Why I Left Donut transcript

- Hey guys, it's been a while. I don't work at Donut anymore and I haven't for a while I wasn't allowed to talk about it, but now I am. Most of you have probably already guessed that, but it is official from the mouth of me. I don't work at Donut Media anymore and I started a new channel. This one, it's called Speed With three E's. Welcome to Speeed. I'm gonna tell you guys why I'm leaving Donut, what I'm gonna do next, what this channel's gonna be.

I am very excited and very nervous to be honest about the next chapter in this journey, but luckily I'm not doing it alone. One, I've got you guys the best friends a fellow could have, and two, the real OGs have definitely heard this guy's name, but you might not recognize his face. The former Chief Creative Officer, creative director of Donut, my best friend and creative soulmate, Jesse Wood, is behind the camera right now.

We're doing it together, but before we get into the future, I think it would only be appropriate to acknowledge the past. I need to call out how special the last nine years have been. Working for Donut and on Donut has been the experience of a lifetime and by far like not even close, the coolest thing that I've ever done. I got to meet and in a lot of ways grow up with an amazing group of extremely talented, dedicated, and genuinely good people.

I am so grateful for that. I'm grateful for them and I'm grateful for you guys. I mean, it goes without saying that Donut would not be what it is without you guys, and my life would not be what it is without you either. I mean, guys, straight up my life used to kind of suck and now it's pretty sweet. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for allowing me to do this. Donut has gone through a lot of phases, countless milestones, a bunch of people and faces since it started in 2015, and I want to take some time to give credit to those people and highlight some of those momentous events that shaped donut and really my life.

So something of you have been asking for it. I thought it'd be fun. If you guys don't mind, this is everything you need to know. Get up to speed on Donut. - This - Is the first email I ever got from Donut Media at this point. Donut was a small production. They were like three months old. They were mostly making cool stunt videos for Formula D drivers. I was a huge fan of Ryan Turk from his videos on Network A. He also drove in this video with Chris Forzberg and Tony Angelo called Blood Masters.

Coolest shit ever. I was in love with it and when I heard that the guys who put that together were involved in this new thing called Donut, I was super excited to meet with Donut, was started at the end of 2015 by three guys, Ben Conrad, Nick Moer and Matt Levin. Ben did a bunch of stuff, developed the visual effects for the first iPod commercial with the silhouettes, created the titles for Zombieland, the Visuals for Beyonce's Lemonade Tour.

Oh yeah, and he directed Jim Kana four through eight. Nick was his production partner, a guy who knew and knows everybody and loves to introduce them to each other. He's the one who found me and the guy who sent that email that we just saw. Matt Levin worked at Awesomeness and would become Donut, CEO, and one of the most important and influential professional relationships that I've ever had. I am grateful for all these guys.

Back then I was a comedian with varying degrees of success. Phil, what are you guys doing? Is that like a store or something? No, Holler. I did a lot of improv, a lot of sketch comedy. I was in some movies and some TV shows. I also wrote for some, and that entire time I was driving stupid cars. It was like this and this and this stupid cars. When I got that email from Donut though, I was in my sister's basement in Chicago trying to figure out how those things might help me get any sort of normal job. 'cause after years of struggling and feeling like success was just around the corner, I'd all been given up on the idea that entertaining people for a living was in the cards for me.

So when I got that email and the idea of combining the only two things that I ever cared about cars and being funny was potentially slightly possible, I took it as a sign from God and I flew back on Spirit Airlines for that meeting and I'm glad I did. Not even in hindsight, I was immediately stoked. As soon as I walked into the old donut office on Purdue Avenue and met with the guys who worked there at the time, I was, it felt special in a way that I'd never seen before, and most importantly, it felt like I belonged there.

These guys liked what I liked, cars and making stuff. They had tattoos, cool pants, they smelled good, and they were actually friends with each other. They all hung out all the time. It was literally the coolest shit I could have ever imagined, and they wanted me to be a part of it. Within a few months, I fired my agent managers, quit doing comedy shows and going to auditions and went full time with Donut as their head writer.

Somebody order a race car? Yeah, me. Initially, I had no interest in being on camera. I was burnt out on performing. We mostly made stunt videos and experimental one-off stuff, so there wasn't a lot for me to do on camera anyway, I was enamored with Ben and I wanted to learn as much from him and the other guys as possible. Ben was Rich and Ben directed commercials, so I figured I could eventually learn how to direct commercials and I'd be rich like Ben.

My new job at Donut immediately improved my situation immensely. All right? It allowed me enough money to rent a porch. My bedroom when I first started working, there was a literal porch off the kitchen in a house full of other dudes. That house was full of rats and his scents burnt down. I accidentally got a pair of shoes sent there, and I texted my old roommate. I was like, Hey man, do you still live there? He is like, no, dude.

That place's burnt down. It's gone. I was moving up, but I wasn't satisfied. Not at all. Boy, this porch was just the beginning. I wanna take a time out here to highlight just how grateful I am for everything. The donut and the audience who've supported it over the years have done for me. You know, putting this video together has reminded me just how much my life has changed because of this. I'm making decisions right now based on what I want to do next, not on what I have to do next, and that privilege is not lost on me at all.

So for every single one of you that are hopefully watching this right now, thank you so much. It's gonna take a while, dude. The first video I ever made for Donut Media was called Don't Get Screwed Buying a Used Car, don't Get Screwed Buying a used Car. It was a vo driven montage list of all the things that you should do when buying a used car to make sure that you don't get screwed. Look at the condition of the tires, look at the brakes.

Do the pads and rotors look thin? Do they look grooved like a record? Then they're broken. The shooter for that was a dude named Jesse Wood. We bonded over the fact that we both had Vans authentic on and we didn't know which one of us was the boss. A theme that would continue throughout our relationship and is still very much the case today. We shot the video and as we were driving back on the 10 freeway, we shot the video and as we were driving back on the 10 freeway, Jesse leaned down to the passenger window of the camera car hung inches from the asphalt and filmed rolling shots of me driving the terrible E 36 that we just bought Los Angeles Skyline behind me in the sunset, I felt like Ryan Gosling and I got a friend bone that hasn't gone down in eight years.

I've shot hundreds of rollers since that day in much cooler locations in way nicer cars. But that day changed my life. It was the definition of a core memory and set my life on a trajectory that I'm still currently on, making videos about cool stuff of Jesse Wood. Ironically, the BMW had title issues, subframe damage, and we did in fact get screwed. Many of you guys probably found the channel from up to Speed or Money Pitch Wheelhouse, bumper to bumper or if you're an OG Science garage, but the time before any of those shows existed was so fun and raw and formative to what Donut ended up being, and the people that worked there played a huge role in the vibe that you guys fell in love with, even though most of them moved on before you ever heard of us.

James Kirkoff, Jacob Aian, Andy Puka, Sam Conifer lvo, Tony Balde, and Hannah Fini, who Jesse and I still work with today. All of these people were instrumental in developing Donut into something worth paying attention to. I could make a whole video about how they contributed to the aesthetic, the vibe, the overall feel, and purpose of Donut. Several of them went on to start a company called Race Service. Now, this is also when some of the people that you have heard of came into the picture.

Nolan was hired as an intern, Felipe Armenta and Eddie Esparza who have shot, edited and directed some of the best videos we've ever made, also started their donut careers as interns. You guys need any help In 2017, about a year after I got involved, Matt Levin, the CEO at the time, asked me to make a video about the history of a car he's talking about Up to speed. Hey dude, I haven't seen you in a while now. I popped up in donut videos here and there, but my focus really was not being on camera, right?

I was happy being a part of the team, coming up with fun drift video concepts and making pitch decks, trying to figure out how to say he will slide around a corner or it will be shot in a fun and interesting style a bunch of different ways. Basically saying, Hey, trust us. Matt insisted and we decided that I'd host a video about the history of the Nissen Skyland, a couple weeks to write, six hours to shoot, and took Eddie months to edit it on this terrible, hilarious gaming laptop with a literal cracked screen.

Do anyone got Mike? Like if an art department in a movie brought this laptop and was like, Hey, some guy's gonna edit on this. In the movie, people would be like, no fucking way, dude. Thing sucks altogether. Took about four months, it was five minutes long. If you like this format, let us know what else you want us to cover. If you hate my face, let me know. If you want me to die, please tell me how. Please subscribe, comment.

Now, this time we were mostly making stuff for Facebook 'cause Facebook was paying creators well and up to speed. The name we ended up calling this new video was an experiment on building an audience on YouTube. I'm wanna be real with you guys. All right? Did pretty good. Did pretty good too. Got a ton of views right away and as a reward, I was told that I have to make one every week until the day that I die. Up to speed changed everything.

Let me be clear, the stunt videos that we had been doing were rad, all right, very cool. But they were expensive and they took a lot of resources to shoot. Every video would take the entire team out of the office, sometimes to another country for days or even weeks at a time. Now, I often say that early Donut was pretty much a boutique ad agency. Those stunt videos were essentially ads and how cool they were was very dependent on how cool the client was willing to let us be, and the views reflected that Suddenly with up to speed, we were seeing people come back to the channel every Thursday to see a new episode.

No matter what car we were talking about, we were getting views and for the first time ever, we were starting to get subscribers. You guys, that's when you guys got here, not me. I've been here since Grady's and Lambos and Chris Forsburg, drift van q and a. Well, not you. I'm what you call an og. I'm saying most people. All right. Most subscribers started showing up when we started doing weekly content consistently, and because of that, we decided to go with it in a wild and completely undeserved showing of confidence.

Matt promoted Jesse to creative director, later, chief Creative Officer, and me to editor in chief. The two of us were now in charge of all things creative at Donut. Now, none of this, none of this donut would've happened without Matt Levin. Matt is the smartest person that I've ever met, and there are a lot of people that I've talked to who've said that same thing to me, unprompted, alright for anyone. He saw what Donut could be and he didn't relent on reminding us.

He pushed us constantly further than we thought we could go. He had big ideas. He encouraged us to have big ideas and then he'd figure out how that we can do those big ideas. No one had ever believed in either me or Jesse to this level before, and I'm sure other people that donut feel the same way. The amount of respect and confidence that was put in us and the amount of care that was given to our development as creatives and leaders is a gift that I hope someday I can afford on more people in the future.

Matt, thank you. Our first decision as leaders, one that I stand by to this day, brilliant, move, hire our friends, teach the interns how to do stuff. One such intern was a young man by the name of Nolan j Sykes. Perhaps you've heard of him now, Nolan is one of the best known and most talented and dynamic personalities in automotive media, but back then, he was a college student with a dream, an amazing work ethic, and a haircut that was years ahead of its time.

Nolan sent Matt an email asking if Donut needed interns. Matt told him to email back in a few months, and according to Nolan, he sent a reminder on his phone for exactly three months. From that day, emailed Matt again and was invited to come meet with the team. Now, when people ask me how they can get a job at a place like Donut or anywhere really, I always use Nolan as an example of doing it right? Alright, show that you care that you dedicated that you can respond, but don't be a fucking weirdo.

Alright, Nolan rode the line perfectly. I think we can all agree that it's paid off for him. The dude is a fucking star now. Now, back then, we didn't know what we were doing. Okay, I'm gonna be real. So we ended up doing a little bit of everything. So in turn, everyone at Donut did a little bit of everything and together, together we would tackle more and more bits every day until we decided that's enough. When Nolan joined the team, he started doing a bunch of stuff until eventually he gravitated to the stuff that he liked the most.

He edited videos, wrote sales copy, helped source clips and research for our early series, the Bestest. Eventually he expressed interest in writing, so we gave him a shot. He took to it very naturally and soaked up everything that me and Bart taught him like a sponge. And eventually Nolan became my favorite writer at Donut. I mean, he still is. No one before or since has even come close. The dude understands timing the bill story jokes.

He knows when to be serious and though it's harder for him when not to be. He eventually told us that he wanted to be on camera as well. So we had him write, edit, and host his own daily automotive news show, donut News. It lasted nine days. In hindsight, that was insane to think a person could do that. It is a lot of work and he almost lost his mind, but he didn't and he kind of killed it. So we started developing a concept that would go on to become Wheelhouse.

The longest running donut show in the history of the channel. You know, it's very possible. - My nostalgia for these cars is clouding my judgment. - Working with Nolan has been one of the great joys of my lifetime. When I was younger, I was fortunate enough to have some really great mentors. Guys like Matt Walsh, Colton Dunn, Scott Rogers, Joe Wagner, Eric Moneypenny, Heather Ann Campbell, Ian Roberts, Sam Brown, Trevor Moore, Matt Levitt, and a lot of other people.

They all spent hours, weeks, years talking to me about comedy, writing with me, letting me act in their thing, giving me notes on my thing, really helping me figure out who I was and how I could best present myself to an audience and be the best me that I could be. I wasn't a good actor, but I'm a pretty good me. They would tell me when I did a good job and maybe more importantly, how to do a better job when I did a bad one, and Nolan was really the first person I could pass that down to my first chance to pay it forward and teach someone to do the thing that I love, to participate in a tradition that really formed me.

Nolan is also my friend, and the partnership that we shared during those formative days of the channel is really special. Recurring jokes like Nolan Drinking Milk or my son Nolan, came from a very pure and genuine, joyful place of joking around at the old donut headquarters trying to make each other laugh because we knew if we could do that, people on YouTube might think it was funny too. The vibe and feel that came to define Donut was real and was forged in those early days when all we had was building, I think a single camera and more courage and talent than resources.

I'm known for selling radios causing TVs am FM radio has plenty of fans, but what if car owners could have music on demand to die? We may do with what we had and we built something out of nothing. Speaking of friends, this was around the time that Park showed up and Bart and I worked at a restaurant together in Louisville, Kentucky. He was a waiter and I was his busboy. I was actually head buser at that restaurant until I got fired.

We hit it off instantly and I actually did my first comedy show with Bart. Bart is just about the best friend that anyone could ever hope for, alright? There's times in my early twenties when Bart was the only reason I was able to eat. He let me bar his Oldsmobile so I could go to auditions, and when I got arrested when I was 23 for stealing a registration sticker, Bart and two of the other guys on that list from before bailed me outta jail.

Turns out that's a felony. All charges were eventually dropped. When I got my Giga donut, I brought Bar in as soon as I could. He took over head writer duties when I got new responsibilities, and as most of you know, started hosting his own show. Science Garage and rakes are the net, - Which means expand. Boy, that was fun and easy. - What we, for a lot of people, this is the golden age of Donut, the first one at least.

This is the team that hit a million subscribers. The team that did our first SEMA trip got our first press card, the first team with Donut T-shirts and hats. Jimmy showed up. This time at Donut was the first time in my life that I felt successful and I was surrounded by a bunch of people who I loved who were also sharing in that first It was the fucking best and our lineup was fucking Sick Wheelhouse Science Garage, new Car show, which later turned into bumper to bumper, the old version hosted by me.

This is also when we did Miracle With and Bating cleanup the show that started it all up to speed. I fucking love that shit, man. That shit was the most fucking fun shit ever, man. It was responsible for so many things that still ripple through the channel to this day. Our style, our sense of humor, our shared point of view. Every car is cool. Let's be inclusive. A hardcore car guy can watch it and enjoy it, but a person who's just casually into cars can watch it and like it too.

People watched it with their kids, people watched it with their spouses. Not to mention all the weird phrases that stuck around Mo Powell, baby Power Baby. A More power baby, more power baby. Buff horses. Buff horses. Lightning, lightning, lightning, lightning, lightning, lightning Curse Purse, just like my dad, Jessica Nolan's son. Things that you guys connected to and made into a thing. I almost forgot. A lot of the style and humor of that show is thanks to Kolby Mann, the editor of Up To Speed.

Kby was my dj. We had a shorthand. I'd be filming an episode in the hallway while he was editing on the other side of the office, and if I said something funny enough, I can hear Colby laugh. I knew killing, and then he'd try and make me laugh with the edit. He's the reason that we started shooting on a green screen so that he could move me all around and I think put me in space if you want to. What? What Ram Charger.

James, I see a video. You driving around in that HE double hockey sticks cat. It's called a Hellcat Yeah. Trick. Oh my Lord, please don't use that language without kolby. We definitely wouldn't have gone as far or as hard as we did. I think the channel would look totally different. Probably a lot more boring in the next few years. We're just kind of a blur doing that stuff. Multiple videos a week, trying to figure out what worked and what didn't.

Eventually Matt told me, Hey, we need more hosts. So we posted on our Insta and hired a casting director to do a nationwide casting call. Thousands of people applied, but one guy stood out, heads and shoulders above the rest. A dude from North Canton, Ohio that worked at ECS tuning Zach job - Account, he infested. - Zach changed the game for us when he came on board. We went from being a channel that talked about cars and sometimes drove cars to a channel that built cars.

He's probably the only person on the planet with his specific skillset, right? He worked in parts development at ECS. He's an insane mechanic. He was good on camera, straight out of the box. He was a really hard worker and he was really interested in learning about his new job. Now, stunt videos was phase one, up to Speed Science garage and Wheelhouse were phase two. Then phase three started the day that Zach showed up.

This is our E 36 rally. Zach moved here in an rv. We were like, you want an apartment? He's like, no. And while he was still literally sleeping under a bridge, we started production on high, low season, more expensive, mean more better. Let's find out. Let's find out. Yeah. Now I feel like all the videos we made up until this point were really good mix tapes. Okay, we got some buzz. People were starting to knew who we were.

We had a pretty dedicated fan base that was rooting for us. But High Low was our debut album was the first time that we were all on camera together. Our first series, our first real multi-week production, and the first time a donut bought Project Cars Getting a Good Pump Gun. Alright? I just rewatched that first season about a year ago, and I remember thinking, this is so good, but there is no way that we could do something like this again.

We were so dedicated to get it done. The emotions are so real. We barely slept for weeks. Our budgets were tiny and we loved it for the most part. And I think all of that really comes through in the series. We were just grateful to be there and the best moment in the history of the channel happened in that first season. Here we go. Okay, 3, 2, 1. - This is like what failure looks like? You good now? No, Eddie, not good.

What the fuck you think - Dude? Hilo is my favorite thing, and in my opinion, still the best thing that we have ever done on the channel. Now, I can't mention High Low without mentioning another Zach. Zach, red Pat, Zach, co-directed season one of High Low with Jesse, and he's directed almost every season since all but one. He might be the single most talented person that I have ever worked with, right? He's also one of the coolest people that I've ever met.

The Tacoma season of High Low was kind of a rough, crazy time. High, low always is, but that one especially, we ran outta water on a mountain for days. Straight, straight. Hey, tap, tap, tap. Was that the winch? That was the whole bumper when we got back from Colorado. Red Path quit. All right, and moved to Paris for a year. He's that kind of cool. Over the years, we've offered him senior roles with a bunch of different job titles and he's turned them all down.

All right. That's how fucking cool the guy is. He prefers coming in, killing it, and leaving Eddie and Felipe. The guys who started his interns with Nolan are also responsible for shooting and co-directing a lot of high Low. That show definitely would not be what it is without those dudes. They did such a great job, in fact that when we launched Job Solo Show Money Pit, those guys started directing full time. Felipe would later end up directing a lot of Bumper to bumpers starting Jeremiah Burton.

Speaking of Jeremiah Burton. Jeremiah auditioned during the same casting call as Zach, but we'd already given the role to Zach, but Jer was funny and cool and we liked him, so we brought him on as a writer for the next year. He wrote some episodes of Bumper to bumper and some scripts for up to speed, J some as well as a bunch of other stuff, and he killed it. So at the beginning of 2020, we gave him his own show. He took over bumper to bumper and then Covid hit.

And with it came a new era of Donut. We didn't miss a single upload. We immediately ordered webcams and sent them to everybody's house. Jesse Redpath and Max set up all the hosts with OBS and taught us how to shoot well enough to get the job done. Our head of production, Christina Nicoli, somehow connected all of this stuff, driving between our houses all over the city and sometimes outside of the city, keeping this shit running.

Trying to figure out what to say she did, but I literally have no idea. Alright? I just know that we couldn't have done it without her. And the fact That I don't know what she did is the sign of a good producer when Covid hit. Zach had just started shooting Money Pit at his house with Eddie. So they just locked in and started doing their thing. Nolan did wheelhouse and pass gas over Zoom with me and Joe Weber. Joe Weber did pass gas with me and Nolan over Zoom.

I did pass gas with Nolan and Joe Weber over Zoom. I was also doing Up to Speed and launched the list the first week of quarantine. Now the D-list is when I started working really closely with a guy named Max Maddox who would go on to become the current creative director of Donut d-List. Might be my favorite part of quarantine. Max and I were just doing the weirdest, most unhinged shit, knocked it out of the fricking port.

I'm going crazy. AKA Amata. Look at the facts. All right, just turn back my son. You're a little, It was perfect for being basically slap happy for a year. I think he's such a creative, awesome person and his job is hard right now and he cares about Donut probably more than anyone. So please, like I said, give him a shot and please be nice to him. Jeremiah went into Covid, a new host, and he came out of Covid, a fucking star who had Covid and gave it to us like three times.

He turned his garage into a studio first day and him Felipe Tiernan and Jesse completely changed a show that used to be me talking about a build into an engineering driven weekly event. And a lot of people's favorite show establishing himself as the science-minded specialist of our team. Jeremiah became our Donatello. Nolan is Michelangelo. Zach, obviously, Rafael not gonna say who I am, but it's not Master Splinter.

At some point, Kaan Garrison took over for Felipe and became a really great creative partner for Jeremiah. I think so much of Donut is duos, me and Jesse, me and Max, me and Colby, Zach and Eddie Redpath and Nolan Canan and Jeremiah have made some of the best donut videos over the past few years. I haven't seen it out in the world. He's a big time now, and the videos they've released so far are awesome. And you can bet that Canaan's a big part of the Crack It Open.

While I'm giving props to directors, I got a shout out. Henry Dre, and he's worked with us forever and is responsible for some of the coolest and weirdest stuff that we've ever done. All in all, honestly, quarantine was pretty sick for us. I mean, it was weird, obviously it was weird for everybody, but it was a time of extreme growth for Donut, both for the channel and viewership. People had a lot of time to sit around and watch YouTube videos, but it was also huge for us creatively. 'cause we were forced to push ourselves into making videos in a completely different way.

And 'cause we weren't allowed to do anything else, we basically became individual creators all making videos alone in our houses. But we also talked more that year than we ever did before or since we leaned on each other and supported each other. It sucked, but it was awesome. It was truly triumphant. And another genius move from Matt. We took advantage of the low commercial real estate prices during Covid, and we finally got a shop in Inglewood.

It allowed us to work on more cars. We did more season to buy low. We were able to make bigger videos, have even bigger ideas. And then in November of 2021, donut Media was acquired by Recurrent Ventures. And to be honest, not much changed. Initially, 2022 was actually pretty sick. We hired Justin. Matt had moved away from la so we had an entire year totally unsupervised in a new shop. It was like Lord of the Flies, which is a book.

Yeah, we hung out and stayed late almost every day. I met Riley when she was paying the mural in the office. I became really good friends with Andy Paws, the guy who designs all our Merck. Our videos evolved with the ability to shoot new kinds of stuff in a new space. We had gone from shooting in a hallway in West LA in an office that we shared with two other companies to shooting alone in our homes for almost two years.

And now all together again, room to be creative in so many new ways. Okay? Oh my God, you swapped v eights into the Zs. We built trucks, we built WR Xs, we shot each other with BB guns. We had cookouts and happy hours. It was total chaos, but we somehow got it done and we were getting a ton of views. My birthday that year was one of the best birthdays I have ever had. And then slowly it got less and less fun. And I think a number of things contributed to that.

We were and are involved in less and less decisions. There was more structure, more bosses, and honestly at this point, we were all just really tired. Jesse and I have been going full into this thing since 2016, and the other guys have been going just as hard, a lot of times harder since they came on. And we did that because there was this idea that was either told to us or imagined probably a lot of both, that we were all building something together, right?

But that thing that we were building wasn't ours and it never was, and it never would be. And I think that that's the original sin of Donut. We don't own it and we never owned it. None of the guys that make videos got rich when it sold. And more importantly, without owning Donut, we don't get to decide what Donut does, which is scary when you're the faces of it. The new leadership at Donut, and I often disagreed about what was best for Donut.

I was very vocal about what I thought, probably too vocal. I'm not very good at hiding how I feel, which ironically is something that I always felt made me better at this job. I've cried twice during this video so far. Jesse ended up leaving in February, which was a huge hit to my motivation to stay. And eventually, me and the guys in charge decided that it was best if we ended my contract early. Now, this relationship that I've built with you guys over the past nine years is something that I've worked very hard for and something that I am incredibly grateful for.

It's also something that I'm extremely protective over. It's what every YouTube channel is based on, the audience, you guys. And every time a company makes a decision, it has the potential to put that relationship at risk and a donut. I don't feel like I have enough say in what those decisions are and whether or not we should take those risks. So I'd rather start a new thing where the only person I have to make decisions with is my best friend that I trust.

Because my relationship with you guys relationship is one of the most important things in my life. I literally owe you everything. I'm not exaggerating. I was living on a fucking porch when I met you. Now, I'm not saying that the decisions the company is making are bad, but the fact that I'm not making them or sometimes even consulted is enough for me to have to walk away. So I am, which finally brings me to what the fuck this is.

Oh my God. Finally! He's been talking about memories forever. Welcome to Speeed. So what is Speeed? In a lot of ways, it's a return to the stuff that I think I'm good at, the stuff that I really enjoy making, the stuff that I miss the most, just sitting here and talking to you guys, telling you stories that I think deserve to be told and teaching you about stuff that I think is cool and you might think is cool too. There will be some car stuff, for sure, a bunch of it.

But I want the opportunity to really explore a whole world of subjects. I wanna get outta my comfort zone and spread my wings. I wanna feel nervous again. I want to be new to something. And just like we fell in love with the stories of Carol, Shelby, Lee Iococca, RWB, Spoon, Mugan, all that other crazy car shit that I talked about from 2016 to 2022. There is a whole world of people, places, and stuff out there that I think is equally as interesting.

Things that I think are cool and exciting that I can't wait to tell you about now. I think that you guys and I have a lot in common. It's why we get along so well. So I'm hoping that you guys will love and enjoy this stuff and think it's cool too, stuff like Nike SB, Carhartt, Jackass, Virgil Abloh, Bass Pro Shop, Glock, Rolex, Leica, Fender, Chrome Hearts, Levi's, Braindead, Adidas, Dieter Rams. Basically, I'm gonna do up to speed on a bunch of different cool shit to tell you everything you need to know about everything.

I've been so focused and nervous about getting this video out and the next couple of videos ready. Hopefully enough of you guys like this new project because if Jesse and I are able to think about speed in the way that we used to think about Donut, knowing what we know now, and most importantly, 100% in charge of where it goes and what it does, I am really excited to see what kind of fruit this tree can bear. I'm excited to share that fruit with you guys.

Maybe make some jams or some hard cans. I'm leaving a channel with a lot of YouTube subscribers and this channel has zero as of today. So if you like this or me and you're excited about this new thing, please let me know. By subscribing, we're gonna be releasing a lot of new videos, but they're not gonna be every week because we're literally a team of two and we wanna make sure that they're really good. Every single video we're gonna try our best at.

So hit that notification bell so you don't miss any and follow me on Instagram because that is by far the easiest way for me to talk to you guys day to day. And because this is a new venture, I'm gonna be updating you on a lot of stuff. I'm really, really excited to be communicating with you guys a lot more. Everything said on my Instagram and on this channel does reflect the views of myself. Thank you for the past nine years.

Guys, here's the nine more. Oh, I love you. I didn't think it's what I wanted. I had it all figured out. I never got a donut tattoo when I worked there because I didn't want to jinx it. I thought it would be nice to commemorate the memory. It was like a really great time in my life. Plus, I know that a lot of you guys have donut tattoos, and I don't want you to regret it, so we're in it together. Welcome to Speeed.