00:00:00 ◼ ► Welcome back to Cortex. In this episode of the State of the Workflow series, I'm joined
00:00:05 ◼ ► by Marques Brownlee. Marques has been producing tech-focused videos on his YouTube channel MKBHD
00:00:11 ◼ ► for over 17 years and now sits at over 20 million subscribers. Marques' product reviews are an
00:00:18 ◼ ► incredibly important part of the launch of many consumer tech products. Over the course of this
00:00:24 ◼ ► series so far, there's been a thread that keeps popping up that is of great interest to me and I'm
00:00:29 ◼ ► focusing on it more and more and that is the idea of influence. The people that I've gotten to speak
00:00:34 ◼ ► to, they're all very influential in the worlds in which they operate in, whether that's amongst the
00:00:38 ◼ ► audience that they've made for themselves or outwardly with the companies that they cover.
00:00:42 ◼ ► And for me, in the world of consumer technology, there is nobody more influential than Marques
00:00:48 ◼ ► Brownlee. What Marques thinks matters. And I want to know what goes into making these videos. How does
00:00:57 ◼ ► Marques structure his opinions? How does he produce videos consistently at the quality that he does?
00:01:02 ◼ ► How has his team grown to help him do it? And also how someone of his notoriety, his fame,
00:01:07 ◼ ► his success continues to operate online. But before we get to the interview, I want to mention for the
00:01:14 ◼ ► last time that you can get 20% off an annual MoreTech subscription by going to getmoretext.com and using
00:01:21 ◼ ► 2025Holidays at checkout. So if you stop right now and go sign up, you'll get the entire conversation with
00:01:27 ◼ ► no advertising interruptions. That's getmoretext.com and use the code 2025Holidays at checkout. But I'll
00:01:38 ◼ ► Okay, Marques, I want to get started by asking a question I ask everybody who comes on the show.
00:01:48 ◼ ► I think the answer is just my laptop. Okay. I used to be a like multiple computers in multiple
00:01:57 ◼ ► places person like more than I am now. But now I use my laptop a lot in a bunch of different places to
00:02:03 ◼ ► get like real work done. I mean, the real answer is my phone. Like I need my to do list app everywhere
00:02:08 ◼ ► I go and all the time. But I think my laptop has been a nice bonus for a lot of that stuff, too.
00:02:16 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah. It's right in front of me. So you can't see it. But this is the 14 inch M4 Max.
00:02:22 ◼ ► M4 Max. Okay. And are you using that computer docked to your workstation? Are you still using a
00:02:35 ◼ ► I dock this to my monitor. On the go, I just use it like a laptop. And so the one other computer that
00:02:44 ◼ ► You would think. I mean, it's doing fine. They haven't updated it since M2 Ultra. So it's the
00:02:51 ◼ ► Ultra. It has all the GPU cores. It's great for video editing. Like if I swapped that M2 Ultra out for
00:02:56 ◼ ► this M4 Max, I would be gaining in some single core and some smaller stuff, but it would be probably
00:03:03 ◼ ► slower to video edit. So I keep it for video editing because that's what it's good for. But it's also
00:03:11 ◼ ► pretty clear that Apple's not going to stick around with updating Mac Pro for very much longer. So I
00:03:20 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, even if you went to a Mac Studio, but I'm sure with the laptop too now, it must be
00:03:26 ◼ ► Because I remember I saw you on the street once in San Jose waiting for an Uber and you had like
00:03:33 ◼ ► six suitcases around you. And like one of them was a huge Pelican case, which I think you used to carry
00:03:41 ◼ ► You looked like a man who had been through a tough time. You know, you're really getting ready to leave
00:03:51 ◼ ► So for this episode, I want to take a look at your workflow for video production. And I think
00:03:56 ◼ ► maybe the video that is potentially the most important of the year that you do is maybe your
00:04:02 ◼ ► iPhone review. So I kind of want to take it as a look through that. At least in views, it tends to
00:04:06 ◼ ► be the most consistent to be way up there for you in a year. I don't know, unless it's a new PlayStation
00:04:11 ◼ ► or whatever. I can sometimes do the thing. So I want to start at the very beginning. So you've just
00:04:16 ◼ ► been to the event, right? So you've seen it, you've seen what Apple's got to show, you know,
00:04:20 ◼ ► you're going for briefings that day. How soon from seeing what the iPhone's going to be,
00:04:26 ◼ ► do you have ideas that start popping up in your head for what the shape of the review could be?
00:04:34 ◼ ► I was going to say sometimes it's before. Yeah. Like there's only so much that changes every year
00:04:38 ◼ ► with the phone, but telling the story of how it got to where it is, sometimes the storylines are
00:04:43 ◼ ► developing before the device even gets unveiled. So yeah, sometimes before, sometimes there's leaks,
00:04:54 ◼ ► what will Apple's response be? That's interesting sometimes too. But yeah, pretty soon, you know,
00:04:58 ◼ ► they get on stage, they start crafting the Apple narrative. You hear about the way they frame
00:05:02 ◼ ► things. That's interesting to listen to. Yeah. And then, yeah, that's where the ideas start coming
00:05:07 ◼ ► from. Do you usually get devices quite soon after you've seen them the first time? Like
00:05:11 ◼ ► in average that, you know, and I'm sure like, I know Samsung kind of sometimes give people devices
00:05:16 ◼ ► beforehand or access beforehand. Yeah. Does this kind of timing affect the way you think about the
00:05:21 ◼ ► reviews? A little bit. Since you're talking about the iPhone review, Apple is basically the last big
00:05:26 ◼ ► company in this space that does not pre-brief on devices. So when the device gets unveiled on stage,
00:05:35 ◼ ► everyone is learning about it at the same time, basically. Yeah. And then yes, sometime between
00:05:44 ◼ ► And I guess it makes it either easier or harder depending on how much time you have, right?
00:05:49 ◼ ► Because the embargoes are pretty, you know, they're close, like it tends to be like a week or two,
00:05:57 ◼ ► Oh, barely. It's usually not even a week for the iPhone. It's usually like four or five days. Yeah.
00:06:01 ◼ ► So like with all this stuff, this is kind of like, you know, tech companies, especially Apple,
00:06:05 ◼ ► they announce things on a similar cadence, right? So, you know, you roughly know when it's going to be.
00:06:10 ◼ ► The exact timing of all of these things can be variable. And this time of year, September,
00:06:15 ◼ ► October, you know, the two month span of Tech-temper, lots of stuff is happening. Does it become
00:06:21 ◼ ► hard for you and the studio team to try and plan what you're going to be producing and what the
00:06:30 ◼ ► I don't think so. I think what happens is during the rest of the year in January, February, March,
00:06:36 ◼ ► all the like quieter months where we have a little bit more flexibility and a little bit more time,
00:06:40 ◼ ► the way I've described it is that is like when we're playing with our processes and production
00:06:46 ◼ ► the most. That's when we try new things. That's when we add stuff, subtract stuff, see how it goes.
00:06:51 ◼ ► And then once we get to September, October, that's kind of like the playoffs. Like if you're
00:06:58 ◼ ► a sports team in this analogy, you're no longer like getting better at the sport or learning new
00:07:03 ◼ ► strategies. You're just locking in what you've been learning all year and executing on it as best
00:07:08 ◼ ► you can, because that's your plan. And I think that's kind of how it goes here. Like we know
00:07:12 ◼ ► what's going to come out with these typical releases every year. We know there's not too many surprises,
00:07:19 ◼ ► so we can kind of plan for most of it. And then we just go in and we just execute, execute,
00:07:25 ◼ ► You're not going to come up with a new technology workflow, adding a new piece of equipment in the
00:07:32 ◼ ► Like I would assume that there is a, whether it's hard or fast, not, you kind of have like
00:07:42 ◼ ► When you get a new phone, what are the first things that you start doing with it to get a
00:07:48 ◼ ► feel for it? Like to get your first impressions? Like, do you have a set of tests that you do or do you
00:07:55 ◼ ► That is basically all I do is integrate it into my life. So I've done the setup process and the like
00:08:01 ◼ ► getting moving into a phone, if you will, so many times. Maybe you get some like information about it,
00:08:06 ◼ ► like a review bullet list or something like that from the company. They'll tell you like what's new
00:08:10 ◼ ► about it and you can pay attention to that. But basically, yeah, I unbox it. I pay attention to
00:08:15 ◼ ► what's in the setup process. Sometimes there's new software features and they like highlight that
00:08:19 ◼ ► there. And then you move into the phone. You don't really get to start evaluating battery life until
00:08:25 ◼ ► maybe two or three days in, but you pretty quickly get to start playing with new features, seeing how
00:08:30 ◼ ► well things work or don't taking lots of pictures and videos of the cameras are new and just living with
00:08:40 ◼ ► I get my SIM card in it right away. And when you start to find things that it doesn't do
00:08:44 ◼ ► very well, that maybe other phones did well, because it's my main device, then I'm like,
00:08:50 ◼ ► all right, can I use a workaround? Are there other things that this phone can do that maybe make up
00:08:54 ◼ ► for the fact that it's bad at this thing that I wanted it to do well? All these other little
00:09:07 ◼ ► The more I hear about TickTick, it's like it actually has everything. It's like it's its own
00:09:11 ◼ ► operating system. It seems like one of these like Chinese super apps or something. It's just,
00:09:19 ◼ ► You know, I have cars that I'm actively reviewing. I have like phones I'm actively reviewing. And anytime I
00:09:24 ◼ ► have any thought about them, I'll just open it and jot it down real quick, just to make sure I don't
00:09:28 ◼ ► lose it or forget it. And yeah, eventually I have enough notes and enough thoughts that I can form a
00:09:34 ◼ ► coherent review slash story or whatever it is. Do you have an entry in TickTick for each distinct
00:09:40 ◼ ► product? Or are you just throwing them all into one spot? I am for each product. Each product has a
00:09:45 ◼ ► note. And then each note is a bunch of text, a blob of text. And TickTick, I guess, is important to
00:09:50 ◼ ► you as I imagine a lot of software is if it's multi-platform because you're moving around
00:09:55 ◼ ► everywhere all the time, all different platforms. I imagine that's actually quite important for your
00:10:00 ◼ ► workflow. Yeah. Whatever device I'm using, I need to be able to just pull up the notes and draft
00:10:07 ◼ ► something in there, drop some text in real quick. Yeah. What are the most frustrating parts about
00:10:12 ◼ ► switching phone to phone? Because I mean, I guess it's kind of funny really where you mentioned
00:10:17 ◼ ► there are frustrations. I expect people think like, oh, Marcus just gets to use whatever phone
00:10:22 ◼ ► he wants. But I guess it's not always like that for you, right? You have to use whatever the one
00:10:26 ◼ ► you're testing is, whether that's the phone you want to use or not. So I can imagine that's a
00:10:31 ◼ ► frustration. What are the other kinds of frustrations that you run into when you're testing stuff out?
00:10:35 ◼ ► There are such specific like tech reviewer complaints that I have. Like I'll be reviewing
00:10:40 ◼ ► a phone and I'm four days in and I'm finishing up my thoughts. And then there's a major software update
00:10:46 ◼ ► that changes a bunch of stuff that I now have to go back and relearn and retest. That's kind of
00:10:50 ◼ ► frustrating. I also know that, you know, battery life is not really, you can kind of scientifically
00:10:58 ◼ ► test it, but there's so many reasons why so many battery benchmarks are flawed. That is frustrating
00:11:04 ◼ ► to me. Like I kind of just have to go by how well it sustains my lifestyle. And that's my only
00:11:08 ◼ ► benchmark. I like your, your kind of benchmark is screen on time, right? Like I hear you reference
00:11:13 ◼ ► that a lot. And I think, you know, I actually don't care about how many hours I can watch uninterrupted
00:11:18 ◼ ► video. Like Sam, it's just not a thing I ever do. So like, I'm fine with that, you know, like I don't
00:11:24 ◼ ► need to know that. So like screen on time, I think is a pretty good, that's the thing we can all
00:11:28 ◼ ► understand. I think people sometimes get a little, even too granular with it. Like when I'm reviewing a
00:11:33 ◼ ► device and I'm, you know, obviously some people want to know the exact specifics, but it's like
00:11:36 ◼ ► either the battery life is good or it's bad or it's meh. And there's kind of this gradient in
00:11:45 ◼ ► between where you can get really nitpicky over like, Oh, I got seven hours and 37 minutes on this phone.
00:11:49 ◼ ► And I got seven hours and 12 minutes on this other phone. So this one phone is slightly better.
00:11:53 ◼ ► That doesn't make a big difference to me. I just want to know if it's good or not good. Like I'm using
00:11:59 ◼ ► this phone right now, the one plus 15 and without giving you like benchmarks or any like nitty gritty,
00:12:05 ◼ ► if I say to you that it's 10 AM and I've used this phone for an hour already and it has 97% battery
00:12:11 ◼ ► left, that's all I have to say. That's all I have to say, right? I don't have to get into the exact
00:12:16 ◼ ► nitty gritty and the details of my benchmark results. It's like, this is a really good battery life on a
00:12:20 ◼ ► phone period. So that's kind of how I like to look at battery. I guess looking at your reviews in
00:12:25 ◼ ► general, you are not a speeds and feeds guy, right? Like that is not really your approach to
00:12:32 ◼ ► reviewing technology anyway. It's rare to see a chart in an MKBHD video, right? Is that because
00:12:39 ◼ ► that's what you care about? Or is it just what you think is best to approach from your content? Like
00:12:43 ◼ ► why do we not see cyberpunk benchmarks on your pro videos or whatever? You know, it's useful sometimes.
00:12:50 ◼ ► But again, I think if you're looking at the, especially what sort of audience you're talking
00:12:55 ◼ ► to, I'm talking to obviously a bunch of people who are thinking about buying this device, but I'm also
00:13:00 ◼ ► talking to a bunch of people who are just watching this for entertainment and have no intention of
00:13:03 ◼ ► buying the device and a sort of a broader audience. And the challenge in speaking to both is not losing
00:13:08 ◼ ► one of them. And I think I could easily do a bunch of benchmarks and a bunch of extremely specific
00:13:13 ◼ ► comparisons and give you those charts. And that would be very useful for the people who are about to buy
00:13:19 ◼ ► the device. But I would lose a lot of people who were never going to do that in the first place.
00:13:23 ◼ ► And on the other side of that, I could give you a bunch of extremely broad, yeah, battery's good,
00:13:32 ◼ ► So trying to, you know, speak to both groups is a pretty specific writing challenge, I think.
00:13:37 ◼ ► But yeah, I think a lot of those charts, I try to use them sparingly because sometimes they're
00:13:43 ◼ ► useful to give context on something, but sometimes they're just a little unnecessarily granular. And
00:13:51 ◼ ► You mentioned it's a writing challenge. Your reviews do not feel like they are being read
00:13:57 ◼ ► aloud. They feel very much like you were just talking. How much writing goes into an MKBHD review?
00:14:04 ◼ ► Yeah, this is a learned skill, a very developed skill. I write 90 something percent of what you're hearing
00:14:12 ◼ ► me say. You know, the way it's delivered is sometimes a little bit wandering around what
00:14:17 ◼ ► I've written, but I've written everything. Like I have a whole bunch of things that I need to say,
00:14:21 ◼ ► and especially in the order that I want to say them so that it flows and that it moves from point
00:14:25 ◼ ► to point to point. But, you know, in talking to the camera, there are ways to make it feel like it's
00:14:32 ◼ ► not just me reading from a teleprompter or whatever. Some people are really good at that,
00:14:36 ◼ ► by the way. I'm terrible at it. But I have my notes like in my lap and I'm reading them. Okay.
00:14:41 ◼ ► Knowing like how that feels and how I want to say that and then delivering it. And sometimes you can
00:14:46 ◼ ► go a little bit off script because there's something I remember in the moment or something I want to
00:14:53 ◼ ► So you're essentially line reading as it were. Essentially. Yeah. Or it's like, it's not even
00:14:58 ◼ ► line reading. It's like paragraph reading where like I have five sentences I want to say. And even
00:15:05 ◼ ► if I don't say it word for word, exactly the way I wrote it down, as long as I deliver the points and
00:15:11 ◼ ► the emphasis and the reason for me saying it success. You do a lot of takes less than I used to. I got
00:15:17 ◼ ► better at it. But it's definitely I think the ratio most people who make videos might understand is
00:15:22 ◼ ► like for a 12 minute review, there's probably about 45 to 60 minutes of a roll. Okay. So that's just you
00:15:31 ◼ ► speaking into the camera. It's about four or five times the amount of what will the runtime of the
00:15:36 ◼ ► video or not even the amount of stuff I'm saying. But like from when I start recording to when I stop
00:15:41 ◼ ► recording is like 60 minutes. And that is how long it took me to get all the takes I want for the
00:15:47 ◼ ► 10 minute video. Do you have people in the room with you kind of like listening and producing from
00:15:52 ◼ ► that respect? Yeah. Newly this year just to have like, because we want to make sure I'm not going
00:15:58 ◼ ► too far off script or riffing or like missing numbers. You have someone in the room to make
00:16:02 ◼ ► sure like they're looking at what I wrote. And if I say a number wrong in the take, I might not process
00:16:07 ◼ ► that. But that's at least a second set of eyes that can be like, oh, you actually said 12 and a half,
00:16:12 ◼ ► not 10 and a half. Just to make sure you say that again. Was there something that happened that made
00:16:16 ◼ ► you do that? Or was that just a change that you wanted to make? That's just like having higher
00:16:19 ◼ ► standards for quality control in general, like lots of feedback on like, we want things to be as accurate
00:16:24 ◼ ► as possible. And so do I. So like, that was a good way to get ahead of some stuff that I can't like
00:16:28 ◼ ► fix and post. Is it weird to have someone watching you? Yes. Especially if you're doing it for so long
00:16:34 ◼ ► on your own, right? Where you're like, all right, gang, I'm going in here and you just closed the
00:16:38 ◼ ► door. But now you've got someone, you've got a one audience member, which is about the worst amount
00:16:42 ◼ ► of audience. Yeah. It's so true. Yeah. Yeah. You get used to it. There are certain things you never
00:16:48 ◼ ► really fully get used to as a video creator. One is hearing your own voice while you're editing in
00:16:54 ◼ ► your headphones like that. You never really fully get used to that. You don't edit the podcast,
00:16:58 ◼ ► right? No, no. That will get you used to it. Really? Okay. You just waterboarded with your
00:17:03 ◼ ► own voice. Yes. Like you're just forced. There's no way you're not getting used to that. Like if you,
00:17:08 ◼ ► you know, like you're into hour two of just you talking, like that would do it. Dang. Yeah. I mean,
00:17:13 ◼ ► I've definitely edited many, many hours of my own voice, but I suppose a podcast is a great way to
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00:19:22 ◼ ► Like obviously you started doing this on your own, right? Like, and you've scaled up to the point where
00:19:27 ◼ ► you have a whole team in your studio. Setting up for the A-roll. Are you still setting that up or
00:19:32 ◼ ► involved in that setup? Or do you have members of the team who are going in there and set dressing,
00:19:38 ◼ ► setting up the camera, setting up the microphone and stuff? A little bit of both. So some of it can
00:19:42 ◼ ► be directed, but a lot of it is also taste. So like I have a look that I want. If I have a look
00:19:47 ◼ ► for a review or whatever video I'm making, that I can do the skeleton of it, of like dropping the camera
00:19:52 ◼ ► on the tripod in place and like where I want our key to be and what the background is. And then,
00:19:56 ◼ ► you know, they can easily fill in the blanks of like set design or microphone placement or like where
00:20:02 ◼ ► the foam behind the microphone is to make sure it sounds better than a big empty room. Things
00:20:07 ◼ ► like that. So yeah, those, the, the like ratio of how much gets done by me versus the team varies
00:20:13 ◼ ► per video, but there's definitely like a taste part. I assume this is a similar thing with editing,
00:20:18 ◼ ► right? Like, I guess it depends on the project as to how much of it you're going to touch.
00:20:21 ◼ ► Exactly. So there's me and Mariah is the other editor on the team for the MKBHD channel videos.
00:20:27 ◼ ► And it will typically be spearheaded like primarily by one of us. So if Mariah doesn't edit,
00:20:34 ◼ ► I may give notes on the last 20% of it, you know, it's not like I edited it, but I had some input
00:20:41 ◼ ► or if I'm editing something, then I'll just take it from start to finish and then I'll pass it on to the
00:20:46 ◼ ► team to take a look at. And if they have extra things they think would make it better than they can add
00:20:54 ◼ ► And then I'm assuming you also have people who help out with all the other various things like
00:21:03 ◼ ► I'm assuming this slows your process down a lot compared to when you did it on your own.
00:21:12 ◼ ► Yeah. And that's a sacrifice that you have to take a balance of. Like you can go all the way to the
00:21:20 ◼ ► extreme of like 20, 30 people touch every video and edit things and work on things. And then it takes a
00:21:27 ◼ ► long time, but you can make an amazing product and an amazing video out of that. We do have several
00:21:33 ◼ ► people touch each video. Like sometimes there's motion graphics. Sometimes there's audio stuff.
00:21:37 ◼ ► Sometimes it's just me and I just take a video from A to B and it's over. But I think, yeah,
00:21:41 ◼ ► we can make better videos with more help, but we don't want it to take too long, obviously.
00:21:45 ◼ ► There is a balance to all this stuff, right? Like you could make like the most perfect YouTube video,
00:21:50 ◼ ► but then maybe you make one video every 18 months. Are you producing like weekly videos? Like what,
00:21:55 ◼ ► do you have like a cadence for the main channel? Like how many videos you produce in a year?
00:21:59 ◼ ► Yeah. It's, it's feels like it's about one to two per week. I think this year it's a little
00:22:09 ◼ ► Probably one and a half a week. Yeah. Like with shorts now, there's a little bit of an extra
00:22:15 ◼ ► X factor in there because we can kind of just have an idea and drop something at this drop of a hat.
00:22:29 ◼ ► To the business? No. To maybe specifically content strategy and visibility of the channel and just
00:22:38 ◼ ► overall, like obviously they get a lot of views and sometimes you can sort of use that as like the
00:22:45 ◼ ► top of the funnel to get more people to subscribe and watch long form. But it's hardly substantial to
00:22:51 ◼ ► Yeah. I just had Hank Green on the show and he basically just said those views, he just doesn't
00:22:57 ◼ ► even consider them real. Yeah. Like he does them and he, he figures there's a benefit, but just like
00:23:01 ◼ ► they're almost kind of fake at a point with the shorts views. Very hard to quantify compared to the main
00:23:07 ◼ ► kind of regular video views. Yeah. There's like a scale of like one YouTube view equals
00:23:12 ◼ ► 30 TikTok views equals 300 YouTube shorts views. Yeah. They're not worth the same. That's for sure.
00:23:20 ◼ ► Obviously a big part of your review videos are the incredibly elaborate and cool intros that you do
00:23:27 ◼ ► as part of them. Are you involved in this part too? It seems like there's like a multi-person
00:23:38 ◼ ► Yeah. So I think generally we want the sort of cinematic intros to set the stage for either
00:23:46 ◼ ► the story or whatever's happening in the rest of the review. And so no matter how much I'm involved,
00:23:53 ◼ ► sometimes I'm involved like minimally just in a little bit of direction and then the team can spin
00:23:59 ◼ ► it up and go. Sometimes I'm like really heavily involved, but the main point of like making those
00:24:05 ◼ ► successful is we have some story or something that we want to say and this intro supports that.
00:24:13 ◼ ► So yeah, it'll be like, all right, do we have an intro we want to make for this review here? This
00:24:18 ◼ ► OnePlus 15? Yeah, actually, you know, it would be nice if we kind of set the stage with like how
00:24:22 ◼ ► overwhelmingly different and how much stuff there is going on with this phone. And then we kind of
00:24:26 ◼ ► brainstorm a little bit on how we want that to go for that particular video. There was a lot of back
00:24:31 ◼ ► and forth because we wanted to like fill up the screen with as much stuff as possible because
00:24:35 ◼ ► there's a lot of new stuff. So yeah, it's a lot of communication. It's a fun process, but it usually
00:24:41 ◼ ► Do you have a lot of creative meetings as a team? Are they like ad hoc or fixed or a big mixture of
00:24:48 ◼ ► They're super ad hoc. It's like somebody walks up to somebody at their desk and then they just sit
00:24:54 ◼ ► We're all in the same room, essentially, like a studio is one big open space. So anyone can work
00:25:00 ◼ ► with anyone on anything at any time, which is awesome. And it just means like, yeah, if somebody
00:25:05 ◼ ► has an idea, they walk up to my desk and be like, hey, here's an idea. And I go, ooh, and I start writing
00:25:11 ◼ ► it down on the whiteboard. I'm like, yeah, actually, we can work with that. Let's try that. And then we
00:25:16 ◼ ► Talking about the space and the people in it, like when you started out, obviously your channel was just you
00:25:20 ◼ ► and it was just you for a really long time. And then you hired your producer, Andrew, and then it
00:25:24 ◼ ► kind of was off to the races. And how many people are now working for the MKBHD empire?
00:25:42 ◼ ► Well, I think everyone feels that in some way, just because it's like, I think my expertise is still
00:25:48 ◼ ► in reviewing tech content strategy, you know, being in the mix and like YouTube and tech and stuff like
00:25:55 ◼ ► that. My expertise is not in being a manager or being a boss or a business expert or anything like
00:26:02 ◼ ► that. I went to business school, but it's like, this isn't my expertise, clearly. So there is some
00:26:08 ◼ ► amount of pressure in trying to run an operation that is fair and generous and equitable and useful.
00:26:18 ◼ ► and all these other things that are not necessarily the primary focus of the business. So
00:26:27 ◼ ► I think no. I think that's one of the things I've gotten to offset with people who are way better at
00:26:34 ◼ ► It's a skill and not everybody has it. And lots of people don't want it. Like it's hard. It's really
00:26:39 ◼ ► hard. Like when you're trying to work with people's needs and interpersonal stuff and like,
00:26:45 ◼ ► it's difficult and not everybody has the patience or skill or mind for that kind of thing. Especially
00:26:54 ◼ ► Yeah. I'm not going to be the best in the world at that. I can promise I'll be as good as I can in
00:26:58 ◼ ► other things, but it's like, we should probably just have someone who's good at that. Yeah, exactly.
00:27:18 ◼ ► I actually think I probably am in every video on every channel, but to different degrees.
00:27:24 ◼ ► I think it kind of is just an audience expectation thing for different channels. There are different
00:27:30 ◼ ► things that you go to that channel for. For the MKBHD channel, you're here for my opinions on tech,
00:27:35 ◼ ► more or less. And so I am the host. I'm the person talking to you on camera for the waveform podcast.
00:27:41 ◼ ► Okay. It's obviously a podcast. It's more of a chat show. Like all of us are on camera.
00:27:44 ◼ ► And then for the studio, there's all the people at the studio. So sometimes I'm there. Sometimes I'm
00:27:48 ◼ ► hosting. Sometimes I'm one of several hosts. Like there's a big variety there. Autofocus is
00:27:54 ◼ ► miles and I and thoughts on cars. So like I'm in everyone miles is in a lot of them. Like we have
00:28:00 ◼ ► different levels of collaboration on that. And all this is still variable too. Like we're figuring out
00:28:05 ◼ ► what works on different channels, but yeah, I think it's audience expectation that drives most of like
00:28:26 ◼ ► Oh, definitely. It is infinitely easier to work with people in person in this collaborative
00:28:44 ◼ ► Yeah. Like creatively, there's a lot of back and forth too. Like when you're sort of molding an idea
00:28:50 ◼ ► or trying to think of a way that you can portray something. Like there is often a lot of
00:28:55 ◼ ► people tossing ideas into a pot and stirring it around and pulling things out. And that
00:29:04 ◼ ► I'm assuming you still use collaboration software though, even if you're all in the same spot. What
00:29:12 ◼ ► Yeah. Okay. So I guess the big one is Notion. And the other big one is just Google Docs.
00:29:21 ◼ ► So anytime there's a video document or a script or whatever, all of that is put into a Google Docs that
00:29:27 ◼ ► several people can look at and add suggestions to and jump into there. And that's kind of the only
00:29:34 ◼ ► two big ones. Everyone uses email and Slack, obviously. But like as far as creative collaboration,
00:29:42 ◼ ► Do you have someone kind of managing the Notion? Like, is there like someone in charge of making
00:29:53 ◼ ► It probably shouldn't. Like, I'm the one who made the templates and who's like kind of building the
00:29:58 ◼ ► structure of like what pages we use for certain projects. But yeah, I wish I didn't have to spend
00:30:03 ◼ ► I mean, that feels like something that you set up. So it's the way that you want it to run. But
00:30:10 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, at the beginning of each year, like you said, we kind of like mess with things
00:30:13 ◼ ► and like we'll change processes and we'll sort of establish how we want to use Notion. And then
00:30:18 ◼ ► hopefully we all do it. And, you know, some people use it. Some people kind of check it once in a
00:30:22 ◼ ► while. It's not like super critical, but it kind of just helps us keep a finger on the pulse of like
00:30:26 ◼ ► And I would assume like from talking to other video creators, especially that is like a database of
00:30:32 ◼ ► here are all the video projects and here's where they are through the flow. You know, this one's being
00:30:36 ◼ ► shot. This one's being written. This one's being edited. That kind of thing is what's going on in there.
00:30:40 ◼ ► Exactly. Or if even someone has something to add, like the smartphone awards are coming up and it's
00:30:44 ◼ ► like we need someone to keep track of like all the trophies that we ordered and the shipping and
00:30:48 ◼ ► interesting and all the other design things with the video itself and with the trophies, like we'll
00:30:56 ◼ ► And again, I'm sure that, well, I would, I would like to hope so that that is like one of these types of
00:31:11 ◼ ► I think you might need a personal assistant. Like I'm not trying to make you hire more people, but.
00:31:22 ◼ ► And what that means is she has the bird's eye view of everything happening on every channel and how
00:31:30 ◼ ► everyone's time is being used. So previously before Harper, for example, if someone came up to me and
00:31:36 ◼ ► was like, Hey, or if I said, I need to shoot this short right now, is anybody available who knows
00:31:41 ◼ ► camera, but it's not busy shooting with other stuff. Like I think miles is available. Is rich here?
00:31:47 ◼ ► Oh, rich is outside. He's. And there's like, that was massively simplified. Now that Harper's here,
00:31:53 ◼ ► it's like, Hey Harper today, this afternoon after lunch, I'm going to shoot these two things. So let's
00:31:58 ◼ ► make sure we have a spot to shoot them and a person who can help me shoot those things. And then she has
00:32:03 ◼ ► the bird's eye view and can line those things up. So as far as like time saving as like what a personal
00:32:12 ◼ ► Yeah. I still think you might need an assistant, but you think about that one, you shouldn't have
00:32:17 ◼ ► been ordering those awards. So something I find kind of like jumping back into the iPhone review
00:32:25 ◼ ► of it all, something that I find really interesting is that you will say like with the, when the iPhone
00:32:31 ◼ ► embargo comes up, people are posting their reviews and you would frequently drop a first impressions
00:32:36 ◼ ► video at that time. And then a review later. So you've had, you give yourself more time.
00:32:43 ◼ ► It is twofold. One is because this is the only company that doesn't pre-brief. And so we inherently
00:32:52 ◼ ► have less time. And by the time the review embargo drops, I've probably only had half the time I really
00:33:00 ◼ ► need to review the phone. Yep. But the second part of that is the iPhone is a super hot and people want
00:33:06 ◼ ► to watch something on day one. And so I just, I'm giving you something on day one. I'm giving you
00:33:11 ◼ ► something to watch. I'm giving you some new impressions that weren't in my initial impressions from the event,
00:33:15 ◼ ► but it's not the full review yet. Those fully baked thoughts come when they're ready. So it is a sort of a
00:33:21 ◼ ► solution to that problem. Is this something that you can take advantage of that maybe other creators
00:33:29 ◼ ► would not? Because I don't feel like I see anybody else do this, that like if they've not got a review,
00:33:34 ◼ ► it's not called review. It maybe isn't going to work for their audience, but you seem to be able to be
00:33:41 ◼ ► very successful in getting two pieces of like long content out of the one product. Yeah. Do you think
00:33:47 ◼ ► that this is like a competitive advantage you have? I don't see why anyone else couldn't do it. I guess
00:33:53 ◼ ► there is a distinct pressure on basically every creator to be as early as possible with all of
00:34:00 ◼ ► the thoughts that they have. And I think it is a luxury or a privileged position to not feel that
00:34:06 ◼ ► pressure as much where I think that people will want to hear what I have to say, even if it's three,
00:34:12 ◼ ► four days later. Yeah. So yeah, I think other creators could do that, but that pressure to be
00:34:17 ◼ ► first is never gone. So I think it is kind of something that we get to do because people want
00:34:23 ◼ ► to hear what we have to say anyway. Yeah. I think, you know, I've been focusing on covering Apple for
00:34:27 ◼ ► like 15 years in the podcast that I do. And from a coverage perspective, what you do is similar to like
00:34:34 ◼ ► what John Gruber will do, where John's written review will come a week later, maybe more,
00:34:40 ◼ ► but people want to read it because they want to know what he has to say. Like he has a voice like
00:34:44 ◼ ► you have a voice, which for a lot of the audiences of both is more important than being first. Like
00:34:52 ◼ ► that there is like a distinct thing that people want, which is, you know, clearly why you are as
00:34:56 ◼ ► successful as you are, right? Like your voice, people want to know what you have to say and want
00:35:01 ◼ ► to know your thoughts, which is why whenever there is a new piece of technology, you are amongst or at
00:35:08 ◼ ► the top of the most viewed videos for whatever that might be. There has to be a reason for that. And
00:35:13 ◼ ► that's what I would assume it is. Sure. And there's also some level of like, you know, the embargo thing,
00:35:18 ◼ ► like everything drops at the same time. There is an amount of noise that is hard to navigate. Like
00:35:24 ◼ ► when all of these opinions come out at the same time, how many of these reviews are people really
00:35:28 ◼ ► going to watch on that one day versus when things settle down a few days later and then something
00:35:34 ◼ ► maybe a little bit more well-formed or at least a little bit more distinct comes out that can live on
00:35:39 ◼ ► its own outside of a lot of that noise. So that helps too. Yeah. I mean, anybody that subscribes to a bunch
00:35:44 ◼ ► of tech creators, you know, there is like the clock ticks over your refresh YouTube and it's like, here's six
00:35:49 ◼ ► videos for you to watch. At least. Do you have to think about that? Do you try and consider the packaging
00:35:54 ◼ ► of your video when you have these big embargoes? Oh yeah. There's a whole game. There's a whole
00:35:59 ◼ ► strategy even within just that little system. Like the thing that you've probably heard people start
00:36:03 ◼ ► doing is like when there's a super, super, like when one plus or Samsung drops a device and I know that
00:36:10 ◼ ► there's going to be 50 videos on the hour, I will wait till 6.02 to drop my video so that it's at the top
00:36:19 ◼ ► of the feed because 50 things just flew through your feed at exactly six o'clock. And now it's
00:36:24 ◼ ► 6.02. Here's this one on top. So when you log in, you start scrolling, you'll hopefully see mine.
00:36:28 ◼ ► You shouldn't say this out loud. Now, like everyone's going to be sent in different minute
00:36:32 ◼ ► comments from each other. Soon it'll be like, oh, half past the hour, here comes my guest. He's ready
00:36:39 ◼ ► to go. It's funny. That might happen. You know, there's also when you start testing a device,
00:36:44 ◼ ► like a lot of reviewers, we're talking to each other behind the scenes. Like we're testing things.
00:36:48 ◼ ► Seeing how bad this camera is too, to not just me. Okay, good. Just, I don't want to make sure I'm
00:36:51 ◼ ► not crazy. We kind of, when we test the device, we get an idea of like what we think other people are
00:36:56 ◼ ► going to say. I use a phone. I realized it's a really good phone and I'm going, okay, I know that
00:37:02 ◼ ► at launch, everyone is going to be saying that this is one of the best phones of the year.
00:37:05 ◼ ► So if there's a way that I can sort of fit my packaging in like a puzzle piece to obviously live
00:37:12 ◼ ► on its own, but maybe even be referential to the world that this video is launching in,
00:37:17 ◼ ► that also helps a lot and usually gets people to click. So that is also something to think about.
00:37:22 ◼ ► But you very rarely forcibly wade into controversy. I feel like as a career, I don't feel like you're
00:37:29 ◼ ► trying to find the gate as it were, like as a content strategy. Yeah. Like, so there's being
00:37:35 ◼ ► first as a strategy and then there's being contrarian as a strategy and then there's being negative as a
00:37:42 ◼ ► strategy. And I think the gates kind of fall into that third one where it's like, ah, this new thing's
00:37:47 ◼ ► going to come out. It's going to be really good. We all know that the new, whatever is going to be
00:37:50 ◼ ► good, but Ooh, if I can be the first one to find the critical flaw, man, that's a good content
00:37:56 ◼ ► strategy right there. So yeah, that is always going to happen. This episode is brought to you by
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00:39:38 ◼ ► of Relay. In the past couple of years, there's been a lot of talk about your impact of having
00:39:45 ◼ ► positive or negative effects on the products that you're covering. Like I think about the humane AI
00:39:50 ◼ ► pin, especially like if a few months ago, I had David Pierce from the verge on the show and I spoke to
00:39:56 ◼ ► him about this exact thing too, because I think the two of you made some of the most viewed content on
00:40:03 ◼ ► this. And it was a product that was very negatively reviewed. And then there was a lot of talk about
00:40:07 ◼ ► products killing companies. So like you at the time, you made a video, right? Where you're like
00:40:13 ◼ ► bad products kill companies, not the reviews of them. Have your feelings evolved in any way on this?
00:40:18 ◼ ► I've definitely given it a lot more thought because strangely, a lot more bad products have
00:40:25 ◼ ► continued to come out. The people can't be stopped. That's the problem. Yeah, that's evergreen. It's
00:40:29 ◼ ► always going to happen. But I have found it interesting because the controversy was actually
00:40:34 ◼ ► two sided. There were people who suggested that I was too critical of this new thing, insert new thing
00:40:42 ◼ ► here, and that I should be more open minded about people making new things. But there were also people
00:40:48 ◼ ► who are critical that I wasn't negative enough about this thing that was clearly bad and it was a cash
00:40:55 ◼ ► grab and it was just designed to raise venture capital or whatever and then peace out. Like that
00:41:01 ◼ ► was a real two sided argument. Like even making the video is bad because you're, you're kind of
00:41:07 ◼ ► promoting it even if you're doing so negatively. Yeah, that's happened a bunch more times, like a bunch
00:41:12 ◼ ► more bad products have come out. And I've seen that on Twitter where people go, oh, I can't stand all
00:41:19 ◼ ► these negative reviewers who don't see the big bright future ahead of us. And there's people going, how does
00:41:25 ◼ ► this keep happening? Why are people not shutting these down as soon as they come out? So yeah, my thoughts
00:41:31 ◼ ► have evolved a little bit, but I think I generally still feel the same way that if your product is bad,
00:41:37 ◼ ► people are going to buy it and find out that it's bad. And then soon enough, the reviews come out and
00:41:42 ◼ ► people stop buying it. And if a big review comes out saying it's bad and a whole bunch of people find
00:41:47 ◼ ► out at the same time, not changing the trajectory of the product, I'm more just accelerating what was
00:41:57 ◼ ► Because it's like, what is the alternative? Like people give their money and find out it's bad
00:42:01 ◼ ► individually before giving them? Like I'm definitely on that side of like the service that you provide
00:42:07 ◼ ► to talk about your experiences with the product. If those experiences are bad, it's really good to
00:42:12 ◼ ► know that. Now you can be wrong, I'm sure, right? Like everybody can be wrong and that will come out
00:42:18 ◼ ► in time. Like if it was like, no, you know, he just had the battery and backwards or something. And that
00:42:23 ◼ ► was why, you know, like, it's like, oh, okay, now we understand it. But if you're going into it
00:42:28 ◼ ► earnestly and showing the experience, that is the benefit to the people that choose to pay attention to
00:42:34 ◼ ► you. Yeah. And this is part of what comes with like trying to be, I think one of my skills is
00:42:39 ◼ ► like being a professional user, almost like understanding the type of person that is going
00:42:44 ◼ ► to buy this thing and then using it like that person would. So if I'm reviewing a hundred and
00:42:51 ◼ ► sixty dollar Moto G, like I'm not going to spend that much time benchmarking how many frames per second
00:42:57 ◼ ► I'm going to get in a game or any of these really, really nitty gritty camera back and forth detail
00:43:02 ◼ ► comparisons because the person buying a Moto G is not interested in that and is not really frankly
00:43:08 ◼ ► paying attention to that at all. But if I am reviewing a bleeding edge, humane AI pin, which
00:43:14 ◼ ► is a new first gen product in a category that only early adopters are going to buy, then that's
00:43:20 ◼ ► how I go into my testing of like, I'm going to try everything this thing is capable of. I'm
00:43:24 ◼ ► going to see if I can do the things from the commercial in my own life. And when a product
00:43:29 ◼ ► fails that test, it's pretty clear that there's going to be some negative reviews following it.
00:43:33 ◼ ► Even without the big polarizing things, do you spend time considering your influence? Like
00:43:40 ◼ ► what you can influence in the world of technology with the people that pay attention to you? Like,
00:43:48 ◼ ► Not too much, really. I think most of my focus is just in trying to be accurate and trying to make
00:43:57 ◼ ► good stuff. And the only like influence, I guess, I really mostly see is in other coverage of the
00:44:03 ◼ ► same things that I choose to cover. So if I am not one of the first, but if I'm somebody who jumps in
00:44:09 ◼ ► on a product and realizes it has this really unique application and highlights it, then I will actually
00:44:14 ◼ ► see other people notice that too and highlight it, which is cool. And if it's the other way around,
00:44:19 ◼ ► if it's negative and I review something and everyone starts to realize how bad of a deal it is or how bad
00:44:24 ◼ ► the product is. And I do sometimes see that ripple effect as well. I think there's a quote about,
00:44:30 ◼ ► I think it's maybe Walt Mossberg. He's like, I don't care about your stock price. Like I'm not
00:44:34 ◼ ► interested in that. I'm, I'm just here for the products and, and how good or bad they actually
00:44:38 ◼ ► are. How much time do you spend looking at feedback from your audience? Is that actually
00:44:44 ◼ ► something you're able to do? Yeah, that's always been one of my big highlights. I used to read and
00:44:49 ◼ ► actually, this is going back a long time. I used to respond to every single comment on every single
00:44:54 ◼ ► video. And there used to be a thing called YouTube channel comments. So you could, they could comment
00:44:59 ◼ ► on your channel and I'd respond to all of those too. And I used to get an email for every single new
00:45:04 ◼ ► subscriber and I would click on the channel link of the person who subscribed and I'd leave them a
00:45:09 ◼ ► channel comment, thanking them for subscribing. Scalable. Yeah. Oh, definitely. I don't know why I did that for so
00:45:14 ◼ ► long. I did that for years. I think the day I had to turn that off is the day I did some random like
00:45:19 ◼ ► accessory giveaway. And I had like a few thousand people subscribe in one day. And I was like,
00:45:23 ◼ ► my inbox is literally a disaster. Like I can't keep doing this, but I have always read as many comments
00:45:29 ◼ ► as I can, as many tweets and replies and threads and people talking about the videos under the videos
00:45:36 ◼ ► as I can. So, yeah. And I think you, you get different types of replies in different places. I could
00:45:41 ◼ ► talk for hours about that. Like when I go to the YouTube comment section for the first 30 minutes,
00:45:46 ◼ ► that's all useless because that's just people who were going to watch in the first 30 minutes anyway,
00:45:51 ◼ ► and are generally very positive. But after the first 30 minutes, then you get people who are starting to
00:45:56 ◼ ► flow in from recommendations, people who aren't subscribed, people who are seeing the videos for
00:45:59 ◼ ► the first time. That's interesting. If the video starts to surface on Reddit, for example, then you get
00:46:05 ◼ ► people who are Redditors, like they watch certain types of YouTube videos and maybe they haven't seen
00:46:11 ◼ ► your video before. So you'll see a different type of reaction to your video. When it gets embedded on
00:46:16 ◼ ► different websites, then the comment sections on those websites are interesting. There's all kinds
00:46:20 ◼ ► of different feedback that you have to kind of filter through to understand the lens that it's coming
00:46:26 ◼ ► Dude, this is why I even posed the question of, is it possible? Because I just figure it is,
00:46:31 ◼ ► for you, an absolutely crushing amount of information. So many people with so many opinions.
00:46:43 ◼ ► Yeah, that is definitely a developed skill that I've had to learn over time. Like it's a fire hose at
00:46:49 ◼ ► this point. Like I obviously can't read every single comment anymore. There's too many of them.
00:46:53 ◼ ► But I can read hundreds of comments and sort of parse through the way people are feeling about a
00:46:59 ◼ ► Do you feel that, you know, going through the feedback, does it affect the content that you
00:47:05 ◼ ► will make in the future? Or do you just kind of like log it as, okay, this was a feeling somebody
00:47:14 ◼ ► No, definitely. It definitely does. This is a long time ago. But one of the best, most impactful
00:47:20 ◼ ► YouTube comments I ever got was I made this video. I don't even remember what video it was. It was just
00:47:26 ◼ ► kind of like a random video when I was in college. And a couple hours into the comments, I scroll down
00:47:33 ◼ ► to the comment section. And one of the comments just says, what was the point of this video?
00:47:38 ◼ ► And it's such a simple comment. But it really pulls back the curtain on like, why did I make
00:47:45 ◼ ► this video? This next video that I'm working on? What will I be able to say is the point of making
00:47:51 ◼ ► this video? I want to be able to answer that question. And the fact that I didn't have an
00:47:56 ◼ ► answer for that video made me want to have an answer for every subsequent video. And you know,
00:48:00 ◼ ► there are people who go, oh, there's too many of this video in a row. Can you make some other stuff
00:48:03 ◼ ► that maybe can make me realize, oh, you know, that's actually true. I've done a bunch of
00:48:07 ◼ ► phone reviews in a row. Let's zoom out a little bit. So yeah, generally, I do listen to feedback.
00:48:16 ◼ ► You seem like a very positive person, just in general, I always get that vibe from you and the
00:48:20 ◼ ► content that you create. But being online in any capacity brings with it a lot of negativity.
00:48:32 ◼ ► Yeah, in the same way that I've built this filter over time of being able to parse out like what
00:48:39 ◼ ► people actually mean when they say certain things in the YouTube comment section, for example,
00:48:43 ◼ ► I have also built that filter for social media, positive or negative. I've built that filter for
00:48:51 ◼ ► in real life interactions, positive or negative. And I kind of feel like I've gotten good at
00:48:57 ◼ ► getting to the core of what people really mean when they comment something or what they really want to
00:49:02 ◼ ► say when they comment something. I value constructive feedback the most, I think. So if it's negative,
00:49:09 ◼ ► but it's got this little nugget of I wish you would do more of this other thing, that can actually be
00:49:13 ◼ ► But you know, I mean, I speak for myself and basically everybody that I know that sometimes you'll get these
00:49:20 ◼ ► comments or it's like people are very positive. And then there's that one negative comment.
00:49:24 ◼ ► Do you have that too? Like, does that still get to you or you have managed to handle it? Like,
00:49:29 ◼ ► do you still, you know, it's like four o'clock in the morning, you're like, you're like stewing on
00:49:35 ◼ ► No, I definitely still get those and I still gets to you. I don't think that that's another one of
00:49:39 ◼ ► those things as a YouTuber, you never quite get used to, which is like you could read 400 positive
00:49:43 ◼ ► comments in a row and then you could read one or two negative ones that are about the same thing.
00:49:49 ◼ ► See, I thought that we were leading towards you'd somehow found the way to manage it, but
00:49:58 ◼ ► You can kind of throw some away, like people just leave like random hate comments like,
00:50:03 ◼ ► wow, I hate this guy. Okay, well, I can't really do anything with that. That's not constructive.
00:50:06 ◼ ► Those don't bother me actually, but it's the ones that are like extremely specific that
00:50:16 ◼ ► Like when I started this series, there were lots of people leaving lots of constructive
00:50:20 ◼ ► feedback and it has now led to what I think are much better episodes. But I still had that
00:50:27 ◼ ► thing of like, they said the thing, you know, they got the thing, which you kind of know it,
00:50:40 ◼ ► Every video that you post reaches a massive audience, like millions and millions of people.
00:50:55 ◼ ► Yeah, definitely. This was happening a lot this year where we had this streak of like maybe a month
00:51:03 ◼ ► and a half or something right around September, which is obviously a hot time of year anyway. But
00:51:13 ◼ ► glasses that I got to try. And I, in my head already was kind of like, this is a meta Ray-Bans
00:51:22 ◼ ► glasses video in the middle of iPhone season. Like I already know it's going to bomb, but I am really
00:51:27 ◼ ► into these and I think people would be interested in it. So I'm going to make it anyway. Fully prepared
00:51:31 ◼ ► for the 10 out of 10. And I actually think it started as a 10 out of 10. And by the next morning,
00:51:37 ◼ ► it was like a three out of 10. And I think now it has like seven or 8 million views or something.
00:51:41 ◼ ► And I, sometimes when that happens, I'm like, okay, I should stick to my gut on like why I actually am
00:51:48 ◼ ► making these videos. Cause clearly I cared about it, but why wouldn't that hit? Right? Like why
00:51:53 ◼ ► wouldn't that be an important video to watch or to check out or to share? So yes, I do still get
00:51:58 ◼ ► surprise, but I think it's good to keep that happening because the more surprises, the more
00:52:04 ◼ ► like interesting, like things that people hook, it just means we're doing a better job of judging
00:52:09 ◼ ► what should be a video, which is good. Yeah. With these few numbers comes a lot of people in the
00:52:14 ◼ ► world knowing who you are. Like you are a celebrity as well as a YouTuber, right? Like there aren't,
00:52:20 ◼ ► I think that many in certain verticals that kind of cross over into that world. But like, you know,
00:52:25 ◼ ► you went to the Met Gala a few years ago, right? Like you have these brushes with celebrity.
00:52:34 ◼ ► Yeah. There's a lot. There's an interview with Jimmy, I think, Mr. Beast, who kind of broke this
00:52:41 ◼ ► down. He oversimplified it, but it was really funny. It was basically like when you have, you know,
00:52:46 ◼ ► 10,000 subscribers and you go out and you go grocery shopping, you're kind of like wondering
00:52:53 ◼ ► and like hoping, is somebody, is somebody going to know? Hey, does anybody here know about my videos?
00:52:59 ◼ ► Anyone looks at you a little bit, it's like, you saw it, dude. Yeah. I got you. You're like very
00:53:03 ◼ ► excited for that. And that like makes your whole day and it's super cool. And then when you have a
00:53:08 ◼ ► million subscribers, it's kind of like every time you go out to a crowded place, there's probably one
00:53:15 ◼ ► person that says hi. Probably every time you leave your house, one person says hi to you, which is
00:53:20 ◼ ► interesting. It's really cool. When you have 10 million subscribers, every time you leave the house,
00:53:24 ◼ ► people say hi to you. Like people will come up to you and say, hey, I like this video or hey,
00:53:29 ◼ ► my friend really likes these videos. Can I get a picture? But then he said like once you get to 100
00:53:34 ◼ ► million subscribers, which this didn't resonate at all. But when you get to 100 million subscribers,
00:53:38 ◼ ► every time you go out, it's a meeting greet. One person takes a photo and then everyone looks over
00:53:44 ◼ ► and goes, oh, the photo. Oh, this is the guy. And then they just start. And it's like a whole thing,
00:53:48 ◼ ► which sounds brutal. But I think, yeah, the interesting middle ground is that, yeah, every
00:53:53 ◼ ► once in a while you just kind of get this sense of community and scale and just like there's people
00:53:58 ◼ ► everywhere that are like you never know who you're talking to or what sort of connections or
00:54:02 ◼ ► community they're in. But it is pretty cool that there's like this network effect of like
00:54:08 ◼ ► it's kind of everywhere. A few years ago, WWDC, I was in the media area and you would came in and it
00:54:15 ◼ ► became like a meet and greet just amongst the media. People just coming up to you and wanting pictures.
00:54:19 ◼ ► Like, I guess there are certain environments where it gets extra heightened, right? It was like,
00:54:28 ◼ ► This might be spoiling a video, but we haven't really planned it yet. So I'll just say it anyway.
00:54:31 ◼ ► Like anytime there's a tech event that is like obviously the highest density of people who are
00:54:37 ◼ ► probably going to say hi or want to take a picture or whatever. And CES is like the apex of that.
00:54:49 ◼ ► And I was trying to think of like, is there a way that I can go back to CES and like really see some
00:54:55 ◼ ► stuff? And maybe if I get like this super elaborate disguise with like, you know, movie makeup and like a
00:55:01 ◼ ► transformation, maybe I can go to CES and like make a video and see some cool stuff. But then also it's
00:55:06 ◼ ► like a crazy YouTube video. That would be kind of fun. Do you know Adam Savage from the Mythbusters?
00:55:11 ◼ ► That's exactly what we were going to we're going to reach out to him and be like, I think this would
00:55:16 ◼ ► be sick, like a totally different human. And then I get to like go to CES. And then everyone who sees
00:55:24 ◼ ► What would be very fun is you going to vendors and booths and trying to get them to pay attention
00:55:33 ◼ ► to you. I just think that would be very interesting and maybe interesting for you to like a humbling
00:55:42 ◼ ► Yeah, that's true. The experience that I have at CES is inherently very different from most
00:55:47 ◼ ► peoples. Yes. But I would be curious to like talk to the people. Also, like the PR filter that I get,
00:55:53 ◼ ► like I don't get the real opinions of PR people. I get the PRified this might go on Twitter in five
00:55:59 ◼ ► minutes answer. And I would love to go to the same booth as me and as like this in disguise person and
00:56:06 ◼ ► talk to the same person and get different answers. You've got to do this. That would be hilarious.
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00:58:28 ◼ ► of this show and relay. All right, Marcus, you sent me your home screen. What phone is this?
00:58:34 ◼ ► That is the Pixel home screen. Yeah. So this has been sort of a, yeah, default for most,
00:58:40 ◼ ► and I have adjusted it a little bit, but yeah, I can walk you through whatever. Okay. So usually when
00:58:47 ◼ ► people send me their home screens, I'm obviously struck by what's on it. For you, I'm actually was
00:58:53 ◼ ► immediately struck by what's not on it. Oh, interesting. There's no Slack here. It's on
00:58:58 ◼ ► the next page. So there are certain apps, and I've even pruned this a little bit. There are certain apps
00:59:01 ◼ ► that I've realized I only really engage with them most of the time through a notification that I got
00:59:06 ◼ ► from it. So I don't need to launch into my email app or launch into Slack as much. I mostly will just
00:59:13 ◼ ► get a notification and then I need to go to Slack. What is your notification policy? Are you strict
00:59:17 ◼ ► notifications on my phone? No, I just kind of get all of them. No. I mean, yeah, you must turn some
00:59:25 ◼ ► things off though, right? Like the social media ones, surely. Oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry.
00:59:29 ◼ ► I don't have Instagram or Twitter. Yeah, you're right. I used to have those. You've seen those videos,
00:59:33 ◼ ► right? Where people's phones are just going crazy. Have you ever tried that? Like just to see what it
00:59:37 ◼ ► would look like. Not only have I done that, but I have also, and this was years ago, almost a decade ago,
00:59:43 ◼ ► I accidentally leaked my own phone number in a video and it was only a few split second,
00:59:49 ◼ ► like a split second. It was on the camera, but five minutes into a 10 minute review, there's my phone
00:59:55 ◼ ► number and I immediately went back and like use the YouTube blur tool. But in the meantime, my phone
01:00:01 ◼ ► was just white hot with phone. Like I couldn't do anything on my phone because it was getting too
01:00:06 ◼ ► many calls at the same time. I've never seen that before. Calls. Yeah. That's bold. Phone calls.
01:00:10 ◼ ► Right. Like, yeah. I mean, I don't know why people would do it anyway, but like texts I would
01:00:16 ◼ ► see is the thing, but like, what are they? It's like, hi, hi, how can I help you? You reached
01:00:21 ◼ ► the Marquez hotline. They just wanted to call. Yeah. You must have to go through your videos
01:00:24 ◼ ► like a fine tooth comb. That's why it's helpful to have the extra sets of eyes where it's like,
01:00:29 ◼ ► I might scroll past my calendar for a split second and there's an embargo in there and I got
01:00:38 ◼ ► Every version of this you can imagine has happened. Yeah. Okay. It just keeps happening forever.
01:00:42 ◼ ► Probably like there is one where, gosh, I was reviewing two products at once. I think I was
01:00:49 ◼ ► reviewing a new phone and I was reviewing the new, I think it's the HomePod mini or something
01:00:55 ◼ ► like that. Okay. And, you know, Apple review policy is basically like, you can't acknowledge
01:01:00 ◼ ► this thing existing or presence until the video comes out. So I was reviewing the first thing,
01:01:09 ◼ ► the settings or whatever, it had the little icon for the HomePod mini that said I was playing
01:01:13 ◼ ► it on the HomePod mini. And that goes in the video. And sure enough, I get an email from Apple,
01:01:18 ◼ ► like delete this. God, you're right. So I go in and of course I can trim it out or add a blur
01:01:25 ◼ ► with the YouTube video editor, but it's like, yeah, the fine tooth comb is underrated. We need a lot
01:01:30 ◼ ► of that. It's one of those things where like from Apple, you're like, oh, come on, really? But at
01:01:34 ◼ ► the same time, they do ask, right? And like you say, okay, right? So it's like, we don't like, you
01:01:40 ◼ ► know, it can be a bit frustrating, but it was an agreement that we all made. I also, I see Instagram
01:01:45 ◼ ► is here, but none of the text social media apps are on your home screen. Yeah. There's no threads or
01:01:51 ◼ ► Twitter or anything like that. What puts Instagram front and center, but not those? And has that changed
01:01:58 ◼ ► over time? It has a little bit. I also have like a separate home screen with just the tech social
01:02:02 ◼ ► media apps. Instagram is the one with the people that I know in real life the most. Yeah. So as far
01:02:08 ◼ ► as like things that I'll just sort of just scroll mindlessly for a little bit, that's like Instagram
01:02:13 ◼ ► for me. Twitter is probably my second most scrolled social media followed by like the others and no
01:02:20 ◼ ► particular order threads and blue sky and all that. Do you find it frustrating to manage multiple
01:02:25 ◼ ► text-based social media apps now? Like, is this a thing that you have to like put a lot of thought
01:02:29 ◼ ► into? Yeah. Especially because I'm not a fan of like cross-posting the same thing to everything.
01:02:34 ◼ ► I kind of believe that there is inherently some overlap of people who will follow one person on
01:02:40 ◼ ► several accounts. Yeah. And I'd be like, why am I seeing those in 300 places? It's kind of silly.
01:02:45 ◼ ► So I try to speak the language of the platform on each platform. And yes, that is annoying and a lot of
01:02:50 ◼ ► work, but I try to do it. What do you like about superhuman? It's an email app, right? Yeah. I mean,
01:02:55 ◼ ► I assume there's other things in there, like a lot of these apps, but like you're using superhuman for
01:02:59 ◼ ► your email. Yeah. It's one of those apps I don't really recommend to most people because it's like
01:03:04 ◼ ► a 30 or $50 a month or something like that for an email app or service, but it has a lot of really
01:03:10 ◼ ► useful management things. So I can get to inbox zero. I can have emails pop back up on certain days when I
01:03:17 ◼ ► need to see them. It's just fast to manage stuff. And I get like three to 500 emails a day. So it
01:03:24 ◼ ► helps to have like all those. Yeah. The management part of like getting to inbox zero with that sort of
01:03:29 ◼ ► volume is pretty big for me. You may be client answer this question, but why do you get so many
01:03:34 ◼ ► emails? What is that? Is it press releases? It is a combination of, I'm looking at my inbox right
01:03:41 ◼ ► now. There's a lot of admin email stuff. There's a lot of emails from companies. So probably most of
01:03:50 ◼ ► it is just like, here's a new thing that's coming out. Like I just get an absolute ton of those emails.
01:03:56 ◼ ► Yeah. And I guess it's from companies, you know, and those you don't, right? Like everyone wants you
01:04:00 ◼ ► to know they've got a new thing coming out. Exactly. I'm looking here. I have a whole bunch
01:04:04 ◼ ► of Frisbee emails and like random other things of like conversation I'm having with like people I
01:04:10 ◼ ► know. Oh, that's so sad that that's happening in email. I know. Like that's bad. It's like, please.
01:04:15 ◼ ► Like a group email with a bunch of people. Anything. Anything but email, guys. But here we are.
01:04:21 ◼ ► There's news. There's business emails. There's emails I'm CC'd on that are just for visibility. So I can
01:04:28 ◼ ► see the threads developing as stuff is happening. I will use this as another point to suggest you
01:04:33 ◼ ► get a personal system. Like this is just like another thing that that person could do for you
01:04:37 ◼ ► is how we handle your email. I will say I was genuinely surprised that when I contacted you
01:04:41 ◼ ► to do the show, how quickly you responded. Like that was quite a surprise. I assumed you may never
01:04:47 ◼ ► see it, which is probably a safe assumption for a lot of people with that sort of volume of email.
01:04:51 ◼ ► Do you think superhuman is actually helping you deal with this or are you just good at spotting
01:04:56 ◼ ► things in your email? It's a little bit of both. I think because again, if I didn't go through my
01:05:03 ◼ ► email, like for example, I just got back from a tournament in Europe where I was kind of offline
01:05:07 ◼ ► for a while and I would log back on and the time zones were all messed up. So I'd log back on and I'd
01:05:12 ◼ ► have like 260 emails and I'd be like, Hmm, I could just skip this and come back tomorrow, but then
01:05:19 ◼ ► there's going to be 500. So I just, I'm very deliberate about going through everything. Archive,
01:05:23 ◼ ► archive, archive, archive, archive, run me later, reply real quick, archive, view, click link, return
01:05:29 ◼ ► back, reply, archive. Like I go through everything. I can triage pretty quickly based on like what I'm
01:05:34 ◼ ► I've got to say, you know, it's funny. I stopped using arc on the desktop. So I'm kind of just like, I have arc sitting here because there are like little space. I have spaces of like, it's almost like bookmarks at this point. Like I have a couple themed spaces left, but I could easily just go back to Chrome.
01:06:22 ◼ ► I want to touch on TickTick again a little bit. So, you know, you mentioned using it for notes. I assume primarily it is a task manager for you. That's where your tasks are going.
01:06:33 ◼ ► Do you share tasks with people or do you keep your own task list and expect others to do the same?
01:06:49 ◼ ► I've also experimented with endless other tasks apps that I figured I could, like, I could do shared lists with people to assign tasks and all this other stuff.
01:07:15 ◼ ► I don't understand how you could get anything done if you don't write down what you have to do because I would not remember to do all the things that I need to do.
01:07:23 ◼ ► And also, I don't want to. Like, even if I could, I would like to think about other stuff than the to-do list.
01:07:31 ◼ ► All right. So, Marques, before we finish up, I would like to say to you, what are you excited about right now?
01:07:36 ◼ ► Do you have anything that you would like the Cortex audience to know that you've got going on?
01:08:10 ◼ ► What I like about Waveform is it's like the shows that I've been making for years, too,
01:08:16 ◼ ► where it's people that enjoy each other's time hanging out and talking about technology.
01:08:47 ◼ ► I really hope that you enjoyed this episode with Marques as much as I had the honor of putting it together.
01:09:00 ◼ ► Before we wrap up, I want to remind you for the last time that we're offering a 20% off discount from a MoreTex subscription.
01:09:06 ◼ ► You can buy this for yourself, give us a gift, or tell someone in your life that this is the perfect stocking stuffer for you.
01:09:21 ◼ ► To give you an idea of the content that you're missing out on, I'm once again going to include another MoreTex segment from a previous episode at the end of this show.
01:09:29 ◼ ► So I'm going to play for you the MoreTex segment that I recorded with David Pierce at The Verge, where we make a series of recommendations to each other for things that we're enjoying online.
01:09:53 ◼ ► So I want to give the MoreTexans a taste of this, about the way that you think and the things that you like.
01:10:00 ◼ ► And maybe this could be stuff you are enjoying right now or things you can pluck from your mind in the past of, like, favorite things from Installer.
01:10:09 ◼ ► Like, what are some stuff, maybe some apps, some games, some media, some hardware that is exciting you at the moment?
01:10:27 ◼ ► I love any story about a person with, like, totally unbelievable amounts of martial arts training, just, like, fighting their way through bad guys.
01:11:01 ◼ ► And instead is, like, really desperately trying to get me to watch some reality show I don't want to watch.
01:11:09 ◼ ► It's one of those shows that does the thing that Netflix does a lot now, which is it starts with the climax and then rewinds.
01:11:14 ◼ ► And all these shows do this now for, like, really interesting structural Hollywood reasons.
01:11:28 ◼ ► And that is just, like, pure turn-your-brain-off delightful entertainment that I cannot recommend highly enough.
01:11:51 ◼ ► And it's, like, it's fun now because it's, like, I guess he just makes lots of stuff on Netflix now.
01:12:13 ◼ ► Netflix also did this thing that Apple do a lot, where it's, like, if you make one project with them,
01:12:18 ◼ ► you will be able to make as many projects as you want as long as they're only even kind of successful.
01:13:18 ◼ ► Even to the point where, like, I was a huge American Idol fan for the longest time in the early days.
01:13:25 ◼ ► And, like, a lot of these people, like, go on to win and then you never hear from them again.
01:14:18 ◼ ► They are all working in fine hotels, chocolatiers, or they're, like, you know, they've built up a business on their own.
01:15:19 ◼ ► And it also has that thing that it's been going on for many years where people have come back.
01:15:30 ◼ ► On that note, there's also, I don't know how globally available this is, but there's a show called The Kids Baking Championship that is sort of in vibe terms the closest thing I've found to Bake Off in a way that I really, like, the thing about The Bake Off is, like, they're all rooting for each other and they help each other.
01:16:01 ◼ ► And the judges, like, care for them but also are mean to them about when they screw up their caramel.
01:16:12 ◼ ► Whenever me and my wife are in the U.S. together, we will alternate between Food Network and HGTV.
01:16:26 ◼ ► And so, Food Network is just all Christmas cookie challenge, Christmas baking challenge.
01:16:39 ◼ ► I mean, I'm happy that they don't bring the same, like, kill your opponents to the kids' challenges.
01:16:59 ◼ ► The podcast is called What Went Wrong, and the YouTube channel is called It Was a Shit Show.
01:17:04 ◼ ► And what they both do, it's always movies on What Went Wrong, and it's usually movies on It Was a Shit Show.
01:17:11 ◼ ► But they basically just dive deep into all of the ways that making things is hard and messy and often totally disastrous.
01:17:26 ◼ ► And they'll actually, like, often they'll review current movies or talk about stuff that's coming up so you get a sense of, like, what's going on in the movie world now.
01:17:35 ◼ ► But then they'll go way back and sometimes for timely reasons, but other times not at all, just give you, like, long, messy backstories of movies.
01:17:44 ◼ ► Like, I just listened to an episode about Pirates of the Caribbean the other day, and it's, like, a history of the movie Pirates of the Caribbean laced with all of the ways this was a giant disaster that almost fell apart.
01:17:54 ◼ ► Like, one thing I really like and will always watch or listen to is people being really good at their jobs.
01:18:00 ◼ ► Like, I had this long run not that long ago of just down the rabbit hole of watching John Batiste, the musician, just do anything.
01:18:09 ◼ ► It's just, like, just watching people who are that good at anything is always incredibly fun.
01:18:19 ◼ ► This is, like, the ways in which every great thing is incredibly tenuous and messy and complicated and it's sort of a miracle anything good ever gets made is, like, very much the vibe of both what went wrong and it was a show.
01:18:34 ◼ ► And for anyone who likes the show Arrested Development, which should be everyone, they have a series on It Was A Shit Show about the making of Arrested Development that is, like, again, it makes very clear that it's a small miracle that show ever existed, lasted as long as it did, and still exists.
01:18:51 ◼ ► And, like, you come out of it being, like, thank God this actually happened against all odds.
01:19:21 ◼ ► They essentially go to a bunch of places and they are with them for a week before an important event.
01:19:33 ◼ ► So you've got the Westminster Dog Show, setting dinner at 11 Madison Park, which was the best restaurant in the world at that time, the Kentucky Derby, A League of Legends, Esports Team.
01:19:45 ◼ ► Like, they're with them for a week before a thing happens, which also reminds me of an incredible movie called Six Days to Air, which is how a South Park episode is made.
01:20:06 ◼ ► But then also, like, something that I will rewatch every few years is all of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
01:20:13 ◼ ► It is that idea of, like, people who are at the absolute top of their game in something just talking about the thing that they do.
01:20:21 ◼ ► My current version of the Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee thing is Working It Out, Mike Birbiglio's podcast.
01:20:27 ◼ ► It's a mix of, like, every comedy podcast, which is just, like, two comedians talking about how they got into comedy.
01:20:33 ◼ ► But then a big part of the show is, like, they both bring jokes and actually work them out together.
01:20:40 ◼ ► Like, you sort of can't believe you get to listen to these people who are this good at it do this kind of stuff.