WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 We have talked before about how LMG makes money. 00:00:05.800 --> 00:00:10.480 The vast majority of our revenue comes directly from our audience through sales of our products 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:14.520 or from watching our content, either on YouTube or over on Flowplain 00:00:14.520 --> 00:00:19.520 where our incredible float goats subscribe for extra content, early access and perks. 00:00:19.520 --> 00:00:24.760 The rest of it comes indirectly from our audience in the form of sponsorships and affiliate links. 00:00:24.760 --> 00:00:28.160 And that's why when we make a decision, you are our guide. 00:00:28.160 --> 00:00:33.720 We are laser focused on serving our audience with the products we develop and the content we create. 00:00:33.720 --> 00:00:38.560 Which is why it's time, finally, to have the talk. 00:00:38.560 --> 00:00:43.160 What happens to the money? How does Linus Media Group spend money? 00:00:43.160 --> 00:00:47.440 How much of it does Linus keep? I'm gonna tell you all of it. 00:00:47.440 --> 00:00:51.400 But first, I'm gonna need to get some money from our sponsor. 00:00:51.840 --> 00:01:02.840 I really didn't wanna kill our accounting department 00:01:02.840 --> 00:01:07.520 preparing this. So before we begin, I wanna acknowledge that the data that they prepared 00:01:07.520 --> 00:01:10.720 does contain some rounding and some quick maths. 00:01:10.720 --> 00:01:13.920 So take it for what it is. It's a big picture look at expenses 00:01:13.920 --> 00:01:18.080 for the last couple of years with Windows of insight into the smaller details. 00:01:18.080 --> 00:01:24.520 With that out of the way, let's begin. Across 2024 and 2025, our largest expenses, 00:01:24.520 --> 00:01:30.420 combining for 50% of our total, were inventory purchases and people. 00:01:30.420 --> 00:01:35.000 Now when I say inventory, that doesn't include cameras and editing workstations and that sort of thing. 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:41.760 I'm talking about the 4% we spend on apparel, the 8% we spend on backpacks and other gear items, 00:01:41.760 --> 00:01:45.600 and the 14% we spend on screwdrivers and other items 00:01:45.600 --> 00:01:48.640 to stock in our warehouses and ship around the world. 00:01:48.640 --> 00:01:52.440 It's kind of wild to think about, right? A quarter of our expenses 00:01:52.440 --> 00:01:55.520 are buying inventory for lttstore.com. 00:01:55.520 --> 00:01:59.600 Now, in theory, these are sound investments that should generate profit for us. 00:01:59.600 --> 00:02:02.760 So no big deal, right? 00:02:02.760 --> 00:02:06.040 But nothing is a guarantee. We've had our share of duds over the years 00:02:06.040 --> 00:02:10.480 and even for successful products, managing cash flow for a growing business 00:02:10.480 --> 00:02:14.300 can be extremely challenging. If you buy too little, your store looks abandoned. 00:02:14.300 --> 00:02:19.680 You buy too much and you might be short on money for payroll. The big load in that we had for Black Friday this year 00:02:19.680 --> 00:02:24.880 required pretty careful coordination between Creator Warehouse and our accounting department. 00:02:24.880 --> 00:02:28.920 By the way, thank you for being part of it and don't forget to leave a review for your purchase. 00:02:28.920 --> 00:02:34.480 We do read them and we care a lot about your feedback. The next biggest expense for LMG is people. 00:02:34.480 --> 00:02:40.080 But we'll come back to them later because I wanna dive a little bit deeper into that. So first, let's talk about product fulfillment. 00:02:40.080 --> 00:02:43.280 Why don't you guys have a European distribution center? 00:02:43.280 --> 00:02:48.120 You might ask. Well, because the distribution channels that we have now 00:02:48.160 --> 00:02:52.840 are already 10% of our total company expenses. 00:02:52.840 --> 00:02:56.440 Guys, storage ain't free and the people who pick your orders, 00:02:56.440 --> 00:03:02.840 they're not free either, trust me. I hate giving couriers this 8% exactly as much as you do. 00:03:02.840 --> 00:03:08.520 And when the time is right for us to have distribution in regions like Europe and Australia, we will do it. 00:03:08.520 --> 00:03:12.900 But for now, we're just gonna have to keep exploring other ways to reduce our shipping costs 00:03:12.900 --> 00:03:16.360 and improve our delivery processes for our global customers. 00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:21.800 Another thing that I'd love to reduce but can't is selling costs at 3%. 00:03:21.800 --> 00:03:27.480 This includes the fees that we pay for our Shopify store as well as the pound of flesh that we sacrifice 00:03:27.480 --> 00:03:31.280 to payment processors like PayPal and Stripe. Let's see what's next. 00:03:31.280 --> 00:03:34.680 Ah, yes, overhead, that's an expense. 00:03:34.680 --> 00:03:38.760 Yeah, okay, it's a pretty broad term, but there are a lot of things that need to fit under this umbrella. 00:03:38.760 --> 00:03:43.280 Our overhead category includes bank fees, insurance, 00:03:43.280 --> 00:03:48.920 as well as company events like sports nights, quarterly department activities, summer of fun, 00:03:48.920 --> 00:03:54.520 which is where employees get credits for group activities like meals, golf, arts and crafts, et cetera. 00:03:54.520 --> 00:03:58.160 And of course, our epic annual Christmas party. 00:03:58.160 --> 00:04:02.600 It also includes postage, mileage reimbursements, office supplies, janitorial services, 00:04:02.600 --> 00:04:05.640 security, building maintenance, marketing, and charitable donations. 00:04:05.640 --> 00:04:09.080 Utilities are also in here at about 0.3%. 00:04:09.080 --> 00:04:13.480 And then there's R&D, which I assume includes some of the wacky equipment 00:04:13.480 --> 00:04:18.680 that the CW team buys to develop new products. Travel comes in at about half a percent 00:04:18.680 --> 00:04:21.920 and production purchases weigh in at around 1%. 00:04:21.920 --> 00:04:25.640 So that's your cameras, lenses, lights, SD cards and that sort of thing. 00:04:25.640 --> 00:04:30.400 I actually remember making a comment years ago about how cameras are not expensive, 00:04:30.400 --> 00:04:33.920 people are expensive and people lost their freaking minds 00:04:33.920 --> 00:04:37.760 about how out of touch I was. But this is the context, folks. 00:04:37.760 --> 00:04:42.580 Yeah, cameras sting a little, but like software is substantially higher 00:04:42.580 --> 00:04:47.640 at 1.5% of our yearly outlet. The biggest ones are solid works for CAD, 00:04:47.640 --> 00:04:54.420 gorgeous for managing customer care tickets and Adobe for, well, you know this, Adobe. 00:04:54.420 --> 00:04:58.540 Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams and ShipStation make up kind of the next tier 00:04:58.540 --> 00:05:02.740 and then there's a bunch of smaller ones. The last two big ticket overhead items, 00:05:02.740 --> 00:05:06.700 totaling 1.5 and 2% of our annual expenses respectively 00:05:06.700 --> 00:05:12.820 are foreign exchange and other, which I assume is just embezzlement, as well as rent. 00:05:12.820 --> 00:05:16.180 Hey, rent, don't you guys own your buildings? 00:05:16.180 --> 00:05:21.180 Yes, we do. To give ourselves peace of mind and location security for the future, 00:05:21.180 --> 00:05:26.240 we've spent a considerable amount of money over the years owning and upgrading our workspaces. 00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:30.420 Some of these acquisitions have actually ended up being pretty solid investments, which is nice, 00:05:30.420 --> 00:05:33.660 but others haven't, which is all besides the point right now. 00:05:33.660 --> 00:05:39.460 The point is that Yvonne puts our offices into their own companies that for tax purposes 00:05:39.460 --> 00:05:44.560 have to be paid to cover their own expenses, like interest on the loans that we took out 00:05:44.560 --> 00:05:49.180 for those buildings. It does mean more paperwork, but apparently there are also liability advantages 00:05:49.180 --> 00:05:52.380 to doing it this way. I don't pretend to fully understand it. 00:05:52.380 --> 00:05:57.660 All right, that's overhead. Now for a fun one, capital expenditures. 00:05:57.660 --> 00:06:02.580 Okay, it doesn't sound fun, but these are best described as large outlays of money 00:06:02.580 --> 00:06:09.380 that don't comfortably fit into any other category, including the lab's acoustic chamber, a fire truck, 00:06:09.380 --> 00:06:13.820 some upgrades to our set, some workshop, a three-stage cascade CPU cooler, 00:06:13.820 --> 00:06:17.220 a 2020 Toyota Corolla for the Comet AI self-driving video, 00:06:17.220 --> 00:06:20.500 and the YesTech LED video wall that I bought on Craigslist. 00:06:20.500 --> 00:06:24.360 What's interesting though, is that while these high profile purchases get talked about a lot 00:06:24.360 --> 00:06:30.620 and have big dollar values in the thumbnails, they actually make up less than 1% of our total expenses. 00:06:30.620 --> 00:06:37.160 The same cannot be said about people. With a headcount of 120 now across our various teams, 00:06:37.160 --> 00:06:41.020 it shouldn't be a big surprise that other than the inventory we stock, 00:06:41.020 --> 00:06:46.680 payroll is our largest expense by a significant margin at about 25%. 00:06:46.680 --> 00:06:51.600 Breaking this down from there was a little tricky. See, many members of our team are cross-functional. 00:06:51.600 --> 00:06:55.100 That's to say that one day they might be evaluating a material sample for a T-shirt, 00:06:55.100 --> 00:06:59.960 and then the next day they might be appearing on camera, explaining T-shirt materials to our Floatplane subscribers. 00:06:59.960 --> 00:07:03.080 But the way that our payroll budget is generally broken out, 00:07:03.080 --> 00:07:06.200 is according to the areas where people make their primary contributions. 00:07:06.200 --> 00:07:10.960 With that in mind, the largest department is called internal shared services. 00:07:10.960 --> 00:07:16.920 With multiple companies, we could have separate HR, accounting, events, 00:07:16.920 --> 00:07:21.560 infrastructure, logistics, and operations departments for each company, 00:07:21.560 --> 00:07:27.440 but that would be horribly inefficient. So instead, we share all of those departments. 00:07:27.440 --> 00:07:33.000 The biggest one is operations at a little over 11% of our payroll for 2025. 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:36.920 That's so large because it happens to include multiple top executives, 00:07:36.920 --> 00:07:42.860 and it also serves as a bit of a catch-all for things like events, community management, and HR. 00:07:42.860 --> 00:07:48.040 The other half is made up of accounting, IT infrastructure, and logistics. 00:07:48.040 --> 00:07:52.620 These are the folks who get our expense reports paid on time, keep our storage servers working, 00:07:52.620 --> 00:07:55.960 and who keep our shared office spaces equipped with peripherals. 00:07:55.960 --> 00:07:59.880 All three of these departments are absolute heroes, and we thank you for your service. 00:07:59.880 --> 00:08:03.840 Next up is developers, developers, developers, developers. 00:08:03.840 --> 00:08:07.080 No one else? Okay, fine. The point is we have a ton of developers now, 00:08:07.080 --> 00:08:14.520 handling everything from Floatplane.com to LTTstore.com to LTTlabs.com to internal tools 00:08:14.520 --> 00:08:17.920 and weird experiments. Hey, remember the time our dev team 00:08:17.920 --> 00:08:21.080 built a VPN product in a weekend, and then we got cold feet 00:08:21.080 --> 00:08:25.240 around the legal and ethical concerns? These guys, absolute heroes too. 00:08:25.240 --> 00:08:32.240 It is worth noting that this one is a little funky though, because Luke is in here and he is not a developer. 00:08:32.240 --> 00:08:36.520 He manages developers, but then he also manages the Labs testing team, 00:08:36.520 --> 00:08:40.800 and he appears on camera and is just, you know, generally a chad, so as you'd expect, 00:08:40.800 --> 00:08:44.440 he inflates the numbers here a little bit. The next several departments, 00:08:44.440 --> 00:08:47.760 each land in the 10 to 15% range, 00:08:47.760 --> 00:08:51.680 starting with writing. These are probably the folks that you know the best. 00:08:51.680 --> 00:08:55.040 We call them writers, but it's kind of YouTube industry lingo 00:08:55.040 --> 00:08:58.520 for a bit of writing, a bit of production planning, a bit of hosting, 00:08:58.520 --> 00:09:03.160 a bit of, sorry, I'm doing what today? Okay. And then next up is production, 00:09:03.160 --> 00:09:06.800 another department of unsung heroes. Though with that said, 00:09:06.800 --> 00:09:11.200 I actually kind of love it when they sing a little, whether that's our camera operators jumping in 00:09:11.200 --> 00:09:16.640 to ask the question that everyone's thinking, or our editors adding their customary 15 pieces of flair 00:09:16.640 --> 00:09:22.480 to our videos for you guys to pause and appreciate. Product design, which includes graphic design, 00:09:22.480 --> 00:09:26.760 fashion and engineering, has become a major group for us over the last couple of years. 00:09:26.760 --> 00:09:30.960 These are the folks that bring the many products you enjoy on lttstore.com to life, 00:09:30.960 --> 00:09:35.720 obsessing over every detail from the sound of the ratchet to the hand feel of a design 00:09:35.720 --> 00:09:39.760 printed on one of our high quality garments. In some cases, this team also gets tasked 00:09:39.760 --> 00:09:43.000 with taking our product ideas behind the barn. That was a fun video, by the way, 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:46.320 and is totally worth a watch to get some insight into how these folks work. 00:09:46.320 --> 00:09:51.160 Finally, there's operation staff and management specifically for lttstore.com. 00:09:51.160 --> 00:09:55.360 These are more unsung heroes, working on everything from customer care 00:09:55.360 --> 00:09:58.840 to compliance to supply chain management and marketing. 00:09:58.840 --> 00:10:02.920 These are the folks who helped us weather some major storms this year 00:10:02.920 --> 00:10:06.520 by rolling out a US based warehouse in a matter of months 00:10:06.520 --> 00:10:10.960 after a certain person enacted a bunch of import taxes on Americans. 00:10:10.960 --> 00:10:16.400 And then they also had to manage the fallout around moving fast and breaking stuff. 00:10:16.400 --> 00:10:21.320 Our two smallest groups in 2025 at under 10% each are the Labs team 00:10:21.320 --> 00:10:24.640 who handles product testing and is quietly working in the background 00:10:24.640 --> 00:10:28.400 to scale up our processes, while also making growing contributions 00:10:28.400 --> 00:10:31.840 directly to the content, as well as our partnerships team, 00:10:31.840 --> 00:10:34.960 which includes Bizneyland, who handles brand partnerships 00:10:34.960 --> 00:10:39.280 and brought you mega bangers this year, ranging from AMD ultimate tech upgrade 00:10:39.280 --> 00:10:42.840 to that incredible tour that we did of Kyoksia's fab in Japan, 00:10:42.840 --> 00:10:47.440 along with our amazing procurement team who I think can buy anything. 00:10:47.440 --> 00:10:51.080 I mean, they barely even raised an eyebrow when I asked for a fire truck. 00:10:51.080 --> 00:10:56.240 So that's it. That's who gets paid, but how are they paid? 00:10:56.240 --> 00:11:00.200 Well, while we don't always get things perfect, what I can confidently say 00:11:00.200 --> 00:11:03.360 is that LMG delivers on our goal of median salaries 00:11:03.360 --> 00:11:08.800 that are well above what's typical for our region. In 2024, including only employees 00:11:08.800 --> 00:11:15.960 who were active for the full year, LTTstore.com, in 2024, 00:11:15.960 --> 00:11:19.360 including only employees who were actually active for the full year, 00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:23.080 we landed at around $73,500 Canadian dollars. 00:11:23.080 --> 00:11:27.560 And that was higher than even the average income in our area at that time. 00:11:27.560 --> 00:11:30.680 Then in 2025, we increased our median salary 00:11:30.680 --> 00:11:35.360 to just over $80,000 Canadian dollars. This 9% change was made 00:11:35.360 --> 00:11:38.320 in spite of actually flat revenues across those years 00:11:38.360 --> 00:11:42.840 to hire and retain key talent, as well as to better support our valued team members 00:11:42.840 --> 00:11:45.960 through the current cost of living crisis. It was also partly driven 00:11:45.960 --> 00:11:50.360 by the internal minimum wage guidelines that we have for entry-level positions. 00:11:50.360 --> 00:11:53.480 It is separate from the legal limit and instead is tethered 00:11:53.480 --> 00:11:57.840 to the published Greater Vancouver Living Wage, which is designed as the hourly rate 00:11:57.840 --> 00:12:01.520 that a full-time worker must earn in order to cover essential expenses, 00:12:01.520 --> 00:12:05.000 avoid chronic financial stress, and to participate in their community. 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:09.080 Furthermore, it is worth noting that unlike many gig-based productions, 00:12:09.080 --> 00:12:13.760 we hire the vast majority of our local team members as full-time employees, 00:12:13.760 --> 00:12:17.080 which here in BC affords them protections and benefits 00:12:17.080 --> 00:12:21.080 that are not the norm for contractors, and for that matter, 00:12:21.080 --> 00:12:24.320 not the norm for anyone in many other parts of the world. 00:12:24.320 --> 00:12:27.800 We also offer a benefits package that includes retirement savings matching, 00:12:27.800 --> 00:12:33.240 continued education, health and dental, and budgets for extras like counseling and physiotherapy. 00:12:33.240 --> 00:12:38.200 Also, now that more members of our team are having kids, we recently added partial coverage for orthodontics. 00:12:39.200 --> 00:12:44.320 I know that there will be many LMG team members, both current and former, watching this video. 00:12:44.320 --> 00:12:48.800 And I'm sure this talk of company compensation is going to raise some questions for some of you. 00:12:48.800 --> 00:12:51.920 But what I hope is that this degree of transparency 00:12:51.920 --> 00:12:55.280 will answer at least some of them. And if you still have concerns 00:12:55.280 --> 00:12:59.080 or you're looking for ways to improve your pay, it might be time for a conversation 00:12:59.080 --> 00:13:02.080 about either performance or a role change. 00:13:02.080 --> 00:13:07.560 We post all open positions on LinusMediaGroup.com and you can always speak with your manager or with HR 00:13:07.560 --> 00:13:11.000 about how to boost your total compensation. We're working on a system, by the way, 00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:15.120 for quantifying some of the previously intangible qualities 00:13:15.120 --> 00:13:18.120 that have led to people with similar job titles making different amounts, 00:13:18.120 --> 00:13:22.360 and we're hoping to roll that out shortly. Moving on to average salaries. 00:13:22.360 --> 00:13:25.640 Naturally, these end up higher than median salaries 00:13:25.640 --> 00:13:29.240 since you're going to have outliers like top executives that skew the data. 00:13:29.240 --> 00:13:32.400 But they don't skew things as much as you might think. 00:13:32.400 --> 00:13:37.160 In the last year, we have focused on improving compensation for our individual contributors 00:13:37.160 --> 00:13:40.280 and have made only small adjustments to leadership. 00:13:40.280 --> 00:13:43.760 This is reflective of a recent period of flat revenue growth 00:13:43.760 --> 00:13:47.280 and hopefully is a trend that we can work to improve for 2026. 00:13:47.280 --> 00:13:53.160 Average salaries across our companies then were 114,000 Canadian and 115,000 Canadian 00:13:53.160 --> 00:13:59.240 for 2024 and 2025 respectively. Another key metric that people look at to determine fairness 00:13:59.240 --> 00:14:02.360 is the relative compensation of executives 00:14:02.400 --> 00:14:07.600 and individual contributors. And I'm going to do my best to give you guys some insight here, 00:14:07.600 --> 00:14:11.640 but calculating this ratio is a little bit complicated for us. 00:14:11.640 --> 00:14:16.520 See, Yvonne and I have each paid ourselves $121,000 a year 00:14:16.520 --> 00:14:23.120 for years. Why that number? I have no idea, but as the also shareholders of the company, 00:14:23.120 --> 00:14:29.880 it's obviously not our entire take home. So then we could remove ourselves as weird outliers, 00:14:29.880 --> 00:14:32.960 but then we'd be sharing an average of like four people, 00:14:32.960 --> 00:14:37.600 which is basically just outing their salaries. So what I've opted to do instead 00:14:37.600 --> 00:14:40.760 is to just semi out one person, Taryn. 00:14:40.760 --> 00:14:46.960 Our CEO to median pay ratio is somewhere in the range of five to one and 10 to one. 00:14:46.960 --> 00:14:50.920 Okay, it's a pretty big range, but for the purposes of this fireside chat, 00:14:50.920 --> 00:14:55.200 I don't think that really matters. The point is that it's reasonable. 00:14:55.200 --> 00:14:58.800 Even by 1970s standards before executive compensation went, 00:14:58.800 --> 00:15:03.440 cray-cray at the expense of the worker, that kind of a ratio was commonplace. 00:15:03.440 --> 00:15:07.800 Now it is worth noting that Taryn's been on the job for a few years now, and there are plans 00:15:07.800 --> 00:15:12.280 to tune his comp package in the near future if we execute well on our plans for 2026, 00:15:12.280 --> 00:15:16.360 but I can only tell you guys what is, not what maybe will be, 00:15:16.360 --> 00:15:21.480 which brings us to the five foot one inch elephant in the room, this guy. 00:15:21.480 --> 00:15:26.760 At this point, I'm addressing our team as much as the audience, so I'll be direct. 00:15:26.760 --> 00:15:30.040 In 2025, our tax installments were just shy 00:15:30.040 --> 00:15:36.240 of 8% of our total expenses, and the last 15 or so percent is our net profit. 00:15:36.240 --> 00:15:41.920 Is it a lot of money? Yes, but from an objective standpoint, 00:15:41.920 --> 00:15:46.480 it's not outside of the reasonable range if you consider the whole picture. 00:15:46.480 --> 00:15:51.360 And if anything, my intention is to find new revenue opportunities or efficiencies 00:15:51.360 --> 00:15:54.600 that will push that into the 20% range. Why? 00:15:54.920 --> 00:15:59.240 Because that bucket isn't just fun money for Linus and his family, for starters, 00:15:59.240 --> 00:16:02.840 it includes setting aside any capital that Yvonne and I, 00:16:02.840 --> 00:16:07.520 with consultation from our executive team, might put aside to invest in new projects, 00:16:07.520 --> 00:16:11.200 such as the upcoming series, buying and renovating a tech house, 00:16:11.200 --> 00:16:16.560 as well as another yet to be disclosed big content related acquisition for 2026. 00:16:16.560 --> 00:16:22.760 It also includes maintaining our operating cash flow, as well as our rainy day fund, which, okay, 00:16:22.760 --> 00:16:26.000 memes about my financial irresponsibility aside, 00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:30.920 Yvonne and I have been extremely careful with our resources over the last decade plus. 00:16:30.920 --> 00:16:35.520 We've weathered multiple major storms that have had serious business impacts 00:16:35.520 --> 00:16:40.120 with zero layoffs, and that includes both COVID, as well as the 2023 controversy. 00:16:40.120 --> 00:16:44.120 Now it is worth noting here that layoff has a very specific definition. 00:16:44.120 --> 00:16:47.400 It means a reduction in force due to like a restructuring 00:16:47.400 --> 00:16:52.560 or like a shortage of available work, which might happen someday, but it hasn't yet. 00:16:52.560 --> 00:16:58.160 And if anyone tells you that they were laid off here, they either don't know or fully understand what happened, 00:16:58.160 --> 00:17:03.240 or they are not telling you the whole story. The last thing that our careful financial planning 00:17:03.240 --> 00:17:07.280 has enabled us to do is never bring in outside investors, 00:17:07.280 --> 00:17:10.440 which can be okay, but it can also carry the risk 00:17:10.440 --> 00:17:17.800 of enshridifying our jobs and our content. Finally, yes, this pool does include paying dividends 00:17:17.800 --> 00:17:23.120 to our shareholders, that's me and Yvonne. And this is where the lines get really blurry. 00:17:23.120 --> 00:17:26.120 For one thing, if I were to issue a dividend 00:17:26.120 --> 00:17:30.760 to myself, for example, I can't just give myself money from that bucket. 00:17:30.760 --> 00:17:35.920 I'm gonna have to pay personal income tax on top of the corporate income tax that I already paid. 00:17:35.920 --> 00:17:39.760 So that slice of the pie, it's not actually as big as it looks 00:17:39.760 --> 00:17:43.960 if I wanted to use it personally. And then the other thing blurring the line 00:17:43.960 --> 00:17:48.120 is that any shareholder dividend that I wanted to issue to myself, 00:17:48.280 --> 00:17:53.160 it wouldn't just be a payout for the ongoing investment into the company. 00:17:53.160 --> 00:17:58.200 It would also include whatever the company decides that I'm worth for being our primary on-screen talent, 00:17:58.200 --> 00:18:02.200 creative director for our physical goods business as well as a top-level executive. 00:18:02.200 --> 00:18:07.520 How do you quantify what each of these is worth? How do you quantify what they're all worth together? 00:18:07.520 --> 00:18:11.760 Am I worth millions of dollars a year? Can anyone be worth that much? 00:18:11.760 --> 00:18:15.600 I don't know. I could compare against other recognizable hosts 00:18:15.600 --> 00:18:21.680 where, yeah, okay, doesn't look that ridiculous. But then realistically, I'm not as good as them. 00:18:21.680 --> 00:18:25.960 But then on the other hand, Yvonne and I provided our own seed capital for this company 00:18:25.960 --> 00:18:31.560 without even so much as a bank loan. They didn't have to go through that. So it's a tough question to answer. 00:18:31.560 --> 00:18:35.000 On the one hand, it sounds like a lot because it is. 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:38.680 But on the other hand, this is it. This is the pot at the end of the rainbow 00:18:38.680 --> 00:18:43.160 in a capitalist system that we didn't choose, but do have to operate in. 00:18:43.160 --> 00:18:47.120 Yvonne and I took a big risk, both providing capital to grow this thing 00:18:47.120 --> 00:18:51.080 and working our butts off alongside the world-class team that we build. 00:18:51.080 --> 00:18:56.040 We beat the odds. And we're also making concrete efforts not to pull the ladder up behind us. 00:18:56.040 --> 00:19:00.560 If you did the same thing, I'd want you to have the same reward. It's a hard truth to swallow, 00:19:00.560 --> 00:19:03.560 but a wage will always have a ceiling. 00:19:03.560 --> 00:19:08.880 The ceiling of how much someone's willing to pay, which is dictated or at least strongly influenced 00:19:08.880 --> 00:19:11.920 by a market that is cutthroat by its very nature. 00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:15.080 By contrast, the ceiling for entrepreneurship, 00:19:15.080 --> 00:19:19.040 that's however high you can build it. It is worth noting by the way though, 00:19:19.040 --> 00:19:22.160 that while entrepreneurship is a great way to elevate your earnings, 00:19:22.160 --> 00:19:26.880 I am not saying anything about what it'll do to the quality of your life or your peace of mind. 00:19:26.880 --> 00:19:31.400 There are pros and cons to every path and over a decade of being self-employed, 00:19:31.400 --> 00:19:35.080 I've learned that there is nothing wrong with choosing employment either. 00:19:35.080 --> 00:19:38.680 Whatever path our team members choose, we want to be part of their road to success though. 00:19:38.680 --> 00:19:42.960 And we're putting that desire into action. Recently, we've taken steps to relax our policies 00:19:42.960 --> 00:19:47.160 around content creation side hustles, even in competitive verticals, 00:19:47.160 --> 00:19:52.360 and we've even taken the unprecedented step of directly sponsoring former team members 00:19:52.360 --> 00:19:56.460 who we feel are doing great work and who have strong brand synergy. 00:19:56.460 --> 00:20:00.160 I am so proud to be a part of the teams that work here, 00:20:00.160 --> 00:20:05.160 but I don't know. Recently, I've begun to think that maybe my greatest legacy 00:20:05.160 --> 00:20:09.320 could end up being the incredible pipeline that we've built for developing talent, 00:20:09.320 --> 00:20:13.280 and then the future success of ex-LMGers. 00:20:14.240 --> 00:20:17.600 Whatever it ends up being, I'm excited to build it together 00:20:17.600 --> 00:20:22.200 as long as it can be done while also respecting the company's need to grow 00:20:22.200 --> 00:20:27.460 and protect both its own people and its own interests. So it's important to note that with that in mind, 00:20:27.460 --> 00:20:31.600 we've reserved the right to reevaluate our policies as things evolve. 00:20:31.600 --> 00:20:36.840 Constant change is just part of the game, you know? And you know what else is part of the game? 00:20:36.840 --> 00:20:39.960 The segue to our sponsor. If you guys enjoyed this video, 00:20:39.960 --> 00:20:43.600 why not go check out How Does LMG Make Money if you missed it? 00:20:43.600 --> 00:20:48.100 It's changed a lot over the years, so it's kind of worth watching the whole free video series.