The Full Story of Michelle Khare (Challenge Accepted)

you know a youtube channel is a resume [Music] i get an email your request has been approved out of nowhere it exploded it's very painful imagine what if this was me wow we're both creators but we sit in a chair like this is so drastically different [Music] so i spent the last week really diving into your content watching a lot of it and one of your most recent videos is your swot video this week on challenge accepted i am going to swat academy and going through your episodes i think one of the most interesting things to me was the production quality and how similar it is to television and what we grew up watching but then how much it acknowledges youtube and i'm just kidding i'm just curious if you could walk us through that swap video and how you think about composing one of these episodes specifically for youtube or if you even are thinking about youtube while you're shooting them oh we absolutely are cool um thank you for noticing by the way um well i think when i when i started my own channel i really wanted to make a point to hire people who had experience in traditional so my fiance and garrett over there he's the creative director he has a really strong background in directing editing went to film school like you um our editor worked on dance moms he has a really strong background in reality and several of the other people on our team have a documentary background so my goal was to take my background in digital merge it with traditional because i think there's a lot to be learned from traditional right there's a lot we can lose as well but for example reality tv has existed since the early 2000s and only now probably in the past six years have we seen people adopt reality tv practices into their work for example i think of the 2014 to 2017 vlog era like logan paul jake paul is very stevo i think of a lot of the best non-scripted stuff or even what arach is doing on his own channel the dating videos for example i mean that's also early 2000s reality in a lot of ways history repeats itself and there's a lot that can be learned we take a lot of those elements from traditional reality tv our favorite documentaries i'm always watching documentary but then i also look at youtube meta what makes the most sense okay well in a netflix documentary they're going to really live in this particular scene but if i'm editing it for youtube we're going to take these three bytes and move on and still keep the same essence of the scene so that is sort of my goal because my ultimate goal would be to get nominated for an emmy for challenge accepted next wow because i kind of want to be traditional at their own game wow that's very cool there's one thing that we often say which is don't make tv for the internet and i think watching your show has kind of proved us wrong in a way or showed us how you can take traditional and turn it into an internet show in the swat video in particular you go through like four challenges in the first two minutes in order to pass i need to sprint a quarter mile in under 85 seconds do 30 sit-ups in a minute 20 push-ups in a minute six pull-ups and then complete the obstacle course in under four minutes all back to back to back that type of action would never happen on television right like you give away too much exactly like that as a tangible example of being like oh no this is not tv for the internet this is youtube it's the first time we've seen it at that production quality thank you how do you pitch the show challenge accepted like if we if we're hopping on the log line yeah well we're hopping on the phone right now like how do you explain what the show is so challenge accepted is a documentary series wherein i take on the world's most intense and unique professions lifestyles and communities for an extended period of time to see how far an amateur can go under the best training possible i knew you would have dialed like yeah i knew i knew that was going to be locked i could feel it that was great because for a long time because it's such a it's such an interesting show because i think there are a lot of shows where you know a lot of reality shows show celebrities trying something for a day right and we've seen that format it's really cool but what we're doing is very different because i want to i want to really push myself i want to fully immerse myself into whatever i'm committing to when i for example i just finished a challenge where i trained like a competitive cheerleader for that i changed my entire lifestyle nine to five my job changes i'm going to training i'm doing ice baths i'm watching videos i'm reviewing my footage i'm you know watching tutorials i'm training with a private coach i'm going to different gyms i want to commit fully and i think that's what makes challenge accepted unique is the commitment level that's really cool i also just love that you can describe your show and your format to us i think that is a practice that all creators should work on because you if you can't explain it then how can the audience understand it right and word of mouth is still the best growth strategy someone turning to someone else and saying hey you should check out this show called challenge accepted it's where and if they can't fill that back part in it's they're not even going to suggest the show because it's hard to explain and it expands beyond that because you think of you know when you get to a certain level you have agents you have managers pitching for you it needs to be yes good enough so that their diet coke version of you know your coke version of it actually makes sense to whoever's gonna work with you these videos that you're making take a long time to make yes and that is inefficient not necessarily inefficient but i think it's like a newer version of the culture on youtube like for example so far this year mr beast has put out three videos right and that's like four or five months he's only put out three videos i think there's a culture that's moving in the direction of you know less and higher quality but to take that amount of time to make a video that is kind of suggesting that you have some way of financing production and i'm just curious like what are the constraints you're under to do something like that where you can take three months to make a video uh how does that work from from supporting your team supporting your business growing what you're doing like how does how what are the economics of that or how does that has that net out it's a really great question um so obviously what we're doing is pretty different from most people we don't have a regular upload schedule necessarily videos take anywhere from one week to one year to film there have been two episodes that took an entire year to film wow um and i think that the way that we approach it is we sort of have a few different buckets of income flow so first i have my fitness app mk fit you can download it first month is a dollar um we also have you know just natural i call it like the baseline adsense of if you don't upload anything for a month you can expect at least this baseline that's one um and then we we do rely heavily on brand deals but what i like the way i like to approach brand deals is a little bit different i actually make like full pitch decks for our entire slate because we take so long to make the videos i know all the videos we're filming all the way through september of this year already they're already planned they're booked flights everything wow so with that ammunition we can go to a wide variety of sponsors and get a higher dollar value amount because we have so much information not only on what we're filming but also on the track record of the channel we know that an episode of challenge accepted could get this many views we know that because fbi did well a video of of similar category could also potentially do just as well so i like to plan would you rank the swat video on the more expensive end of the spectrum when it comes to your videos no no swat is probably one of the more affordable videos that's interesting so the reason that swot is more affordable let's say it's still expensive still pretty freaking expensive is because it's only shot over a few days now albeit they're very jam-packed days but it's just that week when i commit to something for an extended period of time and we're involving coaches multiple filming days training montages meaning we have to film like 12 different days and then cut it into 60 seconds to give the appearance of me progressing over time that is when things add up and i would say that the current episode i'm training for right now boxing is probably the most expensive one because i'm training five days a week multiple coaches nutritionist ice bath does it ever does it ever scare you to make the upfront investment like that or is it the sponsors and like some of your episodes don't have sponsors yeah boxing doesn't have a sponsor it doesn't have a sponsor so like is that upfront investment is it like do you look at it as the adsense that's generated by this video or is it more of the holistic picture of the business and the catalog of like this i'm investing in this and it will add to the overarching you know income generated by the company i would say it's more of that got it um you know will boxing outperform 9-1-1 which we shot in a day we shot that video in a day and um i i don't know i mean that that video really did super well so but for me honestly i like investing in life experiences boxing however performs is one of the best life experiences i have encountered getting to work with an olympic athlete for the extended period of time i have the mental and emotional growth i have had from that i can't put a view count or a monetary amount on that so as long as we can afford it in the time let's do it that's sort of how i operate maybe it's not the most that's cool financially savvy but i like to invest in life experiences the interesting thing though is that youtube does facilitate the opportunity for the numbers to even out and i was listening to one of your early podcasts and this may be outdated but you said that episodes can cost anywhere from ten thousand to thirty thousand dollars yeah and in that time period those numbers for the amount of views you're doing actually from an adsense perspective can even out a little bit a little bit the sponsors are definitely necessary for our business operation yeah and i mean it's not efficient i mean sure we're doing millions of views but like mr beast even in his early days shoots a video in a day and he gets 10 million views yeah so we're at this point in time trying to have all these plates going of like how can we rival traditional go for awards in that category but then also do well on youtube and sometime you know should we cut things out that typically a year ago we would have kept in to make it better for retention like we're trying to balance all of all of that at one time yeah when we pop around to those other business functions like brand deals now i guess like how do you think about what is required to be a creator who does well in brand deals and how's that be their top line of revenue i think to do well in brand deals you have to be thinking in the mindset of advertisers we will make videos specifically that have no other logos and brands in them that we think are just going to perform super well like the etiquette video that when a brand comes along it's a perfect placement for them sometimes we for example i did a video that's coming out this month where i spent a week with the us army and for that that was actually a um you know an outreach thing that i wanted to do i had seen that the army has done paid placement with other creators before i was like i think we could do this and make it really awesome so i actually pitched to them um through through my representation i think that it is about like like when we talk about brand friendliness i feel like there's this connotation of made for kids or has to be super clean and i think it just has to be respectful and genuine to you there are brands that reach out to us wanting to offer a substantial amount of money that we decline because we're like it just doesn't make sense and it's going to inflame our audience because to me the most important person in our business is the audience um and i i would take that over any brand deal anytime yeah i saw your marine video is sponsored by the marines i want to say a special shout out to the u.s marine corps for sponsoring this video and allowing me to do something that very few civilians get to do that's so interesting uh it's such a like it's almost i guess in that sense it's like brandon hunting yes right do they have a lot of say in the edit or how it comes together when you do something like that when you work with the army or the marines are they looking yeah when you're working with a client like the us government yeah there are a lot of rules um but what has been really helpful to us is we have done so many of these deals we actually have a process so whenever a brand we work with them i have a list of like 12 questions they have to answer before we sign a contract so that's like what's the length of the ad placement what are the talking points how many rounds of feedback what is the timeline that kind of stuff so we're super super clear before the contract because sometimes you sign a contract and you figure that out later i want to know the exact plan before any of that is made and from that we're able to proactively shoot something that fits what the brand wants but is also going to be a viral video for us and in the case of the us army actually the original pitch they came to us was completely different from what we ended up with and we pushed back and and we're like this is the version we're pitching right now is actually what's going to perform well and be what our audience wants and we were able to meet in the middle before anything was signed which was really great is that something you learned from experiencing the opposite or is that kind of training you got even as far back as buzzfeed of like being that ahead of schedule or that ahead of like what problems may arise i definitely learned it on the job i would say more because at buzzfeed i never did branded content i never interfaced that was a completely different department and also just from like my dad is an entrepreneur and business owner himself so he was constantly like you need to read everything and best understand it and and i think too like we've all been in positions where brands have taken advantage of us as creators or asked for more than previously stated so for me i'm like let's get really clear are you gonna ask for those things okay that is x dollars more or we don't want to do that i like to proactively ask all the problems that can arise ahead of time i love what you even said about like keeping the episodes clean of other logos yeah just in case i think that's something that a lot of creators don't think about and when i look at your videos they are so clean i looked at your catalog and how many seasons have you done of challenge accepted this is our third season and i was looking at those and thinking like the opportunity that these would get licensed potentially and end up on another platform seems so ripe because they are so clean i'm available is that something that you thought about going into it or that's never coming away what we felt when we first watched it was like a network could pick up this stuff right like they literally pick up challenge accept it as a show and distribute it as is on on a show whether that's discovery disney plus hbo we've talked to them before you have talked to them about picking up pre-existing episodes or filming new episodes and is that part of your aspiration or is youtube actually have you reached that point of like this is the pinnacle of making my own show is controlling my own distribution well from the beginning like most of us i've had a dream of like oh i want to be on a tv show or whatever and what's interesting is as challenge accepted grew we started getting a lot of interest from production companies and we were taking these meetings with huge like people who have made the best i mean winning non-scripted content of all time and what was interesting is we would go in these meetings and they would be like we love challenge accepted we want to do it just like it and then i would tell them how long it takes to make the episode like walk us through a production process and i'm like okay so for the video where i train like an olympic figure skater for 60 days we have a month of prep i train for 60 days then six weeks of post and they're like wait so you spend five months on a video and i'm like well yeah i'm like literally training for 60 days what do you think is going on and they would be like well is there another way we can do this for like in a week and i was like what is the point of giving up my ip of something i you know is a beloved part of my life at this point and theoretically going to a network that my audience is going to assume has more money and therefore should be bigger production to do something that could be a reality show from 2002 of any celebrity trying something for a day i just thought it was stupid so i said no more money for a watered-down version exactly and less control you know what i will say those i feel like tv often has access to whatever they're filming it's like you watch a tv show especially reality tv i'm amazed that like they have access to celebrities to organizations like you have access to right like i'm always amazed that you do back up the title thumbnail you are actually with you know swat or fbi or whatever it is how do you go about getting that type of access like that to me is something that i find to be really rare on youtube that does actually separate often youtube from television i think it's two things i think it's a track record legitimacy the resume of our youtube channel is completely different from most other creators um and also people ask me all the time how did you get to work with the fbi and here's what happened i'll just tell you guys and now a quick word from the sponsor of today's episode so traditional entrepreneurs start with a product or service and they work to try and find customers or audience for that product the way creators work is we build an audience first and then we try and figure out products that we can sell to that audience and that's where the sponsor of today's episode of shopify really comes into play for creators when you have an audience and you want to sell them something shopify is where you go now we've been partnering with shop5 for two years and they're truly investing in creators we're actually in arizona right now at the shopify creator commerce summit where they've brought a bunch of creators here to learn about how to build businesses they even launched a new product called link pop which makes it much easier to sell products to your audience it's a link in bio tool but it's designed to be shoppable from the start so if you're a creator and you don't yet have a shopify store link pop is actually a really great place to start because you don't have to have a full-on shopify store you can just go ahead and start your link pop to start selling so the link to our link pop is in all of our descriptions so if you click that you can get to our newsletter our course our other social platforms as well as this blue publish app which is sold out but if it wasn't sold out the way you could buy it is you add to cart and purchase and you do that all within three clicks right there in the link pop you guys are going to grab your link pop urls and tweeting them at us which is awesome uh because they are running out do you have linkpop.com i don't please don't take it if you want to explore what it's like to have a shoppable link in bio head to the link in our description go to linkpop and claim your url and thank you so much to shop5 for partnering with creators like us and bringing us to the desert but mainly for partnering with creators like us the desert is nice it's lovely it's hot it is hot it's hot people ask me all the time how did you get to work with the fbi and here's what happened i'll just tell you guys we found a 1-800 number on the website like fbi.gov no we call the 1-800 number i'm like there's no way this is going to work and garrett's like just call them just see what happens and they're like oh here's an email you can email you know they gave us some generic request at fbi.gov i don't even know it was something like that so i i put together a proposal and i wrote an email send it nothing we hear nothing back for four months and then go completely out of the blue i get an email and it says your request has been approved wow and i was like garrett the fbi has approved a request what's going on and um then from there they connected us with jeff the hollywood guy he's called the hollywood guy in the fbi and he's he works at the fbi yeah and he's called the hollywood guy that's his job title at fbi no maybe not his official job title but that's what everybody calls him okay wait also it's so fbi that they weren't like let's get on a call they were like requests so we connect with jeff the hollywood guy so he is the person so a lot of these organizations have a hollywood pr kind of person who you know you think of those like crime procedural shows that involve the fbi in a scripted capacity he's the person who reviews those scripts and approves them and makes sure it's not defaming or whatever to the fbi so he connected with us and he's like well i'm retiring in a month let's just see what happens and he had never approved another youtuber before but he was like i'm retiring so okay okay timing yeah so we got really you know yeah you know got a great opportunity there and then from there we sort of just followed the same format so again i think a well-placed email can open any door and in this case it was the door to quantico amazing wow i don't even do you remember it's like 1888 fbi help or something yeah we just google it call them right now let's get them on the phone that's incredible don't say i sent you i don't want them to have a bunch of people calling i'm curious so for us a lot of times our video cycle takes about like two weeks and there are times when our videos don't turn out the way we wanted them to things go wrong and the videos don't come out and it's devastating and those videos take us two weeks has there ever been a moment for you where you've taken three months six months a year and the video doesn't net out how do you deal with that or is that something that you don't do oh man are you just hitting home runs yeah like do you just understand it so well now that's not a problem i mean there have been do you mean like where you scrap the project all together yeah or you upload it and the viewership's not where you want it to be and it just didn't perform like when you invest that much time how do you deal with oh it's painful it's very painful but i like to approach whenever we hit upload it's a video we love you know we can't control the views we can't control how it hits the algorithm we can do everything we can to make the title as clickable and you know do as many options for the thumbnail a b test whatever but at the end of the day if it doesn't hit i mean it's it's devastating but the one thing i can hold on to is i'm proud of the video never upload anything i'm not proud of i think that's a really interesting and important point for a lot of creators to hear around success metrics and exploring what makes a video successful is it exclusively performance like like viewership and i don't think it can be i think as creators to build a long long-lasting career you have to have something else that's even if it's as simple as i'm proud of the creative because what's interesting is you'll see even when something doesn't perform like you mentioned we've seen where the videos have a profound impact on the people who did watch it yes and so i think that's such an important thing to recognize too is that you might not be building as much width all the time but you're building depth with your audience i love what you just said because at the beginning of my own personal channel and i think a lot of creators experience this you just want to throw as much stuff at the wall see what sticks and you're really going for views or at least i was you do what you can for views but then i sort of got to this point where half the content on my channel was stuff that when people recognized me on the street i was like you know i don't know if i i want to be known for the other stuff i'm doing not not this category a i want to be known for category b which for me was these deep intensive challenges i was doing so my goal was to reduce as much of category a and pump it all into b and now i i only want to do content i love and i think that it's a it's a tough investment to make because you might see a you know it's hard to avoid the low hanging fruit you know when you see an opportunity for oh i can make that video or that short and it'll do super super well and to say no to that and invest in something you care about more but i've actually found that the return on that investment is even better because brands respect you more um over time subscribers respect you more because they really have they know that they're coming for high quality every single time because you know a youtube channel is a resume but it's a very interesting resume because when a brand or anyone you know potential partner even a potential subscriber comes to look at it you can't control what they're going to click on and that one thing they click on could make or break why they decide to work with you or subscribe to you and i want to make sure every single piece of content even if it doesn't have a ton of views is one that shows the quality of the channel that's that's really good i like that a lot just the concept that you can't control what people are gonna land on where does the inspiration come for this show is it a mix of traditional and digital like how do you come up with this unique show that you have well for me i was actually a professional athlete first my name is michelle carre i'm the reigning u-23 national champion for cycling and this year is my first year riding as a professional so i was a professional cyclist at the same time i was working my 9 nine-to-five job right out of college and it sort of got to this point where i was like you know one of the reasons i loved being a cyclist was that i felt like i had this unique opportunity to encourage more women to do it i mean also just being a person of color too i was often the only person of color at a lot of the races i attended and then i realized that with digital i could use my athletic background to hit a more broad range of things and not only uplift those communities but also show someone who looks like me doing it um so choosing to give that up to do challenge accepted was a really really big decision for me but i think it's born out of like my passion for athleticism and challenging myself innately um i prefer to be a jack of all trades than a master of one and also i mean i love documentary content i consume it all the time and i i just feel like there is this really unique opportunity on youtube to support an ecosystem that doesn't require someone else green lighting it and so i want to support that way more personally i remember when i was growing up the only the only representation of what it was like to be indian like the primary one was a poo uh on the simpsons which was like not played by an indian it was like a caricature right and so there was not any connection to you know what i looked like or or you know that i could do something in entertainment uh and i think that was that was something that also drove me and i was curious if you could speak a bit more about the concept of representation as a female of color on youtube which is predominantly right now i would say dominated by white males i mean some of my the reason that i feel like i avoided this industry for so long was because even growing up doing school plays where am i going to fit in in hairspray or oklahoma you know what i mean so i i felt like just by nature it was like there's literally not a part for me to play that makes sense in in this area of the world and why waste time on it now what i really admire about youtube is that it gives that opportunity um and it honestly wasn't until i started making the videos and seeing comments from people that were like i've never seen an indian woman portrayed as strong before i've never you know seen somebody who looks like me literally doing this i've never met a firefighter that is your height or skin color and not that i'm actually becoming any of those things but that i'm inviting the possibility for that to happen i didn't think was groundbreaking i was like let's just do a great video you know it sort of came out of that for me and i think i'll always have a little bit of like i want to prove traditional wrong when i think about i mean i've i've had i've had auditions so like i auditioned for stuff like theatrically in hollywood and i've been told oh you're not indian enough to do this because i'm half indian but then you know well we weren't really looking for someone who looks like you for this can you read for the latina role i'm like literally no i'm not gonna do that um that's just super inappropriate but i've been told these things and it's just a waste of my time why would i sit here trying to prove to somebody that i deserve to be there when i can do it myself and there are millions of people who champion it and are right there behind me i'm definitely going to go in that direction and i want to support a platform that invites that opportunity traditional doesn't give that opportunity even if i'm like the token person of color in whatever tv show as a guest star cool great for them they get to check off that diversity thing and you know maybe eventually down the line they'll put someone who looks like me as the lead but why not do it now and challenge them like get off your ass and make it happen now yeah i love that it's awesome it's really clear to me as i look at your channel that your why for making these videos does come off the platform from that history because in the challenge genre i feel like it's very easy for creators to come up with the title thumbnail first for something so bizarre that is just made for a title thumbnail that is not necessarily based in like a personal experience yes and i feel like with your channel it's so clear that like the goal is the personal experience that you go through it happens to mesh really well with the youtube algorithm and with a title thumbnail but that's not the basis for the idea of course i want the title to be so astounding and deliver on the premise i tried fbi academy what she went to the fbi yeah and you're actually going to see that in the video it's not me hiring an fbi agent to train me for a day we are literally going to the fbi academy do you consider yourself as a part of the challenge genre on youtube like when you look at mr beast you look at ryan trahan arak do you see all of you in the same genre or no well even within that i think that mr beast and ryan trahan are completely different creators i guess technically it's a challenge but i think more broadly we're all non-scripted in a certain way i feel like i align more with non-scripted than i do the connotation of what people think in challenge which is very strange because challenge is the name of the series like challenge accepted um but when i think of challenges on youtube i think of something that's grand and big for the title and thumbnail and lasts a day typically um which is great whereas i feel like how i want to differentiate from that is the documentary storytelling perspective really highlighting the communities that do this every single day i mean going to train like a firefighter is different from going to firefighter academy because we're going to meet the people who have worked at the biggest wildlife fires in the world who have you know gone to australia on deployment during the 2020 fires who have really seen stuff firsthand and honestly things that i can't even say that i challenged myself to do i always want to make sure that we include an element in the videos highlighting the people who do this every single day yeah i think uh empathy is a really interesting ingredient in your videos um like the 911 dispatch video where you kind of look and you say okay well wow i've never thought about the people who actually work this job and then further if you go into the comments of your videos i think what's really interesting is people reflecting that but then also asking you to come join their community and do a challenge in their community that must be a very special experience for you to have people look at what you're doing not as oh she's exploiting our community for views or anything like that or for her own personal gain but actually hey she's showcasing our community to the world in a light that they've never seen empathy is the centerpiece of any challenge we take on and sometimes we will can we'll convince somebody to work with us and we'll get in the meeting and they'll have a perception that we want to deliver like a hollywood watered-down version of it or i don't want the real thing and a lot of times i'm in the meetings i'm like i want you to put me through my paces i want you to to give it to me real even if i fail on camera time i'm 55 55. okay good job so obviously i have not passed the entrance qualifications for being a part of s swat unfortunately you have not that's awesome yeah because it shows how difficult it is for for anybody else to do it and how amazing it is that you can go into a burning building with bravery and rescue a family i mean it would be insane to assume that after only a few days of training i could actually successfully do that and you know it's cool that that we get to have those experiences um but i am always like you know give it to us straight let's have the real experience i think one of the craziest examples of those moments is the gas chamber in the uh marine episode yeah like when you walk out of that it is crazy like your eyes are tearing up there's a snot coming from your nose and you're like holy [ __ ] that was a real experience you just had that is crazy and then the thought of that is part of marine training like that is something everyone has to do and we're interested and part of your job yeah the first thing i thought was wow we're both creators but we sit in a chair like this is so drastically different yeah exactly i think there's a lot of ingredients when i look at challenge accepted as a format of why it is successful and why it's it's garnering millions and millions of views um i think when you look at it like you open the show and you say here's the thing i'm doing so already there's a tension point right because it's something that probably we've never seen before fbi training marine training swat training even chess right these are things that we don't understand so there's a tension point of oh i want to see i want to see what it's like for her to go through and that's kind of the act one in the hook and as you get into the act two there's this like tension of the process of well what does it actually look like and i want to keep watching because like now you're running an obstacle course and you're doing these things that basically introduce new tension points and release them constantly in the episode where you're given many challenges within the grander challenge the second part i think in that act two that's so interesting is that as an audience member you're naturally drawn to be like well could i do that and so every challenge you're doing it while i'm watching your show my head is doing calculations on like well what would it be like for me if i did push-ups and then i had to run this obstacle course how fast could i do the obstacle course how many pull-ups could i do right like it's it's such an interesting active participation from the audience and then act three is kind of this like conclusion and wrap up where you do a really good job of kind of bringing together this uh this whole experience and why it matters in the grander scheme of things that is like pretty clear-cut storytelling structure for all of our episodes even before we start filming we outline the whole thing we sort of we never script anything but we can usually assume okay the gas chamber that'll probably be a low point um and so we kind of like fit those things in we take all of the different activities i'm doing and we build them out as scenes we anticipate okay this scene will probably be 90 seconds this will be 30 seconds and build it out to see the run time we rearrange them a lot of the times you're watching the episodes they are completely out of order in the way we shot them um and then we always want the final challenge to be a culmination of everything is that something that as you look back in your story you know you worked at buzzfeed for some time is that something that you feel like learning the ingredients to make an internet video or make you know just documentary is that something you learned there is that something that you picked up prior to that i didn't go to film school so a lot of what i learned comes from garrett from silas our incredible editor who have these really strong traditional backgrounds and what i learned at buzzfeed you know buzzfeed was a really interesting experience for me because it was grad school for youtube and coming from the indian background having a nine-to-five job in youtube sounded better than i'm gonna go out quit my job and do this thing and it it offered this really interesting opportunity for me to hone those skills of video making retention i mean we had classes on how to make a thumbnail and how to choose a title right which was which was really you know really interesting experience for me to learn but always the goal was to be my own content creator and business owner and for me buzzfeed was sort of a stop along that journey to get the education i needed to to continue on i think there's a lot of parallels there from being an athlete um yeah where as an athlete you have coaches in most of your facets of what you're doing right like i'm assuming what as a professional cyclist you had a coach yes right and maybe you had a different strength coach and maybe you had a nutritionist or something like and you have coaches in all these areas and i think as an entrepreneur as a content creator what's funny is i don't know if you know this but we actually spent a week at buzzfeed doing like a like uh academy essentially there that was like an educated when was it it was in 2017. yeah yeah what month i have no idea okay it was cold outside and there's a video on our youtube channel about it so you may be you may be in the background you might be in it but yeah are you all at the you're at siren studios then that's right yeah yeah what yeah so we spent a week there and we did everything you're describing we actually show in in this like this week-long edit that we did um that showed us like learning how to identify our audience learning how to write titles you know learning how to brainstorm thumbnails like it was school that we never had traditional there was no there is no traditional youtube school it's funny how you said that you had class on titles and thumbnails because we showed up the first day and it was school yeah and both of us were like we hate school i can't believe we signed up for this i can't believe we're doing well there's a lot of anxiety as like entrepreneurs who are like this is not productive yeah we should be like we're losing money being we should be in our studio making videos we should not be here for a week and then by the end it was a complete i mean we reflect on that week as like some of the most interesting lessons ever learned yeah and i think there's there's obviously general like connotations with buzzfeed as as a organization and as you know creative studio but you can't like spending the week there you can't deny the skill set that they've crafted in the in that you know whether or not you like the videos everyone has heard of buzzfeed of course yeah and they've done an amazing job of doing that and even some of the formats that have come out of buzzfeed worth it i think is a great example like unbelievable right like there's and the creators that have come out unsolved yeah the creators that have kind of emerged from that school of of content have built massive platforms including yourself so i do think uh that is a really interesting thing to talk about around taking a job doing something that you eventually want to do is not necessarily something to look down upon or even i feel like the culture right now of creators is like just go independent immediately like right you know it's almost like a straight to the league vibe you said it exactly correct and that i think there's definitely a culture of quit your job worked for me it's definitely going to work for you i i i didn't do that i mean i view working for a company or even another creator and their company as paid grad school go to learn learn everything you can and when you feel ready to graduate and do your own thing do it i mean for me i i was saving money for an entire year before i quit my job and like making a plan i prepped videos for six months leading up to training in my two weeks on the weekends not during work hours on the weekend i want to make that very clear um because that's that's what you have to do and for me again in my background you know what my dad really drilled into me about entrepreneurship is you can you can go towards fear and you can go towards risk but you better have a plan there's no point in jumping off a cliff without some sort of parachute or safety net as as a backup and so for me i had like three months of savings maybe um a lot of people also like don't have a plan i feel like especially like young people coming out of college and that's the best time to get a job like for me that's the first thing i did i got a job working at a hotel and whatever i chose to do after i got out of work showed me maybe what i did want to do yes and that was like filming and editing on my own time right so sometimes like just getting any job is a step towards figuring out what you want to do even if you hate that job and now today there's so many opportunities to have a job doing a creative thing um i on the other side also coming from an indian background uh with an entrepreneurial father who you know immigrated and kind of had was like in survival mode and had to figure something out and did i actually my storytelling as a kid was almost the opposite which was just like just jump so that you have to survive and then find your climb your way out yeah right and that's exactly what i did i was just like all right i'm just gonna start something and see well that's how it goes and that works for a lot of creators yeah i'd say that though we could have i could have had a more accelerated path if i didn't think like that um at times i think there's some of it that's like you have to have that so you know how to you know solve problems in a very unique way and and do stuff just by yourself um but we had the same experience when we went and our first company got acquired and we got to work within a company that was building and monetizing youtube properties we both refer to that as our grad school like we and it was our paid grad school um we left that company with no plan and not really a you know proper what you're describing we did not do we just jumped and we were like let's start a channel called colin and smeared see what happens well it's working well it's four years later yeah it's four years later now um but yeah that that that is something that i often times look at creators and say if you have the opportunity to go work with a creator or work at a creative company go take that yes hone your craft and then step out like because you're gonna find this is all a journey of self-discovery right like i can imagine that when you first started working at buzzfeed and making videos challenge accepted was not something that immediately clicked you did do some challenge videos there right i did some like physically taxing videos the ufc yes i did a video where i trained like a ufc fighter for 60 days i did a video where he trained for a marathon in 10 weeks got it so what did you learn like from transitioning to becoming independent what was there anything that was like oh wow this is really different now meaning like making videos within a company versus making videos independently like was there a big stark difference or a learning curve for anything beyond even just making the videos running the business anything like that or did you feel like it was a pretty smooth transition it was definitely a big transition um some of the positives were at the full-time job there were a lot of restrictions on what we could or couldn't do at that time outside of work and in many ways i actually felt like we were sort of sheltered from the youtube community at large um and so it was really nice to be able to make those connections outside and sort of do something without having to have it go through a bunch of approvals um i think the other thing that i sort of realized also is that there have been several creators who have left buzzfeed and get a million followers in a week you know try guys sophia and i guard incredible creators who are able to carry that over but it's also on you as your creator to keep that momentum going a shout out only goes so far or people knowing you from somewhere else and we've seen that i mean there have been plenty of people who've been shouted out by huge creators you have a massive bump it goes great for a month and then sometimes they even quit or fall off entirely so i i sort of knew this wasn't really a learning i was like this is gonna you know my wildlife buzzfeed video will probably do really well but it's on me to have three more viral videos right in the can ready to go to hit the algorithm in the recommended page as soon as this goes out how did you navigate that in the very beginning you you get that bump from leaving buzzfeed you know you have to focus on the creative you need to have good videos coming out but at the same time you're now on your own from a sales and business perspective like in the very beginning how did you navigate that so i sort of strategically was ready such that when any video went viral that was when i started reaching out to agents and managers like right after i had a bump because i was like this is the best time i look you know better than i did a month ago and i was able to get representation pretty quickly which was really nice so what was your first brand deal coming out of working at buzzfeed so my very first brand deal on my own channel was for a different fitness app shall not be named no no they were great to work with just didn't come in competition with us now and it was a dedicated video so the whole video was about the app for seven thousand dollars and at the time i was like oh my god i mean that's crazy this is amazing you know um and and when i learned later how many downloads we netted them i realized we should have asked for way more yeah but that was one of my first experiences and i was so excited because one of the benefits of working on the com at a company is financial stability a negative is there's no vested interest when growth happens always and where i was at in the company it didn't matter how my videos performed i was paid the same and getting that first brand deal gave me an understanding of motivation of the better i do the better things become overall it was really inspiring so i had that taken care of but in terms of building a team i mean it was a lot to navigate because i was also kind of like i mentioned earlier i strategically wanted to hire people from traditional traditional is and with that it was not only hiring them but also training them on digital and getting them accustomed to all of that so that was a huge learning experience as well and a lot of it was you know starting as freelance and then eventually moving people to full time can you describe the primary difference between people trained and traditional and what they need to learn about digital for people who are watching just for people who are watching let's say there's people who are watching who are in the traditional entertainment space like what what is the key difference and what do you need to learn i think you have to be a fan of the content i think being a fan of the platform and the content whether it's youtube tick tock whatever it is that is going to teach you so much more than i could sitting there explaining to you the differences between the two i think if you are going to a film school that is focused and traditional you have to also just consume a ton of the content at the same time and then also understand like what's really interesting about digital is because it's non-union a lot of the jobs sort of flow into one another and so being prepared for that i think is also really helpful i mean a lot of people aren't just producers they're predators now they're producing their editing what a tough name for that job i know i've i thought that since i didn't think that name was going to stick i didn't think that i was going to speak the first time i heard it i was like predator producer editor can you imagine being like that's my job title i'm a predator which is a lot of people's job title yeah yeah tough yeah we were just calling we're working to rebrand it if you are a predator right now or well there you go there isn't really a name until creator sort of came around i think creator's probably a better title for that but i think expecting things to flow interdepartmentally they're not going to be as segmented on a digital set and with that you also have to protect yourself so on our sets we follow a lot of the union rules still what do you think creators can learn about what's happening in traditional right now i think there's a lot that creators can learn about from traditional specifically in the content i make it's it's a lot about being very well organized having a schedule structure plan i mean there are content creators i know that don't know about the six hour lunch break role i'm like you gotta break your crew and have have them have lunch after six hours i don't know that i didn't know that yeah yeah no every six hours you have to provide a meal on a film set um no one gets any ideas this isn't this isn't a traditional film set well mutiny is taking place right now this is a non-union show just so everyone you know we didn't have that at buzzfeed either but um you know like even showing up to production meetings with potential collaborators and partners and having a schedule for the day some people just show up and figure it out and that works great but it's also so much more efficient and a better experience for the crew when when you're really well prepared i mean i love excel so i spend a lot of time in excel doing scheduling and planning and safety meetings are really important with the content we make too so i just think there's a lot to be learned about like being prepared and thinking of every single detail i think that's really important and i do think that there are creators like yourself that are moving youtube in this direction of much more professional production i would love to continue to do something in the traditional space i think it's awesome i loved doing the show on hbo max karma youtube star michelle carray hosts a new series on hbo max karma that summer that i did that show completely transformed who i am as a content creator and was one of those like opportunities where i could i could learn something from traditional karma was a kids survival show where they took 18 teenagers put them in the wilderness to survive for three weeks and whoever won won fifty thousand dollars so it was a pretty incredible show and an amazing opportunity to like be the jeff probe stuff i loved the opportunity because a lot of my mentors on the show were people from amazing race from um biggest loser from these huge shows and they were literally directing me on how i could be a better host and all of that knowledge i have brought back to my channel you watched the videos before i did karma and after huge difference in terms of my personal camera presence how i interview somebody is completely different now versus before asking things that the audience would want to know not knowing anything so sometimes in interviews i felt like i would skip right to a specific point i wanted to make versus now i'm really thinking about how an audience member who is not here having the experience i am having would really want something broken down so far more detailed um putting putting things right into the hands of the audience because a host is there to be the you know the the voyeur the conduit for the audience you know sometimes you ask a question interview and they give you really long-winded answer you can't use that in the cold open for the con and smear show so sometimes i have them repeat it can you say that again in one sentence great that's going to be our cold open interesting wow very cool so does that experience on karma now make you want to be proactive about maybe pitching a show that you would be the host of i would love to host another show i i think it would be amazing i mean i loved that experience and it was also nice to only do one thing on that show it was really really nice um i think when the right opportunity presents itself whether it's something we come up with and pitch or an opportunity where i step in as talent i am so game for that my primary focus right now is my youtube channel just because you know as the theme of all of these interviews you all have been doing everything comes back to the content it's the only thing i can control i don't have to wait for a green light and when i think about should i spend five days of the work week on a pitch for a show where i'm gonna have to explain what youtube.com is to a bunch of people in suits would i rather do that or would i rather sit down with our editors and producers and bang out the next three months of content that will not only net us more you know immediate funds and opportunities but also like i think that if you can create something by yourself that grows on a youtube channel all of that other stuff comes like it's like a magnet and when you let go of that that's when the opportunities start to fade so i'm going to hold on to my own lifeline and for something like karma during that experience you can't work on your youtube channel i would assume i did you did so um i didn't want to give up the youtube channel they're like well are you going to pause what are you going to do and i said don't worry about it you're never going to hear about my youtube channel because that was one of the concerns the producers had they're like we've worked with youtube talent it becomes this point of tension where they want to go and film and we can't i said you're never gonna hear about my youtube channel so every day i woke up at four and i drove an hour and a half down the mountain to an ice skating rink at this time i was also training like an olympic figure skater i found a coach had them drive in and every morning before said i would train at the ice rink for two hours drive back up the mountain shower go to sat and never talked about it wow [Laughter] that's what i do all the time like last week i had i was doing cheerleading and boxing so i would go to cheerleading will you do tumbling they're throwing me in the air eat lunch go to boxing for two hours how do brakes play in to the schedule like personal breaks for you personal breaks yeah like does that do you like sleeping yeah actually i have a great sleep schedule um we we're very clear on weekends off so previously at the beginning of the channel i would train a lot on the weekends because it wouldn't interfere with the nine to five aspect of our job and now i have realized training is my job like that is like me being an athlete on the channel that has to be factored into the nine to five so i i don't do that anymore i it's always during the workday that i'm training do you ever think about the fact that it's just you who is the ultimate engine behind all this something that we think about that like the channel is called colin and sameer so like a video doesn't go out unless we're in it do you ever think about that when it comes to planning the next phase of your business absolutely someone i look up to a lot is um blogilates for example she has awesome cassie incredible amazing yeah um she has her brand with her face on it and she's also developing other brands that don't have her face on it i think that's really smart and i feel like i'm sort of in a phase where i'm still figuring out exactly what that would mean for me i do have a lot of ideas but right now and something i really enjoyed about the yes theory interview y'all did was how they were sort of discussing that they've they've branched out they've done other things but everything comes back to content and for me this year that has been my biggest focus in the pandemic we did a lot of stuff like we built the app which has been amazing we did a little bit of merchandise i did an online course those are all amazing things and now that the world has opened up a little bit more and we can film again to the capacity i want to film in 2022 i really want to like explode the channel yeah that's my biggest goal jimmy said that to us mr beast when we were with him he just kind of looked at us and he was like one of the things he thinks creators make a mistake on is diversifying too early because he was like at the end of the day if you actually every week just focus on making the best video possible that's what's going to unlock the world for you yes and it actually you have to have a lot more patience than you think in like crafting a best-in-class product and you look at some of the brands in the past that have focused on a singular thing and being the best in class at that thing they're often the brands that last the longest and i think that is something hard because in our industry it's like things just start opportunities just are coming at you every week and they're all really exciting and really interesting i'm curious just to go back to as you started this channel your independent channel did everything just kind of work or were there challenges in the beginning like did you start posting videos like the victoria's secret video which is a fantastic video there's 10 million views like was it just like oh wow i make these videos and everyone loves them and and money's coming in and everything works absolutely not i mean they've definitely been hills and valleys throughout the whole process and sort of what we were mentioning earlier is when you get a shout out or you're transferring an audience from somewhere else to yours that's a nice bump in the beginning but you have to deliver week after week on following up on that promise to all of those people so i mean the victoria's secret video was a year into me being independent and i released that video and it didn't do well for the first several weeks it was like a couple hundred thousand views maybe for a video that i spent five weeks training for i was like a little bit like disappointed and then out of nowhere it exploded in the algorithm weeks later which is very unique i think because i feel like we put a lot of pressure on the first 24 hours or even seven days of video's success and for me on my channel i've actually found that evergreen success is the most lucrative and the most exciting which is probably why earlier when i was we were talking about like if a video doesn't perform to standard i always like to wait a little bit because sometimes i'll check back a few months later and it's like oh it hit a million views i don't even realize it so that video when that did well really opened my eyes to what if i just commit more fully to all of the challenges i'm taking on and i really find this unique way to trend jack stuff that's trending right now but also make it more elongated documentary style can you speak a little bit more on trend jacking i guess or like what you mean by that yeah so it's a term i guess that i've only heard recently and it's something i learned a lot about at buzzfeed actually was every morning at buzzfeed they would send us an email with these are the five things trending on facebook on youtube whatever best performing videos of the past 24 hours no clue how they pulled all that information but we would get an email every day and we would see you know best hashtags on twitter and because the output and the turnaround was so quick there we quickly be like oh kim kardashian is in the news someone someone out there make a kim kardashian video and someone would do it someone trained like kim kardashian it's somebody somebody yeah someone in the office did that and so what i sort of wanted to do on my own channel was project trends so one of the first series that i did was a series where i trained like different superheroes so i trained with spider-man's lead stunt double i trained with batman's lead stunt double i trained for a period of time and then at the end we would film like a cinematic fight scene of me assuming the role of the character and really putting my skills to the test and what i did was project the trend so i took the year slate of movies and tv shows coming out and i said okay spider-man homecoming is coming out in july you know this other marvel property is coming out in september and we will work backwards so if i want a spider-man video to come out the day the spider-man movie comes out i should start filming that three months ahead and that's sort of where we would filter and literally release a viral video the same day the movie releases because it's going to be everywhere it's going to be all the google searches it's going to spike in google trends for that opening weekend and that was sort of my initial strategy wow that's really interesting i love that that's cool because it seems like a lot of people kind of look at that concept of like social hacking or or like trend hacking i'll call it um as like something that's already existing there's a wave that's already happening on youtube and then you hop on that way yeah i would say that's how we operate that's how we operate we're very right yeah well i mean when you have the opportunity to be reactionary and produce something super quickly then yeah it absolutely works but even for as recently as our 911 dispatch video that video has been edited for months and we held it for emergency telecommunicators week um so that all of those publications would already be celebrating 911 dispatchers oh great there's a piece of content that talks about how this job is made you're kind of like doing the job for the journalist that was actually a lot of my initial approach on the channel of i would make a video like victoria's secret and then i would reach out to all of the publications daily mail cosmo whatever that would normally make an article about this type of thing and push my stuff to them and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't but that was sort of an early sort of an early technique i used to try and get our videos on other platforms i love that idea of thinking about doing the job for the writers yes which is similar to the agent thing yeah yeah making it easy for them it's it's really important we talk about this spectrum of being an artist uh and a distributor right like a distributor is the person in the studio who's like we need to make another spider-man so that because people buy tickets for spider-man and the artist is someone who's like i'm making this i don't care what anyone thinks right this is my expression and creators are somewhere in the middle but probably shade a little bit over to the distributor side where they have to think about how is the audience going to receive this and how do i get this in front of as many people as possible the artist is not holding the 9-1-1 dispatch video right like when the artist feels it's done it's going out yeah right like the distributor is what you're doing it's very strategic i guess i was going to ask do you agree with that do you agree that you have to have more of like a distribution mindset of course to make it as a creator of course constantly distribution mindset i think and for me the artistic part of it was making the video making the edit perfect i'm very very proud of how that edit turned out i think it's an amazing video and then the distributor within me says wait a second we could you know get more views we could really you know grow the channel strategically now can i prove that releasing it during national emergency telecommunicators week actually made a huge impact i don't know but a lot of the comments were like hey i'm celebrating this this week and thanks for you know honoring the job that my mom does whatever it may be and another reason we held it was because we wanted to do three banger releases in a row so in april we released the the video where i went to etiquette school we released 911 and we released swat all within two weeks of each other and that month was our best performing month of all time on the channel and we 7xed our adsense in just that month by holding the videos and having them you know come out one after another because i don't know if you guys have seen this but if you have a video do well it will typically give a early bump to the video directly following because it's going to appear and recommend it so we're like well i think these are going to do well let's group them together and it worked pretty well there's so much distribution strategy in that i love that i would also say those three videos have amazing thumbnails that was also a big change it feels like there was like a a shift because those are like incredibly well-crafted thumbnails thank you and i'm curious about that yeah thumbnails have been personally my weakest everything because they drive me crazy it's like we work you know for a year sometimes on a video and it's like the night before oh my god we have to make a thumbnail right and i don't know if you all have been seeing on twitter i'm sure you have feel like you guys follow some of the same people i do where there is this new echelon of thumbnail twitter artists yeah um like adventure or jay or tkg they're very talented there's some really niche thumbnail twitter accounts too there's one that's called thumbnail colors that we've seen that find ourselves featured on which is like that's more about like the art of the thumbnail it's like what are the dominant colors in this thumbnail well that's i guess good psychology to understand yeah um but earlier this year i joined a like a accountability group with some other youtubers and we meet every week and critique each other's thumbnails and titles it's amazing and i hadn't experienced that level of feedback and you know self-critiquing since i worked at buzzfeed honestly and that has really helped me hone a lot of the thumbnail so from there i got you know we we connected with some of these amazing twitter thumbnail artists who have been working with us um and it is just amazing what they are able to do i don't even understa they'll deliver an asset to me and i'm like how did this happen how on planet earth did this come out of the photo i delivered to you if you look at some of their before and afters it's insane so very impressive work by them and i i do think that thumbnails have been it's a massive part of distribution though because you're right you can make the best video possible but if you don't have a good poster yeah [Applause] it's such a simple concept that like if people don't click on the video they're not going to watch it but to craft that in a world where the competition is increasingly high for people's attention i think that is like such an interesting um challenge and it has like created a whole market of jobs of people who like how important to your revenue a thumbnail designer is is really interesting not to drive the price up of your thumbnail designer but it is like a really important role in all of this when it comes to distribution and if people are going to watch your channel or not but those three thumbnails i just wanted to say thank you now on the accountability group that is a that is a theme that has kind of come as the creator economy has started to rise and to be this like actual job that people can have and career that people can have accountability groups and and masterminds or kind of like workshops or something that have emerged i even went on a trip in january to colorado with a bunch of creators where we just sat in a cabin and watched each other's channels i want to go yeah it's so interesting that it's it's essentially we are pulling some things from what a traditional media company would do and decentralizing them saying yes we're just going to organize ourselves in different pods and do what we would do if we were working all at one big media company together but what i think is really fascinating about our space is you're meeting with creators that technically you're potentially fighting for attention with them right you're actually competing for viewers attention but i've found that our space is unbelievably supportive of each other like there's creators sometimes who unsolicited hit us up and are like hey this video would probably do better if you did this it's like that's awesome what if that's because there's still enough attention to go around yeah for everyone like it's not a scarcity mindset yet but it's a really interesting thing that that we have that in our community i think it's because like a you know rising tide lifts elbows whatever that's saying is i'm butchering it um because the more people we get watching youtube the more eyes we all get in a way maybe but there's still this like misunderstanding right like jimmy kimmel this week during uh oh my god did you see this i almost launched into orbit seeing that yeah yeah it was amazing he said um youtube does not deserve its own upfront youtube is not television youtube is medicine we use to tranquilize our kids and i was like wait a second kimmel and i actually wrote a linkedin post about this because i was upset um but i was like as we all do as we all do we all turn to linkedin you know yeah but i was like i think kimmel's channel has done 68 million views in the past 30 days i would bet that more people watch him on youtube than on tv and the people who are watching him on youtube have no idea how to watch him on tv like same tv without youtube he might be extinct to most people no one even knows he exists so i think it's like we still have this kind of collective passion around proving everyone wrong um yeah that i think is what binds us all together right that's a strange tweet it was a really strange comment it was part of his uh his up front for for what whatever you don't even know what network she's on i know it's abc only because i watched a clip of him on youtube last night right yeah right right and it's like isn't he buddy buddy with mark rover weren't they making a show together yeah yeah yeah man yeah but maybe he did it to put himself in the headlines who knows distribution strategy from kimmel there i think i'm pretty sure lily singh said this i i'm pretty positive she said this i'm not butchering this but she said something that really stood out to me a few years ago where it doesn't matter how successful you are you are the only person that cares the most about your success yeah i totally agree with that i think that is actually one of the wonderful byproducts of this like entrepreneurial wave is that people are having to learn how to believe in themselves uh you have no other choice you know like for us when we we've been doing this for 10 years and there's been a lot of times where this didn't work a lot where we're making extremely little amounts of money but still trying to make videos and sitting together and being like i believe we can we have it in us to have this be a career we just haven't solved it and the perseverance to keep going through that is i think what we're all learning collectively in this career now and i feel like that bravery goes away over time because we all had it when we decided yes to make the url you know to make the account and to post that first video that in and of itself takes so much bravery and you know you get caught in this place of well the videos aren't performing as well or maybe they are and yeah and you start to self-doubt and if only we could tap into why the hell did i think i was brave enough to quit my job and and think it would be self-sustaining where where did that come from i need that today that it fear is a fascinating ingredient in our decision making and it does i think as success increases somehow and i would speak for for myself in this fear actually becomes more of an ingredient in your decision-making as your success increases because you have something to lose and i think that is one of the most fascinating things where you would think you have more confidence in your decision making sometimes it's it's riddled with more fear because you don't want it to go away you know what it took to get there and you're terrified that it could all go away in the same amount of time or quicker when you said i need that today is there something specific you're referencing or like a feeling that you have right now oh i feel great today today i feel great i just mean there are times when i say to myself i need that today um you know when i'm about to be thrown in a basket toss at cheerleading i need that bravery today when i'm about to get punched in the face at boxing sparring for the video that we're filming right now i need that bravery today to come on the con and see your show [Laughter] why do you why do you why is essentially like why does all of this matter to you like why does growth about growth on the channel matter why does this show matter like what what is this um for you personally outside of business success and and audience growth like what why i think there are a lot of reasons that are why for me you know i didn't see someone who looks like me on disney channel growing up sure of course um i want to see more women kicking ass on youtube yeah okay of course but also i think like philosophers come up with the the sentiment of life that we should live by and artists are the people who communicate that and for me in a way with challenge accepted i not only want to inspire people to go out and and do the dreams that they have for themselves or maybe even pursue a passion or profession that they wouldn't have otherwise i also want to highlight the people who are doing this every day sometimes people will say oh like how are you doing this you're so strong i'm like i did it for a month what about the person who's been doing it their whole life and have been risking their lives to save others and and to make make miracles happen to me those are the real heroes and that's who i want to highlight on my channel as an influencer i feel a massive responsibility to uplift unheard voices and and just share more raw experiences i think that a lot of the professions we show on our channel have only been shown in a very polished light previously or the light of you know a quick news clip here and there or even a self-produced documentary and what i want to show is real raw and authentic that's why a lot of times the videos have a very strong emotional component you see me fail you see me hurting and struggling because that's part of what it takes to get to the professional level and i don't want to hide that i want to honor the people who do it i love that [Music] you

Channel: Colin and Samir

Views: 364,393

Keywords: colin and samir, colin samir, Colin and Samir Videos, colin and samir show, Amazon FBA, Robinhood Stocks, Making money online, how much money on youtube, Michelle Khare, Challenge Accepted, I tried, interview, buzzfeed, youtuber, business, education, army, go army, michelle khare, challenge accepted, military, air force, marines, bootcamp, airborne, army airborne, basic training, I Tried The Army

Id: 7qoe2qhcZ-Y

Length: 77min 19sec (4639 seconds)

Published: Tue May 31 2022