STATURDAY CHAT LIVE with Brandon Foltz, Ep. 65

n m hello everybody oh I'm out of focus try this again there we go it helps when you're in focus on a live stream so welcome everybody to the next Edition a special edition actually which I'll get to in a second of sturday chat live here on March 16th 2024 the day before St Patrick's Day here in the US I'm assuming elsewhere thank you for stopping by the live stream as always if you're new to the live stream this is how it's going to work just so you are aware this live stream will be a bit shorter today because I have an appointment at 1:00 that was the only time they had so I have to keep this short so I can get to the appointment by 1 pm so we won't go you know too awful long on this live stream always put in the chat where you are watching from I like to know where you're watching from in the world because we have viewers from all over the place and I like knowing sort of where you're watching from uh the way this works is that you can put your comments questions or whatever else thoughts in the chat and I will get to those to the best I can I can't always answer everything in real time on the live stream which you can reach out to me on LinkedIn is probably the best way um or my website if you have a follow-up question as long as it's a short follow-up question I will try to get to it um as soon as I can you know I do my best this is something I do on the side of my spare time so you know if I can't get to your question it's not anything personal I do the best I can so a few things to note as we begin this live stream so this is actually the penultimate live stream for the foreseeable future this is my second to last live stream for the foresee foreseeable future I talked about this on the live stream excuse me before main reasons are cost so the software I use to do the live stream costs almost $500 a year and right now the YouTube revenue does not justify the costs associated with that um you know in the Stream I did the streams starting a couple years ago to make myself available to everyone and of course as YouTube has changed that I'm not sure that's bringing a whole lot of value to everyone so this is the PIN ultimate the second to last live stream that I will be doing for the foreseeable future that does not mean I quitting YouTube at all that's not what I'm saying uh like other people are quitting YouTube and stuff but I'm not it's just the live stream so I'll still be releasing content on YouTube when I have the time but again YouTube was like my third priority because I have other I have a career obviously 9 to-5 typical career and I have other side projects that actually pay me to work so I have to kind of focus on those but the live stream has been great and in the future that might resume I don't know I'm not closing the door to the live streams going away forever but for right now it's something I have to do both financially and in terms of time and hopefully that allow me to actually make more content for YouTube proper so yeah so this is the second the last live stream for the foreseeable future the next one will be either be in two or three weeks I'm not exactly how it's how it will fall but of course you will see that notification on YouTube Andor LinkedIn when I post the live stream so probably two weeks from now but maybe three week three weeks from now depending on how things go I have some work travel coming up that I have to attend to and some other things

with my sort of day job that take presidence of course so yeah so that's sort of the status of the live stream just so you know I don't want you to think that I'm disappearing forever or anything like that I love having these streams and talking to people but I think over time their utility has just decreased as YouTube itself has changed and you can see that in the number of large creators are actually quitting YouTube Because as I say the juice is not worth the squeeze for many people and um I'm one of them it's just the reality of the way YouTube is changed so um so a few more things I'll get out of the way Piper hello from Denver it's good to see you again my friend hope you're doing well thanks for swinging by the channel and Phil good morning uh from boy congrats on the new position at Sage thank you very much yes I should mention that too part of the another part of the reason too is that um I did get a new position within my company it's a it's a broader position on the or or chart it's basically the same but I'm overseeing I'm actually the instructional designer for quantitative business which is like decision Sciences which is and finance which is what I do now or it did do but like accounting and tax and econ and all kinds of other stuff so it's there's going to be more people to deal with and more disciplines to work on which is good because it makes allows me to extend my reach and my knowledge and my expertise and what I bring to the table to more disciplines within uh my company but it will require another level of you know a little bit higher level of time and commitment um to do what I want to do with it so um yeah so the new position in my company is excellent I'm really looking forward to seeing how it goes it's kind of a position that we're developing as as time goes on and you know we'll see how it goes but yeah so thank you Phil I appreciate uh that message and I'm looking forward to yeah seeing where the instructional designer position at s Gage goes all right um P says sad but makes sense yeah the the YouTube is just changing so has changed so much especially over the past six months to a year that's why you see a lot of big YouTubers actually just quitting um because the time it takes to make content is not matched by the revenue that comes out of it anymore and you know my channel has flattened I know other YouTubers channels who have sort of really flattened out and YouTube wants to become a streaming service like a Netflix or whatever so it's try to compete with short form content like Tik Tok and so on so YouTube has changed in the over 10 years that I've been on there and as you can on here see other YouTube creators are feeling the pinch the same way to the point they're actually quitting the platform allog together I'm not doing that I'm just doing the live I'm just stopping the live streams because of the cost and the time that go into it so that's life you know sometimes in life you have to know when to uh say no let something run its course and then you have to move on to the next thing and that's just that's part of life it's been part of my life and it's I'm sure it's part of your lives and even though if you like doing something at some point it stops making sense and you just have to you know close that chapter and move on so anyway I look forward to making new actual YouTube content and some actually some different types of content and hopefully this will free up some time to do that on the weekends because I lose two Saturdays a month because the live stream so um I'll be able to focus on the weekends actually making YouTube content instead of spending most of my Saturday every other week on this live stream that is having decreased reach you know it's just the nature of the Beast so that's sort of why I'm doing it and yeah so we're going to have one more so I hope everyone can stop by for that final uh live stream at least for the foreseeable future and uh you know we'll sign off with a good last one here in two or three weeks cheers yeah absolutely definitely I'm in the midst of a lot of change myself absolutely you know it's I think the it's one of my favorite you know Darwin I'm a big fan of Charles Darwin and all of his the science and stuff that he did just revolutionary science but the phrase that's true is that you know those who survive are the ones who can adapt and you know to to be that Survivor requires adaptation constantly

and whether it's something small you know in the grand scheme of things like stopping a YouTube live stream when it's run its course or you're switching a job or you know moving to a different place or whatever sometimes we just have to adapt you know and that's just part of this process so you know stopping the live streams for at least for now is part of that process of growing and changing and adapting and surviving ding you know onward and you know we'll see but again I'm not quitting YouTube I want everyone to know that don't think I'll ever quit YouTube but I do only do content when I have the time and I think it's beneficial you know because like everyone else I have to do the things that pay the bills that keep the lights on that keep the water running it keeps my mortgage from you know being foreclosed on so just the nature of the Beast okay so I I'll be around I'll be on LinkedIn of course like I always am I'll be on YouTube making content so that's it so Jeffrey com says bummer but best of luck yes thank you very much again I think over in the long term it'll probably free up again free up more time to actually make YouTube content instead of spending two Saturdays doing a live stream with limited reach so um Chuck D whatever you say Piper oh I got some mail today I don't really do unboxing thing videos but this UPS just dropped this off on my way down the stairs to the to my basement to do the live stream so I thought I'd open it and I think I know what's in it but we'll see what we got here if I can find the perforation to open it there we go let's see what we got here oh yeah Charles Darwin oh it's a book oh yeah baby beautiful and Tada so here we go so this is the latest I love that new book smell oh new book smell so nice so this is our new edition of what we call it NBS for modern business statistics it's our statistics book that has Excel integrated through throughout it's gorgeous it's so beautiful I love the smell books but yeah um this just came out and actually it's uh it's child I guess um Essentials of modern business statistics which is a split so you know it splits around right here about I don't know about two-thirds through it splits and that's the essentials version of this book but it's really cool I work with amazing people every day work and a lot of effort goes into making these and of course the digital component as well and it's really cool to see like your hard work um payoff and your colleagues that you work with hard work payoff when this a beautiful new book that you've all worked so hard on um comes to fruition and here it is in your hands it's it is really and you know that tens of thousands of students um use and rely on this book for their education and it's prettyy cool seeing your name in there you can't see my name in there but there it is there's my name to have your um you know to have your name inside of a book like this that is the market leader by the way uh it's just amazing so I always smell new books them come weird all right so um yeah love getting new books in the mail let's see here yeah Charles Darwin absolutely one of my heroes in terms of all almost all scientists at that time were problematic because of beliefs at that time but you know but the science stands and you know evolution is a natural selection is one of the most if not the most important idea in science it's also True by the way that's see here um Clyde how you doing Clyde little late today good to see you it's too my friend thanks for stopping by our penultimate live stream Piper good question are you guys going to taking advantage of python and Excel that is the plan of course I think everyone who you know works with excel in higher education will plan to integrate some of the Python and Excel using the equals py function the question around that though uh Piper is whether or not all students will have access to that because my understanding is that Microsoft is going to charge

extra on the subscription or whatever else to have the python functionality turned on inside whatever version of excel that's being used which that creates accessibility issues so we take for granted that we can open up Excel or any other program like that and everything in there just works but it seems to be that these tech companies are going to nickel and dime people to death and instead of just making it part of the subscription they're going to back on more additional cost possibly to have access to um the uh to that functionality in Excel because the thing is what the way that works is the python is not running on your computer they're sending all that python up to the cloud basically it's a cloud-based anacon distribution so they're sending that python up to a server somewhere in the cloud that where it's being processed and then sent back down now of course one easy solution to this cost problem or accessibility issue I mean accessibility in terms of being able to afford it is let people run the python on their computer because python you can download and install for free obviously you know so I'm sure there's probably a way to do that so yes like everyone else will I'm sure that we will you know integrate and teach that python integration to the best of our ability depending on how the access works out that's on Microsoft's end that's not ours unfortunately so um you know we'll see all this other what they're doing is all this AI stuff the python stuff and whatever else they're all tacking you know additional costs onto these subscriptions instead of just folding it in to the usual subscription that you have as a way to generate more Revenue I mean they businesses that's what they do so I guess that's you know but in the end I'm not sure how much that's going to work and of course if I'm a higher education institution and I have to upgrade my Enterprise license for all my students many of which don't need it to get Python and Excel am I willing to pay that additional cost don't know so anyway but I'm in I'm on The Insider channel for Excel so I have the python uh built in right now it's a matter of you know students having access to it universally we'll see so um yeah so they're going to choke out their user base you know maybe it depends you know how many people use it we'll see yeah seems like a ridiculous solution to embed Ving code in a in a spreadsheet yeah I'm obviously not a fan of it either but you know CU When you install The Insider version of excel right now it'll say that this is just like a trial or a beta or something like that and the fine print at the bottom says in the future this will be an additional cost to Excel or to the subscription or whatever else it actually says that you know after you install that Insider version so that appears the way Microsoft is going to do the python and Excel is additional cost to wh whomever whether it's an institution in their Enterprise subscription a company or individuals through some additional tack on cost you know and it's the same thing all these AI companies want you to spend $20 a month to use their AI you know a few times a month and they all want $20 extra so by the time you subscribe to all of them you're paying $100 a month just for AI stuff that you might use a handful of times a month so the co the cost things are going to have to be figured out I don't know what the solution to those sort of things is because those things are expensive to run you know so um yeah Power B let you run R python doc scripts I'm surprised yeah that they're going to do that uh you know I again they're a company that's going to do what they're going to do I'm not sure if the python in Excel is the same implementation as similar things that are in powerbi I'd have to look into how that how it all works I'm not exactly sure so all right oh Clyde asked penultimate are you stopping your live streams yes so this is the second to last live stream I'll be doing for the

foreseeable future as I've explained in the past um the YouTube is just changed to the point where I cannot justify the cost of doing the live streams using streamyard and the only other free option is OBS but OBS requires a whole bunch of like you setting up scenes and all this other stuff and you know the having the chat available is you have to have like multiple things going on and it's like out of sync and using OBS is possible for live streams but it's a pain in the ass and credit the streamyard they've made streaming very convenient in terms of having all the chat built in like I can put up your comments you can do you know video bumpers and overlays and all kinds of cool stuff but it costs $500 a year you know and my YouTube channel doesn't make that much a month anymore you know I'm not going to spend more than a month of YouTube revenue on a piece of software um it's just it's too expensive but like I said I'm not quitting YouTube it's just the live stream stuff at least you know for the foreseeable future unless another company comes in that can do this cheaper than streamyard or streamyard can do it cheaper than they're currently offering the service because it seems a bit expensive um you know for just basic sort of streaming but again these are companies that answer to their investors and their equity you know holders so it's it is what it is but it doesn't mean I have to like do it so that's that's where the live streams are ending for the foreseeable future plus like I as YouTube has changed the utility of the live streams has just decreased and you know there aren't um as many people on them kind of as there used to be part of that's the AI stuff probably and you know it just in the balance of finite time and resources it's just something has to give and you know the live stream is what's going to have to give at this point um let's see all right yeah they're taking a different direction for Excel maybe you know I'm not sure if that's because Excel is more widely used and therefore they can increase their revenue by charging Excel users additional costs to have the python built in to that um but there is something kind of shitty about the fact that you know you charge people to use free software in your software you know I don't I mean I don't know um or there's a different implementation that wouldn't be so costly you know I pay what I pay like $120 a year for my office license my personal office which gives me like what five or seven different seats I can put it on like my parents and stuff like that um for 120 bucks but then they want me to turn around and pay them $240 a year or something crazy just to have Python and Excel that doesn't make any sense so it's it is what it is that is that's the where Economics work right now um you know in an era of high interest rates and you know VC money and private Equity money drying up that was free money this is just what you know this the way it works now excuse me I got to have uh my post exercise smoothie before I get to my car appointment and by the way just if you're if you come in the live stream late I will be ending this live stream in like six minutes because I have to take my car to the shop and the only appointment they had was at 1 p. m. Eastern um so have to be a bit shorter today so I can get my car uh tuned up and running well it's a shame you'll be missed appreciate that um like I said it may not be forever but for the time being the live streams will come to an end yeah so yeah the financial Paradigm is hammering tuck right now you know absolutely it's really easy to do this stuff when you're getting free money at 0% interest but um you know was it Warren Buffett or whoever said you know once interest rates go up you find out who has clothes on it's like the tide once the tide goes out you figure out who's who doesn't have any clothes on and this is what's kind of sort of happening and as interest rates have gone up and stayed up you know costs of capital have gone up um compan who have variable interest

debt have seen those interest rates go up because it floats you know with the interest rates and it's just a really tough time so they're having to squeeze every dollar out of the average person that they can you know to make their investors and shareholders happy and that's the way it works I'm not you know I'm not criticizing that necessarily it's just that's the way our economic system works it's like it's the worst economic system aside from all the other ones as the saying goes yep and it is what it is um is um but we won't solve those problems here but you know I do worry about the future of YouTube where it's just a collection of people who have insanely high production values well three people three groups I think YouTube's going into three groups you're going to have the Mr Beasts of the world who have insanely High production value um and do you know silly pranky stuff that is entertaining and everything but you know it's sort of innan um so you're gonna have those sorts of YouTube channels and YouTube loves them because it makes them a ton of money then you're going to have sort of people somewhat in the middle that have to either go out and find in sponsorships for all their videos beg you to join their Channel memberships patreon or sell merch or whatever else in order to make it financially viable so you're going to have this middle group of people on YouTube that are just having to turn you into a customer instead of a viewer and that's going to degrade the quality of YouTube content and already is degrading then the third bucket we're going to have probably on YouTube is just a flood of AI generated content so you know it's going to be Mr Beast and stuff with extremely high production value lots of views makes YouTube lots of money a middle group that has to ask and beg for money all the time through sponsorships through patreons through Channel memberships and merch and so on and so forth selling you things and then the third group will just be a bunch of a flood of AI generated content that's probably going to be you know the the future of YouTube over the next um little bit because that's the that's the system they created you know and that's what they want I guess so that's the way it's going to be you know like with Channel sponsorships I get requests all the time for sponsorships and one either they have nothing to do with my channel two they're shade they look shady as hell three the ones that do actually offer anything offer you like $50 to put an add in your video well no it just pisses off your viewers if you do that and um you know the sponsorships I've done on the channel are are people in institutions and products that I know and use whether it's Great Courses statistics. com um I think those are the two main ones I've done in the past so yeah I'm not going to I'm gonna get go out there and Hawk some creepy VPN service to you all because that's what half of them tend to be plus if I take sponsorships that means I have to like create content on their schedule and not mine which I interested in doing the Dark Forest you know so I will say you know YouTube is a YouTube has become a great streaming service there are some really great content creators out there that manage to do it full-time but they because they have you know sponsorships that can keep the lights on for them they ask you to donate to their patreons join their Channel memberships buy their this buy their that you know lot of them live in countries that have universal health care so they can do YouTube full-time and not worry about having a medical issue that can just bankrupt them immediately um so I think YouTube will Favor YouTube over time will favor individuals who live in countries that have a social safety net or have a Universal Health Care system or whatever else as imperfect those as those are often times they still have them um you know in the United States at

least for the most part you know your health insurance is tied to your job so that's the way you have to like think you know and look that's and that's a good thing to have right there are many places in the world that don't have access to adequate healthare at all period so I'm not complaining about you know um having healthcare through a through my job but it makes YouTube less of a priority because the things you get through your career type job are in the long run much more valuable than you have to have them okay all right there's a few more minutes and then we're going to roll because I got to get to the car shop um thank you for making stats easy you are very welcome very kind of you to say appreciate uh appreciate your comments and hopefully you all have more time to make some more stuff for you I have this whole series of videos planned with orange and the Machine learning stuff there just ain't no damn time there just isn't any time plus right now as I'm sure some of you are I spend all my free time almost trying to keep up with all the AI stuff because it changes every five minutes there's something new every day sometimes multiple things that are new every day it's crazy all right see you next week for the finale yeah probably be two weeks from now or three weeks from now will be the final one um I haven't looked at the calendar to see how things fall it'll either be the third 30th of March or the 6th of April will be the last live stream um again it'll pop up on YouTube uh and Linkedin when I schedule it so all right okay folks um I'm going to get myself cleaned up and head up to the car shop to get my car worked on but it's been great having you on this uh allit short live stream this penultimate live stream um here on March 16th and yeah I hope you have a rest a wonderful rest of your day and I'll see you again in uh two or three weeks just be on the lookout and that'll be our final live stream um for the time being for the for the near future all right so have a good one and I will see you soon take care bye