My Response To Michael Reeves | The Full Story

I don't have credit. Don't have a credit card. I don't actually know what rent is here.

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So today I want to introduce you to Michael Reeves. He's a millennial college dropout turned computer programmer turned robotic mad scientist turned YouTuber, turned back to robotic mad scientist turned viral internet personality. Within a few short years, he's amassed a following of nearly 5 million subscribers on YouTube, 1 million on Twitch, and hit upon hit of multi-million view videos showcasing his love for computers, programming, and tasers. Lots and lots of tasers.

I was intrigued by nothing short of a YouTube algorithm masterpiece. As someone who's deeply obsessed with all aspects of personal finance, investing, and saving money, I had to reach out so we can get an inside look into how Michael Reeves was able to turn his love for computers, programs, and tasers into a full-time career. And now how he manages and spends his newfound money.

So with that said, here's how Michael Reeves saves, spends, and invests his money… wait for it… Michael Reeves, millennial money! Oh, and by the way, if this video gets 100,000 likes, Michael Reeves will tase me. Okay, fine, he was going to tase me anyway. But still, make sure to smash that like button because it helps out my channel tremendously, and subscribe because why not? It's totally free, just takes you a split second, and uh thank you so much, and let's begin.

Here… oh boom. You mentioned robotics. You can move my thing with just floating your hand around.

Like the way I got into it was, um, I worked a software development job for the government, like an internal tooling system for one of the public school systems back where I'm from on Maui. And I was getting like extremely bored of programming, and I used to have fun with programming. So I purposely started doing really like stupid things just to keep my interest going with it. Because I've seen, you know, it's like good to just do dumb stuff that's fun.

How much were you making back then?

Yeah, it was 15 an hour, which sucked because I was like leading their team at this very small rinky-dink college.

What were you doing with that money back then? Were you saving it or spending it?

I was still living at home. It was like a good thing, but I was saving for the year of college. What am I saying? I didn't get scholarships, so I had to pay for it. No investing. Seriously, I took a small interest in like the stock market and learned about it a little in college, but that was that was about it.

So did you teach yourself to code?

Um, yeah. Yeah. Just the internet's like a great place, especially comp sci. It's just like, like Harvard puts their computer science courses online. You don't need to go to Harvard; you can just like look at the Harvard class online. It's crazy.

Yeah, when COVID's not around, I go to colleges and break into their comp sci classes. Just pretend to be a student, bring a backpack, just sit down. And they just talk. They don’t take notice.

Have you actually done that?

Yeah, it's bad.

What?

Yeah, you just get to watch a college class without paying tuition. It's awesome.

Your first job, did you get that just from information you learned online for free? Was it free?

Very. Yes, you're still free. Man. You just go on YouTube, free courses. Um, like you can sign up for Skillshare or Udemy. The meat of it’s always the same if they're a decent teacher.

Does an employer look at that and see that you don't have a degree?

And like, what's your degree? Udemy. I learned online, YouTube. What you gotta do is you gotta start doing stupid projects. And they don't have to be stupid; just you gotta start doing your own projects. So you don't have to be at a workplace. It's really nice. It's not like, like you're a doctor. You don't have to be on site to show something on a resume. With software development, you don't need to be working in a company to, you know, make your own app. You just make your own app, and then now you have that on your resume.

A microwave that only turns on when you scream at it.

How would I… Why? Why pull it out?

What made you post that first YouTube video?

I've been watching YouTube since I was like very young, and I would sometimes just watch YouTube for like eight hours a day. And it was like, that's what I did. It's just bad. Yeah. And so I'm like, it's not that it was easy, but I'm like, I know I've always gone off of like, I know what I like to see in a YouTube video. And it's like, I'll just do what I would like to see if I was some other guy watching. It's like, I mean, I'll just try it.

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Gee, I wish I had a robot that could shoot lasers into my eyes"?

While I sure have, like I haven't worked just doing like YouTube and stuff very long still. I got out of my one-year college and then moved back home for like the summer. Um, and then I moved to Oahu, which is a different island in Hawaii, not the island I'm from, and I just kind of chilled there and was almost homeless.

And I think that was the point when it was like, um, it's somewhere in like that span of that blur of time I was like, "Yeah, we should probably make this like a try-full time at it." Not too close because it's kind of dangerous.

So just put your hand up; it'll reach the water.

First and foremost, I need it to be fun and interesting because then I'm gonna… if I start treating it like a job where I'm just like strategizing about how to grow and get bigger, then the way I think about it is, I'm just back at square one where I was at my job and I was like trying to think of new fun things to do. This is the new fun thing for me, you know?

And I needed to like stay fun and interesting and not turn into like a grind. I needed to just like enjoy it. I won't work on like projects even if like maybe they do well on YouTube if I don't think they'd be fun and interesting, you know?

Um, like this… what is this that we're in?

Oh yeah, this is the… this is from my last video we're doing. This is for the video with Amazon. Amazon, it was all based around the show on Amazon Prime. Um, it's called "The Boys." There's a scene where like a guy uses a baby superhero to cut two guys in half. He uses like the laser vision. I put this together.

And so the thing is, it's like, wow, this is scary.

So if you give it a good shake, like give it a really... hold it by the neck. Hold it by the neck.

Hold... wow. Yeah, it's shake activated. Uh, lasers come out.

Wow!

Okay, so how about this? Could you break down a bit of your business? I mean, surely at this point, it's turned into an income source. Where does that come from? Is it like YouTube at the top, and then that trickles down everywhere?

It's like, it's actually, YouTube is maybe like... the YouTube AdSense is like 10% of it. I don't make like very much because of how much I like swear. I… they just I don't get very good CPM.

Um, so most of the income is actually from sponsors, which is which is nice. Sponsors. Um, I started doing Twitch recently, which is cool, so there's like income there. But I don't really stream because I need the income. I just it's like a fun thing.

So when I get stressed from YouTube, I go to Twitch. Stress from Twitch, I go to YouTube. I take sponsorships that I like. The fact that I like don't make many videos means I can just take the sponsorships that I think are, you know, good products. And I get to keep it like genuine. Like I don't do any sponsorships for like stuff I don't… wouldn't use myself or don't enjoy.

Oh, we should have talked about my, uh, tutoring business I had on Oahu. So I just made like a bunch of fake websites and companies— not actually founding them. I would just like make a fake website, fake Craigslist ad, three, four, five, six different companies— jokes on you, they're all me! I'm all of the companies. And then I would just contact people that way.

So I just had a small monopoly on the comp sci tutoring business on Oahu.

That's clever.

For a while...

We're gonna get to the juicy stuff now.

Yeah, sure. How much do you spend?

I think most it's the same as most people where my biggest spend is food.

It's food?

Food isn't that… how much? No, that's not the biggest expense for most people. How much do you spend every month on food?

I guess I don’t have a lot of expenses. Okay, I've, I've… I think I was actually watching one of your videos. How much do I spend on food? I get like Uber Eats like once a day or once every other day.

Okay.

Um, usually it’s like I’ll get it, and then it just lasts me the whole day.

What would you say though? Your food budget is? Do you have a food… do you have a budget or is it just whatever comes to mind?

Whatever comes to mind.

30 bucks a day? 40 bucks a day?

So we're gonna count that about a thousand dollars a month now.

You really just got to extrapolate that out to the months. Besides food, where else do you spend your money?

I mean, um, I got business expenses. Um, this, I mean, I pay a guy to type the room. My overhead's really low though since I do most of the stuff myself, um, and Chinese electronics are extremely cheap most of the time. So I just order like bulk electronics for whenever I'm building something.

You'll get your odd, like I need to pay for something quite expensive.

What about rent?

Oh, rent! That's got to be more than food, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's more than food.

Surely?

Yeah, yeah, surely! It’s more than food!

I don’t actually know what rent is, yeah here.

Could you could you say your portion of rent?

I know. I don't know what my portion of rent is. I… cause there's like it's complicated. There's one big bedroom upstairs, yeah, and we… it's like a thing where we keep swapping around our splits of the rent. At one point it was like 2,000 or something.

It less?

More? It's… I think it hovers around 2,000 or less.

Okay, around there?

Yeah, that's really good!

Yeah, well there's a lot of people in the house. It's not too bad, right?

That's actually… I, I approve of that. I will give the thumbs up.

Yeah, plus I get like, um, no one uses the garage, so I just pack it full of my tools.

It's actually really... That's decent.

Yeah, how long did this take you to make?

I think two months, start to finish.

Wow.

Like, and that was just like every day, get up… that was I had a lot of structure at that time. Like come in here, work on this thing, go to sleep. Obviously, I don't know, start to finish. When I start something, how to do it! I have to kind of go into a little blind solve it as I go. That's just like the nature of doing new projects. But like mostly it's just internet. It's like watching some people do some things like building off of it. Learning 3D printing— so I wouldn't have known that I could do this if I didn't like learn 3D printing like from a random Chinese 3D printer that the Chinese company sent me like forever ago.

What about car payments? Anything like that?

No, I just bought my car.

Okay, Tesla, right?

Yes, yeah. All three! I always wanted that!

Yeah, it was what? Didn't pay zero dollars?

I'm gonna have it for my whole life. Um, I assume like most of my adult life. I've never been like a car guy, but when I like first saw Tesla coming out, I was like, "Okay, if I were ever to get a car, that would be the car."

Okay, so now why didn't you finance it?

Oh, I…I don't know how to do that. So I went, I don't have credit. Don't have a credit card. Don't talk to me!

Don't talk to me about it!

Don't worry, I'm really not waiting. Don't talk to me, girl!

We're gonna sign you up for a credit card before I leave!

You know what? I'm getting, I have one, I just never activated it and it's a problem.

Which… what was your first credit card?

What did you get from Chase?

I think it was when you talked about financing like houses and how it's smarter to mortgage them instead of just pay for them outright. I was like, "Oh, that's what credit score is for!" Like I don't, I… 'cause I hate owing money so much, I… I don't ever have debts. I always pay them off. Just always. I just hate that, or I just won't do it in the first place. But when you're like leveraging, you're using it as a leverage instead of like it's a necessity.

I understand.

So where would you say then you waste your money? Is there any place you're just like...

I'm actually not too bad. One of the few things I bought for myself is that record player.

Okay, how much was that?

I was like, 200 bucks.

Really?

Yeah, it's this pretty cool record player. I don't use it all the time because I just have a Spotify account. I… I invest in the stock market sometimes. Um, been doing that since I lost a bunch of money on GoPro in college.

And I buy a bunch of money, I mean probably like 200 bucks.

Okay, because I was in college and didn't have money at all.

I just have a low overhead, so I'm able to do... I'm able to save it. I'm able to invest it. Throw a lot of it into investing. I'm thinking about real estate actually less as a source of income and investing.

Though I want that to be, you know, a facet of it. I think I just want like a, I like the idea of like redoing like a house— just like it's a fun project on the side. Just like… and like having a house, it's like wow, I… that's my house. That's cool.

So how much of your money would you say you save as a percentage?

Like fifty percent, sixty percent, eighty percent?

Do you save eighty percent of your income?

Like all the money I don't use on like food rent. I don't buy a lot of things like for myself.

I think every purchase I've made— and I buy from like Amazon so much— every purchase I've made like in the last five months has been business expenses.

So what are you invested in now?

Just SPG, which is a property company.

You're just in Simon Property Group on the recommendation of a friend?

Not much else, just kind of…

So wait, wait. So all of your investment right now is Simon Property?

Oh no, no. There's a bunch of… it's not the whole portfolio. Okay, it's that… I haven't found anything else that I'm like very interested in because I'm like, you know, just throw a, you know, sliver into that.

It's not like Wall Street bets double down on SPG one day calls.

Now why tasers?

You know there's no better way, like they're just fun. First of all, they're fun! Also, you can't like trigger fire with like as quick as you can, you know. Like with electricity, it's so easy to just, you know, hook a taser up to a relay and now you have something you can trigger electronically through like a robot.

It can trigger instantaneously! For robots, tasers are easy to work with. They're epic too! It's fun to taste people.

On a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?

It's… it's probably not as bad as you think. The sound is definitely more impending than the actual tasing. Remember I told you how the sound is worse than the actual tasing?

How many times have you done this to people?

More than I can count and more to myself than I would care to have admitted.

All right, I'm gonna do this.

Oh, okay, it sounds bad!

It's not as bad as… it's a little shock.

It's not as bad as you think!

Also, you can get… you can get like… do it again.

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It's not too bad.

It's not as bad as…

Yeah, yeah, this is like, I think it's mid-charge. It's not as bad as you think.

How many hours a day do you work?

Depends. I have a very like really weird schedule for working. Like if I am working, it's like I'm working like 15 hours a day, 16 hours a day. Working on, like working all night, working like 30 hours straight. I did for the last video of like overnight.

Um, and then when I'm not doing that, I'm like just playing video games.

Any idea why you're so successful?

I try to just make stuff that like, kind of how like when I first started where it's like I just want to make stuff that I myself would enjoy. Like I like good YouTube content. I love good YouTube content. I want to make, you know, YouTube content that if I were watching, I'd enjoy.

So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. Make sure to subscribe, hit the like button and notification bell. Also, feel free to add me on Instagram. I posted pretty much daily, so if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me there.

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