Spencer: Welcome back to another episode of Creators Uncut. I’m Spencer and this is our show about the business side of YouTube and social media. I’m excited today because we’ve got Rob and Sarah from the Tool Show with us. And they were actually one of the first people we started working with in the YouTube industry. So we thought it would be a good homage to have them as one of our first guests on the show. 

Rob: That’s so nice. 

Spencer: Thank you for being here. 

Sarah: I feel so honored. 

Rob: Right? They were first. So, you know, we kind of have to have to have them on this podcast first or they’ll get cranky. 

Spencer: So we originally started working together. I used to work at another company and it was like an agency and I started editing videos for Rob and Sarah. And then I left that company and I guess you guys decided you liked me and so you followed me? 

Rob: We immediately went looking for you. When we, I remember that distinctly, we had worked with this company to do the editing of our show. And that company specifically kind of passed us around as those big companies do to a bunch of different editors. And once we got matched up with you, you were so good at what you did. We worked so well with you that the day we found out you were gone, the first thing we did was we went to LinkedIn to find you and say, what are you doing now? Do you want to edit? Because we really like working with you. So we were really excited to see that you guys were starting your own thing and we’re hopeful that you’d take us. And been with you ever since and I absolutely love working with you guys. 

Spencer: Yeah, it’s been like two years now, I think, somewhere around there two or three. 

Rob: Has it only been two years? I feel like it’s been longer than that. 

Sarah: I feel like it’s been longer than that. 

Rob: I feel like it’s been ten years since I’ve edited. 

Spencer: Like two or three years, somewhere around there. 

Rob: Either way, yeah, it’s been quite a while. 

Spencer: Yeah, but it’s been a pleasure working with you guys as well. Tell us a little bit about yourselves and how you got started into YouTube and also the transition to doing it full-time kind of a thing. 

Rob: I think I can start by saying, welcome to the podcast, I’m Rob. 

Sarah: And I’m Sarah. That’s just how we introduce ourselves now. It is. We become like, it’s a problem. Yeah, we produce a weekly news show about the power tool industry. So we pull content from anything that manufacturers announced that week and then we also point you to other YouTubers tool content on YouTube. But yeah, Rob and I have been working together for going on nine years?

Rob: I think so, yeah. 

Sarah: Pretty sure we’re headed into our ninth year or wrapping up our ninth year. 

Spencer: And is that just on YouTube or is that all together working together? 

Sarah: That is all together. So Rob owned an ad agency here in Columbus for about 20 years when I started working for him. And I’m sure we’ll get into all the details of how we went from an ad agency to a YouTuber. But yeah, I started working for him and his ad agency about nine years ago. And then we’ve been working together ever since. 

Spencer: Cool. Tell me about that transition from the ad agency to YouTube. How did that come about? I’m assuming you were working on videos as an ad agency and then just kind of jumped into posting. 

Rob: Yeah, as an agency, we did everything for small and medium sized businesses. We did branding. We did marketing. We did e-commerce. We did lots of photography and videography. And that’s what kind of led us to this point. And Sarah, you can correct me if I’m wrong. We were producing what we thought were not to toot our own horn. It was a really creative video production. 

Sarah: I agree.

Rob: A good example, one of our clients was a large real estate group and they came to us and just said, hey, we’re making videos about these houses we have available and no one’s watching them. So we pitched the idea of doing, what did we call that Sarah? 

Sarah: Crib chasers. 

Rob: Crib chasers. Yeah, it was a parody. It was a parody of house hunters. Yeah, we literally took their customers that bought houses and we met with them. We wrote a script for them and then we created an episode of Crib chasers where they’re walking with their agent through the house they’ve already bought. And we go through all the silly tropes. Every guy as you walk into the master bedroom goes, this is where the magic happens. And all those silly tropes and stuff and turn them into these short, I don’t know, maybe eight minute long episodes. 

Sarah: That sounds right. 

Rob: Yeah, we did it because we thought it would be a great tool for essentially when we would take somebody locally, because that’s the market these agents are selling houses in a market. Is that if we took one of their customers who is in a local place, bought a house, and we put them in an episode, they’re going to be the ones that promote it. They’re going to be the ones that are telling all their friends and family that, oh my gosh, we’re in this little parody show, go watch it. So it literally became this kind of a creative marketing tool for growing local customers. So we did that and we did lots of other creative video stuff. We ran into, we had a new client called Ohio Power Tool, which is a power tool retailer. And they brought us in, we did all their marketing stuff and e-commerce. And we noticed that they had a YouTube channel and how there was, it was like 1200 subscribers. 

Sarah: I was going to say they just had over 1000 subscribers and they, the videos that were on the YouTube channel were awful. And they know that we’re not like, dissing anyone there. Like the people who made it, they know they were not great. So we were able to take over that when we were their ad agency and put our creativity on their video series and came up with an idea for a new series that was not the tool show because it had a way worse name than that at the beginning. But we, we launched the Power Tool Week In Review for them on that channel that they had. And it was just nuts. It took off. It actually ended up being very successful. 

Rob: Yeah, I was going to say, I think that that first version of that weekly show we did, which like she said, eventually turned into what the tool show is now. I think that after the first two seasons, so like a year and a half or so, we were averaging, I think at a time, like 25,000 people watching every week, which was just unheard of in that space. We had several peers that tried to duplicate that and it just didn’t work. So ours worked really, really well. And once it kind of grew, we were still in an agency still doing jobs for a bunch of different clients. And all of a sudden that customer wanted into our office one day and said, crazy pitch. What do you guys say to closing your agency, firing all of your clients, and essentially taking their channel, breaking it off from their company, partnering with them, and turning it into a little YouTube empire and do that ourselves. And what did we say, Sarah? 

Sarah: We laughed at him and told him, no. 

Spencer: Oh, really? 

Sarah: There’s no, there’s no way you’re going to do that. We had stability and clients that we spent years cultivating relationships with and had steady income. So there’s no way we were going to give that up and be YouTubers. Like that just sounded so absurd and that risk was just astronomical. So yeah, we told him no and he left our office. 

Spencer: Do you know about like what year this was? 

Rob: Oh yeah, it was 2019. 

Spencer: Oh, 2019? 

Sarah: That’s right. 

Rob: Yeah, it’s five years ago. Yeah, we laughed at him and said, you’re out of your mind. 

Sarah: There’s no way. 

Rob: I think we had maybe a dozen clients on retainer at the time and some of them were very big, a couple of universities and we just loved our job. We loved making content. We were good at it and our clients loved us. So why would you put that to be a YouTuber? 

Spencer: So how did he convince you to do it? 

Sarah: Well, because he was like, he didn’t know as an answer and then on the way out the door was like, well, just name your price. What would it take? Like, I understand it’s a huge risk, but I want to partner with you. So what would that look like? So several days went by and we’re sitting in the office working on some piece and I’m like, I mean, he said, name your price. Like, what would it, what just, okay. So hypothetically, let’s play this scenario out. What would that look like? And we honestly, I feel like from my perspective, it was more of like an exercise to figure out like what that pitch would look like, like not to actually go after it, but it was an exercise. 

Rob: That’s right. 

Sarah: And so we put a pitch together, you know, shooting for the moon. 

Rob: And it was a good pitch for what it’s worth. Like, and when we say a pitch, I mean, that was, you know, as a small ad agency, that’s a big part of what we would do is that when we’re trying to get a new client or convince a current client to spend some money on a fun project, you’ve, you’ve got to be good at selling that project and putting that pitch together. So, so we did, we put together, I want to say at least a dozen slides and data and where money would come from, what we would need, what the goal was. We had, we had spreadsheets that showed how long it would take to become profitable and the things that would make us different. Like we, but Sarah’s right. There was no way. 

Sarah: Because he never said yes to that. Yeah. 

Rob: Because we said that we made the offer so good for us that in other words, we just, we wanted to make sure that if we were going to take the risk of closing a 20 year old agency, firing 10 clients that are currently paying, which means you don’t get those back. If it doesn’t work out, you don’t call them and say, Hey, you want to be our client again? They’re like, we replaced you with someone else. So if that was going to be our risk, we knew that our partner needed to have the same level of risk. So we, we asked, asked him to put a lot on the line. And so we knew he wouldn’t say yes, because our pitch was pretty, was pretty steep. 

Sarah: Yeah. And then he said yes. 

Rob: He did. We, we brought him into our office and did what we do with other clients. We put him on our comfiest couch with a really nice area for a big, big screen TV. So we could kind of pitch our idea to him and we pitched it and we thought he’d be like, come on. And we just be like, yeah, but you asked us. So we did our due diligence. 

Sarah: He got quiet towards the end of the pitch. And I was like, see, like there’s no way he’s going to say yes to this. And he just sat there for a second and then he’s like, yeah, okay. Let’s do this. And then Rob and I were looking at each other like, that was not the plan. You were not supposed to say yes to this and it’s been five years. And it didn’t take us that long to become profitable from 

Rob: It was like six months. Right?

Sarah: It was, yeah, within that first year it was, it became a success. It kept growing and we grew quite significantly over the next couple of years. 

Spencer: Wow.

Rob: So yeah, it wasn’t, it wasn’t planned, believe it or not. Neither one of us is young enough to grow up wanting to be a YouTuber. So it was not an aspiration. I think the biggest thing for us was, and why, you know, when Sarah turns to me and says, you know, he did say, what would it take? It’s that we had been spending all this time producing what we felt was really good content for other people. We were doing it for other companies. So when we did a great job, you know, whoever in that company that hired us, they got all the credit for it as they should. That never bothered us. Like that was, you know, that, but that just meant we were doing a good job. 

Sarah: But this exercise allowed us to take that and look at it for us. Like, okay, like we are good at it because our companies that we work for are so successful with what we’re doing. Like what would that look like for us to be successful with our creativity and what we’re passionate about? 

Rob: Yeah, we get to build things for us, which is crazy to me because then we’re not worried about budget or personalities or political consequences within the client’s company or, you know, none of that stuff. It’s a literally let’s build an empire for ourselves and what would, you know, what would our favorite pieces be and how do we make them all work together? 

Spencer: Yeah. So when you guys first, like committed to that deal, did you guys jump in immediately as like the hosts of the show or did you do a couple of shows with other people first? And then how did you decide to become like the hosts of the show? 

Sarah: This is fun. We started this with me insanely confident. I would never be in front of the camera. 

Rob: Yeah, Sarah, that was part of the deals. Yeah, never got in front of the camera for any of our client work that we did. I rarely did just when we needed something. 

Sarah: When we had to. Yeah. 

Rob: Yeah, I would do that occasionally. But yeah, Sarah was never interested in being on camera at all. Perfect, perfectly reasonable request. And at the time, you know, this was when, before we did this full time, we were producing the show for our client. And I had another employee at the time who was excited about being on camera. And so I essentially went to the two of them. I said, okay, so we need a news desk and I need two of you sitting there and you’re going to read the news about power tools. And my one employee got all excited. Like, I’m on board. Let’s do it. Sarah was like, you’re nuts. No, thank you. And I negotiated with her and eventually came to the agreement, which stands today, seven seasons later, Sarah has never read the comments. Not even once. She does not read comments. 

Spencer: Really? 

Sarah: I don’t read them. I don’t want to know about them. Like, don’t. 

Rob: In all fairness though. I clearly bring her very, when people say kind, respectful things, I occasionally, you know, just say, hey, people are mentioning this about your joke you did, that they really liked it or whatever that thing is. And or they’re complaining because you didn’t yell baby chainsaw for one episode.

Sarah: Right. But my perspective was more of as long as I was doing a good job for Rob, that was and our client who we’re working with. Like, I don’t care what anyone on the internet says. And I don’t want that to shape how I go in to do my job every day. So, I did not read any of the comments with the only exception of there was a section of time where I produced nine shows by myself. And at that point, I shot a wrote shot, got you all the footage, which thank you for turning that into something. That was fantastic. Those nine episodes were the only ones that I actually read comments. And even then, our business partner helped. So, I didn’t have to do it by myself. But yeah, I reluctantly got on camera. I did not want to be talent in any way, shape, or form in front of a camera. But yeah, it’s been seven seasons. 

Rob: We like to remind people or when people are asking us about how we got started and stuff, we usually beg them never to go back and watch our early episodes. 

Sarah: Please don’t. 

Rob: We’ve never done a new show before. We knew that our goal, one of the things that made it different was we designed it literally around sponsors, which we can chat about sponsors here coming up if you want to. But we designed it around sponsors. And coming from advertising, we knew, especially seven years ago, that marketing departments, depending on what industry you’re in, Power Tools is not a progressive industry, is that the people in the marketing department still didn’t know what social media was, didn’t understand it. And we wanted to go in and we wanted to go after annual sponsorships. We didn’t want someone to sponsor one episode. We wanted them to sponsor 48 episodes at a time for the full year. And so our goal from the beginning was to make a weekly, reliable show on YouTube, which is not what our peers are doing. They’re just posting whatever viral thing they can find. And we wanted it to look like television. And we wanted it to look like television because we knew the people who had the $8 million budgets, they were all older people that recognize television. They recognize a TV show. 

Spencer: That makes sense.

Rob: So we wanted to create it and focus on it on it that way. So we did. But if you go back, we didn’t know what we were doing. Some of the first episodes looked like a couple of adults broke into a high school and used their recording studio and they were pretending they were newscasters. But we got better at it. And shortly after we started, I think Sarah got sick one week. So I filled in for her and it’s like the worst performance of my life. I’ll tell you what, reading a teleprompter is a skill.

Spencer: I believe it.

Rob: And you need to develop it. You go back to the first episode I did and my face is dead, my eyes are dead. The way I speak is dead or it sounds like I’m trying to put enunciation in where it doesn’t belong. It’s bad. So we got essentially shortly after that. 

Sarah: It definitely takes time. 

Rob: Yeah. So shortly after that, Sarah and I started doing the show and we just had really great, you know, on camera chemistry. I write the show primarily. Sarah’s done a great job filling in at times. But I write the show and as I got to know her better, I just got much better at writing her. And the two of us just work together so well on and off camera. It just made sense that we would do the show together. So it was that way moving forward. 

Spencer: Cool. It’s funny or I guess not funny, but occasionally I look back at when I first started working with you guys. For those who don’t know, I’m the editor for the tool show. And I started when it was the Power Tool Week In Review and I go back and look at those episodes. And even from when I started working with you guys to now, it’s like, I feel like gotten so much better quality wise. 

Sarah: Thank you. 

Rob: Yay. 

Spencer: So I think the show is great where it is right now. And I think it was good where, you know, when I first started with you guys, I thought it was really impressive. Maybe it’s just because my skills in editor is grown. But it’s, I’m happy to see that the show has grown so much. 

Rob: Yeah, it really, it’s funny because I feel like there are a lot of things that could have put us on a different path. One of the things we were told in the beginning, and which I think a lot of people are, is the generic advice you get if you want to be a content creator. Because the advice, the advice, the generic it needs to be for the lowest common denominator. Those are people that don’t know how to create good content. So the advice is always make as much as you can, publish as often as you can, put it on every platform you can, and eventually, you know, you’ll get better, you’ll learn, you’ll get lucky, whatever. And that’s not what we found at all. And we knew, you know, after we had done the show for two years for the client, when we were setting off to do this on our own, part of our, our pitch to make this work was, we’re not doing that. We’re not going to be producing, you know, shorts everywhere. We’re not going to be making Instagram posts. We’re not going to be filling our Facebook page with stuff. We’re going to focus on YouTube and get good at YouTube. And as it turns out, as a YouTuber, which is clearly what we are still today, you can spend hours every single morning just going over your analytics, just learning from your competition, just doing research. There’s an enormous amount of work that goes into making a successful YouTube video, let alone a successful YouTube show, let alone a successful YouTube channel. So we made that choice in the very beginning to focus all of our efforts onto YouTube. And we genuinely believe it paid off. We, there are many things about our channel that separate us from all of our peers in our space. We still continue to do things very differently. And the results have been very good. We have a very solid fan base that shows up every week to watch our show. And we’ve had, for the most part, fairly reliable numbers for, you know, going on five years now. 

Spencer: So I’m sure a lot of that was like trial and error to like, figure out how to get like the best show possible. Would you say there was any mistakes that you made along your way to get to where you are now? Any of the stand out, I guess, or right? 

Rob: Lots.

Sarah: Oh, that is a long list. I don’t, I’m not sure how to answer that. 

Rob: Well, I was going to say for it, I think, Sarah, if you go, if we go back to our production quality, as Spencer, you just alluded to, things have clearly gotten far better, even from year to year. I mean, we’re now on seven seasons, I think we’re on episode 370 something. And you can go back a year and go, Oh, it’s not quite as good a year before that. Oh, really not good. Matter of fact, so Spencer, you’re going to see we finally, we continue to make enhancements to our video production, to our writing, to our pace, to our hooks, you know, all these kinds of things that go into video production. Literally this week, we just finished building our new set, which is probably our fifth or sixth set at this point. 

Spencer: Oh, wow. 

Rob: So, so yeah, that, that’s a big part of it. I think we made a unique mistake in the beginning. It was an ambitious mistake. And it’s, like you said, there are no manuals for YouTube or being a YouTuber, there are a plethora of opinions out there. But there’s no real manual. We got it in our head, part of our pitch for how we were going to make our channel, the the center of the Power Tool universe, which was always our goal. We, we were actually planning to make a format everything so much like TV that we wanted to become a TV network. 

Sarah: That’s right. I forgot we did that. Yeah. 

Rob: So, so the first thing we did was we changed before we came into this full time. It was the show was the Power Tool Week In Review every Friday on the YouTube channel, Cop Tool, which is stood for Central Ohio Power Tool, which is the company that owned it prior. And Cop Tool was not a good name because we didn’t, you know, review Mace and or handcuffs. And we weren’t ex cops. Everybody thought we were lik ex police officers. 

Sarah: We did get asked often if we were ex police officers and we’re like, no, it’s just a bad name. 

Rob: So we changed the name to Belts and Boxes being your tool belts, toolboxes. And that was purposefully the name of an umbrella network. So what we envisioned was our YouTube channel was Belts and Boxes. And then every Friday at eight o’clock was going to be the Power Tool Week in Review. Then we wanted to go to other content creators, specifically smaller ones or content creators that were only producing things for Instagram or Facebook and say, hey, you know, come to YouTube and they go, Oh, that’s so hard. I hate it. Like you Instagramers don’t want to come to YouTube, partially because it takes way longer to make something than making an Instagram post. But our pitch was we have a channel. We have traffic. So what if on Friday was a Power Tool Week In Review every Wednesday evening was, you know, Steve’s project of the week. Every Tuesday afternoon was, you know, Michelle’s favorite tools or whatever. And we thought that if we brought them in and did shared revenue, we would grow bigger together. And we ended up creating this network called Belts and Boxes on YouTube with a whole bunch of shows. And then the one we produced is just one of the shows. And for what it’s worth, that was our, that was our own idea. Like we were very proud of this. As it turns out, we were not the only people with this idea. Even at the time, there were many networks, content networks on YouTube, some fairly big ones that came from traditional media that were bankrolling it and bringing in content creators to make tons and tons of shows. So we tried it. And it took us, I think we only produced one other show with one other creator. They were an Instagramer. And we learned really fast something they don’t teach you because there’s no, there’s no textbook for this about YouTube. Yeah. YouTube, their algorithm, only supports one persona per channel. And a persona from marketing landscape, marketing terms, as an agency, we talk about personas all the time. Simply when we come to a client that wants to sell apple juice, we help them identify the different personas of their customers. So they sell apple juice to schools, they sell apple juice to stay at home moms, they sell apple juice to busy work life moms, whatever that taught, you create all those different demographics, those become personas, and you find the best way to reach each one. So essentially, YouTube only when it does the math, when you post something to your YouTube channel, it doesn’t go, Oh, this looks like Steve’s tool of the week. I know what people like that and send it to those people. And then a power tool we can review on Friday, it’s goes, Oh, this is a power tool we can review. I know what people like that. It doesn’t. There is one persona and it’s people who watch our channel. So back then it was people who watch belts and boxes. And we had spent years building up that persona to be people who wanted to watch the power tool week in review. So when we put anything else up on our channel, no matter how good it was, unless it was Rob and Sarah doing the power tool week in review, it still sent it to the same people who watch belts and boxes group. And they saw the thumbnail with somebody else’s face, some other plan, and they go, No, thanks. Or they click on it because it says belts and boxes like, and it brings up someone besides Rob and Sarah, and it’s clearly not the power tool news. And they leave. That was the problem. So you can’t create different types of content on one channel. I mean, I take that back. It can be done on really large channels. If all of your content is applicable to the masses, ours is only applicable to trades people who really like tools and tool hobbyists, the prosumer at home who has the best tools. That’s our only demographic. So trying to teach those guys, which is 98% male, trying to teach those guys to also listen to this guy, walk around where was it? He’s in a brewery.

Sarah: Brewery, yeah.

Rob: Talking about the tools they use in the back of a brewery. Didn’t work. 

Sarah: Doesn’t work. 

Rob: They didn’t want to see it. And so immediately YouTube goes, Oh, so half of the people who watch belts and boxes didn’t even click on it this time. And the ones who did didn’t stick around very long. That means we made a bad video. Don’t show it to anyone else. And it dies. So we discovered that we couldn’t do a network. It didn’t work that way. So at the end of that year of trying that, that’s when we realized the only thing we can do is serve our persona, our channel persona. We could venture off. Sarah and I, we do trade shows, but that’s still Rob and Sarah on the camera, talking about power tools. It’s not the news. It’s also the trade show, but that works like the people who watch our show also want to watch us walk around a trade show and talk to people with tools. So you can do that. But with that said, we realized we were never going to be a network. It was really our show that mattered the most. And it occurred to us that the best possible name for a show about tools was the tool show. And we were able to grab tool show as a channel name. So we swapped that out. And it also helped us with marketing and sponsorship by, gave us the ability to, if we reached out to a small tool manufacturer and said, Hey, my name’s Rob. I’m from Belts and boxes. I produce a show, a producer show called Power Tool Weekend Review. Would you like to be on it versus hi, my name’s Rob from the tool show. Would you like to be on it? And then you go, we make tools. Yeah, I want to be on the tool show. 

Rob: So that’s what makes that works. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Spencer: So speaking of sponsors, I’m sure a lot of our listeners would be interested to see how you first got sponsors and what it’s like working with sponsors. 

Sarah: I feel like we work with sponsors differently than the majority of people on YouTube and definitely way different than anyone who gets sponsors on Instagram. Those are two completely different worlds, but we attacked this in more of an annual sponsorship versus one off videos or one off post, which was pretty much all we heard from other people on YouTube was they did one off videos or one off post or something like that. But there’s no stability in that. So knowing that this was our full time job, we really did look at it differently, trying to figure out what is long, what’s going to provide us food for the entire year. So we do sponsorship annually. That’s how we started. Right now we’re sitting at about 30% of our revenue is coming in through YouTube ads and our membership program. And then the other 70% right now is through annual sponsorships. We are doing more money through midroll ads as of late. And I know Rob can definitely talk more on how he figured out how to do this because again, he’s the mastermind behind how the ad revenue works. But yeah, I don’t know, what would you say? I feel like we do things differently because we do it annually versus one off posts. But in the story of our first sponsor was a really fun a fun conversation leading into being profitable. 

Rob: Just to speak from a high level. In the beginning, we didn’t want to do the one off stuff because like some of our friends on Instagram, they’ll end up with 200 contracts a year because a contract is for a post or two posts. And that turns out as it turns out, it’s a remarkable amount of logistics. Not only that, but you’re also really pushing and struggling hoping that you’re going to make ends meet at the end of the month. So we did do things very differently. And again, my goal was to go to very large companies and say, Hey, we’re good for you. We’re good for the industry. We’re professionals. We look like TV and we’re reliable. So I know you have, you know, four or five million dollar budgets, give us a chunk and you won’t have to babysit us. Because that’s the other thing too, is that these companies that may have four million dollars to spend, if they’re going to spend that on a 1500 or $2,000 Instagram post, that’s a lot of contracts. And it’s a lot of babysitting because each new person they work with, they have to go through contracts, get them to agree to everything, send them a product and then check on what they produce, did they produce it on time, did it do well, you know, all that kind of stuff where that’s expensive. It’s very expensive to have a full-time person managing all of that. So our pitch was, look, we’re going to guarantee 48 episodes a year, giving us room to skip four of them for out of the 52 week year. And if you choose to sponsor, you know, us for a full season, which is 48 episodes, that’s expensive. I mean, that’s six figures. But you know that we, you know, we sell them on the fact that we’re extremely reliable. We don’t put any personal stuff on our accounts. There’s no chance that I’m going to get drunk and put a racist rant on my Instagram this weekend, which we’ve seen happen. You know, that’s, we’re a very safe, reliable, professional place to invest your marketing dollars. We also have a background in advertising. So when your team tells us, here’s our message that we need to stay on, we know how to do that. We speak their language and we’re good at doing that. So we did that and it worked well for, well, five years. We had very reliable income. We made great money. You know, a little bit of what Sarah was talking about, our first major sponsor was a power tool manufacturer, which nobody back then had contracts with a tool manufacturer. These are multi-billion dollar companies. And we show them what we were doing. They believed in it. And again, we had them signed up within six months and that one contract was enough to make us profitable, to cover our salaries, all of our expenses, everything. And then everything after that was just great. When we had, you know, three or four more sponsors on top of that, it was just magic. But things have definitely changed. And it’s partially just an industry maturing. We’re also running into the issue of the agencies that are used by these big companies and their own marketing department. They may understand the different value in a long form versus a short form. Like when I create a short for a brand, that gets forced on people. They get, it gets in their feed. They flip their thumb and there’s my face. They don’t have a choice. And they only have to stay there for one second for it to count as a view. When you go to YouTube, I am actively creating thumbnails and titles and content. And people are choosing to click on it. So when we have 100,000 people watch our show now, 100,000 people saw the thumbnail, saw our pitch, our title and said, I want that. And then our average view duration for our channel is nearly about six or seven minutes, which is nuts compared to a one second flip. So we have a captive audience. And from a marketing guy’s perspective, I’m like, that’s worth way more. In the beginning, companies saw that as well. And we had those sponsorships. These days, what we’re running into is shorts just look too good on paper. So literally when we started doing shorts this last year for the platforms, where it makes sense, our very first TikTok did 7.5 million views, which is bonkers. 

Spencer: That is crazy. 

Rob: Yeah. Especially at a time considering just a couple of years ago, 7.5 million views for our entire year on YouTube would be a great success. That would be awesome. So for us to do that in a weekend with a TikTok is nuts. And the problem is that that looks so good on paper. So when we’re now going to these marketing departments and saying, hey, sponsor our show, we’ll get you an average of around, I guess this year is around 90,000 views per episode and an average view duration of six, seven minutes. So a lot of engagement. And they go, great. But if they spent a few thousand dollars sponsoring one episode and on paper, they’re like, I spent three grand and we got 100,000 views. On that same sheet, we gave $800 to a TikToker and got 7 million views. And all of a sudden, they have to explain that while they may understand the difference, they still have to explain that to the people above them. So as it goes up the chain, you run into more and more ignorance about what that means. And instead, they just, they’re like, look, we gave you $2 million. What’d you get for it? And they’re not going to sit there and explain the difference between 100,000 views on YouTube and 100,000 views on TikTok. 

Spencer: And so they don’t look at watch time at all? They just look at views. 

Rob: Because it’s the simplest, dumbest number. You know, and think about it this way too. And I am trying really hard not to just get out of this chair and stand on my soapbox and get started. 

Sarah: You’re getting there. 

Rob: Yeah, I can feel it. I’m heating up. No, as a matter of fact, these companies, when they came to us, we had an executive from a tool company that, again, billions of dollars a year. These guys should know what’s talking about. This was the senior VP of marketing from this massive company. And he came over to us at an event. This is Rob and Sarah. So good to see you. Love what you do. Blah, blah, blah. I’m like, great. Yep, we’re big fans of yours. This is, we love your stuff. And he goes, so how many subscribers do you have these days? And I got Sarah knows. Like that is just like the wrong thing to ask me. 

Sarah: It’s such a trigger point for him. 

Rob: It is because, and I did. I didn’t completely compose this. I should have said, oh, we’re at 205,000. Thanks so much for asking. But you should see our engagement numbers. Instead, I’m just like, why? Why’d you ask that? 

Sarah: VP of marketing. Just going to put that back out there. It was the VP of marketing. That’s right. Keep going.

Rob: And the poor guy just like, you know, he’s just being polite to a bunch of content creators at an event. And I said, because the reality is, I said, honestly, what the question you should ask me is how many people are watching an average video right now? Because the answer to that is, you know, about this year is 90,000 people. And I was respectful and nice about it. But that’s just not a surprise. In YouTube, in the YouTube world, that’s our big dumb number is subscribers. If you have 100,000 subscribers and you get your plaque, you’re the king of YouTube. You get a million subscribers and get a gold plaque, you’re a bigger king of YouTube. And the reality is, you know, we’ve got peers in our space that have a half million subscribers versus our 200. And their average view per video is 10 to 12,000. Ours is 90. That means we’re hugely bigger, way bigger. The most bigly in our space. 

Sarah: Technical term. 

Rob: But you can’t see that in asking me, hey, Rob, how many subscribers you have right now? Because literally I want to go, no one cares. You should never look at that number. You need to say how many people are watching your videos right now. That way I can proudly say 90,000. And we do that because we’re good at what we do. And we have the best editor possible working on our show. 

Sarah: That’s true. 

Spencer: Thank you. Thank you. You didn’t have to say that. 

Rob: Okay, but just to circle back around, you were asking about sponsorship. And the reality is because of those difficulties, because people like the giant numbers that come with shorts, we’ve started losing our annual sponsorship. It’s getting harder and harder to convince people to do that. So this last year, we signed with an agency that we are absolutely thrilled with. They’re out in Los Angeles and their background and their focus is automotive YouTubers. So this agency, the people who created have a background on some of the biggest automotive YouTube channels you’ve ever heard of. And they started just a year ago and they signed a ton of huge automotive YouTubers. They reached out to us because they felt like power tools was a really nice adjacent thing to automotive just because there’s a ton of overlap. So they asked if they could sign us and we said, heck yes. And their job is to do what Sarah talked about earlier, which was mid-roll ads. So in the middle of our show, we pause and we actually produce a short commercial. That’s 60 to 90 seconds or so. About a product and those can pay very, very well. And because we’re working with an agency, I need to sign contracts for each one, but they look out for us before we sign. I don’t have to research the company to know if they’re good, if it’s a product that we’re talking about. I absolutely do research first to make sure they have a great reputation, not only for a good product, but for customer service. We don’t want to promote anything even through a simple ad. If the product’s bad. So we do that, but other than that, they manage all the finances. They take their cut as an agency and we just get checks from them. And I think that is a big part of our future. We’re still trying. If we can find annual sponsorships, we will gladly take them on and work closely with them to be their favorite ad spend of the year. But to survive and move forward, the market’s changing. So we’re changing with it. 

Spencer: Cool. So I actually want to jump back a little bit. Sarah had mentioned that getting your first sponsorship was kind of a funny story. How did that come about and what was that like? 

Sarah: I feel like it was, again, I feel like we stumbled into becoming YouTubers to begin with. And then I don’t even remember what event we were at or why we were at dinner with this specific individual. But I feel like the entire conversation of the evening was another accident into this deeper deeper dive into this industry that we were now completely invested in. But it was just a conversation that started and quickly went into I see you guys for who you are, what your vision is, what you’re passionate about. Yes, please. Can we sign up? Here is my checkbook and I want to be partnered with you today. And we were six months into this endeavor of firing all of our clients and starting. So when we took the leap of faith in risking everything we had to become YouTubers, it was a massive amount of holding your breath. Yes, we had a plan. We felt like we knew what we were doing. We were good at producing videos. We were good at coming up with really creative ideas and we believed in what we were doing. But that doesn’t pay for mortgages and everything else in life. So when we got to a conversation with somebody who very quickly saw what we were envisioning, it was insanely encouraging. And then I mean, you can have a conversation with somebody where they’re like, oh, yeah, great. I love what you do. Yeah, I totally see your vision. And then they walk away and they’re not going to put their money where their mouth is. And it’s like, oh, that guy was nice, but like, it would have been much nicer, you know, if we partnered. But it was it was really encouraging. And looking back, all of it, like Rob mentioned earlier, all of the teeny tiny things that had to fall into place perfectly to get us to where we are today. Like any one of them could have not happened and we would not be working here. We would not be working together. We would not have what we built. And that conversation with somebody who took a leap of faith in us and helped us out six months into it was just, I will forever be grateful for that. It was a conversation over a couple drinks at a bar. It was nuts. And now we are where we are. So yeah, funny, funny might not have been the right word, but it was just one of those tiny little things that had to fall into place perfectly in order for us to do what we love doing. And I’m insanely grateful that for that conversation. 

Rob: So there’s two things I want to add here really quickly. One, I don’t mind, I don’t mind telling telling that story. The short version of that story. But two, I love what Sarah brings up here because this is never brought up in these kind of interviews. It’s what I consider the absolute BS answer of hard work. We really pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and really just worked harder than everyone else. That is not how this stuff happens. You need to be talented 100%, but I can promise you, I can go to our local mall and just start interviewing people. And I will find somebody better at this than me, somebody better on camera, somebody who’s quicker or more witty, a better writer. It’s a huge part of this is luck. It just is. To speak to what she’s talking about, that person she’s talking about worked for one of these huge tool manufacturers. But before he did, he produced a YouTube series. And this is back, let’s see, five, it’s like 2012, May 2013. Completely different time on YouTube. But he produced, he created a company in the Power Tool space to work with Power Tool brands and put a professional looks like television show together for YouTube. And it was successful at the time in the sense that I found an audience. But they died quickly. They burned very, very bright. The production quality was off the charts. It looked amazing. It was fun to watch. But after about a year, it was just disappeared. So we were at the event with all these tool executives and stuff. And I just, once I found out who this guy was, I started putting two and two together and realized, oh my God, Sarah, that guy, I’m pretty sure is one of the guys that created this YouTube channel, which I took a lot of cues from. And by then it had been dead for five years. So I went over to him, introduced myself. I got his big smile on his face and started saying how he loves what we’re doing. And he just great. And I said, you created this YouTube thing, didn’t you? And he just lit up. He goes, I did. And I said, I’ve got a little pitch for you. You did it five years too early, didn’t you? And his eyes just got huge. And he goes, yes, I did. And again, it just, so then we sat down and I shared everything I loved about what he was doing with YouTube. I started talking about what I was doing. And he just couldn’t wait to have this conversation and started just dumping stuff on me. He started sending me videos of behind the scenes stuff that they never showed anybody. But we just connected over that. And so I told him, I said, but it’s, it would work today. And I think I’m doing it. And he just got this huge sponsor. He goes, you are. And I use that. I mean, again, I come from sales and marketing. So I wasn’t going to let that opportunity pass. I just said, you know, hey, you guys could be a part of this. And I also made my pitch and said, you know, we’re going to be telling the world about all these brands. And he was representing a brand that was literally going to be brand new. It was actually a couple brands that the company produces. So, but he was going to be bringing something new that would need exposure. You know, in our space, really biggest established companies like Milwaukee and DeWalt and Makita, these guys don’t necessarily need exposure. They’ve got information about a specific model, a specific niche they’re trying to get into or specific trade they’re trying to address. But the reality is anyone in our space knows who Milwaukee, DeWalt and Makita are. So that was my spot. That was my opportunity. We connected over what he had done and I use it. But again, the chances of me meeting that guy, me knowing the story, I went through all this old YouTube stuff. We’re now sitting in a place, you know, having drinks and it was a perfect opportunity for me to have a, you know, a private conversation about it for us to connect over all that. That’s insane. Did a lot of my hard work get me there? Sure. But if we didn’t have that conversation, if he was busy talking with people, I don’t know where we’d be today because it was that first conversation. So, yes, you need to be good at what you do. You need to be a good writer. You need to be good on camera. You need to be a good editor. You need to understand timing. You need to understand what people like about watching on YouTube or whatever your platform is and you need to learn from it and you need to pay attention. But that does not guarantee success. Sometimes you need to do those things purely so you’re in as many places as possible for that one place at the right time opportunity. So we got, we got really fortunate and everything just grew from there. But I don’t know. I’m pretty confident though, had that not happened, we would have slowly added advertisers until we became profitable. That just happened to be awesome because we were six months into it. Just over night. 

Spencer: Just like skyrocketed.

Rob: Oh, we were set. Oh, yeah, they supported us. I mean, it was genuinely hey, we want to support you. We want to see you guys grow. We want to be a partner. But for what it’s worth, it absolutely paid off for them. But it was at risk. Back then they signed up for very large sponsorship for a show that what were we averaging? Like I said, it’s like 8,000 views per video back then or something. 

Sarah: Not that much. But to us, I mean, we had just taken over this channel and we were slowly building this little pet project. So that 8,000 was huge to us back then. But no one in the right mind should have given us that much money for what we were producing at the time. 

Rob: We convinced them that we were worth the investment and we did that with a great deal of confidence and we were right. It worked out. 

Spencer: Well, that’s awesome. That is a great story. Before we wrap up, I wanted to discuss one more thing with you guys. 

Rob: Sure. 

Spencer: And I don’t know if this will put Rob on his soapbox or not, but. 

Rob: I’ve got it ready. I’m ready. Come on. Bring it on. Say it. I know what you’re going to say. I’m ready. 

Spencer: What are some myths that people have about YouTube? Maybe it’s something about shorts. You mentioned that previously. 

Sarah: Spencer, I don’t know what your middle name is.

Rob: But you’re angry. 

Sarah: I’m upsetti spaghetti. 

Spencer: We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to. 

Rob: There’s no such thing. No, no, no. All right. So the reason why this is funny for us is a couple fold. So the biggest thing is we, part of our strategy about two years ago is we started doing YouTube channel memberships. So our fans can pay a fee, which we charge $10 a month, to be part of our production crew. And Sarah and I do a live show that’s private just for them every Monday night where we review what we think we’re going to put on the show and it gives them a chance to be a part of that and say, hey, here’s a video you guys should consider. Naturally, a lot of these people who sign up to want to be a part of that are want to be YouTubers or they’re just low level YouTubers who want advice. I love talking YouTube. I love talking analytics. I absolutely love talking video production and thumbnail design and writing. And so I’m happy to give advice. And when shorts were added to YouTube, there was something about that that I just didn’t sit right with me, that I was convinced was going to be a problem. And it leads back to that whole persona, that one persona issue. And the concept is shorts get viewed way more. When I sit down to watch YouTube videos, long form videos, I might watch three or four and my session’s over. Tiktok, I’ll go through 3,000. So those views, those views are way higher. And so I was worried that if literally worried I would make a successful short, because if I made a successful short, unless that short was only appealing to people who might like my show, that I risk them becoming subscribers to the channel that don’t fit my persona. And that creates a brand new issue. So once I discovered that this was true, which I’ll share with you in a second here, once I discovered it was true, it became my mission to tell anyone who would hear me that they absolutely cannot do shorts on YouTube on their long form channel, or they will destroy all their traffic. So that’s why this is funny, I think. Okay, so what this shorts issue is, is essentially because shorts are watched by lots of people and it’s fed to them versus them clicking on a thumbnail. If you make a very, let’s say satisfying short, literally I just take honey and I pour it over a biscuit and it just looks great because it’s like, oh, it looks delicious. Watching the honey go, glub, glub, glub. Like, come on, we all want to watch that. The problem is, just like our shorts this year have gone on to reach millions of people. You don’t need a very large percentage of those people to hit subscribe for you to suddenly have an extra 10, 20, 30,000 subscribers on your channel. Now, when we have 200,000 subscribers, like we do now, and we have carefully, we avoid viral content, we don’t chase the most popular thing because we want to keep our subscriber base as pure as possible that fits into our persona. So we’re at 200,000 subscribers, we’re averaging 90,000 views per video. That is remarkable. If we were to start doing shorts, even if it’s about power tools, but it’s just a click, like, oh, that sounds great, right? And I make a dumb video where I click a bunch of batteries into a battery holder and it makes a funny click noise. Okay, that’s the kind of content that works in shorts. If we get 5, 10, 20 million views with that, we may add 30, 40, 50,000 subscribers. Those subscribers do not care about the tool show. They do not care about a weekly show about power tools. They do not care about Rob and Sarah. They, nothing that makes our channel persona the channel persona. Okay, so 200,000 people right now, when we put out our video, our weekly video, it gets sent to a piece of them and the algorithm watches. Does the channel viewer, does the people who watch tool show, do they like this video? And if it’s good, it can branch off because they may notice that within our persona, all those guys that watch our show, that also watch kayaking videos, really love this episode for some reason, it may branch out as the show goes bigger and bigger and start showing it to kayak people. That’s how that works. Now, the problem is, is that we do a couple of successful shorts. We add 100,000 subscribers that all came from shorts. Now, a third of our subscriber base doesn’t care about our long form videos. So when we publish a new long form video, it goes, the math bags have the same, it goes out to our channel viewers, which includes short viewers and a third of the people they send it to, don’t care about our show, don’t care about our tool show, Rob, Sarah, none of that. So they all skip it. And all of a sudden in the past, where X percentage of our audience were always click on it, that drops by a third. That tells the algorithm that the content we made that week that our tool show on Friday, isn’t as good, stop showing it to people, and it dies. And that is the biggest problem. And this has been proven over and over by a ton of big channels. Some channels that are very closest, one of my favorites, I’m not going to name names, but remarkable content creator in our space had a half million subscribers and was averaging 350,000 views per video, which is bonkers and produces a lot of income, by the way. So with a half million views was averaging 350,000, started doing shorts. Their shorts were pouring honey over a biscuit. And within six months, went from a half million subscribers to a million, which if you only care about that number, the biggest success story, right? That’s great. Continue doing long form videos. His average view of average number of views per video for long form dropped as he went up to a million subscribers from 350,000 down to about 110. 

Spencer: Wow.

Rob: That’s two thirds of your revenue is gone. 

Sarah: That’s a lot of money.

Rob: And it was just because you’re good and this guy is good at shorts. He knows how to make a satisfying 30 second clip, but it destroyed his long form. So we’ve taught people that they need to avoid that at all costs. 

Spencer: What’s your opinion about brand new channels? Do you think it still hurts brand new channels or just like those who have been established as long form? 

Rob: The reality is successful shorts will damage your ability to make a successful long form. That’s all. So you still may, again, this whole theory shifts a little when you’re making content for really large audiences, which is to say video games is a huge, huge space. So there’s room for you to have a long form video game stuff. And the reality is, you know, grandma will absolutely subscribe to the me pouring honey over a biscuit. Okay, she’s not going to subscribe to shorts about video games, probably. So that helps. So you make shorts about video games and long form content. There’s a good chance that people who really love video game content will watch both. And it may not hurt you as much. But when you get into our smaller niches, like ours, which is Power Tool News, grandma will never watch my show, my long form show. She just won’t. But if I make something that’s just satisfying to watch for 20 seconds, she might subscribe. And that will damage it. So as you’re a new account, I’d say absolutely do not mix them. What you don’t know if this is your first time on YouTube is if you’re better at making shorts or better at making long form. Long form is a lot more money in it. They’re just is. So from ad revenue. So my recommendation every single time is you need to create two channels. You need to and brand them the same. That’s fine. But we constantly hear BS about, you know, from marketing experts saying if you’re a YouTuber, you need to be using shorts to bring people to your long form. They never talk about the damage that does when you get subscribers from shorts. Never. And quite frankly, no one in this industry switches platforms. No one. You can’t create, you can’t make a YouTube channel and then go to Instagram and advertise it. We all thought that was a great idea. It’s not. Nobody is flipping through Instagram and goes, Oh, long form YouTube. Yeah, let’s click on that and go to a different app and watch a long video. No, they’re doing this. They’re doom scrolling. So that’s what they want. So that that stuff doesn’t happen to the same extent on YouTube. It’s funny. I went through this with my dad, who is one of our viewers. 

Sarah: He’s also a paid channel member. 

Rob: He is a paid channel member. 

Sarah: He’s a paid channel member. Yeah, he’s he’s he’s our biggest, right? He’s our biggest fan. But I was asking my dad about it. I said, you know, do you watch shorts? And he’s like, yeah, they started putting shorts on my YouTube and oh, I don’t like them at all. And I’m like, okay, why don’t you like them? He’s like, just because I watched them for so long. And I went, dad, that means you like them. That doesn’t mean that you hate them. It means you’re a short, so I heard you’re and it’s okay. You know, chase your joy, man, whatever makes you happy. But that’s just it is that the serotonin you get from watching one of our episodes is going to hit when you hear about your favorite brand once in a while, or you hear a joke, or you hear Sarah yell baby chainsaw, or whatever is that makes you make you happy. That’s when you get those with a short. All our shorts are designed to hit you fast. Keep your attention and then keep feeding you every second of the way to get you to watch the whole 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 90 seconds. So if you just need to feel good, there’s a reason why doom scrolling is a thing is because joy is just one flip away. You just flip it and now there’s something else being thrown at your face that’s supposed to make you happy. And algorithms are good at doing that. So yeah, anyways, so yeah, to answer that question, I unless you’re doing something that reaches the masses or it’s a very, very general subject. Otherwise, if you’re going after a niche, you absolutely need to keep your shorts separate from your long form. 

Spencer: Well, that is good to know. Thanks for sharing that with us. And thank you, Rob and, Sarah for joining us for this episode. Really appreciate you guys and your insights. If people want to follow you and the tool show, where can they go? 

Rob: Avoid all the places with shorts. YouTube. Honestly, we’ve been doing this for so long, you can’t type tool show into any platform and not find us. I mean, I think that so we got 200, 205,000 subscribers on YouTube, but we’ve got like nearly 300,000 on Facebook. And again, we just started Instagram, TikTok to do shorts and stuff. And they’re already, I think Instagram is pushing 100,000 TikTok. We’ve only released 20 TikToks, I think are 23. And we have about 50,000 followers already. So yeah, go to any of your favorite platforms, type in tool show, you can’t miss us. We’re there. And thank you so much for having us. By the way, Spencer, you know, we are huge, huge fans of what you and Julie do. There was a reason, I’m glad that we got to mention that story. There’s a reason why once we found out that you left, we needed our mission to find you. Yeah, we knew we wanted to work with you. And then to discover that your wife is a talented audio engineer, just made us sound better too. So yeah, you’re really great to work with. We’re huge fans of both of you. We’re excited that you’re doing this podcast. I can’t wait to hear, you know, the future episodes to find out what other creators have to say and see if they’re wrong about shorts on YouTube. 

Spencer: Well, that will be interesting to see what other YouTubers have to say. 

Rob: So yeah, you never know, they might be wrong or they’ll say exactly what I do. 

Spencer: Yeah, well, it’s a pleasure working with you guys. I love editing the show. You guys are hilarious. So everyone listening, make sure to go check out the tool show. And for all of our listeners, make sure to check Creatorluxe out on all of the social media platforms as well. And if you’re ever interested in working with us, if you want us to edit your videos or your podcast, links will be in the description and we’ll see you guys next time.