VIKKSTAR: The Sidemen Almost Ended Because Of Me

Summary

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Great Company with Jamie Laing

Episode: VIKKSTAR: The Sidemen Almost Ended Because Of Me
Date: November 12, 2025
Host: Jamie Laing
Guest: Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)

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Episode Overview

This episode features YouTube megastar and Sidemen co-founder Vikkstar (Vikram Barn), who joins Jamie Laing for an open, inspiring, and at times raw conversation about building an online career, resilience, teamwork, and the reality behind internet success. Vikkstar reveals the sacrifices, obsessive work ethic, and team dynamics that have allowed the Sidemen to endure as one of the world’s most successful creator groups. He also touches on health challenges, burnout, massive video productions, and transitioning into music.

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Key Topics & Discussion Highlights

1. Starting Out on YouTube (05:33 – 08:36)

• Vikkstar began making YouTube gaming videos at 14 as a hobby in his bedroom in Sheffield. Monetization wasn’t even possible then.
• Early feelings of being an outcast—vlogging looked “almost like psychosis” to outsiders.
  • "Why are you sat in front of a screen and talking to yourself? Because no one did it." (07:40, Vikkstar)
• Early payments: £50–£60/month, which felt “mad” as a kid. By age 18, he earned “tens of thousands” yearly but worked 16–18 hour days.

2. Perseverance and Outsider Status (11:00 – 14:54)

• Vikkstar discusses the conflict of being introverted but doing something so outward-facing.
• Early on, he was part of a group of friends making videos, but he was the only one to keep going.
• Why didn’t he quit? He persevered out of passion and fascination, not because of initial success.
  • "I was fascinated by it ... I think maybe I didn't have as much else going on." (14:56, Vikkstar)
• Consistency rewarded him; uploaded daily for 6–7 years straight, sacrificing social life and health.

3. Addiction to Numbers and Burnout (16:11 – 20:04)

• Adrenaline from real-time feedback made YouTube “so, so addictive.”
• Developed self-worth tied to view counts; stopping constant uploads was scary and identity-shaking.
  • "After so long, you've tied your self-worth as a person to those numbers." (22:10, Vikkstar)
• Burnout cycles were common; shifting focus required re-learning how to have hobbies, build health, “even just learning how to actually not be doing stuff.”

4. Formation and Growth of the Sidemen (10:00 – 13:15, 21:48+)

• Sidemen began when Vikkstar and fellow YouTubers moved in together, combining audiences and efforts.
• Early spirit: collaboration over competition, supported by “UK culture” of friendly banter and self-deprecation.
  • "Collaboration... it doesn't work in the long run to guard what you have. It's better just to collaborate with people, share your audiences, share your ideas." (37:09, Vikkstar)
• Working as a group is forgiving—members can have quiet periods and be supported.

5. Production, Scale, and Financials (28:13 – 31:39)

• Sidemen Sunday videos now cost an average of £50–60k to produce; the wildest topped £500k collaborating with MrBeast.
  • "Some [videos] cost £5000–10,000 if it's just us, but the most expensive was £500,000." (28:29, Vikkstar)
  • Sometimes these big projects lose money but are pursued for creative or collaborative reasons.
• Early big hits cost nearly nothing—now investment in quality/staff is essential.

6. The YouTube Algorithm & Creator Pressure (44:42 – 47:14)

• Discussed the evolution from subscriber feeds (everyone saw your videos) to today's algorithmic, hyper-edited, psychologically optimized content.
  • "Now—there's probably more, you know, I think they say being an influencer or a creator is the most desirable job ... but then you're competing with all of them." (46:18, Vikkstar)
• 720,000 hours of new content are uploaded daily (47:30); standing out requires both quality and strategic thinking.

7. Analytics, Business Mindset, and Diversity of Sidemen Roles (32:45 – 34:33)

• Sidemen’s strength: diverse skillsets—some members are entertainers (JJ, Harry), others (Vikkstar, Josh) are logical “nerds” obsessed with analytics and planning.
  • Jamie: "So you were constantly... you're an analyst. You're basically... you're the analyst." (34:11)
  • Vikkstar: "I think that's what works so well in sidemen, is with seven very unique people." (34:19)

8. Health Struggles and Sharing Vulnerability (61:28 – 64:41)

• Vikkstar revealed having Crohn's disease; he hid it for years but ultimately went public to help others.
  • "It's one of these things people call an invisible illness... it's hard to say, 'I'm really not feeling well' because it's kind of like inside you." (62:55)
• Talks candidly about the toll on his energy and needing time to find the right medication.

9. Expanding Beyond YouTube: Music, VC, Netflix (42:24 – 43:08; 66:36 – 70:08)

• Sidemen now pursue business ventures (e.g., VC arm) and TV (Netflix show “Inside”).
• Vikkstar's DJ career: from hobby to booking Tomorrowland, with real-world connection to fans now as important as digital.
• Suffers from imposter syndrome (“I'm the guy who plays video games, what's going on here?” (70:10)), but embraces challenge.

10. Advice for Aspiring Creators (73:14 – 74:07)

• "Work hard consistently ... use everything as experience and a learning. ... The more things you do, the more people you meet ... you increase the surface area of your luck." (73:14, Vikkstar)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Early YouTube Days:
  "Why are you sat in front of a screen and talking to yourself? Because no one did it. ... Influencers, YouTubers, there was none of this stuff." (07:40, Vikkstar)

• On Success:
  "People say, sometimes it's better to be imperfect lots of times than perfect just a few times. So I think again, the 10,000 hour rule, I think I've uploaded over 10,000 videos." (16:11, Vikkstar)

• On Teamwork:
  "We're more powerful as a collective than as individuals." (38:25, Vikkstar)

• On Money and Risk:
  "Sometimes you just need to do stuff ... spending £500,000 on a video, knowing you might not make that back." (30:32, Vikkstar)

• On Imposter Syndrome:
  "Going to a festival and ... I'm the guy who plays video games. Like, what's going on here?" (70:10, Vikkstar)

• On Advice:
  "You increase the surface area of your luck. And the more you increase that, the more good things that will come to you in time." (73:14, Vikkstar)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [05:33] Vikkstar describes starting YouTube at age 14
• [07:40] Early feelings of being an outsider
• [08:52] First earnings from YouTube
• [10:00] Sidemen beginnings and moving in together
• [16:11] Obsessive work ethic and daily uploads for years
• [22:10] Tying self-worth to numbers, being scared to post less
• [28:29] Production costs for Sidemen videos, biggest-ever project
• [31:39] The consistency and risk-taking behind YouTube’s biggest creators
• [37:09] Collaboration versus competition in YouTube groups
• [44:42] Evolution of the YouTube algorithm and psychological demands
• [61:28] Living with Crohn’s disease and why Vikkstar went public
• [66:43] DJing at Tomorrowland, stepping beyond digital into music
• [70:10] Struggling with imposter syndrome in new creative fields
• [73:14] Final advice for those starting out—work, learn, increase your “surface area of luck”
• [75:51] Quickfire round: humor, fears, guilty pleasures, work ethic, and more

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Tone & Language

Throughout, the tone is candid, energetic, and self-reflective, with Vikkstar’s humility and analytical nature shining through. Jamie’s style is enthusiastic and supportive, asking probing questions that encourage vulnerability as well as humor.

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Further Listening

Jamie suggests also checking out the Italian Batch episode for more about nontraditional creator journeys and study of the craft (84:14).

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Summary by: [Great Company with Jamie Laing — "VIKKSTAR: The Sidemen Almost Ended Because Of Me," Nov 12, 2025]

Transcript

[Jamie Laing]

Coming up in this episode of Great Company.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I started making YouTube videos when I was 14 years old.

[Jamie Laing]

How many hours do you think?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

14, 15 hours, seven days a week for six or seven years. Going to sleep, wake up the next day, do it again. I destroyed my house.

[Jamie Laing]

Feeling isolated, maybe feeling lonely. Why didn't you give up, dude? That is insane.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Hey, I'm Vikstar and I'm in Great Company. Hey guys, it's me, Vikstar123. Introducing Sidemen. He's down. Shut the up. Wake up. Make videos. You're just a username and a voice.

[Jamie Laing]

But you're sort of living in a virtual world.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Almost to the outside world. Looked like psychosis. It's like, why are you sat in front of a screen and talking to yourself?

[Jamie Laing]

You have now 22 million subscribers on Sidemen. It's like a third of the country.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

We've been a Group since 2013. Our most expensive video was what the.

[Jamie Laing]

But the competitiveness within you guys, inside men, that never got out of control. It got a bit out of hand that for me, I see someone who is addicted to what you do.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It did kind of get to a point where after so long, you've tied your self worth as a person to those numbers. It was, it became like for all of us, so, so addictive. I was so, like exhausted for kind of few years.

[Jamie Laing]

When was the last time you cried?

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[Jamie Laing]

Hello everyone, my name is Jamie Laing and this is Great Company. Guys, I can't really hold my excitement for today's episode with Vik Star. It's. I've been wanting to get one of the sidemen on Great Company for a long time so I'm beyond excited for this one now. Welcome back to the show. If you're an OG listener, you know who I am. You know what the show is about. Welcome back. If you're a new listener, welcome. My name is Jamie. I'm the host of the show. You're going to take so many learnings from this episode from Vikkstar. So many incredible things about being a YouTuber, about focus and determination, about capitalizing on your situation, about working amongst a team. There is so much in this episode so stick around for it. Okay? And before we start the show because I know you want to get into it, I would just like to ask you one favor and I'm going to make it very Quick. One favor is if you can subscribe to our show. I'll leave it there. If you can subscribe to our show. It's completely free and it really helps the show improve in every aspect. If you can do that. Thank you so much. Okay, I'm really excited for this one, so enjoy this episode of Great Company with Vikkstar.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Hey, I'm Vikkstar and I'm in great company.

[Jamie Laing]

I know exactly who you are because I've seen your videos. I've watched you for a long time and when. And what I find so interesting, especially about YouTube. Right. Is that it's so personal to you because I. I can sit in my room by myself and I can watch your videos alone and you can talk to me and you. And I see what you do and everything. Right. But for. And I know how famous you are. You're very famous somehow.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah. Although we don't.

[Jamie Laing]

We don't.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

We don't like to see it that way. We try not to.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay, but you're very famous, like extremely.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

A lot of people know who we are. I don't know.

[Jamie Laing]

A lot of people know who you are, but then a lot of people wouldn't know who you are either. And so you're seriously famous, but also at the same time, underground. Underground.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

Can you explain? Can you explain to our listeners who some know who you are, but who don't know who you are? What do you do and why are you famous?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

So I started making YouTube videos in my bedroom when I was 14 years old. And it was like this fun little creative hobby. Just record myself playing video games, clip it up, put it on YouTube. You can't even monetize YouTube videos at this point. So it's just like a fun little hobby. I'm going to learn the skills, see where it goes. And then one day a company comes along and says, hey, we'll pay you to make these videos. And I think, okay, I've cracked the jackpot of life. I've won the lottery because I'm getting paid to play video games, if you think about it that way. So started doing that and, you know, over 14 years have really kind of revolutionize the way that is taking it from beyond video games to real life to every different kind of content you can make. And loads of people have joined the journey across the kind of over a decade and support us in doing that. And it allows us to kind of go bigger and better every time.

[Jamie Laing]

When you were 14 years old, where were you? Were you in Sheffield?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yes.

[Jamie Laing]

So you're in Sheffield, you're making videos in your room, which I imagine at the time is kind of like a. A strange thing to be doing, right?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Massively.

[Jamie Laing]

So you must have felt like a bit of an outcast in a way.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, yeah, 100%. It was almost like it almost, to the outside world, looked like psychosis. It's like, why are you sat in front of a screen and talking to yourself? Because no one did it. I remember the first time I ever tried to vlog. It was in 2012. I was going to an event in London called Eurogamer, and I'm there on a train talking into my phone and everyone else is on the train is looking at me like, this guy lost his mind. Because no one did it. There weren't influences, there weren't YouTubers, there was none of this stuff. So I think that was the barrier to entry at that time. And you kind of had to push yourself out of your comfort zone to do that. And because we were the first people to do it, it meant that we could grow audiences first doing it. It meant that there wasn't as much pressure on us, there weren't expectations in terms of what quality content is now. The ceiling, I'm sure, as you know, is so high for content right now. It has to look so good.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

But back then, people just were excited to see something real.

[Jamie Laing]

Can I ask this? So firstly, how much, when you were 14, 15, 16 years old, whatever, making the videos, how much were you paid when they said, we're gonna pay you to make these videos? What was it?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Oh, I mean, maybe back then I'd make like 50, 60 quid a month, but as a kid, mad, this is.

[Jamie Laing]

That's gold.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Oh, my word. What's going on? So it was, yeah, enough at that point to really kind of be something that was worth pursuing as, hey, instead of having a paper round, I'm going to carry on trying to make my videos better and better. It was like I had my own kind of mini business in doing that. And then I carried that on throughout the whole of my time at school. And by the time I'd finished my A levels, I was pretty much earning a good salary. And that's when I had the time to think, okay, I want to take a gap year and put all of my efforts into this because I've been balancing it with schoolwork, so let's see what I can achieve in that year. And also, we were terrified because we were like, okay, we're getting paid to play video games. When does this Bubble burst. When does a media company come in and take away all the rights from us? When do people just stop watching our videos? When do the advertisers say, hey, we don't want to advertise on YouTube anymore? We had no idea what was going to happen. So I took this gap year, and fortunately for me, in that year, that's pretty much when the Sidemen, which is the group that I'm now part of, formed. Because we were a group of young guys doing the same thing, struggling to make content at home, annoying our parents, being loud, being up late at night. So we thought, we'll move into a house together, make videos together. And that was the start of something even bigger.

[Jamie Laing]

18 years old. What are you. What salary are you earning from doing?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I can't remember the exact amount, but it was. It was. It was tens of thousands.

[Jamie Laing]

That's amazing.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

A year from. But then also that was kind of working at that point, like 18 hours a day or 16 to 17 hours a day on the videos. And then I remember we moved into our first shared house together, which was the Sidemen. I realized kind of like half of my earnings were going into rent or maybe even more than half my earnings. And I was thinking, this is. This is. This is a bit crazy. My parents were like, what are you doing? You can't move into a house with these strangers in London that you've met, like, once before. So, yeah, it was a roller coaster, but it was. Yeah, everything happened at the right time.

[Jamie Laing]

When you were 40. Cause I imagine you said you felt like a. And I don't want to put words in your mouth, but maybe you felt like a bit of an outcast because you were making these videos, but you enjoyed doing them. Maybe you're a bit of an introvert, whatever it is, but then you're in your room doing something so extrovert. So that's a weird, like, combination. Does that make any sense to you?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, I get what you're saying. Cause I was both at the same time. And I actually thank YouTube and all the friends that I made through YouTube to get me, kind of make me come out of my shell massively. Because it felt like, first of all, in gaming, one thing that was really nice is, especially back then, and even to a degree now, you're just a username and a voice. Yeah, you're not. You know, you go into every situation there, and it's just like you are just this person people aren't judging you on based on how you look, what you're wearing. Where you're from, you're just this kind of username and a voice. So I think in gaming I really enjoyed that having all of these I had through the gaming world that didn't view me in the same way, that kind of everyone in the real world and at school might have viewed me. And then also going into the YouTube thing again, it was this new group of people. So I wasn't inside my own head thinking like, oh, what are the people at school gonna think about? You know, how I'm putting myself across what I'm talking about. It's kind of all of these new people online, which was fun and it was this escape. And then when that got to a certain point, then people at school started to find out about it and then there was this very mixed response of.

[Jamie Laing]

What was the response?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It was a mixed response of, oh, you make money from this. This is really cool. Like, tell me more about it. And then on the other side, why do you sit at home and talk to a camera while playing video games? That's really weird. Like, you should probably like, you know, do something else kind of kind of mindset because it was just something so alien and different to people.

[Jamie Laing]

Then when you're sort of getting a love hate response from something that's almost an exciting place to be.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

Because you're. That means you're doing something different 100% because people are admiring you for doing something different, but people are hating on you because maybe they're jealous or they don't standard. And that's a really good place.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

That's what they say. They always say, like, if you're trying to be successful in something, you almost want people talking negatively about it because it's a sign that you're going in the right direction. It's like you have to kind of see both sides of it. So yeah, I think you're right. I knew that at the age of age of 15, I was so confused. I was like, what's going on?

[Jamie Laing]

Because that must be confusing, right?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

And all you kind of do, I know for me at that age, like man, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, just wanted to fit in.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

Like, like I was so desperate to just fit in the whole time. And you know, I wanted to be admired and successful, but also I wanted to fit in. So I imagine there's like a lot of people out there who probably had the same vision, same desire, same appetite for what you were doing, but decided not to do it because they were too scared.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I actually remember early on in my career so it wasn't just me that started making videos. It was actually a big group of about seven or eight boys from my school also who were making videos. But they kind of all stopped, and I carried on, and that's when people kind of started to pay attention to it. But I remember at one point, very early in my career, they had maybe 1,000 subscribers at the time on their, like, group channel. And they put this video, and it was well edited and it was. They had a HD recording device. And I remember looking at it and distinctly thinking, I'm sat here with a camcorder on a tripod, pointing at my TV when my screen turns black. You see myself sat there with my headset on in the reflection. My production quality is so far from what they have. I remember at one point looking at and thinking, I'm never gonna be that. Why don't I just give up now? Because it was kind of those doubting yourself thoughts of, like, someone else is already doing it better, so why even try? But I guess that's a lesson in life, that if you persevere, you can go much, much further than you might think you would be able to.

[Jamie Laing]

Why didn't you give up?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I couldn't truly tell you, but I think it was just. Just because I was fascinated by it. And again, like you say, I was kind of searching for the experience and the skills, and I was thinking in the back of my head, as I've learned how to use some editing software, I've learned a bit about video games making content ahead of anything else. And also, I think maybe I didn't have as much else going on. All these other kids were playing all their different sports, kind of going out drinking, doing all their fun stuff. I was just like, in my room playing games, making my videos. But it kind of worked out that.

[Jamie Laing]

That image of you when the screen goes blank and then you just see yourself.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Funny to edit out those little clips. I'm like, you can't see me.

[Jamie Laing]

Just see yourself just sitting there, be like, wow, this is. This is a bit lonely, actually, man, that. That I. When I look at you, right above all the creativity and all those different things. But I think people go like, God. And I imagine the question you ask, how do you make it so successful? How do you know this and that? For me, I see someone who is addicted to what you do.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

And is resilient and consistent.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

And that is the success story, I imagine, plus the other things. But at the core of it, surely that's what the success is.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

So yeah, when I, my gap year, I turned down a place at UCL to do natural sciences. So kind of in my family's view especially, that's a good, that's a good place to be. If you want to set yourself up for life, you're going to take that. But I said, let me take one year and kind of focus all my energy into this YouTube thing, see where it goes. And I kind of almost made a deal with myself at that point. And it was, if I'm going to defer that place, I'm going to upload a video every single day for as long as I possibly can. And I think I went something like six or seven years. Every single day, a new YouTube video. And it didn't have to be the best video, it didn't have to. It just had to be a video. And I think that's also what people say is, they say sometimes it's better to be imperfect lots of times than perfect just a few times. So I think again, the 10,000 hour rule, I think I've uploaded over 10,000 videos to my YouTube channels. So I really went through a period of years where it was genuinely wake up, make videos for 14, 15, 16 hours. And that would be recording them, putting them into editing software, editing them, uploading that, doing that again four or five times in a day, going to sleep, wake up the next day, do it again. So it's consistency, that's how it works.

[Jamie Laing]

Wow, man, that is beyond dedication. Do you think you have to be, in a way, an addict to be successful?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

That's a good question. I think it definitely helps a lot. And I also think actually thinking back to the early days of YouTube, it was very easy to really, really get into it because it was that real time response. Every day you post a video, you see the number of comments, you see the number of views going up every hour. It was, it became like for all of us, so, so addictive. And you're saying, yeah, the revenue's going up, the views are going up, the watch time's going up, your number of subscribers, you're hitting 10,000, 100,000 going like that. It was, it was a very easy addiction to Chase. And I think a lot of us have struggled to shift out of that later in life because it is a cycle that you can get trapped in forever. And I remember kind of at some points I would kind of upload a video and in the back of my head there would be a countdown time be like, okay, 14 hours until you need to get the next one live three hours till the next one goes live, so you can get caught in that loop. But also, it was a lot of fun. At the same time, I can't act like I was doing something I really didn't enjoy. I was playing games, I was enjoying. I was creating an enjoyable experience. I was editing my favorite parts of those experiences and just sharing them. So it was kind of. While it was a bit obsessive, it was also, and still is a dream job. Really.

[Jamie Laing]

Dude, that is insane. So how many, how many hours do you think you were spending, especially during that gap year you were spending making videos? How many hours a day on average?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I would say like 14, 15 hours, seven days a week for a couple of years on end. It was all I did. It was also, it was, it was so fun at the same time and so exciting, especially when we were living in a house, doing it together. The whole lifestyle just revolved around it. We'd go into each other's bedrooms and help each other record real life videos. We'd go on trips and we'd make videos while on those trips because we were just documenting our lives. And we still do that to this point. Is. It's. Yeah, it's an interesting.

[Jamie Laing]

That is what. Okay, like you, I, I'm. I'm obsessed with what I do. I'm addicted to what I do. I love it, I live it, I breathe it, I eat it. Like, oh my God. But what that happens with that is then it can lead to, I, I think burnout can lead to feeling isolated, maybe feeling lonely, feeling all these things. Have you ever felt that?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, definitely throughout stages. And it was even more, you know, more. How do I say this? More focused in the gaming space. Because I'd pick up a game that I enjoyed. Let's say it was Call of Duty, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto. And I would make videos on this game. I'd be loving it. It would be super easy. For months and months, the views on that kind of game would go up and up and up. And it would get to a point where I was like, okay, not really enjoying playing this game or making videos on this game. So then you end up in this trap where you're like kind of hitting record. You're like, put this big smile on, act like I'm having the best time ever. But actually I'm not enjoying this game. And the viewers are seeing maybe five hours of footage compiled down, so they see the kind of pure best bits. But you did kind of end up a bit burnt out on a title and I think for a lot of us it meant a lot of the times biting the bullet and saying, okay, I'm going to try starting making videos on this other game that I think is going to be a big hit at some point. Maybe it's not there yet. I'm going to see my views drop by 50, 80% to start making videos on this new game. But it was almost like you had to keep adapting. It's the same in business. You have to keep adapting how you run your business to kind of survive in business. So there were like these kind of little stages of burnout throughout. And then I think a big realization was when I did kind of decide to stop uploading every day, it was this, okay, I have some spare time now. What do I do with this spare time? What do I like doing other than playing video games, going out and making YouTube videos? So it was like a kind of like a shock of a few, a year or two where I was like, okay, I need to start finding things outside of work that I can do in my life. Like, how strange is that?

[Jamie Laing]

So there was a moment because you. So you said you uploaded every single day for seven, eight years, but you're sort of living in a virtual world almost.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

Not living in the real world. When you do stop doing that, as you said, and you suddenly, you leave your room and you're like, okay, fine, I'm not. Firstly, is that scary when you suddenly decide, I'm not going to post a video day in, day out.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

And then secondly, how, what was the feeling like?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

What do you. Was it weird? It was both at the same time. It was scary because one, it's kind of almost to be so successful and consistent, you've almost scared yourself into thinking that I have to, I have to get this done, I have to get the video out, I have to be getting, keeping my views up. And it was almost, it was also part of it. As YouTubers, we're all, we are all competitive. We're hard working, we're competitive. So it is like I'm getting this many views a month. How many views are you getting a month? Oh, I got this video over a million. Did you get this video over a million? And you chase that and it's six. It's great at driving success and kind of pushing yourself forward. And it was always kind of a friendly, competitive nature. But it did kind of get to a point where after so long you've tied your self worth as a person to those numbers. Really. So if I'm doing 60 million views a month. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm that guy right now. You know, I'm walking around and then it's like, oh, if three months later it's dropped to 30 million, it's like, what am I doing wrong? Like, I need to. And I think following through all of that, it was difficult enough when I thought, okay, I'm putting in my best efforts and the views are still going down and. But then every time that happened, they cycled up and down, up and down. You become more okay with that. That is something that just happens. But even then, when I was working as hard as I could, it was kind of like, easy to say, okay, the views have gone down, but I'm trying my best, it's fine. But then that mindset of, okay, I'm going to post less videos, I'm going to put less effort into my videos, and then I'm going to watch the views kind of. And the revenue kind of go down. It was this thing where you had to, like, almost like, pull yourself out of it and think, like, it doesn't. It doesn't matter. And I think, again, it was this inherent fear of, like, turning down university and potentially all these other careers to do YouTube that made me push so much with it because.

[Jamie Laing]

Unreliable, unpredictable.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

That's it. And it was almost. Yeah. And it really was. And actually, I'm glad for it now. They say, you know, make hay when the sun shines. And we really, really did. When it was not ultra competitive, when the quality standards were not super, super high, we could really kind of have a lot of fun and make a lot of content. We really went for it, and I went for it. And that's one thing that I'm really happy for now because when it is now hyper competitive, super challenging, quite stressful, we can, one, build a team to help with that and two, step away from it a little bit and kind of rely on the hard work we put in earlier. So, yeah, that's the work side of it. And then on the personal side, I was just like, okay, I need hobbies. I need to get into health and fitness. I destroyed my health. Like, I barely did any exercise.

[Jamie Laing]

Are you serious?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Awake throughout the night making videos. I barely saw the sun. What are you drinking?

[Jamie Laing]

Are you drinking Red Bulls or energy drinks to keep awake or.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

No, not really. No. I never really got into. No, I wasn't ever super caffeine heavy, but it was like, we're talking ready meals in my bedroom. Like, in between two. I'm living off sandwiches and crisps, and it was not great. So I think kind of, yeah, taking control of my health again was a big step. Getting into kind of music and just. Just learning how to actually not be doing stuff.

[Jamie Laing]

So then you had to. You had to make a. You have to make a basic risk in your head. You had to say, right, we're going to stop doing this and go and get another go to save your mental and physical health, basically.

[Sponsor Voice 1]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

What does that teach you in life about making those decisions to adapt, change, move.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

You've got. You've got to do it. If you don't do it. And it's also in doing YouTube. For so long, we've seen so many creators become the biggest thing on a certain game, a certain kind of type of content. They blow up to these crazy levels where we're all sat there watching them going, whoa, they're doing crazy numbers. But then two years later, you ask, oh, what happened to that person? Like, get out of here. People come and go so much in this space, and it's because you have to keep changing what you're doing. If we were still making the videos we were making in 2016, 2017, 2018, not many people will be watching them because they're just not what's currently trending. They're not edited and produced in a way that people expect content to be now. So it is that, yeah, you've got to keep. Keep going for it, trying something new. And also a lot of our best and most successful things have been. Again, I'm sure you'll know in life, it's when you get out of your comfort zone, when you take that risk, when you start a new business, when one fails, but then another becomes something ten times bigger than you thought it might be. And actually kind of the Sidemen project itself, we all collaborated, we had these huge audiences that we combined. But then again, our system of collaboration kind of broke down in a sense that it was kind of difficult to always appear on each other's channels. And it might be you'd be on one other person's channel for three videos in a month, but then you wouldn't have anything you needed them for, or they wouldn't be able to be on your video. So we made a group channel where we said, hey, we're just going to get together and make one really great video every week on a Sunday, if we, you know, the best video we can. And that now is our biggest series ever. Each of those videos gets kind of 8 to 15 million views every time. And again, that was us trying something new, saying, hey, let's try this, it might succeed, it might fail. And it turned out to be kind of bigger than everything a lot of us had done individually before then.

[Jamie Laing]

What you do, you guys, as a sidemen you do. And on those weekly videos I find it's amazing because not only do you have all your other stuff going on, you may be getting married, you've got relationships, you got social things going on, you're doing your own videos, but then you're also creating a big video which is on the Sunday, right. Which is just kind of mad as a group. And I think what people don't realize is the I come from a TV background, right. And what's amazing that I see on YouTube now is like YouTube is the new television. Yeah, without a doubt. And you can see I saw a crazy statistic which is something like a hundred percent of 18 to 35 year old men have watched something on YouTube.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, I believe it.

[Jamie Laing]

A hundred. That was 100%, which is wild. Right? So that's where everything's going. So when you guys are making your big production shows for the sidemen, how much does it cost to make it? How much? What is the cost of putting on production like that, which people don't realize?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

So those weekly videos of Sidemen Sundays now I would say on average around 50 to 60,000 pounds per video. And that's factoring in we have a big team, around 40, 50 people that make those videos possible. We sometimes hire, you know, huge sets, locations, cars, flights, all of this sort of stuff. So some of the videos we can still make a sidemen Sunday video that costs, you know, 5,000, 10,000 to make if it's just us walking around with cameras doing kind of a silly challenge. But then some of them, you know, our most expensive video was, I want to say I think it was 500,000 it cost to put together. So which one was that one? It was our video where we competed against MrBeast and we built these big sets, almost Takeshi's Castle esque challenge against him. And that was also him coming over like, it's MrBeast, we gotta pull out the credit card and make something big happen here. And it was still nothing compared to the scale of his productions. But it was our attempt at, you know, doing something a bit different. So yeah, having access to that now is also pretty crazy again when we.

[Jamie Laing]

Because you can do one.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah. And when we started our videos, every video was zero dollars to make. You know, we've got thousands of videos We've made that were, you know, $500 to make some of our biggest videos. You're talking like crossbar challenges. We used to film. We would go. We would set up cameras ourselves on tripods, hit record kick footballs at a crossbar for two hours, edit it ourselves. Let's say that video cost us £100 to make.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

And it's got 30 million views. So that back then you could do that. It was easier. Now, now you've got to spend the money.

[Jamie Laing]

Quality, spend money. People, people are expecting more, more, more, more, more. Yeah, but, but if you're look, and just because I like looking at. From the business side of things. Right. If you. If you're creating a video which is going to cost 500,000, right. As a production value and then you get good views on it, do you make profit back on that or.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

No, I think we lost some money on that video.

[Jamie Laing]

So you're just doing it just because you know it's going to work?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, well, yeah, just because sometimes you just need a. Need to do stuff that. Again, we were just trying to work out what do we do with MrBeast. We'll just build something big. And also we had time constraints because he'd come over for our charity football match. We had a half day before the match. We were like, what can we build that works? And it's almost. You have to think about how reliable a video is as well. Because we're thinking, you know, sometimes we spent a lot of money on a video, we turn up, we shoot it. We're hoping things go as we hope they go. If not, we save it in the edit. That's always the way.

[Jamie Laing]

But yeah, what is it when you see like MrBeast come over and like these complete and utter machines like you guys are, you know, and we're gonna get into Sideburn, how it started, how many? Because you have now 22 million subscribers on Sidemen.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I think so.

[Jamie Laing]

Which is 22 million.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

Dude, that's.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

That is absurd. It's a lot of people, sir.

[Jamie Laing]

It's like a third of the country. Like, like, it's absurd that that many things. What is the one attribute do you think that each of these relentless, amazing, successful people in YouTube have in common?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I think, yeah. One thing is we've gone over it. The consistency. Yeah. The second is that the risk taking. They're like, they don't worry about how they're going to be perceived for doing certain things. They just, they just go for it. They try it, they'll try Things that fail, they'll try. Things that succeed. I say that's another key part of it. I think those, I think those are the two main things. Be consistent, I guess. I guess. And also they love it. They just absolutely love it. And they, they come across as someone who enjoys doing what they're doing. I think it's really important. I think it's really difficult to fake enjoying what you're doing. And I think I see a lot of the new generation of creators and influencers, if you like, taking it, really going in and, and they're acting as if they're having fun because they're trying to get the, the Lamborghini, the business class flight, all of this kind of stuff ahead of just enjoying making the content. They're copying other people and not enjoying it. And I think that's where a lot of people kind of fall down now. And it is hard, it's hard to look at what everyone else seems to be having and not chase that.

[Jamie Laing]

So who in the, in the digital world would you say is a personality and who would you say is the one in the. This is, it's like a negative term, but I don't want to be taken. Is nerding their way into it.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It's a really good, It's a really good question because everyone is a huge blend of both.

[Jamie Laing]

Because you, Because I would say jj, KSI. He feels more personality, but maybe he's not.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, if I go within the sidemen, definitely. Yeah. You've got, yeah, on one side of the spectrum you've got Harry and JJ who are very, very much. They're just, they're just brilliant on camera. They're funny, they're entertaining. They have very, very little sense of self embarrassment. I think that's one of their biggest kind of perks. They've never, never. They, you know, have these huge, big reactions to everything. They're really, you know, open to make a fool of themselves. But it's all in the spirit of the content. And then I guess on the other side of the side, man, you've got myself and Josh Zircher. And we're definitely kind of more logical, more interested in the kind of business side, the ins and the outside.

[Jamie Laing]

The data.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, the data. Looking at the analytics. Simon as well. It was kind of me, Josh and Simon, when we lived together, we would be sharing all sorts of ideas. Hey, longer videos are working right now, actually at the moment you want to do a shorter video, you want a longer overall average watch time and then. Oh, actually no, now you Want a higher percentage of your video views.

[Jamie Laing]

Wow. So you were constantly. You're an analyst. You're basically. You're the analyst. And then. And then you have almost the big personalities and you blend it together and that's what's the perfect mixture.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I think that's what works so well in sidemen, is with seven very unique people. And when you combine us in different ways in different environments, you always get a different outcome. It's kind of like this Pandora's box of content that we've stumbled our way into.

[Jamie Laing]

I have so many questions and I just want to keep going. So, like, okay, so what are your thoughts on building a career around Grand Theft Auto or Fortnite?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, great. I think you could. Well, you could argue that the sidemen began on Grand Theft Auto 5 2013, this huge, huge title that everyone was watching. We all started playing it together and it was this sandbox, open format, great place where we could mess around as a group of guys on the game, race each other, drive into each other, blow up each other's cars and have this human kind of interaction. And that's actually where we made our GTA 5 crew, which was called the Ultimate Sidemen, which was a shot at ourselves. It's like, we're the sidemen. We're not important. We're just having a laugh.

[Jamie Laing]

Is that where the name came from?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

That's where the name came from. It was a GTA 5 crew, believe it or not. And then.

[Jamie Laing]

Cause you weren't the main men, you're the sidemen, like the inbetweeners in a way.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, yeah, I guess you could. Yeah. And also, especially back in 2013, it was like the grime scene. It was like, you're a sideman. It was like, yeah, it was like, that's like where it came from. It was not a good thing, but it was almost like a bit of a laugh kind of thing.

[Jamie Laing]

So you're being self deprecating from the sort of beginning. Yeah.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I think that's also a big part of our culture and UK culture. It's like you'll take the piss out of your friends, you'll put each other down, but it almost makes you tougher and it makes you more real as well. We're not all sat there going, oh, you did so well in that race. It's like, no, what are you doing? Why are you stuck at the world with a ramp? Like, why have you crashed into me, you idiot? Kind of thing.

[Jamie Laing]

That kind of like friendly banner, like, work towards it.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, that's it gave us a great platform to display that. Then we hadn't even thought about becoming a group. But the fans of all of our individual channels enjoyed us coming together in that dynamic so much, they coined the term. They said, hey, we love Sidemen GTA videos because they didn't have anything else to name it by. So then we became the Sidemen. Then we went to a gaming event called Insomnia and we thought, we'll print a Sidemen logo on a T shirt. And we sold a thousand of those T shirts and walked away with real cash. And we were like, hang on a second. This is not just. This could actually be a brand of its own thing. So, yeah, I think it's all of these games. It can be a great place to build yourself, but the main thing is you have to transcend beyond that.

[Jamie Laing]

This is what I find so just absolutely mind blowing. You're in this together. How do you stop being competitive with each other? Or are you competitive in a healthy.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Way with each other always? Yeah, at that time it was healthy. Yeah, Competitive, yeah, it was friendly, competitive nature. And also we all were sharing our own audiences that we built and kind of bringing them together. And that's actually what let us go so much further. And I think a lot of the YouTube community, especially in the UK, fortunately, sees that is this idea that if you try and guard what you have, collaboration. Yeah. It doesn't work in the long run. It's better just to collaborate with people, share your audiences, share your ideas, kind of bounce off each other and kind of all move forward together. And also, it's helped us in the Sidemen in that we've been a group since 2013. So, yeah, 12 years now. And by forming kind of an official group, if someone has a year where they are going through something, they're struggling, they're not feeling great creatively, they're not, you know, making that content. It's fine. It doesn't matter. They're not kicked out of the group. It's not, you know, this mindset of, oh, you're not, you know, contributing right now, so therefore you're worth nothing. It's kind of. We're all, especially in the uk, we're all in it together, so then when somebody does have a great year, then they can help everyone else out as well. And it's kind of. We move as a. Move as a. As a team, and we're more powerful as a collective than as individuals.

[Jamie Laing]

100%, dude. Collaborating is one of the biggest things. And we don't realize it like, we all. It's why, like, you know, school, I find sort of an archaic system because you're told not to copy or collaborate and. But actually life should be about that.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

And you know, especially in I, you know, one of the most. Some of the most successful people in the sort of television landscape have been co pros, you know, they make shows so they collaborate and people. We don't. We want to hold onto our stuff for some reason. We don't want to collaborate. But collaboration is the way that you grow massively.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah. All of like, our best ideas as well. We'll work with other creators and be like, oh, they did this in this way. Like, maybe we could do a bit of that. And I'm sure people come and film with us and they see the way we do things and they're like, I will take a bit of that on. And then even with ideas, we take kind of formats that already exist and change them and make them in our own way. And if other people do the same with us, it's kind of all fair game. It's. Let's just make cool videos and run with it. So, yeah, it worked well.

[Jamie Laing]

Did the. But the competitiveness within you guys, inside men, that never got out of control. There was never. It got out of hand. Friendships have never been lost because of it.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

No, no, definitely not. We did have a slightly funny, funny period in 2017 where everyone started making diss tracks about each other that were half real, half not real.

[Jamie Laing]

It got a bit out of hand there.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, a little bit out of hand. Yeah. But those, they've got tens of millions of views and everything all came back together in the end. So.

[Jamie Laing]

Do you know the biggest successes in life? Right. If you look at like, TV shows, like Friends, Right. Or if you look at like Kardashians or whatever, it's because people stay together. It's the same thing. Yeah, the format stays the same and the sidemen is the same thing. What year is it now? 13 years.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, 12. Okay, 12 years coming up on, I think 13 in October.

[Jamie Laing]

So 13 years together this year. And the success is that you guys have stayed together, you haven't shifted, you hadn't moved. And I hear loads of reasons why that isn't, because you split everything equally and you're all equal board members and all these amazing attributes which build success. But as you go into music, as you are getting married, as, you know, some. You guys have kids, everything, it does such change. How do you make sure that the sidemen don't split up?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It's a lot of mutual respect. I think that's kind of one of the key things, and just understanding that everyone is doing their different things, but at the same time, we respect the project and kind of we show up for the project. And I think we are giving ourselves and each other more leniency now with things that are going on outside in our life. And the nice thing we've been able to do is we're kind of. We've been really focusing on building our team to take more and more of the pressure off ourselves. So while the work rate is a lot. It's a lot more manageable when a huge amount of the behind the scenes is now being handled by other people that we've effectively trained to think and work in the way that we would. So while it looks like we're kind of developing loads of outside work responsibilities or outside sidemen responsibilities, at the same time, the workload within sidemen is kind of coming down for us to balance that out.

[Jamie Laing]

How do you get people who are not the core members of the sidemen obsessed with what you do? Because that's what it takes. We spoke about it. It's like obsession, right?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

So how do you make sure that your team members are also obsessed?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It's just interviewing finding the right people and creating kind of a work culture of people who are kind of. They just care about the final product. And I think, yeah, that works well. And also, we're not kind of too obsessed with. You have to be working nine to five every single day. It's like, okay, if everything's in good standing, you're done at 2pm you know, go and do whatever you want. But if something's not right, you know, we'd hope that you will keep working until it's right in the same way that we would. So it's amazing creating that kind of.

[Jamie Laing]

Work and what people don't realize. Right. I think maybe they do with the sidemen. Not only is it creating videos and building your careers there, you also build products. You now have a.

[Sponsor Voice 2]

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[Jamie Laing]

You've done this new Netflix show.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

Which is inside. Yes, inside. Which is insane.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, that was. That was really fun as well.

[Jamie Laing]

She sold a whole concept to Netflix.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

Which is wild. And you also have a VC arm.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yes. Yeah. It's a bit of everything. Yeah. Which actually. Yeah. Me and Josh are heading up the. The venture side of things. And again, that's really, really fun. And it's this new learning experience.

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[Jamie Laing]

This whole new digital age is a crazy one, right? And I think we put a lot.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Of our worth now the numbers, the numbers man. And the algorithm is crazier than ever because it really like we there wasn't really an algorithm when we made content. So it felt really nice.

[Jamie Laing]

Explain that. What do you mean? For somebody who doesn't know what the algorithm is, what do you mean by the algorithm?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

So there weren't so many people making content when we were across Instagram, Twitter, TikTok didn't even exist. YouTube. It was at a point where it was not oversaturated. So we would make content and if people subscribed to us or followed us, they would see our content because there was not so much content that they couldn't see all of the content. And there weren't the social media platforms hadn't built in algorithms to hyper hyper analyze the way people consume the content, what they think, what the platform thinks the viewer wants to see. But now it's flipped the complete opposite way. And you do have to play the game of human psychology to really keep people's attention. And that can be exhausting in itself.

[Jamie Laing]

Give me an example of that. What do you mean how do you lean into someone's psychology to know that this video is going to work?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

So for short form, for social media clips, they have to be, they have to be captioned, they have to be quick cut. It's like, no, a lot of people don't. You won't capture a wide audience if your video is just a one minute unedited conversation. Unless. Unless you have built up this really great fan base and what you're talking about happens to resonate with loads and loads of people. But it is just the way stuff is edited now. Has to be, kind of has to have that hit you and your endorphins. Yeah. Because if half the people that see it go not interested and move on, the algorithm then decides your video is no good. We're not going to show it to more people. And that's like a new shift, which is also exhausting and also it makes it very difficult for creators trying to build a following, an audience. Now we were again, we started in a time where if people were a fan of us, they would see most of our content because it. There wasn't so much content that they couldn't and there wasn't loads of, I guess, non, non specific content being fed to these people. But now it is, it's like anything, right? You get that early, it's easier now. There's probably, I think, yeah, there's probably more. You know, I think they say it's being an influencer or a creator is the most desirable job with the younger generation now because they see that. But then you're competing with all of them.

[Jamie Laing]

You're competing with all of them.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

How much content is put out to YouTube every single day, do you think?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I have been told the stat. It's the last I heard it was something like 20,000 days every day.

[Jamie Laing]

Matt, you ready for this?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Okay, I'm ready.

[Jamie Laing]

Over 720,000 hours of new content is uploaded daily to YouTube.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Okay. Yeah. So that's. Yeah, about 20,000. So yeah. Or double 20. But 10,000. Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

10,000 days.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Is that 10,000 days? No, 10,000 days.

[Jamie Laing]

How have you done that math that quick? That is outrageous.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Sorry. It's 30,000.

[Jamie Laing]

How have you done that math?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

30,000 days? Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

You've done that math sacquick.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

30,000. Sorry, that's the biggest thing in the episode.

[Jamie Laing]

You just done that math so quickly. You kidding me? Like, what the hell was that?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

See, that's the funny part about me is I wouldn't describe myself as creative. I'm like a Maths and science nerd.

[Jamie Laing]

Really.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

And I just, I scienced and mathed my way into this creative world. I'm like not creative by nature. I'm more of a. And yeah, I'm just, I'm like a chameleon. No one knows.

[Jamie Laing]

Firstly that that's a. That's crazy. That's 30 days.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

30. 30,000 days. Every day.

[Jamie Laing]

30,000 days. Every Day worth of content. Yes, Every single day uploaded on YouTube. What? It's the most competitive industry in the world.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It's gotta be. Yeah. But also I guess the other way you can look at that is you've got billions of people consuming YouTube every day.

[Jamie Laing]

Totally.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Right? So more people than ever. Are there so many niches. You know, you can, you can be the best at making, you know, flying RC airplanes. There's, there's a niche for that. And that's what I think we all love about YouTube. It's super empowering and was for us. And even with that much competitive nature, you'll still see new channels blowing up.

[Jamie Laing]

So, so the talk me through this thing, what you just said, which I find so interesting, right, which is where you're saying you almost nerded your way into this industry. Because I see it a lot with Mr. Beast. I now see it from you with music production. Right. And I know, you know, you dj. It's all mathematical.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

And what I find that there's a really interesting thing, right? Which is, okay, so we look at these international DJs, right? Calvin Harris or you know, yourself, who's now DJing Tomorrowland and things like that. Which is mad, right? That's crazy, right? But and if you, I, you know, I watched the God Rest us All, you know, Vici documentary and these, these people who are achieving stuff over here, which seems as like an extroverted. You have to be this creative, outgoing person who sprays bot and everything like that. But actually if you talk to a lot of these individuals, slightly introverted.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

All about the craft.

[Jamie Laing]

It's all about the craft. It's about how you're mixing and mathematically getting things together. And that's the music. And you're saying the same as with YouTube and creating. But explain that to me for someone. Cause in my most people listening and watching now will go, no, these are outgoing, creative people who can sit in front of a camera and talk because that's what a TV presenter is. But that's what you're saying.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, it's almost the. Especially early on in YouTube it was like you had to be everything you had to be the on screen personality, you had to be the content strategist, the video script writer, the editor, everything of the video. And I think that creative people definitely thrived in that. But it almost required a systematic approach in that basically you build a team and that team is yourself. Isn't that a weird. What a weird concept. But I guess a business, a small business owner is the same. Because as a small business owner, you can't hire someone to do all the accounting and the product and the, you know, the distribution and the marketing. So small business owners do it all themselves. YouTube creators are kind of the same, but it is this very strange, forward facing, humanly perceived side to it. So I think, yeah, there's different ways of doing that, but in my experience, it does take a bit of a kind of logical business approach to it. I think either you go for that route or the most, you know, wonderful, creative people I know who hate the business side, they hate the ins and outs. If they hire a good team, then they can be supported doing that.

[Jamie Laing]

So when you're in, when you're in lockdown and you were playing Call to Duty.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yes.

[Jamie Laing]

How good did you get?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I got pretty good pretty fast early on. I think I picked things up quite quickly. How.

[Jamie Laing]

Because that's coordination or what? It's coordination tactics.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It was like 10 years of, well, I say 10 years, probably 20 years of playing video games up to this point, which I think also just set me a good groundwork. And then also what helped was it was my job to play the game. And I guess a lot of people, you know, lock down, they're still working remotely, whereas I was on every, all day, every day playing that game. And that let me kind of pick it up quite quickly, I guess. Also I had the high stakes on me because I was live streaming it. So I'd have like, you know, 10,000 people watching me playing at all times. So that forces you to perform at that kind of higher level.

[Jamie Laing]

How many people watching you?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It's like 10,000 on average, like sometimes like 50, 60,000 people watching me in like these tournaments that was playing, which was also this crazy thing. But also, you think during lockdown, people, they didn't have, they had so much more time. And a lot of people were in on this game and they wanted to see me playing the game so they could pick up things from how I was playing. And I was also playing with people much better than myself. They did exist and I was learning from them as I was kind of playing. And that's how it worked.

[Jamie Laing]

Does the game pay you to play?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

No, no.

[Jamie Laing]

You. But you would earn revenue from uploading ad revenue from uploading videos or whatever it is that's. So for anyone who doesn't know, Call of Duty is like a war game. And there's a thing that. Which you can play, which lots of people play, which is like War Zone, where you get dropped into what is like a.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

A map.

[Jamie Laing]

A map. A city. And you have, you know, 160 people or whatever it is.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It's the Hunger Games.

[Jamie Laing]

It's the Hunger Games. Last one survives, wins, and you get a kill. What was your best? How many. What was your kill count? Your best kill count on the Call of Duty?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, the biggest video that we did was when there's 100. And, yeah, there were 135 players in the lobby. But. But the thing is, when you die, you have a chance to come back. You go to this prison, you fight in the gulag, and you can come back.

[Jamie Laing]

And the lobby is the map. That's the place where you play.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, yeah. And so during one of these lockdown games, I think me and the three other players who I was playing with, who were. They're part of Faze Clan's professional Call of Duty team. So they're like some of the best ever. And we were playing and we got 138 kills in the game, which is more players than there were actually in the lobby. So we killed some of those players twice in the same game, and we pretty much. We split up. So it was teams of four, and we each went off individually, and we were taking out teams of four players at a time each.

[Jamie Laing]

That is like the SAS being in it.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

But also, it's funny if you go back and watch that now, like anything, the skill level is, like, just so much lower. It was just early on where other people hadn't quite got to grips with the game, whereas we'd been playing it every day. So we were nowhere near as good as the people that play now. But we were so much better than them back then that we could walk through entire teams of people. So that was, yeah, a fun time.

[Jamie Laing]

Because people used to say, you were that good, that means you must be cheating.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I got a lot of that. Yeah. There were entire Facebook communities that would share clips of me playing and create conspiracy theories about how I was cheating at the game, which was, again, in gaming, they say that's the best compliment you can get. If someone says you're hacking, that's high praise. So I just kind of had to roll with it. So that was a fun chapter. And again that allowed me to get back into this obsessive state about what I was doing because before that again, it was more kind of sidemen focused. But we went into lockdown and we were like, well, we can't even meet up to film sidemen videos anymore. We were sat on video calls making sidemen Sundays, which is, and they're some of our most viewed sidemen Sundays to.

[Jamie Laing]

This day actually, because people were just inside. They had to consume stuff.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

And everyone else stopped. Stopped, everyone stopped doing it, Stopped making content because. And we almost stopped. We actually had a vote in the sidemen and it was four votes to continue making videos through lockdown, three votes to stop. Wow. I was one of the votes to.

[Jamie Laing]

Stop because you thought this was a time to rest.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

And I thought we can't live up to the quality standards we're trying to create.

[Jamie Laing]

You voted to continue.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I, I wanna, I, I, I, yeah, I don't, I don't want to put someone else forward and say that they, you know, said to continue when they said they wanted to stop when they didn't. But I just remember I was wrong in that. And that's the power of the sidemen is I love the loyalty.

[Jamie Laing]

You just did. You didn't want to say, you didn't want to say.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, because I think, yeah, it's just one of those things. But it was me and two others said we should stop because how can we make good videos? And I remember one of our videos, we just, we went and did a mukbang on one of the boys rooftops.

[Jamie Laing]

Which is where you eat food, right?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

We just sit and eat food and talk. And we were satisfied two meters apart on these different chairs dotted around the camera. We sat and we eat. And it's got I think now like over 30 million views. And I remember again we said at the time, we're like, we can't just make a video of us sat eating.

[Jamie Laing]

But you've got to tell me 30 million. Just give it to 30 million views. What revenue you making?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

30 million views? Let's, I would, you know, between 250 and $300,000. As an average, it might be more, it might be less, but, but to.

[Jamie Laing]

Get to 30 million is impossible.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, it rarely happens ever. And that was a video that cost nothing. And we were just sat on our roof eating. And it was a video that we were all sat there scratching our heads thinking how on earth are we uploading a video that's an hour of Us eating food and talking. How is that, like, how is this Our big production piece for the week, but it also goes to show. And I think that's kind of what has taken us further is a lot of the audience just want to hear from us rather than other channels where it's all about the spectacle and the show. It's balancing both.

[Jamie Laing]

You got married?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I did. Just over two years now.

[Jamie Laing]

Let's go, man. How was it?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, it was great. It was the best day ever. It was. It is so surreal. Kind of of. Yeah. Having that, that occasion. Everyone, kind of everyone that's important in your life all in one place at the same time. It was. Yeah, it was. It was amazing.

[Jamie Laing]

So if you ever. I'm about to be a dad in December, which is like the most true, actually.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Congratulations.

[Jamie Laing]

Thanks, man. Thank you so much. Would you ever think about kids? Is that something that you would want at some point or no?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, at some point, but also kind of at a point in my life now where a puppy is enough responsibility. And it is. It's a genuine. It's a good kind of step of just this. Okay, I can't go away as much if we are going away, let's find someone to kind of watch. So it's almost like that half step of responsibility that kind of made me realize, actually I kind of want to try and travel and kind of do a lot of stuff now that get it all out of the way to the point that when I do kind of want to have a child, I can think, okay, this is my new responsibility. I can be. This can be my consistent project that I'm there for every day. So.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah, lots of fans turned up at your wedding in Malta. Mmm.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

That was. That was surreal. That was a bizarre experience. I think there were a lot of fans in Malta in general, which we didn't particularly realize. I guess it's an English speaking country. I guess again, it's one of those places that I don't think many YouTubers go to. So when we all turned up, it started a little bit of a buzz. And yeah, during the. Well, we were told during the wedding that there's, yeah, like 100 fans outside the wedding venue. And I'm thinking, what on earth is? Because I'm thinking in my head, we love our fans. We'll always give time to our fans. But if there's one place I really think it's fairly obvious, don't come to my wedding, Fairly obvious that you probably shouldn't show up to was the wedding. So, yeah, they Were just. Fortunately, there was a gate on the venue, so they shut the gate. They had one police officer who was kind of just stood telling them. But you can't also. They were outside the venue, so you can't really tell them to leave. I did feel bad for some of the guests because obviously they've come to a wedding.

[Jamie Laing]

What do they think? Some of the guests who don't get it, they didn't understand.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Oh, yeah. A lot of family members were just like. Well, the thing is, actually, to them, it was much more funny because it's like. I guess a lot of my family that don't understand the YouTube and that kind of world, to them, it's like. I guess it's a bit of a laugh. It's like, what? But I think some of the other kind of. Yeah. Creators who were invited, I think they were a bit. They did really. Like, we did feel the privacy's just violated. It's just not.

[Jamie Laing]

What did your wife make of it?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, she wasn't happy. There's actually. I remember we drove out of a different exit and she was hiding below the window of the car as we left the wedding. She's like, I don't want. I don't want loads of social media pictures of me through the car window partying. It was good fun. So we just wanted to have fun.

[Jamie Laing]

And just be married in that moment.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, that was a very, very strange, strange situation. It's not one that we could have predicted really, but I mean, fortunately, nothing. They didn't come into the venue. Nothing bad happened. It was just a bit uncomfortable and just felt just a violation of. Of privacy.

[Jamie Laing]

Do you like keeping your relationship private as well? That is that one thing that you don't really not share everything, but you want to keep that to yourself.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, yeah. It's just something that we just, yeah. Keep to our. Keep to ourselves. And I think it is also nice to have part of my life that isn't all consumer broadcasted. And, yeah, my wife, she has zero interest in having people know who she is or followers or any of that sort of stuff.

[Jamie Laing]

Do you know, my wife is the same, but I force her into it. Also. Last year, you amazingly revealed you did a video saying that you had Crohn's disease, firstly. How are you doing?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Much better now, fortunately. Okay. Yeah. I'm on some immuno kind of suppressant medicine which so far, touch wood is keeping it pretty stable. But, yeah, that was a tough thing to kind of go through.

[Jamie Laing]

Can you explain it to you?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, Crohn's is an autoimmune disease where effectively some cells in your gut, your immune system, they don't really understand it properly yet. It just kind of attacks them. So it just causes kind of damage within your gut. And it can be uncomfortable, painful, stop you from kind of eating, trips in and out of hospital. So, yeah, that was difficult to kind of go through. And also, like, if you're not eating, your energy level is. Is like struggling. So, yeah, when you're kind of on camera all the time. I was. And traveling, I was so, like, exhausted for a kind of few years. And it's a difficult one to kind of diagnose. No, it was. That's the thing. It's. It's. It's a. There's a series of kind of gut conditions, and it is just like. It's probably one of the more. The. One of the less understood parts of science. So it was difficult going through that and kind of working out what it was, trying different treatments, eventually getting something that worked. And. Yeah, that was also then a thing of kind of like I was just. Just going through it. And it was. It's also. It's one of these things that people call an invisible illness. So you kind of. From the outside, other than. I lost a lot of weight, I looked kind of myself, so it's difficult to say, like, I'm really not feeling well because it's kind of like inside you. So it was a challenge to get through. But again, through time, found the right medication and much better now as a result of it. And then that was kind of. When I. On the. On a video, I got really ill to the point where I just. It's like, I gotta. Gotta get out of this video. And then I kind of thought, if I tell everyone now on the video, also other people watching who have the same condition will hopefully kind of realize that. I think a lot of people do have it, but it's. Again, it's one of these invisible conditions. A lot of people don't talk about it. So people who have it can feel like they're kind of alone and it's kind of like they're in this unfair situation. So, yeah, that's something. Yeah, I kind of of went through and fortunately, better now.

[Jamie Laing]

Scary time, right?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

But, yeah, definitely very uncertain and scary. And just. It is. And it just. It also kind of. It's a challenging one because you start to blur in your head what is. Actually, I'm unwell. And what part of it is, I know I'm unwell, so I Feel unwell or what part of it is I'm just run down and tired. It's like you're battling all those things in your head at the same time. So it's hard thing it was like, isn't it? Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

Makes you realize how important health is.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I've kind of focused on health since then and I think that's also helped alongside the medication is just kind of cleaning up my diet kind of. That is to go onto another tangent. There is just so much unhealthy kind of food and drink and so much things in our environment that exist now that I'm sure was also contributing to it.

[Jamie Laing]

So do you know it's just to be healthy. It's expensive. Like that's the crazy thing we talk about the problem with obesity and the problem with, you know, lots of different issues that go on with unhealthy eating is because to go and buy an avocado is like three quid. Like it's crazy.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

And it's inconvenient.

[Jamie Laing]

And it's inconvenient.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

You gotta sit, cut it all up, get the stone out.

[Jamie Laing]

Like what's easier to go and get is gonna go. Go and get a frozen pizza and chuck it in the oven.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

That'll feed a family.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah. And I did that for a long, long time as well. Like I said, I was on the ready meal to frozen food. It was funny my. When I first met my wife, she was horrified. She was like, you live out of this. This fridge full of like ready meals.

[Jamie Laing]

And you're like, yeah, this is sexy.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I was like, I'll put this up front. This is the deal. This is part of the deal.

[Jamie Laing]

Listen, here we go. When was your first date? Where was.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Was at a bar near the O2 back in. Must have been like 2016, 17. So a long time ago.

[Jamie Laing]

That moment when you decide that you're gonna. Did you ever had. I had the moment my wife and you suddenly go I think I'm gonna marry them. Did you have that? And you were like. Did you ever clock in your head and go like I would marry this person.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I think it changed at some point but have like a defining point. But I know a lot.

[Jamie Laing]

I remember mine was like sitting. It was a few times but then sitting on the the loo. And I was like I think I'm going to marry her. Nice.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It's a great place to think and reflect. Right. Is so you get away from your distractions.

[Jamie Laing]

And it's honestly was just insane. If you guys have kids?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yes.

[Jamie Laing]

If you ever do, what would your rules be on social media?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Great, great question. I wish there was an answer to that question. I think also it's. I think it would be even crazy now to try and project that decision because in, you know, even in two years time, what is social media gonna look like? Even in five years time, seven years time. So I think it all depends on where the world is. Your.

[Jamie Laing]

Your music career as well, man. So now you're, you're drifting to this space where you're just, you're being booked. You did Tomorrowland.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

What was doing Tomorrowland?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Unreal. That was. Yeah, it doesn't get in my eyes. It doesn't really get much better as a festival and it's one that I've been to four or five times. So it was, yeah, the coolest moment. And we were all there. The funniest part is we were all going anyway. So I booked for me and all of our friends to go to Tomorrowland months prior. And then I get an email saying, hey, would you like to play a set at Tomorrowland this year? And I'm like, what? And it was funny. All my friends were joking. They're like, oh, we're gonna get a sneaky set. And I'm like, yeah, right, I am.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah, exactly.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It came as a, yeah, big surprise. Yeah. Super, super highlight moment. And I think, yeah, it has a nice story to it in the sense that it was, yeah, one of the first dance music festivals I went to. It's one of the kind of most well respected in the world and just the vibes are great. So now I had, yeah, I had the best time, man.

[Jamie Laing]

That is amazing. So, so. But then how do you juggle everything, right? Because if you're DJing, you're moving into this area, into music that feels like it needs to take a lot of focus.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It does, yeah. So it is just. But again, I've taken focus off. I'm not doing the kind of gaming videos and live streaming, which was this huge time investment. And it's actually worked out kind of well because for me personally in gaming, there's not any game that I love right now that also works great for content. So it kind of, it's a natural place to step away. Whereas if I force myself to be doing gaming videos and live streams, you won't enjoy it. After doing it for 12, 13 years, I wouldn't be enjoying it. So it's, it's just like massively out of my comfort zone, which is good.

[Jamie Laing]

And it's Just constantly pushing yourself.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah. Learn new skills. And also what's. What I really enjoy about it, and that makes it kind of worth the time commitment, is the real world engagement with this audience that I've built through a screen. It's so nice because we've done events before. I mean, there's things like the charity match, which is huge, but also it's kind of. They're there to watch everyone in the sport itself. And then we've done like events where we do a meet and greet. But I'm sure as you know, you can kind of meet like 100 people or so an hour. Any more than that's a bit impossible if you want to give the people a good experience. So you're a bit kind of limited in terms of how many people you can share an experience with. And then I played my first set at Ministry of Sound about two and a half years ago and there were a thousand people in the room and it was cool to be able to share something with them in a real world environment. Because you're not.

[Jamie Laing]

You sealed, you're doing. You're sort of almost in a weird way, sort of giving back. Because weirdly, when you stand there designing stuff and maybe it's a bit odd, but that is sort of you saying, no, this is something that I've done and I hope you find it like you're providing it for them.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah. And it was going from seeing like numbers on a. Numbers on a video, like X Many views, 200 comments. It's just text strings, seeing like real faces of people who are supporters. So yeah, just at that point I was like, okay, I'm gonna try and follow this to wherever it gets to. And again, even at that point, someone said, oh yeah, you're gonna play festivals in Tomorrowland and support people like Alan Walker. I would have been like, there's no way. I'm like, this is just a fun hobby. But I think again, it started in a similar way to how YouTube started. It was just something that I wanted to do because I enjoy doing it. And I think those are sometimes the things that go the furthest.

[Jamie Laing]

Do you ever get imposter syndrome?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

DJing? Big time? Massively. Like, it's especially now going to a festival and like getting taken around on a buggy, going into a green room with Drinks Rider Bear. And I'm like, no, I'm the guy who plays video games. Like, what's going on here? No, with the dj, massively. And it's. I think it is. It's a tough thing. To get my head around, because I think everyone enjoys the environment. But again, you've got people commenting from kind of the outside, and they'll be looking at these performances and making comments based on what they're seeing. But actually the real world, you know, environment in that room is very, very different. So it has. Yeah, there have been a few times where I'm like, what on earth am I doing? Like, this is not for me. And I think especially I had a lot of resistance into getting into it. And it was actually through Alan Walker kind of really being a great friend and pushing me and saying, like, you will enjoy doing this and helping me, that I got into it. But it wasn't something that I'd even considered. Cause it was like, how can a YouTuber be a DJ? It just didn't really, like, didn't align in my head.

[Jamie Laing]

Makes you realize that really, if you want to do anything, if you really want to do stuff and you can just put your mind to it, you can kind of do it. And that's. Look, unless it's like. Like becoming an NBA player, I'm not. I'm not going to be able to do that, I really don't think.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

But you know what I mean.

[Jamie Laing]

But if it's something that you can create and do yourself, you can kind of. Doesn't matter how big or small it is, you can kind of do it.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

And that's. Yeah, I think that's where sometimes the best things happen is when you don't really aim for anything in particular. You just kind of just do it again to learn the skills. It was just this challenge. It was this unique environment. And I remember one of the big imposter syndrome moments was before I played for the first time at Ministry of Sound. I had some friends who DJ'd there. And they were. They basically said, like, hey, they taught me to DJ a bit. They were like, you should come and play a set. And I remember I was practicing in my bedroom and I was playing all this music. I was like, yeah, this is good. And then I was like, this is great. The audience of zero people. And I got to Mini Drew sound and I play like really upbeat EDM dance music. I walk in and they're playing like some Drake and some Travis Scott. And I'm thinking to myself, this is not good. No, this is. And I'm thinking to myself, I've convinced myself that the music is good. Me and my audience of myself in my office playing this music has said, yeah, this is gonna be good. And I'm Gonna walk out and everyone's gonna boo me off the stage and you're just like, this is not gonna be good.

[Jamie Laing]

It's actually not gonna be good here. It's like when you're about to tell a joke and you realize it's not funny and you're like, oh, fuck, what now? Oh God, this is not gonna be good.

[Italian Batch]

Yeah.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

And there's a room full of people that it's been big stars here. But again, as soon as I went out, it was, you know, a lot of people in the crowd knew who I was then they were just ready to get on and enjoy anything. And that was. And it went, went great. But it was funny.

[Jamie Laing]

If someone is listening right now and maybe they are at the beginning of their journey on YouTube or the beginning of their journey doing content creation or just anything, anything in the, in that space or in this world, what advice would you give them?

[Sponsor Voice 1]

Them?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I think again, our theme has been work hard consistently and also I think use everything as experience and a learning. Not everything has to be. You're making good money from this. Not everything has to be. You're creating huge success from this. So often the things that you go into for the experience, to meet new people, to learn those skills. I guess a way I see it in my head a lot now is in the way that you create your own luck. It's almost like the more things you do, the more people you meet, the more places you go, the more things you attempt to do, you increase the surface area of your luck. And the more you increase that, the more good things that will come to you in time.

[Jamie Laing]

That is so right. Because it is. I think that's where we go to like we create our own luck. And the way that you create your own luck is putting yourself in environments where that luck can happen.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Exactly.

[Jamie Laing]

You've got to put yourself out there.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yes.

[Jamie Laing]

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[Sponsor Voice 4]

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[Jamie Laing]

Can I say I've loved every second Monday after the weekend that in every single way, I really appreciate it, man. We. We end our episode with eight questions. Quick fire. You ready for this?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

I'm ready to go. And thank you as well. Great questions and you did your research and your homework, dude.

[Jamie Laing]

It's freaking amazing.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Appreciate it.

[Jamie Laing]

What's the saying or phrase that makes you smile and cheers you up?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Oh, probability has no memory. And I say that because it's one that I used to say with the sidemen a lot and they would laugh and they'd be like, it's just my way of saying that. But yeah, probability has no memory. It's like things will happen and happen again.

[Jamie Laing]

I love that. I'm going to use that. What scares you most about yourself?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

What scares me most about myself? My inability to focus. Sometimes very easily distracted and kind of mind wanders and it's can be problematic.

[Jamie Laing]

That's also leads to success though, because you can.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

True. Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

You end up in weird tangents, but.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

There'S a time and a place and sometimes, yeah, I'll just be.

[Jamie Laing]

Especially in a relationship. Relationship.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yes. There you go. We're in the same boat with that one.

[Jamie Laing]

You're not present. Yeah, I'm here. You're not present. I'm like, what? I am. I'm here. Yeah, I've had that chat before as well. When was the last time you cried?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Probably when I was like frustrated with trying to get on the right medication for my Crohn's. And it was just. And it wasn't kind of as sad. It was just like really just frustrated and kind of of going to doctors and kind of not being able to get a proper answer on kind of what was going on. And it just kind of got to me a bit.

[Jamie Laing]

But yeah, I can get that.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

That frustration.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

And. Well, never Speaking out about it because so many people probably dealing with it.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah. And they feel like it's just them. But I think a lot of people do go through health issues and it's. It can sometimes be.

[Jamie Laing]

It's very lonely place.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, I get it, man.

[Jamie Laing]

What's something you can't let go of?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

How good of a video game Halo 3 was?

[Jamie Laing]

How good was it?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It's so good. It's so good. It's like one of the first multiplayer games on the original Xbox. How good is it? Unbelievable. It was just. At that time, it was just. It was just we'd gone from playing video games on our own to this first multiplayer experience that everyone was playing. And it was just. Even though it was like, as a kid, it was like, oh, my gosh. Oh, my word. That's another real person I'm playing the game against. So. Yeah, man.

[Jamie Laing]

I remember when for me, one I think I can't is still GoldenEye and the Nintendo 64.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah. The split screen. Oh, my God. It's up there. That's up there. Unbelievable game.

[Jamie Laing]

What's your guilty pleasure?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

My guilty pleasure is a video game called Dota 2, which I have, I think, 4,000 hours of playtime on, and it's the. Yeah, I think I'm in top 1%, the top 1% rank of all players of this game.

[Jamie Laing]

What is it like, what type of game?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It's a moba. It's like League of Legends. I don't know if you've heard of that. So it's kind of like a strategy, kind of like fantasy. Fantasy, yeah. And the funniest part is it's my guilty pleasure because every other game that I've played, I've made loads of content on and got loads of views on Dota. I maybe made two videos.

[Jamie Laing]

It's like your secret thing on the side.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

And I used to play it with all of my friends all the time, and now I play it on my own. I just lock in and play this game. I love that. So it's truly a guilty pleasure, but I love it in general.

[Jamie Laing]

What's your biggest turn off?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Turn off.

[Sponsor Voice 2]

Ooh.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

It might be just kind of superficial conversations that are very superficial at a very surface level. Think.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah, it's just going deeper is where it's at. Yeah, I'm with you, man. 100%. I'm 100% where it's at. Get in there.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Definitely.

[Jamie Laing]

What turns you on, I think.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Intelligence, like complex systems. Yeah. In. In all sense. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

So AI. Must be exciting. For you.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Wow. It's also. But actually, it's also terrifying. It's always too intelligent. Actually, there's a. A human level of intelligence when it goes beyond that.

[Jamie Laing]

You're scared of it a little bit.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Skeptical, definitely. But I think that's everything and everyone. Yeah, I think that's. You should be.

[Jamie Laing]

I. I agree. I 100 agree. What do you like most about yourself? Oh.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Probably. Probably my. Yeah. My work ethic and consistency. Again, it's this reoccurring thread through here, but I think it's. Yeah, it's done a lot for me. Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

Bonus. Who's your favorite member of the Sidemen?

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Haha. Trick question.

[Jamie Laing]

You had to pick. What if you had to pick one member of the Sidemen to live with on a desert island.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Okay. Forever to live with on a desert island.

[Jamie Laing]

And everyone else is.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Oh, they perish.

[Jamie Laing]

They perish. Yeah.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

That is. That is. Well, you've made it easier with the desert island question. I'm gonna go with. I'm gonna go with Josh because he's very pragmatic and I think we'd be. We'd have that whole. Whole desert island operational pretty quickly. So.

[Jamie Laing]

This is amazing. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming on. This has been awesome.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

Thanks for having me.

[Jamie Laing]

Thanks, man. That's amazing. Wow. What an incredible episode. I've always wanted to meet a member of the Sidemen. I'll tell you why. Because I find. Find them fascinating because of the longevity they've had, the fact that they've had. They've been able to build an audience over this time, the fact that they're different people from different backgrounds, but they still have remained together as a team. Because in a sense, they're like a boy band. Right? They're like a boy band. But typically bands break up, but they haven't broken up. And from that episode, you learn all the reasons why. Because they make it equal the whole time. You know, being a YouTuber, a lot of us still look at YouTubers as. They're not famous. They just sort of sit in their bedroom making videos. But actually, what I realized from this. This episode is that Vik Star is probably one of the hardest working people I've ever met. Making a video every single day for four years or whatever it was. That is insane. No one can say that. That just shows that in order to become successful in anything you do, you have to put the work in, you have to put the graft in. You can't cut corners. You have to dedicate your life to making it work and Vixar is a true example of that. The focus and determination you need to succeed. Man, it was off the charts. This episode also really reminded me of another content creator called Italian Batch. You may have seen him online. He makes very funny.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

When you're a.

[Jamie Laing]

Forward thinker, you don't just bring your.

[Vikkstar (Vikram Barn)]

A game, you bring your AI game. Workday is the AI platform that transforms the way you manage your people, money and agents so you can transform tomorrow, moving business forever forward.

[Sponsor Voice 2]

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[Jamie Laing]

Videos he makes YouTube videos now and some of you may see just him as that funny guy who makes funny videos, but he's so much more than that. So if you like this episode with vikkstar, trust me, you'll like the episode with Italian Batch. Here's a little clip clip of what you will find in the episode with Italian Batch. So I hope you enjoy it. Why the name Italian Batch?

[Italian Batch]

It was at the time that I was studying like Mr. Beast and stuff like that and I was like a lot of the youtubers and creators who go far have don't use their name because it's more memorable to use something someone hasn't heard before because I could be Isaac Smith, but there will be another Isaac Smith or there's other Isaacs already, but there's not another Italian batch. There's not another Mr. Beast. There's like a name like that will stick in your head. So I thought, okay, I'll go, I'll go on a, an Elias. I'll go under Italian batch and that's how I'll do it. And yeah, I was posting like five videos a day constantly.

[Jamie Laing]

Is it. That's a real marketing skill.

[Italian Batch]

Well, it all came from just watching other people who had done it before and I was like, I was trying to recognize patterns.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah, but there's a difference between, there's a difference, I think, between copying and actually having a sense of why they've done it.

[Italian Batch]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

Don't forget, we're going to be back next week on Wednesday for another episode of Great Company.