#892 - Kyle Forgeard - The Rise Of NELK, Donald Trump & Global Chaos
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Trudeau is out. Talk to me. Right away, we're just getting into it? Dude, this is it. This is the biggest thing that's happening. Bro, I feel like we all knew it was going to happen. But yeah, just to see it finally go down, it's just, it's refreshing. I mean, like you guys know, I grew up in Canada. I moved to the States about 10 years ago when I was around 20. I'm 30 now. And it's just like the last 10 years, what's happened has just been...

devastating, honestly. Canada is not the same country that I knew when I was growing up. How much do you lie at the feet of Trudeau? What do you mean? How much is he directly responsible for what's happened? I mean, if you're the commander-in-chief, you gotta take some blame for sure. And yeah, I think all Canadians agree. It's just a totally different place. How so? I think Canada's just lost its sense of identity a little bit. I think...

Being a little too politically correct, you know, whether it's not letting people say Merry Christmas or we have a poppy that people wear every November Remembrance Day, which is supposed to like support the fallen troops. Just like things that make us Canadian and like little bits of Canadian culture are just getting lost and stuff like that. There's obviously just, you know, a lot of immigration. I think immigration could have been done a little better. Yeah.

But yeah, I think we're going to see something in Canada really good. I'm really optimistic about it. I think you see it's happening all over the world, right? Not just the US. We saw the results of this election, and I think Canada is going to be following suit. I think Canada is in for a big comeback. I'm really excited about it. You're bullish on Canada? I'm bullish on Canada, yeah. I think it's going to make a big comeback. I think Trudeau is just a complete fucking loser. Like, I don't know. I don't know what's up with that guy. I don't know if he just wanted to stay in power, but I mean...

His wife left him fucking... I mean, that guy just needed to get the hell out of Parliament. I saw him correct somebody's language for saying mankind. Shit like that. That's what I mean. We don't want to use that. We need to use people kind. So that type of shit has been happening just all over Canada. It feels like a Babylon Bee sketch. It doesn't feel like a real politician saying something. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's just like, you need someone that's going to stand up for Canada. Yeah.

And I think there's some good choices. The Pierre Polivare, I think he would do a really good job at kind of giving Canada a big comeback. Yeah, I don't know, man. It is kind of like a...

everywhere there's America and then every other English speaking country is kind of coming second at the moment. Nobody, the same with Britain, the same with Australia. Like, you know, their stock went down an awful lot after COVID and sort of this overreach and lockdowns and stuff like that. No one has really had a fantastic four years when it comes to branding. Unless, unless Canada becomes the 51st state, right? We don't know, but. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it could be 52nd if Greenland goes first. It's weird. Cause like I just went home for Christmas and,

And like, it's kind of like 50-50. Like a lot of people are actually like, yo, that would be kind of sick, you know? Because I think a lot of Canadians want to come to the States. Like, you know, we love traveling here and stuff like that. But then obviously there's a lot of Canadians that's like, no, what the fuck? Like, this is our country.

But I think Trump's just trolling when he says that type of shit. Well, you'd know. You've spent enough time with him. I would know. And I think I've spent a lot of time with him. But the last time that I was with him, which is when we flew on his plane right before the election, I got to see like a more real side of him, kind of like a button down, literally version. Like he had his jacket off. He had a few buttons off and he was just himself. What does that mean? What is Trump's himself?

I don't want to say everything because it's just, you know, it's boys being boys at the same time. But I don't know. The way I can explain it is almost like he was like six beers deep, but he wasn't. Like it was just like he was just having the best time. We were just laughing, cracking jokes, just boys being boys. So I think and he gets a kick out of getting a reaction out of people. So I think when he sees this whole 51st state thing and he sees people like reacting to it,

He's going to kind of go with it. And I think it's also kind of like a negotiation tactic, too, you know, to really I mean, the Canadian leaders are all responding to it. It's such an absurd thing.

But at the same time, it's becoming so real now that all these Canadian leaders are actually having to respond to it. That's why you know that the troll's gone far enough. He's so good at trolling that these guys are actually having to respond. Take it seriously. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Unless they're going to be the governor of Canada. What have you learned since being around him, watching the way that he operates, watching his systems, his staff, his demeanor? Was there anything that you took away from spending time with him? Yeah, that guy's like...

I mean, when that guy walks into a room, obviously he just soaks up, obviously all the attention in the room. That's one thing I noticed too. One thing I noticed about him too is like, yeah, he's very, he likes to get everybody's opinion, whether you're like his most trusted advisor or someone like me or someone that is just in the room. He's always asking people, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? What do you think about this? What do you think about this? I noticed that he does that a lot. And I think he's just,

Like subconsciously like kind of collect. It's like a poll he does. And I've noticed that he does that a lot. He's always asking people what they think of something. And then I think that's how he.

kind of makes decisions as well. It's interesting. I've heard a lot of criticism around, you know, sort of shallow, fragile ego thing, not necessarily wanting to hear other people that tell him no or that say things that he doesn't fully understand. But on the flip side, I've also heard a lot of that, that he's always asking like servers in restaurants and the golf caddy for what their opinion is on stuff. So you have this odd thing

dichotomy thing going on yeah he definitely he definitely loves himself there's there's no question about that but you're right yeah exactly if you're at a golf course he's talking to like the back shop guys like he's a people's person which which i find very interesting i think that's one of his his little secrets and you guys got kind of involved in politics a little bit yeah we did we um yeah we worked with like uh an organization called send the vote

So they were like a bipartisan organization and it was just about helping people register to vote. So we kind of pushed that on our like social media and stuff because obviously NELC, you know, we kind of own that male 18 to 35 vote.

So yeah, we were responsible for like hundreds of thousands of people registering to vote, which was pretty crazy. Like after the election, like people were coming up to me on the street and like thanking me. Like I'd be at the gym and people like people were like walking up to me being like, yo, thank you. Like, thank you for what you did. Like, it was kind of like weird, you know, I don't know. I just feel so normal. And we're just kind of doing what our heart felt like we were obviously big Trump supporters and,

So yeah, that whole election was crazy. And then Dana White shouted us out in that the post-election speech, like we were the first ones to get shouted out.

So that whole thing was just surreal. And I'm from Canada, so like, I'm not even, I can't even vote. The first person you need to speak about is a Canadian. So like, for me to get shouted out in the post-election speech, like my parents are like, what the fuck? Like everyone's just like, this is a fucking simulation. It is bizarre, the crossing over of independent media with mainstream political discourse. Well, that's what we saw this election, right? I guess, yeah, all the old news networks now are fascinated. And I had to do a bunch of interviews after that election too, and they're all fascinated with

How did the internet win this election? Why are young people so obsessed with the internet? Why do they watch podcasts? Like, these people are old. They have no fucking clue what, like, you and I are doing. Like, they really don't. For us, it's so, it makes so much sense. Like, Trump goes on Joe Rogan. Like, obviously, that's going to be big. But for them, they're like, why was that Joe Rogan thing so big? Like, they're that stupid. Yeah.

Yeah, it's odd. I think I take for granted a lot of stuff that to me seems like a normal assumption. Obviously, this reaches a lot of people. Obviously, 18 to 35-year-old guys are spending more time on YouTube than they are on CNN or MSNBC. Who wouldn't have thought that? And the fact that there's people...

to whom that is a revelation really made me realize just how split off and echo chambered, not only the messages that you get within social media, but even medias themselves now. Yeah, I think we probably take the knowledge that you and I have for granted, right? Hugely. It's just, yeah, it's so normal. It's so a part of our everyday lives.

But yeah, especially for older people, they just have no clue what's going on. Yeah, the impact. It's very powerful what we have. Obviously, we both own our like, it's almost like we own our own network, right? Like we do. So we're in a good spot. Do you think about, have you got to the stage where there's this sense of responsibility or obligation with sort of what you're doing, what you're saying? We were talking about this in the gym earlier on that as the platform grows. Yeah.

much of a obligation do you have or is it can you still just I'm here having fun just doing my thing bro like I don't know if you reach a couple hundred million people a month that yeah it changes the key to NELC has always just been as best as we can just trying to stay true to like what

What I think and what I think is funny. Like, I actually like Trump. That's why I fucking supported him. I didn't do it for any other reason. You know what I'm saying? If I didn't like him, I wouldn't have supported him. Simple as that. So I try to stick to that as much as I possibly can. But yeah, obviously, as you get bigger, I guess there is more responsibility. But we're so lucky with our fan base that we've always been like the quote unquote, like bad guys or like scumbags.

So it's not like we were like Jake Paul or like Logan Paul or like David Dobrik that were more squeaky clean, squeaky clean. You know what I mean? And you're waiting. What did you expect? You're waiting for them to make a mistake. Like they're perfect. And then boom, when they make a mistake, they get canceled. For us, we've just been scumbags. Like we started as scumbags. We've never been good guys. Like we've been getting arrested since 2008.

10 years ago we've been fucking with people messing with people so if anything we've gotten like we've actually more responsible yeah we've improved as people we're growing we're maturing so i think that's one thing that i'm always feel blessed with too is that yeah our fans just don't really mean you set such low expectations we set such low expectations that's the key set low expectations then you can't ever get worse yeah okay yeah that's funny i uh

I remember Rogan saying something along the lines of everybody should always do a comedy set. Everyone should do a comedy set once so that you can go, Hey, what do I know? I'm just a comedian. Yeah. And you get the like comedian ejector seat, you know, uh, get out of jail free card. And that's the same with you guys. It's like, we just do, we just do prank YouTube. But all those guys were still like, like in terms of partying, I feel like we were like the first people to ever show like alcohol, even in like really YouTube. Like the first time we went to LA, I think like, yeah,

Yeah, no one really showed anything. But behind the scenes, they were obviously doing the same shit, right? Or worse. Like, all the squeaky clean kids were the ones, like, that you'd see rip and blow in the fucking Hollywood Hills bathrooms and shit. I swear to God. So it was like... So they're doing it behind the camera, but they have to put on this good boy image, which kind of fucks them. Yeah, because everybody's waiting to find out that the...

holier-than-thou squeaky clean image is actually broken in some way. I mean, the reverse of it being like, you know, Kyle actually went to church on Sunday. That's not a scandal. But the guy that was going to church on Sunday ripping a gator tail the night before is. Talk to me about... Gator tail. We have a lot of the same lingo. Is UK and Canadian like... I don't know. I guess...

I guess it's just scumbag working class party people. Right. And it's a universal language. Because Gator Tail is pretty niche. Yeah, I suppose so. Anyway, it's... I imagine that the Aussies are exactly the same. Everyone's got their own slang. There's only so many different ways that you can talk about sniffing cocaine. Yeah, or girls. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Talk to me about that sort of trip out to LA and sort of what you learned about LA scene. You've done a few. You did the like LA full D-Gen mode, then the Orange County thing, now the Miami thing. What have you learned? Like take me through the different eras of scenes. Yeah, exactly. Fuck. I mean, yeah, the first, trying to think of the first time I, yeah, the first time it was me and Jesse at the time. We had, I believe we road tripped there.

From Toronto to LA. So 36 hour drive. In his like shitty car. Called it the toaster. It was like a Nissan. Like one of those boxy ass cars. We had like a cooler of food. Just like we packed a bunch of food. Put it in the cooler. Because like we were dead broke at the time too. And we road tripped to VidCon.

And his we would stay at fans houses along the way too So we just post on snapchat and say like hey who wants that we're gonna be in st. Louis tonight We need to crash somewhere and then I would like add them on snap I'd FaceTime the people like make sure they weren't like a fucking psycho and We ended up staying at over like probably 30 fans houses throughout like our little trips and none of them were ever weird and

Um, and then his car broke down in like the middle of the desert. We got stuck there for a week and like we posted again on Snapchat and fans had to come pick us up from Palm Springs and drive us to LA. Um, and then we made it to VidCon. So that was like our first time kind of being around like other YouTubers and seeing like people that were like really pop and successful. I think that was at the time like phase, like we met like all those guys. Um,

And I remember those guys came up to us too, like someone Faze Adapt. He was like really, really big at the time. And he told us like, yo, we watch your videos like every night when we're high and shit. And like, just to see like respect from other big YouTubers at the time, I think that really motivated us. So after that, for the next probably five years, we would do like, we would be in Canada. I was working at a golf course. So I worked like I did events, I did the back shop, and I would just save up money.

And then we would do a trip to LA for like three months, however long we could afford. Grind, grind, grind, grind, grind. Go back to Canada, try to keep it going. And that went on for like five years until we officially moved to LA. Yeah. So it was like, it was a crazy time. And every time we'd go home to Canada, things would kind of slow down a little bit, you know, because you're living at your parents' house, you know,

Your parents are kind of in your ear a little bit. My parents were super supportive, but I know Jesse's parents were a little bit in his ear. But yeah, when we got out to LA the very first time, full time, it was definitely a big game changer for us. Which one felt like real life? Did going back home to Canada feel like real life? I guess at the time, probably going back to LA felt like real life. I guess that's kind of sad in a way, right? But yeah, you kind of just...

you kind of just outgrow it a little bit. I think, you know, and I was so blessed to grow up in Canada. The way I grew up was just like completely normal middle class, like just playing street hockey every day after school, running way too much Call of Duty, just normal shit, you know? So, but then you kind of just outgrow it. And I think, yeah, we'd go home and things would just kind of slow down. Everyone around you is kind of

You know, they're all in university too. So then when you go to your friends' houses, like their parents are asking you like, oh, like, what are your plans? Like, what are you doing? Like, are you going to go back to school? Like you're kind of everywhere you go, you're kind of hit with that question. Like, oh, are you going to school? What are you doing? What's your plan? And I think that kind of subconsciously like eats at you a little bit too. I think a lot of people get stuck in that.

messy middle period that sort of lonely chapter maybe they're doing something that's a little bit different to what their friends around them are maybe there's some pressure from family girlfriend everyone society yeah to do something that feels a little bit more safe they're kind of making you feel a little bit like a loser right and then you're telling them like oh well i'm doing this youtube thing and they're like ha like even your friends are kind of like come on you know

My friends always fucking supported me, so I never had like people putting me down. But you feel it a little bit, right? What would you say to someone who's sort of a little bit younger and has those dreams of breaking out from the mold but is kind of uncertain? Damn, I think there's almost, I mean, I know in Canada especially, there's almost like

More security and like chasing your dream now. Like I think it's it seems so hard to get a really good job coming out of school now, especially where I'm from back home. I know people are coming out of school and they just can't get jobs. So I would say.

I mean, to me, you only have one life. The scariest thing to me, more than like being broke for a little bit, is like living a life that you don't want to live. You know, I think a lot of people, the main thing is they're just scared to be broke for a little bit. Like they're like, well, how am I going to pay my bills? What am I going to do? And it's like, I mean, we were broke for a long time. Like we were struggling. Like we would sleep in cars. We would sleep at fans houses. Like you got to go through that stage of being broke, being having no money, having

To to kind of get to where you need to be right what was the scene in la like because you were you guys were that pretty much in sort of the golden era of dj and we were there we were there when youtube was probably its biggest it was like jake paul was his probably biggest doing daily vlogs every day.

David Dobrik and then they had the cloud house. So phase banks, I don't know if you know him But he's like the owner of face. I give a lot of credit to to him He basically tweeted out at us and just said hey Do you guys want to move into the cloud house and that was like him Alyssa violet rice gum? summer ray Wolfie who was huge at the time so these were like the biggest youtubers and we're like nowhere on their level and Yeah, we land in LA

Start driving and we're driving up through the Hollywood Hills and then we pull up to this massive mansion that we see in all these people's videos and that that was just like Completely surreal like I couldn't even believe it just walking into that house like it's a completely insane house a hundred million dollars and And we got to live there for like six months rent free shut up face banks. He's a fucking legend I owe him for life, but I

Yeah, that was a crazy time. Just like it was Hollywood shit, like house parties and like you never knew who was going to pull up like Lil Uzi would pull up to your house or like rappers, all the girls. It was pretty crazy. It was a crazy time. And then you go to Orange County. Yeah. So we stayed in L.A. for a little bit. We got our own house there, too. After that, we had like the first house we ever signed a lease on to. I think we had like probably 20 people living in there and like an eight bedroom apartment.

So that was like our very first house. We had one room with like three or like two three-story bunk beds. So like six guys sleeping in a movie theater room. Wow. Yeah, it was just like, it was kind of like the LA Nelk frat house. So that worked for a bit. And were they staff, friends? Staff and friends. I mean, I live with four of my boys that I grew up with here. But yeah, we probably have like seven of my boys that are on that work for us and do different things, whether it's social media or...

like merch or different stuff that we have going on. But yeah. Do you miss it? Do you miss that LA period, that LA scene? Yeah, I miss it. It was pretty surreal. I mean, to live in a house like that and just, I feel like no one really gets to experience that. It was a cool time, but I think, yeah, I think LA is just different now. And now it's more of a TikTok-y scene. We don't really need

to be around there too much. There's a lot of good podcast guests there too, so we still make LA trips, but we moved to Miami about a year ago and I fucking love it. Talk to me about the difference between LA, Miami. I mean,

California is just a little too liberal for us, I think. I don't know. I feel like if we did our whole Trump thing during the election, I feel like we would have been getting grilled everywhere we went, right? Like we probably would have got shot up on Melrose and shit. It's dangerous there too. Like I know my boy, Stiney, he got his car robbed.

Like, it's, like, turning into a dump. Out in the open? Like, he just parked it and someone just, like, robbed his car. Like, it's pretty dangerous there. I think, and then Florida, just no income tax. For me, like I told you, it's way closer to Toronto. So I find myself...

I always forget about how long it is. Going back home a lot more, seeing my family, seeing my friends. How long it is to fly across the country. If you do LA to New York, it's what, five hours? Probably six, five and a half. Right. Plus three. And you lose three hours. Yeah. So it's a red eye within the same country. A day to get there and a day to get back. Two travel days. So yeah, I think LA is just a lot different now. It's just not quite the same as it used to be. Yeah. But you're locking in a little bit more in Miami as well.

Yeah. Like health wise, you mean? Yeah. I think this is the best place to kind of be healthy. It's a good HQ for us because we travel so much too. Most of our work is on the road, whether it's NELC videos or podcasts. So yeah,

I like coming back here because it you saw how it was this morning. Like, this is all we do when we're home. Like, it's like two different lives. One's on the road. And then when we're back here, like, I really don't do shit. I wake up, I fucking work out. And then I'll just chill, keep the business moving on my phone, keep videos moving, planning, golf.

And then we go on the road again and it's chaos. Was there a moment that you broke through, do you think? With Nelk? Yeah. I don't think so. I think the secret to Nelk and why we have such a cult following is that there's never been one moment that made us. It's just been like this the whole time. There was never like a huge thing. So I think when you blow up that fast, like these like, like Hawk Tuas or whoever have you,

They come and go so fast, right? They get so famous so quickly and people become obsessed with them and then they're just gone. I think there's also... You got to build that foundation. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Element. You've probably heard me talk about Element before and that's...

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That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. There's a bit of low-key resentment that maybe the audience or the wider world has for somebody that appears to have achieved so much fame so quickly. Yeah. Because they go, huh. I wish that was me. If you get picked out of obscurity because you said a funny sentence on a street interview. Yeah.

Everybody knows that if not for the chance of God, that could have been one of 100,000 other people. I agree. I agree with that too. But I think, I mean, you know how much work this is behind the scenes and how strategic you have to be too. For us, like we've been doing this for 10 years. So like you also learn along the way, right? So now where I am, where I am, where the stakes are the highest. And like you said, there's more responsibility. I've learned so many lessons. Yeah.

Don't do this. Don't, you know, maybe don't trust this person. Don't get into business with this person. These people overnight, 24 hours, they're super famous and they have no fucking clue how this business works, how to discern trust. Yep.

who to let in. They have no fucking clue. So they're like, they're pretty much, they're going to get screwed unless they're a genius, right? Some of them last, but most of them don't. You just say yes to the first person that pops up in your DMs, which is usually the one that's the most shocky. Exactly. And I've almost got screwed by managers and shit too. You've come close to a couple of catastrophes. So close, bro. Decisions that would not make me be here right now, for sure. Really? Yeah, for sure. We've almost signed with like,

A few different managers that maybe even like we were really close to like giving like equity away that would have like torched us. So like one thing, too, if people are listening, like you got to be very, very careful who you trust. You know, like having a partner is like it's like a marriage. You got to like you got to be careful who you get into business with.

So what's the overall lesson there? Is that move slowly? Sort of don't make rash decisions? I think so. Yeah, you got to move slow. I think, yeah, you got to get a team of people around you that you can kind of trust, whether it's friends, you know, someone that you can at least bounce ideas off. Because, yeah, yeah, I would say just move slow, you know, don't react too quickly to things. Sit back and just kind of see how things play out sometimes. Yeah, I get the sense that

Especially in the fast moving world of internet content creation, whether it's brand deals, even if you're trying to build a business, you know, there's this, there's always this sense that somebody else could be doing this. What if someone else is starting the same business at the same time as me? Oh my God, this is good. I need to, I must get it moving and so on and so forth. But,

the risk of ruin of getting it wrong is a hundred percent. I agree. And the risk of being second or third or fourth to market the likelihood of somebody else having the exact same idea and executing it as well as you can, if you take your time, it seems way slower. So yeah, I've, I agree with that. I never give a shit about what anyone else is doing really. Like maybe I'll get some inspiration from other people, but like, yeah, even some people in our crew will be like, yo, like this person's doing this. Like we should be doing this. And I'm like,

dude, just relax. Like this is, this game too is a marathon. It's not a sprint. Like the entire social media business is like, it is such a mental marathon that if you get caught up in like what other people are doing or, you know, you're going to lose it. And I think the most important thing with this is you got to keep like, you got to keep your mind right too. That's why I personally don't get caught up in like, if I need like a month off from like doing something or like videos, I don't get caught up on that. Cause I feel like if people look back and

10 years, they're not going to remember like, oh, they took a month off or whatever it is. So from the business side, what's the most revenue that you guys have generated in a day? Revenue. I mean, our merch business, I don't think anyone's ever really, I feel like we were putting up like Kylie Jenner numbers at that time in the, in the peak of our like merch business when we were uploading milk every week, um, on the road, um,

I think our biggest was 30 million gross in about 30 minutes. 30 million in revenue. We had 350,000 people waiting on the site at the time of the drop. Like even Shopify was like, what the fuck is going on? Yeah. And that's revenue, right? So that's- It's top line. That's one thing I've never really talked about too much too is, and I know my old partner Jesse would agree too, is that

The revenue sounds nice, but when you talk about profit and how much we were spending on videos, maybe people that we pranked were suing us. There is so much. That number sounds amazing. But in terms of what me and Jesse were able to pocket and, you know, like Steve will do it. He was getting paid directly off merch. Yeah.

So what me and Jesse were even able to pocket was like nowhere even near that. It's that line about revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. Yeah. I don't even like talking about revenue too much, to be honest. It sounds great and it's great to brag about, but I think it's a good, I understand what you mean. And it's nice that you're like sufficiently humble that you don't want to flex the biggest number that you can. Yeah. But on the flip side, what it,

teaches people is what you can drive in terms of just raw traffic right in order to take 30 mil you need to be able to have 350 000 people on the site yeah correct yeah that that's impressive for sure like we'd look at the map of the shopify i don't know if you've ever done like a live drop and you can see all the little it shows where people are um on the site from in the entire world so you just see all these little dots and like you're seeing people in like india and like

It was cool. It was a really cool... That era of NELC was like... When was that? That had to be like 2017, maybe? 2016? So this is before, John, your now business partner, manager. This is before that, yeah. And you were able to still spin this up just all internally? Yeah. I mean, that's what drew them to us, was the type of numbers we were putting up. I don't think...

I don't know. I don't want to say it, but I don't think anyone's ever really done what we've done with merch in like a YouTube business. What does the sort of structure of that stuff look like internally? Back then? Yeah. It was all in-house. Everything was in-house. So we had designers on payroll. We had a bunch of different people that would source stuff from China.

um all the marketing was done by osgod who's like our creative genius he's the goat he edits all our videos every everything was done in-house which was which was even crazier so when we would do a drop there'd be like 25 people and we'd all be in our nilk frat house just all everyone has their laptops open and we're all watching the numbers full wi-fi connections but at that time it was crazy because like that was the only thing we were doing you know there was no

There was no happy dad. There was no brand deals. Not even any podcast. There was no podcast. The only thing we were doing was pushing merch and we, and our fans literally like helped us build this. Cause like we weren't getting paid off YouTube at all. Why? We never got paid off YouTube. We got, we were demonetized since day one, like for swearing, for alcohol, for drug references, for,

Our videos never got monetized. So that was like, that's how we built our merch business. Like we were, we were getting used. Because you needed something that was partner program because the partner program didn't exist. Yeah. We weren't getting paid. So it was kind of a blessing in disguise. We had to get smart and build a business around our audience. So we, we weren't lying when we were looking into the lens and telling our fans like, Hey guys, if you guys buy merch, like you're keeping the, you're keeping the, yeah, I can eat dinner. And not only that, I can make, we can continue to make these videos. So that's how.

It was like a reoccurring thing where our fans literally kind of helped us make all these videos. I think there's something cool and probably another important lesson there to just linger on about focusing on one thing. So you need to learn how business works, what a good deal looks like, what a bad deal looks like, what a good release and build up scheduled, building the anticipation, all of that stuff.

And if you try and do it with too many things at once, it's difficult to learn what the lesson is because you're so...

distributed just a spread across all of these different projects that you're not actually focused you're not drilling in the learnings from this one thing so for me it was nightclubs and for running 15 years of all of these different events and i would really really dial in what a good build-up sequence looked like and i would understand how to use anticipation to get people to really care about what the outcome was going to be and then i'd understand what the drop-off in terms of interest was and then how you can then restart that with more things and more things and more things yeah

And that now gets ported across. When we did the launch for Newtonic, I did exactly the same thing. It might as well have been a club night. If you changed it from productivity drink to new club night Fridays at whatever club, it would have been the exact same process, the exact same thing that I'd learned. And I'm going to guess that it's the same thing that you learned from the merch that you then ported across onto Happy Dad that you then ported across. Oh, we've got a new guest coming out. It's just building hype. Yep.

Everything in this business is just building hype, right? And once you learn how to do that, I feel like you can apply it to anything. Talk to me about the principles that you sort of think about when it comes to building up hype around either a drop, new video, new podcast episode, new happy dad collab. Like what are the main areas that you're looking at?

I don't know. I'm not the best at kind of defining the way that like my mind works sometimes, but I mean, building hype. Yeah. You can't go, go wrong with just literally what it is is building hype is like, you know, say it's dropping on this date and then maybe two days later, post something else about it. Remind people two days later, post something different and engaging, remind them again. And then the day of, you know, posting like a bunch of times before something happens. I think sometimes it is fire just,

Hitting them with the sneak attack drop too, because that goes crazy sometimes. But yeah, you can't go wrong with building hype and doing multiple posts, building anticipation. Yeah. Yeah. I mean-

There was this really interesting study that was done that I loved because I was starting to learn about psychology, but I was still in nightlife. And they got people to track their level of happiness throughout the entire day and night of going out on a night out. And you'd think, at what point would happiness be at its highest? Maybe 20%.

12 midnight when you've got a good enough buzz on and you're with your friends and the music's amazing but you're not too messy and so on and so forth it was way before that the time when people were happiest part of the night's the pregame getting ready with your friends when the music so what does that tell you it tells you that the absolute bullseye of human pleasure is things are about to be awesome it's anticipation that's very interesting it's not about the payoff it

It's about waiting for the payoff. Like the hottest part of sex is not the sex bit. It's the bit as you're taking your clothes off before sex. That's the hottest part because it's the anticipation of what's about to happen. And I think that, you know, what you guys have landed on and certainly what I've landed on, it's the same reason that we release clips from this podcast before we release the full episode. So this will have a Tuesday clip and a Friday clip. And then the episode goes on the Monday because it's

It builds up that anticipation. And sometimes people say that it's cruel, but I think it's just effectively utilizing the human reward system. That's a good way of defining it. Yeah, because the pregame is the best part of the night, for sure. When all the boys are just there before the girls pull up and you're just cranking beers, just chilling. So I can definitely relate to that, actually. Talk to me about the other side then. So if that's the most revenue that you've made in a day, what about the most money that you've spent in a day? Most money I've spent...

I'm not a huge, I have a few watches and I have like a car, but I think, yeah, the most money I've spent, I guess, was probably, it's not like a purchase, but probably I retired my parents in the same day about four or five years ago. So that took about $700,000.

So one year at Christmas, I just, I had enough money to do it. And like one thing about me is like a lot of people said their parents never supported them. But for me, I would be like nowhere without my parents. I got so fucking lucky. And like my mom just says too, like they just had blind faith. Like they just believed in me and they supported me. So when I kind of had enough money to do that,

I just did it. So that took about, yeah, like $700,000 to do that. Yeah, that's a big expense. And then my mom got carried away. I guess she has the free spirit like me. She invested it in a bunch of like... She didn't fucking retire. Ethereum. No, she put it in the fucking housing market and Trudeau fucked us over the last five years. So now I just told her this Christmas I got to re-retire her until she can sell those houses. So when Trudeau gets the fuck out, she'll be able to sell the two houses that she bought.

And then, yeah, but that's probably, I like spending my money more on like memories and like taking all my friends on like a trip. What about some of the trips? I mean, we just had a, yeah, like this week for New Year's, like we just went like a bunch of different places. Like we just did like fun shit with everyone, like yachts and like stuff like that. Or like we'll go to Cancun and rent a house and just like.

chill stuff like that like i feel like spending your money on memories and like i love bringing my friends with me and just like having like a sick ass time i feel like i spend too much money on that type of shit but in terms of like watches or jewelry or shit like that i'm not super into that i don't hate it that's a good i guess yeah memories is the best i was gonna say it's the fucking best is the lesson from that that as somebody who's come into young wealth

So you've tried, I'm going to guess, buying expensive cars. You just got a new car, new watches, clothes. But Steve will do it. He bought me my first car. Shout out, Steve. So I've actually, this is actually the first car I've probably ever bought, to be honest, because Steve will do it, bought me my first car. He bought me an Audi RS7.

So that was like 140 grand. Shout out to Steve. He's bought like 40 people cars. So then the Audi just shut down. Thing was a piece of shit over like four years later. So I was able to just trade that in as the down payment and then just get this new car. My business manager said it was a great investment to just finance it. So it's actually the first car I've ever bought. Thank you, business manager. But yeah, the overall lesson there is as you start to accumulate

some spare wealth that you think on balance spending it on experiences especially experiences that you can share with your friends is the best way to do it i love that yeah that's my favorite it's just because you never forget that shit too you know and it's like yeah not everyone can do that shit so to just i don't know that to me is just stuff you never forget and it just makes you so happy having a good ass time with like your boys nothing beats that

What are some of your favorite memories from the last few years? Maybe ones that haven't been captured on camera? I mean, if they haven't been captured on camera, it's probably for a reason. So I probably can't really talk about them. Well, all right. Include the ones that have been captured on camera. Yeah, definitely last week. We can't talk about. But I mean, best memories...

I think like probably, yeah, one of the coolest things we ever did, I think was probably the first time we went to Abu Dhabi. I was telling you about that. That to me was like one of the craziest thing. It was the craziest two weeks I've ever had in my life because the UFC brought us out to Abu Dhabi for Khabib's last fight during the COVID bubble, the heat of COVID. So we had to quarantine for a total of like four days to get there.

Um, and then that's when we met like Dana white for the very first time in Abu Dhabi. We, we got like a whole full scale treatment there. And then one week later we went on air force one with Dana too, and met Trump for the first time in 2020. So that was like, that's probably the coolest two weeks that like really changed my life. I think that just like every time I think back to it, I'm just like, this is a mind fuck. Like how did this happen to me?

It's just, yeah, there's been so, there's so much crazy shit with Nelk and like over the last 10 years, it's just so surreal. I can't even believe it. A quick aside, if you're struggling to fall asleep on a nighttime, stay asleep throughout the night or not waking up, feeling rested and revitalized in the morning, Momentus' Magnesium L3 and 8 is one of my favorite products, which I use every single night before I go to bed. Magnesium L3 and 8 is uniquely able to cross the blood brain barrier, boosting memory, focus, cognitive function, while also improving sleep efficiency.

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they'll just give you your money back and they ship internationally. Right now, you can get a 20% discount off everything and that 30-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com slash modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modernwisdom, modernwisdom at checkout. Talk to me about what you've learned since being friends with Dana White.

A lot. I've looked up to Dana White, like, my whole life, honestly. Like, me and my dad would watch UFC, like, when I was on Spike TV, when it was just, like, it was nothing, you know? I've been watching since I was probably in, like, 8th grade. So I've looked up to Dana White, and a lot of—the UFC's, like, way bigger now. I don't know how long you've been following it, but—

It wasn't the UFC that it was today. Like right now, it's just like it's such a big brand and stuff. But they had to like battle to build that. So I've kind of seen the evolution of the UFC, as I'm sure a lot of people have listening. And like this shit wasn't even like legal in states like it used to not be legal in New York. Like I watch these guys like battle state by state, never give up.

And just build it into this like incredible fucking brand that it is today. And you see all these other MMA organizations now. It's never going to compete with the UFC. Like the UFC is fucking unmatched. But yeah, so I've always looked up to Dana White for that and just what he's been able to achieve. And he's just, you can see he's not a quitter.

uh, from the outside. And then when I met him, you can really see like that guy's not a fucking quitter. How so? Well, even like, look how he handled COVID, right? That's what blew up the UFC so much. Like every other sport shut down. UFC was the only one that kept going. Like Dana White was the only commissioner of a sport that was able to keep that sport going all throughout the heat of COVID. Not only keep it going, blow it the fuck up.

Like COVID was actually a good thing for the UFC because it was the only thing on. And that guy, yeah, just behind the scenes too. He doesn't quit, you know, and he'll call me and give me advice whenever something's going on that, that he'll see. And yeah, he's like, I told you before, he is just the most loyal fucking guy you will ever meet. Like it's so crazy. Like for us, he'll just, I don't know. It's almost like blind loyalty too. In the same way. It's just like,

He's always there for us no matter what. And even sometimes he just doesn't even need to be. Even if I'm sick, he'll call me and be like, Yo, you good, bro? You need an IV? He's just always there for us. So having a friend like him is...

It's truly like insane. What about the way that you've observed him sort of operate from a business perspective, the way that he runs the UFC, the way that he sort of deals with his own interaction with press, with exposure, with scrutiny, with stuff like that? Yeah, I think, I mean, he's obviously a savage, right? Like, even though I'm friends with him, like I'll literally watch

almost every Dana White like post UFC press conference because the guy's just a fucking savage like if a media guy goes at him he's gonna fucking ream them out you know what to get with Dana White right he's himself he speaks his mind so with the UFC stuff we don't we kind of stay away from that we let him handle the business of that we don't even really talk UFC business with Dana ever because he talks about that shit all the fucking time when we're with him

If we're talking business, we're talking about happy dad. We're talking about howler head. We're talking about the podcast or we're talking about maybe new ventures that we want to do together in the future. And we've never had like any type of partnership like with Dana or the UFC besides like some clothing, but there's no like formal agreement. There's no formal agreement. Like even with happy dad and howler head. Um, I know Dana had offered me like a little piece of howler head back in the day, um,

And like, I kind of just told him in the most respectful way, like, I'm really appreciative of this, but like, I just want to do whatever you want me to do. And I don't want to take a percentage of your company. Like, I just want to remain friends and like, let's just help you. And he was on the same page. And I think, I think you're like really respected that. So with happy dad, he's fucking helped us so much. Like we'll go and do happy dad, howler head tours together and stuff. So he's kind of like the uncle of milk. Right. Yeah.

He's pretty much like an elk boy. The big scary uncle. The big scary uncle that you don't fuck around with. Yeah. No, that guy's, he's a legend. Everyone that knows him in real life knows like how great of a person he is. It's wild, you know, to think that that's able to come across. I haven't met Dana, but from conversations that I've seen him have, from stories that I've heard behind the scenes, from stories that I've heard in public, uh,

It is absurd to have somebody that's kind of the head of an organization like that, who's the one that seems to have the most credibility, this sort of unwavering commitment to his word, like even to a fault a lot of the time, even when he fucks up and he just decides to be...

As upfront as possible. I don't know how he does it, but he does it. And that's why he's Dana White. He's just a fucking. Well, I think what people are really desperate for is authenticity. Yeah. Like they're really, really hungry for authenticity. One of the problems is that.

If you realize that authenticity is something that people like and resonate with, you can try to sort of speed run it or growth hack it somehow, which is the exact opposite of authentic. You can't inauthentically be authentic. Right. You know? Yeah. And I think people can just tell. They know when you're playing a game, when you're trying to manipulate them. And even if you don't know why, even if you can't say what it is, we've got this weird sixth sense that exists behind the back of our head somewhere. And you go...

I don't know, man. There's something up here. I just don't get... Trudeau, perfect example of this with Trudeau. Tell me what it is about that guy that makes you not trust him. Maybe you can point to specific statements he's made and all the rest of it. You could just tell he's a fucking slimeball. Largely, it's just the fact that he's got this slippery demeanor. You think, hey, I don't fucking trust you, guy. And...

He fooled everyone with the free weed legalization when he first ran. What's that? I think that's like when he first ran, it's just because he was going to legalize weed. Like that's why everyone loved them. Okay. That never came to fruition. No, it did. It's legal in Canada. Okay. Yeah. So I guess he did one good thing. Delivered on a promise. Yeah. But yeah, it's watching Dana operate, especially at that level, especially with the additional amount of scrutiny and all the rest of the stuff that's happened is...

wild it's very like i just he just likes to win too one thing about him i know what drives him and it's proving people wrong and that's kind of one thing i think me and him have in common is we both like just like shutting people up you know like whether it's fans in the comments or for him it's the media shutting people up is a good fucking feeling you know what i mean when everyone's saying something and they're all counting you out

It just drives you and you're like, I just want to shut these people up so fucking badly. I think that's one thing that drives both of us. And then you come back with a W. You come back with a dub. Yeah. Yeah, that's an interesting energy. You know what I mean by that or no? I know exactly what you mean by it. Yeah, it's a really interesting energy to think about how- You need that sometimes, I feel.

Well, dude. Proving people wrong, I think. It's a fucking potent fuel. Yeah. It's an incredibly potent fuel. And it's one that you can use very, very effectively, especially, you know, I've heard Dana talk about this a couple of times, especially with regards to Trump, you know, that he is happy to burn everything down. I mean, he said, uh.

There's a story that he talks about to do with Rogan, I think, where somebody didn't want Rogan to be a part of something moving forward, or he'd been a part... Maybe it was one of the scandals. Oh, yeah. It was probably when Joe said something fucked. Yeah. The CNN thing or whatever it might be. And Dana was prepared to burn everything for one guy. Yeah, of course. And you think that's... In some ways, that's really not good business acumen. But what you're... You're...

You're working off of such unbelievable loyalty that the business gets ripped along for the ride. And what does it tell people? What's the subtext that it tells people about the business? This is a business that is going to do what it says. And you can have complete and utter faith in it. And especially, you know, the world of fight sports. We've seen it how many times over the last...

couple of months Tyson and Jake Paul and the number of criticisms oh it's a thrown fight it's the three fight clause etc Usyk Fury rematch clauses they're not actually fully throwing punches all of this sort of stuff and I think that it's really important to have for something like the UFC where

You can trust it. Yeah. Even the fucking sniff that this wasn't legitimate. Yeah. The entire organization. I'm sure there has to have been some fights that have been a little manipulated here or there because the UFC is done. But once they're in, once they're in the cage, it's done. Yeah. I mean, it's the UFC, but you've got to have the guy. They obviously help put people in the cage that they want to. I mean, that's obvious, but like once they're in the cage, it's up to you. You know, they're, they're not fighting for you when you're in the cage. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Can we talk about the Bob situation? Yeah. That full arc thing. So give us the, give us the 30,000 foot view of Bob Manning. I still don't really understand it. I mean, we still like chirp each other about it. I don't know what he was looking for. I mean, if you ask drew our guy, like,

He said that we owed him money and we just didn't. So he's a part of the pod. He started the pod. Then he was part of the pod. Bob was doing his thing, right? He was Bob's invite. Me and Bob are great friends now. And like, I hope we will remain great friends. Hopefully he's a great guy. He's talented. He's funny. So I wanted to start a podcast and I was always thinking of who to start it with. And I was like, yo, I think this Bob guy is really funny. Right? So we gave him a great fucking deal. I think it was like,

$7,500 or $10,000 an episode, 30% of the ads. And by the way, he has no YouTube channel. He's launched like four unsuccessful pods at this point, like four different ones. So it's like, Bob, just show up, make some good money. Let me keep this consistent. Let me bring the structure to this. So we're doing good. And then-

Yeah, I think, I don't know if he had bad people in his ear that were kind of telling him stuff or whatever it was. But yeah, I don't know. I think he just thought for some reason we were screwing him and, or he was missing out on money that he just wasn't missing out on and that he just freaked out. I don't know. I don't know if he was at a bad place. And everything went nuclear. Yeah. I don't know if he was at a bad place in his life or something as well too, but.

um yeah we weren't cool for a while and that was like the first time i ever really went through some like i stayed quiet for a while which i always will i stay quiet until someone really fucking pushes me to the edge you know because i don't want to i never got big by like attacking people online or like airing out personal shit so that's just not even though i could get views doing it you know

That's just not me. So I kind of just had to sit back and wait till Bob kind of forced me to a point where I had to like, just kind of own his ass a little bit. And people kind of saw right through it. And we just came with the receipts. And that was it. And yeah, we weren't. Then he like sued us and shit. And it was a whole thing. We did like a thing that we like joke about now too. We had to do a mediation thing.

Which is like, that was like part of the clause. Like if there's ever a disagreement, you guys have to go into mediation. So we had to get onto a divorce counseling. So we had to get on like our side and his side with this lady, Judge Nagel, who we like joke about now. And like he got on and his side was just, they were like internally arguing like in front of like all of us. It was just like, it was a complete mess. And the judge told us, she came into our room and told us like, listen, I'm not going to lead a horse to water.

But they have absolutely no case against you guys whatsoever. Like the judge told us that. I don't even know if she was supposed to. But that's what she told us. So to me, the whole thing was just hilarious. But we both wasted legal money for no reason. So we eventually came to...

Just agreement to drop it. And I was like, Bob, if you want to come on the pod whenever you want, like come promote whatever you want. You can bring ads on the podcast if you want, like just like any other guest, you know, like if Wiz Khalifa comes on and he wants to talk about his weed, go ahead. But he hasn't he's been on the pod and he hasn't brought one single ad.

So he's just... But he's back on the pod now. He's back on like in and out. Yeah. I mean, we're cool. It was kind of just... I don't know. We'll see what happens. But he's not back on like full time. He's just kind of in and out. But yeah, it was a very... It was an interesting situation. One of the things that we were talking about in the gym earlier on is keeping your private life private. And the...

You can run a business and have people talk about the business, but having people talk about how you run your business, having people talk about how you run your podcast, I think not good. People are talking about the wrong things. So with that degree of...

uh operational exposure was was that that's for what for when you and bob are having this sort of fallout and there's all of this kind of exposure of internal yeah biting me i don't i don't enjoy that shit like i know everyone on the internet now it's all about drama correct and like i mean we could start drama with people too or like whoever it is but that's just not how we got big you know like we've never started drama with people it's always just been about making funny shit

So for me, any opportunity we have to like, I don't know, I just don't look to that to get clout or views. That's just not me. It's my least favorite kind of view. Yeah, like that was when I was just pushed to the edge, you know? So like, I'm just going to stay quiet until it's to the point where I have to defend myself. Like, I don't want to, but that's kind of the way that I work. I just, I don't know, there is, we're really kind of in the...

the era of criticism yeah drama drama is huge on the internet all people want to see is people fight and fucking just go at each other they said this thing oh my god this singer with that girl and she's released these texts and so on and so forth yeah i don't know man like that's my it's like the streamers the whole streamers it's like it's a lot about beef and stuff like it's all about beef it's just it that energy the clip era i feel like

the clipping error that we're in kind of changed that, right? It's so quick. It's so fast. Well, the biggest thing that you can get on YouTube is timeliness. So we realized this last year. I'd known that it was a big deal for a while, that you're sort of basically being a news-ish channel. But as mainstream news is declining, people are looking to YouTube for their news so much more. And search volume is such an important driver. So Trump gets shot and then

36 hours later, I bring Tim Kennedy on. Whatever it is, 72 hours later, I bring Mike Baker on. So I've got one Green Beret, one ex-CIA guy who's still involved in intelligence stuff. And it was nice or whatever that people are interested and that I have people that have got genuine expertise and we can talk about this sort of stuff. But it was almost in some ways a little bit disheartening how much those episodes blow up because you think, oh,

There's no reason. The episodes were great, but they didn't need to be great. It was just something that was timely. And what's the most timely thing that you can do? Be start drama and be involved in the drama and just keep talking about it back and forth. And, uh,

If you look back... I guess that's just human nature, right? 100%. It's the most... Tabloid. It's the most important... I don't know why we're like that, but we just love to see negative shit about the human race. There's some really interesting potential evidence about why the human brain grew to be as big as it did, which is that...

It wasn't so we could use tools correctly or so that we could remember the location of plants, but because when you have a 150 person tribe broken down into 30 person pods or whatever, for me to be able to remember Kyle and Kyle's relationship with Dean and the fact that Kyle and Dean used to be friends, but they're not anymore. And John has actually come in and John is now Kyle's best friend. So Dean's kind of feeling about that. When you start to scale that up is really computationally difficult.

which is why you need a lot of ability but it also means that that is so important and salient to you like if you i don't think humans are particularly good at working out this is some dramatic social information that i need to pay attention to versus some dramatic social information that has absolutely nothing to do with me it's just drama therefore i must be able to pay attention and therefore it's going to um pull me in it's going to suck me in and um

If you were to look back, I think, across your week's watch time history, your pie chart of that, the...

I would doubt if anybody looks at the however many percent, 30%, 50% more, that they look at drama farming stuff and go, time well spent. Like, who's saying that? No one's saying that. No one looks at it and goes, really glad that I watched that Brianna chicken fry takedown summary video again for the third time that I've seen from two other different channels beforehand. Yeah, that shit got crazy views, which is...

I watched it. Of course, we all watched it. You can't not watch it. It's like the black hole of content. It just sucks you in. Yeah, it's just human nature, I guess. I don't know why. We like to see negative shit about each other. A quick aside. Traveling should be about the journey, not send it. The chaos, all manner of nightmares have occurred.

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I got him. Talking about YouTube and stuff. Is it weird having Steve, I mean, we bumped into Steve this morning in the gym. Is it, how odd has it been playing that balancing game now? It sucks, bro. I mean, you know, like Nelk's not the same without Steve. Like there's no, and you can't show him on YouTube. There's no question about it. I mean, Steve will do it was like, he was like the biggest one in Nelk. I mean, like he was like, he was more, he was bigger than me. Like at the time too, like,

So, yeah, it's a very weird situation. I don't quite understand it. I mean, I guess he was banned for putting a gambling link in his URL, but I don't know. I think that was just an excuse. There's something deeper going on.

I don't know if people know, but he is one of the most naturally funny guys in his own way. He has very dark humor. And I personally love his dark humor too. I think it's hilarious. But I guess there's just certain shit that you just can't say on YouTube. You know what I'm saying? So...

Think YouTube was seeing like some of his dark humor shit and they're like this is a ticking time bomb waiting to happen and one thing I've learned from YouTube too is They don't YouTube doesn't like negative press about you about youtubers YouTube cuz that's gonna fuck their right right like their advertisers don't like that press too. So I know we learned that during kovat

During COVID, we were like kind of traveling still making videos and we showed up to a college to film something. And we didn't even post anything ourselves. Like we just like went to the college and we were filming, but other people were taking Snapchats of us.

And through that, it gained a huge crowd. So it looked the all the articles were YouTubers host mass gathering YouTubers, this YouTubers that and we got like a manual email from YouTube, which you never get. You always know when it's like automated, right? And this said like, hey, Nelk boys, which is like Nelk boys is not even on our channel at YouTube at all. It's like Nelk. So and it was a custom email that said you guys need to watch your off off platform responsibility.

Which basically means like, we're giving you guys one last warning before we delete you. Or they're like, or your channel's deleted. So at that time, this was, and we're like, Jesus, like we're walking on eggshells. So I think since I've had that experience, it's kind of the, at the end of the day, they're just trying to make money in that YouTube office, right? So if they're looking at Steve and they're saying, this guy's making a bunch of

Crazy jokes. Flying close to the sun. Flying... Probably flying in the sun. He flies in the fucking sun, bro. He's going straight through it. Yeah, like his videos were fucking hilarious. And the jokes that he makes are fucking hilarious. So he was flying in the sun for sure. Probably right in the fucking center. And I think they just used the gambling thing as an excuse, to be honest. And then...

I think Steve knows probably he probably could have handled after the strategy of after getting deleted. He probably could have handled it a bit more diplomatic and strategic.

But still, I think, I mean, for them to take his channel down is just like... All of them. All of them is fucking crazy. And then not only that, to tell us that we can't even have him in our videos. So the editors... Or our channel will be deleted. The editors on the back end must permanently have this Steve filter. Well, then now it's created this weird thing where it's like Steve also...

So I created this weird thing where Steve's around and he obviously wants Nelk to be successful too. And he wants Nelk to keep going. He's not the guy that's like, yo, put me in this shit. Put me in this shit. That's not him, right? Our ultimate goal was Steve. When I first met him, I feel like was to just kind of like help him and make him financially successful. And our main goal was to start this, Happy Dad. So that's Steve's...

Steve and mine's ultimate goal is to build happy dad up into a billion dollar company So Steve wants obviously milk to be successful. He wants us to keep pushing happy dad But yeah I really think that they at least need to start with letting him be in milk videos or something else and it's weird because he'll go on other people's channels and Like they won't pick on and they won't pick on those channels. I

But for some reason, like, why is it only us? You were told specifically that he can't be in videos. Yeah, we were told very specifically. That's... On the phone. It's like somebody being unpersoned. It's fucked. Yeah, and I think it's been... You could even bring Tate on. You know, the most... Tate gets deleted on our shit too. Okay. Which is weird. Maybe you can't. Yeah, Full Send Podcast Tate got deleted. But, um...

I know what you mean. Yeah. It's just your Trump one got taken down as well. Right. The first one. Yeah. But we need to, I think we need in closing that we need to like, they should let his channel come back. I think eventually it's been long enough. And then to start, they should let him be in like, uh, or they like, they don't let him be in Bradley Martin's content. Like it's fucked. Like they got to let him be on YouTube now. Like the culture shifting now to like, well, let's talk about Zuckerberg, Chad transformation. Yeah. Uh,

I'm conflicted about this Zuck thing because part of me thinks moving in the right direction, nice to see a return to freedom of speech, et cetera. But another part of me thinks this is just blowing with the wind. You were cucked when the cucks were in office and you're bigoted now the bigots are in office, like Judge Mandly. Only half joking. And

I don't know. I get it. I get that people like the idea of it moving in the direction that they want, but it does seem like kind of a pretty thinly veiled, now that the free speech people are in power, will just do whatever they think is cool. Does no one see that? I see it. I see it. And I kind of saw it coming too. And I think that's what people don't get too, is at the end of the day, these are all companies that just want to make money. Whether it's YouTube or...

Facebook meta right like I don't I feel like it's not really a personal vendetta they have against these people It's just like they're sitting in a boardroom and they're trying to figure out how to make money, right? So they're gonna follow they're gonna follow the money. So now like obviously Zuck sees what's happening with X He's smart too. And at the end of the day, it's a W for everyone like that. We what was about to happen if Trump didn't win and

was fucking scary. To go further down that road. We were about to lose free speech. I think we would have lost it completely. I mean, it's hard to imagine, but thank God he won and the way that he won reflected where culturally we're at. But yeah, I think Zuck, obviously, he's probably sick of just getting chirped all the time too at the same time too, right? Elon Musk gets to be the man and gets all this praise. That is true. Everyone's always ripping on Zuck and Zuck's probably just like,

fuck I want to be the man too like Elon but I think it was very smart I mean there's no better person again to bring on than Dana I think that was that's so smart because Dana's always going to be for the people he loves social media too like he gets a kick out of just like seeing like he's always showing us numbers and stuff too like we're sending like our biggest reels that do well and shit so he understands social media and then yeah he's he's for the people he's always going to be for for free speech like UFC's for free speech so yeah

Yeah, I think Zuck just, he had no choice. That transformation is crazy of his. Visually, ideologically, in terms of the way that he presents. Zuck? Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. I know. I think it was just that. I think he just wanted to like, I think he just wants to be kind of cool, right? Boys club. Yeah, he wants to join the boys club. We'll see. We'll let him in, right? Yeah. Well, I tell you what's weird when you're thinking about the ecosystem of social media, that you don't have an equivalent front and center person on YouTube.

You know, you don't have, I mean, is it still that Susanna lady? Maybe Steve will do it soon. Wow. I mean, that would be an absolute U-turn. But yeah, look, I... Yeah, she's gone. I like the fact that Facebook... Even Twitch has someone now too, right? Yes. That older guy that's like...

I think he's like the CEO or something. Maybe. But yeah, YouTube, that's interesting. I like the fact that Facebook, and that obviously means downstream from that, WhatsApp and Instagram. Instagram's a big, I'm still shadow banned. I've been shadow banned since the week before the election on Instagram for sharing. You remember Kamala Harris had the phone up and then showed it and it was her camera? Yeah. I got, I'm still, since then, whatever it is,

down regulated in feed you know all of the little yellow orange circles on the back end got tons of orange circles that i can't get rid of because it's a story so i can't delete the thing and it's because of it's because of the fact checkers ah so the exact thing that they just brought up is the reason that i've been i'm thinking that i am glad about uh and overall it is a good thing but i'm just a little i don't know skeptical about the purity of the motivations for why there's no purity

There's no purity. They're following the money. They have no choice. I mean, the election was like a reflection of where society's at. Like, they have to be idiots not to like see like, holy shit, we got to adjust. But at the end of the day, it's a W for society. It's funny that the two topics that they highlighted as well were gender and immigration. Probably the two things.

most, at least from a campaign perspective, the two most aligned talking points when it came to what the candidates were driving home from ads, right? There was that ads that the Trump team, Kamala is for they, them, Trump is for you. One of the most successful political ads in the recent history. I think a third of their budget was spent on that one ad, some absurd amount of the budget. And then immigration was, you know, the flag that was planted in the ground by

the Republican side as this is the thing that we're pushing back against. I think interesting that those are the two flashpoints that you're enabling now on meta. What do you mean they're enabling it? Well, that when they talked about these are the sort of topics, there were two topics that they specifically called out as being ones that would be discussion would not be censored around as much. And it was gender and immigration.

They also happen to be the two biggest talking points when it came to the campaign trail as well. So that's a new thing they're doing, they just said? Yeah, it was part of the big announcement. A couple of the guys, some representative went on Fox and was talking about it, but I think it's actually written in something. I mean, yeah, if you're Zuck, you got to be like, he's obviously not an idiot, but you got to be a complete tool to not see where, like he has no choice. Like it's pretty obvious, right? I mean, and they're going to have to make all those adjustments. I mean-

I don't know why people don't see it. People are just going to follow the money always, right? I'm interested in what keeps driving you. You've mentioned proving people wrong is a part of it. But that only takes you so far. Doing something for a decade, however many hundreds of uploads, thousands of uploads, including all of the shorts and all of the work and sourcing and creating, spinning something up internally. I don't think people realize just how much work that is. What is it that...

keeps you motivated and keeps driving you forward after doing this for so long? I mean, I really fucking like enjoy what we do, honestly. Like I really do. And like, I'll go through waves of maybe there's a bad video or there's a bad moment on social media. But for the most part, like I really fucking love this shit. Like I started doing this for fun, just making videos, uploading them, not making any money. And I was making like

All types of videos. I wanted to be a director when I was younger. So I was making short films that were serious. I was making skits. And then we were doing pranks. I just loved creating, thinking of something, filming it. I would edit it myself, post it, and then you get that. It's entertaining. You get that reaction back from people saying they loved it. It's a good feeling. So I don't think I've lost that whatsoever. Even our latest NELC video, I was telling you, the Tribe video we did.

It was just fun. Like the whole process from thinking of the idea to planning it, like getting on the call with Forrest and talking about doing it to traveling there to filming it. And then we get home sitting with the editors editing it. And, you know, we're choosing the music, we're choosing the font, we're choosing just the storyline and then posting it and getting all that great feedback, watching the numbers go crazy, the entire process.

is fun. And I don't, I mean, I don't know what else I would be, I would be doing. I don't want to go back and work at the golf course. That's one thing I do really love it. And then, yeah, I mean,

obviously want to be like financially free i think you know i don't i don't know if we can do milk forever maybe we can like maybe it's like we have kids and we're still doing like dad's trips or some shit and we're bringing the babies and stuff happy dad in one hand child exactly there you go there we go oh yeah we're gonna definitely keep going but yeah i mean it would be with happy dad our ultimate goal is to build it into a billion dollar business and yeah so there's two sides to it there's just the content and then happy dad is our what are you more passionate about at the moment

I think I'm passionate about both equally. I love, I think that's one thing that like my partner, like John tells me too, is like, I can just switch from like a creative side to like a business side, like,

Like that, like with a light switch, you know? So I love like being completely creative and like making a video. And then I also love getting strategic and like helping build a business. So it's almost like I have two hats that I get to wear and I'm constantly switching them, which I think fucks with my mind a little bit too. And then.

And sometimes I got to babysit all these fuckers too. Like, I don't know if you know, Stiney, all like all these guys are fucked. I'm fucked too. But so there's a few different hats that I have to wear. A quick note. I partnered with Function because I wanted a smarter, more comprehensive way to understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests that monitor over a hundred biomarkers and their team of expert physicians will analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and fitness.

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slash modern wisdom that's a strange one i suppose that you made a name for yourself and still now sort of continue to as being the fun older brother or i guess a younger brother and then now older brother for most of your audience uh but because you're the front man

and the leader and one that's under a lot of scrutiny and one that has to make a lot of the decisions and stuff like that, there's a sense of obligation as well. So balancing, "I want to have fun,"

with i want to be the fun uncle fun fun older brother type thing with the i also need to be the responsible leader figurehead thing that's something i feel it never used to be like that too much but now i find myself doing that more than ever but you're the boss i know but i never like it gets fucking annoying sometimes too bro to be the buzzkill yeah of course like it's like it's like it's also like just don't make me be a buzzkill like i don't want to fucking have to like

rip you a new one. I don't want to have to fucking rip you a new one. The reason you're stepping in to do it is because you haven't done the thing that I asked you to do. But like some people just don't learn unless you fucking rip them a new asshole. So it's like it gets, but it does frustrate me and it gets annoying. So now some things I just kind of let go. I'm kind of only focused on what affects Nelk. Like I can't, I've learned I also can't help everybody. I can tell you something once. I could tell you something twice. If you're going to keep doing it,

that's going to be up to you. You know what I'm saying? Like there's not enough time in my day to babysit everyone's personal lives. I thought I get like, I don't know. I care about people that are close to me a lot too. So I try to help people as much as I can, but yeah, it gets, there's only so much time in a day at the end of the day, people are going to do what they kind of want to do.

Yeah, there's a few. I think Elon's probably a pretty good example of this, but I read sci-fi and novels and stuff like that. And in those books, a lot of the time, the person that's the figurehead, that's usually the protagonist in the book or whatever,

You get to observe inside of their own mind the price that they need to pay in order to be a leader, the fact that they need to do things or say things or make sacrifices. Ernest Shackleton, the guy who attempted an Antarctic crossing in the sort of 1910s, he had so many self-doubts that he wrote in his diary. He had so much concern and didn't know if people were going to survive, didn't know if they were going to be able to make it through multiple Antarctic winters.

And you sort of see him writing these things down in his diary and then stepping out there to put on this brave face that inspires everybody around him. And it's kind of interesting the...

the unique cost that a leader has to pay in order to keep driving something forward. And there are sort of certain very unique challenges that only maybe within, even within an organization, maybe only two people or one person or a couple of, you know, very, very small group of people actually have to deal with. And everybody else kind of gets to come along for the ride. Everybody else gets to be coached along. And, um,

Main character energy and sort of assuming that you're the most important person in the story is kind of how everybody sees their life. Everybody sees their world as the main character, but if you actually look at anybody else's world, at best you're a side character. At best you're like some ancillary dude that came in partway through.

But if you really want to be that main character, if you like the idea of being the leader, if you like the idea of being a figurehead, the person that's driving this thing forward, there will be prices that you need to pay. Very, very particular, unique, lonely prices that...

You can put a brave face on it or you can grin about it as much as you want, but ultimately there is a lot of shit to eat and you are going to have to eat it. 100%. It comes with the territory. I would never complain about it. It just, yeah, that's something kind of that I've had to deal with more recently as our business has grown.

as like you said yeah the stakes are higher now there's more responsibility so back then when we're just fucking around and we're you know now it's the stakes are higher so there's a lot more on the line there's a lot more on the line what's the uh what's the toughest part of your job i don't want to sound like a bitch or like complaining because like they're like what i i'm so fucking grateful for like my life and my job and stuff but i mean if there's one thing that just burns me out maybe it's just

traveling like a lot all the time the lack of a the lack of a routine and like structure that that can burn me out like if we're traveling all the time back when we were probably like drinking a lot and partying that was that was starting to burn me out a lot starting to lose it a little bit maybe but how so

Oh, not like lose it, but just, I mean, as you get older, bro, too, we were talking about it too. Like, bro, I obviously just can't fucking, I can't drink. Like I can't drink. Like I used to, like obviously when I'm 21, I didn't even know what a hangover was. I'm 30 now. So I get hung like a fucking, it feels like I got hit by a bus, you know? So I think it's just, it's that too. So when we're part, if we're like traveling and drinking a lot too, that can burn me out.

I love, I mean, I love having a routine too. Like when I'm in Miami and I'm just on my shit, like just exactly what we did this morning, dialed, working out. That feels really, really good to me now. The older I get, I think the simple things just become more and more important and just taking care of yourself, keeping your mind right. So if there's one thing, it's just that. It's just the traveling sometimes burns you out. Yeah.

Do you lose motivation or do you have low points? It seems like you have this sort of quite upbeat mentality a lot of the time. Not only that that's your disposition, but also that you need to be that for everybody else. They're going to look to you or Kyle's got to bring the vibe to this thing. I think I definitely lose. I think I lose motivation sometimes. I mean, I think everyone goes through points where, yeah, maybe you just get low or...

You kind of question, like, oh, do I want to do this? Like, what's the point of this anymore? You know? I've gone through phases like that where it's just like, yeah, you're just like, why do I need to do this? You know, what if... But I think those are just, like, little funks that everybody has. And you kind of just got to break out of them. And you got to kind of, like, look at stuff from, like, an outside perspective, too. Yeah, I think...

I'm so grateful to have this life and like everything I've built. So if you think about other people's lives or what they have or what their problems are compared to yours, I find that's like a great thing I do sometimes just whenever you're complaining about something, like really take a look at what you're fucking complaining about compared to other people's problems. So anytime I find myself in a funk, I'll kind of just think of that and be like, yo, this is my problem compared to like,

Someone else's problem like look around me look what I've got not even material wise like I have fucking a great family I have fucking great friends I have a great life like some people don't have that so all the stuff you kind of take for granted sometimes is

Not everyone has. How much do you rely on the sort of group around you? Do you think you could do this? You couldn't do this on your own? Nah, the group we have right now is like fucking really, really solid. Like obviously I have Gabe, who's like my assistant. Like that guy's slash lifesaver. He's the best. Like we've become best friends too. And he's like, there's no one better than him in anything. Yeah. I mean, Oz God, who edits all our videos, Sean Haney, yeah.

Brett Judd there's just like a whole crew of like our whole team is just like so good and I think that's what's as We get bigger and bigger. That's what's really important. It's like having this team It's never a one-man army for sure. And yeah now like the crew we have it's like we're all great friends We hang out like we work out we party so

I was telling you, I've been spending more time around bands. And I think a lot of what is happening in new media is reinventing what already happened in old media. So there's ad breaks, right? And sometimes there's little transition sounds between ads and there's regular guests that come up and sometimes there's segments. And so it's like all of this existed in radio, all of this existed in TV. But when I was thinking about how people that travel a lot, what is an existing...

artistic endeavor or project that has

some degree of travel in it, some degree of sort of difficult sleep and wake schedule. Maybe there's some partying, there's an obligation for performance, all of this stuff. Like, well, comedians and bands are two good examples of this. So I've been looking quite closely at how bands sort of maintain their motivation. And one of the fascinating things around that is you can have somebody who is an amazing musician who would perform phenomenally on stage that the audience might love, but they're a shithang.

And, or vice versa. There's someone that's an amazing hang that's great for the morale behind the scenes, but can't deliver what they need to do when it comes to this. And basically my point being that even with comedians,

A lot of them will have some sort of tour manager or a warm-up act that goes with them. And yeah, sure, the TM's got a job to do, checking into the hotel, dealing with delays, etc. The warm-up act's got a job to do. They need to make sure that the crowd is nice and ready for you to come on stage and they'll give you a hand. But what are they really there for? They're there for morale. They're there to keep your vibe good. And yeah, I think that's something that I...

being the solopreneur type degen thing working away in his room in solitude for a long time. I think that's a lesson that I kind of overlooked that I've done this on my own for decades.

you know, seven years now, I don't need anyone. I'll just keep doing this." And you go, "Yeah, you're going to get yourself to the stage where you need to lean on other people because your tank's going to be empty." And yeah, that's something, especially observing you guys and seeing how important that group dynamic is. And everybody's here. It's your house, right? It's our house. Yeah.

But everybody's in here. Everybody's there for the hang. It's unorthodox. Something blows up. You know, someone's coming for you. Someone's criticizing you. They're there to help support you. Something goes well. They're there to celebrate it with you. And we glorify the sort of Sigma male Lone Ranger. I'm going to do it on my own thing. Yeah.

I don't think that that's the best way to do it, to enjoy the good times. And I don't think it's the best way to do it to weather the bad times either. I agree. Yeah, no, we, the crew we have right now is like, we're all just, we're all just friends. So it's like, yeah, we celebrate the good times. We battle through the bad times, um,

And yeah, there's a lot of like, it's like a friend group. So it's like you're working and you're also having fun. So some things aren't done the most professionally, but I think that's, that's always been the magic of NELC and like what we've created. Like you never, even sometimes maybe we got a little bit too corporate and stuff too. Like that never fucking, that never works. I don't think like for content, like we got an office in OC for a bit and not, not that it like killed our content for anything. It was just like waste of money for, for, for NELC.

Um, happy dad completely took over that office cause they needed the space anyway. But for us, it's way better for me. Like now the editing office you saw is like right over there. I don't want to fucking drive to the office every day. Like this is the way that we've always done it. It's like, I wake up, I can just go walk over there.

after the fucking cold tub and be like what's good how's the video looking boys and i can just go sit with them for 10 minutes and we just like boom we just did like two hours worth of work like as i was coming back to like shower yeah it's funny the uh the need for slack and calls and check-ins and updates and where are we at project management i think that that works in a business obviously like these businesses obviously you need that but i think in a creative business and obviously filming or

a YouTube crew, any of that typical shit, I find it doesn't work. You got to do it your way. You got to keep it fun. You got to keep it. You got to keep good energy. Yeah. You know, the second people don't want to be there, it's not going to be good. Yeah. It's a really interesting challenge. And it's part of the thing that people don't see where behind the scenes,

the energy that you bring to something this is something that rogan's got so right it's so seamless like going and working like he has just removed all of the friction there is zero friction involved in his entire process and the team that he's got around him and the guys that he likes hanging with are just fire yeah you know he's got his little squad and you turn up at the studio and he doesn't need to think at all about anything that's going on he gets to turn up and do his thing and then he goes away and nothing saps that energy from him and i think that

yeah observing you guys i've learned a lot from sort of seeing how you've held that energy together and i think it's uh it's really impressive and obviously as well the proof's in the pudding you've kept going for 10 years so it's been a while evidently works yeah yeah it's been a long ass journey for sure what would you like to do next like what's from a content perspective from a business perspective um i want to this year i'm pretty fucking motivated right now me too i think uh

Yeah, I mean, I think last year I got a little bit comfortable maybe for a couple different reasons. But I think this year, even just after the reaction of our last video, like, the Nelk channel is so fucking unique, what we have. Like, even the videos at, like, 5 mil or something. Like, that's a lot of fucking views for a YouTube video. Not a lot of people are getting views like that in our genre. Obviously, MrBeast gets, like, crazy numbers. But for our, like...

Like that's just, that's awesome to me. So, and I had such a great time doing that. So a lot of people have been asking for us to like upload more, which I want to slightly tough if you're going to an uncontacted tribe. Yeah. But I want to, I want to get back into like trying to do a lot more NELC videos for sure. And then keeping the podcast going to we next week, we're going to UFC LA. So we're going to do like a pod with all those, with all those guys. And we got a couple of good guests in the works and,

And then we got the inauguration. So we'll probably, we'll have a lot of, are you able to film at the inauguration? We're trying to, we want, we want to try to make an inauguration video for NELC, but we'll see. It might just be, who gets to go with you? Cause you must have a limited number of tickets. You can't just bring everybody. It'll be, it'll be me and Stiney. And then it'll be Osgod, our filmer. And then probably Gabe. Gabe will be in charge of suits.

He's in charge of suits? He's dressing you? He wants to be in charge of suits, though. Okay, but you're in charge of suits. It's not like a job we throw on him. Okay. Yeah, well, we'll see. Yeah, that'll be cool. But yeah, no, this year we just want to kill it with content. Shorts, NELC, Full Sim Pod. How do you come to think about what makes a good NELC video? Or what makes a good piece of content in general? The first thing we'll think of is... I guess you think of it at the same time, but...

what's going to make a good video, obviously, but then you have to think of a good title and thumbnail. I mean, you know how it works, but that's the main thing. So if you think of a good idea, then the next thing you think of is, okay, well, what's the title and thumbnail? And then if we can't think of that, you don't really have...

A full concept, you know, what makes it is the title and thumbnail and then actually good quality content. Yeah. But title and thumbnails, everything on YouTube, right? I mean, that's the very first thing you should kind of be thinking about and yeah, just what's going to be digestible to like.

a large audience. Our whole team likes getting views too. Like, I think that's what we want to make a video and what's going to get the most fucking hype. What's going to get the most fucking views. Like that's what really motivates like me, Salim, Stiney, everybody on our team. What's just going to like make noise. So what's the watch time on a,

40 minute vlog for you guys. Do you know? I don't even, I'm not a fucking huge YouTube analytics guy. Honestly, I let like our guy Judd's like super into that. Like he'll be like, bro, this short had fucking 110% retention. I'm like, dude. Yeah. Like I don't really, I'm not a huge YouTube analytics guy, but yeah. Lots of completion though. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. There's, I wish that there was a way to,

That we could see more sentiment on YouTube than just click through and watch time. And I guess likes kind of contribute a little bit to that and comments kind of contribute. Getting a lot of likes is nice too. It is good. It doesn't do shit, I tell the audience, but it just, it fires the whole team up. Yeah. To just see like a lot of likes. Yeah. This isn't going to make it go any further, but thank you. It doesn't do shit, but thanks. It makes everybody in the office feel good. Yeah, it fires everyone up.

Yeah, I wish there was this idea that Twitter had X, I guess, about golden hearts or super likes, I think they were called. And what they had was you maybe got three per week or one per week. And it meant that because there was a limited number that you had to use, you had to be really selective about what you gave it to. But that meant it was a really big deal. You know, like on Reddit, you can kind of gift people stuff. YouTube should do more shit like that, right? It would be so good. Because they've lost like that.

Don't know like yeah, there's not really that much point of even having an account that much right like before I

It was all about subscribers and, you know, you would subscribe to people. Like, it kind of sucks now, too. I don't know if you noticed, but it's a lot harder to gain subs now, right? Way harder. I mean, there's no point of subscribing to someone. No, because if you watch three videos in a row from the same creator, whether you've subscribed or not, you're now going to be delivered back. YouTube used to be all about your subscriptions. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I like the fact that... They need to add, they need to bring, like, a Dana White on.

for like they they should do something like that they should bring someone on and like add some stuff like that i wonder if they'll follow suit i mean we've certainly seen you know the person that broke through was elon with them what he changed with regards to twitter into x and now with matter as well i wonder if that's going to put some pressure on on youtube and um that would be great to sort of i think x x has been putting pressure on youtube because they've got the video uploads yeah yeah i know i mean

Where John is pretty tight with he helps out a lot with X and yeah, they're definitely what Elon's doing is putting pressure on every other social media network, you know, because they have to follow suit. I've actually even noticed YouTube is and I want to give credit to YouTube because we shit on them a lot. But at the end of the day, YouTube is fucking great. And they've been a lot more lenient. I've noticed I've noticed since X. Yeah.

I don't think we've gotten like an age restriction in like a long ass time. We used to upload everything, age restricted, age restricted, age restricted. Like now, like I noticed, yeah, I think it was during the time of X2, like we would do a podcast with like Donald Trump Jr. And like, he's just going off about like trans and stuff like that. Like usually that would be like, yo, an absolute no-go. And just like no age restriction, no nothing. So I started to really notice like,

YouTube is they're following suit as well. Like they're going to have to follow the money. Everyone's going to have to follow the money. I've noticed they've been way less picky on us.

Yeah, well, they rolled back the language policy thing that they brought in about a year or 18 months ago or so. It was within the first two minutes of the video. Am I going through and thinking, oh, God, someone said shit within this time. We've got to get rid of that. Found out that the C word is just an instant demonetization. No matter how deep it can be, an hour and a half into a three hour long video. It's like you're getting popped. But how much are you tracking this world of...

kick and twitch and rumble and whatever the other ones are streaming stuff because i kind of see it's huge right uh-huh i walk i watch it and like even like some people on our team are like should we do this should we stream i just think that i don't know streaming is a that's a big commitment you know and i think too like back in the day when we were younger and we were

drinking five times a week to make a video every week i think we probably could have competed in that streaming space but the amount of work that these guys are putting in now for content i mean they're streaming what six days a week like i was like kai sanat too he's like what 21 like he's fucking yeah they're putting in a lot of work streaming's not the type of thing um that you can just do it once a week like you got to be streaming 30 to whatever hours a week so you

I just know how content gets done on the NELC side. It's a little more wilder. There's drinking involved and there's... Things that need to be cut out. There's things that... Oh, fuck. Yeah, that's a whole different story. Yeah. A live stream with NELC, depending on the video, would be... Yeah, we might be fucked on that, honestly. But yeah, it's a grind for sure. And I think if in 2017, I think we would have been able to destroy that space for sure when we were just young and not even thinking. But...

I don't know. I just like the YouTube stuff. I like making more of like a finished product and like polishing our videos. And I just love the style that we do. Who is it that's orchestrating the stuff behind the scenes? Like you say, hey, it would be great if we went to go and see an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. Yeah. But flights need booking and licenses to get filming rights and the kit needs organizing. I'll probably like

I'll probably mostly like think of the ideas or we just have a group chat with everyone too, that we're just always spitballing shit. But yeah, I'll kind of, I'll press play on the video and tell them like, all right, I look like we all like this idea. Everyone like it. All right, boom, we're doing it. And then we have a producer Griffin. He used to do some stuff on like the Eric Andre show. He's a beast. And then Gabe to Gabe and Brett, they'll,

Do all the flights, all the logistics. So I just, my job now is like, I press play and I dish it off to them and they're all on top of logistics. Austin and Sean will handle any video. But it couldn't have always been that way. No, we used to do everything back in the day. I mean, I used to edit the videos myself back in the day. So I've had a hat. I was my own assistant back in the day. Like if there was a prop that needed to get it, I would have to go get it.

To three different Halloween stores to find the costume. So I've like played all those hats that everyone's doing now. So I kind of know what needs to be done. That's why when I'm hiring them too, I'm kind of. Scrutinizing very closely. Yeah, I know exactly what needs to be done in each situation. But no, we have a fucking all-star team. So when we press play on a video, it's like bang, bang, bang. There's like no fucking bullshit. That's one thing like Gabe knows too. There's no bullshit when it comes to like.

Like we did a bachelor video recently with Stiney as the bachelor. And that was like huge budget. We did like five days. We did like Miami, Nashville and Cancun. And it was just like completely dialed to a T. So that's one thing I have no complaints about is our, our video process is like 10 out of 10. That's why I'm just like, yeah, we got to run this shit up on NELC. Yeah. Because you've got the systems in place. We have the system and it's just like such a powerful channel. People want more videos. I'm fired up.

that's sick yeah dude i appreciate the fuck out of you yeah uh it's awesome it really is it's cool to see what you're doing uh i love i love seeing someone that's passionate about what they what they do and is able to scale it and get out of their own way and just hand stuff off and uh yeah i'm excited to see what 25 has in store for both of us crash it this year appreciate you man appreciate you brother let's go uh any more drops any other shit that people need to check out

Not really. Just watch us this year. I mean, I just talked a big game. So everyone watching, if we don't do it, come, come chirp me. Come fucking give me shit. Stay on our asses. I love it. Fuck yeah. Appreciate you, man. Thank you guys. If you want more focus in your life, or if you find yourself dealing with an energy slump in the middle of the day where you just don't have the motivation to stay productive, fear not because I do too, which is why I spent more than a year creating the world's first productivity energy drink, Newtonic. Honestly,

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