Sloss Tech 2017 - Casey Neistat Keynote

hey guys I've been asked like a hundred times today I don't know the question but I don't know the answer to the question but I honestly don't think I've ever been to the great state of Alabama in my life I've been to like six different sub-saharan African countries and I've hung out in Kabul before but I don't think I've ever been to Alice it's awesome here folks look at this place when you guys were at lunch I flew the drone in here terrible idea so I had a little bit at a talk prepared for this event today and then Kelly just interviewed me Kelly are you still in this room hope not oh I'm so sorry I didn't mean to call you out and she kind of threw off my whole talk thanks Kelly and and it kind of made me skew my talk so I have I want to take in a little bit of a different direction compliments of Kelly thanks again Kelly but I want to really zero in on one thing it's something that I seldom get to talk about because typically when I'm speaking with when I get these opportunity to speak with big groups it's it's a slightly more diversified group some of the students with different aspirations but this is a real entrepreneur audience here so I want to really zero in my talk and share with you something that is more more pointed more direct than I could maybe on the YouTube channel on the vlog or anything like that because I feel like we all kind of speak the same language so why not just wanted to keep it in that vernacular for now but this started with with Kelly asking me kind of what it means to be an entrepreneur or would like for me to be here preparing to speak to an entire room full of people who are curious about her who are entrepreneurs because my entrepreneurial path in my career has been pretty pretty far from from what is typical and when she asked me that her when she brought that up I respond her by saying how I define what it means to be an entrepreneur is simply as when you start with an idea and then starting with nothing more than that idea you end up with something that looks like success and I think that's a pretty abstract a pretty sweeping definition of what it means to be an entrepreneur I think that's a definition you could apply to so many different things I think that's a definition that is one that's much more optimistic and much more much more maybe inspiring something that's much more palatable for people then perhaps the Mark Zuckerberg definition of a lot of must definition of what it means to be an entrepreneur so it's due that lens that I want to walk you guys through my life as an entrepreneur you know when I when I left Connecticut because my baby mama dumped me and I just baby mama is in fact a completely politically correct term is an accurate term baby mama is just I mean observed more fair way to characterize okay when my baby mom glad we're all five were all aligned on that one well my baby mama dumped me and I was like this politically correct and I like bailed and I was like I'm going for it I'm reached for the stars because my hearts broke and I don't know what else to do and I moved to New York City the the catalyst for that the thing that was like I can do this or I'm going to do this was nothing more than an idea it was this idea that I could be something more than a guy who works in the back of the kitchen doing the very worst responsibilities that that exists in a kitchen which is like you're taking out an industrial sized plastic garbage bag from a restaurant garbage can that's one of those thick heavy black one and it's so have you have to lean forward a little bit and then as you're walking out the door the bottom of the bag punctures just enough to flood out all the seafood restaurants garbage juice into the back of your shoes that was my job and the catalyst to walk away from that was an ideas just this idea behind that idea was a whole bunch of passion and all these other intangibles but it was an idea it was an idea that I believed in I don't know if it was enough that I would be successful it was enough for me to make that first step it was enough for me to go from 0 to 1 and that first step for me was moving to New York City and you know there was a number of really terrible jobs that I took in things that in New York that were awful like being a bike messenger don't ever do that no matter how cool it looks in the movies being in my expression Jers is terrible terrible job my first after my first week at being a bike messenger I literally had a net loss of income because the minutes and my cell phone cost more than my paycheck was at the end of working 50 hours in a week I cost me like $70 to do that job terrible job but like about two years after I moved to New York City is maybe even a little bit less time than that I got a really real paid gig by a fancy person who was smart and picked me and thought my brother and I were the right people to do this job and he paid us real money to make a birthday video but it was it was an exchange it was like here's money that I can live off of it and all you give me in return is you make me a movie this thing that I've been paying to do my whole that was my first taste of success that was in itself sort of a micro like a microcosm it'll bubble of what it meant to be an entrepreneur and I don't think that's how anyone would characterize what it means to be an entrepreneur I have this idea this idea that was enough of a kick in the ass for me to actually chase it down and the first manifestation of success was me getting the opportunity to make a birthday video and I think if you'd asked me that I wouldn't have at all to characterize that as one really being successful or to what it meant to chase down a dream turn it into something and call that being an entrepreneur but that's exactly what it was I look back in retrospect and that's what I could see and it was with that thread that I think I could connect every sort of success every high point and every failure and low point in my career to where I am now is a single idea or an amalgam of ideas that that was filled enough passion in me for me to actually want to chase it down and do it and so I just posted a video like a couple days ago when I went to hang out with my wife Candace and like I got to sort of see her burgeoning new company that is finding success and I ended the video by saying like how often in life does somebody a loved one a friend an enemy a co-worker somebody at the water bubbler somebody like somebody disliked putting up an idea or a thought for what they'd love to do wouldn't it be crazy if why hasn't somebody invent it we should make an app that does you know it'd be cool someday I want to start a rest or how often do you hear that how often is action taken because that is the hardest step that 0 to 1 is the hardest step and it's when I look back that I see the decision to take that first step as it always the foundation for every sort of success that had in my career and and with that you know my HBO show is something that I like to talk about a lot that makes me seem like a big deal a huge CEO for I mean it the irony is like when I say now that has a YouTube channel it's like I'm just like every other 13 year old in the world for I said an HBO show I was like a big deal like nobody watched HBO show and you guys probably all seen one of my youtube videos so okay when I have the HBO show like that's a big glamorous thing that when people talk about and when like my agent emails for the folks at Sloss tech for my accolades that looks really bright and glamorous on there but if you look at that again if you look at that through the lens of what it means to be an entrepreneur what was the idea that that led to that it was it was literally like a really kind of uninteresting opportunity and we worked with this guy who's very smart guy and sort of had a public access show and here my brother Nene was like can we do something cooler like your videos and we were like sewer news I'd like to hire you to make some videos for the public access channel cuz we're opening one in Colorado I was like well okay fantastic you can count on us to make you some public access videos for your public access channel in Colorado was the budget and the budget that we agreed on was like just enough to fly it out there and put us up in a 2-star hotel and and then fly back and sort of feed us in between and we agreed to it because it was an opportunity and I remember the last thing he said to us and she was like just just don't screw this up man just please make this respectable and we like you can count on us you can count on so what we did is we blew the entire budget buying a 1986 Ford Econoline III 50 van and then we put two chinese-made ordered out of a catalog minibike like we're in the back of that van and instead of flying out to Colorado to make the videos we drove from New York City to Colorado because all we knew about Aspen Colorado was what we learned in the film dumb and dumber so we thought we would just remake that movie and then we painted on the side of our van respectability tour and we made it and it was like the most preposterous thing I've ever seen and done it really didn't make any sense we don't know how to make a long movie so we just made like 23 minute movies and piece them all together and handed that in and when he saw it he was like this is fantastic what else can we do together and we were kind of like no nobody's ever presented that opportunity before and he was like well let me know what you think so I remember like I went back and I like did some math and I added up all of our bills for my brother and me and then I added like 20% on the end of that now they're here this is what it cost us to live let's just see times 12 equals x and I went back to and I was like we need this much money and in exchange we will make a bunch of videos and I remember he was like he was like uh yeah I was thinking like a feature-length documentary or something and we were like mm-hmm and he was just kind of like okay and that moment like you know that moment was such a huge moment which was just like someone of importance who didn't really know much about me really believing in me and supporting that with an actual action and what we ended up doing was exactly we said my brother and I just started making all these little videos and then after kind of like a month he come to visit us and we show my little videos and you like I don't know what this is but keep going and that's the three months we had a lot he was like this is too much so we push them all together into like 20 minute videos things like this is starting to make sense let me bring over some important friends and he brought some important friends by and I remember guy named Doug Liman who directed a couple of movies but one of the movies he directed was the Bourne Identity he's a huge like movie director guy big deal I came over he's like put like a title sequence at the beginning and one at the end and we were like okay he was right here not the TV show and we're like okay and we finished up TV we were for a year on it we had eight gigantic chunks of content and then we went around and we showed it to people and a lot of people we showed it to like I'll call them out by name like the History Channel and I think AMC and a couple of like hey guys this is really cool nobody else wants it let us know we'll put it on our website so things and and we showed a cage PL and they were they were like I like this I'm very interested now that this wasn't that mean and then they're like made us an offer of millions of dollars to buy their show and then they bought it and it became this huge deal now understanding that I left a lot of the gory stories out of that a lot of the ugly details of what that entire process looked like out but that ends up being 10 years later is just sort of a footnote in my bio I had a show on HBO that I wrote and directed and produced there's a success at the end of the tunnel that started with something that was nothing more than a small idea and I think to me that's what really what it really means to be an entrepreneur and as I look back and I see this pattern throughout my own experiences you know having lived in this place out for 20 years trying to find success here having no idea what I'm doing and I can't underscore that enough I have no idea what I'm doing I don't know what I'm doing right now I'm not kidding I never have any idea what I'm doing because the truth is like to succeed to exist in this world of being an entrepreneur it means there is by definition there's no instruction manual if any of you out there trying to do something trying to build something they're trying to follow some prescription that somebody else define you fail you have already failed you will not succeed you can write that down you will not succeed if there are 10,000 sheep with white fur fur what if she have wolf what's on the back of a sheep 10,000 white woolen sheets going that way and you're like wow yeah I want to succeed let me jump in line to be sheep and I wonder how come nobody's noticing me like nobody's going to notice you you got to be the one that steps out you'll be the wolf that runs in the opposite direction and that's what it takes that is embracing the idea that you have to define it for yourself and I I consider myself very lucky I'm very very lucky because because I had a fucked-up childhood and because my parents got like a really nasty divorce and I was a teenager and I didn't know how to react so I acted out and got thrown out of high school and then got a girl pregnant and ran away from home and I'm lucky that I only have a 10th grade education and I'm lucky that I like know what it means to try to raise a baby on welfare and not being able to afford diapers or not having a place to stay when you have a two-year-old kid I'm lucky to have had those experiences because those experiences make me not give a about the fact that I don't know what to do instead I just keeps going that is a virtue and when I look at my like privileged trust-fund good-looking rich New York City socialite friends I pity them I feel terrible for them I'm like man I feel so sorry for you that you would that you inherited 12 million dollars on your 18th birthday that sucks and I'm not kidding when I say that to them they will never have that appetite they will never have that hunger to get out there and chase it down now another thing we talked about backstage is like this idea that this is a tough one you to think about this one took me probably six months actually understand what this means but in life you can have especially everybody in this room I mean if you're healthy enough to figure out how to get in here and healthy enough to get a ticket or in the United States of America like you got a huge leg up on the rest of the planet already but in life you can always get whatever you want you just can't want whatever you want and what that means it's like if you truly want something like I did I don't have a choice it was like what continue to like wait for my free diapers and milk to show up on the first of every month like that's not a comfortable place to be the bottom is a really shitty place to wake up every day I genuinely wanted I wanted more out of life I wanted more out of my career I was sick of like the looks that my parents my friends parents would give me because I'm the loser that they didn't want their kids to hang out with I really wanted it and when you want it that bad it's easy to go out there and chase it down it's not easy to succeed but it's easy to chase it down but you can't you can't want whatever you want and those trusts on kids and I don't mean to pick on them I know some very successful trust fund kids but I people who have never had that hunger people who who you know maybe God wasn't so angry when they woke up and didn't curse them with ambition those people they can say they want it and they can say they have this try but it's not there it's not there and that's not just a bad being either but if you are one of those people if you're one of those people who is cursed with the burden of ambition and you have to race what you don't know and you have to leverage the power and the passions that is the only way to get there because the road that I think most of you and certainly that I am on there is no map to follow there's no prescription to follow by virtue of being an entrepreneur by the virtue of having nothing but an idea that filled that passion you're seeking success by very definition you have to define your own path otherwise you're one of those sheets headed that way nobody can er notice you so with that bringing that back to my own career it's you know I brother and I have this kind of athletes the Osho wasn't a good process they bought our show they sat on it for two years it's very frustrating it's the first time my life I had money and I feel like I didn't have to work the hunger was sort of satiated as well fed both literally and figuratively I mean literally like I used to buy like the fancy sandwiches from the deli across the street every single day they all would like to be able to afford a bacon egg and cheese sandwich seven days a week that is well and for like tier they didn't do much I can all my friends patting on the back grats on your sale man this is a huge deal I read about you and variety you know but yes you did I wasn't making anything and my brother and I stopped working together and you know he wanted to focus on his art and I wanted to try to build any business and what he's a and I'm the opposite ends out the HBO show premiered and you know I had a successful film that also premiered and I had all this kind of Hollywood attention that literally manifest like remember the day is vivid but I was like we just left the Independent Spirit Awards the very next day with the Oscars so all the movie stars in world we're in were in Hollywood they were in Los Angeles and I just won an Independent Spirit Award just won like the biggest award you get for independent film and I like when you win with those you don't put it down like carry it around I was like 29 I'm not putting the thing to a Latino any woke to guess is like I just walk and I remember like walking past the room and this is like at the peak of Mad Men and I saw Jon Hamm in there and I was like and the minute we caught eye contact over comic I'm so good-looking and I kept walking bus and he was like hey hey hey KC come in here and I went in there I'm chit-chatting and I'm like why is he being so nice to me and we know this a movie producer you probably want to be in my next movie wow this is it this is it that was like one of 50 stories from that day I also did never ride home and I hitchhiked in the limo picked me up and it was like the cast of the office not I'm on the plane flying home listening to okay on the last last last digression I'm on I go to the airport now if you ever seen the issue google it but not now don't look down don't look away from me I contact if you've ever seen what the award looks like for an Independent Spirit Award it's sort of like if you can imagine an Oscar instead of shiny gold just gross bronze and instead of it being a sleek sort of almost a phallic looking shape it's just like Angel of Death with gigantic wings now those liens are made out of bronze or brass or the hell metal they use and they're so sharp you could shave with it and this is kind of dig in it's heavy you could easily bludgeon someone with it you could most likely rob a bank with this award it is such an aggressive weapon and I show up at the airport not to leave it in my left hand walking through the airport I guess and it sets off every alarm and I remember like the TSA looking at I mean like there's this is a weapon you cannot and I was like like come on and like you can't you can't and I was I get get the boss or something I'm not I'm gonna so they disappear like waiting there holding my thing and then there's guy comes out of the back and he's got like not the thing around his neck he's got the one that clips on right here and he's like a slightly nicer TSA outfit and this is how I see him coming across the airport and he'd estimate is like he's like I saw you on TV yesterday MANET congratulate great to meet you nothing like thanks they said inter-country star hand just go ahead I was like are you kid that in appear works some on the airplane and you know that thing when you're on an airplane or on a bus or in the backseat of a car and you have your headphones on and you listen to like sad music very thing apply listen to okay computer and like you just get all these weird and up emotions so what the hell's wrong with me right now what's happening to me okay that happened to me and it was like like oh like what what yeah and I realized it like it was a true feeling of emptiness like I felt Hollow and it was because like for cures I hadn't made anything and this moment is data is crescendo of success in this world that I worked so hard to kick in the door oven so there's crescendo of success it wasn't about making or creating the thing that I loved it wasn't about that I that passion fueled ideas about sort of this like masturbatory patting one another on the back and having jon hamm make deep eye contact and I just felt empty in that was when I went back to New York City and I kind of called my agent and I was like I don't want to do it I don't want to no more TV I don't want to see any more scripts I want to anymore meetings that are wasting my time and there's I'm just gonna make youtube videos and now 2010 YouTube was a place for like hat and parody videos and like free booted Michael Jordan highlight reels it was not a place where there was even a community let alone the work creator applying to it at all and my agent thought everyone thought it was a bad idea and I put my head down and that's where I really focused and again there I was like trying to do something else for what it was but it was an idea that was fueled by passion I knew there's maybe some version of success but I had no idea what I was doing and no idea how it might take me there and and you know I really found my footing two years three years in and I built this big company on a production company around it I was making a good living I was really excited and I found something and then an opportunity came our way and it wasn't an incremental opportunity it was an opportunity that really shook things up it was an opportunity that I would describe it I hate this word disruptive have like other speakers been using that word today if they have I'm not taking on nanba come on disruptive we're disrupting news injustice and what it was an invitation to go to MIT and that what that meant was it was actually a fellowship that was a joint fellowship that was sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation that was organized by the Sundance Institute and was hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and they selected me not like you know despite arrogance and ego and all of that stuff like I will always Harbor tremendous insecurities about being a high school dropout so the idea of going to MIT was like the perfect you so I was really excited and but what it did mean was really literally shutting down my company and I wasn't sure what that meant I wasn't sure what that might yield but I knew that that this was something that again I didn't know where I was doing I didn't know we're taking I knew something that felt fresh and felt like I needed to do and I went there and I learned so much at MIT and that's a whole nother talk but when I got back was when I got that was when I started being and the ambition to start being was because I was surrounded by the smartest people on planet earth inside of the MIT Media Lab we're talking post-grad students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology literally solving the world's problems I shared a lab with a guy who had lost both legs while climbing a mountain and built robotic legs that he could run marathons and dance on like these are the geniuses I'm surrounded by so I'm like head down iMovie editing videos all day and the Media Lab I'm soaking it up soaking it up and I went back and I literally read a book about a tech startup and I was like I want to tackle this entrepreneur thing in a very literal form and again there was this idea and there was passion behind that idea - seemed exciting and fresh something I wanted to do and I knew what a version of success look like it's when how much did they pay for whatsapp 18 billion dollars success is when Mark Zuckerberg writes you a check for 18 billion dollars okay here's an idea get here how hard can that be and I tackled that and I went out that I still to start a technology company I've never written a line of code in my life I've still never written a line of code in my life but this to me was something that I was wildly curious about and if there's one thing I learned about like the 500 books I read about every startup that I could find it was that there was something in common for all of them and that was that they didn't know what they were doing they didn't know where it might go Instagram was an app that was meant to share your location with friends and nobody liked it but they did like I could post pictures on their Twitter of started as a company called IDEO which was like a blogging site they didn't know the hell they were doing but they tripped and they found this trajectory and that idea that idea of literally almost an institutionalized embracing of not knowing what to do is what excited me about starting a technology company and I would say very specifically very acutely with no equivocation when we started that company when I started if I had no idea what I was doing or where it might go and I could have never predicted the outcome that we had but it was it was being it was starting that company that led me to starting the vlog which in some way or another brought all of you here today it was like there's no way to kind of project or predict rather the path that that one decision would take me on so that's my big takeaway for today I'm not quite done talking yet but that's the big takeaway for today is that when I sit back and I looked at the history which has been a tumultuous one of my own career and my my life as an adult which started at age fourteen there is a common blue line there's a common narrative to every single success and every failure so I like to talk about those so I'm gonna have like 40 minutes or whatever and everyone what you're talking about a failure like I did in that kind of time here I have my own problem every success follows that single line which is embracing the unknown believing in that idea and just stopping at nothing to find success even though the manifestation of that success is never ever what you'd imagined the opportunity to take a year and do nothing but makes fun videos I could have never told you would have yielded an HBO series the idea of making a birthday video I would have never told you would have yielded a career in the fine art world and certainly like getting pissed off and making a three-minute video about my iPod when I was 22 years old so angry I would have never guessed that would have taken me where it took me and I certainly wouldn't have guessed that shutting down my successful first time I built something successful really on my oldest was my production I'm shutting that down to go to MIT as I said no play see I think the idea that might yield me starting a technology come active never and magic but you start with this idea that fueled by passion put your head down you keep running now because I'm always insecure about my own ability to speaking it will to say that I did a good job when I walk off the stage I like to end with a movie because the movies I spend a lot of time on I can like make sure they're good I'm like this if it's just me guessing hoping I can reach in right now a little story so I the success of that production hoping that that existed before I went to MIT was largely around one single movie and that would make it count and the and the origin story of make it count was just like I wanted to just work with companies I didn't want to make TV commercials anymore and I had some opportunities to do that and the best opportunity how it was Nike was like we love your short films do some short films for us and I did something they're successful in the end I did this one video where I like stole the whole budget and spent the budget running around the world on this crazy trip and then kins and in this video that had no Nike products and you could just see that I was wearing a Patagonian shirt in every single shot my 19 and how do I not notice but that video was a unbelievable runaway success and introduced this whole wave of like inspirational content and this motivational content and it was with that success it would really shoot my company out of a rocket ship the trouble was every time somebody would come to me they would say we'd love for you to do for us what you just did for Nike and the whole reason why it worked is to do it was something had never been done I can't keep doing this it doesn't work and the video that I want to I want to show and this talk with is exactly that example and this was sort of the last real video that I made before I went to MIT but my assignment with this is literally getting a phone call saying hey we've got this inspirational movie coming out want you to make an inspirational video for it just like you did for Nike and really like in the video you see listen read the response numbers like I don't want to do it but if you give me all the money I'll do something else and they kind of agreed to it and I like to show this video for a lot of reasons but this videos are very real four and a half minute example of having an idea that was fueled by passion aiming for something that was success but having no clue what would happen in between no idea what would happen in between so just kind of housekeeping we're going to play this video now it's like four or five minutes long and after that I think we're going to do a big fat Q&A right yeah all right so let's let's LA kiss me I'm not going to sit here I'm gonna sit over there I'm not leaving I just want to stay here to things are like stare at me and see it and I'm just you know sit over there okay make it loud how does this feel a work Dargis it here - how do i do my Q&A - I go back there no I stay here people are going to line up just does anybody have any question okay thanks everybody for coming thank you good to be here I appreciate I remember I'm married to a Texan yeah sure so I I get it I have a very Universal response to that which is it the more tools you can have in your toolbox the more powerful you are and what that means is like you know how to use the camera right that's the tool there need to use it but that's a tool you get four years of education sure you took some classes you don't want to take it maybe your parents course you take you need your credits to graduate those are tools you never know when you're going to need them my favorite example of this is my sister when she was in college she worked at Applebee's or Chili's and one of those microwave BBQ rib places and she hated the job and then when she got our first real job at a huge marketing company the CEO is giving a talk to like all 3,000 employees and he was like we just brought on Chili's as our new client does anyone here have any experience with the company and she was the one person at that moment here to reach into her toolbox and raised her hands he had to pull that tool out and because of that she had a one-on-one with the CEO it's led to bigger things so if you have if I had had the opportunity to go to college I would have embraced it I had the opportunity taught how to use that camera properly so he could teach me I would I would embrace it because you never know when you're no need to lean on these tools but education is a shortcut to what is otherwise learn from experience and you should embrace that I wish I got to go to college thank you oh wait before we go to the next question I do have one request which the right side of the audience is not going to love and that's what the questions go boy girl boy girl which means the next question is someone from this young lady right here I'm just kidding he's a beard you do doesn't yeah so first of all thank you for sharing your story truly inspirational so one time I was watching William video is something you should resonate with me I don't know why I ever meet this guy asked me by I mean it's like six inches off it's more on the forearm but but not bought yeah yeah we're on the talking about sensei yeah yeah dad there's a movie I've written about is that I haven't made but it's like there's a point in your life we're all old here there's no skid okay there's some kids here but you guys remember that damn time the adults in this room that thing when you thought about life and all you saw was what was in front of you like all you could see was your future and like it was possibilities were endless everything was in front of you and what was behind me was just sort of the cost the price of entry and I think for me I embrace that and I live that so hard because the really formative years when they were left the question before I was in college was really formed with years of being a teenager into early adulthood for me were so serious we're so consequential we're about raising a baby and having no money in finding life that I was forced to really live in this fantastical vision of the future and when you're 17 years old thirty seems impossibly far away and when you're 17 years old and you're like looking at a newborn baby's face the idea of 30 seems impossibly far away and I it sounds crazy for me to say now so I'm like a marginally responsible adult with a real job and stuff but at age like you know seventeen through twenty five the idea that at some point in time I would have to face a dolt hood and I'd actually be an adult and actually be and the why I always attached at the age of thirty it seemed in infallible incomprehensible to me it just never made sense and when I turned 30 it was really like I forced myself to stop at that moment and really reflect back on when that's where my brain was for so many years and then proceeded to tattoo that number on my arm so I would not forget that moment when I entered the place where I am now which I think most of us in this room are were when I think about the totality of life I think about my past just as much as I think about my future and that makes sense so that was it let's sort of write something that some do have question from a lady yes we do oh hey hi and eight months ago my other sister died and it's been like a really really awful awful time but your videos have helped me so much and they kept going and I know you're no stranger to hardship but seeing you come out on top of the things like this going to year's made me feel like I can't you I've had there's a lot to me especially this thank you sorry thank you thank you for being generous in sharing that and I don't they have already filled anything like that I don't I want let's be straight here but did you yeah I was curious um what changes you foresee in social media that will affect the way you for what I really didn't see that big of a pivot coming that's like somebody used to buy futures on this girl she's going places well I wouldn't have thank you for sharing what the hell did you just ask me sorry I'm so sorry about your sister well I think that's a one that's a really advanced question okay okay it's impressive you did mission accomplished thank you for asking next week no I say that because I think to really understand some concepts that could answer that question means that you immediately have a leg up because if you can even have a hypothesis as to where things are headed in that space the most valuable space in all of marketing then you can leverage that understanding you have an unfair competitive advantage that you can turn into your advantage that you can do that you can build careers or businesses off of and my biggest guess and I don't think this is that much of a reach I think that video will become immediate not this video but it will become completely homogenized meaning the idea is that right now if you want a lot of types of cards connected to this thing called Netflix and you want to watch Game of Thrones on is it Saturday or Sunday does anybody know Sunday thank you we want to see how Game of Thrones will watch HBO and if we want to see news we will watch Fox News or CNN and if we want to see vloggers we will watch YouTube right now there's still somewhat attached to these distribution outlets and I think in the future we're just going to have these these devices that we now have that just keep getting better and better that look like this and we're not going to give a and we're not going to know we're not going to care where it's coming from we're just going to know how to consume it and when I look at kids and I look at an even Ono's 19 he's a little old but I look at younger kids I don't see them paying attention that the distribution medium at all I just see them seeing this is a vehicle to that content so with that I think that the outlets themselves like the Viacom and the old media companies I think they need a better pick up the paste and figuring it out and I'll also say the same about the youtubes of the world like if they don't if they don't figure out what the next step is somebody else is going to and I not to get to each other nuance here but I think there's going to be like this sort of broad decentralized truly yah latarian distribution medium for everything social and everything media that's going to level the playing field on communication globally I'm trying to figure out how I can find a place in helping shape that be a part of that for my own self-serving reasons and altruistic reasons but I think to sort of understand that from a conceptual perspective is to have a gigantic leg up on everybody else who's looking at what's happening today that complex enough you only go deeper because I can start talking about blockchain if you want thank you for being so generous and sharing with all of us which is like you should somebody said we could do nice at the same time good luck topping that one every day and if my question is nervous how good is it normally just like everyone compiling something about this or it kind of a sure unpack that a little bit the first of the more practical like when I was making video every single day for my channel I was always have an inkling of an idea in the morning and then it would be throughout the execution throughout the day of capturing that I would sort of find that story and then it was in the Edit process that I figure out I share that story and when you're doing it every day it's pretty easy to find a formula in there but what drove me to turn around that amount of stuff was just like a real fixation it was the same thing was like an idea driven by a passion knowing that was going to take me somewhere not sure not sure where and it was like that was so at the peak of the daily show of the daily vlog that was so strong that nothing could interrupt that like I remember making a video called I don't know what it's called like hangovers are the worst or so I mean literally Candice and I like I had a babysitter who slept over and it was the first time we had partied since we had the baby and we were out like really just tying one on and we like woke up at 2:00 in the afternoon the next day just sick and like deathly and somehow I made a vlog that day and like that was the degree of obsessed that I was with this self-imposed challenge of making something every day and that's sort of theta you know for now it's I'm really focused on what we're doing at beam I'm still super excited about making YouTube videos and I do them when I get a chance for some reason like the last couple months I've just been I've been more obsessed with running than I've ever been before and I'm running like 80 miles a week and I can't stop running I wish I was running right now instead of talking to you right now but I think that like I think my lucky stars every day that I've never been one who's interested in drugs or alcohol or anything really bad because I just I am someone who's always leverage and really embraced a kind of obsessiveness so was that obsessive this that fueled the daily production and the daily production was what dovetailed with kind of what I described before in house it really yield the the new episodes every day thank you those baby goats came from Long Island where there's a woman who raises David oh she was lovely which is very protective of them she this thing ever we had two baby goats Thursday for Candace's photo shoot and if you they were like six weeks old they're the cutest goats you've ever seen and when you would separate the two for their brother and sister they start crying no we had to give them it was like those dope it was a photo shoot for my wife's clothing company into a company and it's called Billy so she got Billy Goats to be in it and then she had these beautiful models that were professional models the models got paid less per hour than the baby goats that is completely true and really upsetting sir you're going out to switch places with the young lady behind you because that one I'm sorry there's a strict mandate here that we have to maintain a boy/girl boy/girl oh I see what's happening because then the whole patterns thrown off oh okay unless you want to both speak at the same time you know what yeah no let's just keep it okay okay okay go go ahead sorry now you're on the spot what's your name what's everyone Gillian okay Candice doesn't she sees that it stresses her out hit me kill ya don't sleep work harder well I I think that passion is like an innate I don't know what his passion it's an emotion maybe and I think what you're asking is like you if someone hasn't found what they should attach it to and what I mean by that is like when I was a teenager and I wanted to make movies I really liked Tim Burton was my favorite and I wanted to make Edward Scissorhands and I never did that I never made Edward Scissorhands and certainly I could have never predicted that like making eight-minute videos for YouTube on my computer would be how my passion would manifest itself so my advice to people who are passionate and have passion but don't know how to don't know how it should manifest or how to sublimate that emotion it's just start doing and start doing things my mother who will never see this cuz she's not to work the internet is someone who has nothing but raw passion and has never directed it she started a million things in finished your entire life and I learned a lot from that so I always say find something and don't stop doing it until you're good at it and you can quit when you're good because if you've gotten good and you quit it means it wasn't right for you but if you never get good and you quit it just means you're quitter you gave up so just do my first 4 years of making videos were terrible and then I sort of found something that was good and my passion turned into a career that thanks Jess thank you for question yeah that's a smart I like what that said but then you're going to get okay go ahead but how do you follow its taught that's probably the hardest thing in the world I can say that I'm much better at it now than I was with Owen and just like I'm a very lucky person in that own is a much much much more forgiving compassionate person than my two-year-old who's just a total maniac and completely unforgiving it has no time frame and so I do like a credit on which so it would being like you know just the most generous kid ever when I was really distracted as a dad but now I have the opportunity of retrospect like Candice when she says I want to have another kid I jokingly seriously said her at sweet 16 years because 18 years between kids feels like the perfect gap because I was able to learn so much from from Owen so you know like how I literally do it now it's like I'm just super regimented in a really uninteresting not a compelling answer but it's like I don't go running until Franny leaves for school she leaves for school at 8:30 I go on my run I'm home every single day at 6 o'clock and I mean that like all the startup kick-ass work hard to do more tattoos and every single day and the first one to leave my office every single day 26 employees watched me walk out of the office first and to them I'm you know I know how I feel if I saw the boss we first every single day but to me it's you know that them's the rules like I am only renamed six so she knows about 8:30 but now you're the GM to get super small no problem yeah I think we maybe have to give up in the girl boy thing it's totally working out the way no I can great question huh I wanted to be inspired by that I work for and through that I feel like I've found what I'm actually good at than what I was going to do and currently I'm working an 8 to 5 job and then I go home and I've got three kids and a wife and then I'm also asking you know late into the night and I have to obviously devote a lot of energy to my given to my family because they're very important to me and there are some days when I just feel like I don't have any more energy to give but I want success so bad that I continue to push forward and I would do two podcasts and I watch your blogs and videos from other people like Gary Vee I'm just curious because when I seen your video see the schedule that you keep which Dwarfs mod by comparison are there places that you go to find inspiration and to propel you forward even when you feel like you don't have an energy keep doing it ah and that's so much information there I mean I don't you know I in a non dismissive way it's hard and it's preventatively hard and I would say like just relate to tell myself when I was really struggling was that like the only way the only way to guarantee success is to never give up because then you'll either have died trying which means they never gave up or you'll find success movie only two outcomes I'm totally fine I was totally fine then with both of those outcomes never giving up means it means having found a degree of success and then succeeding is is literally what you're taking down in the first place so you know I don't know what the answer to that is and I can tell you that like the things I prioritize over it over anything when it comes to my career like the reason why I'm obsessed about things like running is because it's time for me to just really get in my head I have friends who don't run and they meditate and they cherish that time so you know I think that like yeah there are some answers like meditating or Tai Chi or running a zillion miles or whatever it might be and it helps your brain get in order I think the other thing is it's like you know it's this hard for a reason like it it's a house-sat when I was 21 years old so I don't have a place to live in New York City so I house that for this woman and she was out of town and I ran out of cat food and the choice was to feed her cats which is what I was being hired to do or eat myself and the cats lost a lot of weight it was hard it was hard like terrorists blew up my apartment and my dad called me instead it's time to come home you don't have a job or a place to live it's hard and I think that you and I both have it easy you have like an expensive cell phone in your hand you've got three kids that are at home or in school and are doing well like we are the lucky ones so if there's ever any doubt about how easy you have how easy your version of hard is or how easy my version of hardened think about what it means to be a woman who's born in South Sudan think about what it means to wake up in Aleppo this morning like we have it easy so I when I struggle I sort of look at an amalgam of all of those somewhat you know rhetorical hyperbolic things that I think are really cast a shadow on my version of a struggle and I realized that my struggles are meaningless compared to your struggle like what I have to deal with like a fighting with my wife and doing the of bills and stuff like that's nothing you would trade that and I would say that no heartbeat for the struggles that you've had so contact is important but um no it's just hard it's not easy easy everybody would do it so I wish you the best of luck of course what's up god I heard he brought spirits Keith after the question when your discipline that they carry things back with your life um yeah I think you know like the idea of creating video every day is obviously super interrupted and the other aspects of your lives but you know I was I think I was irresponsible when I first got started and then you find kind of a cadence and you figure out and make it work but again I think if it's a passion and not a job it's something that's omnipresent in your life and you have to be responsible in the go shooting wearing how to interact with everybody else everything else rather that you do but your young man you ain't got no excuses how many kids you got exactly exactly okay people are dropping like flies we're going to do two more questions and I'm sorry she's next it's just literally your question okay please take out your oh you got like one second and then you're moving the microphone lady TV you're overshadowing me everywhere I go I am an independent marketing strategist and is magnetic and all kinds of CEOs and clients power what people are and that has money that you're spending somewhere else well I mean I'm not I'm not so idealistic about it not to call you're idealistic but I think that like it's very easy to look at Coca Cola's annual marketing budget of call it a billion dollars and say you could solve hunger in four countries instead of buying TV commercials to sell carbonated sugar water but the reality is like they're they're trying to build a business and the reality of that video and that that's like one of the few times that were worked in advertising to promote a commercial entity where I lost money like I spent thousands of dollars of my own money to make that commercial and at the end of that people did benefit like those people that were able to feed in in the Philippines their lives were impacted in the positive way and I'm very proud of that but that that video also sold movie tickets it did its job that was marketing that was effective that was marketing that that brought people to the theater and did good things for the margin of paramount or 20th Century Fox or ever develop a yeah of course so everybody's looking for the ROI you know I wrote a medium post and it's called and the clickbait titles awesome it's called how to travel the world and get companies to pay for it and then the first line is is like nobody gives a about your vacation and nobody ever will and they'll never sponsor your vacation to get sponsorships or like unicorns and leprechauns they don't exist show ROI show that it's a smart investment so that you will impact their bottom line this is business so I think if you want to sort of complete those two ideas of altruism and marketing then you both have to benefit and if there's not a they're not mutually beneficial if you just want to take money from from a client and give it away to people who need it you failed and if you just want to take that money and spend it on stupid things like clicks that mean nothing and have no actual returns except for you know they look at in the spreadsheet which maybe get you promoted like they've also failed and I think the sweet spot is somewhere in between but today be naive to either one of those sides I think is a non-starter you're welcome I never said hi no respect okay I'm sorry what how many questions did I say one that was that was a good question by the way what was her name that was a good question by the way I appreciate that question I just want you to know that IOU snapshot go and we got to really make this wish because you're good enough people time here it's lovely to meet you go okay and almost as this not meet per se people who are diseases people people don't care and I don't need so much humanitarian where I've seen facility videos with like boys or action have proposed for free or you're here anyway how do you get in contact with like a visual connection company like me what connections I don't right there your asset people get you ask that question so you have a and someone of the yeah I mean I think it I think it is difficult I think I hear you have to have a message that people are willing to hear I think a good example of this is PETA I'm not necessarily a supporter and I'm not necessarily against PETA but I think is interesting is for years PETA used to put out there's really like impossible to watch like terrible animal torture videos that were just like get this away for me this is disgusting and then they started taking like vegan super models and actresses and like putting them on billboards naked with a campaign that said I'd rather wear nothing than wear animal fur and I like seeing that because those those people have beautiful bodies and that's nice and it makes me smile it's like that's kind of charming all of a sudden now I'm consuming and I'm indentifying with the message of a company that of an organization that I once that once dismissed so when it comes to bringing attention to things that are otherwise very difficult to bring attention to I think it's in the eye of the of the messenger to find a way to communicate it that makes sense and I think that this can be done both negatively and positively I think that sort of the the growth which is how I described a xenophobia in this country has been because bad actors have effectively promoted xenophobia in this country by you know promoting ideas that like the biggest fear we have in this country is terror when objectively it's just not as big of a fear is theirs to give a concern as getting to a car accident I think they've done a good job of marketing what I think is a terrible message so when you think how could you possibly kind of propagate the alternative I think you have to find a way to message that that makes sense when that Philippines things took place like the world knew that a horrible horrible horrible typhoon I just hit the Philippines but there was something about that way it was communicated in that video that that you know motivated five million people to watch it and then a lot of people followed that video to nonprofits where they could then participate in helping the people affected by the atrocity so again I think it's a lot of responsibility on the messenger and it's the power of positive messaging and it's the power of marketing or propaganda or however you want to characterize it but if you can't tell me something in a way that I'm willing to listen then I'm not going to hear it at all that that good okay I'm going to answer whatever your question is in like seven words no matter how complicated is go oh boy here we go okay go oh thank you a lot of us because of the cutter myself or you need to insert a very much driven by the videos but not necessarily you specifically for the PP workers like Oscar and nowadays you guys can't request a stack what we're doing now people that don't necessarily see the questionnaire include their own success but marking with others pushing them I think success is how whatever sort of gives you a sense of accomplishment completion in life and the example I always point to is like my very very very best friend in high school who you know I shared GG ambitions in life and right now he lives out characterises like a very kind of normal life he's got a wife and a kids and he lives in a small house he's a very very happy person and his happiness and satisfaction and success in life is derived from things that that I much of mine identify with my career and his has to do with something else so if working with others enabling others being enabled by others is is what gives you a sense of satisfaction in life and that is exactly you should be pursuing and nothing else I would always be suspect of other people's definitions of success including mine which is very fast where you talk about it okay first of all we've all got ticket to the site flora seed oh I'm bringing Jessie I told Candace I sorta have doctors here divorce me okay I will be putting money and I'm not a gambler I will be putting money on McGregor I don't think he stands a chance here's this day like I'm a fighter everybody my whole life I box like ten years all that matters here is Mayweather's defense because in McGregor is you the gas themself out she's looking for that heroic knockout which is what he should be looking for getting the chance the only chance he's got is like a tool and a haymaker a hail maker a Hail Mary that knocks him out but there's no way you're not going to hit me whether he just in a day it can be a boring fight after the first round in the matter here here's the thing when you train so I try and take boxing Krav Maga when you learn to fight and you fight with your feet and like you've got all these forms of defense and offense you don't think just with your hands it's very different and I don't think McGregor's will be able to turn that off and that's all mayweather no they were all up here there's no way he's gonna be able to resist McGregor's me other resist like and that's where his brain coming out things can be able to turn that off so I I wanted to win because he's the best trash talker we've ever seen and when it comes to boxing all I care about Sofia Erik's not the barbarianism of it but I I just know I think Floyd is going to wake up I think he's going to take off his robe he's going to wake up you're going to walk out and they're going to ring the bell and it's just going to go like this for like nine rounds and you look at the judges and you can go like this and he's like going to go to the bank and deposit this thing's like can you come can you cover the outside of my rolls-royce and make it this time that's what I think is going to happen best question of the day okay what do I need not compromise I will remember your face that happens where the odds at all you know what the odds are good I'm going to put like I'm gonna put like at least 15 bucks I'm going to go crazy I'm we go crazy last question because you are a young man and I hope to impact you in a positive way I also hope this about the McGregor Mayweather fight go and I watch it is did you ever get any offers besides being in and if so why did you take salmon sure good question smart question if I'd known your guys matter we've just walked out the stage before this we had a number of offers from including more lucrative offers potentially more lucrative offers from much more typical technology companies the kind of tech acquisitions that you would expect they weren't exciting for me because it was a lot more of the same and I think like I was I had a fatigue with the vlog and a fatigue with YouTube I do now I'm kind of getting a little bit sick of sort of what YouTube is and what it's capable of and I want to reinvent that and I'm excited about different opportunities I'm excited about like what YouTube read might be doing excited about different directions that might go in but I want a different direction I wanted a different direction so the idea of guys were still talking here so the idea of partnering with like a gigantic media company with resources that are vast meant that like here's an opportunity not only to sort of promote what I'm doing the technology space but really like seek out new paths and new trajectories within the media space on YouTube and it was an early conversation I have with CNN with Turner which is just like like we could do interesting things together I'm not interested in going on TNN like I literally don't know a person who watches CNN besides my dad and like none of my audience watches it like it's not a place for it so I don't fit there I don't I also know what the hell they're talking about most of the time on any broadcast news like it's not a fit for me I'm not interested in that but if you're interested in building something that we can do on YouTube and on the Internet into an audience like the audience I know to communicate with me just let us do it our way then this could be some fruitful and CNN was genuinely enthusiastic about just that and we're eight months into the acquisition I have to say like they've been unbelievably supported and letting us do whatever it is we want to do and had been completely hands-off everywhere except when we saying we need help which is crazy like we're they're just saying that news companies have like CNN has where every feed from cameras that they have Saul over the world so all their affiliate like local news stations they're like filming live from helicopters and have like a camera set up on tripods in the middle of Afghanistan's and worth they have thousands of these in case they need to go to a live feed there's always at the ready but they're never being used and we learn that we were literally getting like a fifth-grade tour of CNN like here's where we have all of our live feeds not like have a question those are all live and they're like yes so they can we have all those and they're like sure so like literally we have access to like all of these fees are going to completely unused and right now we're building like a product we're building a mobile app that will let like any of you access all of these seeds in a way that provides tons like I want that like I wish I that existed right now instead of wishing exists we're going to make it we're only able to make it because the resources they're bringing to the table and that's like one little case of all of the opportunities that this acquisition brought and when I when I really considered the other opportunities that we were looking at none of them were were so exciting and none of them were with such an open-minded partner kind of 14 are asking a question like that up its own fall thank you and I thank you everybody for being generous of your time thanks for coming out thank you for having me

Channel: Telegraph Creative

Views: 458,834

Rating: 4.7506733 out of 5

Keywords: Technology, CNN, Casey Neistat, Social Media, Digital Media, Tech, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Advertising, Videography, YouTube, Beme

Id: LxOuKMramRQ

Length: 70min 49sec (4249 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 24 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Astrophsx]

Just as an FYI, when he says "my movie"... he was one of seven producers on the film and not even the executive producer. I wonder how much of what he says at these speaking gigs is embellished. Highly doubt that someone at the TSA watches the independent spirit awards (are those even on TV?), let alone recognized Casey as one of the producers that was given an award from an obscure category.