Sam and Shaan discuss Meet Kevin, a YouTuber who built a $52 million net worth by age 29 through a combination of real estate investing, YouTube income, and stock market investing — all documented publicly on his channel. The conversation expands into a broader theory about content creators running for political office as a brand-building play, citing Kevin’s California governor recall run and predicting Mr. Beast types will eventually throw their hat in the ring.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Meet Kevin’s $52 Million Portfolio [00:00:00]
Sam: Kevin — I think he’s even more famous now, he has 2.5 or 3 million subscribers. He recently did a video called “Here’s My Entire 50 Million Dollar Portfolio at Age 29.” I was clicking — double click, full screen, headphones on.
Sam: I noticed he had done one of these about nine months ago, or maybe 13 months ago, something around a year ago. His net worth then was only 25 million. And I was like, what is going on? This guy is nuts.
Sam: So basically, Meet Kevin — I don’t know his full name — makes like three to four videos a day. He talks about which stocks he’s buying, which types of houses he’s buying for investment properties. He shows his entire portfolio, and at the end he goes, “Now here’s proof,” and he logs in to all of his accounts. You can see all of it. Screen share.
Shaan: Yes, which is amazing for many reasons. One — he’s only 29. He’s a YouTuber with 50 million dollars. How did he get that money?
Sam: So he’s just off his YouTube? Or did he have some other business?
Shaan: He started at age 19, I believe, as just a real estate agent. Just a normal guy. He made a little bit of money — like a hundred grand a year — took that hundred grand and bought some properties. Then he started a YouTube channel in 2010 or 2011 and just started documenting his real estate investing.
Shaan: Slowly that started making additional income. Using that income he bought even more properties. Eventually he had a course and things like that where he was making like one or two million dollars a year — a significant sum. Then he took that money and started investing it, and started talking about what he was investing. And you can see this entire growth over the last five years of his portfolio.
Shaan: Of course it helps that he’s now got a significant income stream — like four million dollars a year, I would imagine — and we’re in the best bull market of all time. So it kind of works. But that’s how he’s done it.
Youtubers Running for Office [00:04:00]
Sam: Interestingly, when Gavin Newsom was being recalled, Kevin ran for office. There’s a Republican named Larry Elder who got second behind Gavin Newsom — Kevin was third, with something like hundreds of thousands of votes. This kid is amazing.
Shaan: That’s surprising. I feel like a YouTuber with a big following should crush any politician.
Sam: He doesn’t have that big a following — only 2.5 or 3 million. It’s not significant. And it has to be California, above 18 voters, so it’s not like the whole audience counts. But my point with a lot of these YouTubers: this video was wild.
Sam: Graham Stephan did the exact same thing. And here’s my prediction: a Mr. Beast type person will run for president and will surprise people with the following they get.
Shaan: Oh, absolutely. Whether you want to be president or not, I think the original Trump playbook was: I’m going to throw my hat in the ring, get tons of attention and press, build my brand off the massive amount of attention that goes into elections, and be the curveball story that everybody wants to cover and has an opinion on. Like Kanye — he threw his name in.
Shaan: You’re going to see the wild wild west of people trying to put their name in the hat for running for office or for these kinds of positions. How could a 21-year-old YouTuber be doing this? They’re going to get a little momentum, and then that’s going to create a press cycle, which is going to create more momentum.
Shaan: I don’t think they’ll actually win. I don’t think they even want to win. But it would just be a smart move in the dog-eat-dog world of YouTube trying to get views.
Sam: And back to the original point of getting views — what an exhausting life. But I’m thankful that Mr. Beast does what he does. I’m thankful that Kevin and Graham are crazy enough to log in and show me their entire portfolio. That is so cool. They are absolutely nuts. That is nuts.