Confronting Pokimane | Inside The Million Dollar Empire

what's up guys it's Graham here so a few weeks ago dozens of you began sending me this video it was of a twitch streamer who goes by the username pokey main who reacted to my feature and glamour titled how youtuber Graham Stefan lives in LA and 1.6 million a year at first I didn't think much of it but after realizing that it might be funny to record a video reacting to her reacting to me I filmed a video and posted it on my second channel the Graham Stefan show while I'm denounced to me she actually saw that video and responded to it and then after that one thing led to another and now we're about to meet up in person to get a behind-the-scenes look into the business of one of the most viewed twitch streamers in the entire world in just a few short years she was able to turn what many people would think is simply streaming video games in front of a computer into an online empire with almost a dozen employees and a following of over 20 million throat twitch Instagram Twitter Tik Tok and YouTube and since I'd like to think of myself as a business person we're gonna be diving into the work day of pokey min and discover all the mechanics of running an online multi-million dollar business that no one gets to see right after of course you smash the like button to need to valgar them because if you don't then Elon Musk is going to be sad and we definitely don't want that to happen so make sure that like button turns blue and with that said let's begin [Music] what if I close the door sure what's going on let me show you she's literally right there that's my roommate when did you start realizing that all of a sudden this would be a business where you could actually make a living doing it yeah I remember the exact moment I was a second year university and up until then I had been streaming kind of like part-time as a hobby and I was studying Chemical Engineering and then it got to a point where one month I made like ten thousand plus dollars in just brand deals and once that happened I was like oh okay like this can actually be a job whereas before then it was just something that I did kind of like part-time that kind of yelled some like some financial benefits so instead of like getting a part-time job I would just stream but I really didn't see it as like a full-blown business until that month what would you say to people who asked what you do how do you explain that what do you call yourself okay obviously whenever Oberer drivers are like I'm a youtuber because that's what most like people boomers understand like now they know what YouTube is but twitch and streaming I mean it's definitely gotten a lot more mainstream in the last couple of years but there's still a lot of people who don't know what it is so I usually just say like an online youtuber influencer of so of sorts or I say I just I make videos and we'll say videos about videos about video games basically I have my Shack here and then my alerts here when you're live streaming your alerts are like people that are subscribing or Reese abandoned your channel if anyone donates and there's a message it'll show yeah for some reason my mindset has never changed from like when I was in high school - when I was now in terms of I feel like if you make a hundred K a year like you're set so to be super honest with you throughout the years of creating content and streaming although the amount that I've made for sure has like expert increased in certain years to me after I started making a hundred K a year everything else was kind of the same which I also think will sound kind of crazy to you but for me like there really isn't a massive difference between like even like 200 K and 300 K because at the end of the at the end of the month like your you have enough to splurge on yourself when you want you you have enough to pay for Starbucks yeah sometimes we could literally just sit here and chat and talk about stuff or look at videos or do whatever for like hours it's really up to me and in my community to decide what we want to do I always felt like I couldn't see streaming as a full-blown job if it was always reliant on whether or not people wanted to donate to me or wanted to subscribe to me or trying to incentivize people to subscribe it was really once I saw the connection with brands and being able to do projects with them and stuff like that that I could see it as a business or a long-term job I think some cool things to see my workstation would definitely start off with asana so this is basically where me and everybody that I work with communicate more or less so certain things we have on asana will be like contract deliverables or specific deals and then I respond with whether or not I want to do it if there's anything about the deal that I want to change and then that gets sent back to my manager who deals with it with my agent do you wake up every morning and there's like 50 offers for you to pick and choose from me like I want to make 5,000 here like is that how this works so it's definitely updated daily or as the deals roll in or as the opportunities roll in at what point did you start hiring on help because how many people do you now have working behind the scenes okay don't me just break everything down I want you to break everything down okay top to bottom yes there's me okay and I have an agent at UTA so like technically she's not my employee but she works with such for me still for a very long time I had editors so just people that I've commissioned hey can you make one video and then over the years that turned into a full-time editor and then over the years that has now become like I need someone to manage my editors because I can't spend all that time like reviewing videos telling people what to make videos about reviewing thumbnails I still have oversight on everything so I'm in all the conversations but I have someone else actively giving that feedback I try to be as hands off as possible just so I can have any sort of a personal life or time to myself and I have hired a manager in general which is you're someone that I delegate tasks to and that communicates with companies execute on things that I want their help with but is mainly just like managing my day-to-day and my liaison for other companies so that I'm not the one responding to every email and stuff business expense that by far is what I spend most of my income on probably like 10 and 20 K I haven't actually counted up but 10 20 K a month mm-hmm just paying other people out I forgot to mention that I now also have like a business manager which is someone who handles all of my finances including paying all the people I've mentioned hell yeah yeah including that including setting up meetings with like investment firms so that I can decide who to work with and then also that person technically working for me everybody that helps me is just so crucial in terms of what I do but typically I really trust the people that are on my team to find the right people to help me I love everyone that I work with however I do agree that it is a lot of work kind of managing all these people does it ever get stressful having so many people to like to talk to [Music] there are no like it's not a nine-to-five there's no times for this sometimes you have stream or YouTube issues at 10:00 p.m. sometimes you have them at 1:00 a.m. it's really all over the place and so you kind of have to be ready to respond to things as they pop up for example literally just yesterday we had an issue where there one of my youtube videos was flagged which kind of means that it stops getting recommended and you can even see how much it did that is painful for me I know it was like just going up and then it just dies and when something like that happens I have to communicate with someone at YouTube communicate with my youtube manager and be this middleman try to make a decision of do we take the video down do we not I don't it comes to everything else I just generally have oversight so ultimately it adds up to a lot more hours than just six hours on stream yeah it's a lot I feel like I'm talking a mile a minute you know it's true the entire chance it's like I could literally always be working because there's almost always things on asana that are just like emails coming in or projects that I can take part of or don't in the beginning I basically took any deal that like aligned with fine morals and what I mean by that is like the things that are off-limits to me are typically just like gambling or alcohol or promoting anything that is like suggestive which is just a personal choice of mine all the fun stuff so basically anything that wasn't that and also that I felt like was a fine product I was happy to promote and then it got to a point where I took a lot of deals mostly to build out my resume it's kind of like working a job you don't really like so like you can get a job you do you really like or have the credentials to get a job you really like so for the first like two three four years it was a lot of that now I'm just like if it's not a yes it's a note trying this again so where are we heading to so we are headed to the offline TV house which is where I used to live and it's where all the other members of a fun TV live it's basically like a content house we literally just do a bunch of crazy things our most recent videos are like haircuts for quarantine and we're going to take some photos for our merch drop soon my life work balance is all over the place all the time too so except sometimes that's kind of fun but other side of it is it makes it hard to like properly take care of yourself or to do much self development at all honestly and I feel like so many other people rely on me all the people that I mentioned work with me that I feel like I owe it to them to be responsive to be punctual so it really is a 24/7 job and it sounds like you don't know when things will pop up so it really is just like work self friends pictu and even that is hard to pick - how many days would you say you wake up and just don't feel like doing anything but you know you have to because there's so many people counting on you and you just something happens personally just behind the scenes and it just throws you off for the day how often does that happen what do you do oh well so if it's a day that I have to stream I just forced myself to I'd say it probably happens like 20% of the time if not more I mean sometimes you'll literally be in the middle of the stream and something will happen that really really ruins your mood and you kind of just try to push yourself through it and sometimes that's good sometimes it's not good because you should give yourself a break but yeah lately I have been trying to treat it even more so as a job in that aspect but if I didn't have a stream schedule and it was really that bad of a time I just wouldn't do it so right now we have a merc shoot while fine to me so we have some photographers with masks and all of us we see each other regularly so we're basically just gonna be taking some photos for the rich drop that we're gonna have it soon not product placement by the way yeah when it comes to marriage is just a lot of back and forth between you and the designer or you and the manufacturer company or the company that's gonna be getting the materials yeah so just a lot of little edits back and forth for months and months and months and this is months of work to do this yeah the actual time we put you don't really see the back and forth revisions with the designers even like sometimes I will literally draw on an iPad or draw on paint the kind of idea that I want them to put together so all of that takes a lot of time and effort itself so there's always something in the works and it's always being organized on this dashboard have you ever had to fire anybody yes that's the toughest because I mean anyone I hired I'm generally really like I want things to work out there have been times where I've had to like let someone go because not meeting deadlines or it's really tough also because sometimes you become friends with people and if you know they're just like going through a tough time in life you can give some leeway but at some point you have to decide when it's too much leeway all those things so I feel like I went from like a streamer to a boss of some sort and that's been a huge learning experience luckily some of these people that maybe I have to stop working with for a while I get to work with later on when things do improve all right let's try one of these which one should I get comment down below and let us know can you grab the Oreo do you feel any pressure right now to make the most of it now like are you ever afraid of this going away I feel like the way that I alleviate that feeling is just by saving the large majority of my income so I feel like if my income went up and my spending went up then I would be really worried about that kind of thing because it's like how do I maintain this lifestyle etc but at this point it's like I've saved up enough money to like live reasonably for a long time so I'm not too worried about it all ending instead I'm just trying to worry about really enjoying what I do for you guys so waste of money I feel like this is done on purpose now it's just it's gonna trigger all of my viewers I know oh yeah it takes you longer to go in the app figure out what you want wait for it to go to the door it takes you longer than it takes to fill up a coffee machine at home ninja melt I don't know oh that's like a soda I'll drink it I'm not gonna let it go to waste it's free so technically I mean let me talk about a few things about money that make me mad one rent in Los Angeles why is it a million dollars and also taxes California taxes are tough and very much make me want to move to Vegas that's what I've been saying it's crazy to think because like my parents like my mom's a teacher and so for me to think I'm just like throwing away my mom's salary because of where I reside long term I'm just like that feels so financially irresponsible but also there is the upside of well if you're yes in LA this opportunity is this so I saw it is bit it's like there's an opportunity cost of leaving Los Angeles yeah everyone is here how much you generally say if you give a percentage 100 percent is your income well I put away about 40 percent of everything I make it's like a tax saving this account and then I would say I don't touch another half of that so 30% it's just like in the bank and then I would say the last 30 is either stuff I have as like business expense or spending income I would have to try so hard to spend like 10k in a month what do you spend $10,000 on in a month and I feel like to be spending like all the money that I make what am I gonna be like leasing out cars every day doing all this so I feel like the amount that I spend it's hard for me to say frugal because it's not in a similar sense to you where you're like I mean it's just like I don't purchase things that I don't need and anything that I do need will probably ultimately be like under 3k a month or sir I'd say so in terms of percentage that is within my disposable income so I'm all good I once mind yeah that's my favorite thing to do it's like a comfortable way of the hundreds of people and just like hanging out and talking to them all at once like Smiley's doesn't it just feel good so I'd say my the majority of my income definitely comes from twitch and people talk a lot about like donations and this and that especially when you're a female streamer but like at this point in time it's under five percent of my income stream and then sponsor deals are kind of tough because it's not just twitch but it's also YouTube and it's also a lot of stuff so we have all that YouTube ad deals also sponsorships Instagram you don't really make money off of unless you do sponsorships which I don't really like to sometimes merch hats really don't do well but mainly in our industry because you know we're in the gaming industry and merchants general does really well shirts hoodies especially in sweatpants but hats I think it's just good movie gamers don't go out as much but yeah for sure you just test out different things that you think oh this will be really cool like it looks good the quality's good the fabric is good but if it doesn't suit your demo or your community doesn't really like it doesn't work what are you investing in this is what I'm really curious about sometimes I find startups that I think are really interesting okay and I will look into it and see whether it's a good investment so that's one thing have you get access to those startups I literally just reach out to do you really I mean I think they also see that like I have a certain amount of followers like oh like this is influence and money and typically they're pretty interested in that but then I always have to run it by my financial advisor and he can like I usually put him in touch with the company so he can actually look through their plans or their records and he basically lets me know whether it's a decent investment to make or not he also sometimes runs investment ideas by me and he has also entered like there was a period of time where he introduced me to many invest firms and not to choose one it's like your Goldman Sachs of the world sure so yeah and then I have that and I literally just set aside a certain amount of money and just give that to them for the last six seven years I've just like been grinding as like pokey main that I haven't really allowed me ahman just the person to experience much of her life as a regular 20 whatever year old or even just does a regular teen because I've been doing this since I was 17 in university I think I mean in college my two years I probably went to one party maybe so I don't want to sound like it's worth pitying me or anything like that it's just I really love working I think you can relate yeah I had a really really good time but I also just like grind a day and day out and realize that I could just allow myself to do this forever or have to be very adamant about setting time aside for myself I usually either watch TV read to wind down ultimately long-term I really really find great interest in business I love helping people I wish I could be a consultant for like every eSports company any company that wants to get into like influencers or gaming or this whole internet space yeah I feel like right now all I want to do is provide as much value as I can and I feel like this thing that I know and understand the best is truly social media platforms online influencing and I really just want to help and teach that and create businesses down the line guys make sure you not destroy annihilate the like button for the YouTube algorithm or else or else Graham will come to your house every single time you order Starbucks and give you a lecture you gotta do it you gotta do it came all the way here you got to make it turn blue if you just do that that's it and with that said we got the rest of the video thanks for watching it's really quick I just finished editing and I want to throw myself in here too say that now I have like 72 hours of cumulative work like thrown into this video to make this happen so if you guys appreciate that just please make the like button turn blue subscribe if you haven't subscribed already and if you enjoy content like this where I actually leave my house because they never leave my house and go and meet new people if you guys like that just let me know down below in the comment section and if enough people say they like it then it will make more content like this with maybe some other youtubers and other business people out there so with that said you guys thank you so much for watching I really appreciate it as always make sure you subscribe hit the notification Bell feel free to add me on Instagram I post here pretty much daily so if you want to be a part of it there feel free to add me there as on my second channel the Graham Stefan show I post there every single day I'm not posting here so if you want to see a brand new video from me every single day make sure to add yourself to that and lastly if you're watching this and you have not yet gotten your two free stocks use the link down below in the description and weeble is going to be giving you two free stock Sweeney deposit $100 on the platform with one of the stocks potentially worth all the way up to $1400 so if you want this to free stocks it's totally free I love free use the link down below in the description let me know what you to free stocks to get thank you so much for watching and until next time what's up you guys it's Graham here did you mean you guys I'm just one person also how did you get in my house I don't know [Laughter] I'm out here with like a PowerPoint so this is the amount that I've made and

Channel: Graham Stephan

Views: 1,261,785

Keywords: investing, investing for beginners, investing in your 20s, how to invest, how to invest in real estate, how to invest in stocks, stock market investing, stock market investing for beginners, stock options, robinhood, best stock trading app, how to be a millionaire, how to be a millionaire in 3 years, credit card, credit cards for beginners, how to build wealth, how to build wealth in your 20s, Pokimane, pokimane reacts, pokimane investing, pokimane twitch, pokimane stream

Id: wvl05CQKkY0

Length: 22min 51sec (1371 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Poha-Jalebi]

Yeah I literally just came from that video. Never knew about her before.