An Unfiltered Conversation with Linus Tech Tips

oh my God we did that completely wrong we totally it you've been in this for a while thanks you're closing it on two decades old yeah I'm shooting literally 10 videos a day wow oh where'd you get this don't worry about it man it's so much easier on the flip side it's never been harder to compete I get very scared of building a team so big it's complicated I would love to hear the law of riding good videos law number one control the scope number two number three how many laws we got what did you

learn about that experience last time August your channel is for aspiring creators and everything but [Applause] [Music] like today on the Colin andp show we're joined by lonus Tech tips AKA Linus Sebastian he's honestly the most requested guest on this show wouldn't it be lonus Sebastian AKA Linus Tech tips is his real name not Linus Tech tips okay so I asked chat to explain lonus Tech tips to someone who doesn't know him and it said imagine a mix of Mythbusters and a tech focused late night show hm that's pretty creative chat GPT now I think

that's actually pretty accurate just like a late night show he's uploading multiple times a week about the most topical things happening in Tech he's also just one of those OG YouTube creators he's been on the platform since what 20 for 16 years yeah 16 years and he has this super interesting story of starting as an employee at a computer store making YouTube videos eventually having to buy his YouTube channel from them and then eventually building this channel to 16 million subscribers and building one of the biggest companies in the Creator economy with Linus Media Group

it's an Empire I think you can call it a YouTube Empire I think one thing that we get into in this conversation that really surprised me was how big his merchandise business is so not just content he is an absolute wealth of knowledge everything from how to make a compelling YouTube video to uh the system that go into scaling the process of making a YouTube video he's just very in the weeds when it comes to building a large YouTube company and this year has been a significant year for his company they went through some controversy

earlier this year around their business practices the workplace environment and accuracy of information in their reviews and we talk about that in this interview we also talked to lonus just about the present and future of Linus Media Group which includes hiring a new CEO for the company what that process has been like of you know being the guy in charge and now bringing someone else in I think he's one of the most fascinating guys in our industry he he's a he's a big character and he's really sharp and good at articulating his rules of YouTube

we start the episode in in talking about his 10 rules of making YouTube videos which is really great have we also talked about how requested this episode has been like first thing I said that's the first thing you said I don't know where I was but it's most requested episode I'll say it again this is one of the most requested episodes the amount of comments asking for lonus throughout the years has been incredible yeah most requested episode for years so we've ignored those comments for years until now one thing that always shocks me is creators

like lonus who are capable of putting out four to five videos a week like I I just don't I I think it's like unbelievable how dare you honestly YouTubers who can do that are unbelievable but there's one thing that if you are going to do that you have to get really good at and that's titles and thumbnails and that is my segue into the sponsor of today's episode I saw where you were going SP Studio spotter studio is a first ofit kind software that's designed specifically for YouTube creators to help you come up with titles

thumbnails and hooks for your videos so you can either start brainstorming by typing in a title or if you don't have an idea you can just click surprise me and because spotter Studio connects directly to your YouTube channel it gives you ideas based off your top performing videos as well as the top performing videos on YouTube Once you have that title you can turn it into a number of thumbnail variations and you can choose from a variety of styles they have sketch concept art and realistic and one of my favorite things about this is that

it really learns what we do on our Channel you'll start to see in some of the mockups the arrow that we've actually used in Prior videos or even this one where you have our bookshelf which is really similar to our 13 years of YouTube knowledge video smeir you hear that what is that new feature alert okay tell me we've got YouTube preview in spotter studio now so when you make a thumbnail you can see what it looks like on desktop on mobile on TV so before you publish a video you actually can see what these

thumbnail mockups can look like in all these different environments while you're brainstorming titles you're also going to see words that get underlined these are power keywords that are overperforming on YouTube so we have a link in our description for you to try out spatter Studio totally free for 60 days click that link in our description check it out and now for our interview with lonus tech tips all right lonus welcome thank you so we just watched you shoot a YouTube video you did yeah that was amazing I know maybe you don't think it was amazing

but sorry that was a weird noise uh I for one didn't think it was amazing just to clarify he didn't like it you up the whole time yeah no no that's fine I just mean here's a here's a weird question because you guys obviously make YouTube videos and uh watch YouTube videos and you've probably seen someone make a video before how was that different from watching the video I'm just is it not the same no it was not the same it was very it was unbelievably smooth top to botom here's what I'll tell you if

I was doing that I would have done those takes probably five or six times you did it once with a few breaks so I came up in a very different time on YouTube let's let's get into it when I started out there was no um sponsor Integrations right um AdSense was meager um a big channel on the platform like we were like a big channel in Tech or whatever we had had I think when we started out we had about 120,000 subscribers when we started the company so when we actually like went Indian I didn't

work for a computer store anymore and so when we did our first CES our first Consumer Electronics Show we shot somewhere between like 45 and 55 videos when we were down there for one week and to put this in perspective for you guys like we're there for about four or five days of the show so I'm shooting literally like 10 videos a day and you don't don't forget I in a lot of cases I'm not on the show floor I got to travel from hotel suite to hotel suite so I'm here in the OC suite

at CES and I've actually got their entire SSD lineup in front of me it might not be so I would basically walk up I'd be like tell me everything about this water bottle okay now shut up I turn to my camera and regurgitate it but like you know with energy and try to demystify a few of the details whatever the audience wants to know then I turn back and I go look I'm sorry I didn't mean to be rude but I have a limited amount of Random Access Memory I needed to retain everything you said

thank you so much for briefing me on your product I will see you later and then I would go to the next thing and that was out of necessity because for the first six months we were running at a deficit unlike most creators that I meet I was never a oneman show not even for one day I always had someone operating a camera operating a timeline usually both and so [Music] we had employees from Day Zero that had to be paid you know why I need to be able to just nail things it was because

everything was lean super lean we almost ran out of money and we just wouldn't have had money to pay paychecks and so if I didn't nail things I had what I called the one take policy basically just keep going through it fumble a thing a little bit doesn't matter keep going keep going only time for one take so good uh well I'm not I'm not that good at it anymore I took two takes that was embarrassing um yeah but like the thing I take way more than that often these days but the thing that's amazing

is on on line of tech tips you're putting out a video a day is that right not anymore but almost the past week I think you've put out from what I've seen and the video you just shot is coming out tomorrow morning yeah yeah but that's unusual but how many are you putting out in a month or a week is there like a a specific amount four and a half a week is the Target right now it used to be six a week plus W show now it's we aim for four and a half a

week plus W show but just like you saw in the last I think probably seven or eight consecutive days I think we've uploaded will go periods of three or four days without uploading at all now and it just comes down to how our production schedule works I mean we made a commitment to our audience a little over a year ago that we were just going to take a harder line on if something's not quite ready just push it just push it and we've held to that so meaning like so Matt Pat had this rule when

he came on here he talked about the 85% rule that they were trying to get videos to 85% they 85% push it out does that feel representative I would say that that's more representative of our older philosophy but I think that you know whether it's fair or not or whether it makes sense or not uh our audience is holding us to a higher than 85% standard and at the end of the day um they're the boss right I talk about this a lot internally is like I'll I'll ask someone and not in like a weird

like pushy way but just in a conversational way like it's a funny thing right because think about it like who's your boss and I don't like make it awkward and make them like think about it and try to answer me and then correct them I'm just like like who's your boss and I'm you know I'll give you a hint it's not me it's not Taran Tong CEO of lest Media Group it's not Ivon you know like my wife CFO has a lot of things but it's the audience it's the audience and and and it's the

hardest boss in the world because you think about that that iconic uh scene or line whatever from Office Space where he's talking about how he has like a handful of bosses and all these reports and the whole thing feels ridiculous right well it's like it's that but times literally a million you know because everyone has a different idea of what kind of content you should be doing and what the standard should be and you know what is acceptable and what's not and they're all like eager to voice their opinions and it all gets mixed up

into this cacophony of voices that's pummeling you and you somehow have to kind of sift through it and find the Nuggets of truth that will drive you to Greater success and drive you to do better um but they're the boss and so you don't get to choose how your boss gives you feedback you don't get to choose how your boss sets the direction so with the amount of output that you guys have now uh how how are the ideas coming together how's the writing coming together because from what I've seen the script being that tight

is what enables the turnaround to happen sure right like if the script isn't tight then it'd be really hard to turn around four and a half or six videos a week if there's anything that I would say is my Creator Talent right like I'm I'm not artistic um I'm I I don't think of myself as an actor you know like I'm that was pretty good though thanks um if there's anything that I am as like a creative I would say it's I'm a writer and it it was really it was really funny to me I

was working on a challenge I I was using a Qualcomm Snapdragon laptop for a month and for those of you not familiar basically that means I don't have like a normal processor in it so there's a lot of applications that I can't use if they're not compatible with this platform and I saw this like kind of ridiculous comment that I felt compelled to reply to that was basically like well Linus's perspective on this is so skewed because like creative professionals couldn't even deal with this at all and like he's fine with it but like creatives

I'm sitting here going what are you talking about just because your canvas is you know um an iPad with an apple pencil just because your canvas is a piano keyboard or just because your canvas is something else right like my canvas is a blank sheet of paper I'm a writer um and so if there's if there's anything that I am as a Creator right instead of like a business person a business person like lonus wouldn't understand right it's it's that I'm a writer and so I um I still play a major role in ideation I

still play a major role in laying out key beats I still play a major role in taking the finished script and altering the voice tightening it we have a great team but I think the the word writer is almost an improper descriptor of them because they do so much more than just write in a lot of cases they're sort of formulating opinions they are which is part of writing but they're also um they're so they're they're writing but they're also like testing it in some cases like we do have our Labs team that does some

of the more in-depth testing but they're also involved and they're working with those guys and sometimes they'll even work on things like they they'll go Source a prop because we're a very um we're kind of we're kind of flat like we have more of a formal hierarchy now than we used to but we're still kind of flat like you don't get to just be like oh well I'm slightly above you on the org chart therefore I don't do anything for you and you do everything for me like it doesn't work like that how many writers

are there uh on that team okay so we got Jake James who's more of like the writing team manager uh and then we've got um and then David and Jordan and then Adam and plof and Elijah and Alex so eight including manager got it and is it like from what I've heard you have like a writers meeting every Monday and in that Mee Fridays now but Fridays okay so once a week you have a writers meeting usually are they pitching you ideas and what are you looking for in those ideas we pitch ideas to the

group okay so I will sometimes veto stuff I'll be like guys like come on can we let's wrap up this conversation this is not viable like so I'll sometimes have to kind of take on that role a little bit but in general we we want to make sure that we're getting multiple perspectives on an idea because the thing with tech is that sometimes the story is really obvious the story is that this thing performs 25% better and is 10% cheaper therefore it's a good value and if you are looking for these you should buy right

see your your guys your eyes are glazing over just like listening to me say that because it's boring it's boring and so a lot of the time the story is that can't be that yeah we have to find another angle and you need multiple voices and you need multiple perspectives to find the who the who cares right and the why should I care um like that's I think number one on the laws of writing good videos I would love to hear the laws of writing good videos but one of our laws that we talk about

is exactly what you just said who is this for and why would they watch those are really simple questions that sometimes creators just don't ask themselves actually I think sometimes marketers everyone in business should ask themselves that uh law number one control the scope make sure the point isn't too broad keep it narrow keep it focused love that number two don't waste the viewers time again it's almost the same one again what is the point make your point as concisely as possible something I used to talk about a lot and I don't talk about as

much anymore but it's information density um that's one of the main reasons that we moved to scripted because in a lot of cases I could probably add lib a lot of what we do and I still do a lot of our stuff is still unscripted um our podcast is unscripted a lot of our Vlogs are unscripted they'll have kind of like beats we want to hit but it's like we're putting it in our own words on the fly but the problem with that is the information density is very low and the editing lift is very

high compared to scripting everything and tightening it down um number three load up the learning outcomes and this one's really important to me because I feel like our role is to make you feel at the end like you got more than just um you know like marshmallows and and cheese whiz you know like you got something of substance after you consume our content I think that there's a lot of very addictive content online that and I'm not going to say we're the single most educational Channel or anything like that but we try to we try

to have you walk away with something just be a little bit could just be a little bit every time but we want you to walk away with something because I think it's really important to building a long-term relationship um plan for flow make it personal why should I care what does plan for flow mean oh some ideas will have a natural order um you know it could be physical outside to inside it could be temporal beginning to end it could be con Cal start with the background info current events future speculation you know um but

make sure that you have a clear idea and I I put this one in because we'd run into a lot of situations where people wouldn't intu it this and you know they would start with okay well this new water bottle from LTT store.com it's got this new twist cap and uh you know if you look on the inside it's got this kind of this this lining and then like oh but now we need to look at the bottom oh my goodness water all over the place right because was that part of it if you don't

think about the flow through which you are going to go through something you end up with something unnatural or something happening that is disruptive and you're you're you're drawing the viewers attention away from the story you're telling and onto wait weren't we just talking about the internal specs why is he talking about how pretty the shell is and whoa now we're talking about how much hard drive capacity it has again does that does it ever materialized in like a list form like I'm going to tell you three things that I love about this or do

you think yeah absolutely lists are great right because you can basically organize any video's flow into lists yeah here's all the things we're going to talk about here's the things we're going to talk about pertaining to that than that and and then you've just got the classic essay format which I love I know it's a weird thing to say I love the essay format no I love it too it's not it's not broken those work really well and they're easy to understand Andy follow so the last it no that's five that's five there's more laws

how many laws we got we got 10 provide context it's not always obvious how good a screen is how impressive someone's subscriber count is right you know you have to contextualize things meaning Benchmark it against something else or compare it to something else yeah remember who you're talking to you know not every video is for everyone so you guys are going to see this a lot right sometimes you guys are going to do a video that's really targeting brand new creators who've never done anything and sometimes you guys are going deep into the weeds for

people who if they don't have like a million subscribers it's probably not applicable don't worry about it yeah right um plan for the payoff really important to me tellal and show us how to feel man and this is part of this is part of the context one too provide context um it's so much better to to to show people how we're feeling about things versus just say and that's really good you know I like in the video that you just saw yeah you know I make sure that I'm being expressive when I'm excited about something

I make sure that my expressiveness Falls extremely far when I'm exasperated about it if you don't show and tell people how to feel they're just going to tune out they're going to disengage and that's not their fault it's just you do that really well with your voice too it's part of the it's part of the natural process of creating video and I I tell people this anytime I deal with an inexperienced host one of the things I really like to tell them is here's the problem with cameras they have they have this glass filter in

front of them and and it's it's real tough for them it's kind of like they have uh like a like a like a screen that sits and it filters out probably 80% of your energy so however you would normally talk to someone right when you're talking to a camera you've got to take that and you've got to give it like this much more energy you got to act in a way that would actually be kind of uncomfortable maybe even offputting to somebody that was sitting and talking to you in person and I'm I'm I'm dialing

confirm offputting I'm dialing it back because this is more of an interview format and I'm trying to seem like a sane human being but when you're presenting the camera it captures a fraction of your energy it captures a fraction of your emotion so you have to overdo it if you don't overdo it you end up just flat and boring number 10 have fun the audience's [ __ ] detector it's like finely tuned yeah finely tuned if they can tell that you don't give a [ __ ] why should they give a [ __ ] they

shouldn't and they only get better as time goes on right like obviously as YouTube progresses the [ __ ] detector gets more find some of them are idiots all you got to do all you got to do to prove my hypothesis is look at the like dislike ratio back when we had that yeah any YouTuber apology it's like that many people bought that yeah you guys are just your detector is broken bro oh man but in general I do think the audience as a whole is evolving to become more Savvy yeah of course they've just

seen a lot now like what used to be reality is like progressing the same way that reality TV progressed right like it's it's all progressing in that way how how do you have fun with something that's heavily scripted because for me I look at unscripted whether it's or doing a vlog and like authentically I will find moments where I'm having a good time or I'm just like sure feel like I'm the realest interpretation of myself and I enjoy that but with scripted I do feel a little bit like performative and I still like that format

like I like those videos but when I'm doing it it feels performative um I don't know I I guess for me it's like uh it's the little things right like I I love sneaking in little bits of personality I love sneaking in little Easter eggs I love making jokes that I know only 3 to 5% of the audience is going to get or care about and then it's such a it's such a fun payoff for me when I get I when we go down in the comments and people are like H he said streets ahead

we're GNA make it a thing let's go you know like I love that stuff right and and so for me I guess part of it is just kind of trying to keep that vision of the final product or or realizing that if you're doing a scripted format and you're not having fun your script probably blows 100% and you need to make it better yeah so are you doing where does title thumbnail fit in on in the writer's room and in these meetings if you don't have a title thumbnail you don't have a video so is

not in modern YouTube is that first or is it like discussion about the idea and then you're like I really like that idea let's has to happen in parallel there's the general video concept the title the thumbnail and the and the flow and payoff got it it all has to happen in parallel it's like you got your your chicken your egg your rooster and like your I don't know hen house or whatever all the things you need are to make like a baby chicken and is hook a part of that kind of like the the

first few lines of yeah that's where I say like the intro um so we have we have lots of like laws that's just one of the law documents but one of our little our intro one of our intro laws is you have to pay off the title thumbnail in the first I think 10 to 13 seconds yeah this was honestly based on a mark Rober video that I watched like ages ago I don't watch much YouTube so every once in a while I watch YouTube I'm like oh yeah it's evolving it's good so I watched

his one on the like deceptive manipulative like gambling elements in kids arcades and I basically was like this is a really good intro um what's in it and so I kind of figured out identify the problem uh show me there's more that I need to know address the title thumbnail and there like there's one more but we basically have a template that you have to fill out before you write an intro that shows that you've identified all these things and made sure that they're all going to be in there yeah for us we talk about

like confirming title and thumbnail and then introducing a new unclosed Loop sure like within the first 30 we going give you this but we're also going to give you something you didn't expect yeah how do you think about formats because a lot of the top creators right now you look at like Ryan Tran it's like I stayed in this type of Airbnb right and if it works do it again and again and again when I look at your channel there are so many different types of titling conventions and thumbnail formats and yet you still reach

a consistent audience couldn't explain it couldn't explain it well the format is Linus's face a lonus tech tips video is essentially a format that's not repeatable but I'm just saying it's like a there's there's things within it right like the Segways are like if I'm a part of the community I know what is happening in the show right if that makes sense yeah I mean I yeah I guess you could say that and we we it's not like we don't have some formats I mean we'll react to stuff but we'll do uh we've done like

the five versus 50 versus $500 thing a couple of times uh we have some of our some formats that we kind of started like we have like a handy Tech under $100 format kind of thing the build uh build with only items from yeah build with only Amazon your the wishom build with only items from wish.com so yeah we have some formats but I guess one of my big things and it's both a really good thing and it can be a really negative thing sometimes is I hate retreading old ground which when you've done 6,000

videos or whatever we're up to now means that a lot of the time our writers room ends up like that South Park episode like Simpsons did it Simpsons did except Simpsons is us like we've done basically freaking everything at this point but YouTube rewards that right like I mean the the vibe of YouTube is like if something works like just keep doing it um but I get bored you can't do it and Rule Number 10 is have fun yeah so if I'm bored we're just not going to do it so I've also heard you talk

about how like in greenlighting a video you want to make sure that it gets I think it was either 100 or a thousand views in perpetuity that is old meta that's old meta that's old doesn't happen anymore so you don't think about that now like in terms of I need this to be Evergreen for a long period of time we still strive for everg greenness in our content but it used be that if we go and we look at the the the all all views for the channel right like let pull theh lifetime come on

or actually I'm just GNA highlight yeah on the graph where that meta died that was terrible thank you it's good good I have long arms it's a talent right there can we poke around this while we have it open dud whatever so this is Lifetime from 2008 wow oh my God this is an amazing graph okay lifetime from 2008 where the meta of like trying to have those videos died it looks like 2023 it used to be that there was just this finite amount of content on the platform and if you made a good video

even a decent video it would settle in eventually to like maybe a hundred views a day and it would kind of stay there and and the the idea and if you look at that like total sort of Channel viewership graph it played out right the idea was that if every day you uploaded a new video that could get like a 100 views a day in perpetuity then your overall Channel viewership would always grow until it just always grew forever yeah um and it worked for a really really long time but eventually competition heated up and

there's just there's so much content dude I regularly at trade shows and stuff I'll run into like Tech creators who have Channels with like a 100,000 or hundreds of thousand subscribers and I'm just like please don't take this the wrong way I mean no offense but I I've never heard of you this is tell me about yourself like super nice to meet you and everything but like where did you come from like I and and there's and there's there's so so many people in the space now especially with the way that production equipment has gone

down in cost and complexity yeah like anyone with literally a smartphone can like make a goodlooking good decent sounding video these days and so the burier to entry is so low and it's a good thing right like the democra media ESS right but what it do mean is there's a t of competion for attention on the platform and so that that meta just didn't exist anymore and you can see like we never really had like breakout times we we always relied on just like slow and steady wins the race just make a decent video every

day a little more decenter than the last one and keep going but your first six years in the context here are pretty slow yeah 2008 to 2014 is pretty flat what was going on there uh well from until 2012 I worked for a computer store so I was I was on payroll and I got a small bonus I forget what it was I think it was like10 or $15 a video or something like that for uploading to LT because I didn't even own the channel um it was their choice to Brand IT lineus Tech tips

because their store NC had NC Tech tips but those were a bigger production and more overhead head and we couldn't produce that many of them and lots of our partners Wanted videos for their products and so they were like oh well we'll do like this unboxing format is is a thing and I was like unboxing that's stupid um look at me now um okay yeah fine and they were like okay but like branding let's keep the tech tips because that was a huge part of the kind of the the the the foundation of the channel

for me the way that I pitched it was we weren't going to try and sell anything we were going to educate and that would build a relationship and build trust with our audience which would ultimately make them buy something which is great because I work for a store and that's that's our goal but we wouldn't cross that line to um to just just turning the video into a sales vehicle there had to always be an educational nugget which comes back to back to the law of making sure that you build in some learning outcomes kind

of what I call them and and so we were like Okay so let's keep the tech tips but this is going to be like kind of unscripted Slash like kind of off the cuff and we're going to lean more on like Linus the personality what if he says something you know weird you know they were actually ahead of their time in terms of like preparing themselves for influencers doing or saying something outlandish right they like this guy's going to get canceled eventually it's a matter of time it's a matter of time with this guy yeah

let's see if we can get a good few years yeah so why don't we call it like lus Tech tips that way it doesn't reflect directly on theand Tex Tech tips which the second video I do want to play more with your dashboard by the way I will but there was ncx Tech tips which the second video on that channel is you hi welcome to ncx Tech tips my name is lus Sebastian and today 17 years ago now you start hosting on that channel and you're getting paid per video y I think I got I

think it was $250 per NCIX Tech tips I've also heard that before you worked for NC you were like essentially pro bono doing customer support for them in forums yeah that's one way of describing it yeah I just hung out in there in their like Community forum and I would just look at people's like build lists and I'd be like yeah actually you can get the OEM Samsung DDR for like $3 cheaper it performs exactly the same it just doesn't have the shiny heat spreader on it so you could go ahead and do that or

not I mean whatever is your money so you were just really into this stuff oh yeah yes really into computers like dude I either I was on the NC Forum or on this buy sell trade forum redflag deals.com and I was like buying low and selling high and wheeling and dealing and I would build computers for uh people who wanted computers I'd go by buy the parts I'd charge them like an assembly fee i' put it together I'd configure Windows for them what was your plan if you didn't go in like at that time were

you just G to were you going to build computers you're work in a computer store like how did you see your life going oh I mean I was supposed to go to school like I I went to University for like two and a half years and I was supposed to be like getting an education um during my two summers in that period right um I also you guys have College Pro right like College Pro painters no like student college student pains student painters yes okay yeah so I did like a college Pro competitor called student

Works which I don't know if they have in the US but anyway uh so I ran a painting franchise in there as well also I was like a certified lifeguard and water safety instructor I used to te swimming lessons um I think once I had grown up past about grade two and you know wanting to be a fireman you know um I probably thought I was just going to be a teacher but I think a big part of that was just that so many influences in my life were teachers like every adult I knew was

a teacher my teachers were teachers my mom was a teacher my stepdad was a teacher um got it my aunt on my biological dad's side was a teacher and these were all the like key adults in my life growing up so I was just like I don't know I guess everyone just grows up and is a teacher yeah and if you it's funny because if you think about it I basically still am yeah you are I just get paid better version yeah poor teachers they uh support your support your teachers at what point in the

early Journey uh of making YouTube videos did you realize that part of your identity or part of what you enjoyed was hosting and writing like did you always see yourself as a writer when you were like a lifeguard and things like I'm a pretty good writer no I mean I I was um pretty good at it I was not good at it until I somehow got put into like the advanced placement like AP English in grade 11 and I had a really great teacher think he's still kicking alorn um really great teacher he pushed us

extremely hard he was a stickler for detail if you had an assign all of our assignments were out of 10 if you had a uation Mark out of place you lost5 of your entire grade it didn't matter if something was not correctly capitalized something was misspelled and these were written assignments there was no spelled check you had to actually like write it out in the class he penalized you and I think there's a lot of people that would look at things like spelling and go well these are arbitrary these are not actual indicators of the

quality of the work but what we learned was that the quality of the work is an indicator of the quality of the work and you could have car that you know by and large functions mechanically but if has a big scratch on the side that's the only thing anyone's going to talk about and I think that changing that mindset for me was really key in making me detail oriented enough to succeed at this so I did my AP exam I was this is this is one of my like favorite stories not because I'm like super

exceptional lots of people get a four on the English AP exam which basically means you skip first year college um English and it's like the highest grade basically I think it's four it's either four or five it's whatever the highest grade was but the only reason I cared so much was because the other like like exemplary students who beat me in every other subject didn't so that's got it yeah so so that was probably the moment that I figured out that I'm like pretty okay at writing I read a lot like I read ravenously as

a child um and I didn't use it at all until man we didn't even start writing our videos until we'd moved into the Langley house at some point but the thing is that far beyond NCIX once you're into yeah but the thing is that the fundamentals of story structure of argument structure and when I say argument I don't mean you dirty rat like I mean I mean I mean formulating a concise argument to demonstrate a point and to win people over to your side you can you don't have to write it down right as long

as you foundationally understand it and can verbalize it then that's just that's just a skill that you have that's something you have in your back pocket that you carry with you and I I've said so many times I think sales is the most important life skill and sales is basically making an argument selling your position selling your skills you know whether it's you're applying for a job finding a partner right like selling the value of yourself as someone that you should accept a ring from you know everything you do in life ultimately comes down to

your ability to argue your position and if you can't do it it doesn't matter how good your ideas are they'll never go anywhere and so I think grade 11 grade 12 AP English was more foundational for me than almost anything I can look back at career-wise wow I love that that's that's really I I really believe that like making videos and writing are one and the same right because exactly what you're saying you're crafting a perspective and an argument you're trying to get a point across in a story when you were doing this with NC

like that that that video that I watch I had a whiteboard on I had a whiteboard propped under the camera on the tripod and it had like basically just my main sort of Beats that I wanted to hit so I'd be like okay blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah wow that's but but like okay just a guy who is spending his time in forums and building computers yeah the natural thought is not this guy would be great on camera when did you realize

like or were you just immediately comfortable on camera no no I mean you've seen the videos right SE the videos but you to have the guts to get on camera how did the opportunity even come about did you ask for it to go on camera Heavens no I I dude I already had like three full-time jobs I was a product manager I was um I was in charge of like our online like PC Builder I was involved in like some of our marketing like dude I I did like so much stuff I even did a

little bit of like Community man management like it was it was ridiculous like how much stuff that I had on my plate already but basically my my okay my boss but not the one that I hired who works and is my boss now and not the president of the company so my then boss pulled me into his office and he basically goes and like pardon my French but he he pretty much said it exactly like this he's like look Tiger Direct has videos we need to have [ __ ] videos go make videos got it

and I in his typical fashion he was kind of like like hyper animated about it and like not open to conversation necessarily sometimes he was in a very different mood but he was not in that mood at this point and and he basically goes now get the [ __ ] out of my office and he look I I love him dearly he said get the [ __ ] out of my office in the most loving way loving way possible I was still expected to leave right but in a loving way in a loving way so

he goes get the [ __ ] out of my office and I'm like okay this is probably one of those things where he's like read an article or something and realistically he's going to forget about it in a couple weeks and if I just don't work on this and I do other stuff that I know definitely has a value he's probably going to forget about it that's funny and he pulled me back into his office like a month later he goes where are those [ __ ] videos when I give you an assignment I expect

some kind of followup he went and personally went to the president of the company and requisitioned a camera which was a gift that the president had bought for his son that he didn't really like use it was some Sony camcorder and he like he hands it to me he goes no excuses pretty much WoW make a video like I don't know how to make a video I didn't even do like I I didn't even do drama PL past the one third of a semester that I did in grade A like I I had no experience

on camera no experience behind a camera nothing and I was like okay so I recruited a helper internally uh who went by the Alias cameraman who I would often banter with because he was a Mac guy and I was a PC and uh he has asked me not to disclose his name so I I won't but uh great guy we we worked together extremely well and we produced the Sunbeam tunic Tower overview that was the very first antic Tech tips it was meant to be just like kind of a okay how does this work let's

pick the simplest possible story to tell and see if we have any idea how to do this and if anyone cares at all and the rest is history do you remember the first time that someone came up to you and recognized you because I will I will always remember you know our first channel was the Lacrosse Network it was all about lacrosse and I will never forget we were at a lacrosse tournament in Utah and a little kid came up to me and was like hey it's Colin and Samir and we have the moment on

camera I remember being like oh that's so cool like I think my camera though is like recording but kind of down and I just like said to Samir I'm like whoa Samir we both were like what what like it's just I will never forget it uh and it it felt like a little bit of validation that we were doing something that people enjoyed and a moment of like did my life just change forever that someone knows who I am and I don't know them I think so yeah I was at McDonald's okay I was getting

lunch um I hadn't figured out that I shouldn't eat McDonald's yet um so I was getting lunch with uh a colleague or a couple of colleagues and we're in line and we're just Yik yacking about whatever and Guy turns around he goes I recognize that voice oh yeah so it wasn't actually the face wow it was the voice wow that was the dead giveaway and I was like no way and uh they obviously like ribbed me about it they're like intern famous of course um it is weird to go from the default which is assumed

anonymity at all times in your life right you walk into a McDonald you're like no I'm just here getting McDonald's to there's a shift and I think on YouTube because YouTube Works in these fragmented niches there's it's actually a murky Middle Ground of if you still should assume anonimity or not whether you're at our scale your scale like if I'm at a farmers market it's very unlikely that anyone's going to walk up to me or at least it would have been not that long ago uh whereas if I walk into a best bu yeah it's

over like yeah you're Justin Bieber yeah well no but no yeah okay but people are people it's pretty likely yeah that if I if I ever needed my ego stroked you know I could go do a lap in a Best Buy and someone would walk up and tell me they think I'm cool or something right right um I don't do that but if you see him at a Best Buy please stroke as you yeah so the NCIX did it start like working like were views on that channel just started working yeah just started working aming

pretty much immediately I mean there was so little competition if I uploaded that video today I would be drowning in obscurity forever that wouldn't that wouldn't be successful you have to be it's it's mindblowing right because on the one hand it is easier than ever there's so much inspiration out there there's so many tools it's all affordable right it's so much easier than ever to make a great video and like like be an awesome content creator but on the other on the flip side it's never been harder to compete against the literal millions of other

people who want the audience's eyeballs right so it's like people ask me sometimes they're like you know is was it easier to start out when you were starting out or is it easier to start out now and it's like it's totally hard both times but in totally different ways yeah like getting a getting a decent light was like thousands of dollars back when I started a decent camera we couldn't afford lights like are you kidding me we didn't have a decent camera we just straight up didn't yeah you just had crappy cameras and who cares

cuz YouTube was 480p anyway yeah yeah so wait I'm how did the the lonus tech tips Channel starts because they're like who knows what he could say yeah so we and also like we need plausible deniability if he does something if he does something dumb but that is technically because you're an employee of NC owned by NC yeah not technically 100% 100% L Tech tips was originally owned by this computer store yeah how did that happen that you go independent so I had an argument with the president of the company the big boss and um

basically we didn't agree on the direction for the company and it was it's a stupid thing honestly when I summarize it but he wanted us to carry less inventory and I wanted us to sell more inventory if that makes sense oh I see so he saw the future as going super lean and if you look back he was actually pretty wise in terms of where the Market's gone like Amazon becoming a Marketplace more than an actual like retailer at this point stuff like that anyway we had this kind of fundamental disagreement and what it boiled

down to was we we had kind of we were carrying too much inventory and it was u a burden on our cash flow and he basically said we need to figure out how to buy less and I said no we need to focus our efforts on how to sell more and he basically goes look if you can't get behind the column you know the marching column if you can't carry the banner then maybe you should just make videos well he meant for him but you know got me thinking right like I could see the AdSense

checks they were small but they were growing I could see the way the platform was going I could see the potential in the future I didn't see this I I saw you know maybe having a small maybe half a dozen person team and everyone makes a living salary and you know we we grow out and we make videos and test computer hardware and that was that was sort of as far as I could look into the future but I did see a future and I kind of started to Crunch the numbers and went yeah why

don't I just make videos so I came to him with an offer that basically went I'm quitting and you know he kind of went please don't I kind of went well I am I'm quitting I've made my decision and there are two paths path number one is you sell me Linus Tech tips for $1 I offer you a non-compete for a period of I believe it was it was either two years or three years or something like that I offer you a it was either a one-year or two-year contract to come back and help you

build up a team and train a team to run the ncx tech tips Channel which obviously I'm not going to take it's branded after their store and you couldn't change YouTube channel names back then not easily anyway um and I will did I already say the non-compete okay and I will offer you a Perpetual license to use any lineus Tech tips content that we ever produce wow for Rich video merchandising for your products on your store wow that one's big although NCIX doesn't exist anymore well we'll get to that so that was my offer that's

offer that's path number one okay path number two I don't have a channel I don't have a means to support myself I'm going to go work for New Egg wow good negotiator I'm not gonna stay here that ain't a path yeah and so after some back and forth and you know some stuff that honestly I probably shouldn't have done I I tried to take the cameram with me got it um and he was also in a very senior position there when the owner found out he almost torpedoed the whole deal right and so we had

to I had to basically say okay I'm not taking anyone with me it's just me and like it was there was a whole drama literally literally at the 11th Hour like I was sitting there he was in like China and we were negotiating on I I still vividly remember this on December 31st I'm standing in the family room at my house and I'm on the phone with him and it's whatever o'clock in China and we're like hashing out this this deal like look I am unemployed tomorrow am I sending out applications or do we have

a deal and we we got it done so on January 1st Luke and Ed came to work for lus Media Group Incorporation and we had a channel it was it was down it was that close to the wire it was wild and we had plans we were going to try to like make a go of it like starting the channel from scratch but it was we all knew it was far-fetched and looking back on it I don't think we would have succeeded wow what a makes for a good story have you always been comfortable sort

of negotiating on your own behalf and getting into somewhat confrontational scenarios like hey I'm either put in applications tomorrow or not like when you're in middle school and high school are you are you like no are you that stronge headed no no I was awkward dude I was like an awkward nerdy kid man like I I was loud maybe and like I but I didn't say the right thing usually and like I don't know I I have some very strong personalities in my family so I guess like going toe-to-toe with them probably primed the pump

a little bit but no how how quickly did did Line Tech tip start working January 1 you're you know Luke and Ed come to work zero Revenue you've zero but the channel has some AdSense 120,000 or so I think some AdSense did you know how much you had to make to keep them around how muchan I can do basic math oh I don't remember now but they made you know more than minimum wage less than what they were worth but more than minimum wage you know they actually well depending on how you factor the hours

I think Luke was pulling a lot more hours than I even necessarily realized he lived in house like I don't not everyone knows that but he lived with me at the start of the channel he just had like a spare room got it in our house like lived there part of the deal was that um he could uh my wife was on maternity leave at the time and she was cooking meals so you did this you did this move when you had kid he had like room board and food as part of his employment deal

like it it was dude it was wild that is crazy yeah and no yeah so I newborn we'd had our first son eight months prior my god dude what a wild time to do that and we we had this conversation right and and I often I I often say this maybe not that often but definitely said it multiple times is like people will ask me when's a good time to do something and I'm like it's never a good time just figure it out it's never a good time you just have to do it and so

you know when my wife and I are talking about this is probably like August September time frame when we're like talking about this and starting to work it out and like we couldn't afford a lawyer so we like tried to make our own like sale contract for the channel I mean the fact that NC doesn't exist anymore slash the statute of limitations is probably over is probably a good thing because I have no idea how proof that sale contract was like I basically wrote it and like right yeah yeah it was rough man um but

so we have like a four-month-old when we're like going through all this and like this is crazy but but I was really lucky right I I had a partner that was a able and B willing to support this dream um and she was working as a pharmacy manager she finished school she she was she's the good one right um I dropped out after two and a half year flunked out it's complicated I didn't technically flunk out I was on academic probation when I stopped coming to school so I also was on academic probation am did

I get fired did I quit I don't know sounds like you left on your own accord yeah it's sh time was right academic status so how long until uh lineus Tech tips channel is kind of like working quote unquote like it's paying for itself at six months in wow that's amazing we had run out of Runway we didn't have much oh okay was the problem we had run out of Runway and the first like check hit that was like this covers everything that's going out and we are at break even and we were on fumes

so we yes we managed to go from zero to profitability extremely quickly I think most businesses would say six months wow great job but we also had no planning and no startup Capital right like we were still paying the mortgage on our house like we didn't have like our house paid off we didn't have like a a nest egg we were in debt not like cash flush yeah did did you feel like six months in you were like this can get exponentially bigger you no no not even close you were just like I'm just making

it through yeah we were it was like day by day we were like fighting for every penny um we by then we had our uh fourth or fifth kind of depending on how you count Yvonne who technically wasn't working for us cuz she was on maternity leave um but we added Brandon who was uh actually hired as an editor but he ended up being more of a like DP um and it was sustainable but I don't think there was a clear path to anything more than sustainable was the concept then just like make a video

every day oh yeah 100% the daily Cadence was a big part of what allowed us to iterate on our content we take feedback we iterate we upload we take feedback we R we upload yeah how much viewership was enough back then I don't remember I mean we can open the dash I can tell you like that that feeling of like oh that video did well or that video didn't do well do you have a sense for you don't remember what that was yeah I have no idea interesting um and do you remember that first AdSense

check I do I do remember my first AdSense check but it was actually before being oh right lus Media Group and it was like it was like a few dollars like it it really wasn't very much but it's less the first one that I remember they used to send physical checks cool I tell that story all the time I remember that um it was less the first one and the Milestone I actually remember more was when it reached a dollar a day so the first time I got a $30 check in the mail and I

went okay but this was $15 not that long ago and then the next one was like $45 and I went wait this could scale yeah because it's the scaling that matters it's not the when I when I showed the $30 check to people because I was really excited about it they were like yeah what like coffee and remember coffee was cheap then so um like that's a lot of coffee yeah like what coffee I'm like no no but but it's but it's more than the last one it's so much more than the last one and

the next one's going to be even more because there's the two month delay right yeah and there's a freedom to it to just it showing up that I think is hard to explain to people who don't do YouTube you can make this is actual like internet money I figured that out yeah yeah it's crazy too because like what Colin just said like I was thinking about it when I was looking at our lifetime revenue and I was like what's amazing is we didn't have to call anyone to make this deal this money just shows up

yep that's the amazing thing about YouTube I mean that's why YouTube is and will forever be the premier platform for creators because they enable any to do it and you know you look at you look at platforms where you know copious amounts of money are streaming into them like kick for example uh but that's that by definition cannot be forever there is no infinite Fountain of money yes so unless you build a model that properly incentivizes people to build great content for your platform it's always finite yeah it's finite forever whereas YouTube has built a

perpetual motion machine the creators create the content which makes the money which pays the creators which pays for the content which makes the money which pays the creat which pays Perpetual emotion do you remember speaking of creators like during that time when you know you're starting independent do you remember the landscape of tech creators at the time like where where was Marquez at that time where was like he didn't exist yet he wasn't around yet no 2008 I don't think so I mean if he was he was no I guess you're right cuz he as

irrelevant as me so you know wow I mean when I first started it was like like PC whiz kid and like Locker gnome was Untouchable I would never catch up to Locker gome Chris pillo you know uh chill frilla wow doing the unboxing of Xbox 360 you know like wow when did that Tech scene start to emerge and did you feel I justtin don't forget I just she she's OG like she was like that's true obviously like on a level that I would never be touchable because this platform could never get that big and like

I don't know I don't know she probably had like 880,000 subscribers or something but the creators who had 100,000 subscribers at that time felt like yeah impossible to get to yeah oh impossible impossible are there even a 100,000 people watching videos on the internet right like it's crazy um I and I don't know the answer is that I still don't watch a lot of YouTube I'm not digital native that way I guess and I I never did I I came into this because my boss told me to did you read like PC mag and like

CNET where that you weren't that was expensive I didn't have money interesting I could afford magazines dude are you kidding yeah I just find that like in the tech world it's so interesting to me because it reminds me of the sports world where Sports Illustrated was like the major sports publication they didn't create ESPN which is fascinating to think about like ESPN came out of a different angle was like actually this should be like 247 Sports on all the time right if you think about tech creators it's a really similar concept like none of those

Publications really made it big as video creators some of them have tried but it was the independent who came at a different Ang like actually we can make great videos about this stuff well it's the innovator dilemma right like there was no money in video there was no incentive to invest in it until all of a sudden video was eating rit's lunch yeah and it was too late yeah so if you're not watching a lot of YouTube does that mean that you're not aware of like the competition in the tech space or the saturation like

you're not feeling that as someone who's in it since 2008 um I remember reading I forget what show it was but they basically had like a policy on their on their site or on their like contact us that was like if you send like a like a like a pilot or like a draft episode or like an idea pitch or whatever else um just know that we shredded it before we ever read it because we don't want to be put in a position where our idea that we came up with independently could be infringing on

on someone else's idea don't send us anything we don't want it um and I feel like in some ways it is a benefit to me that I don't watch much because it means that even if I do end up doing the same thing as someone else a lot of the time I didn't see their video and we end up with a slightly different angle anyway yeah it's not like I'm not I don't try to be peripherally aware of what other people are doing like I I keep up with our subreddit I read a lot of

comments so it the community itself keeps me informed but I see that as a very healthy information Loop where I'm outputting the best thing that I can do based on my community feedback and they are advising me on what I should be doing and what I shouldn't be doing and what others are doing and what they're not so what did you have a perspective on this year when there was a lot of chatter around MKBHD and Fisker or MKBHD and Humane like his reviews of those companies taking down the companies quote unquote bad products take

down companies and bad business practices take down companies I mean this isn't even fisker's first time going down if I recall correctly right so um I think that if if Marquez had said something untrue about those companies if he had purposely sabotaged them then that would be um you know absolutely uh a cardinal sin right but as far as I could tell these were bad products that all he did was explain why they were bad um I don't really think that there's any I don't think that the argument that he's somehow responsible for for their

fate holds any water so I I agree with you I I was fascinated to see the reaction on the other side for that whole conversation made me think of like is the assumption that you know YouTubers or reviews in general are positive because that that shouldn't be an assumption right there are reviews oh I don't think people and when I say people there are certainly individuals that do understand what a review is but I think that the definition has shifted over time in a way that makes it hard to communicate so we talked a little

while ago on our podcast about the word scam and this was actually surrounding another Marquez controversy his wallpaper app and people were referring to it as a scam and I went well it's not a scam because a scam has to have an element of dishonesty to he told you what it was he told you how much it cost if you don't like it don't [ __ ] buy it that's not a scam that's not like Miracle snake oil healing cream that doesn't actually heal anything and actually gives you a WRA it's just a thing that

doesn't have a value to you and therefore you could just not buy which is totally fine now if you want to have a conversation about how it's out of touch or the quality is low or whatever these other things are that's fine we can have that conversation but don't use the word scam and I had people especially it seems like younger people kind of coming back to me and saying well the meaning of the word scam is changed it just means a really bad value now and I'm like okay but that's a problem because a

that isn't what it means and B yes I understand you want to talk about sort of the the evolving meanings of words and language and and what a natural and valid thing that is but the problem is that when you allow this word to evolve in that way you obscure the meaning of it and you end up painting with far too broad of a brush the reason that words have specific meanings is so that we can communicate with Clarity and so that the recipient can understand what we saying so if you say marquez's wallpaper app

is a scam that actually communic to other people of how you feel your Loosey Goosey definition of it it communicates a very different thing to other people it's a two-way street so the reason we have an agreed upon definition for words is so that everybody understands not so that just you do and just the people who use the same colloquialisms that you do can understand it this comes back to this conversation around the audience being the boss right yeah cuz like their reaction informs a lot of how you operate the business I'm curious just when

you're thinking about the business now and growing are you thinking how much you thinking about like returning regular viewers and how much do you think about new viewers on a videoo video basis and then also from a broader perspective so coming back to the definition of review then yeah review means a lot of different things to a lot of different people and that has become extremely challenging so I will see often on a sponsored video that we upload on short circuit for example which I would Define as more of a product showcase because anything that

is sponsored and and we do our due diligence when it comes to disclosures cannot by definition be a review because that video was reviewed by the brand whose entire reason for existing is to sell you that product right but you'll see people going oh yeah this sponsored review is really great that's an oxymoron we literally got a question we asked people on Twitter on X like what we should ask you and someone said ask about how he feels about doing sponsored reviews yeah there's no such thing there's a sponsored video and that's one thing and

there's a review which has to have editorial Independence but here's the thing even when you talk about the definition of an editorially independent review you're going to get a lot of different answers coming back to what you were saying about um you know the earlier days of print media they would consider even something as simple as like you know sitting down for dinner with someone potentially conflicting right whereas you know I would get into conversations with the written media guys back when they were invited to you know a new GPU briefing alongside me and you

know everyone would have completely different lines for some of them they insisted on paying their own travel for some of them they insisted on uh they would allow Nvidia to pay the travel but they would stay in their own hotel like everyone had completely different lines and I basically was of the mind that like realistically I'm here against my will if they would send me the card and just give me an online briefing I'd rather do that I'm most certainly not going to pay for the flight to be inconvenience so yeah sure I'll take your

flight but if you imagine for a second that my Integrity is for sale for a stupid plane ticket to somewhere I don't even [ __ ] want to go then that's ridiculous right but that's the thing that's my take yeah not everybody agrees to someone else I'm compromised immediately right especially the more old school guards so so this this inability to Define review I think has poisoned any possible broader conversation around who is and isn't a reviewer what is and isn't a review and what are their roles so that's where I think you get some

of those conversations where people will be like well the review is supposed to be highlighting the positives it absolutely isn't yeah it could be it could be the or it could not but you've got people's you got people's perceptions so Twisted now but also it's because the business is advertising and a lot of these products that you're reviewing are potential advertisers absolutely and so and and the funny thing is you'll see people go both ways with it you'll see people say this is a really great sponsored review I love this thing I want one and

then you'll see people saying like oh he said something positive must be an undisclosed paid partnership right when actually that's not the case at all we don't do undisclosed paid partnership yeah and so yeah it's real difficult because no there's no consensus and so just like the word scam has come to mean not a scam it has come to mean bad value to some people which really poisons our ability to communicate with each other clearly the word review having no defined meaning anymore is extremely dangerous yeah I agree with that that's a good point it's

a very good point you know at one point a lot of these creators emerged and then it was at first like what is this then it became aspirational to become a YouTube Creator because everyone's aware of what the outcome could be if you do it right sure but it's like the lottery that way like I I know I'm supposed to be like your channel is for aspiring creators and everything but [Applause] like it's tough it is tough yeah I actually don't think it's the lottery as much as just how long do you want to do

it for without getting paid or much validation if you actually just enjoy it don't forget you have to pay for it it's exactly you pay into to it you spend your time on it and someday maybe it will pay off yeah there's a skill element uny yeah unlike Lottery there's a there's a skill and you have to be able to call it like Blackjack I just think there's a little bit more enjoyment in making videos and storytelling than there is in the lottery hey some people enjoy it get that dopamine hit but sure yeah yeah

yeah I think Marquez describes it as like the NBA you know it's like it's such a small amount of people who get to make it yeah and you have to be so committed and you have to gain so much talent over so much time and you have to be lucky yeah I think anyone who says it's a meritocracy is I mean narcissistic or arrogant or stupid like there's it's not pure talent you also have to get lucky I was in the right place at the right time and I worked hard and I was good enough

at it but that's every and that's every entrepreneur I would say that's like entrepreneurship in general yeah I think that's fair I just I reject the people who leave out the luck so I wanted to ask you about sure how lmg makes money yeah um cuz this is a this is a graphic from 2020 maybe I didn't find it but if there was a more updated version there was a newer one um okay this is 2020 wait no we did two is this the second one yeah okay then yeah this is the most upto-date one

so is this accurate of how lmg makes money today no no we're planning a new one okay so if you did a breakdown of that or maybe you I guess you've already done it or are doing it or even without percentages if you just give a breakdown I can give you like I can give you a couple things anyway so first of all AdSense was 26% and merchandise was 15% then in 2020 yeah merchandise is now 6X AdSense six times AdSense yeah and I also five to Sixx I also caught a peek a dadson so

that's insane uh oh yeah yeah um whoa that's physical Goods physical Goods do not have the same margin as AdSense checks yeah so you're saying Topline Revenue Topline Reven is 6X AdSense wow that's a that's a big merchandise company yeah yeah I actually I've been I keep wanting to do this and I keep forgetting I I want to stop calling it merch yeah it's a brand it's not merch it's not merch we make apparel and consumer goods we don't we don't just slap our logo on things totally that's where we started but I feel like

we develop products from ground up engineer things design things bring them to Market I don't think we're a merch company anymore but um yeah it's a it's a very sizable company in its own rightous amazing and we've we've had so many conversations with creators who were like yeah I love your guys' stuff like like can I be like create a warehouse and we're just like someday someday we've tried to do a couple of small collabs and our process is just it's it's wild like it'll take us a year to bring a pair of pants to

Market it took us I think three years or whatever it was to build the screwdriver because we really are just like doing things from scratch and we're perfectionist about it and we bet big I can't ask other people to bet big the way that you know the way that we do to to take on risk the way that we do to basically book 10,000 units of something sight unseen and hope they can sell it you know it's not how most creators models works and I think a lot of creators also have an expect a margin

expectation of course that is built on you know cheap Goods the lowest common denominator Goods with a label silk screened on them wow and and and they expect to make that kind of money so you know we might have someone come to us and be like okay yeah can you do our t-shirts and I'll be like yeah sure are you ready to make half as much as you make on your current T-shirts because we can't do it for nothing and also our blanks won the project Farm um merch t-shirt Roundup recently H for just overall

quality of blanks and printing um there were some categories where we were a little behind but there were some categories where we were way out ahead and overall we ranked number one and it's because that costs money wow that's amazing I'm I'm pretty taken aback by the size of that but I also appreciate a lot what you're saying too like that's that's the way to build a long-lasting brand though because that has exponential returns over time I hope so having like high quality product that's yeah so as long as we can figure it out Market

it other than LT videos that's something that that we don't have any experience with and we're we're working on it we're trying to do better just like you know creating short form video and like paid ads yeah yeah like no no wait no no hold on no people pay us for right now yeah and um that was actually did you sponsor a Marquez video yeah yeah um a couple more recently too we did one with Zack builds um [Music] I'm gonna forget the rest of it doesn't matter the point is that's actually the title of

our last podcast was like look at me I am the sponsor now theck dude I saw that title I that made me laugh and we're going to do more of that expect to see dozens of LTT store sponsorships on smaller creators so interesting for creators to become the sponsors yeah like that's it's so cool and and we've done that with our newsletter a couple times did to support that like next generation of of like in some cases smaller creators in some cases like we sponsored Marquez the screwdriver creators our size you know I don't know

I I think it's cool oh it's awesome yeah and you also know so much about what that means to do a brand integration and where how it could be effective and where it yeah so um Amazon affiliate is not nearly as consequential these days other Affiliates are more consequential float planes killing it we have almost 41,000 paid subscribers on float plane for anywhere between $5 and $10 for people who don't know what is float plane float plane is essentially our own patreon that we made amazing yeah but it's really focused on like behind the scenes

my gosh yeah um so that's that's huge for us knowing what I know the number of times I've seen people talk about how much float plane is failed like you do the math yeah 41,000 times five bucks yeah times 12 months a year that's doing fine yeah um wow I'd say sponsored projects and in video sponsor spots have probably switched spots really yeah sponsored projects at this point in video sponsor spots was 27% of the revenue and sponsored projects was 14% yeah so those have switched we've found much better ways of working with our sponsors

to be able to make the creative content that we want to do and integrate their products more naturally in a way that doesn't really impact the the the flow of the video and the and the meaning of the video how are you doing that yeah what are some of those ways um well I think we've just developed more of a of a Hardline stance you know I think our business team is a lot more experien now than they were back then uh so they've learned that you can just walk away and everyone comes crawling back

eventually so if they have terms that we don't find acceptable they want us to like pretend that I use it every day when I don't which not going to do we're not going to say something that's not true right um so if we basically say look here's the concept we're going to dump Coke on a computer comp and then we're going to try and save it are you in or you out so you're saying that's like a full sponsored video that's on LT but it's a concept that you would want to do and so that

was fully sponsored with deep product integration by origin PC their computer was built right into the whole thing it's their computer we literally dumped Coke down it and then cleaned it and booted it back up and we we work in a little bit of more of a traditional read where we go yeah by the wayc 24 call it action but that is the kind of thing that we're doing more of now where we figure out what project do we want to do we figure out a natural brand to integrate into it we did one on

cleaning an old water cooled system and we had an integration for a for a like sonic toothbrush yeah and we used it to clean stuff so it's great but those trade at a higher value than the the ab yeah absolutely that's advantageous to both parties in I think everyone wins yeah everyone wins there I think that's the direction of YouTube BEC or should be because I actually think the short form ad integration it works well in podcasting it's but it's a format that's borrowed from the radio some old school old school if you have a

heavily visual video it can be increasingly more difficult to then all of a sudden stop your story try and work that messaging if you're like traveling through Vietnam and then you like are back in your apartment you're like let me tell you about Squarespace real quick and then you're back to Vietnam It's Kind it's a bizarre it's a bizarre cut but can I make an argument for that form yeah please I like having a clear delineation between the talking points and the content and so you know even when we do something like that spilling the

coke down the PC well yeah but we have you know something that is clearly talking points and other than that the PC is there and it's part of this content where we're you know pouring Coke on it and then we're cleaning it with isopropyl alcohol and whatever the case may be so we we very intentionally have for years and years and years and years years years made our sponsor spots very skippable you know like easily you know left Arrow or or double taable um and we have resisted calls from sponsors to move our end rolles

at the very end of the video into the middle or move them toward the front which has been the industry Trend and that's because I just don't want it got it and now you have and you also have the leverage now to say no I'm good no we've always stuck by that got it just like yeah we do one at the beginning a one and we do one at the end a long one yeah and he's been trying to convince me col's out there he's been trying to convince me to change it up and I

told him he can experiment with a couple but I'm like I'm pretty set yeah and is that consistent across all channels no some of the channels do more of a midre um but on LTT which is the bread and butter of the business um that's the way we do it and LTT in terms of viewership you're sitting at like 70 million views a month 70 to 80 yeah 70 80 million views a month and that's primarily long form not a lot of that is on short form from what I checked it's like under 10% of

that is short form I don't know that number off the top of my head but we're mostly long substantial amount of long form viewership well that's our that's our business right that's we we came from long form I can make a short I've even had a couple that have done really well yeah but it's not my yeah I'm not short native sure you know and across the channels is it is it like are you talking about around 100 million views a month across lmg or something like that maybe a little less these days yeah but

something along those lines that's an amazing amount of audience right like obviously like the largest attention advertising Market in the world is the Super Bowl that's around a hundred a little over 100 million views like that's like a Super Bowl a month yeah yeah it's funny we've used that line oh you have okay but I think 100 million people relate to that CU that's like in in the world of advertising you can benchmark again around like that's a Super Bowl every it's a funny thing too because we are we're kind of like the biggest channel

that kind of I feel like stayed under everyone's radar for years and years like we didn't have a YouTube rep until like long after we probably should have in terms of our overall our overall viewership numbers um we are small by some metrics like our average viewership for per video is pretty low compared to some really big guys in the tech space even um like marquez's um back back to him since we're talking about him a lot his average use for videoos much higher so you could kind of look at that and you could go

okay yeah that engaged audience is actually substantially larger from moment to moment but in terms of who's driving the actual views in long form I'd say it's us and then I don't have the breakdown for Aaron Mr who's the boss but he's a major player there as well but we've just done it through just like sheer volume sheer scale and it is always interesting for me to see because the metric that I actually use more than anything else to determine sort of like uh remember like celebrity stocks kind of yeah where you where they like

had their stocks would go up and down based on like doing a good interview or like whatever and it was just like you could kind of it was isn't like a crypto thing play money no it was just like play money yeah so one of the one of my favorite ways to gauge YouTuber star is actually not by the performance on their own channels but by their performance on other channels so you can bet that I'm going to be creeping the analytics on this video going like okay where am I at yeah where how do

their interviews usually like track and like where where am I uh because the thing about tech and especially us where we do such variety like we're not always doing smartphones we're not always doing gadgets we're doing everything from like okay we're touring a data center today we're looking at a factory today we're looking at like this CPU today we're building a Facebook marketplace home theater in my family room tomorrow like it's we're all over the place right so when push comes to shove like what's the what's the brand recognition when we're on another Channel I

always find that fascinating um because we don't have the kind of viewership that'll watch every video we have a viewership that Tunes in here and here and here and here interesting so how big is the audience is actually a really difficult thing for me to measure the only reliable one I have it's so funny we've only been on interviewed a few times and I have aund 100% done the same thing yeah yeah and at times been like whoa that's amazing and at other times being like like oh boy yeah I've had it go both ways

man that's really funny in this context of like the audience being your boss and being being the the the Arbiter I guess of impossible to please boss yeah very impossible to please but how much do you think about um returning viewers and how much do you think about gaining new audience um I am old school I am really focused on the you in YouTube yeah right and that's me in this case interesting and so what I'm looking for is like-minded people who share my interests and who think the same things that I think are cool

are cool and if they watch our videos all the time then that's chill and if they don't watch our videos all the time and they're fly by then that's chill on a video by video basis I think that we will Target things like a more tech-savvy person who we might group into returning viewers right or we might Target someone who is more of a of a of a flyby they need to build a computer one time and we're making a resource for them so we might go over in more detail some of the things the

regular viewers really don't need to hear um but I don't think in terms of the new viewer regular viewer buckets and I probably should do a better job of that got it interesting and do you think about that in when you started to expand to multiple channels absolutely the channels definitely had a viewer that they were interested in but all of them need both new viewers and returning viewers but it was just sort of what we wanted them to be when did you go from one channel to more channels very early after we after we

started the company really so Tech quickie originally started as a repository I I thought that our path to growth was actually going to be doing paid Productions like like making commercials and I was like okay our special sauce is twofold one you don't have to explain the product to us which is great because you're a marketing agency and you probably don't understand it anyway uh number two is we're going to build up this channel where we're going to publish the ads and they're going to get like a bunch of views there and it's going to

be basically free real estate you know um and so some of the earliest uploads on techwiki they're gone or they're they're unlisted now but some of the earliest uploads there are actually just like ads for like ad data and Corsair and Sam just like random Brands and we did man we did some weird stuff we did this one where like a ninja breaks into the house or something like steal internet native Ad Agency or production company right is kind of the concept and um and then I was like okay but no one's going to subscribe

to a channel that's just ads what what did I know about what was coming I'm I mean there's channels these days that basically every video is like fully sponsored whatever but I I thought that was crazy uh so I'm like no one's going to subscribe to a channel it's just ads let's create a format that will drive subscriptions here and we'll try to build it up because lots of people had secondary channels so we came up with the fastest possible format and for Tech quickie and just like quick explainers of basic concepts that realistically the

LT audience had probably outgrown interesting and do you have because now how many channels do you have under lmg it's complicated so we have I think it's like eight or something but a handful are pretty much Hiatus right now so the ones we are actively uploading to are LTT lmg Clips Tech link PSU circuit PSU circuit yes I'm just gonna game link not game link not game link game link is Hiatus right now yeah that's it so we have we have contracted a little bit to help streamline and focus right now do you have laws

for launching a new channel no that's law we just have institutional like experience we have people who have done it before and every time it's kind of a cluster and we do our best do you have like a certain amount like how do you evaluate a new channel we usually announce it on the main channel to kind of give it a kick in the ass and then you know beyond that we're basically just looking at like business operations right like how much management overhead of is this in terms of like it equipment HR um how

much revenue is it driving um how how much you know Strife or conflict within the organization is it creating um you know what's the sustainability of this from just like a business standpoint got it when you say that some of those channels are on Hiatus uh to streamline and focus what's funny is like if you go to your Reddit with the Hiatus channels it is just like people are going nuts yeah like what happened there and like it almost feels like you could go down five different paths on the Reddit of like what happened and

it's it's like and lus conspiracy none of them are right okay I can tell you that with 100% candidness yeah none of them are accurate and the cold hard truth is just like the controversy that we had last August I cannot give you the answer MH um and I think that it's really hard for people to hear that especially because we've made such efforts to maintain our transparency over the years I think it's really challenging for people to hear that the cold simple truth is that I cannot give you the answer because there are a

privacy laws that protect both our current and former employees that would restrict my ability to tell you anything about the details of whether they quit were laid off or were fired right those are all three very different things yeah right but no matter which one of them it is I can't tell you the circumstances I can't even tell you which one it is I can't give you names I can't give you anything and that's right that's a good thing that's that's good nobody should get any kind of unwanted attention imagine for a second right we're

in your exit interview and whatever the circumstances are you handed in your resignation you were laid off because of a lack of work or you were fired for negligence whatever it doesn't matter if I were to tell you hey we're going to talk about the uh the circumstances of your departure on our podcast and I'm yeah see right no that sounds crazy yeah like I'm it doesn't even matter if you're willing to sign the piece of paper sign the release I'm a [ __ ] [ __ ] for asking yeah yeah and but that's something

that I think that the audience doesn't understand we're not you know a sports team we're not um whatever we're not the a good that's a good note though you're not a sports team yeah and and and I I think it was on our our pre-brief for this where I basically went um I think part of the expectation of this this information that people want is like part of the parasocial relationship where they feel like because they're engaged with us and with these personalities and these people and this brand right and and and and with me

personally they feel entitled to know but the reality of it is like that's pillow talk you're not entitled to pillow talk you know you're a viewer yeah and and I'm so appreciative and I live to serve you you are my boss but you are not entitled to know someone's personal business about why they don't work at their employer anymore that's not okay yeah period yeah no I I mean when you when you ask that question I think that feels like a really good way to contextualize why why it would be and you know what I

understand where the expectation comes from because we used to do like a goodbye episode on the podcast for people and like that but the problem is that if you do that and you do that for everyone except one well then you're basically you're fueling the speculation you're answering the question of what happened without even answering it yeah and there's a liability there and there's and there's like an ethical responsibility to not do that so yeah we've changed our policy and that's how it's going to be and you know what there is no one literally I

promise you there is no single person on Earth who is more frustrated by it than me I personally thought you guys handled that pretty well we tried our best yeah I I actually thought you did and granted I'm not as engaged in I wasn't as engaged in the controversy I wasn't familiar with it until you were putting stuff out after you watch my deserved to downfall your what my deserved to downfall is there a video the title of the video I didn't watch it that sounds like that's the title of this video should we name

ours part two part two I've been I've been falling for a long time but um what what did you learn about that experience last August like how what did you learn about the process of running a company like yours in the public eye about I learned that you can't win and you just have to be okay with it because imagine two scenarios right so imagine the scenario where everything that was said about me was 100% true so we're going to take a spectrum here everything that was said about me was 100% true if I come

out and I say anything it's 100% true and I'm terrible okay let's go the other way let's imagine that absolutely none of it is true and it's all complete horseshit right if I come out and push back hard I'm a bully and you might not think that's right and you might think that that like sucks and is stupid but that's the truth that's what every PR professional we talk to that's every lawyer we talked to was ultimately saying is like look it doesn't matter how good your case is it doesn't matter if it is tight

bulletproof you litigate any of this you come out you push back hard you do [ __ ] anything you're a jackass you're a you're a powerful business person and whether it's you know uh you know some whether it's some YouTube channel that said something lialis or whether it's an employee or whether it's whatever it doesn't matter because at the end of the day um I'm the bad guy I'm the bully and I should have just I should have just taken it I because if I try to silence them I'm taking away their voice right and

it's like okay now like anything the truth is somewhere on the Spectrum yeah it's always Nu I'm not going to tell you where because then I would be disclosing things that I'm not going to disclose but what I'm doing is I'm laying out this spectrum and I'm going okay over here I'm a bad guy and over here I'm a bad guy and at the end of the day I can never reach the full audience that heard the other side of the story anyway so I just had to figure out and figure out how to live

with that my reputation is irreparably tarnished and there's absolutely nothing I can do and there's nothing I could have said that would have changed it h but there are changes that you made internally y after that um but I think what a lot of people are missing about any changes that we've made since then is that the vast majority of them were in progress you know I've seen the narrative that you know it was because of that they like they like hired these people and they did this and they did that and it's like well

like the CEO like the the leadership changes that were happening at the company had literally we've been in talks with them for an extended period of time it's not a quick hire um yeah it's not a quick hire and he had already started at the job four months before anything happened he had like the wildest like first quarter of employment was crazy when he made that video when I watched that video I thought about that cuz that was within six months right that was with six months of working there I was like whoa welcome to

YouTube my friend what did I sign up for man you can see it in his eyes you can see it in that I know he's looking at the camera he's like a CEO that's having to address millions of people yeah yeah it's just such a fascinating entry to that job yeah yeah well you can either you can either take the Heat or you got to get out of the kitchen and you can take the heat I guess he's still here so one of the changes that I read about was you being you didn't watch the

video all the videos before they went out at that time is that right no you didn't I didn't now you do so it's a funny thing because uh this is another like damned if you do damned if you don't right because half of the narrative was that uh I'm careless and sloppy and um you know I don't care about the product and it's just like yeah quantity over quality and then the other half of the narrative was that I'm like a control freak and overbearing and I operate this oppress workplace and it's like well which

one is it either I am like a micromanager and I'm like doing everything myself or I am Loosey Goosey and I don't care I can't be both um it's kind of like and I'm not going to name any names but it's kind of like when you see like political discourse where one day they're talking about how inept this person is and then the next day it's a conspiracy theory about how they're like controlling everything with their Puppet Master strings like well these two things are actually mutually exclusive they can't be but in the context of

being like uh overly like involved or or like micromanaging and being Lucy goosey thata that can happen in the context of two different departments or two different like making videos and you know I don't know Team Management I don't know what what I do is make videos the only team that I ever manag you're only involved in the video and like I definitely especially when I was still CEO and I'm still like primary shareholder like I yes I dabble in everything but the dayto day for me is making videos got it um and so basically

you know what I what I kind of realized was that you know right away I was just going to have to to embrace more I was going to have to take the reins back tighter because yeah I had I had loosened them up in a big way and I was just kind of like okay let's you know go for it you know yeah get it right do it right and you know massive to our team like what we do is not easy and I think this is something that a lot of people sort of struggle

with it's like I'm not the one driving this hamster wheel it's algorithmic it's audience driven um I am sitting there on the front lines like telling the troops we need to charge and this is the way we need to do it and here's the battle strategy but at the end of the day they are only employed as long as we are uploading videos that are getting views it's that simple right right and and and so you know I um I I don't want so so they work hard and we have a world class team I

use the world word world class to describe our team all the time and it really is apt like we are competing at the top of the game and we do so as a team but there were obviously areas where I needed to oversee more and and I do think that I'm not right about every call in fact we were having this conversation on the walk here where Colton was talking about how frustrating it can be to deal with me and yvon sometimes because realistically between the two of us we're probably right 95 to 98% of

the time when it comes to something because we've seen it before we just we've seen everything at this point and what can be really frustrating is those like one to 5% of the time when we really are wrong and like getting that across and and and I I value so much um the team's willingness to kind of go to battle against me and and push back when I'm wrong about something because it totally does happen but um in the case of like the final review on the videos um I just had to kind of come

in and go okay yeah I'm just gonna have to like make a bunch of calls here yeah and I'm gonna have to go back to doing that and making sure that the the quality of the content's Tighter and it's still not perfect nothing's ever perfect but it has been better what what I find to be difficult when working with team on videos and edits is sometimes it's not even there is a right or a wrong oh 100% it's just that's what I like that's just it doesn't even matter if it's I think is funny you

know perspective I don't yeah and it's tough to communicate that sometimes that like what you're doing is not necessarily wrong and the way that you like to do it is right for you I mean none of that stuff was the problem the problem was when stuff was wrong right sure sure sure yeah and there are still creative decisions that I'll jump into or things where I I believe that there is objectively a correct creative answer yeah um like for instance when we have a list of three things I want three rapid fire cuts to those

three things not sort of an illustrative one of them that overlays over all of them so there are there are definitely you know areas where I am I've I've jumped in and given a lot of feedback but what I will say is again credit to the team they're world class I provide so much less feedback on videos today compared to when I first started using this Frame IO workflow to like annotate the videos um yeah I have an image of a dock here sure this Dock at the top here is that like a is that

kind of like laying out the rules of oh where'd you get this don't worry about it man yeah did I send this to you no oh okay yeah no this is um this is part of taking that annotation process that I was doing and turning it into processes that can be part of training resources so that we won't run into the same things again yeah so can you describe what's what you're training so I I wrote this because we had this visual that popped up in the lower third of a video that was basically just

like a wall of text and I basically went look a visual can serve one of three purposes it can be reinforcing so the viewer should process something from it while they're also listening it can be supplemental so it's there so that if they really wanted to they could like pause the video and look at it or they could come back and look at it later or it can be entertaining so that would be something that doesn't add to the information at all a funny character or whatever that pops in that's just like hey don't forget

you're still watching a video just stop doing whatever it is you're doing on your main monitor for a second this is important right one of those three purposes and I kind of went this is none of them this is a dense wall text that adds very little to what the host is saying nothing is highlighted which makes it impossible to parse the important information in the time that I have to look at it um and it also isn't entertaining so it's not number three and it just lingers there forever this is this is not good

and I called this one visual intent so figuring out what the intent of our visuals are and so yeah there's there's a bunch of stuff like this on on a dock like that yeah I loved looking at this because I think that's been one of our biggest challenges is communicating some of this stuff into like Frameworks for our own team and that can be really frustrating as a team member part of the problem guys is that like I don't have formal training yeah so where was I supposed to learn how to train this this is

just something that I in intuited from doing this for 17 years or however long it's been and and I'm not trying to make excuses like yeah I should have built training docs and like built processes like obviously like any functioning freaking company right yeah but sometimes it's not obvious to me what's not obvious and so it it can take going through with a fine tooth comb and going like oh this was clearly not obvious to everybody like one of the things that I run into all the time is hey if you don't get a joke

or if something doesn't make sense to you say something because a lot of the time you'll get people just going through their daily work and they kind of go yeah I don't get it but it's probably some techno jargon thing that I wouldn't understand anyway and I'm like oh that didn't make any sense that didn't make any sense to anybody and it makes it all the way through because people don't know what they don't know and so it can be a problem at both levels I don't know what I don't know so I don't explain

myself clearly and they don't know what they don't know so they don't realize that they actually did know enough and it was just jar it was Babble it was gobble it was nothing it didn't make any sense I think the takeaway for me is how important it is to uh come up with that vocab right whether it is like the word scam or review the same thing applies to like your internal decisions that you make based on taste and communicating this is called visual intent okay now we have a language to talk about and that's

that's the easiest way for me to identify commenters or people on Reddit who have never worked in a midsized or large team right where they're just like this shouldn't happen this should be impossible I'm like bro you ever played telephone it can totally happen and and can even happen with everybody being competent in good faith working towards a common goal yeah which let's face it having all three of those things from every member of a team five days a week 40 hours a day ain't happening yeah yeah I will say even for us with this

podcast we'll do yeah quality control watches and I will do some of them and then someone else will do it and they'll find things that I missed and I'm like yeah okay I I swear I watched that whole thing but I missed that moment you're experienced and competent and you certainly have a vested interest you care yeah totally but we're all human we're all human at the end of the day so it's always just it's comical to me to see the way that people will kind of spin these narratives that this could have only happened

from malice but I'm I'm a firm believer and oh man I forget whose law it is um but it's like never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity because um this was another conversation we were having on the way over here which is like I was basically like yeah I don't know people are kind of kind of idiots and Colton equips to me he's like yeah except you right I'm like yeah no I'm an idiot like I turns out I'm also people like we're all just like yeah we're kind of bumbling around

and we're like we're doing our best and humans are we're messy and we're careless and we have bad days and and we have hormonal imbalances and we have we have all of these things right the fact that the fact that Humanity accomplishes anything sort of a miracle right um and so it's it's with all of that in mind that I I try to kind of I try to kind of see the best and I try to kind of assume the best but I think there's a lot of folks that don't really see it that way

they kind of expect Perfection I'm like okay well so so there's about 90 people who work at lus media somewhere between 90 and 100 105 I don't remember somewhere between 90 and 100 we have AED a little we have a disagreement that I think that's a big company you think it's not a big company well it comes back to the definition of words right according to the definition of a small company um we are a small company anywhere from like I think it's like one to 100 it's kind of like a small company so we're

a small to like borderline midsize company benchmarked against our company sure context between an the I would say the average YouTube channel company a lot more larger company challenges than I would say the average YouTube compan aage YouTube company however yes not everyone works for the same company Creator Warehouse has like two dozen people who work at it got it that is a for all intents and purposes they are in a different building they do different stuff they work very closely map out the the companies and just how it all yeah we got about half

a dozen people in accounting and admin okay we've got about half a dozen people on the business team we've got a couple people in HR we've got uh maybe more than half a doz on the business team because there's like the marketing guy and like Dennis does like the creative sponsor reads so it's like it's all pretty small teams um the writing team I already said it's like like eight or something like that Logistics is three um the lab is about another dozen I think um float plane is about a half a dozen then we

have some developers that are not float plane Creator warehous is a couple dozen and that includes its own subd departments like they have customer service engine ing uh design um fashion and then they have some administrative people too some of whom are contractors am I missing prob editing I'm missing editing there's like a dozen people in editing yeah yeah Minor Detail I'm I'm like I'm doing a I'm doing a walk through the building right now to try to make sure that I catch everybody we have some it folks a handful of them and I'm I'm

so sorry to whoever I probably missed I deeply sorry but it's been a long day um and you are the chief Visionary officer of the whole media grou is that correct I don't like the word Visionary but Vision sure oh Chief Vision officer Vision officer you're not the chief Vision I would hardly call myself a Visionary okay I run a I run a YouTube channel and a screwdriver company like let's get real here I'm not changing the world so what is what is the day-to-day of a chief Vision officer um basically because I in multiple

roles I take on sort of an editor and chief role for lonus Tech tips I an on-screen talent I try to set the stage or like set the direction for the rest of the executive team um at the end of the day you know if I am not willing to stand on the stage at our Expo we're not doing it right got it so like we we have to have we have to have alignment with sort of you know what I think is a reasonable Direction the reality is I've been doing this longer than anyone

else so you know I can extrapolate the trend line from more data you know in terms of where we're headed um but mostly I just do my job I review scripts I host videos I attend exec meeting maybe one out of every three what do you think yeah probably about a third of the exec meetings they'll like come up with the stuff like if a huge budgetary thing needs to be approved they'll bring in me and Ivon and make sure that as the shareholders onard with it um you know we'll have conversations about like if

we were going to if we were going to expand into a new product category what would it be I want to do cables I believe very firmly that cables are a super broken space right now I would love you don't know how many you don't know how many watts it does you don't know what data speed it does uh the quality of the average cable that you buy on Amazon because they've eroded the margins of their sellers so much with their exorbitant fees like I I think the cable space is is is ready a direct

consumer brand so that's going to be something weend into and and so that's the kind of stuff that I like I'll do I do merch meeting where I'll go through and I'll you know look at progress for all of our products and and I'll pitch and people will pitch to me and we'll kind of talk through it yeah do you have an appetite for more scale like in the beginning was it your appetite for hiring more people and building it bigger um it was more just like I don't know I feel like it just happens

like why do you hire someone I guess we just we we haven't in a while but it's just typically when we just get more projects like I would say when we say yes to more things than we can handle yeah yeah so that's okay got it yeah or or you need or when we get excited about something that we don't currently have yet yeah or you need skills that you don't personally possess yeah you know I I don't know a ton about Material Science yeah I know a little bit you know I took high school

chemistry but you know we when we were looking at you know how do we improve the materials and quality of our merchandise we were like yeah we should probably like hire someone with a background in this right yeah but I just I don't have the I get very scared of building a team so big at least again from my context and my relative scale like building a team of that size of 90 people I I feel like I wouldn't know how to it's really hard do that there's days that um I wish it was smaller

and not because I I don't like and enjoy working with all those people but because I having a personal relationship with every single person at the company and once you get past I'd say probably about 25 to 35 it's not feasible anymore right you can't be close with dozens and dozens and dozens of people it doesn't work that way we're not wired that way yeah and and like I miss it and and it's and it's frustrating as someone who you know does care about you know putting out a quality product with it's a video or

whether it's physical Goods right like not being able to have my finger on every single pulse can feel sort of helpless and like you're just sort of a drift sometimes and but you you kind of have to trust people and sometimes they're going to do a great job and sometimes they're going to completely [ __ ] it up and uh you've got to be ready to kind of roll with those punches and make changes and uh accept that you what's what's that prayer you know give me the uh the the knowledge to something the something

and the wisdom to accept um what I can't change the yeah the knowledge to whatever I'm going to look it up grant me the serenity to accept what cannot be changed the courage to change what can be changed and the wisdom to know one from the other those that is really good are words to live by I like that a lot yeah not the first time I've heard it yeah but good but but I didn't make it up I didn't make it up literally ancient that's just chat gbt yeah the Serenity Prayer I don't even

know where it came from is it a history Protestant theology Reinhold new what's the experience of having a CEO like that that must feel new and different and you know like having a leadership team that you're pulled into meetings and like is that fun for you that you're you're like oh great I get to just there's been a learning curve both ways I think I think that it's a team dynamic as opposed to like he's my boss or I'm his boss because technically he's my boss and I'm also his boss so there's multiple dynamics that

play and um I'm a firm believer in reaching consensus I think that whether you are higher or lower on a you know company or chart if you don't have a consensus if you don't all agree with the direction that you're Marching In ultimately you're going to have deserters you're going to have people that are breaking ranks and it's not going to be healthy one way or the other um so you've got to you got to sell your ideas whether you're selling them up or whether you're selling them down the chain and so I think that

you know basically the biggest benefit for me has been to have someone taking care of the administrative thing someone running like skip level lunches you know making sure that um you know individual contributors are getting a chance to meet with their boss's boss's boss and express their concerns um you know one of the things he coordinated when he came in was a management training seminar for all of our managers and supervisors we did like four sessions with homework and stuff and we did role playing and and stuff like that like it's not that I would

have wanted to do something like that I was I was on camera literally on camera what I you don't know how what am I supposed to coordinate this yeah you know I just had too many things on my plate we had a part-time company leader because I was on camera right yeah and some of the stuff last August had to do with the workplace right yep and so those change or have those have you made changes in that direction or like how do you feel about what that means like the workplace and and coming to

work at LT or at lmg I don't know if I'm going to be able to answer that question without addressing the claims which I won't be doing I mean we released our statement so what I'll do is I'll paraphrase um after the third party investigation uh the claims were found to be unsubstantiated and unfair got it I think that unsubstantiated says a lot and I think that unfair says a lot more yeah so fine I'll answer your question has anything functionally changed other than you know tightening up our processes and expanding our leadership team which

we were already working on no yeah like I'm sure some things are different absolutely you're always evolving you're always changing but at the end of the day um no yeah and and a lot of the changes that we were being criticized for were things that had already changed anyway like one of the criticisms was that um my wife and CFO was handling HR things and it's like okay well a um that wasn't the case by the time the controversy blew up we already had a dedicated in-house HR person and for years prior had had outside

HR uh like an outside HR contractor um and for two it's like well who the [ __ ] else are they supposed to talk to like at the end of the day when something gets escalated who do you think ends up dealing with it the the last stop within the company is the owner and if it can't be resolved there in the province of British Columbia we have our human rights tribunal we have work safe BC we have a lawyer like if you have a problem you have lots of avenues and so why wouldn't you

talk to the owner sure if you have a serious problem if the problem is with the owner then I guess it's an issue but I can I can tell you Scouts Honor I will swear on my dead mother my mom's alive okay but the point is I will swear on anything you ask that Ivonne has has not created an HR problem sure so she is a very valid person to talk to I I can also understand that people who are less comfortable in AB confrontational settings or or even just non-confrontational uncomfortable conversations absolutely would be

challenged to talk to the owner of the and that is exactly why for years prior to the controversy we have had HR resources available so that people have someone to talk to that was really important to us yeah but that wasn't new yeah wasn't new yeah a lot of this stuff is so interesting because it's like being a creative making great videos making videos for the audience like that occupies more than when you're talking about like Ram in the beginning of the show it's like that occupies more than 100% yeah it can so to open

up space like it's just sometimes you even have the learning or the understanding of at least I'm speaking for myself here of like what does building a company look like like that's not actually my craft my craft is making videos yeah so to then adopt the craft of building a company is uh it's just a whole other thing speak for ourselves I think the best thing we can do is do a better job of like and this is sort of separate now but like I'm just thinking about it communicating our own Vision more frequently yeah

yeah right so people who who was it uh Scott Scott bsky from from Adobe said something amazing he said like leading a creative team sometimes is like you're in the driver's seat and all the windows are blacked out team in and the team's in the back seat yeah right they have no idea if you've made any progress what you have to do is make sure that you're communicating to them and telling them hey this is what I'm looking at this is where we're going yeah no that's that's so apt um and that's why it always

comes back to communication and it's really hard especially when you don't have time cuz you're literally on camera so to bring it all the way back to your question that's I'd say the biggest thing that has changed from having an actual dedicated person in a leadership position it also creates yet another layer between ownership and the individual contributors for them to go to for conflict resolution which again is something that's really important to us a lot of the uh a lot of the creators we've spoken to on this show uh they kind of fit into

two camps it's either I'm going to do this for the rest of my life until I'm 85 years old yeah or I got a I've got a line of sight on on when at least I'm off camera or how I'm going to move on to the next thing sure and they may not say that on camera right that they've got like they're moving on but what what camp do you lie in you've been in this for a while thanks you're closing it on two decades feeling old yeah um I don't know sometimes it varies from

day to day hour to hour I mean I made that video I'm think thinking of retiring years ago now right none of that changed that's as true today I can't even watch that video cuz it's like it's too real it's like not none of it's changed not not a word of it um and so it's one of those things that I just kind of look at and I go like I mean I'll even have people internally ask me like what what are you even doing like why are you even doing this like literally people who

see the numbers they know they're like why do you bother and I'm just like meaning the company is doing well enough yeah without oh yeah the rumors of like my mismanagement and being a terrible businessman or whatever are greatly exaggerated um I they're just like why do you why do you still do this and I don't know there like there's always there's always something there's always like a new Hill to climb um you know and and it's exciting for me we had um someone on our on our creator Warehouse team is welcoming a child and

just moved into a new house with their Sal that they make from Creator Warehouse ink how [ __ ] cool is that yeah like literally we went from nothing couldn't get a credit card I couldn't get a credit card issued in my company's name for like two years even though we had Revenue we had profits we had growth it didn't matter we were nothing we were nobody we didn't exist as a as an industry um because you know this was 12 years ago or whatever right or 10 years ago um to like people treat this

like an actual company that you can go to today and then you can leave at the end of the day and you can assume that tomorrow morning the building will still be there and lights will still be on I have to say that I don't know if people and sometimes I feel like my dad because he was a business owner but sometimes I come home and think I'm like do people understand how hard that is that sounds like so dad-like to be like the fact that the lights are still on the next day and everyone

gets their paycheck we have never been laid on payroll not once I mean same but that and and that's like I feel like a lot of people take that for granted of course that is a huge deal yeah like that is that is is it's such a it's such a foundational thing to us as as owners and as as business people that we are we are providing that predictability I don't have that predictability right right like if I if I hit my head or something yeah I don't I don't get anything I just I just

lose I lose everything I just lose my ability to make an income I I don't I don't have a safety net right I just have to get in there and and do it right that's the only option and and the ability to provide that to people is is a point of Pride yeah and I think a lot of people don't really understand that or they don't relate to that to answer your question yeah why do I keep doing it um I think the team is a huge part of it I'm I'm I'm it's so we

we have okay this is pretty cool we have our Christmas party is it this week Colton yeah we have our Christmas party this week the Christmas party is a really big deal to me because our very first year we had like an all hands meal where we like splurged we got like um we got like fried rice with Truffle in it or something it was at CES in Las Vegas and um it was really exciting because like the show had gone pretty well at that point and the first night we arrived we had eat nothing

but cheap chicken nuggets cuz that we that was AFF and uh so we we remembered that one meal that we had that one Splurge meal and we made it an annual thing and that turned into our company Christmas party our company Christmas party is very important to me um because it's it's the time when we get to talk about we get to kind of celebrate the growth and take a second to just not make videos yeah you guys make a lot of vide so looking forward to that you guys made a lot more videos than

us and just have fun you know yeah and um and this year at the Christmas party I've wanted this for a long time we are going to have a Santa Claus oh fun yeah we're GNA have a Santa because we finally have enough kids whoa W that's cool to have a Santa Claus yeah so when we started the company I was the only one with kids and for years and years and years I was the only one but we're going to have like a veritable Gaggle so one of the people on the party planning committee

um W went and got presents for everybody for all the kids and was like raing in the warehouse the other day and we're going to have like like an actual Santa we're going to do like Santa and Christmas presents so that's amazing I'm stoked dude I'm like actually very excited that's so cool cool that's something that I feel like um a a few creators YouTube creators can actually probably share with you yeah uh yeah we got a Sanda out our Christmas party let's go go not like because not like Elsa and like like you started

when you started and you're still doing it and you've built a company that can now support other people how many how many YouTube creators really have been around for multiple Generations it's cool I'd say another big reason is that like my work isn't done people aren't informed in their Tech decisions yet there's lots more for people to learn there's always you know newcomers getting into the hobby that's never ending yeah it's it's never ending there's always something fresh there's always some new Scandal there's always some new bad value for people to watch for um and

then I think the last one is like I don't even know who I am without being a YouTuber anymore like this one I say all the time but you know people who don't know me right I'll bump into somebody at like a kid's birthday party or whatever another parent I'm like oh yeah what do you do and they're like oh what do you do and I go I am a YouTuber I don't say I do YouTube I don't say I you know I say I am a YouTuber and it's something that I do reflexively I

do without thinking about it because it's not a job it's a mindset um a grind set if you will it's a it's it's a part of your being it's what you live breathe eat sleep um and I don't even know what I would think about in my idle time if it wasn't YouTube and videos and the audience and Technology like whenever I take vacation like my my wife always quips about this right because she'll be like yeah within like 3 days he's like writing down video ideas and like tinkering with stuff cuz he just like

can't yeah yeah I I relate to that so hard like that is exactly um the case but I'm tired yeah everything that I said was true yeah so make of that what you will can you leave us with some predictions for YouTube in 2025 or what like the Creator economy right like this this thing emerged while we were all doing it cuz we were doing it prior we started in 201 you started like you know 2008 long before then and then all of a sudden there was this thing it's like here's the Creator economy yeah

just kind of happened kind someone coined Creator economy and then tot We're Off to the Races and it kind of feels like we're on the other side of that excitement level from the media and from the external VC money that started coming into the space yeah I should have I should have sold when I had the chance there was probably a real opportunity oh no there was yeah yeah I've talked about it oh you have yeah yeah we got a $100 million offer oh well um what did that feel like to turn it down cool

cool yeah it does feel cool yeah it felt pretty cool um I I wasn't done yet yeah um but do you think about that now are you like yeah oh wellow that would have been yeah because I would have been like I forget the exact timing but like when the whole controversy thing went down yeah I would have been like not that far out of just like waiting out the clock and being like see but but then the question goes again the hell would you do then I don't know yeah so I guess I'll just

yeah yeah yeah build computers for maybe I'd point a camera at it oh [ __ ] that's just the same thing again what what type of company was interested was it a big Media company do they own a bunch of companies yeah they they own other media properties um and I I do think those guys are probably you know still around guys like that but I do think that the appetite is probably in a in a bit of a low point right now yeah but I I do think another wave will come yeah I think

everything's cyclical right like you look back at um you know the revision three like Discovery deals that happened back in the day was like yeah crazy money is coming in like acquiring YouTube channels this will never happen again right like make your Studios and all that stuff and um and no it's totally like still coming in I mean the reality of it is there's there's an Ever growing population of people who have more money than they have knowledge about how things work and are just looking for places to park it and grow it and that

Global trend is not reversing anytime soon soon so no I actually I have talked myself completely out of this I think money is absolutely not going to stop pouring into the Creator economy it's just a matter of like what form that will take but what you've done of like here's this big media property um that's reaching a super ball-sized audience once a month and then we can build a product company like next to that and other companies next to that that's the thing that I think is like I don't think a Pure Play YouTube channel

Maybe I'm Wrong is uh investable in and of itself it's it can be capitalized in different ways yeah but investable I think is harder unless there's something scalable attached to it that like look if if if you are gone tomorrow and there's an investor there there's it's it's they could continue building the media properties and building the product companies yep and they would have a path to a lot of success I think they could I think they could um but it's exponential with with obviously having a host and having you there and like having a

face to it I think that you could I mean we're off our exponential path I'll tell you guys that much um we are we've been we've been linear slf flat for few years now um but I do think that like a Creator company could be investable but only like to a point because your relevance can only go parabolic for so long before everyone succumbs to I call it the curve you know the natural life cycle of the online celebrity yeah um but yeah no I think you're probably right that once you reach a certain point

it'll flatten or it'll go linear and there's only so much you can do unless you but that's why you see you know whether it's like Chamberlain coffee or whether you see like people building screwdrivers or stickers or you know whatever right ultimately finding other ways to diversify your business and reach a broader audience than your personality alone can attract is the only way yeah um dude thank you so much for spending this much time with us really appreciate it and uh hopefully we'll come up to Canada soon Vancouver I want to come spend a day

working for L that' be great oh you're more than welcome be fun don't come any season other than the summer because it blows I want to sit in the writer's room like I want to feel it out yeah sure yeah you're more than welcome we're we're an open book you wouldn't be the first to just come and be a fly on the wall so cool cool awesome man thank you dude my pleasure enjoy Santa I will I might sit on his lap exciting