My Response To iDubbbzTV | The Full Story

I got really anxious one month because I was like I spent like 800 on ubereats this month. I was like that's bad. [Music]

What's up guys, it's Graham here, and I'm not gonna lie, today is one of those moments where I have to sit down and pinch myself to make sure it's real because I'm about to sit down and talk business with someone who I've looked up to for years, and that would be iDubbbz. That's a bit of a problem.

This is just sort of a dad bod simulator. Now, some of you might know him for his comedic rants or his edgy humor or his content cop series that single-handedly destroyed careers while cumulatively racking up hundreds of millions of views. But lately, he's taken a softer, more artistic approach to filmmaking while he documents an inside look into the lives of unconventional people and unconventional stories.

However, despite him creating content around others, very few people get to hear about him, and today he's allowed me to turn the tables so he could talk openly about his views on investing, personal finance, saving money, and how he was able to grow from nothing into becoming the face of a million-dollar business.

In real talk here, this entire money series was inspired by Ian. After watching his full force documentary, something just immediately clicked, and I told myself I want to do that, but in such a way where I could showcase the financial behind-the-scenes lives of the most successful people in their field, and somehow that came true.

Pokimane, Michael Reeves, Kevin O'Leary, and the Stradman all disclose their business that no one else talks about, and today we literally have the person who inspired it all right here, ready to be financially confronted by me.

So if you enjoy these videos and you want to see more like it, just do me a really quick favor and smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm. Not only does doing that help me out a lot, but it's also totally free, and it lets me know you want to see more videos like this. Plus, if you smash the like button right now, I'll finally stop asking, so thanks so much for doing that!

And now, let's go into the financial life and behind the scenes of iDubbbz.

"It's a lot of fun reaching out to other people and collabing, and I think the sort of financial stuff is like a lot of the stuff that people want to hear from their, you know, favorite YouTubers or whatever, but they just can't. It's like not accessible. So, do you have you come out and, you know, grill us, get all the information? It's like it's very fun."

"Is there anything that's off limits here that I can't ask you?"

"Nope."

"Anything?"

"Nope."

"I could ask you any question I want, and you'll answer it?"

"Yes."

"You'll be honest?"

"Absolutely."

"What did you want to be when you grew up?"

"That's a genuine question."

"That's a genuine question."

"Yes, I have no idea. I never thought really. I didn't give it too much thought. I think making money doing something I enjoyed was like the only sort of barometer."

"Then what led you to making YouTube videos?"

"I was watching a lot of game commentators online, so I did it as a hobby for a long time. A lot of past channels just dead and gone. But I played games. I didn't get particularly better as time went on because I was doing it sort of casually. But eventually, you know, I started making money, and it started doing better when I would do different things, so I actually sort of grew out of the commentating over games and did more general commentary."

"How long ago was this? Like what age were you when you started doing that?"

"Oh god, it's kind of embarrassing to talk about because I always think about it. I'm like, oh yeah, I was young, but I was like early 20s. I was playing like Minecraft, and like commentating Minecraft when you're like 23 isn't particularly glamorous, but it was fun at the time."

"Yeah. How much were you making back then?"

"I would say probably around two thousand to three thousand dollars a month, and that was exactly where I was like aiming for. I was like if I can make this, I can rent an apartment, I could get food, and that's pretty much all I needed, you know? That's all I really cared about."

[Music]

"Did you go to school at all?"

"Yeah, so I graduated from Cal State San Marcos with a bachelor's in business management, and that was like super useful to me because it was like this period of time where my parents could continue to hound me about getting a job and completing college and whatever else. And while they were hounding me about that, I was also doing YouTube. It gave me like this weird little flux period where I could continue to grow the YouTube channel, so by the time I was out of college, I didn't actually have to get a real job. I could just keep doing YouTube."

"Have you ever had a real job?"

"First, the Gap and then Legoland."

"Never would have guessed."

"Yeah, Legoland was much better. I was doing food and beverage, so I was flipping burgers and cutting watermelon."

"What did you spend the money on back then?"

"I didn't spend very much money. I definitely err on the side of saving. But yeah, I'm not much to be honest; like gaming stuff like computer parts, that sort of thing. When I was working at Legoland, I had this—they have this day; I don't know—like Legoland's not going to come after me—they had this day where it was like half price all LEGO products for employees, and I was into flipping it at the time. So I would buy half-price LEGO products in Legoland and flip them on eBay, and that definitely helped out the like $8.50 minimum wage that I was earning. That was a start, I think of like trying to earn a little bit more."

"What do you think of the school system in general?"

"It's going to be sort of the same thing that you hear from most people, I think my age, who haven't really experienced much benefit out of paying the ridiculous amounts that people are paying for school. It's generally useless if you ask—I think anyone who's semi-successful will say don't go to school unless you need it to become a doctor or lawyer or something like that or a civil engineer. But I think a mentor is infinitely more useful than, you know, four years of school."

"How did you figure out to be different?"

"A lot of those unboxing videos I was just like I think in a lot of ways at wit's end in like video ideas. I'm like I can't come up with anything, so I'll just be a clown in front of the camera for, you know, thirty minutes."

"So recently, I've noticed you've shifted a lot from that content to more of the behind the scenes of making documentaries about other people. What caused that shift?"

"I would compare it, Graham, to a financial portfolio, right? Okay, maybe for the past, you know, five years I've had like fifty, sixty percent of my portfolio in commentary, general commentary ranting, giving my take, maybe like 20, 30 into edginess and toxic behavior that could, you know, drag people in. But I need to start to sort of balance my portfolio, get a little take a little bit away from the edge because it's not great returns on that."

"Sure."

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the Batman here to steal all my coyote urine. But the documentaries you're making, I gotta say, are incredible. How much do they cost to make?"

"Oh man, it's cheap. The cost of an Airbnb: one bed, three dudes. Yeah, not much. I would say like I don't know, like two thousand dollars."

"Now the question I'm really curious: how much do these make?"

"Something like the airsoft fatty one that ended up doing a lot better than I thought it would because there was some questionable stuff in it, but it did, I think probably around twenty thousand dollars, and that's like really good for like my channel because usually it's like much lower CPM rates. And then beyond that, it's just whatever sponsor would give, which is around about the same."

"And then what about for ice cream man?"

"That one was better because we had merch. We split the merch like roughly three different ways. It was Dax, me, and Dane, and gosh, net sales on that were maybe I don't know, two hundred thousand, something like that. I think we kind of prefer doing that because obviously you don't have to put some weird ad in there or halfway through; you don't have to deal with those weird requirements, and you know, the fans walk away with something a little keepsake."

"Let's just put it this way, guys: if you want to own a piece of history, then you'll buy this shirt."

"So how's your business broken down right now?"

"So we got me at the top, and then we got an army of editors—like three editors. One does like a stream highlights channel thing; another one does the documentaries, and another one just sort of picks up the slack when I have a tummy ache or something. Beyond that, there's really nothing."

"How many hours a day do you usually work?"

"It's very tough because when you're, I guess working from home, self-employed, whatever you want to call it, you don't really track your time very well, and what categorizes as work time is very weird. The stuff I'm doing, like you know, lately I've been getting into Twitch, and I've been like just kind of watching other Twitch streams and, you know, doing research—not necessarily setting things up or anything, but I've just been brainstorming a lot of the time, and that really kind of coincides with leisure a little bit. So it's really hard; I would say if I'm being honest, it's probably around five to six hours a day."

"Happy New Year's Eve, everyone! I hope yours is going better than mine is."

"How many different income sources do you have?"

"AdSense is like 50% of the income; merch is like 30%, and sponsorships are like 20%."

"Can you share approximately how much that works out to be?"

"Roughly, it vacillates between like two hundred thousand to five hundred thousand a year."

"So I think at the start, I was motivated by money, but you know, you I'm sure have seen it; like there's a lot of studies out there measuring happiness, and it's like maybe a hundred thousand dollars is like peak utility that you can get for your money, and I tend to agree with that. I think anything past that hundred thousand per year kind of number, you just don't get any extra value. So I think basically since I reached that number, I've just been like, yeah, you know what? What creative mark can I leave on the world? What can I do? I have a mobile game that I'm working on that's sort of been my project for the past three or four years now."

"What about your investing? How much of this income are you saving?"

"I guess whatever I'm not spending, I'm saving, so it's probably close to eighty percent is being saved, and then it gets split between my SEP IRA and just an individual account and then a bunch of random things. I have two houses."

[Music]

"And I recently started investigating the like private crowdfunded real estate kind of stuff. Okay, that's been nice instead of actually having to buy properties."

"Has this always been something you've been interested in, or did this come just as you started making more money?"

"Well, I think everyone's wired a little bit differently. I think you're someone who totally is like gamifying your life a bit where you're like, I just love to see all the value I can extract from different things, you know? It's fun figuring out credit cards, how you can maximize the amount of money that you can make. And you know, I think that's been maybe from when I was like 25 and older; I was more interested in like spending my time listening to financial podcasts or just general YouTube videos talking about that stuff."

"So two houses: what was the first house you bought?"

"A single-family residence for myself."

"Yes, all the boomers in the world are just like obsessed with real estate, and they just talk about real estate like it's the best thing ever, and I sort of took that information to heart. So I was like, okay, I'll get a house. I like owning stuff; it feels like I'm not throwing away my money."

"What about the second place?"

"For a rental, yeah. So the first place, actually, I want to rent that out now. I've left it; I've paid it off completely. So I got a new place just thinking like, yeah, I'll dabble in the rental property thing, so I don't know if it's gonna be my thing yet, but we'll see."

"Why did you pay it off?"

"Yes, I know you were gonna ask me about that. It is a huge weight off my shoulders. I do not like having this, you know, I don't know what you call it, negative cash flow. I don't like spending—having that money disappear, and I wasn't confident that I'd be able to get renters in straight away. So I hate the idea of like, okay, I got two mortgages that I got to keep up with, and you know, I mean maybe that would be good; maybe that would put the fire under my just to get renters in there. Yeah, I just don't like the feeling; it feels really bad."

"So where else are you investing money? You mentioned Tesla stock."

"Every year my tax guy says, yeah, put a bunch of money into your SEP IRA, so I'll do that. Lately, I've been opening just like more accounts and stuff. For some reason, even though like everyone I know puts all their money in like indexes and stuff, I've generally avoided that; I've just been picking and choosing. I don't— I really don't know why. There's no one that has told me to do that or anything; I just feel more confident in companies rather than these indexes."

"What are your biggest holdings?"

"Definitely Tesla. I got in it like in like 2017 or something like that."

"Wow. So like I've just been having a ball."

"How much did you invest?"

"I mean, I've only recently opened up individual accounts, yeah. So it's all retired. It was just my retirement account, so I do the max contributions in the SEP IRA every year, and that would pretty much be in Tesla, Amazon, and Nvidia and a couple other ones."

"So where do you learn about personal finance, or where do you pick up on some of these things?"

"Just all YouTube videos. I mean, like what you're doing for people is very good, you know? It's like there's a ton of financial people on YouTube; I think everyone has like a person that they can kind of model their behavior after a little bit. There's a lot of people who are like crazy about Warren Buffett; they're all about value investing. There's people who are just crazy about Tesla now, so I'll just get a mix of what I think works for me."

"I've taken more of a like what would I—what stocks would I like to or technology would I like to see perform well in the long term? So like clean energy stuff, things that are helping people out generally is the things that I will invest in, and I was like, well, if it doesn't do well, I just sort of write off saying, well, I tried, you know? I tried to essentially fund something that I thought would be good for the world."

"Yeah, it's tricky though because I know that a lot of the, you know, money I'm up right now, it just makes you feel like you're smart, but I know that like a lot of these decisions I've made have just been so casually done. I'm not looking into their financials; like obviously, if I looked into Tesla's financials leading up to 2017, I wouldn't have put any money in there, right?"

"Yeah."

"So it can trick you. It can make you—investing can make you think you're a lot smarter than you are."

"Welcome to the iDubbbz TV makeup tutorial channel. I'll tell you one thing, Nvidia is another example. I was like completely clueless. I was just like, I like their graphics cards; they go real fast; they render really well, and then one day it was like, I don't know, they're doing autonomous driving stuff—maybe I'm not exactly sure what bumped them up to where they are now."

"Yeah, it's just wild."

"How many credit cards do you have?"

"Four."

"Not bad."

"Yeah."

"What's your credit score?"

"It's scraping 800."

"Really?"

"Yeah, that's fantastic."

"Pay everything off, man. That's fantastic."

"I overpay oftentimes."

"So do you think now you're saving enough and you're making enough money?"

"Oh definitely, yeah. It's sort of—I think of it like I can get a little anxious and stressed out about money. I know I have like no reason to at this point in my life especially, but I kind of view it as like a cushion. Occasionally, I'll, you know, see how much money's there, see if it's overstuffed or under stuffed and try to spend or save accordingly. I got really anxious one month because I was like I spent like 800 on ubereats this month; I was like that's bad."

"Um, that is bad."

"It's not bad; it like— especially for a person in your position, you can totally afford to do it. I looked at my spending, and like we probably spend pretty similarly, and I'm like I've—oh, like maybe like 40,000 last year in spending, and that's like everything; that's like flights—that's, you know, I got two dogs that need surgeries and crap, and it was like—it was not bad, and I'm paying for meals for, you know, Anissa and I. I'm usually the one doing ubereats."

"Yeah."

"Um, if you're doing it out of laziness, if you have nothing else to do, if you're sitting on the couch watching like bad reality TV, then it's probably better you go to the grocery store or go and pick up."

"Oh yeah, there's—under a certain income level you should never use those services in general if you're just being lazy doing nothing. Then I would rather use my time going to the grocery store. If I'm in the middle of something and I'm like I gotta grind out a video, I'm running behind, I gotta get something done, then it's better to pay the premium."

"So I avoid lazy spending if it's out of laziness."

"Yeah, but what about—okay, let's imagine this like futurology lifestyle where you don't have to pay for a fridge; you don't have to pay for a damn microwave or a stove or all this nonsense; you just get food delivered to your door, $3.99, the whole thing."

"Oh, whoa."

"Yeah, I know that, man; that's heavy."

"So look, you could get seven of these for the entire week; you'll spend about $25 for an entire week's worth of lunch. That's like one chicken wing in there."

"Yeah, one chicken wing and the lettuce."

"Lettuce that don't fill you up."

"It does, try it."

"So what are you motivated by right now?"

"I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of a bunch of different things, so I really don't know where to put my focus. Like right now we're working on the mobile game Pocket Squirrel, and that is really fun, and I could see doing more game-related stuff, but then the documentary is also a lot of fun. It's that's more my speed and more my skill set, so I could see doing more of that. I think just kind of anything art-related, anything where I can, you know, put my fingerprint—anything I put my fingerprints on, including a Tesla."

"And then what's the best money advice you've heard?"

"Save it, baby; save it, baby, just save it. But you can get better at saving it by not putting it in a checking account nor savings account; you can at least in this current moment in time in history, you'd probably be better off putting it into an index fund or something that is actually at least matching or beating inflation."

"Hey guys, I think you might want to consider hitting the like button; only if you want to though; you don't have to. If it's going to add value to your life, hit the like button; otherwise, there's no need to dislike it. Just leave it blank and also subscribe if you want to. There's no need; you won't make money by subscribing, but you might learn some things. It would help Graham reach 10 million subscribers, which I think is the next milestone."

"Are you excited for that, Graham?"

"Ecstatic."

"Yes, I want mine as well, my diamond play button. Good luck, guys; keep your chins up."

"All right, all right, that's great; thanks, man."

"So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching, and if you want to see the entire unedited clip of this video—it was like 40 minutes long—I'm going to be posting that on my second channel, The Graham Stephan Show. The link to that is down below in the description. Just go ahead and subscribe to that channel, and you'll see the video posted there very shortly."

"Oh, and also while you're down below in the description, if you like free money—which basically everyone likes free money—the free stock trading brokerage WeBull is going to be offering you four free stocks when you deposit $100 on the platform, and those stocks could potentially be worth all the way up to one thousand six hundred dollars. So anywhere from eighteen dollars to sixteen hundred dollars is how much you're gonna get just for signing up and depositing a hundred dollars on the platform, and you can just go and sell those stocks afterwards if you want to take the money, or you could use them in their free stock trading platform.

So there you go, enjoy the free stocks, guys! Thank you so much for watching, and until next time."