#263: Colin & Samir on the future of their channel and the creator economy

Summary

Creator Science Podcast Episode #263: Colin & Samir on the Future of Their Channel and the Creator Economy

Release Date: July 15, 2025

In Episode #263 of Creator Science, host Jay Clouse engages in a deep and insightful conversation with the influential creator duo Colin & Samir. With over a decade of experience and a substantial following, Colin & Samir share their expertise on building sustainable channels, navigating the evolving creator economy, and maintaining brand integrity amidst rapid changes in content consumption. This summary captures the key discussions, insights, and conclusions drawn during their candid dialogue.

---

1. Building a Timeless Channel: Consistency and Brand

Consistency emerged as a cornerstone in Colin & Samir’s strategy for creating a channel that endures. Samir emphasizes, “Creaters are gonna get lost in this current world where viewership is a really exciting metric. Brand is a way harder metric to track, and it's also way harder to create. It requires consistency over time” [02:06].

Colin echoes this sentiment, highlighting the importance of icons and consistent formats:

“I think it's really important for creators to sort of put a stake in the ground and understand what they stand for and try and remain consistent” [04:08].

They draw parallels with iconic brands like Apple and Nike, noting their unwavering consistency in iconography and messaging:

“Both of those brands you can close your eyes and you understand what the logo looks like, you understand the colors that they would use, the types of visuals” [06:33].

Long-standing YouTube channels such as Dude Perfect and Rhett and Link are cited as exemplars of sustained consistency, maintaining their formats and delivering value over extended periods:

“Their mission statements... it's consistency over time” [08:13].

2. Monetization Strategies: Diversifying Income Streams

A pivotal discussion revolves around avoiding reliance on YouTube’s AdSense. Samir advises:

“First and foremost, don't tie your revenue directly to your channel” [02:22].

They explore brand deals as the primary revenue source, constituting 92% of creators’ income:

“That's going to be your, your bread and butter” [27:19].

Samir outlines a structured approach to securing brand deals:

1. Understand Your Audience: Knowing who you’re talking to.
2. Value Proposition: Clearly define the value you offer.
3. Consistent Delivery: Ensure a steady flow of value to your audience.

Additionally, they discuss direct-to-consumer models, including merchandise, digital products, and memberships, as complementary revenue streams:

“You could sell a digital product like that or it can be, you know, a membership, a subscription platform” [24:29].

3. Navigating Brand Deals with Integrity

Maintaining audience trust is paramount. Colin shares his strict approach to brand partnerships:

“I just kept saying no and they kept incrementally raising their offer just to a no email” [33:07].

Samir introduces the concept of a floor price for brand deals to prevent underselling:

“We have a brand deal floor price... you need to be in a position to say no to anything under your floor” [34:39].

This strategy ensures that partnerships align with the channel’s values and maintain integrity:

“You have to make decisions in line with your number one customer, which is your audience” [34:52].

4. The Role of Short-form Content and Shorts

The evolving landscape of short-form content, particularly YouTube Shorts, is scrutinized. Samir notes the attention fragmentation caused by short-form media:

“I find myself more and more getting faced with, like, decision paralysis and long form content and jumping straight into the shorts feedback” [43:14].

Colin debates the cultural impact of Shorts compared to platforms like TikTok and Instagram, suggesting that Shorts may not yet drive culture as effectively:

“You can send someone really easily a TikTok or a reel. It's a unit of conversation to connect you with someone else” [44:22].

5. Merchandise as Brand Loyalty

Merchandise serves dual purposes of brand loyalty and potential revenue. Colin and Samir discuss their Press Publish merchandise line as a means of fostering community:

“There's nothing greater than seeing how many people wear that hat... that's community” [42:55].

They acknowledge untapped revenue opportunities in their merch line, emphasizing the strength of brand recognition through consistent merchandise:

“We have the press publish logo, the hats, the shirts, I think that's what that is” [42:07].

6. Challenges and Predictions for the Creator Economy

Looking ahead, Colin expresses concern over the "dumbbell" distribution of content, where only long-form high-end productions and extremely short-form content thrive, potentially sidelining mid-tier creators:

“The money will go to the either side of those dumbbells” [48:26].

Samir fears the hyper-fragmentation of YouTube’s audience, questioning whether a sustainable business model exists for creators operating in the middle ground:

“Is there a business model for those people in the middle?” [48:27].

7. Live Streaming and Its Place in Content Creation

The discussion touches on the role of live streaming, with Colin finding it bizarre and less integral to their content strategy:

“Live streaming to me is, is bizarre to me” [49:23].

Samir compares live streaming to traditional media formats like MTV, emphasizing its role in companion viewing:

“Live streaming occupies that, like, companion nature of like, I just want something on” [52:05].

8. Conclusion: Upholding Brand Integrity and Long-term Vision

The episode culminates with Colin & Samir stressing the importance of long-term planning and brand integrity. They advocate for creators to:

• Maintain consistency
• Diversify income streams
• Protect audience trust by setting clear standards for brand partnerships

By adhering to these principles, Colin & Samir exemplify how creators can navigate the complexities of the digital landscape, ensuring sustained growth and meaningful engagement with their audiences.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Samir on Brand Metrics: “Creators are gonna get lost in this current world where viewership is a really exciting metric. Brand is a way harder metric to track, and it's also way harder to create” [02:06].

• Colin on Iconography: “Both of those brands you can close your eyes and you understand what the logo looks like, you understand the colors that they would use, the types of visuals” [06:33].

• Samir on Revenue Streams: “That's going to be your, your bread and butter” [27:19].

• Samir on Floor Pricing: “You need to be in a position to say no to anything under your floor” [34:39].

• Jay on Brand Integrity: “If it's an endorsement to the person receiving it, what if we started with that assumption?” [37:12].

This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of sustainable content creation, emphasizing the balance between consistency, brand building, and ethical monetization strategies. Colin & Samir’s experiences provide valuable lessons for creators aiming to thrive in an increasingly competitive and fragmented digital ecosystem.

Transcript

[Jay]

We've always kept our team small but mighty here at Creator Science, and today I have a fantastic assistant who helps me with all kinds of things. But before I had an assistant, I had systems. In order to keep track of everything I needed to do, I built systems for task management, project management, content management, and everything else. I built all of this in Notion, and last year I turned it into an operating system that you can use too. It's called Creator hq. And it's still the exact system that I use every single day to run and manage the Creator Science business. It has step by step tutorials teaching you how to use it if you don't feel comfortable with Notion. And this thing is robust. It's designed for creators like you and me to stay on top of everything in one place and not have to spend any time trying to remember anything. And it's built for collaboration. Now that I have a small team, we all collaborate inside of Creator hq. It's where I assign tasks to my assistant, where my producer and I collaborate on video ideas, and where I keep notes on my book project, just to name a few things. I got a message from a recent customer who said Creator HQ is a thing of beauty. I'm just now going through the steps to implement it and wow. Just wow. We're running a promotion this summer to give podcast listeners our best price since Black Friday. Just use Promo Code Summer and you'll save 100, which is 34% off. Take me up on this. There's a link in the show notes. Or visit creatorscience.comhq and use promo code summer to save $100 on Creator HQ.

[Colin]

Patty Galloway always calls YouTube a click and watch platform. I think it's like a hover and hook platform.

[Jay]

That is Colin and Samir, the most influential duo in the creator economy. Colin and Samir started making videos together all the way back in 2012. But the channel you know and love started with this video in 2016. Over the last decade, they have gained one and a half million subscribers, generated over 445 million views, and and created the central hub where creators of all sizes come to learn from the best in the world. They're here today to talk about how to build a channel that stands the test of time. In this episode, you'll learn the importance of formats and building a strong brand.

[Samir]

Creators are gonna get lost in this current world where viewership is a really exciting metric. Brand is a way harder metric to track, and it's also way harder to create. It requires consistency over time. Finding a Format is the path to consistency.

[Jay]

How to set your channel up for financial success.

[Samir]

First and foremost, don't tie your revenue directly to your channel. Great case study, Mark. Robert didn't leave his full time job until he had 10 million subs and.

[Jay]

I even asked them if they've got any grapes.

[Samir]

So many Jay all the time.

[Jay]

And now onto my conversation with Colin and Samir. It seems like right now the pace of change in the whole world, but in the creator space as well, is just so fast to pull from your perspective, from conversations you've had on the show offline, from people who are really in this. What are you paying really close attention to and what are you deciding not to pay close attention to? What do you think the direction of forward progress is moving towards that you're really keen into right now?

[Colin]

Yeah, I would say I'm trying to, even as I consume YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, trying to plug into who are the creators who are making repeatable formats, who are doing things consistently and creating brands. You know, I think three to four years ago, as Samir and I were covering the space, there were a lot of trends, right? And it was easy to kind of like hop on a trend and make sure people know about it and educate people because you should be, you know, hopping on some of these trends, some of these best practices for YouTube. And I think now there is just so much coming out on a daily basis. We are so saturated with content that the one thing that matters in my eyes now and moving forward is are you making something consistently, delivering value consistently and creating a brand that people can trust and latch onto because we're just inundated with so much otherness. There are so many different types of things. There are a hundred variations of every type of content within a niche. And so I think it's really important for creators to sort of put a stake in the ground and understand what they stand for and try and remain consistent.

[Samir]

The one thing that I think is really important to look at is appointment viewing. And what I mean by that is like what's really interesting is as much as we can say that like, oh, creators are dominating attention and Hollywood is falling behind. I actually think looking at like Severance and White Lotus most recently, that's appointment television and that moved back from binge model back to the week to week model on HBO Max and on Apple TV and created a lot of like cultural penetration in terms of people talking about these shows. So I think those are the two things that I'm looking at. One, I think everyone should be looking at what is capturing our attention in a sea of just abundance in terms of content and how these like eventized appointment viewing moments are driving a lot of cultural conversation. And then the other side on the creation side, exploring like what is a world of more self reliant creation look and feel like, what does that mean for how content gets produced, how collaboration happens and what that end product looks like for audiences when it's touched by a singular creator plus the support of, you know, a lot of software.

[Jay]

What are the important points about why should something be consistent? Like when does consistent become stale? Why is that a feature and not a problem?

[Samir]

Why don't we talk about like some of the best brands in the world? Like what we would the three of us consider like the, the most iconic brands in the world, like timeless brands like Jay, what do you think of when you think of brand?

[Jay]

I mean you have things like Apple, you have Nike, you have luxury goods.

[Samir]

Apple and Nike come up. For me, when if someone says the term brand, Nike, Apple, those are like immediate, right? Like I wonder, like let's explore why those come up.

[Colin]

I think it's the iconography. It's iconography, it's consistency, right? With both of those brands you can close your eyes and you understand what the logo looks like, you understand the colors that they would use, the types of visuals. That's not to say that those brands don't stray from that and do a ton of experiments and things on the fringes. But more often than not they've kept to a consistent style over time so that we just remember them. I think we talk a lot about memorable views and forgettable views and there are so many things, right? You're scrolling TikTok or you're scrolling a short form feed. You're watching hundreds of videos in a day. How many of them do you actually remember, right? What's the one that you actually remember and then share to a friend? The chance that you would remember a video, especially on a short form feed, it gets a lot higher if you've seen something similar to it from the same creator before. So I think that's a baseline. It's just like you know our friend Jack Coyne with Track Star music trivia show. It's the same format every single time.

[Samir]

Not only is the same format, same question that opens it up, same question.

[Colin]

You see the headphones with the track star logo. Often he's wearing an orange jacket, right? So I think this is important just to build the brand. When I'm scrolling of like, oh hey, there's the show I like, right? There's the creator I like. There's track star, I'll remember him. But they also sometimes will go to a music festival and create slightly different formats and they'll experiment and do slightly different things. They'll put long form on YouTube. But if you don't have that base level consistency, the likelihood that someone will forget you is a lot higher.

[Samir]

You zoom out at like the longest standing shows on YouTube, like the longest standing creators on YouTube. Two that come to mind are dude, perfect and Rhett and Link. Right? Like immediately. That's who comes to mind. Dude Perfect. Really interesting. They commit, like, when you ask them what their mission statement is when we've talked to them about it before, it's to be the most trusted brand in entertainment. And I think that is a really impactful mission. You look at Rhett and Link, they've been doing good mythical morning for what, over a decade, right? And they don't miss. I think when you think about, like, what is the equation for a brand? It's consistency over time. And consistency has to do with quality, it has to do with values, it has to do with the mission statement, has to do a lot of things, but it's that over time. And that unlocks the world for you. Like, that level of like, consistency unlocks the world for you. And so when you back up, consistency as a creative is really hard to get to. And finding a format is the path to consistency. And so that is like the. The world of building a brand on the Internet today when you can watch just an unlimited amount of content. Today we're talking about recall. We're talking about, like, do you step away from your phone and go, I remember that video. That was a good video. That was time well spent. And when we're talking about to bring this all the way back to Nike and Apple, it's like our recall of Nike, the check mark, just do it. The iconography of it is, is like that. And a lot of that is also because they have a set of values. We can like, close our eyes and imagine a Nike campaign, and that's really important. Close our eyes and imagine an Apple campaign. And they can experiment. Apple can launch the Apple Vision Pro and it can not go well. And Nike can try a few different things and they can not go well. But the thematic kind of consistency of the brand is rooted in the, like, consistency over time of like, you know, Air Jordans or like the dunks. Like, these are the. That's their engine. That's Their, like, consistent format, and then they can have experimentation around that. But you have to have that engine so that people know who you are, what you stand for, what. What it is. Over time, I think a lot of creators are going to get lost in this current world where viewership is a really exciting metric. Brand is a way harder metric to track, and it's also way harder to create. It requires consistency over time.

[Jay]

This brings to mind a couple things for me. One, did you guys watch Survivor?

[Samir]

I didn't.

[Colin]

I've seen some seasons of it.

[Samir]

One of my friends was on Gabon. Survivor. Gabon. So I watched a couple episodes of that.

[Jay]

But, yeah, Survivor, I think, is one of the greatest television shows ever made. I didn't get into it until the Pandemic and I just needed something to fill the time. But that is extremely consistent in format to the point where at any point in the episode, I have a pretty good chance of knowing what Jeff is going to say. The host is like, all right, I'll read the votes.

[Samir]

Or like, where the villain is gonna come in. Or where the. Yeah, like, they just.

[Jay]

There's a formula to it and they experiment within that. But, I mean, it's Survivor 48 right now. They've been doing this for 24 years, two seasons a year. So there's something to be said about that. And this format I'm talking about goes back to season one. It's crazy how much they got right and just stuck with. And the question is, do they get it right and stick with it or is it right because they stuck with it? Sort of. This also brings to mind I had a conversation with an executive from Proctor and Gamble one time, and we were talking about brand because, you know, Procter and Gamble has Crest. It has everything. Right. And he said the point of brand is to take. I forget the exact word. It's. I think he said a second order consideration or a first order consideration and make it a second order consideration. Basically, you're saying, like, a great brand means that you don't have to think that much or do product comparisons. You just trust the brand itself so much that you go with that option unconsciously. And I think that's kind of what you're speaking to with this recall and trust. A brand that we know we're going to get when we tune into it. And we tune into it because we know what we're going to get.

[Colin]

Mm.

[Samir]

That that can be hard as a creative individual.

[Jay]

Right.

[Samir]

Like, again, like, you know, someone like a Sean Evans who's been doing hot ones for Over a decade as well. Formats are these like unbelievable containers for creatives to like build something, but then also you are over a decade as you go through your own changes as a creative person. If it's successful, that's the thing you're gonna be doing for the, for, for the remainder of maybe your creative career or some iteration of it. And so I think it is very important to like not look on such a short term window when you're building formats to actually ask yourself. The question is like, is this something I could do? The first thing we ask creators is like, can you produce this format for 52 weeks? I think that's really important. Like could you do this every week for the next 52 weeks? One year, can you make this format? And the next question, as you zoom out, it's like, if this is the thing that hits, can you do this for the rest of your creative career? And it's an interesting question to ask yourself as you're developing formats and exploring what, what you want to do across platforms.

[Jay]

Stick around, we'll be right back. We just got back from the Lab Offline, the first in person experience for a membership community, and I am buzzing. There's just something special about being in a room with people who get this creator thing. The shared vocabulary, the shared trauma. You just can't beat it. These offline experiences are going to become a staple of membership in the Lab. And it's another reason I really think you should consider joining us. We had 40 members join us at the first offline event and they rated it a 9.4 out of 10. But it's more than just these offline experiences. The Lab's online community is where I am personally spending most of my time online. Because it's just hard to find a community like this. No matter what level you join. You'll get all of my courses, including build a beloved membership podcast like a YouTuber and newsletter masterclass. You'll get access to creator HQ. You'll get my behind the scenes retros each month and it's $1,300 worth of products alone. But the real difference is the people. By joining the Lab, you'll learn alongside hundreds of other creators who are really taking this thing seriously. And those insights are just priceless. Consider the Lab, your on demand support community. Whenever you have a question or challenge, I would be willing to bet we have the answers. But don't just take my word for it. Listen to Eric Zimmer, the host of the one you feed, one of Apple's top podcasts of the year with more than 35 million downloads.

[Samir]

Jay responds to pretty much every question in the lab. And we did a hot seat with him where he helped me solve a problem that I thought we were going to need lots of hot seats to ever sort out. And in one 30 minute session, I pretty much had the answer, which was amazing. So I highly recommend the lab if.

[Colin]

You'Re looking for more connections with people.

[Samir]

Who are doing what you're doing and facing the challenges that you're facing, people who have some more experience than you.

[Colin]

That can share that and access to Jay's wonderful brain.

[Samir]

So I highly recommend learn more and.

[Jay]

Join the lab at the link in the show notes or visit creatorscience.comlab that's creatorscience.comlab and now onto my conversation with Colin and Samir. So how does this play into the Colin and Samir brand or the publish brand? How are you thinking about formats, consistency? How is this consideration leading your thinking right now?

[Colin]

I mean, I would say for us, when it comes to the Colin and Samir show, that's something that started out on Audio in 2018. So there was no video to our podcast. It was just Samir and I talking with each other about what it's like to try and embark on this creative career, to try and make it work. And the moment we took it to video in 2020, 2021, that's when for the first time, we were able to deliver the same value to creators consistently every single week. That was the first time we realized that we had a format and a process that would let us do that every week. And so flash forward to today, our business is more multifaceted. We do have things like publish the newsletter creator startup, our education. And when you actually look back at last year, we're not putting out an episode and video on YouTube 52 weeks out of the year. Right. So even now, this year, we're looking at the Colin and Samir show and our interviews, which are our engine, and thinking, what changes can we make to actually get closer to that if we had to? We're still like dissecting and looking at our post production and breaking it down and realizing that, oh, you know what, we actually, we say you should be able to make 52 of these with the, with our current, I actually don't know if we can. And so we're still looking at it and going, all right, we need to make some changes, make some adjustments to try and try and get there so that we can remain consistent as a brand. We can have that engine which is the show, which helps us deliver value every week and then we can breathe a little bit and have time and space to experiment, which I think is really important. Just as a creative person you need to be able to experiment. But it's also important for the evolution of your brand and for your audience to know these guys have not gotten complacent and are just putting out an episode every week because they have to. Right. Or it's because it's the box that they've put themselves into. They're still evolving and pushing and their story is changing. And I can follow that.

[Samir]

I think also like that's where you know, the ancillary products like the published press comes into play. Right. Because that since that has launched, correct me if I'm wrong, but we have not missed Ascend.

[Colin]

Never.

[Samir]

Never. We've never missed Ascend. Maybe we've been like an hour late if there was like a technical difficulty with Beehive, but like we've never missed a day to send that. And creating formats like that, where you can be really consistent over long periods of time, I think is super important. But also not pouring your like the published press, three news stories a week. We have writers who help us with that. We have, you know, we have an editor. We're able to operationalize that to ensure that's a consistent product. I think when it comes to me and Colin, like even within each episode of the Colin and Samir show, there's a bit of variation. The like consistency is it's me and Colin and. And we're going to be talking about the world of like the creator economy. We're going to talk about creativity on the Internet, we're going to talk about digital entertainment. Sometimes it's going to be with the guests, sometimes it's going to be with us. But there's actually quite a bit of variation amongst each format. It's not, it's not super formulaic episode to episode. Having that engine of like the published press and having a newsletter like that, that does allow us to stay consistent. It's been years now and we send three a week and we just don't.

[Jay]

Yeah, obviously you guys have the interviews, you have some of your solo videos where it's just the two of you talking. Before this conversation, I rewatched the video you guys had about YouTube is changing. Yeah, I really love that episode. I mean I watch most of your episodes. I love your episodes. I also really love the documentary style stuff you guys do. And I know you have this history and Passion with documentary style stuff, I imagine it's a pretty big lift to do one of those things. Where does that live in the current Colin Samir brand? Are you thinking about that as a more repeat format?

[Samir]

I think you have to be so unbelievably careful to commercialize the thing you love doing. I think you have to be really, really careful with that. The thing that's a deep love and passion. I've talked to a lot of creatives of like, what's your dream project? And they'll pitch me a dream project. Make amazing. Put that one over here. Now, what do we think is a good strategic project for you? Right, let's do that one. There's a lot of ways to like develop a format and a container for yourself to do this, like, engine. Right. And again, what we're talking about of like, hey, can you do this for a long period of time? Docs for us, I think are like, deep passion. We get really excited. They are so unbelievably hard to make. They take a lot of bandwidth, a lot of mental bandwidth as guys who, you know, got into this as filmmakers, like, we want our hands to be all over those. So they're not scalable. It's not a scalable format for us. So from a business perspective, you zoom out and you're like, could we become documentary filmmakers? Maybe that business is a lot harder. And I think if it became my source of income and my source of revenue, I might have a not great relationship with doc filmmaking.

[Colin]

So, yeah, when we do those, we don't bring on much help.

[Samir]

Yeah.

[Colin]

You know, it's generally like Samir and I and one other historically that we've, we've done these projects and they are so wrapped up in our identity that it is painful for everyone in the company and it's painful for us. I am not sure how to make that a business.

[Samir]

You're a writer, right, Jay? Like, you want to write a book.

[Jay]

I mean, that is a tough question to ask. Like, if you, if we get into like identity questions like, are you a writer? Are you a creator, are you a YouTuber? It's like, oh my God.

[Samir]

But I'm saying you want to write a book, right? Right. From what we're talking about, you want to write a book. So it'd be. I think it's very similar of like, well, Jay, why don't you just write a ton of books? You know, I don't get it, if that's the thing. Like, why don't you just write a bunch of Books. Yeah.

[Jay]

Yeah.

[Samir]

That's how I feel about filmmaking.

[Jay]

Yeah. Oh, man. Okay. That resonates with me strongly because there. There is, like, a certain class of projects that you hold in such high regard that even just doing it is kind of a threat to your relationship to the thing, let alone, like, the external feedback or whatever. Like just doing it and seeing do I even have the stuff to do that actually is such a risky thing for your psyche. So now I totally understand where you're coming from. Let's talk about where YouTube lives in your business and how you think YouTube should kind of live in the business of creators getting started today. Because I think a lot of creators who are getting started on YouTube. YouTube is the business. It is everything. You guys have expanded beyond the channel, beyond the podcast. We talked about publish already. You mentioned creator startup. So talk to me about the portfolio of a creator's business and content and where you think that is headed or where people should be looking as they're moving forward.

[Samir]

And we're talking about, like, a. Like an upstart creator, like someone who just started out on YouTube or are we talking about, like, how deep into the journey?

[Jay]

I think we could talk about both, given that you see that there's a difference between an upstart versus somebody who's been doing it for a while. Let's talk about both cases.

[Samir]

I think the first and most important thing to do that we did not do is to not tie your income to YouTube. When you start a YouTube channel, that might sound unbelievably obvious to people listening, but it wasn't obvious to us, and it's something that we did. And if you look at, there's this graph, the Colin and Samir YouTube channel. And if you just go to our lifetime revenue or lifetime, you know, whatever, dashboard, and you look at the first five years, it's essentially like a flat line. And a lot of that is because when we first started out on YouTube, we started experimenting with the Colonist mirror channel, having a lot of fun making videos, but people weren't really watching them. And then once financial pressure hits, you start having to make decisions that are very different and starting to find projects that'll pay you and starting to take deals that might work for you on YouTube. And so when people ask me, like, hey, do you think it's too saturated right now to start a YouTube channel? Like, could I find success on YouTube? My response is always like, first, what's your relationship to making videos? Like, do you enjoy the process of making videos? And two, do you have three to five years. And you know that might sound really aggressive but I truly believe that like actually getting good at it to make it a substantial thing that's building, like building a real brand probably takes like three to five years to figure out. And, and you know we have outlier cases, we have erak who did it in a year, we have like a couple of cases here and there. But I really think that that's what it takes to build a channel. So first and foremost, don't tie your revenue directly to your channel. Great case study. Mark Robert didn't leave his full time job until he had 10 million subs. Don't have to get that aggressive. But just think about that as you start. Then as you, as you get into the business. I would say you're split up in the world of like you're in business to business advertising and you're in direct to consumer payments. Those are like the two sides of what you could do as a creator. Business to business advertising is split into two. One is AdSense. That's the check that YouTube's gonna cut you as you become a part of the partner program. And that check is magical. It just shows up, you just make videos. Depending on your niche, let's say you're in the credit card niche, maybe you have a, a higher cpm, maybe you're not in the entertainment niche, you have a lower cpm. But no matter what that check is going to show up. The most important thing that we did early on was we left that AdSense check off of any of our budgeting. No projected revenue against that, no hiring against that number. We were just really cautious with that because you have very minimal control over it.

[Colin]

And that number was magic. But it was also magically small. It was a very long period of time. So in the beginning didn't make sense to budget it in. But as it started to creep up and kind of grow exponentially year over year, we still keep it out of the budgeting. Yeah, because we don't really control that.

[Samir]

Even to this year because we know that tomorrow based on market factors, based on all types of different things, very possible that that check goes away or just looks really different. The second way is through like direct brand relationships through brand deals. I think there's a stat that's like 92% of creators make the majority of their income through brand deals. That is going to be your, your bread and butter. And in order to be effective at brand deals you have to take a step back and understand a few things about your channel. The first is who is the audience? Who are you talking to? The next is what is the value proposition to that audience? Then you need to understand, do I have a consistent way of delivering that value to that audience? Then you can start thinking about brand deals. We have an educational program called Creator Startup Pro. We essentially walk you through building a pitch deck for brand deals for your business and for your YouTube channel. It's the exact pitch deck we used when we started selling brand deals. And I think it's a really important exercise to recognize like you're not just in the business of viewership. It goes back to what we talked about in the beginning of this episode. You're in the business of building a brand and you have to understand again, who is that audience? Why are they watching? Can you deliver that on a regular basis? And then what is the ad product that someone can buy from you to actually integrate into that? That's going to be the lion's share of your revenue. Once you get into the point of like regular inbound brand requests, like you're getting emails of hey, we want to sponsor your show, we want to do a multi video sponsorship on your channel, then you're getting to the point where you're like, okay, this could be a real thing. Now the other side of monetization is the direct to consumer side that's gonna be, let's say you have merchandise so you could be a e commerce business that wants to use YouTube as lead gen and go. Actually we're direct to consumer so like our monetization comes from people buying our product. Could be a digital product. Like we have courses, you have courses, people sell notion templates like you could sell a digital product like that or it can be, you know, a membership, a subscription platform, something like you have as well or like a Patreon or something like that. And that's a different monetization model. Cody Ko and Noel Miller, when they started on YouTube, you know, they were working full time jobs at full screen. They made this, this, this kind of campaign around like once they got to 2,000 patrons, Noel would quit his job and, and go full time as a creator. They did that. That Patreon ended up growing really big. So that's kind of the pie chart that I would say of like monetization and how to explore your own journey. I would say the classic steps are like AdSense is probably going to be one of your first checks if you're a YouTube creator. Your second and the most substantial is going to be brand deals. And then as you Go further. You're going to explore how to engage with your audience on a direct level if you want to do that.

[Jay]

It's so interesting. It's so counter to my story as I entered the world of video. That is absolutely the typical path that I see. But coming from like the world of mostly writing email, brand deals are like this thing that people turn their head. Like what? I could add sponsors to my emails and they're doing like fully direct to audience sort of offers. And it's so interesting because like the obvious answer is you do both and you do like the ideal mix to the degree that you can. Before I kind of go down that pathway, I'm curious to hear where you think that is going in terms of brand deals and even AdSense. As time passes, is the pie growing there? Is it getting easier to get money from those two areas or is it getting smaller?

[Samir]

I think the brand deal pie is getting bigger. I think you're. We're still at a point where like brands are shifting dollars to the world of creators now. I think the important conversation there is long form versus short form. I think the reality is there's probably in the short term more brand dollars that shift into short form. And a lot of that is because brands can run short form content as like paid media. It works across every platform. They can use the asset in multiple different ways. And when a brand comes to a creator to make a short form piece of content out of the 60 seconds of content, a lot more from a percentage basis is the brand's messaging than a long form integration. And so while the long form integration I think will be around for a long time, as you start to see like Unilever just hired a new CEO who's like 37 years old and wants to shift a large portion of their budget to creator marketing, I think that's going to show up in short form content. So I think that's where the brand dollars are moving. I think AdSense will continue to increase. YouTube is the most watched app on connected TVs, like the television advertising business, the linear TV advertising business, which is 160 billion plus dollars, that probably will start to move small, in small chunks over to the YouTube world and continue on that path that it's been on for a while.

[Colin]

I do believe though, with short form brand deals you have a less engaged viewer. Not always, but I think you're more likely to have a less engaged viewer. It doesn't mean you can't have a less engaged viewer in a long form video. But I think if you hit it right, a long form integration is way more impactful.

[Jay]

Right.

[Colin]

Because you have a viewer who almost has given you permission. You've made it so far into the video. And if you do the integration right and it actually elevates the messaging and the experience for the audience, the likelihood that it again will be memorable and not forgettable is higher.

[Samir]

Yeah, I find podcast, I mean, this is not like self service, but I find like my own consumption habits and purchasing habits. I am very influenced by podcast ads and maybe that's just because of my age or the medium that I'm in. But like we talked about this with Tim Ferriss when he was on, like Tim Barris. Reading an ad was like a high likelihood that I was going to buy. Right. And so I think that comes down to like, the best marketing is word of mouth. Right. Like, there's no better marketing than your friend telling you about something. And because of that, you explore, like, where is the scaled version of word of mouth and like podcasting and long form conversation. That's the scaled version of that.

[Colin]

I also think brand deals are gonna get better as they become a little bit more custom, as the experiences are more custom and they really elevate the experience and not interrupt. So destroying. Who's a football creator, a sports creator that we've had on the show. His hit series is this one on one series where someone, you know, they have like a competition series, you can win $10,000, he goes to different markets and people compete one on one to either catch a ball or block the ball. And the NFL came in and partnered and said, hey, you're doing that series. It's your most watched series. Why don't we do it in NFL markets, in NFL stadiums, Right? So they came in and like really partnered deeply and elevated that experience for his audience. And I think that's really where long form brand deals, when they're at their best, are going to move. When a brand comes in and realizes, hey, we're not just asking you to take up 60 to 90 seconds and deliver our messaging, even if it's relevant to your audience, we're not asking you to do that. We're actually going to find something that elevates the experience overall.

[Samir]

I agree.

[Jay]

I love that example, but it also strikes me as like, that is a 1% versus 99% brand deal.

[Samir]

You're right. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jay]

The impression I've gotten as someone who gets like more inbound than I used to, the inbound that I get from brands most of the time is like, Laughable to me. The impression I get is that so many creators are just wildly underselling themselves. They're doing like dedicated content, whatever format for these brands for very little money. Like, I had a brand come to me that was a legitimate brand and they asked about sponsoring the channel and I gave them our typical rate, which is in the thousands of dollars for an integration. And they're like, how about $300? And I said, well, no, we have more demand than supply and that would not work. And they said, well, it's a test and if it goes well, then we'll do your typical rate. And I can see a circumstance for doing that. But also, again, I have more demand than supply, so I don't need to do that. I just kept saying no and they kept incrementally raising their offer just to a no email. So it's like, I think a lot of creators are saying yes too early and promising more than they need to. Yeah, I really want more creators to just like push further on the worth, especially if they're doing dedicated content.

[Samir]

I have a cup. I have a ton of thoughts on this, actually. So number one, I think creators are not a replacement or even similar in any way, shape or form to your advertising that you bought on Facebook or that you buy on Facebook. Right? Like, and I think sometimes that is, they're equated where it's like, hey, yeah, we're just going to do a test with Jay. We'll spend as much as we would have spent on a, on a post on, on Facebook. We'll see how the responses, see how conversions are, and we'll go from there. I think that's like a completely incorrect view of what a creator is and what a creator does because there's, there's a part of it that's just like, hey, you're getting the space and the time no matter what. It's like a TV ad now. Your ability to convert as a brand is not on me as the creator, it's on you. And if you want that to be more of a relationship, then I need to really look into your conversion funnel and understand like how good the place is where I'm sending my audience to, to actually get a conversion. And so if my job is to talk about the brand and that's gonna live in my content forever, it's a baked in integration, like, that's extremely valuable. I totally agree with you. Now, how to defend against that, like that inherent desire when you, when you're. First of all, I think there's an Element of validation, where it's like, as a creator, the validation comes from a brand wanting to work with you and making money from your content. You might be willing to accept a lower rate if you're just starting out and trying to figure out, like, trying to make this a thing.

[Colin]

There's also fear that the alternative is no money. Right, Right. Like, you understand your supply and demand, but not all creators understand and many times will find themselves in a situation where they might think this is their last opportunity for a while.

[Samir]

And that's why I think, unbelievably important that in the beginning, you. You aren't tied financially to your channel so that you can say no. It's really hard, but to build a mechanism to say no. What we did and what we work on in Creator Startup Pro is building a brand deal floor price. So basically going, what is my floor price? Like, what is just the. No matter what, I will not go lower than this price. And I think a lot of that actually has to do not with CPMs or not with metrics just based on your own lifestyle and your own desire and your own, like, circumstances of how much money you want to make from your channel. Now, sometimes your floor price is gonna be way higher than your market rate. And that means that you need to grow your audience, you need to make your content better, you need to get there. But I really think you need to be in a position to say no to anything under your floor. How we did this to make sure that we weren't underselling ourselves was actually just develop materials so that when we get that email, hey, thank you so much for reaching out. Here's our pitch deck, right? And that actually has our pricing in it. And that pricing is rooted in this month. So this is February pricing. We're not committed to it. If you want to come back in March, if our rates have gone up, here's our February pricing. And you immediately weed out people by going, here's my rate. Now, a lot of people think that's counterintuitive from a negotiation perspective because they're like, why would you show your cards? Why would you go, hey, it costs. It costs $5,000 to work with us? Well, a lot of that is just to also keep you focused on the content. If that's your floor price and you go, hey, it's $5,000. We sell these in packs of three. It's a $15,000 buy. If you want to work with the Colin and Samir show. Okay, great. Basically, are you in or not? And you can Go. That's too expensive for me. Okay, sounds good. All good or hey, actually, that works great. Boom, we're done. This is how it works now. We can operationalize it and build a system for it, and I can stay focused on the content. So I think there's a lot of considerations when it comes to brand deals, and it's not just money. A lot of it also has to do with time, space, ability to deliver value to your audience. Is this the right partner? Are they measuring success based on conversions? All kinds of considerations when it comes to the world of brand deals.

[Jay]

To go back to your point about trust, Colin, and the reference to your episode with Tim. I love that episode with Tim. Tim very rarely does interviews, so I'm just so excited to listen to them. And I thought his interview on your show is one of the more unique ones. It got me thinking about our own ad opportunity or ad operations, because what I realized was every integration to our audience is an endorsement. Whether I think it's an endorsement or not, I should probably think of it as an endorsement. And so I've really tightened the aperture on what we do across the business from a brand deal perspective, because if it's an endorsement to the person receiving it, what if we started with that assumption? And how enthusiastically could I then actually, in integrity, endorse these brands and have these outcomes of, okay, when. When Jay advertises somebody, I know I can take him seriously and trust him on this, but it really tightens the window of who you accept, which can be a real problem if you don't have a lot of opportunities. Obviously, it's kind of a luxury problem to have. But I totally agree with your idea of don't hinge your budget on this. But then that kind of begs the question, how do I pay the bills then if I can't hinge my budget on it? I'm just getting started and I'm not getting a ton of revenue. And I think that's the other side of the equation of can you find means of monetization that are not brand deals and are not adsense?

[Colin]

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the most important things we ever did in the very early stages and something we go into in Creator Startup Pro as well, is like, look at how much money do we actually want to make? Okay, there's two of us. This is how much money we want to make, how much money we need to make. All right, here's how many episodes we can make in a given month. Let's divide that amount by these episodes. Let's say we could make that much money per all of these episodes. How many did we need to make? I remember the first time we ever did that with our rate, which when we were first starting out was probably around $1,200 in integration, we realized, oh, my gosh, we need to make like eight of these a month. That is not realistic. And even if we could make eight, there's no way we could fill all of those. We can't have 100% fill rate on those videos. So. Okay, wow. We need to take a major step back. The reality is we may only fill one to two of those a month and we can only make four. So now we're able to look and go, well, clearly this cannot support our lifestyle, so we have to look elsewhere. And we did turn into a bit of, like a freelance production company. That was our solution for the time being. Right. And so I think it is a, as you said, it's a luxury to be able to say no. But I think you have to fight to stay in that lane of being able to say no. Right. Because Samir always says this, but, like, you are what you say no to. And you will benefit long term if you're able to stay in that pocket and say no.

[Samir]

I think Colin said in our video, it's called, like, 13 Years of YouTube Knowledge and something like that.

[Colin]

46 minutes.

[Samir]

46 minutes. His advice to new creators, number one, was get a job. Like, get a job that's not YouTube because, like, just again, I can't. I can't harp on that enough. Like, giving yourself the time and space to let YouTube develop is going to give you a lot more longevity. It just is. Versus getting stressed a year in and being like, I need to be able to support myself. You're gonna start making decisions that are gonna lose trust. And Tim Ferriss said this on the show. We keep bringing him up, but he said, trust is gained in drops and lost in buckets. And I think that's an incredibly important thing to do. And you wanna put yourself in a position to make decisions that are in line with your number one customer, which is your audience.

[Jay]

Right.

[Samir]

Your audience is there for the product of value. They are your customer. You have to make decisions in line with them and the value that you promise to provide to them.

[Jay]

Do you guys look at your merch line as a revenue generator or as like a brand loyalty move?

[Colin]

Brand loyalty, yeah, the latter.

[Samir]

But I think it could be a revenue.

[Colin]

Yeah, I think it has the opportunity to be. We just have not put A ton of time and energy into operationalizing it. Right. Making sure that we've had the same hat design for four years. So clearly that's. There's, like, a missed opportunity there. We could have someone who's helping us. It built the decision. We did that so that we could build brand and so that people recognized it as it started to show up. But clearly, if we had, you know, someone spending more time and energy than us, I think there could be a revenue opportunity.

[Samir]

Would absolutely love to make it a bigger thing, like, for sure. And I think it's an opportunity for us to collaborate with more artists and do interesting collaborations on the merchandise. It's a great canvas and, like, you know, for how little we have spent time on the merchandise, I think we did spend a lot of time thinking through the hat. We were very particular about the hat and very particular about which colors we.

[Colin]

Did and the whole brand of starting.

[Samir]

It out brand itself. But, like, there's nothing greater than seeing how many people wear that hat. Like, to me, that is, like, the coolest thing and the best thing is that we see that people sometimes post on Instagram. They're like, I made a friend because he was wearing a press publisher. That, to me, is like, boom. That is. That's community. That's, like, the. The real manifestation of our audience and, like, a big service to the world that I would want. Like, everything that I feel proud of in our business is, like, stuff that I wish I had 10 years ago. And so I think, you know, knowing that someone can walk up to someone else and immediately have context and know that they're part of the same tribe of stuff that they're into just by wearing a press publish hat or press publisher. Like, to me, that's super cool. And that's. That's what I craved, you know, 10 years ago. And so anything.

[Colin]

We always said, like, you know, we're huge Casey Neistat fans, as I'm sure a lot of people are, but we always said we would have loved a shirt that said, do more in the style of the tattoo that he has on his arm, right? To, like, signify that we were watching those vlogs and we were a part of that community. And for us, the press publish logo, the hats, the shirts, I think that's what that is.

[Jay]

What do you think is the evolution of shorts? We see that views are being changed in the way they're counted. What do you see as the role shorts plays in YouTube and for creators?

[Samir]

I find myself more and more getting faced with, like, decision Paralysis and long form content and jumping straight into the shorts feedback. I don't know if other people are like that. I actually don't even know if Colin's like that. But I watch a ton of shorts. I don't think it's actually the question of, like, where shorts nets us out. I think it's the question of, like, how fragmented our attention gets over long periods of time. Because I'm, you know, I'm a guy in his mid-30s, but I talked about severance and White Lotus. I could barely watch some episodes of severance without reaching for my phone because I need that, like, that quick hit of like the next piece of content. I think shorts will always have like a place. I don't think they're like the greatest monetization mechanism from a content perspective, but I do think they are a lower barrier to entry for content, high opportunity for attention. You just have to be really careful that you're not just building views, that you're actually building a brand.

[Colin]

Yeah, I don't believe yet that YouTube shorts specifically dictates or drives culture, like a TikTok or Reels. Right? Like you, you, you can send someone really easily a TikTok or a reel. It's a unit of conversation to connect you with someone else. And I don't find that shorts Just because YouTube is not a messaging platform. So I think that's a huge barrier to if, if Shorts is able to really become a culture driver. I think right now it's just extra data. Right. That hopefully maybe informs a viewer if they want to watch your long form. But I'm not sure that short people in a short form feed are even really thinking about going long form.

[Jay]

What's also really frustrating about shorts, my wife loves TikTok and she uses it like a search engine like crazy. We want to go buy this couch from Costco. She's going to find a specific TikTok. Reviewing that couch on Costco, totally. When TikTok was banned, she could not find that same content on YouTube. It was not the same experience for her. She was very frustrated, which is ironic because YouTube is a search engine. Historically, I think it's not the same.

[Samir]

Experience when it comes to short form content like Instagram. I don't think we can overlook Instagram. Instagram feels like in the US a major cultural epicenter. Like when I post something on Instagram in conversation, it is brought up to me a lot more than if I post something on YouTube. And I think a lot of that is just because that is kind of this cultural operating system of the United States. And I think messaging like Colin mentioned is a major reason for that. Like people are messaging a lot on Instagram. People are messaging each other content on Instagram. And I think Instagram is like this major social hub. And so I actually think if I was like zooming out and thinking about short form content, I would think Instagram as like my main destination.

[Jay]

Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Colin and Samir. What about a scary prediction, something that you think might happen and if it does, that would be a net bad thing for the creator space.

[Colin]

I don't know if this is a bad thing, but this is something that I've been noticing very recently with the way that I watch YouTube specifically on TV. As you're on the homepage, you can hover over a video and it autoplays for 40 seconds. 40 seconds is a lot of time for me to understand if I want to watch that video or not. And I know it registers as a view and it becomes part of your watch history, but I am watching way less longer form videos because I can just hover and see what it's like and then move on. I know Patty Galloway always calls YouTube a click and watch platform. I think it's like a hover and hook platform. The more that it's being watched on TVs I think your hook becomes unbelievably important now that thumbnails may be become a little bit less important.

[Samir]

I think it's just that the dumbbell continues to build and widen the gap between these two ends. At one end it's like the TV quality YouTube. So like again, YouTube most watched app on connected TV Mr. Beast Mark Rober dude, perfect. Ryan Trahan. These are 38 minutes or you know, 40 minute long piece of content, 22 plus that are watched on connected TV. High budget, high production. Michelle Carre, Cleo Abram in this camp as well. And on the other end of the dumbbell you have short form content and short form content is being consumed on the platform. These are the two major focuses that I can feel from YouTube. My concern is that all of the middle gets kind of lost and the question of like what happens to the middle? Can those creators hold on long enough or for kind of the next evolution of YouTube. So I think that's, that's my fear and my question. I mean as a just a consumer I'm finding that I'm watching more and more extremely niche content. There's this stat from YouTube that 47% of Gen Z are a fan of something that no one they know personally is a fan of.

[Jay]

And super interesting.

[Samir]

I think that is like continuing to happen like the hyper fragmentation of YouTube and of the Internet and of attention. But is there a business model for those people in the middle? My hope is yes. My fear is that the money will go to the either side of those dumbbells. It'll go to long form high end productions and extremely short form content that can be used as paid media and as like, you know, short form advertising.

[Jay]

One thing we haven't talked about at all is streaming.

[Samir]

Yeah.

[Jay]

And you guys have talked about in the past how live sports are this verifiable human experience that is getting more and more valuable in the age of AI. And it strikes me that live streaming is in that camp as well. What's your take on live streaming? Is it interesting to you guys from the colonists of mirror perspective? Because I know historically a lot of streamers have said we're kind of the pie is kind of fixed. If we're going to get more viewers, we're pulling it from other channels. Curious your perspective.

[Samir]

We are in no way, shape or form entertaining enough to live stream. There's just no possible way.

[Colin]

Yeah, live streaming to me is, is bizarre to me. Like I'll plug in every once in a while to twitch and just see what's happening and there'll be like you know, 70, 80,000 people watching. And on Friday I tuned into a live stream of. It wasn't Kai, but it was like other members in Kai's universe. And I was watching basically like live action theater. Like there were multiple characters streaming from their own POVs and someone was about to like blow up a house and like they're, they're like both live streaming it and I'm watching and I'm realizing like this is like wwe. Like I don't know what these writing meetings look like.

[Samir]

Yeah.

[Colin]

But this is basically like WWE happening live and there's a hundred thousand people tuning in to both angles. And I really, I don't know what to make of it, but I just find it fascinating that like all of these, you know, podcasts are essentially the radio. Like long form YouTube is essentially TV and streaming. And then you know, you have like live streaming like this, which is like live action theater playing out. Like it's just so interesting that these things are coming back in different forms.

[Samir]

Yeah. It reminds me so much of just like deciding to like the ease of turning on MTV when you came home from school and it's just on and whatever's on is on. It's TRL and then it's room Raiders or whatever. And then it's the real world. And you're just like, yeah, cool. I'm just like, with this channel for a while and actually think live streaming occupies some of that where like the decision paralysis I talked about, I think it, it gives me a nice place to just have a companion. Right? And I think companion viewing is like a big deal right now. And it's like something that a lot of people like. You'd be hard pressed to find someone having lunch by themselves without a phone in their hand, right? Like, no chance. That's like a, you know, that's like just not a thing of the past. You're not going to do that. And I think live streaming occupies that, like, companion nature of like, I just want something on.

[Colin]

Even for me, YouTube exists in that lane. Like, when I turn on YouTube on my TV, there's. I'm only in two modes. It's either like background viewing while I'm doing something else or intently looking for something to actually, like, look at the screen.

[Samir]

But I think live streamers have shown us that, like, cultural relevance comes from time spent. You know, like, I think podcasting is the same way, like two, three hour long podcast that. That creates cultural relevance over long periods of time. Kaisen at I show speed, these creators are like, you have the opportunity to watch them almost every day if you're like eight hours a day. So, like, the opportunity for time spent is very high. That creates like deep, deep, deep relationships, which then creates a lot of cultural relevance. And I think again, that comes back to the question of short form. Like, can shortform have the same cultural relevance or is TikTok culturally relevant? Because you're spending a ton of time on TikTok. So I think that's. That's like an interesting thing. Back to the question, would we ever live stream? We do live Q&As. We do educational lives, which is really fun. Like, we've done cohorts for our education where we are live. Super fun. But I understand the value exchange of that live really well. I don't understand the value exchange when a million or 100,000 people are watching and being like, entertain me.

[Jay]

All right, actual last question. Any grapes?

[Samir]

So many, Jay. Just so many all the time. Let me think. Because I just had a really good one.

[Colin]

Yeah, I would say, like handshakes between guys in general.

[Jay]

Oh, my gosh. Just because there's elbow angle. Am I going down?

[Colin]

Options available to us. And somehow we're supposed to read each other's mind and just figure out, like, what type of handshake we're going to do. I just think it's preposterous. Big time. Great.

[Samir]

Well, I think you have to lead, like, the thing to quell that anxiety.

[Colin]

I do lead, but then I just. I don't go like, that's not me. I just go with.

[Samir]

I just go and lead.

[Colin]

I just go handshake. I was like, hey, how are you?

[Samir]

Yeah. The issue is there's two of us, so we have to be in sync a lot of times with these handshakes. But I try and go first as much as possible, so.

[Colin]

Yeah, yeah. But I wish we could just, you know, I thought during COVID we were like. People were like, ah, we're getting rid of the handshake. And I was like, ah. All right. Like this, like, this is great.

[Samir]

I have a gripes note in my iPhone, so let me see what I have.

[Colin]

Do you have one, Jay?

[Samir]

Okay.

[Jay]

Oh, man. I should have prepared for this is my question.

[Samir]

I have a couple that I think I've already said on the show, but I will. I'll say a couple of them to see if any of them resonate with you. Probably my number one gripe in the world is when you go to a coffee shop and you say, can I have a cappuccino? And they go, yeah. What size cappuccino is one size, Jay? It's one size. It's a cappuccino. It's a third. A third, A third. There's only one size. Do not ask me what size I want for my cappuccino. It's eight ounces. All right. The other is a horror movie trailer before a non horror movie. If I've gone into a movie theater to see a romantic comedy or like an adventure film, do not show me a trailer for the Exorcist. My context is not that I'm here to be freaked out. I don't want to see, you know, a ghost throwing up all over someone. That's not what I wanted when I walked in this room.

[Colin]

I've said this one before too, but it just came to mind when there is an ad that plays on a horizontal screen, but they've put like a fake vertical frame to make it seem like it's on TikTok. But it's really high production and it's still. You can tell it was like a multi hundred thousand dollar ad. But They've cut it to look like it happens to be someone with a tik, like on TikTok. But then they'll also put the like streaming hearts up the side as if it's like an Instagram live. They don't even understand the formats that they're trying to tap into. They're just like we're trying to tap into Gen Z. That's a gripe.

[Samir]

This is one that I've mentioned for a long time, but it's when someone says now a silly one. When you're in a group photo, oh my gosh. I just. What are you supposed to do?

[Jay]

And what if you did the silly one first?

[Samir]

I never do the silly one first. Whenever someone says now a silly one, I don't change what I'm doing. I'm just gonna smile. I'm not, I'm not doing that. Whatever that is.

[Jay]

My all time favorite gripe of yours, Samir, was when there are soap dispensers next to a lotion dispenser at a sink.

[Colin]

Yeah, that's a big one, dude.

[Samir]

You know, and you would think that at this point I'm so aware of that that I wouldn't get got. I get got all the time, dude. I got got upstairs this morning.

[Colin]

That's a problem. We need to ask them to remove the lotion.

[Samir]

I got got.

[Colin]

I just don't believe that people are lotioning.

[Samir]

Not often, that often.

[Colin]

Nor do they want a lotion. That's not like most people. If they like, if they even care about lotioning their hands, they have a specific lotion at home. No one is just rogue lotioning throughout the day. It's crazy.

[Jay]

All right, I do have one gripe that I'll share and that is the price of mocktails. What am I paying interesting $14 for in this? Seltzer water and cranberry juice.

[Colin]

Yeah, that's a big one.

[Jay]

That's fair.

[Colin]

My wife is pregnant right now, so we went to like a non alcoholic liquor store and we asked for something that felt like orange wine. And I'm sure It was like $35 or something and it was just straight up like pomegranate juice. Like it was just not even a question about it. Take a swear. Oh, yeah, that's just juice.

[Samir]

I'm going to give you one more, just one more grab because it happened to me yesterday. I haven't even talked to Colin about this. One of my friends invited me over and was like, hey, I want to learn how to edit. He's a standup comedian. He gets a lot of footage of himself. He wants to be able to clip himself. I was very excited about this. So I go over to his house. I'm like, we're gonna open up Adobe Premiere. We set up the project, we bring in the clips. I'm showing him, like, how to keyframe. I'm like, here's how you do. Oh, you went out of frame here. We're gonna make a vertical. We're gonna keyframe you over here. And then as I'm, like, poking around Premiere, I'm like, wait, hold on. All this stuff that I'm doing actually is just like. There's, like, a single button that you can do.

[Colin]

I plugins for it.

[Samir]

Then he asked me a question. He goes, what about cap cut? Like, should I use cap cut? And I was like, it's a good question. Let's download capcut and see. So we send the horizontal file to cap cut. It's literally the click. Like, we spent an hour cutting one clip, did the same thing in a matter of three minutes.

[Colin]

That feels like a good thing.

[Samir]

Yeah. But it was a gripe that I know. To me, it felt like I was showing someone how to cut tape.

[Colin]

Yeah, you're a dinosaur.

[Samir]

Like, like, I knew that cap cut was that good, but I was like, wait, I just spent an hour showing him how to use scissors, cut tape, and tape it together. And I was excited about showing him how to do this.

[Colin]

Yeah.

[Samir]

And everything I had taught him, basically.

[Colin]

Your gripe is becoming irrelevant.

[Samir]

Yes, my gripe is growing older and becoming irrelevant.

[Colin]

Understood.

[Samir]

Yeah. So.