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So you might know that I started with YouTube about 6 years back. I had no prior experience as a creator and was in a full-time real estate job. But I was inspired to start my own YouTube channel because I was – and still am – an avid consumer of YouTube videos. I really loved watching good content, breaking down how the videos were made, and learning from the expertise of the OGs like Casey Neistat. I find creators inspiring because they stand for everything that I admire – persistence, passion, and enthusiasm. And this year, I decided to dive a little deeper.
Over the last few months, I have been meeting up with creators and talking to them – to get a look into their creative process and understand how they approach their work. Some of my favorite interactions were the behind-the-scenes look I got at MrBeast’s studio and business operations, Enes Yilmazer’s $45 million house tour, and Ryan Serhant’s tour of the highest residential home on the planet.
This week, I got an inside look at the NELK HappyDad headquarters in Orange County, California. The NELK boys have a fascinating story, starting with prank videos and positive content, and pushing ahead to become some of the most recognizable content creators in America today. But beyond that, HappyDad is an amazing business, worth $250 Million – and John Shahidi gave me a step-by-step explanation of how the brand is so massive today and the work it takes to build a business like this. If you’re building a business, this is a must-watch:
The other creator deep-dive this week was with Kelly Wakasa on The Iced Coffee Hour podcast (make sure to subscribe!). Kelly has been making videos since the age of 15, and I love his mastery of storytelling. Kelly is extreme – For example, he saw that college videos were hot on YouTube and enrolled in college for a semester just to make college videos. This is also the video where I cracked up the most on camera – I just couldn’t stop laughing at one of Kelly’s college stories. Kelly has a lot of lessons to share for content creators who haven’t found the success they are searching for – and just people looking to live an exciting life:
Right, the fun and games are over. Now let’s get down to some serious stuff.
Falling behind
Over 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. If you’re not among them, congrats! If you are, it’s time to get moving. But you can’t achieve your goals if you don’t know what your goals are. So I looked through the data to find the average net worth by every age, and the top 1% in each age group. Just numbers don’t reflect the whole story because financial goals and priorities change during different times in your life. In this video, I break down all of this, to give you a complete idea of what you should be shooting for, and how to catch up if you’re falling behind.
What age bracket do you fall in, and what is your financial priority at the moment? Let me know in the comments.
The Graham Stephan Show
This week on the Graham Stephan Show, I first looked at a video that stressed me out – this lady had somehow managed to “accidentally” buy one thousand pairs of shoes! I wanted to find out what was going on in her mind when this accident happened. I was not disappointed. Then I recorded my brutally honest reaction to fellow Vegas YouTuber Norma Geli’s video on how much she spends. Watch this to see me guessing the rent she pays (and comment below if you think I should go on “The Price is Right”). Finally, I watched Caleb Hammer rip apart a millennial’s spending. No person should have this level of debt – Not in your 20s, 30s, ever!
By the way, I have a recommendation for you this week:
Check out Brian Feroldi’s newsletter.
Brian is a master at educating investors about the stock market – his threads about remembering timeless investing wisdom, valuing stocks, and reading financial statements are some of the best content I have read on Twitter.
In his weekly newsletter, every Wednesday, he packs a wealth of investing information into five short pieces of content that you can digest effortlessly. Check out his newsletter here, and sign up –It’s totally free and completely worth it.
So that’s it for my Sunday round-up. For the new folks here, in this newsletter, I give a quick recap of whatever you may have missed over the week on Sunday over all my different channels, and on Wednesday, I will be doing my deep-dive article on one of these topics.
See you next week with another bunch of exciting videos!
And force of habit – Smash that like button to help others find this newsletter. Hit that subscribe button if you haven’t done so already!
50 Years old, house is paid off, divorced, kid is still in High School, trying to save as much as I can right now. I would like to get into some kind of side income. Maybe real estate? Trying to build up some money to be able to fund this.
I'm 65(How did that happen?) and financially my life is a mess. My wife died during covid and I just managed to pay off the funeral between my disability check and one of my daughters helping.
I have been disabled since 2006. I had a 401k that basically got burnt up by medical bills. After my wife died, I moved in with a friend who is in his 70's. My emergency fund is near 0.