TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

How Jared Owen Builds 3D Videos That Last

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We sit down with Jared Owen to unpack how a 3D animation channel earns 500M+ views by focusing on evergreen “how it works” topics instead of trend chasing. We dig into his full-time leap, the real time cost of high-end animation, and the systems he is building to ship faster without losing quality. 
• building 3D “how things work” videos with Blender and a free learning path 
• finding evergreen topics that keep getting suggested years later 
• learning from early algorithm wins and avoiding event-based ideas that fade 
• quitting a stable job with a one-year financial runway and strict budgeting 
• handling AdSense volatility and deciding when sponsor deals truly fit 
• grading yourself as a business owner and balancing creation with operations 
• speeding up production with contractors, better rendering capacity, and automation 
• using AI for coding tools and research while double-checking every claim 
• getting NASA-style expert feedback to protect accuracy and credibility 
• planning videos with thumbnails, retention, and audience expectations in mind 



Teaser And Why Evergreen Wins

SPEAKER_00

I usually hit somewhere around 200 hours or so. Usually five or six hours in, I'll I'll just get hurt and like I can force myself to keep working, but the productivity just died off. But if I had a board of board of directors, uh they would not be super happy. Let's put it that way. Chasing the trends will die quickly. But if you can get something like Statue of Liberty, where people are like, oh, how does that work on the inside? How do you climb? I mean, people are always Googling that. If I can make a banger video, this will still be getting views years in the future.

SPEAKER_02

Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that isn't afraid to have people smarter than him on the podcast. I'm Travis is here. As always, I have an incredibly special guest this week. It is Jared Owen. And let me tell you a little bit about Jared. Jared's been on the platform for a very long time and he's had a lot of success. Over the course of 14 years, he has over 500 million views, but more importantly, more interestingly, over 4 million subscribers in just over 100 videos. Which I every time I look at that, I go, How is that humanly possible? But Jared, I can't wait to talk about your journey here on YouTube. Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you. Thank you, Travis. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02

If you're new here, we like to tell uh YouTubers' stories and how to help you grow your YouTube channel in so many different ways. And today, Jared, we're going to talk about where you started and how you started. Tell us a little bit about your channel. Uh, kind of just tell us what

Blender Beginnings And Channel Origin

SPEAKER_02

it's about and we'll we'll dig into it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so 3D animations on how things work. Uh, I'd like to show and explain things. Uh, it kind of started with the I would see an animation for something done with 2D, and I'd be like, oh, if that was in 3D, we could explain that way better. And so that was kind of how it started. And uh, yeah, we do all sorts of things on there. It started with really small things around my house, but the animations have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger over the years, probably too big. And I've had to kind of scope it in. But that's yeah, that's the main thing the channel's about.

SPEAKER_02

What's kind of interesting because you did start around a little bit over 14 years ago, and I'm trying to think of like that the software uh at the time, when you look at it compared to today, of course, is it's kind of silly. It's like, oh, that's that's cute. I can do that on my phone now. But I mean, at the time, like you had to have a pretty expensive computer. The software wasn't necessarily easy to understand. Um, what made you want to do that as your first YouTube channel, other than the fact that, like, you know, you said I saw some 2D stuff and I thought it'd be that seems like a high barrier to entry. Was that something you were already doing anyway?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Uh, so the software's called Blender, which is actually I still use it today and everything like that. Uh, but uh yeah, Blender is open source, which means it's free. You can you can go download it. Uh, you do need to have a halfway decent computer, especially if you're gonna render the images and stuff like that. But I've always been interested in animation. Uh when I was younger, I wanted to be a Disney animator and stuff like that. Oh wow. Uh, but I also like you know, the learning how things work. I like to code, I like things like that. And so uh yeah, I was trying to figure out how to merge all those passions into one. And especially when I learned that wait a second, you can actually make enough money to do this for a living. That that was that was like fuel under the fire there that really got me uh moving forward.

SPEAKER_02

So but YouTube 14 years ago was way different than it is today. I mean, A, there were no YouTube shorts. Uh, I'm not even sure if live streaming was a thing back then. Do you remember if live streaming was a thing when you joined? I don't I don't think it was. Yeah, it was yeah. I mean, like you were ancient uh YouTube when you came on. I can't imagine there was even all that many YouTubers that were doing the type of content you were, were there?

SPEAKER_00

There was not a lot, and so in fact, that was a concern because I I was like, the 3D animation uh especially back then took a really long time to make. And so it was trying to figure out if I made, if I spent all this time making it, would anybody actually watch it? And so so there was there was one video, and I I still have still have this this video that I look at from time to time. It was how a bowling alley works, you know, the pins and everything like that. And it was it was 3D animated, and so I saw that video, it had five million views at the time, and I was like, aha, people would watch it, it just needs to be done well, and so yeah, that was kind of my motivation.

SPEAKER_02

Were you already a professional at that point using the software, or was it a hobby at the time?

SPEAKER_00

It was a hobby. So I I was a software developer, that's what I went to school for, and everything like that. I was kind of doing it on the side, kind of teaching it is what I love about YouTube. I learned it all from there. I didn't take any professional courses or anything like that. Uh, because of Blender being free, I mean, I had always thought you had to pay I mean, some of these other 3D animation softwares, even today, thousands of dollars for the license and everything. And so that was my motivation is I can download it for free, I can learn it for free. Um, so that was pretty much the reason I got started. With without that, I I don't know if I would have been able to keep moving forward.

SPEAKER_02

I'm trying to remember back then, wasn't it easier to get monetized? Wasn't it like something really small that uh I can't remember exactly what we did?

SPEAKER_00

I think so. Uh I'm trying to remember back then you could monetize uh now now the requirements are a lot more strict, but it Right, of course. Yeah, I I don't even know what they are today, but I was able to monetize really quickly. And then uh the threshold to get paid was I think a hundred US dollars or something like that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. So when you started, were your videos getting decent views off the bat, or did it take a while, or what was that was that whole?

SPEAKER_00

It took a little while. I was sharing with friends and stuff like that, and it would be like, Woo-hoo, hundred views, you know. I get excited, I'd share it with everybody on Facebook and 100 views, 200 views. It was like, oh, what if I could get 500 views? And then I made a video about how the solar system worked that the the YouTube, it was the first time the YouTube algorithm like really took it, and it got a couple thousand views, and I was like, Whoa, I only have like 200 friends on Facebook. So I was like, somebody's watching this, who is it? And so other people than you, yeah. So that was that was super exciting. The first time that happened, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, now you look at it, it's what 27 million

First Algorithm Breakthrough Moments

SPEAKER_02

views, which is insane to think about. Yeah, um, I think I feel like um one of the things that helps your channel along isn't just that it's interesting and that there's a slightly higher barrier to entry, so you're not gonna see as many people do it. It's um that it's evergreen stuff. So, like a lot of things you're covering are evergreen. Was that always kind of the plan? You always want to talk about things that were kind of just general knowledge, or did you have an interest in this stuff already? Or what what was the because you have like understanding computer parts and you have truck animation, which are not connected at all, but by the same and what are binary numbers? Like not connected at all. However, they are evergreen.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. For for some of those, I mean, the word evergreen I didn't really hear for the first couple years. It was when, you know, I started to get bigger, started to get sponsors, people were saying, Oh, your content's evergreen. And I was like, Oh, what does that mean? And I realized some of these vloggers, you know, that go to Disneyland or something like that, they're hoping for a couple million views in the first two weeks, and then it might die completely. And so then I realized some of these other ones would, you know, I've I've got videos here that are 10 years old that are still getting views, and that's when I realized, like, oh, chasing the trends will die quickly. But if you can get something like the Statue of Liberty, where people are like, oh, how does that work on the inside? How do you climb? I mean, people are always Googling that, people always want to know. So there's always, yeah. So it wasn't a plan originally, but pretty quickly there, it was like, okay, if I can make a banger video, this will still be getting views years in the future. Pretty quickly, I started thinking along those lines.

SPEAKER_02

That's kind of like a secret sauce on YouTube is to be evergreen. And it takes it's not as easy as you think. Some people think, oh, you just have to make something people search for, which is partially true, but by the same token, it has to be relevant. It's not just what people are searching for. What are some of the things you've learned over the years that make something truly evergreen and really powerful?

SPEAKER_00

Um, yeah, like you mentioned there, the search traffic. Uh, sure, let's get it if we can. But what's even more powerful is if YouTube suggests it. And so, uh, like for example, we made some space stuff with the International Space Station and stuff like that. And so when current event happen current events happen, when a crew dragon launches, when something really big like that, um, sometimes I'm not even looking up in the news and I I'll look in my analytics and all the space videos, go. And so that's that's when I'm I immediately like, whoa, what's going on right now? There must be some big event. Um, so yeah, if you can get YouTube to actively suggest the videos, that's where it's most powerful. Sometimes another big YouTuber, um, like I've had Mark Mark Rober and a few other big ones, when they make a topic, you know, uh, sometimes I'll piggyback off of that. I'll I'll get a little bit of boost, which is amazing when it happens.

SPEAKER_02

So, what how do you do your like topic research to kind of know that something is? I mean, of course, you don't know how well a video is gonna do before you put it out, but you gotta have a general feeling, right? Like after being a creator for a long time, uh, especially for as long as you've been, you like you have a pretty general feeling. What is your process for figuring out these kind of evergreen topics that are going to be something that someone three years from now is still gonna be interested in?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, sometimes, sometimes I hit it right on the dot, sometimes not. But they're like, for example, the Super Bowl was held at a stadium, I think, in 2019, which we we did a video on. Amazing views while the Super Bowl was happening. But the day after, the views like died. And so in hindsight, I was like, okay, that was a good learning experience, but that video is almost dead now, um, just because nobody cares. Um but yeah, strangely, my number one criteria is whether I'm motivated enough to do it. Because I've I've chased some things before where I'm not as motivated, and I think it takes longer because I get to the computer in the morning and I'm just like, do I really want to finish this? Like, I need to, so let's keep going. So, yeah, me being motivated, but then um also what's done well in the past. Um, sometimes I can tell from thumbnails on past videos, um, how the video is structured. Um to be honest, I'm still figuring it out. It's it's it's not like I've got it all figured out, got this system. I know this video is gonna hit 10 million views in the first month. Um sometimes I think it'll do well, it doesn't. Sometimes I think a video like, ah, this isn't gonna do well, and it takes off. And I'm like, whoa, okay, I had no idea where are these views coming from? Uh so yes, there's still a little bit of guess and check, but I feel like I've got a somewhat of a system in place for that.

SPEAKER_02

So as you were um kind of uploading years ago, um, it looked like you were you took a kind of a a uh bit of a break from uh your truck animation to computer parts, like three years or something. Yeah, yeah. So were you just uploading a little bit and then you kind of stopped? What happened there?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that was uh I think it was towards the hobby stage, and then probably around 2015 or so, that was when I I had the full-time job. So I was getting up early, sometimes in the evening, you know, I would I would do the animations, but that's when I I was really like, all right, um, if I'm gonna make this work full time, like it, this isn't gonna be something that I can just like, oh, let me try it every once in a while, let me see what's happened. It was like, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. And so I started putting in at least two hours every day on on the weekends. I would put in a little bit more. And so prepping for that time when I would finally jump ship from my full-time job. Uh, but yeah, that was kind of that gap

Going All In With A One Year Runway

SPEAKER_00

where I was, you know, kind of trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And then 2015, I got real serious about it. I was like, all right, I'm gonna give this, give this a full effort here.

SPEAKER_02

Did you give yourself like a timeline? Uh some people give them some like a year or something like that. They're like, I'm gonna try this for really hard for a year. I had a uh content creator who um he quit his job because he really hated it and gave himself a couple of months. He went to his wife, he's like, Look, I'm gonna try this for like a couple months. Please don't leave me. Uh, let's see what happens. And then it worked out for him, but that's not always the case. Did you give yourself some type of timeline or anything?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. And in fact, my story is somewhat similar. We we sold a house. I, you know, I'd done the math. I was like, okay, if we budget, if we try and figure out if I'm making absolutely no money, how long do we have before I hit the panic button and I need to go find something full-time again? And we figured out it was about a year. And then I was like, okay, during that time, if I'm able to, you know, start making, you know, even a couple hundred bucks, a thousand bucks, then that timeline extends even more. So I'd I'd done all this math, I showed all these charts and um things like that. But uh, I ended up getting some contract jobs, people seeing my stuff on YouTube and emailed me and said, Hey, do you work for hire? And uh, you know, I was I was like, what does that even mean? Work for hire. Yeah. Yeah, right. So yeah, I I had made enough money that I was like, okay, I can make this work. I'm gonna have to work really, really hard. Um, but yeah, we'd given we'd given it about a year. Um, if I was making absolutely nothing, and then if I could prove that I could slowly fill the bank account back up, and it ended up working out.

SPEAKER_02

So within that year you were able to kind of uh grind and get it to work out.

SPEAKER_00

The the thing that was so hard is with a full-time job, you know, you you can expect X amount in in the bank account on the day. But then it was like, okay, YouTube pays consistently as long as you have that threshold, but the money was all over the place. I'd get all over. I'd get a really good video, and then the next month not a good video. So it was like if we have a good payout one month, it was like that's not just Vegas money, that's put in savings, get ready, yeah, yeah kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02

Because you never know, right? Yep. So um, how long into things were working pretty well that before you like well? So you quit your job before all this, right? So you were like, I'm quitting, I'm going hardcore for a year. Is that that I understand right?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, because you're if you were a software dev, I would imagine you were making decent money. Yeah. Does that sound yeah? That sounds right. Yeah, decent. So it's a little scary to go from paycheck that I know I'm getting on Friday to I might get 32 cents next month. I don't know what's happening. Correct, correct. Yeah, and that what was that mentally like for you?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that was that was hard because uh, you know, I was I was doing all this 3D animation work in the evening after I'd already been staring at a screen for eight hours. And so I was like, okay, if I if I get rid of the job, then all of a sudden I have all day long. But what was surprising to me was those eight hours go by so fast. It was like, oh, I'm gonna get done so so much, but before long, I mean, days are just chip it away. I was like, okay, I've got to be disciplined. There's no boss over me saying you have to get this done. Um, yeah, so a lot of a lot of discipline there. But um pretty quickly I've figured out how to how to put money and and at least initially we were we were penny pinching a little bit. It was just like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But you were you were um uploading during pre-uh adpocalypse. So for those who don't know, the there's a a time in history on YouTube called the adpocalypse where uh a certain YouTube creator, which our main name was these now, made a video that was kind of distasteful, and a lot of ad companies pulled um their their sponsorships from YouTube videos, and they call it the adpocalypse because a lot of ads went away. Um cpms and and how much you get paid uh from ad sense went way down. Um so previous to that, I imagine you were already kind of full-time and things were going well. Is that is that true?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'm I'm trying to remember the years when that ad adpocalypse.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it was before it was before um, I think it was like before even 2018 or something. It was probably like 2017 or somewhere around in there. So you would have been going for a couple of years. Do you remember adpocalypse and how that affected your your channel?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I went full-time 2018. And so before that, I was pretty much just trying to scrape up whatever ad revenue I could, just building the audience. I knew I was like, that's the most important thing. Um, so I really, I mean, I heard about it, I read about it, but it really didn't, I didn't, it was kind of before my time when I was worried about it too much.

SPEAKER_02

So when you start, when did you feel like was there ever a time, maybe not even now, where you felt comfortable, even though the numbers always even now go up and down? Like even to this day, some people might look at your channel and go, You've made it. Like your channel, your videos destroy views. It's crazy how successful it is. And you're in a niche that I'm sure is pretty high, um, like RPM, which is revenue per milli, which is about how much you get paid from from AdSense. We'll talk about sponsorship stuff in a minute, but um, it sounds like like you've made it, like you have nothing to worry about. What how long did it take before you started to feel somewhat comfortable with what you were getting from YouTube uh AdSense?

SPEAKER_00

Uh probably only a year or two. Um, okay. Yeah, it really wasn't too long. Um yeah, a few few successful videos that really took off and things like that. I think I think I've been uh a little bit more, I don't know if you want to call it luck, but uh my AdSense revenue has been a little bit more steady than I've seen. You know, I've talked with other creators and stuff like that, that you know, huge ups and downs. And uh, you know, we've had enough where I don't have to I don't have to worry too much. In fact, that's how I've been able to support and um my team, I've got a couple contractors that help me out and things like that. That's the only reason I've been able to hire is because AdSense has been a little bit more steady. But talking with other creators, you know, they talk about how AdSense is like um that's like the extra on top. But they're you know, they're doing products, they're doing courses, they're doing all the things like that. Those are areas where I have not tapped out as much as I should have. I've relied on AdSense much more than most creators should. Um, I

Sponsors AdSense And Business Reality

SPEAKER_00

think I've been lucky in that aspect.

SPEAKER_02

Well, we're gonna talk about that in a second, but let's talk about um sponsorships because you mentioned sponsorships before. You wouldn't think like looking at your videos that you would you would have an opportunity for sponsorships because you know you're educating and it's animated, and like how would you even so can you remember the first couple of sponsors that came to you and what you thought when that happened? Someone's like, I want to pay you money to put something in your video. What what were your thoughts behind?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I was I mean, I was always hoping to get to that point because you've seen bigger channels um and things like that, but I think product placement has been a little bit of a challenge with these videos just because there hasn't, you know. I have like, for example, years ago I did how a how a nerf gun works. I'm like, oh, that's perfect. I'll just pitch the Nerf gun at the end of the video and stuff like that. Um some you know, it's trying to figure out the audience that will actually actually purchase because if I do a sponsor and it doesn't actually convert, that sponsor, you know, says thanks, but that they don't have any return offers or anything like that. And so I I've had a couple of those where I'm like, darn, it must not have performed very well. Um, but yeah, trying to find the right um the right audience. It seems like with with mine, I've got a little bit more of a worldwide audience. And so doing uh digital products seems seems to do well. VPNs, things that don't have to be physically shipped, that seems to be a little bit more successful on my channel. Whereas others I've seen where they're selling fit physical products up the wazoo. And so yeah, it's still trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. And sometimes the only the only really data I have on that is whether that sponsor comes back, whether they say, Hey, let's let's do another one, and they either up the offer or keep the same. I'm going, okay, it must not have been too bad. Let's do it again.

SPEAKER_02

So, what do you think about the? I mean, obviously, you want to um, you know, always have a successful business along with the YouTube channel. That's just the way it is. A lot of people don't think about their YouTube channels as businesses, but obviously, if you want to become a full-time creator, it becomes a business. You then become a business owner. Um, I would I've never asked this by another creator, but I want you to grade yourself as a business owner right now. Are you an A, B, C, or D? Are you failing as a business owner? Like not saying that you're not doing well, but like as a business owner. So you're a boss, yeah, you're also the talent and all these where how would you grade yourself?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, an actual grade. I'm definitely not in the A range. I think there's okay, there's a lot of opportunities to optimize. I think one of the challenges that you successful creators come up with pretty quickly is their time is stretched. Do I create videos or do I run run the business? Do I hire somebody? How do I carve things out? And I'm actively trying to figure that out. There's been times where it's like, oh man, I could be pursuing this, but if I do that, then the next video doesn't come out. And so um, yeah, I'm not sure if I could if I could nail down an actual grade, but if I had a board of board of directors, uh, they would not be super happy with let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_02

Well, they'd be at least uh happy with uh the production coming out. It looks like you upload a video every couple of months, which is yeah, it is is amazing because you get a lot of views per video. However, there's a huge risk behind that. And the risk is you spend all this time doing a video, and if it doesn't do well, now you've got more months before you can get something else out. Um, talk to us about that. Is it a strategy or is it just because of how much time you put into these videos?

SPEAKER_00

I would love to put out videos every two weeks, you know. Just um the animation side of things has is is what takes so long. It's yeah, yeah, it's not a strategy. It's I think it's definitely hurt the channel just because I know the YouTube algorithm favors channels that post more often. That's just how it works. And so it's something for for years I've been trying to trying to speed up. Uh, you know, I started hiring contractors consistently about two years ago, which has been going well. I feel like we're kind of ironing out the process and things like that. But the um rendering out the animation, um, you take it from that cartoon-like state and actually render it out into the final animation, which is what you see on my channel. That has taken a long time with uh my one computer that I had 10 years ago. Sometimes I would have that running 24-7 for like four days.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00

You know, I'd have fans on it and everything like that. Yeah, yeah. And then once I got a little bit more budget, I was able to upgrade even more and more. And now with uh now with AI and stuff like that, I'm able to code tools to be able to. I've got several machines here at home. Uh, I've got family members and friends that have machines. And so that process, even in the last couple months, we've sped up considerably. I bet. So there's the the goal is to get it down to once a month and kind of see oh nice, see what the pipeline looks like, see if we have some people working on the current video while we have others getting ahead on the next one, um, trying to get that pipeline going. But uh yeah, that has been a challenge for sure.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I spoke to uh content creator recently, Hafu Go, who does um kind of scientific uh videos on YouTube and he uses AI for workflow um to expedite his workflow in a lot of ways. And he showed an example of some stuff. How how are you how are you leveraging AI and what you do? I feel like um the animation and stuff alone, maybe even like uh research might be an obvious place. Where are you how are you uh leveraging it?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's uh I think most people are a little uh they're using it and freaked out by it at the same time, just by how how it's changing and stuff like that. But the video generators, you know, when I saw those come out, I'm like, oh, could I could I use them? And I I think the answer is yes. Uh I've messed around with them a little bit, but I'm still convinced that you need 3D software to be able to get the exact thing that I want, be able to, you know, op open this up, show what's on the inside. Um, but yeah, as as far as that, uh mostly been sticking with the traditional animation route um using using 3D animation, but the thing that I've been using more and more is coding tools. Uh with clawed code and things like that. My background in software, we're able to take anything that's tedious, you know. What are we doing over and over and over that's really repetitive? Write a tool for that. Um and so that's something daily that I'm doing there. But you mentioned the research aspect of that. That's it's been interesting because a couple years ago, you know, I would I would use AI to to figure out like, hey, can you show me all the decks in this cruise ship? Show me what's going on here. And I would compare it with like a spec sheet or something like that. And it was half the time it was about 50% correct. It would just it's gotten considerably better, but you cannot you cannot trust it 100%. Uh that is true. And so we've we've had it done before where we've we've verified facts in obscure NASA documents or things like that that AI did not know at all. And so it's like it's a tool, but double check it 100%.

SPEAKER_02

You have to, and um, you can have AI check itself, which is kind of a weird double-edged sword, uh, because it actually is pretty good at doing that. However, then you don't know if they got it right the second time around. It's very interesting.

SPEAKER_00

And we found like sometimes AI is scanning, scanning stuff that AI wrote before that is also wrong. And so you have this like garbage problem where it's like, how do you know what garbage in, garbage out?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that is a yeah, but it seems like almost necessary for the type of content you do to at least uh have it in some way be a part of your workflow. So it's like a necessary, not a necessary evil, but yeah, it's necessary.

SPEAKER_00

Correct. I think you'd be silly nowadays to ignore it completely, you know.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Do you look at it because the people who are kind of against AI think about it as ruining art? Um, and I can understand where they're coming from, but then you just don't have to have it do the art part. You do all the stuff that you don't want to do because inevitably there's some part of content creation that a content creator doesn't like. Someone's gonna say, Oh, I love everything. Okay, but you're in the minority. The vast majority of us have an aspect of what we do that we just don't like, and AI can actually get rid of that part for you and sometimes do it better than you could.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. It's a it's a dicey subject in the in the 3D world right now because uh I can imagine. Yeah, just they're kind of feeling like, hey, it's taking my job, taking away everything that's you know, I enjoy and things like that. But um, you know, one of the one of the things I've seen proven online is that you know, when you say, hey, make me an image of X XYZ, it's using other people's artwork to do that. And so, you know, you're then then you're going, hey, what are you doing with that image afterwards? Are you making money off somebody else's stuff? And so it does does get dicey, and I I know that's kind of an ongoing debate, and probably will be for years and things like that. But um I don't know. I'm I'm all for it. I I will say we create most of our stuff from scratch or purchased models right now, just because uh you can create 3D models with AI, which we're actively watching, but it's it's still messy.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's not really where you want it to be. There's but I mean that could change in three months, it's going so fast right now. Yeah, which is um you've you've done a lot recently with NASA uh uh around

AI Tools Plus NASA Level Fact Checking

SPEAKER_02

uh NASA type videos. Are you working with NASA on anything? Because I know sometimes they work.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, not not officially. We've we've got a contact there um that uh has reached out to us and basically said, Hey, we love what you're doing. How can we speed you up? Wow. And so tell us about that.

SPEAKER_02

How did first of all, can you do you remember the first time they reached out to you? You must have been kind of mind blown.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. I did the whole thing where I was like, is this a scam? Is this this for real? I look I looked him up on LinkedIn. I was like, no, he works at NASA. This is this is for real, and everything like that. But yeah, they're they're basically trying to get a better public outreach, you know, with with space companies like uh SpaceX and stuff like that. NASA gets kind of a rap of like they're kind of old, they're not really doing anything cutting edge. And so they're trying to basically change that. Like, hey, look at all the stuff that we're doing. And so um, we love to basically just tell tell the story of what happened. And sometimes they've been able to connect us with astronauts, engineers who've been able to look at our rough drafts and be able to critique them, be able to say, like, hey, what you said here is mostly correct, but you didn't show this. And so that's been huge. Because as you know, when you post something on YouTube and it's incorrect, oh the comments the comments are terrible, you just get hashed in them, and everybody tells you you're wrong, and yeah. So we try and get it correct beforehand. So having those contacts at NASA has been super helpful.

SPEAKER_02

That's so crazy. So, what what kind of things do they so they connect you with other astronauts, which is to me a mind-blowing thing. I mean, an astronaut is it is what some kids have grown up always wanting to be. It's like one of the things I want to be the president, I want to be an astronaut. You know, it's it's such a crazy thing. Um, as a as a listen, I'm a geek and a nerd myself. As a fellow geek nerd, uh, were you having kind of a nerdy cool moment when you're talking to a an astronaut? Like that's kind of crazy.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. And actually, before we had contact with NASA, like there was I did space shuttle videos back in 2020, I think it was. And I had, you know, I had Googled all these astronauts that were in some of these missions that we were talking about. And I had actually I tried to find email addresses. I'd cold reached out to them, um, some of these guys that are in their 60s and 70s that aren't actively working for NASA anymore. And I'd reached out and just said, Hey, would you be willing to help me with the video? Most of them, I got nothing, but one or two of them actually did respond. And so we had some good email, email conversations, phone call with a couple of them. But yeah, they're just regular people, super down to earth. Um, but yeah, I was very honored to talk with them. It was like getting all nervous on the phone. What if I say something stupid? Or what if I say something wrong?

SPEAKER_02

Um, when you when you're making these videos, uh, I mean, obviously getting the content correct is is absolutely because your audience is going to be sticklers about everything. But like, how long does a video take to actually make from the scripting part to the filming to the editing? I know you're uploading them every couple of months, but like if you just had to combine all the time together and crunch it down into an amount of hours, how long would it take? For example, this uh this lunar roving vehicle video you did. Uh, about how long would you say that took?

SPEAKER_00

About two months. Um, I have been tracking the hours that like it takes me personally, and I usually hit somewhere around 200 hours or so. Um, I'm trying to crunch that down and just figure out like what parts do I need to be doing and what parts can I have somebody else help out with. Um but there's there's also a threshold there throughout the day where I'll I'll get up and I'll I'll work on the video, and usually five or six hours in, I'll I'll just get burnt. And like I could force myself to keep working, but the productivity just hits a dive bomb. And so it's at that point where I'll switch gears, um, I'll try and do something else productive, try and work on some of those other like business owner things that need to get done. Um, so that that slows down the videos as well, but I'm not sure how to get around that. It's like it's kind of a human threshold.

SPEAKER_02

And and that is the that is the thing, is like again, we talk about how you have to be a business owner, but you also have to be your own boss. It's it's one thing to be someone else's boss, depending on on how uh uh disciplined you are, being your own boss can be not necessarily a great thing either. Because I'm very permissive with myself sometimes, maybe too much. Uh, is that something that you have a problem with, or are you pretty good at uh keeping yourself sticking to a schedule and all the other things?

SPEAKER_00

I can usually keep myself sticking to a schedule. It's it's funny because we just uh we just had a baby, our our number three, and uh that that killed uh several weeks at least. Just by thinking, like, hey, give me two weeks, you know, I'll bounce back. But that was that was hard. And just thinking about like, hey, nobody's nobody's forcing me to be at this desk. Like, there's not I don't have a a boss, you know, saying, hey, this really needs to get done by Friday. And so um, yeah, I've tried to set deadlines in a schedule, like, hey, we're gonna have the rough draft done here, we're gonna have rendering going on here, we're gonna have the final YouTube version done here. Try really hard um so that I can look at that every day and go, hey, we're on track, we're not on track. Um, yeah, but it does take a lot of discipline uh to be able to get that in

Ideation Packaging And Analytics That Matter

SPEAKER_00

place.

SPEAKER_02

Jared, I want to ask you to do something. Uh, I never really have asked someone to do this exact thing before on a podcast, but I kind of want to go through, I want to get into your brain a little bit.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Um, I don't want you to talk about any videos that you're working on now, but right now, uh, stream of consciousness. I want you to come up with an idea for a video that would work on your channel and tell me what you would do to get there. Like, think, okay, if I want to do something about space, I would think about that. I really want to hear what it would be like to be in your brain. This is actually helpful for people to understand how ideation comes from someone who's been doing it for so long that you might be thinking things in a way that a new creator might go, oh, I never would have thought of getting to that point that way. So let's come up with an idea. What would be a video idea you could do and just walk us through the different aspects of that idea?

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Okay. I'll tell you one I've I've thought about. I don't know if we'll ever actually do, but uh, what's inside the USS Enterprise from Star Trek?

SPEAKER_02

You know, oh, okay. I love this already. So walk us through this. Like, okay, how are you visualizing this? How are you coming up with the story arc? Uh, how are you getting the where are you going to research things? Tell me everything.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. So the first thing I I would think of is okay, how much Star Trek have I've watched? How much could I, how much, how much could I could I think of what would actually show? Would we show the bridge? Would we show the engine room? Would we show what are all these things? And then I'm I'm instantly thinking of, okay, 3D model, is there a good one that we could purchase? Um, or do I need to think ahead of time? Because it it'll probably take one of my contractors, you know, a bunch of hours to be able to put something together and a lot of back and forth. And so I'm immediately thinking, how do we get to that polished 3D model that we can use in the animation? And then, you know, okay, we're gonna want a space scene, we're gonna want the earth in the background, maybe a couple other things. And so I'm thinking a lot ahead to what previous videos have we done? Could we use 3D models from those previous ones? Um, reuse is is a huge thing if you've already done all this work to create a 3D model, a 3D scene. Can you leverage that work again? Um, that's something I'm trying to get better at because sometimes we're a one and done. But yeah, then then from there, trying to figure out like, okay, well, if we show if we want to show a scene on the bridge, you know, maybe we'll show the camera zooming in and we'll show the ship coming apart and exactly where the bridge is. Um, do we want to show it empty? Probably not. We'd want to show some characters on there. Okay, so we're gonna need some characters in Starfleet uniforms, and we're gonna need some of these things. And then then I'm thinking ahead to okay, we need a video expert who could tell us, tell us if it's correct or not. And so that one would be a little bit different because if it's, you know, the Statue of Liberty, I'd reach out to the park service there for somebody that works in it every day, to an engineer, but to for the USS Enterprise, I'd probably want to find like a super geek that like knew it inside it out, that had seen all the episodes that would be able to tell me, like, oh, this actually isn't correct, this is correct. Um yeah, those are some of the things that would go through my brain. Um, how long should the video be? Because you're you kind of train your audience to do they expect five-minute videos, do they expect hour-long videos? And if you all of a sudden switch that up and your audience isn't expecting that, it'll some of your super fans will watch no matter what. But others might get deterred if they're expecting a short video and they're they see a half hour video, they're going, oh, I don't have time, I'll watch this later, and then it might never happen. And so that's important as well, trying to figure out like, oh, we've got material for a half hour video, but we've got to cut out something. What do we cut? And so, yeah, those are those are those would be my initial thoughts that would, and I would I would create a document and I would just brain dump, try and organize it immediately. What are the actionable next steps? Can I get somebody 3D modeling it? Can I get my script writer um trying to work on it?

SPEAKER_02

Uh yeah, does that kind of give you a good idea of where I would go? And what I and when I listened to you, I also heard something that I don't know if many people heard, which is I actually heard your experience talking through the moment. And what I mean by that is inevitably when you would say things, like, oh, I need to think ahead of this, these reasons the reasons you're you're saying that is because of either mistakes you've made in the past, comments you've seen, things you've learned over the course of time, and you're naturally putting them into your thought process of how to make these videos. You may not even realize it in the moment because, like, oh, I have to think ahead of this. The reason you'd have to think ahead of this is because maybe there was a time before where you didn't and it came back to bite you. So it's so cool to hear you kind of do that and and and and get that from them. How many, how many times would you say you've gotten something that's been really been a part that's become a real big part of your creative process that came from like comments? Like how often has that happened? Obviously, not getting things wrong, but has there ever been something that someone has said something like I think I need to think about consecration differently because of what someone said?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, sometimes there's a sometimes there's a hot moment in the video for better or for worse, where you get things wrong or you realize everybody everybody really liked that part. It was it's a common theme in the comments, and so uh yeah, it's a good idea to to study those and trying to figure out like why did they like that so much? Could I recreate that? Maybe not exactly, uh, but um I found cutaway views. Like uh I did one on the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. Um, like uh oh gosh, that was probably seven years ago now. But the the part where the the ship comes apart and you see the ship layout underneath there, there was a spike in viewers, like people really liked that part. And so things like that, and you know, they'll they'll comment underneath there, or or um I'm trying to think, there's there's certain parts of the movie where where they're really enjoyed. And so I'll find if I can put Easter eggs in in the video that everybody's talking about, um, that really helps. And so, yes, comments help out considerably. Um but uh one one more thought I had in my in my thought process there, so I don't get hashed by the other YouTubers that are watching this video. Um, thumbnail should always be thought of uh very early on as well, because I feel like we've made some really good videos before, but the thumbnail was just not a banger and didn't get the clicks. And so uh I feel like I've made decisions on whether or not to do a video or not over do we think the thumbnail's good? Do we think people will click on it? And so um, yes, that should be very odd early on in the process as well. Do you make your own thumbnails or do you have someone else do that? Um, I've traditionally I've I've made uh my own thumbnails with the help of my wife. Um, she's pretty good with like the graphic design stuff, but I've got a contractor who helps me out. We're still kind of figuring out the back and forth process, but yeah, um, yeah, I'm trying to get more and more help because that would usually suck up a few days. Like, yeah, I could. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Do you spend a lot of time in the analytics portion of YouTube at all? Like the back end? Not as much as I should. Well, okay, but did you ever, or if you just never, if you are you more in the creator side? Because I when I talk to people, I'll either talk to someone who's a super data nerd and that's just they love that, or another person who's more the artist, uh, that just like, yeah, I kind of look at one of ten or whatever, and after that, I don't really care. Which side would you say you're in? Are you in the middle?

SPEAKER_00

I would say I'm in the middle. Yeah. Okay. There's times when uh, you know, we've had a really good video, and I'm like, sweet, let's let's do it again, let's see what we can do. And then I'm like, hold on, hold on. Go into the analytics. Where's the traffic coming from? What's the click-through rate? It's it's like the it's it's a gold mine, and there's always there's always more. You could spend so much time in there trying to figure out what worked, what didn't work, what should I do again.

SPEAKER_02

So if you have to pick one analytic you look at in a video at any time where I did bad or good, which one are you picking?

SPEAKER_00

Uh, probably that audience retention curve. Uh retention, yeah. Yeah, because especially that first 30 seconds where it always drops off really steeply. Sometimes you'll look at other videos and you're like, okay, this did not drop off. It's always going to drop off some, but this one didn't drop off as much. Why? Was it the intro? Was it something that I said? I feel like that that is crucial because if you can hit that, um, it just makes a world of difference. I mean, obviously, throughout the video, you want to make sure retention's good as well. Uh, but that oh, that first 10 to 30 seconds is just drives me crazy.

SPEAKER_02

Do you have a number that you try to hit? Because uh this would be interesting to hear, like especially since you have videos that do really well. Not you have a percentage you try to hit?

SPEAKER_00

Not specifically. Um, I I know I've seen other other presentations where like Mr. Beast and stuff is able to hit insane levels. Yeah, yeah, of course. You know, of course he is things like that. I uh you know, after the first 30 seconds, if I still have over 50%, I feel like that's pretty good. Feel pretty good. And I feel like I've had some where you know it's been as high as 60 or 70.

SPEAKER_02

Um that's attainable, it's all attainable. It just really depends on like the packaging portion, the title, the thumbnail. How long do you spend on the title? Because we talked about the thumbnail. How long do you spend on your titles?

SPEAKER_00

Not as much. Uh, you know, I feel like mine has kind of followed a similar pattern. How does an elevator work? How does an escalator work? How does blank work or what's inside blank? I feel like I've tried to get a little bit more creative recently, just trying to, especially now that you can test your titles. You can test whether one works, trying to figure out I the title doesn't make as much of a difference. I found if that thumbnail catches, then the the it the title still matters, but not as much as the thumbnail. So I've messed around a little bit, but not too much.

SPEAKER_02

Is there someone on YouTube that you watch that you're like, man, I wish I could be as good as them? It doesn't even have to be in your niche.

SPEAKER_00

Um, but you you just you're really inspired by probably Mark Mark Rober. He's been somebody that I've been a fan, you know, for a long time. I've I felt like uh our audiences aren't exactly the same, but I I've always admired his ability to take some complex science science thing and just be able to dumb it down so that a five-year-old can understand it. That's really been really expiring to me. And I feel like I've watched some of his videos trying to figure out like how how did you do that? How did he do that? You know, and even even try and get his bullet points and be like, okay, you said this first, then this first, you showed this visual. Yeah, but he's he's one that I've admired for a long time.

SPEAKER_02

What that if you in a perfect world when you had more time, would that be uh an interesting secondary channel to do something not to exactly what he's doing, because he's doing some really like totally involved things, would take just as much time as what you're doing now. But like, would you like to have a science channel where you kind of um take things that are super complicated and make them even easier than what you currently do?

SPEAKER_00

Potentially, you know, and and and I've thought about that. Like, you know, we we kind of have, I mean, even on this, uh, I don't really have a secondary channel right now, but uh, we kind of have you know, building space, you know, small objects. We kind of already have a few separate topics, and I've you know thought about well, hey, what about the small objects? What if we split off a second channel and just talked about those? Or, like you said, like a sciencey channel where we just talked about real sciencey things. Uh, you know, I've I've thought about that, maybe, um, especially if I could figure out the um how to duplicate myself more so that uh let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_02

I'm gonna do because for many years I was a YouTube content coach and I I've helped tons of large and small creators do things. Let's have a real quick little session, a little three-minute session. Let's talk about that. So, how would we do that? I look at your channel and I think, well, your superpower is explaining kind of complicated things in a very visual way using 3D graphics. But your mind, your brain, is that you do understand these things. And while animation is a great way to get to a large group of people, if you wanted to have a secondary channel that did something different, obviously you couldn't spend the time to do that unless you did like something where every piece of the animation is completely sent to someone else to do, right? Like you just you you have to let that part go. And I don't think that's the type of guy you are. So here's what I think. I think you would do more of a talking head thing with like just normal b-roll about a subject, and that could be super lightlift. That would be something that like like Jared thinks about this or Jared thinks about that, or the latest science trend, and you just kind of talk about that. And you can still have that secondary channel, which I love diversification when it comes on YouTube, because if something happens to this channel, you still have something else, right? If something happens to this channel right now, it's a little scary, right? Like if if someone accidentally if someone hacks your channel for a and it takes like a week to get it back, like that's scary. If anything like that happens, uh you're kind of you're kind of stuck. Um but uh yeah, I would love to see you do something where you take another passion, but it's much lighter lift. And it's something you just literally sit down in front of the camera, you talk, maybe read a script, and then you give it to everyone else to do. They just do the rest of it, the editing and everything else. You give them a note, you then you look at the end result and you go, I need this, this, this changed. And then at the end it gets uploaded and done. Um, and something that's low lift and doesn't cost you that much, you never know. With your knowledge and and what you know, how YouTube works, the way you know how YouTube works, uh, it could be kind of cool. Could it work pretty good for you?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, that is an interesting thought. That I've you know, I've thought about things like that, and I it goes back to kind of what I was saying earlier. The my passion is animation. Um, I love doing that. Um, and there was a time when I was like, that I'm not hiring anybody, I'm gonna be a one-man show and just figure out how to do it faster and faster. But I've changed a lot recently and just like, all right, uh, I will never speed this process up if I don't, you know, get help somehow. But um, yeah, I'm I'm not sure about the talking head thing. I've I've thought about that before because it would be low lift, you know, just put B-roll in there, even B-roll.

SPEAKER_02

Or even voice over or voice over anything. It doesn't even have to have a talking head, yeah. Voice over B-roll, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the thing that I've struggled with, and and maybe other business owners have figured this out, but like it's like I I can delegate some things, but especially the this the script writing making it look exactly like me. It's like if I'm not directly involved in there, there's there's enough that just doesn't feel like it's my voice, it doesn't feel like it's my work. And so yeah, maybe other business owners or other YouTubers have figured that out a lot more than than I have, but it's something that I'm yeah, I'm actively every day trying to figure out.

SPEAKER_02

Well, it's interesting. I I talked to a content creator who does documentaries uh a couple months ago. And when we were talking, um, he he I said uh we talked about editors, and that's usually the thing that most content creators have a hard time uh outsourcing because they believe that their edit is the only way that it could ever look better. And I always argue that there's always a better editor than you, no matter how good you are. Uh, but when we talked about it, um I he most content creators uh edit, but he is an editor who's a content creator, so that aspect of him could never be released. Like that's the part that is him, and then the content creation is kind of around it. So that's interesting. So, in some ways, you're kind of saying the same thing. It's like not necessarily the edit part, but other aspects of it. Like, I that's the part I can't let go because then it's just genuinely not me. But I would challenge any other creator out there to really look at the different parts that you are putting into a video and That are uniquely you. And sometimes it's just your voice, sometimes it's your thought process, and it's not these other things that that we think they are. And the first thing that most content creators need to let go is editing because it takes the sometimes takes the longest. And there's 99% chance there's someone better out there than you can do your content. Animation, different story. I don't know. I'm not I'm not an expert in that in that situation. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And maybe this is how it is with editing, but I found with my contractors, they've they've been great at learning like my style. And it's like if I can get if they can get 90% there, and then I'll come in there and do the last 10% just do the rest and give it that.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

That yeah, that's kind of been my strategy.

SPEAKER_02

Um yeah, it's a really good strategy too. And who can argue uh four million subscribers, not even 200 views, not even 200 videos, and just a over a decade of I'm just gonna call it excellence because I love science and I love science videos, and I think your channel is one of the shining stars of YouTube because it's it's family friendly, which is really great. Uh, it's evergreen, which is super great from a business perspective and for a viewer perspective. And you just kind of have it figured out, which is so cool, Jared. I can't thank you enough for spending your time with us today. You've shared a lot of cool information with us. Um, if

Where To Find Jared And Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_02

someone wanted to get in touch with you, maybe they wanted to have um they just wanted to know, hey, I have a science channel. I would love to to touch base with you. Is there like do you have like an Instagram or something that someone can reach out to you or anything?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I have I have most of those socials. I do have my email listed on the on the YouTube page, but I am a little bit selective about who I answer. But um but yeah, if if somebody wanted to reach out, you know, I'd be I'd be open to that.

SPEAKER_02

I think specifically you're inspiring because um a lot of content creators who've been on the platform as long as you are not putting out videos that are doing better now than they did a couple years ago. A lot of those content creators had a spike in the COVID era and stuff. Yes. And since then have kind of gone downwards. And I know this because I talk to content creators every single day, and I'm doing research on content creators for the podcast. And I do find a lot of content creators who've been doing it for over a decade, and they are not doing as well as you are. And it's just really inspiring. I just know that there's someone listening going, I really want to talk to him. I want to talk to him so bad. So Jared's around. Uh, don't bother him with silly questions. But if you're genuinely interested in maybe your science channel, he might be able to delete it. Absolutely. You're doing a good job. Absolutely. Uh, for everyone else, uh, there'll be links in the description and the show notes for Jared's channel and some of the other things he's doing. Uh, and I have a video right here. If you want to see someone else that I've talked to very recently, very cool, check that out. And we'll see y'all in the next one. Thank you, Travis.