Transcript for:
Internet Shaquille Victor - Making a Living on YouTube

I disagree with you probably on most things I'm a psycho person who thinks about things in Psycho ways I had no idea how much power I have to just scam my fans and my viewers like truly I'm like this is just an infinite money glitch can I make a living as a Creator how can I do so without becoming Mr Beast he asked me what my CPM was I had to look it up you've been a full-time YouTuber for how many years uh how much do you make today that is truly beautiful it's 2024 can you still become a new YouTuber and make enough to support yourself without selling out your soul or content to the algorithm meet internet Shaquille he quit his job 3 years ago to do YouTube fulltime and now he makes over $250,000 a year from his dedicated patreon ads and selling his handmade ceramic cookware and he could be making three times more but deliberately chooses not to to protect the quality of his life let's find out why and how he does it this pod is sponsored by me I help build this cool new tool car insights if you're a Creator car helps you manage your financials and compare how you're doing against peers more on this later and Link in description below Victor internet Shaquille you strike me as a very authentic Creator do you think of your channel more as a business or more as art oh boy uh I happen to have monetized something that I do for fun that is inspired by I guess artistic uh thoughts of an ideologue and so in a way both but uh that's probably the case with anybody who paints or make music I went to a movie theater for the first time in like a year maybe and the guy sitting next to me was friends of a friend and he asked me what my CPM was I had to look it up I don't know you've been a full-time YouTuber for how many years maybe three and you don't know what CPM impressive how much do you make today as a Creator I looked at my Quickbooks p&l yesterday yeah and it said 250 in gross income uh and then what trickles its way down to me personally is much much less yeah okay and that's combining all of your different income streams obviously right so it's like one two for YouTube one two three for patreon and then if I do like a brand deal for five or find a way to finagle five out okay we're retiring for the rest of the month and if something comes along after that it's like okay that's fine so it's 10,000 of income from content though right and then you have this whole other business income on top of that which you don't even count towards your goal you're talking about Barkley yes if you ask me how much Barkley makes I truly have no idea Quinn I know you've done some analysis on internet shaquill business numbers what are you estimating his barkl Revenue yearly at his Revenue yearly um if our numbers are right it's about $150,000 for the past 12 months okay but monthly it ranged from anywhere from like 5 to 15 ,000 right and how would you describe barklay for those who don't know yeah Barkley is a handmade ceramic dinner wear company based here in Tempe Arizona and so everything's made by hand and it's very much like not a Mass Appeal product that's something that I obviously gravitate towards as somebody who doesn't do things with a whole lot of Mass Appeal um I got into Ceramics because up the street there's a city center that does Ceramics um for very cheap it's it's run by the city there's like three companies joh o pandaly and you know if you've heard of felt and fat or if you've heard of East Fork then those are like the hip ones they kind of own everything like if you go to a restaurant in New York and there's a handmade plate and you look under it it's probably going to be jono pandaly like they have cornered the market if you as like a customer everyday eater just kind of want some of that restaurant flare at home it's pretty hard to think of something that you could select outside of those major players and I thought why not why not give it a try yeah I have I recall you started like crafting these yourselves but people were like hey I'd love one and you're like well the time it takes to manually craft these relative to the cost people are going to pay not going to make sense so you brought in friends neighbors so I have a set of 12 dinner plates that I made for my family in our kitchen and I rever those because it took all semester to do those and if you asked me to sell them they would cost hundreds of dollars because of how long it took the ceramicist that I work with is much faster has better system in place so yes she makes virtually all of the Ceramics now and that's how you get to the $40 price point versus the the $100 right exactly for a handmade piece which is I mean I think that's pretty impressive yeah what I'm kind of Ling too is like this shared Spirit where you sell products but they're not outsourced to third party manufacturer you're not even sure how much you make there feels a lot of the passion left there because these are like handmade ceramic pieces that you would make yourself you've now brought in friends to make too I'm fascinated by how you haven't thought about this as how do I make money you've thought of it as like yeah I like want to make income but I also want to do the things I like but it's working it's more of just like can I do this fun thing without going broke on it the first month of selling I messed up the shipping costs and I was selling at a slight loss that was a whole disaster in itself basically Amazon owns shipping now which I wasn't really aware of there was basically one option in the metropolitan Phoenix area that is not Amazon and so I used them we ran into a lot of trouble with order accuracy breakage uh things going out on time and I thought if I have to do this over Amazon I'd sooner shut the business down because that's not really what it's about so now it's all at the ceramicist office and I have paid her extra to assume those duties and she's turned out to be much faster and more accurate and it's not a business it's not a company it's just like me and again so it feels really nice to give more income send more income her way than like the people who are making things really hard for me so you're saying that she handles all the Fulfillment yes okay and you're doing that like by hand every single one you send out like USPS or yeah yeah well Amazon takes like 30% margin so it's like I either have to be like everybody else where I charge a lot more or uh just make 2% margin on everyone and then you have to like be selling all the time what's the point of that how did you get the money to get the initial stock you said that business people email creators and say I want to invest in you so did you take an investment from uh a business person if you're a Creator carrot just launched this new insights tool that analyzes your socials and financials to calculate how much you're making today and how much more you could be making you can compare your earnings to that of other creators like you and see on average how much they make and how they're making it whether it's AdSense brand deals merch or courses for this channel I learn compared to other podcasters of similar size I'm lagging behind in growthy and brand deal earnings so I know how to improve try for free via Link in description below because Carr's mission is to help handle the business side of being a Creator now back to the podcast you said that business people email creators and say I want to invest in you so did you take an investment from uh a business person so that particular one with the ramist I said I don't know what you'd like to do what we can work out but if you can help me like make Ceramics happen maybe we can like split the business in some way we didn't really get far enough to get into details because it turned out that he was unable to make it happen for me okay so after that uh I paid for it myself you paid for yourself okay so you had you saved up or like in um preparation for this or before I switched to YouTube full-time I saved up a Year's worth of my salary at my other job and so always been pretty cashr business buiness wise okay and that's another reason why I don't really know how much I make because I pay myself through that cash pool and I basically like I have my salary set at either 60 or 80 well it's it's $80,000 but 20 of that goes into a retirement fund that I set up for myself so effectiv responsible yeah oh I love personal finance really yeah yeah that's why I'm such a big carrot head that's so interesting so there were two months where you made like 17 and $188,000 I don't remember exactly what they were both of those were the times that I didn't have an ad but I did have something to say and so I thought instead of doing an ad read at the end I'll just promote Barkley and those were like massive sales yeah and I remember like refreshing the Shopify page like I sold $14,000 worth of merch that's insane that is insane why don't why not every time then because I talk myself down by saying okay well let's say my net margin is 20% yeah it's suddenly not that exciting and it's a little bit more exciting to like just take an ad deal where the margin is 100% it's fascinating because it's funny how Quinn gave you a number and then talked through a couple months where you made like a lot and you kind of knew which months they were and why and it was from your own business as opposed to doing the brand deals right but to your point a lot more work and a lot lower margin right so what's 20% of 15 I went to ASU I can't do math 3,000 okay great so I love how well I went to Harvard you went to ASU Quinn beat both of us right there come on now go BR I can't uh justify doing that every time if I'm making 3,000 instead of five for a lot less work and I also get very nervous like I I hesitate to scale the business because of how scary it is like when I get a new email I'm like I hope somebody's not mad that their experience wasn't good yeah over Christmas break this year I was in California at a hotel on like shaky Wi-Fi and somebody emailed me Christmas morning saying oh I got four dinner plates for my son and one of them was cracked can you send a new one at his address instead of the one you sent it to because he's going back home after Christmas and I accidentally sent like three to his address and four to her address because I kept like refreshing the page and I was doing things on my laptop which I'm not used to and the Wi-Fi would go out I'm just like I accidentally made like eight makeup orders CU I was like just so stressed out about like man her Christmas morning is so much sadder to be like it's broken yeah and with your margin you just lost like hundreds of dollars there that's insane did they did he ever reply back and just be like wow like Victory thanks for sending me like eight plates the mom responded it's like I just want to make sure that he's getting them because I've gotten like four boxes at this point and I'm like I'm Sorry's like thank you but this is not what I wanted I don't want your plates like please stop no they're using those as dog balls I'm sure yeah yeah you mentioned that it's hard for you to scale the ceramic business because like margins are low the way you're doing it but you don't really necessarily want to change the way you're doing because there's certain character and a soul associated with it m what about you mentioned you like doing brand deals because it's like 5K and it's 100% margin how do you choose the brands that you work with 90% of the time just email me like do you want to do this and 70% of the times I'll just say no thank you cuz it's like a crypto fishing like fishing game or like raid Shadow Legends or Shadow uh I'm trying to think of some of the stranger ones there haven't been a whole lot of strange ones I feel like maybe the econ has dipped a little bit so now all the like wackier businesses are maybe not so fruitful anymore um but yeah I think like one of them is like a fitness coaching app and I start my free trial tomorrow and I get two weeks to decide if it's good or not I kind of love this concept where you end up doing Brand's all these videos but like and brand ironically we just like here's like a crypto fishing thing I think it's a huge [ __ ] scam but uh it exists I will donate this Sal to charity but I think it's bad I do an April Fool's Day video every year and for the first two years I was able to do that um because it was like magic spoon cereal I was like you know how much I love cereal and because it like it fits into the video um but for the third year and Beyond it hasn't worked out cuz people like we don't really want to buy an April Fool's Day ad for wait so when you did Magic SP cial did it convert I don't know I truly have no idea that's why I was so surprised when my own ad read for my own business did so well cuz like oh my gosh I've been giving these people so much traffic this whole time this moves the needle yeah uh they almost never share that data with me yeah they I don't think they share it with anyone because they're afraid if they do you're going to use that to negotiate and price higher yeah maybe kind ofed up I also wouldn't put it past a lot of these Brands the idea that they just don't even know themselves there was a sleep aid hot chocolate and it was definitely on the fence about like I don't know whether to take this or not they sent me a bunch of samples I slept better than ever before I heard some things about melatonin giving you nightmares you just you can do whatever you want I'm going to do the ad deal they said hey that that went pretty well how about we set up an affiliate deal where you talk about us more often and this is my first foray into affiliate marketing and they said for every sign up we'll give you $100 because our our LTR what is it ltvv yeah longterm value yeah is uh $200 per customer so we'll give you a 100 and I thought that's very strange because the product itself is $90 so I could tell you I'll venmo you $90 if you buy this I'll pay for it for you and then get $10 and then i' scale that up in mass and I just like tell everybody who watches my vide like hey I'll pay for this if you just send me a v reest infinite money machine and so I thought what if I tried this and you know they we signed the deal and I did like one test where I was like told my sister like hey can you just buy this real quick and I'll venmo you for it and it tracked perfectly and this was in November and they ran a sale where everything was half off so now I only have to give them $50 I'm like ah whoa and you make you make aund I'm like this is just an infinite money glitch uh the company was called beam so I called it the beam scheme and like everybody my Discord server I was like let's try out a beam scheme and uh I checked the contract my wife is a lawyer this is not a breach of the contract they set it up in this way and I thought let's just try it and so like 14 people in my server tried it and um their backend analytics they they made a tracking system like that day and it was only showing let's say 12 or 14 I was like this isn't tracking well so I definitely don't want to move forward with this in a genuine way because I don't know how much I'm making and I also don't want to move forward with it even in like the beam scheme disingenuous way because you know if I give 17 people or if I give a, people $100 and it only tracks 800 then it's not really worth it anymore and you're going to have to tell them that you were you know you know that these people converted cuz you paid for their hot chocolate I love how like the main point of your story was to be like company's good don't have good backend tracking conversion systems but the main takeaway I have is like you are a genius yeah I I got to get this you're like wait the affiliate pays me more than the product is cost how do we scale this how do we make some Moola I think that there is an inherent sense that every Creator influencer whatever you want to call it faces where it's like I had no idea how much power I have to just scam my fans and my viewers like truly influencers have an immense power to do like crypto rug PS fake promo yeah and so that's the scale that we know about and then there's also this like smaller scale which just like oh and I could also talk about this affiliate deal where I don't disclose that and it's just I think that's something that you have to fight with internally when did you realize for the first time like hey this isn't just like a hobby where I post videos and like some people see them to like oh like I have influence like this is a business I can sustain myself and people are listening to what I'm saying I agree with the conceit of that question up until the final sentence because I made a YouTube short about a Peppermill that I thought was ridiculous cuz like $200 or $300 and I thought nobody needs this nobody in the entire world and they kept sending me Instagram ads and so I thought I'm going to ruin this this company's whole career I'm going to like shut them down and I posted about it and a bunch of people like that's such a stupid product I can't believe it and then the guy who owns the the brand said hey I'd love to you know send you a free one if you give me your address this is like our biggest day of sales ever and so like yes I do have influence but you know there's no way for me to predict in which way it'll I picture someone sitting be like okay time to watch my favorite Creator Shaquille talk to me about what he has in his kitchen oh he hates this Peppermill I'm a buet yeah exactly you run other Affiliates though I have like four current Affiliates I had like six last week and I got mad at two of them yeah wait why do you get mad uh I have I'm such an annoying person to work with you know I'm not going to say the brand there was a brand that had an affiliate deal with me and I just happened to like two months ago try to type in the coupon code and it didn't work so I emailed my point of contact and said hey this doesn't work should it work and uh they never responded and then I had an Instagram DM from them in my like hidden requests that I never knew about they're saying hey want to help you sign up with an affiliate deal and I messaged them back saying I already have one can I talk to somebody basically I got passed around like three times over I was like let's just not do this you're like this isn't worth it wow and what were the portions between like AdSense and like memberships on the money side of things the YouTube AdSense income floats around like 1,500 to 2,000 which I think is significantly lower than most people a month yeah yes that was going to be my answer too for you okay I think a big portion of that is that I don't have any mid roll ads I imagine if I double the length of my videos I would get Triple the income cuz then I would have three ads instead of just one either I'm lazy or I value peace above all and it's depending on which kind of lens you're going to look at it through this is kind of a long story so we don't have to get into it and it definitely sounds like retconning but like 10 to 12 years ago I set like a life goal for myself and that was to have a passive income before I had children oh between then and now I've come to not really believe in the term passive income MH but I I do I have achieved my goal like I achieved my life goal that I deliberately set out what a beautiful way to look at it it's I feel like when I before I started this job I was a full-time YouTuber and it like I felt like this prison of needing to work all day because it was like money on the table you know what I mean the patreon you have is very impressive too how did you grow that yeah oh that's good to know that it's impressive because I also don't I don't know what like how it Compares most most creators your size are much more heavily weighted on AdSense and brand deals yeah the fact that you're making 3,000 a month from patreon right which is like 36,000 a year which is like more than 10% of your gross that's very strong okay good yeah and you you're below the 50th percentile in AdSense Revenue but your overall revenue is much above that right because you make up for it and your other Reven sources in terms of like how I feel about income sources patreon is my beloved yeah oh my gosh I can't I would be ruined like they are the one thing that I can depend on where I'm just like you know worst case scenario I lose everything and make $3,000 a month that's pretty good that's pretty good uh I'm you know I set up a Discord server where I can talk to some of the tears of those people every day and that's really nice I can get a sense of like what they do and don't care about I can run ads by them or I'm just like have you heard of this brand and it's just like such a great direct thing that they've set up for me and that is like the one income source that I'm most grateful for well how did you go about building it initially and what do you offer cuz I went on there and I saw well my favorite tier I think it was like your max tier you'll send the pictures of your feet you can buy pictures of my feet for $99 a month how many people do people do that I don't believe there are any current foot Patron members right now but there have been at least five because they also get a special um tier in the Discord server and so people like hey there's a foot guy like no it wasn't it wasn't for the feat I just wanted to support VI up at the top too right it's like admin level yeah oh that's amazing so far only one of them has been sexually gratified by the feet pictures that that was a pretty severe um Dynamic to navigate I love that you know that too oh they make it very clear cuz you know a bunch of them I'll send them they like dude you are ridiculous and the other one's like more more except walk outside barefoot uh I don't know how to navigate what a unique angle to what you're doing you're like well of the five people who've gone the fix one of them really likes them yeah I've run surveys on my patrons at least twice over the years about like do you feel like I give you an adequate amount of value and by a wide margin every single time it's just like you need to stop thinking about this we are doing this to support you yeah because I worried so much about like gosh like you are giving me an amount of money per month that's equivalent to like a Disney Plus or Netflix and I really want to give you more value than that um but it's become clear that most people virtually all people do it as a means of support that being said the Discord server access is of tremendous value yeah what do you do in the Discord first of all it's not free and I think that's huge because any free Discord server where there's like 10,000 people it's like this is impossible to just like spend time on and so it's very clicky like it's very much like hey good morning everybody like it's just a couple hundred people maybe a hundred online at a time like somebody asked a question about ebikes today and you get like six people who are like I just got done spending six months researching ebikes this is what you should get and like since so many of our interests overlap you get a lot of really great value I wish I had something like that for other YouTubers who think about that in the way that I do um but I don't and so I'm just making that for them do they feel when you look at the people in your Discord do you think they're people you one get along well with in real life and two are they similar to you so first of all a lot of them have met up with each other they do like an annual Meetup called saltcon the server called the salt seller um and like they meet up with each other uh they'll do like a Power Hour together and they'll be like can you contribute some videos I'm like hey everybody uh I haven't been able to go because my wife says it's a huge liability she's a lawyer and she's like do your own me she's like you cannot go to this they GED together to celebrate you but if anything bad happens it would all be on me apparently oh if anything bad happens to them I thought she was worried about your safety okay she doesn't care about I've met up with a couple people by chance where it's like hey I'm in Austin I know you live here let's hang out and that's always been really fun but no I've not been allowed to go to the meos yeah you don't want to make them sign releases or anything okay yeah and do you think they're similar to you personality most of the time no but I am a freak weirdo so like you know can you imagine a hundred of me in a server all at once um maybe but there are there are certain people I'm just like oh my gosh I envy how normal you are like there's a guy in there named Casey who's just like such a normal well-rounded person where I'm just like to be a normal person online is such a a delight like you see that so infrequently at least from my perspective where I'm just like look at all my normal online friends that are just like not freaking out about crazy stuff and just like let's just talk about mayonnaise today yeah well when you say that you're a weird freak what does that mean I mean other than sending foot picks out yeah like the things that I care about are bizarre and like the things that send me out into spirals nobody should care about a lot of the things that I post on my second Channel Extranet Shaquille was just like ruminating on those sorts of thoughts where it's like oh Pokey man came out with a new type of cookie and people are upset about it and I can't believe that the narrative is going this way even though I don't have any stake in the game I don't care about what con you come to I just hope that the path to that conclusion is one that's informed by good thinking just like oh this is an insane person I didn't think you would have posted a video about the Pokemon Mina drama right I did well fortunately we the same type of weird because similarly to you what matters to me are principles people thinking about things the right way like regardless of your conclusion of the situation at least consider XYZ is kind of what I'm hearing the point of that video was yeah and I remember when you emailed me asking if I wanted to sign up for carrot and I said can we get on a call my first question to you was something extremely bizarre I don't remember the exact phrasing but it was like oh you're you're you're issuing credit cards were the effective credit scores based on your followership don't you think that's bizarre and you're like yeah it's very wacky isn't it like wait a minute I remember you basically were like so yes I emailed you be like hey like we're trying to build Financial products for creators here's a cool new credit card product it takes into account your social following and I felt like the implied question you were really asking is like you are either incredibly stupid or is this a scab which of these is true and I was kind of just like yeah it might be a bad idea and I fully acknowledge this but I still want to try and we had such a lovely conversation about this that was a lot of fun yeah and I asked you a question about like don't you feel as though owning a credit card is an effective tax on the unbanked and you're like yes like oh totally oh I might be signing up for this card credit card is 100% ear tax on bank so similarly I have a lot of obessions this is one of them for those of you who don't know every time you pay with a credit card the store pays a credit card processing fee to accept that card and the thinking is you're going to spend more at this business because you're using a credit card than carry on cash so credit cards take on risk the store needs to pay a fee because they're getting more business now stores increase their prices to make up for that fee which means if you're paying with cash or debit card you're paying the slightly increased prices which credit card people are also paying but they get rewards back as a debit card holder you get nothing it's like a regressive tax on people who are lower income you don't even get uh purch protection or anything else it's super [ __ ] up and there's basically three possible responses to this one is nihilism where you just laugh at the absurdity of life and you're like I don't know what to do life's a joke the second is trying to rechange the entire system in the third which is what I ended up deciding to do acknowledging the Absurd nature of it deciding I can't change the system yet so well if this is the way the game is played at least let people know so they can play the game as well while acknowledging that it is AED up game that's actually really similar to the Mina uh commentary that I had which is like oh so what you're saying is that the entire system is rigged and all purchases run through this filter of uh moral hazard yes maybe but let's put that out of our mind yes it is bad I think we think about this in in a similar way I think we probably think a lot of the same freakish thoughts have you ever taken those personality tests I think the most popular one is Myers Briggs but I think that's pseudo science I'd say the most scientifically rigorous one is the big five it measures your personality across five traits openness conscientiousness extraversion able it's neuroticism so how open you are how conscientious you are how extroverted you are how agreeable and how neurotic very I'm going to I was say I was going to Hazard a guess that you and I are both higher than your erotic scale def because we think about things I think so too I think Quinn you're a little bit more chill I think yeah I don't think I'm very neurotic at all yeah it's good that's what I mean by normal guys I like I I meet a normal guy in my life I'm like bless you just a well adjusted person who doesn't hyperfixate and sand but no it doesn't I don't I don't do that and H I should try to think less about okay you don't worry that you're worrying or you don't even consider it wor not until this moment and now now you've got a group of so $3,000 a month in patreon how many members is that I don't know I'm so sorry I don't know I know so few of my own figures I I don't have it has to be about a thousand right on it I would hope so your tear are what 3 five 36 and N okay so let's say somewhere between 500 to a th000 okay so you've now found a cohort of 5 UND to a thousand parasocial Shaquille yeah who if they do not think similarly to you at least admire and appreciate it that is really cool yeah I think a lot of people in my Discord server disagree with me a lot rightfully we had a huge debate last night about Bean cookery yeah I I posted something like yeah I don't like to overcook them so I slow cook them and everybody's like no we all use an instant PA like you're not worried about overcooking like no they' literally never been a problem as like I got completely dog piled on for having the inferior Bean opinion on the instant pot team for sure you got all day you're you're you work from home though you're a Creator you got tons of time to cook those beans right and it did it did really fundamentally change how I I'm going to look at beans I'm going to buy some I ordered some today and they're going to arrive and I'm going to try to do some instant pod cookery and we'll see yeah so you're so deep you're deeply tied in this community and that that feels like a big reason why they're so engaged right right and in that instance they're better than me and they taught me something and so it's all very collaborative yeah and that's the main that I guess is the main benefit of your patreon that's like what you try to deliver you get you get him you get him you get un unfiltered access the way I set it up that TI your names are more text more videos and more access so but I patreon just launched in you you can have the ability to like give free trials so now you can get a 7-Day free trial into the Discord be like I'm not sure if I'm going to pay $9 for this and so far seven out of eight because somebody just joined like two days ago have stuck around so like you're going to get to argue with Victor about about beans there is a pinned infographic that somebody made where it's like the timeline of a salt seller user and it's just like oh I'm so happy to be here and then by the end they're just like Shaq is so stupid he doesn't know anything and they just like all gang up on me so yeah Bo sorry they're called salt sellers cites Saltines it's it hasn't been decided big divide within the community so how did you start this because clearly you've got this passion devoted parasocial semi cult following now but how does it begin I when I was big into that phrase passive income I listened to a podcast called smart passive income with Pat Flynn I know Pat he's a friend client and angel investor in us actually he had an interview about somebody who's like a big patreon representative or like lover of patreon and he's like the number one thing that people get tripped up on is like what makes me so worthy of asking people for money and what you have to drill into your head is that you're not asking people for money you're just giving them a way to do so and so when I heard that I signed up for patreon that's why I have such a short URL it's just patreon.com Shack and that's four the yeah and so I signed up for it I was like I'm just going to wait I was like big into posting Vines at the time like I'm not going to monetize Vine by being like oh you should uh you know join my I don't even know literally it's like 50% of the vine clip is you selling your patreon right exactly and so there came a time where I was like you know what it might be time to do like a big YouTube patreon tie-in I made like a big trailer for it I had just listened to this is marketing by Seth Goden I used a clip of his audiobook with my own footage behind it I made this like huge trailer while like this perfectly exemplifies what I'm trying to do without being too serious yeah wow that's how it started it's very impressive I feel like you're very educated on the business aspect like you read business books you you listen to business podcasts but you you don't want to scale I think that is truly beautiful or psycho yeah or psycho no you're like I've learned the ways do I want to use them myself a little bit Yeah Yeah well I think Seth Goden is very much like the anti- Gary ve like I think those are the two of the spectrum and so it's like whereas one end of the spectrum might be like oh I have a business I should hustle I should get as much money while as I can while I can and the other side where I am is just like w hot dog I did it and now I get to like float in the pool raise my child like this is everything everybody says that they'll do if they ever like strike it rich or make it big and I'm I'm doing it for real yeah yeah and then I get to sit down and tell somebody tells me like you made $150,000 I'm like great $250,000 50,000 of Revenue wow so if it if it is a value I can go through like how all that money trickles down to me yeah please do yeah so there is my llc's checking account that's the main Hub that's where all income goes twice once every two weeks that pays me like a $2500 paycheck with tax has taken out and that's my personal checking that's the only account that I spend money out of as my own self so 5,000 so 2500 you said twice a month so 5,000 a month right yeah and then um 650 of that is Auto deposited from my personal banking to a shared banking that me and my wife set up that way we all of our bills come out of that and we always have enough and if there's ever a surplus we can do something fun and also none of us is worried about like did you buy those new shoes um then there's the much more complicated business side which is $20,000 per year is getting taken out of my paycheck to go into a solo 401K basically it's like filling up buckets do I have the high yield savings account full if yes then invest some into Barkley and buy some new products and if I already have products then put some in Wise which is what I use for like International payments and that gets like 4.5% apy and then if I have left over from that then I can like buy a new camera or something um so it's very much like a trickle down where all I know is my own personal self and then at the end of the year when somebody's like yeah you made this much money I'm like okay good this is automated yes you just get to live your life it's like you know the system's working as long as you're getting like you know above X th000 views per video you're like all the mechanisms are going to work and I'm going making enough so I'm in this little bucket my own personal bucket I'm like everything is good as long as I make at least $10,000 a month everything is fine and then you come and tell me hey carrot insight's over here your 18th bucket way down here is getting filled up great news I'm just like okay good fascinating how much do you spend a month very little I was also very like Mr Money Mustache head Bogle head oh so you were fired yeah yeah and even though I haven't like hit my fire number where I like do a 4% withdrawal rate I definitely hit the point where I can Coast for the rest of my time here and that's it's like everybody when they set up fire when they're like I'm going to I'm going to retire early and then I'm going to play golf all day I'm going to do whatever and then they do it and they're just like actually how about we do a 3% withdrawal rate or how about we get extra conservative and do 2% and Rit sa who wrote I will teach you to be rich yes he had to write a follow-up book I don't remember the title where it's like oh all these people who like followed my instructions are now psycho about money and they're not I think it's called how to live your rich life it's like I have to teach people like you're rich now you're rich like go enjoy your life go have fun like don't cutting your dryer sheets into quarters to save like 25 cents per laundry load I don't want to get to that point where I'm just like neurotic about it yeah that's kind of the hardest thing right because one yes saving money is good how if you learn and inculcate enough in yourself to care so much you don't go off the deep end and two then it's like what do you do with all that free time like I at one point also considered going fire this was before I decided to do a venture back startup instead which basically FS your fire plans because you're like I either this could be a billion dollar company or not and guess we'll find out the big reason why I kept thinking to myself say I actually have like $10 million or whatever like what do I do with my life and I was like I don't know that's the problem with peace is that there's not a whole lot of excitement anymore I thought about that where like over the Super Bowl you get a bunch of like gambling promos for all these apps and I signed up for like three of them at once and like oh let's bet on who wins wow and I was like oh like you know if I put down how much how much money do I have to put down to get like a a lifechanging like exciting like let's go buy something like I got to put $1,000 on a 4 to1 bet to maybe get 4,000 and if I get 4,000 I'll like put it in the ira or something there's just nothing to get excited about and so even like the $5 free bets that they give you I'm like okay I'll put it on this fun thing and just like I there's nothing to be excited about you're like I can't wait to put my Super Bowl winnings into my retirement fud you're not the whale they were hoping for right yeah but truly like what what could excite you I guess your business doing well because you parlayed your entire Nest Egg the way the way I basically decided to figure this out was I want to do the thing that I want to do and the money happens to support that so what I'm doing now is what I want to do like I get to build cool products for creators I get to hang with both of you it sounds like you two in a way like you're happy like you you make you you have a wife you just had a kid you have enough money you know 250k gross right where you've split into these buckets it covers your needs so I suppose the question is one do you have free time in that sort of you know fire ideal life and two what do you do with it what gives you meaning fulfillment well now I have a kid so that's all the free time yeah but that was by Design so that's good okay so you you you knew you want to have a kid right yeah and then for the like year and a half in between then I was like I bought a DJ deck I learned how to DJ I bought a pottery wheel did Pottery yeah and so it's like oh my gosh this is so much fun side quest Victory laugh whatever you want to call it he's just so fulfilling to like learn how to be good something from scratch all over again do you worry about the about it running out though like your your business yeah I think inappropriate amount like yeah especially seeing like I think that's why the Mina cookie thing troubled me so much because it's like oh the things that are existential threats to your image and your livelihood are so impossible to anticipate and it could be me saying that a bathroom talking about a bathroom in a certain way and it could be I don't know white labeling a cookie right exactly yeah and so I don't think you can ever live without the risk of something going horribly wrong um that being said I've got a nice long Runway where like okay yeah I've got probably three years worth of saved up money where like if everything turns off overnight W you could just do nothing and be fine yeah I'd probably be applying for like very cushy jobs so that I can just like be a consultant somewhere um but I certainly wouldn't be stressed immediately about the money I'd be completely stressed about like I can't believe these people are saying these things about me online and I have no way of having any recourse about it but oh so what I'm hearing the biggest existential isn't necessarily Financial because you're like hey you have three years one right you know you could go figure something else out it's more I mean for those of you who don't know pokem man basically sold some white labeled cookies and the price was higher than people liked and they also found out it was white labeled and they just like pseudo canel her for a little bit and I think she's fine now like these things always blow over but in the moment I'm sure that was like terrifyingly scary what I'm hearing it's like that's what's terrifying it's like the salt sellers rising up in Rebellion be like down with Shaquille the new king yeah the number one thing that I rem or that I take away from all these lessons is like the thing that I care about most is how you respond to criticism and there has been really good criticism levied against a lot of my work and for example I think the worst video I ever made was about heat transfer I talked about it in terms of momentum which is physically impossible like heat doesn't have momentum that's not how thermodynamic there's no Mass Associated right and so scientists comment and they're like I see what you're going for but technically and I pinned that comic like that's you know in retrospect I wish I talked about it the way it really is instead of making like a metaphor for how heat works because in my life I don't know I'm thinking about like air Exchange in my house and how air conditioner systems work like all of my best personal decisions are informed by the way things really are and not like heris for those things and I wish that I extended that to the audience and I feel like also you you being able to worry about heat transfer and these sorts of things comes from you being like cashr too right and managing your money well I was gonna say also weirdly obsessive too yeah well yeah well yeah obviously that but like the stress of the business goes away when you have three years of Runway right like that's that's huge for you I definitely my wife is the one who's like do you have any brand deals this month I'm just like no I woke up this morning really mad at an email that I got I was like I think I'm going to cancel this brand deal she's like you know that's $55,000 that you're saying no to I'm like but yeah I've had those conversations with my girlfriend too where I was like I really don't want to do this I really don't want to do it was like well don't do it you know but it was it wasn't like it was probably further than you would have gone it was it was a mobile game and it was like you know I had agreed to it a long time ago and then I checked the game out and I was like oh my God it's one of my first five brand deals but you know yeah and I think on the other end of that spectrum is like my friends who have no vested interest in me becoming rich or anything and it's just like yeah I remember eating nearby a park the park over here and I was like What if I brought my ice shaver and made a bunch of pucks of like really hot cuisine ice like shaved ice like lavender like really crazy shaved ice and just did it and he's like bro how about you make a video and make like $5,000 like okay he was like I don't want to hear about the Pu ice anymore and it's the same thing where it's just like you know imagine you are a lawyer and you come home and you see your husband with the baby strap to him with headphones on like I'm working on a mix yeah he's like I can't believe the marketplace values his work is more valuable than mine tied to that but not directly related are you represented no I'm very happy about that and I don't recommend anybody be represented unless K is starting a new representation arm no we we will not not because we looked into it it's actually really hard to do brand deals well on service of another creater because it's all like human powered reaching out to Brands negotiating saying hey I can do this better than you can and where that falls apart is when you try to scale it right because like cool you have like more clients you're still the same person either you are now giving everybody less time or you're hiring people who are not you under you and both of those are hard how do you make that decision to go independent I have never understood the value proposition of being managed at all I think the the number one thing that they talk about is like we manage brand deals for you but I mean I worked in Corporate America for eight years at least and so I know how to write an email and just be like yeah my rate is this are you able to give us a discount for first time ad deals there's no I'm sorry I don't do discounts ever and it's just like that's it that's that's all the negotiation that is required and there's been a couple times where I had to work with a management company not by signing a contract but just working through them and it's just worse because like the brand is coming back that they want to do this like okay let them know that I don't do that okay well we let them know that and then the brand it's just like a game of telephone that you're playing it's just it's just worse and then you you must know in your heart of hearts that like these people who are representing you also have a vested interest in like getting you paid not that much because then they can get more clients I I just truly don't get it I've never been posed the value proposition in a way that makes it sound good yeah yeah I think that a lot of new creators get tied into these sorts of things and then they they just don't understand how to manage it right and also setting rates I think is kind of interesting but it seems like from your perspective obviously you're super established and you know how much you want to charge you know how well your videos are going to do but I think you can get tied into it early but I do agree that there's Le like the value prop is very small how did you come up you mentioned $5,000 is what you usually charge for a brand deal right somewhere in that room According to some of my contracts because my wife reads all my contracts and lets me know I'm not allowed to talk about most of the deals regarding what they paid sense I am able to talk broadly okay so a management company reached out to me for the very first time to get paid for an ad and they said $3,500 we'll give it to you and I said that sounds great to me because I don't know anything y uh then I started getting more subscribers because I was like hot I was on a roll this was like right after the burrito video and I said hey guys I have gotten like 200,000 more subscribers I'd like to be raised to like 4500 and they instantly were like okay fine cuz what I didn't know is that the number of views actually is what matters like how many people are watching the video and I was foolishly thinking about subscribers I think most people even like high up in business to they're giving Netflix shows to people with like 10 million subscribers who have like 2,000 views no they have no idea what they're doing so basically what I did and if anybody out there is trying to figure out how to price their work just keep going up until they're just like no we're not going to do that and then leave it right below that and luckily I only do like a maximum of two ad reads per month like most of the time I'm just aiming for one cuz I I just want to be be contractually obligated to post one video next month um and so when I got to the point where I had my two booked and then I had two booked out for like two months in advance and people like hey uh let's let's buy an ad I like okay well it's actually a little more than what it really is and you just do that until the demand runs out and then I brought rates down by about 30% recently because I think just economically there hasn't been that much demand for attention and AD reads and so right now if you email me asking how much it is for an ad deal I'd say $5,500 okay oh you were way above okay wow yes you were cooking for a there was a time and it was it was right it was not too long after I quit where I was like oh my gosh if I do three let's say I do three ad reads a month at 7,000 each I am rich rich like just filthy rich and you know that's that's another reason why I don't really like I got to get 20,000 cuz like the trajectory was this and now it's not so much but everything's still fine that's the first time that I've heard you say something like that where it's like well I could just I could just do a little bit more work and make a little bit more money that guy told me like you should try to make 20,000 you're like man it's like kind of the same thing it's like oh I can have longer videos and do more AdSense I could do more brand deals I could sell more Pottery or do it at scale and each of those you've sort of looked at it and you're like actually things are good where they are right I feel like this is being here was kind of a lose lose scenario for me because anybody who's watching me as a viewer is like oh my gosh he's so much richer than I ever imagined anybody who's watching these as a Creator is like that man is broke he makes no money cuz I'm thinking about like my compatriots who have more subscribers more watch time post twice a week each video is 13 minutes long so they have three times as many ad reads they command a higher ad rate they're making a quarter million a month yeah and so I'm like it's hard for me to present this information in a way that is satisfying for anybody well Victor if I'm being honest there's a reason why you are the first Creator we've ever done a financial deep dive on okay and this is by Design and this is why you're smart and you've built a real business but you haven't you've chosen not to scale this into some corporate soulless machine there's a lot of the Soul still left in you so you yeah you make $250,000 gross half from your own pottery 30% brand deals 10% patreon 10% AdSense because that's how you've chosen on principle how to live your life mhm like that's an inspiration to anybody out there who's thinking like can I make a living as a Creator how can I do so without becoming Mr Beast right or needing to be Mr Beast right or just like posting content have like no idea no idea how to make any money whatsoever yeah there is a very Goden esque concept called smallest viable audience it's very similar to minimum viable product you guys probably work with and it's just like what is the smallest group of people I can serve that will get me where I want to go and get them where I want them to go and I am beyond that and I don't have any desire to go much further do you think you'll keep creating content forever no I hope not I hope I run out of things to say what a cursed life if I don't you might not I mean if you continue to learn right why would you run out of things to say a lot of what I had to say subconsciously I'd have to have like a therapist validate this was coming from a place of like what will my legacy be I have no child how can I teach people to think in a way that I find Val uh valuable and now that I have a child it's just like oh I can just funnel all that to them um for now I really like it because if I die tomorrow he could be like oh at least I know like hours worth of stuff in terms of how to think and how to cook and and so in way now your YouTube catalog is Beed onto your son for him to watch and become the next at shail yeah and I'm so glad I didn't make my money like talking about I don't know like comedy or something just like that was my dad like at least it's something like retroactively somewhat Noble at least when you have the veil of my dad was like a thoughtful guy who cares weirdly a lot about beans but that's okay I guess real dumbass regarding beans but uh regarding everything else you might have had a point yeah when did you know you want to have a kid probably forever oh yeah I think why not wow yeah I think that a lot of people my age and in my tax bracket now I'm 34 or I'm I'm 32 we're close to each other yeah yeah I feel like a lot of my friends are just like well I don't know it sounds so stressful and I don't know if I have enough money for it and I don't know it's like I think as soon as you get to the point where you're just like concerned about whether or not you're going to do a good job you're like beyond the point of doing a good job and I think I don't know do I have some kind of responsibility to pass on my things that I have to my new nepo baby may I guess it depends on how you look at it but I don't know I I feel very motivated to pass on what I have fiscally and mentally I love that as 34 32 year olds and you know Quinn Quinn's the youngster here you and I have both spent a good amount of time in what were you doing before deciding to go fulltime 3 years ago or so I worked like uh 5 years as an instructional designer at ASU making online courses and then four or five years at a private construction company just down the street from here um making instructional courses too for like safety and best practice and things like that okay this makes so much sense because I feel like you have this very comforting demeanor in your videos where you like walk people through things I'm like ah this is a style of a man who's used to teaching things to people that was actually like my sort of Magnum Opus after I quit my job and like did things full-time and I felt very satisfied with my cooking stuff I made a big like 45 minute long video called how to make an internet Shaquille video and so I just put all that out there and it's like my instructional designer outlook on YouTube when did you first start YouTube O I made my account in like 2006 because I was making like uh DVR what are those little camcorders DV camcorders digital video I think you know better than me yeah they were like little high eight tapes and so we would always just me and my friends would hoard these video thinking and we would put them on VHS tapes and we thought one of these days we'll have everybody come over and like watch what we make and then YouTube came out and in 2006 I was like oh this is exactly what I've been waiting for um so I was posting a bunch of like dumb stuff of me as a child uh that's all set to private now and then like 2015 or 16 is when I started posting cooking stuff just because that was I was at a CrossFit gym at the time and a lot of people wanted to talk about what I was eating as someone who cares about food but also is like not uh you know trying to cut or bulk or whatever and so those are conversations that I was having the most often I thought I might as well just record these are you like incredibly jacked because I will say no look at me you look great what you me many gyms myself I've never had someone come up to me and please tell me what you're eating because I want to be more like you you don't give the vibe it's more of like it was a very small CrossFit gym and so you talk to the same 10 people over and over and they're like what do you like to do cook okay well what do you eat if you're avoiding this and you're like oh hey let me share my knowledge via YouTube right and it it took off instantly no now I remember there was a video about potatoes that took off because someone posted it to Reddit oh I was not monetized by then and there's three requirements that you have to meet it's like uh how many subscribers you have and how much watch and I didn't hit that watchtime threshold until that one popped off okay and so I'm watching all this all these numbers go up and all the money stay the same because I have to wait like two weeks for it to get approved so I I made no money off of that um but then I remember remember being on a plane and landing and somebody was texting me like oh your your other videos on Reddit and um that was the burrito video that got several million views and that I got like $5,000 that month and I was like oh my gosh this is incredible what was this burrito video about why did it do so well I think the title I think the title which was why are restaurant burritos so much better than homemade it's a good title you know I wasn't really thinking about smart titles back then but in retrospect it was a good one I feel like The Meta of cooking YouTube titles is there's like a top five that get used most often like that one is still kind of you accidentally authentically stumbled on one of the top fight five click clickbait style of cookie title do you claim that were you the first personally yeah but I wouldn't I wouldn't you know chastise anybody for claiming it themselves yeah yeah but um yeah it is a really juicy idea which is like somebody tried home cooking once and it didn't come out quite well so what did they do that I didn't and that was also my first experience with YouTube commenters because of how many like thousands of times it would just be t h e r e they're not uh and I'm just like you know like that was my first time understanding the idea that like some people go through their time on the internet thinking the text on the screen is talking to them and they're just like it's not actually next it's like oh this is a like a personal attack like actually my burritos are better than restaurant burritos and how dare you internet Shaquille no that was a really Illuminating moment for me if you were to meet previous internet Shaquille just starting your corporate Journey what do you think he'd think of you now uh do we really wow wait okay let's go let's go through each of these okay first no no no I don't know like I was working at that ASU job and the main reason I was making YouTube videos is because I was so bored like we had truly nothing to do and I became so cynical about like state run education because of that because they paid us so much $50,000 a year at the time was like oh my gosh I'm making $50,000 a year and I'm doing nothing uh so I would like shoot videos on the weekends and then edit them at my desk because I had nothing to do yeah um so when that started making money it's just like maybe I should not work here anymore but then I got a new job at the private company and that was like a 50% pay increase and so that stay oh so that was like you were out like a 75,000 yeah a friend of mine who's self-made in business entrepreneurship Tech guy who like it was after a friend's wedding we just hung over on the lawn of their house and he's like you really ought to just quit your job and I gave him every reason why I don't want to and he refuted that reason handily and perfectly W it's very logical yeah it was a very charitable thing that he did for me um because it's like well there really was no reason where it's just like well what if I run out of money he's like you won't you have three years worth of money or at the time one or two like oh well what if I H get cancelled in the middle of it like okay you just get a new job like he had an answer for every single thing I like okay you might as well I had a very similar thought process myself so I spent what seven years five to seven years working in corporate and similarly when I was thinking about doing my own thing I had a dinner with a friend who just like why the [ __ ] are you still there right and I was like no I'm scared like I'm going to fail I don't have a box under Highway 295 my parents will hate me and very similar he's just like okay you're not going to end up homeless you will be able to get other jobs you also have money saved up who cares what your parents think and it's weird how suddenly you wake up one day and you're just like okay yeah it is effectively taking everything that you've built and parlaying it in something into something bigger and I think as fiscally conservative cautious people it's a hard thing to get past but some people are like they'll ask me when did you decide to make a the leap make the jump I was like I brought the boat all the way up to the dock I secured it I put tape between the gap of the dock and the boat and I slowly walked onto the boat like I did not take a leap I was very conservative about my move yeah yeah and I don't regret doing it that way but it is I think freakish in nature the way that I went about it it plays into the sustainability though right a little bit about me when I went fulltime on content I had no following I just quit my job right I just did it one day did you have savings I had savings yeah I had a lot of savings I had probably about a Year's worth of money similar similar but I had no idea what I was doing I had no Foundation I had not made a single scent I didn't have a single subscriber on YouTube I was like I'm just going to quit my job figure out made any videos either no I hadn't made any videos okay that that's definitely a little bit more of a jump than what Victor did Victor's path is so much more sustainable you know what I mean like it's so much smarter to do it that way right cuz now you have this peace right you got you don't have to think about these things you don't have to worry about it you want I'm not quite convinced that everybody values peace that much definitely not as much as I do but that much globally because it's like I think so much of that like hustle and grind type mentality is it tickles a lot of people in a way that's just like actually I I don't want peace I kind of want to grind all day that's fine there's various schools of thought like is there meaning in life inherently what's your take on this let's go back to talking about my income dig deep uh oh gosh I hope my son isn't watching this one cuz I don't know uh I don't know I truly don't know is there meaning in life I guess if you want there to be and if you don't want there to be then no I really truly don't care about what conclusions other people come to and I think that paints me in this like oh you're such a Centrist or I don't know what other kind of pejoratives you can come up with but it's like there's I'll I'll frame it around having a baby the number one thing that I came out of the baby having experience was there is truly no reason to tell anybody what to do there's like Millions upon Millions exponentially choices that you can make like you can get down to telling the hospital that you want the doctor to wash their hands instead of using hand sanitizer because some people find that Superior like that times infinity literally and if you apply that just to having a baby I will never tell anybody what they should and shouldn't do I can tell them what I did or what I didn't do much but uh you know how I went about thinking about it and I just really have no vested interest in other people thinking about things the way that I do cuz there's just an infinite number of ways to look at everything and that's just for one aspect of life and so you spread that out of orders of magnitude right do you believe you found your own personal meaning in life it's certainly the one that I set up for myself which was to have a passive income before I have children so that I can focus on my child which becomes your legacy in a way yeah I watched him try to roll over and then he did it I was like oh my gosh what a champ like he did it he rolled life goal accomplished filled achievement and so now he knows how to craw we're introducing solid food I watched him like na in his first ribey bone he loved it and it's just like wow what a what a life well live what a son and that's why you know YouTube short comments drive me so crazy it's just like I I want to just like sit them down and be like is this a life well- lived that you're making for yourself but again I don't it's not my responsibility to tell I subscribe to the same philosophy I don't actually think that there is inherent meaning in life as in everyone should choose what it is for theirs and to make it their own I have a hard time believing that I have any discernable value that I can identify Within Myself values meaning things that don't change like it's not just things that you care about right now it's like they don't change and so like you think of oh what's that test that determines your political affiliation sapply values quiz I think that's a good one where it asks you what your values are and it'll be like agree with this statement violence is never good and it's like I think a lot of people go about that like oh yes violence is never good and then I might be engaging with that question or their answer in an inaccurate way it's another reason why I hate those quizzes so much like Myers Briggs I feel like you're reporting on them you don't know yourself that well I feel like they end up being just like business theoretical astrology for business I agree um but basically the part that I value the most is how many straightforward broad values based questions it asks you to Grapple with and the only one that I felt it's the only one that I remember for sure is it is possible to have too much money agree or disagree and I I put like strongly agree but then I talked about this with my wife's parents I was like do you believe that it's possible to have too much money and they said no and I'm just like okay that's that's really good for informing the way that I think we talk about things um I'm not going to try to convince you to come to my side of things but in terms of values that I have I feel like there might be very few of them I think that might be the case for a lot of people and they just kind of go through the world thinking that there are more than there really are in terms of your content which you have your main Channel which is focused on cooking you have extr net Shaquille which is focused on the various ruminations and obsessions you have and bathroom reviews right I really wanted to call it ethernet Iverson but I thought it was too far I like it though that's actually really really oh gosh that's that's clever that's so good and ranked at the very bottom of that list cuz I list everything was TCP KD yeah that one that one that's a hard a hard very few people there's very little overlap between like networking and NBA fans there I love that what's the dream for your content do you want to continue making what you're making where do you see that evolving my dream for my content is I get better at writing and I can just get faster at writing in a perfect world I write a book instead of a video and that way there are no comments well there are they're just on good reads and they're way more annoying okay dream rescinded no still I want to get better at writing like the tortilla video I made a two-part video about how to make corn tortillas and it's like so difficult for me to untangle that concept that it took me like a year and a half to write that so I have script ideas that are just sitting back burner for a really long time one of them is titled I think the government should mandate influencer status and the conceit is like back in the day where it was like oh everybody should work retail for a while because it teaches you about Humanity I'm like everybody should be an influencer for like 15 minutes just to see how truly there is an infinite number of uh opinions to be had and broadcasted um that's about as far as I've gotten there but like certain videos are just sitting waiting for me to untangle them and it's just really difficult and I wish I was better at writing sometimes yeah that's the peaceful way to look at it I feel like you're you're just trying to love the work right versus some sort of outcome from it say we have some parasocial salt sellers watching you right now I think they will be they find everything I do I just did a collaboration with a different brand of microwave uh microwave cooking dish and they they found it instantly it has like 300 views and uh yeah they they found it they're like hey here's this collaboration that he did so this isn't even hypothetical because they will be watching this and they will be looking at us right now to to your salt sellers what do you feel if you were to attend one of their salt cons I don't know is that what they're called no that is yeah yeah exact they that's EXA say say youin one of them I just thought a s on and say say they said they wanted to follow your path in life what what would you tell them the dos and don'ts I would say Define who your audience is like who do you wish to serve regularly engage with whether or not you are serving them in the way that they wish to be served don't worry too much about the way that you look I feel like a lot of people they want the logo on their shirt to be like an outline of their face or the glasses that they like to wear and it's just like you just get locked into that forever I keep growing and shaving this mustache I like bleach my hair for a while CU like I'm going to age you're going to watch me change my appearance in real time there are periods where I am like 15 pounds heavier and then lighter it's like I don't want you to associate the work that I do with the that I look because that's one of the things that's guaranteed to not stick around um I don't know do whatever you want find a good support group I wish I had a better you know community of creators or influencers where I could just be like hey uh how do you guys feel about this thing that I feel like is kind of stinky or not very good like bad practice and it's just like you know right now I have my people hello Alejandro jigs e uh Casey saber there's hundreds of you guys hello you know anybody with if I didn't mention you I did in spirit just now I feel like we have this community where it's just like you know something bad happens and it really drives me crazy I'm just like how do you guys feel about this and a lot of times they can work with me and be like you know what it's actually not that serious they talk me down from the ledge or they ampt me up or they're like yeah this is stupid this I'm thinking of some video that got me really upset recently about whether or not you should rest the steak after cooking I was like this is so disingenuous and you know I wish that I could have those conversations with other creators where it's just like you know I have a lot of questions regarding how much shame should be injected into the world of online creatorship and maybe that's my Catholic upbringing but I do feel as though there is an eror there is a yeah an eror of okay but he got his bag though one of the things driving me crazy right now is some guys going viral for deliberately mispronouncing tsiki wrong where he's like oh they put on some TI tataya sauce and people like he said what but everybody wins in that scenario this is a long answer everybody wins in that scenario because the people who are dumbfounded get to be dumbfounded and post about that on Twitter the people who know that it's done on purpose get to be like he got his bag though and he does this every time and you suckers fall for it and the guy making it gets to be like I'm rich and so I wish there was more discussion in our field about what is and is not acceptable because right now he got his bag though is the number one way of looking at I think anything right because the justification right and it's hard to argue with that when you know nobody's getting push back from other creators cuz it's sort of like I I don't know what it's like to live in LA I imagine you're not allowed to talk badly about any movies because if you're in the industry it's just like well I can't talk about The Squeakquel to Alvin and the Chipmunks they could be anywhere they could be listening and then yeah I could never be the DP on their job because he worked on the squeel and so it's just like I feel bound up like you there's no way to have any outlet for this sort of thought unless you go on to their comments and like publicly like I don't agree with this and it's like that guy's a hater and like if you Google internet Shaquille I think one of the top five and I think it's like result four and five are just like why is this guy so mean to like creatives like I want to be able to ask these questions about like should this be allowed do you feel as though it's appropriate to call certain practices and this is cooking like this is such a low stakes yeah I feel for anybody who has to like get involved with political thought or Commerce Finance any of these like actual controversial topics God spe to you if you trying to Anchor this back to the original question which is the cites want to start their own videos I I definitely have lost that thread some of the people in my Discord server have gone on to start making their own videos and I do help them we have like a plug and prel I understand your point though you're almost like hey for those of you who are going to be creators or even you just looking at the Creator space in journal how can you offer thoughtful critiques regarding as creators what you can be putting out like you can put out whatever and get your bag but maybe what do you want to be putting out and how can we hold ourselves that higher standard is hard right I I feel like if like I'm a very critical person I think everybody in my life understands that when my wife is asking me why we should change like we're picking the color of the house and I'll say like this is too warm of a green and she'll be like you're overly critical like that applies to everything in my life but I wish the large group generally of influencers were open to being more critical more often I love that but then somebody's going to comment it's like such a typical thing for a hater to do be the comment right on this video why I watched your interview with scumbag scumbag dad and career hater feels this ey that I feel every day where it's just like how are people falling for this how do the people in my Echelon not shame other people for taking advantage of these situations how is the system so rotten all the way through like every level down that this stuff proliferates and then I remember like I don't want to be a career hater and just kind of had to let some of it go but you know if I could snap my finger and and make things different that would be the thing that I change about as you're talking I was literally thinking about scumbag Dad no I watched his interview I'm like I feel your pain so much but at the same time I'm glad I don't feel it as strongly as do it's endless he shared he doesn't even feel like he's criticizing particular people anymore he's like fighting the entire content ecosystem yeah my April Fool's Day videos are based on trends that I notice and it's at the point now where anytime I post people are like oh this is so XYZ coded and it's like an influencer I've never heard about and I look him up like oh my gosh that guy is insane like the guy was creating this as a parody this is not meant as a personal attack right yeah in the same way that I was talking about values where where people don't have as principled of thought as I think most people think they do um it's very easy to go about the world where it's just like guy participating in thing fine guy criticizing thing bad and it's just like if you really just like sit with the uncomfortable nature of how difficult all this stuff is to figure out I find it to be very fun and rewarding but I understand that most people don't and would rely on heris sixs to just be like well this guy said that it's a good thing and I'm just going to listen to his podcast and listen to his take and hard trying to end this no no no I mean it's hard to think for it's easier just to borrow takes from other people that lack Nuance in the certain way that you're applying or thinking through them and I think that's why people react to you as a hater because it feels as if you're saying these thoughts and opinions that people are like oh cool like here's a take like let me just figure out how do I copy and paste this like every situation that comes along whereas I think your Point's more like be thoughtful yeah I think that presents itself in my work as well like a lot of people in the cooking space present recipes and I'm trying to say like here are some ways to think about food if you are trying to make a certain type of dish and in a way that is very dissatisfying for people who are like just tell me the recipe but for the people who benefit from it I think they really like that and I'm happy to yeah I saw an interview where somebody asked you a question like Hey how do you feel if someone went and made Mexican food but they weren't Mexican and you gave this like really thoughtful answer that was basically neither like approving nor condemning it was not like a yes or a no you're like well on like the one hand food is food everyone should be able to celebrate it and like you growing up it's not like you know you're were a huge foodie only eating Mexican food and if they want to celebrate it great on the other hand like are they depriving an opportunity of somebody who actually is mexan to go and do this it's really like thoughtful take that was not a sound bite right and I think uh that's good for if you want to think and it's bad for if you want to get sound bites yeah but um you know I think of Rick bis who's like really good at Mexican cooking really respectful in the space you mentioned him by the way the other interiew too you're internally okay well it's like you know I think he should be able to and willing to receive any criticism levied against him including you are doing culinary appropriation you are taking jobs away from people who might be better suited to it and I would be more interested in what his response to that criticism was I think he'd probably handle it pretty well but that is typically what I value more than the actual criticism itself what are you most concerned about in the conon space right now I think my biggest concern is that attitude of oh he got his bag though ignoring that I think it's not necessarily a problem but something that isn't talked about in a targeted way and that's the reason why I want to make that video about the government should mandate influencer status there are an infinite number of opinions and when I say that many people are going to hear that and think yeah of course but they don't understand that I really really mean infinite like I make a video about what manise is and there are responses that you would never ever believe like I may maybe one about mayonnaise versus Miracle Whip and somebody commented you know I've been eating hot dogs my whole life I don't care about that organic BS fjb and I was like what his first fjb into Google okay I am reverse engineering this and I understand okay this person sees my comparison of Miracle Whip versus mayonnaise as real versus fake and as a lifelong hot dog eater he doesn't care about that whether it's Miracle Whip versus man or organic versus conventionally grown and also Joe Biden is to blame for this oh yeah yeah you forgot about the hot dog people and also yes there's really and I really mean this like an infinite number of opinions and you truly have no idea what that means until you put a message out there that gets picked up by a broad audience and that's why shorts are I think uniquely good at revealing that because that gets shown to a lot of people who don't know your whole stick makes me think of two things one I'm actually afraid now to put out shorts because of the context in which I know I will be attacked and personally feel sad about the second I remember there's a short story from this author the internet who used to go by the name slate star codex and he put together a short story sci-fi on hey like if Humanity were to invent the most devastating psychological attack possible what would that look like and it was an AI that would like go through people's opinions on a topic in a certain area and just like spit out a statement that half the people looking at it would find like totally yeah that makes so much sense like is this thing even working everybody knows this is true until they find out someone else is like what the [ __ ] is this right and the whole point of the story was they developed this machine and they thought it literally wasn't working because it kept printing out STS that they thought were just literally common sense like a it's thought these are supposed to be divisive until some of these started leaking out and they found out there are people for whom this is the most offensive thing ever and it just wasn't even in the heads of the people who created it to consider oh like what I consider to be like just foundational knowledge is not yeah MH so I think to Circle back around and answer your actual question like what is the biggest problem or what's the biggest issue facing us it's that audiences are largely unwilling to engage with differing opinions in a way that is outside of this guy wrong this guy right yeah bad versus good and what ends up happening is you glom on to influencer or a podcaster or whatever it's like every time something happened Will Smith slaps kiss Ross at the freaking Oscars and it's like this guy said it was bad I think it's bad like I love and you just do that every week over and over again it's like he always has the best opinions and it's just like you just do that for years and then one day like they have an opinion that you don't like and you're just like oh I used to love this guy and it sucks and you just keep going round and round until you like can stick to one person as like your your Superman where it's just like he's got all the right opinions um and I really like the way that he goes about spreading his message online and I think people feel that for me A lot of times and that is a big responsibility to carry um don't I'm a very flawed person uh I don't have the same opinions as you I disagree with you probably on most things just because I disagree with most people like I'm a psycho person who thinks about things in Psycho ways I think the one video I ever unpublished from my second channel was like me not liking the Barbie movie I was like everybody loves the Barbie movie I don't get it and a lot of the responses were like oh you understand this thing that you have a problem with is a a feature not a bug like that's how people play with barbes I like you changed my mind on this I understand thank you very much I deleted it um I understand now it's just like I think what you should do according to how the internet works now is like dig your heels and and be like I'm going to be actually the Barbie hating guy now because so many people are the ex guy for everything where it's just like I'm actually the guy who loves I don't know um I I hate it when they put a girl in movies that's that's the thing that I whenever they put a girl in a movie I go online and I talk about how I hate that like you just do that over and over again and I think you can do that for cultural issues political issues all the way down to like food and makeup to be like I'm actually the person who goes online and tells you that like you should be rubbing slug whatever that is juice slug slime on your face it's like I'm the slug slime girl I remember there slug yeah like in high school there was a banana girl where she's like all I eat is bananas yeah yeah especially in like the the nutrition world it's just like I'm the guy who eats 300 grams of protein every day like that's my whole thing or like the liver King who ended up being totally fraudulent whose whole thing is like I'm jacked I eat raw livers and like that's a stick you're now the liver King now you go make millions of dollars selling your liver yeah like if people can glom onto you as like the Superman as the Golden Boy or whatever it is it's like even if you're entire conceit being I eat liver and I'm Natty and I'm buff and I'm jacked even if it's proven wrong it's like okay actually I've reconsidered things and I am the same guy but in a different way people like welcome back liver King we always do it it actually ties to your previous point where it's like well got the bag like the pursuit of money ends up becoming a justification in itself literally people are like some people delivery King are like you know what he made a lot of money yeah I respect that and that somehow absolves him of all the previous deception L he still has a following right yeah he does he's back yeah better than ever it's like you're talking to a career liver King I'm a liver boy in a way these two points you're saying somewhat tied together your first points almost like keep in mind just like the vast array of opinions on the internet and how easy it is as a Creator to try and just become I am this guy to help seek out individuals who parasocial are looking for views that align with theirs and sort of filtering through disagree disagree this guy this guy I agree with and now that guy nor say consistent is the guy for all these things someone might come along one day and be like this is terrible but like I guess he got his bag yeah and I also don't want to make it seem as though I'm just nihilistically going around the world where it's like what's my opinion on this who cares I like too cool to have opinions um but I think the way that I like to look at these sorts of things is are they a net positive or NE negative on the people they wish to serve and it's like that thing about the stake resting that drove me so crazy I feel as though putting that information was a net negative on the cooking Community even though it elucidated some really good scientific data I think it was positioned in a way that I think people who are not that good at cooking will be worse off summarizing the content of the video in the way that they seemingly did and I think when it comes to like those tough hairy issues that it's like oh well people don't have any Nuance these days it's like okay we can have all the Nuance you want but at least if you want to come to a conclusion it should be like all things considered are they a net negative or a net positive did it need to be cooking content I'm glad that it was I don't think so uh I think making the second channel was illustrative of how much I could talk about anything just like oh I don't like the Barbie movie uh and thank God it's like I picked a vertical that's relatively non-controversial like the the last big controversy in the food space was like bone appetite shutting down its video arm because they were being mistreated the nastiest thing that happens in food is like you stole my recipe which yeah I think people that's another thing with infinite number of opinions but in terms of ownership of recipes it's at least legally not something that you have to worry about it's a very nice niche I will say it's sustainable it's like I have my life as the job and then I have the YouTube as the fun part and I came to a more satisfying conclusion to the question that you had which is what would you say to somebody who's trying to make a YouTube channel and that is I think most people who are trying to put stuff out there online feel as though the market is more saturated than it really is because if you watch a lot of food or Pokemon content you're just like well there's already somebody talking about this versus that and it's just like there's no reason for another person but every person adds their own bias and worldview and thought process in a way that like if I don't know let's just say every American when they turn 30 years old has to make a 10 video long series of YouTube videos about uh their life so far it's not like the first year everybody be like all right everybody said anything to say about that it's like even if you take everybody in the world and make them talk about the same thing there will be standout stars who do things in a notable remarkable way and so I've had people come up to me where they're just like I would love to talk about food but it's just like I feel like I'm stealing the babish camera angle The Shack editing style and this guy's recipes it's like the conglomeration of all those is what makes your thing special and so know that there is room for you and whatever you have to say uh regardless of what you have to say I think there is room for your message what do you think of AI one argue based on its training it two is just learning and picking up little bits from other people and this is actually one of the First videos that I made on the Extranet Shaquille YouTube channel because I feel as though this is the perfect conglomeration of people not wanting to engage with the topic and a way other than AI bad AI good I had a commenter on one of my patreon posts I started doing like a free Friday newsletter and one of them was about a video and they didn't like how the thumbnail looked like it was AI generated I don't think it was but there one of their comments was like I would never listen to a guy who makes AI thumbnails who uses AI thumbnails it's like okay understand that there are people who will really write you off if you have a good opinion about it or a bad opinion about it people are talking about AI in a way that is disingenuous both as consumers and producers I come from the design school all my friends are designers they're all working on how to put AI in their products because their Bess are like AI is hot you got to put it in everything I use Shopify and it's like oh you're writing an email click the sparkle icon and we'll write it for you it's not good but uh it's just everybody feels on the business side like they have to implement it and then every at the same time I'm in the design school so I know a lot of artists on The Artist side are like we must resist this as hard as possible um and so my opinions are multifaceted take at least 15 minutes to explain and you can watch those thoughts anille video called what people get wrong when they talk about AI art or something like that check out internet Shaquille's videos check out extr at Shaquille I really wish it called it extr at Iverson or TCP IP TP I KD and check out also we've spoken so much about it barklay yeah I made a website called internet chail.org that was fun