What are you putting off out of fear?

I'm putting off quitting my job. I'm

putting off reaching out to all the

people I need to to make this dream a

reality because it means I have to say

it out loud. I'm waiting for a false

sense of security to inspire me to take

a leap. But I'm actually being

challenged and invited to create my own

security. I've never designed my own

rubric of success. And that's because I

don't trust myself to define success.

I'm scared to assume that

responsibility.

That was my fear setting.

It's very personal process.

>> Michelle, at long last, here we are.

>> Here we are.

>> So nice to meet you in person.

>> It's so nice to meet you, too. This is

so exciting and surreal for me. So,

thank you for letting me infiltrate your

podcast studio today.

>> Absolutely. I am thrilled. It looks like

about three years ago that I first put

you and your channel in my newsletter,

Five Bullet Friday. And I think it was

probably even before that that one of

our mutual friends, Adam Grant, had been

telling me repeatedly,

you have to have Michelle on the show.

And the reason that I was so excited to

put you in the newsletter, I don't even

remember the line. I went back and I

looked at what I said exactly. And one

of the things I said was, "I'm so happy

that someone finally cracked sort of

this premise and did it right." But

since people probably have no idea what

I'm talking about, although I would have

already said something in the intro,

what's the log line so to speak for

Challenge Accepted?

>> Of Challenge Accepted. What is it?

>> So, Challenge Accepted is a show where I

attempt the world's toughest stunts and

professions. And that can range from

learning and attempting Harry Houdini's

deadliest trick, the water torture cell,

to training with the Secret Service for

a week to most recently I recreated Tom

Cruz's stunt from Mission Impossible

where I was hanging off the side of a

military aircraft as it was taking off.

and you have more than 6 million

followers, more than a billion views,

and I'm going to read, you know what,

we'll probably just skip the intro

because I'm basically getting into it

anyway. Michelle hopes to prove that

with enough dedication and failure,

anything is possible. And that's one of

the characteristics that I most

appreciate about the show is like if you

have a breakdown, if you're flat on your

back, if you stumble and fall, it's in

there, right? That's a feature and not a

bug.

>> Exactly.

>> So, it's not just the highlights, it's

also the low lightss. And since we're

already getting into it, I'm just going

to read this paragraph. All right.

Michelle's work has earned multiple

streaming awards, including show of the

year, has been featured in the New York

Times, Forbes, Vogue India, and more. In

2025, challenge accepted, made history.

Congratulations. Successfully

petitioning to join the prime time Emmy

ballot. Michelle was named a Time 100

honore for her impact as a creator and

storyteller. Let's rewind way back. We

were chatting a little bit before we got

started about Shriefport, Louisiana.

>> Oh yes,

>> shout out Shrieport.

>> And I mentioned I had been there and you

were like, I'm so sorry.

>> There's not much there.

>> Why was I there? Why had I been there?

And why does that tie into your

background a little bit, your history

growing up? Oh, I was just say if you

want to hop into it because I'll I'll

suppose answer my own question which is

the reason I was intrigued is because

they have very compelling tax incentives

and other incentives for filming.

>> Right. So what was your first exposure

to sort of the business broadly speaking

in air quotes? My very first exposure to

the business was my dad is a big big

movie and television lover. He actually

learned English after immigrating from

India by watching films even on the

plane from India to America.

>> So growing up because there's not much

to do in Shreport. Every Friday night we

were at the movies. It didn't matter if

it was a blockbuster or a, you know,

very lowrated Rotten Tomatoes B-side

movie. I saw everything. Kids movies,

PG-13 up, like we saw it all. And then

we would go to a pizza shop and talk

about the movie afterwards. Again,

there's nothing to do in street. So,

this was like the pinnacle of

entertainment. And so just naturally I I

started experiencing

a homegrown little film school, if that

makes sense. We printed out the AFI top

100 movies and had them in our living

room and we would check them off as we

watched them, me and my dad. And what

was special is as I got a little older,

all these tax incentives started

happening, bringing films to New Orleans

and to Shreveport.

We got a lot of like Twilight knockoff

movies. I think one of the scary movies

was shot in Shreport. And so our town

sort of experienced this little economic

art renaissance which was really

exciting. And so all of our friends and

and family members were becoming extras

in movies and TV shows and and feeling,

you know, very excited about all of

that. And so one of my first jobs was

I had an internship on a movie starring

The Rock. It was a movie called Snitch.

It came out in 2013. And I I think I was

like so low on the call sheet. I was

like it was after all the PAs. It was PA

intern. It was the last person on the

call sheet was me. And I was just

getting coffee for people and learning.

And it it was an incredible experience.

And I love that because I got a window

into the traditional scope of what it

could take to tell a story at a higher

Hollywood level.

>> And that's what I hope to bring a lot of

to what we do even on Challenge Accepted

today is this midpoint of digital

freedom ownership but structure and

understanding and respect of the history

of where our visual storytelling medium

has come from. Mhm. Part of the reason I

said I'm so glad somebody finally sort

of cracked this is

you'll know this, some people may not.

There are basically two reasons why I'm

doing this podcast or the catalyst that

led to this podcast and they both relate

to ownership in a sense. The first was

the 4-hour chef, which was basically

just a suicide mission of a deadline.

Book that should have taken three years

was done in a year and that's just

physically effectively impossible. So

ran myself into the ground with that

>> because you are self- testing all of

these techniques.

>> I'm self test. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I

was doing everything in the book full of

experiments and somehow thought it would

be a good idea to try to learn

photography to do

hundreds of photographs in the book

myself, which turns out to be a craft in

and of itself that takes a lot of time

if you want to be even halfway decent.

>> And what ended up happening in that case

was

distribution got hamstrung. I expected

some of it because it was a book. It was

the largest title that had been acquired

by the then very naent Amazon

publishing. And because people in some

ways rightly fear Amazon as this

omnipowerful, you know, omnipotent

entity that controls all of these

different aspects of in most cases

distribution. But now Amazon Publishing

was going to be competing with the big

publishing houses for author talent. And

this scared the hell out of everybody.

So, I expected that there would be, say,

boycott by Barnes & Noble. I did not

anticipate it would include all the big

box retailers and much more. So, the

book basically I I don't want to say it

died on the vine because it did as well

as it could have. But at the same time,

roughly, this is the part I haven't

talked as much about. I had been filming

and then debuted in 2013 the Tim Ferrris

experiment. And the Tim Ferris

experiment had me doing these

experiments as you might expect on a

weekly basis. And that was through a

startup within Turner Broadcasting

called Upwave. But there were all these

problems internally at Upwave.

Ultimately that that got shut down.

there was a regime change and then what

h what happens? The catalog of episodes.

If it succeeds, the new leadership is

not going to get any credit and if it

goes poorly, they're going to get all

the blame. So, it just got locked up.

And it took me like 2 years or 3 years

to get back the rights and then quote

unquote self-publish on Apple. And it it

did very well at the time. But what you

just said is so important. And I want to

underscore it for people because I've

heard you discuss. I want to give a

shout out to Colin Samir, two of the

best interviewers out there in my

opinion, especially when it comes to

creator economy and the nuts and bolts

of making things in this modern era. I

really want to give them due credit.

When you've had conversations, and I'm

going to talk for a second, I apologize,

but when you've had conversations with

some of these larger, let's call it

traditional outlets or platforms, right?

and you start to talk about your

production schedule, they're like,

"Well, wait a second. It takes you 6

months or a year or fill in the blank in

their mind excessively long period of

time. Could we compress it into a week?"

>> Mhm.

>> And you have figured out very artfully

how to have largely complete editorial

control. There are some constraints,

right, depending on how you want to go

about it with partners and sponsors and

things like that, but largely you

control your schedule, your direction.

actually you do completely right you're

choosing positive constraints depending

on your objectives

but what ended up happening with Tim

Ferris experiments like okay we have a

week for each one

>> and so I would be in compression pants

and like putting on DMSO and all this

crap because I had a ton of injuries

from one episode but we were already

going into post and then we'd have a day

of travel and then I'm starting the next

episode and it was impossible right it

was just physically I'm still contending

with injuries from that. We might talk

about that with respect to some of the

stuff that you're doing. I want to hear

about it. But there were two issues,

right? There was the kind of production

side control

>> problem and then ultimately didn't

control distribution. And

for

those reasons, those two straws that

broke the camel's back, I was like,

"Fuck this." And I'd used podcasts to

launch the 4-hour chef. And I thought to

myself, you know what? I like RSS feeds.

I like this idea of being able to do

whatever I want, be myself. If I want to

curse, I can curse. Not that that's

ultimately, I suppose, can be an art

form in and of itself, depending on

where you grow up. And that's how we

ended up here today, right? So,

>> just so I understand, you were human

guinea pigging, 4-hour chef. Yeah.

>> And shooting Tim Ferris experiment at

the same time.

>> They were basically backtoback and there

was probably some overlap. So, I was

doing pre-production while I was

finishing the 4-hour chef cuz I'm a

glutton for punishment. For people who

haven't seen that, it's my first

fourcolor book. It's something like 600,

700 pages, cut down from like a thousand

probably. And

the biggest

difference, I'd say the absolute biggest

difference between the 4-hour chef and

the books that came before it, the

4-hour work week and the 4-hour body, is

that in the case of the 4-hour body, I

did all of the experiments, then

digested it all, combed through

everything, and compiled the book. In

the case of the 4-hour chef, I was still

because of the deadline doing a lot of

the experiments as I was already

beginning to write the earlier sections

of the book, which is a very risky

gambit.

>> Uhhuh.

>> And then on top of that, because I did

not know, and I thought this was

actually a good idea, although there

were a lot of pitfalls, because the

4-hour chef was a huge gamble,

particularly from a distribution

perspective. I expected I was going to

get kneecapped in certain ways and I was

like, well, if this doesn't work out the

way I wanted to, I still have the

benefit of the doubt in the eyes of most

people and I can use the success of the

prior book and the blog at that time,

remember blogs, people to parlay that

into the television. So, I was like,

"Let me get the deal before The 4Hour

Chef fully comes out so that I have the

leverage that might become a question

mark once it's published."

>> Oh my gosh. Okay. So, I for those of you

I feel like there are so few people in

the world who can truly empathize with

what you put yourself through. I'm

thinking of Morgan Spurlock.

>> Yeah.

>> The true pioneer of whatever it is we're

doing. And rest in peace, my gosh. David

Blaine

>> is another that comes to mind.

>> And I think what people don't realize

when they watch your content or even

mine is that it's not filmed in a

vacuum. Life is happening. As you

mentioned, you're not just going to

Japan to learn Yabusame for 5 days.

You're struggling with a jet lag. And

then you're also probably answering

questions and emails about what next

week's episode is going to entail. And

that is a level of professional athlete

that is so unappreciated. So I much

empathize with that.

>> I Yeah, I really appreciate that. And

>> but we were talking about decisions.

>> Decisions. Yeah. So decisions and then

we're going to go back chronologically.

Okay.

>> Thank you for saying all that. And I was

also building initially the the the

writing side of things based on in some

ways models from let's call it

experiential journalism who came before

me.

>> And there were quite a few. Usually it

was done with some type of satirical or

humor twist right like AJ Jacobs would

be a great example for people who don't

know. The year of living biblically I

think is an amazing amazing book.

>> I met him a couple months ago and I said

you need to do that again and make it a

YouTube video. It would bang. He is such

a sweet guy. Morgan Spurlock for people

who might not have recognized the name

immediately superersized me.

>> Really a sort of a genre breaking

category redefining experiment and many

more who came earlier from a writing

perspective but questions. So what I

would love to know and this is going to

get in the weeds a bit guys but we're

going to zoom out and get the Genesis

story as well. But part of what I'm so

curious about is you have in some ways

the dizziness of freedom, right? You

have a paradox of choice challenge where

having complete lack of constraints

can be almost as bad if you don't have a

framework for figuring it out as having

too many constraints. So when you have

things running concurrently, right, you

might, as I understand it, be working on

like two or three challenges at the same

time, right? You're doing

post-production for one, maybe you're

doing planning for another, and you're

in the middle of a third.

>> First of all, how far in advance do you

plan your editorial calendar?

>> The editorial calendar for Challenge

Accepted can be anywhere from 12 to 15

months out from idea to upload. Yeah.

>> And an example of concurrent things

happening would be

>> there was one day where I had to do

astronaut training for our NASA episode.

So naturally, I began my day by going up

in a fighter jet in the middle of

nowhere in California, flying around,

having no idea what I was getting myself

into.

>> Hope you took your Zopran. Yeah,

>> I threw up.

>> Yeah.

>> While there closed,

>> I exited the plane. We finished filming

that. I got in my car, drove 3 hours

back to Los Angeles, and had a ballet

lesson.

I think that like is just a a good

window into what one day of of life is

like and often training for multiple

things at once. But when you have a

situation and and a privilege honestly

of the gift of choice and getting to

choose how you use your time, I like to

maximize my output for each year as far

as it really comes down to

something that I learned early, which is

the more

milestone memories you experience, the

longer life feels. for sure.

>> And I've realized that that goes hand in

hand with my business. The more

milestone memories I create and can

capture and turn into stories, it

actually is a better episode, it it

leads to more revenue, more

opportunities. And so I've sort of

merged those together. But it comes from

I am an athlete. I am a person who

operates in an environment where if you

give me a coach, you give me a training

plan, I'll follow it. I'll do exactly

what you tell me to and I really thrive

in that environment. And being a

business owner is such an oppositional

to that because now you are both the

coach and the athlete at the same time.

And so what I have had to do is, and I'm

stealing this term from one of my other

friends, is put a Formula 1 team around

myself.

>> A Formula 1 team, you know, we love Max

Vers Stappen. He's an incredible driver

and he's not able to do what he does

without the support of all of the

mechanics and engineers. So what I have

done at every step in my life is try to

find who are the best people to put

around myself to continually challenge

me whether it's business,

personal relationships, content, story

and assembling that team is really

important to me. Those are the people

who help me decide how do I spend each

minute of a calendar day.

>> We're going to double click on a few

things here and we're going to go all

over the place, folks. So,

>> buckle up.

>> Buckle up. Right.

It's not quite going to be the vomit

comet for astronaut training. Hopefully,

it'll be a little It'll be more like a

tour through the countryside with lots

of interesting sites and vistas, but a

few things come to mind that I want to

mention and then ask about. The first is

that

and Colin and Samir made this point like

you sort of exemplify

something that I hope continues to gain

traction which is a focus on

quality over quantity

>> right because there was a point where

it's like hey you have to post 50 times

a day you have to do this you have to do

that you have to like vlog 20 minutes

every 12 hours no matter what you do

>> and you're you're borrowing a lot of the

best storytelling techniques and

production quality of quote unquote

traditional, right?

>> But also applying it to this sort of

digital native environment,

>> which has a lot of its own upsides and

also

potentially long-term damaging

temptations, which you have to be aware

of, and I think you very much are. when

you're publishing fewer videos however

right in a sense you not in all senses

but in some senses you're kind of like

fighting the drive of the algorithm and

there are economic incentives

that drive the frequency with which a

lot of people publish right

>> so when you're doing less and again had

tip to Colin Samir it's like you are I

want you to modify this because it's

been a minute since you spoke with them

but you can keep the lights on, right,

to some extent with like AdSense and the

sort of ad revenue from that. Then

you've got brand partners, right? And

that's part of the reason why it seems

like it's helpful to have an editorial

calendar out for a period of time,

right? Because you can

>> have some type of I don't want to call

it sales process, but you have sort of

forwardlooking thematic opportunities

>> to look for those types of deals.

And then you've got your app, right,

among other things.

>> And I' I'd like to hear you talk about

that. But when you're going to break a

mold and you're trying to do something

that people say can't be done, right?

Like traditional TV on the internet,

right? Or whatever it might be, you may

have to find a new approach to financing

what you want to do, right? And so I'd

love to hear you speak for just a moment

about kind of what you have had to build

and how you've had to think differently

in order to do what you want to do. And

then I do want to return to and you can

mention this in your answer if you want,

but when you have certain episodes that

take a day to film, right? Some that

take a week, some that take six months,

some that take a year to set up, how the

hell do you create like a Gant chart or

whatever to actually do that? And my

understanding is like production is one

of your superpowers, right? So

>> that is a very gigantic half-page

question. But

>> okay.

>> Yeah. If you could speak to basically

how you make it work,

>> how we make it work,

>> right? Because a lot of creators I think

are succumbing to the culture of

cortisol drive.

>> Mhm.

>> Where they feel like they have to keep

up, keep up, keep up often in terms of

just frequency, right? And I think

that's a really dangerous game to play

for a lot of reasons. Somebody else is

always going to be able to sacrifice or

be willing to sacrifice their entire

lives to publish more frequently. So if

that can't be your sole metric, right?

So how do you do what you do? And how do

you have to think differently, operate

differently?

>> How do we operate differently? Our

business is super antithetical to what

most creators are doing. And I started

in that place that you're referring to,

uploading multiple long form videos a

week. I mean I was uploading before Tik

Tok existed. So it was all long form.

Then of course short form came along.

But what happened at the beginning of my

career was I was trying to grow my

channel to create financial and personal

stability. I

had taken a big risk by leaving my job.

And as a part of that, the first entry

point was stability in some sense. So I

was making videos about anything I

thought would perform well and still

with my own lens, of course,

>> but I would have this strategy of I'm

going to do three videos a month for the

studio, if you will, which is a term

from traditional TV and film, where a

big director will do a big blockbuster

movie and then the studio will allow

them to do their passion project. So, I

would do that for myself or once a month

I would do a passion project. And at the

beginning of my channel, it was I would

DM stunt performers like Tom Holland's

stunt double and ask them, would you

train with me for a week and and can we

make a video together? And it was cool

because we were targeting communities

that were undervalued and unseen often.

I mean, many stunt performers aren't

allowed to share their work. And so

giving them an opportunity to highlight

their work was helpful to them and

exciting for them and exciting for me

selfishly because I want to learn how to

do all these incredible stunts and make

an amazing story about it. And I saw a

market opportunity because when you see

BTS stuff from movies, it's it's very

>> behind the scenes.

>> Yeah, behind the scenes. My apologies.

When you see behind the scenes content

from big Marvel movies, it's very

manicured and very short. And I really

wanted to give space and breathability

to this experimental process. And what

ended up happening is those passion

projects started outperforming

the things I expected to just perform

well. And it got to this point where I

was limited resource-wise, just like my

own time even, of of being able to do

more of that passion thing. And I just

decided, we decided as a team, we're

only going to focus on challenge

accepted. Let's just try that for

>> was it when did it get named Challenge

Accepted?

>> It got named Challenge Accepted after

Challenge Accepted existed. So when you

go back and look at season one of

Challenge Accepted, which is a while ago

now, I think we went back and named it

that because we're like, "Oh yeah, this

was the beginning of this show." Which

is so funny. But we were we were doing

many things on the channel and we

decided to strip away everything and

only go in on that and that is where a

true inflection point came on the

channel. I would honestly say Tim, you

were asking earlier about key decisions.

I think a lot of the inflection points

of my life have happened when my back

has been against the wall.

>> Not in a a place of I get to make a

decision, but more like I have to make a

decision because everything's going to

break if I don't. And this was a risky

decision to make to go all in on a show

where I am physically committing myself

for up to months at a time. At this

point in 2026, 2025, we release 8 to 10

episodes per year.

>> Mhm.

>> That's my upload cadence. And so every

opportunity is a is a big bet. But what

I have found is that when I did that,

something even more special happened. It

created something unique. And I have

found that defining something unique can

be even more valuable than consistency

or mass viewership. We're very blessed

that challenge accepted does get a lot

of views and we feel strong about the

bets that we make on these episodes. But

I have found that creating something

special attracts even more people to

want to support it. And so now what we

ironically have on the channel is a

scarcity mindset for advertisers that if

you want to be in an episode of

Challenge Accepted, there are 10. The

train's going. Are you getting on or are

you getting off? Because we only have so

much inventory to sell. We're able to

sell it at a premium. And it makes what

we're doing so one of

my like big thesis is whatever we do has

to be one of one. A few things come to

mind as as you're talking you know one

is

the importance of owning or creating

even better yet a category right

>> so this category of one idea

blue ocean strategy I think at least at

the time I read it which was a long time

ago 10 years ago pretty good exploration

of this but separately

as I look at the landscape now

I've had a lot of people ask me about

podcasting if you were to are now what

would you do? And

I could throw out sort of examples of

what I might do, but just from a broader

kind of meta level, I say I think it

would be very difficult for me to do

now or start now what I started in 2014,

which was kind of a broad exploration of

deconstructing world-class performers in

an interview format. Now there are 600

of those. And

if you want something that is

sustainable and this is not exactly the

right way to frame it, but premium from

a partnership perspective,

>> right? From a CPM perspective, from a

whatever perspective, the best examples

that I would try to model are shows like

yours. Although I'm not really um kind

of shy with video, so I probably

wouldn't do video first, but it would be

a show like yours. I mean, if I were 20

right now, I'd be like, "That's what I

want to do." If I could have a job, it

would be Michelle's job. I mean,

honestly, it would be. But if you want

to look at some other examples where I

probably wouldn't pursue it, but they're

doing excellent jobs. Acquired, for

instance, founders, you know, David

Senra, highly focused,

long form, very hard to replicate

because there's so much goddamn work,

right? Yes.

>> Which is true with yours also. It's

like, oh, you want to spend six months

making a video? Like, let's let's see.

It's a lot easier to publish frequently

without thinking as hard about the lead

time of doing something that's very

complex.

>> And that was part of the strategy with

challenge accepted too is you see many

people copying one another online in any

form of art. People are copying

constantly and part of our defensive

strategy was how do we do something that

is so crazy? No one would be no one

would be crazy enough I don't think to

run seven marathons on all seven

continents in in one single week and

make a documentary about it and go

through all of the production headache

of that or call the FAA 300 times to get

permission to hang off the side of a

military plane to recreate the Mission

Impossible stunt. It's almost like the

things that feel so untouchable

instantly become opportunities for story

because it's a great story to try and

overcome that.

>> And also the second mover scenario will

at least take them so long to catch up

to us to get there,

>> right? Because you're going to be the

comp. They're going to say it's like

challenge accepted but dot dot dot. And

that is going to be very difficult for

other people to overcome, right? And I

want to explore this a little bit more

because it's I think so critical and you

see it in a lot of different places.

Sometimes the hard thing

is the easier thing long term. Meaning

like if if you solve a very hard problem

upfront,

it makes your life a little easier or a

lot easier long term.

>> And this applies everywhere, right?

There's a amazing amazing guy. You

should meet him at some point.

>> Okay.

>> Jersey Gregorick and his wife Annella

Gregorick. They're Polish immigrants.

They immigrated to the US with like 10

or 100 bucks in their pocket. They were

political refugees. Landed in California

and still to this day, they both have

multiple world records in Olympic

weightlifting. And I would say they're

both around mid60s.

And Jersey can get on an indo board like

a balance board with a fully loaded

barbell and do a perfect Olympic snatch

like as to heels and then drop the

weight and repeat while balancing on a

board. He's got to be at least 65 now.

his wife Angela, who also, as I

mentioned, has a bunch of world records,

can, you know, her her daughter's, I

guess, ball got caught in a tree a few

years ago, and she just like ran up the

tree and got it and came down. I mean,

they are incredible physical specimens.

They take no prescription medications.

And the reason I'm bringing them up is

that Jersey has this expression, which

is hard choices, easy life, easy choice

is hard life. And so so it applies in

physical training and health. It applies

in

>> creation broadly speaking, right? It's

like with what you're doing, right?

You're creating a moat that is is is

very defensible in a lot of ways.

>> Yeah.

>> It applies to startups, right? Where

it's like, okay, sure. Yeah, you can

vibe code and create something in 20

minutes and that's interesting and you

should experiment with that. and the

barrier to entry has has been lowered

dramatically on the production of say an

app but the barrier to attention has

never been higher. Therefore, like there

is actually something to be said for the

hard startup being the easier startup

where if you're solving a hard problem

that requires a really good team and

like hardware and this that and the

other thing, most people are never going

to attempt it. Therefore, you actually

have a margin of safety in some respect

if you can execute. Right? So, I I just

wanted to mention that because I I see

this all over the place where

if you spend the time to work on

something hard up front, it buys you a

lot of safety.

>> Yes.

>> Is at least one way that I think about

it. And you've talked about assembling

this Formula 1 team.

>> But let's rewind because I'm sure some

people are like, "Well, if I don't have

any money and I'm just getting started,

how do you afford to hire the Formula 1

team? That sounds expensive. So, let's

go back a little bit before you became

active on YouTube. What were you doing?

>> What was I doing?

>> Yeah.

>> Gosh. So, I grew up in Shreport. Got my

first taste of the film industry there.

I went to college at Dartmouth.

>> Good school.

>> Yeah, it was great. And while I was in

college, I did some internships in the

industry, but I also did an internship

at Google. And so there I sort of saw

the behind the scenes of the platform I

guess I upload to now which was really

interesting

and as I was mentioning to you Tim a lot

of things that have driven key moments

in my life have been moments when my

back has been against the wall and one

of those moments for me was when you do

a Google internship I don't think I've

like talked about this much but when you

do a Google internship at the end of the

summer like many big internship you find

out if you get the job.

>> Mhm.

>> And you can go into your senior year of

college like, "Oh my gosh, I'm rocking.

I I got the job. I'm set. I can chill

out the last year." And there was one

day where they called everybody from my

internship class letting them know if

they got the job. And we're all in a big

text chain together and everyone's like,

"I got it. See you next year." Blah blah

blah.

>> I get my phone call.

>> I didn't get the job.

>> Yeah. And I would say that this was

pivotal and ironic now that I'm so

embedded in YouTube in a completely

different way. But what it forced me to

do was my whole life had been about as

as an athlete finding a coach doing

exactly what they tell me to do. In

school, it was here are all the books to

do well on the SAT. I will do them. I

will wake up at 5 in the morning over

the summer and memorize everything and

do it because that's the formula

>> executing to plan on the

>> exact and I think it's part of the

immigrant mentality of the holy trinity

of doctor lawyer engineer is because

those are systems for safety

>> and also from my family like with many

immigrant families they know so

intimately what instability feels like

>> and So that led me on the course that

eventually led me to Buzzfeed, which was

in many ways sort of the first creative

risk I had taken on myself. And at the

time it was the fastest growing YouTube

channel in the world.

>> What was the job that you had at

BuzzFeed?

>> So I started as an intern again.

>> Mhm.

>> And eventually I became a producer at

BuzzFeed. And producer is such a strange

term even in traditional but what it

meant at BuzzFeed was doing everything.

So I was responsible for everything from

ideiation to filming, editing, uploading

and I didn't have any of those skills

even though you know my homegrown shripp

Louisiana

shout out Vet K my dad putting on his

little AFI film school in our house. It

did not cut it for what we needed to do.

But what I loved about that was you had

to learn every part of the process.

Unlike when I interned on a traditional

film set, it's very specialized. There

are unions. You don't even touch

equipment from a department that's not

yours.

>> I've seen that. You get yelled at.

>> You and you do get yelled at. And there

are great reasons for that. But the

learning environment was so important

for me to to learn. When you ingest

footage, you can accidentally delete it

all.

that sucks. I needed to learn all of

those processes because even today now

we have an amazing team, a massive

production team

and

it helps me as a leader to be able to

empathetically chat with each

department. Yeah,

>> we've all been at companies or on film

sets where the director or CEO has never

done the jobs of anyone that they're

asking to do a job for. And I like being

able to talk to the sound person in my

basic understanding of what are the

frequencies we're on, is there anything

we need to adjust about this set that is

is disruptive to the way you have the

boom pole set up? Like I like knowing

all of the details and being able to

think critically about each department

so everyone can succeed.

>> So this is going to be a leading

question, but

>> I'm going to try it anyway. Do you think

it's fair to say that if you had not had

the BuzzFeed job and you'd gone straight

from not getting the gig at Google to

YouTube that

>> the outcome would have been very

different?

>> Exponentially different.

>> Yeah. I don't think I would have

succeeded period.

>> So, I want to spend a second on this

simply to say because I get

asked about starting companies all the

time, right? And someone's like, "I'm

graduating and I'm going to start my

company." And

I think they're sometimes surprised, and

a lot of professors disagree with me on

this, which is fine because I think that

makes for interesting conversations. But

my default recommendation is do not

start a company right after school.

>> Go get an MBA or a master's degree in X

where you get to do every job

>> where someone else is paying you for it.

>> Exactly.

>> So that you are learning learn make all

your dumb mistakes or make your first

massive round of dumb mistakes on

someone else's dime. And if you

immediately start your own company,

you're also not necessarily going to get

the breadth of experience in a more

mature and that by mature that could be

10 or 20 or 30 employees. It doesn't

have to be a gigantic company, but get

that experience first and then

increase the odds of your own success

at that point by going and starting your

own gig.

>> Right. And I'm curious if you think

that's still applies for instance in the

world of and I know this is painting

with a broad brush but YouTube if

somebody came to you and they said I

want to get really good at and the world

has changed so quickly in in terms of

video and entertainment and visual

storytelling

with a startup I would still tell

someone hey if you can I know we're all

painting this dystopian picture of

MadMax in 10 years let's just for the

time being for planning purposes assume

that's not going to be case, work at a

startup first, then start your own

startup. But in the world of visual

storytelling, would you suggest people

get a job kind of working at a place

like a Buzzfeed or something like that

before making the leap into YouTube now,

or is there a better way to learn the

skills necessary to do in-depth long-

form stuff? I definitely think having

experience working for someone else in

the field that you want to be a part of

is so educational. Not just to be in the

mail room and see how things work,

>> but also to define a core tenant list of

what you enjoy about the company and all

the little things you don't like. Mhm.

>> When I left my job, I had a very clear

list of

this worked great for for this company,

but at my company, I'm never going to do

X, Y, or Z. And that was super super

helpful to define company culture, to

ensure people's voices are heard, to

keep employee retention high.

And I think that's why with challenge

accepted, our sets operate so

differently that everybody has a digital

mind of we need to shoot it this way

because it will perform well or we're

thinking critically about retention and

the intro and whatnot, but we're also

thinking about storytelling as a medium

has been solved.

>> Traditional Hollywood, they clearly did

something right and and let's learn from

that.

It's as simple as breaking for lunch

every six hours. It's as simple as

making sure we have enough

pre-production meetings. And those are

the things that were pain points for me

at prior jobs. And I'm able to apply

them in this really special space where

we have an amazing amazing culture and

and work environment where people can

hopefully feel that they're able to

express themselves artistically,

experiment, and learn at the same time.

So, I'm trying to figure out where to go

next because

I think it's probably going to be fear

setting just because I want to hear how

that factors into things.

>> Okay,

>> why don't we just go there because I've

read about and

the whiteboard of fears and and other

things. I'm sure we'll spend a second on

cycling also, but the way that this

interview ultimately happened was

because of an exchange, right? Like I

put I put up a post about YouTube

channels. Are there any YouTube channels

out there that have some type of

intersection with the 4-hour work week

or anything in it? And that's how we we

ultimately personally connected.

How does fear setting fit into the

story?

>> Well, Tim, it fits into the story in a

few ways. Challenge accepted at its core

originally began by me taking a

whiteboard and writing all of my fears

out and then connecting each fear to a

circumstance that would cause me to

address it.

>> Not just as a like personal self-help

type of thing because I am a very

anxious person internally,

>> but more specifically because it makes

for a better story. Mhm.

>> We realized very early on showing the

vulnerability, showing the fear, that's

a key part of Snider's beats of

storytelling. So, starting with the all

is lost moment of the story led us to

unlock really, really fascinating

episodes. And we would structure the

thesis of each of like I want to be a

firefighter, but I'm not brave enough.

Okay, that's an interesting story. And

we're thinking about that in every piece

of the edit, every piece of the

pre-production. And that is the climax

of the emotional core of when I finally

go in a burning building.

>> Why we care so much? It's the same in

the Mission Impossible project. I would

love to be in a Mission Impossible

movie. But am I actually brave enough to

strap myself to the side of a plane like

icon Tom Cruz? Okay, I've got to do that

first. But I actually brought something,

Tim.

>> You brought something?

>> I brought something to help demonstrate

fear setting.

>> Okay,

>> I'm going to bring it out now.

>> Yeah, let's do I'll describe it for the

audio listeners.

>> No, I ren

the colors.

>> Okay. Unfortunately, you are dealing

with a fan in the chair opposite from

you. But reading the 4-hour work week

changed my life.

>> This is the original copy I have from

2016. I was a bit young when it came out

in 2007, so I didn't have that that

version. So, this might be slightly

revised, but I went back into my

archives

>> and I found this email.

The date is, what is today? March 31st,

2026.

>> Mhm.

>> The date of this email,

I'm not making this up. March 18th,

2016. It has been exactly 10 years since

I sent this email.

>> Okay. I have to shout out my therapist

Jodie because she's the one who told me

to read your book and I wanted to read a

section of my fear setting.

>> Oh my god. Amazing.

>> Now, as you know, because these are your

memories in your brain. This was prior

to the define

prevent repair chart of your 2017

talk.

>> So, this isn't even in a chart. These

are just a couple of questions that you

had. But I wrote here this 20. This is

so crazy. My dream is to leave my job,

start a YouTube channel, somehow

succeed, own my ideas, and start a

company where I can grow as a

storyteller and help other storytellers

grow without traditional barriers to

entry.

>> Number one, define your nightmare. I'm

just going to read a few of the

highlights,

>> please. Oh, yeah. No, take your time. to

find my nightmare was going broke, never

figuring out what I'm best at since I

find the most joy in trying everything

rather than specializing.

People not thinking I'm funny. And the

last one is actually not being funny.

>> And of course, I went through the steps

of repairing the damage.

>> Do you have any examples there? Of

course. Yeah. Yeah. Because for just I

want to give like a quick

No, no, not spiel. Just like a quick

context rapper. So, fear setting is a

pretty straightforward thing. It's

basically barred from the Stoics. I'm

not the first person to look at this. I

just tried to systematize it for myself.

It was in the 4-hour work week. And it's

like goal setting, but it's identifying

your fears very specifically

>> and then making them as concrete as

possible, then talking about what you

might do to prevent them and or repair

them if they inevitably happened. And

the objective here is to in a sense

demystify and take your fears from being

this nebulous cloud of anxiety to

something that you can put under a

microscope

>> to test.

>> Yes. So the first part is defining the

nightmare. The second is what steps

would you take to repair the damage even

temporarily? And here I had

using some

using using my savings from my Google

internship.

>> Yeah. So, I did have savings from that.

And then making sure that my resume or

LinkedIn was ready for other jobs in the

industry. This is number three. If you

were fired from your job today, how

would you get things under financial

control? And I I said that I would

temporarily use my savings and if that

didn't work out, aggressively apply for

other jobs. Enlisted some other

companies I would reach out to. This is

where it gets very intense. What are you

putting off out of fear? I'm putting off

quitting my job. I'm putting off

reaching out to all the people I need to

to make this dream a reality because it

means I have to say it out loud. I've

reached out to some people, but I know I

can do better. What is it costing you

financially, emotionally, physically to

postpone action?

I'm under emotional high stress. I want

to tell stories that really resonate

with other people. I want to be around

people who share creative joy in the

same values of quality that I do. I am

unhappy in an environment where I feel

like people feel the opposite. What are

you waiting for? So this is the last

section. I'm waiting for a false sense

of security to inspire me to take a

leap. A brand offering to collaborate,

someone else offering financial

stability, etc.

But I'm actually being challenged and

invited to create my own security for

the first time. I have

Oh, this is like crazy to read.

I've continually found success in other

people's rubric of success, but I've

actually never found happiness.

I've

never designed

my own rubric of success

and that's because I don't trust myself

to define success.

I'm scared to assume that

responsibility.

That was my fear setting.

It's very personal process.

>> It is.

>> I know you and anyone listening who have

actually like done it can can empathize

with that.

>> Mhm. I'm a very emotional person as you

can see from my videos. It's real.

>> Anyways, I was so excited to share that

with you.

>> I'm so moved by you sharing that and I

really appreciate you bringing that.

>> Yeah, of course.

>> And you [ __ ] did it also, right?

>> God, that's crazy. Like, guys, it works.

It It actually works. Wait, I didn't

tell you the funniest part of this. Here

was the funniest part. So, this has

obviously been on my bookshelf for 10

years at this point, and I am a copious

like you, handwriter, notetaker. I beat

up my books. I write in the margins and

proof. I mean, like, this is you can see

the wear and tear on this thing. But

when I opened this, there was absolutely

no annotation. And I was like, why is

this? And I I felt stumped on it. And it

wasn't until I found this email where it

was revealed. Okay, this is how I wrote

to my therapist with the chart.

OMG, all caps. I am obsessed with the

4hour work week. Several exclamation

points. I just got the book on Monday

from my coworker and I've been reading

it incessantly every night. Here's my

fear setting exercise.

I stole this book apparently.

And I sat and I was like I called my

therapist last night before the

recording. I was like, who would I have

borrowed this book from? I couldn't I

have no idea whose book is in my lap

right now, but it's been on my shelf for

10 years. Whoever it is, I'm so sorry.

By the way, I did buy all of your other

books, so I did contribute to that

economy, but I have a stolen Tim Ferris

book.

>> I should like contribute to the cycle

and donate it to a library or something.

But

>> oh my god, that is so good. It's so

funny because the person from my job who

let me borrow and steal this has no idea

how much they impact me because I don't

even remember who it was. I mean, we

were all in a bullpin with 30 desks. I

probably just borrowed it from someone

who sat next to me. But

>> so here's a follow-up question on the on

the fear setting. And this isn't a trick

question because when people

experience

any

ambitious or scary journey for

themselves, often the same thing.

>> It's not a straightforward line up and

to the right. It's a bumpy path.

>> After doing that, when did you take

action towards realizing the dream?

could have been a very small thing. I

don't know. But like what was the kind

of defining first step that kind of set

you on the actual path to realizing what

you laid out?

>> I took action pretty immediately, but it

took me a year to quit my job. And I'll

define what the difference is. I took

action immediately by this might be

crazy. This was a Tim Ferrris

experiment. I really resonated with what

you wrote about

coming to terms with the worst possible

outcome.

>> And so I decided I'm going to train

myself for the worst possible outcome.

>> I love it.

>> So I moved into a studio apartment with

a roommate.

>> I cut like like financially stripped

down. I mean, I didn't have much

anyways, but stripped as much as I could

to simulate if if I'm truly failing at

this and having having to live in a

Hollywood apartment with a bunch of

roommates. I'm just going to get used to

that. I'm going to get used to it right

now. I'm going to cancel all of my

memberships and figure out how to stay

healthy with just myself. Just myself in

in this small place. I am also going to

commit to working on my own stories

after work on the weekends because if I

can't do it now with stability, I I need

to prove to myself that I actually give

a [ __ ] about this really. And I did that

for an entire year.

growing a little bit of a personal

savings but also growing mental and

physical stamina towards

I'm already in still a place of safety

of course but I am in a situation where

I think I can handle this I got this

like the LinkedIn is up to date the

resume is up to date I am so ready I

have defined prevent and hopefully we

don't got to go to that third column

repair and so then a year later exactly

I quit my job. And when I quit, I had

two months of videos backlogged, ready

to go. Also, legally, for the record, on

my own machine, not company resources.

All of that was ready to go. And I knew

what my first big project would be,

training with stunt doubles. I had a

shoot date ready. I had taken, you know,

I only had like three months of savings

at that point. And I had had allocated

this is going to be for the dream

project, my first risk on my channel.

Nothing will touch that. The rest is is

for operating daily life expenses. And I

said, I got three months to to make this

work. And like you said, you know, like

we've been talking about sometimes you

got to put your back against the wall

and go.

>> I love this. So So this is I feel like

we were separated at birth. So So

a few things I I'll say. number one to

try to not that I have I'm not a paragon

of self-awareness but I I will say that

I for different reasons have a certain

like hypervigilance focus on safety and

security which might sound strange to

people listening but I'm always trying

to risk mitigate right I'm actually I

don't view myself as a big risk taker I

have done a few things that have ended

up with me accumulating injuries that

maybe in retrospect shouldn't have done

But broadly speaking, I'm always trying

to mitigate risk, which is underscores

this entire fear setting exercise,

right? Cuz it's not just about

convincing yourself. It's also in my

mind completely intertwined with what

you did, which is

preparing

and training yourself and your

circumstances, right? So

when I flash back to starting my first

company, it's like how did I start the

first company? I started my first

company during lunch hours, evenings,

and weekends basically while still doing

my other job and doing my other job

well.

>> Mhm.

>> But I wanted to have a head start so

that I wasn't beginning from scratch

after quitting a job. Right. So I did

that. By the way, you're simultaneously

developing skills as you're doing that

and proving that you don't need the

crutch or the or the training wheels of

your company,

>> right,

>> to enable you to do those things, right?

So, the moonlighting aspect, this is

another thing that that

at least in in my mind maybe conflicts

with

how some listeners might think about me,

but there's a difference between I'd be

curious to hear you speak to this.

There's a difference between putting

your back against a wall, in other

words, like highly pushing yourself to

make a decision,

>> and like burning all the ships and

burning all the bridges.

And the way I would frame the difference

is

when like a year to the to the day

almost, right, you quit your job and

you're setting up this groundwork and

you have some videos ready to go and you

were in where were you at the time? This

was in

>> in LA.

>> In LA. So, you've got probably Cobra,

right? You might have some like residual

health care after you quit. I'm not sure

what how it was set up benefit-wise, but

like in my company, I knew I had at

least like a handful of months where I

wasn't going to have to pay for my own

healthare. And in that case, right, as

you're thinking about what could I do

if this fails, right? If it doesn't work

out, what could I do? You've got your

LinkedIn and resume ready to go.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. And in my fear setting, and for a

lot of people, it's like, well, I could

get like a temp waitering job. I could

>> bartend. I could sell a bunch of my

furniture. I could sell my piece of [ __ ]

used car and, you know, take public

transport. I could whatever, right?

Sleep on an air mattress in a friend's

room. So, in a sense, like you've proven

to yourself that the permanent

irreversible risk is actually low,

right? while at the same time propelling

yourself towards this like defining

decision which is like taking the leap

>> and I think the emotional stability of

that decision is important. You want to

be able to brainstorm what should I do

in the worst case scenario from a place

of safety which is what I had at the job

still. So I was able to be creative

about thinking about solutions without

being panicked at the same time in that

situation.

>> Exactly. What an amazing story. What

fun. And it's so it's a recipe, right?

It's replicable. It's going to be

different for every person, but it is

actually it's a formula that works like

a lot of things. And

I I want to also mention a few things

that come to mind just to draw some

parallels. So you mentioned

BuzzFeed where you learn to do all of

these different jobs, right? And there's

a benefit to that above and beyond the

expertise of say spot-checking your

team's work or something like that. Your

team will also respect you more because

they know you have done the thing you

are asking them to do which you did kind

of mention in passing but it's really

important right I think of I have some

PTSD memories of this book but the

4-hour chef like which which which

confusingly is a book about accelerated

learning actually tried to do a lot with

that book very proud of it think it

worked but the reason I bring it up is

there's a chef who's profiled in that

named Grant Ackets who was basically

one of two superheroes in a sense. I

mean, they both have superpowers, right?

You had Grant Ackets, the like chef

Vundakint genius, and then you have Nick

Kakonis, who I've become very close

friends with, who is a former

genius options trader at the in Chicago

who then decides to get in touch with

Grant. He he's magical at cold emailing,

which I want to talk to you about. Very

good at cold emailing. and they got

together and Nick is from a business

kind of challenging and redesigning of

systems perspective incredible. But the

reason I bring it up is that Grant

can work every station in the restaurant

better than everybody else. which is not

to say automatically that I or you can

do that with all of our team members,

but he's at at the very least incredibly

good at each of the stations so that he

can when need be improve systems, change

things. He can also teach and coach. He

can give feedback and if he gives

feedback, people take it seriously

because they know he's done it himself

and he knows what he's talking about,

right? So there's a huge advantage to

that and it makes your mistakes later

less expensive also and it it allows you

to hire more effectively whether that

hiring is a contractor or full-time.

>> Mhm.

>> Okay. So you I just wrote this down and

I I have to mention it because like

basically I'm living vicariously through

you now.

>> Oh my god. um in a sense because your

channel is like oh my god like that's if

I could have sort of self authored a

path to doing that like oh man what an

amazing thing and I know there's a lot

under the hood and behind the scenes

that I'm sure is very difficult which

we'll talk about but if you have not

connected and maybe you've graduated on

from the stunt work and so on but Damen

Walters have you seen Damian Walters?

>> No.

>> Okay. I don't know if he's still in the

game, but Damen Walters, he's a former

highle British gymnast who then entered

the world of stunt work and just has the

most insane yearly highlight videos that

he put out for a while. This is an older

vintage. He's been doing it a long time.

But in any case, I thought he could be

>> incredibly fun to connect with at some

point.

>> That's awesome.

>> I've never really interacted with him,

so I can't so much love and heart for

the stunt community. That's really where

the channel started. And the stunt

coordinator that I work with today, his

name is Steve Brown.

>> And this is how crazy the world is,

right? Back in

2016, so a few months after I sent this

email, I went to a kebab shop in LA, sat

down at the counter, and was just eating

dinner by myself. And I I remember I was

really critically thinking about this

decision of going off on my own and

applying this. And this guy comes in,

sits next to me. We just start talking,

have a nice conversation, go our

separate ways. I go on to start my

channel and do what I'm doing. He goes

on to choreograph and do stunts and lead

stunts for Logan, several Marvel

projects, and most recently all of the

Avatar films.

>> That guy also does all of the stunt

coordination on our channel.

>> That's incredible. Um and it's amazing

that when you meet people who are

passionate like you know when you meet a

flavor of a person before they have hit

their

>> their peak moment it's special to

connect with them and and rise together.

And that's what's been awesome about

Steve is between his Avatar movies he'll

come over and strap me to the side of a

plane or throw me in the Houdini tank

and and make sure that everything's okay

because we have that we have that kebab

friendship.

Well, this speaks also to putting

yourself in the center of the action,

right? And I've had very famous investor

named Bill Gurley on the show before I

sat where you're sitting right now,

legendary investor, and he talks about

this a lot, which is putting yourself

where the action is. Right. So, if you

want to have those types of connections,

it's less likely to happen in a small

town in Montana than it is in Los

Angeles.

>> Right.

>> Right. Similarly, depending on your

industry, IRL still matters a lot,

right? As much as we would like to think

it doesn't, it's like if you want to be

in certain games and tech and you want

to have access to the talent, etc.,

still to this day in in a lot of

instances, you have to be in San

Francisco or somewhere near San

Francisco. That's just where you have to

be.

>> And this is coming from the the virtual

guy.

>> It is. It is. And yet, if you look at

what the virtual guy did, because I was

trying and wanted to get involved in

tech and then ultimately angel

investing, where was I? I was in the Bay

Area for 17 years.

>> Mhm.

>> If I had not done that, I think my

success would have had a 0% likelihood.

>> I mean, literally 0%. If I look at how a

lot of the ultimately best advising or

investing relationships came together,

they almost all started with Chance

Encounters at the equivalent of a kebab

shop, right? I go to a barbecue at

someone's house and like accidentally

bump into someone and spill their drink

and start a conversation and then boom,

that turns into like one of the most

ends up defining 30% of my net worth,

right? I

sure there's luck involved, but you have

to provide and I'm borrowing this term

from someone else, but surface area for

luck.

>> So, what have we learned? Barbecue,

kebab, spilling drinks, key to success,

30% of Tim's chapter one. Chapter one,

bump into people. actually really could

be. The other thing I wanted to mention

is you talked about in a sense and this

is not the most elegant way to put it,

but like practicing poverty, right? That

was one of your fears, right? It was

like running out of money, right? So,

you move into the apartment where you're

sharing a studio with someone else or

multiple people and you get rid of your

memberships and so on and you prove to

yourself

number one, you can certainly survive.

Number two, probably it's not that bad.

Like you can figure it out. And sure,

maybe if you're depending on the

roommate, I mean, you might want to get

rid of said roommate. But it reminded me

of not to belabor this, but since the

genesis of fear setting is stoic

philosophy and the stoics, Senica the

Younger talks about practicing in this

way. very close friend of mine, Kevin

Kelly, who was the founding editor of

Wired magazine and fascinating person on

all levels. Also has a big Amish beard

and has spent time with the Amish to

study how they accept or reject

technology, etc., etc. really

interesting guy, but he also, I don't

know if he does it anymore, he's got to

be mid70s now, but he used to routinely

spend periods of time, I want to say

every year, where he would just camp out

in his living room in a sleeping bag and

have like instant coffee and instant

oatmeal and just do that for like a week

>> and he's like, "Oh, yeah, great. Yeah, I

don't really need that much." Yeah. And

by doing that, it gives you

courage, which I think is a practiced

skill, right? Your subconscious has to

believe that you can do something. It's

you can't just read books and suddenly

have confidence in all situations. And I

mean, you're I think a walking example

of of how you can do that.

>> So, my question for you, Formula 1 team,

all right, Formula 1 is expensive,

right? It's like these cars in some

cases are like what $250 million, right?

When you start to add everything in

pricey, yes, very high performance. But

when you quit your job and you're like,

I have 3 months.

>> Mhm.

>> How did you assemble or enroll the help

that you needed in the early days, the

first like 3 to 6 months after quitting

your job? Or did you just do everything

yourself? I don't know. Right. So, what

did it look like in the early days?

Because once you get some momentum, sure

you get some money coming in. Okay, you

can start to add, you can start to

upgrade, you can start to do various

things, but in the beginning, you're

very capital constrained, right?

>> Yes.

>> What do you do? How did you assemble the

help that you needed or enlist it?

>> This is a strategy I employ for every

challenge I take on now. And hindsight

is 2020. And with that 2020 hindsight, I

think it comes down to having three

people on your Formula 1 team. And it

doesn't need to be fancy. It's really

a coach, a mentor, and a cheerleader.

>> Okay.

>> What does that mean?

>> Yeah.

>> In a specific episode of Challenge

Accepted, the coach is the most

important person that I want to find

before we pursue an episode, like

>> in a recent episode, I attempted to get

a black belt in taekwond do in only 90

days. In martial arts, that's a somewhat

controversial thing to even attempt to

do. Mhm.

>> And so I knew I could only do it with

the blessing of a really respected

master. So objective number one was to

find the best master and coach in the

world. And I think it's important to to

find someone and again I'll give an

example for what I did in that specific

situation. But that's number one for me

because this is the person I'm going to

be spending all of this time with and

learning from them. The second person is

a mentor who is different from the

coach. This is a person who has most

recently

done the thing you're trying to do. So

for me, that's other students in the

black ballot class. They're my mentors.

They have gone through this process.

They know what it's feels like to break

a brick with their hands and get through

that. Mhm.

>> And it's important that it's different

from the coach because coaching is a

different skill set and art form from

mentoring.

>> Also, it's harder for the coach to put

themselves in your shoes because so much

of what they do is second nature and

they're probably decades removed from

the experience you're about to have.

>> You want someone who has the experience

of leading somebody to that finish line

of greatness. And you also want someone

who knows what it feels like to be the

man in the arena. Mhm.

>> And then the third person is a

cheerleader, which is someone who is

completely detached from the outcome. So

for me, that's my best friend Olivia. It

could be a sibling, friend, family

member, someone who is going to root for

you and love you no matter whether you

succeed or fail. So that's how I

approach every single challenge on the

channel. Metawise, at the beginning of

the channel, what was that for me? It

was the mentor figure or figures for me

were other people who had recently

started channels and were just a few

steps ahead of me in the process. Maybe

they had 50,000 subscribers. Maybe they

had 100,000 subscribers. They were

people I met at little meetups at, rest

in peace, the YouTube space, which

doesn't exist anymore. But those peer

groups were really special and important

to me to keep me motivated and to just

reach out to people even today. Reaching

out to other creators, what do you guys

think of this thumbnail? What do you

think of these titles? Having people who

are just a couple steps ahead of you or

on similar playing fields can be so so

helpful in that process.

The cheerleader for me at that time was

was my sister Maline who was one of the

only people I told I was going to quit

my job and and fully believed in me. And

then the coach figure for me when I was

starting from ground zero was

cold emailing

people I respected. Now, that's not the

same as having a coach who's with you

every day in the way mastery is training

taekwond do with me every day. But I saw

those as coaching opportunities because

they were people light years ahead who

had the teaching component, I should

say, of being able to advise even in

small doses.

>> What did those emails look like?

>> Okay, I love a great email. You

mentioned that you have an amazing cold

emailer. I I need to to see their art

and their work because I I love

comparing notes on emails.

I personally believe that a really

well-written email can open any door.

>> I agree. By the way, assuming the person

sees it, right, there's there's some

friction, but

>> true,

>> but people underestimate

what they can do.

>> I agree. And there's there's something

about an email that's different from an

Instagram DM or I don't know. I love an

email. Well, I love a Google calendar.

This is where we're talking about true

passions to emails.

So, when at the beginning of my channel,

when we didn't have millions of

subscribers,

>> and we wanted to collaborate with

institutions like the FBI, the Secret

Service, and ultimately, we became some

of the first YouTube channels to ever do

that. came from not a producer, not a

friend of a friend sending email, but me

sending a cold email. An example of that

is I wanted to do a video with the FBI.

So, I went on FBI.gov. I called the

1-800 number of the FBI, which by the

way is for like crime tips, which I

didn't realize.

And I pitched them this idea over the

phone and they're like, "So, I'm here to

receive crime tips, but I can connect

you to someone else." And I wasn't

anticipating that. I thought it would

kind of be a dead end.

>> So, I just want to pause here for the

specifics.

>> Ring ring. Hello. FBI 800 number. What

are you What are you saying?

>> Hi, my name is Michelle K. I know this

might come off as a little strange or

unexpected, but I was trying to contact

someone in your department who might

work with film and television. I'm a

content creator online. We have several

hundred thousand subscribers and I was

hoping to talk about a collaboration.

>> All right, great.

>> And usually they're like, YouTube, what?

But this person was was generous enough

to connect me to someone else and we

kind of got kicked down a few a few

different routes. But we ended up

connecting with someone called the

Hollywood guy. This is a job at the FBI.

He's just like, "How did I get stuck in

this department?" Every email that comes

over the transom about some kind of film

television thing.

>> It's the Hollywood guy. And now this is

the person within the Federal Bureau of

Investigation

who is assigned to

documentaries or even scripted shows to

ensure that the seal of the FBI is

accurately and and not displayed not

misrepresented or or shown in a

derogatory manner.

>> This is the guy who did the McDonald's

Monopoly HBO documentary. He He was the

FBI's representative for that amazing

docky series.

>> I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with this.

Monopoly, like the game Monopoly.

>> Oh my god, you're not familiar. What is

this called? I think Oh, the

documentary. It's called McMillions.

>> Okay.

>> Have you heard of this doc?

>> I mean, what is it about Happy Meals or

something?

>> Riveting documentary series.

>> McMillions. Okay.

>> Oh, Tim, you're going to love it.

>> So, there's probably some fraud involved

and the FBI gets involved. Do you

remember in the '9s, 2000s, there was

the Monopoly game at McDonald's? Sure.

Where you could peel off the sticker and

see if you won a vacation or a bunch of

money. Turns out all of the winners of

that

>> were all related in some way.

>> Or they figured out how to game the

system. They're all family relatives or

friends of friends or people within this

group of people that they hired

>> to win.

>> I don't want to reveal how they did it

because it's riveting. The documentary

tells the story from the perspective of

the FBI agents who uncovered it,

>> right? So, Hollywood guy gets an email.

Hey,

>> so this guy just did McMillions, one of

the, you know, an incredible docu series

for HBO.

>> Gets an email from me. YouTuber

and effectively what happened was he was

like, "Well, I'm retiring in a couple

months. Let's try it out."

>> It's so wild how these things work out

sometimes.

>> It's amazing.

>> Now, so that again, this like surface

area for luck, right? Like you have to

have some pinballs in the pinball

machine

>> for the possibility of something like