#892 - Kyle Forgeard - The Rise Of NELK, Donald Trump & Global Chaos

Speaker 1 Trudeau's out. Talk to me right away.

Speaker 2 We're just getting into it.

Speaker 1 Dude, this is it. This is the biggest thing that's happening, bro.

Speaker 2 I feel like we all knew it was going to happen.

Speaker 2 But yeah, just to see it finally go down is just, it's refreshing. I mean, like, you guys know, I grew up in Canada.

Speaker 2 I moved to the States about

Speaker 2 10 years ago when I was around 20. I'm 30 now.

Speaker 2 And it's just like the last 10 years, what's happened has just been devastating, honestly.

Speaker 2 like canada is not the same country that i knew when i was growing like growing up how much do you lie at the feet of trudeau what do you mean how much is it directly he directly responsible for what's happening i mean if you're the commander in chief you gotta you gotta take some blame for sure and yeah i think all canadians agree it's just it's just a totally different place how so

Speaker 2 I think Canada's just lost its sense of identity a little bit, you know? I think

Speaker 2 being a little too politically correct, you know, whether it's not letting people say Merry Christmas or we have a poppy that people wear every November, Remembrance Day, which is supposed to like support the fallen troops.

Speaker 2 Just like things that make us Canadian and like little bits of Canadian culture are just

Speaker 2 getting lost and stuff like that. There's obviously just, you know, a lot of immigration.
I think immigration could have been done a little better.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I think we're going to see something in Canada really good. I'm really optimistic about it.
I think you see it's happening all over the world, right? Not just the U.S.

Speaker 2 We saw the results of this election, and I think Canada is going to be following suit. I think Canada's in for a big comeback.
I'm really excited about it.

Speaker 1 You're bullish on Canada.

Speaker 2 I'm bullish on Canada, yeah. I think it's going to make a big comeback.
I think Trudeau is just a complete fucking loser.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 I don't know what's up with that guy. I don't know if he just wanted to stay in power, but I mean, his wife left him fucking, I mean, that guy just needed to get the hell out of the out of parliament.

Speaker 1 I saw him correct somebody's language for saying mankind.

Speaker 2 Shit like that. That's what I mean.

Speaker 1 We don't want to use that. We need to use people kind.

Speaker 2 So that type of shit has been happening just all over Canada.

Speaker 1 It feels like a Babylon B sketch. It doesn't feel like a real politician saying something.

Speaker 2 That's what I mean. It's just like you need someone that's going to stand up for Canada.

Speaker 2 And I think there's some good choices. The Pierre Poliver, I think he would do a really good job at kind of

Speaker 2 giving canada a big comeback

Speaker 1 yeah i don't know man it's uh it is kind of like a

Speaker 1 everywhere there's america and then every other english-speaking country is kind of coming second at the moment nobody the same with britain the same with australia like you know their stock went down an awful lot after covid and sort of this overreach and lockdowns and stuff like that no one has really had a fantastic uh four years when it comes to branding unless unless canada becomes the 51st state right we We don't know.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, it'd be 52nd if Greenland goes first.

Speaker 2 It's weird because like I just went home for Christmas and like it's kind of like 50-50. Like a lot of people are actually like, yo, that would be kind of sick.

Speaker 2 You know, because I think a lot of Canadians want to come to the states.

Speaker 2 Like, you know, we love traveling here and stuff like that. But then obviously there's a lot of Canadians that's like, no, what the fuck? Like, this is our country.

Speaker 2 But I think Trump's just trolling when he says that type of shit.

Speaker 1 Well, you'd know. I would spend enough time with him.

Speaker 2 I would know.

Speaker 2 And I think I've spent a lot of time with him, but the last time that I was with him, which is when we flew on his plane right before the election, I got to see like a more real side of him, kind of like a button-down literally version.

Speaker 2 Like he had his jacket off, he had a few buttons off, and he was just

Speaker 2 himself.

Speaker 1 What does that mean? What is Trump's himself?

Speaker 2 I don't want to say everything because it's just, you know, it's boys, boys being boys at the same time. But I don't know.

Speaker 2 The way I can explain it is almost like he was like six beers deep, but he wasn't. Like, it was just like he was just having the best time.
We were just laughing, cracking jokes, just boys being boys.

Speaker 2 So I think, and he gets a kick out of getting a reaction out of people. So I think when he sees this whole 51st state thing and he sees people like reacting to it, he's going to kind of go with it.

Speaker 2 And I think it's also kind of like a negotiation tactic too, you know, to really, I mean, the Canadian leaders are all responding to it. It's such an absurd thing.

Speaker 2 But at the same time, it's becoming so real now that all these Canadian leaders are actually having to respond to it. That's the thing.

Speaker 1 Even if I know that the troll's gone far enough, he's so good at trolling that these guys are actually having to respond to

Speaker 2 you know what I'm saying? Yeah, unless they're going to be the governor of Canada.

Speaker 1 What have you learned since being around him, watching the way that he operates, watching his systems, his staff, his demeanor? Was there anything that you took away from spending time?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that guy's like,

Speaker 2 I mean, when that guy walks into a room, obviously, he just soaks up, obviously, all the attention in the room. that's one thing i noticed too one thing i noticed about him too is like yeah he's very

Speaker 2 he likes to get everybody's opinion whether you're like his most trusted advisor or someone like me or someone that is just in the room he's always asking people what do you think about this what do you think about this what do you think about this what do you think about this i notice that he does that a lot and i think he's just like subconsciously like kind of collect it's like a poll he does

Speaker 2 and um I've noticed that he does that a lot. He's always asking people what they think of something.
And then I think that's how he kind of makes decisions as well. It's interesting.

Speaker 1 I've heard a lot of criticism around, you know,

Speaker 1 sort of shallow, fragile ego thing, not necessarily wanting to hear other people that tell him no or that say things that he doesn't fully understand.

Speaker 1 But on the flip side, I've also heard a lot of that. that he's always asking like servers in restaurants and the golf caddy for what their opinion is on stuff.

Speaker 1 So you have this odd dichotomy thing going on. Yeah,

Speaker 2 he definitely loves himself. There's no question about that.
But you're right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 If you're at a golf course, he's talking to the back shop guys. He's a people's person, which I find very interesting.
I think that's one of his little secrets.

Speaker 1 And you guys got kind of involved in politics a little bit. Yeah, we did.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we worked with an organization called Send the Vote.

Speaker 2 so they were like a bipartisan organization, and it was just about helping people register to vote.

Speaker 2 So, we kind of pushed that on our like social media and stuff because obviously NELK, you know, we kind of own that male 18 to 35

Speaker 1 vote.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, we were responsible for like hundreds of thousands of people registering to vote, which was pretty crazy.

Speaker 2 Like after the election, like people were coming up to me on the street and like thanking me. Like I'd be at the gym and people like people were like walking up to me being like, yo, thank you.

Speaker 2 Like thank you for what you did. Like it was kind of like weird, you know? I don't know.
I just feel so normal and we were just kind of doing what our heart felt.

Speaker 2 Like we were obviously big Trump supporters. So yeah, that whole election was crazy.
And then Dana White shouted us out in that

Speaker 2 the post-election speech. Like we were the first ones to get shouted out.
So that whole thing was just surreal. And I'm from Canada.
So like, I'm not even, I can't

Speaker 1 even speak about it as a Canadian.

Speaker 2 So like to me, for me to get shout out, shouted out in the post-election speech,

Speaker 2 like, my parents are like, what the fuck? Like, everyone's just like, what, this is a fucking simulation.

Speaker 1 It is bizarre, the crossing over of independent media with mainstream political discourse.

Speaker 2 Well, that's what, that's what we saw this election, right? I guess, yeah, all the old news networks now are fascinated. And I had to do a bunch of interviews after that election, too.

Speaker 2 And they're all fascinated with how did the internet win this election?

Speaker 2 Why are young people so obsessed with the internet? Why, why do they watch podcasts?

Speaker 1 Like, these people are old.

Speaker 2 They have no fucking clue what like you and I are doing.

Speaker 1 Like they really don't.

Speaker 2 For us, it's so it makes so much sense. Like Trump goes on Joe Rogan.
Like obviously that's going to be big. But for them, they're like, why was that Joe Rogan thing so big? Like they're that stupid.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's odd. I think I take for granted a lot of stuff that to me seems like a like a normal assumption.
It's like, obviously this reaches a lot of people.

Speaker 1 Obviously 18 to 35 year old guys are spending more time on YouTube than they are on cnn or msnbc yeah like who who wouldn't have thought that and the fact that there's people

Speaker 1 to that to whom that is a revelation really makes me made me realize just how split off and echo chambered not only the messages that you get within social media but even medias themselves now yeah i think we probably take the knowledge that like you and i have for granted right hugely it's just yeah it's so normal it's so a part of our everyday lives but yeah for for especially for older people, they just have, they have no clue what's going on.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The impact.

Speaker 2 It's very powerful what we have. Obviously, we both own our, like, it's almost like we own our own network, right?

Speaker 1 Like, we do. So we're in a.
Do you think about, uh, have you got to the stage where there's this sense of responsibility or obligation with sort of what you're doing, what you're saying?

Speaker 1 We were talking about this in the gym earlier on, that as the platform grows,

Speaker 1 how much of a obligation do you have?

Speaker 2 Or is it can you still just i'm here having fun just doing my thing bro like i don't know if you reach a couple of hundred million people a month that yeah it changes the the key to nelk has always just been as best as we can just trying to stay true to like what i think and what i think is funny like i actually like trump that's why i fucking supported him i didn't do it for any other reason you know what i'm saying if i didn't like him i wouldn't have supported him it's simple as that so i try to stick to that as much as i possibly can but yeah obviously as you get bigger i guess there is more responsibility but we're so lucky with our fan base that we've always been like the quote unquote like bad guys or like scumbags so it's not like we were like jake paul or like logan paul or like david dobrik that were more squeaky clean squeaky clean you know what i mean and you're waiting what did you expect you're waiting for them to make a mistake like they're perfect and then boom when they make a mistake they get canceled for us we've just been scumbags.

Speaker 1 Like, we started as scumbags.

Speaker 2 We've never been good guys. Like, we've been getting arrested since 10 years ago.
We've been fucking with people, messing with people.

Speaker 2 So, if anything, we've gotten like we've actually more responsible.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we've improved as people.

Speaker 1 We're growing. We're maturing.
Oh, my God. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, I think that's one thing that I'm always feel blessed with, too, is that, yeah.

Speaker 2 Our fans just don't really.

Speaker 1 We set such low expectations.

Speaker 2 We set such low expectations. That's the key.
Set low expectations.

Speaker 1 then you can't ever get worse

Speaker 1 yeah that's funny i uh

Speaker 1 i remember rogan saying something along the lines of everybody should always do a comedy set everyone should do a comedy set once so that you can go hey what do i know i'm just a comedian yeah and you get the like comedian eject a seat yeah you know uh get out of jail free card yeah and that's the same with you guys it's like we just do we just do prank youtube but all those guys were still like like in terms of partying i feel like we were like the first people to ever show like alcohol even in like really youtube Like the first time we went to LA, I think like, yeah, no one really showed anything.

Speaker 2 But behind the scenes, they were obviously doing the same shit, right?

Speaker 1 Or worse.

Speaker 2 Like all the squeaky clean kids were the ones like that you'd see rip and blow in the fucking Hollywood Hills bathrooms and shit. I swear to God.

Speaker 2 So it was like, so they're doing it behind the camera, but they have to put on this. Good boy image, which kind of fucks them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because everybody's waiting to find out that the holier than thou squeaky clean image is actually broken in some way.

Speaker 1 I mean, the reverse of it being like, you know, Kyle actually went to church on Sunday. That's not a scandal.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But the guy that was going to church on Sunday ripping a Gator Tail the night before is. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Talk to me about. Gator tail.

Speaker 2 We have a lot of the same lingo.

Speaker 2 Is UK and Canadian like.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I guess.

Speaker 1 I guess it's just scumbag working class party people. Right.

Speaker 1 And it's a universal language.

Speaker 1 AHL is pretty niche.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I suppose so. Yeah.
Uh, anyway, it's I imagine that the Aussies are exactly the same. Everyone's got their own, their own slang.

Speaker 1 There's only so many different ways that you can talk about sniffing cocaine or girls.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Talk to me about that sort of trip out to LA and sort of what you learned about LA scene. You've done a few.
You did the like LA full D-Gen mode, then the Orange County thing, now the Miami thing.

Speaker 1 What have you learned? Like, take me through the different eras of

Speaker 1 scenes. Yeah, exactly.
Fuck.

Speaker 2 I mean, yeah, the first, I'm trying to think of the first time I, yeah, the first time it was me and Jesse at the time. We had, um, I believe we

Speaker 2 road tripped there

Speaker 2 from Toronto to LA. So 36-hour drive in his, like, shitty car.

Speaker 2 Um, called it the toaster. It was like a Nissan, like one of those boxy-ass cars.
We had like a cooler of food. Just like we packed a bunch of food, put it in the cooler.

Speaker 2 Cause like we were dead broke at the time, too. And we road tripped to VidCon.

Speaker 2 Um, and his, we would stay at fans' houses along the way, too. So we'd just post on Snapchat and say, like, hey, who wants to, we're going to be in St.
Louis tonight. We need to crash somewhere.

Speaker 2 And then I would like add them on Snap. I'd FaceTime the people, like, make sure they weren't like a fucking psycho.

Speaker 2 And we ended up staying at over like, probably 30 fans' houses throughout like our little trips and none of them were ever weird. Um, and then his car broke down in like the middle of the desert.

Speaker 2 We got stuck there for a week and like we posted again on Snapchat and fans had to come pick us up from Palm Springs and drive us to LA.

Speaker 2 And then we made it to VidCon. So that was like our first time kind of being around like other YouTubers and seeing like people that were like really popping, successful.

Speaker 2 I think that was at the time like FaZe. like we met like all those guys.

Speaker 2 And I remember those guys came up to us too, like someone, Phase Adapt. He was like really, really big at the time.

Speaker 2 And he told us like, yo, we watch your videos like every night when we're high and shit. And like, just to see like respect from other big YouTubers at the time, I think that really motivated us.

Speaker 2 So after that, for the next probably five years, we would do like, we would be in Canada. I was working at a golf course.
So I worked like, I did events. I did the back shop.

Speaker 2 And I would just save up money. And then we would do a trip to LA for like three months, however long we could afford.

Speaker 2 Grind, Grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, go back to Canada, try to keep it going. And that went on for like five years until we officially moved to L.A.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so it was like, it was a crazy time. And every time we'd go home to Canada, things would kind of slow down a little bit, you know, because you're living at your parents' house.

Speaker 2 Your parents are kind of in your ear a little bit. My parents were super supportive, but I know Jesse's parents were a little bit in his ear.

Speaker 2 But yeah, when we got out to la the the very first time full-time it was like definitely a big game changer for us which one felt like real life

Speaker 1 did going back home to canada feel like real life or did la i guess i guess at the time probably

Speaker 2 going back to la felt like real life

Speaker 2 i think i think and that i guess that's kind of sad in a way right but Yeah, you kind of just,

Speaker 2 you kind of just outgrow it a little bit. I think, you know, and I, I was so blessed to grow up in Canada.
The way I grew up was just like completely normal middle class,

Speaker 2 like just playing street hockey every day after school, running way too much Call of Duty, just normal shit, you know? So, but then you kind of just outgrow it. And I think,

Speaker 2 yeah, we'd go home and things would just kind of slow down. Everyone around you is kind of,

Speaker 2 you know, they're all in university too. So then when you go to your friends' houses, like their parents are asking you like, oh, like, what are your plans? Like, what are you you doing?

Speaker 2 Like, are you going to go back to school? Like, you're kind of, everywhere you go, you're kind of hit with that question. Like, oh, are you going to school? What are you doing? Like, what's your plan?

Speaker 2 And I think that kind of subconsciously like eats at you a little bit too.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of people get stuck in that

Speaker 1 messy middle period, that sort of lonely chapter. Maybe they're doing something that's a little bit different to what their friends around them are.

Speaker 1 Maybe there's some pressure from family, girlfriend,

Speaker 1 society to do something that feels a little bit more safe.

Speaker 2 They're kind of making you feel a little bit like a loser, right? And then you're telling them, like, oh, well, I'm doing this YouTube thing. And they're like, ha.

Speaker 2 Like, even your friends are kind of like, come on. You know,

Speaker 2 my friends always fucking supported me. So I never had like people putting me down, but you feel it a little bit.

Speaker 1 Right. What would you say to someone who's sort of a little bit younger and

Speaker 1 has those dreams of breaking out from the mold, but is kind of uncertain?

Speaker 2 Damn, I think there's almost, I mean, I know in Canada, especially, there's almost like

Speaker 2 more security in like chasing your dream now. Like, I think it's, it seems so hard to get a, a really good job coming out of school now, especially where I'm from back home.

Speaker 2 I know people are coming out of school and they just can't get jobs.

Speaker 2 So I would say, I mean, to me, you only have one life. The scariest thing to me more than like being broke for a little bit is like living a life that you don't want to live.

Speaker 2 You know, I think a lot of people, the main thing is they're just scared to be broke for a little bit. Like they're like, well, how am I going to pay my bills? What am I going to do? And it's like,

Speaker 2 I mean, we were broke for a long time. Like we were struggling.
Like we would sleep in cars. We would sleep at fans' houses.

Speaker 2 Like you got to go through that stage of being broke, being having no money to kind of get to where you need to be.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 What was the scene in LA like? Because you guys were there pretty much inside of the golden era of D-Gen influences.

Speaker 2 We were there when YouTube was probably its biggest. It was like Jake Paul was his probably biggest doing daily vlogs every day.
David Dobrik, and then they had the Cloudhouse.

Speaker 2 So FaZe Banks, I don't know if you know him, but he's like the owner of FaZe. I give a lot of credit to him.

Speaker 2 He basically tweeted out at us and just said, hey, do you guys want to move into the Cloudhouse? And that was like him, Alyssa Violet, RiceGum.

Speaker 2 Summer Ray, Wolfie, who was huge at the time. So these were like the biggest YouTubers and we're like nowhere on their level.
And yeah, we land in LA,

Speaker 2 start driving, and we're driving up through the Hollywood Hills. And then we pull up to this massive mansion that we see in all these people's videos.
And that, that was just like completely surreal.

Speaker 2 Like, I couldn't even believe it. Just walking into that house, like, it's a completely insane house, $100 million.

Speaker 2 And, and we got to live there for like six months, rent-free. Showed up FaZe Banks.
He's a fucking legend.

Speaker 2 um i owe him for life but yeah that was a crazy time just like it was hollywood shit like house parties and like you never knew who was gonna pull up like little uzi would pull up to your house or like rappers all the girls it was pretty crazy it was a crazy time and then you go to orange county yeah so we stayed in la for a little bit we got our own house there too after that we had like

Speaker 2 the first house we ever signed a lease on to, I think we had like probably 20 people living in there in like an eight bedroom. So that was like our very first house.
We had one room with like

Speaker 2 three

Speaker 2 or like two three-story bunk beds. So like six guys sleeping in a movie theater room.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It was just like, it was kind of like the LA Nelk frat house.
So that worked for a bit.

Speaker 1 And were they staff, friends?

Speaker 2 Staff and friends.

Speaker 2 I mean, I live with four of my boys that I grew up with here, but yeah, we probably have like seven of my boys that are on, that work for us and do different things, whether it's social media or merch or different stuff that we have going on.

Speaker 1 But yeah. Do you miss it? Do you miss that LA period, that LA scene?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I miss it. It was, it was pretty, it was pretty surreal.
I mean, to live in a house like that and just,

Speaker 2 I feel like no one really gets to experience that, you know?

Speaker 2 It was a cool time, but I think, yeah, I think LA is just different now. And now it's more of a, like, it's more of like a TikTok-y scene.
We don't really need to be around there too much.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of good podcast guests there, too, so we still make LA trips, but we moved to Miami about a year ago, and I fucking love it.

Speaker 1 Talk to me about the difference between LA and Miami. I mean,

Speaker 2 California is just a little too liberal for us, I think. I don't know.

Speaker 2 I feel like if we did our whole Trump thing during the election, I feel like we would have been getting grilled everywhere we went, right? Like, we probably would have got shot up on Melrose and shit.

Speaker 2 It's dangerous there, too. Like, I know like my boy Steiny, he got his car robbed.
Like it's it's it's like turning into a out in the open? Like he just parked it and someone just like robbed his car.

Speaker 2 Like it's pretty dangerous there. I think and then Florida, just no income tax.
For me, like I told you, it's way closer to Toronto. So I find myself

Speaker 2 going back home a lot more, seeing my family, seeing my friends.

Speaker 1 How long it is to fly across the country? If you do

Speaker 1 LA to New York, it's what, five hours?

Speaker 2 Probably six, five and a half.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 And you lose and you lose three hours.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so it's a red eye within the same country.

Speaker 2 A day to get there and a day to get back. Two travel days.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, I think LA is just a lot different now. It's just not, it's not quite the same as it used to be.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But you're locking in a little bit more in Miami as well.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like health-wise, you mean? Yeah, I think this is the best place to kind of be healthy. It's a good HQ for us because we travel so much too.

Speaker 2 Most of our work is on the road, whether it's NELC videos or podcasts. So I like coming back here because you saw how it was this morning.
Like, this is all we do when we're home.

Speaker 2 Like, it's like two different lives.

Speaker 2 One's on the road. And then when we're back here, like, I really don't do shit.
I wake up, I fucking work out.

Speaker 2 And then I'll just chill, keep the business moving on my phone, keep videos moving, planning, golf.

Speaker 2 And then we go on the road again and it's chaos.

Speaker 1 So was there a moment that you broke through, do you think?

Speaker 2 WC with Nelk? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't think so. I think the secret to Nelk and why we have such a cult following is that there's never been one moment that made us.
It's just been like this the whole time.

Speaker 2 There was never like a huge thing. So I think when you blow up that fast, like these like

Speaker 2 Hawk Tuas or whoever have you,

Speaker 2 they come and go so fast, right? They get so famous so quickly and people become obsessed with them. And then they're just gone.

Speaker 1 I think there's also...

Speaker 2 You got to build, you got to build that foundation.

Speaker 1 There's a bit of low-key resentment that maybe the audience or the wider world has for somebody that appears to have achieved so much fame so quickly. Yes.
They go, huh.

Speaker 2 I wish that was me.

Speaker 1 If you get picked out of obscurity because you said a funny sentence on a street interview,

Speaker 1 everybody knows that if not for the chance of God,

Speaker 1 that could have been one of 100,000 other people.

Speaker 2 I agree. I agree with that too.
But I think,

Speaker 2 I mean, you know how much work this is behind the scenes and how strategic you have to be, too.

Speaker 2 For us, like, we've been doing this for 10 years, so like you also learn along the way, right?

Speaker 2 So, now where I am, where I am, where the stakes are the highest, and like you said, there's more responsibility. I've learned so many lessons:

Speaker 2 don't do this, don't, you know, maybe don't trust this person, don't get into business with this person. These people overnight, 24 hours, they're super famous and they have no fucking clue.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they've got to do that.

Speaker 1 How this business works, how to discipline, who to trust,

Speaker 2 who to let let in. They have no fucking clue.
So they're like, they're pretty much

Speaker 2 going to get screwed unless they're a genius, right? Some of them last, but most of them don't.

Speaker 1 You just say yes to the first person that pops up in your DMs. Yeah.
She's usually the one that's the most shocky. Exactly.

Speaker 2 And I've almost got screwed by managers and shit, too. Like, I've been

Speaker 1 close to a couple of catastrophes.

Speaker 2 Too close, bro. Decisions that would not make me be here right now, for sure.
Like, really? Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 We've almost signed with like a few different managers that maybe even like we were really close to like giving like equity equity away

Speaker 2 that would have like torched us. So like one thing too, if people are listening, like you got to be very, very careful who you trust, you know, like having a partner is like, it's like a marriage.

Speaker 2 You got to like,

Speaker 2 you got to be careful who you get into business with.

Speaker 1 So what's the overall lesson there? Is that move slowly? Sort of don't make rash decisions.

Speaker 2 I think so. Yeah.
You got to, you got to move slow.

Speaker 2 I think, yeah, you got to get a team of people around you that you can kind of trust, whether it's friends, you know, someone that you can at least bounce ideas off.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 yeah, yeah, I would say just move slow, you know, don't don't react too quickly to things. Sit back and just kind of see how things play out sometimes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I get the sense that especially in the fast-moving world of internet content creation, whether it's brand deals, even if you're trying to build a business, you know, there's this, there's always this sense that somebody else could be doing this.

Speaker 1 What if someone else is starting the same business at the same time as me? Oh my God, this is good. I need to get, I must get it moving and so on and so forth.

Speaker 1 But the risk of ruin of getting it wrong is 100%. I agree.

Speaker 1 And the risk of being second or third or fourth to market, the likelihood of somebody else having the exact same idea and executing it as well as you can if you take your time seems way slower.

Speaker 1 So yeah, I've I agree with that.

Speaker 2 I never give a shit about what anyone else is doing, really.

Speaker 2 Like maybe I'll get some inspiration from other people, but like, yeah, even some people in our crew will be like, yo, like this person's doing this. Like we should be doing this.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, dude, just relax. Like this is, this this game too is a marathon.
It's not a sprint.

Speaker 2 Like the entire social media business is like, it is such a mental marathon that if you get caught up in like what other people are doing or, you know, you're going to lose it.

Speaker 2 And I think the most important thing with this is you got to keep like, you got to keep your mind right too.

Speaker 2 That's why I personally don't get caught up in like, if I need like a month off from like doing something or like videos, I don't get caught up in that because I feel like if people look back in 10 years, they're not going to remember like, oh, they took a a month off or whatever it is.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 from the business side, what's the most revenue that you guys have generated in a day?

Speaker 2 Revenue? I mean, our merch business, I don't think anyone's ever really.

Speaker 2 I feel like we were putting up like Kylie Jenner numbers at that time in the peak of our like merch business when we were uploading NELC every week

Speaker 1 on the road.

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 our biggest was 30 million gross in about 30 minutes.

Speaker 2 30 million in review. We had 350,000 people waiting on the site at the time of the drop.

Speaker 2 Like even Shopify was like, what the fuck is going on? Yeah. And that's revenue, right?

Speaker 1 So that's top line.

Speaker 2 That's one thing I've never really talked about too much too. And I know my old partner Jesse would agree too, is that...

Speaker 2 The revenue sounds nice, but when you talk about profit and how much we were spending on videos, maybe people that we pranked were suing us.

Speaker 2 There is so much.

Speaker 2 That number sounds amazing. But in terms of what me and Jesse were

Speaker 2 able to pocket, and Steve will do it, he was getting paid directly off merch. So what me and Jesse were even able to pocket was like nowhere even near that.

Speaker 1 It's that line about revenue is vanity, profit is sanity.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I don't even like talking about revenue too much, to be honest.
It sounds great and it's great to brag about.

Speaker 1 but I think it's a good

Speaker 1 I understand what you mean and it's nice that you're like sufficiently humble that you don't want to flex the biggest uh

Speaker 2 number that you can yeah but on the flip side what it teaches people is what you can drive in terms of just raw traffic right that in order to take 30 mil you need to be able to have 350,000 people on the site yeah correct yeah that that's impressive for sure like we'd look at the map of the Shopify I don't know if you've ever done like a live drop and you can see all the little, it shows where people are on the site from in the entire world.

Speaker 2 So you just see all these little dots and like I've seen people in like India and like

Speaker 1 it was cool.

Speaker 2 It was a really cool

Speaker 2 that era of Nelk was like when was that?

Speaker 2 That had to be like

Speaker 2 2017, maybe 2016.

Speaker 1 So this is before John, you're now business partner manager.

Speaker 2 This is before that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And you were able to still spin this up just all internally.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's, that's what drew them to us was

Speaker 2 the type of numbers we were putting up. I don't, I don't think,

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 2 I don't want to say it, but I don't think anyone's ever really done what we've done with merch in like a YouTube business.

Speaker 1 What does the sort of structure of that stuff look like internally?

Speaker 2 Back then,

Speaker 2 it was all in-house.

Speaker 2 Everything was in-house. So we would like, we had designers on payroll.
We had a bunch of different people that would source stuff from China.

Speaker 2 All the marketing was done by Osgod, who's like our creative genius. He's the GOAT.
He edits all our videos.

Speaker 2 Everything was done in-house,

Speaker 2 which was even crazier. So when we would do a drop, there'd be like 25 people and we'd all be in our Nelk Frat house.

Speaker 2 just all everyone has their laptops open and we're all watching the numbers full wi-fi connections

Speaker 2 but at that time it was crazy is because

Speaker 2 like that was the only thing we were doing.

Speaker 2 There was no Happy Dad. There was no brand deals.
Not even any podcast. There was no podcast.
The only thing we were doing was pushing merch.

Speaker 2 And we, and our fans literally like helped us build this because like we weren't getting paid off YouTube at all.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 2 We never got paid off YouTube. We got we were demonetized since day one, like for swearing, for alcohol, for drug references.

Speaker 2 Our videos never got monetized so that was like that's how we built our merch business like we were we were because you needed something that was partner program because the partner program didn't exist yeah we weren't getting paid so it was kind of a blessing in disguise we had to get smart and build a business around our audience so we we weren't lying when we were looking into the lens and telling our fans like hey guys if you guys buy merch like you're keeping the i can eat you're keeping the yeah i can eat dinner and not only that i can make we can continue to make these videos

Speaker 2 so that's how it was like a reoccurring thing where our fans literally kind of helped us make all these videos.

Speaker 1 I think there's something cool and probably another important lesson there to just linger on about focusing on one thing.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 you need to learn how business works, how what a good deal looks like, what a bad deal looks like, what good, a good release and

Speaker 1 buildup scheduled, building the anticipation, all of that stuff. And if you try and do it with too many things at once, it's difficult to learn what the lesson is because you're so

Speaker 1 distributed, you're so spread across all of these different projects that you're not actually focused. You're not drilling in the learnings from this one thing.

Speaker 1 So for me, it was nightclubs and for running 15 years of all of these different events. And I would really, really dial in what a good buildup sequence looked like.

Speaker 1 And I would understand how to use anticipation to get people to really care about what the outcome was going to be. And then I'd understand what the drop-off in terms of interest was.

Speaker 1 And then how you can then restart that with more things and more things and more things. And that now gets ported across.
When we did the launch for Newtonic, I did exactly the same thing.

Speaker 1 It might as well have been a club night.

Speaker 1 If you changed it from productivity drink to new club night Fridays at whatever club, it would have been the exact same process, the exact same thing that I'd learned.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to guess that it's the same thing that you learned from the merch that you then port across onto Happy Dad, that you then port across. Oh, we've got a new guest coming out.

Speaker 1 It's just building hype.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 2 Everything in this business is just building hype, right? And once you learn how to do that, I feel like you can apply it to anything.

Speaker 1 Talk to me about the principles that you sort of think about when it comes to building up hype around either a drop, new video, new podcast episode, new happy dad collab.

Speaker 1 Like, what are the main areas that you're looking at?

Speaker 2 I don't know. I'm not the best at kind of defining the way that like my mind works sometimes.

Speaker 2 But I mean, building hype, yeah, you can't go wrong with just literally what it is is building hype is like, you know, say it's dropping on this date.

Speaker 2 And then maybe two days later, post something else about it. Remind people two days later, post something different and engaging.
Remind them again.

Speaker 2 And then the day of, you know, posting like a bunch of times before something happens. I think sometimes it is fire just

Speaker 1 hitting them with the sneak attack drop too.

Speaker 2 Cause that goes crazy sometimes. But yeah, you can't go wrong with building hype and doing multiple posts, building anticipation.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
I mean,

Speaker 1 there was this really interesting study that was done that I loved because because I was starting to learn about psychology, but I was still in nightlife.

Speaker 1 And they did a, they got people to track their level of happiness throughout the entire day and night of going out on a night out. And you'd think, at what point would happiness be at its highest?

Speaker 1 Maybe 12 midnight when you've got a good enough buzz on and you're with your friends and the music's amazing, but you're not too messy and so on and so forth. It was way before that.

Speaker 1 The time when people were happy.

Speaker 2 The best part of the night's the pregame.

Speaker 1 Getting ready with your friends when the music.

Speaker 1 So what does that tell you? It tells you that the absolute bullseye of human pleasure is things are about to be awesome. It's anticipation.
That's very interesting. It's not about the payoff.

Speaker 1 It's about waiting for the payoff. Like the hottest part of sex is not the sex bit.
It's the bit is you're taking your clothes off before sex. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's the hottest part because it's the anticipation of what's about to happen.

Speaker 1 And I think that, you know, what you guys have landed on and certainly what I've landed on, it's the same reason that we release clips from this podcast before we release the full episode.

Speaker 1 So this will have a Tuesday clip and a Friday clip, and then the episode goes on the Monday

Speaker 1 because it builds up that anticipation. And sometimes people say that it's cruel, but I think it's just effectively utilizing the human reward system.

Speaker 2 That's a good way of defining it. Yeah, because the pregame is the best part of the night for sure.

Speaker 2 When all the boys are just there before the girls pull up and you're just cranking beers, just chilling. So, I can I can definitely relate to that actually.

Speaker 1 Talk to me about the other side then. So, if that's the most revenue that you've made in a day, what about the most money that you've spent in a day?

Speaker 2 most money i've spent

Speaker 2 i'm not like a huge

Speaker 2 i have a few watches and i have like a car but i think yeah the most money i've spent i guess was probably

Speaker 2 it's not like a purchase but probably i retired my parents in the same day about four or five years ago so that took about

Speaker 2 seven hundred thousand dollars So one year at Christmas, I just, I had enough money to do it. And like, one thing about me is like a lot of people said their parents never supported them.

Speaker 2 But for me, I would be like nowhere without my parents. I got so fucking lucky.
And like my mom just says too, like they just had blind faith. Like they just believed in me and they supported me.

Speaker 2 So when I kind of had enough money to do that,

Speaker 2 I just did it. So that took about, yeah, like $700,000 to do that.
Yeah, that's a big deal. And then my mom got, my mom got carried away.
She, I guess she has the free spirit like me.

Speaker 2 She like invested it in like a bunch of like she didn't fucking retire. Ethereums.
No, she put it in. She put it in the fucking housing market and Trudeau fucked us over the last five years.

Speaker 2 So now I gotta, I just told her this Christmas I gotta re-retire her until she can sell those houses.

Speaker 1 So when

Speaker 2 Trudeau gets the fuck out, she'll be able to sell the two houses that she bought. And then, yeah, but that's probably,

Speaker 2 I like spending my money more on like

Speaker 2 memories and like. taking all my friends on like a trip.

Speaker 1 What about some of the trips?

Speaker 2 I mean, we just had a, yeah, like this week for new year's like we just went like a bunch of different places like we just did like fun shit with everyone like yachts and like stuff like that or like we'll go to cancun and rent a house and just like

Speaker 2 chill stuff like that like i feel like spending your money on memories and like i love bringing my friends with me and just like having like a sick ass time I feel like I spend too much money on that type of shit.

Speaker 2 But in terms of like watches or jewelry or shit like that, I'm not super into that.

Speaker 1 I don't hate it. That's a good, I guess.

Speaker 1 Memories is the best.

Speaker 2 I was going to say, it's the fucking best.

Speaker 1 Is the lesson from that that as somebody who's come into young wealth,

Speaker 1 you've tried, I'm going to guess, buying expensive cars. You just got a new car,

Speaker 1 new watches, clothes.

Speaker 2 But Steve will do it. He bought me my first car.
Shout out to Steve.

Speaker 2 So I've actually, this is actually the first car I've probably ever bought, to be honest, because Steve will do it bought me my first car. He bought me an Audi RS7.

Speaker 2 So that was like $140,000. Shout out to Steve.
He's bought like 40 people cars. So then this, the Audi just shut down.

Speaker 2 Thing was a piece of shit over like four years later. So I was able to just trade that in as the down payment and then just get this new car.

Speaker 2 My business manager said it was a great investment to just finance it. So it's actually the first car I've ever bought.

Speaker 1 Thank you, business manager.

Speaker 1 But yeah, the overall lesson there is as you start to accumulate some spare wealth that you think on balance, spending it on experiences, especially experiences that you can share with your friends, is the best way to do it.

Speaker 1 I love that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's my favorite thing. It's just, because you never forget that shit, too.
You know? And it's like,

Speaker 2 yeah, not everyone can do that shit. So to just, I don't know.
That to me is just stuff you never forget. And it just makes you so happy having a good ass time with like your boys.

Speaker 2 Nothing beats that.

Speaker 1 What are some of your favorite memories from the last few years? Maybe ones that haven't been captured on camera?

Speaker 2 i mean if they haven't been uncaptured on camera it's probably for a reason right so i probably can't really talk about them well all right include the ones that have been captured on camera yeah definitely last week we can't talk about um

Speaker 2 but on i mean best memories

Speaker 2 i think like probably yeah one of the coolest things we ever did i think was probably the first time we went to abu dhabi i was telling you about that that to me was like one of the craziest thing it was the craziest two weeks i've ever had in my life because the ufc brought us out to Abu Dhabi for Khabib's last fight during the COVID bubble, the heat of COVID.

Speaker 2 So we had to quarantine for a total of like four days to get there.

Speaker 2 And then that's when we met like Dana White for the very first time in Abu Dhabi. We got like a whole full-scale treatment there.

Speaker 2 And then one week later, we went on Air Force One with Dana 2 and met Trump for the first time in 2020. So that was like, that's probably the coolest two weeks that like really changed my life.

Speaker 2 I think that just like every time I think back to it, I'm just like, this is a mind fuck. Like, how did this happen to me?

Speaker 2 It's just, yeah. There's been so, there's so much crazy shit with Nelk.
And like over the last 10 years, it's just so surreal. I can't even believe it.

Speaker 1 Talk to me about what you've learned since being friends with Dana White.

Speaker 1 A lot.

Speaker 2 I've, I've looked up to Dana White, like, my whole life, honestly.

Speaker 2 Like, I've, me and my dad would, would watch ufc like when i was on spike tv when it was just like it was nothing you know i've been watching since i was probably in like eighth grade so i've looked up to dana white and a lot of the ufc is like way bigger now i don't know how long you've been following it but it wasn't the ufc that it was today like right now it's just like it's such a big brand and stuff but they had to like battle to build that.

Speaker 2 So I've kind of seen the evolution of the UFC, as I'm sure a lot of people have listening.

Speaker 2 and like this shit wasn't even like legal in states like it used to not be legal in New York like I watched these guys like battle state by state never give up

Speaker 2 and just build it into this like incredible fucking brand that it is today and you see all these other MMA organizations now it's never gonna compete with the UFC like the UFC is fucking unmatched but Yeah, so I've always looked up to Dana White for that and just what he's been able to achieve.

Speaker 2 And he's just, you can see he's not a quitter from the outside. And then when I met him, you can really see like that guy's not a fucking quitter.

Speaker 1 How so?

Speaker 2 Well, even like, look how he handled COVID, right? That's what blew up the UFC so much. Like every other sport shut down, the UFC was the only one that kept going.

Speaker 2 Like Dana White was the only commissioner of a sport that was able to keep that sport going all throughout the heat of COVID.

Speaker 1 Not only keep it going, blow it the fuck up.

Speaker 2 Like COVID was actually a good thing for the UFC because it was the only thing on.

Speaker 2 And that guy, yeah, yeah, just behind the scenes too, he doesn't quit, you know, and he'll call me and give me advice whenever something's going on that he'll see.

Speaker 2 And yeah, he's like I told you before, he is just the most loyal fucking guy you will ever meet. Like, it's so crazy.
Like, for us, he'll just,

Speaker 2 I don't know, it's almost like blind loyalty too, in the same way. It's just like.

Speaker 2 He's always there for us no matter what and even sometimes like he just doesn't even need to be you know

Speaker 2 Even if if I'm like sick, he'll like call me and be like, yo, you good, bro? Like, you need an IV? Like, I'll send, like, he's just always there for us. So having a friend like him is,

Speaker 2 it's truly like insane. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What about the way that you've observed him sort of operate from a business perspective? The way that he runs the UFC, the way that he sort of deals with his own

Speaker 1 interaction with press, with exposure, with scrutiny, with stuff like that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think, I mean, he's obviously a savage, right?

Speaker 2 Like, even though I'm friends with him, like, I'll literally watch almost every Dana White, like, post-UFC press conference because the guy's just a fucking savage.

Speaker 2 Like, if a media guy goes at him, he's going to fucking ream them out. You know what to get with Dana White, right? He's himself.
He speaks his mind.

Speaker 2 So, with the UFC stuff, we don't, we kind of stay away from that. We let him handle the business of that.
We don't even really talk UFC business with Dana ever because.

Speaker 2 He talks about that shit all the fucking time. When we're with him, if we're talking business, we're talking about Happy Dad.
We're talking about Howlerhead.

Speaker 2 we're talking about the podcast, or we're talking about maybe new ventures that we want to do together in the future.

Speaker 2 And we've never had like any type of partnership, like with Dana or the UFC, besides like some clothing, but there's no like

Speaker 2 there's no formal agreement. Like even with Happy Dad and Howlerhead,

Speaker 2 I know Dana had offered me like a little piece of Howlerhead back in the day.

Speaker 2 And like I kind of just told him in the most respectful way, like, I'm really appreciative of this, but, like, I just want to do whatever you want me to do.

Speaker 2 And I don't want to take a percentage of your company. Like, I just want to remain friends.
And, like, let's just help each other. And he was on the same page.

Speaker 2 And I think, I think you like really respected that. So, with Happy Dad, he's fucking helped us so much.
Like, we'll go and do Happy Dad Hellerhead tours together and stuff.

Speaker 2 So, he's kind of like the uncle of Nelk, right? He's pretty much like an Elk boy.

Speaker 1 Scary uncle.

Speaker 2 Big, scary uncle that you don't fuck around with. Yeah.
Yeah. No, that guy's,

Speaker 2 he's a legend. Everyone that knows him in real life knows how great of a person he is.

Speaker 1 It's wild, you know, to think that that's able to come across. I haven't met Dana, but from

Speaker 1 conversations that I've seen him have, from stories that I've heard behind the scenes, from stories that I've heard in public,

Speaker 1 it is... absurd to have somebody that's kind of at the head of an organization like that, who's the one that seems to have the most

Speaker 1 credibility, this sort of

Speaker 1 unwavering commitment to his word, like even to a fault a lot of the time, even when he fucks up and he just decides to be as upfront as possible.

Speaker 2 I don't know how he does it, but he does it. And that's why he's Dana White.
He's just a fucking...

Speaker 1 Well, I think what people are really desperate for is authenticity. Yeah.
Like they're really, really hungry for authenticity.

Speaker 1 And one of the problems is that if you realize that authenticity is something that people like and resonate with, you can try to sort of speedrun it or growth hack it somehow, which is the exact opposite of authenticity.

Speaker 1 You can't inauthentically be authentic. Right.
You know? Yeah. And I think people can just tell.
They know when you're playing a game, when you're trying to manipulate them.

Speaker 1 And even if you don't know why, even if you can't say what it is, we've got this weird sixth sense that exists. behind the back of our head somewhere.
And you go,

Speaker 1 I don't know, man, there's something,

Speaker 1 something up here. I just don't get...
Trudeau, perfect example of this with Trudeau. Like, tell me what it is about that guy that makes you not trust him.

Speaker 1 Maybe you can point to specific statements he's made and all the rest of it.

Speaker 2 You just tell he's a fucking slime ball.

Speaker 1 Largely, it's just the fact that he's got this slippery demeanor. You think, hey, I don't fucking trust you, guy.
And.

Speaker 2 He fooled everyone with the free weed legalization when he first ran. What's that?

Speaker 2 I think that's like, when he first ran, it's just because he he was going to legalize weed. Like, that's why everyone loved them.

Speaker 1 Okay. That never came to fruition.
No, it did.

Speaker 2 It's legal in Canada. Okay.
Yeah. So I guess he did one good.

Speaker 1 He's ever done a promise. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But yeah, it's watching Dana operate, especially at that level, especially with the additional amount of scrutiny and all the rest of the stuff that's happened, is

Speaker 1 wild. It's very, very like, I just, he just likes to win, too.

Speaker 2 One thing about him. I know what drives him, and it's proving people wrong.

Speaker 2 And that's kind of one thing I think me and him have in common is

Speaker 2 we both like just like shutting people up.

Speaker 2 You know, like whether it's fans in the comments or for him, it's the media.

Speaker 2 Shutting people up is a good fucking feeling. You know what I mean? When everyone's saying something and they're all counting you out, it just drives you.

Speaker 2 And you're like, I just want to shut these people up so fucking badly. I think that's one thing that drives both of us.

Speaker 1 And then you come back with the W.

Speaker 2 You come back with the W.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's an interesting energy.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean by that or no?

Speaker 1 I know exactly what you mean by it. Yeah, it's a it's a really interesting energy to think about how you need that sometimes, I feel.

Speaker 2 Well, dude, proving people wrong, I think it's a fucking potent fuel.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's an incredibly potent fuel.
And it's one that you can use

Speaker 1 very, very effectively, especially, you know, I've heard Dana talk about this a couple of times, especially with regards to Trump, you know, that he is happy to burn everything down. I mean, he said,

Speaker 1 there's a story that he talks about to do with Rogan, I think, where somebody didn't want Rogan to be a part of

Speaker 1 something moving forward, or he'd been a part. Maybe it was one of the scandals.
Oh, yeah, it's probably when Joe said something fucking yeah, the CNN thing or whatever it might be.

Speaker 1 And Dana was prepared to burn everything

Speaker 1 for one guy, yeah, of course. And you think that's in some ways, that's really not good business acumen, but what you're up, you're

Speaker 1 working off of such unbelievable loyalty that the business gets ripped along for the ride. And what does it tell people? What's the subtext that it tells people about the business?

Speaker 1 This is a business that is going to do what it says,

Speaker 1 and you can have complete and utter faith in it. Yep.
And

Speaker 1 especially, you know, the world of fight sports, we've seen it how many times over the last couple of months?

Speaker 1 Tyson and Jake Paul, and the number of criticisms.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's a thrown fight, it's the three-fight clause, et cetera, Usik, Fury, Rematch clauses, they're not actually fully throwing punches, all of this sort of stuff.

Speaker 1 And I think that it's really important to have for something like the UFC where

Speaker 1 you can trust it, even the fucking sniff that this wasn't legitimate, the entire organization.

Speaker 1 I'm sure there has to have been some fights that have been a little manipulated here or there because the UFC has done.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 once they're in the cage, it's done.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, it's the UFC.

Speaker 1 But you've got to have the guy.

Speaker 2 They obviously help put people in the cage that they want to. I mean, that's obvious.
But, like,

Speaker 2 once they're in the cage, it's up to you. You know, they're not fighting for you when you're in the cage.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Can we talk about the Bob situation? Yeah. That full arc thing.
So

Speaker 1 give us the 30,000-foot view of Bob Mannering.

Speaker 2 I still don't really understand it.

Speaker 1 I mean, we still like chirp each other about it.

Speaker 2 I don't know what he was looking for. I mean, if you asked Drew, our guy, like

Speaker 2 he said that we owed him money and we just didn't.

Speaker 1 So he's a part of the pod. He started the pod, then he was a part of the pod?

Speaker 2 Bob was doing his thing, right? He, he was, Bob's, and by me and Bob are great friends now. And like, I hope we will remain great friends, hopefully.
Um, he's a great guy, he's talented, he's funny.

Speaker 2 So, I wanted to start a podcast, and I was always thinking of who to start it with, and I was like, yo, I think this Bob guy's really funny, right?

Speaker 2 So, we gave him a great fucking deal. I think it was like

Speaker 2 $7,500 to $10,000 an episode, 30% of the ads. And by the way, he has no YouTube channel.
He's launched like four unsuccessful pods at this point, like four different ones.

Speaker 2 So it's like, Bob, just show up, make some good money. Let me keep this consistent.
Let me bring the structure to this. So we were doing good.

Speaker 2 And then, yeah, I think, I don't know if he had bad people in his ear that were. kind of telling him stuff or whatever it was.
But

Speaker 2 yeah, I don't know. I think he just thought for some reason we were screwing him

Speaker 2 and or he was missing out on money that he just wasn't missing out on and

Speaker 2 that he just freaked out. I don't know.
I don't know if he was at a bad place.

Speaker 1 And everything went nuclear.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know if he was at a bad place in his life or something as well too.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 1 yeah, we weren't cool for a while.

Speaker 2 And that was like the first time I ever really went through some like, I've stayed quiet for a while. which I always will.

Speaker 2 I stay quiet until someone really fucking pushes me to the edge, you know, because I don't want to,

Speaker 2 I never got big by like attacking people online or like airing out personal shit. So that's just not, even though I could get views doing it, you know,

Speaker 2 that's just not me. So I kind of just had to sit back and wait till Bob kind of forced me to a point where I had to like just kind of own his ass a little bit.

Speaker 2 And people kind of saw right through it. And we just came with the receipts.

Speaker 2 And that was it. And yeah, we weren't, then he like sued us and shit.
And it was a whole thing. We we did like a thing that we like joke about now too.

Speaker 2 We had to do um a mediation, which is like that was like part of the clause. Like if there's ever a diff disagreement, you guys have to go into mediation.
So we had to get onto his like to his

Speaker 2 divorce counseling. So we had to get on like our side and his side with this lady, Judge Nagel, who we like joke about now.

Speaker 2 And like he got on and his side was just, they were like internally arguing like in front of like all of us. It was just like, it was a complete mess.

Speaker 2 And the judge told us, she came into our room and told us like, listen, I'm not going to lead a horse to water, but they have absolutely no case against you guys whatsoever.

Speaker 2 Like the judge told us that. I don't even know if she was supposed to, but that's what she told us.
So to me, the whole thing was just hilarious. But we both wasted legal money for no reason.

Speaker 2 So we eventually came to

Speaker 2 just agreement to drop it. And I was like, Bob, if you want to come on the pod whenever you, whenever you want, like, come promote whatever you want.

Speaker 2 You can bring ads on the podcast if you want, like, just like any other guest, you know, like if Wiz Khalifa comes on and he wants us to talk about his weed, go ahead.

Speaker 2 But he hasn't, he's been on the pod and he hasn't brought one single ad.

Speaker 2 So he's just, but he's back on the pod now. He's, he's back on like in and out.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, we're cool. It was kind of just, I don't know.
We'll see what happens. But he's not back on like full-time.
He's just kind of in and out.

Speaker 2 But yeah, it was a very,

Speaker 2 it was an interesting situation.

Speaker 1 One of the things that we were talking about in the gym earlier on is keeping your private life private.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you can run a business and have people talk about the business, but having people talk about how you run your business, having people talk about how you run your podcast, I think

Speaker 1 not good. Like people are talking about the wrong things.
Yeah. So there was that

Speaker 1 degree of operational exposure was that that's for what for the when you and Bob are having this sort of fallout, and then there's all of this kind of exposure of internal, yeah, backbiting-y type of stuff.

Speaker 2 I don't, I don't enjoy that shit. Like, I know everyone on the internet now, it's all about drama, correct.

Speaker 2 And, like, I mean, we could start drama with people too, or like whoever it is, but that's just not how we got big, you know.

Speaker 2 Like, we've never started drama with people, it's always just been about making funny shit. So, for me, any opportunity we have to, like, I don't know, I just don't look to that to get clout or views.

Speaker 2 That's just not me.

Speaker 1 It's my least, it's my least favorite kind of thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like that was, that was when I was just pushed to the edge, you know? So like, I'm all, I'm just going to stay quiet until it's to the point where

Speaker 2 I have to defend myself. Like, I don't want to, but that's kind of the way that I work.

Speaker 1 I just,

Speaker 1 I don't know. There is, we're really kind of in the

Speaker 1 era of criticism.

Speaker 2 Yeah, drama. Drama's huge on the internet.
All people want to see is people fight and fucking just go at each other.

Speaker 1 They said this thing. Oh my God, this singer with that girl and she's released these texts and so on and so forth.
Yep.

Speaker 1 I don't know, man. Like, that's my.

Speaker 2 It's just like the streamers, the whole streamers, it's like, it's a lot about beef and stuff.

Speaker 1 It's all about beef.

Speaker 1 It's just, that's. Yeah,

Speaker 2 the clip era, I feel like the clipping era that we're in kind of changed that, right? It's so quick. It's so fast.

Speaker 1 Well, the most, the biggest thing that you can get on YouTube is timeliness. So we realized this last year.

Speaker 1 I'd known that it was a big deal for a while, that you're sort of basically being a news-ish channel. But as mainstream news is declining, people are looking to YouTube for their news so much more.

Speaker 1 And search volume is such an important driver. So Trump gets shot.
And then

Speaker 1 36 hours later, I bring Tim Kennedy on.

Speaker 1 whatever it is, 72 hours later, I bring Mike Baker on. So I've got one Green Beret, one ex-CIA guy who's still involved in intelligence stuff.

Speaker 1 And it was nice or whatever that people are interested and that I have people that have got genuine expertise and we can talk about this sort of stuff.

Speaker 1 But it was almost in some ways a little bit disheartening how much those episodes blow up because you think, oh, there's no reason. The episodes were great, but they didn't need to be great.

Speaker 1 It was just something that was timely. And what's the most timely thing that you can do? be start drama and be involved in the drama and just keep talking about it back and forth.
And

Speaker 1 if if you look back.

Speaker 2 I guess that's just human nature, right?

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 1 It's the most important.

Speaker 2 I don't know why we're like that, but we just love to see negative shit about

Speaker 1 there's some really interesting

Speaker 1 potential evidence about why the human brain grew to be as big as it did, which is that it wasn't so we could use tools correctly or so that we could remember the location of plants, but because when you have a 150-person tribe broken down into 30-person pods or whatever, for me to be able to remember Kyle and Kyle's relationship with Dean and the fact that Kyle and Dean used to be friends but they're not anymore and John has actually come in and John is now Kyle's best friend so Dean's kind of feeling about that when you start to scale that up is really computationally difficult which is why you need a lot of abilities but it also means that that is so important and salient to you like if you

Speaker 1 I don't think humans are particularly good at working out

Speaker 1 this is some dramatic social information that I need to pay attention to versus some dramatic social information that has absolutely nothing to do with me. It's just drama.

Speaker 1 Therefore, I must be able to pay attention and therefore it's going to pull me in. It's going to suck me in.
And

Speaker 1 if you were to look back, I think across your week's watch time history, your pie chart of that,

Speaker 1 I would doubt if anybody looks at the however many percent, 30%, 50% more, that they look at drama farming stuff and go, time well spent. Like, who's saying that? No one's saying that.

Speaker 1 No one looks at it and goes, I'm really glad that I watched that Brianna chicken fry

Speaker 1 takedown summary video again for the third time that I've seen from two other different channels. Even that shit.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that shit got crazy bees, which is,

Speaker 2 I watched it.

Speaker 1 Of course, we all watched it. You can't not watch it.
It's like the black hole of content. It just sucks you.

Speaker 2 It's just, yeah, it's just human nature, I guess. I don't know why we like to see negative shit about each other.

Speaker 1 Talking about YouTube and stuff, is it weird having Steve? I mean, we bumped into Steve this morning in the gym. Is it how odd has it been

Speaker 1 playing that balancing game now?

Speaker 2 It sucks, bro. I mean,

Speaker 2 you know, like Nelk's not the same without Steve. Like, there's no.
And you can't show him on YouTube. There's no question about it.
I mean, Steve will do it was like.

Speaker 2 He was like the biggest one in Nelk. I mean, like, he was like, he was more, he was bigger than me at the time too like

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's it's a very weird situation. I don't I don't quite understand it.
I mean

Speaker 2 I guess he was banned for

Speaker 2 Like putting a gambling link in his URL, but I don't know. I think I think that was just an excuse.
There's something deeper going to be honest. Yeah, I think

Speaker 2 I mean he was repping Trump pretty hard at the time and that that was a different time back then too. And then Steve is just like a lot of people

Speaker 2 I don't know if people know, but he is one of the most like naturally like funny guys in like his own way. Like he has like very dark humor.
And like I personally love his dark humor too.

Speaker 2 Like I think it's hilarious, but I guess there's just certain shit that you just can't say on YouTube. You know what I'm saying? So

Speaker 2 I think YouTube was seeing like some of his dark humor shit and they're like, this is a ticking time bomb waiting to happen. And one thing I've learned from YouTube too

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 they don't, YouTube doesn't like negative press about

Speaker 2 YouTubers.

Speaker 2 YouTube, because that's going to fuck their, right, right? Like their advertisers don't like that press too. So I know we learned that

Speaker 2 during COVID. During COVID, we were like kind of traveling still making videos and we showed up to a college to film something.
And we didn't even post anything ourselves.

Speaker 2 Like we just like went to the college and we were filming, but other people were taking snapchats of us

Speaker 2 and through that it gained a huge crowd so it looked the all the articles were youtubers host mass gathering youtubers this youtubers that and we got like a manual email from youtube which you never get you always know when it's like automated right and this said like hey nelk boys which is like nelk boys is not even on our channel at youtube at all it's like nelk

Speaker 2 So and it was a custom email that said, you guys need to watch your off-platform responsibility, which basically means like we're giving you guys one last warning before you we delete you or they're like or your channel's deleted so at that time this was and we're like jesus like we're walking on eggshells so i think since i've had that experience it's kind of the

Speaker 2 at the end of the day they're just trying to make money in that youtube office right so if they're looking at steve and they're saying this guy's making a bunch of

Speaker 1 crazy jokes flying close to the sun flying and probably flying in the sun he flies in the fucking sun straight through it yeah like his videos were fucking hilarious.

Speaker 2 Like, and the jokes that he makes are fucking hilarious.

Speaker 2 So he was flying in the sun for sure, probably right in the fucking center. And I think they just used the gambling thing as an excuse, to be honest.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 I think Steve knows probably, he probably could have handled

Speaker 2 after the strategy of after getting deleted. He probably could have handled it.

Speaker 1 A bit more diplomatic.

Speaker 2 A bit more diplomatic and strategic. But still, I think, I mean, for them to take his channel down is just like all of them is fucking crazy.
And then not only that, to tell us

Speaker 2 that we can't even have him in our videos.

Speaker 1 So the editors.

Speaker 2 Or our channel will be deleted.

Speaker 1 The editors on the back end must permanently have this Steve filter.

Speaker 2 Well, then now it's created this weird thing where it's like Steve also, when I met, when it's created this weird thing where Steve's around and he obviously wants, you know, he wants Nelk to be successful too.

Speaker 2 And he wants Nelk to keep going. He's not the guy that's like, yo, put me in the shit, put me in the shit.
That's not him, right? Our ultimate goal with Steve, when I first met him, I feel like was to

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 2 kind of like help him and make him financially successful. And our main goal was to start this, Happy Dad.

Speaker 2 So that's Steve,

Speaker 2 Steve and mine's ultimate goal is to build Happy Dad up into a billion dollar company. So Steve wants obviously Nelk to be successful.
He wants us to keep pushing Happy Dad.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I really think that they at least need to start with letting him be in Nelk videos or something else. And it's weird because he'll go on other people's channels and like they won't pick on,

Speaker 2 they won't pick on those channels. But for some reason, like why, why is it only us?

Speaker 1 You were told specifically that he can't be in videos.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we were told very specifically.

Speaker 2 That's

Speaker 2 like on the floor.

Speaker 1 It's like a, I know it's like somebody being unpersoned.

Speaker 1 It's fucked.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and and i think you could even bring tate on you know the movie's tate gets deleted on our shit too okay which is weird maybe you can't yeah full sam podcast tate got deleted but um

Speaker 2 i know what you mean yeah it's just the trump one got taken down as well right the first one yeah but we need to i think we need in closing that we need to like they should let his channel come back i think eventually it's been long enough and then to start they should let him be in like uh or they like they don't let him be in bradley martin's content like it's fucked like they got to let him be on youtube now now like the culture's shifting now too like well let's talk about

Speaker 1 it's time to bring Steve back to the Zuckerberg Chad transformation yeah uh

Speaker 1 I'm conflicted about this Zuck thing because

Speaker 1 part of me thinks moving in the right direction nice to see um

Speaker 1 a

Speaker 1 return to freedom of speech, etc.

Speaker 1 But another part of me thinks this is just blowing with the wind. You were cucked when the cucks were in office and you're bigoted now the bigots are in office, like judgmentally.

Speaker 1 Only half joking. And I don't know.
I get it. I get that people like the idea of it moving in the direction that they want.
But it does seem like kind of a pretty thinly veiled

Speaker 1 now that the free speech people are in power, we'll just do whatever they think is cool. Does no one see that?

Speaker 2 I see it. I see it.
And I kind of saw it coming too. And like, I think that's what people don't get to is like, at the end of the day, these are all companies that just want to make money.

Speaker 2 Like, whether it's YouTube or

Speaker 2 Facebook, meta, right? Like, I don't, I feel like it's not really a personal vendetta they have against these people.

Speaker 2 It's just like they're sitting in a boardroom and they're trying to figure out how to make money, right?

Speaker 1 So they're going to follow.

Speaker 2 They're going to follow the money. So now, like, obviously, Zuck sees what's happening with X.

Speaker 2 He's smart too. And at the end of the day, it's a W for everyone.
Like,

Speaker 2 what was about to happen if Trump didn't win

Speaker 2 was fucking scary.

Speaker 1 Like a further down that road.

Speaker 2 We were about to lose free speech. Like, I think we would have lost it completely.
I mean, it's hard to imagine, but thank God

Speaker 2 he won and the way that he won reflected where culturally we're at. But yeah, I think Zuck obviously.

Speaker 2 He probably sick of just getting chirped all the time too at the same time too, right?

Speaker 2 Like Elon Musk gets to be the man and gets all this praise and like everyone everyone's always ripping on zuck and zuck's probably just like fuck i want to be the man too like elon but i think it was very smart i mean there's no better person again to bring on than dana i think that was

Speaker 2 that's so smart because dana's always going to be for the people um

Speaker 2 He loves social media too. Like he gets a kick out of just like seeing, like, he's always showing us numbers and stuff too.
Like, we're sending like our biggest reels that do well and shit.

Speaker 2 So he understands social media. And then, yeah, he's, he's for the people he's always going to be for uh for free speech like ufc's for free speech so yeah i think zuck just

Speaker 1 he had no choice that transformation is crazy of his visually ideologically in terms of the way that he presents Zuck yeah yeah crazy I know I think it was just that I think he just wanted to like I think he just wants to be kind of cool right boys club yeah he wants to join the boys club we'll see we'll let him in right yeah well I tell you what's weird when you're thinking about the ecosystem of social media that you don't have an equivalent front and center person on YouTube.

Speaker 1 You know, you don't have, I mean, is it still that Susanna lady?

Speaker 2 Maybe Steve will do it soon.

Speaker 1 Wow. I mean, that would be an absolute U-turn.

Speaker 1 But yeah, look, I...

Speaker 2 Yeah, she's gone.

Speaker 1 I like the fact that.

Speaker 2 Twitch has someone now too, right? I think. Yes.
That older guy that's like, I think he's like the CEO or something.

Speaker 1 Maybe.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but yeah, YouTube, that's interesting. I like the fact that Facebook, and that obviously means downstream from that, WhatsApp and Instagram.
Instagram's a big, I'm still shadow banned.

Speaker 1 I've been shadow banned since the week before the election on Instagram for sharing. Remember, Kamala Harris had the phone up and then showed it and it was her camera.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I got, I'm still, since then, whatever it is, downregulated in feed, you know, all of the little yellow orange circles on the back end.

Speaker 1 Got tons of orange circles that I can't get rid of because it's a story, so I can't delete the thing. And it's because of, it's because of the fact checkers

Speaker 1 so the exact thing that they just brought up is the reason that I've been I'm thinking

Speaker 1 that I am glad about

Speaker 1 and overall it is a good thing but I'm just a little I don't know skeptical about the

Speaker 1 purity of the motivations for why

Speaker 2 there's no purity there's no purity They're following the money. They have no choice.
I mean, the election was like a reflection of where society's at.

Speaker 2 Like, they have to be idiots not to see like, holy shit, we got to

Speaker 2 But at the end of the day,

Speaker 2 it's a W for society. I'll see

Speaker 1 the two topics that they highlighted as well were gender and immigration.

Speaker 1 Probably the two

Speaker 1 most, at least from a campaign perspective, the two most aligned talking points when it came to what the candidates were driving home. from ads, right?

Speaker 1 There was that ads that the Trump team, Kamala is for they, them, Trump is for you.

Speaker 1 One of the most successful political ads in the recent history.

Speaker 1 I think a third of their budget was spent on that one ad, some absurd amount of the budget. And then immigration was, you know, the

Speaker 1 flag that was planted in the ground by the Republican side as this is the thing that we're pushing back against.

Speaker 1 I think interesting that those are the two flashpoints that you're enabling now on Meta.

Speaker 2 What? What do you mean they're enabling it?

Speaker 1 Well, that when they talked about these are the sort of topics, there were two topics that they specifically called out as being ones that would be

Speaker 1 discussion would not be censored around as much. And it was gender and immigration.
They also happened to be the two biggest talking points when it came to the campaign trail.

Speaker 2 So that's a new thing they're doing, they just said?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was part of the big announcement.

Speaker 1 A couple of the guys, some representative went on Fox and was talking about it. But I think it's actually written in some of the things.

Speaker 2 I mean, yeah, if you're Zuck, you got to be like, he's obviously not an idiot, but you got to be a complete tool to not see where, like, he has no choice. Like, it's pretty obvious, right?

Speaker 2 I mean, and they're going to have to make all those adjustments. I mean, yeah.
I don't know why people don't see it. People are just going to follow the money always, right?

Speaker 1 I'm interested in what keeps driving you. You've mentioned

Speaker 1 proving people wrong is a part of it.

Speaker 1 But that only takes you so far. I think doing something for a decade, however many

Speaker 1 hundreds of uploads, thousands of uploads, including all of the shorts and all of the work and

Speaker 1 sourcing and creating, spinning something up internally. I don't think people realize just how much work that is.

Speaker 1 What is it that keeps you motivated and keeps driving you forward after doing this for so long?

Speaker 2 I mean, I really fucking like enjoy what we do, honestly. Like, I really do.
And like, I'll go through waves of maybe there's a bad video or there's a bad moment on social media.

Speaker 2 But for the most part, like, I really fucking love this shit like i i started doing this for fun just making videos uploading them not making any money um

Speaker 2 and i was making like

Speaker 2 all types of videos like serious i wanted to be a director when i was younger so i was making like short films that were serious i was making skits and then we were doing pranks we were i just loved creating like thinking of something filming it I would edit it myself, post it, and then you get that.

Speaker 2 It's like entertaining, you know, you get that reaction back from people saying they loved it. It's like a good feeling.

Speaker 2 So I don't think I've lost that whatsoever, you know, even our like our latest Nelk video, I was telling you, like the tribe video we did, it was just fun.

Speaker 2 Like the whole process from thinking of the idea to planning it, like getting on the call with Forrest and talking about doing it to traveling there to filming it. And then we get home.

Speaker 2 sitting with the editors editing it and you know we're choosing the music we're choosing the font we're choosing just the storyline and then posting it and getting all that great feedback watching the numbers go crazy the entire process is fun and i don't i mean i don't know what else i would be i would be doing i don't want to go back and work at the golf course

Speaker 3 um

Speaker 2 that's one thing i i do really love it and then yeah i mean

Speaker 2 obviously want to be like financially free. I think, you know, I don't know if we can do NELC forever.
Maybe we can.

Speaker 2 Like, maybe it's like we have kids and we're still doing like dad's trips or some shit and we're bringing the babies and stuff.

Speaker 1 Happy Dad in one hand, child in another. There you go.
There you go.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. We're going to definitely keep going.
But yeah, I mean, it would be with Happy Dad, our ultimate goal is to build it into a billion-dollar business. And yeah, so there's two sides to it.

Speaker 2 There's just the content, and then Happy Dad is our main.

Speaker 1 What are you more passionate about at the moment?

Speaker 2 I think I'm passionate about both equally. I love,

Speaker 2 I think that's one thing that like my partner, like John, tells me too is like,

Speaker 4 um,

Speaker 2 I can just switch from like a creative side to like a business side, like, like that, like with a light switch, you know? So I love like being completely creative and like making a video.

Speaker 2 And then I also love getting strategic and like helping build a business. So it's almost like.

Speaker 2 I have two hats that I get to wear and I'm constantly switching them, which I think fucks with my mind a little bit too. And And then sometimes I got to babysit all these fuckers too.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't know if you know Steiny, all like all these guys are fucked. I'm fucked too.
But so there's a few different hats that I have to wear.

Speaker 1 That's a strange one, I suppose, that

Speaker 1 you

Speaker 1 made a name for yourself and still now sort of continue to as being the fun older brother, or I guess a younger brother and then now older brother for most of your audience.

Speaker 1 But because you're the front man

Speaker 1 and the leader and one that's under a lot of scrutiny and one that has to make a lot of the decisions and stuff like that,

Speaker 1 there's a sense of obligation as well.

Speaker 1 So balancing I want to have fun with, I want to be the fun uncle, fun, fun older brother type thing with the I also need to be the responsible leader figurehead thing. That's something I feel.

Speaker 2 It never used to be like that too much, but now I find myself doing that more than ever.

Speaker 1 But you're the boss.

Speaker 2 I know, but I never like, it gets fucking annoying sometimes too, bro.

Speaker 1 To be the buzzkill?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Of course.
Like, it's like, it's like, it's also like, just just don't make me be a buzzkill. Like, I don't want to fucking have to like rip you away.

Speaker 1 But the reason I don't want to have to fucking stepping in to do it is because you haven't done the thing that I asked you to do.

Speaker 2 But like, some people just don't learn unless you fucking rip them a new asshole. So it's like, it gets, but it does, it does frustrate me and it gets annoying.

Speaker 2 So now some things I just kind of let go. I'm, I'm kind of only focused on what affects Nelk.
Like I can't. I've learned I also can't help everybody.
I can tell you something once.

Speaker 2 I could tell you something twice. If you're going to keep doing it, that's going to be up to you.
You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 Like, there's not enough time in my day to babysit everyone's personal lives. I thought, I get like, I don't know, I care about people that are close to me a lot too.

Speaker 2 So I try to help people as much as I can. But yeah, it gets, there's only so much time in a day.
At the end of the day, people are going to do what they kind of want to do.

Speaker 1 Yeah. There's a few.

Speaker 1 I think Elon's probably a pretty good example of this. But I read sci-fi and novels and stuff like that.
And in those books, a lot of the time,

Speaker 1 the person that's the figurehead, that's usually the protagonist in the book or whatever,

Speaker 1 you get to observe inside of their own mind the price that they need to pay in order to be a leader, the fact that they need to do things or say things or make sacrifices.

Speaker 1 Ernest Shackleton, the guy who attempted an Antarctic crossing in the sort of 1910s,

Speaker 1 he

Speaker 1 had so many self-doubts that he wrote in his diary.

Speaker 1 He had so much concern and didn't know if people were going to survive, didn't know if they were going to be able to make it through multiple Antarctic winters.

Speaker 1 And you sort of see him writing these things down in his diary and then stepping out there to put on this brave face that inspires everybody around him. And it's kind of interesting

Speaker 1 the unique cost that a leader has to pay in order to keep driving something forward.

Speaker 1 And there are sort of certain very unique challenges that only maybe within, even within an organization, maybe only two people or one person or a couple of, you know, very, very small group of people actually have to deal with.

Speaker 1 And everybody else kind of gets to come along for the ride. Everybody else gets to be coached along.
And

Speaker 1 main character energy and sort of assuming that you're the most important person in the story is...

Speaker 1 kind of how everybody sees their life, right? Everybody sees their world as the main character. But if you actually look at anybody else's world, at best you're a side character.

Speaker 1 At best, you're like some ancillary dude that came in partway through.

Speaker 1 But if you really want to be that main character, if you like the idea of being the leader, if you like the idea of being a figurehead, the person that's driving this thing forward, there will be prices that you need to pay.

Speaker 1 Very, very particular, unique, lonely prices that...

Speaker 1 You can put a brave face on it or you can grin about it as much as you want, but ultimately there is a lot of shit to eat. Yeah.
And you are going to have to eat it. 100%.

Speaker 2 It comes with the territory. I would never complain about it.
It just, yeah, that's something kind of that I've had to deal with more recently as our business has grown.

Speaker 2 As like you said, yeah, the stakes are higher. Now there's more responsibility.
So back then when we're just fucking around and we're, you know, now it's the stakes are higher. So there's a lot more.

Speaker 2 On the line. There's a lot more on the line.

Speaker 1 What's the

Speaker 1 toughest part of your job?

Speaker 2 I don't want to sound like a bitch or like complaining because like they're like what I, I'm so fucking grateful for like my life and my job and stuff but i mean if there's one thing that just burns me out maybe it's just traveling like a lot all the time the lack of the lack of a routine and like structure

Speaker 2 that that can burn me out like if we're traveling all the time um

Speaker 2 back when we were probably like drinking a lot and partying that was that was starting to burn me out a lot

Speaker 2 starting to lose it a little bit maybe but how so oh not like lose it but just I mean as you get older, bro, too.

Speaker 2 We were talking about it too, like, bro, I obviously just can't fucking, I can't drink like a I can't drink like I used to like obviously when I'm 21. I didn't even know what a hangover was.

Speaker 2 I'm 30 now, so I get hung like a fucking, it feels like I got hit by a bus, you know?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 2 I think it's just, it's that too. So when we're part, if we're like traveling and drinking a lot, too, that can burn me out.
I love,

Speaker 2 I mean, I love having a routine too. Like when I'm in Miami and I'm just on my shit, like just exactly what we did this morning, dialed working out.
That feels really, really good to me now.

Speaker 2 The older I get, I think the simple things just become more and more important. And just taking care of yourself, keeping your mind right.
So if there's one thing, it's just that.

Speaker 2 It's just the traveling sometimes burns you out.

Speaker 1 Do you lose motivation or do you get have low points? It seems like you, you have this sort of quite upbeat mentality a lot of the time.

Speaker 1 Not only that that's your disposition, but also that you need to be that for everybody else. They're going to look to you while Kyle's got to bring the vibe to this thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I think, you know,

Speaker 2 I think I definitely lose, I think I lose motivation sometimes. I mean, I think everyone goes through points where,

Speaker 2 yeah, maybe you just get low or you kind of question like, oh, do I want to do this? Like, what's the point of this anymore?

Speaker 2 You know, I've gone through phases like that where it's just like, yeah, you're just like, why do I need to do this? You know, what if

Speaker 2 but I think those are just like little funks that everybody has and you kind of just gotta break out of them and you gotta kind of like look at stuff from like an outside perspective too

Speaker 2 yeah I think I'm so grateful to have this life and like everything I've built so if you think about other people's lives or what they have or what their problems are compared to yours.

Speaker 2 I find that's like a great thing I do sometimes just whenever you're complaining about something, like really take a look at what you're fucking complaining about compared to other people's problems.

Speaker 2 So anytime I find myself in a funk, I'll kind of just think of that and be like, yo, this is my problem compared to like someone else's problem. Like look around me, look what I've got.

Speaker 2 Not even material-wise, like I have fucking a great family. I have fucking great friends.
I have a great life. Like some people don't have that.

Speaker 2 So all the stuff you kind of take for granted sometimes,

Speaker 2 not everyone has.

Speaker 2 How much do you rely on the sort of group around you do you think you could do this everything you couldn't do this on your own nah the group we have right now is like fucking really really solid like obviously i have gabe who's like my assistant like that guy slash lifesaver he's the best like we've become best friends too and he's like there's no one better than him in anything um

Speaker 2 yeah i mean os god who edits all our videos sean haney

Speaker 2 brett judd there's just like a whole crew of like, our whole team is just like so good. And I think that's what's,

Speaker 2 as we get bigger and bigger, that's what's really important is like having this team. It's never a one-man army for sure.

Speaker 2 And yeah, now like the crew we have, it's like we're all great friends. We hang out, like,

Speaker 2 we work out, we party. So I was telling you.
Team's key.

Speaker 1 I've been spending more time around bands. And I think

Speaker 1 a lot of what is happening in new media is reinventing what already happened in old media. So there's ad breaks, right?

Speaker 1 And sometimes there's little transition sounds between ads, and there's regular guests that come up, and sometimes there's segments.

Speaker 1 And so it's like all of this existed in radio, all of this existed in TV. But when I was thinking about

Speaker 1 how

Speaker 1 people that travel a lot,

Speaker 1 what is an existing

Speaker 1 artistic endeavor or project that has

Speaker 1 some degree of travel in it, some degree of

Speaker 1 sort of difficult sleep and wake schedule, maybe does some partying, does an obligation for performance, all of this stuff. I'm like, well, comedians and bands are two good examples of this.

Speaker 1 So I've been looking quite closely at how bands sort of maintain their motivation.

Speaker 1 And one of the fascinating things around that is you can have somebody who is an amazing musician who would perform phenomenally on stage that the audience might love, but they're a shit hang.

Speaker 1 And or vice versa. There's someone someone that's an amazing hang that's great for the morale behind the scenes, but can't deliver what they need to do when it comes to this.

Speaker 1 And basically, my point being that even with comedians, a lot of them will have some sort of tour manager or a warm-up act that goes with them.

Speaker 1 And yeah, sure, the TM's got a job to do, checking into the hotel, dealing with delays, etc. The warm-up acts got a job to do.

Speaker 1 They need to make sure that the crowd is nice and ready for you to come on stage and they'll give you a hand. But what are they really there for? They're there for morale.

Speaker 1 They're there to keep to keep your vibe good yeah and um yeah i think that's something that i

Speaker 1 being the solopreneur type degen thing working away in his room in solitude for a long time i think that's a lesson that i kind of overlooked that i i've done this on my own for you know seven years now i don't i need anyone

Speaker 1 i'll just keep doing this and you go yeah you're gonna get yourself to the stage where you need to lean on other people because you're just gonna your tank's gonna be empty And

Speaker 1 yeah, that's something, especially observing you guys and seeing how important that group dynamic is. And everybody's here.
It's your house. Yeah.
Right? It's our house. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But everybody's in here. Everybody's there for the hang.

Speaker 2 Something unorthodox.

Speaker 1 Something blows up. You know, someone's coming for you.
Someone's criticizing you. They're there to help support you.
Something goes well. They're there to celebrate it with you.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 we glorify the sort of Sigma male Lone Ranger. I'm going to do it on my own thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't think that that's the best way to do it to enjoy the good times. And I don't think it's the best way to do it to weather the bad times either.
I agree.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, the crew we have right now is like, we're all just, we're all just friends. So it's like, yeah, we celebrate the good times.
We battle through the bad times.

Speaker 2 And yeah, there's a lot of like, it's like a friend group. So it's like you're working and you're also having fun.

Speaker 2 So some things aren't done the most professionally, but I think that's, that's always been the magic of NELK and like what we've created.

Speaker 2 like you never even sometimes maybe we got a little bit too corporate and stuff too. Like that never fucking

Speaker 1 That never works.

Speaker 2 I don't think like for content

Speaker 2 Like we got an office in OC for a bit and not not that it like killed our content for it for anything It was just like waste of money for for for Nelk

Speaker 2 Happy Dad completely took over that office because they needed the space anyway, but For us, it's way better for me. Like now the editing office you saw is like right over there.

Speaker 2 I don't want to fucking drive to the office every day. Like

Speaker 2 this is the way that we've always done it. It's like I wake up, I can just go walk over there after the fucking cold tub and be like, what's good? How's the video looking, boys?

Speaker 2 And I can just go sit with them for 10 minutes. And we just like, boom, we just did like two hours worth of work like as I was coming back to like shower.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's funny the

Speaker 1 need for slack and calls and check-ins and updates and where are we at project management.

Speaker 2 I think that that works in a business, obviously, like these businesses, obviously you need that.

Speaker 2 But I think in a creative business, and obviously, filming or a YouTube crew, any of that typical shit I find

Speaker 2 it doesn't work. You got to do it your way.
You got to keep it fun. You got to keep it, you got to keep good energy.
Yeah. You know, the second people don't want to be there,

Speaker 2 it's not going to be good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a

Speaker 1 really interesting challenge. And it's part of the thing that people don't see where

Speaker 1 behind the scenes,

Speaker 1 the energy that you bring to something. This is something that Rogan's got so right.
It's so seamless.

Speaker 1 Going and working, like he has just removed all of the friction. There is zero friction involved in his entire process.

Speaker 1 And the team that he's got around him and the guys that he likes hanging with are just fire. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, he's got his little squad, and you turn up at the studio, and he doesn't need to think at all about anything that's going on.

Speaker 1 He gets to turn up and do his thing, and then he goes away, and nothing saps that energy from him.

Speaker 1 And I think that,

Speaker 1 yeah observing you guys i've learned a lot from sort of seeing how you've held that energy together and i think it's uh it's really impressive and obviously as well the proofs in the pudding you've kept going for 10 years so it evidently

Speaker 1 evidently works yeah yeah it's been a long ass journey for sure what would you like to do next like what's from a content perspective from a business perspective um i want to this year

Speaker 2 I'm pretty fucking motivated right now. Me too.
I think,

Speaker 2 yeah, i mean i think last year i got a little bit comfortable maybe for a different couple different reasons but i think this year um

Speaker 2 even just after the reaction of our last video like the nelk channel is so fucking unique what we have like like even the videos at like five mil or something like that's a lot of fucking views for a youtube video not not a lot of people are getting views like that in our genre.

Speaker 2 Obviously, Mr. Beast gets like crazy numbers, but for our like

Speaker 2 genre, like that's just that's awesome to me so and i had such a great time doing that so a lot of people have been asking for us to like upload more which i want to slightly tough if you go into an uncontacted tribe yeah yeah but i want to i want to get back into like trying to do a lot more nilk videos for sure and then keeping the podcast going too we um next week we're going to ufcla so we're going to do like a pod with all those with all those guys and we got a couple good guests in the works and then we got the inauguration so we'll probably we'll have a lot of you able to film at the inauguration we're trying to we want to try to make an inauguration video for nelk but we'll see it might be who gets to go with you because you must have a limited number of tickets you can't just bring everything it'll be it'll be me and steiny and then it'll be osgod our filmer and then probably gabe gabe will be in charge of suits he's in charge of suits

Speaker 2 he wants to be in charge of suits though Gabe, are you in charge of suits? It's kind of like a job we throw on him.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah, we'll see.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that'll be cool. But yeah, no, this year we just want to we just want to kill it with content.
Shorts, Nelk, Full Sen Pod.

Speaker 1 How do you come to think about what makes a good

Speaker 1 Nelk video or what makes a good piece of content?

Speaker 2 The first thing we'll think of is,

Speaker 2 I guess you think of it at the same time, but

Speaker 2 what's going to make a good video, obviously. But then you have to think of a good title and thumbnail.
I mean, you know how it works, but that's that's the main thing.

Speaker 2 So if you think of a good idea, then the next thing you think of is, okay, well, what's the title and thumbnail? And then if we can't think of that, you don't really have

Speaker 2 a full concept, you know? What makes it is the title and thumbnail and then actually good quality content.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But title and thumbnail is everything on YouTube, right? I mean, that's the very first thing you should kind of be thinking about.

Speaker 2 And yeah, just what's going to be digestible to like a large audience. Our whole team likes getting views too.

Speaker 2 Like, I think that's what we want to make a video on what's going to get the most fucking hype. What's going to get the most fucking views? Like, that's what really motivates me, Salim,

Speaker 2 Steiny, everybody on our team. What's just going to like make noise?

Speaker 1 So, what's the watch time on a 40-minute vlog for you guys? Do you know?

Speaker 2 I don't even, I'm not a fucking huge YouTube analytics guy, honestly. I let like our guy Judd's like super into that.
Like, he'll be like, bro, this short had fucking 110% retention.

Speaker 2 I'm like, dude, dude, yeah. Like, I don't really, I'm not a huge YouTube analytics guy, but

Speaker 4 yeah.

Speaker 1 Lots of completion, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah. There's, um,

Speaker 1 I wish that there was a way

Speaker 1 that we could see more sentiment on YouTube than just click-through and watch time. And I guess likes kind of contribute a little bit to that and comments kind of contribute.

Speaker 2 Reading a lot of likes is nice too. It is good.
It doesn't do shit, I tell the audience, but it just, it fires the whole team up. Yeah.
To just see like a lot of likes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this isn't going to make it go any further, but thank you.

Speaker 1 It makes everybody in the office. Fires everyone up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I wish there was this idea that Twitter had, or X, I guess, about

Speaker 1 golden hearts or super likes, I think they were called. And what they had was

Speaker 1 you maybe got three per week or one per week. And it meant that because there was a limited number that you had to use, you had to be really selective about what you gave it to.

Speaker 1 But that meant it was a really big deal. You know, like on Reddit, you can kind of gift people stuff.

Speaker 2 youtube should do more like that right it would be so good because they've there's they've lost like that

Speaker 2 i don't know like yeah there's not really that much point of even having an account that much right like before

Speaker 2 it was all about subscribers and you know you would subscribe to people like it kind of sucks now too i don't know if you noticed but it's a lot harder to gain subs now right way harder and this there's no point of subscribing to someone no because if you watch three videos in a row from the same creator whether you've subscribed or not you're now going to be be delivered that way.

Speaker 2 YouTube used to be all about your subscriptions. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 I mean, I like the fact that they need to add, they need to bring like a Dana White on for like, they, they should do something like that. They should bring someone on and like

Speaker 2 add some stuff like that.

Speaker 1 I wonder if they'll follow suit. I mean, we've certainly seen, you know, the

Speaker 1 person that broke through was Elon with them what he changed with regards to Twitter into X. And now with Meta as well.
I wonder if that's going to put some pressure on YouTube.

Speaker 1 And that would be great to sort of see.

Speaker 2 I think X, X has been putting pressure on YouTube.

Speaker 1 Because they've got the video uploads. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I know.
I mean,

Speaker 2 John is pretty tight with, he helps out a lot with X.

Speaker 2 And yeah, they're definitely what Elon's doing is putting pressure on every other social media network, you know, because they have to follow suit. I've actually even noticed

Speaker 2 YouTube is, and I want to give credit to YouTube because we shit on them a lot, but at the end of the day, YouTube is fucking great. And

Speaker 2 they've been a lot more lenient, I've noticed. I've noticed since X,

Speaker 2 I don't think we've gotten like an age restriction in like

Speaker 2 a long ass time. We used to upload everything, age restricted, age restricted, age restricted.

Speaker 2 Like now, like I noticed, yeah, I think it was during the time of X too, like we would do a podcast with like Donald Trump Jr.

Speaker 2 And like he's just going off about like trans and stuff like that. Like usually that would be like, yo, an absolute no-go and just like no age restriction, no nothing.

Speaker 2 So I started to really notice like YouTube is

Speaker 2 they're following suit as well. Like they're, they're going to have to follow the money.
Everyone's going to have to follow the money. You notice they've been way less picky on us.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I, well, they rolled back the language policy thing that they brought in about a year or 18 months ago or so.
It was within the first two minutes of a video.

Speaker 1 And we're going through and thinking, oh, God, someone said shit within this time. We've got to get rid of that.

Speaker 1 Found out that the C-word is just an instant demonetization, no matter how deep it can be. An hour and a half into a three-hour long video, it's like you're getting popped.

Speaker 1 But are you, how much are you tracking this world of Kick and Twitch and Rumble and whatever the other ones are, the streaming stuff? Because I kind of see.

Speaker 2 It's huge, right? Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 I watch it, and like, even like some people on our team are like, should we do this? Should we stream? I just think that, I don't know,

Speaker 2 streaming is a, that's a big commitment, you know?

Speaker 2 And I think too, like, back in the day when we were younger and we were drinking five times a week to make a video every week, I think we probably could have competed in that streaming space.

Speaker 2 But the amount of work that these guys are putting in now for content, I mean, they're streaming, what, six days a week?

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 2 Kai Sanat, too. He's like, what, 21? Like, he's fucking, yeah, they're putting in a lot of work.
Streaming's not the type of thing that you can just do it once a week.

Speaker 2 Like, you got to be streaming 30 to whatever hours a week. So

Speaker 2 I just know how content gets done on the NELK side. It's a little more wilder.
There's, there's drinking involved and there's things that need to be cut out. There's things that, oh, fuck.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a whole different story. Yeah.
A live stream with NELK, depending on the video, would be... Yeah, we might be fucked on that, honestly.
But

Speaker 2 yeah, it's just it's a grind for sure. And I think if

Speaker 2 in like 2017, I think we would have been able to like destroy that space for sure. Like when we were just young and not even thinking.

Speaker 1 But I don't know.

Speaker 2 I just like the YouTube stuff. I like making more of like a finished product and like polishing our videos.
And I just love the style that we do.

Speaker 1 Who is it that's orchestrating the stuff behind the scenes? Like you say, hey, it would be great if we went to go and see an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But flights need booking and licenses to get filming rights and and and the kit needs all i'll probably like i'll probably mostly like think of the ideas or we just have a group chat with everyone too that we're just always spitballing shit but yeah i'll kind of i'll press play on the video and tell them like all right i love like we all like this idea everyone like it all right boom we're doing it and then we have a producer griffin

Speaker 2 He used to do some stuff on like the Eric Andre show. He's a beast.
And then Gabe, too. Gabe and Brett, they'll do all the flights, all the logistics.

Speaker 2 So I just, my job now is like, I press play and I dish it off to them.

Speaker 1 And they're all on top of logistics.

Speaker 2 Austin and Sean will handle it.

Speaker 1 We couldn't hit videos.

Speaker 2 No, we used to do everything back in the day. I mean, I used to edit the videos myself back in the day.

Speaker 1 So I've had a hat.

Speaker 2 I was my own assistant back in the day. Like if there was a prop that needed to get it, I would have to go to three different Halloween stores to find the costume.

Speaker 2 So I've like played all those hats that everyone's doing now. So I kind of know what needs to be done.
That's why when I'm hiring them too, I'm kind of knowing

Speaker 2 I know exactly what needs to be done in each situation. But no, we have a fucking all-star team.
So when we press play on a video, it's like bang, bang, bang. There's like no fucking bullshit.

Speaker 2 That's one thing like Gabe knows too. There's no bullshit when it comes to like

Speaker 2 videos.

Speaker 2 Like we did a bachelor video recently with Steiny is the bachelor and that was like huge budget We did like five days We did like Miami Nashville and Cancun and it was just like completely dialed to a T

Speaker 2 So that's one thing I have no complaints about is our our video process is like 10 out of 10 That's why I'm just like yo, we got to run this shit up on milk.

Speaker 2 Yeah because because you've got the systems in place We have the system and it's just like such a powerful channel. People want more videos I'm fired up.

Speaker 1 That's sick. Yeah.
Dude, I appreciate the fuck out of you. Yeah.
It's awesome. It really is.
It's cool to see what you're doing.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 love,

Speaker 1 I love seeing someone that's passionate about what they do and is able to scale it and get out of their own way and just hand stuff off.

Speaker 1 And yeah, I'm excited to see what 25 has in store for both of us.

Speaker 2 Let's crush it this year. Appreciate you, man.
Appreciate you, brother.

Speaker 1 Let's go.

Speaker 1 Any more drops? Any other shit that people need to check out?

Speaker 2 Not really. Just watch us this year.
I mean, I just talked to Big Game, so everyone watched that yet. Everyone watching, if we don't do it, come chirp me.

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