Colin & Samir Reflect on Life and the State of the Creator Economy

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Finances and and being creative often times don't mix.
In my first video I had 500 views.
One of those views was Samir andmy life changed forever.
We were cobbling up a couple 100bucks each a month.
It was not easy. A venture capitalist, he said.
You're making home movies and quite frankly, you're not that
good at it. His criticism was actually our
superpower. And then Marriott came on board.

(00:22):
Nike, Gatorade, We're still making mistakes.
We're still getting wins. We're still in the gate.
Our guest today are the dynamic duo Colin and Samir.
Their YouTube channel has attracted nearly 1.6 million
subscribers by decoding how creators build empires on their
show. They've gone deep with Titans

(00:43):
like Mr. Beast, Emma Chamberlain, MKBHD, Mark Rober,
Amelia Demuldenberg and Rhett and Link of Good Mythical
Morning. That insight earned them a spot
on Time Magazine's 2025 Top 100 Creators list and made them the
go to storytellers of the creator economy.
Colin and Samir, welcome to the show.

(01:04):
Welcome to another episode of Money Travels presented by Visa.
Will we explore the extraordinary innovations in
digital finance, transforming lives and livelihoods
everywhere? I'm rich.
I'm Max, Ali and Samir, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having us. Thanks guys.
Excited to be here. So can we just talk about how

(01:24):
you start? Not, not many businesses are
born from no disrespect from thesport, but from a love of
lacrosse. Hey, how did you find each
other? But how did that turn into into
such a successful business? So yeah, if we back up, you
know, I grew up in Los Angeles. I always wanted to be in film
and TV, but I was the son of of two immigrants who had no real

(01:48):
connection to the city, no connection to to Hollywood.
But I found myself to be fascinated by storytelling and,
and, and filmmaking and, and that's what I wanted to do.
So went to college and studied film, really fell in love with
editing and felt like that was the craft that that really spoke
to me. And after I graduated college,

(02:08):
got a job as an editor in a Hollywood studio called Red
Studios. And I worked on a film called
Ides of March. And that was a film that was
directed by George Clooney and starring Ryan Gosling.
And it was, I mean, to be honest, for a kid growing up in
LA like that, that was kind of adream scenario.
At least I thought when I would show up to the studio everyday,
there was like a 20 foot distance between the gate of the

(02:30):
studio and the editing room. And to give you a sense of my
psyche at the time, I would walkas slow as humanly possible
between the gate and the editingroom because in my head, some
producer was going to come out of their meeting, look at me and
go, that's the guy we need to cast in the next movie.
And that that was largely built from obviously a fantasy of, of

(02:55):
being involved in in all aspectsof Hollywood, but also this deep
feeling of capability of I thinkI can write the movie.
I think I can act in it. I think I can be on camera.
I think I can film it myself. I think I can edit it myself.
And that was juxtaposed with thefrustration of going into that
editing room every day and feeling like this really slow

(03:18):
moving cruise ship where things were moving really, really slow.
And there was such a system to it that I felt like based on the
movies that I would edit with mybrother in my room and the
movies that I edited in college and that I made, I could
actually have an idea tomorrow and get something out the next
day. So I went to lunch with the the

(03:38):
lead editor and he gave me some of the best advice I've ever
gotten in my life. He said, you know, you're a
great assistant editor. I'd hire you again as an
assistant editor and then again and again.
But it doesn't seem like that's what you want to do.
And if you stay on this path, then maybe one day in about 15
years, you could be me. Is that what you want?

(04:01):
And I said, definitely not. I don't want that.
I want to do exactly what I wantto do.
I want to make stuff. And he said, well, success in
the creative field is the opportunity to do more of what
you're currently doing. So go do what you want to do,
make that a success, and get theopportunity to do more of that.
Do exactly what you want to do. And I turned to the only place

(04:24):
where I could do exactly that, which was YouTube.
It's a place where I could have an idea.
I could make a video, I could upload it, and no one could say
yes or no. It was just between me and the
platform and eventually between me and the audience.
And so started the channel basedon the community that I was a
part of, the community I had access to.

(04:46):
I picked up a camera and startedfilming videos about lacrosse
sport that I grew up playing, community that I was deeply
connected to and and I was a member of the audience for the
videos that I was making. And through making lacrosse
videos on YouTube, not that manypeople watch those videos.
Not that many people were makingthose videos, but one of those

(05:06):
people who was making videos about lacrosse was calling.
Yeah, that was that was 2012. I'll bring you up to speed
quickly with how we met 2012. I'm in Colorado.
I just graduated from school there, and I knew I wanted to do
something entrepreneurial. For me, that meant, you know,
knowing how to make my own website, knowing how to take the
photography, do the graphic design, make the video.

(05:27):
So I bought a camera off Craigslist.
I got the Adobe suite of products to learn graphic design
and I started filming and editing a web series about the
lacrosse team that I had played for in college.
And I I put out the trailer to the series and like Samir said,
there weren't many people doing what we were doing.
My first video got about 500 views, but one of those views
was Samir. So he he reached out to me that

(05:49):
day that I put out the series and we started working together
from afar. I ended up publishing all of my
episodes on the Lacrosse Network, which was his YouTube
channel. And then after six months, he
invited me for a three month internship in Los Angeles, and
that was 14 years ago and I'm still here today, but no longer
an intern, which is good. That's fascinating because

(06:11):
Colleen, it's really interestinghow you you look at that and the
way you tell the story, which itseems like you were you wanted
to be an entrepreneur. But Samia, the way you're
talking about it was is you wanted to, you know, to talk
about, you know, you wanted to do what you like and talk about
a passion. At what point did that become a

(06:34):
business in your mind? Yeah.
So I, I, you know, I grew up again as a son of, of, of two
immigrants from India. So there's no real option but to
like, treat whatever you're doing as a business.
Like business is the, the dinnertable conversation, right.
And so when I set out to do this, you know, for me, I always
wanted to be in business as well.
My dad's an entrepreneur. I wanted to be an entrepreneur,

(06:54):
but I didn't want to do any business.
Like, I wanted to do something that I was deeply, deeply
interested in. And I preferably wanted to do
something around storytelling. So from the beginning, I treated
it like a business. I mean, the even the reason that
I reached out to Colin is because what I recognized was if
you were going to do the business of YouTube, even, you
know, in 2011, 2012, when we when we first were starting the

(07:18):
business of YouTube is about thinking like a distributor,
thinking like a programming executive, thinking like what
does the audience need, right? What do they want and what do
they need? And so when I saw Colin series,
you know, I looked at it as likeacquiring programming.
I needed to fill programming slots like just like ATV network
and his show was really good. And so like making that deal

(07:41):
with Colin was immediately thinking of it as a business.
How can I get more content? Because as I want to go out and
sell ads on the network, I'm going to need more programming.
So pretty pretty quickly, I thought of it as a business.
And you know, lacrosse itself islike very, very niche.
I think what's amazing about theInternet and what was beautiful

(08:03):
about the Internet then what's still beautiful about the
Internet today is that you can find people like you.
There's this incredible stat about YouTube, which is that 47%
of Gen. Z say that they're a fan of
something that no one they know personally is also a fan of.
And that is this incredible statthat shows you what the Internet
opened up, right? Like film and TV, radio.

(08:26):
There's a sense of monoculture. There's a sense of if I'm the
studio executive, I'm dictating cultural relevance.
I'm dictating what you can be into.
Once the Internet unlocked the doors, there was people like me
who are just, hey, I'm, I'm intolacrosse.
Maybe there's other people into it and that turned out to be
true. And that's still true today,
actually, you know, times probably 100 or 1000.

(08:49):
YouTube is enormous now and you talk about I think on one of
your episodes, it's it's got more viewership than the
Netflix, I think. But if you go back to 2012, how
big was it then? And like how much of it, I guess
a risk were you were you taking saying we're going to go into
this world of content creation? Definitely not what it is today.
You know, today what you're referencing is that YouTube has

(09:10):
the highest share of watch time on connected TV's.
So when people turn on their TV in their living room, more
people are turning on YouTube. The Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu,
Amazon Prime Video, they're #1 and that was not the case back
then. That was the theory, right?
The the theory was independent creators talking about stuff
that they're into is probably more entertaining than, you

(09:34):
know, Hollywood studios coming up with programming and the pace
at which people were creating it.
It felt kind of obvious to us, but like still uncertain if it
was going to pan out like that. The size and scope of YouTube
back then, you know, we got to apoint where we had hundreds of
thousands of people watching ourvideos.
To me that felt absolutely enormous.

(09:57):
Like to, to find 100,000 people who are also into this specific
thing we were into of lacrosse, like that felt enormous.
I remember even the first time 10,000 people watched something
of ours like that felt huge to me.
The fact that we could reach that many people felt really
big. So, you know, I don't know by
the numbers how big YouTube was at that time, but I know how it

(10:19):
felt and it felt big. I would say to back in
20/12/2013, the advertising industry and its relationship to
YouTube is nowhere near what it is today.
And that was definitely one of the barriers we ran into was,
you know, Samir and I were constantly pitching ourselves to
companies, but also just YouTubeas an ecosystem of why this is

(10:40):
actually a great place to advertise because we have a
direct connection with our audience, right?
But that was a real hurdle that we had to get over for years and
years and years back then. You had to pitch against
YouTube, but how much did you you know you have to pitch with
or to your family as well? Like what was the, you know,
what was their their first reaction?
You know, I'm a father of three.I'm wondering even myself, like

(11:03):
how would I respond if my daughter comes to me and say I
want to be a creator and I can't, I can't only imagine what
was the reaction back in 2012? Like how do they respond to that
and what was their point of view?
OK, so you know, short answer, it was really hard, but I think
people react to passion really well.

(11:23):
And we had like a unreasonable amount of passion, both Colin
and I for YouTube. It's totally unreasonable at the
time because it was really hard to make money, right?
And, and money is a very clean validation metric for business,
for life, for, you know, once you get out of school, the only

(11:46):
grade that exists is like your, your job title and your salary,
right? Those are kind of like the
grades that, that exist in adultlife.
And, you know, we were living more in a world where those had
not yet been formulated. The job title of YouTube was not
a respected one by any means. And the salary you can make from

(12:06):
doing it was super undefined. So those two, you know, typical
societal metrics weren't available to us.
So you have to look at other metrics of success internally
and externally. Internally, I think it was, we
talked about this all the time, that it was just the inherent
love of coming up with an idea, bringing that idea to life from

(12:29):
your head to the screen, and then seeing the reaction of the
audience. That was like the metric for us
of just internal success of like, wow, this is unbelievable.
We can come up with an idea, putit out, and people can react to
it and give us feedback immediately.
Now, the external metrics like that was really hard.

(12:50):
You know, like my family was really confused about how this
worked. My dad comes from a product
business. He started a business where he
sells clothes. He was like, I don't understand
what you're selling. And that pushed me to actually
explore what it meant to sell asa creator, what were we selling?
And it took me years to figure that out.

(13:11):
But, you know, those conversations I think were hard.
And we did a lot of odd jobs as creatives that we fell back on
because we couldn't make money from advertising early on.
We built websites for people. We, you know, made stickers one
time for a company. We just did anything creative.
The way that we could understandit, we could explain it to other

(13:31):
people even was we are a creative agency.
We are a production company, we're a service business.
If you have something you want done creatively, we can make
videos for you, we can live stream for you, we can edit for
you. So we would just try and explore
where our services were valuableand essentially look at our
YouTube channel as marketing forthose services.

(13:52):
But internally we knew that wasn't the plan.
That was like AV one just to just to quell the the business
anxiety, but we knew we were actually trying to get to the
point where we were our own media platform and we could sell
advertising against. That so there's one thing
getting I guess feedback from close friends and family, but

(14:13):
but there's an out that you've told us before where you sought
advice and had some some people within the industry talk to you
about home movies. So talk to us about that, that
home movie moment. Yeah.
So a couple years in, you know, I really felt like we had some
traction, but we were still doing odd jobs.
You know, we were still just doing creative services and we

(14:34):
were cobbling up. Like, I don't want to suggest
that we were making a ton of money by any means.
We were cobbling up enough to make a couple 100 bucks each a
month. Like this was not.
It was not easy. I was living with my aunt.
It was not glamorous by any. But yeah, by any means at all.
Like we really were not. We were years in now.

(14:54):
We were, you know, in our mid 20s almost, and really not
making much money. And so I got to a point where I
was like, I don't know what the solution is, but I think maybe
it's to raise money. Maybe I need to go talk to
people and explore if I can raise money.
So I ended up getting a meeting with a venture capitalist and

(15:16):
had found out that he had invested in the Tennis Channel.
So he was familiar with niche networks and also found out that
he grew up playing lacrosse. This guy felt like a, a bull's
eye. He was going to listen to the
story. And maybe if he wasn't going to
invest, he would have some advice for me.
And the call was set. And I get on the phone, his

(15:36):
assistant patches him in and he goes, all right, tell me about
the business. And so I start pitching him.
And at the time, we were doing alot of, you know, live streams
of games. We we, we were broadcasting from
my perspective. So I started telling him, well,
you know, we are a modern niche Sports Network.
We're built on YouTube. We're built not for an audience,
but with an audience. And we do everything from news

(15:59):
and analysis to vlogs to broadcast live games.
Right when I said broadcast, he said, listen, I'm going to stop
you right there. You just use the term broadcast.
I used to work in broadcast. What you're doing is not
broadcast. What you're doing is making home
movies. And quite frankly, you're not
that good at it. So I would chalk this up to a

(16:20):
hobby and go find something elseto do.
And I said, OK, thank you very much.
Thanks for the time. And the call was honestly like
maximum 90 seconds. And it was definitely a gut
punch because like, I had a lot of hope and a lot of, I think

(16:40):
early days in your entrepreneurial journey, you
kind of get this like savior complex where you think like
somebody can, can, can pull you out from obscurity and, and save
the business and save this idea.And when I hung up that phone, I
recognized like, that wasn't going to happen for us.
That wasn't going to happen for us.
Like we, we were going to have to just keep our heads down and

(17:03):
actually be faced with this question of like, how much do we
believe in this idea? How much do we believe that this
can work? I think what we learned
eventually was that his criticism was actually our
superpower. You know, him telling us we're
making home movies. If you take a step back, that's
actually what our audience really liked.

(17:25):
The fact that this was very different than a traditional
sports broadcast, that Samir andI were occasionally the ones on
the mic, right? And we're looking at the
comments during the live games and we're calling out members of
our community. But it was more of a, a, a
grassroots feel to what we were doing.
And we eventually printed out you're making home movies and

(17:46):
put on a poster. And we still have it with us to
this day because it was a reminder of like, let's actually
believe in what we're doing thatwe are doing a different.
And this guy may not understand it, but we understand the value
to the way we're doing things and we should stick to that.
I think what's, what's fascinating is the more that
we've we've talked and the more that I've kind of delved into

(18:08):
this, this space is the parallels between setting up any
business are just there. And actually there's for anybody
who wants to learn more about their space.
You've got a really good one of your videos, it's called 13
years of YouTube in 46 minutes and you talk about the kind of
various steps you did and like what you're talking about there

(18:29):
is that audience creation, whichis effectively understanding
that customer problem like that any kind of business kind of
sets up on just say that anybodywho wants to learn more about
this, this industry, you're going to listen to that.
So you guys, you're the entrepreneurs, you've come up
with some, you've had a gut punch of someone telling you,
you guys make home movies, go and do some more jobs.

(18:50):
Do you start again? Or do you say actually that's
just one of many punches we're going to get along the way
because we truly believe in whatwe're doing and you've come up
with this framework that you truly believe in.
So you just keep plowing through.
Yeah, I think we just kept our heads down.
Like I, I couldn't imagine stopping because the we had an
audience. Like letting down an audience as

(19:12):
a creator, that is when you havea deep relationship with them.
Like that feels like it's not even an option, right?
Like think about this term content market fit.
You have to have three things toto really like check the boxes
as a creator. Number one is you're making
videos that you want to make. That was check for us #2 you're

(19:37):
making videos that an audience actually wants, right?
That's like arguably one of the most important things to get
next. Like do people actually want
these videos? That was a check for us.
And the third is like, are you making videos that the platform
wants? And you know, that can be a
moving target platforms, distribution platforms can kind
of shift along with the audience's interest as well as

(20:00):
the platform's interest. And we felt like we were also
getting there. We were doing these Long live
streams mixed with these vlogs, mixed with, you know, all types
of different content. And so finding that like that
just like any other entrepreneur, when you find
product market fit, you know, I think the thing that we were
missing there was an element of monetization, an element of like

(20:22):
is there an industry to support what we're doing?
And again, our belief was that because we had content market
fit, we were just ahead of the sports media industry, that once
the sports media industry caughtup, we would be able to
monetize. We were seeing this wave of, you
know, Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, all getting into the

(20:42):
sport. And we just believed that
because we were this new wave media platform, we were going to
be the place to advertise. This was absolutely a gut punch.
I think we understood even just coming from the world of
competitive sports, like we bothactually grew up playing
lacrosse, right? So like you understand that the
concept is not that you're goingto win every game.

(21:05):
The concept is you are going to lose, right?
The concept is the other team isgoing to score.
But that's what playing the gameis like.
You just want more wins than losses at the end.
You want more goals than the other team at the end.
So I think we just had a competitive feel that lights a
fire. And I think it was within a year

(21:25):
from then where the company got acquired.
And that was obviously, you know, in our life, a massive
validation moment to go. We had an idea it was valuable
to an audience, but now it's actually also commercially
valuable. Yeah, In that window, we
experienced some wins when it came to monetization.
You know, we had endemic sponsors, companies within the

(21:48):
lacrosse community that were thefirst to get on board and
realize, OK, we're not going to spend with magazines anymore,
right? Like this is now the home for
this community. So we saw a lot of interest from
endemic sponsors. And then, you know, we even
towards the tail end of that, wedid a series that Marriott
eventually came on to and sponsored.

(22:09):
We did a series around the Team USA Lacrosse tryouts that
Marriott came on board with. And that was huge.
That was a massive validation point for us.
But then what Samir alluded to, you know, the company was
acquired by a bigger sports media company in New York.
And that was not only a huge validation point for us, but it
also gave us now runway and legsbecause it was an Aqua hire.

(22:30):
So, you know, it was a great opportunity for us to continue
what we were doing and just focus on what we were doing.
And now we had a sales team, we had a legal team.
You know, this was a company that worked with all of the
major brands with, you know, theNBA, the MLB, the NFL, and
worked with brands like Gatorade, right?
They actually did work with Nike.

(22:51):
So we were now able to get into these rooms with some
infrastructure and during, you know, that first year of being a
part of this company, we were able to land deals with Nike,
with Gatorade for the Lacrosse network and really grow from a
monetization standpoint in a waythat we had not before.
And do you think like, if you look at today, the financial

(23:11):
industry has caught up with thisand is more keen now to help us,
you know, the creators to bring new ideas to life, both on the
funding but also on the monetization side of things?
I think the monetization side isreally catching up, right?
Like, I think especially when you start to understand that
YouTube is the most watched platform on connected TV's.

(23:33):
You know, linear TV advertising is north of $160 billion
industry. You know, YouTube has generated
$40 billion in, in AD revenue and, and paid that out to
creators and, and artists and media companies.
So I think, you know, the reality is there's, there's a
great quote from Hollywood executive named Barry Diller.
He says TV is TV no matter what pipe brings it forward.

(23:56):
And I think that is the industryhas caught up to that.
Now you have brands like Unilever, they have a new CEO
who said he wants to move from 30% of their marketing budget
being spent with creators to 50%of their marketing budget being
spent with creators. And Unilever is one of the
biggest advertisers in the US Somoney is getting shifted over

(24:17):
there. So I think on the monetization
side, the monetization is there.You can, you can build a career
as a creator, you know, on the funding side from the banks.
I do think we're starting to catch up.
That was a challenge for us early on, like even to open a
bank account. It was, it was a lot of
confusion of what the business did and how to classify it.

(24:37):
You know, at the core of it, we,we're a media company, right?
And, and the way that works is you do need time and space to
build an audience and then solve, you know, how to, how to
monetize. I think like, you know, typical
entrepreneurship is let me builda product and let me find
customers for that product creator entrepreneurship is let

(24:58):
me build an audience and let me find products for that audience,
right? So it goes.
It's the inverse. So I think on the on the funding
side, like what a lot of creators need is like bigger
credit limits. They need to have space to
evaluate, to fund their ideas. I think they need like financial
institutions that can understandthem.

(25:20):
And then I think on the creator side, I think you need to
understand who you are as a creator.
There is such a big spectrum of what it means to monetize your
creativity to be a creator in, in, in 2025.
There's, you know, one side of the spectrum is being an artist.
An artist is going to make whatever they want to make.

(25:41):
They have an idea, they want to express themselves, and they're
going to find ways to express their ideas.
And typically, the audience comes last.
For an artist, their own creativity comes first.
The audience comes last. On the opposite end of that
spectrum is a distributor. That's someone who's like a
Hollywood executive who's sitting in their office saying,
you know what? We need another Spider Man

(26:02):
because Spider Man puts butts inseats.
I'm thinking audience first. What does the audience want to
watch? I'm going to make that.
And you know, those two sides ofthe spectrum require different
things. You know, on the distributor
side, they are going to require funding to go out and and make
that spider man because they know it's a calculated risk.

(26:23):
And if they know they're going to put butts in seats.
On the artist side, they actually just need space.
They need space, a bit of stability so that they can
explore and figure out what theywant to make.
And I think as a creator, you just have to understand which
side you're on. If you're on the artist side, I
would not recommend taking on a bunch of overhead.
I wouldn't have a ton of expenses.

(26:44):
I wouldn't have the burden of having to solve every month how
to make payroll because you're an artist.
You just want to make the stuff that you want to make.
On the distributor side, you cando that.
You can absolutely do that, but then you also have to build
formats and products that can bring you some level of
predictable monthly revenue. So there's just different
considerations. I think today to be a creator

(27:05):
you have to sit somewhere in themiddle and probably way more
over to the distributor side than the artist side.
If you were given the opportunity to evolve and create
a product that will help on the financial side, that will help
the creators, something that doesn't exist today, what hasn't
been invented that could help you?
I'll speak for myself first because it'll be short and

(27:26):
sweet. So being on the creative side, I
don't like spending time on thatside.
And generally anytime I've looked at a software that's
meant to help, I'm like allergicto it and I don't want to spend
any time in it. So for me, I look towards
people. I think if I in a world where it
was myself without Samir, I'd belooking for a human touch point
to help with all things financial, rather than looking

(27:48):
for financial sort of software and solutions that would help me
do it. So I'll let Samir run with what
he thinks. Yeah, I think, I think for me
right now if I was to explore that, it would be templatizing
opportunities to grow financially.
And so to be more specific aboutthat, like right now, if there

(28:09):
was a system or again, I mentioned the Google AdSense
check comes in every month, sametime.
It's like the 21st of the month every month it comes in.
If we could just set up a systemwhere it automatically suggested
a percentage of that check to gointo a savings account or to go
into, you know, whatever our Maxcontribution could be of a of a

(28:33):
Sep IRA. I think we need more like
automated and templatized systems for creative individuals
and maybe for any individual to go, hey, this is the type of
revenue I'm receiving. These are the factors of my
life. Here's the inputs.
Now, can you output a plan and execute on that plan?
And I think that is very possible in the world of AI

(28:54):
today. I think it's, it's very possible
to just essentially in a radically simple form, type in
what your outcome you're workingtowards is and get suggested
ways to slowly get to that outcome.
I think people are always shocked when they find out about
like, you know, small investments that turn into large

(29:17):
sums of money when they find outabout the ability to maybe take
some of your capital and put them into bonds to take some of
your capital and, and, and put it into a retirement account.
And I think, you know, there's one element which is like human
to human, but there's another element where I think we can
build like just compelling automations for that.

(29:39):
And I think creative individualswould love a little bit of out
of sight, out of mind, but Peaceof Mind that it's happening that
I am building some level of stability and some level of
safety net while my head is, youknow, down working on my
creative craft. That's a really good one.
I think there are some options to save money or to put money

(30:00):
aside every month in a creating wallet and digital wallet to do
that. But to your point is what you
want behind it is really like building that path and say I
want to retire by whatever age 50, I want to grow my business
this way. I want this and tailor those
savings and those investments and those expense management in
a unique way that is tailored for you and not just a

(30:22):
standardized thing for everyone,right?
I think it could even be shorterterm than that.
I think it can be. I want to live in New York City
next year, right? Like what, what does that mean?
What does my life look like if Ilive in New York City next year?
What's the average cost of, of living there?
What's the average cost of an apartment there?
Like do I, do I need to save a certain amount to do that?

(30:43):
Do I need to make a certain amount to do that?
And essentially building like here's the lifestyle design I
want now build based on my revenue, build some level of
automated system to help me get there.
So now hearing you talk effectively about advising, you
going to know what it takes to become a crater, the different
types of craters out there. How did you get to this stage of

(31:05):
effectively advising new creators, current creators from
you'd built a successful lacrosse network, you'd sold it.
You said you probably phoned up that person who said you were
making home movies and said, youknow, Remember Me And couldn't
you do this over, you know, overagain for another niche, another
industry? How did how did that transition

(31:27):
go from, you know, from creator to almost coach?
So while we were at the company that acquired us, we were there
for two years. And towards the end, we started
to feel like we wanted to explore ourselves outside of
just sports. You know, we had spent the last
six years within sports, and YouTube at the time was
drastically changing. You were seeing creators like

(31:47):
Casey Neistat who were, you know, telling stories about
themselves and their own lives and building huge businesses and
audiences off of it. And Samir and I felt like we had
gained the expertise to potentially do something
similar. And that felt very exciting to
us. So we left the Lacrosse Network
and started the channel that we have now, which is just called
Kalin and Samir and started making videos about whatever we

(32:09):
wanted to make, just truly expressing ourselves as artists.
And that is actually like a, a terrible strategy if you want to
build a creator business, right?The the guys who started the
Lacrosse network incredibly niche, you know, delivering
value to an underserved audience.
We should have known that you can't leave and just make videos
about whatever you want for whoever wants to watch it at any
given time. So we, we fell a bit flat on our

(32:31):
faces and you know, for a while really turned into a production
company and started working withcreators behind the scenes,
helping them make their videos. Continued to work with some of
the brands that we worked with at Lacrosse Network.
And what we had to do all the while was continue to focus on

(32:52):
our YouTube channel and dial into, again, who is the audience
now that we want to serve. And what we started to come to
is we want to make videos for our younger selves.
We want to make videos for the 22 year old Colin and Samir who
was embarking on this YouTube creator journey and had no idea
where to look for guidance. So we started, you know, making

(33:17):
videos for aspiring creators with the goal of educating them.
And you know, once we dialed in a process to deliver that value
consistently, which was turning our podcast into video form,
uploading it every week to YouTube, that's when this
version of Colin and Smear as coaches really started to take
off. I would probably push back on us

(33:39):
as coaches, like I think we are peers and that's how we see
ourselves. Like, you know, we, we were
navigating the career path. It's just very meta.
Like we were just being very open as we were navigating it.
And I think because we were openand honest about our navigation

(34:00):
of figuring out how to turn Colin and smear into a business.
You know, we found other people like us, other creators who are
feeling the same way, who are trying to navigate and, and, and
explore this new world of building a business around being
a creator and, and just opened up a space on our show to have
those honest conversations. So I think like today, of

(34:20):
course, I think a lot of people see us as, you know, experts in
the, in, in the field. I would say we're still
exploring and we're just open about our exploration and, you
know, sitting down with other creators and, and telling their
stories. I think it's a mix of this deep
sense of pride, right? When you look back at 14 years,
I think I have such a sense of pride that the way we did this

(34:41):
was through YouTube and through independent distribution and
independent creation. So I have like a lot of pride
and I want to bring forward a lot of creator stories and tell
those to the world. And then the other side is like
natural curiosity. I'm still curious about how
people are thinking about this, how people are building their
businesses. And I think this term creator,

(35:01):
from what I'm seeing like it potentially in the next 5 to 10
years might go away. This term creator economy might
be gone because we might just call this the entertainment
business, right? We have the next wave of standup
comedians that are emerging on YouTube and building massive
distribution on YouTube. Musicians are emerging on Tiktok
or Instagram or or even YouTube as well.

(35:22):
Massive creators like Kaisen ad are emerging on Twitch and
becoming like the most culturally relevant people in
media. So I think, you know, my
perspective is now as we're pushing forward and exploring
the world a bit more, you know, we are entering another phase of
this, this which is going, huh, I guess this is the

(35:45):
entertainment business now. Like this is just all what what
Hollywood used to be and what traditional entertainment used
to be is just living in a different place.
Oh, except the push back on coach, it's quite interesting.
Like what you've just it's one of your fundamentals of of
business where it's building this community within the
community itself. I want to talk about those

(36:06):
fundamentals. I think you, you, you talk about
that kind of there's four key fundamentals of of good ability
to create a business. So we have 4 fundamentals that
we believe every creator needs to have a successful business.
And this is something that, you know, we figured out for
ourselves in 2021 to 2022 when we finally took a look at our

(36:26):
business and we dialed in these 4 pillars, that's when we really
started to grow both from an audience and monetization
perspective. So the first pillar is audience.
You have to define your audienceand know deeply who you are
speaking to. And for most creators, you know,
like us, it's a version of your younger self or a version of
yourself, right? Like you should probably be a
part of the audience that you are trying to serve. 2 is value

(36:49):
prop. So how are you actually
delivering value? How are you trying to serve that
audience? 3 is process.
Do you have a process to consistently deliver that value
to the audience, right? What's your vehicle?
What's your show? Essentially, for us, it's the
Colin Smear Show. It's the podcast that we can
distribute on a weekly basis. You know, once we knew we could

(37:11):
do that every single week, we knew we could continue to reach
that community and build that community.
And the last pillar is monetization.
Do you actually have an industryto support what you're doing?
Do you have a process for not only creation of the content,
but for monetization? If a brand reaches out, do you
have a process to deliver what they want or offer them
something? Or if you're selling a product

(37:34):
to your community, do you have aprocess for that?
So like sound fundamentals for any business, not just the kind
of create your economy, like many, many businesses fail.
And I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of
creators who haven't quite made it.
Where do you see most of them falling down?

(37:55):
If you kind of align them to those fundamentals, where, where
do you think that there's room for, for, you know, your show
and for for others to kind of say, actually this is where you
get it wrong? So I think we are continuing to
move into a space where we have less patience for our own ideas
and I think we want things to happen really fast.

(38:15):
A great example of this is the largest creator on YouTube, Mr.
Beast, who has 400 million subscribers.
If we go back in time to his early days between the ages of
12 and 1616, he across those four years his channel did
400,000 views and in his you know career that represents what

(38:40):
percent. .0003% of his overall viewership.
So 30% of his entire career arc was .0003% of his overall
viewership. Right?
So he had four years worth of just grinding through what I'm
sure felt like almost no audience, no validation.

(39:00):
So good, good creative takes time.
It takes a lot of trial and error.
And sometimes that means like three to five years of trial and
error. So often times when like a new
creator comes to me and says, like, what is it?
You know what, what, what is, How long do you think it should
take for a crater to make it? It's like, I don't know, how
long do you have to give to youridea because it could take one

(39:23):
year, it could hit in one year. But we're dealing with ideas.
These are very, this is very different from making like a
pillow and refining the pillow to be a great product.
You're, you're coming up with thoughts in your head, you have
emotions, you have charisma on camera, you have editing styles
like you are just developing this very intangible idea into

(39:45):
something and seeing how the audience reacts to it.
And I think a lot of creators fall off in, in, in a couple of
ways, 1 is like over investing from the beginning in their
content. It's not sustainable.
Right, if you're spending a ton of money on each video, then can
you really produce those over and over and enough to, to solve

(40:09):
what works for you and #2 is like time.
Time is, is something that you want on your side when it comes
to developing a creative idea. And we always ask creators like
or think about your, your concept on a 52 week window.
Can you produce this idea 52 weeks out of the year?
Doesn't mean you have to, but can you and your production set

(40:31):
up, your ability to make stuff should be as lightweight as that
so you can experience a lot of trial and error.
I think that is such a major part of building a creative
business. Even if we look at like, you
know, the history of TV shows inHollywood, when The Office came
to the US, Season 1 of The Office is pretty different from

(40:52):
Season 3 of The Office because that space, they just needed
space to breathe. They needed space to figure out
who they were. As they were adapting this, you
know, UK version of the Office, they were just figuring
themselves out. And I think across the
entertainment business, we are giving things too little time to
figure themselves out now. And that is so incredibly

(41:14):
important for a creator. So Colin always says like first
piece of advice, I think he saysit in that that video, the 13
years, if he's a new creator right now, he would get a job.
And I think that's a really interesting piece of advice
where it's like de risk your creativity.
We did the opposite. We went all in.
We said this thing should pay our bills.
But to put that type of burden on your own creativity from the

(41:35):
get go, I think it's really challenging.
On the inverse, you have someonelike Mark Rober who worked at
NASA and Apple, one of the biggest creators today with 60
million subscribers. He didn't leave his day job
until he had 10 million subscribers.
That's a pretty extreme version of what I'm talking about, but I
do think creativity needs space to breathe before you can turn

(41:57):
it into a business. Interesting.
And to have that resilience, a lot of this is about resilience
from, if you take Mr. Beast's example, at 12 years old, I
mean, that's kind of a superpower.
So I guess that's really interesting, right?
So, and maybe when you have these conversations, you must be
as big as creators of all ages and to talk about you're in this

(42:17):
for the long term if you want tomake this a, you know, a proper
vacation. There's an element of
resilience, but there's also just an element of passion where
it's like, would would you do this if no one was watching?
Would you do this if you weren'tmaking money?
Marques Brownlee, one of the biggest tech creators on
YouTube, said. To us, the people who make it,
it's like the NBA, the, the athletes that make it to the NBA

(42:40):
are the ones who just love shooting hoops in the park by
themselves. They would do that no matter
what. That's the same concept when it
comes to being a creator. Do you actually love making
videos? And if you do, you're probably
like, even if this, if our business just fell apart
tomorrow, I'd probably still make videos.
I like making videos. So that is something that you

(43:01):
need. That is a a core component of
being a creator is like the honest passion towards creating.
It's also about the discipline, right?
Can you produce 52 episode a year for like the next 10 years
and have the discipline to, to actually do it?
Because to your point, once you have 10 million followership,
it, it might be super easy to just like, you know, let it slip

(43:23):
and say, Oh yeah, that's fine. You know, I'll, I'll pass this
week. And just like any athletes, if
you don't continue shooting, then you should get like, you
know, not great. And then someone, someone else
will, you know, will come and, and should better than you and,
and be the top 1%, right. So the discipline behind it is
is also critical. Just like athletes, you need to

(43:45):
continue practicing, right? Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, I, I think that's a reallygood comp.
And, and a lot of the creators who are now going on 15 years,
some of which are going on 20 years, you look at creators like
Rhett and Link who make a show called Good Mythical Morning,
they make 3 episodes a week and they never miss and they never
have missed. And when we had them on the
show, they said, well, yeah, it's a show we don't miss,

(44:07):
right? And that's an unbelievable level
of dedication. And it's the reason they are who
they are today. They're some of the biggest
creators. You know, YouTube is putting
them up for an Emmy push. They are.
They are legends in the space, similar to the way an athlete
would be a legend after a long career.
I want to go into your last pillar around monetization.
You invented a fake accountant. Is it a fake accountant that you

(44:28):
invented to actually get like, you know, all the financial side
sorted? Tell us about that story.
I'm fascinated to understand, like, how did you make that
happen? Yeah, I mean, I think like
finances and and being creative often times don't mix.
You know, sometimes they do. I think we were lucky to have
two of us. Like I definitely live more on
the business side and and more on the financial side, the

(44:50):
revenue side and Colin lives more on the creative side.
And I think that that that's what has made our partnership
and relationship work over the past 15 years.
But early days, you know, I think every everyone, any
entrepreneur can empathize with chasing down payments.
That is that is a core componentof being a startup founder.

(45:11):
Is this person said they were going to pay me.
They said they were going to payme On this date.
They haven't paid me yet. How do I get them to pay me?
And I found that very awkward early on as the creator, the
face on camera who was being kind of goofy and charismatic.
Then to hit my e-mail and go, hey guys, is this check coming?

(45:33):
So I just, I just thought that contact switching was like very
awkward and very strange. So I decided to start an e-mail,
which was Albert at the LacrosseNetwork.com.
Albert just felt like a, a finance guy and he could be
really firm about chasing payments down.
So I would loop in Albert and say, oh, hey guys, this was a
great collaboration. Like I'm just going to loop in

(45:56):
our, our accountant Albert. He's going to, he's going to
follow up on the payments and I could be really aggressive as
Albert to actually get the payment to, to come through.
And it worked. It worked really well.
You know, again, I didn't want to be scary and aggressive as
Samir, but I could be scary and aggressive as Albert.
Yeah, I will say I think tracking down payments,

(46:16):
especially as you start to hire and you have some overhead is a
pretty big pain point for a lot of creators.
You know, there was a time for us when we were tracking down a
$70,000 payment in this newer iteration of ourselves as
calling and smear Post Lacrosse Network.
And it was really important thatwe got that payment.
If we did not get that payment, I don't know what the business
would look like, you know, the month or two after, right?

(46:39):
It was really dire and, and we ended up getting that payment
advanced by an agency and that agency we're working with, but
they were really like they were going out of their way to do
that for for us, right? And I don't know, I think that
is something to like having a place to go for advance payments
when you need them like that, especially when you know these
payments are coming from big brands, major corporations.

(47:00):
So like, you know, we knew the payment would come, we just
couldn't get it to come on the time that we needed it to.
From a platform setpoint, because you also get that those
you know, you get the payments from those big brands you're
working with, but as well as youknow the platforms, right.
Was it? Was it the same and is it the
same today? Platforms you don't have to
chase right? Like Google AdSense check comes

(47:20):
every month no matter what they are.
That is an automated system. You will get that check every
month. It's it's native things in the
world of media and creativity isthe fact that we can start a
YouTube channel, we hit certain metrics, we become part of the
partner program and we just enter into a revenue sharing
agreement with this platform that generates a ton of ad

(47:40):
dollars. And if we are, you know, driving
enough viewership, we can get a check, you know, from this
platform without ever talking toan advertiser, without ever
negotiating a contract, without any of the work that goes into
account management. Now, when you look at like
creators and how they monetize, there is this, you know, kind of

(48:01):
B to B ad industry side, which comes through Adsense as well as
brand partnerships. The last I checked, you know,
the estimation on how creators make money, it's north of 70% of
creators make the majority of their revenue from brand deals
and sponsorships. And that is that is accurate to
our business. It's accurate to all of our

(48:22):
friends businesses. The Brandy on sponsorship
business is by far the biggest business in the creator economy.
Now a lot of creators make good money on Adsense.
To give you a frame of reference, in the past I think
four years our channel has crossed over $1,000,000 in
Adsense earnings. And so it's not, it's not
nothing, but it's not the, the lion's share of our business.

(48:46):
On the other side, you have the direct to consumer, you know,
part of the business for us, we have an education brand where we
sell courses. We also sell merchandise.
Lot of creators have membershipsthrough a Patreon.
And so that's them engaging directly with their audience.
So those are like the two sides of a creator business.
And I really think that, you know, the, the, the Google

(49:07):
AdSense side, the automatic payment that comes every month
if you are of that size, like that's a truly incredible system
that has been built. What we do with that when we
think about that money and we think about like projecting out
our business, we don't control that.
So there can be factors, you know, economic factors that come

(49:27):
in that impact the ad industry that change that payment all of
a sudden one month, right. So we don't, we can't really peg
too much of our monthly operating expenses against
Google AdSense check. And that's where we go and focus
heavily on what we can control, which is brand deals and
sponsorships. We can control how we pitch
ourselves in the market. We can control what our products

(49:49):
are in the market. We can control those
relationships. And I think a lot of creators
focus on that. We, we run a program called
Creator Startup Pro where we we teach creators how to pitch
themselves in that context, how to build a pitch deck, how to
manage a relationship, because that is by far the lion's share
of how creators make money. Do you think that goes beyond

(50:12):
just? The face of Colin and Samir.
So if you're thinking about longevity in a platform, yeah,
ultimately you guys are the faces of your show.
But that education can be taughtto success as people you bring
into the business. Is that something that gets
talked enough about in the in this space where you, you know,
there's often there's a a name associated to, you know that

(50:33):
that Channel definitely, yeah. I think we're all as.
Creators like in some way, shapeor form chasing the scalable
version of ourselves. You know, Max, back to your
question about like funding in our space.
I think one of the barriers to funding is is, you know what
people would called key man risk?
Meaning like, am I going to invest in your YouTube channel?
What happens if Colin and Samir stop making videos like the

(50:55):
column and Samir channel and column and smear brand stops
when we stop creating, but building scalable products that
are attached to your media brandthat gives you like a true
unfair advantage. So obviously we see creators
like Orion Trahan, who's building a candy brand.
It's now the number 2 candy brand in in all of Target called
Joyride. You see, you know, Mr. Beast

(51:17):
with Feastables, He's a chocolate company.
Mark Rover with Crunch Labs, which is a toy subscription box.
So I think we're all trying to solve that scalable version.
It's more investable, it's more scalable and it can live beyond
us. And we can utilize our platforms
right now to have an unfair advantage in the market, right?
We get to have lower customer acquisition cost because of our

(51:39):
platforms into these businesses.And that's how we think about
our education business. And while I'm saying all this,
Rich, I have to say the term coach is an accurate one.
I think that's fair. As I'm thinking about it, Colin
and I always say like we feel like we're writing the textbook
in real time about the creator economy.
So I almost see ourselves more of a player coach, player, coach

(52:00):
because we're still. In the game.
We're still in the game, we're still making mistakes, we're
still getting wins, but we're also.
Coaching, we're on the field andwe experience wins and losses.
Too, And I think it's fascinating and and again the.
Parallels back to any kind of any startup business and any
scale up business. Now you guys are at now do you
have like an executive team? It's not just Colin Smith,

(52:21):
there's a whole team behind you guys.
Do you sit down and kind of think through what the future of
not just the industry, but the future of kind of your your
business looks like? We don't we.
Have operated very much, you know ourselves for a long time,
but I think we're probably entering into a time where we
need that. I would say in our, in our

(52:42):
space, in the creator economy, we are all audience rich and
time poor. And I think the reality is like
the most needed and most covetedjob in our industry right now as
an operator, someone who's a, a business operator who can come
into the business and say even look at our business and go,
hey, this education thing is really interesting.
I actually think we can 10X thisif we hire these people.

(53:04):
That's not necessarily our core competency right now, nor do I
think it should be. I think we need to focus on
being the best Colin and Samir we can, which is being excited
about ideas and making them and connecting with our audience.
And so the the infrastructure ofbuilding out the business, I
think that is something that a lot of creators need.

(53:25):
And you're actually seeing that happen more and more now where
people are coming from traditional entertainment or
from startups to actually help build these businesses.
To bring up Mark Rober again, hehe brought in an operator who's
a formal former Google employee to help him build Crunch Labs.
And now that team is massive. When we went to his office last

(53:47):
year, there's 60 people working on Crunch Labs, There's six
people working on the YouTube channel.
So like the, the, the businessesthat they're able to build with
a good operator next to them, I think that's a huge unlock.
The same way that creatively developing a format is an unlock
for creators and for a YouTube channel on the business side,

(54:08):
having a good operator can be a huge unlock for you.
I would say while we do need to focus on.
Content hiring an operator is something we think a lot about.
I do feel like we're a bit at opportunity overload right now.
If you look at our e-mail inbox,the amount of opportunities we
have to branch out to different parts of our business to make
our current business better are really unbelievable.
But we just don't have that support.

(54:29):
So if anyone is listening and thinks that they would be a
really great candidate to, to help us grow the future of our
business, you know, just text Colin.
His phone number is 3. 10 Yeah, correct me or or e-mail.
Albert So yeah, e-mail Albert. That's good.
Is that the future for the? For the.
Creators of the world, which is one side is is the content and

(54:52):
the other side is basically the other gigs that they they built
on the back of it to you examplewhere the content might be very
lean and still based on their creativity because no one else
can do it but themselves. But then they have like a whole
company almost like I would say a side gig or you know, a
franchise, whatever it could be that that is like, you know, the

(55:13):
big company and and I don't wantto say bigs can still still be
an SMB, but like, you know, the cash calendar revenue maker or
the the next the next stop for that business.
Yeah, definitely. I think I think it can be for.
Like the creator economy, if youlook at it, it's like split up
into a couple different, you know, slices 1 is like

(55:35):
entrepreneurship, right where you go like if you have an
entrepreneurial creator, I thinka great example is a a creator
in New York named Gabe Desanti. He started making the short form
format where he would shadow a job everyday.
So he would go, hey, to a taxi driver, can I follow you around
all day? And he would show what it's like
to to do that job. Or he would do it with a wedding
photographer or do it with a clothing designer.

(55:56):
And it's a great short form series.
Millions of people watch this series.
So the question now is how do you extend that value prop into
a business? Because that's a show
essentially, right? Great show, can do brand deals
into that show. Awesome.
But what Gabe did that I think is really interesting is he
launched a platform called Stodge where you can pay to go

(56:17):
shadow someone. So if you have an expertise,
your job, you can apply to be, you know, an expert.
Hey, we're full time YouTube creators.
You want to come shadow us for aday because you're curious about
what it looks like to be a full time YouTube creator.
You can pay money to actually shadow us.
So he took this concept that wasbuilt in a show and built a
product based on it. And I think that that's like a
beautiful form of entrepreneurship that again,

(56:39):
build the audience first, build a product for the audience
second. But there's a whole other part
of the creator economy that's also people like me at 21 years
old who just wants to get into the entertainment business.
I want to make shows. I want my product to be my craft
and my creativity. And I think, you know, for both
sides, operators are needed, butthey're very different
monetization paths. And so I do think we're going to

(57:00):
see I, I don't know that any business in the next 10 years is
going to be void of content, right?
Like Hailey Bieber and road justsold for a billion dollars.
Like that grew, obviously, because she's a celebrity, but
like a lot of that played out ofher social platforms.
That was content that played outof her social Ulta Beauty, which

(57:22):
is a, you know, one of the largest beauty retailers.
They're actually turning their employees into content creators.
They're creating incentive programs that while you're at
work, you're really familiar with the products in the store,
make videos about the products and you'll get rewarded based on
viewership metrics. And and, and, and that I think
is like we are entering into a world where everyone is going to

(57:45):
have some type of show. Some type.
Of content that's connected to the business.
So yeah, in short, I definitely think that's the next chapter of
the creator economy. I think brands are becoming
creators and creators are becoming brands.
And then I think TV is getting replaced by what we are doing on
YouTube. And I would just add that I
think the brands. Who are becoming creators are

(58:07):
hiring some of the creators who aren't as entrepreneurial.
I was just having a conversationlast week with a super talented
creator who's way more on the artistic side of the artist and
distributor spectrum. And he was talking to me about
how he's going to become the chief creative officer of a
company and get a salary. Not to say he's, you know, going
to stop creating some of what he's making, but he's fielding
that type of opportunity. And I think you'll see some

(58:27):
creators on that end of the spectrum who sort of graduate
and up level that way. I want to take a maybe a step
back and a step. Sideways, I don't know what
that's called because I think, Ithink we're now kind of talking
about we're in this era of legitimacy when it comes to kind
of creators. You mentioned the first kind of
conversation with the VC who kind of maybe suggested to go a

(58:52):
different way. You talked a little bit about
how early conversations with banks around kind of credit
lines you were, it was thanks, but no thanks.
Where are we or where, where have we come from in that kind
of logistic point when it comes to kind of financial services
which are kind of super important, like in terms it's
not just about getting paid, it's about having access to the

(59:15):
right types of financial serviceto help build your business.
I think we've actually come to like a very.
Sophisticated point in financingand funding of creator
businesses. I think banks have caught up,
which is great. I think there's also a lot of
banks that understand us as startups now, which is great.
And, and startup banking is something that, you know, that

(59:37):
exists. I, I still think like our
product is, is less understood and, and our, our, the way
revenue comes in is less understood, But I think there's
so many more ways to make money as a creator today.
That revenue can come in a lot faster than back in 2012 when we
were trying to navigate like, you know, a $300 check here,
$1000 check there. Like if you're good at what you

(59:59):
do, if you can tell a great story.
You're probably starting to makethousands of dollars pretty
quickly. And so I think I think that has
supported it. There's also a lot of different
funding options when it comes tolike there's a company called
Spotter that that will give you upfront capital in exchange for
the rights to monetize your backcatalog.

(01:00:19):
That's not something that has existed, you know, prior to
this. Something exists in in music.
It's something that exists in, you know, other types of
business, but essentially going,hey, you have a valuable catalog
of content you guys have been creating for, for years and
years and years and people are still watching your videos.
So we think, you know, we, we want to take on this back
catalog and, and sell advertising against that.

(01:00:42):
So there's so many different ways we even have have people
coming in and saying, I want to buy a minority stake in the
channel because I think it can scale.
And so we, we have gotten to a point of, of sophistication and
funding options. I think where we need support is
in financial literacy for creators, because there's a lot

(01:01:03):
more similar to athletes, like there's the opportunity to make
a lot of money pretty quickly ifyou're good at what you're
doing. Now, what do you do with that
money? I think is, is a question that
I, I had to navigate quite a bit.
And both of us are, you know, you still, you're still
navigating it as a creative individual, but like, what are
my options when it comes to the types of accounts that I can

(01:01:25):
start? What does it mean to create a, a
retirement plan? What does it mean to invest
money? So I think that those are things
like financing is becoming more of a thing.
Banks are starting to take us more seriously, starting to
understand us as startups, but you know, the creators who are
able to generate revenue quickly, how to manage that

(01:01:48):
money. The financial literacy part of
it, I think is still a place where where we need support and
is that I'm going to stop using the word coach, but.
Kind of your role and, and both your roles like having, having
this huge platform and having this community that you built.
How much of that are you taking on yourselves?
Because that's, that's huge, especially, you know, hey, I'm
guessing if you could talk to yourselves, you know, what was

(01:02:10):
it 13 years ago, you might have made some slightly different
decisions in terms of how you'remanaging that.
I think this gets back to being a.
Player coach where you know, we put it upon ourselves to find
the people who do have the answers and make it accessible
to our community. So if you are to take creator

(01:02:30):
Startup pro, you'll hear from our lawyer, right?
And our lawyer will break down, you know what you should look
for in some of your deal terms, right?
Things to look out for We bring on our agent from UTA and she
talks about that relationship and what that looks like.
So, you know, not to say that Samir and I are making episodes

(01:02:51):
about what people should do withtheir money, but we are hoping
to acquire that knowledge and make sure that we can point
creators in the right direction or even just open up space for
conversations. You know, where we have craters
on the show and they talk about how they've invested and how
they've sort of managed their money.
And I think part of our job and what I.
Liked throughout the process. Again, it's all very meta

(01:03:11):
because we, we've gone through all of this.
We're still going through it. And so I try and share, you
know, what has helped for us, which is radical simplicity.
So for example, on the financialliteracy side of the, of the
equation when it came to US navigating like one question
that you kind of ask is like, how much money do I need to make

(01:03:32):
as a creator? How much money do I want to
make? What is my, what is a revenue
goal for me? So we, we do this exercise very,
very simple. It's like take a piece of paper
out and on one side, on the leftside you write money out, on
their side you write money in and you just go on a month to
month basis. How much money is going out?

(01:03:54):
Now a lot of creators when they start, they are sole
proprietors, right? Like there's just them.
It's, it's one person, single person business.
So we try and say like, how muchmoney does it cost you to live?
Because you probably have this mix of of working and life
expenses in that like you pay rent in a house and that's where
you shoot, you pay for a phone, that's what you used to shoot.

(01:04:14):
You have a laptop, that's what you used to edit.
These are these are all work expenses as a creator.
So let's write down all of your outs.
What's going out of your bank account on a monthly basis.
Then let's explore what is coming in, if anything, and if
not, what needs to come in to cover your out and give you a
little bit of profit. And, and just trying to create

(01:04:35):
like very simple frameworks to understand that like I, I think
can quell the creative mind quite a bit.
And I know it has quelled mind, right?
Like it, it, it, it can be very overwhelming and very feeling
like a tangled web when you juststart going, OK, I have this
money coming in and this money going out.
I don't know what's going on. Accounting software can feel

(01:04:56):
overwhelming. Working with an accountant can
feel overwhelming. Just having a very, very simple
sheet, I think can give you a lot of solace and give you a
revenue target of going, OK, I guess I need to make $10,000 a
month. Cool, that's attainable.
How to make $10,000 a month? All right, I guess I could do
you know 2 brand deals a month and those would have to trade at

(01:05:19):
5000. Is that where I am in in in my
career? Oh, maybe not.
So maybe I'd actually have to do4 brand deals and and you know,
trade at 2500 bucks. So just starting to evaluate
like what is the math equation that gets me there?
I think part of our job is to give creative people very simple
frameworks to help them understand that's what we

(01:05:41):
needed. I think that's what, you know,
young creatives need. So I guess Colin mentioned, like
our lawyer comes on, we also built a contract template.
And you know, I worked very, I, I, I worked very diligently on
that to go, how do I make this feel safe for creators?
How do I make this really easy to understand how to make this
easy so that if someone does want to work with them, they can

(01:06:04):
fill in the blanks, send it backand they already have a contract
they can feel confident in. So I think that is, that is a
lot of our job. And I think as we move on, as we
learn our job is to go, how do we articulate this into
something simple that we know people like us can understand?
Here it is. I think a lot of that will
transcend. The creator economy and like,
you know, as a, as a Brit, my, my personal opinion is I don't

(01:06:26):
think we teach financial literacy enough in, you know,
in, in kids. I think the US does a a much
better job. But actually, because it's such
a buzz industry and you got quite a lot of young people
going into it. If they had that kind of simple
to understand, I guess kind of PNL of finances, then whether
they go into the greater industry or not, that's going to
set them up for for kind of general life.

(01:06:48):
I think one of the most important things.
For a creator, when it comes to their business is just
understanding the concept of enough.
I think that is a very confusingthing to get into when you live
on the Internet, when you live in a world where we're all just
watching numbers on a screen go up and we connect our self worth
to those numbers on a screen. And I think recognizing what

(01:07:11):
enough means, both from, you know, what's in your bank
account as well as what's on thescreen when it comes to
viewership, when it comes to subscribership, I think we can
chase this endless dragon and starting to just start from the
beginning. Like I said, I'm doing a
financial exercise or even just a deep internal exercise of why

(01:07:33):
am I doing this? What, you know, what is enough
for me? What else do I want to do
outside of this? I think this can be an all
consuming effort and I've, I've,I've at least noticed, you know,
in my own journey that that's been a really confusing thing to
explore. Is, is the term of enough?

(01:07:54):
Is it also kind of wins enough for the?
Audience, like, when are we kindof overloading them with like
stuff? They'll tell you when it's
enough though. That's yeah.
You won't be confused that real time, they will tell.
You when it's enough, right audiences.
Vote with their, with their views, they vote with their
engagement. You'll know when you've you've
given them enough. That's a target that's always
moving. Yeah.

(01:08:14):
And I guess that that. Real time conversation because,
you know, you talk about actually some of your ultimately
the customers is the audience. Yeah, the community is, is
creative is is platforms. That's probably quite unique in
a business to get that real timefeedback.
Yeah, it's, it's really unique, I think.
It's very rare that you can essentially spin out an MVP of

(01:08:36):
your product on a day-to-day basis, right?
And and maybe that can happen inthe world of tech, but I think
in our world it's, it's very unique that you can get to a
minimum viable product really quickly and throw it out into
the world. And based on the feedback from
people and from the audience and, and how it goes, you can

(01:08:57):
turn around and make a new version the next day.
And I think that's like a reallyincredible moment in time and
such an amazing moment to be a creative.
I think it's also what makes creators such great.
Entrepreneurs, because a lot of us spend four to five years
intimately getting to know an audience and understanding their

(01:09:18):
wants and needs. And then the products and
services that they would want are so clear to us, you know,
after those four or five years of intimately getting to know
them because it's always about the customer.
So that's the thing. I can see the jealousy of Max
Eyes, who's, you know, he's spent years and years trying to
get this right in marketing, butthat just got an instant

(01:09:40):
customer feedback. And I think that's also kind of
passionate like you have you said like it what makes great
entrepreneurs, but it's what makes great business people who
are that connected to the customer and that kind of
customer problem. It's fascinating.
I also think that adaptable and that.
Flexible, right? Like I think I often think in

(01:10:00):
the world of sports, when we were first starting out, I would
I would explore this, these stories around Sports
Illustrated, which is the leading sports magazine, you
know, in America. When we were or just back in,
you know, early days, you know, when they came across the
concept of ESPN, of this idea that there would be sports on

(01:10:22):
ATV network 24/7, They thought it was ridiculous.
They thought it was crazy that anybody would watch sports 24/7.
And they stuck with being the magazine.
And if you just explore like they were the leaders in sports
media and then ESPN came along and just took them out.
So I think as creators, because our environment changes so much,

(01:10:43):
we have to explore our own adaptability and question our
beliefs on a day-to-day basis. And I think that's a really
important trait in entrepreneurs.
I think it's a really important trait in humans.
Like the natural state of the world has changed.
There is a quote from Bruce Lee that I that I heard in college
and that I just absolutely loved.

(01:11:03):
He says to be like water. When water is poured into a cup,
it takes the shape of the cup. When it is in a river and there
approaches a rocket, it it becomes the rock.
And I think we have to think about that as creators that you
brought up AI like that was not a part of our life a year or two
ago the way it is today. And in a year from now, it'll
look totally different. Our audience can love something

(01:11:27):
one day and not love it the nextday.
And we have to be adaptable and we have to be in a constant flow
and relationship with the ever changing environment of the
Internet, of our audience, of our own desires and own
creativity and accept that the natural state is change.
So I think that is like such an incredible trait to adopt both

(01:11:47):
as a creator, but also as as just an entrepreneur.
You've been at this for 1213 years.
Now, why do you still do it? Like what?
What gets you out of bed in the morning?
What is that still drives you? There's a couple things you know
from the beginning. I've always thought of YouTube
as a ticket to the extraordinary, right?
So from the moment I uploaded myfirst video, I, I, I said it had

(01:12:07):
500 views. One of those views was Sameer
and my life changed forever, right?
And that still happens to this. Day every time we put.
Out an episode, every time we put out a video, someone seizes
that you that you didn't think or know would see it, right?
And you get an opportunity to meet this person, go to this
event, all these things you justcouldn't have imagined.
So it's an exciting and interesting life where new

(01:12:29):
things are coming at you all thetime.
But then also it's for me, it's a love of storytelling.
You know, we're working on a video right now that's going to
come out next week and it's kindof all I'm thinking about.
I want to get it right. I want to be proud of it.
It's a piece of work that's going to live forever and, and
it's self-expression. And for me, I think that's what
still keeps me going. It's what got me excited in the
very beginning. I think there's this.

(01:12:51):
Childlike feeling that I don't know that I'll ever shake, which
is like, I feel like I wake up and I'm looking at a rock and
I'm just curious what's underneath that rock.
And I can't live with myself or sleep unless I go turn over that
rock myself. And I think a lot of creatives

(01:13:12):
experience that somebody can tell them, Hey, don't you don't
need to turn over that rock. It's just dirt and worms.
And you're like, I think I have to.
And that's what it feels like tohave an idea.
You have no choice as a creativeindividual but to pursue your
idea and the, the, the excitement of having an idea in

(01:13:32):
your head and then seeing the physical manifestation of that
idea. I don't think I'll ever get over
that feeling. So as long as that feeling still
excites me, I'll, I'll keep doing this.
It could take a lot of differentshapes, but that's the feeling
that drives me every day. And and do you as you build out.

(01:13:54):
Colonists who made the business do you surround yourself with?
People. Who have that similar kind of
creative passion is, is, you know, it's not just you guys who
are on camera, but it's the whole team behind you.
Is that kind of what you look for?
Is that what's driving this industry?
There's just this, as you said, I just got to turn over this
rock and see what's there. Yeah.
Yeah. I would assume that everyone

(01:14:15):
that works with us. Some of which are in the room
right now as we're recording. Get some element of identity and
self worth from the creative thing that they make right.
The same way that if, you know, we said if this wasn't a job, we
would still make videos that we care deeply about.
And I think everyone we work. With feels the same way.

(01:14:37):
I feel that's such an amazingly kind of very.
Unique quality when you talk about kind of businesses and you
talk about kind of this search for purpose and and if pretty
much everybody in not just you know your your your team, but
the industry itself is driven byby something like that.
It makes a lot of things quite alot easier on on the kind of the
business side of people are justthis is not a job as a passion

(01:15:00):
and it's incredible easier and harder because if you're.
Trying to turn over a rock that does not align with the
priorities of the business. As a creative individual, you
have no choice, but you got to go do that.
You can go on a lot of detours. It must be absolutely
fascinating to just. Being so immersed into the
evolution of culture and seeing and, and also as you say, like

(01:15:23):
you know, as a player coach, yousee the younger generation, the
younger people coming in and bringing new ideas and like keep
evolving that you know that culture along the way 100%.
I mean the reason I studied film.
Was largely my interest in how films played such a major role
in society and in ideology. That the way we dress, the way

(01:15:46):
we talk, often times is, is directly derived from the media
we consume. And so that is so interesting to
me and so incredible that we as humans, like that is how we
shape our society. Is is is by media.
And the democratization of that media I find to be so
interesting. Like I've been travelling to

(01:16:07):
India since I was a young kid and it felt like 2 distinct
worlds. When I was younger, it felt like
there was America and there was India.
And as I've gotten older and as social media has hit this global
audience base, you recognize that I can, I can be in a, you
know, in Los Angeles one day andfly to Mumbai and pick up the

(01:16:28):
same conversation. We've all watched the same thing
on Netflix. We've all seen the same meme on
Instagram. There's much more of a global
culture than ever before. As much as culture is fragmented
into these niche pockets. We have common ground now
because the media that we're allconsuming, and I think that's a
really powerful point right now in the world.

(01:16:48):
There are two letters that come up in a lot of.
Businesses at the moment which are A and I and I'd just be
really. Interested to for.
Your take because you do have some, you know, computer
generated content out there, especially in kind of short
form, but listening to kind of your story and other stories,

(01:17:08):
it's certainly longer form content.
What really makes it believable and authentic is the passion
that comes from humans. So where do you think kind of AI
plays in, you know, kind of the industry as it is and kind of
going forward, both as an opportunity and potentially a
threat to, you know, some content creators?
I'll start with the opportunity I think you know. 1st, it's

(01:17:32):
helping us go quicker from, you know, idea to existence, right.
Some of the tools are just allowing us to really shorten
that gap. It's, you know, it's not how to
make something anymore. It's what to make is what a
guest told us on our show. And that's really true, right,
That like how to make something is is getting really

(01:17:53):
democratized and it's easier along with that, I think the
opportunity is that verifiably human experiences are being
valued to a greater degree. So long form podcast, someone
sitting down for two hours, you know, in the in that second hour
towards the end, you can't fake what it's like to be that
person. It feels verifiably human.

(01:18:14):
Live sports and live events in general, live streamers are more
popular than they've ever been because it's verifiably human.
It's live. It's in the moment, you don't
know what's going to happen. And we're we're seeing a greater
emphasis on those live experiences.
There are definitely threats. I think when it comes to some of

(01:18:35):
the jobs in terms of some of thealmost like assistant editor
type skills, some of the things that get you going, but I also
see that as opportunity. I'm starting to see it, you
know, the ability to to understand AI as someone in that
role, I think is becoming increasingly important because
it does starting to save you a lot of time.

(01:18:58):
I think one of the biggest. Threats is not at the creator
level, but the the consumer level thinking about you know,
I've about two weeks ago we wereriding in a car from Manhattan
to JFK going to the airport. It's like an hour and a half
drive and I spent the entire time prompting images on ChatGPT

(01:19:20):
and what I recognized when I gotto JFK was I just had a one of
one Internet experience. I don't know if there's no one
else in the world who just had the experience I had on the
Internet and it was really fun. And that hour and a half used to
be filled with listening to a podcast or scrolling Instagram
or being on YouTube. So as our world becomes more and

(01:19:43):
more fragmented, like that stat that I mentioned, around 47% of
Gen. Z is a fan of something that no
one they know personally is a fan of.
Are we going to get to a point where that stats actually
representative of 50% of humans are currently having an Internet
experience that no one else is having?
And if that's the case, then theone to many creator, there's a

(01:20:04):
there's a lot less space for us.We're now not competing with
other creators or other shows. We're competing with the
Internet and with the algorithms.
And I think that is that is a threat to us where attention
moves is always a threat and attention being so heavily
concentrated. Into a one of one experience, I

(01:20:26):
think is a threat to the greatereconomy.
I think as much as we're moving in a direction of a fragmented
Internet and maybe one of one experiences, you know, there's
always an, an inverse reaction to stuff like that.
And I think we're witnessing a large rise in collectivism of I
want to have a collective experience.
I want to be experiencing something at the same time as as

(01:20:46):
everyone else. We're at a point now where we we
have a series of. Events called coffee with
creators, where we get about 150creators together, we have
coffee, we get to know each other and really just give space
for everyone to meet and interact.
And it's a really great opportunity for us to see our
audience and and really interactwith them, you know, and make
sure it's people like us. We said earlier that, you know,

(01:21:08):
YouTube and and creating is about finding people like you
and, and that's one of the best opportunities for us to do it.
It reminds me a lot of Jerry Seinfeld was asked one time, you
know, when you get off stage after doing comedy, is there
someone you look towards to tellyou if it went well or not?
And he was like, no way. He's like, no one gets more
feedback more often than a comedian on stage doing stand

(01:21:32):
up. It's just right in front of your
face the whole time. And there's an element of that
for Samir and I as well. With some of our events, you
know, we are on stage. We're answering questions live
from creators and we get to see truly the the impact live and
see their faces and understand it.
Are people laughing? Are people taking notes?
And there's really an element for us of that.

(01:21:52):
And I think for creators across the board right now, some of the
most successful creators are doing live tours.
And, you know, they're proving to themselves that they are that
level of of entertainer or educator who doesn't need to
spend hours editing it in just the right way.
You know, they're honing their skills of being able to do it at

(01:22:13):
any given moment in front of hundreds of people.
So we are making a pretty big swing.
Of throwing our biggest events ever on September 4th in in New
York and rented out a big space and and working towards throwing
that because we believe like that is something that is really
important. This career can feel really
lonely. You are filming yourself, then

(01:22:36):
you're loading in footage of yourself onto a computer and
you're sitting and editing yourself by yourself.
So asking yourself, would peoplelike me?
Are people going to like this? So I think that can be a really
lonely experience. Our show is meant to make the
experience less lonely, to hear stories from other people.
But I think our events are builtto make the experience even less

(01:22:59):
lonely and saying, hey, let's get together, let's share our
experiences. It's amazing to be with someone
who you have common ground with.Oh yeah, it's fantastic.
I think if if you're not in the industry.
You don't. You don't really appreciate
that. You don't appreciate all the
work that. Goes on behind but you.
Don't appreciate that yeah, these famous people that we see
in front of our screens must be spending time with millions of

(01:23:20):
people but no there's so many hours in a dark room and that's
probably why you do it together,right so yeah totally if they're
if they're really. Popular, they spend a lot more
time in the studio by themselves, right?
Like, that's that's the reality.It's like they spend a lot of
time on the craft. Our belief in events is that,
you know, one of the biggest values of just meeting new

(01:23:40):
people. And so a lot of what we do both
at coffee with creators and whatwe're going to do at Press
Publish NYC in September is put people in groups that maybe they
weren't expecting, right. So unexpected groups of people,
unexpected interactions. I think that keeps you
stimulated in a way that's just so interesting.
And so partially, yeah, you're going to be sitting and and

(01:24:03):
listening to a panel kind of like a a a a tad, but we keep
that to a minimum. I want I want it more to be
opportunities to learn from eachother.
I think that's like the most thethe the the worst version of
like an event is me is I go and I hear someone talk and and
maybe I like it, but I don't meet anyone and I leave.

(01:24:24):
Like the value of the collectiveexperience is in meeting people
like you. Colin, you mentioned that you
guys are working. On a new video that comes out I
think next week, what's what kind of next for for you 2 Like
what what is the next going to six months going to look like?
I mean, we've experienced a lot of personal change this.
Year and I think the the past six months have been very eye

(01:24:48):
opening. So in January we both lost our
homes in the in the Los Angeles fires. 12 days after the fire I
had my first baby and in a month, a month and a half, Colin
will have his. 1st baby and. So as a creative, as an
entrepreneur, you're constantly in collaboration with

(01:25:10):
everything, right? With your surroundings, with
your own life, with, with this new relationship, the time.
And I think now it's like the next six months are going to be
us continuing to figure out whatthe new version of Colin and
Samir looks like. Now we have new collaborators.
Now we have new forces that are creating, you know, new energy

(01:25:31):
with our with our content. I think I found that the same
thing that was true 13 years ago, same thing that's true
today is like we can't help but tell each other ideas and get
excited about them. We just can't help it.
Like this video that Colin's working on is nothing like
anything that's been on our channel, but we got excited
about it and we want to see it through.

(01:25:52):
So I think no matter what, that's what the next six months
will be like. But from a true business
perspective, to be honest, it's about finding more scalable
revenue. So our education business is, is
a huge part of that. The question of, you know, this
education business is, is, is probably the first time in our
entire creative career that we've generated passive revenue.

(01:26:12):
So it's OK. How do we, how do we keep going
in this direction where, you know, as we enter this next
chapter of life, we want to explore passive revenue.
I think there's another element of exploring the deep desire
that got us into this career, which is exploring Hollywood and
going, huh, there's some problems that Hollywood is
facing. YouTube clearly is dominating.

(01:26:34):
Is there a bridge between these two worlds and exploring some of
that? And so I think it's about
stepping into this new role as humans and seeing how that shows
up in our in our business like that these new constraints will
create a new reality. And I think that's what the next
six months are about, Yeah, if you think about those 4 pillars.

(01:26:55):
Audience and value prop for the most part are not changing, but
as new forces come into our life, process will change.
And as Samir said, monetization,we're starting to change that as
well, looking for more scalable revenue.
So I think for a lot of creatorsas they've been in this for a
long time, audience and value prop generally stays pretty
consistent. It's hard.
That's a slow moving shift ship if you actually want to change

(01:27:18):
those. But for all of your career
process and monetization, those are the two that you're kind of
always. Yeah, they're always a little
bit in flux and you're always working on.
Well, congratulations to both ofyou and.
I wonder if they have a channel aimed at kind of toddler
lacrosse, maybe. That's going to be a few years
time. Honestly, probably, yeah,
probably. Probably do.

(01:27:38):
Everything's on. YouTube and if it's not there.
I'm not going to start it. Not at this point.
My career. A lot of financial education as
well. Financial literacy would be
important for the babies. Yeah, that's true.
Yeah. Like.
My first PNL Yeah, before we letyou go, we ask all our.
Guests, if you were to listen tokind of one guest on a future

(01:28:01):
money travels podcast, who wouldyou like to hear from and what
are the some of the questions you would you would ask them?
I mean, I, I would say for me. Personally, I love listening to
Scott Galloway. I really enjoy the crassness and
the the way that he articulates himself.
When we had him on the show, youknow, he talked about how he has

(01:28:23):
a a team of writers that help him, you know, take complex
topics, things that are happening in current events and
make them incredibly accessible,right, With analogies and
metaphors. And I just think the way he
story tells around financial literacy, financial planning, I
think there's almost no one better.
I think he's really great. So I would love to see him on

(01:28:45):
the show. I think for me it.
Would be. Rick Rubin, I don't know if you
guys have read his book, The Creative Act, but I find it to
be one of the best articulationsof creativity that I've ever
heard. And I'd be really curious to
hear him talk about the commercial side of art and just

(01:29:05):
actually exploring. Like, you know, I think what
we're talking about is being a creator, being a media company,
but I'm always fascinating to hear what someone who's an
artist thinks about the world ofmoney.
Well, both of them really, really good, Colleen.
Samir, thank you so much for joining us.
It's been a fascinating conversation about creativity,
resilience and the business behind the camera.

(01:29:29):
That's inspiration me. This week.
To keep the conversation going, you can follow us on our social
media handles. And of course, don't forget to
follow the show on. Spotify and subscribe on
YouTube. If you enjoyed what you heard
today, leave us a review, tell your friends or better still, do
both. We'll be back next episode to
explore more life changing innovations in digital finance.

(01:29:51):
So wherever your travels take you this week, remember to join
us then for the next instalment of Money Travels presented by
Visa.

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