take me into your inbox a brand they message you to review their products what is getting a yes from Marquez brownley most products are kind of mid but if something is really really good oh that's interesting if something's really really bad sometimes that's interesting too Mr B said you're the video producer that decides what tech everyone in America buys half the time I watch his videos and I just leave and go buy stuff the responsibility that comes with being a tech YouTuber have you ever reviewed a product where you are paid to do it is it ever hard to speak truth to power personally damn for the last 15 years it's me going so what's the product now it's me going well I guess I'm telling you about the product if you were starting a YouTube channel today what would you do I could get into the science of that that's what it's supposed to look like I don't think that's good advice you're very good at what you [Music] do Marquez thanks for coming on man thanks for having me to dive into the tech side of YouTube I pulled this tweet that I thought summed it up so perfectly from Super saf I was wondering if you could read that and give your response as well yeah bars so Sapp says say something positive about a product how much do they pay you bro say something negative about a product how much did the competition pay you can't win with these guys and I just tweeted say nothing why do you hate them so much you can't win yeah you can't win this is this is Evergreen content to be honest this is true about every industry and every product so you just can't worry about it I guess you kind of have to just pick I mean I've said on videos before I make videos about products I'm interested in and products that I find are interesting in general to audiences that watch our videos so if I don't make a video about something people assume you must hate it you must already dislike the thing when in reality like I'm one person we have a team but like we can't make every single video about every single thing um and we're also very trans parent about our sponsor relationships we don't privately take money from anyone or like secretly get paid or whatever like that's it's just kind of a running joke at this point but yeah saf is is on the money with that take me into your inbox let's say it's a brand not Google Samsung Apple they message you to review their products what is getting a yes from Marquez brownley um it's is the product interesting totally subjective they will not know the answer that how do you define interesting is something new about it is something Advanced about it is something do I think it's going to be popular do I think it's going to flop a lot of products are just kind of mid actually most products are kind of mid which means they don't get a review but if something is really really good oh that's interesting if something's really really bad sometimes that's interesting too so you kind of have to find what is actually interesting about a product that's kind of number one and then the rest is okay is there a spot for it on the calendar is there a spot for it on the channel are there maybe other videos or topics we've talked about recently that can feed into also talking about this new thing so themes but yeah it's do I want to make that video it's the number one thing and are you going through your inbox yourself or you have your team filter and then it comes to you yeah it's been me I mean so jonno also does some handling of like the mass business emails because we get infinite emails now how many per day just to put a number on it do I get yeah personally damn I hope I I'm gonna ballpark like 200 a day yeah holy C it's but I but that's where I live I live in my to-do list my calendar and my inbox yeah yeah I'm curious about the responsibility that comes with being a tech YouTuber sure um ham Minaj once said you're the Kim cardashian of tech and Mr Beast also said I thought this quote was fascinating he said um that Mar as quote decides what tech everyone in America buys half the time I watch his videos and I just leave and go buy the stuff you did say that um I bring that up because so many influencers have absolutely no influence whatsoever yet you I really believe do and then people are making big purchasing decisions so I wanted to Rapid Fire really quick um okay have you ever reviewed a product where you are paid to do it no no have you ever sent one of your review videos to the manufacturer before it went live never never once what's the biggest sponsorship deal you've said no to because it may have been a conflict of interest I don't know if I can name drop but it's people who make things in the area that we review so if you make smartphones and you want me to be sponsored by a smartphone that that's going to be a no yeah yeah could they sponsor other videos on your Channel or there's a clear line they can't cross it that's a clear line I mean there are like accessories there's lots of really good tangential products so if you're a company that makes those like Associated products that's kind of like the perfect goldilock Zone and then there are things that are like outside of our normal that's obviously a green light if we like the product but yeah if you're if it's literally like I'm reviewing this mic can this mic company sponsor it no yeah of course yeah did that hurt your growth as you were starting out I mean for us it's been a huge part of our Channel Growing Up like we've been growing our team for you to not be able to take sponsorships on a lot of the videos that you made was that hard when you were starting off or you were able to make money other ways when you were in your early days so thankfully in the early days I didn't make any money and it didn't matter which is pretty good pretty good cuz this was this was the key is I was focusing on the videos so much that it was kind of a bonus when in year three or whatever it was the partner program was born so the first several hundred videos were made with zero ambition of making money or intention or optimization or anything in that realm and then even in the early days it was like when the top five biggest YouTube channels would all do like a Wendy's commercial on the same day and it was like you can do that like that it was a huge moment when sponsors came to YouTube and so it was still very Out Of Reach it was like whoa YouTubers are doing sponsored things that's cool you know from high school when I started all the way through college it was just like a side thing that I did that happened to make enough money to buy a lens to keep doing it which was great um and so we never even thought about for a very long time we never even thought about doing anything sponsored what what's the pie chart of M K BHD look like in terms of income like what percent would you say is AdSense for sponsorships verus other Revenue today it's much more healthy of a balance I'd say it's probably 60% sponsors 30% AdSense 10% other I mean we have merch things like that um but if you rewind about n years it was 95% AdSense wow because I didn't need to do anything else which is fine yeah what what's the best AdSense check you've gotten in a month I don't know the number but I'm gonna I'm going to guess that it's either a September or October you've heard about toober of course it might be in November because the thing about C you know cpms go up in certain times of the year and then the most tech the tech wave crests at the same time the CPM wave is like spiking so it's I want to guess it's probably a recent October probably like in the six figures like wow seven ever has there ever been a seven fig month on not not on AdSense no no yeah but for the business yeah wow yeah wow that's that's amazing I mean it's cool to see that coming full circle after you put the audience first for so many years yeah I think that's the reason why we've never I've said this before the best thing that never happened to us was like a video going viral yeah because a lot of what happens in those early days is a video blows up and your incentive becomes to chase that again uh because something happened like you got on TV or like you got a big check or some you got a sponsor from it and like I got to do that again and your whole Channel becomes trying to replicate the viral thing which almost never works yeah um and the entire first few years in hundreds of videos it was like nothing goes viral all we do is build a community kind of like a snowball around this Tech thing that we care about and if people care about it they'll jump on I think it's actually easier to grow once you're big because you have things like access to now a lot of manufactur I assume send you the prods early but I want you to rewind back if you were starting a YouTube channel today no resources no connections what would you do in order to stand out because if you again rewind the barried entry is way lower and the ceilings way lower so you can stand out with just pure talent and a DSLR now it's really hard to stand out and I think everyone goes into it with the I need to Mr beastify my operation standout in some way spend 100 Grand on the first video mentality I don't think that's good advice and I frankly don't have any other advice so tough question I don't have a good answer YouTube today feels more kind of like a numbers game of just you just make stuff and maybe one of them hooks uh than ever before it's amazing to see you quoted in Apple's keynote and Google's keynote um I wanted to ask first of all how does that feel to see your name alongside the big Publications as a YouTuber really gratifying really uh a little bit surreal I think it's also kind of a testament to how much work our team has put in I I I have memories of like the first time I was invited to an Apple event and that was always like a dream to go to see the product and do a video there and when I was there I realized I was the only YouTuber there H I was like oh that's interesting what year was it I want to find the the actual answer for you but it was an it was a it was a Summer Event probably a WWDC like seven years ago something like that uh but then the next Apple event I went to there were three of us and then the next Apple event there were nine of us and then slowly you start to see them realize like oh yeah this makes a lot of sense we should actually set things up for video so these guys could Point cameras at stuff and that slowly becomes a thing and so I feel like because of those doors that we've opened early now now it's like it makes perfect sense for us to be right next to the other Publications doing the same stuff shining a light on pointing a camera at evaluating the newest Tech when it comes out that's what we all do well what's the red carpet that they roll out for those of us who will never be invited to one of those apple events like what what do they do behind the scenes to make that experience good for Content but also how do they treat creators Apple's an interesting example because they kind of do their own thing they have a campus they invite everybody to they have a theater just for the event they have a massive like uction budget and it's it's great they'll give people snacks and like clap when you walk in the door hey welcome come downstairs so they have a whole thing set up but I think in general yeah they try to they try to make it um easy for people to just make content writing photos videos about the products in the moment which is kind of what we're all trying to do is it ever hard to speak truth to power like maybe now that you're big it's not but I've talked to a lot of smaller Tech traders who sometimes are worried about the reviews like turning off the company they don't get access to the product like did you ever have a moment like that or do you have advice for people trying to navigate a situation where if they say something truthful it might cut off access and therefore hurt their business yeah that is a tough spot to be in and what I've always said and what I hope is that if you are speaking the truth that it should never result in any punishment or cut off and if it does you look a lot like the goody guy in that situation and ideally your audience can see that you're telling the truth and that you're accepting the consequences that come of telling the truth um so I've never had to actually like peer on the other side and go well maybe I should lie or maybe I should hold back the truth I've always felt like that's a pretty core part of what we do but you're you're right a lot of smaller creators aren't necessarily position I am so I just say tell the truth and that should ideally put you in the best spot um so dude I pulled some stats about you that just blew my mind uh in just the past month you uploaded five videos to your main channel uh two videos to your studio channel five episodes to your podcast four car reviews all of which got 36 million views and somehow you still had time to make products with Ridge fly to Japan to win a professional Ultimate Frisbee tournament and then somehow also get your wisdom teeth removed I mean I haven't been to the dentist in like a year so that particularly impressed me but my question is H how the hell do you manage your time and still put out such high quality videos uh well when you put it that way seems pretty crazy uh a lot of practice I would say and I live my life through Google calendar so I don't know if this is a toxic trade or if this is like a nice clean way to keep the puzzle organized but I very clearly delineate when I'm doing certain things or when I'm in certain places and so it helps to just like visually lay it out do I have time for something oh yeah there's a slot right there boom good got it so yeah just a lot of practice do do you have days where it's more creation days versus meeting days definitely uh I I kind of line up the schedule every week for the team for what we're going to do at the studio and so yeah we inevitably have production days like we're shooting a lot of stuff and then we have non-production days which are either like post like editing and stuff or pre-production a lot of writing maybe meetings maybe figuring out brainstorming stuff like that so it's kind of two types of days yeah have you said no to a big opportunity recently that maybe you would have said yes to before because you've been so focused on your production and putting out these videos yeah all the time it's hard to think of like a single example but yeah we it's it's busier than ever and it's awesome because more doors are open than ever so it's really exciting but there's so much overlap that you do have to say no to things uh that you might have said yes to and heartbeat years ago what would you have said is there an example of that that just uh huge opportunity you're like can't do it uh there's a car launch event that I was going to go to in Germany for a certain German car brand very exciting car would have definitely gone but it overlaps with training camp for a team that I play for and so I'm definitely going to go to the teams training camp instead of the fun trip to Germany to drive a cool car I want to talk about that because the way you balance life outside of YouTube with YouTube is fascinating because most top YouTubers I've interviewed are just Allin and obsessive um but I want to talk about your creative process first um and there's so many so much to be said about the 1,500 videos that you put up over your 15 years on YouTube which is just crazy to say but I thought I just dial into one video that you tweeted out was probably the best upload to date um and I actually pulled a clip from it and that's why the Cyber truck is here I mean we're in the same Studio that you filmed it yep because I think I if there was a YouTube Hall of Fame in San Bruno like this video would be in there wow yeah cuz the way you scripted it the way you like brought us along the surprise I think you don't even have to be a tech YouTuber to learn and apply some of the things you did and I just wanted you to maybe review SL roast see if there's anything you would have improved um by first just watching the intro which I thought was such a unique way to start this kind of video so this is the Cyber truck review video the most dangerous thing about the Tesla cybertruck is not the pointy edges and Corners it's not the fact that it weighs over 3 tons and goes from 0 to 60 M hour faster than a Corvette no the most dangerous thing about the cybertruck is the way it makes other people around you on the road behave still true yeah I pulled a script of that here mhm how did you go about writing that video and how do you think about hooks in general cuz I think Tech videos could be so boring and I find myself watching videos that you made about products that I'm not even interested to buy yes cuz I'm just curious about how you're doing it you just hook me in I app that's the best compliment I can get I love that um no this is super interesting so reviewing a product is like a this is the thing we have a lot of practice at it's like an art form in a way you can just deliver the numbers and the specs and then that's it and let the person decide but product reviews are sort of limited in their appeal in that way where if I'm not buying the product why would I watch the review so I'm also trying to give some entertainment or some learning value or something yeah um with a car review or a a thousand smartphone or a computer if it has say two million views on YouTube you got to figure 90% of them weren't even thinking about buying that thing but they watched it anyway for some reason I'm trying to give them the entertainment or the education that makes it worth watching this one was interesting because you know we have the Cyber Tru this from Ridge we had for probably three weeks just driving it around learning the ins and outs of what it's like to own it drive it charge it every single day parking in the garage parking on the street and you I've gotten pretty good at reviewing smartphones so it might take me a few days but after 3 weeks with the cybertruck I was still forming opinions about it until it finally hit me that it's not really so much about the fundamentals as much as it's like the only anybody cares about when they knock on the window and they're like what is this thing like this design is everything about this truck so it ended up being the focus of the whole video it's like is this uh is this iconic already and that's kind of of weird because it's a mass production vehicle that's very attainable that millions of people have pre-orders for is it somehow already iconic and then diving in from there so a lot of the quotes like this come from me explaining it to people at the studio so I said this to people in the studio like two three times before I was like you know what that's the intro of the video like we've talked about the pointy Corners we've talked about 7,000 PBS doing 0 to 60 in 3 seconds but it's just the design that people care about what about other intros you've written um other like ways you think about simplifying without dumbing down because I think you did a great job with that yeah it's uh it's a little bit of packaging like I think people think a lot about titles and thumbnails on YouTube these days I also think that the intro Hook is a part of packaging for a video so with a video like this let's say if we just use this review as an example it's the the title and thumbnail of this truck the word iconic in the title and then clicking on it and wondering why that word is used and in the first 30 seconds having a question already answered about why this thing is so significant yeah it's all sort of like hand in hand yeah I also wanted to ask uh Jay Alto he uh analyzed a reading level of top YouTubers and I thought it was fascinating Ryan's world and Mr Beast had a fifth grade reading level for their videos but you had a sixth grade reading level which which I was more impressed by because you're talking about such technical topics are you looking at a script on a teleprompt or do you have it on your notes like can you show us an example of a script on your phone yeah I can do that right now and I'll oh I put my phone in my bag but it's like a Google Docs it's just the bullet points and like a 75% full script yeah and as I talk to the camera I've got the phone either on the table next to me or in my lap and so I'll read a couple bullets put it down and deliver that the way I think it it's meant to be in the video and if I think I got it I move on deliver it again and I just keep going so I might deliver a certain line five six seven times if it's I'm trying to get it in the flow of the video or I misspeak or I say something a little bit I emphasize something more than I wanted to or something else came to mind that's later in the video but I think it belongs now that sort of stuff happens all the time but I try to keep it mostly to what I wrote down oh wow I yeah I have never heard you say that because I I look at your videos and I'm like it must all come naturally First Take that's what it's supposed to look like yeah I'd say an artist's greatest accomplishment is making it look easy yeah yeah it's supposed to look easy it's not how do you think about the delivery to camera in terms of not being too over the top because I I think YouTube now has gone in a way of being loud fast editing and it's calmed down a bit and Mr Beast like put out a tweet recently about how we should slow things down I feel like you've always slowed things down without being boring yeah how do you think about breaking those YouTube best practices when making your videos I weirdly from the beginning never thought about that in particular as a YouTube thing I just thought of it as like a what audience are you talking to thing and I did notice like the over animated versions of YouTube becoming super successful but I always figured and this is maybe just anecdotal but that that was a different audience from mine that's a younger or potentially not as interested in certain things type of audience that I'm not after um and so I'm respecting the audience that I'm talking to by just talking to them like I would if it was you and me in a a barber shop talking about a phone I just started using or something like that like that's the sort of setting that I was aiming for and always have been um I'm happy to see it slowing down I feel like if people start to slow down a little bit they'll start to find more um because it can it can get grading I feel like if you watch some of those videos it's it's a little much on the senses so I feel like if you if you get a little bit of a lower average on how many things are happening on the screen you might hold a certain audience a little longer M uh how you think about b-roll when you're writing your videos are you already identifying like what you're going to put as b-roll so that way you can start and stop more easily yeah I have uh so the script will be bold for talk to camera and then non-bold for boll so it's easier when it's just a bunch of non-bold because I can just read it to the mic and I can say the things that I want to say but then when it's like bold and I think this is something I need to say to you that's kind of the only criteria for me this is something I need to tell you versus show you if I'm sh it to you buau makes perfect sense yeah what percent of what you say on camera is off the cuff versus scripted I would say if you watch a full video 82% of it is scripted and the last 18% is either out of order from me remembering something or an extra bullet point from I just sat down and realized I wanted to say this or I said this wrong on a different take but it now belongs here little adjustments like that but it's I would say mostly scripted how do you pick ideas for videos to make that aren't tech reviews because I think part of what you're doing is reactive big companies put out products you review them how do you pick ideas for the other videos yeah there's all kinds of weird products and announcements that come out and they'll hit my timeline on Twitter and I see the reactions and I'm like this is I wouldn't normally review this but I got to get my hands on this because people care about it and I care about it and I need to try it that happens all the time and then yeah Tech stuff just constantly constantly comes out so that's easy yeah what's the most expensive video that you've ever produced on the channel to make wow uh honestly so one of my favorite parts of the interview is coming up and that's where Marquez talks about how he's now making products Beyond just reviewing them and he's done that with his Adams shoes and now he's making these signature products with Ridge they show on camera for the first time in a bit and that got me thinking you know what's the easiest way for you and I to create our own products too well thanks to Shopify who sponsored this video it's easier than ever in fact Shopify powered the sales of marquez's Adams shoes and it's what Ridge uses to sell their products too and many other creators from Mr Beast to Cassie ho trust Shopify to power their stores as well that's because Shopify simplifies starting a business with a drag and drop store editor lets you sell anywhere online or in person and Shopify magic gives you AI tools that help you write descriptions improve product images and more and fun fact your Shopify products show up right below your YouTube video which is actually a feature I help launch when I work there so now that I'm a creator that means I can make more money in more ways and get back to doing what I love most which is just creating so if you're a Creator or just have an idea to start a business then consider Shopify to launch and sign up for a free trial at shopify.com usy all right back to the video it's probably just travel because once we get to location we have our gear we have our team and we we shoot pretty lightweight I mean your setup reminds me my setup like we can get it done in a day um so I think the most expensive videos are just like did we have to fly six people out to shoot a car with all our gear that would be expensive yeah do you have a range of what that is uh well that's just how much the tickets cost yeah so so our overhead is light like we don't buy a bunch of stuff for videos usually uh I think people mostly assume like we buy the product or we get our hands on the product that's a given but then like what else would our expenses even be we're just a couple props maybe for this video maybe there's a bit in the video where we do a sketch where I need like two or three props sure but we have our space we shoot in we have our gear kind of just set it up and go yeah so I guess a lot of the overhead I mean you have a big team it's 12 people 13 people I think about yeah 12 yeah yeah on packaging um Marquez I feel like you're so good at design and when you're at the top like you are it's hard to look elsewhere for inspiration um maybe push back on that but I'm curious who are your biggest design Inspirations or video inspiration um it may beond some of the obvious that I assume May a big inspiration but um for you like where do you look to because your design and brand is so impeccable yeah that's a good question I we do have a lot of internal inspiration because we have very creative people on the team yeah so as far as video style yeah there's great videos we can watch on YouTube like obviously the professional ones that shoot like Apple's Keynotes are amazing um but for the rest of stuff yeah we we kind of have to make it up as we go and sometimes it feels very intentional because we have an aesthetic that we like to stick to but a lot of it is let's see if this works and if it does let's try again let's evolve from it let's bump up from this next time but you know I don't have any names or anything I wish I could just give you like three or four of the YouTubers that Inspire the tech thumbnails not even YouTubers like outside of it like I was I was interviewing Jimmy and I was fascinated when he said one of his thumbnails was inspired by watching Apple TV's s show yeah and so do you look off of YouTube for inspiration imp so whereare yeah I don't watch a lot outside of YouTube this is one of my critical flaws is I don't have time to watch I I have a Netflix account I can't remember last time I logged in um so I don't really watch TV or Apple TV or Hulu or whatever else so it's a lot of YouTube so I'm sure there's a lot of subconscious inspiration happening but a lot of YouTube Yeah I wanted to share thumbnails that you put out compare them to other folks in the tech industry Mr who the boss and compare them to Mr Beast the negative space the way you again it feels like you go against so many YouTube trends how do you think about your thumbnails thumbnails okay so thumbnails have two things they have to look good really small M and then they have to obviously get you intrigued and maybe get the video started without actually getting the video started so we have an incredible graphic designer Tim who helps bring these things to life but we kind of start with an idea of all right what's a simple version of this works with the title and gets you into the video and intrigues you a little bit so this AI one this is actually a weird one cuz like how do you make a title about I was just talking about AI in general yeah like what there's not a lot of ways to do that thumbnail a lot of people use robots maybe or use like a computer version of themselves there's a fortnite character of me so like we happen to like make a hand and like turn a sweatshirt blue and like cross it over and that kind of felt right uh smartphones I've done so many smartphone thumbnails so I could I could get into the science of that if you wanted to but other things like the the Google versus Bard that's another one not a lot of people know what Bard's logo is or what Bing's logo is or what other products like chat GPT are represented by so how do you do a a assistant battle thumbnail it's like not an easy or obvious concept so you know I think a lot of people have dialed in Aesthetics you show Mr Beast stuff here like when people see his face they know it's Mr Beast that's something I do on the autofocus Channel you know Mr who's the boss he's got obviously a very bright aesthetic he he's got his face in a lot of thumbnails too makes a lot of sense um I probably should put my facing more thumbnails but I'm not too worried about it what is the science of product review thumbnails product review thumbnails are often so again not everyone is going to buy the product so what is the most interesting feature physically on the product and how big can we make it in a thumbnail without losing the rest of the device so if it's just the new iPhone with this new triple camera system on the back you better believe if you go to new iPhone thumbnails on YouTube 75% of them that's in the thumbnail just very easily identifiable CU all these phones are slabs they all look almost the same unless you find that thing that looks different about them so I think it's an exercise in finding the thing that's different about it and highlighting it if you can and then you know clean background if you got to hold it if it's handheld if you have a face that sort of expresses the thought about it of that stuff is pretty obvious but yeah phones are they all kind of look similar yeah it's amazing how how you putting trust the design it's just MKBHD as a brand is so premium I feel like and I feel that's a big reason why Ridge partnered with you guys I want to talk about that but you know there's a lot of talk right now of YouTubers retiring you know seen yeah U Tom Scott uh retired or you know taking a break from his channel top YouTubers like Matt Pat sold um Jimmy talked about being offered $1 billion for his channel I'm curious what would you value MKBHD at right now so like if someone wanted to yeah's number yeah what's in what's the retirement number retire me today I don't I don't know that I would take it like everyone has a number so I'm sure if you were like here's a hundred billion dollar I go okay sure but it reminds me a lot of JJ reck's podcast where like he retired and immediately started a podcast and was like when you retire from the thing that is like the core of what you've been doing for a decade it hurts like you don't really want to retire and the different examples you gave different versions of handling it gracefully um I don't think I would want to retire at this point I think I would want to keep making videos so yeah you could probably stick some crazy numbers in my face and I would go but then what do I do yeah I would want to make videos anyway have you ever been offered a crazy number to sell the channel no no no um speaking of which it seems like you not only love it and obsess about your craft but um I say this with all due respect it seems like you have a life outside of YouTube which most creators don't I mean I found it hard we' grown to priori things outside of it um is it true that you don't respond to your phone on weekends and when you have a frisbee tournament like like how much time do you take off and do you have this secret life that maybe we don't know about on the YouTube channel not so secret I mean so I play professional ultimate first B and in season yeah we are cooking like weekends are completely full so yeah I I actually find it refreshing to just leave my phone in my bag and we go play we go eat we go to sleep we wake up we play again and we go home and then I'll check my phone like I don't need to be online and it's nice because the sport I play happens to be very siloed into these like Windows of time weekend nighttime where like business happens weekday daytime so I kind of flip that switch and I I do find it really really necessary for my sanity to be able to flip that switch this uh this creative version versus this competitive version like if you told me to take away one I'd probably I'd hate it so I'm happy to have both um Jimmy has famously talked about like working on holidays working on weekends and that's what he says like help them get ahead do you ever have fomo or think that you could be bigger as a YouTuber if you put in that time on the YouTube channel instead of Frisbee and other things yeah there's no question we could be making more stuff and the channels would be growing and we'd be bigger sure um I think it kind of comes down to what we value at this point so there probably was was a stage right around when I was in college where yeah the balance was super heavy uh into like working on videos all the time oh God I have homework all right I guess I'll spend an hour on that but I'll get back to videos like I'm watching WWDC in the back of finance class like that sorry Professor but like come on uh so the balance was different but I think at this point our values are very much like healthy creative growth in general and being able to open doors and try new things and all that comes with it consistency that we value but there's more to it than just growth growth growth for this thing are there any productivity tools or apps that you use as a YouTuber that you recommend to others that have helped with your like time management how much time do you have uh yeah I would say give me a few of your favorites or one of the ones that are underrated like not a Google Calendar or Google keep so I mean my to-do list app is is very crucial to my remembering to do things I won't diagnose myself with anything but like I need this app so so I so it's called tick tick and this is the one I keep coming back to I try tons of others I try all these sort of like calendar hybrids with like to-do list and inboxes built in but to tick tick is pretty good because it lets me just in the moment if I need to remember to do something or remind myself to do something I can set that set that up and it's there it's on the calendar it reminds me of when I need to do it it's where I dump ideas it's where I dump like do this now remember to do this so I guess if you feel like you need to remember to do things I would recommend it to do L St because that's yeah I could yeah do you use any AI tools like you've been so outspoken about how AI will change our industry and and I think a lot of us can see where it's going to be in maybe a year five years and maybe it'll be accelerated but right now and in the next three to six months like how are using AI if at all to help with your creativity um brainstorming is fun brainstorming with a chat bot is fun it's a little exercise we do uh sometimes just to come up with IDE or packaging or framing or just titles for videos um sometimes it's to find what we want to do with the next video in general Sometimes they come up with crazy ideas but my favorite and I'll probably get back to this because we stopped for a while is doing alliterations at the end of videos that would summarize the whole video what an example I was trying to do it as like a retention hack where like people would stay to the end to hear their analogy or hear the alliteration but it would be like I'd review the pixel phone and at the end I'm like so this phone is pretty perfect for perfect photos or something like that I don't know something cheesy but like I have the chat bot help me come up with a good one I want to do that more I want to bring that back good idea I like it um what what are some prompts that you're putting in to like are you're saying like here's the title I'm thinking of generate 10 other versions or like are there any specific prompts you thought yeah or give me sequels to this video or oh wow so you take a more successful video and you ask for a sequel yeah wow or give me uh give me the opposite for like the if something is really good give me the opposite point of view or summarize this this or uh help me brainstorm what a Channel about this would talk about in this category uh or just in general because it knows what MKBHD is so you can ask it make an MKBHD title which is interesting sometimes it's pretty bad but you can try it does that scare you with the rise of deep fakes like how much information you put out about yourself and the fact that people can say like hey make an MKBHD video when they're not MKBHD yeah I have and we have a podcast too so like there's thousands of hours of my face HD and my voice into a high quality mic I'm a prime candidate for being deep faked and I guess I've just accepted that um we'll see I mean it's this it's this video right here yeah how long is my job safe I don't know we'll see I I think the way forward is uh sharing monetization like I think it'd be really cool if you like co-sign on something that's like if somebody makes a piece of content with mkbhd's likeness and of course there has to be some kind of portal to submit for approval if you like it or if you want to coign that could be interesting have you seen what Instagram's doing yeah yeah yeah with the Creator like Chat thing yes I don't know how I feel about that how do you feel about that well I think it's weird that they kind of name them different like the people have different names than their actual names right so like Jimmy is like the funny guy yeah and you're chatting with the funny guy Jimmy face but you see his face yeah that that to me was weird I'm like it's like almost like the uncanny valley of like recognition even though I see their face and yeah that me felt a bit confusing imagine you're a kid though and you're like oh I want to talk with AI Jimmy but it's not Jimmy but it is like I don't know it's feels weird but then Instagram also is doing something where they're going to roll out this tool where you can have an AI version of you DM and chat with your followers so they can DM AI you I don't know how I feel about that like I I'm in the beta and I'm I'm GNA try it but yeah feels do people know it's like Marquez brownley it says it's AI it say it says it's AI there's no Revenue implications at all just kind of like DMs like engage with your audience you can't DM all of them but what if we did it for you so I guess I get it but yeah kind of weird I wanted to put you on the spot and ask uh if you were the CEO of these different companies what would you do so here we go if you're the CEO of YouTube what's something that you would do to the platform today if I was a CEO of YouTube gez Neil what would I do uh I would bring back back the dislike counter why because I think that it was a pretty useful quick visual indicator for the quality of a video yeah and I still to this day miss that I didn't think I would still miss it but I'm very plugged in I know when I watch a video that's one hour old with 400,000 views and 29,000 likes that it's doing well no matter who it's from but if I'm like searching for a tutorial on how to install the MyQ garage doorbell opener app on my phone and it has 29 views and 11 likes and I don't know how many dislikes it has I don't know if this is the video I should be using but if you turn that back on I do yeah I still miss that I don't know if I'm the only one who still misses that but I still yeah I still we still miss that yeah um CEO of X what would you do um CEO of X what would I do I would try to build out the analytics of videos in general like the the the video upload platform the analytics evaluation behind the scenes for videos so that when I upload a video I can actually tell what's happening right now it's just look how many people saw it on their timeline and there's a couple small graphs in there and but I would build that out a lot more that would be a priority CEO of Instagram what would you do if you were Adam aeri um I would make it easier to upload and then watch landscape videos you know how people do the thing where like turn your phone sideways oh my I would build that into the platform wow you're just piercing at my heart when I worked at Instagram I worked on igtv and video and we were trying to make long form and horizontal happen it's very hard when the DNA and the habits are built around short form yeah I used to be the hater of like vertical video like a couple years ago but it's like nobody takes horizontal videos on their phone anymore yeah yeah CEO of Facebook what would you do if you were Zuck burn it no um you know Facebook can do a lot of the same stuff like I think people left Facebook video for a reason and I think if they're able to build some of those same like jump in the portal and scroll tools for video and then as a Creator I get a lot of the analytics YouTube shows really because they have a lot of analytics on Facebook but the stuff that YouTube shows with the retention graphs over time is I would do that yeah yeah um the next question is what would you do if you were the CEO of Ridge but we actually have him here so I thought we'd invite Sean Frank um who you recently partnered with so Sean if you want to join us I got a few questions for you both sure all right Sean thanks for joining us man thanks for having me all right so I want to ask all about the partnership uh that you guys really made waves across YouTube and I feel like it's going to pave a new frontier for creators everywhere but first tell me about Ridge what is the product and how many of the wallets have you sold if you could show us one yeah yeah we make a very popular wallet I think it's the most popular wallet in America you put your cards in here you push it you go like this lifetime revenues over 500 million at this point and we'll do we'll do a couple hundred million dollar this this year a year ago you put out a tweet that's like I want to offer a Creator $1 million I want to ask what were you thinking when you put that out and Marquez what was your reaction when you saw that tweet yeah so in the in the tweet I think I either tagged you or I or I just said it was a thread it was one of the first TW oh was not so subtle yeah and it was very much like Marquez can have the job if he wants it uh you know we've been pretty open that we've spent at at least $10 million at this point directly with creators and you can either buy or build things so we could spend a lot of money trying to build this in- house internally and I I bought a publication called the r car.com but it'd be so much easier if I could just pay for a tutor and bring somebody in to like help us develop this muscle dude I'm glad you saw it at least we're interested yeah well I saw it and then sort of like back shelved it and then it got sent to me a bunch of times and so it's like on the front of my radar and then it got like messaged me a couple times and I'm like okay I've seen it guys like I've thought about it but took a little bit more thought obviously a little more time to like sort of develop what it could look like in my head before actually replying to it I think I emailed you first or something you probably emailed me and I replied so we got we got really close to signing with uh a couple people and I offered it to Colin and Samir I was like hey you guys can have this I think it'd be really great and they thought we met we talked about it they're like H we got a bunch of going on right now maybe later right and I'm like okay so we got really like far down a path to somebody and I'm like hey before I sign that deal I should just make sure you see it so I send it over to you right and what did you think at that point I thought it was really interesting and I think I I said this in my tweet but like Ridge as a company like making a bunch of stuff already I get asked in interviews like this like all right you review a lot of products when are you g to make a product and it's like yeah I know I should be focusing on that but I'm so into making videos that I know I don't have the bandwidth to be making products I just do not have the bandwidth to build the comp and do what Jimmy has doing like I just can't do it but uh a really really really good partner would be right in that middle ground where they already have experience building products they already know how to make products but they would be willing to be molded by what I think that should look like what the company should look like what the product should look like and so we can kind of meld this thing together and I think that would be ideal and the more I thought about that in my head and ridge the more the everyday carry Motif just kept hitting me over and over again and I was like actually I feel like this is a really good fit so we we started talking about it shared our Visions with each other about what it could look like and eventually like figure it out and I feel like you're starting to see the first little glimpses of what we started working on but we've been working on things for a little bit now which is exciting and yeah there's going to be a lot more yeah I'm excited for some of the products that you guys are announcing uh but first I want to say yeah Ridge is doing really well I mean you guys are private bootstrap 0 employees uh Nimble enough to bring somebody on but not bureaucratic enough that it becomes like hey do this and there's not a conversation what was the part of the deal that was most contentious or the thing that you're like I'm not going to sign right away until this is in the contract I think there were like comparisons initially to like well there are other deals like this that are just like a celebrity and a budget and a bunch of photo shoots and your face goes here and we use your face to sell things and it was like I don't want that and Sean immediately was like yeah no we also don't want that which was perfect so I was glad we're on the same page there um so from there it was it was not too contentious as far as just finding a ground on like what sorts of goals we want to have with this and how long the partnership should be and like where we should aim right off the bat versus longer term yeah um but yeah I mean I it's a good thing I already like a lot of Ridge products I think the first thing that I probably told you was I love Ridge wallet but I don't use one because I use a soft wallet so we got to have plans to make a soft wallet and the fact that there was a yes and the fact that there was some uh ability to like be maneuverable and we will have input on products and make cool things in that way too was like oh this is this is going to be amazing you know I just want to highlight a point that you guys were talking about earlier about sponsorships right and you're like you know hey has Apple ever offered you money and you're like I would never take that right I think I think the beauty of us as an accessories brand is like we actually are not Tech at all we're like a perfect Tech adjacent category that um we have like a ton of design experience manufacturing experience like we own factories that whole thing but at the same time it's like it it can complement what you do and not encroach across any boundaries exactly yeah um I want to go into the specifics of the deal I was talking with Sean it's a four-year agreement um there's cash compensation um there's Equity would did the cash end up being more than a million I don't know if we're telling but I think the balance of it is like there's obviously going to be a lot of time that I spend on this now and so that forfeiture of time will have some value so we should make sure that that balances out um but then I'm also I I want to be like personally really into this and the best way to do that is to be invested directly in this company yeah um so that had to be a part of it too so we knew it would have to be a balance of those two things yeah Sean you said you have 20% of the company yeah right uh and then Mark has you now have multiple percentage points of the company yeah um you also have a board seat right what does that mean having a board seat like how many people how often do you guys meet what decisions are made is that like yeah yeah so you know when I say we don't think do things very traditionally you know we have no debt we've never raised money and all decisions were basically just us sitting around trying to figure it out so us bringing Marquez on is us to have a real board so there's only three board seats and he's one of them W uh so we'll we haven't had a meeting yet q1 just ended that's probably the first meeting we have to have but I mean you know giving away a boarded is like he has Direct Control the company to like help us figure out whatever vision and Direction and problem solv we have to be working on so the only people who can fire me are the boor and he's one of them marz that's a lot of power man just say you know and then a number of sponsored videos throughout the year um and building products together which which I want to talk about but but I want to say I think that this is so interesting for what it could mean for creators moving forward because obviously you have Mr Beast who started febles in house um then you have a Ryan Tran who you know partnered with Joy Ride which was an existing company but smaller than Ridge and then you have Ridge like uh who is now working with you and I I I've seen this myself I feel like that one of the biggest reasons I've been able to grow as a creators like coming on as an ambassador for different companies like like AI companies like Opus clip and just I don't know I feel so much more secure um do you feel that way Marquez in terms of now you have like more money coming in or more sponsor videos you could maybe take less sponsor videos or do less on one front to be able to focus on products that's a part of the equation for sure and also something you were saying about like being able to open doors a little bit like other creators have been incredible with like starting their own companies and that I respect that a lot but I do feel like it was important to open the door to like a large company working directly with a single Creator because when you've been doing this for a long time you have this giant mass of experience that it's kind of hard to apply anywhere else like you know how you knew the in the ins and outs of YouTube you know how this works you know what people like and what people don't like and what they buy and what they comment on and how they react to things and can you apply that to a product company opening the door to working directly with a big company that can actually turn that Vision into real products and connect with people I'm really happy to open that door because I think it's like it would be cool to start my own company but like I said I don't have that bandwidth let's open this door let's make something really great and set an example and hopefully others can do the same thing I love it can you show us some of the products that you guys are working on I know Sean you mentioned there's three categories which is MKBHD and ridge branded products there's a new Signature Series that's coming there's products that we haven't seen yet that you guys are tinkering on um what what what are those products and can you show us a few yeah yeah so here's my actual wallet that I use every single day and I it says Matt Black everything yeah yeah it has like an oil fillz oh yeah I'll do the little vano Whiting I got to say this is hilarious being on the other side of this CU for the last 15 years it's me going so what's the product like tell me about the product and now it's me going well here's the product I guess I'm telling you about the product so yeah this is the rual this is the the map like everything version of the r yeah so that's the that's the first one to come out it's going to come out at some point in April and so Ridge X MKBHD is stuff that we already make and it's his custom color way or or prints or patterns that type of stuff right and that's the reason why it's coming out first it's the easiest to do it's already things in the existing product line and the next one would be Signature Series so like if we make a wallet and you know he wants a different type of wallet let's say you're a billfold guy you're like yeah I like a different type right so that's inside the wallet category and just new uh you know makes finishes designs engineering that goes into that the third one is what's going to take the longest time to produce and we're working on that now it could be you know a year to make a really high quality product but it'll be expansion series the stuff that Ridge doesn't currently make that Marquez is like hey maybe we should get into water bottles maybe we should get into whatever we will throw you know design engineering and millions of dollars to make sure we make the best version of that and you know you brought up you know making a company undoubtedly at this table the most accomplished guy here if he wants to make a company make products he can do it it is just a different muscle than making YouTube videos and same reason like why we didn't build this in house it's like well it would cost me I would guess $10 million in 10 years to make videos one tenth as good it's so much easier just to unite forces yeah and we've had we sorry we've had that conversation at the studio which is like if you gave a random person who's never made a YouTube video some amount of budget and some amount of time how much money and time would you have to give them to turn them into a YouTuber and the answer was undefined we cannot Define how much money time it would actually require to turn any one person into a fully like blooded like live Breathe It YouTuber it just doesn't you kind you either have it or you want it or you don't and so yeah it's it's kind of a crazy question to as much as I want to be a professional basketball player I'm 58 dude I'm making the te yeah I think that's a good note for any brand trying to build it in-house you know a lot of people try to have in-house creators and it's much harder Marquez I know you have a prototype can you show us yeah I would love to show you this is this is fun um yeah I was saying like I have used soft walls for a while so like if this is an early prototype so I can't guarantee too much about this but yeah subject to change yeah everyone this is kind of the thing about products is the way I decide making videos is a lot of the same way I decide on products which is something I've got to be interested in but also that I think other people are interested in people carry their wallet in different pockets they carry different amounts of things in their wallets they they access different cards different amounts in different times of the day so I know what my perfect wallet looks like but that's not everyone's perfect wallet so my expertise on what I want Sean's expertise on what people clearly want and buy and use combined with all the people who are helping to make this stuff that's what's going to make this awesome but this is the softw what was the conversation to make this cuz this is so radically different than the hard wallets that you put out and I've seen succeed well it was you know us us getting on a call and us being in slack being like okay tell us exactly what you want and we will go out there and make it like we will Source the Leathers the materials the factories we will send you Pro to prototype until you get something that you're like that's worthy of being one of my signature series products wow um what's the most underappreciated detail about that again it's just like accessing the cards so like I have three cards that I use the most it's my personal card the business card and my ID and so I know I will always find friction in a wallet that doesn't let me really quickly access those three things so that's got to be number one and then there's like long-term storage stuff my insurance card my like find my card whatever that the door key to the studio that stuff is like once a day once in a while having that delineation between the two and then of course materials and hey it's Mt black that kind of helps so like there's a lot more to it but I feel like the fundamentals of a wallet we all got to be on the same page about that and then it's the fun stuff after that if you go to any luxury brand website like any accessories brand wallets are a subcategory of a subcategory so like really the future of Ridge and the reason why I think we can get to a billion dollars in Revenue not this year or the next year but probably the year after that is we're just moving up subcategories so from wallets to small lither Goods to bags and eventually it's like anything you could buy from a coach like that's what we're going to offer and ridge has been a great business and we've been so successful inside the world's smallest most category so we're just slowly moving up that market yeah um what's your wish list what's your top product that doesn't exist right now or doesn't rid doesn't make that you want to make Market oh man that's crazy because if I was asking a tech executive that question they'd be like well we don't talk about future products but like they always have that canned response so here I go I'm not going to reveal anything too crazy yeah but like what we're saying like the the everyday carry stuff like we've made videos about everyday carry and people love watching those by the way so we know what we like about everyday carry what people who watch the videos like about everyday carry and now it's just up to us to like find and make the best possible versions of all of those things that's amazing how do you think about the videos that you'll make with rid products moving forward perfect Integrations yeah right like I I'm going to be talking about the things I use cuz I already do that so now this is funny I did a GQ interview which was like show us your everyday carry stuff 10 things you couldn't live without and I didn't realize this until it went live but like half that stuff was stuff that I've helped make wow and they're like wow Marquez such a flex like the MKBHD Edition is what you carry and I was like damn you're right that's that's pretty sick so I ideally we will be able to make and plug the stuff that I use because that's the easiest that's just what shows up no matter what video I'm making anything else that you're thinking about in terms of the future like like if you're a smaller Creator watching this and they're aspiring to get a deal like this what what advice would you give them if you're focused on review stuff like me specifically you want it to be sort of adjacent to or around what you're normally covering yeah um aside from that shoot for the stars like there's there's a lot of opportunities and doors opening and it's going to make a lot of sense yeah this is where the industry is going I think I mean you know we're not the first people to do this I think I think Ryan TR and joy R are a great example but we've already watched like pop icons in media move over to YouTube and digital content and it's not going to slow down right there's a reason why there's there's so few bankable stars in ollywood it's because like the internet eats everything so I just think this is more of what's going to happen and maybe it's an early example but I think there's going to be a long list of opportunities like yeah do you think fewer opportunities will go to the Oscar Isaacs and um Pedro pascals of the world who you rejected to work with Marquez to go to YouTubers still open to work with those guys no no hate or shame uh no I mean like I'm don't feel bad for those guys I'm sure they're doing fine uh and I'm sure they they love plenty of opportunities it's really the Next Generation yeah what's one thing that you guys have learned from each other I know you have monthly meetings like what's something that you've learned from Sean about products as a YouTuber who focus on content and what's something that you've learned from arquez about content as you focus on products his job is way harder than mine it's like I can show up and do whatever I want and you know the regiment the schedule like I'm not cut out for it so I'm I'm glad the world has people like that I was goingon to say kind of the same thing but it's like there's every time we have a meeting just the little details of like I know what I've seen on a product but now that I know what it's called like the oil fill on the wall like okay now I can like refer to it by the correct thing and I know the details that go into oh we can change the color of this by like 5% saturation or or like we can change materials here just a lot of the material science stuff is kind of fun for me to poke around in but also I'm not cut out for the other end of this equation so it was a perfect puzzle piece yeah yeah this makes sense on so many levels thank you both for taking the time it's incredible to see this and uh can't wait to see what else you guys launch thanks cool thanks for having us of course all right that's a wrap thank you guys sick