A Year of Loss, Fatherhood, and Reinvention

The Palisades [music] is a complete disaster zone. Everything is gone. [music] So, it's been a pretty stressful year and stress and making YouTube videos, they don't really mix that well. Now, to catch you back up, in January of this year, both of our homes burned down in [music] the Palisades fire. Shortly after that, like days after that, [music] Samir and his wife had their first kid. And right after that, we took down our entire podcast studio

and moved into a new building and a project called The Lighthouse. And about 3 months later, Colin and his wife had their first kid. We've made less YouTube videos than we've made on this channel in a really long time. [music] And you guys have watched less uh because we put out less content and probably because you're less interested. >> You got anything you want to say? >> And we are approaching [music] next year 10 years of

making videos on this channel. It's been a while since we've done this like just like talk to you guys. Felt like the right time to do it. Also, if you're curious, we're standing in the middle of the Palisades. So, it's kind of like the town center. >> It is one of the oldest parts of the Palisades. that have been coming here since I was about I don't know four years old and none of this exists anymore.

So this is a story about rebuilding and reinvention. [music] So Colin and Samir, this channel was already a reinvention of ourselves on YouTube. [music] We had started on YouTube in 2011 and had this really amazing experience building a channel in the sport of lacrosse. But after building that channel, we just felt like we wanted to make it to the big leagues of YouTube. >> We wanted all the people that we admired on YouTube basically just to

watch our stuff and [music] think it was cool. We just wanted to be seen. We also wanted to get this channel to a million subscribers and figure out how to make the Colin and Samir channel be our job. That's what making it was as YouTubers. >> So, we started really without a plan. And if we're being honest, reinvention did not go well. >> Ready? >> Yeah. >> If you could switch hair with someone right now for

the rest of your life, whose hair would you get? >> We made so many videos over basically the course of 5 years with minimal viewership, making almost no money, and at one point we almost walked away. And so through this process of trying to figure ourselves out, we decided to start a podcast. And the podcast was about our struggles of making it as YouTubers. And what happened next was that a bunch of YouTube creators started listening

to our podcast. And then when CO hit and there was nothing else to film, we decided to film that podcast and put it on YouTube. >> This is a really big deal. >> The day we got a podcast set. >> Yeah, that changed everything. >> All right. Welcome to the brand new version of the Colin and Samir podcast. Lily, welcome to the show. >> Thanks for having me. You know, a YouTube channel is a resume. [music]

>> Your fans are your focus group. >> Longtime listener, first time speaking to you guys. >> Laserike focus. I just want to be the best YouTuber I can. >> And we ended up hitting milestones I never thought we would. A million subscribers in front of our entire audience. 100 million views a year on the channel. >> Part of the wildly popular Colin and Samir show. >> You guys are like the Oprah of YouTube. you really are

like connoisseurs of this whole creator economy. >> Obviously, I'm just such a big fan. >> I watched these guys on YouTube almost religiously. >> And on top of all that, with the show working came financial success, not just to the point of like we could do this as our job, but we actually got to build a team around the Colin and Samir show and eventually got to buy houses. >> I'm a little speechless. >> And that

to me is crazy. the fact that we just committed to this YouTube channel and that led us to actually achieving all this and then we had a physical manifestation of all of that hard work in our homes. That that was just like a total dream come true scenario at the end of 2024. By all measures of our imagination, we had made it. We had validation from all the creators that we admired and we were able to

do this as a career. But in 2024, a strange and unexpected side effect of the success that we found was fear. Now that we got the thing that we always [music] wanted and worked so hard for, we were afraid to lose it. [music] >> We made a studio tour of our brand new podcast studio. We looked at it and we were like, "Nobody wants to watch this." >> We went golfing with Good, which was a great

video that's like ready to go, but >> that's a great video. >> It didn't come out. We made tons of videos that just won't see the light of day because we were too afraid to put them out. >> And I would say primarily for the show. There's a lot of times where people reached out who wanted to come on the show and I would absolutely love to sit down with that [music] person, but I couldn't figure

out if it would make sense in a title and thumbnail, if it would actually attract the type of viewership that we had gotten accustomed to, that we felt like was the amount of viewership we needed to keep the business running. All that said, dealing with this fear led us to publishing a lot less videos. Now, reinvention itself is stressful, right? Like having to actually take a new shape and figure something new out, that's in and of

itself stressful. But reinvention on YouTube is more stressful because you're doing it in public and the viewership is public. The comments are public. Like, this is a comment we just got like right now on the channel. says, "The next video better be a hit, boys." >> I don't think this conversation had any value to add to a small/aversized creator. I didn't learn anything that could help me do better, get inspired, or anything like that. >> I

liked it when you felt like you represented creators, not billionaires. That's an interesting one. >> Okay, here's more of a comment uh than a question. Honestly, watching this channel now feels like walking into a seemingly local restaurant and then realizing it is a food chain. Uh >> yeah, that hurts. That hurts. But I understand that, you know, I I I I read feedback like this and I'm like, that's uh that's good for us to know how

it feels. >> And this is a comment we got on our most recent upload. What the are y'all doing? Honestly, have a whole channel about how to be YouTubers while being dog YouTubers whose channel is slowly dying. Yeah, that that one hurts. [music] >> So, it's comments like these that you know even before the fires, even before becoming fathers have contributed [music] to fear. And then once the fires did happen and once we did become [music]

fathers, you're now feeling an extra heightened sense of pressure to provide and make the right decisions. So, we've [music] actually got to talk to some pretty cool people this year. One of those people was Reed Hoffman. Reed Hoffman was the founder of LinkedIn. And in reference to this year that we're having, he said, "Never waste a crisis. >> Turn crisis an opportunity. Never waste a crisis." >> That hit me like a ton of bricks. Like right

when he said it, you just realize that amidst how crazy this year has been, it's actually a huge opportunity to reinvent. it doesn't like compute in your brain cuz you're standing in the same spot you were standing and it had a whole different meaning and a whole different feeling and now it's like 100% different now at the same time of of navigating like this process of of the houses being gone um becoming fathers is a whole

other thing I would say becoming a father kind of saved me this year because it it allowed me to have so much perspective and so much understanding of what I'm doing at home is the thing that is my life that is the thing when I come to work that is that is the other thing that's like almost like the hobby it's a thing I do for fun and it's obviously the thing I do to provide for

my family too for me becoming a father has removed so much of the fear it is the best thing in the world I feel like life actually just started and looking back it's been fatherhood that has provided a new level of comfort efort and stability to create from this feeling like no matter what happens, I've got my family. >> Yeah. You make whack YouTube videos and your kid still likes you probably, right? >> Until he gets

to be 15 and he's like, "Whoa." >> Until he starts watching. >> He starts leaving the comments, right? >> Good question for Rhett and Link. >> That is a good question for them. >> All right. So, here we are just about one year after one of the biggest life-changing moments ever. Of course, this has been a very dramatic change in our life. But if you're watching this, it's possible you're going through some type of change right

now, too. And when we drove back up to the Palisades recently, we ran into someone who really helped us understand how to deal with change when it's happening. [music] His name was Noah, and we're driving and we just see him walking with a shovel. And we pull over to talk to him. So, Noah is a kid like me who's born and raised [music] in the Palisades and trying to figure out what's next for this town. But

what he was doing was just digging holes in this very small patch in my neighborhood and just planting [music] trees. And while we were talking to Noah, Colin shared with him this Dave Chappelle quote, and it was the first time I had ever heard it. He said, "You can't always change the world, but you can make a corner look pretty nice. Yeah, literally a corner of this part, all these little things. >> I always like that.

>> And that's exactly what Noah was doing. It's an incredibly overwhelming task [music] to try and figure out what's going to happen in the Palisades. 7,000 homes are gone. But what he's doing is just taking small steps that will eventually have larger impacts. And that's one of the biggest lessons that we've learned this year. When you're dealing with change, you just have to take small steps. When big change happens drastically, you can't fix it all at

once. Okay. So, this has been like a totally crazy and unexpected year of our lives. And you know, one thing I'll say is like I have such immense gratitude for all of you watching us, supporting us, supporting this channel over the past 10 years of us doing this. Even the comments that are critical show that you care. So, in a way, I appreciate that. And amidst all those comments, it's just part of the job. You're going

to get critiques. There were also so many uh positive and uplifting comments and people just asking how we were doing. So, we wanted to take this opportunity and kind of bring you more behind the scenes of what this crazy year has been like. >> I also want to say thanks to all of our creator friends. like being a YouTube creator has this crazy side effect of being a part of a very tight-knit community of people who

deeply care and helped us out a lot this year as well as everyone who works at YouTube. This is a crazy thing when you become a YouTube creator like you join this this bigger thing and I felt that this year more than ever. So, as we move forward now into our 10th year, there are a ton of ways where you can watch us experiment, where you can continue to keep up with us outside of even just

this YouTube channel. So, we've been releasing audio only episodes on our podcast feeds. If you want to check that out, it's on Spotify and iTunes. Uh, we've been experimenting with short form content on this YouTube channel as well as Instagram. We've also been sitting down with creators of all sizes and helping them workshop their problems on our second channel, Creator Support. That's been super fun. And we've been hosting a lot more events for everyone who came

out to Press Publish NYC in 2025. We are doing more of those. And when I say more, I mean multiple >> two >> two. You'll find out about that very soon. But that has been really fun is getting together with you guys. If you want to come check those out, subscribe to our newsletter and publish press. You'll find out about those. All right. Thanks so much for watching. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for being a part of

all of this. 10 years of calling and smear in 2026. >> See you. >> All right. See you.