 Of course, there's growing pains along the way and even now, you know, with over a million, you're still just like, 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're 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. And then after, you know, almost four years of doing this, I still don't know sometimes like what people want. This is Startup to Storefront, the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth. And welcome to season three. Today's guest is Daniel Inskeep, a YouTuber and self-described anti-guru who together with his wife, Rachel, have built their Mango Street YouTube channel to an audience of over a million subscribers. There they focused on creating concise and informative photography and filmmaking tutorials, but they have both recently created personal channels that focus on their other interests like investing, passive income, and fitness. So listen in as we cover everything from selling knockoff designer jeans on eBay to turn a quick buck back in high school, why failing through his entire 20 set him up for success, and Daniel's continuing quest to get some of that sweet, sweet internet money. Before we go on with the video, just click that like button. It really helps with the YouTube algorithm. Now back to the episode. All right. Welcome to the podcast. Everyone on today's show, we have Daniel Inskeep of Mango Street. Daniel, how do you introduce yourself? Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me, first of all. My name is Daniel. I'm a photographer, video editor. I make YouTube videos. I dabble in online business just like kind of all over the place. I want to talk about a little bit about sort of, let's start with your journey. And so I watched some of your YouTube videos. We don't got to dig too deep into it, but it seems like you went from basically having a video editing internship to just taking it to the next level on YouTube as it relates to all things video editing. Can you just share a little bit about your journey with us on that side? Yeah. So for sure, I went to a school called Full Sail, which if you're not in the creative or entertainment world, you might not be familiar with it. But it's, it's like kind of more of a technical school really. But back when I went back in the day, I got my associate's degree in audio engineering. And so that was just like 12 months straight through. And then they, you go off into the world and try to figure things out. And so I worked at a few recording studios as like intern level kind of things and the music industry was kind of taken a bath around that time. I graduated school in 2008, which is not, not the greatest time in the world to graduate, but music industry in general is going through a lot of changes. And I didn't really see a career path that I wanted to pursue there. So I like left, I moved to LA and then I left and went back to Indiana where I'm from and was playing in a band and trying to make something like that work and it didn't work. And so then like, I found myself like at 23, I had to move back into my parents' like basement because I didn't know what else to do. And I had finished top of my class. I was the valedictorian at school and I thought, you know, I'm going to make it as a audio engineer. And then I found myself like reevaluating everything because nothing had it really panned out as I thought I might have. So that was, uh, you know, I was like delivering pizzas and trying to figure out what to do next. And I moved into Chicago, did another recording studio internship, did not like it. And I was like, okay, well, you know, I've always kind of like liked video editing. I kind of dabbled in it a little bit in high school. And so, um, I was like, I'll just try to get a job as a video editor. So I found a job, uh, on Craigslist. I had no relevant experience. No school was like barely relevant. I mean, I have an audio background, which is helpful. But beyond that, nothing else to show for it, but I made like a video of resume, made a little website with some basic HTML. And I got a job and it started off as part time, but after a week, I was like pretty much working full time there. And I worked there for like three and a half years, just like grinding it out on like a lot of corporate videos, a lot of like event stuff, not sexy videos by any means. So, um, it was definitely a grind solid job. But, um, I kind of want to do something more. And along the way, when I moved to Chicago, I met my girlfriend, now wife, and she got me into photography and showed me how to use a camera and we started shooting, she started shooting weddings. And then I came along with her and helped her out. And so I've kind of always had like this photography weekend job along with my video editing job. And eventually in 2015, we moved to LA and was kind of working freelance, a little bit of remote work from my old job. And then I finally got a job as a motion graphics artist as a startup here in LA and it was a really cool job. And at that job, I was working on motion graphics for an online course that they had made. And it was like pretty much like a how to be a YouTuber type course. And I'm like making all motion graphics for it. And I'm kind of always looking for a side hustle. So I come home and I tell my wife Rachel, I'm like, we should start a YouTube channel. And she's like, no, like you don't have any time for that. I always have these like hair brained ideas of like some sort of like side thing to try. And she's like, take it easy, you know, like slow down. But then after she, you know, she thought about it for a little bit. And she's like, you know what, maybe we should do like a YouTube channel on photography, because we found like we were looking around on YouTube. And there really, there wasn't much, there were way fewer YouTube photographers back in like 2016, 2017. And there's like this kind of gap where no one was really shooting in our style. A lot of the tutorials were very long. When did you have to fast forward to get to like the things you wanted to learn? And so we're like, let's fill this void. Let's create shorter videos. We're not really, we don't really have this like YouTube charisma that a lot of these people have. We're very kind of monotone, kind of like quieter, not really outgoing. You know, we're kind of introverted. So we don't really have that typical YouTube personality, but we're like, you know, we'll just do it in our style and try to try to make it happen. And then I don't know, it's just three and a half, almost four years later, and I'm still doing it, I guess. I love it. I mean, there's something I want to touch on. It sounds like we're all the same age, by the way. And it sounds like we all graduated at the time of like the recession, 2008, 2010, time frame. Wonderful time. Yeah. A weird time in America and not an ideal time. But certainly, I mean, one of the things that you're sharing is just the sheer drive of testing new things and being wrong and moving places and really in some way finding yourself right in all of that. And I think we have a lot of young listeners. And so I'm just saying this on the record, because I think it's important that it's it's okay to not know, right? It's okay to not know and kind of just figure it out. And as long as you're willing to work hard at figuring it out or even working hard at figuring out what things you don't want to do, these things come back and they compound over time. And so at some point for you, even by virtue of what people might view as on accident, I think there's a lot of deliberate steps that you've decided to take probably around saying, no, more than saying, yeah, let me do this just for the sake of money. Moving back home is uncomfortable for a lot of people. Single 23 year old guy. However, you know, you doing those things over time make a lot of sense. And then the decisions start to kind of bear fruit. But it's mega painful for that seven years, right? Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting. I failed most of my most of my 20s were just like kind of frustrating. Like didn't have any money, nothing I was doing was really either fulfilling or like really clicking, you know? And yeah, I spent most of my early 20s just failing at things. Yeah, same. I mean, that's amazing. I'm going to air quote failing, right? I think at the time it felt like a failure. But at the end of the day, what you will realize you're doing is just like you just have to wait for this tree to grow and watching a tree grow feels like failure every single day. It is interesting how everything happened. And I never set out to be a YouTuber of any kind. I never even spent much time on YouTube other than learning motion graphics or something like that. But it was kind of like a culmination of both my wife and I is like skills that we've developed over the years, like photography being one, video editing being another, having a background in audio. It was just like all these things actually when you combine them make for a pretty decent YouTube channel. If you can deliver information well. And I want to jump into that. So we just launched our YouTube channel recently. So we were basically an audio only podcast for such a long time. And at some point we were having a conversation and Owen, who's on our team who reached out to you, he said, Hey, you know, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. And I've always as an entrepreneur looked at social media channels as platforms. And so we can rank them, right? It's like Twitter has this many users. Facebook has billions of users now. And so at some point as an entrepreneur, if you want to get your product out there, your story, whatever, being on these social platforms helps tremendously because it's not you going door to door to door to door, trying to get people to pay attention to you. I was just gonna say, it's interesting how you can get so much organic growth from YouTube because it is a search engine. So it's been like vital. Yeah. How long did you guys so, and I'm saying this to one to get some information out of you, because we're like learning this. And we're also just so, so new to it. Well, you know, we're seeing a lot of data now. And it's like, we're seeing the algorithm, I think, finally pick us up. Right. I think we're at that point where going from zero to 100 subscribers is like monstrously painful. And now we're just seeing things almost doubling at a really cool rate. And I, there's a bunch of videos on YouTube that show 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 and your videos are amazing. I mean, you guys, the level of quality is honestly next level in terms of audio and video. And so I'm sure that plays a huge part of it. But what have you, what have you learned in your three years of growing? What was it like, especially starting out? Like, what were you seeing? And 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 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 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 compile 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 that the first couple of 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's far surpassed 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 weren't doing something that was a popular topic, maybe we can add something that no one else has mentioned. And 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 have 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 he do to improve things and how he 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, are 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, 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 X 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, 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 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've 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 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, OK, 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 to not cripple it. And probably the size of the market isn't that big, right? So if you're if you're releasing like hip hop album reviews, that market's significantly bigger than what you're doing. At least like that's a we find to I mean, we're talking about entrepreneurship. And so you're already in a small game in terms of how many people want to be entrepreneurs, not many. And then it's like, we're talking founder stories where we talk about like imposter syndrome, raising capital, hiring employees. It's like, how many people really are ever going to deal with that? Sure. Many. But at the same time, it's abundantly honest, you know, I think that's the part of it that I like. Like to me, it's it's come get your quick therapy session. And here we all are together. Well, there's something to be said to being like the top of a smaller niche to like that's right, completely valid. Yeah. So let's talk about what you're working on now. And so I saw your personal YouTube channel and you talk about different passive income. You're talking stocks, you're talking some real estate. How long have you been just sorting out or looking for some of these side hustles? No, since I was a kid, honestly, like, you know, I've made my mom make make an eBay account when I was like in fifth grade, you know, because I was like, you know, not only can you buy like stupid kids stuff, but like, you know, I'd like sell video games and old computers or whatever like that. So like, I've kind of always been attracted to like that internet, the internet money, for instance. I mean, like it was kind of like the Wild West growing up, you know, where so like in high school, I don't stand by this, but in high school, a friend and I bought like some knockoff designer jeans, sold money, be shouldn't do that. It is not ethical. And but I mean, it happened and I can say that it happened. But I've grown since then. So, you know, I've always kind of been looking for some sort of like just a little side hustle that could make a little bit of money. I tried buying stuff from Alibaba. I have bought and sold bacon land. I mean, I bought like a liquidation law from my home Depot or something and then like resold the stuff that worked on eBay. I've like tried so many different kind of niches. I've done some print on demand stuff. And most of them weren't like, weren't super successful. But I mean, they're all like learning steps and the whole whole thing, you know, like so my new YouTube channel has kind of focused on like how to make money online. And I'm like the way I looked at it was if I look at personal finance on YouTube, you know, there's a lot of good information out there, but also you have the issue where it's it's like, can you trust these people? Because at the end of the day, they probably have a course to pitch you or some sort of product or, you know, there's maybe some ulterior motive, an affiliate link. And I'm like, well, this is my this is like a side thing. Like I make my money from another YouTube channel. I don't need to push things like that on this channel. And maybe people appreciate that. And so it's just kind of like an honest look at like how to do different things online. And if I fail, I fail and you'll see that. And if I have success, you'll also see that. But I'm like, I feel like I'm kind of normal, like I don't have a huge drop shipping seven digit drop shipping business that I can be like, here's how to do drop shipping. It's easy, blah, blah, blah. No, I'm like approaching it from like someone who's like, never done it. Or if I've done it, I've probably failed at it. So it's just kind of like, I think a fresh perspective on this whole niche on YouTube. And honestly, it's just been fun because it's like stuff I like doing anyways. Like I wouldn't really have a reason to try out print on demand or drop shipping now because I should really be focused on my main YouTube channel. But now that I have this excuse, the second YouTube channel, it's an excuse to try all these things that I like anyways, you know, I was curious about just a function of time. So like one of the things that we were running into when we first started this podcast was like, you know, very quickly, we found that just between Diego and myself, we couldn't keep up with the workload, essentially. So we had to build a team around us. You know, I'm sure that between Mango Street, your own channel, and then Rachel's fitness channel, you guys are pretty strapped for time if it was just you. First of all, did you build up a team around yourself to help cut up the activities and then the workload? But then like at what point did you guys realize that you had to expand in order to keep up with all of this? Yeah, that's a great question. And it's something we struggle with, which me personally, like I'm like fascinated by systems, which is like such a dorky thing. But like when you see something that's so systematized, like I look at like a franchise, for instance, I'm like, that's so awesome how how it's just like so consistent. It's like the system of it. To me, I'm like, that's that's super cool, which is like such a dorky thing to be like interested in. But it's kind of interesting because we've had we've like struggled with that with our own business because it's just me and my wife and we're just kind of at home and working on it together. And it doesn't matter, you know, we don't need input from anyone else really. But then, you know, it did reach a point where it's like, I think maybe we could do this and this this, if we had like an assistant, like we're not capitalizing on this, we should be sending out emails more often, we could update our website with this. So there's like, we just like realized there's like, we made like a list on our phone of like, what all would we have someone do for us if we hired them? But that didn't really go according to plan either, because we did we did hire like a part-time assistant at one point. She was great. But we also at the same time, got studio space here in downtown LA. And we wanted to try starting a co-working space. That failed. I can say that too, like I'm still failing to this day. So it was trying to find like, like a regular schedule for the assistant and like have regular things, which is hard because we have a very irregular type of business where it's like, yeah, we're putting out videos every Monday, but sometimes we'll have three videos done and uploaded and just scheduled out. But most often, we're like working Sunday night, I'm finishing up the video for Monday morning. And it's just like, it's it's hard to then create the system that allows other people to help out because you're kind of just in your own world and you feel like it's hard to delegate and are hard to let go of some control. When you've just been kind of in your own world doing it your own way. And so that's been difficult. But the point is like, is like when someone's going to help lighten your workload, help make things easier for you help generate more revenue. That's when we're like, okay, now it's just back to me and Rachel again. And we tried hiring editors and we have one editor who's awesome, but it's like remote. So it's like, if I want him to edit a project, I have to send like 200 gigs or, or, you know, create smaller file sizes. So it's like, it is still like me having like a workflow in place that I don't consistently have. So it ends up being like, well, should I send this out to be edited or should I just sit down and do it myself? And so most of the time I just end up doing things myself. And that is kind of maybe hamstring us a little bit, because it's it's kind of hard to develop those systems in such a small kind of irregular business. I want to ask you a question that I think I usually start with this with all entrepreneurs, because it's a it's a very personal question. And it actually like aligns everything else in terms of what they do, whether it comes to hiring or how they view these systems. I consider myself like a system builder. Basically that's like what I try to optimize for because me personally, I'm always trying to solve for my time. And so I'm never trying to solve for money. I'm just always trying to get my time back. And I don't have kids. But in my head, the way the conversation goes with my kids is like whatever year old, four year old, three year old, two year olds like dad, I want you to stay home from work. And I'm like, I don't have a job and done like let's kick it whatever you want to do. I'm here for and I've always and so that's always been something that has been deeply personal to me. And so because I'm trying to solve for time, hiring employees is the only avenue to do that. And then training them and making sure that they can be autonomous becomes of the utmost important. And in that you're going to have employees that you have to fire. And that's just part of the game. But again, I'm committed to solving for time. And so I accept the realities of that journey. Right. For you, what is it that you and Rachel are trying to solve for? And it might just be for you personally, because it's not always the same. Yeah, I mean, that's great. First of all, and it's a good why, you know, what's your what's your why? And honestly, it's pretty similar. Right now I am at the point where my time is the most valuable resource I have. It's not it is less about money. It's less about everything else because it's unrenewable. It's very finite and in similar to you. I think about it as I want to get to a place where you have the financial freedom where you do have kids running around, which we don't yet. But then it's just like, you know, we'll both be home, we'll both be available, both be around and not stressed about like, oh, you broke your arm, how am I going to pay for that? Or, oh, you know, you're sick. I want to assess this to him. So like for me, I just want to be in a place where it's like, you're not working for a paycheck so much, you're just kind of working on things that you're passionate about and enjoy doing and still trying to figure out how to get there, honestly. Yeah, what are let's talk about some of the things that you have found success in? I know you're documenting all of it, but what are some of the things that you're like this, if I could scale this, this would be great. Well, I'd say like, at least on my channel, the one thing that I covered that was super successful was stock options trading, which, you know, it's a bit like a casino almost. So that's like something where you probably can't just scale it. But, you know, I just got into that this year. And that turned out pretty well for me. But it's still like still a process. I love passive income. I mean, who doesn't? But it's also I mean, the truth behind passive income is it's not it's not easy. Otherwise, everyone would just be sitting at home, walking to the mailbox and picking up checks. So for me, one thing I do to make passive income is I make music for mostly for video licensing to put in people's YouTube videos or commercials or whatever. And that's something that I got into, I think two years ago. And that's created a way more passive income than I thought I would. It only pays out once a year. So that's kind of not great. So I'm estimating it's like $2,500 a month. And that's just just a handful of songs that I spent, you know, I spent a while on them. But I mean, like I have a bunch more than I'm working on because I found I was like, I tried it out with like eight songs. I was like, let's see how much this makes. So I uploaded them in May of last year. And then I got paid out in December and I was like, what? I got $12,000 from these like eight songs, like coming as a musician, as like someone who played in bands, like most ever made was like maybe a hundred bucks, you know, like I was like, this is insane. So I was like, now that I know there's like potential here, I'm going to devote way more time to it because it's it's going to not only do I like really enjoy doing it, it's it's going to pay some bills too. So my goal is to ramp that up, which I had spent a lot of time this year doing. I took it from like eight songs on there to like maybe like 40 or 50. So that was like a way that I'm trying to grow that passive income source because it is like, it's first of all, it's fun to make music. And then it just sits there. So I'm like, well, I blow it to one licensing site. And I put it on like Spotify and streaming and stuff. And that streaming actually paid me like 300 bucks a month, which is not much. But like, most people complain about, you know, streaming, not being being like fractions of a penny. So I mean, that's just I'll take it. Sure. So those are like a few of the ones that I've been like really excited about also have photography, like stock photography, my wife has like quite a catalog. And that brings in several hundred a month. And so we have tons more that we could definitely, it is about taking the time to like upload the photos, keyword them, do all this stuff. And then sometimes they reject them. So then you're like, I just did all that for nothing. But that is we do have, I guess we did recently hire on Rachel's mom to help us out with she ships out a merch and handles a lot of this more administrative stuff. And so part of that is uploading stock photos, because they're just sit there. And instead, they could be earning some revenue. So that's another method that we've been implementing more. That's pretty cool. I like the stock options. It seems like during this time, there's a lot of things that even if you're not the most intelligent human, like prop 22 around Uber and Lyft was on the ballot. Obviously, you know that it's not going to pass just because of the sheer number of dollars. And so all you had to do was put a nice little bet on Uber and Lyft going incredibly high the day after the election. And you're good. And sure enough, that that happened. I mean, another easy one is because of COVID, no one's going to office. So like, there's a stock called Upwork, right? It's like, oh, what is this? Oh, cool. They're booming Zooms. Another Yeah, there's there's so many little things that I think if people just take a step back and they're like, all right, what kind of world are we living in now? And where should I place my bets? You can you can do pretty well. Stock options have been fine. I mean, Zoom doubled my retirement account when they had earnings past July, I think. So I was like, oh, OK. And I did a video on my channel where I bought my wife a Peloton for a birthday. And then I traded Peloton stock options to pay for the Peloton bike or at least to try to. And so that was kind of a fun experiment. And it was like something like I probably wouldn't have done it unless I had like the motivation of making a video behind it. So yeah, stock options have been really fun this year. I love that you've incorporated just like your pure curiosity into your videos. I think that's probably something that a lot of people would want to do. And you take it more of like a learner's approach than a you know, you don't not to say you don't disrespect the money, but it's certainly more of like a let's let's try and figure out if it hits its better video. But if it doesn't, it's just as good, right? It's honest. Yeah, yeah. I'm OK and you know, thrown down a couple hundred or whatever to buy something or to make build a website, you know, build a Shopify thing, pay for ads and see if see if something is like will work for like maybe the average person. And yeah, I mean, it's honestly, it's just like it's kind of fun. Like right now I'm doing a drop shipping video where I like I pay someone on Fiverr to make me a drop shipping store. And so I'm looking forward. I've never really done drop shipping. So I'm looking forward to trying that one out. I think it's just be fun to want to see what it's about, you know, so it's just yeah, it's just like fun experiments. I would think in some ways, you know, we've talked about how many times you've failed in your life. I would think in some way, this personal YouTube channel of yours allows you. It gives you the freedom and the permission to go ahead and possibly fail some more. But in like in from the confines of a safe space and knowing that even if you fail, it's still going to come across as sincere in the video and hopefully help other people avoid that same mistake. So there's really like even in in a potential failure, there's still a lot of success to be had. Oh, for sure. Like I did the print on demand. I started like a company built a Shopify store, pay for Facebook ads. And it's like throughout that process, what did I learn? Well, not only did I get more familiar with Shopify, I spent time in Photoshop making design. So I got like even a little bit better at Photoshop. And then I was doing Facebook ads, and then you have to dive into that a little bit more. And so it's like there's like so many different elements along the way that you're getting more experience with. You're learning what fails, what what works, what doesn't work. And so yeah, I mean, that's why the air quote around fail is is pretty appropriate because I mean, honestly, that's, you know, you're failing forward, as they say, right? So it's all just part of the learning process. So yeah, I think it's awesome to just like, there's so many things that like, you know, maybe I couldn't normally just rationalize spending like 200 bucks on to try out. Now I can, you know, so it's like, yeah, it does validate like my curiosity. Do you have any lofty things in your sights as to what you might want to try maybe, maybe next week, maybe someday eventually like lofty goals for when I have the time or whatever might come up along the way in your channel that maybe would surprise a few people. Well, I mean, one thing I'm trying to do right now, which we've been trying to do for years is we have like this new construction project in the works for a house. And our goal is to like live there and then turn it into a vacation rental. And I've always been like, in love with real estate, but like never, you know, in my twenties didn't have the capital to like do much with it. You know, I was like, even like worked as like an intern for real estate investor. And so like I've always I've that's like my probably my favorite topic is real estate, but I don't own any really beyond a few few pieces of vacant land. So that's like a project, but it's just been really slow moving. There's so many different pieces to get right. But we had architect drops from really cool plans. So that's like that's like more of a long term thing that I mean, it'd be great if we could have it done in six months, but we'll see. So that's something that I think would be really cool to show on the channel because it's a little different. And you know, show kind of like the thought process behind the revenue goals to behind it. So that's what I do. It's a long game. Real estate development is like it's the most trying event of all time, in my opinion. It's a hurry up and wait game. And so your first step is to have a vision that you think is cool, right? We do coffee shops and breweries. Who doesn't like those? We kind of view those as like the new community centers. Then you got to find a great operator. So a great brewer or a great coffee maker with amazing ethos and just really amazing at what they do. Assuming you check that box and you got to acquire a property which might require some lobbying, some political capital, some political help, as well as just pure capital. Yeah. And then you got to hire the architect and now you're just waiting while all you're going through city processes. But once it's set up, I mean, it's really amazing. So this is like something else I'm trying to solve for is like impact, you know. And I think for me, if we pull off like right now in Santa Monica Boulevard, we purchased a building in West Hollywood and we're putting a coffee truck inside of it. They came on the podcast. They called me a year later saying, hey, this truck breaks down every month. It's a beautiful Citroen. It's like a 1950s vehicle that they retrofated to serve coffee. Problem is it can't support the weight. And so they were asking if I could help them sell the vehicle. And I thought, why don't we just put Sonny inside of the vehicle? Because it's literally their brand. I mean, it's like their whole brand, their whole identity is this vehicle. That's how people know them. And so I thought, why don't we put it inside? How cool would that be? So then so now I'm negotiating this with the city and making sure that they're OK with a vehicle inside of a building because it's not really common. Right. And so time, time, time, time, time, time. And then on the back of it, we're going to put our podcast studio, which will be again, like just next level, we could maybe rent that out. Right. But it's also not having a clear idea on how that podcast studio lives and breathes with the creator community. All I know is it's going to be pretty amazing, super cool. Like who wouldn't want to be there? You're also you have an amazing coffee in the front, but it's just time. And then once it's all set, now you have the passive income. But it's like, I mean, we're talking about like a year of work before you're seeing any return and you're just dumping money while you're trying to figure this out. And from my perspective, the hard part is like even knowing where to start with something like that, because, you know, you can have the idea that's everyone has an idea, but like actually figuring out how to execute it is a whole another beast. And that's something like with real estate to me is like, I find it so interesting and fascinating. But like, I'm also just so daunted by it because I'm like, I don't even know who I'm calling for us on the phone. You know, like, there's just so many like all those things you were mentioning is just like, I don't know, I wouldn't even know where to start. The Airbnb market's good, though. I mean, that that could be a big win for you guys. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense in the market we're looking at. So it'd be awesome just to show it on the channel just to get people. I think it's a great real states, a great vehicle. So I wish more people would kind of maybe look into that. Yeah, we document so Nick and I document all of our real estate development projects and we kind of make it like this fun HGTV but more with a realistic view. We'll talk about like via fire inspection matters and there's a bunch of nuances to construction that people would just never really know. And we realize that kind of it's great because once we have the grand opening, there's a sense of you followed the journey, you know, you've committed your time to understanding who we're bringing in here. And and sometimes it's just cool to put a car in a building like that's a cool thing to do. Yeah, there's a shop in the arts district here where there's a car in a building. And every time you walk by like, oh, I should walk in there and see what see what that's about. Yeah, the talk it's a taco shop. I'm pretty sure. And they just have a car on the side, but it's inside. Yeah, right. It's always like peaks curiosity. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't serve anything though, as far as I know. Well, look, I'm happy to talk about real estate to you any time. I mean, it's something that we've spent entirely too much time in. And I think I've figured out all the hard parts are at least like where people can fail. I figured that out so far, but obviously still so much more to go. It's something I'll be doing forever. My wife also owns a construction company similar to you and your wife and how you parlay your interest. It's the same for us, right? My development, where a development can fall apart is usually with the tenant. We work hard to find that. And then the second part is with your contractor. And I'm just married to the most amazing contractor. And so that's got to be nice. It's a symbiotic vertical integrate vertically integrated relationship. That's what he said in his wedding vows. It's ultimate skin in the game, right? Because if it doesn't work, we're in it together, too. So there's like the fear of that side of it. Daniel, I wanted to jump back just real quick. So I work in the film industry and I didn't personally go to film school, but I know a lot of people who have and to a fault. Most of them say that if they had to do it all over again, they wouldn't have gone to film school. And you mentioned that you were a graduate of full sale. I know a couple of people who've been to full sale. And, you know, this might not be fair to them, but based on their experiences, they did not have a really good time there. They just thought it was like full sale was happy to take their money and maybe not provide them with many resources or the best coursework or education that they could have gotten. Looking back on it now, you know, I know that you had some internships out of there and now you're in a completely different field. Looking back on it now, if you could do it over again, would you still go to full sale? Would you go straight into the work environment that you're in? Like what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, that's a great question and a really good topic. And so when I was graduating high school, I had good grades. You know, I was kind of like kind of a person who I wasn't really interested by anything taught in school. But, you know, I wouldn't work that hard. But it's, you know, I can still get good grades enough to keep my parents happy for the most part. So but then like I decided to graduate a semester early from high school because I just wanted to get out of there. I hated it. And, you know, I could still get my honors, diploma or whatever, whatever it was. And so I did that. And then I got it. This will date me. I got a job at Circuit City selling TVs while my friends were in high school. So I was like, I'm making money, you know, you're just sitting there not making any money. So but after doing that for, you know, semester's worth of time, I was like, you know, this, you know, obviously isn't the career path. But I was like, you know what, maybe I will go to school. But I didn't like the things I'm interested in. I'm like super interested in. But I don't like, like I don't like, I didn't want to take all those general studies classes that normal colleges have you take like almost almost all my friends, you know, I'm from Indiana, most of my friends went to Purdue and I could have gone there, had like a freaking awesome time with them. But like, I was like, I don't there's nothing I want to do there, you know. So I did decide to go to Full Sail because they just, you know, you go there for 12 months straight and then you get out. And I was like, that's good. You just learned what you pretty much need to know or what you want to know. And to me, I was, I was like, OK, well, I really want to learn, learn, you know, how to record bands and place microphones and stuff like that. So I was like super into it. And Full Sail is easy to make jokes about and I joke about all the time. You know, if you get a policy you can get in, you know, if you can apply for financial aid, they'll take you. So, you know, it's, I feel like a lot of people go to these schools who shouldn't because if it's going to force you to like, if it's going to put you in a financial spot where you're going to have to move back home to a place where you can't, where you'll have a hard time succeeding in your chosen career path, then you probably shouldn't do it. If you're going to be in a spot where you can maybe move to a city like LA, New York, or whatever, you know, wherever you need to be to help you be successful, then maybe it is. But it all depends on like what your goal is. Like you can definitely be an audio engineer without any schooling. But I also, you know, I have friends who do audio engineering as a hobby. And, you know, there's things that I learned that I would never have learned just from YouTube or figuring out myself. And so I'm like, I'm glad I have that base knowledge. But could I get by without it? Probably. But then I also think about like relationally, the people I met at Full Sail, like I'm still friends with a lot of them to this day. And, you know, I've lived with them after school, like for years, you know, I've lived with different ones. They played my band. We've done this and that. So it's like, I don't know, are you paying for relationships at that point instead of like the education? Maybe. So I definitely don't regret it because I had, I honestly had a great time. I learned a lot and I met some great people. But, you know, it's perfectly possible for everyone to have the exact opposite experience that I had. Like I had in the first four months, I had like three roommates because the first one after two months, we drew from school. The second one who moved in after that, he quit school too after, you know, a couple months. So then I'll, so, you know, some people just it's not for them. And now that, you know, when people ask us in like the photography realm, if they should go to school for it, we always say absolutely not, definitely not because photography to me is one of those things that you can kind of just pick up on your own. You don't need to know all this like book stuff. You just need to be good at taking photos and you can kind of figure out the rest from there. So it is a tricky subject and for some people, I think it works well. You know, obviously if you want to be like a chemical engineer, go to school. But, you know, if you want to do something more creative, I would recommend take a year or two and try to see what you can do on your own and start a YouTube channel. Don't, don't do a YouTube channel. Make a student film. You know, just, just try things out and maybe you can avoid the racket of college. Will your kids go to college? Will you send your kids to college? Only if I would never make them go to college. Only if they want to. Because my, my, my parents were, I always thought they're really strict growing up, but honestly they're, they're cool about the things that really mattered. So when I didn't want to go to school, maybe my mom was freaking out inside, but I wasn't receptive to it. My dad was really cool and I was really appreciative of that. And then when I did want to go to school, they were supportive of that too. So I would never make my kid go to school unless they wanted to college. That is. Yeah, I love that. We're kind of in the same boat if they want to go because they want to be like a history professor somewhere. OK, I guess that's your only path, right? As long as it matches, right? That's kind of my thing. It's like if they know where they want to go and they're like super focused on that. And even if they'll change later, I think that's OK. But as long as school is appropriate, then. OK, that's fine. And some, I think some of the benefits are less educational, you know, like it is like growing as a person in college gives you like freedom to do that, where, you know, it's a little easier to to grow when you're in that like safety net of the educational system. But especially in this day and age, like look at if you look at my career path, like I was making good money with something completely like I'm sure my degree did not help me get a job barely. You know, it's an associate's degree in recording arts, like who cares? I was able to make it just by learning from YouTube and then doing it on my own. I had this dream the other day. This goes back to like the real estate stuff where basically I got a bunch of people together to build the ideal college. And it was a dry place. You couldn't drink there. You couldn't do anything. And it was like, remember the TV show Guts, how like you have to do different challenges on Nickelodeon. Oh, I didn't have cable TV grown up. Same. That's great. OK, so there's a. Anyway, it's a television show where you have to do a bunch of like physical challenges, but you're on a team almost like gladiator style challenges, right? And but they're all different. And so the concept was you come to college, you're in a cohort. You're all studying together. And so you're still learning the basics of whatever you're trying to go for. But then like afterwards, instead of you being an athlete dedicated to soccer or something, your whole team has to figure out this. It's basically a two day obstacle course. And you guys train and you have like dedicated trainers and you have to figure out who on your team is the best for that thing. And so Nick was a college swimmer. He'd obviously probably do like the swimming portion of it. And at some point, everyone has a role at the end of the semester. You all compete against the other cohorts, but that's it. It's just like a hundred percent education, a hundred percent of kind of what you're talking about, where it's like the social component of being on a team and leadership and delegating. And I was like, I should go build that. That'd be pretty cool. Now, I don't know if that's valuable because what I'm convinced is the system needs a different take. How that take is given. I'm not sure. Yeah, it definitely needs some improvement. I would say if it wants if college wants to be like a lasting institution that people care about. Yeah, which I don't think is the case anymore, but we'll see. Yeah, I mean, we're seeing it now with especially with covid. We saw it when colleges and universities were trying to decide whether to have people come back on the campus. And even those that weren't, that were offering online courses for their student bodies were still charging essentially full price tuition. And you saw, I think Rutgers University was one of the first ones where their student body banded together, signed a bunch of had a petition going around, got a bunch of signatures, saying like, why are we expected to pay full price when we are not getting everything that our money is paying for? You know, the grounds, the dining halls, the gyms, the student centers, the libraries. Like why are we expected to continue to pay this when we're not seeing the value? And I think that's going to reverberate long after covid. It's like, you know, back when our parents were in college and university, they were paying a fraction of the price that these colleges and universities cost now. And and there's a lot of reason for that, obviously. But I think that we've kind of reached peak college tuition payments. And I think there are a lot of people who would be all too happy if those start to come down and then you might see a transformation. Absolutely. Yeah. When I read that, that like they're still paying full price on like that is insane. Like it cannot be worth that the same price. Yeah, like we've had teachers email us or like, hey, can you give me some pointers on like how to create captivating like videos? Because like now we're just like teaching via video. And I'm like, I don't know. Like it's different, you know, different piece. That's awesome. Well, listen, tell everyone where they can find you. You guys have amazing content everywhere. I'm a fan. Really next level content. When I was looking at your stuff, I was like, we need to up. We need to up our level. And I think that's important. I think that's honest, but it certainly makes you an amazing creator. And so just tell everyone where they can where they can consume some of your content. I appreciate that. So on YouTube, my wife and I are a photography channel. It's called Mango Street. You can just search Mango Street. It should pop up and my online business channel. It's just my name Daniel Inskeep. And then on socials just about all those, you know, all the usual suspects, you know, you can find us there. I appreciate you coming on the podcast. I appreciate you being so candid with us and keep it up, man. It's look, it's enjoyable to watch. I hope you hit it's cool. It's cool to watch at a minimum. So I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. It was good talking to you guys.