45] success so badly um there are personality types on youtube that you see in every line of business for sure there is this type of person who is so ambitious and insatiable and they are chasing something that is fleeting viewership i know people look at me some of these people that i know i and i can see it in their face i know they look at me or like my channel and they're like oh that would be a nightmare if i went from like getting 30 million views or like a 2 million views in a week to like getting under 100 000 views oh my god and i see that when i engage with people

[40:27] or i would engage with some of these people and they would be like oh my i'm i'm growing in subscribers and i'm like i can't remember the last time i like sat there and you know refreshed looking at the subscriber count um maybe it's just being older i'm 37 years old maybe it's like having this experience maybe it's i felt like i did something i don't have anything to prove i'm not sure what it is but the most successful people that i've seen on youtube they chase that fleeting number of likes engagement viewership the video got a million it's got to get two million oh you're only getting 800

[41:05] 000 [ __ ] my channel's dead got to do something crazy got to do something crazy to get back in the news get back in people's thoughts and i think maybe the most cloud-chasing thing that i've done is i did a a charity boxing match a couple months ago a youtuber boxing match which i always thought like i i love youtube drama so i was like is that where we are in this weird form of gladiators where nerdy youtubers are gonna hit each other for more clout the nerdiers the dirtiest youtubers by the way i watched it i watched it like like graham 7 like cnn god

[41:42] oh my god love that oh yeah he is he is and he went against michael reeves also great just two great guys it was and that's why i did it because i would never do the boxing thing but this was for charity and i really liked the creators that were in it they weren't like doing they weren't trying to prove anything everyone was like hey this'll be a great journey and we're doing it for a good cause let's go and do it and we all did it we had a great time um but it was different and then i got offered to box on the ksi

[42:15] card which is uh on the um 27th of this month and i was offered 150 000 to box one match in that card and i was like nah they were like 150 000 some most boxers will never see anything close to that amount ever a lot of championship boxing matches aren't that amount um and i'm not scoffing at the money in my current state that is an incredible amount of money and an excellent opportunity and i think it's a ton of money and i absolutely think it's so worth it and great but i'm not a fighter i did it for a personal journey chasing the check

[43:00] and being a like come on being a boxer 37 what if i get punched stupid you know what if i come out of that dumb dumber or so what if i break a nose that's like just forever weird who knows it's just it's not like my passion um plus i didn't know who i was boxing um but i looked at that and i've been fascinated by the youtube boxing thing and even the fact that they're like hey you're a washed up youtuber do you want to box someone for 150 000 and that's one side of one boat on a card with like eight matches and i would

[43:38] probably be bottom of the card so as you go up people are getting paid 300k 600k i'm sure whoever's fighting in the main event might be getting a million i think uh when when youtube disrupts industries that is like my favorite that's my favorite thing when i see that uh you know i know some people are like oh it's boxing like you know they're ruining it the coach that i had here in montreal he was like i've not had as many sign ups for boxing with young kids since jake paul started boxing and talking about it um and i just love i loved i've always loved you know you know same thing with

[44:17] like twitch whatever like disrupting the gaming industry when video games come out and something that wasn't that popular happens to be popular on twitch now that entire company is like completely talk about what you're doing on twitch i think that'll be interesting to people because you know you seem to be always ahead of the curve so yeah what do you work what are you working on on twitch yeah well see like twitch i remember in 2015 i saw an article that said after netflix the number one most streamed website was twitch and i knew justin.tv so i was like twitch i'm like well that's careless of

[44:56] me i'm on youtube and i don't know what twitch is and i went over to twitch and i watch people and i was like so crazy people watched someone play a game and i noticed a money culture that wasn't present on youtube people gave money on youtube like that was that thought was insane like don't even ask for money bro don't even sell me something free video free video shut up i'm skipping this ad right away and then you go on twitch and someone's like gets a headshot and they get like a 20 donation and they're like thanks for that donation and like that said i'm like that's what

[45:34] that person paid for it was so insane to me didn't understand it but i kept putting it on because i wanted to understand it and then i found a streamer that i liked this guy i'm a cutie pie and i would start watching him he would stream at 7am i'd go i might wake up at 7am back then for work and like he would be live and he'd be there and i'd be great and like if he was late i'd be like that's weird and like i just had like my first parasocial relationship on the other side where like i was a viewer and i'm like this guy and his cats

[46:04] i love his music taste he doesn't know who i am at all and then i was like i'm gonna start streaming on twitch and i started in 2015 and you know what it ended up being really really good because um and i only would get like you know at the time what was very difficult for me and this was probably what really helped my ego or uh or or like destroyed my ego in the sense that i'm like i'm not i'm not my viewer numbers you know was i would stream and people didn't know i was on twitch in like 2016 and i would have like 300 viewers

[46:43] and people would come in and be like oh my god epic meal time fell off they used to get millions of views now he has 300 viewers but like now i know firsthand 300 viewers that will watch you when you go live every time that 300 viewers is literally worth more than 300 000 views on youtube 100 000 because these 300 people are like they're all ambassadors they're sitting here for hours dude they didn't watch your video they're here with you and they want you to be here tomorrow um and i thought twitch was so fascinating like that and i was like oh i'm gonna do twitch

[47:24] for a long time and then i got hit up by facebook and this proved to be extremely fruitful for me and this is i'm not ahead of the curve now but i was then because i was in a position where facebook hit me up and they're like we want you to be part of our gaming program and they offered me a contract that per month dwarfed the biggest best month i ever had on twitch because it's like facebook money and so they gave me this deal to stream exclusively on facebook for three years um and i did that i streamed on facebook for three years and i had a guarantee

[48:03] i just had to stream you know 80 hours a month um and i was doing that on twitch already and that facebook deal was great i did that for a couple years and that just ended uh recently last year and i went back to twitch because just facebook you don't pop on facebook people go on twitch and pop you know aiden ross or you know uh even a lot of andrew tate clips are popping off like on twitch him going onto people's podcasts um and i just uh was fortunate to be part of that facebook thing and i think i may have stunted my twitch growth

[48:44] having been gone for three years but it was a risk i took and one i'm happy with because you know like i said there was a guarantee there um and i got to just chill and now i go on twitch and you know i got weird sleep schedule it's midnight not really sleeping i'm gonna play games and i'm like i know you know through my my instagram and through my snapchat i'm like i know my demographics top audiences are los angeles and england i'm like okay so it's 9 p.m in l.a and england's gonna be waking up soon i've just justified me being a degenerate playing [ __ ] mario

[49:24] all night long now and you know sometimes i'm there and sometimes there's 25 people there there have been times when there's been 5 000 people but either or there's just and i i'm like so grateful that it happened at this time in my life at this age that these are the things that don't they don't hurt me you know what i mean um people will see me and they'll be like oh my god epic meal time i used to love your show and my mom will be with me and she's like but why don't you watch now why don't you watch him now he needs the

[49:57] views and i'm like oh heather chill i like that your mom's around it's okay you know like that's big you need everyone needs money oh 100 100 yeah last night at 3am i was like streaming on twitch and uh you know and i'm like oh yeah this that i was like i went by my mom's house and then like a chat pops up harley's epic mom and she's like that's right and you need to check the mailbox we're waiting for an important letter and i'm like here's my mom i've got a funny at 3am i've got a funny mom story like so i have a lot of

[50:29] um i've got a lot of my friends moms who like follow me on these different platforms or read my newsletter like my friends literally won't read my newsletter or do it but for some reason their moms love my [ __ ] and i had i used to like before i you know started doing the twitter thing and got big on twitter i had this like kind of janky newsletter that i would send out once a month just saying like what i read during that month and basically like a review of that book and so like you know i'd read four books a month and i'd put a review

[50:53] and a star rating out of five and um i have this good friend from stanford whose mom um was an avid reader of this thing she loved reading books and so she would like read my things and then take them as suggestions and i wrote a review on um this book where the crawdads sing which was like a happy fiction like novel you know like happy ending like the whole thing you know right i liked it i'm kind of a simple guy when it comes to fiction so i wrote i gave it five stars i wrote this thing i get a response from this guy's mom who like i

[51:24] think i had met one time in my life that was literally the most scathing response angry and she was like yeah she was like she was like you know i normally trust your reviews reading this um but i did not expect this from you sahil um you know the uh she said something to the effect of like like it was rated five stars on reese witherspoon's reading list and she was like i expected this from reese witherspoon but not from style blue and i i kept it and i was like man i said it to my friend i was like dude i don't think i'll ever recover from this man

[51:59] this is the end i love i love how she burnt you and recently this morning at the same time raised further yeah and you know what like actually reese witherspoon was great i'd i'd be happy legally blonde man you gotta gotta respect that's so funny he uh

[52:29] yeah i was yeah i'd be like wow i guess it was bad enough for them to make them exactly uh i want to see if it's produced by reese witherspoon maybe she produced it she produces all types of things now yeah uh that's that's so funny i think that's uh hilarious and you know what it took me a long time to realize it but like that's like some of your top fans that is the behavior of this 33 i hate this by the way about these freaking review sites rotten tomatoes i'm on tomatoes where are the crawdads saying 33 on the tomato meter like the critics

[53:11] review audience score 96 so like that's all i care about man i don't care give a [ __ ] about the critics like you know it's like totally the audience is the man in the arena man the critics are like going from the sidelines you know what though but sometimes like sometimes rotten tomatoes like thirty percent or a hundred percent and i see that i'm like yeah i'll see about that there are a few i'll see about that i'll be back i'll see i'll leave like a thirty percent i'll be like yeah sometimes i'm not about it no no no i i'm like i go back and i'm

[53:46] like yeah now let me see what you guys you always wonder about now that i thought i wanted to redo some of those things like because i always used to wonder that with yelp like who the customer who leaves a review on yelp i think is like it's not your average customer and so there's like a selection bias towards the negative in my opinion like my um i i have a family member you think so yeah it's very the problem with and someone should solve this whoever you know there's a bunch of entrepreneurs listening right now it's yeah anyway i should solve this that's oh signing myself

[54:20] basically you have the problem with it is you have a bunch of people who are so you know you go to a italian restaurant nico's italian restaurant it's amazing you love it you get to know nico five stars five stars he like was really nice to my mom you write a whole long review or there was like a bunch of hairs in your pasta dish you know and you would leave a one-star review so you end up having is this weird bifurcation so inherently yelp style reviews are pretty are pretty yeah i wonder who can fix that i live in the new york area now and say hill where do you live

[54:59] okay because i'll tell you like i've been operating this way montreal like where i live the reviews of places here like there's a chance that i'm like reading the review on facebook and it's like a friend or a person that i know so like i know them and i've seen reviews here they're pretty pretty accurate pretty good when i go to the states and i open up ubereats or i'm looking and i'm googling restaurants like in montreal if it's below a four star i would never go there never if i'm in the u.s a three star i'm like that might as well be a four and a

[55:38] half here like a three star's very high in the u.s like people only go on yelp and stuff for the most part when they're pissed it's literally when they're pissed off because the reviews are so much more passionate in the u.s like i read them here and they're like we go there every time tom's our favorite waiter hey tom if you're reading this and then i go to like like i'm in like orlando and i'm reading like if it's like one star this [ __ ] manager that works at this place and like it's like so much more aggressive and so like when i see a three star i i'll bump

[56:17] mine's like a personal issue like i think i have a mental issue around this where like i grew up in a household uh where i felt like excellence was the standard like that my parents demanded of me um for better or worse right like that has a great side to it and that i always felt like you know i was pushed in a good way but i also think there's a downside to it at times where you like you know you feel like you can't do enough at times or you feel like there's a standard that's set that's really challenging to meet but the result of that for me in

[56:44] like random things like this is that i don't feel the need to like praise someone for doing their job you know like uh like at a restaurant if i have a good meal at a restaurant i'm not going on yelp to say yo i had a good meal cause i'm like that's your job like i was supposed to have a good meal at this expensive nice restaurant that i just went to on a friday night with my wife if you did a bad job then yeah maybe i'm gonna like figure out how to fix that for you in the future by leaving it something but a good job unless it's

[57:09] like unbelievably excellent way out performing you know like anywhere in the eight to nine range i'm like yeah that's kind of what i expect if i'm gonna go pay 200 in manhattan for a dinner with my wife

[57:24] yeah no it's uh like that's the thing i love playing video games and people like oh yeah they're so mad about this game they're on twitter everyone's on twitter talking about i'm like no not everyone the people that like game are literally playing it so the people that don't like it don't have a competing force on twitter to be like no it's great because they're literally playing it and sometimes games come out and they're like taking these twitter takes and i'm like that's a person honestly like that might be a person like that loves nintendo and this is a playstation game so they're like that game sucks and people are like you hear

[58:00] this someone's saying something about something and i never get caught up on on any of that now also i'm like i'm a star wars fan so like i've been through one of like the most craziest fan bases of like in the last like six years the star wars fan bases just really went through it with each other it used to be like people like star wars fans and then there was like star wars fans that also liked the prequels and it was like two types of star wars fans people that like star wars and people that like star wars and also like episode one two and three

[58:31] now it's like divided and divided and divided and it's just like toxic i watch [ __ ] now and i'm just like i hope this show gets an ending you know sometimes things get canceled before they end and like that's why i won't even like i didn't even start watching breaking bad until it was like a success in the fourth season i'm like i'm not gonna watch a show and get caught up and then they're gonna take it away or so you have to like that that's the type of that's the type of guy who like gets heartbroken and like doesn't want to date anymore because he's like nah they're they're

[59:03] all they're all poison yeah yeah yeah exactly i'm like i like this show the show get cats the writing was bad anyways you've got this video on youtube researching for this episode that i want to ask you about because it's awesome that is like basically you it's it's got a bunch of your old bar mitzvah video clips in it uh yeah it's a great great job funniest clip this is i mean you know the only reason why i could say this is a the funniest clip is because even though i was a producer on the show the uh actual like show runner producer this guy greg heller great guy he put that

[59:44] together like he calls my mom asked for the bar mitzvah so when i was screening the episode actually watching a cut of it i was like where the [ __ ] did you get my bar mitzvah stuff he was like i asked your mom so like that was all him that's why i'm allowed it was so good i mean it's a great clip and i encourage people to watch it it's like you know you're kind of talking to your future self in the bar mitzvah clips out of it and you're like you know you're going to be dope you're going to be awesome you know whatever and then you're like reflecting

[1:00:13] on it in the future talking to your prior self so it brings me to the question of like which i think is a fun place to end and maybe we can all reflect on it like what what advice would you have to give to your like 2010 self you know you're starting out your substitute teacher at the time you're trying to figure out what's next um you know you're rapping on the side doing you're doing your thing trying to figure out youtube what um what reflections or advice would you have for that for that version of you there's so you know there was so many things that didn't play out the way i

[1:00:48] wanted it to but at this exact moment sitting here right now like talking about everything talking about where i am right now i wouldn't change in any way so i i as crazy as it is i wouldn't even go in and be like yo do everything you're doing except buy way more bitcoin that's all

[1:01:12] and maybe sell some of it in like 2021. uh like that's like maybe i would say that but beyond that like i i really wouldn't change the approach there were some things that you know definitely were sad definitely were heartbreaking definitely were stressful or hard to get through but no matter which path i end up taking that's bound to happen for everyone in life but i'm very grateful for today right here so i wouldn't change that and i think you know if maybe now this year is someone else's 2010 you might be starting a journey you might be doing it like just do it just do it and wing it there's so many

[1:01:50] perfectionists out there and i'm the opposite to a detriment um but like some people want to wait i don't know writing their book i always say writing the book that book you want to write like you actually just got to write it back then i was scared to go in front of cameras because you know i wanted to i had the teaching as my backup plan but it's very easy for your plan b to automatically become your plan a through your actions and i'm i'm happy that i i made that commitment to plan a um so yeah i mean just do it maybe you get lucky i like

[1:02:29] that no there was a lot of fall starts before you get lucky what about uh you know we talked earlier about how young people all want to be youtubers and how you were lucky that you became successful in your mid mid to late 20s should teenagers sign up to youtube and become youtubers or should youtube put like a a requirement you need to be this high to sign up no i think they should i i see like teenagers like they have their phone and i'm like how could you not how could you not you absolutely should like i always always think about that kid remember that kid someone took a

[1:03:10] picture of him at target and then he was saying today 700 000 followers on twitter the next day alex from target no no alex from target he was just like cause like that that yodeling kid at least like oh yeah i do remember that this was just like a cutest boy at the checkout line someone took a picture and like it was over his life was different do you know how many people like went and filmed the tick tock and then that tick tock has 60 million views and then now they have like 800 000 followers that are like what's next from you and i'm just like yeah you should

[1:03:43] however anyone who leaves school or quits school to become a youtuber you don't have it buddy i'll tell you right now if you cannot be in school and do your youtube you're definitely not built for it because you're not going to compete with the type of people that that do this [ __ ] like i know successful youtubers that are so hungry about it like they're still out there no name producing other shows or working like a real job or whatever it is and like if you're like if you think you need to leave school to become a youtuber like you you don't have the chops because

[1:04:19] when you are a youtuber and everything goes great and you're super successful well that's when things come up obligations or travel or meetings or you're going to court or whatever it is and like if you can't do both like you're not you're not going to cut it so if you happen to be a teenager listening to this or like a a an up-and-coming entrepreneur or whatever it is like specifically for youtube i can't talk about everything if you can't do school at the same time like you don't have to stay in school so make sure you get uh i think we can hit on that if you're not ending it on stay in

[1:04:53] school i don't know dude this was awesome so much fun i hope you go get some sleep because i mean holy hell i have a newborn at home and i'm sleeping way more than you i won't i won't no i won't because it's going to mess up my schedule like i need to like just

[1:05:12] drink more of that g fuel g fuel 69. uh thank you so much for coming on where it happens man this was a blast thank you thanks so much for listening to today's episode if you have any questions that you want featured in a future episode email us at hi trwih.com leave us a review at apple or spotify to help us grow the reach of this podcast until next time we will see you soon [Music]

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