The Art of Reinvention on YouTube - ft Speeed

**James Pumphrey** (0:00)
I think sometimes people overlook that YouTube is an entertainment platform. It's TV, and so if you don't want to entertain people, then you don't want to do this job.

**Colin** (0:09)
Today on the show, we're interviewing James Pumphrey and Jesse Wood from the YouTube channel, Speed. Now these guys started this channel about 18 months ago, and it quickly rose to 2 million subscribers. And beyond that, in their first 60 uploads, they crossed 80 million views.

**Samir** (0:25)
Speed is one of my favorite new channels on YouTube, and Jesse and James have a super unique perspective on the platform, because this isn't their first go at it. They worked for just about 8 years at the very popular car YouTube channel, Donut Media. Jesse was the chief creative officer, and James was the editor-in-chief.

**Colin** (0:44)
Outside of personal finance and tech, car YouTube has proven to be one of the most valuable genres on YouTube. It has a really rabid audience, and we've seen an influx of capital come into the space, from Doug Demereau, who launched an auction website called Cars and Bids. He got a $30 million investment from the Churnin Group to the company that James and Jesse worked at, Donut Media, which got acquired for a reported tens of millions of dollars in 2021

**Samir** (1:11)
In this episode, we asked Jesse and James what it was like to be at Donut Media, what they learned there, and what it was like to get acquired, some of the discomfort that came from all of that capital coming in to their media company.

**Colin** (1:23)
James described the time period after they got acquired as a gluttonous pursuit of growth. We'll get into that. We'll talk about what it means for large capital injections to come in to creative companies.

**Samir** (1:35)
There was also a ton of good that came from the time that they spent at Donut Media. We talked to Jesse and James about what they've learned and what they've now applied to their new project, Speed.

**Colin** (1:45)
Yeah, I think media companies like Donut or Vox or BuzzFeed have proven to be really great incubators. Some of the most prolific creators today have come out of media companies, and James and Jesse aren't really that different. They came by our studio right before they launched Speed, and they pitched me this vision for what this channel was going to be. And the way James said it is, he said, it's not going to be a car channel. It's going to be much more like a men's magazine for YouTube. And I didn't really understand what he meant, but then as I started seeing the channel come to life, it was exactly that.

**Samir** (2:20)
Just to give you an idea of what some of the videos are like, I'm going to read off some of these titles. Building a cheap, fun project car in 48 hours. That has 4 million views, and that's probably what you would expect from the guys from Donut. But then you have the best male hobbies according to women, 3.5 million views. I tried 30 viral health trends for 30 days to see what's worth it.

**Colin** (2:40)
3 million views.

**Samir** (2:42)
Testing the same products from 1975 and 2025 3 million views.

**Colin** (2:47)
What's the one about having a good summer?

**Samir** (2:49)
Have a good summer guaranteed. That has almost 700,000 views.

**Colin** (2:54)
So it's an amazing variety of content, all aimed at one specific demographic. And it really is this modern version of YouTube, which is more of a channel that's pointed at a demographic rather than a subject matter. It's not one format repeated over and over again. There's a lot more variety than we've seen before. And as we get into this episode, what you're gonna learn from these guys is, how do you spin up a YouTube channel in 2026 that actually stands out, that can attract millions of people? Because a stat that we just read on YouTube's official blog is in 2026, on average, 20 million videos are uploaded every day to YouTube. That's crazy. In a sea of that much content, how do you stand out? And that's what we get into in this episode.

**Samir** (3:40)
We also talk to them about what a modern small media team looks like. We ask them about their ideas for their videos and how they green light a video. And then towards the end of the episode, they deliver their nine rules for how to start a successful YouTube channel in 2026

**Colin** (3:55)
All right, I think you guys are going to really enjoy this. We loved sitting down with these guys. It's truly our favorite new YouTube channel. I think you're going to learn a lot. Here's our interview with James Pumphrey and Jesse Wood from Speed. I wanted to start the conversation around Car YouTube. And if you guys could just explain Car YouTube. Because it's like a rabid audience. Everyone who I talk to about Car YouTube thinks it's cool that I know about Car YouTube. Yeah. But what is the world of Car YouTube?