Tom Buck: Leaving a 9-to-5 to Focus on Podcasting and YouTube

Ever wonder what it takes to leave the comforts of a steady day job and plunge into the unpredictable world of online content creation? Meet Tom Buck – a seasoned podcaster, successful YouTuber, and, in his previous incarnation, a digital media teacher – who made this exact transition. Join us as we navigate the story of his transition from the classroom to the digital sphere, the multiple income streams that keep his creative engine running, and the often-underestimated hurdles of starting anew in unfamiliar territory.

From the importance of embracing authenticity and having the right gear, to the art of tackling excuses, we delve into the intricate world of content creation. Hear straight from Tom how he broke free from the confines of societal norms, embraced his true self, and found his voice as a creator. Discover how he overcame the self-imposed limitations of gear and realized that it's not about having the best equipment, but rather about making the best use of what you have. The conversation uncovers the truth about gear as a disguise for the discomfort that comes with content creation.

Beyond the creative journey, we also venture into the tricky landscape of monetizing content while staying true to your craft. Tom shares his insights on the benefits of sponsored videos, creating online courses, building supporter communities, and leveraging affiliate marketing. You'll hear the remarkable story of how YouTube's algorithm served as the matchmaker between Tom and his wife and why being uniquely 'you' is the magic ingredient for attracting the right audience. We wrap up with a crucial reminder of the importance of taking the first step in your creative journey, regardless of your gear or experience level. Because the best time to start is now.

Tom Buck's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tombuck
Courses: https://himynameistom.com/courses
The Enthusiasm Project: https://enthusiasmproject.buzzsprout.com/

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Transcript

Tom Buck: 0:00

I was feeling like a dork because I'm not as good as everybody else and they're judging me when they're not paying attention at all. But worst case scenario is they just see someone trying, like putting an effort to get better, and there's nothing. That's a cool thing, Like it's really cool to to try at something, put effort into it, and if people see that that's something we proud of, not something to be ashamed of.

Alban Brooke: 0:26

Everybody. Welcome back to the channel. Today I'm joined by Tom Buck. Tom is a podcaster, a YouTuber and a formal digital media teacher. It was a really interesting conversation for me. We talked about getting started as being a creator online, how Tom grew his YouTube channel, then, in 2021, decided to take it full time and leave his teaching job. We talked a lot about the revenue streams to sustain himself as a full-time creator, but we also got into this human and emotional side creating things online, why it feels so difficult to start something new. How uncomfortable it is when we're just not rated something and we're still learning the ropes. We talked a lot about gear and what you actually need to start something new and in the end, he shared with me about how YouTube comment introduced him to his now wife. Really interesting conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Tom. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

Tom Buck: 1:20

Yeah, thanks so much for inviting me. I'm really excited.

Alban Brooke: 1:22

Yeah, I've really been looking forward to this conversation. I've been reading more about you and getting more into kind of the TomBuck creative universe. So for people who don't know you or haven't subscribed to your channel, could you tell me a bit, tell them a bit about what you do online?

Tom Buck: 1:37

Yeah, I basically am a lifelong AV nerd cameras, microphones, audio video production. I love all that stuff and so my YouTube channel kind of shares that. I try to share what I know in a helpful way, but without positioning myself as, like the expert. So it's I'm an enthusiast about this stuff, have experience, but I also have a lot to learn. I'll share with you what I'm thinking is interesting and helpful and maybe you'll find that helpful. Then I've also got several podcasts, the main one being the enthusiasm project, which is just my personal one, where it's usually just me alone in a room talking to myself for an hour, hour and a half overlapping, and prior to that I was a high school digital media teacher for 11 years and then I moved to full time YouTuber. So the master's degree is really paying off there.

Alban Brooke: 2:18

I, when I was going back and reading about you a little bit and then also looking at some of your videos, it made me realize there has to be a lot of lessons that you learn from being a teacher, Because the style that you have on YouTube reminds me of some of the best teachers I had growing up.

Tom Buck: 2:32

It's so funny because the the one of the main reasons I started my channel was because I had been teaching for so long but as a teacher I wasn't really making anything because I was too busy, honestly, and I wanted to start a channel, to have something totally separate from work. This was about six years ago and that I could just be my own creative thing. And of course then they ended up kind of merging and then the YouTube channel ended up becoming my job. So that plan didn't exactly work, but I was really shocked.

Alban Brooke: 2:55

They're playing with a little too good. I mean, yeah, I'm not complaining.

Tom Buck: 2:59

It's not what I expected that when I started. But the the thing about the YouTube channel that surprised me was it really helped me. I felt like it helped me become a better teacher because it made me so hyper aware of how I come across when I'm explaining something or teaching something, because you're filming yourself, editing yourself. But then the teaching side of things was so helpful with the YouTube side of things because learning how to explain things and how to break things down and being comfortable doing that and you know, sometimes you make mistakes and sometimes you you need to correct something or whatever it might be and it was really interesting how the two helped each other build up. It was like this spiral of progress.

Alban Brooke: 3:34

That's interesting because I've noticed being on the teaching side and see being with like a live audience. You get a type of feedback you can't get, obviously, from YouTube or podcast casting where you can see, oh, you're zoning out here. That's like the real life attention graph that you see like down on YouTube stats. You can see that happening in real time. But the opposite of that is editing yourself. Like if you take real like your own video and you're editing it, you start noticing all sorts of things about the way you talk and your cadence, what you do when you're stalling to figure out an idea, just editing some of myself. I mean that for me some of those were most painful moments, very painful learning experience.

Tom Buck: 4:15

Yeah, it feels weird. Definitely that was a hurdle when I started my channel because originally my channel I wanted it to be like. The channel was called the enthusiasm project and I wanted it to be profiles of people essentially diving into things they were enthusiastic about. Maybe it's a job, maybe it's not, but I wanted to make like a series of mini documentary profile things. So I was never going to be in it and then I realized scheduling that was a nightmare and I'd make like one video every three or four months maybe. But if I was the one on camera it was just up to me and my schedule so I could do a lot more.

Tom Buck: 4:45

That was like out of necessity, but it felt really weird to like I'm going to point a camera at myself and record myself because I'm saying something that's so important it should be recorded, and then I'm going to take the footage of myself, put it on a computer and I'm going to sit there editing footage of myself to post online. It felt weird. It was very hard to get over that. It helps with practice, but it also it helped to just sort of think like you want to make a podcast, you make a video. It feels weird to film yourself, but the people watching and listening expect there to be somebody, and in this case it just kind of happens to be you.

Alban Brooke: 5:15

I guess the version of that that I had was the first time ever it was doing a podcast. I realized later it was my. I was hyper critical of people who do podcasts, I guess in my own mind I was like, well, who's this person to do a podcast? So I was like imagining myself being somebody else critiquing me in a way that I wouldn't critique another person Right.

Tom Buck: 5:36

Of course not. Yeah, you're always going to be harsh on yourself like that.

Alban Brooke: 5:40

And so I was like who are you, albin, to do this podcast? And then I realized no one in real life was thinking that they didn't care. If they didn't like it, they turn it off and move on with their lives, and if they enjoyed it they'd stick around.

Tom Buck: 5:52

Yeah, no, it's still a thing. Even I was recording a podcast episode like a week or two ago and it went kind of long. It was like supposed to be an hour. It was edging on 90 minutes and I was like, oh, there's one more thing I want to talk about. And then in my mind I was like, if somebody has listened to this for 89 minutes, I don't think they're going to be mad that I go for another 10 minutes, Like you know, if they're already listening to you, you've already kind of won. Like they're on board and they probably want you to succeed to a little bit.

Alban Brooke: 6:14

Yeah, that's a really interesting idea. We imagine that the people who are attracted will always be the people who are not excited for our success I actually, so one of the videos I went and watched to yours was when you hit 5000 subscribers on YouTube. Oh wow, yeah, two and a half years ago. All the top comments are people who are like you deserve so many more subscribers. You've done such a great job. I can't wait to watch more of your videos. The people who are hating on the videos they left one mean comment and moved on. People who stick around to. The ones who are like this guy is awesome. How does he only have 5000 subscribers? This makes no sense to me.

Tom Buck: 6:47

Yeah, it's, it's funny because that's like I'm sure you're the same way. That's how I feel. When I there's a podcast that listened to that becomes popular, or there's a channel I watch that starts blowing up, I'm really happy for them. Like I'm excited for the person and sometimes you catch like a channel that's you know every day it's it's really growing like 10,000, 20,000 subscribers a day and I love like I'm going to refresh and see, wow, they went up another 2000. That's amazing. Like it's really fun to see somebody else get that. Yeah, that's how people would feel if they're a fan of what you're making, they want you to succeed. Because if they don't want you to succeed, they might just say something mean, but then they're not spending much other time talking or thinking about you. They moved on to hating something else over here.

Alban Brooke: 7:25

I noticed this with your channels. Well, so you spent two years on your YouTube channel and that's when you hit 5000 subscribers. That was two and a half years ago, and now you're at 122,000 subscribers. What was that journey like? Obviously, in the beginning you couldn't devote as much time to the channel, but what was that journey like through the course of growing the channel?

Tom Buck: 7:47

It's. It's been an interesting. I'm really like overall, I like the rate of growth, you know, because a lot of people will say like they don't want their or it's not about the numbers and things, which is true, but also you don't want the numbers to be zero or negative, like you want there to be some growth. And one thing that I have seen when those channels do blow up like that is it there's a lot of, you know, there's the examples we shared where people handle it well, but there's many, probably more, examples of people that don't really handle it well and things kind of fall off or it caused a lot of problems for them, and which makes sense. It's like way more attention and eyeballs than a human being is programmed to have on them all at once. And so I've really liked the relatively moderate, steady growth of the channel because it's been easy to adapt to. Like I don't know what I would do if it went from 5,000 to 100,000 in like two months. That would. That would have been really hard.

Tom Buck: 8:37

But doing that over a number of years was like okay, I can, I can handle this now, you know, and that I feel like my big thing has always been trying to make it sustainable and I think that's really helped is like it's it's not necessarily the most popular or the fastest growing or the videos with the most views, but it's it's really kind of solid. I think that's been helpful. So I can feel weird sometimes, I won't lie. You have the thing where it's like someone starts two years later and grows five times as fast and you're like man, I've been over here for like six years but you know, that's just hopefully a little part of I think it's a natural competitive, maybe even an insecure part of most people that exist. And if you can kind of like get over that and just go like my thing is my thing and it goes the way that it goes, nobody else wins or nobody else loses because I win or lose, like we're all kind of on our own separate path here for Buzzsprout, the channel that we watched.

Alban Brooke: 9:27

Pass us with you we were like he's doing podcasting videos and we're doing podcasting videos and now look at him skyrocketing. He's going to catch us in like a month.

Tom Buck: 9:38

Oh boy, yeah, and that's funny because it never even occurred to me that my channel could be that channel until right now. I never even thought. It's always like you're always looking at somebody else and it's, it's just. I think that's normal, but it's funny though. And yeah, the growth has been awesome and I think it's way more. 5,000 was way more than anything I could have ever expected, so this is like mind blowing.

Alban Brooke: 9:59

I love that you said the goal was to have a channel that was solid as solid as YouTube can be part of. Like making this career solid and I do want to dive into like making the career switch and going full time as a creator but how do you make that solid? Because you've built other channels I know you're active on Twitter and Instagram and you have courses and you have the podcasts and you have the YouTube channel. Like, how does this all fit together into creating something that does feel solid and secure.

Tom Buck: 10:25

Yeah, I mean, what you just mentioned is part of it. All of those different things really helps. Like you know, at the end of the month or the beginning of the month, when I go through and do like the finances for the previous month, you know there's something like 18 or 20 different little income sources which sounds so like hustle, culture, whatever, like gotta have your side.

Alban Brooke: 10:45

There's always different. Do you publish your monthly like income streams?

Tom Buck: 10:50

I don't. I've done podcast episodes where I've talked about them, but it's it is. It's this interesting thing, though, where it's like I both for the most part any of them on their own aren't really that impressive, but all of them combined is more than I was making as a teacher after 10 years or 11 years, and so that's cool, and there's no lower limit. So when I'm a teacher, like, I have my salary, no matter what, I'm going to get paid. At least that. But there was a cap.

Tom Buck: 11:14

I could never go beyond that, whereas this, there is no lower, it could be zero, or negative one month, but there's also there is no cap and some of it is in my control If I wanted to do more sponsored things or make courses or something, but that has all really helped. And then YouTube I'm just really lucky that video production is a thing that I love and that YouTube exists, and that YouTube exists in a way where it, I think, really is the most stable of all of the platforms. There's always talk about like a YouTube competitor and somebody needs to break it, but I'm not saying monopolies are a good thing. Nobody has the infrastructure that keeps that can handle what is put on their servers every minute of every day and serve it out. The way that they've been able to build up monetization for creators is pretty great. It's better than any other platform by far and the different options that you have are huge. They're diving into all kinds that. You can do live streaming, you can do podcasting, you do short form, you can do long form. It's crazy and the stuff that you make lives like.

Tom Buck: 12:09

You went and watched a video for many years ago on a lot of other platforms. After a day, the thing that you made is just going to disappear. I like that. The time I spend on something for YouTube. That video can still have a life years later and still help somebody figure something out, even though it was made in 2019 or 2018 or whatever. That is very unique to YouTube and that's definitely a reason why I think YouTube is a good main platform to have. I'm just fortunate that the thing I was interested in matched up with that platform specifically.

Alban Brooke: 12:38

If there's somebody right now who's looking at, I'm starting a YouTube channel, I'm starting a podcast. I want to have something that is mine online that's not associated with work. What advice would you give them or what would you start pointing them towards?

Tom Buck: 12:53

I think what you just said is a great place to come from. In the first place, something that is mine that is not work is really good. It's easy to think about. Well, these people make money and this person it became their full-time job. I feel like diving into it. For that reason, most of the time it's kind of a recipe for disaster, but diving it in because you just want to and there's something you're interested in my wife and I always talk about.

Tom Buck: 13:18

It's the thing that your friends and family are tired of hearing about. If you have, whatever it is, any kind of interest or knowledge or whatever that you find yourself going like oh, I want to tell someone about this, but I can't keep talking about it, or people are tired of it. That's probably a great thing to make a channel or a podcast or something about, because there's other people out there who will feel the same way, and then you won't get tired of it. You don't want to do the thing. That's like this is probably the most marketable thing I could possibly do. After a few episodes, you're like well, this is terrible. I just made myself another job now that I don't like, I think coming from that place, which is a terrible business plan of just the thing that you're excited about and interested in and then working to just focus on that.

Tom Buck: 13:57

Just make that. Whatever that is. You'll figure out how to build a channel identity over time. Your podcast will have a few episodes, are going to be rough, and then it's going to start to feel more like a thing and there's no shortcut through that. It just takes time and it can be really fun to kind of be in that phase of it and things will come together over time and then you never know where you'll connect with, what will work, what your audience will be, what opportunities will show up. But I really am a big believer that if you just start out doing something you're interested in, something you're having fun with, you're enthusiastic about, and you just keep doing it, then down the line really cool stuff will happen.

Alban Brooke: 14:33

One of the things I love to do is go back and look at really big YouTube channels I mean, I guess you do this for podcasts as well, especially if they were not like a celebrity beforehand it's somebody who actually grew up as a creator and go back and watch those early videos or listen to the first podcast and they're so bad. It's so encouraging to go see one of the early Mr Beast videos and you're like he was shooting this on a graining camera and didn't know what he was doing and over time grew into one of these people who knows how to capture attention better than anybody else online.

Tom Buck: 15:13

Yeah, you can see the hours of reps that people have put in like anything. You know anybody who's good at anything. They make it look easy. But then if you try to do it with no experience, you realize, oh wow, there's a skill gap here that needs to be covered. And the same way, like someone playing an instrument, you know you can just tell when someone has put the time into something that they just seem comfortable with it and like a natural at it. But that didn't come naturally. They had to put in the time. And YouTube podcasting is all the same thing. The people who are really really good at it have put in a lot of reps and made a lot of really bad stuff to get to the point where they can make some good stuff and make it seem like it's just this easy, natural thing that they don't have to think about.

Alban Brooke: 15:54

We're very good when we're young at being bad at things Like, my daughter is incredible at starting gymnastics, and she's just as bad as I am at it. And then, a few weeks later, though, she's really good at it and I've not progressed because there's no way I'm going to go into a gymnastics thing and start rolling around and try to do moves. But children do that. Yeah, that's how everyone learns everything. You are always bad at the beginning. The idea of like somebody walking in and playing the piano perfectly. The first time we hear like one story like that, we imagine that's how things are supposed to be. But the truth is, nearly everyone is bad at everything and, over time, learns it. And yet when we hit a certain point and I don't know when it happens it's like I expect to be good. The first YouTube video I make, I think my first podcast, should sound just as good as what I'm listening to. That's produced by NPR, and so there's something wrong with me that I'm not at that level day one.

Tom Buck: 16:53

I did take a class and the ice skating instructor said like you find a weakness and you just attack it, like whatever the thing is that you're not good at, just attack that one thing and then, once you get it, attack the next thing. And it's crazy how you remember doing that as a kid, like you don't do anything. So you're trying to ride your bike and you're bad at it and you just every day just go out and try and fall and tip and eventually you ride your bike. It does take the mindset of embracing the beginner state, the experience of being a beginner, and that's hard and the thing that I came across that was really helpful because it was feeling embarrassed and especially like at like an ice rink, at an adult public skate. Every time they're normal clothes and I'm over here, I'm got my elbow pads on, I've got my knee pads on, I'm going to put on my wrist guards.

Tom Buck: 17:35

I'm going to put on my helmet, like I can't, like I can't smash my face into the ice and like lose a bunch of teeth right now, just can't. And then I found something online where it was kind of like the same thing. There's so many things, especially with hockey and ice skating, where people are like is blank age too old to start, it doesn't matter 17 year olds or 60 year olds asking the same question. And somebody said like yeah, I put on my stuff and I go over there and they're like I'm not afraid to be seen trying. I was like, oh my God, I was feeling like a dork because I'm not as good as everybody else and they're judging me when they're not paying attention at all. But worst case scenario is they just see someone trying, like putting an effort to get better. That's a cool thing, like it's really cool to try it something, put effort into it and if people see that, that's something we proud of, not something to be ashamed of. And this is a really simple mindset shift, but it really helped.

Alban Brooke: 18:20

Let's go back to. What are the benefits of being like a creator that are not the monetization and the money side of it. What did it do for you when you said I need to have something that's my own. That's not work. What came out of that for you?

Tom Buck: 18:34

That's a great question. It's, I mean, for me it was so much it was such a self confidence builder. One of my early videos must have been like. The 10th or 11th video on my channel was like a little vlog about learning to play music and like why I started playing music and I titled it loud as F word I don't want to say but and even the thumbnail even has like the word censored and in the video I censored myself saying the word, which is like it's YouTube. I didn't have to do any censoring, I could just say the word. I don't want to go that far, but to me it was like I just want to, like I don't.

Tom Buck: 19:08

There was like a thing about like I'm gonna just kind of like play around with a little bit of profanity in terms of personality, because that's something I would never do at work or could do at work, and it like it sort of sets a tone, is like this is my own thing, that I want to do and I love cheesy, dumb jokes and wordplay and some people hate it and some people don't, but that's like how my brain works.

Tom Buck: 19:31

And the first hundred videos on my channel have none of that because it's I was so scared of like wasting somebody's time that I didn't want to say, like you know, here is a shore microphone and it does this or whatever, versus like here's a shore microphone and it sure is neat, but if you don't know which road to go, like all that stupid stuff, which is how my brain works. And the channel started doing better once it started doing more of that. So what it let me do was, like, rediscover my own personality, learn to be comfortable putting it out there. And then there's actually a thing that helped the channel do better, because people don't want a vanilla nothing. They want some kind of personality, and so you know that that was a really beneficial thing that I learned from starting a channel and a podcast later on.

Alban Brooke: 20:16

I'm right now reading Rick Rubin's book. Me too, you are, yeah, and that is something that he, I think, was in an interview maybe it was in the book where he said, for everybody who's watching, rick Rubin is the producer for tons of music albums, for tons of genres of music that you would have heard of and he. One of the things he said was what piece of advice is don't listen to anybody. Listen to yourself, find out what you like and then make that art. Make the art for you, be the audience and make your art for you. And if other people like it, that's great, and if you have to get a job to support that art, that's okay. But you've got to make the stuff for you, and I think it's easy for creators or podcasters. To start with, I'm going to monetize what's the most popular podcast type and you're like what you're telling me? Actually, what you want is a job.

Tom Buck: 21:08

So you should just go get a job, you're right.

Alban Brooke: 21:10

Because you're asking what will other people like? But the benefit of being a creator and like being yourself and being your own boss and doing it yourself is I'm the audience for my own art and if I like it, this is really cool, and if other people like it, that's amazing. And if I can make money doing the thing that I want to do, that's insane. But if you go down the path of I don't really like true crime at all, but I do talk about true crime on my podcast every week, day in, day out all you do is you really just created a job that you didn't want to have and you definitely can't quit.

Tom Buck: 21:46

Right, yeah, and you can't. You can't change it because that's now the thing that you're, that you're known for. There are even less extreme examples of that. Early on with my channel, I started making some videos about 3d printing just because I was really into 3d printing at the time, and some of those are like my first videos that did well, got like a couple thousand views or even more, which was nuts when you have like four subscribers on your channel and it was pretty clear like wow, anytime I talk about a 3D printer or a 3D print, it does. Well, I could just do a 3D printing channel and it will do well. But after, like, I made a handful of 3D printing videos like that's literally everything I know and I'm interested in about 3D printing, like I'm kind of done Then I sort of realized like, okay, maybe I actually even don't want to make any more because I don't want people to come in thinking that's what this is, when I don't want it to be. That. It's easy sometimes I've.

Tom Buck: 22:35

My first viral video was an Apple Watch video where it was like on release day I happened to get a watch and just hit a speed comparison. Of course, it's a video that took like 20 minutes to make. I didn't plan to make it until I just that day and the video went nuts and I remember thinking like, oh, this is why people do Apple channels, because it's a very different world. But then I've also known people who have pivoted channels or started Apple channels had huge success, but every time Apple announces something, they're like depressed for three months because they just have to buy every model of MacBook, every color of iPhone, every whatever, and then do infinite test videos and comparison videos and benchmark videos and it's just like the same cycle over and over again.

Tom Buck: 23:18

And some people love it and don't get tired of it, and that's amazing. But a lot of people they kind of did it because it was the thing that was popular, that got them popular, and they can't quit and they don't like it and they find themselves. I've known people who are like, yeah, I have half a million subscribers and I make a ton of money, but I'm just going to go get a job again because I don't want to do this. Okay, I don't want to be in that situation myself. So it's scary.

Alban Brooke: 23:41

We've talked a bit about kind of the being a creator as a whole. What are the differences between the like Tom Buck YouTuber and Tom Buck podcaster? How do those things work together? Or at least how are there just different mediums and how do you see them?

Tom Buck: 23:53

I'm going to have an existential crisis now. I.

Alban Brooke: 23:57

What's the difference between your podcast and your YouTube?

Tom Buck: 23:59

channel. No, there's actually the individual.

Tom Buck: 24:02

There's a pretty easy answer, which is this the podcast is another. The YouTube channel is formal. The podcast is just way more casual and maybe a little more in the weeds. Sometimes it's a chance where when I'm editing a YouTube video, I'm not trying to do the Mr B style of like editing for retention. That's like a little much for me. But I do like cut out breaths and pauses and I rewatched the videos a million times and think, like you know, I kind of say this here and I say a very similar thing here I got to get rid of one of these like really try to get the video down to its essence, even if it ends up being a 40 minute video about a microphone or something Like. I feel like these are unnecessary. 40 minutes Like it's as short as I can make it.

Tom Buck: 24:45

And the podcast is sort of different because I I should do more, but I don't even really edit my podcasts. I do pretty much everything just through the roadcaster and record. Pause is kind of my edit for the most part and I just you know, I have an outline, I try to explore ideas. I feel like if someone were to watch the YouTube channel and we meet in person, they're going to be like oh, you're the same person from the YouTube channel, so it's not like that isn't to me. But I feel like the podcast is a lot more like yeah, if we're just sitting around together and talking about stuff, that's kind of what it feels like and it's it's a little more of a chance for me to explore an idea in depth and just share it with an audience, rather than like having to have a conclusion necessarily or tighten it down as much as maybe I even should just kind of have a breather. That that was why I started the podcast originally actually was because, as a teacher, I had amazing students and I had, like the best position, but they're all high school students. It's hard to get through a couple of sentences without having to like answer a question.

Tom Buck: 25:38

The phone rings, someone comes in. You have to like please be quiet over there, put your phone away. You know like, repeat yourself, like I couldn't get through one or two thoughts without doing that, and after years of that, you just feel like a crazy person. We're like I just want to get this through this information and through these thoughts please, and YouTube's a good outlet for that. But YouTube is, you know, like I am very aware of every word and every frame and the podcast was like I can just hit record and just go and it was almost like therapy and that that's kind of for me at least. I know, not every podcast works that way, of course, but for me that's the role that it's filled and it's been. It's been really nice and it really blew my mind that people actually started listening to that for some reason, which is great. So it's almost like they they all satisfy different creative itches and therapeutic needs in a way.

Alban Brooke: 26:25

YouTube can sometimes, for me, feel like there's a bit of this anxiety, like I need to hold your attention as firmly as I can because over on that sidebar there are so many other cool videos and I know you want to click them. But just stay with me a little bit longer. Where a podcast? I'm guessing you're probably driving your car or you're out for a walk, or you're working out at the gym, or you're doing dishes. You're doing something else. There isn't something fighting for your attention. You're actually happy to have a friend along having a conversation with you. You know that's how podcasts can feel, so the tension is way lower. At least the anxiety level is lower, which is why I feel like the need to edit as tightly is like alleviated a bit and it allows us to explore things that probably wouldn't come out in a YouTube video, because when you're talking about the different colors of iPhones, you're just like, oh, this yellow was slightly bigger, brighter than this yellow and the blue it's really blue.

Alban Brooke: 27:24

Okay, you just have to get like just to the very the main points and you can't like sit there and run the nests or think through. Just kind of go off on tangents as much as you could on a podcast.

Tom Buck: 27:35

Yeah, and that's, and it's funny too, because they again they kind of work together. A lot of times I've made YouTube videos that unexpectedly came from podcasts Like here's. You know, I always usually have a topic and an outline for a podcast and not totally just like random rambling, but you know it's, it's a little free form, and then I kind of realized, oh, there's sort of an idea here, there's something there, and then I sort of take that discussion and distill it down into something that is a little maybe more purposeful or intentional, and then that can sometimes be a great video. So that is one way that the two sometimes get tied together, which has been really fun, because in that video or in the description you can kind of point out like, hey, if you want more of this in depth, check out this episode over here. This video is 12 minutes, that's 80 minutes If you want to check, if you want to go down that road.

Alban Brooke: 28:21

One of the things we haven't touched on at all is your channel primarily, or at least quite often, talks about the actual gear that people use. You talk about microphones and cameras. I got my camera because of you and your recommendations. One of your biggest videos is the roadcaster pro, which I have here. But what is your view on? Like gear as a whole? Like you are someone who teaches gear. How important is gear to being a creator, and especially when you're getting started?

Tom Buck: 28:49

Yeah, so this is such a funny topic to me and there's a very common thing in the creative world Gear doesn't matter, and I like totally disagree with it almost at every level because it's just not true.

Tom Buck: 29:01

And what I do think is important, and the nugget of wisdom in that, I think, is that gear should never be the thing that stops you from getting started. You know so, if you want to make a channel or a podcast and all you have is a phone, that's enough, you can. You can get your reps in, you can get things going. You can actually make some really great stuff just with whatever you have Like. If you're watching YouTube or listening to podcasts, whatever you're using to watch and listen to those things on, you could use that same device to make those things Like at its most basic level. But beyond that, there are certain things that you just need certain gear to have. And I do think sometimes telling people that gear doesn't matter, gear doesn't matter Almost does them a disservice, because then they start having unrealistic expectations when they look at someone who you know, who has a $10,000 camera set up and they're like well, my phone has cinematic mode, why doesn't it look the same? It's like there's a lot of reasons that it's not going to look the same, but your phone can look really good, but it's not going to do that, and it's not even just the quality thing, but it comes down to you know something like the roadcaster. Mostly you'll don't need a roadcaster, you just need to find one which is a single channel, xlr interface or USB mic and you're. But when you're the person who wants to have multiple people plus some sound clips and some music and you want to eliminate editing on your podcast, suddenly it's like oh, the roadcaster. Without that you would have to then daisy chain six other pieces of gear together. Like it really does make a difference. And learning how to use it makes a difference.

Tom Buck: 30:23

What I always like? I just like gear in general, but I like sane and practical uses of gear. I don't like upgrading, you know, every year to every brand new thing all the time, and I like it when you can get something and that can be your thing that you use for a long time. But figuring out what that right thing is is really important and comparing stuff is fun. Like all the questions I have whenever I'm researching stuff, I try to put those into videos.

Tom Buck: 30:48

Gear is really interesting. It's not the be all, end all, it's not going to solve all the problems, but it is a very crucial thing. And there's also this other side of it, though, where it's like sometimes people will think you know, I got this microphone and like something with a sure SN7B mine's right there on the back wall is a great example. They thought they would get it, plug it in, it's going to sound like their favorite podcaster who uses it and it doesn't. Because they need to figure out how to get the levels proper. They need to figure out how to EQ it for their voice and maybe figure out how to sound treat their room and sometimes you don't want to do that.

Tom Buck: 31:20

So I think there's that part of gear where it's not this magic bullet, where it's, you know it's just going to fix everything, because you bought something you need to put in the time to understand what you need, why you need it, how to use it. You know I'm constantly making mistakes with gear all the time, but it's also. It's also just really fun, like there's just something so satisfying about setting things up and trying new things and experimenting, and gear can enable you to do things in a new, creative way sometime. So I don't know, I love gear. I wouldn't encourage anyone to be irresponsible with their purchases of gear, but I also think that it's important to have good stuff and that I'm also kind of against the idea of gear being overkill.

Tom Buck: 31:59

Sometimes people are like, especially on YouTube, you don't need that camera for just a YouTube channel or just whatever. And it's like, well, I could give you a million reasons why I do. But also, who cares? Like, if I want to buy a cinema camera and just film talking head tutorials, who am I hurting? Nobody Like. If that's what I want and I'm being financially responsible, you can do whatever you want to do. And if that brings you joy because sometimes you know you could buy a cheaper thing I could buy a $20 boom arm instead of this $100 boom arm. But every time I use that $20 boom arm I'm probably going to get annoyed, like frustrated, whereas this nice one is really fun. And every time I come in here I'm like I want to use that thing that I bought because it's really cool, so it can also encourage you to make more. And you know gear is such a big topic. But those are my like semi-spark note thoughts on it.

Alban Brooke: 32:47

One of the things I've noticed to myself and now I think I see it in other people, though this may not be true is that sometimes the gear is not the necessity, it's the excuse, so that you don't have to be uncomfortable Like I don't actually want to release a podcast episode. That's bad, I just want it to be really good. And if it can't be good, I don't want to do it. And then I found out all the big podcasters they pretty much have, like this setup that now looks like it's $2,000. Well, unfortunately that's not available to me. That's why I can't be a podcaster. So I guess, until I can put those two grand away and buy all this stuff, I can't do it. And that excuse at least.

Alban Brooke: 33:30

I mean, I've come up with that one myself. Oh, if I really wanted to get into cooking, I'd really want to buy an expensive knife. If I really wanted to 3D print, I would want to buy that 3D printer. If I really want to get into four-wheeling, I'm going to buy that Jeep. These are all real ones. For me, if I want to do all these things, I have to have this expensive piece of gear. Well, I can't. So I guess I can't do it. There's my excuse and I'm out, and I've at least I think I see that in other people with podcasting where they're like well, what's? I have someone ask me I only have $10,000 to spend on my podcast set up. What should it be on? And my answer was you should buy a Samson Q2U and take $9,940 to put them into a bank account for a bit that's a B500 and then like come back a few years from now. Yeah.

Tom Buck: 34:16

That's I mean honestly, that's. That's probably the way to do it. Maybe pay for a.

Tom Buck: 34:20

Buzzsprout hosting plan, but otherwise that's about it. What's really funny is like two things came to mind when you were saying that, which is one early on, when I was starting my channel, I was in like this Facebook group for people who were starting channels and you know, trying to figure out YouTube and stuff. And there was this one guy who was like I really want to get started, but you know my, I'm living in like this basement and it's very poorly sound, treated and stuff. And so I was like, oh, you got, you know, you hang your jackets up here on this closet thing, you hang some blankets here, like it's super easy to soundproof, just your sound treat, just with what you have. And he's like, oh man, I can't do that because then I, for whatever reason, can't move this thing over here. And I was like, well, what's your channel? And he said it was about outdoor stuff. And I was like, oh, you don't even need to be in a basement, you go outside. And then the outdoor sound is actually just part of it because you're talking about outdoor topics. And it was just no, I can't do that because then I don't have a tripod or whatever. Oh, you don't need a tripod, just, you know, set your camera on a stump or like what.

Tom Buck: 35:16

Like every problem he had I had a very easy, free solution for and he had another excuse that it was like, okay, it doesn't matter, I could show up with everything you need and a whole crew ready to film, and you wouldn't want to make something because, for whatever reason, there's a block, and I think for some people that could be the gear. I need, the $10,000 setup before I could record. The flip side of that was which I saw all the time when I was teaching, especially because I taught at Title One schools, which are lower in socioeconomic status, so the students didn't have a lot. We had a lot of gear in my program that students could check out, but the number of times I would see kids make stuff on some busts at old, cheap phone with like the worst camera in the world and they would spend all weekend filming something, editing something on this free, terrible app that put watermarks all over it or whatever.

Tom Buck: 36:04

Like everything about it is bad, except that what they made ended up being really good because they wanted to make something and it didn't matter. Nothing was going to stop them from making something with whatever they happened to have and it's like that's sort of the exact opposite. If you really want to do it, nothing's going to stop you from doing it. Like you will figure it out, you will find access to the gear. You will find access to the software and the tools and the web hosting and whatever and you know it's it does come down to. I don't know what's going on inside. I guess more than anything.

Alban Brooke: 36:36

I've definitely been on the excuse side, where I'm finding sometimes the excuse or the problem that I have is actually the solution, the solution to the real problem, which is I do not like the sound of my own voice. I will never feel comfortable with it. I don't like it and so I don't really want to hear it on a recording. I don't like the way that I slow down and I stammer. I'm never going to like that, so I don't want to hear it.

Alban Brooke: 37:02

My solution is the only way I will ever do a podcast is if I have $10,000 of equipment, and even if you showed up with that $10,000 of equipment, I'd be like today's really not a good day. I've got so much going on. So sometimes I have noticed, at least myself, when I keep having a problem, those problems actually are the solution to a different problem and like do I want to move past it or do I want to just like say I'm not starting a podcast Not because of this made up problem, of it's oversaturated or made up problem, if I don't have enough money, it's actually because I just don't want to do a podcast. As much as I kind of claim that I do, it really is like this may not be the thing that I truly want. I'm more interested in being a person who other people perceive as a podcaster, if that makes sense.

Tom Buck: 37:48

No, it absolutely makes sense. I'm kind of going through something similar at the moment because, going back to being a beginner, last year I started taking flying lessons to earn my pilot's license and I was scared of flying. So it's kind of a cool thing to do and it's been pretty amazing. After about I don't know 20 ish hours over the course of like seven months, I kind of hit a point where I was like I think I'm gonna take a break. I don't know why it just I was kind of just like it's really expensive and I've done a lot of really cool stuff. So I don't regret it for a second, but I don't know that I I don't know how much I want to keep going.

Tom Buck: 38:18

There's also a lot of excuses of like well, the weather's bad and the. You know, right now I'm just busy, so I should push this, this lesson or this test to this time here or this reason, that reason, another reason, and I'm not going to lie it's been a thing where, like if it happens to come up or someone's like I heard that you were doing this or whatever, they're like really interested in it and they, they want to make plans like, oh, when do you get a license, we could. We could fly to Vegas in a half hour. We could do all this cool stuff and like and that that feels really good.

Tom Buck: 38:44

And so part of me is like, okay, I don't know if I want to keep going or not. I need to figure that out, but there really is a part of me that that kind of likes, that likes the, the positive, like, yeah, this is a. It's a really cool thing that most people aren't doing and people are interested in it, and that feels really good. And I feel like maybe I should keep going or, or I won't have that anymore, or I'll be disappointing to the people who had all these like sorry, we're never going to do the 30 minute Vegas trip, sorry, but like, and and kind of really really having to go back to. Okay, is this something I'm interested in? Still interested, I lose interest. All of which are fine, like and, and that's okay.

Tom Buck: 39:23

And same thing with podcasting and having so much online.

Tom Buck: 39:26

You know, and especially if you've already done one thing you have a YouTube channel, you should have a podcast.

Tom Buck: 39:31

You have a podcast, you should be posting short form clips to wherever, and people feel like they have to be doing these things, even though they really don't want to, but they feel like they have to. And so you have someone who like just wants to do a long form podcast about whatever they're interested in. And now they find themselves spending most of their time editing 20 second vertical video for like, Instagram and TikTok and YouTube shorts and they're like I hate doing this, but I have to do it because it's the thing that you're supposed to do and now there's no more joy in the thing that they really liked and going all the way back to what you said of like, if you're kind of, keep making these excuses and you know what is the actual reason, is it something you really want to do or is it something you've sort of told yourself? I am someone who wants to do this thing, or other people have external pressures, like. Whatever it might be, it gets complicated. It's like a quite an exercise in psychology.

Alban Brooke: 40:19

There is absolutely something to the I want to create because this is good for my soul. It's just good for me to have something that's my own, that I am creating, and even if I get 30 listeners or 20 subscribers on YouTube like that's good, I don't, I'm doing this for me and if I attract other people, that's a bonus. Then it turns into well, how often do you post on TikTok?

Alban Brooke: 40:43

You're like oh none actually oh well, that's how you get listeners, okay, well, and then repurpose those for YouTube shorts and for Instagram reels, but you can't have the TikTok logo in them or else they're going to get downgraded, so you have to make them separate. Okay, and I'm going to separate. And then are you using Twitter? There's a new thing going on with Elon Musk, and I don't know how much you want to be involved. But and then LinkedIn and you're like I now have 400 things to do, none of which are really aiding the real goal, which was I'm doing something that's creative and for me, I don't know, have you, did you ever feel that when you were kind of getting into this?

Tom Buck: 41:20

Oh, I feel that all the time. Yeah, I mean, that's like TikTok, is some vertical video is something I'm just not into, and, yeah, I understand that a lot of people are really into it. I typically, for the most part, don't like watching it, unless it's like a cute dog or a cool hockey trick or something, and I, for the most part, don't like making it. Every once in a while, there, there is an idea where I'm like oh, this is really cool, but I literally only need 30 seconds. I can't make a video about this, and it's like that's a perfect thing to make a little short, vertical thing for. For the most part, though, like, I don't like. I don't like framing things that way. I don't like, I just don't enjoy it, so I don't want to do it.

Tom Buck: 41:57

But I definitely feel the push of like. You have to do it Definitely feel the push, and sometimes I've done like sponsorships with companies where they're like oh, and then what about your, your Instagram and your Twitter? And I'm like those are really huge messes. Like those are not involved in this right now. Like you don't trust me, there's nothing going on there that you want to like, it's not going to help this cause right now. The sponsored thing right here, because I just use them how I want to use them. But I did feel at certain point like, oh, I'm signing up for Twitter and this is how you have to use Twitter. I'm signing up for Instagram, this is how you have to use that.

Tom Buck: 42:29

And you know, there's other stuff where it's like maybe I just don't want to check this anymore, I don't need to, and the thing I always think is it's good to check stuff out and to try it.

Tom Buck: 42:39

You know, like, maybe discord is something that's cool for you, maybe TikTok is great, maybe it's not. So try it, see how you like it. But if you don't like it, even if it is something very popular, don't feel the need to do it, because then it does become draining and taking away from the thing that you really like doing, which is the thing that maybe people are even interested in the first place. So it's like you know, if you have an audience because you make videos, instead of spending all your time navigating this weird world of, like influencer marketing or vertical video or whatever, just spend that time making more videos that you like, which is why people found you in the first place.

Tom Buck: 43:16

Like, just go back to the thing that you enjoy doing, and you can always tell when someone enjoys they're doing something because they enjoy it versus it's like watching a band play on stage but they hate each other. It's like, yeah, the music sounds good, but there's like it's very different than like here's a group of musicians who love spending time together and our friends, and now they're playing music together. It's a very different feeling, even though it's kind of the same thing on the surface.

Alban Brooke: 43:39

Before we close, can you tell me a little bit about being a creator, who makes money by being a creator, and what that process was like? I know you said you had a bunch of different little income streams. Could you tell us what some of those are, even if we don't talk about numbers?

Tom Buck: 43:53

The money and creator thing is very conflicting to me. When I started my channel, I was adamant that, like I'm never going to make money, there's never going to be an affiliate link, there's never going to be anything, because I thought that that would somehow like contaminate the thing. Like I just want to make something, even if it's a gear review. I want everyone to know that I'm making this review because I'm interested in this thing or I want to share something about it, not because there's some greater marketing scheme or money behind the scenes or whatever. And I get that. I get why I felt that way. I was also wrong, totally wrong, and probably would have been a good idea to like open myself up to you know, some forms of monetization earlier. But ultimately the goal was to like protect the integrity of the thing I want to make and what I had to learn. It took a long time to learn was you can do, that Money isn't inherently evil and it's okay to make money making stuff that you love, and there's ways that you can do that that protect the thing that you're making. I think we've talked about it before, but I have a whole page on my website that's like an ethics statement that that covers how I approach brand deals and I send every single. I really don't do a lot of it even says on there I don't like doing sponsored videos so like, right away, that's a terrible sales pitch if somebody I'm trying to get someone to sponsor me but it's setting the tone of like this I don't want to make. Every video is now a client project because it's a sponsored video, but every once in a while something pops up that makes a lot of sense and can be really cool thing for me, for the channel. Like I did a sponsored video with Sennheiser earlier this year, which was awesome because I really like Sennheiser, I really like the microphone that we were talking about. I really liked getting paid that month because I needed flight lessons are expensive and bills are expensive, but also Sennheiser was on board to like to donate a couple hundred of these microphones to different schools around the world and even just individuals. It was this really cool thing where it's like this is a sponsored video where I get to work with the company.

Tom Buck: 45:48

I like talk about something I'm excited about that I would be talking about anyway, and I get paid and other people benefit from it. They get gear and equipment and that. How is that? How would it have been better if that weren't sponsored? If it were just me, I spent $130 on this microphone. I'm telling you about it. It would have been the same video with so much less benefit to so many people.

Tom Buck: 46:07

So there are actually ways where it it can be a good thing and you just sort of have to like it's very different for everybody Keeping your integrity and the relationship with your audience. I think keeping that intact is the most important thing, however you choose to do that which is different for everybody. So, since I don't do a ton of sponsored stuff, it does help to do that. I do have courses because I like. I know it sort of is like a cliche, like oh, you're a YouTuber with a course, but I was a teacher for 10 years and I really, you know, I like teaching stuff and I like the courses because I can. It's not that you can't get that info anywhere else, but it's sort of a more curated, focused. It's almost like in between a podcast and the YouTube channel, because there's a lot more breathing room and a lot more depth than a YouTube video would have. But it is obviously way more focused and like everything is written out and planned and curriculum designed like a class would be, so those really help.

Tom Buck: 47:01

I did go into like supporter communities like Patreon and YouTube channel memberships, which blew my mind because people actually wanted to pay just to support the channel.

Tom Buck: 47:13

And then that's why I started like putting names at the end of videos and then every once in a while we you know, I do you know posts for them or live streams, or you know, it's a really fun thing, especially as the channel has grown. That's been cool because when you do a live stream on a channel with 120,000 subscribers it can kind of get busy, which is great, it's a cool problem to have. But when you do a live stream, you know on a Tuesday and 25 channel supporters show up, you can kind of just sort of like hang out and talk and just have a good time. Very low, low key. So finding things like that that have worked. And and then affiliate marketing ends up being huge too, which is like you know, a bad month on Amazon would be like 17 or $1,800 and a good month would be like over $4,000 of just people clicking links. That would be there anyway, like why not do that?

Alban Brooke: 48:00

It's. It's definitely wonderful If you what you talk about is gear, and I'm sure that's why so many people are attracted to Apple videos and gear videos and things like that Because, yeah, amazon giving you a little bit of a kickback on anybody you send their way and they already are looking for the link anyway, so it's not like that's the thing on them.

Tom Buck: 48:20

Yeah, and when I started my channel I was like I'm going to put links because I always want. There's so many times where I'd see somebody with something and I would try to find what it is and I would literally have like a paused frame of the video and it have the product image and I'd be looking like there's a red button there, but mine, like trying to find it, they could just put the link to the exact one they're using. That would be amazing. That was like pre-YouTube, before I knew about affiliate links. And then it wasn't until like a year into it I made a video about a camera lens and my channel was small, like under a thousand subscribers. I just bought a new camera lens and made a video about it. In the first week I had five people tell me they bought that camera lens because of the video and I was like that's like this is an expensive lens and it convinced five people to buy them. And then I was like if this were, if those were affiliate links, nothing would have changed except I would have made a couple hundred bucks. Ironically too, like affiliate links, sometimes it's easy to make them shorter. So, like visually and aesthetically, it keeps the description more organized.

Tom Buck: 49:13

My thing is like, as long as I'm not making a video to share an affiliate link like here's something that's a piece of junk that I hate, but you're going to click that link and give me that 24 hour cookie. So as long as I'm not doing that and the links are the links that would be there anyway, I think it's a win-win for everybody, because people get the exact thing that they're looking for. I get a commission if they make a sale, and it's been an unexpected, really, really great revenue stream over the past few years. But I mean, all of those things help, and you know, the courses courses are so, at least the way I do them, because I want them to be good.

Tom Buck: 49:43

There are a lot of work to put together, and it's an interesting thing with those, because once that initial push is done though, they are just kind of there and you're just sort of keeping tabs on them, updating them when necessary, and that's really cool, like. Like last month, I have three courses out and I think it was $2,345 for what came through courses, which is great, because I didn't make a new course in that time. Sometimes it's zero. Also, sometimes no one buys anything that month and it's just $0. But it's kind of cool and it's like wow, okay, this, these assets that I've put together, help pay the mortgage, or more than pay the mortgage last month. That's awesome. All that little kind of stuff really really does make a difference when it all pulls together.

Alban Brooke: 50:21

I think there's this misconception sometimes that people have that if I, if you have a job, you're secure. If you have a creator, then you put this together yourself. That's less secure and that's very true on day one, like day one where you got a job, now you know two weeks or a month from now, a paycheck comes in. Day one is a creator full time. You do not know, unless you've already been doing it for a while, like in your case, that a check will come in. But now you're in a position near five years in as the employee and five years in as the creator. The employee has one person who says this no longer works. Unfortunately, we couldn't make the numbers work or we really didn't like something you did. We're moving on. Businesses isn't doing well, whatever it may be On the creator side. For everything to fall apart, youtube has to demonetize you. Patreon has to say all your patrons say I no longer want to support.

Alban Brooke: 51:19

Amazon says we're actually taking away all commissions. Your course has to go offline. Somehow you have to have like it's a bad day All these catastrophes, yeah, and in a way it's so much more secure because it is so much more diversified.

Tom Buck: 51:32

Yeah, I mean, I never even thought of it that concretely. But you're, you are completely right, because I was the last person to I would ever think would be a full time like YouTube creator, so like careful and conservative with everything, and I had a tenured teaching position. Like it's very hard People do really bad things sometimes and don't get fired and like it's very hard to get fired from that position. It's very easy for them to make it like miserable though. And you know, yeah, I'm teaching this digital media program and this great thing, but all it takes is one administrative, legislative, cultural, district change somebody in some position somewhere. It's like, oh, you're going to be teaching you know middle school remedial English, you know, to violent offenders now, because I want to bring my buddy in from this other school to take over your program, something like that could happen at any point. So, even the really secure thing like I guess I would still be getting a paycheck but I would hate every minute you know they can make you hate every minute of your existence and that's probably the most secure position someone could be in If you're not a union tenured teacher, then yeah, all it takes is one manager to switch out or change their mind or one bad quarter or something. And sorry, the plans change. I mean the number of times you hear about like tech companies and things pivoting, like we're going all in on this note, we're going all in this direction Sorry, guys over here like we did want to bring you on permanently, but now we're going over here so we don't need you anymore. It can really happen.

Tom Buck: 53:00

And a thing that really struck me, I guess, was after I had put in my notice that I was leaving teaching so it's just been over two years that I left that I was shocked that every person I talked to, from other teachers to administrators to even like district officials every single person said they wish they could leave to, but they didn't have. They didn't know where to begin. They didn't have like a thing. And I didn't realize I had been building a lifeboat with the YouTube channel and the podcast and everything and I was just so grateful that I had that because there was an option when things just weren't going well. It's like, oh, I can just get in my lifeboat and paddle away. That's kind of a cool thing. You don't realize you're building it sometimes. But I was shocked at how many people had nothing and really wanted something is kind of sad.

Alban Brooke: 53:42

Yeah, I not the exact same, because I did not go into being a creator, but have that experience with law. Like lots of lawyers saying, I really wish I wasn't so far in my career that I could leave now you know, the way law gets you is that you start making enough money, that you start committing yourself to making lots of money, and, as silly as it sounds, there's a way you can grow your lifestyle that you're making $250,000 a year and you cannot make any less, because you are in a country club and you you are, have two expensive leases and your kids go to private school and there's no other option. And now you have to stick with the only way that you can make that much money, which is continuing the practice of law. So there was a bit of. I didn't have a lifeboat, but I knew we were close enough to shore that I could jump out and swim to a new job, because I hadn't gotten out and out to sea, and it was as soon as I did that a bunch of people were like oh, I'm out to see. There's no way I could ever swim back.

Alban Brooke: 54:39

Now, though, one last thing. I read about you, tom. I want to hear this story. If this is true, okay. I read somewhere that you met your wife through YouTube.

Tom Buck: 54:46

Yes, it's so funny. That's talk about the algorithm, like showing you what you need. We told the story a lot, so somebody's listening and they've heard it. I apologize, but it is pretty fun. Basically, my wife quit her job. She also had worked at a school. She was like an admin marketing person at a private school. That was her thing. She quit in 2016, because she was sort of noticing like this, this push towards digital media, and she kind of wanted to almost like advocate for digital media literacy. I was a digital media teacher teaching digital media stuff, and she had been doing that for about a year. There was a summer of 2017.

Tom Buck: 55:24

I was getting really into like I'm going to start this YouTube channel. I'm going to do do everything. I was super into Casey Neistat, so what I was going to do is buy a boosted board, because if you started a YouTube channel in 2017, you had that boosted board. And I was looking at reviews and I found this review from this girl who, like had never been on one before, so it wasn't like the person who was like oh, look at me, like I'm a pro skater. It's like day one of boosted board and half of the video is her like anxiously waiting for the UPS guy to get there and then he gets there and she's been waiting all day and she's like, oh yeah, cool, thanks. Like she plays it off Like she hadn't been looking up the window, which is exactly what I do.

Tom Buck: 56:00

So it was just like oh, I really like this video, it's really fun. The next video that popped up she was talking about like a packing trip to Iceland and I had just booked a trip to Iceland. And then the next video was her talking about digital media literacy, which I was literally teaching classes called media literacy, and she was like in the video she was talking about, like she has this idea that there's like this misconception between young people being tech literate versus tech savvy and like kind of what that means to bridge that gap and all this stuff which is literally what I do lessons on every day. And she was sort of like I have this theory that'll work, but maybe not. And I swear it didn't come from a like hitting on, hitting on a girl on the internet place I had never left a YouTube comment in my life.

Tom Buck: 56:42

But at that point, like I left her a comment and I was just like she has the comment still. But it was something about like I'm a digital media teacher. I need to like what you're doing is exactly right. This is like so perfect, blah, blah, blah. And she replied and said, like send me an email, I'd love to learn more about your program. And so I sent her an email.

Tom Buck: 57:00

It was she was like it was crazy, she. She had started this thing that month. She was calling it all in August and she was like I'm just going to say yes to every opportunity that pops up. I emailed her about my program. She was like oh, I'd love to see it. I was like, well, you're more than welcome If you want to drive all the way out here and check it out. You're more than welcome to school starts in a couple weeks. So it kind of has to be now, because it can't really be during like the school day at the moment.

Tom Buck: 57:22

She's like okay, and she drove out and we just like hit it off just as human beings, immediately, just like as it was. I've never we started talking. I forget she arrived at my campus at like one PM that day and we like just kept literally talking nonstop until like one AM and we had never met before and it was all about like digital media and YouTube and the freedom of like being your own creative person and all this stuff. Like these discussions I'd never had with anybody before. And so we then just became like great friends and we started working on like these weekly live streams, sort of podcast things together and like there were all these people going like oh, you know, like that, the girl from YouTube, the YouTube girl, was like no, no, it's just, we're just friends or whatever, and I was wrong and we weren't, and then and then, and now we've been married for like three years.

Tom Buck: 58:13

So that's this crazy. This is a crazy situation, but it all came from the YouTube algorithm recommending the right video at the right time.

Alban Brooke: 58:22

I love that. This kind of ties back to one of your first points, which was, like you just have to do the videos that you want to do. Had she not been doing the videos that were uniquely her, she would not have been like such a clear signal, like, oh, this is a person that kind of I connect with. Like, yeah, boosted board in a style that you were interested in. Then Iceland, which whoa, that's weird, I'm going to Iceland and digital media literacy. Nobody else on YouTube probably had all three of those videos and somehow it all connected where you went. Whoa, there's nothing common here that I probably don't feel. I don't feel weird leaving a comment, you know, telling about myself, because it's so almost strange that we have this much in common.

Tom Buck: 59:05

There's no YouTube coach. That would say like make a channel that has all those things and say, don't put all that on your channel?

Alban Brooke: 59:11

Absolutely. It said split it up onto three channels because there's three separate audiences, but then you don't attract that like middle of the triple Venn diagram that probably the only two people in it were you and your wife. Well, that's.

Tom Buck: 59:25

It's funny because I never even I knew nothing. I was literally the first time I left a comment on YouTube and I never looked at any other numbers. And it wasn't until very recently that she was like yeah, that video you left the comment on has like 200 views. Like seven years later, I think it has like 200 views. It is not a popular video, so by every metric on YouTube that is a failed video. But that's how we became husband and wife was because of that video.

Tom Buck: 59:49

So, you know, like you, and she made that video because it was the thing that she was interested in and the thing that she was passionate about and what she really wanted to share that day. And you know it's a really good lesson to just kind of follow that, like the Rick Rubin book, where it's a lot of it is about trusting your gut and your creative instinct and being aware when something kind of sparks in you to go. I'm going to chase that a little bit and not shut it out for something else.

Alban Brooke: 1:00:16

That is so true. Before we go, we're going to have links to your YouTube channel, your podcast, your website, your courses, everything. Is there anything else you want to leave the audience with before we wrap up? I mean?

Tom Buck: 1:00:27

that's all great stuff. If you want to check out any stuff I do, the only thing I would say is what I've learned over this past number of years of doing this. The only regret I have is that I didn't get started sooner, and I said that many times. But seriously, if somebody has that push of wanting to start something, whether it's a channel, podcast, anything, whatever gear you currently have, use that and do that and get started, because you won't regret it, even if you decide it's not for you. You do a couple and you're like I don't like this enough for me. That's cool. You figured that out. That's an important thing, but it could also turn into something and a year from now you'll be really glad that you started a year ago.

Alban Brooke: 1:01:04

And you might just meet your future spouse by doing it.

Tom Buck: 1:01:07

Guarantee that'll happen for sure.

Alban Brooke: 1:01:10

Thank you so much for spending this time with us. I really appreciate it. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks so much.