Building Practical Engineering with Grady Hillhouse

0:00Any chance you could take to reduce the stakes gives you more room to experiment, to try new things, and I, I mean, that's how you learn to, to get good at anything. But definitely on YouTube where, you know, y- there's just no way to know what people are gonna respond to and enjoy unless you try it out. And so especially if, if you can lower the stakes and do it, you know, just for the pure joy of making videos. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's conversation on the YouTube Creators Hub podcast.

0:31Before we get going, I do wanna say thank you, uh, to all of the new listeners and viewers out there. This show has been going on for almost 16 years, which seems crazy to me. I've interviewed almost 500 creators, and there's always things that surprise me, and we've done some episodes recently that have done very well and have expanded beyond the tens of thousands of people that we normally reach. And I just wanna say thank you to you, the listener, and don't forget to reach out to us if you're looking to take your channel to the next level.

0:59We've got all kinda offerings for creators, so check out that in the description or in the show notes, however you're consuming the podcast. With that said, we are joined today by Grady Hillhouse. He is the person behind the Practical Engineering YouTube channel. As of recording this podcast, it has 4.83 million, that's right, million subscribers, uh, 250 videos uploaded. A bit about Grady. Um, he's an author, civil engineer, and science communicator widely known for his educational video series, Practical Engineering, which is his channel we were just talking about.

1:37It's currently one of the largest engineering channels on YouTube. Grady's videos focus on home-built demonstrations of engineering concepts, have garnered media attention from around the world, and been featured on the Discovery and Science Channels. Grady, how are you doing today? Good. How are you? Doing well. I'm just excited to chat with you today. I know this is gonna be another good one, and I'm just gonna dive right in. So with the channel, you've got 250 videos uploaded, and if I sort by oldest to newest, it looks like it's about 11 years ago when you uploaded the first video titled Turning a Segmented Bowl on the Lathe, Cherry and Spec trap…

2:17I don't even wanna say that word. I'll probably butcher it. But can you give my audience the story or the origin story of how did Practical Engineering come to be? Yeah. My journey on YouTube started with woodworking. I get-- I, my father-in-law gave me some woodworking tools, and I, I had never done anything like that. I didn't take shop class in high school. And, you know, what do you do when you, when you get a new tool? You, to, to learn to use it, you go on YouTube.

2:45And I started watching some woodworking YouTube videos, and that was my first kind of exposure to YouTube as more than just a search engine for videos, you know? That I noticed, you know, there were these people who had channels, and they had an audience, and they had built a community around what they were doing. And for some reason, that just really captured me. I was s- I was just really interested in that. And so, you know, as I started my kinda woodworking journey, I decided I wanna make some woodworking videos too and post them on YouTube.

3:20And You know, at the time, I was working as a civil engineer, and slowly, you know, as I got more interested in YouTube, as I started enjoying the hobby more, the videos started to kinda transition from woodworking to talking more about my career and, and the things that I was passionate and interested in within civil engineering and the built environment and things like that. And eventually, it just got to the point where that's really what people came to expect from me.

3:47That's what I really enjoyed making videos about, and so th- that's when I kinda branded the channel as Practical Engineering, before it was just my name, and kinda started taking it a little more seriously. Did it take off rather quickly? Because that first video has over 350,000 views. Is a lot of that people who know who you are now and going back- I think so, yeah … to kind of where you started? Or kind of what was the… Was it a slow burn? Yeah, I think it was a slow burn.

4:13You know, there were some-- there were definitely some inflection points pretty early on. Tom Scott, who probably a lot of your viewers know him, a pretty popular kind of science-y type, uh, YouTube guy, he had a big channel at the time, and every once in a while, he'd go on vacation, and he wanted to maintain this, uh, weekly upload schedule, and so he would invite guests to produce a video that would go up on his channel. And so I did a, a video for his channel, and that, that drove a lot of viewership early on in the channel.

4:45So that was a big inflection point. And then, yeah, I just had a few videos that did, you know, really, really well compared to what, what they normally do, and so it just slowly grew. When you made the transition from doing woodworking to doing more engineering-type videos, kind of experiments and, and builds and things of that nature, and you really honed in on who your audience was, did you see a big kind of growth spurt of just like, "Okay, I'm niching down.

5:14I know what I wanna create, and I kinda know who my audience is." Can you talk about that transition and maybe how important or not important it was to kind of make that kind of decision? Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I still kinda feel like YouTube is a, is a place to experiment, and it… although we, we have a pretty, you know, standard format for our videos now, we still sometimes will t- you know, go a little rogue with w- with the topics we cover or just try something a little different or new.

5:47And I've, I, I've always kinda maintained that, and so it's hard to really put a finger on, like, what works or what doesn't 'cause I think audiences change The, the platform itself changes and you kinda always have to be at least playing around on the edges of things to see what, you know, how people respond and, and what people are interested in. Yeah, I think that answer is really indicative of kind of successful creators on YouTube, is that they're willing to-- If you look at MrBeast or any of the guys who are super popular and viral, they are willing to put themselves out there and fail over and over again and experiment and try new things.

6:25They're not going too far out of their comfort zone or their niche- Yeah … but they are going far enough to where they're like, "Okay, I'm experimenting to see if this works or that works." Yeah, exactly. And then when they find something, they kind of double down on it, which is kind of what you've done. Um, if you were to equate or put, put it on one or two things as to why your channel has done so well, what would you attribute that to? Man, luck.

6:48Good luck has gotta be the top one. I guess the other thing is, is, you know, there-- especially in education and science and technology, y-you have a lot of channels where the host or the creator doesn't necessarily live in that world. Like, you know, they're, they're a little bit more of a generalist. And for me, you know, I worked as a civil engineer for almost 10 years, and so I'm more, a little bit more of an insider, and I think, I think that's something people crave on YouTube is, is to hear from someone who, you know, who has some background, some, some expertise and some knowledge that you couldn't just get from a Wikipedia page or something like that.

7:34And if there's folks listening to this thinking to themselves, "Oh, I'm never gonna get 1,000 subscribers or 10,000 subscribers," what would you tell that person? Because I get a lot of that. People hire me or they email me for the show, and they say, "Man, I really would love to be on the podcast someday, but my channel just seems to be stagnating, and I, I see no growth." What would you tell that person? Um, I, I mean, it's tough because for so long, for me, YouTube was a hobby.

8:00I, I really didn't have any, any goals for it. Like, it was just a fun way to spend my free time and, you know, share some of my knowledge and passion about it. And, you know, that's changed over time, especially having employees now. You have to be more thoughtful about, you know- Hitting those, those metrics, but for m- for the majority of the time that I've been do- doing YouTube, it, it wasn't that important to me how many subscribers or views I got.

8:34Like, it, it, it really was just, "Hey, I'm excited about this topic or this, the, this thing that I'm building in my garage, and I wanna share it with people." And I really think that-- I, I think it's important to have that attitude because there is-- there's so much that you, you can't control when it comes to, to YouTube or any type of content creation. And if you kind of make yourself beholden to those numbers, it's like you don't know what kind of ride you're gonna be on, basically.

9:04It-- Do you think that's kind of been a bit of your superpower per se as far as a creator is not being too concerned? And it's easy to hear that and say, "Oh, well, of course he's saying that," right? Almost five million subscribers. Yeah. He's got a big channel- Yeah, exactly … a big audience. But I, I really believe you're being genuine, and I think that would you agree that that might have a little bit of contribution to why you've been so successful?

9:27I think so. You know, any chance you could take to reduce the stakes gives you more room to experiment, to try new things. And I, I mean, that's how you learn to, to get good at anything. But definitely on YouTube where, you know, y- it-- there's just no way to know what people are gonna respond to and enjoy unless you try it out. And so especially if, if you can lower the stakes and do it, you know, just for the pure joy of making videos and sharing something that you're interested in with an audience, you know, that is the way to get better at this, I think.

10:02Completely agree. You mentioned YouTube was a hobby for a long while for you, and then now it's obviously a full-time gig and you have employees. Can you remember the moment that you thought to yourself, "Okay, this might can be more than just a hobby"? And can you talk about that transition? I don't know if there was ever one moment. I-- There were definitely moments where it was kinda like, "Wow, I'm making…" Like, there w- there was a time when it was like, "Okay, these projects that I'm building out in my garage can pay for themselves now."

10:33And then it was like, you know, "This is actually meaningful to my, to my finances." And then there definitely did reach a point where it was like, "Okay, I'm making more money than I'm making in my full-time job now Just doing this as a hobby. But I love being an engineer, and it was an important part of my identity, and so I was, I, I think just because of that, I s- I kept it as a hobby for a lot longer than I could have and maybe should have.

11:02And it really was a culmination of things that kind of forced my hand. We had our first kid, I signed a book deal, COVID happened. All these things kinda came together and, and it reached a point where I was like, okay, I can't be a great dad, a great civil engineer- Mm … a great author, a great, you know, online advocate for the built environment on YouTube. I can't be great at all these things with the time I have available. And so that really just kinda forced me to say, "Hey, you know, I think I'll take this seriously for, for a little bit and just see how things go."

11:36I still maintain my, my professional engineer's license 'cause you know, I wanna be prepared for if the bottom falls out of this at any moment. Yeah. I, I, I tell people all the time, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." Exactly. This thing could, could crash and burn tomorrow. So- Exactly … I, I'm with you. So I, I love that story. That's, that's really good. A lot of people do it too early, and you're saying you might have kinda held on for maybe even longer than you should have.

12:02I love that. Your videos, you know, I watched s- I got addicted to them. I'm not a big… I don't have much interest in the topics you're covering. Yeah. But once I started watching, I watched a video you did about a month ago titled, "Are Beavers Actually Good at Dams?" That video has 1.1 million views, getting 600 views every hour. Can you talk about just how you are able to make time to produce, you know, biweekly or weekly videos that are 15, 20, 30 minutes in length, still be a good dad, and still do- … all the other things that you… Be an author.

12:36What are your maybe guardrails that you've put in place to make sure that you stay focused and, and maybe can help some others listening to this who are like, "Man, I wanna do this YouTube thing, but I got other stuff, and I don't think I have time to do YouTube"? I mean, I'm very fortunate that I get to treat it like a full-time job, and I really do. Like, I come, I come into the studio at 8 o'clock, and I leave at 5 o'clock every day. And, and we've built, m- me and my team have built, you know, a s- a set of systems that, that work for us to, to get a video out twice a m- twice a month is our schedule.

13:12And so everyone kinda knows every month w- you know, what they're gonna be doing each week to make that happen. I am a project manager at heart, and so, you know, I really think about, think hard about, you know, what has to happen before this happens, before this happens, and, and we've just built this pipeline that's kind of a well-oiled machine now. And s- I mean, that's a big part of it. But a lot of that was born out of doing it as a hobby and not having a lot of free time available to do this.

13:43And I don't-- I'm not sure why exactly, but it's, you know, early on I decided 'Cause a, a lot of the topics we cover and the projects that we build could kind of spiral into the, into infinity if you aren't careful about it. And so early on I decided, "You know what? I'm gonna draw some, some boundaries. I wanna set a schedule and say, 'Hey, whatever we get done, what, you know, whatever we get written, whatever we get built by this time is what's going out on YouTube.'" And so that kind of created this cadence where it's just like, I know I have this much time to write this script this week, and however good it is, is however good it is.

14:23And we've almost never, you know, missed a, a, a video deadline. Can you talk about that video process if you're trying to get, uh, a video out every two weeks? Can you talk about from start to finish kind of what that looks like? Yeah. How many do you have up and going at the same time? Yeah. Um, how long can one take? Because I look at some of these videos that you've done, you know, every US electrical outlet explained, the grid that doubles the strength of the ground, what's under your feet in New York City, these really amazing titles that we'll talk about packaging in a minute, that really draw me in as someone who doesn't really know what it's about.

15:03And so that's- Yeah … y- your team's doing a really good job. So can you talk about start to finish kind of what that looks like? Yeah. Uh, we can skip, yeah, the packaging and the, and the topic selection. But o- once we, once we have a video picked out, the first step is scripting. I do most of that, although my producer sometimes helps with that, with the scripting, especially fact-checking and just general editing and stuff like that. And we almost always have roughly five videos that are in various stages of, of production.

15:33Um, and so once the script is done, we go through what's called a breakdown phase, which is… And this is more on the producer side where we're deciding, what are we gonna show with this script? Like, are we gonna show my face? Are we gonna show something that got, that we built in the garage? Are we gonna pull, you know, a stock footage clip for, of a bridge or whatever? And then, and s- so once we have a script and a breakdown, we sh- we shoot it, and then that goes into post-production editing and, and motion graphics.

16:05And for half the video, so one, one per month is something includes a, a built demonstration of some kind out in the garage. And so, uh, that's part of the scripting process too, is building that demonstration, you know, getting it to work right on camera and stuff like that. What have you- So that, that's the general process. And what have you learned about filmmaking, video making along these 10, 11 years that y- I mean, I know you, I know you've learned a ton.

16:32Yeah. But as far as being on camera, you know, you were an engineer. You weren't- Yeah … an actor. You weren't someone- Yeah. … who was an on-camera personality. You know, and now that I've been doing this full-time now almost 12 years, you know, the camera and the microphone to me seem normal. Like that's just- I don't even know they're there anymore, but like someone else who comes to my home office or studio, they see it and it's very abnormal.

16:53It's not, it's not the norm. So what have you learned about being on camera, storytelling, all the things that kind of make up the good anatomy of, of a successful video? Yeah, there are so many things you could go into. And, and like I s- Give me a top three or four … like, like I said, I'm a civil engineer, you know. I have no formal training in any s- any part of this process. There, a- and that's, you know, that was a big part of why I started doing YouTube is because it did let me flex some skills that I didn't get to, you know, I didn't get to do at work, and be a little more creative and stuff.

17:26And so yeah, I mean, e- everything from Good writing to production to, to lighting and audio and all these things. As far as being on camera, that's a thing that I, I was hesitant to, to, hesitant to do for a long time, but finally it just made sense to have an on-screen host during s- you know, some parts of the video. It gives the videos a lot more personality and, you know, it's fun, too. And one thing that helps me a lot is I fly-- My, my editor is my best buddy since we were kids, and, uh, he lives in LA.

18:02And so three times a year, he flies here and helps me shoot videos 'cause it's so much easier when you have someone else in the room to, to, you know, to help you with the, with being on camera. So he kinda acts almost like a director saying, "Hey, you know, you looked really bored when you said that." Stuff like that just kinda coaches me through it. 'Cause it's still, you know, I'm not the most charismatic person- Yeah … out there, and so it just helps.

18:29I interrupt this conversation just for a few seconds to tell you a few things that we offer to creators. If you're someone looking to take your channel to the next level, I think we have something for you. We have a creator mastermind group. Five ten bucks gets you in. We do mastermind calls every month, sometimes two to three times a month. We also have channel reviews where you pay a very small amount for me to take a look at your channel, and then I record a six to seven-minute video around your channel of where I think you can spend your time to improve your channel.

18:59And then if you wanna go even farther than that, I offer one-on-one creator coaching where you get to sit down with me thirty minutes all the way up to ninety minutes, and we break down your channel. We talk about things that you think you need to work on and more. And so if you're looking to take your YouTube channel to the next level, check the show notes, and I think you're gonna find a service for you. Now, back to the show. Yeah, whenever I have clients and we're working on on-camera presence, I'll have them pretend like they're filming a video, like on a call.

19:28It's very awkward. Yeah. But I'll have them say, "Hey, pull up a script or something you're working on, and let's kinda do a rough draft, and let's run through this together." And nine times out of ten, it's the same thing you just said, where it's like I'm telling them, "You don't even act like you wanna be here. Like, what are we doing?" Yeah. Like, you know, it'd be like listening to this podcast and the host just be kind of just, uh, very in doldrum and, and v-very low tones and not have passion, right?

19:52So I think that the on-camera stuff… Were there any things you did to get better other than working with your editor as far as being on camera? Yeah. N- I mean, noth- no like concrete steps, I guess, but it's, it's just been this gradual process 'cause, you know, for so long I was trained in this communication style of an engineer, right? We, we talk in jargon, we use very formal language in writing and speaking and even in public presentations. And so it's just taken me a long time to get-- to kind of break those habits and, and move my communication s- style to something that's more accessible, more exciting, more interesting And, and really it's just video by video.

20:36You, you know, you watch it, you see how it came out, you see p- how people respond to it, and you say, "Oh, I'm gonna do that a little different next time." And, you know, over time you just get better at it. Yeah. Uh, it's, it's-- I love talking to people who've done it for so long like you have, because y- you can just hear in your voice in these answers you thinking back of the times that maybe you've failed- Yeah and something has flopped. Can you talk about a video or an idea through these past 10 or 11 years that you can look back on and remember like, "Man, this was a epic failure," but you learned from it and you got better from it?

21:12Yeah, I mean, there have been qu- there have been a lot of videos that, that just- Give me one specific though totally missed the mark. Yeah. Way early on, I d- I, as a, as an engineer, I was doing mainly working on dams and mainly working on, like, the hydraulics of dams. And so one of the big things I did was model floods on a computer, and I thought it was super cool. And so one time I made a video where I took terrain data from Mars and used that hydraulic simulation model and ran a flood on Mars, and I mean, I was just like, "This is gonna be awesome.

21:52Everyone's gonna love this." And it just w- you know, it just really flat-lined. And so that was an example of, like, okay, I need to recalibrate the things that I find exciting versus what, you know, a general audience does. Yeah, so you did that video- But there have been lots of examples like that … you did that video about nine years ago. It's called- Yeah it's been a while … Rivers- Rivers on Mars, exclamation point, and other uses for hydraulic models.

22:15People are gonna hear this and think, "Oh yeah, he's being a little humble." It's got almost 200,000 views. But the, again, you know, people who discover Gray now- Yeah … probably go back and watch these videos. Yeah, people go back- It probably performed- … and watch the old videos. Yeah. It, it performed poorly in, in, in retro r- relevance to what he- Yeah … would, would say would be a good video. So it's-- I loved asking that question because I can remember so many podcasts.

22:39I remember a podcast I did early on, it was episode in, in the 50s, and we're-- this episode will be, like, 520 or 521 or something. Yeah. And it was a father and son, and they… You would think that on a podcast like this, if you have creators on that have tons of subscribers, like you, right, where they're millions of subscribers, they're gonna be a great get for the podcast. Yeah. Nope. Had them on. They were just as dull as could be. There was no value.

23:06There was nothing. And I thought to myself, going in, I thought, "Man, this is gonna be so good." I almost didn't air it. Thank God I did because I have a relationship with them and they've kinda connected me with some more people. But you learn lessons along the way, right? Yeah. Where from your failures. Oh, yeah. I mean, uh, almost every, every aspect of the channel is built on lessons learned where, you know, we didn't, we didn't do something very well on a previous video.

23:32That's awesome. I, I love to ask that question. Now let's talk about packaging for a minute. I think that's probably, in my opinion, one of the things that your team and you do the best. Uh, your most recent six videos, there's not any text on the thumbnails. I'm gonna, I'm gonna say the titles again 'cause I think it's important. Every US Electrical Outlet Explained. Stopping the Unstoppable. I love that. The thumbnail is like a big train and then like this machine.

23:58It, it just makes me wanna click, right? And that video's performing very well for you. And then the next one is Are Beavers Actually Good at Dams? And it's got this really amazing picture of this beaver up close of his face. Explain your strategy for packaging a- and what you guys are doing so well to evoke the curiosity that makes people wanna click and watch your videos. I wish I had a good answer for you. I mean, we do-- We definitely have a process that's evolved over time.

24:24We, we put more thought… You know, it used to be that we would just be like, "Let's do a video on this," and we'd just write the video and then once it was produced say, "Oh man, what are we gonna put, uh, as a thumbnail on here?" Now we put more thought into it. W- We have kind of a pitch process where everyone brings ideas. We talk about them. We see if there's a way to-- You know, there's an angle on it that, that would grab someone's attention.

24:52And once we do have some ideas we feel, you know, like we could make a good video about it, we do mock up some thumbnail ideas and say, "Oh, what if we, you know, did this," or, "What if we titled it that?" And so there's like a little more discussion and thought about it before the video gets produced. And then, and then, yeah, at that point, you know, we feel pretty confident that, that we have a topic that, that's gonna make an interesting video, but it also has a hook into it that's gonna capture some interest.

25:23And so usually the final title and thumbnail is pretty close to what we had discussed in those pitch meetings beforehand. What does that ideation look like? Where I assume you've got a massive list of things because for you- Oh yeah … s- I mean, th- to be-- to an-- As an engineer, I'm a tech- technology person. I love tech and so like if I'm doing all these videos on tech I get very excited. So I assume for you, you kinda get giddy about some of these projects that you get to work on, l- right?

25:50You, you get to be excited about them. So what does that ideation process look like and how, how do you, how do you filter through some of the stuff that may not be as good as the things that get through that filter to publish on the channel? Yeah We do have the big list. It's not very well organized. We get a ton of, of ideas from emails and stuff, people in the comments saying, "Hey, you should cover this." And so that's kind of the first layer of, of filtering.

26:17Of course, you know, a lot of that stuff is ideas that I have that I throw on the list, but, but I also look at what other people suggest and say, "Hey, you know, is, is there any chance that we might cover that in a video?" I'll throw it on the list. And so then most of the pitches that, that myself and my team bring to those meetings come from those lists, and we're all-- we're just thinking about, "Hey, you know, is-- could-- are there good visuals with this topic? Like, is, is there a visual component?" 'Cause there's a lot of good stories out there where there's just not that much to look at, and so that's one thing we're thinking about.

26:56Is there a nice hook, like a great title and thumbnail, or at least, like, a cool case study that would kind of show people the stakes of this engineering topic? I'm trying to think what else. You know, a lot of it is just gut feeling though. It's just like, do we think this is cool? Are we excited about this idea? Um, 'cause that's what carries you through this kind of arduous production process is, like, you gotta be kind of enthusiastic about it and excited about it.

27:26And so that- Mm-hmm … kind of is, you know, the bellwether to, to whether a, a topic gets made or not. How do you get through the days or the weeks, and we all have 'em. I think a creator that would say that this is not the case would probably be lying to you. How do you get through, I don't know if I wanna call it burnout, but maybe days where you're just like, man, I know everyone looks at this job and they think it's the most fun thing ever, and it is.

27:51It's phenomenal to be a creator, but there are days where you don't wanna turn the camera on. Yeah. You don't wanna put that microphone on. W- what do you do on days like that for, for you and for your channel? Well, I mean, first and foremost, like I mentioned before, is I, I treat this like a day job. Like I, I t- I turn it off at 5:00 PM- Mm-hmm … every day and I go spend time with my kids, right? I'm not thinking about this nonstop 24/7 every day, and that helps a lot.

28:21And, you know, maybe you get better results if you do treat it that way, but, but how sustainable is it? And so I've always kinda tried to make this not my entire life, you know. So that's one thing. Another one is, like I mentioned before, we have multiple videos that are in various stages of production. And so- Mm-hmm if you're starting to get burnt out on something, a lot of times I'll just switch to another video and work on that one. Um, but even within individual videos, because there are so many aspects of the production process, a-- sometimes it's just like, man, I'm tired of writing this script.

28:59I'm gonna go out to the garage and work on the demonstration a little bit. Like, it, it's, it's just like having something to switch to for a little bit- Mm. Yeah … to kinda reset your brain helps me a lot. And so that's, that's the way I kind of try to arrange my day is where I can, you know, switch gears if needed. Yeah, I'm exactly like you. It's, I've kind of built my business to where, you know, a lot of the week I'm talking to creators like you.

29:22I've kind of outsourced a lot of the editing of the podcast over the past couple of years, and so the things that I were, was not as interested in that oftentimes kind of bottled me up or balled me up, uh, I don't do anymore. And then I get to make my videos for my channel, and then I get to film weddings and do videography that way and kind of create art that way. And so there's a lot of different aspects of your business where you can kind of shift to something else to kind of get you back in that mindset of, "Okay, now I'm ready to go. Now I'm, I'm ready to get back on the, on the tracks."

29:53Um, all right, let's talk about money. You're obviously making good money in, in terms of kind of, you know, being an engineer and being able to replace that income. You obviously have team members, so you're paying them salaries as well, I presume. So with that said, can you talk about the different avenues in which you make money, and then on average, what could you make on a good month? Yeah. We- We, our primary revenue streams are Y-, are AdSense, YouTube AdSense, and then sponsorships.

30:22And so, you know, that's able to, to feed my family and, and two full-time employees, one part-time employee, and a few contractors who kind of help with motion graphics, thumbnails, that kind of stuff. So, so yeah, it's, I mean, it's, it's working well and, and it's been actually, you know, for as volatile as YouTube is, fairly stable over the past, you know, few years, which is as long as I've been doing this full-time. The other thing that, that has helped is books.

30:58I wrote one book that came out in, I think in 2020… Gosh, 2023, I believe. And then I have another book coming out, um, in March of next year. And so that's been s- a nice kind of supplemental revenue stream that's kind of built out of the channel as well. Yeah, so the, the partner program, the YouTube ad revenue, is it seasonal for you? Or like, I can look through, uh, I use vidIQ- Mm-hmm … and, you know, y- your channel gets anywhere from 6 to 10 to 12 million views a month, right?

31:29Sometimes a lot more than that. Does that sound about right? Well, since YouTube changed how they count views, it's, I, I haven't quite recalibrated my brain to, to the new view system. Yeah. Yes. I think- Usually I say north of five. Yeah, north of five million, and, you know, your videos are averaging 20 minutes, and so you're able to put some mid-rolls, a couple of mid-rolls in there. And so, um, you guys can do the math listening. You know, really good revenue from that.

31:58And then can you talk about, like, when you're getting a sponsor for a video, how much currently in the state of your channel getting those views… You know, some videos may take off, like the one that you did a couple of weeks ago, right? Where you did the video about stopping the unstoppable, and that video is right at five million views within three weeks. That, that one was an outlier, right? It was one of those that performed really well. So on an average video, how much are you charging for a sponsorship?

32:25That is under NDA. Mm-hmm. I work with an agency who, who gets our sponsors, and so there's pros and cons to that. Obviously, they take a cut, but it's also a part of the business that, that I don't particularly relish, is negotiating, you know, with, with sponsors. And actually, it's been really nice working with, with an agency because most of the sponsors on the channel aren't just there for one video, right? They're long-term. In fact, this year in 2026, SendCutSend sponsored half of, of our entire production schedule.

33:03And so having those long-term sponsors evens things out for-- on their end and on my end because, you know, there's not this huge risk for, oh, this video did terrible, and that sponsor's never gonna work with us again. They get a much more stable kind of connection to my audience, and we get a much more stable revenue stream as well. And, you know, that's something I probably could not have negotiated on my own. But having an agency kind of hold my hand through that process has really helped a lot.

33:35Grady, you've been a phenomenal guest. I, I wanna ask you the last question that I always ask people that are on this podcast. For those listening to this, they're on a bunch of different spectrums of where they are on the journey. Some haven't even started, some have hundreds of thousands to millions of subscribers. What advice would you give to creators listening to this who are yearning to have a successful channel or be a creator like you are?

34:01What would be your final word to those folks? I think it really is to f- to find the joy in the process itself, and to, and to worry far less about, you know, the tangible results that come out of it. And, and really just, you know, treat it like a hobby in that you, y- you find the joy in, in just doing the thing, in just the process of making a video or a podcast or whatever it is. You know, I think that's w- it's worth doing on its own accord.

34:34Uh, and if you can find that joy in it, I think that the, the success is more likely to follow in that way. That's awesome. That's really good. I'm so glad I asked you that question. Guys, if you wanna check out Grady on YouTube, it's just Practical Engineering. I encourage you to go watch the beaver video. I watched it last night, and my 11, my 11-year-old daughter was like, "Daddy, what is that?" And we watched the last 10 minutes together. So, uh, kudos to you and your team, Grady.

35:02You're obviously doing something right. So again, I'll have it linked down below, along with his books and different things of that nature. So Grady, thanks again for joining us today. Thanks for having me. And that's a wrap on this week's podcast. I'm so thankful that you stayed to the end. Don't forget to check out all the services that we offer for creators. Everything from our mastermind group, channel reviews and audits, one-on-one coaching.

35:23If you're looking for something, we have it. Check the show notes for all of the things that we offer creators. With that said, don't forget to subscribe to the show wherever and however you are listening or watching to the podcast. That way, every Friday when we go live with a new episode, you will be notified. And with that said, we'll see you guys next week