What's Going On With Braille?

I just saw the title for the video Gabe quitting Braille now at first I thought this was clickbait uh genuinely but I went through the comments and I realized that this is a real thing that is happening which is shocking because Gabe is nowadays I would say the Cornerstone of Braille last time I talked to him he managed pretty much everything like Braille runs through Gabe Aaron is the founder and the the big guy on campus but Gabe is the person who handles the day-to-day who makes all the videos who comes up with the ideas he he's the person who makes Braille so if he's quitting I feel like that says a lot and that's something I want to talk about today and I want to go through his video and actually watch it live because I went through the comments only haven't heard what he had to say yet but I think this is very real this video is also sponsored by Squarespace I need that to be the case because I have had very little interest in making skateboard YouTube videos this is a topic I happen to be interested in but right now I am completely obsessed and focused with writing children's book building my IP and just designing in general it's just become like my new skateboarding it's super fun um but you know this channel is about skateboarding so let's get to it now we're not going to watch the entire 33 minute video don't worry but we're going to get the gist of what's going on all right take two I've already failed at this one time two takes is pretty good for uh filming a video like this ultimate goal hold it together all right this is uh can I get two words out that'd be I can't imagine how he feels at this point this has been his bread and butter his job since I started YouTube this is basically like me doing my YouTube channel as if it was for someone else and then being like all right I'm stepping away officially the hardest video I'll ever film in my life my name is Gabe Cruz I'm the acting YouTube manager for Braille skateboarding which basically means that for the past 7 years since mid 2017 I've been doing all the behind the scenes stuff for the main Braille YouTube channel coming up with video ideas filming them getting them assigned to editors making thumbnails uploading the videos uh SEO research whatever you want to anything you can possibly think of behind the scenes I've probably had something to do with it for the last 7 and 1 half years of my life this is why I'm making this video and talking about it because skateboarding right now obviously I think a lot of creators have talked about skateboarding as a whole having to deal with a potential Decline and even the biggest skateboard companies like primitive P Rod was talking about in an interview how skateboarding is just really struggling right now and the skateboarders who ride for these epic companies the AMS and the professionals are making less money than the people who are working at the warehouses I'm not saying if that's fair or unfair I'm just saying that skateboarders aren't making minimum wage in California and if they're not making it in California they're not making it anywhere else so it's a struggle for all skateboarders the point is that the industry is skateboarding I feel like that probably plays into why Gabe is quitting but Gabe is the he does everything for Braille I mean according to what he just said he he the channel cannot run without him I don't understand what they're doing I don't even know how to say it but um today is my last day with rail skateboarding oh man because it really is the truth that this is my last day with brail skateboarding I've you know the honest truth is is I'm I'm 25 I'm still pretty young and I've had the most incredible magical time working with bra over the last 10 years there's really nothing I don't even think there's anything I can fully say or like any words that I can explain the dream come true that I've been living in for the past 10 years the friendships I've made the incredible content the incredible projects that we've produced and just the unbelievable moments that I'll never forget for the rest of my life wow I just just for whatever reason gathered the correlation of Gabe starting probably around the time I started and sort of feeling the weight of what he's saying because I think a lot of skateboard YouTuber people who started around the same time probably have a lot of nostalgia for when we were just starting and and we were finding so much momentum and we're all working together as a big community and we could keep that up now but I think just like Gabe as he's saying it's like he's he said he was 25 I think we all sort of feel just that that weight of needing to move on from something that once felt good because we need you just kind of do sometimes you want to see what else is out there in the world and I think that's probably where gabes heading with this so let's let's hear I came on to Braille when I was 15 turning 16 and now I'm turning 26 and I've literally grown up my my entire my late teenage years in my early adult years have been this Aaron has been the most fantastic friend and the most incredible mentor and I truly thank him for helping me become the person I am today if you're new to this Aaron is the one who started Braille he's he's the the head honcho and uh Aaron is amazing I don't feel like I have enough uh time to talk about how much I respect and enjoy Aaron as a human being we always have the best conversations and our brains actually work very similarly so and we come from a similar background in skateboarding and uh yeah he's a really really really good person in my eyes and a really fun person to be around but uh I think before we finish this video we should probably do our Squarespace uh sponsor read so let's do that with Squarespace you don't need to know anything about Design This is the website that I've been putting together recently and it was super easy it's basically drag and drop uh you don't they have award-winning templates you can choose from as as well so no design background needed um you can just make a pretty website and uh if you're a creative entrepreneur such as myself which is a weird thing to say um a website is a great centerpiece to show your work they have blogging tools as well if you're someone who likes to write but they also have uh email campaigns and it's the best way to engage with your audience because if someone actually subscribes to you they get your emails no matter what unlike other social media so if you have a thousand people on your email campaign a thousand people will get your notification no matter what that's pretty cool they also have analytics so if you're someone who does have a business they give you all the backend information you need to understand what's selling well and what you need to do better and where traffic is coming from uh analytics they they're they're beautiful to me my two favorite features so far one is you can actually have a paid wall uh for classes so if you're someone who's an expert in something you can actually have all that instead of having a thirdparty website where you like link over here and do this and this and this on Squarespace you can actually build that whole course on your website and it's like class one class two and uh people can sign up for it the other thing is now anyone can build a clothing brand so they work with thirdparty sites now as well where you can do all this through square space you just design something and then you drag and drop it onto merchandise and they even create templates of people wearing your merchandise and then you just put that on the website so it's all under one umbrella now uh which is incredible so every time there's a new feature that sort of involves creative entrepreneurship Squarespace adds it to their website so it's kind of the all stop shop for someone who wants to build your own like solo entrepreneur creative career so if you want to check it out you can click the link in the description down below to get 10% off your first purchase or domain uh or go to squarespace.com Jill to get that get that same deal so let's watch the rest of this Braille video and thank you Squarespace for sponsoring this video 25 um turning 26 and I think I've just hit the point in my life where um I'm just ready to move on and and start fresh and um I'm beginning an entirely new career and that's that's really it there's no special anything there's no big reveal or anything like that it's just getting a little older that's wild so yeah he's starting completely over with something else it sounds like um I don't blame him I really don't blame him at all I think uh I think sometimes at like a the quarter age crisis as you can say he's 25 right um 26 yeah it hits you hard one day when you go I'm going to die soon or it feels like it you obviously you have time but you feel as if you don't have enough time in your life to live all the lives right you start actually feeling like your time is limited I think um at least more than I did when I was a kid so me at 33 I feel that pretty heavily sometimes so to me it's like I don't want to like cling to something because I feel like I need to or have to because I'm going to die with regrets I mean when I at the end I'm going to be like I never got to that thing I wanted to try and that just seems like a horrible fate so um I get it I totally get it that's pretty much it I mean there's not really much more for me to say except the really important point I want to get across is that words cannot express the Gratitude I have for Aaron and Devon behind the scenes and Kylie Khloe all the people along the way who have literally seen me grow up I just hope I've made you guys proud damn I just realized Aaron CYO has a whole talking bit I feel like we need to watch that I have no idea what your thinking why are you going I don't know I'm going to keep trying to pull it out of you and understand this move but I do understand and I do respect you and I understand that you know people change and they grow up and they got to move on but there is this famous quote Gabriel Hario or glacius Cruz it says didn't quit skateboarding because you got old you got old because you quit skateboarding just remember that and just remember anytime you want to go shred I'm with you I will go shred so that's quite the video I mean it's it's a uh it's clearly nostalgic for me this channel actually was built a lot off of braille's Rise I mean they had a moment where they were getting almost a million views of video and so many of these videos were just popping off and I was in so many of them actually every time they came to La I would skate all weekend and Aaron was actually living here staying here for a while so I got to collaborate a lot with him and uh I was I I would say I was a designated part of Braille for a little while at the beginning of my YouTube channel so obviously I have a lot of love for Braille um and they have changed a lot throughout the years I mean they filtered in pretty much everyone uh to a new person except for Gabe and Aaron Cairo those are the only two ogs I would say that the old crew was a lot of the YouTube skateboarders that sort of branched off on their own like me Lise MOA Chris Chan even a little bit Garrett Jenner um and that was fun it was a really fun time skating with with everyone and Braille watching this happen it reminds me a lot of the barracks which is also just such an iconic uh website and Company and nowadays uh the barracks just sold their warehouse and if I'm going to be completely Frank and um hopefully none of this is taken as any any poop talking um talking um but I have a feeling that Aaron probably wants to let go of his Warehouse sometime soon because last time we talked he was just like yeah just you know takes a lot of money obviously to have a warehouse like that kind of close to San Francisco so I have a feeling that a lot of companies are going to see a lot of setbacks for a little while you're going to see a lot more companies go under unfortunately cuz that's how in sort of works it's really strange because you know we're not charging enough for skateboards but then all the people in skateboarding can't afford a skateboard but with how it is now all the companies can't really afford to stick around because their profits for selling boards is so so small so it feels like the only way to buffer that is content you know YouTube will pay you if you make videos and that's why a lot of us as individuals were able to sort of keep skating um but when you're like Braille and you try to turn it into a company or even myself I mean I've tried this multiple times where I try to turn this whole thing into a company it doesn't work I mean it doesn't work for me at least and I haven't been able to afford paying people I got a warehouse in Columbia South Carolina for a while and I just couldn't afford to go there back to New York City where I was living and pay for people full-time salaries and I tried my best and we made a lot of really really really good videos that I was proud of but the profits were I mean it it did not only did it not break even but I probably spent three times more moneyy than I made by the end of it but you do all this stuff for the love and that's what I knew I was going to do and you hope at the end of the day that you at least Break Even but with skating right now people aren't even breaking even they're losing money on a lot the of the business ventures and obviously if you're going to pay $120,000 or whatever the barracks said for rent they're going to be losing over $100,000 a month I mean that I I very much doubt a company like the barracks no matter how many videos they upload is really profit that much money especially when people aren't buying boards and products through third parties anymore like the barracks are like skate shops they're buying them directly from a lot of the brands so it's uh it's it's tough out there especially for skate shops as well and it's like I think there's like 85 million skateboarders and somehow it's just so hard to make a living skating and uh content right now is sort of the way that that it's going so I don't know what the future looks like for Braille which is the biggest skateboard YouTube channel 6.8 million subscribers in the world crazy this stuff always feels really big at the end of the day tomorrow you know we can just go to the skate park and skate like that's always going to be there right there and then we talk to people we have fun and we hang out it is hard though when it when it becomes this cool big giant thing and that bubble that balloon sort of bursts and you're right back down to reality thinking okay well what's the next thing that I have to do and I think with someone like Gabe it's going to be easier to manage than someone even like myself or Garrett Jenner Etc because you know we've dedicated our entire lives into skating since we were really young Gabe did as well but I think he was more about the community and the channel and the whole project as a whole rather than just skating itself so I think Gabe could probably step away from skating itself um and and be fine but it is a hard thing to do and a skate shf the other day made a shirt that said recovering adult skater and I totally understand that I mean it it's it is a it's a tough thing as you saw in my video about depression if it came out yet probably maybe going to be the next video maybe I'll just upload this one tonight I think one waight with all the YouTube skateboarders in case you're someone out there who kind of kept up with the whole YouTube sphere is I think I think we all feel a weight where we really wish we could give people the same feeling that we were able to give before at least in the same way right I think we we built really big communities really fast and it felt like something new and different and exciting and to me the most exciting part of that was how the audience was receiving that you know with me as a skateboarder as a kid I would have really loved to have that kind of community pop up and me even be involved as someone who is watching um so it it feels it feels hard for I think a lot of us more than maybe you know because we think about a lot of the people who are watching we think about you and we just think man I wish we could create in the same way and deliver the same feeling I think we're all trying to do that but I think we just know at this point that beating a dead horse essentially and doing the same thing over and over that's not going to feel good for you at the end of the day even if it feels like that's what's missing um we're always constantly trying to think of new new things and new ways to get people happy and excited and skateboarding uh or just in general and and that's what we we're going to keep working on and I'm sure Aaron's going to keep working on that and that's what I'm going to keep working on and once I think of a video idea or series that I feel like people are going to you know give that feeling again I will jump on it 100% but for now um focus on other stuff because that's just you know I feel like that might be another calling of mine so thank you for watching I'll see you in the next video whenever that is hopefully soon um you're great and uh yeah I hope I hope you're finding content on YouTube that you enjoy because that's hard for me nowadays it's yeah I don't know it's just not as fun anyways let me know what you think and uh I'll see you in the next video take care progress daily and keep killing it

Channel: John Hill

Views: 175,266

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Id: CzgTj-6vLB0

Length: 15min 42sec (942 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024