How a St. Louis Company Built 6.5 Million YouTube Subscribers Selling Giant Gummy Bears

Jamie Salvatori [00:00:00] You know, we started with hard hitting stuff like video fireplaces and video aquariums. So yeah, I'd go take a camera to my friend's houses, well my friend's parents' houses that had nice houses and nice fireplaces, and set a camera up, light a fire in like the middle of June. Videotape that, buy some Christmas music, put it with it, put that on a DVD and sell that. This is the Vance

Vance Crowe [00:00:25] Crowe podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. This is a podcast where I try and interview experts that have a deep knowledge in an area that I don't know anything at all about, and then try and figure out how do they understand the world in ways that could help me do things better. This week's interview is with a really unusual character named Jamie Salvatori. Jamie is the CEO of an online retail outlet called va nineteen.com. Now, if you go to this website, you will find that they sell really unusual things like a six foot long gummy worm, or the world's spiciest chocolate, or all sorts of silly putty and games and toys that you can't find just anywhere out on the internet. What's even more interesting about Jamie than his unusual store is the fact that he has marketed so many of his products on YouTube, and he's done it so well that he's actually amassed an audience of 6.5 million subscribers. Many of his videos get all the way up to 85 million views. This is an incredible reach, and it actually describes something that I think is pretty important. Jamie knows how to capture the attention of people and keep them entertained and engaged, and it's helped him build a very successful business. You will find out though, that Jamie isn't just a great marketer. He thinks about things in very unusual ways, and after we get through the components of how did he start his business and what is he really doing on YouTube, we start talking about what is his impression and how does he feel about kids and what they should or shouldn't be allowed to watch on YouTube or what technology should be made available to them.

Vance Crowe [00:02:14] And he also ends up talking about YouTube and how they've demonetized certain programs over others and how does he feel about that. And components of things like hate speech. This was a wide ranging conversation and quite interesting. And one of the things that you should note is as soon as we got done with this interview at about 1130 at night, Jamie left here and went back to work. He is a hardworking entrepreneur and there is a lot to learn here. But even more than that, you can tell that Jamie has a great personality and is just fun to be around. So buckle in and enjoy. Jamie Salvatori. Hello. Welcome to the podcast.

Jamie Salvatori [00:02:53] Thank you.

Vance Crowe [00:02:54] So a few weeks ago I had you down, you and your wife down to my house. We just moved in the neighborhood a little while ago and we were sitting outside and I remember thinking before you came over that it was nice that the couple was coming over. It was gonna be a lot of fun. And then we were sitting outside and I was talking to your wife and she ends up being a PhD scientist and actually quite, quite impressive.

Jamie Salvatori [00:03:18] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:03:18] And then I turned to you and was like, so you're like an

Jamie Salvatori [00:03:22] Attorney or something? Yeah. No, my brother was, my uncle is grandfather was. My brother is, but me not so much.

Vance Crowe [00:03:35] And so I,

Jamie Salvatori [00:03:36] I felt like you were disappointed for a moment that I wasn't an attorney. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:03:41] I think

Jamie Salvatori [00:03:41] Like you had a legal problem that maybe I could help you with.

Vance Crowe [00:03:44] So what, what, so I now, I was like totally on unsure footing. 'cause now I'm like, okay, well what does this guy do? And you're like, I I do some YouTube stuff.

Jamie Salvatori [00:03:53] Yeah. I always have a hard time explaining what, what I do to people. 'cause everybody just wants a one word answer. I'm in construction or like, you know, I'm a doctor, I'm an attorney or, or whatever, something that's easy to sort of explain, but I don't really know what my profession is. 'cause my business is kind of weird. And we do a number of different things.

Vance Crowe [00:04:21] So you then say to me, you know, I work in YouTube and I say, well, what, you know, what's, what's the channel? I'm interested in this. And you said, what's that? 19 VAT 19. And so I of course rudely pull out my phone as you and my wife.

Jamie Salvatori [00:04:36] No, I wanted, I wanted you to check. And I

Vance Crowe [00:04:38] Check it and I am like, oh my God. We're sitting with a man that runs a YouTube channel with 6.5 million subscribers. Like, you're bigger than RET and Link. This is, this is unbelievable.

Jamie Salvatori [00:04:52] No, they've got more subscribers.

Vance Crowe [00:04:54] I just looked it up this morning. They have 4.5 million

Jamie Salvatori [00:04:57] That might be on their, like anoth a second channel or like a crew channel or something. But their main channel is like 15 million

Vance Crowe [00:05:04] Or

Jamie Salvatori [00:05:04] 20 million in,

Vance Crowe [00:05:05] In any case, you have enough subscribers that millions and millions and millions of people see your views. And in fact, I was just looking it up this morning, you have a video that's been seen by 85 million people. You have other videos that have 25, 15 5 million views consistently. So we are sitting with a man that runs a YouTube channel that does something to grab people's attention. And I could give a description of it, but I'd be, I'd be very interested in hearing, how do you describe to people the videos that you put out to the world?

Jamie Salvatori [00:05:39] That's a good question. So our YouTube channel began as a way to promote the products that we sell on our gift store. So my, my professional life is a little strange, the story. But basically right now I have a gift store that sells toys, candies, and sort of general gifts. Okay. And they're kind of weird products,

Vance Crowe [00:06:09] Not kind of weird. They're the weirdest products that you can find. Okay.

Jamie Salvatori [00:06:12] So they're kind of weird. They're, they're not your essentials. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:06:16] Okay. That's it.

Jamie Salvatori [00:06:17] No one, no one would mistake us for Amazon and like, oh yeah, I'd go there to get copy paper. Right. We sell weirder stuff. It appeals to either the kid inside or literal kids. And we make videos on YouTube to promote these outrageous products as outrageously as we can.

Vance Crowe [00:06:39] And so why don't you give an example of some of the outrageous products that that, that you sell at your store?

Jamie Salvatori [00:06:45] I think our most popular product right now is a chocolate bar. Although I guess you could use the phrase bar with the air quotes around it because it's one and a half inches by one inch. So that's not, that's pretty small, but it's the world's spiciest piece of chocolate. It'll put any spice tau to shame. I mean, it's as spicy of food that you can create. And it is so popular. I dunno why people, I guess people like pain or they like testing themselves or they're just, you know, someone tells you this is the spiciest thing in the world and you just want to try it and like see what happens to you.

Vance Crowe [00:07:32] You know? And so if you were trying to sell that chocolate, like, and you were an ordinary person, you'd be like, Hey, I've got this chocolate bar. It's really spicy. Do you wanna try this? But in your YouTube channel, that's not what you do. You feature these products in really unusual ways.

Jamie Salvatori [00:07:48] Yeah. You gotta grab people's attention. I, I've been kind of telling the folks at work that, you know, we sort of, you know, we sell a lot of candy in food, like this world's hottest chocolate bar. We also sell the world's largest gummy bear. Right? We've got one that weighs 26 pounds. It's like, it's like the size of a 4-year-old. You know, it's giant, giant gummy worms. You know, really just a six foot inflatable soccer ball. You know, a lot of really kind of random but fun products. And when you wanna sell something like that, you gotta have fun with it. And you've got to, what am I trying to say? You, you have to grab people with something that is different and unusual. It's gotta fit the product. Right. The product's kind of weird. And so you can't just tell people that it's the spiciest chocolate bar in the world. You gotta, you gotta show 'em. So you gotta, you gotta eat it and you gotta try to eat a lot of it. And you, you're gonna have to be in pain. You know, you're gonna have to suffer for those sales.

Vance Crowe [00:09:03] Right. And so, so to give an example of how you've done this, one of the ones that caught my attention, so I watched several hours of this right after. Thank you. You left. I, that's how,

Jamie Salvatori [00:09:11] That's how we, that's how we got to 6.5 million subscribers

Vance Crowe [00:09:14] Because it's addictive. So right after you left, I'm, I'm sure that evening I stayed up and watched, I don't know, two hours of your videos. 'cause once you start, you just can't, you're totally hooked. You're very, very good at this. But then even today I was watching some and with that world Spiciest chocolate bar, you took a bunch of them, ground them up and then put them in a chocolate fountain. Oh,

Jamie Salvatori [00:09:35] That's right. I forgot about that.

Vance Crowe [00:09:36] And then you took, you, you would have the, your employees dip some sort of candy in it and then take a bite of it. And there's no mistaking, like there's no actor on earth that could fake the level of intensity that they're going through. And it's so mesmerizing because even though I can't smell or taste the chocolate, I'm like, that looks really, really intense.

Jamie Salvatori [00:09:59] Yeah. We have to do it for real because we aren't good actors. You know, we gotta, you know, we gotta method act. So I'm lucky that I've got employees willing to try that spicy stuff because it's, it wreaks havoc on the way in and on the way out.

Vance Crowe [00:10:20] Right. Oh wow. It's not just for while you're recording.

Jamie Salvatori [00:10:23] It's, it's rough.

Vance Crowe [00:10:25] And, and then you're doing other things outside of just like spicy stuff. Like one of the first videos I ever saw was when you made the world's largest bath bomb. Oh

Jamie Salvatori [00:10:35] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:10:35] And so I, I actually wasn't familiar with bath bombs, but this is like the concept of like, you get a little ball and you drop it in your bath and then it makes suds and you can sit in it.

Jamie Salvatori [00:10:46] Yeah. I wasn't that familiar with them either, but I think they're more popular with women than they are for men. And it's some sort of combination of like, is it baking, baking soda, and a couple other chemicals. And, and so you can sort of mold it into a thing and then you can put fragrance in it and you throw it into your bath. And I guess it, it, you know, fizzes, it's like a Alka Seltzer tablet for your bathtub or something. I don't, I don't know. Women would understand this a lot better than I do. And well, that came about, that's a weird one because the video came first and the product came second.

Vance Crowe [00:11:33] Okay.

Jamie Salvatori [00:11:34] So the pool at my house was, was broken and we needed a new pool. And so I was sitting at dinner with my wife Allison, and I said, we're killing this pool. Right. So what could we do to this pool that you would never do to a pool that you, that you cared about? Right. You know, since we're getting rid of it anyways. And we're putting a new pool in. And she had the idea of, of a giant bath bomb, just making like a huge one because, you know, it's, it's probably gonna mess up your pool as far as like the filters and whatever. You just wouldn't wanna put that much like weird chemicals in your pool. So that was the idea. And then we started working backwards from there because most of our videos promote a product that we sell in our stores. So it was like, what, what do we do? So I start looking into all these bath bombs. I'm like, they're all the same. I can't find anyone that's like, interesting or cool. So, you know, eventually we came across a lady making black bath bombs. So you throw it into your bathtub and it, and it turns it black. It kind of like dies your bathtub black. And I was like, that's it. Let's make this giant bath bomb and have it turn my pool black. That'll be awesome. And it, it barely worked. That was like super high stress level for like a few weeks.

Vance Crowe [00:13:04] And so the video is essentially, you, you have a bunch of people that get together and they figure out like, how are we going to construct this cylinder, or not even a, like a, like a sphere that you can then mix all the chemicals in to make a bath bomb. And then you buy, it looked like industrial ingredients to be able to put all this together. You make this bath bomb and then you drop it into your pool and it just explodes and makes black everywhere. And then your employees jump into the pool and start swimming around in it.

Jamie Salvatori [00:13:34] Yeah. I think we all got a rash.

Vance Crowe [00:13:36] Did you really?

Jamie Salvatori [00:13:37] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:13:37] I mean, everybody had to have wondered because it is black, black, black in

Jamie Salvatori [00:13:41] There. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:13:41] I

Jamie Salvatori [00:13:41] Think, you know, I don't think that's, I don't think bath bombs are good for your skin, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:13:47] Okay. I

Jamie Salvatori [00:13:48] Don't, well maybe you're not supposed to stay in 'em for like three or four hours, which is what we ended up doing, you know? 'cause you're like, we just put this giant bath bomb in this pool, we're gonna hang out for a while. But that was a ton of fun. It was super high stress because, you know, you can look on the internet for a recipe to make a bath palm, but everyone's making 'em, you know, this big, we've gotta make one that's four feet in diameter. I mean, it weighed 2000 pounds. So 2000.

Vance Crowe [00:14:17] Yeah.

Jamie Salvatori [00:14:18] So when you start thinking about, I'm, I'm thinking back to when we made that video and, and the problems that we ran into. You know, I don't wanna bore people with them, but you know, when you scale something up, that large things come into play that don't normally when you're working on something that's like two inches in diameter, you know, how long is it gonna take to dry? Oh. Because, you know, to dry all the way into the middle of this thing. Like, is it gonna work? And then, you know, we built the molds at my studio, but then we've gotta get everything to my house and we gotta build it. And what, what if we take the mold apart and the whole thing just crumbles and we've just wasted thousands of dollars and, you know, hundreds of man hours making this thing and it, and it doesn't work, you know? Now what,

Vance Crowe [00:15:07] So that brings up an interesting question. When, when you're making a video like that, what is your goal? It's it's views.

Jamie Salvatori [00:15:14] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:15:16] So, and, and what does that mean to, to people that aren't familiar with YouTube? Like I'm a YouTube junkie, but I have found that that kind of puts me as an anomaly in the, in the tribes I run around in. I think most people don't have any idea, one, how big YouTube is, but then two, like how, who's making money there and how are they doing it?

Jamie Salvatori [00:15:36] Well, YouTube I think is the world's second largest search engine behind Google. So it's gigantic. I I can't remember the stats off my head, but off the top of my head. But I think they've surpassed a, a billion unique visitors, what is it, a month or something like that? I mean, Facebook's at maybe 2 billion or something. YouTube's probably right, right around there. It's gigantic. I mean, it's, I've been on YouTube and, you know, obsessed with it for 10 years. And I come across YouTubers all the time that I've never heard of that are two, three times my size, you know, that are getting hundreds of millions of views a month, have 10 million subscribers. I'm like, I've never even heard of this person because it's so giant that you might just, you know, never get to that corner of YouTube as far as who's making money on YouTube. I mean, a lot of people are, I think it's overblown how much money people are making on YouTube. It's a newer media platform. And so yeah, your, your top 10 people might be making pretty decent livings, but considering how many eyeballs they're generating, how many views they're generating, we're really underpaid. And this isn't supposed to be like a woe is me. 'cause I know people are thinking, oh,

Vance Crowe [00:17:05] Like you sit around your

Jamie Salvatori [00:17:06] House all day making like stupid videos and you get paid for it. Like, poor you. And it's like, well, that's what some people do on YouTube. And I, I sort of agree, I don't have much sympathy, but if you take the viewership, and let's say you compare the viewership of a YouTuber that's getting 50 million views a month, right? Let's make the math easier. 60 million a month. About 2 million a day. How many viewers does Rachel Maddow get each night on cable news? Oh

Vance Crowe [00:17:40] Yeah. It's not, it's not 2 million. Yeah.

Jamie Salvatori [00:17:42] I don't think it's 2 million. Yeah. And what does she,

Vance Crowe [00:17:44] It's certainly not 30 days a week that she's getting

Jamie Salvatori [00:17:46] 2 million.

Vance Crowe [00:17:46] Yeah, yeah.

Jamie Salvatori [00:17:46] What is she pulling in? 20, 25, 30 million a year. No YouTubers making that much money. No way. So what's the difference between the eyeball on YouTube and the eyeball on cable? The only difference is the advertisers, you know, still feel more comfortable on cable than they do on, on YouTube. And so the, they're just not willing to pay as much or they're not as many advertisers there. So the price is a lot lower. But you, you can make a living on YouTube, but I think in general, they're underpaid for the amount of, of exposure they get.

Vance Crowe [00:18:27] And for your business model, you're more diversified than the kid that's making, let's play videos because you have both the videos that you're making. So there's viewership, then you have sponsors that actually say, Hey, regardless of how many, well we, we want you to get a certain number of views, but we are, we are putting money up front as, as the same way a regular advertiser would. And then you actually sell things in your store.

Jamie Salvatori [00:18:52] Yeah. So we do have, yeah, three different sort of revenue streams there, but they're all predicated upon, you know, the views from YouTube. I mean, if our views suddenly, you know, go way down, then obviously the ad revenue from YouTube would go down. The sponsors will pay less because you're getting lower views and the traffic coming to my store will be lower as well, and the revenue from the store will be lower. So the YouTube channel is the primary driver for our business.

Vance Crowe [00:19:25] Well, I mean, this actually is the, one of the very first things that we talked about that night once we found, once I found out about your YouTube, which is, do you feel like you're in danger by having your, by having your channel or your, your ability to make money coming from, you know, essentially Google, they can turn on or off that switch.

Jamie Salvatori [00:19:44] Y your business is always in danger.

Vance Crowe [00:19:48] Okay.

Jamie Salvatori [00:19:49] That, that's what I think. I mean, I don't think any business is ever really safe. I think that's why it needs, you know, good stewardship, right? You gotta be thinking about it, caring about it. I haven't been in business that long compared to some other folks. Probably about 17 years. I've already pivoted my business at least three times and it was necessary each time, you know, so, and if I hadn't made those changes, the business would be dead.

Vance Crowe [00:20:22] And what were you doing? You, you, you had a business before YouTube then?

Jamie Salvatori [00:20:26] Yeah, we had like a family business that did video production Oh. For companies here in St. Louis. So you would come to us and we'd make like a terrible video for you.

Vance Crowe [00:20:38] You

Jamie Salvatori [00:20:38] Got a car dealership? Yeah, I'll make that video. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:20:41] No kidding.

Jamie Salvatori [00:20:41] You got, you need a video about sexual harassment. I'll make that video for you.

Vance Crowe [00:20:50] Did you make that video? Yeah.

Jamie Salvatori [00:20:52] Did

Vance Crowe [00:20:52] You make it?

Jamie Salvatori [00:20:52] Oh, of course.

Vance Crowe [00:20:53] And so what is that? Like you have scripts and then it's like, you know, should, should Roger come in the

Jamie Salvatori [00:20:59] Room? I blocked it all off. The worst were the medical videos. So these doctors would record themselves. Oftentimes it was like plastic surgeons recording themselves doing procedures. And there was a company here in St. Louis that sold the, I guess it was like edu continuing education or I, I don't know. And so these doctors are in there and they're just, they're just like hammering away at some person's nose, you know, doing a rhinoplasty and yeah, we're like making those videos. So that's what we were doing. We were just selling time like a lawyer would, except, you know, for a lot less than a lawyer, makes it wasn't a good business.

Vance Crowe [00:21:47] And so what signaled to you guys that it was time to get out of the, the video making business?

Jamie Salvatori [00:21:53] The signal was probably the amount of money in the bank account. You know, it's, that's an extremely difficult business. And at age 22, 23, not one that I could properly navigate. I mean, maybe now I could do something like that, but I wouldn't enjoy it. So we, we started trying to pivot away from that and trying to own more of our own destiny by making our own content. So, and this is how we got to a store. So we saw the explosion of dvd, so we started to try to make our own DVDs and sell them on our website. No

Vance Crowe [00:22:36] Way. Wow. That's, that's entrepreneurial.

Jamie Salvatori [00:22:39] So we, you know, we started with hard hitting stuff like video fireplaces and video aquariums. So yeah, I'd go take a camera to my friend's houses, well my friend's parents' houses that had nice houses and nice fireplaces and set a camera light of fire in like the middle of June, videotape that, buy some Christmas music, put it with it, put that on a DVD and sell that. And that's sort of the first DVD we made. Then there was the video aquarium, and then there was like the calming DVD and then I expanded into educational DVDs. And

Vance Crowe [00:23:13] How did they do, but how, like how did the fire DVD do?

Jamie Salvatori [00:23:16] Like those did like pretty well, you know, like

Vance Crowe [00:23:20] You're talking like enough for you to take your girlfriend out to dinner or like paying your rent.

Jamie Salvatori [00:23:25] Oh, I'm trying to remember. I, we probably over the years, gosh, I'm just pulling this number out. We, we probably sold anywhere from 20 to 50,000 copies of that.

Vance Crowe [00:23:39] Holy geez.

Jamie Salvatori [00:23:40] May maybe more. I don't know, some, but we're talking over the course of maybe four or five years. And then we got into educational stuff and you'll like this. So we made, like, I made like a driver's educational DVDI made a DVD on public speaking.

Vance Crowe [00:23:56] Hey, all right.

Jamie Salvatori [00:23:56] Right. How to give a speech. It was called Making the Speech. And it was like a reality stuff. I'm like, I'm, I'm thinking about the video. It's not terrible, but kind of cringey. And so we would make these and, you know, I'd make flyers and send them out to like libraries. So a big business for us for a while was selling to schools and libraries. And there's distributors that sell into those markets. And so I would, I would pitch 'em my DVDs and did that for a few years. But then I saw that DVDs were kind of, it looked like they were gonna, you know, stop being as popular. And I thought, well, okay, if, if I can't make the product anymore than I'm selling, then I've gotta sell other people's products. And I loved making these goofy trailers for our DVDs, right. That would promote the DVD try to, you know, entice you to buy this fireplace, DVD. So I thought I can just make trailers, like goofy trailers for products and there'll be no client, no customer. I'll make money when I sell the product. And that was like the big shift back in about 2007. Where

Vance Crowe [00:25:12] Did you imagine you were gonna place those videos? Was YouTube a thing?

Jamie Salvatori [00:25:17] YouTube? Yeah, at that point, YouTube was a thing. 'cause YouTube started in like 2005, I think. And around 2006, 2007, I was putting those DVD trailers on YouTube because it was free. It was free hosting. 'cause before that I was paying this company called Akamai, probably $1,200 a month for video

Vance Crowe [00:25:41] Bandwidth, like server space. Oh yeah.

Jamie Salvatori [00:25:43] For the bandwidth to stream out the videos to sell these ridiculous DVDs.

Vance Crowe [00:25:48] It had to have been so painfully slow back then to be doing videos.

Jamie Salvatori [00:25:53] Oh. And the videos were like, you know, they were like this big. I mean, they were like, you know, I don't know, like they, the kids today would say they were shot with a potato,

Vance Crowe [00:26:05] You

Jamie Salvatori [00:26:05] Know what I mean? I mean, they were like these three 20 by 2 44 by three aspect ratio. Tiny little videos that took forever to buffer. Remember that? Oh yeah. Like, oh, you know, it'd play for a little bit and then you'd wait. Sometimes you'd like go to the bathroom, come back. Ah, now it's buffered. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:26:24] Can watch my video. It be easier to watch

Jamie Salvatori [00:26:25] Grainy

Vance Crowe [00:26:25] Cinemax on your

Jamie Salvatori [00:26:26] Tv, right?

Vance Crowe [00:26:27] Yeah. Yeah.

Jamie Salvatori [00:26:28] I mean, that was back when it's like, oh, I better make this video short because no one's gonna wanna sit through a five minute long video that buffers.

Vance Crowe [00:26:36] And so then, so that YouTube was your primary, you, you saw the light there,

Jamie Salvatori [00:26:40] It, it was free. No, I didn't see any light there. I'm not like that. I don't have, I'm not like visionary at all. It was free. And that's where I put the stuff. I don't even think back then there, you know, you would, you had like a YouTube account. I don't even know if they called 'em channels. I don't even know if there were subscribers back then. There was no vanity metrics. I wasn't, it was just free. It was just a place to put it. And the videos would play back. And its sole purpose was to get people that were on my store to buy something. That's it. I did not see YouTube as a advertising medium for us. I ran ads in a bunch of other places to get traffic to my store. And then YouTube was just something I embedded on my website to just play back my, my commercials.

Vance Crowe [00:27:30] And then did it, did it work then?

Jamie Salvatori [00:27:32] Yeah. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:27:33] Yeah. And that's how VAT 19 got started. Then that's

Jamie Salvatori [00:27:36] How we got started. I mean, I spent a lot of, I basically poured all the money from selling the DVDs, which were very high margin back into advertising to try to get traffic to the store as we started adding other products and making trailers for these other products.

Vance Crowe [00:27:51] And then with those products, are you buying them wholesale? You're going out and finding cool things and saying, I'm gonna buy 50,000 of them. And

Jamie Salvatori [00:27:58] Yeah, I mean, the first three years it was tough because it's like, you know, I got one person there buying, and they're like, what, what is our store, Jamie? I go, I don't know. You know, find me cool products. Like what, what is, what's a cool product? I mean, I can't stress enough how there was no business plan. Okay. Like, I can't stress enough how this was not strategic at all. This was, I'm broke. I'm just trying to figure out my way. Here I am, you know, at that point, 27 years old, you know, not a lot of experience in business, just trying to figure, trying to figure out a way to make some money. That's it.

Vance Crowe [00:28:47] And when you were 27 or even before that, were people around you, like, Jamie's a hustler, he is gonna make it work, or they're like, and Jamie's lost. He's, he's just never, he's never gonna make it.

Jamie Salvatori [00:28:58] I don't know.

Vance Crowe [00:29:01] Surely you have some sense. Were people rooting for you?

Jamie Salvatori [00:29:07] I don't know. I, I know my wife was, yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:29:12] I bet she

Jamie Salvatori [00:29:13] Was rooting for me. But friends and whatnot, I don't, I don't know. I, I didn't, I mean, this might make me sound like whatever, but I, I didn't, I didn't really like solicit their opinion on my life and what I was trying to do. I don't know if, I don't know what the employees thought at that time. If they thought, oh,

Vance Crowe [00:29:36] You had had employees by that point.

Jamie Salvatori [00:29:38] Well, we, yeah, well, it was a, you know, it was a family business. And so we went from about 15 employees down to about four.

Vance Crowe [00:29:51] From the, from the videos that you were making, the, the instructional videos, the

Jamie Salvatori [00:29:55] Four hire business, the service-based business had about 15 people. September 11th came along and every advertiser in the country was like, you know, pump the brakes. So maybe a couple weeks after September 11th, we had to let go 10 of the 15 people there. Oh man. So we were left with like four or five people. And it's like, all right, so let's, what are we gonna do here? So I started making the DVDs that I mentioned, and you know, when you've got like four people, it's like, okay, I think maybe we can pull off filming a fireplace, you know, and then I started to sort of try to improve it and grow as we go. But I was probably too naive or wrapped up in what I was doing to even think, to survey the employees to see if they thought this this was gonna work, if they felt secure in their jobs or anything like that. I was just like, I'm gonna try this thing and see if we can make some money doing it. You know, as I said, no, no business plan. It was just like, okay, I think this makes sense. Let's try this. Okay, this is working, do more of that. Oh, that's not working. Stop doing that. Keep doing more of this. And I don't know.

Vance Crowe [00:31:16] Well then when, when did the things start to settle out? And you started to say, Hey, things are, things are going, they're heading up. Was it, was there a big turning point?

Jamie Salvatori [00:31:26] I'm, I'm probably a little bit more pessimistic than optimistic by nature. So I've never felt like, oh man, it's going really well. That

Vance Crowe [00:31:35] Is shocking because your personality online is like exuberant optimist with, with just, you know, this happy, playful attitude.

Jamie Salvatori [00:31:46] You know, how people could like trick, you know, the mind over body. You can sort of, if you start, you know, thinking that you're sick, you become sick type of thing. So that's my technique.

Vance Crowe [00:32:01] Okay.

Jamie Salvatori [00:32:02] Oh, this is gonna be awesome. This is gonna work, this is gonna be awesome, this is gonna be great. And then maybe it turns out well, but deep down I'm never like, oh, we got, this business is doing great, we're awesome. It's, it's more like, you know, oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh god. Oh, you know, most of the time that's what's really going on because yeah, I just feel like any business, you're, you're one, you're a couple bad decisions away from ruining the entire thing.

Vance Crowe [00:32:38] How many employees do you have now?

Jamie Salvatori [00:32:41] 23 or 24, 25, somewhere like that.

Vance Crowe [00:32:45] And what are they doing all day?

Jamie Salvatori [00:32:47] God only knows. Right?

Vance Crowe [00:32:49] Well, I mean, the reason I ask is because a big shtick in your show is that you stop by people's offices and you're like, Hey, you can either hold this sucker that's like

Jamie Salvatori [00:32:59] Flaming hot in

Vance Crowe [00:33:00] Your mouth, or you can lick my toe. And so there's, that brings up a couple of interesting questions, right?

Jamie Salvatori [00:33:06] One,

Vance Crowe [00:33:06] One of which is what, what are those employees doing before you walk in there? But then second is when you hire someone, do they sign a waiver that they're, they're going to be exposed to potentially dangerous and somewhat weird working conditions?

Jamie Salvatori [00:33:19] Is that something I should do?

Vance Crowe [00:33:21] I don't know. Is it, maybe I should, I may interview a lawyer and ask them. I can.

Jamie Salvatori [00:33:27] So, you know, we've got employees there that focus on the store aspect of things. We have our own warehouse. I've got warehouse employees that are shipping out all the things that we sell. And then there's a lot of folks there working on the videos, you know, so yeah, yesterday for instance, we shot an episode of a new series we've been working on. It was episode four of, of a series called Hidden in Plain Sight, where one of my employees hides from me in the building all day. And I'm trying to find them so I can put 'em, you know, back to work. So their job that day is to not work. And my job that day is to try to get 'em, you know, back to work. But they have to be hiding in plain sight, meaning you can see them plain as day if you know where to look.

Vance Crowe [00:34:22] Okay.

Jamie Salvatori [00:34:23] And it's maddening.

Vance Crowe [00:34:26] Really? Oh

Jamie Salvatori [00:34:27] Yeah. Because they're very good at it, number one. They're very clever, very smart with the ideas. And I don't wanna say what any of 'em are and ruin any of the episodes, but they're great reveals when you figure out, when you finally see how they've been hiding, you're just like, that was good. But it's maddening for me because everyone in the building knows where the guy is hiding. His name's Danny. I'm always trying to find Danny. Everyone knows where he is. So you feel like everyone's laughing at you because you haven't found him yet. And I can't find him. And I just know he's sitting around doing nothing. I'm paying this guy to do nothing and I wanna find him and put him back to work. So it's maddening, but it's a lot of fun. Y your

Vance Crowe [00:35:17] Employees seem like the type of people that would be on MythBusters or something, right? Yeah. Like a lot. Well, at least

Jamie Salvatori [00:35:23] Some of

Vance Crowe [00:35:23] 'em, right? Like they, they, they, they're in a shop and they're building trebuchets, like, you know, and to do the giant cornhole game.

Jamie Salvatori [00:35:31] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:35:32] And, and, and they have a, they have a whole lot of skills. And I find myself thinking, and I, I'm, I, well at least you do a very good job of, of making it. So it's like, man, I, I could only dream of working in such a dreamland place and I know in the back of my mind it's work. It's gotta be work, right? You're paying people to show up. Yeah.

Jamie Salvatori [00:35:51] But

Vance Crowe [00:35:51] It, it appears to be a, like a very warm, congenial, exciting place to be.

Jamie Salvatori [00:35:59] I think that it is, but it always looks better on video than it, you know, probably is in real life. But video production by nature is a really cool profession because it's a lot of problem solving, you know? And unless you've, you know, shot a little, unless you've shot a lot of video and different stuff, and I mean, we've shot 14, 1500 different videos. It's just a lot of, just as I said, problem solving. And so that translates well, if you've got a couple guys there on the video team that, you know, are kind of handy and have done some, you know, minor engineering stuff, they're just very adept at, okay, how do we make this work to get this done for this video? So that's that,

Vance Crowe [00:36:58] That MythBuster I give you a good example is not only did they build a triche, but one time you wanted to make jello that you could swim in. So you made a giant vat and they had to foil the water. So they took these big 55 gallon drums and they built stilts that you could then put a burner underneath it. But then the question becomes, alright, well how do you chill the jello

Jamie Salvatori [00:37:17] Right

Vance Crowe [00:37:18] Fast enough so that you can, you can get it to turn into that gelatinous material. And they couldn't find a refrigerator that they could buy that they could just walk into. Well,

Jamie Salvatori [00:37:28] I wanted to use nature, I just wanted to put 'em outside when it was cold out. There's your refrigerator. That's what I wanted to do.

Vance Crowe [00:37:36] But it wasn't cold enough at the time when you were doing it.

Jamie Salvatori [00:37:39] Well, as we learned, jello is, jello requires a very small temperature range for it to become gelatinous or whatever. It, it can't be below freezing and it can't be too, I think it's gotta be somewhere between like 34 and 40 degrees or something like that. So you are gonna have a hard time finding weather

Vance Crowe [00:38:08] That's gonna cooperate like

Jamie Salvatori [00:38:09] That. Yeah. That like over a 12 hour period is gonna be right in that range. So we went looking for a refrigerated truck and, but see this is the thing, the smart thing would've been to get a giant container that could fit inside of the refrigerated truck. But you know, we already had the container already spent the money on that couldn't return it. So we just built a refrigerator inside our studio. We just sort of built a frame and put a bunch of styrofoam around it and then got an air conditioner and then you can get this little gadget, I think it was called the Cool bot, and the cool bot fools your air conditioner into running constantly, right? So we just got a little window unit air conditioner, put it on this styrofoam sort of cube, and you fool the cool bot and you tell the cool bot, you know, it's, you know, the cool bot tells the air conditioner, I think, hey, it's still 70 degrees in here and the air conditioner's trying to make it 65. So it just runs nonstop. But that air conditioner can make, you know, a small space, you know, I dunno, whatever that was, 35 square feet or whatever. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:39:24] Yeah,

Jamie Salvatori [00:39:25] Yeah. It can make it 35 degrees if it's running nonstop.

Vance Crowe [00:39:30] It was amazing. I was, I was surprised when they came out and, and it was funny because at the top of the, I don't wanna give away the whole video, but the, but that, that warm temperature was enough to make mold on the top.

Jamie Salvatori [00:39:41] Yeah. I mean, don't give us too much credit. Like we, we can figure out some stuff, but we can also ruin it pretty good. And the thing is, is it's just like, well yeah, it's moldy. We're not selling it to anybody. No one's going to eat it. So yeah, let's just do it. Hop on in, let's just hop on in. I we will be fine. You know.

Vance Crowe [00:40:03] So if you have these, you know, the clearly engineering, do you have a budget for like, Hey, this is our budget for this year on how we're gonna make videos? Or how does that work?

Jamie Salvatori [00:40:14] Nah, I mean, I don't, I've never made a budget. You're

Vance Crowe [00:40:21] Like a businessman after my own heart. You're like, no business plan, no budget, I just do it. I'm still paying the mortgage and my children are all clothed and it's fucking fine.

Jamie Salvatori [00:40:30] I don't, no, I don't, I don't have a degree in

Vance Crowe [00:40:34] Business.

Jamie Salvatori [00:40:35] I don't, I don't have an MBAI don't understand accounting that well. I understand enough. I don't make budgets. We just have a culture there of not spending a lot of money on these videos and just put some simple controls into place. I think I've basically told them, I don't remember, I don't know what the dollar amount is, but it's somewhere between like 250 and 500 bucks where I'm like, if you wanna spend more than that amount of money on something, you gotta come and, and talk to me first. Simple as that. So like on the jello one, they were like, okay, Jamie, it's gonna cost $1,500 for all the jello, do you wanna do it? I'm like, yeah, buy it. So

Vance Crowe [00:41:24] That was $1,500 worth the gel. It was like 2000 pounds or something like that. It was something

Jamie Salvatori [00:41:28] Crazy. I mean, maybe it was more than that.

Vance Crowe [00:41:29] Wow.

Jamie Salvatori [00:41:30] Yeah. That, but I felt deep down that that video was gonna do well and get a lot of, get a lot of views.

Vance Crowe [00:41:38] So at this point, what is doing well for you? I mean, when you look at a million

Jamie Salvatori [00:41:42] Views,

Vance Crowe [00:41:43] A million views,

Jamie Salvatori [00:41:44] That's what I'd love every video to get a million views within 30 days. And

Vance Crowe [00:41:49] How, oh, within 30. And how many videos are you putting out in say, a week?

Jamie Salvatori [00:41:54] We're trying to get to 11 videos every four weeks. So what's that 2.75 or something a week?

Vance Crowe [00:42:05] It, it makes me wonder, like, so one of the thoughts that I have about the work that you're doing that's gotta be really difficult is what's cool in the world changes and what's cool on YouTube changes even faster. Yeah. And yet you've, you've been able to stay on top of that wave for a really long time. How, or, or at least well enough to to to be where you're at.

Jamie Salvatori [00:42:28] We've had a lot of ups and downs.

Vance Crowe [00:42:30] Really. It's not, it's not been up the whole time.

Jamie Salvatori [00:42:32] No.

Vance Crowe [00:42:33] What is it, what is it like to have it down? What do you mean

Jamie Salvatori [00:42:36] It's depressing?

Vance Crowe [00:42:37] No, I, I guess I don't mean, how did it feel? I mean, you, you're, you're putting up videos and people just aren't watching, right?

Jamie Salvatori [00:42:44] Yeah. That sucks. And,

Vance Crowe [00:42:46] And when was the last one of those?

Jamie Salvatori [00:42:48] Today

Vance Crowe [00:42:50] Really?

Jamie Salvatori [00:42:50] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:42:51] I mean I watched i five or six hours, so

Jamie Salvatori [00:42:53] Right. So that's yeah. Maybe 40 views. I need like 3 million or 4 million a day. You're

Vance Crowe [00:43:02] Talking. So that's what your, your business requires three to 4 million a day?

Jamie Salvatori [00:43:06] No, I wouldn't say it requires, but that's what, you know, we're, we're hoping for what we're striving for the Yeah, I it is, it's an embarrassment of riches, what we've got going on there. Right. So I try to keep that in perspective, but I think it's human nature. You get accustomed to something pretty quickly. And so, you know, if if it deviate from that norm, you know, it can have a pretty profound impact. I'll give you an example. You know, maybe about six months ago we were in a real downward trend on YouTube videos. Were getting maybe 300 to 500,000 views in, in 30 days. And there'd been times in years gone by where, I mean, we would sort of make bets on how many days until the video gets a million views, right? So it was just like, guaranteed we were gonna get a million views for this video, maybe more. It was, it was literally like we could do no wrong, no matter what we put up. It was just gonna get huge view numbers. And as YouTube changes its algorithm over time, all of a sudden you put a video up that you think is really good and it just doesn't do well. Six months ago, that's where we were 300, 400, 500,000 views of video, which to many people might be like, would

Vance Crowe [00:44:41] Be mind blowing. That's mind blowing. The wildest dreams. Yeah.

Jamie Salvatori [00:44:43] Right. But we've gotten accustomed to a million. So all of a sudden 500,000 views, which is basically like 10, what is that? Like 10 Yankee stadiums full of people watched your video. Right. But that's depressing. That's a failure. So that's how quickly you get accustomed to a particular way. And so we had to sort of pivot our whole business, change it, you know, to get the dramatic results we wanted. And it took us a few months and then all of a sudden the video start getting millions of views again. What's

Vance Crowe [00:45:23] That conversation like? Because you have creatives there and writers and, and videographers and, and you're in there saying, you guys gotta write harder. Like what do you mean?

Jamie Salvatori [00:45:33] Well, I mean, you can't, like yeah, you, no, I mean that, that doesn't work. You know, you can't just go in and say, guys, you gotta make better videos. I gonna say, what does that mean, man? Right. Well we did the thing that I thought I would never do. I hired a consultant.

Vance Crowe [00:45:53] Oh, okay.

Jamie Salvatori [00:45:54] Yeah. And worked with him for three months and he gave us some tips and said, try this, do it. Try it. So we tried some of the things that he suggested and they turned out to, to work. And so once everybody saw that, it's easy to get the buy-in and say, guys, okay, we gotta go from, from this mode of making videos and shift it all the way over to this mode.

Vance Crowe [00:46:23] Can you describe any of that? Like the changes?

Jamie Salvatori [00:46:26] So we, I mean, it's kind of like inside baseball, sort of YouTube stuff, but in a nutshell, we went from making videos that were one or two minutes long to ones that were over 10 minutes long.

Vance Crowe [00:46:39] That

Jamie Salvatori [00:46:39] Was, you know, and then we started doing a lot of testing.

Vance Crowe [00:46:46] The the who, who's watching your videos. I mean, you kind of, I don't know, you kinda alluded you,

Jamie Salvatori [00:46:52] I think it's kids,

Vance Crowe [00:46:53] Do you get demographic information

Jamie Salvatori [00:46:54] You do from YouTube, but what a joke because, you know, they start at age 13. 'cause you know, you're not supposed to be, you're supposed to be over 13 to be on YouTube.

Vance Crowe [00:47:08] It's funny that you're bringing up how old people are and that it, that it's a joke that you don't actually know. Because I was telling Annie that you and I were gonna do this interview and she, and I was telling her that, you know, the, the children must love this. And she was like, well, how would you know? And I'm like, the demographic information on the back end of YouTube. And she's like, but how does YouTube know if it's a kid or not? And I was like, you, you just dunno anything about technology. This

Jamie Salvatori [00:47:32] Your wife's smart.

Vance Crowe [00:47:33] Yeah. So, right. So you really don't know who those Yankee stadium full of people are. Do you get noticed when you're out on the street? Yeah,

Jamie Salvatori [00:47:44] I occasionally, yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:47:46] By kids.

Jamie Salvatori [00:47:48] It's mostly kids.

Vance Crowe [00:47:49] And what's that like?

Jamie Salvatori [00:47:56] I'm indifferent to it.

Vance Crowe [00:47:59] I didn't expect that as an answer.

Jamie Salvatori [00:48:02] Meaning

Vance Crowe [00:48:02] You're like, hi kid, you know, going,

Jamie Salvatori [00:48:05] No, I think it's great that they watch like I'm, I'm, I'm just like, that's awesome. Thanks for being a fan. Thanks for watching. They want to take a picture or they want an autograph or whatever. I'll, I'll do it. But I don't walk away from that sort of jumping up in the air and kicking my heels and being like, oh, I'm, I'm recognizable, or I've been noticed, or something like that that doesn't, it doesn't do anything for like my ego or my level of happiness or anything like that. So yeah, I'm, because

Vance Crowe [00:48:40] That's something you learned or is that, is that, oh, I

Jamie Salvatori [00:48:43] Guess it's just the way I am. Like,

Vance Crowe [00:48:44] Man, that has got to be super, super healthy because I would imagine the celebrity that comes along with YouTube can be a, a, a terrible gamble that people play or bet I think it Ian

Jamie Salvatori [00:48:55] Deal it. Yeah. I, yeah, I bet it could be. I mean, you do see that, right? I mean, it happens all the time. People can't sort of handle celebrity. And not that we're celebrities by any stretch. I mean, I know that, I mean, I've had those moments where kids come on tours to our facility and I'll like walk up to meet them and the kids will like, you know, they'll like, you know, they'll, they'll, they'll gasp or you try to talk to them and they, they can't talk, right? And their parents are like, you know, they're, they're freaking out. They're just, you know, and it's hard to understand like, that reaction. I mean, I get it, but it's also just like, you know, I just make goofy videos on YouTube. It's not that big a deal, but I understand where they're coming from. But, and, and I'm super appreciative that we have an audience that wants to see this stuff, but, and I don't wanna make it sound like I don't care about them. I do. I'm just indifferent to it doesn't, yeah. I don't, I don't get a, a buzz out of it, an ego lift, anything like that. I just,

Vance Crowe [00:50:11] I mean, I, I, to me, this is wonderful, right? It's very humble and it's, it seems genuine and probably keeps you as a, I mean, makes you a more normal person. And it also, it's, it's a funny thing because if you had walked around your neighborhood, I mean, there's no way people have any concept in when you're taking your walk that, that you're well known to millions of children or

Jamie Salvatori [00:50:34] No. And that's good, right? I don't, I don't, I don't aspire to that either. You know, I could be in every single video if I wanted and make sure that my face is seen more and more. But I, you know, that's not something I care about. What I, what I get, what I like is making a video that does really well and that people seem to really like and enjoy and, and wanna watch. That's what I get the big high out of is like, yes, we, we figured it out. It's like cracking a code each time. You know, think about what it's gotta be like to have made like a hit movie. I mean, Hollywood's making couple hundred movies a year, 300 of 'em. I mean, you got the best writers, directors, actors in the world working on these projects. And how many,

Vance Crowe [00:51:34] Do you

Jamie Salvatori [00:51:35] Remember three years from now, out of the 300 that Hollywood makes each year? A handful. Right? Right. Maybe 10 maybe. So think of what that must feel like to have been the director on that movie, one that you know, did really well and that people kind of remember. Like, to me that's what, and, and we're, you know, Hollywood, us, I mean, we're,

Vance Crowe [00:51:59] I mean it's all attention at the end of the day. It's, I mean

Jamie Salvatori [00:52:02] We're, you know, it's very, very small minor thing. I'm not comparing ourselves to a Hollywood movie by any stretch. I'm just saying the feeling of accomplishment of, it's so hard to get people's attention that when you can make a video that that does well and kids come on a tour and you ask 'em like, what's one of your favorite videos? And they name one because it stuck out to them. That's, that's pretty awesome. 'cause it's like, hey, we came up with that idea and we figured out how to do this and we did it. That's awesome to me.

Vance Crowe [00:52:34] So one of the things that I often talk about is that attention is the most valuable thing that you own. And whatever you're paying attention to is, is whatever you think of is the most important thing that you could be doing at that moment. Because if you could think of something more important to be doing at that moment, you'd be doing it. So that means that the, in that context, the, the content that's going out on YouTube that you're putting out is worth, you know, worth the, the most valuable thing that people own their attention. What do you think you've learned about people's attention by making videos and, and, and creating that relationship where people are having this kind of joyful experience and being entertained?

Jamie Salvatori [00:53:16] I've learned that I've got a lot more to learn. You get really cool data from YouTube. You get second by second retention information. So you can see that, you can see this amazing graph of how you can see this amazing graph of how many people were watching the video at that point of the video. So it starts out at a hundred percent and it starts sort of dropping as time moves on. And you can see like, you know, big dips, right? Oh, when we hit to this point in the video, everyone dropped off and stopped watching, or oh my gosh, look at how long everyone kept watching till the very end. And that to me is so fascinating, but it's teaching us constantly how to tell better stories. How to keep people's attention longer. First thing we gotta do is we've got to grab their attention to start with, you know, you gotta have that thumbnail and title that grabs you in two seconds. It's a book cover, it's a billboard. You gotta like grab 'em and you gotta tell a story in half a second. But if they click on it now, you've gotta keep their attention for as much of 10 minutes as you possibly can, knowing that everything else on the site is trying to get them to watch the next video or watch a different video or whatever. I mean, how often do you click play on YouTube and you're watching the video and there's, you know, four more right underneath it and you can be scrolling through and looking at other stuff that you might wanna watch while you're watching that one video.

Jamie Salvatori [00:54:56] Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, so that viewer is constantly being pulled away from your content. So I've learned how much I don't still know about how to tell a good story and how to craft better stories and more engaging stories. That's what we're constantly working on is, okay, how do we keep people's attention longer? And that's difficult. And yeah, I just, you probably find this with a lot of people you talk to that are so-called experts in whatever it is that they do. You know, as you work on this stuff more and more, the, the less you feel like you really know it.

Vance Crowe [00:55:45] Oh, we, we, I also talk about a thing, you know, the Dunning Kruger effect. Are you familiar with this? No. So the Dunning Kruger effect is the experience, like if you were to map how, how confident from zero to a hundred somebody is on a subject over the amount of time they've spent studying it. So you watch one documentary or you read one book, your confidence spikes from zero way, way up. Maybe you listen to a second one, it just keeps going up, but you hit a point where point, eventually the more you learn, you start saying, oh, wait a second, that exposes how little I know. Right? So your confidence starts going down and it it will continue to go down for a very long time until eventually you'll hit like a trough. You know, we call this the trough of disillusion where you're like, I'm never gonna hit the bottom. There's, there's so much to know. I'll never know at all. Yeah. But eventually you can come back up and it's called the Dunning Kruger effect. It was, it was kind of coined by Dunning and Krueger. And I would imagine something like attention in particular, when you're talking about the algorithms that change in this, in this weird world of YouTube that, that you may, you may always be in that trough of disillusion.

Jamie Salvatori [00:56:56] That's the most depressing thing I've heard. But I think you're right.

Vance Crowe [00:57:00] But I mean, like, there is

Jamie Salvatori [00:57:01] But that gives me some solace. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:57:03] I mean, it, it can, one on, on the one hand, I, I think one of the things that you learn about that Dunning Kruger effect is to be on the confidence side means that you are arrogant and, and vastly overestimating what you really know. And, and it's only when you're over here falling down that you're saying, well, I'm still learning. Right? I'm still progressing, I'm still moving along on that path.

Jamie Salvatori [00:57:27] Yes, that's exactly how I feel.

Vance Crowe [00:57:30] I mean that's, that's

Jamie Salvatori [00:57:31] Most of the time is I don't know what I'm doing here. You know, I dunno. I, yeah, I feel like that with so many things. I don't know, maybe that's healthy, maybe that's good. But

Vance Crowe [00:57:47] I think there's gotta be a balance there, right? If you, if you were, you know, the, the pessimist that's extremely pessimist never tries anything. The person that says, I, you know, I know nothing you know is right, is is just as ignorant as the person that says they know everything.

Jamie Salvatori [00:58:01] Yeah. Yeah. What I think happens to, you know, this is sort of really simple, distilling it down, but it's like, okay, well, you know, if I don't try, I can't fail type of thing. And and the more effort you put into it, the worse it feels to fail at something. Right. The game I was telling you about where I'm trying to find the employee that's hiding from me. Right. The longer it goes, the more that trough you feel like you've fallen into. You know, the longer it goes, and I can't find this guy, oh, this is gonna feel even worse if I never find him. You're

Vance Crowe [00:58:42] Being genuine. Like it really is frustrating to you that you can't find.

Jamie Salvatori [00:58:45] Of course. Yeah. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:58:46] Okay. I mean, I had to be like, well, maybe he's just doing a stick. You're like, I can't find him. And then

Jamie Salvatori [00:58:50] Singing music

Vance Crowe [00:58:51] In the background, you legit are saying like, I get frustrated with the fact that I can't find them in,

Jamie Salvatori [00:58:56] It's my building. Right. I know. The whole building, top to bottom. There aren't rooms in there that are like, I don't know where they are. I mean, it'd be like your house, it'd be like inviting me over to your house and then you counting the 10, I go hide somewhere and then you can't find me for seven hours.

Vance Crowe [00:59:18] You'd

Jamie Salvatori [00:59:18] Be like, where is he? You know? And then to make it even worse, it's like, I'm not hiding. I'm literally in plain sight. You just need to know where to look. You know, he's not, he's not like built a false wall or anything like that. Well, I'm totally

Vance Crowe [00:59:37] Intrigued.

Jamie Salvatori [00:59:38] That's never where he hides. So anyway, I don't know how we got, how I got off of that tangent,

Vance Crowe [00:59:42] But, well, I, I will put a link to this video as soon as I, as soon as I watch it. And, and because this is, this is good, right? Like, you've clearly built some tension here and I'm, I'm willing to go. Where

Jamie Salvatori [00:59:51] Is he?

Vance Crowe [00:59:52] One of the thoughts that I have about, you know, you studying attention and figuring out how do I capture other people's attention? How do I do these things? Is you're a parent for children and people are vying for their attention. So how do you think about how they spend their time in front of a computer or with access to YouTube and, and you know, what, do you know by being on the other side of the camera?

Jamie Salvatori [01:00:25] I don't, I don't, I think YouTube's fine. I think iPhones are fine. I think, I think everything's pretty much, unless it's inherently dangerous, say like, I don't know, like a hot stove, anything's fine in moderation. So YouTube's not gonna hurt him. iPhone's not gonna hurt him. None of that stuff's gonna hurt 'em. But if you do it seven hours a day, that's a problem. If you do anything that long, that's a problem. So that's how I, that's how I view it. So, man, this

Vance Crowe [01:01:05] Is unorthodox. I I did not

Jamie Salvatori [01:01:07] What

Vance Crowe [01:01:08] I mean, well, I mean, like, you don't normally hear people say that. You hear people say, you know, you gotta watch that. I wanna lock it up. Oh, the screen time we this, this, you like, yeah. This is very, very different.

Jamie Salvatori [01:01:19] Well, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying you can keep going with

Vance Crowe [01:01:24] It. I'm not telling you this is bad advice. I'm just

Jamie Salvatori [01:01:26] Saying I think we figured out all these things, you know, a long time ago as sort of a culture, a species. It's just, and we have 'em all in, in sort of, you know, phrases or whatever, you know, everything in moderation. Boom. You can just, you can live your life by that. We figured that out. Just like you can't do any one thing too much. Podcasts are awesome, but you can't do it 12 hours a day die.

Vance Crowe [01:01:55] Do you, do you find yourself telling your kids there are certain channels they can't watch?

Jamie Salvatori [01:02:00] Sometimes? My wife's not gonna like this, but dude,

Vance Crowe [01:02:08] My wife never listens. Don't worry.

Jamie Salvatori [01:02:13] At least not that far into it, right? That's

Vance Crowe [01:02:15] Right. Yeah.

Jamie Salvatori [01:02:16] Yeah. I, so when I was growing up, the, the big fear I think was violence in video games. Right? Or maybe it was Satanic themes in video games or something. And Oh

Vance Crowe [01:02:33] Yeah, we had doom and all that.

Jamie Salvatori [01:02:34] Yeah. And then like, you know, bad language and rap songs and all this and Tipper Gore with her rating system on CDs or whatever, what was it, parental parental guidance or something? Or some sort

Vance Crowe [01:02:48] Of, yeah. And they had the explicit lyrics.

Jamie Salvatori [01:02:50] Explicit lyrics and

Vance Crowe [01:02:51] Like they just told you which they told you which ones to buy. Right.

Jamie Salvatori [01:02:53] That was a big sticker that said, buy me 13-year-old Jamie, buy this.

Vance Crowe [01:02:58] And I'm like,

Jamie Salvatori [01:02:59] You know, and you know, none of that caused any harm. Like, you know, I think I was 14 years old and so my parents were divorced. I think my dad showed me the movie Basic Instinct. I was like, 14 or something, you know, I'm pretty normal, you know, it didn't ruin me or whatever. I just think these things like language, sex, whatever, you know, I just, I just don't think there are any words that are like bad. I don't think in polite company, right? Your 5-year-old shouldn't be dropping F-bombs everywhere they go. But generally speaking, I don't think there's a problem with them hearing it. They should just know when it's appropriate to say it and when it's not appropriate to say it. That's all. And yeah, so I just, I don't know. I just don't think keeping kids away from these subjects is protecting them. I think it's sort of coddling them from what's gonna happen later on in life. So

Vance Crowe [01:04:08] The concept of family friendly, that's not, that's not one that you,

Jamie Salvatori [01:04:12] Well, I understand that the majority of people don't agree with what I'm saying. So I don't have a pro, I, I make content that falls under those guidelines, but I know that there's a lot of content on YouTube that my kids have access to that wouldn't be considered family friendly. And I don't necessarily have a problem with the, my kids seeing that stuff. And I know that that's sort of appealing, especially as my kids get older and become teenagers, they're gonna wanna watch more and more sort of taboo type of content. But from a business standpoint, I make traditionally family friendly type of content because I want the broadest audience possible. So it's just like a business move that I wouldn't say is like antithetical to my beliefs on this. 'cause I'm not saying that content needs to be explicit in order to be good. I just don't think we necessarily have to shield kids from it.

Vance Crowe [01:05:24] I, I mean, it's interesting that you have this perspective in most of all, because I mean, your content could be watched by a 10-year-old that wouldn't see anything in there that Yeah, I mean it's like, it's very, you know, there's no bad language. It's all kind of fun in games. It's all kind of happiness. You're, you're wincing you don't think it's,

Jamie Salvatori [01:05:42] Yeah. No, I, I, and like, I like Disney movies, I like Pixar movies. I also like incredibly violent movies too. I mean, you know, we can all be a lot of different things, you know? I don't know. Walt Disney probably watched porn. I don't know.

Vance Crowe [01:06:05] That's a good, that's

Jamie Salvatori [01:06:06] Like, I mean, I don't know, but I'm guessing he did and didn't think that it was, you know, he probably thought, oh, this probably wouldn't,

Vance Crowe [01:06:14] This isn't good for the kids. I would, but it's not, I don't think it's not okay for me.

Jamie Salvatori [01:06:18] Yeah. I don't think he, you know, it's like, okay, his business is going to be, you know, super family friendly, but he might have like differing points of view. I mean, I think that's okay. I think most evangelical preachers would agree with me on that. 'cause I think for business they project a certain point of view, but I think they're in their real life, they have a very different, they live a, a different set of values perhaps.

Vance Crowe [01:06:53] Okay. So in the same vein of family friendly is the idea of privacy. So you have a lot of kids that are able to make videos, really high quality. They're filming themselves playing video games. They're doing all kinds of stuff. What, from your vantage point, do you, do you have concerns about kids getting out on social media at an early young age? You're so pensive. There's never been, I've never had a guest that's, so I'm thinking

Jamie Salvatori [01:07:22] About it has

Vance Crowe [01:07:23] These long drawn out m sorry, I'm sitting there wondering, do I need to cut these out for

Jamie Salvatori [01:07:27] People or might No, by all means, I would be terrible on radio. I don't have a yes no on that.

Vance Crowe [01:07:38] Well, I maybe

Jamie Salvatori [01:07:39] One of the things people

Vance Crowe [01:07:40] Should consider,

Jamie Salvatori [01:07:41] Well, you know, it's no good obviously when a kid goes and puts themself out there online and then gets sort of bullied by the comments and ends up killing themselves. That's what I think about is like, that's terrible. And then, so that's the bad side. Alright, so that's the risk you're taking. What's, what's the potential reward? I don't know if the reward's high enough. I'm not, I'm not sure for a child, you know, what, what is the reward? I mean, I guess they're learning skills, which is great. Maybe learning the skill of, of coping with sort of negative comments and criticism is, is pretty worthwhile life skill. The money that they might make is definitely a good, a, a good reward. But, you know, most guys going out into business that are sort of quote unquote risking everything, you know, a 30 5-year-old guy quits his job starts a business. I'm risking everything. It's not risking his life. Usually it might be risking a bunch of money, mortgage, you know, stuff like that. But these kids seem a lot more fragile because they're just so much younger and taking that kind of online abuse, maybe that risk isn't, isn't worth the reward. So I'm not, I'm not sure. I think the parent just has to kind of look at that and say, okay, what's the makeup of my child?

Jamie Salvatori [01:09:14] Do I think they can handle it? Should I just disable comments so no one can comment on what my kid's doing? I'll give you a little story. When I was maybe 12 or 13, you know, I was a computer dork. I had what was called A BBS, which stands for a bulletin board system. I don't know if you're

Vance Crowe [01:09:35] Familiar. Oh yeah, I know. Yeah.

Jamie Salvatori [01:09:35] Okay. So I had one at my house, right. Got my mom to install a second phone line. Man,

Vance Crowe [01:09:40] You were advanced

Jamie Salvatori [01:09:41] So kids could call up this thing and, and you know, I rem I was, you know, 13 or 14 and my handle on this system was black September. Okay. That's what I chose. I'd read a book about it. So being 14, I thought I'd be cool, right? And name my handle. Black September, not really fully understanding. You know, you're 14, you do stupid things. I don't

Vance Crowe [01:10:15] Know what that is.

Jamie Salvatori [01:10:17] I'm trying to, I'm trying to remember. Lemme look it up. I think it refers to a, a terrorist event perpetrated against Jewish people. Oh, sorry.

Vance Crowe [01:10:33] Okay.

Jamie Salvatori [01:10:34] Black September was a Palestinian militant organization founded in 1970. Oh

Vance Crowe [01:10:40] Man. Okay. It

Jamie Salvatori [01:10:41] Was responsible for the assassination of a Jordanian prime minister and blah, blah, blah. Oh. It's when the, is a bunch of Israeli athletes and officials were kidnapped and killed during the 1972 Summer Olympics. Okay. And I'm not a religious person, but my mom was Jewish. So I, so I thought I was sort of being like, ironic calling my handle black September. Okay. Not really understanding what I was like doing by picking that, but I was just like, you know, I don't know, being stupid and ironic. And I started getting all these people on the bulletin board just harassing me nonstop about all this, you know, antisemitic stuff, you know? And I just like, were

Vance Crowe [01:11:41] You prepared for it? I mean, no,

Jamie Salvatori [01:11:43] I didn't think that was gonna happen. I just thought it sounded cool. Oh, black September. That sounds cool. And what

Vance Crowe [01:11:48] Did it do to you? Like, were, were you, were you, I mean, 'cause I just unplug, not like the friends at school would see it.

Jamie Salvatori [01:11:54] No, I just unplugged the computer one day and just shut it down. And people kept calling that phone number for like six months trying to get onto the bulletin board. So I was really hurt by it, you know, I was like, this person doesn't know me. And they're saying all these terrible things about me because, you know, our family's Jewish and it was, it was terrible. But I could, I could just turn it off. I could make it go away. I just unplugged the phone line. And so it just sort of went away. And, and so the reason why I bring up that story is 'cause the kids today, do they have, is there an off button for that stuff? I, I don't think there is anymore. You can't just like turn off social media. I mean, they could, they could kill their account, but then that kills their whole like, highway into their social network, literal social network with their friends and everything. So they can't just kill their Instagram account where they're gonna start a new one. The people that are harassing them will just go to the new one. So that's what I mean by, I mean, I guess the kid could, could delete their YouTube account or delete their streaming account. I don't, I haven't thought enough about these things, but I think they're complicated topics and

Vance Crowe [01:13:16] Probably Do you have access to your kids' social media accounts?

Jamie Salvatori [01:13:19] I don't know if, I don't think they have social media accounts. Or maybe if they do, they're all set sort of private or whatever. But yeah, I don't, I guess through my actions of not really wanting my kids to do this stuff, I don't think it's good for them. And I remember reading something about like, a lot of the guys that work out in Silicon Valley send their kids to schools that, you know, don't have iPads yet. The kid, yet the school my kids go to, they're like, every child has an iPad. You know, they're just like, this is great. And the people that work at Apple that invented the iPad are like, I don't think these are good for kids. You know, I don't know if this is, these are the best devices, kids being in front of screens all day, learning off it is, is great. You know, again, everything in moderation. I don't, I don't think the trade off, you talked about privacy, I don't, I don't know if it's totally worth it, especially for a, for a kid, you know? So, yeah, I don't, I don't know, I don't know if you should be creating content at that age, because again, I think the, the risk might be too high versus the reward. I mean, I made some really stupid videos when I was 13, 14, 15 years old. Thankfully, you can't find them anywhere. You know, you're finding yourself, you're finding your way at that age. And do you want everybody seeing that? I don't know. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:14:49] I mean, it does seem like, and it, it, I don't think it'll ever happen, but it does seem like it'd be really nice if kids could hit a reset button at 15 or 16 and just be

Jamie Salvatori [01:14:58] Like, you know,

Vance Crowe [01:14:58] Right. And just sort of, you just don't get

Jamie Salvatori [01:15:00] That. Yeah. Just like you got this big like, like undo button they can press and it's just like, or at any point and

Vance Crowe [01:15:07] Just sort of

Jamie Salvatori [01:15:08] Wipes your whole digital life clean. That would be cool.

Vance Crowe [01:15:12] What do you, so, so along with the hateful comments or the things that can happen to people, what do you think of YouTube and their move to try and cleanse the internet of hate speech?

Jamie Salvatori [01:15:33] I don't, well re in reference to adults or children? Just

Vance Crowe [01:15:40] In general.

Jamie Salvatori [01:15:41] In general.

Vance Crowe [01:15:42] I mean, I, I look at the stuff that they demonetize videos and things like that, right? And it, it seems like the more you do that, the more you, YouTube puts themselves in the position of having to make finer and finer and finer distinctions. And that there's no way that people are gonna agree with the distinctions that they make because they're all gonna be done by committee. And, and I don't, and, and, and you wouldn't want 'em made by a dictator, but the decision that come, I

Jamie Salvatori [01:16:11] Don't dictators get things done. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:16:13] There you go. Right. So I, I mean, I guess I just wonder about

Jamie Salvatori [01:16:17] Decision made. Yeah. You,

Vance Crowe [01:16:18] You live in a world where if somebody decides that your videos are somehow insulting to somebody,

Jamie Salvatori [01:16:24] We've had that shut

Vance Crowe [01:16:24] Off. We've, we've, we've, you've had videos shut down,

Jamie Salvatori [01:16:26] We've had video. Well, not, we've demonetize we demonetize

Vance Crowe [01:16:29] For what,

Jamie Salvatori [01:16:32] You know, we made a video that had some like zombies in 'em and they thought it was too gory. We had one video where we were testing the efficacy of CBD oil against spicy things to see if, like, if you took some CBD oil, if you could then need something really spicy and have it not hurt as much. And they demonetized that because it had to do with CBD oil completely legal, right? Yeah. And,

Vance Crowe [01:16:57] And they doesn't

Jamie Salvatori [01:16:58] Matter. It's their, it's their platform. I mean, to sort of answer your question about hate speech, I don't, I don't think any person has a right to not be offended. I just, so I think the simplest solution is to, you know, allow pretty much any content to be out there. Unless it is directly it call for violence against somebody. I think the Supreme Court has made those sort of distinctions before. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of caveats to free speech, but I'm pretty, you know, yeah. Say whatever crazy stuff you want. I don't think you should be policing what people are saying other than, you know, if I go and tell a whole bunch of people, Hey, go to Vance's house and let's murder him. I think that right is, is a call to violence that should be silenced. I don't think that should be allowed. But beyond that, I don't think you should have a right to not be offended. However, I don't, you don't have a right to make money off your statements. Right? I believe that, you know, something is worth what someone's willing to pay for it. So if your content does offend a lot of people and no advertisers wanna spend money on your content, then yeah, you're not gonna make very much money. You'll have to figure out a different way to do it.

Jamie Salvatori [01:18:29] You don't have a right to make money off your content on YouTube. I mean, it's a business and you gotta follow their rules. But that's the problem with monopoly platforms and YouTube is kind of monopoly platform. There aren't really other places to find all of, you know, that type of video in, in that scale.

Vance Crowe [01:18:53] Do you put your videos anywhere besides YouTube? We

Jamie Salvatori [01:18:56] Put 'em on Facebook, but the Facebook audience is a lot different than YouTube. They have probably one 10th the attention span of people on YouTube just 'cause of the nature of the platform. So

Vance Crowe [01:19:07] Yeah. They're not there for it. Yeah.

Jamie Salvatori [01:19:09] Yeah. So it doesn't do nearly as well. But yeah, I, I kind of don't really subscribe to the idea that there is hate speech. I don't, I think that's actually, I don't wanna say a made up concept. I just, I don't I've yet to see it. I mean,

Vance Crowe [01:19:27] I'm, you know, the concept of them being a monopoly is,

Jamie Salvatori [01:19:32] I don't know, you know,

Vance Crowe [01:19:33] That that word monopoly gets, gets thrown around and it's not a government enforce monopoly. It's not like anybody's saying, you're not allowed to come out with a new YouTube, you're a new video platform. It's just, it'd be really expensive and really difficult. But it's not like the utilities where they say only one person can run a, only one company can run utilities through here.

Jamie Salvatori [01:19:56] Right. But sometimes you have like winner take all markets and is that good? I don't, I I, I think we're finding that for some people it's, it's not so good. I guess I think YouTube understands because they are in this winner take all market, just like Google is with search. I mean, when was the last time you binged something? Never.

Vance Crowe [01:20:26] Yeah,

Jamie Salvatori [01:20:26] Never. So when you own that market, then you have a lot of responsibility. And it probably does need some level of government regulation. I mean, here's a small example, right? All the tech companies make all their money off of advertising and none of their metrics are, what's the word I'm looking for? None of their metrics are verified by a third party. So everything they say is self-reported, you know? So

Vance Crowe [01:21:03] I never thought about that.

Jamie Salvatori [01:21:05] I mean, Google's telling the advertiser, yeah, this is how many v views the video got. This is how many people saw it. This is how many people clicked on it. This is how many, who's ver verifying that? Who's validating any of that? No one, you know, but like for TV you had the Nielsen's company that would tell you how many

Vance Crowe [01:21:27] Wow.

Jamie Salvatori [01:21:28] You know, and this has come up to sort of, and I think advertisers have complained about this because there's been some small mistakes that Facebook has made where they've like under-reported or over-reported impressions for ads. And so you've, you've got these entities that are sort of like monopolies. They're self-regulating themselves and okay, what's the big deal? It's, you know, maybe Nike overspent some money on some ads, like what's the big deal? But what you're getting at is kind of, you know, from a, a censorship standpoint, right? If, if the young kids today are getting all of their news from Ray Will, Ray William Johnson, right? And YouTube starts not, not censoring him, but saying that, look, we're going to, if you talk about certain topics that aren't advertiser friendly, you are going to make a lot less money. So now he's de incentivized to talk about certain things. And is that good for kids that are getting their news from YouTube? I mean, I'm not saying I have the answer to that. I'm just saying that that's the dynamic that's been created because we don't have news anymore that, you know, is sort of, you know,

Vance Crowe [01:23:02] That's interesting. So you just said we don't have news anymore. When was the last time you watched CNN or Fox?

Jamie Salvatori [01:23:08] No, I'm, I'm While getting a haircut.

Vance Crowe [01:23:12] Yeah. Right. Or

Jamie Salvatori [01:23:12] In the

Vance Crowe [01:23:13] Airport. Yeah. I mean I talk about like, the only time I ever would see CNN or Fox would be in, in the airport and I can tell what part of the country I'm in, right?

Jamie Salvatori [01:23:21] Based

Vance Crowe [01:23:21] On what are they showing on the airport, right?

Jamie Salvatori [01:23:23] Is it Fox, is

Vance Crowe [01:23:24] It

Jamie Salvatori [01:23:24] Cnn? It's

Vance Crowe [01:23:25] Exactly right.

Jamie Salvatori [01:23:25] Is it NBC? Yeah. I

Vance Crowe [01:23:27] And other than that, I would never go there to get my news. That's

Jamie Salvatori [01:23:30] Where I see it is on, is on Reddit. But we're a headline sort of, I mean, back to the, I can't remember the names of the two two guys, but if we're getting all our news from reading headlines on Reddit and we think that we know something, then yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:23:44] Dunning Kruger. Yeah,

Jamie Salvatori [01:23:45] Dunning Krueger, right? We're, we're all 100% confident in everything because we read a headline that's that morning about it. It's good. It makes for a good informed population. You know, I don't know what the effects are gonna be of this 50 years down the road. I don't, I don't know.

Vance Crowe [01:24:06] So to wrap up, not because this hasn't been a great conversation, but it is like about an hour and a half past when I normally go to bed. Yeah. And you live up the street, right?

Jamie Salvatori [01:24:16] And

Vance Crowe [01:24:16] I can have you back again. Yeah.

Jamie Salvatori [01:24:18] Whenever

Vance Crowe [01:24:18] I want. Anytime. This has been a whole lot of fun. If you were gonna point out to people in addition to VAT 19, which I'll, I'll link to in the subscription or in in the notes, what are, what are some corners of YouTube that people should go check out? Just to, just to go see, like keep in mind a lot of people that I, that are, that are listening or are listening as opposed to YouTube fans and so they don't know necessarily very much about YouTube.

Jamie Salvatori [01:24:44] Oh my gosh.

Vance Crowe [01:24:45] I know it's hard to believe but

Jamie Salvatori [01:24:47] YouTube's No, I was, I dunno where to send someone to go to, you know, there's something for everyone on YouTube. So what are your hobbies? Go to YouTube, type that into the search bar, right? What are you into, what do you like, you know, you like Metallica type Metallica live in there, you know, watch some, watch some Metallica shows from 1992, you know, and then see where that leads you. You know, just meander around and see if you find somebody that's interesting or you know, you got a hobby or something like that. I mean, I'll watch mesmerizing videos of Master Woodworkers and really, oh dude,

Vance Crowe [01:25:31] Can you think of one in particular? Oh,

Jamie Salvatori [01:25:33] I can't remember their names right now 'cause I've got my subscriptions or whatever.

Vance Crowe [01:25:37] What would you search for if you wanted to see Mesmerizing woodworking?

Jamie Salvatori [01:25:40] Oh, just type in woodworking and see what pops up. You know, you think CBD oil or whatever chills you out. Watch some dudes that are good at building stuff, woodworking style. Those videos are amazing because, you know, I I'm never gonna make a chair outta

Vance Crowe [01:26:02] Wood,

Jamie Salvatori [01:26:03] You know, but I'd like to think I could. And watching these other people do it, watching people that are good at something that they really enjoy doing is awesome. You know, that's why you like to have people come here that are sort of experts in whatever it is that they do. 'cause I, you, you, you're interested in their opinion or something. Watching people on YouTube that are really good at something is awesome. I have this, there, there's these videos of this one guy, I'm terrible at names, but there's, there's this website called, I think it's called like Omegle or something like that. O-M-E-G-L-E. And you can find those videos on YouTube and

Vance Crowe [01:26:46] You just send me the link. I'll put it in.

Jamie Salvatori [01:26:47] Yeah. It's this weird thing where it's just like you're on your webcam and it just like puts somebody in in front of you, right? And, and this guy, he's an incredible like, piano player and, and singer. So some people just sort of pop up on his chat and you know, he will be like, okay, you know, I like playing the piano. Like what, what kind of music do you like? And the person they're in will be like, I don't know, you know, say Metallica or whatever. And I'd be like, oh yeah, I think I know. And he'll just start like playing it and playing a bunch of it and singing along. And it's so fascinating to watch someone that's so good at music that they can just sort of play anything wherever and they're just doing it on the fly for people. And that's, that's awesome. You know, so like go type in some things you're interested in hobbies and see where that leads you on YouTube. 'cause there's great stuff on there. It's not all just kids being stupid and doing pranks and breaking things and, you know, there's, there's awesome stuff on there.

Vance Crowe [01:28:00] Well, I mean, I think your stuff is awesome and I'm not just saying that nice to you. I, I could have just watched one or two, but I found myself being like completely mesmerized by, by your ability to have so much fun. And, and I had a friend in town last week and he said, you know, one time I came home and my mother was to tell my mother, like, mom, mom, nobody wants to play with me. And she said, well, why don't you just go outside? There's a guy named Dwayne FABERs just on the podcast. And she said, just go outside Dwayne and, and play and act like you're having as much fun as you can. And eventually people will, will come around. They'll wanna be around you. And, and you know, I I actually think that's a lot of what VAT 19 is about. Like, people are going out, they're having fun and it's so invigorating and joyful that you just want to be around it. So it, it made my day better. And I think you're putting things out there that are, that are heartwarming and, and, and wonderful and, and

Jamie Salvatori [01:28:58] Wow with

Vance Crowe [01:28:59] Some, some point of attention. So

Jamie Salvatori [01:29:01] That's really nice. Yeah, man, thanks.

Vance Crowe [01:29:03] Is if people wanted to follow you on social media, where, where would you direct them to?

Jamie Salvatori [01:29:08] Just, just vat 19. I'm actually not, I'm not on social media. Can you believe that? So

Vance Crowe [01:29:15] Ironic. So. Well, thank you so much, man.

Jamie Salvatori [01:29:18] I

Vance Crowe [01:29:18] Appreciate you coming by.

Jamie Salvatori [01:29:19] It's been awesome. Thank you. Thanks.

Vance Crowe [01:29:20] Well that's it for this week's interview with Jamie Salvatori. If you wanna see more about his shop, you can check out va nineteen.com and go check out some of his videos. I've shown it to other people that I know and they've kind of looked at it a little bit, curiously, maybe with their eyebrows raised and then they go to watch it and they end up like me watching several hours. It's really interesting stuff. And you can see just what a creative mind can do if they're given a video camera and a crew of people. So thank you so much for watching this. If you enjoyed it, I hope you'll share it with other people. Remember that reviews and subscribing helps me get this out to more people. But just know I have loved, loved, loved doing this. It has been really interesting to interview new characters. And if you can think of interesting people in the St. Louis area that I should sit down and talk with, please do let me know. I hope you have a great week and we'll be back next Wednesday.