Aug 7, 2024 · 1h 24m · bigdeal
How to Build a $10M+ Online Empire (feat. Joshua Weissman)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Host Codie Sanchez sits down with culinary creator Joshua Weissman to explore how relentless kitchen discipline, uncompromising production standards, and authentic audience connection built a multi-million-dollar digital media empire.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Codie holds 37.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Codie as informed peer 3.0 Guest teaching 2.6 Guest disagreement 1.3 Codie pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is Codie, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:12:50 Joshua mocks lack of basic kitchen vocabulary
Joshua playfully rejects Codie's self-deprecating framing, expressing shock that anyone would not recognize standard culinary concepts like mise en place.
Hardest push from Codie ▶ 46:23 Codie rejects Joshua's modest marketing explanationCodie interrupts Joshua's claim of organic simplicity, asserting that his cookbook integration into YouTube videos was highly tactical and systematic.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 8:33 Joshua dismantles anti-kitchen work tropesJoshua educates Codie and the audience on why cooks choose high-intensity kitchen environments, reframing suffering as an essential component of artistic craftsmanship.
Codie holds their own ▶ 7:26 Codie frames food through macroeconomic theoryCodie connects culinary labor to the classic economic text 'I, Pencil', demonstrating deep business literacy regarding global supply chains.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Codie as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Codie pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Episode Preview: Relentless Dedication and the Attention Game | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Introductory teaser, sponsor read for Riverside, and host framing setup for the guest. | |
| Societal Psyche, Online Negativity, and Sensory Content | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Codie asks Joshua about societal happiness trends and social media sentiment. Joshua elaborates on post-pandemic economic pressures and online negativity. | |
| The Ephemeral Art of Food and Human Interconnectedness | 6 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Joshua discusses the paradox of culinary art existing only to be consumed and destroyed. Codie introduces the economic concept from the essay 'I, Pencil' to explain supply chain interconnectedness. | |
| Kitchen Discipline, Camaraderie, and Suffering for Craft | 3 | 5 | 3 | 1 | Joshua corrects the popular media narrative that professional kitchens are purely toxic, reframing the intense environment as a shared pursuit of perfection and camaraderie. | |
| From Line Cook to Full-Time Creator: The YouTube Pivot | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Joshua clarifies that his former restaurant was not Michelin-starred and recounts transitioning from an $11/hour cook to making $40k/month on YouTube. | |
| Cultivating Thick Skin and Emotional Regulation Strategies | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Joshua breaks down his psychological approach to handling internet hate, explaining his delay-based rule to avoid emotional reactions. | |
| The Gastrique Kitchen Fire and Unflinching Accountability | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Joshua shares an anecdote about accidentally causing a six-foot gastrique grease fire in a professional kitchen and taking full accountability. | |
| The Death of Traditional TV and the Rise of Digital Food Media | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Joshua argues that legacy television is permanently diminished compared to targeted digital media. Codie corroborates this with insights from entertainment industry executives. | |
| Signature Hooks, Creator Personas, and Viral Pacing | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Joshua discusses developing pacing intuition, visual pacing, and signature hooks organically rather than forcing synthetic personas. | |
| Running a Production Studio: Honoring the Audience | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Joshua discusses operating a full-scale production company, balancing artistic preferences with the audience's viewing needs under high overhead costs. | |
| Playing for Necessity: Mastery Through Relentless Repetitions | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Joshua articulates why internal necessity outperforms chasing glamour in content creation, while Codie relates it to the high-volume output of top performers. | |
| Guerrilla Marketing Tactics and Authentic Cookbook Launches | 5 | 2 | 2 | 5 | When Joshua attributes cookbook sales simply to authenticity, Codie pushes back, pointing out his tactical integration of book plugs inside high-retention video moments. | |
| Long-Term North Stars and Strategic Business Risks | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Joshua details his long-term ambition modeled after Gordon Ramsay, including spending tens of thousands of dollars on single video concepts as business investments. | |
| Culinary Nurturing: The Psychology of Cooking for Others | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Joshua explains the psychological divide between cooking for oneself versus providing an exceptional dining experience for others. | |
| The Date-Night Cooking Blueprint for Beginners | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Joshua offers a tactical breakdown of how beginners can prepare a date-night meal by surveying preferences and executing high-yield, low-risk dishes. | |
| Reviving the Dinner Table Ritual and Everyday Mindfulness | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | Joshua and Codie discuss the psychological and relationship benefits of shared meal preparation and breaking away from phone distraction. | |
| Harmonizing Culinary Indulgence with Physical Fitness | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Joshua outlines his intuitive approach to nutritional balancing, combining intense fitness goals with culinary indulgence without obsessive restriction. | |
| Seeking Exceptional Dining and Defining Individual Success | 3 | 4 | 3 | 2 | Joshua banters with Codie over standard culinary terminology before explaining that great food experiences level socioeconomic divides. | |
| Studio Reflection: Relentless Detail and the Comedic Edge | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Host monologue summarizing her impressions of Joshua Weissman's studio setup, comedic discipline, and obsessive attention to detail. | |
| Business Teardown: The Harsh Financial Realities of Restaurants | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Host business teardown monologue analyzing the financial drawbacks, margin compression, and failure rates of traditional restaurants versus digital culinary media. |
Statements from this episode (27)
Weissman: Food art is unique because it is designed for immediate destruction
“The irony about food is that same level of attention to detail, care, passion, stress, practice craftsmanship goes into it, but it is made to be instantaneously destroyed and shit out literally.”
Weissman: Intense Kitchen Operations Are Necessary to Serve Great Food
“It is quite literally partially the nature of how a restaurant must operate to serve you great food.”
Joshua Weissman earned $40K monthly on YouTube while making $11 hourly
“Totally overshadowing when I was making 11 dollars an hour. At the time, I mean, obviously we've scaled this into like a substantial business, but at the time, when you're just one person, you're making like 40 K a month, it's like, what the fuck is going on? …”
Weissman: Slept 2-3 hours nightly for a year balancing restaurant and YouTube
“I slept for like 2:03 hours a night for almost a year while I was producing videos. The only way I could make it happen, make full-time restaurant and YouTube work at the same time.”
Weissman: Restaurant workers must treat harsh criticism as impersonal lessons
“Anyone who's worked in restaurants for long enough, for sure, you have to learn how to take an aggressive beatdown as what can I learn from this? And it's not personal.”
A24 executive says streaming apps want to integrate user generated content
“I was meeting with an A-Twenty-Four executive the other day, and she was telling me that in their conversation with the streaming services, all of them are sort of pondering how to include like streamed first person POV or user generated content into their sys…”
Joshua Weissman spent $500,000 building his custom culinary studio
“It costs you a half a million dollars to build this location.”
Weissman: I Was Among the Very First Food Creators on TikTok
“But I know for sure that I was the first, if not one of the very first, like within, like you could count on one hand that was producing food content on like TikTok.”
Joshua Weissman claims he invented the quick cut editing style for food
“They may not be copying me directly, but they're copying someone else who copied me or someone else who copied them, who copied who,
Another person, it ultimately leads to me.
Cause the whole quick cut editing style stuff started with that.”
Weissman: Creators must detach emotionally from viral views and analyze them formulaically
“If you make a video and it does crazy views, the first thing you should do is not give a fuck. You need to get out of the, whatever feelings you have attached with those views, you need to murder those feelings and look at it formulaically and figure out how t…”
Sanchez: Content creation is the most competitive game with zero moat
“I think one of the toughest parts that I've realized about the content game is it is the most competitive game there is. There is zero moat to this game, and you are competing for the highest and most expensive commodity that we have in this day and age, which…”
Sanchez: Loving Tim Grover's 'Relentless' predicts employee fit at her companies
“Tim wrote a book called Relentless, and I think it's a really good screen. If people love that book, they're gonna like working in my companies. If they don't, they're not.”
A $200K Pinterest ad campaign drove under 1% of his cookbook sales
“Less than one percent of our sales came from that.
And the amount of ad space they gave us was 200,000 dollars worth of ad space.
Less than one percent of my sales came from that.”
Joshua Weissman sold 60,000 copies of his cookbook on launch day
“Yeah, we sold like, 60,000 copies that day.”
Sanchez: Have never lost money for any investor to date
“The other day we just raised a bunch of money and I put in millions of dollars for a company that we're scaling in the SAS space and I bought it and now we're building it. And, you know, I told some of the investors that gave us money You know, I knock on wood…”
Weissman: Have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on videos
“I've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on videos. Yeah, multiple six figures I've lost on videos”
Short form video builds minimal audience loyalty compared to long form content
“Long form is really powerful. It's not like short form. Someone can watch a short form video and not give a shit about you. They can watch 20 of your videos and not give a shit about you. Long form is a commitment.”
Study shows 60% of women under 35 never had men cook
“I was reading some studies the other day on women today, and more than 60% of women today have never had a man cook for them below 35, which I thought was fascinating.”
Weissman: Elaborate cooking gives men only a 10% to 20% marginal dating edge
“There are few, so few men that cook, I think, for their ladies in their life, or the ladies they wish were in their life, that just cooking, you're already so far ahead. I only think you're gaining maybe a 10 to 20% additional advantage by getting really crazy…”
Weissman: Sacrificing quality of life to extend lifespan by three years is not worthwhile
“I don't know when I'm going to die, but I sure as fuck don't want to ruin my quality of life just so that I can live three years longer.”
Weissman: Primary goal of creating content was never to teach cooking
“My whole goal when I started doing this was never to convince anybody to cook.”
Average US small businesses sell for $800K versus $198K for restaurants
“The average small business in the U.S. Sells for around 800,000 dollars. The average restaurant goes for a 198,000 dollars.”
Sanchez: 60% of Restaurants Fail in Year One and 80% Fail in Four Years
“60% fail in the first year, and 80% fail after four.”
Sanchez: Average Restaurant Net Profit Margins Are 3% to 5%
“On average, restaurants can expect net margins of three to five percent.”
Codie Sanchez: Personal Deal Rule Requires Minimum 30% Profit Margins
“I won't do a deal unless I can make 30 cents on every dollar, or 30% margins.”
Sanchez: All Things Butter raised $2.2M and sold 250k blocks
“So in twenty-twenty-three, he raised 500,000 dollars, seeded his company, Started calling the company All Things Butter and sold a bunch of flavored butter, like garlic and herb. This year they landed a 2.2 million dollar investment from a private equity firm.…”