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REGIFTED: TURNING STRUGGLE INTO SCALE WITH DHAR MANN · The Media Odyssey

• Dhar Mann: [00:00:00] Yeah. You know, I used to have my hair kind of like you had before. I don't know if you've seen like some of my earlier. Evan Shapiro: It was gray and you dyed it black? Welcome back to the Media Odyssey Podcast. That is Marion Ranchet. Marion Ranchet: And that is Evan Shapiro. Evan Shapiro: And we have a very special episode with one of the biggest creators in the world on the podcast today. But before we get to that, Marion, creators were basically the center of the story at Cannes Lions. Is that what you thought? Marion Ranchet: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think Pedro, who we, Pedro Pina from YouTube, who we had on a pod said the discussion around creators wasn't so much the why, but the how. And we had an amazing opportunity to spend some time with Amelia [00:01:00] Dimoldenberg from Chicken Shop Date. And, I'm sure you met a ton of other folks. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, that's exactly right. And those episodes with Pedro and Amelia are available right now and we're really lucky to continue that narrative, that story with one of the biggest creators in the world: Dhar Mann. Dhar, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for being here. Dhar Mann: Thanks. Appreciate you having me. Marion Ranchet: So I think to get us started, I have to say when I looked you up and did my research I was actually surprised to see your backstory. And let me explain. I feel like a lot of folks in our industry, whether you're talking big media or creator media, they always wanna show the shiny side of things. Oh, look how great I've done, et cetera. And you are really showing yourself from a place of pain. Do you wanna share a bit more about that? To the extent that you are comfortable because it feels like this is fueling what you've been doing these last few years. Dhar Mann: Sure. I think part of the struggle with social media is that we're all seeing just polished [00:02:00] versions of everybody's life. But if you look at any great story, let's say I was to tell you a classic Disney story of a prince who decided to go rescue the princess. So he took a car ride, went to the castle, put her in the car, and took her home. The end. That wouldn't be interesting. What makes any story interesting is that he went in the car and on the way, he, his car broke down. He had to go by foot, then a storm hit and then when he gets to the castle, there's a dragon flying around and like breathing fire, like trying to destroy him before he can rescue the princess. And then right at the very last second, he prevails, right? That is what makes any sort of story worthwhile. And if you've watched a Dhar Mann story, we tell a hero's journey. It's like the classic stories of somebody who has some sort of dream of something they want to accomplish and then they struggle on that pathway to realizing their dream. But then during that struggle, [00:03:00] they find something beautiful, they learn a lesson that they needed to learn. Some door at the last second opens, some moment happens that kind of turns their life around. And that's the life experience that so many of us share. And so what my superpower is is that I just lean into the struggle because I think those are the real human moments. And I certainly would be a hypocrite if I didn't talk about my own struggles and my own journey. So that's how my whole content journey started was just telling people that, Hey, I am a guy who has made a lot of mistakes in my life, and here is what I've learned from them, and here's how you can learn from them too. And by the way, failure isn't final unless you allow it to be because even in our hardest moments, there's growth opportunities that we can learn from. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. I love that. I mean Evan, you and I, what we're doing, it's coming from a place of pain too, right? In different ways. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. No, I was fired. I was very [00:04:00] publicly fired from my last gig, the last job I had, and I've written about that a good deal. Marion has written a good deal about your own personal difficulty. Marion Ranchet: Corporate burnout. We can put a name on it. It's okay. I'm embracing it now. Evan Shapiro: And crucially, we both converted ourselves to creators. You too. You weren't raised in the studio system or in Hollywood, in the media Hollywood system. You were in another industry and then you made this move into content creation. Yes? Dhar Mann: Yeah, that's right. I've never taken a film class. I've never taken a writing class. I just learned by trial. And my first scripts, I actually used to write on napkins. How I got into live action filmmaking was by complete accident, I didn't even know it was called live action filmmaking. Evan Shapiro: Oh, how, yeah. So how did, like, how do you accidentally stumble into live action filmmaking? Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Dhar Mann: So I know we're not going in order here, which is totally fine. Evan Shapiro: That's fine. Dhar Mann: Jump around. But you know how this whole journey started was that [00:05:00] again, I was just somebody who went through different hard times in my life and by the time I turned 30 years old, I just found myself at the lowest possible point. I was dealing with anxiety, I was dealing with depression, I had health issues, I had a fresh relationship breakup. I was having family problems and I was $600 away from getting evicted from my apartment. That was the last money in my bank account. And so the only thing that got me through these hard times was reading inspirational stories of entrepreneurs, founders, athletes, musicians, anyone notable that had big dreams but really stumbled on their pathway to success. One thing that I came to find is that failure was not just a part of success, it was a prerequisite for success. So that gave me motivation that if other people that we look up to had failed multiple times in their life on their way to success, that perhaps my [00:06:00] story was the same and that I was just on my failure chapter and that wasn't the end of my story. So that inspired me to keep going. Eventually I found success through other industries and businesses, but I always kept thinking about how there must be other people that are struggling out there, similar to how I was in my thirties, trying to figure out how to still push forward despite all the hardships that they've gone through, all the bad days. So it began with me just talking to camera, my content journey. I wanted to speak to that person that was struggling. I started speaking to camera and just giving people life advice. Hey, you've survived 100% of your bad days so far. Today will be no different. And it was just a conversation, and that content was getting no views. And it's one of those things Evan Shapiro: That's not your channel. Dhar Mann: It was a learning lesson, right? Evan Shapiro: You're on your channel, but you're not vlogging on a daily basis, right? That is not what you make. Dhar Mann: So failure again has just been a [00:07:00] consistent aspect throughout my life, and even when I started my content creation journey, because guess what, nobody's first idea ever is the one that. Evan Shapiro: Marion and I both have failed as many times as we've ever succeeded on ours as well. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. You more than I, but it's a discussion play. Dhar Mann: Yeah. So you have to go through a lot of different iterations. And as I was talking to camera, I kept at it trying to give life advice. It wasn't working. My wife says something to me that really stuck with me. She's like: don't tell people, show people. So that was in my mind and as I was writing a script, again on a napkin of what I wanted to say, I started thinking about how I could show this differently outside of me talking to camera. And I was writing a story about infidelity. Again, we talk about, we touch on relatable topics that everybody has some experience with in life. And so my point about infidelity in the story was that it can start with seemingly innocent acts where one small thing can [00:08:00] lead to the next. So I was writing a story about how a guy was scrolling Facebook and he happens to come across a post of his ex while his wife is in front of him with her back turned towards him cooking him dinner. And now he's debating if he's gonna this post or not. And then I was gonna go on to tell a story of how that snowballed into something much more serious. As I'm writing this, I happen to look over and my brother-in-law who is visiting me happens to be sitting at the kitchen table on his phone, scrolling Facebook and my wife's friend was in front of him cooking something in the kitchen with her back turned towards him. And I was like, if this isn't serendipity, I don't know what is. So I rush over and I grab my one employee that I had and I was like, I asked my brother-in-law and my wife's friend, is it okay if I include you guys in this story? Are you down to be in this video? And they're like, yeah, sure, what [00:09:00] do we have to do? And I'm like, nothing. Evan Shapiro: You have to cheat on your wife. Dhar Mann: I probably should have disclosed that in hindsight, I didn't know that would be the video that blew up. But yeah, sure enough, I go and I narrate the whole story as they're just doing these actions that they were already doing. And that was my first video. Evan Shapiro: That was the first one that blew up? Dhar Mann: To make a million views. And so what's funny about that is my camera equipment was just an iPhone. My studio was actually a studio apartment and my actors were actually just like my brother-in-law and family friends. So later I came to find out that that was considered a live action film because I had no idea. Evan Shapiro: And it exemplifies something, which is this new era, this new era of creatordom is one of the key tenets is test and learn. You tested straight to camera vlogging. It didn't work. You tested by accident to a certain extent by serendipity, [00:10:00] by fate. Call what you will, kismet. You tested live action narrated by you and the combination blew up, but that AB test showed you the pathway. Had you not had the repetition up until that point, you wouldn't have had a point of reference to benchmark against, and you wouldn't have tested this very out of, this was a leap, right? So it is one of those key things is that you can't have a fear of finding out, you have to be brave enough to try something and fail. Dhar Mann: And by the way, there was about 10 other iterations in between those two formats, that has skipped over. So you're absolutely right. Evan Shapiro: And that goes to, so now you've built something, when you look at the top 50 creator channels on YouTube in the US or Top 50 channels, not creator channels, top 50 channels in the US, you're there, you stand out. Yours is one of the, what I would call the only scripted non-studio, non Hollywood studio based platforms out [00:11:00] there. I know, I understand how you got there now, which is a amazing, but how do you make the economics work? Because you're not straight to camera like Rhett and Link sitting in the same studio every single day. You have multi characters, you have a much larger operation. The in and outs of expense and revenue are much more diverse. How does that work? Dhar Mann: Great question. So I'll start off with the story. I'm a storyteller. I had a friend of mine who is a big time Hollywood producer, and he's thinking about going into YouTube now. So one time I was having lunch with him and he's like Dhar, I figured it out. I'm gonna start this YouTube channel. We're gonna do narrative scripted content and by the way, I went out and I raised a million and a half dollars in order to do 32 episodes, and I was like, I was so excited about everything you said up until you told me that you raised money and you already have 32 episodes planned out. Because the way that YouTube and creators have found [00:12:00] success is by bootstrapping, staying as scrappy as possible, and then learning from every piece of content that they put out. If I took my entire life savings and put it into one video early on and inevitably that video did not work just like every other creator's first video, I would've just spent my whole budget. Then I'd be done. Or if I had planned all 32 videos that I was gonna come out with to be one format, right? And never took an opportunity to actually listen to comments, learn from my community, look at my analytics and see where I had falls in retention rates or why my click-through rates weren't as high as possible, I never would've succeeded. So the reason that creators have succeeded is because they do things the opposite way of traditional Hollywood where they actually just stumble from failure to failure, trying to figure out what is gonna finally click, and then when you [00:13:00] find something, that's when you scale up. So for us, we're very fortunate that all of our videos get millions of views not only on YouTube, but our content works across every platform. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, you're big on Facebook as well. Dhar Mann: Correct. Marion Ranchet: TikTok. Dhar Mann: We had over 600 million long form views on Facebook last month. So we're the largest creator on Facebook. And our content also works on Spotify, on TikTok, on Instagram. So we have a format that works everywhere. We do different cut down versions of that content. It's, if, you have to start again being very scrappy even when you start to scale, we never lose sight of how things started. So even now with our big studios Evan Shapiro: You gave up your office. Dhar Mann: Yeah, I gave up my office as an example. I'm in my wife's office right now, right? Because we're trying to stay scrappy, but we have about 200 employees, 125,000 square foot of studio space. We employ over 1,500 actors every single [00:14:00] year, but our cost per minute of production is actually going down as opposed to going up, which is the opposite of what you're seeing in traditional storytelling. So we still do things at a fraction of the cost of traditional media, and because we are now generating millions of views and having cross platform success, the economics make sense for us. But if you look at a traditional studio who's trying to create for YouTube. They come in thinking six to seven figure budgets per episode, where it's no, you have to spend somewhere around a thousand dollars per minute to create scripted content, not 10,000 or even a hundred thousand per minute that Hollywood is used to. So it's about staying scrappy and also getting formats that get a lot of views, ideally cross-platform. Marion Ranchet: No, but so you are saying, you are doing one. Well, at least at first, your advice was to do one video at a time, right? This is how [00:15:00] you've built the, your studio. But is it still possible right now to operate like that? And so what's the cadence? How many episodes are we talking are you, do you have different genres you cater to? I'd love to understand a bit more. Dhar Mann: Absolutely. In the beginning we used to put out one three minute video every single week. And now we're at the point where we put out about five hours of content, premium scripted content every single week. We have eight full-time production crews that are shooting around our 65 plus sets here in Burbank. And we actually plan to double our output by the end of the year. So it's one of those things that you have to nail it before you scale it. And so it took us a long time to try to figure out exactly what that formula was. Like a lot of traditional creators, a lot of the roles to make this successful depended on me. I was wearing a lot of different hats. I was [00:16:00] fortunate early on to remove myself from camera. So I never had that issue, but I still had the other issue that I was in charge of the creative, I was in charge of producing, I was in charge of reviewing every single edit and choosing the packaging. So I was limited. Evan Shapiro: And the ad partners too? Yes? Dhar Mann: Exactly. In every aspect, I was pretty much the lead on. So I was the biggest limitation for us to be able to scale. I ended up Marion Ranchet: You were the bottleneck. Dhar Mann: I was the bottleneck and it, and the craziest thing happened. Everything you know in life in some way is either a blessing or a lesson. I truly believe that. I ended up having really bad health issues a couple years ago during COVID, where I ended up in the hospital. My daughter ended up in the hospital. It was a very tough time and a doctor told me quite sternly, you have to slow down. You're doing too much. 'cause I was burning myself out working, [00:17:00] 18 hour days in my bedroom. I would be alternating between coffee and energy drinks. I had no work-life balance. And it wasn't until a doctor came in and said, you have to slow down that I started delegating more responsibilities and empowering my team. And naturally as a creative, that's the hardest thing in the world, to let go of the reins a little bit. And for the first six to 12 months we did, as I expected, experience downward growth. And that was very challenging for me to see. Our videos were getting less views and I wasn't involved in every single creative decision, and there were decisions being made that I wouldn't have agreed upon. But after the first year of that, something incredible happened. The team actually started really learning how my brain was working and not only was able to figure out how to do the creative, but figured out how to level it up and do things that I wasn't even capable of. So from there, we actually started new [00:18:00] genres of content. We went into horror, we went into action. We went into comedy, we went into romance, like we were able to bring more opinions to the rooms and more life experiences that everyone had. So now we had a very diverse group of storytellers. So we are continued to expand in different genres. We started creating episodic content where we now have our own Evan Shapiro: Serialized. Yeah, right? Dhar Mann: Yeah, exactly. We have our own IP that we've developed, and a lot of this IP has been developed from the team. We've gone into feature length movies. We actually average about 40 million views on any feature length video that we've put out, and we have Evan Shapiro: How many features? How many features have you put out? Dhar Mann: We've put out two so far with plans of expanding more, but like how are Evan Shapiro: Exclusively on YouTube or on YouTube and Facebook? Dhar Mann: Yeah, I would say about 80% of our views for our features have been on YouTube just because every one is different. Evan Shapiro: Do you mind me asking like, how many views has one [00:19:00] or either of those features gotten off the top? Dhar Mann: Yeah, it's anywhere between 25 to 40 million views I would say. Again, Evan Shapiro: So how do you, so how do the economics work there? Is that purely a programmatic ad sale? So the fill in there is enough of a split with between you and YouTube and then you and Facebook. 'cause you also do a lot of video on Facebook to generate enough income to, 'cause you are, you're driving down the price of content creation. Or you were at Cannes lion. I saw you schmoozing the hell out of the brands themselves. Boy, you are top notch at that. And by the way, I will say they were flocking to you not for nothing. And they had to get through your wife in order to get to you. How, what is the economic model there? How is that working and how much of it is pay for play or merchandise or any of these other revenue lever? Dhar Mann: Great question. So a hundred percent of our traction to date has all been organic viewership. And if you look at any sort of RPM line on YouTube or any platform. It looks like this. How do I describe this for the listeners [00:20:00] on audio and not video? It starts to flatten the longer the runtime goes. So in the beginning of the first like eight to 14 minutes I would say, you're starting to see the sharpest increase in RPM, but then after you get past the 14 minute mark, you start to see it flatten. So what we've done is we have figured out the perfect balance between optimizing for RPM and cost. Because in the beginning, your cost per minute for production is pretty much a flat line. Every additional minute costs about the same as the proceeding minute, right? But RPMs aren't that way in the beginning, the RPM is increasing much faster, but you get to an inflection point where it starts to drop. So for us, 22 minute episodes are actually our bread and butter, which just happens to be perfect for TV length episodes. So as we start to have conversations [00:21:00] with SVOD and FAST Channels, and they're like, can you create TV content? We're like, well, we've been doing this for the past several years. It just hasn't lived in the linear world or streaming platforms, but the content is the same, even though people think there's this big difference between YouTube and linear. Those worlds are blending. So for features, it actually doesn't make much economic sense currently, like we could do instead of a one and a half hour movie, it would make much more sense for us to do nine 10 minute episodes. Evan Shapiro: But that's why make the feature I guess as that? Dhar Mann: Yeah. Not everything we do is based on viewership and revenue. A lot of it is just based on why things started in the first place, which is our community. Evan Shapiro: Creative. Dhar Mann: Yeah. So we follow what our community wants and sometimes they take us in a direction that isn't great for business. But if it's great for our community, if it's great for Evan Shapiro: That is great for business. Dhar Mann: We'll still do it. Evan Shapiro: What is good for your community is great for your [00:22:00] business at the end of the day. Dhar Mann: Yeah, in the sense that it depends what our KPIs are, right? When most people think what is good for your business, they're thinking of dollars and cents. For us, when we think of what's good for our business, we think of our mission first. But of course, everything, the economics have to work out. And so if all we did was features on YouTube. At a certain point in time, those economics wouldn't make sense and we would probably have to stop. But we are at a point now, thankfully, that we can do lots of things that are just for giving back and listening to our community versus what make dollars and cents. Marion Ranchet: And so right now you are mostly working on an ad supported business model and we'll speak about the fact that you are you've announced launching a FAST channel in the coming weeks, months, but would you consider going behind the paywall? Dhar Mann: So like an SOVD type play? Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Dhar Mann: Yes. Interesting. Interestingly enough, we had an amazing meeting with, one of the biggest [00:23:00] players in the SVOD space yesterday. And they are very much trying to figure out how to catch up to YouTube now. Because YouTube has gotten so much of the traction and movement. For the first time ever, YouTube has surpassed every other streaming platform in terms of CTV viewership, they're at about 13% of US households versus Netflix is at 12%. And if you think about those business models, Netflix has to spend billions of dollars every single year to create content, whereas YouTube has to spend $0. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it has, YouTube has basically half the cost per minute of content. They still have costs for obvious reasons, but it's half that of Netflix's. Marion Ranchet: But no risk, right? They're not paying anything upfront. They're paying creators afterwards. So it's it's free business. Dhar Mann: You look at the most sustainable, biggest business models in the world. Airbnb doesn't own homes. Uber doesn't own cars, YouTube [00:24:00] doesn't own videos. They try to do videos and it didn't work out so well. So I think in the long run, platforms typically are the business models that win. And so now Netflix and other big media players are trying to play catch up as to how can they take a chapter out of YouTube's book. I, and it's unclear exactly what that looks like. I think the first iteration of that model was try to get creators to be talent on camera and tell creators exactly what to do, what to say and that clearly didn't work because then the audience is getting two different versions of that creator. Now I think it is much more collaborative. Like we've seen Amazon, do, you know, the first season of Beast Games with Jimmy for a hundred million dollars? Evan Shapiro: And Jake Paul on Netflix with the boxing match. And Side Men on Netflix as well. Dhar Mann: Yeah, exactly. And I think now platforms are seeing that there's clearly some sort of special magic sauce that [00:25:00] creators have, that they have a direct connection with their community and they need to lean more into what the creator thinks is gonna work rather than what the platform thinks. Evan Shapiro: I think though so we have a decent amount of listenership or viewership depending on where you consume the Media Odyssey Podcast, within the business side, the corporate business side, who we try to implore to convert and transform for this new era, but we also have a number of constituents who are producers. Own production companies, small, midsize businesses and they're struggling to transform those businesses. I think something that you said that Amelia also talks about as well, when we had her on the pod a couple weeks ago, is ownership. You own a hundred percent of your library, correct? Dhar Mann: Correct. Evan Shapiro: Worldwide in perpetuity, all platforms, as long as you continue to clear all the music and everything on the backend. Yeah? Dhar Mann: Yes. Evan Shapiro: And it sounds not like you're just a [00:26:00] creator who wants to produce stuff like let's say Orion Murphy or someone like that who knows how to make one big deal. But you're running the analytics on the backend, you're studying the RPMs and the conversion rate, compared to the cost per minute per episode and where the sweet spot is and a lot of other things that are just not where a lot of production companies know how to spend their time these days. But that's the table stakes these days, right? Dhar Mann: Yeah creators are running every part of the business. I think that's why YouTube, CEO Neil Mohan has said that YouTube is the new startup. And that's so true. 'Cause you could start with no budget, no resources, no camera equipment, no crew. That's the way that I started, just in my apartment. And that's how a lot of business startups actually begin. I have a friend who is a popular YouTuber. He is a very successful entertainer. And currently, he makes about seven figures from his YouTube channel. And then a big SVOD platform came in and [00:27:00] said, Hey, we wanna actually do a show with you and we'll pay you eight figures to stop making on YouTube and to start making for our platform. So he came to me and he goes, Dhar, I'm hopping off YouTube and I'm gonna go to this streaming platform because they're paying me a lot more. And I gave him a response that he didn't quite expect. And so I said, yeah, that's great. You're gonna make more. You're gonna get a bigger check from this platform. Without a doubt, that makes a lot of sense. But one thing that you should also keep in mind is that by building on YouTube, you actually own all of your IP. You are owning your community, you can create so many other business opportunities off of that IP that you have. And by the way, while you might be leaving YouTube because you're making seven figures there right now in order to make eight figures on the streaming platform. Your IP could actually be a nine figure business in a few years on YouTube if you keep going down that [00:28:00] path. So he ended up staying on YouTube and he's been absolutely crushing it. So I think that's one of the biggest unique opportunities of building on social platforms is that you continue to own a hundred percent of your content and IP. Evan Shapiro: And the good opportunity that you seem to be seizing is this FAST. So you announced a partnership with Samsung TV plus around a fast platform. Do you have any more details? First of all, it seems like that's a great opportunity to take your IP. You control your own destiny. Why Samsung? Dhar Mann: It's been incredible meeting with the team at Samsung where I've, I feel that they truly understand creators and they are tapping into our creative power versus just treating us like talent. So I think a lot of it just comes down to the chemistry and the collaboration that I've seen take place. Also the partnership with Samsung is much bigger than what has been announced so far. People are gonna be, I know our [00:29:00] fans are gonna be really excited once they find out like the full extent of what that partnership looks like. And of course Samsung's reach is huge. And to be able to have our videos preloaded in any Samsung Galaxy device gives us reach to new audiences that we don't take for granted. And they clearly wanna do more than just this initial batch of content that they're getting from us. So I think they also see the long-term vision. So I'm really excited about the partnership with Samsung. And we're also not restricted. We still have a SVOD play. As I mentioned, we still have a lot of creative freedom to do other deals with platforms that we're looking at right now. And one of the interesting parts about meeting with this huge platform yesterday that I didn't expect is that they also value our speed for production and our production cycle. So traditional production cycles take anywhere between a year to three years, let's say in Hollywood, when they asked us what our production cycles are running at, we said 30 days, and their jaws literally [00:30:00] dropped to the floor. So it was like, instead of you guys green lighting something that we're gonna give you two years from now, how about we just start giving you stuff 30 days from now, you start giving us insights and data as to what's working and then we can pivot and 30 days later we can make adjustments based on the information you've given us that now we're catering more towards a community and serving your platform. And they were blown away by that. And I was like, and by the way, if you like the first series, we can create four more other series within the next 60 days, that's how fast we run. And these platforms are not used to that kind of turnaround. So I think it's gonna be interesting to see how platforms start to respond to YouTube's dominance in the media landscape and the changes that they start to make. Marion Ranchet: What I'm hearing from you though is that, 'cause this world really likes exclusivity. And what I'm hearing from you and the advice that you gave, and I actually saw the LinkedIn post you did on that about [00:31:00] your your friend and and creator friend. So you wouldn't do that, right? You wouldn't go exclusive. You need to stay free to do whatever you wanna do. You're just gonna maximize putting content out there on as many platforms as possible, right? Dhar Mann: We're in a unique situation that even though we're called Dhar Mann as a company and as a show, really Dhar Mann can be broken down into many different shows because again, we have romance, we have action, we have horror. We actually have created serialized content that lives under its own IP. And so for us if someone was to come and say, I want all of Dhar Mann content to live like on our platform. There's just no world in which that would make sense. And it wouldn't even matter how much money is being offered. 'cause to me it's about the community and I like to meet people where they are versus trying to force them to go to a platform that they're not at. But I think what we could do is say, we will create specific [00:32:00] shows for you that reach certain audiences or under certain genres that we would explore exclusivity on. And those are the types of conversations that we've been having. And then we also have a library of almost 2000 episodes. Which, again, if you go to most creators, they don't have that deep library that we do that is constantly adding, like I said, we're adding five hours of premium scripted content. Evan Shapiro: But even if they do have the deep library, they're usually vlogs or straight to camera stuff. It's thousands of hours of content, but it has a shelf life, whereas yours is a little bit more timeless because it has a scripted nature and there's this, these larger themes at play across the entire library itself. I do think, my question on the follow up to that is you're gonna basically be a creator in the pure creator economy and play in the corporate economy and hop around where the economics for your business and the opportunities for your audience [00:33:00] intersect. Is that a fair description? Dhar Mann: Yes. Evan Shapiro: And so what do you think the new opportunities for yourself over the next, let's say couple of years, do you see live as something that you might explore? Do you see maybe broadening your definition of studio where you'll take other shingles? Like you'll create a, make a deal with another creator and bring them onto your studio model? 'Cause you are the new age, Tyler Perry. More so than let's say a Shonda Rhimes who's really just making content for one player as much as that is a studio per se. And it was a long question, but where do you see the new opportunities for you as you look ahead for the rest of this decade? Dhar Mann: Absolutely. It's a great question. Just one thing I want to quickly touch upon from the last convo because I know you said there's a lot of producers and folks within the industry that listen to your podcast. What advice that I would give for those exploring where to create content, which platform to create for, I would always say start on YouTube because that is the cheapest way [00:34:00] to create content and get instant learnings about what's working. And then once you finally come upon a format that makes sense. It makes much more logical sense to go to shop that IP you've already built to different platforms. And now you're not just coming in with the pitch, you're actually coming in with the series that exists with an audience. Exactly. So I just wanted to, add that extra color. But in terms of the future, there's really three opportunities that I am most focused on. Number one, we're in one of those special, unique moments where we still have only scratched the surface as to what's possible with what we're already doing. So for instance, we went from creating four original videos on Facebook every single week to eight original videos on Facebook and our revenue almost doubled. Our viewership almost doubled. Our subscriber growth almost doubled. So there's no reason that we're not just gonna continue doing more of what's [00:35:00] already working, which is the easy answer. Slightly different formats, new genres, new concepts but just doubling down on the existing success. Number two is we are now starting to go into the nonfiction world. Everything we do right now is primarily fiction driven, which by the way, is usually the biggest category in any media space anyway. But as we tell these inspirational stories that we make up, there's also so many true stories that are so inspiring. And so I've started a short form format where I go and I interview inspiring people and ask them their life story. That's going to transition to a long form podcast where I actually can sit down with inspiring people, get them to tell their real story, and everything creates a flywheel, right? So my short form content can lead to the podcast. My podcast can actually lead to the dramatization of the story of the person that I'm interviewing and so on [00:36:00] and so forth. So that excites me to go into the nonfiction space. And then the third thing, which I have not really talked much about publicly is that you look at any major player within the media space or in any industry and they have really risen based on acquisitions and mergers. And so Disney, right, wouldn't be the brand that it is today if it wasn't for Pixar and Star Wars and Fox, and all these other sub-brands underneath. Evan Shapiro: Marvel. Dhar Mann: So we're actually in active conversations to start to acquire other talent led assets and brand assets in the creator space. So to create more of that Disney umbrella where you have access to many different brands. All that cater towards a family audience that is still brand safe and aligns with our positive mission. Marion Ranchet: Sister brands. Love it. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, I think that, I think I was gonna say, even before you brought that up I definitely see you as the [00:37:00] Walt Disney of the creator era. The studio, the themes, a lot of the history as well. It's just it's interesting that you said that. Marion Ranchet: And your studio is in Burbank, right? Dhar Mann: Correct. Marion Ranchet: Coincide? Dhar Mann: Burbank Airport, which you'll probably hear airports, airplanes flying over all the time. Yeah. Evan Shapiro: So if you were, Marion and I are creators, and we do also have creators out there who are listening. You gave a really good, I think, example of how to change your development process. Using YouTube as the first rather than making a sizzle and taking out a pitching it, make an episode, put it on YouTube, test and learn. And if you're successful, you'll have a piece of IP to take out there. If there's a, if there's a piece of advice that you might leave the creators out there, fellow podcasters, fellow writers or creatives of any nature, how to succeed in what is a very difficult yet rewarding environment of the creator [00:38:00] economy. What would you, I know it's a tough question, but you've been really successful through, I think as you said, adversity as well. So what would you leave those listeners with? Dhar Mann: Throughout my life as we talked about in the beginning of this podcast, I have failed more than most people have. And when people ask what is my secret to success? I just say, I've failed more times than any other person out there. And each time I have just learned from that. That has helped me level up. And every one of those struggles I actually started openly talking about in my content and connecting with my audience based on my life experiences and my hardship. And so what I used to be ashamed about, right? My struggles actually became my superpowers. And this is a very common thing that you see with creators. So for instance, I interviewed another creator as part of my short form nonfiction series, and he was in medical school and [00:39:00] he was extremely just depressed. He was away from his family in another country. He was struggling with mental health and he goes one day and he is in a very dark place in his life. I'll just say that. He ends up in front of the Sydney Opera House and he is having the worst imaginable thoughts and two strangers came up and decided to ask him how he was doing. They saw the struggle in his eyes and they gave him a hug. Strangers. And that was such a magical experience for him that he came back and he told his family I have never felt the way that those strangers made me feel before. So now I wanna go out and make others feel that too. So he holds up a sign that says if you're struggling with mental health, hug me, and he is wearing a blindfold. So many strangers come up and just give him these like long, emotional hugs, and he is recording this [00:40:00] experience. That format ends up going super viral for him, where now he's one of the top creators who gets billions of annual views creating content that just helps people that are going through a hard time. So he leaned into his struggle to find his superpower. So that's my advice is like everybody is putting out a polished version of themselves where everyone is photoshopped. Everyone is so glamorous, everyone's wearing amazing clothes and such, right? If you really wanna stand out, dig deep into the parts of your own story, your own heart, your own struggle, and those are the moments that make you human, that people are gonna remember and figure out a way to create content around that. Because in a world in which AI exists, everybody is optimizing for click-through rates and doing what's best for the algorithm. The one thing that AI can never [00:41:00] replace is your story, your journey, your struggle, your emotions, and the more that you can bring that into any creative project that you're doing, even if it's scripted like mine, like my content, I think the more that you'll be able to break through and shine. Evan Shapiro: That's great. Marion Ranchet: Nothing to add. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, no, I don't. That is Marion Ranchet: What can you say after that? Evan Shapiro: I could drop my mic, I guess if you want me to. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. He needs to come every week. No, but yeah. Evan Shapiro: And just really quickly, I think that's what Mar and I have very much found for ourselves. The more Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Evan Shapiro: we are, the better off both of us wind up doing in our creator businesses. Dhar Mann: So have you done a LinkedIn post about like you were very publicly, I'm assuming you have, 'cause you talked about Evan Shapiro: I wrote about having cancer. Yeah. Marion's talked about her struggles with personal, the career path. Yeah. We've both been very honest about that. Yeah it's only, I think, deepened our relationship with the people who follow us. Right, Marion? Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I agree. A lot of people are [00:42:00] extremely nice to us because I think we, so there's two things I think we share a lot about ourselves, but we're also very generous with our ideas and what we do and et cetera, and we're really looking to educate and bring value to people, then entertain. That's why he has the hair. That's why the French accent, all of that. Evan Shapiro: It's a much, it's a much smaller version of what you have. I'm sure you're swarmed wherever you go. But, even in our world, we may not know everyone who follows us, and yet they definitely feel like they know us. And that deepens the relationship and it's just been a very rewarding experience how personal our relationships with our audiences. So I imagine what that must be like for you on what, how many subscribers do you have on YouTube? 29 million? Dhar Mann: On YouTube? Yeah. Across all of our channels we have just shy of 50 million. 'cause we have 34 channels. Our main channel, we have 25 million subscribers. Evan Shapiro: So do people come up to you like a religion when they see you [00:43:00] in the streets? Dhar Mann: It all depends. It's always interesting to me that I could walk into a room, if I go to Disneyland, sometimes there's a bigger line around me than Mickey Mouse. Evan Shapiro: That's amazing. Dhar Mann: Somewhere else where I can't even get inside, right? Because like they just don't know who I am. Marion Ranchet: They just don't know. Dhar Mann: For me Evan Shapiro: It does, but you're following stems from that authenticity. So it's been amazing to hear your story and get to know you over this hour. Yeah, thank you so much. Dhar Mann: For sure. And it all started with just trying to help one person going through a dark time. I never lose sight of that. When I was struggling to put out my first video, questioning myself with self-doubt and a lot of the things that anyone who's looking to create something does what got me over the hump was just remembering that even if only one person saw my videos, that would be worthwhile for me to pursue to help that one person have a better day. And so even now, I don't take that fan interaction for granted. Even if I meet one person who happens to be impacted. And it [00:44:00] sounds like this is happening to you guys. That's the whole soul of this all. We can easily get lost and the numbers and the spectacle. But just remembering that each person is human. Each person you know has feelings in a story. And if you can reach that one person that makes this journey worthwhile. Marion Ranchet: I love it. Thank you so much for coming. Dhar Mann: Yeah. And I love the cherry blossoms in your background by the way. My wife loves cherry blossoms. Marion Ranchet: Nice. So don't tell anyone, those are fake. They would never last. They would never last. Evan Shapiro: They have been consistently in that same spot in every episode. Marion Ranchet: For six months. Evan Shapiro: So I think anyone who has ever seen the YouTube. Dhar Mann: Gotcha. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. But this has been, Dhar, thank you so much. It's been great. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Hopefully we can spend some time outside the pod at some point. But thank you for spending this time with us. This has been the Media Odyssey Podcast. Marion Ranchet, where can they find your newsletter? Marion Ranchet: Streaming Made Easy on Substack. How about yours, Evan? Evan Shapiro: It is the Media, it is Media War and Peace newsletter also on Substack. Dhar you can be found [00:45:00] everywhere, including YouTube and Facebook and every other platform out there. Thanks for watching or listening. We'll see you next time.