Latest / Gimbal Podcast / Head of Team Jesser: How I Operate Multiple 1M+ Subscriber Channels At Once

Transcript

Head of Team Jesser: How I Operate Multiple 1M+ Subscriber Channels At Once · Gimbal Podcast

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Dan Lambert runs second channel strategy for Jesser, one of the biggest basketball creators on YouTube with over 36 million subscribers on their main channel.
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I learned so much from Dan.
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This was an awesome interview.
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Let's just get right into it.
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I have that you were from age 11 to 14.
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You were a freelance hustler selling thumbnails, making Minecraft renders.
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Take us back.
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I'm going to have to add that to my LinkedIn.
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I think 14 year old hustler.
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That sounds really, sounds really good.
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but yeah that's that's true um i've always been a fan of of youtube always been really creative kid
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and youtube is something that i think i started watching around 2010 2009 used to love original
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smash ray william johnson freddy w yugs cast all these big minecraft creators and i got a lot of
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inspiration from them and that's what really made me want to you know become a youtuber but
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becoming a YouTuber isn't as easy as working behind the scenes.
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And back then being a YouTuber was something that was kind of frowned upon.
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You know,
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it wasn't as cool as,
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as it is now.
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So I just started finding,
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finding ways to make money online,
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whether it was video editing.
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I remember I was making Minecraft thumbnails and selling them for $2,
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50 a piece.
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And I was like 13,
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14 years old.
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And so,
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you know,
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when,
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when $50 hit your PayPal account at 14,
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like you feel like you're at the top of the world.
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and it was like the best feeling ever.
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And I really just built up on that,
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tried myself at so many different things
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around the YouTube world
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and eventually found my way into working with Azzyland
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as I was finishing up high school
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and started working as a creative director,
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doing a lot of the video ideation,
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script writing, thumbnail ideas.
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And I really learned like the most
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that I know now through Azzyland.
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She was the biggest female creator
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at the time.
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We were doing reaction videos and also in real life videos.
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How did you get connected with her?
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Did you reach out or did she reach out?
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Yeah, it's a great question.
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A lot of people ask me how a lot of these roles and opportunities
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happen.
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And for myself, it's been through Twitter.
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Twitter was always like this community hub for
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creators.
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So I love following all these big creators.
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And one day, Azzy Land just tweeted
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out that she's looking for for more help uh we worked together for three years it was just really
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really very surreal and life-changing experience for me okay so shifting to jesser now you don't
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touch the main jesser channel at all you run the second channels i can run you through the channels
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that we have now because it's actually getting kind of you know we're expanding a lot on the
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world for us yes yeah so we have the jesser main channel which is the the staple that's the baby
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that's you know what everything around the jessica brand revolves with then we have the team jessica
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channel which used to be jessica react team jessica channel was you can think of as a group channel
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you know four main characters including jessica just having fun challenge videos then we just
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launched the jessica gaming channel which i run and operate now that's just jessica we try to have
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fun collaborations with other roblox and gaming creators and then top videos channel is where we
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upload our compilations.
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What we call compilations is say we have a series of videos testing viral
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basketball products, and we've done six of those videos.
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We stitch them together into one, one hour
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long video, and we call that a compilation.
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We used to post it on our second channel,
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but now we made a dedicated channel just for those compilations.
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Okay.
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Lots of questions.
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Maybe first walk us through what your day-to-day actually looks like.
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Yeah, at the minute, we're trying to really maximize how much we're recording for the gaming channel.
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We just launched it this week.
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We've launched two videos already, and we want to really go as fast as we can.
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So a lot of my time now is spent on ideation, trying to figure out what is viral in the gaming space, Roblox specifically.
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and it's something that I've really had to learn pretty quickly over the last few months
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gaming works very differently from in real life content it moves so quickly trends change and then
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outside of outside of gaming I'll also be you know still running the top videos channel making sure
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that we're uploading on there consistently helping on thumbnails and a lot of it is also the
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operational side too which I think a lot of people don't talk about or also don't realize the amount
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of work that goes behind the scenes to to run the channel making sure that people are getting paid
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making sure that you have you know it's tax season in america making sure you have your the w9 forms
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from from everyone there's a lot of administrative work that goes behind the scenes as well and we
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have a lot of really great relationships with with youtube with platforms as well so my job is also
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just to to stay on top of all the behind the behind the scenes stuff as well and really making
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sure that we're we're staying like tapped in uh on the latest things happening and making sure that
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we're we're always improving and we're always trying to to improve our videos whether it's
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you know there's some new thumbnail trick that's that's that everyone's trying to to do right now
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like i'm always trying to stay connected with people in similar positions as me with other
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big creators and really just trying to trying to learn from other people as well i imagine jesser
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is incredibly busy.
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How does he split his time between basketball, gaming, and all of his other
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responsibilities?
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And how did you decide that he could actually take on this new initiative?
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That's a great question.
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I've been working with Jesse now for four years, and his time has become
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more and more limited.
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As he's become a bigger creator, there's, you know, more opportunities
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He's coming at him every single day.
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And at a certain point, you just have to say no to things.
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And that's really been a big thing that as a team, as a company, trying to do better at.
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Because every single person in the company needs Jesse, whether it's for a picture, whether it's they need him for thumbnail photos, or they want to film a short form video with him, or they need him for a long form video, or I need him for a gaming video.
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And we've been very careful at scheduling his time.
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We have someone on the team who helps us really manage the day-to-day of Jesse's schedule.
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And they work very closely with him to make sure that he's not double-bucked,
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making sure that we don't have a brand deal shoot scheduled over something else
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or a call or a meeting scheduled over something else.
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So we try to be very, very diligent with that.
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What made you sure that you could commit to this gaming channel?
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In terms of figuring out if this gaming channel is even worth it,
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We spent, well, I spent about a month just talking to other gaming creators and people
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who work behind the scenes, producers, modders, and developers who work with these creators
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trying to figure out, well, how much time do these videos take to record?
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Like what's the time commitment usually look like?
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And on the business side too, thinking about what are the costs going to be for this?
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So before we launch any new business, we do a lot of due diligence on making sure that
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we can actually pull this off.
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But the biggest factor for something like this is Jesse's excitement.
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If Jesse's excited to do something like this, and he's a gamer at heart in his free time,
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he, I think right now he's playing Ark Raiders.
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So, you know, a lot of people wouldn't think that he's a gamer, but he's really into gaming
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together with his fiance and his friends.
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That's usually the best thing that creators can do is when they're trying to launch something,
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just do something that you're actually passionate about and that you love doing.
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then it doesn't become a chore that you have to like oh you have to you know do two hours of
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gaming recordings today like it becomes fun it's it's really not difficult work is just fun for
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for jesse and for for the guys who help us in the gaming channel i hear that a lot that's that's
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basically the like number one reason of like whether or not people jump into something is
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like does the creator enjoy it the best second challenge are just you know passion projects for
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creators reaction content was really fun for three years but you know we've done 500 reaction videos
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and we you know jesse and we got tired of doing reaction videos there's only so many funny
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basketball tiktoks and there's only so many try not to laugh challenges that that you can do before
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it becomes repetitive and before you run out of things to try so we transitioned to you know
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passions that that i have that jesse has and we we all believe in these in these projects and
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And, you know, we put our role into making them successful.
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Is there a lot of audience overlap between your different channels?
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It's difficult to figure out whether there is a big overlap.
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But anecdotally, I'd say 50% of the audience is on the second channel, is probably also
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watching the main channel.
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But we also come across, you know, so many fans who we, who Jesse meets and we get to
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talk to, to them and their parents and they'll say, oh, like, I love your reaction videos,
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but they don't watch any of our main channel videos.
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So it goes both ways.
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And I'm sure that now with the gaming channel too, we're going to have so many new viewers and younger viewers too, because Roblox is a very young demographic.
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And I think there's going to be a lot of new viewers who we're going to find who will just watch us for Roblox content and who just aren't going to care about basketball at all.
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Is there anything you do to try to channel people from one channel to another?
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Yeah, so we've done end screen.
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We call it end screen swab, which is basically linking your end screen from your main channel and pushing viewers to your second channel.
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You can do it with like an actual call out and pushing people to watch a second channel video or you can just leave it very generic and people will just click on it and they won't even realize that they're watching a second channel video.
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We've done that before.
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We're not doing that right now with the gaming channel
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because we want to see how far we can go organically.
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But that's something that we've also considered
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for the gaming channels and the new channels.
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It's really a good way to bring viewers to your other channels.
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Other stuff that you can do is also just having
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your channel featured on the homepage.
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You can add my other channels on your YouTube homepage
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as one of the playlist tabs and people can watch it that way.
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okay pivoting a little bit i've heard you say most second channels fail what did they get wrong
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they think that it's going to be a lot easier and not as time consuming as it actually is to give an
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example of us launching a gaming channel if jesse had to figure out every last detail of gaming
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videos creative scripts if he had to be in the weeds of this this would not work second challenge
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really work best when you have great people running it for you and there's a lot of really
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great examples like ben azelart and stay wild they're a wildly successful second channel and
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it's very similar similar content styles as his main channel so you know he's able to utilize the
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same team for both channels but a lot of people just don't realize how time-consuming second
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channels are and you really like the way the goal that we had for jesse reacts and team jesse is
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So Jesse just shows up, he has fun, he records these videos,
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and then we send the footage to the editors
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and he doesn't have to worry about anything.
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And then he can focus his attention on his main channel,
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which is really his baby.
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He's really in the weeds with everything main channel.
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That's what most creators do.
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But they try to give that same attention to their second channels.
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And Jesse, he gives plenty of feedback
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and we have plenty of back and forths about second channel and gaming stuff.
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And he pitches ideas.
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so it's still his channel but he's just not as involved and the time sink is usually one of the
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big things that people don't realize and then the other part is they just don't realize how expensive
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it can be to run a second channel it's not as cheap as you think and often you're running at
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a loss as well when you're first starting out and a lot of creators just can't stomach the idea of
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losing money on their channels and they can't see past the first couple of months where yeah you're
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kind of eating a lot of the cost yourself, but eventually turns into a big business.
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But obviously
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when you're so busy running so many different things and creators tend to be just crazy hard
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workers working seven days a week, it's difficult to try to see beyond like the next couple of days,
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let alone six months down the line.
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If someone was launching a second channel or you just launched
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two second channels, what are three things that they need to get right?
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You need to have great
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people who understand the niche or the genre of content that you're trying to break into.
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You need
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to have great content ideas as well.
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And you need to really yourself understand the content to be
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successful in this.
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Jesse understands the Roblox games that he plays.
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If he hadn't played those,
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those videos would be an absolute disaster if he didn't understand what he's doing.
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So you really
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still need to be well versed into the content that you're trying to break into on your second
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channel um and then lastly i'd say you have to give it give it time and just really be consistent
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with something like this so many channels just aren't patient enough and aren't consistent enough
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there's so much magic that can happen on youtube if you just keep uploading videos and you build up
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a great back catalog of content because one day you'll go from you know getting a hundred thousand
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views or whatever your benchmark might be to getting like a million views a video and like
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we've seen that with with our channels and then once you've posted 100 videos 250 videos 500
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videos that back catalog just constantly feeds itself and that's really what you should be able
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to do with with all of your channels just create a back catalog of amazing content on your on your
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channels and just let it do its thing like youtube knows how to find viewers for for these videos so
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you just have to keep keep feeding youtube with with more great videos and you'll be
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rewarded for that.
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Going back to the not just second channels, but many channels fail.
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Is there like a time when you realize like this is time to give up or do you just keep going?
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Jessa Reacts was a good example where, you know, we made a lot of changes.
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We went from
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basically a dead second channel to relaunching it, running Jessa Reacts for three years.
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And
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throughout those three years, we've tried daily uploads, we tried putting compilations on there.
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And then we eventually transitioned away from daily videos to high quality videos and, you know, adding more After Effects animations.
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And then we niched down a little bit more as well.
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And we started adding more in real life aspects to those videos.
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But the views never really changed.
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We were kind of stuck at sort of 20 million views a month.
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And it didn't really matter what we did.
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It just, the views just wouldn't go any higher than that.
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So we realized that we found like, we found a good baseline, which is great.
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It makes for a very solid and reliable business.
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But if you can't have growth, like eventually something's going to give and those channels
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tend to die out.
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So that was also one of the reasons why we moved away from Jesse React is the fact that
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we just weren't growing and channels aren't growing, aren't, you know, sustainable long
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term.
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And that was one of the things that was kind of a tough pill to swallow for myself as well
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and for the team that, you know, these reaction videos are just not moving the needle anymore.
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They're not providing any growth.
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It's a great second channel.
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It's a great business.
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But, you know, how long can you keep doing this for?
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Can we do this for another year?
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Can we do this for another three years before it finally gives in?
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And we just, you know, sat down and made the changes that we did.
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How often are you like changing strategies?
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that's that's very common with creative people i find is just changing opinion changing what they
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want to do we're always very mindful of that because we're now i want to say we have 45 50
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full-time employees in the business so you can't just do what you want to do anymore you have to
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be strategic and you have to be careful with with making changes before we made the change from
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jessary actor team jessara we sat down and we looked at all the previous in real life videos
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that we had in the channel and we ran through the data we made sure we understand how much money
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this could make and we built out a budget and we you know we hit the budget last year as well so
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we're very careful and strategic in terms of figuring out if this is a financially sound
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business and if it's worth our time because if it's not we're just not going to do it we're
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we're at that stage as a creative business where you can't do things that just feel good just
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because you want to do it on a whim.
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You have to do things smartly and strategically.
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If you were giving advice to another creator that wanted to like change their
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content style, what would be the playbook?
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That's difficult.
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It's very, very difficult.
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And I feel that we found a little bit of dumb luck
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with the changes that we made.
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Going from Jessoreacts to a group channel team, Jessore,
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we already had in real life videos on the Jessoreacts channel.
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And that's something that
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I did and planned for from day one is having reaction content alongside in real life content
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so that if we ever did want to change and three years later we did change we would have already
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had that style of content on the channel that's difficult to do you know if you're doing a gaming
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channel and you're trying to throw in real life videos on there or a completely different topic
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that's just not gonna work so in that regard we got very very lucky with it because the audience
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just you know once we switched off the the reaction content on the channel we didn't really
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even see any comments asking where's jessory acts gone like people just naturally flowed into the
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new content and uh it was just a very organic transition so in that regard like i don't really
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have a great answer because we we got a little bit lucky but we also kind of planned for it but
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it was just a really great combination of of the two but for a lot of creators it's really you just
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have to be slow and steady and just experiment with other channels there's a lot of creators who
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launch secret second channels who you never hear about and they just kind of experiment on their
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theorist is really good at launching new channels the the people behind game theory they've done
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this so many times and they've really been able to build a great business behind all of their
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channels uh one of the things that we we've actually tried to try to follow from them is
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launching with multiple videos in the channel or you know not promoting your new channels until you
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have multiple videos on there for your audience to to binge and another thing as well is you can
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try new content on your existing channel you can always delete that video you can always private it
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it doesn't have to live there forever if it's a flop it's a flop doesn't matter learn from it
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move on you know perhaps read the comments and see what the audience reaction is but it's not
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you know it's not a life sentence you don't have to keep doing the same thing like you can just
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pivot and launch new channels and try new things if you if you want to it sounds like you have like
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multiple types of videos at the same time when do you know that that video is supposed to go on a
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second channel versus on that channel like how did you know team jesser was the same channel and not
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a new channel and then the second question are like what are things you should definitely not do
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when starting another channel?
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So in terms of knowing which channel to post on,
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that can actually get quite tricky
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because sometimes the videos are just main channel worthy.
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They're of the quality that you would expect
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from a creator's main channel.
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Our big differentiating factor was
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the Jesser main channel was always about Jesser himself
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and the second channel was Jesser and friends.
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So we would have multiple creators
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as sort of characters in those videos.
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So that was a big differentiating factor.
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even though sometimes you would see multiple of Jesse's friends in his main channel videos as well
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but it was always a very clear group dynamic on the second channel and that's why those videos
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never would have really fit on the main channel and in terms of just the general pitfalls for
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second channels the difficulty of launching a new channel is you just don't know how it's going to
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how it's going to perform there really is no expectation and when we launched gesture gaming
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We had zero expectations of how it's going to perform.
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We obviously hope for the best, but you never know.
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We're prepared for failure as much as we are prepared for success and prepared to double
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down as soon as something does well.
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One thing that we do as a content team is we always double down on things that work.
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And that's one thing is as soon as you're launching a new channel, you're probably trying
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a bunch of different new formats.
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double down on the ones that work and go from there.
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We always have the 80-20 approach.
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So
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80% of the videos are just staple series that are repeatable formats.
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20% of the time we're
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experimenting with new series and eventually kind of shift through your list of series and you
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remove the ones that are the worst performing ones.
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What justifies a second channel?
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Like,
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why isn't everything just on one channel?
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Second channels tend to be for trying something
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different.
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And that was the case with those with the reaction channel.
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And then the group channel,
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there was a very clear differentiating factor between the two doesn't mean that you can't
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do everything on the same channel.
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And it can work.
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But usually, you just have to think about
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it from your own perspective.
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Like, would you want to watch very different types of content
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from the same creator on the same channel?
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Like, probably not.
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Okay, want to pivot a little bit to
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your team.
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So when you joined, there were six people on the team.
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Now there are 50 plus and
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dozens of contractors.
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Can you walk us through your team?
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So when I joined four years ago,
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it was six of us.
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It was me running the second channel.
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We had obviously Jesse, the creator
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himself.
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We had someone on the business operations side, someone running the main channel, and then
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two talent slash videographers to help Jesse on the main channel.
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So that was the core team.
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It really wasn't many people at all.
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And now we have the Jesser main channel, which has probably around 10 to 12 full-time people,
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plus half a dozen, a dozen contractors like videographers that help on the big shoot days.
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For the second channel, we had a very similar sized team last year as we did for the main channel,
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maybe a little bit less full-time people and relied more on contractors.
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now a lot of the people from that team have shifted into the main channel team to help
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create more main channel content then we have the gaming channel which is full-time it's just me and
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then i rely on a lot of contractors to help me on ideation on helping run roblox servers and make
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sure that everything's running smooth during the recordings thumbnail designers video editors we
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have a socials team as well which are the guys who run instagram tiktok and short form content for
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jessica across everything there's four people on that team and then we have a big bucket squad
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apparel brand which is jessica's clothing company we make shirts like the shirt that even i'm wearing
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today we make shorts backpacks so it's a huge operation to run a an actual e-commerce business
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and we're also in retail now at dick sporting goods too so everything just has grown very very
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quickly from needing marketing people to hiring a president for the company as a whole to having
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a COO.
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A lot of things just happen naturally and sometimes quickly.
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But for the most part,
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it's the content teams that we have are going to be very similar to what other large creators have.
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You have your video editors, you have your production people, you have your creatives.
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It's all very, very similar across the board.
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How do you know when someone's like full-time
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versus a contractor?
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Do they start as contractors or do you bring them on full time later?
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How does
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that look?
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What does that look like?
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It's a good question.
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I get asked this a lot because a lot of
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creators do struggle with hiring in general.
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And it is very, very difficult to hire in this industry,
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finding great talent, like everyone's fighting for the same people, whether it's video editors
24:15
or production people in LA, everyone's trying to out-compete each other.
24:19
So it makes it very tough.
24:20
in terms of finding knowing how to start people it really depends on the on the role sometimes
24:25
you just need someone boots on the ground full-time five days a week with you nine to five
24:30
making the videos happen and sometimes you just need to bring people on for a day so videographers
24:36
is something that we usually just hire out for for the day for a day right because we don't have
24:41
a need to have videographers for more than where jesse's shooting because jesse's as a creator is
24:46
obviously only in one place at one time so we have the same people that can be there with jesse
24:52
across everything that he does so we don't need multiple of the same role and then there's other
24:56
roles where you know you need a full-time creative right now we're hiring for creative writers
25:03
because we want people with us at the office just living and breathing youtube and understanding
25:08
everything that we do so that they can write the best possible videos for us they can ideate and
25:13
they can help us you know create magic with our videos but there really is no right or wrong answer
25:19
sometimes starting out with hiring a freelance is just great for your budget you don't have to
25:24
commit to someone working full-time with a full-time salary and benefits and all the other
25:30
stuff that goes into into hiring someone full-time you can just hire them out for for a week try out
25:36
see if they like it and see if you like it as well because sometimes it's just not a match and
25:40
sometimes you realize that actually I thought this is going to be a full-time role and it could
25:44
probably be just two days a week part-time or maybe maybe this person can work you know on the
25:48
weekends or something like that there really is no right or wrong answer so I would just recommend
25:52
that creators don't commit and think that full-time is the only option because it's not you can have
25:57
hourly workers you can have part-time you can have contractors you can have them internationally if
26:02
you don't need them to be in person with you then you know you can just hire someone from from
26:06
Europe and sometimes that even works better with the different time zones with video just for
26:11
example you know they can work during the night whilst you're sleeping and by the time that you've
26:14
woken up there's a video for you to to review so it can work both ways and it really just depends
26:20
on the role so you mentioned that a lot of people from the second channels shifted into the main
26:25
channel how often does that happen how often do roles shift around within within your ecosystem
26:31
I think this is the first time we've done it in a in a major way because we've pivoted away from
26:36
the second channel being like a real strong independent channel and we're now focusing
26:42
more efforts on the jessera main channel so this year there'll be a lot more uploads on the on the
26:48
jessera channel versus the second channel and what we want to try and do on the second channel is
26:52
really build and deepen the relationship with our core audience so having more vlog content more
26:59
personal jessera content because that's something that we found that is just missing from out there
27:04
because we've been so focused on making very YouTube optimized content that, you know, a lot
27:09
of the old school fans who have been watching Jesse for the last 12, 13 years, like they've
27:14
grown up and they remember what he was, the kind of content that he was doing way back in the day.
27:20
And we're trying to bring some of that back.
27:21
And we, you know, we posted an announcement video and
27:24
there's been a lot of excitement around that.
27:26
And the team shifted to the main channel and it's such
27:30
a easy and organic move as well because it's the same roles people are just doing the same job
27:36
nothing's really nothing's really changed and always where possible when we're making changes
27:40
we always just shift people into other roles within the company because you know once you
27:46
find great people you don't want to have to like replace anyone like it's that's a very very
27:50
difficult and time-consuming process so we always try to keep working with the same people and
27:55
majority of people who have been with us they've been with us for for a long time i've been with
27:59
the company for four years.
28:00
A lot of the folks on the main channel team have been there four or five
28:04
years.
28:04
And, you know, we really don't have many people ever, ever leave.
28:08
And I think that kind
28:09
of says a lot too about, about the company and about everything that we do.
28:14
What do you actually
28:14
look for when you're hiring someone and what is your hiring process look like?
28:19
I always look for,
28:20
it's, it's kind of difficult to explain, but there's a certain level of just YouTube understanding
28:25
and someone once you meet someone who just has the it factor you you usually know whether it's
28:32
a creative whether it's a video that's and you see see some of their their work you you can kind
28:37
of tell within the first first time you talk to someone whether they're going to be a right fit
28:41
or not i can run you through a couple of the processes that we do so for example for video
28:45
editors we usually use twitter and now as of like the last year we use linkedin and other hiring
28:52
platforms more like YT jobs and and some of the other platforms to to find people obviously we
28:59
post our jobs out to to those platforms you know sometimes have Jesse even make videos or like
29:05
tweet it out use community posts on our channel so I really try to broaden the reach that we have
29:11
and sort of cast the widest net that we can then we usually just look for video portfolios from
29:18
from the candidates and see if if the kind of work they've done in the past is is something
29:23
that matches with what we're trying to achieve if it is then we'll go to a trial phase where
29:28
we'll pay people to do a short you know two to three minute trial edit for us and we'll see
29:33
what their style is like whether they can adapt to our change and adapting to change is one of the
29:37
big things that we look for if you're not able to adapt to our style if you're not able to just
29:42
adapt in general and like learn quickly like it's probably not going to to work out because youtube
29:48
is a very fast-paced environment and you have to constantly be on top of it and constantly learning
29:54
learning new things because if you're not like someone else is going to overtake you and we
29:58
always look for people who are learning trying to improve and then if the video editors then
30:03
you know we like their their style we'll try a couple more videos as freelance and this is where
30:07
the whole freelance versus full-time conversation kind of happens we see if they're interested in
30:12
full-time or if they want to stay as a contract and you know we can guarantee them maybe one or
30:17
two videos a month that they're going to be working on at a set rate or if they want to be full-time
30:22
with us we can also offer full-time so it then kind of depends on what we're looking for and what
30:27
they're looking for as well you know you're trying to find the the common ground with in-person roles
30:34
those are truthfully quite difficult to find we're in the LA area so there's a lot of really talented
30:41
creative production people out here who have worked in and around Hollywood and also a lot
30:46
of people who work with big creators out there in the area as well but finding people in person is
30:51
so much more difficult than any remote roles because you you're also trying to find not just
30:57
whether they're good at their job but also whether they're going to be a good company fit because you
31:02
don't want to bring any bad apples into into the mix because it will spoil it for everyone so that
31:07
is a really difficult thing to to assess and figure out whether people are the right match
31:13
for the content team and and for the business because sometimes they can just be amazing at
31:18
what they do but they're just not culture fit and you don't want to have the two not really
31:23
working in sync with each other okay two quick follow-up questions from six to fifty how many
31:28
of those were you involved in as far as hiring and then how do you know when someone's not a right
31:34
fit?
31:34
Yeah.
31:35
So with the last question first, so it's, it's honestly really easy.
31:39
You just have
31:39
that gut feeling when you know that this person is in the right fit.
31:43
They're just not getting on
31:44
with, with people on the team.
31:46
It's not happened very often.
31:47
It's happened maybe a couple of times
31:49
over, over the years, because we are so careful with who we bring on board.
31:54
And we always try to
31:55
make sure that we have multiple people within the company who interview the folks so that we really
32:01
get a good temperature check on on the candidates that we that we bring on board because we wanted
32:06
to work out for the long term for for both ourselves and also for the candidate we don't
32:11
want to have to find someone else three months later six months later because it didn't work out
32:16
over the last four years I've probably hired around 20 people into this business some of them
32:22
are still working with us some of them have moved on to to other roles now a lot of those roles have
32:28
been remotely because obviously jessereacts was three years and then the second channel team
32:33
jessere was uh we've only ran it for for a year so we had less time to to bring more more people on
32:40
we've had a lot of different people in the company bring people on board and we've also just grown a
32:44
lot operationally where a lot of things aren't necessarily limited to to just my team anymore
32:49
they're kind of roles that cover bases across all the channels and then the apparel business as well
32:55
So they kind of end up being hired by our president or our COO.
32:59
So it really just depends on the role that we're hiring for, whether it's me bringing those people on board or whether it's someone else in the company.
33:05
And that's honestly a great thing as well that we have now is just the biggest support group.
33:09
And we're able to cast much higher quality nets and just bring greater people into the company now.
33:17
What would you say is overrated or underrated when you're looking to hire someone?
33:22
For me, as someone who didn't go to college, you know, only has high school education, maybe I'm a little biased, but college degrees isn't something that I personally necessarily look for.
33:32
For certain roles, it is important to have people qualified in their specific fields.
33:38
But for a lot of stuff that we have, given the example of myself, I'm completely self-taught.
33:43
Everything I know about YouTube, about business, about operating a large team is self-taught or taught by mentors and my peers.
33:52
That's just not something that I think is necessarily necessary in the YouTube industry.
33:56
You don't need a college degree.
33:58
And, you know, it's kind of difficult to know what college degree would you even get to work in the YouTube field.
34:03
So it's not something that I personally look for.
34:05
And it's just not important as long as you can learn on the job.
34:08
you'll be fine and then underrated i think is quite interesting is when someone when a candidate
34:14
already does social media themselves whether it's just making tiktok videos or they're making their
34:19
own they have their own youtube channel and they're actively practicing the skills that you
34:24
want them to do for your youtube channel so something that we actually encourage is for
34:28
our team to just make their own content as well like we have a lot of people internally in the
34:34
company who are you know small content creators themselves and are doing it quite successfully so
34:39
that's something that we encourage people because that way your your team and your employees are
34:43
doing the practicing and doing content themselves and they're able to apply that knowledge and the
34:47
things that they learn from their own content to their day job as well with us so that's something
34:52
that i think that a lot of creators and a lot of businesses are just not really looking for
34:57
and i'd highly recommend trying to find candidates who do content because they'll just have a much
35:02
higher understanding of how to make a good video.
35:05
I like that.
35:06
So you started running his channel
35:09
from the UK, right?
35:10
And then you just moved to California last year?
35:12
Yeah, that's right.
35:13
The
35:14
Just Reacts channel worked really well remotely.
35:16
So actually, our entire team was remote across
35:19
Europe, across the US, across the world.
35:22
We had people in Australia and India and Canada.
35:25
How did you make the remote work work?
35:27
What made you know it was ready to come in person?
35:30
It can be tricky because a lot of people struggle with not being able to see their employees in person and not being able to check in on everything that they're doing.
35:41
For us with the Reacts channel, it worked great because the whole channel was operating in a way that Jesse would record the videos, send the footage in, and we would handle the rest for the post-production side.
35:53
And same thing for the pre-production and the creative side.
35:56
There was just no need to have people move out to California to help with these videos.
36:01
Jesse can just literally turn on his computer, turn on the camera and just hit record and
36:06
start making the reaction videos.
36:07
But obviously, once you transition to making in real life content, we had to make the move
36:12
to an entirely in-person team.
36:14
The video editors are the only guys on across the company who work remotely to this day.
36:19
but everyone else for the most part is in person
36:22
because that's, you know, the production needs require that.
36:25
We're all in person.
36:26
So it wasn't really anything that was too difficult for us to do,
36:29
to transition through.
36:31
For myself, obviously, there's a whole visa process to make the move.
36:35
I wish it was an easy process to navigate,
36:38
but unfortunately it's not.
36:39
And then once I was already in LA,
36:41
we had to obviously build out a team in person, find contractors.
36:45
Thankfully, we were able to rely a lot on the main Gesture Challenge team
36:49
to help us with this.
36:50
We had a great network of people who we were able to tap into and who have
36:53
just been fantastic.
36:55
And we hired a few new people as well into the team.
36:58
So it took a little bit of
36:59
time, but we got there.
37:02
We got there in the end.
37:03
What would you tell someone who's trying to get
37:06
a role like yours, especially someone who doesn't have like a college degree or a traditional
37:12
background?
37:13
It's difficult.
37:15
There's a lot more of these jobs out there available, but it's also
37:18
are getting very competitive and there's a lot of channels poaching from each other they're trying
37:23
to poach the best uh the best people the best thing you can do is promote yourself uh be active
37:28
on linkedin be active on twitter be proud of the work that you're doing and show it off to the
37:34
world like scream from the rooftops because no one else is going to be ever as proud of of your
37:39
work as as you will be and no one ever is going to be the biggest champion of you then then you're
37:44
going to be for yourself.
37:45
I highly recommend just a lot of self-promotion and being active.
37:49
Another thing is also going to events and networking because that's where a lot of magic
37:52
happens.
37:53
There's so many roles that we've been able to fill purely because we have a wide network
37:58
and we're able to tap into, you know, more creators who perhaps someone has left a certain team.
38:04
And
38:05
then, you know, those people get recommended to us purely by the fact that we just happen to know
38:09
each other.
38:09
We've met each other at an event.
38:10
And even this podcast, for example, is happening
38:12
because we're all in a group channel together.
38:14
There's about 85, 90 people of us together
38:17
who just talk about YouTube and YouTube production.
38:21
And that's how this podcast happened
38:23
is just through networking.
38:24
There's so many opportunities that happen in life
38:26
through networking,
38:27
but none of that really can happen
38:30
unless you put the hard work in.
38:32
I've been hustling my way in the YouTube world
38:35
since I was 12, 13 years old,
38:37
trying to find my way through.
38:39
And now finally it feels like
38:42
you know, everything has, has come together, but for the longest time ever, like it didn't feel
38:47
as stable as it does now.
38:49
It felt like things could just fall through at any given moment
38:52
because there was no industry to look out to and realize, Oh, like, you know, if this doesn't work
38:58
out, like I can go to this other creator that just wasn't, wasn't something that existed.
39:02
But now
39:03
I can see that there's so many more opportunities out there.
39:06
So it really gives you that certainty
39:08
that this industry is growing and things are moving in the right direction.
39:13
And it's really where media and where everyone's trying to move.
39:18
There's a lot of people from traditional media as well who are interviewing with us
39:22
and who, you know, I've interviewed them as well.
39:24
And things aren't going great in Hollywood, unfortunately.
39:28
And the money is very clearly moving to the creator economy.
39:31
And that's, you know, it's very clear that that's the future.
39:34
So it's never too late to start.
39:36
It's never too late to be trying to find your way into this industry.
39:40
So I would highly recommend that if this is something that you truly want to do, just
39:44
go for it.
39:46
Shoot people a message.
39:48
I get messages on LinkedIn all the time, and I try to help people where I can with roles
39:54
if we have them internally.
39:55
So it doesn't hurt to ask.
39:57
It doesn't hurt to try.
39:58
What is changing in this space that you feel like we should be paying attention to?
40:02
AI has been used as a buzzword a lot.
40:06
and I think people haven't truly realized the good that it can do.
40:09
A lot of the thumbnails that we make, for example,
40:12
we use a lot of AI-generated backgrounds, a lot of AI-generated assets
40:16
and it's honestly made the thumbnail-making process so much easier for our team
40:22
and for the contractors who we work on thumbnails with.
40:25
Same thing with video editing.
40:26
There's a lot of just great AI tools that have been helping us a ton
40:31
and has made processes a lot easier.
40:34
And I think that's only going to keep accelerating.
40:37
And 2026 is probably going to be another year of AI, but AI, like actually useful AI felt
40:44
like there wasn't, there was a lot of just slop AI that was coming out there with features
40:49
that no one really wanted to use.
40:51
But now it finally feels like we're actually making, you know, people are making software
40:55
that people want to use.
40:56
And it's, it's helping us a lot.
40:58
We use AI across script writing, thumbnails, video editing.
41:03
It literally covers everything that we do now, and it's helping us work more efficiently and also create content faster and more content as well at the same time.
41:12
We're able to just increase the quality and the output.
41:16
I feel like this could transition into a whole other podcast.
41:19
Definitely.
41:21
Is there anything that you do not use AI for, like lines that you don't cross with AI?
41:27
obviously you want to be careful with what you upload into into ai so you know don't ever upload
41:32
any of your any of your documents and into there because you don't know what's going to happen to
41:36
the data but outside of outside of the the obvious um you know obviously for production
41:41
it's still all entirely in person that's a difficult thing to to have any ai help for uh
41:48
we have a lot of amazing production people videographers production assistants on the
41:55
on the team and you know they do amazing work but even for them like some of the you know if we're
42:00
designing something like they'll be able to use AI now for for design work but you still have to do
42:05
all the physical the physical work yourself so it's a very useful tool and it's honestly does
42:11
begin to touch like literally everything so it's kind of kind of hard to to avoid it at this stage
42:17
who is a creator you're paying attention to I'm a big consumer of of YouTube and something that
42:24
I've really been focusing more on over the last few years is not necessarily the creators, but
42:28
the businesses that creators are building.
42:31
Think about Brian Trahan's Joyride, Jessa's Bucket Squad
42:34
Apparel, and we're launching more exciting stuff this year as well.
42:37
So the business side of things
42:39
is really where I think a lot of creators are still not paying enough attention to and launching
42:45
their own businesses that are going to last beyond their career as a creator.
42:51
You see Mr.
42:52
Beast launching so many different successful businesses across completely different completely
42:57
different niches he's launching a bank he's launching a mobile network this year there's
43:02
so many exciting things that creators are able to do and the creators who are breaking down those
43:07
barriers like I have so much respect for them because it is really really difficult and I have
43:11
no involvement in Bucket Squad Apparel at all but I hear things I see things and I just understand
43:16
how difficult it is to run those businesses.
43:21
And I think there's going to be a lot more of those creators
43:24
who I personally try to pay attention to
43:26
and just see who's doing what behind the scenes,
43:29
because that's where I think it's really interesting.
43:32
Great interview.
43:33
Thank you very much.
43:34
Thank you for being just a great interviewer as well.
43:36
I really, really enjoyed this.
43:38
This was fun.
43:39
And that's it for today.
43:41
We have new episodes every week, so subscribe if you haven't already,
43:44
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43:46
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43:48
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43:49
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43:51
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