The Cleo Abram Interview: YouTube's Newest Superstar

Cleo you're one of the fastest growing channels on YouTube right now what is your process of picking ideas pitch info do outline script very simple language but very complex ideas that is the best step-by-step process I've seen to making a viral video on YouTube you started your career at Fox how did you prepare yourself to ultimately take the jump oh man this is an email that I sent to NASA and it worked how did you break through as YouTube has gotten more saturated you know what a good video is if you're very good at what

you do [Music] Cleo thanks for coming on the show thanks for having me oh my God I feel like you are setting the blueprint right now for leaving a full-time job to become a Creator as you've prepared on the side and I just have so many questions to ask you that I think people will benefit from because you started your career at Vox that's right tell me about VX not Fox yes yeah yeah yeah and Vox is obviously doing a lot of great things in digital media what are some of the things you've learned there

as you prepare to make your jump and become a Creator and have this growth that you've had and what advice would you give creators trying to leave and prepare for the next step I learned how to be a video journalist at Vox I I still like watch Vox videos in awe because I think their visual storytelling is just um helps you understand something because you can see it the visuals aren't an afterthought or like slapped on after you have a script it's I mean I pulled some of your scripts here that I'm excited to go

through cuz I think you're also laying the blueprint for how to script YouTube videos in a way that makes I don't want to say uninteresting topics more interesting but you've definitely hooked me on videos that I didn't think I'd click on and I have like we're going to talk about like you know like F1 and uh you recent video about the ocean and how did you think about packaging the show because one thing I was really impressed by Cleo is that you launched your Channel with a show in a format and it's something I don't

think enough creators do like how did you think about launching the channel and starting huge true and for folks who are not familiar with it like tell me about that as part of that answer huge if true is a genuinely optimistic show about technology and the Futures that we can build with it so in every episode I I take a really deep dive into one area that I think is very promising or very interesting or very exciting um so for example nuclear fusion like the sort of practical efforts for that or Quantum Computing we got

to go visit IBM's quantum computer more recently the efforts to use new technologies to map the Deep ocean like it could be so many different things um but I'm exploring how smart people are using technology to do something new that I think could be important or interesting to millions of people um and I always wanted to tell stories that way I mean even if you look at the way that I was I was covering things when I was at box my first ever video was about oh my God it was I think it was about

crypto kitties do you remember back in the day um and the reason why I was interested in that was that I just thought like wow what a weird interesting thing to know more like I I just became so curious about it and like kept digging the hole um and so I've always been interested in forms of technology that I think uh you know just spark something and make me curious and so um the way that I approached that when I was going to leave um was or this was after I left I took about a

month to prepare and launch that first uh trailer and then the First episodes after that um and so I had so you prepared the trailer and follow-up episodes before you launched the channel I had one episode baked so I was a I was a little bit ahead I was one episode ahead smart um and I also wanted to experiment with actually it's one thing to make the trailer and say what you're going to do it's another thing to actually do it so I wanted to have done it once before I released the trailer to know

that I was right to describe it that way like like I had to be able to overd deliver on what I was promising and so I tested that for an episode and I was like oh yeah no this is right like I can do this this is great um so that first episode was announcing it was called why I left Vox but it was like 1% about box it was it was 99% about like why I was so excited about this show and why I really wanted to do this um on YouTube independently and I

laid out what this was going to be it was going to be journalistically rigorous it was going to be genuinely optim istic it was going to explore new technologies I think I said it was going to be like Black Mirror but the opposite and journalism that's that's how I was thinking about it that's how I still think about the show my model was that I was gonna um actually I think that it all all of the ways that you build your career on YouTube require you to make some bet and then iterate on that bet

yeah but if you don't make the original bet then you can't iterate on anything totally um so you have to like put your self out there decide what you're GNA make if it hadn't worked if people hadn't liked what I was doing maybe I would have done something else or changed it slightly and I do actually change it a little bit um in the sort of content that I'm covering or um one thing that I have personally really loved is field shoots I'm leaning more into that like you you do kind of tack Against the

Wind yeah is how I see it but what's interesting about you making that bet that I think is important for all creators to keep in mind one is like have a clear pitch for what that beted is and what that piece of content is I think the other thing that's part of that is have some some sense of familiarity that people can latch on to like Black Mirror but this or like we like to say like how I built this for our show but for creators because people know the show like that guy RZ does

but you can make it for a different Niche I'm curious did you hire a team before you jumped in and start huge if true like did you save up like because to me when I left my job like I'm going to have savings I'm a pretty risk adverse person so I try to line up a few Partnerships and and just like go into that with some sense of like okay I'm starting a business not just yeah becoming a solo YouTuber did you think about it that way as well when I left Fox I was at

maybe 400k on Tik Tok um and people had begun reaching out for small sponsorships and I always turned them down um because I just I never even went to Vox with them like I just felt like that was not really appropriate to having a full-time job I'm sure that many companies would feel differently don't even know what box would have said about it um but so I knew that there was some amount of demand there that I had been putting off um and when I launched I got um in the month between when I left

Vox and when I started huge I got a a sponsorship on my Tik Tok Channel um that covered the cost of some of the early huge of true episodes interesting um so for a and and that continued for a while there while I was building up from zero like I um in the in the first six months the business was the business is still Advertising based um and that was almost entirely on Tik Tok and now that's no longer true it's across all the channels um so that definitely helped to have an audience on one

channel while building another um in a very different way like I didn't have any long form videos that I was making on my own uh and so I didn't have that to offer for sponsorships um and in terms of a team I before I launched I worked with um a wonderful designer and animator named Whitney Theus to design uh what huge of true looked like that like first title sequence was designed from the gecko by Whitney um and she and I talked about it was such a fun process that really helped me figure out what

the brand was because for example um we talked about like color choice I think all we did at first was title like font style title sequence the animated format that's still in uh our videos and color M um and we use like every color but those are the ones that we keep coming back to like the neon green and the blues and the and the dark Browns um and every choice that you make about design early on it's such a fun conversation to have about what your intentions are so I do think this exercise of

like who you are from a visual perspective can be really helpful for people for example um in one of these early conversations uh I found myself saying that the way that people art direct almost all sci-fi that I had been watching at the time was um and actually no all technology journalism that came to mind for me was uh black and gray uh with one neon color huh like it's always like neon pink or neon blue or whatever it's like I can see it looks like Tron and what that implies visually like it's all about

what does it like say to the audience implicitly what that implies is that we're living in like a really awesome spaceship but like the world has ended and we now live in a spaceship and like there like Grays it's like metallic colors um it's very masculine it's very like it gives you a sort of vibe of what the future is um and I was really into I still am really into solar Punk and so the colors and like the images that I showed Whitney were like um I want it to I want like the background

colors to be dark Browns and dark greens and dark Blues like it should feel like um we still live on Earth but Earth is just like wonderful and like we figured more out and here's like a vision of the future that like feels more earthy and like mother nature and like this is a it and I'm sure that no one has ever watched my videos and noticed anything like that but like it's the vibe you know and I was I was figuring out what the vibe the show is going be what is your process of

picking ideas great um and I again I I have these like scripts that um you know like you've shared you kindly like shared with me before in your process but like as you go into but you it seems like you have a four-step process Cleo to making a great YouTube video uh what is that four-step process to getting as many views as you've gotten pitch info do outline script break it down pitch is a a template that feels to me it doesn't it's not quite formatted the way that it was at box but it feels

to me very similar where the main goal is to put on paper what the concept is like the sort of titles and thumbnails that lots of people talk about and then also what is the key visual in the story itself so maybe that key visual is a demonstration you're going to show how to do something this is like um this is the key visual for the videos that I love uh that Simone does demon of how to build is ay visual or we see in the beginning in the intro can you explain Key visual like

key visual is something recurring throughout the piece it's the guiding thing that you need to see in order to understand what's going on so it's actually not that like first visual it can be the first visual that you see but it's not necessarily um and a good video story to me is like you know it uh you know what a good video is if you and I sat down for coffee and and uh I was telling you a story about something interesting and the moment when I need to pull out like a napkin and draw

a diagram or show you something on my phone and pause it and be like you see this like that's a good video otherwise it should just be an essay because that's much easier to write oh wow and so that that Insight that like you have to see this in order to understand what I'm talking about you have to see this um if you're watching Johnny Harris like you have to see this map and how the map progresses in order to understand what we're talking about here in this part of the world for me like you

have to see this like the inside of this plane because what you're going to see is like the comparison between like the how this plane works if you understand it versus like a combustion plane like this is why electrical planes can be built in different shape like whatever um that key visual makes for a good story interesting uh good video story specifically um and so in the pitch the bulk of the pitch is just image like put the image take me through one of your pitches I have it right here can you show just take

what's exactly in a Cleo AB pitch duck what this is showing is that you do the title and thumbnail thing um I would say that I am much less specific about the what the thumbnail is going to be I do think titles are really helpful because um they help make you sure about what you're covering before you cover it but a lot of the time mine will be like nuclear fusion comma explained and then it'll maybe become more specific as I learn more about the topic but it sort of needs to be specific enough that

I can dive into to it um the tldr is uh what is the key takeaway from this story like how would you tell a friend about it um and what is huge if true about the story that's the major change for me that's different is um in order to make this part of the show that I make it has to be meaningful and transformative for millions of people in the future like why does this matter for people and why is it huge if true and that's so important to do the brand work you were talking

about early because you can't have a question or you can't have the answer to that question if you don't know exactly yeah um and then visual abstract and the visual list um the visual abstract is a list of the visuals in in theoretical order like if this video um becomes something that we end up doing like what visuals do you see in what order in this one for example uh the key visual was the data comparison between the level of detail that we have of our Maps uh of Mars of the land on Earth and

of our oceans our oceans are much more area per pixel which means much less information about the ocean floor than we have about Mars um and that comparison makes me really curious why is that like we know so little about our ocean floor like how are we doing that and you come back to that data comparison because it's gotten better over time and as you're reducing the uh square footage that uh per pixel you're seeing all the technology that is going into that effort and you're sort of rooting for like the uh reduction in uncertainty

and the increase of information and like what are we learning like what does that mean that we can do what what are we finding in in the deep ocean and this is a successful pitch this is like it has a framing that I think is compelling and interesting it has a key visual multiple key visuals really and then it has something that is huge of true about this story and so how long did that take to put together Cleo and what step in like is this two months before you know you're like like three months

before this should be I mean if it has a field shoot it needs to be like three months out three months out um so this is like things that are in the Zeitgeist but not breaking news that's one of the reasons I love shorts um the pitch if it's not with a field shoot um it's probably two months out and the actual pitch document should only take about half an hour to create but you should be like thinking about it like it should be the result of Interest prolonged interest on like you know you should

be like I I write a pitch do after I've been like absent-mindedly surfing the internet trying to learn how much we know about the deep ocean for like you know a couple weeks um and like I and and my team are like constantly just sort of reading and interested in things that feel huge if true e and then eventually something like Rises to the level where you can just like write a pitch in half an hour got it so a lot of this is premeditated like you're thinking about it for a while and then how

many pitch docks do you guys go through before deciding they're pretty high hit rate because we're getting better like um pitch do is a way of showing you that if you can't fill something in then you shouldn't be pitching it in the first place so if it's a struggle it's probably not going to be a good video yeah exactly like you you if you really can fill out this entire pitch Dock and every box feels exciting then it's probably going to end up being a really great huge of true episode if you find yourself in

the visual abstract and like after one visual you don't know like where the story is going next like maybe we'll talk about it as a team and try and find the framing that would would allow it to become easy to right um and so I would say that we I I would say that we do most topics that we formally pitch to each other yeah it's so fascinating to hear about I think this is applicable to a lot of creators because our medium is Visual and there's a lot of good ideas that could just be

essays like you said um but I will say that some V key visuals are people they're never me but they are Casey neistat or Emma Chamberlain or like the personalities that you want to just hang out with and like like they're so charismatic that you want to just watch that's a key visual like you're watching them because they are incredible personalities and performers and like they're just drawing you in with their style and their video so like it's not that a key visual needs you just have to know what the key visual is yeah it

doesn't mean that it has to be a in my case it is often a chart or like a a demonstration or an example um but it can be you know something that you're building like Simone or you know a product like MKBHD or uh just you like Emma but I think like the the just you or the personality can sometimes take a it takes longer to build or like sometimes it takes that confidence to be on camera hard it's very rare also like I I'm good at being on camera but I am not the key

visual that's I'm well aware like that is not that's not which by the way I think is both self-awareness and it's a great way to not shortcut success but accelerate success on YouTube because that way you're able to get people interested get higher retention while giving them value in the video in the form of a visual as you talk yeah I think that one of the things that I care a lot about is that I'm not the main character of my show like I am the proxy for the audience and I introduce them to a

new main character in every episode like the main character was the ocean in this most recent video um where the main character is uh the expert that's G to like show us how he's been building or she's been building some incredible robot or like there are either expert characters that are like paired with their technology or the technology itself is the main character how do you find great key visuals because it sounds like that can make or break the video and you may have a good idea but if you don't have the visual sounds like

the pitch falls apart how do you find great key visuals oh that's a hard question because a lot of the time they sort of find you like our first episode that we ever did was about um using technology developed for fracking in geothermal to make geothermal much more energy efficient and more specifically to be able to be done in much more many more places um and that key visual was uh a sort of like cut imagine if you cut the Earth and then you're seeing the different methods on like a sort of side cut of

the earth um and that you're seeing it first for fracking and you're understanding how fracking draws oil and natural gas out of the ground and then you're seeing it like change to be the way that they're using that technology in geothermal and you're seeing multiple different ideas for how they might do it and it's a it's a key that keeps returning over and over again but I would draw it on a napkin in to explain to you like how fracking works ver how geothermal Works vers like what we could potentially do with it if we

did it this way versus that way um so if you're thinking about a story how you would explain it to someone else is probably the place that I would start and what you would need to draw or show yeah and then once you've identified that it's like make frame the whole story around that what you see is this then you're seeing this then that like if you're using the word this over and over again you're probably on the right track interesting it's almost like yeah you keep mentioning the napkin I'm like maybe it's like the

napkin rule if you need to draw something or you need to pull out your phone that's a good key visual that you should you use in the video and may validate the idea to be worthy about producing a video around one level up that I will say is the visual needs to actually help the explanation huh the visual can't just be like if you see a um here's the difference um if you see a video of a plane crash from afar it doesn't necessarily tell you anything about why that happened it's just a visual but

if you see a plane crash and it does a weird little dip and then it goes down again maybe that dip tells you the like trajectory tells you something and you can reanimate how that was happening and that tells you new information and like you have to see the visual is the explanation the next level up is like once you have a key visual like is it answering the question is it doing explanatory work and if it's not then you have to find another one no I'm I'm like harping on this point because I think

a lot of people just blow past it and then the rest of the video becomes harder to do yeah a video by the time you've gotten visuals in order which I think is where we're going next um it should be much easier to write the point of doing all this work is that your job is easier later I promise yeah what step two in your process is an info do step two is an info do what is the info do like what do you see on the spreadsheet an info do is a collection of all

of the visuals that you think are doing explanatory work um so in each research section uh for example um this one is what we already know about the ocean this should be every depth map that I can possibly find and my uh associate producer Nicole can find and like all of the historical maps that Marie Tharp was creating and like where are they located oh they're at the Library of Congress like here's you know what that looks like um all of the visuals these are um you're probably copying many rows these are probably like 40

rows long in each section oh W um and what this is telling you is that the visual is the most important thing so visuals in order one in each box notes about that Visual and then hyperlink to where you got them um and that means that by the time we're done like sort of dumping all these visuals into this kind of uh document by the time you get to your outline you're selecting visuals from the info do in an order and like moving them around to tell a story um so this is a collection of

this is like um I think about uh making a video like um like building a brick wall like the pitch is like where are you going to build the wall what are you going to build it out of the info do is like collecting all of the bricks and just putting them in a massive pile or maybe like a series of piles of like organized materials and then the outline is starting to actually build the wall yeah yeah tell me about step three um step three is the visual outline um this is images in order

yeah um and so what you can see here is like I'm describing the visual and then I'm just putting them down so uh visual data comparison this is terribly drawn uh if you watch the actual video you'll see that it's much more beautiful when Justin does it but this is me literally going into Google slides and just being like it should be something like this and like make it you know data correct but like it should be earthland is going to be really small because there's a lot of information in very small uh per pixel

um Mars is going to be bigger and Earth's oceans are going to be very big meaning they're very blurry um and then another example is like this image is um how deep is the ocean really this is Justin's like first sort of pass at showing what an animation might look like um and then this visual uh is me um again in Google Slides being like this is make it more beautiful but like this is what the animation conceptually would look like yeah I mean it's it's so interesting to see that and we'll put up the

final video as well uh because I I think we what we do on our size like I have like a um PowerPoint Deck with a bunch of like brand assets for this show and then I move it around and we tell our editors okay for these different beats in this interview this is how we want it to look and and then they take it from there but I think a rough reference point which it sounds like what your outline is is so important by the time you're done with this the visual outline should become basically

all of the important visuals in the middle column of the script so you're almost copy pasting in but like they're very spread out and you might have lots of other visuals montages like all kinds of other things in between but these are the building blocks that go in the middle column of a script and so step four is the script which I don't want to call the easiest part but it sounds like with all these three steps you've done before falls into place it becomes much easier I will say I spend by far the most

time on the script but the script becomes um it's it's three columns the middle is all of the visuals that I'm going to be using um and then the uh left hand column is all of the actual words that I'm going to be saying including like music cues like sound effects um my editor Logan does a lot of artistry with that as well but if I have a specific opinion about something I'll like write it in um interview Clips everything that everything that you're hearing goes in the leftand column everything that you're seeing in the

middle column and sources and notes in the right hand column wow I mean that's such a different approach to writing an explainer video that uh how do you write it creators having their own membership sites is all everyone seems to be talking about these days but it's often hard to know where to start and that's where you screen comes in with over $150 million in membership Revenue paid out to creators in the last year alone you screen makes it easy to build a loyal community and earn steady reoccurring income Beyond just ads and brand deals

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laser focus at helping you run a lucrative membership platform that includes pairing you with a dedicated success manager 247 customer support if you already have a membership don't worry they'll even help you migrate your content students and payments over so if you're intrigued check out the link to bck a oneon-one demo with you screen so they can give you a step-by-step plan your Revenue potential and the effort required to run your own membership I basically write to a PowerPoint deck first and maybe this is just like more of a corporate background like coming into play

but I think about one I think about not a video I think about a keynote speech to an audience and when I'm putting that speech together I'm thinking about the moments where the people in the audience are bringing out their phones to take a picture of my slides this is the same Insight this is a visuals first approach like yours is like the visual and then the writing underneath a keynote but like that's exactly it's basically you take your format and you just rotate it 90 you have my format exactly and then I think about

my Keynotes to videos as like comedians think about standup sets to standup specials so I test it out in front of crowds as I do speaking events I see their feedback I tweak it I'm like okay I have my deck I my visuals and then I sit in front of a camera and deliver it that's awesome yeah so uh it's interesting to hear your take and just compare notes because I think I don't know I hear so many creators just turn on the camera like how do you do that you know and uh but those

videos don't always perform as well as yours do it's also cool to hear you think about a live audience because I have basically no experience with a live audience like my entire career has been behind like solo with a camera and in fact most of the time that I have with a camera I'm also shooting myself including like most of my box videos all of the quibby show I was I was filming myself and like monitoring my own audio and like looking at my own like all of that I mean it was it was during

uh 2020 so it was U necessary and I um that process has made me like very aware of the relationship with an audience digitally but like we're going to be on stage in front of a live audience like I you're that's a very different experience um and uh I'm getting more excited about that but like my primary medium is video and so what I think about is like the relationship but I think you could create an audience like I run all my material um by my wife uh my parents who like are from Iran so

English is not their first language but they're very smart so I'm like okay if they understand this then we're good if not I'm probably using words that are too complicated or my sentences aren't simple enough that's awesome so I talk to my mom and dad a lot when I'm preparing like explainer videos um wait actually that's a a perfect example you have the The Human Experience of um one of the best lessons that I ever got for writing video which was um never underestimate your audien's intelligence and never overestimate their PR prior knowledge so in

your case you're you're they might have a lot of prior knowledge but you're thinking about the wording for for me a lot of that means like no jargon no no like acronyms nothing that they might not already know so like very simple language but very complex ideas yes there's actually a great email that leaked from Tesla that Elon mus sent to all his employees have you seen this the one where he says he hates acronyms yes I do like that yeah like I do like that no acronyms and these other things I'm like I wish

like uh this is could be sent out to all coming but yeah it's like don't lose people in train of thought like I mean when I worked at Google we had a um a dictionary of like decoding acronyms and uh I feel yeah they're speed bumps and especially when you have them in a video um what are other things like that Cleo like that you learned at box or that you now have as part of your team like that's a really interesting like principle what are other things that you really think about as you put

together your videos one of the big lessons at Vox um early on was there was this expression that the head and the hands should be as close together as possible meaning um that the person who came up with the idea should also be the person to actually make the work and that's very very empowering because the person who had the idea is probably the person who cares most about it but also who has the vision who like every time this is the great art of making video and the great Art of Storytelling in general is

like how much can I like form a connection between what going on in my mind to what's going on in yours and like no matter how high the throughput of that connection there will always be loss and so if you have a series of people working on something there will always be loss in the communication of the vision um now that becomes a like the tradeoff is that other people can make your vision much better and so you have to like acknowledge that there will be loss to the original version but like when I describe

these animations to Justin he's going to go make them so much better and so like yeah there's loss in like me communicating what I have in mind but what he has in mind is better so like that's that's a cost I'm happy to to pay um but I do think that if you are really Scrappy and really want like the tone and the personality to come across in the video having the person who came up with the idea also be the person to actually do the edit and actually do the animations can be really really

powerful but I like to say do it before you delegate it yeah you know and like I think you mentioned you used to take night classes to learn how to animate and even if that gets you some of the way there to be able to put together a rough Visual and then communicate like for me like I didn't know the first thing about color grading for example and I'd tell our editors this image looks flat like that's not good feedback to give to an editor and then I was like you know what I should go

in and just like work with the like coloring myself like oh oh lower the Shadows yeah well think about the midtones you just saying you can go either way so I've learned that either I can try and make something like these visuals uh these little like terrible little visuals that I have made in Google slides are much better than just describing in text what I'm talking about like it's getting much closer and so it's just much easier to communicate because I made a terrible drawing but it's it's close um but when I'm giving feedback um

the best way that I learn to work with designers and animators and folks who have artistic vision for what they're working on is um because I know they're better than me I will say things like this makes me feel like this or like um because I don't necessarily know the best solution to something like that's what I'm paying them for um and so I'll say like um like this I won't say this is too dark yeah or like increase the like brightness on this I'll say like we're not calling enough attention to like like I

can't see the like I I can't um the focus isn't on this like we want to make sure that people can see that to them to figure out like what is the best solution that and then like if as an editor and an animator I have an opinion about what that solution should be maybe I'll say specifically like you know fill right with left on the audio track like I can hear like sometimes I I do know and that's also really helpful is like to to be an editor and to be able to understand what

the available Solutions are so you know like what you're asking Cleo you're one of the fastest growing channels on YouTube right now uh and you've done it with so few uploads what are the things you think you've learned and and how did you break through as YouTube has gotten more saturated well I don't know if I'm one of the top growing I will take the compliment thank you very much that's very nice um I uh I think that you always have a choice in what kind of content you want to make and I think for

me um I was I had an opinion about what was really exciting to me and what I felt like would fill a sort of white space for for me personally like what was it that I was missing from my media diet and I tried to fill that for myself and so the big question that I was really asking uh was are there other people out there like me like do other people feel that way um and I think that sort of um creative confidence for lack of a better word of like what I was I

was making things for myself I was asking if there were people out there like me like I was making optimistic technology content and wondering if there were people who also wanted that how are you by putting out Tik toks about like how were you testing that hypothesis oh no I I just launched the show the whole show like a test I was I want this let's see if other people that was the way to answer the question it wasn't like you're preventing or asking friends or like uh like that was that was it the launch

was like let's see if this is yeah I was like I mean because there's definitely a world in which it there the answer was no um but I had to I had to offer something in order to either be like um accepted by some people or rejected W and either option would have been I mean I would have been upset if the show didn't work um but I wanted to make I wanted to make this I wanted to know if there were other people that I could connect with in this way to make optimistic technology

content and like tell these kinds of stories and I would have been and am still really excited to iterate based on format and kind of thing that um is most interesting to people and way of telling those stories but the mission of the show yeah was really like me putting myself out there as a person and saying like this is what I want to see exist in the world and this is the way that I want to help I want to help inspire people to work on um Technology Solutions that might help others I want

to show you ways that people are working on improving the world so that you feel like you know there there are other there helpers out there and um I could have found a lot of different ways to do that but but this is what I really wanted to test um and so to answer your question about uh how fast the show is growing like for me the reason that feels just like so wonderful and like um really really exciting is because the answer has been yes like because I put myself out there a little bit

as a person and I said like this is what I want do you want it too and the answer has been yes and that's just been really gratifying one of the ways that you put yourself out there is you get all these interviews that really bring another level of depth to your videos can you take me through a pitch email oh my God I pulled it up here like cuz I I think what's really interesting about this email that you sent to somebody to get them on camera and get them to talk is something that

any YouTuber could do and I want to talk about like how YouTubers can think more like journalists because that makes their videos more interesting but walk me through this email that you sent you don't have to read it verbatim but what are kind of like the checkboxes of a Cleo Abram email to get somebody to talk on camera yeah so this is a an email that I sent to [Laughter] NASA and it worked um I can't believe this is uh real this is a video that I haven't put out yet about supersonic planes so go

subscribe to see that one when it comes out um but this is me emailing I'm pretty sure that this is just the maybe this is one email deep uh because I seem to know whose name I'm reaching out to so maybe this is like after I had reached out just cold to their like press email and then maybe I had gotten a response and then I'd asked for this is like a followup um so I said hi my name is Cleo Abram I'm a video journalist creating huge of true and I explain what that is

um I say that we reach a lot of people um across YouTube Tik Tok and Instagram um and that we have featured visits to other sort of similarly um uh complex and uh frankly like secure locations so um IBM's quantum computer argon National Lab nuclear research that tells them like hey I understand understand how you work I'm happy to wait a long time I'm happy to like go through a security clearance like I've done this before and I am going to be like respectful of your your needs um I'm working on a video about the

future of SuperSonic planes I would love an interview with someone on a specific team that I really wanted to to see they're working on a plane called the x59 which is going to explore ways to make supersonic flight quieter really really big deal and I say I I am showing them that I've done research ahead of time but I'm saying like the the acoustic Tech lead or the lead engineer like I know who their names are and then I say or anyone else you would recommend I'm trying to say like I've done a little bit

of looking into your team I love I love what you're doing uh but also I defer to you on on who the best uh person is um and uh sometimes that's sometimes that's not the case sometimes I'm asking for an interview with a specific person um and then in this case I really wanted to see the plane so I say like and perhaps see the x59 in person if possible um this episode would explore the potential of SuperSonic planes and explain key elements of the engineering behind them um would someone be interested in being part

of this video so uh I don't know if this email will meet the criteria that I'm about to say but the perfect email can be read in one with no swipes on your phone so I will literally send the email to myself and pull it up on my iPhone and see if I can see read the entire email in the in the first box because that's the amount of time that I think I deserve from these people um and then uh and and if you have to swipe I'm like demanding too much of their time

interesting um and so I try and say we're doing this kind of show we reach these kinds of people and I'm asking for this specific thing um and like 90% of the time the answer is no in this case it it happened to work got it um how do you find their email address we've had some amazing guests on this channel and today's sponsor Riverside has played a big role in making those interviews happen seamlessly like my recent remote interview with Jay Alto what's great about Riverside is that it helps from prep to post production

I mean it gives us summary notes from our pre- calls records our remote shoots in the same 4K resolution as my in-person interviews and Riverside saves everything locally so I don't have to worry about spotty Wi-Fi I mean if you're a YouTuber you know that coordinating remote recordings can be tough with unreliable connection and quality but with Riverside you're able to record studio quality Audio and Video making it feel like we're in the same room even when were a part and your guest can join with just a link no need for an account on their

end or anything the setup is seamless but what I love most is that Riverside also makes post production so simple I mean their text based editor lets you make changes as easily as editing a transcript you can download separate audio and video tracks for each of your participants so it gives you a ton of control in the editing room plus their AI features can trim those award silences add captions and even optimize a speaker view all with just a few clicks so if you want to check out out Riverside see the link in the description

below for a discount code and trust me it's going to save you hours of work and you'll wonder how you even manage without it all right now back to the video I think it was like press nasa.com or something I think it was like straight up yeah yeah yeah um and then often that it's that person's job to funnel you to the right press person yeah um if you're a smaller Channel like how do you get someone as big as NASA to appear on your YouTube channel like what do you say to them like how

do you land that I mean earlier on I I wasn't shooting for NASA um but that's not to say that they wouldn't wouldn't have done it I've been like so pleasantly surprised by The Unbelievable generosity people show to people that they see as doing something really cool if you have a YouTube channel that is like perfect for someone and they feel like you are their people like especially you know someone doing research on quantum physics and your channel that is like explaining quantum physics to kids like they want to talk to they really do like

people do what they do because they what they do and just like especially someone who doing something complex that other people are not fully understanding like they want to explain it and that I think is like such a gift um I I love working with people like that so I'm looking for those people and if they say no like that just means that they that that's totally fine that means they're not they're that you you if someone says like not right now there's no follow-up email to that it's just like thank you for your time

and maybe revisit it in a little bit if you feel like you have something new you can offer them um so I think being super respectful of their time uh showing them why you are their their people and like why you would connect with them um and it's much less transactional than you might think it's not like I have this ma some maybe for people that are even larger like it's you know I have some massive audience who obviously want to reach them but like most of the time people are doing it because they just

really like talking about what they're talking about and I just think that's true for collaborations with other YouTubers that's true for working with experts like people love what they do for a reason so if you are able to connect with them about that like yeah you might just get a yes yeah and also you got to be okay with like most of the time getting a no and that's fine too um what were some of those big wins early on that you got early on I interviewed a lot of academics who again like love what

they do and like love talking about it um other journalists can be really helpful um so in my first episode that one about geothermal um I did an interview with David Roberts who's a uh energy reporter um who I knew from box yeah um and also uh an an academic who was working on specifically the technology that I was talking about and so it was really cool to have someone who who's uh narrowly focused there um I got an opportunity the first opportunity I got to interview a Tech CEO was the CEO of Cru When

they released their self-driving cars uh the beta test in San Francisco um I interviewed uh Kyle their CEO um and that I think was sort of they wanted someone to explain what was going on and to kind of like contextualize uh self-driving cars in a way that helped people understand what the different levels of self-driving are like they just and they didn't nobody ever sees the videos before they go out they're just an expert interview um but they kind of trust that my goal is to contextualize and explain something um and I just think they

wanted help with that so the channel was couldn't have been larger than like maybe 100,000 200,000 at that point but they said yes to that which I thought was really cool um what are other ways that YouTubers can be better journalists what are things that they could do I'm I'm really excited about that I think uh one of the big questions that you might hear in in sort of people within media companies these days is like what's the future of Journalism especially given how quickly sort of Creator Dom has risen um and I think uh

one of the interesting questions is how do journalists become creators but I think another really important one is for creators who want to how do they become journalists because I think a lot of the technical skills that are involved in creating video like we talked about um are more time consuming to learn than some of the skills of Journalism journalism is wonderful because it is not a like degree that you get or that you have to get or like a a sort of bar that you pass um literally I mean like not the test you're

not becoming a lawyer or a medical doctor it's an act that you do every day it's like if you are doing the things that make up good journalism you are a journalist if you would like to call yourself that um what what is the act because I'm I'm I'm curious because like reach reaching out to a primary source and getting an interview is part the checklist of how YouTubers can become better journalists which I think is how do you make better content yeah seeing a primary source versus pulling from something else that people have seen

it's just more interesting what's that checklist of how YouTubers can do more of that to become journalists in their videos you know I think a lot of this goes hand inand with uh ways that people themselves can be better news consumers but it's like checking your sources um being clear about what you've learned and from whom sometimes I'll even say in my very first video this is something that I've felt more comfortable experimenting with actually independently in my very first video I said I've spent about a month researching this like this is what I have

found um if you are an expert it was a a sort of complex technical point about fracking I said if you were an expert in fracking I'd love to continue this conversation like I was able to unearth this like I'm being honest about where I am in my you're not at the conclusion of the process and also like I'm not able to become an expert in fracking in every episode I'm featuring someone who is and I am I am doing a service to fit parts of a puzzle together yeah um but that doesn't mean I'm

an expert and that I think is something that is core to journalism it's like that humility and that desire to genuinely present the truth um I do a a a sort of Fairly specific optimistic take as well I'm not sure that all journalists would see the kind of perspective that I offer as like necessarily a core part or even like that they might see that as more opinion than like formal straightforward journalism um I'm okay with that like I I think that that uh as long as you're clear about where you're getting your information and

you are um clear about where your perspective comes from this was the philosophy at box that you could share um all of the information and then what you take away from that information that's also okay to share as a person behind it yeah yeah that's so interesting like it just yeah I feel like sometimes yeah people don't want to insert the eye but you know it it makes it more human sort of part of the deal when you're when you're like hosting something on camera and I also see what I do as a mix between

explainer journalism and I am trying to offer a specific hopeful perspective on the world and so I choose to cover things that I think fit fit into that category um and sometimes I don't cover things that I have too many concerns about um and also I try and share the ways that things could go off the rails or like the genuine concerns that people have about that technology or the people building that technology might have so it's it's I think journalism involves sourcing it involves um a genuine effort to find the truth it involves um

explaining that in an empathetic way to an audience um and uh at the end of the day it involves a lot of humility because like you you might be wrong you're not going to be an expert and like when you do you need enough um you need enough humility to be able to like correct your work or and do better yeah um I have a couple questions to bring us home I I'm so fascinated by your process when it comes to long form what's your process when it comes to shorts cuz I see you like

in those videos you have your coffee cup it seems very casual but come on Cleo it's not that casual is it like you're well when I record it is the the how many takes are you doing of those videos like how much preparation go that is like I'm recording well I might do multiple takes of a certain line because I I speak quite quickly more faster than I talk in real life and so sometimes I just mess up um so I'm recording just like holding my camera uh my phone for me that feels very natural

I want my short form to feel like I'm just FaceTiming you and explaining something like with some good visuals um and so I do record on my camera very casually as opposed to or sorry on my phone camera as opposed to with my like real camera yeah the stories that I choose are they don't involve this whole process that would be Overkill but they do involve like a pitch with a visual um and then a script and I have an amazing associate producer Nicole who's working on a lot of these um and we talk about

what is the key visual for the short form video like it's 60 seconds you only really get to say one thing 60 seconds it's like what is this what happened and why why is it important say that outline again this is blank yes it matters because blank that's really all you get got it um and this is blank involves a key visual yes got it yes um so if it's uh the most recent um Nobel Prize in physics is one that we're working on right now uh an atosc is like you need to understand how

small that is there's a comparison for how small that is like that's the only real visual um and then we're learning a l about electr that way electr are for reaction and electronics and all kinds of other things um so that that little mini structure uh fits into 60 seconds would not I mean I'm sure that I could build it out into a longer form video that one that I just said like if it deserves Decades of academic research it definitely deserves a long F video but um you can you can share something things succinctly

uh and give them that little piece of information and that little bit of optimism in short form got it um looking ahead like what's your huge if true take on YouTube and where creators are going like fast forward and in your career like where do you hope to take huge if true I feel you have so many things that you've done in year one where does this go from here I'm really really excited for people to and it seems like they are really lean to the fact that what YouTube offers you is distribution that you

control and so whether that's in my case I'm particularly excited about journalism on YouTube and I'm I'm excited to do what I can to support that um but I've also talked to actors who I was speaking with a a Hollywood actor the other day who had a a sort of more traditional career and then launched a YouTube channel and is doing fiction on YouTube and that that's a wonderful shift like that I think is um not going to be for everybody but I think for people who want opportunity to own their own distribution I'm very

very excited about the um that ownership continuing to become a part of more and more Industries I don't think that that means that any part of YouTube that relates to an industry is going to like take over that industry it means that there are more options for those people there are more options for actors if they also can control their own YouTube channels there's more options for journalists if they also have their own distribution like that doesn't mean that um I don't think that needs to be threatening for big institions that are capable of recognizing

how wonderful that is as long as they're down for like recognizing um recognizing that the people that they might want to work with have more options and therefore have more like I think the people who are creatives and across many different Industries should have more power and that's a wonderful thing and I think that having um the opportunity to build something on YouTube facilitates that so for people whether you want to be a comedian or a chef or a a journalist in my case like I think that having the opportunity to build that career in

public on YouTube um Can can be a real rocket ship for you and that's what I think is I think we've only just barely seen the start of that that's amazing Cleo well I'm excited to follow along I think so much of what you T I mean that what you just went through like that is probably the best step-by-step process I've seen to making a viral video on YouTube thank you and the way you broke it down with the visuals um I wanted to end by giving you just something we put together we have a

cartoon newsletter where we illustrate different insights so we made this one for you I'll put it on screen I'll send it to you as well so cool um but just you like thinking and being at Vox like you know one day and then you just starting huge of true this is day one and you're making it's really inspiring this is really nice thank you so much yeah thanks for coming on the show Cleo thank you for having me of course all right that's a wrap on Cleo all right guys