1 hours 4 minutes 21 seconds
🇬🇧 English
Speaker 1
00:00
All right, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2
00:01
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1
00:02
So today, Jarvis Johnson, who is a software engineer and YouTube creator, recently independent.
Speaker 2
00:08
Yeah, it's almost like the reverse now. Now I'm a YouTube creator and a software engineer.
Speaker 1
00:12
Yeah, I've been wondering that. So I was first drawn to you because you were posting these software videos. So Matt Hackett, who is Casey Neistat's co-founder, he posted 1 of your videos.
Speaker 2
00:24
I know he followed me on Twitter. I didn't know he posted 1 of my videos. But yeah, I think when I started out I was trying a bunch of things.
Speaker 2
00:33
And the first video that I had that got any traction was actually on Facebook, where I posted a video that was making fun of the technical interview in the software industry. And I posted it in a Facebook group called Hackathon Hackers or something like that. They kicked me out for self-promotion, but before they did it, it had started going viral. It got 300,000 views or something.
Speaker 2
00:58
So I was like, all right, guys.
Speaker 1
01:00
There are so many things I want to cover, but this is an interesting angle because you're both the beneficiary of the software industry, but then criticizing it, too. I'm wondering how you tow that line.
Speaker 2
01:14
The way I think about it is that the software industry is extremely popular and has gotten off kind of scot-free and extremely glorified for a really long time. And being in it and being someone who had this dream of entering the industry and being a productive, contributing member of it. And then coming and doing that, I both was really gratified with the work that I've been able to do, but also realized that there's a lot of stuff that people aren't talking about, for whatever reason.
Speaker 2
01:44
And just like liking to make fun of things, or liking to try and be funny and criticize things, it seemed like a good opportunity
Speaker 1
01:52
to do that. Peter T. Leeson Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 2
01:52
like a softball.
Speaker 1
01:53
Brian Z. Walker Yeah,
Speaker 2
01:54
because I was like, wow, everyone complains about this stuff and a lot of comedy is just connecting with what people are already feeling and thinking. So.
Speaker 1
02:05
Yeah. That's when we did Comedy Hack Day, we put out this video called Well Deserved, which was a place to sell your privilege. I don't know if you ever saw that video. I didn't.
Speaker 1
02:14
It was really good. But basically this was of the time when a sandwich video just happened and every company was putting out the same kind of soft music video with the big sweeping shots of San Francisco. And it was like, put it out, immediately works. Brian D.
Speaker 2
02:27
Walker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that that's what things like Silicon Valley the show do really well. And I think I benefited from the fact that I was coming from the inside.
Speaker 2
02:38
And so I had a lot of information that I could then condense down, hopefully, to something that was palatable to people who were both in and outside of the industry. Peter T.
Speaker 1
02:47
Leeson Yeah, but I mean, in spite of the criticism, I think you're actually doing a lot of good for the world, like getting people into programming. Brian D.
Speaker 2
02:53
Walker Yeah, yeah, and I, thank you. I don't think that I don't think about that as much when I'm making this stuff, but I do still, to this day, get a lot of messages from people who tell me that, and I'm super grateful. And I feel a little guilty because nowadays I'm not talking as much about tech stuff, but I think it's because I needed a bit of a break from it because I was spending all my time working my tech job and then if I was going home and working on tech videos, it felt like my whole life was consumed by this industry when really there's more dimensions to me as a person and also like what I wanted to do creatively.
Speaker 1
03:33
Yeah, of course, which I want to talk about, but I also want to cover the software stuff too.
Speaker 2
03:36
Oh, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1
03:37
yeah, yeah. So I watched 1 of your videos where you're talking about programming the TI-84. Oh
Speaker 2
03:43
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1
03:44
But how did you get into it, and then like how did you even end up moving to California?
Speaker 2
03:48
Okay, yeah. So, I, you know, there's like a longer story. I've definitely tried to dry out this narrative into a bunch of videos, But the basic story is that a friend of mine, who's still a really great friend of mine who lives in New York, turned me on to, he's an Android developer, or mobile developer at large now, he's just doing everything, But he turned me on to the TI-84, like TI basic language.
Speaker 2
04:21
And so I started playing around with that in my chemistry class, and we would just make silly games. I just remember making a thing where I could just move theta around. And that was the coolest thing in the world to me, just being able to make something that didn't exist, even though it was the most basic thing in the world. And then that was after we had already tried to learn C++.
Speaker 2
04:44
I tried to learn C++ when I was a sophomore in high school because I listened to a podcast called Geek Nights, which is like these 2 New York tech professionals who were talking about, I think there was just 2 22-year-old guys who made this podcast after they graduated, and I found it when I was like 14, and I was like, oh, interesting. And I tried to learn the program, and I failed. C++ is not a great first language to learn, especially if it's just from a book. And so then I came back to it with the TI basic, and that was a little bit easier to go down.
Speaker 2
05:15
And then I didn't really care for, I wasn't passionate about any of the top, any of the subjects that I was taking in high school. So when it came time to pick a college major, computer science was like a thing that felt like more palatable to me. And then I went to Georgia Tech for my undergrad in computer science, and I just found, like, such a supportive community there that it was able to help support my natural interest, but also help me through the hard times. Because it's not like, computer science is not an easy degree by any means.
Speaker 1
05:56
And so was there kind of an inkling early on that you're like, oh, okay, I could do this? Doing like CS, Following that whole path, that career path, all of it.
Speaker 2
06:07
Well, oh yeah, that's a good, yeah. So the other part of the question was like, moving out to California and stuff. I think the first moment of even thinking about, I hadn't at any point thought about career, like anything beyond college.
Speaker 2
06:22
I was just like, oh, go to college and then you get a job, I guess. But at Georgia Tech, there were a lot of career fairs and there were a lot of companies visiting,
Speaker 1
06:32
excuse me, there were a lot
Speaker 2
06:33
of companies visiting for recruiting purposes. And I was like, oh, Facebook is here, Microsoft is here, these are just things that I know of from my computer screen, but there are actual people that work there. And there was kind of a culture of glorifying that a little bit, where it's like, everybody's wearing company swag, and then it becomes a thing that everybody wants.
Speaker 2
06:51
And it kind of felt a bit like a game to me, where that was like, what people cared about, you're supposed to do. So it's kind of like how when your parents are like, get good grades, and you're like, not sure why you should get good grades. That's kind of how I felt. I was like, I guess I should go do this thing.
Speaker 2
07:06
But I was lucky enough to get some internships and I interned at Google when I was a sophomore. And that was my first big moment of whoa, this industry has got a whole thing happening. And from then on, I was like, OK, I'll probably come out here after I graduate.
Speaker 1
07:22
OK. And so then my understanding is then you interned at Yelp, right? Yeah. And you decided to work there.
Speaker 2
07:30
Yeah. I decided not to go back to Google, not for any reason other than wanting to try something else. I don't know. I had a lot of peers who were doing an internship their sophomore year, their freshman year, and then coming back over and over and over and over, and then going to work at that company full-time.
Speaker 2
07:48
And that never quite made sense to me, because the company can never value the intern that much, and you miss out on getting a lot of experience with a bunch of very different companies, because companies at different stages, or even at exactly the same stage, can operate completely differently. And you're never really going to know what you like, unless you try a couple of different things. So I went to Yelp just to try something new. And it was in San Francisco.
Speaker 2
08:16
I didn't like living in the South Bay when I was interning at Google and didn't want to do a big commute.
Speaker 1
08:21
So
Speaker 2
08:21
Yelp was a good fit there. I just had such good mentorship that I wanted to come back full time. Peter T.
Speaker 1
08:27
Leeson Yeah, I think a lot of these jobs can create a scarcity mindset in people and they think, oh man, I don't know if I could ever get the Google job again. The reality is, most likely you can. Brian D.
Speaker 1
08:36
Lewis, PhD
Speaker 2
08:36
Over a long enough time period, especially, because there's definitely false negative rates and false positive rates in the interviewing process, but There's also so many opportunities that it's bound to, even if you don't do well in the interview this year, you can try every 6 months, you can try every year, and there's so many of those opportunities that something's gonna land. It really only takes 1.
Speaker 1
08:58
Yeah, I thought that was actually a really nice piece of advice that you gave, Because you interviewed at Yelp twice. And most people think, oh man, once I fail the Facebook interview I'm going to be. Brian D.
Speaker 2
09:07
Lewis Yeah. Because you grow so much and so much changes. I also interviewed at Google or interviewed for the Google internship and failed it, and then got a callback for a different program, and they used my failed interview, and I didn't have to interview again.
Speaker 2
09:28
So it was a weird situation of, That's actually maybe a theme in my life, is this seemed like a failure at the time, but it was actually not. I just framed it that way in my head. And so I want us to be mindful of how we frame our failures and the narratives of our lives, because they may not actually be that. Objectively speaking.
Speaker 2
09:51
Paul Matzkoff
Speaker 1
09:52
Right, I mean, like you said, over a long enough time frame, too. When you keep doing things, you keep getting up.
Speaker 2
09:57
Ryan Reich Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Just keep getting up.
Speaker 1
09:59
Paul Matzkoff I know, well, that's really the story of it all. Especially with creators. At what point do you decide, okay, Yelp, this has been cool, I want to move to a smaller startup?
Speaker 2
10:12
So it was more, I definitely could have stayed at Yelp for a long time, because I had a lot of good people around me that were supporting me and stuff like that. My rate of growth, at least as I was perceiving it personally, was slowing down. But it was more that this opportunity came up that was not something that was in my purview, which was working at Patreon.
Speaker 2
10:42
I was in India at a wedding, And a friend of mine had just started working there and was like, hey, you should interview. And I was like, oh wow, should I? I don't know. Because it had always been, I had been a fan of, my YouTube and tech career are very intertwined because I knew about Patreon because I'd been following Hank and John Green, who are YouTubers who've been around since the beginning.
Speaker 2
11:08
And I'd been following them since very early on in their YouTube careers. They had started something called Subbable that Patreon then acquired, And that's how I was aware of Patreon. So I was like, oh, I could be working in like, I could be working on stuff that they care about and that they use. And that value proposition was like enough for me to at least interview.
Speaker 2
11:29
And so It was really my proximity to YouTube that inspired me to make the change. And then that, and I felt more confident in my technical skills. Because when I initially started out, I think I wanted to work at Google because I was afraid that I couldn't hack it at a smaller startup. Peter T.
Speaker 1
11:53
Leeson Meaning that you wouldn't have mentors?
Speaker 2
11:56
Yeah, or that I didn't know enough. I did a lot of hackathons and stuff in college, and I had all these friends who were just self-starters, who knew, who could really just build something all their own, the full stack or whatever. And I didn't feel super confident in my skill set.
Speaker 2
12:16
I wanted to work at a bigger company because I thought that I would learn patterns, I would develop a skill, something that I could then work downward from and know how things scale up for larger companies and then apply them to smaller companies. But I had enough confidence in myself at that point. Peter T.
Speaker 1
12:35
Leeson It's not necessarily a bad idea either. I mean, I heard you mention that you had student debt when you graduated. And I was in the same boat.
Speaker 1
12:42
I didn't work at the big company. That's a different kind of pain. Brian D.
Speaker 2
12:46
Robinson, Ph.D.: Yeah, no, actually that's another good example. I think there's a safety there. I think there's a lot of advice that's going to say, oh, you might learn so much more at the startup.
Speaker 2
12:56
And it's like, maybe that's true, but I think you should be asking, Am I going to learn the right stuff? Am I going to learn good habits and good patterns? Or am I going to be trying to build something with the worry that the company's going to collapse on my shoulders? And I'm going to be doing that for far less money.
Speaker 2
13:16
And if you've got your own personal finances to take care of, or you've got dependents, or you're helping out your family and stuff. I think that the smart decision, I know that the smart decision for me was to work at a bigger company out of college and take care of all that. Because, I mean, yeah, it was just like if I had student loans now, I wouldn't have been able to do half the stuff that I was able to do. Peter T.
Speaker 1
13:42
Leewy I mean, it's also a complete mindset shift. As soon as you're in the black, you're way more optimistic about things you could try out. Brian.
Speaker 2
13:50
And you're able to invest all that money that you're investing in student loans, you can now invest in your own financial safety net. Because that was not something that I had, and so I needed to build that for myself before I could put on your oxygen mask before helping children or whatever. Peter T.
Speaker 1
14:04
Leeson Yeah, dude, I want to talk about this in related to creative competence and risk aversion. But before we get
Speaker 2
14:10
there, I
Speaker 1
14:11
want to talk about you switching from an individual contributor as an engineer to a manager. Why did you want to do that?
Speaker 2
14:20
So I always enjoyed the act of engineering. I like making things. I like creative problem solving.
Speaker 2
14:30
But I had in the back of my head that there were other ways for me to contribute, to use more of my full skill set. Because I also had this background in college. I was a teaching assistant. I like breaking down the problems, and I like the people aspect of the technical roles.
Speaker 2
14:52
And it wasn't that I felt better suited to that than anyone else, but it was more that I noticed that it was rare that I cared about that stuff, that that stuff excited me as much as the technical problems. In my career, and in my life, I think about the rare combinations of skills that I have, rather than the absolute value of those abilities. And I'm like, well, if I can take this technical ability and I can also spend a lot of time talking to people and thinking about larger picture stuff and also career development and stuff like that. That's something that I'm curious about.
Speaker 2
15:35
All that combined with the fact that I had a really good manager at Yelp, who was an inspiration for what, and an example of what a good management could do for a team. And that was super cool to see. And I was like, wow, it would be neat to walk in that person's footsteps or to try to model myself after that. Peter T.
Speaker 1
16:00
Leeson Right. Well, I think it's 1 of these things where you're studying it in school or on the side, CS, and you think, man, this is fun, but I don't want to completely live in the console. And I very much felt like that doing hackathons and stuff on the side.
Speaker 1
16:15
I was an English major. I have interacted with people, right? But it's a little scary to think about. Brian D.
Speaker 1
16:21
Wu, Jr.:
Speaker 2
16:21
Yeah, no, that's definitely a thing. In college, I lived that lifestyle, that sort of archetypal, What's the kind word to use? I had my hood up, I was in my terminal, I used the cool Linux distributions or whatever.
Speaker 2
16:41
Brian Kardell
Speaker 1
16:41
Sweet keyboard.
Speaker 2
16:43
I didn't quite switch to Dvorak as my keyboard, but I judged people who were using Macs, which was like the loopiest 1. But yeah, I lived that life a little bit, and I just felt that I could combine more... Well, all of that's to say that I knew that I eventually wanted to try it out.
Speaker 2
17:08
But then the opportunity presented itself and it was at Patreon where I had already been there for almost 2 years. And I had a lot of trust and a lot of support from the people around me and in a pure circle of other people in management. So I wasn't flying completely solo. So it felt like the right environment to try it.
Speaker 2
17:38
And then I did it for almost a year, but leaving The tech industry was not a function of not enjoying that role or not thinking. I think that if I were to rejoin the tech industry now, I don't know whether or not I would go for a leadership role or an IC role. But I know that I definitely had more fuel in me for keeping going with management. Peter T.
Speaker 1
18:05
Leeson Interesting. Do you think the management experience has made you a better individual contributor? Because now my understanding is it's just you, right?
Speaker 1
18:13
You're a one-man shop. Has it improved your goal setting, your efficiency, any of that kind of stuff?
Speaker 2
18:21
I think a lot about process, and I think that thinking about process and operating efficiency is a super valuable skill set to learn. That was another attractive thing about management. It would be cool to learn the types of things that would make me a good manager, whether or not I use them as a manager in my career, or I use them wherever I go next, or with whatever I do next.
Speaker 2
18:45
So yes, I do think about that. I think I value my time a lot more than I would have. I think I'm just more aware of time. I'm more likely to spend money to solve a problem as a business expense than I am to do it myself, even if the part of me that grew up poor and doesn't like spending money is thinking,
Speaker 1
19:10
oh no, this is going to be a
Speaker 2
19:11
waste of money. I'm better at arranging the pieces to go, no, no, no, this is the right way to. Peter T.
Speaker 1
19:16
Leeson Yeah, well that's also a dangerous trap where you think, I can do it better than anyone else, therefore I have to do this incredibly time-intensive process.
Speaker 2
19:26
Brian D. Lewis That's another thing that's super valuable about management, is giving away and trust, Not being the person to actually write the code in a lot of situations is a super valuable exercise because you have to delegate and you have to trust, and you have to know that you're, yeah, the whole thing doesn't rest on you, I think that that's like a useful skill for anybody to have.
Speaker 1
19:57
Yeah, no, I'm not much a fan for business books, but there's 1 called the e-myth. I don't know if you've ever read
Speaker 2
20:02
that 1.
Speaker 1
20:03
It's 1 of, in my opinion, the few good ones. It could be summarized in a couple pages. But basically it's like most people who are, say, like an engineer, want to go out and do their own thing because they're like, oh man, I won't have to deal with the bullshit of the company life, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1
20:19
And in doing so, they don't really realize that running your own business is mostly not writing code. It's doing sales and all
Speaker 2
20:25
that stuff.
Speaker 1
20:26
And the big takeaway is you need to spend more time working on your business, not in your business. And that's what you learn when you start managing people. Then you can abstract it and you can get better at that.
Speaker 2
20:36
Brian D. Walker, Ph.D.: Yeah, I think that's honestly what I go through a lot now with YouTube is that a lot of the time I'm spending on anything is not necessarily on creating content. It's on essentially management tasks, and not the IC work.
Speaker 2
20:53
And I do draw a lot of parallels between making videos and software engineering, because to me it all scratches the same itch of just making something, bringing something into existence. My Adobe Premiere setup feels a lot like my Vim setup where I've got JKL or whatever to move things around. And Yeah, I definitely agree with that.
Speaker 1
21:18
Peter. And so what was the moment? Was it just like, oh, okay, I can monetize my channel to a certain amount, I can make the jump? Or was there a particular moment that made you want to fully break from Patreon?
Speaker 2
21:30
Brian. So I've mentioned before that I'm a very risk-averse person. So it took me a while to think of doing YouTube stuff full-time as a clean break. I think I had a bunch of contingency plans in my head of, well, maybe I'll work part-time, or maybe I'll do this, or maybe I'll do that.
Speaker 2
21:51
And it took a while to say, no, I need to do this clean break thing because otherwise I'm never going to grow. It's possible that I don't even invest as much as I can in this creative endeavor because I am afraid, I'm trying to hold on to 2 things. There wasn't necessarily a threshold that I necessarily hit. Monetarily?
Speaker 2
22:20
Monetarily, yeah. It was more that I had spent about a year at that point juggling both. In some ways, I'm amazed that I was able to do my regular job and also YouTube because I would wake up at 6 a.m. And write or work on a video.
Speaker 2
22:42
The benefit of the tech industry is that you could go into work at 10 or even 11 and it's not like weird. And so I would try to use that to my advantage. So I would wake up like hyper early and then like kind of
Speaker 1
22:53
work half.
Speaker 2
22:54
Yeah, work 2 jobs essentially. And I can't do that now. Maybe, which is maybe a good thing.
Speaker 2
23:02
In my head even. So even though it's my only job now doing YouTube stuff, I can't harness that energy. You
Speaker 1
23:13
mean you got soft? Maybe. It's different.
Speaker 1
23:16
You're probably just much healthier.
Speaker 2
23:17
Yeah, I think it's just healthier. Because the point that I was getting at with that is I hit a breaking point where I was like, this is no longer sustainable. Because it's like I don't see my friends or anything like that.
Speaker 2
23:27
I'm just this working machine. Because the other part of that was I was also working weekends. And while still just trying to figure out, like a lot of my YouTube stuff is like trying to figure things out, like with what I want to even make, rather than making stuff sometimes. So I would just spend a lot of time researching stuff or in empty Word documents.
Speaker 2
23:51
It's just like never feeling satisfied with your output is a really dangerous. Interesting.
Speaker 1
23:57
So was there any 1 particular moment where you're just underwater on everything and it just broke? Or how did it go? Brian D.
Speaker 1
24:04
Walker, Ph.D.:
Speaker 2
24:05
Yeah, I think there was this time towards the end of last year where when I started managing, I kind of made an agreement with myself not to do any IC work, because I thought that was going to help me transition better. I was just doing a lot more coaching and stuff, because the benefit of switching into management at a company that I'd already been in IC at is I had a lot of context on stuff. So I was able to use that to not actually have to write the code myself.
Speaker 2
24:34
Then there was a period towards the end of the year where we had switched into doing work that required a lot of back-end expertise and our team load out didn't have people who had that background at the company. A lot of people who were willing to learn, which was amazing, but what we needed was a back-end tech lead, and that was a role that I've held before. But we couldn't just grab that person. It all takes time, so I also started doing IC work again.
Speaker 2
25:06
And when I was doing IC work and management work and making videos, I was like, I can't keep doing this. This is the worst. And so then, what also happened, at the same time was that YouTube started blowing up. And my YouTube had gone from a thing that I could just take a month off if I really needed to, to something where I had like 300,000 or 400,000 subscribers.
Speaker 2
25:34
Not overnight, but over a month, basically. Peter T.
Speaker 1
25:37
Leeson Yeah, which is insane growth. Brian W. Brown
Speaker 2
25:38
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, yeah, we can talk about that. And I was like, well, there's an opportunity here.
Speaker 2
25:46
What happens if I'm actually able to put more into this? Because at a certain point, I was only making a video every 2 weeks or a month, if that. And things were still happening, So I really wanted to, I didn't want the ship to sail without me capitalizing on it a little bit. I'm not really a regrets person, but I'm like, oh yeah, I definitely felt like I left a lot on the table in that time because I couldn't capitalize on the moment.
Speaker 2
26:16
Because I think that the moment has passed and now I'm waiting for the next moment in terms of growth. Because I think that YouTube growth happens in waves. Peter T.
Speaker 1
26:27
Leewardt Well, I mean, based on my limited experience, It's like you get caught in the algorithm for whatever particular reason and it just goes. But then other times it's really slow, just plodding along. Brian D.
Speaker 2
26:39
Lewis Yeah. No, that's a thing for sure. It's something that I've observed happening to a bunch of other channels where it almost feels like a storm in terms of if you look at the analytics, it's like, Oh, you're suddenly gaining thousands of subscribers a day.
Speaker 2
26:55
And and then that, that, that's not happening for like, whereas like normally maybe you're getting 500 or 1,000 subscribers a day or 200 or something like that. And yeah, that storm passes eventually. And while it's there, I do think that there's ways to capitalize on it. And I was like, okay, I don't know how long this moment's going to last, but Maybe this is something I could do for more of my time.
Speaker 2
27:33
So I started thinking about it, having conversations. 1 conversation I had was with Jack Conte, the CEO of Patreon. He has always been super supportive of me. And so I have an immense gratitude to him.
Speaker 2
27:48
Because I just remember having like 2,000 YouTube subscribers and having a one-on-one with him just about YouTube, where I was just like, I don't know. Were they
Speaker 1
27:56
all clued in, everyone at your work? Well, I
Speaker 2
27:58
think people were aware. Me and another co-worker had started our channels at the same time, and hers blew up kind of immediately. So I think everyone was kind of aware that a couple of us were doing YouTube stuff.
Speaker 2
28:11
And I remember going to Jack and being like, I don't know what's going on. I feel like I'm making these bangers. And it's just not happening. And we made this.
Speaker 2
28:22
He went through this exercise of it's the beginning of the next year.
Speaker 1
28:31
What is the press release?
Speaker 2
28:33
Last year was your perfect year. What is the press release for what happened? And it's like, well, I made these videos.
Speaker 2
28:39
It's like, how many subscribers do you have? What is your relationship with your fans? And going through that exercise just put me at ease about Whether or not I was on like the right track in And I had a conversation and so like that was just like I was just continuing to chow along and I had a I called Jack and told him that I was thinking about potentially doing YouTube more full-time. And he was kind of like, as a creator, you've gotta do this.
Speaker 2
29:15
Or it was more like, as a CEO, I don't want you to leave, but as a creator, you need to do this. You're going to kick yourself if you don't seize this opportunity. But maybe there's something we could work out in the middle, and so we worked on that for a bit. It was several months before I eventually, I was initially planning to do something more part-time, but I eventually decided to make the clean break.
Speaker 2
29:42
But I tried to have the most seamless transition out where I stayed on for, essentially I put in my 3 months notice, rather than my 2 weeks or whatever, to wrap up projects and finish things up. And then after having those conversations, it just became more and more real. I knew that I had saved enough money to give it a period of time. If I wanted to spend a year without having to worry about making money from YouTube, I would be able to do that.
Speaker 2
30:11
Because I saved pretty aggressively after I paid off my student loans, for something. I don't know what for. But it's for the personal capital, like investing in yourself. And so I'm like, yeah, from that it just became like, okay, this is more and more feasible to take the leap and who knows how long it'll last.
Speaker 1
30:32
I mean, it's tricky because obviously YouTube's fickle. But I think the relationship between creators and entrepreneurs is very similar. You just feel like, oh shit, now is the time to build this channel.
Speaker 1
30:46
I'm having the early drips of users come in, like I have to jump on this right now. Brian.
Speaker 2
30:51
There's a clear market opportunity here. Unfortunately, my brain does think about things in those terms often, so I have to pull myself back and just like making stuff that I want to.
Speaker 1
31:05
So this is the next thing I wanted to talk about. So you mentioned it already, like the relationship with fans and it's something that I'm always curious about with our channel that I need to do a better job of, like talking to the users basically. Right, Right.
Speaker 1
31:19
But then on the other hand you're like, I kind of want to make the
Speaker 2
31:20
stuff I want to make. Yeah. And so how do you balance that?
Speaker 2
31:23
Yeah. Well, it's definitely not easy. And I take a lot from the fact that I just witnessed a lot of user interviews and creator interviews when I was at Patreon. And thinking about how random users relate to a product.
Speaker 2
31:46
A lot of people, just humans in general, don't know what they want. That's dismissive, but I want to bring that back with we don't know what we want, but at the same time, what we are saying we want does mean something. It does indicate some, maybe it's a problem. In the user experience world, you're trying to get at the underlying problem that someone's having so you can address that.
Speaker 2
32:14
And That's kind of how I try to take the criticism when I'm thinking about it. YouTube comments hurt my feelings sometimes. Same. I'm not going to lie about that.
Speaker 2
32:30
I'm not perfect at this, but in terms of how I let it inform the content, I do a lot of reach-outs and asking people what they want to see, but I don't take it as requests.
Speaker 1
32:41
Who do you reach out to?
Speaker 2
32:44
I'll do a poll on the YouTube community tab, or I'll tweet something, or I'll post something on the Instagram question and answer thing, which I wish it was easier to export the answers from that. And I use that as a sense of taking the pulse on things, but you also have to qualify that with like, or couch it in, this is the 5% of my audience that actually follows me on social media, or this is the percentage of people who will actually say something. And so you've got to use that as 1 data point, but then you're also looking at your actual metrics where you want to take things.
Speaker 2
33:34
It's kind of like in the tech world, or I guess in the product world, there's this thought that you can't iterate yourself to a product vision.
Speaker 1
33:42
Yeah, I've heard this before. It's like, all these people are just like A-B testing and reaching some local maximum.
Speaker 2
33:47
Exactly. This is the 1 place I think where I think that's exactly how I think about it. Where I'm like, you can find those local extremities but not know that there's this absolute maximum. So you've still got to have your vision.
Speaker 2
34:11
That's a real thing. There's no amount of listening. Listening to people is extremely important, but I also don't know if, there's no amount of listening to people that ultimately makes you successful. It's just like a piece, it's like an important piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 2
34:26
Because you don't want to be out of touch. You have to know how your stuff is being received if you are making stuff for people to enjoy. Because as much as I like the concept of like, I made this thing, I don't care how you feel about it, usually people are making something to be enjoyed by people or for their message to be received and you do have to have met you have to have some idea of whether or not that's happening. Yeah.
Speaker 2
34:54
And so you can't you turn into Kanye if you're like you turn into like 2019 Kanye if you like don't really care what people think and you're just like going off your own ego. So it's a delicate balance, but I try to look at everything in a beautiful soup.
Speaker 1
35:12
Yeah, was there any point where you realized that your, because you haven't put out that many videos.
Speaker 2
35:18
I put out like 70 videos, so it's not that many.
Speaker 1
35:20
Which for people who don't pay attention to YouTubers, that's nothing.
Speaker 2
35:23
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, yeah, no, for sure.
Speaker 1
35:26
Yeah, I mean, you do great work. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2
35:28
People put out a
Speaker 1
35:29
video a day, for example.
Speaker 2
35:30
Yeah, yeah, exactly. We'll go ahead with your question.
Speaker 1
35:34
My question was, was there any particular learning where things really started to click for you? When it really started to grow, was it adopting the mentality of going all in? Was it a certain stylistic change?
Speaker 1
35:46
Obviously the tech videos did well for you. Brian Feroldi
Speaker 2
35:49
Yeah, I think the first thing that I figured out worked were tech videos. And so then my channel became me doing stuff that I wanted to do, and then when the numbers would start to die down, I would make a tech video. What bothered me is that that's maybe the most confident I've ever felt in video ideas and how things will do.
Speaker 2
36:15
Because I made a video called Why You Shouldn't Be a Software Engineer. And I made it in preparation to make a video about me getting braces and talking about the journey of that, because I knew that that would pop up the impressions or whatever. And then that video did so well. And it's something that I spent so little time on.
Speaker 2
36:38
And it taught me a lot about how the effort that you put in doesn't mean anything for the quality, it doesn't mean anything for how it will be received. And also, yeah, you just can't judge. I think me as a person, and I think a lot of people, have just, I'll just talk about myself. I have a completely whacked out idea of how I value my own work and my own output.
Speaker 2
37:04
And it's lessons like that. There's tons of lessons on my channel of how I'm completely out of touch with that. But I was saying something about the tech video. Or was there a moment that I felt like I figured it out?
Speaker 2
37:23
I think no, except for the fact that I knew that tech videos did better than non-tech videos, so I would throw tech videos in there to tentpole the other content while I was continuing to experience.
Speaker 1
37:37
Peter T. Leeson But it's a
Speaker 2
37:37
weird strategy.
Speaker 1
37:38
Because now if you look at your videos, there are some tech videos still, but the lion's share of them are not. And not that many channels do that. And not that many companies think like, okay, we're going to have like this product for this audience and then this product for this audience.
Speaker 1
37:53
And like the overlap might not be the same.
Speaker 2
37:54
Yeah, in my mind, there was a thread that connected all of that stuff. And I still think there is a thread that connects all that stuff, but a lot of what dictates what does well and what doesn't is the click-through rate on the thing. And if you see a through line between, I made a video called The Worst Software Engineering Advice I've Ever Seen.
Speaker 2
38:29
And it was my first foray into the commentary genre because I was really enjoying watching those videos on YouTube. And the reason I made that video is because I was like, okay, I know that people like tech videos from this channel and I really like commentary videos. So let me make a tech commentary video that I can then pivot, hopefully, into just commentary videos. Because I wanted to get people used to that format for me so that then I could remove the tech.
Speaker 2
38:58
But what I misjudged at the time, I don't think it ended up mattering a great deal, but what I misjudged at the time was that the click-through on, even though at the end of that software engineering advice video I talked about this channel called 5 Minute Crafts, when I actually made a video about 5 minute crafts, no 1 clicked on it. And that's fine, but it's an indication of audience expectation and like the story that you're telling to the audience and the value that that audience gets from your channel. So I'm I found out that there are just a lot of people the value that they got from my channel was strongly correlated with like me talking about tech because they wanted to get this like information from tech. And so if that value prop wasn't in the wasn't immediately obvious then they wouldn't click on it.
Speaker 2
39:51
That was the takeaway from that moment.
Speaker 1
39:56
Yeah. It's tricky, man. There are so many weird things that you can do. Just depending on title.
Speaker 1
40:01
At the end of the day, you just keep pushing it out. It seems.
Speaker 2
40:04
Brian. No, for sure, for sure. I guess the point of all of that and of learning all of that was to develop a, I did have a content strategy of like, how am I... I realized that you're not really...
Speaker 2
40:29
What's the phrase? You can't choose what you're famous for, or whatever. I made some tech videos because they were getting the most traction, but then it kind of got away from me. And even though my channel wasn't a tech channel to me, it was a tech channel to other people.
Speaker 2
40:44
And I've run the numbers. At no point did my channel have more than 50% tech videos. Because in my head, I was like, that was never the thing. But now to this day, of my 70 videos, 20 of them are tech videos.
Speaker 2
40:58
But the thing that resonated with the first bigger audience was that. And so that's what it was to them. And so when I made stuff outside of that, I had to have stronger hypotheses about the other people that I was reaching and how people were converting across the different styles of video.
Speaker 1
41:18
I mean, I think this is why, in many ways, because humans are so good at rationalizing things, they just say, okay, fine. You see it happen with products all the time. In many ways, it's great, right?
Speaker 1
41:30
Provided it's not harming the world in a massive way. But I think it's hard when you view yourself maybe more in the artist category.
Speaker 2
41:39
I don't know. I think, yeah. I guess a big moment where I was like, oh no, this is not what I'm going for, for me on my channel was it, on 1 of my videos, they were saying, oh, great information, but I really wish it didn't have all the comedy sketches in it.
Speaker 2
41:55
Couldn't you just get straight to the information? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, oh no, you've come to the wrong place.
Speaker 2
42:01
I'm actually only talking about that information so that someone will watch me try to be funny.
Speaker 1
42:06
It's my main critique of a lot of tech, whatever, sub-communities where it's all upload based. There's not a lot of joy. And I think it pushes people out.
Speaker 2
42:15
Yeah. And I think that tech is something that I'm still, I still want to talk about, but I don't have a lot of energy for it in this current moment, and I haven't figured out what I want my voice to be there. Because I eventually made a second channel for tech stuff and I just haven't really posted on it. But my first video that I posted did well, so I could tell that the audience is still running.
Speaker 2
42:44
Peter.
Speaker 1
42:45
I thought they were good. I watched this. And then you did the AMA, which is funny.
Speaker 2
42:50
I accidentally made that live video public, and I have an edited version of that for an actual post. But then I was just like, all right, maybe we'll just leave. I want to get back to that, but I just haven't, I don't have my shit together, is essentially the.
Speaker 1
43:10
And it's also fair when you're like, hey listen, I've expressed these certain ideas, like I know that many people might want to hear the same thing over and over again, but that's not really where I'm going
Speaker 2
43:19
right now. And I think that I'm sure I can do some sort of advice or Q&A type thing, but it's just not where my attention is right now. And so A lot of what I talk about is a function of where my attention is.
Speaker 1
43:32
Peter. Which is great. Yeah. So you did get a bunch of questions, some tech related from Twitter.
Speaker 1
43:36
Oh yeah,
Speaker 2
43:36
and that's totally chill.
Speaker 1
43:38
So 1 question I really liked was from Nathan Alibach.
Speaker 2
43:41
So you know who this is? He runs the Stakehams Twitter account.
Speaker 1
43:45
Oh, that's hilarious. I don't even, Is the Stakehams Twitter account good?
Speaker 2
43:50
It's a great example of what brand Twitter has turned into. It's kind of like the anti-brand Twitter brand. So it's
Speaker 1
43:59
like the Moon Pie Twitter?
Speaker 2
44:00
Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great. I made a couple of videos about brand Twitter, and I met Nathan through that on the internet, and we've kept in touch.
Speaker 2
44:09
Yeah, great guy.
Speaker 1
44:10
That's cool. I like that guy. I'm very much digging that genre.
Speaker 1
44:15
So his question is, are content creators responsible in any capacity for their audiences? Brian
Speaker 2
44:20
D. Williams. I think that's a really good question, and I think the answer is absolutely yes. In a big capacity, maybe not 100% responsible.
Speaker 2
44:32
Because if someone who, like you get this with PewDiePie. He's so big. Yeah, and it's like if anyone does anything bad in his name, it's like what is his responsibility to that? And I think that he does have a responsibility, because I think that there's a power.
Speaker 2
44:52
He's not solely responsible for these people because they're free-thinking individuals, but when you have that power dynamic, when you have that power dynamic, there are going to be people who are doing things for you or for your – to get your attention or to benefit from your brand or your name or whatever. And I think the best I can do in that situation is to try to call out when things don't seem like right to me. Like if someone like says something mean in my name or something, I feel a responsibility to call that out and to try to look within myself as to why a person who acted that way enjoys my content. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2
45:48
And then make whatever changes are necessary. I've been lucky enough that I haven't run into this. Peter. I think you see it a lot with these big influencers.
Speaker 1
45:58
The 1 that comes to mind always is Rogan. At this point, or PewDiePie, they're making something and because of their actions, maybe their action in a certain interview was not preparing a lot. And so therefore you're somewhat responsible for misinforming millions of people.
Speaker 1
46:15
Brian.
Speaker 2
46:15
Right, right. I think that creators should be, on the whole, like we should all feel a great sense of responsibility. That's really what I'm trying to get at.
Speaker 2
46:27
I don't want to call out anyone in particular, but I just think that when you have a platform and you have influence over people, it's not fair that you get all the benefits of that without any of the consequences. And so, you know, with influencer marketing, I think a thing I have a problem with is when people are selling products that could be actively harmful to their audiences to make a quick buck. That's like, I get some brand offers now where I get stressed out over trying to look into whether or not the company is something that I could support. And I think that that's right.
Speaker 2
47:10
I think that we should feel a little more pain there and not just like, oh yeah, sign the check, pay me a bunch of money.
Speaker 1
47:17
Well, I mean, even more abstractly, you're kind of in the business of consuming people's attention. Yeah. It's a little complicated there.
Speaker 2
47:27
Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like there is a trust that is built between the audience and the creator. I want people to know that I am thinking about what I'm saying, how I'm saying it, what I'm promoting, the type of behavior, in terms of product or behaviors that I'm promoting, what I'm calling out.
Speaker 2
47:49
I think that a lot of times, what I choose to talk about specifically is the result of a lot of thought and how is this going to be perceived? Am I punching down? I think it's a thing that we should all be. When we're responsible for people's attention, we should not take that lightly.
Speaker 1
48:11
Peter. Yeah, absolutely. And it can be deceptive, because you see your thumbnails and you're like, ah, this is just some like YouTube-y stuff. But it's a little more thoughtful than that.
Speaker 2
48:18
Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, totally. And that's like kind of the game that you play.
Speaker 2
48:22
Yeah.
Speaker 1
48:23
We haven't gone down that path yet.
Speaker 2
48:24
Yeah. I mean, for me, the most is that I've made videos that are called like, this is the worst channel on YouTube, where that's like hyperbole for sure. But at the same time, if you come in for that and then you stick around and then you see the actual statement that I'm trying to make, then it's like, I don't feel too bad about that. Peter Chapman
Speaker 1
48:41
That's fine. You're not as negative as your titles would make you seem.
Speaker 2
48:44
Brian D. Roberts That's actually fascinating to me as well. I've been experimenting with how to, are you familiar with Mr.
Speaker 2
48:51
Beast? He's a huge YouTuber, 1 of the biggest YouTubers right now who's new. A lot of what he does is gives away a bunch of money to a homeless person, or he puts 100 million Orbeez in his friend's backyard. These giant stunts that involve a lot of money.
Speaker 2
49:08
Casey Neistat just had him on doing an interview. It's maybe a good intro to him, but he's given away, he's got 18 million subscribers right now, he's given away $2 million or something. And it's fascinating because 1 of the things that he says is that a lot of people think you need negativity for clicks, but you can also do clickbait with positivity. I'm still trying to figure out how to like, because I think I'm a pretty optimistic, positive, and kind of cheesy person.
Speaker 2
49:37
And I'm trying to figure out how to translate that, but I haven't quite gotten there yet.
Speaker 1
49:43
Yeah, I mean, because that angle can also be off-putting. Because like, oh Jarvis is just like virtue signaling here.
Speaker 2
49:49
Look how good I am. Brian. Right, right, right.
Speaker 2
49:51
And it's like, no, no, no. It's like, let's just try to be real here. Negativity is just like an attention grabber, but a lot of people do, when you frame something like that, do walk away with a negative perception or the wrong perception. And you know, going back to the responsibility point, there have been situations where people are like, oh, we have to do this to get back at this person.
Speaker 2
50:17
And I was like, no, that's not how we operate here. And I try to, whenever I've seen that happen, which hasn't been much, I try to say, no, we use our words and we use well-thought-out criticism as our ammunition because I don't want people to go harass anybody. Paul Matzkoff
Speaker 1
50:40
Yeah, that's a great point. All right, Taylor asks, In what way do you think content creation can benefit one's career in the tech industry?
Speaker 2
50:49
I find a lot of similarities between creating content and making software. You've got point A and point B. You want to get to this end via this means, and you're going to swap out the means of a video or a piece of software.
Speaker 2
51:07
So exercising that in different mediums is ultimately going to help you think about ways to solve problems. You'll apply something that you learned. I apply a lot of what I've learned in software in making videos. And in terms of how you navigate your timeline, or even other stuff.
Speaker 2
51:34
But there's another way that it helps, I think, where you are able to build a personal brand.
Speaker 1
51:48
But that's tricky though, right? I think the question is, I mean, you can cut it in multiple ways, but that visibility is both great until it isn't for certain people.
Speaker 2
52:00
And do you even want this content to be related at all to tech? I think that's another thing to be... Paul
Speaker 1
52:09
Matzkoff Yeah, because I see people asking about it all the time, and you're like, well, maybe I don't want to talk about my work-related stuff all the time. And so if your videos were just people smashing pies in your face, that's awesome. But that's not necessarily beneficial or detrimental.
Speaker 1
52:27
Brian.
Speaker 2
52:27
Yeah, but another way that it could help if you want to make content that is around tech, then if you're teaching something, obviously, you'll understand things better when you have to frame it towards an audience that doesn't understand the thing. That was something that I learned from being a teaching assistant. Where I was like, let's talk about depth first search or whatever.
Speaker 2
52:52
Let's talk about Dijkstra's algorithm. And then working from completely no understanding to understanding. You get a much better understanding of it yourself, of the ins and outs.
Speaker 1
53:03
Well, that's what really drew me into your software videos, because I was like, oh, he's trying to help people out and not, I mean, obviously you are advancing your personal brand or whatever, but For the most part, it's about making something that's fun and helping people out. And I think to this question, content creation, benefiting your career, I think most people would read that and think, oh, I should write medium posts like everyone else.
Speaker 2
53:30
And
Speaker 1
53:30
that's actually not where the gains come from.
Speaker 2
53:32
Ryan Yonko, I never even thought about my tech videos as benefiting my tech career because it really was just coming from a point of like, I want to make some YouTube videos, I want to cut my teeth in this process, and also here's some information that I just have.
Speaker 1
53:51
Here's stuff I know about.
Speaker 2
53:52
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here it is to you. And also I think that when I see people struggling with stuff that I've struggled with, or I think I've gone through and realized it wasn't as big of a deal as I thought, then I'm like, oh my god, let me save you some anxiety.
Speaker 1
54:10
Yeah, yeah, I'm so pro accessible role models and that's why I very much dig these channels.
Speaker 2
54:16
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1
54:17
That's awesome. All right, so I want to talk about a couple more things. 1 thing I want to talk about is your podcast that you started when you were a teenager.
Speaker 1
54:24
I haven't listened to that. Is that still online somewhere?
Speaker 2
54:27
Kind of. I've put snippets in videos. Other than that, not so much.
Speaker 1
54:34
Because that's like OG podcasting.
Speaker 2
54:37
Yeah, that was like 2006, 2007. My co-host of that podcast, we were actually starting a new podcast. And Our first episode is a little bit talking about how it has clips from that podcast in it.
Speaker 2
54:54
Yeah, I got into podcasts from the same thing that I got into software from. And whenever I get into something, I'm like, oh, I want to do that. That's usually what it is. And so whenever I find something that's super cool, I'm like, oh, I like that, I want to do that.
Speaker 2
55:10
Paul Wiltz
Speaker 1
55:11
Anything I've ever learned well has been because I want to make the thing. Anything I've learned poorly has been because you need to learn this. Never.
Speaker 2
55:19
Brian. I'm finding that so much now where I'm wanting to learn about so many things that I should have learned in high school or whatever, about history or something. Where I'm like, oh, it just wasn't the right medium or I wasn't super jazzed. I almost feel like my brain has changed and how I want to absorb information.
Speaker 2
55:40
But maybe it's just that the stakes of everything have changed and I'm less stressed out about getting the grade and more interested in just learning things.
Speaker 1
55:48
Yes, learning for fun. Also not having to learn 7 things at once. 7 different topics, which seems like broken as well.
Speaker 2
55:55
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1
55:56
But yeah, how old are you now?
Speaker 2
55:58
I'm 26.
Speaker 1
55:59
About to
Speaker 2
55:59
turn 27. So
Speaker 1
56:00
a 27-year-old could crush high school.
Speaker 2
56:02
Yeah, put me back in, coach.
Speaker 1
56:06
Also, you do comedy stuff, too. So someone asked, Octopus Blues asks, what lessons did improv teach you and what would you recommend other people do?
Speaker 2
56:17
I recommend taking 1 improv class to everybody. Improv taught me a lot about team dynamics. I performed with a team in San Francisco for about a year doing a weekly show, or bi-weekly, or whatever.
Speaker 2
56:38
And just the relationships that you build, and the improv is all about not being the star of the show, and about setting up your teammates for slam dunks. I took a lot from that with management, where it's like, how do I make sure that my team is able to, how do I set them up so that they look really awesome? And there's a lot of satisfaction in that. Like getting somebody a promotion or whatever, it feels a lot like calling back to somebody's joke from the first beat or whatever and allowing them to knock it down.
Speaker 2
57:17
And improv helps you a lot with getting out of your comfort zone and feeling accepted, knowing that what you're afraid of typically is not rational, even though you feel it. So it's very real. But when you put it out there, you realize that people are accepting. Like improv's a very accepting place where you can just be like, I don't know if this is gonna land, but I'm just gonna say it, and people are, they don't ridicule you for it, so it's a very safe environment to just feel more comfortable.
Speaker 2
57:50
Yeah, there's a lot I think that can be learned from improv.
Speaker 1
57:54
I think it gets thrown under the bus in many ways as kind of cheeseball.
Speaker 2
57:58
It's a great punchline, yeah.
Speaker 1
57:59
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But your point's great. Just take 1, there's no downside to taking 1 class.
Speaker 1
58:04
Brian D.
Speaker 2
58:04
Lewis Yeah, and there's even a place where you can do a drop-in class for a Saturday afternoon in games in San Francisco. It's like 15 bucks, 3 hour class. Get in, get out, meet a bunch of new people.
Speaker 2
58:17
It's cool. Yeah. Cool.
Speaker 1
58:21
All right, so my last question is predictions. What is the predictions of both YouTube creators and then content creation in general in the next handful of years?
Speaker 2
58:31
Oh, interesting. So wait, prediction of like where the like.
Speaker 1
58:38
Where is the industry going? Like what things are going to get traction? Obviously you can't know.
Speaker 2
58:45
Yeah, no, no, no. I think that TikTok is going to produce some people, some more quote unquote traditional creators. I think there are people who are doing really interesting stuff on that platform, But there's a lot of noise, or I feel mean even calling it noise, but there's a lot of what people make fun of TikTok for also there.
Speaker 2
59:11
So I think that that will be the next thing where People are like, oh, YouTuber is a word that is used to describe Logan Paul's of the world, where it has a negative connotation. And I hope that that will change in the future. I hope that YouTube becomes a more supportive place for creators of all kinds, where they're not constantly fighting against monetization and stability. Because as it stands today, it can be a very unstable thing for a lot of people, and oftentimes not even related to the algorithmic changes, but more like how the loop between advertisers and YouTube and stuff work.
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