Samir Explains Why 99% Of Content Creators Fail At YouTube | Samir Chaudry Interview
High Stakes Interviews, Creator Economy, and MrBeast - September 4, 2023 (over 1 year ago) • 01:48:12
Transcript:
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
Shaan Puri | Yeah tell me about mister beast | |
Samir Chaudry | He is so unique in the fact that he is laser-focused in a way that I've never really experienced. And maybe at times, like in a way that I... | |
Shaan Puri | I don't wanna experience | |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, he doesn't want to do it. Colin and I, you know, spent a lot of our careers making documentaries. What we noticed was that if we were interviewing a subject head-on, we wouldn't get good answers.
Then we started taking them driving or having them do something else, and that's when you would get the truth.
Oh, what's interesting is that the truth comes out in the car. I think it's something that some documentarians say: if someone's doing something else, they're much more open if their mind isn't 100% on the interview.
| |
Shaan Puri | Why is that, you think? They're just performing, basically, when they sit down in an artificial environment.
| |
Samir Chaudry | Probably, yeah. There's a lot of self-perception stuff that's going on, right? It's like, how am I coming across? Who am I? Is this sounding right? And if you're distracted, then you... but.
| |
Shaan Puri | you guys do your interviews at at a table basically | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | so you don't do that well we've | |
Samir Chaudry |
I've been trying to explore the concept of creating the right energy for conversations. You think about it... this has a completely different energy than if there was a table. It has a completely different energy than if we didn't have mics and we were laughing or had boom mics.
So we've been trying to explore where our show is moving and what type of space we want.
| |
Shaan Puri | That's where I wanted to start, which is basically you guys do. We came down here and we were like, "Oh, let's get a place and have some in-person interviews with people that we think are awesome."
It's different than the at-home thing for sure, right? The vibe is different; you get a different energy. But also, you can do high-stakes interviews almost. It's like the whole day kind of gets built around this interview, which is not really the case when you do it online.
You guys have been doing some high-stakes interviews. I mean, just recently, I saw the Tim Ferriss one. That was great! I'm guessing you're like me and that you grew up really into Tim Ferriss' stuff.
| |
Samir Chaudry | and I'm | |
Shaan Puri | gonna kind of admire him | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah it was pretty surreal | |
Shaan Puri | That's a high-stakes interview. You did Mr. Beast, you did Dream, you did a bunch of these things. First, do you prefer being the interviewee, or in this case, you're kind of more the guest on the show? Do you prefer guest or host?
| |
Samir Chaudry | I like to talk, so I enjoy when we are the host and it is a conversation. I think that's the most fun for me. I am a naturally curious person, and you know, along with higher stakes, it's also about very interesting people that I'm inherently curious about.
So, that to me is really fun. I think where it gets challenging is if you don't have chemistry. But we actually now do pre-calls and, kind of, not like chemistry reads, but we try to gauge...
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | What our chemistry is with the guest. Because we've been in situations where the chemistry is not good, and then you're like, "Okay, how do I... where do we go from here?"
| |
Shaan Puri | how does | |
Samir Chaudry | This work... and when you're the producer of the show, or it's your show, in the middle of it, you're like, "Okay, is this gonna perform?"
| |
Shaan Puri | voice in your head | |
Samir Chaudry | It starts going on... edit this. How does it? And that then puts you into a hole, like a disadvantage.
| |
Shaan Puri | You're, so let's say you're doing one of these kind of interviews. You're pumped for it. I'll call it a high-stakes interview.
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | How do you... kind of walk me through how you're preparing for that? And how you're just kind of getting ready to perform that?
| |
Samir Chaudry |
Yeah, actually we've been really trying to establish our relationship with prep because we found that sometimes if we're overly prepped, I'm barely listening to the other person. I just know where I'm going with my talking.
I also consider how much of them I've listened to prior, because if I know their stories and their beats, I'm kind of like... [trailing off]
| |
Shaan Puri | right you know | |
Samir Chaudry | A bit of curiosity wanes...
Yeah, the curiosity wanes. So, I've been trying to explore that relationship. We do have a team that essentially develops a research document. We have someone on our team who does that.
It was like, "Here's kind of some origin story," and we structure it like an Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 structure. Where is their origin story? What's the inflection? Right? Where has that put them today?
Because it's like, what was the tense part of the journey? What didn't work for them? Do we know any of that? Is there something we can ask about that creates an inflection?
Because we are trying to tell a story with it. Yeah, so we need to know the general themes of what's happening in the origin (Act 1), what's happening in the conflict (Act 2), and then the resolution and the future. Right? So, that's like...
| |
Shaan Puri | the most without knowing all the details | |
Samir Chaudry | without knowing all the details | |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry |
So yeah, we're trying to establish a new relationship with that. How much is it curiosity and how much is it prep? I think that's become more substantial for us as the landscape of interview shows is getting more and more saturated. Right? Like when we interviewed certain creators 3 years ago, no one else was interviewing creators, so it was kind of like, "Okay, this is a talk show for our own community."
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | Doesn't exist anywhere else. Now we're a part of a group, and that then pushes you to try and become more singular and more differentiated.
Chemistry—how you show up and who the hosts are—matters, right? I think you guys have done actually a really good job of that. I think about your show a lot because I think...
| |
Shaan Puri | tell me more what are we doing what are we doing well well | |
Samir Chaudry | I think you have to be it's similar because there's 2 hosts right | |
Shaan Puri | which is really hard | |
Samir Chaudry | Which is really hard in interviews, but probably you have a better reception when it's just you and Sam.
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry |
On a lot, right? It's like when you're building a show that's guest-dependent or all about the guest bookings. Some people will look at this and be like, "I don't know who that is, so I'm not going to click on it." Some people give it a chance because they trust you. But really, if it's you and Sam, you can carry the show, and then you become less reliant on bookings.
I do think Colin and I have been thinking a lot about that - how do we instill some of that? How do we think about that? But we are just... the show takes us to really interesting people like Tim Ferriss. So right now, in this moment, it's like, keep [going with this format].
| |
Shaan Puri | riding the wave yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | You keep riding it like this is cool. The type of outreach we have is really cool. The people we get to talk to are really cool, so you...
| |
Shaan Puri |
"How do I show up?" I think about this a lot because when it comes to sports, we're used to an athlete having a pregame routine:
- A meal
- A nap
- A stretch routine
- A warm-up
They're wearing headphones, listening to their song...
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | they get the motivational speech they run up they run out there they do the warm ups and then they play | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | And for other types of people who need to perform, it's like, "What are you doing? Why do you need to do that?" Sit down and talk, right? It seems so easy.
| |
Samir Chaudry | It’s definitely about presence. You have to become very present in the conversation. There are a couple of different things to try to do that. For me personally, I’ve discovered this 11-minute Wim Hof breathwork.
| |
Shaan Puri | nice | |
Samir Chaudry | online that's just | |
Shaan Puri | I think it's brutal | |
Samir Chaudry | I do | |
Shaan Puri | that a lot have you | |
Samir Chaudry | done it yeah yeah there's so many people who know this exact one it's like 11 minutes | |
Shaan Puri | his free youtube like top ranked youtube | |
Samir Chaudry | and his his accent is amazing | |
Shaan Puri | come on alright go | |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, it's so good. That just gets me in the zone. I love doing that.
| |
Shaan Puri | I wanna I wanna do that right now I got it | |
Samir Chaudry | says yeah | |
Shaan Puri | do you do it laying down | |
Samir Chaudry | yes I do it laying down | |
Shaan Puri | because that's his way right on your back | |
Samir Chaudry | so we we made a documentary about wim years ago and so like I'm just been | |
Shaan Puri | which one I might I might have seen it | |
Samir Chaudry | it's it's on yes theory's channel it's all called frozen alive colin and I actually | |
Shaan Puri | edited that | |
Samir Chaudry | yes yes this is it | |
Shaan Puri | this is so good so good | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah so | |
Shaan Puri |
Lie down, sit down, whatever it takes. By the way, this is good as a... I do this like whenever we have a team retreat or we need to do something. I'll be like, "Hey guys, if you're down, let's do something a little bit weird." Then yeah, they're like, "Boy, what is he gonna say?" And this is not so weird, they're down with it. You definitely feel energized, right? At the end of it.
| |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, I try to get present. I try to take out a lot of the variables. I think as we've built a team, what's been great is that it used to be just me and Colin figuring out where the mics go, where the cameras go, and if the lighting looks good. That can be really stressful.
For example, during our most recent interview with Mr. Beast, when we went out to North Carolina, we were there for a full day prepping for the pod. But at the last minute, we realized we didn't have a table. Colin and I went to a furniture store in North Carolina two hours before we sat down with him, and we were just scrambling to buy a table.
| |
Shaan Puri | assemble it | |
Samir Chaudry |
I had to arrange for it to be delivered, and basically it all happened within a matter of... you know, that was a very stressful 2 hours prior to sitting down. I felt very not present in the first half of that.
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | You know, I was just coming off like, "Okay, that was intense." Why didn't I think of that kind of immediately? Already being retrospective of the process... and so all of that stuff, I think you just have to eliminate.
| |
Shaan Puri | I made a bunch of mistakes like that when this podcast started. I was doing long-form interviews; the first 20 episodes were just me interviewing people at a studio. I kind of got my reps in there, and then it switched at around episode 40 or something like that to me and Sam as a recurring thing.
That was a way different setup. You know, it was a turnkey setup. We already had good chemistry, so I didn't have to book guests or research them. I just had to be ready to talk about interesting things and turn up the charisma as much as I could.
But now that I got back into it, I thought, "Alright, let's try to utilize this amazing network. These are fascinating people to talk to, so let's do it." I called Ben after the first one and said, "Dude, that was like an hour too long." I ended up doing three hours! I thought I was Joe Rogan for a minute there. It was way too long, and I over-prepped like crazy.
The thing you were saying where you're like...
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | I'm listening, but in my head I'm like, "Okay, we're supposed to match the beat to this." Next, I was like, "That wasn't right." So...
| |
Samir Chaudry | it's hard | |
Shaan Puri | Before this, we went to Dave and Buster's in between interviews. You know, we played Pop-A-Shot, and I got in a good zone. Now I'm here.
| |
Samir Chaudry | it's either that or wim hof | |
Shaan Puri | you know | |
Samir Chaudry | dave and buster's or wim yeah | |
Shaan Puri | if you don't have a local dave and buster's so if you're unfortunate enough I thought you're gonna say if | |
Samir Chaudry | you don't have a local wim hof | |
Shaan Puri |
I said that you all got... Wim, you've had a bunch of these. Yes, who's somebody that's been a lot of fun that you guys have had on recently? That's like, you know, giving you those kind of like "mind blown, my brain's leaking out my ear." Like, who's done that for you recently?
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah it's it's hard to not say tim tim ferris | |
Shaan Puri | you could say tim it's cool but tell me what was dope about the tim one | |
Samir Chaudry | With Tim, it was the fact that he's been doing this for so long, and he really opened my eyes to this concept of having a very high-quality audience. I look at Tim, and I think he has an incredibly high-quality audience.
I think we make a lot of sacrifices because we distribute our stuff on YouTube for viewership. Right? It is very odd that we have public performance metrics next to our work. There are very few other places where that happens.
In business, it doesn't happen where you're like, "Here's how well I'm doing," and anyone can see that at any time if you...
| |
Shaan Puri | Go to a Shopify store. It doesn't just show you sales, like how many sales it has had. Exactly the truest, rawest benchmark is...
| |
Samir Chaudry | Imagine walking into a grocery store and it just has, you know, revenue under every product. It's a very odd thing that pushes us to make decisions for larger viewership rather than higher quality viewership.
I think sitting with Tim, it was a deep understanding of how he's built a very high quality, premium audience and a premium brand over a decade. I think that...
| |
Shaan Puri | something in that interview to you he was like there's always a market for like the best | |
Samir Chaudry | the best yeah | |
Shaan Puri |
And he's like, "So I wanted to... whatever the ads were priced at, I was gonna go like double that and do it." That's how I get that to be the thing, because that will always be there. There will always be a market for whoever's got the highest quality audience with the best ad read, you know? That'll always be there, and I think that's played out.
| |
Samir Chaudry |
Yeah, and I think what's important is for us as creators to realize that what we are doing is not novel. It's been done before. We're building audiences, we're media companies, you know? Like, this has been done before, and we should look far back at who's done it really well.
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | You know, I think that sitting with Tim was that opportunity. It was almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The type of people who reached out to us after the Tim episode really was emblematic of it. It is a high-quality audience that watches Tim and is interested in him. However, it was not our highest performing episode.
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry |
But it's one of my favorites, and it's one that drove a lot of high-quality outreach. It reminded me that we can get really caught up in high viewership, but I think that was something that really pushed me. There's a lot of stuff in there...
There's something that I'll never forget that he said, which was:
> If you do something that is even slightly energy-depleting, it will compound over time.
He emphasized to really look at your day-to-day and recognize what is depleting your energy because it'll compound over time.
| |
Shaan Puri | when you say that it's like I feel like everybody can think of like the one thing right away | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | that you haven't been like really paying that much attention to but when tom did your brain it's like of course it's this yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | And this is, you know, this is from "The 4-Hour Workweek," his book. He talked a lot about who the right clients are to have.
Money is not... we look at it as such, like, "Well, it's a lot of money, so I'll sacrifice these things for it." But if the client relationship isn't good, if it's depleting your energy, if it's causing a strain on your team, it's not worth it.
All those viewpoints are almost antithetical to our internet age, where we think all of this is infinite, right? You know, we can always be making more money. We should always be pursuing more viewership, more money, more of everything.
He came in with the perspective of what's the right money and what's the right view.
| |
Shaan Puri | so he said that energy depleting thing what did you think of for you | |
Samir Chaudry |
I thought of like meetings... I'm a creative person. I like to be creative, and I've kind of just spun myself up to be like, "We run a media company, so I need to operate like a media company owner." And I think about hosting meetings or being on Zoom calls, and I'm like... I really don't like it.
| |
Shaan Puri | Right? At all. So, on the podcast, Sam did a really funny rant where he was like, you know, he had a long build-up. He was like, "You know, I've been... we sold The Hustle this many months ago. It's been 6 months. I've talked to this person, this person. I thought about all these things. You know what I realized? I'm a fucking artist, man."
| |
Samir Chaudry | and he | |
Shaan Puri |
Just like... and I was like, "What?" It's not what you think is coming when he says it. And he also doesn't... like he doesn't come across like an artist. Some people, the way they dress, what they do, you're like, "That's an artist."
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | And he's like, "I'm a fucking artist, man. I just need to create, and I'm gonna just keep doing that no matter what the situation is." I should've... they said, "Be an investor."
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri |
I tried... I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna do that shit, you know? I stopped doing it altogether. I just wanna be an artist, and I think about that a lot actually. I think there's like a great way to kinda draw a line in the sand around, you know, "This is what I am" because it gives me a bunch of energy. And like, what is that not, you know? And how do I just not have to do it? Maybe I don't have to do it at all.
| |
Samir Chaudry | I think sometimes I operate from an old model with a new business. You know, I grew up in an entrepreneurial family; my dad's an entrepreneur, and I'm from an Indian immigrant family. It was all about going to his office, clocking in the morning, and clocking out—being there every day, being present in front of your team.
I think we're just in a new world where it's like, do I need to operate like that? As a creative, as a creator, I found myself reflecting on something else Tim said. It was a quote from Whitney Cummings: "If art imitates life, then you have to have a life."
I think the mentality of "I really want to succeed" is, "Hey, I'm going to go to my office, I'm going to grind every day, I'm going to work really hard." But then, as a creative person or someone who's on a podcast, it's like, well, now I have very little experiences to talk about. You know, it's kind of like I can tell you about the coffee shop down the street where I get coffee every day, and then I come and sit here all day.
| |
Shaan Puri | right so routine why does anyone wanna listen to this | |
Samir Chaudry | why does anyone wanna listen to if I don't have interesting life experiences | |
Shaan Puri |
There's a thing I realized, which was... My grandfather... Like, what does your grandfather do? Or one of your grandfathers, did they have like a factory job or any like...?
| |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, like my grandfather that I knew—because the other one passed before I was born—had a train engineering job in India. | |
Shaan Puri |
Yeah, almost exactly the same. Like grandfather's engineering... a chemical plant, right? Of some kind. He worked there, and to him, work was:
You come to the factory where the ingredients are coming in, they're getting processed, there's fumes everywhere, and that's what work is. And there's like a shift supervisor.
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | And then, if he saw what my dad did, which was like going to work with a briefcase, there's a computer on your desk, you sit in a kind of cubicle or office, and you know, you take phone calls or you get on a flight and go to a business meeting where you're going to shake a hand and maybe do a paper contract deal. That was kind of my dad's job. That's like what work became, right?
This is kind of unrecognizable and looks much less serious than the chemical plant or the fertilizer factory or whatever.
To my dad, what I do is like, "Are you ever going to work? What are you doing? You're sitting in front of your phone. Who's listening to this? You get paid for this?" I'm like, "Well, if I get a bunch of views, then yes." Or, you know, sometimes it's like, "I'm working." It's like, "No, you're just messing around on YouTube."
It's like, right, that's exactly what I do. I'm looking for the most interesting things in the world, I'm synthesizing, and I'm going to talk about it. But it's like our version of work is unrecognizable to, you know, our parents.
And I'm like, "Oh, I just have kids. I just have two little kids." I'm like, whatever they're going to do is probably going to blow my mind. It's going to be so super unrecognizable, but every generation does that. I'm like, "Oh, that's kind of interesting. I should not write off those things that look like complete not work."
And like, our company got bought by Twitch, which is like if you watch people playing video games for a living. It's like, "What? This does not work."
| |
Samir Chaudry |
That was a very confusing era. I mean, even now in my mid-thirties, when I look at what a 20-year-old creator is doing, it's hard for me to track. You know, I spend a lot of time on YouTube, I spend a lot of time talking to YouTube creators, but this next wave of creators is kind of like... "Wait, what's happening? What's going on?"
| |
Shaan Puri | What's the name of the girl who's going viral because she's like an NPC doll? Yeah, Mickey doll. Yeah, I was like, that was... yeah, that's the thing. I don't know, is that what our kids are gonna do? They're gonna break a vending machine?
| |
Samir Chaudry | all of this is so like it brings so much about like who are we as people | |
Shaan Puri | like what | |
Samir Chaudry | what is that that we're into | |
Shaan Puri | have you seen this thing | |
Samir Chaudry | really strange have you | |
Shaan Puri | I haven't seen Vicky, though. Basically, she's just standing there, and people are donating using the TikTok live feature. Have you guys seen this?
| |
Samir Chaudry | It is gang gang. Ice cream is so good! Take it, Jackie. Gang gang gang gang gang gang. Oh, special! Gang gang gang gang gang gang. Balloon gang gang gang gang gang. That was good! Illuminated, he has...
| |
Shaan Puri | So she just... whatever. If they donate to Cowboy, she always says the same thing, the same way. Like, she's a bot. "Girl, you're ready!" And she's just making, like... I don't know, like whatever. Was she making like...? | |
Samir Chaudry | $7,000 a day | |
Shaan Puri | $7,000 a day | |
Samir Chaudry | gang gang gang gang slay okay | |
Shaan Puri | there's all these funny memes too of like guys filming their girlfriend like doing this now right right right | |
Samir Chaudry |
Right... right... right. Now, I think it says a lot about what we crave as audiences. Obviously, there's a lot there to unpack about what we're into, but the interactivity... Like, you think back to entertainment even when we were growing up. It was like the TV told you what was on. It's a "lean back" experience.
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | turn on tv if what you wanted wasn't on you just waited | |
Shaan Puri | and you may not even know yeah you don't even know super into these like niche cooking shows | |
Samir Chaudry | right | |
Shaan Puri | until the yeah till chopped comes out and you're like oh | |
Samir Chaudry | exactly I didn't | |
Shaan Puri | know I wanted to watch other people cook | |
Samir Chaudry | I don't know if you remember the tv guide channel | |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | It was a TV Guide channel. You just waited, and it told you what was on channel 12. If you missed it, you had to wait for a whole other set of channels to scroll by. So that was like a very lean-back experience where we were like, "Okay, you tell us what to watch."
As we progressed, there was TiVo, and it was more on demand. It was like, "Oh shit, we can record a show and have it on demand," or see what's coming up.
Now, you accelerate it all the way to YouTube or Instagram, and it's like, "I can search for what I want. I can curate my own entertainment." Now, I can create my own entertainment, right? I can pay money, and she will do something.
| |
Shaan Puri | yes | |
Samir Chaudry | That's like an... that's to the next level, right? It's like interactive entertainment where I'm not just consuming it; I'm creating the entertainment. I'm part of making it. | |
Shaan Puri | part of it yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, and I think that's what, you know, Twitch is a great example of too, right? Like, people are watching long live streams. Why? It's because they can have an impact on it. | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, I think people don't really understand what's going on with Twitch.
Now, I think it's accepted that Twitch is a thing, which took a while to be recognized as a big deal. It's like, "Is that a big deal?" and the answer is, "Yeah, it's actually a pretty big deal."
However, unless you use Twitch, people still sort of think the default is probably that Twitch is just people watching other people play video games live. While that's part of it, a lot of people are just there for the chat. Many users are simply using it as background noise in another tab.
I remember looking at some data when we were there about how many people are literally just using it as a non-focused tab on Chrome. Some people were like, "Well, we should discount that," but when you talk to users, they say, "No, that's how I like to use Twitch."
| |
Samir Chaudry | I'm not | |
Shaan Puri |
Yeah, it's not like an accident and it's just running in the background. I listen to it while I work and I'm coding. I'm listening to this and I'll check back in... every time something interesting is happening, I'll go... I hear the crowd roar, basically. I go look at the score and I go see what's going on.
| |
Samir Chaudry |
To me, it's like the reinvention of the radio. Twitch has really operated like that, but then again, where you get to play a part in it. Ludwig was another creator that we talked to on the show where he has developed this kind of adversarial relationship with his chat.
| |
Shaan Puri |
Yeah, because in the way you said it, it was interesting, Hugo. It's kinda boring if everybody is just... if there's also just supportive, right? It's like, "You're right," and I was like, "I didn't really think of it that way." And he's not adversarial like they hate each other.
How would you describe it? Like, what is an example of what's going on on his channel?
| |
Samir Chaudry |
It is so odd. There are so many different things that go on. I would say his subathons are probably the thing to bring into focus, which is essentially... you know, he'll go live for... He initially started at 24 hours, but every time you subscribe, every new subscriber, he extended it. Right? So essentially they torture him.
Yeah, he was an adversary. It was like, "I want this to end," but when you take this action, it extends.
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | Right, it extends an hour. So, he ended up doing it for 30 days straight, live streaming for 30 days straight. But again...
| |
Shaan Puri | dead now but it was okay it was fun while it lasted | |
Samir Chaudry | But that's an example of having an adversary relationship, which is, you know, kind of like you can interact, but you're bringing me discomfort.
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | You know, by doing this, it makes it fun for the audience to play with that. It's obviously like a joking relationship, but there's something fun about that.
I think we should really think about these young audiences that are growing up with this. What do they want next?
We are considering the advancements of entertainment in the context of what we had and how advanced this is. We can self-publish on the internet, right? People can comment, and we can have Discord servers to engage with them.
But there's a whole other version of participation. Think about TikTok—why did TikTok become such a big thing? It's participation. It was easy to participate.
| |
Shaan Puri | for anybody to make yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | It was easy to... and they told you what to do. Right? Here's the trend, here's the dance, here's how you do it. Here's a hundred videos of people doing it.
| |
Shaan Puri | it | |
Samir Chaudry |
Right, here's the sound. You try... *click* This. You try it now, right?
Yeah, so even if you look at Pinky Doll, what we're just talking about... For you to do that, for you or I to start doing that, it's... we just start a live account. That's it. We just start. Like, the participation is so easy where we can either:
1. Participate in the actual livestream, or
2. Become that creator
...within a matter of minutes, right? What?
| |
Shaan Puri | do you think's next where do you see the puck going with that I think hard to predict | |
Samir Chaudry | but it's hard to predict but I think | |
Shaan Puri | if anyone could it might be you | |
Samir Chaudry |
Yeah, but I think what we have to realize is that TikTok taught us a lot about the fact that the platform is the creator in that context. Like, if you take the top 10 creators off of TikTok, TikTok's still TikTok, right? You still open it and you... it's a "For You" page. You wouldn't even notice. It's almost reverting back to the lean-back experience:
I open TikTok and I say, "You tell me what's going on." Right back to what we're just talking about with TV.
| |
Shaan Puri | it's just that it's personalized | |
Samir Chaudry |
To every single... it's personalized, yeah. So it's **hyper-personalized**, I think, is number one. Right? When we think about the trends that are coming (which is already happening), but I think also like **participation forward**. So it's like it's personalized, but it's really easy for me to engage in the action too.
I think that's where maybe there's like two extremes:
1. There's the MrBeast [popular YouTuber] extreme, where it's like, "I can't do... I can't buy a train and have it go into a ditch," which is something he did in his last video.
2. [The second extreme is implied but not explicitly stated]
| |
Shaan Puri | I saw that | |
Samir Chaudry | And then the opposite end of the spectrum is, "Here's what's happening on YouTube Shorts or TikTok." It's actually really easy for me to do that, and I can try it myself.
| |
Shaan Puri | I'm in San Francisco. If you walk around SF, you know you can't... like, you stub your toe and it's like, "What did I step on?" Oh, AI! It's like nothing is the answer to everything. It's AI.
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | And I kind of wonder if the answer to this is also AI.
Meaning, you see that AI can draw amazing art, like a painting. You know, it can paint better than a human can paint. It can paint anything you want instantly. Whatever it can write, it can make, you know, chat. It can even create rap lyrics.
So I wonder, do we just get to the point where actually the creator is the algorithm? The algorithm is the creator. It's just hyper-personalized.
Here's the thing: it's going to just deep fake and create something that it thinks you like. It's just going to try 10,000 variations per second. Then, if anything starts to work, it starts to go more down that rabbit hole for more creators.
| |
Samir Chaudry | for more people it might not even be a creator it might just be self generating video right | |
Shaan Puri | that's what I mean like | |
Samir Chaudry | if their algorithm | |
Shaan Puri | Is just making the video, making the content be like, "Okay, people seem to like this." Because they have, I mean, an unreal amount of data, right? They're like, "People like to hear people eat."
| |
Samir Chaudry | has a good sam been deep fake chat | |
Shaan Puri | have you heard of | |
Samir Chaudry | my first million | |
Shaan Puri | I've heard of it. Yeah, I've heard of an audio-only version, not a video one, but an audio-only version. That's a fake conversation.
| |
Samir Chaudry | and how how close was that | |
Shaan Puri | I mean, it's like... okay, if somebody listened to it, like a family member who doesn't listen to the podcast, they would just think this is the podcast.
Yeah, because it doesn't sound robotic, right? There are little moments, but it's kind of passable. If you don't know what deep fakes are, you'd be like, "Well, I guess it just sounded like that."
If you listen to the podcast, you'd be like, "Oh, you're cool," but you're not really substantively saying anything.
Like, did you hear the one where they did Joe Rogan talking to Steve Jobs? Yeah, that one was pretty good, but I think it's kind of edited to make a cool demo.
| |
Samir Chaudry |
I listened to "Joe Rogan and Sam Altman," which is... it's a YouTube channel called "The Joe Rogan AI Experience." And I... genius idea. Yeah, it's a genius idea.
But I clicked on it to find out like Joe Rogan and Sam Altman talking about OpenAI and how ChatGPT works, right? Started listening to it to be like, "What does this sound like?"
| |
Shaan Puri | I wanna hear one | |
Samir Chaudry | And then I just was like, "Wait, this is just good and interesting." I found myself listening to it, and then I was like, "Do I care?" So if...
| |
Shaan Puri | We can do that with the like V 0.1. Then you just have to believe, like, "Okay, inevitably that's where it goes."
Well, there's been a few of these that go viral, right? Like the kind of AI, fake AI things. There's one on Twitch. I don't know if you've seen the Twitch one of Biden and Trump debating.
| |
Samir Chaudry | Yes, I think where we're going to see this all really skyrocket is during the election, for sure. | |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry |
Right, and it's going to get really weird... crazy and weird. I brought it up about you because it happened to me and Colin recently. There was a video of me, Colin, and Mr. Beast talking about an online casino that he had started. Our lips were also [moving in the video, presumably].
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | deep faked and | |
Shaan Puri | is it on youtube or is it | |
Samir Chaudry | No, it's taken down. We got it taken down pretty fast, but it's cool.
| |
Shaan Puri | really fuck that | |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, it was really compelling. But I mean, it was too compelling. People could click on it. To the untrained eye, it's like, "Oh, that could have been a moment from the podcast I didn't watch."
I've had to have conversations with my parents about, "Hey, be careful. If someone calls you and you think it's me, let's develop a safe word."
Basically, when you ask me what's next, the thing that's been on my mind the most is physical experiences. I actually think that we're going to want things that are uniquely human in the coming years. I think we're going to want things that are like collective human experiences.
For example, stand-up comedy. I think we're going to want to sit and be like, "That human is standing there delivering that entertainment to me." Or plays in theater. I think we're going to want that.
I also think there's a lot of digital creators who are building really promising communities where people will show up. But there are a lot of online creators who are building high viewership, yet no one would actually show up to something that they do. I think that's important to consider. | |
Shaan Puri | and what's the | |
Samir Chaudry |
I think the difference is the amount of personality that you inject into your videos and if people are willing to connect with that. Like long-form podcasting, there's people who spend more time with you and Sam than they do talking to their own mom or their own best friend. So they have this really in-depth parasocial relationship. You guys have done live events, people come...
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | Right, and I think there are other creators who rip all of that out because they're looking at the algorithm. They're like, "You know what? When I inject my personality..." | |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry |
10% of people stop watching, but they're looking at it from a view of 5,000,000 people. They'd rather have 5,000,000 views than 4,500,000 views. But when I look at it, I'm like, "I think I'd rather have 100,000 views or 100,000 dedicated fans who are..."
| |
Shaan Puri | who walk away knowing something about me like | |
Samir Chaudry | One more unit of trust. Exactly who are down to listen to me talk and understand my personality? Then try and rip all of that out to make sure they get to the end of the video. That is how the business of YouTube is predicated on: do they click and do they watch till the end?
But I think sometimes that can give you the wrong signals of what should I keep in and what should I keep out. Again, back to the conversation of a high-quality audience. I think for young creators, it's like playing video games on YouTube. If I try this, then this number goes up, right?
I think that is too easy to manipulate right now. There's so much information; I think we're part of that, sharing information on how that all works. But you do have to take a step back and be like, "Am I building a brand?" A brand is about trust, credibility, and depth of connection. That comes from some stuff that might not be optimized for the algorithm.
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, there's a difference between drop shipping and building an actual brand around what you do, right? Like, yeah, you know, it's...
| |
Samir Chaudry | a good comp | |
Shaan Puri | There's... I don't know if you ever saw when Sony got hacked. Do you remember that? When the emails were hacked?
Yeah, there was one email that I remember came out that was pretty interesting. I think it was one of the early Sony guys talking to the CEO. Or maybe it was one guy from a record label talking to him. He was like, "You know, here's what we're saying."
He said, "Basically, the more popular this gets, like, you know, people streaming music at home, blah blah blah, it's also creating a pent-up demand for what he called... I think out-of-home entertainment is gonna be big."
He mentioned that out-of-home entertainment, like festivals, would do well. This was a while back, and there was this kind of pretty big music festival craze that came out of it.
But there were also a couple of other trends, like Tough Mudder and Spartan Race. All of a sudden, people were like, "You know what? I just want to go and voluntarily crawl through mud this weekend."
Right? Like, why would somebody want to do that? Yeah, it's kind of because you're sitting in front of a computer all day. Life got too easy, and you kind of feel soft inside. So you go voluntarily have this hardship. But also, you want to be able to Instagram it and put it online to show that you did it.
| |
Samir Chaudry |
Yeah, I think I totally agree with that. I mean, obviously that's what happened. But I think AI is going to create this homogenous nature to content. Everything's going to feel the same, and that is going to make us crave something completely unique and different. Almost like looking for...
AI has brought a lot of efficiencies into our studio. We use AI for a lot [of things].
| |
Shaan Puri | like what | |
Samir Chaudry | do you guys use autopod are you familiar with that | |
Shaan Puri | no what do I what | |
Samir Chaudry |
Was that... So there's 3 cameras right now, right? And so basically you would bring these 3 cameras in and you want to get clarity on like: if I'm talking, the camera's on me; if you're talking, the camera's on you. Oh, I see.
| |
Shaan Puri | does those cuts | |
Samir Chaudry | it just does those cuts automatically if it's a a 3 hour conversation it'll do it in 90 seconds | |
Shaan Puri | oh that's amazing | |
Samir Chaudry | And it'll be very precise. When you start talking, it'll go there. If you have a human here live switching, which I don't know if someone's live...
| |
Shaan Puri | he's not live switching right now we talked about it like right before we started this | |
Samir Chaudry | So, if he's live switching with the switcher, he actually can't predict when you're about to start talking, right? He's going to be a second late.
So now, do I trust the human more, or do I trust the AI more? I mean, the reality is it's brought a ton of efficiency into our office. That's cool.
We also explore YouTube titles and play around with AI to be like, "Hey, here's the title we thought of, but give us 10 variations." Sometimes, maybe it's ours that we like.
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | but if we keep going down that path you know the other day we were in a is | |
Shaan Puri | this chat gpt or it's a different tool | |
Samir Chaudry |
ChatGPT, but there are other AI tools specifically for creators. There are some that aren't public and can only be used if you're partnered with certain creator companies. Specifically, there's a company called Spotter.
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | That has a really great AI tool that I was using this morning. The funny thing is, you're sitting in a room with your team, and the question arises: Is it more efficient to sit alone with AI and get hundreds of variations, or is it more efficient to sit together as a team for 30 minutes?
I don't know the answer to that, but I think probably it's AI. So the question for me is, if this is driving so much efficiency, am I going to crave inefficiency in other places?
| |
Shaan Puri | And it's like the slow food movement. Totally. Like, farm to table. Fast food gets too prevalent, then it creates the demand, the craving for the other.
| |
Samir Chaudry | for the inefficiencies yeah | |
Shaan Puri | I've seen that even though something gets created, it usually ends up getting dwarfed by the thing that's, of course, better, faster, cheaper... you know, that style of stuff.
| |
Samir Chaudry | Entertainment, I think, is different. Like, you go to a concert; it's the most inefficient way to hear the music.
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | The Taylor Swift concert, right? If you like Taylor Swift's music and you just want to hear it, just go on Spotify.
| |
Shaan Puri | right you're one | |
Samir Chaudry |
Tap away. So why do you want this collective experience? Why do you want to drive, deal with parking, get in there, you know, get to your seat? It's kind of a pain in the ass to go to a concert, right? So what is it about that that's... you know, it only happens once, right? It's like an experience that you get to happen.
| |
Shaan Puri | but but you know by the numbers a lot more people will stream tim swift than will go to that | |
Samir Chaudry | agreed | |
Shaan Puri | But you know, she'll make a lot of money and can monetize totally, totally differently.
Yeah, tell me about Mr. Beast. So, I've gotten to go to his place and hang out with him a little bit. He's a pretty remarkable dude.
Mhm. And not like, "Oh, he's like an alien" or whatever, but just very interesting to see him in his normal ways of working. You can kind of see some differences between how he approaches things.
For me, I was like, "Oh, how does he approach things? How does he see situations and approach things differently than I do?" He came on the pod, but actually, nothing he said on the pod would have given me that insight.
But actually watching him work and being in a brainstorm with him, you do start to see those differences. I think you've gotten a lot of access to those moments.
Yeah, what's what stood out to you that you've kind of picked up or noticed just by spending a little time with him?
| |
Samir Chaudry |
I would say he's like the most unique human I have ever met. I think he's *very* unique in what he cares about, you know? I think what he cares about is very different from... what I care about or what a lot of people care about. He's different.
| |
Shaan Puri | what does he care about | |
Samir Chaudry | He is so unique in the fact that he is laser-focused in a way that I've never really experienced. And maybe at times, like in a way that... | |
Shaan Puri | I don't wanna experience | |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, yeah. Jesse doesn't want to do that. I mean, he and I have this conversation a lot. I don't crave what he has; I like to have more of a wide perspective on life and a view of different types of experiences.
He's very committed to his craft and can laser focus in on something. If you've been in one of those brainstorms with him, he's just very blunt. He's very... you know, he's just like, "Why would we do that? That doesn't make sense."
No, it doesn't exist in the same way for him that it exists for other people, based on social context or based on... like, "Well, wait..."
| |
Shaan Puri | so say that again so you said no doesn't exist for him | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | The same way it exists for other people, I think that's really accurate. Yes, I have a story as an example of that from him. What went for you?
| |
Samir Chaudry |
The time where I saw that the most was at the **Mr. Beast Burger** opening in New Jersey at the American Dream Mall. Colin and I went insane, right? We spent the 24 hours with him before and after, and lived with him through this... what felt like a hurricane storm of fandom and new experiences for him, Reid, and the whole team.
| |
Shaan Puri | think it was gonna be go go to the part where | |
Samir Chaudry | where he walks out where he walks out dude that was so I was the only camera behind him at that moment | |
Shaan Puri | are you this camera or are you | |
Samir Chaudry | on this camera your video | |
Shaan Puri | yeah like leo is famous but I was like this is not what I thought was gonna be | |
Samir Chaudry | I mean, there were multiple times where I had the chills filming this video. Yeah, so I filmed that. I know that. I filmed that clip, and then Jimmy was like, "That's crazy! Send me that." I sent it to him, and then he tweeted it. It was just like, it's completely insane.
But so that experience, there was, you know, the night before, there was a question around how many burgers they could serve. There were already, I think, 15,000 or 20,000 people there the night before, right?
| |
Shaan Puri | it was | |
Samir Chaudry | Completely insane! They were sleeping in the mall. Mall security was there, and they were just like, "Okay, alright." I guess no one fully understood how big he was at that moment. So they were like, "Okay, we don't know if we can serve all these people." And Jimmy was just like, "What?"
| |
Shaan Puri | what | |
Samir Chaudry |
"Do you mean let's just figure it out? Like, what do we need to do?" And they're like, "It's just not possible. We can't get more supplies here."
And he was like, "Well, can we pay for it? Can we just pay someone to do it?"
And he [the other person] was like, "Well, I don't... you know, I don't think so. I don't think that's possible."
And basically, what ended up happening was it *was* possible, and Jimmy just kept pushing.
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | At a point, a lot of people would be like, "Okay, that's a no." If I ask three times, it's a no. There's no other possibility.
| |
Shaan Puri | oh the fire marshal said it he's like yeah you know whatever | |
Samir Chaudry |
Yeah, and I think that he thinks in different ways too. Like, you know, his immediate thought was around the staff. He was like, "I need the staff to be really into this. I need them to be on it." And so he's like, "I'm gonna pay everyone an extra $1,000 today."
That is $30,000 - there's 30 people working. It's in our video where he says, "I'm gonna pay all of you guys an extra $1,000 to whatever you're getting paid today."
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry |
That's like an irrational thing to do. A lot of people would look at that and be like, "That's kind of irrational to spend an additional $30,000." But you know, he looks at that and he was like, "This is what I need to make this excellent."
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry |
We're just gonna do that, you know. And you look at what he tweets about now too. He spends, you know, $1,000,000 or $2,000,000 on a video and it makes $200,000 in AdSense revenue. And obviously, his sponsors and stuff [contribute], but some of his videos don't make money. And he's just like, "But that's... they're good."
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | you know he he thinks in just different ways like that yeah he's just very unique | |
Shaan Puri | I feel the same way. He also said some things that were really funny to me.
Like, I was like, "So do you want to have kids? What's your goal in life besides, okay, yeah, I've heard the YouTube part. What else do you want?"
I think he said, "I want to be president. I want to do this. I want to be a billionaire." I was like, "Okay, cool, but what do you want out of your life? Forget the big, cool-sounding things. Do you want to get married and have kids? What do you want to do?"
He was like, "Yeah, you know, I think I'll probably date or get married or whatever. I wouldn't want kids. No, fuck no, I don't want kids."
I was like, "Oh, why not?" He said, "Actually, you know, like Steve and Elon, they have kids. There's probably something to it, so I'll do it."
At first, it was just hilarious to hear him say, "Yeah, just like the first name, basically, literally like the dead Steve Jobs." Yeah, who he never met. Amazing!
He was like, "That's the class of people I'm in. You know, if those people did it, there might be something to it, so I'll do it just for that reason. But I don't feel the need for that because I'm on this mission, and that's where my head's at right now."
| |
Samir Chaudry |
I have seen him, you know, just being friends with him and having conversations... We just did another podcast with him recently. I have seen him mature quite a bit. Like, I think we do have to remember that's a guy in his mid-twenties.
| |
Shaan Puri | of course yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | you know he's | |
Shaan Puri | Actually, he wasn't even... I don't even know how old he was. I remember laughing at something and I was like, "Dude, he's so much smarter and more mature than I was at 24 or 23, whatever he is."
| |
Samir Chaudry |
Though again, it's... that's not... I don't... I didn't have any friends like him when I was in my early twenties. I think he's a very rare individual. He's 25 now, and he's maturing into... he runs a company with over 100+ employees. He's got this whole massive operation, this massive platform, and he's 25. It's going to be interesting to watch the next 5 years.
| |
Shaan Puri | if you were to advise him what would you tell him | |
Samir Chaudry | I think he's already experiencing some of this, where he's looking at his content and injecting more storytelling into it, which I think is really, really smart. It's something that Colin and I have been talking to him about for a long time.
Yeah, you know, it's the same thing I was saying earlier. I think it's okay to have a deeper connection with him, with the content, and with the contestants that he has on there. He can sacrifice some of the hyper-retention editing for that.
I also, you know, a year ago, probably would have told him he was potentially doing too many things, and he's already refocused. He's really just focused on the main channel and Feastables. If you think about a year ago, Beast Burger, Feastables, main channel, Reacts, Gaming—these are all different things he was doing.
| |
Shaan Puri | Right, plus 25 other amazing opportunities. Yeah, people who want to meet him and this and that, right? Everything will tug your attention away. | |
Samir Chaudry |
And it's... he can be excellent in all of those things, but as you grow up, as you mature, it's like: What do you say yes to? What do you say no to? And when you're at that platform where you have any and every opportunity, how do you focus? It's hard.
| |
Shaan Puri | well the way I put it is he can be excellent at any of those but probably not all of them | |
Samir Chaudry | I'm not all of them yeah right like | |
Shaan Puri | not at the same time right you could do anything you just can't do everything at the same time | |
Samir Chaudry | Because as a creator in a creator-led business, you are the bottleneck for everything. I've spent time with him; he is the bottleneck for everything, right? He needs to be pulled into the room to look at something. He has, you know, say on all of that stuff, and he also has the right mind for it. That's the reason that company is so big and why he's built such a large platform.
So where do you inject that? Is it across 20 projects or is it across 2? I think they've really refocused and focused on 2 projects. | |
Shaan Puri | Of these platforms, there is usually a guy or a girl at a certain time who is like the one. You know, whether it was Casey Neistat or PewDiePie, they have these epic arcs. They reach the top of the mountain, and then most of them either literally stop creating because they transition careers, get burnt out, or whatever it is.
Some are still creating, but they're just not as prominent because there’s a new wave of people doing new, cool things. MrBeast is kind of remarkable, though. He may have a different path or trajectory than most.
If I were to say, "Alright, make a prediction: five years from now, what is today?" If MrBeast is like, you know, the number one YouTube creator and launching a couple of these businesses underneath, like Feastables and whatnot, do you think he’ll still be the number one creator on YouTube?
| |
Samir Chaudry | I think he's probably the number one online digital media company. I don't know what "creator" is going to mean in that many years. I think he has the best pulse on online storytelling right now.
We saw some people try this, like BuzzFeed and these massive media companies that emerged. I think he's more akin to a media company than he is a creator. That's what I think. I believe he'll be the biggest media company. The way he's building it is like a true company. It's a great vibe there. If you've been there, you know they have good people involved.
So, I don't know what the content looks like. I don't know what he, as the creator, looks like, but I think it will be a media company. When we sat with him last in our last interview, he had a ton of aspirations to make content for Netflix. He has a ton of aspirations to produce stuff. I don't think he's that keen or intent on having to be in everything or being the lead in everything. | |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | I think that's been the draw right now. But I think in the future, Mr. Beast is a content studio. You know, it could be... we could be looking at the next Disney or Paramount, or you know, some massive studio that can build IP and monetize in different ways.
Mr. Beast is the first, if we look at it, and say that's the first show that was built out of there. It's a game show that has a couple of different formats. It's distributed, and it's the biggest show. They built a chocolate brand out of that that operates kind of like a game show; you can win stuff when you buy the chocolate.
Right? So it's like, okay, that looks and feels really similar to Disney and Mickey Mouse. Let's build this big media platform and connect a product to it. They have that skill set; they can probably replicate that.
As you look at their cast of characters, you know there is a cast of characters there that can be built out. There is more IP that can be built out. It's like build IP and connect products to it, or connect experiences to it. It could be an experience too.
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, if he chooses to go that path, I want to talk about this. This is amazing.
| |
Samir Chaudry | so yeah | |
Shaan Puri | so your con | |
Samir Chaudry | your yeah | |
Shaan Puri | Content Company did something pretty dope. You guys did, I think, was it 100 editions or...?
| |
Samir Chaudry | a 1000 editions 500 of those | |
Shaan Puri | no no no but this was to celebrate it | |
Samir Chaudry | was to celebrate 2 years of our newsletter 2 years | |
Shaan Puri | yeah 2 | |
Samir Chaudry | years of the newsletter the published press yeah | |
Shaan Puri | So, you got this newsletter, **The Published Press**, which is dope. It's like a kind of what you guys do on the YouTube channel. It's sort of like a great newsletter for creators.
| |
Samir Chaudry | I mean, it was largely inspired by the Morning Brew hustle movement, right? Which was like, "Okay, we are subscribers to these newsletters. What if we made one about our own community?"
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, and then you made an actual physical newspaper. I'm very honored because you pretty much sold out of it.
| |
Samir Chaudry | these | |
Shaan Puri |
Yeah, this was dope. Why do something like this? I'm asking because this isn't like an economic move. This is not gonna grow your audience, it's not gonna get you rich... It's not gonna do any of those things. It takes effort.
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | It's a risk in a little way. What's your philosophy on just doing dope shit like this? Why?
| |
Samir Chaudry | It just... it's fulfilling. It's hard to say that we have a hard-nosed philosophy on it. It's just that we are creative people.
As we've built a business, one of the interesting things about being a creative is that you're really good at kind of going from 0 to 1. It's like, "Let's just do cool stuff until something works." What becomes startling is when something works, and then you're like, "Okay, so what now? Do I just keep doing this thing?"
That's the really funny thing about Colin and I. We always say that creatives aren't consistent people. So, we've surrounded ourselves with really consistent people who help us be consistent in the formats that we've found.
But you need that occasional pop of inspiration, like, "You know what would be cool? To make a newspaper!"
We were rebranding the publication for us. That's a new logo for it. We were like, "How do we tell people that we've been doing this for two years? How do we celebrate it?" Also, we just crossed 100,000 subscribers on the newsletter, and it was like, "How do we celebrate this moment?"
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry |
What is it? Do we just put out a tweet that's like, "Hey, it's been great"? And we were like, "Well, as things are getting increasingly more digital, what if we did something physical?" And that was it. That was the impetus.
Then it was just, "Hey, is everyone excited about this? Okay, cool. Are we down to stay up late at night for this? Great." And that's it. It just organically happens when you... There's a lot of people who we asked about this and they were like, "That's not going to happen in the time that we wanted it to happen in." And that's another exciting thing for a creative person who's driven.
| |
Shaan Puri | I found the challenge | |
Samir Chaudry | That's another exciting thing—impossible! So, yeah, I would say that it, again, cost us money. We do not make money from this; there's no sponsor in it or anything. It didn't dramatically grow our audience, but it has been a moment where a lot of people could understand what the brand was. A lot of big creators reached out to say, "Can I have one?" | |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | You know, I want one in my house. Then we're seeing that creators have framed it and put it in their houses. We're seeing that there's just something for one on the...
| |
Shaan Puri | other side | |
Samir Chaudry | You asked me, you DM'd us and asked for one. To me, this is again back to the concept of a high-quality audience. It's like the people who reached out about this, it's a premium.
| |
Shaan Puri | And the remask is because it's like, in retrospect, once you see the final product and it's cool, then you hear these stories and it's like, "Yeah, all these things make sense in hindsight."
It's upfront, when it's kind of unknown, kind of unproven, tight deadline... you know, a lot of things to do. That's when it's hard to do this. Or sometimes you say yes to too many of these things, right?
So it's almost like... sure, what you just said kind of reminds me of how Google had the 20% time. They would hire the best engineers in the world, and like, this guy's fixing the bug in the AdSense platform. But we gotta give these guys like 20% time to just tinker and hack on...
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | Stuff that they, you know, get motivation from. Logically, you'd say, "Well, you're losing, you know, 20% of your time," which is basically one day out of the week that they're not working on their main job. But the reality is that sometimes those hit, and also it makes the other four days out of the week... | |
Samir Chaudry | yep | |
Shaan Puri | More productive, you don't actually lose anything totally because you attract the best people. You give them an outlet to be creative.
| |
Samir Chaudry | And also, if you're not following what's exciting you, then you've just built yourself a job. You know, and that's like... then you have to look at it and be like, "Wait."
| |
Shaan Puri | what did | |
Samir Chaudry | I just do | |
Shaan Puri | you know what what | |
Samir Chaudry |
Did I just... I also think that, you know, what we do with our merchandise and what we do with anything physical... Most of it at the moment is not driving crazy revenue. It's not like a revenue driver for us, but we think about building our community. We're very niche, and so for niche creators, we think about collectibles. Like, we want to create collectibles, right?
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry |
And when we have collectibles, then you get to be a part of our community and be like, "I'm in it!" It's the feeling of going to see a band when you were younger and keeping the ticket stub. It's like, "I was a part of this community at this moment." Right?
So these are collectibles along the way of our journey. You think about the massive creators like Logan Paul and Mr. Beast or Emma Chamberlain - they're creating consumables.
| |
Shaan Puri | yep | |
Samir Chaudry | Which is great for mass creators, right? So, these things are like cool collectibles that we think are awesome. We're planning another drop in October.
Our merchandise does not drive crazy amounts of revenue for us; it's relatively nominal. But it's awesome when you walk down the street and see someone in the merch. We've sold 2,000 of these hats, and they're out in the world.
Right? 2,000 people are wearing them, and we see stories where people connect because they saw someone else wearing the merch. To me, that is like the symbol of community building. It's this tight-knit group who can connect and be like, "I'm part of the same group as you. I identify in the same world as you do."
| |
Shaan Puri | Totally! I love the way you put it. It's a great frame on the idea of consumables versus collectibles.
When we were about to launch merch for the podcast, it was like, "Oh yeah, merch!" And then I thought, "Okay, here are two things I know."
Number one: People don't want to wear a shirt that says "My First Million." That's just not going to happen. It's not cool. I don't want to wear that, and they don't want to wear that. Let's just all agree on that.
What they will wear is inside jokes and slang that only, if you know, you know. And if you don't, you don't.
| |
Samir Chaudry | no small boy stuff | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, no small boy stuff. I have this shirt that we made. It's a fuzzy Polaroid of Sam when he had his hot dog stand. Mhmm. But it's in the style of those Kanye shirts.
| |
Samir Chaudry | or whatever | |
Shaan Puri | It's like some cool-looking imitation of that great thing, and it's like nobody will even know who that is or what's a hot dog stand. But like, if you know, you know. And that's it. That's it. | |
Samir Chaudry | and I | |
Shaan Puri |
I was like, "We should just do..." I was like, "What if, for my rule, it's like the Tim Ferriss rule?" It's basically:
If you're not gonna make a ton of money on it, it should be free, or it should be sold at cost, but like... and do like a limited run so that it's more interesting. Totally.
And just only... if you're gonna try to make money, only make money when you're gonna make *a lot* of money. Don't try to like trickle a little bit of... beg for money everywhere because that doesn't... like, nobody likes that and that's not the right approach for something like this.
| |
Samir Chaudry | lot of our merch is also the | |
Shaan Puri | right way to think about | |
Samir Chaudry | A lot of our merch shipments are driven by our referral program through the newsletter, right? And so that's like, you know, again, that's like pulling from the playbook. Same, yeah, yeah, the old newsletter playbook. | |
Shaan Puri | You had this tweet or this video that I saw, which was a Naval quote that I really liked. It said something like, "Your problem is that you're writing to be read."
| |
Samir Chaudry | yes | |
Shaan Puri | That resonated with you and me. I want you to talk about that. Why did that hit? Because it's so simple. It's like, you know, yeah, I don't know, seven words or something.
| |
Samir Chaudry |
I think it hit me at a time where I felt like we were creating very scared. At the beginning of this year, I felt like we were creating very scared. We had crossed a million subscribers last year, we felt like we had built a brand in the space, and opened up the year... We made a few videos that we just canned. We just didn't put them out because we were like, "Oh, those aren't gonna work for the audience," but we liked them.
We got really in our heads around, you know... Again, you're playing this dance as a creator of:
1. What you want to make
2. What the audience wants to watch
3. What the platform wants
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | Those are the three things that we think you're constantly playing with. If you overvalue what the audience wants, you will be catering to a group that has obviously created your career. If you know you've made it, you can't forget that it came from what you wanted to make.
I think on one side of the spectrum, whether you're a publisher or a creator, there is the artist who says, "I do not care what you think. I'm going to make this." That has financial implications, right? It can be very hard to make money like that, but it's very cool. We respect artists like that. Some of the most respected artists are misunderstood, maybe understood once they pass, or just didn't care about what the audience thought.
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | your interpretation doesn't matter to them right then you go on the | |
Shaan Puri | I love that you exist, but like, sure, I like guacamole on my Chipotle. Exactly! I'm just going to have a job. It's okay.
| |
Samir Chaudry | The other side of the spectrum is being a distributor. It's like, why do we have so many Spider-Man movies? It's because they put butts in seats, right?
So, the person at the studio, the movie studio, is not an artist. They're thinking about, "What do we make? What do we greenlight?" Spider-Man is going to get people in the seats; that's going to sell tickets.
I think as a creator, you have to be in the middle of that. Some creators slide heavily on the side of distributor, just thinking, "What does the audience want to watch? I'll make that." And then on the other side, there's the question of, "What do I want to make?"
I think that Naval quote really hit me in this feeling of losing... you know, I did grow up, I went to film school, I took playwriting in college. I'm really into artsy stuff.
I think when money gets involved, when you start commercializing your creativity, and when it doesn't work for years, that's an important part of our story, right? It didn't work for a long time. We didn't make any money for a long time. You get terrified of losing it, and when you get terrified of losing it, you start creating to be watched or writing to be read.
| |
Shaan Puri | what is it creating scared | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah creating scared yeah | |
Shaan Puri | and let's take a book title right I like that one | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah I mean it's something colin and I talk about a lot | |
Shaan Puri | it's like | |
Samir Chaudry |
Let's not create scared. You know, what are we scared of? It's all this mix of the public view count, the perception, the tweets of like "These guys have fallen off" or whatever you think is going to happen if you put out a video that people don't like. And people can feel that, I think. I think you can feel it as a creator. It feels really uncomfortable to create scared.
| |
Shaan Puri | and right | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah it's not it's not fun to watch | |
Shaan Puri | yeah absolutely you you know you had hasan minhaj on the show and | |
Samir Chaudry | love hasan | |
Shaan Puri | He's very much on the artist side. I think he drew a line in the sand for himself. He's like, "Okay, I'm either going to get on TikTok and dance for the algorithm."
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | Or I'm gonna go the other way, and I'm not. He had this soul-searching moment. It's not like, you know, he sent me a voice memo once. I was just like, "Bro, I'm gonna just create great art. I'm an artist, and an artist creates art. That's what I'm doing. I'm not a businessman first. I'm not a creator first. This is what I'm gonna do."
And he's like, "So I gotta be true to that, and I'm gonna work on projects that are interesting to me from that perspective. It's gotta hit my bar on that."
That's the vibe I got from him. But, you know, this was a few years ago when we were talking about that stuff. You had him on, I think, more recently.
| |
Samir Chaudry | end of last year | |
Shaan Puri | yeah did he say anything that kinda resonated with you on that | |
Samir Chaudry | Totally, yeah. I mean, he talked a lot about... he kind of changed my whole perception on making YouTube Shorts, I guess. What?
| |
Shaan Puri | did he say | |
Samir Chaudry | He kind of made fun of it, you know? It's Hassan's like, so funny the way he talks. But he described making YouTube shorts as being a "skinned rat" for the engineers in San Bruno, which I thought was really funny. He was just like, "You're a guinea pig. You are essentially creating more data points for them, for their... you know, your boss, whatever works on their algorithm." You then pander to that, right?
So he kind of pushed us in that direction of recognizing: are we artists, or are we creating for the algorithm?
The second thing he said, which I heavily resonate with, is: "Everything is about the PDF." This means, what is the idea? Write it on a piece of paper. Is the idea good? Show it to someone, pitch it to someone. Do they immediately go, "That's a good idea"? Do they laugh? Do they feel some sort of emotion?
| |
Shaan Puri | before it's packaged | |
Samir Chaudry | Before it's made, yeah. And he was like, "People, even when we got on our pre-call with him, he was like, 'Alright, what are we making together when we sit down?'"
He asked us that question, and I was like, "Oh, you're right. What is the Hasan Minhaj, Colin, and Samir interview?"
Let's write it out. Let's not plan it, but what is it? Like, what's the idea? Why is this a good idea to do this?
| |
Shaan Puri | what was the answer | |
Samir Chaudry | We talked about how we can bring forward his creator story of starting on YouTube and using YouTube to navigate this crazy, windy path up to Netflix. Now, he has kind of left YouTube, but does he use Hudson's origins, which are on YouTube?
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah I mean he used | |
Samir Chaudry | to upload he came up with shows and and put them on youtube if you go to his channel and search by oldest | |
Shaan Puri | like how like sketch shows | |
Samir Chaudry | Sketch shows he did hosted shows where he talked about the news, almost like Tosh.0. Yeah, Tosh.0. For us, it was like, "No one has told that story." That's interesting. Let's talk about that and let's talk about your relationship with... | |
Shaan Puri | He was also like 18 or 19 doing comedy clubs, right? Like, he's been in stand-up in San Francisco or something like that, I think. Totally.
| |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, I watched him do *King's Jester* live. Did you go to one of his shows?
| |
Shaan Puri | that was really good | |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, so it's a stand-up special. That guy's like a performer, man. He really inspired me to be like, "This isn't just a craft comedy show." | |
Shaan Puri | it's a it's | |
Samir Chaudry | a one man show | |
Shaan Puri | it's it's | |
Samir Chaudry |
A performance. That, to me, really inspired both Colin and I to be like, "This is a craft. You have to work on it." You know, performing is part of this craft. Ideation is the biggest part of it. You know, he has a writing partner that he sits and writes with.
| |
Shaan Puri | did you meet pratt | |
Samir Chaudry | or | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, what's he like? I've never gotten to meet him, but I am very, very fascinated by kind of the wingman.
There are a lot of popular people, but almost all of them are not solo. Everyone's got some kind of a team, and usually, they have their confidant—the person who's in the bunker with them, figuring things out. This confidant complements them, does all the things they're not good at, and keeps them going in the right direction.
Those people are actually really, really fascinating to me, and nobody really asks them a ton of questions. Totally! I have a million questions for them. What... tell me a little bit about...
| |
Samir Chaudry | Oftentimes, as creatives and creators, we think we want to hire an employee, but actually what we want is a collaborator.
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | And if you're lucky enough to come up with a collaborator, then you know those are the people, in my opinion, who typically make it—like fully make it—when they have a collaborator.
So, Pratt had limited time with him, but I find comedians to be astute observers of the world, and I found Pratt to be very much that. He had a notebook and pen during the King's Jester taping.
I don't know if it was a taping or if it was just one of the shows, but they were prepping for the Netflix special. I don't know if it was a taping or if it was just one of the shows, but they were prepping for the Netflix special.
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry |
And he was sitting there during the entire show, he was sitting right in front of me just voraciously taking notes on what was working, what the audience was reacting to, when there was too much of a pause, when there wasn't... Like he was... And right after the show, before Hassan came back into the green room, him and Pratt were talking.
| |
Shaan Puri |
I love that. Yeah, I love it when it's sort of like we're going back to the lab. It's like we kind of do our thing, but... because I tell Ben - so Ben's my collaborator basically. We did a couple businesses together, but also when it comes to content, like we recently did... We're kind of new to YouTube, but we used to just basically put the podcast on YouTube.
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah I remember and I was like you guys are growing now though | |
Shaan Puri |
I started really bad. It was like... the first time we did it, I remember we had like 4,000 views and I was just like, "Oh man." Which is fine for when you start, but we already had the podcast, which was significant. So it's kind of like if you play poker at $1 stakes and then you go down to the micro stakes, like quarters and 10 cent tables. It doesn't feel very fun because you've now experienced a different level of stakes.
| |
Samir Chaudry | But those aren't even in the same casino. Yeah, Spotify or Apple Podcasts and YouTube? Yeah, it's a completely different group of people.
| |
Shaan Puri |
So exactly... We were like, "Alright, we think we could do this," and so we started to grow. But recently we did one, and it's this... It says "Money" - that's the one on the right there. That has... how many views do I have now?
| |
Samir Chaudry | 3 guys 1,000 | |
Shaan Puri | Nice! So, 300,000 views. This was a video; it was the first video that I made for YouTube. At first, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to create a video that I think is going to be like YouTube." It's not just a podcast.
Me and Ben were like, "What if we just took 3 days? What if we just tried to make one great video for this?" And we did. We made that, and we were basically collaborating on that for the first time. We had done that that way.
But the cool thing is, now we've been working together for a couple of years, and you get this mind meld where it's almost like you can speak in shorthand or reference things. It's like if you say something, I already know what part he's going to be like, "Oh, we gotta talk about that later," right? Because that relates to these other three things.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then earlier we talked about this, but that's... if you can get to that, that's like a pretty formidable thing that I think most people don't have. But when you have it, it's like, "Oh, fuck, this is..." that lets you go places.
| |
Samir Chaudry |
I think you need someone who's excited and wants to be a part of a team where their name isn't at the forefront. Which can be really complex, right? But we know who Pratt is. However, if you're a fan of Hasan Minhaj at scale, you're not gonna know who he [the writer] is. So you have to find someone who's really into that too, right? Someone who likes [being behind the scenes].
| |
Shaan Puri | that person if you've ever tried to hire a lot of people would be like I wanna work for you because I wanna be you | |
Samir Chaudry | because I wanna be you yeah | |
Shaan Puri | and it's like okay cool but that doesn't really work | |
Samir Chaudry | like especially with this | |
Shaan Puri | group I need | |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, this group right now, it's hard to hire someone who doesn't want to be a creator or is trying to become a creator. Working with you to be like, "Okay, now I get it. Now I'm gonna go do it."
But yeah, you have to find someone who's down for that. It is kind of like being an athlete where, you know, when I leave, you're going to talk about the performance. You're probably going to watch game tape back and be like, "Oh, maybe I should have asked this question there," or "Maybe this would have been more interesting," or "He went a little long here; I should have stopped him."
You know, there's so much that goes into this that if you deeply care about the craft and you have someone who cares that much about the craft, you can get better at the craft.
| |
Shaan Puri | get better faster | |
Samir Chaudry | you can get better way faster yeah that's hard to find | |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | it's it's typically happens just organically and then you're like oh okay this is my guy now | |
Shaan Puri | Right, how much do you guys... So you have your business off the back of your thing, which is the news? The newsletter's a... yeah, a kind of a different type. It's a business. | |
Samir Chaudry | it's actually a separate company now | |
Shaan Puri |
And there's separate people writing that thing. It's not you guys creating it necessarily. Have you seen... I'm keeping track of these kind of creator-driven businesses where you have like an almost... an audience co-founder. And like the way you used to have a technical co-founder for a business, now you have almost like a distribution co-founder or an...
| |
Samir Chaudry | audience cofounder cool | |
Shaan Puri |
What have you seen that maybe everybody hasn't heard of? Because I think everybody's kind of heard of Mr. Beast and maybe a couple others, but what are some cool ones that you're keeping an eye on or I should know about or other people should know about?
| |
Samir Chaudry | The typical creator business is to make content and sell ads, right? Which is like, that's the baseline. Some people never need to grow out of that because that's just a good business. | |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry |
But when you go through those extensions... I think **Ali Abdaal** has a fantastic education business. He's a creator out of the UK who talks about productivity, and he's built a series of courses. Wasn't he a doctor too?
He was a doctor prior, yeah. You're right, he's a doctor. He's an excellent teacher, but he has built a great business that is very much focused on online education, I think.
| |
Shaan Puri | He publishes his number. He publishes his number like $4,000,000 a year on his... like $4 or $5,000,000 on his pushing.
| |
Samir Chaudry | to 6 this year | |
Shaan Puri | creator academy yeah which is like basically like become a youtuber yes | |
Samir Chaudry | Yes, and he has a ton of courses on Skillshare about studying for the MCAT. He's just figured out that, okay, I'm really good at making online videos. Yes, one of those ways is to monetize through advertising, but another one is through *paging*. | |
Shaan Puri | through online video | |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, and that's the classic "build one, sell twice," right? It's like you build it, and it lives on Skillshare or on your own website for years to come. People can buy it.
I really like the digital product business because it's just scalable, and we do very few things that are scalable as creators.
I also think there's a future model now, which is potentially... there's a creator named Emilia de Moldenberg who has a show called "Chicken Shop Date."
| |
Shaan Puri | I think I've heard | |
Samir Chaudry | about this great show | |
Shaan Puri | were you the one who showed me | |
Samir Chaudry | this it's it's a great show she she's had jack harlow on it she just had jennifer lawrence on it it's | |
Shaan Puri | and what's the what's the shtick it's like at a chicken shop like it's a | |
Samir Chaudry | it's a date | |
Shaan Puri | a fried chicken place | |
Samir Chaudry | Or what? It's a date at a fried chicken place in London. The chicken shop in London is like the last place you would go to have a date. So, there's comedy in it. She's a comedian.
| |
Shaan Puri | and through that's it | |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, through this, she has now spun into essentially creating her own production company. Brands come to her and say, "We love your shtick. We love your comedy. We love the way you've created this show."
Right? This show has no advertising in it, no advertisers, and will never have advertisers. The Jack Harlow episode has 15,000,000 views. This regularly does, you know, 1 to 5,000,000 views in the first week, but no advertisers.
What it operates as is like a production company, and Nike just came to her.
| |
Shaan Puri | so she kinda created an agency | |
Samir Chaudry | she created an agency yeah so like nike came to her | |
Shaan Puri | proved like I can create cool likable content | |
Samir Chaudry |
It's vertically integrated where she can come up with the idea, then her company can shoot the idea, then she can be the talent in the idea. And then the thing that I think we forget is... she's the distribution outlet for that idea too. Where does she post? On her own feed.
| |
Shaan Puri | on on | |
Samir Chaudry | her own youtube channel yeah so she she | |
Shaan Puri | she wasn't doing ads but she put like full episodes of like because I saw barbie | |
Samir Chaudry |
Yeah, she went and posted the Barbie premiere. That's smart.
I like that there's another creator named Amanda Rach Lee who's based in Canada. What she did is she started YouTube by showing bullet journaling and how she was setting up her bullet journals.
| |
Shaan Puri | and what is it I | |
Samir Chaudry | Don't know what it is? Go to the channel Amanda Rach Lee. Yeah, like go to one of these bullet journal setups.
| |
Shaan Puri | or this just looks like etsy of youtube yeah yeah yeah | |
Samir Chaudry |
And how many views does it have? 3,000,000. 3,000,000! So when she started, she was doing these bullet journal setups like, "Here's how I set up my journal." And then what she did was swap out the journal she was using and create her own.
| |
Shaan Puri | own custom yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | journal company and that to me is like epitome of creator business | |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry |
Where it's what Colin and I call "content-product fit." She didn't have to change the content to integrate the product, right? You just... I mean, to talk about a big example, it's Chamberlain Coffee. When Emma Chamberlain launched that, she drank coffee in every episode.
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | swap her coffee out | |
Shaan Puri | product placement but done at like a a whole another level | |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, and I think, you know, it's something we're actually struggling with in our newsletter, which is like...
| |
Shaan Puri | the top version of that | |
Samir Chaudry | How do we integrate that in every episode? Sure, we can bring it up, but that doesn't drive subscribers. Right? So, it's... Logan Paul said this about Prime. He said a lot of creators, when they talk about their own product, it sounds like they're doing a brand deal.
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | They don't know how to integrate it regularly, you know? And like the Nelk Boys with Happy Dad, right? Their alcohol is in every single episode.
| |
Shaan Puri | right because they're | |
Samir Chaudry | showing over there | |
Shaan Puri | so yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | Logan has Prime everywhere with him. So, you know, I think creators who have this, like Amanda, can build really substantial businesses.
| |
Shaan Puri | what do you call it content product fit | |
Samir Chaudry |
Yeah, content-product fit. This is a really impressive business to me because it's just... it's niche, but 3,000,000 people watch this and she sells this journal. Yeah, that's insane.
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, she's gotta be doing... I mean, what do you think she's making on something like this?
| |
Samir Chaudry |
I've spent time with her. She's never told me, but I will say that she speaks at a lot of Shopify events as a very good case study for them. I know she's doing well; she has a good team.
The thing I love about this business too is it's repeat purchases. There's a new journal drop, you can run out of pages in a journal. Once you have allegiance to this, it's like... yeah.
| |
Shaan Puri | you know grady so I've had this idea for because I'm a big journal guy | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | And so I was like, "Oh dude, I wanna create my own." Because I don't know, I have an idea of what I want mine to be; I just haven't made it. So, like, if I'm gonna make it for myself, maybe I'll make it for others.
But the best example, my favorite example of this, is actually a really small stakes one, which is the Ryan Holiday coin.
| |
Samir Chaudry | totally | |
Shaan Puri | That's like such a good example of this because he was like... the way he described it.
So first, it was like the content-product fit where he's just like, "Stoicism. Here's the reminder coin that you're gonna die." He says, "You know, whatever, remember you're gonna die," or whatever.
But he was like, "You know, I've done t-shirts. T-shirts suck."
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | And he's like, "I wanted something that was like I could fit in an envelope, a normal envelope, so mailing was easy. I wanted something I can manufacture here so I don't have to produce overseas or whatever."
He's like, "No sizes, no colors. It's like just one SKU and I'm gonna sell."
And I think he sold like $20,000,000 of this one SKU over the... Really? Yeah, I'm pretty sure he said that on our episode where we, you know, waterboarded him out of it. Like, you know, we were like, "I think you've done that." Is that wrong?
| |
Samir Chaudry | is that in the ballpark | |
Shaan Puri | and he's like some you know not wrong | |
Samir Chaudry | I think probably one of the biggest creator-led companies right now that maybe isn't as prominent in the mainstream conversation is Mark Rober's Crunch Labs.
| |
Shaan Puri | that which is like a subscription subscription box stem or something right like he's like | |
Samir Chaudry | A science kit! Exactly, it's a science kit. I got it for my nephews, and it is excellent. They are hooked on it.
| |
Shaan Puri | nice | |
Samir Chaudry | like it is excellent I text mark about it I'm like dude this product is crazy | |
Shaan Puri | like that's huge that's your big business huge yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | that's a big business yeah | |
Shaan Puri | yeah I I | |
Samir Chaudry | And I know he said, "Now that makes more than his channel." Yeah, for sure. I mean, his channel is massive.
| |
Shaan Puri | that's that's a good other ratings because he does basic crazy science experiments right | |
Samir Chaudry | that's right | |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | And he has big versions of that in his video. So, like, he'll make a big version of it, right? And then he'll be like, "And you can make a miniature version of this at home," you know?
| |
Shaan Puri | I think this content model, this what you're just describing here, these examples, is like... I always think about when I meet someone. I'm like, "Wow, you had so much success! What'd you do?"
Often, the story is basically like, you know, there was a moment in time where you realized, like, "X thing works." For example, in the early days of Google, it would be like, "I could buy clicks for a cent for any keyword." That's insane!
So, I thought, "Okay, let me just work backwards. What's the best keyword?" And that's how I got into selling leads to lawyers or whatever, like, you know, asbestos removal companies or whatever.
Then, it's like... our buddies created Native Deodorant, and he's like, "Yeah, basically, I started this when Facebook ads were kind of underused. People were only using them for media companies, trying to buy Facebook ads, but then they were driving them back to a blog post and monetizing with a Google ad there."
| |
Samir Chaudry | right right | |
Shaan Puri | it's not really a good model | |
Samir Chaudry | it's like | |
Shaan Puri | I realized that you can sell a product through Facebook ads with really simple ads. You don't need to go into Target and get them to carry your product. You can just start selling directly to consumers through Facebook, which is known as D2C (direct-to-consumer).
I mean, there wasn't really a clear category for it yet, but if you knew that secret during that time, it was kind of an open secret. However, it wasn't obvious to everybody yet.
| |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, I mean, I think Movement Watch is another great influencer with Amazon-led marketing.
But I think what's incredibly hard, especially for creators right now, is what you have to sacrifice to have that long-term view of building a product. Advertising revenue is so available to us right now.
And again, you kind of pull the levers when it comes to YouTube. It's the highest margin advertising dollars that I think has ever existed in video content.
Right? Because you don't get on the phone with the advertiser. You're negotiating a contract. There's no sales team, no back and forth, and no revisions.
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah but youtube takes what like 45% | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah yeah still it's like this | |
Shaan Puri | is not you know | |
Samir Chaudry | Dude, but there's still like... you don't see it. It's just like, you know, you don't have to do any work. You just upload content and you get a check in the mail, right?
So, creators who make really viral content that has reasonably high CPMs, it's like, "Well, I should make another video." Then a brand deal comes, and that can be anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000, all the way up to $200,000.
You're like, "Well, okay, alright, I'll make another one of those videos." What I find is that a lot of creators never get to that moment of, "Okay, now we should stop and put our focus in right over here." And how do we even do that?
| |
Shaan Puri | a totally different skill set | |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, how do I even do that? How do I hire someone? I think that's the biggest need in the creator economy right now. Operators are the biggest need.
| |
Shaan Puri | yes | |
Samir Chaudry | Education on how to hire is just not there, right? Because there are all young people who grew...
| |
Shaan Puri | Funny, by the way, because there are so many operators. I'm coming to an operator group, and all the operators are like, "Dude, if I just had the..." | |
Samir Chaudry | right influencer | |
Shaan Puri |
"This... yeah, this is soap. We could sell a lot of this soap, right? Or whatever the thing is." I gotta pick them, pick your favorite widget. And for them, it's like a total black box. "How do I go meet these people and get them to trust me enough to do this?" And so it's like this...
| |
Samir Chaudry |
This conversation is about whether the market has the temperament to want that. A lot of creators might conceptually think they want it, but then when they get into it and their name is on a soap product, for example, they don't really like that it went out to a customer and it wasn't perfect. Then they're like, "Oh, I don't want to do this anymore."
They freak out because it's like, "I have so much control over how my brand shows up." But when you start to scale, that control gets [diminished].
| |
Shaan Puri | uncomfortable | |
Samir Chaudry | right | |
Shaan Puri |
So, and do you... I have this question up here I put on this list. It's "3 creators likely to become a billionaire." I gave you one freebie - you can say Jimmy, and he could be #1.
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | What other creators do you think have the potential to build a $1,000,000,000 empire around what they're doing? A combination of their content and businesses, whatever.
| |
Samir Chaudry | I think dude perfect | |
Shaan Puri | I saw they did like a amusement park or something | |
Samir Chaudry | right well they're working on it | |
Shaan Puri | yeah a $100,000,000 project | |
Samir Chaudry | yes so this yes what does | |
Shaan Puri | that mean they're that's what they're investing into this project | |
Samir Chaudry |
I don't know the specifics of it. I've spent a lot... They're actually... I've known them for a really long time. Like, I've been on YouTube and around YouTube for 12 years. They were the first group that I got involved with early on when we sold our last company.
| |
Shaan Puri | and they're kinda like the trick shots was their thing that worked but like | |
Samir Chaudry | They make sports accessible to young kids through trick shots and viral sports videos. The reason I bring it up is that I think those guys have been at this since around 2006 or 2007, right? They have remained at the top of their game throughout that whole experience.
They also went through a long period of time where they did the work. I watched them hold the cameras for years. Even when they had 30 million subscribers, they would just go out themselves, hold the cameras, and edit the videos. They still sit there in the edit bay and make sure they're perfect.
If you've seen images of their recent tour, you can see the young kids who turn out for that, along with their parents. I had a conversation with them one time where they said their goal is to be the most trusted brand in entertainment. I actually believe that they are on track for that. Parents really trust that they can take their kids to a Dude Perfect event. | |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | And that, when you take that to an amusement park, a couple steps forward, I think that matters a lot in the future. I think they're on track for sure. | |
Shaan Puri | That makes sense. I like that.
Does anyone else come to mind that you think has the potential to do something large like that?
| |
Samir Chaudry | I think of some creators who have the potential, but I don't know if they want to do it. You know, like I think Cody Ko is actually someone who's...
| |
Shaan Puri | he's he's coming here tomorrow | |
Samir Chaudry | oh he is yeah yeah I love cody I know you went on his show | |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | I think cody is like one of the most intelligent people I've met | |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | in the space | |
Shaan Puri | I | |
Samir Chaudry |
I think he... even as he's starting to invest now, and I can just... I was thinking about it because him and I were texting yesterday, and I was thinking in my head, "Who's Cody Ko in 10 years?" He's either like in the woods, you know, like...
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | he's a | |
Shaan Puri | free man free man | |
Samir Chaudry | dj ing and running or he's like running the biggest capital company you know | |
Shaan Puri | like I and | |
Samir Chaudry | I think that's just a personal choice | |
Shaan Puri | up to him yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | It's all available to him. But yeah, I don't know that... I'm sure there are others that I'm not thinking of.
| |
Shaan Puri | they're my favorite brand on | |
Samir Chaudry | youtube tmg | |
Shaan Puri | tmg is my number one favorite channel on youtube | |
Samir Chaudry | I think noel miller's like a true artist | |
Shaan Puri | special | |
Samir Chaudry | And special. I think there are very few people like him, and also not very many people like Cody Ko.
| |
Shaan Puri | right so | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah their music | |
Shaan Puri |
Videos... videos are so goddamn good. It's actually kind of annoying, frustrating. Yeah, it's like a bit... it's a bit off-putting. Like, dude, what? You can't just do that, right? That you can do it as a joke, it can't also be amazing... be good.
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah it can't also be good it can't also make me wanna listen to it multiple times | |
Shaan Puri | Right, it's funny and amazing. You just did it for kicks on the side, right on top of your other successful thing. | |
Samir Chaudry | I find this pursuit of being a billionaire to be very fascinating. I don't really have an interest in it. If it's the outcome of what I decide to do, that would be interesting, but I don't find myself focused on that outcome. I also found that most creators I talk to are not focused on that outcome.
| |
Shaan Puri | totally but | |
Samir Chaudry | I think it's in the video game of entrepreneurship. It is the final boss, right? So you're kind of like...
| |
Shaan Puri | If you're looking at it, it's actually walking away. Sure, yeah, yeah. The person who says they have enough is like, you know, Paul Graham, who created Y Combinator (YC), which is, I think, probably the most successful tech startup.
It created all these other tech startups, like Dropbox and Airbnb. They probably wouldn't like to say they created them, but without them, there is no Reddit. There probably aren't those businesses being successful, including OpenAI, because...
| |
Samir Chaudry | right | |
Shaan Puri |
He saw Sam Altman and made him president when there were tons of other more qualified candidates on paper. But he's like... He even said something like, "This is what it would be like to talk to a young Bill Gates." [He] saw that before, and now he's created OpenAI, which is...
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | Today, one of the most valuable private startups... So anyways, Y Combinator (YC) gets to the peak of its powers or does amazing, amazing stuff ten years in.
Paul says, "Sam, here you go. I'm going to the woods in the UK. I'm going to live in the woods with my family, and I'm going to basically write essays, paint, and code. That's what I'm going to do."
That is the final boss of Silicon Valley because you see, most people just go right back into the hamster wheel and they start running again.
| |
Samir Chaudry |
But that's like the final boss of life, right? It's like making that realization is not wanting anymore. Yeah, being content and developing a relationship with the term "enough." That's a hard thing to do, but...
Do you have that? Do you have a number or like... do you feel like you have enough? What are you in pursuit of?
| |
Shaan Puri | I'm in pursuit of a really specific thing, which is I heard a quote once that I think Naval said. He goes, "The day you stop trading today for a better tomorrow, you've retired."
So he's basically saying if the things you do today, in and of themselves, were the reward of what you did today, you've actually exited the game. You've retired. Retirement doesn't mean you go sit down and do nothing. It means you're not saying, "Alright, I'm going to do this stuff today that I don't really want to do, that I don't like to do, but I'm doing it because it's going to pay off in the future."
Your whole life goes by doing that. Good? Yep.
So when I heard that, I was like, "Oh, guilt! You know, guilty! Like, put me in cuffs, take me to jail!" Totally, that's me. I've spent the first, you know, 15 years of my career, like, from 20 to 35, basically doing that. I was like, "Oh, I'm going to do X." And I want to say I didn't enjoy it necessarily, but definitely I was doing X because it might lead to Y.
| |
Samir Chaudry | I I totally agree with that | |
Shaan Puri | I've never just done x | |
Samir Chaudry | that too yeah | |
Shaan Puri | I've never just made my main thing like I'm doing x because I'm just doing x seems fun | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | And so that's the game I'm playing now: to try to achieve that, to craft my life such that it's true.
Even though it's weird, it's awesome. What do I like to do best? I don't know. I like to do this podcast. I like to read. I could talk. I like to tinker with these little things or just understand, go down rabbit holes, and see how things work in the world.
Those are the things that I do without thinking about some future payoff. So I don't think they even like... or they don't.
| |
Samir Chaudry |
Clearly have one. Well, you can also have the... There's another Tim Ferriss moment in our episode together. He was like something to the tune of:
> "You can decouple the non-financial reward and the financial reward."
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | Right, so like this experience, there's a non-financial reward to this, which is that we have a good conversation.
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry |
Cool, this is fun! We both go home, that reward is complete. Then you put it out. If there's a performance reward to it, amazing! If that leads to financial opportunity, great. You know, like, but that's a separate reward. And if you can decouple those things, then that is... yeah.
| |
Shaan Puri | Basically, the way I think about stuff is like there's a car, and you can have a bunch of passengers in the car. It's like, you know, I have my ego, but hopefully it's in the trunk. It shouldn't be driving. Let's put it in the back, you know? Yeah. | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah yeah | |
Shaan Puri |
He's kind of annoying, but he's there, and you've got, you know, the thrill of things. That's in the car, but I don't really want Thrill to drive because he takes us off the cliff. So who gets to drive?
And so, you know, that's kind of like... To me, I'm like, alright, who gets to drive is the version of me that is:
- Following my curiosity
- Creating shit consistently
- Just creating things
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | And is content with life. I’m doing it because I want to do it. I’m doing it because it’s enjoyable to do. I’m doing it because it’s challenging.
So even though it’s not that enjoyable, like I’m struggling at it, I’m enjoying the struggle of doing this thing.
Yeah, and so that’s who I want to drive meaning. That’s who gets to ultimately make the decision of where we are going in this car. Other people might have input; other parts of me might have input, like, “I want money, I want this, I want that.”
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | But I can't... like, basically, money was driving for a long time. Then it's like, "Hold on, wait. The deal was you get to drive till we get to this number." We got to that number, and you don't get to drive anymore. Yeah.
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah yeah | |
Shaan Puri | And maybe you shouldn't have been driving in the first place, but at least in my life, I was like, "I want to get to basically a financial freedom number." A number where I can spend whatever I want in my lifestyle, and it's coming off of my investment income, not out of my work income.
Yeah, because then it's like, "Alright, cool. Money works for money; I work for me."
| |
Samir Chaudry | Man, I think that is a big opportunity with creators. It'd be like a smaller group, but I think as creators, we're really good at generating money. However, we don't know how to turn money into money, right? Because we're... it's like it's... | |
Shaan Puri | a totally different skill set | |
Samir Chaudry | Totally different skill set. And then we don't know who to trust with that. You know, I think if there was a creator-focused group that helped with that, that would be beneficial.
| |
Shaan Puri | Well, we went to this athlete event yesterday with a bunch of basketball players there. It's the same thing. Like, literally, we were joking that this event would be cool if it was just the athletes who do what they do and us. But then you have all the clingers.
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah and you're like who do I trust | |
Shaan Puri | And then, like, yeah... some of the clingers are the people they trust. They're like kind of safe choices, but they don't actually know how to do the thing for them.
| |
Samir Chaudry | sure | |
Shaan Puri | It's like, you know, actually if they asked, I would help them for free or tell them exactly what they should be doing so that their money works for them and they don't waste it.
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | But the incentive is not for me to go chase them, reach them, and then beg them to listen to my advice.
Yeah, the guy who's trying to take their money is incentivized, sure, to chase them, beg them, and try to convince them that he's the guy who's going to help them.
Right? And it's like this weird, perverse incentive. It's like the guy who's going to work his hardest to break into your circle is the one who wants something.
| |
Samir Chaudry | you actually don't wanna work with someone who's like | |
Shaan Puri | needs something from you yeah yeah yeah | |
Samir Chaudry |
On the sports topic, there's one more: Deestroying. He is a sports creator, football-focused creator. He played football at UCF, and this is pre-NIL days, right? So he played football, he was making YouTube videos, they brought him into a room and said, "You have a choice. You can either continue playing football or you can continue with the YouTube channel." He chose YouTube and built this really substantial YouTube channel. He has this series called "1-on-1s" that just partnered [with a major platform or brand].
| |
Shaan Puri | go live to places like he goes to like a city | |
Samir Chaudry | Like hosted live events, and they get crazy. In Arizona, it had to get called off because there were too many people there, and the police had to get involved.
| |
Shaan Puri | right I was gonna go he I think he he he messaged or management somebody messaged okay | |
Samir Chaudry | okay and | |
Shaan Puri | When he got me, yeah, like he's an hour away. I was like, "Oh, that sounds kinda fun." But like, I didn't make it out. What does he do, actually? He's a mess.
| |
Samir Chaudry |
On one-on-one, so basically it's wide receivers versus cornerbacks. They line up and they go one-on-one, and one dude wins $10,000. For some of the communities he's going into, that's life-changing.
| |
Shaan Puri | for me | |
Samir Chaudry | right for a lot of communities that's | |
Shaan Puri | the guy in the thing or it's | |
Samir Chaudry | he's the host | |
Shaan Puri | other guys okay | |
Samir Chaudry | He's the host, okay? You know, and like, you can see, this is what it looks like. If you go to his channel and go to most viewed, that's in my old high school.
| |
Shaan Puri | oh cool so that so that guy if that guy had caught it he would have | |
Samir Chaudry | He met 10 grand. No, no, he had a massive tournament. It's a tournament, and then you start to know these characters as they travel to different markets. This is...
| |
Shaan Puri | the new n1 mixtape | |
Samir Chaudry |
Exactly. This is N1 mixtape for football. Colin and I spoke with [Roger Goodell] at a YouTube event with Dee. He was speaking with Roger about [Destroying], and he was like, "This guy's really impactful for football."
| |
Shaan Puri | oh wow | |
Samir Chaudry | He's creating new fans, and the NFL just partnered with him on this series, the "1 on 1" series. When I look at Dee, the leagues are starting to get involved with him in a way where I'm like, "Wait, he is single-handedly a really important part of the future of sports viewership."
Yep, and that to me, I don't know if he has aspirations to be a billionaire, but to solve that problem for the NFL is a big problem to solve. If you solve that for the CFL and you start solving that, you know, you go down the line, this can also become camps. Totally. This can become, you know, so many things, right?
| |
Shaan Puri | the world is his oyster | |
Samir Chaudry | he can become a host he he's probably should be one of the hosts for the nfl | |
Shaan Puri | like or like the pro bowl which no one's watching | |
Samir Chaudry | I think he can also create a yeah I mean he can redefine the pro bowl | |
Shaan Puri | because this | |
Samir Chaudry | is more interesting | |
Shaan Puri | this is already this is way more yeah I'm like half looking at you because I'm like watching this | |
Samir Chaudry | I mean I we we pulled this up in our office and we have ton of people who don't watch sports and then they got hooked on it | |
Shaan Puri | they were like this is primal it's primal yeah | |
Samir Chaudry |
And so he could redefine the Pro Bowl. He can also create an NIL agency. So you have college athletes who he represents. This, you know, where college athletics didn't let you monetize, he knows how to do this, right?
So okay, now can Dee create an NIL agency where he's signing athletes and getting them contracts? The world of Dee... like the world of sports, no one is really approaching it like him. And I think that sports is still... it carries a very high dollar value, live sports.
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | it's it carries such high dollar value that I think he has that opportunity as well | |
Shaan Puri | There was a guy at that event we were at. You'll know him because he's lacrosse. Paul... Paul Raybald, yeah.
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah he's a groomsman in my wedding he's one of my best friends | |
Shaan Puri | amazing he is I I don't know much about the so you're | |
Samir Chaudry | at the boardroom event yeah yeah | |
Shaan Puri | So, tell me about it. Basically, what he was saying on stage was, "Okay, we created this professional lacrosse league."
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | What was interesting is that he mentioned there are, like, eight teams or something. But he's like, "We own the teams." It's not like a franchise model.
I think he's saying we pay the costs, but then all the players have upside in the thing. What is the business model of this? This sounded pretty fascinating.
| |
Samir Chaudry | and yeah so it's do you think it's | |
Shaan Puri | a good model also | |
Samir Chaudry | I'm an investor, so I have a biased opinion, yes. But I've always seen in lacrosse, if you pull up the Premier Lacrosse League YouTube channel and play the last vlog from their All-Star game, you get a sense of the community.
That one had the fastest shot right there! You get a sense of what it looks like. I mean, they were going wild, and they packed the stadium out in Louisville for their All-Star game.
So basically, what he did was there was a preexisting league called Major League Lacrosse. They paid their players terribly and treated them poorly.
| |
Shaan Puri | the best league | |
Samir Chaudry | That was the only pro league. It was like... no one really cared about it. I mean, it was kind of interesting, but there were empty stadiums. They didn't have health care. It was tough to be a pro athlete and not get paid much, right?
Paul became the number one lacrosse player. He had the biggest media platform. Colin and I actually ran his YouTube channel; that's how we became very close. We were running a lot of different athlete YouTube channels at one point.
So, we became really close to Paul; that's how we met. He had the best head on his shoulders for media. He knew how to build a brand. He was called lacrosse's first $1,000,000 man. He had deals with Red Bull and New Balance, and he had created the model for how to make money as a lacrosse player.
| |
Shaan Puri | A prop blocker... was he the best? He was the best at media, or he was actually the best at media and really good. No.
| |
Samir Chaudry | he's he's the he was the best | |
Shaan Puri | he was the best player yeah he was the best player | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah yeah yeah | |
Shaan Puri | So, those are like Conor McGregor. At one time, he was the champ, and yes, he's like the most marketable guy. | |
Samir Chaudry | So, he decided, you know, at one point, just to say, "Hey, you know what? We're gonna go raise money and create our own league. Like, this league sucks that I play in." That's what he did. He turned to Joe Tai, who's...
| |
Shaan Puri | the nets owner | |
Samir Chaudry | You know, the Nets owner who played lacrosse in college and loves lacrosse, right? He's a great dude. I met him a couple of times. He became the lead investor, and then they partnered with the Raine Group. They raised a bunch of money and said, "We're going to pay the players a reasonable salary. We'll give them equity in the league, we're going to give them health care, and we are going to create media around them. We're going to create media opportunities for them. We're going to teach them how to..."
And the last thing they did was they said, "We're not going to stick these teams in local markets. We're actually going to take the whole league on tour."
| |
Shaan Puri | makes sense | |
Samir Chaudry |
So they built that... it makes more sense. It's like a touring circuit where it's like, "Is it coming to San Diego this weekend?" Okay, everyone descends upon this major market. Yeah, so you...
| |
Shaan Puri | you know if you have lacrosse people they come to town twice a year | |
Samir Chaudry | exactly it's | |
Shaan Puri | like alright we'll go to that we may not go all the time or there may not be enough people to support a stadium | |
Samir Chaudry | Well, I think also what he knew and what we saw was that the model in lacrosse, the way you made money, was by doing camps and clinics.
Right? So, you have youth camps. There are a lot of young kids who want to play. They come from affluent backgrounds, and their parents are willing to pay $1,000 for them to get coached by their favorite lacrosse player.
Paul built a massive camps business. So, alongside this, you go to a major market. Now you have a weekend dedicated to camps. You can turn all these players into camp counselors and trainers.
| |
Shaan Puri | they earn extra money or whatever | |
Samir Chaudry | They can build their own bespoke businesses, but that all connects to the league. He and his brother are really sharp.
| |
Shaan Puri | and they didn't sell franchises yet | |
Samir Chaudry | not yet | |
Shaan Puri | yeah and they they got | |
Samir Chaudry | involved in one of them | |
Shaan Puri | okay | |
Samir Chaudry | They got to name the expansion team, and the cool part of my take is that they're the owners.
| |
Shaan Puri | what's the name of it | |
Samir Chaudry | The water dogs... like, ridiculous name, yeah? But like, you know, there's a... that creates kind of that inside joke with the part of the PMT community. It's like they have their own team that's smart.
| |
Shaan Puri | it's a collab it's like oh it's a collab yeah | |
Samir Chaudry | Because when they play, Big Cat's tweeting about it. When they won the championship last year, he got his own ring, you know? It's like...
| |
Shaan Puri | amazing | |
Samir Chaudry | They are able to build again. They're very media savvy, and so they understand that this is a long game. Lacrosse is not well... | |
Shaan Puri | To build any league, I think I texted you this during the event. I was like, "I think what this guy's saying is actually quite smart. We should look at investing."
And I go, "Man, building a league is hard." Like, it's fun if you do it, but that is like one of the hardest games you could play in the world of entrepreneurship. It's creating a sports league from scratch because it's like kind of a 20-year arc to actually get there.
| |
Samir Chaudry | you have to have such a long view on the world and on your life to do it and you're doing live events | |
Shaan Puri | you're doing all the hardest things | |
Samir Chaudry | I mean, every weekend he's in a different city. You know, I'm watching these and looking at the most promising thing: look how young the kids are who are there. Right? So if they grow up with this league, these teams, these franchises, they are playing a very long game here. I credit them for doing it, but it's not an easy thing to do. | |
Shaan Puri | I signed a $10,000,000 deal with someone at ESPN. Like, ESPN? Yeah, the media rights deal. Yeah, that's good. | |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, so when they first started, Colin and I made a documentary about them for NBC. That's right. We've met many different lives of, you know, Colin and Samir, but...
| |
Shaan Puri | yeah that's amazing | |
Samir Chaudry | do you | |
Shaan Puri | think that's gonna be you know a good investment for you were you like the first one in because he's like your buddy | |
Samir Chaudry | I was first one in which is great | |
Shaan Puri | so it sounded good | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah yeah yeah yeah to do it I'm happy to help you | |
Shaan Puri |
You're gonna get... let's say this works out, hopefully... we all were rooting for this. You're gonna make a bunch of money from this thing that was so impossible to predict. That's how this whole thing would pay us.
It's like, "Alright mom, I know... Yeah, I don't have health insurance. I don't have a job. Mhmm, I know I'm kinda filming this failing league. I know you're like this Blue Cross thing..."
It leads to the thing, right? So it's a Steve Jobs quote: "You look back, you see all the dots, how they connected." But like...
| |
Samir Chaudry | When you go even further back, the way this happened was my first idea when I was 21 was to set up a laptop and make YouTube videos about lacrosse.
| |
Shaan Puri | commentating right | |
Samir Chaudry |
Like, that was a bad idea when you really zoom out, but if you're into it... A lot of creators ask me, "How long does it take to make it on YouTube?" I'm sure entrepreneurs ask that question too, right? Or have that thought in their head like, "How long is this going to take?"
I was thinking it's such a ridiculous question because I'm like, "Well, what's your relationship to making videos?" Do you wake up every morning and you can't *not* do it? Like, you're just like, "All I can do is make videos."
| |
Shaan Puri | then you made it from day 1 | |
Samir Chaudry | yeah you you made it and it will there will be an outcome from | |
Shaan Puri | that | |
Samir Chaudry | There will be... it will lead you somewhere. But if you wake up and you're like, "This sucks," it's kind of what you were saying. It's like, "I'm doing X so I can get to Y."
| |
Shaan Puri | Well, the entrepreneurship version is: startups fail, but founders don't.
I moved to San Francisco in 2012, so that's 10 years ago. I met a bunch of people, and we used to have these underground founder meetings where we would trade tips and tricks. We would discuss things like, "What do I do about this person? I need to fire them. What do I say when I fire them?"
Basically, there were a bunch of CEOs saying, "I can't tell my team about this. I can't tell my customers about this. I can't tell my investors about this. I can only tell you guys."
Yeah, because you guys understand. Unlike YouTube, everybody who was doing startups at the time was living in the same 7-mile radius city, so we would just all meet up all the time.
Sure enough, if you track that cohort, there are basically only two outcomes. One is that they got so burnt out from the grind and failure that they just stopped after 3, 4, or even 5 years. They would say, "Screw this, I'm taking a job. I'm moving back to Connecticut, and I'm going to live in a low-cost place. I'm going to de-stress and do that."
But everybody else who stayed in the game won. Literally, almost 100% of my friends who stayed in the game succeeded. Some of them won in year 2, some in year 5, and some in year 9. Now we're in year 11 or 12, and people are winning now.
It feels like a really long time—like, wow, 12 years. But we all started this when we were 21, so, you know... yeah, okay, we're still here.
| |
Samir Chaudry | mid thirties yeah | |
Shaan Puri | For us, we're 34. Rich? Yeah, like, you know what? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it worked. In the end, it worked, right? The 15-year arc. You get like a... then the odds flip from like 90% of new businesses failing to actually like 90% of you guys succeeding if you enjoy this enough where you'll keep doing this even though you have easier options.
| |
Samir Chaudry | Yes, I always... I've said that multiple times. Whenever I'm having something that feels like I'm struggling, I'm like, "This is the least rational path to making money," right?
Also, now I have enough exposure and enough of an abundance in my network that I can go and get other things, get a good job, right? But I do this because it's just what I do. It's just who I am. I don't even know what to do in another context. I don't know what that looks like.
I will say, though, like being... it's hard to be not outcome-oriented. You know, like I think as an entrepreneur, you think about exits and you think about these big paydays. I would say that even with our newsletter, like when I saw Milk Road, I was like, "Okay, I want that outcome too."
But whenever I get too attached to that outcome, I'm like, "Okay, wait a second." Right? That's creating in a way that's just like... the product probably will not be great if I don't just put my head down and go, "Okay, it's Monday. Is this Monday issue really great?"
Okay, it's Wednesday. Is this Wednesday issue really great? I've really tried to refine my focus on process and impact. Like, I have to focus on the process of creating the thing. And then the second thing is, a lot of my reward is seeing if we're having impact. Is this actually impactful, what I'm putting out?
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | Or is it just going out and, you know, no one's saying anything about it? Or we're not getting any...
I find I gauge the success of our stuff from the texts I get or the DMs. For example, "Hey, that episode was really impactful," or "Hey, that really changed the way I think about this," or "Hey, that newsletter taught me about this."
If I see those, then I'm like, "Okay, we're doing something. Let's keep doing that." Hopefully, that takes us to an outcome, but you also have to accept it might not. It might just be this, and we might just get, you know, 5% better over the next two years.
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | And that's it. You have to accept that. That is maybe the most likely reality: you just keep doing it.
| |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Samir Chaudry | and as long as you can accept that at least for me that's how I'd I'd you know explore it for myself | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, the best test of a project is basically, "Would we regret doing it if it didn't work?" | |
Samir Chaudry | right | |
Shaan Puri | Like, obviously we don't want it not to work, and we might be upset if it didn't work. But would we actually regret doing it if it didn't work? Because then it's like, "Oh, I'm just actually dependent on the success or failure of what's usually a low odds of success endeavor."
| |
Samir Chaudry | totally | |
Shaan Puri | Whereas other things are like, I wouldn't really regret it because, well, I'm still going to get this. It's still going to be fun to do, and I'm going to learn a ton. I'm like, this is the type of thing I like to do.
So, you know, if this doesn't work out, it doesn't really matter. I'm just going to ping pong to the next version of this. But it was a forward step either way, right?
There's this thing Tony Robbins does where he talks about dabblers versus masters. I don't know if you've ever heard this.
So, he tells a story at his events where he goes, "There are some people that they go and discover racquetball." Maybe now it would be pickleball, but it's like, you know, they go to the gym, they see somebody doing racquetball, and they're like, "Oh, I'll try it." They go, and they have some fun, and they're like, "Racquetball, this might be my thing."
Then they're like, "Okay, I'm going to play racquetball." The next day, they come back to play again. The next day, they actually go and get better shoes because they were like, "Oh, that was the problem last time." They buy the racket, they start playing, blah, blah, blah, and they're doing well.
But then they play somebody who's been playing for like 10 years, who's way better than them. For three days straight, they're playing, and they can't hit a good shot. Everything's going off, and they're losing all these games. They're like, "This is stupid! Stupid racquetball!"
They're thinking, "What am I in this box? I'm trapped. It's too loud in here."
| |
Samir Chaudry | it is you know weirdly loud | |
Shaan Puri | In the back sport for older people, you start to find all these reasons to quit. So they quit, like, "I'm gonna go play a real game. I'm gonna go play tennis."
They go outside, play tennis, and they're like, "Oh, this is so much better on my doors. This is way better." They’re hitting the ball around, starting to learn the strokes, and they're enjoying learning a little bit.
The same thing happens when they start to play someone who knows what's going on. They're hitting the ball in the net, they can't really serve well, and it's getting frustrating. It's hot out, and they're like, "Stupid game! What is this?" Then I'm like, "This is... was this like a girly game? I don't wanna play it. Someone played like a real game, like golf."
And then they're like, "Just fuck!" From day one, they're like, "Fuck!" Basically, most people go through their whole life doing a series of these.
| |
Samir Chaudry | dabbling yeah | |
Shaan Puri |
And they're dabblers, and he's like, "What's the difference between a master...?" There's like three categories:
1. A dabbler is basically like, "Try it, as soon as it gets hard, bounce."
2. Then he's like, "Then there's the stressor achiever."
3. A stressor achiever is like, when it gets hard, they just start gritting their teeth and they're gonna keep going, but they don't enjoy any of it. All the hardships stress them out, but they've just been trained since they were a little kid to...
| |
Samir Chaudry | push through it | |
Shaan Puri | Just keep pushing through, and like, you'll get a gold star later. The joy will be later.
Then there's the master. The master basically knows that when you start something new, there's the initial joy of discovery, the learning curve, and the hard plateaus. When the plateau comes, they greet it like an old friend, saying, "Oh, there you are! I thought you'd be showing up soon."
I've been playing for a week, and usually, that's when I'll hit the plateau. I know how to deal with you because I know that after the plateau comes the next upswing, and I'm excited for that.
But yeah, let me work through this plateau. They don't really get flustered by it, so they get the same or even better results than all three—way better than the dabbler and significantly better than the stressor achiever.
The difference is that the whole way, they're actually enjoying the dance or playing the game. They understand that these are all normal parts of the game.
You find that the people who get really into struggling or grinding, or who feel overwhelmed by adversity, it's really just that they haven't played the game enough to know that this is how the levels of the game work.
| |
Samir Chaudry | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | You shouldn't be surprised that the roller coaster is going up and down. Like, yeah, you remember you got in line to get on a roller coaster, right? That's a good analogy.
| |
Samir Chaudry |
You know, one thing that I don't know why this made me think of it... I think just because of the ups and downs of the game and the conversation we're having at the beginning of the show about interviewing. One thing that both Colin and I did was go to improv class to learn how to be [better interviewers].
| |
Shaan Puri | to get better | |
Samir Chaudry | Yeah, just to get better at being present and working with whatever the other person says.
What we found was, my wife was listening to our interviews and she said, "You're not listening to them. You're just not listening to your guests. They're saying something, and then you say something completely different."
| |
Shaan Puri | you're just waiting to talk | |
Samir Chaudry | Just waiting to talk. So, I went to improv class, and it was really this incredible lesson in the craft of how to sit in the pocket and just be like, "I can't have any preconceived notions as to where this is about to go."
You're going to say something, and I have to let go of where I want it to go. I found myself on the first day of improv, and I was like, "Okay, I know exactly how to make this funny. This is going to be funny; I know where to take it." Then the person right before me said something, and I was like, "Why the hell would you say that?"
Then I had to deal with it, and I was like, "Oh, this is the work. This is the craft."
I think, you know, in the roller coaster of being a podcaster, you have to be willing to do all of that in public as well. You go back and watch your early episodes, and that roller coaster is a record of the ups and downs—times when it was going really well, times when it wasn't, times when views were up, and times when views were down. It's all public.
I think it's challenging because we have to practice in public. As you know, you build in public as an entrepreneur, but there's something incredibly vulnerable about being a content creator. You're out there, and everyone can see everything.
| |
Shaan Puri | well you guys are doing an amazing job I'm a fan | |
Samir Chaudry | thank you man | |
Shaan Puri | I look forward to seeing if this is your kind of learning phase. I'm excited to see what it's like as you guys master this. So, I appreciate it. Thanks for doing this; I really appreciate it.
| |
Samir Chaudry | thank you so much man | |
Shaan Puri | man |