They sold their company to Snapchat (and then became YouTubers)

Going on Shark Tank and having them all say no I was devastated and then one morning I woke up to an email from Evan at Snapchat he's like how about 40 million look at this gorgeous family is it aspirational I literally wake up not knowing what day it is that's also though because you have a wife how do you think the kids understand the YouTube channel you're like ah do we want them in the public eye you're Getting in with like a Disney well that all changed when North Korea hacked son's emails you raised the

10 million where does the studio stand today as of now SL for today on the Colin INSP show we're joined by Garrett and Jessica from The Bucket List family their family channel that documents their adventures all over the world to their 1.4 million YouTube subscribers and 3 million Instagram followers we first heard about them when They crowdfunded $10 million to launch a studio in hopes of turning their channel into an animated series they came on the show to talk about how that studio has progressed and a deal that they just signed with National Geographic we

also talk about the complex ethics of running a family YouTube channel and we talk about how they got started on YouTube which includes the unlikely story of Garrett selling his college startup to Snapchat I feel like clapping I feel Like that story was so like that was really well told too and if you're not subscribed yet make sure to subscribe all right now for our conversation with The Bucket List [Music] family Jessica and Garrett welcome to the show thank you you guys are fresh off of an Antarctica trip like 12 hours ago we got back

wow wow what is that like we're kind of used to just living This broken up life of you're in one place and you have to be super present and then the next day you're somewhere else you have to be super present so honestly I forgot that we were in Antarctica three days ago you kind of just move on best I probably would have been nervous for this leading up to it but I didn't have time to think about it like we're in Antarctica embracing an and now we're here but travel the travel to anartica is

like kind of treacherous Right yeah I mean it's it's a whole journey down to Buenos Aris and then you get on a three-hour plane to usua and then at least a two-day Voyage to you know the the top part of Antarctica there's the Drake Passage some of the most rough Seas on the planet I mean we had these like special wristbands we had these stickers story really quick you don't have to put this in this is this is listen to this Garrett has history of narcolepsy one day one one of The side effects of that

being sleepwalking quite often one of the nights on the boat or on the Drake Passage which is notoriously a really can be rough seas and it wasn't too bad Garrett left dinner was feeling a little nauseous he's the one who gets motion sickness he goes down he falls asleep and I went um was going to bed and I put one of those little patches on on his ear just being a little sweet wife we go to sleep wake up the next day Everything's normal and then about halfway through the day Garrett goes into the bridge

which is like like the command center and you could any a guest can go up and no problem and uh one of the workers goes hey I saw you last night at 3:00 a.m. and he looked me like right in the eyes and he's like I saw you last night and I was like and he's like yeah you're the only person on the boat walking around in sandals and shorts I mean we're in near Antarctica And I like I'm looking at where he was like it was kind of creepy because I turned around and you

were like staring at me through the window like you were on the outside of the boat like staring at me through the window and he's like kind of like startled and then he's like and then you walk down to the bow of the boat like the front nose of the ship and like there's waves like splashing over and I was about to yell at you like get off the boat but one of the Waves got You and you walked off so he says that to me and as soon as he says it to me like

part of narcolepsy is like when you're sleepwalking you remember it like a dream but you know you don't always remember your dream so as soon as he said it like sparked the memory and I was like oh my gosh I was there so he slept walk never woke up went and got back in bed the next morning when this hell happens and he's like tell me about this I tell her she's like I was Freaking out yeah was fre you go back to the room and find my like my jacket is like soaking wet next

to the bed oh my gosh I yeah had no recollection the next day I normally wake up I'm a super light sleeper and uh I think I was just on drama mean as well so I didn't realize it but I guess these patches can cause sleepwalking wow is that crazy also we live drastically different you know like we've been here this whole time it's dry it's safe here Safe in this room here anyway that's that's my like big crazy dramatic story yeah from Antarctica so Antarctica success you know what so it was our seventh continent

as a family it was really fun knowing that our youngest is six years old about to turn seven so our our like last video on our YouTube channel was our seventh continent before the age of seven our outlook on all of our travels is like just trying to go to new places and so it wasn't necessarily Going down there for like a specific reason we were just open to whatever that destination was going to provide us nowhere on this planet is just in its most raw untouch State like that part of the planet it's it's

incredible and and how much content comes out of a trip like that like how many videos do you produce do you think about that in advance or oh it it could just be like endless for me my mindset um Jessica handles all of our like Travels and business and itineraries and then I do all of the filming and also editing myself and so going on something like that epic of an adventure all I'm thinking about is I want to remember this forever together with my family and what's that look like is it one video is

it three videos and again it's kind of like we're our own target audience what will I want to watch back when we're like older and so for this trip specifically on our way to Antarctica we Stopped by two islands so first island second island then Antarctica so we're going to we'll break it up into three videos but that's nothing to do with like how will these perform and just everything to do with how do we want to remember this special family adventure I would say stylistically that comes through like on the spectrum of family channels

there is very hyper produced where it feels like a kids show and then I would say there's you guys Where It Feels Like Home Movies you know like you're filming some of the shots are vertical a lot of them are clearly on your phone right I me 80 90% are on the phone yeah and that that comes across it feels very intentional that makes happy one of my favorite things is when people travel with us for the first time and they see like behind the scenes almost all the time they'll say to us it surprises

me how much you don't have your camera out they thought it would be Like a production and I'm just like filming filming filming and it's like they'll say it's no different than any other family on vacation where Dad is like oh my child's about to jump off the diving board let me plot my camera it's like those special moment has an incredible ability to film something and live very much in the moment where me and I think most people you know you're trying to like enjoy first moments with your kids or your babies or the

first Steps you know and you're just like no I need this mental memory and Garett can hold a camera perfectly still and still live in the moment he does a really good job at it so do you have a different relationship then with the production of the videos than you do if you're more on the creative side like oh totally yeah totally car like in the back of his mind he lives a music video like he experiences a moment he's like this is the music I'm going to use for this or This is the way

I'm going to tell this story he does a very good job in our content of always always telling a story it's never just oh we're here on this trip because of whatever you know Antarctica is going to be we went to this island and then this island and then you know we achieve this seventh continent it's there's always a goal and a rhyme and a reason for everything that we do but do you have the relationship when you're you know traveling Antarctica of like okay we need to get x amount of videos out of this

they need to perform this well no she doesn't think anything anything about that like in a lot of ways she has the dream scenario where she can just experience these to like she's just a mom experiencing these with her I'm just planning a family vacation and at the end of it she gets to watch the video she's like there's not like a production she's not helping with Ed I will say Though on on one hand though because I'm the one who has the relationships with the brand right I am this is going to be good

this needs to be shown we want to put our best foot forward and you know show this off well so I come from it from that relation from that aspect the relationship with the brand or the tourism board orever whoever we're working with and you come from it purely from the creative and what do we want to remember as a family to to to learn this Story that like the path in here was starting an app I feel like we have to tell that story I love that we're in Venice Beach too like this is

such a full circle moment here um we have a lot of like love for this area because of the time in our lives you know back in what was that 2012 13 so where did that where the 10c version of that is when we were in college um I was playing soccer and that was like the focus of my life and then I Was dabbling and like wanting to create an app this was 2010 and so I had a long list of in my mind were like brilliant creative ideas of apps I wanted to create

but I didn't know how to do it so I was like I'm going to go to the bottom of my list take one of my like lamest ideas and create that app as like a way to teach myself Garrett's a designer like his background is design right so I'm going to like design and prototype and create This app and then I'll get on to my better ideas so that lame idea was an app called scan that would scan barcodes and QR codes and we put it into the App Store and it just went crazy it

was me and two of my buddies two of my classmates why did it go crazy the one like the app market in 2010 was just like new and growing it was just like the Golden Era of the App Store and we did a couple things really well I will say this Designed well and it worked really well but I mean it was literally just a basic scanner you would open it up super basic and it would just you know scan a cure that's what the app did okay using that there were 2,000 plus other barcode

scanners in the app store there was red laser there was picato but we were called scan and the company was called QR code city so when you would see a q code which in the US were kind of new and emerging people would go into the App store because it would say download an app to scan me and they'd either type in scan or they're typing QR code either way we showed up first and so App Store SEO was a huge reason for our success and it also H lesson for me CU I'm just like

a salesy promotional guy and I remember like going to like parties on campus and like getting people to download my app and being very excited when like a dozen people downloaded my app and then I found out the power the Beast of like the App Store and what it means to like be connected into something much bigger than you and I mean we were pulling in 50 to 80,000 downloads a day of this app and so over the course of it like threeyear lifespan we got over 100 million downloads of this app we went on

the TV show Shark Tank and then one morning I woke up to an email from Evan at Snapchat and it was just this one liner of I really admire the app you Built Well Done would Love to connect someday so I respond to him and I was like think that that means a lot coming from you uh let me know when you want to connect and like I'm in and he's like well let me know the next time you're in Venice and we'll have lunch at the Snapchat offices so then this was on a Friday

and Garrett messages back oh I'm actually gonna be in LA on Monday of course which is what you need no brand that was the most important lie of my life I said I'll be There on Monday let me know that works and he's like it works book the ticket you know and so we went and we had an hourong walk together along the beach um in Venice and then he asked me the question that I hoped was coming and he said hey would you ever consider selling your app and I told him a second lie

I said you know no I want to build this to last forever I'm in this for the long run but if I ever did sell it I'd want it to be to someone like Snapchat Because again as a builder as a Creator I know you don't want to just build garbage you want to build something that'll hopefully be timeless and last forever and I you know I I I knew that was important to him as well so as soon as I said that he goes well there's someone I want you to meet we go into

the office he waves over his lawyer the lawyer literally walks over and goes have you guys agreed on a price yet I look at him and like oh shoot like This is happening right now and he looks at me and goes ask me like I think two questions he goes how much money have you raised and I said we did $7 million in funding thus far he's like how long have you been working on it we've been doing it for three years how about 40 million and at that moment my insides are doing this what

28 27 28 years old like We're Young before but before that fight I talked to my two buddies and we just kind of like put it out there're Like hey what's our number guys just so we can know thank goodness thank goodness when he said have you guys agreed on a price thank goodness I didn't speak up because our base like oh it would to pay pay back the investors and get a money that we are happy with we need to sell for at least 12 our big win would be 20 and out the gate

he started the conversation at 40 and just again I think I did a pretty good job I think of just keeping like poker face But inside I was just screaming and crying and like all the above like I can remember that moment so vividly so I said I said I think that can work but I need to talk to my team how long does something like this usually work I'm new to this and he's like oh most companies I think he threw Facebook under the bus is like it would take them months and months if

not longer I want to have this done by next weekend I was like okay well I'll talk to my team and I'll let You know he's like yeah yeah take your time just call me back later today oh thanks for giving me all the Time in the World um so I just remember leaving call my my buddies they said you got to call our lawyer like we don't know how this works I call that lawyer and he's like unfortunately we also represent Snapchat so I can't represent you in this process but I'll connect you to

someone like this is what he does or like major Tech acquisition So I get on the phone with that lawyer and the first thing he says is like congratulations what's the number I said 40 he's like okay you're going to call him back and you're going to say I looked at the cap table I talked to my team we can't do less than 50 and I was like oh no no no I want to make it clear like we're stoked on 40 like we're good don't screw this up like don't poke the bear we're we're

happy and he's like have you done this before no no never And he's like this is all I do he's not going to give you his biggest number first like you're going to get more than 40 I was like do you want to call him and then like the lawyers like you know what you're going to have a lot of hard conversations this is just the first like you need to do this I'm here to guide you but you need to have this conversation I like oh shoot I'm at LAX like about to board the

flight home I called back Evan and I was like all Right um thank you for your offer I talked to my team I looked at the cap table and uh I can't do less than 50 and then I'm just like cringing inside and he's like I'm sorry to hear that well thanks for talking to me and he hangs up and I was just like called back to Lauren I was like you fool you ungrateful fool I told you I told you we were happy with 40 and he's like wait wait wait he'll call back promise

he'll call Back I'm like I'm getting on a flight man like I I was so close to being like forget you I'm calling him I'm saying like 40 is in enough and he's like give it five minutes he'll call back if he doesn't call back we'll come up with a game plan no joke five minutes Evan calls back and he's like hey I don't know if we can do 50 but we'll figure something out call me tomorrow and we'll talk some more I like so then we went on my flight we over the next 3

days it Just went back and forth back and forth on negotiations until and this is like a pretty meaningful part of the conversation is the price was now at 44 okay and Evan calls me and he says Hey as of now the deal is for you to finish your seasor senior season of soccer and then come join me in like three months and it's at 44 I'll give you 10 million cash more and make it 54 if you quit soccer tomorrow and come Jo me next week this is a phone call I I Was in

a Walmart I remember with two buddies from the soccer team and they're like trying like yeah like what are you doing I was like have an important conversation like one second and he said he saw my face just sink because when that opportunity came just being transparent I know this is like outrageous numbers but when he told me that I remember the feeling in my heart of being like there goes my youth there goes my senior season of soccer and I Just followed my gut and I said thank you for that opportunity let's keep it

at 44 I'm going to play soccer I'll see you in three months and he's like all right respect see you and then he hang hangs up and like it felt like the right decision I called my co-founder and as soon as I got on the phone with him he's like Garrett I know you're pure I know where your heart is and I know like what motivates you and that it's not money but that 10 million Isn't just yours it affects a lot of us and I was like oh geez dude like just say nothing more

I messed up and I was thinking selfishly I'm sorry I'll fix this so then I called Evan back and I told him the third lie I said you know what as soon as I hung up I was just far too excited to join Snapchat if the offer still on the table I'll quit soccer tomorrow and come join you he's like deal and the acquisition finalized at $54 Million I feel like clapping I feel like that story was so like was really well told too man it was it was a freaking roller coaster so we moved

here to Venice like immediately I had just had literally two weeks prior our second child and we moved out here moved to play Vista right around the corner and um we moved out here I thought for the Long Haul I was so excited to be out here it was it was really fun and and for me like I had a dad who worked 9 To-5 so to have Garrett working at Snapchat on more of that 9-to-5 schedule and he came home and he was done I was thrilled I was so excited to have just this

you know 9-to-5 husband but after maybe three months he was like he was dying I was about to say if we're similar at all he died I was dying do that oh my gosh I like in emotional thinking about it because I thought I was like bulletproof as a human but it was crazy to me a few things when I Experienced a culture environment it was surprising to me how quickly I'm like a very confident human how quickly I started to lose my like self-confidence and care more about what like Evan and the higher ups

thought about me than my own opinion about myself it was like a very gross toxic new feeling to me that like okay I'm going to like try to survive this but this is this is new to me and it's difficult and then also it was hard for me to like turn off at 5 And like kind of live my life like giving half passion or like part-time passion building someone else's dream that's not it it was all just like new to me but I wanted to at least give it a try and I told her

I'm like hey two to five years like this I was I was so happy to be here I was excited to be out of Utah and moving on I thought we were really moving on in life and doing the big things and I was also just super grateful like super grateful to Evan and Snapchat for giving us this like life-changing money and opportunity so I was in it for like 2 to five years and we'll go from there was that all cash uh it was no it was a major uh like a combo of ownership

and Snapchat and cash back when they were valued at $ a share it was a good time good time what was the can you can you talk through the moment where the money hit your account like the emotional I can tell you that moment in very much detail I remember it very well just because we had just had our like second child this this all all happened about the same time um and do you remember the moment cuz it was literally I'm kind of a showy Storyteller I like I like to make even the smallest

of Life events like special and important that's not a small life event yeah but I'm saying like uh even with this I'm like okay Jessica was about to like go into the hospital to like for delivery anyways I Remember the moment when and I like pulled up the number like our bank account on on my phone and like waited till she was like in labor and I was like check this out and I made a big spectacle of it and then the baby came out was just rolling but I don't it was it was a

fun thing because like what not wanting to sound like money hungry or greedy we just like it was absolutely lifechanging and we were just so beyond grateful we We Big Time celebrated and we didn't celebrate like go out and like Splurge or spend we we didn't spend any of it I think I think I bought a new laptop we no we bought Kings bed remember king bed that sorry that's probably the most drama my heart was racing there oh wow but but but we like we were just so happy and thrilled and we didn't like

we felt like we literally won the lottery espe just knowing the hard work that went into it it it was such an awesome Time for us so we move out here we're super I'm we're both super stoked but quickly I see the light in his eyes just drain and I mean we had been out here for three-ish months and it just so happened we went to church one Sunday and ran into his BYU soccer coach and he had said hey if you change your mind and want to come back and I was kind of like

the door is closed like we've moved on and and Garrett came to me and said I want to leave Snapchat and I want to go Back and play soccer and to me I was that was going backwards in life so that's where the um compromise of okay we'll finish your senior year of soccer and then I want to do a little bit of traveling and we moved back to Utah finish senior hereo of soccer and took a you know for me I'm like let's go on a couple couple months of vacation and Garrett king of

extreme here is let's sell everything and do this whole you know YouTube and he goes big and for me For the first while I was just on a family vacation I was there to just enjoy it and Garrett kind of in the back of his mind was ready to move on and you know I'm curious so so you sort of were the impetus for travel 100% what in your brain made you think let's document let's do something with this uh like like I said the number one thing was just a journal I'm a big time

Journal keeper so I was just going to journal and document it the entrepreneur in me Was like all right I'm not going to like go on a year-long vacation it's just not how I live what is is my and it's not what's my business or what's my like money play here it's just kind of like what's my like Venture here what what's my idea what's my creative Outlet during this travel and so that's when I like came up with the name The Bucket List family created the YouTube and all of that again so it was

like I'm going to journal this but I'm going to do it in Like it is kind of like oh I see this like rise of this this YouTube and and social media in general I want but this is 2015 this is long before any travel influencing was a thing orally travel influencing was a thing it's interesting because I'm about to uh take off on like a monthlong travel for my brother's wedding right and going to a ton of different places and my first thought was I should make videos about this yeah you guys are eerily

similar even you Like renovating your home you don't do anything just because your first impulse is like could this be a part of a home Rena show yeah I reached out to a bunch of networks to be like I'm renovating my show I'm open to be cast on a home and my perspective is almost I would rather pay more to not be on a home R show to just like have it be done and then live there yeah totally I like and if not I'll just document my own version of a home R show maybe

I can make a series Out so we go to um Outdoor Retailer gck go Outdoor Retailer we took and he just started walking Booth to booth and saying hey I'm traveling for you know we're going to Tonga and New Zealand and Australia and all these places you give me some free gear and I'll take some photos for you like that was kind of his mindset of how we could do this way back in 201 where does this like productivity mindset come from you and when I say productivity it's kind of like sometimes I feel this

where even on like a weekend if I have no plans I'll like sit on the couch and I'll be like what is the thing I could progress right now or what what could I do like and and my wife whatever that disease is I got it we have my wife pushes back on that quite a bit where like I have to be even if it's I don't know like anything I have to kind of be creating something or doing something it's very hard for me like if if someone turned to me and said let's travel

for 3 Months I would think the exact same thing i' be like well okay cool we'll make a series out of it yeah like I I I don't know what that is or sometimes I think about like I don't know I try and like psychoanalyze you know what's interesting were you born where were you born here and your parents were born here no so just I don't know if I like believe this but someone else said it to me they said it was in an entrepreneurship class yeah it was like Are you me to be

an entrepreneur and it was like a 20 out of 20 question and everyone's like sharing their scores being like I got a 13 oh that's pretty high I got a 16 like oh that's like the highest I've heard in years I was like I promise you I didn't lie but I got a 20 out of 20 and and one of them was are you like a second level generation immigrant and like I don't know like there there's that weird balance of like do you know what poor looks like do you Know what poor feels like

and then that's like half of it and then the other is like the op like optimistic upside of just like what's the most you can do with your time the we were we were brought here to do something I think that like the dinner table conversation of being a young kid at least for me like you know my my dad was an entrepreneur uh and still is but like dinner table conversation was around money how we were going to build the Company you know at like seven years old that's what I'm hearing and also traveling

to garment trade shows with him like family trips were family trips but they were also business trips they were primarily business trips right and so like you know luck my dad selling clothes we had you know cool places to go whether it's Greece or um Hawaii like we went to Beachside places to sell his clothes but we were a lot there to be like on a business trip You know and if we weren't if for some reason as We Grew Older we weren't he would find business in those places right and so I think that's

like obvious as a kid like getting exposed to that so is your wife sometimes just like can we please just be for a minute but I think she now is also has I've I've probably rubbed off on her a bit more too I think probably knows like we are just like yeah yeah and I my work is to like solve how to slow down I feel like That's my life's work or to accept that's just not who I am if uh if this is a therapy session yes it is um two things two things that

I have found that that help sick people I guess uh one is surf yeah and I purposely don't have like a smartwatch or anything it's the only time where I'm like truly like at a hyper level so beyond present because for your safety you have to be um I I think that's why surfing has just become my new Addiction Because it's like oh I I can finally feel like true disconnect and then the other and this would be like you know the dream for for spouses is when you go on a trip where you don't

have the option of connection some of our favorite travels if we go on a sailboat and we go off the grid where Internet is just not even an option it's it's just some of the most special times because unfortunately how connected we need to be in like what we do that's it's a Pretty good cure I found that with swimming and Tennis those are two two things tennis like the ball's coming at you you have to focus on the ball you lose focus on the ball you don't hit the ball it's like it's like very

Elementary but I found that those two activities for me I can find present do you both have the same motor for traveling like are you both at a level where you're still equally enthusiastic about it you're excited about it surprisingly yes And that goes to when she said let's do a little bit of traveling that agreement was we'll do four six months of travel until an important part to this story is when we got that acquisition money um I'll say this I have the fortunate and unfortunate background that's my some of my family would have

been very like considered very wealthy for some time and then lost it and so for me to see what that how quickly that can go one of the most important lessons in my life so We sold everything made $445,000 from selling our car and clothes and furnit and the agreement was we'll use that money nothing from the acquisition nothing from the we won't touch it if we have to touch it that's when we're done traveling well and at the time to be transparent when we got our first payment it was I think 1.7 million which

is life-changing money but not enough to like hang up the boots and cash up front payment not like the ownership equity And Snapchat right so it was one of those things like if Snapchat dies tomorrow and we never see another dime like we we have to be smart we can't be idiots we can't just be traveling because there was still an earnout of more cash later yeah got it right so so for us it was four months of travel then we're going to come home re-evaluate and then decide what was next Garrett actually pitched some

investors on the next business idea um they were ready to Fund his next venture and then you know in my eyes we were going to come home and he was we were going to do it again um but much to my surprise we came home and I was like I'm loving this I love living out of a suitcase and I'm actually thriving so like the the moderate Colorado girl next door was loving living an unconventional life and Garrett of course was probably going to be in no matter what so when we came back after four

or five months of travel At that Christmas and we decided let's keep going and and that's when we went into like business game plan into what are we going to do because again we don't want to be foolish and touch the acquisition money and the 45,000 is near gone that's when we started to like reach out to Airlines and touris and boards and hotels being like will you pay us will you host us will you give us a discount and at that level we were probably like 50,000 followers at the Time on Instagram and like

20 subscribers on YouTube and um they they would sometimes if we reached out to enough of them like they would give us a discount but then as we grew and also as like influencing as a whole that like space grew then they became more familiar and aware and willing to like test it out so then they would like give us it for free so the bleed of our like cash was like slowing down at least we were traveling and it was still costly But at least like cheaper and then you know we probably traveled for

a year maybe breaking even barely breaking even and then you know 2017 18 is when people started paying uh creators and I you know I'll never forget some of our first deals and you know making $600 off of a post was just such a big deal I mean we had our savings and we had our money we didn't necessarily need it but to have this new Venture and start making money it was like a really exciting time I Think it was an important them though at least for me and how my brain works is it

was important for me to like put that acquisition not just put it aside but like mentally forget about it and so if you ask me as as ridiculous as it sounds like I was poor again I had like the the money in the bank that was quickly dwindling away and I was like perform or die especially because I knew like I wanted to keep traveling and if we can't figure this out then then we're done Traveling and so I felt like a young hustling rookie entrepreneur and I and that's like my favorite version of myself

and so I like to to purposely position myself in that so that like again not only did it help us like perform the best but it also just like that's when I'm maybe my happiest self so I'm the same and I would say though the danger that I've experienced with that and I'm curious about this is uh creating that environment for others who Don't like that environment does that make sense so like for me I work my best when the my back's against the wall when the stakes are super high and when I feel like

it's survive or die but I don't think Colin works as best like that right and I think I've noticed that at times I have in our career created that environment because it's very motivating for me but it kind of can be it's not a great creative environment I think Sometimes for me it makes me feel like for some reason we're not doing well right and I'm like wait I think we're successful right right now why are we acting and I'm not saying we should be foolish right but like we're acting we're treating ourselves as if

we're not doing well and like we're not succeeding we should feel somewh good about what we're doing and not always treat ourselves like we're failing right yeah it's a very interesting like Psy Psychological battle because it drives a lot of purpose and then sometimes it is your reality like you do live in that reality but yeah being you know being married to your business partner has been a very interesting thing to navigate and we both have such different work Styles and for him to realize early on you know I don't want to be up until

3:00 a.m. work like I'm going to go to bed and Garrett's not he's going to like go until the job is done and you know And I'm going to care about these little things and Logistics and the kids and all this stuff and you know again Garrett's got his one track mind so figuring just navigating I think that relationship in a marriage has been totally I I don't know I was telling literally in the way here I was like I've loved the last six weeks together I did a big press tour for my new book

we went to Antarctica and I've loved every second of like being by Garrett side We've had a really great time together and I mean we've been working together now for almost 10 years we've figured it out but um I still would not recommend working with your spouse it's very difficult very very difficult I would recommend it yeah I mean mean I can imagine 100% yeah I mean I think it's beneficial that we're not married sure have some separation we get to have separation yeah um yeah it's so interesting though Because I think I I always

think about like where what I would do with you know um like I've always craved that that I think we we all grew up at a time where you know the big Tech Acquisitions like that was the aspiration for a young 20-year-old right like that was what everyone was playing for we watched the movie The Social Network you heard about Evan Spiegel you're like I got to build an app and sell it you lived it which is so interesting and that was I think a Lot of when we were when we were young and started

our first YouTube channel that was also the aspiration yeah we didn't look at it as a YouTube channel we were like this is business and people are selling businesses right yeah how old were how old were you when when you guys started that 21 and we 24 when we went through our acquisition um and yeah I mean it wasn't as much cash it was a lot of like you know stock and like you know getting in getting a job Essentially but especially at that age so much of it is like experiencing that process like going

through that process crazy process yeah exactly what was the I'm I'm just wanted to go back to this what was the experience of like telling Evan Spiegel that you were going to leave after yes you have to tell him the story this might not be for the video but this is a typical gar g any story that needs to start with this is a true story what I'm about to tell you okay is Um we I'm working at Snapchat and she says like oh I decided I was unhappy so I just I told her I'm

going to leave and go play soccer how it like actually happened was this that I I was I was committed I was like you know I'm unhappy but he bought my company he paid a fancy dollar for it like I'm in for the long run okay then one day this happens James Franco made a movie dissing on North Korea North Korea hacks Sony's emails Sony CEO sits on the board Of Snapchat who acquired my company journalists dive into those email hacks and just find any information that was confidential that they could with the acquisition scan

acquisition was completely confidential nobody we couldn't tell our parents we told our parents we moved to Venice because we had a new business partner my company for 54 million and my parents my siblings did not know about it okay so completely private and at First I had said earlier today I was like oh when I started the company I was like it would be really cool to someday like have my name up in like Tech crunch or Wall Street Journal of like you know this this acquisition happened and when that didn't happen I was like

am I bummed and and then I quickly realized like no this is actually like the best case scenario we got like this lifechanging money but no one's going to treat us differently and we can choose How we want to live our lives because nobody knows about it okay well that all changed when North Korea hacked Sony's emails because I'm at Snapchat offices on December 16th her birthday and even my co-workers thought I was just like a higher out of college so I'm sitting with the design team and the designer next to me is like Hey

Garrett check this out and I look at his computer and it's literally the cover of Wall Street Journal saying Sony leaks update Snapchat uh acquires Utah company scan from Garrett G for $54 million and there's a big picture of me and I'm looking at it and I was like oh and he looks at me like who are who are you what's your name again whoa and I was like um and then right then the door opens Evan the and the lawyers like come in like Garrett come with us and they literally just sat me down

like hey things are obviously going crazy um turn off your phone do not talk to anyone We'll come up with a game plan and talk to you tomorrow this was like the end of the workday Jessica like 10 minutes later picks me up we're going to go have a special dinner for her birthday and she's like how was your day at work and I was like you know what like it was a crazy day but I want this night to be about you like let's just talk about you and if you haven't really like just

is just the most selfless human on the planet and she's like no no tell me About your day and I was like okay so this is what happened and just like spilled the thing anyways long story short that that like put this weird curveball into everything at Snapchat just the whole company started like to Morphin change and my role now people understood like who I was and like how I came on the company so they now couldn't have me as just like a ambiguous designer on the team it was like okay Garrett and his team

are actually Working on the secret project and they get their own office now and it it just changed things big time and that sparked the change and I remember before making the big decision not only having the conversation with Jess I remember calling my brother who's a high school teacher and just the person who perhaps I like respect and admire is like life wisdom the most and I called him and I was like Hey surprise surprise I made a lot of money and I'm now working at Snapchat and I want to quit I'm making 180

as my salary I get a million dollar bonus for each year I'm here and this is how much money I got from the acquisition I'll if I leave I'll keep the money from the acquisition but I'll give up my 180 salary and I'll give up my million dollar a year bonus and he's like okay uh can I call you back he calls me back like you know whatever 20 minutes later and he's like I'll be honest I just can't even like get past Those numbers like don't I'm a high school teacher I don't I don't

understand these numbers you're talking about they're absolutely outrageous but he said he goes but I know you I know what your like work ethic is what your future is and most importantly like I know where you find happiness that you got to leave you got to walk walk away from that money and you got to quit so it was the very next day I just set a meeting with with Evan And I was ready for him to just he's a very passionate guy he's very like kind of like steep J esque in his both like

passion and creativity but also is like notorious like anger and like again it's just passion to his fullest right and so when I went to I was really scared I remember I got bloody nose that morning just like how nervous I was I sat down with him and just so much props and admiration for Evan because when I told him he the first thing he said he's like I get it I knew it was a long shot bringing like someone like you in um if you ever want to come back I'd love to work with

you again but best of luck to you like see you later wow wow yeah wow wild I know it was crazy so and that happened the week before soccer season started so we literally packed up our bags went back and I played the season opener when you joined the soccer team everyone knows you sold your company oh yeah I sponsored the team my my company Badge was on Our Sleeve yeah it was a really weird scan was yeah wow it was a really weird thing to be a Col soccer player like why you tell these

stories do you remember do you remember Snapchat I mean if they still have it where you like based on your location you would have a filter so you could swipe over and like have that location based Geo filter so the very last thing I remember they're like turning off my email and I was like wait Give me one more day and I like go to like Southfield which is our soccer field and I put a picture of me so that like when I was playing soccer attendees of the game would swipe over it was like

a picture of me that was like my farewell to Snapchat wow wow how' the soccer season go it was great yeah it was awesome no regrets I played my senior season of soccer that's fun you got your money and your cake too yeah see yeah You got it that's what that means yeah did um did the experience of going on Shark Tank and having them all say no did you enjoy selling the company after that I remember that very well yeah I imagine you you were like yeah I remember each of those it was a

cool thing when it became like you could like Google like shark Tank's biggest Miss opportunities and we were number one wow um I remember when we went on the show we had already Raised money and the app was already like getting downloads like crazy so we need to do a de and Shark Tank came to you it was one of the few times where he hadn't gone through the whole application process um so I fully went on the show being just I just want exposure whatever and my company is scan I'm here seeking an investment

of $1 million but just the competitor in me I'm just a competitive guy once I was in the moment I was like I must win these People over and so to have them say I was devastated I don't know if you guys know this but like you have like a movie star trailer and you go back to your trailer and they literally have like a therapist there to like talk you off the ledge and be like it's okay it's okay whatever and I was like guys that be good like I'm not worried I went back

in the trailer and I'm like it's over I messed up this is the end of my business and she had to like talk me down um yeah I just got caught up in the moment and then finally I realized like this was a good thing for us and then when the episode aired and just like had really favorable edit and it even though they didn't take his money they said really they a million dollars for 5% which is what you came in asking is pretty high for no yeah they do not take kindly on Shark

Tank to those types of valuations so when you guys first start Making YouTube videos then like after all this um do you remember the first time when like the viewership on YouTube specifically started to pick up because it sounds like Instagram picked up before YouTube yeah definitely do you remember that experience of like like what did it feel like for YouTube views to start coming in and and a community to start building there that that's where that's where we started to learn um a lot about ourselves and how we Relate to to social media in

the most like true pure way Jessica's like not made for social media and that's what I love about her why you know um and yeah so as it started to grow again she like what's in the comments and the messages she and I deal with that like very differently got it how do you differ in that I can imagine but oh I just I I'm a people pleaser so when you read those comments and you're like oh you know you should mother it this way I think a lot Of it was just like how dare

you not buckle your kid properly in a car seat or how you know like I don't know people just always so critical on different things and how you're spending your money or how you're raising your kids or where you're going and what you're doing and what you're not doing anyway yeah it's just hard for me and it's awesome something the last eight years that I've had to you know I've gone through these ups and downs of mental health and Dealing with being in the public eye it's been a challenge for me for sure yeah I

can imagine yeah that is difficult especially with children because obviously you care the most for and the people who are commenting care the least for sure about the wellbeing of your children well and early on it was one of those things where I was like you know what I need a thicker skin like I this is good for me and for a couple years I was great and then there was you Know there's been a some ups and downs and um maybe a couple years ago something happened and I was just like I'm out you

know and Garrett has been the one to step and really take over that comment section and and and I've had just to find that balance of like how I can be involved and see stuff but also you know not not look in the comments ever yeah I find the tough thing with the comments is that many times for a Creator your self-awareness Is your superpower so if you understand things about yourself and how other people will perceive them yeah you can be a better YouTube creator for sure because you can mold yourself to what you

think the masses probably will like but because of that you're probably also self-aware of some of the things that make you insecure or that you're not happy about totally and then you see them in the comments and even if it's just 10% of how you feel it just Explodes and now it's like 100% of how you feel that day right yeah absolutely yeah I mean it's it's interesting because I imagine this uh there's this complicated relationship with like hey this thing is like a an amazing platform we've built with our family and it comes with

the you know the the the good and the bad right like putting yourself out there is just a there's a thing Colin says about like when you first started a YouTube channel like a lot of people Will come into the comments and be like wow this Channel's so underrated you like you're so underrated this is so great and why don't you have more views why don't you have more more subscribers you guys are great you guys are great and you just feel great you're right why don't want I'm going to be so great this is

so great and then there's a Tipping Point right where it's like oh yeah you you become you go from being underrated to rated everyone's ready to judge you Right and everyone's ready to be like why does everyone like these people like this is this sucks like and it's it's this weird moment in time where there's no middle ground doesn't go from like I remember we I I think it was Instagram when we we went from 1 million to 2 million on Instagram and I had told Garrett I was like we're too big now like we

kind of passed that threshold of just having all the people come in because for the longest time and still To this day like if there's one thing I'm going toot my horn about it's the incredible community and demographic that we have like the people that follow us and really follow us are the best of the best people and I love that so much but you know still depending on the platform you get jerks out there so um you know just a lot more have come along who is the audience for The Bucket List family you

know what it's it's it sounds weird to say it but it's good people and It's families and it's all around the world it's really cool we're we're 50% International and uh something that's interesting is our YouTube audience specifically they're not YouTubers they're instagrammers when you dive into our analytics you see that most people are coming from Instagram and they're watching our YouTube nothing else it's it's like almost 90% of our views come from Instagram way like literally like the Click rate like we for the first Time ever we had like a YouTube expert like look

look he's like this is this is weird like this is completely different than anything we don't get anything from the algorithm like at all yeah it's like YouTube hates us but it's just like or you're making decisions that are actually just not optimal well and that's for growth mean yeah when I say again Garrett doesn't play the YouTube game he uses copywritten music he makes 20 to 30 minute videos once a week we Don't play the game so I'm not surprised I would argue though right now 20 to 30 minute videos it's it's kind of

like I would say like some of your titles and thumbnails are really optimal and some of them are not and I think the viewership changes for those same with your intros like that you watch your videos and they're like oh you're making these more similar to Home Videos than what like a true YouTube retention specialist would 100% um the Uh is like I said before like literally every decision is like shoot do I do this to perform or do I do this for my journal and that's just my weakness the first time I came across

you guys was via Instagram and it was because my wife was like look at this gorgeous family and I remember it very well and I I it makes me think about like are you guys conscious of the concept of like [Music] um creating Aspiration right like like you're content is inherently aspirational and does does that ever come into play of just like like is it aspirational I guess is the question like are you as you're living it you're like this is what everyone would want what I what I it's a weird question inter question what

I really like about it is that like on the surface our content's about travel but you ask our AUD it's been so cool to be on Jessica's book tour Because while she's signing books I'm just getting to like hang out with people online and just talk to them get to know and it's just like the biggest focus group ever where I'm learning like oh this is why people have connected with us and every time it's like oh I saw this exciting video where you went and you were like cage diving with sharks and that was

the first video I watched but then I started to watch more and more and now it's like what the Content is about what it's actually about behind like you know the facade of travel is about family like a much more meaningful message and so yeah like if we can be aspirational for people in the sense of family like 1,00% we've achieved our goal and our message I like that aspirational the book is a good example of that because the book does not necessarily say everyone should travel like us all the time like there's no Expectation

here you're going to become The Bucket List family but and maybe you can tell us more about the book from your words but like from my understanding the book is here are ways that you can travel yeah like how we travel well if there's one thing I I do want people to get out of um the book is I can't remember who was saying who you went Hawaii a bunch as kid you know I think a lot of families mind included we were Disney World family people travel To the same place every single year time

and time again but there's so much more out there especially when it comes to Nature and Wildlife and culture and history you know what I mean like the more people see of the world the more they care and and now getting out that message just you know I want to see people traveling more intentionally and so I hope by putting out this book and some of these bucket list things that are actually achievable not only for an Individual but for people with kids um you know we can all become better ambassadors for the world just

so everyone knows what are some examples of these bucket list items that well I mean do we've swam with whs and Tonga and we've stayed in castles and we've you know been in the overwater Bungalows and we've even this trip last week to Antarctica I mean it was a 23 day voyage and our kids were the only kids on the boat the average age was like 70 and Yeah everyone was kind of looking at us like you crazy like your kids are going to cross to Drake Passage they did better than we did and then

also it's just like it's it's a pretty intense thing you know you're there like literally amongst the elephant seals and and fur Sills and the Penguins and everything like it's it's Antarctica is crazy and uh but we show very well in our videos like how doable it is and how family friendly it is and and it doesn't Need to be these you know very expensive trips on Safari but you know you can you can go to Baja Mexico and go to this Lagoon in San Osio and have gray whales come up to your boat and

want to be pet like stuff like that people just didn't even know existed so very affordable experience it's a very affordable experience over you know you know having to I me Safari real dis world you yeah it's true and so but even like going back to like what's the the deeper Message behind the message is when my friends have asked me hey like welcome back from Antarctica how was it I find myself the first thing I say is like oh it's incredible like 23 days on a boat with my family like my kids didn't have

school and soccer and music practice and all of that stuff I didn't have interon internet connection the majority of it so like what a unique time to be together as a family on this adventure I find myself talking like more about like Oh this is what it was as a family experience then just like oh the icebergs and this and the Penguins how do you think the kids uh relate or understand the YouTube channel because they are pretty young like what's their perception as far as you know of what it means to have a YouTube

channel so for a long time our kids were completely unaware of it they just thought were making Family Videos they thought everybody had family videos I remember Dorothy our oldest meeting some kids at a pool in in I think we're in Greece and she made a friend and she was like oh I want to see your videos do you want to see my videos like she thought everybody made videos and now I mean now they're starting to realize she's 11 she she's starting to get it she's actually starting to want to make her own videos

and create her own content which is really really fun but they would like come home from school and be like what's A subscriber like somebody at school said we have a lot of subscribers just a fun moment we got our gold play button right however many years ago and purposefully I kind of like just put it aside in our closet as like hey this is where like my journals and my memories go but we didn't like show it off or do any like special video or anything about it and then I remember our middle child

his name is Manila he came home from like third grade and it's Was like Dad what is a gold play button and I was like excuse me again he doesn't like know anything about our YouTube channel or whatever that's why he was like curious because a kid at school had said I hear you know you have a million subscribers you have a gold play button he's like I don't know what you're talking about so he comes home and talks to me about it and I said that's something you get if you get a million subscribers

I had like the whole Conversation with him and he is like thinks about it as super thoughtful and he's like well keep working hard dad you'll get there someday like okay so I I mean that's funny it's it's been a weird balance of why we haven't made our kids like fully aware from the beginning wasn't necessarily like for those reasons it was more so just how we relate to social media in general that our kids like don't have phones they don't have screens they're not consuming Social media content um other than vide yeah they know

we make these videos and then we get to watch them me that we share with people they understand that um but they they don't get the gravity in the audience and and and it's really something weird as a parent to navigate you know this is such a new world that we live in and Garrett and I every day are having these conversations of how does this affect our kids and do we want them in the public eye and how does it You know that's a whole spiral yeah I mean TR to they they are in

the public eye right mean surely like people I mean our recognize each of we have an Instagram account for each of our kids and they all have I don't know 250,000 followers right yeah and those literally started yeah the the whole thing has been interesting because we'll get sometimes get like criticism like any family YouTuber would of like hey why do you have your kids on camera and It's something I'm super passionate about because I'm like guys you don't understand like this started from the most pure place this was literally a family Journal each of

my kids Instagrams was me being like I want to remember this child in every day of their life so I'm going to post one photo a day but again it wasn't in my mind like post a photo a day it was like save a photo a day and then they just grew big and then even our YouTube Channel like video one it's us being like hey Mom and Dad we're going on this trip around the world we want to remember and share it with you so we're going to make these videos once a week in

video like 4 it was even like later than that like video like week 12 I'm like hey Jacob and Brandon thank you for subscribing to our Channel we're now up to like eight subscribers like you know it was just a family like journal and nothing more so when people are like why Do you put your kids in the public eye it's like no like you guys did that we just made Family Videos we made a journal it grew bigger than and became like a career in an industry but that was never the plan well and

early on though they were private right so over time you were the one that had to convince me to make it on private and that in the that conversation do you remember like the main reason why I shared with you what You decided like okay let's do it there just came the time where for me with social media I think you can put out good bad or nothing and my personality is probably the nothing like deep down I'm like you know like let's just be ourselves or you know keep it close to our family or

friends or something but when I started to see the impact we were having on people and how important it is to put good out in the universe um to put out family to put out Kindness to put out service to put out adventure and travel you know like all these great values um it took me a minute to realize how much good can be done and should be done and we've been given so much and we have the responsibility to share it so that came maybe a year in our travels that you know I had

to really become just a more confident parent of the I am confident and what we're doing in our attentions and the way we're parenting and I want To put that out there I want to share that with the world because I think more parents should you know do the same put out goodness and put out kindness and put out love and family and all those good values I I find for myself it's very hard to separate what I know and what I do for our business and uh what I do on my personal sure accounts

like I I don't post personally on Instagram I haven't for like two years because I feel like I know too much about what it Is to make content and to care about it and I don't want to look at myself on my personal account and judge uh what I think I would like to be just memories yeah like you're saying but I can't do that I can't separate the two because I know what it means to not perform well on Instagram or something not to get shared and then I look at it and I I

don't I'm not able to look at it objectively like oh that's a nice moment that I had right do you face that as Well at all of like where performance meets family memories on a weekly basis but it's the same thing and and uh I I'd like to like say I've stayed true to our like purpose and why we started originally because every time when I make a video I mean I literally am editing Antarctica and it's like okay this video will perform better if I do ABC but I'm G to like this video better

if I do XYZ and it's like a two second negotiation with myself and I'm like no I'm going to do YZ I want I think our background selling scan having that Financial stability has made us as creators be able to do things that most people don't you know what I mean like we don't have to worry about the numbers and Garrett like our YouTube I mean you monetize one out of 10 videos we just don't monetize because he uses copywritten music because every time I'm like this is the song that would make it perform better

and make us more money This is the song that better reflects the way I remember this moment and that's what I'm going to choose so that was the first conversation Colin and I ever had that is true yeah yeah he was making a series out in um Colorado about his his uh club lacrosse team that's how we met I watched the trailer and I was like I'd love to put it on my channel which was called the Lacrosse Network I was really viewing it as like a TV network yeah so Like I'd love to to

essentially acquire the rights to your show right and I was like all you have to do is change the music and we can put it out and Colin was like I was like well I can't change the music like I can't change the music it's better music so nice knowing you yeah good luck with your Lacrosse Network thing yeah well and and the more we've learned about the YouTube world and how much money we could be making um that's been kind of a hard thing for me Because I'm I'm the business side I'm the financial

side and he's the creative side so to him again we do have that Financial stability and security that we've had for the last nine to 10 years I think that's a really important context because my my question is like you guys are are speaking about this in a way that you don't have the pressure of profitability for sure this is much more our passion than it is our career right otherwise like and then I would Also say you're correct me if I'm wrong here but your production costs are likely taken care of from the travel

perspective like you're not paying for your own travel to go out there so then it's like well if it's no at no you know like a lot of creators what what the issue is like they're like let's say yes Theory right travel they travel in time cost them a lot of money to go take their crew out to you know one of their destinations so the pressure of Performance is high totally and those guys are really passionate about travel I've spent a lot of time with them but that still plays a factor into it of

course like it has to also perform but it's interesting to to recognize this is a different like that that your entry point into YouTube was not from a place of I need this to to work as a job which I actually think is a very dangerous way to enter YouTube and I know that from experience because it was our entrance Into YouTube you know and our entrance into commercializing creativity for sure um and then you have that additional layer of like you have to be very careful about commercializing a family Journal uhu right for sure

yeah and be very thoughtful about how you do that for sure so where does the you know monetization come into play because the thing that's very fascinating about you guys the first time we we talked like I found the way you're thinking about this Next chapter of the career to be very unique and interesting and I'm curious if could talk about that of you know how do you take what you've done now and you've built this amazing platform how do you now scale it to the next place because surely at some point you don't know

as I guess your kids get older if you still want to right do totally and that was probably I think my biggest reason we wanted to move this route is with the whole Parenting side what's it like to have kids in the public eye and on social media and so when the idea came about of doing a cartoon it was like oh wow we can continue to travel to put good out there but I can take my family and go off into the sunset meanwhile Garrett can build something super beautiful we wanted to make it

a a choice for the kids as much as you want to be involved it's here it's an opportunity but 100% if you no longer Want to be involved or attached to this that's okay but we've worked so hard to create create this um you know platform or Community or brand um this message that so many people around the world benefited from that we think it would be like both like foolish and irresponsible to just like turn it off so how can we like pivot or morph it and that was the turning it into a cartoon

so can you talk about that where that idea sort of came from and where it is right now so Current like that was 2020 I feel like when that like idea sparked and came about well and we had had many offers for reality television and even you know sort yeah yeah yeah we had had multiple offers and that was I had no desire I you had Noire Noire I mean yeah I think reality would be hard because you lose control of the narrative really fast oh for sure same reason why I don't have an editor

is because like this is my family our memories I really need to be able to Control like how they are shown and portrayed MH right yeah and that what you just talked about around like having to make a decision on what would work better versus what am I comfortable with you go to reality there's no what am I comfortable like's the drama what's interesting about this's the fight between you guys like that's what I'm filming if I'm a reality producer or trying to instigate well you'll learn like Jessica is just Mindful and careful And moderate

in all things and I'm just Yes Man to the fullest and so like every time a reality TV show would hit us up I knew her answer was would take all these calls from production companies that were so thrilled and excited to you know that might be our relationship yeah I would you and I should go into business you just like we would go wild literally every Mr Beast competitor and yeah it would be a disaster the most ridiculous like email that'll hit us I'm Just like hey let's entertain it I mean a good example

is like I remember when the Dubai tourism board hit us up it just happened to be days after we had left and Jess is like obviously no we're not going to go back we just left there 48 hours ago and I was like but but what if we just put a crazy number out there and they say no to us so we say yes to them they say no to us and then maybe something will happen in the future so just tell me like there's a number that Would get you to go back to Dubai

and she's like no no like Christmas is coming up we literally have like not only we were just there but we have like 48 Hours window I'm like then let them know that say this is our number and this is our window and they'll say no to us and she's like okay put out a ridiculous thing said yes and they said yes and we went back to Dubai I brought my sister and my brother-in-law we had this Epic legit 36 she was like they Would need to pay us this much I want to bring my

sister and like this is how long we have and they said yes to it what so was that number uh this was pretty early I think it was eight grand you know this is you know we hadin yeah we had like 100,000 followers maybe at this was like 2016 we were like small Fridays at the time I see and yeah that and that was at the time that was like our biggest paycheck to date so it was really Exciting for us and again I was just like just put your number it's funny you say that

because I was asking Garrett we were working out before we came over and I had said I was like what's their Dynamic and he was like I think they're really like balanced whereas you and I are like yin and yang and and now hearing you guys say that I'm like okay here we go now I understand like we have yeah you got have we're balanced because we're on opposite sides yeah that's Where we find balance yeah so and I think we respect each other's uh viewpoints where we differ you need both you need both Absol

you need someone who's like The Pusher and The Pusher and then some make not dead aut our history has always been like Samir finds his way into rooms that I like can't even he found his way into tells them what we can do says yes and then comes back to me and I'm like oh you you got in that room and said yes all right let's figure It out and then it's tough and it's difficult but we're always uh you know feel good and are happy on the other end of that and that's where like

progress happens I will say I think that was really fun and great when we had very limited opportunities because I would have to find the opportunity now opportunity comes to us every day and that's actually I would assume with you as well for Yes Men that's a dangerous game when I wake up every day to new Invites around the world as a yes man do you want to be paid to go to Korea do you want to be paid to go to Bali and I'm over here as a mom being like but the kids they

want to go to school and they don't want to miss their Valentine's party and they don't want to miss the talent show yeah um so a lot of it is and then there's also just the play of like gratitude of like am I in a place where I can just say like no to these opport I would feel like ungrateful and so I'm like how long is my life I'm just going to say yes to all of these and and that's how I like express my gratitude I think yeah I I don't for me I

don't think it's I would I like gratitude as as uh I would like to adopt that but I think for me it's a lot more fear where it's like am I ever gonna get this chance again right right right that's that's I think where I where it really it really hits me because I think we Spent a lot of years for us not being successful not having opportunities and if you remember that you remember what it's like to not have the opportunity body lives there like your body doesn't move as fast as your reality right

so like we're here now in a space of we have opportunities but my existence is still back there where we didn't you operate in this could all go away tomorrow and I operate a little bit more so and isn't it amazing we're even here Yeah yeah like that's that's our Dynamic for sure same so the second time I came across The Bucket List family was when you started crowdfunding for an animation studio for the cartoon yeah I think that was in was it in 2020 or 2021 I think 2021 I think yeah 2021 and I

was aware of you guys and I you know I I I'm I'm not really in your demo uh Beyond like from from a YouTube perspective like but I checked It out on Instagram like very aware of what you guys were doing but when the crowdfunding campaign came around that was really interesting to me and I was wondering if you could talk about you know the impetus of that what it was and how that worked I I think as like just like the Creator economy it's just such an important like lesson for all of us because

here we wanted to in a way like not like step away from YouTube but just kind of like evolve it and see like what Is the next chapter for us which like so many creators are doing right and so for us that that idea was a cartoon and so how are we going to create it and it was like well we could like raise money and self-fund it we could uh go and try to like partner with a big like Disney or one Netflix or one of these Studios and I kind of just like I'm

so new to this I'm going to do all of it at once and just see what's working and I went and I pitched a lot of the networks and one of Them made a $10 million offer to us of like hey this is great you guys are great let's buy this off you for 10 million and just do it and buy what off of you like bu by the rights to make this cartoon rights to make the bucketless family into a cartoon yeah and it kind of goes back to like thank goodness we're in the

financial situation we were because knew that wasn't the right decision for our family or for the cartoon for the show like Creatively it wasn't the right partnership um but $10 million is a crazy amount of money and so like so I said no to it a lot of people were upset and like baffled by it and because that you know that was the goal you can create your cartoon like just go for it but that was the mo I remember sitting we were in Alaska and I remember seeing to you like you can either build

this yourself and not be told to do or you can be you know the Employee again and knowing that Snapchat experience of how quickly like being told what to do and not having creative control I was like this isn't going to work yeah it's good that you had experience with high dollar amounts because yeah I think if even today if I heard that number and I said no to it it would keep me up at night you know like I think having exposure and experience of that obviously played into your favor there but was there

an issue with also Like IP and creative control of you know that honestly that's what triggered me at first cuz I so I initially said yes let's do this oh you did but in the contract it said that we were giving our life rights right to our children life Wow and you're like ah what a terrible parent are you to be like oh yeah $10 million and yes you can have my three children for the rest of your life um yeah so the initial was like obviously I pitched them because I Wanted to work with

them and then when they said yes like that same day they made us the offer and so it was like yes let's do this it's a victory chairs let's start negotiation and the negotiations was this like fre maybe like six Monon process and then when they finally got gave us the contract I remember they're like thanks for letting us take the 6 months to get you the contract we need this back by Friday or like deals off the table and we like Dive into it and it was like too aggressive and I was like not

only did you kind of like show your side when you like were weird about this timing like trying to like force us to rush this but clearly it's like an unhealthy contract like as a friend do you want me to sign this because if we're going to be partners we should be friends and it just wasn't right so um when you know when you understand that it's like okay that was not only The right decision but it's actually an easy decision you know and so we decided to like consider the funding part and so from

me uh raising investor money for my iPhone app I went back to a lot of those investors G very good at fundraising very good like you could have easily I think we had said we wanted to get 10 million and you could have raised it very I told them I'm like I want to raise a majority of it from my past investors because they've supported me From day one and then I'll I'll I I want to find a way to like include our audience and what that looks like so the idea was like let's make

a pitch video which we did posted it on YouTube I think it was titled like 10 seven reasons not to invest and um and we'll just like put it out there and we'll allow if there's anyone out there who's like an accredited investor meaning like 100k or more we're open to like meeting with them and hopefully they'll be able To participate to include our fan base and then something very interesting happened it became legal in the US literally that month for people to participate as as small amount as $100 $100 and get actual equity in

the company and so we used a brand new platform to like try this it was called Republic yeah remember and we were well we I remember we were about to launch it and at the point the minimum I think was $25,000 we attached it like there was Like a Google form where you could commit your amount like here's my all my information and I'm going to commit 100 Grand like whatever it is you have to be an accredit minimum was it 100 25 it was 25 25k so the concept here though is that like if

I put in 25K I actually own a percentage of this animation it wasn't so because the crowdfunding like say Kickstarter is like thank you for your money we're going to give you like a t-shirt or whatever price level but you Don't have ownership in this project no this was like you're an actual investor an actual like Equity holder in our company the bucketless studios so we created the like Studios company the bucketless studios and you're going to have ownership not just the cartoon but like the entire company and so we're about to put out this

video and we had put the base level of 25k thinking oh that'll like weed out someone and it was like 10 minutes before hitting publish That I'm like you know what I want you had a conversation with your old business partner and you said why should the rich just get richer we need to open this up to anybody and then you switched it to 100 switch from 25k dry all the way down to $100 and then we just hit publish and like let's see how this turns out and I like have the no the numbers

in my phone because I'm like typing out this outrageousness as it happens she and I are like sitting in Bed on Sunday morning watching the spreadsheet fill up in under like 10 minutes we had passed a million dollars in under an hour we had passed three million and 24 hours later we had $43 million committed to us which like I being an optimist I'm like I think we can reach our goal of 3 million like I think so but like 43 million was beyond me whoa whoa for $43 million is crazy well and and so

you you filled out the Form and you could say at what level got it and you know it it was from $100 up to so this were commitments people weren't giving us money yet that was $43 million were committed from a total of about 30,000 35,000 people and I was really proud to see like 50 different countries were represented in this pool of people wanting to like support us I have two questions is it a problem that it's way more money than you wanted and what roughly allotment of the company Like what percent was that

see well and that was the thing whether it's like smart or foolish whatever we just we we didn't know what to expect so we had told people beforehand like this is the valuation of the company and this is the percentage we're looking to give away which at the time again I had already promised my past investors like hey you can come in and they were participating at like a million dollar $2 million like they were writing big checks so we only Had a very like a smaller allotment still remaining um so the crazy it was

a weird thing where like because we already set our valuation that was just us like vocalizing it we definitely could have like gone back and been like yo this there's way more interest than we expected we're going to raise the valuation so now everyone can give us we're going to take your 43 million and we're only going to give you like 10% of The company we maybe could have done that and a lot of our investors are like yo you got to like do this and I'm like no like that doesn't feel fair to me

we' already voiced the the thing so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go back and ask everyone we literally put the cap the max amount you could uh uh invest was $100 it was a really weird thing to be like thank you for your offer of $100,000 would you be willing to only give us $100 and but that's what We did because at this point money wasn't important to us it was allowing people to participate that wanted to support us like we there was the community that was our number one priority and so put

the max there and am I doing the numbers right 30,000 people invested $100 for 3 million total from our audience 7 million total from our past big investors for a total of uh $10 million wow to start this cartoon this company yeah and so is is the the base Premise of the cartoon company or the the animation studio is to start with hey we have this IP of The Bucket List family we have we have an existing audience to scale this we can turn this into a that can live on you know way longer than

we want to make videos but is the secondary and then we can replicate that with other people in our position it was yeah like PE people know like you know we're big thinkers we're big dreamers there might be a future but As far as what we promised it was like look we're going to do three things initially we're going to create this cartoon and potentially more content we're going to create software just because that's like our background and we're going to figure out like what type of apps and software we want to create and then

we're going to create merch just because that's that's fun and as a designer I just if you create a cartoon that's where You're going to make your money as Theon merch if you make the cartoon merch the merch is where you're going to really make not good money in like yeah actual like cartoon it's it's even like in that like $10 million deal like the way things would like break down and shake out like you wouldn't make a whole you wouldn't take a whole lot of money home it's it's once you've created an incredible brand

that's just use like The Simpsons as an example then how you Can monetize that endlessly is where you can make the money but not actual like the content interesting yeah YouTube has changed that right YouTube hasg feels like like again making music is similar right like you don't really make that much money off the music going exact interesting um so that now you know you raised the 10 million where does the studio stand today so we raised that money and a weird thing to this and I voiced this when I Said hey here's the seven

reasons not to invest in me one of those reasons was this isn't going to be my top priority family is going to be even health is going to be even my hobes is like there's a lot of things of like um me trying to have like a balanced happy life like this is going to be somewhere high on my priority list but it's not going to be at the top and people need to like understand that and so the tricky thing with that is I can't build I can't use this money and go build like

an army and animat of animators because I don't want to manage them I don't want to like I don't want to be the next big CEO of a big Corporation I just know what that looks like lifestyle wise and it's not for me so my challenge is like how do I use this 10 million build a very small team there's like passionate and talented and then probably just because it's such hard work to create something like a cartoon show we need to Still still go back and partner with a bigger Studio bigger Network whatever that

looks like so this gives you leverage now MH yeah so now we like and now to go to these networks and say we have 30,000 paying and and we've got a team like oh and we have 5 million people who and we can say no to you yeah exactly like the leverage in negotiation is like you've just created a whole new version of Leverage when it comes to like IP life rights like you're Like we don't we don't need that anymore right I guess in in theory well so we've spent the last two years since

you know finishing the round of funding again going back to these networks and then and stepping foot into this entertainment world is so difficult we're used to the Creator space we're used to the text space where you see something and you create it in days people also speak very directly in the Creator space yeah meaning like it's Like hey let's do this you want to do it yeah let's do it that means that means you're doing it the entertainment World a problem that you're running up against it's infuriating I mean literally the last year of

negotiations and but not even negotiations it's like oh we're super interested let's reschedule or like what are you doing 2 months from now and you're like what are you doing tomorrow I was just telling about this let let's set a call yeah let's set a Call when in June what it's May or like what are you talking about that's not the way work it's crazy it's not the way we work I honestly I think it's like in so many ways it's just a broken industry and like optimis me I was like I just want to

fix so many things because again if if you don't have time for a call in the next like 48 Hours like don't do that call it's not worth your time if it's not worth your time like this week you know yeah that's a really good point A mindset really good point um that yeah if it's not there there's a story I told Colin about um Ari where uh if someone says like hey I'd love to talk he just goes okay call me now yeah and it weeds out people who aren't prepared for sure because yeah

I love that yeah because they're like oh wait I was gonna say I was going to suggest next week he was like clearly you're not ready yeah it's not important so well I mean that it helps that I just Shared the story of like Evan being like I want to acquire your company I this done by the weekend like I know how quickly legal can move when they want to or when they need so prior and also timing wise too you know we were kind of starting to pitch these networks right when the co boom

of of the networks was falling right they were cutting shows left and right so then start pitching them on something new I loved listening to the Oscars Yesterday where they were like why don't we start funding 20 different um Ventures for 20 M for 1020 million instead of giving one you know one Marvel $250 million yeah so it's just been an interesting last two years learning how this how this industry Works meanwhile still building an app still creating merch you know and so that's been it was super helpful to go into these negotiations and say

you know when we're talking about merch like Oh hold on we already sell backpacks we already sell clothes we already sell all this stuff so we came into the negotiations I'll say that was that was very intentional to to sell the merch we have um a lot of our audience has been confused of like wait why you pushing merch so much I thought you were focused on the cartoon and it was it was tricky thing because um it was super intentional to sell this merch because I knew the time would come when we would Get

to negotiations with the with the studios and they would want rights to the merch and I knew if we just said no like we want the rights that wouldn't have a lot of like PLL but to already say no this is already our business and we've already been doing it and have sales and Designs all that we own like you can't you either buy that from us or we're going to keep the rid so it was all very intentional the order that we did this in so that when we finally Found the right partner we

were in a really good place negotiation wise to to get what is the suggestion the audience gets a return like the people the 30,000 how do they get a return on that $100 because they have like actual ownership in the company um it comes down to like like it's similar to investing in any startup you're waiting for any sort of liquidity if the company goes public the company gets acquired anything like that is when when they would make their money Back wow um the the tough thing for me again like as a Storyteller is I'm

wanting to tell people like this is what happened and then this is what happened but for two years the story was the same I am knocking on the doors of these networks trying to find the right partner and even though we were having good success and good interest because it no deal was happening I couldn't for two years just tell like our audience the same you know kind of like I mean my The ban of my life was these pitches and so I just kind of like took it as my own personal journey and we

didn't like update our audience that much because I kept feeling like oh we're right on the edge of like closing a deal I'll just wait another month then I'll update our audience and it just kept being that way shareholders it was it was really 30,000 of them so you have people being like we're you know and most of these people they've never invested in anything Before so they were very very excited and we were too you know like we all want to see this come out you know but learning how this industry Works especially animation

right it takes a decade at least so yeah I was just gonna say it was a hard thing to just try to be like guys like trust me trust me I'm like we're working our hardest and I'm trying to do this the right way not the fast way we we long ago could have done this the fast way But we want to do it right and it's slow have you considered just the YouTube way like in in a world where Coco melon exists uh and is able to thrive on YouTube obviously they have other offerings

as well but why not like hire someone from a Coco melon 100% we cut have and so we did um I'll say there's there's kind of like the big Network say Netflix Disney um HBO Max like those and then there's like third part like third party Studios uh most of them like Especially up in Canada and Vancouver area that can like create it but they're not like the distributor of the channel or like the the network right um and I pitched every single one of those as well and it was interesting because the majority of

those I I think every single one of them actually said yes we want to do it and then it came up to me just being to go to a studio and say we want to create this oh and we have the money and we have the audience that's that's Music to their ears everyone was a yes but then we quickly realized why would we give them a piece of the pot you know like why wouldn't we just we would still eventually have to go to a Netflix or go to whatever or put it on YouTube

so that's a great question of like why not just put this on YouTube and I think to be honest it was kind of like um something we always wanted to consider but we knew that was an option so why not go down the other path just To see if something else is the option knowing like YouTube Not only is an option but it's a really good option so like and even like today there's a real good chance that like that's where a lot of our content happen like either way content will end up on YouTube

but like is that the only place like maybe very likely yeah you probably have more leverage if it's not on YouTube in some way shape or form to start and and and it's just kind of also like I want to Experience life and because we've experienced YouTube like is there something else out there let's let's find out so the good part of this long long journey is after all of this we start having negotiations with National Geographic Jessica writes her book for National Geographic it was a four-year process and it launched February just last month

and it it did incredibly well and it's just like a spectacular book we're so Proud of it um and Not only was it one of National Geographics bestselling books ever in like the pre-order phase and at launch but they also just like fell in love working with Jess and so in a cool way all along she became like the golden key to all this where I was just like hitting the pavement and like not making like successful progress for like two years and then Jessica was just like her pure kind self and they fell in

love with working with her and then they Experienced The Madness of our audience when they were buying her book like crazy around the world and that's when they said hey you guys are working on a cartoon or like trying to we should have that meeting and that was like finally the meeting that changed everything for us because they it's a beautiful match where I have just so much like admiration for n Geo and I even all along if you would have asked me back in the beginning like okay you've dream for This you know I

never said it I didn't want to jinx it so I just like never said it but that the number one all along like if this this should live with National Geographic it's a beautiful beautiful partnership especially National Geographic being owned by Disney um so I I gave it my everything in that pitch meeting yeah take us into that pitch meeting like what's obviously they have a pre-existing relationship with you The the goal was the goal was okay we need to find a future home for all things bucket list eventually that'll be a cartoon before that

it's a very smart step to because a cartoon takes so much time it's a really um clever step to do like kids books first especially just because I I'm really excited about it because of how much of our Lives is like digital so much of what we represent is experiencing life offline and so to create books first is something we're Incredibly excited about and so it's like okay we need to find this future home so that's what this partnership was like is National Geographic and Disney the future home of all things bucket list so we're

working towards that and it came down to the wire and by that I mean like it was December oh my gosh I'm having so much PTSD this was super stressful for me um and I just kept asking I'm like Hey cuz we we would have a conversation if I had one question I'd Be so careful about whether not I would like bring it up and I would have to choose because if I brought up something and they didn't have an answer then we would rearrange a next meeting every time that meant that meant a week

you know and so every time I knew every detail every question is just putting out another week and I wanted the deal to be closed in 2023 the OCD Creator Storyteller and me wanted the deal to be closed in 2023 I'm Very I'm a logical person I understood very well like if this deal closes the second week of January 2024 it makes no difference the grand of scheme things but the OCD Storyteller and me wanted 2023 not only do those numbers add up to seven my lucky number but my hero Walt Disney created the company

Disney 100 years prior to 2023 way cooler than the 101st year right but I couldn't tell that to Legal team they could care less and if Anything they're like wait you're ridiculous like maybe we don't want to partner with you so I couldn't I couldn't voice this and here I am just stressing and trying to come up with like other logical re reasons why this deal needs to close and finally I just had to force my hand I said look guys when I when you have our passion and our excitement you've with her book you've

experienced the value of that and it's been your bestselling book this Year I promise you if you close this deal this year you're going to have my full excitement gratitude passion all of it if this gets pushed out to next year uh I think I want to like kind of like start over just kind of like restart the conversation because this isn't the partnership I you know thought it was I need to feel some like give and take care close this deal this week or it's not going to happen oh okay and two days later

we we have the contract it's Closed wow wow two days later they send it to me and I remember like I've been venting here it was just this year-long grueling process and coming from the sports world and you know I want to like sit down at the table put on the hat and say I'm going to South Beach yeah um and uh they just send me a docu sign and I was like I work this hard for a docu sign I'm GNA open the email I'm G to do one click and it's done like that's

what we've been working towards like come on Where's the fireworks you guys are freaking Disney like let's make an event of this but yeah whatever so it was like four days before Christmas and um should we launch a docu sign competitor where like someone comes to you contract on platter and a big yeah a big hat I was gonna say do you want some Mickey Mouse ears I'm taking my talents disne so this is what we did this is what we did I remember hitting up my contact at n and being like hey I got

the doc you sign do I need to sign this right now or does it make any difference if I sign it later or tomorrow and she was like excuse me you've been like pushing so hard to us to get like why are you not going to sign it and I I think I told her I was like I just want to wait for the kids to get home from school we'll do this together and she's like all right so while the kids were at school I designed my own contract that was a beautiful like legit

contract printed it out set Up a table in our living room like made like a special family event to it explain to the kids like this is what this means for us as a family this is what it means for like Bucket List as a company and and then we each signed it you know we framed it put it into our in our home and then and then we click docu sign that's awesome and then the deal done yeah congratulations yeah so you you have a home for this it has found a home it was

our number one dream choice We're so thrilled but you know her experience actually working with National Geographic for the past four years that's what you know really proved to us like these are the people we want to work witht great company great brand and and then just such a cool partnership where we're like young new and like fresh compared to them and I would argue that Nat Gio is the most timeless respected brand on the planet arguably Worldwide yeah totally and and what's interesting is actually it being done via n Geo feels substantially different than

it being done via Disney 100 because big opportunity to be yeah like the Nat Geo brand Geo also respects the travel side to what you're doing there's no brand that is more esteemed really than National Geographic when they had they had for a while it looked like it was going to Pivot and it was going to be like a Disney thing like oh we'll Move this from n GI like Disney wants this and that's where I put my foot down I'm like no we want to do this deal only with National Geographic because even like

if we're like designing the cartoons and what do our characters look like we didn't want someone to see it and think oh that's cool that looks like Disney that's not what we wanted also there's probably a question of like you guys are going to still make YouTube videos right M and there's probably some Requirement that you have to all the pressure of and that's the whole other part of the negotiations of what are we allowed to continue to do and what do we own versus the new content and what and also the channel is like

the marketing for the book so it's like oh for sure we need the channel to keep you know stay alive so there's a bit of that like there's there's complications with YouTube creators because we're also very used to being independent and so when You get into you know a situation where you you're getting in with like a Disney it's it's a totally different ball game because you want to keep what's yours yours still and and that's something I really appreciate about National Geographic specifically even with my book is they want me us to be true

to who we are you know they have when Jessica created her book she created so much more creative freedom with them is it co-created or similar we talked to The Sid men's team and they did their deal with Netflix they produced their movie and then licensed it to Netflix and they own it 100% I'm assuming that's not the case here no this is going to be much more of like a team effort I'm like say like at the head of the will creatively and like leading that charge um but it's going to be very much

like co-created picking artists together and everything um but again I'm I'm the one being difficult and being like no it Can't look like that it's it's got to be its new thing we got to hire these specific type of artists and everything and I mean props to them they're trusting me and they're following my lead and that's something I like go back to like Walt Disney and like what the big picture is here I feel like massive responsibility but I only feel excitement with it like I I feel like I'm the right person for this

task what's the desired timeline like when Can we expect to watch a cartoon well to read well okay sure yeah curious about both literally it's just like when can we show the world anything m right and then that's another in the negotiations I'm like guys I'm going to document this process I couldn't document the process of me pitching Studios and like the legal negotiations and that's I it's like hurt my heart how much our audience has been in the dark up until this point so as soon as we have something that we Feel like oh

this is actually not just like oh this is a finished book but like I'm going to start showing like the process the explorations the concept are like rough drafts like all the things and it was a tough battle with legal being like hey guys like this is what I do I'm going to do it and you can you need need to be all right with that and trust me and so we'll very soon immediately start like showing that process but as far as when the book First book one say the actual content will come out

as of now it's slated for next fall I literally just have like that was the one email they sent me before like don't don't make any promises to any hard day I think it's later for next fall um but again like if we finish the book in the next three months then that'll change so also nice they've been flu they're willing to be fluid with us on when this comes out what I was getting at though like the The actual like answer in my mind is you can't rush greatness and I'm like guys I just

experienced most grueling process and was so patient with you guys for legal you're going to need to be patient with me I'm not going like have you ever been to a movie and you're like how did the movie get made like that was terrible like who approve this movie once I got into the entertainment space and saw I'm like oh that's why bad movies get made because people make Deadlines people make like budgets and then they just like rush them and and like they spend the wrong like time in the wrong places I'm like guys

everything is going to live and die first based on story then based on Art then based on music so like those are three things we're never going to rush this is my legacy project we're going to focus on this until it's just the way we want it then we'll move to the next chapter I appreciate and I like respect Your deadlines and I'm going to try my very hardest to like beat them and be ready far before them um but that's all I can promise you is my best effort I'm not going to release something

that I'm not fully proud of and so like timeline wise we'll see like greatness takes time and I'm going to force them to be as patient as they required me to be for that process think that's smart story first this is a question now like that I'm really really curious about as We're starting to talk to more creators who are doing deals with traditional media and and those deals have hot like large dollar amounts what have you learned about negotiating in those environments as a Creator as someone who's you know built your own media platform

when you walk into the room with a traditional you know entertainment business like what have you learned about those negotiations that can get into the tens Of millions of dollars is it's interesting to like the more you can like detach yourself from the numbers it's weird it's just kind of like you need to know up front like you're incredibly valuable and just have that like self value and confidence and then from there forget about the money and just and just like is this a good deal is this the right partnership do they value me and

usually like the way of them showing they value you is not Only like negotiating in a favorable way but then also showing you with like the dollar amounts right and so one of the best things I've ever had going for me when it comes to negotiations is I just not only do I like value myself at a very high level but I also know like I'm going to give you my everything and this is going to be the best choice you ever made letting letting me work with you and I'm gonna prove that to you

I'm worth it so like that's that's do you Guys have a team doing your negotiating or do you do that yourself I did it for a lot of our career you did yeah and now we are represented by United talent agency okay yeah and then we have a lawyer as well who works from there I'm I'm extremely involved right but it is it took me a long time to feel comfortable being detached from the process and I'm detached I'm still involved in everyone I I I feel uncomfortable if I'm not in the meetings Like I

I need to be very much a part of it but um yeah it's different it's very different to to have someone else doing it but it has freed me up quite a bit and the good side of it is like that is what they do and so they can just bring like both like more deals and bigger deals we were they also know the market which is has most help me right is because if I'm like oh that sounds pretty good I mean I've had experiences like exactly what you described with the Scan deal where

I'm like we're happy with that you know and they're like Samir we know the market right you're you're being undervalued here you know and I'll be like but I'm good that's that's good and so we we we've gone back and forth quite a bit on those types of things but it's always netted out in a positive way because they do know the market exactly we have in our life christe yeah and she like it would almost be feel wrong to like call Her a manager our assistant she's just our Christie she's our everything just to

make our lives better in every way and uh yeah she's been that for us in a lot of ways how does the studios the book all of that fit into the broader I guess um business and like Revenue pie chart of Bucket List family because it sounds like you were saying like you you monetize one out of every few YouTube videos you it sounds like brand Partnerships are probably a big part of the business now does all of that continue does this kind of engulf and and swallow all of that like is does The Bucket

List Studios now also incorporate what's happening on YouTube and Instagram or like paint me the picture of of the whole business now we'll we'll continue to like and actually I had made the announcement on our Bucket List family YouTube channel our current YouTube channel that we've been putting Videos out about once a week and like literally their title was like week 204 week 205 on week 250 we made made the announcement that we were going to stop at week 300 at least in their current format we're currently at week 265 I think oh wow so

you're closing in on that uh and we list let people know like hey this has been a season for our family we don't know if it's going to just completely turn off and it quits or if it's going to like morph and what That's going to look like but you can expect this consistency to follow continue to 300 and then something will change ominous there cryptic yes Something's Gonna Change I mean a lot a lot of it is is you know Garrett has edited every single one of those videos you know what I mean to

be where we're at in life and and Garrett spends his days exactly how he wants to spend his days it's not hard and he loves editing these videos but I mean he's still Spending 20 to 30 to 40 hours a week editing so I think that's going to be a big shift but you know building out not only this cartoon and the books and you know we're working on an app and you know just building out more of our community that's a whole other side to it like I said we have an incredible demographic an

incredible Community we have something called bucket list friends which which is a subscriber group people pay $5 a month we give them Exclusive content um exclusive travel deals um bringing that all together for a new community on an app that's whole other side to the studios that's included in the business um so it's it's still got this big grand scheme and then all the merch on top of it so so it's kind of this whole big 360 you know and then at the same time you know like I don't know what YouTube is going to

turn into but you know there's still the social media side That's that's the marketing driver that's still the the views that you need to make it all successful so if you were to rank your revenue streams from like biggest to uh I guess I guess just like in order of of like how the business really functions is merch on top prior to Studios or is it advertising brand deals um for us it's about well so there's The Bucket List family right now and then there's the bucket list Studios Bucket List family is half brand deals

Half bucket list friends half subscription okay classic Creator right and then Studios is all merch right now om merch yeah how big is your team uh there are 10 of us total us included yeah your brother is the head of story at Bucket List family can you talk about that role and what are some of the other roles that are in the business because head of story is not a it makes complete sense but what is that role this it's a good example of like we're doing this in Such a different way like it might

blow up in our faces and I'm I don't want to say I'm okay with that but like I'm okay with it if I tried my best I love trying something unique and if it fails it's like hey at least we tried something at least we something new so much better than like oh okay I'll just bow down and stick to the recipe and then if it fails I'd be like disgusted with myself and so um I hired my brother this is the brother that was the high school teacher That I talk to that I just

look up to so much you know and what a unique so much props to him and his personality that he'd be willing to like work for his little brother sure right but that's he he knows just how I feel about him I know he feels about me so it works and he's just a brilliant brilliant writer and nobody knows our story better than he does I could go out and hire the best writer in the world but they don't know us as well as he does and even though He's never written a cartoon or children's

books I he's just the most brilliant writer you know and so I'm confident it was the right choice we'll see I'm sure a lot of like blame or like questioning will come my way if it doesn't work out being like Oh you just hired him to like help hook up your brother which wasn't the case but like we we'll see how that turns out um but everyone who we've hired there's one guy on our team who's are like lead of Animation and creative he has industry experience he's the only one of the team of 10

everyone else our merch guys is new to merch we've obviously never done this you know um and then me and my one of my buddies that we built the iPhone app with scan um he's on board as well he's he and I are creating the app together cool and so it's just yeah it's just it's my dream scenario it's a very small team I dare care dearly about everyone we're very tight-knit you know Family type group and uh just kind of that Misfit let's see if we can do this as a team of rookies and

are they all employees of Studios not yeah so the Creator company is just you guys yeah yeah yeah that's I I like that I think that's the right we we've seen that it's a growing Trend in the Creator space of like interesting there's a scalable side to what you do and an unscalable side to what you do you keep the unscalable side really small as small as possible yeah And you H in the scalable side right so like you transfer any Talent over to the side that has scale to it yeah yeah that's really interesting

the um I'm curious what you think about just generally the category of family and uh I guess like familyfriendly YouTube and familyfriendly digital content because it is a massive category it is like you know YouTube even has its own app for YouTube kids right it's interesting too to be in this space and like Garrett Said like we're not huge consumers ourselves our kids aren't consumers whatsoever that's interesting your kids do not consume YouTube none I don't no they can watch our YouTube videos and that's it interesting it's that's a rule like you can't watch yeah

yeah or just in general like our kids at home don't have scen we don't have a TV we'll sit down on a Sunday and like pull up old videos just for fun and watch your old yeah I still do that with my home movies Like if I go to my parents house with these vhs's pop them in I can just watch them for hours what's the reasoning behind that of like we don't want you watching more so just we believe that like a healthier life it's just it's it a weird thing cuz I'm such like

a techy guy but because of that I've also seen the dark side well and and our YouTubes if you look at our YouTubes our goal is to put out there put it out there right it's our family videos we hope you will Watch it for 20 30 minutes once a week and then we hope you'll go out and live a life like I don't want you to sit and watch my videos got it right which is you know probably not how most YouTubers work they want you to sit and go through all the videos for

hours um but ours is probably more like a TV series where you can go and watch you know that's why the algorithm hates us the uh no yeah that's exactly right and so to The Good the good side of like Why we why we do like being like creators is because I feel like the life of a Creator is so busy to create that it leaves very little time to like consume and so if you're going to spend some time like on a screen or on a phone it's I I would rather my kids say

in the future if they want to I'd rather them be creating than just consuming yeah well and our do you know our oldest is 11 none of her friends have phones so we're we're kind of at the precipice of Uh you know bringing in phones and social media and stuff you know like it's not quite there but maybe in the next two years or so you know and I don't know what that is going to look like do we you know gett and I have talked about maybe when Dorothy's 17 or 16 we give her

her Instagram you know let her do you know she's got 300,000 followers and you can turn it off or you can monetize it a if it or you just turn it and she Loves making movies she loves I mean like that just happened with Matthew MC that's exactly what it did you watch that you see that his they they I think you mentioned that yeah yeah yeah they gifted their son his Instagram and had 800,000 followers right had that many but how old is he but basically they like launched it for his birthday I he

16 wow and they made like a public announcement yeah you know here it is have fun yeah yeah well and Something I also love about our demographic is um and we took this when we were pitching other companies and the first thing people would ask is what's your demographic and for us they were looking for the oh you know the seven to 12 year olds they wanted a very specific demographic and for us it's always been full families the amount of our audience that sits down together on a Sunday evening and watches it together it

I mean it's the majority of our audience It's a fun tradition that they'll like on Sunday evening send us a picture of them as a family sitting down in the living room and like watching on TV together like sometimes like wearing our merch and stuff and for me I'm like tell me something else in the entertainment world where families will in today's world gather together as a family on like a weekly routine wear the merch like maybe sports teams have like achieved this you know maybe reality Competition shows American Idol they're probably not wearing the

merch they're definitely not wearing the merch so for us to like be able to like achieve that when we go into Disney National Geographic and they'll like push back being like no like you need to be more specific with your demographic I'm like no sorry we've worked so hard to like achieve this unique setting that we're what we want that's what we want to achieve with the Cartoon as well yeah you know it's not going to be a little Kitty cartoon it's it's G to be that family friendly full family entertainment full family entertainment is

really interesting I mean maybe maybe the other and it's it's probably an older demo but I would say dude perfect probably fits into this category of like full families can sit or at least like you know parents and kids I've I've watched that happen where like you know parents and kids are Sitting and watching Dude Perfect kid we'll sit down and watch Mar robberg when he does his we love watching I think with both of those groups you know dude perfect and Mark Rober like Mark has built an incredible business with gr flaps just a

phenomenal business where it's like kids use it yeah I mean my my my nephews use it and it's just like you watch the video and then you get to like the business is also built to say get stop Watching and start doing which is really cool and he only makes 12 videos a year so it's like exactly yeah he's uh that's interesting yeah I think you guys fit into that do do you have anticipation of doing any like I know you have done this in the past like Retreats or like family trips that you can

we do them quite quite often we'll do like two to three year and now and actually now even with like this bucketless Studios teams or are like group of 10 we all work Remotely it we do our best which isn't the most like strategic thing success business-wise but we do our best to like practice what we preach and so everyone works from home and like they know that we would prefer them to prioritize their family get your work done but like you don't have work hours you're not uh checking in or clucking in like nothing

like you live your best life you be healthy you be like have your passions and hobbies and focus on your family Just make sure you get your work done whenever and wherever you want to but because of that we're all remote so we'll like we try as much as possible but usually ends up being like three times a year we'll come together somewhere awesome the good part of about being the buas family is there's just like an email full of invites to destination so we'll respond to them and say would you be willing to like

host the bua studios team and then those that Say yes so we did we like told our team about the really exciting news of the partnership with National Geographic on a private island called Ariel in the British Virgin Island it's just it it looks like almost like a villain there on the cliff side it's the most outrageously beautiful stunning structure in the British for Island and that's where we got to like tell our team so the downside is we don't get to like hang out with them the plus side is We can work pretty epic

places when we come together yeah and they get to mold their lives as they like have you you've done Retreats though for like audience members so we I mean we go to Africa every other year we've we're working on surf camp you've done BL GH we've G Fiji we've gone to and you're there every time this happened yeah we've done one that we weren't present and it awesome to see like how well that did so now that has our wheels turning but other Than that one which was a safari in Tanzania all of our bucket

list group Expeditions we call them are with us present and we we love them like we love we we purpose we kind of learned along the way what we like and don't like and the smaller groups is what we prefer but I mean it it really does just bring together such incredible people yeah I like that I like the experiential business for YouTube like YouTube creators who have the opportunity to Whether it's touring or like camps or Retreats like I think it's a really interesting it's also healthy for the YouTube creators to like go out

and do something like well and I think for me especially to see like okay everything we are working so hard on because I have tried to detach myself from the social media side to go out and say these incredible people that are watching and how it's impacting their lives it it gives me so much more excitement and Motivation to continue to opening myself up to the world the scale comes in you know three forms I think or has the opportunity to come in three forms when it comes to being a Creator one is digitally right

so for you guys that's turning yourselves into a cartoon now we can digitally scale right then there's like physically that's through merchandise you can scale the brand through like things people the Nat Geo book um things people can touch and feel And then there's experientially as well which is can I do the thing that you're doing and I think the creators who have the best opportunities are the ones who can scale across all three of those then you're you can really build a significant business to totally totally one thing that you guys should be warned

about okay is once you like you know us once you're on our radar you're going to get invites often crazy invites and you need to like this is an actual warning You need to be aware that you it's like okay to say no because you're going to get a lot of invites oh man this is exciting this is exciting and and like like terrifies me CU like being friends with the yes theory is not so different or used to be not so different I'll say I I uh Adams who's a Creator who like hikes all

over the world I said to him I was like hey if you ever want someone to join you I'd be happy to go and he dm'd me immediately and said I'm going to Chile in 3 days I was like oh no I was like I'm not prepared yeah like no I didn't I didn't mean that it was more of like an emotional thing it wasn't a real thing I I just mean I'd like to be that person who would be there with you now they're used to the like hey uh we're going to swim with

great white sharks this weekend I'm going to take all the invites I'll take all cuz I think I'm now at a point where I'm like yes and I'll come back to that like the Entrepreneur in me being you know young and and a bit scared that I was never going to get somewhere right if someone invited me to something I'd be like I can't I got to work right and not recognizing that like having a we go we will monetize somewh but but just not realizing that having a variety of experiences was really important to

being a creative entrepreneur like I don't think I realized that for a lot of my 20s I thought the path was sitting Around and just sit on your computer and work you know well then I I want to know for you guys each of you guys like what is that thing that would be the number one the very top of your bucket list that you haven't done yet that you want to someday if if money is not an issue if the difficulties the typical difficulties are not an issue where is that place or what is

that experience I think mine has been a little bit longer term I really want to Become fluent uh in Spanish I was an Italian major in college and I got like pretty much there yeah um but I have like zero opportunities really to use Italian and there's so many opportunities here to speak Spanish and I loved what speaking another language did to my brain it felt like aerobics for my bra I just loved being confronted with that opportunity totally um and I I've wanted that so badly is to like go for long enough to be

fluent yeah I love That if you if you just off the top of your head had to pick a Spanish country to have that first experience the first thing that comes to mind is Mexico City just because I really enjoyed it um and I think traveling around Mexico would be really fun and interesting and if I had to get back for some reason for my family here and there like uh or to even come here I could do it yeah uh that's the first that comes to mine yeah Italian you like studied that in school

Or yeah have you been there yet College yeah yeah I spent a lot of time there in college uh becoming basically fluent so you know the joy like how much that can like connect you with that culture in just the next Lev way yeah and talk about like a away from the internet type of experience like I was there at a time I didn't even have a smartphone but even now when I have the opportunity to speak a language like my phone in the internet is so far in the back of my mind I'm Just

so plugged in and excited to engage and like see how it's going yeah it really does it's there's such a beautiful feeling to be able to like you said oh gosh and it like puts a smile on my face it puts a smile on the other person's face when they feel like it's working even when it's clunky you know it's like it's so fun she and I we met serving Church missions in Russia so that's where we first met we're both fluent in Russian and it's interesting To hear you say that because like 90% of

like cultures and languages around the world as soon as you say hello thank you in their language they just like light up everything Russian not the case oh really Russian you can like speak fluently back to a Russian and they're just like you speak very poorly why do you have a terrible accent I'm like dude I'm speaking your language nobody speaks Russian by the way and they are not impressed yeah they're not impressed I Think for me it would be South America like I studied abroad in Brazil and I really loved it um and I

always wanted to like I don't remember what the actual thing was the kind of like motorcyc type there was a lot of people that I met down there who had like flown into I think Lima Peru and then they were just on a motorcycle going through South America I can't motorcycle and I'd be too scared so I'd probably ride buses but there was an experience I had in Europe where I flew into um Barcelona and met my friend and then had a flight out of Paris 10 days later and had no plans in between and

we just hopped on buses and found our way through you know basically na from Spain to to France um and that's the that's what I want to do now is just like flight into Lima Peru flight out of somewhere else three months later and then just be like I have to navigate my way through that I like the The Challenge and the Unexpectedness of that the uh the ups and downs of we had a lot of Downs in those 10 days right like there was nights where we couldn't figure out where to sleep and we

had to get on a bus to sleep on the bus uh it's like that to me was really fun those like Adventures where the next hour is you have no idea what is about to happen beauty of travel and when it bleeds into your life of just realizing like oh the ups and down of life like are the Journey are the experience is a good like you know what you take away from travel did you um make mental note so you can plan these yeah we can send a followup I have a like a functional

question here like do the your kids do they operate almost like like child actors where like they have those accounts that you're stashing money into that they can't touch until okay so that's ites got It do we did a deal with Disney back in 2018 where we it was called 30 stays in 30 days we stayed at every single Walt Disney World hotel in 30 days there's 30 of them they made us open up cougan accounts for the kids that's what and and I'm glad they did because now we have one for each of them

and now any deal we do that includes the kids which is every deal yeah where it's benefits them got it and and our second son he's like starting to grasp money and so he's Like wait how much money am I like you know are you saving for me like when do I get this money and what can you know what I mean like can I have ice cream no no ice cream what if I pay for it oh shoot oh wow that's so funny he's like what what do you say yeah what did you say

to that no I still know that I still your dad what was it the other day he's like Dad are we rich and I was like okay let's have this conversation and I was like I Think I just told him no um but we work hard and and I just made sure not to answer like use the word rich and the response it I'm like look we're working as hard as we can so that we can always have food we have our amazing house that we loved then that gave him that answer and he like

goes quiet he's thoughtful about it and he's like well keep working hard dad you'll get there someday thanks bud that's funny yeah what is your relationship now to money and how does It play into your motivation or your life money is a weird it's a weird world I don't know and maybe as like a Creator where you know when you're making $25,000 or $50,000 on a post or something like that and you can do one post and make so much money and then to go to the grocery store and see produce for you know or

a carton of eggs for $12 and I'm like what it's it's just a weird I don't know if you guys it's all relative and and like Garrett mentioned earlier we're very conscious of how we spend our moneyy we're still very frugal and I think a lot of our friends are really surprised when they see how Frugal we are um even though we have money even in our travels like if we do a brand deal we'll ask to be flown business class and hopefully they'll say yes but we never going to pay for cl we're always

finding the cheapest ticket we're always economy and our kids understand that yeah I gota be Honest that whole experience has really messed me up getting flown business everywhere because it just it will and this sounds ridiculous to say it does but it's just a real thing that happens right like you get flown really nicely nice accommodations when you're flown out by a big company to go do a speaking engagement or something like that you got to buy your own ticket and you're like all right uh I guess like I I try and reach out you

think about you're Like am I really G to spend four to five grand for eight hours 12 hours on a flight no that's crazy but then you're like sometimes it's way more than that sometimes way more than that if you're if you're flying to you know I I fly to India for my family trips that's an expensive business class tick sure yeah so if you have any travel hacks I will also take if have you guys worked with have you ever heard of flight King no okay I'll I'll introduce you guys he he um he

I think he kind of uses all the points in the credit cards king is not a website it's a guy Creator it's a guy it's a guy turned into a business yeah yeah he'll he does business class at discounted rates so instead of paying 10 grand for a business class you're paying five so it's always just worth an attempt like if you're going going to go on a trip and you have some budget that you're at least considering it you literally just Let him know this is when I go this is my flexible window and

then he'll get back to you like oh here's the discounted prices and then you can choose if you want to book we've been using him the last two years did you guys ever plug for the flight K did you guys ever think about launching a travel website or travel app I mean that's what bucket list friends is where we give people exclusive deals so anytime we go to a place let we just went to the Antarctica uh on a Lim blad trip Lim blad is a very like pricey experience but right Reon like rightfully so

it's it's the best way to experience like especially the Arctic regions and they have experiences All Around the World in part parip with National Geographic so it's a great experience on limbad but we'll let these companies know up front if you're going to work with us if you're going to host us pays whatever you also need to provide a very Stellar Discount only exclusive to our bugus friends got so bugus friends they pay $5 a month but as soon as they like book a safari and save themselves like eight grand you know these are like

really Stellar deals interesting that's that's a really cool perk to that membership that's a great how many members are there in that um it kind of ranges over time but I think like in the lifetime we've had 30,000 yeah I think like obviously like when you watch a channel Like yours the natural instinct is well I want to do that too so yeah being a part of that and yeah we absolutely love that we can like provide it's always one of the favorite things is people send us a pick being like hey look where I

am and there's somewhere that we've been before and they're very like remote like off the path places that they would only go to because like you know we send them there do you guys represent your own brand Partnerships or are you repped by Like a agency no just just yourself so people just send you an email and that's where well and my my background is in marketing and advertising I I went to school I wanted to do product placement in movies I wanted to do the the Reese's Pieces and ET or the you know the

bond cars like that's what I wanted to do and now I just do it in my own life let me ask you a question on that why hasn't product placement come into our world I mean I feel like it has you feel like it Has yeah I guess what I'm talking about is like right now let's say we had like a Coca-Cola right here right movies I would not have to disclose that that is a paid promotion okay I get what you're saying Yeah in our industry I would yeah why is why has that not

happened yeah does that make sense that's a great question uh that that to me feels really interesting that like a great question if you guys are driving us a Jeep let's Say right right right again on a TV show or in a movie you do not need to disclose that jeep is paying for that much better consumer experience a great point but on YouTube you'd have to be like thanks so much uh because FTC you'd have to be like thanks so much Jeep for providing the car and sponsoring this video like your story for 60

to 90 seconds talk about it I find that like we are adopting advertising from the radio right right on YouTube where it's Like break from the programming deliver the advertisement back to the programming um whereas like movies get to do it in a much more integrated way yeah Transformers can have Chevy all over the place we don't get to do that I just think that's that's probably the next chapter of advertising for I was going to say I think it's morphing that way I think that's just and I think it already is like happening even

just we not necessarily aware of it like how Often brands are just trying to send us stuff because they understand that you know what I mean so I think it's happening it just isn't quite to the level that it is movies yeah what my favorite thing about how the way Jessica like represents us because like we said we don't like belong to an agency is purposefully so because Jessica not only is just like doing these deals um but she's just like becoming friends with these Brands right The fact that she's like personal friends with most

every major airline in the world and every like tourism board and hotels and like everything has just been so incredibly valuable to like what we do I think that's a really important point because we like our industry we are in the relationships business 100% like as long as you're making good stuff yeah then you're in the relationship business first you have to make good stuff then and gett and I both like him With editing and me with my relationships like we've both been control freaks from the very beginning so we never wanted to sign with

an agency and Garrett's never even thought about having an you know so we I think most people would be surprised I mean we do have someone who helps us now kind of go through contracts and stuff but um yeah it's been Garrett and I for the last eight years I remember when our friend she was like fashion influencer And she was repped and it got back to her that Victoria Secret invited her to the fashion show and they weren't willing to pay so the brands or the agency said no when she found that out she's

like that's like my Mecca I would have I would paid to do that like why did you say no so there's just good examples of like it's obviously more work but I think it's the best things we've done yeah and that's how the Nat Geo Deal comes together is because relationship because you own that relationship well and and and our editor my editor has been our Advocate throughout the whole company and she's been the one who's gotten us meetings with you know speaking at speaking at National Geographic and book the book side and the social

media side and the cartoons that United me so kind of going through all these different groups dyamic would be very different if there Was actually an agent between you guys and she's amazing she came to Africa with us last summer she's our friend now and I mean she's half the reason why we are with them where we are cuz we adore her we invited her to Africa and she said yes wow he's really pushing look in your eyes right now like the next time you ask us to go somewhere I can't wait to ask us

to go honestly it's one of my favorite ways to get to know a person is how they react when you Give them an outrageous invite oh man it's not even the experience the invite stage so what is the I'm open to it I'm open to it I will bring it camera hey that's gett that's a lot of them are going there's going be a lot of invites so you got you got to be okay to say no sometimes Garrett is thrilled to have a buddy with him with the camera as well CU then they're just

playing off each other that those are like your favorite trips when yeah yeah you have multiple Creators what is the major motivator now for you guys and where do you want this all to go I think for the last few years you know when finances isn't the you know the the motivating factor so much of it is what experiences can we have together as a family and what do we need to do to achieve that right so we just went to Antarctica that was on our bucket list um you know just we're just looking for

these opportunities for our family we Actually talk about this like a year ago we said let's just say like YouTube turned off Instagram turned off whatever like it's out of our control to an extent what are the things that we wouldn't be able to pay for or want to pay for and we need to do it while we're The Bucket List family because if that turns off are we going to pay $180,000 to go to Antarctica we're just wired too Frugal we wouldn't and yet it's such an important experience for a human to be Able

to like hopefully make there make it there someday so we made that list of these are the things we need to prioritize while we are the bug of this family not saying it's going to turn off but that might be out of our control perspective you know I like that yeah that's really really cool feel like we should make a list of like things that we would do while we're we would absolutely say yes to yeah In This Moment exactly that's good Uh for me for me a big like big motivating factor at this stage

is I'm aware that if I wanted to I could just like turn off and fade off in the sunset and a lot of entrepreneurs be like oh I could never retire I would argue I could once I picked up surfing like I could do that the rest of all day every day Garrett's fiveyear plan is to not own a phone oh interesting we'll see yeah so lifestyle wise you're looking for a shift in five to 10 years yeah and I and I'm there like could do that tomorrow if I wanted to why I'm still going

is kind of a mixture of these experiences while we're still the bucketless family that we can pull off but to be honest like the other half of it is wanting to take what I feel like I've accomplished in life which is Ultimate freedom and gift that to as many people as possible not only like hopefully Inspire it to many people around the world but people in my circle Can I give you a job or an opportunity or whatever it is can I help you get to what I've accomplished just not financially but like Freedom wise

freedom of Lifestyle well and experiences like we've seen and experience so much and so now like we we joke about giving like invites to travel there's nothing there's no greater gift you could give us than us experiencing something for the first time through your eyes you know when Safari is my Favorite place in the whole wide world so when I get to take my friends and my family on Safari it's the greatest they're watching the animals and we're just watch just like I love it there's nothing that brings more joy we we had our neighbors

in Hawaii who like rarely leave the island maybe they've left like twice and we their kids don't is it's kind of like the Hawaiian way like they don't have a TV their kids had never watched like a Disney movie and the just Knowing their kids I'm like oh my gosh their heads would actually explode if they experienced Disney World let us take them and it was almost like a year long to like convince them to let us do it so we took their family to Walt Disney World this is like a month ago it was

VIP tour guide backd door access buus family style like they just got it to like the max level and it was one of our favorite Disney experiences ever to to give through someone else's eyes I Read a quote of yours um where you said you wanted every day to feel like a Saturday do you feel like that's where you are right now I feel like I've probably been there for like 10 years wow it took a lot to get there but I I've been there I literally wake up not knowing or caring what day it

is and I do what I want to do that day 99 out 100 days of the year that's also though because you have a wife who does all of the things that You don't want to on Monday wow I know exactly what day it is this is very true that is it that I will say like props props to Garrett and for what he has accomplished because even back in the scan days like the scan Snapchat acquisition wasn't the biggest acquisition that you've see you know like it's not that big of a deal and the

grand scheme of things but Garrett sold a successful company while playing Collegiate soccer while being with his wife and young daughter like Garrett has always had an incredible work life balance of you know just living how he wants to while accomplishing incredible things and I'd say also like the unique part of that perhaps is how much I did walk away from the tech Rat Race how many people hit me up during our travels being like hey you must be itching to get back in like to the rat race of things and I'm like I swam

with whales Today with my kids like I'm good I'm not dying to be be back behind a computer um but like that's how a lot of people are it's just like more money more money more money and I think one thing that like if I were to try to explain how to achieve that every day a Saturday like lifestyle is understanding that like bell curve of life where challenge to your graphics team there's this bell curve right and as you make more money or you achieve more Fame you become Happier and happier and happier to

a point and then as you get past that Tipping Point which is different for every human you become sadder sadder and sadder so your happiness is on a bell curve as you make more money or achieve more Fame and the interesting thing with like us and our Dynamic is I if I were to guess I like truly do feel like at the cusp of it we're in a really amazing place and I want to like push that limit I want to see like hey let's get to the Top and look over the edge and then

stop there but I don't know where that is and I think I have a very high threshold for both so I want to keep going keep going where she's like Hey we're good we're good like let's stop here so she in a positive way is holding us back and I just want to look over that that's very honest and I appreciate that and I I yeah I was gonna say I would say we've talked about that extremely similar to that yeah I think I asked you one time Like how how famous are you willing to

get remember it's different for everyone right you've had you've had some incredible conversations with Incredible people over the years I remember you know back in our scam days we lived in San Francisco Garrett went to the Giants game with Jack dorsy founder of Twitter he was he was Garrett's Idol he was a designer he had yeah had Square had Twitter like he was everything and in that two hours you know there's not a Better like experience to get to know somebody than a baseball game in like a box where you just it's just you and

him and you get to just chat for hours and after that conversation this is again you know before the acquisition of skin Garrett came home and I was like how did it go you met your Idol today and he was like he was awesome he was super nice but all I wanted to do was find out what's your family like what's your friends like what do you like to do for Fun and his whole nothing was business and Garrett left being like that's not what I want and we honestly I was like brokenhearted because I

was like oh he's not my hero who I thought he was and there's nothing against him we were just different people different motivations but I was like it was important for me to realize in that time like oh it's I thought it was money that I wanted but money is not going to give you Freedom it can help Greatly but but it was in that moment I oh I'm not trying to achieve title and fame and money I'm trying to achieve Freedom Fame can help with that to an extent money can help with that to

an extent so I want as much Fame and money that will give me as much frame as possible nothing we left Silicon Valley the next month went back to Utah Garrett I mean Garrett dropped in and out of soccer or in and out of school three times to play soccer and that was one of Those times was after being in silon Valley for a year doing the rat race and then really as like realizing what is this for like this is not what I want you know you thought that's what you needed to do is

you needed to be heads down 247 is literally the fisherman we met in Tonga who was like Hey man like there's a better way to do this like you can catch way more fish if you bought a bigger boat and did this and this and this you would be making way more money Well what would you do with that money I just want to fish like he's doing exactly what he wants to do and money is just going to make his life more complicated and so once you achieve it like that's where you live yeah

so I do think we misconstrue like freedom is uh often times what everyone actually wants and I think we misconstrue the other things that that again like you're were saying I I think the honesty is really important like They do help of course they help right money and fame do help you get there but you might like tip over the edge in the pursuit of well Freedom's on the other side Freedom's on the other side it's like when we're building our company we're hiring more and more people the more I can like delegate and hire

people that's going to make my life easier until I'm managing 100 people and I both times in both companies I've learned like 10 is kind of my sweet spot once I Get beyond that I'm spending too much time managing and not enough time creating so I want just enough people to like create and it's like a team team effort but I'm still like a meaningful part of the creation process not the management process there I remember someone asking me do you miss the days when you were like a young poor married couple and they almost

asked in their way like they wanted me to say yes and I was just very transparent with them I Was like no way life is way better with money anyone who thinks otherwise is bad at having money I I remember too deeply what it felt like to be like poor and worried and stressed and I'm only grateful for any money in my life and I think we've done a really good job of like sticking to at least like The Frugal part of who we are then only letting it be a good thing so far awesome

well what do you guys hope um what do you guys hope for with uh the Next year as you're approaching your final you know the 300th I guess YouTube video which means a big shift you're approaching this new chapter of of animation and and immortalizing yourselves into cartoon like what do you hope for what do you hope comes out of all of this I just want to do a good job it's it's it's what we've been working for is to get to this point yeah right to have an audience on on our YouTube that we

Can like just share the stories the way we want to um it's such a special thing so I'm like I'm in no rush for these 300 it's it's funny because videos 0 to 250 were always about like 20 minutes and I found that they're starting to become like an hour long because I feel it like slipping away from me and I just want to like soak it in while I have it and so on that end it's fully just embracing it and soaking it in while we're while we're in it and then the next chapter

Being with National Geographic I I really just want to like prove ourselves and do a good job it it's such like a blink slate blink canvas and uh I want to do a good job for him well we'll be watching we'll be reading and hopefully we'll be with you on some crazy adventure look forward to the first forward to the first dad is up to you my friend cool thank you guys you appreciate it [Music]