 There's a bunch of videos on YouTube that you're like, oh, how to hack your YouTube, how to grow, and they're all trash. Like I'm convinced that there's just an algorithm that as long as you're nice to it, like you just pet it, which basically means you say, yes, I'm a real creator, and yes, I'm willing to upload daily. And by the way, there's some other things that like engagement. But what have you, what have you learned in your three years of growing? Yeah, what was it especially starting out? Like what were you seeing? Were you experiencing the same frustrations? Yeah, it's interesting because we worked on, you know, I'm still at my day job back in 2017 in January, and we spend the weekend working on it one video. It's really short, maybe three minutes, but we really took the time to like, make it our own, like add our own stupid jokes, you know, our sense of humor. And we did voiceover, we don't, we didn't really talk to the camera until the very end. And we're like, okay, this is the video. Let's put on YouTube. It'd be awesome if it got like a couple hundred views by the end of the week, just to give us enough motivation to make another one, because you don't want to spend your entire weekend doing something that no one watches. And then you're like, what was the point? And so like some things I learned from my day job was kind of about just reaching out to like other platforms that can maybe find your information, your videos valuable. So like I compiled a list of like 10 photography blogs to email with our video as soon as it went live. And then like even Reddit's on there, but Reddit's kind of tricky because it's, they don't like self promotion, but I emailed like some of the biggest blogs and a lot of them reposted it, you know, posted our video, I guess the first couple days it was live. And so then within like maybe 48 or 72 hours, we hit 10,000 views on our very first video, which was just like mind blowing like that as far as surpassing any goals we had set for ourselves. But I mean, that's great for one video, but that doesn't mean they're going to keep coming back. They're not going to be recurring viewers maybe. So, you know, over the first year we did, luckily it did snowball and, you know, we just kept at it. And one of the main things was like, no matter what, like content really is king. So if you're, you can have a cool thumbnail on a great title, but like honestly, if the information or the video is just like, you're not delivering, then no one cares. And that, you know, maybe you'll get a few clicks here and there because you have a cool thumbnail, but that they're not going to subscribe or they're not going to come back. So you really have to focus on what you're actually putting out there. And so we always, we didn't want to do a video just because it's like a hot topic. We want to do something maybe that people weren't mentioning. And if we were doing something that was a popular topic, maybe we can add something that no one else has mentioned. Or just maybe it's a 20 minute video that's out there and we can do it in like three minutes and just give people what they need to know. And so we just kind of always look for that like, what's missing and how can we like supply that? So within the first year we did end up getting 500,000 subscribers, which was just, that was mind blowing. But you know, of course there's growing pains along the way. And even now, you know, with over a million, you're still just like, it is, you're still trying to pet the algorithm as you mentioned. It's like, you don't really know sometimes why you don't get a lot of views. Like we did a video and I'm like, oh, yeah, this, this hot topic is definitely going to get a ton of views the first week or whatever. And then it doesn't, you're like, what? And then you put out one that you like, no one's going to watch this, we'll just put it out there. And then it blows up and you're like, well, I don't know. Even after, you know, almost four years of doing this, I still don't know sometimes like what people want. And so you're still always trying to figure that out and still trying to, you know, you can blame the algorithm, which I do, because maybe our videos aren't long enough. We don't mid-roll ads. So YouTube doesn't want to show them. Or I don't know, maybe our style has shifted over the years and we haven't even realized that maybe people don't like this much. So you're always trying to figure out like what can you do to improve things and how you still kind of have to fight for a growth and relevancy even after being established for a few years. How much do you let that algorithm influence what you make, you know, the types of videos? Like are you still at the end of the day making the videos that you'd like? Or is there times where, you know, you might see a topic like, oh, 10 things every filmmaker must own. You're like, ah, that does pretty well. I should probably make another one of those types of videos. Yeah. I mean, every once in a while we'll make a concession if we think our audience will like it, even if it's something that we don't like. So if it's like how to shoot in the style of ex-photographer and we don't really like that style. But I mean, you still might help people learn something that, you know, they didn't know before and that's what they want. That's fine. I mean, we're here to give information and help out where we can. We don't always have to love everything that we talk about. And so it's like, I don't know, we did a video somewhat recently on like TikTok photo hacks, whether they actually works. We're testing them out. I don't like TikTok. I'm not on TikTok, but it's obviously very popular. So especially in like this, there's a weird niche of TikTok photographers who do really well on TikTok. So it's like, all right, let's try that out. And that time you're kind of making concession because, you know, it's kind of, it feels a little gimmicky in a lot of ways. But as long as you can still like put your effort, put your own like take on it and people, people like what you're doing, then I think that's okay. At the end of the day, you know, we still want to be happy with what we're doing and like not like stooping too low or like feeling like we're losing integrity. So, you know, there are some video topics that I know would do well that we just kind of avoid just because we don't, we're not interested in them. A big topic in our niche is like gear and we're not big gear heads. Like that doesn't excite us. Every once in a while I'll do a video maybe about a camera, but I mean not very often at all, maybe twice in the last several years. So even though those videos do really well, it's not what we're passionate about. So and it's like, there's other people that are like maybe more technical and more, like if you're super passionate about it, that's going to come through in the video. So obviously, if we're just like phoning it in, people are going to know. Do you have another part of you that in terms of like growth round two, right? So at some point it's organic and you, it sounds like you're doing a lot of interesting things to get your YouTube channel on the radar of all these blogs, but at some point you become bigger than them. And so have you considered getting like a publicist or just doing something PR to take it to that next level? We haven't really. I mean the, we just kind of keep everything pretty much the same for the most part. It's like, yeah, you don't reach out to the blogs anymore for the most part. It's mostly just like if they want, they know we're out there. So if they want to post one of our videos, they can feel free, but for the most part we don't, don't need to reach out. But you know, you still are like, you know, we do have the discussions where we're like, well, should we be on TikTok? Like, should we take our old videos and make them like work in a TikTok format? And so it is our livelihood, you know, so it's like, you have to think about it in terms of like how it could disappear at any moment, you know, like the algorithm or whatever, you know, YouTube shuts down or whatever, if something stops favoring you in any way, and then you're like, oh, well, this is how we pay our bills. Like this is our job. You have to like maintain that job security in some way. And in one way is by diversifying, having different streams of income or even diversifying like, you know, we both started new channels the past summer. So we've been more focused in just like how to diversify the core business as opposed to pushing ours. I kind of feel like almost there's a cap on Mango Street, the YouTube channel just because of our personalities and maybe the style that we shoot. It's like, you know, and obviously that's a kind of a pessimistic way to look at it. But that's kind of where we where we are. It's just like, we kind of just want to make videos that we're passionate about. Because after doing this, every, you know, on a daily basis for so many years, you do get burnt out. And so you kind of just want to focus, like at this point, we're like, we just want to make videos that we're like, like creatively inspiring that like, you know, like if we could do a cool photo shoot, like once a month, and, you know, that's it, that would be cool. But then it's just like, okay, well, how are you going to pay your bills? I think that makes perfect sense. I mean, it seems very logical. So now you're hedging, you're trying to move in other directions in an effort to not cripple it.