Yeah, but the pie chart stayed fairly consistent. Like sponsorships made up a big portion. We started Hacks Without Store, I think in 2020 technically. And just last year now, it was actually, it accounted for 50% of our gross revenue. Wow. Which was truly incredible. And we're so grateful for that. It was a historically very bad year for YouTube views and sponsorship money. So it's not, it doesn't actually compare to some of our previous years, but it's definitely a good start. And the tricky thing with that is most of that came from the minisaver sales, which is incredible. But you can't expect to have outlier products all the time. So we recognize that this isn't like a permanent thing. We're going to keep selling it, obviously. But the demand isn't going to be like it was when we first sold it and whatnot. So for example, this year, ad revenue has been garbage. We've posted a lot of videos, gotten a lot less views. I'd say ad revenue in 2023 was probably like maybe 150 grand. Our monthly overhead is 300. it's not even enough to cover two weeks of existing well sponsorships certainly helped and last year it was actually the first time we we did a bit of engineering on the side um because people often ask like oh you guys must you must do something to make real, real people money, right? Like consulting, engineering, military contracts, you know, all these things. It's like, no, just YouTube. And most of the time it's because YouTube can be quite lucrative. Again, I talked about exponential success is great, but it also focuses in one area. So we would turn down smaller paying jobs and things because it didn't make sense when we could work on YouTube videos. But the problem is to start any new business, you got to start somewhere. so some of those small paying jobs it might not have been worth our time three years ago but they could have grown into a business yeah that could be even bigger than youtube today but because we were hyper focused just on youtube we were never able to take advantage of those opportunities and even now it's like it's very hard to we're very much up against the wall of having to make content just to exist and it's a really painful position to be in where it's like i want to just make what i feel like making and then there's a lot of doubt of like even if i went back fully to my roots i might still not be popular I might still not get views because YouTube's changed as a platform audience appetite for this kind of thing has changed yeah especially with being a channel that's been going on for nine years full-time your audience ages out and unless you're replacing that aging out audience with new audience that's why you'll see a lot of big channels start to slip and fail. Because they've either tried doing something else because they were tired of whatever they were doing, but they don't find the same success doing it. And then it feels like a very slippery slope when the YouTube algorithm notices. It's just like, well, your videos haven't been getting many views. We're going to show them to less people. And that's the fear I live with every day, not knowing what our future has in store on YouTube. And that's why we're trying to build up Paxman at Store and other businesses that can help be more like

a brick and mortar kind of like solid sustainable thing so many takeaways from that like one I think like when you're building a company as a youtuber sometimes the work that you resist like for me like you know I want to just focus on the videos but we get a lot of consulting work and agency work and I'm like you know what for the exact same reason that you said, like, I should keep diversifying the business, because the videos and the sponsorships, you know, that could go up and down. And so I mean, I got to give credit to my wife and business partner, Amanda, who's like, okay, let's keep growing the consulting side while we grow the video side and invest in that. So we have something going. But the other thing that I want to dive into in terms of your business is the sponsorshipships and then the products, because I think you're doing things that are so innovative there that, again, so many YouTubers can learn from. because it to me seems like such a win-win that like if there's a movie that's in production for three four years something like that like ahead of time that there's at least some kind of conversation with the billions of views that you've gotten of hey let's have the hacksmith make an item from this movie ahead of time and then line it up with the trailer release like youtube is a bigger part of the strategy studios do you find that's happening or do you find they're still stuck in the stone ages

it it does feel like youtube is still the last platform companies

think about um so

what we find usually is when we do work with movie studios and we've worked with probably dozens over the years um is it's in that last like month to weeks before the movie comes out and it's almost as if all right whatever whatever we can dredge out of the advertising budget that we haven't spent yet let's throw it at youtube and the problem with our projects especially is they take a lot longer so a great example is the the bulletproof john wick suit We started that project as a passion project. We plan to release it near John Wick four, because that's an easy way to kind of capitalize on SEO and people already searching for John Wick and whatnot. Um, and in the middle of that, I actually, I took my break and I stepped back from YouTube and we put it on the back burner. And then the movie was coming up. It was closer. It was closer. And I'm like, no, I don't feel like finishing it. And then two weeks before the movie comes out, the production company that made John Wick 4 reaches out and they're like, you know what would be really cool? Can you make a bulletproof Kevlar suit in two weeks and post it in two weeks and the approvals our legal department all that and i was like well you're lucky i've actually spent the past two years doing this and it it worked out but obviously that's not an ideal way to do it yeah um and the only reason that video did so well is because in the video you can see how much work we put in yeah because the reality is in another another timeline alternate dimension i didn't make the suit but they reached out and were like respond to this i'm like i got you fam go to the suit store buy a suit go to wherever you would buy a bulletproof vest from, take some scissors, cut it open, sew it inside the suit, bada bang, call it a day. I would have achieved the same goal of making a bulletproof suit, but that's an extremely low effort video, and there's no way that video would have done nearly as well. We went to the gun range dozens of times because we actually developed our own composites, working with manufacturers who make the materials used for bulletproof vests and whatnot, and then the actual tailoring of the suit I think was a solid two months of work. If I had to guess, the suit probably cost over $50,000 to make, not including materials, because we actually worked with those companies and they gave us some materials for free. And the other issue we have is, yes, we've worked with all these production companies. We've only worked with one person at these movie studios. And there is such big companies. And sometimes it's actually an external agency. So just because we've worked with Warner Brothers before, we've worked with 20th century before it doesn't mean we work with and i don't know what level of connection you need to get to where either i know someone high up and it's just like this is a goal like the hacksmith is involved with every every project every movie release or something i don't know i don't know how to get into the right room yeah where i could meet those people and because it really is a match made in heaven and we could do some really incredible things that could potentially really bolster movies especially like with the example the john wick video it did 10 million views in one week in the same amount of time the movie did 140 million at the box office if you take an average ticket price of about 10 bucks everything with inflation that's 14 million views yeah so we were almost one-to parody with hollywood with a 200 million dollar budget movie yeah ours was free to watch obviously yeah but i'm sure that video took some fans who are like maybe i'll see it too oh you know what i'm gonna go see that and i think there's so much value there and i would love to get a better relationship with all the big movie companies out there um because it would also allow us to focus on some of these really cool projects that i'm passionate about because doing all this is because i love movies like i'm a huge movie buff obviously i love the superhero genre and i've kind of built up this persona of the hacksmith is kind of being this real life tony stark macgyver captain america batman right you name it kind of kind of character and i

think that the two things from that on the sponsor side and the fact there's turnover i think for any creator like we see that as well we have relation with the brand managers not just the brands and whenever you get that dreaded out of office message you know when you follow up you're like oh my god they don't work at the company anymore i don't know if this is just us thing but uh one tip perhaps for other creators is that we send like our recap report that we sent after a brand dealer sponsorship to the other folks who may have been on the thread and just say hey like we saw that this person like had a bounce back message i don't know if they're working at the company anymore but uh here are some of the results of the past campaigns we love to work with you guys moving forward yeah um it just plants the seed because like there's always movement rotation um and then i'll also add the brand manager who left that company on linkedin just so they could keep us in mind for future stuff um but it's funny to hear it in your situation because i think you represent the extremes that we could still learn from because i also think about that captain america wakanda shield that correct me if I'm wrong. You made that from just watching three seconds of a trailer, like no heads up from the studio. And then you went into a year of making that product. I don't think it took that long. That was probably only a few months, a few months, but you're studying the frames from the trailer because you have no other source material. I know Marvel is big, but still, they have a marketing budget and dedicating it to... Yeah, I'd be happy to sign any NDAs if I got to see movies earlier.

Lately, I've found, at least on my Instagram following, which is about a million, I get invited to movie premieres in Toronto. I don't get paid for it, but I love going to movies. And it's an early screening of the movie. I'm like, I'm down. Yeah. I love going to the theater. Yeah. And even just putting a creator in the room

or somebody creative, I feel like there's untold possibilities of what seeing something will trigger in terms of what you make either as a product or a video, which I think is so

inspiring i mean that's the other thing like um for any of these big movies that we've made projects from especially the lightsaber yeah i would roll out the red carpet for any actor from any of the star wars movies if they wanted to drop by oh my god with a real lightsaber yeah and i guarantee they'd have an amazing day yeah but um those people is really hard to do. And I'm sure some of them have stumbled across a video on YouTube and maybe have seen this. But they might not know that I would literally roll out the red carpet for them. I'd show them a great time and let them play with a lightsaber or whatever else. But it's so hard to reach people in Hollywood because there's basically walls of people whose sole job is almost to block you from connecting with these people. You got your managers, your agents and all that stuff. So that's definitely a big pain point, too, where it's just like i'm not some crazy fan who just wants to meet you for meeting you it's like no i made something from a movie which i think you like because you're in the movie and you've do you want to see it in real life like for example the power loader i'd love to get sigourney weaver here like she's she's getting a bit old she's in her 70s but you drove it yesterday oh yeah i bet she could beat you so yeah she would kick my ass and same thing with like james cameron like the guy in his spare time uses a submarine to visit the mariana's trench he is an eccentric billionaire and he obviously loves mechs because in avatar there's a mech and aliens they had the power loader and whatnot i like to think he probably hasn't seen it because that seems like a no-brainer to me yeah why wouldn't you want to see a real life mech where else can you see that you know so if anyone's watching who has

james cameron's phone number let me know do you feel like being based out of canada just outside of toronto versus in los angeles or new York, like plays a role in that. I'm curious because I bet there's people listening to this. I grew up in Chicago and I was like, you know what, like, like LA is where I need to be to, you know, grow my career as a creator. Maybe I was wrong, but you've done it outside of Toronto. Yet hearing you say a lot of these things is interesting. Do you feel like your location plays any role in that as a creator? Yeah,

I feel like doing what we do, being in LA would probably make things a bit easier. Every now and then I do get invited to premieres and things in LA, and I can't always say yes because it's a long way from here. And especially for A-list celebrities and whoever else, time is money and no one has time. Like, it takes a lot of effort to fly across the country to do this thing or whatever. So I think it probably would be a lot easier. But you saw Herc. Oh,

yeah. This

is an experience like this doesn't exist anywhere else um so i'd love to have the opportunity to show some people and it's it has nothing to do with oh you're famous i want to meet you i want your out there's none of that it's like i really respect what you've done yeah i respect your talent the things you've been involved with and i would love to share what i've done that's connected to you yeah i mean if it blew my mind to hold the lightsaber that

you made i can't imagine what

i can just imagine like seeing mark hamill's face light up yeah would be incredible that would be like a memory for a lifetime i'm putting

it