Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host), Colin (guest, Colin & Samir), Samir (guest, Colin & Samir)
Introductions [00:00:00]
Sam: Colin and Samir, do you guys know what you’re getting into? Do you know what this is at all?
Colin: I thought this was a podcast about procurement. Is that not what this podcast is about?
Sam: Yeah, it’s all about office supplies.
Samir: I don’t even know how to say the word “procurement.”
Sam: Once you get around us, that word becomes a problem. And Ben is the systems integrations guy, right?
Colin: Yeah, exactly.
Sam: So give me your story. I kind of know a little bit of it, but let’s assume people listening to this don’t know it — which is my way of saying I only half know it. Give me your story.
Samir: I’m Samir, by the way. This is my voice if you’re listening. I graduated college in 2011. I went to school to study film and digital media. I grew up in LA, so I was really into the film business. I wanted to be a storyteller, I wanted to find a way to become a filmmaker — and that was a really challenging thing.
Sam: So how did you swing “I’m going to be a filmmaker”?
Colin: He’s good looking, though. He looks like an LA person.
Sam: I know, but parents don’t care about that.
Samir: You’re right. I remember the moment I called my mom and said I’m not going to be a business major, I’m going to be a film major. It was a scary moment for them. I was a bad high school student — I wasn’t good in high school, I just wasn’t getting it. I didn’t do homework. I wasn’t someone who lived up to the standard of being an Indian kid. Whereas my brother was student body president, became a lawyer — he followed more of a traditional path.
I think they noticed I was so unconventional that it was like, alright, at this point, do whatever. But my dad is also really unconventional — he’s an entrepreneur, he’s a fashion designer, he’s different. So there was a bit of, okay, you seem confident, figure it out.
When I graduated, I had this issue with being someone who wasn’t good in school. I wasn’t great at being an employee, either — that was really hard for me. I worked as an editor on a film called Ides of March in Hollywood, and I just didn’t like it. I didn’t like doing a single task, doing one thing.
I had become aware of YouTube because I was up in Northern California in college and was really fascinated by it. I felt like I had all the tools to just upload a video and make something. The subject matter I picked was the community I was part of growing up — I played lacrosse in college — and I decided to spin up a YouTube channel called the Lacrosse Network. That’s the origin of my first upload to YouTube, really outside of student films. And at the same time, Colin was uploading a trailer for a series about the Colorado club lacrosse team. I’ll let him pick up from there. This is 2011, just for frame of reference.
Sam: Let me jump in with one thing. I’ve seen a video where you said something about your first video only having, I don’t know, 100 or 1,000 views, but Samir was one of them — and that one view changed your life, because then you guys ended up joining forces. Fast forward to today, you’ve got this like really baller YouTube channel, and you get to do the thing you want to do.
I don’t know what I’d do if I could do anything — I’d probably be a professional basketball player, that’d be the peak. But I feel like the second-best thing might be being a YouTuber. I love that idea: I only had 100 views, but one of those views changed my life.
Colin: For me it was a real lesson in community. Unlike Samir, I was actually a really dedicated student — almost probably to a fault. So when I finally had this experience in college of buying a camera, being a little more creative, putting out my first video about the lacrosse team, having it not necessarily be a huge success — it did connect me with like-minded people. One of which was Samir. He sent me an email that day basically saying, if you’re going to be making these videos, even though you just started, why don’t you put them out on my network? I’m trying to aggregate tons of people who are fans of the sport.
From that point on I was like, I don’t even care about my past education. I’m so interested in telling stories and having them connect with people.
Sam: But the Lacrosse Network — that was kind of a failure, right? Like it got you to a certain point and then you were like, this isn’t going to pay the bills?
Colin: It definitely didn’t pay our bills in the first three years. It wasn’t a failure exactly, but… we sold the company in 2014, which was really positive. So that was a success for us. But the pathway to get there was really challenging because there was no business model surrounding YouTube in 2011, 2012.
When we tried to get advertisers, no one even understood that spending money on YouTube was a reasonable thing to do. The only way people could understand us was as a video production company. So what we did to make money was creative service jobs for people. We made videos, we made websites, we designed stickers for one company. It was like, oh, these guys are creative internet people — if we have a creative internet task, we’ll ask them.
What was beneficial to us was that YouTube the company was very interested in what we were doing. They basically came to me and said, if you can secure live rights, we’ll really get behind you — we’re trying to explore live sports on YouTube. So that’s what I did. I got rights to high school games first, then college games, then we eventually distributed pro games, figured out how to acquire live rights and got YouTube behind us. That grew our profile and got us to the point where we got acquired by a sports media company.
A lot of that, I would say, was an aqua-hire, to be very clear. There was cash exchanged for our company, but really the majority was we had salaries and stock. We got to have comfortable, stable jobs pursuing YouTube, and exploring — the company’s called Whistle.
The YouTube Business Model [00:11:30]
Sam: By the way — YouTube started in like 2005, right? And you guys are saying it was 2010, 2011, and it really wasn’t a well-trodden path of “be a YouTuber, make money, this can be a business.” The way you guys used it was more like, it’s our portfolio, we’ll get some clients, it’ll be a launch pad, maybe we’ll get picked up by somebody bigger. That’s crazy, right? That’s six years into the game.
Shaan: That’s why, just as a bigger point — like crypto right now — these things take a long time before they become a thing. Before it’s like what YouTube is today, where it’s obvious you could be a YouTuber and make a bunch of money. It’s still not even obvious now, I don’t think.
Sam: Yeah. I don’t think it’s that obvious.
Shaan: At least there are examples now. I watch YouTube on my Apple TV and that’s TV to me.
Sam: Most people don’t do it like that.
Shaan: I do think if you take a step back and look at it, it operates exactly like most media companies. If you just take business models from the past — how radio operated, how television operated, a magazine — that’s how YouTube operates too.
Samir: There’s a really unique version of advertising when it comes to YouTube in that we’re uploading and the platform will actually pay us without us having to interface with clients, without having to build a media kit, without having to pitch anyone. I think that causes creators to not fully understand the business they’re in, because they don’t have to pick up the phone and sell their audience to someone.
When we were first starting out, AdSense was absolutely insignificant — our audience was extremely niche and small, and YouTube wasn’t that developed. There were people making good money from AdSense checks, but that was never that significant for us because we’ve always been very niche. So we had to learn the business of media and apply it to what we’re doing on YouTube. And that maturity is starting to catch up right now in the space — it’s why a lot of creators are able to build businesses today.
Sam: Fast forward to now — the Lacrosse Network is no longer the focus, it’s the Colin and Samir show. You’ve got hundreds of thousands of subscribers, you talk about creator economy stuff, you’ve got these really highly produced interviews, clips, and you do this thing where you’re sitting in your car giving analysis of different videos and why they’re going viral. I watch it all the time. How big is the business at this point?
Samir: As you mentioned, we’re on our way to two million subscribers. We have 813,000 as of this recording. The business is myself, Colin, and we have four full-time team members who work on the channel — three editors, a production manager, and a data and insights person who looks at how everything’s tracking analytically. Then we also have a newsletter, and there’s a team of three on that — one general manager, one more in business development and sales, and a writer on staff. So the total number of people in the Colin and Samir ecosystem is ten, split across two media properties: the YouTube channel and the newsletter.
Shaan: I would say too — we’re primarily an advertising-based business. Our biggest clients are Samsung, Shopify, Jellysmack, and other creator economy companies.
Sam: What’s the revenue now? Can you reveal that?
Samir: We haven’t been super 100% transparent with exact numbers, but we’re a seven-figure business.
Sam: Are you getting close to eight?
Samir: No.
The Path to Eight Figures [00:18:00]
Sam: Do you think this gets there? Sometimes you get in a business and what got us here won’t get us there. From a business model point of view — if we just keep it up, we’re at 813,000 subscribers today, probably tracking to 2 million next year, and the ads will just keep scaling — will this be the business forever? Or do we need to come up with a second act?
Samir: I think there are decisions you can make as a creator to get there. We’re friends with a lot of creators who are pushing towards that eight-figure business mark, and a lot of that is just an ad-supported business. There are other creators who’ve launched course companies, education, direct-to-consumer content, Patreon, subscription platforms — you can absolutely get there.
But I think honestly it’s based on this moment, as an artist or filmmaker, someone who wants to express something — where you go from being a filmmaker to a media maker. Those are two different things, and you have to decide what you want the lifestyle to look like.
I think you mentioned it, Sam — your mother-in-law saying she likes taking Tuesdays and Thursdays off. I think that’s a really important thing for all creators and entrepreneurs to look at: what’s enough for me? What do I want to do? Colin and I are trying to constantly evaluate which parts of this are really enjoyable and which parts start to feel like we’re just making stuff to make stuff. We have to find the balance of how to scale what we’re doing while also recognizing — we got into this because we wanted to make something. It’s okay to lean in and say, maybe there’s part of this that’s just about telling the stories we’re excited about.
Sam: Who is crushing it? Like what’s his name — Ali? Ali Abdaal?
Colin: He’s coming on the pod soon.
Sam: I think he reveals his numbers where his course business is going to do like six million this year?
Colin: Yeah, I think he’s tracking to six million.
Sam: YouTube Academy?
Colin: Yeah, I signed up for it actually.
Sam: So that’s an example of somebody crushing it in the course model. Then there’s the car guy — Doug DeMuro. We bought a car from Cars & Bids.
Shaan: Me too, actually.
Sam: Amazing. So he’s a car guy with two or three million subscribers and he has an auction website for cars that could potentially be a nine-figure company.
Shaan: Yeah, the channel launched the business, right?
Sam: He had the channel for five, maybe many years first.
Shaan: The unique thing we’re experiencing right now — this is entrepreneurship, but the difference is we build an audience first and then solve how to monetize that audience through products, services, subscriptions. Whereas a lot of traditional entrepreneurship is: build the business first, then try to find customers or an audience second.
The thing holding back the creator space right now is operators — really good business operators to surround creators. Because to make content on a consistent cycle when you are the subject of your videos, it doesn’t really allow you to also operate the website and push the business at the same time.
Sam: Ask your question, Shaan.
Shaan: What are some other examples? Ali Abdaal with the courses, Doug DeMuro with the car channel then the car auction site — who else has done something cool? Who started with content, started with an audience, and then created a cool business off their YouTube channel?
Colin: One that keeps coming up is Cassey Ho. She started Blogilates — fitness, yoga instruction on YouTube — and now she has two separate product companies that are both eight-figure companies.
Samir: Yep. One’s an apparel company for athleisure and one’s yoga mats and accessories.
Colin: There’s also a yoga creator called Yoga with Adriene who started teaching.
Shaan: She’s so great. Her subscription platform is amazing.
Sam: I’m a customer.
Shaan: Have you seen this? Her name’s Yoga with Adriene. She’s got like the girl-next-door look — not intimidating, but she’s definitely beautiful. She’s based out of Austin. She does yoga with her dog. She’s very calming.
Sam: She’s the best. I love Yoga with Adriene.
Colin: There’s another creator named Amanda Rach Lee who started creating content with bullet journals — showing how she was setting up her journals, organizing her days — and then she launched a line of stationery and journals, and that’s become her primary business engine.
Yes Theory when it comes to merchandise and apparel has done an incredible job with Seek Discomfort, building a brand that can stand alone outside of the videos. And I believe they just went into the fulfillment business — not only do they have their own merch line, they also do the printing and warehousing for other creators.
Shaan: That’s really smart when creators start businesses like that, where they say, okay, if we’re going to solve all these problems independently, we can then work with other creators to do the same.
What Creators Should Be Doing [00:27:00]
Sam: What do you think people should be doing that you don’t see? I have a couple ideas — I’ll throw them at you and you can tell me if they’re bad ideas.
Samir: I think I’m curious why we haven’t seen creators band together, especially in the e-commerce space. Why have we not seen ten creators come together and launch one e-commerce retail store, where they can bring a ton of traffic and pair together all their audiences under one brand?
Colin: That’s exactly what I was going to say — like a Disney Store or Discovery Store type of thing.
Sam: 100%. Or even one singular brand.
Colin: It’s happening with this brand called Cloak in the gaming world. But why not — if every creator had a piece of one apparel brand, couldn’t you make the next big apparel company? Could you make the next Urban Outfitters? If Emma Chamberlain plus five creators came together and made a retail store, I feel like especially in beauty, fashion, and cosmetics, there’s such an opportunity to band together.
Shaan: My company got acquired by Twitch, so when I was there I was looking at what these creators were doing. One brand that stood out was G Fuel — basically it’s like an energy drink, like a Gatorade-type thing, “gamer fuel.” The guy who started it is this absolute 55-year-old bro, just jacked, and you’re like, I don’t know what’s happening at this company, but okay.
What happened is he went to Twitch stars because he recognized the traditional brands weren’t going to them — they were going to Instagram and YouTube creators first. He went to them and said, hey, I’ll make a flavor for Dr Disrespect, I’ll make a flavor for Ninja, each one of you gets your own shaker that you promote with your brand on it. He got like nine of them to be sponsored athletes basically.
From what I remember it was definitely over $20 million, might be over $50 million in sales they were doing, just off of this one real niche channel. But then each of the individual creators was still doing their own thing — Ninja made a gaming mouse, somebody else made a coffee or a stimulant. And I was thinking: if the ten big ones just got together and launched a gaming accessories line — the best keyboard, the best mouse, the best whatever — they would be selling hundreds of millions a year if they put their powers together, Captain Planet style.
Samir: I think that goes back to the lack of operators in the space right now. There’s a lot of short-term revenue to be had, a lot of quick cash to be made, that I think now people are starting to look past toward the longer-term. There are more road maps now.
Mr. Beast is singular, in my opinion — you can’t really replicate him. But you can look at some of the stuff he’s doing, like Feastables. Or even Logan Paul and KSI — they made Prime instead of partnering with an existing brand. That’s interesting.
Sam: How’s that going?
Samir: I’m not positive on exact numbers. From what they say, it’s going well. I will say it tastes great — we bought it here. But I have absolutely no idea how the business is actually going.
Colin: It seems like he’s following the Beats by Dre trajectory of making sure to get it in the hands of celebrities and famous people. Anytime he has someone on his podcast, they have Prime in their hand, or they try it and they like it. That’s a good strategy.
How Long It Actually Takes [00:34:00]
Sam: How long did it take you guys to get to 800,000 subscribers?
Samir: I think at least four years, right?
Colin: Four or five years.
Samir: Yeah. Probably four years to get to 200,000, then one year from 100,000 to 800,000.
Sam: Let me take this journey for one second. If we strip away hard work and talent — assume those are core ingredients you guys have — every journey has inflection points. Something broke your way, you realized something before others did, one video went viral and stepped you up to another level. Because if I go to the channel today, the top thing is an interview with Mr. Beast that has 10 million views. How the hell did you get Mr. Beast?
Samir: My first answer is time and market. We’ve been in this space for ten years, and that has introduced us to a lot of people who created opportunity as we started to grow. Jimmy — Mr. Beast — shot us a message when we made a video a couple years ago and said, that was a cool video. We struck up a relationship and started talking about YouTube because we were both authentically into it.
That created a situation where, when we got to a point where we had an interview show, we had a relationship with him such that we could fly out, get access to his new facility in North Carolina, and he was excited to be on our platform.
Even before that, as an inflection point — we weren’t catching that much traction from a sponsorship perspective, but we had made enough connections that Samsung was looking for creators to partner with on year-long ambassadorship deals, and our names were up there because of the relationships we’d created in the market.
So I would say the fact that we stuck in it for ten years has introduced us to people that created opportunity. We are late learners — figuring out YouTube took a really long time for us. But as we figured it out, we were in a position where we had enough relationships that our first couple of interviews were Marques Brownlee and Mr. Beast. We had developed those relationships before they fit into the format we eventually landed on. And collaboration on YouTube — that’s how you grow.
Shaan: Time in market is an awesome phrase. I’ve never heard it. Usually people use it for investing — Buffett, I think, said it: instead of timing the market, what matters is time in market.
Samir: I would add: it’s time in an underserved market. The reason Jimmy even reached out to us is because no one was really talking about creators or the YouTube space for a long period of time, and we continued to talk about it while no one was giving it the time of day. So it’s not that we were just in the market — it’s that we picked an underserved community. We happened to be the place where creators could turn.
Shaan: That’s happening in crypto right now. I created this crypto media company not long ago called the Milk Road and it’s doing really well, but we’re so new, and crypto’s now cool, so you don’t get credit for being there when it’s cool. There’s a show called Up Only on YouTube, started by Cobie and Ledger or whatever, and they’ve been doing it for a long time back when there wasn’t much heat in crypto. They were just every week showing up and talking about whatever, shooting the breeze. Now when famous people want to hit the circuit, they’re like, well, we’ve got to go there because they have the respect of people who were hanging out here before the tourists arrived.
Colin: You can’t beat that. I think you watched people go from being not interested in what we were doing on YouTube to extremely interested, and then a lot of those people who were interested in the creator economy shifted over to web3. Time in market, when you’re just like, actually, this is the career we’ve chosen, we’re going to be in this, we enjoy this, this is what brings us fulfillment — then wherever this goes, the ups and downs, we’re just here. That is an important thing as you’re going on your entrepreneurial journey.
How to Build a YouTube Channel from Scratch [00:43:00]
Sam: Right now Shaan and I have a podcast that’s doing great — we’re like a podcast that sometimes gets posted on YouTube, podcast numbers are first. But we’ve each toyed around with the idea of maybe we should give this YouTube thing a try. I’ve thought about it, but I’m like, when I’m going to do it, I’m going to go all in. Can you give me and Shaan advice? What are the table stakes to get to 100,000 or 200,000 subscribers inside six to twelve months? Assume budget is no big deal — we’re willing to spend money.
Colin: Here’s something I think is really important: you’re creating a video podcast. In your mind, the thought is there’s not much marginal cost in posting this to YouTube — you’re already producing video and audio. There is not marginal production cost. There is marginal distribution cost. You’re going to have to spend time thinking about how to distribute this show on YouTube and how it differentiates from the audio.
But think beyond what you’re already doing — you do need to go all in. You need to understand the audience you’re serving, and most importantly, you need to understand packaging and what works on YouTube from a search perspective and from a click-through rate perspective.
Samir: All of YouTube is click-through rates and then retention.
Sam: Tell me what works.
Colin: What’s the niche you’d want to tackle?
Sam: Entrepreneurship. Let’s say I’m buying Airbnbs — short-term rentals, just use that as an example shortcut.
Colin: I would go along from a packaging perspective on basically how to make money through Airbnb rentals. Maybe you create a series like “Zero to a Million Dollars in Revenue on Airbnb Rentals, Episode One.” I wouldn’t title it like that literally, but the concept is: brainstorming titles would be our first step, because you’re trying to help people understand how they can do the same thing.
Shaan: Even that “zero to a million” framing — that’s a story frame. You set the stakes. You’re a man on a mission. Which is not what most people would naturally think to do, but for you guys it’s like, well if you have a mission, people are going to want to see if you can do it.
Colin: For that example, people are already doing that — and that’s not a problem. It can actually be to your advantage. We tell creators: if there’s something you want to talk about, search it into YouTube, sort by most viewed, and see what videos are getting a million views. There are definitely videos about the business of Airbnbs that have over a million views. So that’s a good place to start — what’s currently working, and what are those videos about?
The key for you would be: how can you make sure that when you get that sensational title and thumbnail, your video actually meets the expectation of the person who clicks? It’s not just you sitting down talking about it retroactively. Maybe it’s a video that took you two months to make. But it’s got to match that expectation and actually be impressive.
Sam: I’d probably package it around “I made a million dollars on Airbnb in 30 days.” Basically, you’re going to track how you went from not making any money to actually doing it.
Colin: That’s the packaging you’d have to fall into — and then you’d have to meet that expectation. You’d actually have to do it.
Then I’d think about: where are people currently getting Airbnb education outside of YouTube? Are there communities where if you made your video you could seed it, where it would be a success if they started talking about it organically?
What would your early team be? Would you have just an editor, someone filming you, a thumbnail maker?
Sam: Just for the sake of argument, let’s say money is no option.
Colin: I would hire a thumbnail designer who is also part YouTube strategist. Most thumbnail designers have a lot of YouTube strategy in them because they’re so linked. I’d recommend finding someone who really deeply understands packaging and has seen things that work.
Sam: I’m going to read some titles in this exact Airbnb category and you guys guess the viewership. “How to Make Your First Million on Airbnb” — I would think that’s over a million views.
Colin: 900 views.
Sam: 900? Yep. “You Can Make a Million Dollars Per Year on Airbnb in 2022” — with the “you” in all caps.
Shaan: I hate that. Probably has… I’m going to say low. I’m going to hope and pray it’s low.
Sam: 18,000.
Shaan: I’d say that’s medium.
Sam: “How Much Money My Airbnb Made in Its First Month” — high? That one crushed it. That’s Shelby Church, 2.35 million.
Colin: I love her.
Sam: I watched that video, that’s how I know it’s great.
Shaan: She’s amazing.
Sam: But I think through that exercise you’re starting to understand — do that exercise in packaging. Go through all those and then upgrade the titles that aren’t working. What was wrong with that framing? Did it not match the expectation? And for Shelby — what was right about her framing? “How much money my Airbnb made in its first month” is really great because it’s personal and concrete.
Shaan: Me and Sam talked to this woman, Rebecca — Rebecca Zamolo or something like that? She’s got maybe 10 or 15 million subscribers across all her channels. She makes content for like 10 to 12 year olds. I was asking her how she got to a million subscribers pretty quickly — within a year or two years. And she was explaining it, and I was like, okay, so basically what you’re telling me is you quit your job and you just treated this like a nine-to-five?
And she was like, yeah. Like, no one else was treating this like a job. I’m at the office at nine, I’m working until six, seven, eight, nine, ten sometimes, but I’m showing up every single day and I’m just working. Versus most people who are just kind of around it, like, I’ll get to it when I get to it.
Colin: And studying as well. Really being a student of the platform. That exercise we just did took five minutes — looking at top performing videos in a category and dissecting what you thought was good, bad, what worked, what didn’t. You have to do that first. It’s like market research.
YouTube Tools: VidIQ and Search Strategy [00:55:00]
Sam: Is there a good tool that shows you search volumes on YouTube?
Samir: There’s a tool called VidIQ you can use. And we do it on Google a lot because Google and YouTube are obviously connected. We’ll use Google Trends to track, okay, is this keyword better than this one, are people searching this more than that? And then on YouTube specifically, we do use VidIQ sometimes, and it’ll tell you how competitive a keyword is, how much search traffic there is on YouTube for that, and it’ll show you the top videos for that keyword. If you go into VidIQ and type in “Airbnb,” you’re going to start to see what are the trending videos in this category, what’s working, what are the thumbnails that are working.
Sam: VidIQ is a great example of — as you try to be successful on YouTube, you’re like, I wish it was easier to do this type of research. Not just see what’s popular, but how competitive it is, and just quickly show me the top videos in that thing. So VidIQ becomes this piece of software that’s useful to you.
Tools and Opportunities for Creator Economy [01:00:00]
Sam: What are some tools or things you guys wish existed? There are hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs who listen to this, and some of them will hear that and be like, oh, I could build that.
Colin: The two things I wish existed when we first started — and that I still think there are opportunities for — are LegalZoom for creators and TurboTax for creators. I know those two things exist for entrepreneurs, but something with a more creator lens. A lot of creators have this influx of freelancer-style income, and it goes really fast from “I made a little bit of money on YouTube” to “wait a second, what do I do now, I just made a ton of money on YouTube.” The back-end business side is what you need the most help with.
If you’re really into it, you’re going to go nine-to-five into YouTube and you’re going to figure out your niche, your category, how to find an audience — time in market, baby. You’re going to figure it out, you might have to hedge your bets and have another job while you figure it out. But if you’re really into it, you’re going to figure out the content. It’s the back end — the younger creator who lands a bunch of success really quickly and then says, what do I do now — that business ops stuff would be really helpful.
Sam: You were talking about creators needing operators. In my head that’s like, oh, that’s cool — someone like me who knows how to operate a business just partners with someone like you who’s famous, we do a 50-50 split, and I build a business while you keep getting famous.
I agree that’s a great business. But in that example, as well as in your partnership, and in just a normal creator setup — what happens if one of you guys dies, or you get in a fight, or you want to quit? Is your business just going to die? I know Jenna Marbles is huge on YouTube — I’m pretty sure she just bounced, she just said I’m out. Same with Casey Neistat — he just said I don’t feel like making videos. Does your money just go away?
Colin: I think creators are a lot like athletes. If we stop playing, yeah, your income from playing is gone. It’s about figuring out the businesses that can support you outside of creating videos, because the reality is — you can’t sell Colin and Samir and expect someone else to operate it. If one of us is gone, this version of Colin and Samir is done. That’s the reality.
But the things we build — it’s a lot of why we built a newsletter. We were like, okay, that follows a similar value proposition: it’s similar in creating content, and you can hire writers, you can scale your voice and thoughts, and if we’re gone, that thing can operate. It’s not called the Colin and Samir Newsletter for a reason — it’s called the Published Press. So it truly can scale beyond us.
What we do is unscalable beyond us, and I think we’re okay with that. If something were to happen to me, I would hope Samir could continue the interview show we’re currently doing and serve the brand partners we have, if he wanted to.
Samir: It sounds like Colin’s thought about it.
Colin: I’m just saying — whereas in the past we had a really high-lift format that just wouldn’t have worked if one of us was gone, right now we have an interview show. You could carry it on.
Surprise Channels: The Hidden Niches [01:11:00]
Sam: What channels have surprised you? Have you guys interviewed anyone or come across a channel where you’re like, dude, this fishing channel is making a million dollars a month? Has there ever been anything like that?
Colin: There’s a guy who has a channel just on breaking into locks, and it’s a huge channel. There’s another channel where they just smash stuff — a hydraulic press.
Samir: Man, I want to pull up the exact name, but there’s a barbecue channel — actually a whole barbecue genre on YouTube that’s massive. They do huge partnerships with brands like Sweet Baby Ray’s or Stubb’s, and they’re starting to sell their own spice rubs, which are really high margin. That genre to me is really interesting — people who are into barbecue are really into barbecue. They’re very good businesses when it comes to selling rubs and barbecue accessories.
Colin: I’m always amazed by channels like The Slow Mo Guys where there’s literally no need for language. It’s just the visual of something happening in slow motion, and the viewership is so high because those videos can be watched again and again, all over the world, no matter what language you speak. YouTube can place ads globally in every market. So just the revenue they get from the platform is out of control. That’s a fascinating business — just film something in slow motion and rake in massive advertising dollars.
Sam: You guys want to hear something messed up?
Samir: Sure.
Sam: There’s this channel I follow, and it has a huge following, and no one talks about it because it’s embarrassing. There’s a group of people — I’m one of them — who like popping zits. But to take it a step further, there’s one where people love seeing dandruff come off people’s heads. When you have dandruff, you’re like, I need to get this out, it’s killing me. When I watch other people do it, I feel the relief, like it feels relieving for me to see it.
There’s this guy — I think it’s just called like the Indian Dandruff Barber — and he takes guys with dandruff, shaves their head, and you can see the scalp get cleaned. I was with my friend Neville recently and I went to his house and turned on his YouTube, and I said, hey let me show you this video, it’s hilarious but don’t laugh at me, I think I’m a creep. And that video was purple — he had already clicked on it. And I was like, dude, you freak, you watch the dandruff stuff too.
There’s this whole genre. If you type in “dandruff removal,” there are so many videos. And another one is cysts — seeing those get removed. I love those videos. I love them. Don’t make me feel like a freak.
Colin: Listen, when I come across a good pimple-popping video, I’m diving in. I don’t shy away from that. I’ve seen the Indian Dandruff guy.
Sam: There’s also one account I got really weirdly into — the folding lady on TikTok. She just folds clothes in different ways and organizes them in her drawers. My drawers are a disaster, so for me it’s like this aspirational account where she organizes stuff. There’s a lot of weird stuff out there.
TikTok vs. YouTube [01:19:00]
Sam: How do you guys look at TikTok? It’s this younger, sexier version of YouTube — you’re the 37-year-old actress and now you see this 21-year-old come onto the scene. What’s the perspective on TikTok from your guys’ point of view?
Samir: I see TikTok as a content accelerator. If you’re new to content creation and you want to find out what works faster, go to TikTok. It’s low barrier to entry to post. If something doesn’t get viewership, no one really sees it — there’s not much weight on it because of the For You Page, which is this talent show style format: if it’s good, it’ll find people; if not, whatever.
With YouTube, when you start a channel, it feels like a statement — I’m here to make my own version of some big media company, and this is there for all of time. Every time you pivot, every time you make a bad video, it’s just sitting there in your library. Whereas TikTok, there’s not as much weight on it. Move fast, put something out.
I think TikTok is a great place to find audience. I don’t know if it’s a great place to monetize that audience, though.
Colin: I think a big reason for that is it’s the closest thing to a lean-back experience. You just turn it on and it finds content that’s good for you. You might not go in there and search for a specific creator — that’s not really a behavior a lot of people do. It’s just: feed me whatever’s good. So if you take out the top creators on TikTok, our TikTok experience wouldn’t change that much. It would still find content that’s interesting.
So it’s actually not a great place for creators — it’s a great place for content. It’s not a great place for creators to build relationships with their fans. That’s why most TikTok creators move to YouTube to build that depth with their audience, build a library of content that compounds over time. If you’re serious about the career, I think you’d move to YouTube.
Shaan: What’s like — you guys are not as bullish on TikTok. I put out a tweet the other day saying I want to hire a great content creator because we have distribution, and this guy sent back this TikTok. Colin, was it amazing to you?
Colin: I thought it was an extremely visually compelling piece of content in a format where I had to watch to the end. You set the stakes — he’s going to finish a gallon of milk — and the editing was funny, the little cuts in between.
Shaan: So the guy basically said, hey, I saw your tweet, you’re hiring. He used our joke — I’ve moved straight to the end — and then he got a gallon of milk and started chugging it to show how bad he wants the job. He’s in like a car mechanic’s place asking people to hold the camera, they’re saying no, he puts it on the ground, takes off his shirt, starts chugging this milk. It’s just awful. He’s got little cuts in between — “why couldn’t they have called it the Juice Road?” because he’s having to drink milk. Whenever he finishes, he celebrates and pours the milk all over his head.
So I tweeted out, “this is amazing, you’re hired.” I just talked to him on the phone before this. I was like, alright, what’s the game plan? And I said I think the first thing we have to do is pick which channel we want to be on, because the platform dictates what content works.
Sam: I have a buddy, Steve Bartlett, who says you need to hack the algorithm — understand what the algorithm wants and then serve it to them if you want to grow faster than normal.
Shaan: We were debating: should we start on YouTube or TikTok? TikTok definitely feels like the growing wave. But the downside is even if you get viral growth there, those people may never see you again because of how TikTok works.
Colin: Honestly, I don’t think you have to pick and choose. Let’s say you’re going to commit to short-form vertical content — obviously you’d put that on TikTok. You could post that same thing on YouTube Shorts and on Reels. Keep that up for a certain amount of time and see what takes off. You may find that YouTube Shorts takes off, people subscribe to your channel, and then when you want to transition to long-form video you have a home for it and a place to build deeper connections. On TikTok you don’t really have that option right now.
Short-form vertical content is a lower barrier to entry — not the lowest (a tweet is probably the lowest) — but it lets you take more shots to figure out your format and your style. It might take 100 videos before you find the one that works.
Sam: Can I tell you my first assignment for this guy?
Shaan: Sure.
Sam: Man-on-the-street style interview, like you see on late night shows. Go outside of a strip club and ask the strippers how the economy is doing, because they are the front lines — they feel it first. They see what’s going on from all the drunk hedge fund guys. They get all the scoop. They see how the tips are changing in real time.
Colin: I think that can work — it’s a very specific audience, and it’ll work for that audience.
YouTube Shorts as an Accelerant [01:33:00]
Sam: Our podcast gets one or two million downloads a month. I would have thought you guys had one or two million views a month too — but I’m looking at your stats on Social Blade and you were at like a million views a month every month, 400,000, 500,000, and then all of a sudden you got to like 27, 28, 42 million views a month. What the hell happened? Is that from Shorts?
Samir: A lot of it is from Shorts, but Shorts propelled the other content. The way we view Shorts is: a lot of people had a problem with “you can’t monetize Shorts.” I was like, but if I told you as any business that I had a way that was lower lift to get you in front of way more people for massive brand exposure, wouldn’t you take it?
When Shorts kind of emerged, we said, okay, we can make a Short in a day, whereas it takes us a week to two weeks to make a full long-form video. Let’s just try it. And as we started trying, we had Shorts that hit 10 million views, 20 million views, 7 million views, 8 million views. And those people were subscribing.
Then there was concern: are those people going to watch the other content? But because the Shorts were directly connected to the longer-form content, we were just aggregating more people who then watched our library. So it worked for us.
Colin: It’s fluctuated, too. I think right now we’re back in like the 9 to 10 million views a month range on the channel, and Shorts are not as big of a factor — we’re not putting out as many Shorts. But a lot more people are watching our library now.
That’s what YouTube is. You’re building a library of content. Our Mr. Beast interview, for example — you mentioned it — it’s pushing 11 million views right now. In the first month it did a million views. It’ll be a year in September and it’ll probably have 12 or 13 million views. It’s about building a piece of content that can be viewed over the next year, two years, five years. When you do that, it has this compounding effect, especially when Shorts are added as an accelerant.
Sam: We had a Short go viral recently — it’s Shaan explaining who one of the Ball brothers is, and I don’t pay attention to any of that sports stuff.
Shaan: Yeah, I was explaining who someone was and people in the comments are just ripping us — like “these guys are idiots, he doesn’t know anything about LaVar Ball,” whoever it was.
Colin: Whenever any of your videos hit that mass scale, that’s when the comments turn. It’s kind of a good sign in a way — it’s just what happens.
Sam: There’s another one — we did a clip contest for the podcast, where we said, hey, take any of our content, you can own a channel, make your own TikTok channel, your own Shorts channel, and cut these clips. We just want our clips out there. So we’re doing it differently than most — you guys want to build your specific channels, whereas we’re like, you can call your thing “My First Million Clips” or whatever, and go ham with the content. We give out a prize for whoever does the best job each month.
People have gone wild with this. The first winner had a few million views on their TikTok channel, and we paid them the $5,000 prize. But they’ve actually turned that into a business clipping for other podcasts, and that business will do like a million dollars in revenue this year — as a pretty young kid.
Colin: Just yesterday someone said here’s a clip that got 1.2 million views — it’s from an interview we did with Neil Patel, where he’s talking about how he spends $180,000 a month as his lifestyle burn rate. And the title is like “Billionaire Explains How He Spends $180K a Month,” but the guy’s not a billionaire. The kid who’s running this channel is just like… and then the top comments are people saying, that’s Neil Patel, he’s not a billionaire. And then this kid is just responding ”?” to every comment — not “oh yeah, sorry, that’s a mistake,” just ”?” — and then somebody says “who is this guy?” and he writes “Founder of Google?” and there’s a hundred comments being like, that’s not the founder of Google.
Sam: Who is this genius that’s hacking engagement by putting dumb comments as the creator, just to get people riled up so the algorithm sees tons of engagement?
Samir: We’ve played around with that a bit. There are definitely things creators do like that. We’ve misspelled words in our subtitles sometimes. We had a Short where we interviewed the Chief Business Officer of YouTube, Robert Kyncl, and the Short begins — we wanted to say “we interviewed the head of business at YouTube” and we said “we interviewed the head of YouTube at business” — and just kept moving on. People rewound it so many times going, “wait, what did they say?” I think there are a lot of fun ways to play with that and play with the audience.
Colin: This person doing it has nothing to lose, so they’re cranking the dial up to level 12 of spamminess, because they’re like, why not? It’s not my brand.
Closing and Takeaways [01:46:00]
Colin: I think — your Drake steak Short. That piece, there’s definitely a Short there. I can tell that would be really fascinating in a concise, one-clip bit. That was actually one of your better thumbnails — it came across my recommended. But the challenge is, at an hour and 24 minutes, anyone’s expectation might be: wait, is that an hour 24 on Drake steak? There might be an opportunity to clip out just that part and lead people to watch the full thing.
Sam: The guys who edit the podcast also edit the YouTube, so — hey guys, you hear that, do it.
Colin: I think that’s your opportunity. It’s actually eight minutes on the Drake steak situation, and that was your best thumbnail — it caught my attention, made me curious.
Sam: Well, dudes, thanks for coming on. This is sick. I’ve been watching you guys for a while, it’s really awesome that you came on and that you knew about the pod.
Samir: This is great. And of course — me and Shaan both run or ran newsletter companies, so you’ve been helpful with us. If you ever want to shoot the breeze about newsletters, we’ve got you.
Colin: That’d be awesome. We definitely want to learn.
Sam: Right on, guys. Cool.