MKBHD: The Story To 16 Million & The World Of YouTube

1. 0:00 – 1:23

   Intro

   1. MBMarques Brownlee0:00

      If we are sitting here trying to think, "How do we make more money?" What's the point of making more money if we're not gonna do anything with it? The thing that we do with the money that we make is turn around and make better videos. So yeah, if at any point we are... Like I said, we, we have ambitions. In order to reach those goals, we do need to make more money in order to be able to afford to, to attack those goals. But it is very much that making money is in order to make videos, for sure.

   2. AAAli Abdaal0:29

      Hey, friends. Welcome back to Deep Dive, the ongoing podcast where every week, I get the chance to sit down with inspiring authors, entrepreneurs, creators, and other inspiring people, and we talk about how they got to where they are and the strategies and tools that we can learn from them to help live our best lives. Now, this is very exciting because this is an interview between me and Marques Brownlee. Marques Brownlee also goes by the name MKBHD on the internet, and he's one of the world's largest tech YouTubers. He's been on the platform for more than 10 years and has made hundreds, I think if not thousands of videos, all about tech and consumer tech, and his channel is one of the most well-respected on the entire platform. Right now, Marques has a whole team of 12 people around him. He's got this enormous studio, makes incredibly high quality videos. And so we talk a lot in the discussion around this idea of being a creator in the modern creator economy, how he grew as a YouTuber, how he managed to stay consistent for 10 plus years producing tech content week after week and month after month. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with one of the legends

2. 1:23 – 3:30

   Staying consistent on YouTube over the last 10 years

   1. AAAli Abdaal1:23

      of YouTube as much as I did. Let's, let's roll the conversation. Marques, hey. Thank you so much for coming on the show. How, how are you doing today? [laughs]

   2. MBMarques Brownlee1:28

      I'm really good. Thanks for having me.

   3. AAAli Abdaal1:30

      Yeah, this is gonna be fun. Um, so obviously I've been following your channel for, like, decades it feels at this point, and the place I wanted to start was that you and, you and iJustine are, like, in the tech YouTuber space, have been around for such a long time and have managed to stay consistent and seem to continue to be having fun with the thing. And I remember you were on the Y Combinator podcast, and they asked you something around the lines of, "You know, Marques, what's the secret to your success?" And you kind of shrugged and you said, "Well, if you do anything for 10 years, then you're bound to be successful at the thing." And so the place I wanted to start was, like, how have you managed to stay so consistent in g- kind of basically doing the same sort of stuff over the last 13, 14 years, and how have you made it fun and kind of interesting for yourself as you've evolved over time?

   4. MBMarques Brownlee2:15

      Yeah. Wow, that's a really good question. W- there is a lot of, a lot of smaller answers that add up to a bigger thing. So I feel like the, the number one thing is it's fun. We enjoy it. I- we're all nerds here at the studio. I enjoy tech. Trying, trying a new piece of tech every day is, like, what... That's, like, the, the dream. It's super fun. Um, and genuinely having so many things under my belt now that we feel calibrated enough that I can turn around and give my opinions on a piece of tech and actually share it and have it be valuable is super cool. So it's just fun to review tech and, and show it to people. We're also video nerds, so it's fun to make videos, and that's fun, too. And we get... We try to get better at it every time. And then I think also probably a little piece of that interview w- around that same point was, uh, as a creator, you, you see this l- sort of a lifespan of a creator, right? It's, it's typically relatively short as far as careers go. But luckily, as a tech creator or as a product-focused creator, the pressure's not on me to, like, keep it interesting or keep it spicy or whatever. It's, it's actually just up to the tech companies, and I'm just having fun following along, pointing the camera at the stuff, and, uh, and evaluating and reviewing and checking it out. So it's a sort of a nice combination

3. 3:30 – 7:05

   The lifespan of a creator

   1. MBMarques Brownlee3:30

      of all those things, I think, that come together to just... we just keep making videos.

   2. AAAli Abdaal3:33

      Yeah. Yeah, th- this was a big part. Like, when I, when I started YouTube about five years ago, like, this month five years ago, um, I sort of had in the back of my mind that the only people it seems who have serious longevity on the platform outside of, like, people like PewDiePie, although even, even he was kind of, is younger, in inverted commas, than, than you and iJustine are. It seems like tech really does lend it, lend itself to that longer arc of a career, whereas the thing that I worry about all the time is that, like, will I still be relevant next year? Will I be relevant the following year? What am I gonna be doing? Do you have any of those concerns at all around, like, relevancy and, like, fading out of people's minds and, and things like that?

   3. MBMarques Brownlee4:08

      Nicely, I think, no, just because, uh, people will always be somewhat interested in the latest tech. Maybe it's not like, oh, the, the priv- the pr- position we're in now is amazing, where we're sort of at the top of our game, like, people wanna see what I have to say about tech, and they'll go to it voluntarily, which is cool. But I think the, the second half of that, which is a new piece of tech comes out, I'm gonna just point the camera at it and see what I can reveal about it or explore or review it or show it from a owner's perspective. People will always be seeking that out. Uh, and so even if I'm, you know, not worried about being the number one tech reviewer in the world, I still feel like that will always exist, and I'll always have fun being a part of that ecosystem.

   4. AAAli Abdaal4:51

      Hmm. How, how do you think, if at all, about quote, "competitors"? Like, the other people in the tech ecosystem, in the tech sphere, you seem, you seem to be friends with, like, all of them. But at the same time, you're also sort of competing in this, sort of competing, sort of not. Like, do you worry about what they're doing? Do you not really think about it? How, how do you approach that?

   5. MBMarques Brownlee5:10

      So far it's felt like a rising tide lifts all ships, and I-

   6. AAAli Abdaal5:14

      Hmm

   7. MBMarques Brownlee5:14

      ... genuinely mean that. Like, when I look back at tech YouTube, like, seven, eight, nine, 10 years ago, all of us, not only were we all making worse videos, but we were all perceived differently. We were all taken less seriously. Um, at this point now, uh, it's sort of matched maybe what you'd consider traditional media as far as respect levels and, and consideration as far as what you think of a, a device, and we're still trying to improve on that. But yeah, we all, we all tend to, to make each other better. I'll see things that other people are doing in videos and I'm like, "Oh, that's cool. I'll talk to them about that." I think other people do the same thing with our channel. I think there's a, a healthy amount of, like, we're not really competing for the same eyeballs, 'cause there's enough to go around, and that's also a, a good thing about product videos on YouTube is people want a variety of opinions on things. So yeah, it doesn't really feel like competitors as much as it's, like- A community of... It's an ecosystem. I think that I used that word already, but it's an ecosystem

   8. AAAli Abdaal6:14

      Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's, it's the same approach for, like, you know, my stuff is around productivity and personal development and stuff, and people often ask that, "Hey, how do you feel about the fact that other people are doing, kinda doing the same thing?" And I always... or I also use that phrase like, "The rising tide lifts all the boats." Um, if Matt D'Avella has a cold shower video, then it's likely to be suggesting Nathaniel Drew's cold shower video. And so, if I make a cold shower video, and we all do it in our own ways, then actually, that's, that's pretty cool, and we're all mates, and it just feels like quite a, quite a fun thing, especially when we can meet in, in real life. I, I imagine you have a similar, similar kind of approach to it.

   9. MBMarques Brownlee6:46

      Yeah. Yeah, and I feel... I also think there's a, there's a good amount of... I guess there's a, there's a process for trying to decide what we make videos on, and most of that process doesn't really consider what other people are making videos on. Luckily, it's just what do we think is cool, and what do we think is worth showing and sharing? Maybe it's a review, maybe

4. 7:05 – 9:07

   Your process for making YouTube videos

   1. MBMarques Brownlee7:05

      it's an explainer, maybe it's an interview, maybe it's a dope tech video, maybe it's this. Whatever. We got ideas. And I think if there's other people making cool videos, then we can take, uh, we can take advice from that. We can, we can collaborate with other creators. It's all sort of a, a net positive.

   2. AAAli Abdaal7:19

      On that note of, like, deciding what videos to make, how much are you go- uh, how, how much does it play on your mind of, "Oh, I know if I make this sort of video, it'll get this nu- this many views," versus more like, "I feel like making this video because I feel like it." And sort of that, to me, that's always felt like a bit of a spectrum of, like, doing things because I feel like it versus doing things because I know they'll perform well. Um, how, how do you think about sort of videos along, along that spectrum if, if it even is a spectrum?

   3. MBMarques Brownlee7:45

      Yeah. So I think this is super lucky that the videos that I know will do well are the most interesting to me also because they're about probably a piece of tech that is so cool that I wanna check it out anyway, right? So on one half, it's like, what videos will do well? It's, uh, the, the hottest gadgets, the most impressive new things that people haven't seen before, uh, collaborations with really cool, interesting people. Those I, I know before we make them are like, oh, those are gonna do pretty well. And then on the other half is, what do I wanna do? And sometimes it's, well, I wanna check out this gadget. This seems pretty cool. Or I kinda wanna talk to this person. They seem really interesting to talk to. And suddenly, like, they're, like, meshing together, and it's kind of the same pool of things. So often, um, again, it's like I don't have that much pressure to, to, like... I don't really, I'm not inter- I'm not into this video, but I'm gonna do it anyway 'cause I know it'll get a lot of views. That doesn't happen too often for me, 'cause if I know it's gonna get a lot of views, why is that gonna get a lot of views? 'Cause it's a really interesting piece of tech. Oh, okay, so I'm in. [laughs]

   4. AAAli Abdaal8:47

      And has that always been your attitude, or was that a thing that changed over time?

   5. MBMarques Brownlee8:50

      I think that's something I figured out over time. I know that there are videos that I make that aren't going to blow up like the ones that are the most popular gadgets, but I still wanna share them because I still think they're cool. And I think if I can make the video in a way that actually shows why I'm so interested in it,

5. 9:07 – 13:55

   What is the MKBHD business model?

   1. MBMarques Brownlee9:07

      then it will eventually be interesting to people and will catch on. So I think that's something I sort of learned probably in the p- in the second half of making videos, which is that, yeah, we can, we can sort of justify pretty much any video we wanna make.

   2. AAAli Abdaal9:21

      Nice. Um, one, one thing that struck me about your stuff is that you don't have a lot of sponsored content, it seems. Like, it's, it's very occasional that you'll do, you'll do a sponsorship, and you don't plug your own merch very much either. So I, I've, I've just been very, very intrigued for a while, like, what is the MKBHD business model? And it seems also on that point that you're not really chasing revenue, because you could make money more efficiently or more effectively if you wanted to, I'm sure. What is the business model, and what are the, I guess, the metrics or the goals that you're actually optimizing for? 'Cause I imagine it's not, "We just wanna make as much money as possible."

   3. MBMarques Brownlee9:55

      The overarching goal behind everything, just to, to keep in the back of my head for all, all this stuff, is we wanna make what we'd wanna watch, and that actually d- it translates pretty well towards, like, the entire business. And if you keep that in the back of your head towards any part of what we do, it makes a lot of sense. So when we consider, like, what videos we're gonna make, it's what, what would we wanna watch? What would we, what would we... It's like a tongue twister. What would we want to subscribe to? That's the type of channel we're trying to build. And then as far as revenue, like, we are in a position where the AdSense on the videos makes a good amount, and so we do very, very carefully hand select, like, we're extremely picky about when we work with sponsors because they al- we also want them to make a lot of sense. You're right. We could decide to make a sponsor... The amount of nos I say in my inbox, like, we could make a sponsored video every single video for the rest of time, and, and that would be a very different channel. We wouldn't wanna subscribe to that channel. But we could do it if we wanted to make a lot of money. Um, but yeah, there are some sponsors where it's, it's a win-win for everyone. We see that it's a cool product, and we wanna share it anyway, and now it's worth working with them, and the whole thing works out great. So yeah, we, we do have goals as far as expansion and, and building not just a team, but a, I sort of have, like, this dream video studio in mind on the horizon, and that's not gonna be cheap. So we gotta get there somehow. But yeah. There is a, there is very much a, a handpicked, very picky element about when we do sponsored stuff and when we plug stuff just because it's what we'd wanna watch.

   4. AAAli Abdaal11:28

      So it sounds like it's very much sort of craft first and business second, I guess. Um, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like kind of the business exists for the purpose of the craft rather than the other way around. And I guess this is something that Casey said, um, we- at the Nas Summit in Dubai. He was like, uh, a lot of creators make videos to make money, but he makes money so that he can make more videos. And so the, the making of the videos is just the instrumental intrinsic joy that he gets from his life. Would you say that's the same for you? Like, how do you, how do you balance kinda craft versus business, again, assuming that there's a, there's a spectrum between the two?

   5. MBMarques Brownlee12:02

      Yeah, that's 100%. I had never heard that quote, but that's exactly how, the way we see it. Like, if we are sitting here trying to think, "How do we make more money?" what's the point of making more money if we're not gonna do anything with it? The thing that we do with the money that we make is turn around and make better videos. So yeah, if at any point we are, like I said, we, we have ambitions and in order to reach those goals, we do need to make more money in order to be able to afford to, to attack those goals. But it is very much that making money is in order to make videos, for sure.

   6. AAAli Abdaal12:35

      I actually have no idea where you're actually based, but my understanding is, like, somewhere near New York.

   7. MBMarques Brownlee12:39

      [laughs]

   8. AAAli Abdaal12:39

      I have a friend who just moved to New York and he said that, like, "Oh my God, the rents here are super expensive. Like, it seems like you've got, like, ridiculously wealthy people, and you can spend an unlimited amount of money on an unlimited number of things." How do you personally think about, like, your l- I guess lifestyle creep and the sort of managing, essentially managing your relationship with money? Because it's, it's, it's a thing I s- I, I, I like to speak to a lot of kinda creators and entrepreneurs are, about because it seems like in every creator's and entrepreneur's life cycle, there comes a point where you decide, "I've actually got enough and I don't need to optimize for money anymore." Whereas when you're struggling to pay the bills, obviously, you know, at that point, money makes a lot of sense. Uh, so there's a certain point where enough is enough.

   9. MBMarques Brownlee13:19

      Yeah.

   10. AAAli Abdaal13:20

       And some people say that if you're living in the middle of, like, Utah, there a- there actually isn't a way to spend large amounts of money. But when you're in New York, suddenly it's like there's a lot you could be doing. I'm very curious. How, how do you approach that relationship between money and lifestyle?

   11. MBMarques Brownlee13:32

       Yeah. I, so we are, we're in New Jersey. We're right across the river. You can see New York from our window, so it's right there. Uh, we can get there quickly, but it is much cheaper to be in New Jersey than in New York, so price per square foot-wise, doing pretty good over here. Um, no, I think what's funny is I, I was, I've been making videos forever and I think, uh, when I was in college, I went to a, a school called Stevens Tech, which is in Hoboken, New Jersey. It's a technical school,

6. 13:55 – 14:49

   Approaching the relationship between money and lifestyle

   1. MBMarques Brownlee13:55

      and one of the things that happens when you go to a school like that is pretty much every student there, especially in my major, the business majors, engineering majors, uh, takes a, a sort of structured co- well, the way they build their college career is around going to class and then going to intern at a company they hope to work for and then going back to class, and so you have these sort of periods that are designated for that. And I went through my freshman year, I changed my major halfway through. I settled on this business with a background in tech, and I finally got to the point where the question was, "All right. You've made it through the first year. Where do you wanna go intern? Like, where do you wanna work when you finish this major? Where you sh- you should get ahead of the, the, the process and, and go intern somewhere in the city." And it was pretty much at that exact moment that I realized I just wanna make videos. That's, that's all I wanna do. [laughs] So I

7. 14:49 – 18:30

   What’s been the biggest challenge of having a team?

   1. MBMarques Brownlee14:49

      didn't go intern anywhere. I just went back and made more videos and then got back to class, and then that was the thing that I did with my time, and it turned out that that financially made a lot of sense. It, when I dedicated myself full time to videos, it was even better for the channel. Then I went back to class and I was like, "Oh, I'm spending so much time on homework, and I could be, I could be making videos again." So yeah, it turned out I, I didn't, I didn't really have too much second thought when I graduated about what I was gonna do. Uh, the channel was making enough money that I didn't have to optimize for money, as you put it, so that's what I started to do straight out of college. And I, I think lifestyle creep is pretty easy in a big city, big fashion, big, you know, Big Apple, all this stuff. I don't really spend that much money on almost anything. I don't, I mean, I wear, I wear T-shirts and jerseys, like sneakers maybe. Maybe that's my guilty pleasure. I don't, I don't find that, uh, lifestyle creep actually has too much of an effect on the business or the, or the stuff that we do. So luckily that's, uh, it's all still true.

   2. AAAli Abdaal15:56

      Just a quick message from one of our sponsors, and we'll get right back to the episode. This episode is brought to you by Shortform, the world's best service that summarizes books. Uh, trust me, I've used all of them. I'm not allowed to mention them by name probably. But Shortform is by far the best one out of all of them. They even have summaries of enormous books, like Tim Ferriss' Tools of Titans. Honestly, I have n- [laughs] I, I've read bits of this book, but I've not yet gotten around to reading all of it. But the Shortform summary takes all the best ideas and puts it into a more digestible summary than this enormous behemoth of a book. But it's way more than just book summaries. On Shortform they also have these little segments where you can engage critically with the ideas, with interactive exercises and bits like that. And whenever the author says something, or in this case, there are various people that are interviewed in the book, say something controversial, then Shortform flags it up and says, "Oh, hang on. This thing that Tim Ferriss writes over here has actually been completely debunked and disagreed with by this person over there who's written that book." And it just helps you engage with the ideas on a way more critical level than, at least for me, I would have done otherwise. For me personally, the two ways I use Shortform is firstly I use Shortform if I'm thinking of reading a book. Then I will often, instead of reading the whole book cover to cover, I will read the Shortform summary and then be like, "Do I want to actually read this book based on how valuable or insightful or interesting I found the summary?" Uh, and secondly, once I've already read a book, Shortform is great for revisiting the ideas in that book so I don't have to reread the whole thing, and it tends to save me a lot of time, along with looking at my Kindle highlights. So if any of that sounds up your street and you too want to subscribe to the world's single best service that summarizes books, then head over to shortform.com/deepdive, and that link, which is also in the show notes and in the video description, is gonna give you 20%, a whole 20% off the annual premium subscription. So thank you so much, Shortform, for sponsoring this episode. And I feel like this is more of a thing in the US where you can just creep up, it seems way more than, than you can in the UK. Do you have, I mean, w- without any, without naming any names, people that you know, creators, entrepreneurs, those, those sorts of people? 'Cause I imagine you've come into contact with some pretty wealthy people, you know, Elon Musk [laughs] aside. Have you seen any of those sorts of people be a cautionary tale for this sort of thing at all?

   3. MBMarques Brownlee17:50

      Mm, not really. I mean, so a lot of the creators, I hang out with a lot of, with a lot of creators, and I'm always fascinated by their, like, their process and the behind the scenes and als- also kinda, like, the vibe of, of what's happening. Like I, you know, there's creators that are, that are close to Solo, who you would never imagine, like, still edit all their own stuff. There are creators who are, they feel like they're in a cog in the machine. They have 100 employees, and there's just a bunch going on. Some- I'm, I'm always paying attention to that And I, I think they've all been pretty positive examples, um, in a v- in various ways. I think there's, there's things to aspire to in a lot of the, the creators I've had the opportunity to talk to. So

8. 18:30 – 19:42

   What’s your opinion on quality vs quantity?

   1. MBMarques Brownlee18:30

      I don't know if there's any cautionary tales, but I, I know what you're talking about, which is, like, you know, there is YouTubers who are just like, "Ah, I finally made enough to get, uh, this couple cars that I always wanted. Now I'm gonna get the cars, and now what?" I don't know. [laughs]

   2. AAAli Abdaal18:45

      Yeah, sure. [laughs]

   3. MBMarques Brownlee18:46

      If you're in... I mean, I, I guess that I'm lucky that my hobbies are exactly what the business is already doing. Uh, I play, I play a sport. It's not particularly expensive to play other than traveling. I, I golf sometimes. That can be expensive, but I don't play enough for it to be expensive. Yeah, so I guess I'm, I'm pretty, pretty set.

   4. AAAli Abdaal19:08

      Amazing. [laughs] Um, on that note, so if I think of comparing, like, like, for example, the way Linus runs his business versus you versus, I guess, someone like Justine, who seems to be more of like a solo operator, operator with maybe a s- a smaller team. Have you ever considered going down the sort of Linus Media Group, 17 videos a week, multiple channels, multiple hosts kind of thing? Um, and, like, how, how do you think about what you actually want from the channel and from the business in the future?

   5. MBMarques Brownlee19:35

      Yeah, for sure. I, I definitely still use the back of the head, what would I wanna watch, what would I wanna subscribe

9. 19:42 – 22:47

   What does the org chart look like?

   1. MBMarques Brownlee19:42

      to mentality. As of right now, I think I probably subscribe to about, I think it's, like, 120 channels on YouTube, something like that. If I subscribe to a channel that uploads every single day, I better really like that channel, or I'm gonna stop watching after a while. I'll get fatigued, then I'll probably either unsubscribe or not watch most of the stuff. So going down that, like, content factory route is very much an optimization for making money and revenue, which we don't need to do. Uh, we still have the mentality of, okay, what would be a good video? What do we actually want to make or show or accomplish with this video? Instead of just, we need a new video. That's, that's where I'm at. So I think I'm probably, if you're, if you're making a spectrum between, you know, Justine and Linus, I'm probably closer to the Justine. Uh, we have a team here, out of necessity, that is extremely talented and skilled and helps us make really good stuff, but it's not to make more stuff or to make more money. It's not like an assembly line where we just, like, cranking out the next thing. Um, it works for some people, but it also seems like, uh, you're just hopping on a treadmill and just turning up the speed.

   2. AAAli Abdaal20:53

      When did you start hiring people? And I guess, like, what, what does the org chart look like now, and how does, how has that sort of evolved, evolved over time?

   3. MBMarques Brownlee20:59

      Yeah, so I remember first time technically hiring someone was, uh, a former teammate of mine, Andrew. He, he currently runs the studio here. But it was, like, a... It was a CES, I remember, one year, and CES is always one of those weird, stressful times as a tech creator because there's so much stuff you could maybe make a video about, but good luck getting to all of it. So I, I remember after I finished a CES, just, like, sitting in the hotel with, like, half the footage I wanted to have, just like, "Wow, I could've used a second, second set of hands there. Like, that would've been way easier if I had somebody to hold the camera and to, like, help me out with things." Uh, so he was the first person I hired. At this point, the org chart is, I think we probably have a... I don't remember the exact number, but I'll figure it out as I count. So Andrew runs the studio with me, so that's two. Um, we have the, the main channel videos, which are Vin and Brandon do cinematography, set design, art design, the intros. Their camera work, camera work is awesome, so that's four. Um, we have an editor. We have a sales ad manager. We have a behind-the-scenes channel point, point guard, I guess, runs it, edits it, shoots it, everything, the studio channel. Then we have a podcast audio editor and a podcast video editor, and then we have a motion graphics and a still graphics, and so that's 11. And that's, that's the sort of... I don't know if there's a flow to it or it's sort of a blob at this point, but everyone has a designated task 'cause I've... Have you heard my octopus analogy before?

   4. AAAli Abdaal22:36

      Yes, I have. I was gonna ask you about that next, but I would love it if you could elaborate on that. [laughs]

   5. MBMarques Brownlee22:40

      Yeah. Well, that's... So okay, so the octopus analogy is, like, as you start off as a creator, you're a solo creator. There are all these different things that you do

10. 22:47 – 24:16

    The octopus analogy

    1. MBMarques Brownlee22:47

       that you really wanna be good at, but you, you have a, a main focus. So for me, it was like I wanna review tech, I wanna talk about tech, but I also have to be a professional cameraman, and I have to be a professional video editor and lighter. And I have to be a professional inbox manager and, and finance and accounting and taxes, and I also have to do all this other behind-the-scenes stuff and audio and, and the list goes on. And so you feel like an octopus. You've got eight arms. They're all doing different things in order to stay on track. At this point, the team we've built is all of the arms that I've cut off. [laughs] So they're all much better than I am at holding a camera. They're much better than I am at set design. They're much better than I am at sound design, at still graphics, so the thumbnails are all better. The, uh, the sound is all better. Everything is better about everything we make because of the team, and that is the purpose of the team. So yeah, we... I guess the, the, the awkward ending of the analogy is an octopus has three hearts, so I feel like, as one of the hearts, I'm the beating heart. I am still very much, like, talking tech, reviewing tech, you know, content strategy, but the team is now built out around it in a way that it is, it is pretty smooth.

    2. AAAli Abdaal23:52

       Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's kind of the same for me. So we have a team of 13, of which, like, nine-ish are, like, in person. Um, but a big chunk of that is, uh, running operations for the courses that we do, and then there's, like, a much smaller team because the sort of, the, the sort of videos that I do don't have such a kinda heavy lift in terms of production and cinematography. Uh, it would be awesome if they did, but-

    3. MBMarques Brownlee24:12

       Mm-hmm

    4. AAAli Abdaal24:12

       ... um, I think my vibe is more, like, what do I want to be

11. 24:16 – 25:45

    Are you still editing yourself?

    1. AAAli Abdaal24:16

       doing? Basically, just, like, exploring cool concepts and talking to the camera about them, and similarly I don't really want to have to be doing the editing, and so that was something that I outsourced early on. I was listening to another interview with you from a few years ago, where you said you were still holding onto the editing. Uh, are you, are you still doing the, the editing yourself, or have you, have you cut off that particular arm yet?

    2. MBMarques Brownlee24:34

       We're slowly adding that. So we have a new editor, and we're sort of working on matching style, adding, you know, what they should edit versus what I should edit. I still edit most stuff that you end up seeing, but the studio channel, I don't edit. The podcast channels, I don't edit. So depends on what you're watching, but yeah, we do, we do cut that arm off pretty soon. [laughs]

    3. AAAli Abdaal24:56

       What's been, what's been the biggest surprise around having your own team, or the biggest challenge that you hadn't quite realized would be a thing as you, as you built up over time?

    4. MBMarques Brownlee25:04

       Oh, that's easy. Uh, you become... You have to add an arm, which is managing people. [laughs]

    5. AAAli Abdaal25:09

       Mm. [laughs]

    6. MBMarques Brownlee25:09

       That's a, that's a whole new, a whole new job. So yeah, before, my job was find the tech that's worth making a video about, make the video, find out what makes a good video. Like, all of that is very much a, a front-of-mind focus. But as you become the hub of the wheel, you also need to sort of manage and optimize everyone's processes towards making that video, where before, you controlled everything. Now you have to sort of control the control. Uh, so that was my, my biggest surprise. I'm, I'm learning at it. I'm getting better at it. I think that's a s- a learned skill. But yeah, that's, that's for sure, like,

12. 25:45 – 30:03

    How does your business operate?

    1. MBMarques Brownlee25:45

       a new amount of time that I have to be prepared to spend.

    2. AAAli Abdaal25:49

       So are you the one, like for example, doing one-on-ones with all other 10 team members, or, like, is it that you have a, I guess, quote, general manager who does all the d- day-to-day management? Like, I'm so curious to dig into sort of how the business operates, like, within, within the machine that you've got.

    3. MBMarques Brownlee26:03

       Sure. It kind of feels like pretty much everything has to go past me in order to be published, like, content-wise. Um, but as far as, like, running things, you know, Andrew and I sort of tag-team, like, running the studio and assigning things and make sure everyone's doing the thing that needs to get done. That's kind of it. I feel like there's only maybe two levels to it, I guess, as far as org chart, like, visuals. But I think that helps. I think th- the team's not too big that it's like we need, like, a manager to, to manage a group within a group that has a manager to manage the managers or anything like that. That's, that's a lot. We just have our, our creative team and our business team, and they all sort of work together.

    4. AAAli Abdaal26:40

       Yeah. Yeah. At o- at one point, we had a team that was approaching the size of, like, 20, and at, at the size of 20, we had to have, like, middle managers whose only job was to manage the people doing the thing, and we ended up having, like, a bunch of issues around, like, communication and stuff. Um, and so as we sort of pared down to working with people more part-time and freelancers, it really felt as if, ugh, okay, now we have a content team, and now we have a courses team, and those, those are, like, the two hubs of the business that work well together. What does your process look like from, I guess, idea to video being published? What are the steps along the way? Who are the people that sort of get involved with making an idea come to life?

    5. MBMarques Brownlee27:14

       Yeah, so let's go with, uh, let's go with a classic video, reviewing a phone.

    6. AAAli Abdaal27:18

       Yep.

    7. MBMarques Brownlee27:18

       Right? So step one is the phone arrives at the studio, and I take it out the box. Sometimes I'll shoot the unboxing if I know that's gonna be part of the video, and I put my SIM card in it. I set it up, and I start using it, and I start testing it. We have a... So I actually mentioned, I forgot one of them earlier, a writer-researcher-script supervisor. David will help me with a lot of the research and making sure we've got all the points worth mentioning about this device, about this phone, all in one doc. So I'm taking notes as I'm using it. We're brain dumping into this document, and then eventually we get to the point where we're like, "All right. I think we've got it. I think we've got everything. Let's turn it into a script, a story, a through line, something that's worth watching." That's basically my job, is to, to translate all of this information into the headline, the thumbnail, the thing that will live on YouTube. Then we shoot the thing. So there's sort of two versions. I'm sure you do this too. There's A roll and B roll. So you shoot your A roll, where you're talking to the camera, and then you have pieces where you know you're gonna be sh- you know, you're talking, but you also have, like, footage ready for when you're gonna talk about that stuff.

    8. AAAli Abdaal28:26

       Mm.

    9. MBMarques Brownlee28:26

       We typically start with shooting A roll so that I have all of the talking out of the way, and then we know all the little quirks and things that I've mentioned. And then we will go shoot all of the rest of the B roll to cover all the things we need. A lot of that is Vin and Brandon shooting B roll off on their own. A lot of that is I've got a couple shots in mind I need. I'll, I'll grab them and go up to the roof, and we'll go shoot some stuff that I know we need to get. We cover the whole script. Everyone has access to the script. Then it gets edited. For the most part, that's just me ingesting all the footage and laying it down on the timeline, and then if there is any sort of extra fancy visuals, then, uh, we'll go sort of next level. Say this one has a robot shot in the intro. I'll be editing the main video while Andrew, Vin, and Brandon will go off to the robot studio and will make their incredible masterpiece, and then that can tie in back to what I've been editing. So they'll give me a couple ideas. We'll pick one. We'll go, "This is one that would really work with the YouTube tagline," and sort of you can see the whirlwind happening as the content gets made. It gets to the end of the process. I finish the video. We give it one last walk through the whole timeline, watch the whole video together, any last adjustments. Okay, it's good. Export, upload, publish.

    10. AAAli Abdaal29:43

        Nice. What, what prompted you to spend such an ungodly amount of money on a robot studio? [laughs] What's the, what's the thought process behind that? [laughs]

    11. MBMarques Brownlee29:52

        There is actually several things, and I think it makes a lot of sense now that all those things are real. So number one, we went out and shot a dope tech video at that studio, the company that makes them. Had no intention of getting one

13. 30:03 – 33:04

    Why a robot studio?

    1. MBMarques Brownlee30:03

       when I went out there, but they came to us with the idea, "Hey, check it out. We do these camera robots." I was like, "That is so sick. Let me check it out." We go out there. We shoot with them. They get some example shots or whatever. We come home. Within a day of getting home, I was like, "I wonder if we should get one of those things. That was kind of cool." Um, but the other thing about it is, look, there's a thousand different tech videos that you can watch now about the new iPhone SE that just came out, right? Why would you watch mine? Maybe just 'cause it's me. Some people will watch it just 'cause it's me, but I wanna give you like a real tangible reason to watch this one because you have so many options. And so we start to do things like cool shots in the videos, realistic shots in the videos, extra depth and insight in the research and testing. But one of the things that we found is anything that you do at this level, at the highest level ideally, is very visible, and lots of people will try to copy it. And all I wanted was something that's really hard to copy. So if we do stuff like top-down shots and everyone else is doing top-down shots all of a sudden, great. If we do stuff like macro shots of certain things and then suddenly those show up, fine. They're, they're good ideas. Of course, people will take them. That's the whole point. But we wanted a couple things that we could do that are unique to our videos to give you a reason to watch them, and also everyone here at The Studio is a video nerd, and when I had the idea of maybe getting the video robot, it was pretty unanimously, "Hell yeah, let's do it." And so all of that stuff sort of came together, and now we have a robot.

    2. AAAli Abdaal31:40

       Yeah, I find that, like, when I, when I see a, when I see a Marques Brownlee video, I am just like, "Oh, I wonder what they're gonna do in the intro this time." And I'll, I'll often just sort of re-watch the intro, and it'll be like, I think in the latest one with the Pixel 4A or sorry, Pixel 6A, you sort of took it away from the thing. I was like, "Oh, that's... Oh, ni- oh, that's clever. Nice, nice, nice one there." [laughs] Just like watched that a few times and-

    3. MBMarques Brownlee32:00

       Yeah

    4. AAAli Abdaal32:00

       ... it's, it, it's become this sort of... I, I imagine you get this feedback a lot from people, become this sort of Easter egg where I'm like, "Oh, yes. [laughs] Let's see what's going, what's gonna happen this time around." And I guess that's kind of fun for you guys-

    5. MBMarques Brownlee32:10

       Yeah

    6. AAAli Abdaal32:10

       ... being video nerds as well.

    7. MBMarques Brownlee32:11

       It's fu- Yeah, exactly. We, we enjoy making the videos, and also we, we enjoy, like, having the, the sort of Easter egg moment of the fact that it relates to... It's, it's not just a cool shot. Like, we can just do a cool shot, but the shot will actually have some sort of reference to the video itself or a reference to the, to the title or the headline or something that we're gonna say in the video. And so that extra challenge of making it really intrinsic to the video is probably why people enjoy-

    8. AAAli Abdaal32:37

       Mm

    9. MBMarques Brownlee32:37

       ... that extra level of, like, watching the intro and then getting into the video.

    10. AAAli Abdaal32:40

        Yeah. Um, what was the... I guess, what happened during COVID when it wasn't like a p- people in the studio in real life anymore situation I'm, I'm imagining? Like, what was working in that kind of setup like?

    11. MBMarques Brownlee32:54

        That was a absolute nightmare. [laughs] So I, I am the type of YouTuber that is terrified that if I give something up, I'll forget

14. 33:04 – 45:01

    How did covid impact your business?

    1. MBMarques Brownlee33:04

       how to do it well. So as I've slowly started to add pieces of the team, I will still occasionally chip in and do the thing. Like, like Tim makes nine out of every tum- 10 thumbnails, but I'll still make one out of every 10. Like, I'll edit these things. Um, and during COVID, everyone had to leave. I think we had at that point five people, and it was at the exact moment that we were moving studios. [laughs] So we had all of our stuff upstairs in this building, and we basically got kicked out. It was right around the start of a new month, where we'd switched our contract down to this place down here. So by myself, basically, I became a furniture moving machine.

    2. AAAli Abdaal33:43

       [laughs]

    3. MBMarques Brownlee33:43

       I found a way to drag thousands of pounds of furniture down into the elevator and across this building into the n- the new studio. Uh, spent a couple weeks doing that, set some things up, and then, you know, a couple months go by. People start bec- becoming more comfortable coming back. Vaccines are a thing, and I am very grateful for the team coming back because we can make much better stuff when they're here. You can probably see a shift in, like, the second half of 2020, where the videos were, like, very, like, OG YouTube, and then they, they went back to being, like, like, a little bit above, you know, the, the classic production level. That's, uh, that's the team.

    4. AAAli Abdaal34:21

       Just a quick little break to tell you all about the sponsor of this episode, which very excitingly is Shopify. Shopify is sick. It's like the best platform in the world for starting and growing an online business because it is like an e-commerce and an in-person way of selling stuff on the internet or in person, taking basically any payment method, selling in basically any country. And obviously, building an online business requires you to sell stuff, and Shopify is by far the easiest way to sell anything on the internet. We've been using Shopify for over a year now to host Essentially, which is my stationery line. So Shopify hooks up with our warehouse provider and our logistics provider. They've got thousands of other integrations as well, so it's super easy to get your Shopify store connected to stuff, which is exactly what we've done. And we're also in the process of building out our own Shopify store, where we're gonna be selling digital products, including website themes and Notion templates, and also where we're gonna be selling our online courses and a bunch of other cool stuff further down the line. Shopify is super easy to get started with. You don't need to know how to code at all. You don't even need to know how to design. In fact, the template we use for our store is just one of the templates you can get on Shopify. And all we had to do was tweak it a little bit to make it look the Ali Abdaal vibe, and we didn't have to do any kind of faff that it takes to set up any other providers for e-commerce, where you have to know how to design, you have to know how to code. It's just super easy with Shopify. It's not just tiny stores like mine that run on Shopify. Gymshark, incredibly huge brand runs of, runs off Shopify. Tons of other absolutely huge brands run on Shopify as well, so it's great if you're at the level where you're scaling to sort of multiple tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in sales as well. But if you're like me and you wanna start your online business, you wanna grow it, you wanna have the tools, you want it to be nice and easy, then head over to shopify.com/aliabdaal, and you can try out the free trial. Try it out completely for free. And if you like it, you can stick with it, as we've been doing for the last year. So thank you so much, Shopify, for sponsoring this episode. One thing I've st- I've, I've done over the last year is, is think sort of like, you know, what is the sort of YouTube channel that I wanna have? What's the sort of business I wanna run? And I kind of realized that it's a lot more energizing to work with people in person rather than remotely. And, and I realized, oh, I guess I could just hire people in person and have a studio, and hence why, hence why we're here. But I will occasionally see other kind of startups and stuff where they've got a fully remote workforce, and And I was speaking to another YouTuber friend a few days ago, and he was saying that, "Hey, man, if, if you had a remote team, you'd be able to, I don't know, get people from abroad and pay them less money and not worry about benefits, and you'll just be on Zoom calls." And there was part of me that was like, y- yeah, I could, but it's just way more fun just hanging out with people in real life. What's, what's been your experience of sort of the, I guess, creative collaboration IRL versus, versus over Zoom?

    5. MBMarques Brownlee36:45

       I've, yeah, I've definitely found it much more engaging. Everyone except one person works in the s- in the studio. That one person being [laughs] ... Well, they were going to consider moving right at the beginning of the pandemic, so that sort of got derailed. But yeah, it's, it's, because so many pieces of the team work together in so many different spontaneous ways, it makes sense to just all be in the same room. Like, we'll have, I'll have an idea, and I'll just roll my chair over to Tim and be like, "Hey, I just AirDropped you this, this file. Let's, uh, let's do a couple of these edits, and I think it might be a thumbnail candidate." And then, you know, David will roll back his chair over to Adam and be like, "For the next episode of the podcast, I just had an idea. We were just editing this thing an hour ago, and I just wanted to just drop this on your plate so you know about it." And so there's this ... And, you know, everyone's collaborating and talking, and that sort of creative environment, I imagine, is more productive than having to do a Zoom call every time. It feels like it's more productive. Um, so productive, creative, collaborative. Everyone is a little more likely to take action when it involves another person, rather than just sort of Zoom calls all day.

    6. AAAli Abdaal37:55

       Yeah. Yeah, no, I com- I completely agree. Like, I, I feel, I feel like the, uh, the IRL thing is where you get those serendipitous connections that, you know, we found that when some of our team was in person and some of them were remote, it's like we'd be having an idea, and then to, to, to update the person who was remote, it would be like, oh, now we have to arrange a Zoom call with that person. Which means, oh, now we've got to play calendar Tetris. And it just adds so much friction that it's like, that person's never gonna find out about the idea, and then the idea's not gonna happen because the people-

    7. MBMarques Brownlee38:20

       Yeah

    8. AAAli Abdaal38:20

       ... who need to know about it are not gonna know about it, and all that kind of stuff. We've been in this studio now for the last almost, like, nine, 10 months, and we've got another two months in here. And so the next question is, like, where are we moving to? And so we've been scouting out a few other places in London. And for me, at this stage, it's, it feels like there's a bit of a choice of, like, we could downsize, and I could try and film back in my own apartment, in my flat, and maybe the team would come occasionally or we'd sign up to a WeWork. Or we could actually get a studio for another year and have a nice space where we can film videos and podcasts, and there's great vibes 'cause the team's around. But that's more expensive. And what's in my mind is, like, it's ... In our case, if, if, for example, the business was just absolutely loaded with cash, it would, it would, it would be a no-brainer. Just like, "Oh, let's, let's go for the studio because it's fun." But in my mind, there's a bit of a concern around the ROI of, is it really worth spending all this money for this extra space and just being able to have slightly nicer shots and slightly nicer vibes? Uh, what's, what's been your take on the whole ROI of the studio? Is it ROI positive or, in, in terms of money, or do you not really think of it in those terms?

    9. MBMarques Brownlee39:27

       That's a interesting question. Um, I think at the highest level, we, we don't have too many ROI concerns because we sh- we get so much use out of everything that we do. Um, anything that we might do for one single video, it's more of, like, a time ROI than, like, a, like, a money investment ROI-type thing. The, the, the robot, you know, it was very expensive, but we've used it for literally years now. I, I'm not too worried about ROI. Like, the studio is the single most expensive thing that I regularly, other than taxes, I guess, pay. But we shoot everything here, so yeah, that's pretty ROI positive. And so yeah, individual videos we might have a hefty amount of time dumped into, like, a 12-second clip where we're like, "We gotta redo this robot shot. We gotta redo the animations here. We gotta get this right." That, you know, that's again on the end of, like, we want it to be hard to replicate, so this is, this is a goal. Let's accomplish it. But, you know, as far as the studio goes, I feel like YouTube is a very visual medium. And so if your goal is to be more cinematic, then the studio can help you accomplish that. If the goal for the vibe is to feel more like a home or like a small set or like a less of a production, which is a goal for a lot of productions, is to feel like less of a production, then it makes more sense to just go straight to that. Um, we kind of have a, the way we've built out the studio is, like, it's a large space, but with a bunch of smaller spaces in it that we can make feel more homey or more reasonable than a s- relatively unrelatable 7,000 square foot white box. So that's, that's what we do. That's the goal. So i- it would depend on what your goal is. If you specifically want the videos to feel or look a certain way, then you sort of have to lean towards that to accomplish it.

    10. AAAli Abdaal41:13

        Mm-hmm. Yeah, I like how, like, uh, other than when you do, like, a studio tour or In the Studio YouTube channel, you don't really get the impression that you're sh- you're shooting in a 7,000 square foot place that has, like, in- you know, a whole team in it. And, and, like, it, it, it almost does feel as if, oh, you're just shooting in, like, a room, and there's a shelf at the back, and there's, like, a blue iMac that says A on it. And there's, like, a little Easter egg of, like, a little Android, little robotic stick figure of me-

    11. MBMarques Brownlee41:35

        Yep

    12. AAAli Abdaal41:35

        ... in the background. And it, it does kind of feel sort of OG YouTuber of, like, I'm just shooting in my bedroom. But, like, obviously, like, a level up, and then you see the B roll, and you're like, "Wait a minute. What's going on here?" Um, I, I imagine that's an intentional decision on your part.

    13. MBMarques Brownlee41:50

        Yeah. Yeah, there is a, so there is this very specific aesthetic to the videos that I think a lot of people don't really talk about, which is that they feel first person instead of third person. And I don't know if that's the right terminology for it, but basically, sometimes we'll, we'll do, like, a setup, and I'll go, "Hey. All right. Vin and Brandon, we're gonna make a video with the Pixel 6a, and, uh, any sort of Easter eggs that you see in the script that you think would work here, let's build it." And we'll, we'll build a set, and then we'll, we'll have the camera, like, five feet away from me, and it'll look incredible, like a beautiful set. And- You look at the frame and you're like, "I look like someone is shooting a video of me, not like I am making a video." And it's just, it's a very small visual cue, but you bring the camera way closer in, and you give it the wide angle, and a lot of times I'll even start, you know-

    14. AAAli Abdaal42:48

        Yeah

    15. MBMarques Brownlee42:48

        ... with the touching the camera like I'm right in front of the camera. I think that first-person feel is very intangible, but very important to the feel of the video. That goes for our set design, for the fact that we shoot in corners more often than we shoot against a blank white wall. Like, we're thinking a lot about that feel just as much as the things that are going into the video itself. Um, and I think that's a reason why it never feels like we're shooting in a giant white concrete box. It's more we've built things inside of the box to accomplish a different vibe, and sounds like it's working pretty well.

    16. AAAli Abdaal43:24

        Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Uh, I've, I've never quite thought of it in those, in those ways, but I, I do notice in your videos, you know, there are some times when you're, when you're holding up a camera and you're looking off to the side in the monitor to be like, "Is this in focus?" And part of me is thinking that, like, surely you've got a cameraman behind you, so you don't need to do that. But also, it l- it looks good, 'cause it looks as if you're kind of that Marques Brownlee who is like, "Hey, guys, 100 videos, 73 subscribers." [laughs] It's just, like, slightly leveled up rather than, like, ridiculously leveled up with the whole 7,000 square foot place.

    17. MBMarques Brownlee43:53

        Yeah. And I, we don't actually... So I mean, sometimes there's a cameraman, but if I'm doing A-roll, like the camera's on a tripod, I've, I've gotten so comfortable talking to a camera on a tripod. That's all it ever is. There's no person behind the camera. It's just me, the tripod, and the monitor is right next to the camera. So that's kinda what it is. It, there are, you know, there's things like teleprompters that would theoretically make the production better that I can't see myself ever using because they feel less natural. I guess I haven't explained. I, I, I write the video out in a doc, and then I have the doc on my phone, and I put the phone in my lap or on a table next to me. So when I talk to the camera, I'll pick up the phone, read the first two paragraphs, put it down, internalize it, and then just deliver it. And it's not gonna be verbatim to what I wrote down, but as long as I hit all the points that I wrote down, then I, I've got the flow going. And then I'll pick it up, read the next couple, put it down, deliver them, and then sort of work my way through that way. So that's why sometimes I'll go off on a tangent or, like, mispronounce something or missay something, 'cause I'm just sort of going through what I wanna tell

15. 45:01 – 48:00

    How much do you care about analytics?

    1. MBMarques Brownlee45:01

       you as if I'm talking to a person. And so I'm, I'm definitely guilty of, like, having some mistakes in videos, but I, I think that all sort of comes back to just the feel-

    2. AAAli Abdaal45:09

       Yeah

    3. MBMarques Brownlee45:09

       ... of the video. It's very real.

    4. AAAli Abdaal45:11

       Yeah. So on that, on that note, something I spoke to, um, Mr. WhoseTheBoss about, who I know is a friend of yours, who I in- interviewed on the podcast a f- a few months ago. Uh, he said that he is very kind of anal about the analytics and the retention and making sure every single moment is scripted and spends 100 hours scripting and repeats a line-

    5. MBMarques Brownlee45:31

       Wow

    6. AAAli Abdaal45:31

       ... like a dozen times just to really try and squeeze those extra points of retention out of it. And there was part of me that was thinking, "Oh, wow, that's, like, an incredible attention to detail." But another part of me was, that was thinking, "Wow, that seems like a lot of work." And I, I t- I kinda get a bit stressed out when I look at analytics and retention curves, and I don't really like looking at them. What's your relationship with analytics and retention curves and trying to make the video as retention heavy as possible versus, like, being a bit more chill about it?

    7. MBMarques Brownlee45:54

       Yes.

    8. AAAli Abdaal45:54

       How, how do you think about that?

    9. MBMarques Brownlee45:56

       Here's how I'll rephrase this. Do you watch any sports?

    10. AAAli Abdaal45:59

        Um, I watch the occasional squash match and occasional clips of you on ultimate frisbee [laughs] when I see them as B-roll, but yeah.

    11. MBMarques Brownlee46:04

        Okay.

    12. AAAli Abdaal46:05

        [laughs] So not really.

    13. MBMarques Brownlee46:06

        Okay. I'm gonna use a... I'll, I'll try a, I don't know any squash players, so I'll use a basketball example.

    14. AAAli Abdaal46:10

        Sure.

    15. MBMarques Brownlee46:10

        So how do you know somebody is a good basketball player?

    16. AAAli Abdaal46:14

        Number of points scored in a season or just a vibe?

    17. MBMarques Brownlee46:18

        Yeah, you can, you can use-

    18. AAAli Abdaal46:19

        Yeah

    19. MBMarques Brownlee46:19

        ... points. Sometimes, so, so you watch some- You, you watch a game and you get the sense as the game is going on, you're watching, you're like, "Oh, this guy is, this guy is the best player on the team. I mean, he's got the most points. I see him dunking on people. He's grabbing rebounds over the top of people. He's really flashy with the ball." Like, I can tell. I can tell this guy is good. I really like this, this one player. Now, if you wanted to craft the best player, uh, let's say you were just designing a player from head to toe, you could design it entirely around stats. He will have the most points, the most rebounds, the highest efficiency. I'm gonna look at all the numbers and the curves, and I'm gonna design the player that is the best. And statistically, sometimes that player wins MVP. But sometimes it's just the eye test. Sometimes it's just a certain look or a certain change in a historic way that the game is played, and that can be just as valuable to a video even if it doesn't match the, the retention curve or the, the stats or anything like that. I think you can have a healthy amount of both. So to sort of bring it back to, to YouTube, it's like I could obsess over the numbers and sort of focus every ounce of my s- my, you know, attention on maximizing the numbers on paper, and theoretically, that means it's a good video because people made it to the end and I successfully maximized retention. But I'm not, that's not my only focus, and I think if it is my only focus, I might lose a little bit of the rest of what makes a good video. So yeah, the numbers, we pay attention to them. I think they're sort of a, a guiding force. They're the bumpers

16. 48:00 – 50:33

    What’s your relationship with goals?

    1. MBMarques Brownlee48:00

       on the bowling lane more than they are the bowling ball itself, you know? Does that make any sense? Uh, yeah. We pay attention to them, but we don't live by them.

    2. AAAli Abdaal48:07

       Speaking of numbers, uh, in, at, at, at the end of last year, you tweeted the following. [laughs] Um, "But seriously, the only way to guarantee meaningful, positive change in the next 365 days around the sun is to exit your comfort zone and relentlessly attack your goals. That's my plan anyway. Good luck and Happy New Year." Um, and I read that at the time, I was like, okay, I, I w- I wanna understand your relationship with goals. In Aaron's case, uh, it's very numerical. Like, I know I wanna hit 10 million subscribers this year, and I'm gonna try and reverse engineer the numbers to hit the goal. He's obviously stupidly successful. Um- In my case, it's a bit more like, ah, I don't, I don't really, I don't really like numbers. I kind of like goals that are under my control. Like, hey, I wanna make a video every week. And once it's out in the world, beyond tweaking a title and a thumbnail occasionally if it bombs, like, there's not a lot I can do about it, so I'll not, I'll try not to think about it. Um, how do you approach goals? And when you say re- relentlessly attack your goals, what does, what does that look like for you?

    3. MBMarques Brownlee49:04

       Yeah, I think stepping out of the comfort zone has been a, a big thing, especially with, like, adding the team. That's been a thing. Like, I'm a relatively quiet, introverted person, so building a team around me is, like, a new outside of my comfort zone thing. Um, but the goals really are pretty simple, and I'm like you, I like to keep them in our control. So, the goal is more better, and I've- I've s- I've mentioned this before, like, if you try to do more of something, you probably do it worse, and if you try to do better at something, you probably do it less often. So, the fact that we have built a team skilled and talented enough that we can do more things and all of them are better than they usually would be, that's a success for us. Numerically, I just kinda wanna keep it on a st- a steady positive. I... It's not really in my control how people respond. The s- the channel's pretty spiky. I don't know if you, you look into analytics enough to know, like, there's some channels that, you know, are, are pretty steady growing or that are pretty flat or that are, you know, sort of spiky like mine. Um, sometimes there's just a device that you don't expect that just people... It just clicks. The people wanted to know about it, and you got the video out at the right time. Great. Um, but that's not in my control, so as long as it's still on a general positive, I'm pretty happy. Um, but it is fascinating to see [laughs] people, like, set very specific goals that are clearly not in their control,

17. 50:33 – 53:27

    Your dream video studio

    1. MBMarques Brownlee50:33

       but to attempt to guide all factors towards accomplishing it. Like h- like saying, like if I decided today, all right, we have a certain subscriber count. We wanna hit 20 million subscribers by the end of 2024. How on earth would I guarantee that? I really don't know, but I think doing more and better would get us closer to it.

    2. AAAli Abdaal50:54

       Mm.

    3. MBMarques Brownlee50:54

       That's kind of, that's kind of all I can control.

    4. AAAli Abdaal50:56

       Yeah. And when you say that you had this vision for, like, a, a dream, a dream studio, what does, what does that look like, and is that the sort of thing that you're then sort of reverse engineering based on, based on the vision? How, how do you approach that?

    5. MBMarques Brownlee51:08

       Oh, yeah. Well, so we... I, I picture the dream video studio, and we already have gotten quite a f- quite, quite far as far as this vision. Like, our current video studio is kind of amazing. We'll have other productions come in, and they look around, and they're like, "You, you guys own these Red cameras? Do you-

    6. AAAli Abdaal51:25

       [laughs]

    7. MBMarques Brownlee51:26

       "You just, you just have a Russian arm in your parking lot? Like, what? I don't understand." Because most of the time, if you want to put a good production together, you need to get the logistics out. You need to go, all right, here's the cameras we'll need. Here's the set we'll build. If you, if we walk into the studio and I wake up with a good video idea, we can leave the studio that day having finished the video because we just walk up to the camera, and it's right there. The equipment's right there. The ability to make something amazing, we have the robot room right here. The editing is right here. Everything is here, so we can just make whatever we want, which is amazing. Um, we're... I sort of picture a leveled-up version of that that is a little bit more, uh, just a little bit more of the, the right sorts of tools available to us at any time, and maybe a little bit more organized than it is now, 'cause we sort of just crammed a ton of stuff in here. That's one thing you don't see in the videos is how, is just how much stuff is just everywhere in here. So, yeah, we're working on that. It's gonna take a little while, but we'll get there.

    8. AAAli Abdaal52:22

       How b- so at the moment, you're 7,000 square feet. Like, how big do you imagine the dream studio to be?

    9. MBMarques Brownlee52:28

       We have been doing all kinds of looking. My sister's a real estate agent. She's sent me listings. I think my minimum is somewhere around 20,000 square feet-

    10. AAAli Abdaal52:38

        Wow

    11. MBMarques Brownlee52:38

        ... that I've actually considered, but there's been a bunch of different options that have come up that we... We'll visit, we'll visit a building and just look around and be like, "All right, what can we build in here? Is this, is this floor layout, like, gonna be able to suit us making studios in here, making podcasts in here?" There's a, there's a very hefty content production consideration, so I don't know if there's a number that actually will end up being targeted, but we sort of walk into the building, and we get a feel for it.

    12. AAAli Abdaal53:06

        Nice. Yeah, I remember when you moved into this one and you were, like, doing the tour, showing it around. It was just, it's just so exciting, and I think that's one thing that your channel does really well, where I and probably the 50 million other people who follow you feel like there's, in a way, this relationship with you, and we get very excited when, "Oh my God, you're moving to a new studio. That's really cool." And you're, like, showing us around, and it's just, it's just a great vibe. I often worry,

18. 53:27 – 55:02

    Do you worry about the longevity of creators?

    1. AAAli Abdaal53:27

       when I'm 55 years old, am I still gonna be being like, "What's up, guys? Welcome back to the channel," YouTube video, YouTube video-

    2. MBMarques Brownlee53:33

       [laughs]

    3. AAAli Abdaal53:33

       ... about personal development. Do you ever worry? Like, what are you gonna be doing when you're, like, 55 years old? [laughs]

    4. MBMarques Brownlee53:37

       That sort of existential [laughs] question?

    5. AAAli Abdaal53:39

       Yeah. [laughs]

    6. MBMarques Brownlee53:40

       I guess not. You know, I, there is a, uh, there is a sort of a larger life cycle of media formats that is fascinating to me, where a lotta people who have been around long enough kind of see this generation of tech video creators on YouTube as, like, a follow-up to the newspaper columnists that they used to follow for, like, the, the Walt Mossbergs and David Poges-

    7. AAAli Abdaal54:08

       Mm-hmm

    8. MBMarques Brownlee54:08

       ... of The New York Times and Wall Street Journals. And I don't think those 50, 60, 70-year-olds are too mad that they're still making tech content. It's just not the new wave of whatever video stuff that we do now. And so, I see the videos that we're making now as being this larger wave, and I do wonder what comes after that. I don't know. I don't... I, I keep an eye out for it. I, I'm not really sure, is TikTok a new wave, or is it just a smaller crest on the top of the wave? I don't know. It's hard to know, and 'cause I couldn't have told you five years ago what we'd be doing now, so 50 years? I don't know. But, um, I do think about, yeah, that, that wave of, like, I enjoy tech, I enjoy making content about and with the tech. Maybe that looks different when I'm 40 or 50,

19. 55:02 – 1:01:00

    How are you thinking about shorts?

    1. MBMarques Brownlee55:02

       but I have no idea how it looks.

    2. AAAli Abdaal55:03

       I got glimpses of your view into this in your Cullen and Samir interview. Um, but how, how are you thinking about short-form content like shorts and reels and TikToks? And I know you've got the MKBHD shorts channel, where some of the stuff on that has been cool. But for example, if you... Again, if you, if you wanted to, you could 10X your output on short, short-form content to thing. And you could be thinking, "Hey, TikTok is where all the kids are at. Let- let's just bang out the content on TikTok." But it seems like you're not going down that approach. So-

    3. MBMarques Brownlee55:30

       Yeah

    4. AAAli Abdaal55:30

       ... how do you, how do you think about TikTok-y type content?

    5. MBMarques Brownlee55:33

       Yeah, okay, so that last point you made is really very close to how I think about it, is, like, the, uh, the demographics of our audience. So again, uh, I'm 28. A lot of my audience is right from about 14 to 35, let's say.

    6. AAAli Abdaal55:50

       Mm.

    7. MBMarques Brownlee55:50

       Just, like, 15 years less to maybe 15 years older, just somewhere in there. And endlessly, probably undefeated with creators, what I'll see is as they get older, their younger audience that was closer to their previous age becomes less interested, and I guess their older audience becomes more interested. So when I see TikTok, I'm like, "That's where the youngest parts of my audience will inevitably be." If I want to talk to those people, and anyone using TikTok, that doesn't mean you're a child. That just means, like, that's the average of what a TikTok scroller is doing. Um, if I wanna reach that younger audience, I guess I should be on TikTok, but is that my goal? Or am I really just concerned with reaching the same people who are making a purchase decision, who, who have some disposable income, who have a choice to make about what piece of tech to buy? And maybe the age of those people isn't gonna change. I mean, it's cool to get kids into tech. I still think that's awesome, and I think there is probably a cool way that we can make short-form content that is interesting to younger audiences, and maybe that's a net positive 'cause we can get people interested in tech, and that's cool. But I think the target demographic is actually the same age as it's, as it's always been, whether it's shorts or longer videos or podcasts or anything like that.

    8. AAAli Abdaal57:10

       Hmm. So it sounds like you don't feel that pressure of... Like, like I've spoken to a bunch of other creators who, who, and, and myself included, who sort of feel that pressure of, "Ah, crap, TikTok is where, where all the new people are. Everyone shows that, like, maybe YouTube is on the decline. Am I gonna stay relevant by, uh, uh, am, am I gonna try and force myself to stay relevant by kind of adapting and becoming a TikToker as well?"

    9. MBMarques Brownlee57:33

       Yeah, okay, so that's a different question. So relevant. If my goal was just to be famous, which I don't want, then I would be all in on TikTok, right? But here's a different way of thinking about it. When I'm going to search for the new iPhone comes out, where do I go look for that video? I go to youtube.com and I type it in the YouTube search box. That is where I wanna live, for those people who are searching for that information. If that answer ever changes, if it's like, "The new phone came out. Let me go into TikTok and see what people are saying about the phone," then I guess that is when I'll feel that pressure. But I think for the people who feel the pressure to be relevant or the pressure for the eyeballs or the fame or something like that, then you'll feel the pressure, 'cause TikTok is 100% accomplishing that now. The most viewed piece of content I have ever made in 15 years is a 12-second TikTok-

    10. AAAli Abdaal58:20

        [laughs]

    11. MBMarques Brownlee58:21

        ... of me unfolding the LG Wing. It has 35 million views. If I wanted the eyeballs, I would be all over TikTok. But I think it's different. It's, it's just that people searching for things-

    12. AAAli Abdaal58:31

        Yeah

    13. MBMarques Brownlee58:31

        ... the people making purchase decisions, I'm trying to make valuable content for them, and so that's still YouTube.

    14. AAAli Abdaal58:35

        It's a nice way of thinking of it. Um, just out of, out of curiosity, if, if you were to look at your analytics, do you find that most of your growth comes from search, or is it mostly through, like, homepage suggested, the browsy type features?

    15. MBMarques Brownlee58:45

        Growth interestingly comes from the browse and suggested. Um, but I still feel that, like, slightly intangible, like, section of... I- it's almost, like, time-based. When I-

    16. AAAli Abdaal58:57

        Mm

    17. MBMarques Brownlee58:57

        ... when, when you look at the comment section of a video, like, the first three to four or five hours of, of people commenting on a video are not people who came from search. They're people who subscribed, who found it with browse. Then, like a week or two later, there's people who are searching the subject and then watching the video and then commenting, and that's a whole new separate crowd that might not be the YouTube growth you're after, but you can still see the value in that. So we sort of optimize the content for both of those groups of people, but they're very different times.

    18. AAAli Abdaal59:27

        Hmm. So do you then change titles, like, "You wouldn't believe this phone" versus a Google Six- Pixel 6a review? And I kind of know the answer to this 'cause I, I d- I don't see you doing those sort of browse type, clickbait-y type titles particularly.

    19. MBMarques Brownlee59:40

        Yeah, I, I see those titles, and it comes down to, again, like, what would I wanna watch? What would I click on? W- what I wanna subscribe to? And sometimes I do see this title and thumbnail which is just, like, a f- 'cause, you know, you're, you're doing the analytics. You're like, "Oh, I have to have a face in the thumbnail. I'm gonna have a sort of a clickbait-y blurred out object. You wouldn't believe this. Oh, check it out." I, I don't click those. I don't watch those videos. If I was thinking, "Wow, every time I click one of those, I am very happy with what I watch," then I would probably explore formatting my content like that. But I think if you just name it what it is, you can't lose, right?

    20. AAAli Abdaal1:00:18

        Hmm.

    21. MBMarques Brownlee1:00:18

        That's it. You're gonna get what you came for.

    22. AAAli Abdaal1:00:21

        Yeah.

    23. MBMarques Brownlee1:00:21

        There's no way you're let down. I told you exactly what you were getting into. We, we play with, like, the, the post text formatting a little bit sometimes, play with a little pun at the end of the title, but-

    24. AAAli Abdaal1:00:29

        Yeah

    25. MBMarques Brownlee1:00:29

        ... you know what you're getting.

    26. AAAli Abdaal1:00:30

        Yeah. Yeah, I, I was having this debate with myself, um, just yesterday when I, when I was f- filming some stuff, where I was thinking, you know, this is a video about how to start an, an email newsletter. And then I was thinking, "Ooh, but, like, do enough people want to start an email newsletter? I know it's something I wanna teach, but what if I said, called it something like- This thing that you're not doing is a thing you should be doing, question mark. [laughs] Or, or you know, something-

    27. MBMarques Brownlee1:00:55

        Mm-hmm

    28. AAAli Abdaal1:00:55

        ... somewhat clickbaity like that to get more eyeballs on it. And, uh, you know, it was, it was a bit of

20. 1:01:00 – 1:05:48

    Should we use clickbait titles for growth?

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:01:00

       a, bit of a debate I was having with myself, where I, like I know a lot of YouTubers who'd go down that route, and I've gone down that route in the past. But I was thinking, "You know what? If I didn't, if, if I was acting in a way that I didn't need to worry about the views, and I didn't need to worry about money, what would I title the video?" It would be called How to Start a Newsletter, or How to Start a Newsletter That Changes Your Life. You know, you have a little bit of clickbait just there.

    2. MBMarques Brownlee1:01:20

       Yeah.

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:01:20

       Um, it wouldn't be called, I... You wouldn't believe this one thing that I did that made me a millionaire or whatever the hell else the, the, the title might be. And I opted for the more vanilla title rather than the more clickbaity one. And I, I, I felt good about the decision, but I guess we'll, we'll see on the analytics [laughs] what that looks like.

    4. MBMarques Brownlee1:01:34

       I also feel like whenever I see those titles, I'm like, you are, you are making the conscious decision to weight your, your optimization more for the subscribers and the browse feature, and the search, the people searching for how to start a newsletter will never find that video. Even if that's exactly what you talk about in the video, if the title is something completely different, and the thumbnail is something completely different and clickbaity, when I search, 'cause I am specifically looking for how to do this thing, I search YouTube how to start email newsletter. If that video comes up, I'm not clicking it, because that's not looking like what I wanna watch. The one right under it that says how to start an email newsletter, I'm watching that one. So if you're trying to deliver value to a certain type of person, you have to realize there's several buckets of getting that, that click.

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:02:23

       Mm-hmm. Um, you mentioned just now that you're not particularly interested in being famous, and yet you are one of the most famous tech YouTuber’s or tech people in the world, I would say. Uh, what, what is your relationship with fame broadly?

    6. MBMarques Brownlee1:02:37

       Uh, I think I'm lucky that most people [laughs] who watch tech videos are at home most of the time.

    7. AAAli Abdaal1:02:43

       [laughs]

    8. MBMarques Brownlee1:02:43

       It's great. [laughs] So I can go out and I'm, you know, I do... It's cool that there are people in public that recognize my videos and, and my work, which is, which is very awesome. I, I happily talk to people. You know what's funny? The other day, yesterday, I was walking out to my car, and the UPS guy pulled up as he was delivering to the building and stopped and said, "Hey, I just watched your video on the Pixel 6A, and I just had a question about this feature," and just went right into, like, the features of the phone that I just reviewed. And I was like, that's, that's someone who really pays attention to the videos. That's amazing. That's probably my ideal interaction. It's fun. We actually get to talk about tech. And there's a lot of YouTubers who are famous for them, and they can't go outside, because people just wanna talk to them. I also have another hilarious anecdote, if we have time for it, which is-

    9. AAAli Abdaal1:03:34

       Of course

    10. MBMarques Brownlee1:03:35

        ... uh, uh, the, [laughs] the YouTube Creator Summit every year. I think there's a couple, but basically, it's a, you know, 100 or so creators from a certain region, in my case, North America, all going to a certain hotel somewhere and meeting together, but also meeting with the CEO of YouTube and a bunch of executives at YouTube and just talking about how we feel about the platform, things like that. Inevitably, they, they put us all up in the, the hotel, and they give us this little postcard that says, like, "Hey, you know, let's be considerate and not post about this on social media, because if your fans find out where we are, you know how they are. They might show up." It's a hotel, it's public information, so we try not to make it public where we are when there's 100 of the biggest creators in the same building. But inevitably, someone posts on Instagram, and someone looks in the background and sees the name of the hotel, and suddenly there's 100 screaming little girls outside, and we're like, "What? What happened?"

    11. AAAli Abdaal1:04:26

        [laughs]

    12. MBMarques Brownlee1:04:26

        "Somebody told... Ugh, this is great." And I remember this happened, and I was standing at the, at the door of the hotel, and there was like 200 or 300, like, teenage girls just, like, waiting for, I think it was Lele Pons or something, just like, "I can't wait. Oh, my God." They're screaming like, "Let us in. We wanna see this." And I was waiting for my Uber to go back home. My Uber pulled up in the street behind them, and I walked out the building, and I just walked straight through the middle of them, and not a single one of them even noticed who I was. I just walked right through. Walked, got in the Uber, and I was like, "This is great." Any- anybody who would've been into tech, like they're at home, maybe they show up at a tech event, that's cool. We can chat there, but, like, I'm not here to try to be, like, screaming girl outside the hotel famous. That's... We're not... That's fine.

    13. AAAli Abdaal1:05:15

        Nice. [laughs]

    14. MBMarques Brownlee1:05:15

        They can have that.

    15. AAAli Abdaal1:05:15

        [laughs] That's great. Do you get much hate as a tech YouTuber? I've, I've never seen any in your comments, but I mean, 50 million subs and, like, millions of views in every video, you, you, you must do. What sort of hate do you get, if any, and, like, how, how, how do you deal with it?

    16. MBMarques Brownlee1:05:29

        Hate is funny because it's formatted as just, like, trying to get your attention-

    17. AAAli Abdaal1:05:34

        Okay

    18. MBMarques Brownlee1:05:34

        ... uh, which is pretty funny sometimes.

    19. AAAli Abdaal1:05:37

        Yeah.

    20. MBMarques Brownlee1:05:37

        So I, I do think there's a good amount of, like, legitimate feedback.

    21. AAAli Abdaal1:05:41

        Hmm.

    22. MBMarques Brownlee1:05:41

        People who watch a video and genuinely believe, you know, something's wrong about the video, that they would've done it differently,

21. 1:05:48 – 1:09:29

    How do you deal with hate?

    1. MBMarques Brownlee1:05:48

       that it should've been a different way. And you can read a comment and feel and understand that this person really means what they're saying. And then there's hate that's just like, "Ah, this guy sucks. Ah, this guy loves Apple. Oh, he can't stop talking about how much he hates this company. Oh, he's biased. Oh, Samsung paid him," whatever.

    2. AAAli Abdaal1:06:03

       [laughs]

    3. MBMarques Brownlee1:06:03

       I don't pay any attention to any of those comments-

    4. AAAli Abdaal1:06:06

       Of course

    5. MBMarques Brownlee1:06:06

       ... because they're just unfounded, and they mean nothing. And also, they're wrong, so fine. So I try to separate those buckets in my head. Yes, I do get hate, and I try to sift through to find the, the grain of truth inside of every pearl of hate. There's something in there that maybe I can learn from.

    6. AAAli Abdaal1:06:26

       One of the sort of genre of, I guess, hate, but, like, I kinda don't like the word hate because it sort of implies, hmm, malicious intent sometimes. Uh, but one of the genres of sort of, uh, feedback comments that, that I find sort of strikes me at the core is when someone will say something like, "Hey, Ali, your videos used to be good. Back when you were, back when w- back when you were a doctor and you were providing value to society, I actually watched your videos because you were actually doing something interesting. Now you're just a YouTuber who makes videos for the sake of making videos." And I'm like, oh, man. [laughs] That's kinda true.

    7. MBMarques Brownlee1:06:59

       [laughs]

    8. AAAli Abdaal1:06:59

       I'm a YouTuber who makes videos for the sake of videos, and just like I'm not a doctor anymore.

    9. MBMarques Brownlee1:07:03

       Mm-hmm.

    10. AAAli Abdaal1:07:03

        And like, ugh, there'll, there's always be a, a p- part of me that's gonna be lying awake at night thinking about that. Do you- Get that response to any sort of genre of hate comments or negative comments or anything? Or are you sufficiently zen that you're just like, "Ah, it's either feedback or it's unfounded."

    11. MBMarques Brownlee1:07:17

        No, I don't think I've seen that too much. I mean, I think of, when you just mentioned that, I just thought of Mark Rober, who used to work at Apple, used to work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, and now is a full-time video creator, and does amazing videos and amazing work for getting kids interested in STEM. So I don't see the problem with being a YouTuber. Maybe that person's kinda old.

    12. AAAli Abdaal1:07:36

        Yeah. [laughs]

    13. MBMarques Brownlee1:07:36

        Maybe that person's kind of old. Yeah, no problem.

    14. AAAli Abdaal1:07:39

        What was the, the thought process or, like, the strategy or, like, the reason behind starting the Waveform podcast, and how's that kinda evolved over time?

    15. MBMarques Brownlee1:07:49

        Yeah. The podcast was, uh, started for two reasons. One, because we had all these conversations in the studio that we realized were very interesting or insightful, and we were like, "Oh, we could've recorded that. That would've actually been a really interesting conversation to get other people's opinions on." And two, uh, is because the videos that we produce are so produced. They're polished and they're, they're structured in a way that the podcast allows us to just, like, sit back with a mic and just talk. And if something interesting happens or some conversation comes up, then, then it's more casual, and that's a sort of a different way of creating content. But it's, it's actually fun for me to just, like, think off the top of my head about this new phone. You know, I just had a thought about this. I, as we were talking, I realized, just dive right in, that sort of thing. So it's been pretty successful for both of those outlets for us, and we look to keep, keep doing it.

    16. AAAli Abdaal1:08:44

        So do you have, like, a, a schedule where you're thinking about episo- episodic content and, like, what your talking points for the week are, or is it literally just, "Hey, I've got a cool thought. David, let's go chat about it on the pod," and you go over to the studio and, and turn the cameras on?

    17. MBMarques Brownlee1:08:57

        Yeah. It's, it's somewhere in between that. We'll have, um... We know we make one episode per week, and we record sometime on Wednesday, every Wednesday. Um, and so we might have, like, a, a conversation on Tuesday and we're like, "Hey, wait, save that thought. Write it down. Let's talk about it on the pod." Like, we'll have that. And so we'll sort of gather everything from the week. We have a Slack channel literally just called Waveform, and we'll just dump thoughts in there, and then every Tuesday or Wednesday, we'll just, like, drag things out of there, like, "Oh, we were talking about this before. Let's talk about this. Oh, remember this, this tweet we saw or this random announcement of a

22. 1:09:29 – 1:11:59

    Starting your podcast, Waveform

    1. MBMarques Brownlee1:09:29

       thing? What did you think about that?" And we'll just get into it. So it is probably the most structured, like, format-wise that we have, 'cause it's, like, literally one upload per week, but that's kinda how it goes.

    2. AAAli Abdaal1:09:38

       Hmm. That's a good idea. Like, I, I often think that with our team, where... And we, you know, we, we even h- hired a full-time videographer just to sort of capture this, but it ended up not being the... With, with audio and, and micing people up. Now we always have really interesting conversations in the studio about, like, being a creator and, like, the business side of things and stuff, and some subset of our audience really is interested in that kind of stuff. And there's still a part of me that's like, "Ugh, I really wish we had, for example, a podcast studio that was always set up so we could literally just sit down and hit record," because right now it just feels like-

    3. MBMarques Brownlee1:10:10

       Yeah

    4. AAAli Abdaal1:10:10

       ... a lot of friction. And then there's all these interesting conversations happening which are not really relevant to our content, but are just interesting and we wanna kinda share them somehow. Uh, any, any thoughts on that? Do you think it's, it's nice having, like, a, set, a studio that's set up at all times?

    5. MBMarques Brownlee1:10:23

       Yeah. That's ba- This is the most turnkey room in the whole studio. We walk in, I hit that light, I hit that light, I hit that light over there, the board turns on, and we, we're ready to go. So if there's, like, a thought we have or, like, a guest or someone pops in, we're like, "Hey, you wanna, you wanna just talk about that on the s- on the podcast real quick?" And we can, we can just do it. That frictionless experience is, is part of our ideal production environment, so yeah, that's, that's pretty key.

    6. AAAli Abdaal1:10:48

       Nice. All right. I'm sold. We're gonna get a, some kind of podcast room in our, in our new studio, whatever, whatever that-

    7. MBMarques Brownlee1:10:54

       Yeah

    8. AAAli Abdaal1:10:54

       ... looks like.

    9. MBMarques Brownlee1:10:55

       Hot mics everywhere, all the time.

    10. AAAli Abdaal1:10:56

        Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, uh, sim- similar question around the, the studio channel. What's, what's going on there? What was the idea behind it, and why did you decide that, like, "Oh, it would be cool to sort of showcase the team," rather than it sort of being, I guess, you being the, the centerpiece, uh, at all times?

    11. MBMarques Brownlee1:11:16

        Yeah. It's, uh... So th- the studio channel is really... I guess the, the studio itself is the main character. Like, you, you watch the videos and you feel like you are in the studio. You feel like you're almost part of the team. And that, that's, that's the idea, is, like, we've realized we have such a cool, unique experience here at the studio that, like, let's share it. Let's at least give people an opportunity to, like, peek in and, and get a window into it because there's, there's a lot of fun stuff here. And then we'll have random ideas of, like, "You know what'd be funny? A parody video about this commercial that was super bad." Or, "You know what else would be funny? If we did, like, a Chopped episode, but, like, with making YouTube videos instead of food." So yeah, we just, we just have crazy fun ideas and we do them, and I think the idea

23. 1:11:59 – 1:17:44

    The studio and your team

    1. MBMarques Brownlee1:11:59

       is you feel like you are in the studio.

    2. AAAli Abdaal1:12:02

       Hmm.

    3. MBMarques Brownlee1:12:03

       And that's, that's a pretty easy thing to accomplish.

    4. AAAli Abdaal1:12:05

       Yeah. It cr- it, it creates a very sort of fly on the wall kind of vibe. Um, I really enjoyed, like, the Leica M11 review, for example, where I was like, "Oh, this is a cool camera. I wonder if Marques got it." And that's kinda weird for MKBHD to, to do a video reviewing that particular camera, but, "Oh, sick, there's an episode of The Studio where the team are reviewing the camera," uh, which was, which is-

    5. MBMarques Brownlee1:12:23

       Yeah

    6. AAAli Abdaal1:12:23

       ... pretty awesome. So The Studio channel, is it purely for fun, or is there more of a, quote, quote, "strategic business objective" behind it, kind of to use that terminology?

    7. MBMarques Brownlee1:12:31

       It is definitely for fun, but I think it's also interesting and experimental to have a channel that doesn't depend entirely on me being on camera. And so in that sense, there's a little bit of the, the pressure on the ideas to be interesting there, because it's not just product-focused stuff, it's more ideas. But it is interesting that we actually have successfully created a channel where I can appear in videos sometimes, or sometimes there's entire agency where someone's just like, "I, I gotta review this keyboard. Like, people need to know what I think about this keyboard."

    8. AAAli Abdaal1:13:02

       [laughs]

    9. MBMarques Brownlee1:13:02

       And they have an outlet to do that, so that's pretty fun. Um, yeah, sort of a combination of the two.

    10. AAAli Abdaal1:13:08

        And, like, on that note of, like, this, th- a big, a big part of this business, like, or, or almost all parts of the business seem to revolve around you as an individual. One thing that a lot of other creators that I know have done is slowly try and build their own brands and build their own teams and their own setups. In a way that means that the business will survive even if the creator decides suddenly that, "Ugh, you know, I'm not really feeling it," or, "I wanna take a break for a whole year." Do you think about that sort of dissociating yourself from the business so the business can, quote, "Survive without you"? Or are you fairly chill about just continuing to be the sort of centerpiece of, I guess, the nucleus of the whole business?

    11. MBMarques Brownlee1:13:44

        Yeah. This is probably the number one biggest cardinal sin as a business major that I've committed.

    12. AAAli Abdaal1:13:51

        [laughs]

    13. MBMarques Brownlee1:13:51

        Which is I am totally fine being the one that is necessary for everything for the engine to run, for at least the main channel on the podcast. Like, I guess theoretically the podcast could be other conversations and I couldn't- I, I might not be there. But yeah, I, I think I'm pretty happy, uh, with being the taste maker for the operation, and so that, that means I'm involved with pretty much every part of the process. And if I did wanna take a break for a year, then it would absolutely fall off the face of the earth, and that's on me.

    14. AAAli Abdaal1:14:23

        And you're okay with that [laughs] in theory? Or do you just imagine not wanting-

    15. MBMarques Brownlee1:14:26

        I'm okay with that be-

    16. AAAli Abdaal1:14:26

        ... to take a break for a year?

    17. MBMarques Brownlee1:14:28

        That's, that's basically what it is. I'm okay with that be- so okay, I'm fine with that because I know it's very unlikely I'm gonna take a break for longer than about a week or two, which in YouTube terms is nothing. And then also, um, we do think strategically about larger brand collaborations and larger product opportunities and things that we could make, and we have been having those conversations behind the scenes for like the better part of the last five years, and it's really just about finding the right thing. I've had endless opportunities to just jump right in and be a part of something that seems pretty cool, but, um, the list of things that gets me really excited about it and really wanting to like make that a priority is very small. So yeah.

    18. AAAli Abdaal1:15:14

        Hmm.

    19. MBMarques Brownlee1:15:14

        Those conversations bubble up now and again. We have our agency that, that works on those sorts of deals. But yeah, it's a, it's mostly just a-

    20. AAAli Abdaal1:15:23

        Yeah

    21. MBMarques Brownlee1:15:23

        ... nucleus type of deal.

    22. AAAli Abdaal1:15:25

        Oh, interesting. Yeah, I feel like I'm, I'm in that place right now where it's like, oh, obviously the entire business is reliant on me. And we've sort of made a bit, a few inroads in the past of like, oh, let's try and diversify, et cetera, et cetera. What if Ali gets hit by a bus? Then all of a sudden the business dies, and now that we have employees and stuff. But I think in the past I was like, "Oh my God, this is a big concern. We need to sort this out." But actually sort of w- what I've seen over the last few months is that like if someone has worked for our business and then strikes off on their own to do freelance stuff, they're gonna get clients, no problem. Like they're gonna have zero issues. [laughs] And so I imagine it's the same with your team. Do you, do you worry about like-

    23. MBMarques Brownlee1:16:00

        Yeah

    24. AAAli Abdaal1:16:00

        ... "Oh crap, how am I gonna support the team?" Or is it, is it a similar kind of attitude?

    25. MBMarques Brownlee1:16:04

        I think it's pretty similar. Yeah. The, the team is supported. I mean, the, the work that they, that they create adds so much value that like everything is, everything is set. Like they, they make the, the... I guess if it's a machine with a bunch of gears, like they are, all the gears are really important. The machine doesn't work with gears missing, but like you kinda have to have all of them for it to be operational. So everybody has a stake in everything, I think.

    26. AAAli Abdaal1:16:28

        Sweet. Um, final couple of things I wanted to talk to you about is I, so I- I've recently started dabbling with angel investing in startups. And I c- I can't remember which one it was that I recently invested in, but it seemed like you and Casey were also on the cap table. Um, I wanna ask like w- how, how long have you been doing angel investing? What, how, what, what's, what's your take? Like w- what, how did you get started? Like what's the sort of companies you invest in, and like how does, how does that work kind of from, from your end, if you're open to talking about that?

    27. MBMarques Brownlee1:16:56

        Right. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty new to me, so it's definitely within the past like two years that I've started like seeing investment opportunities, and it is very much, I've watched so much Shark Tank that to me it's like I see a pitch and immediately I go into shark mode of it's like, "Well, what if a big company copies this? Well, what if this..." Like I, there are, there are a couple ideas that are really cool, and I've, I've invested in I think four companies total in the last couple years. So it's not very many. But it's the companies whose products I believe in and who I think I can add value to and maybe it can become something bigger. That's the general idea. Um, so I guess yeah, it's not that many, but it is, it is really interesting now being able to behind the scenes instead of in front of the scenes have a sort of an influence or an impact on something

24. 1:17:44 – 1:19:41

    Angel Investing

    1. MBMarques Brownlee1:17:44

       you think can be bigger than it is.

    2. AAAli Abdaal1:17:46

       Nice. Sick. Yeah, I've, I think I've kind of overstretched on that front where I've just sort of was saying yes to any opportunity that came my way. And now it's a bit like, ugh, I'm getting WhatsApp messages from these companies I've invested in, and I feel really bad because I suck at replying to WhatsApp messages for my friends, let alone kind of people [laughs] like I've, I've given money to. Um, and I might have to kind of put a bit of a pause on it. Maybe like four feel, four feels like a manageable amount. I guess final thing I wanted to ask you about is, uh, firstly, thank you so much for being so open and gracious and stuff with y- with, with your time. This has been a wonderful conversation. What sort of goals do you have in, or sort of what are the things you're thinking about in your personal life, so like the non-YouTube, non- non-work stuff? Do you have any sort of personal goals that you're, I guess, working towards? Um, how are you, how are you thinking about that?

    3. MBMarques Brownlee1:18:29

       Yeah. I mean, I definitely have, uh, a second half of my brain that's switched off when I'm at the studio, which is during weekdays we, we make the tech stuff. We do the s- the studio video thing. I also play on some ultimate Frisbee teams, and we have big goals for those teams. Every year we have pretty lofty goals. I am leaving for a week starting tomorrow to go compete at the club world championships, which is a pretty lofty goal. I mean, that's, that's gonna take a lot of focus, and I won't be making videos for a week. So it's stuff like that. I feel like the left brain, right brain thing is pretty real. Work hard, play hard. You've heard the, the phrases.

    4. AAAli Abdaal1:19:11

       Yeah.

    5. MBMarques Brownlee1:19:11

       So yeah, a little bit of that. Little bit of, uh, keeping my competitive side entertained versus the creative side.

    6. AAAli Abdaal1:19:19

       All right. Well, Marques, this has been an absolutely wonderful conversation. Thank you so much. We'll put links to all the stuff in the video description, but like where can people go to learn more about you and to kind of see, see what you're up to?

    7. MBMarques Brownlee1:19:28

       Uh, any, if you just search MKBHD on any platform, probably video platform, you'll probably find me. Yeah.

    8. AAAli Abdaal1:19:36

       Amazing. Right. Thank you so much for taking the time. This has been wonderful, and hopefully we can meet IRL if I ever get a visa to come

25. 1:19:41 – 1:20:24

    Personal goals

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:19:41

       over to New Jersey sometime. I'm, I'm currently working on it.

    2. MBMarques Brownlee1:19:43

       Yeah. Open invite to the studio. Feel free to come by anytime. This was fun.

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:19:48

       That would be awesome. All right. Thank you so much, man. Take care. Have a great day. Say hi to the team, and we'll, we'll see you guys later. Bye-bye. All right. So that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Episode duration: 1:20:24