Yes Theory and the Art of Making People Care

“I always assume that even our current subscribers don't care at all about what we do, and how do I make them care? I know that you guys talk a lot about that. You have to make people care. And I always assume every single idea I have, every video I have, that nobody cares. And I start from that place, and it's like my job to make people care. And sometimes it's literally in how you present it, right? You take a niche idea that you're interested in, and you have to figure out, how do we introduce this to millions of people to make them actually curious to watch this all the way to the end?”

“We have this saying, which is hide the vegetables, that you guys know. Which is that you have to sort of frame things, unfortunately, sometimes through a more, I don't want to say provocative lens, but it has to have some kind of tension, or has to have some kind of conflict in the title, in the thumbnail, that makes you want to watch it. But then we always try to make sure that in the story itself, there's a very human element. Like we don't go to a place looking to tell the negative side. We actually really try to focus on meeting the humans who live there and telling their story as authentically as possible.”

“I think if it's too vanilla, it's not interesting. There needs to be something, there has to be stakes somewhere in the story. And if there are no stakes, I think it's a fun, maybe casual watch for a small subset of the community that just like you for who you are. But I think if you want a story to actually perform on YouTube, you have to think. I find that it's much more interesting to have the challenge of doing both. I want to do something unique, and that gets me excited, but I also want the video to perform. I think every creator wants that. But I'm not satisfied if I only get one or the other.”

“And if you look at who has the deepest communities on the platform, Yes Theory is one of them, bound by this concept of seeking discomfort, meaning that the best things in life are on the other side of your comfort zone. And that mantra has really created this global community. Even when I was traveling in India, I just reached out to the Yes Fam India group, and they hosted meetups with hundreds of people in different cities that I was in to hang out. Like, because I reached out, and that was crazy. It's a really, really impressive movement.”

“We live by the philosophy of seeking discomfort. So we believe that on the other side of discomfort is all of the growth that we are seeking. So I think through the stories that we do, it's not just to experience the world, it's also to grow as people. And we try to take something away from every trip, learn something new, speak to an elder on the street and ask them for wisdom. That's what we just did the last few weeks in Japan. And I think I'm very fortunate to be 11 years in and still be curious about telling stories and about traveling.”