Multithreaded Creators | Multithreaded Income Episode 35 with Michael Rollins

Welcome back to the show, everyone. I am joined by my very good friend, not even a special guest. He is a very good friend of mine, Mr. Michael Rollins. How are you doing today, Mike?

I mean, look, dude, it's freaking tsunami outside. Uh, we've got

It is a very bad day outside. Yeah.

Look, I woke up to thunderstorms this morning, which just makes you want to sleep longer. Right? Like it. So in that way it was pretty fantastic. But honestly, man, I'm, uh, we're doing all right. We're living the dream.

You have the same problem I have because you were the original shed quarters, right?

was, yes, I was.

and I, I didn't get the idea from you, but realized, Oh, there's a community of us now of people who have sheds in their backyard and backyard

This, and this was pre pandemic. Mac. Like it's so funny because I feel like when the pandemic hit, I mean, obviously the pandemic was really awful in a lot of ways, but one of the things that made me chuckle was watching all of my colleagues try to figure out how to work from home. And you know, I'd, I'd see people get like the haggard look around their eyes and I'd be like, come on, let's talk. And I'd be like, are you working in your bedroom?

It's a separation

it is, it

Let's bring programming into this. Don't take work into the bedroom. Cause the bedrooms for other things. Right. And, um, Most importantly, sleeping. It's

don't know if that's most important, but I take your point. Yeah.

It's not the most important, but if you're a single person,

Maybe. Okay. This is true. This is true. Yeah.

All right. But like your, your bedroom is a sacred place. Like don't work in your sacred place because then you're going to regret being in your sacred place. And we've had this conversation multiple times. Like the shed quarters is really good for that separation. When I come out here to work, I'm in work mode. When I go into the house, I'm in, I'm not in work mode. I'm in dad mode. I'm in husband mode. And it's nice to have that concern that that separation of concerns.

Absolutely.

whereas more particularly a problem is a day like today where it's a tsunami outside and we, I had to put on a rain jacket to

I did too. I had to put on a hat and a rain jacket and then I had to step carefully through the lawn so I could avoid all of the, you

same

four inch deep puddles. That's pretty great. Oh

should really take a picture. I've worn a path in my backyard just from years and years of walking. And it's created a divot in the backyard that I should really fill. I should like, I should pave a

Yes, I, I think this every time it rains. Yes, you are not the only one. And then what I've done is accidentally expanded the pathway because I realized all the grass is dead in the middle. So I started walking on the outskirts, but that actually doesn't let the grass grow in the middle. So I'm just expanding this, this dead spot across the middle of my yard. It's, it's pretty fantastic

Mike, tell us a little bit about what are you currently working on? So I know you, but our audience might not know

So, um, let me, uh, let me start with a little bit of backstory. Um, I had my midlife crisis, you know, the same time most dudes do. Um, you know, I've been working for 20 some years and decided I was really bored with it. And so I decided to go off and. Try to make millions as a YouTuber. And as it turns out, I made hundreds, um, which was, which was fantastic. Um, but when I, when I did that, I realized actually how incredibly hard it is to be a successful creator.

a little

Little, little, little teeny thing had a minor impact on modern culture. Um, and then our, our CFO is from, you know, he's from wall street and, you know, the, the, I don't understand why they let me in the room, but so be it. Um, but they, they actually intended to bring like a studio model to podcasting and creators and. They found out that didn't work for a lot of different reasons. Um, but in the process, they figured out how to help creators become better businesses.

The folks that you have as co founders, how did you get hooked up with those guys? Because that's a, that is quite a skill set to, to get into one room. How did you make that initial connection or how'd they make the connection with

Um, so, uh, it actually came through one of my, my former CEOs, a guy named Sean burns. Um, and I worked for Sean at both flurry and outlier and, um, they got connected to Sean through one of his business partners. And, um, you know, they, what was interesting is Sean's group. Looked at engine room was like, Hey, you guys have a SAS platform. You just haven't written the code yet.

Yeah.

so, um, Sean was like, who do I know? That's a good engineer and understands the creator economy and might be available. Oh, there's this guy, Mike Rollins. Hey Mike, are you interested in this? And I'm like, Oh my God, yes, this is amazing. Um, and so, I mean, you know, it, it, I will say this. One of the things I've learned, um, over the past few years is I did a lot of really good networking and didn't understand, didn't realize I had done it.

It's all about building bricks, right?

it's about relationships.

know, you said, uh, yeah, you create this network and it's one person at a time and you really never realized that a connection or a relationship that you've created 10 years ago might come back to help you in the future. Um, I've had that more than once where someone actually, I have a similar, similar story where a couple months ago, a guy I used to work for. Oh, what year is it? 2024 back in like 2009, 2010.

matter how much, okay. So I saw this, I love Jordan, the stallion. I think the guy makes amazing content. Um, and normally I feel like he gets it right, but he did a stitch with. This one, one guy who was talking about, well, they're not going to give me two weeks, so I'm not going to give them two weeks. And, you know, Jordan, the stallion was like, my man's on it.

You never realize when you leave a job and when we talk about jobs, we're talking about skilled, skilled jobs, like you're maybe an office environment or something, but when you leave, you. If you leave immediately, no notice, you are not putting an impact on the million dollar corporation. Like you think you are, uh, you're putting an impact on a person. It may be a small group of persons who now have to figure out how to fill that gap that You're leaving behind. So it's not.

Yeah. I mean, and, and like you said, that is definitely kind of a skilled labor kind of a, a, a, a thing there. Um, but even, I mean, even in something that's, you know, physical labor and things like that, I have witnessed other people lose out on jobs because they worked for someone that knew someone. And so, you know, anyways, that's a, but that's a, when you have a

we could.

it's when you have

Yeah, I think the moral of this story is, you know, keep your network going and don't burn bridges unnecessarily in your network. Um, if you. If you have it within your control to be a good person, think of how you would feel if you're on the other side of it. Um, so we wanted to talk more about the diversification of, of just income in general. And this goes really well with what we talk about. Multi threaded income, like don't put all your eggs in the one basket.

I think we have to kind of start at the very beginning which is most creators First off, don't realize that they're going to be creators. They just tend to go out and they do things and other people seem to like it. Um, I know that was the case for me. Um, it took me a while to find the thing that everybody wanted to see me do, but that ended up being interviews. Um, and I was interviewing people in the FPV community. Um, I never started. Go ahead. Oh, sorry. First person view drones.

Wow.

uh, one of the guys that I am still, you know, still pretty close with, he does a lot of filming for Mark Rober. I mean, you know, there's, there's, uh, it's, it's a really cool sport. And it is a really cool way to create. Um, but what, like I was saying is most creators don't realize they're starting out as creators and then suddenly they realize I'm a creator and what they don't realize at that point is you're a business. And so with a business, there's risk management, right?

Are there any examples of where that has already happened in the past? I don't know, five, 10 years where people went all in on a platform and then that platform just went away overnight.

I mean, there were definitely, there was vine it, which interestingly enough, that's what, that's what tick tock is, is vine. Um, it's just done. The algorithm is what makes it so good. Um, yeah, I mean, there were a lot of creators that went all in on vine and that thing bellied up fast. Unfortunately, it was such an amazing idea. Um, You have, I mean, shoot people that were on, that were building businesses on Twitter.

I remember pre, so around the time of pandemic, a little bit before pandemic, a lot of folks in the coder,

uh,

We're really going to Twitch, like starting live, live streaming on Twitch. Twitch was the place to go. Let's let me hit my affiliate status so I can start making money. Let me try to hit partner. And the, the going was good. Like if you got to that point, like I, I gotten payouts from Twitch a couple of times. It wasn't a few money, but it was.

Twitch.

like, Oh, I

Surprising fact, Twitch has the highest CPMs of all the platforms. Yes. And so for, for those that are not familiar with the term CPM, um, CPM is effectively a cost per milli. Is what it stands for, which almost makes no sense until you realize that milling means thousand effectively, how much revenue can be generated for every thousand viewers, um, and or thousand listeners and, um, podcasts on average have the second highest CPM.

that's interesting from a, from the Twitch standpoint, I had gotten the impression from folks that I knew that were avid streamers on Twitch, that Twitch had gone completely downhill and that it was,

Uh,

it's changed around again. So, so. Is probably why it's better to be on all the platforms. Right. Just so when it does, Evan flow,

you remember ninja the fortnight guy the fortnight player? I mean he there was this big deal when he left twitch and he went to you did a mixer,

Was it, did he go to mixer or YouTube?

He ended up on

he went to mixer. Didn't

think he went to mixer first. Well, I think we could check but um You Yeah, I mean, he left Twitch to go somewhere else basically, because he was going to get higher guaranteed CPMs. And then, um, but it didn't pan out like YouTube made a big play for live streaming and YouTube's okay with live streaming. Um, but like eventually he ended up back at Twitch and a lot of the creators that left Twitch ended up back at Twitch.

Yeah.

But, um, yeah,

What recommendation would you have for someone that's out there and they're, they're a beginner creator, they're getting started and they're, Say only on YouTube or only on Twitch. What's, uh, what steps should they start taking to try to diversify?

off, don't quit your day job. no, I'm serious. Like there was a time where I was very tempted to quit my job and try to go all in. And I had some very smart people look at me and say, that is the dumbest freaking thing you could ever do. Um, and I'm glad that they did. And I'm glad that I listened, um, at the time I didn't want to listen, but I did. Um, so yeah, don't, don't quit your day job.

So does this apply to a certain level of creator? Like if I, let's use multi threaded income as an example, it's a fairly new plot, new, new. New platform, right? It's, uh, your episode 30 something out of the catalog, which is mature for a,

A podcast.

a podcast because it's past 10 episodes, but still relatively young, trying to grow a listenership of viewership does something like multi threat income, try to establish that. That Patreon, my network, that's something else that early and

have a Patreon or Mighty Networks, Kevin, you need to have one. And on,

I got homework

okay. And on top of it, you also need to paywall some of your content. Um, because how many podcasts have you listened to where at the end of the episode, they're like, okay, we're going to continue this conversation, but only for our patrons are only for the people that subscribe. And, um, the conversion rate on that hook is pretty high. Um, I, I did it recently for 1, uh, for the, um, uh, cafe, something with Preet Bharara, because it's just really good news coverage.

so I'm going to

Yeah.

expose myself a little here. I have at least four podcasts. I pay. Pay for the additional like shows and stuff for it. And it's mostly because I like the personalities on the shows and I want to give a little bit more and we're not talking a substantial amount of money. We're talking a buck or two a month or a buck or two per show. And. I'm in a financial position where I can do that and it doesn't hurt my bank.

something, something to consider, and this is, this'll probably surprise you. Um, the, the, your patrons, your subscribers, that is not a transactional thing. That is not a transactional relationship. It's tempting to think that it is if I stop producing content or if I don't do this thing, um, then, uh, then they're going to, they're going to cancel and no, they won't. Most of those people are there because of you. They're there because of you.

Interesting.

because, and I'll say this, and if you ever hear interviews with any of these creators, most of them will say it is the conversations that they can have with me. It's what drives their membership. Mm-Hmm.

Gotcha. And there's a lot of opportunity like multi threaded income is. We, we have our discord and we have conversations in our discord. And now, now I'm thinking, Oh man, I I'm,

Well, and I mean, like with, with, you know, here's more, more nuts and bolts with discord. You can have a paid section for Discord that ties directly to the pat, to the Patreon or Mighty Networks membership. And if they stop paying the membership, they, their access to the Discord gets Rev. And I mean it, you know, it's a thing, but it's a privilege too. So

All right. I have some homework for multi threaded income and I'll have to report

By the way, Kevin, I'm not, I'm going to recommend against you starting an OnlyFans like me. We are both kind of big men, and I believe that the addressable market is kind of small, just for the record.

you know, Everyone's got a thing. Right.

This is true. There, there are some wild kinks out there, and I am not here to kink shame. Uh, I did have, I was on one, uh, YouTube show one time and convinced the entire audience that I was actually an OnlyFans creator. And that there was an enormous market for big men in, uh, stockings and high heels. And, oh man, it was, it was some of the funnest times I've ever had.

man, I'm going to have to put an explicit rating on this episode if we

have not said anything explicit. All right,

mike, I want to, I want to stop talking about. Platforms and diversification. I want to talk more like financials foundations and stability because you said something very interesting at the beginning of the episode. I want to circle back to it and that you said when you had quit your job,

Mhm.

I'm sorry when you lost your job, you didn't quit your job. You lost your job like a lot of people out there. You felt you probably have that initial like, you know, I've lost my income stream and you said, it. We, uh, you and your spouse, we thought I'm air quoting here. We thought we had three months of runway. Uh, I'd like you to expand a little bit on that. You said you thought you had three months. Did you have far less than that? Should you have had more?

So, um. Yes, we should have had more. The reason I say we thought that we had three months in the bank, um, is because we did not realize it would take us time to ramp down on our cost of living. And we also thought we could ramp down more than I think was reasonable. Um, and so, you know, that three months, um, was really more like a Two months to begin with, but then we did not account for Cobra and, um, health insurance is

Cobra, let's imagine I'm not in the U S and tell me what Cobra

Okay. Um, if you are not in the U. S., then you are not acquainted with the fact that the U. S. healthcare system is a freaking disaster. And And one of the primary reasons that some people, including me for quite a while, do not go independent is because you don't have health care. If you do, and you need to provide it yourself, um, most health care policies are tied to employment. And that, you know, you talk about sticking it to the man.

Do you underestimate how much food you consume in a given month?

Um, no, we actually, we realized we like our, yeah, I mean, I tell people if we wanted to eat Doritos and, and drink barrel water, if you know what that is, uh, the, the sugar barrel water, God, this stuff was terrible. Um,

think they do that anymore. That was like a 90s kid

yeah, that was, that was definitely a nineties kid thing. Um, But, um, then we could eat for less than we do, but we try to feed ourselves and I have three kids for what's worth three teenagers. So, um, they're basically bottomless pits

you said going, going into this, that you were, uh, debt free, that, uh, debt free, except for your house, your, your mortgage payments. How, how did that factor into your, I guess, mental state at the time you lost your job?

Um, there was more peace in the 2 months after I lost my job than there had been for years. Um, we, when I got the, the, the job that I eventually got laid off from, um, we. Ended up, um, it had been tough, but we paid off all of our debt. That was like a car. And then, um, we also saved up that three months. Cause I was like, I am tired of being in the position prior to that, for what it's worth, um, the company that I was with called outlier was being acquired by Twitter in April of 22.

we were talking a little bit before, uh, we hit record. So this really goes to your patron conversation. Yeah. This is the, this is the stuff that we should be selling is

Yeah. This is, by the way, if you're hearing this now, then it's going to stop right here. And if you'd like to hear more, then our Patrion is Kevin dropped a patron.

yeah. 1 a month, you know, or 1 per

Nah, man, you need to do at least three. Come on. You're worth it. You're worth

Oh yeah. Don't sell myself short, but we were talking, so we had a couple, you know, threads, we were going with this. And one of them, you had said that debt is anti income and I, I, I love that cause I, I don't think people appreciate

Yeah.

or they, they rely too much on debt. So could you talk a little bit more about what you meant by debt is anti

Um, so the, the, the situation is that, I mean, it's pretty straightforward. Mathematically, debt is anti income. You're trading future income for something now. Um, and that is what debt is like. That's the actual, I think that's might be the actual definition of debt. Um, but the, but. It is such a common way to do things nowadays that people don't even really think about it.

fixed that loophole. Yeah.

just on a side note, if they would just add that thing back in, the cost of college would come back down. There's literally no risk in, in loaning that money it's beside the point it makes me so angry. Um, but then you, you, you. You leave college and now you're an adult. So you need a new car. Um, eventually you're, you might, you need a new house, it turns out. And, but if you never start playing the game to begin with, then you're a hundred, 200, 300, 400, 000 ahead of your peers.

I remember being a 18, 19 year old, you know, getting my foot in the world. And my first ambition was. All right. I like to be as successful as my parents are right now and not really taking into consideration that it took my parents 25 years to get to that point and my, and I was so disconnected from all the financial hardships that my parents went through. Um,

Cause you weren't there. Quite possibly. Yeah.

wasn't involved in that and I never, never went without and always, you know, always taken care of. So like childhood was good for me. Um, and I remember being in, in college. Yeah, going to college and having a part time job. And eventually I got to the point where I was making what, like 18 an hour at a part

Dude, you were killing it.

big stuff right

For the record, that's probably like 800 an hour in modern money. Like, I just want to put that in perspective.

but like my first career out of. A college, I was making 45, 48 grand a year. And I'm like, I have made it. I am so I'm doing so well right now because I effectively was making good quote, good money for a mid two thousands, junior level, whatever, out of school. I've worked so hard to meet and exceed my parents position when I was younger. And now I'm thinking about my kids and my, I, like I bought a house in 2009. Like I bought a house when it was a good time to buy a house.

And

You can't get one without the

to tie that back to the debt conversation, um, There I was actually listening to, um, Scott Galloway recently. Um, I, I think the guy has some really good ideas and he said something very interesting. He said, the best time to start a business is when nobody else is starting it. And the same is true for just about everything else. The best time to buy a house is when nobody else is buying. Um, and the typically, like in 2008, 2009, 2010 even, we bought our house in 2012 and got a fantastic deal.

Let's, uh, keep good thoughts out there for our

Yes.

who are going to be entering the workforce in the next decade or so, and hope that is not as hard on them as I think it's going to be. Cause I can't imagine being the teenager now preparing to enter the workforce. And. Having that same ambition to meet and exceed what my parents had at the time I entered the workforce, because that is a high, that's a high bar to get

I'm gonna, I'm gonna push back on that.

Okay.

don't want my kids to have what I have and part of that is the systemic things that Go into what I have to having what I have when when I did that when I had the like sudden epiphany That if I had multiple income streams, I could be more independent Um, one thing I realized is that my salary, which was a very, very good salary, was also, it's a golden handcuff. Um, it would be so difficult to replace that income in a short period of time that it was feasibly, it was unfeasible. Right.

Mike, we are coming to about an hour. So we should probably wrap up. Um, thank you so much for coming on the show with me today. And we'll probably have to have you back at some point to just continue this conversation because it's always a good time

Well, thank you, Kevin.

with that. Thank you everyone for listening. We will catch you next week on the multi threaded income podcast. Y'all take care.

Y'all have a good one.