Behind the Scenes of a Father-Daughter YouTube Channel | Jordan Matter | Digital Social Hour #54

And so last year at VidCom was the first year that they celebrated TikTok over YouTube.

Attendance was way down.

Meet and greets were way down.

How do you get a relationship if you're doing this?

If you can get people to watch a video that's a 20-minute video and you've told them a story about yourself, they are committed emotionally to you now.

That is, I think, what uniquely YouTube offers that TikTok and shorts don't.

Welcome to the Digital Social Hour.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

I'm here with my co-host, Charlie Cavalier, and our guest today, Jordan Matter.

Hey, Sean.

How's it going?

Great.

Thanks for coming in today.

Just got off the plane.

Where'd you come in from?

LA.

Okay, not too fast.

Easy ride.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'd love for you to explain your story to people watching.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Where would you like me to start?

The creator story?

The creator story?

I could give you a Cliff Notes version.

Perfect.

Okay, sweet.

I used to be a baseball player in college.

And then I finished that.

I was an actor in New York.

And I picked up photography because I was doing headshots for my friends.

And that took off.

So I built a business as a photographer for headshots in New York.

That was many, many years.

And I started photographing dancers.

And when I started photographing dancers, I came up with kind kind of a unique way to do it which was putting them in everyday situations but then enhancing that with dance so if you're running for a subway and a split leap and a full suit and briefcase kind of thing had never seen it before

and that was my first experience with

going viral or whatever you want to call it it was on Facebook it was before Instagram but it started taking off wow this is going to zip through things but ended up having a best-selling book that process took a couple years of taking those photos every day but eventually it became a best-selling book.

And then once I started working on the third book, I started posting those videos to YouTube as a way to kind of prove that the videos were that the photos were real because there was a lot of comments about how I photoshopped everything because no way they could get that high in the air.

So I started just posting these things.

They know this is real.

Look, this just happened.

But it was right around the time where it showed Dance Moms was off the air but still hot.

And I was using some of the dance moms stars in these videos.

So then people started watching those videos as a a result of wanting more of content with those with those dancers.

And I came up with something called a 10-minute photo challenge.

It's about five years ago.

10-minute photo challenge had never been done before.

Simply, I would go to a spot, randomly picked, see how many shots I'd get of a dancer in 10 minutes.

We'd be running through stores.

We'd be creating chaos, taking a lot of photos, and it kind of took off.

So for the next three years, I was taking photos of dancers and celebrities.

I would do Charlie D'Amelio, Addison Ray, whoever was the most popular person person that would let me photograph them.

YouTube channel started building a lot as a result of that.

But it was always reliant on the popularity of the person I was photographing.

So if that person had a huge following, probably I would get more views.

Nobody really cared about me that much, I don't think, other than I was, it was kind of like a talk show or like your show, right?

I mean, you're recognizable, but it's kind of about who you book and what you can bring out of them.

Same for me.

Can I get Charlie to do some crazy stuff?

If I can, a lot of people are going to watch it.

So that was a YouTube channel built totally on collaborations.

Every week I had to have a new collaboration.

That can kind of get exhausting.

And so my job was getting ghosted.

That was my job.

Everybody who I worked with ghosted me before I worked with them five, ten times.

What I learned about ghosting is, you know, I'm older, so usually you say things to people, but younger generation, ghosting is kind of a way of saying, no, I'm not really interested.

What other ideas do you have?

So I would just reach out a couple months later, not even acknowledge i just got ghosted say hey i've got a great idea then i started realizing actually it's about the benefit to the creator so i'd say okay this is how i can help you this is how much time it will take and this is how many views i anticipate it getting that started getting more traction so i would just keep reaching out keep building that

along this time i was spending a lot of time with my son because he was interested in youtube too so he would come with me my daughter a gymnast was not and I was missing her.

So whenever I had opportunity, I would put her in a video.

She was a gymnast.

She was little, cute, so she could was very bendy, so we could come up with photo challenges.

And then people started really liking her because we had a dynamic, and suddenly it was not just about me being a host, but me having a relationship with somebody.

And as I realized more and more, I had more fun working with her.

And she was really actually the most popular collaborator of all of them because we had a relationship.

So the last two years, the channel has basically evolved into a father-daughter channel.

And I've I've kind of put away the camera, and it's more about weekly adventures with the two of us.

Wow.

That was more of the cliff notes.

So you switched from photography to more videography now, then, right?

Well, I've always had a videographer, an editor, a partner who works with me.

His name is Sandy, but I stopped taking photos on camera as part of the challenges.

It was very limiting because we'd say, we have this great person.

Now, how do we incorporate photography into it?

That's very limiting if they're not flying through the air.

So in this case, it was like we have this great collaborative.

We still collaborate all the time with people, but now it's me and my daughter Salish and somebody.

But we don't have to worry about taking photos of them anymore.

So now it's just whatever story we want to tell.

Right.

And you guys just went to the kids' choice awards, right?

How are you?

We did.

That was fun.

We got to sit up on stage and

it was a blast.

Lots of energy.

So what has been the most fun of doing this with your daughter?

Because I feel like that's a rare dynamic.

You don't see

families that are doing this together.

What has been probably the hardest part about doing it with your daughter?

That's a great question.

She started with me regularly when she was was 11.

She's 13 now.

The hardest part is obviously making sure that it's healthy for her in the short and long term, emotionally, right?

I mean, there's a lot of nastiness out there.

And so now I'm suddenly putting my kid out there.

And she, and so the first thing we have to do is make sure that she's in charge of her own image.

That's really important.

And I think a lot of families might get caught up in this is how I want to project you.

And what I do is I say, do you like this idea?

So we might, the production team team might work all day on an idea.

And then we might decide, you know what?

This is great.

Tell her she doesn't like it.

And then we just

squash it.

We don't do it.

And we just give her another idea until she's happy with it.

So as somebody who, as the creator economy's, you know, been more advantageous in the last 10 years than probably when you started.

You were

one of the originals creating a content creator economy for yourself out of photographs in New York.

What has been the best and worst part for you as this new social media going viral sensation has occurred?

Has it helped your business?

Has it hurt?

Has it made it more difficult?

Or what have been the best things for you there?

Well,

it's a very difficult nut to crack because there's so many people trying to do it.

But if you happen to build an audience, if you're fortunate enough to do so, then the AdSense revenue that comes in can be great depending on how many views you get and what sort of audience you have and what sort of advertisers you have.

Again, to get back to your original question,

building a foundation of success on your kid

can be challenging.

And therefore, you have to be very aware as a parent that what you're doing is...

healthy for the kid because it's two ways right comes with opportunities so she has all these opportunities now people want to to work with her and she's building a platform and she can take it and go in any direction she wants, a platform that she has built herself.

On the other hand, if she's learning things about herself based on other people's perceptions of her, that can be unhealthy.

So we're always constantly, my wife and I, talking about it, monitoring her, talking, checking with her, making sure she still wants to be doing it.

Fortunately, we had a very successful channel before she came on board and she knows we do not need her for our success.

And I think that's a really important thing.

A lot of times the family channels, the kids know that, like, if they stop, the family's revenue is gone.

And that's insane pressure for anybody, but especially a kid.

So she's always known, if she's listening to this, say, I'm telling you again, say, but I tell her every day, just do it until you're not having fun anymore.

As soon as you're not having fun,

we'll be done.

I love that.

Full-time gymnastics.

She's a gymnast.

Nice.

And we'll be good.

You know, very lucky that I can say that.

So you have 15 million subscribers.

You get millions of views daily.

With that viewership comes a lot of hate.

How do you deal with negative comments and haters on social media?

We don't get a lot of it, but I'm sure it's coming.

It's like inevitable.

We have an unbelievably supportive base.

Just on Saturday, we did the first video with my wife.

She's always been camera shy.

And then what was starting to happen is people would

literally come up to her when she was with Salish and they'd say, oh, are you the nanny?

And she was like, this is kind of a bummer, but I don't really want to be on camera.

So, we finally did a face reveal of her.

She was very nervous, and there was like 15,000 comments of, she's so beautiful, she's so sweet, I love them together.

So,

there wasn't any hate of her at all, which we were all concerned about because you know, you build something up over years.

Salish is almost exclusively gets positive reinforcement, which is really great.

We monitor it because that's one of the big things, and we talk to her about it.

How will you feel if such and such happens?

You know, when there is a comment like that, she usually screenshots it and laughs at it.

Like, she'll say, oh, look at this.

Look at what this person said about me.

But so far, it's been really positive.

Nice.

Yeah.

Yeah, because when Dream did the face reveal, it didn't end well for him.

No.

He got a lot of hate.

It didn't.

And that's such a shame.

I mean, that's really brutal.

And I don't, I mean, I followed that.

I don't exactly know.

I think obviously so much of his mystique was that he didn't know what he looked like.

I think no matter what he looked like, it would just be a bummer.

Yeah, he could have been the most attractive.

Yeah, I don't think it was that he's unattractive because I don't think he is.

It's more just like, ah, ah now we know

it'd be like marshmallow taking off the helmet right why do you right even need to no right unless he made obviously his own personal decisions about that right interesting um so with your daughter being 13 and all how does she deal with all the spotlight like does she still go to public school and all that um we're yeah we're yeah yes she's about to go transfer schools um next fall and we're kind of trying to figure that out.

We've done a couple.

I mean, the thing is, is

she's popular specifically with her age people, right?

So it's, so it's, we, we talked to a couple schools about it, and the schools would say, oh, we've had a lot of kids who are the kids of celebrities.

And they're like, that's awesome.

I think that this might be a little different only in that even, I don't think of her as a celebrity.

I just think of her as known within a certain world.

And that world is teens, and she's a teen.

And that world is parents.

We have a co-viewing audience.

So there's teenagers and parents that watch our videos.

So now everywhere she goes, if there's teenagers around, they usually recognize her.

And she really appreciates it.

But obviously, you know, that comes with a certain responsibility that you always need to be aware that somebody might be filming you or something.

And kids can be cruel.

I mean, you know, I think even more so than adults sometimes, right?

Like you get jealousy built in, especially in your teenage years.

You know,

kids can be cruel.

And also,

once again,

I would tell you if it was happening,

wherever she goes or we go,

it's positivity.

She's a gymnast and she's a competitive gymnast.

That's been the biggest adjustment for her because COVID knocked out two years of competitions.

During that time, we started doing YouTube together.

Suddenly, she comes back into the competitions and all the people that are competing with her know who she is.

So in between events,

Kids that are competing are coming up asking for selfies and and when she's doing

you know like bars or something it kind of like stops and people are just watching her that's a lot of pressure like if you're already like do i have my skills i want to get like the judges are watching i want to get it's regionals yeah and then also you see like other people filming you

um so

again she's been so great about it and she's so thrilled that she has the opportunity to have this attention yeah but it i i would think it might add an extra layer of uh pressure to her in those situations for sure it's already pretty pressurizing in those situations.

It can be.

And I think she's just really lucky because I think the energy that we try to put out is inclusive and positive.

And so as a result,

there's not a lot of drama.

We're not doing things that you would normally get hate for.

We don't like flex or anything.

So

I don't think there's controversy in a way that would lead to the hate.

I had an interesting conversation with Charlie D'Amelio.

Actually, the first time I worked with her, she was just blowing up.

Like within within a week.

And I was the first, quote, celebrity that she had worked with.

That's funny, right?

But she had followed me as a dance photographer, had all my books.

She was a dancer.

She was so excited to work with me.

Grand Central Station was the shoot.

Kids came up to her.

I said, how long has this been going on?

She said, a week.

It's been going on a week.

Next time we worked together two months later, she had become massive.

People screaming.

She was going to go on with Jay Lo and Super Bowl the next week.

It was like crazy.

What happened in two months?

And I said,

how did this happen?

And she said, what happened was

she had a loyal fan base because she was responding to their comments.

That loyal fan base, then she got popular and there was a lot of hate.

A lot of hate, you remember.

Still, she gets unfortunate.

She's one of the nicest people I've ever worked with.

She gets so much hate.

All her fans came to her defense.

That created a lot of engagement.

TikTok saw the engagement, boosted the post.

So she was grateful for the hate because she's like, this hate led to all the success in a way.

Yeah, if you could channel it, sometimes it works in your favor, right?

Yeah, it's an interesting way to look at it, isn't it?

This is actually a positive thing because it's generating buzz and engagement.

And TikTok likes buzz and engagement, and they post, they push my post more.

I agree because if you spark debate, it leads to the post going more viral.

And the thing that's amazing, because I know Mark and Heidi, her parents, they're really, really great parents and very level-headed, very smart about how to, you know, when to give her opportunities, when to pull her back.

And I've kind of tried to learn from their actions in a way with Salish in terms of how to be a healthy parent and supportive of her without pushing her out there too much.

Like we don't do brand deals really or we haven't sold any products.

We just have only just like, here's content for free.

We've never done a paywall.

Wow.

Everything's for free because a lot of the viewers might not have the money to pay for something.

And we don't want them to feel excluded.

And as a result, I think that we have a lot of goodwill.

That's interesting you took that route because you could have made millions, if not tens of millions, doing brand deals and other activities.

Yeah.

But you decided just to make everything for free.

Yes.

Will that change one day, do you think?

I think that if we had, and this is again, it's her decision because I'm not going to pretend that I would be the one selling it.

So first of all, she has to be comfortable with the thing.

And one of the things is, we've talked to a beauty line, for example, who several who are interested in doing

a launch, right?

Like the Salish skincare products.

Okay.

Great.

She loves skincare.

I'm sure a lot of kids would be interested.

I think Salish would feel like she was sharing something positive with the world.

However, that requires a commitment of at least a year on social media.

I don't want to feel like she's obligated to have to do this for a year.

I want her to know she can walk next week if she wants.

So any long-term commitments get in the way of that commitment, right?

So that's one of the reasons.

But I think if she found the right thing and she was really excited about it and she wanted it, then sure.

I mean, it's all going to be her money anyway.

That makes sense.

So it's her decision.

Yeah, a lot can change in a year.

Yeah.

I'm curious,

because your videos get millions, sometimes tens of millions of views.

Is it as simple as turning the camera on, turning it off, sending it to the video editors?

How much thought actually goes into your videos?

So

the goal of YouTube is to make it seem effortless.

But if it is effortless, and I've worked with people who don't put a lot of effort in, you can tell.

So our week is

start with Monday, Monday and Tuesday, are, we film on Sundays because that's her day off.

She has Sailor She has school and gymnastics, that's the priority.

So we take the spots that she can give us.

That's usually Sunday.

So we'll shoot on Sunday.

Monday and Tuesday, we're conceiving next week's video.

Wednesday, we're doing pickup shots if we need them because she has off on Wednesdays also.

But mainly it's a day off.

Thursday, Friday, more concept.

We're building pre-production, all that.

Sunday, we film again.

So we basically pre-produce five days a week.

So it's all set to go so the idea is and we i i think of it as

the amount of we we've gotten five billion views so the that's significant on for any entertainment channel yeah and i think it deserves that effort but netflix wouldn't put something out and just hey yo guys right so i don't i think youtube is competing on several fronts but i think they're competing with tick tock on shorts but they're also competing with netflix they're competing with hbo and hulu youtube is the number one streaming platform number one, beyond any of them.

And that's because people are now sitting down on the couch and watching a YouTube video like it's a Netflix series.

And we are coming to their home weekly.

And the thing we have the advantage of is we're real.

Netflix is all scripted.

We're not.

So it's like a soap opera in a way.

And if you

build a trust with the audience, there's an expectation for a certain quality.

of content and we've set that bar pretty high.

So now every week we want to match that and that's hard.

And the other thing, anybody out there that's thinking about being a creator, consistency, it's by far the most important thing.

Would friends have taken a week off?

No.

Of course not.

We post every Saturday.

In five and a half years, we've probably missed four or five Saturdays.

Wow.

And that's through COVID.

That's through personal stuff that everybody's going through.

We've posted every single Saturday.

So now, when we post, and we've built an audience every week, right?

So when we post,

there were 130,000 people watching our premiere last week, or just our premiere.

Just the first 15 minutes of it.

That's insane.

That was crazy.

Because they know it's coming, and they're looking forward to it.

And then if you give them, satisfy them, or exceed their expectations next week, they'll bring friends with them.

And then the other thing, of course, the responsibility, again, I keep talking about this, but the responsibility of

a parent knowing that you have teens and parents watching.

It's so important that the content you put out there is positive because as you said, there's so much negativity in social media now.

We don't want to be another one of of those.

And by the way, negativity also, by that, I mean like

showing things that cannot be achieved by anybody else.

Like look at my huge magic.

What?

You know, and the gold chains, like

$20 million.

Like for me, I think it's great if people have achieved that success, especially if they came from less success and they want to show the world because they're proud of themselves.

But for me, we actually shop at Target.

So we show ourselves shopping at Target.

We want to make it the kind of content that almost anybody could believe.

I could live that life.

Relatable.

Yes.

There's always always somebody with a bigger boat.

Yeah.

And you know what's happened with YouTube is, I don't know how familiar you guys are with the platform, but everybody was getting gobs of views last year because they were all doing 100 fears in 24 hours or these mega things.

And they're flying all over the world.

And there's nothing personal about that content, but it's spectacle and it's fun to watch.

But I think now the audience has...

turned the page on that.

A lot of creators are still trying to do that because they haven't built a personal relationship with the audience.

They haven't shared anything about themselves personally.

And what we try to do every week is bring you into our lives, make it not such a big spectacle, but make it intimate.

Where do you see YouTube Shorts going?

Do you see a lot of potential in that?

I'm not a huge YouTube shorts fan because

I think it there's there's a certain attention span that people had and they have less of it now

and it's YouTube is unique long form it's the only place you can go to get long form, really.

But shorts is what everyone's doing.

Reels, TikTok, Snapchat.

Yeah.

I get what they're trying to do.

But I think that, and I also think just to do a short well is very creative.

I'm not saying it's easy.

It's really hard, actually.

But I don't think it allows the viewers to build up any sort of relationship with you.

So do you guys know what VidCon is?

Yeah.

Okay.

So last year at VidCon was the first year that they celebrated TikTok over YouTube.

Attendance was way down.

Meet and greets were way down, even though they had people that get like 100 million followers

because there's no relationship there.

It's just, you know, this.

How do you get a relationship if you're doing this?

So

if you can get people to watch a video that's a 20-minute video and they watch it, and you've told them a story about yourself, they are committed emotionally to you now.

And that is, I think, what uniquely YouTube offers that TikTok and shorts don't.

Do you feel like you're maxed out?

And what I mean by that, if you wanted to scale up production, maybe two videos a week now or more stuff, would you have to start removing things from you and your daughter's lives?

Or do you feel like you're still in a situation you could do more?

No, you'd have to start removing things.

We'd have to, yeah.

Yeah, we would have to.

Because we could do two videos a week if we wanted to lower the quality of the videos, for sure.

There's people that go go into a studio and bang out three in a day.

But if we want to make the kind of videos we make, then I would have to ask Salish to either skip gymnastics or miss school.

Right.

And I don't want to do those things, and she doesn't want to do them.

So we're

on a one-a-week pattern.

Similar to Mark Rober.

He does like one a month, right?

He does one a month.

Yeah.

And it's epic.

Epic.

It's epic.

Have you seen those?

Yeah.

It's like doorbell pranks.

Yeah.

I love it.

We're going to work with him.

Yeah.

We're working with him in September.

Very excited.

Going up to his space.

So you see a lot of child actors, child stars grow up and go down a dark path.

I've heard of it.

Yeah.

I'm sure you have.

Is that in the back of your head a lot?

Yes.

Yeah.

And that's why,

and again,

I don't know those kids personally.

You only know the stories.

But often when you hear the stories, there is some version of parents pushing their kids out there.

There's some version of that.

Not listening to the signals when the kid was like, I'm not happy here.

I'm not comfortable.

I don't want to do this.

So as long as I feel like, as long as we're communicating, we're keeping the doors open, we're involved, and she really knows that she does not have to do it, there's no pressure to do it.

Um, we've we've on several occasions canceled the shoot as we were about to shoot-big shoot production, lots of this, that, and the other, and cancel it for whatever reason.

She was suddenly uncomfortable with the circumstances or didn't like something about it, or wasn't feeling well.

Without even a hesitation, we'll cancel it.

Wow, and and then we'll figure out something else.

Um,

and for me, that's the most important thing:

is her comfort my son also does YouTube but he is on his own path because he's got his own channel he peers in ours sometimes but he he for me I know he will probably always do it he's deeply passionate about it she loves gymnastics and loves creating videos I don't know if she wants to be a creator one day the path will be open to her if she wants it because

you know she's got a platform now but if she doesn't want it you know she'll have money in in the bank and she'll get to do whatever she wants.

Right.

So I hope I really, it's a really good question, Sean, because I think about it all the time.

Yeah.

And I'm like, I listen to all the podcasts and all the videos about like all how that, what went wrong with YouTube kids.

Sunny V2 videos.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Those are good.

And it's just like, dang.

Okay, let's not, let's not do that thing or that thing or that thing or that thing.

Yeah.

It's scary, man.

It is scary.

Now, what I have so much respect for you is just how much you're hammering home.

You can walk away whenever you want.

You do not have to be here.

The adage, the show must go on, does not apply in this situation because it's your family, it's your daughter, it's people you care about, and that's more important than it is.

It is, yeah.

My relationship with her is the most important thing about all this.

That now, weekly, we get to go to do something together.

Um, it's unbelievable.

I'm just ridiculously lucky.

What are your goals and plans for this?

Do you want to have your own TV show, own movie, one day?

Um, I have

there's, I think that what would be great would be if we took this and we built some something, a show of some sort, and we've been talking about what, that can live on beyond us needing to post on YouTube.

Right.

So if it's, for example, an animated show, would love to do that.

Now, we can lock in right now this moment, because this moment for us is magical.

We have a great relationship.

She's still young.

She's very innocent.

And I want to lock that in because she's growing up quick.

And And even if we do, even if she keeps making videos,

probably in a couple years, she's not going to be like beating me up on camera.

She's going to be 15, 16, she's going to be doing that.

And I might be behind the camera, kind of helping that process along.

So right now is magic and I want to bottle it.

So there's a couple of different ways we could go, either product or shows.

I think shows would be better if we felt like the entertainment was healthy.

Is there a time when you're going to bring someone in to do a lot of the production stuff so that it doesn't fall on you?

I don't do it.

Okay.

My partner is in charge of production.

So I do pre-production as in creative ideas.

He has a production team that shoots, does the audio, edits.

I give notes, but for the most part, he's in charge of production.

So that's his department, and my department is the creative.

How much money would you say you would need to get started if you want to be a YouTuber, make videos up to your quality?

Oh, well, up to our quality would be

it's not so much the camera often we film on a phone oh if we like if we're in the mall or somewhere we're not allowed to film yeah we always shoot with an iPhone

but the audio and that is the number one thing audio if you if you just watch a lot of videos you can see it's on camera audio you can just tell you listen to echo

our audio is beautiful we're all laughed so the audio is great And then the syncing of that is a challenge.

So you need to have, because if you have multiple audio tracks going and they're stopping and starting throughout and then they're not syncing up So that's the biggest hassle But I don't actually think you need a lot of money because there's not not expensive cameras my partner.

He sold his camera that was a red camera because he never needed it.

Wow.

And he just has a little Sony.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's all about the idea.

I'd say that the success of to be a YouTuber, the most important

success part is the concept of the video every week.

That

it encourages people to click on it.

But then once you get them to click, you deliver what they thought they were going to get.

And you give them more than they had anticipated, and you have a reason why they need to wait until the end to see what happens.

So that's storytelling.

So concept and storytelling are all it's about.

I think Mr.

Beast does a great job with that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, he's it's really interesting how Jimmy will go on a podcast and say some things and suddenly everybody's perspective cha changes.

Like everybody's like, okay, now it's about attention.

Now it's about retention.

Now it's about click-through rate.

And everybody's kind of waiting to hear what his thing is because his numbers are astronomically higher than whoever number two is out there.

I click on almost every video.

The thumbnail is just

great, and you know what you're going to get.

But then there's a twist, right?

And he's a master of retention.

I think he's been better at keeping attention spans for long-form videos.

And I mean, that's why he's hit the numbers he's had.

But the thing is, that what happens is, is if you're inspired,

if you're inspired by Jimmy

and you try to replicate what he does, that's a challenge because

he's really doing it.

He's building a million-dollar set and giving away a million dollars.

If you now say $10,000, let's say you save up for a month, you're like, I'm going to give away all this money.

Nobody cares because they just watched Jimmy give away a million.

So you can't compete with that in any way.

But what you can do is be unique to you.

So he's unique to him.

And

whatever you have to offer, you don't need to feel like you have to go out and give away stuff just because that's successful for him.

You have a personal story to tell, and there will be people that are interested in hearing that story.

Yeah.

Lastly, how important are the metrics on YouTube, like watch time, all that stuff?

Really?

So you study it all the time?

Yeah.

Yeah.

YouTube Studio.

Definitely.

And it seems like currently YouTube is valuing AVD, which is the average view duration, the number of minutes somebody stays on the video

as opposed to APV which is the percentage of time so if you have a 10 minute video and you get them to stay for seven minutes that's an incredible length of time 70% is huge right or if you have a 20 minute video and they only stay 50% YouTube I think will prefer the 20 minute video for 50%

because they want minutes on the platform this this is we all talk all the time so this is conjecture who knows right but my but that's what seems to be longer videos seem to do really well on YouTube right now.

So you're a very positive person, and I love that.

But I want to hear a story about what the worst photo shoot experience that you ever had was.

I need some negativity.

I need something.

That's funny.

Okay.

Probably the worst photo shoot experience I ever had was I was

I mean my okay.

There's a lot I could I could say, but then I would be dishing on people that I we can we can keep it anonymous.

We can we can you know, they'll know

I'll tell you two.

One was a very well-known person whose parents were there.

And

I was photographing her.

It's not Charlie, by the way, because I mentioned her, so I just want to clarify, not even Mark and Heidi are awesome.

And the parents were being really hard on her.

And at a certain point, I took them aside and I said, look, I just want you to know that if

I would never work with her again.

And I wouldn't because you guys are being so cruel to her.

Wow.

I don't want to reinforce that in her by saying it's okay.

So, I had to have a talk with the parents.

That was very awkward.

But, probably the most awkward experience I ever had, I was in McDonald's 3 a.m.

in Times Square, and we were doing a photo shoot, and I was photographing a contortionist.

So, and which I would do all the time, I'd photograph dancers and contortionists, and I'd put them in everyday situations.

So, this

woman was a contortionist, and she's in a full backbend or something, and she's eating a Big Mac.

Some dude, he's drunk, it's Times Square's 3 a.m.

He comes in and he sees somebody doing a backbend, has no idea what the context is, and then grabs me and throws me against the window in McDonald's.

And this is being broadcast live.

We were doing a 24-hour live stream.

And in the middle of this live stream, this dude, and this guy was big, man, like muscles, 6'6.

Big.

And Sandy, who knows, I believe he knows Jiu-Jitsu or Taekwondo.

And he's like 50 with a pack on, gets in between us and protects me.

Wow.

So it's awesome.

All that caught live on camera.

Why did he throw you?

What?

Why did the guy throw you on the wall?

Because he saw a contortionist doing a bend and he didn't understand why.

And he got angry at me.

And I didn't know.

I don't know.

He was drunk.

Wow.

Yeah, I actually don't know what he was at.

When the story started with McDonald's Times Square, 3 a.m.

3 a.m.

drunken guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So just getting assaulted on camera on a live stream probably was the worst.

Wow.

That sounds intense.

At least you were recording it though, right?

Yeah, we got it on camera.

And then actually, later, you know, we kept doing live stream, but somebody talked to me and said, oh, dude, sorry, man.

I was just, I had too much to drink.

Like, again, like, they explained to him, he's a photographer.

He does photos of dancers.

This person is a dancer.

Oh, dude, I got it.

Jeez, man, that's funny.

Jordan, it's been a pleasure.

Any closing comments for the audience?

No, man.

Just go after your dreams.

That was cheesy, but true.

Love it.

Digital social hour.

Thanks for tuning in, guys.

I'll see you guys next time.