Latest / The Scene Projects / Zach Werre on YouTube Growth, Wrestling Insights, and Content Creation Challenges

Transcript

Zach Werre on YouTube Growth, Wrestling Insights, and Content Creation Challenges · The Scene Projects

• 0:11
  Welcome in to this exciting episode of Real Biz.
• 0:15
  I am am your host, Bubba Starts.
• 0:16
  And with me today from Tap Out Corner, Zach Wary.
• 0:20
  Zach, welcome to the show, brother.
• 0:22
  Hey, Bubba.
• 0:22
  Thanks for having me on.
• 0:24
  Man, it's such a pleasure to have you.
• 0:26
  I know that we cross over in the content creation space with some good mutual friends
• 0:32
  there with Below Zero Wrestling and everything that they're doing up there.
• 0:37
  Huge shout out to Nick Stokey off the top of the show who kinda connected me with you.
• 0:42
  And this episode's been a long time coming, man.
• 0:44
  So glad we finally get to do this.
• 0:46
  Yeah.
• 0:47
  Likewise.
• 0:47
  I'm looking forward to talking and getting to know you a little bit more too.
• 0:51
  Excellent.
• 0:52
  Well, off the top of the show, I'd love to, just give you a little bit of time here to give
• 0:57
  us a little bit of your backstory.
• 0:59
  Obviously, you're working in the YouTube space, a content creator, your channel, over a million
• 1:05
  subscribers now, which is just, amazing, to to watch that.
• 1:10
  But I'd like to know kind of a little bit of the lead up to that, and then, obviously, we'll
• 1:14
  talk about everything you got going on now.
• 1:16
  Gotcha.
• 1:17
  Gotcha.
• 1:17
  Yeah.
• 1:17
  How much time do you got?
• 1:20
  Base I a lot of my what I my work at all revolves around YouTube.
• 1:25
  It's content creation, but YouTube is the core essence of it.
• 1:28
  And so going back to how I first got introduced to YouTube, that's essentially where it all
• 1:32
  starts.
• 1:33
  Back in 2006, I at my church, there a buddy of mine, you know, we always would hang out after
• 1:42
  service, and then one day, he came up, you know, like, hey.
• 1:45
  Have you heard of this website?
• 1:46
  You know, people upload videos to it.
• 1:48
  You know, people share just ordinary people can upload anything they want, and it's this
• 1:52
  website called YouTube.
• 1:53
  Yeah.
• 1:54
  Never heard of it.
• 1:55
  He shows me he shows me some funny videos, and just I'm amazed.
• 1:59
  Like, man, you can like, anyone can post stuff on here.
• 2:01
  They can make something, put it online, and, essentially, the world can see it.
• 2:04
  And so that just really captured my imagination.
• 2:07
  I was really I thought that was so cool that, like, you just make stuff and build an
• 2:11
  audience.
• 2:11
  You could tell stories, do essentially whatever you wanted, put it online, and talk to people.
• 2:17
  They'll see it.
• 2:17
  So for, I'd say, probably the next, like, five to ten years, I was really just experimenting
• 2:24
  with it, trying out all sorts of things.
• 2:27
  None of it really ever landed or stuck.
• 2:29
  I would do, you know, videos talking about video games.
• 2:32
  I was really into video games at the time.
• 2:33
  I did, some videos with, little Lego figures.
• 2:36
  I did what's called stop motion animation where you take the figure, take a picture, move the
• 2:41
  figure, take a picture, you know, move the figure, take a picture.
• 2:44
  Did that for a while.
• 2:46
  Just a ton of different stuff.
• 2:48
  And none of it, you know, amounted to much, but the big thing during that time was just I was
• 2:52
  learning a lot, learning about, you know, video editing and just learning about, you know, how
• 2:57
  do you do a voice over?
• 2:58
  How do you get b roll?
• 2:59
  You know, just learning about all sorts of different types of videos, how to make videos,
• 3:03
  and also just what type of content to make on YouTube.
• 3:07
  And I'd say the real big turning point was in 2015.
• 3:12
  I started a channel YouTube channel called the Tap Out Corner.
• 3:16
  And by that point, I've probably done over probably over 15 different YouTube channels.
• 3:20
  I stopped and then deleted and then moved on to something different.
• 3:23
  So I finally decided to give wrestling a try because I was I had become a big wrestling fan.
• 3:27
  I was like, hey.
• 3:27
  I like wrestling.
• 3:28
  I know wrestling.
• 3:29
  Why not make a YouTube channel about wrestling?
• 3:31
  And so I did that in 2015 after I graduated from high school, and I was kinda off and on
• 3:37
  with it for a while, but it was the channel that had gotten the most attention.
• 3:41
  I remember I put together my very first video, and it was a lot of work.
• 3:46
  I really struggled the voice over with you know, I had a script, but just being able to
• 3:50
  say it and not mess up was, like, a real big struggle for me.
• 3:52
  It still is.
• 3:53
  But I you know, it was a lot of work getting that first video done.
• 3:58
  But I just said, I'll finish it, and then I'm just I'm never doing this again.
• 4:01
  This is way too much work.
• 4:02
  This Tap Out Corner channel isn't gonna work out.
• 4:05
  You know, I I I'm not gonna able to do this.
• 4:06
  I have to do something different.
• 4:08
  But I uploaded the video, forgot about the channel, and then, like, two weeks later, I
• 4:12
  went and visited the video.
• 4:13
  I think it had, like, 10,000 views on it.
• 4:15
  And that's when I was like, okay.
• 4:18
  Maybe maybe we need to keep doing this Tap Out Corner wrestling YouTube channel a little bit
• 4:22
  more.
• 4:22
  And so I did a few more videos, and like I said, I was kinda off and on with it.
• 4:26
  I wasn't sure if I really wanted to dig into it if this was the, the direction I wanted to go.
• 4:32
  And then in July 2019, I was graduated from college.
• 4:36
  I was in between jobs and, yeah, I was off and off the YouTube channel the Tap Out Corner
• 4:41
  channel.
• 4:42
  I'd post a few videos that I'd be gone for a few months.
• 4:44
  And so it was sitting at about 20,000 subscribers at that point in July 2019.
• 4:50
  So in between jobs, I was still trying to learn about YouTube.
• 4:55
  So I was like, I think I still wanna do this YouTube thing.
• 4:57
  You know, if nothing else works, if no other jobs work out, like, I could maybe I could make
• 5:01
  this YouTube thing work.
• 5:03
  And so I'd still been learning about YouTube about, you know, what how do you get views on
• 5:07
  YouTube?
• 5:07
  What makes for a good YouTube video?
• 5:09
  And so finally, July 2019, when I was in between work, I decided to give let's give this
• 5:14
  Tap Out Corner channel a try again.
• 5:16
  And then in that first month, I think I made about, like, $700 from, the Tap Out Corner
• 5:22
  channel.
• 5:22
  And so so I'm thinking, like, yeah.
• 5:24
  It's not like, you know, can't live off that, but, hey.
• 5:26
  This could be a great part time job.
• 5:28
  So from that point on, July 2019, I kept up with the channel, kept posting regularly,
• 5:32
  usually trying to get at least one video out every single week.
• 5:36
  And then slowly from there, I started building the channel, started becoming a little bit more
• 5:40
  stable of an income, and slowly but surely, I kinda just, okay.
• 5:44
  I don't need to do this job anymore.
• 5:46
  I don't need to, you know, do this gig anymore.
• 5:48
  And slowly but surely, it just became more and more of a full time job and kinda turned into a
• 5:52
  career for me.
• 5:53
  And so, eventually, the Tap Out Corner channel became a full time job.
• 5:58
  And I think that I think it really happened probably in about 2020 because I was working at
• 6:03
  the Premier Center, the Daisy Stanford Premier Center in Sioux Falls as an AV tech.
• 6:07
  And then as we all know in March 2020, COVID hits, everything gets shut down.
• 6:12
  Yeah.
• 6:13
  So I'm kinda essentially out of a job, you know, for the foreseeable future at that point.
• 6:17
  So then, like, well, I still got I can still do these these YouTube videos, so I might as well
• 6:21
  really dig into that.
• 6:22
  And then, and luckily, by that point, a few months later, they eventually started slowly
• 6:27
  reopening the premier center doing some stuff.
• 6:29
  But at that point, I was just like, you know what?
• 6:31
  I'm I think I'm gonna just zone in on this YouTube thing now and really focus in on that.
• 6:35
  So that was kind of the moment where it really transitioned from being, you know, a part time
• 6:39
  job job, a side gig, to being a full time job, full time, you know, career.
• 6:44
  And so I just kinda kept growing the channel, experimenting, learning more about how to make
• 6:48
  better videos, how to grow an audience.
• 6:51
  So then kept go doing that with TapUp Corner, doing a few different things here and there.
• 6:55
  I'm someone who likes to just try different things, you know, even outside of wrestling.
• 7:00
  But then the next big moment for for myself or my career was in April 2023.
• 7:05
  I've been doing the Tap Out Corner channel.
• 7:07
  That was, you know, my full time gig at that point.
• 7:11
  But, you know, I wanted wanted to do more.
• 7:13
  And one of the things I noticed from the Tap Out Corner channel was the videos that tend to
• 7:18
  do the best on the Tap Out Corner channel, I always did wrestling videos, you know, list
• 7:21
  videos, top tens, and I'd do videos like the secrets of WWE exposed.
• 7:26
  You know, how do they do the buried alive match?
• 7:28
  How do they hit each other with chairs and not, you know, kill each other?
• 7:31
  How does h h h hit someone with a sledgehammer and not kill them?
• 7:35
  That sort of I did videos like that.
• 7:36
  And those videos always tend to do the best, the ones that we're kind of sharing how the
• 7:41
  wrestling business, how WWE, how it actually works.
• 7:44
  And so I'm and while I was working on those videos, I'm like, man, you should someone
• 7:48
  should just get a former WWE wrestler, somebody who's actually in that ring, in that company,
• 7:53
  knows exactly how it works.
• 7:55
  Someone should just get with, like, a person like that and do a YouTube channel with them
• 7:59
  where they just talk about from firsthand experience, you know, how the business works,
• 8:03
  how the weapons work, all that stuff.
• 8:06
  And so, yeah, I'm like, well, I could do that if I could find someone who's a former WWE
• 8:10
  wrestler, and there lies the the trouble.
• 8:13
  Like, how do you find someone who's a former WWE wrestler?
• 8:16
  You know?
• 8:16
  Like, how do you how do you find someone who will you know, a, has the experience, has the
• 8:20
  knowledge, b, has the skills, the, the skill set to be able to talk to the camera and
• 8:24
  present, and c, wanna work with you.
• 8:26
  You know?
• 8:27
  People just typically don't wanna work with people they don't know.
• 8:30
  They wanna work with people they do know.
• 8:32
  And so so that was always the the hurdle for me with starting that, this cap project.
• 8:36
  This former WWE wrestler explains, tells all YouTube channel.
• 8:40
  So but it kept itching at me.
• 8:42
  I I thought, man, I feel like this is a great, great idea.
• 8:44
  I feel like there's some big potential with this YouTube channel.
• 8:47
  And so in April 2023, I finally just said, I'm I'm just gonna reach out to sub one and see if
• 8:55
  we can make it happen.
• 8:56
  You know, we're I'm assuming they're gonna say no.
• 8:58
  You know, some random person reaches out to them.
• 9:00
  They're probably not even gonna respond.
• 9:02
  But at least if I reach out, I can tell myself I tried.
• 9:05
  So in April 2023, I reached out to a former, WWE wrestler that I knew I'd followed his
• 9:11
  career.
• 9:12
  I was, into his career.
• 9:13
  His name was Maven.
• 9:14
  For wrestling fans, they probably know him as the first, winner of the tough enough
• 9:19
  competition show.
• 9:20
  That was a competition WWE did in 2001 where it took ordinary people, trained them, and then
• 9:26
  the winner would get a WWE wrestler contract.
• 9:29
  And Maven was the first first winner of that.
• 9:31
  And so he went on to have about a four year career with WWE wrestling for them.
• 9:35
  And so but I was always, interested in his career the way he got into WWE and stuff.
• 9:40
  So I'd always followed it.
• 9:41
  It was he was always one of my favorites.
• 9:43
  And so I decided, hey.
• 9:45
  Let me see if I can get in touch with this Maven guy.
• 9:48
  May maybe maybe we could maybe we could do something.
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  So I found Maven's LinkedIn, wrote out a brief but professional email just explaining, hey.
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  Here's who I am.
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  Here's what I wanna do.
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  Here's why I think it could be successful.
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  You know, if you're interested at all, I'd love to chat more.
• 10:03
  Send it out thinking, okay.
• 10:04
  One of two things is gonna happen.
• 10:06
  He he's either, a, not gonna respond or, b, say thanks, but no thanks.
• 10:11
  Fortunately, there was a third option, c, and he responded back a day later said, hey, Zach.
• 10:16
  Thanks for the email.
• 10:17
  I'd love to chat more about this.
• 10:18
  It sounds like an awesome idea.
• 10:20
  So from there, we got together.
• 10:21
  Maimon and I had a few Zoom calls.
• 10:23
  I explained a little bit more about who I was, what I was looking, what I had the idea I had.
• 10:27
  I got to know a little bit more about him.
• 10:29
  And then in May 2023, I flew out to New Jersey where Maven's located, got an Airbnb.
• 10:35
  We filmed our first, I think, six videos there and went back, got them edited.
• 10:41
  And then 07/21/2023, we post our very first video.
• 10:46
  And, I think after about, like, two weeks, that first video had gotten started getting
• 10:50
  traction, started building a lot of momentum and getting comments and subscribers and
• 10:54
  everything.
• 10:55
  And then from there, we just knew knew we had something.
• 10:58
  And then really ever since, that first video we posted July 2023, we've Maven and I have always
• 11:04
  posted a brand new video every single Friday.
• 11:07
  Even this past Friday, we just posted a video.
• 11:09
  And then this coming Friday, we have another video already in the can ready to get,
• 11:13
  uploaded.
• 11:14
  And so between those, those are kind of my my two biggest accomplishments, in terms of in
• 11:18
  terms of reach, that I've had is the Tap Up Corner channel, which I still do, and also the
• 11:23
  Maven Huffman channel, which, again, we're doing new videos every week.
• 11:28
  Yeah.
• 11:28
  And I love that, you know, you shared with us that it took you fifteen years of kind of
• 11:33
  figuring it out and starting and stopping and not knowing.
• 11:36
  And even with the channel and I think a lot of smaller content creators like myself are even
• 11:41
  looking at a, you know, a a channel with 20,000 subscribers, like, man, that would be
• 11:46
  incredible to look at that.
• 11:49
  And it it's it's time.
• 11:52
  You you have to you know?
• 11:54
  And it's not just about the creation of the content and the style behind that, but like you
• 11:59
  said, the, you know, I guess they say, like, the business end of it, attracting new viewers
• 12:05
  and and having the right descriptions and thumbnails and, you know, headlines and titles
• 12:11
  to everything.
• 12:11
  And I know that you're kind of a student of the game in that regard, and it's something that
• 12:16
  you're constantly, you know, keeping up with and following, I'm sure, in the analytics as
• 12:22
  well of what does better and what moves the needle.
• 12:26
  I love the evolution of the idea.
• 12:28
  Like, Tap Out was already successful in what it was doing, but you're like, there's more here.
• 12:35
  There's more of a story to tell and to bring that out.
• 12:39
  And if it needs to be a separate channel, then so be it.
• 12:44
  Right?
• 12:44
  Like, if this isn't working on this channel, that doesn't mean that it's not working.
• 12:49
  It's just not working inside of the niche that essentially YouTube has put you in.
• 12:54
  You you try to style YouTube's gonna put you in a lane, and it's gonna feed you to the people
• 12:59
  that it thinks are going to watch your stuff.
• 13:02
  And it's it can be difficult to, grow if you are trying to change lanes.
• 13:10
  And that's something that I've found in what we're doing, you know, in trying to provide a
• 13:16
  huge array of content with the scene projects.
• 13:20
  You know, initially, I was kind of putting everything out on the one YouTube channel
• 13:24
  because I was, like, trying to grow one.
• 13:26
  Right?
• 13:26
  I'm trying to get one to a couple of thresholds that we wanna hit to even be available for
• 13:30
  monetization.
• 13:31
  Right?
• 13:31
  A big one of those being the 500 subscriber level.
• 13:35
  But I didn't know enough about YouTube when I was starting out to to realize, you know, that
• 13:41
  I was actually doing myself a disservice in a lot of ways going too many directions.
• 13:47
  What you really need to do is to just develop another channel and to let that grow.
• 13:52
  And, now we're in this.
• 13:54
  That's why this, you know, this conversation is being featured on our real biz channel and
• 14:01
  network rather than on the scene projects, where the scene projects is still the brand and
• 14:06
  is the umbrella over everything that each, you know, topic needs its own vehicle so that it
• 14:14
  can be put into a lane and fed out to that.
• 14:17
  And even then, it can take years of doing this for things to catch on.
• 14:22
  And I think that's something that in a age where everyone is chasing that viral moment,
• 14:29
  that they don't happen overnight.
• 14:31
  Yeah.
• 14:32
  Yeah.
• 14:33
  Even on, the Tap Out Corner channel this week, there was a video that I posted several months
• 14:39
  back, maybe even longer, that was it did, you know, kinda alright, not great when I initially
• 14:44
  post it.
• 14:44
  But now all of a sudden, it's starting to tick up, and I'm checking the analytics.
• 14:48
  Like, oh, wow.
• 14:48
  This video that I I completely forgotten about is now picking up some steam.
• 14:52
  And it wasn't even you know, I didn't change the title or change the thumbnail.
• 14:55
  It just, you know, kind of caught on.
• 14:57
  And so that's that's one thing with YouTube is, like, I I think a lot of creators, if you're in
• 15:01
  it long enough, you'll have that happen where a video you posted maybe months, maybe a year,
• 15:06
  maybe even two years ago will, just suddenly just get picked up in the algorithm.
• 15:12
  And so it's again, there's there's a I like to say with YouTube, there's a lot of stuff in
• 15:16
  your control, there's also a lot of stuff that's not in your control.
• 15:18
  The element of timing is always just one that's really hard being in the right place at the
• 15:22
  right time.
• 15:23
  But at least with YouTube, you know, you can even if the video wasn't posted at the right
• 15:27
  time, the right time might come eventually, and then the videos that already there.
• 15:31
  So and that's where you see a video you posted a year ago, all of sudden, oh, wow.
• 15:36
  No.
• 15:36
  It's picking up steam now.
• 15:37
  You know?
• 15:38
  That's been over a year.
• 15:40
  Yeah.
• 15:41
  You give me a lot of faith, you know, building out this massive catalog.
• 15:45
  Right?
• 15:45
  We had over 1,700 uploads onto our channel last year.
• 15:49
  Now a lot of those are in short form, but we had over, I think, 400, long form videos that
• 15:55
  we posted in addition to the short form content.
• 15:59
  And the way that I always looked at, especially the scene projects, because we're interviewing
• 16:02
  independent artists, people that aren't you know, we're we're not dipping in and, you know,
• 16:07
  you know, we're not interviewing Jelly Roll.
• 16:09
  I like to use him as an example a lot, you know, or Garth Brooks isn't coming on the show
• 16:15
  anytime soon that we're not relying on those big names.
• 16:19
  But what we have provided is a platform for independent artists, and the reverse of that is
• 16:25
  that we've sunk our hooks into a whole lot of coattails that should any of those people get
• 16:30
  famous and people are all of a sudden searching for their name, that we kind of get picked up
• 16:36
  into that train as well.
• 16:38
  And and I think that it was just a different way of building it out when we were kinda going
• 16:42
  through the growing pains of developing a YouTube channel.
• 16:46
  And I love that you kinda pointed out that it was you were essentially fifteen years into
• 16:51
  creating content on on YouTube before you really settled in or maybe ten years before you
• 16:58
  settled in and created the Tap Out Corner channel already.
• 17:01
  So you had already had a lot of experience built into that and and just and maybe it was
• 17:08
  in different arenas, right, or different topics.
• 17:11
  The experience you were gaining behind the camera and then in post production, editing,
• 17:17
  and all of those things, they were necessary to make Tap Out Corner as successful as it was
• 17:22
  kind of out of the gate and then now well into the long term.
• 17:26
  Yes.
• 17:27
  Absolutely.
• 17:28
  Like, I I uploaded my first video, I believe, in 2009.
• 17:32
  That the very first YouTube video I ever uploaded.
• 17:34
  And, you know, Tap Out Corner, which is, I'd say, my my real big success, breakout success
• 17:39
  for YouTube wise.
• 17:40
  That was 2015, so, you know, six years difference.
• 17:43
  But and there was a lot and, like, maybe it could have come a little bit faster if I would
• 17:47
  have stuck with things a bit longer, you know, rather than because a lot of times what I do is
• 17:51
  I make a YouTube channel, upload a handful of videos.
• 17:54
  I'm bored with this.
• 17:54
  I don't know if I really wanna talk about video games, or I don't know if I really wanna make
• 17:58
  LEGO stop motion animations.
• 17:59
  You know?
• 18:00
  That sounds like a ton of work.
• 18:02
  Yes.
• 18:02
  Yeah.
• 18:03
  I actually did some with wrestling figures for a while.
• 18:07
  I used to do animations with wrestling action figures, have them do matches and stuff.
• 18:11
  And I did it for a few years, but then I just realized, ah, this is a lot of work.
• 18:14
  So, like, I mean, god bless.
• 18:16
  And, like, I huge respect to people who do stop motion animation because it's just it's a
• 18:21
  tedious, a long process.
• 18:23
  Have to have a lot of patience for, so my hat's off to them.
• 18:26
  But, the point being, like, even though I was starting to stop a lot of YouTube channels,
• 18:31
  yeah, I was kinda halting my success, you know, my progression because, you know, I wasn't
• 18:35
  sticking with it and just building something.
• 18:36
  You know, you have to have a lot of key is just have commitment, stick with it.
• 18:40
  You know, you're not necessarily gonna see success right away, but, you know, over if
• 18:44
  you're staying commitment, staying committed to it and continuing to post, continue to try to
• 18:48
  get better, I think you're gonna see better and better results.
• 18:51
  But the one thing even though I wasn't doing that, the one thing that really helped, like
• 18:55
  you said, Bob, was just learning more.
• 18:57
  I got I went from I literally, I put my first video.
• 19:00
  I didn't know about editing.
• 19:01
  I didn't know you could edit a video.
• 19:03
  So, literally, I hit record on the camera, hit stop, and then that's the video.
• 19:07
  I didn't there was no music.
• 19:08
  There's no editing.
• 19:09
  There's no you know?
• 19:10
  So but then but through doing all these different, YouTube channels, I learned, oh,
• 19:15
  hey.
• 19:15
  You can upload video.
• 19:17
  You can film videos.
• 19:18
  You can put them together.
• 19:19
  You can cut out stuff.
• 19:20
  You can oh, you can add text to your video.
• 19:21
  You can add effects.
• 19:23
  Like so even though I wasn't necessarily building a YouTube channel, I was learning a
• 19:27
  lot, which helped out with things like Tap Out Corner and then later on the main health and
• 19:31
  channel.
• 19:33
  Yeah.
• 19:33
  It's it's incredible to kinda hear your journey and what it's taken.
• 19:39
  For me, it it is encouraging because I think that we have we've moved a lot faster and that
• 19:46
  nothing we've done, because we never stopped is for naught.
• 19:51
  Right?
• 19:52
  You know, the scene projects just passed a pretty big milestone for us really in the first
• 19:56
  year of having a YouTube channel where we reached that 500 subscriber subscriber mark.
• 20:01
  Right?
• 20:02
  And and a lot of other channels have been around for a decade and don't have that many.
• 20:06
  Right?
• 20:07
  And and granted a lot of these people aren't in it to the same degree that we are, you know,
• 20:11
  releasing, sometimes multiple videos a week and putting these interviews out there.
• 20:17
  The mission is also different as well.
• 20:19
  It's never been about me monetizing a YouTube channel.
• 20:23
  Right?
• 20:24
  It's been about how do I support as many independent artists as I can with that channel
• 20:28
  and put it out there.
• 20:30
  Now with other, you know, thing now with RealBiz, it's more how do we support the people
• 20:35
  that are coming on here.
• 20:36
  Yes.
• 20:36
  We want to grow the subscriber base and and we want these to be big, but I also realized that
• 20:42
  that can be a very long plan.
• 20:45
  So what can we do in the meantime to not just monetize the creation process, but to support
• 20:51
  the people that are coming on here and producing content for others that is there
• 20:57
  beyond entertainment value, maybe more in the edutainment value and just doing podcasts.
• 21:02
  And, obviously, your YouTube videos aren't aren't really a podcast format.
• 21:07
  Right?
• 21:07
  You you're covering a lot of stuff.
• 21:09
  So talk a little bit about that and kinda go in in-depth with us on as far as, like, what the
• 21:15
  videos that you're releasing, you know, on a weekly basis for Tap Out Corner go.
• 21:20
  I I know the Maven show is a little bit different, and we can address that one
• 21:23
  separately if you like.
• 21:25
  Yeah.
• 21:26
  Tap Out Corner, it's it's evolved.
• 21:28
  Up upward subtle ways.
• 21:31
  The channel is basically the bread and butter is doing, like, list videos.
• 21:34
  One that I actually have currently being edited right now is the top 20 worst wrestling moves
• 21:39
  of all time.
• 21:40
  And so stuff like that, the one I just uploaded was about failed second, third, and fourth
• 21:46
  generation wrestlers and kind of almost like a little mini documentaries documenting, you
• 21:51
  know, The Rock's daughter and how, you know, her career you know, what what happened to her
• 21:55
  career and, the sons of the million dollar man, Teddi Biasi, how their careers went and where,
• 22:01
  it went down.
• 22:02
  And so lot lot videos like that are kind of so lists, you know, sharing facts, videos sharing
• 22:07
  rankings, and kinda and somewhat, like, little mini documentaries.
• 22:11
  It's definitely evolved a lot.
• 22:13
  I don't do I say lists, but that is one thing that I don't do quite as much, as I used to
• 22:20
  just because the era of, like, list videos, top tens, like, it's still very popular on YouTube,
• 22:26
  but it was I'd say it peaked a few years back.
• 22:29
  There was a time where top tens lists were massive, massive.
• 22:32
  They were huge and really popular.
• 22:34
  Well, and because of their popularity, the market starts to get flooded with people that
• 22:39
  are like, oh, this is gonna be my ticket.
• 22:42
  Yeah.
• 22:42
  I'm just gonna do this.
• 22:44
  Exactly.
• 22:45
  Exactly.
• 22:45
  And so and then, and yeah.
• 22:48
  And so that's, so that's one thing that's definitely changed.
• 22:52
  So but those are kinda, I would say, kind of my bread and butter, with the Tap Out core
• 22:56
  channels.
• 22:56
  Usually, getting a collection of stories, whether it's maybe documenting wrestlers'
• 23:00
  careers or doing some rankings, you know, ranking ranking moves or, you know, different
• 23:05
  aspects of wrestling.
• 23:06
  That's kind of what the bread and butter of the the Tap Out Corner channel is.
• 23:11
  Incredible.
• 23:12
  And then, yeah, go ahead and I know the the Maven, the Maven show is a pretty big deal for
• 23:18
  you as well, the other half of your time Yes.
• 23:20
  Every month.
• 23:21
  So talk about that one and kind of the content you guys are putting out there.
• 23:25
  Yeah.
• 23:25
  Essentially, it's, you know, Maven giving his insight, giving his behind the scenes knowledge
• 23:29
  on the wrestling business on WWE.
• 23:32
  It's it's another one we've been doing for coming up on three years this year since we
• 23:36
  started the channel.
• 23:37
  And so that's obviously evolved a little bit.
• 23:39
  We did a lot more pulling back the curtain on stuff early on, but, obviously, when you're
• 23:43
  doing a video every single week, you're gonna yeah.
• 23:46
  Well, we already talked about this.
• 23:47
  We already talked about that.
• 23:48
  So but, essentially, a lot of it is Maven giving us insight on wrestling as someone who
• 23:54
  was a former wrestler.
• 23:55
  You know, we did a video recently where Maven sat down and watched Monday Night Raw, which is
• 23:59
  WWE's weekly flagship show.
• 24:02
  And so and then the whole hook, the whole, reason to watch the videos, you're getting
• 24:07
  someone who's actually a wrestler in WWE who wrestled on this very show, this very program.
• 24:12
  Just break it down, let you know, hey.
• 24:14
  Here's what's going on, noticing things that the fan might not notice, but as someone who
• 24:18
  actually was in, you know, backstage, was wrestling in that ring that they might notice.
• 24:22
  I'm just giving you his insight as a a former wrestler on, you know, what these current
• 24:26
  wrestlers you know, what does what does he like about them?
• 24:28
  What does he think they can improve on and that sort of thing?
• 24:31
  And then even this past Friday, we he did video, you know, just capturing about some of
• 24:36
  the troubles that the views facing with the direction the business has had and maybe gave
• 24:41
  his thoughts on that.
• 24:42
  You know, obviously, one of the big things in the rest of the world is ticket prices have
• 24:45
  really gone up, really skyrocketed, and, you know, there's pros to that.
• 24:50
  There's cons to that, and and there's, some of those cons might not we might not see come to
• 24:54
  fruition until years later.
• 24:57
  And so but a lot of the the Maven channel is just Maven, you know, being a former wrestler,
• 25:00
  sharing his insight into the business, breaking stuff down, and if get offered just insight
• 25:05
  that the typical fan might not have.
• 25:08
  Is there any pushback from people inside of the industry?
• 25:12
  Because I I would imagine that it is like a magician kind of revealing, you know, watching
• 25:18
  other magicians do and go, this is how they did that.
• 25:21
  You know?
• 25:22
  So I I would imagine that some people inside of the industry, whether it's at the WWE level or,
• 25:28
  you know, in their corporation that are pushing back a little bit on it, or do they embrace it?
• 25:33
  And it's really the opposite of giving fans that in-depth look.
• 25:37
  Gotcha.
• 25:38
  I feel like it's pretty pretty neutral.
• 25:41
  Maybe I actually get asked that question a lot in his interviews.
• 25:43
  And from what I know, he's never like, I haven't gotten any pushback, and I I don't
• 25:47
  think Mamie has ever gotten any pushback except for one time, which I'll share a little bit.
• 25:52
  But, typically, I think for the big thing too is a lot of this stuff is already out there.
• 25:57
  You know, there's videos like the stuff I was doing on Tap Out Corner.
• 26:00
  And even now, that we're be on Netflix, they have a whole series called unreal where it's
• 26:05
  literally taking cameras backstage and showing, you know, wrestler out of character.
• 26:09
  They're talking about story lines, you know, stuff that, you know, even twenty years ago may
• 26:14
  have been kind of taboo.
• 26:16
  And so but it's just the biz I think for the most part, wrestlers understand, hey.
• 26:21
  People know that, you know, the mystique of the business is kind of isn't really there as much
• 26:25
  people know that, you know, we're performers.
• 26:28
  We're playing characters out there, you know, and and that sort of thing.
• 26:32
  And a lot of the stuff too is, stuff that's either, a, you can already find out there or,
• 26:37
  b, if you just watch closely enough, you could probably figure out, like, oh, hey.
• 26:40
  When a wrestler punches, they always stop, you know, stuff like that.
• 26:44
  And so for the most part, we haven't gotten any pushback.
• 26:47
  But there was one time we did a video where actually, someone came up to us.
• 26:53
  It was kind more of a vlog style, just what we call Maven in the wild.
• 26:56
  And, someone had said, you know, just he didn't wanna be in the video because he doesn't like
• 27:01
  that, you know, we're exposing the business, which fair enough.
• 27:05
  We have no no no pushback.
• 27:07
  He was I got polite about it.
• 27:08
  It wasn't, confrontational or anything, but just, you know, he he just wasn't a fan of, you
• 27:13
  know, the, exposing the business, which, again, with thousand percent respect.
• 27:17
  But I think that's the only time we ever had any sort of pushback for on the three almost
• 27:22
  three years that we've been doing that.
• 27:23
  A lot in fact, a lot of there was sadly, right before he passed away, Sabu, this was last year
• 27:29
  at WrestleMania.
• 27:30
  We maybe he was doing an event that I came along just to film, just to see what we could
• 27:34
  get.
• 27:35
  You know?
• 27:35
  And Sabu, who's a hardcore, hardcore legend in the wrestling business, he, you know, was
• 27:43
  there.
• 27:43
  He came up to me, and he obviously just, you know, hey.
• 27:45
  What's going on, brother?
• 27:46
  You know, saying hi and just and he was saying, you know, yeah.
• 27:48
  I love the videos.
• 27:48
  Good job.
• 27:49
  You know?
• 27:49
  And he's he was back when Kefic was, you know, he's he no.
• 27:53
  Non exposing business was very like, that was very important, very sacred.
• 27:57
  Anyway, he was, you know, happy with the success and everything and happy for Maimon and
• 28:02
  everything.
• 28:02
  So so yeah.
• 28:03
  No.
• 28:03
  No.
• 28:03
  Not really any pushback.
• 28:04
  Not not so much.
• 28:05
  No.
• 28:06
  And I don't feel like it's hurting the brand at all.
• 28:09
  I I obviously, the brand is bigger than it's ever been, and you have, you know, multiple of
• 28:14
  them.
• 28:14
  Obviously, TNA and AEW, and you have all of these that seem to all be doing very well, even
• 28:19
  the independent.
• 28:20
  You know, our good friend Nick Stokey with Below Zero Wrestling up in North Dakota in a
• 28:24
  very small area is selling out arenas with their program.
• 28:30
  So people, I feel like admitting that it wasn't, to the hardcore wrestling fan, it's not
• 28:36
  like we all believe that it was true to begin with.
• 28:39
  It doesn't make it any less entertaining.
• 28:41
  Right?
• 28:42
  And and I think that is the, you know, the driving factor between all We don't care.
• 28:49
  Right?
• 28:49
  There's soap operas with violence.
• 28:51
  You know?
• 28:51
  Like, it's it's okay.
• 28:53
  And if we wanna see real violence, we can go watch UFC or any other of the martial arts, and
• 28:58
  that's fine too.
• 28:59
  But, really, it's about being invested in these characters and in this.
• 29:03
  And, to me, I think it's okay.
• 29:06
  I think the transparency only helps build the brand because now you're not treating your fans
• 29:11
  like they're idiots.
• 29:12
  You know?
• 29:13
  Yes.
• 29:13
  Yes.
• 29:14
  That that's, we all get into this from different reasons, but I think a lot of us, you
• 29:19
  know, begin watching as younger, you know, as children.
• 29:22
  I started watching WWF, dating myself a little bit here in the early nineties.
• 29:28
  You know, Saturday mornings, they were on TV, and I would watch at my granny's house.
• 29:33
  And to watch how much they've grown since then, and and we would go and my granny, my mom's mom
• 29:38
  grew up in Kentucky.
• 29:39
  So she was watching these guys in the, you know, the small arenas and gymnasiums within
• 29:45
  the, you know, fifties and sixties.
• 29:47
  Right?
• 29:48
  So it's really incredible to, you know, see how much the sport has grown, to see how now it can
• 29:55
  provide a living for, you know, just a simple YouTube content creator like yourself making
• 30:01
  videos about the sport.
• 30:03
  I think it's incredible that it's building out a a living for these athletes, for these people
• 30:09
  that have grown to love the sport, and I don't find anything wrong with it.
• 30:15
  You know, you're not you're not doing something that somebody else wouldn't come along and do.
• 30:20
  Right?
• 30:21
  It's not like you're the only one out here that's talking about it.
• 30:24
  Having someone that was inside of the industry, I think, is maybe a a unique take on it.
• 30:29
  But I think it's it's what separates you from the other creators out there and that channel
• 30:34
  from everyone else is that, look.
• 30:36
  I'm not speculating here.
• 30:38
  I was in the room.
• 30:40
  Yes.
• 30:40
  Absolutely.
• 30:41
  And going back to your point too, like, I always you know, some people just have
• 30:44
  preferences.
• 30:45
  They just rather not to I just rather not, you know, share this, or I prefer when wrestling
• 30:50
  was a little bit more believable.
• 30:51
  We didn't reveal everything to the fans.
• 30:54
  Like, I totally respect that.
• 30:55
  The one where I get pushback is if, you know, this is know, it's gonna hurt the business in
• 31:00
  the long run fans when they know how the sausage is made.
• 31:03
  They're not gonna wanna watch.
• 31:04
  I'd argue the opposite.
• 31:05
  We get comments on our videos, you know, saying, when we get comments from people
• 31:10
  saying, you know, I I I don't like wrestling or watch wrestling, but I enjoy these videos.
• 31:14
  So new people getting exposed to wrestling, people who weren't even fans, don't watch
• 31:18
  wrestling, don't support wrestling, now checking out our our videos that can hopefully
• 31:22
  lead to them watching Monday night raw, watching dynamite, AEW's flagship show, and
• 31:28
  just go go and check out local shows in their area.
• 31:31
  And as well as we also do get comments from people saying, like, this makes me wanna watch
• 31:35
  wrestling more.
• 31:35
  I wanna watch wrestling now that I've watched these videos.
• 31:38
  And I think it comes down to just once you see it once you see the sausage is made, it makes
• 31:43
  you appreciate it a bit more.
• 31:44
  You know, same with the behind the scenes of a movie.
• 31:47
  Yeah.
• 31:47
  You see the finished product and maybe it just, know, okay.
• 31:49
  You know, looks impressive, but, you know, I'm assuming it's just all done in computers.
• 31:53
  But when you see the behind the scenes of how tedious and how hard some of these the stuff is
• 31:57
  to accomplish, it makes you a bit more appreciative.
• 32:00
  You're just a little bit more invested, and that, you know, leads to, okay.
• 32:03
  I wanna see the final product a bit more now because I see all the steps, the trial, the
• 32:08
  tribulations that Russell would have to go through and how much they have to go punch
• 32:11
  planning and preparation goes into even just a simple match, you know, much less than a
• 32:15
  elaborate match where there's, you know, crazy spots and they're, you know, jumping off 20
• 32:20
  foot ladders.
• 32:21
  You know?
• 32:21
  How are they what are they doing to not kill themselves doing that?
• 32:24
  You know?
• 32:24
  And so Yeah.
• 32:25
  It almost to me, it makes it more interesting to be like, even though it's choreographed,
• 32:29
  like, you still have to stick it.
• 32:30
  Right?
• 32:31
  Like, we watch we watch figure skating in the Olympics, and it's all choreographed too, but
• 32:35
  you still gotta land it.
• 32:37
  Right?
• 32:37
  You know?
• 32:38
  Now you got guys out there throwing backflips in their routines, and, you know, guys have
• 32:42
  been doing that off the top ropes, you know, 15 feet in the air landing on and and another
• 32:48
  human being has to catch them.
• 32:50
  Right?
• 32:50
  And then it's into the next and it's just it's incredible.
• 32:53
  It's an incredible dance that these wrestlers and, you know, these athletes are doing inside
• 32:59
  of the ring and sometimes outside of the ring.
• 33:02
  It's incredibly hard on their bodies.
• 33:05
  And and I think that the more you let people in, the more they like it.
• 33:09
  And as an interview more an interviewer based, you know, podcaster, which I don't necessarily
• 33:14
  consider you a podcaster truly.
• 33:16
  You're a YouTuber, right, in a more pure sense of the word where my I am a podcaster who has a
• 33:22
  show on YouTube.
• 33:23
  Feel like, distinctions being what they are.
• 33:26
  I don't know that it matters as much as it did even, you know, five years ago, but that I
• 33:32
  would love to talk to these people.
• 33:33
  Right?
• 33:34
  And getting the out of character interviews and just talking.
• 33:37
  And that's something that, you know, on our scene project sports network that our our
• 33:41
  cohost Boo Boo has done with, beyond the bell, which is exactly that.
• 33:46
  It's talking to, you know, independent wrestlers that are working in much smaller, you
• 33:51
  know, arenas and much smaller promotions.
• 33:54
  But getting the stories behind the people and what sparked that into me, these are some of
• 33:59
  the most interesting stories in the world.
• 34:01
  Why wouldn't we want to tell them?
• 34:03
  Yes.
• 34:03
  Yeah.
• 34:04
  Absolutely.
• 34:04
  And that's, like, the thing where, obviously, it helps when they're big stars.
• 34:08
  You have that built like, you talked about, blah blah blah.
• 34:10
  There's the that built in audience, you know, when you have a big star like Liv Morgan or
• 34:15
  Roman Reigns, you know, just you have people who are gonna go out of their way to watch it.
• 34:19
  You know, the independent star, they might have a little bit of a following, but, obviously,
• 34:23
  nowhere near the following that those folks have.
• 34:26
  But and that's one of the things I do like with the Maven channel.
• 34:29
  Like, obviously, Maven had a bit of a following, you know, being in WWE, but he when
• 34:33
  we started, he had been out of WWE for close to twenty years.
• 34:37
  And he had a little bit of an independent career, but he kinda drift away from wrestling.
• 34:42
  And so that was one of the exciting things is, you know, to get calls from people that say,
• 34:47
  you know, I didn't watch you when I was, I didn't watch you when you were wrestling, but I
• 34:52
  watch you now.
• 34:52
  Or even people who say, like, I didn't care about you when you were in wrestling, but I
• 34:57
  love, you know, your channel now.
• 34:58
  I'm trying to basically build a new fan base for people.
• 35:01
  That's one the things I really, really like.
• 35:02
  And, you know, it's again, it's tougher for an independent wrestler to build that fan base
• 35:06
  because they don't have the WWE machine.
• 35:08
  They don't have the WWE brand behind them.
• 35:11
  But, you know, I think it's still still as possible.
• 35:13
  It's harder.
• 35:13
  It's much, much harder, but I don't think it's, impossible.
• 35:16
  And I love just, in general, seeing that, not just with people and athletes and, performers,
• 35:21
  but even stuff like, an example I always bring up is Cobra Kai, the Netflix series.
• 35:26
  You know, it's obviously based off Karate Kid, which, you know, big show, big movie franchise
• 35:31
  in the eighties, but, you know, it kinda faded out.
• 35:33
  It was still, you know, part of pop culture, but it would just you know, there wasn't any
• 35:36
  new movies that kinda died down.
• 35:38
  And then they start this new show, Cobra Kai, and it you know, they build new fans with it.
• 35:42
  It's not just, you know, the people who grew up with Karate Kid.
• 35:45
  There's people who didn't even know Karate Kid existed if they want, like, Cobra Kai.
• 35:49
  And so that's one of my kind of favorite things with, like, the Maven channel is being able to
• 35:53
  not just rely on, like, the people who remembered Maven and still followed his career,
• 35:58
  but also being able to bring in new people and build new fans, build a whole new audience.
• 36:03
  Yeah.
• 36:03
  And I'm sure a blessing for him to be able to dip back into the wrestling world having, you
• 36:08
  know, kinda retired from it for a couple of decades.
• 36:11
  So incredible, Zach.
• 36:13
  Anything, obviously, plug the YouTube channels where people can find you and find the shows,
• 36:18
  and I'll let you get out of here today.
• 36:19
  Awesome.
• 36:20
  Sounds good.
• 36:20
  I appreciate the this conversation, Bob.
• 36:22
  The place to check me out is Tap Out Corner on YouTube.
• 36:26
  That's where that's my channel.
• 36:27
  And then also the Mavis Huffman channel on YouTube.
• 36:30
  That's where we upload a new video every Friday.
• 36:32
  So if you're into wrestling, check both those out.
• 36:36
  Yeah.
• 36:37
  And if you're, you need to do some, content creation, videos, I think, and maybe start a
• 36:42
  new channel, start helping out, young creators like myself who could always use some tips
• 36:48
  along the way and some encouragement, because it it's not everyone who can stick with it.
• 36:55
  And I I think the biggest part you know, biggest takeaways for me of your story is that
• 37:01
  it took a long time to happen, and it took a lot of learning.
• 37:04
  And it still is a lot of learning and watching and adjusting the trends and, being able to
• 37:11
  evolve.
• 37:12
  And, you know, in many ways, the Maven Huffman show is an evolution of what you wanna do with
• 37:17
  Tap Out Corner.
• 37:18
  It's just that it it it made more sense to start a new channel and to work on that
• 37:23
  separately than to just slam everything into one channel.
• 37:26
  So I I'm absorbing a lot of advice today just kind of as an aside to a great conversation.
• 37:33
  So, Zach, appreciate you, man.
• 37:35
  Congratulations on all your success.
• 37:37
  A million subscribers is no joke.
• 37:39
  That's that's really incredible for an independent creator.
• 37:42
  And keep on going, man.
• 37:44
  We're we're so proud of you.
• 37:45
  And a fellow South Dakotan as well.
• 37:47
  I think we kinda glossed over that a little bit.
• 37:49
  But, for a a small town kid, which I would consider a Sioux Falls in a lot of ways, it's
• 37:54
  still a small town on the grand scale of things.
• 37:57
  To do what you're doing and creating content out there in the world and and finding a home
• 38:02
  for yourself is so cool, man.
• 38:04
  So thanks for being on the show today, and thank you for being part of the scene.
• 38:08
  Yeah.
• 38:08
  Okay.
• 38:09
  Thank you so much, Bubba, for all that.
• 38:10
  Thanks for having me on.
• 38:11
  I wish you all the best as well.