What's going on ladies and gentlemen?
Welcome back to the channel.
It's Alex and Marko, the Vagabrothers.
It's been a little while since you've seen our faces.
And we wanted to address the fact that
we have not been posting as much lately,
and let you know why.
There's been a lot going on behind the scenes,
both in the business and in our personal lives...
both good, both bad, and we wanted to give you an update
and also let you know about some exciting things
that are happening very, very soon.
Without further ado, this is why we haven't been posting lately.
As most of you know we spent the bulk of the summer filming
our new TV show, Budget Versus Baller,
which is going to premier on YouTube TV
on the Tastemade Channel this Fall.
It was pretty intense.
It was forty-five days on the road of production nonstop.
We did episodes in North America, in Europe, and in Asia.
We learned quite a lot, both about ourselves,
about television, about production, and about life in general.
It was definitely very different than filming for YouTube.
We have done stretches where we filmed
for like two weeks to a month.
Back in the day we did six months straight
when we first got started when we won the BBB contest.
The Biggest Baddest Bucket List
Not BVB.... BBB. It's different.
Confusing, but this is definitely
the biggest stretch of travel.. six weeks straight
that we've done in a very long time.
And also it happened right in the middle of summer, which is usually
when we're trying to publish as much content as we can for you guys.
For that we sincerely apologize.
We wanted to try to deliver more content to you
over this summer, but life happens
and the situation we found ourselves in
was one where we could not produce as much content
as we wanted to publish over the summer.
But good things are coming.
I think that TV is different than YouTube in many ways.
On one side you're doing less.
We were just only focusing on hosting.
However, it's also very taxing, very tiring
You were traveling around a lot.
You have multiple cameras on you at once.
You start, stop, move, change locations all the time.
Call times, early call times, late wrap times.
I think what we should just clarify when
Mark says, " All we have to do is host"
When we make YouTube videos for you,
when we go out and shoot series,
we're not only being in front of the camera,
we're often times, almost always, operating the cameras.
We are getting the shots; we are talking with businesses
to allow us to film there.
We're getting from A to B
We're essentially doing the jobs of many people.
When we hosted the show, Budget Versus Baller,
our only responsibilities were hosting the show.
Everything else, all of the different aspects of production,
which don't get talked about a lot here on YouTube
were handled by other people, by the production team.
The production team was really cool.
The director and cinematographer was Christian.
His second camera guy was Tyler
Nathan was A.C., assistant camera.
Katie was the producer, and we picked up a
local sound, audio engineer and a local fixer and
driver in every location where we went.
There were four people that were very much constant fixtures on the trip.
And then we had another three or four that were constantly cycling out.
It was quite the adventure.
We became very tight with everyone on set
as we traveled through out these different destinations.
We went to Europe first. We did Lyon, Nice, Genoa
and the Italian Riviera, and then Geneva in Switzerland..
After that we flew back to the United States;
We shoot an episode in LA.
We were here for a weekend in Los Angeles to catch up with family and friends.
We also shot the pilot in Austin, Texas.
which is the second episode from North America.
Then we flew to Asia and we shot an episode in Taiwan
in Lao..in Okinawa, Japan
and finally in Hong Kong.
Essentially, a week looked like this:
three days of filming, Day 1, Day2, Day 3 filming
travel day, Day1 , Day 2, Day 3 filming next destination
Rest day.
And then repeat.
It was like that for about six weeks, which
in the beginning it was very manageable
and actually taught me personally a lot about wellness and rest.
I became very focused on doing Yin Yoga
and meditation in my time off
to balance out the yang-ish energy of being a TV host.
I took the opposite approach to it.
I just finished reading a really good book
by a guy named Jaco Williams who is an ex US Navy Seal
and his whole philosophy was just...
grab life by the huevos and never compromise on yourself
I was trying to wake up at 4:30 in the morning
and get a workout in before a 6AM call-time.
And that lasted a couple of weeks,
but towards the end of it, I was in the same mentality of
Oh my gosh I really need to conserve energy to finish strong and complete this job.
That was a long time for production
and constant travel, constant being in front of the camera,
it can be very taxing.
But I think it also taught us some lessons in the sense that
when you have such a large time obligation,
it teaches you to focus on the essential stuff
for what our business is.
Sometime if you're self employed,
you can easily get distracted doing this, this, this, this,
especially if you're a Youtube and you combine your own business with FOMO
where you always feel there's something else you should be doing
some other place you could be.
It can be a recipe for burnout, and a lot of
creators on youtube have been dropping out from burnout,
from just trying to be everywhere at all times....
to be on all platforms.
All platforms at all times, constantly posting,
constantly updating, constantly working and uploading and editing and shooting .
It takes a toll on you, and when you do that for years at a time with no break,
you are setting yourself up for burnout and for failure.
a lot of the last few months for us has been re calibrating
and just trying to find equilibrium.
Part of the reason we weren't publishing over the last few weeks and
not publishing as much over the last few months
is we have been juggling lots of different responsibilities
and we have been very aware and cognizant of the fact
that burnout is real, and we're just trying to avoid that
so that we can continue creating content for all of you.
On a side note, we will be doing a premier for Budget Versus Baller
here is Los Angeles.
If you live in the area, stay tuned and follow us on Instagram
for updates about the specific time and dates.
Should be late October.
That's where we're going to be making the announcement once we figure out
and finalise dates for the premier
If you want to come, watch an episode of Budget Versus Baller with us in person
then make sure you are connected with us on Instagram
so you don't miss the announcement.
On the personal front, we have had a lot of people pass away in our lives, recently.
Not only like everybody, Anthony Bourdain
passed away right before we started the TV show
and he was a huge inspiration to us.
Halfway through production, Ryker, Alexi and his girlfriend Mindi, our friends from
High On Life crew also passed away from a tragic accident in British Columbia
and when we were coming home on our last day
of production, we got news that our grandfather
who's super close with us was on his deathbed.
We cut short a trip that was planned to go to the Philippines to do some vlogs
and we flew straight home to Los Angeles to be with our grandpa.
It was really, really difficult.
At the end of forty-five days on set,
after a fourteen hour flight across the Pacific from Hong Kong to LAX,
we got off the plane and went straight to our grandparents' house
and spent the next week or so
with our family watching our grandfather slowly pass away
That was not easy by any means.
But I think that having that happen was natural.
He was 92 years old.
He lived a full life. He was surrounded by his wife, his loving wife of over 60 years,
his children, his grand children
I was just glad we were able to make it back in time
to be there to support the rest of our family
H, that's what we called him. His name was Halford.
He was an amazing individual.
He was an optimist, a member of the Optimist Club
I will continually and always try to live to the standards that he set
for being positive and being cheerful
and trying to encourage everyone to live their best life.
It was kind of a shock.
It was kind of a a rough homecoming, for sure
after a very exhausting summer.
But I think that we knew that he loved us
He knew that we loved him.
And it was just time.
That's life and that's death.
H, if you're up there watching, I love you.
And you're always going to be in here.
It's worth mentioning that we were super close to our grandpa.
We grew up in San Diego, and he lived here in LA
I went to school in LA and I was able to go visit him during finals.
I'd come there to study
But most importantly, when we got started with Vagabrothers,
we won this contest to go six months around the world making videos,
we came to California and didn't really have a place to stay.
We knew we had to be in Los Angeles
to be near the YouTube space to try to pitch
and try to pitch ourselves as TV host,
and our grandparents took us in.
Our grandma, Jeannie, and our grandpa, H
took us in , and we stayed in basically our old
mom's, aunts' and uncle's rooms just crashing out.
It was great; it was a really symbiotic relationship because
we brought a little bit of youth and energy into their house.
They gave us a place to stay and a lot of support
and wisdom....and wisdom, and our grandpa would come in...
We turned their living room into our production studio,
This is four years ago.... 2014
And our grandpa would walk into the living room
when we were there working, and he'd always say the samething..
"At it again. At it again!"
He is always impressed by how long we are working.
He'd be like, " A and E. That's all I want to see,"
which is short for asses and elbows
because he grew up on a farm in Kansas
and he would always that when you were working,
you were like in the ground planting seeds.
So all you should be able to see if someone is working hard is asses and elbows.
He also had another great saying that we loved
which is ,"Onwards and Upwards," "Excelsior" in Latin.
And that is what we're going to try to live
and internalize because life is a journey
and you point your compass upwards,
and you continue to march onwards,
then good things are going to happen.
And it's a good phrase to use when
something goes bad.
He passed away, and the first thing I thought
was onwards and upwards.
Every single time something bad happens to you in life,
you have to just look forward and go,
onwards and upwards.
That is his philosophy.
That's something that really helped us get through some difficult moments.
I'm very happy knowing that we had the chance to speak with him so much.
I've always tried to live to make him proud,
to make my grandmother proud, and I know
that we achieved that.
They were both very, very proud of us.
My grandpa's favorite movie was our film
East of Eden,
which in a way was about the dialogue we had with him.
We had very different values and political views,
but that film was really about bridging the gap between
urban and rural, and our grandfather who
grew up on a farm in Kansas and is a bit more traditional
I think he really appreciated that film.
He would always watch it on loop(??).
I think about 1000 views of that video are from him alone.
Also with the passing of Ryker, Alexey, and Mindy
We were not super close with them, but they were definitely our peers.
When I heard the news, it really shook me to the core.
We were on set in Geneva,
and we both just starting crying.
It just really makes you realize how
that could have easily been us.
It could have been Alex going after Carrie
and me going after my brother,
and all of us meeting our ends.
There's been a lot of people passing in our lives recently.
It's been a reminder that life is short,
and you can't really just say we'll do this next year,
we'll do this later.
If something's worth doing,
it's worth doing it right now.
I think that what we're going to dedicate ourselves to
is really checking off some of the big goals we have in life.
And yes, a lot of that is narrative travel and story telling.
We appreciate you guys have been so patient with us
as we've been through this period and we haven't been posting as much
We're going to do our best to make some content in the meantime,
and we're going to dedicate ourselves into making
really, really high quality travel cinema for you to enjoy over the next couple months.
On a positive note...moving onwards and upwards,
we just want to let you all know that
good things are coming, that we are
dedicated to delivering the highest quality travel content
on YouTube for all of you Vagabuddies out there,
and we have some really cool exciting new destinations
which are coming up very, very soon.
At the end of this month, we are going to be heading to Sri Lanka.
We'll be shooting a large vlog series there,
and we are estatic about it.
We can't wait to go explore this island.
We really think all of you out there are seriously going to enjoy it,
and afterwards probably going to book a ticket there.
When we started this channel, I was super into documentary making expeditions.
And I think that as we move forward,
those types of journeys, those types of trips,
we want to start incorporating back into our content.
Not only are we going to give you guys travel tips,
and the city guides and the top tens, and the travel vlog series,
but we want to start planning at least once
or maybe twice a year, one large expedition to a new place
that's off the grid where we're going to have to go into the back country
and explore nature and culture and adventure
and try to get back to that wild, free feeling in places that we've never been before.
If you're interested in that type of content,
if you want to see us do more nature, or backpacking
or back country content, then please share
your tips on the places that you think we should go
or places that you've been that you think would make great vlog series.
Please let us know because that's also on the agenda for the end of this year and 2019.
In sum, thank you for your patience.
Thank you for watching this far in the video and taking an interest
on where we are personally, emotionally, and professionally.
We promise to be making great content for you in the coming months.
Again, stay tuned on Instagram for updates about when we're doing the live premier
here in Los Angeles and either way Budget Versus Baller
will be available in the Fall on Tastemade's channel on YouTube TV
As always, stay curious, keep exploring,
and we will see you on the road very soon
with new fresh content coming at you.
Thanks guys. Peace.
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