The MKBHD Interview

all right welcome to my first video bought a new laptop the world's greatest gadget reviewer i didn't even know such a thing existed so yeah welcome to video number 100 he is in my opinion the tech reviewer on the youtube platform and really for me just in general this is the first video i'm uploading to over a million subscribers on youtube kind of a ridiculous number oh what what thanks marquez marquez brownlee and the creator of the decade award goes to mkbhd [Music] recording rolling perfect [Music] so the first thing we wanted to ask you is around the fact that we've heard you say multiple times that you say no to 99.9999 of things that come through your inbox we're curious this is the first time that we're speaking in person why say yes to do this well okay long time listener first time speaking to you guys i've watched your videos for a while i've watched the show i see the podcast of course i'd like to talk with you guys of course i know this is going to be a fun chat so of course i said yes that's really cool it's it's awesome to know i mean colin just said first time talking to you in person but we're actually talking virtually additionally i think what's what's amazing in the creator community is just like you feel like you do if you do watch someone's channel develop a relationship with them it's kind of confusing it's like wait do we know each other or do we not know each other we've never spoken but we both know a lot about each other exactly yeah cool well yeah it seems like you have a lot going on right now just curious like what is happening in the world of mkbhd what does it look like right now like are you on a bit of a press tour is this mkbhd 2.0 no it's funny though anytime it seems like i'll do something online and then there will be like a ripple effect of equal opportunities where i'll do a podcast and then everyone with a podcast goes we should have them on a podcast no my world is uh is in this like sort of lull in the year where there's not too much tech happening so i have a lot of time to reflect and reinvest to make that this year better than last year obviously the world of mkbhd has has grown into a you know a bigger media property than when this all first started so we do want to just rewind for a second and i was watching some of the videos of you uploading uh you know your golf swing as as some of your first pieces of content on youtube i was just curious at that time when you were uploading your golf swing looking for feedback were you watching youtube at that time were you inspired by other creators were you just looking at it as a platform to upload your golf swing no absolutely my uploads were 100 inspired by watching lots of videos it was pretty obvious to me at the time that there was a sort of community effect where you could talk to people from around the world who didn't know you who would descend upon your video because of search and leave a comment it felt like pretty special at the time and still like it's it's a ton of fun now even now it's like amplified like i'll spend i'll pour my heart and soul into something and spend hours and hours and hours on it and the second it's done uploading and i hit publish thousands of people will have the ability to watch and react to what i just made and that just that cycle just keeps getting better and better so was there a specific creator that you did watch that kind of tipped your mind into the aspiration of of taking on youtube as a career or was there anyone that you looked at and you were like hey maybe it's not necessarily just a hobby and this could be a thing that i do yeah there were some there were some early tech creative um youtubers that paved the way uh i think one of the probably the earliest one would be chris pirillo aka locker note was his channel and he was live streaming all the time he made youtube videos and that might have been the first like professional tech social media thing i ever saw and then there were others there was the ijustines the soldier knows best the john 4 lakers of the world sort of in this like initial wave of people making consistent high quality tech videos that made me really fascinated by it and made me want to do the same thing uh so there were a few definitely like people paving the way before me for sure and when you went to college then yeah i know you talked about you studied business in college was there as you were in college making videos your audience is growing are you thinking about your channel as like a case study or hey these lessons i'm learning in business school actually could be applied here to what i'm doing on youtube yeah not only did i look at my channel as a case study i had professors look at me and my channel as a case study which is funny that's cool uh i did have a professor go why haven't you dropped out like literally asked me why i didn't drop out during my junior year which i thought was strange but i think at that point it was somewhere one to two million subscribers and i was just barely beginning to work with brands and by the time i was you know two three four years into college it became obvious at some point in those years that that would be what i did when i graduated a lot of times a business school people do a co-op or they'll do an internship in the middle of their career because they know they want to work for something in that industry i never did any of them and that to me was like because i was putting that fuel back into my own channel was there a moment throughout your rise because your rise has been very steady but also significant and there are certain moments like marquee interviews that i look at whether it's like kobe bryant or you know recently president obama i'm curious to know which of these moments for you was sort of a whoa this is crazy and like same for your family oh interesting so for me definitely kobe 100 uh that's the most nervous i've ever been to interview anyone most nervous about probably the most nervous i've ever been so the first time i contacted he ever reached out he's like would you like to interview kobe we've got his new shoes coming out it's it's in the middle of his farewell tour season he's got a huge hand in designing these shoes and the tech in them we think it'll be a cool collab yes of course yes i'll definitely want to do this and so uh the way it's kind of set up is it's in this gym of like he's gonna come into the gym and he's gonna go around the gym and sit down for each interview one by one so i'm like he walks in and then he sits down for the first interview and i can see his like entourage surround the interview so i can't see the interview but i see that it's happening over there and then he moves to the next one and then he moves to the next one so the hype is like building like exponentially as i wait to like hopefully not forget the questions that i've been trying to memorize for the past hour he comes over he's super nice and we immediately just start talking like the interview goes great and i think yeah that everything that's surrounded that once it's published and then like the the sort of sit back and like okay yeah that that did just happen like i did just interview kobe for a video that's real that i feel like opens a lot of doors in my own head opens a lot of doors in other people possible collaborators heads and i think to my family was probably pretty surprising because i don't really tell them about things until they're like either about to launch or launching i feel like i don't want to jinx anything but once that video goes up they're like i'm sorry what you did what so yeah there's there's a lot of i think that was definitely a i think i'd put that at the top of my list of like peak channel interview moments i think that's pretty much it thanks for being a part of this i appreciate the time uh and hopefully we get to do it again thank you like those moments obviously they're like big moments for you for your family like for the brand but i actually think there are those moments and i specifically remember the kobe interview being a very big moment to help validate um myself and us as creators when someone within the creator ecosystem gets to do something like that like i think it actually raises just the bar and the elevates just what it means to be a creator and how powerful uploading to youtube and building an audience is oh yeah i think i feel that too and i feel grateful to be able to open some of those doors sometimes it could it could feel almost i don't know if a glass ceiling is the right word but like there was sort of a peak of like what you can do as a creator things you you can unlock if you will and and i feel like when another one of those doors gets opened by one creator it feels like it opens for a lot of other creators and and similar types of doors will open because if it goes well enough they'll want to do something like that also so yeah i feel like that's been a pretty nice byproduct for sure was there another creator that you saw that you felt opened the door that kind of opened your mind to what was possible like i would say for for us you know obviously watching casey turn his everyday life into into engaging content unlocked this this world in my head i went to film school and understanding like hey here's this guy who's turning his everyday life into into movies was this like incredible moment of empowerment for me as a creator so i'm just curious was there a was there like the the marquez brownlee kobe bryant interview was there a video like that for you uh i don't know if there is a single uh thing like that i think what came to mind is on the style actually uh because that if you look back at like the early videos they were very simple they were shot on like a webcam or maybe like a sanyo zachdy hand cam or whatever watching especially so john morris in tld today another tech creator was one of the first to start doing videos on dslrs and like to start really playing with cinematography and videos sliders moving shots and things like that and that was one of the earliest moments where i was like oh wait i kind of love cameras why don't i just go all out with like the the production and the gear too and that turned out to be a ton of fun so i i want to give like him a shout out for that because like tech videos didn't look like the way they do now before that early moment of us sort of starting to experiment with that so i think now the production ceiling is much higher yeah definitely what about creators in the current moment are there certain people on the platform that you look at and the way that they treat their business and the way that maybe they're pioneering what it means to be a creator are there creators like that that you're watching you're taking notes from yeah i think mr beast is sort of the obvious uh answer right now just as far as business ventures we've talked a lot about this but just like how to focus a team on building something that you're like that you're building get everybody on the same page and building towards the same thing so i think that that would be the obvious answer is like how can you not respect like not only the the depth of of like the videos that he makes and how far he goes to make each video but to see the process a little bit behind the scenes i feel like even david dobrik a little bit of the same thing where you see him at an event and he'll have his camera and it'll be this i i remember this pretty specifically saw him at the cyber truck event and he was just kind of hanging out and the cyber truck goes on stage and it's just this crazy thing and i'm there to make an entire video about the cyber truck and i remember like watching his vlog like a couple days later whatever the next one was and there wasn't a single second of footage from that it just wasn't good enough yeah and like that to that to me that level of dedication to you know that craft which is like collecting all the best moments was was inspiring too so i'll toss some love to dobrik and and mr beast so you've described being a youtuber as being an octopus where you have eight different arms that all represent different parts of the business at what point do you chop off one of your octopus arms and hand it to someone else like when did that happen yeah i've always had the idea i think back in i mean maybe when i was in college you know there's people telling you hire an editor hire an editor hire an editor that was like the thing to do hire an editor and i was like oh okay so if i hire an editor then i can be like shooting videos and then passing them all the footage and then while they're editing i can be working on the next one that's that's genius that's twice as much output that's so useful so like that was the first mission all right i'm gonna find an editor and you know i didn't really have much success with that but i think what i realized is another part of that octopus analogy which is some parts of the mkbhd creative process are like one of the hearts are like not really something that i feel that i can chop off so the team now is five and it is me andrew vin brandon michael and they're all really good at the things that i was like doing with other arms like the set design and cinematography and motion graphics and management and things i can sort of pass off to be done way better than if i was doing all of it and i think the last hardest pieces are the the creative pieces like writing like camera work and like editing and so those those are a much longer more deliberate uh process but i think eventually those will end up also chopped off we'll see we'll see writing is the interesting one i want to ask you about because i read somewhere that you mentioned you took the video because you were never much of a writer but it's clear if you look at your videos there's some serious writing that goes in to your videos so what is your trajectory your path look like as a writer and how does writing fit into your process i feel like writing has become the most uh inefficient use of my time it's the thing that i spend the most time on in this in this job that i have which is making tech videos so i'm testing products i am i'm putting together all my notes i'm writing them all down i'm making the video i'm editing the video the writing process or putting together a video takes like an entire day when the rest of the post-production process also only takes one day all the editing all the shooting all the design all the motion graphics everything you know i was i was always a pretty mathy person but now i'm i feel like i'm a professional writer at this point which is crazy so yeah writing is one of the most interesting new hires that we have happening this year and i'm really excited about who we have joining the team and i think you know not just making review videos but another thing about tech is videos of a very short tale uh which basically is like you know how how long are you gonna watch the iphone 12 review after it comes out maybe about another year and then that's it um but making those more interesting explainers and those long tail evergreen videos 5g explained you know talking about like why companies do certain things those are the types of videos i want to be doing more of and so to be able to do those in between the reviews and have someone helping with writing and research on those things is that's that's exciting to me i think that'll be that'll be pretty big for the channel so what does the mkbhd org chart kind of look like and and how does an idea go from you know hey here's an idea and what is like the process of getting it into okay now it's now it's going to be made into a video and now we're publishing it at this point it'll it'll depend on the video but let's say it's a review because that's like the bread and butter so the device will show up i will do all my testing and everything the review process begins basically with me writing all the things down that are going to go into the video i have a google doc that i start adding all of my thoughts to that will slowly morph into a script kind of like baking a cake but you can see it being baked so i share this document with everyone here with andrew who's sort of like production manager and venom brandon our cinematographers so as i finish writing they can see this pie baking as like a shot list and go through and get some of the b-roll of oh he talks about the speakers so let's get some shots of the speakers and let's get some shots of the cameras and the general device we'll get a spec shot we'll set up some top downs things like that stuff that i would ordinarily also have to spend time doing later and then once the writing is done then we basically set up the talking to camera part and then fill in the blanks basically within the edit so i'll talk about a whole bunch of stuff will shoot me using the phone i'll shoot me using the phone and then we'll just sort of hammer out any sort of fun last details which might be an intro or an outro or some crazy robot shot or top downs or whatever it is it all comes together in the edit which is just me sitting in front of the computer for a few hours till my eyes bleed and then that's it then it goes up to youtube and it's it's published do you feel like you sitting there editing until your eyes bleed is essential like is that uh irreplaceable component of the process up till this point it has felt like it but i know deep down that it's not and i i think finding and hiring not just talented editors but talented editors who are familiar with youtube and are familiar with the tech world and are familiar with reviews who can edit a review to this certain style that i would uh could make an mkbhd video i just think i want to make mkbhd videos does that make sense i i feel like the little things that i find in the edit that i can like twist or like bend a little bit to make a video work the way i want really happens in those critical couple hours where i'm like obsessing over the edit um and i don't know that i can teach that is there someone who helps there like maybe loads in the footage chops it down to selects and then you take it or you take in just the you shoot you take in the raw footage and it's yours i i take all the footage in we shoot on red cameras for these little ssds and they go shoot like for b-roll for a while they'll just drop off a mag at my desk and just go shoot some more stuff so i'll have like a stack of mags and i'll import all the footage so i take it from raw footage to final product what about the intricacies of like when you push in from whatever it is like 4k and you push in or 8k and you do a slight push in are you making that move yep yeah a lot of some of that is with software some of that is the way we designed it in the shot um the stuff that that i'll that i'll pass off is like the crazy intricate a lot of times intro shots and videos so you might see like the first five seconds of the video is some crazy like drop down helio shot of like revealing the phone from behind something with some motion track text that will be lifted and passed off then brandon and michael who are really good with that can take it from there they'll have my direction on like what to make and then that will get dropped in at the beginning or wherever it fits into what i was building um but yeah other than that sleep to nuts is in my hands it's also not an easy thing for most creators that we talk to hiring is not an easy thing to do especially because you're you know you're a solo creator you've been making this stuff on your own the easiest way to do it is just hey let me just grab a camera shoot it and edit it so i'm just curious how like what makes a good mkbhd higher and and how do you think about hiring as you start to scale into new ventures as i build the team this year especially i'm looking at not just skills we kind of call them unicorns but uh people who share the taste and the ability to turn the taste into reality so a lot of times i'll like describe a shot or describe an intro and we can sort of get the wheels turning in everyone's head to the point where we know roughly what we're making and we don't have to do a whole bunch of back and forth and a good hire is someone who is good at executing on those ideas basically and now if it's a writer that just comes with like learning the language of a video that i that i make and adapting to that if it's uh if it's in cinematography or if it's in editing that's just gonna come with me teaching that style which makes it feel like my job is going from writer to teacher and that was actually part of my follow-up question was about education there's not really like a track right now not only to become a youtube creator but an educational track that's like prepares you to work with a youtube creator do you think that there's something whether it's looking back at your education that really helped or advice that you would give to someone who's interested in working for a creator when i describe these people as unicorns it's like anytime you find someone who is that good at that many different things they're usually already their own independent creator in some way probably already a youtuber and if they're not they have the skills to be because they have writing they have the ability to turn their taste into a vision and turn it into a video and they know audio and sound design all the stuff so the advice i would give really is to to be multifaceted to not just be a great editor because a lot of people can be great editors but to be a great editor that also knows how to do x y and z and how to bring those things into an edit or how to enhance an edit using unusual skills from other areas um same thing might apply to writing or cameraman type stuff uh but i think yeah the advice would be to be be multi-skilled multi-talented sharpen multiple knives i would say could you describe how uh one of your employees came to work at your company i know i think michael had a form of cold outreach to you correct yes it was incredible so he's our motion graphics specialist right so if you see uh like motion tracking animations or text or things like that intros and the videos he's responsible for most of those his cold email was literally like hey every year seems like you redo your graphics on your channel like your intro or outro are you going to do one this year i think this is at the beginning of 2018 or something like that and i was like oh yeah because he had his portfolio and he did motion graphics too and so i the last time i'd redone my intro i'd worked with this spectacularly talented artist who'd done commercial work and we went back and forth for like a month on this amazing thing this amazing five second thing that became the intro and michael said all right i like that idea and recreated that intro from scratch from his own assets and said now what would you change and as soon as i saw that i was like okay this guy's good this guy's good he's clearly a million times more talented at me and that one after effects class i took in college so yeah it was a no-brainer to and the fact that he could execute on the changes and had the taste and had the timing uh that was that was incredible so if you can do that if that can be your cold email do it definitely do it are you hiring anyone to sort of oversee everything that's happening with mkbhd sort of a chief of staff or a manager someone that is keeping their eye on every facet of the business i should shouldn't i um that is that is one of our i have an idea board and we have some potential hires to look for in the next few weeks and months and that is one of them just because as the team grows and things get more complex and we're working on more simultaneous projects actually up until this point we hadn't used any project management software at all it would just be our google doc and whatever notes i was taking and sort of reminding people what we're doing at any given time and then the podcast and then the emails there we just sort of keep it all on mind and new hire came and said so okay great what project management software do you guys use and we didn't have an answer because we didn't use any so that has been actually a really great addition being able to put everything down in text and to have everyone be able to see all the goals and all the projects at once and i think as things continue to build and get more complex and creative we will probably need to have someone who literally just oversees everything to make sure that's not my new primary job yeah i i have this interesting visual when i think about creators and even our experience we built you know a few different businesses on youtube and typically as the creators when you think about hiring you're thinking you know okay let me hire people to support what i'm doing and then you kind of remain at the top of the organization everything flows up to you but in this next iteration of where we're headed what we've started to look at is actually i think we're in the center of the organization and we actually could hire above us meaning people who are there to oversee the overarching org and everything that's happening they still work for us but they're actually operating at a more you know managerial or c-level perspective taking a look at the business as a whole and that's a new way of thinking that that we've adopted recently and something that i think requires a little bit of letting go of certain elements of the business uh especially you know if you want to really lean into the creative side of it letting go a little bit on the the business side uh and so i know that i yeah i want to hear from you about the business side of mkbhd and i know that you still do negotiate some of your deals and i'm curious about how much of your time goes into that side yeah that is a lot of my time so a couple things there one is uh i think in a dream world if i can cut off all the right arms my primary job will be content strategy right and because that's what i think i can contribute to this this org in in the tech world on youtube basically um i'm still reviewing i'm still using things i'm still trying to figure out what's good and what's not but that i think will be the primary time thing the other thing is yes so what you mentioned is like being in the middle of the org instead of at the top a lot of what we've already written down in this idea board is like things that that person would do and we noticed that a lot of the things that we were writing were like tell me what the sponsor deliverables are so that i can make sure i do them like make sure you ryan remind me to do things so that i can deliver to those things um so yeah it does feel like you want to be more in the center with all these things happening around you you're like the hub of the wheel maybe something like that and yeah the business so i do yeah i'm in the inbox a lot that's another thing so i am negotiating the deals who to work with who not to i'm typing no 99.99 of the time but that does feel like pretty integral as a piece of like how people identify the mkbhd brand is the selectiveness of who we work with and what we do decide to work with brands on so yeah all that all that still applies that's pretty amazing but you do have uh an agency in wme that supports are they involved in the negotiation or you're passing once you decide on the brand you know you're letting them take care of the agreement and at what point did it make sense to bring in a partner like that in wme this was uh probably about four or five years ago that we started working with them and so i do and and they will bring in some brands specifically on projects interested in working with me but it feels like half of them come through wme and half of them come directly to me uh which is fine it just means i'm like literally reading contracts which is not fun but i'll work with brands directly uh but it did make sense once that value became obvious and also because if you're relying entirely on adsense obviously that's not as stable so when i was this was when i was graduating from college and turning it into a job that it made a lot of sense to try to focus on picking the right brand deals and doing those well when you look at uh potentially trying to diversify your revenue streams you know realizing that you do lean heavily on adsense lean heavily on brand sponsorships what's the next category that you're really looking at building out so as much as we are continuing to build out the media channels products are the are the next most obvious thing considering that seems like people agree with a lot of my taste in products it would be wise to capitalize on and curate or create some type of products for people who have the same taste as me so that's that's sort of natural transition hey there you go got the icon skin got the microphone the mask so yeah so that's what i'm talking about is like if we can make stuff that we like then hopefully other people like it too that thought of diversifying as you're talking about new products is there any like consulting with with tech companies you mentioned that it seems like there's people who enjoy your taste and i think in your s21 video you were like there might be some people over there who are watching mkbhd is there a level of interaction with any of the companies who are interested in consulting and having you actually work on the products yeah up until now zero i've never consulted for any tech company that makes anything they ask all the time but to some level giving free advice to a company whose product i review doesn't quite feel right and so i haven't but i'm i'm definitely exploring those opportunities because there's there's got to be some way because like everyone if you want me to make a tech product i don't have the means by myself here in my video studio to make one so i have to partner with or use the resources of some tech company in some way but the the path to that happening hasn't been as clear like we've made the dbrand icon skins and those are accessories for phones but i don't review skins or cases so we're still playing with that is that like a dream of yours to have a mkbhd edition phone or your own line of actual true hardware tech something like that yeah definitely having my own line of something that i make and that is a representation of my taste in some field would be pretty sweet uh in your dogecoin video you you said that having a uh diverse investment portfolio is is a good strategy um also a quick note on the dogecoin video you're you're like turns to camera where you were giving the disclaimers that were clearly shot after but they were so seamless uh yeah those were really good that was really i really like that but i'm curious when you look at like a diverse strategy of course like in the business you have different revenue streams but now you're starting to launch multiple channels you're thinking about new new media properties do you feel like it makes sense to be diversified across social platforms as a creator or diversified across formats and channels within one social platform so a little bit of both especially on youtube our plan is to be diversified across youtube so we're we're launching channels and we're we're tweaking things in that way um but i do think being diversified across different platforms helps you with leverage both for yourself against a platform and just to to capitalize on different audiences i didn't realize how little of an overlap there is between like people watching videos on youtube and people watching the same videos on facebook for example um so my my stance on repurposing content had always been super negative i hated when someone would like upload the same thing to instagram and then to twitter and then to facebook because it was like why am i following you on all these things but it turns out most people don't do that so i think taking advantage of that platform's native tools and specifically creating for that platform like i see people upload videos to tiktok but that they're just cut from a youtube video it's fine it works but like if you make a tick tock that's going to be better every time so i think taking advantage of the platform natively uh is the best way to go about that but you should diversify across platforms for sure for us it was actually really surprising to hear that um i think around 40 or 35 percent of your revenue comes from adsense and uh i i think that's so so amazing that youtube can actually pay out creators in that style you mentioned that you know there's a big chunk around 50 to 60 percent uh on brand deals is that right yeah something like that probably 60. yeah and then a bid on merch i'm curious you know i know you've referred like almost over 400 teslas is there like an affiliate program that you're also is affiliate marketing at all part of what you do referrals how does that play into your business yes there is a little bit of uh of affiliate so like amazon and b h are the two main ones because there's so much tech products pretty much anything i talk about or review you can find on one of those two sites so we do have an amazon affiliate program and a b h affiliate program those still though i mean they're great that they exist and we definitely use them but they are right on the same level as merch basically where like if we cut that arm off right now we might not even remember to turn it back on but again if we did want to specifically focus on it we could turn that into its own business its own its own revenue stream to some significance uh there was a tesla referral program by the way and that that did go pretty well until they killed it oh so that doesn't exist anymore not anymore i mean you still can get so there was that there was a very robust program where you eventually got a free tesla roadster uh i think they'll just give the referrer like a thousand supercharging miles now or something like that which is good yeah that's cool i mean you're also one of the few people that elon follows on twitter is that right it's true yeah that's pretty crazy yeah i try not to abuse that uh i try not to i i have been known to to dm once in a while but i don't feel like i don't want to waste his time you know he's sending stuff to mars like i don't want to do you man yeah well mr beast is also sending stuff to mars so i guess the thing to do who's not sending stuff to mars now you know fair i'm curious as you uh look at this year uh considering you have interviewed people like elon musk president obama what are some like bucket list interviews you would love to get for your channel and for your community i watch a lot of sports and so a lot of minor athletes and here's the thing about that list of people i've interviewed is i got thrown directly into the deep end like as a child i interviewed the ceo of motorola and then went straight to kobe bryant like there's no there's no warm-up there's no refining your skills before getting these like incredible videos and so it's kind of felt like oh wow the point of this series is to interview high-profile people but really the point of the series was to interview people and talk to people who have an interesting perspective on tech who might not look at tech the same way as you or me whether that's someone who's a ceo of a company because they have to have by definition like a five to ten year vision of the future which can we talk about that or if it's an athlete who uses tech to make a better sports product like that's cool too so i think for me a lot of these interview people are like the lebrons of the world like people who have an impact in more than just their own sport who have their foot in tech in some way athletes don't really get much time to to keep up on the tech world so a lot of times the conversation is just like about literal performance of apparel which is a very small piece of tech but i think it's fun anyway i think those are like yeah lebron would be a pretty fun interview obviously what does this like version 2.0 of mkbhd look like now that you you go into multiple you know youtube channels like what can we expect uh in this next iteration of mkbhd and if you want to tell us what the secret channel is we can do that here and now uh so here's what i'll tell you it's like you see the mkbhd channel that is marquez and marquez's opinions crafted by many hands in order to present it as well as possible each one of the people contributing to this has their own identity and their own things that they like and things that they're an expert on that deserve to be showcased too so that's something we think about a lot that's something we're working on at channel four the podcast also will get a video version as you mentioned so i think the version 2.0 i guess is probably it'll probably be like 4.0 i don't know i sort of divided in phases in my head but the new version of mkbhd i'm building is like one with a lot more visible moving parts uh if you can imagine a transparent machine where you can see the gears turning like it's very impressive the final product and what the machine is doing but you'll be able to look inside and see what the machine's doing while it's doing the thing which i think is pretty fun does the weight of the publish button get heavier and get bigger because like i think when you think about from where you started where you're just taking a bunch of shots it's just like video after video after video especially in you know 2009 2010 when you're growing now it's a different experience yeah it's funny when we when i started it was just kind of like publishing and then not really expecting too much and then just moving on to making the next thing because that was what was fun but after a certain point you guys probably felt this too is you get to a place where you've finished your video you have the file you know the whole thing like the back your hand and you're already anticipating what the response or the reaction is going to be what you think people will like about it what you think people will comment on what things you added whether they'll catch them or not and so when you describe the weight of the publish button it feels like there's a there's a little extra of like i did all my research i talked about everything i wanted to i think i'm pretty thorough but i'm never quite sure exactly how people are gonna react to each little thing um so that's that keeps it fun but i definitely think you're right there's an added weight to uh to publishing something new it was something that we talked about quite a bit last year and we were both really um impressed the video that you put out during you know kind of the heightened racial tensions in in the us and we sat together and we're finding it so hard to to find the words but you know as your platform continues to grow you know do you feel a level of responsibility or how do you i guess interact with big moments in the country like that with with the type of platform that you have yeah i think i've what i've found is i i have my own philosophy on celebrity as weird as that word is which is i only try to admire someone for the thing that they are like good at the thing the reason that they're who they are for tiger woods it's like greatest golf athlete i've ever seen i i look up to him for that and his work ethic and the talent in golf and that's it and so when people like see all their headlines about tiger or other stories about tiger i don't really care like he's still tiger the golfer and that i apply that across everything across like elon musk the entrepreneur and business person across like jeff bezos the amazon inventor basically all these things but i've realized over time that that's not how most people look at it and so with any form of a platform that you have you are automatically inherit this responsibility and this spotlight on like everything else you do and so if there are other issues that you feel strongly about or other things that you have thoughts on and you share them they will inherit part of the platform of like the original thing you do so for me it was like i have i do these tech videos and in theory in my own world the only thing anyone cares about in in marquez land is what should i buy next in tech but this was a time where so many other issues were weighing on me and speaking to me that i felt like because i understand that the spotlight is going to be on other things i have things to say about that i might as well use it too and i think there's other examples of people doing a great job with it i think lebron is another great example of like whatever you think about him as a basketball player he's obviously incredible but his off-the-court presence and ability to create change and speaking out on issues that matter is super admirable so if i can learn from anyone in that i think that would be something to something to take in mind yeah that's that's really great man i mean honestly like i think you've like we mentioned about the interviews you've you've done a lot in the creator community to uh to continue opening new doors for all of us and i really do think that that um your video last year was just so well articulated and and um something that we sent around to to everyone that works here at our company so love all the videos you put out but that one particularly i think really uh hit home for us and was awesome thank you so yeah are you at all nostalgic now i think it's so unique that you've been on the platform so long before it could even be a career when it really had to be a hobby and so much of it is documented from when you were such a young kid do you ever go back and watch those videos i know samir and i like having also been on youtube for 10 years i don't think we go back and watch our old videos anymore but we're definitely nostalgic at times for like the rise in the journey and where it's gone a little tiny piece of me is like i don't watch old videos but i do like remember very clearly like that that space on the internet where it's kind of like everything that happened felt almost like an accident instead like when you see now like creators blowing up and creators starting new channels and getting a lot of traction everything seems very deliberate and contrived and on purpose and i guess for some reason back then maybe a little nostalgic piece of me is like people weren't really trying specifically to go viral all the time as much as they were just like you know uploading a video of themself at the zoo or just like making it or they captured something on their phone and it would be fun to share and they put it on youtube so they could send the link to their mom but then people found the video like it was that that environment i think is what i'm nostalgic about uh but i don't watch my old videos yeah it's uh yeah we definitely don't watch our own i try to try to steer clear of them at this point well um really appreciate you coming on the show um really appreciate you talking and and you know what we talked about about education we feel like these conversations can offer a lot of uh you know lessons in just the observation of how other creators are growing their businesses and as this becomes more and more of a viable career i think turning to conversations like this uh and probably for you looking back on this a couple years down the line when uh mkbhd enterprises as i'll call it is is is a bigger company with even more employees it'll be interesting to see where you were at this time i don't i won't look back at old videos but i'll look back at old places that we were as a business and i'll probably feel pretty good so that's exciting thanks marquez [Music] yeah you know if it is a simulation then uh we're all just characters in in some random sims game i guess basically yeah we should probably start stocking up on dogecoin to be able to uh transact with this uh simulation definitely if you can get the if you can get the coins you'll be set

Channel: Colin and Samir

Views: 197,574

Rating: 4.9732389 out of 5

Keywords: colin and samir, colin samir, Colin and Samir Videos, colin and samir show, Amazon FBA, Making money online, how much money on youtube, MKBHD, marques brownlee, MKBHD new video, how much does MKBHD make, How to grow on youtube, how much does marques brownlee make, marques brownlee first video, MKBHD first video, mkbhd youtube earnings, youtube entrepreneur, how to make money online, how MKBHD is dominating youtube, mkbhd interview, tech, tech reviews, iphone, samsung

Id: pWH1TF1ZfKA

Length: 42min 46sec (2566 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/dhruvinrajgor]

This was a really good interview. I guess I'm kind of a fanboy at this moment but I can hear or watch this man talking for days and never get bored 😂