Why MKBHD Told Netflix: "Don't Bother"

0:00 The weight of the publish button

0:01 with this many people watching is a little heavier.

0:03 YouTube [music] launched this summarize button.

0:06 Do you worry that you may become obsolete?

0:08 It's a really good question.

0:09 Do you hate AI?

0:10 Hmm.

0:11 Casey Neistat, he went

0:13 [music]

0:13 off about you.

0:14 Marques will go down in history as the greatest

0:16 YouTuber in the history of the platform.

0:18 What about your review of Humane?

0:20 I don't feel bad about an honest review that is negative.

0:23 What defines a conflict of interest for you?

0:25 They're like, "Can you tell us if you have

0:26 any issues with it before you publish your review?" No.

0:29 Uh it's not video.

0:30 [music] How many emails do you get per day to review stuff?

0:32 What's the best subject line?

0:33 LeBron James x MKBHD I was like, "What is this?"

0:37 Have you said no to streaming platforms?

0:38 Don't bother.

0:39 Going to make a show on Netflix would

0:41 not [music] accomplish anything that we can't do here.

0:44 You gave me an early cut of a video.

0:46 It's almost like a full-length [music] documentary, a year in your life,

0:49 that I think it's going to change YouTube all over again.

0:51 People always wonder what's going on behind the scenes.

0:53 A bit more vulnerable to just [music] show how our team works.

0:56 Do you ever worry about your coworkers getting poached?

0:59 The only way that I can combat that is

1:01 by making this [music] the best place to work.

1:03 Why did you shut down Panels?

1:05 I obviously wish that I'd launched it better.

1:08 One of the most insightful hater comments I ever got was So,

1:19 dude, a lot has changed since our last interview.

1:22 And I just want to reel off a few stats that blew my mind.

1:24 You crossed 20 million subscribers on your main channel.

1:26 You got over 3 million subscribers across your other channels,

1:28 which I want to talk about.

1:30 LeBron James interviewed you.

1:31 Yeah.

1:32 And also, you won a gold medal for Team USA for ultimate frisbee,

1:35 which I think makes you probably the only person in the world

1:37 who has a 10 million subscriber plaque as well as a gold medal.

1:42 Didn't Ronaldo just start a YouTube channel?

1:44 Okay, yeah.

1:45 You and Ronaldo, okay, that's good He's got to have a gold medal somewhere.

1:47 Good company.

1:48 Um but I was I was trying to like

1:49 put in perspective like all the things you've done.

1:52 And then I saw this tweet where you

1:53 said you're dropping the best video you've ever uploaded,

1:56 which is you getting shrunk down in a space suit,

1:58 and there's comments about how good it is, it should have been on Netflix,

2:01 and we actually did a full breakdown of it.

2:03 But, you know what else got me about that video, Marques?

2:05 In the beginning of it, you say to the camera,

2:07 "This is not AI." We would have to shrink way down.

2:13 But, with a little help, I'm up for that challenge.

2:16 By the way, no generative AI is being used to create this video.

2:21 Yeah.

2:22 Which I thought, as one of the world's biggest tech creators,

2:25 you saying this is not AI and the need to almost defend it,

2:28 like, why did you feel the need to to do that?

2:32 That line was a last-second add to the script,

2:35 but as we were writing that video, in the back of my head, I was like,

2:39 "I think a lot of people will just assume it's AI generated." And that discounts

2:44 hundreds of hours of work that goes into making this exactly what it is.

2:49 So, we decided to add that line near the beginning

2:51 of the video just to settle people in for like Cuz

2:54 one of my one of my favorite things is like

2:55 watching a video and realizing how much work went into it.

2:58 I would like people to watch that video

3:00 and appreciate how much work actually went into it.

3:02 So, that was, I think, worth adding.

3:04 But, but what if it was generated with AI?

3:06 Like, do you feel like that the ends are less,

3:09 um, enjoyable for a viewer because of the means of AI?

3:13 Like, do you do you hate AI in terms of like necessarily less enjoyable.

3:16 I just think that people enjoy watching stuff that humans made.

3:22 And maybe this is naive,

3:23 cuz this we're still pretty early with AI-generated videos,

3:26 and they're getting really good, and people like watching them sometimes.

3:30 But, I think one of the reasons people watch my videos specifically

3:34 is to hear what I have to say and what I've been thinking.

3:37 You're watching my opinion on the thing

3:39 and my choice on how to deliver that information.

3:42 I naively maybe think that that's what people will continue to come here for.

3:48 And so, I when I'm when we're spending all of time

3:51 and energy putting it together and making it exactly what it is.

3:56 If this was AI-generated,

3:57 it would have been a couple of prompts and like stringing it together,

3:59 and that's a different process that maybe doesn't take as long.

4:02 This is entirely bespoke.

4:05 All the stuff we chose to put in that video was all like human choice.

4:10 Do you worry that you may become obsolete with reviews?

4:13 Like because I was fascinated that YouTube

4:16 launched this summarize button on videos

4:18 now where you could literally type in summarize this video or get bullets.

4:21 There's a lot of like YouTube plugins that that do this.

4:24 And there's a lot of truth of like I'm coming to Marques to get a MKBHD review.

4:30 Yeah.

4:30 But now that I could summarize your video,

4:32 do you worry about that ruining watch time or like the traffic?

4:36 Like what like how how do you think about that?

4:38 So, I think that feature specifically is probably more

4:42 worrying for certain other types of channels and videos.

4:45 Like if I came to a like a tutorial, for example,

4:49 and I need to know what tools do I need to install this Nest doorbell,

4:54 and I click on the first result, and it's a 14 and 1/2 minute video,

4:58 and the summary opens up and tells me the tools I need, I'm out of there.

5:02 Like that type of pure information grab is likely to be like impacted by this.

5:09 I like to think that our videos

5:10 are a combination of information grab and entertainment.

5:14 And if you're here for just the information,

5:17 I guess you could open the MKBHD iPhone

5:20 review and look at the summary text and go, all right, got it, and leave.

5:23 But at that point, where are you on YouTube?

5:25 Um I think the entertainment value, the human part that I talked about,

5:29 all of that is also why people come to watch these videos,

5:32 and I think that they will probably still

5:35 watch the video if they want that part.

5:37 How do you refine your take or your perspective?

5:40 Cuz I I I I feel like we have information overload now,

5:43 and like we want to hear a clear opinion or or or point

5:46 of view to the point where even shows like Subway Takes is like

5:49 taking off where it's like a podcast essentially in the subway where you're

5:53 opening up with an opinion not just

5:54 straight information like So what's your take?

5:58 This is a note to all restaurants.

6:00 Stop singing happy birthday to adults.

6:04 100% disagree.

6:05 How do you think about okay,

6:07 this thing just launched millions of people are going to use

6:09 it millions of people are going to talk about it.

6:11 I'm going to have an opinion that's going to be one of one.

6:14 A lot of it just comes from your context of like I

6:15 have thankfully gotten to test and use a lot of different tech now.

6:19 Um this this happened this like built up over time in the car videos too.

6:23 Like I started the car channel.

6:24 I'd probably only ever driven like 50 cars which sounds

6:28 like a lot but for a car reviewer not that much.

6:30 Now I'm reviewing uh cars with the experience of the context

6:36 of like the last 250 cars I've driven and that helps me

6:40 a lot more to have a take on whether this it's

6:43 the story or the product versus the value or whatever it is.

6:46 Um same thing with tech same thing with any other channel.

6:49 It's like I have a lot more experience now and I think that helps.

6:52 Yeah.

6:52 Um on this idea of like AI I saw this thumbnail that you also put out.

6:57 Yes.

6:57 And uh you also were very clear like guys this was not Yeah.

7:01 Like like I was like cuz you look at it you're like

7:04 I could have probably just put a prompt in and gotten this.

7:06 And actually I see people on Twitter do that.

7:08 Actually it's kind of annoying.

7:09 But people in my inbox would be like I

7:11 generated 50 better versions of the thumbnail for you.

7:14 Here they are.

7:14 I'm like well now that you had my source

7:17 material of course you can generate this but like

7:19 this is a idea that we had to visualize

7:23 this concept and that's that's what we made.

7:25 Yeah.

7:25 Hopefully you can appreciate that's what the humans made.

7:27 Hopefully.

7:29 Maybe.

7:29 Do you think that um like cuz you're

7:31 showing more behind the scenes content than ever before?

7:34 Like on your X like in the studio channel this year in the life video.

7:38 Do you feel like because like the outputs are becoming I don't want to say

7:41 commoditized but like the level of quality

7:43 is going better and better across the board.

7:45 Across the board.

7:46 You have to work harder to show the process

7:49 cuz I'm seeing the stuff you're putting on the Studio

7:50 channel like Jimmy just brought us on to be

7:52 with him for 45 days and film like a seven-episode documentary.

7:55 And our goal was like help people appreciate how they pull off the impossible.

7:59 And I'm wondering like are we having

8:00 like a renaissance of like behind the scenes

8:03 and like process-oriented content cuz the output

8:06 is just it's hard to appreciate with AI.

8:08 I think so.

8:09 And even I was just thinking about this.

8:12 I had my Daft Punk on earlier, my hoodie.

8:15 But Daft Punk to me is one of maybe

8:19 the last of a generation of a certain type of celebrity.

8:24 Where there's a mystique to it.

8:27 Uh it's it's it's a movie star, it's a musician,

8:30 it's a whatever where you just get

8:32 the curated part and you can really appreciate that.

8:35 But then you don't get anything else.

8:37 You don't get the behind the scenes,

8:39 you don't get who they are as a person, what their life is like.

8:42 I think that is kind of almost over.

8:45 And today, in order for people

8:48 to relate and appreciate the humanity of something,

8:51 they want to see the humanity of the thing.

8:53 You Now you go on Hot Ones and you like sweat over spicy wings

8:57 with Sean and like have a conversation on camera and then you go on the Joe

9:00 Rogan podcast and like there's way more

9:03 pulling back the curtain and way more appreciating

9:05 of people talking about their process and how

9:07 they grew up and how that, you know, goes into what they do now.

9:11 And you know, to an extent the Studio channel is like a version of that.

9:14 Like people see the MKBHD videos and they're pretty

9:17 polished and they're pretty well produced and all that.

9:21 And obviously there's a humanity to it,

9:22 but when you see the behind the scenes of the team that's having fun

9:26 making the thing and then taking a lunch break and then making the next thing,

9:31 like there's a little bit more of the behind the scenes appreciation, I think.

9:36 Um I still love Daft Punk, but that era is probably gone.

9:40 Yeah, we they never show how they make their music.

9:42 Yeah.

9:42 The studio channel with this year in the life

9:43 documentary you made you're showing how you made Exactly.

9:46 the some of the most premium videos on YouTube.

9:48 Yeah.

9:48 I have another take.

9:49 As I was watching like the studio channel

9:51 and just seeing what you've done in the past year,

9:53 I think you're solving like the key man problem where

9:55 it's like how does a YouTube channel go beyond its host?

9:59 And I think there's a lot of different ways to go about this.

10:01 You see Smosh bring in like an ensemble

10:04 of entertainers like people who are amazing at improv.

10:07 But to me as an educator or like somebody who's

10:09 like been like in a different space I find it hard

10:11 to relate to cuz I'm like how how do I hire

10:12 entertainers create an ensemble like you

10:15 spotlighting an ensemble of co-workers Mhm.

10:20 is really interesting.

10:21 Yeah.

10:21 How do you do think about launching the studio

10:24 channel and do you feel like it's almost

10:26 like getting some of the weight off of you

10:30 in terms of putting out quality content that doesn't

10:32 just have to involve you cuz we're seeing Harper

10:34 Eric Andrew there's so many people in the video

10:37 that are becoming characters like yeah with the studio

10:41 channel launch an answer to not doing everything yourself.

10:47 Partially.

10:48 There's a couple dimensions of like why that channel exists.

10:53 We kind of have like a cinematic universe

10:55 of channels that all like plug into each other.

10:57 And maybe give a give context of what those channels

10:59 are and what they are broadly just so so folks know.

11:00 So you guys probably know me as the tech guy.

11:02 I make the tech videos on the MKBHD channel.

11:05 There's also the Autofocus channel which is just the car videos.

11:09 There's also the Waveform podcast and then

11:12 all the associated clips which are you know

11:14 our chat show talking about tech news stuff

11:17 and having some game show fun and etc.

11:19 And there's the studio channel which is a sort of a yeah like you said ensemble

11:24 but a little peek behind the curtain

11:25 into the production and the studio and its characters.

11:29 Yeah.

11:30 And you I thought that was amazing.

11:31 You guys have style guides for each of these.

11:33 We do.

11:33 Yeah.

11:33 And that's new, too.

11:34 But yes.

11:35 Like different identities.

11:36 And then also I mean this is no joke.

11:37 Like these aren't just side channels that you upload every so often to.

11:40 Like some of the videos like you guys have uploaded to these channels.

11:43 56 videos to the MKBHD channel, uh 30 videos Autofocus,

11:47 like 12 videos like just in the past year alone.

11:49 Yes.

11:50 That's wild in terms of output across other channels.

11:53 Yeah.

11:53 And they all work with each other.

11:56 And so the Studio channel there's a lot of reasons for it to exist.

11:59 That's one of them.

12:00 There are so many ideas that we have or things that people here are passionate

12:05 about that don't quite bubble all the way to the surface of full-on MKBHD video,

12:10 but they could be a short, they could be a Studio video,

12:12 they could be a a video hosted by the person that cares

12:15 a lot about it that we have the resources to bring to life.

12:19 Uh so that's a version for why it exists.

12:21 There's also cuz people want to see how the MKBHD videos get made.

12:24 They also want to see what it's like to be

12:26 here in the space while this stuff gets made.

12:28 So there's a bunch of reasons.

12:29 Seeing your uh co-workers in the videos

12:32 and becoming like main characters is actually really inspiring.

12:36 I I'm wondering do you ever worry about them getting poached?

12:39 Like I I've talked to other YouTubers who actually are worried about putting

12:43 some of their best editors and people in front of the camera because they

12:46 they've had experiences I've heard like of other YouTubers taking them cuz like

12:50 what an amazing training ground this is for like to work for Marques Yeah.

12:55 and to learn about the editing and then it's

12:57 like oh oh this is the person and it's not you know there's an etiquette to it

13:01 but you're kind of There's two versions of that, too.

13:04 Yeah.

13:05 There is worrying about getting poached meaning like some other

13:09 business is going to see that talent and then hire them.

13:12 The only way that I can combat that is by making this the best

13:16 place to work and the most fulfilling like feeling of ownership of the output.

13:22 Uh I still think we're we're really good at that.

13:25 Like you you can see your work come

13:27 to life and immediately get seen by an audience.

13:31 Then the other version of that is working here

13:34 long enough and learning enough that you can start

13:37 your own thing and then like vault off

13:40 from the visibility here to go do your own thing.

13:43 And I have no way of stopping that.

13:45 I think that's something that like if someone

13:48 here that's also kind of a unicorn like you

13:49 have to have a bunch of different skills

13:52 to bring it all together to launch your own thing.

13:55 Um But yeah, I think I I think

13:57 there's nothing stopping anyone here from getting enough visibility

14:01 to launch and go do their own thing other

14:02 than this being a really fun place to work.

14:05 A really rewarding uh direct connection with the output where you feel ownership

14:10 of it and you feel like that's what you want to keep doing.

14:13 That's all I can do.

14:15 Do you dial back your presence in some

14:16 of these other videos to give more room for these like

14:19 how how conscious like are you about like

14:21 your screen time in some of these other channels?

14:24 Yeah.

14:24 Um Not not really too much.

14:26 I mean it's it's kind of just

14:28 a result of like audience expectation at this point.

14:30 I think the MKBHD studio the MKBHD videos you know what to expect.

14:35 The other channels are mostly started because of like bringing a new format

14:42 or a new idea to life that wouldn't

14:43 necessarily fit with the audience of existing channels.

14:46 Yeah.

14:46 Like we were talking before about like you're kind of a like

14:49 this is kind of a checklist you're running me through

14:51 about when to start a new channel cuz I I think

14:53 like a lot of creators start second channels that just die.

14:56 Yeah.

14:56 And you've started a second, a third, a fourth channel that are thriving.

15:00 So what what is that checklist and how

15:01 do you think about launching a new channel?

15:03 basically [clears throat] you have the channel you have now.

15:06 Yeah.

15:06 And that channel every time you upload the audience is expecting something.

15:12 Whether that's the people on camera or the format or whatever,

15:15 the production value, they're expecting something.

15:18 That's kind of like what this idea tree is.

15:20 Okay, now I've been like writing for Top Gear for a couple months

15:24 and I had had all these cars

15:25 come through the studio that were really interesting,

15:28 but just not quite enough to be an MKBHD video.

15:31 I'd made like four car videos on the main channel,

15:33 but I reviewed 30 cars for Top Gear.

15:36 But what if what if I did make videos about those cars?

15:39 Yeah.

15:40 And And those for Top Gear is written form.

15:42 Written form.

15:42 Yeah.

15:42 Yeah.

15:43 Uh that audience expectation,

15:45 if we start a new channel where it's just the car stuff,

15:48 they'll come back for just the car stuff over and over.

15:50 Car stuff, car stuff, car thoughts, car videos, car reviews.

15:53 And so that again became us like, okay, we're going to have a steady stream

15:57 of car thoughts and car reviews, then okay, perfect.

16:00 Let's make a channel where we can do that.

16:04 Um so that's kind of basically the entire tree,

16:06 but if you have a recurring thought or format or something where

16:12 it doesn't quite fit to the audience

16:14 expectations of the currently existing channels,

16:16 it's a good candidate for a for another channel.

16:19 So at this point now, we've I think we kind of have the universe covered.

16:22 Like we have the casual chat show podcast,

16:25 we have the shot on a smartphone only car review,

16:28 we have the highly produced MKBHD channel,

16:30 we have the behind the scenes and the vlog of the studio.

16:33 We That's That's a lot.

16:34 I feel like we kind of have it covered.

16:36 So anything idea-wise that we have will probably fit into one of those boxes.

16:41 Yeah.

16:41 And And to put this in perspective, I know you said podcast,

16:45 a lot of people with podcasts, let's be honest,

16:47 if they don't put any time into it.

16:48 Like they just show up.

16:50 I pulled these text messages from David on your team and these emails

16:54 of him reaching out to people to get primary research, to get interviews.

16:58 And I just wanted you to talk about like,

17:00 what's the prep process before you record a Waveform podcast?

17:03 We saw you guys go in there today.

17:04 Like, what are you guys doing to make sure it's

17:06 not just another podcast where people turn on the mics,

17:08 chit-chat, and like what what what's the MKBHD version

17:11 and and how are you guys preparing for that?

17:13 Yeah.

17:14 I will say one of the most insightful hater comments

17:16 I ever got was probably like 15 years ago or something.

17:21 But I was just cranking out videos and I got

17:24 a comment that just said what was the point of this video?

17:30 And I thought about it for a second and I was like I don't know.

17:34 It was just to make it I just wanted to make a video.

17:36 I just didn't really have a good point to the video.

17:39 And it sometimes you just kind of throw that stuff

17:42 to the side like it's just another hater comment,

17:43 but I really have thought about that many times since

17:46 then where every time I'm making something that I'm going

17:50 to publish like the weight of the publish button

17:53 with this many people watching every time is is a little heavier.

17:56 Like I want to have a good reason

17:58 for why we're doing this and why we're making it.

18:01 And the podcast, you know, you can just kind of turn a mic on and talk

18:06 but we wanted to have a podcast that was

18:08 informative and accurate and sometimes entertaining and educational and all

18:13 these other things and that requires some level of preparation.

18:17 So a lot of times David's doing the sort of prep,

18:19 Andrew's doing the sort of research.

18:20 We have the producer,

18:21 Adam and Ellis are working really hard behind the scenes making entertaining,

18:24 coming up with trivia questions,

18:25 all this stuff so that it's a really good time to be

18:28 able to answer the question what was the point of this podcast?

18:31 Well, it wasn't just turning the mic on and chatting.

18:33 It was to make something good ideally

18:36 that's also encompassing of the having fun chatting.

18:38 apply as a point of view.

18:39 Exactly.

18:40 Yeah.

18:40 Yeah.

18:41 Marques, I want to talk about more of the ways

18:42 that you kind of changed YouTube and and created trends.

18:45 You know, one of the things that impressed me most about Marques,

18:48 being at his studio and seeing how he runs his business,

18:50 is how he launches his products.

18:51 From Ridge to his [music] Atom shoes that he sold out,

18:55 all of which are built on Shopify, which is today's [music] sponsor.

18:58 Shopify powers our merch store, created.store,

19:01 and so many more creators use Shopify because it's one of the easiest

19:04 ways to start your business and get it in front of your audience.

19:08 And they have a bunch of new features that are total game changers.

19:10 One of my favorite new features is called Sidekick and it's

19:13 [music] basically an AI business partner trained on your store.

19:16 And they have other features like

19:17 their pulse feature which will analyze your store

19:18 and suggest personalized ways to boost sales

19:20 from abandoned cart emails to planning marketing campaigns.

19:23 But my favorite feature is called custom apps

19:25 where you literally build apps for your store

19:27 with a single prompt like creating an app

19:29 that tells me when [music] to reorder and boom,

19:31 there's a custom tool there ready to use.

19:34 And with Sidekick skills, you can save prompts to reuse easily like

19:37 generate a social post for your top selling product.

19:39 So, if you're a creator or just have

19:40 an idea that you want to turn into a business,

19:42 then consider Shopify and get a free trial by going to shopify.com/youshy.

19:47 And now, back to our video.

19:48 But you gave me an early cut of a video

19:51 that I think it's going to change YouTube all over again.

19:53 But it was it is almost like a full-length

19:55 documentary like 90 minutes like a year in your life.

19:58 Why did you decide to do that and can you

20:00 share more details about it cuz I think that it's

20:02 going to cause a trend that more people are going

20:04 to do this documentary 90-minute year in the life video.

20:09 It's almost like a yearly vlogging is I think

20:11 going to become a thing if I had to predict.

20:13 That would be sick.

20:14 It kind of feels like daily vlogging.

20:15 And I think it's like we're at like kind of the early days.

20:18 I'm just making a prediction here but you

20:19 know what I want to hear your thoughts.

20:21 I think that's valid.

20:21 I mean the idea was I mean it's the studio.

20:24 So, the studio channel often peels back the curtain

20:27 on People always wonder what's going on behind the scenes,

20:29 how does this stuff get made, what's it like to be there when it gets made

20:32 or what goes on in between the videos, stuff like that.

20:36 And what if you just put all of it from an entire year so you

20:40 can see the arc of the whole year into one piece and like share that.

20:45 So, we just started recording everything which was something

20:47 to get used to but I think it was

20:49 worth it because now people can actually like fully

20:51 pull back the curtain and see what that's like.

20:54 And yeah, I think I think other people will try it too.

20:56 Yeah.

20:56 What were some other moments from the year in the life that you look back

21:00 on or or some of the lessons that you think people can take away from it?

21:04 I think one of the probably most frequently asked questions

21:07 that I get is why are there so many people,

21:10 what do they all do, and you know, that can't possibly be like necessary.

21:15 I think this answers a lot of those questions, which is like I can finally point

21:19 people towards this when they ask that question.

21:22 Um but it also kind of it unveils cuz I

21:24 don't there's no like how-to guide on building a YouTube team.

21:27 There is no step-by-step instructions on like building a creative

21:33 like machine people who work together to make this stuff.

21:37 Um so it's a bit more vulnerable to just

21:40 show how our team works and secretly hope other

21:43 people also show how their team works and we

21:46 can all learn from each other in this way.

21:48 Um but yeah, it it is fun to actually actually get to see everyone

21:52 doing their thing and how it all comes together like puzzle pieces, I think.

21:55 Just to break it down, how many people right now work for you for MKBHD?

22:00 I believe it is 18, but that's including my mom

22:04 who does all the finance stuff behind the scenes and me.

22:07 So it's probably 16 work for me like actively on creative.

22:11 Do you see a world where you want to expand beyond that?

22:14 Do you want to stay where you're at or like what like

22:16 cuz I mean I find a lot of creators are going into creation,

22:19 but they end up becoming managers.

22:20 Yeah, that's really hard.

22:21 It is really hard, uh which is why Harper is a manager.

22:25 Yeah, that's just a super useful.

22:27 Yeah, who's your uh what do you mean by that?

22:29 yeah, exactly.

22:29 Which is I didn't realize I needed it until

22:32 she started doing that job and I was like,

22:33 "Oh, that's that's that's what we needed." Yeah.

22:36 What is the octopus metaphor?

22:37 You talk about that a lot and I think it's important to every creator.

22:40 It's my favorite thing.

22:41 It's I think it's super true.

22:42 Basically, an octopus, for those who don't know, has eight arms.

22:46 Uh and every creator, whether they know it or not,

22:51 is doing a bunch of different jobs in one.

22:53 Yes, you are trying to make a living by making videos or whatever that is,

22:58 but that also means you're doing a lot of optimization

23:01 in your writing process and a lot of creative shooting

23:04 and then you're also the editor and then you're also

23:07 the content strategy person who takes the edits and like decides how

23:10 to package them and then that means you're doing a thumbnails

23:12 and titles and still graphics and before you know it

23:14 you've got eight arms you're doing a whole bunch of different

23:16 stuff and each arm gets a fraction of your attention.

23:21 The goal for a creator is to like chop off one of the arms and hand

23:27 it to someone who can spend 100%

23:29 of their time and intensity and intelligence on that thing.

23:33 And no matter how good you think you are at that and you're going to be

23:37 surprised at how much better they are with all of their time at that thing.

23:40 So editing is one of the things

23:41 you always see creators struggle with handing off.

23:44 I've struggled with handing it off but giving

23:46 a talented editor all of their time

23:49 to catch up to match and surpass your own editing is worth cutting it off.

23:54 And so you end up I end up cutting off still graphics,

23:57 [snorts] motion graphics, inbox management, negotiating with brands,

24:01 all these sorts of different things that I don't want to spend all

24:03 of my bandwidth on and now I'm back to what I want to do.

24:07 So fun fact is an octopus has three hearts and that's just because a creator

24:13 needs to find their three things that they can't cut off that they stick to.

24:18 For me that's you know reviewing

24:20 the actual tech and content strategy and creative

24:23 you know choices around the YouTube channels and the way we do those things.

24:27 So yeah, it kind of feels like the the octopus

24:30 analogy has been useful for a long time.

24:33 Have you ever cut off your own heart or like given away something or delegated

24:37 something that you're like damn like I that that actually gave me life you know.

24:41 No, in fact I was too slow to cut off some arms I think.

24:44 I think and I was I'm I'm very deliberate

24:46 about how we go through each one of these steps.

24:48 We're super super slow about it.

24:50 I'm sure there are other creators who cut off something

24:52 and then realized that that was something they wanted to do.

24:54 They brought it back.

24:56 Um but yeah, I've I've was the octopus

24:59 for a decade and then I was doing everything.

25:02 Doing everything for a long time and then had to slowly decide which arm

25:08 to cut off one by one and I think I'm thankfully uh intact here.

25:14 [laughter] Which is good.

25:14 How do you pick which of those things to cut off or to delegate?

25:17 Cuz I I think a lot of creators like struggle with that.

25:19 Do you Do you was it clear to you that, you know,

25:22 graphics were the thing that you're going to delegate or negotiation cuz

25:25 like for me I actually realized like we at one point like,

25:29 you know, we're working more external with folks who did our brand deals

25:32 and I mean I actually really enjoy the biz dev and you know,

25:34 my uh partner Amanda, she's great at the operations.

25:37 We brought everything in-house versus So we kind of went

25:40 back and forth in terms of which arms do we delegate.

25:43 I'm wondering how how how how did you think about that?

25:46 Yeah, that's a that's exactly kind of the same process as we

25:49 we know what we enjoy and we realize what makes us us.

25:52 So if that's like, you know, you you realize like I'm a tech YouTuber,

25:55 I obviously am going to be the one testing

25:58 the tech and delivering my thoughts on it and reviewing it.

26:01 But maybe there are parts of that that are not necessarily what makes me me.

26:06 It's not why someone is drawn here.

26:08 Like okay, the thumbnails for example.

26:11 For the longest time, I would make the whole video.

26:14 I'd be so excited about this whole video

26:16 and I'd finish editing and I'd hit export and I

26:18 can't wait to upload it and share it

26:20 and uh I don't have a title or thumbnail yet.

26:23 Hmm.

26:25 And I would just upload the video and then quickly throw

26:27 something together in Photoshop or and then just make that the thumbnail.

26:31 And it's important, the packaging obviously,

26:34 but it wasn't the thing that I was passionate about,

26:36 the thing that I was spending most of my mental bandwidth on.

26:39 And so along comes Tim and mo- still

26:42 graphics wizard like he does all of the graphics,

26:45 but he can spend all of his time on something

26:48 that I was spending 1% of my time on.

26:50 So they are way better than any thumbnails I could ever make.

26:54 And they can follow the vision and like

26:56 package things and support the business really well.

26:58 Uh you mentioned thumbnails and in our newsletter

27:00 we tend to curate a lot of your stuff

27:01 and this one just stood out as one of the best of the week on YouTube.

27:05 And I got these original mock-ups of a thumbnail that you

27:08 put together that I thought was one of your best thumbnail.

27:11 And And I was just wondering,

27:11 can you take us through like what is going on from that mock-up?

27:14 Like what's happening behind the scenes?

27:16 Like that process to me looked just fascinating.

27:18 What's going on with this thumbnail?

27:19 Yeah.

27:20 This one specifically, it's such a meld of so many things going on.

27:24 First of all, the video itself,

27:26 this is the Epic Spaceman video collab where I'm shrinking myself down

27:30 to the like nanometer scale to show the size of a transistor.

27:35 And we wanted a thumbnail that could sort

27:38 of illustrate the fact that I'm shrinking down.

27:40 Yeah.

27:41 I have used various shrunken Marques thumbnails in the past.

27:47 I've had me shrunken down sitting on a Mac mini.

27:49 I've had me shrunken down opening an iPhone.

27:52 And we thought, okay, that's a really good visual.

27:55 If we can show that scale, that shrinking thing, that's really really good.

27:58 But an M5 chip, how do we show that?

28:01 I don't know.

28:02 But what if we had the five key on a Mac keyboard?

28:05 It's the closest thing we're going to get.

28:06 This is us like talking in front of the whiteboard like trying to sketch it out.

28:09 Tim and Brandon, these wizards, are like kind of drawing it out for me.

28:12 Then it just goes into production, which is,

28:14 okay, well, we know how to shoot this.

28:15 We'll shoot the keyboard first,

28:17 then we'll shoot Marques from the same angle so that we can match it.

28:20 Have like an object we've learned it helps to hold

28:22 an object so that it easily kind of fits in with physics.

28:25 It turned out like very hard to visualize this idea in a thumbnail,

28:30 but it worked out pretty well.

28:31 So, I did a highly scientific study.

28:33 I went to the streets of Hollywood and different conferences over the past year.

28:36 And I asked people, who's more popular, Steve Jobs or Marques Brownlee?

28:41 Popular?

28:41 Yes.

28:42 Yeah, or who's more known?

28:43 Just In like the year 2026?

28:45 Yes, yes, yes, yeah.

28:46 Okay.

28:47 Who are these two people?

28:48 Marques Brownlee and Steve Jobs.

28:50 We got Marques Brownlee and Steve Jobs.

28:53 The truth I don't know this guy.

28:54 This guy, Bill Gates.

28:56 We have Marques Brownlee, I think that's his last name,

28:58 and then we got Steve Jobs.

29:00 Not Steve Jobs, the other one.

29:02 Tim Cook, right?

29:03 Tim Cook.

29:04 And I don't know who that is.

29:05 Well, that's Marques and then your man Steve Jobs.

29:09 know who that is, I can't lie to you.

29:10 I don't know who this guy is too.

29:11 Do you Do you have an iPhone?

29:12 Right here.

29:15 [laughter]

29:15 That's an interesting one cuz I don't think anyone who knows Steve Jobs

29:19 or I don't think anyone who knows me doesn't know Steve Jobs is.

29:22 That's what I thought was interesting.

29:24 Yeah.

29:24 So, it would be interesting if there was That's a hilarious video.

29:28 If there was like a like a Hollywood actor or something, but totally separate.

29:34 Yeah, that'd be really interesting.

29:35 Yeah.

29:36 Funny.

29:36 Yeah, god, wow.

29:38 I would say who's more impactful is Steve Jobs.

29:40 Yeah, I I That was pretty clear.

29:42 I know it's a crazy comparison,

29:43 especially now that Apple could have you in their big product keynotes,

29:46 and and Google does the same because last time we did an interview Marques,

29:49 I asked you a lot of questions about the business of tech, rapid-fire.

29:54 I wanted to ask you some of those similar

29:55 questions and see if any of your answers have changed.

29:57 Oh, interesting.

29:58 I hope I remember what I said last time.

29:59 Well, I think it's more interesting that you don't.

30:01 So, okay, here we go.

30:03 Have you ever reviewed a product where you were paid to do it?

30:06 No.

30:07 Still no?

30:07 Still no.

30:08 Never will.

30:09 Have you ever sent one of your review

30:11 videos to the manufacturer before it went live?

30:14 No.

30:15 No.

30:15 Also never will.

30:17 What's the biggest sponsorship deal you've said no

30:19 to because it may have been a conflict of interest?

30:22 Sponsorship deal I may have said no to.

30:26 I think there's the amount of Dubai conferences I get invited to now

30:30 to like go on stage and talk about crypto where they're like,

30:32 "Here's seven figures.

30:33 Want to come to Qatar and talk about this?" [sighs] No, I don't want to.

30:39 I say no.

30:41 I'm sure they would be fine, but I'm just not interested.

30:44 What What defines a conflict of interest for you?

30:46 Like like what is a conflict of interest?

30:48 question.

30:48 Yeah.

30:48 Because because I interviewed LinusTechTips.

30:50 A lot of your content is reviewing products from brands,

30:54 but then you also take sponsorships from brands.

30:56 Absolutely.

30:57 How do you handle like conflicts of interest?

31:00 You cannot buy my opinion.

31:04 You cannot buy my labs team's analysis.

31:08 What you can buy is airspace for what is clearly separately,

31:15 obviously, your talking points.

31:17 Mhm.

31:18 Everyone draws their line in the sand in different place.

31:20 I will not accept money uh to do any review.

31:25 Like the reviews that I choose to do are always whatever I want to do.

31:29 The product gets sent, of course.

31:30 I do all my own testing, and then that is independently published.

31:33 And they get mad sometimes, by the way.

31:35 They're like, "Can you tell us if you have

31:37 any issues with it before you publish your review?

31:39 Can you just like run it by us?" No.

31:42 Uh it's my video.

31:43 Um and then yeah, conflict of interest.

31:46 So, then there's like just categories I'm not interested in.

31:50 It's not even a conflict of interest.

31:51 It's just a lack of interest.

31:53 And yeah, I don't know if there's any other like specifically defined ones,

31:57 but it's kind of just just keeping it clean, I guess.

32:01 How do you keep separation of church

32:03 and state if a brand sponsors a video that's

32:05 separate from like a product that they may send you and and want you to review?

32:10 Right.

32:10 Yeah, I mean, I will I will work with brands

32:12 on uh a sponsored integration to highlight a product,

32:15 which is definitively not a review.

32:18 Um and it's you It's typically not even

32:20 in the category of anything I would review,

32:22 which is I think just easier for viewers to understand.

32:26 That's also the other thing is viewers sometimes don't always

32:29 fully understand because the line is different for every YouTuber.

32:32 They don't understand um I think they think about sponsorships

32:36 as they would treat it versus how the YouTuber would treat it.

32:41 So, if I am a tech YouTuber and I

32:45 accept a Samsung brand deal to talk about a microwave,

32:51 then surely I must feel obligated to speak highly of Samsung phones, right?

32:56 That's like a totally logical thing to think in your head.

33:00 And that's maybe true for some YouTubers and it's not true for other YouTubers.

33:03 So, it helps to just keep it as clean as possible.

33:06 Just no Samsung ads.

33:07 Just helps to keep it as clean as possible.

33:09 I'm never doing an Apple ad or anything like that.

33:12 It's always going to be a something I'm not reviewing can get an ad.

33:15 Something I am reviewing can't get an ad.

33:17 Oh, wow.

33:17 So, so if they're part of like the like iPhone, Pixels,

33:21 like things that you like Samsung phones that you're reviewing annually.

33:24 Yeah.

33:25 You will close off any money you may get from them.

33:28 Never doing a phone ad.

33:29 Never doing a phone ad.

33:30 But like a sponsorship on another video that's not related to that.

33:33 Is that fair game?

33:33 for a phone, I won't do it.

33:34 If it's for a phone.

33:35 Just to keep it easy to understand.

33:36 Cuz I know people will think, oh, it's separate.

33:39 This isn't the phone review.

33:40 It's a sponsored bit.

33:41 But even and some tech YouTubers do that.

33:43 They'll do a Samsung phone review over here

33:46 and then they'll do a Samsung phone ad over here.

33:50 Some people understand that there's a distinction.

33:52 Some people don't.

33:53 So, I just choose not to do it.

33:55 Yeah.

33:55 Yeah.

33:55 But if it's more broad,

33:56 if it's like like Google like or or YouTube like NFL Sunday Ticket.

34:01 separate enough, I think that's easy to understand.

34:03 Like for yeah, there's I will do an ad for a YouTube feature even though YouTube

34:08 and Google are part of Alphabet and I'm technically

34:11 reviewing Pixel phones that are also made by Google.

34:13 It's like if I think that's enough

34:15 of a distinction that people will understand it.

34:16 But yeah, that's a good point.

34:17 There's like yeah, there's so many different lines

34:19 in the sand for different types of conflicts

34:22 and different YouTubers that it's it's easiest to just

34:25 keep it as easy to understand as possible.

34:27 How much harder is that for younger and smaller YouTubers?

34:31 Cuz they you may give a bad review and that might

34:34 cut off like them sending you product which may cut

34:36 off like your ability to make like content and then all

34:38 of a sudden That's an interesting I hear that a lot.

34:42 I think there's different levels of that.

34:44 I think if you're a early creator and you're

34:46 just getting your first product to review ever,

34:50 uh you may feel like some temptation to be

34:53 positive about it so you don't lose that access.

34:57 I would say you shouldn't be afraid to lose that access

35:00 because clearly it wasn't a big part of your business before now.

35:03 So you should be fine without it.

35:05 There's also the even younger channels

35:06 who never have relationship with these companies.

35:09 They never have to worry about that.

35:10 That's great.

35:11 A lot of people talk about the bigger channels like mine where

35:15 the access that they give us sometimes is pretty critical for our review.

35:18 Oh, you're getting a device ahead of the release or something

35:21 like that and therefore your video is in the first wave.

35:24 That's important to your business.

35:26 Totally valid.

35:27 What ends up happening is I'm still honest about all

35:30 of my opinions and I I'll give a positive or negative review.

35:33 You can watch lots of negative reviews I've given of embargoed products.

35:37 Um and it's up to the company to decide what they want to do.

35:40 And I have never to this day had a company cut me

35:43 off from future product reviews because of a negative review I've given.

35:47 It's actually never happened.

35:48 They will very typically hit me up about here's the things that we fixed.

35:52 Here's the software updates.

35:53 Here, please review this again.

35:55 Here's the newest version.

35:56 Check it out.

35:56 It's way better.

35:57 Um but a company cutting me off for an honest

36:01 negative review looks worse for the company, not me.

36:06 Um so I'm not worried about giving an honest review and then getting cut off.

36:09 If anything, it's content, isn't it?

36:13 [laughter] Like that's pretty That's a bad look for that company.

36:15 Um so yeah, I I don't worry about that either.

36:18 Speaking about negative reviews,

36:19 what were the conversations like with Fisker who you reviewed their car?

36:22 Fisker, I've never talked to them.

36:23 You've never talked to them?

36:24 Never talked to them.

36:25 So I wanted to review the Fisker Ocean just

36:28 like many other EVs that were interesting at the time.

36:30 I couldn't get one from Fisker,

36:31 so I went to uh J&S, who's a dealership in New Jersey,

36:34 and I said, "Can I borrow your Fisker for a video?" They said,

36:36 "Sure." I reviewed the car.

36:38 I learned why no one was buying them.

36:40 I made the video.

36:41 Obviously, it was negative.

36:43 No one at the time was saying,

36:46 "These are great cars." Everyone else, if you go look back at it,

36:50 people who had reviewed the Fisker Ocean before me were like,

36:53 "This is really bad, like really problematic.

36:55 Issues with the cars,

36:56 issues with getting locked out of them." Worse issues than I'd had.

37:00 Um I made my video.

37:01 The headline obviously got a lot of attention and got a lot of clicks.

37:05 But that stock price was doing this before I made the video,

37:09 and it was doing that after I made the video,

37:11 and if anything, maybe it accelerated a little bit,

37:13 but I don't feel bad about an honest review that is negative.

37:18 I would feel horrible if everyone else was saying

37:21 it was great and their stock price was up here,

37:24 and then I had a horrible experience,

37:27 gave it a negative review, and then the company went bankrupt.

37:29 That wouldn't make much sense, but I would feel bad if that actually happened.

37:33 Um thankfully, it doesn't happen.

37:36 It's like it's an honest review where everyone's reviewing the same stuff,

37:39 and everyone knows what's bad.

37:40 Mhm.

37:40 Well, what about your review of Humane the pin

37:43 device, the pin that would have like, you know, a display on your like,

37:47 there's a lot that was out about that before

37:49 the product came in, and then you reviewed it.

37:51 You called it the worst product that you ever reviewed.

37:54 How did you think about the gravity of that video?

37:57 So, a lot of products I get in to review are like pretty mid.

38:04 They're fine.

38:04 [snorts] They usually don't get a video.

38:07 They're like not that interesting or exciting.

38:09 But the ones that are interesting and exciting, like a 10, that's pretty cool.

38:13 That's worth getting a video.

38:15 And then every once in a while, we get one that's so bad that you're like,

38:21 "I'm kind of surprised this made it this far." That's That's its own story.

38:25 That's also a video.

38:27 That was one of those rare products where it had all this hype,

38:30 it had all the you know, these founders making these super interesting videos,

38:33 and they thought maybe this could be the future, and then you tried it,

38:36 and I was genuinely surprised that it

38:38 was actually the worst thing I'd ever reviewed,

38:40 and I've reviewed a lot of stuff.

38:42 So, here I am being honest about the product again.

38:46 And yes, mine was one of the earlier reviews as well at that point,

38:49 but you continue to see after my review other people review it.

38:52 They all also can tell it's bad, it's overheating,

38:55 it's having issues, the software is not good.

38:57 This is also kind of awkward, but yeah,

39:00 um that was just another weird case of a shockingly

39:05 outside of the normal bounds of quality product.

39:07 Usually products are mid, and if they're great, they get a video.

39:09 If they're terrible, they can also get a video.

39:11 Like what what does a company do in that case?

39:13 Cuz like the ethos is often like launch fast, iterate,

39:17 like get feedback, and and and your platform is massive,

39:20 but it's another form of feedback that if it came in another way,

39:23 they could have made the product better.

39:24 Like do they slow down on on launching the product,

39:26 but then their development is worth Like it is a bit of a catch-22

39:30 in the YouTube era to launch tech products when review channels like yours

39:35 do exist and have that kind of weight when maybe that was like

39:38 V1 of something that could have been great like in version three or four.

39:42 Totally.

39:42 I hear that a lot.

39:43 I and I made a video kind of about this topic as I

39:47 also talked about a humanoid robot that I think is also not ready.

39:51 It's a very modern trend of announcing with a very pretty video and a very

39:57 complete website and a pre-order button a product

39:59 that does not exist and is not ready,

40:01 and even when it does come out, it still needs a lot of work to actually be

40:04 as good as you're showing it to be in the video.

40:07 It's like a new thing in the last couple of years.

40:11 I I don't know if there's much that I can do about it

40:13 other than suggesting that you wait until it's done before you actually show it?

40:18 I don't know if that's a crazy take.

40:20 Yeah.

40:19 Yeah.

40:20 But, you know, there's a lot of these AI things that they need a lot of data.

40:23 They need to get into people's homes.

40:24 They need to enthusiast to beta test it.

40:27 In which case, you're just going to have to deal

40:29 with a lot of early reviews saying it's not done.

40:31 It's not good yet.

40:32 And if your product is good enough or has enough promise,

40:36 it can weather that storm.

40:38 I think that's true.

40:39 I think there's a lot of beta-ish products that require a lot of, you know,

40:44 full self-driving from Tesla or a lot of like products

40:47 that need a lot of user input to actually be good.

40:50 I'm sure when Waze first came out, it wasn't as good as it is now.

40:54 But if the promise is good enough and the base product is good enough,

40:57 I think it can survive with those good enough fundamentals to get to okay,

41:03 this is actually good now.

41:05 And maybe get a second review.

41:06 I think that's something that's specific to one product.

41:09 Rabbit is really trying to do that.

41:10 I reviewed the Rabbit R1, which is this little handheld standalone AI

41:15 product not long after the Humane Pin.

41:17 Truly wasn't ready.

41:18 Way too early to launch it.

41:19 But they've done a lot since launch and I think a lot of people

41:22 have been telling me to re-review it cuz it's a totally different product now,

41:26 which I think is fair.

41:27 But yeah, back in those early days, it was I think I called it unreviewable.

41:31 It was way too soon.

41:33 It's such an interesting Yeah,

41:34 it's such a hard place to be as a founder, like people watching tech products.

41:38 But I I think it's also kind of people setting expectation.

41:41 It's like, this is not going to be the next big thing yet.

41:43 Yeah.

41:43 It's going to be rough.

41:44 And

41:44 But their video will paint it as it's the next big thing.

41:47 Give us your money right now.

41:48 Yeah.

41:48 Yeah.

41:48 Yeah, that's off.

41:49 Yeah.

41:50 Marques, I'm wondering, how do you take like such dense information

41:53 and turn into something that like anybody can consume?

41:55 Like I I I was going through like some material.

41:58 I got like a reviewer's guide of a product that's like 70 pages like deep.

42:03 Like you get these all the time from different products.

42:05 Um you see keynotes.

42:07 Like I I like being in the corporate world for a bit,

42:09 like I have PTSD listening to some of the jargon

42:12 and some of the like There's so much jargon.

42:14 There's so much like world word salad that like people put out there.

42:18 Um, yeah, how how are you like going through a keynote or or something

42:21 like cuz I think every creator in their niche has to translate somehow.

42:25 Um, and like you've been able to do that in an really interesting and clear way.

42:29 Yeah, it's funny.

42:30 I have this this concept for a series or playlist

42:34 that I haven't really been able to bring to life yet,

42:36 but I think it kind of encapsulates the whole channel,

42:39 which is ad versus reality.

42:42 Just like watching an ad,

42:44 watching the this product and what they claim to be able to do,

42:47 and then trying that exact set of things and seeing how well it actually works.

42:50 Because every presentation, every reviewer's guide, every keynote,

42:56 every marketing thing has what they want you to believe about the product,

43:01 the story, how well-made it is, how well it works.

43:04 And then there's reality, how well it actually works,

43:06 how well it actually does what they say.

43:09 That often involves a lot of parsing out technical information or parsing

43:14 out marketing jargon and just giving

43:16 the real-world speech version of the verdict.

43:21 What's the most overused jargon?

43:22 Like comparing something to the size of a football field.

43:25 Like like what's there's a lot of I was just talking about this.

43:28 There's a lot of aerospace grade aluminum.

43:31 There's a lot of surgical grade steel.

43:33 There's a lot of There's a lot of just like people like

43:36 using certain terms to emphasize how great something is going to be.

43:41 It's fine.

43:41 I don't know.

43:42 I I They're totally like great for billboard

43:44 and stuff like that, but I'm just going to use

43:46 the phone in my pocket with no case for a week or two and then we'll see.

43:50 We'll see.

43:50 Have you ever had like a tech company reach out

43:53 like after you distilled or like taken their information like,

43:56 "Hey, Marques, that was way off." I've gotten versions of that.

44:01 I've gotten "How did you get the product to do

44:05 that thing that we didn't design it for?" or had you know,

44:08 there's versions of like we anticipated the user's

44:11 use case to be different from your testing, which is interesting.

44:15 Um, I don't necessarily have a problem with that.

44:18 I think that's totally valid to hear their version of it,

44:19 but also I'm using it how I believe the users will use it.

44:24 What's an example of just a maybe common

44:26 if I'm using a if I'm using a thousand-dollar microphone,

44:32 I'm going to test it with a lot of things in mind

44:34 that I wouldn't necessarily include if I'm reviewing a ninety-dollar microphone,

44:39 if that makes sense.

44:40 Because the buyer of the thousand-dollar

44:41 microphone has considered seven other thousand-dollar microphones

44:45 and is looking at the tiniest minutia of details and differences between them.

44:50 Where the person buying the ninety-dollar microphone odds

44:53 are it's one of their first ever microphone purchases

44:56 and they just need to know if it's better

44:57 than the one in their phone or their laptop.

44:59 I'm not saying that out loud as I review the microphone, but you can you know,

45:03 understand like the decision for the for the viewer is

45:07 in the context of all the things around that product.

45:10 And then you know, you might get

45:11 a nice letter from the the ninety-dollar microphone

45:14 company about why didn't you test it

45:16 in these other environments and these other things.

45:18 I'm sure it's capable of that, but I'm talking to this audience.

45:21 Yeah.

45:22 Um, how many emails do you get in your inbox per day or like Jono,

45:26 your like who leads a lot of your biz dev and like

45:29 how many emails do you get per day to review stuff now?

45:32 To review stuff, probably a dozen a day.

45:36 I get a lot of emails.

45:37 Jono gets a lot of emails.

45:39 You could ask him how many he gets.

45:41 What's the best subject line you've seen lately?

45:44 Something that caught your attention.

45:45 LeBron James x MKBHD [laughter] was like I opened it and I was like,

45:50 "What is this?" And it was like LeBron wants to interview you.

45:52 I was like "Yes, great.

45:55 Of course." That was a great headline.

45:57 Good catcher.

45:57 Okay, you know, as a little side quest, like what What the experience like?

46:00 Like LeBron, I mean he's just It was awesome.

46:02 The guy I mean, just like what It was super fun.

46:05 I will say the thing that hit me the most from that is

46:08 the production team that he has built with this uninterrupted network is goated.

46:12 I just want to give them their props.

46:14 I've been on so many big productions,

46:16 so many big shoots where there's 70 people behind the camera.

46:19 I've did a masterclass.

46:20 I've done these huge productions where I have a 8:00 a.m.

46:24 call time and I walk in at 7:55 and they're like, "Yeah,

46:28 just give us a minute for like hair and makeup over there.

46:31 Okay, now they're ready, but then they're still doing the lights.

46:33 Okay, maybe another hour for this, another

46:35 hour for that." And I'm shooting at 1:30.

46:38 I'm like, "Why did I show up at 8:00?" I think for that LeBron shoot,

46:41 I showed up It was probably like a 9:00 a.m.

46:43 call time.

46:44 I showed up at 8:55.

46:46 I think I was sitting down in the chair shaking hands with LeBron at 8:59.

46:50 Like, "Go.

46:51 Action." I was like, "This is amazing." And then we shot,

46:55 great, you know, fun conversation.

46:57 And then that was it.

46:58 It was just a a blink of an eye.

47:00 Did LeBron or Maverick Carter, who is his business partner,

47:03 like leads a lot lot of his like content,

47:04 did they ask for any advice off screen or like they're

47:06 doing a lot in content while he's still on the court?

47:08 Whereas most athletes like, you know, [snorts] but well yeah,

47:11 what what were those conversations like about them picking your brain?

47:14 They obviously have their, you know, physical production pretty down,

47:18 but just as far as like what they want to do as a network,

47:21 the shows they're doing.

47:22 They have a lot of ideas for things.

47:24 Obviously LeBron's very involved.

47:25 Probably is being very smart about building

47:28 this business while he has the visibility

47:30 of being one of the goats in the NBA and an active player.

47:34 So, yeah, we had a couple of those those chats, too.

47:37 Last time we chatted, you also gave me a breakdown of how you make

47:41 your money as a YouTuber and rough percentages were these I said last time.

47:45 Is what you said last time.

47:46 Yeah.

47:47 What what is it now?

47:48 Like how how how do you make money as a YouTuber today?

47:51 This might be the same.

47:52 Maybe right now.

47:53 Yeah.

47:54 So, in 2024, it's 60% sponsors, 30% AdSense, 10% other.

48:02 Yeah, I think that's about right.

48:03 So, like AdSense is is the flux thing that goes up and down month to month.

48:09 It can be a great month.

48:10 It can be September or it can be January.

48:12 It can be really really low.

48:14 Um so, you don't rely on that as a business.

48:16 You have our partners, Ridge, Dbrand,

48:20 super long-term, super involved, essentially channel sponsors.

48:24 Um and then we also will do occasional like other sponsored stuff in between.

48:28 Those put together are still, I think,

48:31 roughly 60% of like the stable year month to month like income for the business.

48:36 And then, yeah, AdSense probably goes between 10

48:39 50% depending on what's going on that month.

48:41 And then other, which is a bunch of stuff, it's licensing, it's merch,

48:46 it's the little behind-the-scenes projects we do here and there,

48:50 uh is still yeah, probably like 5 to 10%.

48:54 That's fascinating to me cuz I thought by now,

48:57 um because when we did our interview a couple years ago,

49:00 it was right as you're launching new products with Ridge, the MKBHD brand.

49:05 Yes.

49:05 Um are products not a bigger part of like how you make money today or

49:10 Um like cuz I'm I'm seeing a lot of these.

49:11 Like I'm even getting ads of like,

49:13 you know, different Ridge products that you've designed.

49:15 I'm paying more attention to those as I'm wondering if like that's like Yeah.

49:19 driving more conversions across the board.

49:21 It definitely is.

49:22 I think that's just a product of the structure of my relationship with Ridge,

49:26 where it's mostly ownership.

49:27 It's not like the products I'm involved with I get a percentage of income from.

49:30 It's more of just like an equity in the business.

49:33 So, yeah, we are definitely doing a lot with Ridge and it's really

49:36 fun and I'm excited about a lot of stuff we have coming up,

49:38 but it's not like moving the needle in the month to month term.

49:42 We work with them.

49:42 We do sponsored integrations with them also.

49:45 Yeah.

49:45 But, yeah, that's how it's structured.

49:47 What have you learned about product development and like cuz now like,

49:50 you know, we you you've come out with like a your own wallet,

49:54 soft wallet, like battery charger pack on the back of phones,

49:58 like a lot of different things.

49:59 Like, what yeah, what have you learned about like

50:01 being involved as a YouTuber in in a existing business?

50:04 Cuz I think that's becoming more and more common, you know?

50:07 You have Jimmy who started Feastables like mostly from scratch,

50:10 but you have a lot of folks who have done what you've done

50:12 or Ryan Trahan with Joyride and like coming into an existing candy business

50:16 or recently like we launched an accounting

50:18 business and like we're trying to scale

50:19 that and more with with a a lot of like the infrastructure there.

50:23 I'm wondering like what have you learned like doing this at a bigger scale?

50:26 A lot and I think it'd be really interesting if all the people you

50:29 just mentioned also shared more of the behind the scenes of what they learned.

50:33 I try to include it a little bit in the product reviews.

50:36 Um because I mean, I went to business school.

50:39 I knew this stuff already,

50:40 but it's so much more tangible when you work on products.

50:42 Like every product is a series of trade-offs.

50:45 Every choice that goes into a product,

50:47 whether it's the colors, materials, capacities, abilities,

50:51 all those things are a direct trade-off with quality and price

50:54 and timeline and all these things that go into it.

50:56 And it's made me probably a little bit more understanding

51:00 of choices that get made in the products I'm reviewing.

51:03 Cuz when I we make a product with Ridge and it goes out there and other

51:07 people review it and I see how people talk about the choices that we made,

51:11 it gives me a new perspective on uh yeah,

51:14 when I'm reviewing this, let me think about the choices that went

51:17 into making this exact choice that I'm about to talk about.

51:21 Like what?

51:21 Just in like um if I'm reviewing

51:23 a phone that decided to have a lower resolution, but a higher refresh rate.

51:31 Refresh rate being the speed at which you see the Yeah, the display.

51:35 I do see a lot of comments about like the just the screen is a downgrade.

51:39 Like I can't like why am I going from 2K to 1.5K?

51:42 But when I see that choice, I immediately think,

51:44 okay, they knew those comments were coming,

51:46 but they also knew that most people were not using the display at 2K,

51:49 so they can move to 1.5K and have a still great screen,

51:53 but also bump up the resolution because the chips that they're

51:55 using can support a higher refresh rate at the same resolution.

51:59 This is nerdy stuff, but I'm like I I see those choices more down the rabbit

52:04 hole of the maker of the product now than I did before.

52:07 What what choices have you made like being part of Ridge?

52:10 Cuz that was that was a huge deal.

52:10 I think it was like the numbers probably were over a million dollar deal,

52:14 multiple years you getting equity, you being the chief creative partner.

52:17 Like what are some of those decisions you've helped make on products

52:20 and then you get reviews on and you're like, "Oh, like Yeah.

52:23 kind of got roasted there." The wall the soft wallet was one

52:25 of the first products that I worked on and people just see the final result.

52:29 What they don't see is the hours of meetings and the dozens

52:33 of in-between versions that were considered

52:36 before the final version where the slots

52:38 are in different places and the stitching is slightly further from the outside

52:41 and the materials are a little different color and all these other things.

52:44 Um and I think yeah, basically when the final product comes out,

52:48 I'm like hoping that people appreciate

52:51 the small details about how far the stitching

52:53 is from the outside and when the exact black leather that we're using.

52:57 Um but at the end of the day it's mostly just like, "Yeah, is it a good price?

53:00 Does it do what I want?

53:01 All right, it's good or it's not good." Um but yeah,

53:04 there is there's so many micro decisions that go into the simplest products.

53:10 What about Panels?

53:11 That was a app that you launched that sold wallpaper.

53:14 I don't want to simplify,

53:15 but maybe maybe put into your own words and and why did you launch that?

53:17 Cuz I I thought it was interesting of all

53:20 the things to put your like brand behind like

53:23 that was one of the things that you put

53:25 out since our last interview a couple years ago.

53:26 I think that was October 2024 you launched it and then

53:29 just a few months ago November 2025 you shut it down.

53:33 Yeah.

53:33 What was the process of launching it?

53:35 That's a that that must have been a hard decision.

53:36 Yeah, it was a fun project that we learned a lot from.

53:40 The original idea for it was one of the most frequently I think

53:44 the most frequently asked question I get is where did you get that wallpaper?

53:47 And I think if you Google MKBHD and hit

53:49 space like wallpaper was the next word that shows up.

53:52 Like people are constantly trying to where did you get that wallpaper?

53:55 Where did you get the wallpapers in this style?

53:58 Um And we're literally talking about the your phone screen.

54:00 The background on on your on your computer,

54:03 on your phone, on your tablet, on whatever.

54:05 Yeah.

54:05 And so having obviously I could just like give you the image or whatever,

54:09 but I thought it would be more fun to have a place

54:11 where you can go view more from that artist and like find

54:14 the rest of their stuff and even if you want if they

54:16 sell stuff you can have it that's access to that stuff too.

54:19 Um I still like the idea.

54:22 I think obviously we launched it pretty poorly

54:24 and I think the communication specifically was the failure because

54:28 I think most people today refer to panels

54:30 as a subscription wallpaper app or a paid wallpaper app.

54:34 It was a free wallpaper app,

54:36 but it happened to have the ability to buy things also and if you wanted

54:40 access to everything behind the paywall you could

54:42 just pay a subscription to that growing library,

54:44 but it was a free wallpaper app.

54:46 Nonetheless, it wasn't as tactfully launched as we should

54:49 have been and uh it didn't maintain the numbers

54:52 and the the sort of community we were hoping for and so we did shut it down,

54:55 but I think we learned a lot from it.

54:57 I would I would launch it again if I was 2 years ago I would try it again.

55:00 I think there was a lot of things we we got out of that experience.

55:03 And yeah, now we know like what sort

55:06 of developers to look for, what sort of teams

55:08 to work with if we want to do something in the same vein in the future.

55:11 Oh, so there's a chance you may relaunch it?

55:13 I don't think we're going to relaunch panels,

55:14 but I think if there are other projects cuz we we we worked with the developer,

55:17 we worked with outside teams for you know

55:20 bringing in more help for coding and then putting

55:22 that together and then also filling the ad slots

55:24 in the background and all sorts of other things.

55:26 Um So if we were to do another project that's

55:29 similar in like the software space or whatever it is,

55:31 we now have those connections.

55:32 We know we now know who we can work with and things like that.

55:35 Yeah, it's fascinating that like even like like when you

55:38 answer the question like why did you shut down Panels?

55:41 It's like well, maybe the app shut down,

55:43 but then the learnings from it and the things that like like like yeah,

55:47 it's like and because anything you do even like if it's like

55:50 just an experience going to be massively like talked about in public.

55:54 for sure.

55:54 Yeah.

55:55 I'm not like I'm not mad at how it went.

55:58 I obviously wish that I'd launched it better.

56:01 A lot of that falls on me, but it's it's more of just like all right,

56:04 we just learned a lot about launching things.

56:06 We just learned a lot about building things.

56:08 We just learned a lot about communication

56:10 and and managing the things that we do.

56:11 So, I think it's still a win.

56:13 What what else did you learn about launching things?

56:15 Cuz I think so many creators are trying to launch something beyond content.

56:20 And then this time I'm sure like you learn more from your, you know,

56:22 I don't want to call it failure, but you learn from like things that didn't

56:25 go as successfully as they could have.

56:26 Like what Yeah, what did you learn from Panels that, you know,

56:29 other creators or you may like use for your next

56:32 app that I think one of the biggest

56:33 things was explain like just going into depth

56:36 and giving it the explanation time instead of cuz again,

56:39 we spent more than a year.

56:42 We spent many months behind the scenes of like making tons of choices to build

56:46 that, to bring the artists in, to communicate

56:48 with the artists about what percentages made sense for them.

56:50 All sorts of crazy things that we didn't talk about at all in the launch.

56:54 The launch was like casually tacked on in the middle

56:56 of a different review where it's like hey, we made this thing.

56:59 Check it out.

57:00 Let me know if you like it.

57:01 The end.

57:02 And didn't explain any of the choices.

57:04 I think in in hindsight, I think if I if I were to launch

57:07 it again or launch something else in the future,

57:08 I would go through and explain all of those things.

57:11 I ended up making a follow-up video about

57:12 Panels and then explained a bunch of that stuff.

57:14 But if I could do that from the beginning

57:16 to give everyone the information that they can then pick apart,

57:19 that would be way better.

57:20 Yeah.

57:21 Instead of them assuming everything.

57:22 It's interesting that's like that that first video,

57:25 whether it's like your launch video explaining it or a review,

57:28 it's very hard to like change like people's

57:32 like minds about what they heard in that video.

57:35 It again goes into like what you don't say

57:36 is just as important as what you do say.

57:38 I had a chance to interview Casey Neistat and he went off

57:42 about you and just said this quote that really stuck with me.

57:44 I just wanted to play this clip from my interview with Casey.

57:46 I think Marques will go down in history

57:49 as the greatest YouTuber in the history of the platform.

57:52 He absolutely crushed.

57:54 No one is looking to the New York Times for the iPhone 16 review.

57:58 No one is looking at what the Wall Street Journal is saying.

58:01 Because he's so good and was so far out

58:04 in front that now it is emulated across the board.

58:07 Marques has defined a genre.

58:10 Appreciate that, Casey.

58:12 What what what does it feel to hear

58:14 that and also see your work emulated across the board?

58:17 I thought that was a part of the quote that was interesting

58:18 cuz I I've just seen so many different facets of your work, Marques.

58:23 Like I I pulled a lot of visuals from your formats to your thumbnails,

58:26 your different shots over the years that I think

58:29 are all across YouTube and beyond just the tech genre.

58:33 I just wanted to just get your initial response

58:35 to that and wanted to dive deeper into how you've done that.

58:37 Yeah, well, so I would say first it's not that no

58:41 one watches the Wall Street Journal or New York Times anymore.

58:44 Obviously they they have their audience that they speak to.

58:46 It tends to be older, sure.

58:48 Uh but it's clearly shifting.

58:49 People want to hear from people about it like

58:51 you've had a conversation like you you use that thing?

58:53 Should I buy that thing?

58:54 Like that conversation is what people like to make purchases off of.

58:57 So, that's kind of what I do.

58:59 Um and there are a lot of tools that we use,

59:02 visual tools that we clearly use often and have developed

59:05 that work really well for this to support that goal.

59:08 Uh and yes, people copy them cuz they work well.

59:11 So, makes sense.

59:12 Take me through like some of the things

59:14 that you've done in your videos that, you know,

59:16 now we see across all of YouTube.

59:18 Okay, so well, top downs is a good one.

59:20 Now we have a room just to do top downs cuz we use that type of shot so often.

59:25 Obviously [snorts] showing a simple thing

59:26 in the center of the frame, the device,

59:28 but then having props, having a background,

59:30 having an environment that's not too distracting.

59:32 The orbit shot, there's an object in the center of the frame that's the focus,

59:35 and then the camera moves around the object.

59:37 So, typically it's on a I'd do it with a slider a lot,

59:40 so I'm just moving left to right and panning at the same time.

59:42 And then we have some cinematic stuff, too.

59:44 The probe lens, some of our cinematic intros and other stuff.

59:47 That's just fun cuz the whole team here, like me, just enjoys making videos.

59:52 Uh but yeah, realism is is usually the goal.

59:54 And also just like little things.

59:55 I will say like I love like when I look

59:57 in the camera in our videos and we do like a zoom in.

59:59 A little punch in.

1:00:00 A little punch in.

1:00:01 And that is like directly adapted from you.

1:00:04 Yeah, there's lots of little things.

1:00:05 I don't know how much to take credit

1:00:06 for cuz I'm not inventing a lot of this stuff.

1:00:08 These are available.

1:00:09 People can do what I'm doing.

1:00:10 It's fine.

1:00:10 But, I do feel like there's certain levels of like like repeating the same

1:00:16 type of thing or using it for emphasis a certain amount of times.

1:00:18 Like people start to pick up on that, then it feels like it's a useful tool.

1:00:22 And then other people can use the tool the same way.

1:00:24 So, yeah, it's great.

1:00:26 I I will say it reminds me of this quote from Virgil Abloh,

1:00:29 the late Virgil Abloh.

1:00:29 It was like creativity is a 3% change.

1:00:32 Mhm.

1:00:33 And that's all you need to start to like innovate.

1:00:35 And I feel like you've made these 3% changes across YouTube.

1:00:38 That's what being a creator is.

1:00:40 Every video is a 3% change from the last video.

1:00:43 Yeah.

1:00:43 And then if you scroll back far enough,

1:00:45 you start to accelerate the 3% changes and you

1:00:47 can see it change by bigger fractions over time, but everything is a remix.

1:00:51 And oh, one of the things I've said is the best thing

1:00:55 that never happened to me was one video like blowing up, going super viral.

1:01:00 If you like look at the the graph of my channel over time,

1:01:03 it's just like a flat slowly growing line.

1:01:07 Yeah.

1:01:07 That's the 3% change.

1:01:09 That's it right there.

1:01:09 We try to do some stuff that's like harder to steal, also.

1:01:12 Like if there's going to be a thousand reviews of the same phone,

1:01:15 but one of them has a sick robot shot in the first 10 seconds of it,

1:01:20 kind of lends a little bit of credibility maybe to that video.

1:01:23 So yeah, we do lots of stuff that can be copied,

1:01:26 which is why we also do some stuff

1:01:28 sometimes that is really hard to copy on purpose.

1:01:31 Hey, can I ask how much did that robot arm cost?

1:01:34 That robot arm cost $250,000.

1:01:38 Wow.

1:01:38 And and to get like these fluid shots

1:01:41 where you punch in punch that you program it.

1:01:43 sick.

1:01:43 Yeah, you've seen the Glambot at at the bigger award shows or whatever.

1:01:46 It's essentially that.

1:01:47 It's a big manufacturing robot arm made by Kuka.

1:01:50 It puts doors on cars in factories.

1:01:53 But ours has a camera on the end of it and it's got an Xbox controller

1:01:56 that controls the whole thing and some software

1:01:58 on a Mac where we get to, you know, keyframe up exactly what we want to do.

1:02:02 So instead of the Glambot or putting the windshield into a Tesla,

1:02:06 it's move this camera here and adjust the fizz,

1:02:09 the focus iris zoom to hit this point and then do

1:02:12 this and then do this and then that's it's a lot of fun.

1:02:15 Yeah.

1:02:15 And and what about like how you come up with new formats

1:02:18 cuz I I I thought it's fascinating when you did the smartphone awards,

1:02:21 which you've been doing for a while now.

1:02:22 A lot of folks have done something similar, even the thumbnail.

1:02:26 It's just interesting to see that adapted in in different ways.

1:02:30 The smartphone awards initially, I mean I have this the bread

1:02:32 and butter of the gadget review space is smartphones.

1:02:36 They're coming out all the time.

1:02:37 There's tons of them I review a bunch of them all the time.

1:02:39 So I don't remember the first year.

1:02:41 It might have been 2013 or something where I just decided let's do a wrap-up

1:02:47 this year of all the best ones I came out and maybe some categories.

1:02:51 And then the next year I actually I'd started that with like

1:02:53 a bunch of phones on the desk in front of me.

1:02:55 So the next year I had more phones on the desk in front of me and I

1:02:57 made it a little more formal and once you do it twice, now it's a series.

1:03:01 So you got to keep going.

1:03:02 So now we did another one every single year and eventually it became the awards.

1:03:06 So yes, other people have done smartphone wrap-ups at the end of their year.

1:03:11 Makes a lot of sense.

1:03:12 Some people take varying amounts of inspiration from my Smartphone Awards,

1:03:18 which is totally flattering.

1:03:21 Um but yeah, that that's a tried-and-true format, for sure.

1:03:24 Do you look at outliers?

1:03:25 Like I I talk a lot to Jimmy, or we did an interview with Nick Di Giovanni,

1:03:28 and other folks across like YouTube.

1:03:30 They look at what's been performing well,

1:03:31 and then they adapt that or put their spin on it.

1:03:34 Do you look at like what has been performing on other channels

1:03:37 as you try to adapt and put your own spin on it?

1:03:39 A little bit.

1:03:40 It's usually pretty intuitive, though.

1:03:41 And maybe it's cuz I'm terminally online,

1:03:43 but like I know what people are talking a lot about,

1:03:47 that stuff will perform better.

1:03:50 Uh and I know what I care about,

1:03:51 because it's really exciting, interesting announcement.

1:03:54 That stuff will perform well.

1:03:55 And then there's the stuff that uh I know is

1:03:59 not going to be an outlier or super high performer,

1:04:01 but that maybe I'm just interested in making anyway.

1:04:04 Um and sometimes I'll notice stuff

1:04:06 that surprises me occasionally on other channels,

1:04:08 but usually it's not too surprising.

1:04:10 Just cuz the tech world is like there

1:04:12 are big market things and small market things.

1:04:14 Yeah.

1:04:14 I like to think about it as a spectrum of like uh copy and paste,

1:04:17 which is like ripping something off

1:04:19 and and taking it versus like copy with taste,

1:04:21 which is like ad- adapting it and blending.

1:04:23 I'm wondering like how you think about that spectrum, if at all, subconsciously.

1:04:27 I I do like to give credit where it's due.

1:04:30 I think that's the main theme.

1:04:32 Uh a video that comes to mind just as we talk about this is

1:04:34 I just made a video about the arc of OnePlus as a company.

1:04:38 They started off as an enthusiast brand,

1:04:40 and they did this whole arc all the way to like generic smartphone.

1:04:45 And I reference uh like eight-year-old video

1:04:49 from a tech YouTuber I've watched for forever,

1:04:52 and make sure to like link to his video and explain it,

1:04:56 but like a lot of the points are going to be the same.

1:04:58 So, it's not necessarily copy and paste, or copy with taste,

1:05:02 but it's like I'm just letting you know that this is where a lot of the points

1:05:05 are coming from, and also here's the new context

1:05:07 for it as we talk about this OnePlus company.

1:05:09 So, I think giving credit where due is important, um,

1:05:13 but there's so many This is always the question is

1:05:16 like how much inspiration can you really give credit for?

1:05:18 You've watched thousands of videos in the past.

1:05:22 That's always just a judgement call.

1:05:23 Like do I give credit to this one

1:05:25 thing that reminded me to say this other thing?

1:05:26 I don't know.

1:05:27 But that was a pretty clear example for me of like, yeah, give credit for that.

1:05:31 Yeah.

1:05:31 Uh, when you see people like kind of take your work like exactly does

1:05:34 like it and all that like does that ever piss you off and be

1:05:38 like we originated that they took it and like just like you put

1:05:42 in all the hard work to kind of think about the details of it.

1:05:45 Does that ever get under your skin?

1:05:46 I don't think I've seen it done like flat out like copy and paste.

1:05:50 I've seen copy with taste plenty of times.

1:05:53 I've seen also like homage type of shout-outs which I think are great.

1:05:58 They're super fun.

1:05:59 Like in the Autofocus channel I like come out of the bushes to start the video.

1:06:02 I've seen another car review come out

1:06:04 of the bushes and I'm like that's not copying.

1:06:07 That's like a shout-out kind of.

1:06:08 So I'm cool with that.

1:06:09 even if they don't mention you.

1:06:10 Even if they don't mention it,

1:06:11 the viewers it's like an if you know, you know thing.

1:06:13 Like I then I'll leave a comment.

1:06:14 Like I, you know, I see it.

1:06:16 Uh, I don't think I've seen anyone like straight rip something, which is nice.

1:06:23 Yeah.

1:06:23 Yeah.

1:06:24 It's a It's a big remix culture.

1:06:26 Yeah.

1:06:26 In terms of things building on each other in real time.

1:06:29 And I'm wondering Marques like if you could talk about like

1:06:31 the different seasons of being a YouTuber and and how there's a preseason,

1:06:36 there's there's playoffs and and I think a lot

1:06:39 of that is because you're a tech YouTuber

1:06:41 who works towards September and October where most

1:06:43 tech companies launch their products and you review them.

1:06:46 I'm just wondering how do non-tech YouTubers also think about that?

1:06:49 It's a really good question.

1:06:50 I think this all comes from the topic of burnout.

1:06:54 Mhm.

1:06:54 If you ask a YouTuber to describe burnout,

1:06:56 it's like running on a treadmill for forever and the speed is just too high.

1:07:01 You can't stay on the treadmill anymore.

1:07:03 And ever I think everyone knows like what that feels like.

1:07:07 That's like overwhelming.

1:07:08 That's like it's another video, another video,

1:07:10 another thing and you're you've turned up the temperature too high and you

1:07:13 can't keep this rate going and you just want to step away.

1:07:16 That's burnout.

1:07:18 One way of preventing burnout that's kind of built into tech

1:07:23 is it has a really busy season in Tech-tember, Tech-tober.

1:07:30 And then it has a kind of a lull naturally and like January,

1:07:34 February, March usually.

1:07:37 And that's just cuz like you know,

1:07:38 companies are getting their stuff on the shelves for the holiday season,

1:07:40 but that's like when there's tons constantly.

1:07:42 Like the the rate of production is super high.

1:07:45 But what I found is that actually kind of it's it

1:07:47 has a lot of parallels to being an athlete where there's like

1:07:49 a a regular season and then you're like ramping up into like

1:07:53 the most important execution time of the year which is postseason.

1:07:57 You've had all of your you know, processes that you've been fine-tuning and all

1:08:02 of your experiments you've been running.

1:08:04 The regular season games matter,

1:08:06 but not as much as the postseason where you're going to absolutely

1:08:09 be battle tested and do your absolute best work for 2 months straight.

1:08:14 And then you obviously can't keep that rate going forever.

1:08:16 So then it ends.

1:08:18 And then there's like the the sort of off-season.

1:08:22 Where okay, you kind of sit back a little bit,

1:08:24 take stock of where you're at, how that went,

1:08:28 what you'd maybe like to change going forward.

1:08:30 And then you can start building strategically towards that new thing.

1:08:33 I just so many parallels of like okay, I know next season I got beat a lot

1:08:37 in the air because I wasn't strong off my left foot.

1:08:40 Okay, I'm going to do a lot of exercise

1:08:42 to build strength and build the foundation where I

1:08:45 can be springing off my left foot so

1:08:47 that I win more of those battles in the air.

1:08:49 I'm making frisbee references for some reason,

1:08:50 but Or like I've been really bad at thumbnails.

1:08:53 I'm thinking about them last minute during

1:08:55 my preseason or like my regular season.

1:08:57 I should be better about my thumbnails and packaging.

1:09:00 be working on integrating a person or a process

1:09:03 to be more focused on thumbnails, exactly.

1:09:05 And so now you've got this shape here, where it's like you we have this really

1:09:10 really high output a certain time of year.

1:09:12 And it's not like we have a zero output or a low output,

1:09:15 but it is much more relaxed as we sort of re-evaluate and we are thankfully

1:09:19 in a position as a channel where we've got a lot of people watching every video.

1:09:23 There's a sort of a floor for views per month or whatever,

1:09:27 so it's not like the super high pressure of like treadmill is always high.

1:09:32 So, the systems, the the off-season on-season thing,

1:09:37 I think helps a lot for burnout.

1:09:40 You certainly talk about other channels.

1:09:41 I have no idea how to manage that if you're not a product you're making.

1:09:43 Yeah, well like what are what are like playoffs for other channels?

1:09:46 It's a really good question.

1:09:47 I mean, I feel like I was just talking about this on the podcast.

1:09:50 This is like the Super Bowl for weather channels.

1:09:53 I don't know if you watch like meteorology YouTube, but there's [laughter]

1:09:56 these huge winter storms and like they are killing it right now.

1:10:00 They're making two, three videos a day, live streaming,

1:10:03 keeping the people updated on the next models

1:10:05 and how the storms are tracking across the country.

1:10:07 It's really interesting to watch.

1:10:09 I kind of feel like they also have

1:10:10 an off-season probably when the weather's less exciting here.

1:10:13 Yeah.

1:10:13 Interesting.

1:10:15 Or I guess the default for a lot of channels is November,

1:10:17 December when CPMs go That's a good yeah, exactly.

1:10:20 Yeah, and and you can make more money off of the same uploads.

1:10:23 It's probably true about almost every channel.

1:10:25 Yeah, but I think it's a good takeaway.

1:10:26 Like find your playoffs if they exist in your industry.

1:10:30 Um or like an idea I had cuz I've just

1:10:32 become obsessed with this idea of behind the scenes and documentaries.

1:10:35 I want to like I want to do something in October called Doc-tober.

1:10:39 Okay.

1:10:39 I'm putting it out.

1:10:40 I I don't know if we're going to do it, we'll see.

1:10:41 One one day.

1:10:42 But like where every week we put

1:10:44 out a different documentary about a different creator.

1:10:46 Mhm.

1:10:46 And just create a playoff for our team

1:10:48 to work towards where we'll do behind-the-scenes,

1:10:50 studio tours, breakdowns of different creators, fine-tune.

1:10:53 And it's like, all right, October comes along.

1:10:55 Let's crush it.

1:10:56 I I do think there's something magical about having a a a little brief

1:11:01 part of the year where you are

1:11:02 outputting a ridiculous like an impossible amount.

1:11:06 And it could be like the what you're talking about with the the documentary

1:11:09 of like how is he every single week like coming out with a new thing?

1:11:12 These must have taken weeks to make.

1:11:15 That spectacle and that energy is like really fun to like work towards and have

1:11:19 that that shining like Super Bowl moment for your channel

1:11:22 and to just see what you're capable of.

1:11:24 I think that's fun.

1:11:25 Yeah.

1:11:25 So yeah, that's kind of how the tech season is.

1:11:27 It's like September.

1:11:29 Let's see what I still got.

1:11:30 Let's see what I'm made of.

1:11:31 Like let's do this.

1:11:32 Yeah.

1:11:33 Um do you feel like you're an athlete who does YouTube

1:11:36 on the side or a YouTuber who's an athlete on the side?

1:11:38 Cuz bro, you won a gold medal.

1:11:40 And then you like you're you're traveling to China.

1:11:42 You're competing internationally.

1:11:43 It's unbelievable.

1:11:43 And then you come here and you

1:11:44 have this world-class channel over 20 million subscribers.

1:11:46 I I don't know which version of you is like the the primary It's Yeah,

1:11:52 it is Here's what I'll say.

1:11:55 It's not like a 50/50 split.

1:11:57 It is a switch that flips back and forth.

1:12:00 I do think a lot of the mentality

1:12:02 for each one bleeds a lot into the other though.

1:12:05 There's a lot of team building and chemistry and the playoffs

1:12:10 that we talked about and stuff from athleticism that works in this environment.

1:12:16 There's also a lot of creativity and problem solving that works on the field.

1:12:21 So I guess that's nice that I happen to be able

1:12:24 to use a lot of my skills for each of those things.

1:12:26 Give me an example.

1:12:27 Like like what are you applying from frisbee?

1:12:28 Cuz I I for the life of me

1:12:30 can't understand the parallels other than team building,

1:12:32 we're in a huddle, rah rah.

1:12:33 Like I I can understand that but like give me something tactical.

1:12:36 Like what what what what have you applied like from frisbee to this?

1:12:39 Okay, so there's one part which is team building.

1:12:42 Like every team has a captain and some form

1:12:46 of leadership and a coach and some sometimes there's three captains.

1:12:49 There's a strategy captain.

1:12:50 There's a vibes captain.

1:12:52 Well, and there will be a vibes captain?

1:12:55 Not not actual, but [laughter] like I can imagine a patch on his

1:12:58 Yeah, the vibes guy.

1:12:59 No, there's there will be like three or four captains and they'll they'll all

1:13:02 sort of split the workload of leadership

1:13:05 at a player level into different things.

1:13:07 And so you have the person who's focused on like the defensive

1:13:11 strategy and that's the captain that you look to for that.

1:13:13 And you have the person that's focused on the offensive strategy to not

1:13:16 get beat by the other team's defense and the offense listens to that person.

1:13:19 And then you have the logistics captain

1:13:20 who's like working to make sure those people

1:13:22 don't have to think about the hotels

1:13:23 and the car setups and all the other things.

1:13:25 And what tournaments do we play and how do we have the highest

1:13:27 ranking by the end of the year and all this other stuff.

1:13:29 And I think there's some level of that also applies here.

1:13:34 Like there's you know, people who are essentially making choices about how we

1:13:40 compete as a team to be as effective as possible,

1:13:43 to be as high output as possible in the competitive time of year.

1:13:48 Um You mean there's different captains within the MKH team?

1:13:51 You're saying Totally.

1:13:52 Yeah.

1:13:52 Like is that a formal assigned role?

1:13:54 Not really, but I feel like there's there's channel producers that are

1:13:57 kind of like spinning together all of the pieces to put together,

1:14:01 you know, the things that work with the channel strategy.

1:14:04 Um And then there's I guess the other way

1:14:07 around is like there are levels of problem solving.

1:14:10 I think I did like a mic'd up episode of a like a show at Nationals

1:14:15 last year for frisbee where we're calling a play on the line and it's like,

1:14:19 all right, we're going to run this play,

1:14:20 we're going to set up in a horizontal stack.

1:14:21 You're going to start over on the top left.

1:14:23 The first two cuts will come from the front,

1:14:24 they'll go across and then Marquez, you're just problem solving.

1:14:29 So you're going to read what the defense is doing to those first

1:14:31 two cuts and who they leave open and then make the first

1:14:34 and or second cut depending on who's open top or bottom

1:14:36 to to get open and make sure the the handler doesn't get stalled out.

1:14:40 You're reacting.

1:14:40 Re- reading and react, yeah.

1:14:42 Problem solving.

1:14:43 So yeah, it kind of it's on both sides of the ball.

1:14:45 I feel like you can kind of take uh little pieces

1:14:48 of of playing sports and apply them to running a YouTube channel.

1:14:53 Do you ever think about how much more successful

1:14:55 you could be at YouTube if you weren't doing frisbee?

1:14:59 I don't think it would be very different.

1:15:00 I actually think Really?

1:15:02 Well, it would be a little It's not zero.

1:15:03 Yeah.

1:15:04 It's not zero.

1:15:04 There's definitely some time that I lose to each of these things that I

1:15:07 would I would be a better YouTuber

1:15:10 if I wasn't also traveling and playing sports.

1:15:13 I would be a better, more complete athlete if I wasn't in a studio.

1:15:18 Um but thankfully most of the work text

1:15:23 stuff is like during the day, during weekdays.

1:15:27 And most of the sports stuff is nights and weekends.

1:15:31 So it actually doesn't overlap that much, thankfully.

1:15:34 But you don't work weekends as a YouTuber.

1:15:36 Not as much as I do in like sports.

1:15:39 I used to.

1:15:40 I used to as a college student do 7 days a week of both, basically.

1:15:44 We'd have practice every day, every other day.

1:15:46 We have tournaments every weekend.

1:15:48 Um but there is no way for me to work uh on videos when I'm at a tournament.

1:15:54 It's just impossible.

1:15:55 So I've had to just sort of accept that flip switch.

1:15:59 How does your team keep running?

1:16:00 Like what are you doing like when you're in China, like like you know,

1:16:02 spotty internet, like you're not here, you got to be on camera?

1:16:04 Like what like cuz I I I find like you're doing this thing where I'm like,

1:16:08 "Oh my god, he's not only like taking time off,

1:16:11 he's putting himself into a totally different craft.

1:16:14 Um meanwhile, a lot of YouTubers can't even take a day off.

1:16:18 Um like how how how how how are you doing that?

1:16:20 And and what what what what have you put in play?

1:16:22 Are you cramming videos before you leave?

1:16:24 bit.

1:16:24 A little bit, yeah.

1:16:25 I've had a couple international tournaments that I know about

1:16:27 on the calendar long enough ahead of time that I can cram.

1:16:31 And tech isn't necessarily always conducive to this, but I can cram

1:16:34 some more evergreenish types of videos that can come out while I'm away.

1:16:38 So it doesn't feel like as big of a gap.

1:16:40 I've also accepted more as a YouTuber in the last

1:16:43 couple years that you can take a week off and survive.

1:16:47 So I do that sometimes.

1:16:49 Do you have you ever had a moment

1:16:50 where you're playing frisbee or you're overseas,

1:16:51 you're competing and some big news breaks about

1:16:55 a tech company like oh It's been close.

1:16:57 It's been close.

1:16:59 Um on more than one occasion,

1:17:01 I have flown back into the United States from an international

1:17:05 tournament directly into a tech event or some tech video.

1:17:09 In fact, the last two uh we won a gold

1:17:11 medal with the World Ultimate Championships in Australia last year.

1:17:16 And that's a very different time zone.

1:17:18 And I flew directly to San Francisco where my team met me

1:17:21 with my gear and landed and that morning was the iPhone unveiling.

1:17:27 And so that was a long day.

1:17:29 That was like a 40-hour day.

1:17:31 And the other was I was just in China like you pointed out um

1:17:36 this past year and the Pixel 10

1:17:41 uh hands-on and embargoes were all not embargoes,

1:17:44 the hands-on were all scheduled for the week I was away.

1:17:48 And it was crazy, but I emailed them and I was like,

1:17:51 "All right, this is going to sound crazy, but hear me out.

1:17:54 I'm away in China for that week.

1:17:57 What if when I get back I I like

1:18:01 sneak over to your office and like quickly hang out

1:18:05 and like get the footage and check out the devices

1:18:07 because the next day is the embargo?" And they facilitated.

1:18:11 They actually came here with the unreleased

1:18:13 Pixel phones and set up a little demo

1:18:16 for me to have the same experience everyone else had while I was in China.

1:18:19 And I So yeah, I landed.

1:18:21 I think I got to Newark Airport at like 4:45 in the morning, came over here.

1:18:26 Uh every the Google people got here, I shot the video and I made it in a day.

1:18:30 So it was like as soon as I landed, I was right back to work.

1:18:33 I'm thinking about all the like newer creators

1:18:35 who watch our show and are listening to it.

1:18:36 Do you feel like that is something like a level

1:18:38 you've gotten to because of how big you are now?

1:18:40 Yes.

1:18:40 Versus like would young Marques have made that trade-off

1:18:44 versus being like I'm trying to be a tech YouTuber.

1:18:47 I need to be at that iPhone or Pixel unveiling.

1:18:50 Like Frisbee's going to have to wait.

1:18:53 This personal thing's going to have to wait.

1:18:54 That like would you have made that trade-off

1:18:56 like honestly like if you were younger?

1:18:58 It's a good question.

1:18:59 When I was younger I had school every

1:19:01 day and I couldn't wait to make that trade-off.

1:19:04 I was like as soon as I'm done with school man there's going

1:19:06 to be so many more hours in the day to do all this stuff.

1:19:09 Um I'd be in the back of calc watching the Apple event.

1:19:13 Like I'm just going to miss whatever's happening today in class cuz

1:19:17 I have to be like paying attention and plugged into this event.

1:19:21 Sorry professor if you're watching this like that was me

1:19:23 in the back of the class but like now uh

1:19:25 I haven't necessarily had to make a direct trade-off of like

1:19:28 something is happening that I'm going to miss for Frisbee.

1:19:31 That's it's going to happen eventually.

1:19:33 Um I will probably God it's impossible to decide.

1:19:36 It's very much like in the moment like which thing is more important.

1:19:40 It's really hard to pick.

1:19:41 You're you from what everything I tell you you're very good

1:19:43 at just like being clear about what you want and saying no.

1:19:46 Yeah.

1:19:47 Um are there big opportunities that like you've said no to recently

1:19:51 that maybe you would have said yes to before and I'm just

1:19:54 wondering how you navigate that cuz I think a lot of creators

1:19:56 have this scarcity mindset so like they got to say yes to everything.

1:19:59 They don't know when this wave or whatever they're in is going to evaporate.

1:20:02 Totally.

1:20:03 Um I'm just wondering how you navigate that cuz it

1:20:05 seems like you had this clarity from very young age.

1:20:08 I guess there's you just have to find like a sort

1:20:10 of a north star of like what your goal is with what you're doing.

1:20:13 A lot of people are just like let's just make this thing as big as possible

1:20:15 and get as many views as possible or monetize as hard as possible or whatever.

1:20:19 Um a lot of opportunities came that were clearly not going

1:20:25 to help with any of those goals but that would be fun.

1:20:31 And like what?

1:20:34 Like the N A the NFL just invited me to do

1:20:38 the flag football Super Bowl game or whatever it was.

1:20:43 a creator versus creator thing.

1:20:45 it would have been fun.

1:20:45 Yeah, yeah.

1:20:47 But um I don't know.

1:20:49 I'm I'd rather be here.

1:20:51 Like making videos and see like there's stuff like that.

1:20:53 There's stuff I do say yes to of course now that's really fun.

1:20:55 But yeah, it's just about like finding what you're actually here to do,

1:20:58 what you're trying to do with your channel.

1:21:00 And if you can say yes to things that don't take away from that, that's great.

1:21:03 Um but yeah, you got to find that thing.

1:21:06 Have you said no to streaming platforms?

1:21:08 That seems to be a moment that we're in right now.

1:21:09 You know, Jimmy has Beast Games on Prime.

1:21:11 Mark Rober uh he came on our show talked about how he has a Netflix show,

1:21:14 all the things he's doing for that.

1:21:17 Um you know, Dhar Mann like like all all all

1:21:18 these creators are are having a moment and and you know,

1:21:21 streamers are trying to pick up more YouTubers.

1:21:22 Like have you been approached?

1:21:24 I have not been, but don't bother.

1:21:26 I wouldn't I'm not interested.

1:21:28 I I I kind of maybe have this also maybe naive view

1:21:36 of uh the creator landscape which is that they're all they're they need you.

1:21:40 Like they need the eyeballs and the only way to reach

1:21:43 these people who are just watching YouTube is to be on YouTube.

1:21:46 Uh they're trying to bring the YouTuber to their platform

1:21:49 to hopefully take some of the eyeballs with them,

1:21:51 but we're having a really good time here

1:21:53 making videos that we we really like and going

1:21:57 to make a show on Netflix would not

1:21:59 accomplish anything like that we can't do here.

1:22:03 Um for some of those people, of course they have goals of like to and you know,

1:22:08 boost your profile online and to to leverage your way into other

1:22:11 opportunities and that's why they do those things and that's great.

1:22:14 Uh I'm just that's not one of the things I'm doing.

1:22:17 Isn't there another level though, Marques?

1:22:20 Like I mean, you know, if Jimmy's reaching a ton of people as Mr.

1:22:23 Beast channel then Beast Games, you know,

1:22:25 give gives a crazy budget he's able to do even bigger spectacles.

1:22:30 Mark talked about the same thing and he's like,

1:22:32 but there's a different demographic he could reach

1:22:33 like are there more people that could be hearing

1:22:36 about like your content or seeing a different side

1:22:38 of you that you're not already making on YouTube?

1:22:41 Yeah, probably.

1:22:43 Um but is if I don't know if my goal is

1:22:46 to like reach as many people as possible and like if

1:22:51 I can reach the 50 to 70 demo I don't know

1:22:53 I have that's not really something I'm thinking a lot about.

1:22:55 Of course I'm trying to optimize for the people

1:22:57 who actually do want to pay attention to tech.

1:22:59 And to be honest, these days most stories are tech stories.

1:23:03 Like everything is tech in some way.

1:23:05 So it's valuable to be on a lot of those surfaces and to weigh

1:23:08 in and to be the one that they trust and remember the face of.

1:23:12 So I yeah, it would probably make sense if I went and did a bunch

1:23:15 of things that boosted my profile and made

1:23:18 me more visible to regular people or something.

1:23:22 Um but yeah, I'm just I'm I'm too busy working on the next video.

1:23:26 So I'm not really doing as much of that stuff and I think that's okay for now.

1:23:30 Yeah, well, that that takes a lot of clarity.

1:23:32 Just to talk a bit more about like thoughts on AI.

1:23:35 You retweeted the AI Will Smith spaghetti test.

1:23:40 [laughter] The definitive test.

1:23:41 The definitive test.

1:23:43 What what's your take about where AI is

1:23:47 going and and how it'll impact like creators?

1:23:50 Like we've already talked a bit about like how,

1:23:52 you know, you're trying to do show stuff that's not AI,

1:23:55 but where do you think we'll be like in 6 months in in a year?

1:23:59 How are you using AI?

1:24:00 Like I I I I feel like you're cutting edge in so

1:24:02 many ways to hear your take on it would be interesting.

1:24:05 So one, I think clearly the AI generated imagery is going

1:24:10 to be higher and higher in quality until it approaches human-made content.

1:24:16 That's a kind of a default.

1:24:18 I don't know how long it's going to take,

1:24:19 but that's just we just assume that that's what is happening.

1:24:22 Uh my other assumption that I just kind

1:24:27 of hold that I don't have much reason to hold,

1:24:31 but I hold anyway, is that I think people will

1:24:33 still want to watch human-made craft and activity and performance.

1:24:39 And we're still going to watch humans play chess against

1:24:42 each other instead of AIs play chess against each other.

1:24:44 We're still going to watch movies made by people that tell

1:24:47 their life story rather than AI coming up with a story.

1:24:51 Even if it's graphically as high fidelity as what we'd make as a human,

1:24:56 I still believe that people want to watch human stuff.

1:25:00 And then yeah, I I just feel like there's there's endless opportunity.

1:25:04 I use AI as brainstorming tools mainly.

1:25:07 Like I talk to the chatbots about like at this point

1:25:10 they know they seem to know that I'm MKBHD and they're like,

1:25:13 "Here's some video ideas for your channel." And I'm like,

1:25:15 "This is super helpful." Um So yeah,

1:25:18 that's that's mainly where I use AI tools and then

1:25:20 from there we kind of take it to the, you know,

1:25:22 the creative team and we make what we want to make, but yeah.

1:25:25 Where do you think that YouTube is going like

1:25:27 the in terms of like the future of the platform?

1:25:28 Like last time we chatted you said like you'd

1:25:30 like to see them bring back the dislike button.

1:25:32 Um since then we've seen YouTube launch collabs,

1:25:35 uh the AI summary tool, AB title testing,

1:25:39 um dynamic ad insertions, um Ask Studio, a lot of like new AI creation tools.

1:25:46 Like is there anything you would like to see YouTube do?

1:25:49 Or things that you'd like to make them bring back.

1:25:51 Like put on your CEO hat, like you're Neal Mohan for a day.

1:25:54 What what are you doing?

1:25:55 Well, the the dislike button's still gone,

1:25:57 so I'm still going to I'm going to flag

1:25:59 that one again since I'm the CEO for the day.

1:26:01 Um No, I think they've done a lot of stuff.

1:26:03 I mean, I was waiting for title and thumbnail AB testing as pairs.

1:26:09 They did that.

1:26:10 That's huge.

1:26:11 You test that?

1:26:11 You try that?

1:26:12 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's Of course, yeah.

1:26:14 It's super interesting.

1:26:15 you have for that?

1:26:15 Like I I find that um I try to have one thumbnail with three titles.

1:26:21 And then as soon as I see which title

1:26:22 works then I keep that and then I try three

1:26:25 different thumbnails to that one title cuz you're changing multiple

1:26:28 variables and you're not really going to know what's working.

1:26:30 That's totally valid.

1:26:31 I'm a little more pairing them together.

1:26:33 Usually we pair a title and a thumbnail.

1:26:36 Um I also feel like I started just sort of doing

1:26:40 a bunch of testing at the beginning just cuz we had the feature

1:26:42 and then I learned that most of the tiny things that we'd

1:26:46 AB test didn't make more than a fraction of a percent difference.

1:26:50 So then now we really only AB test really very different titles and thumbnails.

1:26:55 bat.

1:26:55 Right off the bat.

1:26:56 Yeah, like we would have like a an iPhone

1:26:58 review or something or it's like, "Hmm,

1:27:00 should I use the orange iPhone or the blue iPhone?" So we'd do

1:27:03 a version of it's like no one is clicking because of the color of it.

1:27:06 They're clicking for the title and the sentiment and all

1:27:08 the rest of the things happening in that packaging.

1:27:11 So yeah, we'd stop testing like the tiny tests

1:27:13 and and more tests like should we test me taking

1:27:18 a picture with it or me using it from the front

1:27:20 of the phone like front versus back of the phone?

1:27:22 Sometimes the back of the phone is

1:27:23 a little more visually identifiable and iconic.

1:27:26 Yeah.

1:27:26 Stuff like that.

1:27:27 Yeah.

1:27:27 Or I've seen yeah, a lot of creators do

1:27:28 macro changes like like you mentioned and then go micro.

1:27:31 Like I think Ryan Trahan had a hotel video

1:27:33 where he had a bunch of different like compositions.

1:27:36 Yeah.

1:27:37 And then once there was a winner,

1:27:39 I was looking at this on ViewStats like the next one

1:27:41 he changes the copy in the tweet that was on there.

1:27:44 Or I saw Jimmy does it with like the protect the yacht video.

1:27:46 It's like multiple different compositions and just

1:27:48 totally different vantage points of the visual

1:27:50 and then he'll change out his shirt color or like something on the boat.

1:27:53 I He was talking about like open mouth versus closed mouth.

1:27:56 Like I do think that could make a couple percent difference,

1:27:58 but I I I do wonder about those other things.

1:28:01 Maybe at Jimmy's scale or Ryan's scale like 1% difference

1:28:05 is 10,000 more views so it's worth it, but I yeah,

1:28:09 I I just feel like I don't like when I'm

1:28:11 watching videos and the titles change and the thumbnails change

1:28:14 and I just realized I've been watching a video I've

1:28:15 already seen cuz it was a different title and thumbnail.

1:28:17 I'd rather nail it as early as I can and not keep changing it.

1:28:21 That's just me.

1:28:22 Um But yeah, I do see I'll see I'll see a lot of experimentation with that.

1:28:27 Yeah.

1:28:27 Marques another one of the most refreshing videos I think

1:28:29 I watched last year was the one about your mistakes.

1:28:32 Mhm.

1:28:32 What what why did you decide to make that video?

1:28:37 Because saying it out loud was way better than just taking

1:28:41 all that data for myself and then just sitting on it.

1:28:44 Um So the video for those who haven't seen it

1:28:47 was just going through the entire calendar year of videos,

1:28:51 every single mistake that I made, what we did about it,

1:28:54 how it happened, and then ideally how to minimize that happening in the future.

1:28:58 It's not a sexy video to do or a very popular thing to do,

1:29:01 but it does help for those who are like in the thick

1:29:04 of it watching every video to appreciate like what goes

1:29:07 into these videos and the level of like detail that the nitty-gritty

1:29:11 that we can get into with these videos and yeah,

1:29:13 a lot of the mistakes were like yeah,

1:29:15 I said I said I I wrote six iPhone 16 Air instead of iPhone Air.

1:29:20 That's my bad.

1:29:21 Like I I had a couple weird like errors like

1:29:23 that, but there were some interesting ones that we learned from.

1:29:25 Um so yeah, that's just sort of a peek behind

1:29:28 the curtain transparency type of video

1:29:31 that I think hopefully people appreciated.

1:29:32 Yeah.

1:29:33 Are there any other big mistakes that you

1:29:35 recall like when you're putting that together that video or as you put that out

1:29:37 like other things that seem to resonate with folks?

1:29:40 Like again, most people won't talk about that.

1:29:43 I don't think so.

1:29:44 I mean, it was I'd gotten the idea from and I shouted him out from the Tom Scott

1:29:49 video where he had I think it was 10

1:29:52 years of videos and the mistakes that he made.

1:29:54 But yeah, I think actually I've seen in comments of people being like,

1:29:57 "Oh, you know, sometimes these videos are sloppy.

1:29:59 Sometimes there's there's missing information.

1:30:01 Marques gets stuff wrong all the time." So

1:30:04 here's an actual collection of everything I've gotten wrong.

1:30:07 And you can be the judge for yourself if that's too much or not,

1:30:09 but at least now you have the facts.

1:30:11 Yeah, I want to play this last clip from Casey

1:30:15 from that same interview cuz he just went on about you.

1:30:19 [laughter] I want to get your reaction to this.

1:30:21 All right.

1:30:22 We will always want to to know about the latest technology.

1:30:25 There will always be new technology, and we need a voice we can trust.

1:30:29 And I think 30 years from now that that voice will be Marques Brownlee.

1:30:34 And that's why I think like if you're only judging him on what he's done today,

1:30:37 he's still the greatest YouTuber that's ever existed.

1:30:39 But I think 20 years from now there will be no

1:30:41 question in in what he has done for the world of YouTube.

1:30:47 Wow.

1:30:47 [snorts] Can you even think 30 years ahead?

1:30:50 Like do you do you want to be a YouTuber 30 years from now?

1:30:53 Are you thinking about like, you know, there's been a wave of retirements.

1:30:56 You've been on the platform for a while like Yeah.

1:31:00 Well, okay.

1:31:00 So I'm 30 I'm 32.

1:31:01 So 60 62.

1:31:03 Wow.

1:31:04 I'll probably be um Look, I I've always said like one,

1:31:09 I'm not about to predict the future, but two, I love making videos and I'll

1:31:12 make videos as long as I love making videos.

1:31:14 If today you like handed me a check for what

1:31:17 did KB lame just have like a $900 million or whatever?

1:31:20 If you handed me that, what would I do?

1:31:23 I'd probably just keep making videos.

1:31:25 I just enjoy making videos.

1:31:26 So if that's still true when I'm 62, then that's where I'll be.

1:31:31 But yeah, I will definitely have retired from Prisby then Prisby by then.

1:31:36 So I will probably have switched to golf or something less taxing on my knees.

1:31:41 But I'll probably keep making videos.

1:31:43 Can I can I ask a more personal question, Marques?

1:31:45 Yeah.

1:31:45 Um do you think about like having

1:31:47 a family and balancing the YouTube channel with that?

1:31:49 Cuz I've it's been like one of the most rewarding things to have a daughter,

1:31:55 but one of the hardest things to balance it

1:31:56 with being a YouTuber versus like the other jobs I've had.

1:31:59 I'm I'm wondering like are are are you Can

1:32:01 I ask if you're in a relationship right now?

1:32:02 Is it hard to balance that and and YouTube and and think about maybe a family?

1:32:06 I I don't I just maybe this is too personal,

1:32:08 but you seem to balance this so well.

1:32:10 I'm just wondering how do you think about Yeah.

1:32:13 I do think the the like work-life balance thing has been a learned skill.

1:32:21 I remember back in college like my dorm room,

1:32:25 it's like roll out of bed, the desk is right there.

1:32:27 Like you go from home to work and you're just in it.

1:32:31 And the second you feel like you're done,

1:32:33 you can just step back and you're in bed.

1:32:36 And so it's really easy to spend way too much time on work.

1:32:40 And then there was this moment in like 2016 where I

1:32:45 was looking to finally graduate from the dorm to get a house.

1:32:50 And part of my process was I should have a big

1:32:54 basement or something in this house so I can have a studio.

1:32:57 And I got really far in the process with one of these and then it fell through.

1:33:02 And that was actually a little blessing

1:33:04 in disguise cuz then we found this space.

1:33:06 And this is a a building we share with a bunch of other tenants,

1:33:09 but it is uh a separate work space.

1:33:12 So then I had a house and I had a commute to go to work,

1:33:18 spend all the time here in the thick of it, and then leave work behind.

1:33:24 And that was a really important different path to take

1:33:29 for me cuz I could still be like in the you know, roll out of bed, I'm at work.

1:33:33 Um so that was really big.

1:33:35 Now there's the separation.

1:33:37 Then the second half of that really is like I would go home and keep working,

1:33:41 but I think now with the team and with all

1:33:44 of our plans and with the sort of flow of the year,

1:33:47 there are many times during the year where

1:33:50 I feel like there is a really healthy balance,

1:33:53 if you want to call it that, of work and life.

1:33:57 So I feel good about that.

1:33:59 I think the team has enabled that for me

1:34:01 and I think that's what's made it possible to think ahead

1:34:03 about a family and like the types of things that take

1:34:05 a lot of time like having kids as you know.

1:34:08 Um but yeah, I'm glad I I I found that that path was or that the other one

1:34:14 falling through and then taking this path was a nice

1:34:16 blessing in disguise to actually uh make that discovery.

1:34:19 So, having that physical separation.

1:34:20 Yes.

1:34:21 Yeah.

1:34:22 Yeah, that's a big one.

1:34:23 Yeah, cuz I find a a lot of people

1:34:25 would talk the talk but you really walk the walk

1:34:27 having been here uh for a bit just seeing

1:34:30 the fact that your team is eating lunch together,

1:34:32 the fact that in this year in the life documentary multiple

1:34:34 times people said there's no expectation to work after 5:00 p.m.

1:34:39 Um and there's no mamba mentality.

1:34:42 Like which which was kind of interesting cuz I was like

1:34:44 Maybe a little in September, October.

1:34:46 Yeah, but then yeah, you can but then it dial dials up.

1:34:47 Yeah, I think and then having that expectation when it

1:34:49 does and the way you've set up this business, man,

1:34:51 it's just I I I I think it's a just something that uh I I really um look up

1:34:57 to and I think about like how we're building our business

1:35:00 and trying to emulate that um cuz it's it's refreshing,

1:35:04 it's rare and it's just a beautiful thing to see what you've done Yeah.

1:35:07 With not only your content but with your team.

1:35:09 That's that's the goal of the of pulling back the curtain a little bit.

1:35:12 Hopefully more people are able to build stuff like what we're making here.

1:35:16 Yeah.

1:35:17 Yeah.

1:35:17 Cool.

1:35:18 Well, thank you, Marques.

1:35:19 It's been a pleasure, man.

1:35:20 Thanks for having me.

1:35:20 is fun.

1:35:21 Yeah.

1:35:22 If you haven't already,

1:35:22 make sure you subscribe cuz we have another video coming out with Marques

1:35:25 where he does a full breakdown of one of his best videos ever,

1:35:27 how he made it, how he edited,

1:35:29 all the behind-the-scenes stuff I've never heard him talk about before.

1:35:32 And if you haven't, go to ythackpack.com and you will get our free

1:35:36 YouTube growth hack pack which just has our best tools, [music] tips,

1:35:39 and templates on how to grow on YouTube today and we update

1:35:42 it constantly after we do more and more interviews [music] with top creators.

1:35:46 It's all for free.

1:35:47 So, get it here at ythackpack.com or go to this QR code.