Mark Rober's $60 Million Dollar Experiment

Summary

Podcast Episode Summary

The Colin and Samir Show — “Mark Rober's $60 Million Dollar Experiment”
Guests: Mark Rober & Scott (Chief Content Officer, Crunch Labs)
Date: May 13, 2026

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Overview

In this wide-ranging, energetic episode, Colin and Samir sit down with Mark Rober and Scott, his Chief Content Officer at Crunch Labs, to dive deep into the $60 million STEM curriculum project, the evolution of creator-led media, scaling up as a YouTube creator, the challenge of maintaining authenticity, and the new landscape of digital content. The conversation brims with candid anecdotes, practical advice for creators, and reflections on legacy, impact, and staying motivated in an increasingly professionalized creator economy.

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Main Topics & Insights

1. Mark Rober’s $60M STEM Curriculum: Origins and Impact

[01:06–05:19]

• The Headline: Mark is developing “Class Crunch Labs”—a comprehensive, open-source science curriculum for 3rd to 8th grade, funded by philanthropic donors, and given for free to teachers.
  • “We’re doing a full science curriculum...not only does it have really banger videos the kids will beg to rewatch, but it’s got hands-on demos the teachers can make just with junk they have lying in the classroom. And then we’re going to release it, and it’ll be totally free forever for all teachers.” — Mark Rober [02:01]
• Unlike traditional curriculum, it’s designed to be engaging, with YouTube-style storytelling and interactivity.
• Mark views this as his life’s most important work.
  • “It’ll be the most important thing I do my whole life. Like hands down, super easy to say.” — Mark Rober [03:03]

2. The Art of Capturing Attention & Hiding the Vegetables

[05:19–09:11]

• Mark emphasizes the importance of storytelling and motivation in science education.
  • “I can’t teach you if I don’t have your attention...This is not how science is taught in schools.” [03:09]
• Curriculum built backward from "earning views"—making learning “sticky.”
• “Motivation gap” is the big problem in education: even the best curriculum is useless if kids don’t care.
• The Crunch Labs team is highly collaborative with teachers, open-sourcing everything.

3. Scaling Up: From Solo YouTuber to Media Company

[09:22–22:54]

• With Scott onboard, Mark’s production has scaled from backyard videos to a studio model.
  • “Our operation needed some rigor to be able to do 70 episodes of Class Crunch Labs in the next four years...while maintaining 10 to 11 YouTube videos a year.” — Scott [16:00]
• Reflections on early days vs. current scaling pain points, including expanded team size, management struggles, and maintaining fun and authenticity.
• Mark admits he’s not an analytics or management guy, relying on Scott for business structure and financial discipline.

4. Maintaining Authenticity, Heart, and Creator Magic

[19:24–26:26]

• Mark is aware of the trade-offs of scaling his content, losing a bit of the “backyard charm” but gaining much greater reach.
  • “Maybe we’ve lost maybe like 15% of the heart. But now, because we can make way more content...the total impact is larger.” — Mark Rober [20:50]
• Advice for creators: Resist being dragged too deep into management roles—stay focused on creative core.
• Periodically returning to stripped-down, “classic” video formats helps retain the original creator spark.

5. The Shifting YouTube Landscape: Professionalization, Audience Expectations

[24:01–29:52]

• The audience’s nostalgia for more intimate, early YouTube styles, and critiques about creator “professionalization” and “legacy media vibes.”
• Acknowledgement that the expectations and landscape have changed; what worked a decade ago wouldn’t perform today.
• Riffing on creators like Ryan Trahan who have found ways to maintain intimacy despite scaling up.

6. Navigating New Platforms: YouTube, Netflix, and Beyond

[31:05–41:19]

• Mark's content is now distributed on multiple platforms, including a new Netflix competition series ("Schooled"), Samsung TV, and more.
  • “The idea is we want to reach as many brains as possible.” — Mark Rober [31:05]
• Strategic differences between YouTube and Netflix: binge-ability, editorial curation, algorithmic recommendations.
  • “YouTube is my first love...YouTube is and will always be our lifeblood.” — Mark Rober [35:51]
• Open conversation about the next chapter for premium original programming on YouTube.

7. The Importance of Brand, Familiarity, and Thumbnails in the “Abundance Era”

[51:47–55:20]

• Mark discusses the evolution of YouTube thumbnails—they now require a recognizable face, as audiences expect a personal “calling card.”
  • “We test all sorts of thumbnails, and the ones that win...are where my face is big.” — Mark Rober [53:19]
• Both short-form and long-form content play different, but complementary, roles in brand building and reach.

8. Advice for Creators: Motivation, Honesty, and Longevity

[63:10–66:24]

• “There are probably 10,000 good reasons to start a YouTube channel...There’s only two bad ones...to get rich and to get famous.” — Mark Rober [64:42]
• Longevity comes from honest passion, not chasing fame/money.
• Don’t optimize purely for trends or algorithms—do what you genuinely want to pursue.

9. Reflections on Legacy, Impact, and Personal Growth

[56:45–73:47]

• Mark and the group wrestle with the difference between “legacy” and “impact,” with Mark preferring to focus on the latter.
  • “I just don’t care...At the end of the day, you just want to leave the world better than you found it.” — Mark Rober [56:22]
• Mark moving from individual impact to enabling a broader movement (Crunch Labs brand > Mark Rober brand).
• Emotional recollections about Mark’s mother, his childhood, and the unknown impact we all have on the world.
  • “None of us...know the true measure of your impact ever.” — Mark Rober [68:04]

10. Personal Tidbits: Fitness, Team Dynamics, and Life Lessons

[70:38–73:47]

• Mark jokes about getting “buff” in his 40s, sharing his discipline and routine.
  • “You can’t fake. You can’t buy muscle. So it means you’re putting in the time.” — Mark Rober [71:35]
• Scott and Mark share learning moments about over-investing in content (e.g., the failed “rat drives a car” bit).
• Value of constraints: creativity thrives under limitations, even after success.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Impact vs. Legacy
  • "I'm so allergic to that word legacy...Impact is a better one." — Mark Rober [56:56]
• On Building for Teachers
  • "Let me make this whatever you want it to be… help me make this exactly be what you want. Like, I'm at your service." — Mark Rober [04:24]
• On Storytelling
  • "We just help the kids Scooby Doo their way to the answer...A 10-pound hammer and an MRI machine destroying a watermelon will get your attention." — Mark Rober [05:36]
• Advice to Creators
  • "If it’s to be rich and famous...you’ll never be successful, you’ll never be rich enough, you’ll never be famous enough. And so you’re just going to be sad for a very long time." — Mark Rober [66:03]
• On Professionalization
  • "I think the biggest difference for me as an audience member is there are times where you feel more like a host than the creator. Like, I can feel the production." — Colin [24:56]
• On the Role of Joy Online
  • "It feels like joy is a harder reaction to suggest across the Internet right now. Feels like anger and fear, tension...You have done a great job of keeping your content feel good." — Colin [51:19]
• The Rat Story
  • “We spent over $65,000 on the training of said rat...And he sucked at driving the car.” — Scott & Mark Rober [61:56 & 62:07]

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Key Timestamps

• [01:06] — Mark explains the $60M STEM project.
• [03:09] — Mark on the motivation gap in education.
• [09:22] — The role of Scott (CCO) at Crunch Labs.
• [16:00] — Needed rigor: bringing in studio structure.
• [20:50] — Mark on "15% of the heart" lost to scaling up.
• [24:56] — Professionalization and audience nostalgia.
• [31:05] — Mark on expanding to Netflix & Samsung TV.
• [35:51] — YouTube as Mark's “first love.”
• [53:19] — Evolution of Mark's thumbnails.
• [63:10] — Rat drives a car story.
• [64:42] — Mark’s advice for new creators.
• [66:24] — "Success is the opportunity to do more..."
• [68:04] — Reflections on Mark’s mom and impact.
• [71:35] — Mark on getting buff.
• [73:47] — The value of hard work and “working at work worth doing.”

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Flow & Tone

• The tone is candid, humorous, and self-aware—full of inside jokes and transparent conversation about the business and personal challenges of creator life.
• Mark and Scott’s dynamic is a running theme, highlighting the balance of creativity vs. business rigor.
• The episode mixes practical takeaways for creators with reflective anecdotes about family, childhood, and what it means to have an impact.

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Mark’s project is redefining what scale and open-source mean in science education—led by the ethos and skills honed on YouTube.
• Creator-led content is moving from passion-projects to complex organizations. The playbook combines agility and heart of old YouTube with the rigor of mainstream media.
• At every stage, staying “honestly” connected to what excites you (rather than chasing trends or money) is both a path to joy and to sustained impact.
• The landscape will keep changing, but the need for engaging, truthful storytelling, and real passion remains constant.

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[End of Summary]

Transcript

[Mark Rober]

There are probably 10,000 good reasons to start a YouTube channel to make content. There's only two bad ones, and the bad ones are Hollywood.

[Colin]

That industry, for a long time, kind of put off YouTube. But now, you know, we do see you on Netflix.

[Mark Rober]

Creators weren't production studios, and you brought these professionals in who were like, this is how you make content. The audience smelled it out so quickly,

[Samir]

but now we got Scott.

[Mark Rober]

What does this guy have to do?

[Scott]

Yeah, what do I do?

[Mark Rober]

It's nice having just, like, a bulldog, where it's like, this is a thing. That's a problem. Make it go away. Like, fix this. First time in 15 years we finished a video two days before we're gonna upload.

[Colin]

Whoa. That is crazy.

[Samir]

Scott's good. Yeah.

[Colin]

To capture someone's attention feels harder than it's ever been.

[Mark Rober]

We test all sorts of thumbnails, and the ones that win are. Where can I tell the. The rat story? I'm gonna tell it anyways.

[Scott]

Yeah, tell it anyway. Figure out.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

Thanks to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. More on them later. Mark and Scott, welcome to the show.

[Mark Rober]

Great to be here.

[Scott]

Yeah. Excited to be here.

[Colin]

This week we read a headline about you that you have spent $60 million to make STEM curriculum, and you're giving it away for free.

[Mark Rober]

Yes. It's slightly misleading headline, and I can explain. Okay, explain. So basically calling it Class Crunch Labs, but effectively the story is, this is really how it came about three years ago, by the way. This is, like, three years in the making. My CEO, Jim, who you guys have met, his daughter came home from school, and I was like, what are you learning in science? He's like, oh, we watched a Bill Nye video today, and I was like, what? I mean, I love Bill Nye. And she showed me the worksheet that's been copied a thousand times. It's like, how are they still doing Bill Nye in school? Like, this is a new generation. I was like, you know, we've gotten really good at hiding the vegetables with teaching science content without realizing it. Right. We've had to earn those views. We know how to do that. So it's like, we should make some science content for schools that's free. And one of my superpowers is naive optimism. At the time, that seemed like such an easy, brilliant idea, and it's turned out to be a really good idea, but way, way, way more work than I was anticipating. But ultimately, that's what we're doing. We're doing a full science curriculum, third to eighth grade, you know, not only does it have really banger videos the kids will beg to rewatch, but it's like got hands on demo the teachers can make just with junk they have liner in their classroom. And then we're going to release it and it'll be totally free forever for all teachers. It's costing us $60 million to make. But bigger than that, and I'm getting like very nice rich people to pay for it. But bigger than that, that should be

[Samir]

added to the headline. Yeah, yeah, Mark, Robert, get nice, really

[Mark Rober]

nice, lovely rich people to pay for it. But bigger than that, it is a week out of every month of my time for the past year and for the next four years.

[Colin]

Oh, wow.

[Scott]

Yeah, it's a big commitment.

[Colin]

That's a big commitment. Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

It'll be the most important thing I do my whole life. Like hands down, super easy to say.

[Colin]

Why is it the most important thing?

[Mark Rober]

I just think, you know, like after 16 billion views, what I've learned is like, I can't teach you if I don't have your attention, but if I can get your attention with something remarkable now there's something to like attach the learning to. This is not how science is taught in schools. Right. It's, it's written by folks who are well meaning, but they've never had to earn a single view on a platform where there's a lot of choices in the sidebar. And so we know how to hide the vegetables. We know how to do this. We know how to make learning exciting the biggest issue in science education. And everyone will tell you this, it's the motivation gap. You can have the best curriculum in the world, but if the students don't care, it doesn't matter. And my message to the teachers is like, I'm at your service. Like, we have 30 teachers. The team is 50 people deep. 30 of them are like some of the best science teachers in the country. And we're making this content really sticky. Teaches all the science, exceeds all the state standards. But the point is, I'm also going to the teachers. And I just spoke at a teacher conference after ted and it's like, I am at your guys service. Let us co. We're team teaching. I'm not replacing the teachers. We're teaming up. The teachers become the heroes. But I'm like, let me make this whatever you want it to be. So we've done the first three pilots. It's out, they're testing it and it's like, help me make this exactly be what you want. Like, I'm at Your service. And the number one thing we heard from the teachers conference yesterday is like, what's the catch? Like, I can't believe this is free. Like, the quality of this relative to, in my opinion, anything else out there. And by the way, we're also telling the other folks who make curriculum, who currently charge, come to crunch labs. We will show you exactly what we're doing, how we write the curriculum, how we film the videos. Also take our videos, use them in your thing. Like, we don't care. This is so open source. Everything is editable and customizable. And customizable. We don't, like, anyone can use this. Even other folks who are currently making curriculum that you have to charge for. Like, we just want to move the needle forward in, like, the science education space, starting first with America and then the world.

[Colin]

Yeah, you're. You're teaching storytelling to teachers.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. And it used to be like, sage on the stage. Like, when we did science in school, it was like the teacher stood at the front and said, this is the formula for kinetic energy. There's a new school of science teaching that's like, taking over. That we are putting our thumb on the scale is like, where we almost give no answers.

[Colin]

We.

[Mark Rober]

We just help the kids Scooby Doo their way to the answer. Like, one of the first lessons on electromagnetism is like, we show a bullet train in Japan, how it goes really fast in a normal train. And then we're just like, all right, pause the video. Observe what we watch a bullet train, a bunch of stuff. And now the teacher is like, what'd you notice? What's the differences? What did you observe? And we're not telling them. The kids are, like, observing. And then in the end, we build a maglev train with them in class, hands on. They do a version of that. And then I go to an MRI machine with the 10 pound hammer and stick a watermelon in the middle, and then flip it on. And by the power of Thor, this hammer releases ram, just demolishes this watermelon. And now I get to talk about the invisible magnetic fields all around us. But I can't teach you if I don't have your attention. And a 10 pound hammer and an MRI machine destroying a watermelon will get your attention.

[Colin]

The note that you just said about capturing attention. I find it interesting that Mark Rober videos exist in many different contexts now. Originally, even the first time we sat down on the show, it's like Markover videos exist on YouTube. You were making them. You stayed up all Night. The night prior to our first interview, editing your Squirrel video.

[Mark Rober]

Really?

[Colin]

Yeah.

[Samir]

I remember even walking into Crunch Labs and there were a lot of people there. And our assumption was, oh, these people work on your videos. And at the time you told us, oh, no, no, they're actually engineers, and they're all tinkering in there. I actually was up last night working on this video. I have an assistant who helps with some editing here and there, putting clips together. But, yeah, I was up pretty late.

[Mark Rober]

That's amazing.

[Colin]

And now we have Scott here, who's the chief content officer. Correct? Yep. At all of Crunch. Is it Crunch Labs, Technically.

[Scott]

Crunch Labs.

[Colin]

Mark Robert, Mark Rober. Videos exist in the classroom. They exist on YouTube, and they also exist on Netflix now.

[Mark Rober]

And, like, in the Crunch Labs boxes, every toy that comes that you get from Crunch Labs has a video for me that explains the science and gets the kids stoked.

[Colin]

Are the principles of capturing people's attention the same across all, 100%.

[Mark Rober]

Like, the way to make a viral video. This is not a cheap answer. The true. The true way. This is your clip. This is how you make a viral video. All you have to do is create a visceral response. Response in the viewer. Like, they have to feel happy, they have to feel amazed, they have to feel shocked, they have to feel angry. That's how a lot of stuff goes viral these days. Right. They just have to feel something. For something to be remarkable, it needs to be able to be remarked about. No one shares a video they don't finish watching. Right. Like, so that's it. All I. That's the trick. You just have to create. And a lot of times, that's why it's world's largest Blank. Because by definition, if it's the world's largest, you've never seen it before. So that's likely gonna create a reaction in you that's like, whoa. I'm amazed by this. This is incredible. The glitter bombs, you feel vindicated. It's funny to you. Like the squirrels. It's like, what? I've never seen this. That's the same principle across all the platforms you just said is just give someone a juicy nugget. An aha moment of just a feeling. Like, if you want to reach here, this is the doorway. Like, you have to start in the heart, like, in this visceral experience. And then you get access to here. If you try and access here first, you don't get here. This is why flat earthers, you're like, oh, if I could sit down them, I could Explain it. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. The reason they're flat Earthers is because it's doing something here for them. They have a community. They feel smart for the first time. There's a lot of stuff in the heart that you don't get to talk to the brain unless you start with this.

[Samir]

Those principles right there. I feel like if we asked you that three years ago when we came, it would be somewhat similar. Like, the core of you is still who you are, making what you make, no matter where it goes. But now we got Scott.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

[Scott]

He needed some help.

[Mark Rober]

What does this guy have to do?

[Scott]

What do I do?

[Samir]

So, yeah, Scott, tell us, what do you bring to the equation here? Because I think, sure, there will be some creators and people in the industry watching and listening who fully understand what a chief creative officer does. Chief content officer.

[Scott]

Yep.

[Samir]

They're go. Yep, got it. I know that. But there will be a lot who. Even me sitting in this seat, I don't fully understand the breadth of what someone like you does and brings to a creator.

[Colin]

What would you say you do here?

[Samir]

What do you do?

[Mark Rober]

What do you do?

[Scott]

I do what I. I'm an extension of Mark. And so I love how Mark calls himself the reluctant entrepreneur, but also he was a reluctant YouTuber, too. Like, he. He did it for fun. So everything for Mark happens a little bit later. So we met eight years ago when I was at Discovery and so ran Discovery Channel, ran science content, and met because I saw him as the future of science content. And so we started working on Shark Week together.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah, but hold on. Like, in his defense, what happened is these Discovery guys and other people call up and be like, hey, we want to put you on tv. And, you know, you should just be grateful I'm doing this call. And then when you get details, it's like, okay, so let me understand this. I'll get less views, I'll make less money, and I'll have no creative control. Like, where do I sign?

[Colin]

Right.

[Mark Rober]

And Scott came in with humility. Not humility, but just. He understood my perspective. And just like, look, I get it, but I can get you access to, like, sharks and let's do something.

[Scott]

Yeah. And the first five minutes of the dinner, he said, I'm never going to work for you, so this ain't going to happen. But out of respect of Discovery and mythbusters inspired me. I felt like I needed to take the meal. I said, mark, well, you don't Know me. I said, we're actually gonna figure this out. And I said, this was. I was kissing his ass to get him to do Shark Week. I said, but I believe one day I'm gonna work for you because you are the future of science and discovery. I'm trying to tap your audience, and that's why I'm here to figure this out. And so he was blown away by the fact that we sent him to a shark episode for his YouTube channel. We paid for it, and all I asked for was a mentioned discovery, and the timing had dropped. And he was like, you'll pay for the boat, the trip and everything. And that's all I gotta do. I was like, done. And it was an early time. I mean, you were like, sub 2 million. It was a different.

[Mark Rober]

And that was like the banger thumbnail with blood. That video where I tested, like, blood versus, you know, just a drop of blood. Can they smell it? That was like, Scott paid for all that. So I'm like, sure.

[Scott]

So that opened the door of our relationship, which was great because I actually went to the Shark Week shoot because I was like, I gotta get to know this guy. And where I was sitting at the time in legacy media is every year, the median age was ticking up, and I kept looking like, where is the next generation viewers? They were all on YouTube. And I was like, okay. At that time, I was like, how can I transfer that audience? And that was a trick a lot of people thought of. And still to today, how can we transfer that audience over to the other platform? The magic was to be part of that other platform and build it to its next level. And that's now where I am with Mark, because we. You know, my joke with Mark was I was always trying to get him to do something, and he'd always say no right out of the gate. And one of my favorite calls was like, hey, Mark, I got another idea. I was like, yeah, whatever lures, it's not going to happen. I was like, oh, you don't want to go to Titanic?

[Colin]

I was like, what?

[Scott]

And scarily, he was going on the

[Mark Rober]

second finish the story.

[Scott]

We didn't send you. We didn't send you.

[Mark Rober]

Which dive.

[Scott]

The second mission of Titan. We were going to do a live broadcast with Josh Gates and Marco together literally imploded.

[Samir]

Did you have a conflict or.

[Colin]

Well, the beauty really wanted me to go. This pitch is not great.

[Mark Rober]

Right?

[Scott]

Listen, it was before everything, but here was the magic. Josh Gates.

[Samir]

Look, I asked you what you do. We're down here.

[Scott]

Yeah, I know. We're gonna build up. We're gonna build it up. We're gonna build it up.

[Mark Rober]

We're gonna build it up.

[Scott]

Yeah, we're getting there. That became our relationship of just always me trying to get Mark excited. And so almost a year later, my first day was May 4, which I did on purpose for the Star wars reference. So I'm almost in my year.

[Mark Rober]

But here's what I'll say. When Scott came on board, he's a big ideas guy. Like, I'm an ideas guy, but sort of in a different way. He's good at just, like, making stuff happen where it's like, with all these big companies and stuff. I was like, we need to fix a lot of stuff at. On our channel. Like, the idea is that the YouTube channel breaks even, and Crunch Labs is where the revenue is made, right?

[Samir]

And.

[Mark Rober]

And then the. The YouTube channel just advertises, but the main channel is not breaking even. We are spending in very comfortable seven figures, more money than we were making over there. And that's completely my fault, because I'm not a businessman. I'm not, like, in the numbers. I'm not an analytics guy. So Scott came in and kind of brought some rigor and has cleaned that up. But I also told him in the first six months, because we just need to get our house in order, no new ideas. Because he's an ideas guy, and I don't want to be constantly saying no. And he's like, I got it. And then two days later, he starts pitching me ideas. I'm like, oh, I love that. I love this. This is how we did the Netflix Sesame street festival at Christmas. Well, Scott's like, oh, I have this idea. Let's do it in two months. And we turned it around, and it, like, happened.

[Colin]

This episode is sponsored by our friends at Shopify, the platform that almost all of us creators use to build our businesses online. And they just launched this new feature. Check this out. So pick your favorite LLM and then type something like this. My friend really likes Mark Rober. What should I buy him? So the result I get is showing me Crunch Labs, and that's all happening through Shopify's Agentix storefront, which makes it easy for people like me right now to find and buy products in the environment that they're already in.

[Samir]

There is a huge macro change that is taking place right now where people are searching more and more through LLMs than they are in traditional search. And if you, as a creator, have a storefront and you are missing out on that opportunity, to show up in that search, you are missing the moment and you are missing out on a lot of opportunities to be discovered and make sales.

[Colin]

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[Samir]

So Chief Content Officer is part big ideas, part if I come up with that big idea or you come up with that big idea, Mark, I will help execute it. I will find the right people.

[Scott]

I'll make sure it happens, how to make it real. But then to your question, how do we do this with 52 weeks a year, 24 hours a day, and his schedule. So to the point about the overspending and the money, it was really looking at how do we bring a studio structure, which was beginning with, but it was very. In the creator world, you know, it scales from two people to 20. Our operation needed some rigor to be able to do 70 episodes of Class Crunch Labs in the next four years, to be able to make content for the subscription toy line, which we were doing, but now we're launching a retail line with Moose that needs content as well. Content fuels everything. But to be able to do all this While maintaining the 10 to 11 episodes of YouTube videos a year, we needed to bring that structure and rigor. And so I've been bringing in what I call this marriage of legacy media learnings of best practices, but keeping the agility and the magic of what YouTube and Creator World is really finding that synergy together.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. And like I took a vacation two months ago. Like, my life is crazy cool. I have like weekends available.

[Scott]

He told me, I take. I took some of your worries away or something. Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Rober]

I mean, essentially.

[Colin]

No, no, that's not it.

[Mark Rober]

Nice try.

[Scott]

Yeah, thanks.

[Mark Rober]

No, I think it's like we talk every day at the end of the day and just like, it's nice having just like a bulldog, where it's like, this is a thing that's a problem. Just make it go away. Like, fix this. So Scott has the capacity to go in and, you know, find the right people to make change and then fix a thing.

[Colin]

One of the things that's been so wonderful about what we've done over the past couple years is we've checked in with a lot of creators over.

[Mark Rober]

True.

[Colin]

Over the years. Right. It feels like I'm watching a documentary in real life. That's so funny because, again, the first time we visited you, I mean, we. It was very chill. There was 12 people hanging in your. In your office. We hung out all day.

[Mark Rober]

Was it at Crunchland?

[Colin]

Yeah. You had just, you know, edited the Squirrel video.

[Mark Rober]

The first one.

[Samir]

No, I think it was the final.

[Colin]

It was sponsored by Acorns. That's what I remember. Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

The third one.

[Colin]

It was the third one. Yeah. And you were showing us some cuts of it, and it was on your timeline. And the next time we visited you, you had expanded the space. There was now, Jim, there was a whole team of people on Crunch Labs. There was more video people. There was a director on set. You know, we showed up to set. There was craft services. There was like, umbrellas. Yeah, there was umbrellas.

[Mark Rober]

Oh, yeah.

[Colin]

You had an umbrella guy just for you.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

And now cut that, please.

[Mark Rober]

I didn't ask for that.

[Colin]

You can't cut that. It's. It's on Record on YouTube.

[Samir]

It's already on our show.

[Scott]

It's golden. You didn't know the guy, and he didn't know you. It's a great moment.

[Colin]

It's a great moment.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

But. But now, I mean, you know, from my understanding, I think there's probably 50 people in the content, or if not more.

[Mark Rober]

Right.

[Colin]

Working across Mark Rober content.

[Mark Rober]

Oh, yeah.

[Scott]

Full time. Over full time. And then we obviously, we expand in shoot. We need additional teams.

[Mark Rober]

But, like. Yeah, that. For Crunch Labs and for the Mark Rober channel, we have, like. Yeah, over a hundred. Maybe like 110.

[Colin]

10. On content, making videos?

[Mark Rober]

Well, no, like, on making. Also the Crunch Labs boxes. So folks who order the stuff and who. Yeah.

[Colin]

So I. I'm curious about, from your perspective, from a guy who, you know, started Uploading very simple YouTube videos, this has probably been a relatively gradual process, I assume, but what are the trades of this era of you making content and videos versus, you know, even the first time we checked it?

[Mark Rober]

It's a good question. You know, the. The Number one thing that keeps me up at night is how do you keep it fun and, like, maintain the heart? Because I think the authenticity in the heart, that's so easy to see when that leaves a channel. And so often that's correlated to scaling up. I just released a video where, you know, it's been a running theme on my channel, where it's like, I'm trying to be the world's greatest uncle. And it used to be I'd make an orbeez pool for my or jello pool, and I'd always have my niece and nephews there. But now my youngest nephew's, like, 16 years old.

[Colin]

It's cool to see him grown up. I watched that video. I was like, pretty crazy. This is. We've watched him grow up on the channel, right?

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. But it's still at the core, so it's like a different video. Like, I had people who help with the builds. We had people who coordinated the locations. Right. So I get a lot more help on the thing. But, like, at the core of, like, what is the story? It's still, like, me trying to be a good, like, the best uncle, hanging out with my nephew, legitimately having a great time with him.

[Scott]

And it's a great example of the new relationship, too, because that video, we purposely kept it authentic and really intimate to his relationship with Beckham. But the shoot window was a different model, which we wanted to see. Okay, can we do a main channel video with this type of timeline rather than, you know, some of Mark's videos can go years. And so it's a huge commitment. But this was us trying to experiment a little bit of, like, what can we do in different ways to take some of the pressure off the timetable and all the content that we need to make.

[Mark Rober]

So I think. But to answer your question, like, is it the same as me in my backyard with the squirrels? Like, I don't think it is the same level of, like, if I'm being completely honest, like, just charm of just like, me and a tripod doing a thing. But at the same time, it's like an expected value problem where it's like you multiply the efficacy of a thing, whether it's like 100% times the number of views gives you the total brains impacted. And maybe it's like, we've lost maybe like 15% of the heart. But now, because we can make way more content, it's gonna be more engaging. The number of brains you get, the number of potential eyeballs is much bigger, so the total impact is larger.

[Colin]

Interesting.

[Mark Rober]

And so it's like, that's kind of how I view it. And I really, this is why Scott's helpful is like, I am. I manage one person. That's Jim. Like he's the only person that reports to me. I'm a terrible manager. I don't like it. Right. I don't. I'm not good at money stuff. I'm not good at even analytics. You know, Jimmy and I always talk about this, like everything is still very heart driven. Like what feels right, what feels good, what would be like a fun banger video that resonates. It's never like, what is the current audience wants? Like what is the analytics say that's the content we should make. Like it's. It's never been that and it still isn't. And so like in that sense, nothing has changed. And I, most of my time is now. My days are like really scheduled tight. Each one of those meetings though is like a creative meeting where we brainstorm, we're talking about stuff, we're coming up with ideas. I am not in meetings where we're talking about budgets or fiscal planning or manager review stuff. I think that is a mistake a lot of creators make especially small, like going from just you to 15 or 20. They become a president and a manager and people are reporting them and they're having to do HR stuff.

[Samir]

And the audience feels it.

[Mark Rober]

And the audience feels it's like I'm very allergic to that. And by the way, I just suck at it. So it's like I'm honest enough to know that I suck at it and I hate it. I'm good at the creative stuff.

[Samir]

So I think from a content perspective, my desire and advice to the Mr. Beast of the world, the Mark Robers of the world who have scaled and are trying to think about like, how do I keep that core magic within a bigger organization.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah, please.

[Samir]

Is to realize that every once in a while you can still make a similar type of video to back then. You know, even Jimmy, this is an anomaly because he released the hi me in 10 years video which the message to himself. But on his second channel he made a video of him reacting to that video. And it was so stripped down. It was so YouTube and so core.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Samir]

And that is an option that you have on your own channel that you don't always have on streamer or on tv. Right. To be like, you know what? Next month I'm going to make the really stripped down video for the core.

[Mark Rober]

I love that. But I, I would also make a Point. A larger point, though, is like, the audience has changed too. Like, the audience wants different things.

[Samir]

Yep.

[Mark Rober]

Like, I couldn't. If I made the world's largest nerf come video that I made a decade ago, exactly how I made it, then, like, that gets 300,000 views with today's audience.

[Colin]

The landscape has changed, changed dramatically. There's these videos that have that pick up a lot of traction that I noticed recently over the past probably six months. There's these videos that are like, how private equity changed your favorite YouTube channels. And in one video, that video keeps

[Samir]

getting made again and again.

[Mark Rober]

It keeps getting made.

[Colin]

And I was trying to understand why these videos are getting made and then also why this reaction is happening.

[Mark Rober]

What's the premise? I don't understand.

[Colin]

We're in one of the videos and it's like, examples of, like, Colin and Samir getting an injection of capital from private equity, and that's why they feel different. And I was like, we. We have never gotten an injection of capital for private equity. Like, there's no. There's no private equity in most of the channels that are mentioned in. In this. In a lot of these videos. But I think the emotion is the professionalization of creators. The emotion from the audience is, this

[Mark Rober]

is now legacy media.

[Colin]

Yeah. Or like, I think even with Jimmy or you. I think the biggest difference for me as an audience member is there are times where you feel more like a host than the creator. Like, I can feel the production. And you are the host of this production. Same with Jim. You go back to him, both you guys, during that era of him putting, like, Orbeez in a pool, you can feel that he's with a tripod, pressing the button.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Colin]

And I think. I think people are nostalgic for a bit of that, but I don't. I think to your point, I don't know if they actually want that. The one creator who I think still does a very good job of playing both of those is Ryan.

[Scott]

Yeah.

[Colin]

I think there's no. And. And anyone who tries to replicate that, you can't.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

But he does an excellent job of as he's built a bigger and bigger business. Like, he. Because he is still a dude with an iPhone.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. But he's also scaled his team way back.

[Colin]

Way back.

[Mark Rober]

So it's just him cutting his videos, Right? Yeah, yeah. I respect that. Like, for the things we want to do now and the brains we want to reach in the way we want to reach them. Like that. That couldn't. That's just not an option for me.

[Samir]

Right.

[Mark Rober]

Especially with the school, the class crunch labs and what we're trying to do there. Like. And like I think I do. There's a part of me that is nostalgic even personally for those days. But like I didn't release a video that I didn't go to sleep at 7am that wasn't an all night. Yeah, of course. And the whole edit was only four or five minutes.

[Colin]

Totally.

[Mark Rober]

Right. So it's like. And I was editing and doing everything myself so it's like I just couldn't even do that now. And I. Yeah, I think, I think especially, I mean I could just track it by amount of folks who come up on the street and like what they're saying and, and parents and kids and it's like I think we are reaching more brains deeper now than we ever have.

[Colin]

I agree with that.

[Mark Rober]

And like that is my North Star. It's like if with this idea of like getting self actualizing and saying like I can, I'm interested in science, I can do this, I can solve the, the leaky rain gutter, you know, as like an 8 year old people like, like that is like such a good sort of metric and like that we're doing that better now than we ever have.

[Samir]

I also think it's easy for audiences sometimes to see the scaling and the leveling up of production as the end of an arc, the end of the journey. This creator has reached the top and an audience can feel like that story is capped. But it's really not the case. It's just new for where we are in the creator economy and YouTube that these people who've been on YouTube for so long now are hitting this point. And for you it is a new beginning. We will go through a similar type of thing. Like we will change what this show

[Colin]

is once we get that private equity.

[Samir]

It will look different.

[Mark Rober]

You already got it.

[Colin]

Right.

[Samir]

It will feel different. And even our audience may have that feeling of like, oh, this isn't the same as when they used to shoot in their car, but it will be a new beginning.

[Mark Rober]

And by the way, this is just human nature.

[Colin]

It's human nature.

[Mark Rober]

We've even had this at our job where it's like when it was me and five people. When you bring on 30 people, those five feel like, oh, this isn't the same. I used to have more. And then when you bring on you go from 30 to 90, those 30 are like, ah, we don't have the same access. Right. And it's kind of like, dude, I Like that band before, they were cool type of vibes.

[Scott]

But it's a great point because to your point, this, you know, expansion up, you reach a ceiling that even one of our first conversations is Mark was missing that intimacy. So on certain shoots, we pull it back to he's with like three people on some massive videos. But if we don't need the footprint, why do it? And that authenticity and that energy that. That intimacy is there. But when we do need to do something big and crazy, we will scale up. But we now look at it as a dial because we do want to keep that relationship and magic that was in those.

[Samir]

That's a really good point. I mean, like, stylistically still, when you watch a lot of the videos, sure, there can be the really grand shot, but there's still you holding the camera, walking around the room at times.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. And like, his point, like, we will just take phones and it's me and two people. We just did a shoot in Australia and it was me and two people. Was like the whole footprint. And we filmed on iPhone. Yeah.

[Colin]

I think we mentioned this to Michelle Kare of like, something I crave in her videos. Cause they're so cool and so, like, unattainable for me. When I watch them, I'm like, I could never do that. Is like a iPhone cam of her experience sometimes that pops in where she's just intimately talking about how she's feeling to an iPhone.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

And I think as productions scale up, like, that's the thing as we start to, as a group, expand to bigger productions and also to new platforms and new spaces. I think, you know, Colin and I are working on. We're doing this big project right now. We're making car commercials. And we've been really tasked with, like, how do you make a car commercial? But in like, a more personal, intimate.

[Mark Rober]

Like.

[Colin]

Because the value of what we all love about YouTube as a viewer and as a creator is the two way street.

[Mark Rober]

Totally.

[Colin]

Is the fact that I'm not making something for you. You're participant in what I'm making. There's a comment section so that. That I think is important for us to introduce because, like, it's all happening really fast. I mean, we should talk about the fact that, you know, again, last time we sat down together, you had mentioned you were working on a big video that was going to cost like maybe three, four million bucks. Yeah. And it was like, whoa. Like, this is. You know, that's Jimmy started doing that type of stuff. But it's not uncommon now for a YouTube video to be in the millions of dollars. But that is very akin to Hollywood and what TV is. But that industry for a long time kind of put off YouTube totally. I mean, Netflix, I think Ted Sarandos has, has said before, Netflix is in the spending time business. YouTube is in the killing time business. He's changed his tune quite a bit as he's come over to look at creators. But these worlds have now collided. Talk to me about how that has felt for you, because when guys like Scott back in the day were calling you, you were like, I'm not doing these deals. Yeah. But now, you know, we do see you on Netflix.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. And I think the idea there is like, you know, again, the north stars, like we want to reach as many brains as possible. And you know, we also did a deal with Samsung TV plus. So they're a fast channel for us. And there's this like, currently it's just back catalog. It's just videos I've made that are just on the platform. Like that's what's going. It's not like a new show for that. So it's like, sure, like I own these videos. We should just like, why wouldn't we just, you know, basically have as many options for people to see this content? And then we're doing, we are doing a TV show with Netflix that I'm really excited about where I take over the school as like the principal. And then it's actually down here.

[Colin]

Oh really?

[Scott]

It's up by Calabasas.

[Mark Rober]

It's by Calabasas where the high school is. We're filming it in like for a month in the, in the early summer. And basically like the old principal leaves and gives me the keys and I'm like. And then there's. We've scoured the country for like the, the sharpest, you know, future makers, engineers and they come and it's a competition series in the school and I've set up a bunch of like games and traps and stuff in a school that's awesome. It's a competition series and the last one gets a free full ride scholarship and like an apprenticeship with me.

[Scott]

So to build on that, like the library that Mark's built over these 15 years is premium content, repeatable, great content that can travel across platforms. So we're expanding the footprint with Netflix and Samsung TV to get more people to watch. But then now we're working with these new partners. What's that? Elevation of something Mark might not. Mark would have never done an arc competition show on YouTube. It just wasn't part of his plan. But now we are building that with Netflix. And so that's what that partnership's great for. But at the same time building 11amazing bangers for YouTube for the year to come.

[Colin]

So did you say banger before Mark, or.

[Scott]

No, I worked on it coming out more naturally.

[Samir]

So now it's very natural. I've been in this business on YouTube for a long time. It still doesn't sound natural.

[Mark Rober]

Doesn't. Took me.

[Scott]

It took me almost a year. Took me almost a year.

[Colin]

When we're together, you know, Mark, Jimmy, all creators, I try and do it, but it's so unnatural.

[Mark Rober]

Specifically bangers.

[Colin]

Banger is hard. Yeah. It's hard for.

[Samir]

We must not be making enough bangers.

[Colin]

I don't think we make bangers.

[Mark Rober]

That's why.

[Colin]

Yeah, it's not.

[Mark Rober]

Once you start making them, it comes out easy and smooth. You have to earn it.

[Colin]

Can we dig into that point of why can you not make a season arc, like schooled on YouTube?

[Scott]

Like, what is the first and foremost financially? I mean, you heard the money we're spending already on YouTube, which is very healthy. Right. But to do something like that in that timetable, the price point is different. So it just. It opened up and opportunity. And to Mark's point before of like feeling it, all those things are happening with the Netflix show and all our other content plays. So we are now doing that in this bigger format. That is. It's gonna be great.

[Samir]

I think one of the big issues with a season arc on YouTube, there's a couple. One from a creator perspective, when you're shooting, we traditionally don't shoot 10 to 12 episodes at a time all at once. Spend all that money all at once and then go, let's see how it does. We go one video at a time, two videos at a time to adjust. Right. And make sure that they're doing well.

[Scott]

Yep.

[Samir]

And then obviously, from an audience perspective, YouTube is there to serve you the best possible next video, which may or may not be episode two.

[Mark Rober]

Episode. I think this is a big one. And we've heard that feedback from folks who have seen just my old YouTube videos on Netflix. It's much more of a sit down and bin watch, binge watch one after another. YouTube is so algorithmic, even if you see one of my videos, they're gonna serve you something else and take you away from the channel. Netflix is very much, let me watch this and I'm gonna binge watch all

[Scott]

of them to build on that. Like, and for 15 years, it was one a month. So the rhythm of getting that content was different even for a super fan. But to Mark's point, now you get that binge ability and we're seeing the repeatability just be fantastic with Netflix. So it's just creating a super fan quicker with this new audience that just had not found him on YouTube.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. And I think we should point out, and like I had this discussion with Neil and I think he's right. Like YouTube is, that's where I grew up. It is my first love. It will always be my first love. And I think you can't, like, we would never, for example, put videos on Netflix if that meant we'd have to take them off YouTube or do something with Netflix or anyone else for that matter. If it meant, oh, now we can't regularly upload to YouTube like YouTube is and will always be. And I think it's important for other creators to realize this our lifeblood. And I think if you ignore that because don't forget, even being on a platform like Netflix, like they get to choose when, if, if at any point they want to take you off. Like the beauty of YouTube is you will always be able to tap a microphone and upload a thing.

[Colin]

Yeah, it's the core.

[Mark Rober]

It's the core.

[Scott]

But we, you know, this diversification is a good thing too as the world's evolving to be able to reach a billion brains and Mark's ultimate goal. It's great to have these other halo platforms to be able to do that.

[Colin]

Scott's a good politician. That was good. Scott is good.

[Mark Rober]

See what he did there.

[Samir]

I want to ask about the point of new audience and if you feel that of Mark Rober pre Netflix post Netflix, because there are shows on, on Netflix and streaming platforms that take over the zeitgeist and in a major way that doesn't always happen the same way on YouTube because so many things are being surfaced on YouTube. Did you feel even in your day to day life there's a bit of a difference?

[Mark Rober]

Yeah, I think the best, best proxy for that is like how many people are coming up to you and stop you on the street. I'd say it's like it probably is like a little bit of an increase, but not like, oh my gosh, I can't go out of the house now. Yeah. And you know, sometimes people are like, I love your new show on Netflix. This content's so good. I'm like, you realize it's been on like YouTube for like seven years and free. And I think what happens is there's just Some families or who they, they're not allowed to watch YouTube but because Netflix curated, they can watch that.

[Colin]

There' massive concept here that I think about where especially in content that's good for kids to watch. Like the value proposition is time. Like I'm a new parent now and, and my kid doesn't watch TV yet, but when he does, the value of it will be me getting some time back. Like. Right. And that's really valuable. Or in order for me to get my time back, I need to trust what's on the screen. And I think there's this thing that's happening where Netflix probably to some people feels like they can trust it more because it's editorially curated, whereas YouTube, anything could surface. Even if you're on YouTube, kids, they do a good job of making safer environments. But technically, like Colin said, it's a recommendations algorithm. You're not 100% in a long session what could get served. Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

And pretty soon, like your four year old's a flat earther who doesn't believe we landed on the moon.

[Colin]

Right. It seems like you've had experience.

[Mark Rober]

It seems like to go hard on

[Samir]

just imagining the flat earthing community coming in. That's the only story from

[Mark Rober]

guys. If there's a community I feel like we can rally against, can we agree it should be the flat earthers. Why are all you backpedaling right now?

[Samir]

For the record, that's Mark's.

[Colin]

That's Mark's perspective. Yeah. All are welcome at the Colonist channel.

[Samir]

Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

I mean we talked to the dude perfect guys about them launching their app, their own app. I mean, you know, they did something different. Instead of going to a Netflix, they were like, we're going to create our own environment with trusted content. Right. And I do think the editorial curation has two sides to it. One, as you mentioned, it's like Netflix could decide we're not going to, we're not going to really promote crunch labs or skooled. Like it worked a little bit. But you know, now that controls your distribution. But the other side is if they all in on it, the marketing and the curation of it is very helpful in the even general cultural zeitgeist.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

I think that's one thing that as I look at, you know, YouTube is our home. We've been on it for 16 years. I've never spent a week of my life not thinking about our next YouTube upload or my adult life. But I think there is a next chapter of how this comes together with YouTubers making premium shows on YouTube. What. How does YouTube participate in that? Like, is there a future state where schooled can live on YouTube? You know, maybe we're actually talking to

[Scott]

them about like development of concepts that would make sense on YouTube and what a new model could be. There is nothing yet, but there's concepts around it. I think it's more sponsor driven than it is an original funding model. But I do love that, you know, our partnership with YouTube is any, any new project that comes up for Mark. We talk to everyone about it. It's free opportunity moment for both a YouTube, a Netflix, a Samsung whoever to come. And so we want to have those conversations actually to, to unlock it for them to your point, because we want YouTube to stay strong to the core. But at certain times it would make more sense on another partner.

[Samir]

I do think that's their, their next chapter and their problem to figure out just even in the way that, the way that content production is moving and the ability of so many creators to eventually create series and season arcs, there's going to have to be a home that's not editorial for it and a way to serve those that is editorial. Yeah, no, that's not editorial. Like Netflix is editorial. So they will choose. But there will be such an influx.

[Colin]

Oh, I see.

[Samir]

Of people producing potentially shows in season arcs. When you think far down the road that if YouTube can crack the code and become the place for the democratically uploaded.

[Mark Rober]

That's right.

[Samir]

Season arc.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. And I think that the, the hesitance that probably YouTube has and others see is YouTube Originals was a flop, but the YouTubers was a flop because it was just too early.

[Colin]

Too early.

[Mark Rober]

Right. And like creators weren't production studios and you brought these professionals in who are like this is how you make content. And it, the audience smelled it out so quickly. But now a lot of the top hundred, 300 channels like are in some sense production studios and we can do this now and we can handle bigger budgets. So I don't think it's exactly what YouTube Originals was, but some version of that I think does make sense.

[Colin]

I think there will be a version of that for sure. It's to our benefit as creators that the option, if we have a big idea, is to turn to YouTube. Right?

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

But I think these platforms, at least how I experience them as a viewer, they stand for very different things in my, even in my life, like in terms of what, what I'm watching and what I'm craving and what my expectation is on the platforms. I'm curious about your involvement in Other Netflix programming. Because I think when we. Again, when we talk about cultural relevance. Alex Honnold climbing the Taipei 101 was like a major moment that I turned it on. I couldn't stop watching. And I couldn't believe I couldn't stop watching because it was kind of repetitive in some ways of like, his climbing was. Was. It was like a. Like it wasn't that much of a change of scene, but it was so visceral to your point of like, this. The tension of this guy might fall is crazy to watch culturally too.

[Samir]

It was a moment when a lot of my friends who aren't as plugged into YouTube as I am.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Samir]

Were texting me and saying what? Saying like, hey, Mark Rober is.

[Colin]

Yeah. Are you seeing Mark?

[Samir]

Are you seeing Mark, Robert?

[Mark Rober]

That's so funny. Yeah. This is a Scott thing. And he's like, hey, do you want to go with. And I love Alex. You want to go hang out in Taipei with Alex? I'm like, what's the schedule say? Can we do it? It's like, all right, sure, let's do it.

[Scott]

And it was an opportunity because I've been a part of major live events before. Nick will end up walking the Grand Canyon. Felix Baumgartner drop dropping space Live event TV is very powerful, as you just described. And I kind of wanted Mark to get the bug. Cause I think there's an opportunity for what Mark's brand and the Crunch Labs brand is to bring event live. And so this was an opportunity to get him into it. And he did fantastic. And I mean, the telecast was like. It was incredible. You couldn't take your eyes off it.

[Samir]

Scott's good.

[Colin]

Yeah. I gotta now just listen to what you're saying, Scott. Cause I'm just listening to how you're saying it, and I'm like, this is well delivered.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. It's like he does have a good North Star on, like, how to keep the brand special. And what it is like, he gets that. Because that's my concern is someone comes in is like, all right, this is how we just crank this up and burns me out. Burns the team out. And you know, that's like venture capital, right? And it's good for a little bit, but then you don't maximize the area into the curve in the sense that, like, you spike up, but then everything crashes because you can't maintain that. And then VC is like, all right, we're selling our stuff and we're out of here. So it's like very slow, steady growth has like, Been my thing from the very beginning. And so I don't have a goal. Like this is. In three years we should be this big. In four years we should be this. In a decade we should be this. But it's like we're just going to keep. The next steps are always pretty obvious to me. Like I've said, I have a really clear one year crystal ball. Two years, it's pretty good. Three years, it gets a little murky. But if you have a very clear one year crystal ball to know exactly here are the next steps and let's

[Colin]

just go for these.

[Mark Rober]

Like wherever that takes us is where it takes us. I'm not going to artificially impose some goal but what I will say is like every year, two years we'll know exactly the right moves and we'll just go hard and then it will land us where it lands. But that's what I've been doing for 15 years.

[Colin]

Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

I should say though, on the Alex Hond thing, I'll just.

[Colin]

Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

Nugget for you. That guy's wild because like he was. We were hanging out the morning up and he's like, yeah, I'm just, I'm so stoked right now because I. This morning I was just thinking when I go home there's like this boulder problem behind my house I've been trying to work on. I think I figured out how I, I'm going to do it. I just, I wish I was there right now. I was like, bro, you're about to climb like a 1500 stall building in front of tens of millions of people. And he was just like, what? Oh yeah, yeah. What? Yeah, yeah, of course you know that.

[Colin]

That's exactly. I think the feeling when I come back to talking about those videos on YouTube of like what private equity has done to your favorite channels. Like one of the most incredible things about the Alex Honnold Taipei event was afterwards people speculating about how much he got paid. Right? It was, oh, he got paid half a million bucks. That's so little. Or he got paid a million bucks. Whatever it was, Jimmy even, you know, subtweeted and was like, I would have paid him more to do it on my channel. And Alex came out and was like, I would have done this for free. I thought it was cool.

[Mark Rober]

Afterwards, me, him and his wife were hanging out in his hotel room and he's just like foam rolling and we were like playing ping pong in the meantime. The world is blowing up. The most famous people on the planet are like, dude, this guy's amazing. And any other human being like, oh, my gosh, look who just posted. Couldn't care less.

[Colin]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

Like, for the love of the game. Yeah. That was so fun. Like, cool. Where are we going next?

[Colin]

I think the word authenticity is overused.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

And I think we should replace it with honesty. This concept of, like, are you honestly this person?

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

And I think when I watch Alex Honnold, even interviews with him, I'm like, he is honestly that person. And we can feel that as humans. Who are you honestly? And I think as YouTube is progressing and as creators are progressing, I think that's what is getting put into question.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

Is my experience of you from growing up was this person. Now you feel a little different, which is natural. People change. But there's a question of, are you still honestly this person, or are you doing it because it's a strategy or are you doing it because it works or because you have to?

[Mark Rober]

And I think, like, you can't fake that for, like. I think that's why some people either burn out or it's just like, everything fizzles is like. Like, I think ultimately it's that people just say it just doesn't feel honest. That's not really their core and what drives them. Right. They're doing it for other purposes.

[Colin]

Yeah. And I think I hear. I just hear the word authenticity a lot, and I think it's, like, lost its meaning.

[Samir]

Well, authenticity can be a moment of honesty. Like, when you capture a video that's authentic, it's because you are being honestly yourself. But being honest, like, honestly wanting to do the thing has to be a constant.

[Mark Rober]

I had another science creator who's, like, very well known, who's like, don't you just get, like. Aren't you just tired, though, of just, like, getting on camera and just, like, pretending you care about these things? And I was like, what? Yeah, like. And I was so shocked to hear this come from this person. I'm like, not even. Like, that didn't. I was. It really, like, stopped me in my tracks and I didn't lean into it, like, yeah, totally. I was like, not really. Like, I can't. I'm a really bad actor, so it's like I can't fake that excitement. And it's like, it still is super interesting to me. And, like, I am as. I've never really been burnt out, as we've talked about before. And I would say I'm as far as I ever have been from being burnt out.

[Colin]

Oh, that's cool. That's really Cool. I want to talk about your output on YouTube as well, because obviously there's a lot of output in a lot of places. The increase has, you know, come from short form for sure.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

I feel like Mark Rober shorts are what come in my feed the most now. And this year, you know, we're four months into the year. You've put out two long form videos on. On the Mark Rover channel. Do you still look at, you know, at one point you're doing one a month. I remember coming up and seeing like your postcards with the 12 videos planned out.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah, yeah.

[Colin]

Which we forgot to blur. I don't know if you remember that.

[Mark Rober]

I remember.

[Colin]

Yeah, you remember you were upset.

[Samir]

Was it the octopus one?

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. We had a deal. You know how many octopus videos came out?

[Colin]

Yeah, that's on us. But do you still have like, is that still the goal or one a month?

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. And to be fair, like I always say, I do one video a month. But go back and check the last seven years and it's been.

[Colin]

Last year you did nine videos.

[Mark Rober]

The time before is probably like eight. There's been. I really have always shot for 12. That's the goal. Yeah, we're kind of pulling back a little bit on shorts because as I'm sure everyone knows at this point, YouTube change the algorithm where it's like you basically get like two weeks for views and then it dies. So sorry, Neil. Just not as incentivized to like make content.

[Scott]

Well, and the investment, because the bar is so high with our videos that the investment is something that we just got away. So we're going to keep doing shorts, but it's like what's the right volume? But with the algorithm changing, what's the dial up? Dial down is what we're trying to.

[Colin]

Yeah. Cuz last year you did 44 shorts that generated 3 billion views.

[Mark Rober]

See, I have no idea about these numbers. I'm not an analytics guy.

[Scott]

But it's crazy to see just how YouTube is like. I mean, even now on the app, shorts are coming up before long form now. So it is that balance of what's the right amount? And we're also like, what's the bar like, we're not making everything a mega Science Insider like short. Like what is a more IRL moment with Mark just to make them more achievable to produce quickly.

[Colin]

I actually think my favorite short of yours, and maybe this comes back to our craving for just like hearing about Mark is was the sidemen charity match short where you talked about wanting to score A goal like that was very personal, versatile.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Scott]

Very fun.

[Mark Rober]

It's a balance though because like one of my strategies on YouTube because I do really value my private life is that like I love talking about science and stuff. Very protective about like what I actually do on a day to day basis because I just think the whole parasocial thing and I've never like named my fans. Hey, hey, Robert Gang, you know, Rolber Gang. That'd be good.

[Colin]

Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

To stop.

[Samir]

Yeah.

[Scott]

That was a joke.

[Mark Rober]

I know. I'm just kidding.

[Colin]

Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

No, it's like. Right. Like I think that whole parasocial relationship. I'm happy to be the guy you look to, to get good science content, but like it's not necessary for you to know like what I do on a day to day basis or about like my personal stuff. I just don't think that's healthy for me. At least I can say that that's.

[Samir]

Yeah. You also don't want to set the audience expectation that that's what they come to you for.

[Mark Rober]

Yes. They come to you for. And then suddenly like they kind of have power over you in your life and choices you make and they get a question, you know, who you were dating or just like what your thing. Like that whole thing is like our brains did not evolve to have that kind of relationship with a tribe of 8 billion people.

[Samir]

Yeah.

[Colin]

You know, again, you're, you're creating content for a lot of platforms. We're talking about attention in the context of creating a visceral reaction.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

In the context of creating a visceral reaction out of somebody, it feels like joy is a harder reaction to suggest across the Internet right now. Feels like anger and fear, tension. Like that is what's generating virality. Right. Like it's. You have done a great job of keeping your content feel good. But I think if you're in the business of views, like the easy path is.

[Mark Rober]

Is scandal.

[Colin]

Scandal.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Scott]

Controversial.

[Colin]

But I even. I see it within your thumbnails. Not exactly, but like the, the, the necessity to capture attention has evolved. Like we pulled two thumbnails from your channel.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

I was curious just like.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah, I'll tell you about this. That squirrel thumbnail is the worst thumbnail I've ever made.

[Colin]

You think so?

[Mark Rober]

It's terrible. Like we tried the testing. The CTR was so low on it. Like I've tried cracking that thumbnail, that first squirrel obstacle course. But in the end, and we tried so many things on that thumbnail. That is objectively a bad thumbnail. The content's just really good. And then people remembered, oh, I remember this video. So they click on it, and the squirrel's not a good one to show me there. I think a better one of an old video is like, jello pool or watermelon. There's other of my OG video thumbnails that are good. Some don't even picture my face. But this is a really good example of audience. You can now test thumbnails, and we test all sorts of thumbnails, and the ones that win over and over are where my face is big. You know, Jimmy figured this out a long time ago, and if you look at my most popular videos, almost none have my face in them. But that was at a time on YouTube where it was just different. And you could make something like that go viral. Now it's a lot harder to get a high CTR on something that, like, doesn't have cause. I think the audience has expected if someone I love is in this, they know to put their face big on it.

[Scott]

I think it's also a different time. I mean, you guys call it the abundance era.

[Colin]

I was about to say that.

[Scott]

And it's. There's so much now that you need the mark calling card to go, oh, that's a Mark Rober video. Whereas before, there just weren't as many premium choices of content coming through.

[Colin]

I think we're at a point where it's like, imagine a road trip and you're driving when you see, like, the McDonald's arches. It's familiar. It creates a reaction. And you know what to, like, you know, the habit or the.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah, yeah.

[Colin]

It's the same thing of, like. Like on YouTube, you just need the. Like, your face is a brand logo.

[Mark Rober]

I think that's right. And I think you're right.

[Colin]

And. And that's also why that is extremely valuable to Netflix. Yeah, Right. Because in a world of even Netflix starting to try and compete for content, they need familiarity.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

And I think that's also where short form supports this, because short form increases exposure. Like, we're living just in this new world. Of course, this happened before. This was the Hollywood star system. Right. Like when there was. When they jumped from, like, making essentially a couple hundred movies to thousands of movies. They needed a way to signal to the audience why they should come to this movie. And it was through stars and celebrities. So studios locked down stars to be in their movies to market it. And it's the same thing that's happening now. Right. It's like these. You, Jimmy, you know, the stars basically have the logos that are trusted and familiar and that will bring audience in. In a world of abundance.

[Samir]

I think even as a smaller creator, it's a good long term strategy to try and incorporate your face. You know, even when I look at our titles and thumbnails, we're often not in them. We're trying to find the thing that is the most interesting to the most amount of people.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Samir]

But I do believe we should find a way to be in our thumbnails.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Samir]

Even if it means we will get slightly less viewership right now. I think long term you want to build that equity. Yeah, I think long term we want people to. The abundance era is a great example. That's a lofty concept, but it would benefit us long term five years from now if we could talk about a concept like that and our face would

[Scott]

drive again to go back to the past. Shorts are becoming in some ways promotional content too, because ads got seen more than long form. So it's like, what is that relationship? We're even having active conversations of like, what are shorts that could maybe even push to long forms? Not on the nose, but just highlight it. Because the visibility when you look at the metrics, because it's very different what a short will be seen and what a long will be seen. And even with the Netflix relationship, we were very purposeful in naming the show Mark Rober's Crunch Laps. It is a billboard to the bigger company and legacy play. The original concept was going to be called Mark Rober's Big Experiments.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah, I also, I don't like the word legacy in the sense that like, yeah, I mean, what he's basically saying is, yes, Crunch labs. I want Crunch Labs to be much bigger than Mark Rober. And already if you look on Google Trends on certain months, it is, which is like, that's my North Star. I don't care about legacy. This idea. It's like when I'm dead, like, I don't. I don't care at all.

[Colin]

Like, what is that point often of I won't even know. I won't even know.

[Mark Rober]

I just don't care. Like at the end of the day, and I think all of us probably share this here. It's like you just want to leave the world better than you found. We can all disagree on what happens when you die and like where you go and all that stuff. But like, like, that's a great North Star. And I think to the extent that I can do that while I'm here, great. And I think we do that better with Crunch Labs being bigger than me because we could also then elevate more people and more voices.

[Scott]

You're inspiring. I mean, that's the billion brains thing. That. Yes, it's not. We say you're. I say your legacy, but it really is the ultimate goal of reaching a billion brains and inspiring the next generation. That's what crunches.

[Mark Rober]

I'm so allergic to that word legacy.

[Samir]

I think better word is just impact.

[Colin]

Impact.

[Mark Rober]

Impact is a better one.

[Samir]

I like that more so with Crunch Labs than with the Mark Rober brand.

[Mark Rober]

That's right. Yeah. You have bigger impact.

[Scott]

To his point about Google trends, the first time Crunch Labs actually surpassed Mark Rober was the weekend we launched on Netflix.

[Colin]

So that's interesting. I wanted to bring that up because Ted Sarando said there was a spike in Crunch Lab sales when the content went out on Netflix. I was going to ask if that is tangibly different from publishing a Mark Rober YouTube video or why you think it's different.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah, I would think, you know, when we launched there originally, it was around the holiday season and like 80% of all toy sales are done in the back in like one month. And it's like for some people, like we said, it is a new audience where there are some parents, their kids are not allowed to watch YouTube. So it was like meaningful. It was like a nice bump. It wasn't like, oh, my gosh, everything is different now. But like, it was measurable, sort of akin to, you know, at some point, a lot of my YouTube audience, if you're coming back and watching review video, you've heard about Crunch Labs at this point, right. So it's a little bit of a fresh injection of some new eyeballs. So it's like, oh, I actually haven't heard of Crunch Labs.

[Scott]

You know, it's a media plan. When a theatrical comes out, a studio looks at, okay, what platforms are going to be on to push that theatrical to get eyeballs and people in seats. By expanding to a new platform, we reached a new audience.

[Mark Rober]

Well, this is what's great about Scott. You know, how many times has he registered like, you know, referred to legacy media and, and he's right in the sense that, like, this isn't kind of, it's not that new YouTube, like so much of what's happened before so many times in other media, it's just happening again here. And he really, he has lived that. So he's he. His crystal ball and a lot of things on that and like doing the Netflix live stuff and that, like, he sees that A lot better than just like my team or folks, us who've only been on YouTube. And this feels so new and fresh. Where's it headed? He's like, is there's a pretty. There's a road map for this. Yeah.

[Colin]

This has happened before.

[Mark Rober]

This has happened before. Like seven times.

[Samir]

Yeah.

[Colin]

I think we took a lot of pride. I thought about this recently because when we did that, that car commercial shoot, we had like a crew. And it was kind of the first time we had these roles of like producer, director. And at first I kind of felt allergic to it. I was like, this isn't how we do things. It's like, you see, it's just the four of us and Jesse here.

[Mark Rober]

That's it, Jesse.

[Colin]

And like, that's how we do things. We're small, nimble, we're creators. And I took a lot of pride in that.

[Mark Rober]

That.

[Colin]

But as I got more comfortable that I was like, this is really nice. I don't have an umbrella guy.

[Mark Rober]

Don't hate this. Two steps away from an umbrella guy.

[Samir]

We had a production meeting that was incredible.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Samir]

Where like producers talking about feasibility and logistics. Director is ordering our shots. The things that we're saying that are coming out of our brains, he's figuring out how we're going to do them and checking with the DP over there. Can we shoot it like this? And we always like, oh, okay.

[Scott]

Well, a great example of this in our lives is what happened with Perfect Date for the first time in 15 years of the channel team me up. Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. I think it's. It's better coming from you. Better come from you. Which is that we, We. Yeah. For the first time in 15 years, we finished a video like two days before we're gonna upload.

[Colin]

Whoa, that's great. That is crazy.

[Mark Rober]

In 15 years.

[Samir]

And that's why you went on vacation. Like, that's the only reason.

[Colin]

The only way you can do that.

[Mark Rober]

The only way I had a two day vacation. No, and it's like the reason we were. And we were like under budget. Right. And so I will say for the past two years we have been very much over budget. Just because I wasn't tracking it.

[Colin]

Of course.

[Mark Rober]

Like, I'm an idiot with these things. Right. But now we're actually tracking it. And it's not like we were just kind of. We'd spend whatever, you know, just to get the thing done. And like the quality is just as good, if not better because constraints breed creativity. Yeah. And so if it's like, no, we don't have Infinite money to throw out of this. Oh, let's get clever. And then that helps it feel more like me and a tripod where I also didn't have infinite money. Right. So not only were we releasing stuff, like we're creating stuff before, so all our ducks in a row, but like we're also doing it like under budget.

[Colin]

Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

So it's like, who would have known? But you bring a little like rigor

[Scott]

to the process and an roi, like there, there'd be moments like, okay, this thing's gonna cost 75k. So I call him and go, mark, this thing's like 75k, 100k. Like how long is it going to be on screen? It's like maybe like five seconds. I was like, well, I don't know,

[Colin]

is it worth the.

[Scott]

Now there are times something is so important to a scene that it's worth that money. But eight times out of 10 we could be creative with the different scenes.

[Mark Rober]

And also, can I tell the rat story? I'm gonna tell it anyways.

[Scott]

Yeah, tell it anyway. Figure out that.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah, like I said, you know what would be cool is if we taught a rat to drive a car. And this is all I said in one meeting. Yeah. And then six months later, then Scott joins. Six months later. I was like, oh crap. I remember saying this in a meeting and I'm terrified that someone took this and ran with it. I was like, could someone find out where that stands? Did we follow up with that and where it is?

[Scott]

Meanwhile, there was a Slack channel where we've hired someone for over seven months to help us train a rat to drive a car. And we spent over $65,000 on the training of said rat.

[Mark Rober]

And he sucked at driving the car. We spent more money. I could have bought a sick ass car for this amount of money. And the rat wasn't even good at driving the car. If he was good, that maybe still

[Samir]

wouldn't have been even remotely. We just didn't choose the right rat.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

Oh yeah.

[Samir]

Well, maybe I think reopen the slack channel.

[Colin]

Another 65.

[Scott]

It inspired another video. It inspired another video. But these are the moments at the beginning we'd have like, Mark, do you much just cause any what? And I'm like, yeah, well Mark, you say this in a room and that's what happens.

[Mark Rober]

Well, that's because we have such a good team. That's like, we make stuff happen. But like we just didn't have the others. I hadn't set up the rigor of like, someone tell me how much this will I didn't create that loop.

[Samir]

You realize now that this is out in the open, you're gonna have to

[Colin]

make the rat video or somebody else will. Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

Oh, no. I hope someone doesn't make that. Hey, Jimmy. I hope Jimmy doesn't smoke that money. Because it's really possible to teach a rat to drive a car.

[Colin]

What's your advice to creators right now competing in this world of the Internet? Because I find it to be a very challenging, competitive landscape right now. You know, to capture someone's attention feels harder than it's ever been.

[Mark Rober]

What's the advice you give first?

[Colin]

It's mostly that concept I've been writing about a lot is honesty. Like, I think what's hard is we. We are very aware of what a YouTube video could do to your life, and I think that creates a lot of uninteresting work, meaning when you know what the outcome could be, when you know that a YouTube video could make you a millionaire or a billionaire now or make you famous, you. You optimize for the outcome a lot of times. And I think I can feel when I'm watching that as a viewer. So my advice to creators is, like, I was in Dubai speaking at this event, and a lot of creators were pitching me these ideas, and the only question I would ask back to them was, okay, that sounds cool. Do you want to make that? And it was a hard question to answer. They're like, no, but it's a good idea, right? I'm like, it's a good idea, but do you want to make it? To me, that's the only path forward is, like, because you have to do this for so long.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

That you have to want to do it. But I think back to, like, when you uploaded that first video of the Halloween costume. Like, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you were aware of this moment.

[Mark Rober]

No, actually, I did know. Yeah.

[Samir]

Actually, yeah, I knew the intended audience.

[Mark Rober]

This is what I'll say on that, which is kind of what I. This is a version of this. I tell creators, like, there are probably 10,000 good reasons to start a YouTube channel. To make content. There's only two bad ones, and the bad ones are to get rich and to get famous. And when I started making content, no one had any idea that you would get. You can make money off YouTube. That's a crazy proposition in 2011. And so it's like, I had this really cool Halloween costume idea, and I wanted to be on the gizmodo. That was, like, my life goal. And I got on Gizmodo after a day of going on YouTube. I was like, I guess I need more life goals. And so it's like I was like, I have more ideas. That was a good feeling. So I should just upload more videos. And I've essentially done one a month since then. And like that I can honestly say as much as everything grown and changed like that. The call we were just on talking about, which I'll tell you guys after we stop rolling and then we'll do another podcast later when you can say more about it. It I'll be thinking about that I won't be able to sleep well tonight because of that call. And like that is still what drives me at the core. Like it's not money, it's not fame. I never wanted to be famous. I don't let people sing to me at my own birthday because that's weird. Like I love that.

[Colin]

That's so cold.

[Samir]

That is so me.

[Colin]

It's the worst.

[Mark Rober]

Why is that a thing? So it's like if, if your core is that maybe you just want to get better at telling stories, maybe you want to get better at like, like gardening and you want to share it with people. Like there's so many good reasons to, to make content. But if it's to be rich and famous, like you're just starting, you'll never be successful, you'll never be rich enough, you'll never be famous enough. And so you're just going to be sad for a very long time. Yeah.

[Colin]

Cuz one day you will get like you are now rich and famous. Just to call a space right. Like it's uncomfortable to say it and to accept it, but it's like it's the truth.

[Mark Rober]

Totally.

[Colin]

And, and that is like I've known you for all these years. Like you're still excited about a science idea. Like that's, that's the, the, the thing to recognize is success is the opportunity to do more of what you're doing.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

So if you like, if you hate what you're doing and you're doing it for that outcome, like you're just going to get the opportunity more do, do more of something you don't like.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. That's like when someone's like a character like that does some funny bit with a coffee cup and now they're the coffee cup guy. Like, you know, that's why like I've enjoyed every, like I intentionally will do very take weird swings in different directions. So it's like expect to not know what to expect on the channel. And that gives me so much freedom to make whatever video.

[Colin]

Yeah. I was watching back, you know, our. Our episodes together, and I. I get emotional looking at this image of you.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

You know, you in the goggles, like, of tinkering and solving something, of how to, you know, not cry when you're cutting onions. And then I thought a bit about the fact that your mom took this photo. Right.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

And I was curious about, you know, with what you're doing now. Like, I feel this when I look at my son now. I'm like, I'm so curious what he's gonna do with his life. What do you think your mom would feel about what you're doing right now and where you are today? Like this beacon of kind of light that you've become in the world?

[Mark Rober]

Yeah, I think. I just think it's cool when I think about her because, like, by far, she was, like, the most influential person in my life. And it's like, nobody, none of us. You guys don't. I don't. Scott. Anyone who's watching this, you don't know the true measure of your impact ever. And, you know, she just encouraged. I just grew up in a household where creativity was totally encouraged. And she, like, taught me to be a good person and be a good human and, like, lead with kindness. And, you know, she passed away from ALS, like, six months before I made my first YouTube video, which is, like, kind of a really big bummer is one way to think about it. But I kind of think it's beautiful because she had no idea, like, the impact that she. Not that I, like, a huge impact on the world, but, like, there's so many families. Like, that story of parents bragging about their kids either. You know, I love. I was just telling my fiance this because we get to meet a lot of folks. It's either a parent with a kid, and we get to see this magical moment. The kids, like, what the parents are so proud of their kid that they get to meet me and someone that they watch. Or it's a parent without their kid. Be like, you have no idea how much we talk about.

[Colin]

We.

[Mark Rober]

You know, you inspire family type of deal. Both. Those are so lovely experiences. Those are moments that those kids, you know, may remember their. For a very, very, very long time. And so to be able to inspire other families to have, like, that same interaction that, like, I had with my mom and, like, have those conversations and to promote households where you can be creative and you can think big, and that's encouraged, like, the impact that could have on somebody's life is just absolutely immeasurable. And, like, that's her legacy, and she had no idea that would be her legacy. I think that's really beautiful.

[Colin]

It's really beautiful.

[Mark Rober]

I love that we can all disagree on what happens when we die. Everyone's got a different version, but, like, look, if we can all just, like, try and make the world, like, a. A better place, which is what she did, and, like, I'm just carrying that on, and then that gets passed forward. Like, I don't know where that leads, but feels like that's a good thing.

[Colin]

Definitely. I definitely think that's a good thing. Especially right now.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. Especially right now. Yeah.

[Colin]

That's really beautiful. Can I ask you one more question?

[Mark Rober]

Sure.

[Colin]

What's it like? Like, being buff now.

[Mark Rober]

Pretty sick. This whole interview, I've been doing this, if you've noticed.

[Colin]

I think we all have to acknowledge Everyone on YouTube has. Has noticed this. Right? Like, Mark Rober is buff now. Not that you weren't buff before, but.

[Mark Rober]

No, I wasn't. But before, it's been amazing. Like, I've been. I've been working out for two and a half years now. Like, pretty much, I was doing three days a week. And then Dax Shepard was like, it's way easier if you just work out every day. And he's right. And then he's also like, what do you do for protein? I was like, nothing. He's like, do your 200 grams. And so now for, like, two and a half years, pretty much work out every day in 200 grams. And, like, I miss it if I don't work out. I love it. I love opportunities for mastery. And it's such. I could do a DEXA scan. I can track this. Like, I love having a goal and just like, working, especially with working out, you can't fake that. You can't fake. You can't buy. Yeah. Muscle. So it's like, it means you're putting in the time. Right.

[Samir]

Was there a moment, an inflection point for you, of. Okay, I'm going to take this really seriously. A motive and a reason for that.

[Colin]

Was it because you did that shirtless pool short? You were prepping for that?

[Mark Rober]

It's. It's more like, no. My brain is really weird where if it's like, I will set a goal. I don't even know what motive. Just one day, I think I was like, oh, one day I wanted under my Jeff Bezos face because remember, like, Jeff Bezos got ripped. I was like, one day when I'm 50, I want to get really ripped. And then. Then all of a sudden, one day, I was like, why the hell would I wait till I'm 50? I should do that now.

[Samir]

Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

And so then that was literally it. And I have worked out, like, every day since then.

[Scott]

Wow.

[Mark Rober]

I need that.

[Samir]

I was asking if there was a moment because I'm waiting for Mom. I was like, when do I get to be buff version of me?

[Colin]

I remember talking to Jimmy about it after, like, one year of working out. He was like. I asked him what he was most surprised by, and he was like, I'm surprised about how long this takes.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

You know, and it's true. It's really just a practice. It's not.

[Mark Rober]

There's no shortcut.

[Colin]

I actually think it's one the of. Of the most interesting lessons about life because it's like, it teaches you that you have to do a hard thing every day, and you will not see the results. That will happen very incrementally, very gradually, and then also, if you just stop doing that thing, you will revert back pretty quickly.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah.

[Colin]

You know, it's kind of like, it's such an interesting life lesson, and there's definitely a correlation between people who have a discipline of fitness and success.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah, I think that's for sure. Yeah. I think my favorite quote is, like, the greatest gift life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. And I think that's like, something about working out and fitness is, like, really epitomized that. But that's also like, what we're doing not just with our work, but, you know, you guys are both parents now. Yeah, I think that applies there. It's just like, it's a good North Star. Like, not working is a. Like, I can never retire.

[Colin]

Right.

[Mark Rober]

Like, the idea of going and like, living on a farm somewhere, reading a book all day, it's like, I could do that for three days. I like to work. And that was, again, instilled to me, my mom. I was doing chores there. I was helping with dinner. She didn't make dinner. Like, she made everyone, like, participate. That was instilled in me at a young age. And I think if that. That is such a great gift to have in life to. To enjoy work and the outcome of. Of hard work.

[Colin]

I truly take incredible pride in being your friend. And, like, when my nieces and nephews watch, I love saying, like, I know him. No, you don't.

[Mark Rober]

I'm like, I do.

[Colin]

I know.

[Samir]

I swear.

[Colin]

I swear. Watch this video. And when people talk about YouTube, you know, I've been an evangelist for YouTube creators for my whole life, just because I'm so passionate. But I think you just represent again, at a time where it's hard to capture attention with good. With joy and good. You do it so well, and you've built an organization to do that. So just to express, like, my own, like, I feel very. A sense of a lot of pride, and I think all of US as a YouTube community are just very proud of the. The channel you've built and the. What you put into the world.

[Mark Rober]

That's very nice. And I. Scott knows, like, I feel the exact same way. I. Talking about you guys all the time. Just like, top tier. When I first saw you at.

[Samir]

I remember.

[Mark Rober]

I think I came up and told you guys when you presented at, like, one of the YouTube things. Yeah, yeah. It's like, you guys are just so freaking smooth out there. Just smooth.

[Samir]

I remember going up on stage because we were in a room full of top YouTube creators, and I don't know if at that time we fully understood what this event was until we realized we were on stage hosting. And I'm like. I'm like, that's Mark Rober, and there's Rhett and Link and there's all these faces. And it was just like, okay, better perform right now, because this is definitely their first introduction to us. I remember meeting you after and you

[Mark Rober]

complimenting us, and that meant everything about you guys. I was just like, geez, these guys are polished, like, in the best possible way. I'm also proud of you guys, of just so many of the YouTubers, you know, the new ones that, like, what a cool thing. That, like, a total meritocracy.

[Colin]

Totally.

[Mark Rober]

Like, no one picked us. Like, we've just kind of figured it out and, like, created a. A new sort of industry and. And now the world is kind of noticing and it's like, yeah, we did it. Like, how cool that we did it. And they ignored us at first and they said we were lame and no one wanted anything to do with us. And now slowly, just like, we knew it would.

[Colin]

I know.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. Because nobody under, you know, and we

[Samir]

knew he liked it enough no matter

[Colin]

what to keep doing it.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. To keep doing it. That's 100% true. So to corner, like, get that. Vindicate all of us is like, nice guys.

[Colin]

Cool. Cool. Scott, we're also proud of you.

[Samir]

Yeah.

[Colin]

Just to close the loop here. Yeah. Make sure everyone knows. Yeah.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah. Just like us three, specifically.

[Scott]

I was early in acknowledging it.

[Colin]

Three of us here, who people should be really proud of. Well, thank you guys so much for joining. I mean, I'm excited to see schooled. Yeah. It shoots in the beginning of summer. When does it come?

[Scott]

Pre production now, and we're working on premiere dates.

[Colin]

Great.

[Scott]

But soon.

[Colin]

Great.

[Samir]

Awesome.

[Colin]

Yeah, I'd love to come. We'd love to come check out the production.

[Mark Rober]

Oh, for sure. Oh, for sure.

[Colin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Rober]

There's gonna be, like 200 people on set. It's gonna be bonus umbrellas.

[Colin]

Umbrellas for everyone.

[Mark Rober]

Yeah, my umbrella person will have an umbrella person. That's so good.

[Colin]

Well, thanks, guys.

[Mark Rober]

Awesome.

[Scott]

Thank you.