The Ups and Downs of Life: A Journey of Self-Discovery

Growing up with a parent who was in sales can be unpredictable, to say the least. My dad's career was always up and down, and as a result, our family's financial situation would fluctuate accordingly. There were years where we'd enjoy a comfortable life, and then suddenly find ourselves struggling to make ends meet. I remember being in the car with my brother, watching my parents try to navigate the system, receiving food stamps. It was a harsh reality check that not everyone is as fortunate as us. As a result, there's a part of me that still worries about financial stability, always trying to prepare for the unexpected.

However, over time, I've come to realize that having a comfortable life doesn't necessarily mean happiness. When my kids were born, I saw an opportunity to reevaluate my priorities. With two young children, my days are now filled with childcare and parenting responsibilities. While it's time-consuming, it brings me immense joy to watch them grow and learn new things. The milestones – from first steps to words, from teeth to school – become cherished memories that surpass any material gain. In fact, having kids has given me a newfound appreciation for what truly matters in life.

As I navigate my career, I'm constantly torn between pursuing success and spending quality time with my family. On one hand, I have a responsibility to grow my business and provide for my loved ones. On the other hand, I want to be present in their lives and create lasting memories. It's not about being selfish; it's about finding that balance. When I'm working 15-hour days, I know it's to secure our future, but when I go home, I want to spend time with my kids, playing games, reading stories, or simply enjoying each other's company.

One of the most valuable lessons I've learned is the importance of having a clear "why." When you're driven by something greater than yourself, it gives your life purpose and direction. My "why" is simple: to build a successful business that allows me to provide for my family while also pursuing my passions. Having this clarity has helped me stay focused and motivated, even when faced with challenges.

I've been fortunate enough to see the full spectrum of entrepreneurial journeys – from the struggles of the early days to the triumphs of success. I've learned from both sides and can appreciate the journey more fully now. It's not about being a "rockstar" or having all the answers; it's about staying true to yourself, your values, and your vision.

As I look back on my journey, I'm reminded that life is full of ups and downs. What sets me apart from others might be the fact that I've been able to find a balance between success and happiness. While some people might envy my situation, I try not to take it for granted. I recognize that my circumstances are unique, and I don't want to lose sight of what truly matters.

My conversation with Austin Evans has been enlightening, and I appreciate his candor about the ups and downs of our respective journeys. We've talked about growth, resilience, and the importance of finding one's purpose. It's a reminder that everyone's story is unique, and there's no one-size-fits-all solution to success or happiness.

As I continue on my journey, I'm committed to staying true to myself and my values. Whether it's pursuing new opportunities or simply enjoying time with loved ones, I'll always strive to find that elusive balance between work and play. With kids in tow, I've discovered a newfound appreciation for the simple things in life – time spent together, laughter, and memories forged through shared experiences.

As I sign off, I'm reminded of Austin's words: "I want to keep it that way." For me, that means continuing to grow my business while prioritizing my family. It's not about taking a step back; it's about finding that balance that allows me to pursue both passions and happiness. When it comes down to it, there's no one "right" answer – only what works for you and your unique circumstances.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enmy next guest needs no introduction he's an OG and one of the most iconic Tech creators on YouTube with over 5 million subscribers and an amazing team behind him from hilarious mystery unboxings to Wild Tech Adventures his content never fails to entertain and put a smile on my face he's also just a really good dude we first met over a decade ago and over the years I feel lucky to have spent as much time with him as I have I'm pleased to welcome the very gifted Creator and my dear friend Austin Evans yeah dude I'm just uh getting old I'm feeling the age how old you know feeling the age I am 35 you are 31 31 yeah dude it's crazy because like you know when we met each other it was like what over a decade ago or something like that now when was the first time we actually met uh Highlander in person no was before that oh it was before that wasn't Hawaii wasn't it the launch of uh Fiji with the Fiji cards MD yes that would have been 201 13 yeah and so dude like you were a kid back then yes I was actually like 20 something yeah like early early 20s yeah yeah yeah I was a child it's crazy cuz like time's gone by so fast and and part of me still sees you as a kid and then like sometimes I'll just get a a real like Austin's married with two kids in a house like what the hell is going on dude yeah it's wild life comes at you quick sometimes it does dude how you been holding up good man so this is uh Austin on 43% brain capacity so this all you do today I'm not sure I can give you a whole lot Beyond I saw some tech today it was real shiny 43% is good dude that's being on a good day well that's impressive that's impressive man how about you though how's been how's it been in the Batcave um it's been cool man I like it uh like I was um telling the last guest Terrence I was just like dude it's nice just being in a seat in a chair and like air conditioned not having to walk around all day oh you know it's cold you Haven out it's cold too I I did I did rep park my car dude they're charging 40 bucks for valet a day what you valet for just so I could get all my out the fair that's fair yeah so I was like I got to move that but then they started paying they started charging for uh self Park too yeah they just started that earlier 2023 it's like 18 bucks day just a South Park you real that's like everything like Treasure Island is one of the only like Cenas on the trip that doesn't charge for parking oh really yeah you can get free parking if you have like some status or whatever at a lot of the hotels and stuff yeah you're paying like 20 30 bucks a day most places dude just to have cuz I granted I do have a fair amount of equipment this trip yeah just to get it from my car to the hotel room when I checked in it was 40 bucks a day for valet plus they charged me I did $10 in tip yep and then 30 bucks there's a 30 Buck fee for non- luggage items no which is like 90% of my I was like 30 so I spent $80 just to get my bags from Like to Move It Like a few hundred feet non baggage fee yeah non baggage fee I mean I don't want to be rude but uh I feel like that comes out of my tip money dude honestly right dude it's not their call but still like I I I out dude I always tip um even if I feel like I shouldn't but yeah but it was It was kind of sketchy because he's like oh it's gonna be 30 bucks for the non- baggage fee and I was like okay and then I go to like pay there's like a little kiosk inside and I like whip out my card and they're like cash only I'm like is this for real is this for real non baggage is that cash only at Venetian I was like dude you guys are running a little side operation here 100% dude I was sketched out 3 what's up okay they know they know they look at you oh this a sucker dude I know man I'm getting car profiled these days sucks what did you uh did you fly or did you drive drove what did you drive uh we drove uh I drove my is okay nice yeah but I did not have anywhere near as much gear cuz uh you know I'm actually shooting most of the show on iPhone we we have one A7 which we're using for maybe a third of the stuff but uh yeah like this is my third thing of the day and I have shot everything so far on iPhone and the DJI are you shooting portrait the whole time or you shooting some landscape stuff so this morning everything I've shot has been short form okay um so dude that's the way man that is the way for events like this that is the way totally totally yeah but uh we've got a best of CES video which is going to be shot uh so uh landscape so basically every time I see something I have to make the Judgment call vertical or horizontal it's going to be short it's going to be a story like right it's nice to have the flexibility but it's it's definitely I've never approached CES with anything in mind other than snapping a couple of photos and just getting like regular sort of YouTube content so this is the first year I'm actually putting effort into like shorts and everything and to be fair I say putting effort in almost everything I'm doing is embargo till after CS or a ton of that stuff a lot of it's like oh I'm doing briefings for stuff that I'm going to be talking about later in January February whatever so I'm like oh I'm not going to shoot this at all I'm just going to do it at the office that makes sense that makes sense um what uh what's what's that been like for you as traditionally you know starting on YouTube years ago doing long form content and now just with this new wave of short form was that like were there growing pains in that or did you feel like do you feel like you're adapting to that pretty pretty easily it's I mean I think if you know how to make good content good content is good content everywhere there's different styles there different things but I mean you got to hook people a lot of the stuff you have to do for the long form content is still quite similar to short form it's not the same sure it's certainly a little different but yeah it hasn't been a huge huge adjustment I'm certainly not crushing it like some of like the the short form guys and the Tik Tok guys and stuff like they they actually crush it like I I make one or two a week and you know every once a while they do okay um but do you like do do you enjoy the short form stuff more now than than the long form I don't say no no I don't think I enjoy it more it's it's just a different kind of thing right CU like long form you know these are anything from a video that's easy to shoot in afternoon to uh we did a project actually we did a project at uh Big Willow oh a little while ago yeah oh was that the you like what what was that explain because I kind of saw it I caught wind of it but I didn't know what was going on so um basically I've been pitching uh for over a year really since we did our any EXC any excuse to get behind the wheel you better believe in any excuse you better believe it so I'm pitching to do a race Sim versus real life uh video um and I got close a couple times and then our lovely sponsors of Micro Center were like you know what we've got a huge line of racing Sim setup let's do it sweet yes so we rented the hole of uh Big Willow so Willow Springs which is a track a little north of La um and this was my first time on Big Willow right uh which is uh a real fast scary track yeah we always see it when we go to streets of Willow boy I I did not have the coones to like I mean you got that big swe sweeper at the end and I'm like doing like 110 through the sweeper and like it's bumpy as hell so I mean it's it's fine but you're like oh okay okay okay um it's fast did you do it in the is or the RS3 I did in the RS3 nice nice it was fun it was super fun but basically the idea and the premise of the video was um unfortunately we couldn't and this is one of those things where we committed to doing everything and then we ultimately couldn't get it done the way we wanted to so we used iRacing which is you know very you you know iRacing wait what's RAC ing are you do you don't do any Sim stuff then no okay iRacing is one of I would say three or four um high high quality Sims right so very very Esports oriented it's a based like a subscription you have to buy like the tracks but like very much sort of you know I think I know a lot of the NASCAR guys use it it's very much one of those like sort of higher end SS got like super high but like it's it's it's it's popular it's not a game like Forza it's a it's an actual proper no you're in there and like you know like I we were trying to tweak so the problem we had was that uh they had actually just added Big Willow they didn't have streets we would have loved to do streets so just had added big given you an advantage because you've done that track a million times exactly exactly right so uh they had big Willow they have an RS3 in the game yeah but it is a race car version of the RS3 no we had already committed to doing it and we knew that because basically we were trying to find the right sort of combination of game that would be high quality yeah that had to obviously have one of the tracks at Willow and had my car right so this checked two of the three boxes the racing RS3 you know what we can tweak it a little bit yeah we committed you know we were all set and then we realized that oh the racing RS3 is a turbo four-cylinder front-wheel drive race car that weighs th000 pounds less I was like oh that's way different dude yeah different so um how did you compensate for that or did you just uh well so our thought was okay well whatever we'll figure it out um the problem is because iRacing is so authentic if so I started to like oh I'm just throw ballast then I'll try to change it as soon as I throw ballast then goes oh your suspension setup is illegal because you're running it too low because you've added so much weight to the car I'm like oh my God it's like it is Dam unforgiving but that's why it's good abolutely now I mean to be fair uh and My Hope was because again we were like this is we're figuring this out like a week and a half because you know we're going to Microcenter to get all the some stuff we're building the whole thing the office which that takes a couple of days just to build you know they've got like the amazing sort of like base they've got the wheel the wheel and the wheel base yeah together so the the wheel itself was something like I don't know like 1100 bucks or something just the actual force feedback base is like 12200 bucks this stuff is super super highend that's pretty sick it's great were you were you racing against yourself were you doing the Sim okay I wonder if like it was you versus Ken or something no no no so what we did was I I did three different runs right so beforehand I did some practice you know with the high-end Sim stuff there's so many tweaks and tunes and settings and all this kind of stuff so what I did was I got practice at the office we loaded the whole thing up drove out there um we set it up in one of the garages yeah so I took my RS3 out which I've never been on the track before having only done my practice laps I did like a sighting lap or two like I we we uh the track wasn't hot yet cuz the safety people aren't there CU I hav pay for him yet so we had to go kind of real easy but I just you know drove around a couple times just to to see everything lay of the land exactly and then uh we went I did uh a few laps with the Xbox controller set of time with that did a couple of laps uh with the simulator which actually I was happy that was my fastest lap I'd ever done this s was actually at the track I done some practice but it was actually w the fastest um just being there probably just got you in the mood yeah I was just it was yeah a little bit cuz basically what we did was for the day we committed to two laps two laps two laps okay um so two on Xbox two on the actual Sim and then two in real life sure um so I went out um do you want to know do you want to take a guess right so here's the difference right yeah so my first two hot laps right on the actual track okay so the differences are my car has Fair bit more horsepower so how much uh I think is in the neighborhood like 150 horsepower more so like 350 versus 500 online but th000 lb more um cup twos but still street tires right um and obviously not slicks yeah so do you want to guess what the Delta was and obviously my first time around the track where I did not want to crash my car whereas in iRacing I was crashing quite frequently cuz I kept pushing the limits um Delta on on in your favor or in The Sims favor well whatever you think damn um it sounds like a pretty realistic simulator and it seems like you tuned it pretty well so I'm I'm going to say like like 3 seconds okay so the simulator was about 10 seconds faster than real life oh damn a huge chunk of that though was the car so the big thing was I'm sure it was just warmer that day in the simulator yeah that's exactly no we actually we tweak we tweaked some of the stuff you can actually do we stuff the problem was that the simul the race car I was going carry like 20 M hour more through corners like it was it is crazy like I mean and there are pretty I mean obviously we we've gone TR did that make you want to like take your car back out on the track like I know I can do that now we did right so I set my times on the simulator first so I knew I actually forget the time the I think it's like a 12 125 or 135 no I think it was like 126 or something I set on the sem and I go out and my first lap was a 140 I was like oh my God uh my next lap was a one like 38 mind you though to be fair this is like my first two like Fast Laps on the track ever for sure I'm super upset like I knew it was going to be slower I didn't think I that much slower so we bent the rules a little bit and I did two more laps so I still didn't like we had to track the whole day I only did four fast laps the whole day right so I was able to get the same time again like literally then nice so oh wait the same time as the Sim okay yeah so it's funny because I feel like depending on who you are like you're going to take more pride in like getting the bet the better Sim time no I wanted to be faster no the problem was okay so you've done a lot of actual racing so I yeah look my real car probably could have gone four or 5 Seconds faster like if I had spent the time to really learn there's a few spots where I was way too timid cuz I didn't trust was literally had never really raced the track before yeah that being said though if I had like actual like slicks that would shaved off a huge shook of the T by itself um so but it's it's a fun track M it just it's a lot less um like complicated it's a lot more like there's a couple of weird sort of spots on the track but it's actually very simple track it's much more so of like how big are your balls to take it through some of the corners when you're like it's it's that's that's the scary part I mean your balls are way bigger when you're playing a simulator than when when you're when you're driving your own car dude the amount of times I ran off and I racing super unforgiving you go off and it goes oh you got wheel damage and like you have to like reset it's it's it's gnarly right so it was a very fun shoot um dude that's that's insane like that's uh like when you get to that level as a Creator and you can just like like pitch an idea to a brand that's something that you just want to do it's not something that you're being you know that a sponsor wants it's not an agenda it's just like this sounds fun to me and it's like really not something that you could do properly without without like the resources like everything that you built you know it's like yeah that's pretty awesome when like your work becomes your passion those two things are just know interwoven like that you know how it is like we've both been doing this for long enough we've been able to do amazing things like so many amazing things and I want to take advantage of the advantages that we have and the things that we've got and and try to do stuff that's fun right now I'll tell you that video did not performed super well right I could have made a mystery Tech and it would have got double the views right um but I think people largely enjoyed it and almost way more importantly than that honestly I I had a great time you know it was it was fun the team enjoyed I mean it was obviously a very very long day but you know we spent all this time prepping it took forever to but like it was like one of those videos that you know we all have to make videos that we're maybe not super proud of sometimes because whatever like that was video that we knew we had the budget we had the time actually was kind of a little bit rush but that was entirely just because we were trying to get track time and there's a certain movie star who had the track rented that we had to steal it from who came in on a helicopter who I'm not going to name his name but nice he came in want under the bus uh it's okay I won't say his name we could bleep it out Brad I don't forget oh Brad yeah being outed Brad outed on on the interview it's Brad Garrett no but uh it was just one of those things where it was super fun and I like doing those projects even though they make financially no sense but they make me feel real happy and sad yeah for sure and that's like a kind of currency that you got to like pay attention to you know what I mean like I remember you would you would said on on when we did super special that uh like that's kind of what helps you keep going is every once in a while do a project that's just for you yes you know what I mean the thing is it's not like I mean I say it's just for me there are people who still enjoy it right it's not like it's like but and it's a video you're proud of it's not like you're yes and the biggest problem with it was just the fact that we did not do the question of the video Justice by because the cars were so off like right we we had committed to the whole thing before we had figured out the exact plan on everything so that's the one thing that I wish we would have done differently a lot of people rightfully pointed out like hey that's like apples to oranges entirely I mean it was still helpful for me because again I think having done four laps of the track in Anger ever yeah doing the simulator time massively sped me up cuz like there's a couple like I said it's a very simple track but uh there's a couple of spots that are a little bit more Technical and you know there's a couple of spots where it's very easy to just go straight off the track if you're not sort of used to it which I was doing the Sim all the time so it did help but yeah I wish we would have done it a little bit better speaking of doing amazing things uh I saw that uh that you had gone to the White House recently oh SN I feel like there's been a lot of when when do we when when was I on the podcast it wasn't that long ago right um it wasn't but you went to the White House after so we didn't get a chance to talk about that and I don't I didn't catch anything on social media as to why you went there so I I formulated some of my own theories okay I would love to hear you can tell me if I'm if I'm hot or cold on any go go go for it they're painting the White House a new shade of white and needed you for reference okay that's actually true okay so you you nailed it already but you can keep go for your other I know some people up there um they needed Tech Support to fix Biden's Life Alert uh well you know I he was screeching for something but I think it was like can't CH for something so probably not um you're Lifesaver dude and then uh or you were recruited for an exciting new position on Epstein Island okay so we don't talk about that right so it has another more official name it's Area 52 Area 52 so yeah uh no no it was good so um it was super random um so I got uh it was actually thanks to my YouTube rep oh so none of those answers were right no actually unfortunately damn incorrect um so no it was uh thanks to my YouTube rep so basically um I didn't realize Google actually have like uh uh a number of people who are like dedicated to like policy and like you know it makes sense you know it's a big company so basically there was a um an executive order on AI that was being announced and signed on the day yeah and so essentially uh through via my Google rep my YouTube rep they basically hey um we got a couple of seats for some creators and you know you do Tech and AI stuff would you like to go except it wasn't quite like that because it was more like I got a cryptic email from uh from my uh partner manager Zack shout out Zack he's like hey you're going to get an email from the White House it's legit it's not spam and then that was all the context I had yeah and I was like okay cool I guess whatever and then I was uh in Maui for the Qualcomm event yeah and uh I get seea on like Thursday and go hey and it was like an official like I'll show you we can't show this on camera I'll dude yeah what is it like to get an email from the White House a legit email I mean I like I don't know do they stamp it or something uh it actually does yeah I've uh we can't show this we definitely can't show this but I'll show you sure um I kept it in my inbox cuz it just makes me happy um so basically I got this can you pull like a support ticket with the White House you can you can read that just don't show that that's the email that showed up I can read it out loud uh yeah yeah yeah yeah just don't show it okay okay yeah just says Dear Mr Evans so proper please see your invitation below for an event on safe secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence to be held at the White House on Monday October 30th 2023 at 2:30 p.m. and then it's got all this US citizens 18 and old oh damn and then there's this fancy yeah dude it's like all letterhead and stuff yeah yeah so basically it's a is that a blueprint of the White House like yeah it's it's the map hey here go in through this gate talk to like this person or whatever dude so a Seal Team Six map right here so I got that thing on Thursday the invite was for Monday morning or Monday afternoon okay and I'm in Hawaii I like oh how the hell am I going to do this I was flying home on like Saturday so I'm were you stoked when you got that you were like I definitely want to go to the W like I will make anything happen was in the middle shake hands with B I was in the middle of my a-roll and I uh got the notification and I had to take a minute like yes so uh after a quick chat with my wife who's very supportive uh I just booked a Tios like yeah sure whatever so um I roll up it was uh I haven't been to DC a long time so like it was it was strange it was kind it was different than I thought okay remember everyone the US government is watching you all the time now sure I'm sure that's fine no it was different than I thought so obviously you see movies and I've actually I've been to the White House before but not like inside like you know you can just walk like uh there's like that sort of front area we could have like a good view of it so I had like seen it before but you know obviously had not so what was different like the layout like the pillars were all blue I just didn't know what to expect you assume like there's going to be like Secret Service sing and there was there's lots of people with lots of big guns everywhere um but I I roll up and I was supposed to go into like this one gate and so I come and I'm like I'm trying to remember okay so I like here's my contacts name here's the phone number this is what I'm here for I'm like get my whole be ready so I walk up and there's like this little booth the Secret Service um but as I'm walking up there are kids everywhere all dressed up in Halloween costumes so it turns out that all the staffers it was the day that they all brought their kids in with all their Halloween costumes for trick-or-treating oh no way everywhere so not in the actual white house but in the executive so the Eisenhower executive building which is basically right beside so it's in the like the campus that's basically where all the actual staffers go so I'm expecting like you know all this crazy security and there's just kids running around everywhere that's crazy I go inside um so I have to go through security like no secret service what do they what do they hand out for Halloween at the White House candy just bills dude yeah so so I go up to the to the Secret Service and all these kids are coming out and I'm like trying to like I'm like hey I'm here for a real reason they go ID oh okay and I start talking go no ID didn't want to say a word they look at the thing go that way and that was it I was like oh okay cool so then I go around Ming around I go the wrong direction and another Secret Service is like you're not going this way go back to where you came from take a left go the other direction like okay sure and so I come around I go through another sort of checkpoint and then I'm gonna I'm going to out but it's fine um I walk in through this like massive thick heavy door it's like this little like small building before you actually go onto the campus right so I'm like I'm inside the fence but I haven't like gone all the way in right I opened the door and it's like it looks like almost like a little like dinky like TSA style thing when you like a metal detect super super simple and the guy goes oh hey man I love your channel it's like Secret Service dude I'm like okay this is a very different experience I was like ID this way he's go hey man take a picture like what's going on it was it was so Co dude isn't that great like like we're all so like serious around each other when like we're strangers it's like I've been in situations like that where you know I go to some place that's like I don't know like a restaurant and it's like oh my buddy is like oh I know the the manager there just tell him Ricky you know you're a friend of Ricky and they're just like you know bounc like stone cold or whatever and he's like hey I'm I'm Ricky's friend and then instantly they just like there's this instant level of trust yeah you know when you have that Mutual I mean but in this case you were the mutual you you were you he knew you it was such a flex and there was one other like influencer was there too and like when the guy said that she gave me such a weird look I was like yes so this is the best day of my life it was it was cool though so we go in thank you so much to MSI for making these CES 2024 talks possible so MSI Unleashed some killer Tech at their Booth but one thing that totally stole the show literally towering over everything was the mag Maestro 700 lpz this Beast of a dual chamber chassis supports eatx and msi's project zero motherboards you know the ones with the Sleek cable action going on at the back for that clean look but hold up it gets even cooler the case is a single piece of cnced aluminum meaning zero panel gaps add in that one piece glass panel wrapping around and you've got yourself a stunner ready for some extreme water cooling too 3300 60 mm radiator kind of extreme what this unique bad boy the Meg Maestro 700 lpz is hitting stores in the next month or two with an MSRP of $379.99 now if that's a bit too rich for your blood check out the mag Pano this one's got a more budget friendly price tag coming in ATX and Micro ATX sizes US market gets four pre-installed fans or you can choose a fanless version for the international crew it's available in black or white and that wraparound glass panel gives you the ultimate wide- angle views the case features solid Cable Management behind the motherboard with plenty of room and these cool hinged cable covers to make stubborn side panels a thing of the past with so many project zero Builds on display it's no surprise that MSI is also flaunting their line of clutter-free boards featuring the b650 chipset for amd's ryzen 7000 series and z790 and b760 chipsets for Intel's 12th 13th and 14th gen CPUs back connect designed for effortless cable Vibes robust power delivery and extended m.2 SSD heat sinks they've got it all not to mention 20 GB per second USB Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5 gbit land for that extra sauce available now so get them while they're hot hats off to MSI for making these CES 2024 interviews go down scope out their latest Gear with the links in the video description thanks a million to Thermal for backing my CES 2024 chats now about those fans thermal is kicking it up a notch forget the old ones these new tough fan X and SWA fan ex models are on another level why they've got magnets that let you link them up waving goodbye to that cable chaos coming in 120 and 140 mm options these fans only need one cable to power up to three fans at once making PC building a breeze need to clean mod or swap the blades easy peasy plus all the fans include some Lubes so your little propeller doesn't try out thermal is not just stopping at fans no they're diving into the racing Sim world with the gr500 cockpit it's got it all adjustable fiberglass bucket seat pedal Mount plate and a sturdy frame that's pre-drilled for all major brands like like thrustmaster Logitech and fitech and hey if you're into that triple monitor setup they've got to stand for it picture this three of thermal takes 32-in curved monitors with all the bells and whistles Quad HD resolution 170 HZ refresh rate 1 millisecond response time and Sleek bezels for an immersive edgo Edge view want the Deets on all of thermal Tes latest tech hit up the link in the description so if you've ever seen any like political drama or whatever you see like they've got like those like tall ceilings and like the sort of the marble floors you see like so that's very accurate so there's tons and tons of offices in here yeah for all these different departments and stuff but the weird thing was and of course keep in mind there's kids everywhere kids dressed up everywhere um they all decorated so all of these like 100y old massive Office Buildings are like decorated with like Barbie and and like they went all out like all those interns were putting in like the hours um uh the one that I went into uh uh which was the office I'm going get this wrong the office of digital something something something probably should know because they're the ones who gave me the invite yeah um but basically they had their whole office the front half was Barbie the second half was all no well there was a couple of those it was all SpongeBob not good at the White House no no uh well here's the thing though I was surprised like the vast majority of the staffers there like early 20s like they were like I was like it was a different like you expect a bunch of like old bureaucrats it's just a bunch of like I don't say like college but like like certainly like a younger sort of demo and like they're all like like they made this whole elaborate like SpongeBob thing like welcome to Bikini Bottom there's all these that's that's kind of that is pretty wild to like show up to the White House you know that like the staple of our country and be like this is all run by gen Z like what the hell is going on here dude absolutely bunch of Zoomers running around dude yeah that was that was the vibe right and it was it was it was cool qu pens and stuff that's wild dude yeah so then you know we got a little tour um so like you know in like the old Department of war room where like the doors are like freaking thick they're complaining about the Wi-Fi because like uh some of these rooms were like so old and they're like lead lined or whatever like so like oh yeah like they tried to drill in they realized oh there's that's lead or whatever it like like every room's a safe room basically it's crazy but because like there's all this history and obviously you know the staffers turn over a pretty quick rate as as things sort of change and stuff so it's like it's like it just it was a very interesting Vibe so we got to go check out like the vice president's office you know here's like the they're like oh yeah here's the desk you see those tape marks that's where Richard Nixon taped his thing for water games like oh that's cool like here's where all the vice presidents whoever used this desk signed it's just like all this kind of neat cool stuff wow so yeah man so we go through epic it was it was super cool and then we actually go into the White House itself which again you walk by a bunch of very very um serious people with some very very serious weapons right so you you walk past them and then we got to go into the White House the Press briefing room okay um which is where you know you see all like the press conference stuff I will say phenomenal lighting it is incredible small in person and every seat has like the actual like press outlet and apparently it's like a whole thing about like how like they all decide and like oh this is the fox D seat the CNN whatever um but it is uh like mass in fact so much so that it is not allowed to record video so I was able I walked up I took a photo like hey you can't take video cuz that's the preest thing even like it was it was wild wait so when you the photo that you posted online it was you behind a Podium that is the white briefing room when I mean it's almost always press secretary but sometimes the president will come up and like answer questions from like the the the press that is that spot dude yeah it was the fact that you were just like like you like Trump's prints were right there oh I was yeah there well there's a few prints there it was it was surreal right because again I'm like not really knowing what to expect and then we actually go into the White House itself yeah there's a band playing and I I should know this it was either the army of the Navy I think it was the Army but it's like a live band um obviously they're freaking playing CDs or whatever um but we walk through like this sort of underground passage we walk up there's like these phenomenal like portraits everywhere um was there food uh no no there was actually no food was there no I don't think so you would have had to be in a Halloween costume and go trick-or-treating yeah yeah pretty much yeah so basically we walk up and like everyone's like Milling around and you can tell it's like a bunch of people who probably do this somewhat often um I would say maybe like 75 to 100 people something like that um so it's all like kind of Atrium you see the windows are like freaking massively thick and like it's they're all bulletproof yeah I would assume so right but it's it's incredibly fancy and again the the musicians who are playing and just sort of it's It's A vibe so you come in right um to the east wing and everyone kind of take seats and again just kind of hanging out and things running a little late and um and then uh everyone stands up and they start playing Halo the chief and go oh okay so the president vice president just like walk right in like said started playing Halo I was like that's sick oh no no it was it was just it was just like oh like cuz I didn't know what to expect like so I knew that they were signing something but I didn't know like what the setup was how many people were there um and then just the president the United States just walks in the room was like hey what's up dudes damn he just kind of like gave the cool nod yeah right yeah and it was he to save his energy yeah so it was it was cool man it was it was cool he's like like yeah like hey I'm sorry I'm late I just got off the phone with uh like during like the auto strike yeah we just talked to the president of the UAW you know everything's good so anyway back to our regular schedule thing like oh okay cool just a regular Thursday my dude or Monday whatever it was that had to have been surreal man you're kind of just like looking around the in this small room that you've been invited to the president just staring at you and the vice president like they're like just there it just it was just I don't know it just was I don't know what I expected it was just not that it was just it was but it was very cool it was a very cool experience but then afterwards how was it it just it just was over and everyone just kind of they sort of gently sort of ushered people out I was going to go to the bathroom and take a look at some of their cool tissues but I couldn't find the bathroom I didn't wantu tissues the White House apparently has like special um maybe napkins or something like that okay um which you could have like taken as a souvenir or something I theoretically I could have used uh never have taken or anything I did not do that for the record oh they weren't disposable they were like well I didn't know cuz I couldn't find a bathroom and then I just was being ushered out and I was like well I'm not going to ask her the bathroom is just going to leave cuz I don't want to be make a scene you're not you're not trying to steal from the white house right now I'm of course what although I would really funny if you got caught though I did get a little like those those like plaque things for like you know when you sit down at a meeting that says the White House on it says Austin Evans so I took that one home it would have been really funny if you got busted for trying to steal a napkin by the guy who watches your channel yeah it'd be awkward and he's like escorting you out just like I'm so sorry you know was so weird I was like so I hear this whole thing and you know it's like a 30 minute speech or whatever and and you know he signed the bill and everyone applauds and stuff and that's kind of the end uh I walk out and just you walk out of like the front door and just like on the street like you just left this like Bizarro Wonderland of just where everything is weird and fancy and stuff and you're just like on the street next to the quiz nose I'm hopping in the cab the cab driver has the radio on I'm hearing his like they're doing like the news recap I'm hearing exactly what I just heard in person like 10 minutes beforehand and at the airport and I'm home it just it was it was such a bizarre weird it's like own little like world you know it's like like that door is just a portal into this crazy community that it's really cool though like it's I guess a little smaller than you might think it's a very very nice house I heard it's pretty small yeah you look at from the outside it looks smaller from the outside it is Grand on the inside but it's Grand almost more so because like you see the portraits of the presidents you see all of these like amazing things I'm sure the ceilings are pretty high yeah yeah yeah yeah but just the whole thing is just incredible and the music that's the thing that really sits with with me is just like having the band like they start playing Halo the chief in person the person walks go wow this is a this is an experience yeah man dude just so many like every president's been in that house yeah well well okay I think it burned down at one point but most of the president okay most yeah yeah n out of 10 dude there's so much history in there yeah and you're part of that history now I left my fingerprint on the wall so unless they scrip the wall my fingerprint will be there B's going to be like Austin Evans was at this Podium his next speech so yeah man uh dude that's that's freaking awesome thank you for sharing that um what about okay so I was looking I like to do this thing with all the interview guests where no it's something embarrassing but I just go through their their recent content just see what what they're up to um I I've developed an Austin Evans title and thumbnail starter pack perfect that you can you can rate and let me know what you think hit me all right there's just three essential things that you need to do to make an Austin Evans title and thumbnail one you need boxes in the thumbnail you absolutely you need boxes you I've got a story for that go ahead but yes that's essential also brand logos in the thumbnail a brand logo some kind of identifiable recognizable icon got know what's in the box and the third one you have to write scam in the title no don't don't share my secrets yes that is the secret that is the secret no how do I do how do I do that is Flawless perfect and the absolute way to do it so I'm going to start doing them I have data on all three of these yeah I know you do I know you do I wasone I already know you do happens by accident right exactly so do you have access to the AB testing tool I don't know okay I don't know if I would that's the wrong answer my so YouTube has recently rolled out a feature where you can upload up to three thumbnails and it will automatically try them and then it will pick the winner right so you can get the actual number and percentage of watch time which is a little bit of a weird metric but basically you get to throw your thumbnails up and it picks whichever wants the best one wait it picks it based on watch time oh watch time yeah yeah yeah so say if you put two thumbnails up yeah and you know one thumbnail gets 55% one gets 45% then it's going to pick the one that had the higher watch time now I don't think that that I think they're being a little bit tricky with those numbers because I don't think that one thumbnail gets another three minutes of people to watch a video or whatever I think there is a little bit of shenan but regardless it's the better thumbnail right now this has been the most amazing thing ever because we've always done this for like years we did it manually and we did it with like right hazey guesses of like oh I I saw it the the click through looks like it went up a point you know you NE you you know you minus kind of shoo from the hi a little bit exactly yeah yeah yeah just watching the real time you swap the thumbnail and you stare at for 10 minutes go oh it went down that was a bad idea like it was right very crude so sure this has been great we test usually it actually depends either two to three thumbnails for every launch and then we itate from there right gotcha the boxes win every time like what we had so actually it was a video that went live uh yesterday I was recording this video on the new G14 we had this dope thumbnail it was like the me holding the laptop a crown on like it looked so cool and then we had a laptop we just had a box box crushed it it was like 15% higher and I hate it because like but like the problem is it's not a problem but the way that we do it is that people expect us to unbox things like the Box carries an enormous am amount of sort of narrative weight on what the video is about and especially when you pair it with them logos right so you get the idea it's Etsy or Amazon or r or whatever right and you see a dude holding a box with a bunch of logos on it or maybe some weird piece of tech coming out and then you have a title that is um tantalizing but gives you enough to be curious about it right it is the formula that just works I feel like I feel like we love mystery you know what I mean it's like if you tell people what they're getting it's like those uh you know like those Tik toks or whatever they'll go up to someone on the street and be like do you want $10 or do you want what's in the mystery box and like most the time they choose the box cuz just like I think in your mind like the the fantasy or like the the hope of what it could be is more exciting than the thing itself oh absolutely it's like Christmas morning dude what sells to me is an extreme it is a negative reaction or it is a mystery like those I feel like the majority of successful YouTube content Falls in one of those three buckets right and obviously if you've got something so like if I get scammed right so I go on Etsy and I buy and it's illegal or whatever then that's easy right or I order an item and it doesn't show up oh surprise surprise right like that that makes sense yeah um where it sort of is a little bit harder to wrap your head around is sort of how you sell the mystery because like sure there's so much content there's so many choices that someone has yeah if you get them to click and they commit to 10 minutes of their day to spend with you it's like you've got to sell them that you're going to do something cool there's something going to happen it's like not like hey I'm going to unbox 12 items it's hilarious like no no no there one of these things is wild I don't know which one it is you don't know which one it is but it's coming dude in that Wild Thing the last one I saw was that razor mask that you wore the zephrus or whatever dude that was that was so funny yeah when you put that on and like like Canon everyone was freaking out and it's funny because in the video you can instantly tell that you're you're it just enlarges it magnifies your your entire mouth it's RGB around it too exactly and RGB around it but I think in it's probably more difficult to tell right away because it took them a while to realize it and then Ken was like I figured it out it it's magnifying your teeth your whole mouth so you just look did he say you look like the annoying oranges yes yes that was such a perfect a perfect comparison that's my favorite thing is we like we like so the the team so what know some mystery text or behind the scenes the team have a slack that they are constantly looking for weird stuff like like every week they are looking for stuff I don't play Parton it cuz I like to be surprised what makes the video like that's it's it's like sharing the reaction with the viewers you know what I mean like you're you're you're both in the same boat and I think people also kind of crave that authenticity these days that that natural genuine reaction as opposed to just something that's super scripted and it's got a flow and it's like that's polished but you know it's not as real yeah totally totally and it's just it's fun because it's like the way we shoot them is so we you know when we sit down every you know a couple weeks whereever shoot Myster Tech we'll batch shoot you know four or five segments and those get split up up and then we craft the episodes out of segments so we just have a bank of segments that we shoot and every time it's ready for you know we're going to do another episode we just look at all the segments we shot and go oh we're going to take this laptop thing we're going to take this phone thing so the problem we used to have was just that because it was such a mystery and we never knew not only we didn't I didn't know what the products were but also the team didn't know what the reaction would be sometimes these things are terrible and I hate them sometimes I think they're so dumb that like I don't like I don't give them anything good it's just like oh it's like it's a f minute segment it's like super simple um and sometimes these things are amazing so because we sort of shoot them it in that sort of split up order it means that you know we're always sitting on a bank of these things and we kind of craft the episodes where it's like oh we're going to start out with a great item then we're going to do something that's a little bit more lowkey then we do something that's super weird then we something nice balance got a mix exactly do how many uh uh mystery Tech items would you say actually make it to screen oh almost all of them that we shoot make it to make it on camera yeah the matter of what episode they go in because the actual amount of items that we cut it's like less than 10 a year it's not a huge amount like most things we do and the ones that get cut are just boring or they didn't work or sometimes because we shoot them in sort of out of order uh segments would just age out so like you know I do a thing on like a fake s23 by the time the s24 comes out I'm like oh well that's probably not going to be good anymore that kind of stuff but if it's a good segment it always goes into an episode pretty quick and it's usually the stuff that's sort of decent or a little bit more specialty is the stuff that will hold on but there there are episodes of mystery Tech that go live with segments that have been shot like six months apart okay wait so then do you like I haven't noticed are you always wearing the same shirt then hell no I Chang the shirt you CH the shirt changes every segment every segment all right I haven't noticed that I was like I wonder how consistent you are dude no no I don't care at all does make a difference to the video you know the real continuity watch the background cuz the stuff we put in the back of the set is always changing so you see like some things missing you know oh that that one went live in August and it's disappeared this is an old segment theall different color yeah actually no we painted and we did uh like a little like sort of uh wood sort of uh buildout or whatever on one of our walls so some episodes you'll see the white wall some you'll see the whole gotcha wood applique and everything how did how did you even like get the idea like when did you start doing mystery Tech and realize like this is something we need to make a regular series we made our first mystery Tech in like 20 1 no 16 17 something it's been a while yeah it's very long time yeah it's our longest running series we're about to hit 100 episodes no wow oh yeah 100 episodes of Mainline mystery Tech not like mystery Tech and all the other sort of offes like actual proper mystery Tech um so yeah it's it's uh it's been a bit uh the main thing was we started out with like a bunch of random I think actually started out was almost like we were looking at some weird Amazon gadgets and Ken had an idea like oh I don't want to tell you what this thing is you just see right so you drop the thing on the table and that's kind of how it got started yeah nice I did a video similar to that a while back it was uh I gave like my Discord members like 500 bucks to just spend on anything they wanted on wish.com and just send it to me um I had to put it on my personal Channel CU like they were buying me like hentai key caps and like Wu pillows which I should have seen coming I'm not sure what I got like a a penis plushy I was like the wish after dark man wish after dark wish after dark no that's the actual segment of wish oh really yeah okay here's the thing we have to cut and censor so much stuff when we do because obviously we don't show that stuff we we right right yeah for sure um the amount of like butt plugs and just stuff like like like what that your team is getting you for mystery Tech or that no when I'm trying to order stuff like you just browse through yeah everywhere or like the amount of guns you see and like like BB guns and stuff I'm like oh that's a gun that's demonetized oh that's asess chaps can't show that like it's just it's everywhere dude those those sites like wish and stuff like AliExpress those are the only sites where you can buy a gun and a butt plug at the same place and that's a dangerous combination to buy at the same time you should maybe get those from separate places um both of those things are making some crazy actually I have a question for you between wish AliExpress and U what is the best pleb site U yeah I hate to say it te well here's the problem teu is a problematic site as people love to inform me in the comments because essentially it is this massive Chinese conglomerate who are burning piles of cash with really quick Cheap shipping from China yeah on stuff they're burning like 20 30 bucks every time you order like they are burning cash but they are trying to buy market share right they're also spending ungodly amounts on marketing right they advertis Super Bowl in 2023 I think they're sounds like they're doing again this year um and I don't love that I I don't love the fact that they're kind of musing in yeah but at the same time I like to make videos right and people really like the teu stuff like I like I actually funny thing I didn't even know about teu it was my air conditioning guy who was and was last year that long team only launched like late 2022 my air conditioning guys is like hey I got this like I don't remember was this like some nonsense Gadget I got this thing on this site called teu yeah check it out he's like it's like there got so much stuff it's super cheap okay cool because at the time I had been doing wish for a long time and wish had done super well for us and then teamu was just like another level like just came out of nowhere dude it was like no one knew what the hell it was and now it's like you can't escap it can I tell you I shouldn't say that whatever that's fine we're all friends here right um someone from Teemu emails me on a nearly daily basis just why they want sponsor videos oh really yeah I'm not surprised just on a why wouldn't they work with you they work with a M like every Creator every creator has one follower they'll work with it's and it's like they they obviously watch the videos yeah they obviously see I think what bothers them is that I call out to from being as scam CL it's a scam half the time yeah right and they don't like that cuz like okay we get in trouble go for it when we talk about scams when we talk about these kind of things you know some people don't always like that I've had a number of emails from companies who are like hey don't say that kind of stuff about our product there's this reason there's that reason BL are they sponsoring you or no no no no it's just like you know trying to tell you what to say I mean I I can call teu out cuz you know it's teu but like there's a number of other brands who like oh I take a look at this thing and I say oh it's bad it's a scam or whatever and I have a problem with it and then you know companies inevitably will be like hey well actually that's not fair we want you to take that down we want like let's let have a conversation about this because actually what you bought was not the right thing or this thing went wrong or you should have talk to us whatever sounds like their problem that's the thing that's that's the way I treat it because it's like look I has I've made my YouTube Journey have landed on the sort of I am actively looking for bad things to tell you to not buy them like that's kind of it's a mix obviously I like to take a look at things I like but when I find things that look a little bit sus they're really popular whatever like like this I'm like if something seems to be too good to be true I want to buy that thing waste my money on it tell you that that is too good to be true every once in a while I think like oh this thing is too cheap too good whatever and it's great and it's amazing and I have something that's really meaningful to share but nine times out of 10 it's garbage you should avoid it and I like like that's one of the main things that I do know and so I I mean there's definitely been times where I've like you know added a comment or whatever if especially if I was like super wrong or whatever I'm happy to like yeah I'm happy to like do a retraction I've never actually had to take a video down I've never been like amazingly wrong I'm just completely off but like you know if if a company hits me up and says hey this is actually wrong because XY reason and you okay cool you know that's fair that was my bad but almost always it's just they're upset that I called their thing a scam or that I this or that or whatever but like here's the thing like I've bought the worst stuff at Best Buy and worked with Best Buy I have worked with Amazon for like 12 years and every two or three months I buy some weird bad terrible thing on Amazon like most brands and companies get it because they don't like these things either like yeah it's okay so I'm GNA be a little vague here um we had a problem with some stuff we got from Amazon a while back okay a while back um maybe not a while back who knows yeah um and I had within 10 minutes of video going live someone relatively high up at this uh Affiliated company yeah and like hey oh my God we saw your video you know we are going to get to the bottom of this right this is this is totally unacceptable thank you for making the video um please stay tuned we want to have like a chat with you on Monday let's like work through this thing okay I like okay cool cuz it was I can't tell the video cuz I actually went get in trouble but yeah it was like one of the things was like it was I thought quite bad and they immediately jumped on it okay and then they ghosted the out of me really yeah they were like oh we're going to go talk to the manager we're going to you know like get blah blah blah like making this huge deal and I assume this person then went and started talking with like don't touch that don't talk to that they just shut down oh damn because it's like especially when it comes to websites that have like third party Sellers and stuff you kind to be a little bit careful because like you can as a third party seller do all kinds of stuff and there's not a lot of oversight and a lot of times I make cont content on that and people get real grumpy damn dude so there was no there was no resolution to that no I completely got ghosted like he like sent me like calendar invite and the whole thing and I was like no one showed up ignored it never responded to an email I was like okay cool glad to know that you care about me finding this egregious thing on your platform that made a video about cool right exactly still there damn dude yeah I mean it just goes to show like any like any company has the the ability to screw you over like of course and like I'm not trying to be unfair I'm not trying to be singling people like if you sell an item with a onear review that everyone says is broken or incorrect and I buy that thing you can't be upset that I made a video calling out the fact that the reviews were correct exactly right right just like that's I specifically look for people who are really upset about these things hey are they real is this a real thing are people misunderstanding it whatever the case is and I feel like sometimes you you get to a point where it's like you're doing research to see if something's a scam or not and you kind of feel like it's a little ambiguous like it's like almost 5050 like I'm kind of on it's on the cusp I'm on the fence but I always feel like in those moments I always Vier towards this is a scam because at the end of the day that's that's allegiance to the followers the viewers as opposed to the company it's like I'm always going to we're always going to side with the people who watch our videos totally the ones who are spending what little money they have to buy this you know look I mean I don't want to make it seem because I think that probably coming off here is like all like o like I've been wrong about things and I maybe over dramaticized things like I absolutely should do of course like I mean yeah but I I I generally feel pretty good about a lot of the content we do on these kind of things because I feel like it's entertaining yeah it's fun to make and I think that it does have some value I mean we certainly make entertainment more than advice I would say I mean not always we we do you know reviews and stuff but like you know that our strong strong suit is really entertainment and I want to try to entertain you and teach you a little something about a product about a thing that I like or just take you on a journey like that that's my goal yeah um it's an adventure like you're just taking people on an adventure with you yeah as just like explore all the wacky that's out there absolutely um I have a question for you that's totally unrelated yeah do you shave hey big shout out to Thermal for hooking it up at CES 2024 so they Dro some seriously cool cases at their Boo and guess what they teamed up with Asus to birth the series 330 a mid Tower Beauty that's all about those cable-free vibes with asus's BTF motherboards that put all the connectors and headers on the backside clean look check it supports up to 7 120 mm fans and a 360 radiator at the front oh and the case on display you ask rocking that awesome hydrangia blue to celebrate thermal T's 25th birthday bash black and Snow White versions are hitting shelves on January 10th for $19.99 us D and the hydrangia blue option drops on January 4th same price now let's talk about the CTE e600 MX a real head turner dual chamber midtower with edgo Edge glass panels for the ultimate build peep show you can even swap the front panel with an included mesh panel for more airf flow how cool is that plus the whole 90° rotated motherboard and a floating like a boss vertical GPU thanks to a handy mounting bracket and pcie 4.0 cable which are both included launching on January 20th in Black Snow White and hydrangia Blue for $179.99 not bad at all for all the cool stuff it brings to the table but wait there's more the tower 300 a Micro ATX Marvel with an octagonal shape it's like Loot Crate spaceship endless nerdy possibilities with tons of modding potential and it's not just for show removable toolless glass panels and a hinged fan bracket make access to components and cables a breeze and if that's not rad already you've got the option to set it up on an angled stand for a one-of aind perspective on your build plus there's a ventilated panel cleverly concealing all the I/O ports giving it that Ultra Clean aesthetic available for $149.99 in custom colors black and Snow White are out now turquoise and blue on the 14th and green and yellow dropping on February 4th major props to Thermal for making these CES 2024 chats happen check out their latest Gear with the link in the description huge shout out to MSI for hooking it up at CES 2024 and making these interviews possible now brace yourselves for the tech magic MSI just unveiled their Meg 321 urx QD OLED display a 32-in OLED 4k monitor that's got a wild 240 HZ refresh rate and a crazy fast 03 millisecond response time and get this it's not just any monitor it's powered by AI right now the AI is all about giving League of Legends players an edge but more games are in the pipeline check this out there's a slick LED bar on the bottom that syns with the character's health bar keeping crucial info in your peripheral vision while you crush it in battle then there's AI skysight predicting where offscreen enemies might pop up and slapping a Red Skull icon on screen to show you where they're coming from it's like tactical ESP and the best part no bans here because all the AI magic happens on the monitor not your PC so go ahead enjoy that sweet victory you cheating son of a what's really neat is MSI is exploring ways to leverage AI in other games so users can teach their monitors to elevate their gameplay even further but wait there's more MSI dropped a 49in c 2D OLED 2K display with a mind-blowing 5120 x440 resolution hits up to 144 HZ and yep it's packing the same AI superpowers as the other monitor both of them are also rocking OLED care 2.0 for burning prevention dimming desktop icons and other static stuff on your screen hear that noise no you don't because this monitor is silent this baby is fanless using a graphine film to conduct heat like a champ before exhausting it passively out of its ventilated back panel want to dive deeper into all the MSI awesomeness hit up the link in the video description do you shave yeah do you can you grow a beard have you ever grown a beard well okay so here's the thing I was wondering the other day I was like I've never seen I think I I was like watching a lonus video I'm like lonus looks so different with a beard I'm like I don't think I've ever seen Austin with a beard I grow my facial hair like every year really I've got yeah I've got a photo got a photo wait and you like it's it's on your channel and stuff you'll have beard in April 2019 no way uh I had there's videos of me with facial hair prob I don't grow a whole lot like on like the Sideburn so I have like mustache and well no no no no less less yeah it's like it's damn that's sad draw a circle draw a circle around my mouth that's pretty much what grows oh really so like a Homer Simpson you get you get a Homer Simpson kind of goatee yeah go TOA here I'll pull a photo up I did not shave over the holiday break and so I think I've got some photos of me looking a little shaggy I I employed the help of our friends our AI friends to to really see what you would look like with a full-blown beard okay cuz I remember last time you were on my personal podcast oh whoa oh I don't like that I'm not going to sh that I don't like that yeah that that that photo is just for you that looks dirty you look like me um so I'm going to play this for you okay so this is AI generated face cuz last time we we saw what you look like as a girl okay that's not good that's just what do you I actually like it dude what do you like about that what can you just describe to me that is the biggest that's like like I'm going to go be a civil war reenactor with that be no you just look like you shop at REI a lot but yeah honestly like you have this nice friendly J I mean you already have a jolly face but I think you feel like it you feel more warm like a teddy bear you know like I want to get in that beard the problem is if I had a beard like that and like I can't have more facial hair than like hair on my the top of my head that's the problem like the there's an imbalance there it's definitely a Vibe I think I think you rock it though I really do think you rock it I appreciate that I appreciate that unfortunately neither you or I can grow a beard like that well you've got act you have actual facial hair there like what do do you shave do you trim or you just yeah I just I just sh I actually use my manscape trimmer on my face shout out are they sponsor this podcast no oh it could have been that's an organic plug right there they're good for both baby um and then also the other thing I was going to say is like you don't age like you look to me exactly the same as you did 5 10 years ago and maybe that's just cuz really we see each other regularly or whatever I you don't look any different either that's unfortunate um like not in a bad way like I feel like there's certain people who for me it's a dis dude for me it's a dis I was do you want to look older I've always looked bad no I said you didn't okay oh you mean older older uh I guess yeah you're right cuz I I do have we have baby faces a little bit yeah I've got some baby fat my my I got my cheek I got my chip Chun chipmunk cheek reserves but I was very curious what you'd look like as an older gentleman Okay so we've got one of those too oh if you're ready yeah that actually is accurate that looks a lot like my granddad does it really yeah yeah isn't that a trip it honestly I'll take that man I was going to say you look sharp you look like a sharp old man you're aging like a fine wine you like youell aging if that's what I look like when I'm like in my probably what 6 yeah 60s probably you're doing good you're doing good like you look keep hydrated yeah you look very moist well you know what I try my best so the face app filter or the face app also has a uh cool old person wait that's not the cool old person yeah that's not even as cool as dude you can get cooler as a senior make me old and cool this is old and cool okay that actually looks scarily like my dad like really oh you're kind of right you met my dad right of yeah yeah yeah that looks a lot like my dad like H I didn't realize that but you're absolutely right he he had a lot more facial hair he had almost that exact well he didn't have quite that much but he had like very similar that's awesome man and your dad's a good looking fellow yeah yeah all right shout out I I'm looking forward to being a jolly older gentleman that could maybe be a wizard as well well you know what that's a Gand I'm still waiting for my letter I haven't gotten it yet day now it'll come it'll come I've got a fireplace for a reason it'll be an owl that delivers it to you um but dude what do we we've been doing an hour okay 58 minutes and 13 seconds almost there almost there um I wanted to ask you one more thing I mean I wanted to ask you a lot a lot of things but uh there's we've already just gone through so much which is awesome um so it's a new year yeah new year new me and all that uh looking back on the last year 2023 what would you say was was your high and low of the year Well a high was easy uh I had my second son last year that is huge so that was a pretty easy answer for the high yeah um some people would call that a low but I'm glad you're taking a positive no no no I mean it's a lot of work but no no noan it's great it's great um the low I can tell you the low that was that was uh well there are a couple things some maybe things I won't share but there's one that I will um the low it sounds dumb yeah so 2022 we moved into a new office okay right so we spent almost the whole year of 2022 renovating an office like 30 years old so like hey everything had to be upgraded and changed and stuff yeah so early 2023 starts getting cold outside realized a little cold in the office and it was time to upgrade some ACU and some heat units okay fine whatever we figured so we swap one these are expensive units for it right swap two then we swap 20 wait what wait 20 two Z 20 units yeah we had to literally how big is the how big is the the Space 1 14,000 ft dear Lord we had to replace all of our AC heat oh and also the windows the windows would started raining the windows started just leaking what so we had to replace the windows started leaking yeah like the the seals you know like like the the like the black like sort of stripping that goes around each window um yeah that was just like letting water in so we had buckets in our new office uh and it was like 50 2° and people were like huddled around space heaters with their jackets on I'm like man this is such a great upgrade and and this is and you you purchased this you're not leasing it so it's not like you have a landlord that will take care of it that's all on you um dude I am not going to say the number that I spent on AC and heat for this building in 2023 six figs easily oh yeah if not seven uh it wasn't that much but it was uh well into the sixes well into the sixes yeah like uh uh a real nice lambor amount of air conditioning units put in that that's crazy that was probably the low point when we realized that what we thought was a simple little fix was oh start over from scratch right cool did you guys like have it like have the place inspected or anything beforehand like maybe some things were on the inspection report that I maybe didn't read super thoroughly uh read your inspection reports kids those are important there there's some there's some good stuff in there sometimes that you should read boy yeah look I make questionable decisions sometimes I'll freely admit it's all learning experience man yeah man uh being in our brand new shiny office with leaky Windows buckets out and people with uh coats and hudle around space heaters was not the way I thought the 2023 dream would go for sure no that's proper that that is a proper low that is a proper low um I was going to ask like how big's your team now I know I've asked you this probably recently we're at 11 and we're currently hiring number 12 damn does that keep you up at night ever yeah I was gonna say l people man that would what it's a lot of people oh it's a lot of people yeah I mean how do you how do you wrestle with that because I feel like that's there's a number of reasons why I never went that route and just scaled my business but one of the reasons was like just having that many people relying on you all the time like their livelihoods are in your hand if you're having a bad day tough luck you better step it up and maybe that is a motivator but I also find it very terrifying how do do you like how do you cope with that that we it's a lot it's a lot right I mean look the team is incredibly helpful in allowing everything to do I mean obviously we all started doing stuff solo I did stuff solo for like seven years before you know I hir my first person really started turn into like a a quote unquote real business I mean I'm fortunate to have a bunch of really talented people and I don't take that weight lightly but it's not something that keeps me up at night like if I was struggling to make payroll and these AC units were putting us underwater I would be massively more stressed I mean I think about it sometimes I'm like oh all I need to do is lose my voice and everyone's in real deep trouble but that's part of the reason why we've tried to diversify this well we have now three channels how do you how do you say hey guys this is Austin in sign language like ASL boy I couldn't tell you I couldn't tell you um but like it's just one of those things where like the goal here is to make it a diverse company that does not need me to be in front of the camera eight hours a day forever right I obviously I enjoy what I do but it would be nice to have a little bit of that flexibility so that it's not all on me so I'm walk if you go down for a minute like the train keeps moving yeah in in large part we actually have built a lot of that in I mean part of that is just uh what we can do is you know we try to pre-shoot stuff so we usually have stuff in the backlog yada y y but like yeah it it it is something that makes me not feel super great sometimes but also on the flip side I think about like okay but look at the good that we can do not to say that it's I want to say like oh we're doing so good but like you know look at all these people who are able to do these amazing creative jobs and work together and I see the team sort of bonding and going on doing stuff together it's like it's a it's a it gives me like a nice warm feeling like oh man like I have like a part in making this whole thing happen and it just it feels good so I I'm I try to be a pretty positive guy I don't I don't try to stress too much on it but that's cool man that's uh you must be a you're you are a strong dude because not everyone could take that could take that brunt of force you know on their shoulders but uh I think you're right like if you're getting just massive amounts of reward and fulfillment from just creating this this family you know I think that I mean that keeps you going and it has Yeah well yeah yeah and I mean it's like I know I I think a lot about lonus right and I think that you know he has grown lmg to be this monster yeah and I always you know for a long time I felt like it was always like 5 years behind lus like I was like oh he would start to build a team then I started to build a team then he got a building then I got a building and everything but like obviously he was doing stuff at a higher level the entire time and you know way way ahead but a couple years ago once we sort of cuz we were like five or six for a while and it was like a good healthy number like it felt it felt solid and then we crept up seven and then went eight nine 10 like like we almost doubled in like a year or less yeah and that was the point where the Dynamics changed hugely some of the original crew we had you know kind of moved on we went their separate way and so even like a huge chunk of the office now are people who have uh you know been working here for two years or less right which is different than the way where you know we had two years where the same six of us were there the whole time right yeah exactly so it's like it's it's a different kind of vibe right um it go kind of goes from being like this intimate close family to like extended we all used to do lunch together every day now you can't be showing up with a dozen people at McDonald's like everyone's got to clock out and do your lunch breaks and it's it's a much more formal thing which obviously has to be right like can't everyone can't just be hanging out like friends all the time yeah um I feel like there's like there's something very exciting about that but also kind of just sad it's bittersweet it's bittersweet to know like it's almost like a child growing up yeah you know what I mean yeah dude and it's like I don't know I I I kind of miss the old days sometimes I also don't miss the fact that we were a complete dumpster fire like I had no idea to run anything or manage anything in the earli days but I think a lot about Li just because the amount of times that I've had conversations with him and he's like oh like we're done no more people we're done next time yeah we hire 20 more people like L is full of dude I know has said so many things to me I'm like you never did that no wait no shot no shot but like I I because like here's the thing right business like when you start to grow you it's like momentum right like once you start it's hard to stop like because you know you start building this team and then suddenly oh we need people over here and then we need this department more solutions creates more problems it just grows and grows gr obviously a successful business grows I mean that's like the way it works but I've been trying to be more thoughtful about it the last like year especially last two years growing the business doesn't make me happier yeah it doesn't like I I I'm comfortable and happy and I'm really excited about you know all these major pain points about like the office and all these things have been kind of worked out and I think about like how you know again going from like that six to like you know 12ish number was like a just massive amount of extra work and stress and all the all this other stuff that came with it sure and I think about like okay what does that 12 to 24 number look like and it's it's not a happier me it's not and it's like I understand the idea that by continuing to grow it does help to further the goal of me not being so centered to everything working like I totally understand but you think there's a ceiling where you're like I'm good enough like I we're we're set or do you at least slow growth like I like a person or two here or there like that's reasonable that's not going to like totally like upend things but I just think a lot about like like money is not happiness it is not and it's like right you'll never have enough you'll never have enough you'll never be filled by it a good friend of mine um who uh you know he he was he was telling me about he had gone to his therapist and his therapist is like this very high-end sort of therapist who like has like billionaire clients yeah and uh they told him like Hey he was worried about money right he's like hey I have billionaire clients who are worried about how they get their next billion that's not a thing and that like he told me that story and that sunk in so hard like you can chase it forever but as long as you're able to take care of the people who you love and who are you know your family and everything like that yeah and you can live comfortably and have like a good life I it's easy to be greedy the whole everything is set up to be greedy and I don't know like I don't to sound too like hypocritical right CU obviously I've been able to do incredibly well like I don't want to but there's a point in which none of that like one more PSA 10 Charizard or car or house like none of that stuff means much at a certain point yeah right it's all fleeting it's all it's all fleeting like you get that little dopamine H hit you know it's a bit of a rush and it's gone so gone it flips into oh this is another thing I have to deal with I have to manage I have to pay taxes on like it like it literally just becomes this thing seemed like a great idea and me of the past would have killed to have this thing now I'm like now I got to go to DMV again or this it just it it sounds unbelievably like I hear myself say that I I cringe CU like that just sounds like the most douchy thing in the world but it's just for sure no I mean not really well I just you know God we're getting like deep here like I everything is designed to encourage like money equals happiness like that's just that's such a fundamental middle part of the way that so much of the world works but I just think that there's a certain point in which taking your foot off the gas and not doing more more more more more bigger bigger bigger all the time is super healthy and I'm just I'm it's almost like they lied to us you know what man the dream the dream is to keep building until forever I'm starting to get a little sused out over this whole money is happiness thing it's not real well actually it's real up to a certain point and then it's not real after that yeah yeah I think that's fair to say it's like it's good to it's it's nice to be comfortable it's nice to be able to provide for your loved ones and and the people in your life but then it's it's a lot of diminishing returns at some point you're just going to be chasing like at some point what was that Forest Gump line that I'm totally blanking on right now oh God like you just need enough money I'm totally paraphrasing and botching it but anything beyond what you really need is just is just for show Flex or just to try failling some void some itch that you're never going to scratch and I think everyone's level for that everyone draws a line at a different spot yep um but uh you know I think it's just a matter of keeping true to yourself right look man I grew up following the line I grew up um my dad was in sales so we were up and down all the time there' be a year where he did really well and the whole family goes on a vacation and there' be a year where you know uh my brother and I are in the car while they're getting food stamps right like it was not like I definitely grew up with that idea that like not having enough was meant like real dire situations for the family so you know there's a part of me which is always like oh well I need a little bit more because you never know what happens you know a couple years from now and things collapse and suddenly like oh like but like I'm getting over it I'm I'm I'm really trying to get over like look there's a point in which right this doesn't matter anymore yeah everyone's taken care of I have a very happy comfortable life right don't do the other stuff that seems like the path because I don't need to and it really and and that just also takes you away from it takes time and resources away your energy away from what you usually find to be way more important which is absolutely time with people do I want to expand the team and double the size and launch three new channels and do all this kind of stuff and then uh spend two hours less uh you know at home playing with the kids hell no that's not what kind of stupid oh cuz I can have an extra zero to the bank account woohoo like who cares do you think do you think having kids sort of change your mindset a bit more oh yeah oh yeah well because I mean like there's I mean you know I'm in the thick of it I've got a 2-year-old and a 9month old right so it's like I it's uh you know very time intensive but it's rewarding to see them grow up it's rewarding to see them hit these milestones and like you know it it it brings me way more happiness than any sort of money or material thing 100% dude and also the fact that when kids are so young they grow up so fast yes you know they you slow down as you get older but it's like you you take a you know a week you take a week and then you come back after and your kid's shaving you know yeah he's like like D hey Dad I'm graduating college tomorrow like bro you were three yesterday what are you talking about like it's yeah and I think that stuff is more important and I think that it's given me a better perspective on kind of how everything works and it just look man I I I know this Probably sounds douchy I I feel very self-conscious about it but like I'm super happy and comfortable and I want to keep it that way and it doesn't mean that doesn't sound doui at all that sounds like what anybody would want I guess I guess I just I I know that I'm incredibly fortunate that incredibly few people are in a situation like I am and I don't want to take that for granted but also I don't want to lose it yeah right I I I I want I want to it's not like I'm going to oh I'm not like I mean I'm here freaking you know doing 15 16 hour days at CES for a reason right I still love it and I still know that I need to do this to make this whole thing work but at that same time when I go home you better believe I'm going to be hanging out with the kids not say the word the W work word once you know it's just like I it's it's important I have a lot of respect for you man it feels like um it feels like you've you're able you're able to continue doing what you're doing at such a you know a successful in a successful way because you've because your why you found your why and it's a healthy why you know what I mean you have a healthy why why you do all this stuff like why you're growing the team like yeah you got your you got your head on your shoulder straight dude thank you and it's been it's been great to see you it's been very such a joy to see you grow dude thank you man I appreciate that you you know you've been you've seen the whole thing from the yeah dude fire stuff and everything before that to all the way till now I saw your I saw your origin story it was it's been quite a ride yeah well thank you man I appreciate that dude Austin Evans thank you for being on man oh absolutely man I'm this is the most fun thing I'm going to do all day I got like six more meetings and 15 more videos to shoot like getting over here and deep yeah dude I know I'm glad I'm glad we got to talk about some stuff so thanks for having me man thanksmy next guest needs no introduction he's an OG and one of the most iconic Tech creators on YouTube with over 5 million subscribers and an amazing team behind him from hilarious mystery unboxings to Wild Tech Adventures his content never fails to entertain and put a smile on my face he's also just a really good dude we first met over a decade ago and over the years I feel lucky to have spent as much time with him as I have I'm pleased to welcome the very gifted Creator and my dear friend Austin Evans yeah dude I'm just uh getting old I'm feeling the age how old you know feeling the age I am 35 you are 31 31 yeah dude it's crazy because like you know when we met each other it was like what over a decade ago or something like that now when was the first time we actually met uh Highlander in person no was before that oh it was before that wasn't Hawaii wasn't it the launch of uh Fiji with the Fiji cards MD yes that would have been 201 13 yeah and so dude like you were a kid back then yes I was actually like 20 something yeah like early early 20s yeah yeah yeah I was a child it's crazy cuz like time's gone by so fast and and part of me still sees you as a kid and then like sometimes I'll just get a a real like Austin's married with two kids in a house like what the hell is going on dude yeah it's wild life comes at you quick sometimes it does dude how you been holding up good man so this is uh Austin on 43% brain capacity so this all you do today I'm not sure I can give you a whole lot Beyond I saw some tech today it was real shiny 43% is good dude that's being on a good day well that's impressive that's impressive man how about you though how's been how's it been in the Batcave um it's been cool man I like it uh like I was um telling the last guest Terrence I was just like dude it's nice just being in a seat in a chair and like air conditioned not having to walk around all day oh you know it's cold you Haven out it's cold too I I did I did rep park my car dude they're charging 40 bucks for valet a day what you valet for just so I could get all my out the fair that's fair yeah so I was like I got to move that but then they started paying they started charging for uh self Park too yeah they just started that earlier 2023 it's like 18 bucks day just a South Park you real that's like everything like Treasure Island is one of the only like Cenas on the trip that doesn't charge for parking oh really yeah you can get free parking if you have like some status or whatever at a lot of the hotels and stuff yeah you're paying like 20 30 bucks a day most places dude just to have cuz I granted I do have a fair amount of equipment this trip yeah just to get it from my car to the hotel room when I checked in it was 40 bucks a day for valet plus they charged me I did $10 in tip yep and then 30 bucks there's a 30 Buck fee for non- luggage items no which is like 90% of my I was like 30 so I spent $80 just to get my bags from Like to Move It Like a few hundred feet non baggage fee yeah non baggage fee I mean I don't want to be rude but uh I feel like that comes out of my tip money dude honestly right dude it's not their call but still like I I I out dude I always tip um even if I feel like I shouldn't but yeah but it was It was kind of sketchy because he's like oh it's gonna be 30 bucks for the non- baggage fee and I was like okay and then I go to like pay there's like a little kiosk inside and I like whip out my card and they're like cash only I'm like is this for real is this for real non baggage is that cash only at Venetian I was like dude you guys are running a little side operation here 100% dude I was sketched out 3 what's up okay they know they know they look at you oh this a sucker dude I know man I'm getting car profiled these days sucks what did you uh did you fly or did you drive drove what did you drive uh we drove uh I drove my is okay nice yeah but I did not have anywhere near as much gear cuz uh you know I'm actually shooting most of the show on iPhone we we have one A7 which we're using for maybe a third of the stuff but uh yeah like this is my third thing of the day and I have shot everything so far on iPhone and the DJI are you shooting portrait the whole time or you shooting some landscape stuff so this morning everything I've shot has been short form okay um so dude that's the way man that is the way for events like this that is the way totally totally yeah but uh we've got a best of CES video which is going to be shot uh so uh landscape so basically every time I see something I have to make the Judgment call vertical or horizontal it's going to be short it's going to be a story like right it's nice to have the flexibility but it's it's definitely I've never approached CES with anything in mind other than snapping a couple of photos and just getting like regular sort of YouTube content so this is the first year I'm actually putting effort into like shorts and everything and to be fair I say putting effort in almost everything I'm doing is embargo till after CS or a ton of that stuff a lot of it's like oh I'm doing briefings for stuff that I'm going to be talking about later in January February whatever so I'm like oh I'm not going to shoot this at all I'm just going to do it at the office that makes sense that makes sense um what uh what's what's that been like for you as traditionally you know starting on YouTube years ago doing long form content and now just with this new wave of short form was that like were there growing pains in that or did you feel like do you feel like you're adapting to that pretty pretty easily it's I mean I think if you know how to make good content good content is good content everywhere there's different styles there different things but I mean you got to hook people a lot of the stuff you have to do for the long form content is still quite similar to short form it's not the same sure it's certainly a little different but yeah it hasn't been a huge huge adjustment I'm certainly not crushing it like some of like the the short form guys and the Tik Tok guys and stuff like they they actually crush it like I I make one or two a week and you know every once a while they do okay um but do you like do do you enjoy the short form stuff more now than than the long form I don't say no no I don't think I enjoy it more it's it's just a different kind of thing right CU like long form you know these are anything from a video that's easy to shoot in afternoon to uh we did a project actually we did a project at uh Big Willow oh a little while ago yeah oh was that the you like what what was that explain because I kind of saw it I caught wind of it but I didn't know what was going on so um basically I've been pitching uh for over a year really since we did our any EXC any excuse to get behind the wheel you better believe in any excuse you better believe it so I'm pitching to do a race Sim versus real life uh video um and I got close a couple times and then our lovely sponsors of Micro Center were like you know what we've got a huge line of racing Sim setup let's do it sweet yes so we rented the hole of uh Big Willow so Willow Springs which is a track a little north of La um and this was my first time on Big Willow right uh which is uh a real fast scary track yeah we always see it when we go to streets of Willow boy I I did not have the coones to like I mean you got that big swe sweeper at the end and I'm like doing like 110 through the sweeper and like it's bumpy as hell so I mean it's it's fine but you're like oh okay okay okay um it's fast did you do it in the is or the RS3 I did in the RS3 nice nice it was fun it was super fun but basically the idea and the premise of the video was um unfortunately we couldn't and this is one of those things where we committed to doing everything and then we ultimately couldn't get it done the way we wanted to so we used iRacing which is you know very you you know iRacing wait what's RAC ing are you do you don't do any Sim stuff then no okay iRacing is one of I would say three or four um high high quality Sims right so very very Esports oriented it's a based like a subscription you have to buy like the tracks but like very much sort of you know I think I know a lot of the NASCAR guys use it it's very much one of those like sort of higher end SS got like super high but like it's it's it's it's popular it's not a game like Forza it's a it's an actual proper no you're in there and like you know like I we were trying to tweak so the problem we had was that uh they had actually just added Big Willow they didn't have streets we would have loved to do streets so just had added big given you an advantage because you've done that track a million times exactly exactly right so uh they had big Willow they have an RS3 in the game yeah but it is a race car version of the RS3 no we had already committed to doing it and we knew that because basically we were trying to find the right sort of combination of game that would be high quality yeah that had to obviously have one of the tracks at Willow and had my car right so this checked two of the three boxes the racing RS3 you know what we can tweak it a little bit yeah we committed you know we were all set and then we realized that oh the racing RS3 is a turbo four-cylinder front-wheel drive race car that weighs th000 pounds less I was like oh that's way different dude yeah different so um how did you compensate for that or did you just uh well so our thought was okay well whatever we'll figure it out um the problem is because iRacing is so authentic if so I started to like oh I'm just throw ballast then I'll try to change it as soon as I throw ballast then goes oh your suspension setup is illegal because you're running it too low because you've added so much weight to the car I'm like oh my God it's like it is Dam unforgiving but that's why it's good abolutely now I mean to be fair uh and My Hope was because again we were like this is we're figuring this out like a week and a half because you know we're going to Microcenter to get all the some stuff we're building the whole thing the office which that takes a couple of days just to build you know they've got like the amazing sort of like base they've got the wheel the wheel and the wheel base yeah together so the the wheel itself was something like I don't know like 1100 bucks or something just the actual force feedback base is like 12200 bucks this stuff is super super highend that's pretty sick it's great were you were you racing against yourself were you doing the Sim okay I wonder if like it was you versus Ken or something no no no so what we did was I I did three different runs right so beforehand I did some practice you know with the high-end Sim stuff there's so many tweaks and tunes and settings and all this kind of stuff so what I did was I got practice at the office we loaded the whole thing up drove out there um we set it up in one of the garages yeah so I took my RS3 out which I've never been on the track before having only done my practice laps I did like a sighting lap or two like I we we uh the track wasn't hot yet cuz the safety people aren't there CU I hav pay for him yet so we had to go kind of real easy but I just you know drove around a couple times just to to see everything lay of the land exactly and then uh we went I did uh a few laps with the Xbox controller set of time with that did a couple of laps uh with the simulator which actually I was happy that was my fastest lap I'd ever done this s was actually at the track I done some practice but it was actually w the fastest um just being there probably just got you in the mood yeah I was just it was yeah a little bit cuz basically what we did was for the day we committed to two laps two laps two laps okay um so two on Xbox two on the actual Sim and then two in real life sure um so I went out um do you want to know do you want to take a guess right so here's the difference right yeah so my first two hot laps right on the actual track okay so the differences are my car has Fair bit more horsepower so how much uh I think is in the neighborhood like 150 horsepower more so like 350 versus 500 online but th000 lb more um cup twos but still street tires right um and obviously not slicks yeah so do you want to guess what the Delta was and obviously my first time around the track where I did not want to crash my car whereas in iRacing I was crashing quite frequently cuz I kept pushing the limits um Delta on on in your favor or in The Sims favor well whatever you think damn um it sounds like a pretty realistic simulator and it seems like you tuned it pretty well so I'm I'm going to say like like 3 seconds okay so the simulator was about 10 seconds faster than real life oh damn a huge chunk of that though was the car so the big thing was I'm sure it was just warmer that day in the simulator yeah that's exactly no we actually we tweak we tweaked some of the stuff you can actually do we stuff the problem was that the simul the race car I was going carry like 20 M hour more through corners like it was it is crazy like I mean and there are pretty I mean obviously we we've gone TR did that make you want to like take your car back out on the track like I know I can do that now we did right so I set my times on the simulator first so I knew I actually forget the time the I think it's like a 12 125 or 135 no I think it was like 126 or something I set on the sem and I go out and my first lap was a 140 I was like oh my God uh my next lap was a one like 38 mind you though to be fair this is like my first two like Fast Laps on the track ever for sure I'm super upset like I knew it was going to be slower I didn't think I that much slower so we bent the rules a little bit and I did two more laps so I still didn't like we had to track the whole day I only did four fast laps the whole day right so I was able to get the same time again like literally then nice so oh wait the same time as the Sim okay yeah so it's funny because I feel like depending on who you are like you're going to take more pride in like getting the bet the better Sim time no I wanted to be faster no the problem was okay so you've done a lot of actual racing so I yeah look my real car probably could have gone four or 5 Seconds faster like if I had spent the time to really learn there's a few spots where I was way too timid cuz I didn't trust was literally had never really raced the track before yeah that being said though if I had like actual like slicks that would shaved off a huge shook of the T by itself um so but it's it's a fun track M it just it's a lot less um like complicated it's a lot more like there's a couple of weird sort of spots on the track but it's actually very simple track it's much more so of like how big are your balls to take it through some of the corners when you're like it's it's that's that's the scary part I mean your balls are way bigger when you're playing a simulator than when when you're when you're driving your own car dude the amount of times I ran off and I racing super unforgiving you go off and it goes oh you got wheel damage and like you have to like reset it's it's it's gnarly right so it was a very fun shoot um dude that's that's insane like that's uh like when you get to that level as a Creator and you can just like like pitch an idea to a brand that's something that you just want to do it's not something that you're being you know that a sponsor wants it's not an agenda it's just like this sounds fun to me and it's like really not something that you could do properly without without like the resources like everything that you built you know it's like yeah that's pretty awesome when like your work becomes your passion those two things are just know interwoven like that you know how it is like we've both been doing this for long enough we've been able to do amazing things like so many amazing things and I want to take advantage of the advantages that we have and the things that we've got and and try to do stuff that's fun right now I'll tell you that video did not performed super well right I could have made a mystery Tech and it would have got double the views right um but I think people largely enjoyed it and almost way more importantly than that honestly I I had a great time you know it was it was fun the team enjoyed I mean it was obviously a very very long day but you know we spent all this time prepping it took forever to but like it was like one of those videos that you know we all have to make videos that we're maybe not super proud of sometimes because whatever like that was video that we knew we had the budget we had the time actually was kind of a little bit rush but that was entirely just because we were trying to get track time and there's a certain movie star who had the track rented that we had to steal it from who came in on a helicopter who I'm not going to name his name but nice he came in want under the bus uh it's okay I won't say his name we could bleep it out Brad I don't forget oh Brad yeah being outed Brad outed on on the interview it's Brad Garrett no but uh it was just one of those things where it was super fun and I like doing those projects even though they make financially no sense but they make me feel real happy and sad yeah for sure and that's like a kind of currency that you got to like pay attention to you know what I mean like I remember you would you would said on on when we did super special that uh like that's kind of what helps you keep going is every once in a while do a project that's just for you yes you know what I mean the thing is it's not like I mean I say it's just for me there are people who still enjoy it right it's not like it's like but and it's a video you're proud of it's not like you're yes and the biggest problem with it was just the fact that we did not do the question of the video Justice by because the cars were so off like right we we had committed to the whole thing before we had figured out the exact plan on everything so that's the one thing that I wish we would have done differently a lot of people rightfully pointed out like hey that's like apples to oranges entirely I mean it was still helpful for me because again I think having done four laps of the track in Anger ever yeah doing the simulator time massively sped me up cuz like there's a couple like I said it's a very simple track but uh there's a couple of spots that are a little bit more Technical and you know there's a couple of spots where it's very easy to just go straight off the track if you're not sort of used to it which I was doing the Sim all the time so it did help but yeah I wish we would have done it a little bit better speaking of doing amazing things uh I saw that uh that you had gone to the White House recently oh SN I feel like there's been a lot of when when do we when when was I on the podcast it wasn't that long ago right um it wasn't but you went to the White House after so we didn't get a chance to talk about that and I don't I didn't catch anything on social media as to why you went there so I I formulated some of my own theories okay I would love to hear you can tell me if I'm if I'm hot or cold on any go go go for it they're painting the White House a new shade of white and needed you for reference okay that's actually true okay so you you nailed it already but you can keep go for your other I know some people up there um they needed Tech Support to fix Biden's Life Alert uh well you know I he was screeching for something but I think it was like can't CH for something so probably not um you're Lifesaver dude and then uh or you were recruited for an exciting new position on Epstein Island okay so we don't talk about that right so it has another more official name it's Area 52 Area 52 so yeah uh no no it was good so um it was super random um so I got uh it was actually thanks to my YouTube rep oh so none of those answers were right no actually unfortunately damn incorrect um so no it was uh thanks to my YouTube rep so basically um I didn't realize Google actually have like uh uh a number of people who are like dedicated to like policy and like you know it makes sense you know it's a big company so basically there was a um an executive order on AI that was being announced and signed on the day yeah and so essentially uh through via my Google rep my YouTube rep they basically hey um we got a couple of seats for some creators and you know you do Tech and AI stuff would you like to go except it wasn't quite like that because it was more like I got a cryptic email from uh from my uh partner manager Zack shout out Zack he's like hey you're going to get an email from the White House it's legit it's not spam and then that was all the context I had yeah and I was like okay cool I guess whatever and then I was uh in Maui for the Qualcomm event yeah and uh I get seea on like Thursday and go hey and it was like an official like I'll show you we can't show this on camera I'll dude yeah what is it like to get an email from the White House a legit email I mean I like I don't know do they stamp it or something uh it actually does yeah I've uh we can't show this we definitely can't show this but I'll show you sure um I kept it in my inbox cuz it just makes me happy um so basically I got this can you pull like a support ticket with the White House you can you can read that just don't show that that's the email that showed up I can read it out loud uh yeah yeah yeah yeah just don't show it okay okay yeah just says Dear Mr Evans so proper please see your invitation below for an event on safe secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence to be held at the White House on Monday October 30th 2023 at 2:30 p.m. and then it's got all this US citizens 18 and old oh damn and then there's this fancy yeah dude it's like all letterhead and stuff yeah yeah so basically it's a is that a blueprint of the White House like yeah it's it's the map hey here go in through this gate talk to like this person or whatever dude so a Seal Team Six map right here so I got that thing on Thursday the invite was for Monday morning or Monday afternoon okay and I'm in Hawaii I like oh how the hell am I going to do this I was flying home on like Saturday so I'm were you stoked when you got that you were like I definitely want to go to the W like I will make anything happen was in the middle shake hands with B I was in the middle of my a-roll and I uh got the notification and I had to take a minute like yes so uh after a quick chat with my wife who's very supportive uh I just booked a Tios like yeah sure whatever so um I roll up it was uh I haven't been to DC a long time so like it was it was strange it was kind it was different than I thought okay remember everyone the US government is watching you all the time now sure I'm sure that's fine no it was different than I thought so obviously you see movies and I've actually I've been to the White House before but not like inside like you know you can just walk like uh there's like that sort of front area we could have like a good view of it so I had like seen it before but you know obviously had not so what was different like the layout like the pillars were all blue I just didn't know what to expect you assume like there's going to be like Secret Service sing and there was there's lots of people with lots of big guns everywhere um but I I roll up and I was supposed to go into like this one gate and so I come and I'm like I'm trying to remember okay so I like here's my contacts name here's the phone number this is what I'm here for I'm like get my whole be ready so I walk up and there's like this little booth the Secret Service um but as I'm walking up there are kids everywhere all dressed up in Halloween costumes so it turns out that all the staffers it was the day that they all brought their kids in with all their Halloween costumes for trick-or-treating oh no way everywhere so not in the actual white house but in the executive so the Eisenhower executive building which is basically right beside so it's in the like the campus that's basically where all the actual staffers go so I'm expecting like you know all this crazy security and there's just kids running around everywhere that's crazy I go inside um so I have to go through security like no secret service what do they what do they hand out for Halloween at the White House candy just bills dude yeah so so I go up to the to the Secret Service and all these kids are coming out and I'm like trying to like I'm like hey I'm here for a real reason they go ID oh okay and I start talking go no ID didn't want to say a word they look at the thing go that way and that was it I was like oh okay cool so then I go around Ming around I go the wrong direction and another Secret Service is like you're not going this way go back to where you came from take a left go the other direction like okay sure and so I come around I go through another sort of checkpoint and then I'm gonna I'm going to out but it's fine um I walk in through this like massive thick heavy door it's like this little like small building before you actually go onto the campus right so I'm like I'm inside the fence but I haven't like gone all the way in right I opened the door and it's like it looks like almost like a little like dinky like TSA style thing when you like a metal detect super super simple and the guy goes oh hey man I love your channel it's like Secret Service dude I'm like okay this is a very different experience I was like ID this way he's go hey man take a picture like what's going on it was it was so Co dude isn't that great like like we're all so like serious around each other when like we're strangers it's like I've been in situations like that where you know I go to some place that's like I don't know like a restaurant and it's like oh my buddy is like oh I know the the manager there just tell him Ricky you know you're a friend of Ricky and they're just like you know bounc like stone cold or whatever and he's like hey I'm I'm Ricky's friend and then instantly they just like there's this instant level of trust yeah you know when you have that Mutual I mean but in this case you were the mutual you you were you he knew you it was such a flex and there was one other like influencer was there too and like when the guy said that she gave me such a weird look I was like yes so this is the best day of my life it was it was cool though so we go in thank you so much to MSI for making these CES 2024 talks possible so MSI Unleashed some killer Tech at their Booth but one thing that totally stole the show literally towering over everything was the mag Maestro 700 lpz this Beast of a dual chamber chassis supports eatx and msi's project zero motherboards you know the ones with the Sleek cable action going on at the back for that clean look but hold up it gets even cooler the case is a single piece of cnced aluminum meaning zero panel gaps add in that one piece glass panel wrapping around and you've got yourself a stunner ready for some extreme water cooling too 3300 60 mm radiator kind of extreme what this unique bad boy the Meg Maestro 700 lpz is hitting stores in the next month or two with an MSRP of $379.99 now if that's a bit too rich for your blood check out the mag Pano this one's got a more budget friendly price tag coming in ATX and Micro ATX sizes US market gets four pre-installed fans or you can choose a fanless version for the international crew it's available in black or white and that wraparound glass panel gives you the ultimate wide- angle views the case features solid Cable Management behind the motherboard with plenty of room and these cool hinged cable covers to make stubborn side panels a thing of the past with so many project zero Builds on display it's no surprise that MSI is also flaunting their line of clutter-free boards featuring the b650 chipset for amd's ryzen 7000 series and z790 and b760 chipsets for Intel's 12th 13th and 14th gen CPUs back connect designed for effortless cable Vibes robust power delivery and extended m.2 SSD heat sinks they've got it all not to mention 20 GB per second USB Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5 gbit land for that extra sauce available now so get them while they're hot hats off to MSI for making these CES 2024 interviews go down scope out their latest Gear with the links in the video description thanks a million to Thermal for backing my CES 2024 chats now about those fans thermal is kicking it up a notch forget the old ones these new tough fan X and SWA fan ex models are on another level why they've got magnets that let you link them up waving goodbye to that cable chaos coming in 120 and 140 mm options these fans only need one cable to power up to three fans at once making PC building a breeze need to clean mod or swap the blades easy peasy plus all the fans include some Lubes so your little propeller doesn't try out thermal is not just stopping at fans no they're diving into the racing Sim world with the gr500 cockpit it's got it all adjustable fiberglass bucket seat pedal Mount plate and a sturdy frame that's pre-drilled for all major brands like like thrustmaster Logitech and fitech and hey if you're into that triple monitor setup they've got to stand for it picture this three of thermal takes 32-in curved monitors with all the bells and whistles Quad HD resolution 170 HZ refresh rate 1 millisecond response time and Sleek bezels for an immersive edgo Edge view want the Deets on all of thermal Tes latest tech hit up the link in the description so if you've ever seen any like political drama or whatever you see like they've got like those like tall ceilings and like the sort of the marble floors you see like so that's very accurate so there's tons and tons of offices in here yeah for all these different departments and stuff but the weird thing was and of course keep in mind there's kids everywhere kids dressed up everywhere um they all decorated so all of these like 100y old massive Office Buildings are like decorated with like Barbie and and like they went all out like all those interns were putting in like the hours um uh the one that I went into uh uh which was the office I'm going get this wrong the office of digital something something something probably should know because they're the ones who gave me the invite yeah um but basically they had their whole office the front half was Barbie the second half was all no well there was a couple of those it was all SpongeBob not good at the White House no no uh well here's the thing though I was surprised like the vast majority of the staffers there like early 20s like they were like I was like it was a different like you expect a bunch of like old bureaucrats it's just a bunch of like I don't say like college but like like certainly like a younger sort of demo and like they're all like like they made this whole elaborate like SpongeBob thing like welcome to Bikini Bottom there's all these that's that's kind of that is pretty wild to like show up to the White House you know that like the staple of our country and be like this is all run by gen Z like what the hell is going on here dude absolutely bunch of Zoomers running around dude yeah that was that was the vibe right and it was it was it was cool qu pens and stuff that's wild dude yeah so then you know we got a little tour um so like you know in like the old Department of war room where like the doors are like freaking thick they're complaining about the Wi-Fi because like uh some of these rooms were like so old and they're like lead lined or whatever like so like oh yeah like they tried to drill in they realized oh there's that's lead or whatever it like like every room's a safe room basically it's crazy but because like there's all this history and obviously you know the staffers turn over a pretty quick rate as as things sort of change and stuff so it's like it's like it just it was a very interesting Vibe so we got to go check out like the vice president's office you know here's like the they're like oh yeah here's the desk you see those tape marks that's where Richard Nixon taped his thing for water games like oh that's cool like here's where all the vice presidents whoever used this desk signed it's just like all this kind of neat cool stuff wow so yeah man so we go through epic it was it was super cool and then we actually go into the White House itself which again you walk by a bunch of very very um serious people with some very very serious weapons right so you you walk past them and then we got to go into the White House the Press briefing room okay um which is where you know you see all like the press conference stuff I will say phenomenal lighting it is incredible small in person and every seat has like the actual like press outlet and apparently it's like a whole thing about like how like they all decide and like oh this is the fox D seat the CNN whatever um but it is uh like mass in fact so much so that it is not allowed to record video so I was able I walked up I took a photo like hey you can't take video cuz that's the preest thing even like it was it was wild wait so when you the photo that you posted online it was you behind a Podium that is the white briefing room when I mean it's almost always press secretary but sometimes the president will come up and like answer questions from like the the the press that is that spot dude yeah it was the fact that you were just like like you like Trump's prints were right there oh I was yeah there well there's a few prints there it was it was surreal right because again I'm like not really knowing what to expect and then we actually go into the White House itself yeah there's a band playing and I I should know this it was either the army of the Navy I think it was the Army but it's like a live band um obviously they're freaking playing CDs or whatever um but we walk through like this sort of underground passage we walk up there's like these phenomenal like portraits everywhere um was there food uh no no there was actually no food was there no I don't think so you would have had to be in a Halloween costume and go trick-or-treating yeah yeah pretty much yeah so basically we walk up and like everyone's like Milling around and you can tell it's like a bunch of people who probably do this somewhat often um I would say maybe like 75 to 100 people something like that um so it's all like kind of Atrium you see the windows are like freaking massively thick and like it's they're all bulletproof yeah I would assume so right but it's it's incredibly fancy and again the the musicians who are playing and just sort of it's It's A vibe so you come in right um to the east wing and everyone kind of take seats and again just kind of hanging out and things running a little late and um and then uh everyone stands up and they start playing Halo the chief and go oh okay so the president vice president just like walk right in like said started playing Halo I was like that's sick oh no no it was it was just it was just like oh like cuz I didn't know what to expect like so I knew that they were signing something but I didn't know like what the setup was how many people were there um and then just the president the United States just walks in the room was like hey what's up dudes damn he just kind of like gave the cool nod yeah right yeah and it was he to save his energy yeah so it was it was cool man it was it was cool he's like like yeah like hey I'm sorry I'm late I just got off the phone with uh like during like the auto strike yeah we just talked to the president of the UAW you know everything's good so anyway back to our regular schedule thing like oh okay cool just a regular Thursday my dude or Monday whatever it was that had to have been surreal man you're kind of just like looking around the in this small room that you've been invited to the president just staring at you and the vice president like they're like just there it just it was just I don't know it just was I don't know what I expected it was just not that it was just it was but it was very cool it was a very cool experience but then afterwards how was it it just it just was over and everyone just kind of they sort of gently sort of ushered people out I was going to go to the bathroom and take a look at some of their cool tissues but I couldn't find the bathroom I didn't wantu tissues the White House apparently has like special um maybe napkins or something like that okay um which you could have like taken as a souvenir or something I theoretically I could have used uh never have taken or anything I did not do that for the record oh they weren't disposable they were like well I didn't know cuz I couldn't find a bathroom and then I just was being ushered out and I was like well I'm not going to ask her the bathroom is just going to leave cuz I don't want to be make a scene you're not you're not trying to steal from the white house right now I'm of course what although I would really funny if you got caught though I did get a little like those those like plaque things for like you know when you sit down at a meeting that says the White House on it says Austin Evans so I took that one home it would have been really funny if you got busted for trying to steal a napkin by the guy who watches your channel yeah it'd be awkward and he's like escorting you out just like I'm so sorry you know was so weird I was like so I hear this whole thing and you know it's like a 30 minute speech or whatever and and you know he signed the bill and everyone applauds and stuff and that's kind of the end uh I walk out and just you walk out of like the front door and just like on the street like you just left this like Bizarro Wonderland of just where everything is weird and fancy and stuff and you're just like on the street next to the quiz nose I'm hopping in the cab the cab driver has the radio on I'm hearing his like they're doing like the news recap I'm hearing exactly what I just heard in person like 10 minutes beforehand and at the airport and I'm home it just it was it was such a bizarre weird it's like own little like world you know it's like like that door is just a portal into this crazy community that it's really cool though like it's I guess a little smaller than you might think it's a very very nice house I heard it's pretty small yeah you look at from the outside it looks smaller from the outside it is Grand on the inside but it's Grand almost more so because like you see the portraits of the presidents you see all of these like amazing things I'm sure the ceilings are pretty high yeah yeah yeah yeah but just the whole thing is just incredible and the music that's the thing that really sits with with me is just like having the band like they start playing Halo the chief in person the person walks go wow this is a this is an experience yeah man dude just so many like every president's been in that house yeah well well okay I think it burned down at one point but most of the president okay most yeah yeah n out of 10 dude there's so much history in there yeah and you're part of that history now I left my fingerprint on the wall so unless they scrip the wall my fingerprint will be there B's going to be like Austin Evans was at this Podium his next speech so yeah man uh dude that's that's freaking awesome thank you for sharing that um what about okay so I was looking I like to do this thing with all the interview guests where no it's something embarrassing but I just go through their their recent content just see what what they're up to um I I've developed an Austin Evans title and thumbnail starter pack perfect that you can you can rate and let me know what you think hit me all right there's just three essential things that you need to do to make an Austin Evans title and thumbnail one you need boxes in the thumbnail you absolutely you need boxes you I've got a story for that go ahead but yes that's essential also brand logos in the thumbnail a brand logo some kind of identifiable recognizable icon got know what's in the box and the third one you have to write scam in the title no don't don't share my secrets yes that is the secret that is the secret no how do I do how do I do that is Flawless perfect and the absolute way to do it so I'm going to start doing them I have data on all three of these yeah I know you do I know you do I wasone I already know you do happens by accident right exactly so do you have access to the AB testing tool I don't know okay I don't know if I would that's the wrong answer my so YouTube has recently rolled out a feature where you can upload up to three thumbnails and it will automatically try them and then it will pick the winner right so you can get the actual number and percentage of watch time which is a little bit of a weird metric but basically you get to throw your thumbnails up and it picks whichever wants the best one wait it picks it based on watch time oh watch time yeah yeah yeah so say if you put two thumbnails up yeah and you know one thumbnail gets 55% one gets 45% then it's going to pick the one that had the higher watch time now I don't think that that I think they're being a little bit tricky with those numbers because I don't think that one thumbnail gets another three minutes of people to watch a video or whatever I think there is a little bit of shenan but regardless it's the better thumbnail right now this has been the most amazing thing ever because we've always done this for like years we did it manually and we did it with like right hazey guesses of like oh I I saw it the the click through looks like it went up a point you know you NE you you know you minus kind of shoo from the hi a little bit exactly yeah yeah yeah just watching the real time you swap the thumbnail and you stare at for 10 minutes go oh it went down that was a bad idea like it was right very crude so sure this has been great we test usually it actually depends either two to three thumbnails for every launch and then we itate from there right gotcha the boxes win every time like what we had so actually it was a video that went live uh yesterday I was recording this video on the new G14 we had this dope thumbnail it was like the me holding the laptop a crown on like it looked so cool and then we had a laptop we just had a box box crushed it it was like 15% higher and I hate it because like but like the problem is it's not a problem but the way that we do it is that people expect us to unbox things like the Box carries an enormous am amount of sort of narrative weight on what the video is about and especially when you pair it with them logos right so you get the idea it's Etsy or Amazon or r or whatever right and you see a dude holding a box with a bunch of logos on it or maybe some weird piece of tech coming out and then you have a title that is um tantalizing but gives you enough to be curious about it right it is the formula that just works I feel like I feel like we love mystery you know what I mean it's like if you tell people what they're getting it's like those uh you know like those Tik toks or whatever they'll go up to someone on the street and be like do you want $10 or do you want what's in the mystery box and like most the time they choose the box cuz just like I think in your mind like the the fantasy or like the the hope of what it could be is more exciting than the thing itself oh absolutely it's like Christmas morning dude what sells to me is an extreme it is a negative reaction or it is a mystery like those I feel like the majority of successful YouTube content Falls in one of those three buckets right and obviously if you've got something so like if I get scammed right so I go on Etsy and I buy and it's illegal or whatever then that's easy right or I order an item and it doesn't show up oh surprise surprise right like that that makes sense yeah um where it sort of is a little bit harder to wrap your head around is sort of how you sell the mystery because like sure there's so much content there's so many choices that someone has yeah if you get them to click and they commit to 10 minutes of their day to spend with you it's like you've got to sell them that you're going to do something cool there's something going to happen it's like not like hey I'm going to unbox 12 items it's hilarious like no no no there one of these things is wild I don't know which one it is you don't know which one it is but it's coming dude in that Wild Thing the last one I saw was that razor mask that you wore the zephrus or whatever dude that was that was so funny yeah when you put that on and like like Canon everyone was freaking out and it's funny because in the video you can instantly tell that you're you're it just enlarges it magnifies your your entire mouth it's RGB around it too exactly and RGB around it but I think in it's probably more difficult to tell right away because it took them a while to realize it and then Ken was like I figured it out it it's magnifying your teeth your whole mouth so you just look did he say you look like the annoying oranges yes yes that was such a perfect a perfect comparison that's my favorite thing is we like we like so the the team so what know some mystery text or behind the scenes the team have a slack that they are constantly looking for weird stuff like like every week they are looking for stuff I don't play Parton it cuz I like to be surprised what makes the video like that's it's it's like sharing the reaction with the viewers you know what I mean like you're you're you're both in the same boat and I think people also kind of crave that authenticity these days that that natural genuine reaction as opposed to just something that's super scripted and it's got a flow and it's like that's polished but you know it's not as real yeah totally totally and it's just it's fun because it's like the way we shoot them is so we you know when we sit down every you know a couple weeks whereever shoot Myster Tech we'll batch shoot you know four or five segments and those get split up up and then we craft the episodes out of segments so we just have a bank of segments that we shoot and every time it's ready for you know we're going to do another episode we just look at all the segments we shot and go oh we're going to take this laptop thing we're going to take this phone thing so the problem we used to have was just that because it was such a mystery and we never knew not only we didn't I didn't know what the products were but also the team didn't know what the reaction would be sometimes these things are terrible and I hate them sometimes I think they're so dumb that like I don't like I don't give them anything good it's just like oh it's like it's a f minute segment it's like super simple um and sometimes these things are amazing so because we sort of shoot them it in that sort of split up order it means that you know we're always sitting on a bank of these things and we kind of craft the episodes where it's like oh we're going to start out with a great item then we're going to do something that's a little bit more lowkey then we do something that's super weird then we something nice balance got a mix exactly do how many uh uh mystery Tech items would you say actually make it to screen oh almost all of them that we shoot make it to make it on camera yeah the matter of what episode they go in because the actual amount of items that we cut it's like less than 10 a year it's not a huge amount like most things we do and the ones that get cut are just boring or they didn't work or sometimes because we shoot them in sort of out of order uh segments would just age out so like you know I do a thing on like a fake s23 by the time the s24 comes out I'm like oh well that's probably not going to be good anymore that kind of stuff but if it's a good segment it always goes into an episode pretty quick and it's usually the stuff that's sort of decent or a little bit more specialty is the stuff that will hold on but there there are episodes of mystery Tech that go live with segments that have been shot like six months apart okay wait so then do you like I haven't noticed are you always wearing the same shirt then hell no I Chang the shirt you CH the shirt changes every segment every segment all right I haven't noticed that I was like I wonder how consistent you are dude no no I don't care at all does make a difference to the video you know the real continuity watch the background cuz the stuff we put in the back of the set is always changing so you see like some things missing you know oh that that one went live in August and it's disappeared this is an old segment theall different color yeah actually no we painted and we did uh like a little like sort of uh wood sort of uh buildout or whatever on one of our walls so some episodes you'll see the white wall some you'll see the whole gotcha wood applique and everything how did how did you even like get the idea like when did you start doing mystery Tech and realize like this is something we need to make a regular series we made our first mystery Tech in like 20 1 no 16 17 something it's been a while yeah it's very long time yeah it's our longest running series we're about to hit 100 episodes no wow oh yeah 100 episodes of Mainline mystery Tech not like mystery Tech and all the other sort of offes like actual proper mystery Tech um so yeah it's it's uh it's been a bit uh the main thing was we started out with like a bunch of random I think actually started out was almost like we were looking at some weird Amazon gadgets and Ken had an idea like oh I don't want to tell you what this thing is you just see right so you drop the thing on the table and that's kind of how it got started yeah nice I did a video similar to that a while back it was uh I gave like my Discord members like 500 bucks to just spend on anything they wanted on wish.com and just send it to me um I had to put it on my personal Channel CU like they were buying me like hentai key caps and like Wu pillows which I should have seen coming I'm not sure what I got like a a penis plushy I was like the wish after dark man wish after dark wish after dark no that's the actual segment of wish oh really yeah okay here's the thing we have to cut and censor so much stuff when we do because obviously we don't show that stuff we we right right yeah for sure um the amount of like butt plugs and just stuff like like like what that your team is getting you for mystery Tech or that no when I'm trying to order stuff like you just browse through yeah everywhere or like the amount of guns you see and like like BB guns and stuff I'm like oh that's a gun that's demonetized oh that's asess chaps can't show that like it's just it's everywhere dude those those sites like wish and stuff like AliExpress those are the only sites where you can buy a gun and a butt plug at the same place and that's a dangerous combination to buy at the same time you should maybe get those from separate places um both of those things are making some crazy actually I have a question for you between wish AliExpress and U what is the best pleb site U yeah I hate to say it te well here's the problem teu is a problematic site as people love to inform me in the comments because essentially it is this massive Chinese conglomerate who are burning piles of cash with really quick Cheap shipping from China yeah on stuff they're burning like 20 30 bucks every time you order like they are burning cash but they are trying to buy market share right they're also spending ungodly amounts on marketing right they advertis Super Bowl in 2023 I think they're sounds like they're doing again this year um and I don't love that I I don't love the fact that they're kind of musing in yeah but at the same time I like to make videos right and people really like the teu stuff like I like I actually funny thing I didn't even know about teu it was my air conditioning guy who was and was last year that long team only launched like late 2022 my air conditioning guys is like hey I got this like I don't remember was this like some nonsense Gadget I got this thing on this site called teu yeah check it out he's like it's like there got so much stuff it's super cheap okay cool because at the time I had been doing wish for a long time and wish had done super well for us and then teamu was just like another level like just came out of nowhere dude it was like no one knew what the hell it was and now it's like you can't escap it can I tell you I shouldn't say that whatever that's fine we're all friends here right um someone from Teemu emails me on a nearly daily basis just why they want sponsor videos oh really yeah I'm not surprised just on a why wouldn't they work with you they work with a M like every Creator every creator has one follower they'll work with it's and it's like they they obviously watch the videos yeah they obviously see I think what bothers them is that I call out to from being as scam CL it's a scam half the time yeah right and they don't like that cuz like okay we get in trouble go for it when we talk about scams when we talk about these kind of things you know some people don't always like that I've had a number of emails from companies who are like hey don't say that kind of stuff about our product there's this reason there's that reason BL are they sponsoring you or no no no no it's just like you know trying to tell you what to say I mean I I can call teu out cuz you know it's teu but like there's a number of other brands who like oh I take a look at this thing and I say oh it's bad it's a scam or whatever and I have a problem with it and then you know companies inevitably will be like hey well actually that's not fair we want you to take that down we want like let's let have a conversation about this because actually what you bought was not the right thing or this thing went wrong or you should have talk to us whatever sounds like their problem that's the thing that's that's the way I treat it because it's like look I has I've made my YouTube Journey have landed on the sort of I am actively looking for bad things to tell you to not buy them like that's kind of it's a mix obviously I like to take a look at things I like but when I find things that look a little bit sus they're really popular whatever like like this I'm like if something seems to be too good to be true I want to buy that thing waste my money on it tell you that that is too good to be true every once in a while I think like oh this thing is too cheap too good whatever and it's great and it's amazing and I have something that's really meaningful to share but nine times out of 10 it's garbage you should avoid it and I like like that's one of the main things that I do know and so I I mean there's definitely been times where I've like you know added a comment or whatever if especially if I was like super wrong or whatever I'm happy to like yeah I'm happy to like do a retraction I've never actually had to take a video down I've never been like amazingly wrong I'm just completely off but like you know if if a company hits me up and says hey this is actually wrong because XY reason and you okay cool you know that's fair that was my bad but almost always it's just they're upset that I called their thing a scam or that I this or that or whatever but like here's the thing like I've bought the worst stuff at Best Buy and worked with Best Buy I have worked with Amazon for like 12 years and every two or three months I buy some weird bad terrible thing on Amazon like most brands and companies get it because they don't like these things either like yeah it's okay so I'm GNA be a little vague here um we had a problem with some stuff we got from Amazon a while back okay a while back um maybe not a while back who knows yeah um and I had within 10 minutes of video going live someone relatively high up at this uh Affiliated company yeah and like hey oh my God we saw your video you know we are going to get to the bottom of this right this is this is totally unacceptable thank you for making the video um please stay tuned we want to have like a chat with you on Monday let's like work through this thing okay I like okay cool cuz it was I can't tell the video cuz I actually went get in trouble but yeah it was like one of the things was like it was I thought quite bad and they immediately jumped on it okay and then they ghosted the out of me really yeah they were like oh we're going to go talk to the manager we're going to you know like get blah blah blah like making this huge deal and I assume this person then went and started talking with like don't touch that don't talk to that they just shut down oh damn because it's like especially when it comes to websites that have like third party Sellers and stuff you kind to be a little bit careful because like you can as a third party seller do all kinds of stuff and there's not a lot of oversight and a lot of times I make cont content on that and people get real grumpy damn dude so there was no there was no resolution to that no I completely got ghosted like he like sent me like calendar invite and the whole thing and I was like no one showed up ignored it never responded to an email I was like okay cool glad to know that you care about me finding this egregious thing on your platform that made a video about cool right exactly still there damn dude yeah I mean it just goes to show like any like any company has the the ability to screw you over like of course and like I'm not trying to be unfair I'm not trying to be singling people like if you sell an item with a onear review that everyone says is broken or incorrect and I buy that thing you can't be upset that I made a video calling out the fact that the reviews were correct exactly right right just like that's I specifically look for people who are really upset about these things hey are they real is this a real thing are people misunderstanding it whatever the case is and I feel like sometimes you you get to a point where it's like you're doing research to see if something's a scam or not and you kind of feel like it's a little ambiguous like it's like almost 5050 like I'm kind of on it's on the cusp I'm on the fence but I always feel like in those moments I always Vier towards this is a scam because at the end of the day that's that's allegiance to the followers the viewers as opposed to the company it's like I'm always going to we're always going to side with the people who watch our videos totally the ones who are spending what little money they have to buy this you know look I mean I don't want to make it seem because I think that probably coming off here is like all like o like I've been wrong about things and I maybe over dramaticized things like I absolutely should do of course like I mean yeah but I I I generally feel pretty good about a lot of the content we do on these kind of things because I feel like it's entertaining yeah it's fun to make and I think that it does have some value I mean we certainly make entertainment more than advice I would say I mean not always we we do you know reviews and stuff but like you know that our strong strong suit is really entertainment and I want to try to entertain you and teach you a little something about a product about a thing that I like or just take you on a journey like that that's my goal yeah um it's an adventure like you're just taking people on an adventure with you yeah as just like explore all the wacky that's out there absolutely um I have a question for you that's totally unrelated yeah do you shave hey big shout out to Thermal for hooking it up at CES 2024 so they Dro some seriously cool cases at their Boo and guess what they teamed up with Asus to birth the series 330 a mid Tower Beauty that's all about those cable-free vibes with asus's BTF motherboards that put all the connectors and headers on the backside clean look check it supports up to 7 120 mm fans and a 360 radiator at the front oh and the case on display you ask rocking that awesome hydrangia blue to celebrate thermal T's 25th birthday bash black and Snow White versions are hitting shelves on January 10th for $19.99 us D and the hydrangia blue option drops on January 4th same price now let's talk about the CTE e600 MX a real head turner dual chamber midtower with edgo Edge glass panels for the ultimate build peep show you can even swap the front panel with an included mesh panel for more airf flow how cool is that plus the whole 90° rotated motherboard and a floating like a boss vertical GPU thanks to a handy mounting bracket and pcie 4.0 cable which are both included launching on January 20th in Black Snow White and hydrangia Blue for $179.99 not bad at all for all the cool stuff it brings to the table but wait there's more the tower 300 a Micro ATX Marvel with an octagonal shape it's like Loot Crate spaceship endless nerdy possibilities with tons of modding potential and it's not just for show removable toolless glass panels and a hinged fan bracket make access to components and cables a breeze and if that's not rad already you've got the option to set it up on an angled stand for a one-of aind perspective on your build plus there's a ventilated panel cleverly concealing all the I/O ports giving it that Ultra Clean aesthetic available for $149.99 in custom colors black and Snow White are out now turquoise and blue on the 14th and green and yellow dropping on February 4th major props to Thermal for making these CES 2024 chats happen check out their latest Gear with the link in the description huge shout out to MSI for hooking it up at CES 2024 and making these interviews possible now brace yourselves for the tech magic MSI just unveiled their Meg 321 urx QD OLED display a 32-in OLED 4k monitor that's got a wild 240 HZ refresh rate and a crazy fast 03 millisecond response time and get this it's not just any monitor it's powered by AI right now the AI is all about giving League of Legends players an edge but more games are in the pipeline check this out there's a slick LED bar on the bottom that syns with the character's health bar keeping crucial info in your peripheral vision while you crush it in battle then there's AI skysight predicting where offscreen enemies might pop up and slapping a Red Skull icon on screen to show you where they're coming from it's like tactical ESP and the best part no bans here because all the AI magic happens on the monitor not your PC so go ahead enjoy that sweet victory you cheating son of a what's really neat is MSI is exploring ways to leverage AI in other games so users can teach their monitors to elevate their gameplay even further but wait there's more MSI dropped a 49in c 2D OLED 2K display with a mind-blowing 5120 x440 resolution hits up to 144 HZ and yep it's packing the same AI superpowers as the other monitor both of them are also rocking OLED care 2.0 for burning prevention dimming desktop icons and other static stuff on your screen hear that noise no you don't because this monitor is silent this baby is fanless using a graphine film to conduct heat like a champ before exhausting it passively out of its ventilated back panel want to dive deeper into all the MSI awesomeness hit up the link in the video description do you shave yeah do you can you grow a beard have you ever grown a beard well okay so here's the thing I was wondering the other day I was like I've never seen I think I I was like watching a lonus video I'm like lonus looks so different with a beard I'm like I don't think I've ever seen Austin with a beard I grow my facial hair like every year really I've got yeah I've got a photo got a photo wait and you like it's it's on your channel and stuff you'll have beard in April 2019 no way uh I had there's videos of me with facial hair prob I don't grow a whole lot like on like the Sideburn so I have like mustache and well no no no no less less yeah it's like it's damn that's sad draw a circle draw a circle around my mouth that's pretty much what grows oh really so like a Homer Simpson you get you get a Homer Simpson kind of goatee yeah go TOA here I'll pull a photo up I did not shave over the holiday break and so I think I've got some photos of me looking a little shaggy I I employed the help of our friends our AI friends to to really see what you would look like with a full-blown beard okay cuz I remember last time you were on my personal podcast oh whoa oh I don't like that I'm not going to sh that I don't like that yeah that that that photo is just for you that looks dirty you look like me um so I'm going to play this for you okay so this is AI generated face cuz last time we we saw what you look like as a girl okay that's not good that's just what do you I actually like it dude what do you like about that what can you just describe to me that is the biggest that's like like I'm going to go be a civil war reenactor with that be no you just look like you shop at REI a lot but yeah honestly like you have this nice friendly J I mean you already have a jolly face but I think you feel like it you feel more warm like a teddy bear you know like I want to get in that beard the problem is if I had a beard like that and like I can't have more facial hair than like hair on my the top of my head that's the problem like the there's an imbalance there it's definitely a Vibe I think I think you rock it though I really do think you rock it I appreciate that I appreciate that unfortunately neither you or I can grow a beard like that well you've got act you have actual facial hair there like what do do you shave do you trim or you just yeah I just I just sh I actually use my manscape trimmer on my face shout out are they sponsor this podcast no oh it could have been that's an organic plug right there they're good for both baby um and then also the other thing I was going to say is like you don't age like you look to me exactly the same as you did 5 10 years ago and maybe that's just cuz really we see each other regularly or whatever I you don't look any different either that's unfortunate um like not in a bad way like I feel like there's certain people who for me it's a dis dude for me it's a dis I was do you want to look older I've always looked bad no I said you didn't okay oh you mean older older uh I guess yeah you're right cuz I I do have we have baby faces a little bit yeah I've got some baby fat my my I got my cheek I got my chip Chun chipmunk cheek reserves but I was very curious what you'd look like as an older gentleman Okay so we've got one of those too oh if you're ready yeah that actually is accurate that looks a lot like my granddad does it really yeah yeah isn't that a trip it honestly I'll take that man I was going to say you look sharp you look like a sharp old man you're aging like a fine wine you like youell aging if that's what I look like when I'm like in my probably what 6 yeah 60s probably you're doing good you're doing good like you look keep hydrated yeah you look very moist well you know what I try my best so the face app filter or the face app also has a uh cool old person wait that's not the cool old person yeah that's not even as cool as dude you can get cooler as a senior make me old and cool this is old and cool okay that actually looks scarily like my dad like really oh you're kind of right you met my dad right of yeah yeah yeah that looks a lot like my dad like H I didn't realize that but you're absolutely right he he had a lot more facial hair he had almost that exact well he didn't have quite that much but he had like very similar that's awesome man and your dad's a good looking fellow yeah yeah all right shout out I I'm looking forward to being a jolly older gentleman that could maybe be a wizard as well well you know what that's a Gand I'm still waiting for my letter I haven't gotten it yet day now it'll come it'll come I've got a fireplace for a reason it'll be an owl that delivers it to you um but dude what do we we've been doing an hour okay 58 minutes and 13 seconds almost there almost there um I wanted to ask you one more thing I mean I wanted to ask you a lot a lot of things but uh there's we've already just gone through so much which is awesome um so it's a new year yeah new year new me and all that uh looking back on the last year 2023 what would you say was was your high and low of the year Well a high was easy uh I had my second son last year that is huge so that was a pretty easy answer for the high yeah um some people would call that a low but I'm glad you're taking a positive no no no I mean it's a lot of work but no no noan it's great it's great um the low I can tell you the low that was that was uh well there are a couple things some maybe things I won't share but there's one that I will um the low it sounds dumb yeah so 2022 we moved into a new office okay right so we spent almost the whole year of 2022 renovating an office like 30 years old so like hey everything had to be upgraded and changed and stuff yeah so early 2023 starts getting cold outside realized a little cold in the office and it was time to upgrade some ACU and some heat units okay fine whatever we figured so we swap one these are expensive units for it right swap two then we swap 20 wait what wait 20 two Z 20 units yeah we had to literally how big is the how big is the the Space 1 14,000 ft dear Lord we had to replace all of our AC heat oh and also the windows the windows would started raining the windows started just leaking what so we had to replace the windows started leaking yeah like the the seals you know like like the the like the black like sort of stripping that goes around each window um yeah that was just like letting water in so we had buckets in our new office uh and it was like 50 2° and people were like huddled around space heaters with their jackets on I'm like man this is such a great upgrade and and this is and you you purchased this you're not leasing it so it's not like you have a landlord that will take care of it that's all on you um dude I am not going to say the number that I spent on AC and heat for this building in 2023 six figs easily oh yeah if not seven uh it wasn't that much but it was uh well into the sixes well into the sixes yeah like uh uh a real nice lambor amount of air conditioning units put in that that's crazy that was probably the low point when we realized that what we thought was a simple little fix was oh start over from scratch right cool did you guys like have it like have the place inspected or anything beforehand like maybe some things were on the inspection report that I maybe didn't read super thoroughly uh read your inspection reports kids those are important there there's some there's some good stuff in there sometimes that you should read boy yeah look I make questionable decisions sometimes I'll freely admit it's all learning experience man yeah man uh being in our brand new shiny office with leaky Windows buckets out and people with uh coats and hudle around space heaters was not the way I thought the 2023 dream would go for sure no that's proper that that is a proper low that is a proper low um I was going to ask like how big's your team now I know I've asked you this probably recently we're at 11 and we're currently hiring number 12 damn does that keep you up at night ever yeah I was gonna say l people man that would what it's a lot of people oh it's a lot of people yeah I mean how do you how do you wrestle with that because I feel like that's there's a number of reasons why I never went that route and just scaled my business but one of the reasons was like just having that many people relying on you all the time like their livelihoods are in your hand if you're having a bad day tough luck you better step it up and maybe that is a motivator but I also find it very terrifying how do do you like how do you cope with that that we it's a lot it's a lot right I mean look the team is incredibly helpful in allowing everything to do I mean obviously we all started doing stuff solo I did stuff solo for like seven years before you know I hir my first person really started turn into like a a quote unquote real business I mean I'm fortunate to have a bunch of really talented people and I don't take that weight lightly but it's not something that keeps me up at night like if I was struggling to make payroll and these AC units were putting us underwater I would be massively more stressed I mean I think about it sometimes I'm like oh all I need to do is lose my voice and everyone's in real deep trouble but that's part of the reason why we've tried to diversify this well we have now three channels how do you how do you say hey guys this is Austin in sign language like ASL boy I couldn't tell you I couldn't tell you um but like it's just one of those things where like the goal here is to make it a diverse company that does not need me to be in front of the camera eight hours a day forever right I obviously I enjoy what I do but it would be nice to have a little bit of that flexibility so that it's not all on me so I'm walk if you go down for a minute like the train keeps moving yeah in in large part we actually have built a lot of that in I mean part of that is just uh what we can do is you know we try to pre-shoot stuff so we usually have stuff in the backlog yada y y but like yeah it it it is something that makes me not feel super great sometimes but also on the flip side I think about like okay but look at the good that we can do not to say that it's I want to say like oh we're doing so good but like you know look at all these people who are able to do these amazing creative jobs and work together and I see the team sort of bonding and going on doing stuff together it's like it's a it's a it gives me like a nice warm feeling like oh man like I have like a part in making this whole thing happen and it just it feels good so I I'm I try to be a pretty positive guy I don't I don't try to stress too much on it but that's cool man that's uh you must be a you're you are a strong dude because not everyone could take that could take that brunt of force you know on their shoulders but uh I think you're right like if you're getting just massive amounts of reward and fulfillment from just creating this this family you know I think that I mean that keeps you going and it has Yeah well yeah yeah and I mean it's like I know I I think a lot about lonus right and I think that you know he has grown lmg to be this monster yeah and I always you know for a long time I felt like it was always like 5 years behind lus like I was like oh he would start to build a team then I started to build a team then he got a building then I got a building and everything but like obviously he was doing stuff at a higher level the entire time and you know way way ahead but a couple years ago once we sort of cuz we were like five or six for a while and it was like a good healthy number like it felt it felt solid and then we crept up seven and then went eight nine 10 like like we almost doubled in like a year or less yeah and that was the point where the Dynamics changed hugely some of the original crew we had you know kind of moved on we went their separate way and so even like a huge chunk of the office now are people who have uh you know been working here for two years or less right which is different than the way where you know we had two years where the same six of us were there the whole time right yeah exactly so it's like it's it's a different kind of vibe right um it go kind of goes from being like this intimate close family to like extended we all used to do lunch together every day now you can't be showing up with a dozen people at McDonald's like everyone's got to clock out and do your lunch breaks and it's it's a much more formal thing which obviously has to be right like can't everyone can't just be hanging out like friends all the time yeah um I feel like there's like there's something very exciting about that but also kind of just sad it's bittersweet it's bittersweet to know like it's almost like a child growing up yeah you know what I mean yeah dude and it's like I don't know I I I kind of miss the old days sometimes I also don't miss the fact that we were a complete dumpster fire like I had no idea to run anything or manage anything in the earli days but I think a lot about Li just because the amount of times that I've had conversations with him and he's like oh like we're done no more people we're done next time yeah we hire 20 more people like L is full of dude I know has said so many things to me I'm like you never did that no wait no shot no shot but like I I because like here's the thing right business like when you start to grow you it's like momentum right like once you start it's hard to stop like because you know you start building this team and then suddenly oh we need people over here and then we need this department more solutions creates more problems it just grows and grows gr obviously a successful business grows I mean that's like the way it works but I've been trying to be more thoughtful about it the last like year especially last two years growing the business doesn't make me happier yeah it doesn't like I I I'm comfortable and happy and I'm really excited about you know all these major pain points about like the office and all these things have been kind of worked out and I think about like how you know again going from like that six to like you know 12ish number was like a just massive amount of extra work and stress and all the all this other stuff that came with it sure and I think about like okay what does that 12 to 24 number look like and it's it's not a happier me it's not and it's like I understand the idea that by continuing to grow it does help to further the goal of me not being so centered to everything working like I totally understand but you think there's a ceiling where you're like I'm good enough like I we're we're set or do you at least slow growth like I like a person or two here or there like that's reasonable that's not going to like totally like upend things but I just think a lot about like like money is not happiness it is not and it's like right you'll never have enough you'll never have enough you'll never be filled by it a good friend of mine um who uh you know he he was he was telling me about he had gone to his therapist and his therapist is like this very high-end sort of therapist who like has like billionaire clients yeah and uh they told him like Hey he was worried about money right he's like hey I have billionaire clients who are worried about how they get their next billion that's not a thing and that like he told me that story and that sunk in so hard like you can chase it forever but as long as you're able to take care of the people who you love and who are you know your family and everything like that yeah and you can live comfortably and have like a good life I it's easy to be greedy the whole everything is set up to be greedy and I don't know like I don't to sound too like hypocritical right CU obviously I've been able to do incredibly well like I don't want to but there's a point in which none of that like one more PSA 10 Charizard or car or house like none of that stuff means much at a certain point yeah right it's all fleeting it's all it's all fleeting like you get that little dopamine H hit you know it's a bit of a rush and it's gone so gone it flips into oh this is another thing I have to deal with I have to manage I have to pay taxes on like it like it literally just becomes this thing seemed like a great idea and me of the past would have killed to have this thing now I'm like now I got to go to DMV again or this it just it it sounds unbelievably like I hear myself say that I I cringe CU like that just sounds like the most douchy thing in the world but it's just for sure no I mean not really well I just you know God we're getting like deep here like I everything is designed to encourage like money equals happiness like that's just that's such a fundamental middle part of the way that so much of the world works but I just think that there's a certain point in which taking your foot off the gas and not doing more more more more more bigger bigger bigger all the time is super healthy and I'm just I'm it's almost like they lied to us you know what man the dream the dream is to keep building until forever I'm starting to get a little sused out over this whole money is happiness thing it's not real well actually it's real up to a certain point and then it's not real after that yeah yeah I think that's fair to say it's like it's good to it's it's nice to be comfortable it's nice to be able to provide for your loved ones and and the people in your life but then it's it's a lot of diminishing returns at some point you're just going to be chasing like at some point what was that Forest Gump line that I'm totally blanking on right now oh God like you just need enough money I'm totally paraphrasing and botching it but anything beyond what you really need is just is just for show Flex or just to try failling some void some itch that you're never going to scratch and I think everyone's level for that everyone draws a line at a different spot yep um but uh you know I think it's just a matter of keeping true to yourself right look man I grew up following the line I grew up um my dad was in sales so we were up and down all the time there' be a year where he did really well and the whole family goes on a vacation and there' be a year where you know uh my brother and I are in the car while they're getting food stamps right like it was not like I definitely grew up with that idea that like not having enough was meant like real dire situations for the family so you know there's a part of me which is always like oh well I need a little bit more because you never know what happens you know a couple years from now and things collapse and suddenly like oh like but like I'm getting over it I'm I'm I'm really trying to get over like look there's a point in which right this doesn't matter anymore yeah everyone's taken care of I have a very happy comfortable life right don't do the other stuff that seems like the path because I don't need to and it really and and that just also takes you away from it takes time and resources away your energy away from what you usually find to be way more important which is absolutely time with people do I want to expand the team and double the size and launch three new channels and do all this kind of stuff and then uh spend two hours less uh you know at home playing with the kids hell no that's not what kind of stupid oh cuz I can have an extra zero to the bank account woohoo like who cares do you think do you think having kids sort of change your mindset a bit more oh yeah oh yeah well because I mean like there's I mean you know I'm in the thick of it I've got a 2-year-old and a 9month old right so it's like I it's uh you know very time intensive but it's rewarding to see them grow up it's rewarding to see them hit these milestones and like you know it it it brings me way more happiness than any sort of money or material thing 100% dude and also the fact that when kids are so young they grow up so fast yes you know they you slow down as you get older but it's like you you take a you know a week you take a week and then you come back after and your kid's shaving you know yeah he's like like D hey Dad I'm graduating college tomorrow like bro you were three yesterday what are you talking about like it's yeah and I think that stuff is more important and I think that it's given me a better perspective on kind of how everything works and it just look man I I I know this Probably sounds douchy I I feel very self-conscious about it but like I'm super happy and comfortable and I want to keep it that way and it doesn't mean that doesn't sound doui at all that sounds like what anybody would want I guess I guess I just I I know that I'm incredibly fortunate that incredibly few people are in a situation like I am and I don't want to take that for granted but also I don't want to lose it yeah right I I I I want I want to it's not like I'm going to oh I'm not like I mean I'm here freaking you know doing 15 16 hour days at CES for a reason right I still love it and I still know that I need to do this to make this whole thing work but at that same time when I go home you better believe I'm going to be hanging out with the kids not say the word the W work word once you know it's just like I it's it's important I have a lot of respect for you man it feels like um it feels like you've you're able you're able to continue doing what you're doing at such a you know a successful in a successful way because you've because your why you found your why and it's a healthy why you know what I mean you have a healthy why why you do all this stuff like why you're growing the team like yeah you got your you got your head on your shoulder straight dude thank you and it's been it's been great to see you it's been very such a joy to see you grow dude thank you man I appreciate that you you know you've been you've seen the whole thing from the yeah dude fire stuff and everything before that to all the way till now I saw your I saw your origin story it was it's been quite a ride yeah well thank you man I appreciate that dude Austin Evans thank you for being on man oh absolutely man I'm this is the most fun thing I'm going to do all day I got like six more meetings and 15 more videos to shoot like getting over here and deep yeah dude I know I'm glad I'm glad we got to talk about some stuff so thanks for having me man thanks\n"