(upbeat electronic music) – Welcome back to Ear Biscuits. I’m Link. – And I’m Rhett. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we are exploring the question how do we deal with YouTube burn-out? (makes drum hi-hat sounds) – YouTubers burning out is something that, for, well you can say for months has been in the media. – In the media. – In the conversation not only on YouTube but in articles about YouTube that have– – Articles in the media. – More mainstream but one could easily make an argument that it’s been something that’s been a topic of discussion for years. – Around here, yeah. (chuckling) – Yeah, around here too. – Yeah so we’re gonna throw our hat into the mix of the voices that have already spoken about this. – Can we be burned out? We’re volunteering. – Yeah. – For YouTuber implosion. – We’re just throwing our voice into the mix. So we have a perspective on this. We wanna talk a little bit about some of the things that have been said. I think this, even if you’ve read about this, even if you’ve seen other people talking about it, we’re gonna be talking about our personal perspective on it, how we have dealt with burnout. How we feel about being burned out or not now. – Because I will say that, I mean, it is an issue that is very close to us. We are… Why you yawnin’, man? – I’m sitting here yawning now. – You’re already bored? You’re burned out with this conversation. – (chuckles) Yeah. I was setting a, what I was doing was I was– – At least don’t make an audible noise. – I was setting like a mental– – Listeners won’t know that you (breathes rapidly)– – A mental cue. – You’re yawning when I’m talking. – I did the yawn for the video people. – Man. Video people. – I mean I didn’t really need to yawn, again, I did it– – You did it also for the audio people because I heard it. – It’s a set-up. It’s a set-up. It wasn’t intentional. I was hoping that you would yawn. You wanted to when you saw me, didn’t ya? You thought about it? – It’s not a voluntary, man, I wish I could yawn right now. I saw him yawning. Man that looks so pleasurable. – Contagious yawning, man. – I know it’s contagious but I didn’t wish that I– – Yeah but you wanted to really on the inside. – (chuckles) What I was trying to say was, we have certainly dealt, well I wouldn’t say dealt with it as if it’s something only in the past, but there’s been acute moments of it so I think that– – And cute moments. – Absolutely. – Yeah. (chuckling) – So we’ll get into all that. I’m saying it’s gonna get a little juicy. This is not just an academic exercise in conversing about other people’s burnout, but it’s deeply personal to us and for what it’s worth, we’ll share our experiences, plural with burnout. – And I think it could be helpful to anyone who is self-employed. I think it could be helpful to anyone period who could be burned out in anything vocationally or with anything, but I think it will especially be helpful for those who are content creators, but also those who are self-employed and kinda make your own schedule and the traps that you could fall into given that. – So we’ll get into all that. But we did want to, on a lighter note first, I’m a verbal processor, so I need to verbally process what happened to us at a party recently, ’cause I think that there’s something, I need help. I just need to learn from it and at this point I’m baffled. – I feel like I need more help than you because you abandoned me in the midst of this story that you’re gonna tell. – Okay then I feel like at some point, I may need to apologize. – Okay. I expect it. – So you know what I’m talking about so I’ll let you take the lead and then you can yawn at me as a signal when you expect me to apologize. – Okay. So, how can I put this? We do not typically frequent Hollywood parties. It isn’t something that we have made a part of our lives. But we are in this town to, for better or worse, play the game a little bit. And there are other things that we’re trying to get off the ground and other projects and ambitions that we have that hopefully will become things that you may or may not enjoy in the future, and one of the ways that that happens is you gotta play this PR game a little bit, right? – Uh-huh. – You gotta be seen at certain places, you gotta stand on red carpets and do your prom pose with one leg in the air. – So you are who you’re seen with I think is what you may be reducing Hollywood to as a game. But I will also say, practically speaking, relationships drive projects, and getting things going, so a lot of it, a lot of it is who you know, you know? It’s not about having the best idea solely or being right for a part. We’re not actors but let’s say you are. Sometimes sadly it comes down to who you know. – I think I’m an actor. – And those are two different things, so, having your picture taken with somebody is, that feels nasty to me. But the thing that I’m okay with, and you know what, I’ll do that. I’ll do a little bit of that and see what happens. But I also, trying to meet people who are doing things that you could potentially work together and that’s not too dirty, right? – No it’s just part of life. But I will also say– – And these things happen at parties a lot of times. – I will say that that’s not my only, my motivation, maybe in equal measure, is just to have a good time. I like to go places. – And I’m just curious. – We took our wives. – We were invited to this party, Hollywood party. – We anticipate that there’s gonna be people there that we might recognize from television and film. Maybe even the internet. It’s a fun atmosphere so I don’t wanna sell it short. I don’t wanna say that, oh, this is drudgery and I’m just going to build relationships. I’m saying the initial motivation is from a PR standpoint but then in the midst of it I’m like, well I’m gonna have a good time. You don’t get many nights our when you’ve got children. It just doesn’t happen, right? – Because the fact is, we’re not invited to Hollywood parties, but then at a certain point there are people who you can work with who get you invited to parties. Again, that sounds– – Yeah but that’s just– – A little odd, right? – No. That’s just how the industry works. – But I didn’t know that. I was just like, oh, there’s parties, if you know people, you’re invited. But there’s like parties, there may be a party put on by a brand and then, people come to these. – Yeah. Well, and might I say that– – There are people who– – Might I not say it. – Get you invited to a party. – Yeah, but what I was gonna say is, we go into these situations– – That sounds sad. – With a chip on our shoulder. I mean we talked about the chip on our shoulder already. I know those of you were are Mythical Beasts are like, guys, I don’t understand, you guys do this thing for this audience and yes, you’re right, and what we have is amazing. But there’s still a lot of things that we wanna make and there are these, there’s gatekeepers, standing at the gates of these gates that we wanna go through professionally. Well let me say creatively. It’s not just professionally, it’s creatively. – Yeah, like a movie. – But when we come into, so when we go into that party, we kinda know that, okay well, we’re going to see people that we know from things that we like to watch, but it’s not unlikely that we’re not going to be seen as, “Oh you’re those guys from that thing I watch,” because a lot of these people are probably not watching Good Mythical Morning or listening to Ear Biscuits and that’s fine, but I gotta say that I go in with a chip on my shoulder and I’m self-aware and I’m self-conscious to begin with. It’s like when you met– – Like we don’t belong. – You met Josh Brolin backstage at Stand Up To Cancer in the little holding room where all the celebrities were. Let me tell you, that was the most celebrity I’ve ever been around. I mean we got freakin’ Thanos right there. – Right. – And then there was– – Sophia Vergara– – Sophia from Modern Family, and then you got Maria Menounos right over here, and just people that people know. – Macaulay Culkin. – Macaulay Culkin was in there. – And Josh Brolin is facing away from me and I’m like, ugh, gotta talk to him and maybe take a picture and send it to my kids because Lily will freak out. – And you’re very good in this setting. I’m not good at just going up and beginning to talk to people. – You literally left that room and I asked Jenna to find you and bring you back. – It was very crowded. I’m a very big man. I’m like a Great Dane in the midst of a bunch of Chihuahuas and I feel out of place and I gotta get out, man. – Not only do you have a chip on your shoulder, but it is at a high elevation. – Yeah you can’t even see the chip ’cause the shoulder’s above your face. – But yeah I’m self-conscious too, so I was like, at the moment that I was about to say, “Josh,” and get him to turn around, I was so nervous that I was convinced that his name wasn’t Josh. So instead– – You were doubting yourself. – Instead of saying, you know I get that name fright that I’m like, I’m gonna say the wrong name. So instead of saying any name, at the last second, I was like, oh I don’t think his name is Josh and then my right hand went up and grabbed his shoulder. – You touched Thanos’s shoulder? – I didn’t tap it, I grabbed it, and I was like– – Oh gosh, I didn’t see this. – “Hey, man.” And he turned around and I was like, I think I said, “I’m a huge fan. “I just wanted to meet you,” or something like that. And then I was like, then you came over there and I was like, “Can we get a selfie?” And I was like, Jenna was with us, so I was like, “Jenna can you take a selfie?” to get it, and then he laughed and said– – She can’t take a selfie because it would just be a photo. – That’s a photo. – Right. – Right. – But then you also said– – Yeah. – “We’re big on the internet.” (both laughing) – And I said it as a, I knew it was self-deprecating. Of course he didn’t know that. – Yeah yeah yeah right. – ‘Cause he didn’t know me from the internet. – I’ve known you for quite some time. So I knew exactly what you meant but I knew that in typical Link fashion, only Link and me knew what you meant and everyone around did not. And so, Josh Brolin says, “It doesn’t matter.” – What he meant was, I don’t need you to be big on the internet to take a picture with me. – Right. – So then, he puts his arms around us. – Which was gracious, but also, kind of embarrassing to hear him say. – To take this picture, and then, somebody walks by and he’s like, “These guys are big in the internet.” (both laughing) – Hey but I got my picture, man. – [Rhett] Yeah, you did, you did. – [Link] We put it on Instagram. – [Rhett] It was a little blurry but it was dark back there. – Yeah and that was ages ago. – But you’re good at that. – You’re using that as a point to then say, that was again, going into this party that we’re now talking about. – Yeah yeah yeah. – We were squirrely. – I like, I know that you’re gonna initiate some conversations with people and I’m gonna get in on those conversations so I’m thinking about that a little bit. But of course, it’s at a hotel and there’s a bar, so sorta the first thing you do when you get to a party like this is you go to the bar and you get a drink. – Right if you’re walking around mingling and you don’t have anything to eat or drink in your hands, it’s like, you seem sad. You gotta be consuming something so that you feel like I’m not just looking for someone to talk to, yet I’m not talking to anyone. – Yeah you can’t have two free hands at a party. – You can’t have two free hands. – If you’ve got two free hands at a party, you’re nothing but a threat. You just look like a complete moron. Look at that guy with two free hands. He can do anything. He’s got the advantage in a bad way. – Yet he’s doing nothing, so that, what a pitiful person. – Two useless hands just sitting there. – I bet he’s big on the internet, period. – So I go to the bar and let me say that I’m also, I’m not good at bar. I’m not good at the whole bar thing. – I thought I was fine at bar, and I’m right there beside you, I got my elbow up. It’s like I’m a little caszh. I’m not stiff about it. – And again, I’m always self-conscious about how big I am. I’m like, everybody can see me up here, I’m towering over everyone. I’ve got this checkered suit on. That was a mistake. And you’re doing the lean so I start doing the lean and then I see that there’s all these people at the bar and there’s three bartenders and I just did the math really quickly and I was like, it’s gonna take awhile to get the bartender’s attention and then get a drink. And meanwhile I’m seeing people from, oh, that’s the dude from Westworld. There’s one of the women from Handmaid’s Tale. You know, these shows that I enjoy, I’m like, this is pretty cool, I’m at a bar with these people. – That guy looks like a male stripper. But with clothes on. – Hmm. – There are a lot of those type of guys there. – I didn’t, I didn’t notice. – Oh. – Okay. Interesting. So I then begin to see that the bartender, he’s asking people to the side of you and to the side of me what they want, and I’m like, we’re both leaning in at this point. – Well I was just waiting for him to– – Make eye contact. – Make eye contact and ask what we would like. That seems like a reasonable expectation. And then after 15 minutes of that not happening, I start to think, well maybe we need to do something, like lean in more. Like should I give more elbow? And you don’t wanna make constant eye contact. It wasn’t like I was following him like a hawk. So I started doing that. And like I’m looking at you and like I’m murmuring, but I don’t want him to hear me murmuring ’cause– – You don’t wanna look desperate. – If he gets– – You’re already just big on the internet. That’s the problem. – If he knows that I’m murmuring about (murmurs), about him, then– – We shut him down. – He’s probably not gonna wanna give me a drink at all. – And that’s why you then left me? – Well, that was, I mean that was another 15 minutes. – No it wasn’t 30 minutes. – I swear we waited there 20 minutes. – You may have been there 20 minutes. And then you left– – No I looked on your face and like, I was getting angry. I mean I know when you’re getting angry. It’s like, your eyes start to water a little bit. Not in a I’m about to cry kinda way, it’s like I’m about to explode. – Okay, I didn’t know this. – Christy and Jessie were talking, they were right behind us. And I don’t know, it’s just like, you’re there with your woman and you can’t even get her a drink. And it’s like– – I got angry at the guy ’cause then I felt– – You start to feel very small. – I felt like I was being purposely avoided. – Everybody around us, like multiple people were coming up, getting drinks eventually, they’d wait 10 minutes. – And it wasn’t like– – Then they’d go away. – They weren’t flagging him down, he was just looking at them and asking– – And he had peripheral vision. There’s no doubt that the man was seeing us constantly in his periphery. – Yeah and then– – What is it about us? He knew it. He knew we were from the internet. – He saw us and he was like, there it is. A big guy with a plaid suit and his buddy. (chuckles) – From the internet. – They’re from the internet, they’re big on the internet. I’m not going to serve them. – And of course we didn’t actually think that. I’m joking but subconsciously, you start to search for any reason why this jerk is not giving us a drink. – So to make a already long story a little shorter– – So then I left. You looked like you were gonna implode so I left. – Link leaves, of course now I have to order all four drinks for everyone. Now I’m gonna look like a total douche, but then my wife comes up and she’s like, “Why are you still here?” and I’m like, “The guy–” – Why are you still here? – “The guy won’t take my order.” And by that time I said, “Hey man, can you help me “after you help this guy?” And he was like, “Okay.” – Yeah, what– – And then he still didn’t do it! – I’m so angry at that guy. – Then Jessie got up there and Jessie, ’cause I was like, maybe he’s just ignoring the men. She spoke to him– – She spoke to him? – He’s like, “Okay,” and then another five minutes pass and then he comes back up to her, he takes the order, and then another 10 minutes pass. And he has made other drinks for people. And then Jessie is like, “Are you making our drinks?” And he’s like, “Oh, what did you want?” – What? – Yeah. Did you not know this? – No, I never heard this story and I’m so angry about it. – There’s absolutely no way it was not intentional. – All right I want to learn– – No way it was not intentional. – Here’s what I want, what I thought I wanted to learn was how to do bar but now what I’ve learned is, if that happens to me next time, I’m gonna ask the guy. It was like, why are you not asking me if I want a drink? What am I missing, bartender? Like somebody, and maybe if you know, #EarBiscuits. If you’re a bartender, please, let me know what you think we’re doing wrong. And you can say perhaps– – ‘Cause I don’t wanna be rude. – You can say perhaps and then tweet at us so that you’re not making us feel like idiots, but, I just wish we would have asked the guy. Like grabbed him by the collar and choked him ’til he almost died and then let him go at the last second and ask him– – That’s excessive. – Why did you not make us a drink? – That’s a little excessive. I don’t think we should grab him. Don’t do that. – Yeah, but, I would have just asked him. I went to another bar and got a drink! – Is there a hand signal? – There was a second bar. – Is there a hand signal, is there a wink? – I don’t know. – Is there a whistle? Is a whistle system? I didn’t hear anybody else whistle. I don’t know, I don’t do bar well. I’m embarrassed about it. – My theory is we were not talking to each other or anyone else, we were just waiting to order a drink and it– – Seemed too desperate? – We stared at him too much and he didn’t like it and he wanted to teach us some sort of lesson. – Well he did. We won’t do that again. – So ironically, with this YouTuber creator chip on our shoulder, we’re going to dive into what it means to be burned out. With so many YouTubers experiencing it along with us over the years of our career. – But first, we do wanna take a short break and let you know that you can grab this shirt, Not A Sponsor, at Mythical.store. One of us could have worn it, but Link insisted on going with his plain brown shirt and I insisted on going with my plain navy shirt. – Look how plain we are. – We wouldn’t budge so we have to hold up the shirt that we want you to purchase. You can’t purchase a plain navy shirt at Mythical.store or a plain pocketed brown tee at Mythical.store. If you’d like us to sell those, let us know. In the meantime we have a lot of other things. Mythical.store, support internetainment. – I’ve watched a lot of videos, read a few articles over the past hour in preparation for this discussion. And I will say, we rarely speak into the YouTube community in terms of things that YouTubers are discussing. ‘Cause Good Mythical Morning is not really the venue for us to talk about those things. We’re not that type of content creator. I’m glad that we’re having this discussion, but you know I really feel for, I just found myself in a place where I’m just feeling for people, all these YouTubers who are saying they’re burned out. I will say as a sidenote, I’m also still looking through all the YouTuber suggestions, YouTube content suggestions of things that we need to be watching that we will actually personally enjoy and find our little corner of YouTube. I thought we were gonna talk about it in this episode, this air date but now we’re gonna talk about it on the next one, so thanks for all your suggestions. We’re watching and we are getting to that. For right now we’re just talking about this. – For those of you who don’t know exactly what we’re talking about, I’ll give you a quick rundown, a quick summary. So many different YouTubers. This is not a recent phenomenon necessarily, YouTubers have been talking about being burned out trying to maintain relevance on YouTube for awhile, but like Link said earlier, the mainstream media has begun to notice, this year especially and there’s been a lot of articles about it, and actually YouTube has been engaged directly with this and Robert Kyncl has said, he’s responded to this. He sat down with Caspar Lee, a content creator and answered a bunch of questions about YouTube and this was one of them, talked about burnout. – Do you have any advice for creators to avoid burnout? – So we’re gonna get to YouTube’s response to this crisis, which really is a crisis in a little bit. But essentially, the basics are that there are certain aspects of the YouTube platform, it’s probably best summarized as the YouTube platform, specifically the YouTube algorithm which suggests videos for you to watch, rewards people who are highly engaged with their audience and create consistent content and it is the very reason that we ended up doing Good Mythical Morning starting in 2012 and it’s the reason that we built a company, it’s the reason that we’re talking to you right now from this studio. It’s because we got really, really lucky and sort of backed our way into creating daily content that was the right length, that was right time, right place, rewarded by the algorithm and now everyone has sort of seen that one of the tried and true formulas for remaining relevant on YouTube is to make a steady stream of content, ideally daily. At least a few times a week on a regular schedule that doesn’t have any breaks, and that expectation has led to a lot of people feeling like they cannot stop giving themselves to their audience and if they do, they’re gonna fade away into obscurity, and what’s happening– – Because the machine, this little slice of the theory, because you guess as a creator how the machine of the YouTube algorithm works in a lot of ways, and one of those ways is, well if you have a certain rhythm and then you change that, and so your channel goes dark for a few days or a week or a month or you wanna take a break, is it not literally gonna be served up, your video’s not gonna be served up as much to that audience anymore. – And that struggle has led directly to the mental breakdown of a number of high-profile YouTubers who have made videos about the meltdowns, the burnouts that they are having. – I realized last night that I can’t keep doing the vlogs. – It was just like emotionally, it was just a lot. I just felt like my brain was just tapped out. – On the inside, you feel like, just like breaking down. – And they’ve taken breaks, they quit, they’ve left the platform or they’ve just been very vulnerable with their audience and kind of explained what’s going on, and now YouTube is basically being called out by a number of publications. YouTube, what are you going to do about this crisis? – And I will say another factor that’s not the YouTube algorithm but something that happens with a lot of audiences is that they get really upset if you don’t keep your rhythm. Like, if you’re a gamer who has a daily video or three videos a day. Jacksepticeye for example, he has multiple videos a day, and then you feel like you gotta stop, you’ll get complaints from your audience. I’m not saying he got complaints but I think he anticipated that. There certainly have been other creators over the years who have, you’ll see creators miss a day or miss their rhythm and then they have to post an apology video because not the algorithm, but their audience comes after them with vitriol. Is that a word? They upset. So I will say that’s another factor, it’s not just the machine. – Yeah and so, related to that, I have seen, the majority of fans when these people have come out and said I’m having a breakdown, I have to stop. The majority of fans have been supportive. Now, a not very, very small, but very, very vocal minority has basically said, “Pull your pants up, man. “First world problems. “You’re living the dream and you’re sitting in your bedroom “making videos and now you’re complaining “about how you’re having a burnout.” I think most of you guys listening to Ear Biscuits probably don’t even need to have that explained why that’s a ridiculous perspective on this. Because these people are not making this up. They’re dealing with very, very real issues that have resulted from this expectation that has been placed on them. We’re gonna get into a little bit of the ins and outs of what might be contributing to that. But I will say that… So, being a successful YouTuber is an incredible privilege. And the factors that lead to popularity are very often outside of the creator’s control. We kinda hinted at that earlier, we’ve talked about this before. The entertainment business is, as a whole, but also on YouTube, it’s just YouTube is another side of it, there’s just so many things that you can’t control, you can’t anticipate that will lead to your sudden relevance and popularity. There’s a lot more people working very, very hard for a very long time than there are those that break through and somehow make it to the quote-unquote top. And we have somehow managed to maintain relevance for a very long time, and hard work has been a big part of it, but pure luck, right place, right time has been a huge part of it as well. – Hard work for me, luck for you. That’s a great combination. – Right, it works. – But I will say, this is not easy, okay? I’m speaking for us. I’m also speaking for other YouTubers who do this for a living. This is not an easy business. Engineering was much easier. Being an engineer was, for me personally, significantly less stressful, significantly less time-consuming, significantly less difficult than being a YouTuber. Okay? – Oh yeah. – Not even, not even in the same ballpark. So, ’cause a lot of people would be like, “What? “You’re just as easy, you’re living the dream.” Yes, we are living the dream. It is not easy. So I do wanna say that right upfront. I think it’s important to understand that– – And I would imagine that anyone who starts their own business, like starts a restaurant, I hear how difficult that is. That makes sense to me, and I feel like there’s– – That’s a great analogy. – We’re starting our own business. It’s been absolutely up to us and for the longest time it was just us, and– – It’s like opening a restaurant but you are the restaurant. You know what I’m saying? – Yeah. – If you wanna run a successful restaurant, you have to be there. I can’t think of any examples of people opening restaurants and not being there, every night. Very few examples, that’s what it takes to be successful at a restaurant but what if you were the restaurant. That’s a perfect comparison. – Right so I mean, for us it was… Okay we gotta make a go at this. This is what we’re trying to do. We’ve got families, we’ve got kids, we’ve got mouths to feed. We’re putting up videos and we had, early on we hadn’t discovered the daily rhythm of Good Mythical Morning and it was nerve-wracking back then when it was one video a month that had to top the last one. And you could spend all this time and effort and money and pour yourself into it and then there could be a glitch or something with YouTube and then it’s like, nobody sees it, or it severely under performs. And you’re going from video to video that way. So we have the luxury of Good Mythical Morning being what it is now, but I mean, I very much relate to the gamers who are putting up videos every day. Sean, Jacksepticeye, he was in here. He took a break and prepared his audience. – So I just need a little bit of time. Little bit of time to find that energy and motivation again. – And sadly he had to be apologetic about it. I just wish that, it just kinda had that tone of an apology when it’s like you know what, he’s making a strong decision for his own mental health to take a break and he’s communicating properly. That’s something to be celebrated. But he made a video every day for like over four years. And then he talked about there were weeks at a time when he didn’t leave his house at all. He vlogged about it, he told me about it when we were at the sink trying to wash that nasty smell off our hands after we shot the episode. – The intestines. – Yeah of the intestines. And I mean, I relate to that even now. It’s a position of privilege to have millions of people watching every single day, but it’s this pressure that, okay, when’s it gonna decline? When’s it gonna stop? When am I going to, I can’t let go of this thing because the bottom could fall out. I very much relate to that. – And I think that’s, you know, when I was comparing it to engineering earlier, again, this is for me personally. I’m not saying there are not engineers out there who work harder than I do. But I’m saying that Rhett the engineer versus Rhett the YouTuber, there’s not a comparison. It’s not just about the hours. I mean it is the hours, partly. We spend a lot more time on this than we did as engineers, but it is the personal tie to it, because it is you, it is you putting yourself out there. It is you, as we joke often, and it’s kind of a joke but not really. The reason it’s funny is because it’s true. You have a tendency to wanna construct your self-image out of the audience’s reaction to you and you begin to become the you that has been created in the eye of the audience. And that audience expects you to be a certain way because they got in at a certain point. You did something at a certain point in their lives and there is this really unhealthy codependence between a creator and the audience. It is the perfect picture of codependency. – Yeah I mean Philip DeFranco, he talked about how your self-worth becomes connected to how many people are watching you. – 100%. – And then if it’s not that you have 800,000 views on this video, it’s that you had a million on the one yesterday or the one last week and now, is this an indication of something, of the bottom starting to drop out of this thing? – And that relationship, I would argue, is the setting for mental unhealthiness in both parties. – Especially– – Both the creator and the audience, because– – And here’s another. Go ahead, I cut you off. – I was gonna say, people say all the time and I’m incredibly grateful. I’m incredibly grateful that people say that something that we created actually made a tangible difference in their emotional or mental life. It’s incredible. Again, never intended for that to be the case. Was just trying to make people laugh, but the way that this community has been built, and this isn’t true just of us, it’s true of many different YouTubers– – You start to feel if you take that away, you’re hurting people. – But if someone is building– – At least subconsciously. – If someone is building their self-image and their emotional health around your content, they’re setting themselves up for as big of a burnout as you’re gonna experience when you quit giving them the content. It’s not a healthy thing for either party to view their mental health in light of the content. Regardless of what side you’re on. – And sometimes when you start to experience this dynamic, you make creative decisions that make it worse. Felix, PewDiePie, he was talking about the dynamic of well, if your views start to slip, then you start to try things to connect more, to drop the facade. Maybe cry on camera. Get more personal, share even more of yourself because that works. And that very easily becomes dangerous, when it’s, you know, you’re giving more of yourself in order to stave off the turning tide. In the Verge article. I don’t know if you read that. – Yeah. – I was reading it. They talk about an expectation of upbeat intimacy, so there’s this pull between okay, you’ve gotta be somebody publicly who’s so authentic and giving everything to your audience, but you gotta be happy about it. Or ironically, you can play the I’m falling apart and this is my ploy, you know? – Right. – To recapture my audience. – Even when somebody has a breakdown and they come back, or they make the video about the breakdown and then they come back and they are different, they’re transformed, they’re more raw, they’re more real. Again, the tendency of humans is for the creator to begin to find their identity in that, in their new self that they’ve created for their audience and their audience begins to find some sort of comfort in this new person that they’re getting their entertainment from. Again, we’re talking about the very negative side of this because the overwhelming majority of the relationship that we have with our fans and what we get from our fans is positive. Don’t think that I’m painting this as this is a bad thing. It’s ultimately a very good thing but– – Well we’re describing what I’m hearing from other creators. I think it is good to describe our actual experience. – Yeah. – You know. Because, there’s always a tendency towards making unhealthy decisions and we’ve tried to navigate that over the decade plus. – So I’ve shared a little bit about a few of these things. But I’ll kinda give you the whole context here of kinda what happened to me last year. So as you know, in was it October? When did we start the new version of Good Mythical Morning? – That’s when it came out, yeah. I believe. – The new version of Good Mythical Morning. – So one year ago. – Which we called, internally we called it GMM 22. The reason we called it that is because it was, that season of YouTube was, unlike every season before– – You mean that season of GMM. – Yeah that season of GMM, unlike every season of GMM before was financed by YouTube. So YouTube said, “You’re not gonna be doing “the AdSense thing that you’ve been doing. “We wanna come in and we wanna pay you guys “to make this show, and here’s what we wanna do. “We’re gonna give you this money to make the show, “but we’re gonna give you the kinda money “that you would be getting to make a television show, “and we wanna make the content add up to at least “22 minutes a day, and we want it to be “multiple segments every single day.” Again, we talked all about it last year. People were like, “You guys are trying to make more AdSense.” Well, the reality is, YouTube came and said, “We wanna pay you guys to make more segments “every single day,” and so we said this was a great experiment. We’ve been looking for something to shake things up. Let’s do it. – And nothing about YouTube approaching us with that opportunity. We’re not critical of them doing that in any way. – No no no. – We jumped at the opportunity and we are not now critical of YouTube. – I have absolutely zero regrets about it. It was all, well, it was difficult. I’m gonna tell you why it was difficult. But we would never go back and not do it because it led to where we’re at right now. Now, here’s what happened. There was kind of a combination of things that happened at the end of the year, so you know, we had our book that we’d been working on, we had season two of Buddy System that we were working on, we had the new GMM that we were getting ready for and I’m probably not even thinking about something else that we’re working on but basically, we were packing every single hour of every single day within reason, I don’t know how many hours we ended up working a week. It probably averaged out to 60 to 70 or something like that. With all these entertainment responsibilities and then this new GMM came along and it took an incredible amount of time. But it also wasn’t, you remember this, it wasn’t received well by a lot of people. Eventually it kinda leveled out and people were happy for the most part but we’ve had a lot of backlashes over different things but there was a backlash. We tried to address it right here on Ear Biscuits. People saying things like, “Guys, just put it in one video. “Guys, just put it in one video and then also post “all the other videos on their own.” Like The Avett Brothers say, people love to talk about things they don’t know about. I was obviously upset about it. People thought I was being super defensive and I was criticized for that. I didn’t deal with that very well. But probably the bigger thing other than feeling like something we were doing wasn’t working was just how much we had done last year and how much we were signing up for that I knew would just continue right into January. So a couple things happened. You remember I was struggling with this throat thing in the fall, thought it was allergies, thought it was acid reflux. Never really pinpointed exactly what it was but it was new, it had never happened before. – I remember making fun of you a lot. – And then the second thing that happened was, kinda right in the middle of us shooting GMM, I was sitting there reading an email one day and I was like, I can’t see this email. It’s distorted, and I like look at my eyes and I realize there’s something wrong with one of my eyes. Long story short, I get diagnosed with a condition called central serous retinopathy, which is a temporary condition– – Retinopathy. – Retinopathy, in which the, basically the back of your eye right where the retina comes into your eye, where the nerve comes in. The eye has sort of filled up with fluid, it’s detached a little bit. Kinda the same symptoms that you would have in a detached retina. And it’s temporary, like 80% of the time it’s temporary and heals on its own. Lasts about six months or so. And this condition was observed, it was sort of first recognized when World War II pilots were coming back from the war and many of these pilots who’d been in these incredible stressful situations had this condition, so literature’s a little split on this, but there’s a lot to suggest that it’s stress-related. I knew at the time that it was stress-related because I was having these physical problems kinda mount up. I was thinking I don’t know how we’re gonna keep up with the schedule and look into 2018 and thinking it’s gonna be crazy. And my wife says, “You have to go to therapy. “You are manifesting all this stress physically,” which is a real thing, “And you’ve gotta deal with this. “A, next year cannot be like this year.” So there was a lot of promises I made. One of the reasons that we didn’t have a huge project in the middle of the summer this year is because we both told our wives that 2018’s not gonna be like 2017. We overcommitted. But I also knew that it was like, there was so much building that I needed professional help. My mental and emotional health was beginning to suffer. My physical health was beginning to suffer because of my emotional health, and I knew that I needed to talk to somebody about it. So started going to therapy. I’m still in it. Still going to therapy. It’s been incredibly helpful. Sorta the one-two punch is beginning to deal directly with some of those issues that I was having, coupled with us changing our approach to our schedule which is something we’ve had to reevaluate multiple times throughout our career, which we can get into in a second. But that was my last year, so when I read about these guys burning out, I’m like, I totally relate. – Would you call it a breakdown of a certain sort? – As big as a breakdown as I have had, yes, personally. I don’t think I’ve had what is a true mental breakdown before, but it was the most significant… Stress got me worse than it ever has. – Well, I should say, if you’re going blind, I should say so. – Yeah but that’s one of the things I’m dealing with in therapy is like, I am so, I have a shell that’s super independent and super self-reliant, and I constructed that for reasons that I’m still figuring out, but one of the ways I get through things is I just deny that I’m dealing with something and then it manifests in a different way. As opposed to just being honest and saying, I am working too hard. I am tying myself up in this too much. I’m like, you know what? I’m fine. I’m fine, I just can’t see, can’t talk. Got back problems. Stomach problems lots of digestive things were happening. I’m better. I’m not cured, don’t worry. I am in a much better place than I was because of a combination of therapy and just changes that we’ve made. – I mean I certainly experienced all the same stresses of being stretched way too thin and feeling like, you know a lot of it is things that we signed up for creatively that we need to, we feel like we owe it to ourselves to do it the best we can. So it’s not just about meeting audience expectations. But I absolutely, I mean, I remember always being fearful when we would take a break from releasing Good Mythical Morning episodes at the end of the year, like right around Christmas time through the beginning of the year that would correspond with us taking a holiday break. Or over the summer when we would take longer breaks. I would get very, very anxious about not what we were doing but when we decided not to do it. So the stress came on both sides. I’m grateful that we did take those breaks but the breaks were just as difficult as working so hard for me because of the anxiety of what’s gonna happen? Am I putting a bullet in the brain of our performance? Are we waving the white flag to some algorithm opponent? It can drive you crazy. I mean, I would feel that a lot. I’d feel that every time we would consider a break and how do we mitigate it or let’s just… I do think that we bypassed a lot. As bad as it got, and I mean you just quantified that that was, that’s really bad, man. – Yeah and I know where you’re going with this. – It could have gotten a lot worse for us. – Well first of all, you would have never been in a position to even experience, to even say yes to what YouTube asked us to do and say yes to all those projects that we did last year. Without a lot of the decisions that we had made, that weren’t this great foresight, and some of it was foresight but a lot of it was just the way that our lives were. And I think this is where we wanna kinda get into some of the things that we have done and continue to do to mitigate this burnout problem in our own lives, in our own careers. – Well I mean you wanna talk about Good Morning Chia Lincoln first? – Sure. – I think whenever we decided, putting out one video on our Rhett and Link channel every months that was our main strategy, and then we were trying to turn our local commercials into a television show, we were trying to get that project off the ground, it eventually became Commercial Kings on IFC but we didn’t know that at the time. As that was, we’re trying to finagle that and get it going. We decided to do more daily content on our second channel, but we conceptualized it as Good Morning Chia Lincoln, so it was just a talk show. It was basically the Good Mythical Morning format, which, I mean, you probably have heard this story a million times about Chia Lincoln turned into Good Mythical Morning but we decided to put that Chia Lincoln on the table and check in with the progress, and we said, when the Chia Pet dies, Good Morning Chia Lincoln is over. – Right. – And we did that because, well we thought we were gonna make a show called Commercial Kings and that actually happened. And we thought we were gonna be moving to LA for a certain amount of time. That was a main reason we did that. But we came up with that creative device because we knew we had to prepare the audience who may or may not show up to watch this thing, that hey, if you start liking this thing a lot, it is going to end because, well we didn’t say because we’re gonna make television show. We said because that’s just the idea. That’s the creative idea, the Chia Pet’s gonna die. – And I mean– – And so it gave us an out so there wasn’t, like, we weren’t overwhelmed with frustration from our audience– – Yeah we didn’t wanna commit to something that, I don’t know how this is gonna go. This could get old real fast, so let’s not overcommit. – Yeah, we were very nervous about doing a daily video. – Yeah so any– – We never thought about doing like a daily vlog type thing. We were doing vlogs but we would not do them every day. – Yeah so– – Even though those were very successful on YouTube. – I don’t know how our advice is going to apply to someone who’s doing a daily vlog. – Yeah I don’t think it’s advice. It’s just what we did. – Our experience, I don’t know how you can apply our experience to a daily vlog because we would never do a daily vlog. We will never do a daily vlog. – I will say this conversation is brought to you by Chia Pet. Go to ChiaPet dot, no, it’s not a sponsor. – It’s not a sponsor. The shirt, the shirt is– – What if this whole conversation was just to sell something? – It’d be pretty pathetic. – That would be sad. – I would say, even before that, ’cause I think one of the most important things you can do to mitigate burnout is scheduling, right? And so this is something that we walked into because of how old we were and what our life stage was when we sort of began doing this full-time. So we were already, we’ve been doing this since 2006. That’s 12 years ago, so I was 28 years old at the time. I already had kids or a kid. – We really had no business doing it for that reason. – So we were already pretty old. So our brains were fully formed, which happens about 26. So we were who we are in a lot of ways. We had families, we had structure, we had regular jobs before this, so there was this expectation that you’re gonna go from your home to a job for a certain amount of time and you’re gonna come back. And so when we made the decision to be full-time YouTubers, from the beginning we were like, we can’t do this at the house. We gotta find an office. We found a place where we could work. The old basement in Lillington, and we went in every single day at a certain time and we came home at a certain time. Again, that wasn’t because we anticipated that being a YouTuber was gonna be really hard and eventually lead to burnout. It was just, well, this is the structure we have in our families already, so that one sort of– – We have wives and kids that we want to see. – That one default decision to fit our entertainment careers into a nine to five essentially, which really, isn’t really nine to five, but you know, basically the same every day. That was the smartest unintentional decision we’ve ever made because it didn’t spill out too much into something that we were constantly doing or thinking about at home. We weren’t sitting there at night at the house editing videos while our kids were not with us or whatever, it was contained. – We worked one late night a week and then sometimes we slept at the office on Thursday night and we worked all day, all night Thursday and all day Friday and then we came home. But we at least kept it to that one night. That was our commitment. – As things continued to build up until where they’re at now, we’ve always tried to schedule things incredibly efficiently to fit into a window. Now, we’ve talked about this before. You’ve heard us, we’ve said it in public many times. We do not shoot Good Mythical Morning every single day and we would never ever be dumb enough to try to do that. – We did that with Chia Lincoln. – And we did it for 40 days. – And then, yeah, and we knew we weren’t gonna do that again. So we knew we couldn’t make Good Mythical Morning topical. So that we didn’t have to do it every single day. – And I’m not saying it would be dumb for somebody to make a video every day. It would be dumb for these two douchebags right here to try to make a video every single day. We know ourselves well enough to know that we would kill each other or someone if we tried to do Good Mythical Morning every single day, and our wives would probably kill us. – Yeah, ’cause sometimes we… We can shoot a handful at a time. And sometimes we would start that and then, the second one wouldn’t go well. Let’s say we were gonna try to shoot three and the second one wouldn’t go well when we were in your basement. Or not basement, when we were in your garage shooting there at that card table. We’d get at each other’s throats and then we’d be like (gruffly moans), let’s just go to lunch. And then we’d go to lunch and then we’d come back and we’d be like, I’m not shooting anything else today. I’m a bit too frustrated. – Well and you’re talking about, I wanna get back to the scheduling thing because the other thing that we’ve done in conjunction as things have gained momentum is as early as we possibly could, we’ve gotten help. We’ve shed responsibilities, we stopped editing our show as early as we thought we could, to get somebody else to do it because we were just feeling the pressure already. Right here at this table, we interviewed many content creators who were already successful, who were already making way more than enough money to pay somebody to edit their videos but still insisted on– – Said I can’t do it, I can’t give that up. – They said I can’t. You have to choose. You have to choose between complete creative control or mental health. That may be a controversial statement, but I believe that if you’re going to do this for a living, you have to make a choice between those two things. You have to give up some control and get some freaking help. And you can afford it more than you think you can, even if you’re a smalltime YouTuber. You can afford somebody to come in and help you with certain aspects of your production. Find a way to do it, your mental health is important enough to make that happen. – I do want to, yeah… I wanna back that up. I mean I was looking at Boogie’s vlog about this just before coming in here and he acknowledged, it’s not just top creators, it’s people, there’s creators who are living paycheck to paycheck. – I think a lot of people equate this problem to money. Gotta keep in mind, not every YouTuber is rich. – And if they see from video to video that it’s dropped by thousands of views, well that translates into not being able to buy groceries, you know? So it’s frickin’ scary. And we have the luxury of not being at that place anymore. But we were. – Yeah. – We were at that place and so I just wanna acknowledge that, that there’s creators going paycheck to paycheck. You can’t put a price tag on your mental health. – Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. – That was it. – Well in terms of the scheduling thing. Again, I don’t know how this translates to somebody like Ninja who streams every single day. He’s gotta stream every day ’cause that’s his job. That’s what he signed up for. I don’t think it’s ultimately sustainable. But listen, there are– – And we told him that. We told him what we’re just telling you, we’re like– – There are super people though. – Dude, take care of yourself. – So what I will say is, okay, Charles Trippy, he holds the world record for daily vlogs, and I haven’t spoken to Charles in awhile, but he’s a very tough, guy’s been through brain surgery. He vlogged it. He’s a very tough-minded individual and there are some anomalies who are capable of this kinda thing in the same way that LeBron James is capable of what he is as an athlete but don’t assume that you’re LeBron James. Assume that you’re somewhat normal, and that’s the assumption that we’ve always made is that I probably have about an average capacity for stress and for the amount of stuff that I can fit into my day. I have to get sleep. I’m not one of these people that can get four hours of sleep. I gotta get seven, eight hours of sleep every night to be healthy. So scheduling has been incredibly important to us. This might blow your mind. This may blow your mind. So if you’re doing something that you can schedule, GMM is a daily show but because it’s not live and it’s not a daily vlog, it can be scheduled. I believe that our record, there was a time when we shot eight episodes of Good Mythical Morning in one day. Eight episodes in one day, when we were getting ready for Buddy System. – I was gonna say, and then we turned around and then we shot Buddy System. – It was nuts and then we stopped. – It actually wasn’t a healthy choice, but– – We stopped Buddy System and then made like 20 more episodes. – But it helped prove to us that we can clump together episodes in order to then have space in our brains, in our lives, in our professional lives for other things. We started to figure that out. And something that we thought, oh, you know, when we started bickering ’cause we couldn’t shoot two episodes back to back, well we figured it out. – Yeah. – We figured it out. When we got qualified people, the Mythical crew, and we built that team over time to help us out, and it’s something that we tweaked and tweaked and tweaked because, we’re continually reminded of, okay. Hold on, let’s stop for a second, let’s evaluate. What do we need to change in our production schedule in order to maintain, we’re in charge. To maintain our personal health. – Yeah the decision we made is that our health would be a factor, a very significant factor in the scheduling of what we do. We’ve done over 1400 episodes of Good Mythical Morning. And we do two seasons a year, we do a summer season. There’s a few weeks in a couple places around the year where we’re not making content, but I can safely say, at least right now. Now the schedule for last season with the multiple segments a day, that was not sustainable. That isn’t why we didn’t continue doing it. We didn’t continue doing it because YouTube decided that they didn’t wanna keep doing the show in that way. Which was fine. The reason we went back to this current version was because they decided they didn’t wanna do the long version so now it’s back to the way it always was, independent, we’re completely in charge. And– – Which is best for us. – Best for us. – We’re grateful for that. – But we said we are going to approach this in a way that places our health, because our health, our emotional, mental health, physical health, all that translates back into our creative potential. Our ability to do the things, and first of all, it helps, you can be a better husband, you can be a better father, all those things are incredibly important, but when you’re talking about from a business perspective, we have to have that health in order to be able to do a show that you want to watch, to be able to make a podcast that you wanna listen to, to be able to write a book that you wanna read, be able to watch a show. So those– – I appreciate and I just wanna applaud every creator who’s coming forward and saying you know what? I am going to take a break, or I’m gonna make some sort of a change, either for a few weeks or longer, and I’m not gonna apologize for it. So I applaud everybody who’s done that. I don’t know everybody. But when Sean did that, that was great. And I was watching h3h3, Ethan and Hila’s, one of their recent videos where Ethan said– – I just have accepted that I’m like actually depressed. – I’m depressed. This is what I’m working through. This is why I haven’t been making content, you know, on our YouTube channel, that’s what he was saying. And I applaud him and everybody who comes forward and says, you know what, I’m making this, this is the healthy decision for me. The flip side of that is it bothers me that it has to be an apologetic tone, you know? I could sense in the way that he was talking that he just felt, I mean, they were coming off of some other issue with– – The game. – They were beat up about their video game release and I feel for ’em related to that and you know. But then it’s like, I just felt sad that there was a tinge of an apologetic tone in saying, “Hey I’m doing what’s best for me “and you as an audience member. “I’m sorry that I can’t give you what you want.” And, I read a lot of the comments and was encouraged that there was a lot of support there. I wanna echo that to them that to them– – Again, the majority of fans are very supportive. – Very supportive. – But they also, a lot of people don’t realize, a lot of fans don’t realize how the expectations they placed on creators has contributed to this problem. And it’s almost unfair for them to expect, but I think there is an application for fans because you do now understand, you’ve heard it from so many different people that there is this unrealistic expectation that you will be given exactly what you want, when you want it, from everyone you want it from. And it comes at a cost to the health of the creators who are giving that to you. That’s a factor. – Before the internet, everything was seasons. Like I’m so grateful that we called Good Mythical Morning seasons because we knew we were going home to see family for a break and we weren’t gonna make videos. ‘Cause we weren’t gonna be together. So we started calling them seasons. But all these gamers and vloggers and creators, it’s just like, an endless commitment. And it’s ridiculous. It’s a ridiculous expectation. So I was telling Sean, just call ’em seasons. I wanted to help him so badly, but he’s helping himself, he doesn’t need my help. But just to shift gears here because, you know, we’re rounding the final turn. I think the question is, what role does YouTube have to play? What is our opinion about how much of this is YouTube’s fault or is on YouTube to fix? Because a lot of the articles that are out there now– – Say YouTube’s not doing enough about it. – YouTube’s not doing enough. That Verge article being the most recent one. – I have a potentially unpopular opinion about this. – And I’ve got, okay. We may agree. – Is this YouTube’s fault? Well. (sighs) Yes, in one sense, but is it YouTube’s responsibility to fix the problem of burnout? Now, to their credit, they have addressed it publicly. Several different people, several different employees have talked about it. – They’ve got videos from Kati Morton who they put on one of their official channels. Which are helpful. – And well, like Robert Kyncl said, you can take a break. You will not be penalized. There’s plenty of examples of people taking breaks and coming back and not suffering a loss in views. The algorithm doesn’t punish you. Okay, I don’t wanna get into the ins and outs of the algorithm, but ultimately what I wanna say is, YouTube is going to be in the business one way or another of rewarding engagement. There’s just no other way that this works, people. – Automatically. – This whole thing– – With AI. – This whole thing is driven by getting more people to watch more videos so they can see more ads so Google can make more money. That is for better or worse, in this particular economy, that is how this system works and it’s not going to change anytime soon. So they can make some changes. They can offer resources, they can tweak the algorithm so it doesn’t penalize you. But the responsibility of handling this problem is not on YouTube, it is on you as a creator. You are ultimately responsible. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Hope that YouTube will do something that will help this problem so you can confidently take breaks and worry about your own mental health, but don’t plan on it. What you need to do is to take your life into your own hands and your schedule into your own hands and your business into your own hands and make some decisions that put you first. Put your mental health first and listen, I don’t wanna– – What is YouTube supposed to do? I mean– – I don’t know. I don’t know that business. I don’t know how it works and so, I want YouTube to do everything that they can to be helpful, and I hope that they will, but that’s– – It’s in their best interest to. – I’m not laying the blame or the responsibility on them. They need to show up in the way that they can. But you can’t wait around for YouTube to change something so then you can change something about yourself. You have to make those changes first in yourself. And I just wanna say quickly, okay, I especially, I have a tendency to get preachy. I apologize for that. I’m not saying that we’ve got this figured out. I just told you that within the calendar year, I had physical problems, thought I was going blind and had to go to therapy. I don’t have this figured out. We got lucky. We made a lot of decisions by default, based on other life circumstances. We’re just telling you what we learned. Not saying that you have to do this. I’m not saying that if you do this, it’s gonna be okay. I’m not saying that we’re never gonna have another burnout. It could happen tomorrow. All I’m saying is that, this is what our experience has told us and I do feel strongly that my mental health is my responsibility and so I have to get off my ass and take responsibility for it. Now it took physical problems. It took my wife saying, “You have to go to therapy,” but ultimately I had to make the decision to actually do it myself. So I don’t think we should be just sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for YouTube to do something about this, that’s all I’m saying. – I don’t… I think they can do their part just like, hopefully, we’re contributing to a change in cultural expectations of the audience. Like I appreciate you listening as a YouTube viewer and maybe that changes the type of comment that you would leave when a creator disappoints you with taking a break, just to be very specific. – Or takes a break without apologizing or without letting you know. Be sympathetic. You never know what’s going on. And for the creators, the other thing I’d add is that, you have to get to a place where, first of all, being a successful YouTuber does not equal happiness. I am not happier now than I was 12 years ago before we started this. Success and happiness are largely unrelated. All, every single, all the research, all the science points to the fact that you basically return to your default baseline happiness after all kinds of different life circumstances. Lottery winners very quickly return back to a baseline happiness that they were before they won the lottery. And YouTubers who experience sudden or longterm success return back to the same baseline happiness because your happiness is not dependent upon success, so if you’re thinking that being recognized and being relevant is gonna lead to happiness, you’re just plain wrong. So I think that happiness comes from being in healthy relationships, from serving people, from worrying about your own mental health, from taking breaks. There’s lots of different things that actually do contribute to happiness and those are things that you can do whether you’re a YouTuber or not. But if you are a content creator, if those things are not present in your life and the only thing is this complete lie that we all believe that if more people like me, if I break that number of subscribers that I’ve set up as this altar, I will be happy. You will not be happy. You will be less happy if you begin looking for happiness in things that are completely outside of your control. – When Felix released his video months ago about this, his conclusion was, so as a creator, if we’re talking to creators at this point, just do, just create things that you’re passionate about. Stay engaged. – Mm. – Of course I agree with that, but I also think that when you’re running a business, like starting your own restaurant or whatever it is, at a certain point you’re also trying to make a living. And so I think that you’ve still gotta factor in, you’ve gotta factor in your mental health and your quality of life separate from your content and your relationship with your audience. What you were saying, and then, do things to mitigate the ways that your videos may perform, your channel may perform poorly when you take breaks for your own health. And so I do think that YouTube can continue to equip creators to make sound business decisions in that way. Like, okay, can you… Here’s case studies. We presented Good Mythical Morning as a case study. Hey, we batch shoot. Sometimes, we did eight extremely, we did eight episodes in a day. These type of things, just trying to still make as much money as you can. It’s not just about being a pure artist and having to, okay, the way for me to be healthy is to only make things for myself that people, just by chance as a byproduct, enjoy. Let’s also say, it is a business. You’re a business owner and you’ve gotta make sound business and personal decisions together and that’s a component of it. – Yeah, yeah, definitely. – And you will get burned out. Assume that it’s going to happen and how do you turn the corner when it happens and head it off at the path so it doesn’t happen in an extreme fashion. – Yeah. And listen when you get help, you have to worry about those people getting burned out too. You know? – Yeah. – That’s something that we have to think about with the people who work on Mythical crew. Are we spreading them too thin? Are we asking too much of anyone individually? So it’s just something you, yeah, it’s so easily set aside because… Because you can’t put a price on it, you can’t put a price on it. You cannot quantify mental health as a dollar sign, as a dollar amount, but– – And we wrestle with it. I mean in conclusion. There’s not an absolute conclusion. We wrestle with it every week. I literally said yesterday, and just a private conversation between the two of us, I was like, we’ve continued to make changes to our production schedule in order to give us more room to like, if we wanted to go surfing. I think we talked about it on this podcast. When we were coming out of that horrible time. We’re trying to create more space to get creatively energized by doing things just for the fun of it. – Yeah. – And I said yesterday, I was like, as much changes as we’ve made even since then, drastic ones, to our production schedule, we’re still hard-pressed to find time for ourselves. And it’s like– – Yeah. – So we continue to fight for it. And it’s a result, a success, so I’m very grateful for that at this point in our careers. But I’m just making the point that it’s a constant battle. – And you gotta be aggressive about it. You gotta get ahead of it. – So good luck with that. (Rhett chuckles) – Yeah, that’s appropriate. – This was all just to sell this mug that says good luck with that, available at Mythical.store. – That’s what we were doing the whole time. – So if you don’t remember anything. (chuckles) Gosh. Remember our store website. – You would greatly relieve my stress if you would go and buy one of these mugs. No no no no no, forget I said that, forget I said that. – I’m sending out love to all YouTube creators and dedicated fans who support them. You do your thing until you need to stop for a little bit. Both of ya. – Don’t be ashamed. #EarBiscuits. – We’ll speak at ya next week, give you an update on what we’ve found. Are we finding our corner of YouTube that we can enjoy? It’s ironic how, I’ll save it for next week, but I’ll just say– – It’s another podcast. – We’re so invested in this, yet we’re like, we’ll talk about it next week. – Yeah, yeah. Ironic. – #EarBiscuits. Let us know, let’s keep the conversation going. – Yeah. To hear this Ear Biscuit in its entirety and make sure you don’t miss an episode, follow the links in the description to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are available. – [Link] To watch more Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist on the right. – [Rhett] To watch more of our daily show Good Mythical Morning, click the playlist on the left. – [Link] And don’t forget to click the circular icon to subscribe. – [Rhett] Thanks for being your Mythical best.