Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N4p8VY8Mi8
i was just this lanky asian nerd who played chess aaron maney he's one of the uk's most successful ever youtubers i was getting some sort of sick thrill out of seeing the numbers go up so i made one video every single day for at least six months it drove me to the point where i one time i just broke down crying on camera um i never published that but i have a i have a photo which i sometimes look back on to remind me of like what it took there's some things about you that you can't fix and i think you just have to be very mechanical about them and be like this is me i have good things and i have bad things but the bad things i can't change i'm gonna lean on things that are good about me fix the things i can fix and the rest is life emotionally physically just exhaustion i think is how i'd put it very very tired it was actually a bit of a pivot point in my career because i sat down like this isn't actually what i wanted it was a realization that i've actually you know my channel's growing all these metrics are looking up but but this isn't you know my brain not many people know this actually but [Music] aaron maney he's a creator and entrepreneur with over 8 million subscribers his story is unconventional a young kid from the uk that was bullied in school and whose path to escape that reality would turn out to become his dream his purpose his meaning but as aaron will tell you he made the critical mistakes so many of us make when we're chasing our dreams he became obsessive he sacrificed too much things that mattered more and at some point that would lead to him having a breakdown and that breakdown was a moment of inflection and he's figured out that all-important balance of striving while knowing that you are already enough at the same time and that i guess is the ultimate goal of all of our lives so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the director ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself
[Music] aaron tens of millions of followers and subscribers later um when i read through your story and your journey i could see this real sort of fundamental obsessive um ambitious guy under there and it made me wonder as i was reading through about how obsessed you were with the growth and the scaling of your channel it made me hypothesize that there must have been something happen in your early years that did that to you that gave you that bug that insatiable desire to be successful or something have you identified what that is yeah uh so i'd probably i should preface this by saying that i'm very aware i'm a very lucky person um i actually just got off from my brother's wedding a couple of days ago and i was just looking around at the the family around me the friends around me thinking like damn like you know this is it um but there was one thing so when i was growing up i had a very supportive family but i didn't have a great school life you know i was i was just this lanky asian nerd who played chess that was that was me basically um and i think there was some part of me that did seek approval and uh i mean all this really happened when my brother got me my first smartphone and that just became my outlet you know on one hand i had this school life that was very very mediocre but then i had this this piece of technology in my hand that could do all these things and i just became obsessed with it like this was my life yeah i guess um and i just poured everything into it i learned everything about this phone and how to do all these things on it and i think it just got to the point where i was like let's make a video how old were you when you were you were that you described yourself as a lanky asian kid that got got a smartphone for the first time how old are you 14 probably yeah and and the school you
went to what was the what was the what was the typically people get bullied because what you're leading to right i've heard you talk about being bullied i think in some of the interviews you've done um typically people get bullied because the other kids think that there's something to bully them for yeah uh there was plenty um i was a nerd uh i wasn't very pretty to be honest like people regularly just call me ugly um i think there's some sort of also subliminal thing about being asian not being like a cool thing um it wasn't like a particularly asian area if that makes sense just i think a lot of things add up into you just being a bit sidelined was it a predominantly white school predominantly yeah i did have asian friends but majority of them yeah and so you get given this phone and that becomes your world yeah what about your your parents your your immediate family i mean that they're amazing they there was obviously a little bit of questioning at the start you know when you're sitting in your back garden and you should be revising but you're shooting earphones and you know it's like a bit of sun what are you doing um but as soon as they saw the kind of the potential in youtube they've been just like all for it did they understand what it was yeah i'm quite lucky like my parents are very entrepreneurial they're very modern like they've done it themselves they're also business owners so like they get it you know and were you were you an entrepreneur from an early age outside of the obsession with tech yeah i've done the usual like you know like maybe selling sweets in the playground and young enterprise i don't know if you know what that is but um i was like the managing director in our school for our young enterprise team and i had this big idea of like we were going to create a stylus that we were going to pitch to tesco and sell it to them
and we created the stylus we created the packaging it was beautiful it looked like an apple product but i think i was the only one with the vision and i didn't do a good enough job of getting my team to believe in it and so like one man can't sell a product to a company like that especially not like a 16 year old boy at school wow so you were okay you're trying to pitch your tesco at 16 years old um your family in terms of monies how were they were they reasonable yeah you know when i was growing up like it's not like we had everything like i couldn't just ask for what i wanted but you know we had enough um and i can't complain to be honest i think there is a benefit to having things somewhat held back from you like i think it makes you appreciate when you do have things i mean you've had the same right yeah yeah yeah and you so you sign you cite that um sort of search for validation as being one of the real driving forces it's the same with me same in my life it's like i talk about this in my book at tremendous length i think that feeling like i didn't fit in created like it was almost like pulling a spring back made me fly off into the world as an adult trying to validate myself through like material things or followers or like i don't know some kind of social approval or whatever you're you're saying that that's the similar i think that was the that was the springboard but i think it's very different to that now like i'm no longer insecure about who i am i'm i'm confident in myself and so i'm almost like immune to people telling me that they like what i do or almost it doesn't even register because i kind of like i'm internally quite self-aware about it um so now i do things because i i want to do them so you get given that phone tell me how that leads to youtube oh well it wasn't a great phone it was like it was pretty low end and so
like my goal in life at the time was basically to get it to score a certain amount on a benchmarking app and so i did everything i could to this phone i was trying to like overclock the processor and all these kinds of things just to get it to hit this score because in my head that was like that was the sign you had a good phone and so it led me to to just customize it in ways that people probably wouldn't have gone like extreme lengths and that just through that i just gained knowledge i just understood it and i was fascinated by it pretty smart kid if you're playing with like the processor of a phone at 14. i get i guess so how were you academically pretty good actually i think without blowing my own trumpet i think every exam i've you know every exam i've sat i've got the highest marking so what sort of topics were you um particularly interested in when you were younger i was quite mathematical there was something about so i did maths and further maths as two of my a-levels and to start with there was an element of you can feel a bit lost in those presentations when you're getting taught because if you miss one line of reasoning you you lose the whole thing but when it all comes together when you finally understand mathematics it's there's nothing quite like it like it's its own rule set and you can prove things in ways that are completely indisputable and i just i love the language and so a lot of my background is actually economics i went to do an economics degree and i think that completely changes the lens for which you view the world you can see things instead of being like lots of gray areas you see things in black and white oh this is why that person is doing that thing oh this is the next logical step for my business right and and so you go to university okay in the pursuit of what career uh yeah so i was about to become a consultant at pricewaterhouse right i did like an eight-week internship
there at uni and uh got the job um but probably the turning point was actually when i turned down that job i had to write up this little email being like had a great time really enjoyed it but actually no so youtube has been kind of like building up in the background since the age of 14 15. and throughout uni i was still doing it but it was not at a stage where it was a comfortable career path but it was an exciting career path and so i had this had these two kind of crossroads i could have gone down it was either the traditional route or the youtube route and one side was just was just fascinating to me it was you know this whole new world the sky was the limit and i thought it's got it it's got to be that one and when was the first time you made a video was when you were 14 and you first got that phone pretty much yeah take me through that growth journey then so you start what was the first video oh gosh uh it was how to optimize the zte blade which is the phone app okay i'm just gonna say yeah and and is that still on online yeah and how did that video do at the time i'm sure some people have gone back and watched it yeah i think yeah if you looked at it now it probably has a couple of hundred thousand views because of people who've gone back and looked at the time i just remember being blown away by the reception i'm sure if i actually knew now what the views were at the start it wouldn't be very impressive but i couldn't believe that even a thousand people were watching it you know if i if i thought about my circles at the time i was thinking things in terms of single people and so when you see a number like a thousand you're like oh my god and and how long did it take before you hit that a point where you thought [ __ ] you now this is this is going really well
i thought it was going really well when my first video hit 5000 views you know i remember showing my friend at his house and he's like that's not you come on behave yourself that's not you well yeah as in like he's like there's no way you got 5 000 views oh right okay yeah so i mean i i was very i guess maybe it's part of that whole i had no validation at school meant that my bar for what counted as validation was pretty low you know like when people said they hit a hundred thousand subscribers i'd watch other youtubers i never dreamed of that like i never even thought that was an option i was just kind of doing youtube to get a few thousand clicks i guess do you think that um your youtube journey has given you because you said now that you feel like you're a confident person do you think youtube has done that yes but only if only because i've been quite proactive about it so youtube is it's a really incredible thing in the sense that like in no other career path can you get such immediate feedback like when i post a video within one minute there might be 10 000 people watching it there might be a thousand comments or 500 comments and every single one of these data points how many likes and dislikes it's got that is a piece of data that tells you how you're doing and so like you can grow so quickly as a person as well as a channel if you know how to harness that data companies would kill for it it sounds like emotionally dangerous for the crowd to be giving you feedback on who you are potentially you develop a thick skin i think as you go through it providing you have the right mindset and i think as long as you can filter out the negativity there is data hidden in those comments like you almost have to strip away a layer and and just kind of take what's useful is it it sounds easier said than done to avoid the negativity i mean like most of the guests that i've had on the podcast when they speak about negative comments and these might be super successful celebrities in their own field
they still admit to being triggered more so than they should by just that one that one percent negativity versus the 99 blowing smoke up ass yeah so i think it it depends on if it's something you're insecure about so if i'm insecure about i don't know let's say the the shape of my face and someone makes a nasty comment about the shape of my face it's going to sting it's going to sting a little but like because i think over the years i've grown confident about most aspects of myself i think i stopped worrying about the negative comments because i'm i'm okay with who i am yeah i did a did a question tag on instagram this week i said if i could write a book for you what would it be about and one of the most popular things was confidence so what advice would you give to um people listening that are low in confidence about how to build build their confidence because telling that you know i was thinking i'm telling them all to build like a 10 million sub youtube channel is probably not probably not attainable for everybody but i think you have a very similar opinion to me on this which is that you need to make it input based rather than output based you can't pin yourself to a certain number of followers or anything so that you are confident you have to make internal peace with yourself and i mean i look around on the street like all the fans that come up to me and they're like oh can we get a photograph with you you're incredible i love your videos i look at them like you're incredible as well look at you like what are you doing you know you've got a camera you're snapping photos of buildings show me that looks incredible um i think everyone has their own story and their own great things about them and people struggle to see it in themselves but they can see it in others and i i can't like there's no person on this planet who i would look at and couldn't see good in them and couldn't
see something great if you were that young kid again that that was lacking in confidence at 14 years old and say i couldn't give say you couldn't do youtube so it didn't exist what else might you have done knowing what you know now about how your confidence has been built what else could you have done to reach the same outcome i'm really trying to get to like the what what is it that made you come to peace with yourself um because because it sounds like it was a lot of people being nice after some weren't so nice when you were younger hmm i think i'm quite a i'm quite a proactive person so if there's something about me that i don't like i will try and fix it um so a lot of people not many people know this actually so when i was younger i used to have like a crooked nose and it bothered me a lot i used to like only sit at certain angles from people and you know i'd hide myself in the corners of rooms so people couldn't see the other side and eventually i was just like this is a solvable problem why am i worrying about this so i just got i got surgery done and fixed it and i think there's there's some things about you that you can't fix and i think you just have to be very mechanical about them and be like this is me i have good things and i have bad things but the bad things i can't change i'm gonna lean on things that are good about me fix the things i can fix and the rest is life so on that point of having a good or bad nose this is me just going with the wind now because i find it super intriguing um something i've thought a lot about um who who who was to say that your nose was bad people would laugh at me so i guess others it's interesting society says you know this is not good about you
is there a risk in then changing to please them do you think because i feel like that might be a slippery slope yeah yeah it hm it is a slippery slope but you just need to know your limits you just need to kind of like set the boundaries maybe that's easier said than done yeah yeah because i i really want i wonder that a lot about cosmetic surgery these days just generally and about the um [Music] i'm always i'm always like if someone gets one thing done then there's always a there's now a new most like there's now a new worst thing about me and why don't you then go and get that thing changed then that thing changed and i i wonder if it's a slippery slope i have no data data to back this up but just anecdotally from seeing some of my my friends who've got one thing done they typically then will get another done and then i've seen it too i've seen it too you're right um but but there's also an element of like if something bothers you to the extent where you're having to have this whole other layer in your mindset of like oh i can have a conversation with this person but i'm going to do it from here and you can fix it fairly easily then you you should do it like if the next thing then becomes oh well i'd quite like my chin to be longer you're not really solving a fundamental problem you're just you're just you know having fun that's personally where i would draw the line because obviously i don't think i have the perfect face or the perfect good looking guy oh thank you very much um great asian hair great yeah us blacks don't have it the same way necessarily people like beard yeah just no effort on my part it just happened yeah it's strong thank you very strong um i was gonna so one of the reasons i was asking that question about confidence and how you build it build it is because i reflect sometimes on a lot of the stuff that i say and i think i put out there especially my book in my podcast that i
like did this internal work and suddenly i found my confidence and the insecurities faded away but i can't get away from this idea that i did also make myself mega rich and successful and get millions of followers and that might have played a role in me being able to like shrug off the insecurities easily so i'm wondering if like and what awful advice it would be to give to a 16 year old kid to have to say to him oh you you're lacking in confidence well just go and build a multi-million pound business and get 10 million subscribers on youtube and then you'll be fine yes that's what i'm trying to unpack is it is it the achievement and the validation from the achievement that helps the insecurities fall away or is it some other type of internal work i think i think actually gratitude plays a big role in it um i've spent a lot of time recently trying to wake up each morning and just remind myself i feel like we are we are hardwired to focus on the bad things because i mean what prehistorically those used to be the more urgent matters and i think gratitude fixes a lot of these insecurities because it's like okay yeah i don't have beth the best skin i've got acne everywhere but hey i can breathe that's incredible um so that is something i've been doing a lot of and i think a lot of the personal growth i've seen has come since then what does that look like practically in terms of practicing gratitude so one thing i do is when i wake up i i told myself i was going to write down a few things but i end up just thinking them but that's enough so i think of three things that i'm just grateful for in that moment and oftentimes you end up saying the same things again and again but that's actually that's okay it's fine like you don't need constantly changing um mechanisms to keep you happy i found that recently with some of my friends that have been not so well i've just had this tremendous gratitude for my health watching one of my friends that's younger than me be have a really serious illness and it's crazy they they say the same
about like hospital awards if you walk through a hospital word you'll suddenly feel this tremendous sense of gratitude for your health you know and um how do you practice that on a daily basis without having to have someone fall ill or go to the hospital i think is diff increasingly difficult especially in a world where everybody's like status signaling every time you open your phone you know how do you how do you go about doing it then yeah it's really interesting i i make a conscious effort that's the first thing but i don't remember to do every day and then um music does it for me sometimes which is really strange um and i i'm very fortunate that i think naturally i have these like waves of gratitude that come over me i'm very aware that i am current and i said this in my my live show the diversio live i said the vast majority of this audience you're currently living a dream that you once had but you're not appreciating it because your current self is telling future you that you'll be happy when you get three times more than you have now that's typically up and down the income and wealth spectrum what people say they need to become a 10 out of 10 happiness is 3x what they have right now and it's that and it's that idea of like you'll never therefore be happy because you're always so for me that really centers you and says [ __ ] me like 18 year old steve this is what he and i when i say get goosebumps again like this is what i dream for yeah like i wanted to be financially free so that i didn't have to steal chicago time pizzas and nick chicken bones from takeaways and look at me i'm 28 years old and i'm free you know like yeah so i try and sometimes that plays out in my head naturally um you get this a lot on youtube like because of how numerical the platform is like i i distinctly remember moments where i'd look at my sort of like statistics and be like oh imagine a hundred thousand subscribers imagine 500 000 subscribers i would dream of those
numbers and uh you almost don't quite realize as you toddle past those numbers in reality because you're already ready for the next thing you're so focused on like uh making it even bigger even better getting that phone even earlier before launch and all these things you have to stop yourself do you stop yourself be honest with me are you successful in that i'm really happy yeah i'm a really really happy guy um so i i'd like to think yes i didn't used to be even even three four years ago i didn't used to be um when i graduated i had this pent up energy from youtube because i've been doing it throughout but i was also juggling it with my studies and i wanted to get a first and i also didn't want to have a terrible social life so i was doing all these things and it was kind of this this crazy whirlwind of just kind of like activity to activity jumping between filming to lectures to homework to nights out and so when i actually graduated i was like right i'm gonna give everything to youtube so i made one video every single day for at least six months and it it drove me to the point where i one time i just broke down crying on camera um i never published that but i have a i have a photo which i sometimes look back on to remind me of like what it took um and so that that reminds me why were you crying it was uh a lot of things that sort of come to the fore it was it was exhaustion in the moment because it was it was really hot and i was just kind of like my hands hurt and my voice hurt my throat was cracking but it was also this kind of long-term build up that led to it um it was it was actually a bit of a pivot point in my career because i sat down like this isn't actually what i wanted um it was a realization that i've actually you know my channel's growing all these
metrics are looking up but but this isn't you know my brain and it made it immediately made me change mindset from hard work to smart work it was i suddenly started thinking like do i which tasks do i need to be there for and how do i make sure i'm only doing those tasks and also it made me take a step back from i'm not doing a video every day i've gotta look at the data look at these retention graphs find out how to maximize the click-through rates all these kinds of things it allowed me to take a step back breathe and focus on how to utilize my brain to the best of its ability in terms of mental health you tapped your head then when you said you'd optimized for i guess youtube performance but you hadn't optimized for your mental well-being at your lowest what was what was the what was what state was your mind in your well-being i've never been depressed i would say i think i've i'm quite resilient as well as being quite lucky um but i got to a stage where emotionally physically just exhaustion i think is how i'd put it very very tired to the point where i didn't have time for friends for family like by the time i'd finished they were asleep um i'd kind of screwed myself into a little hole and that hole was my bedroom where i'd film so i think that's what people call burnout yeah yeah but i wouldn't let myself stop because i told myself that like this was my dream and that one video a day was the way to achieve that dream and so like there was just something inside me which is like you can't stop now like you're there this is this is the runway just run what did you tell yourself your dream was i would look at other youtubers when i
was a kid and just like you know they had like a million subscribers for example and they were getting all this tech through the door and their entire job was to just test it and learn about it and i remember just being like that's the best thing in the world like i'm fascinated by technology i would love to be able to just see all this stuff because when i was younger i didn't i didn't get to play with the latest stuff you know i was i wasn't the kid who had the latest game boy or anything like that um so so i guess that really appealed to me so your idea of happiness when you're younger was getting sent amazing technology and being able to just like do what you love talk about it so you you i guess you set yourself this plan of just being making a video every single day in the i guess the thought that that would lead to your your dream and i guess you you you realized at some point that your strategy was unsustainable yeah good way of putting it yeah it just felt like a really like you still wanted the same goal but your strategy in terms of getting there was just unsustainable oh my god it just i relate to that so much in so many different ways and i think a lot of people don't realize that you have to set up your goals as marathons not sprints if you you do want to achieve them right yeah i've never heard it described like that but that's it yeah yeah you've got your whole life to do these things like it doesn't need to be today and potentially the intensity of trying to do it today is actually the biggest risk to it ever happening yeah because i mean if you if your mental well-being had been adversely effective more adversely effective than it was you might not have ever come back to youtube because of yeah i mean it could have been enjoyable like you it sounds like at that point when you were doing that like just crazy sacrifice everything was it enjoy was it was it fulfillment or was it something else
i was getting some sort of sick thrill out of seeing the numbers go up the sixth round yeah but you know when it comes at the cost of yourself i think you've been there as well yeah you're not enjoying it really and it's that thought in your mind that i can't do this forever yeah but it took until a kind of breaking point for me to realize yeah and it seems to you for a lot of people it seems that a lot of people hit some burn out some explosive moment i mean tom blonfield sat here from the podcast ceo and founder of monzo and talks about the same thing just waking up in the morning with like a sense of dread and like his sleep actually being the peaceful escape in that three seconds when he woke up and he didn't realize he was the ceo of munzo just being amazing and that crushing weight of like but it seems to be the case with a lot of people that they don't they get so caught up in this this hamster wheel chase for their dream that they don't realize it's unsustainable and the cost it's having on other things that are fundamentally conducive to living a happy life yeah people people yeah i think we are we are complex beings but we are also quite simple in what we need and that social interaction and people who are close and who actually want us to succeed and we don't need many of them we definitely don't need 10 million tell me what you thought you needed before and then after that moment so before so tell me what you thought you needed in life before you had that sort of breakdown moment and then what you've come to realize in subsequent years that you actually need in life hmm i think before it was very much a numbers thing i think i was a i was a kid who thought that the answer was just to just keep growing for the sake of growing but but afterwards it's very much been about i still want to grow i still want to be the the best tech influencer on the planet i want to be synonymous with the word tech but
it will be mindful growth it like one of the factors in that growth will be not just monetary but it will be does it work with this does it does it still make me equally or more happy no decision will go forward if it doesn't if that makes sense so the goal hasn't changed but the the approach has it's fascinating i think a lot of people can relate to that in their lives um in a lot of ways because they're essentially sacrificing a little bit too much and trying to win a sprint but these big goals like the goals that you have the ambitions you have they are as we've said like marathons they are they are um i'm very aware that like if you want to be the best in the world at something you've got to give something you can't spend you know all your time with your friends just having beers you you have to let it go sometimes and so i'm very i'm very careful with how i spend my time but i make sure that there is quality time with the people that i do care about so and so let's talk about that point then hard work a lot of people say that hard work is um it's toxic etc what do you say to that oh the whole uh wake up at 4am that that kind of attitude yeah yeah i don't think that's the way forward if anything actually i think sleep is uh a really practical productive thing to be doing um if anything i wish i was better at it i actually struggle a lot with my sleep i'm really trying to improve i've actually got your um episode with the sleep expert on my watch later oh god um yeah um no she she says some really important things i'm not watching on the way home yeah yeah um so i'm not of that opinion i think there is a time and place for really hard work but it has to be for a cause that it has to be for the greater goal um yeah i think i think you talked about this with uh on the episode with ali yeah yeah yeah yeah and what was the conclusion you came to well i i can't
remember exactly um what we came to but my general thinking on hard work is that um and and i guess burnout is when you're doing something that you you can where you consider the reward of doing it meaningful and worthwhile then hard work really is important and i actually listened to elon musk this weekend to talk about this he said the exact same thing he said when you believe that you're doing the correct thing and it's a noble or like meaningful goal then hard work is really really important and it's also will help you avoid burnout but when you're doing hard work for a task that you don't think is meaningful like working in a factory for 14-hour days and it's and it's not stimulating your mind and it's just hard work for minimum wage yeah burnout is inevitable and it's just around the corner and that for me is like oh god that's my idea of a nightmare hard work hard meaningless work for me is being is the definition of like lose your [ __ ] marbles insanity i think i'm very lucky in that sense in that like i found my calling yeah and i think we're in a world where a lot of people just don't i'm not saying that there's like one true goal for each person like no one's going to have their dream job but i think a lot of people they find out quite late what they really enjoy and i think we're in a system where people have to decide very quickly um and with not a full information set what career path they want to go down what advice would you give to people that are i mean this is just again talking about things that people ask me all the time how to find my passion or whatever is so i would say try as many things as you can while you're young um i had a really close friend who's 18 and she decided she wanted to do pharmacy but then did two weeks of that course and was like actually i don't really want to do that anymore um and then was like oh maybe i should do medicine so she dropped her to pharmacy thinking about doing medicine and then she might drop out of that decide she wants to do business studies
it's like if you just spend two weeks in as many different careers as possible that that's when you know um there's kids kids are lazy a lot a lot of kids are lazy and i think um there's this kind of short short-sightedness that you have to just kind of find a way to overcome just for your long-term future sake like that time is so pivotable when you're deciding you're sat at that crossroads and you're looking down all these different paths given the systems we have in place you have to spend that time well finding out which like what these paths actually look like um and the system as you say set up at 16 years old they give you like brochures and they're like pick yeah pick which subjects you're going to do and then you're like oh [ __ ] then you're locked into those subjects then they go which university in which course and you have no idea the medical and the law courses are particularly bad because they're so specialized um you know if you do a medical degree you're not really qualified to do a lot of different things like you're probably going to be a doctor and you can very quickly find yourself in a position where you feel trapped i have another friend who did medicine and then did the whole thing but then was like actually no i want to be a journalist and so that whole five years they didn't need to do it how did you find your calling then so what is it and i don't mean because i know your story we all do but what is it about you that when your calling showed up you had the whatever i don't want to give i don't want to put answers in your mouth to say that's it i'm gonna go in that direction because a lot of people wouldn't see playing around with mobile phones as a uh possibility i would say uh light in the dark um it was very obvious to me because of what the alternatives were like
i was kind of i think a lot of people follow the path and the path basically dictates that the subjects you are strong in you study a degree that is similar to those subjects and then those degrees usually have a next stepping stone and a next stepping stone and you'll just kind of you'll shoot down unless you veer off you have you have to actively veer off that path and so i was very much going down the kind of i'm strong at maths therefore i'm going to do an economics degree i'm doing i'm doing an economics degree so i'm going to be a consultant i was going down that path and i'm just i was just lucky that i was also doing this other thing which excited me so much and so comparing the two when it became clear to me that actually youtube could be a career as well um it was just an obvious choice do you ever reflect on what might have happened if you didn't have the conviction to go for i think i think i would have become a consultant which is terrifying i i wish i could say i wasn't but you know that's the work experience i did that was the job i was offered so given there was no outside option i'd i probably would have taken it and a lot of people have done that in their lives they've followed those sort of sequential steps yeah and ended up somewhere and they're listening to this right now and thinking [ __ ] it's tricky because you don't want to just quit your job one day for a you know potential startup you might have with a 10 chance of succeeding you can't you can't do that right like what advice do you give to people in that situation well this isn't about me no but i i really do i really do i always say what you said at the start which is about just increasing the amount of experiments you make as as like cost um cost-effective experiments you're making as young as you possibly can which is exactly what you've described which means go to another country spend two weeks and quit really [ __ ] quickly yes and just like rapid
quit the minute you're like i hate this quit move on try in and i think people that are exposed to as you say the most data the most information are able to make more informed decisions about what they enjoy and you can take that part of that job where you got to do this thing and mix it with this part of this job where you got to do that thing and slowly weave your way towards the thing that gives you the most fulfillment yeah but as we say i know because i know the people that listen to this podcast there's so many people right now in jobs where they've kind of like ended up there working in kpmg or pwc in the city wearing a suit and tie and they know that job isn't for them they know it's not for them but they they just maybe they you know but there is also an element i think of like we live in a society where social media is prevalent and people log on to instagram every day and see other people who are leading better lives than them or apparently yeah and i think there is an element of gratefulness with the job you do have because not everyone is going to find their dream job and maybe the job you're doing is your dream job because it facilitates the life that you currently lead does that make sense it does yeah and that's like this the practical approach i'm not practical and like people will get mad at this but like look at that look at my decision-making i stopped going to school i then dropped out of university after one lecture started a company quitter out out the blue ran another company for seven years quit out the blue i make decisions based on how i'm feeling and practicality has always been secondary in terms of well what am i going to do about the feeding my like dropping out of university manchester never got a student loan i'm shoplifting these chicago town pizzas and i call my mom and say mom i'm dropping out she goes i'll never speak to you again i didn't care because i i was just in this relentless pursuit of me of what made me feel good every day um so i understand the practicality argument but i i find it dangerous because it hints of like just tolerate it you know like yeah but but let's say
like obviously i'm still fairly young but i can imagine that if i was 50 years old with a family to support and a career that i'm not you know i'm on the fence of i'm like well you know it's fine it's good you're right what can you do like you just got to be happy with it i do say to people you've got to be practical in those moments but i don't think you've got to be happy with it if you're not you shouldn't quit you can look for outside options but i think it's not one of those things to be impulsive about i agree yeah what we're describing is there's this middle ground yeah where you have to be practical because your kids need to eat but and so you want to be more strategic in how you you know you make your move however i don't i really don't want anyone at any age to find themselves in a place of like misery and think well gotta be grateful and i've gotta feed these kids haven't i i just i just want better for people and i know it's hard like i know it's hard or else everybody would just be living their dream but i i also know that it is possible for all of us regardless of age or position we find ourselves in or how stagnant we've been for how many decades to make the decision today that this is the start of like the rest of our lives and we're going to just give it a [ __ ] go i know that's true the only thing that stands in the way of that is people don't believe it's true they look at you and you seem so far away 10 million subscribers you must be superman super genius that born with it parents must be rich you must have genius just that's not me i'm a muggle and i hate that because i'm you know and yeah yeah everyone starts from zero every youtube channel had zero subscribers at one point and you know was was cheering when they got the first one and it was probably their mum you know the most the most inspiring thing i think i could show the audience is probably you and you're 14.
do you know what i mean because they'd be like that guy the same with me they'd be like that [ __ ] guy i had the camera presence of a vegetable [Music] not good that's crazy on this point of friends then and relationships how are you doing and and what are your tips you're super ambitious you're scaling this big business um on youtube what are your strategies to maintain meaningful relationships amongst all this chaos because i struggle yeah i i try and make sure it's quality time so i think i spend less time texting and more time seeing people like if i spend two hours texting one of my friends that is much less of a quality connection than two hours of seeing that person of being able to have a fluid conversation and being able to see them and see their facial expressions and their gesticulations and all that so i pretty much plan my time such that the minute i finish work i am doing something in person with the people i care about whether that's a board game with my family or a night out with my friends that there's very little down time but in a good way do you have to be somewhat of a contradiction in who you are to have quality relationships um you have to be a different guy because what i'm saying is professionally everything is about return on time if i spend one hour what am i getting back do you have to be a different guy to get the most out of your social life in terms of that that sort of like time efficiency i'm the boss yeah it sounds very transactional to look at relationships like that um i think every person actually does view them in the same way they just don't put the labels on it i think really we're all doing the same things as humans where you know we've got a set of 10 decisions in our heads things we could do and we pick the one that's best for us
but i think i just attach a framework to it that allows me to think about it easier so i think i'd be doing the same thing even if i didn't think about it in that way i'm just the way i think about it allows me to plan it better and you value those things you now value those well when i when i finish a day of work and i know i'm about to go see my friends like my heart starts punting i get so excited i just like i get off the station at st pancras sometimes and i just i feel like uh like a free bird and like i know there's going to be a little adventure that weekend and it's i think those moments make your life worth living do you have a lot of friends not many but but they're good ones roughly how many i have i'd say like good friends like brothers like you know what i mean six sisters six six years and that's pretty much my entire circle i think the only friends i have are good friends the rest of them i've almost decided that realistically i'm not going to be able to make this friendship work and it's sad like sometimes it's even just geographical some of my friends after university they they move to france or indonesia or hong kong and just the fact that they're in another country has meant that realistically my friendship with that person is just going to be a series of messages hey how are you doing i'm good how are you doing and even though i like these people it just doesn't work that's not like a meaningful relationship is it you must have had the same thing as well 100 yeah and it's really frustrating because great guys but you know do you know i actually struggle at the moment because my girlfriend lives in indonesia and so right now um the border to get into indonesia is closed yeah so you can't get in anyway and i can feel that my relationship with her is like small talk you know it's like oh hey how are you i'm doing this what are you doing today i'm doing a podcast again and running my
business what are you doing yeah running my business it's like do you know what i mean and you can feel that the the importance of like physical one-on-one time um which has been smashed because of the pandemic but also because she lives literally 24 hours away so i've got to like really reassess my life i'm assuming you've tried like video calls and like video messages and even then it's like different time zones and yeah that's the worst oh my god it's really difficult but you come back to this point like if it's worth it you're gonna go to extraordinary lengths to figure it out figure out how to solve the problem and for me that that means that i'm gonna have to go there a lot i'm gonna have to fly to indonesia a lot she's gonna have to fly here a lot so you see that being like a permanent long-term relationship yeah crikey yeah good luck i know right she's not indonesian she's from france french and portuguese she's just making your life difficult no comments um but if it's worth it you got to put in the work and you know i reflect on all of my friends relationships and this is the really the thing that really makes me want to put in the work to make it work is all of my friends even the ones that have had the most successful relationships have been through hell in chaos at some point they've had to overcome really really remarkable challenges and it's overcoming those challenges that have made them stronger so i see it as that like my friend that i consider to have the best relationship out of all my friends they have individually both been through personal chaos and managed to come come out the other end so i see this as a as one of those things like a test like the board is closed you can't get into the country you know like that uh what's that rocky balboa quote it's not how hard you get here it's how hard you get here and can keep going forward i think that's
relationships and the thing that keeps you going forward is like is it worth it is it worth it yeah at some point the answer to that question might be no same with burke so your chance uh your stance on this has changed hasn't it with relationships yes quite recently which part which part of my stance so i remember reading that uh you had a relationship that you had to kind of like end because you were so focused on your work oh that i think that daily mail wrote that um but i mean that is true that is true with all of my previous relationships pretty much yeah um that was just a young naive kid that was like a super naive version of me that was miscalculated miscalculated the priorities of life and what changed was it just finding the right person or was it an internal thing it was definitely both but i'd actually say it was more the internal thing it was the this is why i asked you the question earlier on about you what you valued before and after your breakdown because before for me before i had my sort of turning point i thought as you said the most important thing in the world was just getting rich buying a lamborghini and a mansion and then having loads of like infrequent casual partners i thought that would be it that would make me exponentially happier yeah um what i came to and i didn't think relationships mattered friendships or romantic what i came to learn through a variety of different stimuli one of them being a ted talk i saw where they did a 100-year study of men and they looked at men that had relationships and men that didn't have relationships the ones that had relationships lived like 10 years longer were healthier happier imagine that lived 10 years longer crazy made them physically healthier were happier everything everything that mattered was given to those that had meaningful relationships then i read lost connections by johanna hari and it shows
that a lot of the reason why we're getting more and more depressed and socially anxious and all of these things is because we're not in our tribes we don't have meaningful connections but [ __ ] and then i looked at what i'd been feeling myself and i'd always i'd always been too scared to say i was lonely i'd always been too scared to say that and i've always been too scared to say that i wasn't feeling good either but on reflection now i was lonely i was really really lonely you can be lonely even if you're surrounded by people yeah 100 i think actually there's a reason why a lot of people say that university is the best time of their lives and i think it's because they're surrounded by friends and the relationship people have with their friends is often healthier than the relationship people have with their families because the level of expectation is removed like i think with families people find that they fall into certain roles where like they do the dishes and they clean the floors whereas at university with your friends if you clean the floors you're here you're a hero and i think that kind of that attitude means that people want to hang out with their friends more and they enjoy that process even though they're fundamentally doing the same things they're being appreciated more 100 and i think i try and apply that in my relationships it's like when my friends come to see me just the fact that they've come to see me i'm like oh guys come on amazing yeah it's amazing there's also new hierarchy in friendship groups in terms of like your family you have a hierarchy you have the older brother and the older sister then you have the mom in the and then you also get to typically select your friends which you don't get to do with your family so you can wind up with a pretty nuts family that's true and have to tolerate it because you are related and i think the friendship especially as you get out of school because school kind of forces you together but if you get out of school you start to discover who you
are what music you're into what interests you have you then build a tribe around you that have shared values and that seems to be the best yeah the best tribe not to underestimate family though like i think when you have good family connections no one wants you to succeed more than they do yeah yeah yeah and i think very few people have your best interests at heart apart from them 100 what about romantic relationships have you found forming romantic relationships as a on-screen mega youtuber ambitious guy entrepreneur nuanced is what i would say like when you when you have this whole youtube thing clearly like people are into it right people it's a cool job if nothing else it's just cool so you're saying women are into it yeah yeah yeah um but i think you'll know when you've found someone who looks through it looks past it um the only challenge then becomes time because youtube is not just incredibly time consuming but it's also unpredictable and so in relationships where people want stability trying to offer that stability is is not easy um you know let's say someone wants me to come to a wedding in two weeks time aaron can you definitely make it can you book that date in i can't i can't really you know i'm i'm not i'm not working a nine to five i can't book days off sometimes an opportunity presents itself and it's such a great opportunity that i don't want to turn it down um like like this chat like you know i i really wanted to come see you as soon as i got the email but had i said to someone else a friend or a girlfriend or whatever that i was going to be doing something with them this day i'd have had to i'd have had to do that and that that horrifies me because you know we're in a place where the sky is in the limit all these metrics are looking up and so many people and opportunities are presenting themselves i want i want to do them all
so how would you balance it how do you balance it well quality time in person time and i think so you almost have to kind of like assign things in your relationships an importance level and if something is really important to your partner then you just be there no matter what if things are somewhat negotiable then you know try and make it but don't commit and how important is it to find the right person i'm guessing you've potentially tried a few different types like i have i've tried a few different types of people maybe and maybe three three or four maybe five no like i mean like relationships over the last over the last uh let's say 10 years different different characters that either saw my work as a threat or saw it as a really cool thing and were supportive were maybe way too supportive or maybe way too intimidated by work how important has it been to find the right person so important so important i mean you know your partner is the person you're spending you know you want to spend the rest of your life with they're going to become you effectively you know you've heard that thing where you kind of you become the five closest people around you yeah yeah your partner is going to be your biggest influence for the rest of your life and so them being on the same page and them being an inspiration to you as well as you to them i think is is the only thing you need do you think you need a partner that is ambitious and i always i always find this really fascinating that i've had so many conversations with very ambitious entrepreneurs um and they tend to go one of two ways they they typically tend to believe that they also need someone who is sidetracked with their own dreams and goals but i i question that sometimes and i think okay so start with yourselves well so okay so when i was a little bit more stupid
like 18 i used to think that i want my partner to be a like a philanthropist has has their own thing and to just be you know taking over the world themselves however in reality i've come to learn that i might be lying to myself because if that were to be the case then we'd probably never see each other right um because the likelihood is they'd be in another country doing massive things and it would just be texting and so i've i've come to learn especially when i was in the height of my career at social chain and i was flying like 50 days a year 50 weeks a year sorry um i couldn't have possibly had a meaningful relationship with someone that was doing the same so it's made me question myself a little bit and start to reflect on the fact that especially when you know other factors come into play maybe i need someone that is going to be a little bit more uh supportive of my of my and i don't this answer gives a [ __ ] i think i think where i am at with it is a little different i think fundamentally the person you end up with has to see eye to eye with you they have to be on your wavelength and i think for people like us who are just so incredibly ambitious we want to do huge things with our lives it's not going to work out with someone who isn't like that because eventually you'll lose respect for them so i think all these things about convenience of the relationship they kind of all fall to the wayside if that person is right if they if they see you like that i've been unable to form a romantic relationship with someone that doesn't have passion for something and i'm not saying take over the world i mean like be inter-knitting like love you know anything just like love like dog breeding i don't like in reading grooming just just be passionate about something and i think what i'm looking for there is
to come home and talk about you and your life too and your hobbies not just uh it's a center on me because then i don't get to escape i don't get to relax and wind down you know yeah um now you're right yeah it doesn't matter what they're passionate about but they have to be passionate yeah but what if they are what if they what if they're flying 50 weeks a year how had you how does that work i think in the same way that like you know you have to compromise for the other person they will also compromise for you yeah and i think it's okay if you make a million less a year or whatever it is depending on what scale you're working on if it means you can have this meaningful relationship because as we've established like as humans we need that it's a core need and it's the easiest one to neglect because the feeling isn't as urgent as hunger or thirst but it is there so true so true i definitely have realized that if i'm gonna have a romantic relationship and it's gonna work i'm going to have to leave millions off the table just like in missing meetings and not and having to compromise and that's a really that's a really interesting hard to do because you then try and quantify the value the relationship has as a return and you say well if i'm probably going to lose i reckon i'd lose like five million a year by having a romantic relationship genuinely maybe even more like genuinely probably more yeah and you think oh [ __ ] oh they've got to be worried but then you reflect and go i'm i don't need more money do i yeah but there is a game to be made in terms of like romantic connection yeah beyond a certain point what what is money it just it's a bit of convenience right that's all it is and potentially if you get too much a pain in the ass right yeah like some people like i know they spend they spend a long time looking for things to spend their money on oh god that's the worst yeah that is a sickness yeah um so i got this uh phone through
the mail not that long ago and it was a hundred and seventy thousand dollar iphone but you know what it was it was uh so not an iphone it was a samsung phone but it was a phone with a gold brick attached to the back and i was thinking to myself what kind of person actually buys this where would you have to be in your life to purchase this particular phone miserable bastard you've got to be miserable yeah right you've got to be miserable i can't imagine a world where someone that's buying a phone that has a gold brick strapped to it is living a fulfilled life except everything i must know must be wrong if they they can buy a gold bricks oh do you want to know the funny part so because of the gold brick on the back the cameras don't work [Music] the way i reasoned it was that if you've got that much money you've probably got someone to take photos of you true yeah or you've got no friends because you're that miserable what money then let's talk about money what what role does it play in your life so when i was growing up um like i said i wasn't underprivileged so i had i had all everything basic covered but there was definitely what things i wanted you know i wanted the latest toys i wanted the latest trading cards whatever it was um so when i first started getting income from youtube i was very happy with it you know i would buy things off amazon and like make myself short-term happy just fill those little gaps that i had in my childhood i guess would you go looking for things to buy sometimes yeah i think i would same um it's that first initial feeling of freedom and like it almost doesn't feel real when you can order things off your own card and like they come to you and it's like i've earned this this is my treat um but after a period of time i realized that like the things that i actually want don't cost very much and so i actually i've purposefully not bought myself a nice car because i actually i'm very aware that as humans
we adjust slippery slope it's a slippery slope and i know that even if let's say 20 years in the future i own a ferrari or a lamborghini there's no point rushing to get there because i know from that point all i'm going to be thinking is what's next and so you might as well get a polo first and then maybe get an a-class mercedes and then maybe get a a nice nissan i don't know work your way up even even if you could get a nice car now like what's the rush just enjoy the journey it's like i see it like a video game like do you play many games yeah so i always find myself when i play games i am rushing to finish them and i want i want to get to that last boss i want to beat it for the final reward but then as soon as i do that i just i lose all interest in the game and it it there's so many parallels between that and real life you know what do you do when you have so much money that you don't know what to do with it you just you find things to do with it and that in itself is is a you know it's just another thing to do it makes me feel sick sometimes that i still have these moments where i will like glance at a mansion on like right move and then i genuinely have this sick feeling in my stomach because i know what my life then means do you know what i mean like genuinely it would probably make me miserable because i'd have to move out of london which means i'm further away from friends and people can't come to me and then i'm in this eight bedroom house yeah that no one can come to you anyway and i feel that sickness it's like nice i feel the same way when i look at like the lamborghinis and the rolls-royces which i always come back to i'm going to buy one it's like the insecure kid shows up and then i get that like belly sickness where are you going yeah it's like well steve if you do that you know what this means yeah yeah you know what treadmill you're like there is some part of you that's pulling you and you've got to be like stop yes exactly and it's that insecure kid that's being still being influenced by society and social media to try and run
at those empty things yeah it's actually something that's been on my mind recently like society it's that it's that thing and through adverts and social media targeting like it's found its way into our lives in a way that is so close to us all the time constant that you're being pulled in this direction and it's no one's fault it's not our fault um but we are becoming very materialistic yeah at the expense of things that actually matter yeah and it is at the expense of something else yeah these apps are are custom built every decision made with these applications that we use is built to use us to to extract from us um every chime that goes on is custom built to to mess with the the parts of your brain that are made to sort of like they're made to make you lose control to make you think oh my god there's a notification i've got to check it they're built like that and that's terrifying so what you do about that knowing that uh i used to use a scheduling app so i used to set my phone up so that all my notifications would come at one point in the day interesting yeah um but then i stopped doing that when i started missing important emails so now i just kind of keep my phone on silent and look at it when i look at it i almost get mild anxiety if i've not checked my whatsapp like what you mean i used to really get it when i was at social chain because especially when i was living in new york city um i would wake up after guessing that's right yeah i'd wake up after the uk so i would know the minute i woke up and i'd usually wake up at 4 a.m because my brain would wake me up because it was anxious knowing that the minute i touch my phone and look at all these offices around the world and all these people and all these employees and these directors my phone every morning would be 70 80 messages so you'd wake up and then you go like with one eye open reach for the phone and look and just check there was nothing on fire like no major crisis yeah yeah yeah and doing that for
man it takes out if you don't want to get up you don't want to do your job anymore yeah you don't you don't want to ever have that again it's it's awful how did you get around that i didn't i quit the job eventually but it was it wasn't up until i quit like i was waking up with that that like con i was always as you know at the worst times when the business was like stuff and it was it would struggle like i wouldn't want to open my emails and i wouldn't want to open my whatsapps it was just because you knew it was bad news your body's conditioned it gets the signal it's like if you press this button you get bad news why the [ __ ] do you press the button then yeah you start avoiding pressing the button yeah yeah yeah so yes it's it's um it's not easy but social media is designed in that way it's like for probably more so from like the positive reinforcement you get from that dopamine hit of getting comments or likes or whatever and as a youtuber you must feel that more than more than most you've got yeah 10 million it is on my mind actually that like what other things i do in my life going forward are going to give me the same amount of dopamine because if you post a video and it starts you know hitting trending and it's getting millions of views and so many likes and 10 000 people telling you you're great what tops that what what am i going to do in my life that is actually better than that um and and i do sometimes i've had to kind of pull myself out of this mindset but there was a point in my life where i would look at situations i was in let's say on bowling with my family and i'd be thinking like is this making me as happy as getting a viral video it's not it is a slippery slope because it's almost too good it's too good and nothing else can match it it's kind of what you said you said earlier about playing the video game and waiting until you get to the end you are your standard of that dopamine hit or if a thrill is so high now yeah yeah it must be hard to meet that elsewhere in life yeah
so what do you do about that how do you how do you how are you able to enjoy and you don't have to have the answer we're all works in progress you'll be 25. but how are you able to enjoy other parts of life with your partner who wants to just go to i don't know go shopping go shopping or have a picnic um i think the key is is detoxing every now and again you've heard of the whole like dopamine detox not really so it's the idea of completely depriving yourself from all stimulation for periods of time so no music no phone no internet nothing just very simple pleasures and so like whenever i get the opportunity to do those i will take them and so like i have these periodic moments of complete release where i'm doing nothing stimulating and they're quite difficult to be honest like the urge is definitely there to run up and check my notifications but i refrain just because i know long term like i need to stop and how long are these periods of dopamine detox it's whenever i i can afford to do them i mean i think in a best case scenario you do it regularly but for me it's more like if i finish a big stint of work and i'm just exhausted i'll say okay next day and a half i'm doing i'm doing very little i'm gonna talk to people and um drink coffee you know and what impact does that have i think it brings you down to earth again it reminds you of the things that are important and it allows you to enjoy them you only need a couple of hours and i think you can very quickly start to appreciate things that you'd forgotten to appreciate before because you were caught up on social blade statistics is there we talked a lot about the positive sides of this um meteoric rise you had on youtube and how it helped you like be a bit more secure in yourself and understand yourself a bit better but are there some character characteristics or um
i guess side effects of this that are probably reversible now that you irreversal yeah like irreversible consequences of this meteoric success on youtube that are negative in your view i mean that that was kind of one of them there but yeah it the only thing that comes to mind i suppose you'd almost have to ask the people around me to get a proper answer but the only thing that comes to mind is how cagey i am with my time i think because of how much i plan it and because of how self-aware i am of how important it is i i very much find myself in situations where i'm like okay this was great gotta go bye um and i do really enjoy these break times but i do also cut them um and i think for other people who who aren't as cagey with their time they'd probably see that as like uh he's got to go again classic aaron you know or rudeness or something maybe yeah i've been told actually a few times in the past that actually like i start a conversation realize i don't have time for it and leave um i used to do that at university because what would happen is you know you go out your room you're living with your friends you talk to someone and before you know it there's seven people in the corridor chatting yeah and even though i was the one who started the conversation i'd have to go because i'm like okay at 7 30 i've got to start scripting youtube yeah um and some people will be like well that was a bit rude which i can understand but there was no other way i could have got what i needed to get done done you don't regret that though do you no i don't i don't regret it because i think the people who have ended up as my core friends they they understand i tend to also believe that the people that have reached fulfillment and success their lives are really they have like a high boundary set for the use of their time at the end of the day as i talk about a lot um it's the only resource we all have yeah allocating it in a really efficient manner towards things that matter
i think is important but a lot of people won't they'll find themselves in that hallway conversation and they won't want to be rude because they're people pleasing so they'll end up spending like two hours talking about things they don't care about with people they don't really like yeah yeah yeah yeah and for me that's a just a cardinal sin of like happiness you can't you've got to be a bit of a i was going to say the c word then i shouldn't do that you've got to be a bit rude sometimes you've got to be rude sometimes yeah i think a lot about that idea of like becoming uh the richest man on earth but then being really old and wanting to spend all your money to buy another day or something i think about that a lot and it it's a constant reminder of like stay in the right lane focus on the things that matter you don't have that long do you think you're lonely now no i don't i did a few years ago but i i feel really good now i feel like i i know what i want and i've got it and that's that's comes from the balance of friends and family and romantic yeah connections yeah not many but but good ones you've um you've grown you know this youtube channel over the last what ten years ten years roughly um from zero to over eight million subscribers in terms of your growth trajectory what story does that tell um how quickly you grew how exponential was that an s-curve was it slower than fast it's been pretty much slow then fast somewhat exponential i'd say so right now um i my channel is growing much faster than where it is proportionally so the the percentage growth on my channel is really high like one of the highest on youtube um and i've only actually got a team of two people in total to be honest so i'm at a stage now where i'm thinking okay i need to get more help i need to get more people doing the things that i shouldn't be doing right now but i want to keep it as me like i'm very aware that like
i could probably get more numbers if i had people writing my script for me and stuff but there are certain things that i just want to do because i i like them and i think i'm good at them um and so i want to keep doing those things but in terms of that that sort of exponential growth how long like give me the time frames in terms of how long it took you to get to several different stages okay i've got a tweet actually i can find it find it for me okay so it took me seven years to hit one million subscribers it took one year to hit two million eight months to hit three million six months to hit four million and then three months to hit five million so that there's there's definitely been a sort of you know a curve hockey stick yeah but but i think people they kind of misplace where that comes from i think people have this idea that if you're big on youtube you'll just keep getting bigger on youtube but i think what actually happens is that you're big on youtube because you're starting to understand what works and therefore you get bigger because you're implementing what works if that makes sense oh 100 i mean that's applicable to every walk of life right as well as you were saying i was thinking about everything thinking about the gym and i was thinking about you know your business yeah yeah everything um it's interesting it's interesting because there are a lot of youtubers who get big and then stop like their growth stops yeah they they build these big channels and then the tectonic plates shift the algorithm says okay we want something else now and they fall off and they i don't think a lot of these are actually algorithms changing i think right from the start the algorithms have had a very simple goal and i think they've been able to achieve that i think that's the creator's losing touch it's it's whether it's failing to keep
up with the competition because the bar for content is rising all the time or whether it's just neglect of what their audience wants like sometimes i've seen creators who they get big and then they're like oh this is what my audience wants to see i'm just going to keep doing that exact same thing the whole time or sometimes you get creators who one minute they're making a video about how they make cupcakes the other time they're making tech videos and you've got to keep your audience at the front of your mind because so have you heard this saying that like create what you want to create and your passion will show through and people will find you no okay because i've heard it a lot and i actually strongly disagree with it because i think it it makes the creators think that like they're the prize they're the customer when actually it's the viewers and it's a privilege to be able to create for them but you can't be complacent about that they're not going to come to you just because i'm making stuff i like making there's too many people who are doing that for that to be the case so you have to really respect people's time and really deliver value to them in order to be able to adapt to what your audience want it's got to be a two-way conversation so how do you have that two-way conversation really i know how you have it one way but i'm saying how are you getting how are you understanding what they want what are the metrics you're looking at is the comment section is it and again these aren't just lessons for youtube these are lessons for anyone creating any product in the world that is looking to build their customer base because it's the same business so there's both there's explicit and there's implicit feedback the explicit is someone literally writing aaron this was a great video or aaron you should sit a bit further back because your face is too close to the camera i've had that that's very useful but the implicit feedback is is what is most of it it's what percentage of people who watch this video put a like on it it's what how like how many minutes of this 20 minute video did they watch and at what point did
they drop off that's an incredibly useful piece of information there and i used to actually as soon as i changed my attitude from work hard to work smart these are the things i started looking for it was like oh i said this sentence and there was a drop there i'm not going to say that sentence again clearly that was doing something and it was trying to understand what about that sentence made people drop off that allowed me to grow as a person and as a channel so are you really in the weeds like that you're really looking at every video and i'm obsessed with it yeah it's my background as well like i'm a math student i'm an economic student i love the data um i think to some extent the fact that i pay so much attention to it is one thing that really helps me over other youtubers oh i can tell i can tell because the answers are there it's the same in business your customers are usually telling you what they want or don't want but we lead with our hypothesis yes and with and our hypothesis is ego uh attached to our egos it's sometimes overly romantic so we can spend years as i think i did in my first business trying to sell my customer or who i thought my customer was a product that they didn't want and when they told me they didn't want it because of their behavior you were like no i tried to sell it was actually when i started a facebook group and realized that the facebook group was 50 times 100 times more um effective in achieving what i was trying to achieve with my website that i was like people want to do this behavior on facebook i'm trying to force them to do it somewhere they don't want to do it just go with what the people want and that requires you to be low ego low romance there is one caveat which is that every now and again people don't know what they want you know like if you think about the first iphone that came out right people at the time if you'd asked them what they wanted they would have said oh i want a flip phone with maybe a bigger keyboard and they would have just kept
saying that year after year but but actually the iphone completely changed what they wanted and there is a time and place for that as well in youtube sometimes just you have this idea no one's asked for it but you just think oh that's a good idea i'm gonna try it and you'll very quickly realize if it's the right thing to do it's harder to argue with the um well i guess when you're creating something new there isn't the data there isn't the pre historic iphone so that's why you've got to just do it try it's got to start with an experiment and then go into analytical observation yeah i guess i guess that's a good uh good approach i think everyone can relate to what are some of the biggest misconceptions of you as a youtuber that you that you that piss you off uh there's a big thing with tech youtube where like if you say a good thing about a product or a company the assumption is immediately that you're paid to say that and i think it's an element of like i probably just need to communicate better how it works like i'm not paid every time i say a nice sentence about samsung they don't just like slip me a couple of a couple of bills that's that's probably the predominant thing i i saw somewhere that you send these companies an email when they offer to give you a product you letting them know that you won't accept the money but you will review it if you like it yeah so a lot of the emails i get are actually would you like to do a paid review yeah and i i can't with with the with an honest conscience say yes to a paid review because it's a contradiction a review is a piece that is meant to end with a recommendation you should buy this or you shouldn't buy this and having taken money for that piece you can't be objective no i can't be objective so there are cases where yeah a company said can we pay you for a review i've said no i'll do a review but i won't take i won't take the money so how do you make money so you can do sponsors if you do sponsors in the right way so what i think is the right way is i will take on sponsorship if it is if i don't have to be conclusive about
it if i can be completely genuine about it like like you'll for example um i do sponsorships with you but that is because i was drinking fuel before he all reached out to me so they actually spotted me wearing a hue t-shirt in one of my videos and they're like oh okay this guy he likes it already would you like to talk about us and i said yeah why did you like heal do my sponsored genuinely why did you like your it i guess it fits in with my lifestyle i uh you know being i care about my time i um i'm not getting paid for this no i know i am cheers yeah go on why don't we no no genuinely i'm i'm really really curious as to why why it fit in your lifestyle it was the same for me i was a customer for three years before they sponsored the podcast similar thing they were looking for authentic influences but i'm curious as to why it um it fit your lifestyle i think it's this idea of a meal is sometimes for enjoyment but it's also sometimes just because you need something to eat and uh when you're very busy you don't care about what it is like you just need nutrition you and you just you don't want to be eating crap basically you know you want to just eat something that you feel good about and that's what this was i had a friend who got me into it but he he was actually using like full fat milk when he was doing it the whole time and he was wondering why he wasn't losing weight i was like try it with water just give it a go um yeah i don't even have the time to do the well i do the protein but i don't i've i've never really been a huge fan of the like powder in the in the cup mix so i used to do that and then as soon as i started having the ready to drink ones now i just have these yeah same because they're in the fridge they're chilled
there's no washing up exactly yeah yeah have you tried the protein yep you have i like the strawberries and cream oh yeah it's on top of my fridge over there yeah anyway so as you you know you've achieved a lot in in business but also on youtube you've you know i i got youtube channel i've got like 50 000 subscribers bear in mind like 90 of my audience listen off off youtube um but if you told me that one day i'd have eight million subscribers i'd wonder where my motivation would be to get to try and get more i think well that's [ __ ] i mean nine that makes no difference yeah ten like what is your motivation now what is it where does it come from i think it's this idea of like i feel like i have a message to share almost like tech is fun tech is exciting and it's it's one of the few industries that's moving forward really fast like like i look at fashion and you know things just go round and round in loops basically but but tech is tech is a straight line and so i always like the idea of just getting people on board with that idea and so becoming synonymous with the word tech and becoming someone who's like a teacher of tech and who who's a a fun place to learn tech that's kind of where i'm at right now so i guess my my end goal would be to be the tech person so when someone says tech you think oh that's aaron meany that's uh mister who's the boss you know he's tech go look at him so you one of your central focuses is becoming synonymous with the word tech um globally on youtube as a teacher and educator what about the other facets of your life your personal life what are your what are you aiming at i think to be honest like the things i actually want are fairly simple all these considered like it's not cars or or money or gold brick phones it's uh it's
just good good happy well if you're not using it then it's going to ask if you still have that you've got to send it back i actually do still have it you still have it okay they they asked me to send it back initially but then communications got mixed yeah i bet they did but they couldn't they if someone sent me a gold brick phone trust me can you yeah i'd stop answering they couldn't get a career who could insure it so we're struggling to send it back basically i send it out i got a good guy that sends the phones back send it over here i'll i'll take care of it send it over here i've got i got a guy that's yeah best career in europe yeah um i watched actually one of your past podcasts where you talked about like the idea of we trick ourselves into thinking there's something on the other side but this is it and i'm very aware of that and i'm very i'm very happy about it i don't need anything else like i'm enjoying the process and as long as i can keep having those times when my friends are over and we're playing video games together and we're laughing on the couch and you know i can spend good quality time with my parents going out for dinners that's all i need but then going back to a professional goal about being sometimes synonymous with tech if you were to achieve that goal what would it do for you put a smile on my face probably not much more i'm gonna be honest like i think goals like that they're not meant to be achieved in a way like just having the goal gives you a purpose like i already have the income i need to to have the social life and the kind of like the things that actually make me happy and so this goal is something to give the rest of my life a purpose and it is a goal that you can almost not measure yeah which i know is against all uh
goal-setting uh it's like it's against goal-setting 101. i know you're meant to have like smart goals and all that but um no i think it's great i think more people should have goals that are i said this on my instagram the other day incompletable because that gives you that stops you from that sort of mountain top moment where you then need another goal to find your orientation in life and to find your direction so those big incompletable goals i think are the best well you can't ever measure if it came true yeah um which i i think is i think is amazing but it's but it is interesting that achieving the goal would basically do nothing for you yeah which is crazy when you think about it but but i'm loving the process you know like so every time an article gets written about me or i get referenced or someone shares it i look at it and i'm like oh wow this is a step towards my goal so even if i never achieve that goal and even if when i do achieve that goal or if i do achieve that goal i don't care that much it's created a structure such that i can really enjoy the process and that's probably the probably the secret to professional happiness i guess isn't it it sounds like a it sounds nuts it sounds crazy to have a goal you can't complete and that doesn't matter yeah it does i can see it could you imagine that books the key to being happy is to set goals you can't complete that don't matter that don't actually matter um but i think you're left with no other choice when you get to a point where you've ticked off those maslovian needs of like food shelter security yeah that's exactly it nothing beyond that point really matters there was a point when i was like oh if you get 100 000 subscribers you've made it you've done and so when you've got 80 times that there is a point where it's like this isn't numbers don't make you happy you realize that quite quickly well listen thank you so much for uh being so honest
and open with me today i've had such a um enjoyable diverse conversation with you and it's a it's an honor to get to meet you and i was looking at your story and you you are an anomaly in so many ways because um you're you're incredibly self-aware and conscious now and clearly that's not always been the case when you're in that pre-breakdown phase similar with me i wasn't i was i was a puppet driven by society society was the puppet master in my insecurities from my childhood but you've reached that point of like self-awareness that you know those goals aren't going to matter and that you know why you're doing it you know that balance is key and you're able to allocate your time in accordance with your long-term values not any sort of external or insecure um [Music] goals or desires so i think that's remarkable and i think the reason why i wrote my book and a lot of the reason why i do this podcast is to share stories like yours so thank you for your time it is an honor to spend this time with you and uh i am really excited to see you become synonymous with um tech across the world and i think you're i mean you're clearly on the way to doing that remarkable what you've achieved i appreciate it and as a small little irrelevant youtuber i'm gonna i'm gonna need some tips from you off camera about how i can uh continue to do what i'm doing but to be fair like you've answered it for me like we enjoy it and uh yeah we we celebrate like the little wins and stuff but we're doing this i think i think i speak for the team because like meeting people like you and doing this is fun i'll give you one little nugget now more than one if you have them i would try and add some structure interesting i think a lot of the people watching this podcast are very ambitious people who who want the next thing and i think your videos could potentially highlight what's coming and with some sort of ramping intensity to keep those kinds of ambitious people who want the next thing engaged interesting have you watched hot ones yes the wings the wings show yeah and
the reason it's so interesting is that you know the wings are getting hotter each time and that structure allows me to just like watch right till the end no matter what they're talking about that's really really good feedback because watch time matters is so critical to youtube right in the algorithm so incentivizing people when they in the first five minutes to stay till minute 55 by letting them know there's something spicy over there um no pun intended makes a lot a lot a lot of sense yeah i'm going to speak to jack who's behind me we're going to figure out a way to conduct that experiment yeah any other tips before i go like i know you've looked at my youtube channel and you thought what the [ __ ] is this guy doing one uh one thing i've started thinking about recently actually is uh you can just say it was something you saw i did a big watch through of the marvel films okay start to finish the whole universe and i realized that like these movies are um they are self-contained episodes so you can watch one end to end and you will get a character arc you will get villains and heroes and the heroes will beat the villains but they're also part of a bigger picture and it made me realize that like every time i finished one of them i wanted to watch the next one because it was all contributing to this bigger picture it was like this this bigger universe and so more and more i'm starting to think of like my videos as contributions to a universe and how to actually link between them in ways that people feel like they need to watch all of them or no no more like they want to watch all of them to get the full the full picture so oftentimes now i will actually have inter video jokes things that actually span multiple videos like i've had one where i finished one video by throwing a phone up in the air and i caught it in the next one i've had other times where between three sets of videos someone
started throwing stuff at me during the videos with increasing intensity and these kinds of like multi-video storylines are actually really really powerful again because of the algorithm right yeah i mean it just makes people want to watch you more it makes it feel not complete by just watching one video i met youtube and youtube said to me that um when people go on a streak of watching multiple videos on youtube and you'll know that i was like i don't know why i'm talking to you about [ __ ] youtube tips but they said to me when people go on a streak of watching multiple videos on youtube then the first video in that street gets the credit basically so if you can create content that is episodic then it will all of the videos will perform better so what you're talking about there is kind of like interlinking narratives throughout multiple videos so that one video doesn't stand alone you have to yeah that's really interesting but listen thank you for your time i've had so much of it and it's um it's a huge honor i don't know how busy you are so it's a huge honor that you've given some of your allocation today to this because i know you're someone that understands the value of your time so i really really appreciate you and i'm i don't have to tell people where to find you um you're welcome to never i mean type in your name anywhere and they'll find find you in your work on every social platform thank you aaron it's been a huge pleasure it's been incredible thanks steve [Music] you