Search Captions & Ask AI

Simone Giertz: EVs, Viral Robots, and Becoming a Product Designer

May 26, 2023 / 01:06:40

This episode features Simone Yetch, a prominent YouTube creator known for her innovative projects. The hosts, Marquez Brownlee, Andrew Edwards, and David Im, discuss Simone's approach to content creation, her unique projects, and her business strategies beyond YouTube.

Simone shares her experience as a creator, explaining how she balances her YouTube channel with product development. She highlights the importance of building a sustainable business model that doesn't rely solely on YouTube's platform.

The conversation touches on various projects Simone has worked on, including a mechanical puzzle table and her Tesla Model 3 conversion project, Truckla. She discusses the challenges and emotional swings involved in her creative process.

Additionally, the hosts and Simone engage in light-hearted banter about the evolution of YouTube, the importance of audience engagement, and the future of content creation.

They also explore the significance of product design and the challenges of marketing, with Simone revealing insights into her product line and future ambitions.

TL;DR

Simone Yetch discusses her YouTube projects, business strategies, and the creative process behind her innovative builds.

Episode

1:06:40
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[Music] foreign
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people of the internet welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast we're your hosts I'm Marquez I'm Andrew
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and I'm David and this week we have a special guest I'm going to be interviewing her her name is Simone
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yetch and she's a fellow YouTube creator that I've watched and admired for a long time I don't know have you guys seen
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Simone's videos online I feel like she's one of those people who has gone viral in several different like spheres of the
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internet at different times for different things I don't know if you've you've watched them yeah she's been prevalent on YouTube for a very long
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time she's sort of one of those creators that like kind of disappears for a little bit but it's because she's
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working on some insane project and then like once a year all of a sudden she goes Super viral because she did
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something crazy those are some of my favorites sometimes where you're like I wish they made another video but when that one hits you just drop everything
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which is like uh what's that robotics kid that made spotted um
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I literally brought that up they're super similar types of people yeah big project YouTuber chocola you've probably
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seen uh robots yeah yes you turn the model 3 into a pickup truck before the
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Cyber truck even existed which looks amazing it's really cool before the Cyber truck existed yeah I talked to her
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about it well yeah you mean currently we even got unveiled actually that was the
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first time I met her was she brought it to the Cyber truck event oh wow yeah so this was this is she's ahead of her time
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obviously yeah but we also talked about just like her foresight on building a business that is more sustainable
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outside of YouTube like this reminded me a lot of my conversation with Doug dimiro which is you don't want to hinge
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everything on the power of your creativity and just putting it on YouTube and hoping the platform takes it
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away oops you can be a mark Rober but like you can also not be successful on
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YouTube it's really easy so she's built a really interesting business uh with products alongside the videos that she's
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making which is really cool we talked about that uh so there's a lot to this conversation and I think it's so it's really fun one my turn yeah
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Segway right so uh a lot of people hit me up on Twitter and in the YouTube
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comments and we're like Ellis I actually do really want to know that weird color thing you were talking about
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and I'm here to tell you I'm not going to do it it's too boring but if you do
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really want to learn about that stuff there's another creator online the channel is called technology connections
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yeah and he has a six-part series on television three of which are about color technology we'll put a link in the
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uh in the description in the show notes for those who want to check it out uh but yeah without any further Ado let's
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get to the conversation with Simone and there is trivia trivia dude all right
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Simone hi thanks for joining us welcome to the waveform podcast oh thank you so much for having me I've been watching
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your videos for a long time and so I have a lot of questions for you I'm always fascinated by different types of
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creators and then YouTube channels and you have one that I want to pick your brain about okay well go ahead so you
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have a very official like laptop open with a list of questions and I think it
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said simonequestions.pbs yeah it's uh it's so it's not too crazy but I
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do I I'm uh fascinated by the like big project Creator if that's a genre that I
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can sort of like Loop you into like Mark Rober uh this sort of what else would I
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write down there's a bunch of YouTubers Michael Reeves another great Channel with your channel there's such a variety
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of projects that you choose to do and I'm always curious about your process
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for deciding to make a video is it I'm going to do this table for jigsaw
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puzzles anyway why don't I just film it or is it I have an idea for a video this
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table I think would be really fun and people would resonate with it let's make it a project like how how do you start
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with a project it's a little bit both I see I think it's like for me the
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video has kind of become the excuse to go down these build rabbit holes and
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it's so it's very much like I don't think I would have self-motivated to build a mechanical puzzle table so it's
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a table where you can switch between two table tops so you can work on a jigsaw puzzle but then you can switch the table
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tops and you can use it as a dinner table um yeah I don't think I would be
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self-motivated enough to like go and do that because it's it took so much work
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but it's really like the video aspect of it is the excuse that I can use to be like no I can spend two months designing
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this table it's like the the ultimate Ikea project like I I could never put that also there's the the amount of like
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engineering Ingenuity you have to you have to invent something basically like this table doesn't exist so you need to
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go through the process of thinking about how it needs to be made and then and building these things and trial and error that's like that's a fun
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video like all of that is is entertaining to go through with you as you go through it yeah it's like Ikea
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off-road operating and you're like there's no manual for this yeah I think it's there's always like a so I'll have
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an idea of something I want to do and then I do like a cursory Google search to be like has anybody done this before
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partly to see how other people might have done it but also to like if it has been done that I'm not as interested in
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it okay uh and there's always the part where you're like has nobody done this before because there's a good reason I'm
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like somehow magically the only person who's thought of this or because it's a really bad idea in a way that I haven't
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predicted right and uh yeah it's about a 50 50 split interesting that I have two
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questions so one of them have you ever scrapped videos in the middle like this is too much no you've gone to the end of every
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project you started on camera honestly the the video I was working on last week it was the first time where I've like
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genuinely thought about giving up yeah uh I was making this uh robot arm out of
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stained glass like so like old-timey stained glass window but it's a mechanical robot arm so you're using
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this like really old build technique to build this hyper modern object and it just kept on breaking that was the first
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time where I like it broke I yelled really loudly and then I was like can I just give up is
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this this I'm okay I'm done yeah bye and then five minutes later I come back and
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I'm like okay but what if I do it like this so I think I'm just too stubborn I
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don't know if there are a good amount of videos that I've seen that are actually that turn out really well even though the project did come to a halt where
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they like realized oh this isn't how it's gonna work out I think Mark Rober had a video like this similarly where
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they're like well let's pivot and make something different or let's like change it up a little bit because this one won't work I mean a robot out of stained
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glass sounds impossible if you ask me but I've never built a robot so yeah no I you know you go through it and you're
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like this was a really dumb idea from the start why did I do this but now I'm glad that I did and I have this object
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that I'm terrified of breaking for sure so then so you come up with the ideas how do you know if you're going to be
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able to do it at all like I think of trekla as the ultimate no one's ever
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going to be able to do this project uh just like on its face like I'm going to
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take a Tesla Model 3 and I'm going to cut the back off and turn it into a truck shouldn't shouldn't work probably just
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didn't work but if you put enough thought and effort and effort into all the things that you did it will but the
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thing is it's like two points about that one I'm like I should start tracking my
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mood throughout every build because I think I go through a lot of the same emotional swings through every build
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like every build has a part where I'm like I'm not going to be able to pull this together this is never going to work out and it also has the parts of
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like I'm the queen of the world um but then the second part is one of
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the benefits of having a YouTube channel and that kind of shields me from failure
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is that every build has two outcomes or like two products that come out of it one is the build itself and then it's
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the video so with truck club like that is an incredibly risky project but I
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could take it on because even if the build was a failure I knew I would get a video out of it so I think it's
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yeah every project runs the risk of not working out but at least I'll be able to
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salvage it into something interesting they still drive every day that's your daily driver it
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was for like two three years but then now I've gotten a Volvo c40. oh I like
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that the recharge the electric one yeah I like that too I like it it was just like chocolate is is absolutely amazing
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but we were gonna do more work on her so she was gonna like go under car surgery for a while and also it's like I get
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doxed every time I drive it you're the only one on the road yeah what is that
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like driving it do you did you get pulled over are there people who are just like pointing I imagine a lot of pointing in cameras and yeah like that I
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mean and that's fine um I think people following me was the stuff that was really scary people
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taking photos outside of my house with it or like I remember somebody following
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me up at cul-de-sac when I was like gonna visit a friend and you know and it's like two guys in a car and I was
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just like hey I understand you probably have really good intentions but this is really scary for me to like be followed
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by two people I don't know up at Dead End Street yeah so like I don't want to
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talk about my car right now yeah and the thing is most people don't give a about who I am like they're just interested in the car or think like it's
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a secret Tesla prototype that they just spotted that there is that whole culture too around Tesla where like there are
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whole like spy channels have you seen these people okay so test also got this like Fremont test track and all these
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factories and stuff like that people will literally go take a drone take off from a nearby parking lot across the
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street and go fly over Tesla's stuff and just like fly the Drone up to people and
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up to things and take videos of it and post that online yeah and people will find neat things in those oh they're
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testing the Cyber truck over here today and that's an article and that's the whole thing so if people see the new Tesla Model 3 Highland project driving
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around on the street people will actually follow it around to get videos of it yeah put it on YouTube so that
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also surrounded trekla I'm sure with just like people not knowing what it is and wanting to be yeah curious about it
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for sure yeah that's wild but how do you like the Volvo I feel like the xc40 was one of my favorite uh
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EVS when I first tested it so I have a C40 which is yeah just slightly
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different but uh I I'm surprised by how much love it like I
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thought I wasn't gonna be you know I because I was looking at buying another car and I wasn't excited about any of
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the EVs and I wanted another electric pickup truck but like the Ford F-150 and the rivian are just giant like they're
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physically so big and they're also so expensive and I'm like I don't want to spend that amount of money unless it's
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something that I absolutely love so I was feeling really lukewarm about all the cars because also like
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I realized that I like really obscure Vehicles like the two cars I have are incredibly weird uh because I also have
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like an obscure like 80s commuter car so it's like a yellow Little Triangle yeah
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um so I think like I'm just like this is how I express my personality and then having just like an undercover car a
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little bit more um I don't know it pained me to some extent but I really love it and I think
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it's also like Volvo is Swedish or now it's owned by a Chinese company but it was founded in
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Sweden and I'm from Sweden and I'm having that like immigrant or like
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immigrant type of thing where I'm like suddenly just wanting to surround myself with Swedish things which never happened
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when I lived there but now when I've lived abroad for like 10 years I'm like oh yeah maybe maybe a Volvo there's an
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Ikea like 10 minutes from here yeah here the the theme music and the Swedish
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um yeah no there's that that makes a lot of sense I've I started this car Channel earlier in the year and I wouldn't have
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always considered myself a car person but then with all these EVS coming out I slowly became an interested in the
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Tekken cars type of person um so I I wonder to do the truckload
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project you had to at least be interested a little bit in obscure cars and doing projects with cars
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um but yeah that was a that was a pretty next level but I think it's also I mean with truckload because we had a whole
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team come on like it was definitely I was not a loan actor in that so I had a lot of backup and expertise and people
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who could help me um with it um but yeah I kind of jumped into the deep end of like Gear Head stuff yeah
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yeah because I like just got in my driver's license like a year earlier or
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something because yeah so I definitely didn't have like a strong car interest and now I think they're amazing like I'm
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not yeah but I I've never had a gas vehicle and I don't think
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yeah they're still limited options yeah there will be there's a whole generation growing up that will never own a gas car which is pretty sick yeah put me in a
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gas station I'm like the so it's funny in New Jersey you specifically are
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not allowed to fill up your own gas so there's this meme of like Jersey drivers going to other states and just like
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sitting in the car waiting because what do you do uh but that's EV drivers too
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yeah what do I do I rented a gas car what do I do granted the charging stations are barely better yeah like
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they're all weird and they have like their apps and some never work yeah there's definitely I mean the Tesla
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Supercharger network is unparalleled and from like a user perspective but all the other ones it's yeah also last time I
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talked to you about truckla you couldn't supercharge right I could they never yeah took it away no they never took it
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away that's amazing because Tesla would not I'm sure if they uh
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found out too much they would not like to have that supercharging but but the thing is I think the project got
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protected by that it was a little bit too big for them to come after because they knew that I would have thrown a hissy fit online and I think they just
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like kind of wanted to silence it as much as possible by like
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ignoring it interesting yeah sort of let it slide yeah so I think they let it slide but I do I like scheduled a
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service appointment because I wasn't getting software updates or there were some like minor issue and they called me
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from the appointment center and they were like we know who you are and we know what you've done to your car and I
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got so spooked that I ended up just solving it myself yeah so cool that's funny all right do you ever Miss uh old
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YouTube like oh I'm doing air quotes old YouTube old school YouTube I don't know
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if I've been on the platform long enough to be able to say that I started my channel 2015. so I think 2015 YouTube is
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very different from 2023 YouTube where like I'll give you a couple examples one
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is like there is some level now of like algorithmic like I want to just optimize
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for the algorithm you've seen this channels that just want to maximize use that's the whole point of the YouTube channel
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um where I would say I'd argue in 2015 especially our Channel it was like we had an idea for video we'd make it and
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then as it was being uploaded we were like all right we need a title and thumbnail too right okay let's think of this at the last second for packaging
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and then just push it out uh yeah I feel like that was a different time on YouTube and I wonder if you
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especially when you were starting you kind of had this interesting Vibe where
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you were making these projects but you also had such a gap between them that each drop was like a big deal and
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especially with Reddit like Reddit would love every new project and then there would be this sort of community around
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that and it was just a different time you know I think my relationship to
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thumbnails is inverted from yours because I used to care a lot more about it and now I'm I'm in my Golden Era on
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YouTube where I feel like I'm retired and I'm like I'm just doing things for myself so you don't have over Obsession
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on thumbnails anymore no I mean of course I'll like change it out Midway if it's performing 10 out of 10. so like
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YouTube gives you this metric I'm not explaining to you this to you but to the viewer YouTube gives you this pretty
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useful metric where it ranks your videos performance compared to the latest 10 videos that you've had and whenever it's
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ranking like 9 or 10 out of 10 then you're like oh damn yeah and then I might update the thumbnail yeah yeah but
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I think I was definitely like clout chasing a lot more before and I was a lot better so like my YouTube channel
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kind of started as an afterthought like I was mostly making gifts like that was the core of the project and every
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project I did was kind of built around being translated really
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effectively into a gif yeah so I was making all these like shitty robots
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um and it was all like okay how can this work in like a seven second Loop Max
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without audio and people still understanding what it is and then people started requesting like more video
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around it so I was like okay I'll start making like a bigger video around it right because when you wasn't your first
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one like a few seconds long it was basically just the GIF yeah in the video form oh GIF yes really
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GIF you're a gif I'm a gif graphic uh GIF yeah yeah yeah
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GIF okay I can't believe you said GIF but you're
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not willing to die on the hill because I feel like the only people who say Jeff are like ride or died we'll tattoo it on
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their chest there's the peanut butter which is Jif which is Jiff right so I guess I have to it all right I already
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get against my own all right it's GIF so but your first video is like super short it was just the project and then people
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asked for more like how did you make it type things background then you sort of like built video around it yeah okay
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yeah and I think it's also so like my content has changed because what I um used to do is I had the GIF of a project
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and then I would make a video of when I was filming the GIF and like playing with the machine so I wouldn't document
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the build process at all because it was just it's really intense from like a production standpoint and I just wasn't
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ready to let people in on that cluster book of a process uh and now when my
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videos or the projects that I do are less gift friendly like the build video has become a lot more important because
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there's no like for example with the puzzle table there's not going to be a 15 minute video of me just showing how it works
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yeah so like I kind of needed to add the build element into it to make it a worthy piece of content yeah that's
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interesting I also think like building around one shareable even though it might not be a gif building a video
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about around one shareable visual inside of the video has always been a great
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idea like that's I kind of try to do that to this day we had this um well we bought an old original iPhone
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and sort of didn't unbox it yeah and I knew the whole time like every other video anyone's ever tried to do of this
00:19:35
the retention spikes at the moment that they break the seal so how do we sort of
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build out from that like we know we're gonna have the moment of breaking the seal but can we introduce tension and
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sort of a storyline and all that I think it's smart to have a point in the video that you build up to as like the climax
00:19:53
of the video visually and that helps you know yeah create structure for the video I think yeah I called I call the like
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social content um like Flagship videos because they're kind of like the ones that you send out
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and what I've started doing now is instead of a gif it's like a little voice over clip of me being like hi my
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name is Simone and I built this chair because I have a needy dog that likes to sit next to me and I yeah you know yeah
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um and that's been doing pretty well like it's not as efficient as a gift because
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I would always like Reddit does really well like it's very reaction GIF memeable shareable in that way but it's
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also a compromise with like trying to fit in a Content strategy that works with a type of builds that I want to
00:20:40
make on that note we're going to take a quick break but we'll be right back with Simone [Music]
00:20:52
support for today's episode comes from Shopify selling things can be complicated and I say that from personal
00:20:57
experience since I just went a little outside my comfort zone and actually created my own sneaker and I'm used to
00:21:03
making videos in a few days maybe a couple weeks but as much as I loved creating the sneaker it took us like two years back and forth which I wasn't used
00:21:09
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Business course Library sign up for a one dollar per month trial period at shopify.com waveform all lower case so
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go to shopify.com waveform to take your business to the next level today shopify.com waveform is there a project
00:21:53
you're working on now or like a super ambitious future project do you have
00:21:58
like a a like a Mount Everest of projects that one day you're going to be able to do because you mentioned you're
00:22:04
feeling like almost like retired like you're you're only in the golden years of YouTube I believe there's no way someone who likes
00:22:10
to build as much as you do doesn't have like a goal somewhere okay but the thing is so what I realized is that YouTube is
00:22:18
not an end goal for me right like it's not my goal has never been to have the
00:22:23
biggest possible YouTube channel or to try to have that career for the longest time so what I started thinking about is
00:22:29
like okay but if this is not the goal then how can I use this as a tool to accomplish other things I want to do and
00:22:35
I still want to build things but what I'm exploring now is building and developing products for a product
00:22:40
business and like kind of leveraging my YouTube channel in a way to do that so I kind of turned my YouTube channel into
00:22:46
more of an r d department where I have an excuse to constantly build things and turnout projects and try to solve
00:22:53
problems it also becomes early audience testing uh and if there's something that I build on my YouTube channel that I
00:22:59
think might be interesting as a product I can pass it over to the product team and then when it's ready to be sold and
00:23:04
marketed I can pass it back go over to my YouTube channel okay so those that's kind of been like the Behemoth of the
00:23:10
like long-term project that I've been working on and something that I've invested really heavily in time wise and
00:23:16
monetarily in the last year which is like why my YouTube channel has gone down a lot
00:23:22
um and I'm also working on a TV show about everyday objects or I'm working on a pilot episode I haven't sold it yet
00:23:27
but um yeah so it's more it's it's less been like oh I'm working on this big YouTube
00:23:33
video but more like I'm working on these more long-term goals because I don't know if you've experienced this
00:23:40
but like our industry is so young that there's no
00:23:45
road map for what to do for the next 30 Years this is my favorite topic yeah
00:23:52
everything that we're doing is pioneering what some future generation
00:23:57
of creators is going to follow fully agreed but there's no blueprint on how to like yeah you can't Google like what
00:24:04
do you do after you make a YouTube channel that does this yeah and then start a product company that does this
00:24:10
like you it's just up to you there's nothing yeah and and it's a little bit because I remember being like yeah I
00:24:16
don't want to do this for the next 40 years and then what do you do and there's a lot of
00:24:23
I mean there's a lot of examples of people quitting most of them being just people like getting canceled or quitting
00:24:29
because they're like I can't take it anymore or like but I feel like there hasn't been a very positive way of
00:24:35
quitting YouTube unless you can pull off like Eliza koshy which yeah a lot of
00:24:41
people see this like graduate so graduation from YouTube where like
00:24:46
obviously you can create your own thing make whatever you want and then use it to like Vault yeah Liza coach is a great
00:24:52
example um Emma Chamberlain's a good example of the people who have like graduated from YouTube but then you also see the sort
00:25:01
of the opposite graduation weirdly like there are mainstream celebrities who will like Will Smith their way into a
00:25:07
YouTube channel and like start so it's yeah there's no blueprint you kind of can just do what you think works with
00:25:12
your Creative Vision what do you think you'll do in 30 years 30 years
00:25:18
that's a long time if you asked me in three years I'd still be wrong because I'm constantly wrong about what we're gonna do next I think I'm lucky enough
00:25:26
that the focus of our stuff is products
00:25:31
and I have always been interested in the products in the tech in the in the
00:25:36
products in the cars whatever they are and so I suspect that in 30 years I will
00:25:43
still be interested in the products and will still be making this thing that's
00:25:48
helpful to people who are interested in products whether it's a video or some other form of media I don't know but
00:25:53
that's generally how I think about it um in five or six years I think we'll
00:25:59
still be making videos because people are still going to want to buy products yeah generally uh but I think it's
00:26:06
interesting with your your product design business which is yet just so we have the pronunciation yeah
00:26:13
store uh you have like a a big variety of different things like we have the
00:26:18
calendar and then we have the screwdriver ring like how do you think about what sort of things you actually make for the store you know so we
00:26:25
launched the store a year ago we just had our first birthday congrats we celebrated by giving people one percent
00:26:31
off nice yeah yeah that's a very that's a d brand thing which is so yeah I I
00:26:37
love that it actually drove a spike in sales and people were actually using the one percent off discount code which is
00:26:43
funny because you can just get 10 off by giving us your email uh which also we have very good
00:26:49
newsletters and we don't send them very often nice uh so it's worth it um but yeah I mean we started so we
00:26:56
started a year ago and we started with a really small roster
00:27:01
our products I kind of the everyday calendar is I think the only one that I feel like
00:27:08
really holds the ethos of what I want the brand to be it's the only like real proper product and the other ones I'm
00:27:14
kind of thinking more of as like really ambitious basket fillers so they're things that you add on but you're not
00:27:20
necessarily going to come there to the store for it but I wanted to like not sit on the brand for too long because
00:27:26
there's so many things I need to learn a lot of it around marketing and just like what the work
00:27:32
requires and the team and like yeah just like recruiting what roles do we need to
00:27:38
fill so I kind of wanted to like even though I felt like we're only we only launched it with like four or five
00:27:43
products like I still want to get it out there and just try it out but then we have some products coming
00:27:50
out probably next year that I think are a lot more like under what I want the
00:27:55
brand to be so yeah I mean it's kind of been the initial product that's just been like what can we feasibly do with
00:28:02
this small team that we have I mean we have two full-time employees um on the on the product business so
00:28:08
it's like okay we can do this we can do these Rings we have like a screwdriver ring and a screw ring unfortunate name
00:28:15
um and like uh yeah just some like fun weird weird products
00:28:20
um and then how can we use that to fund developing these other products that are a bit more ambitious and that I think
00:28:27
actually solve problems so the calendar is is like there is your sort of ethos
00:28:33
product can you describe it it's like it I just got mine so it's just yeah where is it where is it I want to find a place
00:28:40
to hang it because it closed into the wall too and it lights up and it's this 365 button hexagon cow under but what do
00:28:48
you how would you describe the calendar this is the I mean I we launched this product I think in 2018 uh on
00:28:54
Kickstarter and I still don't know how to explain it in audio always yeah if you can help me brainstorm one yeah but
00:29:01
it's a calendar so like imagine that you want to start a habit and you make a grid in your
00:29:08
notebook so you can check Little Boxes for the days that you do it you're like I want to start meditating every day I
00:29:13
want to keep myself accountable I'm just going to cross these little boxes to be like yeah I did it uh it's like a
00:29:18
prettier version of that that you can hang on your wall so it's an electronic calendar that has 365 days if you tap a
00:29:24
day you light it up and you can use it people use it to track um their periods they use it to track if
00:29:31
they take medicine how often they upload content oh wow yeah I've seen some
00:29:37
people I have a friend who's in the long-distance relationship and I'm like they use it to count down the days until
00:29:42
they get to see each other I was just talking to one of your teammates it was like I'd want to use it to stop uh quit
00:29:48
smoking um but yeah so people are kind of using it in every possible way it's and it
00:29:55
becomes this very visual thing yeah okay so I'm I've talked about this on the podcast before I am the
00:30:01
psycho that lives my life in a to-do list app and a calendar app and all these other planning things where I can
00:30:07
have it tracked blah blah and I have like a drink water tracker and it's like
00:30:12
it's a check box on my phone and when I drink a water bottle I check the box and
00:30:18
it doesn't go away until I've checked it three times during the day wow and I don't really get much of a visual like
00:30:24
reward for that other than just checking the box which I don't know I like checking boxes but it's not nearly as
00:30:29
much as like lighting it up and then it's there like as a physical representation of what you did so I feel
00:30:35
like that that elevator pitch I think the way you started it was perfect imagine you want to start a habit who
00:30:40
doesn't want to start somehow yeah like that's that's definitely the pitch for it and then you go into it no it's been
00:30:46
interesting in like the marketing side of it just like because I'm I'm good at making content I'm very bad at making
00:30:53
ads I feel like and it's so much like you're selling the habit and the dream
00:30:58
of what your life will look like when you have this habit and then this product just happens to be the tool that
00:31:03
can get you there yeah and that's all like yeah it's just a different way of thinking and it's very like if you look
00:31:09
at our social media channels for the etch door we only really have an Instagram feed it's like I think like we're really good
00:31:16
at making content we're making funny weird content and not necessarily good at selling stuff I think that still
00:31:22
works though as like it serves the same purpose you know yeah as like getting the eyeballs for people who'd be
00:31:27
interested in something like that but how do you how did you build your team like you said you have two people full time on the product business yeah and
00:31:35
then you have I imagine some sort of help with making the videos maybe you don't some sometimes I assume that and
00:31:41
people are doing it 100 themselves how did you build that uh so you know I I
00:31:46
actually very deliberately have wanted to keep my team small because I wanna
00:31:52
you know when you when you start your career on on YouTube like there's so many ways of defining success and a lot
00:31:59
of it is just like numbers and scale or how much your growth is and I really early on told myself that like I don't
00:32:05
want those things to matter as much like the two key metrics of success is how
00:32:11
much autonomy do I have and how I spend my time like that's something that's incredibly important to me and that's
00:32:17
luxury to me is like being able to wake up in the morning and being like I don't want to do work or like I want to go to
00:32:23
New York for two weeks or I want to do this and a part of that is
00:32:29
not hiring a huge team that requires me to be there for them to have work to do
00:32:34
so I've intentionally kept the team really small I actually just hired a
00:32:39
shooter editor for the first time okay uh and and then he quit so now on the
00:32:45
video side it's like my executive assistant who also does some stuff on the product business is like helping me
00:32:50
film things because she sometimes does like a rough cut um of it yeah or like she'll do like an
00:32:57
assembly and like take out all the bad takes and then I'll do the editing which is not a good use of my time so if
00:33:03
you're a shooter editor or just an editor in La please send me an email at Simone no apply at simone.com spelled
00:33:12
g-i-e-r-t-z that was gonna that was my next question is how do you find these people yeah because my my I assume
00:33:19
someone who's both an executive assistant and an editor and shooter is a very rare person it's like how do you do
00:33:27
you have a go-to every Creator I've asked different answer do you have a go-to for finding somebody or does it just like I've tweeted yeah a lot of job
00:33:34
ads yeah yeah and I think that um I found her through tweeting
00:33:40
um yeah and then like people I've kind of worked on a project with and I pulled in one was a fan who like uh he's my
00:33:49
engineer who lives in the UK and he was just like very active in the community and kind of just I don't know I just
00:33:55
started pulling him in on projects because he had a really good brain and then I was like do you want a job and he was like yeah
00:34:02
um so it's kind of all across the board but I feel like especially with the product business it's like I need to find a
00:34:08
better way of recruiting and how to do it and not just Twitter yeah same yeah I
00:34:13
don't have a good answer yet that's why I ask everybody and it's also I'm like I need to be better about like also
00:34:19
proactively like I'm feeling a tremendous amount of responsibility of making sure that I have a diverse team and that's like a whole other level of
00:34:26
complication when you're running a small business and you're like I need to be better
00:34:32
in this because you imagine I don't know if you had this but you kind of Imagine like if I got to run a business or if I
00:34:40
somehow got unimaginable be rich which I'm not uh like that I would do it more
00:34:46
responsibly than other people that I see who are in those positions and I'm like I need to walk that talk and actually
00:34:52
try to be as decent of a human as I can be so yeah yeah 100 I feel like uh also
00:34:59
building like when you're building a YouTube channel there's so many different whether it's a Channel or the business
00:35:04
or whatever there's so many parameters to optimize for so it's interesting to have like goals that are not specifically uh quantifiable I guess
00:35:13
like you it would be harder to define success if you don't have some number that you can say okay it's over under
00:35:20
this number so now I have autonomy of my time or I don't like it's it's a little more squishy fabulous yeah needs a
00:35:26
moving Target too yeah maybe you you feel more satisfied or less depending on
00:35:32
how much of that time you get back in different times of the year things like that it's a little more nebulous what's
00:35:38
your definition of success I've stuck it to I want to make things
00:35:44
that I would want to watch and that is not as quantifiable as some
00:35:50
of the other goals that sort of surround that which is like oh are we making uh
00:35:55
you know a variety of things are we are we making enough things I'm trying to
00:36:01
make a channel that I would want to subscribe to by making videos that I would want to watch so it like kind of feeds into itself like that
00:36:08
um but even just doing that like you you make videos that you'd want to watch and then you notice oh now my audience is
00:36:15
like 96 male or something just because like I make videos that I'd want to watch now how do I like expand to more
00:36:22
people and more variety of like countries and things like that I don't know if that's even a useful thing to do but we try yeah they're all kind of
00:36:30
feedback to making something quality that I'd want to watch I think for me yeah it's like pride in the
00:36:36
projects that I put out like in the content I put out is really important and like the the people who actually
00:36:41
watched it like ignoring thumbnails and what your click-through rate is and everything but did the people who watch it like it I think is something I care a
00:36:49
lot about as well but I mean my audience is 80 male and I don't know what to do
00:36:55
about it I feel like it's almost not really up to us but also just depends on who watches YouTube
00:37:02
and a lot of like project videos like it it depends on the genre that you're in too like I'm making reviews of
00:37:09
Tech products and gadgets like I can't control who's into that but I try to make it as accessible as possible and
00:37:15
whoever watches watches um I kind of I was gonna say you kind of remind me of Doug demuro in the Doug
00:37:22
dimiro who you haven't seen Doug dimiro who oh my God okay well let me let me
00:37:27
get the elevator pitch for Doug Doug is a car reviewer
00:37:32
and he started off just making like simple car videos he'd review a car uh a
00:37:39
Honda he'd review a random car you might want to buy and he'd use his phone and set it up on a tripod and do the whole
00:37:45
thing himself and edit the video and he he started by getting a lot more views and so he got to do videos with more and
00:37:52
more interesting cars until he was reviewing like supercars in the same style like he'd show up in a polo and a
00:37:59
smartphone and a tripod to review a Bugatti like that's what happened and he
00:38:05
has the same um the same like Anchor Point which is we can't hinge this all on YouTube it's
00:38:11
just a platform that we all happen to be making videos on but we want to turn it into hinging on into something that we
00:38:19
kind of own more or get to do ourselves and he started cars and bids which is a car auction website oh wow and it turned
00:38:27
out to be super huge his audience loved it people use it it's now competing among the best biggest car auction
00:38:32
websites and like that's the thing that he built so you're telling me that when I saw truck law I should sell it on that
00:38:38
one if you if you do sell truckload carsonbids.com I'm sure Doug would be the first one and the thing is he would
00:38:44
review truckload because he would he would have his hand in there which would be amazing I would watch that video yeah
00:38:50
um but having some sort of a a pivot from making just like their focus being
00:38:56
videos and the content and the projects like that and like hinging it into
00:39:01
something else yeah is the similarity that I see because it's also such a brittle business because it hinges
00:39:08
completely on two factors one is the platform you're on and the other one is
00:39:13
your face so if something changes with the platform or with like regulatory
00:39:18
things on how you're allowed to advertise or sponsorships or whatever which you have no control over like everything falls or if something happens
00:39:26
to you like if you're not well enough to be on a stage or in front of a camera everything falls so for me it's also
00:39:34
like the product business is really important because I don't want it to all be on my face needing to be there I want
00:39:42
there to be work that can happen even if I'm not actively there and that other people can do and that's scalable in a
00:39:49
different way because I mean I I had a health scare and that was kind of the big po like push that maybe like no okay
00:39:55
I need to like diversify what my businesses are because also I can't have a team and like have to lay people off
00:40:02
if I'm suddenly depressed
00:40:07
pressure that comes from trying to find the thing to hinge to if you don't have like an idea right off
00:40:13
the bat like I we we're trying to do some products like I'm not as sure yeah we got shoes now like I'm we're trying
00:40:20
to figure out things that can live without me that's like the general theme is there a way to decide what those
00:40:27
products are there's no there's no blueprint like we've said so it's like I find products that I'm interested in and
00:40:33
and genres that I'm into and try to build there but I don't I mean Doug was into cars so that made perfect sense and
00:40:39
you're into these like projects like the screwdriver ring I've never seen anything like it but it made it just
00:40:45
looks cool and I just I kind of I feel like it's yeah I kind of want one pretty
00:40:50
sweet I need like a method of like deciding what sort of projects
00:40:58
for a given Creator would make the most sense to Pivot to because that doesn't really exist it is yeah it's an
00:41:04
interesting like business exercise of like how do you diversify how do you expand from this and how do you like kind of build out your Universe yeah I
00:41:11
could imagine I mean I feel like product development is such a like you got to be all the way in to
00:41:18
do it because it's painful yeah like there's nothing to do like half-assed uh
00:41:24
but also you're I mean you're well set up enough where you could even if you're not like 100 in it and wanting to
00:41:32
pull all-nighters for it like you could still do it but it just takes it takes a
00:41:38
while like with the shoes it took like it was a two-year process just for one
00:41:43
pair of shoes and it was like a new many design meetings yeah and you're working with an existing shoe company that has
00:41:50
the entire infrastructure for it yes yeah so even that is like kind of a head start yeah like trying to build
00:41:55
something from scratches uh is an undertaking for sure so maybe that's a maybe that's a
00:42:01
maybe that's a whole business of like helping YouTubers find
00:42:07
the thing that will help them graduate from YouTube I mean you have a seven seven or a Titans fund as well right we
00:42:13
do so I feel like that is like if you don't want to develop products yourself then it's like helping other people vet
00:42:20
and develop products yeah but even that is kind of hinged on YouTube which is
00:42:26
like the value of that comes from me being able to connect to my audience to a product for a company yeah and have
00:42:33
the eyeballs and like connect everything yeah but then it's like you're using your YouTube channel as a tool to do other things like the making of the
00:42:39
video isn't the core of it so it's like how can you leverage that into yeah so I'm thinking like something I'm thinking
00:42:45
uh equivalent of like Marquez Shark Tank uh or like does it have to be other
00:42:52
people's product or like your own product
00:42:57
not necessarily yeah it could be my own products it could be yeah I'm sure there's going to be some that go down the path of connecting with other
00:43:03
companies and helping other products grow and then they're going to be some that are like here is this new thing that I made yeah which is like it
00:43:09
requires a different type of brain and you can come up with new ideas and products things like that yeah I feel
00:43:14
like some people like start schools as well like teaching people doing what they do or like different programs and
00:43:21
that and it's a lot of a lot of different paths to go to God Zach jrig
00:43:26
everything he has uh the not a wheelchair project oh right so that's like a again it's very connected to him
00:43:33
it makes perfect sense so like there's there's I don't know there's no way for me to go oh here's what would make sense
00:43:39
for this Creator but every time I see one that makes sense I'm like yeah that's good yeah that's really some people start events yeah and have like
00:43:46
big events yeah I mean like VidCon being one of them the Green Brothers yeah we've seen Creator Clash
00:43:53
are you gonna box anybody no no that's probably something I'm not doing either you could not pay me enough also I'm not
00:44:00
allowed to anymore because I've had brain surgery that's fair but I'm very happy to have that as an excuse because there's no way I do it anyway
00:44:06
granted I used to be so into martial arts like I'm I'm I tie box for years
00:44:12
box somebody before I've boxed a lot yeah yeah no and I was an MMA reporter
00:44:18
like I was deep people in that yes I did not know this yeah I didn't I think it's
00:44:23
on my Wikipedia page yeah no I was deep into like martial arts world so yeah I'm
00:44:28
just saying I'm not gonna do it but I can then brazenly say that I think I'd do pretty well you'd you could
00:44:35
commentate for sure I got to a yellow belt in Taekwondo I was pretty yeah it's not very far Taekwondo is not gonna get
00:44:40
you very far though against like a Grappler giving Creator classes only stand-up fighting yes
00:44:47
um no I can maybe I'd overcome with my my reach or something I don't know yeah not a whole lot I could do you do have very long limbs yeah I could use that
00:44:53
for something something all right we're gonna take one more quick break and after that we'll be back with more with Simone
00:44:59
[Music]
00:45:07
uh I also have one more question for you I don't know if you've seen the podcast
00:45:13
uh we ask everybody the same question yeah go for it how fast can you type the
00:45:20
alphabet I don't know well let's find out yeah yeah let's find out we have a we have a
00:45:26
system uh-huh uh it says it's as competitive or non-competitive as you
00:45:31
want it to be but we have everybody type the alphabet A through Z uh
00:45:37
there may or may not be a a scoreboard slash leaderboard but I am super curious because people
00:45:44
who spend a lot of time typing writing generally do pretty well yeah I feel like you do pretty well okay all that
00:45:51
happens is as soon as you hit a the timer starts and as soon as you hit Z the timer stops so you don't even have to hit enter or anything like that and
00:45:57
you would give everybody three tries Simone we also have the beautiful Apple magic keyboard and a mechanical keyboard
00:46:04
if you would prefer options I'm happy with this yeah yeah yeah let's go yeah
00:46:09
okay
00:46:19
wait
00:46:24
oh it so if you if you mess up it's it stays on that letter until you hit it
00:46:31
yeah no I um I missed w so it stopped at w yeah everyone gets
00:46:38
three tries yeah everyone gets yeah okay make sure yeah yeah okay I can try
00:46:52
eight point four two no four five two pretty good okay last one four seconds
00:46:59
that feels like okay yeah pretty good
00:47:10
7.009 seven seconds flat well done okay do you
00:47:16
want to know where you stand on the leaderboard yeah up to you okay so seven seconds flat puts you right in between
00:47:22
Colin and Samir and Hank Green oh wow good crowd those are some wholesome boys
00:47:29
wait who did she beat which one of them did she beat uh you beat Hank Green 7.2
00:47:36
um you beat Hassan minage you beat David Blaine uh you're right behind Mark Rober and Austin Evans who are in the sixes
00:47:42
wow wow does not feel like crazy fast to type the alphabet six seconds A through Z yeah
00:47:48
yeah you're just sitting there typing and then oh yeah typed the whole off about six seconds yeah I also forgot something I wanted to do so I'm going to
00:47:54
show this to you now I wanted to get you to uh give your first thoughts and Impressions on a
00:48:00
certain product I know you don't do you know product reviews but I was very curious to hear your thoughts on this
00:48:06
this is the Dyson Zone headphones and this is the visor that comes with
00:48:12
them that goes over your mouth you've seen the videos of this right yeah okay they um what did you think when you
00:48:18
first saw them so I evaluated it as a potential sponsorship because they reached out to
00:48:24
me and um maybe passed I I don't blame you yeah
00:48:29
I don't blame you uh first impression
00:48:34
their heavy and big as hell they're gigantic yeah yep I don't like the
00:48:39
mismatched metal because the face part is like some kind of copper gold thing and the headphone have a silver yeah
00:48:48
um I'm gonna try them on please do okay so the m50s that you just had on are 280
00:48:55
grams in well okay uh the super big heavy airpods Max is 380 grams the
00:49:02
headphones you're wearing now 580 grams wow and they look every bit of those 580
00:49:08
grams of heavy headphones it almost feels like I would have to walk in sideways through doors because like yeah
00:49:15
yeah they're they're quite a lot okay so the goal is the the the filter oh yeah
00:49:20
are you is there nose cancellation on I don't know probably not let's see the fact that I can't tell if it's noise
00:49:27
cancellation or anything is probably off yeah yeah because it doesn't have like the yeah exactly sound so they oh
00:49:35
they're they're dead actually so oh really so yeah they're not they're not on um but what would happen if they were
00:49:41
alive is you'd put the the visor on uh flip it upside down
00:49:48
yeah and it would spin up the fans in the ear cups and
00:49:54
filter the air through and pass this like stream of air over your mouth and it would be like this fresh air
00:50:01
experience of purified air all the time so first notice I think I have a
00:50:06
oh my nose is too big you can expand you can pull it but still now it's like really far away from my mouth
00:50:13
um it's a look it's definitely a look is it
00:50:19
giving it's giving Tron I don't know it's something
00:50:25
uh you know it's It's a combination I wish it was on of a
00:50:31
product that doesn't really solve a problem it also looks absolutely ridiculous
00:50:37
Fair yeah very well said and I just cannot imagine who's gonna wear this or
00:50:44
want this for a thousand dollars it has about as much draw as a Twitter blue
00:50:51
subscription uh argue less yeah I would argue less at
00:50:57
least Twitter blue would give you like an edit button exactly yeah I don't yeah I don't I don't get it I really don't
00:51:04
get it yeah but the thing about Dyson this is the video we're working on right now is like Dyson has this weird history
00:51:11
of turning A random assortment seemingly of products into like
00:51:17
premium like world-class gold star things so they made a stick vacuum which
00:51:22
everyone loves like you can get a stick vacuum for 150 bucks but then Dyson made one and their Motors infiltration are so
00:51:30
good and it's so great and it's like eight hundred dollars yeah I love my Dyson vacuum because I don't love my
00:51:37
stick back no maybe no sponsor needed I would just say I love the Dyson vacuum maybe I should buy a Dyson Mac it's
00:51:42
really good yeah have you used Dyson's uh they have a air purifier fan and they
00:51:48
have a hair dryer that people love they have all these things all awesome yeah and they're all based on their amazing
00:51:54
motor and filtration technology so this is technically also uh motor and
00:52:02
filtration motor being in here filter being this literal air filter and it
00:52:09
just sucks air in through there and blows it through that and that's that was their idea of what to do with this
00:52:15
technology you know I feel like they just like the way that this product came about was I mean like we have this
00:52:20
filtration technology what else can we use them for and somebody was like underwear the filters out farts and
00:52:26
they're like no Kyle that's ridiculous we can what else can we do in like headphones and they were just
00:52:34
trying to figure out how to diversify the use case yeah of it yeah I don't get
00:52:40
it I think um the only way I could imagine gen Z wearing it let's see if you could hook it up to your vape and
00:52:47
just have it Blow Vape smoke into her face yeah that might actually be a thing that they would sell more of yeah it's
00:52:53
hilarious yeah no it exists out in the world maybe by the time this is up the
00:52:58
video is up but uh I'm glad you got to try them because this uh me too the
00:53:04
weird what a weird thing such a I feels like a future Contender for the failed
00:53:09
Museum next to the juicero oh there's so many things like I could put in that museum yeah I've reviewed a lot of bad
00:53:15
things in my day yeah this is this is right on top of the list so far anyway although it's weird this
00:53:21
joystick what super useful what does it do so you know how headphones usually have like either like a stem or like a
00:53:28
touch surface so you can like fast forward and stuff and they're like not that great yeah this one volume up and
00:53:33
down on the joystick forward and back tracks play pause and then hold it to
00:53:40
scrub through a song Oh So if you're listening to podcasts you can listen to
00:53:45
the middle of the podcast by fast forwarding to the middle you can go through the ad spots yeah yeah you can go back to Simone after the break and
00:53:51
just fast forward and then she's back and that's like if you're listening to this podcast wearing a Dyson headphone
00:53:57
and a filter thing yeah these and like one other pair of headphones so yeah it's got that going for you I feel
00:54:03
obligated to say this is not sponsored yeah there's no this is the opposite of sponsored but oh I was thinking of that
00:54:09
could be um another career path instead of an influencer or dissuader and uh
00:54:16
people pay you to use competitors products in terrible ways oh interesting so instead of use our
00:54:23
product and talk about it please use this competitors product and say all these bad things so Pepsi's like we're
00:54:30
gonna pay you to do something terrible with Coca-Cola dissuaders yeah this waiter economy
00:54:36
I kind of like it that's a new thing I'm writing that down I'm writing that yeah can we bring in the calendar can I
00:54:44
watch you unbox it okay granted that's terrifying but I do want to turn it on for the first time because I
00:54:50
haven't done that yet yeah do I need anything like an app correct no no no it's 100 Internet connected Adam's gonna grab it
00:54:57
and we'll plug it in right here uh-huh and I'm gonna turn it on no Bluetooth oh this is terrifying I I immediately
00:55:03
regret asking this so when I put out the shoes I had to go through the process of
00:55:11
not being able to see know what anyone was going to say about the thing and then I just had to see what they said
00:55:17
yeah have you ever seen people review your products I've seen
00:55:22
that there are videos of people reviewing products but I've never dared to watch them I think you should
00:55:28
because this is this is like a it's a healthy amount of assuming the review
00:55:35
comes from a good place yeah there there comes a an amount of feedback that you probably couldn't get from your own team
00:55:41
but the thing is it's like yeah I'll ask other people to watch it I just won't watch it myself because it gives me too much anxiety it's a little bit it's like
00:55:47
walking into a room and people are talking about you well you don't have to be in the room
00:55:53
like unless I literally unbox it right now in front of you then yes uh watching the videos is is
00:56:00
definitely an experience I will say so I took the plastic off and these are the buttons and it comes with this nice
00:56:06
poster oh this is the new one yeah try to get the glare off so that's the poster so or I'm holding this and it's
00:56:13
got a nice weight to it so I would have to really trust the wall I'm hanging it on yeah drywall anchors
00:56:19
is a good good call definitely oh you got the new braided cord too this is the latest patch see all these little
00:56:26
details I didn't know about the old one I didn't have the braided cable but I'm gonna plug it in on the back here
00:56:32
doesn't make any sounds about to find out
00:56:37
oh that was a nice animation and now it seems like it's on so
00:56:43
January 1st lit now if I skip days it will skip them
00:56:49
okay so if we're in May 5th like today
00:56:55
all I would do is go find May the fifth and light it up and that's the first day I interviewed Simone and I hopefully
00:57:01
will do this again tomorrow and I'd light it up oh it lets me go into the future interesting
00:57:08
yeah don't let me go into the future I need to earn that button press it doesn't even unlock till tomorrow yeah
00:57:14
at midnight the thing is we really decided to have it zero percent Internet connected it's dumb it doesn't know
00:57:19
anything okay it doesn't know today's date it doesn't know the time it's not selling like microphone and data to
00:57:25
match dot store nothing which is funny because it's like a part of it is like okay that's the product we can pull off
00:57:30
but it kind of became a selling point as well because it's really novel with everything that has like an accompanying app yeah and I'm like no no way so
00:57:38
there's a computer in the back here somewhere and it's just let me know when the lights are on that's it yeah it runs on an at Mega 338p that you can
00:57:45
reprogram people have like made animations and everything and different yeah
00:57:51
different brightness toggles I like this I like this there is an element of
00:57:58
when I check the to-do list thing in my app the satisfying part of that is a
00:58:04
little animation that plays which is just like you did it yeah you drank water
00:58:09
this has like a nice like glow that appears and I wonder
00:58:15
if you went crazy for some Next Level version where like see that mechanical keyboard right there where it has like a
00:58:21
click like a nice clicking set actuation so when I check my habit I
00:58:28
mean the visual part is the best part but the the day when I hit that thing at the end of the
00:58:33
day that that's also really satisfying I think so hit the last day
00:58:39
oh that's so when you do a full month that's the only one that we have Simone
00:58:45
pointed out I'm gonna do this on video 30 out of 31 days there you go 31.
00:58:52
blinks the whole month nice little reward okay I like that I appreciate that a lot but it is we've been running
00:58:57
to so we've had some technical limitations where all the LEDs need to be at the same brightness because I wanted it to do like kind of like a
00:59:03
ripple like Pond effect like a drop in a pond where you hit a day and it kind of like dims up the other day yeah other
00:59:10
days around it but we can't do that because they all have to be on the same brightness but we are working on a new
00:59:15
version where we might have brightness and also RGB so you could have it for
00:59:21
like long press it turns into another um color so three times as much water
00:59:26
that day I would long press it yeah and you get it to be I would do extra super super tap I would love that yeah that's
00:59:32
fire all right Simone's gonna join us for some trivia we have some trivia Ellis and Adam have prepared trivia for this
00:59:39
episode oh question mark oh yeah oh yeah all right oh yeah
00:59:45
trivia time oh wow there's lights and everything yep so Simone earlier you
00:59:52
mentioned you are the owner of a Volvo in 1993 another Swedish car company Saab
00:59:59
we all know and love um as part of the European Prometheus project released a prototype of their
01:00:05
classic Model 9000. this car was noteworthy because it lacked a steering
01:00:11
wheel what what in 1993 no steering wheel what
01:00:17
method was used to control this car all right so we have the time to write
01:00:23
down on our whiteboards can I ask you to say that again
01:00:29
or like the part the part about the important bits yes in 1993 Saab released
01:00:34
a prototype car no steering wheel yeah how did you steer it
01:00:41
[Music]
01:00:48
all right I've written my answer yeah you've got your answer flip them around and read
01:00:55
I said by looking at the place you want to go that is a great answer though darn
01:01:01
what did you write I said joystick um I also would have accepted yoke I
01:01:07
could not find a definitive Source online for the difference between a joystick and a yoke
01:01:12
um agree I'm glad that you did it interesting I feel like a well I a yolk is like a
01:01:24
well no I guess it's not because the Yoke on an airplane has a steering wheel built in right it's like a half a wheel
01:01:29
yeah so I guess joystick is the only answer to this question this is is a straight up joystick with a little see
01:01:35
but it has a rotator knob on top oh my God that sounds terrible to drive that
01:01:41
does sound terrible actually also one more fun fact after you guys were having I had never seen Marquez ever admit that
01:01:48
gif is pronounced GIF but in researching it we did find
01:01:56
that in the original documentation of like the the GIF paper the gift paper
01:02:01
they they mentioned specifically the peanut butter company which is J which
01:02:07
is Jif and they said it's pronounced like the peanut butter and we found there was a marketing campaign when they
01:02:13
first put out this format um based on this classic uh peanut
01:02:19
butter ad just peanuts a ground even fired to get out all the flavorful goodness smell yours so not you smells
01:02:26
more like fresh peanuts taste it just tastes better really better choosy
01:02:32
mothers choose new gif and so their marketing campaign was choosy developers shoes
01:02:39
it just seems like a weird creative decision by the creator of gifts you
01:02:45
know like I said I'm always in Forever GIF sounds like it's up to it's up to the Creator I mean if you made the the
01:02:53
format you get to name it I mean granted my ancestors decided that
01:03:00
my last name spelled g-i-e-r-t-z was going to be pronounced yatch yeah so I
01:03:06
guess I'm kind of in that same boat or somebody do that so many times it was
01:03:11
one of the tougher I'm I'm trying to like phonetically Place g-i-e-r-t-z into yet in my head it
01:03:19
doesn't make and it's a stretch yeah it's tough Simone thank you for sending this our way I love it I appreciate it
01:03:25
and thanks for being on waveform yeah thank you so much for having me that was oddly terrifying yeah yeah the calendar
01:03:32
review not the rest of the podcast it is it was the best part yeah I'm gonna keep doing this over and over again just
01:03:41
so that's been it thank you again to Simone for jumping in to the podcast studio and it was a fun conversation I
01:03:47
think that was uh there's a lot of interesting points in there and obviously talking about YouTube you guys should go watch her videos if you
01:03:53
haven't already seen them if you got through this whole thing and haven't watched any of someone's videos go watch the how dare you we'll link them below
01:03:58
as well uh also you guys just got to watch the trivia but now that Andrew and David are back I think we should have
01:04:04
them attempt the same trivia question so let's do that I'm riding high after last
01:04:09
week I don't remember those new colors oh yeah you did well last week I did
01:04:15
yeah there are new colors they are new colors thank you for noticing I know that component and composite are
01:04:21
different things and I understand how they work unlike everybody else because I actually heard the long version well I
01:04:27
got the question more right so yeah but who's who's really winning here information or trivia points okay I'm
01:04:35
losing in both of those the overall Simone mentioned I don't know being a
01:04:40
Swedish car owner okay specifically a Volvo owner wait like a
01:04:46
okay okay yeah in 1993 another Swedish car company
01:04:51
Saab released a version of their classic Model 9000. Saab Saab this version of
01:04:59
the 9000 was noteworthy because it lacked a steering wheel
01:05:05
wow what was used to control the car instead holy moly
01:05:12
I I was feeling so confident I felt like I was like I know Volvo Swedish I know
01:05:17
Saab is Swedish we're going somewhere quickly we lost quickly now you're
01:05:22
exactly where I was I'm gonna probably answer exactly the same as marquette's answered and get it
01:05:29
wrong if I remember correctly because this is a few days later Mark has had a really silly answer to this question
01:05:35
well anything but a steering wheel is fairly silly so that's a great Point
01:05:40
ready what you got two correct answers boys joysticks I if
01:05:49
you go back to the camera I.E race at the end of the thing and like scribbled it in I wrote handles first handles yeah
01:05:56
I'm thinking of my zero zero turn what did you say Marquez
01:06:05
this one off the rail so fast thanks for watching thanks for listening thanks for subscribing thanks for hanging out with
01:06:12
us on the waveform podcast this week we'll catch you very soon in the next one waveform was produced by Adam Elaine
01:06:18
and Ellis rovin were partnered with Vox Community podcast Network and our interrupture music is created by vayne still peace
01:06:37
foreign

Episode Highlights

  • Interview with Simone Yetch
    Simone shares her journey as a YouTube creator and her innovative projects.
    “I've been watching your videos for a long time!”
    @ 02m 47s
    May 26, 2023
  • Creative Process Insights
    Simone reveals how the video aspect drives her creative projects.
    “The video aspect is the excuse to go down these build rabbit holes.”
    @ 04m 10s
    May 26, 2023
  • The Dual Nature of Projects
    Simone discusses how every project results in both a build and a video.
    “Every build has two outcomes: the build itself and the video.”
    @ 08m 11s
    May 26, 2023
  • The Evolution of YouTube Goals
    YouTube isn't the ultimate goal for many creators; it's a tool for bigger ambitions.
    “YouTube is not an end goal for me.”
    @ 22m 18s
    May 26, 2023
  • Pioneering a New Path
    Creators are navigating uncharted territory without a clear blueprint for the future.
    “There's no roadmap for what to do for the next 30 years.”
    @ 23m 40s
    May 26, 2023
  • Diversifying Business Ventures
    The importance of diversifying income sources and not relying solely on YouTube.
    “I need to diversify what my businesses are.”
    @ 39m 55s
    May 26, 2023
  • Typing Challenge
    Simone competes in a typing challenge, clocking in at 7 seconds flat!
    “Seven seconds flat puts you right in between Colin and Samir and Hank Green.”
    @ 47m 16s
    May 26, 2023
  • Dyson Zone Headphones Review
    Simone shares her first impressions of the Dyson Zone headphones, calling them heavy and ridiculous.
    “They look every bit of those 580 grams of heavy headphones.”
    @ 49m 08s
    May 26, 2023
  • Trivia Time
    Simone and the hosts engage in trivia about a car prototype without a steering wheel.
    “In 1993, Saab released a prototype car with no steering wheel!”
    @ 59m 59s
    May 26, 2023

Episode Quotes

  • The video aspect is the excuse to go down these build rabbit holes.
    Simone Giertz: EVs, Viral Robots, and Becoming a Product Designer
  • YouTube is not an end goal for me.
    Simone Giertz: EVs, Viral Robots, and Becoming a Product Designer
  • There's no roadmap for what to do for the next 30 years.
    Simone Giertz: EVs, Viral Robots, and Becoming a Product Designer
  • I need to diversify what my businesses are.
    Simone Giertz: EVs, Viral Robots, and Becoming a Product Designer
  • It's giving Tron!
    Simone Giertz: EVs, Viral Robots, and Becoming a Product Designer
  • What a weird thing!
    Simone Giertz: EVs, Viral Robots, and Becoming a Product Designer

Key Moments

  • Welcome Back00:05
  • Special Guest00:11
  • Innovative Projects01:22
  • Creative Process03:41
  • Emotional Journey07:46
  • Business Diversification39:55
  • Typing Challenge47:16
  • Trivia Time59:59

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown

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