Neale 00:00
If you enjoyed our Mend It Mark episode, you’re gonna love our next guest. It’s Joey Does Tech.
Neale 00:14
Joey, you’ve got a point of difference in your channel, tell us all about it.
Joey 00:17
I basically started my channel in 2020. I never really had any experience at all with electronics but I used to watch so much YouTube and there was a channel called TronicsFix and I’ve always been a gamer so I’ve always played with consoles mostly Xboxes and then I eventually dabbled with and went into the PC world and I remember specifically 2020 I was sat at my work desk I used to work in IT support and I said to myself this is unfortunately it’s just not for me.
Neale 00:55
There’s was only so much support that you could offer.
Joey 00:58
Yeah exactly, it was second line IT and I’d done it for a couple of years at this point and I just said that’s pretty much it now, I’m ready to at least try and give something else a go. I always had the idea of doing something in business or YouTube but I never kind of knew what other than the gaming aspect. So I used to, where it started I guess I played a lot of games and I’ve always been in and around the YouTube space. Playing games, League of Legends, RuneScape, a bunch of other things.
Neale 01:28
Hitting those consoles hard and probably breaking them sometimes.
Joey 01:31
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, throwing them a lot. So
Neale 01:34
You’re game over.
Joey 01:36
Yeah, and then when it got to PC gaming, it got a little bit more expensive, so I had to calm that down. So, yeah, I just, I thought, I always wanted a career in something to do with, in and around YouTube. I always found it fascinating. So, yeah, I’ve always watched a lot of YouTube. I sat at my desk and I said that was it. There was a guy called TronicsFix, who has a YouTube channel. And what he would do is buy electronic devices that were faulty or viewers would send them in and they’d be broken and he’d talk you through the process of the repair. And I found it so fascinating. But again, I’ve never taken anything apart at this point, nothing.
Neale 02:15
What was the fascination for you because as we interview quite a lot of people who’ve made a career on YouTube by making things and fixing things and so as a fan of those channels what is it that you find fascinating?
Joey 02:28
Honestly I can’t I can’t actually tell you I think again just it was more so figuring out how it worked I’ve played on these devices for such a long time than to see uh and then a Nintendo switch isn’t a great example because I never actually had one yeah but it was it was just thinking about oh how does that actually but you hear the term you know batteries everything thrown around yeah what the electronic circuit how does that actually work and that was my first bit of exposure to that yeah.
Neale 02:52
A peek behind the curtain.
Joey 02:53
Exactly yeah so I’d be watching TronicsFix and it kind of you know it grew me and grew me and grew me and I thought it would be kind of interesting rather than the gaming stuff that I’ve been doing uh on the internet so with YouTube and live streaming on Twitch wouldn’t it be interesting if I’m also started a journey in trying to repair electronics knowing absolutely nothing from a very I’m very simple yeah a very simple basic person and lovely yeah basic yeah I’ll just if someone said describe yourself basic very basic uh so I thought I’ll just document that on YouTube knowing nothing and that’s exactly what I did in 2020 and here we are five years later I’m extremely blessed to still be doing that I had no idea this is where it would go um I know that was a bit of a long answer to your
Neale 03:43
No no it’s great long answers are fantastic.
Joey 03:44
If I get some yeah give some content yeah
Neale 03:46
I think what sets you apart, you got a lot of passion for it, you can tell you’re charismatic on your videos, but the fact that you’ll set up an Excel spreadsheet and go, this is what I’ve spent, and have a mission to try and drive profit, was that like a conscious thing you wanted to show people how it could be done? Was that a personal ambition, where did that come from?
Joey 04:10
Because I didn’t know it was going to work. So it wasn’t really a case to show people, oh, this is how you can make money doing this. It was more of a discovery mission for me to be like, okay, can you actually buy stuff on eBay or from wherever it might be? Electronics specifically that are faulty, fix them and then sell them for a profit. So I actually took some inspiration. There was a couple of people. There’s a YouTuber who goes by the name of The Coder. He started something like this and ran it for a few episodes. And then I also saw a few other people doing something like that, but not as detailed as logging it as a spreadsheet and making it into a whole series. Again, circling back to TronicsFix, I believe he’d done a couple where he’d go, right, I paid, you know, $200 for this and now it’s going to be worth 600, whatever it was. So I thought, I’ll just start that, but I’m just going to, you know, run with it, absolutely run with it. And I’m going to commit to this. And you’ll see that when I’d done the very first episode, it was horrendous. It was so bad. It was a Logitech webcam. The image was back to front. You know, the audio was from the camera, cars outside, talking in the background and very loud music talking over my voice. So that’s where it all kind of started the profit or loss series.
Neale 05:23
But that could be a confidence that you said like music over your voice if you’re not confident you find in your feet one of the key things that certainly we’ve done with this channel and the youtubers that we spoke to is the advice is always get started start eventually you find your own voice you get confident you have to get used to we were talking about before get used to speaking front of a camera and all that kind of stuffs and when you don’t know you’re kind of overcompensate in different areas. On that note I was just thinking about, you know, we’ve spoke to the sort of the Mend It Mark’s and and Lee who looks at retro tech very much a case of you know there’s big screws you can open if there’s lots of space there’s transistors the resistors big chips yeah you specialize in well from the videos I’ve seen PlayStation, Switch, X-boxes. What are the what are the main difference? Obviously space, I can see people being a bit fearful of maybe opening up a phone compared to an amplifier. How’s that fear, what’s that fear factor like?
Joey 06:24
What of the specifically the fear factor of?
Neale 06:27
Opening up such a sealed device is there a big difference.
Joey 06:29
The first time, again, if you go to my YouTube channel, you will see the very first video on my channel is the first time I ever took something apart. So you can
Neale 06:38
That’s the Logitech.
Joey 06:39
No, it was an iPhone 5. The Logitech camera was the recording device, but the iPhone 5, which I knew that I was gonna be okay working on it from a confidence standpoint because I had no idea what I was doing, but it was my own personal device. So, yeah, I said that myself. It’s okay, it was broken. So I just thought, the only thing that was on there was a few images and stuff.
Neale 07:01
So there wasn’t that much to lose.
Joey 07:03
No, not at all, not at all. And that’s something that I preach about a lot now is one of the most common questions I get is how do you get into it and how do you get confident with these devices? Never practice on a customer’s device. If you’re choosing the route of repairing as a service, never, ever do that, of course. You wanna buy stuff cheap. Start with taking something apart, putting it back together. Do that 30 times. Get used to the screw positioning because I actually feel that it’s a very underrated skill, by the way. It’s just taking something apart and putting it back together. And I wish I kind of knew that at the start because again, I’m trying to really over-complicate things, taking things apart.
Neale 07:37
Well, some of the things that you said, I think it was that you had a few PS5s that were non-functioning. You take one apart, and you’re like, well, that’s the wrong screw. Yeah, yeah. You find that, and that’s got to have impact, isn’t it?
Joey 07:48
Absolutely. Yeah, if the screw’s too long it can go through the motherboard and cause, you know, a serious short and those repairs specifically are very difficult because then the layers between the PCB if they do You know fuse together and then trying to find out what layer goes where when you’ve got a 12 layer PCB It’s very you know, it’s very very difficult and limitations with you know Schematics and all those things that aren’t available out there. It makes it difficult but in a lot of the work that I do there’s some magnificent people out there who are able to get these resources by Backtracking, you know and just trying to work out the actual circuit itself Big Clive. I don’t know if you’ve heard of yeah Big Clive Yeah, some of his videos. I just I’m in amazement by watching it because he just the way that he works things out I could never I mean you can tell how much experience he’s got in that realm though. So
Neale 08:33
And you only build that with experience, it’s not something you’re going to pick up in the start of.
Joey 08:36
No, of course.
Neale 08:37
So, if you’re going to start this off, work on something that’s broken, or something that you don’t care too much about. Yeah.
Joey 08:43
Yeah, I always say speak to family and friends and see what they’ve got, because everybody’s got old phones, old tablets in your drawer, you know, or.
Neale 08:49
I’ve got the original Nokia Matrix phone still here.
Joey 08:51
That won’t break. No, that won’t. Yeah, knock your face. They’re not going to break. Yeah. In terms of, I mean, if you’re not super precious about something, even if something is working and it’s an older device, an old calculator or something like that, just again, getting a tactile feel for taking the screws out is actually a really important thing. Yeah. Because if you’re over tightening screws, you’re going to make your life.
Neale 09:13
you can bend and rinse the outer case. You can do all sorts, break the plastic.
Joey 09:18
So, honestly, just getting the tactile feel for knowing how much to screw in and all those things. It sounds really simple and stupid, but these are the fundamentals. It’s like anything in life. Practice the fundamentals and the rest will become easier.
Neale 09:32
Again, to go back to comparing to retro tech, if you take apart a very old PC or a I’ll use guitar amplifier, because I’m in the music world, you can take off components and you can swap components. On a PlayStation, you can’t take off chips and resistors, can you? Why? How did you get around that?
Joey 09:53
You can with a crowbar but I mean in terms of in terms of that would make a life very difficult yeah okay fine yeah it’ll make your life very difficult.
Neale 10:00
We don’t recommend that.
Joey 10:01
No I don’t recommend that uh it’s it’s really tough I think uh I hear a lot of people say about how the you know the old retro tech and older machines the circuits are a lot more simple because there’s a lot less stuff and yeah the PCBs the PCBs are often quite a bit bigger yeah wider tracks yeah of course
Neale 10:19
Because the components have got longer arms sometimes. Yeah.
Joey 10:23
Yeah. So I think, I think in that aspect, it’s a simpler circuit, but now with the knowledge that I’ve accumulated, I can, you know, I can de-solder all sorts of chips and put chips on and do XYZ with all different types of components. But when it comes to retro tech, I wouldn’t know where to start because it’s just so foreign to me. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t know what was what, essentially. I’ve got an idea of, you know, old school capacitors and resistors and stuff, but in terms of actual chips, you know, that’s completely beyond me. Yeah. And, and like I said, I can, I feel like I’m at a competent enough level now with modern consoles that. Yeah, I don’t know.
Neale 11:00
You can do it. So the point I was trying to make is that with you get resistors and you can change those. But let’s just say you’ve got, I don’t know, I’m not technical, but you’ve got a phone and you know that one component isn’t working. How do you go about that repair? Is it a case of repairing the whole board? Can you get into that sort of granule part of that board? Do you have to replace the whole thing? What’s the…
Joey 11:22
It’s so yeah it’s just it’s a one component at a time thing often in modern consoles it won’t just be one thing that goes wrong I’ll give you an example on a Nintendo Switch you’ll have a charging port a USB-C charging port and you know an Nintendo Switch I’d say is more so from what I’ve repaired and the stories I hear is more so a children’s device than adults because actually I I track I’ll backtrack a little bit children break them more than adults do of course they because spill juice right and plug in the wrong cable into the charging port what that does is it’ll bend the pins it’ll cause a short on the board and when you look into a Nintendo sSwitch and you look at the charging point you’ll see the cross-pinch like well that’s obviously where the fault is actually what’s happened is on a lot of the occasions when you take them apart there’s another chip on the board there’s there’s been fried right essentially.
Neale 12:12
So the wrong things are coming that it’s a chain reaction that’s going down further into the box.
Joey 12:15
Because they put a wrong cable in and then oh they found the right cable they put that in that gives a surge of power straight to the chip it’s called an M92 T36 power chip.
Joey 12:22
I know that.
Joey 12:25
That chip then goes bang then what you have to do is you have to locate the short usually it’s going to be on one side of a capacitor going into the main chip because one side of the capacitor is going to be ground and then you take the chip off I use a hot air station so for micro soldering specifically I use a hot air station much more than my soldering iron whereas I think with older retro devices I think more so you’re using soldering irons because a lot of it’s through hole. I don’t know I’m again I’m not too sure but I’d say 80% of the time I’m using my hot air station rather than a soldering iron so I take the chip off check to make sure that the shorts gone which nine times out of ten it has you change the charging port and then you put a new chip on I use donor chips a lot so I’ll just grab another Nintendo Switch I’ve got a
Neale 13:09
Oh so you have a stack of, like a box of, yeah.
Joey 13:12
In a livestream recently I pulled them on the desk and people were like oh well that’s how many that’s how many times you’ve failed yes exactly here’s my experience in failure.
Neale 13:21
That’s good to show, because you only learn from your failures. You very, very rarely learn from a success, do you? Exactly, and apart from not to be humble.
Joey 13:28
I like to, I actually spoke about this in a live stream yesterday and I like to pride myself on that. If I pride myself on one thing it’s probably that, that you have to be able to admit when you’re wrong and you have to own your mistakes because it’s the only way that you are going to get better. I think in life in general but I can only speak from experiencing the repair game for what I do and if I didn’t, if I didn’t swallow that pill there’s no way I’d be where I am today because I just wouldn’t learn.
Neale 13:57
We spoke about the fear factor about opening devices up, but showing failure also gives confidence to other people. It’s like, oh, if he can mess up, then it’s okay for me to make the same mistakes.
Joey 14:08
Exactly that.
Neale 14:09
Speaking of mistakes, you repair a lot of consoles. What is the most common modern console fault that you’ve come across?
Joey 14:17
The PlayStation 5 HDMI port is probably number one okay but you could then argue that it’s probably the most unit sold so in terms of they all break right all of them break
Neale 14:29
Is that because of force of use?
Joey 14:30
Yeah I mean a lot of people when they hear, how do you break a HDMI port because surely it’s just on a, you know, it’s next to a TV, you plug in a HDMI, how does that happen? Well if you’ve got controllers plugged in and people walk across, the console will fall over and when it snags on the back of the port it can cause it to dislodge.
Neale 14:45
Levy the…
Joey 14:47
Yeah yeah yeah, so the pins come loose. What I will say is that with the PlayStation 5’s from my experience working in an actual repair shop for a while, I found that they were the most common console to come in and it would be a PS5 HDMI port repair and it’s often that children as well, again, maybe if they’re taking their PlayStation 5 to their grandma’s house or something and they would just constantly unplug and put it in and you know, so that’s where a lot of the faults come from but I do believe that the solder joints are actually very weak on the PlayStation 5 HDMI port just from experience so I think they’re a very very very common repair. Nintendo Switches are up there for sure.
Neale 15:22
I think that the common theme is the the most common cause of damage to consoles is kids then.
Joey 15:27
Pretty much.
Neale 15:27
So if you want to be a successful gamer
Joey 15:30
Yeah.
Neale 15:30
No children.
Joey 15:31
Yeah, thank you pretty much. That’s the message. Yeah, that’s the message.
Neale 15:34
You just mentioned you worked in your repair shop. So did you go from IT? Did you dabble in repairs? What was the, what was the story?
Joey 15:38
So yeah again a little bit of background apology if I rant on. So when it when it when when it came to I think it was you know 2010-2011 when when YouTube became um a thing and livestream became a thing. Again I was probably 16-17 and that’s when I really wanted to to get into that world and I’ve been I was gaming and going back to the point about you were saying and speaking to a camera I know this is a little bit off track um I live streamed up until 2020 so you’re talking the best part of nine ten years on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday evening for hours and sometimes it’ll be weekend Saturday Sunday too.
Neale 15:40
Just a little bit passionate about it then.
Joey 15:40
Just a little bit yeah no addiction no obviously just a little bit passionate uh and my wife had been there the whole time so that tells you we’re still together yeah yeah we’re still together yeah yeah
Neale 16:26
The most understanding woman ever.
Joey 16:27
No, she’s she’s again incredible and I don’t know any other woman who would support their husband through such a an addiction I guess but that’s where about I got my practice. So it was only to five people. So I’d average I think I looked at the stats and they only go back so far. I think to 2017 but From 2010-2011 up until 2020 when I started Joey Does Tech Having that experience of just talking to people all of those days. I was live-streaming Thousands of hours to five people is where I kind of got you know
Neale 17:02
Something grounds where you learned the technique.
Joey 17:03
Exactly and even though it was a handful of people It’s still having the talks and looking at the camera and you know doing all those little things and like we talked about before Just having the confidence to
Neale 17:13
Do you still have the five people, are they still following you now?
Joey 17:15
A few, I, some of them, most of them were friends. No, they’re still about and some people I will see come into live streams now and they’ve been following for 10 years. So before the whole Joey Does Tech situation and it’s since 2015 and I’m like, oh my gosh, you’re still here. And you’re watching me now repair electronics, nothing different to get, yeah, yeah.
Neale 17:33
Exactly. Well, I think this is, this is a really interesting point because we’ve talked to a couple of YouTubers about this is that, um, they a lot of the time don’t know why people watch them. You know, there was a lot of, um, talk about, is it content? Is it right time, right place? You know, what was in the air, but I think you just nailed it. Certainly the case that we’ve mentioned Mark It Mark a few times now, but personality comes into it. So we get a lot of comments still saying that, oh, he’s a great channel. You know, really, really great guy and stuff. I’ve said, you’re very personable. People buy from people, people watch people. That’s gotta be the key to success, right?
Joey 18:11
Yeah I don’t know if there is a single key to success but I’d say it it definitely helps the situation um and just I think as cliche as it sounds consistency. I was there in 2010 doing all this stuff in a completely different realm not relating to electronics and I made that pivot in 2020 but I never changed that consistency and I failed a bunch of times so yeah I think that alongside with just doing it yeah. People would have quit I mean it’s just one of those things and I don’t know why I didn’t I can’t tell you why it was just it was such a love and a passion of mine to I guess you know you know I know it sounds kind of selfish but just be on camera and have that little bit of an entertaining persona um I just loved it and just getting the instant feedback from YouTube and Twitch whilst live streaming and having people to bounce off. I often say now I’ve got you know my friend circle is very very small I’ve only got a select amount of friends and um but in terms of streaming that gives me my out for the social aspect I know it sounds really weird and being in person is completely different and socializing is completely different to to being online but sometimes I’ll go live and I just there’s a little bit of a a breathe out like because I’m in my comfort zone so my comfort zone is sitting live streaming to people you know 100-200 people and just having a bit of a chinwag messing things up on repair because I want people to see that you know even after all these years of doing it I still mess up daily yeah so
Neale 19:42
Yeah, obviously you did it for so long, so consistent, you said you had to do it. Do you think you’ve filled some sort of hole or some sort of need that you’ve had?
Joey 19:50
Absolutely. Yeah, I feel like it wasn’t it wasn’t it was a massive out for me Just gave me in general and a lot of people would look at that and go you just wasted your time over that ten years Cuz you know if we talk about earnings and what I earned throughout that time It must have been a few hundred pounds over ten years and when you talk about a thousand thousands of hours That’s not a very good hourly rate if we’re being honest
Neale 20:13
If you’re looking at it from a financial level, but on an emotional human nurturing level.
Joey 20:17
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Um, for my state of mind and my mental health, it was my out and my way of being able to relax and just actually shut off from some of the stresses that were going on.
Neale 20:28
Well, if you have got a stressful IT job.
Joey 20:30
Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. And, um, yeah. So I, I, I’d done the corporate stuff from 19 till I think I was 30 when I went to the repair shop. So
Neale 20:42
We’ll get back into the repair shop yeah yeah.
Joey 20:43
Sorry I told you it’d be a little
Neale 20:44
No it’s fine we don’t have to go from A to B we can go via Zed via yeah
Neale 20:48
So it was a it was a good stressful job yeah for your mental health yeah it was what you needed to do at the time
Joey 20:57
Yeah and when I actually got into a relationship with my wife, she was then girlfriend, at 19, I made her fully aware and said look, just to let you know, I’m very much a gamer and I do like my games.
Neale 21:08
And I like my tea with two sugars, six
Joey 21:11
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I kind of just made it very, very clear that that was that was my big point. That was not out. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And it was an addiction, you know, in terms of the actual the gaming aspect, but I wouldn’t be where I was now. And I’m in, honestly, the best position ever right now in my life, mental state, physical state. I can go to the gym at, you know, 11 o’clock when it’s completely quiet, because I’m not the most social person, you know, I don’t like, you know, busy areas. And, yeah, I get to go in the middle of the day. And that’s, again, why I’ve been consistent with going to the gym, because it’s just, it’s nice and quiet. They don’t have to go at five o’clock, you know, and five o’clock a.m. p.m. I can just go in the middle of the day. So.
Neale 21:52
Right, repair shop, repair shop
Joey 21:54
Repair shop. This one’s a slightly interesting one. I worked in the corporate, I worked for an energy company for roughly around about 10, I think it was nine years by the time I left but I’d hopped around roles within that company, ended on IT support but I started on the phones just with like some salesy stuff, customer service and then kind of worked up to like a team leader role etc and then I kind of got bored and sick of that so I kind of hopped around a little bit. It got to, I think it was when I launched Joey Does Tech, it was just more of a hobby situation. I never even thought it would be the career that it is today. I wanted to pursue it and see if I can make something but I never thought I’d be exactly where I am. In 2022 my daughter was born and when my wife was pregnant we had a couple of decisions to make. Financially we own our house, we have a mortgage so we had to make sure that everything we did was a calculated risk rather than just throwing things away.
Neale 22:55
You’ve got someone more important out here.
Joey 22:56
Yeah of course, exactly. So I was very comfortable at this place, I was earning an okay wage. My wife was the breadwinner so she was going to give birth, she was going to have time off.
Neale 23:07
You’re the luckiest man ever.
Joey 23:09
Raymond, supportive wife, kept husband, everything, yeah.
Joey 23:16
Um, so, so yeah, she was, she was the breadwinner and we, we had to make a financial decision as to what we were going to do. She was going to have time off. And we had always said that time with our kids is going to be the most valuable thing. That’s going to be our priority. So we’ll go for as much time as you can possibly go for without having to go back to work. Um, and you know, it was a substantial amount more than myself, uh, that she was earning. Um, and the pay scheme that we had at our old place for maternity was horrendous. I think it was, you get, I can’t even remember what it was, but it was really, really hard. It was a couple of months, maybe two months or a month of full pay. And the after that it was nothing at all. So I had to basically pull my finger out. It wasn’t that I wasn’t earning a decent wage. It was, it was an okay wage, but at the same time, it was like, if we want this to be a, you know, the long game, we’re going to have to, um, I’m going to have to step up a little bit. I don’t know how. And then Joey Does Tech was bringing in some decent hobby cash. Uh, and I thought, okay, how am I going to be able to step this up a little bit? Because I’m only working, I was working Monday to Friday and then Saturday and Sunday would probably be JDT. Um, and sometimes we’d have, you know, family days between myself and my wife on a Sunday or something, but I was always just trying to progress JDT as much as I could. Uh, and, um, and I, and the decision that we had to make was there was in my, I said to myself, sorry, I said to myself, if I want to progress JDT, I need to learn more. So I need to get better at what I’m doing. Yeah. Profit wasn’t in the question at this point. So my YouTube channel wasn’t, you know, doing as well as what it is now, but it was, it was on its way sort of thing. And I had to kind of think outside the box, not just repair things. And, uh, I thought, how am I going to get better at repair? How am I going to feel more confident with the things that I’m repairing? Um, I thought, I’ll try and land a job working at a repair shop. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I didn’t have necessarily any experience with a lot of the things that repair shops would look for. So in this example, there was a, uh, there was a job on Indeed and it was, uh, required phone and tablet technician. So taking basically battery replacements and screen replacements. Uh, and I had mostly been exposed to consoles, even though my first repair was the iPhone 5, which by the way, I think I’ve got four or five videos out of that, but I’ve messed up that bad.
Neale 25:39
Is it working still?
Joey 25:40
Yeah. It’s working. Wow. Yeah. It’s working now. I replaced a whole chassis.
Neale 25:44
Joey Does tech, ladies and gentlemen.
Joey 25:46
Eventually eventually it took a while but when I applied for that job I knew that I wasn’t gonna get it on the basis of phone and tablet experience because I didn’t have that so I basically as a CV I said his name was Sean and we still speak now he’s a good friend I said hello Sean can see the job’s come up my experiences pretty much next to none however here’s my YouTube channel this is what I’m able of is there gonna be a position available and he got back to me and he said this is sort of exactly what I’ve been looking for because I’m looking to establish the social presence of the repair shop you have your YouTube channel so maybe we can you know work something out there even though you don’t repair phones and tablets I had an interview with him I went in to the repair shop and we really really got on and you know his mission was clear what he wanted to achieve and I could have helped that he wanted to start a YouTube channel for the shop and I said yeah I can do that no problem blah blah blah and then I waited for a reply and didn’t hear anything he basically had told me I got the job yeah and I was like this is a bit strange but we were talking about there was no questions regarding work it was literally you know just having a chat and I didn’t hear anything back so I chased him up and he said yeah I’m really sorry because my calculated risk was that what I had to do is I had to maintain my same wage at least which is difficult because I had no experience in a repair shop no experience in repairing things how am I gonna make this man money and he has to take a risk paying me more than what some of the other people in the shop were getting paid and I had no experience. How can you justify that?
Neale 27:19
Yeah, and you can’t put a value on creating a social channel without.
Joey 27:23
No, exactly. It’s really, really tough. But that was his idea from the social media aspect of bringing some money for the shop that way. So that’s kind of how I, you know, that’s how I pitched it. And, you know, that’s how I kind of justified my wage. It wasn’t justified. And he kind of said, yeah, unfortunately, financially, we’re not going to be able to. And then that was in the September of, I want to say 2021. And then July, sorry, June 2022, when my wife is a month away from giving birth, he reaches out and says, I made a mistake. I’ve spoken to the accounting team, which was his wife.
Neale 28:03
Actually, I asked the boss.
Joey 28:04
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, let’s, let’s just do it. I should have taken the risk back then. I want to take the risk now. Do you want to come on board for the money that you asked for? And I said, no.
Joey 28:16
Yeah, double it.
Neale 28:21
Double it, Sean.
Joey 28:21
Yeah yeah I didn’t want to I didn’t want to play that game at all considering we were a month away as well yeah exactly yeah so uh I had to kind of weigh it up I said about calculated risk taken out the window yeah uh so I said
Joey 28:34
Yeah we’ll do it and then um he was like How soon can you start? and a month before she’s about to give birth I gave in my notice so what I what I did which was also fair for the company because I didn’t want to screw them over as well but I had paternity of two weeks and then took two weeks holiday and then I think um that was also essentially my saying goodbyes nice yeah. So I’d done that and then went to go work at the repair shop uh and I built a YouTube channel called Rocket Repairs that’s the name of the shop.
Neale 29:05
We’ll stick it in the description.
Joey 29:06
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the videos are still all there and, you know, I’ll forever be grateful for Sean for taking the risk on me because he shouldn’t have really needed. He just, he shouldn’t have because the wage and, you know, what I thought would be, you know, the right move was, it was asking for a bit too much. But I also had to look after my family. And if we wanted as much time for my wife with our daughter, that’s how we had to play it. And it worked out eventually.
Neale 29:36
If you don’t ask you don’t get. And I take it you learned a lot in that repair shop, right? You must have built up
Joey 29:43
I can’t tell you how much I learned. I mean, Sean was never really there because he also had another job. So even though he owned the repair shop, it was just us techs there. So every single job that came in and every single customer was essentially our own customer. So it wasn’t like we were operating under Rocket Repairs as a shop, but a lot of the time it was that relationship you’d built. You kind of were the dedicated repair person for that customer. So you take the journey from booking the job in, repairing it, updating them, which had its own issues along the way, because when you’ve got a couple of repair techs working in one shop and people not leaving notes and all those, you know, the standard customer service things, right? But my dream was actually at that point, I wanted my own repair shop. So the dream was kind of a little bit different, right? Yeah, because I thought to myself, there’s another YouTube channel called NorthridgeFix in the US and he’s got, in terms of his business mind, he’s really, really, it’s incredible. So I kind of watched him a lot and I said, right, I want my own repair shop and I’ll run YouTube and my marketing funnel will be my YouTube, go into my repair shop and, you know, and then eventually be able to sell stuff and all those things. All the good stuff. Yeah, but working in that repair shop, again, I do like to pride myself of customer service and treating customers to the best of my ability. I think it’s like a number one thing in business in general.
Neale 30:59
You treat people how you want to be treated.
Joey 31:00
Exactly that. Yeah, fundamental. One thing I learned is that, you know, sometimes no matter how you treat people, you are going to get some really difficult situations when it comes to customer service. So, and I saw those firsthand. I worked at the repair shop for a year and a half. Long story short. And by the time I finished, I said, yeah, I’m probably going to leave that now. I think I’d be able to open a repair shop and I’d have the business and I’d have the customers.
Neale 31:25
But the customer experience wasn’t.
Joey 31:26
It’s not even that it’s just the I didn’t really have I could count on one hand how many bad experiences I had in the repair shop but the stress that comes with it right is one thing
Neale 31:37
Because if you want to do a good job
Joey 31:39
Yeah of course yeah but and again I knew that if I was to launch something on my own and I wouldn’t have a actual shop front per se it would be more so like a mailing service or something but that again comes with its own logistics and stress but by the time I had worked at the repair shop I was doing YouTube videos every other day for the repair shop I’d go home and work on JDT for my YouTube channel so everything was repair that way so it went from kind of like being my hobby to then a bit too much because I’d be doing the work for somebody else you know earning money for that business whilst doing then the social media stuff and then coming home and doing Joey Does Tech
Neale 32:16
No time to promote your own
Joey 32:17
Right so I was kind of and I was I was a bit nervous about that as well by the way because I didn’t know how people would perceive that if I’m uploading to two different places is that actually going to affect Joey Does Tech because of course they don’t like seeing that live your own audience yeah so I yeah it was a little bit um but the the YouTube channel for the repair shop Rocket Repair has done done quite well it was earning a little bit of extra revenue not as much as what we thought it would but um
Neale 32:45
But raised the profile.
Joey 32:45
Raised the profile. Absolutely. We had also
Neale 32:46
A little SEO and stuff that could improve it. So, right. Sounds like you did a decent.
Joey 32:50
Yeah, it was and I enjoyed my time there. I met some amazing people and then it just got to a point where it was like, okay the money that I’m earning from YouTube is now equal to my wage right and I was doing it solely
Neale 33:04
yeah if you could look at that then
Joey 33:06
And I was doing it one day a week and I was like okay so again taking a calculated risk and my wife luckily because of what I was earning at the repair shop and with Joey Does Tech it was effectively two wages she was then able to stay at home with our children so that is the ultimate goal in the whole situation and if we’re achieving that we can so I said I spoke to Sean I said can I drop a day to focus on Joey Does Tech because if I can then increase the earnings more and he knew what was coming of course from me asking that yeah and again I give a lot of credit to him because he allowed it and he said yeah it’s gonna be a little bit of a struggle for us but go for it.
Neale 33:42
The confidence in the amount of investment he’s put in you, he wants you to do well as well. And also, while you’re doing both, you raise your profile, it’s not going to harm. So yeah, what a great guy. To Sean!
Joey 33:57
Honestly, he was and you know, there was a lot of he’ll know as well if he does end up watching this. There’s a lot of controversial conversations. There’s a lot of controversial conversations we had, but ultimately it was a struggle because I wanted to make some changes in the repair shop. But you know, he was the main guy at the end of the day. So it was his shot. Yeah, exactly. But I’ve always got on with him and he was a great guy and obviously still is a great guy. And he allowed me to then take that extra day. And with that came me going, okay, I’ve managed to earn a little bit more now. Sure. And I think it’s time that I jump into this full time. And again, it was that calculated risk. I was earning more than what I was earning at Rocket Repairs. Let me dedicate five days a week to this and see how I get well, six days actually. But let me then let me see how I get on. And then I left Rocket Repairs in 2023. I think it was, I was there for a year and a half and I left and last two years of yeah. So 2024, January 1st is when Joey Does Tech was full time. Well, I’m lucky enough that I’m still in a position where it’s full time. Yeah.
Neale 34:59
Well, here’s a first for the Another Bright Spot podcast. We have some bonus content. Joey, we had a great chat, but we couldn’t stay away. You’re in your studio, we’re in our studio. Let’s carry on the conversation.
Joey 35:11
Let’s do it. Yeah, yeah. In our nice comfy places, more relaxed.
Neale 35:15
It was so uncomfortable before, you could just tell the atmosphere. It just wasn’t working so let’s get some distance, right? Right, you’re in your studio. One of the things that I wanted to ask you when we were chatting, but we didn’t get tired because we ran out, was people watch your channel. They may want to do this sort of stuff themselves. What’s your favourite bit of kit? What you go to? What you need to do?
Joey 35:39
Well, it depends because I think there’s two. Are we talking the YouTube side of things or are we talking the repair? Because I have almost two different set ups. I’ve got my whole repair kit and then I’ve got the the more advanced YouTube set up stuff that a lot of people don’t actually get to see.
Neale 35:56
Yeah, no, let’s go both of these. Importantly, if you’re setting up a YouTube channel and you want to do repairs, you need both, right? Yeah, go for it.
Joey 36:02
Your basic sort of soldering iron. I actually done a review recently of a soldering iron that I picked up from AliExpress. When I first started, I used the very cheap nine pound Amazon special soldering irons. They literally plug into the wall socket and they go up to 450 degrees Celsius and they can be quite questionable in terms of, I’d say, health and safety. So it makes it quite difficult for me to say, I recommend these because from a health and safety standpoint, you know, that is your responsibility in terms of that level of safety. But you can.
Neale 36:35
Amazon recommends Joey doesn’t recommend.
Joey 36:38
Exactly
Joey 36:39
Yeah, you can definitely do the jobs that you need to do with a very basic soldering iron. So you don’t need to jump in at 50, 60, 100, 150 pounds for a soldering iron. What I would say is that I personally like to use my hot air a lot more. So this is my hot air station. This specifically is an ATON ST862D. This sets you back around about 150 pounds, but for the repairs that want to make you money, if you were wanting to, if your goal was like a repair shop, this, for example, would do 90% of your work for you. So you’d want to invest a little bit more heavy in something that was going to get the job done right quicker with better quality, et cetera. But if you were starting out, you could definitely start out with a nine pound soldering iron. I don’t actually have one with me right now. I just gave one away because I’d done a video showing with a nine pound, or I think it was 18 pound soldering iron. Can I still do the repairs that I do now with all this experience? Whereas what I currently have or have been using is, have you heard of Hakko? It’s a really, really big brand.
Neale 37:40
No, no, I haven’t.
Joey 37:41
Yeah, Hakko’s a huge soldering brand. I’m pretty sure they do other tools as well, but they’re like a staple holding the soldering industry, I guess. And I had their soldering station and that can set you back, you know, 400, 450 pounds, but you can definitely get started with the cheap stuff. And I would recommend it to start with the cheap stuff, but it comes with the frustrations and you need to expect that. So you’re not gonna get the fancier tips and the better equipment as such.
Neale 38:12
But if you’re new to soldering, you’re not going to, I mean, I’m a musician, I play a guitar, you start off on a cheap guitar, it’s only when you start playing nicer guitars that you realise, oh this is what a fretboard should feel like, oh this guitar’s got a nice action, or oh those pickups sound delightful. When you start off, you don’t know any of that.
Joey 38:30
No, no, no, exactly. Yeah, it’s exactly as you said. Exactly. Yeah. And you just upgrade when when you make a little bit of money, or I always recommend the cheaper stuff, because again, you don’t want to sink 150-200 pounds. And then after a really frustrating repairing session, when you’re not able to do the job you want, instantly regret spending that money on that equipment. So I always say just start off cheap, my actual recommendation for anybody starting to wanting to get into repair is buy something like a Nintendo DS like cheap off of eBay for five pounds, or even better ask your family friends, see if they’ve got any devices, I started off with an iPhone 5, they’re just sat in a drawer or something, they’re going to go in the bin.
Neale 39:14
Something you don’t mind damaging.
Joey 39:15
Yeah, take it apart put it back together It’s not make that make it clear to them that this might not work if it does work It might not work by the time I’m finished with it But just just a screwdriver set again very cheap 10 pound 15 pound and you know I personally I use the LTT one which I’ve got just here, but if you want to go basic I think I’ve got again a very cheap Amazon basic one up there for 18 pounds It comes with all the same bits just a bit of a cheaper feel obviously and and you could do the exact same job And you the frustrations you go through they’ll make you stronger for the more difficult repairs is what I’d say And that’s where you build your experience, you know
Neale 39:53
Yeah, no, absolutely. And also, when you’ve got I always think when you start off with a fancier kit as well, you don’t appreciate it more, but you don’t look after it as well. So again, just using the guitar analogy, I used to leave my guitars out in a car or they get banged. I never used to oil the neck. And on older, cheaper ones, that’s kind of fine. But when you’ve got some that’s a bit more expensive, a bit more precious, it needs looking after a bit more. You don’t want to have basically an expensive bit of kit, not oil it, not clean it, you know, run it into the ground.
Joey 40:27
Yeah, you have that duty of care for something that’s a bit more expensive. But yeah, you can start off as cheap as you want and you can just work your way up. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. You can literally get started with just that screwdriver kit and just take things apart and put it back together. It’s a massive skill, huge skill.
Neale 40:41
Cool. Right, so that’s your tools covered off. If you’re going to be a YouTuber? What camera, mic, computer, set?
Joey 40:49
Well, I guess… I guess for me for me personally a microscope is also a big thing when it comes to repair So I’ve got I’ve got this microscope which is from Tomilov. I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to get a shot Let me see Now there’s loads of different microscopes that you can actually get well I think the two main ones is you’ve got the trifocal which is this could be completely wrong by the way And I might botch this entirely so apologies in advance, but
Neale 41:13
It’s okay. It’s not going on YouTube forever, so don’t worry, there’s no pressure.
Joey 41:17
Trifocal, monofocal, bifocal, whatever it is, but you can have a microscope where you have like two lenses like this And then you’ve got a third and then on that third is where you sit a camera So again, it’s you need to decide if you’re gonna do this stuff for YouTube. It’s those those are very very expensive I’m talking six seven hundred pounds or so or you can get something that is more so like 250 pound Which is what I have yeah what you’ve got behind you
Joey 41:41
That’s the exact one, I didn’t even see it. That, I think, is called a trifocal, where you have the camera sat on top, and you can
Joey 41:48
peer through yeah exactly I think though the pros and cons when you’re using a microscope like that you’re kind of hunched over a lot right because you’re having to look down the barrel whereas with what I use which is the digital scope and it has the screen here so I have like the power press the power button and it shows the actual you know image I can just sit back and chill I don’t have to be you know right next to the screen having to look into that yeah
Joey 42:10
Yeah. So they all have
Neale 42:13
Because then you have to hire a masseuse so that she puts up your channel costs.
Joey 42:15
Exactly that. Yeah, yeah. And then you’ve got you’ve got stuff like I have it on an arm, for example. So it’s a nice swivel arm. But I use HDMI. So it’s a mini HDMI, which then feeds into the back of my PC. In my PC, I’ve got a HDMI capture card, which is a, I want to say a Camlink Pro from Elgato. It has four HDMI ins. So I have my microscope going in there. I’ve got two DSLR cameras. I’ve got my face cam here, which is a Canon EOS 250 D. And I’ve got the exact same camera up top, which gives you hold on, because I’ve got a virtual camera on right now. So this should work pretty smoothly. I hope there it is. Right. So here’s my keyboard. My lights all down at the moment. But you can see that’s my like top down. So, you know, I’ve got all of that. And then I’ve also got, again, that’s all hooked up to my microscope. I run everything through OBS, which is a piece of software that allows you to use all of these and transition your scenes and just and just do all of that good stuff. But if I, for example, went over to my microscope, excuse the dirty table. But that’s that’s my microscope. And I kind of streamline that for all my videos. So I’m not having to, you know, edit for four different inputs on a camera. I’m just running everything through OBS, recording everything. So then that way, I’m able to just edit one, you know, audio one video, and it’s just cuts, because I’m lazy like that. But it’s worked. And it’s made my workflow. Some people will understand this and go, Oh, okay. Some people go like,
Neale 43:37
Mark’s nodding his head in the background. He’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joey 43:39
I thought he might be.
Joey 43:42
I thought he might be yeah. But I thought for like simplicity sake and you know just to speed up my workflow that’s that’s what I do but microphones this is a Razer Black Shark V2 Pro for my live streaming I like to use a headphone like this and a microphone and this is the best mic on the market in my opinion I’ve tried others and this seems to be the best whereas this is a you know like a pod mic if I can’t use this on live streams because of how hands-on I am with everything so meet the benefit of me using the headset is if I go up into the loft I’m still talking to chat and I’m still trying to be interactive and whatnot and I can still hear everything whereas if I was to use this I’d have to you know move out of the way and mute it and all those things whereas this it’s just again simplicity but yeah so I’ve got the microscope for the content creation the cameras the ring lights I’ve got two other lights up there as well so yeah it’s a lot that goes into it I think that you know if you’re not privy to it you wouldn’t really know you just kind of see it on screen and go okay cool yeah that looks all right but there’s a there’s obviously there’s a lot going into it yeah
Neale 44:39
Yeah, I mean you’re such a geek. I mean this in the most affectionate way I mean you’re just the way you’re chatting chatting about your kit I mean we had a long conversation about families and stuff you seem more joyous, no offensive to your family, more joyous talking about your kit and what you’ve got. It’s great. I love it
Joey 44:55
I hope they don’t see this. I hope they don’t see this.
Neale 44:57
It’s not going to be on the internet forever. We won’t hashtag it. It’s fine.
Joey 45:01
Yeah, it’s one of those things I just love. I don’t overspend. I wouldn’t say it, because I think I was actually having a chat with the stream the other day, and I said, I want this camera to be better at the front. And they’re like, why? It’s fine, you know, it does the job. I started off with, I think we covered this, but like a very basic Logitech C920 webcam that I had back to front. The image was reversed on my first video. It’s all there on the channel. So like, you just learn these things, and that’s the epitome of just start basic, just get started, and then work your way up and, you know, stay consistent and commit. And again, I say to people, you’ll find out very quick. If you start with a screwdriver set and a Nintendo DS Lite or an iPhone 5 or whatever it is, you’ll find out very quick if this is for you or not, if it’s a hobby that you enjoy or not, because those are actually really difficult devices to get stuck into. But I like to, in that sense, I started in the deep end. I’d recommend other people to go into that deep end as well, because you’ll either strive or you’ll sink, and you’ll go, this is not for me.
Neale 45:58
And you don’t want to spend a fortune on expensive soldier irons and all that kind of stuff.
Joey 46:02
Exactly that, so save yourself, save yourself that.
Neale 46:05
We spoke about the the differential that I really liked about your channel is that you’ll get a job lot of PS5s and then you’ll go can I make a profit out of you know fixing these yeah. The thing that we didn’t touch on that I really wanted to ask you is do you think it’s feasible that someone could make a living out of repairing old tech or recent modern tech?
Joey 46:28
So, I’ve done a wrap-up of Season 1, so I had Season 1 Profit or Loss, that’s the name of the series, it’s called Profit or Loss. I had Season 1, I’ve just wrapped up Season 2. So my Season 1 target was to make £1,000 buying stuff from eBay and, you know, fixing it and selling it on through eBay, essentially, and just using that platform. And it took me 104 episodes on YouTube, and I worked out how much I was paid an hour for how much time I put into the series, and it was 53p an hour. So, no, is the short answer. However, if you can make friends with a supplier, it’s all about the sourcing and being able to source it for, A, a good price and B, consistently. So because I make content, if I was to just quit YouTube or never had this platform that I have and try and do what I do now, I’m not surviving. And I would have found that out very quick. You cannot, in my opinion, consoles specifically of this generation, newer generation, you know, the Xbox, even going back to like the One S or the One X and the more modern consoles, it’s going to be so difficult because every device you buy, there’s probably been about 15 other technicians that have gone into that device before you, making the ability to repair it not next to none because I’ve, you know, I’ve had my fair share of easy repairs, but it’s like one out of 100. It’s extremely difficult. The hourly profit that I made in season two, so I set a target of £2,000 this time. So I essentially doubled it and I finished it in, I want to say 68 episodes, so a lot less episodes than what the first season was, double the profit.
Neale 48:07
Is it luck, experience, what’s the…
Joey 48:10
I think it’s more so, I don’t want to sound too cocky. I generally do believe it’s experience only because there’s only so much that you can see when you’re buying a listing on eBay, like for example, photos, or there’s only so much questioning you can give a buyer before actually just committing and buying that device because your time is money at the end of the day. So you can’t wait on these responses from the sellers, sorry, that are selling these devices. So all you have really is your judgment on a picture and the description that that seller’s given. So over time, being on eBay, I’m talking specifically eBay as well, because that’s where I buy most of my stuff. It could be completely different. There’s auctions that happen everywhere. It just depends on where you put your time and effort into. But specifically talking about eBay, I feel like that was more of an experience thing, just being on the platform longer, knowing kind of what to look out for, certain terminology.
Neale 48:59
Get a vibe for certain listings, right?
Joey 49:01
You do, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Neale 49:02
You know, if someone describes something a certain way, you know, that you can sort of say by the way, what they’re not telling you tells you a lot about.
Joey 49:10
100%. 100%. And if they’re a private seller or a business seller, if they’re a business seller, that device has probably had a lot of techs on it. So it’s stuff like that. And it’s definitely more of an experience thing when it comes down to it. So my second profit or loss season, it was a target of 2000 pound. I hit that within the 60 odd, but this time things were a lot more accurate. So I went, the first season was like an estimated profit because I didn’t want to have to wait for the items to sell. The second season, it sold on eBay. How much profit was it actually? Minusing cost of parts and everything like that. And it worked out to be 13 pound, 15 hour. So I mean, which is, you know, which is a massive difference. Again, I didn’t have, I didn’t have the exact data for season one. So that 59 P or whatever it was, it was very estimated. But when it came to, I was logging my hours for season two, there was a lot more data that I put into the second season just by learning from the first one and more experience and just not knowing and just, sorry, and just knowing what not to buy. I kind of, I saw PS5s for, you know, faulty PS5s. We’re talking to 220 pounds for a faulty PlayStation 5. To give you an idea, I can’t even sell a working PS five for 220 pound if it’s a digital edition one. So, and I get, I get asked that question a lot. It’s like, Joey, are you slightly to blame? Again, not trying to sound cocky or anything like that. Are you slightly to blame for this faulty pricing on eBay just being a little bit inflated because maybe so many people are starting wanting to try and get into it because of the hobby, but everyone’s now fighting for the same sort of thing on eBay. So people are just ramping their prices up. I don’t know if that’s the case, but I mean, I’d be stupid not to at least consider thinking about that. Yeah. So yeah.
Neale 50:51
Before we started recording just now, I mentioned that I caught a bit of your live streaming. I was at work, I just looked it up, I saw you were online. I mean, just in case my boss is watching, just like your family hopefully won’t be watching this. It was 30 seconds, it was fine. Where do people live stream? Where are they? What are they doing? Got any weird stories for us?
Joey 51:20
I’d say, I wouldn’t say necessarily weird because I wouldn’t know, I wouldn’t think of my audience as weird. Right, let me just say that first.
Neale 51:23
Of course, nah-nah they’re lovely.
Joey 51:25
Just in case anyone’s watching, right?
Joey 51:31
Uh, I would say, I would say that, uh, the, the sort of gold standard that I have in terms of my audience is that they’re usually watching whilst they’re working is what I would say and when my chat is a little bit quiet and the views are the same, it’s usually because people are doing their job and they’ve just got me on in the background sort of thing.
Neale 51:46
Got headsets on the probably in a spreadsheet or Outlook. Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, sure.
Joey 51:49
But I cannot tell you the amount of people that come into my stream, and people have privately gone out of their way to message me this as well, that my videos are the perfect videos to fall to sleep to. Now.
Neale 52:04
What a compliment!
Joey 52:08
You can take that as two ways, I mean it’s great for me, especially on longer videos, because that means they’re just watching all of the ads.
Joey 52:13
So for me, in that regards, that’s a huge win. It means I get paid more.
Neale 52:16
This is why it was £13 an hour. It wasn’t anything to do with more experience on eBay. This is purely people sleeping through your content.
Joey 52:26
I’ll take it. I mean, if that’s what it takes, you know, that’s what it takes, but there’s a load of content ideas when people say that I’m like, okay, so I actually did try and upload a 12 hour Profit or Loss like the whole of I know was it I think it was 3 x 12 hour parts of Profit or Loss Season one. So people could put that on and just go to sleep if they wanted.
Joey 52:46
I’ve done that just to test it and it’s got a couple of thousand views. It’s not done anything extraordinary But people have commented saying thank you. I just have this on to help me get to sleep. I’m not okay I that’s that’s really cool. So, um Yeah, I take I try and take it as a compliment because everyone tries and backs out that way and says look Please don’t take offence, but I like your voice is nice when I sleep So I don’t understand how that, being from Hampshire and stuff, as well I don’t understand how that’s a thing and these are people in US so I don’t understand but yeah
Neale 53:14
Now, I think, look, we’ve, I chatted to James about this, I chatted to Mend It Mark about this, I’ve caught it up with Lee and now yourself. I think the people who have got YouTube channels that have a degree of success, whether it’s, you know, the hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands or over a million, like James is, at the minute, you, people are attracted to personalities. And, you know, if you’ve got interesting content, that’ll get you so far, but your beer, like, you know, a beer meets food, for example, is personality, like you call them fursers, they just sort of radio personality. And people are sort of drawn to that. And I think that’s what makes these, you know, the channels a success. It’s quite interesting that just the other week, YouTube views like smashed BBC traditional media, you know, for the first time ever, very much a traditional media versus up and coming, more people are watching YouTube than they are. I play a four OD. You’re a YouTuber, you’re a broadcaster. What do you think these, you know, traditional institutions of broadcast media need to do to keep up?
Joey 54:23
I mean, it’s a great question. I don’t, to be honest, and the answer is horrible. I don’t know that I think I think I think they just need to try and I don’t know if they’re going to look to maybe hire YouTubers, quote unquote, as maybe like contractors to do some presenting that could maybe be something that they lean into. But I think also host a lot more of their shows and stuff on the platform. And not just YouTube, but any other platform that I don’t, I mean, for live streaming stuff, you have Twitch and everything like that, but for live broadcasting. But yeah, the numbers, the numbers are insane for YouTube. And it’s funny you say that, because a lot of my viewers, when I go into my statistics for the audience, a lot of them are watching on TV now. So it’s not, you know, people are moving away from the the mobiles and everything like that, because they want to sit down. The big screen as well. Right, exactly. And they use their phone to chat for the interaction. So they’ve got chat only mode on their phone, and they’re actually using their TV for the viewing experience. So again, that goes back to me saying about the camera quality and stuff. I’m saying that specifically, because I want that 4k crisp to make sure that I’m okay on a TV, because 720p and 1080p isn’t really going to cut it for some people now. So I think in terms of the actual, you know, main broadcasters and stuff. Okay, I don’t know, because I’m not, I’m not, I have no idea about that world. I’ve got no idea about scripting. I’ve got no idea about production, other than what I do.
Joey 55:44
I am a one-man band, except for my lovely wife of course who helps out but I it’s you know thanks for your comment earlier about you know the stuff about me not saying about my family.
Neale 55:53
No no, you’ve bounced it off now, you’ve paid her a compliment, so it all works out in the wash. It’s like a tick. Well, Mark and I have both worked in media. Mark’s got a longer broadcasting career than I have, but I worked for Sky and ITV, very early in my career. And we were having a chat before that you’ve just said you’re a one-man band, you’re the director, you’re the talent, you’re the producer. And you were saying about BBC, for example, or Channel 4, whoever, getting in YouTubers, they’re going to walk in, right? And they’ve got to deal with the director, they’ve got to work with the producer. I’d think. The director would be like, let’s take another take, let’s do this, let’s do this. But the talent’s going to be like, well, actually, I direct myself, so I think it’s better this way, and they’re going to have instincts and stuff, and there’s clashes.
Joey 56:37
I don’t know, but I guess you could actually caveat that and say, well, sometimes it will take me 10 takes to record something because I’ve messed up and I’ve tripped over my feet a thousand times. So I might be used to that. So it really depends on what you’re like on camera. I don’t get things, but honestly, some of the takes, I’ve got stacks and stacks of it. And one day I’ll make a huge montage of me just doing some really, really bad stuff. But it’s like, when I say bad stuff, by the way, I’m talking about takes, not just like. Yeah, sure.
Joey 57:10
I don’t I don’t know I think I think it’s hard to say but I feel like we’re really on the edge of that shift I think there’s there has been a shift and it’s been shifting but I think I feel like now more than ever the creator economy is very powerful and I feel like it’s just gonna get stronger I don’t see why it wouldn’t everyone’s got a voice everyone can have a voice, now anybody can have a voice you got a platform you got a voice it’s it’s it’s crazy and yeah I just when you do everything like this yourself I wouldn’t know what to do in a situation where we’ve got a producer you’ve got the editor you’ve got the director I wouldn’t have yeah I wouldn’t have no idea what to do I’d probably be horrendous but yeah.
Joey 57:49
How much money did you waste?
Joey 57:51
Yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah can I put that on my spreadsheet please for my Profit or Loss logging it per hour but yeah I don’t know I don’t know what I don’t know what the again like the answer is for that but I feel like it just needs to be more of a collaborative situation rather than a them versus us situation you know because I feel like times are just changing and people have to adapt and change is good change can suck but it is good
Neale 58:19
Last question for you since I tried to get them with all our guests. So Ignis we are electron design experts, we work with a whole plethora of different organisations, different industries, you know we create fantastic electronic product. If you were given infinite budget, infinite resource and you came to us and you could design any device, gets to build it basically, what would you choose?
Joey 58:42
I would choose a games console for kids that was easily accessible, but had like a really good aspect of learning to it. You know, it’s really tough to, because again, we’re in times now and I’ve got children, right, so I’ve got a three year old and I’ve got a seven month old. And it’s scary because I hear so many people talking about how they give their kids way too much tablet time and some people, they give them none. And you have to look at it from both sides of the fence and it’s like, well, you know, when they go into school, they’re gonna be, you don’t want them to be behind in a way because they’re gonna have these bits of technology. So I’d say something that kind of
Neale 59:24
Bridges that gap.
Joey 59:25
It was like a games console, so yeah, yeah, yeah. So it had that sort of, and this is just completely on the spot by the way, but I would say some sort of games console that was a mixture between the gaming side of things and the learning side of things. Obviously it depends on, you know, your parents and how much time you can actually have on it. But I would say something like that at an affordable cost for everybody. I’m not talking hundreds of pounds, you know, something that was 30, 40 quid or something that was easily accessible so that a lot of people could have it is what I would say.
Neale 59:55
Sounds great. Joey, thanks for your time it’s been a pleasure.
Joey 59:57
You’re more than welcome. Thank you. Cheers.